So Far So Good...

Tonight was it: the night we took away the pacifier!

It's about quarter after 9 as I write this and Anna is fast asleep. Yesssss....

It was a bit rocky but not as bad as I had feared. I envisioned a full-on meltdown, complete with reddened face, bulging veins, and snot streaks under her nose. Fortunately I was way off!

When we first faced the no-foofoo situation, she did start to cry. She then waited patiently as I fully emptied her diaper bag (at her request), which is usually where the foofoo ends up at bedtime, having been brought home from daycare. I gestured grandly, "see, no foofoo!" but she was already playing with a light-up truck phone that had been taken out of the bag. Round one: Mama.

A few minutes later she asked for her foofoo again and I explained gently, "Foofoo all gone. All done foofoo." She grimaced, she wailed a little, she took a moment to search under her crib, then stood up and confirmed in a resigned tone, "all done foofoo."

The tuck-in and final good-night went quite well, better than expected, but then started the moaning & groaning. I let her whine (never fully crying) for a good bit of time before I went back in and rocked her some more. The second time seems to have worked... she's been quiet since 8:45!!

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the night pans out... one of the main reasons we decided it was time for foofoo to be dispatched to the great beyond is that she's been waking up more frequently lately, wailing for us until we plug it back in, then immediately falling back to sleep. She's perfectly capable of settling herself back down at this age. We'll see if night 1 of the NFE (no foofoo era) is full of fitful wake-ups or not.

But seriously - I did not think things would be going this well at this point!! Don't want to call it a victory yet though... it's a long night.

Scary

We got away easy, but man did we have a scary scary SCARY moment tonight.

Don't freak out - Anna is fine, totally fine - but tonight she fell down a flight of stairs.

We were visiting some of our church friends across town. The parenting group was getting together to eat, watch football, and hang out.

Their house has lots of stairs, very unconventional layout, and their kids are teenagers so they've long since un-babyproofed.

Anna is very much drawn to stairs right now - she loves going up and down and up and down and again and again and AGAIN so it was just a recipe for disaster, really - tons of stairs and a toddler who is currently drawn to them like a magnet.

She just got away from us for just a brief moment and bam, there she goes, tumbling down the stairs.

I didn't see her fall so I don't know how she DIDN'T get seriously hurt, but somehow she managed to end up virtually unscathed. No obvious bumps or bruises and no signs of concussion. The fact that the stairs were pretty thickly carpeted surely played a role in keeping her safe.

I just... I can't even believe it! We were trying so hard to keep her under wraps, passing her back and forth throughout the visit. I also can't believe how LUCKY we are, to have had a very dangerous and scary thing happen yet have her come away just fine.

For those of you who may be concerned that we might have missed a sign of concussion, here's why we think she's fine:

• She never lost consciousness, just after it happened or at an uncalled-for moment later on. She did doze off in the car on the way home but, mind you, she had no nap today.
• Just after it happened and we got her calmed down, she easily counted to 15 on request.
• She continued to be as sharp and articulate as normal for the entire rest of the evening. She talked, read, sang, and danced as normal.
• We checked her pupil dilation with a flashlight when we got home. Her pupils looked fine and she even played a while with the flashlight afterwards, shining it back in our eyes and delighting in seeing the light spot float all over the walls.

So we're good. Anna's okay and Chris and I both managed to not throw up upon realizing that she had fallen down a whole flight of stairs.

Whew.

WHEW.

Donations and Health Kits for Haiti

We have to all do something about Haiti. Every single one of us.

All day today my my thoughts drifted to Haiti. I tried to put my myself, my husband, and my daughter in the shoes of Haitians affected by the earthquake.

What if Anna was trapped under the rubble and we could call to her but could not get her out?

What if she was wounded and dying but we could not find a doctor to treat her?

What if she survived the first few days but then died of cholera or dysentery due to lack of sanitation, the two of us powerless to help?

What if she survived the injuries and the disease but then slowly starved to death? Or was killed in the civil unrest resulting from millions of people trying desperately to survive?

What if she died and we had no means to bury her properly?

How on Earth could we go on??

There are REAL people facing all of these REAL problems above and more right NOW. Real parents, real children, real sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles.

What can you do?

First, you can send money. www.redcross.org, www.umcor.org. Please please PLEASE give. Give as much as you can.

After you have given, please consider putting together some simple health kits. When there is no sanitation, the ability to provide basic hygiene can and will save lives. The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) is asking for health kits to distribute in Haiti. Throw a few extra items in your cart the next time you're shopping and collect the following items in a sealed one-gallon ziploc bag:

1 hand towel (15" x 25" up to 17" x 27", No kitchen towels)

1 washcloth

1 comb (large and sturdy, not pocket-sized)

1 nail file or fingernail clippers (no emery boards or toenail clippers)

1 bath-size bar of soap (3 oz. and up)

1 toothbrush (single brushes only in original wrapper, No child-size brushes)

6 adhesive plastic strip sterile bandages

$1.00 to purchase toothpaste (just a $1 bill for each kit is fine; put it in an envelope if you want. If you wish to donate more please write a check for the toothpaste cost and your donation - make it out to UMCOR.)

Notes on health kits:

• All items included in kits must be NEW items.
• All emergency kits are carefully planned to make them usable in the greatest number of situations. Since strict rules often govern product entry into international countries, it is important that kits contain only the requested items-nothing more.
• Do not include any personal notes or additional materials in the kits. These things must be painstakingly removed and will delay the shipment.

What to do with the kits when you are done:

If you live in the Lansing area, you can give them to me. Two people from my church will be leaving for Haiti on January 26th (tentative) and they can take kits with them.

If you don't live near me, you have two options:

1) Call a local United Methodist Church (http://tinyurl.com/umchurches) and ask if they are able to accept health kit donations for UMCOR.

2) Ship your completed health kits to the UMCOR Depot in Louisiana.

Address:

UMCOR Sager Brown Depot

P.O. Box 850 131 Sager Brown Road

Baldwin, LA 70514-0850

Before you ship anything, please review the shipping instructions here: http://tinyurl.com/healthkits

Please hurry - the need in Haiti is overwhelming at the moment. Do whatever you can. Thanks to all of you.

Cuteness and Sickness

I have a lot to catch up on from the past two [busy] days. All the stuff I want to tell you about is either about cuteness or sickness.

Cuteness

I'll just bullet point these little gems out:

• Yesterday while I was at work, Anna was sitting on the couch next to Chris. Out of the blue she laid her head on his arm and said "Hi Dada, I wuv you."
• Lately we've been doing the whole "This little piggy went to market" thing with her toes and she has been eating it up with a fork and spoon. So much so that both yesterday and today she grabbed Chris' toes and gave the rhyme a try: "An a market, an a market, an a market, an a market, WEEWEEWEEWEE... home."
• Last night we were on our way out the door to take Anna to the doctor. Chris was getting the car ready and I was almost ready to go - I had Anna's coat, hat, and mittens on, and my own coat and scarf. I was walking quickly around the kitchen/dining/living room area switching off lights. Anna noticed that I hadn't put my hat on yet and was apparently worried that I would forget it because I found her chasing me around the room, hat pinched between her mitten hands, worried look on her face, yelling "here Mama! Here Mama! Here Mama!!"
• This one is more smartness than cuteness - As we were walking up to the doctor's office Anna started saying an odd-sounding word with three syllables. I couldn't make it out at first but as we got closer to the building I realized her eyes were fixed on a stop sign and suddenly the word she was saying made sense - "octagon." (How is this even possible???)

Sickness

Anna has not been 100% healthy since early December. It's always been mild, has seemed to come and go, and she never seemed that slowed down by it. Just your standard runny nose with accompanying cough. She would also sometimes put her fingers in her ears but we just thought she was being silly... she discovered that it was funny to stick her fingers in her ears and go LALALALALALA! so we didn't think much of it.

Earlier in the week I thought she had a fever because her temp was in the 99's. Because I was sick with a fever earlier, I called it in when I got home from work yesterday. The nurse didn't think much of the fever but was alarmed by the longevity of Anna's runny nose and asked her to come in asap. They had a 7:40pm appointment open and we took it.

The doctor said she didn't really have a fever - rectal temperatures below 100 are ok for her age - but that she does have both an ear infection and a sinus infection.

At first I felt like such a deadbeat parent - she's been sick for WEEKS and I didn't do much of anything about it! Just some saline drops, motrin now and again, some vapo rub... what a jerk, right? How could we let her be sick like that???

Then I thought more about it. There is much made of parents who become obsessive and call in every little sniffle, every little bump, anything. Kids are going to get sick and unless it becomes seriously problematic, we are supposed to just ride it out and let it strengthen their immune systems. Because Anna is almost ridiculously sunshiny, it was very hard to tell that she was feeling all that bad. So we were just coasting, assuming that she was just getting a series of smaller bugs. How were we supposed to know?

So it stinks that we let her be sick for so long, but it didn't seem to cramp her style much at all and she's going to get better now. I think it's pretty good that she made it to 18 months without needing an antibiotic.

That's all the news for now... tomorrow it's back to daycare! She has been missed - last night when I called to tell Marcia that Anna wouldn't be in today, she told me that one of the little boys about her age has just been wandering around the daycare calling out "Anna! ... Anna!"

Awww.

Hello from Papa

My Grandfather (known as Papa) passed away in October. This past Saturday the family gathered again at Nana and Papa's house to celebrate (snow-delayed) Christmas. Nana asked each of us to take at least one thing out of Papa's basement. He boasted an impressive collection of clocks, electronics, and... well, many, MANY other things.

As Anna has been very much into trains lately, I chose to take a Lionel train alarm clock for her. It's really a mini Lionel set. A little train runs in circles through a mountain tunnel and a small town scene. We didn't get it running at the time - we weren't sure how!

Yesterday I was fixing something in the kitchen and Chris was watching Anna in the living room. I heard this weird rhythmic noise and just figured that Chris was watching some weird video on his laptop, probably something viral forwarded by one of his buddies. After it continued for a little while I realized it wasn't him and asked him what was going on. It took him a moment to figure out that the train clock's alarm was going off!

I went into our office and got it, then brought it to the living room to show Anna. She was nothing short of ENTRANCED. She just stared at it with delight, completely defying all toddler attention span norms.

I'm sure Papa was laughing when we were trying to figure out that weird noise and smiling brightly at Anna's joy from this mainstay of his creative clock collection.

Anna as Royalty

Our minister took her holiday break late for obvious reasons and she needed someone to fill in for the sermon today. She asked Chris to do it and he did a wonderful job. It was fun for Anna to see him up front. At odd moments she would yell out "HI DADA! HIEEE!!!" and put the congregation in stitches.

Today was Epiphany and our church bakes a traditional "King's Cake" for everyone to eat at fellowship afterwards. There are 3 beans hidden in the cake and if you get a bean in your cake, you are one of the 3 Magi.

We didn't get a bean in our piece of cake but when we were almost done eating, I got a tap on the shoulder. A man had found a bean and was holding it out. "Uh, I think Anna dropped her plate?"

She got a crown (which she didn't want to wear) and a cute star ornament for her Christmas tree with today's date on it. Nice!