Home Again

We just returned last night from our trip to Galiano Island, which was just as great as Sadie's book promised her it would be, but with a little more adventure thrown in.

Sadie was an angel on the flight there and a demon on the way back, but you could hardly blame her. We took the 9:30am ferry into Vancouver from the island and then had several hours to kill before going to the airport, so we went to the aquarium. She loved it. What did she love best, you ask? The otter? The anemones? The 20-armed starfish? No, she fell in love in the children's play area, with a cheesy display in which bubbles float up endlessly through colored lights. She practically spazzed when we finally dragged her away so we could catch our flight.

My perpetual fear is always of being That Family, the one with the screaming child on the plane who won't shut up. Back when I was childfree I would glare and mutter under my breath and swear that that would never my MY kid. Unfortunately, karma came back around in a big way last night -- Sadie wanted nothing to do with the airplane. She couldn't get comfortable, and then once Scott had finally rocked her to sleep in his arms (after screaming fit #1), the guy in front of him put his seat back and hit her in the head, waking her up and prompting screaming fit #2. 30 minutes later, she finally stopped crying when someone behind us gave in to her attempts to play peek-a-boo. Perhaps realizing that the entire plane might revolt if he didn't bite the bullet, he played peek-a-boo with her for like FORTY FIVE MINUTES, enough time to get us into our final descent into LAX. That is a lot of peek-a-boo. Wherever you are, peek-a-boo man, I love you.

The vacation itself was a blast. I'd been anxious about how Sadie would react to a house full of noisy kids and even noisier adults, but I quickly got my answer: she LOVED it, every minute. She behaved like a dream and got along with all the other kids and then, just to make us look extra hateable, she went to bed every night at 6:30 and took 2 hour naps every day as well. She even put aside her picky eating habits and chowed down on everything we offered her -- I'm sure it helped that she was playing with toys every minute she was awake and worked up a huge appetite.

Outdoors activity was curtailed because of the weather -- sunny but really, surprisingly cold, like in the 30s and 40s during the day and colder at night. One afternoon, we thought it would be a nice idea to take Sadie and one other kid for a walk down to the beach in the late afternoon. The walk ran long, afternoon turned to evening, the weather plummeted and we were NOT dressed for it. Sadie let us know about halfway through (when we were a mile from the house) that she wanted to go back inside, but instead we had to carry her back. At one point both kids were crying and our new friend Rochelle turned to us and said, "Best. Walk. Ever." We got back inside and Sadie's little fingers turned bright red and swollen and she screamed her head off for about fifteen minutes until her circulation came back to normal. Moral of this story: when your mom yelled at you to put on an extra sweater and wear gloves, SHE WAS RIGHT. YOU SHOULD HAVE LISTENED.

Anyway, we miss our friends already. It was truly a great weekend, filled with cozy fires and rounds of Trivial Pursuit and watching movies (and fourteen repetitions of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas.") And it ended with a bang -- on the ferry I got a message from our current nanny, telling me she'd gotten another job and they wanted her to start today, so that was that. No more nanny, again. The difference is, after seeing Sadie thrive this weekend, I think she might be ready to transition back into a day care again. I have a few appointments this afternoon and tomorrow, so we'll see.

Happy New Year, all.

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.