turtle

Connie seems to have something in her car every day. I can’t fault her; if I’m headed to CVS I pick up a little something, a ball or otherwise, every time for him too. It’s helping us get through the big cast adventure but I’m sure I’ll have a time on my hands teaching him to lower his expectations once that cast comes back off.

Yesterday, it was a box turtle. A real, live, box turtle.

A tiny one at that, which might even grow into adulthood if it were at someone else’s home. But it was at ours, getting poked and prodded. Being turned upside down and examined closely.

Suddenly, I was having flashbacks of our experience with a frog.

At least a frog can jump away and escape. He wanted to put “Alexandro” in a doll house that belongs to his sister.

She tried her best to convince him that was, well…cruel…to Alexandro but eventually we got down to brass tacks and put the turtle back in his little container with water where he was safe from all the experimenting that a 4-year old can offer.

yelling

We’ve taken to sitting on the front steps each morning until Connie arrives to take care of him. Some days this is only 5 minutes or so; other days it might be 20-30 minutes depending on how early he wakes.

After almost 7 weeks in the cast, there aren’t enough toys to really interest him that long, and since it’s beautiful weather this time of year in Houston it’s a good excuse to stay outside as long as possible.

We’ve been talking about really important stuff each day. I caught a bit of this morning’s talk on video and uploaded it.

http://www.youtube.com/v/eKnazMdIpkY

Ignore the empty pots behind him; that’s a story for another time

4 the better

I don’t want to disparage anyone, just glad the situation has changed – and for the better. His new caregiver is just wonderful. We had issues that the other one wasn’t all that interested in changing diapers unfortunately. But failed to mention that when I hired her. Ya know…it’s hard enough emotionally to be 4 years old (or 14, or 40, or more) and have to be back in a diaper. But then to have to depend on someone to change it when the mood strikes them and know that they’re leaving you in that filth? She had to go.

He has been so busy going on wagon rides, and playing board puzzles and coloring and cutting and playing pretend, I’ve forgotten he’s been in the next room most of the morning.

Karen, I think actually he should be okay going up stairs as long as he has a spotter. The difference there is he’s still scooting backwards, using his “good” foot to help him move up. If he can’t go up stairs then I’m really in trouble!

I thought we were past the nightmares with him but he’s still having 1 or 2 a night. We’ve worked out a system though. He starts crying in his sleep. I hear him. I kick the husband to go over and take care of him. I go back to sleep. The husband takes care of the boy and then both guys go back to sleep. I wake up much happier!

no more

As you all know by now, I have a full-time job (which I love) and normally work in a beautiful office with a beautiful view out the window and work on a floor with lots of wonderful people. In an attempt to be fair to both my son and my employer, I worked out a deal to work from home for the duration of the Casted Saga and have someone come into my home to take care of him in another part of the house.

Well, it was too much for her. Long story short was she showed up this morning telling me she wouldn’t be working here any more. From the looks of what she was wearing, she had another job lined up.

I’ve never been a stay-at-home mom, but if there was ever any doubt of just how hard the job is, the past 3 weeks have surely proved it to me based on someone else’s attempt to come in here and keep him safe, healthy, and happy. That’s the thing about having kids; it’s not this road from point A to point B. Every day there are so many choices that we make, and no matter if we make the best choice, a good choice, a bad choice or worse – each decision has a consequence.

Today is day 21. This is kind of like the Barbara Boone version of the Road Not Taken – surely one of the best poems ever written.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

[edit] Explanation and interpretations

Stanza 1
Line 1 – The roads represent the choices in life. Yellow wood represents Autumn.
Line 2 & 3 – The persona can only make one choice. He takes his time to consider the paths.
Line 4 & 5 – The persona looks at a road(first road) and see how far will the road take him.

Stanza 2
Line 1 – The persona takes the other road(second road).
Line 2 & 3 – The persona feels that he has made a right choice as the path is fresh and inviting.
Line 4 & 5 – Equal number of people pass through both roads today. Therefore, the paths look the same.

Stanza 3
Line 1 & 2 – The next morning, no one has yet to walk down the roads.
Line 3 – The persona thinks of taking the first road some other time.
Line 4 – However, the road(second road) leads him to another path and so on.
Line 5 – The persona will not return to take the other road.

Stanza 4
Line 1 & 2 – The persona will be telling stories about his decisions when he is old. His sigh can be either a sign of relief or regret.
Line 3 – It shows that the persona still remembers his choices back then.
Line 4 – The persona made a choice which not many people made.
Line 5 – That single choice made a lot of difference in his life.
The poem, especially its last lines, where the narrator declares that taking the road “one less traveled by” “made all the difference,” can be seen as a declaration of the importance of independence and personal freedom. However, Frost likely intended the poem as a gentle jab at his great friend and fellow poet Edward Thomas, and seemed amused at the slightly “mischievous” misinterpretation. The Road Not Taken seems to illustrate that once one takes a certain road, there’s no turning back, although one might change paths later on, they still can’t change the past.^[1]

It is all good!

day 20

Another day, another dollar. He slept better last night and wasn’t talking in his sleep the whole time. He woke up before WB and The Sister left so that was really nice that he got to spend some time with them. I got his diaper changed and stayed with him until The Caregiver showed up at 7:40. I told him he would be spending the morning with her.

It started off disastrously. Part of this is my fault, and part of it is The Caregiver’s. Right off the bat he started in telling her to go away (the way he starts all of his mornings lately). I realized we need to have either a better transition or more transition time. I thought spending extra time with him in the morning would make him good to go once she got here, but he really needs some sort of routine to get used to for when she gets here.

She’s not making it any better that she gets defensive instead of redirecting him when he gets upset. She threatens to change the TV to one of her stations and so forth. At one point he had already crawled into my study and then the entry way and was actually behaving in the dining room (and really, quiet happy and healthy is all I’m looking for) when she decided he needed to go back to the living room. He didn’t want to go, and so she said to him “The Boy, I’m going to call your dad. The Afternoon Caregiver has his work number and I’m going to call him and have him come home.”

Oh boy, I was not happy. I told her in a voice that you know that I have (and keep in mind I was in the study and she was in the living room), “Do not tell him that. His dad is definitely not coming home.” She called out from the other room “Sorry Miss Barbara”.

We are in an endless loop where she doesn’t play with him and so he doesn’t want her around and he doesn’t want her around because she’s not playing with him.

He was in here with me for 5 minutes or more. It’s 9:15 and I swear I haven’t gotten anything done today. She was just sitting on the couch in the other room. I got ticked and told her this is not working. She needs to redirect his attention and make it fun for him. He should want to spend time with her. I told her he’s excited to see The Afternoon Caregiver in the afternoons because she is on the floor playing with him and not cutting coupons or paying bills.

Anyway, she thinks I haven’t explained to him that she’s the boss. I told her if he comes in the study, she needs to come get him. She doesn’t want him to scream. I asked her what she would do at Preschool if he talked back to her or yelled. She said she’d turn off the TV and do something differently. I said that’s what I need her to do here.

I told her she seems like she’s just given up on him. I made it very clear that the afternoons are working and the mornings are not. That he is going to get bored and needs to have a constant change of scenery.

Anyway, it’s going from bad to worse. I’m almost sure we won’t have her by the end of the week. I just can’t have her sitting on my couch while I’m in here taking care of him and not getting any work done.

After I wrote that last paragraph, she did play with him in his room for 90 minutes before they came back downstairs. By noon, she was back on her cell phone, apparently not picking up on the fact that I could hear her. Did I not tell her already I heard her talking in the kitchen to Elsa yesterday and that’s how I knew she had lied to me about being in the bathroom? Sheesh! I did not sign up for all this drama when I hired someone to watch my son.

The final straw was it was 12:30 so I went into the living room to trade places with her. And she didn’t leave. And she didn’t leave. Finally after 10 minutes, clearly watching the time, she left. Did she think I would pay her for another 10 minutes? Hello, she didn’t tell me she suddenly was staying around and as a result of me being in the same room, that meant I wasn’t working. And if I’m not working, she’s not getting paid.

As she was walking out the door she announced The Afternoon Caregiver would not be here this afternoon. She said she must still be sick or something. Funny, because The Afternoon Caregiver called me personally the past 2 days. Obviously she had to have called The Afternoon Caregiver to complain about the morning and between the two of them, changed the plan. No advance notice, not even 5 minutes. Last and final straw.

I called preschool and told her it wasn’t working out and that I didn’t expect The Caregiver would continue to be working for us. I gave her some short examples and told her I appreciated the reference and didn’t want it to be an issue between us and the school, but it just couldn’t continue long-term.

As usual, I complained loudly to My friend. It wasn’t long after that she called me back and offered that her mother-in-law could watch him 8-5 (8-2:30 on Thursdays). Sign me up! We worked out some of the details on a tentative basis.

At first I thought I would call The Caregiver this afternoon and tell her. But then I got mad. Did I ever know when to expect her day to day? Did I get advance notice about The Afternoon Caregiver? Did I overpay her by watching The Boy half the time she was here? She can show up tomorrow morning at my door, I’ll give her the cash for her time worked and send her on her way.

That was a huge load off my mind. Now, the next thing was getting The Sister home; she can’t keep staying at daycare until 6pm when WB goes to pick her up. I tested out the ability to get them both in the car and thought I had a workable plan. And it went okay. So we went to pick her up and then she left something at Preschool so we headed back over there after all.

The teacher was leaving for the day when we got there so she got to see The Boy. I asked her to think about the possibility of having him back in class while he was still in a cast and suggested we try an hour at a time or so starting with spring break. That will give him another week or two under his belt and give her time to think of how to make it work. If it works out, great and if not then at least we tried.

The Boy got all geared up for a second car ride of the day when we took The Sister to karate. We couldn’t walk (or rather, I couldn’t walk that far) because my toe is seriously sliced up where I stubbed it on the marble step the other day.

I wrote up a page long letter of why The Caregiver was being fired in case she asks for it. She surely has to expect it tomorrow – if she even bothers to show up.

day 19

He slept until 7:35. That’s a long time on a weekday morning for him. But boy did he talk in his sleep all night long! Whew! He woke up in a pretty good mood. Fortunately, The Caregiver showed up in a better mood today too.

The Sister said his teacher at Preschool asked for a picture of him. I don’t know if it was just to look at or to keep but I printed out one on 8.5 x 11” paper and told her to tell her that she was free to keep it if she wanted.

I told WB I was tired of The Boy having to watch HGTV all day and to set up the TV for a sub-group that only shows kids’ channels. Unless she figures out how to work the remote, then she’ll be stuck with NickToons, Disney, and PBS.

At one point, she left The Boy to go talk to Elsa (I guess she thinks I didn’t hear her?). The Boy figured out how to get up and down the steps to the entry way with no assistance at all. I was in the study, when out of the blue, there he was, peeking around the corner! He was so proud of what he’d accomplished all on his own.

Of course it was obvious he had been able to pull it off because The Caregiver wasn’t anywhere near him. How do you get across an entire room, up the stairs, through the entry way and into the study without being noticed unless she was gone for several minutes? So I just left him in the room with me, waiting to see how long it would be before she noticed.

It was several more minutes. Needless to say, she was surprised. Her excuse was she was going to the bathroom. I of course told her he’d been in there with me for quite some time.

Believe it or not, it really was a better day with her than yesterday. Unfortunately, The Afternoon Caregiver called again and said she was still sick. At least WB works from home on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for now so we tag-teamed taking care of him.

Actually, that’s a funny story. The Afternoon Caregiver called me to say she wouldn’t be coming and I told her no problem. I told The Boy later that morning that she wouldn’t be coming but The Caregiver corrected me that it was “iffy” if she would be coming. I thought maybe The Caregiver talked to her after I did and The Afternoon Caregiver was feeling better. No. Instead, The Caregiver figured I was making an assumption she wouldn’t be there with no thought to the idea that The Afternoon Caregiver had called me herself.

The Caregiver told me later she didn’t realize The Afternoon Caregiver had called and that I was right; she wouldn’t be here this afternoon. Really?

Same ending of the morning as yesterday. I told The Boy that The Caregiver was about to go; she looked at her watch and said “I have one more minute”. You know…I paid her for an extra hour last Friday because I told her at the last minute that I didn’t need her for the last hour. But if she’s really doing what it looks like – waiting down the road to show up at exactly 8 dot zero, zero and then leaving at precisely 12 dot three zero then I guess she doesn’t expect any leeway the other way. The funny thing was after all that, she couldn’t find her keys and spent another 5 minutes in my house looking for them!

She brought up spring break so kudos to her for addressing it ahead of time. She said The Afternoon Caregiver is definitely out that week because she’ll have all 3 kids at home (and I guess that means The Caregiver won’t watch the grandkids if there are 3 instead of 2 involved). I told her I figured neither of them would be there because I thought she would be probably watching the other boy full time for that week.

I didn’t get quite everything she said other than she had planned to go to Dallas to visit a cousin that week but couldn’t afford to because of some unexpected expenses so she might be available. And if she was, since she had told the other family that she was going to be gone, she might be available to stay here all day with The Boy.

I’ll have to think about that.

WB got home at 12:31 or in other words just as she was leaving. We traded off spending time with him until 3:30 when I went to get The Sister. We stopped by Auto Zone to look into one of those things that mechanics use under their car – a mechanic’s creeper – for him to slide around on but one look at them and I realized it is way too wide for him to use with his arms. Bummer; that would’ve saved him a lot of crawling.

He did crawl up the actual stairs to the second floor with WB which was another huge accomplishment. That scares me that he would do that with The Caregiver since she didn’t keep a close eye on him today.

He did not want to go to bed tonight. I told him to give me his gum before he went to bed and his insistence that he would actually be sleeping with gum and our insistence that he wouldn’t lasted another half hour. We won.

day 18

Week 3, Day 18 – March 3, 2008 – Monday

Well, unfortunately we were back to another lousy night’s sleep. He tossed and turned and had dreams all night long as well as complaining of more leg pain. It wasn’t a completely sleepless night but definitely not like the previous two nights.

The Sister helped me clean the house up a bit. One thing is for certain; this house has never stayed as clean as any place I have ever lived. We just moved in October 31st and a month later, Mom came for a month-long visit (yay!) so it was clean all the time. Then we had 6 weeks where it stayed relatively clean before The Boy broke his leg.

Since I have someone in my house every day, it has stayed clean every day again. We might just pick up some habits along the way. One habit we’re out of through no fault of anyone’s is everyone eating at the dinner table together since he can’t sit in a chair.

The Caregiver got here at 8am and right off the bat he told me he wanted to stay with me in the study. He said he didn’t want her to be there. Honestly, she isn’t helping the situation any when she says things like “I know you don’t like me but your mom wants me here”. How many days do we have to go?

By 9:15 The Afternoon Caregiver called and said she was sick so she won’t be here this afternoon. The Caregiver is paying a lot more attention to the time than I gave her credit for. I went in to check on The Boy about 12:25 (or so I thought) and told him it was almost time for The Caregiver to leave for the day. She looked at her watch and said she had “two more minutes”.

She just doesn’t seem very happy to be here. She didn’t interact with him today but blamed it on him being in a bad mood (which he was when she first got here). I think the extra money is what’s keeping her here.

After she left, The Boy and I had a go of trying to navigate the steps toward the entry way of the house. We found if I put a pillow on the second step then he could get up and down the stairs with no problem. He crawled from the living room to the entry way and then back down again to the study. Which meant more video uploads to YouTube!

The electricity went out twice this afternoon; apparently it had something to do with trees down on a power grid somewhere. Since it rained and then turned chilly, we stayed inside the entire afternoon.
WB and The Sister got home about 6pm, too late for karate. I sure hope she’s ready for her karate test this Saturday.

I went to grab my camera from the study and stubbed my toe on the step leading to the entryway; it’s made of marble and let me just say that hurt…a lot. I put pressure on it for 30 minutes to get the bleeding to stop.

The Boy is going to bed in his own bed now with no disagreement.

I told WB I am just not convinced The Caregiver is going to stay the whole time. In 2 short weeks she’s gone from being interactive to having him watch HGTV while he sits in the wagon. Every time I walked in there yesterday, she was either paying bills or cutting coupons or doing anything she could to just be in the room with him without interacting.

She blamed it on him being in a bad mood, but seriously what do the teachers do at Preschool if a kid is in a bad mood? Do they really just leave them alone for 5 hours? I think he’s in a bad mood because she’s not playing with him.

I tried calling church to see if she would be interested in the job if this fell apart but I think her number is disconnected because I kept getting a message that it wasn’t in service.

i need an inventor

I’m trying to come up with an exercise (or exercises) that I can do while multi-tasking at home. The little guy most likely will be in our bed until the cast comes off since for obvious reasons, if he gets an itch he usually can’t reach it (and there’s lot of good itching to be had which we expected).Getting out of bed at 4:30 in the morning is disruptive to him which starts an endless loop since that in turn wakes my husband up, and then the dog wants to get up early to go for a walk, etc.

We have someone staying here for the morning, then a break at lunch, and then someone for the afternoon (mostly because that’s what I was able to work out on short notice).

So I take care of him through the lunch hour which definitely doesn’t work since I’m making a sandwich, etc. ready for him

By the time the husband gets home from work and we get through dinner, karate, etc. I’m ready to crash. It was 8:30 last night and I was fast asleep on the couch. That works for me after I piece all the hours together so that I’m awake during the day for my job.

I keep thinking I’m missing the obvious angle about when and where to fit in exercise with this on a daily basis.

Maybe I should have a goal to be a weekend warrior for a while? I don’t know.