Muchas Gracias

Just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for the words of support this week, as I cared for our sick baby.

RSV is most certainly a Really Sucky Virus.

But, we have such a good team. We are so blessed. Thank you.

Thank you for the calls,

for the emails, sending well wishes and offers to come over and help.

Thank you for the texts and messages.

Thank you for the packages of M&Ms dropped off at our house,

for the bags of stickers,

for the care packages.

Thank you for checking in.

Thank you for the respiratory therapy  video (Puppet shows + A Capella? YES.)

Thank you for helping me at neb time,

by singing,

doing puppet shows,

by distracting, using every ounce of your powers.

Thank you for singing the Eagle’s Fight Song at the top of your lungs.

Thank you for juggling.

Thank you for snuggling.

Thank you, to our parents, our grandparents, our friends.

Our doctors.

Our team.

You have been wonderful.

Baby is a bit better today. This RSV thing is a long road, but I thank goodness

and our angels

that things seem to be looking up.

Oh, and did I mention

today, as I pulled in from our Pediatrician appointment, on the car console by the baby

there was the tiniest little feather? That helped me to breathe.

So thank you, or, as the baby began saying this morning, Gracias.

Go team!

 

Tags: family, love, neblizer treatments, respiratory therapy, RSV, thanks, welcome to joshland

The hardest part.

The hardest part of being a parent is watching your child suffer.

I am so so so so so so so millionsofsos blessed that our suffering has been limited

and that our daughter has had a healthy, happy life.

But, today she is sick. She has been sick for a week. It is RSV

or, for those of you who are not

doctors,

parents,

teachers

or crazy,

Respiratory Syncytial Virus.

And it freakin sucks.

As I said, she has been sick for a week now, and at our second visit to the doctor today, she tested positive for this virus.

And she has to use a nebulizer, as she requires breathing treatments every four hours.

And each treatment takes 5 minutes, and they feel like the longest five minutes I’ve had, because she hates the machine, and the mask she must wear, and the cloudy air she must inhale, and so she cries, and screams and fights me and her veins bulge and my heart shatters into five million pieces.

And then we eat M&Ms.

And we dry our tears.

So, if I’m quiet for the next few days, it is just because I will be using all of my energy to nurse her, and to hold her, and to make her feel as comfortable

and as loved

as possible

until she gets better.

Thank goodness we have the family that we do

(may I just add that both of my grandfathers, her great-grandfathers, called in the past 30 minutes, just to check on us. How lucky is that?!)

and, and I don’t mean to boast or to be obnoxious,

but thank goodness that my daughter has me as a mom,

because I can’t control how she feels

and I can’t control what germs she picks up

and what viruses she comes down with,

but I can sure as heck give her all of the love and kisses and episodes of Elmo’s World and fruit pops that she needs.

I love her with all of my heart, and when she can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. When her voice gets lost in a coughing fit, I can’t make a sound. I love her and I want to kiss her and make her all better. I will sure try.

Please let my baby feel better soon.

Tags: RSV, sick toddler, toddler cold

Her 21st

Today, my daughter is 21 months old.

I can’t believe that she is so close to being two. I absolutely cannot believe it.

***

Tonight, I had to put away some paperwork in my filing drawer, and I stumbled into the “Baby Hospital” folder.

In it, I found her original (unofficial) birth certificate, copies of her foot prints, lists of her measurements from the hospital pediatricians, our hospital bracelets, her poop and pee schedule from the first few days..I found it all.

And I showed it to her.

And she held her foot up to the tiny foot prints, her present day soles towering over the ones on the paper;

she tried on our bracelets (and did not want to let them go);

she flipped through the papers of the packet called “The New Mom’s Handbook”;

and then,

we took shots.

It is her 21st, after all.

Party like a rock star(?)

So, this just happened:

Me: “It’s almost April! We should start to think about baby’s 2nd birthday party. What should we do?”

Husband: “How about a 20′s flapper party?”

Me: “I LOVE it! What do we do? You know, besides dress as flappers?”

Husband: “Hmmm….How about a Pirates v. Ninjas party?”

Me: “No.”

Husband: “Spy party?”

Me: “Absolutely not.”

Husband: “We could do a ‘Legends of Formula 1 Racing’ party! That could be pretty cool!”

Me: “I don’t think we’re on the right track.”

(author’s note: Pun intended. I know.)

Husband: “Didn’t we have this conversation before?”

And he’s right. . He’s totally right.

And so, we continued:

Me: “I’m serious, though. Do you have any real ideas?”

Husband: “You didn’t like the Formula 1 idea?”

(author’s note: He was totally serious.)

Me: “Well, she loves music. How about something Rock ‘N Roll?

Husband: “Perfect. And we will set up a little area to the side where they can just trash everything, like they’re trashing a hotel room. And we can set up mini vodka bottles and fill them with water and pill bottles and fill them with pez so they can pretend to party like rock stars. This is great.”

Ahhh. So close.

Yet so

so

so

far.

Tags: 2nd birthday party, flapper party, Formula 1, party, party themes, rock star

Ours/A Haiku

You call her “so lithe”,

while I call her “willowy”;

we both call her ours.

Tags: a haiku, beautiful girl, lithe, willowy

I just want to say,

that I feel very grateful that I have a partner

who not only takes care of our family every day,

but who also takes extra special care of me when I’m sick.

A partner who

surprised me with the special Amish Egg Custard that my Nanny used to deliver to me when I was little,

and the certain type of chicken soup that my Mommom would let me have, after she’d pick me up early from school when I was sick,

and who knows that after I take a spoonful of red cough medicine,

or suck on a minty lozenge,

I will sneeze

two times.

So thank you, love

for taking care of me

in sickness

and in health

and in sneezing fits

and in everything in between.

Tags: amish egg custard, chicken and stars, love, sick day, sickness and in health

Is it just me,

or did Jake Gyllenhal just get 18 times hotter with his appearance on Shalom Sesame’s “It’s Passover, Grover!“

Come on! The dimples! The Afikomen sticking out of his breast pocket!

Who’s with me?!

I thought so.

Tags: Grover, It's Passover, Jake Gyllenal on Sesame, Passover, Sesame Street, Shalom Sesame

A memory/April, 2006:

Ventnor, NJ; a wintry trip to the beach house. Our first trip of many.

Dining at a small Italian restaurant.

I ate linguini with white clam sauce. He had the night’s special, spaghetti with calamari.

We talked and shared as a new couple and I asked him how he liked his pasta.

“It’s good,” He told me, as he looked over my shoulder and out the window to the street behind me, “but hey, see that car right there? That’s the car I’d like to get you some day.” Pointing to a black SUV.

A family car.

And in that moment I knew that he didn’t really like his pasta special

but that he loved me.

Tags: first dates, first love, scenes from an italian restaurant, Ventnor NJ

The very best.

Listening to my husband, as he brags to his parents

and regales his friends

with tales of cuteness from our daughter’s school day

is one of the most joy-filled experiences imaginable…

…second only to the exquisite gift of witnessing these moments of cuteness firsthand.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,

but being a parent has made me a better teacher

and being a teacher has most certainly made me a more blessed parent.

My daughter now knows how to wear a backpack

and climb up the big slide

and clean up toys

and dance to the recorder

and use a bigger kid as a footstool.

Seriously, this whole school thing…it’s just the best. The very best.

Well, second only to the love I see in my husband’s eyes

as he wells up with tears

and talks about his little girl

and how proud he is of her…

for how she has grown up so much in just two days…

for how she dances…

for how she is so loved.

Oh, how proud I am to call them mine.

Tags: daddy daughter love, Pre-School, teacher mom, toddler school

Five funny things:

When my daughter sees a dog, she now says “Hi, doggy! Hola!” and when she sees her Uncle she says, “Waaaassaaap?!” and when she sees her daddy, she says “Hey, dude!” and when I ask her if she’s ready to go “night-night” she says “Okay! Cribby.” And when I ask her again, just to be sure, “Night-night?” she always says “No!”

My girl calls her Uggs “Bugs”.

Today, a picture frame fell over and she knelt down next to it and exclaimed, “Oh! You ok?”

My daughter and I had a catch for a half hour this morning. This catch was epic. She’d stand on the sixth stair and throw the giant, pink ball down to me and I’d toss it back to her and then she’d kick it to me and then I’d underhand lob it to her and we were so skilled and so sportsy that I almost changed this blog to Mommy, Ever Athlete. And then she fell down the stairs. No more sports for us. Ever.

My daughter spent her breakfast perusing a People magazine. She then tore out a photo of Bradley Cooper and has been carrying it around all day, calling it “dada”. So yeah, that’s not so much funny as it is ACCURATE.

Tags: baby language, bradley cooper, people magazine, Uggs for toddler

She had her first day.

Today, my daughter had her first day of school.

Real, big kid school.

I had a hard time believing it.

She had her very first backpack.

She had a hand-drawn cartoon, made by her daddy, which he tucked, carefully, into her school bag.

She had her feathers.

She had her first day.

She had the time of her life.

Tags: Feathers, first day of school, New Twos, Princess, toddler backpack