Making her speak experiment so far

We're holding firm that Middie Biddie has to use the word for something before she gets it.  Of course we only do this for objects that we know she firmly knows the word for.

It's been rough but I think we're on the right path.  Just yesterday when I blogged about starting this, the tantrum and whining for bubbles lasted 45 minutes before I could coax out any utterance that sounded like "bubbles".  Today, about 5 minutes.  She would either finally say it, or she would get sick of whining and go do something else.

At one point I was chatting on the phone with my mom while Middie Biddie danced on the couch around me and I heard "bubble?"  Boom!  "You want bubbles?  Ok, let's do bubbles!  Sorry Mom, gotta go, she asked for bubbles!"

She also asked for "jungle gym" which means climbing on me and then diving over my shoulder while I sit on the couch.

So, yeah.  I wasn't expecting this much progress this quickly.  I'm sure there's a whole lot more struggle ahead of me, but my afternoon wasn't nearly as rough today as it was yesterday.


Now if only we could fix her sleep issues.  She's waking up every night around 2am and isn't able to get back to sleep.  Last night I brought her into our bed and she actually went right to sleep.  Normally when I try this it's a disaster because she'll lie down for about 15 minutes and then get excited and try to start wrestling around the bed, then we get fed up, put her back into her crib and listen to her scream for an hour before she passes out.  But last night she snuggled in and fell asleep.

Anyone have any ideas as to why she's waking up every night?  I don't think it's night terrors because she's perfectly consolable.  She just sits up, cries, if we go in to check her diaper or rock her, she's perfectly happy until we put her back in the crib again.  It's pretty much guaranteed that she will spend 60-90 minutes crying before falling asleep whether we don't go in at all, or whether we rock her for an hour solid before putting her back down.

We're getting tired around here.

I know it's been all about Middie Biddie lately, so here's a couple of adorable pictures of Teeny Tiny.  I do pay attention to her too!

 

Making her talk

Middie Biddie can talk a lot more than she does.  I've made the mistake of continuously trying to figure out what she wants and providing it for her without making her learn to ask for what she wants.  I never really transitioned from the constant guessing and evaluating a babies wants and desires to properly teaching them how to communicate their desires properly.  I think about how long it's been since they've eaten and just provide the next meal or snack without being prompted in any way.

As a result, I'm constantly hearing reports of children much younger than the girls, like a year younger, speaking more complexly than my girls do.  I still don't get to hear any of their thoughts.  I don't post any funny things kids say here because they don't say those funny things.

Teeny Tiny has taken some initiative and will occasionally tell us what she wants.  Any time either of them says something like "banana" or whatever, we say "you asked for a banana very nicely so Mama will get you a banana!"  So if they ask or communicate what they want, they get it almost without fail (with the exception of treats, those are only if they ate well that day).

For example, I have curtains separating my office from the main living space.  I leave them wrapped around a pole so they are out of the way, and Teeny Tiny has learned to say "curtain please!" when she wants me to put them down so she can run through them or use them for peekaboo.  If she just tugs on them, I remind her to say "curtain please", she does, and all is well.

But Middie Biddie is a whole other story.  She won't ask, she'll reach for what she wants and cries/whines. She's perfectly capable of speaking, she's entertaining herself in her crib right now blabbering away.  She counts all the time, will correctly identify random letters about 90% of the time, will tell me what all the animals say, she just won't use words to communicate what she wants!  Speaking is entertainment to her rather than communication. The frequency, strength, and persistence of the crying whine makes my ears bleed and it's becoming a constant thing.  It frazzles me the same way newborn screeching frazzled me.  I'll remind her endlessly to say "curtain please" and she just refuses.  I know she's perfectly capable, but once she wants something, she's already upset at not getting it and has started the tantrum to get what she wants.  Once a toddler tantrum starts, that's it, you really can't stop it to get a desired behavior.  So the problem is, she asks for what she wants by throwing a tantrum!

We need to put a stop to this and it's going to be painful.  I went to work on it tonight.  She was doing her whining and I figured out that she wanted me to blow bubbles.  She can say "bubble" just fine.  It was one of her first words, the first thing she ever identified unprompted, and she yells out "BUBBLES!!!" whenever we play with them.

She whined, and cried, and got very distressed reaching for the bubbles.  I kept telling her "say bubbles and I'll blow bubbles.  No honey, I can't until you ask.  Just say bubbles.  What is this?  Is it the bubbles?" and so on and so forth for 45 agonizing minutes.  I showed her videos of people blowing bubbles.  She tantrumed away, trying desperately to get me to blow bubbles but I held my ground.  Finally, FINALLY during one of the videos, she finally uttered "buhbuh" and I very enthusiastically declared "You want bubbles?  Yay!  Let's blow bubbles!!!!" and then it was bubblepalooza in the house!  Every so often I would stop and say "What do you want?" and she would say "Bubbles" and yay!  More bubbles!  Then I started to say "I want bubbles!" before each blow because she parrots a lot so she would repeat "I want bubbles" and be rewarded with a room full of bubbles.  That was our activity for about a half hour until she got bored and moved on to something else.

I'm calling it a victory but it's one small battle in a long war.  I'm frustrated that I'm listening to her chatter in her bed when she won't talk in person.  And I'm so unbelievably sick of saying the word "bubbles" I could scream.  But if we want her to start communicating with words rather than whining, we can't continue to allow the whining to work.

Bubbles.

Death in the family

This is one of those blog posts where I really don't have much to say, but I can't say nothing either.  I feel like whatever I write will hurt K's feelings when he reads it because it's not enough, but I don't have much to say and I can't say nothing.  So here goes.

K's mother passed away yesterday.  We knew she's been ill for some time, but an immediate passing was not on our radar.

K called his father several days ago to be met with his father panicked on the other end asking if he was returning a call from his mother whom he had just found unconscious.  K was flabbergasted as he was just calling for a random chat and of course his father had to get off the phone as he had to tend to the emergency at hand.  There was evidence that she had been that way for some time so I think we all pretty much knew what would be happening.  She was physically alive, but non-responsive.

After a day, K's father called and told him to get himself to Florida as quickly as possible as the doctors were saying it was a matter of time since there was nothing that could be done for her.  He was on a plane 3 hours later and arrived the following afternoon.  K got to say his final goodbyes and saw his father through her final couple of days until she passed yesterday morning.

He'll be in Florida until the end of the week, coming home on Friday.

This came as quite a surprise, but not a shock.  Like I said, we knew she had been quite ill, but in the back of our minds we thought it was a temporary thing.  That at some point she would rally, and start working towards health again.  We had been discussing taking the girls out to visit once they were old enough to not be nightmares on such a long flight but we never really determined exactly what age that would be.  But we had been talking about it in sooner rather than later terms over the last few weeks in light of K's grandparents passing.

We're very glad K opted to attend his grandfathers funeral a couple of months ago.  It was the first time he'd seen his mother in about 2 years and we're grateful that they had some time together before her passing.

I know when I started this blog it was very much about going into depth of my feelings and thinky thoughts and really exploring the inner workings of emotions.  I hope you all don't mind if I skip that for the time being.   It's been a whirlwind couple of months of so many things we're figuring out, so much we're changing, so many people passing, I'm kind of thinky thoughted out even though I haven't been chronicling all those thinky thoughts here.  I'm kind of emptying my head of thinky thoughts for the time being so I can help relieve K of his burden when he gets home. I'm sure he'll have plenty of thinky thoughts he'll need to get out of his head and heart when I see him next.

Goodnight Maureen.  May your rest be comfortable and everlasting.

Big change a comin

No, I'm not pregnant, I'll just get that out of the way right off the bat.

No, instead, it looks like it's time for a new house.  We've been talking about it in the abstract for a year or two now but it looks like the day has come.  I finally had an inspector come out to investigate the stains in our bathroom and just as I suspected, we have a black mold infestation and a leaky roof.

We live in a pre-1976 manufactured home on a great plot of land.  The house was built a month before all of the new quality codes and regulations went into place so now we're having problem after problem. The land is worth about $100k so if we tried to sell this location with the house on it to someone, they would need to get a mortgage, but due to that 1976 cut off date, no lender would ever touch it so no one would be able to buy the two together.

We've been throwing money into this pit for a couple of years now, replacing this, upgrading that, and it's just getting to the point where we're trying to throw bandaids at a gaping wound.  Every dollar we spend on this place is a dollar we'll never see again.  The roof needs to be patched at the moment and fully replaced within 5 years.  Despite all of the new flooring, there's still a hint of cat pee in the air that we simply can't get rid of without tearing out the entire bottom of the house and even then it might still be here.  And who knows what else is going to disintegrate in the days ahead.  We could put tens of thousands of dollars into patching this house (as we have been) or just cut our losses and start over.

So we're now shopping.  We've been afraid of this moment for quite a while because money is tight every month as it is.  But now that we're actually looking at prices and crunching numbers, we're realizing just how silly it's been to be afraid of this (we still are of course).  While we have a lot more research to do, it looks like we can get a new mortgage for a brand new manufactured house that will be bigger, more bedrooms, be practically maintenance free to live in for about 10 years due to being brand new, and have it put on the land that we already own here.

Once we have a decent house here, we would have a multitude of life choices that we simply don't have now.  We can live here forever if we choose, we can move and rent it out for a profit over the mortgage every month, we could sell it and have enough for a solid down payment on another house, whatever.  But we would no longer be financially trapped (I hope) by a sinking ship.

I talked to my uncle at some length today because this is a world I know very little about and he's been dealing in a variety of types of real estate for decades, including having some knowledge of manufactured homes.  After talking through the situation and some numbers, he says that this is probably our best option.  It feels really good to have someone far more knowledgeable tell me that he would reach the same conclusions about the best way to move forward as we have.  He told me that the price of new manufactured homes doesn't really change according to the real estate market.  Right now, we're at the top of a bubble meaning house prices are at their highest price, but mortgage rates are at the lowest point.  But a $100k house from a manufacturer is going to cost that same $100k when the market flips back over, but the interest rates would be higher so it's best to buy it now while we can get the loan at record low rates.  Part of the fear of this whole thing is that we're making this decision rather fast and that makes us feel like it's a rash, foolish decision.  But he confirms that it's actually a wise decision and fast doesn't mean foolish in this case.

The next few months are going to be terrifying and stressful while we do research and make final decisions.  I don't know how we're going to come up with the money for a down payment (though we were given some from an inheritance on K's side of the family recently).  We also have to figure out how to get the money for the removal of the building we already have here.  My uncle says that there are people who would buy this and haul it away even with all of the problems, and while I doubt it, I'll take his word for it and see if I can find someone who will take it off our hands.  If we can get someone to give us a bit of cash for the living expenses of being homeless for 2 months and take care of hauling this away (saving us the cost of doing that ourselves), we'll jump at the offer and clear our asses out of here right quick!  Otherwise, I dunno, we might have to get really creative about fundraising some money really quick.  Yes, I might actually be selling my house on Craigslist!

To get over the fear and anxiety that this all causing, I'm shopping and day dreaming.  For our budget, it looks like we can get just about everything we would want.  It turns out 3-4 bedrooms is actually doable, we might be able to get a bonus room that would allow me to do pottery in the house rather than in the shed in the backyard, the process of clearing the land might actually include gutting the rock garden in the front yard leaving us free to put down sod and have a beautiful yard for the girls.  Hell, it would be worth it almost just for that!  A landscaper quoted us about $5k-$7k just to take out the rocks so that was a dream we gave up on and now it might be taken care of as a side effect of this whole thing!

If we can actually swing this, I'm looking forward to it.  I'd say about 75% of my life stress and financial struggles are due to this house that doesn't work and is falling apart.  To have that wiped out in one fell swoop, ahhhhhh!  Sweet relief.  Knowing my kids won't be going to school with that faint smell of cat pee that permeates their home is such a load off my mind.

Now, what to do about the cats?  One of the cats is in the process of dying.  We aren't sure which cat has done the majority of the peeing, but we know that he's done a significant portion of it.  We're hoping that once he's gone, the other male will no longer do it in response.  We'll probably be putting the remaining male on prozac as the vet says that sometimes stops this stress behavior.  But if nothing else, we're probably going to investigate a second layer of flooring in the master bedroom, one with a layer in between that floor and the original floor that comes with the house.  Then we'll keep him locked in there (he chooses to stay in the bedroom away from the kids already) and if he pees, sorry, but he's gone.  We'll try him out in the new house without another male to compete with, but if he continues the behavior, he can't live in my new house. Then we would pull up the floor he peed on and have an undamaged floor underneath.  Before anyone gets on my case about being mean about the cat, please remember that we've put up with this for 10 years and that we are basically losing our house because we chose to keep the cat despite this problem.  I'm done.  We'll find a humane way to rehome him, maybe make him an outside cat or find someone who will tolerate the urine, but I will not have another house destroyed by a pet with bad behavior.

So, anyone in the Pacific Northwest want an old house or a peeing cat?  We're practically giving them away!