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!

a day

G's out of town for a few days, so for the 2nd wknd in a row, the little munchkin and I are flying solo.  Last week, we were literally flying, and I can't wait to blog about THAT exciting trip in my next post.  This week, we're hanging out at home.  So far, it's been much easier, especially knowing that I can go back to work and drop the kid off in daycare for the next 3 days (G gets back on Wed night).

I know I sound horrible, but man I'm tired.  I ADORE our kid, but hanging out with her 24-7 is definitely challenging these days.  I have a new respect for single parents.  This weekend started off fine with a great day yesterday.  I was proud for getting 2 naps out of Diya, but then ended up regretting it last night. She's been transitioning between two and one naps these days, so most days, it's just one.  But the problem is that she has a hard time holding out until the afternoon and starts to get tired and cranky by mid-morning.  But if you put her down, then chances are that she'll nap then for a couple of hours, wake up by noon and not sleep for the rest of the day.  I'm not really sure what's better honestly.  During the week, I say morning crankiness is MUCH better because she's in daycare anyway.  But you see my problem on the weekends . . .  So anyway, yesterday, I was able to manage 2 naps, but she woke up from her 2nd at 5pm and didn't sleep til after 9.  So yah, I screwed myself there.

Today started off hard from the first.  Early (well, not really, but too early for me) wake up.  Breakfast was fine, she even ate a bit while I put away dishes.  Her Highness is picky these days, so you can't take that for granted.  But then I left her playing on her mat for a second to pee and she went ballistic.  I came rushing back to realize she's fallen backwards on her head.  On the mat, but she must have fallen hard because these days she likes to climb the little ledge over to our fireplace, and I'm guessing she fell from there.  It's just another inch or two off the ground, but I'm sure it shook her.

Then diaper change time . . . she had a monster poop that was mostly stuck to her.  So I might have gotten a little excited changing.  But dude, she was wailing the whole time, squirming around, AND trying to touch her crotch (which is fine except that there was POOP there.  I was trying to clean her up and hold her up a bit since there's poop on her butt too and I didn't want it touching her changing table sheets.  OMG, you would have thought I was torturing her the way she went on.   (Totally having deja vu here, didn't I just write another poop story that was pretty much like this except that Tucker ended up eating it?)

Finally, I let her off the table.  She seemed happy at first and followed me to the bathroom to throw the poop away.  Honestly, this one stunk so much that I would have buried it somewhere if it was possible.  Plus, it took me like a million wipes to clean up, so all that went in the toilet too.  I came back to grab a little baggie for the diaper and suddenly saw the kid take a face plant onto the floor. No idea why, but just lost her balance and wham, hit the hardwood.  Ugh, so I threw out the diaper, soothed her for a minute, and went back to the bathroom to realize that the kid's poop had PLUGGED UP THE TOILET.  She was still wailing through all this, so I decided that the plumbing issue could wait a minute and picked her up.  And the poor thing clung to me for a few minutes until she forgot she was in utter pain and wanted off to play with the electrical socket.  (I'm kidding, but I'm sure it was something hazardous).  And oh, did I mention that last night Mia stepped on her leg by accident and left a big ol' scratch on it?  The kid's not having a good weekend, poor thing, and will probably be all nicked up and bruised everywhere by the time G gets back.  Which is just awesome.

THEN, she started fussing cuz she was tired, I decided to make her hold out for the afternoon nap today.  So I decided the best thing to do was head out for a bit.  So we went to Whole Foods.  Ya, don't judge me, for fun I go out to Whole Foods.  It's a whole 15 minutes farther than our neighborhood Lucky and Nob Hill stores, so for us, it's an OUTING.   Anyway the other annoying thing she started doing today was cry whenever we were about to do something she doesn't like.  So every time I put her pants on this morning (I kind of get it, that kind of stuff still hurts for her because of her hips -- but when she's in a good mood, she doesn't really fuss about it), we'd have a little screaming fit.  When she thought we were about to ride in a car, she also went ballistic.  That, I didn't get, she doesn't mind car rides, so who knows.  Oh, so when she had that monster poop?  We also ran out of diapers, so I had to take her with me to go grab another box from the garage.  I think that's when her sudden new fear of cars first emerged because I think she thought we were going out somewhere and crying all over again and looking all freaked out.   So here I was carrying this wailing, naked baby, praying she wouldn't pee on me, and looking for diapers in our disaster of our garage.  It was crazy, she was literally trying to push off of me like I was about to throw her in the car and lock the door.  SO weird.

Where was I?  Oh ya so little screaming fit but otherwise sane ride over to Whole Foods.  She loved being in the grocery store.  For the first time ever, I was able to fit her legs through the little shopping cart -- it takes a little maneuvering with her legs, gotta get the bad one in first and then kind of stretch her other one, but once she was in there, she was in heaven.  Grabbed a couple of tangerines I'd picked up and started banging them around together.  Then bit into one, skin and all.  Yah, so I've never been able to get her to really eat oranges, but clearly I've been going about it the wrong way.  Letting her steal one from the grocery store is clearly the way to go.  She refused to give it up, so finally, I just peeled a portion of it and gave it back to her to nosh on.  Because, you know, I'd much rather have a shoplifter than a screamer on my hands.  She managed to eat a good half of it, but when I tried to give her the rest at home on her high chair, she spit it out and tried to feed pieces of it to the dogs.  I guess as soon as it stopped being the forbidden fruit, she lost interest.

On the way home, she started hacking in the back, and I wondered if she was choking on a tangerine seed.  Thankfully, she wasn't.

And that's where we are.  And guess what, it's only noon!! 

another poop story

Recently, I decided that it was time for us to go back to cloth diapers.  We used to have do a diaper service, and it was great.  Every week, they'd come and haul our bag of dirty diapers and bring us fresh ones.  We used disposables during the first few weeks (because G stole like a million packs of Pampers from the hospital -- we were there for a week, and he'd hide half-used packages in our bags so that they'd bring us more.  Plus we had a lot from our baby shower, so it made sense to use them up first) and at night.  But ultimately, we switched to cloth for full-time day use and I've always liked them better.  They seemed to be better for preventing diaper rash, better at holding in the poop blow-outs, and nicer to the environment. 

Diya's daycare wouldn't deal with cloth, though, so then we switched to a cloth/compostable option.  Still with the service, but they take away all our diapers and compost the non-cloth ones.  The compostable diapers are actually pretty cool.  If you're willing to spend the money and want to be environmentally friendly, these are almost like disposables.  We gave those to Diya's daycare and used cloth at home.  And then when Diya got into her cast, the cloth didn't fit inside there, so we had to full time compostable -- a little one stuffed inside the cast, and a giant one on the outside to hold everything in.  It's been almost 5 months since she came out of the cast and we just hadn't bothered going back yet.  Mostly, I worry about dealing with frequent diaper changes with Diya's brace.  It's a pain to take off and on.

I've missed cloth diapers though, and as Diya gets older, I've been wanting to give them another go.  For one thing, she pees less frequently now, so it doesn't seem like it'll be as much of a pain to take her brace off and on.  And, there are a lot of cloth diapers that are more absorbent than the ones we'd been getting from the diaper service.  So it's not like we'd be changing her diaper every 30 minutes like the olden days.  Also, her new daycare has said that they'd be willing to handle cloth diapers too, so really, it'd be there problem during the week. 

So . . . we're trying again.  But this time, I want to go all in.  No more service, we do our own wash.  Mostly just so we have more options as to what kind of diapers we get.  And I want to start using cloth at night time too.  I've been buying all kinds of diapers online to get our stash built up enough to just do laundry every few days or so, and to stop our service.  I think G's getting a little tired of the daily diaper packages. 

The big problem with this plan is that I'm pretty grossed out by diapers in general and all things poop-related.  I had a bit of a melt down when Tucker kicked up poop on my leg (I tried to find the link to this post and couldn't), and it's all I can do to shake Diya's solids down the toilet now without yakking (yes, like responsible people, we dump her dumps into the toilet, even with our compostables, and there have been times when I've missed the toilet and poop's landed on the rim.  Last week, I thought I lost my poop in the hallway, only to realize it landed on the underside of the rim somehow.  I seriously went down the hallway looking for a nugget, ewing the whole time.  If you visit my house, don't worry, I'm obsessive about cleaning that toilet rim now).  Anyway, I'm still worried about how this is going to work with me having to wash this stuff. 

So far, though, the trial runs have proven to be not much grosser than the compostable poops.  I shake the poops out, and put the diapers in a laundry bag.  The only difference is that I keep a little Bio-Kleen next to the toilet to do a quick spray before throwing them into the laundry bag.  Just to avoid any staining.  The pee ones I just toss in as is.  I'm a little grossed out when I throw the diapers into the toilet, but honestly, I'm always just as grossed out pulling out the disposable/composable bins and trying those bags up. 

Sounds good right?  This morning, though, I realized there might be a few tweaks to still work out.  Well, actually, the other day she had a poop and I realized I didn't know what to do with the wipe.  See, during this trial period, our diaper set up isn't really optimized for the cloth diapers.  We have 2 diaper pails, one for compostable, one for trash/disposable wipes/etc.  I have a little laundry bag on the side, but once we switch over, it's not going to be the best way to go.  For one thing, it's kind of hard opening the damn bag with a diaper in my hand.  Anyway, the other thing is that if the wipes are really poopy, we take those to the toilet too and flush them down.  Just to avoid stinking up the baby's room too much.  Anyway, the other day she had a poop, and I didn't know where to put the wipe.  Usually, they just lay on top of the diaper until they all get hauled to the bathroom.  But I don't want poop stains on the outside of my new cloth diapers.  So while trying to figure out where to set it down, I accidentally TOUCHED poop.  So ew, ew, ew. 

Anyway, that was earlier.  This time, I thought I had it figured out.  Diya had her first monster poop in the cloth (actually I feel totally bad -- I think she may have pooped during the HALF HOUR it took for her to fall asleep for her nap this morning, but then finally just fell asleep with poop in her butt.  Maybe.  I don't know, it was a monster poop, I would think it'd be hard to sleep through.  But whenever it happened, she had a monster poop in her butt when she woke up).  It was mostly solid but super soft, and there was poop all over her vag, and it was pretty disgusting.  And of course, fun to clean up, because for one, she's been really squirmy in the changing table lately.  Plus, she had this stuffed dog in her hand that she refused to give up. 

So here I am, trying to hold her butt up long enough to clean it (cuz there was poop in the back too and I was trying to avoid getting it all over the changing table).   She's waving her fricking dog around, and started SCREAMING when I took it away.  I figure I have this wipe/diaper thing sorted out and set the diaper down on the floor and several extremely poopy wipes on top of the diaper pail.  I even set a kleenex down on the pail to avoid getting poop on the pail, and worked hard to avoid, you know, touching!! the poop.  So far, so good.  The kid is still screaming, and I have no idea if the stuffed dog touched poop before I managed to wrangle it away from her.  So when she was clean enough to give it back to her, I still wasn't sure if it was ok to.  I tried to smell it, but man the whole room reeked at this point, so it was hard to say if there was a particular funk coming from it or not.  (Do you think I'm terrible for admitting that I finally just gave it back to her?). 

OK, so this right here is the whole point of my post, so if you've stuck it out for this long, you're in for a treat.  So I'm feeling proud, right, of getting better at this.  Things are going well, and aside from maybe some poop damage to a stuffed animal, I'm doing all right.  The kid's only screaming a little bit now.  And all of a sudden I look over and there's Tucker EATING the poop from the kid's diaper!!  Not smelling, or just checking out, but totally noshing.  And had gotten a fair amount of it out.  Can I just say, OMFG, really????  Dude, I'd even mostly closed it, but he'd somehow managed to nose his way in. 

EW EW EW EW

So yah.  That was fun.  I chased him out of the room, screaming like a banshee (which of course had the kid just staring at me like WTF).  The most unsatisfying part was that I couldn't even really chase him far b/c I had this kid squirming away on top of the changing table still.  I stuck a new diaper on her, set her in her crib for a few while I went to dump out the poop.  Like I said, it was a bit soft, so there was some that wouldn't come out so I sprayed the hell out of it and I guess we'll see how well it washes out.  I did manage to make it past the rim and into the toilet.  The wipes got flushed, and whatever, the room still stinks so it was a lot of work for not much reward (contrary to what you might be thinking, it's not my cloth laundry bag that reeks -- that actually just smells like BioKleen).

I, of course, then immediately called G to tell him what HIS dog had done.  When he stopped laughing, he asked me why I hadn't just put the diaper on top of the OTHER diaper pail instead of the floor.  In retrospect, I said, that probably would have been best.  But never in a million years did I even think that I'd have to worry about the dog eating the kid's poop.  Then he wanted to know why I hadn't just let Tucker help me clean that portion of the diaper that wouldn't fall out into the toilet. 

Clearly I'm not utilizing my dogs to their full potential.  

these are the days

I've always loved LOVED kids.  Like, seriously, I think I knew when I was 9 years old that I wanted one or maybe two or five.  But I tended to like them on the older side.  Babies seemed a little tiny and useless.  Honestly, all they do is poop and cry all the time.  I thought that when I was 9 and pretty much thought that right up until the moment I gave birth, probably several months after even. 

And then I don't know when I started to come around (I'm assuming I've come around anyway, seeing as how I have this kid that I kind of think is awesome).   But still, I realize why you really just can't see the value in babies until you have your own.  And then, I'm not sure how that translates into liking OTHER people's babies.  Because you hear it all the time, including from my own mouth -- some other baby comes into the room, and I'm all "AW, so cute, I remember when my little bugger was this tiny.  Those were the days, huh kiddo?"  And I look wistfully down at my much larger child and remember the days when it didn't hurt my arms to carry her around. 

All of us are on crack when we think this.  Or we're lying.  Or maybe the hormones that let us willingly endure torture from a little nugget barely the size of our hand still haven't worn off.  Because back when our own darlings were that size, we were a colossal sleep-deprived mess with vomit and poop all over our clothes.  

So before you start thinking I'm terrible (but come on, you know you agree with me, whether you have kids or not), I will say that I'm SO aware of how quickly this time has flown.  These days, Diya doesn't want to be rocked to sleep anymore.  We're down to nursing once a day.  She wants to try to eat on her own.  She hands me her sippy cup to give her some water, and I melt, just happy to be needed for something.  I know I'm going to blink and suddenly she's going to be off to college in another state.  It scares the shit out of me, and there are days when I want every moment to last forever, just like exactly the way it is.  

But then there are mornings like today.  And I don't look back, I look forward, to a time when she becomes some one you can talk to, reason with.  Today, she's been having one of those "goddangit, i woke up too early with pee up my back and i'm not letting you forget it, witch" days.  The tears started when we were changing her outfit (although apparently dad was able to win giggles before he took off for work), continued after her morning milk.  Which seemed sufficient at the time, but ten minutes later, she caught sight of her sippy cup and decided that she needed more seven seconds ago.  Then it was on to pointing at the window wanting to play ball.  Which entails me carrying her, throwing the ball, running after the ball, picking it up, letting her throw the ball, and then leaning down again to pick it up and throw it again for real.  You know, kind of like playing chess with yourself but so much harder on your arms. 

That ended much too soon for her liking because I may have enlisted Mia's help with the fetching portion but that was not to her majesty's liking.  Of course Mia then went off with the ball, and you would have thought the world had ended the way tears started flowing. 

I was finally able to convince her to chase the ball around in the kitchen herself, and she happily threw it across the room, crawled over to it, and repeat long enough for me to get her breakfast going.  I think Mia was peeved to have both her ball and her game be commandeered by the baby (who has way too many off-limit toys already).  She sulked in a corner, but honestly, I could only deal with one offspring's drama and hurt feelings at a time. 

Anyway, she's napping now.  It was one of these mornings where 8:30 rolled around and I figured it was respectably late enough to try for a morning nap while I finally got some breakfast and tea.  I had already called G at 7 to tell him that he better not be late coming home from work because there was only so much I can take.  He was still driving to work at the time.

The drama queen behavior is a new thing.  She points and cries if it's not immediately offered to her.  Whether it's running around outside or the hot pan on the stove top, it has to be hers if she wants it.  And seriously, the tears will start running down her face immediately.  She's an on and off switch, laughing with glee when you provide and in utter despair when you don't.  I had been thinking this was something I could look forward to in teenage land, but clearly, my daughter has gotten a head start. 

I'm finding that I have no patience for this phase.  Give me the hospital visits and middle-of-the-night wake ups.  I might complain about them but they don't grate on my nerves the way the whining does.  On these days, I look forward to the time when I can tell her, "I'm sorry, you can't have that knife because you can do some serious damage to your pretty face if you're not careful" and have that be the end of it.  Anyone have some earplugs I can borrow until then?

In other news, you know how dogs sometimes have pieces of grass stuck in their butthole after they poop?  And you have to help them pull it out because if they're like Mia, they freak out that it's there and can't just push out a little harder?  And it's because you can't stop the damn dogs from eating grass because they're idiots like that?  Well, anyway, this morning, our human child had a blade of grass stuck in her butt when she pooped!!   Dammit, why won't anyone listen to me when I tell them that grass isn't for eating???

Clearly, it's been an eventful morning.