this morning

So either my kid is about the smartest thing there is or she's just a big ol' pain in the ass.  My guess is that she's both, and this is going to end up giving me more than a few heart attacks from here on out.  Starting this morning.  This morning, I was running around like a lunatic trying to get out the door with her as always.  Those of you that know me even a little bit know what a miracle it is for me to get out the door every morning with actual pants on.  And if I manage to not forget my cell phone, wallet, train pass, purse, or leave my lunch sitting on the counter during the process, my day's already about as good as it's going to get.

This morning, it was my turn for daycare drop off, which involves me being responsible for getting myself AND a small toddler out the door (while dealing with a couple of dogs in the process too).  Now, getting out the door is something I've worked long and hard at, because I hear it's one of those skills that's kind of essential for survival.  But these particular mornings are chaotic at best, and I've given up on getting it done gracefully so long as I'm able to get it done at all. Meaning if I end up walking out the door with my hair in a big mess or forget to take off my flip flops, I cut myself some slack.  If the kid starts rolling around on the dog bed right after I've showered and changed her, I just brush her enough to make sure she's only sort of covered in dog hair.

This morning, the kid woke up extra early, so I ended up taking her in the shower with me, but other than that, I thought things were all right.  I think I hit most of the hot spots when soaping up, and I managed to get us both dressed, the dogs fed, even a lunch packed for me.  Breakfast is at 8:30 at her daycare, and I wasn't even looking at being late, which is kind of huge for me these days.  If things went according to plan, I would have the kid handed over by 8 and even catch the express train by 8:15.

If.  See, I think my problem was that I aimed a little too high.  But anyway, I was on a roll.  Even convinced the kid that she needed to get her shoes and socks on without having her resort to tears, which is another plus.  I mean, not the shoes/socks especially, but just convincing the little princess to do anything on our schedule rather than hers is, well, how shall I say this tactfully, challenging.  But this morning, things were going pretty well.  Well, except for the part where I forget to tell you that part of the reason that everything was flowing smoothly was because I let the kid play with my keys as we were heading out.  She LOVES keys, especially pushing all the buttons on them.  But who cares how I get her there, right?  All that matters is that I've managed to get her in the car and buckle her in without even a tiny tantrum.  Kudos to me, I totally rock.

So I'm guessing some of you may already be guessing what was in store for me this morning.  But I'll go ahead and tell you the full story because isn't this blog all about showcasing my idiot moments?  So she's all buckled in, happily pushing away.  I get this WHOA, crazy thought, wouldn't it suck if she locked me out of my car while she was sitting there?  I've been around the block a few times now, so I know how this works.   If it seems unlikely, chances are it probably will happen to me at some time or another.  So I left the front passenger door open after I put her inside.  It was cold, and my car wasn't in the garage, but better that the kid be cold for a second than locked into my car.  So good deal.  I'm on it.  Kid buckled in, check.  My stuff sitting by the garage door, ready to put in the car, check.  Car door open, check.  The door to our garage/house also open because I don't want to get locked out before I'm completely ready to get out of there.  Kid's coat in the passenger seat, check.  I run back to the garage, slip some shoes on, grab my stuff and throw those into the passenger seat as well.  Door still open, check.  And I'm already to go until I get this amazing idea.  I'll grab something else so that I can trade the kid for my car keys.  Which would mean avoiding any hysterics as we're heading out.  Awesome, man, this parenting thing is for the birds!  Random trinket found on the floor of the garage, check.  Lock the garage/house door, check.  Run back to the car, close the passenger door as I walk past it, then reach for the back door to hand over my nifty gift, ch- whoa, WHAT?

Yep, you read that right.  I guess they don't really teach you this in law school.  That if you're keeping a door open to avert a major crisis, your best chances of actually avoiding the crisis in question is to wait until the key exchange has been made instead of deciding to CLOSE THE F"N DOOR as you walk past it and THEN reaching for the back door.  Because the chances are, inevitably, all doors to the car are ALREADY LOCKED at this point by your button-pushing happy toddler who's been doing nothing but pushing the LOCK button since she got into her seat.  The key to averting a crisis apparently, is to actively keep averting the crisis until all possible moments during which said crisis could occur are completely behind you.

So here I am, house locked up, my purse with my cell phone in the front seat, my kid in the back seat with my car keys, and no way to get in anywhere.  We have a side gate but we keep it locked.  The dogs are barking.  The kid is getting a little impatient. I don't even have my coat on, because it's guess where -- in the front seat of the car.

"Push the button," I said cheerfully to my brilliant kid (who I've been SO certain lately has understood our every word because she says "YA!" with so much authority), determined to be calm.  And god knows, the kid can push the button.  The last thing I wanted to do was freak her out so much that she flung the keys away.  The best plan, I decided, was to calmly encourage her to open the door again, and somehow point her in the direction of the right button to do it.  Maybe at this point, I should remind you that she's a year and half, so the reasoning skills are well, you know, still coming along a bit, despite my enamored attempts to think otherwise.  Twenty minutes later, she's pushed every button BUT the one to open the car door.  And before you go knocking my kid's button-pushing skills, I should tell you that there are in fact FOUR possible buttons to my car that she could push, along with 3 possible buttons to G's car, because I have his set on my key ring as well.  So it's no small feat to push the right button, especially with an increasingly not-so-calm mother yelling through the window to "push the button."  And then, "No, no, not that one.  The other one.  Do you see that other one right next to it?"  Well, not yelling so much as high-pitched pleading.  But still, at some point, the kid decided the game wasn't fun anymore and she pushed the keys aside and started to cry.  Because the stress of finding "the other one" just became too much, I guess.  But did not THANK GOD fling the keys away from her because it would have been just my luck to not be able to avert THAT crisis also.

So finally, I gave up, and started to think about how to break into my home.  I was able to scale the fence with the help of the garbage can.  And first bonus of the day proved to be that the back door was unlocked!!  Because you know, I inevitably forget something on my way out the door, and today, thankfully, it was that I totally spaced locking the back door after I let the dogs back in.  Hallelujah for that, because otherwise, the plan was to try every window, but I'm pretty sure we keep them all bolted (due to my obsessive fear that our house will get broken into and the baby stolen while we sleep -- totally different story but blame it on too many Criminal Minds episodes).

But THEN it turned out that I couldn't find the spare key anywhere, despite five whole minutes of searching.  So finally, I went over next door and tried to see if my neighbors were around.  Who doesn't like being woken up at 8 am?  Definitely not someone with two small kids of her own, chances are she's been up for hours already.   I figured I'd just use her cell and call G to see where the spare was kept.  Except that I guess her kids got her up so early that she had left the house already.  And I don't know anyone else in our neighborhood.  Plus, I felt less like an idiot telling her the story because she's come over to our house after her son locked himself up in their bedroom.  Anyway, that plan didn't work, but guess what a great way to meet your neighbors is?

Next issue:  G didn't pick up when I called from some strange number.  At this point, I was standing outside my car with a neighbor's cell.  I left a franctic message but then saw that D had picked up the keys again and was pushing on buttons.  I encouraged her again to push the "other one."  And whaddya know, she said, "YA?" and she did it!!!  Not just once, but twice, so she opened the back door as well!!!

So ya, major crisis averted!   And the kid seemed fairly proud of herself when I told her how smart she'd been to push the right button.  "Ya!"  Conveniently forgetting of course that it took her almost half hr to get it right and if she hadn't pushed the damn button to begin with . . . but whatever, kid.  "Ya!"  So smart!

Want to hear the real kicker too?  Because this story just isn't filled with enough of them, of course.  Apparently, the spare key had been right there with our other keys.  I even saw it, just didn't realize it was the car spare.  But you know, it's better this way.  I got to meet the neighbor.  The story got to be about how my smart kid figured out how to open the car door instead of how I was able to scale our fence and "break in" to our house.  I got to leave a frantic message for G.  And he got to call back some random number that he didn't know before I could call and tell him to never mind the whole thing.  So in a way, he got to meet the neighbor too!  Much better this way.  

another hip update

Man, every time I think about it, I remember something else I never posted about.  So. . . I know India's on the list but I was realizing today that it's been a long time since I've really said anything about Miss D's hips.  Which is odd, in some ways, because actually it's a source of huge obsession for me.  Like seriously, all the time.  There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not somehow stressed about it.  Sometimes, it results in me calling our ortho in a panic or sending a message to one of several email groups.  But mostly, it just involves me googling some random obscure issue over and over again.  This week, I happened to see something in one of my hip groups about an adult with ongoing issues even after surgery.  Which freaked me the hell out because I thought the whole point of all this was to ensure that there WERE no ongoing issues.  Like OMG, is she not going to be able to be a cheerleader if she wants or run marathons???  So now I've been trying to dig up everything there is (which is pretty much nothing) on the long term effects of hip dysplasia.

For a long time before this current issue cropped up, I worried that she was making too little progress, as she's always seemed super stiff with her legs, especially on the right where she had the closed reduction.  Our doc has said that objectively, there's no real reason for this difference and things should just improve with time.  But man, it's tough to wait.  And the longer I wait, the more I find to worry about.  

Despite my constant fears, the hips are actually coming along quite well.  In October (god, I can't believe I didn't blog about this, or did I??), our doc let us take the brace off during the day.  It was pretty awesome too.  Our little miss was crawling around on the floor (I'm not even sure I mentioned she had started crawling.  For a long time, it was an army crawl but then eventually worked its way into a real crawl).  Anyway, she was making her getaway from our waiting room - and honestly who can blame her, these appointments take FOREVER.  And suddenly, there was our doc, saying that she might be getting a bit more mobile here pretty soon.  The brace stayed for naps and nighttime, but during the day, she was FREE.

Then I worried that she wasn't as mobile as quickly as we thought she'd be.  Honestly, for the most part still, we can't really tell the difference between brace off and on.  She tends to hold her legs in the same position regardless, and it's taken me a while to adjust to the fact that this is the way it's going to be for a long, long time.  Apparently, even when she finally walks, she'll most likely do it with her legs in a V-position for quite a while.

The crazy thing is that every time I start to really panic about something, something will happen. Some small hint of progress that restores my faith in our doc, who's said from the beginning that everything will take time, and that we just have to be patient and let our awesome girl do her thing.  That as long as there's progress, no matter how small, we're looking good.  And x-ray wise, our doc keeps telling me, the hips are looking great.  In August, there was little progress, but in October, there was substantial development of the socket and the angles were almost where they needed to be.  Those of you who know me know that patience is definitely not my thing, but time and time again, our kid has proven the doc right.  In this case, soon after I called, worried that our kid was still JUST crawling and with a super wide stance at that, she suddenly started to pull herself up a bit here and there.  Not up straight really, but more onto things.  And then it was onto taller and taller things.

The change mostly started to happen just after Christmas.  Her Auntie M and Uncle J got her a cute little ladybug thing to ride.  We got her a big ol' train.  And within a week or so, she was pulling herself onto them and riding them!  And I don't know, it probably doesn't seem like that big a deal to the average parent because she was climbing up things before too but more like cushions and stuff.  But for us every little accomplishment is oh so huge -- she seems to work so hard at them.

And then, just before our trip at the end of January, G said he saw her pull up almost completely straight.  Dude, he said, she's pretty damn tall when she's completely upright.  I didn't get to see it for a while, but while we were in India, she was standing up constantly. She's definitely got the V going still but her legs are so much closer together now than they used to be. And her legs a lot less shakier too.  I love it, too, she's so frickin' proud of herself every time she does it.  We'll ask her if she wants to practice standing and she'll say, "tan'ing?" and pull on up with a huge grin.

Even bigger news is that just before our trip, we had another x-ray and our doc decided to take the brace off for good.  No more naps or night time.  Which is awesome because we hadn't really been using the brace anyway since she had some moster pee episodes overnight and we couldn't get the stink out.  That was pretty cool too.  I told our doc that we needed a new brace cuz ours was disgusting, and she responded with, "Well, actually, I was thinking more, no brace.  How do you feel about that?"

It wasn't the, we're all done with this shit forever and ever kind of news I would have liked.  In the past, our doc has said that the brace will come off either when our kid learns to take it off herself (2ish) or if her hips get completely healed.  Neither really happened here though.  Turned out that the x-ray tech had done a crappy job taking the x-ray so she couldn't really measure the angles.  But, everything else looked good so she felt confident letting us take it off.  And for now, I'll guess I'll take it.  I think mostly, she's hoping that D's hips will get a little less stiff, allowing her to become more mobile, which in turn will hopefully strengthen her hips more.  So we'll see how it all goes.

I have a feeling that the next step is still a ways off, but who knows.  Maybe our munchkin will surprise us.  But then OMG, what will I obsess about next????  I'll have all these extra hours at work where I'll have nothing left to google.  Plus, our ortho is going on maternity leave for a few months -- doesn't she deserve at least one frantic call from me during that time?   On the other hand, how cool is this -- our kid has been pretty much ahead of schedule with respect to every aspect of this thing (well, except the actual moving around part).  Spica cast -- off in 6 weeks, brace -- "get that thing off me or I'll pee on it again."  She's definitely moving right along.  

A few pics

Catch-up

So I know, I know, it’s been horribly, ridiculously, I-don’t-know-even-if-I-can- even- catch-up-anymore, long since I last posted.  During these last few months, I’m sure there have been all kinds of funny moments and momentous things that I wanted to share.  But these days, if I don’t write or talk about them immediately, I forget.  I blame it on my pregnancy.  Like seriously, in the months after my pregnancy, I swear I lost more than just disgusting gobs of hair.  I’m almost positive I had more brain cells before all this started than I do now.  And no one frickin’ told me that they wouldn’t come back dammit.  So I’m sorry, all I can offer now is a quick digest of the last few months and hope to do better here on out. 


Actually, one of my New Year’s resolutions (which I made just yesterday BTW b/c it’s just too depressing to fail at them in January already.  Last year, I waited until August and was able to proudly say that I didn’t break any resolutions until mid-August or so!  This year, I remembered the blog and all this weight I want to lose and the gym clothes I started bringing to work 4 months ago so that I could join the gym down the street from my work, so thought what the heck, let’s see how this goes) is to blog at least every other day.  Also, I’m going to lose all kinds of weight and finally start that other blog for the little princess.  G’s resolutions so far (which I made for him, so please remind him if you happen to see him – he doesn’t read this blog most of the time and I think he was only half listening while I was telling him in person) are also to lose weight and to clean the garage.  But if you are telling him, be sure to emphasize that a NY resolution to clean the garage does NOT mean he has the whole year to do it. Really, it should fall on the say, "finish by the end of the month", list. I’m still trying to think of other things I might need done around the house that I could throw on his list.  Anyway, so yes, I will try to do better, but for now, here’s what happened the last few months. 


In October, we went on a family vacation to Maui.  And it was pretty great.  Turns out that unlike mom and dad, Miss D really likes the sand.  And I mean, really LIKES, as in we couldn’t go anywhere without her trying to jump out of our arms, screaming “down” until we let her get covered in sand from head to toe.  At least, I think she was saying “down” then, back then it could have just been pointing and grunting.  It’s already starting to fade.  And actually, her down sounds more like “naan” but we all know she’s not asking for bread.  And “wa-wa” was a huge favorite on the trip as well, whether it was the hotel pool or the beach near all that SAND SAND SAND.


In November, we went to Oregon for my brother’s wedding.  The little miss was a flower girl and kind of sort of carried this banner saying “Here comes the bride” while I walked her down the aisle.  I say kind of sort of because I “helped” a lot.  But she was still cute.  And the weddings (both the American and Indian ceremonies) were awesome.  Who knew my little brother could knock out such amazing vows (my now-SIL had some cool ones too, but she rocks in general, so that was no surprise there). 

Also, in November, I flew back to Hawaii, this time to Honolulu with the little monst-, er, um, I mean munchkin, for another wedding.  G couldn’t come because of work, so I got to fly with Miss D all by myself and enjoy some alone time with my daughter.  Who is adorable and funny and cute and decided that it was a great weekend to become super clingy.  So let’s just say I got to REALLY enjoy some quality time with my daughter because she sure as hell wasn’t letting me out of her sight, not even long enough to pee or shower (which that weekend, pretty much took the same amount of time).  I even had her in the bathroom with me while I showered and the barrier of the shower curtain was apparently just TOO MUCH TO BEAR.  Plus, she never adjusted to the time change during the long weekend, so I got to wake up every morning at 4:30 am and hang out with her until late evening when the wedding festivities were over.  Some of her naps were even on my lap since several of the wedding-related events occurred during nap time.  All in all, we got to be pretty tight during that trip.  Which was just awesome.  I hear the wedding was pretty lovely too. 

I will say though that our little glue-stick is a great flier (of course, I wanted to wait until we got back from India before admitting to it because I definitely DID not want to jinx myself before the big trip). So we got that going for us.  Also, she’s kind of cute. 

After we got back, G had to go out of town for work.  The following weekend, he developed some mysterious illness that somehow resulted in him sleeping all weekend but seemed to clear up in time to catch up on some TV Sun night.  So let’s just say that the end of Nov-early Dec made for some lovely mother-daughter bonding time (no really, I'm totally not being sarcastic).


For the rest of December, we stayed home.  Except for when we tried to go to my brother’s place in Oakland for Christmas dinner.  We, of course, loaded up enough in the car to take a long road trip, including more dog beds than the # of dogs, but forgot to take D’s little travel crib.  Um, well at least the dogs were ok.  And I’m pretty sure we remembered the wine.  Anyway, we tried to convince our human child to sleep in a dog crate, but what do you know, she did not go for that idea AT ALL!  So we had to turn around and come back home instead of spending the night. 


And then, to top off our fall travel circuit, we just got back from a trip to India.  Which I kind of do remember (seeing as how I got back couple of nights ago) so will blog about next time.  Because, honestly, if I’m going to stick it out for my NY resolutions until at least the end of Feb, I gotta save something for next time.  Plus I’m worried that your eyes are tired already.  And I’m seriously jetlagged and not really sure if I’m remembering to punctuate appropriately. And OH, I have pictures coming up soon too!