Milestones and almost-milestones.
Recently, watching Stella ride her tricycle was like watching something straight from the circus. Something involving the world’s tallest woman and a Barbie bike. An upgrade was definitely in order. However, Stella being Stella, we couldn’t just upgrade to the next size in the natural progression, we were instead forced to skip straight from pipsqueak bikes to regular old kid bikes, which means one thing: the girl can now haul some serious ass. Behold, the Gremlin:
Last week, Porter started attending a new day care facility.
Although I lucked out in getting Stella into an amazing preschool program, I knew that with Porter, I couldn’t count on that luck again a second time, and so I needed to jump on my opportunity to get him ‘into the queue’ (so to speak). Plus, the logistics of having them in two different towns was really beginning to take its toll. It was a truly difficult decision to make, as Grani-K has been the central force in allowing us to easily and comfortably balance our lives between work and home. She took care of Stella from the time she was 8 months old, and Porter from shortly after his 4 month birthday. She has practically become part of our family, and we will forever be thankful for her seemingly endless generosity, kindness and flexibility. We will all miss you, Kathy.
And so began a new routine.
Not only had Porter just officially transitioned from infant to toddler, but he was tossed into a whole new routine, new environment, new napping, new faces, new diet – you name it. And have I mentioned the teething? The big, ugly monster molars that have been s-l-o-w-l-y creeping through his gumline? And that stubborn fluid buildup in his ears? Blech. What does all of this add up to? An irritable, obstinate, toddler who moves like the wind and exhibits an endless supply of tenacity.
It’s a good thing he still has all that cute going on, because it has just started sinking in that we are all on the the bus back to toddlerville – and I’ll give you one guess who’s driving. Our home is no longer a safe haven where I can freely tend to things while he plays innocently on the floor. I have learned the hard way how much damage can be done in under 30 seconds. There are times where he is actually mid-stride towards my jewelry box before his feet even hit the ground. Aside from his bedroom, every door in our house has to be securely shut. And not just mostly shut either, because Porter? Yeah, he knows the difference. Even in his room (one of the only ones he is still allowed free access to), he has managed to wound himself, and/or seriously mangle the various items he has figured out how to pull off shelves. He has yanked Stella’s lamp from her nightstand and shattered the bulb (twice), removed an entire layer of skin by jamming his his thumb into Stella’s CD player, and taken a header into something (I’m suspecting the coffee table) hard enough to have a huge scabby remnant just above his left eye. Each time, ironically, getting mad at me for attempting to remove him from the scene of the crime. I get read the riot act by a 1-year-old about 500 times a day. And take it from me, his manifesto – it’s a long one.
His new day care also allows him a leisurely morning snooze, which means there is no more easing us into our afternoon with a well-timed nap. Instead we get home in a giant, rolling ball of elbows, backpacks, and empty stomachs. The first couple of days I had to strategize my unloading process so as to not leave The Destroyer to his own devices for any length of time. Plus, he gets mad if Stella gets to leave the car before he does. Tough. I need time to secure the perimeter before I can turn him loose.
Fortunately, his perpetual motion personality also comes with an amazing amount of humorous moments. We often find ourselves laughing just about the time we might otherwise want to set him on the curb. Just the other night, Stella and I were quietly laying in her bed (something I routinely do with her for a few minutes just before she goes to sleep) listening to the one-man house party going on in Porter’s crib. Stella and I both began to giggle uncontrollably listening to him talk to himself, the wall, the stuffed animals. Then we watched his silhouette as he stood there waving – at what, we still are unsure. More times than I’d like to count, I have walked by his room only to spy an unusual amount of daylight pouring out from underneath his door. Ah yes, instead of napping, he has yanked down the curtains and is now busy surveying the backyard. Again.
So you had better get prepared for me to start making all those whiny toddler posts again. Like the ones where I bitch and moan about never being able to get anything done because of the Toddler Effect, but rest assured, I will also be making the ones where I get to wax poetic about how it really is the time that, later down the road, I will want back the most.
For some time now, Porter has been walking. But not to the point that I would actually say that he was walking walking. Instead, it has been the kind of thing where he’ll pensively take a couple of steps, then decide that, at this rate, he could be lapped by a blue-haired granny a with walker, and he’ll drop to the floor and crawl at mach-5 to his intended destination – with strong odds that the destination is one of 5 places:
And lord have mercy if he spots an open door to the outside world. There have been numerous occasions where we will have him perched on hip or arm, whilst tending to another activity, only to have him decide – with absolutely no warning – to lunge his entire body towards the open back door. I can say with all honesty, that I am not quite sure how he has made it this far without being fitted for a full-body cast.
Throughout this time of quasi-walking, he has been running himself through his own mini-training camp [cue Rocky theme song]: cruising laps around the coffee table, balancing on his feet and head, and attempting pull-ups on the oven door handle.
His hard work seems to have paid off, as not only is he walking with increasing coordination, but he is mastering distance and multitasking. In the most recent clip I caught of him, he saunters along while simultaneously eating a banana, and then toys with the idea of hiding it in the push-cart, before deciding to shove it in his mouth at the last minute. It’s pure Porter.
If you are curious as to where I have been, look no further than the following two faces:
My little angels: dipped in a vat of adorable, sprinkled with a fine dusting of mischief, and covered with a thousand kisses of what I can only describe as emotional volatility. And as such, I could go either way with this post. And so, perhaps it will be safest to just stick to the facts.
Fact 1: Stella stopped napping a little over two weeks ago. Finito. Kaput. Nein Nap. It snuck up on me in the fashion that most things do in my role as parent of a child who, I am sure, received the child equivalent of Special Ops training. The first couple of days it was no big deal – I’d work at it for a while, then eventually let it slide, (naively) thinking that she would just catch up the next day. Then came the next day. And the next. And the next. Right around day 5 or so, I began realizing that we had moved from minor deviation, to newly entrenched routine. Just. Like. That. And so here we are, entering week 3 of my complete and utter surrender. Barring some rare planetary realignment, my only real hope at this point is going to be getting her to chill in some pre-alotted down time, the trick being that I am able to keep her contained without a padlock. (Damn fire regulations.)
Fact 2: In light of Fact 1, I ended up having to stage a protest of my own. It had to do with that tiny little 30 minute window I had managed to carve out for myself during the household naptime. Once she decided to stage her napping coup, I was all of a sudden faced with having to relinquish the one and only time, other than my shower, wherein I am guaranteed an opportunity to do something by myself, for myself. And so it was that we sat down eye to eye, and I explained that come hell or high water, I was going to exercise and she was going to play quietly, and she was NOT going to bother me unless she, the house, or Porter were on fire. And I’m not talking about little fire either – I mean the sets-the-alarm-off kind of fire. It took her about one time of interrupting me (for the highly important task of finding a puzzle piece) to learn that it was NOT the equivalent of fire.
Fact 3: Porter down-shifted from throwing up to snotty, then changed lanes to teething. Yes, everyone, he is finally getting that errant 4th bottom tooth. I even think I have glimpsed a couple of purple bulges where some of those monster-molars are in the back. Ouch. It figures that just as we seem to be rounding a corner towards some reasonable night-time sleep schedules, he is going to begin monster teething again. Whatever. Sleep is for weenies.
Fact 4: Stella has become a human juke box. Out of nowhere, her song repertoire grew from Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle to an endless array of tunes about frogs and monkeys and space and days of the week. The other night in the bathtub, she was singing me a song that invoked one of the most amazing recall moments I have ever had. As she chirped along about the 5 little monkeys swinging in the tree teasing Mr. Alligator, I (from places in my brain that I didn’t even know existed) began singing along with her – even going so far as to remember how the tempo of the song slowed down as Mr. Alligator came along as quiet as can be, and he SNATCHED that MONKEY right OUT of that TREE!
Along with the laundry list of other titles she has committed to memory, there is the days of the week song. This song has been particularly important to her because she has really begun to latch on to how each of the days has relevance to her life – with the most important ones being Friday (because it’s the one day of the week where she gets to go into Grani K’s when I pick up Porter), Saturday and Sunday (because they are not school days). Each day she asks us what day it is, and then does her best to figure out where it lies in proximity to the High Holy Day of Friday. So, you can imagine how excited I was when she stopped singing this song as Thursday-Thursday,Thursday-Thursday, Thursday-Thursday, Thurrrsdayyyyyyy.
Fact 5: Porter is almost walking. This video isn’t all that great, but it gives a pretty good visual on his drunken-like stagger, and lack of any speed or direction control. Mostly he just plows forward as quickly as possible until he runs into something. He is a boy, is he not? At least that is what I am constantly reminded of each time I open his diaper and he does a man-jewels check. Yup, still there.
Fact 6: Each day, my life inches one step closer to maximum capacity. You tell me the time of day, and I can tell you exactly where I am. 7:24 am? I’m at the intersection of E & Buhne. 12:24 pm? I’m passing the homeless guy right by the Tomo Cafe. 3:24 pm? Surveying the fridge to make sure we have all the ingredients for dinner. 8:24 pm? Deciding whether I am going to sit down at the computer to make a blog post or go to bed. And round and round it goes.
Fact 7: There is no amount of busy or hectic that could ever outweigh the fun, the silly, the cute, the lovable. It’s a fact.
These last weeks have been about 7 varieties of crazy. The new year has been good, but it is foolish to think our lives were actually going to be calm. Our consecutive hours of sleep number has been improving (on a good night, we can eek out about 7 or 8). But, both children refuse to sleep past 5:30am, like EVER. Stella has also recently come to the conclusion that our cumulative household napping hours are being fulfilled by Porter, and has given me no end of grief in refusing to take her afternoon nap. We tend to live and die by our daily schedule, so when it is disrupted, the whole system begins to erode at an exponential pace. And, no matter how hard we try, some part of the system inevitably gets corrupted, leaving us to face the aftermath. Most nights we reach our fever pitch right about dinner time. Watching us try to complete our evening meal is like watching one of those old British comedies where everyone runs around at double speed bonking each other on the head with clubs. That, and throw in some crying.
Of our two children, it usually works out that one tends to run us through the emotional obstacle course,while the other works the physical angle. Stella has been going through difficult, yet completely typical, growing pains at school, and we are pulling out every trick in the book to keep her on track. Let’s just say that the sticker chart has lost it’s appeal and we are now moving onto Plan B. I’ll let you know when we figure out what that is.
Porter, on the other hand, has, in the last 48 hours, treated us to three rounds of puking and one round of explosive diarrhea. The puking part isn’t actually all that new, but the diarrhea was, well, it was just a special treat.
Although the diarrhea was a little perplexing, the puking part was less of an “Oh My God!” and more of a “Ugh! Not Again!” We have actually had intermittent spells of puking with Porter for about the last 4 months or so. At least, that is when we considered it no longer ‘spitting up’ but rather ‘throwing up’. (For those who are wondering about the exact distinction between the two, I have one word: chunks.) Although we have done our best to figure out some cause and effect, we have been stumped. He’ll sometimes go weeks without so much as a cough, but then will, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, shower us with his lunch three days in a row.
There was a day a couple of months back where even Stella became a victim to Porter’s trademark firehose of barf. As I was trying to maneuver him from the dining room to the changing table, we left a virtual river of spew from one room to the next. As Stella emerged from the bedroom after her nap, I was still trying to wrangle McGoo out of his clothes. She rounded the corner into my bedroom and immediately slipped in one of the puddles, falling awkwardly to the floor. As she tried standing up, she slipped again. I felt like we were all three trapped in an episode of I Love Lucy.
I mentioned all of this to the pediatrician at Porter’s last appointment, but my details were spotty and lacking in any meaningful insight other than, “he seems to throw up a lot.” I just can’t imagine how she couldn’t come up with a diagnosis based on my meaningful description of symptoms. Instead, we had had to go this one alone – gathering data the way the early pioneers did – with a crayon and a bar napkin. At this point, we have observed that, 1.) each time he throws up he has just had a bottle, 2.) the bottle was given to him within a couple hours after a meal, 3.) he never shows any other symptoms of illness, and 4.) he is ready to eat again pretty quickly afterwards, and never with any ill effects.
Thusly, we have ruled out food poisoning or flu. Instead, our hypothesis at this point is that Porter’s “I’m Full” sensor is on the blink. You know, that little voice that we all have in the back of our subconscious that says things like, “Please step AWAY from the cheesecake.” His seems to be there sometimes, while other times it turns into the cheering crowd at a hot dog eating contest, “One More! One More! One More!” It is always shocking to both Steve and I how much actually comes back up. We look at one another as if to say “did you secretly take him to an all-you-can-eat buffet?”
And so it shall be that we will commence with operation Rhymes with Duke.