One!

Posted on April 10, 2012 by amanda

One year ago yesterday, Neal and I welcomed an amazing, beautiful, funny little girl into our lives.

On the one hand, it blows my mind that a year has already gone by, that so many changes have taken place. But on the other hand, it feels like Claire has always been a part of our lives, and it’s hard to remember what life was like before.

We were planning to have a medium-size birthday bash here for Claire, having invited a few close friends and family. As it turned out, it ended up being a party consisting of me, Neal, Claire, and my in-laws who had driven down from Saint John for the long weekend. Not surprisingly, Claire came down with a cold not long after starting daycare; in fact, I think she caught it during the orientation week. Possibly thanks to her (gross) habit of smooshing her boogers into her eyes, she developed an eye infection. We suspected something was going on a couple of days before, but we were hoping that the crusties fusing her eyelashes shut were just a combination of what everyone calls “sleep” and her eyes running a bit more due to the cold. But on Saturday morning, one of her eyes was puffy and slightly swollen.

I called 811 and spoke with a registered nurse. She told me we could treat her at home for now, unless the condition worsened, by using Polysporin eye drops. I don’t think it was pink eye, because her eyeball wasn’t pink or red at all, but rather a generic eye infection. Thankfully, the eye drops cleared up the pus within a day; as is usual for antibiotics – including the over-the-counter types – we will continue the treatment for 7-10 days.

It was disappointing to cancel the party, but for one thing, it’s not like Claire knew about anything. If this had to happen any year, this was probably a good one. For another, we celebrated anyway by hanging up some decorations, dressing Claire in a fancy dress she got at Christmas from her Aunt Carolyn, and eating the cake I had baked and decorated the day before.

Peek-a-boo!

Opening presents!

My big, happy girl

Family photo!

I figured that since Claire’s birthday fell on Easter weekend this year, a bunny cake was called for.

Cake!

Posted in Baby Talk, Stuff | 5 Comments

Week One Down!

Posted on April 6, 2012 by amanda

We all made it through Week One of me being back at work! It wasn’t much of an adjustment for Neal, of course, because he was already going to work; he just had to get up a little earlier. Claire did really well, and has been showing progress everyday. On Monday, she refused to nap except when they all went for a walk in the stroller. Subsequently, she kept dozing off at supper:

But as the week wore on, she became more and more comfortable. On Thursday she actually had two naps! She is also eating really well, which makes me happy. She still cries when we bring her there in the morning, but yesterday her cries were a little less sad, and even before we left the room, she was starting to calm down. Strangely, she also cries when we go to pick her up. The ladies tell us they’re tears of joy.

As for work, I have to say… that I’m actually kind of happy to be back. The rational side of my brain tells me that that’s not a bad thing, and it doesn’t mean I’m a bad mother. But I do feel guilty about it. Don’t get me wrong – I HATE how little time I get with her in the evenings. We get home, have supper, and then there’s only a little bit of time for play before it’s time for her to get ready for bed. But I do enjoy my job, and I also enjoy being around other adults again.

I’m not in the same spot as I was before. I’m now on the second floor of our office (so the 22nd floor of our building), which has far fewer people on it. I will admit that when I first heard about it, I was a little sad because I used to be able to see the harbour from my old spot through one of the lawyer’s windows. Now I don’t have any windows around me.

But now that I’m there, I’m really happy. It’s nice and quiet, and I have personalized my desk, possibly more than before. I managed to take one picture before the camera battery died, and then once I put it on the computer, I realized there were court documents on my desk that showed up in the picture. It’s extremely difficult to make out any names, but ’tis better to be safe than sorry. So I’ll snap a picture next week.

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Back to Reality

Posted on April 1, 2012 by amanda

I go back to work tomorrow.

It’s crazy to think that more than a year has gone by. My last day of work was March 18th, 2011 thanks to a bunch of vacation days and banked time I had at the time. But what is really strange is, in fact, how un-strange it feels to be going to work tomorrow. It’s as though it hasn’t been a year-plus that I have been away, but just a longer vacation, like a month or something. I don’t feel as though I have lost a lot of my foreclosure knowledge, although I’m sure that some review of the training manual I created for my replacement will be necessary. I’m going to be in a new spot, on the top floor of the office building, but I’m working with the same lawyer (thank goodness!), and although there are some new people working at the firm, many of the people are the same.

That’s not to say that I’m not a little nervous about the return. I am still pretty much the same person I was this time last year, except for one fundamental change: I’m a mother. There will certainly be some adjustment going on to this new life of picking Claire up at daycare, cooking and eating supper, bathing and playing a little bit with Claire and then putting her to bed, getting our stuff ready for work the next day, and getting our butts to bed at a decent hour so that we have the energy to do it all again the next morning. I’m pretty good at adapting to change, however, so I just have to remind myself of this fact and trust in myself.

There’s something else though, something that I’m struggling with a little bit. There is a part of me that is actually looking forward to returning to work tomorrow. Maybe that doesn’t sound like something that one would ‘struggle’ with, but the irrational part of my brain yells at me for being a ‘bad mother’, because how could a ‘good mother’ want to leave her child all day in the care of others? I know this is silly, of course. By working, I am helping to provide a more stable financial life for all of us, and as Claire grows, I hope that my example will teach her that she too can have a career and a family, to be independent and not wholly reliant on a spouse.

And, despite the fact that I am looking forward to my return tomorrow, I also have to admit that if the government were to contact me and say that I could have another six months or year at home with Claire and I would continue to get EI during that time, I would jump at the chance. I have just accepted the reality that this is when I have to return to work, and I am extremely fortunate to have a job I truly enjoy with a great firm.

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Not the Best Time to be Forgetful

Posted on March 30, 2012 by amanda

It’s never pleasant when I forget to take my antidepressant for my anxiety. I usually take it at suppertime, and thanks to its short half-life, I will start having withdrawal symptoms the following day – butterflies, jittery-ness, a fuzzy out-of-it sensation in my head, and fatigue. But to forget to take it now, when I’m already a little more anxious due to Claire starting daycare this week (well, the orientation part anyway), and me starting back at work next week, is ultimate time to make sure I remember to take my Effexor.

And… I forgot to take it last night. I realized it right away this morning when I was quickly washing my face. It will normally take until around noon for the withdrawal symptoms to start hitting me, but thanks to already being anxious and tired, and probably my awareness of having forgotten, means that I’m already feeling all of those things above. As a fellow anxiety-sufferer put it, it often helps to write it out. So here I am.

Claire’s day at daycare yesterday went pretty well. I ended up picking her up around 1pm because she refused to nap in the morning and afternoon, and the daycare workers thought that she would probably go downhill and if they can avoid her being super-upset when leaving daycare, particularly at this vulnerable time at the beginning, they will. Obviously, she’ll just have to make do next week as Neal and I will both be at work, but I’m home this week and have the car, so I’m happy to go get her.

Other than the refusal to sleep though, she has done remarkably well. Her mood was great all day (other than when they tried to get her to nap, especially in the morning). She did refuse to take a bottle from Janie, but she ate all of her lunch, which consisted of a bowl of spaghetti, a piece of bread, and some apple. Even when I got there, she looked up at me and babbled, but she didn’t hurry over. Rather, she just went back to playing with a toy next to another little girl who didn’t want to have an afternoon nap.

She almost fell asleep on the drive home, which is all of roughly ten minutes, and she was pretty limp when I pulled her out of her carseat, but then she almost seemed to get a second (or third or fourth) wind, and it was surprisingly difficult to get her to go down for a nap here at home. She sucked her bottle back without any issues, so that might just be something she does at home (which is fine since it’s time to start phasing out the bottle anyway), but then babbled for the longest time. Unfortunately, since we had to pick Neal up at work, that meant she didn’t get to have a long nap once she did finally drift off. She fell asleep on the drive to the base, but then stayed awake for the drive home.

And last night. Oy. She conked out pretty quickly at first when Neal put her to bed, but then woke up a little while later. We made her another bottle, but she didn’t want it; rather, she just wanted to be rocked a bit. And then, throughout the night, she would wake up, cry for a couple of seconds, and then go back to sleep. I mentioned her broken sleep to Janie this morning when I dropped her off, and she said that it was probably anxiety over the daycare situation. Although yes, she has fun there, she wants to make sure that Mommy and Daddy are there. It’s pretty common, and her anxiety will go away, eventually (as will mine, I imagine).

Today is also up in the air. They will try the morning nap, lunch and afternoon nap, and I will call around noon to see how she’s making out. If she isn’t sleeping then, I will go straight over so that hopefully she can get a nap in here before we go to pick Neal up. I miss her terribly, and it is AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL to be here at home without her (in some ways being back at work might be easier!), but I do hope that she can stay until 3pm. It’ll make it a little easier on Monday when she has to stay until 4:30pm.

But one thing is for sure – seeing how she has taken to the place makes me feel better and I now know that she will adjust to this new schedule. Every child is going to have something that takes time at daycare, and for Claire, it’s napping. Like Janie said, it’s more important to her that the child is having fun and eating than having naps. The naps will come as she grows used to the new environment.

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Daycare Orientation, Day Two

Posted on March 28, 2012 by amanda

Alternate Title: So Freakin’ Proud

Claire went for her second orientation day at the daycare today. This was the one where I drop her off for an hour by herself. There wasn’t much lingering going on. I went in, took her coat off, told the ladies where her supplies were (in her diaper bag), gave Claire a hug and a kiss, and handed her over. I expected a cry of protest as she doesn’t always take well to being handed off to someone else, particularly to someone she doesn’t know, but she seemed to be fine. I knew it would be a million times harder to leave my crying daughter, so I called myself a coward and bolted.

An hour. It’s not much, really. How many times have I had an hour to do something that really shouldn’t take very long, and I’m still rushing around to finish? I certainly had no intention of simply going to Tim Horton’s and staring into a cup of tea for an hour, so I had set myself some errands. My glasses needed to be adjusted after having been yanked off my face a gazillion times – I’m sure if I had bent over while wearing them, they would have fallen right off my face. So I got those adjusted, then went to the connected grocery store to pick up a few things, including some supplies (such as diapers, wipes, etc) that would be left at the daycare. Chicken breasts are on sale this week, so I picked up some of those, and some milk, and some frozen fruit for some smoothies I’m going to drink on workday mornings to save some time, and so on and so forth. I wasn’t rushing around, and yet, I still found myself glancing at my watch and internally groaning at how much time was still left.

At last though, I could go through the cash, climb back into the car, and drive back over to the daycare. The baby room is right at the front of the building, so you can see through the large windows. Rather than simply run back in, I peeked through the window to see what Claire was doing. It was snack time, and she (like the other kids) was strapped in a high chair. She wasn’t crying or screaming, but she didn’t look all that happy. My heart sank a little bit.

But I need not have worried. Jeanie (or Janie – not sure which, but we’ll go with Jeanie) quickly told me – the second she saw me come in – that Claire had tears in her eyes because she wasn’t feeding her the yogurt fast enough. Heh, yup, that’s my girl, all right! Claire is also getting to be quite stubborn with her desire to wield the spoon herself, even though she really doesn’t have the motor skills for that yet. So she gets frustrated and will grab at and then hit the spoon away. Jeanie asked me if she liked yogurt, and I assured her she does, but that she likes to feed herself these days. It’s not that I let her, obviously, when it comes to things that require spoons. But I may give her a hint that I use – I give her an extra spoon to hold. She eventually catches on and tries to grab the spoon with the food, but you can at least get some into her.

Other than that, she did cry not long after I left, but not because she noticed I wasn’t there. A little boy accidentally dropped a toy on her head, and although she wasn’t hurt, it upset her (well, I guess I’d be upset too!). She was easily consoled, however, when Jeanie picked her up. The other kids were napping, and Claire stayed on Jeanie’s lap for what was probably 15-20 minutes until it was time for the kids to get up – the fact that she stayed still is, in itself, a miracle. Jeanie must have the magic touch!

So tomorrow we’re going to ‘play it by ear’. Claire and I will drive Neal into work, then I’ll drop her off at daycare. She’ll definitely spend morning nap, snack and lunch there, and then I will call around noon or so to see how she’s doing. If she’s doing well, she will spend the rest of the day there (well, I’ll be there to pick her up around 3pm and then we’ll go get Neal), and we probably won’t do the daycare thing on Friday so that she and I can spend the day together, which will be nice considering that I start back at work on Monday. If she’s not doing so well, then I will pick her up and she’ll probably spend the day there on Friday.

As for me, I’ll probably go get my hair cut and as I didn’t pick up the main order for groceries today, I’ll probably pick up the week’s supply so that I don’t have to worry about it on Thursday evening or on Friday. And then? Stare into a cup of tea, probably.

Posted in Baby Talk, Daycare | 1 Comment

Daycare Orientation, Day One

Posted on March 27, 2012 by amanda

Claire and I got back from our first day of daycare orientation a little while ago, and it went really well. Of course, this is the day where we both stay in the baby room for an hour, whereas tomorrow Claire is on her own, but still. I think it’s not only important that the child gets to meet the ladies and other kids with a parent around, but it is equally important for the parent to observe their child in that setting.

I don’t know how other kids are when it comes to things like this, as Claire is our only child, but she seemed to fit right in. She went over and played with toys, and when the other kids got up from their naps, she went right in and played with them, and had some snacks, and honestly at that point, she barely ever even looked at me.

Now, this is not to say that I am deluding myself into thinking she won’t cry at all when I do leave her there. Tomorrow could very well be The Day. If she sees me leave, she’ll probably cry, but chances are, she will be too distracted to really notice until later on when she decides to look for Mommy… only Mommy isn’t there, but likely in a Tim Horton’s crying into a cup of tea.

But today? It was great! We actually stayed for more than an hour, and I had to practically chase Claire around the room with her jacket when it really was time for us to go, so that’s a good sign.

A few things about the centre:

* If Claire hasn’t had time to eat breakfast in the morning, they will feed her upon arrival as long as I provide her breakfast. My intention is to feed her before we leave, but if she’s just not up to it because it’s so early, then at least I don’t have to worry too much.

* They really seem to encourage switching to whole milk in a sippy cup cold-turkey. Obviously, I’m still the boss as far as that is concerned. If I want to continue with formula, I have to provide that, but they provide the whole milk. She is under a year, and generally speaking, it’s not recommended that babies be switched before 12 months, but my doctor doesn’t seem to be too concerned since Claire is on track for her weight. Plus, she’ll be a year in just under two weeks (holy SHIT, people!), so I don’t think I need to be TOO worried. I have actually given her whole milk from time to time, sometimes mixing it with formula, sometimes giving her just the milk, and she really doesn’t seem to care. The sippy cup is a little more difficult; she’ll drink water out of it, and she will drink milk from it as well, but she definitely drinks more out of a bottle (just to be clear, I’ve never given her water in her bottle). The ladies actually suggest to parents that the cold-turkey switch to whole milk in a sippy cup be done the first day of daycare; personally, I think that might be a lot of changes for a child, but I also trust that they know what they’re doing. So I’m going to tell them that if they want to do the sippy cup route only, more power to them, but if it really doesn’t work, there is a bottle and some inserts and nipples in the bag (we use the Playtex bottle drop-in system).

* They follow all of the recommendations from the Canadian Health Food Guide when making the lunches and snacks, so I know she will be eating healthy food. Apparently the recommendations from experts is that if a kid is going to eat “junk”, it should be at home, coming from the parents, and I’m totally fine with that. Yes, I have given Claire little tastes of my frozen yogurt, a small taste of dark chocolate, etc but it’s very rare and very minute amounts. Hell, I haven’t even given her juice!

* They will provide crib sheets, but some parents prefer to provide one from home as it will be familiar, so that’s what I’m probably going to do, for now at least. We also provide the diapers, wipes, changes of clothes, bum cream (we use petroleum jelly), and other incidentals like that.

The butterflies are still there, and probably will be for a good long while, but I really honestly do feel good about the place, and after watching her play with other kids and show her independent streak, I am reassured that despite the tears that I know will come, she (and I) will be fine.

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Butterflies and a Monkey Wrench

Posted on March 26, 2012 by amanda

The butterfly situation is getting worse, and by ‘butterfly situation’, I am referring to that awful sensation of fluttering in my belly, and it has not been helped by the monkey wrench thrown in on Friday.

A week from today, I will be returning to work. Claire will be in daycare full-time. Last week was really the last true week off with her that I had, today the last day. Tomorrow, she and I both go to the daycare for an hour; on Wednesday, she goes for an hour by herself; Thursday, she’s on her own there for half a day; and on Friday, it’s a full day.

I know I am fortunate to have had a year with her (well, almost a year; as she was a little late, I will actually be going back to work before she turns a year). People in the US, for instance, don’t get that. And I have actually had more than a year off work, because I used some vacation and banked time to leave work on March 18th last year, and I am only going back on April 2nd.

But how is it possible that such a long time has just flown by?

I’m happy with the daycare; it seems like a good place, and I am happy with my decision to go the centre route. I enjoy my job and the people I work with. In fact, I occasionally feel pangs of guilt when I admit that there is a part of me that is looking forward to the return. Of course, that part is completely separate from the part of me that dreads being away from Claire for so long everyday, where our real quality time together will be on the weekends – which is probably when I will also have to get all of the other big household chores done.

And the monkey wrench I referred to at the beginning of this entry? SIGH.

The plan was that Neal would be going on a PLQ (Primary Leadership Qualification) course at the end of April, which would last about a month-and-a-half to two months. It’s in the city, but due to the crazy schedule and the fact that we only have one vehicle which I need to take Claire to and from daycare, he would stay in the barracks on base during the week, and come home on weekends. Since I am being pretty honest here, I should admit that I was a little nervous that I would essentially be on single-parent duty for that length of time, at least as far as the weekdays are concerned.

Oh, how silly of me.

Neal’s career manager has decided to send him on a course to train him on radar (the military decided to change a bunch of communications techs to radar techs, and Neal was one of the people selected).

It’s in British Columbia.

It lasts six months.

Obviously, we’re not happy about this, and it’s not helped by the fact that Neal is trying to go officer, which if he is successful, will render this course out west pointless. Neal is hoping that the career manager just wasn’t aware that he was all ready to go on his PLQ course, and will change his mind. The official message hasn’t come out, and so nothing is really set until such a message comes out (of course, there has been an official message for his PLQ course, and that may not matter – such is life in the military!). Neal’s Chief – who broke the news to him – told him not pack his bags yet, but we’re not overly hopeful at this point.

I know we’ll all be fine. It’s going to be tough, yes – I will be on single-parent duty for six months and I will have some things to figure out, such as how to go about mowing my lawn with a toddler (I do have a couple of possible ideas). I do, however, feel like it’s going to be worse for Neal because he is going to be alone out there, whereas I at least have Claire. Whenever Neal sailed for awhile in the past, or when he went out to BC for three months a few years ago, I almost dreaded weekends because at least when I was at work, I didn’t notice he was gone (ie, I wouldn’t see him then anyway), and evenings were busy enough to keep me occupied. It was the weekends I found to be really difficult. This time, however, I will have Claire to spend time with, and we’ll be busy.

And, at least Neal and I will be able to talk everyday since he will be on shore when he is in BC, unlike when he is on ship. Apparently, it’s even worse now on ship because they no longer have internet access on ship, so he and I wouldn’t even be able to exchange emails. And when they’re on extended trips (such as a month or more), they only get 20 minutes of phone time per week – which, let me tell you, is not very long at all.

And don’t get me wrong – I understand that the career managers can’t take into account everyone’s individual situations. They’re trying to run a gigantic organization in a way that is best for the country. We don’t have anything overly special to make them decide not to send him – lots of people in the military have young children, and Neal will have had a year home with her. Objectively, I understand. But when you get down to the personal level? Well, I’m just sad and yes, a little angry.

So anyway, suffice it to say that there is a lot on my mind these days, and it is no surprise at all that I have a belly-full of butterflies jumping around and I have a headache and am feeling mildly nauseous.

What I ask of you is simple: please pray to whatever God or gods you worship, or send out positive thoughts our way, with the hope that Neal’s career manager will decide not to send him out west in May.

Posted in Anxiety Sucks, Family, Mommyhood, Real Life | 1 Comment

On the Move, Vertical Style

Posted on March 15, 2012 by amanda

Hey, how is this possible?

Not only is Claire using anything she can to pull herself up into a standing position, but if she can find something to help her then walk, it’s even better! First, it was an empty turned-over diaper box. Last night it was a toy shopping cart over at the neighbour’s. This morning, the empty water cooler bottle. Then her bus.

Yowza.

Neal theorizes that Claire will be walking before her first birthday. I can definitely see the possibility, but you never know how quickly she will gain confidence in her balance. Then again, she often forgets that she needs something to hold onto when she’s standing. Earlier, she was holding onto the handle of the bus and she suddenly pushed it away, wobbled for a second, then fell (without crying, that time).

***

Claire’s sleep has been wonky to say the least. I don’t think we can totally blame daylight savings time, although it does kinda coincide. But it’s not so much that she would fall asleep late or wake up early, but that she would suddenly wake up every few hours, screaming away. Sometimes she wanted part of a bottle. Sometimes she just wanted me to hold and rock her. On Tuesday night, it was just some whining on and off, in that way that makes you doubt whether you should get up and get her a bottle – which means she will fully wake up – or if you should just lie quietly in bed, praying she puts herself back to sleep. In the end, she did put herself back to sleep, but it did translate into about 45 minutes of broken sleep for both Neal and I. Then, at last, she slept through the night yesterday! It was so wonderful!

See, I have been wanting to wake Claire up earlier and earlier in preparation for the ridiculously early hour we will have to get her up once work/daycare starts (around 6 a.m. ~shudder~). I was going to do it nice and gradual-like, but then she got sick, and we got sick, and then she was going through the above-mentioned broken-sleep pattern that may have been due to some combination of daylight savings hell and teething. Not only did I not want to wake her up early in those cases, but quite frankly, I didn’t want to wake up early.

So today, finally, I got my butt out of bed around 6:30, had breakfast, then got Claire up. She had two naps (two hours and one hour), I managed to do a bunch of house-cleaning and play with her, and I finished writing Part One of my novel during her first nap. Ahhh, there is something to be said for getting up nice and early!

***

I don’t know for sure that Claire is teething. On Sunday morning, she woke up with a low-grade fever that stayed with her all day, and she was certainly not herself. Even on Monday she wasn’t totally herself, although she was better than she had been, and now she’s pretty much back to normal. She wasn’t as interested in solid food all of a sudden, and would hardly eat anything before slapping the spoon away. She did start wanting softer, pureed food again, after having almost completely turned her nose up at it, so chewing was an issue. And she had her fingers in her mouth a lot, but then, she does that a fair amount anyway.

Now, the fever relation to teething is a contentious issue from what I can gather from my internet research. Some doctors believe a baby can get a low-grade fever with teething due to the inflammation of the gums, whereas other doctors insist they are two separate things.

All I know is that if she is teething, it’s a bloody nuisance. She has eight teeth right now, and other than the occasional moment here and there where she would cry, and some nights when we had to give her baby Tylenol to get her to have some sleep, it really wasn’t bad.

***

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Up!

Posted on March 8, 2012 by amanda

Remember this?

Remember when Claire was so small, so helpless?

Now, we have this:

And this:

And this:

I’m not setting her up there, folks. A few days ago, Claire could not pull herself up. She loved if Neal or I would stand her up at the coffee table in the living room so that she could hit it like a drum, and she would even occasionally take a few steps to the side, holding onto the table – although I’m not sure if she fully realized she was moving herself. Then, all of a sudden, I was getting her clothes out one morning, turned around, and saw that she had pulled herself up at her bookcase, to which I yelled, “Don’t fall!” while I ran to get the camera.

After that came a few hours where she didn’t pull herself up at all, as though she completely forgot how she had done it, but while she was home with Neal that evening while I ran some errands, she started pulling herself up on the coffee table.

It freaks me out, people. All of these changes, taking place in twelve short months, the emerging – no, exploding – independence I see in her… It just blows my mind. Soon (maybe) she will be walking, and for some reason, that freaks me out more than when she rolled over, or learned how to sit up by herself, or learned to crawl. I guess I feel like all of those things offer her enough independence, and save my arms and back and shoulders from carrying her everywhere, that she can, y’know, slow down.

And what’s funny is that I’m okay and not shocked anymore when I see her standing at the table, or at her exersaucer. But then she’ll find some new spot to pull herself up, and I just stop in my tracks and stare at her for a second. I went downstairs to put some laundry on this morning, and when I came back up, she was standing at the gate. Then I stepped into the living room while she was in the kitchen, and I turned around, and somehow she had used the cupboard or maybe even her growing leg strength to do this:

And even with only one hand!

And I think we’re going to have to lower the crib mattress down again – to the LAST option (which means I’ll be bringing the foot stool in so I can get my daughter in and out of her crib. Yes, I know, haha, I’m short).

Sigh.

And just to make me feel better and remind myself that although she is growing up so quickly, she is still my sweet little baby:

Because all kids look tiny again when they’re sleeping and sucking on their thumbs.

Posted in Baby Talk | 2 Comments

On the Mend

Posted on March 5, 2012 by amanda

Claire seems to be pretty much back to normal now. Last Monday, I had a doctor’s appointment to get a prescription refilled and while I was there, I mentioned to the doctor – who is also Claire’s doctor – that she had been suffering from her first cold but was on her way back to normal. The doctor, being the kind woman she is, offered to take a look at Claire. Her ears had some fluid in them, so she asked that I make an appointment in a week for Claire to have her ears checked – obviously, if her condition worsened, I would bring her in sooner.

Her inner ears are still a little red and inflamed, but not bulging and there is no sign of fluid. My ears are much the same – last week was fun, as I developed the same cold as Claire and had my ears blocking and unblocking. I can’t remember if it’s Graves’ Disease or the medication taken to treat it that can lower your white blood cell count, but either way, I’m at slightly more risk for infection, so since I was at the clinic anyway, I decided to have my own ears checked. I was relieved that, so far, there is no sign of infection.

Claire is definitely doing much better than Neal and I. In fact, I think she did better than both of us the entire time she was sick, other than the fact that she didn’t want to drink very much for a few days. We still groan and moan from exhaustion and congestion and ears blocking and popping and sinus headaches, while Claire has continued to play, wasn’t really too cranky, and was only a little bit more tired than usual, translating into sleeping in slightly more in the morning. She is a trooper, that one!

What worries me is that this is a bit of a preview of what is to come, from what everyone, including the doctor, has told me. Once Claire goes to daycare, she’s going to be the “new blood” and will be sick “all the time” for the first six months or so. I’m only going back to work, so I have no idea what to expect for my sick days (I know that some places won’t let employees use their sick days for their kids, which is stupid since um, what are you supposed to do if the daycare requires you take them home and keep them there for a certain amount of time? Thankfully, my workplace is not like that). Neal gets something like two sick days per month, which may come in handy depending on what my situation is like. He is, however, going to be doing a 7- or 8-week course at the end of April. It’s in the city, so technically he could come home everyday. But since a) he has to be at work super-early, and b) he may have to work late some days, and c) we only have one vehicle which I will require to take Claire to and from daycare, he is going to stay over in the barracks on the base. He will come home on weekends except for any that he is required to be away; there is a “field phase”, so there will probably be at least one weekend like that.

So that may be problematic if I don’t have many (or any) sick days when I first return and Claire gets sick enough that she can’t be at daycare. I’m not going to worry too much about it until or unless I need to. I will speak to my office manager about it, and we do have remote access so I may be able to work a little bit from home if necessary. Obviously I wouldn’t be working the same number of hours I would if I was at work, but at least I wouldn’t be using up so much time. And the firm is usually pretty good about allowing you to take time if necessary and then making the time up later.

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While we were at the clinic today, the doctor wanted to weigh Claire since she had gone through a few days without drinking much formula, but there was no reason to worry as she is still on track, weighing in at 20 lbs, 3 oz. She wasn’t measured there, but we have a little grow chart thing taped up on the wall in her room, and from what we can tell, she’s still about 30″ long (maybe a little shorter), so she hasn’t grown a huge amount since her last checkup. From what I can tell, that’s pretty normal for this stage.

Claire has recently started trying to push herself onto her feet all over the place. She doesn’t quite have the strength to pull herself up from her bum to a standing position at the coffee table, but she will stand there for hours, hitting the table if you stand her up. She can get herself back up if you’re sitting behind her and she falls onto your lap.

Sporting her new vest – the pants are still a little long, but it’s not like she has any shortage of pink pants:

I’m too nervous to do this with Claire, but she LOVES when Neal puts her up on his shoulders and runs up and down the hall with her. I mean, just look at the expression of glee!

Neal thinks he looks silly (he’s making a sound as he runs up and down the hall), but I don’t know – he’s always been a good-looking guy, but he has never been so handsome as when he plays with our daughter. I told him that he doesn’t look foolish; he looks like a dad.

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