Preparing

We leave tomorrow to go and see Nora's Nana and Grampa in Alexandria. Nora loves airplanes - and of course she loves Nana and "yampa" too - so it is sure to be another tiring and exciting day for all of us. We get to have a whole other Christmas. And Nora gets to wear her whole Christmas outfit again! She now knows how to say that it is a "pity dess nana made it."

Traveling with a toddler takes so much preparation. Ken has multiple lists going to make sure we don't forget anything. I even packed Nora her own backpack this time. We have a new sticker book and some of her new Christmas books, her baby and many many cheerios. And of course a change of clothes ready to go (for me too!).

I've had nightmares about being "that mom" with "that kid," the one screaming and suddenly asked to leave the plane. I hope Nora's usual sunny disposition prevails. It could be a long flight...

More on Christmas

Now that I've caught caught up a bit more on sleep I can better reflect on our Christmas.

Christmas Eve morning began with a trip to the mall to see Santa. Mimi and Papa accompanied us. The mall is close and their Santa is actually pretty good. A friend gave me the tip last year that if you go to the mall first thing on Christmas Eve the lines are much more reasonable. That has been true for two years in a row now. As I drove to the mall I pondered the whole Santa experience, which is still clearly more for me than for Nora. While last year I could put her on his lap and think it was cute and funny that she was crying, this year it felt much more mean. I guess that's because now I know she understands things and can communicate her hurt to me. So we asked Santa to stand behind us and Mimi and I sat with Nora on Santa's chair. It was much more pleasant.

Christmas Eve dinner Ken cooked pinwheel steaks, sweet potato fries and salad. It was low key and easy (especially for me since I didn't even help. I had Christmas Hand, Foot and Mouth disease - Nora's own special present for me).

Really Nora's Christmas was defined by three gifts. The first, lucky for us, was her table. She has spent considerable time already sitting and coloring there. She knows it is her table - saying "MY table" pretty often, and sitting with her knees tucked under as she concentrates on coloring whatever picture she is currently creating.

The second gift was the tent - the igloo - that Mimi and Papa gave her. She was a bit hesitant at first, but once she got in she loved it. If Nora was missing, she was in her igloo. She ate, played and read in her igloo all evening. And she convinced everyone to get in with her at some point.

And the real winner was the cheerio book from Betty - "Betty Dallas" as Nora calls her. The book asked the reader to fill in certain pictures with cheerios. Nora liked that idea, and she liked the idea to eat the cheerios a whole lot more. She ate her weight in cheerios and more. She would "read" the book and eat the cheerios at the same time. Over and over and over again. She wouldn't eat any dinner.

Christmas has never been my favorite holiday - I'm not a scrooge, but I'm not Fezziwig either. But watching Nora and seeing how much she makes everyone around her smile and laugh may make more of a "believer" out of me after all.

Christmas

All I can really say is that I am exhausted. Which must mean Nora had a fantastic 2nd Christmas. Thanks Mimi, Papa, Unlce Andrew and Glenda (Nora's biggest fan) for spending a great day with us.

It is 8 o'clock and I think I'm off to bed.

Personal Day

Nora slept until 7:15 today. I can write that because I am sure it was a fluke and will never happen again even if I do put it out to the universe. But it was amazing. Amazing. A great beginning to my day dedicated to me.

I had planned a few weeks ago to take a "personal day" today - on my first day of my two week school break. I had determined that I would put all my mom guilt about daycare aside for a day and just think about me. I would send her to daycare and I would stay home. Alone.

Ever since I started sending Nora to daycare last year I have had this horrible nagging guilty feeling from the second the bell rings at the end of school to the time 10 minutes later when I pull into the church parking lot to pick Nora up. If I am not in school I should be with her. Now. Even being 2 minutes later than normal makes my heart race. It is irrational, I know, but I can't stop it.

Or, I couldn't stop it. Sometime in the last three weeks, as Nora's health returned to normal, I realized that I was tired. That I hadn't really had a guilt-free gone-from-Nora moment in two years. That I needed to kick that awful guilty feeling to the curb and relax on the couch. Take a day for me.

I prepared myself for this for a while. I confessed to Miss Laura this morning when I dropped her off that I was taking time for myself. I felt that guilt rise up. But I kissed Nora goodbye and went out the door to begin my day for me.

I had pictured myself reading a whole book wrapped in the covers of my bed. Or watching trash TV on the couch all day. Or napping all day long to catch up for two years of sleep deprivation. I warned Ken that I was not to be bothered about chores on my day to myself. He complied.

None of my super-relaxing scenarios turned into reality. I didn't have a book to read. Trash TV got boring really fast. And I did nap, but after sleeping to 7 am today I didn't feel as wiped as I sometimes do. I left daycare, went to the post office to mail my Christmas cards, came home and did the dishes, watched some Ellen, surfed the Internet. Ken and I went to Ikea to get Nora's Christmas gift. And then I did nap for an hour or so after we got home. Then I went to get Nora. And we went to the park.

I did enjoy being in the house without Nora around for a bit. But it got quiet. And all the little reminders of her - including the ornaments she hung on all the knobs around the house before she left this morning - made me miss her at the same time I was relishing my silence. The nagging guilt left me alone today, as I had hoped it would. And now, after taking time for me, I am more than ready to spend my two weeks with little "me" time and lots of "us" time.

Jingle Bells

Nora is in love with the Christmas tree. Upon waking in the morning, she has changed from her usual routine of stopping at the fridge for milk to walking to the tree and turning the lights on. She says "bye bye sismas tee" when we leave the house and she turns the lights off and says goodnight before she goes to bed. She has fallen in love with some of the ornaments as well. The pink sequin star and two "jingle" bells no longer reside on the tree, but in her Santa purse. And each day last week when we got home she would take some ornaments from the tree, put them around her wrists and walk around the house as if she were a Christmas tree herself.

I can already picture the tantrum that will occur when the tree must depart.

Toddler Crush

Today at the Christmas party at daycare, I met the mom of the boy who took his shirt off for Nora at daycare a few weeks ago. The one who she walked into a table for instead of letting go of his hand. The mom told me that he loves Nora so much. That when she talks about school in the morning, he just talks about Nora. That when he sings his ABCs he sings, "A, B, C, Nora, Nora, D..."

He might be the craziest one in daycare in terms of his enegry. But he must be the smartest one in terms of his taste in girls.

Presents, Hairbows and Helping

I'm afraid of presents. Last year, I was excited to get Nora a Christmas gift and a birthday gift. I hid them both in plain sight and she never noticed. She wasn't quite one yet.

This year is different. Nora knows somehow what a present is. She knows how to spot things I'm hiding from a mile away. She knows who Santa is (she said "Santa. Ho, Ho, Ho" to the bearded butcher in Central Market tonight. He wasn't so thrilled). She has already gotten a few presents for Christmas and her birthday, which are woefully close together. Last night, after she opened two gifts she asked for more. That's when I got scared. I think maybe I should just call off her birthday until she knows better. Too many presents. Too overwhelming. Too much stuff. Ugh.

But enough about presents - on to hairbows. I have been agonizing about Nora's hair for a month now. Do I cut it? Should she have bangs? Does it look too much like a mullet? And for all my thinking about it, nothing has happened. She still has wispy wavy hair that goes into her face too often. But she is so close to not having bangs, to being able to tuck it behind her ear. She refuses to wear anything in her hair. She likes to say "hairbow" but that is about it. But somehow, Miss Laura conned her into wearing a Pebbles-looking hairstyle today for her Christmas party. And when we got home I somehow conned her into a ponytail. And when I looked at her with the hairbow in - especially the ponytail - I couldn't deny it anymore. My baby is a little girl. She looked so big and grown up with her hair all "done." Maybe that is why I haven't cut her hair. Maybe I am already - at 23 months - trying to keep Nora as my little baby.

And helping. Nora is such a helper. She loads the dishwasher, turns on her nebulizer, brings her dishes to the sink. She cleans her books and shelves with diaper wipes, puts her coat away, turns the Christmas Tree lights on and off. And the other night she even helped Uncle Andrew with his laundry. He was so patient as she took each piece out of the dryer and put it in his basket. Then he handed her each piece from the washer and she put it enthusiastically in the dryer. She loves to help. And most times, when she's done, she'll look at me and say, "Yeah, Nora!"

My little growing helper will get lots of love, attention and presents this Christmas and birthday season. And my best present will be to have time away from work to spend with her.

Hot Fire

Ken should really be writing this. But he won't.

Before bed most nights Nora and Ken read Goodnight Moon. For those of you who know the book well, you can picture the green room with the fireplace in the background. Nora has apparently taken to this fire and wished the author had included it in the list of inanimate objects that the bunny says goodnight to before bed.

Nora, as Ken reports, sucks her thumb like Maggie from the Simpsons sucks her pacifier, as he reads, but each time he turns the page she removes the thumb long enough to point and say, "hot fire!" Then she replaces her thumb and waits for the fire to reappear on the next page so she can repeat her pointing and stating "hot fire!"

Tonight Nora was asking for me to put her to sleep (which I don't do because it takes 40 minutes) and she was crying after I left her with Ken in the rocker. He started reading Goodnight Moon and she kept crying. That is, until he pointed to the hot fire. She repeated and pointed. And apparently at the end of the book she said, "night night hot fire."

Too funny.

Nora's First Christmas Tree

With each ornament I took out of the box, Nora oohed and aaahed. To the white and silver heart, she said "mine" and laid it on her chest just where her heart is. To the giant silver snowflake ornament, she said, "so pretty!" And when I took out the star ornaments she started singing "Twinkle Twinkle." (We recently realized she knows the words to most of her songs - and sings along when she doesn't want to nap...)

Nora loved putting every ornament on the tree. And they when we were done she wanted to take them all off and do it again. She took the ones off the bottom two or three times and redecorated. Each time she successfully replaced an ornament she said, "Yeah, Nora!" and clapped for herself.

She even said "night night, Christmas tree," as we went off for bedtime.

Her nose is running - maybe a cold, maybe an allergy, maybe molars - but she is happy as can be.

It was the most fun I've had decorating a Christmas tree.

Ahhhh...A breath of fresh cuteness

Now that the sickness has fled Nora's body for the time being. she is back to her too cute self. In comparison to her moaning, whiny sick self, her abundant energy and talkativeness has Ken and I constantly amused. Here is the new Nora cute list - since it's been a while since I made one.

OTay: Nora's new word of the day - everything today was "O-Tay." Lots of her words are cute: her excited breathless "yeah" in response almost everything, including Ken's asking her if she wants a sister or brother, "bless you, Dada," every time Ken sneezes or coughs, "books a bed" every time she wants to read in bed, which is often, and her labeling of all the colors of everything she sees and does.

Picture Books: Now Nora reads to us instead of us always reading to her. She knows all the pictures in her picture books and says the words enthusiastically and shuts the book and pronounces "the end."

Silly kisses: Nora sometimes, if you're really lucky, will give you silly kisses - which means she kisses you numerous times on the cheeks, nose and sometimes the mouth. And she doesn't stop because it always makes us laugh.

Airplanes: Nora LOVES airplanes. Every time she hears an airplane, even when we're in the house, she stops what she's doing, looks up and says "aplane." She also tries to say helicopter, which is really cute.

Drawing: Nora loves to draw, especially with the many colored pens she finds in my school bag. Tonight she drew many colored Os. I took a picture since amazingly it did look like she was drawing Os. She colors so intently and makes straight lines on the floor with her pens or crayons, organizing her materials.

Cleaning: She certainly doesn't take after me, but at least once a day Nora asks for a few diaper wipes to "cean" her books and toys. Sometimes she insists I help. Maybe she is trying to send me a message about my own cleaning skills.

And the nebulizer: While I wish this wasn't even in her life, she is SO good about doing her nebulizer so far. When I tell her it's time for her mask she runs to open the door for the apple tv, asks for Yo Gabba Gabba or the Backyardigans and then turns on the machine and jumps up on my lap for a relaxing ten minutes of tv and breathing pulmicort. I have a feeling this arrangement is too good to last.

There are so many cute things that Nora does it's actually hard to list. She is just so enthusiastic about life right now. At the same time, she's asserting her independence, trying to do everything from putting on her socks and pants, to feeding herself, to serving her own cheerios.

Oh please stay around, healthy Nora. I missed you!

The New Noramal

With each progressive sickness, beginning when Nora was 9 months old, I knew my odds of one day having the doctor tell me that Nora has asthma were increasing. I would worry about it, cry about it, but all of that was unproductive - the kind of asthma Nora would have would be genetic, ironically totally out of my control even though it was my genetics that could bestow that gift. Ken would tell me to stop worrying, but I couldn't help it. That's what moms do.

Wednesday morning I sat in the doctor's office and she said, "I'm thinking Nora has a mild form of asthma..." She explained that looking at the X-Rays she noticed that all four of Nora's big infections have been in the same spot in her lungs and that she assumes there is a tightness there that is allowing bacteria to grow in the mucous her tightened lungs are producing.

I thought I would cry, that I would be scared and maybe angry. But I actually felt relief when the doctor said it. Finally I could stop worrying about it maybe being true and concentrate on helping her get through it. And, most of all, if this is what will help us keep her well, then I am happy to know the cause. Even if it is that dreaded word.

And maybe I wasn't so upset because it is my genetics. Because I know that I have lived a happy life with asthma. Because I know it is something I can potentially control more so than those other bugs that keep getting the best of my poor baby.

So our new normal includes twice daily nebulizer treatments. She is on Pulmicort, a steroid that will strengthen the weak spot in her lungs. So far, Nora hasn't minded the treatments. She gets a bit antsy. She wants to suck her thumb when she can't. But she hasn't fought it (maybe because it means she gets more TV) and she actually likes to hold the duck shaped mask herself sometimes.

I didn't get weepy about any of this until I took the photo of her with her mask. That new normal may be a relief, but it still is hard to see that your baby is going to have potentially permanent sturggles. But if the first vomit-free day in a week is any indication, maybe this is a turning point towards better health. At least I hope so.

Back to Noramal

As the week to forget carries over into week two, Nora is slowly getting back to normal. In our attempt to get her to eat something, anything, we may have started some less desirable habits - namely eating in the living room. But when your kid doesn't eat for 5 days, those "bad habits" aren't really what you are thinking of at the time.

So today, still home from daycare, Nora got to spend the day with Ken. At around 1 he texted me at school: "She is great but threw up after yoyoke and we had a disagreement about where lunch would be served. See email."

And here for all to view is the contents of that email:

(On another note, every child mispronounces things in cute ways that cause the whole family to use that new pronunciation. Nora's version of yogurt is yoyoke. So that's what Ken and I call it - now and maybe forever.)

The Week To Not Remember

After recording this here, I am going to try to forget it all. I will have it here for proof that we did survive.

This week, Ken got hit by a car, Nora got really sick yet again and Ken caught her bug again. More coughing, fights over medicine, trips to the doctor, blood draws and chest X-rays, and countless lost hours of sleep. And I had to work all day Saturday.

She's not even two and she knows how to hold her own barf bowl.

Life isn't fair. But I guess I knew that already...

I Prefer Sidelines, I Think...

The daycare used to tell me that Nora didn't talk, that she just sucked her thumb, that she was quiet and calm all day. And I worried. As I wrote before, I worried that all of that observing and "playing" on the sidelines meant she was unhappy at daycare.

Well, as I knew deep down would happen, Nora has broken out of her shell. She talks much more (at home and at daycare) and she also is more interactive. Today I dropped Nora off and Miss Laura told me that Nora has been "lovin' on" all the boys, holding hands and kissing them. On Monday I had to sign an accident report since she had walked into the corner of a table and scratched her nose while holding tightly onto one of the boys' hands. Today that same boy screamed for joy when Nora arrived, "NORA!" And then he proceeded to take his shirt off.

It just so happens that this boy is notorious for his energy and crazy dancing. Miss Laura said that if this is the kind of boy Nora is going to go for, we better start worrying now.

As Nora like to say, "uh-oh."

Oh - and all this kissing has led to yet another sickness for Nora. She came home with a fever today.

Great. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

Sunglasses or Tales of a Budding Drama Queen

With the time change came solar glare. With the solar glare came Nora complaining in the car about the sun (understandably). With the complaints came Ken and I suggesting (on separate occasions when we were not all in the car together) that Nora needed sunglasses. With that suggestion came Nora's asking for a week for "suglasses" (apparently the child has a good memory).

After traveling to three stores and being told that sunglasses were "seasonal" (are you kidding? We live in Texas? And even so, has anyone at Babies 'R Us ever been blinded by solar glare off snow?), we finally hit the jackpot of sunglasses at Target. Nora tried on at least 15 pair and I settled on two (what if one breaks?), a Dora pink pair with flexi sides and some more fashionable Hello Kitty glasses. Since finding the glasses, Nora hasn't traveled anywhere without them. She wears them in the car, taking them off only to look for the sun she is shielding herself from. This morning she put them on, took them off, looked ahead and said, "Sun. There it is!" and promptly put the glasses back on her face.

She has the dramatic way of sitting, arms relaxed over the sides of the carseat, mouth relaxed into a pout, that just cracks me up every time I look at her with the glasses on. And I can't imagine a day when it won't make me smile.

Maybe He's Not So Crazy?

I've written before about Nora's skepticism towards Uncle Ian. On Halloween when he came over to visit she began the evening in the usual fashion - hiding her eyes, clinging to me, etc. But what we've realized lately with both her uncles is that she really is just being coy. She certainly tends towards the dramatic (when Ken took her to the doctor today for her follow-up and dose one of the H1N1 shot, she talked about her booboo from the doctor all the way to daycare and then they told us she talked about it all day long. And she says it in this dramatic little fake voice).

When we finally convinced Nora that if she wanted to go outside on Halloween she had to wear her panda costume so finely crafted by her Nana, she surprisingly brought it to Uncle Ian. What ensued was quite comical.

Due to some technical difficulties, the videos below are in reverse order...

Girly Girl

“One purse. Two purse. That purse. This purse.”
“One, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine shoes.”
“No. Pink cup!”

Nora is a girl. A girly girl. At work today someone asked me why I thought she was girly, whether it was our training or her natural preference for handbags, shoes and all things pink. I’ve been reading about this question a lot on other mom blogs. In the Times Motherlode blog there was a report questioning whether we push our kids too much into a gender role and “predict” their sexual future for them. There was even an article about a Dutch family who is keeping the gender of their child a secret to everyone, including the child, to see what happens.

I never gave the whole gender role question much thought, honestly. Nora has lots of pink things. She also has lots of blue things. Her room is green, with a touch of pink. She has blocks, cars, fisher price toys that surely are gender neutral. When she first picked up a purse it was pretty accidental. Last Christmas she found one of my small red purses and she loved it. As she learned to walk it dangled from her arm constantly. I didn’t give her the purse in the first place, but I surely encouraged her to keep playing with it. It was cute.

I’m not really sure it matters if kids like what they are “supposed” to like. I doubt it really has much to do with what their future preferences are. But for now Nora is a girly girl. And I guess I like it that way.

Sick

One of the worst things as a parent is when you feel helpless. For me, Nora being sick makes me feel that way. All I want to do is help her get better, feel better, avoid future sicknesses. In most of those arenas, I am powerless. I can soothe her, rock her, cuddle her, but I can’t make the pain go away; I can’t wave a magic medicine wand; I can’t promise her that I’ll quit my job and never send her back to germy daycare again. That’s the big one. That’s the mom guilt I can’t seem to shake.

Nora was sick this week. Really sick. I’ve blocked out bout number one with pneumonia, but I’d venture to say that she was sicker than she’d ever been before. It started with a virus – one that did not test positive for swine flu. It progressed into croup, which progressed into pneumonia. Horrible. She was crying in pathetic hoarse voice that even the hardest of hearts would have melted at – I’m sure of it. She wouldn’t eat – sometimes she wouldn’t even swallow. And she wouldn’t sleep. Who can blame her really.

When Nora is sick I get teary. I know it annoys Ken – that when she cries I most of the time do too. And I don’t mean to. I would stop doing it if I knew how. But I just want to help my poor sick baby. I know he does too. His brain gets more focused. Mine gets more fuzzy. I lose my focus on anything other than her. The house gets more messy. I forget everything when I leave for work. I just can think about Nora and what I need to do to make her better. Thankfully Ken thinks effectively about everything else and the whole house doesn’t fall apart. But this time Ken was sick too.

I have to send Nora back to daycare tomorrow. She was a big strong Panda for Halloween last night. I hope she can use some of her fierce roar to ward off future illnesses.

"Poop!"

Apparently there’s a bath monster in our house now as well. A very unexpected monster, I must say, since ever since Nora grew out of the newborn phase, she has been a huge bath fan.

Last Saturday when my parents were babysitting, Nora pooped in the bath. This wasn’t a first. She had done it to Ken and I at least a few times; she did it to her Nana in DC in July; she had actually done it just a week earlier when my parents were giving her a bath. Like the vomit, the poop in the tub isn’t a family favorite, and so when Nora looked a bit like she was readying herself for poop the next night, Sunday, I told Ken I thought she was going to poop, we whisked her out of the tub and sat her promptly on her new toilet seat. I guess that wasn’t the smartest parental move, since now apparently there’s a monster called “poop” in that tub.

I had just gotten Nora a new training toilet seat last weekend. She has started to tell one of us every time she poops or pees and then takes us to change her diaper. This, to me, seemed like a sign that we should at least start trying to introduce the idea of the potty. And when I brought the new seat home, Nora was eager to jump on, clothed, and even grabbed toilet paper and wiped herself in all the correct places. (I guess my lack of privacy in the bathroom has taught her something at least…)

Back to the bath – every night since last Sunday – so a whole week now – Nora has cried at even the mention of it being bath-time. She used to take off running to be caught – part of an elaborate entertaining routine that used to encompass bath-time. Once forced into the water, she now whimpers, but ismostly ok while the water is running. She used to play and laugh and sing. And she was starting to do this adorable thing where she had Ken hold her while she floated on her back, super relaxed and happy. Now, the second the bath water stops flowing, she starts crying to get out and says, “Poop! Poop!” over and over. We try to tell her it’s ok, that if she poops it’s not a big deal, she can pee if she needs to (which she usually does). But nothing works and we end up just taking her out and having to calm her down before she’ll settle for bed. She clearly is afraid of pooping in the tub.

Tonight we tried giving her a bath in our bathroom, trying to divert attention away from any incidental memory she has of the poop and the training toilet. She wasn’t easily tricked. We kept asking her to sit down (she hasn’t sat in the tub for a week now) and telling her she was in the “special tub.” And I distracted her with the top of my mousse container and travel size shampoo bottles. She was so distracted that when she reached down to get the shampoo, her butt touched the water, and down she sat. And then she looked at us and said, “Uh oh, Nora.”

But then we had to suggest it was time to get out, she wanted to stay in and keep playing. So maybe the monster’s moving out?

The Sleep Monster

I read frequently about my friends’ woes with their sleeping, or non-sleeping babies. They post updates about lack of sleep on facebook, and on their blogs, they detail their sleep woes in private notes and simple conversations. Even though we know that we aren’t alone in the battle to get our babies to sleep, it still throws us for a loop and causes us to judge ourselves as parents when our babies won’t sleep the way we want them to.

A change for the worse in Nora’s sleep pattern sometimes makes me feel like I am doing something wrong as her parent. I judge my parenting skills by her ability to sleep 11 straight hours. And I know this is ridiculous. Her sleep says nothing about my ability to teach her the important things in life. It says nothing about her future moral self, work ethic or intelligence (at least I don’t think it does). But every time she has a slip in her sleep, part of me feels like I’m failing at something. I don’t judge other parents’ ability by their babies sleep. I don’t think, “Oh, her baby is waking up too much, what a bad parent.” I don’t think, “She is such a better mother than me since her baby sleeps well.” I chalk it all up to luck. Why can’t I do that with Nora too? Why does it feel like a failure for myself when I judge it as luck in everyone else?

This past week Nora’s good sleep habits fell by the wayside. She was sick and I was rocking her to bed so she wouldn’t cough herself into a vomiting fit. So then, of course, she wanted me to rock her every night. And it started taking 40 minutes to put her to sleep. We tried to “retrain” her to sleep on her own. She just pulled the usual Nora vomit trick. Ken and I decided that cleaning up vomit was less pleasant then losing some of our evening time together for the time being, so I rocked on.

When I was away Friday evening, Ken got her to sleep with no rocking. When we were both out Saturday, my mom got her to sleep with no rocking. A pattern emerged. She likes to manipulate her mother. Probably because I’m pretty easy to manipulate.

So Ken is in there putting her to sleep. I put on her pjs and brushed her hair and then I left. And she cried a bit, but Ken gets her quiet and reads her story and sings her song. He says she shakes her head yes when he asks her if she wants to go to bed. And then she goes, no crying (maybe a little) and no vomit. I miss her bedtime. I miss rocking her a little as she dazes out. I miss putting her in her crib and seeing her stick her thumb peacefully in her mouth. I sit on the couch feeling a bit like a failure. But I know I’ll be back in there soon enough, since nothing in the sleep department seems to last too long – good or bad.

I’ll see her at 5:30 am. When she wakes up too early. And until I am a bit more caffeinated, I’ll sit in the rocker, feeling like I’ve done something wrong to deserve such an early awakening. But when I go out into the living room with her, I’ll log onto facebook and read about someone else who has to be up that early too. And we can all suffer together with the help of the Internet.

Moments Like These

Our nighttime routine was normal. Bath, diaper, pjs, put "baby" in crib, read one or two stories (tonight one, plus one page), sing songs. But when we got to the song parts, Nora was fidgety, so I grabbed her tight and held her close, like I used to do when she fit in one arm. And then I sang, with my eyes closed part of the time, as usual, I guess to make sure she knew her eyes should close pretty soon too. But this time, when I opened my eyes, all I saw were bright eyes and a giant grin around a red thumb. And I couldn't help but smile back. And then she giggled. And I giggled. And pretty soon we were in full-on laughter. Over nothing. And we couldn't stop. Any eye contact caused more hilarity. So I closed my eyes and tried to act serious. I finished the verse, opened my eyes, kissed her goodnight and placed her in the crib. And here I am writing it down since it is moments like these that I hope I never forget.

Sesame Street Is Invading My Brain

I used to be cool. Well, not really, but I used to be able to at least fool the students into thinking I was. I knew what they were into and what they watched, the music they listened to and the jokes they thought were funny. I could bring the cool things up when they least expected it and win them over to my side.

Today I realized that all has changed. I no longer reference cool, hip, "in" shows or songs. I no longer make jokes that relate to the newest fad or most popular movie character. No, I compare things to Sesame Street. I am so lame.

Today one of my students was making a joke about living in a trashcan. I threw her a look and she said, laughingly, that she lived in a green can. And I said, embarrassingly, "like Oscar the Grouch." I wanted to die of embarrassment, though the student kindly laughed.

This caused me to flash back a few days when I was talking to a student about his thesis statement for his essay. He asked if he should use third person and talk about himself in the thesis instead of saying "I." I said, "No. You shouldn't talk like Elmo." And everyone knew exactly what I was talking about, and again they laughed as good students should, but I know they must now be thinking that I am so lame. So lame.

Because this one's so cute too...

From the Sidelines

Before I sent Nora back to daycare I worried about her napping and eating. I worried about missing her too much and about her getting sick. I didn’t worry about her being social, since she always seemed to be a people baby – as evidenced from her game with the hat shown below.

On Tuesday when I picked Nora up after school she ran over to me as usual and started blurting out so many words at once, trying to tell me all she had done that day. As I smiled at her enthusiastic talking, Miss Liz told me that Nora hardly talks all day, that she cuddles and sucks her thumb for much of the time. “She laughs,” she said. But she isn’t the social butterfly I had thought her to be. Miss Liz said that she and Miss Laura had decided that Nora will either be a rebellious teenager or one who makes such astute observations that you wonder where she learned it. I vote for number two.

I left daycare that day upset. I want Nora to have fun, to interact, to show all her beautiful words and songs she sings while she’s home. I took her quiet thumb-sucking as a sign of unhappiness.

My mother reminded me that when I was two and a half and spent my days at Aunt Mary’s with other kids, I had to be bribed to play. I didn’t suck my thumb, but I picked apart my stockings for comfort, refusing to interact with even my cousins or friends I had known for a while (if you can know anyone for a while at 2?). I would report to my mom when she asked me if I deserved my prize that indeed I did not. I didn’t want to play.
I actually remember some of this (scary and cool that Nora may remember soon…), and I don’t remember that I did any of this because I was unhappy.

And then at school I thought about some of my best students who are quiet. One in particular came to mind. She listens intently all class and then usually stops and chats with me on her way out, making very intelligent observations that I wish she would add to the discussion in front of everyone, but that’s not her style. And it wasn’t mine either. I’m sure my high school teachers would be shocked that I stand in front of a group and speak all day. I probably didn’t utter one word until forced in most of my classes. And I think Ken was the same way.

But, like Nora I did have my moments. In kindergarten I was the doll in the play – the center of attention, and I screamed out my lines and belted out my songs to make sure everyone heard what I had to say.

And today, when I got to daycare, Nora ran over and hugged me as usual. But then she ran away, through the tunnel they had open on the floor. She looked at her friend Emily and laughed when she came out the other side. And then she ran up the plastic slide and did her little stomp dance around the room. She was having fun. She didn’t want to run out the door.

So I guess I have to remember that quiet isn’t always bad. That she’s clearly learning (see the ABC video below) that she’s happy all day and sometimes silly. That cuddling isn’t a sign that she misses me all day, but that she loves many people. And that she will have her moments when she steps on the stage and moments when she wants to watch from the sidelines. And it will all be ok.

A Note About the Next Post

The post below this one is actually from a model school project I am having my students do. They are making a visual argument about the true America and are going to have to use the website voicethread.com to create a narrated visual argument. So before I assigned the project to them tomorrow I thought I better try out the technology. And of course I did my voicethread about Nora. I hope the students are as excited as I am about the project!

To watch the voicethread below, click the play button on top of the photo.

And thanks to Michelle for taking awesome pictures!

Nora and Her Hat

Nora's Things

School has started. Obviously. And I have so many stories that I think about writing, but so little time to actually put them down here.

Nora got sick exactly two weeks into daycare, just as had happened last year and just as will probably happen every year from now until forever. And along with sickness for Nora comes cough. And along with cough comes vomit. The other morning Ken said that I needed to write about her vomit since it was her “thing” like asthma was mine and lazy-eye was Ken’s. I guess vomit is better than either of those, but her insanely easy gag reflex that causes her to vomit after coughing with any intensity is certainly something I hope she outgrows. Fast.

Not only has daycare made her sick, but it has also made her affectionate. I’ve written before how she is a sweet baby – and that has now taken a whole new form in her too-sweet-for-words hugs and kisses. She has this way of grabbing on, laying her head on your shoulder and patting your back all at the same time. She does it when I come to get her from daycare and when she just is feeling cuddly. She did it to her Mimi with such passion on Friday when she came to surprise Nora at daycare that it made us all laugh. She did it to Aunt Betty this weekend, making it hard for her to get in her car and drive back to Dallas when there was a sweet cuddly 20 month old clinging on. And I know she does it with at least two of the ladies at daycare. And when I see that I feel good that she cares for the women at daycare (though there’s a part of me that hopes she doesn’t just cuddle all day, but plays and laughs too).

Daycare is also helping to make her smarter - Nora is learning to sing. It is almost cuter than the hugging – and much more impressive. One night last week I walked in while she was taking a bath (Ken’s in charge of bath-time) and Ken and I both looked at each other, wondering simultaneously whether the tune and words coming out of Nora’s mouth could have really been the alphabet. And we concluded that it was. She had the tune down perfectly and would throw in letters at the right moments too. She certainly doesn’t have it anywhere nearperfect, but I can tell she’s learning. And she also started singing “up ba ba ba ba ba high” the other morning, which I of course concluded was her version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She sings while she plays and while she drifts off to sleep, a tune always in her head.

And lastly, daycare is teaching her the inevitable – “mine” and “no.” Right now Ken and I think both are pretty amusing. She stands on her stool by her books and yells out “mine!” like someone is trying to snatch something away from her (see attached video). And no one is, of course. She may have learned how to say mine, but the concept of what it means still is a bit foggy. She also does this thing where she shakes her finger and says, “no, no, no.” We had a video of it, but Ken erased it (iphone learning curve – he’s erased a few cute videos…). She still doesn’t tell us no. So, again, the word is clear but the concept fuzzy. I’m glad. But I know it won’t be long.

Crazy

When I first used to go and watch Ken race, I had trouble identifying him as all the like-dressed cyclists flew by each lap. If it weren’t for the hair poking out of the helmet, I might have stood there the whole race failing to see the person I went to watch. Now, when Ken gets dressed for his rides, Nora knows he is about to go and starts to say bye bye. And when we see anyone on a bike as we drive around town she says, “DaDa” (or lately she’s been saying “Matt” since she knows Ken rides with Matt a lot).

The other morning Ken got dressed in his red riding “uniform” and went outside. I loaded Nora in the car for our morning errand and Uncle Ian rode up to the car window, dressed in the same “uniform” as Ken. Nora looked, waved and said, “Dada.”

One might think she just got confused since Uncle Ian was dressed in the same outfit as Ken. Maybe Nora was just having the same trouble I used to have at bike races. But really this stems from the larger problem Nora has with the times Ian and Ken are together.

It usually goes like this: Uncle Ian walks in the door. Nora stares and clings to me. Ian smiles his big friendly smile. He clearly sounds different than “dada.” But Nora stares and we can all see the wheels turning in her little head. Who is this guy that looks so much like my dad? How can there be two dada’s all of a sudden? Is this guy going to suddenly steal me away and pretend I’m his?

All of this prevents Nora from playing happily with Ian until some time has passed and those wheels in her mind have reassured her that her dad and Ian are two separate people.

And as Nora works this all out in her head, Uncle Ian smiles and laughs in his typical fashion. He took early dibs on the “Crazy” Uncle title. And as soon as Nora realizes just how crazy he is, she will be quick to welcome him instead of spending many minutes locked in her skeptical stare.

Imagine All the People

My favorite thing to watch Nora do right now is play with her dolls or her Fisher Price Little People. It is such a glimpse into her mind. Just now as we were passing the last moments before nap time, she gathered all her little people together, put them on her fingers one by one, had them converse in the most interesting babble conversation (I only understood "hi" as one of the words, the rest are a mystery), kissed each one and put them "nigh night." It is so amazing to me to see her actual imagination start to blossom in a way that I can perceive. And this kind of play reminds me that she is such a sweet baby.

And now she is napping. Hopefully for a while. Hopefully alone in her crib. We'll see. Back to school with kids tomorrow and I certainly need a nap too!

Hot Pads

I am enamored with Ken's new iphone video feature. And since I always think Nora's being cute, I always wish I was videoing it to show everyone else how cute she is. To capture her cuteness forever.

This video is of one of her new games. She takes a hot pad, places it on her leg, counts to two - "two, two", and then starts singing "row, row" while rocking and then she claps for herself very excitedly.

Enjoy!

Today it was me

I woke up at 5 today. Nora slept until 6:30.

I didn't get up or out of bed, but I opened my eyes, checked the time and then had trouble quelling the start of school thoughts that started bombarding my brain. Bulletin boards, photo copies, lesson plans (that's not important!), desk arrangement, cart building, supply organizing. The items on my to-do list seemed to go on forever. And they prevented me from sleeping "late" on one of the few mornings where Nora gave me that opportunity. Cruel irony.

I am still not ready. I will be going in tomorrow to clean and organize and to do some of the last photocopying. I have planned my lessons and placed my desks (and Ken built my cart!), but I still don't feel ready. Hopefully I will when Monday morning rolls around.

We are clearing some of the hurdles I wrote about last time. Ken went to the grocery store. Nora's diaper rash is so much better and she hasn't had another 4:30 day (writing that will surely curse me...). They started giving us more written notes at daycare to tell us what is going on with her each day. She seems to be napping at least 2 hours at daycare each day. And next week is furry animal week. And they are going to jump around in furry animal slippers! How fun!

Oh. And she's not allergic to peanut butter. They fed her peanut butter crackers at daycare and she was still alive when we picked her up.

Clearing the Hurdles

Nora ate cheetos for dinner tonight. They were the “natural” kind, but still a horrible horrible dinner. A symptom of the larger problem – we have not established our school year routine yet. Thus we have no plan for dinner each night.

We didn’t feed her the cheetos on purpose. Ken was snacking on them and thus Nora wanted them. He gave her one. I said, “oh-no,” knowing that one cheeto is never enough for any normal human being. And Nora proved to be normal, wanting cheeto after cheeto until they were “ga-ga” from dad’s bowl. So when I offered her three different choices of things at dinner, she was already full.

This cheeto dinner made a great ending to a day that began at 4:30 am. I hope that it is Nora’s teeth and the change of routine that is causing the sleep disruption. She was doing so well! I was feeling so rested! But I guess good things have to come to an end. And hopefully bad things do too.

As I’ve written earlier, routines are really important to me, and I think to Nora too (as evidenced by the 4:30 wake up). This first real week back at work is so hard because, not only am I taking Nora to daycare full days for the first week, but I am not at school for my normal routine. I have to be at different places at different times for different trainings, all of which seem pointless to me. Next week, when the kids come, my routine will be a bit more set, but I have to survive this week first.

So far Nora is a star at daycare. They told me last Friday that they hoped to have a cloning closet this week so all the new toddlers would be as agreeable as she is. She didn’t cry at all last week, not once when I left and not once all day while I was gone. She didn’t eat all of her lunch or snack, but I think she is doing better this week. And she did cry yesterday when one of the teachers was giving someone else some attention after a fall. Nora wanted attention too.

She comes home so happy it makes me happy too. She jabbers about buses and taxis all the way home in the car. She comes into the house and immediately finds something fun to play with. I wonder if I think she is so adorable just because I’ve missed her, or if she does just get cuter as she learns new things every day. Or maybe she is trying to be extra cute so I don’t hate her when she cries at 4:30 am.

Aside from the routine being all out of whack and messing with our healthy eating habits, despite her cuteness and resilience, it just isn’t the same to be away from Nora all day. Tonight before bed, Nora whimpered and said “butt.” She has a terrible diaper rash, and as I put layer upon layer of aquaphor on it I couldn’t help but feel so guilty. If she was here with me her little butt wouldn’t be so red. I would change her diaper more often since I know she is teething.

So the first hurdles of the year back at work. We will get over them just like we did last year. It is just painful having to start the journey.

Nora - Top Chef

Nora was busy cooking today. She had quite a system, with the cup and the water and the stirring. And thanks to our new iphones, we can now record all of her amazing feats!

Day One

I cried. She didn't.

That's the whole story.

RIP Summer Vacation

It’s the night before Daycare and all through the house, the mother is stressing, but not her spouse.

So tomorrow is it. Then end of my summer. And Nora will go to daycare and Ken will get his quiet house back and all will return to the chaos of normal that is the school year.

I took Nora to daycare to “visit” on Friday and I’m really glad I did. She was a bit shy at first – she clearly remembered where we were. The director just took her from me even though Nora was clingy. She didn’t cry. She sat on the director’s lap and said some unintelligible words and took it all in. After a brief visit to her new room – the “butterflies” – we went to the office to fill out paperwork. Nora left my side willingly to go and play with one of her teachers from last year who was in the office covering bulletin boards. And I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

While that has made my weekend much less stressful than if she had been a screaming mess during the visit, it hasn’t made me stress free. I am not nearly as anxious as last year. I am not shedding tears into my keyboard right now. I enjoyed my day with Nora today (despite her early waking and short nap).

But every now and then I do stop and think. Will she cry in the morning? Will the teachers understand her words? Will she nap?

And the big one – will she eat?. Can I send my own snack even if they give them snack? When will she drink her milk? She grazes all day with me and I help feed her still. She is no pro with a spoon or fork. So my biggest stress is what to send her for lunch. What will she be in the mood for? What can she feed herself?

No one can answer these questions for me right now (unless anyone cares to comment with some brilliant ideas on what toddlers eat for lunch), so I just have to tell myself that we’ll figure it out over the week, over the month and all will be okay.

Nora is a social baby – she likes other kids – as evidenced from our trip to the pool today where she said “hi” to everyone and their parents and shared toys with a 23 month old boy. She’ll be fine at daycare tomorrow. Maybe if I tell myself that enough throughout the day, I’ll be fine too. Maybe.

Our First Compromise (Maybe)

Ken says we’ve compromised – Nora and I. I don’t think she’s really capable of compromising, but it’s nice to think that is why I still have to nap with her every day. Not because I failed at Operation-Nap-In-Criib, but because mother and daughter have made the first in a long series of compromises.

The nap still traps me. I avoid the car after 11 – or I do some crazy dance, song, toy throwing in the car to keep her awake. I schedule my mornings around errands that will fit in before 11, before the danger of ruining the nap sets in.

At the start of the summer, Nora refused to sleep in her crib at all during nap time. We “fixed” that. Now she walks very willingly to her room when I tell her it’s time for her nap. She brings her baby, puts her in the crib, I turn on her white noise machine, we sing three songs, I put her in her crib and she sleeps. All by herself.

For 45 minutes.

And then she wakes up and cries and doesn’t stop until I go and get her and bring her to my bed and sleep with her. And she sleeps for another hour or more. With me. In my bed. Mostly while holding onto or lying on my arm to make sure to prevent me from reading.

I found this “compromise” doable. I had my 45 minutes of freedom. I needed a nap myself most days, and it’s really nice to sleep next to a tiny, nice-smelling baby (when she isn’t thrashing around).

Would I have liked to have the whole 2 hours to myself, yes. But at least now I know that Nora still makes some of the same faces she did when she was asleep as a newborn. She makes a very annoying squeaky sucking sound with her thumb in her mouth while she sleeps. She hates to have covers from a bed even brush against her toe (but she has to fall asleep with a blanket on her?). And she is immediately happy when she wakes up with me next to her. And when I accepted the compromise I was too. Most days.

Lesson Plans

At the start of the summer I walked Nora out of daycare for the last day and wondered how I would possibly keep her entertained all day. At daycare there are two or three adults, eight of nine other children, lots of toys, tons of activity. Sure, I had spent many a busy weekend day with Nora, but I didn’t really feel confident that I could successfully fill our days in ways that would please both her and me. I wondered in my first blog, what do you do with an 18 month old all day?

I think I attacked my summer days with Nora much as I attack my days in my classroom. I needed a “lesson” plan. We had our routine that made me comfortable – confines to work within. I wonder how much Nora realized the routine. I tried to vary our activities enough to keep both of us interested. I tried to be patient and loving and kind even when I was tired. Being a mom is a lot like being a teacher. And I learned that being with one toddler is as tiring as being with 100 teenagers who I get to send home at the end of the day.

Nora and I settled into a routine pretty quickly. We would wake up, eat breaksfast and watch Elmo, take a walk and visit the chickens down the street, the “doo doo’s” as Nora calls them. Then we would play outside and inside until about 9:30 and then we’d go on some sort of outing – park, shopping, errands. I tried my best to keep her awake on the car ride back, came home, ate lunch around 11:30, read a book or two and started nap time around noon (more follow up on naptime in another blog…). In the afternoon we would go swimming or to Gymboree or to run around in Mimi and Papa’s at first empty house. Then we’d come home, eat dinner, play and go to bed. Writing it that way makes it sound so easy…

What entertains a toddler generally changes every 10 minutes, sometimes every 2 minutes, but I found some things that Nora generally enjoyed and were no-fail entertainers in every mood.

Stickers. For our plane ride I bought Nora a book of reusable Elmo stickers. It seriously entertained her for an hour on the plane. No joke. It was the best 8 dollars I’ve ever spent. The book said it was for ages 3 and up, but I got it anyway since we would be right there with her. The key is the reusable stickers. They are thick and don’t rip and, just like they claim, you can reuse them many times. When we got back from vacation Nora invented the game of sticking her stickers to the floor and to herself. Since they are reusable they don’t stick places you don’t want them to. If it weren’t for stickers I would have gone crazy many days. I love stickers!

Water table. In April, Ken’s parents got Nora the water table I had been looking at for her. It seemed like the perfect toy for the Texas heat. And I was right. It is a great compromise to the pool since you don’t have to commit to a swim diaper and all that jazz, but she can get wet, put rocks in it, splash, play with toys in it. This was a daily activity for us. And you can tell from the photo that five months after getting it, she still loves it as enthusiastically as she did on day one. That’s not true of many of her toys.

Shoes. Nora, as mentioned in an earlier post, is a shoe lover like her mama. Each evening and some morning she would change shoes and walk around the house in laps looking at her feet. The key was to hide a pair of her shoes for a while, bring them out as new and exciting, and then she would want to walk around and stare. She also loved to walk around in my shoes. This was pretty difficult and dangerous, but she managed pretty well.

Picture Books. Nora’s vocabulary is exploding. I was keeping a list of all her words, but now it’s up to 52 and she says so many new things every day that I can’t keep up with it anymore. I credit this to some of her picture books. Today in the car she said, “taxi.” If we lived in New York that might not be a big deal, but we don’t see that many taxi’s around my part of Austin. She learned this from one of her picture books. And she loves to sit and read them. She had all the animal sounds down and some tricks with animals that don’t make sounds.

Then there’s all the normal stuff – the crayons, the tickling, the chasing, the dolls and puzzles. And there are the times that the only thing she’ll do is cling to me and refuse to be “entertained” by anything, even stickers.

And, perhaps best of all, were the times when Nora just entertained me. There were many of those – she’s a pretty funny little girl.

Temporary SAHM

I practiced going to work last week. I had an AP conference for 4 days, from 8 to 4:30, pretty much the same hours I will be at school in just three short weeks. But really this is my last week off – my last week to be the temporary stay at home mom.

All summer I’ve tried to remind myself that my stint as a SAHM is temporary. It will repeat itself in 10 months, but it is temporary nonetheless. Last year, when I had to transition back to work from being home with Nora for seven months, I was a total basketcase. How could I send her to daycare? They would never love her like I do. How could I be a good teacher? I wouldn’t have the time to work as hard. I cried every morning when I dropped her off, later in the day at work, and at night when I reflected on just how hard all of this was. It was awful. It was surely the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my entire life.

So this summer I made my best effort to remind myself of the fleeting nature of summer vacation at every possible turn. And I will admit that there were some moments, especially early on as I transitioned to being home, that I wondered if I would survive staying home, that I wished daycare was still an option. But I haven’t had one of those moments recently and looking at the calendar and seeing my Nora time diminishing is starting to make me teary eyed again.

The practice run was great. Nora was with Mimi and Papa, certainly only second to Elmo as people to spend time with. She asks for Mimi and Papa at the lunch table and in the car. So I wasn’t worried about her. I knew they would love her back – not like I do – but pretty close. And she is old enough to communicate now, so they would know just what she needed. The first three days of the conference, I left the house without a problem – said goodbye, got in the car, drove to UT, sat in class – it was all fine. But on the fourth day, when I realized that this practice run was going to become reality rather quickly, I cried on my way out the door.

Sending Nora to Mimi and Papa is one thing. Sending her to daycare is another. She will have new teachers, new classmates, new sickesses (please, not as bad as last year.!). So I sit anticipating it two weeks before it will happen. I know it won’t be as hard as last year, but it will be hard.

The thing is, I just need it to happen. And I need my students in my classroom. The week of teacher prep only gives me time to wonder what Nora is doing, to think about what I would be doing with her if we were home. Once those students walk into my room, I am distracted and dedicated – not that I ever forget about Nora. This anticipation is really the worst part.

And, when it really comes down to it, I think if I didn’t stand at the front of a room full on teenagers on August 24, if I got up, watched Elmo, chased Nora around the yard, said hello to the chickens down the street, I would begin to miss that part of my life too. I really do love teaching. I just hate leaving Nora.

Tight Spaces - A Vacation Story

I’m not sure the term vacation can ever truly be applied to traveling with an 18 month old. Not to say that we didn’t have fun and some relaxation on our trip east, but “vacation” connotes a whole different kind of jaunt away from home from what we just experienced. In considering the best way to organize my many stories of our trip I realized that most of them involve being in some tight spaces.

It all began with the plane ride. My perfect plan to fly at nap time so Ken and I didn’t have to hold Nora the jumping bean was, of course, thrown to the wind when the flight was delayed 3 hours due to weather. Ken was smart and knew to stay at home longer than we had originally planned, arriving at the airport later than I was comfortable with, but really at the exact perfect time since our flight was pushed back even further. So Nora, of course, fell asleep in the car, stayed asleep in the stroller while we checked in, but was woken up by the security check since I had to carry her and not roll her through. Which began Nora’s enjoyment of the airport – screaming in pure joy as she ran down the hallways and into many people’s way. And then the tight space – the airplane. She did not sleep for one second on the four hour flight. She bounced around between my lap and Ken’s lap and even spent a stint on the lap of the poor woman sitting next to us (who said she didn’t mind since she had a 2 year old grandson she was just visiting, though I suspect she would have preferred Nora not poke her every time she closed her eyes to sleep).

And the lack of nap on the plane led, essentially, to our next tight space. Betty drove us from Logan to Harwich; Nora promptly fell fast asleep in the car. We arrived, I whisked her in to fall peacefully asleep in the pack and play pre-prepared by Mimi and Papa. But no. She HATED the pack and play. And as Ken said, she added an exclamation point on the end of our long journey by vomiting all over me and herself to prove just how much she hated the pack and play. The problem was solved by having her sleep in the bed with us. With the way Nora flails and moves in her sleep, Ken and I were quickly relegated to the edges and the bed came to feel very small and crowded. But at least there was no vomit (night two of trying the pack and play led to regurgitated whole spaghetti noodles on Ken).

Not all tight spaces were bad. The next tight space was the back of a 1930s truck in the Welfleet Fourth of July parade. There was the picturesque harbor, the classic Cape-Codders, the small town floats and seven very happy children and 5 happy but stiff adults in the back of Rich’s antique vehicle. It was amazing to watch Nora watch the scenery. I’m sure she had no idea that she was in a parade – but what a great story to be able to share with her later. That’s a tight space I hope to revisit with her.

On the Cape Nora put on many shows for her adult admirers. She grunted and groaned as she faked the struggle to open her nesting barrels. She passed around her Mimi’s hat to play the “Hachoo” game that Mimi invented and Nora still loves. She paraded around with purses and tried to hang with her older cousins out in the yard. She adored the beach and ran into Oyster pond, up to her neck, without even a second glance at the shore.

From Cape Cod we headed south to the big city – New York. It was here that we experienced perhaps the tightest space, which I guess isn’t very surprising. We took Nora all over the city – to FAO Schwarz where she found purses to play with and a giant Elmo to hug, to many kid parks in Central Park, all of which she loved, to Union Square to meet up with a friend, on many taxi rides and on one horribly memorable subway ride. At rush-hour. With our giant stroller. A very nice woman gave me her seat to hold Nora, Jess and Ken, with giant stroller in tow, squeezed in and we made it home. It was the most crowded I have ever seen a subway. Nora’s favorite part of New York was probably Aunt Jessica’s air mattresses. She jumped, sometimes with a running start, onto the mattresses over and over again. She had us all cracking up. And she tired herself out and started sleeping a bit more soundly than she had been, making the shared bed feel just a tad bit bigger.

From New York we traveled to Alexandria to visit Nora’s Nana and Grampa. This was where the tight spaces took a temporary hiatus. In the big house Nora had large circles to run, stairs to get in trouble on and many rooms to explore. It was easy to lose Nora here after our many tight spaces. We went to the wide open space of the zoo and saw real live animals that Nora just loved. She was speechless when she first lay eyes on the Panda and over the moon about seeing elephants up close and personal. She had strangers laughing at her ferocious roar as she watched the tigers and lions. She even went to her first Smithsonian Museum – to the War Floor – as Owen called it. She liked the wartime cartoons and was surprisingly patient as we wandered the museum.

And then, the final real stop of the trip, Raleigh, to see Todd and Tania in their new home. We were no longer in the realm of open space. While the house was large, Nora’s sleeping issue returned us to tight spaces – or me in particular. In my hope to be able to visit with Todd and Tania, I tried to get Nora to sleep in Owen’s toddler bed. I spent the first part of the attempt actually in the toddler bed with her. That was not going to work for long. And then I moved to the floor right next to the bed. And Nora decided that she would lay right over my head. In my desperation for adult time, I let her lay like that for a while, until I could hardly breathe any more; thus, I moved her up and she lost her concentration on trying to sleep. And so I moved her to our bed and fell asleep with her and missed all of the visiting. Some day I’ll be able to visit with adults again.

And then began the road trip. From Raleigh to Austin was a long haul. And the Corolla came to feel smaller and smaller each day as it filled with cheerios and toys, the ipod lost its charge, Ken got sick, we got closer to home but were still far away. Nora was an excellent car traveler. Her new puzzle and Elmo stickers got her through. She had no major meltdowns, she ate and slept in the car like a champ. She enjoyed the running at the rest stops and the play places at McDonalds. I’m not a huge fan on McDonald’s, but the play place is a genius move. Fence the kids in (in Atlanta it was even air-conditioned!) and let them play! But Nora is a bit small for the playscape so I had to go with her. And I was a bit big for the tunnels she was crawling through. Once she lost her shoe in the tunnel. I could hear from within the tiny voice saying, “mama, shoe” and I knew she had lost it. I told her to bring it to me. And she hobbled over with just one shoe. I was not about to crawl inside the tunnels, so I told her again to bring me her shoe and she kindly complied. That was one tight space I successfully avoided.

We stayed at a cabin on the Bayou where Nora got to play on the swing and visit with a family of cats. We sat in park on I-10 in Houston waiting for an accident to clear. And then suddenly we were home. And we had more than survived the road trip. Nora ran around screaming every time she saw one of her toys she had perhaps been missing. I bet she thought we were never coming back, that we were forever going to be squeezing her into tight spaces, napping her in strange places and introducing her to new people to perform for each day.

Thriller

In memory of Michael Jackson, Ken downloaded the Thriller music video. “Why wouldn’t you download Thriller?” he said, when I asked him what had prompted him to want to replay that 13-minute zombie video over and over again when you could just listen to the song.

I think he also thought that seeing this video is part of Nora’s cultural edification. And he also thought that showing it to her now – at 18 months – was a good idea.

I wasn’t so sure.

I mean, it’s scary. Sure there’s good dancing and the song is great to dance to. Nora had already started bopping to it when clips played repeatedly on the news. But watching zombies when you are so little?

So we watched. And like with all things television, Nora sat there mesmerized. And bopping up and down. Until the zombies started to come out and the music paused for the scary voiceover. “Uh-oh” she said – right on cue. Ken and I looked at each other. I with the I-told-you-this-would-scare-her look and he with the I-told-you-she-would-love-this look. And Nora sat there, with her thumb in her mouth, watching the zombies, sometimes bopping to the music and continually saying, “uh-oh.”

The next day, while I was cooking dinner, Ken decided to have her watch Thriller again. She again said “uh-oh” right at the appropriate time. She sucked her thumb to soothe away her fears. Or so I thought.

I popped my head over the counter in the kitchen, glaring at Ken. “I question your parenting skills,” I said, half jokingly, as the video was ending. Ken stared back, unrelenting. And again, right on cue, the music ended and Nora said, “more?”

I guess Ken wins.

THE Nap

The Nap

For the first two weeks of Nora’s life – when she was underweight from being early - I had to wake her up every 3 hours to eat. She never stayed awake much longer than it took her to eat. We don’t have any pictures with her eyes open until she is a month old. Even after that she pretty much slept all the time – or so it seemed. I remember going to my 6 week doctor’s appointment and reporting to the doctor that she had slept for six hours straight the night before.

And then something happened. I probably should never have reported to anyone that she was sleeping well. Night waking – night eating – night misery. But it ended and by 9 months I had her sleeping through the night (or at least until 5:30, when she’d join us in bed) and napping in her crib. And then something happened again – I honestly don’t even remember what it was exactly that started it. I think it might have been the three week killer ear infection at Christmas – but it could have even been before that. She would not nap in her crib. She would only nap on me.

And I thought a few times about “fixing” her – but it seemed pointless when I only had her napping here on the weekend anyway.

I resolved to begin Operation Nap in Crib in the summer – when I had time and patience to really “train” her to nap in her crib.

So I did. We started the first day I was out of school. The first day she cried for 20 minutes and then slept. Second day, 10 minutes of crying and then sleep. Third day, no crying. She was a professional crib napper – sometimes even napping close to three hours. All. By. Herself.

And I had a break.

But now, she is no longer a professional crib napper. She is a professional mommy manipulator. Or she is teething (which is what I prefer to believe. I mean, I can see the white bulges of all four cuspids and she has teething poop that even got all over the living room chair and her shoes tonight. So yes, no manipulation, just teething pain. That makes me feel better…) Yesterday no nap in crib, just nap on mom. And I felt trapped. Trapped in the chair, the bed, wherever it was we were napping at the time. I wanted to be reading – or napping by myself. Or talking to Ken. Or something. By. Myself. But she won.

Ferber says in his book that some kids are not good nappers – they are too curious or too “something” to be good nappers in their cribs. Reading that makes me feel better, but it doesn’t mean I don’t still feel trapped when I am stuck napping with her. And then The Nap takes on a life of its own and I ponder it all morning and think about what my plan of attack should be. Instead of just enjoying lunch and running around, I think of what will happen when I place her pretty little head on that pillow. The Nap.

Today she napped for 35 minutes by herself in her crib. And I was thankful for every minute of it.