Watch Out Marty Stewart

 

I have become a domestic goddess.  Yesterday, I baked bread.  Shout it from the mountaintops, Maria!  I MADE BREAD!  I just went on line, got a recipe, bought some flour, and voila!  Bread.  Bring on the bird flu.  I can keep my family alive with...bread!!!

You have to understand the context here.  Not more than a year ago, I swore that I would never be a cook, couldn't cook, didn't want to cook.  Oh, I made the occasional batch of cookies and, if pressed, could conjure up some Kraft Mac.  I've since then gone through a bit of a kitchen revolution.  But back then if someone had told me that on a cold, snowy November Sunday in 2006, I would make loaves of bread that came out smelling good and tasting delicious, I would have scoffed at them.  Loudly scoffed. 

I hardly recognize myself.

Because, friends, I ALSO made a delicious Strawberry Cream cake!  OH MY GOD was it good!  And I'm not the only one who thinks so.  Because sometimes when you make something, it doesn't really taste that good, but because you made it, you think it tastes good?  But not this time!  Eric and Addie shoveled it in like the apocalypse was coming, and we served it for dinner at our friends Chris and Toni's, and they shoveled it in, too.  Shovel, shovel, shovel. 

So, yesterday, I made three loaves of delicious bread and a beautiful, tasty strawberry cream cake.

AND--this is the kicker--I found a used pair of Citizens of Humanity jeans at Buffalo Exchange for a fraction of their retail value IN MY SIZE.  (I know I'm overdoing it with the caps, but I want to make sure to adequately communicate my enthusiasm).  Somebody can put me down now, and I'll die happy.  But not before eating more bread and cake and wearing my new jeans!  Whoopee!  Except if I eat too much bread and cake I might not fit in my new jeans.  Oh, no!

Right.  This is a parenting blog.  Well...

One dark cloud on the horizon appears to be that Addie may be giving up her afternoon nap.  I stick her in her room at the appointed time, but she is just not sleeping.  She is busy in there, singing, playing with toys, reading books, drafting executive orders.  But she is definitely not sleeping.  Which means that from about 4pm on she is a raging lunatic, crying at every little thing, and watching herself cry in the mirror, and forcing us to watch her cry in the mirror.  And, dammit, I need those few hours of toddler quiet.  Sigh.

Any ideas? 

The other huge dark cloud (and this is a biggie--so big I don't really even want to write about it because it's freaking me out) is that Addie's preschool might not be able to take her on Mondays next semester.  And I work all day Mondays.  So that's a huge bummer.  I'm going to think positive and hope that a solution becomes available.  But stuff like this can really shake me up. 

I need cake.

Someone Remembers

Someone, who shall remain nameless, came home last night with flowers.  This someone also told me that he (or she) will always think I'm beautiful.  All this in response to said person finally reading the blog, especially the post on my hair issues.  Score many points for this person. 

This person also wondered if our entire lives were now going to be freely available to the world via toddlerspit.  I assured him (or her) that there was much that would remain off-limits, and he (or she) was much relieved.  There will be much teasing, however:  anytime one of us acts up, the new threat will be "Blog fodder!"  I wonder how long that will be funny.

As we were settling into bed last night, we were talking about some of Addie's recent quirks, and how we don't want to forget them, and that maybe this is the best thing about this blog.  It might keep us from forgetting the wonder these children bring us.  You never think you're going to forget the amazing things they do, but then life gets going so fast, and before you know it, you've forgotten what Addie smelled like as a baby, or how she feels cuddled into the crook of your arm, or how Nolie makes the most amazing squeaks as she smiles and has such fabulous fat rolls that it's all I can do to keep from nibbling at her.

I feel like I'm much more cognizant of the time passing with Nolie, since we're not going to have any more kids; I'm really appreciating her baby-ness and not worrying too much about her reaching milestones or getting to the next stage, like I did with Addie.  I'm trying to just be with her, to enjoy these whisper-fast moments.

And Addie's growing so fast, too.  She's doing things now she'll never do again, and which are charming and weird and uniquely her.  Her latest fascination is with mirrors.  She likes especially to stand in front of the full-length one in our room and spit on it, so that I will come in hours later and the entire bottom half of the glass is totally coated in dried goo.  I find this completely disgusting.  But she thinks it's hilarious.

She also likes to go to the mirror when she's having a tantrum to watch herself cry.  She will say something like, "Mommy, sing me a song while I'm cryin'!"  That song always has to be the theme from Sesame Street.  So, you're standing there in front of the spit-soaked mirror while your toddler watches herself cry, singing, "Sunny days...sweepin' the clouds away...."  Whoa.

Other than that, though, Addie doesn't worry too much about how she looks.  She's pretty much function-oriented.  If her clothes are uncomfortable, she takes them off.  She's not keen on having her hair brushed or her face washed.  Sometimes she'll scream, "Mommy, move my hair!" just because it's falling into her face and keeping her from doing whatever it is she's doing.  But mostly she's utterly unconscious of how she "should" look or what she "should" wear.  It reminds me of that Sweet Honey in the Rock song about there being "no mirrors in my nana's house, and the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes."  I know there will come a day soon when Addie will lose this lack of self-consciousness, and I will mourn these easy moments of just being and doing.

In the meanwhile, and with "someone's" help, I hope that I learn more from Addie about mirrors than she learns from me.

The Tautology of Two

 

Two is an excellent age in so many ways.  It's also the age when you want to ship your children off to distant planets because they are so incredibly maddening.  But it's also really, really excellent. 

One of my favorite things about hanging out with Addie right now is the adventure she is having with language.  Being two allows one a delightful level of creativity with proncunciation, meaning, and logic without self-consciousness; this makes communicating with Addie particularly exciting.  For example, she's been singing this version of "Twinkle, twinkle" lately, which she made up all by herself:

 

Twinkle, twinkle, little moon

How I wonder why you spoon

Up above the world so high

Like a giant pizza pie

Twinkle, twinkle, little moon

How I hope to see you soon.

Cool, huh?  Brilliant little genius, she is.  She also says things with such a sweet little lisp--a bird's nest is a bird's "nesthsh" and so on.  So, this is all endearing and wonderful.  When it's not particularly frustrating, that is.

We're doing a lot of talking about emotions lately.  I was getting fed up with Addie's pretty much constant tantrums a while back, and when I get frustrated, I read.  A discussion of parenting books on my favorite-ever parenting website, Parenthacks, led me to a 1961 book by Haim Ginott called Between Parent and Child.  It's written in this old-fashioned, Cold-War-civil-defense-manual tone and there's a whole lot of sexist stuff about what mommies and daddies do and don't do, but if you can get past that, I think it offers some pretty good advice.  For example, it recommends offering simple, clear answers to kid's complex questions (I know, duh, but for some reason I had gotten into the habit of giving Addie some long-winded answers lately, and this was a good reminder to shut up a liitle).

Ginott's book also reminded me to simply acknowledge Addie's feelings as they were happening rather than try to fix them, interrogate them, or teach her to suppress them.  For example, these are the types of conversations we were often having, typically precipitated by my asking her not to do something such as, oh, I don't know, sticking peas in her nostrils:

A (lower lip protruding prominently):  Mommy, I'm sad!

M:  Why are you sad, Addie?

A (now kicking and screaming, peas flying everywhere):  Because I am!

 

Nowhere to go from there, right?  I mean, how do you explain the problems with circular logic to a toddler?  So now I'm trying something that looks like this:

A:  Mommy, I'm sad!

M:  It's okay to feel sad, Addie.  We all feel sad sometimes and it's good to express it.  But peas should usually go in our mouths, sweetie, not in our noses. 

A (lip still protruding but no kicking and screaming):  Okay, mommy.  Mommy?  I can't breathe!

M:  I know, my darling girl.  Let's get those dang peas out of your nose.

 

Not exactly Jedi magic, but the whole "It's alright to cry" thing seems to really work with her.  This makes a lot of sense to me.  In fact, my therapist really helped me to feel my feelings, too, to the tune of a couple hundred bucks a month.  But it worked--I don't stick peas up my nose anymore, and I know it's okay to feel a liitle sad about it.  Whatever--the idea is that you teach your children to identify and express their emotions in appropriate ways.  Pretty healthy stuff.

The other Ginott gem that Eric and I have been using with Addie for a while is the old giving lots of choices trick.  The key is to make sure you provide manageable and acceptable choices.  In other words, the choices have to be simple enough to not overwhelm a two-year-old, and also contain alternatives that are acceptable to you as a parent. 

For instance, asking a toddler what she wants for dinner is a bad idea (she might say "marshmallows" or "bats' eyes," neither of which is on the menu around here).  Asking her if she wants a hot dog or a quesadilla is a better alternative--at my house, anyway.  At your house, feeding your kid a hot dog might be as bad as the bats' eyes.  The point is that you provide a range of appropriate choices for you.

This is particularly useful when you get the ubiquitous "no" response.  Addie won't even hear your question before her ruby-red lips are forming the word "no," so we've had to develop some creative strategies around this.  Of course she doesn't want to change her pull-up!  She likes lugging around three pounds of pee-soaked cotton between her legs!  But the choice she has is not really whether the pull-up is going to be changed.  It has to be.  Her choice is whether she wants it changed in the living room or in the dining room, or whether she wants to do it herself or with my help.  Acceptable choices. 

Ginnott also talks about why bribing and threatening are bad, though those habits have been a little harder for us to break.  Still, we're working on it.  And his strategies are certainly making my life with Addie more excellent than frustrating. 

Hardy Har Har Hair

Note to reader:  This is a long-ish post, with lots of self-indulgent rambling.  Apologies.  Then again, this is a blog.  What do you expect? 

 

Like many women, I have a long and sordid history with my hair.  I've had perms and mullets; I've been dyed maroon and fuschia (and not on purpose) and have had blonde highlights so often that my hair has fallen out; I've had mallbangs and layers and bluntcuts and pixiecuts and bobs and shags; I've had anchorwoman helmets and feathered sides.  I'm the kind of person who will wake in the middle of the night feeling that something is missing in her life and, deciding that the missing thing is bangs, I will cut them, only to wake the next morning horrified and regretful.  This happens every six months or so.  I dye my hair at home because I'm too cheap to have it done at the salon, and I only have my hair cut every few months for the same reason.  I have no idea what my "natural" color is anymore.  And I am rarely satisfied with how my hair looks, which usually results in it being pinned back with a bobby pin or put up in a ponytail.

Part of this dissatisfaction is a result of genetics.  I have what I call hybrid hair, meaning that the bottom layer is naturally curly while the top layer is bone-straight.  So, unless I dry my hair straight or get it permed (and who does that anymore?), it looks like a disaster when I leave the house.  Have you seen Being John Malkovich?  Do you remember Cameron Diaz's hair in that movie?  That's what I look like when my hair is left to its own devices.  I also have a crapload of premature gray.  I started graying when I was 20, in fact.  And we're not just talking a few stray hairs.  My ex-boyfriend used to teasingly call me the "gray fox."  Which I suppose is sort of a compliment.  When you're 50.

All this means that my hair looks and feels rather tortured.  It longs to be curly where it is straight, longs to be straight where it is curly.  It is dry, over-processed, and split-ended.  It is mad at me, and I am mad at it.  This also means that I can freakishly remember everything, positive or negative, that anyone has ever said about my hair.  Ever.

The other source of torture for me is that I am the most hopelessly unphotogenic person on the planet, with the exception, perhaps, of William Hung.  I would say that out of every 100 pictures someone takes of me, I may sort of, kind of, only really half-like one of them. 

This has created a self-image crisis for me.  See, I'm pretty satisfied with my life most of the time, despite the incessant complaining featured on this blog.  I have a great family, a job I love, good health, things I enjoy doing and feeling and learning, on and on.  In short, my life feels like I should look like Christy Turlington. 

And yet.  Somebody snaps a picture, and I don't recognize myself in it.  I honestly expect to see Christy Turlington in my picture.  Instead, I get...well...somebody else.  Somebody not-Christy-Turlington. 

My sister says the same thing happens to her.  She does her hair all nice and puts on make-up and leaves the door feeling like, "All right.  I'm looking pretty good.  I may not be drop-dead gorgeous, but dang, I look pretty good."  Then someone somewhere takes a picture, and she sees it, and wonders what the hell happened.  Because it won't be a good picture.  And my sister is a beautiful woman.  But her odds of taking a good picture are sort of like mine:  not good.

In other words, we have learned not to trust our perceptions.  I look in the mirror and think, Dang, I look pretty good.  Then some sort of metamorphosis happens between the time I'm in front of the mirror and the time I get in front of a camera, and out comes a picture featuring not-Christy-Turlington Jen but this other being, who has a squarish, long face, and hair that looks like someone lacquered it into a cubist sculpture, and two squinty, not quite the same-size, almost-lazy eyes.  Like my sister, I wonder WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED.

This raises some horrible self-doubts, of course.  One has to wonder if one is just horribly un-photogenic, or horribly unattractive.  And if one stands before the mirror and finds one's self fairly attractive, but then takes horribly unattractice pictures, one must ask one's self:  Am I horribly unattractive and just don't know it?  Have I fooled myself into seeing something in the mirror that just isn't there?  The result of this schism is often that one seeks lots of affirmation from others.  Which, of course, is a very, very risky mode of operation.  Notice that I am referring to this anonymous "one" as if it might not be me.  Schisms galore.

All this is a preface to a conversation I had with Eric last night.  I am on a "growing-out" cycle at the moment.  My hair has been bob-short for quite a long time, and now it's about shoulder length, which is a demonstration of epic discipline for me.  I've been thinking the long hair looks kind of good, is kind of feminine and versatile.  And when we first got together, Eric admitted to me that he liked longer hair on women (an example of my freakish hair-comment memory).  In other words, I have been almost, sort-of liking my hair.  And, unfortunately, I thought I'd seek a little affirmation from the old man to double-check this perception.  You know, because "one" has reasons for not trusting one's perceptions.

So, we're crawling into bed, all sleepy and bone-tired like the parents of two little kids that we are, and for some mis-guided reason I think this would be a good time to ask Eric what he thinks of my long-ish hair, since he's never said anything about it.  The reaction that I wanted, of course, was this:

Eric (burying his face in my hair and luxuriating in the shoulder-length glory of it all):  "It's gorgeous!  You're gorgeous!  It's so feminine and sexy!  Let's get it on!"

Me:  "I'm so glad you like it!  I've been growing it out just to hear you say that!  Rock my world, big boy!"

 

The reaction that I got in real life, and which eventually led to me sleeping in the guest room, was this:

Eric:  "Um, I don't know.  Really, I guess, it's fine."

Me:  "Oh."  (Totally, totally shocked at the utter blandness of this reply.  Rolling over and trying not to cry).

Me (five minutes later):  "Sorry to obsess over this, but is that all you have to say?  I mean, do you like it better short, do you think?"

Eric (almost asleep and wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into):  "Well, I just want you to feel good about yourself.  So whatever makes you feel good."

Me:  "Oh.  What?  I mean, what?"

Eric:  "Well, I can think about pictures of you with long hair.  And I can think about pictures of you with short hair.  And they're both fine with me."

Me:  "What?"

Me (five minutes later):  "I think I'm going to go sleep in the other room."

Eric:  Snore.

 

Have I mentioned that Eric is an understater?  Well, obviously, he is.  And these sorts of conversations make him extremely nervous and clam-up-ish.  If he ever read this blog, I'm pretty sure it would make him glaze over because of all the "processing" that goes on.  Eric hates "processing."  And my seeking approval dangerously approached "processing," I think.  I mean, he probably doesn't really care about my hair at all.  Whether it is long or short probably, objectively, doesn't really matter to him.  Cognitively and rationally, I understand that.  At an emotional, rational level, however, this not caring is the equivalent of being suckerpunched.

Because my relationship to my hair, as I think I've demonstrated, is not cognitive or rational.  My relationship to pictures of my hair is definitely not cognitive or rational.  Thus, the need to sleep in the other room.  It was either that or hit my husband over the head with a frying pan.  Because I need him, sometimes--as pitiful as it sounds--to be my mirror for me.  To sync up the satisfaction I feel with my life with the distorted view I have of how I look on the outside. 

Maybe next time I should just ask for that straight out.  I went with a girlfriend the other night to a party, and as we were walking in, she said to me, "Okay--my ex's new girlfriend is here, and I'm feeling a little insecure, so I might need a lot of affirmation tonight."  And I affirmed her.  I reminded her of how beautiful and smart and funny she is, and none of it was manufactured.  I just told her what I knew to be true.  Maybe that sort of priming is what I need to do for Eric.  It could go like this:

Me:  "Honey, I saw a picture of myself today in which I looked like an overgrown werewolf.  I need you to tell me that my newly grown-out shoulder-length hair is gorgeous and luxurious and that in real life my eyes look like they match and are full of lively mirth.  Tell me my skin is like porcelain cream and my cheeks are preternaturally rosy, and sound like you really, really mean it.  But do it in, like, five minutes, so it sounds like you thought to say all this on your own, without prompting.  Okay?"

Eric:  "What?  I mean, what?"

 

Hmmm.  Riiight.

 

 

A Real Nightmare

I had a dream:

I wake this morning, my neck and back sore from sitting in the green vinyl waiting room chairs, hunched over Nolie sleeping on my chest and with one arm cast around Addie in the chair next to me.  I manage to wriggle away from both without waking them, and go to stare through the glass at Eric in his hospital bed, tubes going everywhere, machine lights blinking.  I lean my head against the glass, leave it there a minute. 

In January, Eric and I will have been together six years.  But because the state won't recognized our union, our commitment to each other, I cannot be at his bedside now.  Because I bore the children and he didn't, they are considered "my" offspring only, and the state will not allow them to see their father except through this pane of glass.

This is the worst part of all of this, of course--not being able to be with him while he fights this thing.  But, too, there are other things.  He lost his job when his coworkers found out we were living together.  First, it just started as distancing, an occasional heckling.  But then it got worse, and eventually they "let him go."  His supervisor took him aside and told him he was a good worker, but that him being there was just causing too much disruption with the other workers.  So he was fired.

Which means he has no benefits.  I'm still working, but I don't make nearly what he did, and of course he can't be covered under my benefits because he's a man and I'm a woman.  Which means that all of this--the hospital, the medicine, the tubes--won't be covered by insurance. 

I glance over at Addie and Nolie, officially "my" kids and not "our" kids, and wonder about their future.  Wonder about what it would be like if society embraced them having a mom and a dad, wonder if their lives will be full of struggle, financially and emotionally, because Eric and I cannot marry.  Are not "officially" recognized and always less-than, always second-class. 

The nurse did let me sneak in one night, let me hold his hand.  I leaned in to kiss him, too, but she pulled me back, hissing, "No!  Someone might see you!  You have to go now!"  I could tell she was disgusted.  The kids don't understand why they can't see their dad, sit on his lap.  The recovery is bad enough, but then to also explain why they must be kept apart.  It's too much.

But this is what our neighbors and family and elected officials have decided is right.  They argue that it is better for the kids to be in a "normal" family then to be exposed to what Eric and I have together.  Endorsing what we do in the privacy of the home, they argue, is like endorsing child abuse.  The absurdity of this is too much for me to grasp, my anger at this injustice too enormous.

The kids wake up and need to be fed, so we trudge down to the cafeteria.  The women who work there should know us by now, should wink at the kids and say, "Hey, kiddo."  But they don't.  They know that the kids have a mother and a father, and so they won't speak to us--only stare behind our backs and tsk-tsk.  And continue to cast their votes to keep us second-class.  Lines are drawn, lines are drawn, lines are drawn.

Can you imagine?  Maybe you don't have to.

A Little Squirrelly

 

There's nothing but drama here at toddlerspit.  We're lighting ourselves on fire, dropping ourselves on our heads, driving sixty miles on the freeway with four flat tires. 

Well, flat-ish, anyway.

A couple of days back we were all in the clunky old Subaru and Eric mentions that the car is driving a "little squirrelly."  This is a pretty mild statement, really.  This car has been a "little squirrelly" since we bought it used a few years back.  But Eric saying this should have set off alarm bells, and here's why:  Eric is a chronic understater.  He is probably the kindest, most loyal, most wonderful (and best looking) man I have ever met, but he is definitely not effusive.  Far from it.  His favorite responses are "yeah," "fine," and "alright." 

As in, "How's your hamburger, Eric?" 

"Alright." 

As in, "I just spent an hour getting ready for this party--do I look okay?" 

"Yeah." 

It could be the best hamburger the man has ever eaten, and you'd never know it.  I could look like Jessica Alba, and he'd never tell.  Understaters anonymous, I nominate you a new President:  my husband Eric.

So for Eric to say the Soob is a "little squirrelly" is the equivalent of any other human being saying, "Holy shit!  This mother is about to run us right off the road!  We shouldn't drive it until it's been completely rebuilt from the ground up!"  Right.  Alarm bells.

However, because I should probably be President of "bad listeners" anonymous, I didn't follow up on the squirrelly comment.  Which meant that today, on my way to work (which is 30 miles away in the town of Golden), I discovered that the car wasn't really, uh, staying on the road.  No, strike that.  It was really on the road, as in, all over the road. 

As in, it felt like the steering wheel and the tires weren't really attached.

We pay good money for an AAA membership.  I own a cell phone with lots of free minutes.  There are ten thousand car dealerships on the way from Denver to Golden.  Did I pull over and call AAA?  No.  I forgot my cell phone today (if you know how anal I am, you know that I almost never do this.  But I did today).  Did I pull over to a gas station or a dealership?  Yes.  Twice.  But there were long lines at both and I don't know how to put air in my tires, so I freaked out and got back on the road, doing a whiny half-cry the whole way there because I was sure I was going to kill myself, leaving my children motherless, or kill someone else, leaving someone else's children motherless. 

And also because I only had three hours to work before I had to turn around and pick Nolie up, and this was going to eat up my whole half workday.  But for some reason, I could not think clearly enough to figure out what to do, except get back on the road and keep driving.  I am not usually stupid, or a wimp.  But today I was both.  I was so freaked out by the time I got to work that I ate a whole package of Newman's Own Chocolate Chip Cookies and bought a sweatshirt in the school's bookstore.  Because when I'm freaked out, I eat!  I shop!  Look out--if bird flu ever hits here or global warming ratchets up or a Republican President gets elected again, I will get so fat Maury Povitch will need to come and cut me out of my house.  He'll be able to use the chainsaw I will have purchased from the Home Shopping Network.  Pull off the road?  Nah.  Eat three pizzas and six dozen doughnuts and max out the credit card?  Perfect response to a crisis.

I did finally pull the car into the Ford dealership in Golden, which wanted $600 to put on four new tires and do an alignment.  They put air back in the tires and I drove it home.  I DROVE IT HOME, PEOPLE!  I am a menace, and should be locked up and put away. 

But not before driving to the polling station, to try to vote the Democrats back into office.  Can I tell you that this did not decrease my stress levels any?  There was at least a one-hour wait at the polls, and the "computers" kept going down.  The only reason I'm not still at the polls is because Nolie threw the loudest fit I have ever seen a child have, people in line started to freak out, and to avoid a riot, the poll workers took pity on me and moved me to the front of the line.

Which was a blessing, except of course that all the sweet old ladies who were the poll workers wanted to "help" me with the baby.  "Is she on the breast?" one wanted to know as she crowded into the tiny voting booth with me.  "Here, I'll help," she said, patting Nolie's back and pulling at my shirt.

"Thanks," I said.  "I think I've got it."

Where is that extra large package of Harry and David truffles I bought last night?  Can I make it to the Gap before I have to pick Addie up from preschool?  Because I'm not even sure my vote got counted:  the polling workers were shouting "The computers are down, the computers are down!" while I was pushing my "cast your vote" button.  And hey, if we ain't got democracy, at least we got capitalism.  And I'm ready to vote.

In the Instant

In her book The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recounts the experience of losing her husband of many years.  One minute they were sitting down to dinner together, and the next, he lay slumped over, dead from heart failure.  Of that moment, she writes, and writes again:

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

Addie, Nolie, and I ventured to the gym this morning.  I always feel better when I work out regularly, and I wouldn't mind getting rid of this babygut.  So we head to the gym and the girls hang out in daycare for an hour while I try to run and lift weights and sweat a little.  We get home, and Nolie is thankfully asleep in her carseat so I can make Addie some lunch.  Pretty ordinary stuff.

Addie decides she's done with lunch and starts to climb out of her chair.  As she's doing this, her legs somehow get twisted around her and she ends up falling from the chair, landing on the floor, back-of-the-head first.

I wait just a split second before jumping up and snatching her off the floor.  I've trained myself when my kid falls not to immediately scream out in horror, prancing like a ninny and waving my hands all around (which is my first instinct), because she falls about a thousand times a day, and 999 of those times it's not a big deal to her unless she sees me making a big deal of it.  So, while I used to squeal and flail about when she fell, now I try to be calm, usually cheerily calling out something like "Uh-oh!  Pop up!" until I know it's serious enough to warrant screaming and flailing about.

This time, it became obvious pretty quick that this was no ordinary fall.  I grabbed Addie off the floor and checked the back of her head to make sure it wasn't bleeding--it wasn't.  There wasn't even a knot.  But she was arching her back, her arms splayed at her sides, eyes rolled back in head, not breathing. 

I have seen this before.  This summer Addie and I were at the gym so I could take my pre-natal yoga class.  On the way out, Addie fell down some stairs and hit her head and had the same reaction.  I described it later as looking like a seizure--her eyes rolled back, her head lolled around, tongue out; she wasn't breathing, her arms were akimbo, her back arched.  It took several minutes for her to be able to focus on me (these minutes felt like hours, by the way).  It was the most terrifying moment of my life.  There were no articulate thoughts running through my mind at the moment, just raw fear.  After thinking on it later, I believe it was fear that my child would be paralyzed for life, or be epileptic, or in a vegetative state.  Fear that the oh-so-ordinary, in an instant, becomes the life-defining, the life-changing.

At the gym that day, I freaked out, even after Addie had come to and seemed fine.  I had the preschool teacher there call an ambulance.  By the time it got there, Addie was sitting quietly in my lap, having the occasional hiccup kids get after a hard cry.  I kept apologizing to the EMTs for over-reacting--they kindly assured me I did the right thing, and said that we should take her in for monitoring.  So Addie and I crawled in the back of the ambulance and headed to the hospital, and after an hour in the ER, I took her home.  The doctor at the hospital said they sometimes do head CTs for falls like that, but they're more to reassure the parents than anything, and since Addie wasn't puking, she'd probably be fine.  So we just went home. 

Still, I watched her really carefully that day, and for a few days after that, seeking signs that something was wrong, that some hidden contusion was just lurking in her head, waiting to burst.  If she stuttered over a word, I wondered if there was a brain bleed.  If she slept longer than usual, I'd figure she'd died from an aneurysm.  You get the picture. 

But after that happened, too, I began to question my memory of the event.  Had her eyes really rolled back in her head?  Had she really gone unconscious?  Or was I just being overly anxious, overly sensitive?  Good Christ, was I one of those moms?  Maybe I was!  Maybe I had Munchausen's!  Maybe I needed to be hospitalized!

A few months later, we had Nolie in the E.R. for what turned out to be a bad cold (Okay.  Now you're getting the wrong idea.  In my defense, the doctor made us go in.  I didn't want to.  But since she hadn't had her vaccines and was only a few weeks old, we went in.  She was totally fine).  While we were in the waiting room, though, a mom brought her two-year-old in, bleeding from the head, and with the same symptoms Addie had when she had fallen.  I recognized them immediately as what I had seen with Addie this summer and, while I felt really bad for that mom and her baby, a small, secret part of me was also glad to know that I hadn't manufactured the event.

But all that aside, I still completely panicked when Addie fell today.  My hands are shaking as I type this, and I'll probably need to check on her several times today before I feel okay about it (she fell asleep really quick at naptime!  She didn't want to read as many books!).  I'm sort of wondering if those physical symptoms are a result of her getting the wind knocked out of her.  At least I didn't call the ambulance this time, and didn't make Eric drive home from work. 

But I wanted to.  I wanted to call a thousand ambulances to make sure Addie was okay.  And am reminded again that life changes in the instant.