by turns

Glasses drama

Last night we took Amia for her nightly fall-asleep walk. The whole time she was reaching for my glasses as we were walking. When she finally got them she ripped them off my face (this was not a gentle process) and gave them to Suzanne. We finally figured out that she wanted Suzanne to wear them. As soon as Suzanne put them on she calmed down and did her usual looking around while we walk. But if Suzanne took them off, put them on her forehead, or worse, gave them back to me, Amia would get a little fussy and demand that Suzanne put them back on. She is a funny girl.

Beware of coughing boys

2 or 3 weeks ago Suzanne and Amia were at the beach.  A nice little boy came up to Amia to say hi. Amia said hi. It must have been very sweet. But then the little boy coughed. Right in Amia's face. And so began a week of worry, sleeplessness, and a wee bit of frustration (at least for me) with this little boy.

Turns out what this little boy had, and what he shared with Amia, was croup. I don't know if you've ever heard a baby with this, but it's not fun. The main symptom is a dry, barking cough that sounds like a seal. It's worse at night, can often wake up the baby, ensuring that no one within 20 feet gets much sleep as baby is usually crying from being woken up. And the cough, frankly, sounds a little scary. Even with minor symptoms. What happens is that the throat becomes inflamed and the baby can have trouble breathing, and begins this raspy, wheezy breathing that can, by itself, keep you up trying to listen for any irregularities. At worst, the throat can start closing and the baby can't get any oxygen, lips turning blue, things like that, which is apparently what happened to me when I was little, which gave me a 2-day visit to the hospital. All I can say is thank God Amia got Suzanne's immune system instead. It took her about a week to get better and we were able to treat the symptoms at home. Mostly what we did is turn the shower on so the bathroom steamed up and read books for about 10 minutes. Also taking her for walks, because the cold air can bring the swelling down.

But now if I ever see that little boy coming our way you can be sure we're all crossing the street.

You Must Go Now

You have to go to Suzanne's blog right now. You really must.

I made the top 3!

Some of you may have read here about the time Amia woke up in the middle of the night, exclaimed, "Mama baby", then went back to sleep. Now, my friends, we have entered a new chapter.

You see this morning she was playing with something. To her surprise, when she bent it it pinched her finger. She immediately began crying and Suzanne picked her up. That's when she said it. Those three magic words. "Mama baby daddy". I'm in! My life is now complete.

Holding My Breath

There are a couple things Suzanne and I haven't been able to do that we're really looking forward to being able to do in the near and not-so-near future. In no particular order they are...

• Go out to dinner together. I love food. And I love eating out at delicious places. Even not so delicious places (I still want to go to Wiener...and Still Champion). We've gone out to breakfast, but Amia is just starting to be able to do restaurants. Before they were too loud and she couldn't eat any of our food. Now she can eat fruit, bread, water, coffee (just kidding), so she enjoys it a lot more. So dinner together will be nice. Mostly just to be able to talk.
• Getting Suzanne a bike and Amia one of those bike trailers so we can go on bike rides. I think about doing that just about every other day. It would be so nice to ride along the beach, either north to look at the HUGE houses, or south to experience the city.
• Going camping. We want to get a tent and go camping with Amia. I think she'd love it. She really loves to be outside.
• See a movie in the theater. I've seen 2 in the theater since Amia came to be with us, Suzanne none, so needless to say we haven't seen a movie out together in close to a year. Now with the Blockbuster Netflix deal we have I've gotten used to watching DVDs, and especially watching TV shows on DVD, but the whole thing of going out to a movie and knowing what people are talking about has pretty much gone out the window. It was wierd to watch some of the Oscars and not have seen ANY of the movies.
• Go to a Bed and Breakfast. At the end of every semester Suzanne and I would go to a Bed and Breakfast for a night (that's all we could afford). It was so nice. Especially the ones with hot tubs in the rooms, and sparkling cider in the little fridge. I really love Bed and Breakfasting. The coolest one we've been in has to be the one on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Completely hand built by the owner, the house was beautiful and overlooked the Pacific Ocean, which we could see as we ate breakfast.
• Getting one of those little red wagons, putting Amia in the back, and going for walks around the neighborhood and having a place for her to put her little treasures. I'm really, really looking forward to that. I even put my name on the wish list at one of the used toy stores around here.

I also have a question for all you out there that have more than 1 child. How and why did you do it? I don't mean how in the...you know sense. More like this--it's hard to imagine, at this point, going through all this again. The sleeplessness, the long nights, the teething, the putting to sleep, the social isolation. And on top of that having another little one to take care of. It's certainly gotten easier the older Amia gets, and the more we learn, but it seems like it would be so hard to start all over again. I'm also wondering why families decide to have more than one child. I kind of feel right now like we'd be OK with just one. Some may say it's lonely for the child, and it may be, but I kind of liked it. It's too early for us to say one way or the other, and it kind of feels to both of us that 2 kids are in the cards, but I was just wondering why some families choose to keep getting bigger. Thoughts?

21st Century Baby

She did it! She walked last night! She took 4 steps on her own! Suzanne was predicting that she'd be walking by my birthday (next month) and it seems like that might be the case. Anya and I were saying that in two months Amia will be able to go jogging with Suzanne in the mornings. We'll see if that comes true.
Oh, and guess what made her walk? Her mother's hopeful eyes? Her dad's outstretched hands? Nope. The computer. Yes, her first steps were to try and be on the computer. It's definitely a new time.

We don't have any pictures of her walking, but this is what she looks like when she stands, which she clearly derives great pleasure from....as she does just about everything.

Holy Crap!

I was just home for lunch and Amia stood on her own for several seconds!! She pulled herself up and slowly, hand by hand, let go of the table, then stood there in kind of a surfing motion for almost five seconds. Then she fell forward and started crawling towards something she tried to eat and shouldn't have. I couldn't believe it.

Amia is so freaking social!

You all know about the crawling. But last night she took it to another level. We were having people over for a study circle. Before they began arriving Suzanne took Amia into our room to see if she would go to sleep since she'd been acting tired. People began arriving. It'd been a while so I went to check up and see if Amia was asleep. I went quietly into the room and closed the door. Amia was wide awake. As soon as Suzanne let her go she slithered onto the floor, crawled to the door, and waited for us to open it! She wanted to be with the people. So we brought her out and everyone was sitting ready to start. She sat down with us, and after a couple minutes of checking out the scene she started crawling to people, looking at them, smiling at them, crawling into their laps.

Then this morning Suzanne decided to take her to the House of Worship since it was so nice out. I arrived after they got off the train and Amia was leaning sideways zoning out she was so tired. But then Suzanne told me that Amia had a great time on the train. She would look at people and if they didn't pay any attention she would screech a little until they did. Then once they'd made friends if they had the nerve to get off the train Amia would get sad and screech until she'd found a new friend.

She's hilarious man.

Well this sucks

We're all sick. All 3 of us. I'd been fighting something since Friday and this morning it really hit. Suzanne has a raw throat. And poor little Amia has a bad cough. On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of illness we're about a 3. In terms of suckiness its about an 8. I do get to stay home today, but it's so cold I don't feel like doing anything except watching movies but I don't want to leave the house. And Amia has a cough that is obviously making her uncomfortable but that we can't really do anything about. We give her cough medicine and tylenol just in case, but we're really just guessing. She could have a headache or sore throat or be achy and there's no way for us to know. She did just go to sleep so that's good. Now I'm going to lay down and wish the movies I ordered from Blockbuster online we here already.

This is What I've Been Reduced To

I've had the same glasses now for four years. I got them the day before Suzanne and I got married. I'm ready for a change. The only problem is I haven't been able to justify the expense. Every year or 2 I've gone to the eye doctor hoping this would be the day. But my stupid eyes haven't been getting any worse. I've tried reading by candlelight, trying other people's glasses on until I got headaches, sitting to close too the TV, intentionally crossing my eyes for long periods of time, and, finally, running with scissors. None of it works! But help has arrived in the form of Amia. She loves reaching for my glasses. It's only a matter of time before a hand slowly reaches up and tries to get them off. At first I resisted, but once I realized what a gift she was trying to give me I gave in. Plus, if she does manage to get a hold of my glasses nothing short of a crowbar can break her grasp. She's a really strong baby. Seriously strong (that's the Suzanne side. From me she gets the chubbiness and the, um, jumpiness). So, here is last nights attempt to get daddy some new glasses. Along with the first official sighting of her tooth.