Are you there God? it's ME, Margaret!

We're still here. In the battle of good and evil, Unhappy Baby Monkey is winning. She keeps making appearances at home, and for long stretches at a time. I KNEW we shouldn't have breathed that colossal sigh of relief when we passed the point that colic would have taken hold.

That's all for now. Oh yeah...and this...

Bookends

I haven't posted in a bit and I'm really sorry for that. It's not that nothing important is happening (hell, my first Mothers Day just passed!) it's just that important things are happening in other areas of my life. Work is getting really busy with software installs, training, trying to hire an assistant that I don't get as much "slacker" time anymore.

Zoe has changed so much in the past week and a half, sometimes I can scarcely believe it. She went from being very interested in her surroundings and studying them intensley to truly interacting with them.

When I say interact, that's pyschobabble for GRABBING. Oh yes. She grabs now. First it was Moms little day of the week pill box which she eyed and then played with as if it was the most expensive toy Fisher Price had to offer. Oh how she loved that pillbox!!! After that, it was ON. My glasses are another favorite. It's a fun game to swipe the glasses right off my face. Those of you who know me in real life know the fun with that game. I'm blind as an effing bat without my glasses. I can't see where her grubby little hand is waving them. Fortunately she usually hits me in the face with them after a second so I know where they are (this was NOT something I thought of when I ordered streamlined, cool little silver glasses)

After my glasses it was my coffee cup. And our lips or eyelids or noses.

It's awesome to see her discovering so much more around her.

She also digs tummy time now (did I tell you guys that already?) She actually calms down when she's on her tummy.

David has a new game that he plays with her. He holds her in a cradle hold and she'll reach up to touch his face (you think it sounds sweet but it really looks like a scene from the Miracle Worker). He then snarls at her and pretends to eat her hand. She LOVES it. She laughs so hard she sucks in air and makes that wheezy littel "eeeeeeeeee" sound.

She's also finding she likes some baby food. Carrots are good (they don't go up her nose nearly as much as the sweet potatoes) and apples and oatmeal aren't that bad either. She's even starting to open her mouth for the spoon a little.

Let me tell you people, spit up gets REALLY fun when there are colored foods involved.

I gave in to the baby gear mania and bought her a bumbo seat. I will post pictures of it tomorrow!

A million little things

Well, between the rockin' thunderstorm that kept us out of power for a bit and the fact that blogger has apparently been effed up for a few days, I haven't been posting much and frankly people...you have been reading much.

That's right. I can see. I KNOW ALL!

Things have been settling down in our household. Zoe is finally back to herself (it turns out she missed daycare. Monday afternoon she was sooo happy when I picked her up)

She's really starting to grab for things now. Last evening I was wearing her while in the yard helping Mom pick up sticks and branches. We were using those littel grabber, which let me tell you are a real exercise in dexterity. I'm pretty confident I could do one of those remote robotic surgerys now.

I started to notice every time I went to put a branch in the trash bag she would grab for it. So I let her play with one for a little while. Then she made a grab for my water glass when we took a break on the porch. I decided to let her explore and she DUNKED her hand in my waterglass! She seemed to think that whole grabbing business is pretty cool.

She also dearly loves to grab hair, noses and lips. It's just one big old glad handing grabbing fiesta!

She hates eating solid food though. More sweet potatoes get up her nose than anything else.

I've realize that I'm a rotten closer. It's a cop out, but I'm going to leave you with another entertaining picture. Sorry Mom. Had to do it.

We're Only Love At It's Best or Worst

Parenting can be an exercise in evasive maneuvers. By evasive I mean learning to wrestle away all of the fears, unknowns, guilt and unbelievable responsibility and putting those things in a place where they can't find you for a while. You know it's not going to be forever, but you can at least buy some time until the NEXT time they rear their evil heads.

If you ever allowed yourself the time and energy it takes to tackle all of those fears that nest in your head you could simply NOT be a good parent. There would be no foods you could eat, no foods your child could eat, no place you could go, no one would talk to you, etc. You'd just be a crazy hermite germaphobe freak parent who raises one of those weird kids who eats butter by the stick and calls himself "Frankie" when his name is John.

For as long as I can remember I've had dreams about these enormous Tsunami type waves come at me and wash over me. I've never been afraid of them. I think this is because when I was very little, one of the summers we spent at Lake Michigan I was playing in the waves and one washed over me. I opened my eyes to see green water sparkling brilliant in the sun, and I felt at peace.

Those dreams haven't changed, but in my waking life I feel those waves coming towards me and they aren't as harmless or pleasant as in my dreams. Each time a wave of panic threatens to wash over me I try to take a breath and give it to God.

What if she doesn't get better? What if they were right about vaccines and I've given her Autism? What if daycare is what is making her sick? Why can't I just stay home and take care of her?

I feel deficient as a mother when I think these things and they simply won't do.

I love that child with every fiber of my being and I will not let the waves wash over me. There is no peace in that.

Fortunately right about the time I feel like I'll break Zoe farts like an old man or blows out a diaper and we both think it's hilarious and life is broken down into simple, one syllable tasks like changing diapers and giving baths. Or...she makes a face like this...



I never liked abstract art, and I won't give into abstract thinking.

Unhappy Baby Monkey

Remember before when I said that I had reached my limit of finding things humorous when Zoe was sick.

I was wrong.

Unhappy Baby Monkey showed her face yesterday. I've decided that Happy Baby Monkey is zoe's superhero name and her use of her feet is her superpower. This is probably resultant of too many conversations with David about What Superhero Would I Be and What Would my SuperPower Be....blah blah blah.

So her evil ALTEREGO is UnHappy Baby Monkey. It's freakin' Friday people, give me a break - there's just not much left in the creativity well.

Upward and onward though...

Zoe hates her breathing treatments which consist of a box about the size of a See N Say, complete with handle that opens up to attach the tubing and what looks like a good old fashioned chloroform mask.

She KNOWS what's about to happen when she sees that mask. Mom asked if she could possibly have caught on that quickly and my answer is HELL YES. She starts drooling and crying. It's sort of Pavlovian.

The mask goes on and her eyes well up and the crying begins. It tears the very fabric of my heart to hear her cry that way. I will admit to being a complete wimp. I have to be the one holding her because I can't stand the look of recrimination on her innocent little face.

And then it begins.

First it's the "wringing of the feet". She literally wrings her feet like someone else might wring their hands.

Then she starts clapping them together. They turn red and hot and they seem to be everywhere at once (hence the superpower reference)!

UnHappy Baby Monkey has grabbed the tubing and almost ripped it, gouged me with her toenails, grabbed the mask connector and successfully pulled that out. The most devilish incident occurred when Mom and I were giving her a treatment. She had one hand and one foot. I had another foot and hand and she was literally up in the air, rigid, like when we used to play Light as a Feather Stiff as a Board when we were kids.

Giving her one of these treatments is like riding a bull! I keep waiting for some cowboy in chaps to scream "7 SECONDS" so I can let go. But no, the treatments last about 12 minutes each, with no respite from the howling of Unhappy Baby Monkey.

DISCLAIMER

I use spell check, I swear.

I'm just usually either blogging on the DL from work or I'm up late doing it and trying to edit it later.

I apologize for any and all spelling/grammatical errors that make me appear uneducated or stupid.

I really need your approval. Forgive me please?

Happy Friday!

Overcome

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our broadcast this evening comes from a place many have visited and never returned once they had children - Exhaustionville. It's sort of like New Mexico, but not nice.

Seriously though, I've been out of pocket a couple of days because Zoe has been very sick. She came down with Bronchiolitis, which can be a very serious respiratory condition in babies.

It can manifest as a regular cold, but in Zoe's case gave her a tearing, bubbly cough and labored breathing, etc. I took her to the pediatrician on Tuesday and she ended up on Albuterol treatments every 4 hours for 24 hours, and she's still taking them as needed. She's also on Amoxicillin, Cough Syrup and vitamins.

Poor thing - we're pretty sure she got it from daycare.

As it happens, as a frame of reference this began Sunday and it is now Thursday.

I wanted this to be funny, but the truth is it's been pretty scary. I think seeing her with a mask on her face taking breathing treatments and getting her pulse/ox checked sort of shell shocked me back to when she was born.

Almost everyone I know whose children had this ended up in the hospital. So far, our trooper is doing pretty well.

So I've basically been scared shitless and ashamed of myself that I'm so tired that when I do wake up at night I make David check her breathing to ensure it's alright.

That little girl is the world to us and I"m sure we're making a mountain out of a molehill but it was damn scary to hear her cough and labor to breath

She also screamed like hell when we give her the treatments. That didn't help. She doesn't like being restrained at all.

Well, we've learned a couple of things about me today.

(1) I do have limits - not everything CAN be viewed humorously
(2) I use foul language when I'm tired.

signing off for now, I just wanted you to know we're stil here...

The Virtues of a Good Husband II -That Cat Has a Screw Loose

One of my cats is about as high maintenance as Zoe. To tell the truth, he may be a little more. He was terribly malnourished when he was young and was the runt of the litter. So his brain did not develop properly and while he is instinctively intact his problem solving abilities are a little sub par for the feline community's comfort.

He's big and fluffy and gray with a jauntily curling tail. I'm pretty convinced that the squirrels in our yard think he's the Squirrel King, because he resembles them, but bigger and not as agile.

Sooooooo.....After the Oven incident on Friday, all we need is another quasi emergency to really break the mood of relaxed splendor hanging out on Saturday had created.

We had just picked up Zoe from mom and dads and returned home. We were making a decision about dinner when I noticed our neighbors dog Peanuts was out. He's a sweet dog really, but he loves to chase my cats. Not two weeks earlier we were trying to get Gemini down from a tree because Peanuts was trying to have his way with her.

There is a window on our porch we leave partially open for the cats in just such an emergency. Jupiter however, being a few whiskers short of a tuna did NOT make a go for the window. Oh, he went past it alright, but no IN IT.

Instead he ran UP the tree and stayed there. Cats climb trees, I know. And rarely do they ever need the fire department to help them down. This time however, we had to complicating factors.

(1) The mockingbirds are nesting. For anyone who has ever had a mockingbird nest in a tree or NEAR a tree in your yard you know the dangers. They will dive bomb ANYTHING that comes close to their nest. We nearly lost Gracie (big fat cat) in a freak nesting incident that resulted in a Mockingbird sitting on her back pecking at her as she waddled to safety.

(2) There was a thunderstorm coming.

We whistled, "kitty kitty'ed" and pleaded for him to come down. His nimble little self was going to have nothing of it.

Lacking a proper ladder, David and I decided the best course of action was to get really trailer trash and pull the car into the front yard under the tree. Not the GOOD car of course, but my 1989 Ford Tempo.

In the rain, the lightning an wind, my superhero husband, much like those fireman in suburban legends, managed to coax that dipshit cat out of the tree.

I won't attempt to give you an insightful closing. I think the picture below speaks for itself.

The Virtues of a Good Husband Part I - Fire in the Hole

Husbands are great to have around on occasion. David and I had a wonderful date day on Saturday, and it was very "couple-ish" and romantic, but I'd much rather draw attention to his finer qualities, as husband, daddy and resident superhero pledged to fight household disaster. Like the small matter of our oven catching on fire.

Friday night was supposed to be Chili Dog Night. This was David and my lame attempt at trying for healthy junkfood. Our oven hadn't been working so great and our landlord finally finished it, so we though "YES! No longer will take take 45 minutes to cook some decent fries!"

That hope was dashed several minutes later, when amid the heavy smoke rolling out from the kitchen I hear David quietly scuffling about. "What's wrong babe?" I call out.

"The oven's on fire" he says

"What?"

"The oven, it's on fire. I'm putting it out".

After a fleeting trip down memory lane back to when David broiled some stale saltines in the oven to "crisp them up" and ended up with a flaming stack of cardboard crackers I gather myself to ask what the damage is.

It was minimal really; non existent. Just a little blackening around the bottom, and David's non chalantness made me believe it wasn't that big of a deal. Turns out, the first was about the size of a saucer in diameter and reached all the way to the second rack of the oven.

But he beat the flames back, time and time again - to protect home and hearth. Not only that, but My Hero CLEANED the freaking oven afterward.

Zoe slept, blessedly ignorant of this near disaster.