mother of a preeschooler

this is my first mobile post. i will add photos later. i am the mother of a preschooler now. it is an interesting experience. e likes school, but it exhausts him. the 2.5 hours he is there leave him a tired sloppy mess by the end of the day. he does ok in school, but he is for sure still himself and very 3.5. the school teacher does timeouts, which we do not really do, but he does not seem bothered by them. even though i spend most of my time away from him at work, it is very strange knowing he is with other adults 5 days a week. i am still getting used to it, and so is j and so is e

adding photos:

right before we left to go.

skunk lesson

waiting for his name tag

Hair and other things

Last post was kind of heavy. Things are still hard but I am trying to give us some space from my mother and enjoy our life with our friends, who are amazing. My son is also amazing, and I realize that more when I am away from my mother more and when I am not fighting to make him into someone or something that he isn't. the fact is, dinner out with your 3 year old on a friday night when you have to wait 40 minutes to be seated is never going to turn out well. Oh, and you have to wait outside on the sidewalk too, of course. And the wait followed an hour in the car.

Bah.

So he's great. But one thing that I didn't predict loving about him is his hair. I mean, I love his hair. He has perfect curls and lots of them. I dread cutting it for real when he (or we) decide it must be cut. Right now, we all love it, so though he is seen as a girl from time to time, the hair is here to stay.

curls

curls

We have some fun plans for the weekend. In fact, E and J are out picking strawberries with some of our friends today. Then tomorrow we are going to this awesome looking circus demonstration and sunday a bbq at our friend in closest proximity.

In 2 quick weeks we are off to vacation, which is exciting and terrifying both.

Thanks again to everyone who offered kind words last post. I just got super down with all the stress.

Now, behold the boy.

sleeping off a fun morning, memorial day

party

family picture from the night we took e to dinner too late and just about lost our minds. We look good anyway...you'd never know.

Update

Well, we moved from the hood to paradise, basically. Chicago style paradise, which doesn't mean hotdogs or super deep dish pizza, but we moved north in Chicago. We have a large back deck, a small yard, free heat and laundry, and we are steps (like 50 steps) from a giant, awesome, green expansive park. My commute is longer. It means I am on the bus an hour each direction every day. BUT, everything else is far far far better.


E. climbs trees now too. And he's really good at it. He was made for it! He can climb anything, this kid.


Work is not so good right now and hasn't been for over a month. I'm not sure when (or if) it will get better. I feel as if I must need to reexamine my career...but this isn't the time to do that as I need to have a job and at least it pays pretty well.

I'm getting a lot of pressure from my family about E's behavior. He is an intense kid who likes to push boundaries. We don't always know what to do about it. My mother seems to think he's going to be a bully and that we are to blame. It's very hard having him around her when she constantly is on him for every little thing he does. We have rules in our house, but they are not the same as hers. I don't know what to do about it, and every time we have to see her I worry for days about what he might do and what she might say. It makes me a very stressed parent. This week, my brother is in town, so I am extra stressed because we will be around them a lot. It doesn't help that E is 3, and that he's still adjusting to the move (we moved may 1st). Of course my mother swears that moving isn't a big deal and doesn't get why he's having a hard time. We moved a lot as kids, and she thinks it was easy for us. In my case, I know I was too afraid of her to seem like it was anything but easy. Also, our first move was when I was 8.

"Every kid is different, he's a bit more sensitive", isn't enough for her. Of course, this is the same mother who came down on me for holding him too much when he was a baby. Can you hold a baby too much?

I'm very sad and frustrated. Being a mom of a kid going through 3 is hard enough. It really is. I wish I had some support from her...but I should know that's not something I would ever get.

Here are some great pics from the weekend. Sorry to be such a downer. I just feel alone right now, and so much like I need to wrap my family up and take them far far away from her.

e and his "best friend" and cousin.

putting his hat out for candy

Read this

I love this blog in general, but today's post was fully awesome. Read it, people.

http://ginsoakedolive.blogspot.com/2011/03/come-out-come-out-wherever-you-are.html

Faster

e loves scooting! I took this action shot by snapping it before he was even on it.

this is my favorite picture of e right now. He's watching tv in this shot, the day before his 3rd birthday...but such an angelic look.

Ok....it's become obvious to me now that I suck and getting the blogs posted. Can I blame it on the job? Yes! Is it fair to say that having a 2 to 3 year old is a huge time suck? Yes. Would I change it if I could? Well, the job, yes...but not the kid. I mean who doesn't wish for a better job?

Well, little boots boy is probably happy with this job.

I work for a department at a University as an Assistant to the Head. It's a fancy sounding title, but I end up just feeling like e knob...like a pee-on, like a person who is helping someone else succeed in while at the same time not succeeding. I rarely write anymore....except for the job and that is not creative writing my friends, it is not at all. I rarely craft. I made E a doll for his birthday, but that's about it for the last year. I hardly even read blogs. I think it has everything to do with being too busy both at work and home. Obviously, blogging and reading blogs at work is a no no...though I might be doing it right now because it's spring break and no one is here, and at home, by the time E is asleep and I have cleaned the kitchen, I'm ready to watch one TV show and call it a night. That's it.

Night is a bit of a circus sometimes. It's hard for me to deal with in a rational way...I think because I'm so tired from working and then I have to just swing into high 3 year old gear and roll with the punches. And E is getting better at playing by himself, but he isn't the kind of kid you can turn your back on. He just might scale a bookshelf or find something he shouldn't have. He's gotten so tall that there is only one home surface he can't reach that I can reach. This has made said surface into a verifiable disaster area...as everything gets stuck up there that needs to get out of his reach. And if he has the idea to do it, he simply pulls a chair over and reaches the top and all the things on it easily. he knows he isn't supposed to do this, but sometimes, he does it anyway.

All of this is to say why I haven't blogged in a while. I just can't. By night's end I'm wordless...and wordless blogs are ok now and then, but it's not why I blog.

Now that I have that off my chest, I will let one other thing off and then I will update and go. I am still planning on making the give away winner her squirrel. If you still read this, please know that I think of it often.

ok....updates.
1. E was sick with stomach flu this weekend. He HATES throwing up. Even while he is doing it he says how yucky it it (yes, talks while the puke is coming out). I hate throwing up too, but I was impressed that he was able to talk while doing it. He said later that he wished it didn't have to come out of his mouth.
2. His 3yr old healthy boy visit found him 3 ft 1.5 inches tall and 31 pounds.
3. We live in a sketchy neighborhood and the other day I drove through a fight and someone tried to get into my car. I didn't mean to drive through a fight, it was just there.
4. As a result we are moving....though we were moving before that too...this just makes it even more important.
5. We just found out that E is pretty far down on every waiting list for every school we applied for him to go to...thanks Chicago Public Schools. We really needed more stress. We'll just send him to the neighborhood school where the fight was that I drove through.
6. I need to breathe and stop thinking the worst.
7. I'm tired of being run by our debt.
8. I've still only lost 20 lbs at wait w..atch.ers. I think I am going to juggle the money and just follow the program but use the money spent there to join the Gym here at school instead.
9. in the more than year since I have written: I had emergency surgery for a hernia, J's mom had a stroke, then J's mom had open heart surgery to repair a hole in her heart, my brother went to and came back safely from a non military mission in Afghanistan, e learned how to use the potty and now only wears a diaper at night, we moved and will move again, I took a new job at the university.
10. I have missed blogging but can't promise I'll keep up.

Have a good day...I'm going to try to do the same.

3!

What I made him.

What we made him for cake.

home made dino pinata. Made by J. She rocks!

She made the crown too.

A constant theme...no time to post. But I will post these 3 year old pictures from E's party in case anyone still reads this. If you do read this, please comment. Thanks!

Still Alive

I promise that I will post one more time before he turns 3 on 2/20/2011.
I miss blogging but am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO impossibly busy.