Somedays you are up, somedays you are in a hell of your own making
Dear Sava,
We're experiencing an interesting salty-sweet time this summer. This is a little bit of a rant because I'm just about out of patience.
Since losing my job at Rosetta Stone, I've been home taking care of you and trying to give you the best summer of your life. We arranged a summer camp with 4 other families to allow you to spend every day with friends; we signed you up for climbing camp because you love to climb; we've traveled a ton (California camping on the river and at the cabin, monthly trips to southern Colorado for camping and hot springs, and daily excursions into the wilderness on hikes, swimming trips, rock finding trips...); and we've done a lot of local exploring.
Most days you are incredibly shiny and excited for life. You sometimes help us with cleaning the house, you have really taken to making art with your mommy, and you love to sing songs, esp. Magnetic Fields tunes. I find myself often overwhelmed by love for you and I can't help squeezing you and kissing your beautiful little face with my scratchy beard.
But goddamn if there isn't another side I wish we could leave behind. Sometimes you never stop asking for things. You need all eyes on you every single moment of the day, without which you spiral out into repeating yourself endlessly. You want to show us your trick swinging a string. You want me to give you juice. You want ice cream. You really want a puppy. You want the windows up/down. You want your song on the radio. You want me to hand you your stuffed kitty. You want me to watch you twirl. You want a playdate with a friend. You want to swim, play, watch a movie, eat, build something, catch butterflies.... Basically, you've discovered life and all of its glory and you want to be totally immersed and present.
Yes! Great! Life!
But no. No no no. Without these things you are not pleasant to be around. Let me give you an example. I drove you and your mommy all the way to the goat farm 3 hours from home so she could meet the baby goats you absolutely could not stop talking about. We got in on a tour that allowed you to actually milk a goat, and we got goat cheese ice cream, which you love. But when you realized you couldn't take a goat home with you (not sure how you got that idea) you were a tyrant, trying to hit your mother and wailing at the top of your lungs, screaming and crying while we forced you into the car to get ourselves far away from the farm. If there is even a hint about something special, such as a little treat, you'll talk about it without stopping for hours and hours and hours, begging and whining until we are forced to throw the thing away.
Somehow you got it into your head you could eat nothing but sweets, you could buy anything in any store we walk into, you are allowed to pester us endlessly for whatever happens to pass through your mind, and we are simply here to ensure you are, at every moment, to be 110% entertained by us. You refuse to eat lunch--you now have a very limited range of food you'll actually eat since giving up on bread, meat, vegetables, and just about anything else I place in front of you--and then scream and cry and writhe on the ground in hysterics 30 minutes later because you are hungry. You ask for gum a good 75 times a day. And, if I give you gum, you get it stuck in your hair or drop it into the car seats. You are careless and destructive. You cry and cry and cry asking for balloons, stuffed animals, stickers, rocks, whatever. If we give you what you want, you will destroy it almost immediately. You rip books, tear up drawings, break games and devices, pull apart necklaces, crack stones, dunk feathers in milk...there is almost no end to your destructive side.
Often you destroy without even knowing you were going to do so, and it's this quality that often has me on edge. You insist on being in control. For instance, you want to carry your own drink - even though it almost always ends in disaster. You can pester me all morning for ice cream, for instance, and decide you will help out around the house in order to get your prize, but once you have the ice cream cone in hand, it could take 4 seconds for you to drop it or, more likely, say something snotty--"This is MY ice cream and I'm not sharing with anybody!"--and turn away only to fall on your face. Today, after I asked you not to run outside the restaurant, you ran and fell hard, bloodying your knees badly and screaming and wailing in front of the restaurant so that we had no choice but get everything packed up while I apologized to others trying to eat, and load you into the car where you reverted to sucking your thumb again.
Regression. Seriously. The moment we get beyond one issue like sucking your thumb it springs back with several friends. Once it was sucking your thumb, now it's drooling on yourself, blowing spit bubbles, sucking your thumb, licking your hands, eating gum off the bus floor...
I hate to say it, but put it all together and it doesn't paint the most rosy picture. A 5 year old beautiful, beautiful girl with such an incredibly complex mind acting snotty, destroying whatever it was she only just received while simultaneously whining for something intangible (like a horse or a puppy), refusing to eat and crying you are hungry, lashing out at us for something you yourself probably caused (like throwing something you wanted out the window of the car only to have it blow off a cliff), and, often during those times of extreme snottiness in which you plug your ears with your fingers to not listen to our advice, falling on your face because you refused to heed the warning, then using this as a reason for reverting to thumb sucking.
If I were to look at all of this I would say you were obviously living under a great deal of stress, but our life is anything but. There is stress, but 90% of it you cause yourself. Typically, we wake to a beautiful day, eat breakfast, go for a hike, visit the creek, swim in our saltwater swimming pool, play with your lovies, watch movies, and read lots of books.
We are hoping--as are other parents we know--that kindergarten and a baby brother will help straighten things out a little. I am griping right now, but I believe you have the capacity to pull through. You are incredible, kindergarten will show you the way and help us all in the process.
Love
Daddy
Posts
