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Elanor was fitted for a foot/leg brace today to correct her problems in her right foot. Because it’s a custom job it won’t be ready until mid-January. But between the helmet and the brace, she’ll be the bionic baby! Maybe she can get her own comic book line…
In some ways we had a stereotypical Christmas…
I finished wrapping the presents at 11:46pm on Christmas Eve as I am lazy and tend to procrastinate. We watched Love, Actually (a favorite movie of mine) and went to sleep somewhere in the 2:30-3:00am window. Elanor woke up at 8:30, and then didn’t want to go back to sleep, so we pulled her into our bed and put on Sesame Street (thank god for Tivo). She lay between us, drinking her milk and watching quietly for the better part of an hour. My mom and aunt came over at 10, so that’s when we did presents.
Elanor got a bunch of books, several dvds, the Melissa and Doug fruit that is held together with velcro (you’re supposed to “cut” it with a fake knife, but for E, we want her working on her hand strength so she’ll be pulling it apart), a shape sorter, wooden blocks and a busy ball popper from us (and santa) and books, clothes, various “little people” stuff, a vtech toy, and a Tag Jr reader by Leapfrog from my parents.
With Ravi’s layoff (thankfully I had bought all but one of the dvd’s before it) we kept Xmas small-no gifts for parents and we weren’t going to do gifts for each other either, but as a joke I had got Ravi a snuggie (which he found because it was sitting on the coffee table when he got home the day I bought it) and so he got me a small wooden tree that opens like a Russian Nesting Doll to hold a santa which holds a snowman since I was upset that we weren’t doing a tree this year. The lack of a tree was more about having no clue how to keep E out of the tree than the money side of stuff.
We had a nice meal (none of which I had to cook, and afterward the dishes magically ended up in the dishwasher) and then my mom and aunt went home as they do not like driving in the dark.
We hung out at home for a while and then walked to a chinese restaurant for take-out.
E went to bed and we watched deleted scenes from Love Actually.
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Now that it’s over, I have to admit that I never got into the holiday spirit. Even though we had snow for the week before the holiday and even though it was snowing lightly as we walked to and from the takeout place, I just didn’t feel it. In part, it’s certainly related to the job hunt stress, and the fact that Ravi has herniated a disc in his neck, which has him in a great deal of pain. The lack of a tree made our apartment feel like it was any other day-one where almost everything was closed. With an iPod, I managed to avoid the barrage of Xmas music. I’ve always found the bell ringing from the Salvation Army irritating–not that I don’t like to give, I just don’t give to religious organizations.
I’m hoping that next year it will be different…Elanor will be 2, and I hope that two will bring a lot more verbal ability, more interest in and comfort with things like visiting Santa, and that we will be in a position to have a tree.
For now, I’m just going to focus on getting through 2009…while it hasn’t been a bad year, I can’t say I’ve been overly fond of it either.
To those who celebrate it, Merry Christmas….
This is yummy…..I think
THIS IS BETTER
Today I was at a restaurant with Elanor.
A perfectly lovely woman comes over to say to the baby.
She extends her hand to invite E to give her “5″
Elanor opens her mouth, removes a piece of partially chewed food and puts it in the woman’s hand.
I am mortified….
*headdesk*
Dear Elanor
I’m very late with this letter…sorry darling, but sometimes I get behind. You don’t leave me with a lot of energy at the end of the day to do things like the monthly letter 
This letter will chronicle November 3 (your actual first birthday) through today.
On your birthday, your Dad and I were totally obnoxious. We came into your room at midnight (although you weren’t born until 5:29 in the morning) and sang Happy Birthday. We sang it again when you did wake up in the morning.
On your birthday I took you to get your birthday photos taken, and we got some gorgeous shots done that day. Below are a few of my favorites!
Afterwards we went to Friendly’s where you enjoyed a hot dog and some mac and cheese. But the real pleasure was dessert where I let you eat your very own cone-head sundae! You loved it, but your outfit was in sad shape.
For dinner we took you to the Rainforest Cafe. You liked the big fishtank we sat next to, but were ready for bed earlier than usual, so we skipped dessert. On our way out through their store, you spotted a stuffed black cat and insisted on it, so we bought it for you. We ended the night with one more round of Happy Birthday.
In the month and a half since that auspicious day, you have changed a LOT.
Medically, you’ve had a stellar month and a half.
You had an awesome cardiology appointment-they are no longer interested in working with you. Your heart function is completely normal and the teeny hole you had last year has closed on its own. One doctor off the list!!! Neurology is down to every 6 months, and Pedi stroke has decided that they only need to see you once a year.
Gastroenterology? That’s not so great. I was a bit overzealous when I said last month that you were 16 pounds. The last weight we had before your bday was 15 lbs 15oz, which made it feel close enough to call 16lbs. But it turned out that some of that weight was constipation, and you have backslid. At your last appointment you were 15 and 11 oz or 12 oz. They aren’t that thrilled with your weight. So you have restarted reflux meds (Prevacid this time) with the idea that a lot of your eating behaviors are similar to that of kids who have silent reflux. It hasn’t seemed so silent as in the few days leading up to us getting the Prevacid (CVS had trouble getting it) you threw up three times. Your puke now is a lot more vile smelling than it was when you were just a breastmilk or formula fed baby (much like your poop is much more vile smelling). We’re also under instruction to give you mac and cheese (a HUGE favorite of yours) once a day and to fry foods that can be fried, to add butter, and we’re adding heavy cream to your milk to make it higher calorie. Anything we can do to try and fatten you up. If there isn’t real gain in the next 6-8 weeks, we’re going to have to do more testing to see if there’s a different problem…but I really think it’s probably silent reflux and the fact that you’re a teeny bean to begin with.
The lack of weight gain has become a problem as your height continues to grow on it’s curve. You are tall enough to wear size 6-12 months for the most part, or 6-9 months for companies that make it, but the waistbands are too big. So we compromise between size 3-6 months from places where the length is about right, or we do overalls, or sometimes I just let the pants do a bit of a low-rider thing on your diaper. I have also resorted to pulling the extra waistband fabric back and securing it with a ponytail elastic. Not terribly fashionable, but at least your pants stay up. If it were summer, I’d just put you in dresses and call it day.
You have a new fashion accessory and will have a second soon enough. Because of your previous stroke and the Von Willebrand disease, you are at high risk for another stroke with head trauma. As a new walker, there is still a lot of falling and….well…head trauma. So you are wearing a helmet. It came in the week after Thanksgiving, but it needed some modification, so you’ve only really been wearing it for a week now. It looks a lot like a pink football helmet. I’m sure you’ll have seen it long before you ever read these letters, so you’ll know what I mean. It’s also been decided that you need a brace to help with your right foot, which is pointing in and down, and causes you to fall a lot because it screws with your gait and is harder for you to control. Not to the point where a casual observer would think you’re anything but a new walker, but for me (who watches you walk all the time) or a physical or occupational therapist, it becomes very clear very quickly. So far all that’s happened is that you were evaluated by the EI physical therapists and we have an appointment after Xmas to have your foot cast by an orthotist.
I will make a difficult confession to you, Elanor. I hate seeing you in the helmet, and I know I’ll hate seeing the brace. Obviously I want to keep you safe and I make sure you’re in it/will be in it, but there’s part of me that just hates every minute of it. I think it’s because you were SO sick, and your recovery has been nothing short of miraculous that in general I can think of you as just a normal little kid. The helmet is something that marks you as different, and while I wouldn’t mind a stellar intellect marking you as different, something so obvious hurts. I worry about people’s reactions and feel very protective of you. More difficult to admit-I worry about people’s opinion of me, specifically that I’m one of the moms that I hate that’s trying to put their kid in a bubble and helmeting them for “safety” as opposed to “because a doctor made me.” Luckily both are meant to be a short term thing.
You are up to 10 teeth (the 9/10th ones are just poking through the gums) and there are two more on the way.
Developmentally you continue to astound us…
You are saying your first non-mama, dada word consistently. There are a few things you say (my favorite is “tan oo” for “thank you”) randomly and without meaning. For example your Daddy said he was going to put you to bed and you said thank you, but then began to scream when he put you in the crib. You also haven’t said it in over a week. What you ARE saying consistently is “YUM.” I posted all about it last week about how it means “FEED ME NOW.”
When asked you can show or point to your head, your ear and infrequently your nose. You clap your hands when asked where are your hands? You kick your feet when asked where are your feet?
If presented with three objects (say a book, a ball, and a shoe) when asked for an object, you most often pick the right object.
You can throw and kick a ball, although kicking occasionally turns into falling over a ball….
With a little help (in the form of a step) you can climb onto furniture. You can climb up stairs.
You love to dance to music, whether it’s on my iPod or made by one of your 8 million obnoxious musical toys. Currently “dancing” means bobbing up and down, but it’s adorable.
You’ve started picking up your dolls and giving them kisses.
For that matter, you’ve started distributing kisses far and wide to almost anyone. Generally this is well received, but recently we were in the doctor’s waiting room and a three year old girl entered. You ran up to her and threw your arms around her. She was NOT happy about this and tried to pull away, but wasn’t sure how as she seemed to get that you were a baby (compared to her) and she shouldn’t hurt babies. I pulled you off her, but she kept avoiding you and I had to keep pulling you away from her. On the flip side, we were at Isis Maternity for class and a woman was leaving the class next door with a young baby in its carrier and you walked up and wanted to see the baby. I asked if it was okay and you gave them a kiss on their blanket, which made both me and the other mom melt a little.
Less enchantingly, you’ve started throwing tantrums when you can’t do what you want. This usually means you can’t rip leaves off your grandparent’s plants, can’t have a diet coke can, can’t come into the bathroom with me when your dad is home, or hear the word no. If we pick you up to get you away from the thing you’re not supposed to be doing/touching/eating/whatever you shriek and arch your back and try to get away. I’m lucky I haven’t been bruised by the force with which you fling your head back against me.
Also, for the record, I’m not loving the complete and total meltdowns you have when I want to do things without you, like go to the bathroom when your dad is home or go out for a few hours to grocery shop without you or even just to go watch tv without you (when your dad is home, obviously). When I’m in the apartment this means I hear you wailing and hitting the door of whatever room I’m in but you’re not. When I leave you, you usually freak out for a good 5-10 minutes, and your grandparents tell me you go to the door and indicate that you want to go. This also resulted in a meltdown when we tried to get your picture with Santa. I put you in his lap and stepped out of the shot and you freaked. Separation Anxiety…fun!!!!
You also are exhibiting a new and strange fear. The vacuum, which you never cared about before is suddenly a thing to run from and scream whenever I run it. Considering the number of crumbs you strew about the house and the messes you make, I run it multiple times a week. Having you lose your shit over it is not fun. However, this is developmentally appropriate, and something for me to just kind of deal with until you grow out of it.
Final thing I’m not loving at all…you dropped down to one nap a day. Seriously child? I need two naps a day just to keep up with you…what’s with the single nap?
Adventures in November and early December…
You tried out gymnastics, and everyone (medical personnel especially) were very enthusiastic about the idea of you doing it. You love “flipping” (you bend over into what looks like the downward dog yoga pose and wait for someone to pick up your ankle and flip you onto your back). Your grandparents bought you lessons for Xmas, and we start formally tomorrow.
We finished off our “Sprouts” class at Isis Maternity this week. We made some lovely friends and you absolutely loved it. While Isis classes always end with bubbles, this was the first time I saw you get excited about them. You now chase bubbles with excitement.
We tried out an Early Intervention playgroup, but you and I both hated it. The instructor was not at all enthusiastic or fun (as opposed to our Isis instructor who is bubbly and gets you toddlers excited), and you kept trying to leave, which was the biggest sign of all. We decided against taking you back.
We’ve also had play dates. We haven’t seen C and Asince your birthday, but that’s just been scheduling. We hung out with Z and his parents at the Burlington Mall-he can say “Elanor” (sort of) now! Next week we’re going to get together with some of the other “Sprouts” moms and their kids!
But your favorite play dates this past month a half was the week that your cousins were up from DC for Thanksgiving!!!!! They stayed at your grandparent’s house and we went over EVERY day. Your older cousin, who is 6, absolutely adored you and kept picking you up and giving you kisses. She didn’t care that you kept stealing (and trying to eat) her hairbands. Your younger cousin (who’s 18 months old) wasn’t too sure of you. Sometimes the two of you played some strange toddler interpretation of tag (I scream you run after me, I scream and run after you), sometimes you fought over toys, sometimes you kissed him and he ran away from you.
They were up for Thanksgiving, as were their uncle and their grandparents. We were 12 for Thanksgiving, which is the biggest Thanksgiving I’ve ever been a part of. On one hand it was amazing to be part of such a lovely family gathering, but on the other, I was often overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. I also loved seeing how you fit into your bigger family.
The day after Thanksgiving we all went to the mall to do pictures of the whole family, each smaller family, and the kids all together and individually. Your cousin’s parents don’t want pics of them on the internet, so I’ll just post a pic of the three of us..
You also had your first weekends away from us. Your dad and I went to LA for a weekend and left you with your grandparents. But then to be fair we had to go away for a night and leave you with your grandma and auntie the following weekend. It was good for your dad and I to get a break and just be us and married for a weekend. You mostly handled it well, but each time we called and you heard our voices you started crying because you missed us.
One last serious thing…
Perhaps the biggest change in the last 6 weeks or so is that you dad was laid off. It’s been difficult not to let the tension affect our relationship with you, but we haven’t always been successful. We are okay because we have savings to cover things like this, but as Daddy looks for a new job, it’s pretty certain that we won’t be living in Massachusetts in six months. We could end up somewhere on the East Coast (which would be great in that our friends would still be pretty close by and would visit us and vice versa), on the West Coast (which would be less ideal, but would be radically different for us and that has it’s own benefits….plus it’s a LOT cheaper to buy a house, etc), in London (which is a dream of ours) or Singapore (which would be quite the adventure).
The things I worry most about with a move are separating you from your grandparents and all of our friends who have grown close to you and become your surrogate family. I also worry about making sure that your medical care is uninterrupted, that the quality of doctor we find in our new home matching your amazing doctors here, and ensuring you get what you need.
But no matter what, we will always love you and make sure that you are taken care of.
Mommy
Elanor has been having some separation issues of late. She’s always been a little teary when I leave her with her grandparents, but until recently her dad and I were interchangable, with a preference for me.
No more.
Her dad can pick her up and if I’m walking next to them she’ll howl and stretch her arms out for me. If her dad is at home and I dare go to the bathroom alone, she will stand at the door and hit it and sob until I come out. This is the dark side of object permanence–she KNOWS I’m still there even though she can’t see me and it’s NOT OKAY for me to be out of her sight. It is mildly flattering, I suppose to be the center of someone’s world like that, but it is also exhausting.
Before I had kids, I never really had the proper appreciation for being able to go to the bathroom with the door shut and to do my business in peace. It’s something I mention to my childless friends as something to enjoy before they spawn (for those that plan to) or to enjoy and gloat about (for those that don’t).
Knowing all of this, I still forged ahead with the trip to see Santa. It created such adorable pictures last year that one became our holiday card. I muttered offhandedly to Ravi that this would probably all end in tears (and not just E’s) but what the hell. He later told me he thought I was being sarcastic.
The first sign that this was all going to go wrong was that I couldn’t find the Christmas Tree tights.
Then the new outfit (well, secondhand, but new to us) which was her current size, had a skirt that hung off her hips a la a young Britney Spears. This was not the look I was going for.
The clothes were trying to tell me to wait until she was bigger. That it would be a mistake this year. I should have listened to the fashion, but I didn’t.
I finally figured out an outfit that fit and we picked up my best friend. The four of us headed to the mall.
We got in the wrong line…I thought the long line was for Santa, but it was to pick up pictures. Yet another sign from the universe to just skip the damn picture.
We get in the right line and everything is fine until we hit the front of the line.
The Santa at this mall is someone who has been doing it for over 25 years, and last year he was great. Of course last year we didn’t get there at 7 on a Saturday. This year he looked shell-shocked, akin to a prisoner of war who has been repeatedly tortured until they’re just blank in the eyes. He gave me a look that said “you’ve got to be kidding me.”
I handed Elanor to him and hadn’t even backed out of the shot before she started freaking out. I let them take 4 pictures as I knelt on the floor and clapped and pleaded and tried to get her to even be calm. The photographer asked me if we wanted to try again, and I said “absolutely not,” which was the first smart thing I’d said once the words “let’s take her to see Santa” were uttered.
I then wasted 20 minutes in line because the photographer LIED to me and said there were one or two good shots. Not really sure what her definition of “good shot” is, but what I saw was not in the same galaxy as a good shot. Then the sales person was shocked that I didn’t want to pay $20 or whatever to commemorate this train wreck of an adventure and gave me back my ticket so that I could “think about it” and come back and buy the overpriced photo or “try again” with Santa.
Look, I’m dumb enough to try taking my 1 year old to see Santa once, but I’m not dumb enough to try it a second time.
I promise a real post (and the getting more overdue by the second 13 month letter to Emby) in the near future, but for now I will share with you one of Elanor’s new quirks.
This past Monday Elanor was toddling around the living/dining room causing destruction as she does, when she went to her highchair, smacked it a few times and announced “YUM.”
When kids are first starting to babble, you convince yourself daily that they’ve just said “Please pass the peas, Mother” or some such thing. So I doubted that I had heard what I actually did. Or that it was pure happenstance, and would not be repeated.
“YUM” a little louder with a whack on the chair for emphasis.
“Are you hungry, Elanor? Do you want food?” I asked.
“YUM. YUM!” Translation-are you stupid, woman? What about this is unclear to you? Feed me NOW, bitch.
And so it began. We were driving home from a doctor’s appointment yesterday and there was a steady stream of “YUM? YUM. YUM!” from the backseat as we drove to a restaurant. It is now a “thing” and she’s been doing it consistently.
It’s just so damn cute, I can’t help but encourage it. I’ve started asking if she wants “YUM” instead of asking if she’s hungry now.
Two days ago I decided to do something radical. Something daring. Something that might drive me to an insane asylum…
I decided that it was time for Elanor to give up her bottles.
She is almost 13 months old, and all the books say that once a baby can drink from a sippy cup, the bottle is just a crutch. She’s been able to drink from a sippy for a while, although it took a lot of trial and error to find one that really worked for her. We had done that, and I had done a test run where she got the sippy all day, and she was fine.
The older a kid gets, the harder it is to ditch the pacifier/bottle, and that’s how you end up seeing 3 and 4 year olds running around with bottles and pacifiers, which along with 4 year olds in strollers is a HUGE pet peeve of mine.
I had also begun to notice that while she used to not care about going to bed with a bottle, it had become a necessity, which was not a good thing.
So on Monday I took away the bottle.
Night one went okay because she was exhausted.
Night two became a battle of wills sometime around fuck all o’clock in the middle of the night. She cried, I went in and gave her a sippy with some milk in it. She threw it. She cried. I gave her the sippy. She sucked a few times to moisten her vocal cords, then threw it so that she could recommence screaming. We cuddled in a chair and she finally drank from the sippy. I put her back to bed and listened to her cry for a good 10 minutes.
I didn’t get back to sleep for another half hour while I questioned my decision, my parenting skills (or lack thereof) and tried not to cry myself. I don’t do so well at fuck all o’clock in the morning….
When we woke up again at the far more civilized hour of 9:30 (still early for us, though) she was her bright shiny self. Obviously my parenting has damaged her and she’ll never recover…
It’s a lot like ferberizing…it’s a crappy short run tradeoff for a great long term result. But, also like ferberizing, it’s not right for every parent or every kid. If it really hadn’t worked for E, we would have given her the bottles back. But as it is working, and she’s just having some growing pains when we don’t give in and let her have her way, I’m going to settle in for the test of wills.
We are now coming up on night three…wish me luck. Or if not luck, a pair of earplugs and a fifth of vodka would be welcomed.
I really shouldn’t have gone around bragging on the internets that we had made it through Thanksgiving without a hospital visit…
Yesterday (the day after Thanksgiving) we ended up in the ER….
As Elanor is now a walker we have graduated to working on going up stairs at her physical therapist’s request. Our apartment building has them, but they’re dirty and we use the elevator all the time anyways. My in-laws, however, have two sets of very clean stairs, one of which is carpeted, and therefore my first choice for stair climbing.
Things got a little overwhelming yesterday, so I decided to take E to the basement to work on climbing up the carpeted stairs. Usually we do this with two people (one behind her, and one in front to encourage her), but it was just her and I. She’s gotten fairly skilled at the stairs, and we had done other sets alone, so it didn’t seem like a big deal. About halfway up (maybe 5/6 stairs from the ground) she stalled and hesitated. So I went up a few more stairs to encourage her…and it was fine, until she overbalanced and fell backwards. I screamed for Ravi as I dashed down the stairs, but there was literally nothing I could do but watch roll down ten stairs.
Elanor began screaming once she stopped rolling and had a moment to realize what had happened. I had her in my arms almost before those first wails had begun. My in-laws were the first people to come see what was going on and then the cousins (the adult ones) and someone got Ravi, who was two floors above me and hadn’t heard me scream for him. By the time Ravi came downstairs, Elanor was calming. Within five minutes of her fall, she was running around on the ground floor of the house.
I had ordered Ravi to find my phone because I had to call pedi hematology/neurology. My MIL told me I was overreacting and that Elanor was fine. Ravi seemed to think that too, but was humoring me.
The pedi hematologist on call said to come in right away so that Elanor could get factor and a CAT scan.
So off we went.
We spent four hours in the ER (from about 8pm until midnight), which all things considered, was a short visit for a major urban hospital (especially as there are far fewer hospitals with pedi emergency rooms than there are ones with adult emergency rooms). Getting the IV in for the blood draw and to give the factor was the worst and hardest part. I tried to step out, but hearing Elanor completely freaking out, I had to step back in, even though watching it makes me cry. It took two tries, and three nurses (two to hold Elanor down and one to put in the IV). Then I had to keep her from yanking at it/messing with it. The nurse came up with a clever fix…they taped something over it so that E couldn’t really get at it. At that point, it was 10pm, a good hour past her bedtime (she’s a night owl who doesn’t go to bed until 9), and she hadn’t napped well all day. I lay down on the stretcher with Elanor, and held her…and she fell asleep.
Fifteen minutes after she fell asleep, they came to get her for the CAT scan. We had talked about sedating her, but since she was asleep, we were going to try to do it without waking her. So I stayed on the stretcher and held her, sleeping, as they wheeled us to radiology. I slowly moved and carried her to the CAT scan machine. She stirred when I laid her down, but I put a bottle in her mouth and she went back to sleep. This would have been perfect, except she turned her head to the side, and they needed it looking straight up at the ceiling for the image to come out right. I tried to turn her head, but it woke her up. In the end, we had to tape her head in place, and I gave her bottle to keep her calm until they were ready to do the imaging. Then I had to pull the bottle back and pray that she’d stay still long enough to get the images that they needed. Luckily it was.
The scan came back clean, but the doctors still wanted to give Elanor factor. She has a mild bleeding disorder called Von Willebrand Disease, which she inherited from both Ravi and I. This is a fairly mild disease…mild enough that I lived with it for 30 years before finding out that I had it. But basically it means that we have fewer clotting factors than other people. Normally it’s not a big deal, but in the case of Elanor’s septicemia, the VWD is a big reason why she had the stroke…she just didn’t have enough clotting factors, and her brain developed a small bleed. ANYWAYS, if E ever has surgery or when she has major falls, like this one, her hematologist wants her to get factor, which will bring her clotting abilities up to “normal.”
The factor took 15 minutes to administer via IV, and since Elanor was already awake and pissed about the whole taping her head during the CAT scan thing, it took both Ravi and I to keep her from yanking out her IV or the thing that was taped to her foot to monitor her pulse and oxygen levels.
But, once it was over, the IV came out and we were able to leave and go home. Well, we went to IHOP (international house of pancakes) and then home…and I needed a good hour of mindless tv to be able to sleep, so it was 2 when Elanor went down and 3/3:30 when we did. Luckily she slept late today, although not as late as either of us would have liked.
All’s well that ends well….but seriously, I jinxed myself in my last entry…
I realize it’s more than a little bit trite to talk about being thankful on (American) Thanksgiving. But I can’t help it…
I just re-read my Thanksgiving entry from last year. It’s funny because what I remember when I think about Thanksgiving 2008 is how tremendously upset I was that Ravi was sick and Elanor and I were alone in the hospital. What I only vaguely remembered was that it was Thanksgiving when the team unhooked Elanor from the last of her tubes. She still had a central line that was hep-locked (a closed iv connection, basically) but it was the first time since she was seven days old that I was able to hold her without a million tubes tethering her to a two/three foot range from her crib. After re-reading the entry I remember carrying her down the hall of the 0-5 pedi floor, describing all the marine life painted on the walls…and her sleeping through the momentous trip. I remember dressing her in her silly little “first thanksgiving” outfit–originally I had bought a 0-3 month size, but she was so tiny I had to take it back and exchange it for a newborn size.
our little turkey
Last year I wrote the day after Thanksgiving…
I had meant to do the “Thankful” thing yesterday, but I don’t think anyone here would be hard pressed to guess what we are thankful for. We came so close to losing our little girl (when I came to the emergency room, they had to wheel me past the pediatric ER and the Acute ER, the latter of the two being where we witnessed the really scary stuff and it was hard not to burst into tears because I couldn’t stop the flood of memories from that room) and we are just so lucky that she is a fighter. She is healthy, happy, smart, and in our eyes (just like every baby is in their parent’s eyes) just perfect.
We’re also thankful for all of you. Your support over the past three weeks has been invaluable and we’re lucky to have you as our friends and family.
This year’s Thanksgiving was very different. We are all healthy (although my back is starting to bother me a great deal again…I need to make time to do Physical Therapy), and we were nowhere near a hospital. We spent today at my in-laws home with Ravi’s aunt and uncle, two cousins and their families. Elanor had two cousins (one 18 months, the other 6 years) to play with. Out of respect for their parent’s wish that they not be named/shown online, I won’t be adding a picture.
I will give you a visual though…all three kids playing together. The six year old hugs Elanor, and the 18 month old (not wanting to be left out) goes over and hugs too. Five minutes later, the 18 month old has a toy and Elanor steals it. A few hours later, the 18 month old offers E a book and then grabs it back. Elanor running after her oldest cousin, whom she already clearly adores. The 6 years old pulling E onto her lap and helping her ride down the slide. I’m sure it was a fairly surreal experience for Ravi’s mom and dad and aunt and uncle. They lived near each other when Ravi and his cousins were young, and they grew up doing Thanksgiving together. This was the first big family Thanksgiving in about 15 years, and they got to watch their children’s children playing together.
Watching the family together, it made me grateful. I grew up as an only child, and we weren’t particularly close to any of my cousins, so Thanksgiving was generally a small affair. By the time I reached adulthood and it was just three of us, Thanksgiving was a super small event. Since our wedding, we have tried to do an event where my parents and my inlaws come together, but it has proven to be disastrous (which is a shame, but it is what it is). I grew up reading stories and wishing I had a big crazy family. Today (well, this whole week) I got that experience. It was so wonderful to have our family come together from both coasts and be with each other.
So I am grateful for my family; the one I was born into, the one I married into, and the one I helped create. I am profoundly grateful for the team of doctor and nurses and specialists who have been with Elanor every step of the way. I am grateful to the point of tears that my daughter has grown into a healthy and happy toddler, and while her strong will tests my patience, I also am thankful for it as it helped save her life. I’m thankful for a husband who is supportive and loving, and who doesn’t make me hide my crazy parts. I have friends who are like family.
Being facetious, I am also thankful for Tivo, GLEE, trashy novels, and peanut butter cups
