Hooray for blogging! And hej da! And happy 4th!

Via Magpie Musing and Lands’ End, we were the delighted recipients of a bathing suit, cover-up, and towel giveaway!

Here’s the reluctant model (the pictures are out of focus since I don’t know how to use my husband’s camera, which was the only one I could find):

Wonderful! Thank you!

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We’re off to Europe later today. Didn’t sleep too well last night, unfortunately; had an anxiety dream about competing with Amy Winehouse for a job working in a library. She got it. Baby is aware and possibly excited that tonight, at night night time, we will be getting on an AIRPLANE! and will get to eat SNACKS! and watch VIDEOS! and go NIGHT NIGHT! on the AIRPLANE high in the sky! We’ll see how that plan works out.

Anal-retentive toddler

I think Baby is trying not to poop. This has nothing to do with potties since she is not a potty-user at this time (when I ask her if she would like to use the potty, she quite clearly responds in the negative). We thought she was constipated–making lots of effortful straining, holding onto people and things, getting red in the face–with nothing to show for it. And when she does poop, she cries and wails in pain or frustration or anxiety or something. This will happen on and off for a couple of days, then a large poo poo will escape, and then it will start up again.

But why would she be constipated? She drinks a lot, she eats lots of fiber, she gets plenty of exercise. Then I noticed she crosses her legs a bit when she is standing there trying to (or not to) poop. And, coupling that observation with her extreme distaste for getting poo poo wiped from herself, it occurred to me that she may have decided that, rather than poop and have to get changed, she just would not poop at all, eliminating (haha) that problem. (Poor thing: despite her best efforts–or because of them–I’m still not sure–she does tend to get a little poop out during these straining/retaining episodes so she still has to get wiped.)

She is in Freud’s anal psychosexual stage (18 months to 3.5 years), which is about learning to control herself, including her bowels. Other people on the internet have reported this issue. I just have to assume she’ll grow out of it. It’s very stressful for us all, though. And I really hope she has a big poop before tomorrow so she doesn’t have these attacks, whatever their source, during our flight. We’ve been trying to talk about how fun poo poo is, and how she can just let it out and she will feel better, but I don’t think she’s convinced. Poor little princess. It’s hard being a toddler. Any ideas?

Preamble ramble

Lots of things haven’t been going my way lately (see last post). It’s probably me that’s off. We leave for Sweden Friday night, theoretically at 8:30 PM, an hour after bedtime, and I’m anxious. Make that Anxious. I feel like I’ve been packing for weeks. I also feel like I’ve written this post before, last year right before we left for Sweden. I was so optimistic then, though; so naive. Now I know flying will suck and no one will sleep; I have no illusions. Fortunately, I also know the flight will end after a minimum of 10 hours. Of course then there will be five hours of driving. And then two weeks of living in a house with many other people and one shower located in the basement (when we’re not at the allegedly electricity- and plumbing-free lake house) and no privacy or control over my plans. At least this year Husband won’t be miserable with nerve pain from Bell’s palsy.

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I made dinner last night. The part that I didn’t accidentally drop onto the floor was burned. I also broke the apparatus I was using to cook. See? Told you I am off.

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It’s not just these thoughts weighing on me but my work has been giving me trouble. Without going into a long story, I’ll just note that other people are idiots. I’ve basically convinced the office, though, that Sweden doesn’t have the internet, so I hope not to hear anything from them while I’m gone even though the thing I have been working on launches while I’m gone. My part is done (so far as I could, what with the aforementioned idiocy of others). Also work-related: I do my work at night. During the day I don’t think about it at all. But sometimes I have do participate in a conference call during business hours. I work very hard at remembering these calls. They’re on the calendar. I walk around telling myself “call tomorrow at 1, call tomorrow at 1.” And playdates, story times, other people’s kids’ napping schedules–all that I can remember. But the last two conference calls I completely flaked out. I just didn’t call. Both times I wasn’t even busy–we were home, playing, doing laundry, whatever. Fortunately, for the last one, apparently nobody else remembered, either, so we rescheduled it for Wednesday at noon. I have put reminders everywhere because if I don’t make this call, I’m sure my co-workers will be posting on their blogs how idiotic their co-workers are.

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Oh, the Babies Can’t Wait people called about the nonexistent speech delay. I told them we weren’t interested. And we aren’t. Baby’s been speaking some Swedish (soooooo cuuuuuute) and using some present progressive verbs and putting two words together and everything.

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Baby’s little buddy Z, with whom we’ve had trouble before, is in a big hitting/kicking/toy stealing/non-sharing/screaming phase. I dearly love spending time with his mother, but we just can’t see them right now. a) I don’t like Baby to get jumped on or physically hurt, or have her feelings injured, and b) she gets the screaming bug from him and then it takes about five days to get her to stop. I can’t let her renew that right before the flight. And normally I’d be straightforward with Z’s mom about this, but lately she’s been telling me how hard it is that this other friend of ours is avoiding her because of Z’s behavior, so I’ve been doing some dissembling a bit. I feel bad about this. But isn’t this more win-win?

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Baby has suddenly decided to call me Mommy instead of Mama. It sounds so grown up. Too grown up.

Mini-saga

This morning we were supposed to go to an indoor group activity, but the weather was so mild and lovely I decided we should play outside instead so we went to the park. This turned out to be no fun at all, however, as staff were doing landscaping work and Baby’s terror of mowers and blowers kept her clinging to me. Irrationally angry at Baby’s irrational fear, I plopped her back in the stroller and left in a huff and then drove twenty minutes to another park. Where there was mowing and blowing. I didn’t even get us out of the car and, nearly despondent, drove us to yet another spot beside a lovely old covered bridge and a duck-filled lake. Where construction workers were using a buzz-saw that sounded JUST LIKE MOWER for crying out loud. But I refused to be beaten down. It was a nice day. We were going to play outside in a park, so help me. So I parked, hauled Baby over to the water’s edge, and let her sit in my lap watching the ducks, acclimating. Eventually her love of waterfowl overcame her fear of loud noises, and she started to explore a bit. She waded into the water. I followed her in. She went farther, up to her waist. She tipped over into the water and got totally soaked, so I stripped her and let her cavort a bit more. She chased some ducks. She watched some butterflies. Fun outdoors: mission accomplished. Barely. Sheesh!

Things I could dress up for, but don’t

Saturday was our fifth wedding anniversary. We had a babysitter lined up and had possible dinner, movie, and toddler toy shopping plans, but decided to cancel the sitter and have Baby join us at a family-style Italian place that specializes in serving foods you can dip into garlic butter, preceded by the same toy shopping agenda. Baby so loves to eat, and eat out, and we do enjoy her company, that it didn’t feel like we were missing out. It was quite nice.

Today, though, when Baby and I were playing dress-up, she with my scarves and shoes and me with my wardrobe of unworn Nice Clothes, I was surprised and delighted to discover that I can now fit back into a lot of my clothes from high school, despite still being almost 20 pounds heavier. I was able to get into three prom dresses (apparently I went to several proms, of which I have little recollection), an elaborate burnt velvet number I bought on the street in San Francisco, the dress I wore to my senior year piano recital, an astonishing number of beautiful suits, and several other fun and dressy things. Now that I know I can wear them, some things even flatteringly enough I could actually leave the house in them, it’s a little sad to think that, nevertheless, I won’t. What do I do that requires dressing up? It’s enough to make one consider a fancy corporate job in New York, or divorce and dating, or running for political office, or taking up flamenco, or even attending worship services just to get some use out of these very lovely garments.

Hometown visit

We (meaning me + my progeny) just took a little trip to my hometown to visit with my mother and grandparents. While there we dropped in on various people, 75% of whom were not home for our drop-in visit; we had fun with the other 25%, me doing impromptu slogan translating for their upcoming missions trips to Honduras, Baby investigating their stacks of magazines.

It’s funny; when we talk about social customs in the U.S. in my ESL classes, I always stress to my Hispanic immigrant students that Americans don’t like drop-in visits, but then I myself force people into panics about the states of their houses with no compunctions at all. Mostly I just do this when I am back home and know where everybody lives (my old piano and Spanish teachers, my childhood friend with two little kids, my grandparents’ neighbors, my high school best friend’s parents; that variegated class of people) but I don’t know their phone numbers and even if I did it would be next to impossible for me to coordinate a visit beforehand what with my grandparents’, mother’s, and child’s various schedules. So we pop in.

My grandmother’s Alzheimer’s is mostly stable. She knows who most everyone is and is able to fake very well knowing where she is and what she is doing. She clings to my grandfather; this morning Baby and I were supposed to “sit with” (i.e. babysit) her while my mother and grandfather attended to some business, but she much rathered (I know that “rather” is not a verb, but apparently this is how I would speak this phrase, and in talking about my grandparents I tend to get very Southern, and I think using “rather” in a past-tense verb form like this must be a Southern thing, so I am keeping it for ambiance) go with him than stay with us. But she and Baby equally enjoy a rousing game of peekaboo and had a nice enough visit; Baby impressed my grandparents, as always, with her wide and sustained interest in food. I was reading an article that mentioned that the brain of someone with advanced Alzheimer’s in many respects resembles that of a one-year-old in terms of the lack of transition of memories into the long-term. My grandmother’s social and verbal skills are rather more advanced, however.

Upon our arrival, my grandparents were so excited to get back into the house to visit with us that they apparently knocked each other over in the doorway. My grandfather, who is on blood thinners, broke open a wound on his forehead that he’d gotten weeks earlier in the removal of a basal cell carcinoma. The day before he’d gotten his pacemaker’s battery replaced. My mother is exhausted taking them to all of their various doctors’, lawyers’, business partners’, and so forth appointments, keeping them fed and dressed and medicated, all with no help as they won’t accept any–even (probably especially) from me. And soon she will return to full-time work. I just can’t see how she can do it all. At this rate she will overwork herself and die before my grandparents, and then where will the family be?

Phobias

A few weeks ago Baby started developing various phobias. They have mounted rapidly. I believe they now are:

–Dogs as seen through windows. Dogs in person are fine. This phobia extends to seeing our own dogs through the kitchen door.
–The sound of plane engines (really looking forward to that trip to Europe next week!)
–Mowers and blowers.
–Hair dryers.
–Our neighbor’s A/C unit (you may be sensing a sound theme)
–Vacuum cleaners, steam cleaners, things that look or sound like vacuum cleaners
–Pieces of dirt on the floor that might be bugs. Actual bugs are no biggie.
–Pieces of car or dog fur on the furniture, particularly if they stick to her sticky little hands and she can’t shake them off and she tries to wipe the fur off on her face and it gets stuck there and then she has fur on her hands AND face (look, everybody is shedding right now, and the fur is hard to keep up with).
–Water on the floor. Specifically, water that she just spilled on the floor. Or pee pee that she just peed on the floor.
–Thunder, though she’s mostly over that now. Or maybe we just haven’t had thunder in so long it seems like she’s over it but this phobia is just waiting to rear its head in my parents-in-law’s strange house.

These phobias are very dramatically felt and can crop up frequently. I don’t always have the most sympathy for her intense fear of little bits of dead leaves the dogs dragged in from the yard, though I try not to show it. Hopefully she’ll grow out of them as quickly as she grew into them.

Insouciance

A preview?

Oh, but she’s still a little girl: