Belated birthday odds and ends

Two years. Two weeks. Two days. That’s how old my Earth Day birthday girl is.

Numbers are big these days. Last week, three days of fever (so sad! so unlike her!). Three balloons for her birthday, two of them mylar. She can count a bit: one mouth (she scrunches her lips to ascertain that, yes, there is only one mouth), two ears (she touches them, reassured), two eyes (seeing out of them seems to be proof enough), one nose (a touch to the side, like Santa, but without rising up the chimney), and…three feet. Ah. Well. She can count to twelve, but give her three things in a dish, and she’ll count “One, two, dee, doh, die, dih, deh, eight, nigh, teh, weh, teh,” running through all the numbers in her repertoire. A fine counter she is – as long as the number is one, sometimes two, or twelve.

Her awareness of time is growing, too. When she saw her juice on the table, she was it was “from yesterday.” And it was. A couple of days later, she saw and then was happily eating a sucker, always lollipops to her, or really, “wahweepops.” I asked Matthew, “When you were a kid, did you eat the swirled Lifesavers suckers?” And if you, readers, did not, you’ve missed out – and apparently, they are no longer made, so you’ll need to continue to live with this gaping, life-preserver-shaped hole in your life. Ah, the blueberry ones…which prompted our dear girl to say, “When I was kid, I ate wahweepop, too – like this!” as she brandished the sucker in front of her. When she was a kid – and it’s true, her first sucker was on Halloween, nearly a quarter of her life ago. It kills me.

And colors. It’s been about a month, maybe a little more. But she nails them. Red. Blue. Silver. Yellow. Cars are her favorite color-identification-item of choice; their variety, their speed, and their sudden appearance and disappearance all make them great focal points, whether out on a walk or just looking out the window. So what if orange is yellow?

Finally, the potty. For at least a month before her birthday, she was diaper free. For probably a month before that, she was diaper free during the day and sometimes during nap- and nighttime. I’d give her the choice, and sometimes she’d pick diaper, sometimes undies. Now, even with the occasional wet pair of undies, I feel safe in calling her potty-trained. Hooray, girlie!

Where’s the thrill, the storyline, the cohesion, something to make all of this hang together? Good question. I don’t know. I just knew that I didn’t want my remarkable and much-loved girl’s second birthday to pass wholly unremarked.  As a mother, now, birthdays seem as if they really mean most to parents (and anyone already living), the memorializing of the day that the world and we, in particular, had the great fortune to make the acquaintance of a new life, THIS particular girl. These bits and pieces of her don’t add up to the whole, but they are part of her, and by sharing them, maybe I’m reminding myself just how lucky I am to be privy to even this much knowledge of another’s life.

 

The battle of little big girl: or, bees aren’t the only ones with hives

The war began, before her nap, in a small way: a small spot on her face, a small spot on her right heiny cheek – like bug bites. After her nap, her body was a blossoming and blooming of pink puffiness, like an 80′s jacket gone awry, a hive of activity. The war was in full swing. The heiny spot was the size of a navel orange, with smaller spots marching down her leg, up her torso, and down her arm, fanning out in formation. Her right cheek was swollen as if from hand-to-face combat. Oddly, only her right side suffered, itchy, red, and angry, as if this reaction and her body had drawn a line of demarcation in their war against each other.

A trip to the pediatrician’s office yielded little: not poison oak, not poison ivy, but hives, an allergic reaction to…something. Yes, certainly, something. No new foods, no clear insect bites?  Ah. Well. Give her 1/2 tsp. of Benadryl and use hydrocortisone to fend off the encroaching army. If you have further problems, call.

And so it was. After her nap the next day, the battle shifted to her left side, with her left cheek, leg, and side of her torso entering the fray. What did the battle plan look like, and how much of her topographical map did the forces intend to cover? We feared for her valleys and plains, mountains and plateaus.

By the next day, Sunday, however, the war fizzled. The sides forgot what they were fighting over. The last remaining territories, her ankles, went out with only small skirmishes. The troops departed.

We were none the wiser about the cause, but then again, the true causes of war are often obfuscated.

And all was quiet on the toddler’s front. And back.

Go home

“Mama, you drive car…go back…to our home.”

She strung this one together last night as we left our weekly potluck dinner, early, at her request. It was dark, with a bright planet shining in the sky, and I’d heard the word “Mama” floating from the back seat followed by more talk, but I hadn’t heard the rest. Sometimes she talks earnestly to herself. I didn’t respond. “Mama,” she began again. “Yes, sweet girl?” I asked. And there it was. Her longest original sentence to date. This wasn’t just repeated lines from us; this was what she can do with language. She always imbues the word “home” with a note of plaintiveness, as if the only remedy for her woe is our return home. It makes no difference that it’s an apartment, and one which we will soon have to leave. It’s home, and it’s a good place for us to go, one of comfort and safety and calm (the untidiness that always surrounds us notwithstanding). “Go home,” she’ll often say if we’re out and things get stressful. She has some good sense already.

In this case, it really was good that she had us leave early, too, because after our really stressful day, we both fell apart, and while I only made myself damp with tears, she made herself and the floor wet with the barely-digested applesauce and tomato she’d eaten. Off came the clothes, the better to leave the day and its travails behind, for the cleansing shower.

It was better that we were home.

Boo-Boo, revisited

“I will hold my Boo-Boo!” she orated, standing on the bed in the semi-darkness, wispy blondish hair splaying out from her head as she shook her head from side to side. “I pat Boo-Boo!” The head shaking continued, accompanied by a serious look not unlike a teacher looking down her nose, a dare for me to interrupt her. I did not. She added more about Boo-Boo eating cat food, then added bits about her being sick, then “I pat her.” Her arms were drawn forward, towards the now-only-remembered feline.

My daughter turned down my kind offer to put her to sleep early, so we left the semi-darkness of the bedroom for the quasi-darkness of the living room, and here I sit, typing; her daddy just came home. As he opened the door, the fading light of evening framing him, she shook her head again, emphatically, and said, “I won’t pat Boo-Boo any more.”

And she’s right. She can’t. She was there, way back in December, four months ago, for Boo-Boo’s last moments. But where does this…this knowledge of the world, all this memory, come from? In my almost two-year-old?

“I won’t pat my Boo-Boo any more,” she said, minutes later.

No, my sweet girl, you won’t.

Sleep training: not for me

I tried. Three nights in a row, I left her in her crib until she fell asleep. The first night, you know about. The second night was smooth: she didn’t cry, fell asleep quickly, hooray! Then she woke up every half an hour for an hour and a half. The third night, she cried for twenty-five minutes (a few of those hysterically) and was finally quiet. I peeked in ten or fifteen minutes later, and there she stood, cherubic in her naked-baby glory, head resting forlornly on her hands as she stood at the end of her crib. In all, she was in there for an hour without sleeping, and that was as much as I could stand. I did a few dishes, got ready for bed, and hopped into bed myself; we went to sleep together at the early hour of 8:30.

The next morning at breakfast, I asked her how she felt, expecting the usual “Happy!” accompanied by her cheerful morning smile. “Sad,” she said. When I asked her why, she told me that she was sad in her crib. “I cry in crib [but it comes out 'tib.'] Mama hold? I take off jammies.”

Oh. Crying alone in a crib may not hurt children, and this approach may – and seems to be – really effective for some. I just know that it made my girl sad, so sad that she remembered to tell me about it the next day.

I also blame it on her ruined napping schedule. Napping had been glorious: Since late December/early January, she’d have a little snack and a bit to drink, I’d put her on the potty, then we’d read a story. I might sing one short song, and I’d leave her in her crib. She might talk to herself and her stuffed animals a bit, and then she’d sleep for anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours. The sad day, she only napped for an hour. The next day, she didn’t nap at all, even though I tried twice, leaving her in her crib for forty minutes to an hour each time (no crying on her end, but no sleeping, either). Today, she only napped for about forty minutes in the car; she didn’t go to sleep in her crib when I put her down for a nap. *sigh*

No, crying it out isn’t for me. It isn’t for her, either.

The toddler sleeps tonight

Two unfinished posts. Seven out of eight nights of  post-ten p.m. bedtimes for the girl. One tired me. One tired husband. One toddler, instantly distraught, at bedtime.

The struggle begins, lingers, ends.

Tonight, though, she was sleeping by 9:30. Unfortunately, this was preceded by forty painful minutes of crying, longer than I’ve ever heard (or let) her cry, with one brief entry of mine into the room. “Mama, hold baby!” didn’t make any of this any easier. She wasn’t the only teary one. Being at your wit’s end doesn’t leave you with much, though. I had lain down with her on the bed, eye level to eye level, and she still managed to kick me in the chin, then sang “Rock-a-bye baby” and part of “Hush Little Baby” and other songs instead of being quiet (charming AND infuriating!), then swung Glowworm like a mace and conked me in the head. I’d had enough. Too many nights rocking and singing and dancing and soothing and patting and – I couldn’t take it anymore. Matthew couldn’t take it anymore. She was wearing herself out, too.

And she did. She did wear herself all the way out and to – what? Sleep? To be sure we hadn’t permanently scarred our dear, sweet, churning-brained daughter, we crept in, hoping that this wasn’t some trick (as she pops out of her crib: “You thought I was sleeping! Ha!”) or that she wasn’t in some position that required we spend the rest of our lives repenting for making her cry (stuck between the bars? Huddled in the corner so she wouldn’t feel so alone?). It wasn’t. She wasn’t. She was asleep.  Everything was thrown out of her crib (thin blanket and small quilt, Glowworm, Panda, her pillow), but she, miraculously, was fully clothed. (On two different nights this week, she stripped herself naked – and one night, it was twice within an hour. “I take off undies!” she proclaimed.)

Tonight, she is sleeping in her jammies and undies, chest and knees down, butt up. She’s done battle with sleep, and she’s won and is getting the victor’s well-earned rest; I just hope that, for all of our sakes, the battle is not part of a long, drawn-out war. I’m not sure I believe in it, anyways.

The conductor of dreams

Tonight, her hands cradled my jaw, wrapping around the curve of face to chin, of above to below, as we lay facing each other on the bed. The darkness was winding around us, but she was still wound up. “What do you need to do to go to sleep?” I asked, as she continued chanting songs and nursery rhymes, eyes wide open.

“Close eyes,” she said. And she did. I wrapped an arm around her. Her hands remained on my face. Her breathing slowed and her eyelids stopped fluttering.

My arm cradled her, warm and solid and gentle, but she’s the one who completed a circuit as she fell asleep, with innocence and trust sparking through her fingers like a downed power line and jolting through me, a conductor of love, a conductor of dreams.

Our least favorite trip to date: our toddler’s trip to the ER

 

Wrapped in a purple pashmina in place of a shirt, my daughter, ML, lay in my lap, sometimes still, sometimes whimpering, sometimes crying, as my husband carefully drove the long, long mile to the hospital. I was careful to try to keep her right arm tucked against her and away from the bumps and nudges that could unintentionally bring her to tears. “Mama hold,” I said, echoing her request made in times of sadness, chanting it as if the repetition could ward off more tears. “Mama hold baby. Mama love baby.” We don’t really baby talk her – we never have – but those are the few remnants of baby talk that have lingered. With a slight jostle, she’d cry, the kind of sound that fills you with fear as does a siren in the middle of the night, wailing that makes you shiver and draw the sheets more tightly around you.

The ride was short, and so was the wait. The injury hadn’t taken much time, either.

“Dip!” our daughter will shout, her version of “flip” as she asks to be flipped again and again by holding her arms and flipping her over, front to back. And that’s apparently just what she and her daddy had been doing, as they’d done so many times before, while I was at yoga the day before yesterday, feeling relaxed, refreshed, and restored. All of that was burned away as I walked in the door. She was crying, her face blotchy from tears, even while my husband tried to comfort her and and distract her with Mole, a Czech cartoon she calls “Gustav Mole” after her beloved puppet. Pain crying sounds different from frustrated or tired crying, and when Matthew explained what had happened (flipping led to crying and holding her arm funny; he’d taken her shirt off to see it better but didn’t want to hurt her further by putting it back on her) and asked if we should go to the ER or stay home, I immediately said, “ER,” and we grabbed a bag with her water bottle and a few books, put a diaper on her (she usually wears undies while awake), and set out for the brief trek across town.

The worst was yet to come – although not the worst as you might expect it to be. After a first false visit – “Is she the one vomiting?” the doctor asked in confusion, as ML sniffled and nursed for comfort, no vomit to be seen – the ER doc came by to see us, on purpose. We explained the situation, and he took her arm in his, gently twisting it; the gentle touch, however, did not keep her from more tears. The doctor went on to explain  how she had nursemaid’s elbow – a dislocated elbow common in children under five before ligaments have tightened. It was now back in place, he said, and she should feel better by the next day. No sense in getting x-rays and spending unnecessary money on pictures. Like many fearful, doubtful parents, I was worried that it wasn’t such a simple thing. I touched her wrist then, and she cried again. He did the same, and she cried again. X-rays after all.

And that was the worst part. I couldn’t be near the x-ray machine, so I couldn’t hold her; Matthew had to, and as the x-ray technician moved ML’s arm into position on the plate on the table in front of her, she wept more loudly than she had before, pleading, urgent, hysterical: “MA-ma! MA-ma! Mama hold!” She reached towards me as I stood, uncertain, a room away. In her pain and need for unmet comfort, she sounded bereft. If we’d been in a valley of endless echoes, I couldn’t have felt worse. Was she crying just because of the pain? Was she feeling like I’d abandoned her? Daddy held her and loved her, and I was grateful – but being unable to comfort your child in need is like being covered, head to toe, in paper cuts: there’s nothing to do to fix it, but oh, how it hurts.

And then it was over. “Mama hold,” I said, arms outstretched, and she came to me. All was clear on the x-rays. We were free to go home. It was the shortest ER visit I’ve ever made, and we waved to the vomiting girl and her parents as we left for our short trip home, grateful for what comfort we could offer, sure to be more careful, thankful that this small child of ours would remain healthy and whole at least a little while longer.

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“Emergency Room.” Photograph. “For 20-Somethings, Everything’s an Emergency.” Futurity. Futurity, 2009 – 2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2012. JPEG file.

A hug helps to save the day

Wearing a cape – was he a superhero today, or a Jedi, or maybe it was a robe and he was Harry Potter? – and sobbing, he huddled on the floor, the opposite of a caped crusader. With all of his superpowers, he couldn’t bend his mother or father to his will. “I want dessert!” he cried, voice broken by tears. “I want dessert!”

Our friends, Rebecca and Christopher, and their two children, aged 5 and almost 4, were over for what I thought was a really kid-friendly dinner: lemon chicken, rice, mixed vegetables. Neither ate much, although my daughter hungrily spooned her way through her serving, and when dessert time came, we grown ups munched on dates and no-bake cookies. Their daughter and our daughter played happily, ignoring our sugar-fest, but their son, the 5 year old, did not take kindly to being left out – as you might have gathered from his aforementioned sobbing. “You can’t have dessert unless you eat more dinner,” his parents told him. Unfortunately, this did not inspire a painless incident of dinner-eating; the crying continued.

My daughter came over as if magnetically pulled by the sound of his sadness, standing between her daddy and me and eying her companion. “Dad [Sad],” she said. “Mama hold.” (“Mama hold” is her current answer to her own – and anyone else’s – unhappiness, and maybe she’s right: if the world had enough mamas to willingly hold onto every sad person, child and adult alike, we might all be a little bit happier and calmer. Her hugs do create great feelings of joy in me.)

A February 2011 hug – a one year old hug! – is just as fresh and welcome today as it was a year ago

“I’ll bet his mama will hold him,” I said, and still he howled. Rebecca offered him a hug, but that wasn’t the kind of sugar he was hoping for. My daughter stepped closer to him and looked uncertain. “Do you want me to send you home with a cookie for later?” I asked Rebecca.

“That’d be great,” she said.

Her son finally looked up. “I don’t want a cookie!” he said sharply, the pause after his words replacing the space previously filled by his sugar-mourning. My daughter stepped closer still and began to tremulously widen her arms.

It probably wasn’t the right response, but the four of us adults laughed.  All this time, all these tears, and he didn’t even want the dessert that we had?

My daughter finally had opened her arms wide enough for a hug, a look of concern shining on her face. “Is it OK if she hugs you?” I asked. He nodded slightly, and she moved in and wrapped her little dimpled arms around him. I felt a bit like crying myself, if the truth be told. She spontaneously, independently, and very sweetly did her best to comfort her friend who was sad. What more can we hope for in our children – or in ourselves? He accepted it, and she released the hug. He didn’t cry anymore. Maybe a hug does have a little bit of a superpower.

The sweet moment passed but, like the calories from those cookies, it lingers still – thankfully hovering near my heart instead of on my hips.

Finding the magic words: my toddler and bedtime

Sometimes – maybe all of the time – a magic wand would be welcome. I’d love to wave it over my daughter and magically make her a better sleeper, a toddler who doesn’t wake up every time she wets her diaper – or, better yet, a toddler who doesn’t wet her diaper and therefore doesn’t wake herself up!

No straw, pencil, pen, stick, or skewer has done the trick, and Ollivander isn’t set up in a shop around the corner, so I’ve had to settle for persistence and patience – and it’s a good thing, because I’m going to need to cling to my patience for a long time: her nighttime waking isn’t changing. But her going-to-sleep pattern is.

In early January, my husband attended a conference, leaving our daughter and me home for the better part of a week. What better time, I thought, to try to switch up our nighttime routine? For months, the last thing she had before bed was mama milk, which really meant that I had to put her to bed. I relished the intimate one-on-one time with her, but it also tied me to the house in the evening and, inextricably, to her bedtime routine. While my husband was gone, however, I switched the order: “milk, books, night-night,” I began saying, trying to impress upon her the nature of the change.

As you might imagine, it wasn’t smooth; we all like our routines, and it’s hard to give up that comfort. It worked, though – even if the “night-night” part required enough back-patting, as she lay in her crib, to create an album full of percussion rhythms.

He came back from his conference, and the new plan was in effect. Sunday night went passably well. Monday night, not quite a week into our efforts, it all went horribly wrong. “Milk, books, night-night,” I chanted. This time, her daddy read the books and tried to put her down – to no avail. We patted her. We rocked her. I nursed her. She cried.  The crib? No good. The bed? No good. Each was, apparently, its own torture device; we must have had tacks and electric shock devices installed without my knowledge. At last, as a last resort, my husband drove her around. Being confined in her carseat is usually a useful, last-ditch tactic to get her to fall asleep. A nursing top-off upon return seals the deal, and she’s down for the count.

Or not.

After the drive, he brought her in, sleepy but not sleeping, and I nursed her. And nursed her. And nursed her. She was sleeping about as much as an Olympic runner is while waiting in the starting blocks. On the drive, she usually looks at the moon and dozes in its beatific presence. This time, she apparently commented on her surroundings: “Light….light….light….,” she said, as they drove past street light after street light. Finally, my husband says, he told her, “Close your eyes and go to sleep!” After a moment of toddler griping, she did. It didn’t last.

Back in the house, our fail-safe method having failed, we were at a loss. We tried lying down with her together, the whole family turning in for the night. That didn’t do it, either. It was nearly 11. It was after 11. WE were tired.  At 11:15, we left her in her crib. Oh, she cried! We lay on the couches, he with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I with The Big Year, and grimaced at each other over our books as her crying went on for five minutes….nearly ten minutes….longer than she may ever have cried at a time before in her whole life. Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but I was beginning to feel a whole new sort of desperation. By fifteen minutes, she was quiet. She was asleep. I felt guilty but relieved. The last last resort worked.

We haven’t had to do that again. “Milk, books, night-night” is now a chant she’s taken up herself. If she asks for milk after reading, we remind her, and she’s mollified. If she stands up her crib as we pat her, calling for another book or, more likely, milk (“Mama moat!” it is, these days), “milk, books, night-night” reminds her to lie down. Now it is routine, and it’s one she can cling to herself. She is, again, comforted with the constancy – and I’m not the only one who can put her to bed.

Daddy and daughter read

“Milk, books, night-night,” she chanted one morning to herself, well before her naptime. I followed her instructions, and she fell asleep at 9, at least two hours earlier than usual. Immersed as we are in Harry Potter (he’s reading, I’m rereading), I wonder if there isn’t a bit of magic in the incantation. I think there must be.

I might not have a wand, but I did find the magic words.