Away to pemberley: the kiddo

Showing posts with label the kiddo. Show all posts

04 September 2010

3

Who knew peeing on a stick could arouse such emotions? I laughed and cried standing at my bathroom window.

Later, I listened to "Fire and Rain" as I waited on hold for that plus sign to be confirmed by my doctor.

Later, I presented my parents with a tiny pair of booties with ducks on them.

A few days after, I boohooed in the car a la Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona... "I luvvv heee-yim sooooo muuucchhhh!"

---
My 5-month-old fetus... or "Festus," as you were lovingly called by my dear friends.

---

My minutes-old wonder boy.
Still nameless.
"It's a boy," still sinking into my brain.
But already oh so loved.

---

Our little family with you around 6 months old

---

At my graduation with you around 8 months old.

---

Your 1st birthday.
When you were in love with Blue's Clues and saying "mama" over and over and over just because you liked the sound of it.

---

And then your world changed when you became a big brother.
And you are indeed one of the best big brothers I've ever known anything about.

---

You turned 2.
You painted a rocket.
And I marveled at your bigness.

---

Best buds.
Most of the time.

---

Easter '09 when you broke my heart with your handsomeness.

---

Party of 4.

---

And that brings us to now.
You're 3.
You pretend to be Indiana Jones.
You have an imaginary friend/buffalo named Bernie, who sleeps in our bathtub.

And I'm 100% sure that you're too big.
And that I'm just going to have to put a rock on your head.
---

It's not living if you don't reach for the sky.
I'll have tears as you take off,
But I'll cheer as you fly

I pray that God would fill your heart with dreams
And that faith gives you the courage
To dare to do great things.
I'm here for you whatever this life brings.
So let my love give you roots
And help you find your wings

03 September 2009

2 years in the rearview...

September 4... two years ago... at 7:20 PM... I met my little man.

I fell in love instantly because... well, just look at this face!

And then I blinked and this happened...

I didn't give him permission to fly in on all that growing business, but we were singing Happy Birthday to him just the same.

I decided to never blink again.

But I did... and now we're singing Happy Birthday to him again. And he's all grown up and painting rockets...

And feeding french fries to ducks...

And stealing my heart over and over again.

Happy birthday, dear one!
You may be Daddy's big boy, but you'll always be Mama's baby.

20 July 2009

lunch in 17 steps

1. I fixed my kid a Kid Cuisine lunch thing despite the salt and preservatives and grossness factor and blah blah blah. And no I didn't feel guilty about it.

OK, maybe a little...

2. I scraped the chocolate pudding out into a bowl because he naturally wanted to eat that/paint himself with it before eating the chicken nuggets, mac 'n' cheese, and corn (all of which happened to be the same color, by the way).

Nope, no guilt here.

3. I went on a mad hunt searching the cabinets for food for myself, having exhausted my own processed, over-salted, and flash-frozen food supply and finally settled on a grilled cheese.

4. I noticed that my child had eaten all of his macaroni 'n' cheese, two bites of his chicken nuggets, and none of his corn.

Me: "Is your chicken good, buddy?"

Kiddo: "No."

Me: "Do you want something else? Do you want a grilled cheese?"

Kiddo: "No. Unh?" (Interpretation: "No. I'm finished. I don't want a grilled cheese. Hand me that pudding.")

5. I continued to not feel guilty as he ate his pudding with star sprinkles.

6. I made myself a grilled cheese and stood in awe of the evenness of it's perfectly grilled golden goodness.

7. I got some pickles and some ketchup and a Diet Dr. Pepper, my vice for which I might need some professional intervention, and I sat down with my Gooseberry Patch catalog to eat and peruse.

8. Kiddo: [pointing to my plate] "Unnnhhh?"

Me: Do you want a grilled cheese?

Kiddo: Uh-huh!

9. I give him my grilled cheese and get up to make myself another one.

10. Kiddo: Bob, Larry? (Interpretation: "I want to watch Veggietales."

Me: "You've only taken one bite of your grilled cheese. Don't you want some more?"

Kiddo: "No."

Me: "If I turn on a movie in your room, will you take your grilled cheese and eat it in there?"

Kiddo: "No."

Me: "If I turn on a movie in the living room, will you take your grilled cheese and it in there?"

Kiddo: "No."

11. I grab the kiddo to rinse his hands in the sink, let him dry his hands with a paper towel, and send him on his way.

12. I go to turn my grilled cheese. Totally charred on the first side. Oh well, I'll eat it anyway.

13. The kiddo grabs my hand and starts grunting and pulling me away from the stove.

Me: "Not right now, I'm going to eat my lunch."

Kiddo: [whining, weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, etc.; no tears]

14. I go to get my grilled cheese, which is not done enough to be removed from the skillet and therefore folds up under itself.

Totally charred on one side, folded under itself on the other. I'll eat it anyway.

15. I sit down to eat as the kiddo continues his prolonged agony beside me and tries to climb into my chair.

Me: "No... if you want to sit down, you sit in your chair and eat your grilled cheese."

Kiddo: [continued drama as he climbs into his chair]

16. I eat my retarded grilled cheese as the kiddo eats some of his corn (with his fingers), the rest of his pudding (fingers and spoon), and some ketchup (spoon only).

17. The end.

10 June 2009

a bedtime story

My husband and I, by some miracle, have been blessed with 2 kids who are good sleepers. I think that I slept well as a child when I finally chose to actually go to sleep. I wasn't terribly old when my parents decided that I would just come to bed whenever I got sleepy and left me to my own devices, which included putting Barbies in all of my dad's shoes. And as far as I know, my hubby's parents weren't exactly the scheduled go-to-bed-at-9-o'clock-on-the-dot kind of folks either. So, the fact that both of our kids (so far) are at least semi-agreeable to the idea of having a bedtime routine and going to bed at a somewhat regular time every night is truly amazing.

I should interject here that we are not rigid conformists to any schedule whatsoever. We are more what you'd call the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of parents. I should also remind everybody (including myself) that the Bebe is a mere 5 weeks old and there is still plenty o'time for a rebellion.

And we're going to hope that the beginning of said rebellion did not in fact take place last night.

It all started when it was I and not her father who put her to bed. I did everything exactly the way he does as near as I could tell, but it just wasn't the same. The second part of the problem was the fact that her father was already asleep when we actually went to bed and he didn't wake up to snuggle up next to her, which she's also accustomed to.

The snuggling is something I cannot do because she smells me or senses me with her magical food source sixth baby sense or something, so unless I want her to eat every hour of the night instead of every hour minus maybe 2, I try to keep a safe distance. I thought she was just going to wake up altogether when I laid her down, but with some gentle coaxing and a lot of pacifier reapplication, she drifted off soundly. I, unfortunately, was not tired at that time, so I laid very still and read for a while.

I was feeling all proud of myself for putting my own kid to bed without actually nursing her to sleep AND getting some bedtime reading time in (something that never happened with the Kiddo until he was close to a year old). But then I turned off the light and our night of calisthenics began. Well, ok, I turned off the light and barely drifted off enough to be groggy and then she woke up. For the next 3 hours or so she wavered between totally asleep and some state of semi-wakefulness which included a lot of wiggling, working her feet out of her sleeper, and grunting reminiscent of a warthog. Needless to say it wasn't all that conducive to sleeping anywhere near her (although her daddy didn't seem to be having any trouble).

About 3 AM, and after trying to nurse her back to sleep numerous times, I decided it wasn't going to happen and just got up to give her a ~~sleep aid~~ bottle in hopes that a full-er tummy would help her sleep. We made it back to bed about 3:30 since I got hooked on an episode of Roseanne and had to finish it. By that time, I was wide awake and my husband had abandoned me to go sleep with our snugglier-than-I-am firstborn. I managed to drift off eventually, blissfully certain that now that her tummy was comfortably full, she was zonked out we were good until mid-morning. Also, the Kiddo had gotten up early the previous day and had only a short nap, so that was promising too.

So, naturally, the grunting routine re-ensued around 6-ish.

And the Kiddo came pitter pattering into my room around... 6-ish.

Which coincidentally is also the time my husband is about to walk out the door.

With an infant attached to me and, I might add, not pleased about still being in the bed, a toddler rubbing my ear/playing with my hair/running his hands all over my face and intermittently blocking my air supply, and my husband standing over me saying how much he wished he didn't have to leave but he had to so bye... it didn't take long for me to bolt upright, throw myself out of bed, and stomp into the kitchen.

And so at 6:30, I was sitting in the recliner trying to rock a baby back to sleep while being scaled and still having my ear rubbed by the Kiddo who was none too pleased himself about being awake.

Thus, I've already been up for going on 2 hours and am watching a segment on Sesame Street about how it's all right to cry and am seriously considering it.

Yes, we have 2 good sleepers, which I think makes it worse somehow when they don't sleep well than if they slept poorly all the time.

Bebe is asleep in her swing... and grunting. Kiddo is sitting next to me... and rubbing my ear. And I am awake... and wondering how I'm going to feel when I look at the clock a sweet forever from now and it's only 10 AM.

I think a trip to Mam-Ma's may just be in order...

05 January 2009

Hell hath no fury...

... like a child who's been tricked into taking bad-tasting medicine.

My kiddo and I have been struck for the last week (give or take) with this blah head cold thing that's going around. Not fun, but thank goodness it was that and not the stomach bug. It's over quicker, but ugh... I'd rather blow my nose 447 times than throw up once. And I'd much rather blow mine AND the kiddo's nose however many times than for both of us to be throwing up... because that would leave ye olde hubby o' mine in charge and since he's pretty much a sympathetic vomiter... yeah... it wouldn't be pretty.

So, anyway, I bit the bullet last Friday and decided to take Little Dude to the doctor, which I despise with every fiber of my being since it's a den of germs and other microbial creepy crawlies this time of year. And since it was the afternoon, which they leave open for call-ins I figured it would be worse. As it turns out, I was right... there were about 4 dozen people waiting in the pediatric department, about half of them actually waiting just to check in, and the well-child waiting room had tumbleweeds blowing through it. There were lethargic, peaked looking children languishing over the sides of chairs and a lot of annoyed or exhausted looking parents.

As it turns out, Doc said my boy had an infection in his left ear and a "croupy cough," which I'm 99% just means a croupy-sounding cough and not actually "the croup." She prescribed him the old standby amoxicillin (which turned out to be orange flavored and not pink and bubblegum flavored... what is the world coming to?) and a steroid (which sounds something like Prednisone but with an extra syllable) for his cough.

The orange-flavored stuff has not given us the first problem and he seems to remember that it tastes ok. He's taken it just fine every time. The steroid is a different story altogether. The first time he took it I actually still had somewhat of a sense of smell and I could tell it smelled sort of like Robitussin, which tastes awful, so I imagine it's not good. The first time he took it, of course, he didn't know what to expect and swallowed it right down and shivered and shuddered and made a whole range of entertaining faces. The next 2 times, he went ahead and took it with some complaint... the next 2 times, most (if not all) came right back out.

So, I called Doc this morning to see what I should do about that and she informed me that if he seemed to be getting better that I could just stop the medicine altogether. I'm not one to use punctuation with no words surrounding it, but ?????. I'm wondering what the point is of prescribing medicine for a particular length of time if you can just stop taking it whenever you want. Oh well...

I decided I'd go ahead and see how much of it I could get him to take without causing too much trauma or too much of a mess. My mom suggested I try a spoon and just pour it down rather than using the dropper thingy I had been using which seemed to give him more of an opportunity to spew it back out.

So, tonight when it came medicine time, I got the spoon all ready, hubby restrained him, I tried to bribe him with mini marshmallows, he screamed and wiggled, and when his mouth was really wide open I just poured it down.

Now... I've seen this kid upset before, but Oh. My. Gosh. He was what I'm pretty sure should be described as P'd OFF. He thrashed like I've never seen him thrash and threw himself a little tantrum. So, of course, natural reaction, my hubby started to fuss at him... and I was like, "Honey, he sorda has a right to be mad... I'd be pretty mad, too." So we just let him holler for a couple of minutes while I got him a few M&Ms out in a bowl and started a Baby Einstein video. And, of course, as soon as he saw the Disney intro he started smiling and eating his snack.

Nothing a little chocolate and classical music can't fix.

It's remarkable how much this child is like his mother.

04 September 2008

12 months behind me

I'm going to take a quick detour tonight from my story to spend some time talking about the special day that it's been.

Today was my son's 1st birthday. A year ago right now, September 4, 2007 at nearly midnight, I was a brand new mother.

It was around an hour in the operating room, another hour in recovery, probably the biggest part of an hour persuading my baby to nurse for the first time, visitors filling my room, nurses practically standing on my belly, and a "teaching session" on caring for my newborn I might add (yes, this took place around 1 AM)... I was drugged, cathetered, compression sleeved, IV'd, not to mention exhausted...

...but I had a baby. No, I had my baby. Resting in my arms all warm and round and pink and perfect laid the child I'd been loving for 9 long months. This precious little person who was, just a few hours ago, kicking me in the ribs was suddenly here... next to my skin, soft and smelling like a baby.

I blinked and now he's 1. The bittersweetness of it is almost too much to bear. My baby is growing growing every day. Time is such a thief and even though I thought when he was newborn, 2 months old, 6 months old... "I'm really making an effort to enjoy every day. I'm not going to take any of this for granted," those days of newborn stillness, those late nights of being alone with him in the darkness of our livingroom, the first smiles and coos, his little hands folded against my chest... are nothing more than sweet sweet memories. And yes, I believe with all my heart that I have enjoyed it all and I will be the first to say that I'm surprised every day at the patience God gives me, but I really don't think you can know how much to appreciate something until you look at it in retrospect.

I know that there are a lot of fun times and firsts ahead of us if God grants that, but there's something truly special about this 1-year mark. I couldn't let it pass without saying how thankful I am that God placed S. in our lives. The bright spot that he is in my life is the greatest blessing I've known next to my salvation. It simultaneously tears at my heart and fills it up each and every day.

My life has been made so much sweeter by this precious little gift from God.

9/4/2007