Trials and tribulations

• life

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

[imported from livejournal and backdated]

It just occurred to me I don’t know what a tribulation is.

Dictionary says:

trib·u·la·tion (trby-lshn) Pronunciation Key

n.

Great affliction, trial, or distress; suffering: Their tribulation has finally passed. See Synonyms at trial.

An experience that tests one’s endurance, patience, or faith. See Synonyms at burden1.

Now I know. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks, but nothing really major or difficult, just tiring.

Not long after Smidge was born, Tiny went through a weird phase. He retreated into his room, climbed into his bed and tucked himself in. JJ went in with him thinking he was tired and offering a bedtime story. Tiny pushed him away, asked that the light be switched off (“dight off”) and didn’t want JJ around. JJ turned the light off, listened to Tiny scream, walked back in to comfort him and was again told to get out. JJ came up to me telling me what a brave boy Tiny was. We talked it over for a little while and then JJ decided that he should probably go talk to Tiny about being a big brother. I asked if he wanted me to talk to him or be there or if it should just be a boy thing, and JJ said he would talk to him.

I snuggled with Smidge for a bit, then once she was well asleep went to see how the guys were doing. I stood in the doorway when it sounded like JJ had finished his chat, poor Tiny was lying in his bed sobbing quietly. JJ said he suspected that Tiny thought that now we had the new baby he was getting shafted into his own room. I told Tiny that we both loved him very much and we were very proud of him, and that I knew it was a lot for a little boy to process, but the new baby didn’t mean that we loved him any less, and that if he wanted he could sleep in his own room but he was more than welcome to continue sleeping in our bed (or in his cot attached to our bed, he’s getting kinda large, but same principle :P)

I went in then and gave him a cuddle and a kiss. We talked a bit more, and Tiny suddenly realised we were all in his room, Smidge was out on the futon by herself, and it was a cold night and she was only wearing a singlet and a nappy. He quickly ran to her drawer (the middle one), ripped it open, grabbed a one piece suit out and raced out to the futon as fast as he could. We followed him out there and he was holding the suit out to Smidge and looking at us with a very concerned expression on his face.

JJ was touched, and praised Tiny on thinking about his baby sister even with all the emotional upheaval he himself was going through.

The next couple of nights we spent getting very little sleep as Smidge pretty much slept through the night (she woke twice, once at 2-3am and again at 5-7am for long feeds) and Tiny kept waking up every hour for a feed. I humoured him for the first couple of nights as we figured he was having attachment issues, plus we discovered he had some more molars coming up and thus was off his food. This made a lot of runny pooey nappies for JJ which he wasn’t overly thrilled with.

Tiny’s molars seem a lot better lately. Think h still might have attachment issues though which is why he might still be at me so much. He does eat on occasion but seems to prefer the boob to food. I’ve had to enforce a “no nah-nu til if you’ve had some food” rule, he has massive tantrums about it sometimes but I don’t give him boob til he’s had something to eat, and usually once he starts eating he will usually take in a decent amount. Then if he remembers he gets his nah-nu afterwards.

I will usually tandem feed them if Tiny is extremely restless or cranky, otherwise he has to wait his turn. I have explained and keep explaining that Smidge is a little baby and has no teeth and thus needs the nah-nu because she can’t eat, whereas he is a big boy with teeth and he can eat food so he can have a snack while waiting for his turn, but she would just keep getting hungrier while waiting. Tandem feeding is hard on my shoulders and arms (having to try to find a balance) but worthwhile watching Tiny cuddling Smidge while both of them are feeding.

Tiny’s been a bit of a brat lately, but I’m not surprised, there’s been a massive upheaval in his life and I think his brattiness is partially due to brain development, partially attention seeky. That would be my fault, I have been babymooning for a bit and not paying as much attention to him as I should have. Poor little guy. I knew my other projects would lag. I’m finally dragging myself out of babymoon mode now and am well on the way to recovery thanks much to my mum being up here for the last couple of weeks and helping with cooking and cleaning and holding Smidge while I was doing things with Tiny. So I’m going to try to get myself back in order, top of the list being spending less time on the computer so I can spend more time with Tiny. A really useful thing with having two of them which I hope continues is that both of them sleep for ages when there is someone else close by (as I found out when I crashed out with Tiny a few times, and then with both of them after Smidge was born) so putting them in the same place (either on the bed or the futon) when they’re both asleep at the same time seems to help them sleep more soundly for longer. This will hopefully give me a decent chunk of time in which to get comic stuff done. The only thing I’ve managed to do so far are a few edits to the script and start splitting it up into separate eps as the 350+ page document takes ages to load and save. And nobody really cares about that, everyone wants the finished product out asap so I better get my arse in gear :)

Awww Tiny just moved closer to Smidge and cuddled up with her coz she was fussing ^_^ Unfortunately he also woke up asking for nah-nu and was most upset when JJ whisked him off to the bathroom to get his very wet nappy changed.

I need to make some new userpic things as well. I seem to have 6 now. What the hell am I going to do with 6 bloody userpics and why the hell would I want more? Nyeh, people are weird. I should probably get the journal name changed at some point, assuming I can be bothered forking out the money to do it.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License