Well, we're eight full days out now. It's hard to know exactly how things are shaping up, but I think we're getting there. This whole process has been a bit odd, honestly.
Carter actually seemed to do pretty well the first couple days out. It was apparent right away that it was helping his sleep, as he didn't snore and barely even moved. He still says he doesn't feel a difference, but he's also still waking up for medicine (more on that in a bit) and sleeping on a crib mattress on our floor, so I think we'll have the true test once he's in his own bed, back on schedule, and properly wearing himself out with full days of school. But the lack of snoring is shocking, and I'm so happy that's over.
He's never been a complete and total lump of sadness through this whole process, at least not since the first 20 minutes after he woke up from the surgery, but he has moments that generally last about five minutes at a time where he complains about his throat or mouth hurting. The frustrating thing is that I can't seem to get a good look at his throat to know what's going on there. He either can't seem to open his mouth because it hurts, or can't figure out how to best stick out his tongue in a way that I can see in. I think there are still some scabs there, but by now he's likely starting to lose some of them. I probably got my best look tonight and there are definitely less scabs than there were, but it's still hard to know what's normal when his throat looks so different than it used to.
The last week has been sort of torturous on the medication end. We've gone through nearly two bottles each of liquid acetaminophen and ibuprofen thanks to alternating every three hours around the clock. The alarm on my phone now makes me cringe. I've worked only two days in the last week, plus one four hour stint on Sunday, so it's been nearly constant. Night duty has been particularly challenging, as it has usually involved three rounds of waking Carter up, which is no small feat when he's now sleeping so deeply. It was really hard the first couple nights, until I figured out that we should use the syringes so I could just get him half awake, enough to be aware enough to swallow, and shoot it in the side of his mouth. But then, starting a couple nights ago, he really started fighting me. Every time I tried to wake him up, he'd cry, push away, turn his head, and make it generally impossible for me to give him the medicine without forcing it. At first I thought it was just because he was in pain, but now I think it's almost like PTSD combined with a night terror, as I don't think he really knows he's doing it, but is instinctively avoiding it. He doesn't remember in the morning that he was upset, and I have no idea how to fix this so I'm at the point of wanting to see just how little we can medicate overnight. We've also dealt with some random overnight crying, but we can't tell if it's pain (though sometimes it happens when he should be well-medicated) or if he's having a bad dream. He might not be used to dreaming much if his old sleep cycle never got him to that stage, but who knows what's really happening. Usually some back rubbing helped after a while, but it was concerning.
Overall he's seemed fine throughout the day, but at each meal he has a moment where he almost breaks down and complains that his mouth or throat hurts. He sometimes leaves the table (which appears to be so no one sees him cry), but comes back five minutes later and seems to eat without incident. It's odd. I'm encouraging him to eat as much as possible because he hasn't eaten a lot over the past week. He's had a Pediasure for the past six days, and he's had chicken noodle soup, mac and cheese, ramen noodles (a new favorite), pancakes, oatmeal (another new thing), smoothies, fruity/cocoa pebbles soaked in milk, applesauce, eggs, sausages, peanut butter sandwiches with no crusts, and Gatorade. I had a nice supply of Jello, but it turns out he mostly just likes the lime jello, so I've been eating a lot of other flavors--which may not be a bad thing because my nails need it! He also had a tiny piece of warm brownie with ice cream the other night. But the quantity usually isn't large and he's not a snacker, so it's been a bit of a struggle. He's eating, but it's a process.
He really hasn't been that miserable, which is great, but it's made it hard to measure where we are in the process or how well the medicine is working. We were advised to keep up the medicine schedule for at least a week, which we did. But now that he can go back to school in a couple days, I'm trying to measure how he's actually doing by stretching out the doses. Today he's done well, but clearly eating is still a challenge. I'm not sure how I feel about school on Friday--should I send him back and give him a small taste of getting back in the groove, or should I keep him home one more day and secure three extra days of recovery, which should be enough to ensure he's functional by Monday? I have to work tomorrow, so I will have to rely on Craig's observations to try to figure things out by Friday morning. Ninety percent of the time he seems like he could do it, but then he has a rough moment and I question everything...which makes me think he'll probably stay home just to be safe unless we have some breakthrough in the meantime.
It's been an interesting week, though. He's probably been better overall than I expected but it's still been challenging in other ways. At this point I'm just eager for him to feel better, eat normally, and be free to run and play. His sad moments really suck and the overnight medication schedule is worse. But I know we're in the home stretch and he'll be fine before we know it. The long term benefits definitely outweigh what we've dealt with for the last week-plus. I just hope we see major improvements all around very soon.
In other news, we did end up having pretty nasty winds over the weekend. The peak gust was 69, and we had 50+ gusts for over 24 hours. It was miserable to listen to all day and night, especially since I had to be up so many times. Fortunately, there was shockingly little damage compared to the 81mph storm two years ago. Only a handful of power outages in town and just a few downed trees in the areas I've driven through so far. Buffalo got hit a bit worse. We're just thankful for no damage--though the basketball hoop and grill are still in the garage and now my car is sitting outside in 4+ inches of snow that came in today. Compared to the winds I don't mind the snow, and Facebook reminded me today about how soul sucking the frigid cold was in February 2015. We only had six hours of the entire month above freezing and it was the coldest month ever in Rochester. I wasn't working so I spent most of it either shoveling the driveway, driving to school to pick up Jacob, and holed up in the house with Carter. That was far worse, even though our crazy weather month hasn't been a joy either. But a few days in the 50s wouldn't hurt...assuming they don't come with winds like Sunday's 55 degrees did. But it's almost March so hopefully some hope is in sight. Maybe. Suffice it to say we're all over the winter weather. The kids desperately want to be outside, and I wouldn't mind a good run. We've just hit that point of the winter. But Carter's birthday party is in sight and hopefully March goes quickly after it.
With almost everything right now, I know things are just temporary and one day at a time we'll get to where we need to be--from spring weather to a healthy kid to Craig's job situation. One day at a time. One breath at a time.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Thursday, February 21, 2019
News and Notes, Recovery Edition
So, we're a couple days into post-tonsil/adenoid life, and all is well. Carter has been doing great, though I think we're starting the downhill slide as he was complaining this morning about his throat being sore. I'm hoping it's just that it's worse in the morning (as it was yesterday, as well) because he hasn't been drinking water most of the night so it's drier than usual, which can cause it to hurt more. I've been trying to at least have him sip water after his medicine overnight, but I'm not sure it's helping. Most of the time he says it feels fine, but every once in a while it seems worse. And each time that happens now, I'm getting nervous that he's heading into scab territory that everyone says is the worst. Time will tell, I guess, but thankfully we have a low-key weekend ahead with no sports, so that will make things a bit easier. Of course, the forecasted 75mph winds on Sunday might complicate that low-key weekend a bit. I actually grocery shopped tonight with a thought toward what might happen if we lost power like we did last time winds got that high. God forbid we go through that again, because this time it would mean an extra long winter break for Jacob and two kids to occupy with no power. Yuck. Pray it somehow avoids us. In the meantime, if you need us we'll be figuring out how to move Jacob's basketball hoop into the garage.
Instead of fixating on the anxiety-fest ahead, I figured I'd rewind to before the surgery. We had a nice weekend with Craig, who finally didn't have a game. He got to see a full basketball game for Jacob for the first time. It was a hard-fought game where Jacob's team lost a nice lead, but in the end they tied. Jacob had four points, including a three-pointer. The game included a lot of fouls and Jacob is once again feeling like he's not getting passed to enough, but he's playing well. I think we just have to be patient. I figured out a decent setting on my camera to take action shots of him, so here are a couple...
I asked Carter if he had any last requests before his surgery, and he wanted brownies. So, brownies he got on Monday.
The boys were both home and it was a typical crazy day trying to keep them apart. At one point I heard them both laughing maniacally, and eventually they pointed to the ceiling, where I saw this:
That, my friends, is a sticky cross. It's basically like a sticky hand. Carter flung it, apparently just a little too much, and it went about 12 feet up on the living room ceiling. For years my fear has been mylar balloons, but it turns out the sticky cross was enemy #1. I have no idea how he got it up there, let alone how it stuck so well. My first attempt was to throw a stuffed animal at it to try to knock it down. Nope. My second attempt was with the tape measure, as it seemed like one of the few things that would reach that high. But it was hard to keep it from folding over when it was that tall, and then it definitely wasn't sturdy enough to scrape it off. Finally, I grabbed the Swiffer Wet Jet and climbed on the chair (a La-Z-Boy rocker--not ideal) and balanced just long enough to get the handle up that high and scrape it off. Thank goodness--both for my sanity and the boys' well being!
I tried to appreciate my time with Carter on Monday, since we didn't know what lay ahead of us with the surgery and recovery. He did such a nice job on building this house!
Yesterday we enhanced the setup by building a train track and ticket booth. He's so creative when he gets himself away from a screen!
I also wanted to share the loveliness that is my Valentine flowers from Craig. Still hanging in there a week later!
Instead of fixating on the anxiety-fest ahead, I figured I'd rewind to before the surgery. We had a nice weekend with Craig, who finally didn't have a game. He got to see a full basketball game for Jacob for the first time. It was a hard-fought game where Jacob's team lost a nice lead, but in the end they tied. Jacob had four points, including a three-pointer. The game included a lot of fouls and Jacob is once again feeling like he's not getting passed to enough, but he's playing well. I think we just have to be patient. I figured out a decent setting on my camera to take action shots of him, so here are a couple...
I asked Carter if he had any last requests before his surgery, and he wanted brownies. So, brownies he got on Monday.
The boys were both home and it was a typical crazy day trying to keep them apart. At one point I heard them both laughing maniacally, and eventually they pointed to the ceiling, where I saw this:
That, my friends, is a sticky cross. It's basically like a sticky hand. Carter flung it, apparently just a little too much, and it went about 12 feet up on the living room ceiling. For years my fear has been mylar balloons, but it turns out the sticky cross was enemy #1. I have no idea how he got it up there, let alone how it stuck so well. My first attempt was to throw a stuffed animal at it to try to knock it down. Nope. My second attempt was with the tape measure, as it seemed like one of the few things that would reach that high. But it was hard to keep it from folding over when it was that tall, and then it definitely wasn't sturdy enough to scrape it off. Finally, I grabbed the Swiffer Wet Jet and climbed on the chair (a La-Z-Boy rocker--not ideal) and balanced just long enough to get the handle up that high and scrape it off. Thank goodness--both for my sanity and the boys' well being!
I tried to appreciate my time with Carter on Monday, since we didn't know what lay ahead of us with the surgery and recovery. He did such a nice job on building this house!
Yesterday we enhanced the setup by building a train track and ticket booth. He's so creative when he gets himself away from a screen!
I also wanted to share the loveliness that is my Valentine flowers from Craig. Still hanging in there a week later!
Not much else to report since we're doing a lot of hanging out these days, but we did find out Jacob's entrance exam results were good enough for a small but nice scholarship to his new school next year. We can now start the enrollment process. Next year is going to be quite the experience for all of us!
Well, I'm getting very sleepy but medicine time comes again in an hour so I guess I'm going to go get it ready and take a nap before my night's sleep! Yawn. More soon!
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
T-Day
After months of deliberating, weeks of waiting, and days of "will we or won't we", the big day is finally here. And as I type, a giant piece of my heart is sitting in an operating room. I'm not gonna lie--part of me wants to curl up in a ball and sob. My anxiety has been working overdrive for a couple weeks now and every worst-case scenario has passed through my mind. But I know that he needs this--and if there was any question when it was just the snoring, there wasn't once round two of the strep hit last week. But it's still so hard to send your child into an operating room with all of the unknowns of anesthesia and painkillers, and know they're going to come out with the worst sore throat of their life...and that it will stay like that for a while. Knowingly doing that to your child is hard, no matter how positive the long-term end result is.
I was nervous when Jacob had his leg surgery, but I might have been even worse when he had a mole removed when he was two, if only because that was his first round of anesthesia. So when he went in for his leg, even though it was a much bigger deal, I felt better about it in general because he'd already gone through anesthesia twice--once for the mole and once for his endoscopy to diagnose his Celiac Disease--so that part of it didn't concern me nearly as much. The stakes of the actual surgery were bigger, though--hoping that they didn't find any surprises once they got in there and knowing we had a very long recovery ahead--but for whatever reason this surgery just has me on edge. Carter's never been put under before, and actually never really had a major illness that has challenged him like this one. Oh, and add in that an informal Facebook survey of how my friends' kids fared after surgery elicited a couple "fine after a couple days" responses and a few more "expect to watch a lot of movies for a few days" to contrast with a couple other "watch out for days 5-10" from Carter's teacher and someone else...I truly have no idea what to expect. And that alone has me on edge.
We've stocked up on soft foods, and two flavors of Jello are gelled in the refrigerator. We will experiment with smoothies and lightly pigmented popsicles and eggs and pudding and yogurt. He's never had oatmeal but we'll try that. We'll sleep with him in our room and stick to the infant-like every-three-hour medicine schedule. Whatever he needs, we'll do it.
Someone just brought a phone out with the surgeon on the other end. He's out and did fine!
I'm so proud of him. He was such a big boy, so happy and brave heading in and so sweet and patient even when he was in pain afterward. He struggled a bit when it was hard to breathe and talk, but he reached out for my hand and hung in there until the medicine kicked in. Such a sweet boy. I feel so grateful things went so smoothly today, and I hope and pray that continues. It'll be an interesting week and a half, no doubt. But I'm so happy to bid those pesky tonsils and adenoids farewell!
I was nervous when Jacob had his leg surgery, but I might have been even worse when he had a mole removed when he was two, if only because that was his first round of anesthesia. So when he went in for his leg, even though it was a much bigger deal, I felt better about it in general because he'd already gone through anesthesia twice--once for the mole and once for his endoscopy to diagnose his Celiac Disease--so that part of it didn't concern me nearly as much. The stakes of the actual surgery were bigger, though--hoping that they didn't find any surprises once they got in there and knowing we had a very long recovery ahead--but for whatever reason this surgery just has me on edge. Carter's never been put under before, and actually never really had a major illness that has challenged him like this one. Oh, and add in that an informal Facebook survey of how my friends' kids fared after surgery elicited a couple "fine after a couple days" responses and a few more "expect to watch a lot of movies for a few days" to contrast with a couple other "watch out for days 5-10" from Carter's teacher and someone else...I truly have no idea what to expect. And that alone has me on edge.
We've stocked up on soft foods, and two flavors of Jello are gelled in the refrigerator. We will experiment with smoothies and lightly pigmented popsicles and eggs and pudding and yogurt. He's never had oatmeal but we'll try that. We'll sleep with him in our room and stick to the infant-like every-three-hour medicine schedule. Whatever he needs, we'll do it.
Someone just brought a phone out with the surgeon on the other end. He's out and did fine!
*****************
He came out of surgery pretty quickly. In fact, Craig was still off getting us lunch when they brought the phone out with the surgeon on the other end. He made it through just fine, with pretty big adenoids and very big tonsils. I went back to see him and he was very, very pathetic. He was in a lot of pain, and could barely talk. He was crying and was making a noise like he was having trouble breathing. He was fine, though, as his oxygen levels were high, but he had a tough time for a while. Craig came back with food and ate his lunch before I took a turn. When I came back he seemed a lot better--much more relaxed and trying to rest. He was drinking water but still refused a popsicle or juice. He tried to rest for a bit and when he woke up he slowly got back to being his chatty self. We got to leave around 3pm.
He's been content since he got home, just sitting on our bed and watching TV. He ate a very decent dinner--jello, a banana, some gnocchi, and half a sausage without the skin. He doesn't seem to be in pain--at least not unless he swallows, and even then it's not bad. We'll have to keep up with the medicine at all hours, but it seems like it will be worth it. He went to sleep without an issue, but I'll definitely feel better being able to wake up and shine a flashlight on him to be sure he's okay. I'm sure we're not out of the woods. Maybe he'll be sorer tomorrow. Maybe it will be when the scabs come off in a few more days. I've already had to tell him more than once not to run through the house. Every time he gets up from the bed, he scampers to wherever he needs to go. It's going to be tough to keep him down, that's for sure. Lots of shows and some tablet time, and hopefully some Legos and Hot Wheels and magnetic tiles when we can. I'm looking forward to the snuggles, regardless!
Just a few pictures to share from earlier today...
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| Hanging out pre-op with his buddies, Colin the Bear and Patrick the Hedgehog |
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| He got to decorate his mask with stickers and was so cute practicing with it. The surgeon pretended Carter was blowing him away when he blew into it, which made him giggle and try even harder! |
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| Post-op and pathetic :( Trying to rest with an ice pack across him. |
I'm so proud of him. He was such a big boy, so happy and brave heading in and so sweet and patient even when he was in pain afterward. He struggled a bit when it was hard to breathe and talk, but he reached out for my hand and hung in there until the medicine kicked in. Such a sweet boy. I feel so grateful things went so smoothly today, and I hope and pray that continues. It'll be an interesting week and a half, no doubt. But I'm so happy to bid those pesky tonsils and adenoids farewell!
Saturday, February 16, 2019
The Big Day!
Carter is six! I have no idea how that's possible. You'd think after 10 years of kid birthdays I'd be used to this by now, but these little buggers just keep getting bigger and birthdays just make it extra obvious!
We finished off Valentine's Day/birthday eve with completing his 100th Day of School project. Carter had the option to do a shirt or a standalone project featuring 100 objects. I went through Pinterest for an assortment of doable ideas, and he picked a pom-pom gumball machine. I cut out the gumball machine parts because I didn't think the kid scissors could handle it, and we only had one shot with the materials we had. I did the outlines of the gumball machine front but let Carter color it in and write "100¢" (because $100 seemed a bit steep). I had to hold each pom-pom so he could squeeze the glue, but he did them all! It turns out that gluing a hundred "gumballs" takes a long time, so thank goodness for those wind chill days we had off school a couple weeks back, because it bought us a couple more days to get this done. The strep got in the way a bit, too, so we needed every bit of time we could get. But it turned out great!
In addition to it being his birthday, Friday was also the 100th day of school, so it was an extra special day--which was why I checked his strep sooner so he wouldn't miss it! Earlier in the year Carter had talked about having us come to eat lunch with him for his birthday, but he hadn't mentioned it leading up. However, I knew that if we didn't do it and it occurred to him later, he'd be upset we hadn't done it, so we planned on bringing him a special lunch together.
He was so excited to see us as his class walked to lunch, and it was so cute to see him leading his class down the hall with his special birthday crown! As we sat down to eat we had to grab a selfie!
He was loving his special Happy Meal lunch and it was fun seeing him in his element!
Elementary school lunch was interesting. I'd forgotten how chaotic and loud it is! They actually had to turn off the lights twice to remind the kids to quiet down, but I think it was a lost cause with it being the 100th day of school and the day before winter break. It was fun to see some of the 100th day shirt designs that kids were wearing.
After lunch we headed back to the classroom so Carter could do his book sharing and we could be there when they sang to him. He shared a birthday book that my mom recorded for him a few years ago. He likes to hear her read it, and we try to read it on or around his birthday each year. He had the idea to bring that in to share, which turned out well since he can't read it yet. He could just hold it up as the book read itself!
Everyone really seemed to like the book, and then he got up so his friends could sing to him (but he chose the "no cha cha cha" version, for the record).
It was crazy to think that after that day he wouldn't see his friends for two more weeks. This tonsil stuff is no joke, which his teacher reiterated on our way out, as her son just had his out a few weeks ago. Her warning was that days 5-10 were brutal. Which is why I find it so odd that a friend told me that her kids were both back to school about five days later. Whatever...our doctor wants a full 10 days out of school and another week with no gym. Whatever gets him through without complications is fine with me.
After a few crazy hours back at work trying to finish up whatever I could before having most of the next two weeks off, we were back at home and it was time for presents!
I won't lie--this wasn't my best year for presents. I'm not sure what the issue was, but it's some combination of knowing he has too many toys already; the fact that he spends a disproportionate amount of time with screens instead of said toys; and preoccupation with the upcoming surgery and all that goes along with it. Normally right after Christmas I have a birthday present game plan based on what we can build on from Christmas and what new interests he starts developing in that month and a half. But this year that just never happened. Luckily Craig had a plan instead, and while I didn't have as many of the fun little touches that I normally do, he was happy anyway!
This box had a Star Wars shirt, an easy reader Tyrannosaurus Rex book, and this random grenade-looking toy with a Lego-compatible Halo character in it. He saw it before Christmas at Five Below, Craig bought it later, and it didn't fit into the Christmas plan so it stayed in the gift stash. And it might have stayed there until Easter except that Carter mentioned it again a night or two earlier! He was so excited to get it!
This box had an assortment of Scooby-Doo Imaginext figures to go with the Mystery Machine he got at Christmas. A couple came from Amazon and the others came from Toys 'R' Us...in Canada!
His last gift was a Hot Wheels haunted house with a bat where you can launch the car at different spots to bust into the house, get the bat to pop out, or knock the bat over. He held it up in the air in victory, which was cute.
He immediately wanted to try that one out!
We went out to dinner at Red Robin, and after a little extra time to play with his toys, it was time to head to bed. It must have been a long day, because he went down without an issue and Mommy and Daddy were in bed by 11pm as well. We're trying to have a reasonably fun family weekend since Craig is off for the first time in a while and it's sort of our last hurrah before a couple weeks being mostly housebound. We had Jacob's basketball game today (four points including a three-pointer), and he has practice tomorrow, but the goal is to fit in The Lego Movie 2 somewhere in there, and maybe one more meal of choice for Carter. We'll see how we do. But the countdown is officially on!
We finished off Valentine's Day/birthday eve with completing his 100th Day of School project. Carter had the option to do a shirt or a standalone project featuring 100 objects. I went through Pinterest for an assortment of doable ideas, and he picked a pom-pom gumball machine. I cut out the gumball machine parts because I didn't think the kid scissors could handle it, and we only had one shot with the materials we had. I did the outlines of the gumball machine front but let Carter color it in and write "100¢" (because $100 seemed a bit steep). I had to hold each pom-pom so he could squeeze the glue, but he did them all! It turns out that gluing a hundred "gumballs" takes a long time, so thank goodness for those wind chill days we had off school a couple weeks back, because it bought us a couple more days to get this done. The strep got in the way a bit, too, so we needed every bit of time we could get. But it turned out great!
In addition to it being his birthday, Friday was also the 100th day of school, so it was an extra special day--which was why I checked his strep sooner so he wouldn't miss it! Earlier in the year Carter had talked about having us come to eat lunch with him for his birthday, but he hadn't mentioned it leading up. However, I knew that if we didn't do it and it occurred to him later, he'd be upset we hadn't done it, so we planned on bringing him a special lunch together.
He was so excited to see us as his class walked to lunch, and it was so cute to see him leading his class down the hall with his special birthday crown! As we sat down to eat we had to grab a selfie!
He was loving his special Happy Meal lunch and it was fun seeing him in his element!
Elementary school lunch was interesting. I'd forgotten how chaotic and loud it is! They actually had to turn off the lights twice to remind the kids to quiet down, but I think it was a lost cause with it being the 100th day of school and the day before winter break. It was fun to see some of the 100th day shirt designs that kids were wearing.
After lunch we headed back to the classroom so Carter could do his book sharing and we could be there when they sang to him. He shared a birthday book that my mom recorded for him a few years ago. He likes to hear her read it, and we try to read it on or around his birthday each year. He had the idea to bring that in to share, which turned out well since he can't read it yet. He could just hold it up as the book read itself!
Everyone really seemed to like the book, and then he got up so his friends could sing to him (but he chose the "no cha cha cha" version, for the record).
It was crazy to think that after that day he wouldn't see his friends for two more weeks. This tonsil stuff is no joke, which his teacher reiterated on our way out, as her son just had his out a few weeks ago. Her warning was that days 5-10 were brutal. Which is why I find it so odd that a friend told me that her kids were both back to school about five days later. Whatever...our doctor wants a full 10 days out of school and another week with no gym. Whatever gets him through without complications is fine with me.
After a few crazy hours back at work trying to finish up whatever I could before having most of the next two weeks off, we were back at home and it was time for presents!
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| I couldn't resist the $1 mylar "6" balloon I found at Target! |
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| Ready to open! |
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| Two dinosaur-themed Hot Wheels cars! |
This box had an assortment of Scooby-Doo Imaginext figures to go with the Mystery Machine he got at Christmas. A couple came from Amazon and the others came from Toys 'R' Us...in Canada!
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| A hot dog food truck with Shaggy and a Mummy, Daphne and Mr. Hyde, Velma and the Snow Ghost, and Scooby in the garbage can with the Funland Robot |
He immediately wanted to try that one out!
We went out to dinner at Red Robin, and after a little extra time to play with his toys, it was time to head to bed. It must have been a long day, because he went down without an issue and Mommy and Daddy were in bed by 11pm as well. We're trying to have a reasonably fun family weekend since Craig is off for the first time in a while and it's sort of our last hurrah before a couple weeks being mostly housebound. We had Jacob's basketball game today (four points including a three-pointer), and he has practice tomorrow, but the goal is to fit in The Lego Movie 2 somewhere in there, and maybe one more meal of choice for Carter. We'll see how we do. But the countdown is officially on!
Friday, February 15, 2019
SIX!
Dear Carter,
Last year at this time I was pretty sad to see you turn five and officially exit the toddler stage. Here we are a year later, with you in Kindergarten, learning so much, growing taller, and now I can barely consider you a little boy anymore. Six sounds so big! Maybe it's a good thing you're still a bit of a little guy--it lets Mama pretend a bit longer!
It's been an interesting year. Definitely not our easiest, but you are still the brightest spot of my day most of the time! Even still, it's been a tough year in the behavior and discipline department. You like to bug your brother a LOT, and a lot of the time you're pretty crafty to not get caught. You have a ton of energy, which can make all of us nuts when you're running around all the time, often putting yourself at risk, but I guess that energy has to go somewhere--and better there than battling Jacob even more. You tend to have a lot of witty comebacks for things, which is sometimes hilarious and sometimes a big problem. So, you've probably spent more time in your room than ever this year, but I suppose you're still a piece of cake compared to what we went through with Jacob, so you're pretty lucky on that front.
I think the toughest part of wrangling you right now is that you are such a screen kid. You love TV, you love playing games, and unless we forcibly take those things away, it's rare to find you doing something non-electronic. That makes me a little sad because you are SO creative and have such an imagination--you can turn anything into a toy and make any number of unrelated toys work together in a story--and sometimes I worry you're not using those skills enough. I'm amazed at how you pick up electronic games, and I know your daddy loves snuggling you to watch shows, but it's definitely something we're going to have to work on. No sense starting until after your tonsil surgery, mind you, but I want to make sure we're maximizing that brain of yours!
School has been an interesting transition. You don't seem to love it, but you do like your teacher and I can tell you're taking in so much information! I know you love to learn, so I think that part of you likes it more than you let on. You seem to indicate you don't have a lot of friends, but I sort of doubt that since you make buddies everywhere you go. I know that reading and writing are a struggle for you--though I'm hoping that your surgery will give you sound sleep and a clearer mind that will make that stuff so much easier. It'll come, I think--but I'm sorry if my patience isn't what it should be in the meantime. Still, I love that you're learning so much and turning into such a cool, smart little kid.
You always have stories to share, and the things your brain comes up with range from the silly to the awesomely creative to the downright weird! Sometimes I just can't imagine what inspired some sort of crazy tale you're telling, but I do love that you have taken in so much information and been able to regurgitate it in some sort of different way. It's a good reminder for the times I feel like you're struggling at school that something is sticking in there! Between your stories and your brother's constant dialogue about basketball and sneakers, sometimes I probably don't have the patience I should to listen to all you have to say, but I try. Silence is golden, but you'd never know it in our house!
I feel like a lot of this year has involved your health. It's been a year since we started considering getting your tonsils and adenoids out, and next week, if all goes well, we'll be fixing that. Strep almost derailed those plans, but it looks like we're back on track. As much as I'm scared to death about you getting surgery, I'm so eager for you to breathe clearly at night and hopefully sleep much more soundly. Next up is getting you to gain some weight (you're so skinny!), and maybe double checking to make sure there isn't anything that's making all of that reading and writing harder for you than it needs to be. Raising you has been so much different than your brother and sometimes it's hard to know what's normal and what's not, so just know we're doing everything we can to make you a happy and healthy kid. But trying a few new foods in the meantime wouldn't hurt!😉
Speaking of new foods, I think your hesitance to try new ones has led to a change in your planned career. For a while now you've said you want to be a chef. But after not wanting to eat certain foods, I think that became less realistic. So lately you want to be an archaeologist. You want to bring dinosaurs back to life--but only plant-eaters, of course, because the meat-eaters would eat us. It's probably just as realistic as Jacob's NBA dream, so go for it!
What I love most about you--and what keeps us sane in the middle of everything else--is how much you love! You are the most loving child, and it makes me so happy! Your brother has never really been a touchy-feely-huggy kid, but even when you were tiny you told me you loved me a dozen times a day, and it warmed my heart so much. Even now you're always up for giving hugs and kisses, and you love snuggling. I even like watching you with your stuffed animals because you can be such a cute little daddy to them. And when you always share your bear with me when we snuggle at bedtime, it just shows me how you think of other people, and I love it. Oh, and let's not forget how you pray for my smell to come back. That is the sweetest of all! Please never lose that sweetness or that love of others!
You just bring so much joy into my life, and if I could hug you and hold you forever to keep you safe, I would. But it's clear you're growing up and little by little I'll need to let you go. I'm so proud of the little person you're becoming and as much as I'm sad to leave another little kid year behind, I'm excited to see where "big kid" you is headed! I love you so much and hope you have an awesome birthday!
Love,
Mommy
Last year at this time I was pretty sad to see you turn five and officially exit the toddler stage. Here we are a year later, with you in Kindergarten, learning so much, growing taller, and now I can barely consider you a little boy anymore. Six sounds so big! Maybe it's a good thing you're still a bit of a little guy--it lets Mama pretend a bit longer!
It's been an interesting year. Definitely not our easiest, but you are still the brightest spot of my day most of the time! Even still, it's been a tough year in the behavior and discipline department. You like to bug your brother a LOT, and a lot of the time you're pretty crafty to not get caught. You have a ton of energy, which can make all of us nuts when you're running around all the time, often putting yourself at risk, but I guess that energy has to go somewhere--and better there than battling Jacob even more. You tend to have a lot of witty comebacks for things, which is sometimes hilarious and sometimes a big problem. So, you've probably spent more time in your room than ever this year, but I suppose you're still a piece of cake compared to what we went through with Jacob, so you're pretty lucky on that front.
I think the toughest part of wrangling you right now is that you are such a screen kid. You love TV, you love playing games, and unless we forcibly take those things away, it's rare to find you doing something non-electronic. That makes me a little sad because you are SO creative and have such an imagination--you can turn anything into a toy and make any number of unrelated toys work together in a story--and sometimes I worry you're not using those skills enough. I'm amazed at how you pick up electronic games, and I know your daddy loves snuggling you to watch shows, but it's definitely something we're going to have to work on. No sense starting until after your tonsil surgery, mind you, but I want to make sure we're maximizing that brain of yours!
School has been an interesting transition. You don't seem to love it, but you do like your teacher and I can tell you're taking in so much information! I know you love to learn, so I think that part of you likes it more than you let on. You seem to indicate you don't have a lot of friends, but I sort of doubt that since you make buddies everywhere you go. I know that reading and writing are a struggle for you--though I'm hoping that your surgery will give you sound sleep and a clearer mind that will make that stuff so much easier. It'll come, I think--but I'm sorry if my patience isn't what it should be in the meantime. Still, I love that you're learning so much and turning into such a cool, smart little kid.
You always have stories to share, and the things your brain comes up with range from the silly to the awesomely creative to the downright weird! Sometimes I just can't imagine what inspired some sort of crazy tale you're telling, but I do love that you have taken in so much information and been able to regurgitate it in some sort of different way. It's a good reminder for the times I feel like you're struggling at school that something is sticking in there! Between your stories and your brother's constant dialogue about basketball and sneakers, sometimes I probably don't have the patience I should to listen to all you have to say, but I try. Silence is golden, but you'd never know it in our house!
I feel like a lot of this year has involved your health. It's been a year since we started considering getting your tonsils and adenoids out, and next week, if all goes well, we'll be fixing that. Strep almost derailed those plans, but it looks like we're back on track. As much as I'm scared to death about you getting surgery, I'm so eager for you to breathe clearly at night and hopefully sleep much more soundly. Next up is getting you to gain some weight (you're so skinny!), and maybe double checking to make sure there isn't anything that's making all of that reading and writing harder for you than it needs to be. Raising you has been so much different than your brother and sometimes it's hard to know what's normal and what's not, so just know we're doing everything we can to make you a happy and healthy kid. But trying a few new foods in the meantime wouldn't hurt!😉
Speaking of new foods, I think your hesitance to try new ones has led to a change in your planned career. For a while now you've said you want to be a chef. But after not wanting to eat certain foods, I think that became less realistic. So lately you want to be an archaeologist. You want to bring dinosaurs back to life--but only plant-eaters, of course, because the meat-eaters would eat us. It's probably just as realistic as Jacob's NBA dream, so go for it!
What I love most about you--and what keeps us sane in the middle of everything else--is how much you love! You are the most loving child, and it makes me so happy! Your brother has never really been a touchy-feely-huggy kid, but even when you were tiny you told me you loved me a dozen times a day, and it warmed my heart so much. Even now you're always up for giving hugs and kisses, and you love snuggling. I even like watching you with your stuffed animals because you can be such a cute little daddy to them. And when you always share your bear with me when we snuggle at bedtime, it just shows me how you think of other people, and I love it. Oh, and let's not forget how you pray for my smell to come back. That is the sweetest of all! Please never lose that sweetness or that love of others!
You just bring so much joy into my life, and if I could hug you and hold you forever to keep you safe, I would. But it's clear you're growing up and little by little I'll need to let you go. I'm so proud of the little person you're becoming and as much as I'm sad to leave another little kid year behind, I'm excited to see where "big kid" you is headed! I love you so much and hope you have an awesome birthday!
Love,
Mommy
Thursday, February 14, 2019
Super Strep Coaster
Three years ago today, Carter had strep on the day before his birthday. Three years later, history has repeated itself. Darn it.
After having eerily similar symptoms on Saturday night to his strep just over a month ago, the sore throat eased up a bit but the low-grade fever remained. He actually felt fine all week despite a consistent 99.5ish fever, but the bedwetting issue stuck around, which definitely had my radar up. We had no issue with it since mid-antibiotics a month ago, and now suddenly he's wet again every night? I mean, his tonsils were huge (like, almost touching), so I suppose it was possible that they were causing worse apnea than usual and doing whatever was happening to him for the month and a half prior to the strep, but it just seemed....odd.
All week I went back and forth with the pediatrician and ENT trying to figure out what to do. The pediatrician suggested waiting it out because it wasn't worth bringing him into the office with all the other stuff that's going on right now if it was just a minor virus that would go away on its own. The ENT suggested waiting, too, right up through today. But last night when I realized that a positive strep test today would pull him out of school for not only his birthday, but also the much-celebrated 100th day of school, I decided we had to get it checked right away.
Luckily we got to see our normal doctor, which doesn't always happen in the evenings, and she was very intrigued by the bedwetting issue--that it completely stopped after the antibiotics, and started up again this week. She was impressed by the size of his tonsils, though noted that his lymph nodes weren't too bad, which gave me hope that maybe it wasn't strep. But sure enough, the strep test was positive.
On the bright side, my mother's intuition is on point. Carol Brady would be proud. But I was pretty bummed because all week the ENT had been telling me that they usually want two weeks after strep to do surgery, so if he tested positive that would most likely cancel the surgery. So, of course, all of a sudden the positive test sort of re-routed our next couple weeks. When we stopped at Wegmans to get the antibiotics I decided to not get any of the soft foods he'll need when the surgery happens, just because I didn't want it clogging up my full pantry when the surgery date was completely unknown. I figured out my work schedule for break next week and tried to make peace with the fact our big master plan wasn't happening. I was frustrated that Carter would have to miss more school and that he'd have weeks more of his apnea-filled sleep, and I was worried that if he's actually a strep carrier that we'd be on this endless loop of positive tests before they'd finally consent to surgery. But then I actually got a little excited to just have some fun, pain-free bonus time with Carter (and Jacob, too) next week. Lemonade out of lemons, I guess.
This morning he woke up fever-free and said he throat didn't hurt at all. Since the doctor said it was okay to send him to school if that was the case, off he went--it is Valentine's Day, after all. I called the ENT on my way to work and let them know the test was positive, and called the dentist to cancel his appointment on Friday (his birthday, I know--pretty sure I didn't set up that one!). A little while after I got to work, the nurse from the ENT office called me and said that if he didn't have any symptoms and he was on the antibiotics, we were okay to proceed with the surgery. Say what?! So after hearing all week that it wouldn't happen if he had strep, all of a sudden we were back to Plan A.
Maybe it was the insane amount of carbs from my office's Valentine's Breakfast, but by mid-morning I was exhausted. I really think has a lot to do with the mental and emotional roller coaster that we've been on all week. From planning on the surgery, to thinking he was sick, to thinking he was mostly OK, to thinking the surgery would be canceled, to thinking there was still a chance he'd be OK, to being almost positive it would be canceled, and finally back to where we started...suffice it to say I'm exhausted. Now I'm just praying he didn't pick up anything at the doctor's office (two rounds of hand sanitizer) and won't at school or anywhere else over the next four days. I don't think I can take another switch.
So, tomorrow we will just focus on celebrating our sweet little dude, giant tonsils and all, and then we'll do what we can all weekend to fill him up on his favorite foods before they're banned for a couple weeks. Craig is off all weekend and Jacob has one basketball game and possibly a lacrosse practice, but that's about it. So hopefully we can have a nice family weekend and get ourselves ready for a crazy couple weeks. Keep us in your prayers!
After having eerily similar symptoms on Saturday night to his strep just over a month ago, the sore throat eased up a bit but the low-grade fever remained. He actually felt fine all week despite a consistent 99.5ish fever, but the bedwetting issue stuck around, which definitely had my radar up. We had no issue with it since mid-antibiotics a month ago, and now suddenly he's wet again every night? I mean, his tonsils were huge (like, almost touching), so I suppose it was possible that they were causing worse apnea than usual and doing whatever was happening to him for the month and a half prior to the strep, but it just seemed....odd.
All week I went back and forth with the pediatrician and ENT trying to figure out what to do. The pediatrician suggested waiting it out because it wasn't worth bringing him into the office with all the other stuff that's going on right now if it was just a minor virus that would go away on its own. The ENT suggested waiting, too, right up through today. But last night when I realized that a positive strep test today would pull him out of school for not only his birthday, but also the much-celebrated 100th day of school, I decided we had to get it checked right away.
Luckily we got to see our normal doctor, which doesn't always happen in the evenings, and she was very intrigued by the bedwetting issue--that it completely stopped after the antibiotics, and started up again this week. She was impressed by the size of his tonsils, though noted that his lymph nodes weren't too bad, which gave me hope that maybe it wasn't strep. But sure enough, the strep test was positive.
On the bright side, my mother's intuition is on point. Carol Brady would be proud. But I was pretty bummed because all week the ENT had been telling me that they usually want two weeks after strep to do surgery, so if he tested positive that would most likely cancel the surgery. So, of course, all of a sudden the positive test sort of re-routed our next couple weeks. When we stopped at Wegmans to get the antibiotics I decided to not get any of the soft foods he'll need when the surgery happens, just because I didn't want it clogging up my full pantry when the surgery date was completely unknown. I figured out my work schedule for break next week and tried to make peace with the fact our big master plan wasn't happening. I was frustrated that Carter would have to miss more school and that he'd have weeks more of his apnea-filled sleep, and I was worried that if he's actually a strep carrier that we'd be on this endless loop of positive tests before they'd finally consent to surgery. But then I actually got a little excited to just have some fun, pain-free bonus time with Carter (and Jacob, too) next week. Lemonade out of lemons, I guess.
This morning he woke up fever-free and said he throat didn't hurt at all. Since the doctor said it was okay to send him to school if that was the case, off he went--it is Valentine's Day, after all. I called the ENT on my way to work and let them know the test was positive, and called the dentist to cancel his appointment on Friday (his birthday, I know--pretty sure I didn't set up that one!). A little while after I got to work, the nurse from the ENT office called me and said that if he didn't have any symptoms and he was on the antibiotics, we were okay to proceed with the surgery. Say what?! So after hearing all week that it wouldn't happen if he had strep, all of a sudden we were back to Plan A.
Maybe it was the insane amount of carbs from my office's Valentine's Breakfast, but by mid-morning I was exhausted. I really think has a lot to do with the mental and emotional roller coaster that we've been on all week. From planning on the surgery, to thinking he was sick, to thinking he was mostly OK, to thinking the surgery would be canceled, to thinking there was still a chance he'd be OK, to being almost positive it would be canceled, and finally back to where we started...suffice it to say I'm exhausted. Now I'm just praying he didn't pick up anything at the doctor's office (two rounds of hand sanitizer) and won't at school or anywhere else over the next four days. I don't think I can take another switch.
So, tomorrow we will just focus on celebrating our sweet little dude, giant tonsils and all, and then we'll do what we can all weekend to fill him up on his favorite foods before they're banned for a couple weeks. Craig is off all weekend and Jacob has one basketball game and possibly a lacrosse practice, but that's about it. So hopefully we can have a nice family weekend and get ourselves ready for a crazy couple weeks. Keep us in your prayers!
Monday, February 11, 2019
A-Ha Moment
A couple weeks ago I saw a meme on Facebook that said something like, "The wins and losses will be forgotten, but you'll remember your teammates forever." At that moment, it struck me that I don't feel like Jacob feels that way about his sports teammates. He's always been friendly enough with his teammates, but never really made anything I'd consider a life-long friendship.
But it wasn't until we were chatting with his therapist at our monthly appointment last week that I realized the significance of this issue. The therapist asked him about his teammates, and what he likes about them. As he started discussing them, I realized everything revolved around their skills on the field, rather than their personalities. Hmmm.
Ever since Jacob could walk, he's been obsessed with sports. It has been central to almost everything in his life. Conveniently, he grew up with a dad working in sports and a mom with a very high tolerance for them, so it was always pretty natural. As a toddler he constantly had a piece of sports equipment in his hand--be it a bat, lacrosse stick, hockey stick, or a ball. And if he didn't have one of those things, he was making something into sports equipment--a toy broom became a hockey stick, or a toy pot and plastic apple became a lacrosse stick and ball. It was constant. And when he got older, he graduated to simulating a sporting event however he could--playing in our living room, drawing it on paper, or playing with action figures, keychains, condiment bottles, or whatever else he could find on a pretend field or rink. It was just a way of life, and to this day he is mostly either playing basketball outside, in his room, or on the Xbox.
The sports have changed over the years. As a toddler it was usually whatever was in season. As he got older, there's been an ebb and flow--usually in something in season but periodically something would strike his fancy and we'd be on a whole new obsession out of the blue. He tried soccer when he was four, and started lacrosse when he was five. Baseball came the following summer and lasted four summers, until kid pitch started and it got a lot less fun. To be fair, lacrosse was really starting to take over at that point, but I'll admit that having kids pitch made it extra slow and very hard to get a hit, so it's no wonder Jacob was frustrated. We hated to lose some of the relationships we'd made, but it seemed necessary at the time to focus on his true love, lacrosse.
For the past six years, lacrosse has been the constant in his sports universe, in some form--whether playing or being a fan. And now, it's not. When he plays his last travel tournament in July, that may be the end of his lacrosse career. It's heartbreaking and disappointing...but seemingly inevitable. He just doesn't love it anymore. After not winning a house league game in about a year, and not getting reasonable playing time with his very successful travel team, he's lost his fire. Maybe he's just burned out. It takes an effort every week to get him to go to practices (house and travel) and his one weekly game. He can't see the opportunity to grow in practices and doesn't want to get hit during games. He's not having fun anymore, and it's so sad to see. The spring in his step just isn't there. The other night he had two goals and it was great, but the team lost again and the goals seemed like a hollow victory in comparison. The worst part, perhaps, is that we'll miss the families so much. It was hard enough to lose our travel families when he didn't make his old team this fall, but now we'll lose our house families, too. We went to a great Super Bowl party with a few of them last week, and it was a blast. But will we get invited back next year if we're not playing with them anymore? Every week when we go to games and practices there are so many people we know, and it will be a bummer to start to lose those connections, just like we did in baseball a couple years ago.
On the other hand, where lacrosse has died off, basketball has picked up. He has been passionate from time to time for years (all the way back to his mini basketball hoop at age 2), but it's been solid since the Raptors' playoff run this past spring. Camp and the big hoop last summer solidified it, and now that he's playing for a real team, he's all in. Well, he's annoyed with the small court they play on half the time, but he is passionate about it otherwise. And it shows when he's out on the court. I've never seen him look so comfortable or so eager. He's faster than I've ever seen, and is so sharp out there. He looks smooth and you can see his excitement. I love it. It makes me wish he could be like that about lacrosse again, too, after all the time and effort (and money) we've put into that, but I'm glad he's found his spot.
But here's the thing, getting back to the moment at the therapist the other day--he's still not really embracing the teammate thing. He loves sports, but it's always been all about the sport. He's taken it super seriously, always on the hunt for the right equipment or just the right move to make his game better. But I'm not sure he's ever had FUN. It's mostly been about winning and personal stats. He's not a bad teammate, per se, but his motivation to be a good teammate is to win and indirectly help his own game. But until I saw that meme I never really put two and two together that he's never looked at his teammates as more than a means to an end. When he didn't make his travel team, he did say he was going to miss his teammates, but now he says he doesn't--particularly since only a couple of them still talk to him at practice. It breaks my heart as I think of all the teams and all the opportunities he's had to make friends...and while they've been solid acquaintances, I'm not sure any of them have truly stuck. I already see the same thing happening with basketball, too.
As we worked through this issue with the therapist, she made a good point. The lack of solid relationships has probably also made it easier to leave. When you have a relationship with your teammates, there's a trust there. Leaving breaks that trust, so it makes it harder to make that decision than if you didn't have it. In adult life, it's those types of relationships that make it hard to leave a job, or even some sort of activity or committee. Jacob doesn't seem to have that, so he can leave his team without guilt or without a true sense of loss. When she made that connection, his complete lack of hesitation to quit lacrosse (and baseball before it) made a lot more sense.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure what the answer is. We came to this realization late in our therapy session, so hopefully we can dig back in next month. It saddens me that this is how he operates. I don't know if it's just a matter of talking him through this to help him understand why this isn't ideal, or if a lot more digging is needed to figure out the cause. I don't think he's entirely like this at school, although hardcore friendships have never been his strong suit. Maybe it's a fear of rejection, or just how ADHD hyperfocus plays out in sports. Maybe he's just compartmentalizing a bit too much and doesn't realize that teammates can be friends. He's often complained that other kids don't pass to him, and it definitely has some merit, but I can't help but wonder if it's just that he hasn't built up that friendship-like trust enough with kids that probably still "see" their friends better on the field than anyone else.
I apologize if this is too abstract a concept to come across clearly, but it was just such an a-ha moment when it happened that I wanted to talk myself through it here, too. Jacob's "difficult personality" diagnosis five years ago has definitely held true in many areas of his life, and apparently sports is no exception. Let's hope that a bit more maturity and some positive team experiences moving forward help him understand there's more to it than just the sport.
But it wasn't until we were chatting with his therapist at our monthly appointment last week that I realized the significance of this issue. The therapist asked him about his teammates, and what he likes about them. As he started discussing them, I realized everything revolved around their skills on the field, rather than their personalities. Hmmm.
Ever since Jacob could walk, he's been obsessed with sports. It has been central to almost everything in his life. Conveniently, he grew up with a dad working in sports and a mom with a very high tolerance for them, so it was always pretty natural. As a toddler he constantly had a piece of sports equipment in his hand--be it a bat, lacrosse stick, hockey stick, or a ball. And if he didn't have one of those things, he was making something into sports equipment--a toy broom became a hockey stick, or a toy pot and plastic apple became a lacrosse stick and ball. It was constant. And when he got older, he graduated to simulating a sporting event however he could--playing in our living room, drawing it on paper, or playing with action figures, keychains, condiment bottles, or whatever else he could find on a pretend field or rink. It was just a way of life, and to this day he is mostly either playing basketball outside, in his room, or on the Xbox.
The sports have changed over the years. As a toddler it was usually whatever was in season. As he got older, there's been an ebb and flow--usually in something in season but periodically something would strike his fancy and we'd be on a whole new obsession out of the blue. He tried soccer when he was four, and started lacrosse when he was five. Baseball came the following summer and lasted four summers, until kid pitch started and it got a lot less fun. To be fair, lacrosse was really starting to take over at that point, but I'll admit that having kids pitch made it extra slow and very hard to get a hit, so it's no wonder Jacob was frustrated. We hated to lose some of the relationships we'd made, but it seemed necessary at the time to focus on his true love, lacrosse.
For the past six years, lacrosse has been the constant in his sports universe, in some form--whether playing or being a fan. And now, it's not. When he plays his last travel tournament in July, that may be the end of his lacrosse career. It's heartbreaking and disappointing...but seemingly inevitable. He just doesn't love it anymore. After not winning a house league game in about a year, and not getting reasonable playing time with his very successful travel team, he's lost his fire. Maybe he's just burned out. It takes an effort every week to get him to go to practices (house and travel) and his one weekly game. He can't see the opportunity to grow in practices and doesn't want to get hit during games. He's not having fun anymore, and it's so sad to see. The spring in his step just isn't there. The other night he had two goals and it was great, but the team lost again and the goals seemed like a hollow victory in comparison. The worst part, perhaps, is that we'll miss the families so much. It was hard enough to lose our travel families when he didn't make his old team this fall, but now we'll lose our house families, too. We went to a great Super Bowl party with a few of them last week, and it was a blast. But will we get invited back next year if we're not playing with them anymore? Every week when we go to games and practices there are so many people we know, and it will be a bummer to start to lose those connections, just like we did in baseball a couple years ago.
On the other hand, where lacrosse has died off, basketball has picked up. He has been passionate from time to time for years (all the way back to his mini basketball hoop at age 2), but it's been solid since the Raptors' playoff run this past spring. Camp and the big hoop last summer solidified it, and now that he's playing for a real team, he's all in. Well, he's annoyed with the small court they play on half the time, but he is passionate about it otherwise. And it shows when he's out on the court. I've never seen him look so comfortable or so eager. He's faster than I've ever seen, and is so sharp out there. He looks smooth and you can see his excitement. I love it. It makes me wish he could be like that about lacrosse again, too, after all the time and effort (and money) we've put into that, but I'm glad he's found his spot.
But here's the thing, getting back to the moment at the therapist the other day--he's still not really embracing the teammate thing. He loves sports, but it's always been all about the sport. He's taken it super seriously, always on the hunt for the right equipment or just the right move to make his game better. But I'm not sure he's ever had FUN. It's mostly been about winning and personal stats. He's not a bad teammate, per se, but his motivation to be a good teammate is to win and indirectly help his own game. But until I saw that meme I never really put two and two together that he's never looked at his teammates as more than a means to an end. When he didn't make his travel team, he did say he was going to miss his teammates, but now he says he doesn't--particularly since only a couple of them still talk to him at practice. It breaks my heart as I think of all the teams and all the opportunities he's had to make friends...and while they've been solid acquaintances, I'm not sure any of them have truly stuck. I already see the same thing happening with basketball, too.
As we worked through this issue with the therapist, she made a good point. The lack of solid relationships has probably also made it easier to leave. When you have a relationship with your teammates, there's a trust there. Leaving breaks that trust, so it makes it harder to make that decision than if you didn't have it. In adult life, it's those types of relationships that make it hard to leave a job, or even some sort of activity or committee. Jacob doesn't seem to have that, so he can leave his team without guilt or without a true sense of loss. When she made that connection, his complete lack of hesitation to quit lacrosse (and baseball before it) made a lot more sense.
Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure what the answer is. We came to this realization late in our therapy session, so hopefully we can dig back in next month. It saddens me that this is how he operates. I don't know if it's just a matter of talking him through this to help him understand why this isn't ideal, or if a lot more digging is needed to figure out the cause. I don't think he's entirely like this at school, although hardcore friendships have never been his strong suit. Maybe it's a fear of rejection, or just how ADHD hyperfocus plays out in sports. Maybe he's just compartmentalizing a bit too much and doesn't realize that teammates can be friends. He's often complained that other kids don't pass to him, and it definitely has some merit, but I can't help but wonder if it's just that he hasn't built up that friendship-like trust enough with kids that probably still "see" their friends better on the field than anyone else.
I apologize if this is too abstract a concept to come across clearly, but it was just such an a-ha moment when it happened that I wanted to talk myself through it here, too. Jacob's "difficult personality" diagnosis five years ago has definitely held true in many areas of his life, and apparently sports is no exception. Let's hope that a bit more maturity and some positive team experiences moving forward help him understand there's more to it than just the sport.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Wacky Weather
We'd had a pretty uneventful winter right through January, but the last couple weeks have been crazy. It seems like our weather has lost its mind.
Three weeks ago we got over a foot and a half of snow. That pretty much provided as much snow as I wanted to deal with this winter.
Then a week and a half ago we had a round of crazy frigid weather. Sub-zero wind chills, a few inches of snow, and enough wind to make things challenging. The kids didn't have school and one of the main expressways here, my main route to and from work, closed. Buffalo went so far as to have a blizzard.
Four days later, it was 60 degrees and sunny. It felt heavenly, but of course it was short lived.
A couple days after that, we had a minor ice storm. It started raining in the morning and pretty quickly ice was accumulating on everything. I had to work an event for work, and it was really nerve-wracking as we drove there and I watched ice accumulate on a truck's antenna. Everything was slick, but luckily by the time we got back to the office it was starting to melt there. I didn't even have to scrape my car. But when I got home, it was a different story. This is what our burning bush looked like...
Our basketball hoop was rather stiff, which was pretty awesome.
I couldn't help but take a couple pictures of our tree, and they may be a couple of my favorite pictures I've ever taken, at least if you look close enough to see the cracks in the ice.
The burning bush was cool from the other direction, too.
I figured it would melt by the next night when it started raining, but no, I still caught this impressive-looking grassy weed. But a couple hours later it was melting off the trees so much you'd think it was raining!
And by Friday, we had 60 mph winds. Enough to make me crazy, but not enough to do any damage (thank God). Bonus points for coming out of Jacob's basketball game last night to measurable snow, after it had been unproductively snowing on and off all day. Oh, and it was still windy. Awesome way to end a really long day...not.
Anyway, it's starting to get a little exhausting. We're busy enough with everything else these days, let alone to complicate things with weather. Of course, six years ago this week we were dealing with even more extreme weather when I was super uncomfortably pregnant. In fact, I wrote that post six years ago tonight, which makes me smile knowing that Carter's birthday is merely five days away. Little did I know then...
And no, I'm not much better prepared for his birthday today than I was when I wrote my last post. I tried, I really did...but it did not go well, and I just can't seem to think of ways to make it special right now. But oh, tonight he seemed to be having a strep recurrence (same nausea minus the actual vomiting, slight fever, sore throat, and first bed wetting issue since the antibiotics kicked in last time), so perhaps we'll be getting the tonsils out in the nick of time. We'll weigh the Sunday morning doctor visit when I see how he's feeling in the morning. Poor kid, just in time for his birthday...just like three years ago. But even if this is strep, hopefully it'll be the last time since a tonsillectomy seems to be the cure-all for that. I'm still nervous as heck, but perhaps this will solidify the decision even more. It's going to be a crazy week either way...
Three weeks ago we got over a foot and a half of snow. That pretty much provided as much snow as I wanted to deal with this winter.
Then a week and a half ago we had a round of crazy frigid weather. Sub-zero wind chills, a few inches of snow, and enough wind to make things challenging. The kids didn't have school and one of the main expressways here, my main route to and from work, closed. Buffalo went so far as to have a blizzard.
Four days later, it was 60 degrees and sunny. It felt heavenly, but of course it was short lived.
A couple days after that, we had a minor ice storm. It started raining in the morning and pretty quickly ice was accumulating on everything. I had to work an event for work, and it was really nerve-wracking as we drove there and I watched ice accumulate on a truck's antenna. Everything was slick, but luckily by the time we got back to the office it was starting to melt there. I didn't even have to scrape my car. But when I got home, it was a different story. This is what our burning bush looked like...
Our basketball hoop was rather stiff, which was pretty awesome.
I couldn't help but take a couple pictures of our tree, and they may be a couple of my favorite pictures I've ever taken, at least if you look close enough to see the cracks in the ice.
The burning bush was cool from the other direction, too.
I figured it would melt by the next night when it started raining, but no, I still caught this impressive-looking grassy weed. But a couple hours later it was melting off the trees so much you'd think it was raining!
And by Friday, we had 60 mph winds. Enough to make me crazy, but not enough to do any damage (thank God). Bonus points for coming out of Jacob's basketball game last night to measurable snow, after it had been unproductively snowing on and off all day. Oh, and it was still windy. Awesome way to end a really long day...not.
Anyway, it's starting to get a little exhausting. We're busy enough with everything else these days, let alone to complicate things with weather. Of course, six years ago this week we were dealing with even more extreme weather when I was super uncomfortably pregnant. In fact, I wrote that post six years ago tonight, which makes me smile knowing that Carter's birthday is merely five days away. Little did I know then...
And no, I'm not much better prepared for his birthday today than I was when I wrote my last post. I tried, I really did...but it did not go well, and I just can't seem to think of ways to make it special right now. But oh, tonight he seemed to be having a strep recurrence (same nausea minus the actual vomiting, slight fever, sore throat, and first bed wetting issue since the antibiotics kicked in last time), so perhaps we'll be getting the tonsils out in the nick of time. We'll weigh the Sunday morning doctor visit when I see how he's feeling in the morning. Poor kid, just in time for his birthday...just like three years ago. But even if this is strep, hopefully it'll be the last time since a tonsillectomy seems to be the cure-all for that. I'm still nervous as heck, but perhaps this will solidify the decision even more. It's going to be a crazy week either way...
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Two Weeks Times Two
It's February. Seven years ago February was just another month of an endless winter. Six years ago it was the home stretch (though a shorter one than expected). For the last five years it's marked the countdown to a holiday we mostly ignore followed immediately by Carter's birthday. This year, it is a tale of two two-week spans. The first two weeks are full of stuff--lots of work stuff for both of us, Jacob's sports, and preparations for the 100th day of school, Valentine's Day, and Carter's birthday. The last two weeks will be the recovery from Carter's surgery. Everything is sort of based on that before and after, and I'm having a tough time processing it all.
For a while it felt like the surgery would never get here, but now that we have less than two weeks, I'm in a panic that it'll all never get done. I have so much going on at work and need to prep for most of two weeks off on top of it. Jacob still has enough sports to keep us busy, and Craig's schedule is crazy as usual. I've felt behind for weeks--my uncle's passing, Carter's strep, lots of crazy weather including two cold days with no school, Craig's roadtrips, and 4-5 days each week for Jacob's sports. Last weekend I had a very random low blood sugar episode on Saturday around noon, which put me even more behind. I never had breakfast because I slept in/dozed while Carter watched TV, and then I FaceTimed with my parents for a bit before settling on making pancakes for brunch. But as I cooked I got very lightheaded and my fingers began to tingle. I did everything I could to finish cooking so the kids could eat and I could get some food in my system, which I did just in time. But it took most of the afternoon to recover, and by then I was behind on everything I'd planned for the weekend. But what else is new, I guess?
I just feel like we're all out of sync and off our routine, and it's making everything that much harder. I've barely planned Carter's birthday. We decided to move his party back for a bit, but normally by now I have a full game plan for presents. Yet I currently feel like he has too many toys as it is and nothing is jumping out at me this year. As a result, I'm currently making do with whatever we've cobbled together. I've only gotten the kids a couple candies for Valentine's Day, and now we have Carter's 100th day of school celebration to prepare for, too, and even with Pinterest I'm a little concerned about that one. Our schedule just hasn't lent itself to me doing anything on my own, or even being able to escape the house with just one kid in tow, which makes it tough to accomplish much of anything. It feels like a chore to drag either kid away from a screen, and when Craig is home he's generally either working remotely or napping off his most recent travels. Sports are messing up our evening dinners at least a couple nights a week. No one goes to bed when they should, and none of us can seem to get up and out the door on time in the morning. We're just off, and all I can hope is that post-surgery we can do a wholesale reset.
Once we get through these two weeks, then we'll have two weeks of recovery to contend with. Of course, we have to get through surgery first. Anesthesia is always stressful, and I have no idea how Carter will do with that or the recovery. I had my tonsils out around the same age, and I remember it being very painful in the beginning. I also remember craving Doritos and being sad I couldn't have them for a while, but beyond that it's fuzzy. After surgery we'll be on an every-three-hour, 'round the clock medication routine for a week or so, so it will feel like we have a newborn again. Keeping him calm for 2-3 weeks to minimize the risk of bleeding will be a major challenge, as running is his favorite pastime and Jacob riles him up so easily. I'm actually very worried about him bleeding and will probably wake up hourly to check on him as a result. I'm looking forward to the snuggles but worried about keeping up with work. I also don't know how we're going to keep our already-underweight kid fueled up when jello will probably be his main request. On a related note, I had no idea how expensive Pediasure is. Usually he's a pretty good sick kid, and considering how much he loves screen time I'm sure he'll be cool with that...but breaking the habit afterward might be tough! I'm hoping new birthday toys will be a motivator to actually play a bit, too. But either way, the recovery seems daunting, for so many reasons.
The good news, of course, is if we get through this, we should have a happier, healthier kid in the long run. That's why we're going through all of this, and I hope someday Carter understands that. But in the meantime it's left us with a very strange February split in two, very decidedly "before" and "after". Keep us in your prayers that all goes smoothly...on both counts!
For a while it felt like the surgery would never get here, but now that we have less than two weeks, I'm in a panic that it'll all never get done. I have so much going on at work and need to prep for most of two weeks off on top of it. Jacob still has enough sports to keep us busy, and Craig's schedule is crazy as usual. I've felt behind for weeks--my uncle's passing, Carter's strep, lots of crazy weather including two cold days with no school, Craig's roadtrips, and 4-5 days each week for Jacob's sports. Last weekend I had a very random low blood sugar episode on Saturday around noon, which put me even more behind. I never had breakfast because I slept in/dozed while Carter watched TV, and then I FaceTimed with my parents for a bit before settling on making pancakes for brunch. But as I cooked I got very lightheaded and my fingers began to tingle. I did everything I could to finish cooking so the kids could eat and I could get some food in my system, which I did just in time. But it took most of the afternoon to recover, and by then I was behind on everything I'd planned for the weekend. But what else is new, I guess?
I just feel like we're all out of sync and off our routine, and it's making everything that much harder. I've barely planned Carter's birthday. We decided to move his party back for a bit, but normally by now I have a full game plan for presents. Yet I currently feel like he has too many toys as it is and nothing is jumping out at me this year. As a result, I'm currently making do with whatever we've cobbled together. I've only gotten the kids a couple candies for Valentine's Day, and now we have Carter's 100th day of school celebration to prepare for, too, and even with Pinterest I'm a little concerned about that one. Our schedule just hasn't lent itself to me doing anything on my own, or even being able to escape the house with just one kid in tow, which makes it tough to accomplish much of anything. It feels like a chore to drag either kid away from a screen, and when Craig is home he's generally either working remotely or napping off his most recent travels. Sports are messing up our evening dinners at least a couple nights a week. No one goes to bed when they should, and none of us can seem to get up and out the door on time in the morning. We're just off, and all I can hope is that post-surgery we can do a wholesale reset.
Once we get through these two weeks, then we'll have two weeks of recovery to contend with. Of course, we have to get through surgery first. Anesthesia is always stressful, and I have no idea how Carter will do with that or the recovery. I had my tonsils out around the same age, and I remember it being very painful in the beginning. I also remember craving Doritos and being sad I couldn't have them for a while, but beyond that it's fuzzy. After surgery we'll be on an every-three-hour, 'round the clock medication routine for a week or so, so it will feel like we have a newborn again. Keeping him calm for 2-3 weeks to minimize the risk of bleeding will be a major challenge, as running is his favorite pastime and Jacob riles him up so easily. I'm actually very worried about him bleeding and will probably wake up hourly to check on him as a result. I'm looking forward to the snuggles but worried about keeping up with work. I also don't know how we're going to keep our already-underweight kid fueled up when jello will probably be his main request. On a related note, I had no idea how expensive Pediasure is. Usually he's a pretty good sick kid, and considering how much he loves screen time I'm sure he'll be cool with that...but breaking the habit afterward might be tough! I'm hoping new birthday toys will be a motivator to actually play a bit, too. But either way, the recovery seems daunting, for so many reasons.
The good news, of course, is if we get through this, we should have a happier, healthier kid in the long run. That's why we're going through all of this, and I hope someday Carter understands that. But in the meantime it's left us with a very strange February split in two, very decidedly "before" and "after". Keep us in your prayers that all goes smoothly...on both counts!
Saturday, February 2, 2019
The Electronics Wars
When I became a parent, I had no idea that I would spend so much time arguing with my 10-year-old about random stuff. Well, I guess I never dreamed I'd have such a particular 10-year-old in the first place, but it seems that I'm not alone in a lot of these battles. Maybe other people aren't having in-depth conversations with their tween about the merits and drawbacks of countless pairs of sneakers or whether youth basketball requires a shooting sleeve that NBA players use, but one thing I know most of us have in common is electronics. There are so many different arguments to have about electronics these days, and I feel like we have had them all...almost daily...for months. The kid isn't even in middle school yet and I'm already burned out on what's appropriate, what isn't, and how we should proceed.
The challenge is that back when I was 10, we didn't really have these issues so there aren't many parenting precedents to go on. Maybe we had some version of them, but certainly not to the all-encompassing degree we do now. Back then, perhaps there was a battle to have a phone in your room, or even a separate phone line. Or maybe you wanted a TV in your room. We had a computer and I spent a significant amount of time on it at times, but "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?" or a pixelated version of "Jeopardy!" only went so far.
I feel like back then there were built-in limits for all of these things, and none were so deeply woven into daily life as electronics seem to be now. A separate phone line cost money, and back then we knew the value of a dollar so adding to the phone bill was a big deal. A phone in your room was easier to come by, but I think most of us knew better than to hog the household phone line for too long. I got a TV in my room when I was a teenager, but it was a tiny black-and-white one and it didn't get cable. I had a handful of channels (one of which got Montreal Canadiens' games in French sometimes!), so I had a limited amount of use for it. Even when I borrowed my uncle's Pong console (25 years after it was popular, mind you), that only held my attention for so long. And I did love our computer, but it wasn't until we got an internet connection when I was 17 that self-control became a challenge. And even then we had the phone line issue as it was still good old dial-up! I did watch an awful lot of TV, but we only had a couple to share for the family so sometimes that battle was lost when everyone was home. And, as proven by the amount of reading I did in the summer, even I got bored with TV after a while. Another self-control danger zone was when we borrowed my cousins' Nintendo when they got grounded from it. I had a tough time breaking away from my beloved Super Mario, but again, a sore thumb and stiff neck eventually motivated me to stop, and it was a short-lived opportunity anyway.
Long story short, I feel like we had some sort of built-in level of self-control back then. We knew we shouldn't do those things all day every day, and we weren't so immersed in technology at that point where it was considered normal to look at a screen all the time. We knew how to entertain ourselves without it. Even with the most fun technology, either boredom would eventually set in or we just had a better sense of appropriateness and knew we had better ways to spend our time. But now, I feel like that self-awareness has disappeared a bit. Everyone does it, right? Okay, maybe that's not the case with all kids, but certainly I see it in mine...so maybe it's a parenting issue. But based on what I hear from others, maybe it's just how things are now.
Carter is definitely a screen kid. He loved TV from the get-go, and took to handheld electronics with ease. I think part of it is that we're often tired parents and if he'll just sit quietly with a screen (and not argue with his brother), it's a relief to get some peace and quiet. So that's partly our fault. But if given the opportunity, I think he'd do screen time 24/7 if he could. Fortunately, when we do force him off, he's very good about finding ways to amuse himself. He's very imaginative, and while he prefers to have a playing partner, he can find a way to keep himself busy with almost anything.
But then there's Jacob. Jacob liked TV when he was younger, but he almost always played with something else while watching it. Even now he loses interest in movies and shows a lot quicker. He also liked playing games on the iPad, but it was never a big thing for him. He had phases where he loved the Wii, and later the Xbox, but again, most of the time he'd do it and be done on his own. The only exception was when he started playing Minecraft, but then again that's when he had a cast on his leg and he couldn't do much else, so who could blame him? But lately, he seems to spend a lot of time in front of screens and I feel a bit helpless about it. Why? Because he flat-out refuses to do anything else. He hates reading. He doesn't have homework (which, I know, is ridiculous and he'll have a huge dose of culture shock next year). He can't play basketball outside right now, and while the hoop in his room gets plenty of use, it's not really enough. Toys, even Legos, have mostly lost their luster, unless he has someone to play with. Everything else he wants to do mostly revolves around electronics, and it's making me crazy. I can't really force him to do things he doesn't want to do--at least not unless I want to listen to endless complaining--so I feel stuck.
I don't want to make this stuff yet another battleground, but I do believe it's important enough in his foundation for life that I do need to push things a bit. Encouraging him to do other stuff only goes so far, and I guess I'd rather he play games than pester his brother constantly. It could literally be life-or-death (yikes) while Carter is recovering from his surgery (if you saw how often they tangle, you'd understand my concern), so we need to weigh pros and cons heavily. It's so exhausting. Here are the current battles we're fighting:
Constant online shopping - This one has been an issue for a while. Jacob constantly wants to use Craig's phone, and most of the time he's combing the internet for stuff. Sneakers, sports gear, electronics (see below), clothes, and who knows what else. This usually yields a rather sizable list for holidays and birthdays, as well as some battles in between. He's currently jockeying for a reward for losing so many lacrosse games in a row (which Craig did promise, once Jacob broke Craig's own futility record from youth hockey) and helping Craig out with a work thing in the frigid cold this week, and has very specific ideas of what he thinks is appropriate. I tend to disagree, of course. The thing is, I don't want to spend our money on something he needs to have, only to lose interest once he gets it, which he often does. He doesn't have much of his own money to spend either--and I control his bank account, so only the most noble pursuits will be considered. Mostly, I just feel like his constant shopping is leading him down this materialistic road where he can only dream of the next big thing, then moves on to the next once he gets it.
He wants a phone - Like most kids his age, he wants a phone. I always laugh at the Facebook meme that talks about kids today wanting an iPhone, but when we were kids you felt like you won the lottery if you got your hands on one of those pens with multiple color options. It's so true. He certainly doesn't need a phone right now, but we'll see how our lives our impacted by him going to a farther away school next year. I know he wants to text and keep in touch with his friends, particularly once he switches schools, but it sort of ticks me off that so many other parents have caved that he has friends doing it now. There are a million reasons why a phone gets complicated, which I will expand upon below, but first and foremost is cost. We certainly don't want to pay for it, and he has no income to pay for it. Plus it's obviously a huge responsibility for a lot of reasons, which I will also cover below. I keep threatening to just do a flip phone, but more than likely he'll inherit my old TracFone and we'll start there. But first...
Headphones/earbuds - His argument for a more immediate need of the phone is that he wants to listen to music on it, citing his long bus ride next year. I agree, he probably will need something to keep him occupied on an early morning, 30-60 minute bus ride, so it could be that my old phone will just get some music loaded on and that will be it. But of course he needs something to listen to music through, which is where earbuds or headphones come in. He wanted wireless earbuds a while back, mostly to play sports, but I do fear he will lose one. We had the whole debate about this prior to Christmas, at which point I bought him Bluetooth ones at Five Below (connected and with ear hooks) for Christmas that are now having some issues. So we'll see. He will get a specific set of headphones at some point (birthday?) but right now he needs to be patient, and once he gets them he will have a tough lesson in learning to take care of them. The other issue, of course, is what he's listening to. I think his love of basketball has led to a love of hip-hop, which is just about the worst thing he could listen to. He doesn't understand why it's a concern, as I don't think he realizes yet just how much language and questionable themes crop up in that genre if you happen upon uncensored versions. We're going to have to police his downloads heavily...and maybe I can sneak some Christian hip-hop in there in the meantime.
Social media - I've seen enough of the "Wait Until 8th" campaign to know I'm not ready for him to have social media right now. It can lead to bullying at worst and lots of wasted time at best, and having not done the social media thing at that age (thank God) it's hard to know what's appropriate. There's a lot of speculation on the psychological effect of this stuff, and I pretty much dread the thought of having to check his devices all the time. I spend enough time on social media myself, let alone adding Snapchat and whatever else to keep an eye on him, and taking the time to check it. Can parental laziness be a valid reason to delay it? Also, I wasn't that devious a kid, so it'll be a challenge to think of every creative way he might break the rules. I'm concerned his relative naivete will get him in over his head before he even knows it. And given how much he poo-poos that suggestion, I know I'm right.
YouTube - He already spends a lot of time on YouTube, which is why it's on this list. Between Craig's phone and his very-old-generation iPad that's in his room, he's on there a ton. It's hard to know for sure what he might be getting into, though most of the time it's some sort of sports video. In the checking I've done, things have been fine, and I think for the most part he has a decent moral compass, but curiosity is only going to get stronger in the coming years. So I know I'll have to reign this one in a bit, too. He also wants to be a YouTuber (like every other kid his age), but trying to explain that not everyone will want to listen to his random commentary on random stuff is tough. And socially it opens up a whole can of worms, too. I've tried to use blocks but it's tough to tell how they work.
Xbox Live Gold and the headset - I can't remember if I got into the headset debate here or not, but basically, there was a $1 special for a month of Xbox Live Gold that Jacob wanted to take advantage of, and even though I knew where it was going 30 days later, I figured it was a low-risk way to check it out. So we did, except that he discovered he really needed a headset to take advantage of the option of playing online with his friends. He doesn't get much opportunity to interact with his friends outside of school, and since social media and text messaging aren't options, this seemed like a reasonable compromise. Might I say here how thankful I am that he never liked Fortnite? It's really just all NBA 2K19, which isn't too bad aside from the fact he's now convinced he can someday play in the NBA and have a house with a court in it. But getting a headset proved to be a challenge. A reasonably priced one had crappy reviews but the more expensive one was definitely out of his budget...especially since we knew he wanted to extend his Gold membership to a full year (essentially $5 per month). I offered to get him one from (again) Five Below and see how that went. Ideally it would get him through until his birthday, when someone could get him the one he wanted. He was appalled at the thought of the Five Below ones, insisting they wouldn't work, and we went back and forth for days. At a breaking point, he relented and let us get the Five Below ones. Initially there was some sort of odd static issue with them, but on try #3, miraculously they worked and have been fine ever since. (Score one for mom). He's been very much enjoying playing online with his friends, but for a while it was taking over--he'd make appointments with his friends and didn't want to stop for dinner--so that was a concern that caused us to threaten canceling. But he's eased up a bit lately, despite two cold days off school this week. I'm still bracing myself for February break when Carter just wants to watch TV post-surgery and Jacob's home wanting to play. Which brings us to...
TV availability - When he was wanting to be playing online all the time, he started asking to either move his Xbox to the basement TV or to get a TV in his room. The bedroom TV is a never, as he has zero willpower and we'd no doubt be finding him up watching it or playing at all hours. We have enough trouble with the iPad, particularly at bedtime. There were also times he'd wake up and pee at 5:30am, and apparently the temptation to get on the iPad would be too much, as he'd play on that instead of sleeping until 7am. Ummm, nope. So the TV would be bad. As for the basement, it sounds tempting, because it frees up the living room for the rest of us, but I sort of like the built-in limits by having it in the living room. Not only is he not alone, which gives us some security about what he's doing, but if he retreats downstairs for hours it will be hard to give him any reason to stop playing. If he's not bothering anyone, what's the harm, or so he thinks. But as adults we know better, and having to stop playing to open up the TV to others makes for a more compelling reason to limit himself. So upstairs it stays.
This is probably just the tip of the iceberg, but it's plenty for us right now. Like I said, I think the potential downsides of this stuff make these important enough issues to push back on, despite his insistence that all the other kids are doing it. We love him enough that we're not going to do anything for that reason, and I remind him often that it's not my problem if other parents don't care to protect their kids to the same degree I want to. I also remind him that he needs to show us responsibility and prove that he's mature enough to handle stuff like that, and right now I just don't see it. I know there's a point at which it becomes the forbidden fruit and he will rebel in a big way, but it's definitely going to take some intentional parenting to ensure we catch things before they get to that point. That's why we're continuing once-a-month therapy sessions and taking baby steps to see how he handles them. He's always been a complex kid, and this issue just takes it up another notch. Yuck.
The challenge is that back when I was 10, we didn't really have these issues so there aren't many parenting precedents to go on. Maybe we had some version of them, but certainly not to the all-encompassing degree we do now. Back then, perhaps there was a battle to have a phone in your room, or even a separate phone line. Or maybe you wanted a TV in your room. We had a computer and I spent a significant amount of time on it at times, but "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?" or a pixelated version of "Jeopardy!" only went so far.
I feel like back then there were built-in limits for all of these things, and none were so deeply woven into daily life as electronics seem to be now. A separate phone line cost money, and back then we knew the value of a dollar so adding to the phone bill was a big deal. A phone in your room was easier to come by, but I think most of us knew better than to hog the household phone line for too long. I got a TV in my room when I was a teenager, but it was a tiny black-and-white one and it didn't get cable. I had a handful of channels (one of which got Montreal Canadiens' games in French sometimes!), so I had a limited amount of use for it. Even when I borrowed my uncle's Pong console (25 years after it was popular, mind you), that only held my attention for so long. And I did love our computer, but it wasn't until we got an internet connection when I was 17 that self-control became a challenge. And even then we had the phone line issue as it was still good old dial-up! I did watch an awful lot of TV, but we only had a couple to share for the family so sometimes that battle was lost when everyone was home. And, as proven by the amount of reading I did in the summer, even I got bored with TV after a while. Another self-control danger zone was when we borrowed my cousins' Nintendo when they got grounded from it. I had a tough time breaking away from my beloved Super Mario, but again, a sore thumb and stiff neck eventually motivated me to stop, and it was a short-lived opportunity anyway.
Long story short, I feel like we had some sort of built-in level of self-control back then. We knew we shouldn't do those things all day every day, and we weren't so immersed in technology at that point where it was considered normal to look at a screen all the time. We knew how to entertain ourselves without it. Even with the most fun technology, either boredom would eventually set in or we just had a better sense of appropriateness and knew we had better ways to spend our time. But now, I feel like that self-awareness has disappeared a bit. Everyone does it, right? Okay, maybe that's not the case with all kids, but certainly I see it in mine...so maybe it's a parenting issue. But based on what I hear from others, maybe it's just how things are now.
Carter is definitely a screen kid. He loved TV from the get-go, and took to handheld electronics with ease. I think part of it is that we're often tired parents and if he'll just sit quietly with a screen (and not argue with his brother), it's a relief to get some peace and quiet. So that's partly our fault. But if given the opportunity, I think he'd do screen time 24/7 if he could. Fortunately, when we do force him off, he's very good about finding ways to amuse himself. He's very imaginative, and while he prefers to have a playing partner, he can find a way to keep himself busy with almost anything.
But then there's Jacob. Jacob liked TV when he was younger, but he almost always played with something else while watching it. Even now he loses interest in movies and shows a lot quicker. He also liked playing games on the iPad, but it was never a big thing for him. He had phases where he loved the Wii, and later the Xbox, but again, most of the time he'd do it and be done on his own. The only exception was when he started playing Minecraft, but then again that's when he had a cast on his leg and he couldn't do much else, so who could blame him? But lately, he seems to spend a lot of time in front of screens and I feel a bit helpless about it. Why? Because he flat-out refuses to do anything else. He hates reading. He doesn't have homework (which, I know, is ridiculous and he'll have a huge dose of culture shock next year). He can't play basketball outside right now, and while the hoop in his room gets plenty of use, it's not really enough. Toys, even Legos, have mostly lost their luster, unless he has someone to play with. Everything else he wants to do mostly revolves around electronics, and it's making me crazy. I can't really force him to do things he doesn't want to do--at least not unless I want to listen to endless complaining--so I feel stuck.
I don't want to make this stuff yet another battleground, but I do believe it's important enough in his foundation for life that I do need to push things a bit. Encouraging him to do other stuff only goes so far, and I guess I'd rather he play games than pester his brother constantly. It could literally be life-or-death (yikes) while Carter is recovering from his surgery (if you saw how often they tangle, you'd understand my concern), so we need to weigh pros and cons heavily. It's so exhausting. Here are the current battles we're fighting:
Constant online shopping - This one has been an issue for a while. Jacob constantly wants to use Craig's phone, and most of the time he's combing the internet for stuff. Sneakers, sports gear, electronics (see below), clothes, and who knows what else. This usually yields a rather sizable list for holidays and birthdays, as well as some battles in between. He's currently jockeying for a reward for losing so many lacrosse games in a row (which Craig did promise, once Jacob broke Craig's own futility record from youth hockey) and helping Craig out with a work thing in the frigid cold this week, and has very specific ideas of what he thinks is appropriate. I tend to disagree, of course. The thing is, I don't want to spend our money on something he needs to have, only to lose interest once he gets it, which he often does. He doesn't have much of his own money to spend either--and I control his bank account, so only the most noble pursuits will be considered. Mostly, I just feel like his constant shopping is leading him down this materialistic road where he can only dream of the next big thing, then moves on to the next once he gets it.
He wants a phone - Like most kids his age, he wants a phone. I always laugh at the Facebook meme that talks about kids today wanting an iPhone, but when we were kids you felt like you won the lottery if you got your hands on one of those pens with multiple color options. It's so true. He certainly doesn't need a phone right now, but we'll see how our lives our impacted by him going to a farther away school next year. I know he wants to text and keep in touch with his friends, particularly once he switches schools, but it sort of ticks me off that so many other parents have caved that he has friends doing it now. There are a million reasons why a phone gets complicated, which I will expand upon below, but first and foremost is cost. We certainly don't want to pay for it, and he has no income to pay for it. Plus it's obviously a huge responsibility for a lot of reasons, which I will also cover below. I keep threatening to just do a flip phone, but more than likely he'll inherit my old TracFone and we'll start there. But first...
Headphones/earbuds - His argument for a more immediate need of the phone is that he wants to listen to music on it, citing his long bus ride next year. I agree, he probably will need something to keep him occupied on an early morning, 30-60 minute bus ride, so it could be that my old phone will just get some music loaded on and that will be it. But of course he needs something to listen to music through, which is where earbuds or headphones come in. He wanted wireless earbuds a while back, mostly to play sports, but I do fear he will lose one. We had the whole debate about this prior to Christmas, at which point I bought him Bluetooth ones at Five Below (connected and with ear hooks) for Christmas that are now having some issues. So we'll see. He will get a specific set of headphones at some point (birthday?) but right now he needs to be patient, and once he gets them he will have a tough lesson in learning to take care of them. The other issue, of course, is what he's listening to. I think his love of basketball has led to a love of hip-hop, which is just about the worst thing he could listen to. He doesn't understand why it's a concern, as I don't think he realizes yet just how much language and questionable themes crop up in that genre if you happen upon uncensored versions. We're going to have to police his downloads heavily...and maybe I can sneak some Christian hip-hop in there in the meantime.
Social media - I've seen enough of the "Wait Until 8th" campaign to know I'm not ready for him to have social media right now. It can lead to bullying at worst and lots of wasted time at best, and having not done the social media thing at that age (thank God) it's hard to know what's appropriate. There's a lot of speculation on the psychological effect of this stuff, and I pretty much dread the thought of having to check his devices all the time. I spend enough time on social media myself, let alone adding Snapchat and whatever else to keep an eye on him, and taking the time to check it. Can parental laziness be a valid reason to delay it? Also, I wasn't that devious a kid, so it'll be a challenge to think of every creative way he might break the rules. I'm concerned his relative naivete will get him in over his head before he even knows it. And given how much he poo-poos that suggestion, I know I'm right.
YouTube - He already spends a lot of time on YouTube, which is why it's on this list. Between Craig's phone and his very-old-generation iPad that's in his room, he's on there a ton. It's hard to know for sure what he might be getting into, though most of the time it's some sort of sports video. In the checking I've done, things have been fine, and I think for the most part he has a decent moral compass, but curiosity is only going to get stronger in the coming years. So I know I'll have to reign this one in a bit, too. He also wants to be a YouTuber (like every other kid his age), but trying to explain that not everyone will want to listen to his random commentary on random stuff is tough. And socially it opens up a whole can of worms, too. I've tried to use blocks but it's tough to tell how they work.
Xbox Live Gold and the headset - I can't remember if I got into the headset debate here or not, but basically, there was a $1 special for a month of Xbox Live Gold that Jacob wanted to take advantage of, and even though I knew where it was going 30 days later, I figured it was a low-risk way to check it out. So we did, except that he discovered he really needed a headset to take advantage of the option of playing online with his friends. He doesn't get much opportunity to interact with his friends outside of school, and since social media and text messaging aren't options, this seemed like a reasonable compromise. Might I say here how thankful I am that he never liked Fortnite? It's really just all NBA 2K19, which isn't too bad aside from the fact he's now convinced he can someday play in the NBA and have a house with a court in it. But getting a headset proved to be a challenge. A reasonably priced one had crappy reviews but the more expensive one was definitely out of his budget...especially since we knew he wanted to extend his Gold membership to a full year (essentially $5 per month). I offered to get him one from (again) Five Below and see how that went. Ideally it would get him through until his birthday, when someone could get him the one he wanted. He was appalled at the thought of the Five Below ones, insisting they wouldn't work, and we went back and forth for days. At a breaking point, he relented and let us get the Five Below ones. Initially there was some sort of odd static issue with them, but on try #3, miraculously they worked and have been fine ever since. (Score one for mom). He's been very much enjoying playing online with his friends, but for a while it was taking over--he'd make appointments with his friends and didn't want to stop for dinner--so that was a concern that caused us to threaten canceling. But he's eased up a bit lately, despite two cold days off school this week. I'm still bracing myself for February break when Carter just wants to watch TV post-surgery and Jacob's home wanting to play. Which brings us to...
TV availability - When he was wanting to be playing online all the time, he started asking to either move his Xbox to the basement TV or to get a TV in his room. The bedroom TV is a never, as he has zero willpower and we'd no doubt be finding him up watching it or playing at all hours. We have enough trouble with the iPad, particularly at bedtime. There were also times he'd wake up and pee at 5:30am, and apparently the temptation to get on the iPad would be too much, as he'd play on that instead of sleeping until 7am. Ummm, nope. So the TV would be bad. As for the basement, it sounds tempting, because it frees up the living room for the rest of us, but I sort of like the built-in limits by having it in the living room. Not only is he not alone, which gives us some security about what he's doing, but if he retreats downstairs for hours it will be hard to give him any reason to stop playing. If he's not bothering anyone, what's the harm, or so he thinks. But as adults we know better, and having to stop playing to open up the TV to others makes for a more compelling reason to limit himself. So upstairs it stays.
This is probably just the tip of the iceberg, but it's plenty for us right now. Like I said, I think the potential downsides of this stuff make these important enough issues to push back on, despite his insistence that all the other kids are doing it. We love him enough that we're not going to do anything for that reason, and I remind him often that it's not my problem if other parents don't care to protect their kids to the same degree I want to. I also remind him that he needs to show us responsibility and prove that he's mature enough to handle stuff like that, and right now I just don't see it. I know there's a point at which it becomes the forbidden fruit and he will rebel in a big way, but it's definitely going to take some intentional parenting to ensure we catch things before they get to that point. That's why we're continuing once-a-month therapy sessions and taking baby steps to see how he handles them. He's always been a complex kid, and this issue just takes it up another notch. Yuck.
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