Thursday, January 30, 2014

Vegemite Vegemite Vegemite Vegemite

Dear Beanie,

It was Australia Day recently, and we did absolutely nothing whatsoever to celebrate. I do feel a little guilty about that... to be honest, I'm not even sure if I told you. Bad Mummy. We may have to have a make-up Aussie Day when your daddy returns from Japan.

You must have been feeling a little lack of Aussie spirit in the house... and you decided to make up for it, big time.


The jams cupboard was open at dinnertime. This is normally a fatal mistake, because you often then refuse to eat all dinner until you get your spoon in the peanut butter jar. But last night? You pointed to the cupboard and started chanting a word I didn't recognise. It sounded like 'lemonade' at first, and I tried and tried to understand, pointing to things and saying the name, but not succeeding. I told you that there wasn't any lemonade, I'm sorry, and I closed the cupboard. Oh the howling! Ok. You wanted something in that cupboard. We worked through it systematically, with you saying 'NO!' every time I pulled something out. Until we got to the back left hand corner and I finally understood!

"VEGEMITE!" I was so happy to have decoded, and the look of joy on your face was priceless at having succeeded once again at this miraculous thing called communication. I then got you a slice of bread and some butter (for really, who would ever have vegemite without butter?!). For the next forty minutes, you refused all attempts at a proper, socially acceptable way of eating Vegemite, and instead ate is straight from the jar.



Yes, you read this correctly. Vegemite, straight from the jar.

You are so much more hard-core than any other person I have ever met! You may be sensitive in many many ways, my love, but Vegemite? No problem. Bring it on.

I love you, little Böhnli!
Love Mummy

Monday, January 27, 2014

The Magical Mystery Moo

Dear Beanie,

I desperately want to write you a letter about the magical mystery moo place that exists in the centre of our little town... but I also want to write about what a phenomenal amount of food you just ate today. When I put it like that, it seems as if option one is the more interesting of the two, yeah? Haha.

There is this magical place where there exists a cow that only you can see. Every time we walk through that particular intersection in our village, you 'moo!' loudly and repeatedly! This has been going on for months now, and your daddy and I are yet to find this invisible cow, or anything that remotely resembles a cow!

Look. Where is the cow?

No cow here!
Nope! Not here!

Moo!
The only thing I can think of... perhaps you moo'd once at random and we made a big fuss of trying to find the cow, and now it is a fun joke for you...? Perhaps? If that is the case, my love, you are a very cheeky sausage, trying to trick us every time!

* * *

Alright, I can't resist... Just in case you happen to want the details of your food consumption, here it is. Feel free to skip right to the 'Love Mummy' at the end, though! For reference, Normally, you would wake up and have a bottle, then a bowl of puffed oats with milk. Then you'd have some yoghurt and lunch would be something like veggie risotto, veggie spätzli or a scrambled egg with some bread and veggies. Afternoon snack, though often you don't want one, would be a piece of fruit and perhaps a cracker, and then dinner. Bottle before bed, and you're done.

Today? Here's what you had:

Your morning bottle.

  • FIVE bowls of cornflakes. Yes, five. And you wanted a straw to drink all your milk out of the bowl too.
  • One hour later, a slice of brown bread with cream cheese and a WHOLE banana.
  • One hour later, a bowl of oat puffs.
  • Ten minutes later, a few crunches on some raw carrot I was using (woot!), half an apple and an ANZAC biscuit that your lovely Auntie Christine brought over for us for Australia day yesterday.
  • A Bio frankfurter, half a tin of corn, some peas and a cripsy cracker.
  • A big bottle of milk.
  • A whole mandarin, a stupid amount of raisins and some of your daddy's muesli.
  • An hour later, three quarters of my seedy croissant and half of my fresh orange juice.
  • TWO slices of wholemeal toast with almond butter (plus I suspect a LOT straight from the jar)
  • A bowl of veggie spätzli that would rival the size of mine. (It's not over yet. Did you think so? Me too)
  • A whole big five-piece carrot and oat waffle and a half a tub of yoghurt.
  • And then a 200ml bottle before bed.


The most hilarious thing? As you were watching your bedtime episode of Thomas, you pulled up your shirt to reveal a belly so enormous that it seemed the skin barely held it in, and you sat there rubbing away at it and smiling.

I love you, my little Buddha!

Love Mummy.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Happiness

Dear Beanie,

I have just had the most wonderful day with you, little one. Today I can finally pronounce us both healthy again, and the joy is palpable.


It's not really that we did anything particularly special today, it's more of a feeling. You were happy. I feel like it has been a few weeks since you have really been happy, but I know this awful illness has been hanging about in you for a while. But there was also that business with the neurologist... and things have just been pretty rough lately. But today? There was no crying, no tantrums, just giggles and talking and asking cute questions and imitating my phrases (like, 'Where's she gone?', 'Here I am!', 'Off we go,' and 'Ready, set, GO!') and dancing and smiling the whole day long.

This is happiness, right here! 
I love days like this, where we have no plans and are never rushed to go anywhere or do anything. It means that there are opportunities to do things like take out all my tea cannisters, open them, experience all the different smells with a very exaggerated sniff, give smells names like 'fruity' or 'spicy', and practice putting them all back. And then do this all over again with all of my herbs and spices. This is something that I need to do with you together, not something I can give you free rein over, and we both spent over an hour (literally!) on the kitchen tiles, exploring these scents. I fear that having places to go, people to see, things to plan and pack and cook, often gets in the way of being able to do lovely things like this with you.
The thing that made you giggle the most today? A new game of ours. You always spend the whole day calling my name in a variety of ways, whether you actually want my attention or not, and today I decided that every time you said my name, I'd say yours. Which was perhaps seven hundred times. Two days ago you started saying your own name, you see, so it must have a different kind of grandeur to you at the moment, because me responding to a drawn out "Maaammaaaa" with a drawling "Ruuuuuuuuuuubeeeeeeen" was simply hysterical to you. This would make you giggle every single time, all day long.
The cheekiest grin in the whole universe! 
It's lovely to see you happy again, my bubba! And wow, how true it is, that when you are happy, I am happy.

I love you oodles and oodles.
Love MAAAMMAAA!

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

"This One"

Dear Beanie,

Well, we are sick again. A pretty severe and horrifically ugly tummy bug, but let's not go into the details. Let's just say it certainly ain't pretty.

I don't really have the energy to write at the moment, but it has been over a week now since my last letter... So I'm dragging my thumbs from the couch and doing this on my phone.

Trying to think of some funny things you've done recently... Oh! I've discussed many times before how you are obsessed with listening to Kings of Convenience. Last night we had a big fun dance to the song 'I'd Rather Dance with You' in a moment of health, and ypu giggled your little head off. Then, when it finished, you announced that you wanted "more Binz" (kings), but we WERE already listening to it... So I changed the track to play the dancing song again, and asked you, "This one?" You smiled, said, "This one!" and started dancing with your eagle. This morning, you came up to the stereo and demanded to listen to "This one" again and again. Seems that is the new title of the song. Funny how your brain ticks!

You also have started to play with the volume nob in an entirely appropriate manner. When the dancing song comes on that you love, you turn it up, but not too loud. And you turn it down when it's finished. Cool, huh?

You still amaze me, little one.

Sleep time. Love you.
Love Mummy.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Dealing with Anxiety

Dear Beanie,

It's things like this that make me laugh.
I wonder if you reading this letter will be the first time that you know for certain that I have problems with anxiety. Probably not... I hope not. I hope that I will always feel as if I can talk with you about the big things in life, and me having anxiety may sound as if it isn't a 'big thing', but to me it is. I know that you are currently going through a boom in your language development, and I see it as a big part of my job to give you words for the emotions that you feel, which will hopefully allow you to feel as though those emotions are valid, that you aren't the first person to ever feel that, and it enables you to communicate this feeling in a way that doesn't involve tantruming. As part of that, I see it as really important for me to be telling you how I feel too. If something makes me angry, I will get angry, tell you that I am angry, and you learn that anger is a part of life and there are appropriate ways of dealing with that feeling. For example.

So right now I feel horribly anxious. It is a feeling that sits high up in my stomach; a feeling that makes me cold and a little shaky; a feeling that makes me want to stop eating, makes me want to pull my knees up to my chin and makes me want to close all the shutters and pull the blanket over my head.

It is important for me to show you that there are ways of dealing with these anxious feelings though. So I'm trying to be a really strong and brave mama and to soldier on with normal life, being happy and playing with you, dancing to music with you, going for walks and seeing friends with you. Because I know that shutting myself away won't make it any better.

One of the reasons why I aim for you to become a bus driver or a hair dresser when you are older is so that you can spend your days doing something that makes you happy, and won't fill you with feelings like this yucky one I have now. I have always been a perfectionist, been totally self-driven in my ridiculously high expectations of myself, and I don't want that for you. It is a really hard way to be. And it means that when somebody says something that is in some way critical, it can be devastating to your idea of self. Something that, if said to another person, might just roll off them, sticks so deeply in my heart and feels like an acid burn.

If you were older and talking to me about having feelings like this, I might tell you to draw how you feel, or write about it. So that is what I am doing.

I have made a time tomorrow to speak with this person who, maybe accidentally, caused this feeling in me. The thought of this confrontation, and the thought of attempting it in broken English and broken German, makes me want to be sick. But I am a mother now, a real-live-grown-up-woman, and I am going to have to learn to deal with these things and to deal with confrontation in a better way. So I made an appointment to talk about it. That is what I would tell you to do, if you were in my situation.

Peekaboo! I hope that you'll only ever
hide from me as a game, little one. 
In some ways, having you in my life has made me so much stronger. I am learning to think about things in this way, where I have to be a role-model for you, and that helps me. But in some ways, having you in my life has made me the most vulnerable person on this planet. I love you so much, I feel such extremes of everything when it comes to you, and I am yet to learn how to sometimes control those emotions so that I can still function!

Last night, while putting you to bed, I said that I love you exactly the way that you are, and that I wouldn't change a thing about you. But then I caught myself, and thought... is that really true? Wouldn't I want you to eat more vegetables? Or to sleep better? Or to love having your hair washed? Or to let me brush your back teeth? But no. I do love you exactly as you are. All of those things are part of a whole you. There are reasons behind all these things you do. And I am learning more and more, every day, that I have to simply trust in you to be you. And my goodness, how I love the you that you are.

It's true.

Love Mummy.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Not talking about sleep

Dear Beanie,

It looks so cosy in there... can I come too?
I just wrote you a very long letter whinging about how little sleep you gave me last night, and apologising for all my crying this morning. It was just severe severe fatigue, my love. Possibly mixed with the massive emotional let-down from the craziness of the past week.

But I deleted that letter that talked about how you are, quite possibly, the world's worst sleeper. And about how you decided that now  is a great time to sleep, when you are in your pram and I can't get back home, upstairs, into my bed... (But see what I did there? I still told you... sneaky, eh?)

Instead, I want to tell you about how you have started saying 'Yes', and, of course, it is in relation to music. I always think that surely you don't want to listen to Kings of Convenience again, but everything else we try is met with a big fat no until track one of Kings begins. Then you say, 'Yes!', stand up, grab the closest teddy or two and start dancing. You have also started singing along, which is quite possible the cutest thing ever... though I may have already said this at some point? Forgive me, I'm too tired to know...

Dancing with Turtle and Teddy!
But here is you today with Teddy and Turtle, making them dance, giving them big 'MWAH' kisses and appearing very awake.

I love you, my little night monster. I really do. All the time.

Love Mummy.


Sunday, January 12, 2014

It was never going to be easy

Oh my beautiful beautiful little boy, we did it. We sat through that awful EEG and discovered that you are healthy.

Such a tired, sweaty boy after so much screaming
and struggling, and a very teary mama.
It was never going to be easy. Whenever I hear bloodcurdling screams from upstairs at bath time, I know that your daddy is washing your hair. And I STILL don't actually know if your last molars are partially, fully or not-at-all through yet (you drew blood from my finger in one very earnest attempt to find out). You are funny about people messing about around your head. I talked to you about it a little throughout the day, but I didn't want to discuss it so much that you became worried all day like me. I just told you that we were going to the doctor again, a new doctor, and that he was going to do some special tests on your head (yes, that's your head. And yes, there's my head.) to make sure everything is okay. Closer to the appointment I told you that maybe you'd have to wear a special hat, and you seemed okay with that.

But it was never going to be easy. Just like how you need time to get used to the idea of snow before you play with it, or how you need at least five half-hour visits to walk around the little toy ride-on tractor at the supermarket before you consider sitting on it, and just like how you stand and watch children play in an unfamiliar playground for twenty minutes before tentatively joining them yourself, you would have needed time to be okay with it. But as it was, we sat together on the bed, you screaming and thrashing about in my lap, your daddy pulling out everything I'd brought to distract you and keep you happy (games on the tablet and my phone, my computer with shows to watch, your favourite books, stickers, etc), you screaming so incredibly hard, going bright red  and sweating from head to toe, unable to catch your breath, sobbing. Oh the sobbing. You were just an absolute absolute wreck. I'm sorry that, in your short life so far, there is ever a situation where you would become so upset. The worst part for me was that I couldn't even rest my head against yours, or nuzzle you in to my chest while telling you I'm here, your daddy's here, you are safe, it won't last forever, everything will be okay... Each time you exhausted yourself so much that your head would flop against me, an electrode would come loose and the lady would have to reattach it. And then the screaming would start all over again.

I didn't lie to you. It didn't last forever. When it was over, you asked for a bottle and just collapsed in my arms exhausted. When the neurologist spoke to us afterwards, he said that your brain activity was absolutely normal and that you showed no signs of brain abnormalities, thank god. We looked at the videos of your wobbly leg and of your newborn twitches/seizures. He watched you run around, declared you (in jest) a genius when you managed to do puzzles well beyond your age, checked reflexes and head circumference (no surprises, You're huge! But, as he says, "geniuses need big heads.") and asked us some tough questions, such as how old were you when you began putting things away. There, with this lovely man, you were happy.

Happy again soon after the ordeal, the pressure marks from the electrodes still on your forehead.

It is incredible to me how you are able to bounce back from what appeared to be one of the most stressful situations of your life. You were were babbling, giggling and wiggling away like your normal self in no time. No lasting damage, it seems.

I'm away from you this weekend, little bean. I'm doing the Swiss national netball trials in Geneva. I wish I could be with you for an hour right now, that precious morning hour, give you a thousand hugs and tell you I always love you all the time no matter what, no matter where I am.

Love Mummy



Thursday, January 9, 2014

Heading to the Neurologist

Dear Beaniebean,

I miss you today.You are back at daycare after the Christmas holidays, and I miss you all over again.

I miss you today even more than usual because I'm still worried about you. Your wibbly wobbly leg has become much more stable, thank god, and might have only been some kind of muscle reaction after all. Last night I only saw your knee collapse twice, instead of twice a second, and it may have even been soemthing that you did on purpose, just to test it out. I can't be certain. You've had no more long periods of staring at nothing, though you are becoming more obsessed with music. Last night, for instance, instead of calling out, 'Mama!' when you woke in the night, you called out, 'Music! Music! Music!'. You still sit and actively listen to particular albums, and you've started singing along in a very concentrated manner too. It's really the most beautiful thing.
This is your 'listening to music' face. 
The neurologist called today, though, and said they have a cancellation tomorrow, so we are headed in. I'm close to vomiting with nerves, but I will do my absolute absolute absolute best to entirely internalise this and not spread the anxiety to you. The receptionist said that you will need to be pretty still and quiet for between one and two-and-a-half hours, and I couldn't help but laugh. Um, a toddler? Sitting quietly for 150 minutes? Deary me. So we will bring your favourite albums to listen to (Edward Sharp, The Nutcracker, Kings of Convenience, Vintage Children's Songs), we will bring my laptop with lots of episodes of the shows you sometimes watch before bed (Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom, Charlie and Lola, Thomas the Tank Engine), we will bring your favourite books (Where is the Green Sheep, Peepo, Alex's Outing, Little Cow, Brown Bear and all your first words books) and... hmm. Maybe I will get some stickers or something for you to play with.

I'm scared of how you will react when we are there, that you will be scared and hate the place. I'm scared of how I will feel when I look at you with all these electrodes stuck to your head. I'm scared that they will ask me to leave the room and leave you alone at some point. I'm scared of what they will discover.

But I know you are a big brave boy, and I will be a big brave mummy for you.

I love you. I love love love love love you. I love you all the time. I love you forever.

Love Mummy.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Seizures, or a Musical Prodigy?

Hi Bubbaloo.

I slept on the couch again last night because I'm worried about you, and that is the closest I can get to your room. We managed to get a doctor's appointment this morning, and you were your usual superstar self in the Doctor's presence, being so well behaved and in some kind of state of awe at the man's power... it's quite funny to watch you like this, actually, wide eyed, still and entirely accommodating. I wish I had taken a photo of you there, in your nappy, standing at the doctor's desk with your hand outstretched towards his computer. Then you said, "No. Doctor's poopah" and backed away. Every day you amaze me, little bean!

But here is a photo of you right this minute.
Asleep with your trillion dummies around you. 
We showed him the video of your wibbly wobbly leg and he seemed a bit worried too, saying that he actually has no idea what it is and that it certainly is strange. He checked your reflexes, poked around your tummy, checked your ears and your throat. He asked if you have ever lost consciousness, and I said no, but told him about your strange episode last night where you drifted off into your own little world while listening to music. Fifteen minutes of sitting still and apparent concentration is very odd for a toddler, you see, unless you really are a musical prodigy and were analysing it all. In fact, you have been quite fanatical about music in the past week, so it wouldn't surprise me if you were just sitting there concentrating. You have started to say, "Music ON" and then tell me what you want to hear. Either 'Happy Talk', 'Nu-kucka' (The Nutcracker), 'Oo Ah' (Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeroes) or 'kin kanananana' (Kings of Convenience). You will proceed to emphatically announce "NO" when I get it wrong, and we work through albums and songs until you get the one you were after. Then, you will either get up and dance dance dance, or you will sit with a smile on your face and just listen. So potentially you were just tired last night, and sat still for fifteen minutes listening. Craziness.

We were given two options: either wait a week and see if this business with your leg goes away on its own, or go to see a neurologist. We would tell him everything, show him the video, and see if he wants to give you an EEG to watch your brain waves and check for seizures. I reminded the doctor about the very strange twitches and quivers you had as a newborn, that evil fill-in doctor just put down to extreme hunger (sigh... breastfeeding... sigh...). I have never felt entirely comfortable with that explanation, but these twitches went away after you began to eat more... so I didn't follow through with second opinions and the like. I'm now kicking myself for that. After I told your doctor this today, he gave us the referral to the neurologist straight away. That makes me happy. I just want to know that either everything is fine, or this is what is wrong and this is how we can fix it. I'm not a 'wait and see' kind of person.

Meanwhile, you had a great sleep last night, while I tossed and turned on the couch! You woke up at 10.30 for a little milk, then slept RIGHT THROUGH until 6.30! Or maybe you were unconscious all the time... Ha. Look at me, finding the humour.

I love you, my happy happy little monkey.

Love Mummy.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Worried about my little genius

Dear Beanie,

I'm worried about you, little one. I know that comes with the territory of being a parent, but I didn't know that the kind of worry I would sometimes feel would be so all-encompassing, would make me go cold all over for hours on end, as if all the blood were rushing from my body into yours. I have always been a catastrophiser, and I fear that I always will be, so chances are that everything is perfectly normal and when we go to the doctor tomorrow you will be so perfect that all that blood will then rush to my cheeks in embarrassment of being 'that mother'.

But before any of that, I want to tell you what a genius you are! I know it goes against everything we are all being taught now to call you a genius, as I should only be praising your hard work and effort, but geez. Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, you know? :) It seems that my months and months of babbling on and on to you about everything everywhere and reading and singing to you is really paying off. Your language skills are going gang-busters, and I couldn't be more proud! You are now nineteen months old, and you have moved well beyond saying only nouns. You now have adjectives for those nouns and are even saying sentences. And you're also speaking a lot of German too! Yikes, your brain must be exhausted. But the most amazing thing of all? You know your colours. It has just happened in the past week, but you can say yellow, orange, green, red, blue and white, and you use them appropriately. Your favourite thing is to yell out when you see an orange man at the cross-walk. But you now have labelled all your balls and cars by colour, and no longer only yell out 'bus' or 'boat', but label them as a red or yellow bus, and a red, yellow, orange, green or blue boat. I love how things like this just happen organically, and since you've been doing it, I realise how often I tell you what colour cars, flowers and buildings are as we walk.

Genius! Look at how you colour-co-ordinated your Lego!
Or.. maybe that was your daddy... 
You said 'I love you' to Daddy a little while ago at bed time, and now you often say it during out going to bed ritual. This is surely a moment that everybody dreams of, and I'm sure it is one we will never forget: your little sleepy voice in the corridor, saying back to your daddy, 'I wuh woo'.

Don't worry, I'm still happy for you to be a hair-dresser or a bus-driver.

But I'm worried about you, little muffin. Yesterday evening one of your legs started quivering while you were standing still. Your knee seemed to just repeatedly be collapsing on you. By the time you went to bed, it was affecting your walking a little, and it seemed you were walking strangely and squatting to test it out a little. Then, as I put you in your cot, you did the most enormous projectile vomit. But you slept well (as well as usual, anyhow) and were very happy today, though your leg was the same and you don't seem to be walking too readily. You also have always been a bit of a dreamer, but tonight while we were listening to music, you sat on the couch, unmoving, for about ten to fifteen minutes. I'm doing my best to not catastrophise these probably unrelated and entirely normal things into some awful neurological condition or paralysis, or epilepsy... this is where I absolutely abhor this idea of mother's instinct. My instinct always tells me everything is wrong! So we'll call the doctor at 8am tomorrow and get that leg of yours checked out and chat about the rest.

I feel a bit better now that I'm not holding all that irrationality inside. I'm sorry if I'm always a drama queen!

Still walking this afternoon by the FREEZING cold fountain,
desperate to get your hands and feet in there. 

Oh my love, you will never understand how much I love you.

Love Mummy.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Conquering the Fireworks

Happy New Year, little Beanie!

I am so proud of you today. We had a wonderful last day of 2013 with our friends. You played your little socks off, then went down for an epic three hour midday nap in their bed. What a magic sleeper! I declare 2014 to be the year of sleep! And fun. :)

Fun with friends and kinetic sand!
All through the day, I could feel a little bubble of anxiety in my tummy about the night ahead. Here in Switzerland, anybody can go and buy fireworks and set them off anywhere, and it always seems that all of Switzerland chooses to set off the biggest ones right underneath your window. Five months ago was your last fireworks experience, and it was not a good one. You were absolutely scared to death, and no cuddling, explaining, watching or singing could fix it.

This time we had a plan. We spent about twenty minutes before bedtime watching fireworks on the television (thanks youtube!), gradually turning up the volume and making the big bangs the most fun. By the time we finished watching and explaining, you were laughing and saying, "Wow, fireworks, wow!". Okay, so there was a small moment in the middle where you started crying, but we dealt with it and moved on.

The fireworks are everywhere!
At bedtime, while I put you in your pyjamas and we quietly talked about everything we did that day (while, as usual, you played with my nose, my ears, my eyelashes and my chin, starting to get sleepy), we talked again about the fireworks and how it was the last night of the year, and that means it is a special night. I told you that if you hear a big bang, you don't have to be scared, it's just those magical lights in the sky. If you do become frightened, you can call for me or daddy to come to you and we can have a cuddle and watch the lights, but there is no need to be scared.

On went the white noise. And off went the craziest fireworks ever!

And you know what? You woke up once at 12.30 for your half, very diluted bottle, and never once flinched at the big bangs and flashing lights around. You rolled over and went back to sleep with no problem. You slept until 7.30am! YOWSERS I am proud of you! And I'm proud of your daddy and I for finding a way to help you understand and get through it.

May 2014 be a year of more fun, more adventure, more relaxation and more love (is that even possible?).

I love you,
Love Mummy.