Baptism

Last Sunday Ben and I went to the baptism of my friend Katie's daughter, Kaylee. It was held at her childhood church, in the town where we grew up, and it was a mass specifically held for baptism. There were five other babies besides Kaylee getting baptized that day, and I actually knew two other parents there who were in my high school graduating class.

Watching the service, watching the 8th grade kid I sat next to in Spanish baptizing his second child, a chubby boy, and watching Katie, whom I have known since my sophomore year in high school, baptize her firstborn daughter, it was a shock to realize that my generation has stepped up to take on the mantle of old traditions. Back in 8th grade Spanish the traditions weren't ours to control. But now that we have become parents ourselves, we now have the opportunity and the responsibility to create and uphold what we see The Right Way for our children. It kind of boggles my mind that it is our turn now. Even though by all markers I am very much an adult, I still don't feel old enough to be a homeowner, a mother, a credit card holder. It boggles my mind that I am in a demographic that can do something, except now it seems I am mostly too tired.

Quality time

First of all, things are back to normal between Ben and me. We worked through our fight on Friday night, then we were fortunate enough to have my parents come over and watch Eliza while we went out on a date on Sunday afternoon. Let me just say that it's been a while since we sat at a bar. Anyway, all is peaceful in my happy world once more.

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to spend quality time with my daughter lately. She is a lot more independent than she was just a few months ago, so she has gotten a lot better at self-entertaining, and I'm able to get a little bit more done around the house each day. But I'm beginning to wonder if I should still be playing farm whenever she is playing farm, or reading her books when she seems pretty content with just looking through them... the eternal question Is Mom doing enough? shooting through my brain. I mean, I like having a few minutes to skim a magazine at lunch, or the chance to empty the dishwasher while she plays with her trains, but on the other hand, I don't want her to think that she has to play by herself. I'll play with her whenever she wants, but I guess the reason I don't immediately engage all the time is because it's pretty freaking boring. I love her to the moon and back, but Mama's brain turns into porridge at the thought of pushing zoo animals in and out of a tunnel for fifteen minutes. I know there are only like a zillion other stay-at-home-parents who feel this way. I do not claim to be unique.

What do I like doing with Eliza? I like taking her to the grocery store. She's actually really good and we talk and I push the cart fast, etc. I like taking her to our local library for a baby storytime once a week. We both love that. I like taking her on walks, but she has a lot less patience for that than she used to, and walks usually need to be by the train tracks or coupled with a park visit for her. And of course, walking without a stroller tends to be chaotic. I like reading books to her, but reading the same book seven times in a row would grate on the Dalai Lama. And as the weather gets warmer, I know I'll like taking her to the pool, or setting up our inflatable one in the backyard for her. I can't wait for that.

It's hard to stay at home because you so rarely get a glimpse into other people's similar daily lives. How do they manage their days? What could I learn from watching them? We're so isolated nowadays. And I did so much to make those connections by ditching the mom's group! Ha!

The finger

On Wednesday, I was on the phone with my friend Marta, when all of the sudden I heard an enormous CRASH in the dining room. I hung up the phone and found Eliza on top of a knocked-over chair, screaming. I pulled her out and saw blood... lots of it. It took me a minute to realize it was coming from her finger, and once I had grabbed a towel and gotten the bleeding somewhat under control, I realized that her right middle finger was shorter. Oh, fuck.

Ben called me right at that moment and told me to head to the emergency room. I had to change a poopy Eliza diaper before we left -- amazing that there isn't a huge blood stain on the carpet where I did it -- and I realized that if her finger was shorter, that meant that the rest of her finger was somewhere. Dragging Eliza by her bloody hand, I found the little tip of her finger and entire fingernail, picked it up with a Ziploc bag, nested it in some blue ice, wrapped it all into a Hobby Lobby bag and sped off to our pediatrician, running a red light and not giving a damn.

Our pediatrician is just down the street, and they took one look at her finger and said we had to go to the ER, but were able to wrap up her finger so she wasn't bleeding all over herself anymore. I was crying and I'm pretty sure they felt like they were dealing with a crazy person, because they asked me a few times if I would like someone to drive with me to the hospital. But I was okay beyond being a sobbing sniveling wreck over watching my little girl all hurt and scared.

We drove to the ER and only waited in triage for 10 or 15 minutes until we were taken back to the pediatric ER. Eliza's biggest problem didn't seem to be pain, but incorporating new people and potentially more stressful/scary situations. She didn't protest a 2+ hour hand soak in an iodine solution, but freaked out when a man came by to get our insurance info. That kind of thing.

A social worker came by with a big bag of toys and videos to help calm Eliza down before they reattached the finger. We watched four Elmos and a Thomas, I believe, before the doctor finally came in to do the procedure. Eliza had to be strapped down in a baby papoose, AKA baby straitjacket, so that she wouldn't flail about while the doctor worked. She cried the whole time, but Ben, who watched the whole procedure, said she never once tried to resist the doctor while he reattached her fingertip.

When it was all over and she was released from her straitjacket, I held Eliza while she pounded on my chest for a few minutes, shouting "NO NO NO NO!" over and over again. At first we thought there was something wrong, but we realized that she was probably working out all her anger from being so helpless and scared. We were discharged shortly thereafter and she came home and slept like a rock all night.

The finger doesn't look like it is going to reattach itself right now, but the orthopedic surgeon we met with the following morning has assured us that whether it takes or doesn't take, her finger will heal normally without a problem. I'm so grateful that she'll be fine and won't remember any of this. Me, on the other hand... well, I'm slightly traumatized by the whole ordeal. Picking up your kid's body part, no matter how small, just totally sucks, and the night after it happened I had a hard time getting that image out of my mind. I had trouble sleeping that night and the next -- just difficult to calm my mind down enough to fall asleep -- and since then I've just been exhausted. It's a small trauma in the grand scheme of things, thank God, but it's a trauma nonetheless to my mind, and it's interesting to step back and see how I am processing all of this. I've had trouble finding and pronouncing words, which is a major sign of fatigue for me. Today I left a gallon of milk in the shopping cart (or somewhere... after Eliza wakes up from her nap we have to go in search of it). It takes a lot of energy to emotionally deal with emergencies, and it certainly makes me empathize with people who are in crisis and are struggling to function from day-to-day. Not that things are that bad here at all -- I just see a glimpse of how hard it must be.

Anyway, Eliza is going to be fine and all is well in our happy home again. Stitches come out in two weeks, and this mama needs a nap and a drink in a bad way.

This is brave

And I am so not anywhere near the place she describes. If something happened to Eliza I would melt away.

http://www.mamalode.com/blog/2011/04/18/mama-digs-to-be/

A long, hard week

Maybe it's because Eliza seems to have a cold (hopefully it's just a cold, anyway), and maybe it's because I've been crabby, and maybe it's because the once-promised spring has returned to February-like temperatures, but last week was hard. Last week was screaming and vomiting and runny noses and fatigue and winter coats pulled back out of the closet. But we got through it, maybe a bit worse for wear and further away from carefreedom (I don't care; that's a good made-up word), thanks to a good friend's visit and a bottle of wine and enforced early bedtimes. And, it must be mentioned, a wonderful husband who, when I balk at the possibility of being up in the middle of the night with Eliza, volunteers to sleep in the guest bedroom with the baby monitor. That is a good man, folks.

This blog was started to document our journey to our next baby, but I haven't actually talked about that yet, mostly because there hasn't been a need. I took my first pregnancy test of this cycle today when I woke up to pee at quarter to six this morning, and my result was totally ambiguous. To the untrained eye, it is negative, but to my eye, which has stared at hundreds of pee sticks over my years on my trying to conceive/pregnancy chat board, I see possibility. I know that my particular brand of pee stick has developed a reputation for mind games (First Response Early Response, I have peed on the last of YOU), so I tested again later in the morning with another of the same test. This time, I saw a second line, but no color in it within the time limit, but when I took it upstairs to show Ben, the line had disappeared. So I am in the same place as I was this time yesterday, except that I had not yet peed on $10 worth of merchandise.

I'm going to test again tomorrow, and I hope I'll have a definite answer on a different brand. The waiting is so frustrating. The getting one's hopes up is so frustrating. This is the last time we'll be going down this road, trying to make another baby, and when you have roller coaster days like this you worry that the road will be long.

In response to a question

Which is harder, your child as an infant or a toddler, posted on a parenting forum I frequent:

In some ways toddlerhood is easier for me. Eliza wasn't super happy as a baby -- I always felt like she was kind of pissed that she couldn't make her body do all the stuff she wanted it to. She's SUCH a happy kid now that she can run around and explore, and of course she's a lot more fun, too. I felt like 13-16 months was a much harder phase of toddlerhood for us, because that was when I was much more afraid of her killing herself. She was unsteady, into EVERYTHING, and didn't understand what "NO" meant. Now, I can let her do a few activities unsupervised and I don't worry about her.

That said, those unsupervised activities last all of 5 minutes before she wonders where I am and starts following me. She likes to play with [Ben], but again, that only lasts for a few minutes until she wonders where I am again. So it's hard for me to get a break at home. And she's SO much more manipulative and that's really taxing. She kicks me during diaper changes and thinks it's hilarious. Today I tried ignoring it and that seemed to help (but hurt a bit). There is a lot that she does for attention that is really tiresome to me, like deliberately eating paper in front of me to watch for my reaction, then I chase her around trying to fish the paper out of her mouth so it becomes a game.

I agree with [a previous poster], things have gotten easier as the weather has improved (and a lot more fun, too). We can run around outside and burn off that energy. My house is never going to look the way I want it and I've mostly gotten over that. I was thinking today how there is a toy/Eliza paraphernalia in every single room of our house, and that made me a little batty.

All in all, I'm enjoying this stage more, probably because I'm not so sleep-deprived, but IT WAS SO NICE to be able to leave a baby in the bouncy chair and know they would stay there while you took a shower.

And speaking of sleep...

Today Eliza napped in a big-girl bed for the first time!

She is a giant kid and has outgrown the confines of her Pack n' Play, so we decided to order her an inflatable air mattress for travel. I realized that we'd have to get her used to the mattress before we could ever expect her to sleep on it in a new place, and figured with her schedule being all off-kilter because of the time change anyway, why not give it a go today? If she didn't nap, no worries save for a few hours of cranky baby.

I talked to her about the big-girl bed every time we were in her bedroom this morning, letting her know that this is where she would take a nap today, asking her how you go night-night and having her show me on the bed, etc. When it came time for her nap, we first read a few books on the bed, and I closed the door and left her alone as usual. I SO wished we had a video monitor so I could have watched her figure things out outside of her crib. I heard her trying to open the door, jumping off the bed a few times, and kicking at the door, but no real fussing. I took a shower, and by the time I got out, she was quiet! I peeked in and saw her with her blanket covering her face, passed out on her mattress. There were books by the door, so she looked at books for a while before going to sleep. And she slept for about two hours! I actually went in there to try to wake her up, just because I'm concerned about getting her back to her regular sleep schedule. (Mama likes her in bed early at night for some free time.)

I am so proud of my little girl. She's a very active child, so I'm so impressed that she figured out how to calm herself down in a room with lots to keep her busy. We'll see how she does over the next few days, but maybe a big-girl bed will be in her future sooner than we anticipated!