At last night’s early morning nursing, William was super sleepy and got the initial let down and then backed off his latch and intermittently pacified. After a few minutes, I switched sides with him, and the same thing… so I unlatched him and his breathing deepened and I lifted him back into his crib. He laid there for a second and then sat up and said, “Nooo-hoo-hooo! More Nah-nahs, please?” So, I lifted him out and he latched again, but didn’t nurse, and instead went back to sleep.
All those times when he was a newborn and the world went silent when he was placed on my chest, all he wanted was just to be near me or on me, that’s what I was reminded of. So, as tired as I was, I willingly held him close and treasured this blessing that I held in my arms. This blessing that I used to fervently pray for when I woke in the middle of the night, and every waking moment when my mind rested on the desire for a child. I devoured the Bible, searching for stories about infertility and the promises God made to those families. I searched the Internet for answers, countless times. I became a self-made expert on infertility.
And now here he is. In my arms. I still can’t believe it.
I thought about how his arms and legs have magically lengthened from scrawny baby frog legs to chubby baby thighs to sturdy toddler legs. How is he in his twentieth month of life already? As I think about that, he pulls his legs up to his tummy, so now it feels like I’m holding a 33 pound newborn in a nursing position. I smile to myself. He sighs in contentment. I stroke his hair, shortened by a recent hair cut. This comfort that I give him is free to me to give. The only cost is sleep. I can sleep in a few years… when his need isn’t urgent. So, I waited and thought about all these things. Eventually, I gently unlatched him, and then lifted him back into his crib.
The choices that I make… a willingness to comfort someone over sleep. I feel like I am owning motherhood. That makes me happy.
**Note: Please disregard any ad that WordPress displays in my posts. They want $30/year to discontinue it. Not going to happen.
STATS/TEETH:
You are weighing in at 32 pounds 6 ounces, and measuring 36″ tall.
No new teeth this month, just your canine teeth continuing to grow in. I’m suspicious your two year molars are intermittently starting to move, because there have been a couple days when you’ve had your hand shoved WAY back in your mouth pressing on your gums.
NEW WORDS:
It’s impossible to keep track of your new words. You’re currently working on your pronunciation and sentence structures… it is so cool to finally know what is going on in your brain. When you have trouble falling asleep, I now know why — you’re reliving your day, from stories at the library to seeing the new baby in the neighborhood.
NURSING/FOOD:
Nursing continues to be a source of comfort to you, it’s also a time for me to connect with you. Sometimes we play and laugh, other times we just close our eyes and enjoy the focus time.
Food, you are doing well this month. You have an adventurous spirit and are willing to try anything we put on your plate. Sometimes you make a face, but you eat it anyways. Other times you gobble it up and ask for “more, more!”
SLEEP:
You continue to be a consistently deep sleeper at night. Sometimes, though rare, you do awaken but usually only one time and nursing puts you right back to sleep. Your day time sleep is not consistent, though, and it’s a bit maddening for me. One day you’ll take a 2 hour nap, the next day you’ll wake after 45 minutes or an hour. Then there’s the (very) rare day that you aren’t able to settle down for any nap at all, and so we end up skipping it altogether.
THINGS WE DID/PLACES WE WENT:
July 13th, we went to Legoland and spent most of our time there at their waterpark
July 14th, you went down a slide at the playground all by yourself for the first time, and then got off and ran around to the start again… saying “Fun!” the whole time
July 20th and 21st, we went to our mountain cabin. We had a really nice time, but you didn’t sleep very well. Neither did I for that matter. There was a huge thunderstorm Saturday night that kept me awake. I think you had trouble sleeping because you’re too long for the Pack-N-Play and are unable to stretch out.
July 27th we had breakfast with your Godparents and they gifted you with a bunch of rubber snakes and frogs and geckos. You LOVE them.
August 3, we had breakfast at Ruby’s in Tustin (after family portraits were taken) and they have trains there. It was so much fun!
PLAYTIME AND CHILDREN INTERACTION:
You are enrolled in Music Together classes every week and you really love attending them. You are doing better about staying with me and not roaming the class. If you do need to roam, I instruct you to “stay in the group” and if you roam outside of it, I pull you back in.
Gymnastics classes are either on Thursdays or Saturdays. If on Thursdays, your Grandma D. takes you, if on Saturdays, your father and I take you. You are doing better every week… you look forward to them and say, “Monkey Class” (the mascot is a monkey) the entire drive there and as you walk up to the door, yet when class starts (up until the most recent class) you would cry through the first 5 minutes of it. Not sure why… the only thing I can say is if we do something like this again, I think either your father or I will be sure to take you to your first couple of classes until you’re more comfortable and settled in.
Your Grandma D. is really good about taking you to the local park and letting you play with all the kids and equipment there. She has also taken you to a few “trial” gymnastics classes out in another city, which we think has helped you settle into your Monkey Class.
You have really come to love books, even more than in months past. You would happily sit on someone’s lap and look at books for hours. I’m hoping that this love of yours continues.
THINGS i WANT TO REMEMBER:
How, one morning after your wake up nursing session, instead of saying “Go see Daddy!” You said, “Go see MIckey Mouse!” I was so startled, but you did indeed want to go see the stuffed Mickey Mouse that we take your monthly pictures with… and every morning since then, you want to “Go see Mickey Mouse!” You like to sit up next to him and check his diaper for poopy. One morning you claimed, “Uh oh. Poopy!” “Go change Mickey Mouse diaper!” So off we went and changed his diaper. How your Godmother gave you a whole bunch of toys that her daughter used to love, including some rubber snakes and geckos and frogs. I put them out in your water table and I knew the second you found them, “Oh Gosh! Oh my Gosh!” was your reaction. They have now taken over our backyard, they swing with the princess, they sit on the chairs, they hang out in the doorways, they “walk around.” I love how imaginative you are! How sweet you are when you ask, “Water on, please?” in the bathtub because you want to “Wash car!” “Wash truck!” The way you melt your head into my shoulder when I ask you to give me a hug… your hugs are the best thing in the world. How even when you’re super tired, and this.close to a meltdown, you’re still the sweetest boy in the whole world.
One day this past week I had a dentist appointment. The office is near our home and I intentionally scheduled it so it would be finished just near your naptime. I hurried home, I couldn’t wait to see you. You knew exactly what I was there for, to nurse you for your nap. All the way up the stairs, your pleas of “nah nahs!” echoed. And I put you in your bed while I got situated and you said, “Night night, Grandma. Sweet dreams.” And my heart melted, even though Grandma was downstairs and couldn’t hear you, I shared with her later and tears came to her eyes.
Over the weekend, we went to our family’s mountain cabin. While there, the children’s Advil bottle was left on the nightstand in William’s room. When William grabbed it, I asked him for it and he handed it to me, so I took two steps and put it up on top of the dresser. William started whimpering, but I thought it was because he wanted his medicine. When I turned back around he had the sticky lid in his fingers, and when he handed the lid to me, he started screaming.
Everyone who has had a toddler knows they can be quirky creatures, and I thought he had suddenly developed an aversion to stickiness. So, I picked him up and he kept rubbing his sticky fingers and crying. I took him out to wash his hands in cold water to get the sticky off, the obvious solution to his problem. He calmed down while the cool water was on his hands, I congratulated myself in my head for solving this problem so astutely. But when I turned the water off, he started screaming again. I tried nursing, he wanted to, but would touch his fingers together and would start sobbing again and he couldn’t latch. He kept touching his fingers with his other hand and crying. So I thought maybe I had missed some of the sticky. Off we went to wash his hands again. Tried nursing again, and same thing, so we rinsed his hands a third time. And then Tony tried to wash his hands with a wet wipe. That didn’t work either. At that point, I thought maybe since all the natural oils had been washed off his hands, his skin must have still felt sticky to him, even though it technically wasn’t. The only thing that ultimately was able to calm him down was Baby Signing Time DVDs. He loves watching them and learning from them.
On Monday night I got home and I was horrified and somewhat sickened in my heart when I saw that he had blisters on his index and middle fingers. The blister on his index finger had popped (or he had pulled the skin off) and the middle finger has several unpopped blisters all down it. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense. Of course, a burn would stop hurting while under cool water. Of course, a burn would start hurting again if touched. Of course, of course, of course.
I stared at those blisters a good long time, trying to figure out what happened in the time span of just a couple seconds. The only thing I can figure out is that he must have touched the light bulb of the lamp that is on the nightstand in the cabin in the two seconds I had my back turned to put the medicine up… and then he grabbed the sticky lid of the baby Advil that had been left on the nightstand.
William attends gymnastic classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so yesterday to protect his injury from the germs that are surely on the equipment we tried covering it with a regular old plain beige band-aid. It lasted all of 20 minutes before William pulled it off. Didn’t even make it to the start of gymnastics class. So, I asked Tony to pick up some Cars band-aids at Walmart. When he got home, he showed his purchases. He had, indeed, picked up Cars band-aids, as well as Angry Birds Star Wars band-aids, and for good measure, Mickey Mouse band-aids. (I don’t even know which words to italicize there.) My mom was astonished to learn that companies make fancy band-aids now… everything is all about marketing. But, you know what? It works.
Apparently putting a band-aid with a picture of Cars on your toddler’s finger and other random spots of your toddler’s body is the key to him keeping it on.
And somehow I have a feeling that Tony plans to use the Star Wars band-aids on any injury he gets. Just a suspicion.
STATS/TEETH:
You weigh 32 pounds and are 36″ tall. You are wearing 3T in shirts and 2T in shorts, although any clothes I purchase now are a size up and for bottoms I put a stitch in the waist so you can wear them longer.
Your canine teeth are finally through. Your right lower cut through 5/31, right upper cut through on 6/3. Your left lower cut through 6/12 and your left upper cut through 6/17. They’ve been on the move since the end of April, so it took a solid two months to cut these canine teeth. I hear the two year molars are next, and I’m a bit horrified by that thought.
NEW WORDS:
It’s as if all of a sudden your tongue is cooperating with your brain this month. All the words you’ve been saying, and words you’ve been trying to say, and words I had no idea you knew, all of a sudden, you’re stringing them together in short sentences. The BIG new words you’re saying, “William.” You are saying your own name. You also say, “Froggy.” You’re finally saying your lovey’s name. You say it all the time, even in the middle of the night as you’re hunting for it, I hear you saying, “Froggy, froggy, froggy!” When we changed your diaper and you’ve pooped, your father always exclaims, “OH MY GOSH!” Well, now you’ve started saying it, as soon as the diaper comes off, “Oh my gosh!” or “Oh gosh!” You say “HI!” to everyone, you say, “Hello!” If I tell you to call some one. You see a phone and say, “Call daddy!” “Call Grandma” “Call Mommy!” You pretend call those same people from your playhouse’s phone. Rain, breakfast, momma car, up, down, out, zebra, elephant, cloud, flower, mommy, William, kick, hands down… ready, set, go!, grandpa, grandma, grandma D., kick, goodnight, night night, get it, got mommy, there you go, see-saw, coming, going, cold, hot, love. If we’re leaving to go for a walk, you remind us to “get phone!” and “shoes on!” When you settle to nurse, you say, “shoes off.” When you want to nurse, you tell me to “Sit down momma. Na na momma, Pleeeease?” Outside, inside, playhouse, ladybug. Red, blue, green and you point to the correct colors. I say, “five,” You say “six.” You say, “one, two, three.” You know some of your letters (especially the letter “B”) and how some of your numbers look, 5 and 6. You looked at me one day last week, pointed at your teeth and said, “Hurt, momma!” I found a scabbed over blister on the bottom of your foot and said, “Oh! You have an owie!” You took a look at it, and then anytime anyone touched your foot, you proclaimed, “OWIE!” You say, “out” and “stuck.” You also say your cousin’s name, “Huck.” You love to tell us when we’re going to the bathroom (“Potty!”) and when you’re going to the bathroom in your diaper, you say, “Poop!” and I’m pretty sure you know when you’re peeing because you randomly say, “Pee pee” throughout the day. Broken, fix it, music. Belly, belly button, him, mine, yours. “Loud” and “noisy” are adjectives you associate with loud sounds. Also, you say “messy” when you’re eating plums or anything that makes a mess. “Froggy to bed!” “Ready, set, go!” “Costco.” “Got mommy “It’s broken!” “Fix it.” Laugh (when you want us to laugh), cough (when you want us to cough, or if you want cough medicine), Medicine when you want Advil or Tylenol. There are so many more things you say and do, but if I were to categorize them, they would take up more space than I’ve already taken up. I will just say that, once again, it seems like you’re going to be a chatterbox.
NURSING/FOOD:
You have been nursing well this past month, I don’t foresee that anything will be changing in this area for awhile and that makes me happy. I love nursing you. Food is hit and miss and is usually pretty predictable as to whether you’re teeth are hurting you. If they are, you’re generally only interested in nursing. I say calories are calories and breastmilk provides some of the best customized nutrition around. You continue to love chicken, decline to eat beef. You don’t like carrots. You love any type of fruit or berry. Vegetables are hit and miss.
One evening, your father and I were discussing what we were going to have for dinner. It was a Friday night, and we’d pretty much decided we were going to eat out. From the back seat you requested, “Pizza?” And so your first sway vote happened, we went to an Italian place and you had pizza.
One morning I made some oatmeal for us to share. I asked you if you wanted some. You looked at me with really big eyes and said, “Noooooo? Pancake… pleeeeeease?” Your father had made pancakes the day before, so you ended up having leftover pancakes for breakfast.
SLEEP:
You’ve hit what everyone affectionately terms the “18 month sleep regression.” What this looks like for you is, it takes you an inordinate amount of time to fall asleep, and you won’t fall asleep before 6 hours of awake time. So, you’re often going to bed at 9pm, because you don’t wake from your nap until 3pm. You wake at 7:30am on the weekends (generally) and I wake you to nurse at 6:40am on weekdays before I leave for work. Some days you’re able to fall back to sleep, other days you’re up for the day at that time.
THINGS WE DID/PLACES WE WENT:
LegoLand: 06/22/2013. You really enjoyed the Storybrook Boat ride. Favorites were “horsey” and “Nah-nahs.” You got your first sunburn.
Music Class (every Monday). You love to sit right in front of the teacher. You also informed the teacher that the drums were “loud” and “noisy.”
Gymnastics Class, 06/27/2013. This was your first class… you are exhibiting some new behavior (discussed below)
Parade: 07/04/2013. You really enjoyed the parade and all the people and animals.
Pool & Block Party Playtime: 07/04/2013, your cousins came over and partied with our neighborhood. Such fun!
Fireworks: 07/04/2013. You were not a fan and after one or two, you declared firmly, “All done.”
LegoLand: 07/06/2013. We spent a lot of time in the water park, and you loved the slides and music.
Haircut: 07/07/2013. Let’s just say, I’ll be making appointments and requesting “Yanna” to cut your hair from now on.
Library story time: 07/08/2013. You pay attention well to the stories.
PLAYTIME AND CHILDREN INTERACTION:
Gymnastics class, first session on 06/27. From just one class (so far), you have picked up balance beam and hands down and trampoline. You made a trampoline out of a blow up innertube, you took it to the side of the coffee table and proceeded to start bouncing on it. You balance on one leg. You will also climb halfway up on something, a chair for example, and start kicking your legs and say, “Kick! Kick!” All of this from one gymnastics class. So worth it. I wonder now if you just didn’t know you *could* do all those things because no one ever showed you?
You love to step up and step down, stairs, curbs, speed bumps and the like. You even invented an up/down game with a roll of carpet I was working with to recover the cat’s scratching post. You walked up the carpet and narrated, “Up!!! Ready???” and then a delay, and then you walked down it and said, “Down!”
When I took my car in for its oil change last month, you saw a bunch of cars up on the lifts getting worked on. Ever since then, you’ve been putting your ride-on up on chairs to “work” on it, too.
On July 4th we attended our neighborhood’s block party. There were lots of children there, including your cousins, who we invited over to participate in the party. You had a great time and were so overstimulated that you weren’t able to fall asleep until 11pm. There was lots of toy sharing going on, and I was glad that we participated because I was able to observe you with several toys and now I think I’ll hold off on ordering them, if I order them at all.
You are very much into pretend play this month. Pretend eating… you used your sand bucket and shovel as a pretend bowl and spoon. In music class, you were pretend eating out of a pan with a stir spoon. And one night after bath time, you were pretend eating things off the bugs on your room’s wall. I have NO idea where you came up with this, but it is hilarious. You also love to pretend phone people.
THINGS I WANT TO REMEMBER:
How cute you are when I tell you we’re gonna go to the store, you’ll be playing with your toys and I’ll head out to the garage and put my stuff in the car. I look up and you’re waiting at the garage door so you can hold my hand to go down the steps. I love holding your little hand when we’re walking around, and it’s so sweet when you reach your hand up and ask for “help.” How you love to lift you Lightning McQueen ride-on up on the chair and inspect it… you started doing that after you saw cars up on the lift at the auto shop. How you get up on the chairs in the back yard and yell at the fence between us and the neighbors, because that’s what you see us do when we’re talking to the neighbors over the fence. How you love to go outside and play in your playhouse, taking all your toys with you in innumerable trips. How you saw my blueberry bush in the back yard and recognized them and just started picking and eating them and saying, “Mmmmmm!” The way you start giggling when you’re about to do something you know you shouldn’t. How you love to play ball with someone, you throw the ball and then giggle like crazy when someone bounces the ball back to you. You grabbed a ball, one that flashes instead of bounces. You threw it to the ground and it plunked there, you looked up at me and proclaimed, “It’s broken. Fix it?” I love how anytime a temperature is noticeably different (food or bathwater, particularly), it’s either “hot, hot!” or “cold, brrrr!” The way your hands flutter and move as you nurse and then, gradually, they still and you rub the corner of Froggy on your ear or the palm of your hand as you fall to sleep.
Sometime over the last couple of months you stopped moaning while you eat or nurse. This makes me very, very sad. It was, hands down, one of my favorite things you did that you brought with you from infancy. When we flew with you at 11 months old you moaned so loud while you were nursing during take off that the guy in the seat in front of us turned and looked at us oddly. I just smiled and said it was my son nursing. He laughed, and nudged the person next to him and told her that it was a baby nursing. (sigh)
A few nights ago, nursing didn’t put you to sleep. Frustrated, and at my wits end, I asked your father to take over so I could get a few things done. He went in, tried snuggling, tried rubbing your back, tried wearing you in the bathroom with the fan going. All tools that he used to use when you were much younger to help you fall asleep. After 45 minutes had passed, I had finished my chores and you were still awake, so I prepared to nurse you some more.
After you were asleep from nursing, your father told me those 45 minutes were such a blessing to him. These days you either fall asleep on your own, or with me nursing you. Your father said he envies me that I get to hold you as you go to sleep, because he doesn’t get to anymore.
My mom told me, around the same time, how nostalgic she was about how rapidly you weaned from the bottle. She used to be able to hold you, and you would fall asleep on the bottle, and how special that was to her. Not anymore.
A friend of mine shared that she got to hold her 3 year old for his nap one day. She said her son was so tired that he just fell asleep on her. She was savoring every second of his nap on her, because it was so rare.
I remember when you were a newborn, all you wanted to do was sleep on me, and most of the time I savored it and traced your ear with my finger, or just sat there and watched you breathe, or put my hand over your chest to feel your heart beating. But there were certainly times I just wanted my freedom to do a couple of things here and there. I would take pictures of you sleeping on my nursing pillow and call them “The Great Escape!” pictures. Gradually you began to sleep in your crib. Now you go to sleep on your own for my mom. And I know the days are numbered that you’ll fall asleep nursing with me. And so for those nights when I just want you to fall asleep already so I can go take care of my stuff, I’m reminding myself … someday, The Great Escape will be you leaving home for college, and I don’t want to have any regrets that I didn’t take the time to hold you when I could.
Sometimes I just feel like there’s a huge push for our children to be independent at such a young age. But for me, since I waited so long for you to be my baby, why do I want to rush you to the next milestone when you seem to be getting there in the hugest hurry all by yourself? So, I’ll just hold you and wait for you to get there by yourself. It will happen soon enough.
I find myself praying when you’re nursing that God will make the time I am away from you speed by quickly, and stretch the time that I am with you into eternity. These precious, fleeting moments, into eternity. You’re here in my arms, so I know for a fact that God does answer prayers, after all.
The days are getting hotter and the heat is lasting into the evenings and nights, and summer has only begun. I complain every year about how this house of ours seems to retain the heat and there doesn’t seem to be any relief. So we drive off in the morning to our respective jobs and dwell in air conditioned offices by day, and return to our sweltering home by night. Air conditioning doesn’t seem to help the upstairs rooms, and William’s room seems to hold onto the heat most of all.
We’ve discussed a portable air conditioning unit for his room, but there’s nowhere to run the venting… we have shutters on the inside of the window. We talked about a portable evaporative cooler, but we’re not sure that would be effective, because we don’t really have the driest of climates here. We’ve discussed adding an attic fan, or whole house fan… if we do that, we also need to add vents under the eaves of our roof. We’ve discussed adding a second vent to William’s room, because the vent in his room is so ineffective. I’ve thought about a vent booster, but the reviews are mixed. I’ve even thought about switching his room to the guest room and making the guest room his room, but that really wouldn’t solve the issue as the guest room gets hot, too, just not AS hot. We’re now looking into an in-line air duct booster. We run the A/C and the downstairs cools to 71°F, but his room never gets below 80°F. It’s ridiculous. We still haven’t come to a decision, and the days continue to get hotter.
So, in the evenings, since it’s cooler outside than inside, we take ourselves outside. We eat dinner on the patio, and listen to the birds chattering from their home in the enormous bougainvillea plant in the cul-de-sac behind our home. The neighborhood dogs bark in the distance relaying their important messages to each other. We joke with our neighbor when he comes outside into his backyard. The new fencing our association put in is taller than the previous fencing, so we can’t see him, which adds an extra funny element to our conversations.
We find ourselves going on bike rides. The shadows slant long through the Eucalyptus trees and dust from the bike trail swirls up as we ride along. We nod or smile at the others who are going the other way on the trail.
We take ourselves to the beach for some sand and water play.
And we welcome summertime. Because, really, what else can you do?
Three weeks ago, maybe four, my swim plugs tore which allowed water to get in my ears, compounded by me shoving them deeper in the ear canal to compensate, I ended up with compacted ear wax and an ear infection. So, for all intents and purposes, I’ve been sick since June 1st. When I woke up with gurgling in my left ear on the 14th, and then resulting deafness, teach me to tough it out thinking it was just a cold. An ear infection is no laughing matter. A round of antibiotics and time, and some magic potion I’ve created, I’m *still* recovering from this and just yesterday regained a little bit of my hearing back. All that to say that my ear infection prevented us from going up the mountain this past weekend, so we decided to go to LegoLand instead.
At LegoLand, the entry line seemed to take forever, but turns out the lady in front of us was purchasing an annual pass, which they require a ton of details for that, so it DOES take forever. The wait gave me the opportunity to defend a poor little boy who wasn’t much older than William. He ran out into the area between the booths and the turnstiles when his parents weren’t paying attention and faceplanted. He was crying loudly, and no one came to claim him. I just started to head toward him when another family picked him up and dusted him off and, finally, a couple minutes later he was apparently missed and his dad came roaring out of the line, yelling at him for running away. Aghast, I went up to the guy and told him his little boy had faceplanted and he might be injured. But really? Way to overcompensate for your bad parenting, yell at your injured kid. I’m still kind of irked about that, in case you can’t tell.
Once inside, we headed over to Mini Land USA. One of our favorite parts of the park. We let William down to run around and burn off some steam, there’s lots of interactive buttons for little ones to push. Turns out, Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale were there with their boys (we learned later via the power of social media). We didn’t realize who the little guy was, but William was having a spontaneous playdate with their 5 year old, Zuma. Tony recognized them but thought they were just look-a-likes. I am the worst celebrity spotter EVER and I just felt sorry for the poor girl whose hair was so overprocessed that it had no swish to it as it stuck out from under her hat. Now we’re kicking ourselves for not taking more pictures. Gah.
Another of my favorite rides is the Storybook Boat Ride. It’s so peaceful and relaxing, a nice respite on a hot day. Turns out, William really likes it, too. At the end of the ride, he would passionately sign “more,” so we just got off and got right back on. We ended up riding it five times. Every single time around, we’d get to the Prince and his Sleeping Beauty, and William would say, “Nah nah!” He apparently believed the prince was preparing to nurse, as that’s his word for nursing. I do have to say, those Lego boobies were seriously firm and at attention. Definitely noticeable!
Tony and I greatly enjoyed LegoLand in the past when we’ve gone, and we really enjoyed our day there this time with our son. It was fun and we’ll definitely be going back.
Last night I was feeling off. Just… not feeling quite right, you know? Anti-social, overwhelmed, that sort of thing. I headed upstairs to run William’s bath and suddenly heard him screaming downstairs. This is the 3rd or 4th time since Friday that this has happened, and I came out of the bathroom yelling, “NOT AGAIN! REALLY. NO, NO, NO, NOT AGAIN! THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!”
He had fallen again, tripped over something or slid on something or who knows what. The result is a bloody nose and bloody mouth and my ultra paranoia that he’s gonna somehow knock his front two teeth out. That is my biggest fear when he falls, those two front teeth. His face was contorted with fear and pain, tears pouring out of his eyes, blood oozing in his mouth turning his teeth a weird yellowish red. I can’t see anything in his mouth because of the blood and that frustrates me. Tony handed him over to me, he warned me that, “He has blood on his fingers.” Great. I’m wearing a new, pale yellow blouse, now I’m worried about him wiping his blood stained hand on my shirt and feeling torn that I don’t care. My baby is crying.
I took him to his room and latched him on to nurse. He’s still crying, sniffling and whimpering. I’m trying to determine by his latch if he still has all his teeth. He unlatches to look up at me, tears swimming in his eyes, he whimpers. I stroke his forehead, whisper that it’s OK. He latches on again. Tony is there in front of me, concerned and upset, a wet washcloth in his hand dabbing William’s bloody nose and swollen lip as he nurses. I know it was an accident, he was right there with William when he tripped over his toy… and I tell him again, “This has got to stop. It has to stop.” He tells me that it won’t, that he’s still learning to maneuver himself. And I respond, “This is just too much, too many accidents. It’s got to stop.” He leaves, William soothes and we do his bath and I nurse him to sleep.
I suddenly feel cold, tired, exhausted. Tony had gone to the gym while I put William down and I stumbled out of William’s room and decided I was going to bypass my swim tonight and go straight to bed. Even though it’s somewhat warm in the house, I turn on the electric blanket on my feet and put on long stretchy yoga pants for warmth. I crawl into bed and fall asleep, only to be awakened by William’s cries at 10:42pm. Unusual, but he obviously is in pain. I go to him and nurse him back to sleep, fighting a cough the entire time he’s nursing. I chew peppermint gum to stave off the cough… finally he’s asleep, now instead of feeling cold, I feel super hot.
I grab the thermometer and take my temperature. 101.2. Huh. No wonder I was feeling off. Other than the cough I’ve been battling for a week now, I have no other symptoms. I decide to go back to bed. I wake again at 3:20am, I hear William shuffling around in his bed. I decide to go nurse him, knowing that will soothe his restlessness. I take my temperature again, 102. The hell?
I take some Advil and head back to bed. The room is too hot. I can’t breathe. I finally get up and open the window, turn the ceiling fan on, knowing full well that the stupid morning doves will coo right outside the window at 5am. Oh well.
5am, there’s that morning dove, and there’s me shutting the window. William is awake, but snoozing off and on. I know I’ll go to work, my co-worker’s son’s graduation is today and she is out most of the day. I have no choice but to go to work.
So here I am. Sleep deprived. Weirdly sick. Drinking water. Wishing I were home. I still don’t know why I’m running a fever. I’ve also decided that since William gets klutzy when he’s tired, he is not allowed to walk after 7:00pm. That makes sense, right?
I just want to ask, what the hell was last night all about??
William’s music teacher claims that children as young as 6 months, maybe younger, have what is called “audio replay.” The premise being, if you’ve heard a song before, and you sing a different part of the song out loud, or continue to do the actions for the song with no words, that you still hear the song in your head. It makes sense, because I know for a fact that adults get songs stuck in their head ALL THE TIME. Why wouldn’t it be so for children as well?
The first part of the video demonstrates this. The lyrics that we were not singing are, “Smells so green and skies so blue, spring has sprung and now, me too! Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing! Take off your mittens and put away those coats. It’s time for gardens and sailing in boats. Smells so green and skies so blue, Spring has sprung now how ‘ bout you! Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing!” — K. Guilmartin
William is gettin’ down to the “boing” part of the song. Also, the bottom boogy that he’s doing is alllll him. No one in the class except him was or has ever danced like that. The last part of the video, well… you’ll see.
Video Link (in the event the playback box doesn’t work)
These moments are why I continue to enroll him in these classes. Last week we were dancing with the teacher, round and round we went. William laughed and laughed… and after every song was done, he signed “more.” And desperately signed “more” when the class ended.
On Monday, I was home from work sick, so I spent the day with William. Well, most of the day. My mom took him for a couple hours in the morning so I could rest, and then he took a whopping 3 hour nap in the afternoon. So let’s just say I spent what time I could with him.
After I woke him from his nap (yes, I woke him, it was getting to be 4pm!!), we nursed and then he decided he wanted an apple before we left for his music class. Not only did he want an apple, he wanted to take his apple out to the back yard and eat it sitting in the chair at the patio table. He had a very specific scene in mind, apparently.
In my mind, I was concerned about time. I still needed to change his diaper before we left, but I realized that this moment in time was indeed sweet. He was enjoying his time with me, and I needed to stop and enjoy the time with him instead of worrying about being late. So we sat out there and enjoyed his apple together.
The sun flickering through the patio cover, the warm breeze stirring the plants and setting the pinwheels to spin, the cats in the cat run, my cup of water on the table, the dogs from the neighbors chiming in with barks… and it was beautiful. And precious. And I’m glad that I took the time to pause.
You know something? I never regret pausing.
Video link (In the event the playback box doesn’t work)
Last Friday evening, we left for Tony’s family mountain cabin. The usual strategy is to go through the bedtime routine, and then instead of nursing William in his room, I nurse him in the car. Instead of falling asleep while nursing, he gets transferred into his car seat after nursing and then we drive off into the night while white noise plays over the speakers and I hold his hand.
It all went according to plan, and William was fine when we left. He fell asleep in the car quietly holding my hand. We made good time going up the mountain and, bonus, I even got a bit of a snooze in. When we arrived, William was in a deep sleep, so I carried him in and did a dream nursing session and then put him into the Pack N Play. At 2:30 am I heard him softly talking to himself, not crying, just intermittently talking to himself. I checked the video monitor (yes, we travel with that thing), and he was lying on his back examining his fingers. I got up with the intent to nurse him back to sleep, even though he wasn’t crying. When I picked him up, he was burning with fever. He was so hot it felt like he was on fire. His temp was 102.9. Shocked, I woke Tony, we gave him Advil and changed his diaper and his jammies, and I nursed him and, then, thanks to having read that skin-to-skin is a body temp regulator, I held him close for 2 hours, nursing him off and on, until his fever started to go down.
We continued to treat his fever throughout the weekend, stacking Advil & Tylenol. His temp was normal on Monday, but Monday evening a cough developed and he started sneezing repeatedly, and he started running a low grade fever again. His appetite was good Saturday morning, but declined the rest of the weekend until the only thing he wanted to do is nurse and eat Mum-Mums. He spotted bananas, asked for some, and then sadly handed it back to me after he licked it… I guess it just didn’t taste good.
I took him to the doctor on Tuesday morning. His ears, nose, throat, lungs were checked and given the “All Clear!” The doctor said it’s viral. Said we should expect the cough to last 2 weeks, expect the fever to last 2-3 more days. Doctor said to try chicken noodle soup. I made turkey dinner in the crock pot instead, and William (all of us, actually) ate like it was Thanksgiving in May. We love turkey! Turkey for EVERYONE!
Oh, and other fun details? I forgot the cord to the monitor, so we had the camera, and then were turning the monitor off and on to preserve battery life. Great timing to forget the cord, huh? Instead of staying the entire weekend, we left the cabin early, driving home on Sunday because William was so unhappy. On the drive home, the bolt fell out of the brake caliper on the driver’s side, so we had to wait 1.5 hours for AAA to send a flatbed trailer with an extended cab which could fit an infant seat so we could get home. Thankfully, remarkably, William napped through nearly the entire wait (He actually took 2 naps on Sunday for the first time since he was 10.5 months old). We took the less steep way home, giving elevation change consideration to William’s ears. If we had gone the steeper way, the brake issue would have been made known going down the mountain instead of the flats at the bottom (Tony uses the transmission to slow the descent when we go the back way.) And, miraculously, no damage was caused by the caliper, Tony just needs to replace the bolt.
I talked to our neighbor lady and her theory is that, if a little one isn’t feeling well (teething, etc.), then elevation changes can exacerbate things and cause higher fevers than normal in little ones because their Eustachian tubes aren’t yet fully developed. All four of William’s canine teeth are breaking through his gums right now, so maybe she’s on to something. Who knows?
After relaying the story to my mom, she said, “I really hope you journaled about this adventure, because the whole story is kind of nuts!” That just about sums it up nicely. A nutty adventure with some sweet moments mixed in.
Jammie J's Quest 