Emilio - 2 Years Old

Emilio, bichito. I have been trying to write a post about you since you were 1 and a half, but you have kept me so busy, it turns out this one is going to have to be about your 2nd Birthday.

I just cant believe we are at this stage of your life. I have vivid memories of when your brother turns two, just before you were born. He seemed like such a big boy, or at least that's how I remember it. Yet I see you at this age and you are still sort of a baby. Except you can cause soooo much more trouble, ha! I look back at when you were born and it feels like you were born in the middle of a whirlwind. Your daddy had just started a new job, your brother just started staying at home with me, I had two jobs, one part-time job in downtown and another contracting job at home. We were moving across the country with this family and a tiny little baby, we were going to Mexico for a month!

Phew, then we finally managed to move here to Ottawa and that first year of your life was SO TOUGH on me. Living in a new city had not much to do with that. But just the amount of craziness I had to deal with being at home with you, a brand new baby, and your brother, the two-year-old. 

Last year your brother started school and you instantly became my little sidekick. You are such a sweet heart little boy. You have become quite the trouble maker lately (which I will talk about in a moment) but in essence, you are such a sweet boy. 

Superficially, you are just over the top handsome. You turn heads everywhere you go and people always comment on what a beautiful boy you are and what a knock out you will be when you grow up. You have the widest, brightest eyes, and the most beautiful smile, with all teeth but half a molar in it. 

You are such a happy, loving little boy. If you wake up in a good mood, which used to be almost every day, you just run around, you dance, you scream and jump in happiness. You light up a room. you are a loud and cheeky little monkey. You are also VERY affectionate. You give the best kisses, cuddles and hugs. You are the most affectionate with me, and will come up to me and just give me a big kiss in the mouth. you are so sweet. You have also become quite attached to your daddy in the last few months, and you love giving him big hugs, climbing on him and just rough housing in general. But when you are tired or hungry, you want no one but mommy.

Speaking of tired and hungry, you are still nursing, mostly at night. You always nurse to nap, and sometimes when you wake up cranky. You always nurse to sleep at night and still wake up tons in the night. You have gone through months of terrible teething pains and that basically destroyed my sleep and sanity, since you were latched on to me every minute of the night, scratching my chest and just doing all kinds of annoying things that drove me to the point of deciding to night wean you. We started to try and it was so tough, and then you got sick with pink eye and a cough and it all went out the window. At the moment you are going through some bad days again and I am just anxiously waiting so we can start over with the night weaning. 

Your latest most annoying quirks (besides the fact that in general, you entered the terrible two's full force, as if you didn't have a strong head already) are that you HATE wearing a diaper at night, to the point that if I put one on: a. you will cry and scream so loud you could probably throw up b. you wake up every 30 mins of the night pissed off because you are wearing a diaper. 

The other annoying thing about you lately is that you have decided that you HATE winter and everything about it. You want nothing to do with going outside, getting bundled up, and on top of it, you want me to stay inside with you at all times. I cannot tell you enough what a pain in the butt you have been in the last month, ha! 

You started Playschool in September and had a rough start, but now you are used to it and I think even enjoy it, except for the fact that I am not there. You were handling it okay until this recent bad phase you are having, and now you are having huge separation anxiety issues, even with your Nana!!! who you had no problem staying with before.

On good days, you will  wake up around 7 a.m., sleep no more that 1 hour and 15 mins, from about 11.30 or 12 to 12.45 or 1.15 p.m. and then go to sleep around 7 or 7.30 p.m. 

You are definitely very different that your brother in your likes and dislikes (even though really, you want to do EVERYTHING your brother does), which makes sense because you have had basically the life of an older boy, following your brother around. 

some of the things that describe you at 2:

- Your language skills have exploded!!! you were kind of a late talker compared to Paulo, but once you did, about 6 months ago, your just made yourself very articulate and understood right away.

- You are a very domestic boy (probably from being around me all the time at home). You love sweeping, dusting, cleaning things, "fixing" things with your tools; you love babies and loving on people. Your favourite games involve shopping carts, dolls, strollers and pots and pans. Besides anything physical such as running or jumping on beds.

- You LOVE animals, especially cats, which is what comes more available here.

- You are not much of a book reader, unless you are alone with me or your daddy. If your brother is around, you are just not interested.

-Your physical skills are over the top, insane, You are fearless, you are strong, coordinated, meticulous, refined with your hands.

- You are Paulos absolute, loyal, #1 fan. Even though like a typical 2 year old, you are starting to make your voice heard and have become a bit aggressive lately, you just love getting your brother's attention, doing everything he does, the way he does it, and just bend over backwards to get a laughter out of him.

- You are amazing at sharing. Sure sometimes you just wont share. But most of the time, if people ask you politely, you will share.

- You are a very polite little boy. EVERYTHING is please and thank you and bless you with you.

That's about everything I can think of right now about you. We love you so much it hurts little guy. I am so glad you will always be my baby boy.

Paulo 2.5 Years

Paulo, hermosho pisioso, bonito, cosita linda, chiquito hermoso, enanito, mune, munequito. You've turned 2.5 years!! and you have changed soooo incredibly much in the last 6 months. I can barely remember the early months, almost as if you have always been this old.

 

You are a tall, skinny, curly little devil, and we are having so much fun at this age. You have been through so many changes since you turned two, it is no surprise to me that you have made temper tantrums part of your daily routine. You definitely are a bear in the mornings and after your naps and I have to tiptoe around you until you're a little bit awake.

 

You have had a tough last few months with our move away from Calgary, your leaving day care, and the birth of your little brother. I am starting to bounce back from severe separation anxiety from being unable to pay 100% of my attention to you 100% of the time. You in turn, have learned to be a bit more independent, and play by yourself for longer stretches of time.

 

It took you a while to get used to your little brother, but you are slowly starting to care more and more for him, which is really cute to watch. You will now randomly hug your little brother and say : "estoy cuidando a Emi" (I'm taking care of Emi"), or give him kisses and bring him things once in a while. That being said, you still almost 90% of the time will take toys away from him, including rattles and other baby toys, haha.

It is no surprise that Emilio follows you with his eyes ALL the time and lights up every time he sees you. You are always on the go, being a busy little boy. I love watching you run around from one place to the other, always in a hurry, with your cute little stiff run.

 

You have become quite strong headed and you must ALWAYS get your way. Everything is a fight with you and sometimes you bring me to tears, it is so exhausting to stretch my patience so much. But I am glad that more and more now we are starting to get have peaceful days and smile more than butt heads.

 

 You absolutely LOVE your strider bike. We go bike riding almost every day now if it's not rainy, and you have now started to go out on bike rides with daddy. You certainly can pick up a great speed and you go around the neighborhood turning heads everywhere you go, you look so ridiculously cute. Other than your bike, your other favorite toys are still balls, cars, and lately the train table we recently got you. Oh, and I should not forget umbrellas...oh boy, your love (obsession) for umbrellas!

 

One thing that has become really obvious to me in the last few months, though, is your mastering language. You are definitely learning more English and becoming more confident at speaking it now that your Nana is at home, and that daddy is making a bigger effort to speak to you in his language. You love speaking English and using all your new words. Your Spanish continues to be amazing, learning new vocabulary every day and starting to sound more and more like me, which I don't know if it is funny or scary. The other new thing from the last few weeks has been your ability to "create" new words in Spanglish, which basically means taking a word in either language and adapting it to sound either English or Spanish. It is very funny, but this is one of those cute traits that I do care to correct because I want you to be able to communicate well.

 

Last but not least, your imagination has sparked and exploded in the last month like never before. I think for the first time in your life, you are starting to use your imagination, mostly with pretend play. You will pretend that you are a cat, make up stories, pretend you are Jake and I'm Captain Hook, and you even pretend you speak a foreign language now, which always makes us both laugh, it is so silly.

 

Paulo, I love you so much I could have never imagined I can love you even more every day. You make me try so hard to be better for you every day, and yet sometimes I am so disappointed in myself that I can't be 100% the mother you deserve. You are such a gift in our life, I will never be able to explain it enough.

 

Te quiero munequito!!!

 

 

Slipping...

So, we finally moved into our new house. It has been a crazy too weeks, trying to unpack everything, getting this house into a livable state, making too many trips to Ikea (enough to take the fun out of it :( ) , and getting everything from health cards to driver's licenses and everything in between, setup here.

Sofar I am loving the new neighborhood. As would be expected, we all need a bit of getting used to. I do miss our "old" life, the familiarity of it, the knowing where I'm at and where I'm going. But all things considered, our start in this new city has been great. People have been extremely nice, especially our neighbors have been very welcoming. Our street is a dead end that backs into great green fields and horse stables, so we see horses being ridden right behind our back yard on a daily basis. Being a dead end street means we get zero traffic, so I don't get particularly worried if Paulo stays outside while I bring in the groceries, or get Emi inside in his car seat. We can play soccer on the street, we brought the basket ball hoop out as well, and we can go for bike rides and let Paulo go as fast and far as he wants to go.

The trees in the neighborhood are old and tall and full of variety. And the weather... oh the weather! nothing like getting away from the cold and unpredictability of the mountain weather and get some REAL SPRING heat. I haven't bundled the kids up to go out in almost 2 weeks, and half the time I feel like I'm back in Mexico. Sure there's lots of creepy crawlies too, which frankly I didn't miss... but hey, you can't have it all, right?

 

Despite everything going so fine and dandy with our move, I feel like on the family front lately I've been.... slipping. There have been some challenges lately that have gotten me borderline depressed, and it all peaked yesterday with some sort of anxiety attack that brought me to writing this post.

 

What has caused this? well, lately I have been working WAAAY too hard at being a mom. I know being a mom is a 24/7 job and that's all there is to it, sometimes there is just no way around it. But added to that, I seem to have an incredible ability of holding on and holding on and holding on, until I just can't take it any longer and then I explode. Rob often tells me I have to rely more on him and take a break and ask for help. But sometimes that is hard to do when you don't have any family to rely on, and your husband is working his ass off as well. It is just hard to be the one to add yet another thing on his plate. I know it isn't really, and that it is better to take care of yourself first, blah blah blah, but it is just hard to do when you feel like you're dropping a ball. That's how I feel sometimes about asking for help ... maybe it is a personality thing.

 

Anyway, there are a few things that have been particularly bad, and I guess it starts with the fact that Paulo's sleep has been just terrible lately. He has never been a great sleeper, but we had reached a point where he was sleeping through the night pretty consistently. Now, since we started packing for the move, and after Emilio was born, he has been waking up every single night without fail and climbing into our bed. This wouldn't be such a big deal, if only our bed wasn't a queen, my son wasn't a bed hog; if we weren't partially co-sleeping with Emi, and Paulo didn't wake up with nightmares in the middle of the night, screaming and kicking. This all results in him waking Emilio up, Rob having to go to sleep somewhere else (because he needs to go to work the next morning and he is a bad sleeper as well), and me getting sandwiched between two kids, getting no good sleep and sometimes, getting just pissed.

There has been at least a couple of occasions where I have just been exhausted from working all day unpacking and looking after the kids, and when I finally go to bed, this circus starts, and it drags on until the middle of the night, where I just finally lose it and explode on Paulo. Half a second after I explode and make him cry, I feel extremely guilty and not only feel exhausted, but also too guilty to get any sleep even if they'd let me. When this is not the case, I just get depressed that I just can't even get a break at night, and I start to cry. Last night, this is what happened, after a long, exhausting day when Rob was stuck at work, didn't make it home until late, and I had to put both kids to sleep (which is CHAOS) and Paulo just would not go to sleep until almost midnight. I was able to keep it together enough to walk out of his room without losing my cool, but after I came downstairs to tell Rob he needed to take over, I went completely into anxiety mode, which now makes me feel like a total loser.

 

I know this all sounds like it is just a sleep issue. But frankly, the fact that Paulo is doing this every night, sometimes throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the night, makes me feel like I have absolutely no control (not a good feeling) and even manipulated. I certainly do not appreciate the fact that night after night I have been sleeping completely sandwiched between my bed hog babies, and I cannot remember when was the last time I woke up with my husband next to me. I appreciate even less that I cannot remember the last time I had a good night sleep.

 

Of course I constantly feel like crap all day. I am cranky and Paulo irritates me easily. I look at myself in the mirror and I see a skinny, tired face with circles around the eyes. I see myself getting old. And I see my life slipping by with nothing left for me.

 

I know I don't always feel this way, and I keep telling myself that I hope (I REALLY hope) this is just a phase that will go away. Please let this be a phase. For now I will go to sleep, for the sake of sanity.

 

And on a more cheerful note, some pictures of our neighborhood....

walking down our block

Brothers

biking in the neighborhood

 

Mother's Guilt.

Well, the 2nd week after Emi's birth was... challenging. To say the least. The reason being that Paulo has been a complete MONSTER for the whole week. I mean, Paulo has just turned two, and granted, he's been sick with a bad cold (for the millionth time) and had pink eye, and stopped going to daycare (which he loved) ... oh, and yes, he also just got a little brother and got his world turned upside down. So I understand he has had enough reasons to be grumpy, angry, rebellious, whatever. But seriously, is this behaviour normal??? He has turned the word "NO" into pretty much all the vocabulary he has used in days. And when he doesn't get his way (which is whatever the opposite is of what we ask or want) he just fully BLOWS UP. And by blow up I mean scream and cry, bites his own hand, throws himself on the floor and looses control for waaay too long. Like, I think he forgets what he's fussing about and there is no stopping him, convincing him, bribing him, or ANYTHING one can do to calm him down.

 

Whenever he has done this at home it is not such a big deal, since once we realize there is literally nothing we can do to calm him down we just let him be and walk away until he is ready for a hug or a cuddle and slowly comes back to normal. However it just terrified me to think he could pull one of these when I took him out with the baby and then what would I do?? well, soon enough it happened, and it wasn't pretty.

 

Our day was going so well. I had managed both kids at breakfast pretty much on my own. Managed to put them both down for naps. And then came the afternoon. I felt pretty confident that I could take them both to the park by myself. The day was warm and sunny, they were both well rested. Well, to make the long story short, we made it to the park with smiles on our faces, Emi wrapped up in the sling and Paulo in his balance bike. And then hell broke lose. I will not waste time on the details (I think it still makes me sweaty to remember it), but basically it finished with me trying to drag Paulo across the street on our way back home, with the baby in the sling, the bike in one hand and a fighting Paulo on the other. He eventually threw himself on the ground in front of me, I tripped on him, slipped in the ice, and fell flat on my front. Yes, with the baby wrapped on me. Needless to say, the baby hit himself in the ice, squealed in horror, and I was so terrified at what happened that I don't even want to remember whether I really landed on top of the baby or not. I was so scared to think the baby might be hurt, and soooo increadibly angry at Paulo for causing that. I got up in tears, left the bike where it was, and just grabbed Paulo by the wrist (he was still in full on tantrum mode, screaming and crying) and pretty much dragged him home.

 

 

The little daredevil on his balance bike - pre-tantrum.

Once we got home I checked Emi, who had stopped crying, and couldn't see anything obviously wrong with him, so I calmed down a bit that he wasn't hurt. But man, that scene was just.not.pretty. Paulo was still going insane, and probably was scared because of what happened too. But I was totally shaken, and I felt guilty too. I know that part of me acting that way was because I thought Emi could be hurt. But I also recognize that I completely lost my cool and that I had never acted so desperate and angry at Paulo before... I don't think. He just got the worst of me and I keep wondering if there was anything I could have done to handle things differently...

 

The truth is, I felt (and still feel) really guilty for what happened. Paulo is only 2, he is going to a great deal of changes and I think I have to really understand that and be SUPER EXTRA patient with him. I really do think my children are such amazing, precious gifts of God, and although partly justified because I DO have to discipline him and I should not give in to that behaviour (especially if it puts any of us in danger), that is not the way to handle such a precious gift. And to add to that, I fell really, really short from the type of mother I'd like to be.

 

Eventually Paulo got over the tantrum and we huged and kissed and I tucked him to bed and we were back to normal. But my scar was still there and the whole thing just had me really upset. At the end of the day, I felt so emotionally drained... all I wanted to do was to go to bed and start from zero again the next day.

 

The last few days I have been trying my best to just avoid tantrums as much as possible and give Paulo as much attention as I can. I think he has improved a little and although he has still had a tantrum pretty much every day, it has been at most one and they haven't been such massive meltdowns.

 

However, that feeling from the other day has still managed to linger, and that just adds up to the guilt I feel for not being able to give Paulo 100% of my attention anymore, and to have to split myself between him and his little brother. Funny, how a mother decides to give her first born a brother so they can have each other's back in life, and this very thing that you are doing, partly to make him a happier human being, sometimes ends up making you feel like you are falling short as a mother... Mother's guilt I guess... and this is just the beginning.Sigh....

1 week post partum: New baby, new normal.

It has already been a week since Emilio arrived and I can't believe it has already been that long since we've had Emi at home. 

 

 

Baby Emi at 1 week of age

 

Physically, my recovery has been amazing.  The baby came out so fast, that there was literally no time for any tears or pain really, so I didn't get any stitches and I didn't get exhausted like I did when I had Paulo. I can honestly say that after little over one week I physically felt close to a 100% back to normal.

 

Other than that, the first two or three days with Emi were so easy that I just KNEW things were going to change big time and all this peace and quiet would come back and bite me in the behind. The first day after birth, my mom brought me breakfast in bed, my dad and Rob took Paulo to daycare (he would be done at the end of January) and we spent the rest of the day just watching the baby sleep the day away. It is funny thinking that two years ago this very same event seemed to cause chaos in our lives and this time around it all seemed so... easy. The baby slept all day, didn't really cry much... Even slept most of the night.

The second night was also pretty manageable. I kind of feared this day because when I had Paulo we spent the second night awake all night because he wouldn't stop crying. Then the nurse came the following day and it turned out he had lost a lot of weight and we had to supplement with formula for a week until my milk came in. I felt like a loser feeding my son formula on his second day of life and not only did this make me miserable in a very postpartum depressive way, but I was also convinced that my husband was either going to leave us or die of a heart attack because he spent the day running around all day getting breast pumps,  sterilizing bottles, boiling water or mixing formula while I cried and tried feeding a baby fwith my cracked nipples and empty breasts (I must say that after a week everything worked out and I happily breastfed my son until 11 months of age).

 

Anyway, that was two years ago, but I was affraid the story would repeat itself this time. Thankfully, this time it all worked out great since the beginning and there was no such drama. My baby boy was feeding fine and although  he was cluster feeding tons on the second night, I could tell he was getting milk when he was eating. It did take some time to learn to feed a newborn again and to get my body used to that "abuse" again but I got over it pretty quickly. I am pumped though that my milk came in so quickly this time and I haven't seen a bottle anywhere near me sofar.

 

In sum, the first days were pretty normal and incredibly easy. I knew though, the other shoe would eventually drop. And man did a big, stinking boot ever slam me on the head... As it turns out, even though Paulo was being great with Emi-- kissing him all the time, looking at him with curiosity and giving him lots of attention, he was also starting to notice he didn't have anybody's full and undivided attention anymore... Not good. Soon enough he was in full on pissy mode and being not just a typical two year old, but just being plain rude, said "no" to literally EVERYTHING and just throwing the most terrible temper tantrums I've seen in him. I just didn't recognize him anymore. That behaviour is just so unlike Paulo. Added to that, he got a terrible cough and he got pink eye -- I'm kind of hoping that his feeling crappy is to blame for all that craziness, or maybe the terrible two's finallly hit him hard, but at this point I'm just not sure.  As if that wasn't enough, Rob put his back out and was completely unable to help with childcare.
 

Thankfully my parents were still here to help out lots. But man oh man were we ever tried in those few days. I think I was probably also feeling overly emotional from all the hormones and maybe some postpartum depression, because I found myself just balling every five minutes over the chaos, feeling overwhelmed and the fact that my two year old was resenting all this change and I just couldn't give him all the attention he was used to. I also started getting really stressed thinking that once my parents left I would be on my own  and I just.do.not.know how tI'm going to handle two kids on my own.
 

I have to admit at this point I am still not sure what I will do come mid February when my parents are gone and Rob is back to work in his new job, Paulo is not going to daycare anymore, and I am left to my own devices to deal with both kiddos - including a crazy toddler. But at least at this point Paulo is starting to feel better from his cold, Rob is slowly recovering and I am starting to get my head around some strategies to organize my day with both kids. I know things will work themselves out eventually, but I just really have to keep it together before Rob gets all worried that he can't just go to work and do his best.
 

For now I will just try to take advantage of all the help I have, and do my best to come up with a "survival" plan. I know this is all part of getting used to a new "normal" for ALL of us and we'll probably all feel stressed and angry at each other many times before we can settle in our new life. so wish me luck and if you have any tips on how to make this transition easier send them my way!