In A Cough I Hear The Worst

Nora is coughing. It has been almost five whole months since we endured our last around the clock albuterol treatments, vomit-inducing coughing fits, and never-ending trips to the doctor. I even made the mistake of saying out loud to Nora last night that we were going to stop doing her mask (the pulmicort we’ve been on since November) this week as she winds down her time at daycare and enters her “healthy” time of year.

And today she is coughing.

She coughs and I hear pneumonia.

She coughs and I take a mental note of where her barf bowl is.

She coughs and I hold the mask a little tighter to her face.

She coughs and I wonder how long it will be until we are at the doctor’s office again,filling more prescriptions, hoping it doesn’t last and last like it always does.

She coughs and either Ken or I or both of us say, “Oh, Nora.”

She coughs and it is me who feels a little stabbing pain in my heart.

TV Talks

Ken and I love Friday Night Lights. Instead of watching the disappointing shows on the few channels we get, we are re-watching the first season at the same time we are watching the new season religiously.

The show is exceptionally well written – and living in Texas and working at a high school I can certainly see the truth in some of the seemingly exaggerated stereotypes. The best part of the show, however, is the dynamic of the Taylor family relationships, father-daughter, mother-daughter, and husband-wife.

Last night I teared up as Tammie Taylor had “the talk” with her daughter Julie. I jokingly looked over at Ken and said we should save it and maybe, in a million years from now, we can just sit Nora down in front of the TV and press play.

Her Words

Nora’s a talking machine now, pretty much repeating and holding in her tiny brain any and all words she happens by. She withholds her words, locking them away like the treasures they are, when she is commanded to speak or perform, when tricks and tales are solicited from her by parents and grandparents and friends.

Sometimes the combination of words and light flashing in her dark eyes kills me. It makes me want to hold her and hug her and freeze her in the toddler moment that causes her words to be so amazingly innocent and true. The lilt of her voice, the sound of her giggle and the expression of her personality in the silliest and simplest ways makes me appreciate language in a new way each day. What would we be without words?

She says “Otay,” all drawn out and exaggerated. Ken says it reminds him of the exaggerated hello’s on Seinfeld, a word so adorable that it could be easily mocked.

She says she does or does not want to hug people, a clear gauge of  her shyness. Usually it is just her being coy, jumping eventually at the chance to hug whoever it is who will shower attention on her.

She declares things are “Your turn,” quickly and loudly announcing the “your”, followed by the drawn out sing-song “turn.” Everything is a game.

She says yogoke instead of yogurt. And now Ken and I do too; she may never get it right and that would be “otay.”

She tells me she loves things and when she says love I hear LOVE, a true understanding of the word.

She shakes her head in the affirmative when she makes a declaration of like or dislike or expresses her desired next task. “I want to paint.” Simple notion with simple head bobs. She is sure of herself.

I teach rhetoric, causing me to see and analyze language differently from most. I’m not sure if everyone would see the tactics and tools of a budding orator in Nora’s first attempts at persuasive speech. But I see them. And they make me infinitely happy.

“I Need a Time Out”

Ken told my parents the other night that we need a discipline book. They looked at him with a bit of shock registering on their faces. Discipline? For their sweet and perfect grandchild, Nora? Yes, we said. Sometimes lately we have felt at a loss as to what to do with our strong-willed daughter who is, as I type, trying to manipulate her father into more books and more songs and more escapes from the bedroom to delay bedtime just one more time. Yes, our toddler needs some discipline.

A teacher should have this down, you may think. Don’t I discipline all day? No. I don’t. I am not so good at discipline in my classroom either – my theory is just to keep the minds and hands busy so there is no time or need for goofing around. It works well most of the time. And when it doesn’t work I feel like I need discipline lessons for the classroom too.

My parents eventually witnessed some of the small defiances that are making Ken and I feel inadequate in the toddler discipline field. Just as with a class of teenagers, really, there are just times when you really need your child to listen. And sometimes she isn’t cooperating.

So we went to the tried-and-true time-out method. We picked a chair for time-out and started to put her there to sit quietly after she has refused to stop hitting or kicking or throwing things. She sits there pretty well – sometimes asking to get down before we’ve released her, sometimes crying, sometimes just looking at us with the I’m-so-going-to-manipulate-you smile.

Time out has either become a giant success or a giant failure, I’m honestly not sure. Now, when Nora hits or kicks or throws and we tell her firmly to stop, she says, “I need a time out,” or “I want a time out.” She walks to the chair and sits there until we tell her to move.

Does she do this because she knows that she has done something wrong? Or does she do this because it’s pretty fun to sit in the time out chair and get attention when it’s all over? I don’t know. And I guess it doesn’t really matter if it’s working to make her stop the behavior.

But we do still need a book.

What good toddler discipline books have helped you?

I Miss the Brown Baby

Ever since Nora was born, I’ve been trying to give her a “lovey,” a blanket or bear or something for her to hold onto for comfort. Something that isn’t her thumb or my hair. My many attempts at choosing the comfort object have failed, however, and she prefers body parts to material objects in moments of discomfort.

Except at daycare.

At daycare she has a lovey – a “brown” baby. She gets in the car each morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to go and play with her friends and her doll. When I ask what she is going to do at school, she says, “play with the brown baby.” When I put her down on the floor of her classroom, she heads straight for the shelf where the brown baby resides overnight, picking her up and throwing her over her shoulder, where I imagine she spends the better part of the day. When we get back in the car in the afternoon, and I ask her what fun things she did that day while I was away teaching writing and literature, she says she played with her “brown baby.”

On Friday the brown baby took a trip to the washing machine. The teacher came and told Nora she was going to wash her and that she would be back on the shelf after nap time. When the teacher returned to the room after starting the laundry, Nora cuddled up close to her, “I miss the brown baby,” she said. Rubbing the teacher’s arm, Nora observed: “You’re brown.”

“Yes, I am,” said the teacher. And she sat there for a while to comfort Nora in the absence of her favorite baby.

When Miss R relayed this to me later in the afternoon, we both laughed. Nora is the kind of toddler who says what she thinks. She observed that Miss R and her daughter in Nora’s class are the the same color as her favorite baby.

As Miss R told me this story Friday afternoon, I began to wonder how Nora’s generation will “see” race. I grew up partly in a rather diverse city (and then in a completely homogeneous suburb), but I don’t remember it being as diverse as Nora’s world. I hope that a child who grows up with African-American teachers, an African-American doctor, African-American friends and a love for a special brown baby will not really even see race or color later on, that it will always be as simple and true as what she said innocently to Miss R on Friday. I hope that not only for Nora, but for all the toddlers who are growing up right now in an even more connected and tolerant age.

And because I don’t want Nora to miss her brown baby in two weeks when she isn’t at school each day, and because I am still on the quest to give Nora a comfort object at home, we went to Target today to buy our own brown baby. Nora carted her everywhere around the house and to my parents for dinner. She named her Big Sweetie.

Mom, I Have Rocks In My Mouth

Playing with the new pool again tonight, Nora hobbled over, mouth crunched and crooked, eyes concerned and confused, “Mom, I have a rock in my mouth.” I had her open up, thinking that some of the gravel that had made its way into her plastic ocean had also made its way somehow into her mouth. I warily put my finger in to feel around since I couldn’t see anything. And I felt a rock too.

“It’s just your new tooth, Nora,” I said, feeling relief and joy and pain all at once as I stared at her two bulging bottom two-year-molars that have taken more than their sweet time entering her poor little mouth.

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t like these new teeth.”

I can’t blame her. When I looked at the “rocks” bugling from beneath her swollen gum tissue I wanted to yell out in pain for her. And there are FOUR of them. Four teeth larger than any other in her mouth, seemingly double the size of her one year molars. No wonder she’s been a bit of a pain lately. She’s in pain.

On Sunday night she woke up like a newborn, almost every two hours like clockwork until I broke down and brought her in our bed sometime in the early morning. On Monday night Ken suggested we give her some motrin. You see, I never think of medicine. I put off taking medicine of any kind for as long as I can. I’m not sure why I do this, but I always have, letting headaches bring me to tears and allergies ruin my days before I consider popping a pill to fix it. Ken, he takes cold medicine at the first sniffle and advil at the first muscle twinge. So it took him finally realizing that if he had these teething pains, he would want medicine before we remembered Nora might want it too.

Tuesday morning I worshiped the motrin gods as Nora slept without incidence. Why hadn’t I thought of that earlier?

I hate teething. It has been hard since tooth number one. I’m not sure if Nora’s extra sensitive or if teething just stinks for all babies, but when these four boulders finally make their final break, maybe I’ll throw us all a party.

Summer Preparation

I have ten days of school left. Ten days until my temporary stint as stay at home mom begins. Like last year, I feel the same anxieties already building, the same fears about changing routines, surviving the usual battle for naps every day, keeping my patience with one child instead of 167. Along with these anxieties comes excitement about our summer adventures – trips to the pool, swimming lessons, adventures to the park and countless searches for unsuspecting roly poly families living in our yard.

My preparation for the summer began today with an after school trip to Academy to get Nora a pool. Instead of the tiny pink plastic one we bought last year for our tiny pink daughter, this year Nora picked out a blue one, complete with fish and a slide. We begin swimming lessons in a week and Nora’s first words when she heard that were, “I don’t want to go in the big pool.” She apparently can’t recall the pure joy she felt last year when in the water, the way she ran into Oyster Pond neck deep without even looking back at the shore. I wanted to remind her of her love of the pool before we set foot into the Y for lessons. And, I think I also wanted to remind myself that the moments I worry about surviving this summer will pale in comparison to the ones that truly make me wish summer would never end.

I’m Telling You You’re A Quiet Child

Sierra on Strollerderby writes today about getting your child to do what you would like them to do by complimenting their behavior, not by directing them to avoid certain behaviors. I should know this as a teacher. It is much more effective to tell students they are smart and capable than to tell them not to slack off or how bad their handwriting is.

Tonight is yet another teething night causing not only Nora bedtime pain (she’s fine until we try to start winding down, when all the tried and true relax-now techniques are failing lately), but bedtime pain for me as well. I can hear her right now negotiating her way through the books, songs, bed routine with Ken. She began the whole routine with a horrifying screaming exercise (egged on by her dad who is probably now regretting that decision).

According to the strollerderby post, instead of walking into the room with her water tonight and saying, “stop screaming,” I should have said, “You’re a very quiet child.” Somehow I don’t think that would have worked either.

Some Days are More Two Than Others

Two weeks ago we took Nora to a friends’ house for dinner. Nestled in her backyard was a storybook house, miniature and perfect, just what Nora had always dreamed about, I’m sure. She played in the house, rocking in the chairs, building with her blocks we had brought. She didn’t eat much at dinner, but she didn’t fuss or complain, simply getting down from her chair and continuing to quietly construct towers with her blocks. She was an angel, perfectly behaved.

These are the moments that trick you into thinking that the “terrible two’s” are a myth, that you have the perfect child, are the perfect parent. And then nights like tonight happen to quickly bring you back down to earth. Because some days she is just more two than others.

By the time we left my parents from dinner tonight, Nora had stripped off all her clothes, momentarily running around naked until I caught her and told her she better not pee on Meme’s floor. She has recently discovered that she is capable of stripping off her clothes without assistance, which makes taking clothes off much more fun than putting clothes on these days. This nakedness ensued after repeatedly and purposefully spilled cheerios, regurgitated chicken, thrown rice and other lovely defiances. We took our almost naked daughter, put her in the carseat and headed home. She tricked me for a while by sitting quietly on my lap, reading her books. But bedtime didn’t go smoothly, perhaps because we’ve kept her up so much lately, perhaps because her molars are just white nubs under the thinnest surface of gum, perhaps just because she’s one of the bossiest two year old’s I’ve ever known.

Today being two meant all the stereotypes that go along with it. Let’s hope tomorrow she’ll trick me into thinking we’re all perfect again.

Breaking Free

Sometimes it’s alright to keep your kid up late.

I told myself that multiple times today as I decided whether or not I was going to go and watch Ken and Uncle Ian in their bike race. What the heck, I thought, she hasn’t been great at bedtime anyway, why not throw another wrench in the works, test the waters, break free of the routine.

And so I went. And it was fun. And Ken is putting Nora to bed right now and she is being equally a pill about it as she was last night – no worse and no better.

When I think about what I would like to most change about myself as a mom it is that I feel so incredibly, cripplingly tied to a routine. If it doesn’t go according to plan down to the minute I begin to analyze the failings of my day, chart my course back on track. I know many moms who flourish with spontaneity and whim. Why can’t I be like that, I think.

I don’t remember ever being this routine before I had Nora. Sure I liked structure, I hated to have things popped on me last second, took time getting adjusted when plans suddenly changed, but this attachment to minute by minute schedules? No. That wasn’t me at all.

But I guess that is who I am as a mom. At least for now.

I broke my rules tonight. And it felt good.