Baby Bunia Chronicles

Hola, Hola, Guacamola!

2012-02-13T16:28:00.000-08:00

Liam, at the dinner table, is repeating a joke, the punchline of which is: "No more avocados? Holy guacamole!" This sparks a barrage of one-upper attempts.

D: "No more lemons? Holy lemonade!"

L: "No fruit? Holy lemon limes!"

P: "No fruit? Holy juice!"

L: "No grain? Holy bread!"

K: "No wheat? Golly gluten!"

P: "No peanuts? Holy peanut butter!"

L: "No brother? Holy lonelies!"

P: "No chicken? Holy chicken wraps!"

K: "There is chicken and guacamole? Neato burrito!"

L: "No paper? Holy origami!"

D: "No belly button? Golly gut!"

K: "No skeleton? Holy bones!"

P: "No corn? Holy corn chips!"

L: "No milk? Holy butter!"

L again: "No butter? Holy sour cream!"

K: "No hummus? Holy tahini!"

And here is the crowner from Parker, that had us all choking on our dinner:

"No teeth? Holy lips!"

Tribute to My Brother

2012-02-09T06:37:00.000-08:00

Lael is toddling around the house with a toy airplane in each hand, whispering, "Tishhhhhh-shchhhh-tshhhhh." She is imitating Parker, who is making his toy airplane "fly" through the air with appropriate jet noises. It's the sort of thing a baby would never do without older siblings around.

I think it's so funny to watch: Parker, with grand ideas of Blue Angels, and Red Arrows, and Airbus A380s; and Lael, with the simple concept that this is apparently what you do to have fun with a toy airplane.

There are three toy airplanes in the house, and it is fortunate that Liam is not interested in adding his flight itinerary at the moment, because there is just no utilizing this incident to explain the concept of sharing. Before Parker remembered that we had a third, he tried to get his sister to give up the one airplane by giving her another, which she regarded as a gift intended to augment her riches. "One for each" did not square at all with her perspective, and an attempt to instruct produced anguished bawling.

I know, I know, she has got to learn this type of math sometime or other, and it may be painful. But if you were the one watching her glee over her new-found treasures, you would also decide this was not the time for that lesson!

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T05:13:00.000-08:00

There is a little knee-high person, in leggings and a ruffly dress, walking around in my kitchen. Today E pushed up to standing without holding onto anything. Up until now, when she falls down, she has scooted to the nearest vertical surface and hauled herself back up.

This really has been the most delightful holiday season. D has been off work for 12 days straight, tomorrow being the 13th and last. We went to the Melting Pot for our 10th anniversary and then had a couple of days at D's parents, including a lovely Christmas Eve dinner celebration. Then we had a relaxed Christmas Day here, with lots of lovely things from the Christmas Angels, along with Grampa visiting for a couple of days.

Then Liam had three days of soccer free plays at the UNC field house, and we ended up with his buddy Jack at our house twice, and Liam at his house once, which was great fun for all the boys. After that we got sick—the cold I thought I was over came back full force and knocked the rest of us down, as well—and had to cancel our visit out to some friends' farm. But D, who is the only one who has not really succumbed, has taken good care of me, and I have napped every day and stayed rested.

On top of which, ever since we came home from Charlotte, E has slept through the night for 7 nights straight... and is taking good naps!!!!!!! Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" is playing in my mind.

Looking forward to what the new year will bring. Here's to new friendships and fellowship, a new level of health and new foods for my baby, and growth in grace for all!

The Way it Is

2011-12-07T06:53:00.001-08:00

My dad talks about being so sick that you think you're going to die, but you're afraid that you're wrong. Well, this isn't quite that, but can I just say...?

I have the kind of cold where you just hope that your baby doesn't fall off the living room chair or swallow a pencil while you run off and leave her, but frankly if you don't manage to claw your way to the kitchen and gulp some water RIGHT NOW, and then follow it up with another dose of cough syrup—and WHO CARES when the last dose was? because an overdose probably won't kill you, but not taking more immediately just might—then you will absolutely, certainly, beyond doubt keel over and die from a paroxysm of coughing, and then what good will you be to your kids anyway?

I'm happy to report that Lael did not fall off the chair, nor did she swallow the pencil, although she was in imminent danger of both.

I love everyone, especially ME!

2011-12-03T16:14:00.001-08:00

My bootin' scootin' gal

Lael is actually starting to walk. She can zoom around at about 30mph with her bootin' scoot, so she doesn't actually need to walk. She just likes to walk socially, in a performance sort of way. She loves to walk from me to Damian and back. ("Wow, look at you!!!!! What a good job!!!!!" Adulation, adulation.) Yesterday when Daddy came home, we tried to show him what a good job she is doing pushing her Ybike Pewi around. She did that a little bit, but then she just turned and struck out on her own, toddling baby steps across empty space toward the couch. She was so obviously putting on a show. She's such a girl. She's in it (fill in the blank here with any word of your choice) for the satisfaction of relationships with people.

Just before our 11/18 trip to Babcia's house for Liam's soccer tournament weekend in Charlotte, Lael had a communication breakthrough. She found her bottle on the floor, verified that it was empty, scooted over and draped herself on me in a pleading manner, catlike, and said something like this:

"Ihzihzihzih moh? Zihzihzih kihkihsu?"

I said, "You want more cookie soup?"

She said, "Yah!"

Since then, her talking has really taken off. She isn't speaking in sentences or anything, but she talks so that other, non-family people can understand her. She says "hi" and "hey" all the time. She says "I love you" ("Aiyuhye"). She says "soothie" ("sizzy") and "lovey" ("uzzy"). She repeats stuff all the time:

"Let's get your shoes on." "Shihzon."

"Lael, stay with Daddy." "Say da-ihy."

"I just don't know where it is!" "Duh-no-eh-iss!" (This is all one rapidly uttered word, and if you didn't know her you probably wouldn't believe that she really said that.)

A couple of days ago, I took her to church for the first time in months. She is just now getting old enough to stay up and nap later in the day, so a full morning outing is doable. I took her into the nursing mother's room so I would have a place to be with her and still hear the sermon. Another mom who was in there said to her, "You're beautiful!" Lael replied, "Yes!" The mom said, "And you know it, don't you?" Lael said, "Yes!!"

Yesterday I had to take the keys away from her as I was putting her in the car. She thinks she has rights, dues, and personal proprieties to those keys, and she was really thinking about pitching a fit that I usurped them... when she caught sight of herself in the safety mirror that allows me to see what she's doing in her rear-facing car seat. She was totally like, "Oh, hello, Beautiful!" She suddenly found herself in the company of her favorite person—always cheerful and agreeable, that one—and what could be better? She and the mirror tried on a few pert grimaces for size, and then settled on a comfortable social smile, complete with friendly small-talk. I think they sang a song or two. They're very companionable, Lael and her reflection.

St. Nicholas, who knows we are Polish, left presents last night on the kids' beds. (And yes, for those of you who are wondering, he ate the cookies and drank the milk we left on the kitchen table.) Lael's gift was a "my first purse." It is a pretty snazzy little item, complete with her own debit card. I notice she has been "a member since 1998"... what is she not telling me? And it should last her until her teenage years; it doesn't expire until 2020. Anyway, we took the purse to her doctor's visit today, and she spent half her time—the half when she wasn't taking the pretend keys, wallet, cell phone, and lipstick and chucking them on the floor and then looking longingly at them until Dr. S. picked them up for her—peering into the mirror and saying, "Hi!!"

Actually, all my kids are narcissists. Liam just recently started a paragraph with the following: "Momo, here's something about me. I notice that I always..." It was complimentary, of course. Really, the kids come by it honestly, because Damian is equally self-absorbed. Just kidding! We're all cut from the same cloth, aren't we? But my kids are rather transparent about it, and I frequently find myself quoting that Tommy Smothers thing (thing? song? what?) my dad said all the time when I was growing up:

So much in love with us are we
You could kiss you
And I could kiss me

That's my girl!

Lael Today

2011-10-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

10/24—If you want to make Lael happy, show her a new doll, or even a picture of a new doll. Parker brought us the mail, and I handed everything back to him to put straight into the recycling, except for the new American Girl catalog. Liam reads the books from the library, and he likes to give the dolls a quick perusal. (He likes the ski set and the soccer uniform.) Hey, I like to give the dolls more than a quick perusal! I was still holding Lael in one hand, and in the other I held the magazine, with two doll faces staring sweetly at her on the back page. She took one wide-eyed look, then looked at me all lit up like a Christmas tree: "Do you see, Momo? Aren't they marvelous?" Then she reached out her hand and patted the doll faces, then beamed at me again. We went inside and sat on the floor and turned the pages. Lael would pat the faces in the pictures, then jabber and laugh: "hahaha!!!" She was so absorbed she forgot to be rough and try to rip the paper.

10/25—Took two unassisted steps from the ottoman to the side of the crib.

10/26—Lael is your typical third child, she doesn't need to talk to get her point across. There are two many people around who have her figured out. In fact, I'm always around, and I can read her like a book. But she does like to talk. Here are the words that I know Lael says, or has said on occasion:

momo: "mama" or "mamama"
daddy: "adzeh" or "addih"
brothers: "buhyoh"(Maybe her third word. Starting before she was even 1yo, she would yell this at the door to the stairs when they were down in the playroom.)
guys: "gahs"
come: "gom"
Kicuś (One of her bunnies. Maybe her fourth or fifth word.): "kee"
Liam: "eeyah"
Parker: "kawkaw"
Parker and Liam: "kawkaw neeyah"
yeah: "ahhhh!"
downstairs: "dahsehs"
go: "gah"
boomp (as in "zoom zoom BOOMP," the game where she runs in her walker and crashes into things: "buh"

The Scientific Mind that Sticks at Naught

2011-10-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

On the way home from soccer...

Liam: "Daddy, I have an imaginary white stallion named Racer. And I'm trying to decide what kind of dog to get. I could get a collie, a German shepherd, an Australian shepherd—those are really beautiful, they have blue eyes— a bulldog... I know, I could get a "dalmatanian"! I think I'll probably get a bloodhound, because they're really good at finding missing people. But I want to have a dog that can sniff animal poop."

Daddy: "Why would you want a dog that can sniff animal poop?"

L: "Because the whole point of the dog is to help me find where the animal has pooped so I can get my poop samples."

D: "Poop samples??"

L: "It's going to help me with my scientific research. If the dog can sniff where the poop is, then it can help me find it. Sometimes I even dive to find shark and fish poop. I need to study the poop, which will help me determine what kind of animal it is, what kind of food it ate, whether it had a good digestive system... This will help me determine how to protect the animal and whether to put it on the endangered species list, if it's not on there. I could take the poop home and look at it through a microscope. It might be pure poop, which would tell me that it has a good digestive system, but I might find tiny, tiny bits of undigested food, and that can tell me other things about the animal... For instance, if I find undigested wild pig, then I know it's probably a tiger."

_________________________________________
Pop quiz: Which word is the dead giveaway that this child gets a large portion of his vocabulary from reading books?

A Man's Reach

2011-08-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

Parker: "Momo, Liam decided to be king over all of Egypt, and China, and Russia, and Europe, and... something else. Did I say Egypt?"

Momo: "My goodness, that's got to be about half the world."

Park (age 5.5) rushes off to report to Liam (age 7.5), who comes whirling in.

Liam (all eagerness): "Why would you say that's got to be half the world?"

Momo: "Well, that's all of Europe, and most of Asia, and some of Africa. I mean, that's a large portion of the world."

Liam: "Yeah! At first I was thinking of being king over most of Europe, most of Asia and half of Africa. But then I thought, Europe is my favorite continent, so why don't I just take all of Europe... and Russia and China are both pretty big, and then there's Egypt, and that's a lot. So I don't want to take too much. Because, I mean, there are probably other pretend kings in the world, and they might just have one kingdom, and they might hear about it and think that's unfair."

Momo: "Yeah, you don't want to hurt the other pretend kings' feelings."

Liam: "Right. I mean, they would probably think I'm so powerful, and my army is so good, and my warriors have spent years in training, and they would think, ugh, who wants to fight him?"

Momo (tongue stuck in cheek): "Yeah, you wouldn't want to be so big they won't even fight you."

Liam (nodding sagely): "Gotta give 'em a chance."

Momo: "That's big of you."

Liam ponders this at first, obviously trying to interpret the idiom. Then...

Liam (brightly): "Too big!"

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 10

2011-06-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

5/9/11 (Mon) — Hard to believe she's really 9 months... but she is just the yummiest, chubbiest, sit-in-a-corner-all-peaceful-and-playest thing ever! I remember loving 6 months old with my other two, but 9 months old is beating everything hands down with this girl.

Last night she ate 9:30, 1, 3, 5, and then up at 7. She did not even want to be bounced afterwards, just put straight back in the crib.

Today I handed her the super-soft little Jellycat bunny from Babcia (named Kicuś, pronounced "KEET-soosh, which means something like "hopsy"), tucked her soothie in her mouth and her lovey under her arm, and put her in her crib at 9:30. She put herself to sleep and slept for 1.5-2 hrs, I lost track. Still seems kind of burpy, and still not very interested in goat yogurt. I mean, she's interested in it as a novelty item, but she refuses to close her mouth around a bite of it and then swallow; she just wants her tongue painted with it, and then to stick her hands in her mouth and sort of become one with the whole yogurt-eating experience.

5/10/11 (Tue) — Treating for homemade green pea baby food (as preventive before I give it to her), just so she can have something to eat besides yogurt, in case she's ever really interested in eating.

Jessie came and watched E when the latter wasn't napping, which she did for a long time. (Note in retrospect: Was this the day she slept 3 hours in the am? I can't remember...) She also took the boys out the common area and gave them some attention. Got a lot of packing done at my house, a lot of organizing at Grampa's.

5/12/11 (Thu) — This is the first time in weeks that I have seen her really, truly hungry for solids. She was watching me eat some almond butter out of a little cup with a spoon around 5pm, and acting like she was desperate to try it. So I sat her at the table and offered peas and yogurt, and she gobbled up 3-4 tablespoons, after which she seemed happier and more mellow.

5/13/11 (Fri) — Time to pack up the table soccer game. I turned around this morning in time to see E standing next to the play table, grabbing at the soccer men and throwing one or two of them in the floor. The little dickens had pulled herself up to standing, with those stout legs strengthened by months of sit-standing in the workshop. She seemed determined to control the exciting items in the kingdom of UP. Had to rearrange the playroom so that the play table is more out in the middle, to keep her from falling back down and banging her (large) head on something nearby.

5/15/11 (Sun) — Parker suddenly asked to have his training wheels removed. I had been thinking he was ready, but didn't suggest it b/c I thought it might make for a wobbly couple of days and was not sure I had the bandwidth to provide appropriate support and encouragement. D took them off and I took him down to practice where the parking lot flattens out. He sailed right on into official bike-ability! E was very happy to watch everyone go whizzing by.

5/16/11 (Mon) — Up a lot in the night, but fortunately went right back to sleep after nursing. Hives on neck, and she's high maintenance when she remembers to be, but napping well and seems happy.

5/22/11 (Sun) — Finally a tooth! We have been saying "a bump today, a tooth tomorrow" for about three weeks now. Finally can feel the rough edge of the lower left (her left) incisor poking through.

Packers came yesterday and finished up today, so everything is packed up — all but what I kept out as necessary essentials. I kept out too much, but I have to be able to feed and entertain three kids w/ allergies for almost a week.

5/25/11 (Wed) — Jessie came for one last "Jessie day" to help me while I pack/load the last of my things to get them out of here before the loaders come tomorrow. It was particularly helpful as E seems to be reacting to something and is not disappearing for long naps. Have to take apart crib; she'll have to sleep in pack-n-play at Grampa's tonight. Boys go to Youngs' this evening for their first sleepover so that they are out of my hair when movers arrive at 8am.

5/26/11 (Thu) — Spent day at Grampa's while movers loaded. E was delighted with the bag of toys I produced for her. Napping well in the pack-n-play.

5/27/11 (Fri) — Moving day! D closed w/ power of attorney for me, so we did not have to rush. Almost 4-hr trip went quite well. It poured rain last night and the rain followed us to our new house, getting their shortly after we did. The movers were there before us, but they ended up doing most of the unloading in the rain. Love our new home! It has all the woodsy charm of Grampa and Gramma's mountain house, probably enhanced by the rain.

5/28/11 (Sat) — Have to have a place for E, so started w/ the kitchen. Vacuumed and dry-mopped and wet-mopped and remopped and reremopped and towel-wiped the tile floor. Then I put up the baby gate, barricaded w/ a box or two, and put her box of toys down. She was quite happy.

Babcia, Dziadek, and Uncle Art came to help us move. Dziadek applied a fair amount of brawn and then went home. Babcia and Artur are staying to apply more brawn.

5/29/11 (Sun) — I think we have managed to do 80% of the necessary cleaning and about 50% of the unpacking this weekend, thanks to Babcia and Artur. Babcia was a cleaning machine, and now our floors are no longer grimy and most of our windows sparkle. Artur single-handedly transformed our dusty, leafy, spidery screened porch into a lovely place to hang out. And he added memorable excitement to the move-in weekend by setting the new grill on fire. The boys were incredibly impressed, especially since they got to help put out the fire with the garden hose.

5/3/11 (Mon) — Memorial day. We are a "little" family of five again, as everyone else went home, and it is nice to be together under the same roof after 6 weeks of my being a single mom 5 days out of 7, D being a weekend road warrior, and the kids only getting a few hours a week of Daddy time.

5/31/11 (Tue) — D's first day at work w/ everyone installed in the new house. We love that his commute is less than 15 mins!

6/2/11 (Thu) — Said "daddy"! It was after he came home from work. I was holding her, and she was happily babbling "ma ma ma ma ma ma" and patting me. (We say, "Pat your people!" because she waves her arm around when she's happy, and if you're holding her she is effectively patting your shoulder.) I handed her to D, and just as he took her from me she said, "ma ma ma ma... a-da."

6/4/11 (Sat) — The Mericles came for dinner. The boys showed the girls and Finn the playroom and the yard, and we pretty much didn't see much of them until it was time to eat. E was hospitable, cooing and smiling and showing off to Mrs. Mericle (known to most of us as Joanna) over her Kycuś bunny, who just plain makes her happy. In fact, she consented to be carted around contented as a clam in Grant's arms while D started the grill and I made the hamburgers. That's unusual for her to take a stranger in stride like that... but then, it's not like Grant hasn't had any practice keeping babies happy. In fact, he was carrying her exactly the way Jessie does. Maybe it's a baby-whisperer trade secret.

6/6/11 (Mon) — Dr J has said that I have to take a month and take care of me. I do not seem to be electrical at the moment. When tested for polarity, I am either ambiguous, or I flat out give two negative poles. Dr J says my battery is burnt out, and I have to do NOTHING for a month. I am supposed to be resting when E rests, etc.

6/8/11 (Wed) — 10 months today. E is constipated. For the past several days I have watched her strain and strain and produce nothing. Ended up taking her to a pediatrician today, as it has been over a week since her last bowel movement. They said her belly is soft and there's no obstruction, and told me I can use glycerin suppositories up to 3x/day until we get results. They wanted me to give her Miralax in some fruit juice. Right. Do you have any idea how long we would pay for the Miralax, to which she would inevitably react? Funny thing is, I did try giving her apple juice, and she doesn't want it. So much for the fear that she would develop an instant sweet tooth. So I'm drinking it. Maybe it will help in my milk.

Give us a kiss, sweet thing! Actually, I have no idea why she's making that face.

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 9

2011-05-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

4/10/11 (Sun) — This girl has been more miserable the last couple of days than she has in a few weeks. The local pollen is definitely getting to her. Going outside in the stroller is one of her favorite things to do, but she tends to come back in fussing and scrubbing at the place on her chin where she gets that sore. On top of that, she had back to back reactions to asparagus and then okra. I thought she had cleared okra; I had treated it in a meal with some other things, but apparently she needs it isolated and cleared by itself.

This weekend the boys are at Babcia's, and we are trying to get the house ready to go on the market. We've made great progress. Both the boys' closet and ours are now organized (and more spartan), and a lot of stuff went to the garage (where we can no longer park our car) in boxes. But whenever I work on one room, it starts to look pretty good, but the rest of the house starts to accumulate items that I needed out of that room. And meanwhile, our baby is so very high maintenance....

Last night we were so tired we tried to go to bed at 8:30. E woke up right then, and she basically writhed in my arms, yelling every few seconds in frustration, for the next three hours. We tried everything: bouncing, walking, getting her good and awake, bringing her down to play, putting her back to sleep. Nothing produced the magic burp, or otherwise relieved what was bugging her. She was itching, I know that much. She is getting so strong that holding her with her arms pinned down and her feet apart (so she can't claw at her chin or scrub her feet together) is an incredible workout for my upper body. After she finally fell asleep, she was twitching in my arms for a long time, so it was 11:30 before I could put her in bed. I felt so sorry for her: being mashed up against me must be so uncomfortable, on top of whatever other discomfort she's dealing with!

She got up a couple more times in the night (2-ish, and 3:30), and at one point I fell asleep while closing her gates. I woke up a few seconds later with the little vibrator still running, and me holding one arm like I had just closed, or was just about to close the gate at her elbow.

4/11-4/17— She is saying "mama" consistently. In fact, as I am somehow the only one who ever changes her, she has this cute habit of babbling "mama" as soon as she is done pooping. She knows the drill!

blood stain smack on the whale =(

4/18-4/21 — This is D's first week of work at his new job in Durham. E meanwhile is swallowing a lot of my blood when she nurses, due to some minor trauma to the skin on the right side, and she is beyond high maintenance. Her stools are absolutely black with old blood, she is spitting up bright red blood, and she is very, very clingy. She cries if I turn my back or move even a foot away from her. Had to treat her for my blood a second time, as she did not clear the first, and this time we treated her for my blood + Insecurity.

She is up multiple times in the night, and then wakes up around 5 and cannot go back to bed for several hours. Coming off of a bad gallbladdery-type reaction that appears to be pesticides (some non-organic oats and raisins I ate: she then tested bad for pesticides, spongy for Bitterness, and terrible for the combination), the swallowing blood thing is almost more than I can handle. I am so tired I am a little concerned about my physical state driving L to his morning spring break soccer camp.

Meanwhile, her new thing this week is swimming across the carpet, which she does as efficiently as L ever did. If she wants a toy that is out of her reach, she just reaches with one arm, pushing with the opposite toe and using the opposite elbow for leverage, until she swims her way over to it. She can almost sit without falling over, but she looks like she might turn out like L, who was way too busy combat-crawling wherever he wanted to go to stop and find out if he could sit still.

4/23/11 (Sat) — Her poops are still completely black with old blood, but she is not really spitting it up or seeming bothered by it. There is something else bugging her, though. She continues to do what I recognize as her gallbladder-bitterness thing. Did some testing, and this is the first time I got a clear reading that she is reacting to phenolics. We already knew that, b/c Dr. J told us, but I could never get a clear reading that that's what we needed to do next.

4/25/11 (Mon) — Had to clearing phenolics + bitterness a second time, and it is a really hard one. She is fussy, burpy, clingy, insomniac... We were up from 3-5 this morning, and then she had 2 one-cycle naps which we fought reeeallly hard for during the day. Spent some time watching her in her bed through the crack in the door. Parker slept in his amby until he was 14+ months old, and it never occurred to him that he could even try to sit up in it. He would just yell for somebody to come get him. This girl is going to stand herself on her head. She was not sufficiently asleep, or sufficiently ready to sleep, at some point when I put her in. So she hauled herself up to sitting—interesting that she can balance in a sitting position in the curved amby while she cannot on a hard floor—and then proceeded to do somersaults and end up with her heels over her head or face smushed against the netting. At one point her head was hanging out the end, and I was poised to make a run for it. She totally looked like a kitten exploring a... what? A box? A big basket? An amby, maybe! This child needs a crib!

4/26/11 (Tue) — Up from 3:30-5, which was a slight improvement. Boosted phenolics to lock them in. She's definitely having a better day, like maybe she's climbing out of her "phenolics hole." Was talking on the phone w/ C from the Natural Organic Baby this afternoon about crib mattresses, specifically the advantages of the rubber vs the inner springs, and how I was concerned about the rubber b/c E is allergic to it and might react even though it is encased in wool and cotton. We both suddenly realized that E is already sleeping on their rubber mattress (encased in wool) in her amby. Whoa! Had L help me test her; she tests fine for the bed, but not for the rubber in the bed. Could that have anything to do with the fact that she has not slept well for a long time? Sophie the rubber giraffe, who has been banned for the last couple of months, suddenly shot from the bottom to the top of my (long!) list of things to clear her for.

4/27/11 (Wed) — Finally a good night: ate at 12 and 4:45, put herself to sleep in amby at 5, woke again 1 cycle later and needed a soothie and bounce, then slept until 7:45!! Starting to sit by herself for extended periods today. Treated her for rubber (Sophie the giraffe toy) + restlessness today, and it was an amazing day. Boys spent all day at Youngs'. E fell asleep on way home from taking them (around 11am). I managed to transfer her from the carseat to the spare amby at Grampa's house without getting her fully awake. Bounced her for a minute and put her to bed (semi-awake), and she slept for 2.5+ hrs!

Spent all day cleaning and organizing at G's. In the afternoon, E would kind of sit and hold her tummy and after a while she would fuss. When she would burp, she seemed to get some relief. She was amazingly peaceful. Around 4:30 I was trying to decide whether to go ahead and get the boys and try to put her to bed early, or if she would sleep some more. She would not sleep and acted burpy, but then finally went readily to sleep in our usual bouncing routine at about 4:45. Finally had to wake her after about two hours; I think she was ready to go to bed for the night and would have done her wake-up-just-to-eat thing if I had not had to go anywhere.

She was in slumber party mode after she finally got good and awake, and then after we got home and she had eaten she was burpy. But again, she would sit on the floor and watch me build with blocks. When she clutched at her tummy and fussed I would pick her up and she would burp. Finally got her to sleep at about 9:15.

5/3/11 (Tue) — Jessie came and helped me out by carting E around all day and doing dishes when E was asleep. I packed up 10 boxes! E had wonderful day (clearing her FloraBaby probiotic, which was the latest reaction), but began to kind of yell as the day wore on. That's never a good sign. I had JJ give me a little snip of her hair and rub a little cloth over her clothes to get the shampoo and laundry detergent residue, just in case that's what was bothering E. When G came for dinner, E tested a little spongy for JJ's items, but that didn't seem conclusive. I finally muscle-tested and asked, "Is there anything in my milk?" No, rock strong for my milk. "Is there anything in the house?" WHUMP! goes G's arm. "Ok... is it the carpet?" WHUMP!

Well, what did we expect? She is crawling all over it all the time.

5/4/11 (Wed) — Treated her for our carpet, then left the house. Took the boys to the Youngs' for the day and took E to Grampa's. She had a dream of a day, with two excellent naps in the 2nd Amby at Grampa's... that is, until she got hold of the boys' snorkels, which they use as props for various pretend play. After she had chewed on those a while, she got fussy and burpy. Granted, those have a rather vile scent and are definitely bottom of the barrel as far as plastics go. Had Grampa test her when he came home, and she tested terrible for them.

Spent the night at G's so that we could keep her away from our carpet for 25 hours. Up multiple times in the night, but never for long.

5/5/11 (Thu) — E very fussy and clingy. Came home at 10, after she cleared the carpet, and she had a good morning nap here, but was fussy and burpy the rest of the day. She had a couple bites of goat yogurt at lunch, but didn't really want it. Afterwards she seemed to get a horrible tummyache. She was screaming and screaming the way she does when she has a burp that won't come up. And of course when she started that the boys and I were right in the middle of putting her crib together. Poor girl.

That crib did not go up a day too soon. I put her to bed in the Amby, b/c she thinks the crib is a fabulous place to play, and I wanted to wait until she woke up in the night and was sleepier before I put her in it. Had to try several times to get her to sleep, b/c she would sit right back up with burps. After about an hour she let out a sudden cry. I went up to her and found her head hanging out the end of the Amby. She had obviously sat bolt upright in sudden discomfort. She is actually a little safer in the Amby at G's b/c the mattress is that thin foam that came with the bed and she is scooped further down in it when she sits up. In this thicker, organic rubber mattress here at home, she has a stronger, flatter platform for tumbling. I put her in the crib, but she was having a tough time with something, and I had to spend a long time holding her.

5/6/11 (Fri) — 1st night in her crib; 1st half of night was rough, but it would have been rough regardless of the bed. I lost track of when I was up with her, sometimes just to give her her soothie. She definitely was frustrated quite a bit to find herself in the crib and didn't know what to do with herself, but I guarantee it would have been just as bad in the Amby. The difference was that I did not have to wake up panicking that I had to try to get there in time to keep her from falling out. It sometimes takes me a few minutes to come to when I hear her crying out of a deep sleep, and it was relaxing to know that that was ok, she wasn't going to hurt herself.

Boys at Youngs' today. E had very short morning nap at G's while I worked, then required that I wear her in the octopus all morning. She seemed happy to play with her toys at home after lunch, but is still clingy. 1st nap in crib this afternoon; she went right down (although she woke up all of half an hour later with a poop, poor baby). And at bed time that sweet thing just put herself right to sleep all by herself!

5/7/11 (Sat) — Treated for plastics today. I had cut a small piece off P's snorkel strap, and also some strands from an old koosh ball I found, which has a similar reek to it. In the middle of clearing that, she was fussy and had hives, and I did some testing and discovered that she is allergic to plastics, not just those. And fortunately, clearing the ones we treated for seem to indicate that she will clear plastics in general. I'm not trying too hard to keep her away from plastics, b/c they're everywhere (her body indicated that she is wearing them, and they're in her crib—found the plastic teeth of the soothie clip on her, and Bella the doll in her crib, but also the teething guard on the crib rails which we couldn't get off). But on the other hand, I make sure I don't just hand her something that I know is plastic.

5/8/11 (Sun) — 9 months today, and 1st Mother's Day! E cleared plastics late morning. Had good morning nap in crib. D took boys out to Costco and spontaneously brought me back some dishes for our new house as a Mother's Day gift. E slept again in crib from 3-5:15. After she woke up we went over to Grampa's to discuss hanging pictures in his house, but E was clingy and acting unhappy. Tested her w/ G and found that there are some things bugging her: we have to do the chemical mix and the perfume mix, and some of the things that I eat most often. Goat milk for instance: she has been treated for it in the calcium mix, and also in her yogurt, but it is the particular goat milk that I have on my morning hot grain that she needs to clear. Also corn, peas, and green beans. Again things that she has cleared in a mix, but now needs to clear the specific things I'm eating. But she is in a much, much better place than she used to be!

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 8

2011-04-10T04:07:00.000-07:00

3/10/11 (Thu) — I made a mistake yesterday. E had cleared grains only partially, because of the gluten, and then she had cleared gluten. So when I found a few bites of oatmeal left from breakfast I ate them. Well apparently she did not clear the gluten grains because she is having a rough time. She yells about it, too. During the day she yells cheerfully. But at 4am when she wants to sleep, she writhes in my arms and gives off angry screeches of sheer frustration.

3/11/11 (Fri) — Wow, this is a bad one, as bad as gluten was. She tested rock strong for gluten, so it was the oats themselves, which fortunately I can just put in a baby food jar and treat her for at home. But her little fanny is just one big hive, and there's not much sleepin' goin' on in the master bedroom of this house. Her sore was almost healed, but her whole body is jacked up on oats and can't get back down, and so it's not surprising that the sore is worse again.

As a matter of fact, I felt a little funny after the oatmeal, so I had D test and then treat me yesterday. Today I am exhausted, dragging around, each minute stretching like glue to the next one. Now, I know I'm not getting enough sleep. And I had to go off the Bvit supplement while we treat for oats because it has oat flour in it. But stiiilllll... [snore].

It's Friday afternoon, so D took an insomniac E for a stroller ride. (She did sleep two hours this morning, but nothing since. And that was at 9am, and she had been up since 5:30.) At least E is cheerful, as long as she is fed megadoses of distraction, and going out in the stroller definitely counts. Boys are outside too. If I were not still wearing my pj's, I might go sit on the drive in the sun, but I'm not really dressed for it. And it's my chance to just shut my eyes for a few. I think I'll go do that.

3/13/11 (Sun) — Discovered she's allergic to Sophie, the giraffe squeaky toy. We were all eating lunch, and she was breaking out in hives. She tests fine for the yogurt, but in between bites she was munching on Sophie. She tested poorly for it, which is not really surprising, as it is made of natural rubber—a common allergen even among "normal" people.

3/18/11 (Fri) — It's been rough. Sophie was the last bad reaction that I know of, and maybe it has just taken five days to get out of her system. She has been screaming herself to sleep in my lap, while I pin her arms and feet apart so that she cannot scratch her sore raw or scrub her feet together. When she does get to sleep, she does not sleep very long. We are up multiple times in the night, and she is almost always up for 1+ hrs around 3 or 4.

She finally turned a corner last night. She has stopped drooling so much (whatever that means), and so the sore is getting a break and healing up. Last night she slept from 9:30-3:30 and 4:30-7. She screamed herself to sleep in my arms today, but she had a couple of 1.5hr naps.

3/19/11 (Sat) — E sleeping pretty well. Babcia and Dziadek came up for Liam's game (we tied 2-all). E managed to work out a sleep schedule that allowed her to come to the game, where she spent most of the time asleep in Babcia's arms.

Craning to watch train!

3/21/11 (Mon) — Making progress. She has stopped screaming herself to sleep and just goes to sleep quietly in my arms. I still can't just leave her in bed or she will scratch her sore. Had another long consultation with Dr. J today. We are having to break things down to minute level and treat for combinations: She tests fine for Fat, Phenolics, Sugar, Protein, etc. by themselves, but is weak for combined items: Fat and Sugar, Phenolics and Proteins, etc. That sort of explains a lot. Tried to dig deeper in our tests and found she is "allergic" to hormones produced by the intestines, adrenals, and pineal gland.

E is showing signs of reacting to something else. Babcia brought a lot of food, and although I branched out very little from my normal diet, I did "live a little" and have some of her food. Since D was out of town, I took a couple of the meals I ate for Dr. J to test, and it looks like there was something in Babcia's "salsa," probably just a vegetable that she hasn't been treated for yet. And she definitely still does not do well when I eat fatty things like the salmon I had on Saturday. Seems to sort of put E in g.i. stasis.

3/23/11 (Wed) — Anybody actually bothering to read all this is going to laugh at me now, but yesterday I thought Lael might be passing gallstones. Every once in a while she has these crumbly little rocks in her diaper. First couple of times I saw it, I though, hmm, what did she eat off the carpet? Only she really doesn't eat anything off the carpet, and believe it or not I keep it pretty well vacuumed. Yesterday it suddenly occurred to me that they had to be coming out of her, and if so, what were they? Did some research, called Dr. J's office. Joan talked to me this morning to tell me that Dr. J's answer was that it was "not impossible," and I told her I was calling to tell her that this morning her diaper was absolutely full of them, and this time they really were green (yesterday they were just sort of sandy brown)... and some of them were a good 2mm in diameter. It was really strange, but after hearing all that, Dr. J confirmed that that pretty much had to be what was going on. And this is coming off of two nights of her up half the night writhing in my arms—not screaming, but requiring the soothie in her mouth while she dozed.

3/28/11 (Mon) — She passed more this morning, which was convenient timing. Dr J tested them, and they are definitely gallstones. We have to treat for gallbladder and for the gallstones, and she is allergic to histamines, which explains why she always acts so frustratedly itchy.

4/1/11 (Fri) — Cleared gallbladder yesterday morning. Had not pooped in a day or two, and when she finally pooped late in the afternoon afternoon, she cried in discomfort and passed a thick paste—her first solid poop in months. Typically her bowel movements are liquid, or a mucousy texture. She passed some more paste before bedtime. This morning she is back to a noisy, wet gurgle, but she passed some thick sludge along with it.

4/5/11 (Tue) — Had to do the virus mix because she got a little stuffy nose and fever something-or-other (and viruses always seem to produce hives and a bottom rash, b/c this girl is weird like that!). And apparently E has been taking her gallbladder and storing viruses in it, because after being cleared for gallbladder and gallstones and in the process of being cleared for virus mix + her own body fluids, she slept from 7-7 with two short feedings at 11:30 and 4:30!!

4/6/11 (Wed) —Had to get out the ol' baby food jar and treat for asparagus. I had gambled that she was ok for it, and she had her worst reaction in weeks—hives and fussiness—and although she is absolutely miserable and it's no fun at all, and the price is SO high that you have to wonder why I EVER gamble like that, the fact is that her bad reactions are just not quite as bad as they used to be!

4/8/11 (Fri) — 8 months old!! The last couple of days she has been babbling the syllables "mah mah" and "nah nah." It sounds comically like she is monologuing about her wonderful Momo. Hard to know if it means anything, but it does coincide with a clingy phase in which she has decided that other people are all very well, thank you, but only Momo can fulfill her needs... and she always has needs, given that she is in the middle of a miserable asparagus reaction. She does not even want D to hold her; if she can see me, she fusses for me, and if he takes her from me, she protests. This is probably partly due to the fact that D has a bit of hay fever going on, and has a tendency toward sudden, remarkably loud, papa-bear-type sneezes out of nowhere, which startle her into crying.

This morning, E got up at 5:30, and so at 6 D got up with her so I could sleep some more. After a while he brought her to me, saying she was staring up the stairs and saying, "Ma-ma-mum-mum-mum!" He felt like she was clearly communicating, and wanted to reward her. When I got up and took her, she gave her little "happy hiss" and put her arms around my neck!

It's sweet to be her favorite. P was a mama's boy when he was a baby, but he went to D for comfort from a very young age. (And then there was the Momo-is-dirt phase, which I am really hoping E will spare me.) L, poor guy, was under too much duress as a baby to be anybody's "boy," but he definitely picked D over me as his solid rock. E delights in Momo in a different way than the boys did, I think.

P on Babies

2011-03-11T11:45:00.000-08:00

Parker: "I would like to have another girl, Momo. Really I would. Only it takes such a long time to take her out of your tummy. You have to wait so long, Momo. But then comes the fun part... You get to play with her!"

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 7

2011-03-09T13:52:00.000-08:00

2/18/11 (Fri) — Treatments continue, although I'm a little tired of recording the minutiae. The big picture is this: When we did minerals and salts (in the same week), she became so calm and happy, she stopped spitting up gunk, and she began to nurse calmly instead of writhing at the breast. (She used to suck, then pull off and shake her head back and forth, groaning, then try again, then complain again...) The writhing, and occasional spitting up, came back later as we peeled back a few more layers of the onion. But after we did acid, which was so bad that she broke out in hives all over her torso during the treatment itself and we had to turn around and do a "multiple" of "acid x 100" (whatever that means!), she stopped acting constantly buzzed-up on caffeine. She began to nurse calmly again. She now naps more than one cycle, occasionally. A sore on her chin which would never heal has begun to disappear, and her face is no longer chapped. This morning she woke up cooing instead of crying.

We are not totally fine, yet. My experience is that when we peel back one layer of the onion, we get some relief, and then her body finds itself free to pay more attention to the next layer—and there are still several big ones. But what a blessing to have come so far!

2/19/11 (Sat) — L had his first soccer game of the spring season (which Crocs won 4-1). E did so well, sitting happily in her stroller and eventually falling asleep in it.

This afternoon we got out Monopoly for the first time. I'm beginning to think of this as the Monopoly fiasco.

2/23/11 (Wed) — E had her first tiny tastes of homemade goat yogurt today.

She has been burpy and sleepless most of the last few days: tired, tries to go to sleep but is obviously uncomfortable, so she gives up and kicks back into cheerful-awake mode for a little while, until fatigue sets in again. She is clawing at her right ear, and that sore under her chin that started to heal after we cleared acid is back full force. I was hoping clearing vitamin E would take care of it, but the reaction to something continues.

2/24/11 (Thu) — Last evening was rough; she was acting like she had an ear infection and had to be held for a couple of hours. Night was not too bad; colloidal silver and homeopathic drops seem to work quickly.

2/25/11 (Fri) — E very hyper, scattered hives, some spitting up of gunk. What is it?? She tests rock strong for everything I can think of. If this has not been coming on for days, I would suspect the tiny tastes of goat yogurt she is getting at lunchtime, but it really started right after she cleared acids. (The relief was so profound, and so short-lived!) I wonder if she is allergic to zinc, like her daddy was. That would explain why she started this while I was doing the avoidance periods for base and vitamin E and eating mostly beef. I'm doing a consultation w/ Dr J on Monday, and I want her to test E for everything under the sun that she can think of. There is something hiding in things and grabbing her by the innards when we least suspect it. :P

She does pretty well, but she's definitely overtired. After lunch, I tried for a long time to put her to sleep. Before lunch, I had just held her while she cried herself to sleep in my arms, but this time she was in a screaming frenzy. I finally sat her upright in my arms, where she literally keeled over from exhaustion.

She's turning into quite the mobile device. I put her on the floor while I typed this, and she managed to spin around on her belly, looking for nearby objects to chew on.

I started some sign language with her. We did "eat" and "yogurt" at lunch. In her workshop, we made signs for "book" and Little Yellow Man (literally "yellow boy"). He is a fav with her, just as he was with Parker. They both noticed his face, while Liam was far too busy to care about painted eyes. But for the record, E spends a large portion of her time munching on the crackly yellow ears of that silly red dog that neither of her brothers ever cared two figs for.

2/26/11 (Sat) — E did pretty well at L's soccer game (they tied 2-all). She never slept, but sat contentedly zoning in the stroller.

2/28/11 (Mon) — I have been getting really desperate. She is so overtired that she hardly seems to smile much anymore... at least not at me, because when she sees me she immediately begins her "oh it's you have I told you how bad it is and what can you do to fix it" cry. Had a long consultation with Dr. J today. E's liver and digestive disfunction are apparently both at 100%. She is not breaking down fats or handling sugars well. She needs B vitamins (and we have to clear gluten first because my B-vit supplement has oat flour in it), and she has a potassium deficiency. (She is allergic to it. No kidding.)

Turns out she's also got H. pylori, the bacteria that causes stomach ulcers and inflammation, which she undoubtedly got from her daddy. The good news is it's treatable like everything else. So the next few things we need to do are get her where she can have things that will benefit her digestion (DigestZen essential oil blend on her feet, for instance, and probiotics) and support her liver (like B vitamins).

I also need to start clearing her for every meal I eat. Dr. J says she is so little (and so reactive) that I don't have to wait 25 hours to do the next meal. I should just put a little of everything I eat for breakfast in a baby food jar, clear her for it after I eat it but before she nurses it, and then do it again the next meal. It's like constantly "boosting" her for everything I'm eating. And speaking of boosting, she suggested we "boost" (like treating for something you've already cleared, and so there's no avoidance period) the treatments that really seemed to give her immediate (if temporary) relief: minerals, salts, stomach acid, and digestive enzymes.

3/1/11 (Tue) — Clearing digestive enzymes must have been important for her, because she began "talking" again. She coos and babbles and explores all kinds of different syllables. Until she began doing that again, I had not realized that she had stopped. But I had noticed that she was going through a phase where she would stare at something (me, for instance) very intently and studiously, without smiling. Cooing at her produced that same look (slightly disconcerting—is there something gnarly on my nose?), but rarely an answering, dialoguing kind of response. It was like she only had so much bandwidth. She was in data capture mode, and when she was done with you, she was moving on to something else. It's nice to see her peacefully cheerful again.

3/3/11 (Thu) — It was a horrible night, but she is doing better today. Clearing H. pylori. She ate a fair quantity of goat yogurt at lunch, despite fatigue, and then I put her in bed and walked off and she slept for two hours. Would NOT eat when she got up, so we just went to soccer. She sat happily in the stroller for 1.5 hrs, and did not fuss until we got home, where she fell completely apart when I handed her to D in order to visit the bathroom: "You so TOTALLY did not get what I was telling you, Momo! I'M HUNGRY AND TIRED!!!"

3/4/11 (Fri) — H. pylori treatment seems to be a big one for her. In the night a poop came through that absolutely ripped up her bottom. I almost never even have to use bottom butter anymore, but that whole area is red and angry today. The sore on her chin stays raw, too; I don't know how to keep it bandaged. So far a bandaid is holding today, but bandaid adhesive is not known for standing up to constant drool. It almost seems like it would be worth it to apply some tegaderm—something that would last for several days and give it a chance to really heal. The tegaderm itself can be so irritating to the skin, though. Maybe I need to treat her for it first!

So as I said, clearing H. pylori seems to be big. This morning I put her in bed around 9 and walked off. She put herself to sleep and did not get up for 3 HOURS!!!

3/5/11 (Sat) — That sore is finally starting to look like it is healing. She did not sleep much today, but was very cheerful and busy. Did not take her to L's soccer game because it was at 4pm, which is way too close to her bedtime (plus she had not napped), and also drizzly.

3/7/11 (Mon) — Rough, rough time. Up from 3:30-7 am, finally got her asleep, and she woke up 35 minutes later. She is spitting up that rubbery gunk, which she has not done in weeks. Treated her for the gunk this afternoon, even though she did not actually test bad for it, and she fell asleep and slept for almost 2 hrs. Meanwhile, that sore was finally looking pretty good, and all of a sudden after she woke up from her long nap at 5pm, she began scratching at it. I had to hold her hands and head to keep her from rubbing it raw.

Got her in bed at 6:30, and she was very ready to go, but seemed itchy. When I got to a stopping point in the dinner prep, I went back to help her and discovered she had not only rubbed the bandaid+silver gel off, she had rubbed her chin bloody on the collar of her pj's. It looked as bad as I had ever seen it—as bad, in fact, as D's hands used to look when he would scratch them until they looked like raw meat (although hers is a much smaller surface area, thankfully).

We had already been muscle-testing for everything we could think of, all of which was fine. I was asking myself, "What on earth do I eat in cycles?" because just when I think she looks better, the sore starts up again. So I finally muscle-tested and asked if there was something in my milk? No. Was there something I was wearing? Yes! Got out my hair stuff, and she tests very bad for one of my hair products. Sure enough, speaking of cycles, I had used that one for the first time in days.

Just knowing what it is is a relief. Going to have to be careful what I use, and going to have to treat her very soon for the main product both D and I use, as she is always getting in somebody's hair.

3/8/11 (Tue) — 8 months today! Sore looks better. Night was not too bad and she is playing happily.

Ellie Songs

2011-03-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

To the tune of the praise song "Everybody Ought to Know Who Jesus Is":

Everybody ought to know,

Everybody ought to know who Lael is:

She's the girl we always prayed for,

She's the girl we finally got.

Now we praise the name of Jesus,

And say, "How goodly is our lot!"

To the tune of the praise song "Holiness Unto Jesus":

I love you, my baby sweet, my baby fine.

I love you, my mornin' bun, I want you all the time!

Oh, Lael Kate, my sweet baby,

Lael Kate, my Ellie Pea!

Lael Kate, my sweet baby,

My beautiful, my wonderful girl!

Monopoly Madness

2011-02-20T09:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon we got out Monopoly for the first time and showed the boys how to play. P and I were a team, and we got a run of rather rum luck, but L took off from the get-go. We got it out at 3pm, and at 7 we finally said we had to clear the table and eat dinner, after which bedtime was coming.

I made individual bundles of everyone's deeds and dollars and took a pic of the board so we could set it up quickly to continue another time... but L absolutely bawled because we had to stop. He wasn't hungry, he didn't want to go to bed, he simply wanted to keep playing Monopoly into the wee hours of the night. He sobbed on Grampa's chest because we stood our ground and refused to let him play any more tonight.

Now, I have to say that Monopoly brings out a side of Liam that can get a little bit ugly. When I offered to buy one of his deeds for myself and P, his response was, "I'm never going to sell that, and certainly not to you." I had to point out the value of not burning bridges in business dealings. It was only a game, I remarked, and yet I still felt like I didn't really want to interact with him any more. He understood, and felt bad, I think, but he has a tendency to gloat and to, well, toot his own horn quite a bit. When he is playing his table soccer game with D or G, I often call out, "Toot, toot! There's a horn sounding!"

L is just one of those kids that is kind of in danger of being drunk on his own kool-aid, and the power-hungry side of him can contribute an unpleasant intensity to the Monopoly atmosphere. Add to that the fact that his intellect is far ahead of his emotional maturity, and you get total disintegration when it is time to box up the game. Poor guy.

Maybe he wasn't quite ready for this...

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 6

2011-02-12T03:17:00.000-08:00

1/9/11 (Sun) — Chasing reactions around, a couple of steps behind. Cleared Cataplex B, then had reactions to coconut milk and turkey (ONE bite of the turkey burgers I was fixing for the men! that's it!) coming through. As far as I could gather, turkey was the current problem, so treated her for it.

1/10/11 (Mon) — Woke up to snow! About 6.5 inches, reportedly. Up in the night, and another light bulb went on. Realized that bacon (not the pork, but the salt used to cure it, and possibly also the celery powder) and vanilla (bye, bye, Haagen Dazs, until I can manage to do a treatment) were also a problem.

We took everyone out in the snow, where the boys had a blast. They sledded down the hill, in the back of the neighborhood down by the creek, in a laundry basket. E bore it gracefully, but she was actually rather tired, having woken up prematurely from her nap in order to poop... and it was cold!!

When the boys came in, I gave them hot chocolate and then treated them for a chocolate mix. They both tested very weak for it, which explains why they so often seem to come unhinged after I have let them have a treat.

Funny, neither the removal of bacon nor of vanilla from my diet is a huge inconvenience... but now my routine is altered, and I find myself wondering what my routine was like before it included those items. It's hard to stay on top of all this.

1/11/11 (Tue) — E is fussy. (Boys are fussy, too, but that is probably the hot chocolate they had before their treatment working its way out of their system.) At 4am, she was spitting up, and I thought, "OK, now what?" I know her rhythms pretty well, by now, and I have kind of an instinct for what is an old reaction on its way out, and what is a new reaction just starting. So today I tested her for a couple of things. Again, instinct (and a knowledge of what things P reacted to) guided me: she tests bad for the maple syrup in the glass bottle, but fine for the maple syrup in the plastic jug. According to the tests, it is the glass, not the syrup itself. P used to do just fine for something, until I put the leftovers in a little jelly jar, and he would begin to react. Dr. Denman confirmed it was the glass itself, and said that some types of glass have lead in it. Isn't that awful? Obviously, it's below the whatever radar the environmental peeps have set for lawful trace amounts, but still. It's enough to make my babies sick. (But what isn't?)

She woke up prematurely from a short morning nap, obviously with burps. Inexplicably, she began screaming after a few minutes. Wouldn't nurse, couldn't be comforted. The only thing that cheered her up was the one thing that always works: taking her into the boys' bathroom to stare at the moon-and-star nightlight. She cheered up, so I took her out of what has become the Coping Room, and she started up again. She wailed for pretty much an hour, and then condescended to have a meal and let D put her to bed, where she slept a good 2hrs and 45mins (!!). Her cheeks have been flaming red, and I saw a scattering of hives on her torso when I bathed her at bedtime. I have been sponge-bathing in beauty water since we discovered the tap water allergy. I need to treat for it, but we took a break from NAETs today. I might have treated her for whatever she's dealing with now, but she's not spitting up.

1/12/11 (Wed) — Treated for a mix that included lavender essential oil and vanilla, which is not such a weird combo when I note that doTerra Serenity was in there, which blends lavender with vanilla, among other things. Found She tests spongy for the mildew on her woombie, so she's gonna have to grow up now and go cold turkey without it.

Yes, there's mildew on her woombie, actually on two of the three of them. That sounds vile and horrible, but in my own defense let me state the following: 1) My child spits up constantly. That's why we have three woombies. They're expensive little numbers, which is why we started with one, gave in and bought a second, and tried to hold out a long time before admitting that we absolutely, positively needed a third. So any given woombie is constantly in a state of partially dry. 2) The woombie label says you have to air dry it. Believe me, I have finally given up completely on that and put it in the dryer with a devil-may-care attitude (it's fine, btw, didn't shrink a bit), but given how important these swaddlers were in E's life, I tried to faithfully follow the instructions. So any given woombie is constantly in a state somewhere between partially dry and fully wet. 3) They really were incredibly important: Up until recently (as in, today), she could not sleep without these woombies. (At least, the last time we tried it it was something of a disaster, so we haven't tried it in quite a while. We have enough sleep casualties already.)

So in the space of 24 hours we went from zipping her up in the convertible woombie with one arm out (the convertible woombie was sort of a felix culpa, since the only leggies woombie I could get happened to be convertible, and I needed to try the leggies because when she's upset, she kicks, and when she kicks she eventually climbs up the inside of her woombie until her knees are sort of pinned to her chest) to zipping her in those sleep sacks with both arms free... having passed through a short stage in which we discovered that even starting the blanket under her and wrapping the free end back over her toes did not keep the blanket from getting kicked over her face.

1/13/11 (Thu) — This is a red letter day: E has politely requested that we dispense with the going to bed song-and-dance hooplah, and simply put her in her bed. This is complicated by the fact that she still has burps (and a few hives), and it can be quite challenging to figure out which is her "Help, I need to spit up!" fuss, and which is her toasted, stick-a-fork-in-her, she's-more-than-done-she's-burnt-on-one-side, "Would you please put me in bed already!!!" fuss. So we started just putting her in bed, putting the soothie in her mouth, handing her her lovey with a cheerful wave, and leaving post-haste. If she starts yelling in a few minutes, we go get more burps up... but you just might hear the blissful sound of silence on the monitor!

Treated today for tap water and her baby soap, and threw in the vial of stuff she was spitting up last night to boost her for that. She had a couple of good poops after the treatment and seemed to feel better.

D took her out for a walk before bed. It is 37 degrees out there, and the roads and sidewalks are still icy, but it was clear enough to give him places to maneuver the stroller. She loves stroller rides, and we get to use that adorable green bunting that neither of the boys ever seemed to need.

1/14/11 (Fri) — Last night E went to bed at 5:30, woke at 9:30, nursed, got up one burp, and went right back into bed without another peep. She woke at 3:30, and it took an hour to get her successfully asleep, but we just kept walking her into the Coping Room (the boys bathroom, where she loves the nightlight), letting her spit up, then putting her back in bed. D's point is that this way we get a dialogue going with her: she has the opportunity to tell us that she has burps, or to go to sleep. She woke up again at 7.

This morning she was looking really tired, so I put her in bed at 8:30. She communicated with me about that quite effectively! She wanted to sleep, that was not the problem, but it took TWO HOURS to get all the burps and spits up, and she was obviously getting miserably tired. I finally nursed her again (she had hiccups) and put her in bed, and she got 35 mins.

After that she was up, and exhausted, until after we checked her treatment at 2. She cleared the water/soap mix, and even though she did not test obviously bad for today's spit-up, I threw it in with the rice/quinoa mix that we're treating for today. (We do grains in two weeks, but being able to have rice makes the 25-hr avoidance period much easier, and quinoa is not in that mix anyway.) After that I put her in her bed, where she screamed for a while, and then I got her up and bounced her on the rebounder, where she fell asleep upright and was transferrable to bed (with the addition of a soothie).

1/18/11 (Tue) — This child is SO HAPPY to have cleared minerals! She purged her colon several times during avoidance period, and again right about the time she should have cleared it.

1/19/11 (Wed) — Fussy, can't sleep. Tests for right ear infection. Took her to chiropractor, who confirmed the ear infection. She obviously feels better after the adjustment and a nap. She is so incredibly happy, I posted a video on YouTube.

1/20/11 (Thu) — Fussy, spitting cheese. Think it's probably salt, which is the next layer of the onion. Went to Columbia to treat E and L for salt, P for tryptophan, which is the reason he has not cleared turkey even though I've treated him twice. They were commenting how much better E acted just after the salt treatment than before.

1/21/11 (Fri) — Acting clingy in night. Got up at 1:30 and at 3:45 I was still holding her in chair. This is what she does when she's got ear infections. Using colloidal silver and Similasan drops. Fussing, hives in diaper area. Put bottom butter on, but I think that made it worse, as she is supposedly allergic to the tea tree oil in it. Need to do emergency treatment for bottom butter tomorrow, when she has cleared salt!

1/22/11 (Sat) — Seems like she was up several times in night, but went back to bed quickly. Treated for bottom butter. Did not nap well. Spitting up some cheese. Tests for double ear infections; the right one is visibly closed up. D worked hard to get her in bed around 1:30, and after about 20 minutes she was up again, so he took her out in the stroller. I was feeling really run down, and boys were having quiet time, so I went to bed. I woke up at almost 4pm, just before D called to say he had been walking for 2 solid hours, b/c she fell asleep and he didn't want to wake her. At his request, I came out to relieve him and walked for another 20-30 mins. Apparently it had become a neighborhood joke. These construction guys went out to do something and came back and said to him, "What are you, like, on lap 50?" When they saw me, one of them laughed and said, "Oh, it's your turn now?" But she felt so much better when she finally woke up, very happy.

1/23/11 (Sun) — Ear infection must be clearing up. Last night she went to bed about 6 and put herself to sleep. She is such a girl—she really wants that lovey cuddled up to her face! After that red letter day I mentioned above, she went right back to needing to be bounced to sleep, but now she needs just a little help from me to bounce her for a minute with her soothie and her face buried in her lovey, and then she is ready to go to bed and go to sleep. Woke around 7:30 or 8 and nursed, but went right back to sleep. Woke again at 12:45-ish, nursed, and seemed very sleepy. I put her in bed, but she squirmed. I got her up and after a few minutes she got a burp up. Put her in bed, but she fussed. Got up and put the soothie back in her mouth, and she went to sleep!

When you put her in her zoo, she looks around and chooses a toy and reaches, at which point you may need to reposition her. She likes the rattly keys dangling from one corner.

1/24/11 (Mon) — To Columbia to treat all four of us for vitamin F (essential fatty acids, aka EFAs). The fact that P is allergic to them certainly explains why he always registers a deficiency when the iridologist examines him. Among the items to avoid is mother's milk, which means E has to fast for 25 hours. Just kidding. I closed her gates after every meal, which I do anyway.

When Dr. J was leaving us for the sit-and-wait portion of the treatment, she said, "Now you will all have to tell each other stories for 15 minutes." The boys couldn't think of a story, so I said I had one, and I told them this story about two boys who wanted to play guitar, and who were very diligent with their schoolwork, and very patient going to Columbia every week, etc., etc. And they had a Babcia who did not know they wanted to play guitar, but wanted to get them something fun for their birthdays. And so one day, after they drove to Columbia for another NAET, they came home and found that there was a package that had come for them, and that their Babcia had sent them guitars for their birthday.

Then I asked Liam if he wanted to finish the story and tell us what happened after the boys got their guitars. He said something about them getting "guitar wizard," which is like the "piano wizard" program we have. I said, "Oh, I have a better story than that..." and I told them that these boys started to get a little frustrated b/c they wanted to be able to make their guitars make real music sounds, and so they were very excited when they found out that the very next day there was a guitar teacher coming to the house to give them their first lesson, and then they had a lesson every week, and they lived happily ever after.

Liam in particular was very excited and keyed up by this story—you could see it hit close to home, so to speak—but he had NO IDEA that the story might be real. After we drove home it was already 5pm, and I had to put E to bed, and D was playing the soccer game with L, and P was watching one of his eternal "sea movies" (which he would spend 92% of his life doing, if we let him)... and then I brought up their birthday present from Babcia. First I brought up the art portfolios, which they thought were very cool. Then I went back down and got the guitar boxes and also the box with their lesson books, and came back up (P had gone back to his movie) and said, "and here is the rest of Babcia's birthday gifts..." and they opened their guitars. They were pleased and excited, but in a hand-it-to-me-and-let-me-at-it, this-is-great sort of way, rather than a jump-up-and-down-for-joy sort of way.

1/25/11 (Tue) — This was a rough NAET for P, who is brittle and falling apart right and left all day. L is doing great. E seems increasingly buzzed-up, like she's reacting to something new.

Boys had their first guitar lessons. L went first, and we all kind of watched and had a good time. Next time I'm going to have P go first, so he does not use up his focus on watching instead of doing. D arranged for Fred to stay and give him a lesson as well.

E knows her name, by the way, and it was her daddy (who declared that he was always going to call her Ellie, because Ellie is such a perfect little daddy's girl name) who taught it to her. Every time he sees her, he says, "Lael!!" So now if you coo, "Lael!!" she looks for you and beams.

1/26/11 (Wed) — E having a rough time with something. I was beginning to wonder if maybe she did not clear EFAs. Woke at 2, back to bed at 3, woke at 4, and did not get back to sleep until I bullied her to sleep at nearly 6. Slept until 7:30, and then spit up cheese and refused to sleep all morning until we left at 12:30 to drive to Columbia for our 2nd NAET of the week. She slept all the way there and all the way back, and we treated her for the rubbery gunk she spit up as well as for the vitamin D we were all doing.

1/27/11 (Thu) — She woke up at 5am, barely nursed, and then absolutely screamed for 45 minutes or so. At first I thought she just wanted to be awake and was mad that I was not going to take her downstairs to play, and I think there was a touch of that in there. But she only screams like that when she has a bad tummy ache. Every once in a while she does that, and then eventually she gets up a couple of burps. We had to distract her with lights and a "party," and then I bullied her to sleep around 6:30, and she slept until 8:30.

Was trying to find the zapper at 2am and went into the boys' room, where P was muttering half-awake. At 5-ish he came out to ask us to fill his water bottle, b/c the water in it "didn't taste good." He does this when he is sick, so I checked his forehead, which was very warm. Today he is sitting on the couch, slowly working on applesauce and watching movies, which is his favorite thing in the whole world to do anyway!

E broke out all over one cheek where D was kissing her this morning. We concluded it had to be something in his mouth—he had just brushed his teeth. Only thing we could figure was the toothpaste, but she tested fine for it a little later.

Maybe EFAs were big for E and sleeping, because today she napped a solid 2hrs.

Treated both boys for body fluids this afternoon. P immediately sat up and asked to eat something, and L stopped looking like a limp dishrag.

1/28/11 (Fri) — P was quite hot during the night; both D and I were watching him. He is much stronger this morning. L seems to be about 18 hours behind him, so he had his crisis during the afternoon. I ran out with just E to get some infant probiotic, b/c if I was going to treat her for a mix, I wanted to include whatever I was going to give her directly. Left both boys on the couch resting. Came home to find D trying to comfort L, who was crying about the math problem he needed to finish ("how many triangles equal what kind of animal"... that's the last time he does math "challengers" when sick!) and talking about the "beating on the stairs." I think he was hearing his blood drumming in his ears and it scared him. That's when I remembered the homeopathic penicillin I still have in the cabinet.

That definitely turned the tide; L was able to calm down and sleep. It did not, however, prevent him from sleepwalking. We had already put his mattress on the floor, thinking he did not need to be in any danger of falling down his bunk stairs if he needed something in the night. About 10pm, D and I woke up to find E crying and acting like she had an ear infection, and L tearing wailing down the stairs, where we found him at his desk with his little lamp on, pulling out his encyclopedia of animals, still wailing. He claimed he did not know what he was doing, and I soothed him quietly back to bed.

I recently put L in charge of his own schoolwork, at least the portion he can do himself. He has a list of what he needs to work on, and he tackles it himself, with some input from me, setting a timer for breaks. Being the kind of child who thrills to responsibility, this has been wonderful for both him and me... but his feverish behavior makes me think we need to handle him carefully to prevent that weight-of-the-world syndrome he is prone to.

Treated E for probiotic/yogurt mix.

1/29/11-1/30/11 (Sat/Sun) — All three kids sick. After the homeopathic antibiotic, both boys are full of energy and wanting to do stuff, but too sick to be up to much. E acted at first like she had an ear infection, but after several rounds of colloidal silver she tested strong for it. D had already decided to stay home from church to take care of us, and I was particularly glad b/c I was up w/ E, who was feeling warm. Her temp was only about 101.5 in the night, but her nose was running, she was fussy and truly miserable. We treated her for my body fluids as soon as she cleared probiotics, b/c we could not get enough from her. Was hoping for more results from that; it didn't stop her from snuffling and being genuinely miserable for a couple of days.

Weather was gorgeous on Sunday, and since E was too miserable to sleep, D took her out in the stroller. She slept a couple of cycles, b/c first he walked her and then I did, while he took the boys to play in the common area. Boys are very brittle, falling apart over this, that, and the other.

1/31/11 (Mon) — It was something of a rough night, and I dealt w/ E alone, b/c D had a bad headache. She was over the fever, but got up at 5:30, was overtired by 7:30, and then proceeded to scream (except for a short nap which I bullied her into) until I put her in the car to head to an emergency chiropractic appointment at 11. She mellowed out and dozed on the way. He identified my NSP Probiotic 11 as the culprit. She cleared the mix, and she was fine for the one I was giving directly to her, but she did not clear mine (or the other baby one that also contains FOS, incidentally). Came home and treated her for just the Pro11. She immediately calmed down and went to sleep, but then woke up and did some more screaming.

Got a tip from the chiropractor for D's headache, btw.

2/1/11 (Tue) — She seemed to finally be pulling out of the probiotic reaction, slept for a solid 2+hrs this morning. But when she woke up, she showed every sign of reacting to something else. D had brought me some mixed veggies from Costco. I had told him to check and make sure they were "ordinary" veggies that she would probably have been treated for. The mix contained broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, and "yellow carrots." A red flag went off when I noticed that, and I had a bad feeling about this, but I cooked them for dinner anyway. I did not eat the yellow carrots, but it was all packaged and cooked together, and that was enough. When muscle testing revealed what it was, I cried... from the irritation of having to watch EVERY SINGLE ITEM that goes into my mouth, from fear of having to go through the outworkings of the reaction alone while D is out of town, and from sheer weariness. (And also from the fact that I had just eaten the leftovers for lunch right before I discovered this.)

L started soccer today. Did not realize how damp it was until we were actually all out there. P wimped out pretty quickly, and by the time L came tramping off the field early, saying he didn't feel good and wanted to go home, P was bawling. Meanwhile I had been pushing a very bundled-up E in the stroller. She did have a nap, but she was giving an occasional, hacky little cough that did not make me feel good about my choice to spend an hour and a half with her outdoors in the wintry pre-rain.

D left for Raleigh while we were gone, not before starting the dishwasher, boxing up the recycling and trash, and generally making me feel as cared-for as possible. Husbands don't come any sweeter. Sorry, girls, I got the best one.

2/2/11 (Wed) — Up from 3:30 to 5:30 am. Finally gave up and took her down to the workshop, where she had a couple of poops. Bullied her back to sleep at 5:30, and she slept for over 2hrs. Today she is fussy, and her bottom is raw, but I am able to bounce her to sleep for naps.

Canceled our NAET today, as I was very tired from the night. Didn't think D would want me to drive three hours today! Plus the avoidance for yeast would be a little rough, and D's presence with the kids would ensure I don't get stuck with kids screaming and me hungry.

L and P also crabby, picking at each other. We really miss our Daddy when he's gone.

E fell off the couch this evening. Was changing her, and usually pay attention to her tendency to roll, but G was standing right there talking to her and probably distracted my sense of what was going on. Turned to correct L behind me, and next thing I knew she was face-up on the floor between G's feet. She was a wet hen about it, but seems ok.

2/3/11 (Thu) — Took everyone to chiro, since E fell off couch and boys are crabby. He confirmed my inclination to keep L home from soccer. He is beyond brittle, crying at everything I say to him, moping around and proclaiming sheer misery with every breath. Dr F says his heart chakra is "overheated." As the heart is the seat of joy, etc, that is makes a lot of sense.

2/4/11 (Fri) — J came and picked up boys to take them to her house for weekend. Something is bugging E, flying under the radar. Treated E for grain mix. Gave her a long bath, b/c she was tired and not sleeping and I needed to kill some time and put her to bed early. So she discovered bath toys. :) But when I took her out of the tub, her back was covered with hives. Wonder if Greenville County just dumped a bunch more chlorine into the water or something.

2/5/11 (Sat) — Quiet day without the boys here. Had to retreat for grain mix.

2/6/11 (Sun) — Rough nights, naps short. Something is still bugging her. Tom Quinlan dropped by in the afternoon, on his way from there to elsewhere.

2/7/11 (Mon) — Up in the night: 10, 12, 3:30 and 6. Had a good nap this morning, but then did not sleep again until about 4pm, when we were strollering around outside Dr. J's office, while D had an appointment with her. E was doing her screeching thing all day, where she starts yelling. It looks innocent enough: people ask, "Has she just found her voice?" But it's really a sign that she's reacting to something. She did it all the time when she was younger, and I called it her cheerful way of being miserable.

Treated her for yeast today. She is allergic to vitE, which explains a lot, as it is in almost everything. Come to think of it, we need to test her for K as well. And there's still a whole slough of things that we have to treat for: acid and base are the next two, which she absolutely must get through before she can have any solid foods... and probably E as well. Then there's the pollen mixes—L is highly allergic to those and it turns out E is too. Only problem is we have to get through them in the next few weeks, before the tree pollen starts to come out. Egad. And she cleared my grain mix, but I had Dr J test her for them, and she is still allergic to gluten and all those grains.

Got in late, everyone tired. E was cheerful about it, but it may mean she's burning the candle at both ends.

2/8/11 (Tue) — 6 months today!! Up every 2 hrs in the night like clockwork. Stay tuned for month 7!

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 5

2011-01-11T12:20:00.001-08:00

12/9/10 (Thu) — D came back from Raleigh late in the evening. It's not that E was not happy to see him, she just wasn't all that moved. We joke that what she had to say was, "Oh, you again. Daddy, what have you done for me lately?"

12/12/10 (Sun) — D stayed home from church to take care of me. G stayed home from church to take care of himself and his cold.

12/13/10 (Mon) — Whoa, rough night! Postponed today's NAET until later in the week, b/c gate zapper is not there yet.

12/15/10 (Wed) — NAET for B-complex. Got the zapper!

12/16/10 (Thu) — Something's eating at her. She is antsy, won't sleep more than a cycle, and it takes a while of soothing to get her to do that. Muscle-testing and not getting any obvious answers except teething. D went out before dinner and got her a couple of chillable teethers. I went out after she was in bed to a different store and found some other things. By the time I got back she was awake again and totally miserable: her face was pretty much one big hive. So we NAETed her. Dr. J had given me some of the little vials she uses, and I scooped up some spit-up and we treated her for it. She had cleared B-complex, as far as I could tell, and it was well past the 25-hr period. It wasn't totally dramatic, but afterwards she was able to calm down and get to sleep.

12/17/10 (Fri) — Don't remember how the night was. Hives pretty much gone. Still some spitting up and burping, but she tests fine for the little vial we treated her for. Skin looks great, the redness around the face is gone, and she looks very healthy.

12/19/10 (Sun) — Theresa Rich brought homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner.

12/20/10 (Mon) — NAET for sugars today. Night was terrible, up every two hours or so, wailing and spitting up, had to be held and wouldn't go back in her bed. If we did not have a NAET scheduled, I would have treated her for the nasty cheese she spit up, but we would have to have 25 hrs to clear it before we do another treatment. So Dr J says she is not teething but has ear infection in right ear. Afraid of colloidal silver, since she is allergic to minerals, so got Similasan homeopathic drops instead.

12/22/10 (Wed) — Treated her for the rubbery junk she is spitting up, and she is like a new baby!

12/23/10 (Thu) — Drove to Babcia's this a.m. E doing great, taking decent naps, acting peacefully cheerful.

12/24/10 (Fri) — E beginning to react to something. Still being her sunny self, which is really impressing Babcia, but I'm starting to recognize that buzzed-up behavior that is her cheerfully starting to feel miserable. Grampa arrived around lunchtime and pointed out a hive or two on the back of her neck. We had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner and then opened presents. Due to E's erratic nap schedule and her reactionary buzz, she was up sitting in Babcia's lap for the presents, which made it more special for Babcia. We got back home around 11pm and did the necessary Christmas prep while kids slept. Artur was with us so he could see kids open stockings tomorrow.

12/25/10 (Sat) — E high maintenance, but not too bad. Everyone had a magical haul this year: L and P came down to the playroom to each find a desk of their own, and a longbow hanging over their stocking hanger. There were lots of dress-up clothes to go with it (a king's robe and crown for L, a robin-hood tunic, cape, and crown for P), some books and games... and of course Uncle Art's cr

12/27/10 (Tue) — She is consistently, whatever the first half of the night is like, waking around 3am; and then it takes 1.5-2hrs to get her back to bed. She has burps that won't come up,or she is just clingy and has to be held.

12/29/10 (Wed) — Drove to Columbia for NAET; iron this time.

12/30/10 (Thu) — Cleared iron. Not that I would know that, if Grampa wasn't around, because I am constantly either "switched," or just generally not strong enough to give a good reading. I drink water, I cross-crawl, I rub my K-27's... Nothing. According to my diagnosis, she was allergic to the cast iron pan, but quite strong for the viscous, rubbery junk she spit up. Right. Anyway, this evening we did a treatment for the rubbery junk, w/ G presiding and D as the surrogate.

12/31/10 (Fri) — Slept 6:30 to 3am! Took 1.5hrs to get her back to sleep, but slept another 2 hrs. Definitely has discovered feet. Wearing pants with the built in bunny-eared feet, which she finds fascinating. FINALLY sleeping more than one cycle at a time! Also first time in days I can put her down in bed and walk off wiyhout first sitting down until she is good and asleep, then crawling into the amby with her and sneaking artfully out from under her. Good late-morning nap, good late-afternoon nap. Obviously feels better. Some spitting up this afternoon; muscle-tests poorly for D's pau d'arco lotion that he uses for his hands.

1/1/11 (Sat) — Wow, what a terrible night! She slept from 8 (it took me an hour to get her to sleep, and I had to do the crawl-in-sneak-out thing again) until 3:30... And then both D and I were bouncing and burping and sitting. Finally got her asleep in bed at 5, and then 20 minutes later she was crying again. I had to sit with her in the recliner and doze until 7. She would frequently writhe and cry and I would have to wake up and give her her soothie again. Had a convoluted dream in which everywhere I went there was this baby I had to do something with, and I kept trying to take a bath but when I was finally able to get in the water was too cold. Now it is 9am, and I am typing one-handed on the iPad while she sleeps in my arms. She swallowed a bunch of bath water by mistake last night, wonder if that has anything to do with it. But I think I had better have G and D test her for Haagen Dazs.

G came over. E tests fine for Haag-Dazs, but bad for tap water! What kind of baby is so sensitive that a mouthful of bathwater causes such gastric distress that she is up for half the night?? Or maybe we should be asking what's really in that tap water. My guess is it's the minerals; my own mineral allergy was incredibly severe. Or maybe it's the chlorine, or something. I think I'll warm up some "beauty water" to bathe her until we can treat her for minerals in a couple of weeks.

1/3/11 (Mon) — Cleared iron, NAET for vitA. Told Dr J about the tap water, and showed her the vial of gunky-junk that E spit up. She said that was rather scary and wished she had a lab she could send it off to and get it analyzed. "You're feeding her nothing but mother's milk, and this is what you're getting out of her??" She confirmed that E tests rock strong for it now, but she suggested that every time we treat her for something (at home), we throw that vial in there along with whatever we're treating, to boost her for it. She said we can treat her every 25 hours, and not to worry about overloading her: she showed us a test to make sure she is "treatable" on a given day.

Dr J is recommending B vitamins, since I was saying I'm never strong enough to get a good muscle-test reading on me; she tested E and said she was strong for the Cataplex B supplement, so I guess I'll try it.

1/4/11 (Tue) — She slept 7 to 1:30, was up for an hour, and put herself to sleep sitting in my arms in the recliner. She woke up at 5:30 and was quite bushy, but at 6 D took her and bounced her and sat with her for an hour, while she dozed and never quite wanted to go back to bed. That meant that I got another hour of dozing as well, and did not have to officially start my day at 5:30. (Such a good Daddy!)

Treated E for D's pau d'arco lotion, after she cleared vitA. (We discovered she was allergic to the lotion after we used D as the surrogate when we treated for the rubbery-gunk. Her belly was covered in hives afterwards, where his hands had been.) The liberty to treat her whenever we need to for whatever we need is so wonderful! The Lord is so good! And it would be a nightmare without that expensive little gate-zapper. I remember treating the boys after we did the basics with each of them, and it was a grueling process. My dad pointed out that at 1$/hr (and actually, my time must surely be worth more than that), and assuming it saves me an hour a day (and some days probably more) of manual gate-closings, the zapper will have paid for itself in six months.

So we treat for pau d'arco around 3pm. Right after that, she's starting to get buzzed-up, can't sleep, starting up with the hives... what on earth?? Did some hemming and hawing and head-scratching and muscle-testing... and realized she was badly allergic to mango. MANGO!!?!?!! I would not walk across the street to eat mango, generally speaking. But D brought home some mixed fruits from Costco, and I celebrated the clearing of the vitA by having some fruit.

Duh, mango is not in the "fruit mix" which she was NAETed for along with vitC a few weeks ago. At least, I gather it isn't, b/c she's allergic to it. And why would it be? Who eats mango? Besides my husband, who got his taste for it in Africa, which is not, of course, its native land. (???) Well, apparently I do, when it is brought into my house and cut up for me.

And then I treat my baby for it.

1/5/11 (Wed) — I don't want to talk about the (long) night. I don't recommend feeding mango mo-juice to this child. Cleared pau d'arco. Treated for mango.

Sneeze!!

1/6/11 (Thu) — Last night was miserable. She woke up 3-ish as usual. D tried unsuccessfully to put her back to bed after she ate, and I got back up with her. At 6am I was still holding her in the recliner, dreaming that I was having bad dreams! A light bulb went on, and when D got up we tested her for the Cataplex B supplement: bad! She also tests for double ear infections, and her ear canals look a bit swollen closed. Using Similasan homeopathic ear drops, and looking forward to next week's mineral NAET, after which we can use colloidal silver.

Went to test mango and treat for Cataplex B, but no-go. Not sure why the mango didn't hold. Maybe there are extracts of mango in some natural lotion or toothpaste or something-or-other around my house that I use without noticing. But I have this feeling that I ruined the NAET myself by just giving her a vigorous back rub, as I occasionally do. Probably stimulated all her acupoints and confused them.

I thought we were really starting to climb out of this; she had a longish nap this afternoon. But putting her to bed was a challenge, and then she woke up about the time we were getting in bed, and at 1am I was still sitting with her dozing in my arms. I looked at the clock right before I tried to transfer her to the amby and thought, hey I could be doing this again in two hours! Sure enough, she woke up at 3:15. D took her and then I took her back, and I got her into bed around 4:30. She slept until 7:15, a specific answer to my prayer!

1/7/11 (Fri) — Definitely feeling better: brighter and bushier... except there is a grouping of nasty-looking hives where her diaper rubs one leg. You have to wonder what I'm doing with my brain, since I seem to have to come to the same conclusions over and over, but... I have been eating white rice occasionally. I figured, I have had to eat it for the NAET avoidance period (it being one of about 3-5 things that I can eat). I've tested her for it before with nothing conclusive, and I really thought it was fine. But gut instinct (pardon the pun) has been nagging at me. (I really should pay more attention to my gut.) Tested it today, and sure enough: Allergy to rice.

That sure makes sense: Yesterday she was bopping along, getting the allergens out of her system with nothing new coming in. But what was I doing while she was taking her longish afternoon nap? Eating rice! Oh, yes. Stage set for next act; cut to baby writhing uncomfortably in momo's arms until after midnight. Okay, can we all agree on this mantra?—Eat Nothing But What We Have Treated For!

Say it with me, now! Eat Nothing But What We Have Treated For!

Not being able to sleep this afternoon, being quite, ahem, itchy (ants in the pants, anyone?), she spent some time in her zoo. And I notice that she has now figured out how to reach up and yank down Ollie Elephant to bring him to her mouth-level. Of course eventually she loses her grip, and he goes buzzing back up, and she has to reach for him again. I don't know about you, but I actually think that's kind of an exciting milestone. I love it when we get to play with the vibrating pull toys.

1/8/11 (Sat) — 5 months today! Now that was more like: went to bed before 6pm, got up at 1 (I think we were only up for an hour, and I did not have to sit with her), and at 5:45.

She does this thing the last couple of days, where she holds her fingers up in front of her nose and goes cross-eyed examining them. She is also getting to that "mobile device" stage when you put her down in one place, and if you turn your back for 30 seconds, she might be halfway across to somewhere else. Or maybe tangled in a computer cord you had not realized was so accessible. And if you sit her in your lap, where she kind of doubles over herself and finds them accessible, she will very busily eat her feet.

She always rolls to her right, by the way. I can count on one hand the number of times ever, in her five months, I have seen her roll back to the left.

Alright, just in case we're not getting this lesson, we get to assimilate it another way: Last night I made a Vitamix shake with coconut milk because I was out of buttermilk. Has she been treated for coc milk? No. Has it always seemed fine in the past? Yes. Are my meal options still limited? Yes. So I drank the shake. Today I found myself saying, "Now what are you reacting to? Oh." You guess it. Ix-nay on the oconut-kay.

Then I excitedly plugged in the new diffuser and began broadcasting doTerra OnGuard, which is an immune-boosting essential oil blend. The two adults were sniffing ecstatically. (My body needs that stuff.) The two boys were examining the apparatus in total fascination. And the baby girl? She was working from fussy up to unlivable. This prompted me to test her for essential oils. Ginger and lavender, the two I use on her all the time for digestion and soothing, test ve-ry bad. On Guard was definitely not good either, and there were a couple others that were no-go.

Apparently the punchline here is that literally any stimulus, internal or environmental, to which she is exposed regularly consistently becomes targeted by her body as a toxin. Her programming is encoded all wrong. The good news is I can reprogram her. The bad news (if you want to get all persnickety and impatient and insist it's bad news) is that I can only do one treatment at a time, at a max of one per 25hrs, and preferably at a more relaxed pace than that. And the list of necessary treatments is growing. I can treat a mix—say, mixed nuts instead of just almonds—but you don't want the mix to be so overwhelmingly complex that the body can't understand and isolate each item.

So after 5 months, we're in a rough place, but still a much better place than we were with either of the boys. We're obviously getting better, because we are peeling back enough layers of the onion for a reaction to one single thing to be a big deal. I think before a lot of it was just suppressed.

And she's still our happy little sunshine!

Awake

2011-01-05T04:32:00.000-08:00

What do we do when we sleep so fine,
When we sleep so fine,
When we sleep so fine?
We slug-a-bed 'til half past nine,
Yes we do,
When we sleep so fine.

What do we do when we sleep so great,
When we sleep so great,
When we sleep so great?
We sweetly drowse 'til almost eight,
Yes we do,
When we sleep so great.

What do we do when we sleep like bricks,
When we sleep like bricks,
When we sleep like bricks?
We get our parents up at a quarter to six,
Yes we do,
When we sleep like bricks.

Not, of course, that any of this is particularly relevant to our baby, who yet sleeps neither fine nor great, and is one night-owl of a brick.

Sunshine

2011-01-04T11:39:00.000-08:00

The other night, Mo, as I lay sleeping,
I dreamed my tummy had a burp.
And then I woke up, and had to spit up,
So I lifted up my voice and chirped.

'Cause you're my sunshine,
My Momo sunshine,
You make me happy
On a really bad day!
I hope you know, Mo,
How much I need you.
Please don't take my sunshine away!

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 4

2010-12-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

11-9-10 thru 11-17-10 — Can't believe that was only ten days. It was somewhat nightmarish, as E has been reacting to something. She tested poorly for cow milk and peanut butter in my milk, so I went off those. I have spent countless hours (and so has D) bouncing her, burping her, singing to her and praying over her, putting a warm herby elephant on her belly, carrying her around and waiting for her to spit up the viscous, cheesy stuff that's sitting in her belly as either the cause or the result of her discomfort. There were nights when we were up every 2-3 hrs, with her writhing and fussing and nursing to cope. Just when we thought she was pulling out of it, she started up again. Now she's sleeping longer stretches, but when she does get up, it takes an hour of burping her (and some spit-up blaps all over my robe) before she can get comfortable enough to sleep again.

Oh, and right at 3 months, E started rolling over back to front... and forgetting how to roll back over onto her back, which was a skill she learned two months ago and apparently discarded as pointless. So there's no just putting her down into the zoo and walking off, b/c she'll be crying face-down in frustration in a matter of seconds.

Btw, here's the elephant, but it's an ugly picture of him, and ours is sage green... and I've just discovered that microwaving him will make his soothing smell not last as long; but hey, we actually need to use him, not just drape him around to look cute (and he is cute, despite the pic), so I guess we'll just deal with it. I hope he's replaceable. It's kinda hard to tell from that website if "mint green" means what we have, or actually means that eye-popping, mint-candy-colored swatch they're showing. I guess we could always get pink. Or maybe I need to order Aristurtle, who is rounder and maybe more belly-shaped, and is stuffed with immune-enhancing echinacea. (The elephant, after all, was a gift to my mom, who was the Elephant in the Corner in our house for eight months. Maybe I need to preserve him...)

E has been so consuming, I didn't even realize it was my mom's birthday until that evening. Well, Candy already told me she missed her mom much more on her own birthday than on her mom's, so that isn't too surprising. I bet it's the other way around if you've lost your child, however. I have a friend who, twenty-two years later, is so conscious of her lost baby's birthday that she tells me, "It's my Ashley's birth month..."

11-18-10 (Thu) — Our custom shades finally came (custom-sized windows, of course), and D installed them this afternoon. E hardly slept all day, though I bent over backwards (almost literally) to do everything I could to keep her comfortable and help her nap. She's still cheerful about it, and being carried through the house face-out so she can watch what's going on is a great distraction that makes for a decently happy baby. When I absolutely can't do it anymore, I put her in her workshop and tell her brothers to go talk to her. (She usually talks right back.) But she's so tired! The room-darkening shades went up just in time to make it easier to put her down early at 5-ish.

11-19-10 (Fri) — Room darkening shades are in place, so I started putting her down in her bed when she was tired... and I discovered something. I had already begun to suspect this, but now it's confirmed: She loves her bed. She is so much happier sleeping in her bed than trying to nap attached to me in a bright, often noisy environment. This business about teaching her to fall asleep? She knows how, and she wants to; that's not the problem. The problem is if/when her tummy is upset enough to prevent her from sleeping.

This morning she had two 1hr-long naps. The first one went pretty well; the second required several rounds of getting her up and burping her and putting her back down. She was tired again around noon, but it took so many re-tries that it was about 1:15 before she was really asleep. She woke up at 2 and nursed, but with her eyes closed, and had "put me back in bed" written all over her. I did, and she slept until... drumroll... 6:45pm! Boys were at Babcia's (she picked them up this morning), so the house was incredibly, weirdly quiet.

Now why is it that you want your baby to sleep, you need your baby to sleep, your baby wants and needs to sleep... but when she finally does sleep, you get a little nervous about it? "It's my baby's bedtime, and she's still taking her afternoon nap! Aauugh!!" No, no, no, I know it's a great thing for her to sleep that long. And a rested baby sleeps better at night. (But still.)

11-18-10 (Sat) — E had several good naps today. We made two trips to mall (the second was because we tried to buy something the first time, but we left the gift card at home) in between her naps. Both times we managed to get her out, back in, and into bed again within the 2hr window of wakefulness that — forget what the experts say — I'm telling you is definitely our baby's max limit.

We were checking out at J Crew, and E was in an umbrella stroller. She was beginning her cheerfully miserable yell, and a black lady in front of us turned around and said, "You tell him, girl! He got it wrong, and you fuss at him!" E cheerfully obliged, and the woman said, "That's right! And you'd talk to anybody, too!" E really was in her element at the mall, so many people to watch. I asked her if she plans to grow up to be a mall rat.

11-19-10 (Sun) — Rough night, rough day. You just can't get the burps up! She wants to sleep, but you bounce and bounce and bounce, and try every position under the sun, and she just cries... and eventually blaps up something nasty. It took me about 2.5hrs to get her down for her after-lunch nap. Well, getting her down is not the problem, it's getting her comfortable enough to stay asleep once she is down. It's like the burps are stuck in her toes. Eventually one will come up, and by then it is a bona fide, certified, royal belch quality burp.

11-20-10 (Mon) — Rough night. She woke up at 5 and we could not get her back to sleep, she was so uncomfortable, spitting up, etc. At 9am I called the doctor in Columbia who does NAETs. At 9:25 the office called back and said she could see us at 11. I was still in my p.j.'s, having done nothing but deal with a baby who had not slept in 4.5hrs. I somehow (with the help of a husband who works at home and could hold the baby while I got ready) mobilized everyone and got them in the car and driving down the road by 9:40, which was squeezing it big-time. E got a short, one-cycle nap in the car, with Liam providing soothie-management. We made it almost on-time, and I explained that I was beginning to more-than-suspect that E was reacting to some of the more basic nutrients. Sure enough, Dr. Jenkins tested her, and she is "allergic" to everything: protein, calcium, VitC, B-complex... It was Park all over again. We did the first treatment (for egg mix) and drove back home.

During the treatment, E began to get a red rash on her tummy and to move her bowels. She fussed for a while in the car afterwards, not having slept more than 40 minutes out of the past 7.5hrs, and then fell asleep for a cycle without her soothie. When I got her home, she went to bed and slept for two hours. We put her to bed early, and she slept well, getting up twice in the night to eat, but without the big spit-up sessions.

11-21-10 (Tue) — The 25-hr avoidance period for egg ended at 1:30pm today. This morning, E slept until 7:30, went back to bed at 8:30 and slept 2.5hrs, and then slept 3.5hrs in the afternoon. (This is the kind of dramatic results we had when we did NAETs with Parker.) I was turning on bright lights in the room at 4:30, hoping she would wake up so that she would be sleepy enough to go to bed on time, as I had a haircut appointment at 7.

11-22-10 (Wed) — D off for vaca. around Thanksgiving holiday. E doing pretty well. Watched Facing the Giants with the boys. They loved it, although L was emotionally exhausted by Brock's "don't quit" death-crawl scene.

11-23-10 (Thu) — Thanksgiving Day. E very fussy. Pretty sure egg/chicken cleared, but there are still so many other things she reacts to that it is neither surprising that she's fussy, nor possible to isolate the cause, although I have some gut instincts. After I get her through the next two NAETs (calcium and vitamin C), I will probably have a good pool of things I can eat without bothering her (eggs/chicken, dairy, fruits and veg's), and can cut out grain and some other suspicious items until we get through more treatments.

Annette came like last year and brought another crock-pot turkey, which was yummy... especially with the Whole Foods stuffing (sourdough sage, and rosemary chestnut, both good) and cranberry sauce that D brought home this morning. The boys love to play with Savannah, although I think they might have worn her out!

Lael has real empathy
for the stomach-achy caterpillar

11-24-10 (Fri) — Lazy day. E and I went back to bed at 8:30 for am nap and woke up at 11!

11-25-10 (Sat) —Artur came to visit. E a little bit high maintenance. We have been back to getting up every 3hrs in the night, but the turnover is faster. Much less spitting up of cheesy stuff.

11-26-10 (Sun) — E and I stayed home from church again. Rather high maintenance, but finally got a nap in together. She had another decent nap in the afternoon, and then I took her fussy self out for a walk. We bundled her in the green bunting, and the boys rode scooters while I rolled the stroller over the leafy parts of the street to hear them crunch-crunching under the wheels and my feet. She was quiet, if not fully content. Distraction is definitely your biggest tool with this baby. She seems to have plenty of "palm tree" in her.

11-27-10 (Mon) — She was up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. D had her downstairs while I was showering, and from up there she sounded just like my first cat, Patches, who used to positively yammer. "Meow! Yow! Yeeowww! " Back to Columbia for another NAET. Cleared egg mix, doing calcium this time. Apparently I have to limit my food strictly, as it is going into her milk, but it is okay if I touch a forbidden substance; I just have to make sure she does not touch. It's a little hard to know where I stop and she begins, so even though it's liberating to know that touching tap water will not blow the NAET, I find myself confused about whether I can touch her after touching something.

Rough day. Spitting up, screeching. It started when she was up from 2:30-3:30, nursed twice (bookends), finally went back to sleep, and woke at 4:15 writhing and crying. Seemed to have toots, and she had them all day. May have been some reaction to the NAET, but it seems like this, whatever it is, was coming on before we did the treatment.

She slept from 3-4:30pm, after half an hour of bouncing and warm-elephant-on-the-bellying and trying to nurse. Got up, was miserable for an hour, and then we gave up on the day and she went to bed. She seemed to be more comfortable when I got her into bed, but the amby almost immediately began whump-whump-whumping up and down. She whumped for a while, and even made a comment or two, but she eventually bounced herself to sleep... yay!

my brothers wore this!

11-30-10 (Tue) — The reaction that seemed to be starting around 4am yesterday morning is continuing full force. "High maintenance" just doesn't quite cut it. She is all-consuming. We did get some school done this morning, mostly while I walked around with her held tucked under my arm.

12-1-10 (Wed) — Slept well: from 5pm-1am, and then had a regular party. Then she slept until 6 (I think; things are blurring together). We could not wake our daddy up, no matter what we tried, so we came downstairs and had a party by ourselves (where her screeches, as she got impatient waiting for me to eat breakfast, evenually brought D down). But the day was terrible. She could not sleep. When she finally was able to get comfortable enough to go to sleep, she would wake up 35 minutes later. She had ants in her pants. I unplugged the Q-link Nimbus, because she was so alert, in a tired sort of way, and I didn't know if that had anything to do with it. At 3 we gave up on a nap that we had tried three times and only gotten 30 minutes out of, but she couldn't even make it until a 4:30 bath for an early bedtime. So at 4:15 I put her to bed. At 6 I nursed her and it took forever to put her back. At 9-ish she was up and ready to part, so we brought her downstairs to see the new lighted Christmas tree which we had set up (but not finished fluffing). She was captivated, but did not last long... yet again it took forever to get her comfortably back in bed. Both my back and D's are in knots with catches and strains from holding her and bouncing her. I muscle-tested her for several things, but there is nothing that is the obvious culprit. She even tested just fine for oats and quinoa, even though Dr. J's test said she's allergic to grains. So I gave up trying to find what it is and just went back to eating without thinking too much about it.

P has a fever. He came down, fully dressed, at 7. All three of us were down here, and we laughingly sent him back up to bed, although he was not laughing about it. He fell back asleep for a few minutes, and then got up at 7:30 and came downstairs, where he told me he had a fever. Sure enough, he was right. He spent most of the day on the couch, where we did get some school done together during the short times that E was actually sleeping. He ate almost nothing but half a glass of "shake" (fruit smoothie), but he rallied for oatmeal at dinner.

12-2-10 (Thu) — Slept well from 8pm-2am, fairly quick turnover and slept until 6. When she woke she was at her brightest-eyed and bushiest-tailed. At 7 she was completely ready to go back to bed... and at 9:30 we finally got her there. There were burps that would not come up, and sausages to be stuffed (that's what we call it when she turns around and nurses "non-nutritionally" yet again: when in doubt struggling with a miserable baby, try "stuffing the sausage"), and projectile spits to launch. Brought her down and plunked her in the workshop two or three times, where she tried her best to be cheerful about it. She pooped once, but then in the aftermath of changing her, she felt so good and was so happy that I gave her hiccups playing with her. Then we had to stuff the sausage again, and then she was too uncomfortable to sleep, so we had to come downstairs again. I finally bullied her to sleep the way I used to when she was smaller: by holding her flat against me, her soothied face burrowed just below my shoulder, and bouncing her vigorously. It lasted 30 minutes. She got up and had another poop, and we tried again. At 11am, I finally left her in her bed, wailing brokenheartedly because I had just walked off and left her, but I had nothing left to give. She stopped crying after a little while, and eventually she put herself to sleep for an hour. Found a hive on her head this afternoon, which certainly explains the whole ants in the pants attitude.

12-5-10 (Sun) — E is breaking out in hives again, although they had died down over last couple days. We have been muscle-testing everything under the sun, and we finally discovered that almonds and cashews are not good at all... and that's when I realized how much of a dietary staple almonds are for me. Well, after the vit-C treatment I'll be able to eat eggs and chicken, dairy, and most fruits and vegetables, so I should be able to feed us for a few more weeks until things like grains are cleared, and then we can treat for nuts.

12-6-10 (Mon) — St. Nicholas Day. Boys are very excited about the football helmets and jerseys (and football books) that he left them. E got some good naps in, despite the hives, but then began having a harder time as the afternoon wore on. Night was rough, long bouts of getting the burps up. Suspect my supplements, which I had gone off of and then added back in after we found out about the almonds.

12-7-10 (Tue) — NAET today. She cleared calcium and we did vit-C. We also tested her for all my supplements. She is mildly allergic to some and severely allergic to others, which confirmed my suspicions. Dr J said that I could try closing her gates every time after she eats. Now, there are eight gates (nine, b/c you end w/ the same one you started w/). To close a gate takes 60 seconds of rubbing clockwise. Add in a squirmy baby and the fact that you really need three hands, and you've got 10 unpleasant minutes. So I ended up paying the big bucks to let their office order the little gate-zapper vibrator thingy that she uses, which closes the gate with one little poke. As I pointed out to D, there are 5 people in our family, and that's a lot of gates... if someone gets sick, we can quickly close gates to treat them. The only reason we don't do it more often is because it is so time-consuming. But I still remember the first time I did it when Park was a big baby and had thrown up. He had turned positively green with nausea and fell asleep in my lap while I was working on his gates (which took even longer — 3 mins per gate, but I won't bore you with the explanation here), but I think before I even finished, he woke up and bounced around, perfectly fine. It was like, "Gee, I'm sorry you're not feeling quite the thing, Park..."

D going to Raleigh today. I hope the nights will not be too strenuous, as he won't be here to relieve me. I closed E's gates (the long way) a couple of times after she nursed this afternoon and evening, and it definitely made a difference.

12-8-10 (Wed) — 4 months today! We made it through the night. It was rough, and I'm tired, but it was not nearly as rough as it could have been without D to help me. (He is so very helpful, and so willing to do his share, bless him!) E took a long time to burp and get comfortable enough to sleep after both times she got up to eat, but she was not fussy, nor did it require the back-breaking bouncing for long periods that she sometimes needs. E is playing happily in her zoo as I write, seems calmer today. While there has been more of an awareness of and control over her hands lately, this is the first time I notice her reaching for things deliberately.

Realized this morning that I never took my q-link off for yesterday's NAET, which I am supposed to do. I hope it didn't affect the treatment.

Breaking out in hives again today, really miserable. She's probably reacting to something in the fish and chips I had last night during the avoidance period for vitamin C. Finally rubbed diluted lavender oil on her feet and closed her gates (9 gates + 1 min/gate + fussy, squirmy baby + only two hands/arms + bouncing baby on rebounder to keep her fussiness to a minimum = sheer torture) this afternoon, and she went to sleep. Kept crying out in her sleep, though.

But the gate-closing, miserable though it is to get through, really calms her down. Afterwards she just sort of sits and chats, or burps quietly, instead of fussing. When I was on my way home from Dr. J's yesterday, that passage from Psalm 147 came to me: the perfect, God-spoken answer to my little girl's digestive unrest.

Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem;

Praise thy God, O Zion.

For He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates;

He hath blessed thy children within thee.

He maketh peace within thy walls,

And fills thee with the finest of wheat.

2-Dec-2010 — Fidgety

2010-12-02T06:21:00.000-08:00

What do we do
When my baby's got ants,
When my baby's got ants,
Got ants in her pants?

What do we do

When my baby's got ants,

When my baby's got ants in her pants?

This is what we do

When my baby's got ants,

Got ants in her pants.

This is what we do

When my baby's got ants:

We dance, and dance, and dance.

18-Nov-2010 — Mixed Up

2010-11-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

King Liam: "Ellie Pea is not my wife. Momo is my wife."

Prince Parker: "Ellie Pea is my wife, and Daddy is my son!"

King Liam: "And Grampa is my advisor. The queen is just a little bit powerfuller than the king's advisor. That means Momo is just a little powerfuller than Grampa."

How old do they have to be to insert anonymous figureheads into those roles? Or at least use people who are unrelated??

I know it's all innocent. It just has an Oedipal sort of eeriness as I listen from the next room.

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 3

2010-11-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

10/9/10 (Sat) — So you think that you're working on one thing, and then you realize that there are several other things going on at the same time. E cannot sleep unless she is swaddled. We've tried it several times, and she obviously does not feel secure. But she's busting out of the swaddle-me blankets every time she cries and kicks, and sometimes just by stretching and squirming in the night. So how can we possibly expect her to learn to put herself to sleep if she destroys her comfortable sleeping environment during her protest crying? In desperation, I ended up swaddling her upper half and letting her legs hang out free. It works, temporarily, but by morning she had squirmed her way down and was wearing a thick cowl around her neck!

At 4am last night, I ordered her a woombie. It's like the swaddle-me, but instead of fastening with velcro (which is pretty hefty stuff, and has done pretty well for a while), it zips. I had come across it by accident once, and it suddenly occurred to me that we really needed it. While I was ordering I read all these reviews (yes, at 4am) in which people said that their baby was busting out of the swaddle-me every night, and the woombie was a life-saver. (I knew there was a good reason I was ordering it at 4am and paying for 1-day shipping to get it here by Monday!)

L had two soccer games today, at 1:45 and 4:45. The first one finally gave us a run for our $; we were down 1-0 in the 1st quarter and came back to win 4-1. After that game, we went to Bruegger's for a snack and discovered Jackson and his sister and grandmother had had the same idea. E slept well both in the octopus (on D) and in her car seat. She definitely does not nurse as well when we are out, so she usually goes shorter hours at night when we've had a big day like that.

The Holz's (Holzes? I never have felt comfortable with that plural) came in time to watch the second half of the second game (again we were down 1-0 and ended up winning 4-2). They were pleasantly surprised to find that there is some real skill and teamwork at this level, it's not just bumblebee soccer. The last time we saw Anne and Paul (whom I have known since I was 1yo, and are more like family to me than some of my extended family), I think Liam was two months old.

10/10/10 (Sun) — (That felt strange to type.) 9 weeks old. Went to church, then out to lunch with the Holz's before they left. Grampa also left on a trip, so it will be quiet around here this week. E is getting to be quite social, gave Frank a big smile at church. Anne sat next to her on the way to church and the way to lunch, and E smiled and cooed at her the whole time. Yesterday I drove and D rode next to her all day, and she just beamed at him and acted like she was getting a special treat to have her daddy with her.

10/11/10 (Mon) — The Woombie came and somehow I managed to get it washed and dried (it has to air dry???) in time to use it at night. Gave her a bath and the usual bed routine, put her to bed mostly asleep. She woke up fully a few minutes later and cried for half an hour, then slept 6 hours.

10/12/10 (Tue) — My first birthday without my mother, my first with my little daughter. D said he didn't really have a gift, so he wanted to get me treats all day. He started by bringing me a Starbucks peppermint hot chocolate and a morning bun. At lunch I made a Vitamix shake (with lots of kale hidden among the frozen strawberries, etc. — which made it a funky color, but tasted great) and had a leftover raisin bagel with muenster cheese melted on top.

The woombie is so helpful! With her zipped up in that, I can sit with her, but then put her dozing self down on the couch for a few minutes without it bothering her. She even spent a little while asleep in her downstairs Amby.

Took the boys to soccer and had lovely weather for a walk around the track with Jill. We only have two more weeks of practice, and then I'm going to have a bummed-out L on my hands until mid February. I guess I'll have to try to get together with some of the other moms for some play dates at the park or something so that he does not starve for companionship.

L made me a birthday present: He drew a cake with 11 candles (one of which has a double flame, b/c it's a "special" candle), and which has a face and ears. On the other side, he drew balloons and flowers and wrote, "Happy birthday to you. I love you Momo." P saw it and wanted to make something, but refused L's instructions to make me a birthday cake, b/c L had already done it. So he ended up drawing a balloon, which he colored pink, and something that looks like a fire truck ladder, but which turns out to be a sled.

D brought me bonefish for dinner, and we had a bonefish brownie for dessert in front of the last episode of the Romola Garai Emma.

10/13/10 (Wed) — Quite the fiasco in the middle of the night last night. E looks a bit washed out, no wonder, but very sweet and cheerful. She seems to have a kind of routine down: To bed somewhere between 5:30 and 7:30, depending on the way naps fell out and whether we were out in the afternoon. Then she wakes up around 12:30 and eats. She wakes again around 4, but I can tell it is her innards waking her up, and not hunger. She nurses, but she sleeps through it, and she isn't really hungry. She writhes and toots, although she doesn't fuss, and it takes a while to get her back to sleep, even though she's sleepy. Then she wakes up around 6:30 or 7, and although she acts like she would still like to sleep, she really seems to need to wake up and poop. She gets a drop of LB extract before that feeding, and it does seem to produce a couple of poops over the next few hours. (Except for today... but her schedule is way off due to last night.)

The second woombie (which is not organic; that's the only difference) is about 5 inches longer than the first, and a bit roomier. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I may yet return it, but on the other hand, she is going to grow pretty quickly. And this one can actually go over an outfit, which is how I'm trying it today, rather than a little onesie.

The boys have taken P's baby (which was L's baby when P was due, and which was my baby when I was 12-ish), and said that is "their" Ellie Pea. I suggested since we already have an Ellie Pea, that the baby could be Ellie Spinach, or Ellie Tomato. L immediately settled on Ellie Celery. They are using E's tub to "bathe" Ellie Celery.

It took my sad baby 1.5 hrs to cry herself to sleep tonight. :( Constipation is quite the issue. I've gone from 1 drop of LB extract in the morning (wasn't sure how potent it was going to be, and I didn't want to send it crashing through her), to giving 1 drop every time I feed her. We have dug ourselves a hole — small, but still there: Between losing sleep learning how to fall asleep, and losing sleep chew-chew-chewing on our soothie during the day instead of sleeping soundly, she is getting overtired.

10/14 - 10/15 — E is definitely making progress putting herself to sleep, but still crying herself to sleep. I wrote it down, but I've lost the piece of paper... it's somewhere around 45mins - 1hr.

10/16/10 (Sat) — Tonight E was put down drowsy, cried for a little bit, and then stopped and spent a lot of time saying, "Humm. Hmm. Hum-mmm." She alternated between crying and humming for about an hour, but she ended on a hmm instead of a cry. After the midnight nursing (10/17 am), she put herself back to sleep without a murmur. At 4:30-ish, she had to cry herself back to sleep. At 5:30-ish, she was crying again. I took her into bed with me, where we both dozed, while she worried at her soothie rather desperately, and I soothie-managed rather dazedly. This poor child is DESPERATE to poop. I'm doing 2 drops of LB extract every time I feed her, even in the night.

10/17/10 (Sun) — 10 wks old. E did manage a poop this a.m. Small, but seemed to give some relief.

D leaving on his first trip to Raleigh since E's arrival. I am left with three kids for the first time! E went down ready to sleep, but then realized she can't have her soothie in bed. She cried about 5 mins, then talked for a while, then cried for another 45 or so. Poor, sweet, sad baby. It's so hard to learn that our bed is our bed, and we sleep now. Boys and I are reading A Single Shard for our bedtime story. Wasn't sure if L was old enough to appreciate it, but thought he would like the story if he could warm up to it, which he has.

I actually worked out before bed. The dishes were all done, all kids were tucked in, I had talked to D on the phone... so I did the metabolic booster from Jennifer Kries' pilates DVD. It felt so good, and I was amazed at how strong I am. That walking with Jill during soccer practice has really helped me.

10/18/10 (Mon) — In the night around 11:30, E cried when I put her back to bed. I actually got her right back up and burped her and tried again, and she still cried. At that point, I felt like I wasn't necessarily going to help her get to sleep, and I was dead tired, so I got in bed. I have no idea how long she cried, but it can't have been for very long, b/c I actually fell immediately back asleep, even with her crying three feet away from me.

She did it! E put herself to sleep without a murmur tonight! Took boys to library this morning, after a little schoolwork. Came home with several of the "Eyewitness Books" series: on Castles, Shipwrecks, Oceans, Chemistry, Sports, and WWI and II. L really wanted the ones on the wars, but it's kinda heavy stuff, even if it is presented in a kid-appropriate way. So I told him I'd read them with him. After we go through those, I'll probably start him on Chronicles of Narnia, b/c he'll have a framework for why the Pevensies were sent to the Professor's house.

We had an ice cream bar at lunch, b/c boys have successfully completed two weeks of our current disciplinary project: learning to come in "ears first" instead of "mouth first" (i.e., not interrupting). They have become so much more polite. During our dinnertime conversation with Grampa, they did not interrupt once, and they were calmly full of, "Excuse me, Grampa..." before they spoke. They are excellent at saying excuse-me, and getting better at actually coming ears and eyes first to see what the adult is engaged in before accosting them, instead of bursting in loudly with "Excuse-me-blah-blah-blah-blabber!!" They actually do that all the time, and I've had to begin to teach them that even if I'm the only one in the room, I might be in the middle of a thought, and I have no idea what they just to me until I can disengage my brain from whatever else I was doing. Hence they are learning to say, "Excuse me, Momo..." and wait for me to acknowledge them, and that way they know I'm listening. They do it with each other, too, and we are all acting more polite and happier around each other.

10/19/10 (Tue) — Rough day today. L's attitude stunk (finally in the evening I sat down and talked with him about it, and he admitted tearfully that "everything everyone does today annoys me!"), and E was miserable. I called Dr. Green in the evening and got more advice about the stimulant dosage. I couldn't tell if she was so miserable b/c she needed to poop (she probably had 2 or 3 today, but that's coming off days of hardly any), or b/c she had too much stimulant in her. Dr. G said probably some of both, we'd just have to play around with the dosage, and trust my instincts. She wailed for a while when I put her to bed, and I finally threw consistency out the window and went and soothed her. I was up with her for a while in the night, too, b/c she would not go easily back to bed, and I felt like she was too overtired for me to let her lose more sleep screaming about it.

Btw, I survived my first experience taking three kids to Costco. It was touch-and-go there for a while, but we got through it. P required a lot of management. When I wasn't handing him stuff to put in the cart for me, I had to make him hold my hand. L pushed the cart, until he finally said he was tired and asked me to do it. But I required one hand to keep a dozing E from losing her soothie in the octopus, and the cart really was heavy, and I couldn't do it. So he pushed with two hands and I pushed with one, and fortunately by then we were almost done.

10/20/10 (Wed) — Jessie N. came today to help with boys. She did all my dishes, held E while I ate, and took the boys outside for quite a long time. At dinner, Grampa helped her with some math concepts: general ways of understanding how to approach problems involving exponents, etc. She had asked for the coaching. ("Isn't your dad the one who's so smart and really great at math and stuff?" It's true that he can take a list of figures, estimate in his head, and come up with an answer that's only a narrow margin away from the actual calculation by the time other people have finished punching numbers on their calculator. Numbers, as he likes to say, are his friends. They can be yours too, if you take the time to get to know them.) I enjoyed the lesson at least as much as Jessie did; it's been so long since I did any of that stuff, and I felt the aha! moments all over again.

E had a pretty good day today. She still has to have the soothie in her mouth while she sleeps on me, so she's not sleeping as deeply as I would like. Her relationship with her soothie is always a good indication of the state of her innards. She did get some good naps in, and when I put her in bed for the night, she was so ready to be there... and then she began to fuss, and she went on for an hour or more. It was really hard to listen to, as I know how miserable she's been, and how she's in this little overtired/intestinal vicious cycle. But there wasn't really a clear time to say, "Okay, now she's definitely crying and will not go to sleep easily anymore," until she had been in bed for a while... and then, for her own sake, I didn't want to confuse her by going in and getting her up. I actually called D and asked him if I should just be consistent, to help her over this little I-don't-know-how-to-put-myself-to-sleep hump, or if I should go help her, since she obviously needed extra comfort yesterday; and he told me we're not helping her, when she's overtired, if we offer her a crutch, and I should just leave her.

Poor baby, it's so hard to grow up, even in tiny, timely, necessary ways. I want to enjoy every minute of her babyhood, and what is it to me if I spend another 15 mins soothing her? In a few months, there won't be any more need, and these days will be gone forever. And yet, she needs to sleep, and I want to help her do it in the best way for her. Fortunately, even if we've mistakenly chosen something that's not really best, she won't remember this. She has already forgotten, slumbering so peacefully now.

Well, we did it... we survived our first three days without Daddy! He should be home very soon, and I bet his little Pea will give him a big smile.

10/21/10 (Thu) — E did give a big smile... she happened to wake up hungry around 11pm, about the time D was unpacking his suitcase. As soon as she heard his voice hovering over her, she looked up and lit up. D said it made him feel loved and missed.

10/24/10 (Sun) — Didn't sleep well in the night. Went to church anyway, and she didn't sleep there. Theresa held her, and I was sure E would sleep for her, but she didn't. I had to spend a lot of time wearing her in the pouch, but her sleep got fragmented every time we had to put her in her car seat (which, since we went to lunch with the church, was several times). Tired baby!

10/25/10 (Mon) — Took her to the chiropractor. Dr. Fedina muscle-tested her and said that she is reacting to the LB extract. That actually has a lot of supporting data. Before I started giving her that, I was remarking that she was so happy, although the longer she went without pooping the more you could see that it bothered her. Lately, though, it feels like we are back to square one, with life just swirling around us in that soup-pot, which-end-is-up way it was when she was dealing with the hives so many weeks ago. According to the muscle-testing, Dr. F said the LB would be fine in my milk, so we're back to treating me.

10/26/10 (Tue) — Nothing memorable except soccer and walking with Jill, wearing E in the octopus.

10/27/10 (Wed) — A morning poop!

10/28/10 (Thu) — Poop at noon. It's usually a pretty good indicator of just how deep in the soup you are when all you can record in your baby log is when there's a poop... It just goes to show how vitally important that poop is, and how everything else is turned upside down. This baby is definitely high maintenance right now. I know it takes at least three days for the LBx to leave her system, so I would expect her to be a bit better tomorrow. (Of course, it did take the erythromycin reaction a full 7 days to work its way out.)

10/29/10 (Fri) — E spending a lot of time fussing and writhing; spit up some nasty viscous stuff. I'm hoping it's the LBx clearing itself out of her system. Whatever it is, it's going out with a bang. No poops since Thurs noon.

10/30/10 (Sat) — Was up half of last night with E. She literally was up every 1.5 to 2 hrs, insisting on nursing, and not going back to bed easily afterward. Finally had a poop in the morning. L had game at 1:45 (won 4-0), and S and J came up for it. I didn't think it was a good idea to take E, b/c we risked digging the hole deeper. At the last minute, though, she was awake when it was time to go, so I was not fragmenting her sleep by putting her in the car seat. J wore her in the octopus at the game; E slept some of the time, but not deeply, was the report. She napped in her pouch in the afternoon, so I got to chat with J. When she woke, J carried her around for a few minutes, but E was just so tired she wasn't sociable. Didn't even bathe her, just put her to bed. It took a long time, and after everyone had gone and D was able to go, he had to go spend a long time with her as well. I found him falling asleep with her dozing in his lap. We were prepared to spend a long night of it, but were pleasantly surprised to find that she stayed quietly in the amby when we put her there. D and I were in bed at 8pm; after the previous night, we were dropping. I am certain we were asleep before L and P were.

10/31/10 (Sun) — Didn't make it to church. E and I were in such a hole, D stayed home to help us. She slept better last night, only got up every 3 hrs. We tried to let her nap as much as possible on us today — D wore her most of the time, and in the afternoon I sat on the couch with her. She was still so tired that she went from an evening nap in the pouch (on me), to falling asleep on D's shoulder while he held her to let me eat, to straight to bed after p.j.'s and nursing. But even though she was definitely ready to go to bed, she cried when I put her there... and cried... and cried... At this point I had determined that she has got to sleep, and I have to be careful to distinguish between what she wants (me to hold her) and what she needs (to sleep soundly in her bed). So we let her cry, and it took her 2.5 hrs to fall asleep.

Despite the fatigue, I did notice one of those times she was up that she is definitely laughing. It's just a little crow of a laugh, but it's there. I think I was pretending to eat her tummy, and D said it seemed to be my hair in her face that produced the giggles.

11/1/10 (Mon) — Worked hard to keep the Pea rested today. After crying herself to sleep after 9:30pm, she woke at 2:30 for a feeding and went right back to bed. She woke fully at 6:45 (which bothers me, b/c that will be 5:45 after the time change next weekend), and then was ready to sleep again by 8. I wore her in the octopus and sat down on the couch to give the the "motionless sleep" the experts say is more restful. She might have slept an hour, and then woke. I breakfasted, she breakfasted, she pooped (yay!!). I think she was ready for her second morning nap about 10, so she went back in the carrier. This time I moved around a little, b/c I have instituted "chore cards" with L and P, and one of them was to unload the dishwasher together, which I supervised. Sat on the couch the rest of the time.

She was up for quite a while from 11:something to about 12:45 (with another poop!), and then she was ready to sleep again. Fortunately, I had seized the opportunity to prepare lunch. I ate my sandwich on the couch, after which I did not move for almost three hours. It was after 3:30 when she finally woke up again. We are talking solid sleep, no soothie in her mouth.

At 5 I knew she needed to sleep again, but I realized that this time next week we would be talking about a bath and bed routine starting at 4pm, which was kind of ridiculous. So I strapped her in the octopus again, put an apron on over the top of the octopus, and made pancakes for dinner. (They don't really splatter, most of her was covered by the apron, and I prayed for protection for her against burns. But I did think about it carefully before I did it.)

She had a nice time relaxing with Daddy and then Grampa from 6:30 to 7-ish. She seemed quite happy and rested. We had a bath, bounced on the rebounder, and sat down in our rocking recliner with our harp music and soothie. It was quite dark by this time, so it didn't take much to convince her it was time to sleep. After a few minutes she spit the soothie out and began to doze without it, so I put her in bed. She opened her eyes wide, of course, and fussed for... get this: half an hour! That's it! Even as I write this, she is sleeping soundly, nothing but the faint swish of the "ocean sounds" noisemaker coming over the baby monitor.

The chore cards are a big help. L's job was to clear the table, rinse the dishes, and put them in the dishwasher after breakfast and lunch. The result was that I was able to make dinner without difficulty in a relatively clean kitchen, and D had only the dinner dishes to deal with afterwards. P emptied the household trash cans and took down the recycling, which will make D's job of taking out the trash much shorter tomorrow.

Was texting with Jenn today, who told me it took V two weeks (starting at age 6weeks) to learn to nap in her crib. At one point she was so strung out that her D told her to lock herself in the bathroom and turn the fan on so she wouldn't hear V cry. But success came, and everyone was happier for the peace of regular naps.

I think it's time. I think in two weeks, when soccer season is over for the winter and we can stay home and not go anywhere for however long it takes, that we will just have to squeeze through this uncomfortable bottleneck of learning to nap, in order to get on with life on the other side.

11/2/10 (Tue) — She grew overnight. I went to put her pants on, the ones that turn up at the hem because they're polka-dotted inside, only I can't turn them up anymore because her legs are longer. She's an armful now. Soccer practice was interesting b/c it was actually cold today. She slept for a while, then woke up and stared while I walked with Jill. I think she was distracted by the new experience of walking in the autumn chill, her legs dangling from the octopus under a blanket. Put her to bed tonight with no fussing. She woke up one sleep cycle later and began crying, but she stopped within 20 minutes or less.

11/3/10 (Wed) — She's starting to act like a 3mo-old, instead of a tiny infant. You put her in the zoo, and the next time you look at her, her socks are off (neatly laid together like slippers), and she has rotated 110 degrees and a foot away from where she left them, talking all the time.

Last night she was up at 1 and 2:45 (what's up with that??), and then again at 5:45. Since that's the equiv of 4:45 in a few days, I was not about to call that a night. After I fed her, it took two rounds of soothing to get her back to bed, and even then she cried for a while. But amazingly, she went back to sleep until 8.

No poop today. She napped fairly well (still on me, of course). As long as I am willing to pin myself to the couch and give her that "motionless sleep" that the experts taut, she does seem to be getting better rest. She is obviously tired, but cheerful about it. When I put her to bed tonight, she fussed for a while, but it sounded like she sort of knew better. It didn't take her long to go to give up and go to sleep. Hallelujah!

11/4/10 (Thu) — What a day. She fussed and had trouble sleeping all day. Had not pooped since at least Tues. Grampa finally reminded me late afternoon that we could use a suppository. It triggered an immediate blowout. The outfit that P wore the first day after he came home from the hospital, which D was admiring on E all day, may never be the same again. She had her big cleanout, then she had a bath, then she went to bed at 5:30. She fussed with her eyes closed when I laid her down, but she lasted all of 5mins, maybe. She's gettin' the hang of this! I'm excited about teaching her to nap in her bed in a couple of weeks. It may be hard, but she's going to be so happy once she figures it out!

11/5/10 (Fri) — Rolled over back to front.

11/6/10 (Sat) — Now that was what a night should be, if it possibly can. Went to bed about 6:30 without a murmur. Slept until 2-ish. Right back in bed and then woke about 7 and had a morning poop.

L had soccer game (tied 3-3, we're still technically undefeated); we bundled up b/c it was cold. Afterwards we went to Bruegger's with Gary and Theresa, and then to Spill the Beans. E was cheerful all day, but not getting enough rest. She fell gratefully asleep in the octopus at Spill the Beans, and so we walked around at Reedy Falls park until 6.

I used another suppository and got a small poop, after which she had a quick bedtime bath, and went to bed at 7-ish. Can't remember if she fussed or not. But she woke back up at 9:30. Now, call me a klutz, but I didn't know what to do with this, and I probably bungled it. I listened to the advice of sleep doctors, who point out that if you go to your baby every time she cries at night, you're fractionating her sleep; there's a difference between her needing you and her preferring to have you rather than go it alone. So I decided that she didn't need to eat, she needed to sleep, and we let her cry. Two hours later, she went to sleep... for 10 minutes. When she started crying again, I reasoned that when we are out during the day, she doesn't eat as well, so she might be hungry, or even just thirsty. (You bet she was, after two hours of screaming.) I nursed her, and she went back to sleep. But there was more going on than that, b/c even when I put her to bed, I noticed that her belly was bloated and splotchy red.

11/7/10 (Sun) — Time change in the night... but of course kids don't get that memo. E must have slept 5 hrs after she went back to bed at 11-ish EDT, and got up at almost 3 EST. Then she was up at 5 and again at 7, and one of those times I had to do two rounds of soothing-to-bed. She was so tired this morning, you could see it, but she was having trouble sleeping. We had church today, and then a party at the Bells', and she did not get much in the way of naps.

It was a rough day for me. During church she was quite fussy. Had a couple of massive burps come up, but she was still writhing and fussing and not sleeping. A couple of people held her, and when I took her back, she reeked of perfume. I hope that didn't irritate her system, but at this point I could listen absolutely anything — especially something made from chemicals and so highly concentrated that I can smell it on her skin after two minutes of being in someone else's arms — as a potential reactant. D finally took her and turned her to face out and people-watch, which distracted her into cheerfulness (and bumped up the cortisol level significantly, no doubt).

Came home at 4 and discovered a smallish poop in the diaper. Used a suppository and immediately got a big blowout. At that point, I decided, who cares if it's only 4:30? Bath the child and put her to bed for the night... and then go get her whenever she wakes up hungry. (Been doing some thinking about that today.) And as I was bathing her... and she is awfully cheerful, even when she's yelling about how miserable she is ("Hey! I'm miserable! Hey! Anybody interested? I'm still uncomfortable! Hey, if you're not interested, you should be! Hey! I'm sure you're doing your best, but I'm actually still miserable!")... So as I was bathing her, I noticed some scattered hives across her belly and back. No wonder she's not sleeping particularly well.

11/8/10 (Mon) — 3 months old! Hoo, what a day. If our daddy didn't work at home, either the baby would spend a lot more time crying, or else meals would be late (even later than they are), and Liam would be standing on a chair to get plates out to serve himself and Parker whatever he could reach from the fridge and the cabinet (cheese and crackers, anyone?), and I might not eat at all.

We were up every 1.5-3hrs in the night. Not surprising, once I discovered the hives. The really sad part is that anything that bothers her is going to crash through her systemically, and you can just practically watch it irritate its way down through her gut. During the day, she kind of clings to me in the octopus and chews her soothie and tries to sleep, as much as anyone can who is obviously dealing with ants in her pants. And she's so tired! My goodness!

I was really hoping that the last round of hives several weeks ago would be, well, the last. But you know, she is still doing a whole lot better than either of her brothers were at 3 months, and I have the baby calendars to prove it.

7-Nov-10 — Thoughts from the Well

2010-11-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

I have been doing some thinking, from the bottom of my current deep well. You see, the sleep shuttle launched Friday night at 6:30pm, orbited Planet Sleep with only one stop at 2am, and landed smoothly at 7 on Saturday. Then it took off with a jolt Saturday night and careered onto a course for Planet Sleep Deprivation, bumping into an asteroid every two hours and dumping me down underground in a heap at 7 this morning.

So I've been thinking.

I thought of all those times that E goes happily in her bed, looks around her with sleepy eyes, and then drifts off silently to sleep. I thought of those occasional times, like Friday night, when she goes long stretches between feedings and wakes up happy. And I thought, what if every time she cries there's a reason? I mean, we all know there's a reason babies cry, even if that reason is that they're so tired they don't remember how to let go and fall asleep. But this child loves her sleep (even if she does sometimes seem to prefer no sleep to sleep without my arms around her). Unlike Liam and to some extent Parker, she knows she needs sleep, and she wants it. She begs for it.

So the problem is not that she can't put herself to sleep, exactly... it's that she can't put herself to sleep, or keep herself asleep, in the face of a certain amount of discomfort. When she wakes up every two hours in the middle of the night and writhes and squirms and doesn't nurse well, I know perfectly well that what she needs is sleep, not food. But I can't force her to sleep, I can't give her sleep as a gift... And it's all very well to say that I love her enough to leave her alone and let her learn that night is for sleeping, but the fact is that she knows it already. And it's just not natural to let your baby cry for two solid hours without going to her. I mean, I totally understand the my-child-doesn't-know-how-to-sleep thing, and if I let her cry for 5 hours one night, and then 2 the next, and then 1/2 hour the third, and then 10 minutes the fourth, and then — hey, presto! — she gets it, and she sleeps well from now on... then I'd say all that crying was accomplishing something.

But when some nights she goes down sweetly and stays down beautifully, while other nights she writhes and screams, all in an erratic 2-steps-forward, 1-step-back, 3-steps-sideways-and-then-a-somersault pattern... Well, I have to conclude there's more going on here than just a fickle temperament.

Now, one night she woke up at 11 and I thought she needed to sleep rather than eat. She fussed for less than 20 minutes, and then came to the same conclusion. I'm not saying I should go to her the minute she wails. But I do wonder if one day I might look back on this and say, "I wish I had been a little more nurturing. I wish I could have had the perspective to see that it was all just a phase and it would come out right in the end. I wish I had gone to her when she cried."

If I can't give her sleep, I do know Someone who can. And while I pray to Him, I can give her the comfort of my arms.

I hear my daughter crying. I think she may need me.

28-Oct-2010 — Sleep Phase

2010-10-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

I can't go on like this anymore, but I think the alternative might be worse.

E will not sleep during the day unless she is with me and her soothie is in her mouth. She may not actually be able to fall asleep unless I bounce her on the rebounder. And because her soothie has to be in her mouth, she does not sleep deeply, as she has to keep surfacing to request it again after she spit it out in her sleep.

I can't keep doing this. To say that it is physically draining to wear her incessantly, bounce her frequently, and soothie-manage constantly, would be to severely understate the issue. And to say that she is overtired underrates the situation by at least a week.

The experts say that falling asleep is a learned behavior. It's the parents who have been most consistent in the way that they soothe their baby to sleep who have the best chance at an easy transition to, say, establishing a daytime nap (as in alone in her own bed — and I'm talking about more than 40 winks) for their child. You don't, they say, have to put them down drowsy-but-awake in order to establish good sleeping habits and prevent sleep problems; it's just that the parents who put their baby down drowsy, but not necessarily in a deep sleep, tend to be the most consistent.

I have no idea what consistency is. Have I been consistent? What am I doing to help her fall asleep? What has she learned by now? Or not learned?

The experts also say that the tireder a baby is, the harder it is for her to fall asleep, due to the production of the stress hormone cortisol, which we all begin to produce the moment we get into a stress situation — e.g., having our sleep interrupted or prevented entirely just when we were really needing to conk out. So the better your baby sleeps, the better she sleeps, if you follow me; and the worse she sleeps, the more impossible it becomes to get her the sleep she needs.

We began trying to teach E to fall asleep by herself at 6 weeks. That is the youngest, biologically speaking, that you could even have hope of results. In other words, the brain has to have matured to a certain point before a baby can have any ability to self-soothe and to learn a small measure of independence. And although she was quite young, we started it for one reason only: We could not go on as we were. It produced immediate results (she instantly started sleeping longer stretches, at least by an hour or two), but then seemed to hit a plateau. Then we got into another hole as she reacted to something and had a flare-up of innards issues. We were sort of back to square one, realizing that there was no way she could self-soothe against the miserable state she was in.

We have only just begun to crawl out of that, and now (I know this will come as a great shock, but...) we are overtired. She has begun to sleep better at night; in fact, last night I put her down drowsy but awake and did not hear from her again for almost 9 hours. (Actually, I did hear her flopping and gritching in her amby at some point in the night, but I ignored her and she apparently went back to sleep.) But how to get her caught up on sleep when a) she won't nap unless I am her human bed, and b) seeing as I have more people than just E whose welfare depends upon my care, I am unable to sit pinned to the couch for as long as she requires, and c) I do not have the physical strength to move around doing other things while wearing her (at least not for more than a few minutes)?

That's not even bringing up the issue of motionless sleep, which is to say there is evidence that my walking around carrying/wearing her, with its jostling and bumping and swaying and motion in general, does not get her the quality of sleep she really needs.

Oh, yeah, and need I mention that I don't find cooking or preparing food very doable, while wearing a somewhat heavy and quite vulnerable baby on my front? So none of us is really getting all that much in the way of nutritive value at the moment. Praise the Lord for vitamins!

And school? Well, no need to report me to the authorities: we are working our way through the syllabus, it's just not falling into a set routine. (But these kids are smart as the dickens. L can add numbers in the trillions, even if we don't manage to have math daily at 11am sharp.)

I'm not (I trust) being a perfectionist here. I'm not (I hope) holding up the ideal and saying my baby ought to conform. I am simply reading her signals — and I will admit I'm pretty good at it by now — and just as I can read, "I'm hungry, feed me..." what I read most often is, "I'm tired, sleep me." Actually, for a baby who is tired and who doesn't get enough sleep, her temperament is amazingly calm and happy. Which probably means that we've done a pretty good job of keeping her as rested as we can.

Sooner or later, I realize, she will have to learn to nap in her bed. She won't be two years old and still slumping over asleep in the "octopus" (a.k.a. "baby trekker" — and I do recommend this over your Baby Bjorns and EuroRiders) while I sit on the couch and ask L to please refill my water for me. But when, and how, do we go about it? How young is too young to be made to go through the hard process of learning to fall asleep on her own? How old is too old, because we've let her get in an overtired rut and made the learning process harder for her? And what do I do? Put her in her bed at the time when she should obviously be having a morning snoozle and let her cry herself to sleep? Go in and soothe her every time she cries, then put her down again... and repeat... until she sleeps?

I don't think the latter works. I tried that this morning, and each time she woke back up in her bed a little sooner, and was a little more tired, and therefore a little less likely to transition smoothly to sleep. After two hours of her crying and being soothed exhaustedly back to sleep, rinse, repeat (a little more frenetically, please), my emotions were raw. It's hard to listen to her cry, it's harder to watch her get stressed out from lack of sleep, and it's hardest to commit to this manner of digging the hole deeper, when I don't have any indication that my shovel is going to produce a light at the end of the tunnel. This is why I say that the alternative to going on like this might be worse.

Maybe I'm just rushing things. The last couple of days, she uses her soothie to get to sleep (on me, of course), but then spits it out and sleeps more deeply. Her relationship to her soothie is always a good indicator of the state of her innards. When they are upset, she absolutely chews it. When they are calm, she doesn't think about it that much. It's not her fault that she has a reactive gut, and things can only get better as her body and brain mature. So we'll just ride it out until things fall into place. There will be a right time to move to the next phase... right? (Hey, motionless sleep or no motionless sleep, I believe in that whole "nine months in the womb, nine months out" thing.)

Well, that's always my perspective... until I lose perspective, usually because something overturns our precarious balance and I find that E is not the only one who is overtired. Then I am so taxed that I say I can't go on like this, and I try in desperation to transition us to something that would work better. Only I go about it wrong, or I don't have the stamina to push through the hard part to success, at least not without knowing that I'm on the right path, and so I go back to what was working to keep us in survival mode. (Yeah, A+ for consistency, Momo.)

Liam was like this. That child did not know how to sleep, and being first-timers, it took us months to recognize that, and even longer to figure out how to do something about it. Park was a better sleeper, even with all the allergies; although as I recall, he still wouldn't nap very long at a stretch. Looking back, I see how constantly overtired they both were, and I want to give my Ellie Pea the gift of sleep.

I've done better at it with her than I did with the boys. To the extent that I have been able to keep her to the "2-hr Max of Wakefulness" window, she has been very grateful. In fact, people who only see her at soccer practice, etc, talk about how she is always sleeping. (Actually, this is because she is always desperate for more sleep, and hopefully better quality this time. But it's true that she has to be somewhat rested in order to sleep so sweetly in that octopus.) We're actually doing just fine... until my back screams at me that it's breaking from carrying her, and my dishes scream at me that they're piling up, and my tummy screams at me that it's really tired of something that came out of the Costco freezer section.

But it's just a phase. Babyhood is so short, and if I have to carry her around so much now... well, let me just be grateful that I can hold my sweet baby girl — the baby girl that I waited so long for, and who may possibly be the only baby girl I ever get.

Just remind me of that in a couple of hours, somebody.

13-Oct-10 — Four a.m. Fiasco

2010-10-13T06:06:00.000-07:00

Last night, I put E to bed, where she was very ready to sleep, and left her. She did a little bit of fussing, off and on, but she never really cried. We had our usual midnight feeding, and she went right back to bed. At 4am, we did the usual sleep-feed-toot session, and half an hour later she was falling asleep in my arms spitting out the soothie, so I put her back to bed.

Well, something went a little wrong there. Maybe I should have waited just 30 seconds longer. Maybe she needed one more round of surfacing and sucking and then spitting out the soothie. Maybe I was sleep-clumsy and I jostled her, despite the woombie, in the transfer. But there she was, suddenly wide awake in her bed, and crying because it wasn't what she wanted.

Having moved to the cry-it-out policy at night, I left her to do so. It wasn't that I didn't want to spend time soothing her; but she needed to sleep, and more than that, she needs to learn that when she's in her bed she should sleep... and if she needs to cry for a few nights to learn that, I know it won't kill her. Well, she cried an hour and a half!! Okay, maybe that's not that long, for those parents whose child cried for six hours the first night they started the my-child-needs-to-learn-to-sleep policy, but it was incredibly hard to listen to. Since it was impossible to sleep through, it gave me plenty of time to think.

Mostly I was just praying and worshiping. I don't know what parents do who don't have a faith relationship with the Living God. They would have to be cocooned in endless layers of guilt and second-guessing and coping mechanisms. If I did not know that underneath all my mistakes are the Everlasting Arms, which set the boundaries of the ocean waves ("this far, and no farther" - Job 38.11) and which can "restore the years the locust has eaten" (Joel 2.25), I would have no peace for fear I might cause my children irreparable damage without even realizing it. But I know that when I "forsake" them, even accidentally, then the Lord "takes them up" (Ps. 27.10).

So I sat there for an hour and a half, listening to my baby cry and wondering what to do. When we finally gave in and made Liam cry himself to sleep (at 8 months? ten?), it was one of the best things we ever did for him, and we realized that we should have done that months earlier. I know Lael is only 2 months, and that's still very tiny. But she needs to be able to sleep, and for her sake that means that she cannot be utterly dependent on having me right there. Still, it's one thing to put her down "drowsy but awake" at bedtime and walk away determined to ignore "protest" crying, but listening to her work herself into a sweating ball of frustration in the middle of the night is another story.

A consistent approach, as any pediatrician or sleep expert would probably agree, is the key to teaching her that when we are in our bed it is time to sleep. But why are we making her scream on and on at 4am, when she had hardly any trouble at 7pm? How could I know when she began to fuss that she would rev herself up to wide-awake and terribly unhappy, rather than shortly cry herself to sleep as she has done before? At what point do we intervene and save consistency for another time? What is inconsistent?

I'm sure that seasoned parents and grandparents, who have learned to expertly gauge the forest landscape, would have their strong opinions as to how we should be handling this. But we are the ones staring at the tree, and we are the ones who have to figure out where to go from here. I am neither hard-hearted nor pig-headed. I am simply willing to forgo the easy way and instead choose the right way for my kids... If only I knew what that was!

I finally made a choice: With tears in my own eyes, I went and picked up my baby. I bounced her on the rebounder to calm her down and get the burps up. I unzipped her from her woombie. I nursed her. I bounce-burped her on the rebounder again. I took off her sweat-damp onesie and put a fresh one on her. I swaddled her back up in her woombie, tucked her soothie in her mouth, and sat down to cuddle her.

Unresentful, she smiled straight up into my eyes and spit the soothie out to tell me how glad she was that I was there. She gave me whole, long, happy sentences about it, then spit the soothie out yet again to tell me more. Then she snuggled her face up against me and soothied herself to an exhausted sleep, and five minutes later she was peacefully slumbering in bed.

The fact is, we have the luxury of making these petty little choices in her life. We have a comfortable house with a comfortable baby hammock, which we can choose to leave her in, or not. I have the luxury of being able to cuddle with my baby in the middle of the night. Or I can choose to let her cry about being left all alone in a nice bed — or possibly even alone with tummy gas — because she has nothing else to cry about in her life. There is no war in our country, no famine, no terrible drought. Our house is nicely furnished. We have our pick of good food options. We can choose between window fans and air conditioning in the summer, and in the winter we don't have to fear being too cold because we can't get the gas fixed. There is no want in our lives. We are free to raise our children comfortably, one decision at a time.

And my Lael Kate is growing up, along with her brothers, in a happy family surrounded by love. We are going to make some mistakes along the way, but she won't remember most of them. Our children are all going to turn out just fine. My dad has always said, "It's harder to ruin them than you think."

As long as they are growing up in a home where Love rules, most of the other stuff is little stuff.

9-Oct-2010 — A Decision

2010-10-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

What do we do with a baby so fine,

With a baby so fine,

With a baby that's mine?

What do we do with a baby so fine?

Well, I tell ya:

Yeah, we gonna keep her!

Keep her, feed her, burp her, change her, bounce her...

Bathe her, soothe her, sleep her, love her, keep her!

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 2

2010-10-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

9/9/10 (Thu) — First Smile! 1 month and 1 day old (4.5 weeks); she's ahead of her brothers by a full week. She was staring up into my eyes studying me, stopped sucking on the soothie and gave a little, unmistakable grin, and then went right back to soothie-ing herself. To be fair D says she has smiled at him several times. But she frequently has quickly passing expressions on her face that are hard to interpret, and I wasn't there to see them. And what do daddies really know, anyway? ;) Although there was that time a few days ago when I handed her to him, and as she was coming at him in the air, her mouth cracked in something that looked awfully like an "oh, Daddy, it's you!" smile.

9/10/10 (Fri) — Took the whole fam to the iridologist. E has hives trying to break out on head. Dr. Green noticed that immediately, so I'm not just paranoid. E's immune system is weak, not surprising in an infant, but the point is she is getting whatever T-cells I give her, and my immune system is weak. E was also showing some stomach issues, which I could have told you anyway, b/c today she was fussy and not wanting to eat, which didn't surprise me hand-in-hand with the hives. And yes, she is constipated; she should be going several times a day, on mother's milk. So we put me on astragalus root, which boosts the immune system, and a gentle herbal laxative. Dr. Green also showed me how to massage the reflexology points on her foot to stimulate the bowels.

9/11/10 (Sat) — L had soccer game in afternoon; they won 3-0 (or 4-0??). E is pooping better, looks like laxative and/or reflexology is helping.

9/12/10 (Sun) — E had excellent night. Tried swaddling her in the swaddle-me blanket and it looks like it helps her feel secure in the amby at night. Went to church, then out to lunch with the church group. (Grampa is out of town, so it was just us.)

9/13/10 (Mon) — E is so peaceful, sleeping well all day. (On me, mind you; I think she hates the smell of the residual detergent in her new downstairs amby. I used one of our old blue sheets so she doesn't come into contact with it, wondering if that's what was causing the hives. But I think she can't stand to even be in it — it would bother me, too — and I'm wondering what to do about it.) Feedings are calm and peaceful. The bumps on her head are spreading out and getting smaller. They look worse, but I keep reminding myself that's exactly what the reaction to the erythromycin did as it ran its course. And her stomach is obviously better.

9/14/10 (Tue) — After a peaceful day, she suddenly got fussy yesterday evening. Finally calmed down and slept 4 hrs with D in the octopus carrier. At 10 he brought her to me (I had probably had a 35-min nap). I nursed her and then gave her to him, but she was so fussy I took her back over and he went to bed. It was 1am before I was able to put her in the amby and go to sleep. She was back up at 3:30, and it was 5 before she was back in bed. After nursing again at 6, I begged D to take her at 6:30, as I had only had a net 4hrs of sleep. Don't know when he got her to sleep, but I woke up at 8:30 to find her still sleeping happily in the Amby. When she started to stir, she did her usual I-think-I'm-hungry-but-I'm-so-sleepy routine of gritching and dozing. I stood over her and said, "Ellie Pea! Sweet ba-bee!" She smiled, her eyes at half mast and very obviously not awake. I did it several times, and she smiled each time I cooed. Finally had another good poop this a.m. She has been going a few times a day, but just a little bit.

9/15/10 (Wed) — The hives are still flaring up occasionally. Don't know if she is still reacting to something, or if this thing, once set in motion, has a bumpy ride to the finish. Took L to the orthodontist this morning (there is going to be some significant crowding as the adult teeth come in). Dr. Tom put him in his free observation program, saying there is no point in early treatment, but they'll watch him as he grows. E was very fussy at the office, and the hives/rash looked pretty angry. Tried to nurse her at the beginning and end of the visit, but she was too ants-in-the-pantsy to calmly take it in.

9/17/10 (Fri) — Great night last night. At 9, 10:30, slept 11:30-3:30 in amby, up 3:30-5, and up again at 6 to sleep-nurse, but slept 6:30-8. Daddy took boys to Gaffney for Babcia to take them to her house. They wanted to leave at 4:45, and E, who had nursed at 3 and then cooed for a while, really needed to be asleep at 5. Had to get boys in car, so I put her in the pouch and she fell asleep. Once it was just us girls, I wanted to hold her on the couch so I took her out of the pouch. In the process, she woke thoroughly, then didn't know how to get back to sleep. She got completely, exhaustedly overtired, and there was no daddy in the house to bounce her. They way I feel about it is, I only have so much strength, and I can't kill myself physically to soothe her this time, b/c I still need to be available next time. So she just screamed her little head off in my arms until Grampa came at 6, strapped her in the octopus and rebounded her to sleep. I finished reading the Newborn-to-4-Months chapter in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and I am beginning to wonder how much of her fussiness — even the gas and burps — is due to being overtired. I remember finally making L learn to fall asleep when he was much older, which included about 3 nights of him crying it out, and how we said, "My goodness, we should have done this months ago!" And I'm wondering if it isn't time to do that with her. Given her burpy history, I think we would have to use that "graduated extinction" method, where you let them cry for a certain period, and then go in and soothe them, b/c otherwise we won't know if she's genuinely uncomfortable.

9/18/10 (Sat) — Rolling over back to side. Last night was rough. She woke and nursed every 2 hrs. Needless to say, some of that time she did not really act hungry. She had her usual party and poop at the 11-12:30 session, but those other times were like, "Why are we here? Didn't we just do this?" D and I are agreed that it is time to help her learn to self-soothe. We have been using Method B, in which we soothe her into deep sleep, no matter how long it takes, before we put her down. But we came to the accidental realization that we need to use Method A: do a certain amount of soothing, and then put her in her bed. She's got to learn that she can put herself to sleep. I am starting a sleep log, per the book's recommendations, to try to get the big picture.

9/19/10 (Sun) — 6 weeks today! Last night we started our "Graduated Extinction" method of learning to fall asleep. She gets soothed to the drowsy, ready-t0-sleep state, and then she gets put in bed. If she cries, we let her go 5 min, then go repeat the soothing process. The next time she cries, she goes 10 min. We keep increasing by 5 until she cries herself to sleep, or doesn't cry when we put her in bed. The first time we did this, after a bedtime bath, it took three rounds. She fell asleep at 14:50 of the 15 min crying interval and slept 2.5 hrs. We repeated "GE" (as it is listed on the sleep log) in the night. Today we went to church, and then to a lunch at the Bells' house, didn't get home until 4pm. She slept in the octopus before church, slept in the car on the way to church, slept all the way through church, slept in the car on the way to the Bells', slept in people's arms at the party, and slept in the car on the way home. She did nurse a couple of times, but she was more interested in sleeping. After monkeying with our normal routines for almost 24 hrs, I was getting engorged! This is Night 2 of GE.

sleeping next to her in-utero pic

9/20/10 (Mon) — She had a bath at 6, at 7:30 we started GE and she dozed in the amby for an hour, with intervals of crying (she had burps). She nursed at 8, GE'd for an hour, and she was asleep at 9... for 6 hrs!!! She woke at 3, nursed like a wolf pup, and then threw her usual cheerful little party (complete with poop — it wouldn't be a proper party without the innards). I soothed, swaddled, put her in her bed at 3:40, and that was it. She tossed the amby around and made some noises, but she never cried, and she slept until 6:40. She was so refreshed and happy! Now today we are working on napping in the amby, and it was a rough morning. She was ready to be asleep by 8:30, and I was on top of things, so she should have been. But things are different when it's daytime and we can see all these things that look different than they do at night, and our noisy brothers are home from their Babcia weekend. So it took an hour of GE, nursing, and another hour of GE to get her to sleep at 10:30. Her max record is the 15 min round; she has not had to go beyond that. When I went up to soothe her and put her back, she was so tired and so ready for sleep... She felt herself being put back in bed and gave a "no-no-no, wait!!" cry, but then fell off the cliff.

9/30/10 (Thu) — E's skin looks perfect! Spent 5 hours at the park today. Went to Herdklotz Park for the Labors of Love midwife picnic. But picnic was canceled b/c yesterday's forecast looked like rain, only some of us didn't get the memo. L's soccer practice had been moved to the Herdklotz Park field, so we got there at noon, knowing we would have to be there at 3:30 anyway... so we just stayed. We shared our lunch with some yellow jackets. I explained to L and P that if a bee comes, you just hold still, and they won't bother you. They did it, including P having to freeze, his eyes scrunched up into buttons, for a good two minutes or so while a yellow jacket examined him from 1/4-in. away. E lay in her stroller with her soothie for a long time, listening to the breeze in the trees, mellowed out and thinking about sleep. Only problem was, I had to use the bathroom. If I were wearing her, I would just have gone, but with her in the stroller, things were more complicated. So we finally had to go in procession, and L stayed outside the bathroom with the stroller to provide protection and soothie-management while P and I did our business. L began crying while I was incapacitated; it turned out that a yellow jacket landed on him and he was very afraid that it would sting either him or E. I congratulated him later on his refusal to panic (which, I explained, tends to make the wasps panic, and a panicky bee is a trigger-happy bee). We nurse different in public, under the nursing wrap and without our cushions, and E found herself latched on at a different angle, looking straight up through the opening at the top of the wrap. She stared like she was pondering how we got here, instead of her usual view (which is more of my shirt than my face), and then lit up with a smile.

10/1/10 (Fri) —E is a very happy baby. In the night, after she had nursed and pooped (it's more like tea for two than a bang-up party these nights) and I was soothing her back to sleep, she kept spitting the soothie out and smiling joyfully at me in the near-dark. ("Oh, Mo, it's just you and me again. Aren't these little moments together lovely?") The tip from the Healthy Sleep Habits book about limiting to two hours or less of wakefulness (since awakening from the previous nap/sleep) has made a huge difference. If I pay attention and read her signs correctly, soothing her and providing a sleep environment (e.g. the pouch) at the first sign of readiness, there is almost no fussing. (As the book says, "Perfect timing produces no crying.")

While E nurses, she likes to look at the patterns on my shirt. If I'm wearing a solid, she still stares (I mean, we all tend to want something to do mentally while we eat), and presumably ponders deep down in her little baby brain why today she gets plain blue instead of the intricate black and white pattern she's seen before. She still loves contrasts; she has always liked to gaze up at the black lamp or the dark shelf against the white wall. Today I held up her lovey, flower side out, for her to look at, and she smiled at it.

10/2/10 (Sat) — L had soccer game at 2:45. Babcia came, and worked the same charm she used on her previous visit: Crocs won 2-1, and Liam scored both goals! First time he has scored since she was here last. E did very well, did not fuss at all, but got overtired.

10/5/10 (Tue) — Walked the track around the soccer field with Jill (Jackson's mom) during soccer practice today. E was in the pouch, and my back was really feeling it before it was over. Will try her in the octopus on Thursday.

10/6/10 (Wed) — We have decided that we need to transition E to full extinction. She responded wonderfully to gradual extinction when we first started, but we kind of reached a plateau. It still takes three rounds or more, often a good 1.5 hrs, to get her to sleep. We feel like sending a more consistent signal (it's bedtime, I'm in my bed, and no one is coming to bail me out) would eliminate the confusion of the 5-10-15-minute thing for her. Here's another issue: the swaddle-me blankets have been great, as she obviously likes the security of being swaddled. However, when she cries, she kicks her legs up and down, which gets her feet caught in an awkward way. Sometimes she busts out of the thing altogether, getting a hand or an arm out at a strange angle. We may have to transition to just a plain ol' sleeper soon.

10/7/10 (Thu) — The octopus was better, but this girl is heavy! I walked for a solid hour, partly uphill. Twice a week of this should get my legs quite a bit stronger than they have been for a couple of years now. Starting at 10 minutes tonight, instead of 5, to gradually transition to full extinction.

10/8/10 (Fri) — 2 months old today! Put her in bed last night and set the timer for 10 minutes when she started to fuss. One more round of soothing was all it took. After that, we heard her thinking about fussing, but deciding maybe it wasn't worth it. (We joked that she heard us decide to go on to full extinction, so she might as well give up now.) She slept 7.5 hours straight! Since I got in bed shortly after 9, I got 5+ hrs the first stretch. This afternoon she fell asleep in the boppy on L's lap while we were doing some school. I successfully transitioned her to the downstairs amby, and she slept there for 45 minutes, arms stretched up overhead, so cute. She has been somewhat antsy since she got up, though. If babies are so susceptible to aromatherapy, I would imagine she is bothered by the smell of detergent that still lingers on that bed (we got it used). She is not actually touching anything that was laundered in detergent, but she smells faintly of detergent after she has been lying in the bed.

She almost qualified for a laugh today. Since she was so antsy, I bounced her on the rebounder. I started to bounce more vigorously, with her head tucked between my shoulder and arm so it couldn't flop around. She began to grin and coo, obviously thinking it was great fun. I took her down to D's office to show him on the rebounder there — definitely close to an actual laugh!

Going to start with 15 minutes in our graduated-to-full transition tonight.

Songs from the Patisserie

2010-10-08T17:14:00.000-07:00

To the tune of "Belly Button" from Philadelphia Chickens:

Liam's song

Chubby, chubby muffin, you're oh so fine!
Ooh, my chubby muffin, I'm so happy you're mine!
You're chubby and tubby, so squeezably tight,
Chubby cherry muffin, you're a beautiful sight!
Chubby, chubby muffin!

Parker's song

Razza-berry strudel, you're oh so fine!
Ooh, my berry strudel, I'm so happy you're mine!
My tasty buttered noodle, my black-eyed pea,
Little baby zoodle, you're as cute as can be!
Razza-berry strudel!

Ellie's song

Little mornin' bun, you're oh so fine!
Ooh, my mornin' bun, I'm so happy you're mine!
So round and so fresh, yeah, so sweet and so fine,
Yummy mornin' bun, I want you all the time!
Little mornin' bun!

Daddy's song

Daddy, daddy, daddy, you're oh so fine!
Ooh, my daddy, daddy, I'm so happy you're mine!
You're our gentle, kind, strong, "buff tiramisu"!
Daddy, daddy, daddy, all we want is you!
Daddy, daddy, daddy!

Momo's song

Momo, momo, momo, you're oh so fine!
Ooh, my momo, momo, I'm so happy you're mine!
I love that "gingersnap" spice, just can't get enough!
Momo, momo, Mo, you're just my favorite stuff!
Momo, momo, momo!

Hush Little Baby

2010-10-08T17:07:00.001-07:00

This is my version.

Hush, little baby, don't you cry,

Mama gonna sing you a lullaby.

Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

Papa gonna buy you a mockin'bird.

An' if that mockin'bird don't sing,

Papa gonna buy you a diamon' ring.

An' if that diamon' ring turn brass,

Papa gonna buy you a lookin' glass.

An' if that lookin' glass get broke,

Papa gonna buy you a billy goat.

An' if that billy goat don't bleat,

Papa gonna buy you a bunny sweet.

An' if that bunny rabbit don't hop,

Papa gonna buy you a brand new top.

An' if that brand new top don't spin,

Papa gonna buy you a boat to sail in.

An' if that sailboat sail away,

Papa gonna buy you a dapple gray.

An' if that dapple gray won't start,

Papa gonna hitch him to an apple cart.

An' if that horse and cart fall down,

You'll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

Hush, little baby, don't you cry,

Mama gonna sing

Mama gonna sing you a lullaby,

Oh, a lullaby.

8-Oct-2010 — Number Power

2010-10-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

Some esoteric dinnertime conversation at the Trzebunia-Simmons table:

Liam, arguing with Parker about how much of my smoothie (which they stole from me) they were going to leave me, indicates some improbably large (and somehow forgettable) amount.

Grampa: "That's almost as big as Avogadro's number."

Liam: "What's Avogadro's number?"

G: "Well, every atom or molecule has a molecular weight that is roughly equal to the number of the protons and neutrons in that molecule. For instance, the molecular weight of water is about 18. If you take the number of pounds of water that equals that molecular weight, and you counted all the molecules, that's Avogadro's number. It also is true for something like helium that has a molecular weight of two. In this case, two pounds of helium has the same number of molecules as 18 pounds of water. I can't remember what that number is, but it's something like 2 times 10 to the 23rd power."

[Actually, it's about 6 times 10 to the 23rd power. Whatever.]

L: "That's not a number."

G: "Why do you think it's not a number?"

L: "I know it's not a number."

G: "How do you know it's not a number?"

L: "I've never heard of it before."

I guess when L, the self-established power around here, is faced with such erudite gibberish, bravado is the only resource. The sad thing is, deep down he really kinda meant it: If he can't get his arms around it, it should have the decency not to exist.

12-Sep-2010 — Breakfast Bowls

2010-09-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

More breakfast table conversation:

L: "Do you know what football tournament is even bigger than the Super Bowl?"

K: "What?"

L: "The Teams' Champions Tournament Team's Tournament."

K: "No one will ever go to that. It needs a nice, snappy name like 'Chocolate Bowl.'" (We have had this conversation before.)

L: "Nawwww! And it has googolplex teams and googolplex players and googolplex games."

D: "Who would want to play in a tournament that will never end?"

L: "It does end!"

K: "Yeah, after googolplex years!"

D: "Who would want to play in a tournament where you'd have to wait googolplex years to get your trophy?"

L: "No, there are 60 teams and 61 games."

D: "If there are 64 teams, you would need 63 games. It won't work to have 60 teams... Unless you give 4 of them a bye in the first round." (Then follows a discussion of brackets, wherein we discover that there have to be a power-of-two number of teams in order for the tournament to work correctly. It took a modest amount of algebra to confirm how many teams need a bye to make it work.)

L: "Do you know what is the smallest tournament?"

K: "What?"

L: "The Atom Bowl."

An Ellie Pea Calendar - Month 1

2010-09-09T07:49:00.001-07:00

8/8/10 (Sun) — Got to birthing center at 8pm, with contractions about 8 minutes apart. About 8 minutes later, my water broke. (Never had that experience with the boys.) Either E kicked in the middle of the contraction and broke it, or else she was startled when it broke and kicked in response. All I know is that all of a sudden in the middle of the contraction, there was a kind of kick-bang-gush sensation, and the contraction intensified 40-fold! Got in jacuzzi, rode out the next 45 minutes or so, until I suddenly knew it was time to push. (Didn't have that sensation with the other two. Birthing is not fun, any way you look at it, but I do recommend water births). Pushed for about 1/2 hour; they said she had a very gentle birth, as I breathed her down slowly instead of pushing her out in two minutes as they said I probably could have done. She was born at 9:29 pm and was handed straight to me (another experience I never had with the boys), so fast she had her first cry in my arms. She did not leave my arms for a couple of hours. She was so round and moon-faced, and all our children have some special place in the "patisserie"... so we decided she is a (Starbucks) Morning Bun. (L was a "chubby/cherry muffin," and P was a raspberry strudel, dating from the time he was raspberry-sized in my womb.)

8/9/10 (Mon) — Came home, stopping by way of a chiropractor who gave her her first adjustment. Babcia, Grampa Bug, and the boys were here to meet and greet.

8/10/10 (Tue) — Babcia went home, and we were a family of 5 for the first time.

8/11/10 (Wed) — First family outing. All five of us piled in the car and took her to Dr. Stafford for a newborn well check. Stopped by Keva on the way home for a treat.

8/13/10 (Fri) — Great Grape comes to visit Ellie Pea. The boys go to Babcia's for the weekend.

8/14/10 (Sat) — First outing with D and me. Went to Target to find things like a baby bathtub, as we got rid of the boys' old one. Annette and Savannah stopped in for a brief visit; they were running errands in the area. Lael terribly fussy in the evening, screaming her little head off in obvious distress, wouldn't nurse. Suspect that the bang bang shrimp of the night before is not something it's a good idea to repeat. (Silly me, she had spicy foods all the time in utero, I thought they wouldn't phase her in my milk.)

8/15/10 (Sun) — 1 week old. Skin looks fabulous, all sign of rash completely gone. Sleeping well, general fussiness and gas (increasingly better throughout the week) gone as well. My original suspicion about an allergic reaction to the erythromycin eye ointment is most likely confirmed. (Dr. Stafford pointed out that it should run its course in a week, if that was the culprit.) Quiet day of rest for D, E, and me. Didn't go anywhere or do anything, napped on couch with E. Boys came home close to bedtime.

8/16/10 (Mon) — Daddy back to work this week. Umbilical cord stump fell off. First bath! Liam kept the massage hose trained on her, while Park manned the drain plug to keep the baby bath full, but not too full, and helped me soap her. She liked the bath. She did not like how long it took to be dried off; pooped all over the towel in her distress. She did like the massage oil I rubbed all into her dry skin after. Then she nursed and slept hard for about 4 hrs straight. (Mental note: Baths should be done right before bedtime.) My scabs have pretty much healed, but I'm still a bit sore; I don't think she's sticking her tongue out far enough when she latches on. I think she's capable of it, she just doesn't do it.

8/17/10 (Tues) — First outing with Momo and brothers. Took the boys to swim lesson at sports club. She had not really nursed all morning, being preoccupied with navel-gazing into the state of her innards (burps? poops? who knows. This child does not want it going in unless the inner atmosphere is entirely peaceful. What an Ayurvedic little baby). So she discovered she was famished just as lesson ended. Nursed in car before we drove home. Confirmed with boys that we need snacks and activity bags available in the car for them at all times in case of Ellie Pea starvation emergencies. (Fortunately, we did have both, although I might make more elaborate prep for the future.)

8/18/10 (Wed) — Fussy all last night, wouldn't sleep in amby, despite the massage I gave her at bedtime. I cried in the morning when I saw a couple of hives on her cheek. Now, other people would tell me that babies get all kinds of rashes that come and go... But I have far too much experience with the other two and allergic reactions. I know hives when I see them, and I recognize inordinate fussiness that goes along with the hives in an otherwise mellow baby. D and I prayed again for my milk to be life and health to E, and we began to pray specifically for her to sleep in the amby all night and have peaceful nighttime feedings. Later in the day, the hives and fussiness disappeared completely.

8/19/10 (Thu) — Got just what we asked for last night: peaceful feedings every 2-3 hours, and quiet sleep in the amby in between. Today she has been much more alert, seems preoccupied with her innards; I have carried her most of the day, as putting her in the amby immediately makes her wake up and squirm. She had another screaming bout in the afternoon, which I took as an indication that, in addition to some mild gas or burp discomfort, she had gotten overtired and didn't know what to do about it. She finally snuffled herself to sleep in my neck and is now sleeping in amby for first time today. D took L and P to L's first soccer practice (Tues was rained out). Noonkessers brought spaghetti for dinner! Gary and Theresa rich came by at 7pm to meet Lael and pray with us.

8/20/10 (Fri) — It was not a bad night, but not an easy one either. I was up from 5-6, and then up again at 7. E had to be held all morning, which meant that we got a nice dozy nap on the couch while the boys played. Finally got her to sleep in the amby after lunch, at which time I did laundry, cleaned the downstairs bath, and vacuumed the main floor. Then, since E was still asleep, I actually trimmed P's hair. Object: transform lank, eyelash-intruding, ear-overhanging locks into Hollister beach cut in under 10 minutes. Result: mission accomplished. I think morning naps agree with me.

8/21/10 (Sat) — D and P went out to bring us hot chocolate and Great Harvest cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I ate two: 1.5 for me, .5 for Ellie Pea. (Patricia Q. tells me that my mother made a comment to her back when her oldest was still new: "The best part about nursing is being able to eat absolutely anything you want!") Uncle Artur is coming today to meet his niece.

Bad night: E screamed from 11-1am. I cried through a lot of that, b/c it was so hard to listen to her and be able to do nothing. Nothing I tried helped her. Not sure how much sleep Artur got! D finally woke up (dads can sleep through ANYTHING!) and took her from me; he held her in the recliner for a long time before she finally slept in her amby.

8/22/10 (Sun) — 2 weeks old tonight! We went to church, despite the bad night. E cried a lot of the way there, but then nursed when we got there and slept in her pouch the entire service. She nursed again after, and then we went out to eat, where she slept in the pouch again. It was a big day for a little girl (and her Mo)! When we got home, I crawled into bed and got a good nap in while D daddied. Noticed after he left that we didn't get any pictures with Uncle Art. Guess we were pretty tired.

8/23/10 (Mon) — Gave in and ordered a soothie (pacifier) for her. She is not a big eater, and often she has had a full meal, but then needs help soothing herself into a drowsy state. Offering her comfort nursing doesn't work very well, either because she has burps that need to come up and so she can't relax and enjoy it, or else because she's just plain full. Either way, more milk going in just complicates the issue. Tried a new bedtime routine: warm bath at 8, followed by a quick massage. The whole thing only took 10 minutes, but the problem was that she had just nursed and was sleepy before I started, and then woke up thoroughly in the process. So it was 9:30 before she was soothed back to sleep. Might have to do the bath earlier.

8/24/10 (Tue) — This was the 2nd night in a row that she was awake — as in, wide awake, alert, pondering the innards and the meaning of life — from 2-4am. But last night, unlike the night before, she bookended that with 3-hr sleep stretches: 9:30-12:30, 12:50ish-2:30, and 4:30-7:30. And actually, she stirs in the morning, but can't fully wake up, so it seems best to let her sleep-nurse, where she calmly and peacefully gets a full belly, and then let her sleep some more, if burps don't interfere.

8/25 - 8/27 — "Morning Bun," my ten toes. "Wee hours of the night Bun," more like! She likes to throw a party somewhere around 4am. She wakes up fully, stares at the lamp (her favorite pastime), navel-gazes, and processes toots and burps and sometimes poops. The whole sequence of nursing and processing and being soothed back to sleep takes anywhere from 1-2.5 hrs, depending on the level of fussiness/burps/gas. One of these nights (I lost track of when), she had both D and me up with her. He was on the rebounder with her screaming self tucked under one arm, and I was singing, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..." "You would cry too," D added, "if it happened to you!" After that she was content as long as he was actively jiggling and trying to get burps up. We began giving her voice to things like, "Who brought the balloons?" and "Let's cut the cake," and "I'm ready for the presents now." Seems like she invited three guests: Momo, Daddy, and her innards. (We were gate-crashed by what Gramparefers to as the Swamp Gas. He says that she is the daughter of a Kitten: She stretches, she drapes, she purrs... and she manufactures swamp gas.)

8/28/10 (Sat) — Babcia and Dziadek came for L's first two soccer games of the season (and forDziadek to meet E). L started as a left wing forward and scored the very first goal, the perfect "coming out" for him. E handled the big day quite well, nursing in the car a few times, and generally enjoying being handed around from person to person while she slept. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to watch the second game without a baby draped on me, as Babcia was providing the human cradle.

8/29/10 (Sun) — 3 weeks old. Night was not easy, probably due to the full day we had yesterday. Went to church; E fussed in her pouch and I had to sit out in the hall and miss most of the service. She finally got a burp out, but by the time I thought it might be safe to go back in and try again, the sermon was over. Quinlans came to visit and meet E. Boys really enjoyed the big day with their friends.

8/31/10 (Tue) — Took L to soccer practice. E and I "parked" on the side of a street with No Parking signs all along its length (which is to say my emergency blinkers were on and I was obviously not walking away from my car, which seemed to satisfy the campus security guy who drove by) right next to the soccer field, so that we could stay in the car but I could keep an eye on P, who likes to watch the practice and kick his own soccer ball around.

9/1/10 (Mon) — She has rolled over front-to-back several times. Of course I don't actually know when she first did it, but consistency proves that it is a genuine skill and not a fluke.

9/2/10 (Thu) — The fussiness is beginning to disappear, coinciding with a slight change in the way we do things over the past few days: I have discovered that E is not a big eater. Of course, she might be guzzling 8oz at a time, for all I know; but the point is that she does not want to eat as often as I expected. I just kind of assumed that nursing (for comfort or nutrition) was the answer to all fussing, but it turns out that she seems to need a good long space for digestion. If she has burps or gas, putting more milk in just complicates the picture. So for the most part I wait until I'm sure she's really hungry before I feed her, and her fussing and burpy periods are fewer and farther between. (Maybe I'm just learning to read her better. I told D that the problem with big social weekends where we have lots of visitors is that I don't read E as well when I'm distracted by non-routine people and events. It's easy to think we don't have a routine yet, until what we do have is disrupted. If you're thinking of coming to see us, don't let that deter you... I just realize that we have to be careful to space things out and not do too much at once.) She has not been weighed since her newborn checkup, but she's obviously getting bigger. And my theory seems to be holding water: that she gets fussy when she is overtired, which creates a vicious cycle; so the better she sleeps, the better she sleeps, if you follow me — and the happier she is. She is sleeping much better in the amby in the afternoon and at night, although she seems to need to sleep on me in the mornings, and on D in the evenings. Last night I bathed her, put on her yellow onesie (she looks great in yellow), and told D, "Daddy's little daffodil is ready for her date." She stays with him for 2.5-3 hrs some nights, giving me a nice period of sleep. Our Daddy takes good care of us!

9/3/10 (Fri) — Doesn't Murphy's law require that if you record in written word that your baby's fussiness is beginning to wane, it will immediately wax dramatically? E had a very fussy evening last night. She writhed on my shoulder for a good 1.5hrs after her bath. Finally got her in bed at 10, and she slept three hours (yay!!). She ate at 1am and afterwards leaned back on theboppy in my lap and pondered, in her usual manner. At 1:40, she vomited (I mean SPEWED) her entire meal. She got a thorough milk bath. There had to have been a good 8oz in that belly, for those of us who are wondering how much of that invisible mother's milk she consumes, and it ALL came out. She was perfectly cheerful about it, too. In fact, after that she began to chirp and coo in a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed manner I have not heard before. So the question, after a warm sponge bath and fresh p.j.'s, was: Does she need a refill, or does she prefer the stomach to be empty at this point? I put her back on the same (near-empty) side so that she could better control the flow of milk, and she had a little bit. And then she was exhausted, but obviously uncomfortable, so she fussed and writhed and chewed her soothie with vim and vigor until almost 3am, when I successfully got her in bed. 35 minutes later, she apparently realized her net food intake was near zero, and woke up to nurse again. Right before she did, I woke up from a dream in which I was trying to put a flannel shirt on over my nightgown. Being tired generally makes me cold, and I was freezing. I added a robe and went to get a flannel-covered comforter instead of my usual cotton one. The pea-sized amount of body-heat hiding somewhere in my innermost core had only just begun to think about emerging and redistributing itself, when E woke up. It was 3:35am, and I had slept 3.5 hrs so far. No wonder I was cold!

There are workmen making a hole in the deck doing something that involves sealing the side of the house against rain. So the boys have made lego tools and are running around making wise comments that use words such as "flashing" and "glue gun." L decided he wanted a tool belt, so he wanted me to get him his apron. I was holding a sleeping E, and was not about to disturb her, so I told him he could use a stepstool and try to get it from where it was hanging on the kitchen wall. Next thing I know, there's a big crash and L comes in to announce that the pan hanging above the aprons has fallen off and broken. The "pan" is actually a frying-pan shaped trivet with a bas-relief bunny molded into it and hand-painted with surrounding flowers. It belonged to my mother, and as she is irreplaceably gone, I would just as soon the trivet was not. I cried, even though it will turn out to be a very little thing in my life. (Btw, I have absolutely no idea how L managed to knock down an item that was not only two feet above the apron he was trying to retrieve, but a full 8 feet above the ground.)

Fussy, fussy, fussy today. L says, "Was I really fussier than Ellie Pea? Fussier than that??"

9/4/10 (Sat) — E gassy all day, dozed on either D or me. 2nd Amby came in mail. Went to ZCCpicnic in evening.

9/5/10 (Sun) — Set up 2nd Amby. Now we don't have to take it apart and carry it up/down stairs twice a day. More importantly, the 2nd one, which I found used on eBay, has the repair kit (which they sent out after the recall, but you can no longer get b/c the company shut down in N. America) installed to keep the bed from tilting side to side — which could, technically, allow the child to roll and get trapped face down. So the nighttime Amby now has the repair kit, the theory being that we are awake and paying attention during the day and it doesn't matter so much. The downstairs Amby, which is now cream, looks sweetly harmonious with the cream/white curtains in Gramma's old spot by the window.

9/6/10 (Mon) — Labor Day, so Daddy is off work. We had a nice quiet day. Went toFuddrucker's for a late lunch burger and milkshake. D was hungry, and would have gone earlier, but I was trying to finish up a photo project while he was available to hold E. And if I had finished sooner, we would not have run into several of our church friends, who had the same lunch idea. We got a table for 10 and sat around and talked for a while. L and P have a couple of surrogate-grandmother types in that church who talk to them and play games, so they had a blast. E slept in her pouch. And btw, I don't know how a little baby who has nothing but mother's milk can be constipated, but she is. Hasn't gone in 36 hrs, and is obviously gassy and uncomfortable.

9/7/10 (Tue) — I prayed before E was born that nursing her would be easy. At two weeks, I would have said that it was "easy, but still complicated." Things are definitely simpler now. At three weeks we were beginning to experiment with different positions, and now we even wing it without the proper-positioning pillow! And E is trying to make up for the constipation by pooping 5 or 6 times today.

9/8/10 (Wed) — 1 month old today!! And making up for yesterday's pooping by trying constipation on for size again. {:-\ This is me scratching my head. But she is doing great. Took her a long time to fall really good and asleep for her morning nap, due to gas and toots, but when she did she really zonked. And this afternoon she spent a solid 1/2hr or more lying on her back on a blanket looking serene. We captured some of it in our first video of The Pea.

4-Sep-2010 — Sense-itive

2010-09-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

A snippet of breakfast-table conversation:

P to L: "That doesn't make any sense."

L: "Please don't say that."

P: "But it doesn't."

L: "But please don't say that!"

D: "Why can't he say that what you're saying doesn't make sense?"

L: "Because it hurts my feelings!"

D: "Why does that hurt your feelings?"

L: "Because it hurts my feelings that I don't make any sense!"

D: "Well, that might be true, but it forces you to think about what you're saying, and whether or not you're making any sense."

L: "But what it doesn't do is force Parker to think about what he's saying, and that it hurts my feelings!"

16-Aug-2010 — Burp Chant for Ellie Pea

2010-08-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

To be accompanied by rhythmic pats on the back, bouncing "pony ride" knee optional:

Oh, dey got me by da innards an' dey won' let go!
Oh, dey got me by da innards an' dey won' let go!
Yeah, dey got me!
Oh, dey got me!
Yeah, dey got me by da innards an' dey won' let go!

We gonna git dat burp,
We gonna git it.
We gonna git dat burp,
We gonna git it.
We gonna git it,
Yeah, we gonna git it.
We gonna git dat burp,
We gonna git it.

Gimme "B"!
Gimme "U"!
Gimme "R"!
Gimme "P"!
Gimme BURP, BURP, BURP
For my little Ellie Pea!
"B"!
"U"!
"R"!
"P"!
Gimme a big ol' burp
For my little baby!

Git that burp out, git it out, git it out.
Git that burp, git it out right now!
Git it out, git it out,
Spit, spit, spit it out!
Git that burp, git it out right now!

Grumble, grumble, grumble, grouse, grouse.
[pause]
Grumble, grumble, grumble, grouse, grouse.
[pause]
Murmur, murmur, murmur,
Gritch, gritch, gritch.
Grumble, grumble, grumble, grouse, grouse!

Itty bitty baby girl
Baby girl, baby girl
Itty bitty baby baby
Baby sweet girl
Baby sweet, baby sweet
Itty bitty baby sweet
Itty bitty baby baby
Baby sweet girl

30-Jul-2010 — Meditations on Reading

2010-07-31T06:40:00.001-07:00

According to the San Diego State Quick Reading Assessment, Liam reads at a 5th grade level. This surprised me a little bit. I knew he was good, but I didn't realize he was that advanced. Not that 5th grade readers are emotionally appropriate, necessarily, for a 6yo. But it's interesting to see his ability.

Parker reads great at a first grade level, and rather laboriously at a 2nd-grade level, which is right-on for where he is in the learning process. At the end of his lesson book, he should be reading fairly fluently at a 2nd-grade level, and he's currently on lesson 80. Things are more arduous for him than they should be (for instance, he read "pet" as "pete," b/c he latched onto the "magic e makes the vowel say its name" rule a little too well, and he promptly began to forget that e makes the sound "eh," unless it has a reason to say its name...) due to all the stops and starts and huge long breaks we've taken during the learning process.

P will get there just fine, he just needs consistent practice. But here's a bit of hindsight for all you parents out there preparing for school: I do recommend that if you decide to teach your child to read young (or maybe whenever you decide to teach him), you prepare yourself up front for any power struggles or other kicking against the pricks, come up with a firm plan for handling those situations, and keep moving forward. The speed at which you move through the lessons is not important, but consistency is.

In fact, the advantage to waiting until a later age is several-fold. You know your child, his reactions and his motivations better. You have had more opportunities to work through (and come up with an effective plan for) various phases of life, such as the power-struggle phase. While the 100 Easy Lessons book is absolutely right that a bright 3yo or an average 4yo can easily learn to read with this method, the younger the child is, the more potential for the parent to feel at sea during the process.

It's not that I wish I had waited longer to start with P. It's more that I just recognize how much we've learned about how difficult it can be. I actually began to teach him when he was 2, just to have something to do with him that was all his own. He was mentally able, there was no question; but he was not emotionally able to handle failure at that point. So I just let it go for a while. I began again when he was almost 4 and we were officially doing school. That worked fine, or it would have if I had been a little more savvy about handling whining.

With my next child, I think I would wait until closer to kindergarten age to start, unless she is herself very determinedly motivated to master the art (as I was at age 3). The personality of the child is an important key. L, the typical first-born, has always pressured himself to achieve, even when going through the this-is-hard-and-I've-changed-my-mind phases. I saw how reading opened up L's world, and I wanted to give P that experience. But P, perhaps a typical second-in-line, has always been willing to sit back and let L take the lion's share of glory (as long as he can come in second — not last).

I'm glad we've been through all this, because I have learned so much about teaching, and about my children. And P will make it over the bumpy spots and turn out a fine reader one of these days. But I'm grateful to have a little more wisdom in my bag the next time around.

21-Jul-2010 — Tough Lessons

2010-07-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

P had a rough day today. He has been power-struggling over his reading lessons. Liam took to reading like a fish to water. Parker has the same quick intelligence, the same (or maybe even greater) early language aptitude, the same well-stocked skill set. He just doesn't have the interest.

Now, granted, once Liam finished his 100 Easy Lessons book, he lost interest (maybe because I stopped working with him actively), and did not take off like a rocket until several months later when I read him his first Boxcar Children book. He loved it so much he reread it on his own, and soon he was sneaking off to read ahead in the series... And now he is known to gulp down a chapter book in a couple of hours.

But Parker has bogged down in the lesson book. He is more than capable of reading — in fact, when he chooses to engage his brain, he sails through it with lightning speed. He has simply decided, most of the time, that it's harder than he wants to work. And it's obvious that the stories, while kind of silly, are not really entertaining enough to motivate him. I can tell that if we can just get through this textbook and move on to working with "real" books, he will feel a lot better about this whole reading thing in general.

I have vacillated in my approach. Part of me feels like this is reading, which should be at all costs fun, and so let's just shelve the whole thing for a year, or however long it takes. We are a whole family of readers, so there's just no way that Parker can go an entire elementary school career balking at the idea... Leave it alone, and his interest will come by itself... He's only four, and just because he is capable of it does not mean we need to push it... Yada, yada.

But today I realized (not for the first time, but with greater clarity) that he is just in power struggle mode. Reading lessons happen to be one of the main arenas at the moment, but the fact is that he is pushing the line in every area he can right now. For the most part, he is a good, happy, aim-to-please child, but parental power struggles define the stage he's in, and that's just where we are.

So today, I put aside all my irritation and disgust over his attitude, which are the main reason we have not found a simple solution to this earlier, and I determined that he is going to learn that Momo means business. That may sound rather brusque and business-like, but I mean it in the gentlest way. Children crave the security of proving that they can't grasp too much power for themselves. A child who is too much in control is a deep-down scared child. So it will be a real relief to both of us when he discovers that he can push all he wants, but I'm a stone wall. And, lo and behold, if reading lessons are not readily at hand as the perfect setting for this moral!

So today Parker was told he had two choices: Work hard at his reading lesson, or sit down on the couch and cry into his lovey until he was ready to work hard. Anything else got him quick disciplinary measures, as he proved many times. It took about 3.5 hrs (with an hour break for lunch and subsequent playtime) for him to get through a one-page story. Not, mind you, because reading is such hard work for him, but because he was whining and refusing to work at all. I simply made it very clear that I had all the patience in the world, but we weren't going anywhere or doing anything (except eating) until he accomplished the task set before him. Even his desperation to earn a trip to the pool this afternoon was not enough to make for smooth sailing.

But he did it. And then I said to him, "You did it! You read the whole story! And it was such a hard thing to get through! And you did such a good job! I think you need a cookie." So he had two gingersnaps, all by himself in the kitchen. And then I told him that it was snoozle time, and when he got up we would go to the pool. And so began the next power struggle...

Meanwhile, back at the farm... No, sorry, that was in the story P was reading. Meanwhile, during this whole ordeal, I looked down at one point at the red chair in which P was sitting, and saw a few pen-marks on the arm, including the unmistakable word: "Liam." In guess whose unmistakable handwriting? Yep: Liam. This is Parker's personal chair, with his name embroidered on the back. Liam has one of his own. But P's chair now sports Liam's autograph.

I called L over and asked him to explain this. He swore up and down (if he had had access to a sailor's vocabulary, I'm certain he would have sworn like a sailor) that he did not do it, and that was the truth. So, when I finished with P, L and I had a long chat about this. We talked about logical deduction:

There is the inked-in name, right there where we can all see it.

Ergo, someone did this.

Momo does not write on chairs, so it was not Momo.

Daddy does not write on chairs, so it was not Daddy.

Elves do not live in our house and write on chairs, so it was not elves.

Other people do not come into our house and write on chairs, so it was not someone who does not live here.

Now we come to the tricky part:

Parker could have written on the chair. But Parker writes only one thing well, and that is the name Parker. He can write other things, but not with the dexterity required to have penned it neatly on this chair. Ergo, Parker did not write this.

That leaves one person.

Liam says, "But that's not very neat." "Yes," I replied, "if I had written it, it would have been neater. But it is neat enough that we can all tell it says 'Liam.' And it looks just like your handwriting."

We did not go into a discussion of the egocentricity of children, which leads us to reasonably conclude that the person most likely to write the name Liam on an object (particularly one that does not belong to him) is Liam himself. But I did point out something else.

"That," I said, "was written by someone left-handed."

Offended incredulity was plastered all over his face. "How do you know??"

Because, I explained, a right-handed person (such as Parker) would have to have been sitting at a very awkward angle in order to make those particular markings on the right-hand arm of the chair. But the word is positioned in just the way that a left-handed person, lounging comfortably, might have reached over and scrawled it in a moment of inspired ingenuity.

Liam was not giving in without a valiant, albeit not-so-bright, effort at shifting blame. "It came like that," he said. No, Momo was the one who unpacked P's chair and assembled it. I know full well it did not come like that, or I would have sent it back (not to mention that Pottery Barn has too high an opinion of their own reputation to ever send out something that defective).

No, there are two possibilities, as I stated to L. One is that he did it and did not want to admit it (there is a precedent for this; besides, he's six), and was trying to cover his tracks. However, as I pointed out, if that was his intention he was going about it in a rather stupid manner, because his protests were all holding less water than a sieve.

The other possibility, which I was willing to buy, was that he did not remember doing it. Such moments of inspired ingenuity are often fleeting, as many an older person has discovered to their embarrassment, and the pen marks may have been there for weeks or months without my noticing. So I was willing to accept an "I don't remember doing that," as long as he admitted that there was absolutely no one else who could have been the culprit.

He grudgingly did this. He is a champion negotiator, and I have inadvertently (being myself someone who tends to wield words as a rapier, and to come out on top in a skirmish) taught him far too much about reason and argument. (Too much for his own good, because now he has to go back and learn the hard lesson that he has to obey Momo and Daddy whether our requests seem reasonable or not.) But even he had to admit defeat in the face of all my assertions.

So the fact remains that Liam, possibly a somewhat younger Liam, but certainly one old enough to know better, defaced his brother's chair. The vile deed has been done, and the results are irreparable. (Does anyone know a good way of getting ink pen out of canvas cloth?) We discussed defacing someone else's personal property, with appropriate how-would-you-feel-if scenarios. I asked him if he remembered the time, years ago, when he took his crayons and colored all over one of our living room chairs, and what we did about it.

Yes, he remembered that we took his matchbox cars away "for about three months." (Actually, it wasn't intended to be three months, but every time we reinstated a couple of the cars, the brotherly bickering and fighting over them forced us to extend the hiatus.) We had told him this had to be a big punishment, something that would drive the lesson home. (I'm not entirely sure it did... as evidenced.) I told him that we were going to have to have another something that drove this lesson home, because defacing someone else's property was a big deal, not something we could just gloss over.

I suggested that he try to think of what might be an appropriate way for us to handle this. After some time, he told me the only thing he could think of was taking his legos away for three months! Ah, the youthful, innocent logic. He has no idea that this would be a punishment far greater than he could bear, not to mention a punishment on us, since legos are by far his primary occupation.

After talking it over with D, I told L that we would not take legos away, because that would punish Parker. We would also not take away either soccer or swimming, because we had made commitments to both that made the situation bigger than just whether or not he deserved to have what he wanted. And beyond that, we weren't sure yet how we would handle it, and we would let him know when we had decided.

Actually, I have no idea yet how to handle it. I would love to take the easy way out and let it go, but I don't think that would be doing a favor to him, or to anyone else. We may as well learn these tough lessons while we are young and pliable.

Funny what a big toll it takes on the parent, to oversee the learning process.

31-May-2010 — His Right Hand

2010-05-31T12:26:00.000-07:00

He holds us in His right hand
And when we go up to heaven
He will still hold us in His right hand
And when everybody is in heaven
All the sorrow and death will be overthrown
And everybody will be safe
For ever and ever
And still He will hold us in His right hand

A "song" written by Liam, age 6.

28-Apr-2010 — Difficult Moments

2010-04-28T05:42:00.001-07:00

There was bound to come a time when Liam, who has traditionally been the one to ruffle Momo's feathers, became easier to deal with and got replaced in the lineup by the younger brother. Liam is six, and except when he gets up on the wrong side of the bed and we have to deal with whining... or when he's bursting with untamed energy and I can't take him outside right then... he is making six look like a dream, after three, four, and five.

He has a funny, precocious zest for the interesting things of life. ("Aren't Philadelphia Chickens the funniest chickens?" he asks, wrinkling up his nose in a caricature of delighted contempt.) He loves math. ("May I please have some more [Miquon] math sheets? These are my favorite math sheets. If we have time, I'd like to do them every day.") Half his vocabulary comes from the books he reads. (He just asked me something about the "ragging" bull in their Zoologic game. It took me a minute to realize he was mispronouncing "raging.") And he is so wonderfully autonomous. I can leave him alone to do Rosetta Stone Polish by himself ("100 percent," he comments. "I keep getting those."), or hand him scissors and paper and glue and actually walk away and do something else.

Meanwhile, Parker — my sweet, sensitive, impish little Parker — is going through a phase that somehow coincides with some different and clashing phase of my own.

I am really tired of the power struggle over clothes. He has dozens of cute outfits in his drawer that he refuses to wear. And I'm not talking preppy, I'm not really that type, but let's just say the only thing that makes the bright orange someone-brought-back-from-somewhere-as-a-souvenir-and-other-than-that-it's-boring tee really palatable is that it matches the orange stripe on the blue-striped deck pants P inherited from his brother.

I love those Hanna Andersson deck pants. I probably paid "too much" for them at some point, although you don't usually end up paying too much for Hannas (painful as it might be to part with the $ up front — I'm paying that much for a hoodie??), because they wear beautifully through at least two kids. (L has a tiny hole in his hoodie, and I'm shocked — Hannas don't do that! I suppose I should contact them about it.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, the orange tee with the deck pants. So there's only one problem. P's current love (read: obsession) is basketball, and the deck pants don't look enough like basketball shorts. So he absolutely, categorically refuses to wear them. And this morning, that was the straw that broke my camel's back. Actually, not that he refused to wear them; more the kicking and screaming part.

So why was my camel's back near breaking point at eight in the morning? Why can I not get over the fact that I have to look at him all day and would rather he was wearing something other than his preference? I don't know. I'm pregnant and hormonal. I still find occasionally that I have not fully gotten used to the fact that I don't have a mother of my own anymore. I had a nightmare right before I woke up. Whatever. The long and short is that, when P launched into a semi-tantrum, I threw the shorts down in anger and walked away.

This sort of thing happens from time to time. I don't like it, but there it is. And my sensitive, savvy little P, who is also my impish, press-the-buttons-and-watch-the-show P, takes it hard. He pushes and pushes until he pushes me right over the edge, and then he observes the results with dismay from behind a nonchalant facade that he doesn't pull off very well. Or sometimes he can't even come close to the cool exterior. This morning, as I threw the shorts down and left the room, he wailed, "Why, Mommy, why? Why are you walking away from me?"

Talk about heart-breaking. I lost my temper, and my little boy paid for it. Other people are always the ones who pay when we choose to be unkind. P only calls me mommy when he is upset. When he gets a scraped knee, or when his feelings get really hurt, it's like he becomes very conscious that there is a role that "mommies" fulfill, and he needs me in that capacity.

When I came back in the room, he had pulled himself together and was getting dressed (in the outfit of his choice, mind you), but you could see the weight on his shoulders: Why is my Momo upset with me? And he kept asking, "When are you coming downstairs? Why aren't you coming downstairs?" He needed me to be normal again. This is in contrast to Liam, who is actually a lot more difficult to manage when we fight. He just goes off and gets over it, and you have to work pretty hard to diagnose and fix the issue if it runs deeper than a surface clash.

Of course P and I made up with a hug and kiss. And we're hardly the only family with imperfect dynamics. In fact, these kids are loved in a measure beyond the common lot of a child, and they know it.

But I still want to love better.

1-Apr-2010 — Lullaby

2010-04-01T06:30:00.001-07:00

The boys go in and out of these stages where, after going to bed at night, they invent reasons (one or two... or 6 or 8, depending on the current stage they're in) to come downstairs. "I can't get comfortable." "You only prayed for me once. Usually you pray two times." "Will you fluff my comforter?" "Daddy, please don't take apart my Lego 18-wheeler in the middle of the night." (P seems to have this idea that we get bored in the wee hours and develop these cleaning and straightening urges.)

On the occasions when Grampa tucks them in, he tells them, "If you need to use the bathroom, you can get up. And if there's a fire, you can come downstairs." The implication, which they fully get, is that there's no reason, in Grampa's book, to come down for anything less urgent than that. (He pointed out to me that this is the kind of information that it would have been really helpful for him to have, as a kid, that time that he had to decide whether to interrupt his "don't-bother-me-no-matter-how-important-you-think-it-is-do-you-understand-me" dad's poker game to tell him that the ash tray was on fire.)

P is currently sitting in the chair across from me, "reading" his Peter rabbit book that plays songs. To a wandering rhythm and the tune of Brahm's Lullaby, he is crooning, "Go to sleeeeeep... like a baaaaby... Don't get up until the moon rises down and the sun rises up... or you can come down... if there's a fire."

11-Mar-2010 - Chemical Attraction

2010-03-11T12:08:00.000-08:00

A couple of days ago, L asked a question that sparked an hour-long discussion about chemistry. It started with an explanation of states of matter: what constitutes solids, liquids, and gases. (No, dad, I did not go into plasma. We have to save something for high school!) This necessarily involved a definition of molecules and atoms.

Somewhere in there, while explaining that different substances combine together differently, I pointed out that there are all kinds of jokes about chemists. You know the scenario: the guy is either ignorant or careless about beakers and flasks in the lab, and — oops! — he accidentally creates his own bomb and blows up his laboratory.

This was definitely the funniest thing L had heard since last Tuesday. His face froze in uncontrollable, wheezing giggles. "He created his own bomb and blew up his laboratory!" That continued to spark spontaneous laughter several more times throughout the day. It made me want to show him one of those cartoons where you get the cloud of smoke, and then the guy's hair is standing on end.

Later, I was going back to states of matter, in a more in-depth way, by way of explaining energy. What determines whether something is a solid, liquid, or gas is how fast the molecules of the substance are moving. Gas molecules are your ultimate give-me-space people. Solids, on the other hand, are totally chummy. I grabbed L around the shoulders and squeezed him tight. "Hey, neighbor!" I yelled. "Let's live together!"

In describing why the trucks that carry a substance such as liquid oxygen have warning signs to stay back x-many feet, I pointed out how a gas molecule, which lives to expand, feels when it is crammed into close quarters with a bunch of other gas molecules: "Would you move?!" [Elbowing to the right and left.] "Do you mind?! Hey, watch it! Ow, you're stepping on my foot!!" (At this, L literally fell over laughing.)

So what happens when you, the idiotic driver who is not paying attention to what he is doing, ram into the back of the oxygen truck? If you are as unlucky as that performance ought to make you, you poke a hole in the oxygen tanks, and all the gas molecules scream, "Oh, thank heaven!" and rush out as fast as they can. What is an explosion, Liam? That's right: a large amount of energy released all at once. So what happens to the oxygen tanks? Big explosion. Enough energy to send car parts flying. Oxygen and gasoline reacting together to set everything on fire.

You remember that next time you see that label: "Caution — Contents under pressure. Stay back 500 feet."

In the middle of that convoluted conversation, L grasped that heat is a form of energy. When Grampa arrived for dinner that evening, L announced that "how hot something is is another way of saying how fast the molecules in it are moving." Grampa was appropriately impressed; but being a chemical engineer, and often giving L "physics lessons" — in which many such topics are discussed in rather more erudite language than most kindergarteners would hear — he was maybe not as astounded as your average layman would be by this pronouncement from a 6 year old.

After that discussion, I found L a couple of pages in his encylopedia that he insisted he had already read. You know he reads his encylopedia for fun. I can't keep him away from it. He knows all kinds of things I think he shouldn't, like how Ellie Pea is developing in my womb. Anyway, he read again the descriptions of atoms, molecules, and chemistry, and agreed that it all made a whole lot more sense now.

Then he took his encyclopedia to the play table, built a lego "microscope," and began doing "research." The notes on his clipboard look like this (in letters 1.5 inches tall, and often with one letter of a word stretching around to the next line, complete with hyphen):

HyDROGen AtoM-
S GOLD AtoMS
iROn AtoMS
CARBOn AtoMS
OxyGen Ato-
MS MethAne GAS
MoLeCULeS

He showed me the clipboard and asked, "Do you know which of these atoms make methane gas? These two [carbon and hydrogen]." He also said, "I'm discovering the chlorine atom in salt. Here it is. But it's really too small to see." He held up a yellow lego, which he had slipped under his "microscope" lens. Note that chlorine atoms were colored yellow in the book, to distinguish them from green sodium atoms in the 3-D diagram of sodium chloride.

A few days ago, L would have told you that when he grows up, he's going to be a fireman (because he has seen the inside of a fire truck and is wowed by all the complex gauges and controls, not because he's really your daring rescue type), a helicopter pilot, a policeman, the driver of an 18-wheeler, and a handful of other, semi-related things.

Now? "I'm going to be a chemist when I grow up." Grampa explained as best he could the difference between a chemist and a chemical engineer, and we all convinced L that, given his love of building things and his engineering propensities in general, he would probably prefer to be a chemical engineer, rather than spend his life in a laboratory. (Pardon me, all you chemists out there, if in oversimplifying I seem to pooh-pooh your glorious careers.)

L sees the appeal of taking one's knowledge of how substances fit together and using it to build or improve technology, but he can't quite escape the seductive pull of discovery. "Momo," he says to me, "I'm pretending I'm a chemical engineer and a chemist. I use my knowledge of chemistry to build machines, but I also discover which molecules are in cheese." I had to break it to him gently that, actually, scientists have already discovered which molecules make up cheese — an early example I had thrown out there in trying to explain what chemistry was all about.

Regardless, it wouldn't surprise me if L really has found his niche. After all, in many ways he is a little copy of his Grampa, so it stands to reason that he would travel behind him down the scientific path. As for me, all the way through high school I found biology boring, physics a brain-frying challenge, and chemistry plain old gag-me-with-a-spoon dispepsia-inducing — like somebody took the most mind-boggling formulas from trigonometry and threw in Latin case endings, just for fun.

I'm just glad that I can see the wonder in science now.

25-Nov-2009 - Hair and Hair

2009-11-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

Liam: "Hey, here's a homonym: UPS and UPS... UPS like the truck and UPS like the UPS man!"

Momo: "That's not a homonym, Liam, that's the same word."

Daddy: "Yeah, Liam, that would be like saying, 'Hey, here's a homonym: hair and hair... Liam's hair and Parker's hair!'"

Park: "Liam's hair, and Parker's hair, and Daddy's hair, and Momo's hair, and Gramma's hair, and Grampa's nothing hair..."

(Grampa shaves his head.)

7-Oct-09 - School Days... Wonderful Golden Rule (over Egypt) Days

2009-10-07T05:48:00.000-07:00

Meet Zapapapa Xyclopedia. He is 5.5 years old (although if you ask him, he'll tell you he's 79), and he is Pharaoh over all Egypt. He sits on his throne and waits, with perfect Pharaoh-ish petulance, for somebody to walk by so he can rule them. "Out of my Egypt," he clips to his brother, pointing an incriminating finger.

Meet Zapapapa's brother, Je Suis Heureux. At the tender age of 3.5 (although I think he would say 50), he is Pharaoh over Second Egypt, which spans the other half of the living room. But that was yesterday. Today, he is Zapapapa's dog, and he has constructed for himself an elaborate dog house which spans the entire geographical area that was once Second Egypt.

School has broadened these boys' horizons incredibly. Studies of Ancient Egypt have perhaps been the most inspirational, engendering everything from horses and chariots and Ancient Egyptian villas built out of Lego duplos, to their first-ever dress-up project, complete with the intense marker session required to make their cardboard "collars" in order to authenticate the Egyptian garb.

We are using Core K and level 2 language arts from Sonlight for Liam, supplemented with some Miquon math, Prima Latina (an elementary Latin curriculum, which I like partly for the helpful way it approaches English grammar), and handwriting. Parker, who gets in on the history, Bible, read-alouds, and handwriting (his favorite subject) as much as he wants, also has his own special subject: slowly learning to read with the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.

So far, we love it. We did have to make our first modifications to the core when we found a book that was too intense for Liam: The Apple and the Arrow, the legend of William Tell. I have been expecting this. I've already culled out a couple of his readers. The fact that he is reading at a 2nd grade level does not guarantee an emotional readiness for such subjects as the ruins at Pompeii, especially the way it is portrayed in Pompeii: Buried Alive!

But that's fine. We'll come back to those when it is just the right time, and meanwhile these boys are growing by leaps and bounds. Oh, excuse me, I'm late. Time to go read about Viking longships.

10-Jul-09 - Self-sufficient Neediness

2009-07-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

If Parker wakes up in the night, he likes to move into our bedroom and sleep "next to Daddy." There is an extra comforter on the floor on Damian's side of the bed, and we bring his pillow and things for him to bed down there. He has been doing this since last September, when his world got turned upside down by seeing his Gramma Bug get carted off to the hospital in an ambulance.

We figured out what that "orange" business was, by the way. At night the shades do not block out the light from the street lamp, which casts an orange glow on the wall of their bedroom. He would talk about the "numbers" that "came out," and that's when I figured out that he meant the shadows made by the bars of Liam's daybed. He was also unnerved by the light at the top of the stairs, which he was afraid would "talk to" him. A couple of nights here without us, while Babcia stayed with them and we helped my mom, was enough to spark this fear of lights that came on and off, in a manner beyond his control, and made funny shadows everywhere.

He was already in a Daddy phase before the whole hospital incident. The week before, when we were on vacation in Gatlinburg, I could not so much as hand Parker his water without getting fussed at. "I want Daddy to do it!!!" After the event, Daddy became his security blanket. Every moment of the day: "Where is Daddy?" Momo we have always with us, but she doesn't seem to have the answers we need, and she is obviously no good at preventing disaster. Daddy is a rock, and we are certain that if we could just always have him two inches away, none of these unpleasant things would touch us.

Long after he has outgrown the original insecurity, Park has been enjoying the privilege of sleeping next to Daddy. But the manner in which this is executed has changed over the months and tells much about his budding maturity. In the initial phase, he used to scream for Daddy in the night, and ask, "Can you sleep next to me?" No, but you can sleep next to me, was the compromise; and pillows and comforter, lovey and animals were moved.

Gradually, terror subsided, but he would frequently fuss and cry, tossing and rolling until someone heard him and correctly interpreted that he needed to pee but was too asleep to know what to do about it. (That was back when he did not do a very practiced job of getting his shorts off by himself during the daytime, let alone in the sleepiness of the night.) By then it was an established principle that if he woke in the night, he got rewarded for his pains by getting to sleep next to Daddy.

He would go through periods when he would sleep through the night without waking. Then he began to get up and run by himself to D's side. The little face would peer into the pillow and whisper, "Daddy, can I sleep with you?" D would get up, take him to pee, move all his essentials, and tuck him in, with Parker radiating contentment. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and find D and P, one high in the bed and one low on the floor, in the exact same sleeping position, as alike as two peas.

One night recently, Parker arrived with pillow in hand and flopped down wordlessly in the usual place. D had to force him up for the bathroom trip, and he was asleep again before the accoutrements were tucked around him.

Last night, D and I woke to find Park turning on the closet light and then closing the door most of the way, which D always does to give a less overwhelming illumination in the bathroom. Parker peed and then came and lay down on his comforter. He graciously accepted when Daddy offered to bring his pillow, etc.

D found the PJ shorts in Parker's bed, where he had taken them off himself preparatory to using our bathroom!

26-Jan-09 - The Orchestra

2009-01-26T17:29:00.001-08:00

This is a story dictated by Liam (5yrs old), after his first trip to the Greenville Symphony Orchestra. He had been begging to "see an orchestra," and I could tell by the way that he was asking what it was and how you played it that he thought it was one instrument that required about 100 people to operate. A few videos on YouTube piqued his interest but also frustrated him with their lack of quality visual explanation. These boys are good about sitting still in church, so in honor of their January/February birthdays, we decided to take them to see the real thing.

The Orchestra

Yesterday I went to see an orchestra. I saw lots of instruments and people. They turned the lights off when they were ready to play, but they left the lights on on the stage so we could see the players better. When they were first about to start, there was a speaker talking. Then the conductor came out and talked into the microphone. Then he turned around and conducted the orchestra.

The music did not sound like I wanted it to. I wanted it to sound like Vivaldi. I like Vivaldi's ["Four Seasons"] tune better. I was fine with this music, but I don't really want to hear it again. I liked the timpani best, and the conductor. The timpani is lots of different drums that make different sounds. The conductor moved his hands to tell the players how to play, and it looked a little bit like dancing. I wish there had been guitars.

I had to go upstairs to get to my seat because we sat in the balcony. The players were far away, so I was not as close as I wanted to be, but I could see the whole orchestra. After the concert, we went to a restaurant to eat yummy pizza for dinner.

The End

I tried to get Liam to describe for me why he liked Vivaldi better than this selection of overtures written for various Shakespeare productions. Granted, I like Vivaldi better. It is ordered and peaceful, even in its intensity. Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, like the Shakespearean themes they express, are boisterous, passionate, comparatively chaotic. I wanted to see if Liam would express this, so I probed a bit along the emotional line.

"How does Vivaldi's Four Seasons make you feel when you listen to it?" I asked. "Does it make you feel happy?"

"It makes me feel like I like it," he says.

"Well, how did this music make you feel?"

"It made me feel like I wanted to hear Vivaldi."

That's my engineer.

25-Nov-08

2008-11-25T05:34:00.000-08:00

This morning, Parker took a simple Lego structure Liam had built and spontaneously copied it, substituting red for Liam's light blue. (Incidentally, it is a toss-up whether his favorite color is red or green. I think it depends on the particular item and on his mood.) It is the first time he has ever done that, and the most mental and physical dexterity I have ever seen from him in Lego play. Usually he conceives something he wants and asks Liam or me to build it for him.

24-Sep-08 - Seeing Orange

2008-09-24T15:46:00.000-07:00

Parker just said the strangest thing. He had been jumping on the rebounder, and he came into the dining room and stared up at the chandelier (it was off). With an introspective frown, he said to the air in general, "I don't want the orange to come out." He seemed genuinely disturbed, so I probed.

"What orange?"
"The orange up in the sky."
"Where does the orange come out, Parker?"
"Up in the sky." [By this he generally means anywhere in the air above his own height.]
"When does the orange come out?"
"When I get on the truck," he said. We just got the wooden ride-on truck out of the closet yesterday.

I asked if it "comes out" when he jumps on the rebounder. "No," he says, "when I get on the truck." Are they just in the dining room? "Yes. And also in the living room." I asked if it was like little orange lights and he gave me dubious assent.

The only thing I can think of is seeing stars, like maybe he got dizzy on the rebounder. The boys spent a lot of time today spinning in the living room until they fell down. Maybe he kept getting back on his truck after that and associates the sensation with his truck.

It was just so strange. It was one of those moments when you realize there is a whole world inside that little person. That world could be entirely different from anything you have ever known, and you might never realize it. The little guy would have no way of knowing, let alone communicating about it.

Well, anyway, I'll let you know if I see any orange in the air around here.

28-Aug-08 - Math Diary

2008-08-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

We are the fortunate inheritors of the Miquon math materials that my mother used in her tutoring days. I am excited about Miquon because it is a very hands-on, learn-by-exploration approach to math. (I love it when free school supplies turn out to be what you would probably have chosen yourself, after researching and comparing all the options!) Not only that, but it provides such extensive teaching that it covers in 3rd grade what modern schools are covering in 5th and 6th grades. We had already had a play session or two with the Cuisenaire rods, during which time Liam fell in love with the rod track/ruler. But it has been several weeks, if not months, since we picked them up.

Liam is very interested in math and seems to need more structured school/play in general these days. So the other day, while going through all my possible preschooling resources, I picked up the "diary" that came with the materials. I found it so helpful and inspiring that today, for fun, I began to do with Liam some of the relevant activities noted in the diary. Parker, of course, tagged along for the ride.

I was so astonished by what I saw in our "math time" that I decided to keep my own diary.

Of course, Liam is only 4.5, and the materials are intended to start in first grade. But there is no reason we can't start exploring. The whole point of Miquon is that the kids decide what they are ready for and when, and there is no pressure to perform to a certain standard.

26-Aug-08 - All Grown Up

2008-08-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. But I feel like I don't have a baby anymore. Last Thursday, he weaned himself. Just like that.

He has not really wanted mo-juice for a while, but when he goes to bed, he feels like he has rights he has to exercise and maintain. So he would go through the motions: "Can I have mo-juice?" "Yes," I would sigh, knowing that this is going to end shortly and preferring to let him be the one to terminate it.

But Thursday, after literally two seconds, he said, "Switch sides!" Then after two more seconds he pulled away and looked at me like, "Well, so now what?" So now we just read before we go to bed and he doesn't even ask for m-j anymore. Except in the occasional offhand reference; as in, "Can I pee, and brush teeth, and have a story, and have mo-juice and go to bed?" But when it comes down to actualities, the m-j never gets factored in.

Oh, and the other night he asked to not have a diaper at night. Since he has been keeping them consistently dry, I said sure. He stayed beautifully dry for three or four nights. Then last night he wet the bed. Hardly surprising, really, considering that Liam did not even day train until he was older than Parker is now, and it took Liam a full year before we began to try to motivate him to night train. And we're talking eleven or twelve straight hours without waking up.

Fortunately, Parker is young enough that it does not hurt his feelings (or his ego) to go back to diapers. When I put one on him tonight, he did not even comment. It does not bother me for him to keep wearing them. We still have a bunch left, so we may as well use them... and he has plenty of time to finish growing up!

*****

The boys love to play racquetball. Not being allowed any balls in the house, they have to pretend with plain old air and the make-do racquets of the day (lately they have chosen the little wooden apple trees from their Christmas train set). They reach into their ottoman "basket" and pull out an air "ball," then swing the little "racquet" at it and yell "bigGANG," which Liam says is the sound the ball makes when it bounces off the wall.

The other day I heard Liam saying over and over, "I'm warming!" He has yet to notice that when other sportsmen say it they always include that strange, useless little preposition: warming up.

"I'm warming!" Liam states. Parker replies, "I'm hotting... It's ready!" You can see the wheels turning as Liam tries to figure out what to do with this. "Well," he says to Parker, "right now we're just starting, so we're just warming. In the middle of the game you can say that."

26-Aug-08 - 15 Seconds at the Lunch Table

2008-08-26T08:52:00.001-07:00

Momo spills a tall cup of purple fruit smoothie all over the table. She holds up her thick canvas apron, which she is thankfully still wearing, to catch what is dripping straight into her lap.

Daddy stares, catatonic.

"Help me!" Momo squeals!

Daddy leaps into action and then realizes he does not know what he should be doing.

"Towels!" suggests Momo.

"Where?" wonders bewildered Daddy.

"Paper towels!" Momo concedes.

Momo begins schlooping shake across the table and back into her cup with her hand.

Daddy reappears with the roll of paper towels and hands some to Momo.

Liam gags on his toast and spits it up onto his plate.

Momo begins to smear purple goop across the table with the paper towels, and Daddy moves around the table to Liam.

Parker pipes up, "I need to poop!"

21-Aug-08 - Piggybank Books

2008-08-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

Look!
Look, look, look!
See Liam read.
See Liam read his Dick and Jane book.
Happy Liam!
Thank you, Grape!
Thank you for our Dick and Jane book!

Oh, look.
See the piggy banks!
Funny little piggy banks.
Liam has a blue piggy bank.
Parker has a pink piggy bank.
Do they have coins?
Yes! They do have coins!

Oh, oh, oh!
We can go to the store.
See us go to the store.
See us go to the store to get a new book.

Look, Liam!
Here is a new Dick and Jane book.
Sally has a car.
See Sally go.
See Spot and Puff go!
See Jane and Dick go!
Go, go, go!
Liam has a piggy bank.
Liam can get a new book.

Oh, see!
Parker has a Biscuit book.
Get the ball, Biscuit!
See Biscuit get his ball.
No, no, no!
Oh, Biscuit!
See Biscuit in the mud!
Silly Biscuit!
Parker has a piggy bank.
Parker can get a book too.

Come, Liam.
Come, come.
See Liam hold his coins.
See Liam get his book.
Go, Liam! Go, go, go!
Go read the new book!

Come, Parker.
Come, come.
See Parker hold his coins.
See Parker get his book.
Here, Parker!
Here is the new book!

Look!
See the piggy banks.
See the blue piggy bank.
See the pink piggy bank.
Do they have coins?
They have little coins.
We can not get a new book now.

Liam likes his Dick and Jane book.
Liam likes to read fast, fast, fast!

13-Aug-08 - Reading

2008-08-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

Parker has figured out that Liam can read, and this means that Liam can read to him. It started the other day when I suggested that Liam read a story to Parker that we had read together the night before. So this morning Parker brings a book to Liam and asks, "Can you wead a Parker?" Liam, full of power, stated curtly, "Not yet!"

This produced instant disintegration. "He won't let me!" Parker comes crying to me. So first we had a chat about the way we phrase things. "No thank you, not yet," magically produces acceptance from Parker, while something terse spoken from Liam's high horse squashes Parker's feelings every time. Then I explained to Parker that Liam might need time to look the book over first, because he has never read it by himself. So the boys went to separate chairs with separate books. After a minute or two, Liam announced, "Ok, I can! Parker, do you want to come here so I can read to you?" "Ok!" says an eager Parker. And Liam read him the book. It was an existential moment for a parent!

This was I Love You When, a Gap publication that Babcia picked up with some clothes for them once. It was a toddler favorite, but we have not looked at it in months. Liam only bogged down over a couple of words, and I was able to supply help from the next room, where I was working on the computer. But after a few pages, the boys ran into a different kind of trouble. Parker wanted to talk about the book, and Liam found this frustrating.

"Daddy," Liam complained as Damian walked through to fill his water bottle, "he's talking and he can't hear me, and I want him to hear what I'm saying!" I pointed out that I have the same problem with Liam himself, but this was sort of lost on him. Damian suggested that perhaps Liam could let Parker talk about the item that interested him and then keep reading when Parker was done, but Liam was not keen on this.

"Parker," he said when Damian had left again, "you have to be quiet or I'm not going to read to you." More comments from Parker. "Ok, Parker, then I'm just not going to read until you can be quiet." More talking. More uber frustration from Liam: "Parker, do you want me to read the words to you?" "No," says Parker.

Next I hear silence from Liam and some frustrated grunts and "Give me space!" from Parker. So Parker was told that if he needs space he has to move to the other chair. He did, with the book. He continued his monologue about the pictures, and Liam was left sucking his lovey despondently in the original chair.

Well, Liam, welcome to the joys of older-brothering a toddler.

7-Aug-08 - Back from the Beach

2008-08-07T04:43:00.000-07:00

We drove to N. Myrtle Beach on Friday. It was a pretty easy trip, going at least. It took us about 4.5 hrs, during which the kids were quiet and content. We got to the beach in time to go to the ocean for an hour or so in the evening. We stayed four nights, hit the beach our last morning there, and left early afternoon to be home by bedtime.

Coming home was a bit rougher. Parker slept for 2.5 hours and then everyone was ready to be done with riding in the car. We stopped for dinner to break up the trip, but I'm not sure it helped. The last half hour found me sitting between them, going through just about every item in my activity bag in a desperate attempt to keep them occupied. It wasn't working too well, but I finally reached for the ocean-themed lacing cards. At last we had found something captivating, but somehow there was a lot of flailing of arms and I was getting socked on the bean more than I cared for. I was really starting to feel like I was sitting between Larry and Curly, which I guess would make me Mo(e).

Yesterday we did not leave the house. I spent the day trying to figure out which end was up and slowly putting away our post-beach clutter. The boys alternated between reacquainting themselves with their toys and feeling thoroughly bored.

Parker keeps asking if we can go to the beach. He took it up a notch this morning. He is bringing his swim trunks for Damian to put on. D got out the special cars that came from Poland, leftover from his and Artur's childhood, because Park was interested in nothing else.

D thinks maybe next year we should stay the full week. These boys went from having Babcia as a full-time babysitter at an oceanside resort to the bone-dry where-did-our-routine-go-again? with Daddy back at work and Momo tired! At least if we went Friday to Friday we would come home to another weekend, with Daddy available to help ease the transition back to the real world.

I don't know. As heartbreaking as it is, in a way, to hear Parker's confused little plea, "Can we go to the beach? Why can't we go to the beach?" I think that the dailiness of life would disappoint them no matter when they had to settle for it.

1-Aug-08 - House Tennis and Smoke

2008-08-01T04:50:00.000-07:00

Liam has built tennis racquets out of legos. He is using the round door-openings from his lego "tubes experiment" set for the racquet head, so it really does look like a racquet (if you ignore the fact that a ball would actually go straight through the opening). It's really good for him because he can see for himself that to really swing the thing for real would cause the legos to fly apart. So he goes around the house make little gentle, understated swings, catching it over his shoulder the way his Tiny Tots coach has taught him to follow through: "Forehand, and pause. Backhand, and pause. This is a serve."

He mentally turns the basket under the black shelves into a ball machine. "Parker, get out of the way, because the balls are coming. Now I hit this one back into the machine... Ok, Parker, one is coming to you..." Parker gets behind him and they use their hands as racquets, loveys having been banned from this game. Or else they get the big exercise ball and bounce it back against the black shelves. When it rebounds toward them, it's another ball coming from the machine.

*****

Yesterday I was making something in the oven and apparently a stray particle from a former meal started to burn on the oven floor. The smoke detector gave two or three beeps, which riveted the boys. Liam came into the kitchen, "Momo, you're burning it! You're burning it! Momo!!" Apparently I was not exhibiting enough agitation for him. When I convinced him I had it under control, Liam would go back into the hall and say, "Come on, Parker, you wanna see the smoke? The smoke is over here, Parker." Parker followed Liam into the hall, hunched over and peering up in awe at the round thing on the ceiling like it was a visitation from the god of smoke and red beeping lights.

A few minutes later I was having to explain to Liam that the red light on the smoke detector does not mean it's hot, it means there's smoke. A green light means there is no smoke. He went around repeating that: "Red means there's smoke, green means there's no smoke." When we were sitting at the table 45 minutes later, Parker suddenly spit out the cryptic but intelligent, "Red do smoke and no green smoke."

28-Jul-08 - The Color of Envy is Brown

2008-07-28T15:22:00.000-07:00

Or is it Blue?

Remember how Liam said that now that we have two UPS trucks we don't have to fight over them any more?

One day I was on the phone with my mom, and as usual I was having a double conversation with my kids. This is why I don't talk to very many people on the phone. The dominance fluctuates between the home side and the phone side, with an approximate ratio of 1 sentence to 5... and all too often it is 5 for the home side and only 1 to the phone. My mom is one of very few people who can put up with this. Or maybe she is one of very few people that I can handle on the other end of the phone while I put up with this.

So I was on the phone with my mom, and all of a sudden she broke into uncontrollable chuckles. What she had just heard me say was, "No, Parker, you don't need two UPS trucks. Give one to Liam." So much for solving the problem of UPS envy by giving Liam his own.

Liam actually started it. He took both UPS trucks one day while Parker was doing something else and announced that one was a UPS truck and one was a FedEx truck. (Never mind that we have a Matchbox-sized FedEx van. This is apparently not satisfying, especially as the scale of the UPS truck makes the van look even smaller.) Of course Parker picked up on this idea, and so it was Liam who was screaming because his brother was hogging both trucks.

I told Parker to give one of the trucks to Liam. Next thing I knew, Liam was screaming because he wanted the other one. I began to calmly explain to him that they were both the same and it did not matter, but he was babbling hysterically about the one with the blue on the back. I looked, and sure enough... the older truck has been banged around too much in the bucket with the other cars, and somehow the painted glaze from one of the other cars rubbed a blue streak onto the back door of the UPS truck. Of course, the moment Liam wanted that, Parker tuned in and developed an immediate passion for blue streaks.

Now what??

Fortunately, my mom had retained her sanity on the other end of the phone. "The first thing you do," she said, "is see if the blue can be removed." Ah, yes, with a little scrubbing -- no more blue streak. Then a permanent marker left a sufficiently visible L and P on the respective black undersides of each UPS truck. When Liam got down from his 10-minutes-for-whining time in the brown chair, he was told that the blue streak "came off." Additional whining was cut short by the discovery of the personalized initials, of which he thoroughly approved. Parker promptly forgot that there had ever been a blue streak once Liam stopped harping on it.

And they all lived happily ever after... so far.

23-Jul-08 - Graduated!

2008-07-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening Liam finished lesson 100 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Towards the end there, we were really just trying to get through it, although the regular practice time was certainly beneficial. They ended with a pretty stupid story about an old man hunting a tiger that turned out to be tame. Liam much preferred the mouse and the bed bugs. I'm rather glad to be able to move on to my own material now, although I was certainly impressed with the way the book transitioned him from non-reader into being able to sound out completely new words.

Today the boys got their final Matchbox cars - Liam got one every 10 lessons, as promised early on when he found the challenge of learning to read to be too frustrating. Liam got a dark green Land Rover [Excuse me, RANGE Rover; this distinction is important to Damian. But he admits that he did tell us originally it was a Land Rover to avoid confusion - ha!] with a trailer hitch and Parker got a gold Porsche convertible. But the crowning touch, as a graduation celebration, was that Liam got his own UPS truck. He came to me a little while later and said, "Now we have two UPS trucks... Now we don't have to fight over the UPS trucks anymore!"

*****

Liam seems very tired lately. At least, he says he is. I tell him to get dressed and he cries out, "I'm just so tired of putting things on and taking them off!" You would think I ran a 3-hr daily fashion show. He is tired of having "10-minute church," which we usually do twice a day. He is tired of this, tired of that.

I had to send him to the brown chair again. The policy has become more clear cut lately. Whining automatically gets the perpetrator 10 minutes in the brown chair. Fighting gets them both 15 minutes. The timer is set, and there is no more "Can I get down yet?" to deal with (or at least, there is a pat answer). As Liam went to the chair just now, he screamed, "I'm so tired of climbing up in this chair!"

I notice he is not tired of swinging a tennis racquet on the courts in the 101-degree sun.

21-Jul-08 - Why-ning

2008-07-21T06:04:00.001-07:00

We are a little sick of all the "why" questions from Liam. Now, I am all for encouraging a child to explore the world around him, but this "why-ning" business is no longer profitable. It has ceased to be an expression of natural curiosity and has become simply a legal way to whine.

We have started telling him, "Oh, that's a physics question. When you're older we can learn about that," or, "Oh, that's a why question. I can't answer those until you are eight."

18-Jul-08

2008-07-18T05:24:00.000-07:00

The first thing Park said this morning was, "Can I go on the court?" When Damian said not right now, he took it up a notch. "Can I go on the court and play tennis??" Then it was, "Can I go play tennis and swim?" Finally he resorted to, "Can I watch tennis?"

*****

The boys are always coming to me saying, "Ooooops...." This tells me nothing. I don't know whether to drop everything and run to clean up dripping liquid or broken glass, or if a piece of paper simply fell off a shelf.

Yesterday I hear Parker say, "Ooooops..." Liam says to him, "Honey, oops doesn't tell me anything. Say 'uh-oh' instead, and that tells me something."

17-Jul-08 - Petite Passion

2008-07-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

Liam has a new and all-consuming passion: Tennis.

We breathe, sleep and eat tennis... literally. This morning Liam looked up from his bowl of grits and announced, "Look -- it's a tennis court!" The white space in the middle is the court (Daddy added the net). The round heap surrounding it is where the fans sit. At the base of each court are "the locker rooms." Picture an aerial view of Center Court at Wimbledon, and you've got it.

Since he was old enough to throw things (somewhere around 14 months?), if it had a ball and something to hit it with, Liam was all over it. Baseball, tennis, golf... we could have started him on any of it, and he would have gone like a fish to water. One of the boys' favorite activities this summer has been to play in the driveway with ping pong paddles and a tennis ball (well, a tennis ball each). Damian would sometimes take Liam into the street to hit the ball back and forth with the paddles. The little basketball goal got plenty of use, too; but rather than just throwing the ball, Liam wants to hit it.

We have been feeling the effects of being cooped up in a town home with no yard, and we were searching for something and somewhere that would let us take these boys out of the house and wear them out. Weekend walks at Furman, with Liam riding his bike alongside, were just not cutting it. By the time we had finished streaming two weeks of live Wimbledon on the computer at breakfast and lunchtime, during which time the boys spent nearly every waking moment using their lovey-blankets as "racquets" to hit wadded up kleenex "balls," it was obvious what we needed to do. So we set out to find some tennis courts.

We ended up with a five-day free trial of a local sports club. The indoor saline pool was a big hit. Both boys quickly overcame their distrust of the water, each in their different ways, and came to the final conclusion that they were having a blast. But where they most want to be is on a court. Yesterday Parker said to me in his irresistible little whine, "Can we play tennis on a court with a racquet and a ball?"

I took Liam to a Tiny Tots tennis program last Thursday. There was only one other girl there, and Liam jumped right in. We had to borrow a racquet from the teacher, and it was too big for him, but he was game to try. He only got about 20 minutes of hitting time, and it nowhere near filled up his sports tank. On Saturday we started our day by watching Damian test out the tennis social at the sports club. The boys spent that hour in the nearby grass with their ping pong paddles. Then we took Liam to see an elite tennis coach in the area who was willing to take a look at him for free. We were thinking that it was totally overkill to set a four-year-old up with an expensive coach, but at least we would get some ideas about how to get Liam into the game.

Well, Liam ate it up. Warwick Bashford spent about half an hour with him, taking him through various exercises that gave him an idea of Liam's potential. With a real racquet in his hand for only the second time (and the first that was the right size), Liam was eliciting comments like, "He's a fast learner... He's not your typical four-year-old... It's nice to see a kid with some real talent for a change." The bottom line: If we want him to teach our son, this coach who helped Michael Chang prepare for Roland Garros at the French Open is willing to take Liam on.

I would love to let him coach Liam. I don't care what Liam does or does not do with his tennis, but this guy, as we later discussed with Liam, has "teaching smarts." He is out to teach a discipline in such a way that the learning process is more valuable than the acquisition of the actual skills. He would be for Liam what my violin teacher was for me: a valuable craftsmaster and authority figure outside the home sphere. This is doubly important when you intend to home school.

For me, this marks a rite of passage for Liam. He is no longer a little preschooler. He's ready to move on to a bigger, older way of learning. The way he interacts with Warwick is so eager and unaffected, so sponge-like. You might think it's just as silly as we did to start a four-year-old in private tennis lessons, but whether we commit to them or not, he is ready for them.

At the end of their time together, Liam asked Warwick, "So do you want to do that [exercise] again, or do you want to do something else?" A half hour does not come anywhere close to exhausting his interest. I have yet to determine at what point Liam actually gets tired of hitting the ball around, but it is well past two hours.

I have taken the boys a couple of times to the courts myself. Give Parker a racquet and his own ball, and you can pretty much check in with him a couple of hours later. What he does with them looks a little more like golf than tennis, but he is happy as a clam to have a whole tennis court to roam around in... especially if the court is right next to the trees, where he can find a few stray fallen leaves to poke around in and some bugs to examine. And Liam... Last time as we were leaving, a woman in the next court over commented to me, "You're starting him young, huh?" I replied, "I can't stop him!" We don't have time to stay long enough to really tire him, but as Warwick pointed out, it's good to make him walk away still hungry for more.

Liam said something to Damian when I was out for a rare moment alone the other day. Unfortunately, the exact syntax is lost in a paternal shuffle of dishes and storytelling and bed-putting, but Liam essentially said that he is just not happy unless he is playing tennis. Parker now replaces his usual "my name is John Piper" with the simple statement, "I'm Federer." (He pronounces this "Fedder.") Both boys mope around all day until I say we can get in the car and go to the courts.

I'm hoping this is just a stage, because the whole cooped-up-in-a-town-home thing is much worse than it was when we first diagnosed the problem. We basically have 2.5 hours of contentment on the court, with about 9.5 hours of disgruntled whining the rest of the day. Part of this may be sheer fatigue. We go out into the hot sun and run around for a long while every afternoon. You would think this would make them sleep like babes, but no! I think they are both too excited; it takes Liam a good two hours past his bedtime to fall asleep lately.

This morning I bought everyone a little while of quiet happiness by suggesting that Liam take all his LEGOs and build me the biggest thing he has ever built. He whined about this at first, but then he got into the idea of building a house. It turned into something more like a country club. There is a parking garage right next to the tennis court, "in case they want to go home and come back again." The locker rooms are way over to the right, up those stairs. And if the court looks a little crowded, it's because the blue and red squares are "boxes of balls," and the yellow ones are racquets.
One racquet is for Federer, and one is for Nadal.

16-Jul-08 - Reading Lesson 97

2008-07-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

When Liam was just about Parker's age, he still wasn't talking all that much. He could make his point clear, but he was nowhere near as efficiently articulate as Park is. At the time, we had windows right next to our dining table, and outside of one of those windows sat a lovely planter of flowers, courtesy of Babcia, on a stand where we could see them. We removed that window screen so that we could open the window and Liam could help me water the flowers without having to walk the long way around the apartment building to the back.

One day as we were sitting there eating, Liam was staring at the bouquet outside. He suddenly gulped down the remains of the food he was chewing, opened his eyes wide like saucers -- for just a second Damian and I both felt like we were watching a cartoon, where the character's overlarge, star-specked, eyelash-batting eyes imply the epitome of eager, innocent cuteness -- and suggested, "Water flowers??" Only, in his two-year-old speech it came out, "Vah fows??" We cried laughing.

This evening, we were working on reading lesson 97 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. As usual, there was a short list of words for him to read before he got to the actual story. He frequently fits the word into a sentence so he can show me that he understands what word we're talking about, but we did not do that for the first several words - until he read "shine." Then he turned to me and, in an older, milder version of the cartoon moment described above, he said, "Shine upon you." For a second I just stared at him, thinking, "Why does he know that phrase?" Then I burst out laughing. Of course, since he was tiny, he has been listening to Michael Card's lullaby album Sleep Sound in Jesus. The final song is from Num. 6.25: "...the Lord make His face shine upon you."

The story starts, "A mouse had a house that shined." By the time he read that far, he had forgotten all about our previous joke, so he went into gales of giggles when I turned to him and added, "...upon you!"

He read the word "very" as if it were "ferry." I asked him if he was sure that was a "fff" sound, and he corrected, "Vewy... but we say thewy." "No," I replied, "that's what you say!" He has always said his r's like w and his v's like th - but only in some words. "Very" gets turned into "thewy," but "hard" and "vacuum" stay regular. Now he is old enough to produce the correct sounds, at least when he sounds words out. A phonics-type aural approach built into the reading lessons has definitely made him more aware of the sounds he hears around him. But he goes back to old habits in his normal speech.

The last word in his list was "dust." He frequently mixes up d and b, so he confidently read the word as "bust." We corrected that, and when he encountered it in the story he read it correctly. But when I asked him, "What was the mouse doing with that rag?" he repeated, "Picking up every bit of bust." It was not a joke; his mind had just played a trick on him and inverted the letter in his memory.

If the amount of laughter going on in our lesson was a good indication, then we were getting merrier and merrier.

*****

Actually, "r" is frequently pronounced as y, as in "fahy" for "far" and "Pahykew" for Parker.

14-Jul-08 - The Strength of Reality

2008-07-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening Liam told me, "Jesus is the strongest man. He's the ever man we've seen."

In his nightly Bible story, we read the one about Jesus calming the storm. (He can pretty much read the entire story himself, sight unseen, by the way.) We know two songs about that: Michael Card's "Asleep in the Bow," and the hymn "Master, the Tempest is Raging" by Mary A. Baker, which has been Liam's favorite since he was old enough to ask for it.

I asked him if Jesus ever says, "Peace, be still" to us. His heart knew instantly what I meant. We talked about how when we're angry and upset we can't say "peace, be still" to ourselves. But He can come in and say it - and it's wonderful, as Liam agreed. Every time we talked about His saying "peace, be still," Liam would lean his head on my shoulder.

Today we happened to have another story that has a song attached. It was the "talitha cumi" story, where Jesus raises the twelve-year-old girl from the dead. So I sang Liam Michael Card's "Talitha Koumi." It is sung from the girl's perspective, but Liam was able to pick out when she was narrating, and when the father was doing something, and when Jesus was speaking. He would point to each character in the picture at the appropriate moments.

"Talitha Koumi" is by far the best song on Close Your Eyes So You Can See. I can remember when Liam was in the womb and I listened teary-eyed, all pregnantly emotional over it. Actually, the first time he heard that album, Liam fell in love with "Make Me a Miracle." When he was two, I did what was possibly a mistake and put it on auto-repeat for him. After that, he wanted it on auto-repeat ALWAYS. He would listen and say, "Liam singing!"

When he was a little older, he figured out where the auto-repeat button was on the CD player in his room, and every time I put that CD in for him, I would come in hours later and find "Make Me a Miracle" still going. Tonight as I put him to bed, I got out that album for the first time in months. Sure enough, "Talitha Koumi" went on auto-repeat.

One of the questions at the end of our story was, "How did Jesus make the little girl well?" Liam responded, "He said to her, 'Little girl, get up.'" I said, "Yes, she responded to His voice. Do you ever hear His voice?" The shy smile on his face made me feel triply sorry for families who think that Jesus is just a religious figure. My children know what - and Who - is real. One look at their faces confirms that.

About six months ago, I remember having to give a rebellious Liam his first really big spanking. He curled up in my lap and cried, "It's too big. I don't like big spankings." I asked him if he ever heard the voice of Jesus saying [pseudo-whisper], "Liam! Liam! Come my way!" He nodded and said "yes!" I said, "He speaks very quietly, doesn't He? And when you're so busy running around saying, 'My way! My way! I'm not listening!' then you can't hear him. That's why Momo sometimes has to give you big spankings to stop you in your tracks." (He thought that was funny because I gave an illustration that involved sudden motion.) "I need something big enough to get all the way into your heart and make you stop so that you can hear Jesus. He is saying softly, 'Liam, I love you! Come love me, Liam!'" After a moment Liam reiterated, "He speaks dewy qwietly."

In those moments, the instant surety in Liam's voice, in his nodding answers and in the look on his face, is simply priceless. It is the difference between a response to an idea and a response to reality. He doesn't just think he agrees with the rhetoric I've been feeding him. He knows. The answer spills out of him almost before he can fully take in the question.

The peace with which he lays his head down on my shoulder, the joy in his voice as he sings along, "'Talitha koumi' He spoke like a song..." These make me think of another of Card's songs - the title song on Close Your Eyes So You Can See. "There's a way," he says, "that a child can look at the world and see through the eyes of the heart..."

So close your eyes so you can see
What it must have been like to be
A little girl or boy who knows
And walks with Jesus as they grow

11-Jul-08

2008-07-11T06:05:00.001-07:00

Parker is getting me up at 5 am to take him to pee (with a dry diaper), and Liam has wet the bed two nights running. Go figure.

10-Jul-08 - Polarized Preferences

2008-07-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

"I like Dziadek better," Liam announces randomly one day as we are backing the car out for errands, "because Dziadek is stronger." Then follows one of our many discussions on relative strengths. Dziadek, according to Liam, is strongest to lift heavy things, to attach the boat to the trailer hitch, to make coffee... but Babcia is unquestionably stronger to cook and garden.

The other night, as I put Parker to bed, I asked him, "So, Parker, what did you do today?" He swells visibly when I do this, proud to be conversing with me unhindered by competition. "Um, der's bunnies," he says, pointing to his quilt. "Brown bunnies." We talk our way around the room, going through more pictures of bunnies. "Der's a white bunny. Der's a brown bunny... Der's Grampa!"

This last comment refers to a framed picture of a man's hand holding a little child's. It's actually a Father's Day card we sent to Grampa Bug. The inside reads, "Grampa, times spent with you are the very best." When I first showed it to Parker, he screamed, "That's Grampa!! That's Parker!!" Granted, it was in the context of sending Grampa a card, but still - Parker is the one who made an immediate, personal connection with the picture. He was devastated to find that we had mailed it. "Wanna see Grampa again!" he sobbed. What, I figured, is the price of a card for his happiness? So back to Wal-Mart we went and came home with another. I framed it in the little white square frame in his room. It's perfect there. The blurred grass of the backdrop exactly matches the green in their room. And Parker seemed satisfied to have permanent visual access to this magical picture.

Parker loves all his grandparents. He is just as likely to ask to go to Babcia's and Dziadek's house as to go the mountains. But he does have a fascination with Grampa Bug. Liam, a daddy's boy from day one, kind of tends more toward the grandmothers. But Parker, who adores his daddy but has a deeply embedded context in which Momo figures as the quintessential heroine, has always gravitated toward the men of his family. He will have nothing to do with my mom if he has any other options. Momo and Daddy are highest on the list as a matter of principle (never, for a moment, let your parents think that you can get along without them, says the Twelve Steps to Perfect Parents: Effective Management from Day 1 manual Parker was born with), but after the grand statement has been made for the parents' benefit, Grampa is his companion of choice in the mountains. This is a little bit comical, as my dad - while he is as doting a grampa as ever lived and plays a mean basketball game with the toddler-sized hoop on the deck - does not exactly have what you would call a knack for babysitting. (It's a good thing dirty diapers are a thing of the past, because they are just not in it for this grampa.)

Of course, it's not like this love affair is all-exclusive. These boys have done nothing but talk about Dziadek and his boat since they went out with him for the first time on Father's Day. In general, Parker asks to go see Babcia and Dziadek at least twice a week. And if you get him past the part where he tries to throw his weight around for show, he is perfectly happy to spend a few hours playing with Gramma.

It is funny how these fixations come and go. I'm sure it happens in every family, but these boys are so fortunate. Kids are very sensitive to family dynamics. I am glad that they are secure enough in their grandparental love to feel they can play with these temporary ideas of favoritism and rejection.

9-Jul-08

2008-07-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

One day recently I heard Liam and Parker in the bathroom, where they had simultaneous business. Liam, perched up on the commode, likes to put his toes on the step stool for support. Parker, sitting lower to the floor on his potty, was jockeying for use of the stool. "No, baby," Liam tells him. "You don't need it, because you are big enough for your feet to reach the floor. I'm not big enough yet."

8-Jul-08 - Conniving, Copycatting and Conversing

2008-07-08T06:19:00.000-07:00

The fact is that Parker is a bit more devious than Liam. He pushes Liam's buttons subtly and silently and then sits back and watches the show. All day long, every day, what you hear from the next room is the absence of sound as Parker maneuvers Liam, and then the very audible sounds of Liam's reaction. "Momo!" Liam shriek-whines. "He won't..."

To put it differently, Liam is in a way more innocent than Parker. You do get plenty of table-turning, where Liam pulls one on his brother. But he tends to copy the methods Parker thinks up. His own style is more direct. It really cracked me up when we had all that fighting over the UPS truck the first day I brought the cars back. It was like watching a cartoon. One of them would see that the other had absentmindedly put the truck down and would tiptoe-dash with those springy, hunch-back steps of the caricatured thief to snatch it up. You could practically hear the little "dink dink dink" sound effect. When Parker did it, he just quietly took it into his own corner to play. When it was Liam doing the snatching, he absolutely could not sneak off with it. He would wrap his arms around it and hold it to his bosom in the caricatured pose, but he would swivel from Parker to me with a look of wild defiance that may as well have been a neon sign on his forehead: "I took it! I couldn't help myself! What are you going to do about it?"

I feel a little sorry for Liam, at the mercy of his brother as he is. Right at the moment he is getting the short end of the stick. But I cannot stand over Parker's shoulder all day to make sure he is playing fair, and I will not tolerate Liam's constantly running whining to Momo. It gets pretty comical sometimes. Liam breaks down and cries while playing with cars on the rug. "Momo, he's telling me what I don't want to hear!! I just don't want to hear things like that!!"

I pretty much tell Liam he has to find his own way of dealing with it. "I understand he is not always nice to you," I tell Liam, "and I can also understand if you feel like I'm not being fair. But sometimes I have to handle you differently from the way I handle Parker, and we are not going to have this whining." It is hard to know you are not being fair. But life is not fair, and who said parenting would not follow that model? Even though Liam is too young to understand it, there really are times when nipping one evil in the bud is more expedient than addressing the other evil that provoked it.

I have tried to help Liam by explaining how he can put a stop to Parker's teasing. Park only pushes buttons because he gets reliable results. "You just have to say, 'Oh, well...' and go do something else," I say, "and Parker will quickly get tired of trying to make you mad." But it's over his four-year-old head, naturally, and too much for his little four-year-old heart. He resorts to copycatting Parker's devious little pokes right back at him. But Liam is not subtle, and I catch him quicker. Poor guy!

Parker does do some copying of his own. "Why???" he whines whenever I say something. Two-and-a-half is just too young to start with the why questions, but his brother has shown him the proper way to behave. It's hard to tell how much he understands what he is asking. I think he has figured out that "why" is another way of asking "what are you doing?" But whether there is comprehension or not, believe me, anything Liam does Parker is capable of imitating with finesse.

One thing you've gotta hand Parker: he has mastered the art of conversation. At his age, Liam was far too busy doing things to converse about them. Parker, by the time he turned two, was initiating conversations like this:

"Da[dd]y?"
"Yes, Parker?"
"[What are you] Doing?"

"Da-y? Doing?" was heard forty times a day. Eventually this has progressed to "Daddy? Wha' y' doing?"

Outside on his bike-slash-imaginary-motored-vehicle, Liam will determine a new and better place for the ignition. "Parker!" he calls out. "Yes?!" Parker calls from ten yards down the sidewalk, where he is walking the toy lawnmower. "Look!" calls Liam. "This is where my key goes!" "Oh!" Parker calls back agreeably. Then, with a cheerful frown, "I don't see it!!" That's my little conversationalist.

He is poking his chin over the counter now, knowing that his breakfast is cooling, and asking, "Can I have dem oats?"

Liam is sitting down at the table, announcing, "Soon it's going to be time for bed." "It's only breakfast," I say. "We have to get through lunch and dinner before it's bedtime." "Yeeees," Liam says. "I know that. I'm just saying it's almost."

5-Jul-08

2008-07-05T04:54:00.001-07:00

Parker, as I may have mentioned, is a morning person. So it is not too unusual to find Parker, me, and sometimes their daddy all congregated in the boys' room somewhere around 6:30 am, before Liam is awake. Was it yesterday, or the day before...? There we were, picking out the day's clothes, with Damian hovering in the doorway. Liam suddenly rolled out of bed, hit the floor, and announced, "Here I come!"

*****

Two days ago, Parker was looking at a photo slideshow on my computer. (I put it on sometimes when they're eating because it absolutely rivets them. It tends to make for a calmer meal.) With perfect clarity, he commented, "Tha's Daddy. Tha's Parker. Tha's Lee-um." Poof! Just like that, "Ilam" has been displaced by the correct pronunciation. There is a similar experience with Liam, when he suddenly pronounced "L."

*****

Parker kept his diaper dry all night, 2nd or 3rd night in a row.

3-Jul-08

2008-07-03T05:20:00.000-07:00

Parker kept his diaper almost completely dry, which is to say he did use it at some point, but he still saved up a bunch for the morning. And he did not come get me in the night to pee, which he has been doing most nights lately.

*****

I think it is hilarious how Liam provides running commentary even when he's fighting with Parker. "No! No! I'm going to run away!... [thump, thump, thump...]" Parker, who is obviously the one doing most of the bashing, comes chasing after him, imitating, "I'm going a run away."

1-Jul-08

2008-07-01T08:03:00.001-07:00

Liam and I were doing a reading lesson this morning. He read the word "logs," and said, "Like, there's a lot of logs in the fire." The next word was "rocks." Totally deadpan, he says, "Like, there's a lot of rocks in the fire." Then he looked sideways at me to see if I got the joke. We both burst out laughing. The next word was "lived." This time he was unable to contain his mirth as he said, "Like, we lived in the fire!"

*****

Parker, of his own volition, kept his diaper dry ALL NIGHT LONG, from 5:30 pm (he went to bed early) to 6:30 am! As a reward, he got a Matchbox "City Services Water and Power" emergency dispatch van. He was very pleased with it. Fortunately, this coincided with Liam's finishing his 90th reading lesson, which meant he was due for a car as well. But I gave Park his car first (Liam had not yet done the lesson) and told Liam he was old enough to let Parker have something special without having to get in on it. This is the start of a new policy we're slowly beginning to implement, where they are each going to have their own unique territory. They really have taken this "must share everything" policy about as far as they can go with it.

30-Jun-08

2008-06-30T11:23:00.001-07:00

Liam is holding onto the back of Parker's shirt and push-pulling him at a running pace through the house. Park says he is a truck "pulling a trailer" behind him. But Liam says that Parker is a lawnmower, and Liam is the engine that makes him go.

29-Jun-08 - Pretend People

2008-06-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

Liam can't seem to say anything like a real person. Everything he communicates is in a put-on voice. It comes across as part whining, part imitation of Parker's baby pronunciation, and part attention-getting show. He's only four, and I hardly expect him to have perfect consonant production, but most of the time he sounds far more like Parker than he should.

It smacks of self-consciousness. I see in it my own inability at times, growing up, to look some one in the eye and say what I had to say without awkwardness. It reminds me of some of my teenage angst, which is probably one reason it irritates the bananas out of me.

Like me, at his core Liam is one of the great cats, roaring around with a large and confident presence. But the inability to do anything in a small way means you have nowhere to hide. That might be the very thing that makes us sometimes feel so exposed. You're hanging out there for everyone to see, and you don't know how to be subtle, but unexpectedly you find that you really care about what everyone thinks. Suddenly nothing flows as it should; the tide can't be dammed, but it sure crashes around against a lot of obstacles.

There are days when the whole thing is virtually indistinguishable from whining. I have told him many times to say something "like the intelligent four year old you are, and not like a whiny baby." It doesn't help that Parker knows his own power and delights in using it. "Your turn," he says cheerfully, starts to hand over the coveted object, and then changes his mind. He knows full well it will produce an entertaining meltdown from Liam.

At the supper table, Liam asked for something, if you can call what he did "asking." I turned to him and good-naturedly said, "Are you a real person in there? I don't think you are. You sound like a pretend person." He gave a sheepish grin. He knew exactly what I was getting at.

After a moment, he responded, "A pretend person is like whining."

28-Jun-08 - Playing John

2008-06-27T11:29:00.001-07:00

Have I told you about "playing John"? We went regularly, at some point since we moved here, to two different churches in the area. At each one, Liam made an eleven-year-old friend named John. John Piper was Liam's first hero. For a while, he did everything like John. The striped shirt he turned up his nose at for weeks suddenly became his favorite because he wanted to wear "stripes like John."

Now, in our newer church, John Vernon has taken Liam under his wing. "You're my little buddy," he says in his South Carolina drawl, throwing an arm around Liam. At home, Liam and Parker take turns trying to pick each other up, saying, "You're my buddyyyyy!"

Lately they have been doing this thing where they impersonate their friends. Liam says, "My name is John Vernon." Parker responds, "My name is John Piper!" Liam says, "Well, then we haven't seen you in a while!" Eventually, Liam puts on his sunglasses to go outside, and then his name is Aaron - another friend, whose prescription glasses obviously fascinate Liam.

The other day, Liam put together his giant floor puzzle of different kinds of horses and we gave them all names and assigned each of them to one of our friends. Miss Joey had a Missouri Fox Trotter named Monkey Grass. Liam has a very prosaic approach to names. ("This one should be named grass, because he likes to run on the grass...") I had to work hard to get him to permit a poetic twist.

Heather had a Connemarra named Purple Mountain's Majesty (it is standing atop purple mountains in the drawing), Aaron had a Falla Bella named Twilight (purple background), and Torie had a Pinto (with a cactus and sun behind it) named Desert Sunrise. I had an Appaloosa that Liam grudgingly allowed me to name Applesauce, and Damian had a Morgan (drinking from a river) we named Waterfall. Dziadek's Lippizaner was named Fancy, and Babcia's Arabian was named Dziadek, interestingly enough. Liam and Parker both claimed the Thoroughbred. Can you guess what their names were?

Liam's was named John Vernon, and Park's was named John Piper!

27-Jun-08 - Self Training

2008-06-27T05:45:00.000-07:00

Parker is occasionally waking up in the night to tell me he needs to pee. A couple of weeks ago, his screeching woke me up in the wee hours. When I went into his room, I found him throwing a regular tantrum in bed. His nose seemed to be frustrating him. I once watched him sit in a living room chair and sniff exaggeratedly a few times, evidencing a minor obstruction in the nasal passageways, and then bawl out, "It's not working!!! Nose is not working!!!"

That night, however, I could see no indications that he had any real cause for irritation. For about half an hour, both Damian and I tried everything we could think of to snap him out of his bad attitude and make him comfortable. Suddenly, it hit me. Note to potential babysitters: if Park ever wigs out on you, take him to the bathroom and make him try to pee. That's the next thing I tried, and he must have let out 8 ounces!

Poor guy, he has worked so hard to learn to hold it in, and to pee only in the designated spot, that he just can't make himself even semi-consciously let go into the diaper. Contrast this with Liam, who was older than Parker is now when he first began to daytime train, and who would very happily choose to wet the nighttime diaper one more time rather than be bothered with the rigors of visiting the bathroom. Funny thing: after I took Parker to the potty that night, he went right back to sleep.

Last night was probably the third time in the last week that he staggered wailing into my room. By the time I get him to the bathroom, I can see that he has put about half of it into the diaper (it's suddenly quite warm), but he does eliminate the rest into the potty. Parker constantly proves to me that the laissez faire attitude in raising the second child really does produce results. Left alone, he trains himself to master some things earlier than Liam began trying.

I'm hoping he'll teach himself to read by watching Liam.

*****

The UPS truck still lives on the mantle, and now the coveted Matchbox item is the one and only boat trailer. There are only two boats, and one is missing, but that is easily fixed with a little origami. If anyone has any instructions for a working paper trailer, please contact me!

*****

Liam has an innate sports ability that he did not get from me. I still remember my dad trying to teach me to catch a ball when I was about Liam's age. "Keep your eye on the ball. The ball, Cheryl, not my face. Watch the ball." I don't think he was too impressed with me. Liam could throw, and catch, a mean ball when he was two. No one has taught him to throw a paper airplane, either. But he has this instinct that sends my origami creations soaring in an elegant arc, while my efforts always result in a most ungraceful spinning dive.