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?