snowmobiling, toddlerness & the bus

- My husband is on a snowmobiling trip in New Hampshire. He went with two friends from work, the same ones he plays on-line x-box with. I am sure it was a male bonding experience. They had a blast although Tom flipped his snowmobile over and the three of them took 40 minutes to turn the 400 lb. beast back over. He says he did 70 mph on the straight-away. I am just glad that he made it without anything broken. He says he saw 3 moose on the trail, luckily he didn’t run into one, those things are huge! He is convinced that I would love it as I love riding motorcycles in the dirt. I always was against it because snowmobiles crush animals’ winter homes. But he covered over 100 miles on groomed trails that get a lot of traffic so that made me feel better. I am looking forward to the photos and complaints of sore muscles.

- I am trying to learn Brazillian Portugese. No I am not. I am trying to learn enough Brazillian Portugese to be able to order a coffee or call a cab when I go to Brazil in (gulp) 8 days. I am a little stressed, leaving the babies won’t be easy. In fact I feel horrible about it. I want this time with Ruby, but really wish we all could have gone. Its one week Kristin…they will be fine. Yes, take the time and RELAX…remember that word?

- I spent the time Tom was away alone with the babies. I did great actually. I spend a lot of time with them alone actually, but its usually broken up here and there, and I am able to get Tom’s help to get Ruby from school, walk the dog, move the car (brooklyn parking!) or whatever. All they want to do is walk. They are pushing furniture around all over the place like a young interior design team. I just read an article in the NY Times about Dr. Karp (who wrote the book The Happiest Baby on the Block)…he has a new book called The Happiest Toddler on the Block. He says that toddlers are primitive and that we need to communicate to them in this basic form. When they are having a tantrum we usually would respond with something like “No honey you can’t have that right now its before your bedtime.” Logic and reason mean zilch. He suggests repeating back to them what they are feeling (who doesn’t want their feelings validated?) and after they calm down you can try and explain. So you would say “You want, you want, Fred wants this now, yes I know”. Something like that. I am a big fan of the method he used to calm crying babies. Id like to see this toddler calming method in action. Marlowe likes to smack Jack whenever he approaches her and she has a toy. On one hand she is competitive, but I also think it is because she feels threatened and doesn’t have the voice to say No! yet. We were giving her a lot of negative attention for it and now I am trying to do the positive reinforcement of good behavior. And be her voice for her as he approaches. It is my job to protect them from being hurt or pursued aggressively. And most of the time I am protecting Jack. But I think she feels pursued as well so its tough call sometimes. Its not all survival of the fittest. (Yes, Marlowe is the scrapper…a future rodeo star, but Jack just pushes her aside with his big paw). They are mostly discovering, laughing, and looking at things with new eyes every day. And luckilly they don’t always pick the same things to be amazed at at the same time. As the toddler age showed up in our lives one morning as we awoke before the sun, so did wonderment and days filled with learning one little thing at a time. I remember at this age Ruby spent a whole day on saying the word “envelope”. I love this age, everything is emotional and important to them. An object’s color, taste or how it feels to the touch is as important as its purpose or meaning. And I am given the amazing gift of being there to help them make sense of it all.
A great post by Motherbumper on toddlerhood here

- My daughter rode the city bus home from school by herself today. You may recall my argument against it to her father some months back. He and I met and talked about it last week with our nice lady. He doesn’t feel he has a choice because of his work schedule and his wife is busy with other things namely work and younger siblings. I asked him to give me the option to bring her home, but I didn’t get a phone call. At the beginning of the year I was against it, and as I said then I would be open to it later in the year if she rode with a friend. He said in our meeting that he was going to do whatever he wanted on his weeks and not confide in me whatsoever. Originally I was angry about this as we have joint decision making and we just can’t go and do whatever we want especially around her education and safety. We have wording in our divorce agreement that basically says that we have to work it out to that maximum definition. Unfortunately that is inconvenient so was therefore ignored. I was really mad back in October, but now I am feeling much more at peace with it. It is not just that I have come around on the bus thing which I have. His explaining that it was not possible for his family to continue to get her everyday at 3pm is a part of his argument that I can take seriously. And that fact would have been enough for me as its important to remember that what effects Ruby’s family also effects her. Sadly this would have been an easy agreement (actually my request was that she travel with a friend wherever possible and that we should work on making that happen not rely on Ruby, and that we sign her up for a self-defense course), but instead he needed to announce that he was no longer going to take any of my concerns for her safety seriously. What a shame. 

I was not going to write about my ex-husband anymore on his blog as I didn’t want to use it as a place to air my frustrations and I didn’t want all of the negativity poisoning this space. I have taken great strides in eliminating it from my head as well. But I think this is important and I thought I would speak to it this once. I am feeling strangely positive about the whole thing really. When challenged as to why we should work towards agreeing and compromising and making decisions together for Ruby I said that there were 3 reasons:
One was that we chose to have a child together, and when we did that we promised to do the absolute best for her. That no one on this earth loves her more than the both of us. No matter what any judge or agreement says, I am Ruby’s Mother all of the time, and he is Ruby’s Father all of the time. And the best thing for Ruby would be to be unified wherever possible and show Ruby that we have respect for each other’s role as parent (note I said ROLE…not person). Ruby feels the tension when we are divided, it causes her great stress (she’s got her eye tic back again). And we are not putting out a CD we are raising a child and it is emotional and hard enough as it is without at least an effort to un-polarize it. I know that I act in a way that shows that I need control over what happens with her. But what he doesn’t understand is that I act that way out of fear. How much nicer for us all if there wasn’t the threat of non communication and actions in spite of concerns by the other parent? How much tension would be eliminated from parents and Ruby if that fear was gone? …and that we knew we would be taken seriously if a concern was voiced?
The second reason is “why do that to yourself?”. Any rights as a parent he takes away from me, he take them away from himself equally. So if for example Ruby wants to go on a ski trip with friends who like to drink and drive, and it takes place on my week…Ruby’s father forfeits the right to say anything if he feels concerned. No, he can say anything he wants…but there are no guidelines set up for if one raises a flag. Why? Because it is too hard right? Well parenting is hard!
The third reason is that we were ordered to. We have an agreement that says in black and white that we must work towards agreement. The whole agreement lists anything we could predict but outside of that it basically says here are the tools to work it out…go do that. If we can’t at least strive for that then we should not have joint custody. Look, I don’t want my ex involved in every parenting decision, that is not what I am talking about. I know there is a gray area as far as what is one’s jurisdiction and where one just has to trust the other parent’s judgement. For both of our mental health we both have to let a lot of that stuff go. The difference is that as things come up, and one parent has a concern over a major health and safety issue, one should be allowed to discuss it and raise a flag and be heard. And we need use the built in safety in there that keeps it in check which is that you can not raise a flag on something that you would not want raised on yourself. It is in fact what parenting and decision making as a parent is about! …deciding where do you step in and where do you let go. We may have different rules about this (obviously) but over time it would balance out and there would hopefully be an understanding as to where the line is. Maybe not. Maybe we will have to draw it again and again in the sand every time, but hopefully have some vague rule of respecting one as you would care to be respected. One need not respect the other for that to work.
So why do I feel positive? I guess that I feel a little like someone who is not going to continue to push the bolder up the hill or tumble down after it. Ruby’s father’s actions affect Ruby. And that is just the way it is, I don’t want control of that. All I can do is act in a way I would like to be treated and continue to strive for what is the best thing for Ruby. And at the end of the day, she knows that her father is doing something I opposed, and she knows that this is the way it is for her as a divorced child of her particular parents. It doesn’t have to be, but that is not my choice. And the repercussions of that choice effects Ruby most of all. When we were in the midst of the divorce Ruby’s attorney said that she is in Juvenile Court every day and the common thread between all of those kids in trouble is that the parents were not unified. In this case, I do not think her father is trying to harm her, but I do think that unless we do whatever we can to work towards a relationship of mutual respect (for our ROLES as parent) then we are not doing everything we had promised her.
One of the things my divorce agreement says is that we are not to act in a way that harms or influences negatively her relationship with each other. Some may view what I just wrote in opposition to it. I don’t. I never understood the argument that one’s actions aren’t the cause of the harm but someone’s revealing of them is. I decided long ago that I would no longer “cover” for anyone. Censoring the truth is more harmful to her. And Ruby knows it all already, she is smarter than we know. Id like to think that I actually show respect and a desire for compromise and respect of his role in this post, a far cry from where I started out years ago. And if Ruby’s father feels it is detrimental to her to read this (she doesn’t read my blog btw) he can raise a flag and be taken seriously right? I am not a vengeful person. I see that people pay the price of their actions just by having to be themselves. Instead I would like to focus my energy on the positive and help empower Ruby to have a voice and speak up for how she feels. And continue to focus on positive ways to make joint custody work in Ruby’s best interests. Even if I am met with someone who does not care to see Ruby’s family holistically.