Bookemon

I mentioned to Dr. Meyer that I was anxious about taking Sadie on a trip in which she will be constantly bombarded by new places, noises, people and sights. She suggested that I put together a book detailing the adventure, and read it to Sadie in the days leading up to and during the trip.

With the help of our truly awesome friends, here's what I was able to put together.

Make Books Online at Bookemon!		read	buy	send

Gearing Up

It's almost Christmas, and we're trying to get Sadie through another cold before the holiday arrives. Well...I'm trying to. Scott's out of town again and won't be back until 2 days before Christmas. Bad timing, too; this is the worst cold she's had yet. I feel terrible for her because she's had major coughing fits for days now. Just an hour ago, she woke up with a coughing fit so bad it made her sick.

The doctor has told us no cough suppressants or cold medicine. We are allowed to give her as much honey as she wants to soothe her throat, but she doesn't like the taste of it and pushes the spoon away, which inevitably results in honey getting all over her, me, the kitchen counter and the floor. I finally started sneaking it into her milk before bedtime, although I don't know if it's helping much.

Next week we leave for five days in Vancouver, staying with friends of ours and a few other families. I've been looking forward to this New Year's celebration for a long time, and promised Scott I wouldn't stress about it the way I stressed about our Washington trip, which was mostly a blur for me because Sadie teethed, cried and went on a food strike the whole time. I'm doing my best not to stress, but I'm really hoping she recovers from this cold soon and that she doesn't develop an ear infection, like she did the last time she had a cold. Ear infection + baby + airplane = misery.

Now that she's 15 months old, I thought I'd post an update on some of the new skills she's been working on. Her newest skill is being able to walk across a room holding onto only one of my hands. She wobbles around a lot, and is rarely in the mood to practice, but a couple of times she's gotten going at a good rate of speed and then you can tell she's totally proud of herself. She can now also bend down to pick up an object without having to sit down on the floor to get it.

She's finding new words. "Ball" is an outright favorite; she can spot a ball across the room, outside the window, on television. Last week we were shopping at Trader Joe's and she yelled "BALL" like ten times before I realized she was talking about round ornaments that had been strung from the ceiling around the store.

"No" is another recent acquisition, and this presents a conundrum: she rarely has the opportunity to bust out a "no," because she's generally agreeable, but she loves saying the word, so as a result she tends to wander around the house cheerfully murmuring "Nononononononono." Only a few days ago, she busted out "up" for the first time and now that's a new favorite too.

I know it's trite and silly to say, but the amount of joy I'm getting daily from this kid is just ridiculous.

Back Again

This was a hectic weekend. On Saturday we took family portraits and had our consultation with Dr. Meyer; Sunday was a marathon of a Christmas family shopping trip down at South Coast Plaza. We thought by getting there when the stores first opened we'd be avoiding the crowds -- little did we suspect that an hour later, the line for getting your picture taken with Santa would be literally out the door. It was fun, but exhausting.

So, no Santa pictures this weekend, but I still consider it all a success, simply because my back chose to cooperate the whole time. This is notable because my back has been a total bitch recently, and it's not getting any better -- in fact it's getting worse and I can't really be in denial about it any longer.

I was diagnosed with mild scoliosis as a kid. Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine; in my case it curves to one side in a way that's not immediately noticeable but which has caused me back problems throughout my 20s and now, my 30s. The first time I ever pinched a nerve was at my college friend Rachel's wedding and it was like one day I was fine; three hours later I was in excruciating pain, using champagne to wash down Advil and feverishly searching drugstores for a heat patch. Six months later it happened again; a few months later, again.

These days I'm used to it -- every so often something throws my back out of whack. It might be a bad massage, or having slept on it funny, or moving in the wrong way. Whatever the cause, I usually get one day of really intense pain and then it tapers off and after a few days everything is mostly back to normal. When I was working out a lot, the problems all but went away and I stopped thinking about them.

Following Sadie's birth, though, things got bad again in a hurry. I haven't joined a gym since we moved to the valley; my sole source of activity is going for a long walk every afternoon with the baby and the dogs. My muscles have weakened and once I began lifting a baby every day, I went back to my usual pattern of occasional back strain and healing.

Then came Halloween, the day I carried Sadie home from the park to meet the locksmith, and the day after, when I was putting her in the carseat and something in my back went horribly awry. Since then, the pain has gone through periods of being more or less intense, but it has never fully gone away. Last weekend it worsened again, and Scott finally yelled at me to go see an orthopedist.

So I did, and surprise surprise, my problems are due to the scoliosis. One of the discs in my lower back is "unhealthy," (his exact words), and tends to get pushed out of joint every so often. I don't know, I don't speak Medical, and he wasn't interested in teaching me. He ordered an MRI and began throwing around terms like "epidural injections" and "invasive surgery." I got the hell out of there. An exercise/strengthening regimen, I can handle. Surgery and cortisone shots I'll avoid until absolutely necessary, thanks very much.

I have another appointment with a different orthopedist this week for a second opinion -- not because I disagree with the diagnosis, but because I'd rather have a doctor who believes in exercise first and giant scary needles second. If his prescription is to join a gym, I'd be thrilled with that -- it would give me an excuse to put Scott in charge of Sadie's bath time, for one thing. We'll see what he says.

All I know is that this getting old stuff really blows.

Good Behavior

We had our consultation this weekend with the licensed child psychologist, Dr. Meyer. She's one of those really, really sweet and enthusiastic women, and what she has been telling me over and over is that we should pat ourselves on the back! for having Sadie tested for socio-emotional issues this early in her development. She said this before observing, an hour or so later, that "you guys seem really...laid back about all of this."

Laid back? I guess. Most of the parents who take their children to a child psychologist are probably in a very different mindset from us -- upset, worried, at their wits' end. If she'd met me four months ago, that's exactly the parent she'd have come to know.

At this point, though...it seems like less of a big deal than it used to be. Having Sadie's physical problems diagnosed was a huge relief; watching PT address those problems another relief; and now we're seeing her slowly but surely conquer her emotional demons. Yet we still see in her a strong reluctance and hesitation to try new things, to push herself past what's comfortable in order to learn the skills she needs, at her age, to be learning.

To clarify for anyone who thinks that we're needlessly throwing money at yet another professional who can look at our kid and make pronouncements about her issues...you might be right. We don't know. One of the most frustrating parts about all of this is that from one week to the next, we have no idea if Sadie needs further help in surpassing her motor and emotional delays, or if she'll be able to get there on her own with a little patience and time.

A few weeks ago, for instance, I'd have told anyone that Sadie very much needed help from an expert in child behavior. After seeing her cry herself nearly sick through two PT sessions in a row after Joy had done nothing more than move a toy from one part of the room to another, I was convinced that something was seriously wrong.

But this past week, a simple change -- me leaving the room for her therapy session -- gave us a drastically different result. With me gone, Joy reported having worked with "a completely different child." Without my lap to crawl to, without me to complain to, Sadie cooperated with Joy and even learned some new skills (how to climb up and down stairs). It's the same principle that reassures me that even though Sadie might wail when the nanny arrives each morning and hurl herself into my lap, two minutes after I've left the room to take a shower, she abruptly turns off the waterworks and goes cheerfully about her day.

And if the formula is THAT simple -- if simply removing the problem, me, from the equation, results in Sadie returning to her normal cooperative self -- then why, exactly, would we spend more money and more time and more emotional energy on putting her through another battery of tests? Well, there are arguments in favor of doing so anyway.

For one thing, to deny that Sadie is behind other children her age in terms of ability, independence and confidence is foolish and ultimately unhelpful to her. It's plan as daylight, when you put her in an unfamiliar room with other children her age, that in many ways she's still far behind them. According to a series of tests administered to her by Joy (the Gasell tests), she's still testing at a 10 month level for locomotion and 11 month level for social development. Not a huge gap -- but when you consider that she's almost 15 months old, it's a significant distance to make up.

I'm Not Saying My Child's a Genius But...

Two days ago she thought blocks were splinter-prone chew toys, and today she's doing this.

Further Developments

Month fourteen stretches on. We're all recovered from the holiday flu, which has given birth to a new holiday we will forever refer to as "Pukesgiving."

Now it's Christmastime, and one thing I really love about my life now is having a renewed sense of the holiday spirit. Usually we view Christmas-tree buying, gift-purchasing and holiday card-sending as giant headaches, but it's pretty great now to be able to see it happen through the eyes of someone who has never witnessed it before.

Sadie's obsessed with the Christmas tree. Last year, looking at the lights calmed her down when she was crying -- this year it's all touch, touch, touch. The ornaments specifically entrance her ("What?") and she giggles when she touches the pine needles. ("WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?")

We're now doing tours of toddler programs at local preschools. These are basically Mommy and Me classes, usually held once a week for two hours, and the next time a parent of a young toddler starts fretting out loud about whether or not Junior will ever get into the right preschool, don't get eye-rolly with them too quickly. Because, at least here in LA, they really do stress that if you want your kid to go to a particular preschool, you need to get them into the toddler group first so by the time they hit 3, they'll already be ensconced in the school system and familiar with that school's philosophy.

That means you want to decide on the right toddler group by the time your kid is 18 months old, and ideally much earlier. Last week I toured a preschool right around the corner from us (we live on Preschool Row, there are four of them on Riverside within a mile of each other) and when I told the director that Sadie was 14 months old already, her eyes got wide and she was like, "Ohhhh, you waited." Two other moms on the tour had brought their children with them. One was nine months old was one was eight months.

My primary anxiety about toddler group is that Sadie be physically ready for it. The group we plan to join begins its next session in February, which would put her at 16 months old. She might have learned how to walk since then, but it's a long shot -- she still hasn't learned how to fall over without toppling like a tree, and every fall is terribly traumatic for her and for me. Last Sunday, she was playing with me, Scott and the dogs while hanging onto the ottoman. When she lost her balance, there was no sticking out of the arms or anything -- just BAM, straight over and smacked her head on the floor. That's the worst sound in the world. If there's one thing I'd really like her to learn in PT, it's not how to stand up -- it's how to fall over.

Speaking of PT, we've hit some recent snags. Sadie doesn't really make progress anymore, because she's gone back to crying and tantrum-throwing through the entire hour. Joy and I have tried everything we could think of -- moving appointment times to later in the morning when she might be less tired, letting her play by herself first before trying to work with her, but it doesn't matter. She howls with anger when Joy gets anywhere near her, and once she gets upset, it rapidly turns into a full-blown hurricane of a temper tantrum. It's frustrating for all three of us, especially because Joy has pointed out that physically, she's capable of making great progress. Whatever is holding her back now doesn't have anything to do with physical capability; it's Sadie's own decision that she would rather scream for 60 straight minutes than allow Joy to teach her how to climb up a set of steps.

On Joy's recommendation, I called a licensed child psychologist and explained to her where we're at and the problems we've been having. We had a really good conversation. "Child psychologist" is a scary term and makes it sound as if we're worried we might be raising the next Charlie Manson. In reality, it has more to do with teaching us, the parents and caregivers, to see things from a child's perspective and to incorporate that into how we introduce her to the world. Right now we know that little tiny things in PT can set a tantrum in motion -- we just don't know why that is. One day it could be Joy putting a hand on her leg, the next it could be something as insignificant as not being able to figure out how a new toy works. PT has become a place of frustration and anger rather than accomplishment, and I feel like if Sadie could talk, she'd be yelling, "I don't get it, why are we HERE? I HATE this place. DON'T EFFING TOUCH ME, WOMAN."

This weekend Scott and I meet with the LCP just the two of us, to discuss...well, I'm not sure exactly what we'll be discussing. It's a 2 hour consultation, and after that comes two sessions with me and Sadie, and possibly an in-home session as well. Then the LCP works with us to draw up an action plan -- the best ways to introduce Sadie to new things and the best ways to help her cope when she gets upset. I feel good about the decision to do this; I think it will help all three of us -- not to mention any future kids that show up down the line.

I don't know if we'll be convincing anyone to come back to our place for Thanksgiving dinner next year

Thanksgiving, a few short hours before all hell broke loose

Wednesday

Things started innocently enough. Around 2am on Wednesday morning, we awoke to the sound of Sadie crying -- as she sometimes does if she has a nightmare or is just out of sorts. I sent Scott in to put her back to sleep, and a few moments later I heard:

"AMANDA I NEED YOU."

I came in to see a miserable baby, covered in puke from head to toe. I changed her clothes and diaper while Scott changed out the dirty crib sheet and her blanket for clean spares; we briefly debated what might be the problem, and I remembered that two days earlier at the indoor playroom, I'd caught her licking plastic balls in the ball pit. A stomach bug seemed the likely culprit. We soothed her, gave her a pacifier, put her down and went back to bed.

A few minutes later, this process was repeated all over again. From that point on we resigned ourselves to a sleepless night. Sadie was up every fifteen minutes, then every twenty, then finally only every hour. (We stopped trying to clean her up pretty quickly -- what's the point of mopping up infant puke at 3am when you know it'll be making a reappearance the minute you leave the room?)

And we seriously discussed canceling Thanksgiving. This, we worried, would be disastrous. Not only did we have his parents, my parents, my sister and her husband, and my elderly grandparents coming over, all with dishes of their own, but our house was packed to the rafters with food. We'd bought a deep fryer, for Christ's sake. There was no contingency plan for shifting the holiday somewhere else -- if it didn't happen at our house, it probably wasn't going to happen.

Thursday

Luckily by 9am, Sadie seemed largely over her illness. She was tired and not very hungry, but her mood was fine. We spoke with her doctor. "Yup, sounds like a stomach bug," he said.

"Is she contagious?"

"Well, could be, but chances are that whatever virus she's fighting, you've already had at some point in your life. You'll probably be fine."

We consulted with everyone in the family, and the consensus was, "Don't cancel Thanksgiving -- we'll just keep the baby at a distance."

"No problem -- she'll probably be asleep by the time you all arrive, anyway."

She wasn't, of course. And naturally, people wanted to hold her and snuggle her. She's going through an especially cute phase right now in which she wants to hug and snuggle everyone, and come on -- are you going to reject a fourteen month old baby's hug, you heartless bastard? I fucking dare you. So she did a lot of hugging, and then passed out, and dinner proceeded well without incident.

Better than well, actually -- it was great. Scott deep-fried a turkey for the first time this year, and after all of my worrying (that we were going to start a gas fire and burn the house down because they showed it on the news and BOILING OIL IS NOTHING TO MESS AROUND WITH, SCOTT, SO STOP MAKING JOKES ABOUT DEEP FRYING COOKIES JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT), the end result was a flawless, juicy, garlic butter-infused bird. My butternut squash casserole and creamed spinach were well received, my mother-in-law's legendary stuffing was as big a hit as ever, and the rest of the family did a heroic job of supplying rolls, pie, homemade cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and everything else we had no time to put together on our own.

We intentionally made and requested too much of everything, the point being to have enough leftovers for everyone. Not a single party walked out the door without a shopping bag of packed-full Tupperware at the end of the night. Our own refrigerator was stuffed so full that we were storing leftovers in the crisper and on the butter shelf. We made plans to hit the market the next day for lettuce and tomatoes so we could eat turkey sandwiches, and envisioned grand plans for eating stuffing for breakfast four days in a row before finally, reluctantly beginning our unavoidable post-Thanksgiving diet.

Friday

We were not as hungry as we'd imagined we'd be. That feeling of fullness continued for me all day, and after a plate of leftovers for dinner I was actually left feeling...kind of gross. The thought of dessert was not appealing, but there was so much food in the house (even after our cleaning lady came and took an entire pumpkin pie home with her) that I ate a couple of cookies, just to clean out some space.

By bedtime Friday night, my stomach was in knots. "I think I might be getting sick," I told Scott, then went to sleep and hoped for the best. The best did not come. It was a long night. I spent most of it in the bathroom and shivering under the covers on the couch with a wastebasket next to me. Two thoughts carried me through:

Thought #1: At least I'm not going to gain any weight this weekend.

Thought #2: When Scott gets up, I am going back to bed and claiming a sick day.

At 6am, he staggered into the living room and looked at me. "What, exactly, were you feeling last night?" he asked.

"Stomach pain...and then nausea."

He sighed, closed his eyes, groaned softly, and went back to bed.

So much for claiming a sick day.

Saturday

This day is largely a blur. Here are a couple of snapshots:

7am: I text my sister to warn her that whatever Sadie had was catching. She reports back that she has already been up barfing all night, thank you very much, so I can take my warning and shove it.

9am: I'm on the couch, willing myself to move, staring dully at the television. Scott's lying on Sadie's play mat on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. Sadie's crawling around cheerfully. "This is what it must be like for babies whose parents are crackheads," Scott says.

10am: Both of our babysitters have politely declined our pleas to come over and take care of Sadie while we lock ourselves in the bedroom. My mom has offered to come over and help, but you can tell she's hoping we'll tell her not to bother. Instead, we put Sadie down for a forced nap and struggle back into bed for another hour.

12pm: I'm not longer throwing up, but I have a fever and have wrapped myself in blankets. Scott emerges from the bedroom in sweatpants and a hoodie, with the hood around his ears.

12:30pm: I feed Sadie the only lunch I can prepare without losing it: cut-up grapes, a slice of cheese and cheerios. So much for leftovers.

1pm: The room fills with the smell of poop, as Sadie smiles brightly. Scott and I look at each other. He says softly, "I can't. I just...can't. Please don't make me." I get changing duty instead.

2pm: From Scott's mother's house comes the report that her husband is the latest casualty.

3pm: Repeated calls to my parents reassure me that neither they nor my grandparents have exhibited any signs of illness, thank goodness. Scott now has the fever, although mine has broken and I'm starting to feel better.

6:30pm: At long last Sadie is down for bed, and we have returned to some semblance of feeling human again. Every time we open the refrigerator to see the tubs and tubs of leftovers, we groan and shut the door again. Instead Scott brings home Chicken McNuggets and fries, which we pick at.

7pm: One final round of calls and text messages reveals that yes, my mother and father are now both sick, and so is my sister's husband, which means that the only Thanksgiving attendees who didn't get ill were my 90 year old grandparents -- who apparently are also superheroes. "I know you feel bad now, but it passes quickly!" we tell everyone, in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the fact that they spent their holiday in a germ-infested house of horrors and will probably never be able to look at stuffing again.

Sunday

Feeling much better. Only...

Those damn leftovers.

Screw it. Tonight we're ordering Italian.

The Nanny Diaries, Pt. 2

Monday, November 22, 4:30pm

Note to readers -- before reading this entry, if you don't like spoilers, you might want to catch yourself up here.

Oh my God, Diary.

Right now, I'm wondering something. I'm wondering why our family was cursed when it comes to childcare.

Seriously, what's the deal? Did we piss off an omnipotent nanny in a former life? We've never found a sitter we liked who didn't up and move to another country within three months (it's happened twice now). Our baby was expelled from day care. And now...now this.

When I finally got in touch with Agency Owner, I had a mouthful to tell her.

I'd gone over each invoice, and what I'd discovered had only added to the dismay I was already feeling. To reiterate, we'd previously agreed on a schedule of 25 hours each week. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, she works from 8am-1pm. On Thursdays, the days I work at my grandfather's office, that schedule shifts to 11am-4pm.

Our nanny was not only logging each day she'd begun work at 7:30am -- she was consistently tacking on hours to the back end. While leaving each day at 1pm, she was reporting having left at 2:30pm, or 3:30pm, or 5pm.

On one particular Thursday, she still logged having arrived at 7:30 and reported her departure time as 5 -- a total of 9.5 hours of work.

The following day, she reported arriving at 7:30am and leaving at 3:30pm.

The Monday following -- 7:30am, 3:30pm.

Owner was stunned when I told her. "There must be a miscommunication," she insisted.  She explained her method of tracking hours: each of her nannies, 30+ in all, are instructed to send her a text message each day when they leave their employer's house, reporting how many hours they've worked that day. Once a week, a courier makes the rounds with invoices, meeting each nanny at her place of business and having her sign off on the previous week's invoice. She claimed it had been a fail safe method for years, that to date she'd never had a problem with it.

"Maybe you can sit down and talk with her about it, to work things out," she suggested.

And me, Little Miss Nice Girl, for once I was not tempted to back down. This was not 30 minutes here and there we were haggling over -- it was hours of extra time. Every day.

I told her I did not want the nanny back to our house ever again. And I wanted our house key returned. The Owner, clearly upset, told me she'd look into the matter and call me back.

The last time ties were severed with a childcare provider, it hit me pretty hard. When Bunny Day Care called me up that day to tell me that they could not longer take care of my daughter, that I needed to come pick her up immediately, my response was tears, humiliation, worry. This time was different. It was on MY terms. We'd been taken advantage of, and that was humiliating, sure -- but this time, it was me calling the shots, bringing the situation to light. I'd felt I couldn't trust her, though I didn't know exactly why, and now that feeling was being validated. I felt almost jubilant.

I walked Sadie to the park. Everything was in vibrant focus. I called our sitter, asked her if she'd be willing to begin full-time nanny duties immediately. She agreed.

At the park, Sadie played with a six year old boy who was gentle and sweet with her, but concerned over her inability to speak. His mother explained that he was autistic, that he himself hadn't begun to speak until he was four year old, that she'd been receiving help through the Regional Center for years and only recently had stopped beating herself up over aspects of life as a parent that she'd realized were simply out of her control. It brought me back to the days when I was sick with worry over Sadie and her development, feeling helpless, powerless, stupid. Now I'd learned that this, along with sleepless nights and teething and potentially unethical nannies, was only one of a bucketful of unexpected curveballs that new parenthood throws at you.

On the way back home, Agency Owner called me back.

"Well, you were right," she said. "And I feel sick about it. Do you want to know how I caught her?"

"How?"

"I got a text from her an hour ago, reporting that she worked from 7:30am-3:30pm today." She paused. "I knew that wasn't true, because you and I had our conversation at 1:30pm, and she obviously wasn't there."

"She left at 1pm today." I listened to her go on for awhile, telling me how she'd called back my nanny and asked her about the discrepancy. The first excuse given was that she'd sent the text at 1pm, but that it hadn't come through until 3:30. The second was that she'd "forgotten her glasses" and mistakenly typed 3:30pm instead of 1.

She doesn't wear glasses.

She maintained her innocence, claiming that my mother and I were setting up a new company, requiring her to work extra hours, all of which had been approved.

Ultimately, the excuses were meaningless. I don't believe she's a bad person. I believe she's a lazy person who chose to take advantage of an opportunity when it presented itself. Each week, when she wasn't called out for the previous week's fudged hours, she saw an opportunity to fudge a few additional hours in the week to come. Each week, my own laziness prevented me from checking that email which would have alerted me to the fact that I was being ripped off.

At any rate...she's gone. She has a new wardrobe full of my old clothes and a stomach full of pralines and peanut butter to remember us by, but still I feel sad. She genuinely adored Sadie, and Sadie liked her, too. She was never anything but nice to me, even when she was scamming me right under my nose.

We're still changing the locks.

The Nanny Diaries

Monday, November 22nd, 9am

Dear Diary,

I've been feeling ambivalent about our nanny lately.

On the plus side, she always shows up early. Like, sometimes really early, like thirty minutes early. Better early than late, right? Besides, I've reminded her several times that while arriving early to beat traffic is totally fine, I can only afford to have her on the clock for five hours -- so if she arrives at 7:30 instead of 8, she'll only be paid through 12:30 instead of 1. And she always says that's fine.

She's really nice like that.

Also, Sadie likes her a lot. She's patient and has no issue dealing with Sadie's frequent freak-outs and meltdowns. That goes a long way. And she tolerates the dogs.

On the minus side...well, there's the food issue, of course. The simple fact is that she eats a lot of our food. She worked her way through an entire jar of peanut butter in a week. And there was PralineGate, the episode in which she broke into of a box of pralines my Dad had brought me back special from a business trip to New Orleans. I was secretly pissed about that, Diary. But when you think about it, wasn't that really my fault? I never specifically told her there were foods she shouldn't eat. She's watching my child for five hours a day; she's entitled to the contents of my refrigerator. Right?

And...well, there's other little things that bug me, to be honest. Like the day I let her sift through three bins of clothes I was planning on donating to Goodwill, and offered to let her take something if she liked it. When I returned home, she'd cleared out everything but half of a bin. I mean...it was fine, I'd told her she could. But still, it seemed a little odd that she'd take everything. (And remark, five minutes later, that she really liked some of my shoes.)

I guess when you get right down to it, the truth is that there are some things about her that don't sit right with me. Like all the times when I've come home at 1pm -- the baby is never napping. This makes no sense. Lunchtime is at 11:30. Naptime is at noon, and typically runs 90 minutes. The baby is always awake when I get home, yet the nanny claims she took a nice long nap each time. How is this possible? She never has a good answer for me, but I feel bad grilling her over small details.

Besides, she folds my laundry for me and unloads the dishwasher. I don't really want to mess with a good thing.

Nevertheless...I feel like maybe it's not working out with her. I've given this a good two-month run, and I think that for the money we're paying her, we could find someone better. I'll feel bad about it, because she's so nice and she means well...but it's my daughter we're talking about here.

Monday, November 22nd, 1:30pm

It all started with a phone call.

"I'm thinking of replacing [Nanny]," I told Scott.

"Okay. Why?"

"I don't know...just a feeling I get. I'd like to hire [our current babysitter] instead; we vibe better and I find her more trustworthy and capable in general."

"Fine with me. Talk to Owner [of the nanny placement agency] and let her know. Oh -- and while you're at it, you should take a look at the invoices they've been sending us recently. They seem...high."

I should stop to explain here. The nanny's job is to report the hours she works to the owner of the nanny placement agency. She, in turn, bills us at the end of each week for the previous week's nanny fees. She sends us a copy of the invoice a day earlier, Thursday, so that if there are any discrepancies we have time to raise them before our credit card is charged for the full amount.

Each week we receive a copy of the invoice, but I'm notoriously bad about checking them. Why bother? We worked out a deal long ago that I'd hire our nanny for 25 hours each week, with a flexible schedule so that if I occasionally need her to work more hours, we can work that out between ourselves. Other than the occasional deviation (she sometimes works an extra 30 minutes here and there if I'm running late, and there was that week when my back was hurt where she worked some extra hours to help me out), the schedule is pretty solid. In fact, she can't work late -- she has to leave no later than 1:30 in order to be at the bus stop to pick up her son from school by 2:30 every day. The only exception is Thursdays, when she arranges for a neighbor to babysit her son so she can work an 11am-4pm shift for me instead of the typical 8am-1pm.

I went to the computer and pulled up the record of invoices I'd been copied on each week. The total was included right there in the subject line -- and every week I'd breezed past it, not really looking, assuming that if it was a couple of numbers off, that just accounted for the occasional extra 30 minutes or hour worked.

The weekly salary we'd agreed upon was $300 -- 25 hours' worth of childcare at $12 per hour.  And the first invoice was, indeed, for $300.

But slowly, through the weeks, the total had increased. To $320, then $350. $380.

Once it reached November, it increased even more. $400, $420.

For the past two weeks, she'd reported having worked an average of 37 hours a week. My invoice from the previous week alone was $486 -- 50% higher than our agreed-upon weekly budget.

"WTF?!?!?!" was basically my reaction on seeing this. Here I'd been sulking over a few stolen pralines, a pilfered jar of peanut butter, and in one week she'd managed to report nearly $150 worth of stolen hours.

And that's when I got on the phone.

To be continued...

Miss Independent

It's like a switch flipped. One day she was a clingy baby, venturing out only for short periods before coming back to check in with me.

This week, she became a resident of Independence, Missouri. Her favorite movie became "Independence Day." Her favorite Kelly Clarkson song is now...you can guess.

She went from slow and cautious to blindingly fast. A few hours ago I caught her straying into the bathroom, the one that has no safety lock on the toilet, so I walked after her to catch her. Hearing me approach behind her, she hit the gas pedal and kicked it into high gear, moving her limbs as fast as I've ever seen her. She tried to outrun me, and she came closer than I would have put money on.

She suddenly crawls all over the house. She explores without caring if I'm in the room. This morning she pulled herself up on the seat of her highchair and stood there, trying to figure out how the harness strap works, for no less than thirty minutes.

The time is fast approaching where she won't need constant care and attention, the way she always has. Yesterday we went to the park and instead of sticking close to me and studying the sand, she powered over to a group of kids and accepted their invitation to play with their trucks. She didn't even look to see where I was. After they left, she wandered over to two three-year-old girls playing near a big stone tortoise in the center of the sandbox. They totally mean-girled her, sitting down in front of the tortoise and explaining sternly, "You can't play with us. You're just a baby. This turtle isn't for babies." I gently tamped down the instinct to strangle them both with the shoelaces of their pink sneakers and instead led Sadie away, but she clearly couldn't have cared less -- she shot them both a big grin as we left.

Who is this kid? She can't walk yet, and is still probably a couple months away from doing so, but for the first time, her physical limitations don't seen to bother her. She's losing her shyness in the name of exploration and fun. After a bad period last week in which she threw a lot of tantrums, she seems to have shaken off the drama and realized that life is more fun if you just find a new toy to play with.

And if that toy happens to have lived under the couch for the past three weeks and is now covered with dust bunnies and cricket parts, then all the better. If it actually is a dead cricket, then triple word score.

This change is much-welcomed, because winter means launching into the preschool shuffle. This deserves a post of its own, because not only is it already time to worry about getting Sadie into a desirable preschool toddler program (I can hear my mom's eyes rolling in her head as she read this), but I'm actually late to the party in not having worried about it up until now.

But we'll get into that another time. For now, PT continues, morning nanny continues (can't wait until that ends -- I don't love getting kicked out of my own house every day, plus taking conference calls from my car sucks), and we search every day for new places to play and new things to explore. Tonight it's over to my parents' house, where Sadie will torture my mother's dog, drink out of his water bowl, and probably get some sort of poop on herself.

8 Days Left

I haven't had much time to update because of the insanity of the last few weeks. Scott has been in Baton Rouge and then Brazil for work (I'm not allowed to say what he's working on; I actually posted an update about him on Facebook last night and it got him in trouble, so let's just say he's working on a certain franchise that involves pale, angsty teenagers) and so I've been pulling single parent duty with Sadie.

Since then, we've been engaging in a giant one-upping contest every time we talk to see who's life has been more difficult. In his corner: crazy odd hours, time changes, jungle locales, no internet, slippery moss-covered rocks. In my corner: tantrums, a re-fi that refuses to go through, a course that needs to be written with no time to write it, and in the middle of it all, a pinched nerve in my back.

The back was the worst -- the timing really blew. And how did it happen, you say? Well, the version I've been telling people is that I twisted wrong putting Sadie into her carseat. And that is what first caused the pain, but in reality it probably had to do with the fact that the Sunday previous, Halloween, I lost my keys in the sand at the playground while we were at the park. I had no way to drive home, so I walked the whole mile and a half with Sadie in my arms. This after I'd called a cabbie, who took one look at my kid and told me firmly that he was not driving us anywhere without a carseat, which, DUH, but through my sorry tears it did not occur to me that I was going to have to transport not just myself, but her too. Then I called AAA, who came and jimmied my car door open, causing the alarm to shriek and everyone on the playground to wonder why I was trying to steal a 2008 Mazda, but still no keys and no way to start the car. So, we walked home, met the locksmith, paid him a fucking fortune to open the door, only to have me dump out the diaper bag and find my keys buried in a pocket which they had not been in the first 20 times I thought to look. Oh yeah, and then we had to walk back to the park to pick up the car. So, yeah. Back problems. Not a surprise.

Fortunately, Scott's mom and my mom were total champions, coming out and bringing me Icy Hot and helping to bathe Sadie for the three nights that it took me not to cry in pain every time I tried to pick her up. That's only been the beginning of our adventures these past two weeks -- another big one was the trauma of Daylight Savings Time ending which -- would you think that would be a big issue for a 13 month old kid? Because I didn't think it would be, but I was very, very, very wrong.

The first night, she thought 5:30pm was 6:30pm and by 6:30 she'd passed her normal bedtime by an hour and was completely freaking out. She woke up all night and at 5am the next morning. The next night it was hourly wake-ups, then rise and shine at 4:45. I thought my body was going to give out. Finally when she woke up the next morning at 5, I changed her diaper, gave her a bottle and put her back into bed -- and blessedly, she slept for another 2 hours. Now she finally seems to be back on schedule, although she's still waking up  multiple times in the night. I think she misses her dad just like I do.

In other news, she's pointing at everything these days. Just randomly pointing, because she likes to do it. She'll point at the ceiling but look straight at me, like, "Hey, look up there!" and then when I do, she'll stab me in the nose with her finger and laugh. Little bastard. She points at the dogs and yells at them in Baby Babble, and she's figured out that a doggie says Woof, or rather, "Wowowowowow." There's been a lot of "wowowowow" in our house recently. Oh, that reminds me -- Pepper has regressed to puppyhood for no particular reason and for the past two weeks has been crapping on the floor. Yeah. It's been that kind of a November.

I haven't had a moment to breathe and watch bad TV for days, so excuse me now while I go do that for awhile.

Is Anyone Here Fluent in Baby?

A little help here, please. What the hell is this kid saying?

Regional Center, Part 2

Against all our expectations, Sadie was approved for PT assistance from the North Valley Regional Center. Hooray! But not so fast.

Both the assessor who did the workup on Sadie a few weeks ago, and Joy, her physical therapist, warned me that the Regional Center has become a place of last resort -- a resource for people who don't have health insurance, or whose plans don't cover things like PT. Hurt by budget cuts, they've essentially become useless for families whose insurance plans already cover PT in some aspect, and we're lucky enough to fall into this category.

In order to qualify Sadie for in-home PT through the Regional Center, we'd first need to petition to our insurance company that in-home would benefit her more than the current out-of-office PT she has now. Only then, if that plea were rejected, would the Regional Center then come in and potentially help out (although we'd first have to champion her case with them.)

This might become a point of concern for us, were Sadie still having troubles with weekly PT. Fortunately, over the last two weeks she's radically improved. She no longer cries and throws tantrums, and although she doesn't much care for Joy (the mean lady who has the cool toys but won't just let her sit and play with them like she wants), she'll cooperate with Joy's attempts to get her to move around. Two Thursdays ago I sat with them while she practiced walking; last Thursday I snuck out into the waiting room mid-session and she didn't even notice.

Joy, who works with a lot of referrals from the Regional Center, has a lot of irritation towards their new policies along with the ever-growing pile of bureaucratic yellow tape that applicants now must wade through. After our last session, she told me frankly that she suspected by the time we set up PT through the Center, Sadie would already be on the tail end of her PT. She feels that Sadie's moving along at a great pace, and I agree.

Talking to our case worker today made me sad, because she really sounded regretful that they most likely wouldn't be able to help Sadie to any great degree, and all I wanted to do was reassure her that her regret was misplaced. We're lucky in many ways: we have a good insurance plan that has covered her PT sessions. We've seen improvement rapid enough to see for ourselves that the PT is working, and to know that within a few months, she'll catch up to other kids her age. We also know that if worse comes to worst and Sadie does require further therapy, we have the financial resources to cope with it.

While the case worker gave me the option of bringing Sadie in for an eval (number two, if you're keeping track), I ultimately told her that I would not be scheduling one at this point. Instead, I'm going to do more of what has been working: giving her reasons to be active every day, helping her practice her skills, taking her to the park and to baby gyms and bribing her with goldfish crackers.

The video below is footage I took today. Sometimes I have to remind myself that four or five weeks ago, she couldn't crawl four feet across the room to pick up a toy.

Fish Faces

Sadie's List of Accomplishments for October, 2010:

- Learning how to "share" objects (by hurling them at high velocity at people's heads)
- Climbing up steps
- Trying -- and liking -- baked pumpkin, green beans, bean and corn salad
- Climbing over objects
- Pulling up on furniture
- Cruising
- Sitting -- sort of, and only if she doesn't think too much about it
- Learning the power of withholding physical affection and how it makes everyone go "aw" and make a sad face -- crafty chick
- Making fish faces

Regional Center

So, yay! We finally got contacted by the North Valley Regional Center for a developmental assessment.

The Regional Center is a fantastic thing -- it's a not-for-profit business that provides free help for children with developmental delays. Many of the children they work with are far worse off than Sadie -- kids with autism, retardation or neurological problems. For these kids, the Regional Center is a lifeline: they refer parents to in-home physical therapy teams, behaviorists, even childcare, all for free or the cost of an insurance deductible.

Everyone from our pediatrician to our nanny has recommended the Regional Center, with the caveat that they don't approve all applicants, and are often very backed up so it can take weeks or even months to be evaluated and approved for help. With that in mind, we sent in an application about a month ago, but went ahead and found Joy on our own without waiting for approval that we might never get.

Nevertheless, when they assigned a case worker to Sadie two weeks later, it was positive news. And last night I got a call from an assessor, asking if she could come by today and evaluate Sadie.

What we learned was really interesting. It was great, for one thing, to see Sadie finally be evaluated by someone who has familiarity with low muscle tone babies, and to see her put through a series of tests to get a solid idea of just how behind she is. The format they use is called the Gazelle test, and it divides skills by month as a way for the assessor to determine where a baby is compared with other children of the same age.

The assessor, a very sweet woman named Rita, tested Sadie's fine motor skills as part of the full work-up. All of those tests she passed with flying colors. She can bang blocks together, fit a peg into a hole, pull on a string to pull a toy towards her, and find a block hiding under a plastic cup. She even did some things that surprised me, like stacking one block on top of another without prompting. In nearly all of her fine motor skills she's on par with 12 and 13 month-olds.

The telling part came when we moved on to gross motor skills. I showed Rita the range of Sadie's abilities, which extend to crawling, pulling up on me, taking a few tentative steps while hanging on to furniture. Rita observed that in this area Sadie's on par with 8 and 9 month old babies.

Rita then surprised me by saying that in her estimation Sadie's hypotonia is quite moderate, not mild as we thought at first. She points out how Sadie sits: with her legs and butt making a "W" shape for maximum stability. She pointed out how her hips wobble back and forth when she stands, and how she tends to lean forward over her ankles instead of standing straight. This occurs because of the looseness in her joints, giving her an above-average range of flexibility and making her, in Rita's words, "loosey-goosey."

To demonstrate this, Rita basically sat Sadie down on her lap, grabbed her legs, and waved them around in a giant circle, shoving them into her mouth and pointing them in wild directions. Dude. Kid is CRAZY flexible. She may never be a bullfighter, but she might just become the world's tallest gymnast.

Kids like Sadie generally reach their first milestones later than other kids do -- she probably won't walk for another couple of months, and she'll most likely be late to run, climb or jump (not a surprise considering how risk-averse she is). Eventually she'll catch up and the delays will become more subtle and less immediately noticeable -- for example, Rita noted that kids like her are often late to learn how to ride a bike. As we've been told before, getting her into sports and helping to strengthen her muscles through exercise will help minimize this gap.

I explained the issues we've been having with her tantrums -- how she now refuses to cooperate during PT and is prone to throwing massive hissyfits at the drop of a hat, at which point she'll throw herself dramatically onto the floor, lie there and wail until the session is over. Rita stressed that for kids like her, in-home PT tends to be much, much more successful than off-site. Kids are familiar and relaxed in their own surroundings, willing to try new things and to cope with frustration. (And sure enough, she was an angel through the entire eval, which took place on our living room floor.)

She also scoffed at the idea of taking Sadie to see a developmental pediatrician or a child psychiatrist, saying, "I REALLY am not getting that she needs that." Bless her heart.

All in all, she's going to take her findings back to the case worker and recommend that Sadie be approved for a series of in-home therapy sessions. Whether or not they'll accept her is borderline. Typically to be approved a child must exhibit a developmental delay at 50% or less of their expected capability -- that is to say, in order for a one year old to qualify, they should be evaluated as having the capabilities of a 6 month old. Sadie, as I said, is at 8-9 months.

Even if she doesn't get approved, though, I think we'll still consider switching to in-home therapy. As nice and as patient as Joy is, it's a waste of her time and of ours to bring Sadie in and see her fuss and scream for an hour every week. She isn't learning any new skills because she's so bound and determined not to cooperate.

And we must keep baby happy.

Let It Be

I'm done with all of it.

The over-analyzing, the worry, the second-guessing, the consulting of experts. Yesterday I got a call back from Dr. Colgrove, the developmental pediatrician recommended to us by Sadie's regular pediatrician. He was really super-nice and willing to listen, and as I tried to explain the problems we've had with Sadie in the past, it sounded ridiculous to my own ears.

I mean, really: "My baby cries when she's with strangers. She's often fussy when expected to do things she doesn't want to do. She's clingy and doesn't want to be with anyone other than me."

"How old is she?" asked Dr. Colgrove, sympathetically.

"Well...she just turned one."

"Oh, she's just a little thing!" he exclaimed, and I felt even sillier. THIS IS HOW ONE YEAR OLDS ARE. WHAT DID WE EXPECT?

Dr. Colgrove explained that he doesn't work with kids under three, and he gave me the name of a child psychologist whose office is close by. He said it would probably be useful to take her there -- not for her, but for me, so I can learn how to introduce her to unfamiliar situations in a way that will be more comforting and less scary to her, which will make day care -- and eventually, preschool -- a less stressful experience. And I listened and took down the number and thanked him, but after I hung up, none of it seemed very necessary and important and more than anything I just kept thinking over and over, "Enough already."

She's a good baby. She's content 90% of the time. When she isn't content, it's typically because she's tired or hungry or has recently bumped her head -- or because she's at the office of that mean lady who has a bunch of cool toys but has the maddening tendency to always set them just out of reach. So she hates day care. What's wrong with that? The routine we've settled into now, with the nanny coming every morning and playdates in the afternoon, isn't an ideal one, but it's working.

It feels nice to let it go.

Counter-Argument

Sometimes I look at our drama through the eyes of someone else and it just seems so ridiculous and over-dramatic. Which I think is a good thing -- a little perspective never hurt.

My sister is six years younger than me, but when it comes to kids, she's the expert. She doesn't have her own (yet), but she's been babysitting, caring for, and adoring kids her whole life, whereas I've always tended to view them as cute, bald, alarmingly fragile aliens. The letter she sent me today helped calm me down a lot, so with her permission I'm reprinting it here.

I know that, prior to Sadie, you haven't really spent a whole lot of time around babies... and therefore, you're really forced to listen to doctors/therapists (physical or otherwise), other mothers, daycare providers, nannies, nosy strangers, etc. about what is "normal" and "not normal" in a baby.

 

There is always something different about every child. Some are totally ballsy, others are big wimps. Some are total bullies, some get bullied. I baby-sat the son of my 6th grade teacher a few times after class... that kid had some serious aggression. He used to punch and kick the crap out of his little brother until his little bro was SCREAMING his lungs out, and then he'd laugh and laugh. I'm sure that there are 100 doctors out there who would have diagnosed him with some psychotic aggression disorder... maybe even relating it back to some phantom "physical abuse" he must have experienced as an infant... but in reality, he was just a butt. And he grew out of it.

 

There is ALWAYS the shy kid at any day care or school. There's always the one kid who doesn't want to play with the others, or get into the middle of things... the one who hangs back and watches things happen around him/her. The one who isn't nuts about strangers and only calms down when Mommy or Daddy are nearby. Have you had any parents bring their kids over recently so Sadie is in her comfort zone, but still able to interact with other children? She was absolutely perfect when Mom and I watched her... clingy, yes, but after the quick bout of crying after you left, she was fine. And I've yet to baby-sit a kid who DIDN'T start blubbering when Mommy walked out the door, especially right around this age.

 

Don't worry that you've missed (or are in danger of missing) an opportunity to make sure that Sadie is a happy, healthy, well-adjusted, developmentally normal child. I don't think she needs a specialist, or a psychiatrist, or anything like that. Just my opinion... and I know you know her better than I do, but I know kids in general pretty well, and you have yet to say anything to me that makes me think "Oh wow, that IS weird." In case that matters at all. :) 

Thanks for the common sense bitch-slap, sis.

Just Because...

it makes me smile.

Touchy Touchy

Today I took Sadie in for her regular PT session, and it didn't go well. At home she's been so great -- crawling everywhere, being cool with me moving around the house. This week she began cruising, although she's still very tentative about it and will only do it if I'm standing nearby. She also pulled up successfully a few times on the couch and coffee table.

At PT, though, she's a mess. She immediately wigs out if I try to move away from her, or if she gets frustrated by not being able to do something, and goes into complete shut-down mode, screaming. She stiffens up all of her muscles, grabs whatever toys are in reach, and hurls them across the room. Usually she can be distracted out of her crying, but today it just got worse and worse. Eventually she went into full meltdown, crying hysterically. It was so hard to watch her physically shut down, so that even though she was standing up playing with toys, she wouldn't sit down so she could crawl over to me. Joy had to move her into a sitting position by hand, after which she crawled over to me, wailing dramatically, buried her head in my lap, and refused to move.

Joy and I had a talk afterwards. I explained that while she's cool at home, social situations often cause her to freeze up. Even if she's more curious than fearful -- like, for instance, if we're at a baby gym or at someone's house on a playdate -- she still would much rather sit in one spot and watch the action around her than explore, experiment or join in.

I know that I'm making it sound like I'm expecting too much of her, and maybe I am. On the other hand, this is all tied together to her behavior at day care, where she would get upset and, rather than try to find a solution on her own, go into immediately hysterics and stay in that hysterical state until someone picked her up and soothed her, gave her a paci, let her hold her special blanket.

Joy has recommended that we take her to a developmental pediatrician. Apparently there's a woman who works out of the Pasadena Children's Center who is supposed to be very good. I talked with Scott about it and his immediate reaction was, "If they want to put her on drugs, we're saying no." I agree with him, of course, and I feel torn about the whole thing.

We know that Sadie has no physical conditions that will prevent her from learning and growing. We know that with Selena, her nanny, or with me or Scott, she's curious, content and happy to learn and play. So maybe she's not the most adventurous baby -- is that really such a bad thing? Should I just let her grow up the way she pleases and just accept that she's emotionally...rollercoaster-y?

On the other hand,  I see her get furiously upset over nothing. I see her react to Joy with utter rage, the way she used to react to the women at Happy Star when they wanted her to play by herself independently or sit calmly in her high chair like all the other babies. I see this behavior, and I want to know how to fix it -- or at the very least, find out what's behind it. I'm not the kind of person who accepts that some things just are -- I always want to know why, and it's killing me that I don't know.

Today Joy became the second person to posit the theory that maybe something happened to Sadie when she was younger that traumatized or frightened her (Rose was the first), which might explain why she gets so panicked when I'm not around. I know it's nothing that ever happened at home -- she's been a lucky baby in that she's never even sported so much as a lasting bruise. Could something have happened to her at day care, something they never told me about or never even knew happened to begin with? If that's true, then how could a problem like that ever possibly be fixed?

Well...regardless, I guess the next step is to call the developmental pediatrician and take her in for yet another evaluation. At what point do we just acknowledge that she is who she is, for better or worse?

A Quick Update

So we interviewed a ton of nannies. Good nannies, not-so-great nannies, and one nanny who didn't even show up for her interview. We ended up hiring her -- I like an air of mystery about my support staff. Just kidding! What I really meant to say is that we found a really nice woman named Selena who now comes in the mornings to take care of Sadie while I hide out at a coffeeshop and attempt to return to some semblance of a normal work schedule.

Sadie has been progressing in leaps and bounds, which I attribute partly to her not being in day care anymore, partly to twice-weekly physical therapy, and partly to my working with her a LOT. Scott gets partial credit, too, but he's been out of town a lot so by default, I get to claim most of the credit for all of the cool things she's finally started doing.

It's so great to watch her learn -- she's quite literally packing months' worth of learning into a few short weeks. Just in the last week she's doubled her crawling speed, almost figured out how to pull up on furniture, started to take the first tentative steps towards cruising (walking along on furniture), and in general become fearless around the house.

Outside is a different matter; she still sobs her way through PT and is very shy and prone to bursting into tears when in an unfamiliar environment. Joy, the therapist, refers to her dryly as being on a "constant emotional rollercoaster," which is a nice way to saying that she's kind of a shit head.

This morning Joy told me something great, which is that in her estimation, there's nothing about Sadie's physical makeup that is keeping her from learning typical skills. Despite being long and skinny, she's strong enough to move around as well as any other kid -- and she proved that by learning how to crawl in the span of about five days, something that kids with hypotonia "just don't do," in Joy's words.

What really holds Sadie back, in Joy's opinion, is her natural tendency towards cautiousness that manifests as wussy-ness. Rather than wanting something and impulsively throwing herself towards it, as a typical baby might do, Sadie stops, considers, and weighs risk versus benefit. If the motion requires too much effort, or is unfamiliar and potentially scary, she doesn't want to do it. Hence she can stand while balancing against a chair until the cows come home, but the thought of sitting down by herself makes her shriek in terror.

The way to combat this is to help her through the motions, over and over again, until they become rote instead of something she needs to think about. Stand up, sit down, pull up, walk over, sit down again. Eventually she'll have the confidence to do it every day.

Although I don't think that a career as a bullfighter is in the cards for her.

And Then...Miraculously...

This happened.

September 24, 2010

Dear Sadie,

Today, you turn one.

As I type this, I'm watching you on the video monitor as you take your midday nap. You're splayed out in a position that looks terribly uncomfortable, with your head mashed up against the bars of the crib. Your ability to sleep constantly amazes me.

In the past few weeks, we've been guilty of focusing on the negative aspects of your growth -- the gross motor skill delays, the hissy fits, the fact that you're such a little juvenile delinquent that you actually got expelled from day care and are already putting your physical therapist through her paces.

Sometimes we're guilty of overlooking the aspects of you that are perfect and wonderful -- the brag-worthy stuff, the things that make us look at you in complete and total awe and sometimes, secretly high-five while other people's backs are turned.

For starters, you sleep. I mean, you really like to sleep. Always have. You began sleeping five and six-hour stretches when you were six weeks old. One night when you were only a few months old, you slept for ten straight hours and your Dad had to physically restrain me from going in to check on you and make sure you were still breathing.

We understand what a rare, incredible gift we've been given, having a child who requires 12 straight hours of undisturbed rest, with two daytime naps on top of it. Other parents hate us because of it. We've learned not to talk about it because it's like telling everyone that you have so much money that you've run out of ways to spend it, but once a year we're allowed to be smug.

Not only do you like your crib, but you demand to be in your crib. Sometimes when it's nap time and we're walking around lowering blinds and hunting for a clean pacifier, you fuss and whine, leaning out toward your crib, wanting us to turn out the lights and leave you in peace. Once I place you in bed, you roll around for awhile, then sit up and play with your stuffed animals, or flip through a book. You talk quietly to yourself, and at some point you lie down and simply go to sleep. Sometimes when you wake up, you'll hang out in there for awhile longer, just because you don't yet care to see us. For this, we thank you.

You are a mercifully non-picky eater. I hope this is something you never grow out of, but in case you do, I'm going to enjoy it now while it lasts. You rarely turn down a meal; even if you aren't hungry you'll generally sample a few bites. There are foods you aren't crazy about, like eggs -- but mostly, you'll eat anything.

This morning, you sat with me in the garden and we shared a raw green pepper. You were down with it. Do you know how weird it is that you actually like vegetables? You greatly enjoy a steamed veggie salad, picking up the carrots and peas and zucchini one at a time and sampling them like a gourmand. That's very different from your style of eating banana, which is to stuff it all into your mouth at the same time, discover you no longer have room to chew, spew out the excess and hurriedly shovel it back in as quickly as possible.

When you have, on rare occasion, a nightmare, I imagine that it is because you've envisioned a universe in which blueberry yogurt doesn't exist.

You love to be hugged and held close. You're not always snuggly -- sometimes you push us away, literally holding us at arm's length. But more often, you want to be cradled on our laps, tucked safely into your carseat, or just to chill in your stroller. You like being enveloped by the world around you. Our physical therapist says it's because babies like you have difficulty mentally placing yourself in space -- it makes it easier and less scary to be touching things at all time. Whatever the reason, it means that a long car ride or an hour-long walk in your stroller are not things to dread, but instead ways to calm you down and make you happy.

You challenge, surprise, frustrate and educate us in ways we never could have imagined. You're an amazing kid, and it's too bad you don't have any concept of what a birthday is, because if you did you'd appreciate just how much extra love, affection and attention you've been getting today from the many people who love you. Enjoy it, kid.

Happy Birthday.

Therapy and Beyond

In the last few days, everything about Sadie's and my daily lives has changed and will change more. (Scott's not so much, but he's definitely gone through a lot in the past few days as well). There's so much to try to write down that I need to break it up into two parts -- Sadie's PT evaluations, and what has happened since.

Before that, though, I want to thank everyone who has written me to offer their support and to tell me anecdotes of their own about tough kid problems and suffering from first-time-parent-itis. They all help and make us laugh instead of wanting to empty a bottle of vodka into our Raisin Bran.

Part 1: Physical Therapy

As I wrote about before, last week Sadie was diagnosed by our pediatrician as having mild hypotonia, or low muscle tone, which is why she has never learned how to crawl or get around on her own.

On Monday we took her to two different pediatric physical therapists for evaluations. The first, Joy for Kids, is in Burbank and is run by a younger woman named Joy who seems like the type that kids instinctively love. The other, Bright Star, was a larger center offering different forms of therapy, where we met with a woman whose name (I think) was Savina.

Those two hours were unbelievably edifying. To begin with, it was both gratifying and a little embarrassing to be able to show others just how volatile Sadie's emotional temperament has become. She screamed her way through both of the eval sessions and was happy only when on my lap or when I was down on the floor playing right next to her. Yet when she had me there with her, she was happy, curious, chatty and otherwise perfectly willing to learn.

We learned some strengthening exercises to do with her, such as sitting her on a yoga ball and rolling it from side to side so she has to work her trunk muscles to stay upright. (She thought this was the funnest game ever.) We were also instructed to help her walk as much as possible, which we already do. If it were up to her, she'd be standing all the time, and it's also pretty clear that she wants to learn how to strike out on her own without our help now that she's got the motions of walking down. Still too afraid to cruise on furniture, though.

She wasn't as much a fan of the other exercises, which involve helping her tuck her hips and legs beneath her and putting her into the crawl position so she can get used to bearing weight on her lower body. She'd developed her own cock-eyed way of reaching for an object which involved splaying out on her belly, then doing a push-up and trying to pull herself forward while sort of ineffectually wriggling her legs behind her. It never got her anywhere, and she's learned to equate it with frustration.

We were advised to start letting Sadie become more independent, to gradually teach her to play by herself by not immediately responding to her panicked tantrums, and to instead help her get the things she wants by encouraging her to do them herself. We were showed how to help her pull up, to move her legs for her in a pseudo-crawl so she can see what it feels like to make that movement.

We left the PT evals feeling tremendously encouraged. It means so much just to have a plan of action, to feel like we have the power to help things get better. After some consideration, I decided to go with Joy for Kids because the commute is much easier and Joy is willing to do early morning 7am sessions.

I was feeling so encouraged, in fact, that I made a very stupid decision that I now regret.

Part 2: Childcare

On Monday afternoon, I got a call from the owner of Happy Star Day Care. They hadn't seen Sadie since Tuesday and were concerned about her. I'd told them I was taking her to the doctor for some testing (truth) but hadn't mentioned last Wednesday's disastrous trial day at Rose's day care. Now they wanted to know if Sadie was coming back.

I had a decision to make. I already knew that Rose was out of the question -- both she and I agreed that Sadie isn't ready for an unfamiliar location and new kids, even if Rose was willing to work with her on physical strengthening, which she is. Rose seems like a good option to explore in the future.

I explained the whole situation to Happy Star -- the physical therapy, Sadie's diagnosis, her new needs. She said, over and over, that she was relieved to hear it and wanted to help. She wanted Sadie to come back to Happy Star, and was willing to learn the exercises and cooperate with us in order to help her. I thought about it, looked at my calendar with a full work week on it (a Tuesday conference call, Wednesday script revisions, Thursday accounting work with my mom), and said okay. I didn't see Sadie staying there permanently, but at least it might be a stop-gap solution until I could find a better option.

Bad idea.

I dropped Sadie off Tuesday morning at Happy Star. Immediately things got off on the wrong foot -- the instant we put her down on the floor so I could show them her new exercises, she began screaming at the top of her lungs. I left, feeling awful, but I had a crucial 11am conference call. I hadn't gotten any work done in 5 days and was starting to feel the urgency of needing to reassure my employers that I hadn't vanished from the face of the earth.

At 10:30am, Happy Star called. This is what they said:

"She won't stop crying. We give up."

"You give up?"

"Yes. We give up. We can't help her. You need to come pick her up."

"Right now?"

"Right now."

And that was that. I canceled my call, picked her up, collected her things from Happy Star, came home, and cried a lot. I might have had a glass of wine in the middle of the day. I'm not saying I did, and I'm not saying I didn't.

Yesterday, Scott took a sick day and we stayed at home and did nothing but interview nannies. I never saw us as a nanny type of household, but here we are. The nanny interviewing process deserves a post all of its own, and I interview another round by myself today, but to sum it up, it's going well. We've found one or two candidates that I'd feel comfortable hiring, and while we definitely can't afford in-home child care full time, we've found a way to swing 20 or 25 hours a week, which would still be a tremendous help. If it means I need to cut down on my workload and put my career on hold for the next few months, then it's something I have to be willing to do.

So it continues. In the next few weeks we'll make a decision about child care, Sadie will start twice-weekly PT sessions in earnest (she had one this morning that didn't go so well, but Joy has explained that she may go through weeks of tantrums before finally accepting that it won't get her what she wants), and at some point, hopefully, I will return to some sort of daily routine.

I miss routines. They just don't get enough credit.

Tomorrow is Sadie's first birthday, Sunday is a little party with only my parents, Scott's parents, my sister and her husband, with some lunch and swimming. It's not exactly the grand, celebratory affair that some of our friends did for their kid's first birthday, but at this point in time, it seems right, and it's all we have the energy to put together.

The Magic Finger

A Little Muscle

Do you ever feel sorry for yourself, and then get annoyed at yourself for feeling sorry for yourself, and then pity yourself because now someone's annoyed at you?

Or is that just me?

It's been a long week, with Scott in Anchorage for work and Sadie starting a new day care, only to discover that she is in no shape right now to move to a new place with new people.

I wrote a really long, bitter blog post a couple of days ago which, when I reread it the next morning, horrified me. I sounded so bitter and annoyed about everything that's going on, and it just read like ME ME ME WAAAAHHH MY LIFE.

I deleted it and decided to start over, but the last three days have been so hectic that I never got the chance. I don't have it in me to start over from the beginning, but the short version goes like this:

Sadie started at her new day care on Wednesday, for a half day. Three hours in, I got a call from Rose that Sadie hadn't stopped screaming ever since she put her down on the floor. She would only stop crying if Rose held her -- but she'd taken her nap and eaten lunch beautifully. It was only play time that she wouldn't tolerate. Rose didn't know what was wrong, but she did tell me she thought Sadie's behavior wasn't normal, and advised me to take her to the doctor.

Once we got home and I spent Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning with her, I couldn't help but notice that Sadie's behavior really has grown extreme. She wouldn't let me walk more than two feet away from her without bursting into hysterical tears. She wanted to be with me at all times.

The doctor examined her, put her on the table and urged her to go after a toy -- Sadie wouldn't, couldn't, and started to cry. I explained it to her: this is what happens. She has no mobility at all, really -- even the crawling backwards has stopped, because it frustrates her not to be able to move in the direction she wants to go.

The doctor diagnosed her with mild hypotonia, which is something you should never, ever Google if you think your kid has it, because you will give yourself a heart attack and call your spouse in utter panic, as Scott did, saying, "She'll never catch up to the other kids! I think she has an overactive thyroid! Have you noticed a slack jaw and copious drooling?"

What it is, essentially, is low muscle tone, and it means Sadie could benefit greatly from physical therapy. It's a problem that could or could not be grown out of on its own, but if she doesn't grow out of it then it could easily grow worse, as she gives up and stops trying out of frustration.

Speaking of the frustration, the doctor explained that what's likely happening to Sadie attitude-wise is the same thing that happens to toddlers who are slow to master speech. They desperately WANT to talk, they know what they want to say -- they just aren't able to tell you. All that frustration manifests itself as tears, anger, tantrums.

Sadie's like that, except her problem is that she can't crawl after a ball that has rolled away, can't follow me when I walk across the room, can't explore a new toy that has caught her eye but is just out of reach. I try to imagine living like that, like a person who uses a wheelchair but has been told that they can't use it and must just sit in the center of the room all day, and I can't imagine the frustration she must feel. She wants to explore her world and can't do it.

I'm really looking forward to the physical therapy evaluation Monday morning, and learning how to help her strengthen her muscles. I'm also trying to swallow worry over what the next few weeks will bring, as far as who will take care of her while I'm working, how much time each day will need to be devoted to strength exercises, how long it will take to see improvement, and how to explain to her other caregivers what she needs. I hope, more than anything, that increased mobility will make her happier and more content than she currently is.

I'm tired, but relieved to have a diagnosis and confident that now things can get better.

Sadie Vs. Paper

A Palate Cleanser

In honor of the new blog template (and to soothe my mother, who I know will soon be emailing me to ask, "Did you really need to do this again? And can you please make the font larger?"), I present this video of a baby with funny hair.

One Year Minus 11 Days

Our bizarre little eleven-and-a-half-month old is less than two weeks away from her birthday. What an odd duck she is. There are many things she can't do, things that a typical baby her age can. But there's so much more she does that just kind of stuns me.

I'm about 95% sure she's said her first word, although "word" is really a very generous way of describing it. To be honest, I don't understand how any parent can tell what their child's first word is. She's been yammering away since she was a few months old; about six weeks ago she picked up mimicry, and since then it's just been a steady chug towards full sentences.

If you were wondering what the word was, it's "doggie."

It's the result of me ceaselessly pointing at the dogs, petting the dogs, letting the dogs lick her face, all the while inanely repeating, "Nice doggies! See the doggies? Love the doggies! Kiss the doggies! No, don't pull on the doggie. The doggie doesn't like that. Please let go of the doggie, you're hurting her."

I suffered and the dogs suffered (and Sadie suffered, going into hysterics every time I prevented her from ripping Pepper's beard out of her head. Luckily, Pepper is very stupid and interprets pain as affection, so she really doesn't mind), but it finally paid off last week when we walked in the door after day care. Sadie saw the dogs and screamed "DA DA DA DA" at the top of her lungs and I was like, "DONE! IT COUNTS!"

By the way, as I type this, Sadie is sitting next to me in the Jumparoo making a sound that I can only approximate as this:

"RRRRNNNNGH. Hic Hic Hic ARRRRRRNGH."

This means she's concentrating on laying a giant turd. And, okay, not to hijack my own blog with poop stories, but about two hours ago she made this sound and then started crying incredibly pathetically. I took her over to the changing table and saw why: there was the saddest little poop sitting in her diaper, looking all lonely and friendless.

I'm used to a softer poop, so I was a little hasty in pulling her diaper off. As I balled it up, the piece of poop flew off the diaper, sailed through the air and landed softly on the surface of her dresser, moulding to its shape like a piece of Silly Putty.

Because there wasn't anything better to do in that moment, I screamed, "EW."

Sadie looked at me and said, "Ew!"

So I guess technically, she can say two words.

On the Sly

The day care issue grows ever more weird.

After the craziness of a few weeks ago, and on the urging of pretty much everyone I spoke to, I finally realized it was time to start looking into other day care options.

Nannies are pretty much out as an option, and I feel strongly about this. Even if we could afford it, I don't think I'd want Sadie staying with a nanny all day. For one thing, it doesn't address the issue that when Sadie and I are in the same house, work simply doesn't get done, regardless of how many other people are there taking care of her. 

So two weeks ago, I pulled out my old list of day care providers that I'd first put together back in Spring. Back then, you'll recall that I almost wound up sending Sadie to a different woman, an Armenian woman named Rose. I liked Rose a lot, but was slightly nervous about the fact that it's just her and a handful of kids at her house; the idea of having multiple caregivers there in case of emergency was more soothing, which was why I went with Happy Star.

Well, since times have changed, I called up Rose and left a sheepish message for her, saying I was interested again in hiring her to watch Sadie full time and asking if she had any availability. I didn't hear anything back, and so figured I was out of luck there.

Meanwhile, Sadie was getting closer and closer to being "fired" from Happy Star. I actually got the "your baby's on probation" speech from the owner -- who explained that they're getting an influx of new kids in September and will no longer be able to give Sadie the attention she needs. To her credit, she seemed very distressed to tell me this. We talked about how Sadie seemed to be settling into day care very nicely before we left for vacation last month, and how frustrating it's been to both of us (as well as to Sadie, I'm sure) that ever since we got back in town, Sadie's been miserable every day.

No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't think of a way to keep Sadie at Happy Star. And the following week, which was last week, I got a call back from Rose, saying she'd been on vacation but now that she was back, she had room for Sadie. We discussed next steps and agreed that I'd bring her for a "test day" that next Wednesday -- today.

I was grateful to Rose for being accommodating, but frankly, very nervous too. I couldn't imagine that if Sadie was putting up a fuss for people she was around every single day, she'd be any happier around a strange caregiver and strange kids, in an unfamiliar environment. 

And I can't deny anymore that she is becoming a more high-maintenance kid. To my parents and Scott's parents, she's a total dream -- because part of being a grandparent means showering your grandchild with attention, and as long as Sadie has that, she's perfectly happy.

The trouble begins when she doesn't get what she wants. See, she's become decidedly crafty, and has figured out that it's much easier to burst into tears than to expend energy figuring out how to do something herself. So if she's sitting next to a toy that's out of reach and she wants it, she cries for it. If she's sitting next to a table and wants to stand up, she cries instead of pulling herself up. If she cries loud, long and hard enough, she inevitably gets what she wanted. At day care they're in a tricky position, because they can't let Sadie sit and scream until she gets tired of it -- they have other kids to take care of, and as they've explained to me, the other kids get upset when Sadie gets upset, and the only way to keep the peace is to give her what she wants, when she wants it.

The result is that she's far behind on many of her milestones. She won't sit up from a lying down position, she doesn't crawl, she doesn't pull up (although she will if you take her hands and pull her up gently), she doesn't go for a toy that's out of her reach. Her world pretty much exists within a two foot diameter of wherever she happens to be sitting, and that's not good. I know that eventually she will learn how to do all of these things, but I can't help but be worried about them anyway.

So, there I was, anxious to remove her from Happy Star and anxious to start her someplace new that might upset her even more. Although I knew it was a total longshot, I crossed my fingers and hoped that against all odds, she might suddenly decide to go back to her normal self at Happy Star once again.

And what do you know? All of a sudden, that happened. Thursday and Friday of last week, she was like a new baby -- I picked her up and was told that she was happy all day, willing to sit and play by herself without fussing. Monday was Labor Day, but yesterday morning I brought her in and she lit up with smiles, throwing herself at the woman who answered the door. Not wanting to mess with success, I called up Rose and told her (ahem) that Sadie wasn't feeling great and I'd reschedule something for the following week. (I felt terrible lying, but what else could I have said, after begging her to take pity on me?)

Well, today I went to the front door to pick up Sadie, as usual, around 3pm. The owner answered the door with a giggling, laughing Sadie in her arms, and when she saw me, instead of throwing herself at me as she always does, she turned away and tried to hurl herself back inside for more playtime. The owner and I exchanged glances. "This is what we've been waiting for," she told me. "Always we've been hoping she would be happy with us."

What to do from this point on, I have no idea. I'm not going to mess with something that works -- but there's always the risk that next week, it might not. All I can do is wait and see from one day to the next.

Lunch

Oh, these?

Just some homemade chicken fingers I happened to whip up.

(My inner sixteen year old just looked up from her seven-layer burrito to mumble, "I don't even KNOW you anymore.")

Day Care Drama

I've been getting a ton of support from family and friends recently, after explaining the drama we've been going through with the day care facility where I've been sending Sadie since June. Since this has been a fairly big issue for me, and is becoming bigger by the day, I thought I'd explain a little bit here what my complaints about this place are and why I'm torn over what to do.

In May, when my workload began to increase to the point where I needed at least a few days a week to devote to it, I began researching in-home day care facilities in my neighborhood. I visited several places and finally it came down  to two: a very sweet Armenian woman who cares for between 4-5 babies and toddlers, and a slightly larger in-home day care run by a woman who employs a full time and a part time assistant to help her manage as many as 12 kids.

I liked the second day care better. For the sake of the story, let's call it Happy Star Day Care. Happy Star seemed to run like a well-oiled machine, the house was clean, bright and neat, and the environment was loud but happy. They had "dance time" and organized play time. It was also significantly more expensive ($250 per week was what the owner quoted me) than the woman who just worked by herself. We just couldn't justify the expense.

When I called the woman at Happy Star to explain we wouldn't be sending Sadie there, she came down on the price immediately, finally (albeit reluctantly) matching it to what the other woman had quoted me. With the last obstacle now out of the way, I was happy to tell her Sadie would be starting immediately. What began as part time quickly turned into full-time care, as my workload increased even more, and soon it was arranged that Sadie would be attending Happy Star every weekday.

There were the initial hurdles to jump in order to get Sadie acclimated -- we had to figure out a system for making her feel comfortable, finally culminating in me having to lug her bouncer seat with me each day, along with her special napping blanket (it's white and fleecy with a satin border; she rubs her nose against it when she's tired). Oh, and it was understood I had to provide her meals, too. Unlike the other day care owner, who explained that she cooked Armenian food for her kids every day, it was up to me to pack a lunch, a spoon, a bib, etc. five days a week.

Of course, all of this was perfectly fine with me. And I was also okay with Happy Star's very, very long list of policies: don't bring your child in if she seems sick, we're closed for a week during summer and a week during the holiday season, drop her off in the back but pick her up in the front -- but only between 3 and 4:30pm, after that pick her up in the back again, call on a cell phone instead of knocking on the front door so they can bring her out to meet me, etc. etc. etc.

And I was okay with paying the last two weeks' worth of tuition upfront, along with the first two weeks, so that it was a significant chunk of change just to get her in the front door.

Aaaaand, I guess I was okay with their somewhat bizarre payment policy, which was this: cash only, you create a receipt recording the payment, which they then sign. This meant I'd have to go to the bank every 2 weeks and withdraw a large amount of money, which made me a little nervous, and I still don't understand exactly why it's so difficult for them to take a check. But at this point I was still just thrilled that they'd met my terms and that Sadie was going to a great day care.

And the thing is, it IS a very good day care. The kids are clearly happy there -- I've never approached to hear anyone throwing a tantrum, fussing or fighting. The women who work there adore the kids, showering them with love and affection. Sadie is generally happy to be there.

The problem is...well, what is the problem really? If I had to boil it down, I'd say that in order to make Sadie happy, Happy Star has continually expected me to sacrifice my time, convenience, ability to manage my workload, and my good humor.

The first real issue that cropped up -- infamous now among friends and family who have heard me gripe about it a million times -- was the Happy Star owner's repeated habit of pulling me outside when I came each afternoon so she could tell me what was wrong with Sadie.

First it was that she wasn't trying to crawl, as all babies her age should.

Then it was that she tended to look right more than left, which could mean her neck muscles were developing improperly.

Then she wanted me to know that if Sadie's pediatrician didn't agree with her that the crawling thing was an issue, I should probably switch doctors.

More than this, the thing that really started getting to me was the manner in which the owner of Happy Star was delivering these various bits of troublesome news. There's no way to explain this without sounding ultra-sensitive, but she has a way of speaking that sounds decidedly accusatory. Rather than, "Sadie was sleepy today and took an extra long nap," it's, "Sadie was sleepy today!" followed by a piercing look and silence, until I rush to fill the void with excuses. "Well, she didn't sleep very well last night...and I think she might be teething...but I'm sure she's okay..."

Then there was the foot-scrape episode. Sadie began returning home from day care with a raw spot on each ankle, which would eventually scab over, then it would happen again. I asked the owner about it: "Have you noticed anything she might be doing that would give her these scrapes?" My question was answered with a blank look and a head shake. "Well, would you keep an eye on her to see if there's something happening?" More blank looks. Then her response was, "Maybe at home she's trying to crawl."

In other words: whatever's happening with her, it's probably your fault.

Eventually the ankle mystery was solved. It was Scott who noticed that when Sadie sits, she absently rubs her leg back and forth across the carpet and in doing so rubs her ankle raw. She was probably doing this both at day care and at home -- but it still rankles that this woman couldn't even conceive that Sadie might possibly have gotten an injury while under her care.

Anyway -- this is becoming a very long post, so I'll jump ahead. Scott and I talked about it a lot, debating the pros versus the cons of Sadie attending Happy Star. The conclusion I finally reached was that if she's happy there, then it's worth putting up with someone who's social skills are less than ideal. We agreed that from now on, if she pointed out things wrong with my baby or my parenting style, I'd nod politely and then ignore her advice. And as long as Sadie continued to love Happy Star, there was no real reason to take her out and begin the search all over again.

And then, last week happened.

I brought Sadie back to Happy Star following our trip up to Washington, and it became clear she was having problems adjusting. The owner reported to me each day that Sadie was crying a lot and missed me. "When she cries, she upsets the other kids," she told me, in that way of hers which gives me the uncontrollable urge to drown her in a sea of excuses on behalf of my baby.

"I think she's teething," the owner said to me on Monday.

"Oh yes, probably teething."

I took her home.

"I think she's getting sick," she told me when she handed Sadie over to me on Tuesday afternoon.

"Oh no! I'll keep an eye on her tonight and tomorrow morning."

On Wednesday, I saw no signs of sickness, so I took her back. "Call me if it seems like she's really not well," I said, then left to tackle a long day's worth of work.

At 11am, I got the call. "Sadie's upset. She misses you. I think you should come get her."

And so I did. And Sadie, if she WAS upset, became fine the minute I got her home. We spent a pleasant afternoon playing. A day during which I did not get any work done. A day after which I had to pull a late-nighter to do the work I hadn't gotten done during the day.

At some point during that long night, I thought to myself, "Isn't the reason I'm paying them so they can deal with her regardless of whether she's happy or fussy?"

On Thursday, I brought her back again. She didn't want to go, clutching my arm tightly and crying for a minute when I handed her over. I felt terrible, but this time I had to say firmly, "I can't come early today. I'll lose this job. I'll pick her up at 3." Then, naturally, I spent all day worrying and feeling like a bad mother.

This time when I picked her up she seemed fine, but I was also sent home with a new list of instructions: you need to start packing finger food; she doesn't like spoons anymore. You need to bring the bouncer seat every day again. You need to speak to her using the same language we do, so she starts listening to us better. You need to begin doing activities with her like we do, so that she likes doing them better with us.

"Play with her. Listen to music with her. Dance with her."

I do, I do, and I do.

What she's telling me, in essence, is that the same activities I do each day with Sadie, that I have no trouble with, are now making her unhappy at day care. And somehow, according to the owner of Happy Star, this is my fault.

I think I'm just about done.

On Friday afternoon, after I'd handed over my giant enveloped stuffed with twenties and was about to drive away with my baby, the owner chased me down and knocked on the window of the car.

"I counted twice, and you're $20 short," she informed me, handing me back the envelope.

I counted it again, while she demurely turned her head away. It came up right on target. I handed back the money and told her so.

She shrugged. "I'm sure it's fine. I counted it twice. Probably the bills were stuck together." She looked at me for a moment before returning inside and even then, even in that moment when I knew completely, utterly and without a doubt that I was right, I still felt as if she were waiting for me to come up with an excuse that would justify the problem. ("I'm so sorry. The bank gave me new bills and they aren't as easy to count as older ones.")  

If Sadie's the baby in the equation, then how is it that taking her to day care makes me feel like the child?