Learning by Momosis

Do you want to go to your room?
Stop running around with that broom!
Quit throwing your toys
You loud little boys
You’re no match for the mother of doom

Gall Bladder Ambulance Pancreas
My dear friend it looks like you’re a mess
I’m sorry you’re sick
As for this limerick
There’s just nothing funny to say about that

We love you. Get well soon.

-Limerick of the Day #3

I like how LOTD, short for Limerick of the Day, is almost LOTR for Lord of the Rings.  I suppose it could be LOTD for Lord of the Dance. Heh.

I’m stalling, aren’t I?

Without further adieu, here’s poem #2:
There once was a little boy Bear
Who never sat still in his chair
He’ll spin for an hour
That’s his super power
But somehow his teachers won’t care

In the spirit of odd blogging self-assignments,  I plan on posting a momosis-related limerick every day. I can’t promise they will be good, but at least they will be brief. Here we go:

There once was a little boy named Roo
Who always had trouble with poo
He won’t use the potty
It’s not that he’s naughty
Butt what’s a poor mommy to do?

I’m sitting here in bed at 1:30 am with Roo on my right, Bear on my left, and Hubby in Isaac’s twin bed down the hall. It’s what works best for us right now. Thank God for backlit keyboards!

Actually, just as I was beginning to type, Roo woke up, sat up, gave me a big grin and then rested his head on side and went back to sleep. Typing is a bit tricky at the moment. I can’t let that stop me, though, because after a 3-month hiatus I’m back and ready to write.

There are some different reasons for the recent break, although I never intended it to be this long. I’m happy to say I haven’t spent the time beating myself up about not writing, either. There were some practical things I needed to focus on, and it’s good to have a bunch of that stuff behind me.

But there was something more than that. It was time for me to find my rhythym, for us to find our rhythym, to simply roll through the days without analyzing the heck out of it. It was time to circle the wagons, deal with some issues, and have as many fun campfires as possible in the process. We dropped preschool in January and made the big change in sleep arrangements a few months later. Those changes felt good, and it was time to see how everything was going to fall into place.

Not that anything felt in place today. Today was a cranky day where every attempt to turn the corner just fell apart every couple of minutes. Ugh. But overall, what a difference a year makes. It was a little over a year ago that I wrote my first blog entry. Woohoo, first blog anniversary and all that.

I’ll leave you with a little poem I wrote and posted one year ago today.

Being A Mom is
like Going To Prom;
it can never
live up to the hype.

But unlike the dance,
there’s no romance
in saying we’ve
been up all night.

–

See you again soon. Thanks for reading. -Naomi

Roo had nightmare tonight, and in order for him to calm down and get back to sleep I had to cup my hands tightly over his ears for over 10 minutes. The regular routine was helping him, and then he actually put my hands over his ears and held them down tightly and said something about not hearing the dream anymore.

He’s always had a profound sensitivity to sound — like the time the smoke alarm went off in the house. He wouldn’t go to sleep that night until I removed the smoke alarm and it’s bracket from the wall in his room. (The one that went off was in the kitchen.)  For the next year, the first thing he did when walking in a new room was check for smoke detectors.

I often wonder how much this affects his day to day anxiety and behavior. Hard to tell.

About 30 minutes earlier I rocked Bear back to sleep. (He’s 3.5 years old and 40 lbs now.) I’m guessing that was gas pain, and the rocking helps.

They’ve been back to sleep quite awhile now, but I’m still awake… figured it was finally time to come out of hibernation mode on the blog. Good to be back.

The boys are playing cars and have two NASCAR-style cars that look the same. They are talking with the Racer X and Speedracer cars.

Isaac/Speedracer: “Hi, what are your names?”

Reggie/other cars:  “We’re Reggie and Isaac! We’re not twins. We’re a year apart!”

When I say we have the “twin conversation” with someone almost every time we go out public, I’m not kidding.

Actually, now they have switched over to being “sneaky” and “stealing” all the underwear so they can put as many pairs on at once while I’m “not paying attention.”

I love not paying attention…

Wait a minute, they just came in and closed my door. I better go see what they are doing.

This is what I get when I tell Bear he needs to sit at the table to eat his lollipop… not exactly what I had in mind, but not surprising either. Metaphorically speaking, I feel I get a response like this from Roo and Bear for just about every little thing I may ask them to do. It is entertaining at first, exhausting after awhile, and exasperating by the end of the day…

Yesterday kept trying to be a good day, but it kept turning into some kind of toy crisis every 4 minutes. Many days are like that around here, but yesterday it was worse and/or it was the last straw and/or I just need a serious break.

Late yesterday afternoon, Roo took something away from Bear for the 401st  time. Bear proceeded to go ahead and kick Roo in the face, while I was standing right there, 5 seconds after I told him to walk away.  I was pissed and fed up — or as Word Girl (on PBS)  had explained earlier that day, I was “exasperated”.

The boys were sent to their rooms. By me, quite loudly. Normally this lasts for about 3 minutes. This time, it lasted longer. I informed them they would be staying in their rooms until their father got home (in about 20 minutes.) I checked back in on them every few minutes to make sure they knew I was still here.

Meanwhile I proceed to remove nearly all the toys from the house. Belive me, I had considered this before. They went in bins or bags out to our second car, which isn’t working right now so it’s not going anywhere.

Somewhere in that process, apparently I tweaked out my back pretty well. Hrmpf.

While I’ve said I’m not quite in blogging mode, today warrants a special entry. Well, technically it was yesterday, since I’m writing this at 12:25 am.

A bouncy chair has been a critical part of our sleeping routine for over 3 years. So much so that Oma and Papa even designed and fabricated a special oversized bouncy chair when the boys really outgrew the biggest mass-produced one we could find.

Today, I put the oversized custom bouncy chair away in the back of a closet and the boys didn’t even notice.

There’s quite a bit to this story if you’re not filled in. If you want some of the history on this, you might want to read this post. A lot has changed since the, including the fact that we took a leap of faith and moved out of  Papa and Oma’s house last September. If you’re feeling ambitious you might even browse through some of my posts under the sleep category. There’s quite a few…

A couple of weeks ago, we made a big change in our sleep routine, and it’s going really well. One result from this is that it elimated the final piece of the routine that relied on Bear using the bouncy chair. So it hasn’t been used for a couple of weeks and I decided to put it away and see what happened. Even though the boys went into Bear’s room to play shortly after the change, it didn’t occur to them it was gone.

I tell ya, every day is a miracle around here. Sometimes a really loud, annoying miracle — but a miracle nonetheless.

I’ll write more detail about the sleep routine changes another day.

Good night, bouncy chair. Good night, boys. Good night, readers. Good night, Mommy. Good night.