PPC day twenty two: learning from mistakes

Most people would say what you learn from this:


(circa early 2009)

is to never, ever, ever leave a giant box of paints under your child's craft table where they can easily repeat the paint-tastrophe.

Well, that is one way of doing things. And probably the way people with clean houses do things.

For a time the paints did migrate away from the table, but eventually they made it back and nearly a year, if not more, passed before today: paint-tastrophe 2.

But you know what? By the time I realized what was going on, my son was already coming over to ask for help.

What had I learned from past mistakes? How to clean up the paint mess, of course!

I grabbed an already dirty towel waiting to go down to the washer and a bowl, and scooped the pain into the bowl. A few more towels later it was pretty much clean and Truman was in the bathroom washing the bowl.

Last time I explained to Truman that he couldn't dump out his paints. And I can't say that I like that he dumps them out on occasion, but ultimately I am just excited that he wanted to paint.

His art table has gone unused for a while, so I welcome the renaissance and its messes.

And what I learned from past mistakes is that I am willing to deal with mess for the benefit of my child and that when that giant mess arrives, I am not even angry.

This project is helping free me from anger over tiny things and enabling me to see the joy in the process of spilling paint and focus on simply the calm process of cleaning it.

Now to use that same calm to clean up the stack of raisins on my floor.

As part the process to become more organized, we are keeping our upstairs clean. This is where the majority of living spaces are (bedrooms, living room, kitchen, dinning room). And after a whole week, we are still doing it! I spent time last night wiping down all the counters and making sure toys were away. Not my favorite way to end a weekend, but the clean living room was my ideal way to start the week.

I think having part of the house clean also makes small messes, like paint, easier to deal with. It's not another mess on top of pile of hopeless messes. It's just one mess in a sea of clean.

Beep-bot-beep lunch bag

With my extra time at home today, I worked on some photography stuff and even sewed this lunch bag, snack bag and made a napkin for Truman.

He's already running around with it.

PPC day nineteen: Letting him steer the ship

Truman has been struggling with a variety of things lately: potty set-backs, difficulty wanting to leave house and difficulty wanting to return, and even hitting other children the last few days.

For a while I was too frustrated about these set-backs to figure out what the underlying cause was. I kept trying things to treat the symptoms of the set-backs (new potty ideas, new ideas for getting out of the house) but none of them were working well. Until one day it hit me that maybe he is just getting scared of the change that is about come.

He knows and loves the baby. He kisses my belly and talks about the baby, but I think he sees all the changes we are making and realizes our family has changed.

So then I thought, how do I help him deal with this bigger issue?

And I couldn't figure that out, either.

Until I really started listening to what he was saying. As he is running away from me in the morning he was literally saying: "I don't want to go ____. I want to stay home and do ____."

I was taking this as resistance, as him just wanting to be in control of the day. I knew when we got where were going that he would enjoy it (and this was true), so I thought he just needed me to be the one to make him go.

Today among pleadings to stay home I realized maybe he just needs more time at home. Home is a safe place where he is potty independent (except for the occasional wipe), can practically get his own food and roam from activity to activity in his own time without interruptions.

We all need the renewal of being home.

Whats more, his instance to stay home made me realize how much I want more time at home, too. How I feel overwhelmed by all the stuff we have been wanting to do + all the things I want to get done at home.

So we cut out our Friday class today and now have free days on Monday and Friday. Days to renew ourselves at home or go and do something less structured.

I know I will still need to steer the ship for him sometimes, encouraging him to do things I know are good for him or that he will enjoy, but Truman has a good compass within himself letting him know what he needs.

I need to listen to that.

PPC day eighteen: Honoring the baby in toddlers

Truman seems older than he is. He's big, verbal and independent. He can do a lot of things like a three year old and he's certainly the size of a three year old, but that doesn't mean he IS three.

He's still two, he still has those needs he had as a baby and it's easy for me to forget, fall into traps of frustration and want him all grown up at once — potty trained, in control of his body and emotions, weaned from the family bed.

I get so caught up in what I want to accomplish with him. I want to help him accomplish these things so he can move on to other things he is ready for.

But just because he is ahead in some areas doesn't mean he is ahead in all areas. And just because I want something done by X date, have reasonable time lines, steps and everything the books recommend, doesn't mean he is going to be ready to take that next step.

He has been fighting a cold and his sleep has been all out of whack, making our sleep all out of whack, making for one cranky round lady.

He hasn't wanted to go anywhere, even our normal outings and if we go he doesn't want to leave.

Today I honored that. Today I stayed home with him as he wanted.

In the afternoon he settled down for a nap on his own curled on the floor looking just like a baby. Then he stirred a few hours later. I greeted him cheerfully, but he wanted me to hold him. He wanted to sleep in my arms like he had for 18 months.

So, I held him. I was sewing at the time and grabbed a piece of fabric I had, wrapped it around him and have been sitting, wearing him since.

He is still asleep in my arms, cuddling his sibling, peacefully.

Maybe what he really needs is not more rules, more structure or me stepping away. Maybe what he needs is just this closeness he has always had.

Maybe he is sensing that it will be shared soon. Sensing me pushing him to grow up and feeling unsure about it.

As independent as he is, he still needs his mother. I need to remember to honor that. As fearlessly as he approaches the world, he still needs security. I need to remember to honor that.

PPC day seventeen: Good days do not always lead to good nights

Last night I slept entirely in about 1 hour increments.

Joe joked it was one way to train for the baby, but I was more wondering how this would work if there were a baby here, too.



Of course, I know that these nights are rare and I am keeping it in perspective. But in the process of letting it go, I want to share the story of our monumentally haphazard night.

Truman fell asleep after 7:30 on our way home. We got him in the house and tucked him in, then I did a load of dishes, cleaned out a cupboard and the fridge, put away the groceries and swept a little (as part of an effort to keep our newly clean house, well, clean).

Confession, though: our Christmas tree is still up in the basement.

Then we made snacks and settled in to watch an episode of The Office on hulu.

Truman has a cold, so I wasn't surprised that I had to get up twice to calm him back to sleep.

By the third time, right around the end of the episode (which is only 30 min. long) I started to think it was a little weird. But tried not to get frustrated.

He had finally wet those pants and I took them off, comforted him back to sleep and he settled in for a while. Then Joe and I fell asleep on the couch while trying to watch an episode of the X-files on netflix we had fallen asleep watching before.

This is what we have become.

We got up and headed to bed, then the real fun started. About an hour later Truman got upset again. Then an hour later I had to pee. An hour later Joe wasn't feeling well and got up, while Truman climbed into bed, usurping his spot. Thirty to 40 minutes later Joe came back and realized he had to sleep in Truman's bed. About an hour later I got up to pee. An hour later Truman's feet were pushing on my head and I had to ask for help. One hour later Truman got upset and wanted to be on the floor. Then changed his mind and came back to bed. It was 5 a.m. and Joe got up to go to basketball.

That is where any attempt to keep Truman asleep ended. He laid in bed for a while, waking me every time I dosed asking me something. Once he heard daddy's car leave he was up for the day.

So I did what desperate, sleepy parents have done for quite some time and put on a movie from him to watch hoping to sleep a bit more.

Well, the rest of the morning developed much like the night: He came back after about an hour asking for a snack. I set him up with a snack and an episode of Word World. He came back in about 30 minutes saying he had spilled his milk, frustrated I told him to get a towel from the bathroom and put it on the spill (which I discovered he did when I got up a few hours later). Then he wanted more snack. Then he wanted to move up stairs. Finally Joe came back home, I slept for another 30 min, and got up.

While I won't pretend that I wasn't grumpy during some of these moments, I did a pretty good job not pushing my grumpiness on my child. I feel good about that.

And, I found out that while I had thought I wasn't having crazy pregnancy dreams, I am. I am just not remembering them.

My dreams all spiraled together into an Inception-like web of layers. There was even one point where I was deep within the story, heard a small voice, said "I don't want her here," and had to start slapping my face through dream layer after dream layer until I got to the last layer and Truman woke me up.

I am pretty sure that little voice was Truman.

That is the worst night of sleep I have had as a parent where someone wasn't up sick all night.

But, you know, it really wasn't that bad.

I am hoping for a joint afternoon nap in a few hours, though.

PPC day sixteen: Pride

Today was one of those days where everything fell into place. This is possible partly because our definition of everything running smoothly is tailored to our life.

Pre-kids we may have thought having a day with no tantrums, no refusing to get dressed, going somewhere exciting was the perfect day.

Now a day with minimal tantrums in which our child makes progress on things that are challenging to him while we peacefully proceed to fill our house with groceries and do something as a family is perfect.

Yesterday we were out of the house from a little after Truman got up until after he was asleep. Anyone who has toddlers knows that can be hard for them. But instead of regressing, he progressed during our day.

We practiced elimination communication from around 6 months. But toddlers don't follow simple equations well. It turns out:

Being aware of his needs to potty + knowing where to do it + being capable of communicating those needs, does not always = potty trained.

At home he has been potty independent (other than the occasional wipe) for almost a year. Outside the house was great until a few months ago.

Recently he has been on a bit of a public-potty strike, which has led to lots of accidents and clothing changes, which creates this horrible cycle of him not wanting to pee in the public potty, but feeling really bad about having to change his pants, which feeds back into the anxiety of the public potty.

Yesterday he peed in public potties the whole time we were out of the house. He wore the same pair of pants the whole day and I could tell he was proud of himself as we were of him.

For most of this potty strike I have been investing a lot of energy in trying to get him potty trained because I was focused on wanting my older child done with the process when my younger child arrived.

But recently I realized that my plan was putting stress on both of us. I backed off. I haven't forced the issue as much and made it clear that it is his body and his to control. It felt amazing to see him decide to use the potty instead of caving into the types of coercions I have been trying (and failing with).

Though we did have one coercion. The restaurant we went to puts ice in the urinals; what 2-year-old doesn't want to pee on ice?

Then we went swimming as a family and something amazing happened. Something that has nothing to do with me at all. Something that was his accomplishment.

He got incredibly closer to swimming. In the past when we would try to help him float on his back or even support his belly so he could kick his arms and legs he would get scared. Scared because he felt unstable. Scared if his face touched the water.

These are natural fears and quite useful. I would explain to him that he was safe, but feeling safe was something he had to come to on his own.

Yesterday he got to the point where he could use a few noodles to float on and swim by himself. Propelling himself along. He was even dipping his head and ears in the water on his back.

I am amazed that at not even three he had that kind of courage and initiative.

Looks like swimming lessons will be in his near future.

PPC day fourteen: My Christmas tree is still up

The Christmas tree I put up in a furry of nesting energy before Thanksgiving and never finished decorating. The Christmas tree that had more non-ornaments thrown into it than ornaments because a certain someone thought that was the best game ever.

Its a fake tree, so it's not like I'm risking a fire hazard, but to be honest I have kept real trees up just as long.

The point is this: some people need order outside of themselves to reciprocate order within. I am not one of these people, but I would like to play one on TV.

I want to be orderly because I am attracted to the idea that my house could, hypothetically, look like a magazine, or at least a semi-realistic sitcom, instead of the house that still has a half-decorated Christmas tree up nearly a month after Christmas.

But you know what? Today Truman took a nap on the couch in front of the Christmas tree and when he woke up we snuggled and pointed out the lights and few things we saw within it. We searched for certain colors and the red bow and the red star. In the buzz of Christmas there wasn't time for that, but now there is.

He didn't care if it was out of season or had branches falling off. He just liked spending a few moments looking at the pretty lights with me while snow fell outside our window.

I want to find a balance between spotlessness and chaos. For us this means getting rid of a lot of stuff so we can continue to use what we have creatively, combining toys from his room with toys from downstairs, without over-running the house with clutter that I am not willing to spend the time to clean.

But it also means accepting a home with children, or, even, any home, is in a constant state of flux with things coming in and going out in an ebb and flow of messy weeks and clean weeks.

In short I am going to own less, clean more and feel less guilty about how clean my house is.

PPC day twelve: Turning a double negative into a positive

Last summer I made a decision that has lived in infamy in our home to buy a used light bright for Truman, my two-year-old.

I was picturing quiet created by concentrated combos of the little pegs, introducing color theory, and the final products shinning peacefully over him as a nightlight while he slept.

None of that really happened. Despite the fact that the lady has assured me her kids had just replaced the light bulb and that it worked, it never worked for us.

I was too thrifty to throw it away, thinking we could still play with it, we just couldn't plug it in.

Well, playing with it became dumping the pieces out of the handy, organized container (pictured above) all over the living room time and time again, while I foolishly and feverishly reorganized them by color (obsessive? yes. But I did say foolishly).

The light bright became a bane on our existence and Joe was constantly asking me to get rid of it.

Finally in a furry of nesting I threw it away and all the tiny pegs, too, but decided to keep the box.

Today Truman dumped out a bunch of the snaps I am using to revamp his diapers from the aplix velcro of doom Bum Genius 3.0s came with to lovely snaps that will stay put as pictured here:




(I will post more information about that project when I am done.)

Both of these situations were negative, yet I realized the snaps would have a perfect home inside that light bright case.

The snaps were just in open plastic bags that didn't seal, now they are well-contained and easy to work with.

And as an added bonus I don't feel so bad for my horrible light bright fail.

So there you have it: negative + negative + the right attitude = positive.

PPC day eleven: Sleep now my darling ...

For most of his life, Truman has slept in our bed with us. He even napped with me or on my lap almost exclusively for the first 18 months (not a choice I made, but a reality of his need to be close in sleep to know he is safe).

When I watch him totally secure in his connection to me, exuding confidence in his daily interactions with other children and the world, I know that it is partly because I was able to love him in that way.

But part of expanding our family has meant a gradual weaning from our bed to his. It's been a slow process with lots of back and forth, partly because he is also night weaning.

While we have had some set backs in other areas during the day recently, last nights and the nights leading up to it have seen some amazing progress in self-soothing.

Instead of needing to nurse in his bed, or crawl into ours, Truman is able to just hear the sound of my voice reminding him he is okay if he wakes and can fall back asleep. Sometimes he does it completely on his own.

These are things some babies do before they walk, but that doesn't make it any less remarkable at this moment for us.

When brushing teeth and getting to bed is hard, I try to remember these moments. I try to remember how remarkable it is just to sleep alone and comfort yourself in the night and to honor this milestone of his as it emerges on it's own schedule.

PPC day nine: Sticks and stones

I will parent the way that is best for me and my child, even in the face of opposition.

When I first became a mom I lived in fear of the obnoxious on-looker, this fictional character I had created — kind of a cousin to the shifty-looking thief on those neighborhood watch posters — who really just embodied all of the fears I had about the choices I felt were right for my family, but stood out.




A piece of me was afraid of being judged for being different, but over time that piece grew smaller and smaller.

In reality, I never really had an encounter with any of the evil people I thought existed until last Saturday.

We went to 5 p.m. evening Mass because Joe was singing, which means he has to go an hour early so we went to 5 p.m. Mass at 4, which means we spent two hours in church.

For the first hour we headed down to the nursery to play. When Mass started, Truman did not want to leave and so we stayed for a while because I know that time of day is hard for him and that staying still in church is hard for him.

Eventually we headed up to the church, walked through, listening to what we could, then took communion. Afterward he wanted to look at the candles people had lit for special intentions. I have decided that if he can look with his eyes and not with his hands it is okay for him to explore these.

How else is he going to engage with his faith of origin at this age? Toddlers gain knowledge by interacting, touching, engaging, not sitting.

He was frustrated about the no-touch rule, but following directions. He was even making a good effort to whisper. Then he saw a statue holding a scepter and couldn't resist the urge to grab the "sword." When I told him no he got mad. Then I asked him to gain control or we would have to go take a minute. He did, but as he was stepping back he hit his head on the pew.

Crying ensued. Crying loud enough that all I could hear over it was the music.

Until I heard rapid snapping coming from behind me. I assumed the old man behind me was just going to try to cheer Truman up and was ready to tell him it was nice but wouldn't work because he was hurt, not mad.

Instead I found a grumpy face talking in a whisper shout I couldn't hear gesturing toward the music and the cry room. He was actually demanding I take my flailing child into the cry room in my 8 month pregnant arms because he couldn't hear the second reflection song well enough (although I could still hear it very well above the crying).

Ignoring the irony that the reason I was having a hard time was because my husband was in the act of making that music, wouldn't do the story justice, but the real point is this:

At that moment I could have gotten angry. And at first I felt that seeping in, but then I realized that nothing could be gained from anger. Nothing could be gained from letting him tell me how to parent child. Instead, I did what was best for us, which was to sit there, calm him, and move on.

After the song, the man stormed out of church. Truman had calmed down, but then got angry again because he wanted to light the candles.

We headed to the bathroom (one of the only actual non-distracting rooms for a child in the church) to take a minute and I started crying right along with him.

It was a horrible moment that I'm still sad happened, but it allowed me to realize how powerful I am as a parent.

I was able to keep from folding under the presence of the Obnoxious Onlooker. I'm freed from that fear because I faced it with all the positivity I am gaining from this challenge.

PPC day seven: Acceptance

Accepting things that are not ready to be changed frees me to experience the lessons and joys emerging from these short-lived stages in life. There is positivity in avoiding resistance. I will remind myself that I am not "giving up" when I choose this option with my children, only pausing for peace.

It's easy to get caught up in behavior modification with children and to start to believe that every negative behavior is a sign of something that needs to be changed.

I have a lot of tools in my tool box to work on these things — by figuring out the deep need that he has that isn't being met, by keeping him from situations that bring on the behavior, by creating more rhythm or schedule in our day to give them a sense of what is to come and avoid the anxiety of the unknown.

But I am finding through this process that maybe I need to add a lot more acceptance into my parenting. Sometimes "negative" behavior is just a part of that age or stage for my child and it is better for me to take my desire to modify it out of the equation and instead help ameliorate the effects.

For us, it's easy for me to step back and look at our every day and think there are things that are "wrong" with it. It shouldn't be this hard to change a shirt, put on pants, put on a coat, hat and shoes and get in the car, right?

I've tried having him pick out his clothes, helping him to dress himself, talking to him in length about why and where we are going, and other things I can't remember right now.

But at this moment I know that it is just hard for him to do something he is not self-motivated to do. This will probably be a part of his personality forever, but at two it seems to be at its maximum.

So, instead of making both of us frustrated pushing for change, I take breaks, find acceptance that this one thing is hard for both of us, make as little fuss about it as possible when I am getting him dressed, and let it go as we move through the day.

I have noticed if I talk about it too much, he begins to build anxiety about the moment. Then frustration, or desire to control himself, that he expresses in the moment is increased. The more matter-of-fact and quick I am about dressing, the less anxiety builds. For now I have chosen to do this to ameliorate the effect and let the underlying sit on pause.

It feels like giving up, but it's not.

What made realize this was a lesson from my little yet-to-be-born child. I've been back into the practice of yoga regularly for over a year now. I took a few weeks off in early pregnancy, but otherwise have been growing a little yogi.

Many amazing moments have emerged practicing yoga with my unborn child, noticing the changes in my body from week to week as I work through the same poses and freeing my mind to focus on us for a concentrated period of time several days a week.

Last week it became hard. The baby went through a growth spurt, which makes sense at 31 weeks, and I felt bulky and even my favorite positions weren't feeling right. Downward dog felt horrible and child's pose didn't have it's magical benefits.

During that yoga session I found myself crying on the mat. This was the same day as that first bad day in this parenting challenge, and I gave in to a feeling of failure — that I couldn't handle my child on the outside or my child on inside.

What followed has been a week of interrupted sleep and daily tiredness.

All week I have resisted these feelings. I have found myself thinking that I must choose not to be this tired right now. I must feel the way I did 4 weeks ago — energized, ready-to-go, able to easily fall back asleep and go through all my poses feeling strong, poised.

I was too tired to get up for morning yoga yesterday, then realized that I couldn't go to afternoon yoga because I wanted to listen to a photography marketing webinar. By evening I was tired, but Truman said he wanted to go to Y, so we did.

On the way I realized that the tiredness might become a part of my life for the foreseeable future. That I am going to start getting rounder and heavier and maybe poses that were easy would become hard. But I will accept that.

I will accept that this is the stage that I am in with this child and in acceptance free myself of the self-defeating thoughts of modification. Instead, I will embrace the end of pregnancy and beginning of a new life.

Accepting things that are not ready to be changed frees me to experience the lessons and joys emerging from these short-lived stages in life. There is positivity in avoiding resistance. I will remind myself that I am not "giving up" when I choose this option with my children, only pausing for peace.

PPC day six: Revamping bad days

I called this day six because it is the sixth day since I began, though this is not the sixth post. I shall continue doing this because I find it unlikely in this stage of family life that I will blog everyday, but am continuing the project each day and want my posts to represent time not accumulation of words.

Truman did not want to leave the kids area at the Y today. He wanted to stay and play with the magnetic building toys he constantly is working toward mastery with.

I could have found this frustrating. I could have taken on the tantrum he was throwing. But I didn't.

Why?

Because I know how important working with that toy is to him. I know that day after day I find him there playing with the same toy patiently building a multitude of shapes, increasing his understanding of geometry and ability to work cooperatively with the other little boys who are just as interested in this toy.

This toy, I am told, has caused fist fights. It's well-loved.

Yet, when I arrived at the kids area and chose to watch him play for a minute to get a glimpse into his world — the world that exists without me — I watched him communicating with others; I watched a conflict emerge as one child smashed what they were working on; then I watched Truman raise one of the blocks poised to throw.

I cringed, thinking, don't do it.

And, you know, he didn't. He paused, thought about it and recoiled. Then began playing.

My son is an impulsive person, but I know when I see moments like that that all the things I have done to help him control those impulses are working, even if he can't do it all the time. It's working.

I left and let him play for a while longer while I knit. When I returned he was still not ready to go and that brings us back to the beginning of my story.

I went in and looked at what he had built with others: a big house, really quite neat. We talked about it and he said he wanted to build it again. I agreed that we would build one more house and then go. So we did.

This kind of count down approach has worked for us before, particularly in the pool, but it didn't work at all now.

So, I end up having to haul him out, at which point every displeasing encounter within the next 45 minutes of his life became a manifestation of the frustration he felt about still wanting to build houses.

All of these things were just obstacles creating more space between him and the thing he desired and they created waves of tantrums: cutting of his wristband, putting on his coat, going in the car, not having the food he wanted in the car, not having enough water in the car, getting out of the car, coming in the house.

I could have seen each of these tantrums as individual problems, letting each one wear on me as I tried to solve it or reason through it. But instead I knew he was just frustrated about the one thing and it was making all of these things worse.

I wrote about this on day one. I really learned this on day one.

And so I let the tantrums happen as they needed to, offering calm solutions to problems as they arose. And finally after 10 minutes crying in the garage that he wanted to get back in his car seat, he came inside and was ready to move on.

Though the last hour had been spent in something I had previously considered a conflict, I felt no more frustrated than when I began because I chose to focus on the underlying issue and helping him through that. I chose not to take on the task of solving all the small problems, or worrying about why he was upset about everything.

And now that we are on the other side of it I will let it go and allow my mind to begin again.

I tend to think I cannot let go of these things an infinite amount of times each day. That eventually they stack up and overwhelm me. But I will learn to do this. As letting go of possessions that clutter one's life creates peace in the physical space, letting go of the emotional clutter that builds from holding onto these moments creates peace in the mind.

Extreme Geometry

We stayed in a hotel Christmas Eve and night where Truman discovered a way to analyze geometric theories by leaping from bed to bed in different angles, thus inventing Extreme Geometry.

PPC Day one: a very bad terrible no good day

We've all had days where we wake up grumpy and that grump continues throughout the day. We mess up breakfast, forget appointments, lose our keys. In the end it looks like the real problem isn't what's happening to us but our attitude about it.

I have to be honest and say that while I have had these days before, I have a really hard time accepting when my son does. This is probably because when he has a bad day, I also have to engage in the bad day.

But I realized today that maybe I shouldn't be looking at the day as "off" and instead focus on each moment, getting through them, and helping him begin again.

I discovered this idea of beginning again about a year ago when we first began battling wills, around 18 months. At some point I realized that if enough things were going "wrong" I should just let them dissolve into the past and move forward with my day taking each interaction with Truman as a new entity instead of gumming them all together in the way we tend to process adult days.

For toddlers life is so immediate and the future so distant that parenting a toddler demands the same kind of forgiveness of time.

Today it was a struggle to remember these things.

The day started normally enough. I stuck to my commitment to get up earlier so that we would have more time to get ready. He didn't want to put on his pants, but that is not unusual. I quickly put them on, which usually helps him avoid becoming too engrossed in his frustration about needing to wear them, but he was still upset. He asked to nurse. He hadn't nursed when he woke up so I started nursing him, but he didn't want to accept when it was time to stop (though I did count down for him starting with just mentioning he could have a few more minutes, then two minutes, then one minute, then almost done and finally done).

But he was mad when I unlatched him. He wanted more milk and he didn't want to leave. He did not want to put on his coat, but that is not unusual.

As usual, I had to begin leaving in order to get him to want to leave. But even as we were leaving he was crying because he hadn't wanted to put on his boots, but seemed to be changing his mind. I really didn't understand why he was crying.

In retrospect I think he was just feeling frustrated and wanted to spend the morning at home and the fact that he had to leave was making him even more frustrated.

He did not want to go potty before heading into the YMCA kids area, and was a little reluctant to go in, though he was happy to be there once he was there.

I went to yoga and returned to find him reluctant to leave. He was playing with his favorite toy and I entered to facilitate leaving. I considered staying to let him continue playing for a bit, but he wasn't able to control himself enough to share with other kids who were asking so I picked him up and took him to leave.

He was clearly frustrated about sharing and leaving and now did not want his wristband taken off (a safety thing they do at the Y to make sure parents end up with the right kids). Finally we got it off but he was very upset, crying continually.

I asked the person at the front desk for another wrist band and he calmed down once it was on his wrist. I thought maybe things would be looking up.

But then he decided he needed a bottle of water from the vending machine (something we have done twice). I explained that we couldn't get bottled water today and that we had a bottle of water with us, but it didn't matter. He wanted that bottled water and nothing else.

He cried all the way to the car, then cried in the car.

He was excited when we arrived at the Elk River La Leche League meeting because he knew there would be friends to play with. But he spent the meeting, tackling, hugging to hard, chasing and running out of the room. Despite my constant reminders and his assurance that he understood what he needed to do, he couldn't control himself.

He finally fell asleep on the way home and I think maybe when he awakes he will feel better.

The day was incredibly frustrating for me, but I realize that it was more so for him. He was unable to control himself and that is why I was unable to "control" him.

I have struggled for a long time with the issue of "controlling" children. In reality I have no control of my child, only the ability to help him control himself.

There are some children born with more docile tendencies that allow parents the illusion of control, but my son is not this way. He has made it clear forever that parenting is not an issue of control.

It's hard not to look at today and try to think of ways to parent better. But I am not sure that anything I could have changed would have changed the outcome. He normally is able to control himself in all of those situations. He is normally only bothered by one or two of those things in a day. It was just one of those days where he was struggling with something of his own and I need to respect that.

Creeping in my head now are thoughts of how this idea must look to more mainstream parents. How I look like I can't set rules or follow through on punishments or how I don't have control of my child because I am not doing things to have control of him. While I sometimes feel the glare of these ideas upon me, I know that I am doing things to prevent these situations. And I take pride in my ability as a parent — in all the things I do well. And I let go of these hard days while I help him let go of them to move forward.

Positive Parenting Challenge: intro

My friend Meredith, who is blogging about her journey to parent positively, inspired me to take up a similar project.

I've struggled often with how to write about the joys and challenges of parenting without sounding like I was in way over my head and accentuating the negative or sounding like I was super mom and accentuating only the positive.

The thing is, parenting is so much a mix of both. I think a lot about how what Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, put it in this Aspen Ideas Festival speech that was aired on MPR a few years ago. He said studies show that while being married does increase our happiness, having children does not. In fact, people are happier shopping for groceries than they are with their kids.

And you know what, a few nights ago I did find myself in the grocery store with only my safely contained baby-in-womb while Joe swam with Truman and I told the clerk "shopping without my toddler is like being on vacation."

And I meant it. The ability to free my mind and think clearly about anything and everything. To dilly-dally if I like. In a way, to be a child myself instead of being a parent.

Gilbert acknowledged that this idea sounds terrible and that he wouldn't deny he loves his children and is glad he has them. But the facts are still there: from a science of happiness perspective children do not increase our happiness.

His point is this: all of the work of raising children at certain points in their life takes so much energy it clouds out other sources of joy. That's why when I am not with him I am able to see joy in even the mundane because my mind open to it.

But what he pointed out, and what I always latch onto is this: while our overall days may be filled with things that decrease happiness, the moments of happiness shared with or inspired by my children are ecstatic. Having children heightened my ability to be happy, even if they themselves do not always make me happy or provide me with a net gain of happiness.

Now that I am a parent the grocery store is a vacation and the dentist a spa. These are truths.

Parenting is work and in this project I am going to explore that work and challenge myself to parent in a way that is positive, gentile and leads us to a place of fulfillment and happiness.

And I will touch on this now because it is glaring me in the phase: are positivity and happiness inseparable? Do they necessarily lead to each other?

I do not know the answer, but I am going to be engaged in looking at these questions. My approach to this project is about positive parenting, but also my own personal journey to approach each day in a way that it leads to happiness and how all of these things interact.

All posts on this subject will be labeled PPC and then the title and tagged with positive parenting challenge. To see them all, just run a search.