The older your child gets, the less time you have to mess around on your computer. Sucks for me, because my job is online, and half my friends are online friends (yeah, I’m glad that doesn’t make me as sad as it would have ten years ago, too) and I have less time to update my various Internet projects.
That was a convoluted way of apologising for the lack of regular updates.
Madness has hit the 15-month mark and sprung two more molars. The poor guy’s pretty much not going to get a break from that till he’s 2 and all his teeth are through! It makes for pleasant afternoons, when I have to make the choice between gum gel at four and then probably about 2am, or at bed time and then not again till the next morning. This sounds like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
It would be if I didn’t apply the gel at 11am, and hence can’t for a couple of hours. Ah, fun times!
The other day, as I was coming home from playgroup, I pondered a bit on the monotony of motherhood. That sounds like some psychological condition, written out like that.
“Don’t worry about Mrs. Madness, she’s in the clinic, getting treatment for MoM”
“For the Minister of Magic?”
Insert blank look of non-Harry Potter fan. “Whatever, she’ll be back with us soon.”
HP fan continues to look confused.
Sorry. Tangent. Anyway, I was pondering this, about how utterly tiring some days can be because of the simple routine-ness of it all. Vicious pondering, indeed, but necessary. See, sure motherhood can be monotonous. These little beings need routine and predictability like adults need oxygen. However, all jobs become monotonous after a time. This happens perhaps more quickly in motherhood because it’s a job we do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for pretty much the rest of our lives, obviously with varying degrees of intensity.
Take heart! Do not despair! My ponderings brought me to one conclusion. Nothing, nothing, can fill a worker with more joy, or sheer fulfillment, than the delighted laugh of your baby as you lift them up over your head and spin them round like a mad thing (not adviseable for newborns, obviously).
No job, either, allowes you to truly feel successful and excited by the accomplishments of others. The first smile, the first roll, the first tentative grip towards a favourite toy. All of those things fill us with indescribable feelings that no other job can offer.
We just don’t care about other jobs like we care about mothering our maddness (maddnii?). Makes the occasional boring day that much more tolerable, doesn’t it?
Fun tip: Actively enjoy your toddler loving your partner more than you. Why sit around moping and feeling jealous when you can go and have a quick soak in the tub?
Serious tip: A toddler is almost always motivated by the attention he gets from his parents. This is a hard time, because he is acting out, in a way, and wanting to be set boundaries. You read that correctly. If Madness goes a bit crazy emotionally, I rub him on the back and reassure him that it’s all right. I wait him out. It's not always easy, I'm not a patient being. But it's so so necessary.
If he uses those emotions to say, hit a child in the face (something that has happened to him, rather than him doing it to someone else), I would not rouse on him or yell or ask him what he was thinking. I would simply say a firm no, remove him from the situation, and pay attention to his "victim". This is nicer, less stressful on everyone and it actively teaches him that hitting children not only doesn't get him any attention, it gets another child LOTS of Mummy attention. If the crazy behaviour persisted, I would take him outside and let him cry it out. Standing watch over him, obviously. I’ve found this, in my observations of other mothers, to be the most effective way of dealing with what is potentially a very awkward situation.
