If You Need To Lose 4 Ounces Really Fast...

Have your tonsils and adenoids out.  No, really.

Av had hers done yesterday.  It's the end of a long journey of borderline sleep apnea, constant trouble breathing through her nose, and a couple of bouts of tonsilitis.  I can already tell a difference in the way she breathes, and her voice is a little different - higher and sing-songy.  Was it difficult watching the burly anesthesiologist carry her off to the O.R., with a Buzz Lightyear doll clenched in each little fist and a trepidatious slant to her mouth?  Well...

I went out for coffee, while GW stayed behind in the waiting room.  On the way back in the van my coffee cup exploded for some reason - lid came off as I picked it up to take a sip and all 24 ounces of vanilla soy frapp (thank goodness it was cold, not hot) spewed all over the inside of the car and all over me.  Yeah.  So I swung into Rite Aid to buy some paper towels, thinking I'd try to clean up a little, but by the time I was finished at the checkout I was feeling a distinct urgency to get back to the surgery center.  So I bagged the clean-up, raced back and found out my instincts were on target: GW had already been called back to the recovery room.  I hurried in, directed by the nurses.  I heard the horrible sound of some poor child screaming at the top of his or her lungs, a really primal, angry, traumatized sound.  As I got closer I realized it was my kid.  I pulled back the curtain and found her flailing on GW's lap in a reclining chair, howling, her eyes blank and staring into space.  They had warned us about this in pre-op.  It still kinda made me wonder if they had actually given her the anesthesia before the surgery.  Anyway, I just wrapped my arms around her as best I could and tried to soothe her, although it quickly became apparent that she needed to do this crying and raging, and after a few minutes I was glad she was doing it.  She was clearing out the ballast, and letting the world know how super-pissed she was that this had happened to her. There was a little bleeding, which pissed her off even more; now she was messy on top of everything else.  She yelled at the nurse who tried to wipe her face and batted the cloth away.  GW tried to restrain her a bit to let the nurse do her job, and Av yelled at him, too.  I translated for everyone; she was howling out her words and no one could understand her but me, for whatever reason.  She started screaming that she wanted to go home.  GW told me later that when he'd been called back and they were taking her off the gurney and putting her into his lap in the chair, one of the nurses had suggested she hug her "Moo Moo" (referring to the stuffed cow she had brought from home along with her Buzz Lightyears).  Avery bellowed at her:  "HIS NAME IS MOO COW!!!" You go, girl. We just did the best we could to keep her comfortable.  After a bit they gave her a shot of hydrocodone, and she fell asleep.  She woke up twenty minutes later completely herself again and drank a bunch of Sprite.

.....And The First Two Teeth Have Made An Appearance.....

Two days ago I felt two little jagged bumps on her bottom gums, and saw the tell-tale white spots.  I have to say I was shocked.  Av didn't get any teeth until she was 13 months old, so I guess I was expecting something along those lines with El, seeing how they're so much alike.  Surprise!

That big adorable smile won't be toothless much longer.

First Crawling Steps

I just saw El take a few steps crawling - on hands and knees, not just the soldier crawl.  It may not be the very first time she's done that (she's been working on it for about 10 days now), but it's the first time I saw it, anyway.  I'm going to go get the camera and have it ready for next time.

Hey, it's a big deal.

Hey, Genius, It's Called a Baby Monitor.

It's one of those days.  Weeks.

Baby's having trouble sleeping, as her tummy's bothering her because of the constipation, which led to the diaper rash, which was all caused by carrots.  My fault.  Started her on solids too early, it seems.   To add insult to injury, last night a lone cricket the size of my pinky fingernail made its way into our bedroom, and started chirping at jackhammer volume.  GW and I found him and flushed him out, after much ado, and eventually I got the baby back to sleep.  By eventually, I mean never.  So it seemed.

Sleep deprivation does weird things to a person.  I'm not myself.  I went to a board meeting last night at Av's school, and couldn't put a whole sentence together.  This morning I poured boiling water from the tea kettle directly onto my hand, instead of into the mug.  That kind of stung a little.  Self-punishment?  For what?  Inadvertently giving my baby diaper rash, maybe.  I'm probably reading too much into it.  I do that.

This is El eating the offending carrots.  Seemed like a good idea at the time, to both of us.

And we're dutifully washing them off afterwards.  Because most of them ended up on the outside of her body and the surrounding area (table, high chair, wall, window), not the inside.  And yet they still wreaked havoc on her poor little bowels.  Guess it doesn't take much when you weigh 16 pounds.

My friend E. came over the other day with her two kids, so they could play in the pool with Av.  I hung around outside the pool while El slept upstairs, and I kept going in and out the back door so I could listen for her in case she woke up.  At one point I was racking my brain, trying to figure how I could keep tabs on El without having to constantly interrupt my pool-skimming and conversation with E. to go stand at the bottom of the stairs for 90 seconds.  E. read my mind pretty easily, and suggested delicately (so as not to make it obvious that I've become retarded), "Got a monitor?" 

See?  No sleep.

Babies: A Sensory Journey Through Time (0-6 months)

AGE: 3 days
What they look like: a little mouse, curled up and pink.
What they smell like: that indescribable newborn smell, clean, pure, and lovely.
What they sound like: a mewling kitten.
What they feel like: a super-soft, floppy little sack of early peas.

AGE: 3 weeks
What they look like: tiny, wide-eyed, splayed-limbed, impossibly cute.
What they smell like: still that beautiful newborn smell; especially from the little bald head.
What they sound like: a kitten with lungs the size of a mountain lion's.
What they feel like: just a tiny li'l sack o' sugar.

AGE: 3 months
What they look like: the quintessential baby - beautiful eyes, that adorable toothless grin.
What they smell like: breast milk.
What they sound like: an injured cat.
What they feel like: beautiful, soft, smooth skin. And getting a bit wriggly.

AGE: 6 months
What they look like: a tiny, pudgy version of one parent or the other.
What they smell like: pee.
What they sound like: a fire engine.
What they feel like: a fifteen pound octopus, recently emigrated from Krypton.


AGE: any and every
What they look like:  you, but much cuter.
What they smell like: the sweetest, purest thing on Earth - including when they smell like pee.
What they sound like:  your favorite song.
What they feel like: can only be described in metaphor, and even then not very well.  Like the previous three.

Local Baby Eats Construction Paper; Throws Carrots On the Wall

AP Six-month-old El seems to have her edibles confused with her arts and crafts, reports her exhausted mother, Plain Jane. Her story has brought greater awareness of a common phenomenon experienced in over 90 percent of homes in which a young baby is trying his or her first foods. This reporter spoke with Plain Jane in an interview that lasted nearly fifteen minutes, not because of the breadth of the subject matter, but because Ms. Jane's cognitive functioning is so impaired by sleep deprivation that it was difficult for her to verbalize a coherent thought.

After sorting fact from inarticulate babbling (the mother's, not the baby's), this reporter learned that yesterday, shortly after returning from the grocery store, Ms. Jane put her baby down on the living room floor to play while she quickly put the groceries away. When coughing and sputtering noises sounded from the baby a few minutes later, Ms. Jane ran into the room to discover that little El had located a tiny triangle of blue construction paper, a remnant of a recent project her four-year-old sister had been working on, and promptly stuffed it as far into her mouth as possible. Ms. Jane attempted in vain to extract the bit of paper, which she stated was visible but partially digested, and therefore plastered quite firmly to the back of El's throat. El, for her part, succeeded in fighting off her mother and swallowing the paper; her ensuing smile led Ms. Jane to conclude that consuming her unpalatable find had been El's intention all along. Later, at the supper table, little El pitched her bowl of pureed carrots against the kitchen wall, splattering its bright orange contents in an uncannily accurate star pattern. Ms. Jane claimed to have a great deal of fun cleaning what she described as a "huge" mess, and stated she was glad she had spent so much time shopping for and preparing the food that her baby tossed at the wall and that her four-year-old sat and stared at with undisguised revulsion for the entire dinner hour.

At the risk of committing the sin of editorializing, this reporter may have sensed a note of sarcasm in Ms. Jane's statements. This reporter may go so far as to speculate that Ms. Jane's expectations of her children's eating habits might be a tad unrealistic. If so, this family's story should serve as a cautionary tale to all babies, who ought to consider spending more energy helping their parents understand that the more effort and thought put into a meal by the parents, the more flavor and fun it extracts from the food. Non-edible items are far more interesting and tasty, and should never be denied even when the parent might mistakenly view the item as "dangerous" or "a choking hazard." These are deliberate falsehoods perpetuated by a parent-friendly media. Or so claims a certain highly articulate baby who made these statements while her mother wasn't listening, and asked to remain anonymous.