Thank you for your support after the incident the other day. I feel much better about it after having some time to settle down, seeing Sam is totally fine, hearing your war stories of toddlerhood, and meeting another mom at the playground who said that her daughter did the exact same thing when she was Sam’s age - same bridge, falling under that bar while she stood there and watched, only she wasn’t holding another baby. So thank you again, all you little bloggy ladies. It’s good to know I can come here and share my incompetencies and be told what a good mom I am. I wonder what I’ll have to do to actually get one of you to say, “Oh man, you did that?! You must really suck at this.”

And here are some other words of gratitude I have mumbled today:

“Oh, thank you for wiping your face so nicely on my butt, Sam. Now YOUR cheeks are so clean and nice!”

“Are you helping mommy by cleaning the top of the toilet with mommy’s blush brush?…Thank you!?”

“No, your mouth is full so you need to swallow those crackers before you get a bite of my lunch…or you could just open your mouth and scrape out the chewed up crackers and drop them on the floor. Yes, your mouth is empty now. Thank you for reminding me that there are always multiple solutions to a problem.”

Labels: Toddler

I don’t even know how to start writing this…to admit this…

Sam fell from a piece of playground equipment yesterday. This is the third accident we have had in the past week. Last week he fell at the park while running on some uneven pavement and bonked his forehead hard enough for me to call the hospital and find out about signs of concussion and head trauma. The day before that he ran off the edge of our bed while we were playing on it. I couldn’t catch him in time as he sprinted in the other direction. Amazingly, the top half of his body landed in his bouncing Amby bed, which bounced him back up and gently onto the floor. It was like a cartoon, just a totally unlikely string of movement that resulted in him being scared but totally unscathed. I know that things happen and now that he is more mobile there are bound to be some bumps and bruises. What happened yesterday is different though, more serious, and I’m having a much harder time processing it.

We went to the playground in the afternoon and for once there was another mom there who I actually knew. She has a 2 year old daughter as well as a new 4 month old baby girl. While there her 2 year old pooped and needed a diaper change. I asked if there was any way I could help, and so I held the baby so that she didn’t need to be put back in the stroller that was currently full of other gear. As the diaper change took place Sam started to climb up onto the playground equipment. In the past I have always gone up there with him in order to help with steps and make sure he doesn’t run off the edge (like he did from the bed last week). Nothing has ever really happened that has required my assistance – I just follow him to be safe and cautious, and that’s what I was thinking when I made the decision to follow him up while still holding the baby. I figured if he needed me I could still hold his hand and that I was totally capable of doing both.

There is a bridge that connects 2 larger pieces of equipment that Sam likes to walk across. It has parallel horizontal bars along the sides but there is about a foot of space between each bar. We were on this bridge walking back and forth when the baby started to squirm some. I started to change her position and wondered if her mom was comfortable with me holding her while up on the equipment; it hadn’t occurred to me to ask her if it was ok. These are my thoughts when I look up to see that Sam is several feet away and standing near the edge of the bridge. He starts to lose his balance – I still have no idea why – and I know. I know standing there too far away that he is going to fall. The baby is still squirming; I’m trying to hold onto her while watching him. I still have in my mind that I can’t let anything happen to the baby up here and that I shouldn’t have come up with her. I think: he’s going to fall and I’m going to have to stand here and watch it happen. And then Sam sits back, trying to catch himself, but he sits down so close to the edge that his butt lands off the side, and because he is sitting he completely slips under the lowest bar and falls backwards off the bridge. I watch it happen. He’s laying on his back on the ground crying and now I am trapped with no way to get down to him while holding the baby. Her mom runs over and I hand her over the side of the bars. I turn back and jump off the edge to Sam, who has had to lay there crying for what felt like several seconds. It all happened so…slowly. That’s how it felt, and that’s what I can’t understand.

Why didn’t I run to him? I saw it happening. I knew it was going to happen before it actually did, and I froze. I always thought that when and if my child was in danger I would become Wonder Woman and rescue him as long as I was there to see what was going on. I envisioned myself as one of the women we hear about, lifting cars to get to their child trapped underneath. But that’s not what happened. Nothing kicked into gear allowing me a momentary feat of strength and agility. I just stood there…frozen. And that’s what I keep coming back to. I know I made the wrong decision when I followed him up while holding the baby. I should have either stopped him or given the baby back to be placed in her stroller. I know that. But that’s not the problem I am having for some reason. It’s to that point in time where it actually happened that I cannot let go. If I had moved faster…if I had moved at all…could I have grabbed him? I wonder how many times I will replay this, wondering.

Sam is fine. We took an unnecessary trip to the ER where he waved at everyone smiling, laughing, and playing with his cars on the seats in the waiting room. He doesn’t even have a bump. But this morning I still woke up unsettled. Do you ever wake up and feel good for a moment because you acknowledge that nothing bad is happening that day, like unwanted appointments or tasks, and then a realization descends upon you and your heart sinks? I woke up this morning with him smiling at me and then I saw him falling and looking up at me sobbing and scared while I was trapped on the top of a bridge…

We went back to the playground this morning. I didn’t want it to become a thing, you know, like a thing where I end up never taking him back or not letting him get back on the equipment and it just spirals into a big fearful inability to function. When we arrived it was like it never happened for him. He pushed his pink toy stroller around, right under the bridge and walked over the place where he had landed without even noticing. I felt nauseous and asked him for a kiss. I stood next to the bridge from the ground and estimated it to be about 4 feet high. It felt so much taller when I was standing on top of it looking down. He climbed up to the top of the bridge and walked across as I tried to stop myself from hanging onto him the whole time, feeling the color drain from my face as he had a brief misstep and teetered a bit. I asked for another kiss. And then we went on the swings, rolled the acorns down the slide, waved at the airplanes overhead, and followed a butterfly back to the car. He’s fine. But I still come back to it, that feeling descending as I watch him fall. Why didn’t I move?

Labels: Tales, Toddler

So, I think it’s time. It’s time for me to join a gym. Since having Sam my exercise regime has been pretty much nil, with the exception of my awesome performance at the strollercize class, of course. And so as I watch my stomach jiggle (I originally spelled that “giggle” - wonder what that means…) due to my newfound obsession with baking and devouring the results, I figure I gotta do something here. But I’ll be honest, it’s not just to exercise. While the exercise element is all well and good and good for me too, this decision, in great part, is so that I can get a break…from Sam.

The gym that I am thinking of joining has childcare, and I would be joining specifically so that Sam and I could go during the week when Hubby is gone. I feel bad…sort of. In a lot of ways I think it might be good for Sam. We’re in each other’s face all the time. Maybe he’d like a break from me too. Maybe it would do us both some good. He might benefit from having some more independent time and exploring a new place with new people. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just rationalizing it that way so that I can feel ok about putting him in a childcare situation, which I’ve never done. Truth be told, Sam has never been left with anyone other than one friend we had back in Chicago and family members. The idea of leaving him in a room with strangers may end up being way more than I can handle. I also recall a few posts I’ve read in the past that make me wary of gym childcare. I went and toured the place on Saturday and asked a lot of questions. I also asked about it on the message board for “the club.” All the moms who responded said the care there was pretty good and that their kids enjoyed going. Maybe Sam would too.

I guess I just feel like I’d do a better job mothering if I could have just a little bit of time each week to do something for myself. It doesn’t really happen on the weekend because there is always so much to do, including spending time together as a family. The time just flies by. And yet the weekdays are loooooong. It’s just Sam and me for 13 hours every day. I feel like it’s really important for us to have ways to break up the day and keep things interesting. I am able to find TONS of errands to do in the morning just for the sake of getting out of the house for a change of scenery, but I can’t keep that up because it is just turning into a big spending habit that we totally CANNOT afford. This would be another way to have something scheduled in to break up the day and perhaps be beneficial for both of us. I get some exercise and a much needed break a few times a week, and Sam gets to do something a little more interesting than hanging out with Mommy at home or running errands. So why am I rationalizing this? Because when I read this over again it’s pretty obvious that that’t what I’m doing. Why should I feel bad about having someone else take care of Sam for a little while so that I can have 2-3 hours a week? Is it normal for me to feel bad about this? Jeez! Where does this come from, this mommy guilt?

Labels: Uncategorized

It was around this time last year that I began the search for the perfect coat. No, not for me, for my then 5 month old son. I was obsessed with all things baby warmth. I began my search via the internet, favoriting websites and marking possibilities. How could I keep him warm in the freezing Chicago weather? It’s so windy, so very windy. I considered snow pants matched with huge coats, fuzzy fleecy baby-in-a-bags, one piece down things with hands and feet built in - I had no idea what I was doing. The search ended up taking roughly 2 and 1/2 months. It was an actual source of stress for me. I even remember accusing Hubby of a lack of involvement in the life of his son because I could not under any circumstance get him to talk to me anymore about baby winter apparel. He had had enough. Two months in our conversations went something like:

“Why don’t you just order that one?”

“FOR THE 59TH TIME I TOLD YOU LAST WEEK I CAN’T GET THAT ONE BECAUSE IT HAS NO FEET AND IF THERE IS A GAP BETWEEN HIS PANTS AND HIS SHOES HE COULD FREEZE!”

“Ok, how about that one?”

“FOR THE 83RD TIME I TOLD YOU TWO WEEKS AGO IT CAN’T BE THAT ONE BECAUSE IT WILL BUNCH UP TOO MUCH AND HIS SEAT BELT WON’T FIT RIGHT AND HE’LL DIE IF HE WEARS IT IN THE CAR!”

“…that one?” (shrinks away in fear)

“FOR THE 107TH TIME I TOLD YOU YESTERDAY THAT THE PRINT IS UGLY AND I HATE THE COLOR AND I’M CRAZY AND AN INSANE BITCH ABOUT COATS AND BLAH BLAH CRAZY WOMAN BLAH SCREECH WHY WON’T YOU HELP ME YOU DON’T LOVE ME BLAH CRAZY COATS CRAZY COATS CRAZY COATS…”

And so I had to go it alone. In the end I made what I thought was the perfect decision - it had hands and feet and zippers and down and a hood and it would make my babe a bundle of toasty goodness all winter long. Except for the fact that I did not actually intend to bundle up my child and go trecking through the windy blowing blizzards of our freezing city. What was it exactly that I needed this SNOWSUIT for?

Here is a picture of one of maybe 3 times total that I put Sam in this thing. Think “A Christmas Story” here.

See how he has to explore with his tongue because all of his limbs have been rendered immobile?

Clearly this is not a garment I could expect him to wear for any period of time over 3 minutes. I tried to put him in it for a car ride once and had to pull over and take him out so that he wouldn’t sweat to death, big sweaty head that he is. Or maybe I just opened all the windows and froze myself as his body temp equalized…

Today is chillier than it’s been. For our grocery trip this morning we sported long sleeves and I my new jeans jacket - let’s go 80’s woohoo! But it hit on my walk to the car as I held my 3 layered child: “Oh no, what is Sam going to wear for a coat this winter?!” And it all started flashing before my eyes again. Snowsuits, boots, parkas, fleeces, hoods, hats. Dear God, it begins again, with a whole new set of toddler like issues. Meanwhile the like new blue suit sits in the closet longing for another body to smother.

Labels: Uncategorized

I mentioned before that my parents were coming this weekend. I also mentioned my big plans to bail on them and my son so that Hubby and I could get some much needed going out time. Since we’re still new here we pretty much have no one to watch Sam so that we can get away, so having this opportunity presents some much needed and long awaited date time.

We saw Little Miss Sunshine yesterday - really very good. I realize I’ve seen like 3 movies since Sam was born over a year ago, but I’m pretty sure it was very good despite my desperate, biased excitement over just seeing any movie at all. I actually laughed out loud several times, which is rare for me at a movie. Great characters, great acting - definately worth a spot on your Netflix queue ( I can’t believe that word is actually spelled that way…it’s so strange to type). And speaking of Steve Carell, can I just say I am ridiculously excited about the new season of the Office starting this week? We’ve been gearing up for it by watching episodes from the previous seasons. Hubby and I actually fell asleep last night whispering in bed about what we think will happen with Jim and Pam, which, as always, results in me having dreams about Jim (Hubby knows. He’s ok with it. He has a crush on Pam too) and then whenever I wake up I find I am still thinking about what will happen Thursday. I’m obsessed. I have never been like this over a TV show. Ever. I’ll probably write about it AGAIN before next Thursday because I think about it SO MUCH. Lame, and yet I care not. Now back to the topic at hand…

Today I got to shower for more than 3 and 1/2 minutes while I had 3 other people there to watch Sam. I even shaved my legs because, that’s right, tonight we are going out to dinner, just the two of us. We’re going somewhere that we could never take Sam, we will spend lots of money we don’t have, we will gorge ourselves on food while it is still hot, and I will wear a skirt and perhaps even a necklace. It is unseasonably hot here today, supposed to get up to 85 or so. We plan to bid farewell to the summer in style, hopefully sitting out on a patio of some fancy schmancy restaurant and eating multiple courses. Bon appetit.

Labels: Uncategorized

Here ya go, the results from yesterday’s Friday Flicks game. Below are the answers followed by the points awarded. I had a system for points, not KEP’s perhaps, but a system. Laina totally rocked it. Looks like we have a Leo fan in the ranks. Thanks for playing!

1. Howard - The Aviator
2. Lee - Marvin’s Room
3. Ismay and Rose - Titanic
4. Jim – The Basketball Diaries
5. Sal - The Beach
6. Boss Tweed - Gangs of New York
7. Porthos and Aramis – The Man in the Iron Mask
8. Juliet – Romeo and Juliet
9. Gilbert and Arnie – What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
10. Kid - The Quick and the Dead

Laina – 14
KEP – 6
Jay – 3
Kristy P. - 3
MamaChristy - 3
Rooney, Carrie, Loni, K, DMD, KTS - 1

Labels: Uncategorized

For the past few months I’ve been playing KEP’s Friday Flicks game. She posts 10 movie quotes and we guess the movie, actor/character, and the theme that ties the ten movies together. She awards points each week and after several rounds declares a winner. I won once and then learned that there is also a PRIZE involved – woohoo! Anyway, for this session she is doing a blog tour for Friday Flicks and I am hosting this week. So welcome fellow Flicks players and everyone who has never seen this game can play along and then check out the point standings and future rounds over at Holding the Mirror Up to My Soul.

Remember you are guessing the movie, the character and/or actor and the THEME. Answers will be posted some time on Saturday. Oh, and this is probably obvious but you can’t use the internet…because it’s lame, and although it might not be an official rule I never read anyone else’s comments when I play.

1. “Come in with the milk. Come in with the milk. Come in with the milk.”

2. “You know how every goddamn Christmas I say, Looks like we didn’t get a card again this year from your Aunt Bessie? Well, that’s my sister Bessie.”

3. “I wanted to convey sheer size, and size means stability, luxury, and above all, strength.”
“Do you know of Dr. Freud, Mr. Ismay? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you.”

4. “Just my own naked self and the stars breathing down, it’s beautiful.”

5. “Now get some sleep, I may wish to have sex again before we eat breakfast.”

6. “They don’t speak English in New York any more?”

7. “Aramis, is this the way to hell?”
“Hell may be our destination, but not this trip.”

8. “You kiss by the book.”

9. “God Arnie, you’re getting so big. Pretty soon I ain’t gonna be able to carry you no more.”
“No, you’re getting littler Gilbert. You’re getting littler, you’re shrinking! You’re shrinking Gilbert, you’re shrinking! Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking!”

10. “No no no no, you see it’s a gun fight. We both have guns. We aim, we fire, you die.”

Labels: Uncategorized