Owie!

The worst injury Elise ever had happened a few months ago when she was walking around outside and randomly tripped on the sidewalk. She began crying, and I picked her up and started my “you’re fine, it’s ok” mantra, lazily checking her knees and hands for (the inevitable) scrapes to add to all the others (She does not pay a lot of attention to what she is doing so she falls and trips and runs into things often. She always has a bump, bruise or scrape of some sort). But when she turned her face to me, I noticed that blood was actually dripping out of the sides of her mouth. It was terrifying. Blood was everywhere. We scrambled in the house and began poking around to try to figure out what exactly was bleeding. When we couldn’t figure out the root of it (or get it to stop), we dragged our neighbor, who is a Nurse Practitioner, over to inspect it and make sure that Ellie was not going to bleed to death.

Elise playing the piano with her second cousin, Cassin, 8.

Turned out that she must have bitten her tongue far back in her mouth when she fell – perhaps she’d been feeling her new tooth with her tongue when she tripped – and as I have mentioned before, the girl is a Bleeder. She had blood oozing out of her month for a good half hour before it finally let up. Our neighbor assured us that she was not in danger of bleeding to death. But it really was quite a scare. There's nothing like thick red blood pouring from your child’s mouth to freak a parent out.

Last weekend, though, we added another traumatic injury to her short list. She was coming down a slide at the playground when she accidentally turned her body so that her hip and foot got caught diagonally across the slide. This caused her to come to a screeching halt on the slide and to wail in pain. I picked her up, realizing it must have hurt, and coddled her for a few minutes trying to calm her down. When the crying nearly subsided, I tried to encourage her to get back on the jungle gym. I put her down, and she took one step and her leg completely gave out on her. She wailed. We went through the process again, and when she’d calmed down, I set her back down. But she could not put any pressure on her leg without crumbling over. Every time she tried to put her foot down, she cried “OOOOOwwwwwwieeee!”
Elise giving hugs to Shoshana's daughter, Lauren, 8 months

Of course, being the Worrier that I am, I freaked out and announced that we needed to go to the hospital immediately. This did not seem like a rash decision to me, as my 16 month old baby couldn’t put any pressure on her leg. But both Marty and my friend Christy basically told me I needed to relax and give it more than 30 seconds before running to the ER. She probably just twisted something. So I plopped her down and began frantically inspecting her ankle, knee and hip, looking for bruising or swelling. There was none. This was, of course, a good sign, but she still couldn’t put pressure on her leg so I continued to panic.

We drove back to Christy’s house, hoping that some time off of her leg would help it a little and that everything would be better by the time we got home. It wasn’t. At first, things were just as bad as they were at the playground, but after a little while she was standing and squatting without a problem, though she still couldn’t walk. A while later, she began walking a little, but couldn’t run without her leg giving out on her and crying “owie.” By the next day, she was running around like a maniac again without any problems at all. We never really did figure out what exactly happened. It was hard to tell if it was her hip, knee, foot, back or entire left side of her body that was actually injured, but Marty seems to think that she hyper-extended her knee.

I hate seeing my child in pain. That, on top of the fact that I am the type of person that worries and panics about pretty much everything, made for a very rough 24 hours. I don’t do it on purpose and I can't control it. I really wish I could see my child limping and think, “she just needs some time to rest and it will be better” instead of “she will be crippled for life,” but like it or not, that’s just who I am. I know that one day there will be worse injuries. I know that there is a good possibility that she could break bones or need stitches one day. I know that kids get hurt and that there is nothing I can really do besides keeping her out of obviously dangerous situations. But that doesn’t mean that I am going to freak out any less if and when those time come.

Happy Thanksgiving!

For the Meredith (Wolfe/Todd/Bittner) Clan: we may not be celebrating Thanksgiving with you, but we are already gearing up for Christmas. Happy Holidays!

The Toddler Handbook

When a friend of mine recently commented that I gave her the same advice on a particular situation as her mother gave her, I joked that when you become a mother, you are given a handbook with all the textbook mom advice. While there may be no Mom Advice Handbook (as much as I wish something like that did exist), I am starting to wonder if there is a Toddler Handbook that is passed out to children once they reach a certain age. Or maybe toddlers just sit around at daycare talking in what seems like gibberish to us, but they are actually doling out tricks of the trade, a la Look Who's Talking.

The most interesting development in Toddlerdom is Ellie's keen procrastination skills. See, once children realize that they are missing out on the fun stuff (packing tomorrow's lunch and watching Grey's Anatomy) after they go to bed, you begin the epic "But I don't want to go to bed" battle that probably lasts until they are in high school. Of course, Elise can't quite verbalize her desire to stay up a little longer yet, so she has begun to take the much craftier approach: thirst. Yes, it seems that every night right before it's time for bed Ellie gets struck with a sudden and dramatic urge to quench her limitless thirst. As a parent, you feel obligated to give her some water, because really even prisoners get that right. So, we hand her a sippy cup and she slowly raises it to her lips and takes the tiniest of sips before pulling back and making a comment about Elmo or pointing out the elephant on the blanket. "Yes, yes, that is an elephant. Are you all done with the water?" we ask impatiently (as there are lots of lunch items to get in order) It's always a very quick "No!" and sippy cup immediately goes back into her mouth for a lingering slow motion drinking session that probably yields less than a mouth full of water. Seriously, how does a 16 month old know to do this? I thought that those were pure 3 year old tactics. I think she's been hanging out on the playground with an older crowd. Or just reading up in the Toddler Handbook.

Another bizarre Toddler phenomenon that Ellie has recently picked up is adding "ie" to everything. Why do toddlers do that anyway? I guess once the novelty of talking starts to wear off on the parents, the toddler feels the need to try to cute it up again or something. To toddlers, suddenly doll becomes dolly, horse becomes horsey and so on. Among other things, Ellie has taken to saying "upie" instead of "up", "Opie" instead of "Opa" (her grandfathers) and my personal favorite "uh-ohie" instead of "uh-oh." Sure, it's sort of cute now, but I hope she outgrows it at the appropriate developmental time. There is a very fine line between cute toddler "ie" and annoying baby-like kid "ie".

The final classic toddlerism that Elise has picked up are the tantrums. It's like they watch video showing the detailed play-by-play: This is how you should scream when you don't get your way. This is how you should kick your legs once you have fallen to the ground stop-drop-and-roll style when they try to make you walk somewhere you don't want to go. This is how you should hit inanimate objects when you're frustrated or hear the word "no." Urgh. It may be textbook, but no one in all these years has figured out how to prevent it from happening. I am hoping that she goes ahead and gets it all out so she can reach her tantrum peak early. That way we can have patience and bliss for the remaining toddler years. Yeah, right!

I will be on the look out for that Mom Advice Book. Maybe there are some good tips in there.

He Who Shan't Be Named

Ok, I know it probably seems like I throw the term “obsessed” around fairly loosely but I am not really exaggerating when I say that Ellie gets obsessed with things. Her obsession with dogs and buses and babies, as I have reported in the past, are all completely legitimate and I am not confusing “obsessed” with “really likes.” Or at least I thought that was the case until a few weeks ago week when we really learned about what it means to be obsessed.

Yes, Ellie has an obsession, a real obsession, and it is completely out of control. It runs deeper than anything we could have imagined and her love of dogs, buses and babies pales in comparison to her new fixation. We refer to him as “our little red friend” or “he who shan’t be named” (because we have to speak in code so as not to arouse an all out frenzy) but she simply refers to him as ELMO. And she refers to him a lot. As I said, she is obsessed.

It started with a book we have that I mentioned before called Hide & Seek that features Elmo and Grover hiding ‘Where’s Waldo’ style (thanks a lot Aaron and Kate!). She loves this book so much that she would sit there and flip through its six pages over and over again until the end of time if we let her. This is amazing in itself considering that she won’t sit still to do anything else for more than 5 seconds. As soon as we get to the end of the book, she says “more?” and back to the beginning we go. On every page she points out “ELMO!” (or sometimes "Hiding!") with equal enthusiasm as though it was the first time she ever noticed him hiding behind that painting. On several occasions, we have actually resorted to hiding the book or elaborate trickery to get her to stop reading it. It’s not that we’re not thrilled that she wants to read, of course, it’s just that the book has six pages. Unfortunately we do not share the same unbridled enthusiasm for finding Elmo in the same six places again and again (at this point it could be done with closed eyes in the next room) It gets old.

Elmo is not just in this book. As it turns out, Elmo is everywhere. You seriously can’t hide from him, even if you wanted to. He’s like this omnipresent creepy little red stalker. We’re walking down the street…she points out that there’s Elmo on the poster in the bus shelter. In the grocery store…look it’s Elmo on a balloon. At daycare…Elmo on that kids lunch box. In our cabinet...there’s Elmo on that box of crackers. Oh look, there’s Elmo right on her diaper. Of course Marty and I never notice. Ellie will scream “ELMO” in whatever setting we are in and we will spend the next minute trying to figure out if she’s hallucinating or if there is actually an Elmo somewhere that she’s pointing out to us. And there’s always an Elmo. That book has made her VERY efficient at finding him, even in the most hidden and remote places.

But the obsession reached new and terrifying heights last week. We put Ellie to bed, as usual, after reading the (six paged) Elmo book for 20 minutes. About 15 minutes after we put her down, she started hysterically crying in bloodcurdling screams. This is not typical behavior in the least. She usually goes to sleep with not much more than a whine or two every night. So, naturally, the hysteria was worrisome and I went into her room right away. She must have fallen out of her crib or gotten her leg mangled in the bars or something, right? Nope, she was standing in her crib looking completely fine, so I quickly picked her up and started inspecting her body for open wounds or blood. No blood, no wounds. She looked at me with this sad devastated little face and sobbed through her tear-streaked face “ELMO!” Seriously. That’s why she was crying hysterically. She missed Elmo. Seriously. Now if that’s not obsession I don’t know what is.

P.S. Yes, we caved (well, her Oma and Opa did) and got her an Elmo doll. I know, I know, we're just enabling her obsession, but really what choice did we have? She doesn't wake up screaming anymore, that's for sure. And you should see how much she loves this thing. Urgh.

Pickiest. Eater. Ever.

Elise has officially become the pickiest eater on the planet. See below the complete list of things that she will eat (and keep in mind that she cannot eat anything with dairy or soy because of her allergies):

• Cut Green beans, no salt added canned only (no frozen, fresh, French style, etc)
• Frozen peas – must be made fresh, will not eat if refrigerated
• Frozen carrots – but only the little square kind that come in peas n’ carrots mixture; will not eat fresh or canned carrots, or frozen carrots that you cut into squares. This makes the list, but she will not eat more than 5 or 6
• Pears – fresh or jarred. Loves.
• Peaches – fresh or jarred, though starting to eat less and less. Might be headed off the list
• Apple – usually only if you are eating it
• Whole wheat toast (I can find one brand that doesn’t have soy protein or milk)
• Whole wheat bagel (ditto about the soy and milk. Will also eat cinnamon raisin bagel if I am eating it but not if it’s hers)
• Waffles (same soy issue. Eggo recently changed their Nutrigrain waffle recipe from dairy and soy free to include both milk and soy. Now we have to buy the very expensive organic kind)
• Pancakes, plain only (will not eat apple pancakes, although she will eat apples and pancakes separately just fine. Must cook from scratch because mixtures contain dairy)
• Pasta – freshly cooked only; will not eat if refrigerated
• Sausage – only BJ’s brand plain sausage; will not even pretend to make any exceptions to this rule. But her love for BJ’s sausage is overwhelming. She would eat 4 at a time if we let her. This is particularly odd because she hates and refuses every other type of meat ever.
• Fried egg – I am putting this on the list to be generous because she actually ate it for the first time today. It is very likely that she will never again eat an egg, but I am feeling optimistic from our experience this morning.
• Cheerios – by the fistful. Will never, ever turn down the opportunity to eat. By far her favorite food
• Honey graham sticks (only kind of cracker on the planet that does not contain soy)
• Gerber sweet potato puffs (only flavor that does not contain soy)

I am not leaving things off this list. It is completely complete. This is the ENTIRE breadth of what our child will eat. At first glance, you may say to yourself "16 things! That's a lot!" but remember that she eats three meals a day, as well as 2-3 snacks. It's impossible to keep an even remotely balanced and healthy diet that doesn't bore her (she gets bored easily) with 16 food items to choose from (especially when there are minimal veggies and fruits). Also keep in mind that she is constantly deleting things off of her list as well. Recently taken off the list (probably because she got sick of it because her repertoire is so small) – and by taken off the list I mean that she used to love but now screams “NOOO!” like a crazy person if you put said food item within 30 feet of her mouth: bananas, cantaloupe, honeydew, grapes, mandarin oranges, sweet potatoes. They're dropping like flies!

Never even on the list: every other food imaginable.

Bonus (One Up) Halloween Picture Extravaganza

This one's for you, Louie...



























Ellie with neighbor "monkey" Myles

I Am Toddler, Hear Me Roar

My friend Christy and I were in Old Navy a few weeks ago when we came across an adorable children’s lion costume that was ½ priced. Not only am I a sucker for a bargain, but when you ask Ellie what a lion says, she says “roar” with her nose crinkled and eyebrows raised and it might be the cutest thing ever. It was meant to be. Ellie would be a lion for Halloween.

When we got home, we thought we’d try it on her so that Christy could see her in the costume since she wouldn’t see Ellie on Halloween. Well it turns out that my daughter is terrified of lions. Or maybe its just bargain priced lion costumes from Old Navy that scare her. Whatever it was, Ellie screamed while we were putting it on her and was anxiously trying to tear it off of her body the whole time she was wearing it. This did not bode well for a fun filled Halloween.

Not one to easily accept defeat, we devised a plan to get her used to it. We laid the costume out on the couch, in plain view, for the weeks preceding Halloween. That way, she could get used to seeing it and realize that it wasn’t, in fact, scary. Every time we passed the couch, we encouraged her to pet the cute lion and before bed we gave it kisses. I must say, this was a brilliant plan. And she did warm up to it. But when we tried to put it on her on Wednesday, she freaked out again. She wanted nothing to do with wearing that lion. (Maybe this has something to do with the fact that she is a self-imposed vegan. Perhaps it’s not that she doesn’t like eating meat, but more that she is making a political statement about the treatment of animals that also carries over into her clothing choices. Next year she will most certainly be dressed as a vegetable).

We finally got the costume on, through protests and tears (and at this point I am feeling very guilty for forcing my child to dress in a ridiculous outfit that she clearly despises for my own amusement, but sometimes you have to wield your power as parent and dresser). We dragged her outside so that hopefully she would get distracted enough by the other kids in costumes to forget that she was wearing this bizarre lion costume that she hated so much. This plan actually worked a little better than “Operation: Stop Being Scared of Lion”. In fact, she ran around the porch for a while laughing and having a grand ol’ time in her lion suit. Seeing as how she relaxed a little bit, we decided to take her for a walk around the block to show off her adorableness but to skip the trick or treating because she’s too young for candy and we don’t have enough self control not to eat the candy ourselves. She loved seeing the other kids in costumes and thought it was fun that so many other children were outside.

About halfway through the walk around the block she remembered that she hated the costume and took the top part off. She left the cute little lion feet on though, and that was cute in itself. It ended up being a fairly successful Halloween, but I will take the lessons learned from this experience to make sure that she is not afraid of her costume next year. No matter how irresistible the bargain.