Goodbyes are hard

Last night I pulled a sheet over myself instead of turning on the air conditioner. Last week I noticed that the angle of the shadows has shifted on the balcony, and the days are perceptibly shorter. The mornings are cool before the sun gets high. The arc of the sun across the sky is lower; it's only a few weeks until the Equinox.

Yesterday I packed up and mailed the first of about five boxes to books plus a few odds and ends to Colombia. All of a sudden it felt real - that we are leaving in a few short days. I almost started crying in a souvenir shop, and then I did start crying while watching Shpresa play with Gabriel.

By far the hardest part of leaving Albania, for me, is saying goodbye to Shpresa. Sure, I'll miss the ubiquity of local fresh fruits and vegetables, macchiato e gjate, roasted eggplant in everything (pizza! quesadillas!), learning Albanian; I'll miss Fun Cafe and the lake. I'll miss walking everywhere and the delicious range of fruit juices available. And I'll miss some of the women from church. But Shpresa has been like a sister to me, more than a friend. Her affection and care for our children has gone far beyond that of a paid employee.

I think part of it is just not knowing if or when we'll be able to come back, thinking of how much the kids will have changed if/when we do, wondering if Gabriel will remember her. She's almost like a second mom to him right now. She gave him his first "solid" food, she was there when he started walking. He talks to her in Albanian.


"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," right? I know our lives are richer for having shared them with her, and I hope she can say the same about us.

Tirana summer

I'm not sure how much you'll hear from me in the next week or so - it's always feast or famine around here, isn't it? Shpresa, our nanny, is away at a church retreat for the next 10 days so my only internet time is while Gabriel is napping (yes, after faking me out for 3 days he went back to his usual mid-day nap). Valerie is playing with Terry's iPad right now - we got a bunch of learning-to-read and beginning math apps that she enjoys a lot. Maybe too much... subject for another post!

Anyway, we have lots of fun things planned for the coming days - trips to Fun Cafe, the pool, Twisty Slide park, Dada's office, maybe even the amusement park one day. Pool time on the balcony. Running up and down the hall with balloons, jumping on the couch, drawing on the floor with markers. Good times ahead!

Pool Time!

Pooh in her happy place - potato chips! 

 Single ladies of Tirana, please take note:

 These are Shpresa's boys - they're so good with G!

Apologies to the random people who got caught in my lens...

The Swing of Things

Can I just say, jet lag SUCKS. I don't think I felt quite right in my body until Saturday, our 7th day since getting back, and I woke up with a complete sense of well-being from head to toe. I almost didn't realize how weird I felt until the feeling dissipated.

Valerie, though, is still struggling to get back into her rhythm. During our second week in the US she dropped her afternoon nap completely, and slept soundly and well every night. But coming back here, working through jet lag, she's been napping every afternoon and then waking during the night for at least 4 hours. So starting on the weekend we've been trying to keep her awake all afternoon. At MCC it was easy, we'd just take her to the Toy Room and she'd be happy as a clam (where did that saying come from, I wonder? Has anyone ever actually measured the happiness of clams? How would you tell?) Here it's such a deeply ingrained part of her routine to go to bed when Gabriel does (especially when Shpresa is here) that it's been hard to create a new routine. 

Yesterday, however was a triumph! Shpresa took both kids - with help from her boys, whom my kids adore - to a pool nearby where they played from like 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.! She packed a picnic lunch and snacks and some toys and off they went. They staggered in just before supper - Valerie took 2 steps into the apartment and threw herself on the floor waiting for someone to take her shoes off for her - Gabriel stumbled over to me holding up his arms and crying "Gak gak! Gak gak!" - neither of them took a nap (G for the 3rd day straight, but he did take one today then). They had so much fun. SO much fun. Valerie was telling me all about the dolphin fountains and elephant slide. It's a little pricey for them to go every day but I think at least once or twice a week for the rest of the summer would be good! 

They slept so well and so long last night, I wish they could go every day. And I got so much work done, too. with the apartment to myself all day! I missed the little boogers, though. 

(Despite what the conjunction of text and photo implies, I didn't knit at all yesterday - this is a sock I knit during the sessions in Akron - a gift for a friend here who's about to have a baby. I'm making matching baby socks too.)

Great Aunt Gin!

These photos are not great, but our moments with Aunt Gin were spectacular. Yes, I'm still talking about our trip to the States :-). Aunt Gin received mail-order packages for us in anticipation of our visit, then organized two family get-togethers for the weekend we were there. She opened her box of toys saved from when her own kids were little and let our kids run all over her house and yard. She cooked delicious food that the kids both ate with gusto, and even watched them for a couple of hours, along with Great Aunt Sheri, while Terry and I went out for a "dinner" alone! (We went to a fast food chain, so I won't call it an actual "meal" with actual "food.") This was possible because both kids took to her immediately and enthusiastically. The words "Aunt Gin's House" were right up there with the magical "Toy Room." The people Valerie warms up to right away are few and very far between, and Aunt Gin is one of the lucky few. Thank you so much for sharing your home, food, toys, hat collection, and heart of gold with us while we were near.

Saying goodbye right before boarding the van to the airport

Akron and Back Again

This post is mostly a random collection of photos and thoughts, I'll try to put up something more coherent later this week.

We had such a good trip. It was hard; 9+ hours on an airplane will tire anyone let alone a sleep-deprived toddler. But it was nothing like the original trip 2 years ago. The return travel was equally tiring and yet overall uneventful, which is a good thing.

The kids - and by extension their parents - LOVED the MCC campus. Green, clean, kid-friendly, safe, and BUNNIES!!!!!

The blue building is the guest house we stayed in. The kids loved the "hammock" chairs (as we called them).

We were able to borrow this double stroller - until the back wheels fell off! We're hard on strollers, I think. It was great during the first few days of jet lag to be able to take the kids out for walks before breakfast (there's not much else to do at 5 a.m. when you're trying not to bother the other guests!)

Oh my gosh. THE TOY ROOM. The child care during the seminar was so, so good. The kids would wake up saying "toy room! Toy room!" every morning. They bonded with the staff and with the other kids - there was a little girl Gabe's age, a boy Valerie's age, and two little girls aged 3 who all played together and it was awesome how much fun they had.

 This is what my kids do when I say "Smile!":

Coming soon: the reason for the trip, what the seminar was all about, and finding Kitty at Aunt Gin's house!

a random assortment of photos

Consider it a basket of Easter candy, from me to you.

Mondays

I love Mondays.

Why? you ask. Monday afternoons I walk across town during Valerie's nap for my weekly language lesson. I get to be a student. I get to ask all my questions - like how do you talk about snacks, naps, and sharing in Shqip when google translate can't give you a word for any of those?

Mondays Shpresa is here all day and I can practice Shqip with her too, and talk about the kids with an experienced mom/babysitter, and I can run all my errands without the kids on tow. Mondays somebody else cooks dinner for us.

Mondays we get back into our weekly nap and meal routine. I don't have Terry underfoot (much as I missed him while he was away) wanting to go on long spontaneous excursions that disrupt said routine. Mondays, for me, here, are refreshing.

***

For those who are curious, a word on language.

I do think it's fascinating that there's no word in Shqip for "snack"! You can name a specific food - like "would you like some chips? An apple?" - or talk about having "a little something to eat" (ha një gjë të vogel) but there's not a specific generic term for a little something to eat between meals. I think it says something about cultural habits.

For "share," the language is actually much more precise than English. You can talk about sharing out something in portions (which we sometimes in English call shares), like food or toys. The word is "ndaj" - literally "to separate." Or you can talk about taking turns: "me radhë." If you think about it, we use one word in English - "share" - to mean both things. When I tell Valerie to share her toys, I usually mean she should let Gabriel or another child take a turn playing with them. Or, that she should separate out some toys for them to have and keep, while others remain hers.

(You may be able to tell, we've been working hard with Valerie on the sharing concept and I'm pretty pleased with how she's doing. We praise her extravagantly when she brings Gabriel a toy, and we praise Gabriel too whenever Valerie plays with one of his toys. So now she does things like pick up my keys or something and I'll say "are you playing with Mommy's keys?" and she'll say "Mama share with Val-Val." It's cute.)

The other thing I couldn't get on google translate was how to explain how I feel when I go out without the kids: "I miss them but I feel free." This is how I would express that feeling in Shqip: "Kur unë jam pa femijët, gjithmon më merrmalli per femijët por është më kollai per të ecin shpejt, edhe per të bëj pazarin më shpejt." Or, literally, "when I am without the children, I always miss them but it is easier to walk quickly and to go shopping quickly."

"Free," as in at no cost, is "falas" and freedom in a political sense is "i lirë." But what I wanted to express was that feeling of lightness that we also call "free" in English.

***

I love languages and I love learning, and I love learning languages. So Mondays are a lot of fun for me here.

Splash!

I am ecstatic - yesterday Valerie had a bath with NO CRYING! I do not know how long it has been since such a miracle has occurred - more than a year, for sure.

The usual scenario goes like this: Sunday morning we tell her "it's bath day," and she immediately breaks down into huge, panicked sobs. She doesn't fight us as we take off her clothes and diaper and carry her into the bathroom, but when we put her in the tub she screams and scrambles frantically to get on my lap. I end up getting completely soaked because I have to hold her close to me as I wash her.

Once she started talking it got even more heart-breaking - she'd sob "Val-Val all clean! Val-Val all clean! Dada get towel!"

So.

Once Terry left I didn't have anyone to watch Gabriel while I bathed Valerie - he (Gabriel) gets upset when he hears her crying - so I waited until Monday when Shpresa was here. She witnessed our routine and then this week she had some suggestions. They were things I had tried before, but she encouraged me to try again. One sign that it might work was that the previous evening when I'd been giving Gabriel a bath, Valerie had come in to watch and saw him laughing and splashing and having a great time.

1. Suggestion the First: get out the bath toys. I'd tried this when we first moved in here, and she'd shown absolutely zero interest in them, so I quit getting them out. However, yesterday I remembered that there were some bathtub toys in our shipment that she hadn't seen in a long time, and she might be excited to see them again. While I was getting those, I also found some stacking cups that I thought she might be ready to play with again too.
2. Suggestion the Second: get in the bath with her. This was something I'd tried as well when we moved in again and it didn't seem to help, so I'd given up.
3. Suggestion the Third: very slowly and carefully wet her hair without using the spray nozzle, and making sure not to let the water run into her face. Lately my strategy has been to just get the job done as fast as possible, so I've been using the spray nozzle - which she haaaaaates - I use it because it gets to her scalp through her thick hair better than when I just pour.

Soooooo... I did all those things, and IT WORKED!!!! More than that - a couple times while I was washing her hair she said "Val-Val fun!"

I really and truly thought that rehabilitating bathtime for Valerie would take at least several weeks of patient step-wise coaxing, I never thought we'd do it all in one go. It actually gives me hope for potty-training and much to think about in that vein (yeah, I gave up on the potty training after one emotional and tear-filled morning).

The stacking cups really, really helped. While I was running the bath and getting her towels ready she found the cups and started playing with them in that absorbed, intent way she has with something new that catches her interest. So when the bath was ready, I asked her if she wanted to play with the cups in water, and after an initial "no" and some hesitation, she came with me into the bathroom and started throwing the cups into the water.

WOW that was fun! I let her do that for about 10 minutes, and then I said "I'm going to get into the bathtub" and got undressed and got in myself. I was glad I did because the water was hotter than I thought. So she played some more and I splashed in the water, and then once she started getting her clothes wet, and the water felt like a good temperature to me, I said, "Honey, today is bath day" and she cried a little, but I said "you can play with your toys in the water!" and she let me take off her clothes and even said "take bip [diaper] off" through her tears and once she was in she got absorbed in her play and stopped crying!

After a while I very slowly and gently started washing her hair and got not a peep of protest! I didn't feel like her hair got as clean as it does when I use the sprayer, but that's a small, small price to pay for a tear-less bath.

When the water started to feel chilly I said "time to get out" and she stood up and we got out and went and dried off and got dressed and she was laughing and smiling and happy the whole time and I am just so thankful for Shpresa who helps me be a better mother.

Three months in Shqiperia

Some pieces of random now that we've been here 3 months:

I'm enjoying browsing through the archives of a blog I found titled "Our Man In Tirana." The blogger was here from 2005-2008 and is now in the UK but I enjoy reading his impressions and comparing them to my own. His life as a guy without kids was very different from mine but he noticed a lot of the same things I see around here.

One day when Valerie woke up in the morning I took her out on the balcony to show her that the weather was nice. "Look, no rain!" I said. Sleepily she answered, "take rain off."

The way I explained the concept of "time-outs" to Shpresa was that it's like a yellow card and then red card in soccer. She finds this hilarious.

Yesterday was unseasonably warm, for a change - we went to the park and Valerie spent an hour and a half running around, jumping, and scratching in the dirt with sticks. (Why do we buy toys???) It felt like spring and I wore short sleeves on my walk to my Albanian lesson in the afternoon.

Gabriel is trying desperately to grab things with his hands. He rolls over like a pro now!

Terry is on another overnight work trip. We thought about going along but it was going to be a lot of time in the van and didn't really seem like that much fun to me. We might take a short trip to another city in Albania over the Christmas break.

Advent

Today was a bad day for naps, but the up side is everybody went to sleep early. I had the luxury of an afternoon nap, though, myself, because Shpresa was here to watch the kids for a few hours.

With all the rain lately, it seems like we go to the park about once a week instead of twice a day like we used to. I've had to come up with some rainy-day indoor activities - al

though Valerie is pretty good at that herself. Lately her fun has been playing pretend games with her toy animals - she changes their diapers, bathes them, feeds them raisins and juice, puts them in our shoes and drives them around, and of course hides them and pretends she can't find them.

One thing I started is a home-made Advent Calendar - I decided just to start Dec 1. Every day I will cut out another little picture and tape it to the tree. I haven't drawn 25 things yet but I have about 2 weeks' worth here. I'll put up the manger on the 24th and add the Baby on the 25th (so, out of chronological order a little bit since the shepherds and wise men didn't come til AFTER he was born... oh well).

There's a lot of Christmas stuff appearing in shops around the city, but I noticed it's all secular - trees, lights, snowmen, reindeer, Santas, etc. - nothing referencing Jesus at all. I wanted to get a nativity set but I guess I'll have to make my own - actually the idea for this "calendar" came when I started thinking how to make my own creche. If/When our shipment comes we have some Christmas books in it that I can use as well.

Shpressa = wonderful

On Monday (it already seems so long ago!) an American woman I met at church here - her husband is their youth pastor - introduced me to Shpressa, an Albanian lady who will be helping me out a couple times a week at home.

I LOVE her!

She's been working for expat families for fifteen years, and is going to help us out with just daily living stuff - some cleaning, some child care (mostly Gabriel at first, until Valerie gets used to her), some language practice. Shpressa speaks a little bit of English, but she's very good at understanding what I'm trying to say, making it into a real sentence in Shqip,* saying it slowly and clearly, and then making me repeat it back to her several times. Completely awesome. She also strikes me as a very compassionate person, and has adapted her head-nod to the American style (Albanians nod "yes" by wagging the head side to side, instead of chin up and down) which makes it easier for us foreigners to understand her.

So Monday afternoon she helped me fold laundry and wash dishes, then gave Gabriel a bath while I ran to the grocery store solo - Valerie was taking a nap this whole time so we haven't done that introduction yet. I'm so happy that she's going to be helping us!

Oh, and here's further proof that she's fabulous - her birthday is the same day as Gabriel's - 7/7! Amazing.

-----

* Shqip = Albanian for "Albanian." The 'q' is pronounced sort of like a "shch."

Further Ponderings

Further thoughts springboarding from the previous post...

This relates also to something that was sort of niggling in the back of my mind all this past year - something about caring for other people's children.

It's a truism, but my life changed completely when we had kids. The commitments I was able to make before were no longer possible. Suddenly I noticed that all the staff at the agency where I cut my teeth on immigration issues in the US had no children. Thinking back through the past 10 years of staff turnover, I realized NONE of the staff at this agency had small children at the time that they worked there. Only one had kids at all, and they were in their teens. But we were a child-serving agency. So we spent all our time taking care of other people's children.

And I mean this in a good way. It was a good thing to be doing, working alongside people who through life circumstances and the arbitrary inequalities of our economic system were particularly vulnerable to scarcity and other related problems.

It's been a big change for me now to be spending so much time and energy taking care of my own children, to the exclusion of other people's children.

The thing is, though, that other people's children are my children, your children, our children. There is a sense in which we are responsible above all others to our own progeny, our genetic offspring, and those we've legally committed to being responsible for. But in another sense as a human race we're all responsible for all the children.

What does it mean to be responsible as an individual and as a society for the children that have been shoved to the side because of their particular heritage within the social system we have inherited?

Big Sister

Baby G. has been home with us for three weeks now. At the end of the first week I was all ready to write a post about how well Valerie was coping. But now that it has become clear to her that he's here to stay... she's struggling.

The first time she saw him up close (rather than through the nursery window), Terry was holding him and she responded exactly as we'd predicted - "no no no no no AAAAAAAAAAAA!" But he passed G. to someone else and she calmed down. Even when I held him, she pretty much ignored him - unless we directed her to say "hi" or to point to his eyes, nose, ears, etc.

But then the shrieking started. She'd been shrieking before, and I'd tried giving time-outs to get her to stop (it worked to quell the biting), but it really took off during the week when her cousins were here. It was hard for her to have other kids in "her" space, playing with her toys, getting attention from her parents. Someday she'll look forward to seeing them and will follow Solana around and imitate everything she does, but right now sharing is very hard. So she'd shriek every time G. or her cousins would make a noise - any noise at all - so you can imagine it was starting to get on my nerves. It's hard to see her unhappy.

I've realized that it helps not only to make a point of spending time with her, but to really give her my focused, undivided attention, even to the point of ignoring G's little grunts (he's very gassy, so they're quite frequent) and waiting to respond to him until it's clear he's ready to eat or needs to be changed. I try to validate her feelings - "you don't like it when Gabriel makes noise" - and reassure her that she's still my baby and I love her very much. I've even stopped referring to Gabriel as "the baby" and just call him Gabriel or "your brother." Someday they will appreciate and be thankful for each other - it might be 30 years, but it will come (hopefully sooner than that!). Right now I figure that what I can ask of her - and of him too, come to that - is that as they grown into social beings they treat each other with respect and kindness. The love and affection will come in time.

I'm missing my mom tremendously right now - realizing in full just how much she was doing for us here, as well as the emotional support. Thankfully there's still another grandmother in town.

48 hours

Not to make anyone nervous or anything (Terry!), but I just looked at the clock and realized that 48 hours from now - unless I go into labor before then - we'll be in the OR about to meet our son. This ever-present awareness has made it hard to sleep the last few nights as we lie awake thinking about names... deadlines (Terry)... to-do lists and the physical recovery ahead (me)...

I am so thankful that we made it to this date, given the scare we had in May. 7 weeks of bedrest has been both a blessing and a marathon of waiting. But here we are. For me at least it's a lot less scary than last time. I feel more confident, knowledgeable, and prepared. I'm SO glad that I was able to do bedrest at home and not in the hospital this time. I am so thankful that my parents were able to be here taking care of me and Valerie and for all the help we have had from my in-laws and our babysitter! Thankful to all the people who have brought meals over - some more than once - and taken the time to check in and see how we're doing.

It's hard to believe, as I feel Baby Boy kicking around inside, that so little time is left in this gestation. I want to make sure to be mindful of these moments and enjoy them.

Sleep update

Soooo.... I'm almost nervous to jinx it, but I right now we're in a good place with the sleep thing. THANKFULLY. We're at the point where I now go to bed expecting V. to sleep through the night...!

In April, while T. was away, I held my breath and took the plunge of leaving the room before she was asleep... and it worked! I was astonished that she didn't cry at all, and at most I only need to go in maximum 2x before she goes to sleep on her own. This was... huge. I was so scared to try it, remembering how much it DIDN'T work last year - at least not well. Five months of CIO and she cried every. single. night. But I guess now she was ready!

Then almost by accident I discovered last month that she was able to sleep through the night when she was in the room alone by herself. After Terry left for Albania, before my parents got here, I had my sitter stay with us overnight to help with the night duty. The 2 nights Rachel slept in the next room, V. didn't wake up. The 3 nights Rachel slept in the room with her, she woke up. So ever since then we've let her sleep by herself... and the ratio of night waking to not reversed itself - instead of sleeping through the night 20% of the time, it flipped to 80% of the time - and as of today, she's gone a full week without night waking. WOW.....

We'll see how long it lasts; I'm kind of assuming that with Terry coming back, then the baby being born, my folks leaving, etc. etc., we still have a long road ahead of us. But for now it's an enormous blessing that she's sleeping well at night.

(Sadly, I still have insomnia from time to time - plus having to get up to pee every 2 hours - but it could be, and has been, so much worse.)

still waiting

I took my re-do sample to the lab this morning, and they said they should have results "by the end of the day." So meantime, I'm just going to rest. It's been hard to sleep at night because I wake up to go to the bathroom, and then sometimes I have a hard time falling asleep again because my mind is spinning thinking about everything. But I thought to myself this morning, "I guess this is my labor." I will probably never have the chance to experience a normal labor and delivery, but this processing, preparation, and trying to work with my body is the closest I will get. And it is "work."

Overall, the emotional journey has been easier this time than last. I have a better idea what to expect. I'm not as terrified of the idea of a cesarean as I was last time (even though it wasn't what I wanted either time, and I was hoping to try for a VBAC with this one...). I like my doctors. What is most distressing to me is the idea of being away from Valerie for a long period of time (well, that and concern that Baby Boy Jantzi - aka BBJ - will end up in the NICU) and worrying about how she'll cope with me not being here for the morning and evening routines. But at the same time I know she will be well and lovingly cared for - we have a veritable village coming together with both sets of grandparents going to be here plus our very capable babysitter who V. is quite attached to as well.

There has been an overflow of loving support through the friends and family networks that I appreciate so much. People I haven't seen or talked to in years sending good wishes and praying for us. Thank you all so much. Your love is palpable.

Sleep, Eat, Smile

So last night Valerie slept through the night for the FIRST TIME in almost THREE WEEKS. She went down fighting but was asleep by 8:30, which is an improvement on the previous night when she spent 2.5 hours jumping on the bed until 9:30, and woke up at 1:30, 4:30, and 6:00 - although she did fall asleep quickly every time. Well last night she didn't wake up AT ALL until 6:15! And was in a much better mood this morning. With our extra time until 9:00 when the sitter comes, I made this recipe:

Mumologic's Unoffensive Recipe

It smells soooo good. I don't know if V. will eat it, but we still have rice and beans hanging around and she likes that a lot. I add chopped tomato, olive oil, salt, and maybe a little meat and she really enjoys it. I'm trying to teach her to eat with a spoon (I know, recien???) but she still turns it upside down to put in her mouth. We're working on it. She prefers to spoon-feed me pretend food and let me do the shoveling for her.

Also, we got yet more snow last night... and more is predicted for the weekend... I was digging around in a box of stored baby clothes yesterday and found a bag of winter clothes I'd forgotten we had - all size 2T and pink! There may be time to use it yet!

wiggles

Started feeling the baby move over the past few days! Overall I'm feeling like this is easier the second time around; knowing what to expect, knowing better how to take care of myself. I'm eating much better than I did with Valerie, partly because I'm cooking and keeping around lots of healthy food for her, and partly because I eat at home most of the time instead of on campus (where it was a lot of cinnamon bagels and decaf soy lattes). So more fruits and vegetables this time.

Valerie has been going through another difficult phase with the sleep. For seven nights straight she fought bedtime (sometimes past 10 p.m.) PLUS would wake for about 2 hours sometime after midnight. Last night though she went down easily, was asleep by 9 (it tells you something that that felt like a major accomplishment) and only woke for about 45 minutes in the night. It seems like changing her diaper when she wakes up helps her get back to sleep more quickly. We're trying to be super-consistent with the night-time routine, and I want to see if we can creep bedtime to an earlier hour as well. The biggest challenge is getting enough food into her before bedtime. I've been tracking it, and it seems like it takes a good 2 hours for her to eat supper. I'm not kidding. That's how long it takes until she's full. Of course she doesn't sit in her high chair that whole time - she gets too bored - but whatever it takes to get food into her, I'll follow her around with her bowl and spoon as long as she keeps eating.

We're also making some adjustments with her childcare schedule so that the days are on a more predictable rhythm. Hopefully that will help. I hired a new babysitter 3 weeks ago who we love, but it's taking some time for V. to get used to having her come. I was having her come Tues/Thurs for 3 hours in the a.m. and 3 hours in the p.m., but I think it was too confusing for Valerie to have that split schedule. She never knows from one day to the next what's going to happen. So now we're going to have the sitter come 4 mornings a week - luckily her schedule is flexible enough that she can make that change. The afternoons are just tricky, anyway, with V's naps sometimes going long, and her waking up cranky sometimes too. I'm also hoping this change will allow us to start dinner earlier (like 5!) so we can move bedtime earlier too.

Hopefully this will all come together soon because Terry and I are POOPED and GRUMPY.

Gums

This morning I noticed that V's gums around her top and bottom front teeth were all inflamed and red. I took a toothbrush to her teeth and INSTANT BLOOD - oh so sad! I googled "toddler bleeding gums" and it came up all about gingivitis and taking her to to the dentist. But B. thinks it's all about the teething. She (V) also has two cold sores on the tip of her tongue.

POOR BABY!

No wonder all she wants to eat is yoghurt, applesauce, mushy peas, oatmeal, and mama's milk. And her usual morning egg yolks (hard boiled).

I feel so bad about nursing her to sleep and not brushing her teeth better. She is getting two new bottom teeth and we've been putting Orajel on them, which has definitely helped her sleep better since Saturday. I'm pretty sure the redness/bleeding is new as of this morning. So maybe it will pass quickly as well.

Anyone else have experience with this?