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."

Choose your own adventure

Both kids sleeping.

Nap, or blog?

Nap.

Sorry faithful readers!

Futbolli Schiptar

How do you say "soccer" in Albanian?

During our morning walk today I noticed scads of sidewalk vendors hawking the Albanian flag in every size, as well as piles of red and black T-shirts and scarves. I wondered whether it was a national holiday, say Skanderbeg day or something like that?

It all became clear to me this afternoon as we walked out to the park and I saw throngs of young men in red shirts waving their arms in unison and chanting songs. It could only mean one thing: the national soccer team must be having an important match.

So, we found a corner of the park away from where the happy youths were congregating and I got out the ball I bought for Valerie this morning. She had a blast running after it, playing catch and chase and kicking it around, pausing every now and then to hop, dance, and twirl around. Every now and then, though, another group of soccer fans would walk by. At first she'd clap along with them but when they'd get close to us the volume and energy of their voices would scare her and she'd huddle up to me. Even Gabriel woke up and wore his frowny face.

Instead of waiting for Terry like we usually do (he walks home through this park so we usually meet him there and play for a bit before heading home for dinner) I put V back in her stroller and we walked over to his office. But it's 2 flights of steps up, and she wouldn't get out of her stroller, and no elevator, so we just went home.

It's funny - when T and I compared notes over dinner, it struck me how different our perceptions and experiences of the park were this afternoon. As a guy and soccer fan himself, he was curious and interested and energized by the throng of happy fans and thought it would have been fun to join them. (He also confirmed for me that there's an important match in Tirana tonight, Albania playing Bosnia-Herzegovina, which I'd also surmised by the very-outnumbered little groups of men in blue and white scarves exchanging taunts with the guys in red.) As a woman with two small children in tow, I didn't feel safe. I knew I was safe, if nothing else judging by the presence of other women with strollers in the park and even some very pregnant women, as well as the rows of old folks lining the park benches. I was also keeping a keen eye on what kinds of beverages were being consumed and saw only two beer cans, so it wasn't an inebriated crowd. But there was just something about the energy of all those male voices chanting together, flags waving, that didn't feel safe.

The city was very loud this late afternoon and evening, and it felt good to be in the quiet of our home making Gabriel laugh and watching Valerie play. If nothing else our walks do serve this purpose - they make this apartment feel more like home, a light and quiet sanctuary.

Three months old!

Gabriel is three months old today! or 13 weeks and one day. So much has happened in this short time.

He is truly a bundle of joy - full of smiles and chuckles and deliciously chubby. He's holding himself up really well and can ride front-facing in the Bjorn. I don't know how much he weighs but I've had to lengthen the strap on the Bjorn and he's outgrown some of the clothes we brought already.

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?

Pondering

There's a playground we like to go to that's not too far from where we live; maybe a 15-minute walk through the city. It's located in a somewhat posh sector, on a wide avenue lined with old trees and traffic cops. For being in such a nice location the playground itself s a bit run-down - there are only two swings, even though there are three swing sets - the other two have empty rings along the top horizontal bar. The missing swings were probably broken by kids too big for them.

The second time I took Valerie to this park it was mid-morning, and I hoped that all the big kids would be in school and we'd only have to contend with the toddler set. I hoped she'd feel more comfortable and have fun instead of being scared the whole time, like when we went with Terry on a late afternoon over the weekend and there were just throngs of people there.

Just as we arrived I saw a big girl about 13 or 14 years old go barreling down the twisty slide yelling at the top of her lungs, knocking a small child of 3 or 4 onto the ground. Another big girl, I'm guessing her age around 12, came running over yelling at her and picked up the little one. As I watched and looked around I realized they were all together, a group of 7 kids in all, three big girls on the cusp of young womanhood, three younger boys (in the 7-9 age range) and the littlest child of indeterminate gender. I can't be sure, of course, but I think they were probably Roma.

There were also several Albanian grandmothers there with little ones; a couple times they exchanged glances of resigned resentment with me as if to say "can you believe these kids?" whenever one of the big kids did something particularly rambunctious.

I suppose I got a taste for why people tend to have negative stereotypes of the Roma, although at the same time I felt bad for them - obviously they weren't in school. One girl asked me for money (I pretended not to understand, then said I didn't have any, and then she pointed at the one pocket in my pants that had coins in it); another girl tried to sit on Valerie's stroller until I told her to get off. On the one hand I resented them for infringing on a playground designed for little children; on the other hand, what else are they supposed to do with themselves if they're not in school? And while I didn't like them taking away from Valerie's enjoyment of the place, I also felt kind of guilty for all the signs of privilege and wealth that surround my little girl - from her specially designed snack cup to her new, clean clothes and shoes. I felt bad for refusing to give the girl money, and then turning right around and using that same money later on to buy Valerie a snack she didn't really need (on the other hand, if I had given the girl money, what about the other 6 kids?) Anyway, we left when the little boys in the group started throwing gravel at each other because I wasn't too confident about their aim.

They weren't there today. I wonder where they are.

Montenegro

We took a 3-day trip to Montenegro this past week, departing Thursday morning and returning Saturday afternoon. It was really cool to see another country nearby, to see the Mediterranean for the first time (well technically the Adriatic), to see from a distance the walled city of Budva - just a tad too far to walk there with the kids in tow, but at least we saw the skyline across the bay.

The reason for the trip was a 3-day staff retreat for WV; expats were allowed to bring their families. We stayed at a hotel most of the time where there was a nice little playground that Valerie enjoyed almost as much as she does going up and down the elevator. She enjoyed walks down to the beach as well, and eating french fries at the hotel restaurant. (Luckily they also had a lot of fruit, bread, and some vegetables she likes like broccoli and beets.)

There was not much sleep to be had as it was yet another new place to get used to, so we were pretty beat by the time we got home. But I still enjoyed seeing the lines and lines of pomegranate trees along the road, cool silver-green olive groves, old-fashioned haystacks, and modest homes with their dining room tables on the front porch shaded by grape vines. I wish I had gotten more photos but my arms were inconveniently full of chubby baby.

Travel tip: If you go to Montenegro, be sure to wear a chubby baby on your chest. You will be gushed and fawned over like you wouldn't believe.

Oh, and apparently Madonna was also there that weekend giving a concert at the most posh of the seaside hotels. So they played her music nonstop everywhere. We didn't see her though.

Language lesson

I'm not sure how much time I have - both kids are napping (yay!) for the moment - so this may be a little random.

I had my first Albanian language lesson today; it was a 45-minute walk across the city navigating across rugged sidewalks and alongside very noisy traffic with Valerie in the stroller and Gabriel in the Bjorn. I took one of Valerie's favorite DVDs along but she still wanted to be close to Mommy. Gabriel had a huge blow-out poop (all up his back) and I used my last 3 wipes cleaning it up. The language teacher is very sweet, she held G. while I tended to V. She has two children in school (9 and 11) and we met her through church. She explains things very clearly and is quite patient but I'm not sure how well I'll be able to focus with the two kids in tow. We'll see. On the way back we stopped at the Kolonat (like a McDonald's) for V's favorite - french fries dipped in ketchup - and then had some more real food when we got home. But she was quite tired by the trip.

People here are so helpful with the kids (of course, if I didn't have kids I wouldn't need so much help...!). I was on the street struggling to put V's shoes and socks on her after the lesson while G was screaming in the Bjorn and a lady stopped and helped shoe the V. while I comforted G. She turned out to be the Albanian teacher's neighbor. Every time I go in or out of the building without Terry somebody comes over to help me get the stroller up or down the stairs.

I have two words in Albanian down pat:

Me falni = Excuse me/sorry

Faleminderit = Thank you

Some photos or Tirana

A view from our balcony. I have to stop myself from taking 100s of pictures of the same scene, because the constantly changing light makes such fascinating, subtle differences in the view. After rain, you can see individual trees on those mountains, the air is so clear.

The local fruit stand, literally around the corner from our place. We are on the 10th floor of an apartment building. The tiny elevator is precisely big enough for me carrying Gabriel in the Bjorn, Terry, and Valerie in her stroller (which I am SOOOOOOOO glad we brought!!!). There was nobody at the fruit stand at this moment because it was raining. I took the photo from in front of the 3-story grocery store where we get most of what we need. Each floor is a tiny maze of shelves: meat, dairy, and eggs on the first floor; pantry stuff and toiletries on the second (including Pampers and ketchup - the essentials of life with two littles); stuff like handbags and clothes on the third floor. Very handy! Except of course the stairs which I can't get the stroller up, so can't (yet) take Valerie there as she refuses to go anywhere except in the stroller. But that's another story.
Terry pushing V. down the street in said stroller.

Vignettes

Veze (there's supposed to be an umlaut over the second e)

On Thursday, I went to the corner grocery near our place to buy eggs. There was a whole big deli section full of meats and cheeses and olives of all kinds, but look high and low as I might I could find no eggs. Terry had said there were eggs there, so finally I approached the man behind the counter and said "eggs?" I pointed to a display of chocolate eggs hoping this might help facilitate communication.

"Chocolat," he said.

"Um... real eggs? Huevos?" I tried. "Eggs?"

The light bulb went on: "Ah! Veze! Jo, jo," he shook his head no, and reached behind the counter for a sample - a cracked egg. So, no eggs for breakfast on Saturday, but I had the satisfaction of communicating at least.

All Forlorn

We were walking home through the nearest park the other day and saw a little guy, maybe 8 years old, asleep in the middle of the sidewalk on a flattened piece of cardboard. His clothes and skin were dirty and he was very thin. He was fast asleep as people walked past, stepping carefully around him. There was a bag of popcorn by his head. (Now, writing this, all I can think of is the other guys who weren't the Good Samaritan.)

We've been told that during the communist era one didn't see this kind of abject poverty, nor the concentrations of wealth that exist now either. Not that Tirana strikes me as a hugely wealthy city - we went through the posh district and it was quite modest compared to Lima, or even Santa Cruz (Bolivia).

It was heartbreaking. I guess it's also why we're here.

"Breast Is Best" In Albania

Saturday afternoon we took the family out for our daily jaunt around the city, and walked to an extensive wooded park next to a lake. A wide brick road curved up over a hill past a snack kiosk; joggers and grandmothers pushing strollers passed us both ways. A group of old men sat on stumps in a circle playing cards while others lounged lakeside in their skivvies. It was a pleasant place, and Valerie had the time of her life playing with a small dog on a leash held by an indulgent gentleman.

On the way back, Gabriel started fussing and I realized he was hungry, so I sat down on a park bench to nurse him while Terry took Valerie to buy a snack. I wondered what Albanians might think of public breastfeeding but figured what the heck, I KNOW I look like a foreigner so hopefully they'll just avert their eyes if it bothers them. We settled in, listening to the sound of Michael Jackson classics ("Billie Jean," mostly) piped over a loudspeaker at what I surmised was a birthday party nearby. Nobody seemed put out by the fact that a baby was taking his repast in the park. Then a tall, tanned and toned couple walked by, maybe in their early 50s, and the man leaned in to say "Bravo! Bravo!"

"Thank you," I said, and he added in accented English, "is the best thing!" and gave me a thumbs-up.

***

Pictures coming soon - I put a lot up on Facebook but I'll get some up here too. They just take a long time to load on blogger for some reason.

First days in Albania

Hello from Tirana! It's our 4th day here, if you count the day we arrived, and our first cloudy day.

Here are some first impressions in bullet points, starting with the trip:

• Board books and beanie babies are really heavy.
• I will never again mock the voice in US airports that announces "the moving walkway, is ending. The moving walkway, is ending." My knees still hurt!
• International travel with a 2-month old? Piece of cake. International travel with a 2-year-old? Piece of headache!
• Oh - I guess there was that spit-up issue. And that other time too. Spit-up being the biggest issue for Gabe and me.

First impressions of Albania/Tirana:

• The mountains are really close to the ocean! And they're really big!
• The outskirts of the city remind me of Cusco - tile roofs, green fields, same colors of paint
• It's more subtropical than I expected or pictured in my mind - palm trees and oleander shrubs line the avenue coming in from the airport.
• Big billboards, none of which I can read
• Everyone seems to be really thin
• Laundry hanging out from apartment block windows
• Old and shabby next to new and shiny - lots of building projects going up
• As Terry put it, the fashion moment here seems to be the "shrink-wrapped" look
• Feels like a small city

We're still recovering from jet lag; Gabe has adapted the most (perhaps because he sleeps so much anyway!) and since I'm more or less on his schedule, I'm getting there too. Valerie is completely off kilter, and since Terry is doing the lion's share of night parenting for her, he's pretty messed up too. Our first night here V. slept SEVENTEEN HOURS. She was completely exhausted after not sleeping much at all on the airplane, and then being way too stimulated during our layover in Munich to nap at all. She conked out on the short flight to Tirana abut then was awake the rest of the afternoon until she went down kicking and screaming at 7:30 p.m. She woke up a few times asking for water (in fact, she wanted to sleep clutching her water bottle) but didn't get up until 1 p.m. the next day. Gabriel, for his part, was up EVERY HOUR on the hour wanting to nurse - I think he might have been dehydrated, since he only nursed twice on the 8-hour flight.

The second night was a different story - down at 11:30, up at 1:00 a.m., awake until 5 a.m., then we got her up around noon.

The third night was a little more successful - down at 9:30, and still sleeping now at 10:30 a.m.

There have been no naps, unless you consider the first part of the second night a "nap" (it would have been roughly naptime in the US - subtract 6 hours).

Right now Terry and Valerie are both still asleep and I'm just hanging out with the G-man.

Thursday and Friday after everyone was up and had eaten and dressed, we all went out for a walk through the city. Given our late rising that was around 3 or 4 p.m.! The first day we cruised around looking for parks and found a little playground nearby where Valerie had fun going down the twisty slide, swinging, and riding a little horse on a spring (you know what I mean?) She did NOT want to leave so we consoled her with potato chips, and she fell asleep in the stroller on the way home.

Aside: speaking of strollers, I've seen a lot of toddlers in strollers out and about but it wasn't until late Friday afternoon that I spotted actual babies - although I really had to peer to see them since they were so cocooned in their strollers - swathed in blankets and then draped in gauze curtains. Gabe's bare legs dangling from the Baby Bjorn have garnered a lot of attention!

Our walk yesterday took us to the World Vision office where Valerie had fun going up and down stairs and drumming on big plastic jugs of water. She wasn't sure what to do with all the attention she was getting from the staff so she mostly chewed on Daddy's shirt (a not-so-charming new habit under stress - his shoulder is a mass of welts and bruises from the trip) and said "NIEW!" ("No," in Valerese). Then we went to the playground. There were a lot of other kids there so she was ok with leaving when we decided it was time to go.

The city reminds me in some ways of parts of Lima, with wide shady avenues and noisy traffic. Lots of pedestrians. Old communist-era buildings are lined on the ground floor with shiny new shops selling just about anything you can think of - lots of clothes, shoes, stuff like that. On nearly every corner, it seems, someone is crouched over a small grill roasting ears of corn - Terry said they weren't there when he came in June, so it must be a seasonal thing. The building we are in is a 10-story apartment building, I guess it's pretty new. There are two crooked little alleys you can take - just wide enough for a car - to the main street in either direction. One of them takes you past a magnificent fruit stand which is open til well after dark, selling all manner of fresh fruit and vegetables. Just next to it is a tall, narrow grocery store where we've been getting our staples and things for the apartment (although it came fully furnished even with bed linens and towels, dishes and tea, there was no toilet paper or salt).

We've been eating crusty bread, fresh tomatoes that taste like they were picked ripe, olives, cheese -

oops, Valerie is up - more later!

One week

One more week until we move to Albania...!

I'm pretty excited. It feels like we're really close to ready, thanks to my fabulous sister-in-law who has done the lion's share, along with my mom (when she was here in June/July), of packing up and organizing all our stuff. Pretty much all that's left out yet is the stuff we're actually using, and we've got a group of friends coming over Saturday to help us get all that randomness bundled into the basement.

It's amazing how much STUFF we have.

I think about all the boxes upon boxes of stuff we've hauled downstairs, the truckload that went to Goodwill, the other truckload that went to the dump/recycling, and then I look around the house and think... hm, it doesn't really look all that different - I mean, the walls and bookshelves are bare, but there's still a lot of stuff lying around. It's the stuff we use everyday. Do we really need all the rest of it, then? All the stuff that's packed away now?

Sigh.

File this under "awesome"

Gabriel slept 7 hours straight last night !!!

Happy Birthdays!

Happy shared Birthday to Terry and Solana today!

(I know that's Valerie, not Solana, but I don't seem to have any pictures of Terry and Solana together, strangely enough!!)

Two months!

Gabriel is two months old today! Does his right cheek look bigger than his left to you? It does to me. He has a dimple although you can't see it in this picture.

We're in the midst of packing up our house to move out for two years, so stressed and exhausted. But having two little ones means we're also forced to stop and enjoy life. This morning we all took a walk to Red Front for a few groceries - Valerie in the stroller, Gabriel in the Bjorn. He fell asleep instantly as soon as we set out and slept the whole walk there and back. We had to go the long way around too, so Valerie wouldn't see the playground...

Gabriel is such a sweetheart. When I change his diaper he looks into my eyes and grins. He sleeps soundly at night, though he's still waking up every 3-4 hours or so (sometimes more) to nurse. But he goes back to sleep quickly. We've sort of started sleep training in that I'm working on establishing regular nap times, and putting him down still awake. It mostly works. Some days he's just fussy and takes a lot of wrangling, and he often wants to eat much sooner than my schedule says he should. But the fact that he CAN fall asleep on his own without any props or without being rocked or nursed to sleep is such a blessing, and I want to reinforce it as much as possible.

We've been using cloth diapers off and on, and the funny thing is that even with the disposable ones, he really hates being wet!

He's holding his head up really well and although I don't have proof, I believe he's over 13 pounds now - meaning he's about doubled his birth weight in two months!!! He's incredibly efficient at nursing - usually under 5 minutes. Still swallows air, but is burping better and hardly spitting up at all (with a few memorable exceptions). The gassiness is much improved. Whether it was the chiropractor, the probiotics, evening out our supply-and-demand, or a combination of all three, I'm very glad. I have learned the hard way, however, that I really MUST avoid dairy. The past 2 Friday nights I ate lots of cheese and the past 2 Saturday nights were pretty miserable, on into Sunday. So no more cheese. Or ice cream, or milk. Sad. Well, it won't be forever.

Valerie is doing much better with him as well, although if she's tired or hungry or both, she can't tolerate the smallest noise from him. But if she's happy and content she doesn't mind him, and will now even say "Beebee!" when she sees him, which is cute.

He's so soft and fuzzy and squishy and huggable, I'm trying to remember to soak up all the delicious baby-ness of him while it lasts, to kiss those adorable cheeks and rub his downy hair against my face. Such a sweetie.

Teeth

I think Valerie must be cutting her 2 year molars, for real this time. She's been sucking on her fingers constantly the past few days and last night was awake for 3+ hours (from 2 a.m. til well after 5) sucking on a pacifier and crying off and on. Poor thing!

Gabe stats

Length: 22 1/4 inches = 25th percentile

Weight: 12 lbs. 8 oz = 75th percentile

His happy smile is the best thing ever!

Gabriel update

Two firsts today, at 7 weeks: 1) a real laugh! A wonderful little chuckle while looking up into my eyes, and 2) first visit to the chiropractor. Afterwards he slept and slept.

Addendum

A couple things I forgot to include about Valerie:

• While she's doing her twirling/dancing/running/stomping thing, she admires her own performance with a frequent "Wow!" She must hear us say it a lot... (actually she says "Vow!" It's pretty cute)
• She is still also enamored of the alphabet, and will recite to herself at random moments. She skips a few letters, but she's also learning the sounds they make as well as their names.
• It's been really fun lately seeing her expand her playground horizons, going down the big slide by herself, getting on and off the little horsies by herself, etc. It's fun just watching her have fun.
• We went to the County Fair one morning last week and caught some of the visiting circus - which included a GIRAFFE! It was extremely cool. Valerie: "Aff! Aff! AffEEEE!" She got to feed him a carrot. She also thoroughly enjoyed seeing baby ducks and all kinds of other farm animals.

This past weekend we traveled to Lancaster for a Leaman family reunion, and the previous weekend we went camping (!!!). Both trips went well overall, although we learned that V does a lot better if she's not right next to her brother. We see these as sort of trial runs for the big move coming up in... less than a month!!!

the Fam

Stealing a Minute

I'm stealing a minute from my own work time to write a quick Valerie post. She's at Grammy's right now, and Terry took Gabriel with him (after a ridiculous cluster-feed, every hour from 7 - 10 a.m. Seriously - he's now 10 lbs 14 oz, having gained another 13 oz in a week, can he really be that hungry??? Apparently, yes!!)

So, Valerie. She is growing so much. She loves to move and dance and tumble - she's mastered the somersault, and loves to run and jump and dance just for the fun of it. I love her delighted grin when we play "chase" around the house.

She's still not really talking, although her vocabulary continues to grow (she only rarely combines words into phrases). But she's really, really into numbers. She knows all the numbers up to 10, and *tries* to count to twenty ("free-free, four-four, five-five, six-six... ten-ten!") She has trouble pronouncing seven ("eppie" or "sefee") and one ("wu" or "mm") but the rest are pretty clear. She counts steps, toys, bottles in the bathroom, and so on. She can also count backwards from five down!

She's still a bit stressed out by Gabriel, and her new coping mechanism is to bang her head - well, her mouth, really - against our shoulders. This really is hard to deal with. And now she shrieks not only when she hears him make a noise (although not all the time), but when other children get within 4 or 5 feet of her. This makes playground visits a little less fun.

After several months of sleeping through the night, she started night waking again in the week after my parents left. I don't really anticipate this getting better until, oh... maybe 2011?

She's becoming a bit more picky about foods but has a new love - KETCHUP!! Anything dipped in ketchup (even grapes - ugh!) is automatically better. Definitely a Jantzi.

Quick while he naps

Saturday Gabriel - or Gici, as we call him here - it means Piglet in Albanian - was one month old, and I meant like crazy to write a nice blog post about him but, well, it's been a little hectic around here.

He's been gaining A POUND A WEEK. Fat rolls have developed around his thighs, his wrists are creased and his hands dimpled. He's about to bust out of his newborn-sized onesies. He feels like a huge chunk of baby in my arms so it always takes me by surprise when people see him for the first time and say "look, how tiny!"

Our main saga this first month of life with Gabriel - apart from Valerie's angst - has been his gassiness. About 10 days ago it got to the point where I feared he had acid reflux, and we took him to the doctor, who said no, with that kind of weight gain it was more likely overfeeding. He was nursing every hour or hour and a half round the clock - ok, maybe 2 hours at night - and spitting up after every feeding and often in between.

I'd always heard that you can't overfeed a breastfed baby, so this was surprising to me, but we followed the recommendation to use a pacifier to space his feedings slowly further and further apart with the goal of 3 hours apart in the day and 4 hours apart in the night. And it worked, as far as the spit-up goes. For a good 12 hours after our visit to the doctor he was even fairly gas-free. But the gassiness started up again in the form of grunting and fussing every time I laid him down to sleep. I knew from our first peds appt. that he swallows a lot of air when he nurses - very noisy eater, lots of clicks and whistles - so I was just working on burping him as much as possible, and we also started using gas drops to try to get the burps out better.

So Thursday I went to an "ask-a-nurse" group for new mothers; the nurse there is a lactation consultant as well and very knowledgable. It was GREAT - I can't wait for the next one. :-) As an LC, of course she said "you can't overfeed a breastfed baby," and instead confirmed what I'd been reading online - that the problem was an oversupply of milk. He wanted to eat constantly because he was only getting the thin sweet foremilk and not enough of the richer hindmilk. She recommended pumping off the excess after feeding him, seeing how much it was, and then pumping that off before feeding him the next time, slowly tapering down the amount of excess milk pumped off, until we reached an equilibrium. Well, I did what she suggested and got an astonishing 4 oz. of milk off AFTER he'd nursed! Just on one side! The odd thing was, though, that was it for excess. The very next time I nursed him I had just enough to fill him up, with less than 1/2 an oz after. So we have reached our equilibrium there.

The other thing the nurse said is that Gabriel has an unusually high palate; the roof of his mouth is domed quite high. This is not a problem per se, it just means it makes it hard for him to maintain a tight latch and that's why he swallows so much air. She said we could try using a nipple shield to help his latch. I finally went and got one and figured out how to use it, but he doesn't like it - he bites down now when I use it so I'm not sure it's a solution.

So that leaves us with just burping him. During the day it's easy; I'm up and about and I can carry him around in the front carrier (either the baby bjorn or the ella roo wrap) and in that position he eventually burps it all out on his own and is quite happy. Nights are harder. I can spend an hour after nursing him getting all the burps out, only to have to get up again a half hour later to get another bubble out. I think also at night I'm just not as patient or as alert and so we end up doing this up-and-down dance for up to five hours. I'm pretty exhausted.

Valerie never really needed burping so it was a cinch to nurse her lying down and then we'd both drift off to sleep.

oops - he's awake. More later.

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.

Growing Boy

Today was Gabriel's due date - we had a check-up and learned he has gained a whopping 13 oz. in one week! He now weighs 7 lbs. 4 oz. Typically they expect newborns to gain 1/2 - 1 oz a day, and he's gaining almost 2! His jaundice is less too. All good news!

One Week

Gabriel is one week old today! Our angelito is sleeping on my lap as I type. He's doing really well. We had a check-up on Monday, where we learned that he'd gained 2 oz. since we left the hospital Friday, which was great news to me since I'd been worried about his sleepiness while nursing. He tends to fall asleep after just 5-10 minutes, although then he'll wake up an hour and a half later for more - especially at night! They had us check his bilirubin levels, which are 13 (22 or higher needs treatment); just to get the blood drawn we had to wait TWO HOURS at the hospital lab which was pretty much NOT our first choice for how to spend the day... but oh well. It worked out.

Our first night home was rough, but we seem to have evened out a bit. Terry re-organized our room (he's sleeping in a bassinet next to our bed) and put in an A/C unit so it's been quite nice, and the system seems to be working well (of course, at this point the system also hinges on Grandma Irma doing a ton of laundry...)

I've found that my recovery has been much easier and faster this second time around, which isn't to say it's been a breeze - I had quite a bit of back pain, especially the first few days, and could only manage to sleep sitting upright. I felt quite like I'd spent the night on an airplane. I can lie flat now and it's heavenly. Yesterday I went to the chiropractor, and today I stopped taking my pain meds altogether and feel quite achy, but nothing unmanageable.

We've also managed two family outings already - a brief foray to our Star Trek group Monday night, and last night to a DREAM Act fundraiser at Qdoba. It felt good to get out and sniff the air - especially since we've been getting rain!

Baby pictures!

Mom and baby Day 1!

All this and the World Cup too...!

He's here!!!!!

Sorry for the long delay in the announcement- but he's here! We're home, resting and recovering, learning our way around parenting a newborn AND a toddler simultaneously. More on that later... and I promise pictures too...

For now here are the stats:

Gabriel Tobias
born at July 7, 2010, 11:07 a.m.
6 lbs. 12 oz, 19 inches long*

came home Friday July 9, 2010, 2:30 in the afternoon.

Happy day!

* plus a fraction but I'm not sure what the fraction was.

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.

Soon and Very Soon

... we are going to meet our son! Hard to believe. He's wiggling away, an active boy, but there are no signs of labor so I'm pretty much assuming we're going to keep our cesarean date at the new hospital Wednesday morning.

Today I dressed V. in her patriotic 4th of July outfit so that people will think she's a local:

Vote!

We are still on the fence about names... although the poll so far (see sidebar) has a pretty clear front-runner... you can write-in suggestions in the comments as well! I temporarily changed the sidebar background color so you can read the names better.

The thing is, I'm not a huge fan of trendy/popular names, and we'd also like a name that's interesting or somewhat unusual, but not too "weird." It's all very subjective, I know. We like Tobias because it's a family name (Leaman branch), although I really don't like the nickname Toby - negative association from a kid I knew in grade school - and we like Oscar because of Oscar Arias and Oscar Romero - and I like how it sounds in Spanish and English. And we like the nickname "Oz." Although most people are first going to think of Oscar the Grouch.

Boy names are hard.

Favorites

Valerie has developed some very strong preferences for certain things, including the number 9. She looks for the 9 on the digital clock in her room, on the CD player display (although her favorite song is track 8), and among her magnetic number set. In fact when she sees the 9 on the clock her whole face lights up with a big smile and she claps her hands. This developed about the time she learned the word for the digit. (She can now name them all except 1 and 7, and counts to five.)

She also looooooooves this book. Especially the "very fine animal called the Iota," and the heart-shaped "Proo." Although I find some of the illustrations (and the overall theme) somewhat disturbingly colonialist (publication date is 1950), it's a fun book to read and I've memorized enough key lines that I can recite it while she flips violently through the pages looking for her favorites. For a while there we were reading it easily more than 10x a day!

Homecoming

Today is also the day Terry comes home!

These pictures are from his last trip but I'll let them stand here emblematically (especially since that's not even the plane he left on last time). (But note the cool reflection captured in the glass. Artsy, no?)

Dave

Today is a day to remember my uncle, Dave Sparks. We miss you.

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.)

Growth Spurt?

I'm wondering if Valerie is going through a growth spurt? She was uncommonly clumsy yesterday evening - cut her lip on a water bottle, then fell off the lazy boy, and seemed to be tripping over her own feet with unusual frequency. She's been eating and sleeping a lot. And TALKING so much more - a lot of babbling, and a lot of echoing what we say, but generally using about 20-30 more words than she was a few weeks ago. Some big leaps there.

After supper last night I noticed a bunny sitting on the lawn across the street, so my mom and I went over with V. and I sat on the sidewalk while she (Valerie, not my mom) hop, hop, hopped while the bunnies (a second one showed up then) just stared at her :-) It was super-cute.

Friends

Valerie is not the most social of toddlers. It takes her a looooooong time to warm up to new people, and she mostly ignores other children her age. (Except, of course, when she's being required to share toys or Mommy with them.) There is a small handful of kids she tolerates and even at times acknowledges, sharing food and space with them, waving hello and goodbye. These are the kids she sees on a regular basis - usually weekly - and it's really nice to see her learning to play with others.
I wonder sometimes if her introversion is linked to her slowness in starting to talk? I mean she talks, but she's not really linking words into phrases yet, and there seem to be a lot of other kids much younger than she is who are talking much more. I know she'll talk when she's ready but sometimes I get impatient.

She did do something cute last night while I was singing "Old MacDonald" to her (the lullaby of choice) - she said, as she often does, "amamamamam" in a growly voice, which in her lexicon means the animals in the song are eating. And then she said, very clearly, "Fat!"

Pictures!

I've been getting pointed hints from certain members of the household currently abroad that there has been a dearth of recent updates in this space. Yesterday I finally got around to downloading some pictures, so here are some recent shots of the V.


Here she is in our neighbor's yard, looking for their dog (who coincidentally has the same name as our mayor - it's an unusual name, which in the northern Germanic languages means "keeper of the keys" and in Khmer means "dog." Anyway, I'm guessing by the look on her face that Kai the dog was not in sight.


Playing with water on a hot Sunday after church.


My dad ordered a whole bunch of vitamins and supplements - look at the pretty colored bottles! V. organized them in this symmetrical arrangement and spent maybe half an hour arranging and rearranging them in rows - until she got tired, knocked them all over, and ran off to do something else. (Yes, she was closely supervised, and all the bottle tops still had the manufacturer's seal on.)

She's really into arranging her toys in rows these days - stuffed animals, plastic animals, matchbox cars. Then she'll knock them all down.

check-up

I had another check-up today with the specialist at Martha Jefferson, and he said he's "amazed" at how well we are doing! My proteinuria levels are basically back to normal, and my blood pressure is under control with the bedrest and medication. I'm supposed to continue as I am with frequent monitoring until delivery. We are now at 34 weeks and the baby looks great - estimated to weigh in at 6 lbs. 6 oz. Yay!!!

no news is good news

We're holding steady here, nothing new to report, monitoring my blood pressure, taking my pills, resting. I'm beginning to get a wee bit bored but I think that's probably a good thing!

My folks got here last Wednesday and we are settling into a homey routine. I feel very loved and well cared for!

I am so thankful to be able to be at home with Valerie, even though I can't do as much with her, there are still a lot of little games we can play while I lie on the couch. One that always makes her grin: I show her a toy and say "You think this is yours?" When she reaches for it I say "It's mine!" and snatch it away. On the third reach I let her grab it but don't let go and we play tug-of-war for a minute or two. Then we do it again. For some reason she finds this hilarious.

toddler talk

Over the past 3 weeks or so, Valerie has made a big jump in her talking after a long plateau. Between her 18-month and 2-year checkups, she really didn't add very many words - maybe 5? Now all of a sudden she's trying to say a lot more - it's really fun :-) She's not enunciating very clearly, but she is trying to say:

fix
fork
ouch
three
tree
pee
puppy (sounds more like "pough," rhyming with "dough")
woof
bow wow
...and a bunch more I can't remember right now but will come back and add to the list as I hear her say them. And other words she's been saying for awhile, she's enunciating more clearly.

She's also finally learned how to jump with both feet off the ground! She loves to dance around the living room, pointing to the CD player as each track changes - she'll say "two!" or "free" (three), "sic," (six), and "eight" when she sees those numbers. She likes to "stand like Daddy" with her legs wide apart and knees flexed.

She is so much fun!

non-stress test and biophysical profile

Welcome to the world of prenatal monitoring! Here are two terms you may or may not be familiar with:

Non-stress test, or NST: The name of this test sent me to Google to find out what a "stress test" might be. There isn't such a thing, per se, but the non-stress test is in contrast to the contraction stress test (CST) where mild contractions are induced to see how the baby responds under those conditions. During an NST, there are two monitors strapped to the mother's belly: one at the top of the uterus to measure spontaneous contractions, and the other lower down to pick up the baby's heartbeat. I had a LOT of NSTs when I was hospitalized with Valerie, and now I'm to have them twice a week. Basically they graph the heart-rate in conjunction with movement, and want to see the baby's heart rate speed up and slow down as s/he moves more and less vigorously.

Our NST today earned a 10/10 rating, which is perfect - BBJ did great with the moving around and kicking and heart beating etc. The machine picked up one contraction, which I felt also - I don't always feel them because at this stage they are very sporadic and mild. They're called Braxton-Hicks contractions when they're not actually labor contractions. I was having a lot more of them earlier before going on bed-rest.

Biophysical Profile: this is a specific kind of ultrasound - not in terms of how it's done, but in terms of what they are measuring. They're looking for three markers of healthy baby: good amount of amniotic fluid, lungs moving (they practice breathing by inhaling amniotic fluid), and practicing sucking. They also measure head, femur, and abdomen to calculate weight (although this can be somewhat inaccurate). BBJ is measuring around 4 lbs 5 oz which is great for 32 weeks, and he's doing everything he's supposed to be doing in utero. And he's still a boy :-)

I'll be having these ultrasounds once a week until we deliver. And I'll be doing repeat urinalysis each week as well.

And if I needed proof that bed rest is where I need to be, I got it Saturday evening - we had a friend visiting from DC and even though I tried to suppress my hostessing urges, my BP was really high that night and then down again the next day to the range where it was before her visit. So, visitors are great - but I really do need to keep quiet and keep visits short, especially in the evening when combined with dinnertime and bedtime for Valerie I tend to expend more energy than I should.

birthday

My sister put together a great set of photos for my dad's birthday which I will shamelessly link to here - happy birthday Dad, love you!

Great news!!!

We got the lab results back - proteinuria down from 1,716 to 284!!!! Incredible! So thankful and glad and amazed. I'm to stay on bedrest at home and drink lots of fluids, keep monitoring blood pressure, and they'll see me on Monday.

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.

Laury

Public service announcement:
By the way, the Preeclampsia Foundation has a very informative web site if you want to learn more about this condition.

***

This morning I called my therapist's office to see about either canceling my Monday morning appointment, or doing it over the phone. The office receptionist said she had bad news. Dr. G. passed away two weeks ago, just three days after I last saw her.

I'm kind of in shock, it really doesn't seem real. I have such a vivid memory of sitting in her office, the needlepoint pillows, the way she would always hand me a tissue. I never got a chance to ask her about the whales and dolphins that populated her space - figurines, sculptures in glass and metal and wood, pictures on the walls, on coffee mugs, even her earrings. Obviously they meant something important to her and I never found out what.

She has a 7-year-old daughter.

I wanted to state here, since I can't tell her in person, how much she has meant to me over the years since I first started seeing her in 2004; how much she has helped me, and how specific things she said to me still stick in my mind like mantras and help me cope with daily life. It really doesn't seem real to me that she's gone.

Limbo

Disclaimer/warning: This post is all about me and my jug o' pee, so if you are of delicate sensibilities and prefer not to read about bodily fluids, feel free to skip this one! I'll just give you the bottom line up front: we are still in limbo and don't know whether I'll need to go on hospital bedrest or not.

***

One of the three markers for pre-eclampsia is the presence of protein in the urine. The other two are high blood pressure and swelling (edema) of the hands and feet. I have high blood pressure, although now I'm not meds that are keeping it in a better place. Last week I did a 24-hour urine catch and this week I'm doing one again.

The benchmark they are looking for is 300 milligrams of protein total in the sample. Anything under that doesn't count, and anything over that is considered a red flag for pre-eclampsia. Mine was 1,700. Yes, you read that right: almost six times the benchmark. Anything over a gram is considered Bad News and some doctors, I learned yesterday, will just go right ahead and deliver the baby immediately with that kind of result. I appreciate that my doctors are a little less alarmist and are willing to wait and see what the results of the second test might be.

If they are still above 1,000 milligrams, then I will be put on hospital bedrest - probably in Charlottesville, about an hour away from here - because they have a NICU and I'm only 31 weeks. If it's lower than that, I may have the option of bedrest at home (oh please oh please!) or at the local hospital (also preferable because easier to see Valerie). My biggest concern is being away from her...

Anyway, so this is how the 24-hour urine catch works: You get a plastic jug, and what they call a "hat" or "bonnet" - a plastic cup with sort of like wings on it, that you put on the toilet before you void (that's the term they use for peeing) your bladder, and it catches all the urine, which you then pour into the jug. The jug needs to be kept chilled. We used a small cooler packed with those frozen blocks that you keep in the freezer. That's it. You collect all your urine over a 24-hour period and then deliver it to the lab.

The convenient thing about the cooler is I can take the jug with me discreetly if I have to go out and about somewhere and continue the urine collection even if I'm not at home.

The inconvenient thing is I have to remember to put the cap back on the jug, which I am very prone to forget. It seems like the act of putting the "bonnet" back in the cooler feels to me like capping something and I feel like I've already packed up what I need to pack up. Or something.

So, today, just as I was arriving at the lab, I heard a slosh from inside the cooler and thought "uh-oh..." and indeed, when I opened it up, I found that I had left the cap off and spilled about a cup of fluid. I know, I know, GROSS. But also, hugely inconvenient. I feel like a prime idiot because now I have to do the test all over again, AND delay getting back the results. They said it wouldn't be accurate if they didn't have 100% of the fluid from the 24-hour period.

The thumping sound you hear is the sound of me banging my head against the wall.

Since I had to register as an outpatient for an accompanying blood draw (which we didn't do either), I kept the hospital band on my wrist in hopes it will remind me not to be so stupid again tomorrow.

So the wait continues.

Again

So here we go again... I've been tracking my blood pressure over the past couple of weeks, and it hasn't been great - flirting with the 140/90 line that raises red flags. So we did a 24-hour urine test and they found significant protein, which is another red flag. Luckily I do not have any swelling in my hands and feet, or other symptoms of pre-eclampsia, but the other two factors are cause for concern.

The plan at this point is to continue monitoring, to rest as much as possible, and to drink lots of liquids (something I never do enough). Today we got a look at the bambino via ultrasound and he's doing great, developing exactly as he should, heart rate and everything else right on track.

Pray I can hold out for another 6 weeks at least...

Valerie is 2!

She loved the birthday pinwheel and balloon

Yes, we did have some friends over, although our little introvert was just as happy running around the neighbor's garden by herself...

After singing "happy birthday" one of the toddlers present asked for "itsy bitsy spider" so we sang that too!

Foggy

So I've been away from the blog for a few weeks - did you notice? :-) It's been hectic the past couple weeks and I'm just starting to catch up with myself. I have ten weeks (give or take) left in this pregnancy, research to finish, a house to organize and pack up, and then all the daily stuff... like taking a shower, eating, that kind of thing. I haven't downloaded Valerie pictures in for, like, ever, but hope to get to that soon too.

What I want most right this minute though... is a NAP.

To party or not to party?

I've simply been too tired to post anything here. I realized today though that Valerie's birthday is a week from Saturday and I need to make a decision about what to do to celebrate - we'll have a family celebration later in the month but I'd still like to mark the day of in some way. Last month we attended her first child's birthday party which she quite frankly did not enjoy very much (my little introvert!) so I'm inclined not to go that route. But cake and balloons at home with a few friends would be nice... she'd like that.

Two years ago

I've been thinking it was today, but when I looked it up saw that it was actually yesterday - two years ago, that I checked into the hospital in Ithaca with symptoms of pre-eclampsia. I was there for 3.5 weeks until Valerie was born, wiggling and weeping with her worried little monkey-face. She was so small!! And has been turning our lives upside-down ever since. I love her so much.

Just for the record...

I love rainy days, and I LOVE having my own office away from home... one small compensation for Terry being away is I have use of his office space.

And V. slept 10.5 hours straight last night! So why am I so groggy that I left my wallet at the coffee shop this morning???

Single Mom-ing Begins

Terry is out of the country for the next 3 weeks, and I'm relaxing in the support network of friends and family. It's been interesting to see V. handling the change. For a week leading up to his departure, we let her know he was going to be gone for a while. I think this actually made her kind of anxious because, being not-yet-two, she doesn't have a very clear sense of time, so she wasn't sure when he was going to be going away. Once he actually left, she seemed a lot more settled, although Sunday morning she was certainly in a MOOD during the time when we normally hang out with Daddy, and he wasn't there - seemed sad and out of sorts.

The main place this anxiety (as I'm diagnosing it) showed up was, of course, her sleep. Terry's last 2 nights here were awful. She resisted bedtime for two hours +, then did her night-waking thing for 2+ more hours and slept in til late. But the first night he was gone, she went down more easily (just 1 hour) though she still did a 2.5-hour waking. The second night, last night, she actually slept straight through! I was ECSTATIC. Even though she woke up for the day at 5:30 a.m., I'd gladly take that anytime over being up with her from 2:00-4:30 a.m. or whatever ungodly hour she chooses.

It has also helped me to hear from her doctor that she's not being willful when she kicks her feet and slaps her hand against the mattress in the middle of the night; she's trying to soothe herself back to sleep and cope with her feelings of insecurity. So instead of getting mad at her I'm able to just be there with her and try to soothe her as well as I can. Rubbing her feet seems to help A LOT, and a friend who does reflexology suggested some pressure points that stimulate seratonin. We've also found that gently massaging her hands calms her down, and I've heard that this specifically helps alleviate negative emotions like anger and anxiety/stress.

Our one untoward event so far was Saturday night; she hadn't eaten much lunch and I think she was pretty hungry at dinnertime. I made some of her favorite foods - rice and beans with shredded cheese, and green beans. The problem was, she ate too fast and didn't stop to chew her green beans, which caused her to gag, which caused her to throw up a little, which then led to throwing up everything she'd eaten since her nap. :-( We got cleaned up though, with a minimum of fuss (I was very proud of myself for staying calm and containing the mess pretty well). After I got her into her clean jammies she ate a bowl of applesauce and some plain white rice with some milk, with no problems. Poor little thing.

Other than that it's been pretty smooth sailing. It's been cold but sunny out and she just loves running around in the yard, in the flower beds, in the neighbor's sandbox. It's great to see her so happy.

23 Months, 2-year check-up

Yesterday Valerie had her 2-year check-up, which we did a month early because we had questions about her sleep issues. Rather than have an extra appointment, we combined the two.

First, the stats:

25 lbs

33 inches

50th percentile

We were surprised that they didn't measure any change in height from our last appointment 5 months ago, because she's been outgrowing her pants and is also able to reach things she couldn't reach before (doorknobs, stuff on top of the table). We were also surprised she hasn't gained more weight - only 1.2 lbs - because she really feels heavier. Maybe our house is shrinking and our arms are getting weaker!

As for the sleep, basically the doctor said that it's a phase she's going through, that she'll eventually outgrow... in a couple of YEARS. Probably. Oh Dear. Their advice to parents is to do whatever is easiest for getting her to sleep, try introducing or encouraging a comfort object (she's more or less abandoned the toothbrushes in favor of kicking her feet against the mattress, which is very annoying to us), and just be as consistent as possible with not only the bedtime routine but her daily routine as well. Sleep disturbances are linked to feelings of insecurity, and routine and ritual help her feel secure in knowing exactly what is going to

happen next (of course this is also constantly tested by her growing desire to be in control).

And he said we're probably in for a real storm when baby brother comes along, not

to mention moving to Albania... He said it will be important for Dad to spend a lot of time with her around the time of the birth, she'll like that.

Finally, we're going to cut back on her screen time. I added up that she's been watching 2-3 hours of Elmo a day most days - a little bit with the sitter, a little bit with us, a little bit with Grammy - it adds up. The recommendation is maximum 30 minutes a day. Boy she's not going to like this...!

In good news, she's been napping pretty well and really enjoying playing outside. Here are some pictures of her in front of our house - I'm not sure if she's smelling or kissing the flowers but it's pretty adorable either way!

pretty

Easter Sunday dress:Good Friday, our daffodils were at their peak:
She had so much fun running around on the grass at the arboretum, looking at ducks and turtles:
In our back yard:

Easter Sunday

I will have to upload my pictures soon because I got to dress up my little living doll and take her picture with ducks and daffodils. I don't dress her up too often because she kind of HATES IT... and her new red shoes match nearly nothing else that she owns. But she's still cute. And I can crop the shoes out of the pictures if need be :-).

She loved the music at church but was very confused by the non-standard service - no children's time? WHAT?!?!?

The real (mis)adventure, however, happened in the late afternoon. And had nothing to do with Easter.

Since before the last big snow, our '89 Accord has been sitting in the driveway, undriveable. Apparently a certain member of the household (not the male one) didn't close the driver's side door all the way after driving the car the last time, and the battery was dead. So this gorgeous spring day seemed like the time to jump-start the car.

Yay, it worked! So we spontaneously packed ourselves into the car for a little drive in the country to charge the battery up again. Unfortunately, at the first real stop light (in Bridgewater, for you locals) it died, just past the intersection, on a low-grade uphill. I jumped out to switch places with Terry so that he could push the car into the gas station that was handily right next to the intersection, but because of the slight hill he couldn't take his foot off the brake. But, also because of the hill, I was able to give the car a little push and roll it easily backwards into the gas station.

This scenario resulted naturally in a truly tragic missed opportunity for a fabulous MAN OF THE YEAR photo shot - visibly pregnant wife pushes stalled car while husband relaxes behind the wheel!!! Toddler looks on, bemused! When one of the gas station attendants ran over to help me, Terry felt led - for some odd reason - to lean out the window and try to shout out an explanation about how he couldn't get out of the car - whatever. I don't think the guy heard him.

So then Terry went to call his dad to come rescue us while I ran across the street to the fast food place to get V. something to eat. There was a bit of an interlude while a passing friend stopped to give us a jump start, Terry drove across the street, and the car died again in the fast food parking lot. Then we just waited for Vern to come get us - and follow us home.

It was actually kind of relaxing sitting and waiting, watching V. stuff herself with french fries (look mom, BOTH hands!). But the relaxation did not last long.

We were on the way back, Vern following close behind, when ONCE AGAIN the car stalled at a light, right next to a big poultry plant (the Dayton Cargill plant, for you locals). Vern jumped us again, and we made it all of, oh, half a block, before the car quit for good. Just as we passed, what do you know, a fire truck that had just arrived with lights flashing. We coasted onto the shoulder, looked to the right, and saw ominous white smoky clouds of who-knows-what rolling across the ground, coming from the plant towards the road. Vern pulled up behind us just as a fireman strolled over and told us we couldn't stay there. Yeah, it really didn't look like a good picnic spot.

So Vern got in the van, we got into neutral, and he pushed our car with his car down the road. And then the wheel locked and we started drifting into the left lane... well, we got that corrected and eventually limped into the parking lot of the Hair Corral, where we left our car to eventually get towed.

It might be time to say goodbye to this old car.