Moving House, The Trilogy - Moving Day Approaches

Monday April 25^th

This morning, despite another sleepless night I made an extra effort with the kids.  G had slept on the sofa because he couldn’t stop coughing but I ended up with Cuddles in bed with me anyway because he was coughing and then had a nightmare. After several hours of wiggling I carried him sound asleep back to his bed. When it was finally time to get up I felt a little like I had been beaten up. Squashing how I was feeling as best I could I “enthusiastically” played with the kids and after breakfast we went to the supermarket, bought donuts, and went to eat them at the park. We had a nice walk, the park is beautiful and overlooks the marina, we played the kids favorite “Sharks and Mermaids” which is a variation of tag using big rocks as safe places, and I showed them how to make daisy chains and upside-down daisies.

When we got home we had some lunch and then I absolutely couldn’t avoid packing anymore. I packed up the two bathrooms, apart from our essentials, and finished off emptying both our wardrobes. I packed some stuff from the kitchen, shudder. It’s really hard to know if I’m making good progress, I suppose I must be because now I have to look for things to put in boxes, but when the contents of your cupboards are outside instead of inside it gets very crowded. Today was complicated by Cuddles pouring a cup of water on our bed, the cat pooing on the carpet, and cuddles both drawing on and spilling juice on the carpet. I am now spending my evening going up and down 2  flights of stairs and crossing a massive car park to the laundry room as we have no unpacked sheets. Perhaps I should just let them all go for it and come to terms with not getting our deposit back. Joke. I think. I can hardly bring myself to be annoyed as I don't feel like the kids are receiving adequate supervision, poor babies.

Cuddles is supposed to be at school in the morning, his rash came on and off in mysterious waves today. At one point he looked like he had been stung on his toes on both feet, then it disappeared.  I don’t think I’ll send him if he has any rash, he didn’t go at all last week. I am missing that brief time when I usually zoom around town doing all my errands. I am also highly aware that with his school on Tues and Thurs mornings that only leaves us Weds to pack the entire day and the rest will be just the afternoons. He doesn’t stay long enough at school for me to drive all the way home and go back, I’d only be home for 30 minutes, NOT worth it. It’s ridiculous I know, wait till we move further away, then it will be even more ridiculous!

Tuesday April 26th

Alright alright this isn’t funny anymore. Was it really so bad for me to mention in a previous blog post that I now GET a goodnight’s sleep? Yet again G’s coughing kept me awake till 1am, then he woke Cuddles up when coughing in the hallway, so Cuddles woke up and had a coughing fit too. I eventually got Cuddles settled and then slammed my finger so hard in his wardrobe door that I sobbed. After finally falling asleep with my very sore finger with adrenaline coursing through me I was awoken again at 5am by a gaggle of extremely drunk men laughing and chanting outside our building for about 30 minutes until a heroic neighbor went and shouted at them. They carried on after he left “on the handlebars on the handlebars” I think they were shouting, but he came back and this time they left. I swear about 5 minutes later a bloody crow started going berserk in the tree outside our bedroom window, ARE YOU KIDDING ME. He eventually flew off, still screaming his tiny head off, the sound got fainter but was still there, he didn’t fly quite far enough away. I’m not sure if I fell back asleep after that, I remember Cuddles coughing at about 6, and then they came in yelling it was time to get up at 7, I maybe slept in-between those two occurrences.

Today, despite feeling extremely hung over (I’m not) I made lots of progress in the kitchen. My pots and pans are all packed and what I’m most happy about is the junk cupboard where we kept batteries, light bulbs, screws etc, that has been thoroughly sorted and packed. Phew.

We are going to take a much-needed breather this afternoon and take a walk to a friend’s lemonade stand by the beach.

Wednesday April 27^th

After an unsurprisingly restless night with the coughing duo, this morning I heard Cuddles’ chest rattling from a foot or two away. I found that a little alarming so I called the doctor’s  office and they asked us to go in later in the afternoon to get his chest listened to. We spent the morning pottering, we did some drawing and I got them both interested in playing some kids games on the computer. Then I went around the apartment and room by room made a “to do” list of all the tasks yet to be done. It gives me great peace of mind to get organized so I was feeling better about things once I had finished, especially after I ticked a few items off and delegated some to G.

Later on at the doctor’s we discovered that Cuddles has bronchitis. It wasn’t a great surprise as he had taken quite a turn for the worse. We always freak out a little when it comes to his lungs because of his stay in the NICU with pneumonia as a newborn. One extremely badly behaved visit to the pharmacy to drop off the prescription and we were back at home. G went to pick up the prescription near our new home but we didn’t realize there are two within a block of each other so he queued up for 15 minutes at the wrong one. I felt pretty bad about that as he had left work nice and early and ended up getting delayed by 30 minutes. We then spent most of the evening with Cuddles on the sofa trying to find something to watch which would be acceptable for him but not too mind numbing for us, this was difficult. He eventually settled down once I had come back from the laundry room with his boy pajamas. He had gone to bed in his sister’s pajamas because he only has 3 pairs that are not packed and he always manages to get them wet and dirty in the morning. He was not happy about wearing girls’ pajamas at all.

Anyway, all in all, not a terribly productive day, tomorrow I will surely do better out of a sense of urgency. I think we might go and get a donut first again as a treat, shh, its terrible, once you have one, then you want to go back and buy another.

Thursday April 28^th

Today is the last day before we move. The movers are due here tomorrow morning at 8am. Today has gone pretty well, the house now has a sense of calm over it as do I. Unfortunately G has been majorly held up at work and still has several things he needs to get done before tomorrow, I’m not expecting him till at least 9pm. I’m going to have my shower this evening and try to enjoy a little tranquility as there isn’t a whole lot I can do right now.

Biting...ouch

A few evenings ago I was busy tidying the kids’ room for bedtime whilst they played together in the front of our apartment in their heady after-bath excitement. Out of the contented chatter I could barely hear suddenly came the most sickening scream. I thought my 3 year-old had trapped a finger or otherwise gravely injured himself so I dropped what I was doing and sprinted to where the kids were playing. To my surprise it was my 5 year-old daughter screaming and in such agony but I couldn’t work out why. Eventually when she had collected herself enough to make herself understood she showed me her back where my son had sunk his teeth into her. Ouch, it looked so painful. I received the odd nip from my children when they were teething babies so I know how painful it can be but thankfully until this point biting hadn’t really been an issue for us.

I recently read an amazing book: Siblings Without Rivalry: How To Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. A friend sent the book to me, she had finished with it and wanted to pass on the love. Well, to date I have read it twice and I am sure I will read it again soon as I want every bit of information to remain in my poor forgetful brain.

I saw the situation in front of me as a very important learning experience for all three of us. I realized my response to what happened might be vitally important. I quickly dragged to the forefront of my brain what I had learnt in Faber and Mazlish’s book and went first to my poor daughter. My son tried to come in for a cuddle but I gently pushed him away without looking at him and hugged my daughter and talked to her about how much the bite must hurt and how I imagine she had also had her feelings hurt. We talked about how her brother needed to find another way of getting her attention without addressing him directly. I carried her to the sofa where I inspected the bite, gave her a colorful bandage and helped her to put her pajamas on. Only when she was settled did I turn my attention to my son. He was sad and shocked. I believe he has no idea, as it should be, how much it hurts to be bitten. I explained to him how very much he had hurt his sister and asked him to apologize, which he willingly did. Then I kindly told him he would be going to bed now before his sister and with no story. He protested a little but quickly settled down. Then I had time to comfort my daughter alone and she was feeling important and cared for by the time she went to bed.

My son explained to me that he had been trying to talk to his sister and she was ignoring him and that is why he bit her. I was pleased he was able to articulate what had happened and it gave me the opportunity to talk to him without anger about finding another way to get her attention. To date the situation has not reoccurred.  I was so relieved to have been able to find a way to deal with a horrible situation without relying on anger and raised voices.

Faber, A. and Mazlish, E. (1987). Siblings Without Rivalry: How To Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc.