Birthdays, Big Sisters and Big Girl Beds

It's nearly impossible to believe that Elise is two years old! She's becoming such a big girl! This birthday feels very different from last year. Last year she had no idea what was going on and this year, while she still didn't get the full concept, she seemed to know that it was, in fact, her birthday (although I am not sure she knows what that means) . This week, whenever a package arrived in the mail, she picked it up and said "Happy Birthday Ellie?" and I would say yes and then she excitedly opened it and exclaimed "WOW!" about her new toy/book. She was genuinely excited about her gifts, which made it really fun.

Ellie and all of her Grandparents

On Sunday we had a tiny gathering to celebrate her birthday and she sang along to the Happy Birthday song and then shouted "Happy Birthday!" when the singing was over. She didn't really care for the (dairy-free) cake, but did eat a few spoonfuls of icing. She REALLY enjoyed the potato chips (she's never had them before), which seemed to be the highlight of the birthday celebration for her.

She picked out a dress to wear that she actually got for her birthday last year (so it was a little snug!) but she didn't have any complaints, even though she's usually very liberal about saying "that too tight!" so we went with the flow and let her wear what she wanted to wear. She loved the party - all of the attention, food and gifts were right up her alley. She loved it so much, in fact, that she refused to take a nap. There was just too much excitement with all the people and new toys to play with. To our pleasant surprise, she didn't totally melt down at the end of the day. She actually held it together pretty well all day long and acted like a big girl.

Ellie and Milan

Speaking of acting like a big girl, Ellie also had the opportunity to practice her big sister skills with our friends' daughter, Milan, who is seven months old. Ellie held Milan on her lap (the first baby she's ever held) and she LOVED it - so much so that when I took Milan off of her lap she was very unhappy about it. As much as she enjoyed holding Milan though, she wasn't thrilled about Mommy holding Milan. Milan is going to stay with us for a few days in July, so it will be good practice for Ellie to get used to Mommy dividing her attention and to also keep practicing those big sister skills for when Juan arrives in a few months.

In other big girl news, Ellie got her "big girl bed" this weekend! We set it up in her room so that she would get comfortable with seeing it, but we intended to leave her in her crib until she spent some time getting used to the new bed and was ready to make the switch. Well, apparently the switch is not as traumatic as we thought it would be because she wanted to sleep in the big girl bed last night. We were a little hesitant, but she was insistent, so we went ahead and gave it a try. She went down just as she usually does in her crib and had no problems falling asleep or sleeping through the night. The only problem was that Greenie and Pinky (the flat elephants that she has slept with every night since she was six months old) fell through the slats in the bed and one was on the floor this morning. Luckily it must have happened long after she'd fallen asleep because she didn't seem to notice in the night so it was no big deal.

Ellie with Gram and Oma

So even though it's a little earlier than planned or expected, we are going to go ahead and make the permanent switch to the big girl bed. She really is getting to be our big girl!

Ellie with family friend, "Aunt" Christy

I can't believe we never posted this

Meredith and I were just cataloging some old videos and we came across this one... it's one of the best. I think it was filmed in November. Enjoy!

Girly-Girl

Carrying her baby Lu in a backback sling
When we found out that our baby was a girl, we naturally assumed that she’d be a tomboy. How could she not be a tomboy? As a kid, I never liked dresses or dolls or girly-things, and to this day I know little-to-nothing about things like hair and makeup and handbags. I was never into the girly stuff, and I did my best to keep the pink and frills to a minimum. Not to mention that from the day she came home from the hospital, Marty has not treated her more like a wrestling buddy than a delicate princess. He tosses her around, rough houses with her and gets her dirty exactly the way he would with a boy. We have done these things on purpose - we have gone out of our way to make sure that we are not treating Ellie any particular way because she's a girl.

Having said this though, we have made a very concerted effort not to steer Ellie’s personality in any particular direction because of our preferences. We’ve gotten her an equal number of baby dolls to trucks and trains, bought clothes equal numbers of pink and blue. But our little girl is her own person. Obviously. Because our little one has turned out to be much more girly-girl than anyone would ever guess coming from her parents. Her favorite things are baby dolls and her Kitty purse (which she insists on taking everywhere with her – whenever she leaves the house, she said “Where’s my purse?!” and finds it and grabs it before leaving). She loves trying on clothes for a “fashion show” (I think she might be the only child on the planet that actually likes doing this) and insists on having her (non-existent) hair brushed every morning. She loves all things pink. It is by far her favorite color.

She's not all girly-girl though - she does have plenty of tomboy qualities. She is extremely coordinated and athletic - even at her age. The child runs faster than any two year old possibly should, can climb up a things with the agility and speed of a monkey, can throw and catch balls with ease, and gives a mean and accurate dropkick that has us thinking she's destined to be an NFK kicker or a soccer star. In addition, her favorite hobby right now is the stereotypically boy-enjoyment of construction machinery. With all the construction going on in front of our house, we have really capitalized on all of the hours of free entertainment that is right outside our doorstep. Ellie loves to go outside to watch the construction workers, and will sit there and watch until she is literally dragged away. The workers have dubbed her "the foreman" because she is there overseeing things so often.

But she still hates to get her hands dirty.

Stranger Danger! ...and Other Emotional Outbreaks

Elise has always been a social kid. She has been in daycare three days a week since she was a mere three months old. Not only that, but she has been in two different daycares with various staffing changes and shift changes, so she is used to different faces and has always been comfortable with lots of different people. She never went through any stranger anxiety that children often go through at around 9 or 10 months. She never cared who was holding her when she was a baby. She has never been the type of child to cry when her parents leave her with someone else and she has certainly never been shy around strangers.

Well, times have changed! Practically overnight, Elise has become extremely shy and completely terrified of strangers. I am not talking about the typical toddler-hide-behind-your-leg kind of shy. Oh, no, that would be too easy! I'm talking about the kind of shy where she sees a stranger and breaks into hysterical crying. Not whining, not a tear or two - hysterical crying. My mom will say that this is some sort of payback for me because I was like that from the minute I was born until I was in elementary school. I feel like the last few weeks of this has been plenty pay back and am hoping that this is just a phase.

A few weeks ago my friend Shoshana came to visit for the weekend. Elise has met Shoshana several times before - in fact we went on vacation for a week with her family last summer. She sees pictures of Shoshana in our house and points her out and says her name. So she is not even a stranger! Yet, when Shoshana walked into the room (the last time Elise saw her was in November), Elise started crying hysterically. She eventually warmed up and has talked about Shoshana non-stop since she left, but it was a rocky start.

A few days later, we were giving a ride to some people from work so we picked them up on the way to Ellie's daycare. When they got in the car, Elise completely freaked out - cried and cried the entire way to daycare. I was in the backseat with her and this seemed to be no comfort. The strangers were in the car! She would not get over it. Then a few days after that, there was a new woman at the daycare (she is doing her practicum there for the summer) and when Ellie spotted her, she refused to go inside the daycare. The poor woman had to leave the room just so Ellie would stop freaking out and come in the building!

I suppose there are pluses to being wary of strangers, but the hysterical crying is not good for anyone. In fact for the past month or so, Elise has been extremely emotional about everything. If she gets in trouble, she cries. If she doesn't get her way, she cries. If she falls down, she cries. It's like her emotions are right there and the slightest thing sets her off and makes her cry hysterically. I think that it is her way of having a tantrum, which may or may not be better than falling to the ground kicking your legs and feet and screaming like a maniac (which she does not do - she just stands there and cries).

When this all first started a few weeks ago, she'd start crying for what seems like no reason and we would repeatedly ask her to use her words and ask for what she wants or tell us what is wrong instead of crying. This was getting us nowhere, so we have started having "crying timeouts" to see if we can resolve the crying issue without going nutty. Whenever she starts crying, we remove her from the situation and let her cry and then when she's done, we can go back to playing or whatever.

She has obviously taken to the new system - maybe a little too much - because now during her timeouts she will tell us "I done crying now" or sometimes when she's about to start crying or has started crying she'll say "Ellie need a timeout". The other day she went up to Marty and said "Ellie crying. I need a timeout with Daddy" despite the fact that there was no sign of any tears or looming emotional breakdown. I think she just wanted some quality Daddy-Ellie time. Since we started crying time outs I have noticed a little drop in the emotional breakdowns. I am still hoping that both the crying and the stranger anxiety are just phases that are nearing their ends. We shall see!

Oh My God! I broke my baby!

Oh, my dear sweet lord, I broke my child. Oh, God, oh, God, Oh, God...sweetie, come to Daddy.

It was about 8:30 AM on Sunday and it was Meredith's day to sleep in. Ellie and I were at the tail end of our morning play about to go upstairs and start making breakfast for mommy, when it happened. And it happened so fast, I couldn't even really tell you what happened.

Shh... shhhh, it's okay, it's okay. Everything's going to be okay. Oh, kiddo, please don't cry. Daddy has you. Daddy has you.

We had done it at least a thousand times. In fact, it was part of our routine. She slams herself into the big blue exercise ball and I pull her up and over the top on her stomach. Then we bounce a few times, pretend to roll off a couple of times before Daddy saves her and then, plop back on the ground to do it again. Neither of us are novices at this point.

Can you show Daddy where it hurts? Is it your arm? Do you want Daddy to kiss it? No?!?

As I rocked Ellie back and forth trying to soothe her, I quickly and distinctly noticed that this time, something was different. I couldn't get her to calm down. She was in some real pain and I had caused it somehow. Usually within about two minutes, even if she trying to milk it a bit, she calms down a little and then with a good distraction and whamo! all better. But not this time. This time Ellie was holding her left arm at the wrist and wouldn't let me anywhere near it. I tried everything to get her move it around and when I went to really test it out, she shouted in pain... simply the worst sound in the world.

Oh, honey, it's okay, it's okay. Do you need to go to the hospital? (meekly: yeah) Yeah? Do you know what a hospital is? (meekly lying: yeah) Okay, let's go wake up Mommy.

Perhaps only slightly less terrifying than knowing your child is in very real pain is waking up your spouse with the news that you think you need to go to the hospital. After about 15 minutes of trying to calm Ellie down without success, I very carefully, went upstairs to tell Meredith that I think we need to go to the hospital. This coming from the parent who usually does not worry. The one who had all the confidence in the world that his child would be fine no matter what the injury. We had to go to the hospital to get Ellie's arm looked at AND so I would already be there when Meredith attempted to kill me.

Hey Mer, (crying child) I think we need to go to the hospital. (Meredith bolts up like... well like a mother who has a hurt child I guess.) What?!? Why?!?

Thankfully, no attempted murder. I underestimated Meredith's complete lack of concern for how it happened. It's all about the now, it's all about making sure Ellie is going to be okay. We spoke to the on-call nurse at the pediatrician's office and she suggested we take her in for precautionary X-Rays.

Ugh. You mean while my hands were on my child, when I had everything in full control, I did something to cause 'precautionary X-rays?!?!' Ugh.

We went over to our neighbor's house to borrow there car, so we could get to the hospital. Our car was in the shop, so we had to borrow their Prius. Nice car by the way, but I never think I'll get used to the feeling of a car being on with no engine noise or vibration. John, our neighbor was at the store, so we had to wait and Karen, nurse practitioner extraordinaire, came over to exam Ellie. She used a puppet to get Ellie distracted and move some of her fingers. The car finally came and we got up to the hospital.

Child protective services is going to come and take my child away. I can hear myself explaining to the nurses what happened, and I sound like the worst, most irresponsible father on the planet. I totally deserve to have my daughter in the hands of someone more capable.

After registering and waiting a little while with Ellie being a very good big girl, we have to get the X-Rays. As I carry her through the halls and I can almost hear the whispers.

Can you believe it? Look how perfect the child is. And there's the guy who hurt her. creep.

The nurses strap Ellie and me in and I have to hold Ellie's arm still so the machine an get a clear picture of her arm. Ellie screams because it hurts and my heart sinks even lower. After the X-rays are taken, the doctor comes in and explains that nothing is broken. (Oh, thank God, I didn't break my baby!) But Ellie has "Nurse Maid's Elbow". It's quite common he says for kids between 18 months and four years.

Not for my child, doc.

It's a dislocation of a tendon in the elbow and happens when their arms are jerked. Usually as a parent (or nurse maid I guess) reaches for a child as they are walking in the other direction. The tendon snaps back over a boney point near the joint and the child's arm is usually limp and useless until it snaps back. It's like having a dislocated shoulder that the doctor just needs to pop back in place. With a swift motion, the doctor is checking Ellie's arm and then...
They gave Ellie some Motrin and after the doc's maneuver, she was almost good as new before we got back back to the car. There is no worse feeling in the world than seeing your child in pain. With the possible exception of knowing you were the cause of said pain.

The good news is, even though I broke my baby, baby's bounce back amazingly fast. By the time we were home, she was outside playing as if nothing happened. Parenting is a series of trials and errors. Some of them will be physical, some emotional and others spiritual, but, I think you can't go wrong if the treatment always is:

Respond quickly with love and compassion and no matter what happens, things that are broken or even hurt or twisted can be always fixed.