I'm so lucky Nixon is mine....he's so sweet, loving, silly and mine! This is a short blog of mommy drivel, feel free to ignore it if you want.

    I'm about to be an aunt for the 4th time (by my sister anyhow, many more if you count the in-laws and the better-than-blood nieces and nephews) tomorrow morning. My sister is having a little boy some time tomorrow. She was due last week, but like all her other babies, this one too needs to be evicted.
     She's being by medical terminology induced. I prefer she's giving eviction notice to her uterus' latest tenant, aka Uterus Eviction Day! It just sounds like more fun than induction or induced.

    I was telling Nixon he was getting a new cousin tomorrow and he got excited. He asked me if this "was the baby in Aunt Snotface's tummy?", which I said yes. Then I told him we were going to see him next month. This little sweetheart of a boy, that I evicted from my uterus, said to me "I can't wait! I want to put him down for a nap, before the moon is in the sky, because that's when all babies are safe." His newest cousin is not even here and Nixon wants to keep him safe. I might be raising the lovingest boy ever!
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On an unrelated note:
Last week Nixon and I watched a bunny in our backyard for over 15 minutes. I took photos of it, and Nixon sat quietly in a chair watching it:

 

Quick mini-brag

  Monday Nixon and I met a friend and her son who were visiting from my hometown, and we spent the day in Baltimore. A big portion of our time was spent at the Baltimore Aquarium. On a Monday. Which was rainy. And had a bunch of field trip school groups. Hello, people overload!
  Most of these kids were pushy and just rude. Some of the adults were too.

  Nixon was on point with his manners. Lots of "excuse me" when he tried to get to a tank and there were people in the way.
  At one point, I was beaming with pride. Nixon had just said "Excuse me please" to a couple as he moved towards a tank. I was a few feet behind him, and the couple turned to walk away. The guy said "That was the most polite kid we've run across all day." I said, without missing a beat, "Thank you, he's mine", and the guy continues "Well done mom. You weren't prompting him or anything, he's very polite. You should be very proud!" I am.

  Sure, Nixon did have his freakout moments and he did fly through the exhibits that he found uninteresting and he may or may not have tried telling a group of people to "be quiet" because they were too loud and hurting his ears (he did do that), but he was awesome overall. Well, minus asking me to carry him up and down stairs because he was afraid of them. But hey, he was just making sure I got the most of out of day out together, kind of like my very own little heavy bag!

Nixon "instructing" the dolphin show...no one knew he was doing it but me

In love with jellfish

Holy upside-down jellyfish! Gross but cool. 

Reach out and touch...the really thick glass tank. haha

A catfish with a head bigger than Nixon's torso! This thing was the chillest part of the visit, he  just came over and sat at the glass looking at us. Even I had to admit, he was kind of cute. 

Stop me if you've heard this before

   In one week from today my mother-in-law will be arriving to spend a week with us. We haven't seen her since Nixon's birthday and I was not at my best, mentally wise. She'll be here one week before Mother's Day, which is cool since we haven't seen her for Mother's Day since....well, before Nixon was here.

   That story goes like this:
Mac and I got married in March 2008. I found out I was pregnant in late-March/early-April, but we decided to wait to tell everyone because I'm superstitious and it seemed awesome that the end of the first trimester was very close to Mother's Day.
Not telling family for 11 weeks....hardest thing ever!
Mac and I had already made plans to fly to Miami and spend the weekend with his mom. We saw my family in March, so this was our first trip to visit his family since getting married. We had planned on not telling his mom until Mother's Day, but had to change that a little. I had horrible all day nausea and I'd lost over 15 lbs by the time we went to Miami. His mom knew something was up. I looked awful! I was super tired (tried passing it off as being tired from the early flight without success) and I couldn't keep anything down.
We went out to dinner with Mac mom, step-dad, brothers, sister-in-law and her family. I was trying to eat and not get super sick. Mac and I decided, since everyone was there and it was obviously going to be a long weekend, we were going to tell everyone after dinner.
As everyone may or may not know, Mac's mom is Vietnamese. Mac is half-Vietnamese but never showed much interest in that side of his heritage. (trust me this is important)
As everyone was getting coffee and dessert, Mac puts his arm around me and says to his mom, "Mom, how do you say "grandma" in Vietnamese?". She starts to explain, it depends on if it's the maternal or paternal side of the family. Then pauses and says "Why do you ask?". Mac says, calm and deadpan as can be, "Well, because you're going to be one."
Cue my mother-in-law asking "Are you serious?" a few times, other family members giving us hugs and congrats and my mother-in-law telling me "I knew you looked more than just tired!"

   (Fast forward to our next visit to Miami before we left to move to Okinawa, when I fell in love with my mother-in-law's Pho...it's a soup that is A-maz-ING! But when I was pregnant, I could barely stomach the smell, let alone the taste. Thank gods, Nixon left my body and I could like my mother-in-law's awesome food once he did)

   It seems crazy that it was five years ago that we told everyone Nixon (at the time Squishy) was incubating in me. I can not imagine my life without him, without Mac and without my awesome mother-in-law.

  Here's to an awesome visit, a wonderful night-out with my husband and Nixon getting some quality time with his Nana while I remain in much better spirits than our last visit.

My inner demons won't stop me from parenting my son how I see fit....and fuck you if you don't agree!

  I've struggled with writing this blog, for fear of the backlash, for a week now. I first went to a closed group on facebook looking for support and found judgement and condemnation. Last night, as fate saw fit to send me a kind and loving shoulder to lean on in the form of a BFF, I found the strength to be true to myself and confidant in my parenting choices.

   It started last weekend. After weeks of Nixon's behavior getting worse and worse, I'd finally had enough. We had tried everything: time outs, taking toys away, no tv time, taking everything away, talking to him about his behavior, rewards for good behavior. Nothing worked effectively. His behavior in public was becoming horrific, despite our repeated removing him from the store to the car as soon as he acted up.
  I finally had to make a decision I didn't want to and I fought desperately to avoid: I had to use spanking. But, I wasn't going straight into it, I was going to give warnings, chances to avoid the spanking and then only one spanking. I never spank out of anger. NEVER! If I can't rationally sit with Nixon and talk about why I spanked him, I won't do it. Spanking is not a means to control him, its a means to help him learn that his actions have consequences.
   Over that weekend, Nixon got a handful of spankings. Every single one of them, he got his warnings, continued to go about doing what he was doing, and got the resulting spanking. He gets a swat on the bottom, enough to make him realize we mean business, but I'm not aiming to leave marks on him.
   The one that really bothered me, and I felt made me "that" mom, happened Sunday night at the grocery store. Nixon was asked to help us do the shopping and stay out of the cart, without his PSP. A first, but I want him more connected to us and paying attention to us. He was doing really great for half the trip, he loved picking out the cats canned food! But, the empty frozen food aisle seemed to be a sirens call he couldn't resist. He slowly started to stray down the aisle, warning 1...started running down the aisle, warning 2....full-on bolted down the aisle, no more warning. He came over to me as soon as he saw me holding up 3 fingers, he knew what was coming. I realized there was no one around, I popped his ass right there in the ice cream section! His tears started, Mac and I took a couple minutes and calmed him down, talking to him (still in the frozen food section) about why he got the spanking and how he could avoid getting another one. He calmed down, and stayed right next to the cart with me the remaining time in the store.
 
 Am I proud I'm spanking my child? No. That's not the point of this. The point is, I'm parenting my child in a way that works for him and in doing so I'm putting my own personal conflicts behind me. It'd be easy for me to use my abusive childhood as a reason to not spank, and I admit I never intended to spank at all. But the more head strong and imaginative Nixon gets, the more difficult it is to punish him effectively. Time out became a time for him to play with his imagination. How do you tell a child to not play with his invisible friends, if he's staying in his time out area? He's not breaking the rules, he's being quiet, and doing his time, he's just having conversations with his "friends". You can't break a child's imagination. He was looking at the wall, like he was supposed to. He knew why he was in time out, he'd tell me why he was there. It just wasn't effective.

  The point is, since I made the decision to actively parent Nixon and use spankings, he's listening and paying attention. Last night we went to the airport to pick up Franny. Her flight came in around 1030pm, which is about an hour to an hour and a half past Nixon's normal bedtime. I was dreading it thinking he'd be a tired monster.
  I was wrong. He was a delight. Held my hand, listened to me, sat next to me while Franny grabbed her bags. The only time he got a little upset was when he had to stop playing with Aunt Franny because we reached the parking garage.
  A complete and total turn-around from a couple weeks ago.
  He's not a changed kid, he's still the same, but he knows to listen and do as he's told when asked because there are consequences. The warnings are enough now.

 I don't expect everyone to agree with my parenting choices. But I'm damned sick and fucking tired of being made to feel like a bad parent because I am being a fucking parent! I'm doing everything I can to help shape Nixon into a productive member of society and I'm not aiming to ruin him like I was ruined by abuse. It's a fine line, but I'm walking it with my head straight and my shoulders back. I want Nixon to know that his actions have consequences. It took only a few spankings for him to grasp that. I haven't had to spank him in 4 days now. I'm not saying spanking is the answer, but I'm also not going to let my child act up in public or set the rules at home because I'm too afraid to spank if that's the effective method.

   I can't expect Nixon to be a strong individual in himself, if I can't be a strong role model as a mother. 

Insomnia induced musings

Do you ever sneak into your child's room, late at night, and sit on the floor next to their bed just watching them sleep? Yeah, me neither.

But for the sake of argument, let's say I am that mom. Do you know what I think about, gazing at the sleeping child smiling in his sleep as I stroke his cheek? I listen to his breathing, his sweet voice murmuring about his dreams. I watch him grasp his teddy bear and curl up on his left side, right leg stretched out with his foot off the bed. I watch his eyelids flutter chasing things unseen to my eyes but what must be vivid  dreams behind those long lashes. I kiss his forehead, stroking his hair, and tell him once, twice, a thousand times "I love you" because the nights I do this are the nights I feel I failed him somehow during the day and didn't tell him those three words enough while he was awake.

I think to myself, sometimes aloud to him, how amazingly perfect my son is. He's the single best thing I've done in my 33 years on this planet and I can't fathom a life without him in it. I sometimes think, gazing at his slumbering form, that he's a dream I'm in and will be gone when I wake up in the morning. I lean over to smell his hair, knowing if it is a dream that's the scent I'll search for forever to hold in my arms again. He's the sun, moon, stars and everything in my universe. And oh how I fear he'll be gone one day. It's an irrational fear, I know, but the nights I need to be there watching him sleep, I'm not rational most times.

I wonder if my parents ever do that. Do they hold tight the memories of my sleeping childhood? Do they, like me, wish things were different somehow?

It's awkward being around my parents. They're almost strangers to me, while other family members are much closer. I see my parents and I can't quite reach them. They're in the same room as me but I'm searching for them still.
I remember my dad used to be my world. Then, something happened and the man I knew and loved and worshiped just disappeared. In his place? An angry, ugly, sad man who couldn't love anything around him and destroyed almost every relationship he had with anyone beyond all repair. The day it happened, the day that loving, kind and caring dad left me, I never thought I'd get over.

I looked for that kind of all consuming love, for decades. It haunted me to want to love like that and I forced myself to overlook flaws, just so I could have that love. It was fake, of course, I realize that now. I lied and pretended so much, that I really believed I'd found it. With a boy. I swore I'd love forever.
Then he left me, leaving behind in his place, a wounded and hurting and spiteful man. Wielding my love for him against me like a boomerang. He'd throw it at me and use it against me to get me to do things for him, forcing me to sacrifice my own goals and dreams to help him further his own, rewarding my sacrifices with insulting words and degrading actions. Still I held on hoping his love would come back. When it didn't....
I ran from him.
I ran from everyone I knew and loved. I needed space to find myself.

I found that love, for real this time. The day I felt my child stir in my womb for the first time. It was my 29th birthday and I was just starting really show the bump of pregnancy. Lying calmly at night, curled up in my husband's arms, I'd felt the first nudging from within. Even better, I got to share it with "Squishy*"'s dad, since he was there with me that exact moment.
The moment all other loves I'd thought I had finally paled in comparison and I realized I was carrying my truest love with me that moment. I love my husband for everything he does and is in my life, but I adore my son!
As crazy as he makes me, with his constant almost mindless tantrums and his insane amount of energy and his lightening quick frustration over the smallest things, I would do anything for him.

My son, my sleeping wonderment of silence, my greatest accomplishment, my reason for wanting to build a home where ever our family goes, my heart, soul and whole being now begins and ends with his smile.

I wonder if, years from now, when he's yelling at me telling me I'm ruining his life, will I still feel this way for him? Will it go away with time or get stronger? Does he have any idea that he really is my most favorite thing in this world? I tell him, he's my favorite, but does he understand that concept?? To have a favorite? He has a favorite teddy bear, but over time he learned we had more than one of them for him. He always knew when he had the original one though. Does he know he's my original love?

Does any of this make sense to anyone else?
Am I rambling because I'm tired or tired because of my ramblings?

*Squishy was the only name we told the family before Nixon was born. We knew the name was going to be met with opinions so to avoid the inevitable name choices being tossed our way, we dubbed baby boy "Squishy". Some people pouted over not knowing the name (Marsha....cough, cough.......) and others fully embraced Squishy. A few people may have even been concerned that Squishy wasn't just a nickname and we were going to somehow actually name our child Squishy on his birth certificate. We didn't because we always knew he'd be our Nixon.