A snapshot of my day:
Jane: Up.
Me: You want to come up? Shouldn’t you go play with your toys?
Jane: Up.
Me: (picking Jane up) Would you like to read a book?
Jane: (vigorously signing please)
Me: Brown Bear Brown Bear, wha…
Jane: Bye-bye. (squirms to get down)
Me: Are you going somewhere?
Jane: Bye-bye (waving)
….
Jane: Up.
This morning, during breakfast, Jane decided to let her water from her sippy cup run back out of her mouth instead of swallowing it. No big deal. She was just playing. Like toddlers do.
Let’s just say that my reaction was disproportionate to in relation to the actual harm done (which was, by the way, none. No harm. At all). I may have slammed her sippy cup down on the table. This response may have made her cry. I am not actually admitting to any of this, mind you. Because that would be embarrassing. Who slams their toddler’s sippy cup down as an instructional method? No one sane, that’s who.
I spent the remainder of my morning doing penance for my over-the-top reaction. First, I beat myself up about my temper (I rarely have one, by the way). Then I berated myself for my lack of patience. I apologized to Jane, although she had completely forgotten about the incident by that point. Then I spent some time praying after my run, while Jane slept in the stroller (because God knows I need help, if I am slamming sippy cups). Once Jane woke up, she and I spent copious amounts of time crawling around on the floor, wrestling and playing–all the while I kept hoping and praying that these are the moments she remembers, instead of my occasional parental lapses.
Parenting Jane brings out the very best in me, most of the time. But sometimes I am forced to confront my character flaws. And I just have to keep reminding myself that everyone has flaws; the real tragedy would be to see them and then do nothing to try to change them.
Jane turned one (ONE!) this past Saturday.
For the week or so leading up to her birthday, my mind kept coming back to what I was doing last year at this same time. Waiting. I was waiting. All her tiny clothes had been washed (one vivid memory stands out of folding onesies in my sunlit laundry room, wondering about the brand-new person that would fill them). I had occupied myself for days organizing the pantry and the cupboards in the kitchen. I spent hours roaming the mall, trying to coax out the little one who seemed to want to take permanent residence inside my body. She was a week late… and that week seemed longer than the entirety of my pregnancy.
Jane finally arrived after 14 hours of labor and an unplanned C-section. And she was amazing. I didn’t fall completely in love with her at first sight, though. It wasn’t until I held her for the first time (about 30 minutes after her birth) and felt her latch on to breastfeed that I was completely overwhelmed with the enormity of being someone’s mother. And completely taken aback by how much I loved this tiny baby girl. Every fiber of my being belonged completely to her.
The first few months of her life whirred by in a sleep-deprived blur. I wrote lots of things down during that time, in her baby book that I haven’t touched since she was 6 months old. Then, there seemed to be lots of time to write and contemplate. She and I had a slow, easy rhythm to our days. But, once she could sit up (at about 6 months… I am sure I wrote it down somewhere), our times together exploded with possibility and little adventures. And writing things down fell by the wayside.
I find myself wanting to capture every moment with her in my memory, freeze it so that I can look back and cherish each moment like folks keep telling me to. But everything happens so quickly. Now she is a big girl who eats brown rice, tofu and pineapple for dinner with her Baba and I. She says “mama” and “baba” continuously. She adores bananas (NANA!) and books (which we have to read over and over again). She is a toddler.
I am fascinated with the child she is becoming. She loves people. The folks at the Y and at the church nursery always talk about what a happy child Jane is. Amy & I didn’t have much to do with that, Jane just kind of came that way, but I bask in the compliment nonetheless. At the mall playground the other day, a little girl wanted to hug Jane. And she did. Multiple times. Jane gamely played along. She even gave the little girl a kiss. She is just that kind of kid.
Our days aren’t without meltdowns and tantrums; Jane has a strong will and her own idea about how things should go. And any disapproval in my tone can send her into a crying jag. But she rebounds quickly. Tears are followed by hugs and (if I am lucky) a kiss. I like that she knows what she wants. And I am thankful that I am strong enough to set boundaries for her.
Jane had her very first cupcake for her first birthday. She dove right into it, grabbing fistfuls of blue icing and shoving her little hands into her mouth. She ate that cupcake like she lives her life, with enthusiasm and joy. I am so amazed that I get to be her mother. And so very grateful.
One of the most awesome parts of having a kid is dressing her in crazy, fun get-ups that I never would have been allowed to wear when I was little.
Exhibit A:
Rainbow leg warmers! And a rainbow shirt that has each color of the rainbow spelled out in said color… And the cloud! The cloud just says “fluffy” over and over in a cloud shape! Y’all, I would totally rock this outfit if I could. But I get to do the next best thing: put it on my one year old daughter!
And, oh are there outfits for special occasions. See Exhibit B, in which Janie debuts the tutu for her first birthday:
Doesn’t this outfit just scream, “ONE!”? Yeah, I thought so, too.
I know one day Jane will have very strong opinions about her clothes. But right now, she rocks the Punky Brewster chic without a care in the world. And. it. is. awesome.
Yesterday I ran for the first time in almost a week. Since running replaces therapy for me, no one really wants me to go that long without a run. I get edgy. And my head starts freaking out and bombarding me with words like “bad,” “can’t,” “won’t ever”…
Does a run fix all that? In one word: yes.
But… the first run back after a hiatus of any kind (and yes, even less than a week counts) is pretty darn painful. And I had been really sick. So, I promised myself I would just do an easy 5k to get back into it. Easy, my butt. There was nothing easy about that run. My lungs felt a bit wheezy. I got tired about a mile in. I felt like I was running through watered down Jello. But I did it. And I still completed the 5k distance in less time than I used to run a 5k on race days.
M0st importantly, though, it was easier to smile at my daughter and mean it after my run. For Jane and I, there was more singing, more dancing, more giggling yesterday than there had been in almost a week. And that is worth all the effort I had to put into that run.
Strep throat. Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a kid like the threat of strep throat.
Now I remember why.
On Thursday morning, I woke up feeling off–my head felt foggy, my muscles ached. At 6 a.m., I asked Amy to get up with Jane so I could sleep for a bit longer to try to ward of the impending sickness. Turns out, sleep only delayed the inevitable. By 1 p.m., when Amy mercifully came home from work, I knew that I was really sick. My fever already reached 100.3. From there, even on a steady dose of Tylenol, it climbed to 103.1 before it finally broke at 10 p.m.
Fevers, chills, hot flashes, and throbbing achiness… and an almost 1 year old to take care of. Those factors can only equate to agony. I do not remember ever being in that much seemingly inescapable pain. And it all seemed so hopeless. Jane wanted me to play. Moving around hurt. She still need to be fed, and held, and loved. And I just wanted to cry. Awful.
When people used to tell me how much my life would change after I had Jane, I thought they were idiots. Of course my life would change. I understood the ways in which it would change. Even after Jane was born, I felt like I had adequately prepared myself for what it meant to completely care for another human being. But OH MY LORD… people forgot to mention that kids don’t go away when you get sick. Jane wouldn’t issue a time out. I could hear her chanting “No mercy” as I lay moaning on the floor next to her tunnel, which she had already crawled through 101 times. It was hell.
At this point in the chaos, Amy was stricken down with the plague, too. That’s right. Both parent figures down for the count by Thursday evening.
Oh, but wait… at this point, my throat didn’t even hurt! Nope, not until Friday morning did I wake up feeling much better… except for the thousands of tiny knives sliding down my throat when I swallowed. But 3 p.m. I was at a walk-in clinic begging for mercy.
Mercy came in a pediatric dose of bubble gum flavored amoxicillin to treat strep (although no one is really sure I have strep at all… it is just an educated guess).
I am not exaggerating when I say that hell is strep throat with an almost 1 year old. Absolute torment. But it is over; we are going to be okay.
Now, if I can just get Jane to stop chanting “no mercy,” everything will be back to normal around here.
Janie hears music in the most mundane places. Washer & dryer running? Totally danceable beat. Shaking the soy creamer? Reason to shake her booty. Spoon clanging in a coffee cup? Time to groove.
I love this about her. I love that, in every day life, she already finds things that move her.
Today, I looked up to find her singing and dancing; no music was playing. I love that she is grounded enough to hear her own beat.
This little dancing imp astounds me every day. Her personality emerges continuously. And I continuously find reasons to love her more than I ever thought possible.
This morning, I was washing my hands in the bathroom next to Jane’s room. I had been in her room less that two minutes before, and she was playing with her toys contentedly. I heard some rustling and looked up in time to see her round the corner, crawling at lightning speed, saying “Mama!Mama!Mama!” She has said “Mama” before, but it was so clear that she was looking for me… that she wanted me. I teared up for just a second before I rewarded her efforts by scooping her up, tickling her and hanging her upside down–all of her favorite things. I love this kid. Every day brings something new. Heck, sometimes every hour brings something new.
This afternoon, we were facing each other, playing with blocks on the living room floor. Suddenly, she stood up (without holding on to anything at all!) and started dancing. Then she sat back down. WHAT?!? The longest she has ever stood by herself was approximately 1.2 seconds. And now she is dancing??? I guess one day she will just decide that she is going to walk… I think that some day might be quickly approaching.
This evening, after we had come home from the YMCA, I was talking to my mom on the phone. I looked over, and Jane was in the walk-in pantry, standing next to the shelves, trying to pull a banana off the bunch. The kid not only told me she wanted a snack, she told me what she wanted for a snack. Dang.
I think she might be trying to tell me she isn’t a baby anymore. I won’t tell her she will always be MY baby (it drove me crazy when I was a kid and my mom would say that to me)–but I’m not going to promise not to think it! My sweet baby Jane…
My 11 month old snorts. She picked up this habit when she was about 7 months old, out of nowhere. She snorts at random (sometimes, in the middle of breastfeeding, she will pause, look up at me beatifically–and snort); she snorts on command (simply uttering “snort” in her presence can start off a snorting episode). She knows it is funny. And I often snort back at her. We hang out, snorting at each other, and I sometimes get really tickled… which makes her snort all the louder. Amusing stuff.
So, here I am, freely admitting that I have encouraged this snorting. And one of my primary reasons for encouraging it: I knew it would drive my father-in-law nuts. He likes a certain sense of decorum, one which snorting completely defies. I love my father-in-law (really–I love him lots), but everyone in the family seems bent on pleasing him. And, I–well, let’s just say I get a kick out of being the one that talks back, the one that teases him. Hence teaching his lovely granddaughter to snort.
And tonight I got to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Janie was playing with her toy, looking around to see who was paying attention, when she caught my eye. I smiled, and she snorted. My father-in-law immediately assured her that there was no need to make that strange noise again. Her Nana, her Baba and I laughed. Guess who she found more persuasive? She was off in a fit of snorting like I have never seen. I swear, the kid snorted for 15 minutes. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Her Nana and Baba were shaking with laughter. And her Pop-Pop just kept admonishing all of us to stop laughing. But every time the laughing would quiet down, Janie would snort again. And her snorting just kept getting louder and louder. Her poor Pop-Pop was beside himself. Heh.
Yep, I think Snortfest ’12 might just go down as one of my prouder parenting moments…
Good news:
The lasagna qualified as normal! In fact, Amy said she even forgot that the tofu ricotta wasn’t real cheese. (I think she may have been exaggerating on that one, but I will take it). Honestly, I am a bit surprised the lasagna turned out as well as it did. I sauteed the onions, herbs and garlic to the sweet melody of a baby screaming bloody murder from her Pack ‘n Play (which was 3 feet from me, by the way). I ran out of oregano and basil in the middle of cooking and had to take a fun little jaunt to the store (where I had already been not even two hours before). Oh, and the the recipe was for spinach lasagna. Um. Yeah. I forgot the spinach. But it was recognizable as lasagna, and that is what counts–at least for today.
Bad News:
This week, Jane can’t seem to nap. She falls asleep while I am nursing her (like she always does), but then she wakes up when I put her in her crib. Typically, this scenario would mean about 15 minutes of crying before she fell asleep. This week, though, it means crying for 5 minutes and intermittent crying and playing for the next 55 minutes. That’s right… for one whole hour, she refuses to sleep. Consequently, she exhibits sleepytime behavior not even an hour after her non-nap has ended. This is crazymaking. For both of us.
Crazy News:
I signed up for the Croom Zoom on January 15th. A 25k trail run. I am extremely excited. What? I told you it was crazy news.
Pensive Pea 
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