Sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.

Sleep and Finn has been difficult, to say the least.

At times it has seemed like everyone else in the world was blessed with the perfectly sleeping child while we have the nightmare. For YEARS now the parenting never stopped because he would only sleep a maximum of two hours, sometimes as little as twenty minutes. There was a time when I'd get home from work and have to go to bed immediately because Finn wouldn't sleep without me. Nighttime was tinged with the anticipation of cries of "mommy, mama" from the bedroom.

We've gone down the road of self-blame. We didn't cry it out. We have a family bed. Our kid is too attached. It's OUR fault. WE have not allowed him to learn self-soothing because of our suffocating parenting style. If you'd told me when Finn was little it would be two and a half years of this hell, I might have made some different decisions. At times I've wanted to make different decisions. Anything for a little sanity.

Then it happened. A switch. Our boy is not only sleeping the entire night, he's PUTTING HIMSELF TO SLEEP.

As Finn's gotten older he's stopped nursing to sleep, and at some point M. and I realized that us staying with him until he fell asleep was actually not working. So we did something crazy. We started leaving. And Finn did something crazy. He started putting himself to sleep. It's been six weeks now and basically we lie down with him for about twenty minutes, then kiss him, hug him and tuck his covers around him. Then we leave and he goes to sleep. Just like that. Sometimes he gets up so we retuck him again, and that's usually only once or twice.

There is hope.

I've come to see sleep as a process, not an event. People love to ask if you're baby is sleeping through the night, as if it's something that is supposed to just happen in the first year, and for some it does. But there is no "supposed to" about sleep, and it can take time...a lot of time. Forcing it has consequences, and while many are okay with those tough decisions, forcing Finn to sleep is something that neither M. or I have ever been comfortable with.

So we have sleep. For now. And I'm going to enjoy it. For now.

Is he a boy or dog?

boy or dog?, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Finn is so funny. He insisted on carrying this stick in his mouth.

I want a FUN kid

As much as I hate labels, we have a very sensitive kid. He's been sensitive from pretty much the beginning. We've worked hard to parent our sensitive kid, to respect his experience in this world, to make it a safe place for him to be. Sometimes his sensitivity makes him a really fabulous, sweet and intuitive kid. Actually most of the time. Then sometimes M. and I feel like this kid is not the one we signed up to parent.

I JUST WANT A FUN KID!!!!!

I wanted that kid who runs around and has a million friends and plays and can go anywhere and just have fun. I didn't get him.

Today we decided to try out a local indoor play area at a community center. We walk in and there's a bouncy house. Kids are supposed to love bouncy houses, right? Aren't they the ubiquitous fixture at kids birthday parties, isn't that how people lure you to picnics and other activities? Hot dogs. Soda. A BOUNCY HOUSE. They're the modern-day kids entertainment, exercise and bright colors all rolled into one.

Call it Bouncy House Fail.

We walk in. Finn signs "all done" and starts telling us that he needs to go outside as he heads to the door. No indoor play area. No bouncy house. No FUN.

It's hard to have your expectations destroyed over and over, and sometimes I feel like that's what parenting is. It's this constant falling into the abyss that exists between your expectations and reality. And when you've left the one millionth social situation because your kid can't handle noise, or crowded rooms, and gets easily overwhelmed, you start to feel frustrated. You start to want to scream those words that you feel no parent should ever utter...

WHAT THE EFF IS WRONG WITH MY KID???????

So we encouraged him to play with something that wasn't noisy, and when it was apparent that he could not be distracted we left and went to Target. Because Finn loves Target and mama & mommy needed a little shopping therapy that wouldn't destroy our budget.

We're also going to have Finn's hearing checked, because there actually could be something going on, and we'll keep working on coping mechanisms for noisy environments. We'll keep working with our sensitive lovely boy to be as okay as he possibly can be.

Potty Pause and Peer Pressure

Potty learning was going well. Then it wasn't. That was this summer. We were going diaper-free every day and Finn was using the potty and it looked like big boy underwear would soon be the default.

Nope.

The potty suddenly became completely non-interesting. This was evidenced by the all too familiar sound of Finn's urine stream hitting the floor and M. and I looking over to see him staring down at a puddle with some apparent sort of wonder. Like he'd never seen pee on the floor before. After a week or so of using up all our back-up prefolds to soak urine off the floor we were done. Back to diapers. It would happen when Finn was ready. It became the subject that we did not talk about. We were officially on a potty pause.

Enter peer pressure in the form of a three and a half year old named Greta and her almost two year old sister Morgan. Both are potty trained. Both looked at Finn like he had descended from outer-space the day we changed his diaper in front of them during our play group. It went a little like this:

Greta: "What is that?"

Me: "It's a diaper."

Greta: "Why does he wear that? Why doesn't he go to the potty?"

Me: "You'd have to ask Finn."

And this is why last night Finn refused to wear a diaper and M. had to layer FIVE pairs of trainers on him for overnight and we have a sudden resurgence in potty interest. Peer pressure exists even at two and a half.

Are we un-paused. I don't know. My child just pee'd all over the carpet. But this time he went and got a diaper to clean it up himself instead of just staring at it. Baby steps, I guess. I just suspect that Finn potty training is not going to be the quick process we once thought it might be.

The Hardest Job in the World

First a TTC update. We are still waiting to start our first cycle. DtD needs to finish his STD testing and we need to sign our paperwork, and then we're ready to go.

It's strange thinking about having another kid. I know that I do want another kid. I also know that I'm okay having one. I know that I want another boy and I know that having a girl would be okay. I just desperately want Finn to be able to have another male in the house. I know I want TTC to take some time because I'm not ready, but if it happens quickly, it'll be okay. I know it won't happen quickly. Then I wonder if I'm trying to convince myself that it will take time because I really want it to happen now. I am telling myself that I will not go crazy this time. I know that I might go crazy anyway.

The Hardest Job in the World

It's amazing how parenting has rocked me to my core. I've always hated when people smugly state that parenting is the hardest job in the world, except that it really is. Well, maybe there are some harder jobs, like working on an oil rig. Maybe there is something else out there that requires the same level of physical stamina, but I honestly don't know if there's anything that will suck as much out of you emotionally.

My goal as a parent is that my kid is almost always okay. The saddest part of this is that I, his parent, am the biggest threat to his emotional safety in this world. I have the power to hurt him down to his very core, to make his world an unsafe place, to destroy his confidence in what is right and good. And I can do this with one mean word, one frustrated moment. I have already done it on too many occassions.

Before I became a parent I thought I was an okay person. I had flaws. They were manageable. I had a mostly healthy relationship that easily rebounded when it veered into unhealthy. Now I realize that none of that is true.

My flaws are huge gaping wounds in my psyche the lead to poor coping skills, and my poor coping skills hurt my child. My unhealthy patterns cannot rebound when applied to a two and a half year old boy who needs me to be his safe place and not someone who hurts him. I have come to realize that these flaws are historical, that they were instilled in me by my parents and by their parents before them. I've come to realize that the childhood that I felt was good, that the parents I thought treated me mostly kindly, maybe didn't, and that I have a lot of work to not pass on these flaws to my own child.

I've found that many, maybe most, parents around me tend to throw up their hands and portray the world around them as always criticizing parents when they are challenged to go above and beyond. I've found that they want solutions, easy to implement systems that involve steps and numbers apply to their children so they can get good results. I've found that few want to turn the microscope back on themselves, their behavior, and consider that they actually might need to change who they are in order to be a good parents.

And this is why parenting is a really hard job. Because it requires constant self examination, it requires you to constantly look at your flaws, it requires you to be on guard with your behavior, it requires you to always always put your child above yourself, and it requires you to not use your child as a way to justify that the way your were raised was okay. Laziness, emtional or physical, does not translate into good parenting.

I am certainly not a perfect parent but I don't expect perfection. But I do try to be a mindful parent, an aware parent, someone who will work her entire life to end her own bad behavior because, truthfully, Finn is worth going through hell fire for, and he's worth any amount of hard work it takes to make sure he's okay.