It occurs to me...

After spending an hour ignoring*enduring*and then helping Josh get to sleep... That I'm asking a lot of the kid.

For a while at least, the days of popping him into bed and walking away while he puts himself to sleep are gone. That's hard for us both, because that's how we've done it for the last almost two years. Him with his binkie. And me with some time on my hands.

The boykin has never been a clingy kid, but when I went in and put his weepy little self into bed, after about 45 minutes of sadness and frustration, he flung his arms around my neck and wouldn't let go. So as he lay there, wrapped around my head, his breathing growing heavier and slower, I was bent pretzel-like, mostly out of his bed, but carefully balancing my upper body with an elbow and a bent back wrist so as to be available while he finally dropped off.

Poor baby.

And it also occurs to me, after spending an afternoon last week, helping another mom with her kids, that right now, I'm not willing to take time away from him. That I need to take the long view on becoming a Postpartum Doula. That this is for when he's at school most of the day. I can't be stealing hours while he sleeps, or while he's with Tim.

That turned out to be a difficult experience, and not in the way I thought it would be either. I thought the two older children would be just too smart and wily and difficult for me. That I'd fail there. But no. Her kids were delightful. Polite. Interesting. And she had a friend there, helping with the baby.

So the challenge?

It turns out, as was brought up a number of times on the training, it is difficult to help someone who does things differently from you without being or appearing judgemental and dismissive of their choices. Because that's just disempowering, which isn't the idea at all.

The apartment, however, was crazy dirty. It was hard not to kind of freak out, and grab the vacuum cleaner. I did the latter, while hopefully hiding the former. There were five cats (two of which were pregnant) a rat, fish, a Chow-Alsatian mix. Never mind kids - the care load for the animals alone would put most over the edge.

I think also, the fact that I was asked to go there by a third party, meant that I think she suspected I was with DFCS, which meant my coming there just added to her stress load. Not what I'd hoped.

So I cleaned, played outside with her daughter while the two-year-old napped, helped her rearrange furniture, talked to her and gathered up some information on childcare options for the older kids once in a while, so she can get some down time with the baby.

But while I was there, my overarching source of stress was that I was expending quality time with someone else and their kids. Not mine.

Who, although he wears 4T and weighs 35lbs, weeks shy of his second birthday, is still a little guy. Who needs to cling to my neck some days. And that on those days when I ask myself if this is all I do? Being with him. That even if it doesn't feel like much, sometimes. It's worth a lot. To both of us.