Elijah, Our Stress Indicator

A number of years ago I noticed that Miciah was a very accurate Stress Indicator for our family, particularly me.  This is probably because, despite how she can get on my nerves, the two of us are a lot alike.  But possibly her age was also a factor, because I've started noticing that Elijah is now our Stress Indicator.  But he's a better Rob's Stress Indicator, and that's probably because, despite how Elijah can get on Rob's nerves, the two of them are a lot alike.

Case 1

Rob's been working Tuesday and Thursday nights (what, am I a broken record?  How often do I mention this?!), and with the holidays upon us, the last few weeks of that schedule were really rough.  As we talked about career moves for the next year, and ideas for the years to come, Rob was talking about holding multiple jobs at the same time, and the possibility of me getting a job, in case blah blah blah, or whatever.  These are all just ideas floating out there, to be considered in case we need to use them at a later time.

The whole idea of me working a part-time job, however, was settled for me one night when Elijah said, "Mom?  If you had a class, too, then who would put me to bed?"
I explained that if Daddy was gone at night, we would make sure I was home, and vice versa.
"Yeah, but, if you DID have a class, then who would put me to bed?"

Later that night, Rob was talking about maxing out our family's stress levels and jokingly said, "If someone else needs to get a job, it's got to be you."

I almost yelled at him.  "NO.  I can NOT get a job.  OUR SON JUST ASKED WHO WOULD PUT HIM TO BED IF I HAD A JOB, TOO!"

I have contemplated Elijah's comment and let it be a stand-alone incident until yesterday when another conversation took place over the dinner table.

Case 2

Elijah asked me what would happen if we didn't live together as a family any more.  He worded it funny, but I knew what he was referring to.  The other day I'd had to explain to Miciah that someone she likes very much isn't a part of our lives any more because he and his wife were divorced now.  Miciah said she knew what divorce was, but Elijah didn't, so I explained it like, "Sometimes two people decide they don't want to be married any more, and then they don't live together as a family any more."  A simple explanation, and a simplified one, but I'm hoping my kids won't have any reason to need it explained more fully. 

So when he wanted to know about when we didn't live together as a family any more, I knew he was talking about if Mommy and Daddy got divorced.  I didn't know what to say about that.  I told him that, of course, we weren't getting divorced, and we were still going to live together as a family.

Strangely, Elijah was almost disappointed about this.  It turns out that he wanted to live with just Mommy and Miciah and Teancom because "Daddy is mean."  Usually it's both Mom AND Dad who are mean, according to Elijah, and it's always because we spank him and put him in time outs.  We do in fact do both of those things.  But not often.  I guess it just leaves a big impression.

But last night, it was only Daddy who was mean.  I pressed Elijah on it a little.
"Daddy's not mean."
"Yes, he is."
"But you still would want him to live with us."
"No."
"Really?  You'd rather him not come home ever again because he sometimes gives you spankings?"
At this point Elijah started to cry.
And I didn't know what to say.

Rob did what a good daddy would do and took him in the back room and sat him on his lap and talked to him.  What it came down to is that Elijah wants Rob to play with him more.  Rob said, "I can do that."


With 2 fairly profound, non-isolated comments under our belt, I realized that Elijah is now our Stress Indicator.  It's amazing to me how accurate, and how blunt--how painful sometimes--children can be at interpreting and re-presenting our stresses.

I feel confident, however, that with a little time and effort, Elijah will once again want Rob to be a part of our family.  Because Rob's a good guy.  A good husband and a good father.

I wish Stress Indicators came as a kit.  "Buy this gadget and it'll measure your stress levels."  It seems unfair for children to do that kind of dirty work.

(On a somewhat unrelated note, but still down the same alley, Elijah was drawing a picture of our family.  Sort of.  It included like 10 people and there was a baby in my tummy.  No, that is not an announcement.  I told Elijah there wasn't really a baby in my tummy and he said, "I know.  It's just pretend."  

Then he kept drawing and started doing the details on my face.  He gave me very angry slanty eyebrows and an equally angry zig-zag mouth.  Elijah said, "Mom, do you know why you're mad in this picture?"  No, I said.  "Because the baby in your belly hasn't come out yet."  Accurate.  Very accurate.)

Thanksgiving Week (an update)

The kids made this Happy Thanksgiving sign. It didn't come out very well on here, I guess. If you click on the picture, you can see it bigger, though.

My mother and grandfather fly into town today, so I thought I'd sit down and write my update, since it won't happen after they get here.

Things to report.

Miciah's Tooth Trauma

Round 2 of Miciah's tooth trauma. Last year right about this time, if you remember, she had to have a tooth pulled after an ER visit where we found out that her tooth was just gone. Rotted out without us being able to tell. They put a spacer in to allow the adult tooth to come in correctly.

Well, a few weeks ago she came to us in the middle of the night (4:30 a.m.) saying that another tooth hurt--this time the same tooth, just on the other side of her mouth. Rob took a look at it briefly, gave her some Tylenol and sent her back to bed. I asked him what he thought and he gave me that look that says nothing good is coming her way. So depressing for her.

We took her in to the dentist and sure enough, tooth number 2 rotted away without us knowing. They showed Rob the x-ray of the tooth from last year. The tooth was totally fine. The dentist said it was pretty incredible that that amount of damage happened in a year's time. They gave her an ultra-powerful flouride tooth treatment (FINALLY people are believing me that she just has crummy teeth!) and scheduled a tooth-pulling session for December 17th.

Dec. 17th was 4 weeks after they brought her in. I wondered if she would last that long. What if it started hurting? It took her another week or so to start complaining about it again. Some nights before bedtime of her complaining. But the last straw, really, was when she came home from school and said that she'd had to go to the school nurse because her tooth hurt. Clearly, we wouldn't be making it all the way to Dec. 17th. We called Children's Dental (the ONLY place I will be taking my kids from here on out, by the way. They're that good) on this last Friday morning and told them she was in pain and we needed to set up a time before Dec. 17th. I was ready for them to put up a fight, tell us how busy they were. But the lady just said, "If she's in pain, bring her in right now. We'll put her in the emergency chair." Oh. That was easy. WHY DIDN'T THEY TELL US THAT BEFORE?!

So we took her out of school Friday morning and Rob took her to get her tooth pulled. They said the tooth was massively infected, and it was good we didn't wait until Dec. 17th to bring her in. She got home by about noon and was pretty mopey. I remember tooth trauma from my childhood, so I'm very sympathetic about stuff like this. But by about 2 pm she was running around being crazy and she said, "I got a day off school!" I looked at her sideways, wondering if it was worth it to get a tooth pulled for a day off school! I wouldn't think so.

Snaggletooth was very nice to her and gave her a full dollar for the tooth trauma. This is the note she wrote to him:

Working the system. That's our Miciah. And she got a piece of candy.

Soccer

Miciah is now playing on an indoor soccer team, and loves it. She is the shortest, slowest, and probably youngest on the team (they didn't have a slot for her in her age group, so they put her one age group up). At her first practice one of the girls put her arm around Miciah and paired up with her for a drill. I was glad that she was able to find a friend so fast. Miciah later told me that the girl had said, "You're so cute!" and "You're so little for your age." ... I suggested to her that she could run a little faster when she was on the field and she said, "You don't run as fast as you can when you play, either." I think that's a tally mark for Miciah.

She has now played 2 games and her team has won them both. She has claimed, after both games, that she scored a goal. In fact, she was so desperate to say she scored, apparently, that she claimed that she scored a goal for the OTHER team. I think she might be wanting to be like me (and that wasn't meant to be cocky). The day before her first game I had a game and I scored 2 goals. It's interesting how compelling it is for kids to want to be just like their parents.

I think it's fun to note my own soccer playing. Mainly because soccer is (and probably forever will be) a love of mine. It's nice to be in touch with that part of me, even though it feels like I pay a small fortune to play, especially when our budget is so tight. In my last game, Friday night, I accidentally did the full splits. By the way I can't DO the full splits. On my way down I heard a sound that I knew was my muscle. Not good. And Saturday morning I woke up knowing EXACTLY where that muscle runs and where it connects in the body. It hurt the entire length. But it's fun to play. Hopefully bruises and over-stretched muscles will be the extent of my soccer injuries.

Stress

Rob's job continues to be stressful, though we seem to finally be figuring it out (slowly). Really, it's the job and calling combo that gets us. This month has felt like a culminating event in terms of stress. It was a crucial time for us to say, "Enough!" and put our lives back together the way they should have been to start with.

For instance, as related to Rob's calling: Is there another meeting that Rob could attend, please? Because I think he needs a few more. ... Ugh! NO! I finally got to a point where I said, "If I hear the word 'need' in the same sentence as 'meeting' I will scream." Because I can think of a lot of things I need and NONE OF THOSE THINGS are a meeting. But we're figuring out how to meet halfway. Rob has figured out that he can say no to some meetings, and I've become willing to let him go to all the meetings he says he needs to go to. And he's learned that if he wants to attend a meeting at all, he leaves the word 'need' out of the sentence. Instead he'll say, "Tamra, there's a meeting that I'd really like to go to..." I know he's saying roughly the same thing as before, but it's a change in attitude for both of us, and it really helps me.

Calendar

I finally have my 2009 calendar. It's amazing how much you need one for the new year come October or so. The kind I buy happen to cost only like $2.50. It was fantastic how excited I was when Rob came home with my calendar. Not quite update worthy, I'll admit, but I'm excited, so I'm including this pointless piece of information.

Sickness

This whole month feels like it's been filled with sicknesses going around our family. It took a full 3 weeks for Rob and I both to feel like we were feeling much much better again. Still, we have a cough that's just hanging around. Not bad any more, but still just hanging there until we've almost forgotten about it, and then it shows up again. Still, last Sunday I declared us all healthy. Hopefully we all stay that way.

While I was sick I lost a little weight. Not because I wasn't hungry (it was a strange sickness, really. No huge symptoms other than a cough and feeling crummy, but still apetite in tact), but because I felt too crummy to get off the couch to get something to eat. My stomach did feel a little not right a few days, because my main caloric intake was mucus drainage and cough drops.

Needless to say, the Health and Fitness Challenge Rob and I were doing was completely thrown off track by this sickness parade. There were several days where exercise was impossible, and many other days where we just didn't want to, even though we could. And after we were finally feeling better, the challenge only had a week and a half left! So the challenge is now over and we completely bombed out of it. But that's alright. We still got some good benefits from it, and Rob still lost some weight, even though it wasn't the amount he wanted to lose.

Reading

A good thing about being sick is that I read the rest of a fantastic book: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It's really long, but it's SO good. I feel like I learned a lot and it was fun to read, too. Highly recommend it.

Then I started on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, which I'm not quite done with yet. My brother, C, recommended it to me and then bought a copy and shipped it to me. I was 70 pages into it before I'd realized I'd spent any time on it at all. It's sci-fi, and it's fantastic! If you like sci-fi at all, I highly recommend this book. (I did read ahead to find out what happens at the end. I needed to know what happened to Mike, my computer friend.) Really. I can't emphasize enough how good this book is. I almost decided, before I started reading this book, to let almost all fiction reading cease in my life and move on to non-fiction near-exclusively. Robert Heinlein single-handedly changed my mind.

Thanksgiving Plans

My mom flys in today with my Grandpa O. (her dad). They will stay for 2 weeks. Tomorrow my dad will be here, too, and he won't stay for 2 weeks, but he'll be here for Thanksgiving. It's fun that we'll get to have them here for the holiday!

While they're here, my computer usage will probably be limited. When there's family in town, why would I spend my time on the computer? Just so you know, when you're wondering where my Thanksgiving pictures are.

Miciah's Parent-Teacher Conference

We had a parent teacher conference with Miciah's teacher, Ms. L. Miciah does great in school academically, and we knew that before we walked in there. Instead, we wanted to know if she was ever over-emotional or bossy in class. She said she's not over-emotional at all. She isn't bossy: in fact she helps other kids with their work in a way where she doesn't tell them the answers, but leads them gently to it on their own. I thought that was an excellent compliment for a 1st grader. But Ms. L did say that she occasionally has to ask Miciah, "Miciah, who's the teacher?" Miciah will quickly correct her behavior and point to Ms. L, the real teacher. When Ms. L said that I laughed and said, "We have that conversation about 8 times a day! "Miciah, who's the mom, me or you?""

She also said some very good things about Miciah and her abilities, especially her reading. Miciah is very confident about her reading. Miciah says she struggles with her math, but really she just makes silly mistakes. Ms. L said Miciah makes most of her mistakes because she's trying to get done really fast so that she can be the first one done. That competitive drive. We wanted to half-apologize for that, but Rob and I just looked at each other and said, "Yeah. That was us." Capable and competitive. Not a bad combo, so long as she's not cocky.

Pictures to Share

My boys especially love markers and crayons. Teancom likes to color the floor with crayons (I made him cry (which is not hard to do) by telling him it was NOT appropriate to color on the floor). And Elijah likes to color himself and furniture with markers. (Miciah likes to color, too, but she colors on paper--novel idea). This is one of my favorite recent colorings:

I like to tell people that I love that kids color themselves with markers and they give me this look like, "Whatever." Seriously! I think it's awesome. I would color myself with markers on a near-daily basis if I felt I could get away with it in public. In fact, maybe I should try it.

The other day the kids came upstairs talking about "snow" they were making downstairs. Uh oh, that's never good. I think they were using packing peanuts and shredding them up real small. I sent them downstairs with an order to not do that any more, but I didn't really care, cause it was my night off (soccer night, and Rob let me go early so I could buy myself some boots (I ended up buying retro little boys boots on clearance (the womens' boots were awful, I thought). I found out that I wear boys size 4) because I needed boots, and I also needed a break from the kids). Right before I left Rob walked downstairs and saw the huge mess and was about to yell at them when Miciah crawled out from under a table with her hair looking like this:

And instead of getting mad, he said (in true Tamra fashion), "I'm going to go get the camera and take a picture." And THEN he cleaned up the mess. Kids are awesome.

A fun Playing with Daddy session from a Saturday morning:

Rob attacks!

Rob wards off a Spider-Man attack from Teancom while pinning Elijah with his leg.

Elijah, still pinned, attacks Rob by pricking his ankle with something. Rob is mid-manhandling Teancom when Miciah runs up with Spider-Man for the attack!

Miciah climbs on Rob's back while Rob has Elijah pinned, and Teancom needs to take a break for a phone call.

What good memories!

2002 Happenings

This is our T family picture from New Year's Day 2002. L (in the purple) is only days away from giving birth to D. My family came in town and was hopeful to see the baby before they had to turn around and go back to CA. D was born the day they had to leave, so they got to see her.


I am holding Miciah, a few months old. And Grandma is holding X, a year old. X was a happy, happy kid (he's probably laughing in this picture). SO cute.


10 May 2002: This is our little family at L's apartment in SLC. L had just graduated from U of U, so we went up to participate in that. Shortly after that, L & J moved to CA.

24 June 2002: Miciah spent a lot of time in her first 2 years being watched by family members. I was working, Rob was working and going to school. This picture is from an afternoon at the B's house in Orem. They loved this picture and set it as their desktop for months, cause it made them laugh. Miciah had a funny look on her face for lots of her early pictures.


2 July 2002: This is one of my favorite pictures of Rob ever. It's not a great picture, for sure, but he's smiling that killer smile and looking hot.

3 July 2002: I love this picture of Miciah. She's sitting inside her bouncer and she's just been crying. But still cute!

3 July 2002: What a great picture of Miciah! That smile is a Rob smile. I adore this picture.

3 July 2002: Me, my mom, Miciah, and K right before he left to go into the MTC. Notice Miciah is sucking on her binky upside down, just like I did. (We tried to get Elijah to take it upside down, too, when he was little, but he wouldn't do it.) She had a binky until about 14-months-old or so. She kept losing her binkies and we couldn't keep up with it. She'd lose 5 binkies a week. Finally we couldn't find them and I refused to go buy another set. She screamed for a day and then she was over it. Was easier than I thought. (And then there was Elijah,...)

16 October 2002: Miciah on her 1st Birthday, opening gifts. We have other pictures, but they weren't digital. ... Maybe someday I'll scan them in and post them on here.

Christmas Day 2002: My mommy gave me fuzzy pajamas with feet! I love them! They keep you ridiculously warm, though.

Christmas Day 2002: Rob in the back, and me with my some of my siblings on the couch. We were at my parents house in CA for Christmas.

2002 was a happy year for us, full of love and stress! At the start of the year both of us were working part-time jobs and going to school full-time. We would swap Miciah off between classes and find babysitters for her at night so we could both go to work. We would then see each other after I got back from work, some time after 10 p.m.! After a semester of that not working, I stopped going to school so that we could have money to eat and I would be stress-free enough to survive. I figured out that, for me, I could do 2 of the 3 things, but not all 3. I could be a mom and go to school. Or I could go to school and to work. Or I could be a mom and go to work. But I couldn't do all 3 at the same time. We made a choice.

And things were better. I worked extra hours over the summer. Best of all, I got to work with my brother, C, and that was a blast. I think people at work thought C and I were married instead of siblings. You'd think that the different last names would have tipped them off. :) But often C was our babysitter for Miciah and we'd swap off at work. Or I'd bring Miciah in to visit him or whatever. C and Miciah were inseparable.

My mom came in town in July to see K off at the MTC. It's always nice to see my sweet mother, and it was fun to connect with K before he left for 2 years.

We had a great time being with family in Utah. The family outing for 2002, if I'm remembering right, was a camping trip to a lake a few hours away. There was 1 cabin and an RV or 2, but Rob and I and Miciah were in a tent. It was fun! And we stayed up late with the family singing songs around the fire and listening to Rob do his Gay French Bear routine.

In October Miciah turned 1. Miciah was a difficult baby (colicky for the first few months--seemed like eternity), and that wasn't changing as she got older. She has always had a definite opinion about things!

Miciah was a tiger for Halloween, in an outfit that my mom made matching for all 3 grandkids at the time. So cute. All 3 of my kids have been tigers for a Halloween, and Teancom still uses it as pajamas (though he's almost out of it, sadly). We'll retire the outfit and keep it for our grandkids.

We got pregnant for time #2 in the fall. October/November-ish. The pregnancy was AWFUL and I was sick a lot. I had absolutely no energy and I was going home from work early more often than I was staying to finish my shift. I was talking to Rob about seriously cutting back my hours for 2003, cause the pregnancy was just not nice to me.

I don't remember where we spent Thanksgiving. We probably bounced around from family get-together to family get-together. Turns out that long ago the Thackers and D's had done their get-together every other year to accommodate V & C when they lived close. Somewhere along the line, it had gotten mixed up and so every other year we had too many get-togethers to attend, with the middle years finding us begging to attend someone's (ANYONE's) get-together. :)

Christmas was spent in California at my parent's house. I think all the siblings were there except K, who was on his mission by then.

Some time during the CA trip, I started feeling much better pregnancy-wise. I figured it was just getting to be that time of the pregnancy. In November, I had spotted once, just a little, which was a little scary. When we went into the doctor the next time (early Dec.), he did an ultrasound and the baby was fine. The ultrasound pushed the due date back almost an entire week, and I was only 8 weeks along!

Anyways, when I went in for my next doctor's appointment at the end of December, the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat when listening to my tummy. I told him I'd been feeling better and he said, "That's not good." Then he went to do an ultrasound to see, and there was nothing in there. No baby at all.

So I spent the end of 2002/start of 2003 miscarrying pregnancy #2. This is a long story that I won't expound upon here (maybe in a post of it's own that you can choose to not read if you don't want to). Basically, I took a drug that is intended for something else, but which causes miscarriages as a side effect. Since I hadn't had a spontaneous miscarriage (only 20% of miscarriages aren't spontaneous), this was meant to throw me into "labor" to expel all the stuff. Round 1 cause contractions, but nothing major. I went back to get Round 2 and it was awful. I was very ill and in a ton of pain. I would have preferred someone shoot me. Seriously. I ended up at the hospital anyways to have a D&C to finish the job. Near-immediately after surgery I felt SO MUCH better. I rested for a day or two and then I was fine.

The miscarriage wasn't a sad thing, though. I was not and still am not sad about it. That pregnancy made me really really sick and I was happy to be well again. I didn't feel like I was losing a child. I have sympathies for those who have miscarried and it's been tough for them. My experience helped me comfort a friend who miscarried about a year later. It was her first pregnancy and they were so excited. My heart went out to her and her husband.

If that pregnancy had been carried to term, and it had been a girl (we felt it was a girl), her name would have been Claire with some middle initial A and we'd call her CAT. Fun, huh? But I guess it all turned out well enough, because M&K have had a baby girl since and her name is Clara.

(written 23 July 2008)