Ocean Isle Beach—The Trip There

July 24, 2011

James has no idea he has a 12-hour car ride ahead of him. (Andy is tying the gate to the top of the van, after we ran out of room inside of the van.)

I’m pretty sure I packed most everything baby-related in the house.

We listened to Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” and the boys laugh and cry, and Sophie laugh and ask how much longer (over and over and over) throughout the drive. We also managed to drive through tar, which Andy had to scrape off with a tire iron (he didn’t want to use the tire iron, but resorted to it after stepping in a mound of fire ants and through poison ivy while trying to find a suitable stick, instead). Somehow, stuff like this always happens to us on car trips.

Sometimes, the beach seemed very far away. To all of us. But all in all, Sophie did as well as can be expected considering she’s 3. Especially because she refused to play with any of her toys (including a new one, gifted to her from us specifically for the trip) or watch any of her DVDs on the portable DVD player because, as she said, she wanted to “save them all for the beach.” So, for the most part, she sat in her seat and looked out the window the entire drive, despite our repeated attempts to convince her that it was OK to play with her toys and watch her shows during the drive and at the beach. Andy claims this personality trait, unreasonable stubbornness, is my fault. Stubbornness, maybe. Unreasonable, no. I’m sure, in her mind, her patience was entirely reasonable. But oh did it make for a long trip for her. I still don’t know how she did it.

We ended up spending the night at Katy and Tom’s house, in Winston-Salem, NC. We arrived around 2am. Katy and Tom graciously moved Colleen to their room, and I put James in Colleen’s crib, Owen in Colleen’s pack-and-play, and then spent two hours trying to convince them that it was 2am, not morning. I ended up sleeping, in my clothes, in the nursery’s glider. We were up at 7am (why is it children never sleep in?) and on the road again.

More Dickens. More laughing. More crying. More not playing or watching anything (other than the passing scenery outside the van windows, growing more and more ocean-like the longer we drove) from Sophie.

I think car trips are most difficult for crawlers. An infant’s idea of stretching is simply being held. A toddler or child’s idea of stretching is running around (easy to do at a rest stop). But a crawler needs to crawl and clean crawling space is often difficult to come by. So stops for food often turned into outdoor picnics—here we’re eating at a school, closed up for the summer. (And here, although still many miles away, we could finally smell the ocean. I loved that.)

We made it—our beach house in Ocean Isle Beach, NC.

Owen meeting his cousin Colleen for the first time.

Owen shoving his finger in Colleen’s eye for the first time.

All four children seeing the ocean for the first time.

James eating sand for the first time.

And I cried, for the first of many times, during this trip. I spent many summer vacations as a child at the beach. And even as a little girl I knew, someday, I would take my family to the ocean. And I crave the ocean. And it had been a long time. And something about the heavy ocean-scented air; and watching Sophie, wide-eyed as she took in the enormity of it all; and seeing the small marks my sons made as they crawled through shell-littered sand for the first time; and putting the tip of my finger in my mouth so as to taste the salt (as I always do)—I was overcome. And grateful. And suddenly, the long drive and lack of sleep seemed totally, totally worth it.

“Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.” —E.B. White

Sophie’s New Trick

July 22, 2011

Sophie to me, as I’m coming out of the bathroom: “Mom, GUESS WHAT!”

Me: “What?”

Sophie: “I can carry the boys all by myself now.”

Me: “What?”

Sophie: “I can carry the boys all by myself now.”

Me: “You picked up the boys.”

Sophie: “Yes, and I carried them all around the entryway.”

And then she showed me.

Turns out she can pick up one of her brothers and carry him all around the entryway.

(The boys, by the way, are not at all thrilled by her newly acquired skill.)

“At the end of the day, a loving family should find everything forgivable.” —Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer

Owen’s 1st Haircut

July 19, 2011

Someday I imagine Owen twisting his head away from me, pleading me to stop running my fingers through his hair. But he can’t talk yet. And he doesn’t twist yet. And I love his hair. (Even when sticky with cereal bar in it.) It’s thick. And shiny. And there’s now enough of it that if you put him to bed too soon after a bath, he wakes up with parts of it sticking up and out and away. I realize that, to strangers, this simply looks like bad parenting. (Doesn’t that mother own a brush?) But I find it terribly endearing.

People started saying, “Have you cut his hair?” “His hair is so long!” “He needs a haircut.” (Andy, especially.) I ignored them. In part, because I loved his hair the way that it was. Shorter meant less material to run my fingers through. But also, in part, because it took so long for Sophie to grow her hair. I wasn’t used to a baby of mine needing a haircut so early, so young (and yet, he’s 1!).

Nicholena, who cuts my hair—and Sophie’s hair—carefully trimmed Owen’s shiny hairs as he sat on Andy’s lap. I took one-handed pictures, while trying to calm a tearful James in my other arm and convince Sophie that she didn’t have to go potty just yet (it was a different experience from Sophie’s first haircut).

He was so good. And when finished, he looked so much … older. More little boy. Less baby. But he’s not twisting away. Yet.

“Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.” —P. G. Wodehouse

Cousins

July 13, 2011

Colleen and Sophie, June 2011

“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” —George Santayana

Lollipops for Father’s Day

July 13, 2011

Sophie helped me make muffins and wrap the two presents she chose for Andy—yogurt melts and lollipops. I talked and talked and talked to her about the meaning of Father’s Day and the very idea of presents (something the recipient would want, not something the giver would want) and still, after a very long and trying shopping trip, that’s what we ended up with. Upon giving him the gifts she quietly asked if maybe he would share … (He also got two video games, though, to make up for this.)

She did make a lovely card.

Sophie then insisted on a tea party with her real tea set. Again, I tried to persuade her to do activities Andy would rather do, but the meaning of the holiday was lost on her this year. Maybe next year. (And thanks, my love, for being so happy and willing and generally wonderful, regardless.)

“Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.” —Bill Cosby

Happy Birthday, Mom!

July 13, 2011

“We turn not older with years, but newer every day.” —Emily Dickinson

Mean Stories and Sleep

July 7, 2011

These days, bedtime takes about two hours. This includes baths, pjs, cups and bottles of milk, stories read, sound machine on, night lights on, fans on, overhead lights off, poem recited, kisses goodnight. All of this takes about 30 minutes. The rest of the time we’re convincing Sophie that “stories” aren’t going to come out of her floor and eat her.

We have no idea how or why she imagined these “stories” up. But that’s what she calls them—”stories.” There are two. One is a giraffe story. The other, a pig story. And while she’s in bed they come up out of her floor and cause her to scream. Loudly. When she screams we run to her room and find her, wide-eyed, red-faced, cheeks and nose wet with tears and snot, absolutely and completely terrified, so panicked she can hardly control herself. (And, of course, this is about when the boys wake up crying, because of the screaming.)

At first we sat Sophie down and talked a lot about make-believe and reality. We talked about the nature of stories (I find it so interesting she calls them that). We had long discussions about what’s real and what’s not. This only made her angrier. She accused us of not believing her (which was a fair accusation because we of course, do not). We thought, by convincing her these stories weren’t real, her fear would lesson. But her terror, to our deep dismay, only grew. Not because the stories were coming more frequently, but because, I believe, she felt like she could no longer count on those she loved and leaned on for support most—her parents.

So we did some research. And contacted our pediatrician. And discovered that she’s too young to fully grasp reality versus make-believe (which is still troublesome to me as I truly believe she grasps it when reading books and watching TV—maybe I’m wrong). But after sleeping with her in our bed night after night (feeling her roll and toss and fling her limbs into our faces and finally giving up, letting her sleep horizontally to the headboard, arms across Andy’s face and feet ever-so-randomly kicking me in the stomach) we were willing to try anything—even if it meant telling a lie, which is, that we believed her.

So the next night all three of us got on our hands and knees and had a talk with those stories. We banged our fists on the floor and yelled, “Stories! You listen here. You are not allowed to come out when Sophie is in her room. Do you understand?” Three ears to the carpet, we waited for a response. I jumped up. “They said yes, Sophie! They promised!”

Things got a little better after that. We’d put her to bed, bang on the floor and yell at the stories, wait for a response, and then we’d promise to check on her until she fell asleep. First one minute, then three, then five, then 10 and 10 and 10 until she drifted off. Every night, we’d have the same conversation:

Sophie: “How many minutes?”

Us: “10 minutes.”

Sophie: “Is that long? Or short?”

Us: “Not long.”

Sophie: “Not 10 minutes. One minute.”

Us: “Let’s try 10 minutes to start with this time. Just see how it goes. It’s not long, promise.”

Sophie: “No! One minute!” (The panic look begins to blanket her face.)

Us: “OK, OK, one minute.”

Sophie: “One minute.”

Us: “One minute.”

Sophie: “Promise you’ll be back?”

Us: “We promise.”

Sophie: “Promise you’ll be back?” (Her voice is higher pitched this time, concerned.”

Us: “We promise!”

We never got rid of the minutes completely, but we did manage to stop her from waking up in the middle of the night and convincing us (bleary-eyed and willing to say yes to anything just so we could go back to sleep) that she should sleep with us. And we did this by pure bribery.

After sleeping through the night in her own bed for a week, she earned her first Build-A-Bear.

(We let her pick out everything and oh, what a bear it was—neon hearts, glittery ballerina outfit, sparkly pink plastic shoes, multiple hair bows and a voice saying “I love you I love you I love you” every time you squeeze its hand.)

Success.

Or so we thought.

After a long vacation, the stories are back. The pig one and the giraffe one, both hell-bent on eating her and taking up our evenings, night after night.

If we were having bedtime issues because she simply didn’t want to go to bed, I’d let her cry. I’d let her scream. She’s 3. And I don’t have much patience for that. But our daughter is absolutely terrified of these stories. In her mind, they’re real. And the look of terror that crosses her face when they “come out of the floor” scares me so much that sometimes I wonder if I’m trapped in some horror movie and they really are there and I just can’t see them—that’s how panicked she gets.

We decided we can’t let her sleep in our bed anymore—when she’s in our bed, none of us get a good night’s sleep.

So now Andy curls up under a blanket on the floor, right where the stories come out. And he stays there, while I put the boys to bed. And he stays there until she falls asleep, while I do the downstairs clean-up alone—a chore that used to go much faster when both of us were doing it. Sophie is slow to fall asleep—she plays with her doll, sings to herself, flips through books and usually only nods off a good hour after being put to bed.

I would be so ever-grateful for help with this. Advice. Solutions that worked for you. Yes, it’s frustrating because our nights—the one time we have to read, watch a show, game, clean, be together—are being eaten up with this whole going-to-sleep process. But what’s even more frustrating to me is that my daughter truly believes a giraffe or pig “story” is going to eat her up, literally. I would do most anything to never again see that look of sheer terror on her face. She’s 3. Her life should be void of such panic and worry and concern. As someone who is always battling stress I don’t wish that type of intense stress on her—not now and honestly, not ever.

So thanks in advance. And hopefully, soon, bedtime at the Uhl household will be filled with silly, thoughtful, funny, serious and beautiful stories only—stories children look forward to, not fear.

“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” —Andre Gide

Daddy’s Rainy Day Fort

July 5, 2011

The boys loved this fort (Sophie’s bedroom fort was too fragile for them to play in). And, if you look closely, you can see someone else who loved it, too.

“Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” —Chili Davis