That Sweet Day

So, it happened. The day every parent waits for and treasures. I was doing the boring, ordinary task of putting cans into a garbage bag for recycling when Katrina wandered over, laid her head on my shoulder and said, "I yuve u, mommy" and toddled off. Completely spontaneous and totally unprompted. Ah...bliss.

You've Got Me In Stitches

So the last month seems to have been a bit accident prone. First Katrina eats random plant matter, then Emily falls and you guessed it, got stitches. Wow. In some ways it strikes me as just being one of those childhood things. On the other hand, Emily is the less rowdy of my two girls. I managed to survive my entire childhood without getting stitches. This could be because I liked to read a lot and was not into organized sports. I did my share of bike riding and tree climbing however, so maybe I'm just more graceful. :) My brothers both got stitches at different times. Christoph also remembers getting stitches as a child. So, Emily is by no means alone in her venture. The sad, or funny thing, depending on your perspective, is that she went through the entire thing without Mom or Dad.

Yep, you heard right. Seeing as I had just gotten back from a two and a half week trip, Christoph planned a romantic overnight date for us. Our friends the Divineys were kind enough to watch the girls for us. Little did they know what they were in for. Saturday morning Emily was outside playing. Somehow, she managed to trip and hit her forehead right on the edge of a brick. After some phone calls back and forth Amber and I decided it should get looked at by the doctor. By the time we figured out where she could be seen on a Saturday it was almost time for us to head back anyway. We were on the Oregon coast, about two hours away. We got some lunch and headed back, but arrived after all the excitement was over. Turns out it was good we had her seen since they put five stitches in her forehead. I felt bad that our friend had to go through such an ordeal with Emily but, I was also glad it was her. Emily knows Amber well and is comfortable with her and Amber is very capable of staying calm and doing what has to be done. I found out after the fact that she was also a great patient advocate for Emily which made me very happy.

Apparently, for whatever reason, Lidocaine (the numbing medicine) doesn't have much effect on Emily. Amber says she could feel the pain radiating through Emily's body as they stitched her up. One interesting thing about my daughter is she absolutely HATES being held down. I've learned this through having to give her eye drops, get sand out of her eyes, and deal with her earrings. If given the choice between being perfectly still and being forcibly held down, she will show incredible self-restraint in holding still. On the flip side there is no quicker way to cause a full on, freak-out fit then holding her down against her will. I had warned Amber about this and she told the nurses and doctor that they could not tie her up. They listened, and Emily rewarded their trust by holding completely still even though she was having a lot of pain. Unfortunately this doesn't relay to her mouth, so even though she doesn't move she is by no means quiet. According to witnesses she screamed almost the entire time.

Not to make this all about me, but I'm just not sure, as a Mother, how to feel about the whole thing. I mostly just feel horrible that my friend had to go through making the decision to have Emily seen, drive her there, and then spend two hours holding a screaming child who is getting her forehead sewn up three inches from your face. Ok, the sewing part didn't take two hours, there was getting checked in, waiting for the topical Lidocaine to start working, moving on the the injectable Lidocaine, you get the idea. I also feel bad for Emily who had to be so brave and go through all that pain without Mommy or Daddy to hold her and comfort her. Does it mean that I'm a bad Mom because I feel more sympathy and guilt for my friend then for my child? It probably helps that when we got back Emily greeted us with, "Why are you back already? I want to sleep here more then one night!" I feel bad I wasn't there to be strong for my baby, but at the same time I have a nagging feeling that Amber was probably more patient with her screaming then I would have been. The fact that Emily held still without restraint for the whole thing makes me proud and also scares the crap out of me. This girl likes control.

Fortunately her wound seems to be healing very well. The stitches came out practically painlessly and the scar seems to look lighter almost daily. At least on her forehead she can have bangs to cover it if she wants to. :) And to quote my friend Amber, "When she grows up, I'm going to have to tell her she can definitely handle drug-free childbirth."

Emilyisms

Emily makes me laugh, probably on a daily basis. I love the little things that come out of her mouth. I just wanted to write some of them down for posterity. This is just a random collection of little things said on many different occasions.

The other day Christoph was telling Emily that she needed to put her shoes on in preparation for them leaving, when he noticed there was something in her shoe. "Watch out," he says, "There's something in there."
"That's Winnie the Pooh," she replies. "He is having a time out."
"Why does Winnie need a time out," Christoph questions.
"He just needed one," she answers magnanimously. The really funny part to us is we have never used time outs as punishment. Something she picked up at daycare and from friends and relatives.

Emily loves to create imaginary friends to play with. For a long time these friends were her real friends that she would "pretend" were visiting. Most often Emma and Madison, or our friends the Lozanos. Now she is branching out and coming up with people who are completely from her imagination. Today it was "Granny Smith Apple Girl". She says to me, "That Granny Smith Apple Girl just wants me to keep talking to her, but I have to leave." "Mean Girl" also made an appearance, trying to throw Emily in the trash and take all her toys. Hmmm.

Today in school Emily made this cool little turkey for her art project. It was really cute. On our way to the car I was exclaiming over it and telling her how cool it looked and how much I liked it. She just looks up at me, kinda nods and says, "Of course you do, Mom." Ah, the absolute confidence of a child.

About three weeks after school got out for the summer Emily comes up to me and says, "You must think I'm sick or something."
I looked at my perfectly healthy girl and asked, "What makes you think that?"
"I haven't been to school or ballet in a very long time" came the perfectly logical reply. Oh honey, that's called summer vacation.

We were in Ecuador getting ready to drive three hours to my parents house. As my brother climbed into the car he muttered "Oh crap". Emily quickly echoed him. He tried to tell her that's not a word little girls should say, but Emily protested, "Why can't I say it if I know what it means?" Of course I had to ask what HER definition of 'oh crap' is. She logically replied, "That's what you say when you think, 'oh no, now what am I going to do'." Nice.

We stayed one night in LA on our way to Ecuador. We rode a shuttle from the airport which Emily thought was very cool. They had a recording that announced the upcoming stops on the way and made little safety announcements, ect. Emily turns to me and asks, "Why does that lady say, 'please don't forget your bags' when the man takes them off the bus for us?" Umm...

Although Emily has outgrown the stage of cutely mispronouncing words, she has moved on to using big words in the wrong context, and making up words of her own. She will occasionally describe things as being romantic, for example "These shoes are so romantic." When she uses a word in the wrong context I love to ask for her definition. The elaborate explanations she comes up with are so entertaining. Recently we were in the car when she stated, "It's almostraffical out here"
"What does 'almostraffical' mean?" I inquired.
"That's when you have to watch very carefully not to hit other cars." she explained. Not far off actually.

Oh my Emily, I love you so. You are such a little firecracker. Sometimes I don't know if I'll be able to stay ahead of you. 

Yuck

Well, perhaps the age old adage holds true... pride goes before a fall. I don't know that I was exactly proud, but I did have a certain sense of satisfaction that Emily never got into anything as a baby, toddler, or preschooler. So it was with great consternation that I had to make my first call to Poison Control. The irony is that it wasn't that long ago that I posted our first poison control sticker by the phone. I saw them at work and it seemed like a good thing to have, just in case. It was the classic green yuck sticker and Emily hated it. For some reason that face just gave her the heebie-jeebies. After three days of listening to her implore us to take it down and many promises not to eat anything bad or let her friends eat anything bad, we replaced it with a more discreet plain sticker that is under the phone base, out of site. By the way, I didn't actually make the call. It was made by proxy through my dear husband. Here's how the events unfolded.

As I mentioned in my last post, the girls and I traveled to Ecuador, to visit my parents. It was a great trip, and fun to experience parts of my childhood through Emily's eyes. Anyway, one day Emily and Katrina were outside playing. I was  doing something, laundry I think, when my Mom says, "You better come, Katrina ate something". She fished some of it out of her mouth, but she had swallowed most of some strange tomatoish thing growing in my parents front yard. Oh great. Here I am in a foreign country, how am I going to figure out what it is that she swallowed and if it's going to kill her? She was acting fine, happy as a clam, so I turned to tracking down Emily to see if I could get to the bottom of what happened. After much reassuring that she wasn't in trouble, Emily finally confessed that she had given the fruit to Katrina to eat because she thought it was a tomato. On a side note, Christoph and I have been noticing a trend recently. Emily likes to use Katrina as her guinea pig in all kinds of ways. So, not knowing what else to do I call Christoph (waking him out of a dead sleep) and ask him to call Poison Control. They weren't much help. They advised taking the plant to our local nursery for identification purposes and then calling them back. They did reassure us that with most poisonous plants you have to consume large quantities to produce any ill effects, so one small fruit would not likely harm her even if it were poisonous. They advised to watch for vomiting, diarrhea, and unusual sleepiness. She acted perfectly normal for the rest of the day, so I'm guessing it wasn't poisonous. I did sternly tell Emily she must never feed herself or Katrina anything without first checking with someone. I will confess however that as I was going to sleep that night my active imagination couldn't help but summon up some images of Katrina not waking up in the morning. It took me a while to fall asleep and all my willpower not to go into her room to make sure she was still breathing. Here's to firsts in parenting, and to hopefully never having to call poison control again.

Catching Up

I can't believe summer is over! It flew by so fast I still feel like I'm spinning. This week I've been trying to get things back into some kind of order and routine. I'm trying to decide if I should kinda retrospect blog about all the fun, cute, sad, scary, funny things that happened this summer or just move into the future. Probably I'll have to write about some of them. I better hurry though or I'll have too many new thing to write about. =)

Thank you to the two wonderful women, Sara and Amy, who wrote me encouraging notes after my frustrated post. I thought about re-writing that one, but I ended up just deleting it. After getting some sleep it sound so pitiful I was too embarrassed to leave it up. It sounded so woe-is-me it made me cringe. There was truth there, so I may revisit the topic at a later date, just not when I'm feeling so down. =) I'm not sure why, but I've always found it easier to write down my feelings then to talk about them.

Here is a quick synopsis of the summer, a little teaser if you will. Aside from the usual fun in the sun, visits to the swimming pool, barbecuing, and such we...

Went on a camping trip to the Oregon Coast

Visited Vancouver Canada

Went to Phoenix for my Grandma's funeral =(

Went to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Ecuador

Had our first call to Poison Control

It's been busy. Part of my trying to get into a routine in life includes a routine in blogging so there will be more to come. As soon as I can get the pictures off the camera!

A Day at the Zoo

We are blessed to have a great zoo near us. We most recently took the girls there on their birthday (March 29th, obviously this post is a little late). It was great because Christoph was on spring break and I didn't have to work. We were able to make an entire day of it and I think we all had fun.

Katrina was old enough this time to actually pay attention and be excited by the animals. She really loved the goats in the petting area. Emily's favorite were the lorikeets. She was a little freaked out to have the birds land on her, but she liked feeding them while they were on Daddy's arm.








They both got very excited about running around in the grass which made us really want to get our backyard done (right now it's a pile of dirt and weeds).

It was so much fun to reconnect and spend time as a family. Since I work every evening during the week and our weekends are usually so chaotic, sometimes it feels like Christoph and I barely see each other. It was also fun to spoil the girls a little. We let them each get something from the gift shop, Emily got a stuffed lorikeet and Katrina a stuffed goat to remember their favorite thing from the day. The butterfly exhibit opened back up in May, so I've been itching to go back for another visit. That's my favorite thing in the zoo. Other then little girls eating snow cones.

Candid Moments in Ballet

I think I've mentioned before that Emily is in ballet classes. They are offered through our local parks and rec department, so they are pretty low-key. I like the exposure without the pressure. These shots make it seem perhaps a little TOO low-key. Some poor classical ballet teacher would probably have heart palpitations if she saw them. You gotta love it.