I like winter probably more than most people. Having grown up in Minnesota, I’m no stranger to the sensations of sub-zero arctic blasts—snot freezing inside your nostrils into little rocks; eyelashes struck together with ice, etc. I’m okay with all that and find it indeed rather bracing and invigorating. But with a baby, not so much. In fact it’s now Wednesday morning and I haven’t taken the baby outside since Friday when I brought Isaac home from piano school. I need some serious Inuit gear.
The days of polar confinement have had some real rough patches, but we got through it. Isaac’s school was closed on Monday so we all stayed home together, a situation that at times felt like “No Exit.” I had a dream, even, that we were being held captive in our house against our will. Yesterday his school was open, unlike all the others in town, but I was still loath to bring the baby out into the wind that was around 20 below, no matter how bundled. So I kept Isaac home yesterday too. This morning the temperature has soared up to 11 degrees, with only a 4 below windchill, so we’re basically going back to normal.
An example of a rough patch: We hit our nadir, I think, on Monday evening. At the end of a long, LONG day inside the house, Isaac took his cowboy belt, with heavy buckle, and hurled it over our atrium to the ground. If this was not enough, he soon began to swing it around his head until it collided with the back of his friend “Superman,” whose costume I gather dulled the blow. And then, when I took the belt away from him and put it up high, he got into an extreme tantrum. While attempting a kickboxing move that I believe is called the “roundhouse,” (directed at me), he KICKED THE BABY IN THE HEAD. (I was holding the baby at the time, of course!) Such that, the incredibly docile mild-mannered baby, who normally doesn’t make much fuss at being constantly bonked and bumped and yelled towards by Isaac, actually burst into pain-crying. My screen went red. I scooped Isaac up and put him in his room in an angry and distressed fashion. A permanent time out? Is that possible? It occurred to me.
This cold snap came along at the end of a very trying week for all of us. Ben exhausted from work and driving; me exhausted from being up all night with a possibly teething baby; and Isaac totally mentally deranged for who knows what reason. At home, sleeping and eating erratically. At school, getting scolded for not listening. “It’s not me, it’s MY BRAIN!” he explained. “I want to listen but my brain won’t let me.” Ever resourceful, his teacher (Dutch kick-boxer) Mr. Johan gave Isaac some “powers” to help him take control of his own brain.
I’m not sure if the powers were strong enough though. Isaac brain, and also his body, was really acting up. A question that daunted us all last week was basically, “Have we severely overscheduled him?” He’s in school now full days, except on Tuesdays. He has swimming lessons on Saturday morning, skating lessons on Tuesday afternoons, and just started piano lessons on Fridays. Mr. Johan suggested that Isaac’s behavior problems may stem from anxiety from being in so many new situations at once. Possibly so. But individually he’s really enjoying each thing and is unwilling to drop anything. I think that my plan for the moment is to cut back on his regular school time and put in some more flexibility and just hang-out time.
On the flip side, though, the idle hands are the devil’s workshop in Isaac’s case. Also, an adage from dog training comes to mind: “A tired dog is a good dog.” All winter my life managing the needs of our two boys has been really a challenge. It seems to me that I’m always pinned down by nursing and Isaac is always running amok. But perhaps the silver lining of this cold snap is that it gave Isaac (not me!) a little mini-vacation from everything. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday we didn’t leave the house at all. He got very well caught up on his sleep, and submitted to eating some protein options rather than just fasting or eating carbs (the situation last week—hellish—manic or comatose being the personality choices). So maybe with his batteries recharged we can embrace the balance of the week more calmly.
Some highlights from last week:
Isaac went up to a black guy who was bagging our groceries and said, “WE’RE WHITE PEOPLE.” The black check-out girl thought this was funny and cute, but the bagger, no. He scowled all the way through the transaction. The next day, Isaac accosted a large black police officer at our new piano school and said, “We’re not criminals!” Which everyone thought was funny, including the policeman, who just laughed and said, “I know that!” After this I got into the car and then it occurred to me just how narrowly I had dodged a bullet. I sat a moment and offered a prayer of thanks: “Dear Lord, thank you for not letting him combine those two ideas and tell the man, ‘We’re not criminals– we’re white people!'”
What else? the cat. Yes. the cat decided to finally strike back at us after lo these many months of terrible neglect. (Although since we saved her from being a girl of the streets, and she’s not out in the subzero weather, I ask you: Is this gratitude?) During my pregnancy I could not change the cat box because of toxoplasmosis, and Ben would let it go until I was basically on my knees begging for him to change it. It’s possible that at some point she got locked in our bedroom closet also, which may have caused her to improvise, I’m not sure. But anyway, after I had Elias I took over the cat box duties, but I tended to follow the squeaky wheel plan of cat box maintenance. And it so rarely squeaked! How odd. Until last Friday. I came home to find that the cleaning ladies had come to the house and cleaned apparently AROUND a large steaming lake of diarrhea courtesy of Lena. I cleaned that up and then went upstairs to find that our bedroom was fogged with a potent cat-crap stench. I looked high and low and found then a smoking gun, if you will– in the closet. Upon closer investigation I found that a whole bunch of clothes, a quilt, a box of summer clothes and so on, were all soaked in cat pee!! The litter box had been so low maintenance because for who knows how long she had been using the closet floor! Somehow unbeknownst to us! I cleaned this all up, throwing away no less than two full garbage bags of clothes and whatnot. (I just couldn’t begin to cope with salvaging them.)
Then I changed a poopy diaper.
Then a little voice pipes up from the other room, “Mommy! I have poop in my underpants!”
So at that point I decided to change my title from “at-home mom” to “major domo of the shit brigade.”
The cat is now being rehabilitated through crate therapy in the laundry room. She has a comfortable metal jail cell there, with a cat box, a bed, food and water, and nothing else. Nothing to read. She is forced to be alone with her thoughts. She hates it there and meows piteously, but I’m hoping that after a week or so she’ll get her head on straight and NEVER think outside the box again.
Ah winter… Perhaps this is just February in Cleveland. It occurs to me that this is not the first time I’ve had a rough patch at this time of year… see my old blog: http://dev.freeverse.com/blogs/catherine and read the entry for February 5, 2004, “the fog of winter.” Three years ago to the week!
But today the sun is out, Isaac is in school, and the house is (until the baby wakes up) all quiet. I’m going to fold some laundry and make chicken pot pie and try to pick up the pieces.