Journey to and Through Motherhood: Lily: 1 Year and 28 Weeks (9/6/10

My mom stayed home with Lily on Tuesday to help her get acclimated to life with her cast. We cannot call in sick to work the day after a holiday without losing our holiday pay so we were grateful that my mom could come over, especially considering that my dad had a colonoscopy scheduled that day so my 89 year old grandmother stepped in and was his driver and companion. Lily was initially groggy and cuddly on Tuesday morning but that was probably due to a combination of her Tylenol with Codeine and the fact that she barely slept on Monday night. Trying to sleep with a giant, uncomfortable cast for the first time had Lily up crying every 15 minutes. She is used to tossing and turning all night which is extremely difficult now. Paul and I went to work on Tuesday feeling like the walking dead. Thankfully, Lily perked right up and didn’t seem to be in pain anymore so my mom gave her Motrin once on Tuesday morning then nothing after that. Lily quickly figured out how to do everything one-handed so she just played all day as usual. I hid all of her toys that required two hands to play with to save her from frustration. Lily even figured out how to sit down and help herself get back up one-handed which had been a real problem for her on Monday evening. It is amazing how adaptable little kids are.

I stayed home with Lily on Wednesday. Again, she did just great with her cast and was her normal, jovial self. She spent most of the day eating and the rest of the time playing. She almost got a little too used to life with her cast because she started getting wild. I felt so bad for her because she was running around, lost her balance, was unable to catch herself with one arm, and ended up falling down and biting her tongue upon impact. Poor baby! I ended up taking a nap with Lily that morning because I was so tired. She was up for most of Tuesday night which meant that I was up for most of the night as well. I even resorted to bringing her into our bed and nursing her for a while out of desperation to get her back to sleep. I hated doing it since I spent so long weaning her from our bed and weaning her from nighttime nursing. The sleeplessness continued all week which left us all exhausted.

Lily returned to daycare on Thursday. She had a really hard time transitioning at drop-off so there were many tears and I ended up getting to work 20 minutes late. Thankfully, she calmed down a few minutes after I left and was fine for the rest of the day. When I picked Lily up on Thursday evening, she really wanted to color the sign-out sheet with my pen. I wouldn’t let her which made her very angry. When we got home, I got out some paper and crayons and she went to town coloring all evening. It is funny because she has never had a big interest in coloring before but was suddenly very into it. It was so cute to see her concentrate on coloring with her little tongue sticking out. She had a little trouble managing to hold the paper down while coloring one-handed but it didn’t seem to bother her at all.

Lily adapted so well to her cast. I was amazed. It was not without its challenges, though. Besides the sleeping issues, the size of the cast was a problem. It was so big compared to her arm circumference that I could only get sleeveless button-up shirts on her. Thank goodness it was a pretty warm week. When we went outside, I just tossed a sweater over her shoulders. The second problem was that she was unable to bathe with it on. Lily loves her baths so that was tough on her. She kept requesting them so I continually had to explain to her that she couldn’t have a bath because of her cast. I kept her body clean with wipes but her hair quickly became a greasy mess. I finally had her lay on the bathroom counter and washed her hair in the sink on Wednesday. Lily hated it and cried the entire time. She never used her sling after Monday night because it cut into her neck and kept shifting off her arm. The point of the sling was just to help carry the weight of the cast but Lily is so strong that she didn’t seem to mind how heavy the cast was.

Thankfully, we were able to get her in to see the orthopedic surgeon on Friday instead of having to wait the full two weeks. Paul already had the morning off to take Lily to her 18 month well-child visit so I moved that appointment and gladly took the first available orthopedic appointment when they called me about it on Monday. The appointment was for 8:15am but they wanted Lily to get a repeat x-ray first to see if the healing process had made the break visible so we all had to get moving super early on Friday morning. I was able to come along for the x-ray before my shift started which was a good thing. The x-ray process would have made a hilarious video. Lily is so strong that it took me, Paul, and the x-ray tech to hold her still enough to take the images. The x-ray tech actually lost an arm-wrestling match with Lily’s casted arm. The “what the heck” look on his face was priceless. He said something to Paul later about her being much much stronger than she looks. The orthopedic surgeon couldn’t find any evidence of a fracture on the x-ray so they took Lily’s cast off. It must have only been a bad sprain and she did have the remains of a pretty big bruise on her wrist. Paul brought her into the lab after the appointment to tell me the good news. I was so excited to see that she no longer had a cast on that I nearly cried! Lily spent her afternoon at daycare then we all went grocery shopping that evening after work and stocked up on coloring supplies for her. As soon as we got home, Lily requested a bath which we could finally say “yes” to so Paul gave her a bath while I cleaned the upstairs. After I put Lily to bed, I did a marathon session of cleaning the very messy downstairs while doing four loads of laundry. After such a sleepless week, I don’t know how I found the energy to stay up until 2am doing all that after having gotten up at 5:30am, especially considering I was up well past midnight both Wednesday and Thursday nights canning salsa, jam, and sundae topper.

Thankfully, Paul let me sleep in on Saturday morning. I got up in time to put Lily down for her morning nap then took over parenting duty so that Paul could work outside. Of course, the moment I took over with Lily was the moment that it started raining so Paul had to tend to the neglected yard in the rain. He got soaked but kept working. He took a small break to dry off while watching the U of M game then went right back out. I wanted to take Lily into town for the Smokin’ Jazz and BBQ Blues Festival because I know she would have loved the music but the weather just didn’t comply. Lily was fine with just hanging around the house and playing all day. I think she was delighted to be able to play with two arms. We thought that her arm might be a little tender with the cast off but it didn’t seem to bother her at all and she was back to her rough and tumble ways as usual. Lily refused her afternoon nap which has been a frequent occurrence lately. She seemed tired but just fussed in her crib for an hour before I gave up and took her back out. She is probably transitioning to only needing one nap per day but instead of taking that nap mid-day, she takes it in the morning so she is cranky all evening. What fun for us!

I had insomnia on Saturday night (probably because I got so used to staying up most of the night with Lily). I used it to my advantage and caught up with an impressive 5 blog posts. Paul let me sleep in again on Sunday morning. I got up when Lily woke up from her morning nap then we all got ready and headed over to Kirsten’s house for a Lion’s game party. We snacked on a delicious taco bar and had fun hanging out and watching the game. Kirsten’s neighbors are so fun and always do things together. I wish things were like that where we live. All of our neighbors are nice but everyone keeps to themselves. Lily amazed everyone at the party because she isn’t into sweets at all. She turned up her nose at the cupcakes that the other kids were going nuts over and instead wanted cheese and tomatoes. She somehow did not inherit my sweet tooth with is probably a good thing. Lily had a lot of fun running around with the kids at the party and made friends with a little girl named Abby who was two years old. They both had a blast bouncing together on the neighbors’ trampoline. All of the excitement wore her out so she ended up falling asleep on our short drive home and continued napping for quite some time after we got home. It is so rare for her to take an afternoon nap anymore, let alone a long one. I actually had to go in and wake her up at 7pm because I feared that she would be up all night otherwise! She must have still been fairly tired, though, because she went to sleep without a fuss at 9pm as usual.

I think that Lily is getting close to being ready for potty training. My mom bought her a frog potty and gave it to us over the weekend but we were too preoccupied to bring it in from the car until Wednesday evening. Lily instantly fell in love with it and wanted to sit on it (with her pants on). We moved it into the downstairs bathroom where she now sits on it every time she follows me to the bathroom which is pretty much every time I go to the bathroom. She shows a lot of interest in what I am doing in the bathroom so I always explain everything to her. Now that she has her own potty, she mimics what I do. The only problem is that I apparently sparked her interest in toilet paper so on Thursday evening, Lily came out of the bathroom wrapped up like a mummy in toilet paper, trailing the rest of the roll behind her. She then proceeded to tear off small pieces of it and practice wiping herself. I thought it was cute but then she snuck up behind me and tried to wipe me while I was cooking dinner. It certainly made me jump! It was funny that she was trying to be so helpful. Lily now tells me “poop” either when she has to poop or when she has already pooped. If she still has to go, I ask her if she wants to try to go on her potty. Sometimes she wants to and sometimes she doesn’t. A few times this weekend, she said “potty”, grabbed my hand, and dragged me into the bathroom where I took off her diaper and set her on the frog potty. Her diaper was wet when I took it off of her so she was probably telling me that she went to the bathroom not that she needed to go to the bathroom. She didn’t quite have the sequence right but I am just glad that she is becoming more aware of what is going on with her body. Thus far, I haven’t had any success in actually getting her to go to the bathroom on the potty but I am not trying to train her yet, just introduce the concepts.

Lily is getting very good at following instructions now such as, “give this to daddy,” “get me your shoes,” “go get two toys that you want to bring with you,” etc. She answers questions for me such as, “do you want crayons or markers?” She is still not saying the word “yes” but she is nodding her head which is helpful. Before, she would say “no” but give no response if the answer to your question was “yes”. She is repeating almost everything we say and knows hundreds of words now. She also has a fantastic memory. For example, on Sunday night she took my hand and brought me to the front door saying “frog” because she wanted to check the front porch for frogs (one of her favorite after-dark activities since Paul leaves the porch light on to attract bugs for the frogs that live in our pond to come up and snack on). We went outside and found a frog then Lily said, “choo-choo,” because on the previous evening, she heard a train whistle when we were outside doing the same activity. I asked her if she was listening for trains and she cupped her hand over her ear which is this adorable new thing she is doing when she is listening for something. She then said “tweet” because we heard a bird on the previous night as well. I asked her if we heard a bird the night before and she nodded her head. We then went back inside so that I could make dinner and she followed me to the pantry where I got out a can of green beans. Upon seeing the can, Lily said “beans” for the first time. I just can’t keep up!

Here are some pictures from this week.

Lily watching TV on Tuesday evening:

She quickly learned to carry multiple things in her right hand since she couldn't use her left:

Watching TV and goofing around with daddy. She was in such good spirits despite her new cast:

Happily playing with her penguin while hanging at home with me on Wednesday (note her better looking hair after the sink washing):

I hid all of Lily's two-handed toys to save her from frustration but she was really into playing with everything else like this popper. Her cast definitely didn't seem to slow her down:

Wearing mama's shoes, of course. Apparently I have failed to teach Imelda Marcos, Jr. that it is never okay to wear socks with sandals:

To eat, we put her casted arm below the tray and covered it with some paper towel to keep it clean. Lily usually eats left-handed but adjusted quickly to right-handed eating:

Paul got Lily's new frog potty out of the car on Wednesday evening. My mom gave it to us on Sunday but things have been crazy since then. Lily absolutely loved the potty and dragged it out to the dining room to sit on:

My cutie sometimes likes to watch TV reclined like this on her chair:

Lily suddenly decided that she was really into coloring on Thursday evening and had a blast when we put her in the high chair with some crayons and paper:

Her final creation (Paul drew the frog and I drew the puppy and bee):

Lily playing with toilet paper for the first time:

Wiping her nose:

Offering some to Paul:

Tearing off pieces to practice wiping with:

Cuddling on the couch with Eeyore watching Yo Gabba Gabba before bed:

My silly girl:

Lily getting her ducks all in a row on Friday evening at Meijer:

Lily was very excited to be able to color with BOTH hands on Saturday morning. This color wonder set was generously sent to her by Kathy as part of a get-well package: