Raising Boys

Perhaps it's related to the fact that there are a couple of slightly older boys in F's preschool class, but my darling boy has officially decided that he can no longer sit down to pee. I'd be completely unbothered by the whole thing, but F has also decided that he needs me to show him how and without giving you a mental picture of what that attempt at a teachable moment looked like, I can tell you it's not going to happen.

It's moments like these that I find myself especially frustrated with our situation. As if being a single parent isn't hard enough by itself, the simple fact is that boys and girls sometimes need an older member of the same sex to show them things. I can't imagine how awkward it would have been to ask my father feminine questions growing up. Actually, I can but I think it would have led ol' Papa Bear to a stroke so I'm especially glad I didn't have to get into bras and tampons and all that jazz. Standing up to pee is pretty small on the list of things that F will need help with in his life, but it felt as big as a mountain when he asked me to do it.

By gently explaining that boys and girls are built differently, I managed to help him understand that I cannot show him but I said I'd be there if he needed some help. I asked what he thought he should do, and he managed OK except that he missed the toilet and somehow managed to pee on everything else in my bathroom. But, we celebrate the small victories here, too, so with a change of his clothes and a quick trip to the laundry room with my bath mats, we were ready to try again. And try again we did, with much more success and better aim. (Hooray!)

The challenges in raising a little boy as a bit of a girlie girl are just beginning, and I know that. I feel especially fortunate that F's preschool class has a male teacher - a positive male role model who he can learn from and hopefully turn to. I'm lucky to have a group of male friends who I can turn to for advice when needed, and I'm lucky in that the boy stuff is less gruesome than the girl stuff as things move forward from here.

But, challenges lie in being a single mum with a boy in other ways. It's the moments when I need a few moments to do chick stuff that F is convinced that he desperately needs to be beside me. It's as I change my clothes or put on a bra or he asks why girls have to sit down to pee that I realize we might be hitting the age where F and I just can't do those things together, and it's tricky. I can't lock the bathroom door when I head into the shower. I can't tell him to wait outside the stall as I use a public washroom. I also have to gently explain that no, he cannot paint his nails when Mommy does. It's a learning curve. (And sometimes I let him have non-shiny clear polish on his toes, just because.)

Yesterday's pee-splosion all over my bathroom taught me that, although it might get messy, letting F take the reins and taking a step or two back is the only way we can make it through some things. It's really hard to accept that F and I might be coming to the end of our baths together. Pretty soon, I'll even have to put my foot down over the whole co-sleeping thing, too. But there are some things we can't avoid, so we'll have to learn how to make them work.

And make them work, we will.

Dear Anonymous Comment-Leaver

A few months ago, I began moderating the comments on my blog for a number of reasons. The first, was some of the comments were spam, but the greatest reason was I feel no need to have trolls leaving hateful messages on my blog - though the number of times this has happened has been fairly low. This morning, I received one of the ugliest messages I have ever received. Ordinarily, I simply delete comments such as these but today I decided to publish it in my own way. Below is the iPhone screen shot of the email notification I received.



Hi there, Anonymous.

Thanks for stopping by. I genuinely appreciate that you took the time to drop by my blog and read my words. I'd like to be able to appreciate your comment, too, so in an effort to be a better person today, I'll focus on the fact that you took time out of your (no doubt busy) day to actually write a comment.

I'm sorry if my last blog post upset or offended you. That was not the intent. I wrote that with a smile on my face, while F played with his trucks at my feet. That post was a tongue-in-cheek, giggle and move on kind of mindless post that fits into the day that your head feels like it might explode. Raising kids is hard. I suspect you may not have one, otherwise you might have laughed at that post instead of being filled with the kind of rage you obviously were.

I'm sorry for whatever you have going on in your life today that has led you to spreading hateful, hurtful words. While I don't think I've done anything to deserve this, I sure hope mine is the only blog you've trolled with your anger and unkindness. While I'm sure your words were supposed to hurt me, they didn't. Jokes on you, I guess.

Now, before I go on any further I'd like to offer you a very sincere invitation to introduce yourself to me. If you're so convinced of your words, how about say them to my face? Better yet, why don't you come and stay with F and I for a few days and then tell me that I'm a terrible parent? I'd love to host you, and let you get up at 5:15 am and join me in making breakfast for F and I, cleaning our home and then getting everything ready for another long day. I invite you to stay up until 10 pm getting the cleaning done.

While you're calling me a terrible parent, I'd like you to consider that I do this every day by myself. I put myself through school last year so that I could give the kid I "don't deserve" and "don't take care of right" a better life - one where college can be in his future. I bust my ass every week so that we can live in a safe neighbourhood, keep our car on the road, eat healthy foods and enjoy some of the finer things in life. Am I perfect? No. I sincerely hope I never am. Do I screw up? Yep. It's called being human.

I'd like to invite you to work 40 hours a week in-office, taking your work laptop home many evenings and weekends to get stuff done. I invite you to spend your "down time" exercising, so that you can be healthy and strong to support your family. I invite you to try to find time to write because you're trying to show your child the importance of practice, following your passions and pushing yourself. And then, I invite you to call me a terrible parent again.

After you've spent a few days with F and I, I invite you to look me in the eye and tell me that I don't love my child and that I don't take care of him. While you're here, you'll see that I occasionally raise my voice, lose my patience and that I often remain calm and logical while he's completely losing his shit. You'll see that the occasional swear word slips, and that I tell him how special he is and how much I love him approximately 4.3 times per hour. You'll also see that he kicks me, tells me he doesn't love me, throws stuff on the floor and occasionally kicks the cat. It's called toddlerdom, and while it's been known to drive me crazy, I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

Finally, I ask you to do me just one little favour. Go look in the mirror. Now, go look outside. Go to a public place, and watch strangers go by. Do you know their stories? Nope. I don't either. I don't know yours, and you only know a little bit of mine. You don't know the stories of the people in my life or the people who come by my blog every day. For that reason, your comment which was aimed to hurt me could have hurt hundreds of other people and you were too careless or too callous to even consider that.

Did you know that about 1 in 5 women suffer a miscarriage in their first trimester? How about that one woman in 100 will experience a "late miscarriage", one after 14 weeks? Did you know that I had an appointment to have an abortion? Nope, I bet you didn't. I bet you also didn't know that the woman who raised me suffered miscarriages, and that I lost my own son's twin during my first trimester, or that I refused the D&C offered by multiple doctors when I landed in the ER for the second time in as many weeks with serious complications. I loved my baby from the moment I knew I had one, and I have cherished him every minute of every day since I was blessed to have him. Does he drive me crazy? Yup, but that doesn't mean I don't love him or that I neglect him.

 If you want to attack me for being a shitty parent who doesn't give a damn, you go right ahead but check your facts first, and don't you dare tell me that I should have had a miscarriage or abortion. You know that line "walk a mile in someone's shoes"? You wouldn't make it out of the parking lot.

I know you won't identify yourself, and I'm equally as confident that you won't comment on this post, but I hope that you do know that I'm not angry or hurt by your comment, and I invite you to comment again. If you want to troll around the world spreading anger and hate, I suggest you prepare for a very sad, lonely existence. Let it go. Life is too short.

Sincerely,

Ashley

The Truth About Toddlers (hint: they suck)

I love F.

At the end of the day, with all the screaming and the whining and the pleading and the spitting and the potty mouth and all of the other less-than-glamorous stuff, there's nothing I love more than wrapping him up in my arms and snuggling. In a lot of ways, he really is the best but the cold, hard truth is that toddlers are the worst in a whole lot of ways. Have you ever seen a toddler meltdown? Yeah. Exactly.

convincing, no? don't let him fool you.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that even though I really, really, REALLY love him, sometimes he's pretty hard to like (which, as far as I'm concerned is a part of the human condition). I remember his second birthday vividly - especially the part where everyone made jokes like "now it begins" "here come the terrible twos".

BULLSHIT.

Two was a walk in the park. Three? Now that's where it gets interesting. Three was like dragging a screaming toddler across a park because it's time to leave and he doesn't want to. Oh, wait. No that was yesterday. Funny that. 

My favourite thing about toddlerhood is that kids are coming into themselves. They're figuring out what they like and what they don't like, and they are adamant about these two extremes with very little in the way of "middle ground". Tolerance and toddlers just don't go together, unless you're a parent trying very hard to tolerate your child at which point I recommend wine, or coffee or both in excess. Especially the wine.

Toddlers are impossible to predict - no matter how well you think you may know them. F often likes his sandwich cut in half, but every now and again he doesn't so WATCH YOURSELF if you cut it without asking. Mercy. Think Hulk only less green and instead of ripping his shirt off he pulls it over his head and gets stuck, thus actually needs my help (but would never admit to it).

They also seem to know words that they shouldn't know, and I'll take it one step further by pointing out that the little buggers darlings know the exact friggin' context in which to use them. Merde. Have you ever heard a 3-year-old sling a four-letter-word, while holding a sippy cup? Tis a sight to behold, lemme tell ya. In F's defense, he probably learned them from me. In my defense, I have nothing to say for myself. Fisherman's daughter, yo.

Toddlers are experts at embarrassing the hoozy-whatzit out of you at the most inopportune moments. No really, take your kid to that public washroom with you. It's a great idea, until they open the door and expose you, squatting precariously over the toilet and cursing yourself for not having stronger legs (while simultaneously telling yourself that this quick trip to the loo constitutes a workout). Then you can just wait until they tell everyone you see about whatever other private business didn't want advertised the exact second your kid sees a person. "D'ya know what my Mom did? She pooped in the toilet this morning."

Thanks, kid.

And finally, much like the teenagers they are all-too-soon to become, toddlers have mood swings that would give a person whiplash. One minute it's all lovey-dovey, and the next minute you're the monster that lives under the bed and they don't want to be your friend anymore. While I regularly lament that my toddler thinks he's a teenager, I *almost* look forward to when he's a teenager so I can just leave him to his brooding and go to Starbucks and drink the largest caffeinated beverage I can find WITH WHIPPED CREAM and possibly even enjoy it while it's still hot. Something tells me people might get upset if I tried this with my occasionally angst-ridden toddler.

Now, I do have to point out that F is a pretty good little guy most of the time. I'd like to think that this is indicative of me doing something right, but perhaps he was born with it? In the middle of his biggest meltdowns, I try to remind myself that he's had a lot to cope with and overcome and then sometimes I join him. But when we're both tired and overwhelmed or there was something he wanted and couldn't have, you might say SHIT HITS THE FAN. Wear gloves.

It's a special age, and the truth is that it is flying by faster than F can race me up the stairs (which, might I add, is very fast). It's hard when he's his super pleasant self, but it's pretty well impossible when he's not. While I wouldn't trade him in for all the pumpkin spice lattes in the world, I can honestly tell you that I look forward to embarrassing the shit out of that kid when he gets a little older. I wonder what his first date will think of me making her privy to his bathroom schedule? ;)