Trop fatiguée pour écrire. Peux encore prendre des photos!
Category: Photos
Road trip!!!
Whoa! I haven’t posted since April 28th? I may have had excuses… Like a sick toddler, followed by a sick baby, extreme sleep deprivation and preparing for a short-fused move. Yes, we are moving. Packing-up. Vacating.
We are listing our house. Preparing to put it on the market. It’s a long story and I am thinking of starting another blog to chronicle this new turn in our family’s life. But in a nutshell this is a positive change in our life. We love our current house and especially our large-family-sized kitchen and backyard but life is about more than kitchens and backyards, isn’t it?
On the bright side, we are moving into a rental property which means that we have the luxury to move out before listing our house. If you know anything about real estate, you are probably attacking your keyboard to tell me that empty houses are harder to sell than full ones, to which I reply “Don’t forget how many children I have”.
Trying to pack a house with three very young children underfoot has been an exercise in frustration. I get a box started. Assuming I find the tape-gun, I start filling it up. Then the babies wake-up. 2 hours later, it’s time to pick-up the kids from school. When I return to my box, the children have found their most favorite (book, shoes, top, toy) EVER and the content of the box are strewn across Hell’s half-acre.
When my husband and I started to talk about listing our house I said: “You realize that you will move us essentially on your own.” He said yes. I meant it.
Needing a break from doing something slightly nutty (moving a family of 10 with infant twins), I decided to do something quintessentially normal: take my two daughters to a sports competition 700 km away. I couldn’t leave my husband alone with the twins and the toddler to pack-up the house, so I brought everybody, along with my mother for supplemental handy-womanry. For a woman like me, even “quintessentially normal” ends-up slightly nutty.
It’s when I do “normal” that I realize how abnormal I am. I go to the hotel pool and I’m the only parent in the water. I look at the other parents sitting together poolside and I can see those I know telling those I don’t know that I have 8 children and the youngest are twins. I can see it by the look on people’s face, a mix of disbelief and contempt. As we return to our room to dry-up and change, I notice several families leaving together for supper or meeting to order pizza. Back to my room, I told my mother:
I don’t think people even realize that I would like to be included. I think that although I see myself as a normal person with more children than most, people see me as abnormal, different, and are either intimidated or not interested.
To which my ever-wise mother replied: “Véronique, you are not normal.” Here I was, at a sports competition 6 hours away from home, with “only” 5 children, two of them babies, one of them running a fever, when most people can’t even imagine themselves with 3. Back home, my husband “only” had 3 children and was having a blast packing-up the house. If moving is ranked as one of life’s top 5 stressful experiences, someone should talk to my husband: without the three youngest, moving was positively restful! (Worry not I have since returned with my sick infant, my restless toddler and the other, quieter, baby and any rest that may have been felt has now been annihilated).
I’m glad we went. I may have mixed feelings about the wisdom of trying to pull “normal” stunts with my abnormal gang but it all went over my athletes’ heads: they were thrilled to be there with their coach and their teammates. They were even spared the pediatric car ride, being given the opportunity to drive up and back with a friend.
Let him cry it out
Lucas is not the best sleeper baby. He is a fun and engaging little dude who likes to party.
He also likes his mom. A lot. Almost from birth he would look around for mom whenever someone else was holding him and react to the sound of her voice. At night, he likes to know his mom is nearby.
Parenting experts say that babies wake-up at night because they lack the skill to fall asleep on their own. But Lucas says it’s all nonsense. He can fall asleep on his own just fine. In fact, his mommy always put him down in bed wide awake. He and Ève will chat a while then Ève will fall asleep and Lucas will keep chatting her up a bit longer until it gets boring. Then he falls asleep looking at Ève.
Lucas wakes-up several times a night to check on mom. Mom finds it a bit tiresome: if you include the last 6 weeks of the twin pregnancy, the longest stretch of sleep mommy’s had in the last 9 months was, oh, about 2 hours. And most nights, between Lucas, Ève and Sarah, mommy can be up as often as every 45 minutes between midnight an 4:00 am. Some nights mommy wonders why she bothers going to bed at all: talk about setting yourself up for failure!
So about once a month since Lucas turned 3 months, mommy decides that she will listen to the experts and let Lucas “learn” to fall asleep on his own. The experts say that after crying for a while, Lucas will learn to “self-soothe” by using his fingers. But Lucas says this is all nonsense : he knows perfectly well where his fingers are and how to put them in his mouth. But that’s of little use to him since they are not attached to mommy.
Other experts say that mommy should give Lucas some water at night so that Lucas will learn not to be hungry. But Lucas says this is all nonsense: when Daddy gives him water or a pacifier, he still needs to know that mommy is near.
So mommy decides once a month that Lucas should cry it out. And it lasts, oh, about 5 minutes. Because nature did a good job and when Lucas cries, this is what mommy is up against:
Goofballs
Session photo de 4 mois par maman
New Year camp out and a raclette birthday
Gone are the days when the children wanted to have McDonald’s as a birthday supper. Now they request raclette. Oh well, good fun with good friends around a good meal at home… it could be worst! And $40 of cheese may induce sticker shock but it’s a birthday on the cheap when compared to taking a bunch of kids to Cosmic Adventures!
On New Year’s Eve one of our older children decided to sleep outside. What an original way to welcome the New Year!
Câlins
Il y a quelques jours j’ai publié sur les difficultés que j’avais à faire dormir Lucas. Vous pouvez lire la publication (en anglais) ici. En somme, Lucas est un bébé adorable et souriant mais qui a du mal à s’endormir seul. Dans un moment de panique sans doute causé par un excès d’hormones (car je ne suis pas d’un naturel paniqué), je me suis vue passer les deux prochaines années à endormir Lucas en le berçant ou en l’allaitant à toutes les 30 minutes. Ce n’est pas tiré par les cheveux: je l’ai fait pour Colin, Marie et Sarah. Et pourtant, après 6 enfants, je devrais savoir que l’art de s’endormir c’est comme la propreté: ça ne se force pas, ça vient de l’enfant ou ça ne vient pas. Bien qu’il soit possible d’aider nos bébés à développer une bonne hygiène du sommeil en les encourageant à apprendre à s’endormir seuls, j’ai du mal à décider quoi faire avec Lucas. J’ai essayé de le mettre au lit somnolent mais réveillé, J’ai essayé de le mettre au lit endormi, mais Lucas se réveille aussitôt que je le dépose. J’ai dû me rendre à l’évidence: soit je l’endort sur moi ou dans la balançoire, soit je le laisse crier.
Il est parfois nécéssaire de laisser un bébé pleurer afin qu’il se rendorme seul. Certains parents (comme moi) éprouvent beaucoup de réticence à laisser un bébé pleurer et choisissent plutôt d’aider l’enfant à se rendormir en l’allaitant ou en le berçant ou en lui redonnant sa suce qu’il a laissé tomber. J’ai essayé la méthode du 5-10-15 avec Colin, Marie et Sarah avec plus ou moins de succès. Mais il semble que plus je vieilli — et plus je me rapproche de la fin des bébés — plus je veux apprécier mes bébés et non me battre avec eux. J’ai dû beaucoup porter Marie et Colin et je regrette de ne pas l’avoir fait avec plus de coeur: en rétrospective, ils ne sont pas restés bébés bien longtemps. Oui leur petite enfance était intense. Mais il me semble, aprés réflection, que j’aurais pu la rendre moins intense en ayant une meilleure attitude. Ça n’aurait rien changé aux besoins de mes bébés mais j’en aurais sans doute de meilleurs souvenirs.
C’est ainsi que j’étais indécise, paralysée par la fatigue, prise entre mon besoin de sommeil et mon appréhension à laisser Lucas pleurer. Puis est arrivée une journée de fous. Un samedi où j’étais seule avec une montagne de travail et 8 enfants. Ève dormait et Lucas, bien, Lucas ne dormait pas. Il était complètement épuisé, incapable de s’endormir au sein ou dans l’écharpe. Au bout du rouleau, j’ai dis à Lucas: “Bien si tu vas pleurer mon bonhomme, aussi bien de pleurer dans ton lit!” et je l’ai mis au lit pendant que je faisais quelques tâches. Au bout de 15 minutes, incapable de le laisser pleurer plus longtemps, je suis allée le rechercher. C’est alors qu’il a poussé un long soupir, a fermé les yeux et s’en endormi dans mes bras en finissant de sangloter. Ensuite, je suis tombée sur cette illustration au dos du dernier Youpi! des enfants. C’en était trop.
Lucas, c’est mon nounours. Je ne peux pas le laisser pleurer quand il a seulement besoin d’être tenu bien au chaud. Lucas n’a pas besoin de se faire une maman de neige quand il se sent seul. C’est vrai que le sommeil est une composante importante de la santé en général et qu’une mauvaise hygiène du sommeil entraîne des problèmes de toute sorte chez le bébé et l’enfant. Là où je décroche, c’est à l’idée que l’apprentissage du sommeil passe par l’apprentissage de l’autonomie. Car le besoin d’affection et d’attachement est au moins aussi important à la survie du petit humain que le besoin de repos.
Lorsque je vais repenser aux premiers mois de Lucas, je veux me souvenir des câlins, pas des cris.
Hey Vero 