Could Have Been a Lamaze Coach

This is one of those: I wish I'd had the tape rolling moments, only I was on the phone with Scott who was saying: You should record this, and by the time we got off the phone the moment had passed.

Sawyer, who's been struggling with some plumbing issues due to his fear of pooping in the pot, was desperately trying to (as Scott likes to say) "drop the kids off at the pool."

Justin, good big brother that he is, was trying to be encouraging.

So as I'm in the kitchen, talking on the phone with Scott, I hear the following exchange coming from the bathroom down the hall:

Sawyer: I can't! It hurts!

Justin: You have to push!

Sawyer: Rrrrrrrrrr!

Justin: That's good! PUSH!

Sawyer: Rrrrrrrr!

Justin: PUSH!

Sawyer: It's coming! It's coming!

Justin: You're doing great! Now push again!

Sawyer: Rrrrrrr! I'm doing it! It's coming! It's c0minnnng . . .

I'm so sorry to report that there was no magnificent, screaming, crying end to this story.

Only a tiny, hard little poop.

Poor Sawyer.

Arden 12 months

Okay. Arden is actually 14 months – well, almost 15 months old – but it's the first time in three months that she's been well enough to have her well-baby check up. The doctors just wanted to make sure she was good and healthy before they pumped her full of about a zillion different God awful viruses. As if four painful, stinging, screaming shots wasn't enough, the nurse attempted to milk an entire vile of blood out of a pinprick in the tip of Arden's finger. About 10 minutes in, I suggested she lower Arden's arm below the heart - get basic anatomy on her side.

I decided to see the nurse practitioner this time instead of the pediatrician since the latter has the bedside manner of doorknob. I'd been really happy with the NP during the past few sick-baby visits. But, this time she rubbed me the wrong way. And then, somehow, everything that came out of my mouth made me seem like a freakish obsessive mom.

We got off to a bad start at the begining of our appt. when the NP immediately made a snide remark about the pacifier Arden was sucking. I've been trying to ween Arden off sucking her fingers, which she does compulsively, and onto a pacifier, and I'm having some small successes - in the car, at the store . . . I'd far rather she suck the Nuk than her fingers after she's touched everything in the germy doctor's office. I said something to that effect and got a "Germs are everywhere honey and babies are going to put their fingers in their mouth no matter what you do" lecture like I, of all people, was some sort of germ freak. So then I had to explain that if she could see the state of my kitchen she would know that germs are not my issue.

A few minutes further into the conversation we were on the subject of talking, and I was running through the few things that Arden says (hi, bye, mama, dada, thank you, bye bye dada) adding that it doesn't seem like much, but that Sawyer was slow bloomer on the language front. And the NP told me that Arden was "smart" - as if she could tell that in those two minutes - in case I needed the reassurance that in fact my baby was worth keeping. And then she said that if I took the pacifier away Arden might TALK MORE! I felt the need to explain that she doesn't run around with the pacifier in her mouth all the time. The backpedaling and explaining was only making me feel more psycho by the minute. Then I truly blew her away when I told her that neither of my children will eat roasted chicken. Like she had NEVER HEARD OF THAT BEFORE.

I should have known better at that point than to ask about Arden's bowleggedness and to wonder, out loud, whether a chiropractor could help. The look of ridicule on that woman's face made me feel like the high school cheerleader who accidentally showed up for a debate team meeting. "A chiropractor . . . for bowlegs?" (She came back in a few minutes later, apologized for blowing off my chiropractor question and gave me the standard lecture on working side-by-side with alternative medicine and how it would do no harm if I felt compelled to waste my money).

In retrospect, this is the same woman who shouted at Arden when she touched the outlet cover (something that I had decided to not hold against her initially). I will, needless to say, never take my children to see her again. (If I can help it.)

Arden, according to the Nurse Nazi, is 50th percentile for height and weight - for a 14 month old - and is as smart as an 18 month old. Time to sign her up for college!

Stand UP!

Sometime in the past week – i have no idea where or when – Sawyer decided that he is a 'dada' and that he is going to go about his business the way dada's do. Standing up. That's right. Lift your toilet seats people, we have a wild stream of urine on the loose! But I have to say I much prefer it to the tuck-and-bend technique we had to employ when he was sitting girly style. There was the constant worry that he would stretch or turn and redirect the stream onto himself or, worse yet, me (yes that happened).

On that note, I have decided that one of the best gifts anyone can give a new mother is a sturdy stool, or two, or three. I find I need them everywhere: toilets, sinks, next to the baby's changing table, next to the kitchen counter, under the microwave - he constantly wants to "watch" or to "see" or to "do it myself." At my mother's house last weekend, Sawyer sustained an injury to the shoulder – or face, depending on which version of the story you hear - because he was running across the house stool in hand, moving locations. Maybe he just needs some of those cups you attach to your feet and walk around on. Remember those? Or platform shoes.

Grow Hope

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden. - Orson Scott Card

It's spring here, finally. The kids and I spend our afternoons outside. Moving rocks mostly. That's Sawyer's favorite pastime. He's very strong. He lifts them into his wagon, dumps them in with a loud crash and pulls them up the hill to a different garden bed where he helps me make a border. He's amazingly useful in that way. I weed and think of new things to plant. Tomatillos here. Peppers there. Cilantro over in that bed. Definitely potatoes. Broccoli or brocollini. I'm jumping on the wheelbarrow and becoming part of the Vegetable Gardening Phenomenon 2009. I think there needs to be a poster of the "I want you" ilk only with Obama's face and a giant green thumb."Plant a Seed. Grow Hope." or something like that. Even the kids are planting gardens at their little preschools this year. I told Sawyer tonight that if he took a bite of broccoli I'd buy him a kids sized trowel and rake. Now that I've discovered the benefits of bribery, I use it whenever possible. As tempting as that was - his fear of green food prevailed. I also like the deceiving choices route: Do you want to taste the broccoli with butter or without butter? That didn't work either. So I'm hoping this whole garden thing is going to perhaps tempt him into the world of vegetables - a place he has yet to explore except to build gardens in his mashed potatoes or drop peas into the engine compartment of his toy car. Scott by the way took a bunch of photos of me planting strawberries today wearing my pink Smith and Hawkins gardening apron and an orange bandanna in my hair. Sadly, there was not card in the camera. (My fault.)So this is all I've got:

I want YOU to plant a garden!

Little Miss Sensitive

So this is something new. Not sure if it's her tender age or a sign of things to come. Whenever you tell Arden 'no' she breaks into a torrent of tears. We were at the doctor today and she touched the outlet covers (and I didn't stop her because - that's why we have COVERS) and the doctor gave her a sharp "No! No!" and you would have thought somebody had just cut off her pinkie toe. Even the doctor totally backpedaled and apologized to her. She reacts like this to even the slightest reprimand, which is funny at first and then just kind of annoying because you have to be like: um, 'Arden, would you mind please not opening that cabinet door because all the expensive china is in there, thank you,' unless you want a 5 minute shrieking and crying ordeal. It's difficult, especially when you are used to barking out orders at an obstinate 2-year-old who will cut his unfazed eyes at you and then do whatever it was anyway. Arden's the same way about tumbles and spills - which I know Sawyer never was. This is probably where the nurture comes into play because I know we were better about telling him to brush it off and move on. She opens her mouth to for a giant wail but no sound comes out for . . . . 5 . . . . 10 . . . . 15 . . . . seconds and we can't help but pick the poor thing up at which point she lets out a lungful and then sticks those two fingers in her mouth and nestles her head against us. And, since I've seen the future and know what's to come in another 6 months or so, I can help but take that moment to snuggle my Little Miss Sensitive and kiss her tears. But maybe we're creating even a worse kind of monster.

Come down from there!

Whenever Justin leaves, we explain to Sawyer that he's getting on an airplane and that we won't see him for a while. It's funny how these things translate in the mind of a 2-year-old. Sawyer must actually think Justin stays on the airplane THE WHOLE TIME circling over us. Then somehow that airplane morphed into a helicopter because every time we hear a helicopter flying over the house he starts screaming IT'S JUSTIN, IT"S JUSTIN! HE'S COMING DOWN TO VISIT! Another funny toddler translation, because whenever somebody comes from the Northern Virginia area we say that they are 'coming down to visit.' Happily, he will actually be 'coming down' in a few weeks. We can't wait!

It may be torment

When I was young I did my best to convince my brother that he was actually adopted from China. You can muse over the many ironies there. And, as I pointed to the lack of baby pictures and the dark spiky hair in the one photo we had as evidence, he always returned a look of skepticism. But somewhere along the way I must have cracked a fissure in his disbelief because when he brought his bride-to-be home for the first time and my mother could not find a single photograph of him under the age of three, he came undone. Ever since then, I am reminded at every family gathering of the myriad ways I abused my poor brother - The Sharpie Incident, The Cleaning Incident, The Ugly Smile Incident - mind you all these incidents took place before I turned 9. Yet, here I am, two kids, and poor Numero Dos has drawn the short straw. Ross pointed it out from the very get go - as only a younger sibling could. Since then, I haven't documented Arden's every word (not that there have been many to document) and I haven't mentioned that at 14 months old she still only has five teeth (isn't that CRAZY?) and I definitely haven't posted enough photos. Sawyer just keeps snagging all the firsts. Oh, and - by the way, as it turns out - my brother's son looks just like him as a baby. Aren't those adoption agencies amazing? (Please note: I'm an older sister. I continue to torment whenever possible. Neither my brother nor his baby were actually adopted)

The barn house

A late winter snow

P.T.

There have been no major milestone moments for us in the potty training process. Just before Christmas I bought one of those small seats that fits over top the regular toilet, two cans of jelly bellies and about 20 pairs of underwear and decided to just go for it. Whenever we were home, Sawyer wore underwear. He got one jelly bean for a number one, two for a number two. He caught on to that fact pretty quickly. (My playgroup friend assured me that once going to the potty is second nature, the treats get moved to the kitchen and eventually they forget to ask for them.) He loved the underwear - Buzz, Nemo, Spiderman, Wall-E, Cars, if Disney sponsored it, he dug it. And we've had plenty of accidents. About three weeks ago I started sending him to school in underwear. He'd come home some days with two or three knotted grocery bags of clothes (the accidents) and recently he's been coming home in the underwear and pants he wore to school. Now he wants to sleep in underwear, but its hard to convince him that he can't drink a full cup of water before he goes to sleep if he wants to wear underwear - that's going to be a hard habit to break. On long road trips I still put a diaper on him, and he cries when he has to pee. I have a mom friend that travels with a porta-pot in the trunk for roadside emergencies, but I'm just not there yet. Which brings me to my final potty training note: I've decided it's not the kids who have to be trained, it's the parents. It's such a lifestyle adjustment, something that has to be remembered and maintained and until the parent is ready to be potty trained, the kid will never be.