I've Been a Bad Blogger

I'm sorry, but things have been so hectic lately!

1. Jameson still isn't sleeping through the night and it has nothing to do with his ear anymore. He finishes up his antibiotic tomorrow and seems to be doing much better and the Mucinex dried up his sinuses so he's breathing again. He simply doesn't want to sleep in his room. It's almost an every night battle to get him to fall asleep in his crib and then he's up 2-3 times. I've been staying firm on making him fall back asleep in his own room, but most of the time he's crawling out and coming into our room for another snuggle. Most mornings he'll come in around 4:30 and then I let him lay down with us so that I can take my shower without worrying about him roaming the house screaming his head off.

2. Let me just start out by saying that Jameson looks like an angle but acts like the devil. He's into everything, takes things away from Ayden and then starts crying when Ayden doesn't give up easily. He'll randomly come up to Ayden and hit him or pull his hair because he thinks it's funny. I've finally learned that when the boys are playing and Jameson starts crying, I ask what happened instead of assuming that Ayden did something to upset his brother.

This being said, when Marguerite told me Tuesday night that Ayden had been punching his brother so hard in the stomach that it made Jameson cry, I didn't immediately jump to any conclusions. Yes, I was upset that Ayden would hurt his brother but at the same time I was pretty sure that Jameson had done something to provoke him. I wanted to handle this when I got home. As I'm walking out the door, David (Marguerite's husband) informs me that I don't understand the severity of what Ayden is doing and that they're worried that some day Ayden is really going to hurt his brother. I calmly tried to explain to him that it's hard for me to discipline Ayden properly because I wasn't there to witness the altercation and this is not normal behavior at home. Ayden wouldn't dare pound on his brother with me around because I would paddle his butt. David then proceeds to tell me that they spend way more time with my boys so they see more of it. Explosions started going off in my head. I told David that a great solution to the problem would be for me to quit my job and become a SAHM, but unfortunately our household budget doesn't allow for that. I certainly don't need to be reminded that I'm having to rely on someone else to raise my children 10 hours out of the day.

Before the tears could escape, I rushed the boys out to the car and left. I was bawling my eyes out...feeling guilty for being a working mom...feeling guilty because Ayden had hurt his brother and I wasn't there to handle it...feeling guilty because yes, David & Marguerite spend as much time with my children during the week as I do. David called me while I was making dinner to apologize for upsetting me. I know they don't want to see Jameson get hurt, but don't make me feel like an inadequate mom in the process.

So my solution to the problem was to have a heart to heart with Ayden and explain that what he's doing is hurting his brother. If Jameson does something to upset him, he needs to tell an adult and they'll take care of it. All of his "friends" (very cherished stuffed animals) were taken away and for each day that he is a good boy he can have 1 back. If he hits his brother again, they'll all be taken away again. Yesterday was a good day. He got his monster back.

3. So while I'm having an emotional breakdown with the Ayden/Jameson thing, I decided to clean out Ayden's school backpack. There was an envelope with the results from Ayden's hearing/speech/vision screening. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but we're worried about Ayden not being able to identify colors. He can count, he can say his ABC's and he has a vocabulary that sometimes scares me but he can't tell you if a particular crayon is blue, yellow or red. We've been worried that maybe he's colorblind so I was hoping that this screening would say otherwise. Not the case. Ayden passed with flying colors in every category except pronoun usage and colors. He was only able to identify 2 out of 8. I spoke with the lady who did the screening and she said it's not time to panic. Because Ayden can match colors, he can obviously tell the difference between them. He's simply not able to retain the name of each color. She gave me some exercises to work on with him and if we don't see an improvement in the next 4-6 months then we'll need to take him to a pediatric optomotrist. We're also going to work on his pronoun confusion (her fell, him did it, them crayons) but since he just turned 3 she's not worried that this won't work itself out.

4. I haven't seen Jason since Sunday. He has been working until 10 or 11 each night so that things won't fall apart at work while we're on vacation. It's hard enough taking care of the boys on my own, but I've been cleaning, doing the laundry, dragging things down from the attic, running errands and packing for all of us at the same time. Our goal is to leave for the beach immediately after work on Friday so it's up to me to make sure everything is ready to go. As of this morning, I only have one more bathroom to clean, 2 loads of laundry to fold, grocery shopping and packing to finish. I stripped all the beds this morning so I'll have fresh sheets in the dryer when I get back from nail night. When I leave for work tomorrow morning, it's my goal that everything will be in the truck ready to go. All I'll have to do is pick up the boys and go home to get Jason and the dogs.

All of the craziness this week will be worth it when we're sitting on the beach building sand castles with the boys. And since I woke up with two pimples on my forehead this morning, I'm assuming that "aunt flo" is on her way and the heartburn I've been experiencing is due to stress. I guess I'll have a few Corona's this weekend after all.

Everyone have a fabulous weekend and I'll post again when we get back.