Grandma's Ill-Fated Visit

High hopes: Car ride to Calgary

I'm pretty sure my mother is having the best time of her life. I know this, because she just walked in to tell me, "A spider just fell on my neck while I was downstairs. I'm looking up natural remedies to get rid of spiders." I like to treat my guests right.

But if we were to go back to the beginning, we'd take a trip down memory lane to Monday, when S, Q, and I made the 3-hour-drive to Calgary (P.S. It's a 4-hour-drive when you have a baby) to pick Mom up from the airport. Everything went pretty smoothly--we had planned a stay in a nice hotel so that we could go to the zoo the next day. The Hampton Inn of our choice was beautiful--it was only 7 months old, everything felt clean, the pool was nice, they provided a great little crib for Q, had ample free coffee, etc.

Playing on the hotel bed

We ate dinner (which involved driving around aimlessly in an attempt to find a decent restaurant before dejectedly settling on Subway), played in the pool, took showers, and then drew the black-out curtains and set Q in her crib at a little after 8pm. We all sat quietly in the dark on our various electronic devices or simply laid on the fluffy bedding. 9pm. Q is babbling to herself. She's singing little bits of "Barbara Ann" and counting ("1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 6, 9, 6..."). She's fussing and insisting on cuddles (I have to acquiesce, because I don't know how much her crying is disturbing our hotel neighbors). 10pm. I had wanted to perhaps have another quick swim, and the pool closes at 11. The babbling voice in the crib is silent. By this time, Mom has gotten ready for bed and is ready to doze, herself.

10:15pm. The most inhuman, earsplitting, bone-rattling, screeching fire alarm blares through our hotel room. Q wakes up wailing. The sound is so terrible that I can't even think, except for, "Get the baby, leave the building." Mom throws on a robe over her nightgown, and I scoop a pajamaed Q out of her crib and head out the door. Just as we get down the stairs (we're only on the 2nd floor, thankfully) and outside, the alarm stops. We stand around, dazed, and eventually shuffle back inside with all the rest of the people. My hopes of getting any pool time are crushed.

Lobby, 5am

We'll just shorten this up a bit and say that Q fussed on and off all night before waking up bright and early at 4:30am, at which point she and I wandered around the hotel for a couple of hours before coming back for a nap. So on very little sleep, but after a delicious continental breakfast, we checked out of our hotel room (which we got for FREE, believe it or not, after Mom casually mentioned to the front desk that the fire alarm possibly resulted in a bad sleep for the baby) and embarked upon our zoo adventure...

...Which really wasn't all that adventurous. It was crowded with school groups, hot, and we wandered for quite a distance before we were actually able to find any animals. An hour and a half into our outing, and Q was no longer impressed. So we called it a morning, grabbed some lunch, and headed toward home.

One hour from home, Q lost her lunch. We pulled over to the side of the road and spent the next 20 minutes trying to clean up the car seat, changing her clothes, discovering she has the runs, changing her diaper, RE-changing her clothes, etc. She had, unfortunately, deposited some of her bodily fluids on my pants, so I was very stinky for the remainder of the ride. I sat in the backseat with her and caught her stomach contents in whatever blankets or dirty clothes I could find. We finally made it home.

Q threw up a number of times that evening/night (10 total?), and it was a flurry of unpacking, hosing off soiled linens, changing her crib sheets, sending S out to buy more waterproof mattress pads, and all manner of disinfecting. She was burning up with a fever the next day and very lethargic, insisting that I hold her the entire day. The following days she has begun to get slowly better, but she is still not able to keep much food down, and we are having to coax fluids into her (she had her first popsicle today and appeared to be a big fan). In the meantime, my mother has been doing all of the cooking and dishes and many loads of soiled laundry, as well as mopping all of the floors after Q's sickest day. I have, for the most part, been stuck under a very sick baby who only wants her mama to hold her.

Thankfully, Q had perked up considerably today. She was still not able to keep down food, but she was cheerful and talking and playing. We were able to leave her with S so that Mom and I could go shopping and out to lunch. We have not, sadly, been able to do any of the little outings I had hoped to do with Q (such as the library and butterfly garden). Tomorrow is Mom's last day here, and it's pretty much been a wash for her. Perhaps that spider was merely dropping by to express his condolences.

Another Post About the Short Person Who Lives in My House

So many of my posts are problem-focused, I would like to take some space to tell you how much I freakin' love this kid. Seriously.

One of the things I love about children is how RANDOM they are. I was reminded of that today when Q wrapped her hair bow around the old insulin pen I gave her (don't worry, it's empty) and said, "Pretty shot!" (She recently had her 18-month-old shots and made a MUCH bigger deal about getting weighed and measured than she did about receiving the actual needle. Now no more immunizations until age 4!) She's also beginning to be able to speak about things that happened in the past. "Teepee!" she said today, alluding to our trip to visit the teepees that are temporarily set up in the empty field along Maple Ave. She thought a moment and said, "Inside teepee." (I made a big deal about us going inside the teepees and not just playing on the nearby playground.) It is a new experience for me to hear her remember things and be able to vocalize them.

 

She makes me laugh every day. When she's being bad and I take a stern tone with her, she starts yelling, "Time out! Time out!" I haven't tried to implement a time out in over a month, I think. She runs away from me at bedtime, toddling awkwardly down the hall while she cries, "Run away!" She also likes to hide now, and always announces it beforehand by saying, "Hiding." Hiding, to her, can be as simple as turning her head away so she can't see us. Of course we play along.

We are spending time in the backyard every day, and it has become our little sanctuary. It's a small, rectangular yard with a slide, a baby pool (when it's not too cold), and a couple of little outdoor toys. I sit in the grass and weed while she explores. Sometimes she comes up beside me and pulls out a handful of grass with her fist. "Weed," she informs me. She also INSISTS that I put on my "suncream." And if I try to get away with only putting it on my arms, she says, "Chest! Neck!" and helps me rub it in. She appears to be mildly afraid of bugs. And she takes great pleasure in drinking from the sprinkler.

Oh, and she's a great eater. My brother says she traded in being sociable for being a good eater. She'll try almost anything, and even if she doesn't like it for the first one or two bites, she'll try again. She eats almost everything we eat. Tonight she ate pork chops with rhubarb relish. I recall being quite a picky eater as a kid, so I think I just got lucky with that one! She doesn't seem to require much snacking, so she chows down at mealtime. I hope this adventurousness in eating and healthy appetite continue indefinitely!

She is now at an age where she will tolerate having her toenails painted, and I think it helps contribute to a more "girly" look, which we sometimes struggle to achieve because I don't like too much pink and she doesn't have long hair. Not that it really matters, but the number of times she has been called a boy despite wearing frilly clothing (just because of her hair, I assume) is startling. Plus, painted toenails are dang cute on a baby.

Oh, and I thank you all very much for your comments on my last post about her excessive shyness. I have come to the conclusion that you're right. She is who she is. And she's still extremely young, so she might grow out of it. I'm not going to "force" her to be friendly. I will always encourage her to be polite, but I won't make a big deal out of her clinginess and will simply spend my time enjoying the close bond that we have. These slow days of routine and exploring and errands and cleaning are special to me. I thank God for lending Q to me--she helps me see the world through different eyes.

Shyness, Your Highness.

Here is my beautiful daughter, 18 months old. And guess what? She's shy. Man, is she shy. And I'm trying to figure out what to do about it. More specifically, I'm trying to figure out IF I should do anything about it.

Here is how her shyness manifests: If a stranger looks at her or talks to her, she turns her head away and gets as close to me as she can, saying, "Mama." It doesn't necessarily have to be a stranger, though. She even pushes away her daddy--usually in the mornings--and clings to me because she's afraid I'll go on errands and leave her behind. Yesterday I told her, "I'm getting you some cucumbers. I'll be RIGHT back." I left her in the backyard with my good friend and her daughter, who Q sees about once a week. When I came back approximately 60 seconds later, she was crying hysterically. I can't do simple things like set her in the grocery cart beside her friend while we're shopping (unless I then push the cart--but even then, she's nervous). She doesn't stop crying while in the church nursery. She is painfully slow to warm up to both people and places. She'll eventually get used to them and start exploring, but under no circumstances will she tolerate me leaving.

However, I'm not convinced that I should do anything about this. She is 18 months. She is far more shy than the other kids I see, but I'm fairly convinced that a lot of it is personality and/or genetics. I was VERY clingy to my mother. It actually made my childhood quite difficult (for both me and her!). I don't want to go down that road. But I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, either.

With children, it seems we have to work to teach them the opposite of whatever traits they naturally possess. I probably won't be having long talks about "stranger danger" with Q, because that isn't going to be her weakness. We'll have to have more talks about trusting our friends and family and being okay when Mama leaves for a little while. I think I say she's shy too much. And if I keep applying that label to her, people will treat her as if she is. And when she's old enough to understand, she may internalize the label and struggle to ever break free of it. I don't know. It's all so tricky. I just don't know the answer.

I don't mind her being serious and having a critical eye of new people and situations. But I also want her to be brave and have fun and be full of fire and spit. She's so young, though, that it could still just be a phase (although I'm starting to doubt it), so maybe I should just wait a little longer. We get out and do things--we see family, I leave her with Daddy while I run errands, she plays at the YMCA, we have a playdate with her friend every week, we go to church most weeks... So it's not that she's never around anyone else. She is my first child and I am by nature a protective parent, so that possibly contributes. But it's not the whole story.

I love my daughter. She is smart and hilarious and careful and thoughtful and can talk like nobody's business. I love her shyness, too. I just want to be sure I am parenting in the correct style for her disposition and that excessive shyness doesn't get in the way of her having a productive and happy childhood.