a day, or two

...in the life of a temporarily single parent who's child is sick is. no. fun.

Freeman has been out in York, PA for his last but hopefully best interview. He's en route home as we speak, but I have been, up to this point, battling this nasty bug Mick picked up from daycare. She started vomiting in middle of the night (3 am) on Thursday and then refusing to go back to sleep. I dropped her off at daycare only to have to pick her up after 2 hrs, since she vomited and reached a 101.4 fever. The remainder of the day was a pure test on my ability to tip-toe around the house, going up and down stairs about 15 million times washing and drying the clothes. Then back and forth between the office to her room, checking to see how she's doing, and working, all without waking her up.

Throughout the day I would doze off while holding and soothing her, and wake up panicking, thinking she got sicker, she's about to vomit again. Since the morning I have had 5 loads of laundry going, and just managed to put some sheet on our bed, so we can sleep tonight.

After all this physical work, the #1 thought on my mind is did I screw up? Should I have sent her to ER?

Why doesn't parenthood comes with some kind of instruction booklet?

If it's not cuz it's dark, and Mick is home alone, I would seriously go for a run to shake off all these tension in my body.

While the trip to Caumsett State Park was eventful, not in the best sense, we did walk away with amazing photo opts!

Ups and ups and more ups!!!!

There are lots of ups and downs when you are parent for the first time, but things are definitely getting more interesting now that Mick is almost 1 year and half.

Earlier tonight, she suddenly wanted me to sing "twinkle twinkle little star" non-stop before bed. Every time I stop, she demands it again by saying "more! more!". She particularly loves the twinkle twinkle part, by wiggling her little chubby body and giggling. It really warms my heart to see her interacting more, and for the past few days, except when she was tired and upset about something specifically, she was amazingly pleasant and happy. She's showing both Freeman and I that she really loves being with us, she pays attention when we speak to her and smiles and make silly facial or body movements to keep us interested. When Freeman or I walk away from her, she calls out to us and smiles. She truly is the sweetest reward in my life, and I was ignorant before when I said I didn't want to have kids. Certainly had I known how amazing she is, I would have had her the moment my reproductive system was ripe and ready =P.

Having said that, I must also admit that raising a child is not easy and seeing how many couples out there are raising 2, 3, 4 or more, I am thinking these old bones of mine can probably manage just 1 more if God willing.

Happy New Year to us, 2011 should be interesting!

Messy business

Feeding a baby turns out to be more demanding than I had anticipated.

Early on breastfeeding, as any mother of young children knows, is very demanding time wise as well as the physical effort it takes. And by the time they turn 6 months and you start feeding them solid, it's an entire different struggle all together.

Today, Mick is a decent eater, she eats most of the food we feed her but I struggle to keep up with all the different types of food she ought to try in order to develop an well-rounded palette for diverse food. I go from being a casual cook to being obsessed with coming up with recipes that can be wiped up last minute. Even though I don't appreciate how expensive healthy, high quality meat and produce cost, I happily fork over our hard-earned cash so that we have a fridge stuffed and ready for the next meal.

Another aspect of feeding that I struggle with continuously is accepting the mess. Yes, the keyword here is ACCEPT! Sure there things one can do to minimize the mess but a toddler is an expert mess creator and she will stop at nothing to ruin her clothes, highchair, the carpet and hair. I am a work in progress, and while I get annoyed with the mess, I have slowed learned to accept the occasional noodle in my hair and delight in finding interesting treasure even sometimes hiding in Mick's diaper.

And every night, I say a little prayer to thank God for Angel, our portable vacuum cleaner, for keeping our carpet reasonable free of food.

The future is never predictable

I hear other parents talk about the terrible t...no not terrible two, but terrible teen years, especially for girls. So far life lesson tells me that the mass is almost always right, collectively we do have bigger wisdom and what the mass experience is usually what an very average individual will experience.

So looking ahead, even though right now I am loving every giggle and wiggling toes, I know that certain day will arrive and you will render me helpless and at times probably make me feel hopeless. My sweet angel McKayla, my baby girl, the love of my life, listen to me carefully. Mommy has been there, raging hormone turned me into a nightmare of sort, at least to your grandparents. So when you are tempted to shut the door on my face and scream for me to leave you alone, know that just by being female, mommy inheritely know what you are going through.

Your path will be unique but I suspect the mass is right, when that day comes when all you see is that boy sitting 2 rows to your right, and black nail polish makes you feel beautiful and unique, and rebelling against your 'boring' and 'annoying' parents is just what you do, I ask that you pause and read this, and while you may not be convinced that I love you, and it seems you will never change your mind, you will. I do love you, and I want you to know that you are truly the apple of my eye and you mean more than the world to me and I will give everything up in a heart beat to make you happy. This phase in life WILL pass, whether it's for better or for worst, that depends on the path we choose for ourselves.

But whatever path you do choose, just believe that someday, you will see just how deeply I love you. Because, you are born to be loved.

Mommy

Forgetting oneself

is not an easy task, in fact I think it's one of the hardest thing to do when you are self centered like me. For the first 34 years of my life, I couldn't manage to do that. But then this little person came along, changed my view on motherhood and makes me forget who I am, where I am and why I bother thinking about myself at all.

For her, a thousand times over. And if God takes me home tomorrow, while I will miss her dearly, I will be pleased I've brought to this world a beautiful little gal and she's made my world a better place.

Precious sleep

One of the few lessons I had the pleasure of learning, from taking care of Mick is that kids are not machines, they go through phases and all the good habits you try to help them develop will come, but because they are growing so rapidly and they each develop at their own pace, some days, weeks, months they react a certain way but quickly change the next day, week or month. There's no telling what they will do next.

Since Mick was barely 2 months old, she has been going down at 7 pm every night. Sleeping through the night was never a problem, and while caring for this active little beast tires us out tremendously, Freeman and I had always been able to look forward to some solid block of down time after 7 pm.

Well, our good fortune took a different turn tonight, it's almost 11 pm now and Mick just fell asleep about 30 minutes ago. I came out of our bedroom (she's sleeping in our bed tonight) feeling beaten down, quite literarily.

Let's hope tomorrow night is different.