Tonight I very nearly tried to give away my child at IKEA, although I doubt anyone would have actually taken her.
GOOD MOTHER POLICE, IF YOU ARE MONITORING THIS JOURNAL, YOU CAN COME AND TAKE ME AWAY NOW.
But seriously, it just went so badly that I was like, what am I thinking, taking this girl out in public? Who do I think I am, to believe I can handle my own daughter anywhere? And the other day I had the gall to feel all cheerful and competent, like hey, I like this mothering business, and I might even be good at it. Well, that'll teach me. And I know, logically, that a bad day shouldn't take such a toll on my self-esteem, but it does. Especially when it happens in public. I came home vowing that Suzannah would be an only child for awhile yet. POSSIBLY FOREVER.
Of course, I don't really mean that (I don't think). But it does give me pause. It doesn't help that when we finally came home I was greeted with a puddle of dog puke on my kitchen floor. And while I was cleaning that up, the dog decided to stroll into Suzannah's bedroom and puke there, too. (I swear, my dog doesn't puke all that often; it's just that apparently, I feel the need to share it with the world when she does.) You think you're having a bad day? ADD SOME DOG VOMIT. It's the icing on the cake.
Let's forget about the IKEA trip, though (I'm certainly going to try). Tonight, big things are happening. We converted Suzannah's crib into a daybed. That's right. She's sleeping into a bed she can climb into and out of all by herself, whenever she wants. Are you afraid? Because I am, a little.
(Note: I know that she's definitely old enough for one by most people's standards; I have mama friends who've had their kids sleeping in Big Kid Beds from much younger ages. We never pushed it, though, just like we've never pushed anything else -- mostly because Suzannah has always been completely content with her crib. And, I don't know, when people talk about their babies climbing out of their cribs I always think an appropriate response might be to add a LID somehow. Just kidding. Mostly. Seriously, since she spent her first year-and-a-half sleeping with us anyway, I never thought much about the "appropriate" time to transition to a real bed.)
Anyway. So our daughter has a bed now. Did I mention she can climb in and out whenever she wants?
I figured she was ready, but I had no idea how the transition would go. My daughter is not one of those children who falls asleep any old place when she's tired; she doesn't nod off on the couch, or on the floor. Ever. (Seriously, I see my friends' pictures of their little ones who fall asleep in all these weird places and I'm like, they just fall asleep right there? While they're playing? I don't understand.) I figured she'd delight in her newfound freedom and create all kinds of nighttime chaos, so I thought it'd be best to deal with that before I went back to teaching in the fall since it doesn't really matter that much if I'm sleep-deprived right now. We were pleasantly surprised, though; she loved her "new" bed and couldn't wait to go "Night night" in it. Or so we thought. Because ten minutes after we thought she'd gone right to sleep, she came trotting down the hallway with a huge smile on her face.
I confess: I can't think about that moment without laughing. We have officially become parents who say things like, "You get back in bed, young lady!"
I'm happy to report, though, that as of eleven o'clock this evening, she's been sleeping soundly for about an hour. Both Matt and I had to lie down with her at some point, but I didn't mind that, since it's something I haven't been able to do in quite some time. (She loves to get in bed with Mama when she wakes up early, but does she sleep? No. She says, "Night night!" and proceeds to kick and squirm and shove her feet in my face and stomach and she pokes and giggles her little head off.)
I actually called my parents tonight to report that their granddaughter was SLEEPING IN A BED that was NOT A CRIB. Because it really does feel that huge to me, like all of her milestones do. Thankfully, they responded perfectly.
"Oh, she's so BIG," my mom said. "Call us right back when she's asleep and tell us how it went."
So far, so good. Ask me again in the morning.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Okay, fine, you can have a pony...
Here's the thing about two-year-olds: They're often not very reasonable people.
Sometimes, a two-year-old might have a temper tantrum because you put her plate of fruit on the wrong side of her bowl of oatmeal. Sometimes, she might burst into tears because you've run out of raisins, and even though yesterday she hated raisins, wanted nothing to do with them, threw them on the floor, and fed sly handfuls of them to the dog, today she MUST HAVE RAISINS, what do you MEAN they're all gone, why don't you just go ahead and STARVE her, because you OBVIOUSLY have no regard for her well-being.
You are expected to read her mind when she invents a new game. For example, when she lies down on the floor and pats the space next to her head, you are supposed to lie down next to her, stick your feet in the air, grab them, loudly announce that you've grabbed your feet, sit up, stick your feet out in front of you, draw them back in, quickly stand up, and then trade places with her, because she's scampered to the other side of the room. What, you didn't follow that? Then YOU LOSE, my friend. And watch out, because she gets crabby when you don't keep up.
She absolutely must wash her hands in the sink immediately following a meal -- her meal, that is. If you're not through eating, well, that's too bad, because she needs to stand on YOUR chair. Not the empty one, but yours. And please make sure you reach for the right kind of soap when she asks for soap; she might actually want to try a squirt of Ultra Palmolive with Orange Extract tonight instead of the usual hand soap. You will be expected to know this based solely on the power of your intuition.
All of these scenarios, by the way, occur within the space of one hour. You're pretty much loony-tunes by six-thirty every night. When your husband walks in the door, you throw your two-year-old at him and run into the bathroom, where you lock the door for fifteen minutes. You may bring the dog with you, and the two of you will share meaningful glances.
Just kidding. Well, about the bathroom part. Really, you're okay with being a little bit crazy at the end of the day, because there are also moments when your two-year-old crawls up in your lap and lets you rock her for a few minutes. She just quietly leans her head against your chest, and you melt a little because she's so busy these days -- the cuddling has to be on her terms. She won't let you know ahead of time, and it rarely works to scoop her up while she's busy concocting her daily plan for world domination -- she'll just wriggle around and say, "Mama," until you put her down. But once or twice a day she'll just crawl right up in your arms and stay there, and you'll get to rock her and smell her hair and her sweet, soft skin, and you'll whisper that you love her, and you think there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more perfect than this moment.
And then she will place her soft little hands on either side of your face and turn your head towards her, and she will say, "Mama, kiss." And she'll pucker her lips a little and lean towards you and press those soft little lips against you. Sanity is a pretty small price to pay for that.
Sometimes, a two-year-old might have a temper tantrum because you put her plate of fruit on the wrong side of her bowl of oatmeal. Sometimes, she might burst into tears because you've run out of raisins, and even though yesterday she hated raisins, wanted nothing to do with them, threw them on the floor, and fed sly handfuls of them to the dog, today she MUST HAVE RAISINS, what do you MEAN they're all gone, why don't you just go ahead and STARVE her, because you OBVIOUSLY have no regard for her well-being.
You are expected to read her mind when she invents a new game. For example, when she lies down on the floor and pats the space next to her head, you are supposed to lie down next to her, stick your feet in the air, grab them, loudly announce that you've grabbed your feet, sit up, stick your feet out in front of you, draw them back in, quickly stand up, and then trade places with her, because she's scampered to the other side of the room. What, you didn't follow that? Then YOU LOSE, my friend. And watch out, because she gets crabby when you don't keep up.
She absolutely must wash her hands in the sink immediately following a meal -- her meal, that is. If you're not through eating, well, that's too bad, because she needs to stand on YOUR chair. Not the empty one, but yours. And please make sure you reach for the right kind of soap when she asks for soap; she might actually want to try a squirt of Ultra Palmolive with Orange Extract tonight instead of the usual hand soap. You will be expected to know this based solely on the power of your intuition.
All of these scenarios, by the way, occur within the space of one hour. You're pretty much loony-tunes by six-thirty every night. When your husband walks in the door, you throw your two-year-old at him and run into the bathroom, where you lock the door for fifteen minutes. You may bring the dog with you, and the two of you will share meaningful glances.
Just kidding. Well, about the bathroom part. Really, you're okay with being a little bit crazy at the end of the day, because there are also moments when your two-year-old crawls up in your lap and lets you rock her for a few minutes. She just quietly leans her head against your chest, and you melt a little because she's so busy these days -- the cuddling has to be on her terms. She won't let you know ahead of time, and it rarely works to scoop her up while she's busy concocting her daily plan for world domination -- she'll just wriggle around and say, "Mama," until you put her down. But once or twice a day she'll just crawl right up in your arms and stay there, and you'll get to rock her and smell her hair and her sweet, soft skin, and you'll whisper that you love her, and you think there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more perfect than this moment.
And then she will place her soft little hands on either side of your face and turn your head towards her, and she will say, "Mama, kiss." And she'll pucker her lips a little and lean towards you and press those soft little lips against you. Sanity is a pretty small price to pay for that.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Word of the Day
Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I miss co-sleeping.
I never assumed we'd do the "family bed" thing. I always thought we'd have our baby sleep in our room for awhile, even a long while, definitely -- but probably in her own space. We even bought a bedside co-sleeper/bassinette-thingie. But you know what? Suzannah hated it. We all learned very quickly that we all actually slept when I brought Suzannah into the bed with us, and when we mastered nursing in bed, well, that was just bliss . Seriously. That's all I cared about, because in those early days, I was completely convinced I would never sleep for more than three hours at a time EVER AGAIN, and I pretty much would have sold my car, my house, a kidney, and possibly future children if I could have just had a little more shut-eye. What can I say -- sleep deprivation does crazy things to your brain.
But it was more than the fact that we all seemed to get more sleep that way. I simply loved seeing my daughter's perfect, milk-drunk face as she drifted off to sleep snuggled in my arms. I loved holding her and smelling her and feeling her nearness. I loved hearing her sleepy sighs, loved the way she would touch my face or the way we'd just look at each other and bask in the newness of our life together. It felt absolutely right, and for some reason, I just never worried about all the warnings I heard from well-meaning advice-givers -- you know, that we'd NEVER get her to sleep alone, that she'd grow up clingy, yada yada yada. It's the same thing we always heard about breastfeeding -- that she'd NEVER stop unless we MADE her. For the record, when Suzannah was ready to transition to her own room, she made it perfectly clear. And when she was done breastfeeding, she made that clear, too.
I miss both of those things, even though I realize that my little girl is just growing up, that it's the right and natural order of things.
But sometimes when I kiss her goodnight, I want to linger with her a little while, want to stroke her hair and hug her and kiss her until she's like, OKAY, MOM, YOU CAN GO NOW. She'll literally drop to her mattress, pull her blanket around her body, and say "Nigh-nigh." She can be pretty firm about this, actually.
But before she does this, I have to hug her a million times, and lately, after I say "I love you" I grab her, squeeze her in one final hug, and say, "Squeeze!" Hey, a vocabulary lesson never hurt anyone, right?
She picked right up on this, as she's adding more and more words to her vocabulary each day. So now, she'll hug me back and say, "Fweeze!"
This evening, we were clowning around after her bedtime story (yes, when we should have been winding down and doing something more peaceful. I don't know, baby meditation or massage or guided imagery or lullabies or something) and she grabbed her own feet, squeezed them, and said, "Fweeze!"
While I was changing her, she asked for a wipe. She gripped it tightly in her hands until it started dripping moisture onto the floor. She grinned. "Fweeze!" she cried.
And every time she does that, I just have to scoop her up in my arms, give her a crushing hug, and say, "Squeeze!" And of course, what it really means is this: I love you so much I can hardly even breathe.
I never assumed we'd do the "family bed" thing. I always thought we'd have our baby sleep in our room for awhile, even a long while, definitely -- but probably in her own space. We even bought a bedside co-sleeper/bassinette-thingie. But you know what? Suzannah hated it. We all learned very quickly that we all actually slept when I brought Suzannah into the bed with us, and when we mastered nursing in bed, well, that was just bliss . Seriously. That's all I cared about, because in those early days, I was completely convinced I would never sleep for more than three hours at a time EVER AGAIN, and I pretty much would have sold my car, my house, a kidney, and possibly future children if I could have just had a little more shut-eye. What can I say -- sleep deprivation does crazy things to your brain.
But it was more than the fact that we all seemed to get more sleep that way. I simply loved seeing my daughter's perfect, milk-drunk face as she drifted off to sleep snuggled in my arms. I loved holding her and smelling her and feeling her nearness. I loved hearing her sleepy sighs, loved the way she would touch my face or the way we'd just look at each other and bask in the newness of our life together. It felt absolutely right, and for some reason, I just never worried about all the warnings I heard from well-meaning advice-givers -- you know, that we'd NEVER get her to sleep alone, that she'd grow up clingy, yada yada yada. It's the same thing we always heard about breastfeeding -- that she'd NEVER stop unless we MADE her. For the record, when Suzannah was ready to transition to her own room, she made it perfectly clear. And when she was done breastfeeding, she made that clear, too.
I miss both of those things, even though I realize that my little girl is just growing up, that it's the right and natural order of things.
But sometimes when I kiss her goodnight, I want to linger with her a little while, want to stroke her hair and hug her and kiss her until she's like, OKAY, MOM, YOU CAN GO NOW. She'll literally drop to her mattress, pull her blanket around her body, and say "Nigh-nigh." She can be pretty firm about this, actually.
But before she does this, I have to hug her a million times, and lately, after I say "I love you" I grab her, squeeze her in one final hug, and say, "Squeeze!" Hey, a vocabulary lesson never hurt anyone, right?
She picked right up on this, as she's adding more and more words to her vocabulary each day. So now, she'll hug me back and say, "Fweeze!"
This evening, we were clowning around after her bedtime story (yes, when we should have been winding down and doing something more peaceful. I don't know, baby meditation or massage or guided imagery or lullabies or something) and she grabbed her own feet, squeezed them, and said, "Fweeze!"
While I was changing her, she asked for a wipe. She gripped it tightly in her hands until it started dripping moisture onto the floor. She grinned. "Fweeze!" she cried.
And every time she does that, I just have to scoop her up in my arms, give her a crushing hug, and say, "Squeeze!" And of course, what it really means is this: I love you so much I can hardly even breathe.
Mother, I just can't do a THING with my hair...
(Suzannah and Kyanne)
BREAKING NEWS: Two days ago, on Tuesday, July 15, 2008, Suzannah Grace Winslow wore her hair in pigtails all afternoon.
PIGTAILS.
I know that some babies are born with enough hair to braid before they go home from the hospital. I know that many, many children who are my daughter's age wear pigtails every single day. But Suzannah is her mother's daughter, which means that she was doomed to spend almost the first two years of her life in a state of baldness (even though I have plenty of hair now, far too much hair for hot summer afternoons, which means that in a spontaneous fit of hair angst on Saturday, I went and had it all chopped off -- but I digress). Lately, though, her hair is actually starting to grow. It's fine and blonde and it kind of looks like a mullet right now, although when she wakes up from a nap or gets a little sweaty it tends to turn into this mass of curls (and that she inherited from her daddy). I refuse to cut it just yet. We've been clipping it into bows for awhile now, but this week I decided to try the pigtails.
I play with her hair all the time in the hopes that she'll be used to my messing around with her head -- otherwise, I figured, when I try to do something to her hair for the first time, she'll freak out. So I'm always tugging at it and running my fingers through it, and for the most part, she tolerates it pretty well. Over the weekend I tried rubber bands for the first time, which resulted in her batting irritatedly at my hands and saying, "Ow." I gave up, perhaps too quickly.
On Tuesday, before we went outside to play in her pool, my friend Kyanne distracted her with play-doh. While they busied themselves taking the play-doh out of the little containers, I knelt behind Suzannah and wrestled her hair into two little pigtails. I wasn't going for perfection this time -- I just wanted to see those cute little spikes of blonde hair sticking out from the side of her head. Because I am DUE.
And they actually looked adorable. I spent the next two hours squealing, "It's a totally new look, isn't it?" And Kyanne nodded and smiled tolerantly. It's true, though -- they made her look like such a little girl -- yet another milestone, a transition, a growing away from babyhood and into little girl-hood. It is pure sweetness.
PIGTAILS.
I know that some babies are born with enough hair to braid before they go home from the hospital. I know that many, many children who are my daughter's age wear pigtails every single day. But Suzannah is her mother's daughter, which means that she was doomed to spend almost the first two years of her life in a state of baldness (even though I have plenty of hair now, far too much hair for hot summer afternoons, which means that in a spontaneous fit of hair angst on Saturday, I went and had it all chopped off -- but I digress). Lately, though, her hair is actually starting to grow. It's fine and blonde and it kind of looks like a mullet right now, although when she wakes up from a nap or gets a little sweaty it tends to turn into this mass of curls (and that she inherited from her daddy). I refuse to cut it just yet. We've been clipping it into bows for awhile now, but this week I decided to try the pigtails.
I play with her hair all the time in the hopes that she'll be used to my messing around with her head -- otherwise, I figured, when I try to do something to her hair for the first time, she'll freak out. So I'm always tugging at it and running my fingers through it, and for the most part, she tolerates it pretty well. Over the weekend I tried rubber bands for the first time, which resulted in her batting irritatedly at my hands and saying, "Ow." I gave up, perhaps too quickly.
On Tuesday, before we went outside to play in her pool, my friend Kyanne distracted her with play-doh. While they busied themselves taking the play-doh out of the little containers, I knelt behind Suzannah and wrestled her hair into two little pigtails. I wasn't going for perfection this time -- I just wanted to see those cute little spikes of blonde hair sticking out from the side of her head. Because I am DUE.
And they actually looked adorable. I spent the next two hours squealing, "It's a totally new look, isn't it?" And Kyanne nodded and smiled tolerantly. It's true, though -- they made her look like such a little girl -- yet another milestone, a transition, a growing away from babyhood and into little girl-hood. It is pure sweetness.
Friday, July 11, 2008
My daughter, the fish; also, some stuff about my teeth
About the time Suzannah learned to walk, she decided she was through sitting down in the bathtub. It was the strangest thing. She'd still splash around in the water -- but she wouldn't sit her little bottom down. If I tried to help her do so, she screamed so loudly the neighbors probably thought I was trying to drown her. I did try to get her into the shower with me a couple of times, but that wasn't terribly successful, either. So for the better part of a year, I had to bathe her standing up in the tub, pouring water over her. (She didn't particularly enjoy that either, and sometimes I had to play a little game we call "Speed Bath.")
Lately, though, she approaches bath time a little differently. It goes something like this: I say, "Should we go take a bath?" and Suzannah goes tearing into the bathroom, where she tries to climb into the tub immediately. Last night, I didn't say anything at all -- I just went in and started the water. When she heard that, she came running and tried to climb in, clothes and all. I managed to wrestle her sundress over her head, but when I asked her to run it across the hall and put it in her hamper, she looked at me and howled, "No! Bath!"
Once she's in the tub, not only does she sit, she throws herself down on her tummy. She kicks and splashes and laughs, and if I say, "Suzannah, are you ready to get out?" she very deliberately wags her head back and forth and says, "No no. No. No no no." Her tone is actually quite polite in a "Not right now, thanks!" kind of way. However, if I decide it's time to get out before she's ready, she's not so accommodating -- so I've figured out that the way to end the bath without tears is to drain all the water from the tub before I try anything. She says "bye bye!" to the water, and then when the tub is empty -- and not a moment before! -- she'll consent to drying off. My guess is that we'll have more success with her wading pool this summer; last year, she was extremely tentative, although when I stuck her sand and water table in the pool and stood in there with her, she played cautiously. I think she wasn't terribly fond of the chill of the water outside, but that doesn't seem to bother her anymore.
Last week when Matt's family was here, we drove to Point Defiance in Tacoma and wandered down to the beach. All I could think was, why haven't we come here before? Because Suzannah loved it. She didn't play in the water much, but she loved the waves crashing around her feet, and she stood at the shore and yelled, "Whooooaaa!" A starfish washed up on the beach, and while it probably wasn't terribly healthy, it was still alive -- so I held it in my hand and convinced Suzannah to touch it. She was surprisingly gentle. (Actually, I've noticed this with Blondie, too; Suzannah is getting so much better about petting the puppy nicely, which we've been working on for, oh, her whole life. And yesterday Suzannah very nicely fed Blondie about three handfuls of oatmeal under the table. VERY SNEAKY, Suzannah, but cut it out with the mind games -- Blondie doesn't know that the next morning when she lingers hopefully nearby that she is NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT YOU.)
***
Let's talk about teeth. Specifically, mine. This is for all of you who make fun of my compulsive brushing habits.
So, I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned yesterday. I've gone every six months since I moved to Washington; my dentist is a stickler for that. They're incredibly thorough; they take little measurements on all your teeth every time you visit, to see how much gum recession you have. Then they deliver all the predictable lectures on flossing and brushing gently. (I'm not good at the "brushing gently" part, I admit it, although since I began using a Sonicare I'm a lot better. Also, I'm not good at the coffee drinking, as in, I do a lot of it and THEY CAN TELL.) My visits are comfortingly predictable: I get all the same lectures on flossing and brushing gently, delivered by a cotton-candy-voiced hygienist; I endure the INSUFFERABLE SCRAPING (you all know what I'm talking about); my teeth are polished up and flossed; the dentist comes in, peers in my mouth for five seconds, says everything looks great, and asks how school is going. And then I get a carnation.
All in all, not too bad. Except for the INSUFFERABLE SCRAPING, which makes me dig my fingernails into my palm so hard they leave marks for the rest of the day.
"Doing all right?" the cotton-candy-voiced hygienist asks.
"Ugh-huh-ggghh," I say. (Which is all anyone can ever say with an open mouth, especially if it's filled with those horrible cotton rolls and latex-covered fingers. So why do dentists and hygienists always insist on trying to carry on a conversation?)
I haven't actually been to the dentist in nearly a year; I had an appointment for early spring, but I was really sick -- coughing and sneezing and phlegming all over the place, and I could hardly talk. So I canceled it. The soonest they could get me in was yesterday (unless I wanted to go at seven o'clock in the morning, which I didn't), since they book that far in advance. I managed not to think about it until about an hour before my appointment, when I decided I probably shouldn't have my morning coffee before a cleaning. And then I promptly started to freak out about ALL THE SCRAPING THEY WOULD HAVE TO DO, because I hadn't been in since last August.
The visit began like any other; one hygienist poked around my teeth, murmuring numbers (the lower the better) while another one wrote them down. It was like I was waiting to hear the score on a math test -- did I pass? Did I do well? Did I get an A? I was pretty sure my numbers were appalling, that my teeth were about to fall out, that I'd be lectured about flossing (wait, that happens anyway). But when she finished, she said, "Boy, I wish my numbers were that good."
"No kidding," said the other one. Really? Okay, that wasn't bad.
And then the scraping started. But it only lasted a few minutes, and it didn't seem nearly as vigorous as it usually does. And then she stopped.
"You have no tartar and hardly any plaque," she said. "I don't have a lot to do today."
Bells began to ring and a choir of angels descended from the fluorescent lights above my head.
"Really?"
"You're done! You've taken really good care of your teeth this year."
Would you like me to let you in on my secret? I brush my teeth after lunch every single day. I haven't always done this, but I started carrying a toothbrush in my school bag this past year. Every day, I make sure to allow enough time at the end of our piddly lunch break to brush my teeth before heading back to class. It makes sense to me; afternoons are not my best time of day, and if I freshen up a bit, I feel a little more energetic. Also, sometimes I like to eat things like hummus or chicken artichoke hot pockets, and who wants to taste that all afternoon?
But you'd be amazed at how many of my colleagues make fun of me for this (and this is as close to writing about school here as I'll get). One lady in particular always manages to wander into the bathroom while I'm brushing my teeth, and she always, always laughs. In, like, a knee-slapping way. "Oh, there you go again!" she cries. "You and your toothbrush! You're so funny!" And I'm always like, uh, okay. Then I ask my lunch buddies, "Is it really THAT weird?" And some of them look at me and say, uh, yeah, actually it kind of is, why don't you just chew some gum?
BECAUSE I ONLY HAD TO BE AT THE DENTIST FOR A TOTAL OF THIRTY MINUTES, THAT'S WHY! I can take any mockery for that.
Lately, though, she approaches bath time a little differently. It goes something like this: I say, "Should we go take a bath?" and Suzannah goes tearing into the bathroom, where she tries to climb into the tub immediately. Last night, I didn't say anything at all -- I just went in and started the water. When she heard that, she came running and tried to climb in, clothes and all. I managed to wrestle her sundress over her head, but when I asked her to run it across the hall and put it in her hamper, she looked at me and howled, "No! Bath!"
Once she's in the tub, not only does she sit, she throws herself down on her tummy. She kicks and splashes and laughs, and if I say, "Suzannah, are you ready to get out?" she very deliberately wags her head back and forth and says, "No no. No. No no no." Her tone is actually quite polite in a "Not right now, thanks!" kind of way. However, if I decide it's time to get out before she's ready, she's not so accommodating -- so I've figured out that the way to end the bath without tears is to drain all the water from the tub before I try anything. She says "bye bye!" to the water, and then when the tub is empty -- and not a moment before! -- she'll consent to drying off. My guess is that we'll have more success with her wading pool this summer; last year, she was extremely tentative, although when I stuck her sand and water table in the pool and stood in there with her, she played cautiously. I think she wasn't terribly fond of the chill of the water outside, but that doesn't seem to bother her anymore.
Last week when Matt's family was here, we drove to Point Defiance in Tacoma and wandered down to the beach. All I could think was, why haven't we come here before? Because Suzannah loved it. She didn't play in the water much, but she loved the waves crashing around her feet, and she stood at the shore and yelled, "Whooooaaa!" A starfish washed up on the beach, and while it probably wasn't terribly healthy, it was still alive -- so I held it in my hand and convinced Suzannah to touch it. She was surprisingly gentle. (Actually, I've noticed this with Blondie, too; Suzannah is getting so much better about petting the puppy nicely, which we've been working on for, oh, her whole life. And yesterday Suzannah very nicely fed Blondie about three handfuls of oatmeal under the table. VERY SNEAKY, Suzannah, but cut it out with the mind games -- Blondie doesn't know that the next morning when she lingers hopefully nearby that she is NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT YOU.)
Let's talk about teeth. Specifically, mine. This is for all of you who make fun of my compulsive brushing habits.
So, I had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned yesterday. I've gone every six months since I moved to Washington; my dentist is a stickler for that. They're incredibly thorough; they take little measurements on all your teeth every time you visit, to see how much gum recession you have. Then they deliver all the predictable lectures on flossing and brushing gently. (I'm not good at the "brushing gently" part, I admit it, although since I began using a Sonicare I'm a lot better. Also, I'm not good at the coffee drinking, as in, I do a lot of it and THEY CAN TELL.) My visits are comfortingly predictable: I get all the same lectures on flossing and brushing gently, delivered by a cotton-candy-voiced hygienist; I endure the INSUFFERABLE SCRAPING (you all know what I'm talking about); my teeth are polished up and flossed; the dentist comes in, peers in my mouth for five seconds, says everything looks great, and asks how school is going. And then I get a carnation.
All in all, not too bad. Except for the INSUFFERABLE SCRAPING, which makes me dig my fingernails into my palm so hard they leave marks for the rest of the day.
"Doing all right?" the cotton-candy-voiced hygienist asks.
"Ugh-huh-ggghh," I say. (Which is all anyone can ever say with an open mouth, especially if it's filled with those horrible cotton rolls and latex-covered fingers. So why do dentists and hygienists always insist on trying to carry on a conversation?)
I haven't actually been to the dentist in nearly a year; I had an appointment for early spring, but I was really sick -- coughing and sneezing and phlegming all over the place, and I could hardly talk. So I canceled it. The soonest they could get me in was yesterday (unless I wanted to go at seven o'clock in the morning, which I didn't), since they book that far in advance. I managed not to think about it until about an hour before my appointment, when I decided I probably shouldn't have my morning coffee before a cleaning. And then I promptly started to freak out about ALL THE SCRAPING THEY WOULD HAVE TO DO, because I hadn't been in since last August.
The visit began like any other; one hygienist poked around my teeth, murmuring numbers (the lower the better) while another one wrote them down. It was like I was waiting to hear the score on a math test -- did I pass? Did I do well? Did I get an A? I was pretty sure my numbers were appalling, that my teeth were about to fall out, that I'd be lectured about flossing (wait, that happens anyway). But when she finished, she said, "Boy, I wish my numbers were that good."
"No kidding," said the other one. Really? Okay, that wasn't bad.
And then the scraping started. But it only lasted a few minutes, and it didn't seem nearly as vigorous as it usually does. And then she stopped.
"You have no tartar and hardly any plaque," she said. "I don't have a lot to do today."
Bells began to ring and a choir of angels descended from the fluorescent lights above my head.
"Really?"
"You're done! You've taken really good care of your teeth this year."
Would you like me to let you in on my secret? I brush my teeth after lunch every single day. I haven't always done this, but I started carrying a toothbrush in my school bag this past year. Every day, I make sure to allow enough time at the end of our piddly lunch break to brush my teeth before heading back to class. It makes sense to me; afternoons are not my best time of day, and if I freshen up a bit, I feel a little more energetic. Also, sometimes I like to eat things like hummus or chicken artichoke hot pockets, and who wants to taste that all afternoon?
But you'd be amazed at how many of my colleagues make fun of me for this (and this is as close to writing about school here as I'll get). One lady in particular always manages to wander into the bathroom while I'm brushing my teeth, and she always, always laughs. In, like, a knee-slapping way. "Oh, there you go again!" she cries. "You and your toothbrush! You're so funny!" And I'm always like, uh, okay. Then I ask my lunch buddies, "Is it really THAT weird?" And some of them look at me and say, uh, yeah, actually it kind of is, why don't you just chew some gum?
BECAUSE I ONLY HAD TO BE AT THE DENTIST FOR A TOTAL OF THIRTY MINUTES, THAT'S WHY! I can take any mockery for that.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Look at the bright side...
It's always lovely to wake up to the sound of the pug eating a puddle of her own vomit in the middle of the bedroom floor. (Should I add a disclaimer to this blog? A warning of sorts, to alert my readers to the fact that sometimes I write about dog puke and kid puke and other gross things no one really wants to read about but that are a fact of my life and therefore fair game? Eh. Consider yourselves warned. I've never particularly cared about writing appropriate things -- I'm sure my mother will confirm this.) I hope it's not an omen, an indicator of how our day is going to go. At least I didn't step in it. Maybe it's my lucky day. Any day in which I don't step in warm dog vomit in bare feet is better than one in which I do, right? (In case you're wondering, no, this doesn't happen often, and yes, actually, I have stepped in warm dog vomit in bare feet. My apologies if you're eating lunch right now.)
In other news, here's a little riddle: How many minutes does it take a toddler to get into trouble while her mother cleans up the breakfast dishes?
Answer: No minutes. It takes no minutes. Seconds, maybe. It's unbelieveable, really; Suzannah is completely capable of entertaining herself with her dollhouse or her baby and stroller or any number of toys, and often she's so absorbed in her play that I could probably take a bubble bath or read a few chapters in a novel before she'd even miss me. So I didn't think it was ridiculous to assume that this morning she could do that for, oh, five minutes while I put a few things away. I busied myself in the kitchen, wiping the counter and washing the dried remnants of oatmeal out of her bowl. I let the dog out. And then, guess what I heard?
Nothing.
Suzannah was silent. (Did that just send chills racing up your spine? Silence is never a good sign when your child is awake.) I turned around, and sure enough, she'd vanished. I strolled casually into our bedroom, because that's one of her favorite places to play, and found her bent over the toilet in our bathroom. She was not only bent over it, she was armpit-deep in it. I tried not to scream, because I had a feeling that wasn't the worst part. I was right. The worst part was discovering that she had unspooled an entire double roll of Quilted Northern into the toilet bowl.
"Suzannah," I moaned. At the sound of my voice, she turned to me and beamed, clearly oblivious to the stricken expression on my face.
"Potty," she announced cheerfully.
At least she knows where toilet paper goes, I guess. I'm so proud.
In other news, here's a little riddle: How many minutes does it take a toddler to get into trouble while her mother cleans up the breakfast dishes?
Answer: No minutes. It takes no minutes. Seconds, maybe. It's unbelieveable, really; Suzannah is completely capable of entertaining herself with her dollhouse or her baby and stroller or any number of toys, and often she's so absorbed in her play that I could probably take a bubble bath or read a few chapters in a novel before she'd even miss me. So I didn't think it was ridiculous to assume that this morning she could do that for, oh, five minutes while I put a few things away. I busied myself in the kitchen, wiping the counter and washing the dried remnants of oatmeal out of her bowl. I let the dog out. And then, guess what I heard?
Nothing.
Suzannah was silent. (Did that just send chills racing up your spine? Silence is never a good sign when your child is awake.) I turned around, and sure enough, she'd vanished. I strolled casually into our bedroom, because that's one of her favorite places to play, and found her bent over the toilet in our bathroom. She was not only bent over it, she was armpit-deep in it. I tried not to scream, because I had a feeling that wasn't the worst part. I was right. The worst part was discovering that she had unspooled an entire double roll of Quilted Northern into the toilet bowl.
"Suzannah," I moaned. At the sound of my voice, she turned to me and beamed, clearly oblivious to the stricken expression on my face.
"Potty," she announced cheerfully.
At least she knows where toilet paper goes, I guess. I'm so proud.
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