This evening we were sitting side by side on swings and Isaac mentioned in an off-handed way, "I have aquatic telepathic powers with matches: if I just THINK about wet matches lighting, they get wet, and they catch fire." Now this is a superpower that will surely come in handy someday! Like, when camping in the rain. Or even camping in dry weather– because as you will note, the matches will telepathically get wet and then light nonetheless.
We're back from vacation down south. Much to report, and yet so very tired. It's not the lolling around on the beach that is tiring, per se, it's all the getting there and getting back. And while there, it's all the chasing of children, the endless imperative to keep them from harm. The beach has obvious dangers for toddlers and kindergartners alike. The boarding house itself seemed especially fraught with stairs and splinters and potential ways to break one's little neck. Also, there were other guests to consider. Although it was officially "kids' week" and the other parents all pitched in and were patient, ours were the youngest kids there. This created a familiar impossibility of ever finishing a meal or a sentence without having to run off after a stray child.
All the sunshine and sand were so restoring, though. I even liked the heat (most of the time) and the furious rainstorms. I saw this lightning over the ocean one night– it was GOLD and it didn't just strike the black water quickly– it SAT there, a jagged vertical bar for an extremely long time. Must have been way out there though– I never did hear the thunder.
Elias is in an especially self-destructive phase. Some of his new ways to harm himself: running into pillars, dropping things on his feet. Yesterday, our first day back, I was inundated with landlady tasks and unpacking and catching up on everything. The dryer at the rental house was broken and I was on the phone trying to get someone to fix it. (So it begins!) Meanwhile Elias took my keys and wandered into the other room. When I got off the phone he beckoned me to come see what he was doing. When I got into the living room, I nearly had a heart attack. He had poked a key deeply into an outlet. So deeply that it was just hanging there…! Why he was not brutally shocked, I can only suppose was because he chose by sheer luck a car key. It was too fat to go in there all the way, and it had rubber handle on it, which perhaps provided insulation.
OH GOD.
So in the midst of everything else I went out and bought two new packs of outlet covers and walked the whole house, covering them all again. We did this a year ago, but somehow over time half of them had wandered away. (You use the outlet, and forget to put the cover back, repeat.)
I now have both boys for three solid weeks, with no respite, before school begins. Ben is absorbed in union negotiations, which are making him miserable, and thus he needs support from home, as opposed to shouldering burdens the minute he walks in. That is to say, Help.
I've been having serious trouble with Isaac too. I spent my scant spare time at Pawleys reading "Raising Your Spirited Child." That is, "the child who is MORE intelligent, perceptive, sensitive, persistent and energetic"– Isaac to a T. Apparently 10-15% of children are thus blessed/afflicted. Really the book is a godsend. I think it has helped me a lot. We've been having horrible tantrums and rages (both of us) in recent months. From my point of view he is just relentless. From his point of view, who knows? In any case, I hope that the new perspective I gained from reading this book will help.
We now have a code word: "I'm heading into the red zone." to tell each other when the madness is coming back. If possible, we can then leave the situation, stop the inputs at their source, and prevent the horrible explosion from happening. We can try this thing I call a "gentle out" (instead of a time out– timeouts stopped working a month or two ago, when Isaac starting using them as an opportunity to destroy his room.) That's where I take him to a quiet place and try to calm him down by rubbing his back and talking to him quietly. I have managed to head off some tantrums this way.
But this sort of thing is not always possible. Just yesterday, we were shopping for groceries, and Isaac's behavior was spiraling downward. He was running, climbing in and out of the cart. He grabbed the coffee bean dispenser and dumped out way more coffee beans than were called for, he gave Elias a cup of water, and Elias dumped it down my back and all over the floor, etc. My goals retreated to just getting the bare minimum so we could make dinner, but still this proved almost impossible. Finally we were at the point of being out the door, thank god, and heading for the car, when he really lost it. Like the lying down and kicking kind of lost it. My goal was to get us physically to the car (meanwhile, as I was trying to talk Isaac down, Elias in the cart was pulling my hair). Pushing the cart with one hand, trying to restrain/carry/prevent Isaac from getting hit by a car with the other hand. At least Elias wasn't trying to get free from the cart at the same time.
Oh lord give me strength.
Someone tell me it's just a phase.
But looking at it, there were reasons that it went like that. It was our first day back, and Isaac was freaking out just from the transition home from vacation, and to the new reality of three weeks of nothing before school starts. And there were all the errands. Piling up. Needing to be done. All the in and out of stores and places, getting Lena and Zane Grey from the boarding place, and so on.
I don't know how I could've handled it better, given the imperatives to get at least the critical things done. But I suppose it helps to understand where it all went wrong, at least. It's no mystery. The question now is how to make the next three weeks tolerable and avoid killing each other. At this moment it's day two, early morning, and Isaac is still asleep. I will now try to take many deep cleansing breaths and prepare for the day. Elias is climbing on me though, and not exactly a non-issue. He's a handful too!
Maybe in a few days we'll settle in though. Could it be nice to have three weeks of freedom? Maybe?