![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusThe State of the Icarii (that sounds like something out of Twilight)
...which is less the state of the Icarii, and more the state of the Icarii household.
We're now up to ten living people in one townhouse, including four cats.
I expected a quiet winter so (boldly!) signed up for two challenges: my yearly SGA Santa and, for the first time ever, Yuletide.
Ha.
My cousin, hours away in West Virginia, had her baby in October. She's only 24, the baby was unplanned (though she had been admiring baby clothes and her friend had just had a baby and everyone had gone, "uh-oh..."). The boyfriend's a mere 20, neither have any college, though they had well-paid union jobs at a chicken plant.
Fresh from the C-section and on maternity leave, my cousin promptly started doing too much. The doctor ordered her to pick up nothing heavier than a moist towlette.
Thus she moved in here to get help from family. Her boyfriend, in addition to crashing after work, seemed to have the TV-based notion that "the woman" would care for the baby. She stayed with us during the week, while her dad drove her and the baby back to West Virginia on weekends. (A six-hour round trip.)
Then their slumlords decided to exterminate some mice, but they used the wrong poison. Instead of the kind where the mice get sick and run away to writhe and die in agony elsewhere, they used the kind where the mice twist and die on the spot. In the vents. So the place filled with the scent of death. My cousin stayed here and raged over the phone alternately at the slumlords ("What's the problem? We killed the mice, didn't we?") and her boyfriend.
Got a little stormy around here.
My cousin's never been the quietest person in the world at the best of times (S. calls her "the T-Rex"), and she and her boyfriend of course were having a tough time adjusting. They'd been together no more than a year, and nine months of that was her pregnancy. *facepalm* She did seem unduly angry with him, however.
Finally she admitted that over the summer her boyfriend had been served paternity papers for his ex-girlfriend's two-year-old. (He would have been 18, oh man.) The test had come back positive and he'd suddenly had child support to pay. The ex had other support as well (family? job? I don't know) so she was doing just dandy while my cousin and he couldn't make ends meet. He promised her that he'd work overtime to pay it, but of course it proved impossible. My cousin hadn't told the family because, well, who can blame her? But getting relationship advice from parents ignorant of the whole picture had proved too much.
At that point, my aunt and uncle weren't too happy with him either, and they invited her to stay here, go to college, while they helped care for the baby. Her boyfriend's allowed to stay here, too, on sufferance, provided he gets a local job. I'll be helping my cousin with her FAFSA come New Year's, and fortunately we're about five minutes from a good community college. I'm trying to convince people to give her boyfriend a shot because, although he's so trailer-park he makes me squirm, he does seem to mean well, the cats like him (which speaks of a gentle character), and he's not much older than my high school students -- of course he's immature.
Their little family's taking the upstairs spare bedroom once they get out of their lease and, well, there're details to work out. But she's very intelligently not counting on a 20-year-old with two kids.
The bright spot in this has been the baby herself. The languid little lady is calm, cool, and collected, easily passed like a toy from one relative to another, loves baths, and started sleeping through the night within six weeks. She only fusses when you don't have her food NowNowNow. And thank god. My aunt and uncle, first-time grandparents, are agog and adoring. She's even good with me, and I'm REALLY not into babies. At all. But it's fun to watch her hand-eye coordination develop and see her start tracking her surroundings. (I confess to being the type to chant foreign languages so she can develop a near-native accent, start looking around to make sure there are plenty of books in her environment, and plan a possible scholarship to a Montessori or Waldorf school, at least for her early grades. I haven't started playing Mozart for her yet, but it's only a matter of time.)
Yuletide? SGA Santa?
Yeah.
I feel guilty for bailing, and sad. This is the first SGA Santa I've missed since 2006, and it was my first-ever Yuletide. But the distraction level has been rather high.
...which is less the state of the Icarii, and more the state of the Icarii household.
We're now up to ten living people in one townhouse, including four cats.
I expected a quiet winter so (boldly!) signed up for two challenges: my yearly SGA Santa and, for the first time ever, Yuletide.
Ha.
My cousin, hours away in West Virginia, had her baby in October. She's only 24, the baby was unplanned (though she had been admiring baby clothes and her friend had just had a baby and everyone had gone, "uh-oh..."). The boyfriend's a mere 20, neither have any college, though they had well-paid union jobs at a chicken plant.
Fresh from the C-section and on maternity leave, my cousin promptly started doing too much. The doctor ordered her to pick up nothing heavier than a moist towlette.
Thus she moved in here to get help from family. Her boyfriend, in addition to crashing after work, seemed to have the TV-based notion that "the woman" would care for the baby. She stayed with us during the week, while her dad drove her and the baby back to West Virginia on weekends. (A six-hour round trip.)
Then their slumlords decided to exterminate some mice, but they used the wrong poison. Instead of the kind where the mice get sick and run away to writhe and die in agony elsewhere, they used the kind where the mice twist and die on the spot. In the vents. So the place filled with the scent of death. My cousin stayed here and raged over the phone alternately at the slumlords ("What's the problem? We killed the mice, didn't we?") and her boyfriend.
Got a little stormy around here.
My cousin's never been the quietest person in the world at the best of times (S. calls her "the T-Rex"), and she and her boyfriend of course were having a tough time adjusting. They'd been together no more than a year, and nine months of that was her pregnancy. *facepalm* She did seem unduly angry with him, however.
Finally she admitted that over the summer her boyfriend had been served paternity papers for his ex-girlfriend's two-year-old. (He would have been 18, oh man.) The test had come back positive and he'd suddenly had child support to pay. The ex had other support as well (family? job? I don't know) so she was doing just dandy while my cousin and he couldn't make ends meet. He promised her that he'd work overtime to pay it, but of course it proved impossible. My cousin hadn't told the family because, well, who can blame her? But getting relationship advice from parents ignorant of the whole picture had proved too much.
At that point, my aunt and uncle weren't too happy with him either, and they invited her to stay here, go to college, while they helped care for the baby. Her boyfriend's allowed to stay here, too, on sufferance, provided he gets a local job. I'll be helping my cousin with her FAFSA come New Year's, and fortunately we're about five minutes from a good community college. I'm trying to convince people to give her boyfriend a shot because, although he's so trailer-park he makes me squirm, he does seem to mean well, the cats like him (which speaks of a gentle character), and he's not much older than my high school students -- of course he's immature.
Their little family's taking the upstairs spare bedroom once they get out of their lease and, well, there're details to work out. But she's very intelligently not counting on a 20-year-old with two kids.
The bright spot in this has been the baby herself. The languid little lady is calm, cool, and collected, easily passed like a toy from one relative to another, loves baths, and started sleeping through the night within six weeks. She only fusses when you don't have her food NowNowNow. And thank god. My aunt and uncle, first-time grandparents, are agog and adoring. She's even good with me, and I'm REALLY not into babies. At all. But it's fun to watch her hand-eye coordination develop and see her start tracking her surroundings. (I confess to being the type to chant foreign languages so she can develop a near-native accent, start looking around to make sure there are plenty of books in her environment, and plan a possible scholarship to a Montessori or Waldorf school, at least for her early grades. I haven't started playing Mozart for her yet, but it's only a matter of time.)
Yuletide? SGA Santa?
Yeah.
I feel guilty for bailing, and sad. This is the first SGA Santa I've missed since 2006, and it was my first-ever Yuletide. But the distraction level has been rather high.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 02:42 pm (UTC)And GO YOU for doing all the brain-stimulating stuff. It *is* fun to watch their little neurons organize, even in a decidedly NON-easy baby like mine was. Then again, we've discovered that mine has inherited my not-up-to-code brain wiring (at least we got it sorted by sixteen, not waiting until forty like me). So that probably contributed.
In addition to Mozart, I'd add in stuff with vocal harmonies. Doesn't have to be the Mormon Tabernacle Choir -- it can be stuff like the Beatles or sixties girl groups. Maybe I'm more focused on that because my kid turned out to have a highly developed faculty from the start -- six weeks old and the slightly-off harmonies in a particular Grateful Dead song caused fierce wailing, followed by happy quiet as soon as I hit "next song", and by age three the kiddo was following the soprano harmony line in preference to the melody, if it existed. It's fascinating to watch a child that young singing along flawlessly matching Mama Michelle. These days, the kid can MAKE a harmony line where none exists. Early exposure to harmony might develop that, and it's nifty.
I think, under the circumstances, that bailing on SGA Santa might be excused.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 06:11 am (UTC)Unless maybe it's a big kid who'll do the same.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-27 05:35 pm (UTC)Funny how you can see that a mile away. I've seen that so many times, even as the person swears it's unplanned. It's like the subconscious takes matter into it's own hands.
Make sure you check out the Community College's own FA. Mine had special ones for single parents with custody. I wish them the best of luck.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 06:09 am (UTC)*ears perk up*
no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 11:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-01 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 03:26 am (UTC)It's cool the kid is so laid-back, it's lucky for both her and all of you. She's probably 'attached' successfully and will have a better chance of being neurotypical when she grows up!
no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-29 04:21 pm (UTC)Uh. I was saying "Yay! Sounds like everyone raising the kid is trying their best and the child has a good chance to thrive!" Which was really a complicated way of reassuring you the kid sounds healthy and happy and I wish you all the best? Sorry.