Poop!

Yesterday morning when I went to get Ella from her crib, she was already awake. She was also completely naked. Her soaking wet overnight diaper was crammed in the corner of her crib and she was looking at me sheepishly, vaguely pointing to the corner of the crib. I looked and, god help me, there was poop squished down between the mattress and the crib rails and smeared on her knee. One of her bears was soaking wet (she sleeps with 9 bears now), presumably from pee. I was appalled. She was embarrassed. It was not a good way to start the day.

I cleaned everything up and called Chad to commiserate. I wailed: "What if this becomes a thing now? What if she does this every morning?" And Chad said if that was the case, we could tape her diaper on, wrapping duct tape round and round her waist so she couldn't get it off. I would definitely wrap my child in duct tape if that's what I needed to do to keep the diaper on.

In a weird twist, yesterday night Ella pooped in the toilet for the first time in her life. Maybe she was trying to make up for the shitty morning (pun intended). We hooted and clapped and smiled, and she beamed with pride.

The Happy Hermits

Ella and I have not left the house since January 1. This hermit-izing was not intentional. Chad worked long days this week and I was too lazy to wake up and drive him into town, so I didn't have the car. And it was entirely too cold to venture outside for any length of time. So we've been in the house for days, simply by accident.

In an effort to avoid complete mental atrophy we've been doing all kinds of fun new things. One day we taped five sheets of printer paper together, stretched it across the kitchen floor, and colored with Ella's fun new markers. Another day we stirred together some homemade play dough and spent a full hour cutting out different shapes and mashing the colors together. I've discovered that Ella really loves "doing" the dishes and would spend an entire morning at the sink if I'd let her. And we've developed a modified, toddler-friendly version of hide and seek where I leave my big butt hanging out so it's easier for her to find me.

As cliche as it is, I feel like my daughter is growing up so goddamn fast and this week allowed me the time to marvel at the little person she's becoming. She's independent and headstrong, and, like many toddlers, she rarely wants help getting things done. She listens to most of what I say very closely, and I can clearly see her taking it in and working out the meaning. She has this endearing way of coloring where she hovers over her marker and colors the tiniest little scribbly circles I've ever seen. And she's very fond of the color yellow, a fact that amazes me because I think yellow is yucky.

But the best part? I've caught glimpses of a gentle, loving little girl peeking through her tough toddler exterior. She's started to hug and kiss, and sometimes she takes my ponytail out to play with my hair. One morning I opened my eyes to see her gazing at me sweetly and sleepily, rubbing her little finger so softly along my cheek. I think it was the sweetest thing I've ever felt.

Mad Dash

The mad Christmas dash is on. I have to do lots of baking and packaging and wrapping. It just doesn't feel like Christmas unless I spend a few late nights baking and wrapping in a flurry.

It's been a long time since I've felt excited for Christmas morning, but this year I am so excited to wake up with a toddler in the house. She will get a real kick out of the festivities, and it makes it all feel new for me too.

Guilty as Charged

Is there no end to the guilt I will feel as a mother?

When Ella was first born, I felt guilty if I even thought about leaving her for a second. I have felt guilty for not feeding her enough "fun" food, and I have felt guilty for not feeding her enough healthy food. I feel guilty when we stay in the house all day and she doesn't get a drop of fresh air. But I also feel guilty when we spend the whole day out of the house and she misses out on her downtime. It's a little schizophrenic, actually.

Recently I have been feeling guilty because Ella is not in daycare. You might think I am crazy, and you will definitely think I am crazy if you know me in real life. I have spent the last 18 months doing anything I can to avoid putting Ella in daycare. It's just that lately, my kid is obsessed with other kids. She eyes them up at the doctor's office and gestures until they make eye contact. She cranes her neck to catch a glimpse of after-school kids using the crosswalk. I feel like I am depriving a potential social butterfly of her social life by keeping her home with me all day long. Perhaps daycare would be good for her?

(Play dates could alleviate this guilt, but one needs friends in order to have play dates, and I don't many of those around here, especially ones with kids. And in this sometimes claustrophobic town in which we live, there is no fun place like Gymboree. And we tried the library once, but Ella was a terror and I'm too embarrassed to go back there just yet.)



In a somewhat related vein, last night we were waiting in a very long line at the grocery store. Behind us was a dad and a little boy in a Steelers beanie. Ella got really excited when she saw the little boy, but he totally ignored her and her antics. Trying to make a connection with him, she eagerly put on her own hat and laughed, like, "See! We are alike with our hats! Let's be friends and laugh together!" The little boy finally responded, and not a second later the Dad steered their cart away to a longer line next to us. Bizarre, no? What is his beef, I wondered? When Chad joined us in the line, I told him what had transpired. I was defensive. I was maybe even a little bit pissed. Maybe I was being paranoid, but why would someone move to a longer line in a crowded grocery store?

Crazed

Today might be the day that I run away from home, screaming like a wild woman, still wearing my pyjamas at three in the afternoon.

Ella has a tooth coming in and this time around, instead of spewing poop or snot, she is spewing pure evil. I know I should probably be more sympathetic, but it's getting hard and I'm out of Baby Tylenol. She is too uncomfortable to fall asleep, which means I have bruises and a crooked pair of glasses from trying to rock her to sleep for the last hour. I just gave up and put her in her crib to work it out on her own. She screamed for ten minutes and has finally, blessedly, stopped screaming.

Oh, wait, just kidding. She's screaming again.

Broken Hearted

Yesterday we dropped Ella off at Chad's mom's so we could get a few things done. We went back three hours later to pick her up and she would not come with us. We asked if she wanted to go home, and she shook her head no. Then she climbed up onto her Grandma's lap and blew us kisses and waved goodbye, as if to say, "OK, you can go now and I am staying here." A little part of me died inside. She didn't want us!

We laughed about it for a while, then I confessed to Chad that it hurt my feelings just a little bit. He said, "Imagine when she goes to school." A few minutes later, realizing that I needed a little more consolation than that, he said, "She gets spoiled there, that's probably why she wanted to stay."

Little Mama

(Um, yes, hi. Remember me?)

My Nana is fond of telling a story about how my Dad called me "Little Mama" when I was small. I think the Alzheimer's has mixed up the characters in her head because I was never called "Little Mama." The nickname is sweet and has a nice ring to it, but no one else remembers me being called this, including my Dad.

Lately I have been calling Ella "Little Mama" because she has been all about her dolls and stuffed bears. She obsessively changes a doll's diaper, clothes and shoes. She props the bears in her booster seat and shares bits of her snack and sips of her milk. She carefully sets them in her little person chairs and props a book in their lap. She is becoming a little mini-Mom to her rapidly growing kingdom of dolls and stuffed bears. The dolls have been around since she was born, and so have the trucks and matchbox cars that she has yet to touch. What made her choose the dolls over the trucks?

I read an interesting article in Wondertime magazine about this very question (I didn't see the article on their site - it was in the November 2007 issue, and it was called "Darwin's 18-Wheeler" by Mark Cherrington). In battling with the nature-versus-nurture question, the author cites a study involving monkeys at play. When a group of male and female monkeys were given dolls, toy dishes, tools, and trucks to play with, the female monkeys chose the dolls and dishes while the male monkeys chose the tools and trucks. The conclusion being, of course, that at least some of our gendered behaviors are a product of our very nature. Mildly disturbing, but interesting and not entirely unexpected.

Month Fifteen

Ella is now officially fifteen months old. I cannot believe this, that fifteen months have passed since she came splashing out of my belly, but the calendar usually doesn't lie. This month has been one of big changes. Ella has definitely left babyhood behind and is fast entering toddlerhood.



Her whole body looks longer and leaner each day. The delicious rolls of baby fat around her thighs have mostly redistributed themselves, and the awkward, bowlegged baby crab-walk has straightened out. Her neck is leaner and her face a little less round. Her feet have flattened out. She looks like a kid instead of a baby, except for the bald head.

She has adopted a white teddy bear as her Number One Friend. The bear was a birthday gift from Chad's friend David, and she left him laying around for a while before she decided he was The One. Now he goes everywhere with her, and she hugs him and feeds him and kisses him and gives him her milk. She calls him "Beah," like "bear" without the "r." His white fur is dingy and stinky, but I haven't yet figured out how to wash him without Ella losing her shit. Beah cannot be out of her sight.

Tantrums are a daily occurrence now, but they're not so bad. I understand that it's all about her asserting her new found independence, and I'm excited about that. I have found this incredible patience inside me that I honestly did not know I had. Sometimes I have to walk away for a minute to find that patience, but it's always there, and once I tap into it I can usually distract her or just ride it out.

I can see some of myself emerging in her personality. She's a people-watcher. She's a little reserved at first, but warms quickly to strangers. She likes to sit outside and just look around. She likes to sleep. I wonder how much of this was there from the beginning, hardwired into her little baby brain, and how much of it is learned, since we are together much more than we are apart.

Teeth, Shit and Snot

(Finally, back up and running with the Internet again. I survived.)

Ella was five months old when she got her first two teeth. We didn't even know she had any teeth growing and then one morning, there they were: two perfect little white teeth peeking out of her baby gums right in the front. Chad called them her Little Chicklets. We were excited. I bragged to other mothers about how easy teething was. "We didn't even know she was teething," I'd say. "She wasn't grumpy at all." Surely, I should have know that this would come back to haunt me, but I blabbered on in happy oblivion.

The next four teeth came during Ella's tenth month, and I still remember the smell of shit and A & D ointment that permeated our house during that terrible week. Doctors may say that teething doesn't cause diarrhea, but I beg to differ (and I think other moms would too). While those four teeth made their slow, painful way through her still baby-soft gums, her butt was one big, red, angry diaper rash from all the poop. She pooped on me, she pooped on Chad, she pooped on her car seat, she pooped in the tub. She would wake us all up in the middle of the night with horrible squirting sounds that heralded more poop.

I thought all the poop was my payback for claiming that teething was easy. Teething is NOT easy, and this was the universe's way of showing me that. I spent more nights than you would think rocking until the wee hours of the morning, dosing out Pedialyte, and ever-so-gently wiping her sore butt to avoid the look of terror would spread across her face when I came close to her with a wipe. It was tough.

Ella's next two teeth came in like the first two: they creeped up on us sometime during the night and we barely noticed it. But I knew better than to brag about it. I just counted myself lucky and waited for the next round.

The past two weeks have brought the growth of all four molars. All four molars pushing their dull, flat heads through my Ella's gums all at once. This time around - thank god - we haven't had as much shit. Instead, we have snot. I would much rather deal with snot than shit, but the amount of snot is kind of freaking me out: snot has literally been pouring out of her head all day long for 11 days straight. I wonder how such a small little head can hold so much snot. She has also been running a fever. On Monday, her temperature peaked at 103 degrees and I called the doctor for advice, but he told me to wait it out and only bring her in if her fever reached 105 degrees or continued for 48 hours. This morning her fever finally faded and now we are back to simply snot and the attendant grumpiness.

Universe, I wanted to let you know that I've learned my lesson about bragging. Really, I get it. I will never again try to make other mothers jealous with tales of my easy child. Could you please stop the snot faucet now?

Bad Parents

If you had to clean up a bunch of shattered glass in a gravel driveway, how would you do it?

I ask because a few days ago we locked Ella in the car. In our driveway. With all the windows rolled up in 90 degree heat and humidity. And the extra set of keys got locked in the car with her.

It was not a proud moment, I can tell you that. When we first got out of the car, it took a few minutes for us to process that we had just locked our daughter in the car, and another few minutes for us to yell at each other about who's fault it was. By that time, Ella was already sweating and her eyes were starting to get panicky, which made us get panicky.

The only solution we could see was to smash a window and climb in. We couldn't call the police, because we live outside town and I thought it would take too long for them to get here. Chad pulled at the window on the back of the station wagon, the one that lifts up on the rear hatch. The one hinge was loose and pulled out easy and we thought we might get out of the situation without any smashing, but the second hinge would not come out. As Chad pulled on it, it unexpectedly shattered in his hands. He got glass all through his feet and ran to the house cursing and bleeding. I pulled chunks of glass out of my bra before I climbed in the car and over the seat to unlock the doors and free my child.

And now I have a driveway full of glass to clean up.

Minute by Minute

It has been another long week. I read somewhere that for stay-at-home parents the years fly by in the blink of an eye, but the days, they tick away minute by agonizing minute. That is how this week has been - a long progression of very slow minutes.

Ella is some fierce little girl now that she is steady on her feet. She has decided that she can do everything by herself. Some things she can indeed do by herself, and it's great to have her do them. Brushing her teeth, for example. I am more than happy to let her scrounge around her own mouth with the toothbrush, because that means I don't have to do it.

There are some things, however, that she simply cannot do by herself, like putting on her clothes. I would love to have her dress herself if she was physically able to, but she just can't coordinate her movements enough to get the clothes on. Her determination is much bigger than her body. And so I have to fight her to the ground amid much screaming and scratching in order to get her dressed.

It truly did happen in the blink of an eye: Ella became a toddler. Why so soon?

Cleanliness is Godliness

Being a stay at home mom with an extremely active, mobile child is so much harder than I thought it would be. Sometimes I can't find the energy for it all. This week I am having an especially hard time. It's all I can do to keep everyone fed and the dishes clean. The house is a filthy mess, all the clothes are dirty, and there is a huge pile of paperwork on the kitchen table that needs filed. I would be so embarrassed if my Mom dropped in.

Last week Chad was telling me about his first visit to a friend's new house. I asked him how it was decorated, what the floor plan was like, and if it was clean. On this last question he paused before answering, "They have four kids." He could not have given a more accurate answer.

Clothes

Yesterday Chad declared that we were going to buy me some new clothes. This declaration came about because I'm always bitching about not having anything to wear, and I think he's getting tired of hearing me bitch about something so petty. So we packed everything up and drove for an hour to the nearest acceptable mall - "acceptable" meaning that there is an Old Navy there.

Somehow though, we came home from the shopping trip with only a bra and a pair of lounge pants for me. But for Ella? She got two pairs of pants, a pair of overalls, two shirts, a hoodie, a dress, a pair of shoes, and a Dora the Explorer basketball hoop. (Perhaps that Dora the Explorer basketball hoop was actually for Chad, but it was officially purchased for Ella.)

Always, this happens: we intend to buy things that we need for ourselves, but instead come home with stuff for Ella. Why can we never spend an on ourselves anymore?

The Baby Book

Dear Ella:

I am sorry I don't have a baby book for you, all neatly filled in with the dates of your Firsts - your first smile, your first full night of sleep, your first tooth - sprinkled with appropriate photographs marking the occasion and a heartfelt note here and there. In fact, I did receive two books specifically for this purpose at your baby shower, but I sold them on eBay because they were brand new but too ugly for me to use, and I knew they would sell for a good price. Your Mama, she's a hustler sometimes.

This first whole year has just been so foggy, and those first three months are a complete blur. Days turn into weeks and months and suddenly you are this entirely new little thing, with new skills and new jokes and new experiments to conduct. It's hard to mark when the changes start because I don't notice them until they're over.

But I do have an entire roll of 35 mm film documenting your first bites of solid food at 6 months. I promise I will get it developed sometime before 35 mm film becomes completely extinct. That counts for something, right?

Love,
Mom

Working Mom

I got a job offer recently. For months I've been sending out resumes and meticulously crafting cover letters, and here, finally, a job offer has fallen into my lap from a former employer. Technically, it is what I've been wanting for months. But now that I've gotten the offer, I'm starting to freak out over what I think life as a working mom will be like.

I've been obsessing over how I will be able to manage it all - working a stressful job, commuting, taking care of Ella, living a life on a clock-in/clock-out schedule. After all, I haven't worked outside our home in 14 months. To calm my mind I wrote down what our new daily schedule would be like. (Yes, sometimes I am crazy.) We only have one car at the moment, so if Chad and I were both working this would be a very realistic picture of our day:

5:30 am: Wake, shower, eat, feed Ella
6:15 am: Leave house
6:30 am: Drop Ella off at daycare and Chad off at work
6:45 am: Commute to work
7:30 am: Start working a 9 1/2 hour shift
5:00 pm: Leave work, commute home
5:45 pm: Pick up Ella from daycare and Chad from work
6:00 pm: Arrive home, make and eat dinner
7:30pm: Get Ella ready for bed
8:00 pm: Put Ella to bed
9:30 pm: Go to bed


According to my estimation, I would have maybe 3 hours a day with Ella - 1 hour in the morning while we get ready to leave, and 2 hours at night when we eat dinner and clean up and do the bedtime bath routine. I would spend 2 1/2 hours a day in my car - 1 1/2 hours in the morning, and 1 hour at night. My only real time with Chad would be the 1 1/2 hours after Ella goes to bed. We would, of course, have the weekends, but in addition to getting some quality family time, there would be chores leftover from the week.

Not only does the massive schedule change freak me out, but to begin working I must also find a daycare for Ella. For me personally, this is an especially sensitive issue. Nobody can love and care for my baby like Chad and I can, but we will have to find, trust, and pay someone else to do it for 11 hours a day. This kills me. Not only that, but thinking about daycare has stirred up some strange emotions about my own childhood.

I spent so much of my childhood wanting and waiting for my own mother to get home from work. After she and my Dad divorced when I was six, she worked very hard to get her nursing degree, then she worked very hard to be a good nurse and make enough money to support us and her own dreams. But her long absences tormented me - I developed ulcers when I was in grade school, and I would devise crazy, elaborate rituals to fill the lonely night time hours before she returned from her 3 to 11 shift at the hospital. I would scream and beg to stay home from school just so I could see her and spend time with her, clinging to the dark wood railing as she tried to pull me out the door.

I don't blame my mother for anything at all - she was and is a supportive, caring mom who worked very hard to put her life together just how she wants it. But I don't want my own daughter to feel like she is always waiting for me. She is significantly younger than I was when my mom worked - Ella is just one and I was six when my mom started working - so I suppose maybe it might be easier on her. But maybe not.

I can obsess over it all as much as I want, but the bottom line is that we need the money right now. So I am trying to approach the impending new schedule like a puzzle, a game of organization and time management, rather than this big awful thing that I dread. And as for finding a daycare, I suppose I should start making some calls today.

Pregnancy School?

Did you know that pregnancy schools still exist? For those of you not in the know, pregnancy schools are a slightly more modernized, more PC version of the old time Homes for Unwed Mothers. Appalling, no? An article in The New York Times explores the failure of such schools, and why they are being phased out in NYC.

"The internal data provided to the Education Department by a private consultant showed what dismal results they have yielded. In the fall of 2006, the average daily attendance at the pregnancy schools was 47 percent, well below the city average. Fewer than 50 percent of the pregnancy school students successfully made a transition back to high school. And the average student only earned four to five credits each year, fewer than half of the 11 credits possible."

Ostracizing pregnant teenagers is a big, nasty recipe for disaster, and I am happy to see that the lawmakers are realizing this as well. Teenagers are social creatures, and teenage mothers need support as mothers and as teenagers, as children really, and as regular people. In order to take care of their families, they need skills that extend beyond the realm of child care. And, like all mothers, they need time to think and talk about things unrelated to diapers or poop or breasts.

Imagine if, when you were pregnant, you were sent to live in a home where only pregnant ladies lived, and you were forced to focus solely on your pregnancy and impending motherhood. Would that not make you miserable? It seems so bleak. I can completely understand why attendance at these schools is so poor.

Fat Baby

Yesterday I took Ella for her one-year checkup. The nurse measured her height and weight (she got to stand up on the big kid scale this time!), and plotted her stats on the height and weight charts. She is 29" tall, which puts her in the 62nd percentile for height, and she weighs 24 pounds and 4 ounces, which puts her in the 96th percentile for weight.

After reviewing the numbers with me, the nurse said, "So she's average height and her weight is a little high. But we can't do anything about that until she is at least 2 years old."

I just looked at the nurse with a dumb look on face. "Do anything about what?" I asked.

"Her weight," she said.

Holy shit, I wanted to club the nurse on the head and say "You fucking idiot."

Ella is one year old. She is still a baby! Why would I want her to be skinny? Why would I want to "do something about" her weight? To me, the numbers say that she is above average for both height and weight, which means that she is healthy and on track.

I know that childhood obesity is becoming a very real problem in the United States. I understand that being overweight can cause certain preventable diseases. I understand that being an overweight child can lead to certain social problems and depression. But what kind of pressure is beneficial and healthy for kids? And how early?

Ella, she is just a baby. According to the American Obesity Association, "The term 'childhood obesity' may refer to both children and adolescents. In general, we use the word, 'children' to refer to 6 to 11 years of age, and 'adolescents' to 12 to 17 years of age." The nurse was clearly out of line with her comment, and I should have said something about it, but I didn't.

Reflections

Tomorrow, May 12, I turn 28. That is two years away from 30, and yet I still feel like a teenager playing house, pretending I am a real adult. Will I ever feel like a real adult?

***

Last year for my birthday, Chad wanted to take me out to dinner. I was hugely pregnant and the only thing I wanted was McDonald's. So, like the white trash that we really are, we went to McDonald's and I celebrated my 27th birthday by eating three cheeseburgers and a large container of fries.

I only ordered two cheeseburgers and when I asked Chad to go get me the third, he hesitated. My hugely pregnant and wildly hormonal self thought his hesitation was because he thought I was fat enough already and did not need the third cheeseburger. I pitched a little fit and insisted that he go right now and get me the third, which he did. When he returned to the table I asked him if he thought I was fat, and he said no, he thought I was pregnant. Smart one, that boy.


***

Today, May 11, is the day that Ella was supposed to make her arrival last year. But she didn't want to meet us yet, and she stayed in my fat belly until May 23. We had to bribe her to get her out of there: I was induced three times before she actually came out.

When I was pushing her big head out of my crotch, the doctor kept telling me I was doing good, keep pushing, there is her head! I didn't like the doctor and I didn't believe a word that came out of his mouth, so I asked Chad if he could really see her head. He was holding my foot and he had tears running down his face and he said yes, she's here. I will never, ever forget that moment.


***

This year, instead of planning for Ella's arrival, I am planning her first birthday party. I already forget so many things about our first year togther. How old was she when she started crawling? What was her first food? How long did it take my boob milk to dry up? When did she start sleeping all night? I feel like I need to take more pictures, write more down, document her life in more detail, or else I will forget everything. She's growing so fast, even though her hair isn't.

Pack Leader

Ella spent the night at my mom's farm this past Friday. When we went to pick her up on Saturday morning, my mom recounted their time together for us. "I took her in the barn with me to do chores. She wasn't the least bit scared by the cows. Whenever they got too close to her or mooed too loud, she would just point her finger at them and holler with a very serious look on her face."

I cannot tell you how this made me swell with pride. My baby girl, not afraid of any animals! Pointing and hollering just like we do when the dogs get out of line! She's already on her way to becoming the next Dog Whisperer, don't you think?

(Click here to read some helpful thoughts on helping children who are afraid of dogs.)

The Stroller Parade

We finally bought a new stroller to replace the crappy ass stroller we had been using. The new stroller is tall enough that we do not have to hunch our tall bodies over to push it. It has a cup holder for each of us - Mom, Dad, Ella. It closes up with one hand for real. It has a snazzy green accent stripe. And it cost us a mere $55.

We walked all over town today pushing Ella in her new stroller. She sat up and grasped her new snack tray like it was a gripping ride she was on, like the whole world looked different and racier from this new stroller. She was delighted and we were just as delighted.

While we were out walking, we saw friends with their new baby. We met another new mom with her baby and there we were, walking down the street, three moms pushing three strollers and two dads looking dumb. It was a stroller parade.

Later, I was gushing to Chad about how cool one of the new moms was. "Did you see her stroller?" I asked. "It was like a Bugaboo ripoff. It was so cool. And her bag? Did you see her diaper bag? It was green. A green diaper bag! She's so cool!"

Chad listened to me go on and on like a blubbering idiot. Then he said "Good thing we had the new stroller today or else we wouldn't have fit in with the cool kids." "Yes," I said, so excited because he said exactly what I was thinking. "Good thing."