first

Molly’s First Day of School (Ever!)

| patmcg

Today was Molly’s first day of school. Of course, Molly was unaware of this exciting milestone.

Kit’s mom, Claire, Molly, and I all piled in the car this morning and headed off to school together. Molly is still adjusting to car rides and complained (ie, cried) a bit on the way to school.

Per the teacher’s suggestion, we dropped Claire off first at her class and then headed across the parking lot to the “small building” where the baby Chicks have their classroom. I had been taking Molly along to drop off Claire for a couple of weeks now, and Claire was still so proud to show off her baby sister to anyone who would look, including other kids, parents, and teachers. Yes, everyone in Claire’s class already knew Molly, and many were still fascinated by the sweet little baby in the car seat.

When we first arrived at the small building and set Molly down in the Chick’s room in her car seat, a big baby named Bobby showed up immediately to investigate. Once we got Molly out, he tried to climb into, or maybe tip over, her car seat. The teachers laughed and said that was Bobby.

The teachers suggested putting Molly in “the pool”, which is a round padded area in a sunny corner of the room. The main point of the pool is that is has short padded walls a few inches tall, so she is somewhat protected from Bobby and the like. We laid Molly down in the pool, and she did not complain a bit. She was immediately transfixed by all the neat stuff to look at. There were big windows with curly trees right outside, toys and mirrors in the pool, and interesting sounds from a few other babies.

We dropped off Molly’s milk, formula, bottles, diapers, diaper cream, extra clothes, pacifier, etc. We also filled out Molly’s daily note stating when she had woken up and eaten this morning. Then it was time to go, but it felt weird just leaving her there. Molly did not seem to mind or even notice. She was just looking around happily un her little corner. Still, we hung around a few minutes to make sure everything was okay. And everything stayed okay. So off we went, feeling a little weird, but without notice.

That afternoon when we picked Molly up, they said she had a great day. She did a lot of cooing and sleeping, and she loved to watch the other babies. I think Molly is in good hands and probably having more fun at school than at home.

Will You Look At That?

| patmcg

Molly did her first visual tracking today, following a black and white rattle as we moved it around in front of her.  This is a bit of a milestone, as she is now actually starting to see things instead of just a fuzzy world.

(Actually, the world is all fuzzy to me, and I am 36 years old, but that is another story…)

Special Addition!

| patmcg

Molly arrived today!

Kit and I showed up at the hospital this morning for our 5 am appointment, which had been set for a couple of weeks before Molly’s original due date. After a brief wait in the lobby, the hospital staff took us to the delivery room where some additional staff poked and prodded Kit for a while, eventually hooking her up to some tubes to help get things rolling. The gynecologist checked in. Besides that, the morning was mostly uneventful.

Kit’s parents took Claire to school at her normal time and then joined us at the hospital mid-morning to wait for Molly. Kit was not dilating very much, and in general not much was happening. After a couple of hours, Kit’s dad and I made a lunch run to Wendy’s and picked up some hamburgers for everyone except poor Kit, who was otherwise engaged. Walking down the hall towards Kit’s delivery room, we heard some absolutely awful screams coming from one of the other rooms. This was a panicky, sustained, primal scream. Kit’s dad said, “That scares the crap out of me.” We did not mention it to Kit when we got to her room.

Kit was starting to dilate more, which was really good. And then she just kept going, dilating more and more! Even before we could finish our hamburgers, they doctor said, “Let’s do this. We’re going to have a baby, people!” About 15 minutes later, Kit pushed hard three times, and out popped Molly!

Little Molly was covered in a thick layer of what was described as alternately “wax” or “cheese” by the nurses. It took a while for the nurses to wipe Molly down enough to see a baby under there. We knew Molly would be small, but it was surprising to see just how small she was in person. We could barely feel any “heft” when holding her. She was so small, in fact, that the standard newborn shirts did not fit her. Instead, she wore little pants, turned backwards and upside won, as a shirt. Of course babies are small, and they often come a lot smaller than Molly. Either way, she was adorable, and her vitals all checked out fine. Meanwhile, Kit was in good shape and was cleared by the gynecologist relatively soon. Kit got a big smile on her face as she got to hold Molly for the first time.

It took several more hours to get everyone together in our assigned hospital room. There was a lot of waiting around. I spent a lot of time in the nursery as Molly’s surrogate while Kit waited around in the delivery room. Kit’s friend Clarissa, who works in the hospital with Kit, dropped by and saw Molly through the glass. (We saw another of of Kit’s peers later as we were leaving the hospital.)

We were not 100% sure about the name Molly for the first few hours. When people asked us her name, we said, “Maybe Molly”, so people started to call her that: Maybe Molly, or Molly Maybe. We did finally settle on that name over the next day or so.

The hospital stay was a blur. We struggled somewhat to feed little Molly, and breast feeding was a challenge. We were supposed to feed her every three hours. Finally when she had gone for five hours without food, the nurses suggested a bottle of formula, which Molly took happily. We were forced to stretch the feeding again the next few times but eventually sort of got breast feeding figured out, although not perfectly.

During the night, nurses were in and out, there were tests and checkups and forms to fill out, and a few trips to the “nourishment room” for snacks. Unfortunately, having gotten up at 3:30 am that morning, and having trouble getting to sleep the night before, and not getting enough sleep for several weeks before that, and Kit going through the trauma of labor, it turned out that staying up all night to work with Molly was tough. Were were both exhausted, and we were just getting started!

The definite highlight of the hospital stay was when Claire came by for a visit. Somehow I had the honor of picking her up from school and driving her to the hospital. She was so excited to see her little sister. To set Claire’s expectations, we had been telling her that babies can’t talk or walk or sit up or even smile. All they do is sleep and drink milk and poop and pee. Claire did not care; she was absolutely thrilled to meet her sister. From the first minute, Claire was all smiles and extremely gentle with Molly. She introduced herself by saying, “I’m your big sister!” several times and patting Molly gently. She patted Claire’s back, talked to her, and enjoyed some cookies. She also got a big sister present, a brand new kid’s Dora the Explorer watch.

So Claire was off to a great start as a big sister, and Molly was off to a good start as a baby! Now the real adventure begins…

Happy birthday, Molly!

TODO: Make and add a video

P as in “prenatal”

| patmcg

Claire came home from school the other day with a big white envelope and some brief instructions to fill it with with things starting with P or J. This is, of course, to help kids learn about the different letters and how they apply to real-world situations. We left most of the work up to Claire, and she quickly divined than we should fill her bag with a pen, a pencil, a penny, and some nail polish. The next morning before school, she said excitedly, “I know! Piano!” Then she hurried over to her little toy piano (a small plastic keyboard, really) and dumped it in the bag. We never came up with any J words, at least not ones we had laying around the house that would fit in an envelope.

Tonight over dinner, Kit and I were asking Claire what “P” objects that the other kids found. She mumbled a couple of things, then suddenly blurted out, “I know! Prenatal! I should bring your pills to school, Mom!” I wish she had. I think it is safe to say she would have been the first kid to bring prenatal pills to school for this exercise.

By the way, I think this was Claire’s first real homework assignment. Actually, she did a different pair of letters, I think B and H, a couple of weeks ago.

TODO: Go back and tag all entries before this with “claire” too

Ouch!

| patmcg

On Sunday afternoon, I took Claire and Muffin for what I thought was going to be a simple walk down Turtle Creek to Reverchon Park. Unfortunately, this innocent walk turned into a broken leg for poor Claire, all day Monday at the hospital getting her fixed up, and several weeks in a full-leg cast. So, not a good day.

Kit was off at work. After Claire woke up from her nap around 4:30, I decided to do something productive with that dubious time between nap and dinner, so I decided to take Muffin for a bath. This has been on the to-do list for weeks, but Muffin’s hygiene had repeatedly been pushed to the bottom of the list. Her white hair was turning yellowish now, and it was really time to get her clean.

When we pulled up to Dirty Gawgz, the self-serve dog wash place, it was closed — out of business. Muffin was out of luck again! Rather than just go straight home, I decided it would be fun for everyone to go for a little walk along nearby Turtle Creek. Muffin was very excited about the idea, but Claire was only luke warm. I think she said she would rather go get some ice cream. In retrospect, I wish I had listened to Claire.

We walked down the creek for about a half mile when we hit Reverchon Park and started to hear a crowd and some music. It was a festival of some sort. The minute I saw the inflatable “bounce house”, I nearly turned back before Claire (with her lower profile) could see it. I knew Claire would really, really want to go play in the bounce house, as she had enthusiastically done at many birthday parties. But I was not really “up” for a fair and not excited about keeping track of Claire and Muffin by myself in a crowded park. Just as I completed that thought, Claire saw the bounce house and yelled, “I want to go there!” I considered telling her we didn’t have time, or something along those lines. But the fact was that we did have time, and the only thing keeping me from letting her play was my own lack of energy and/or adventurism. Isn’t this the kind of thing childhood is all about? Stumbling apon a fair on a nice Sunday afternoon and getting to go play for a while? In retrospect, just this once, I wish my grumpier and more hesitant side had prevailed. But it did not.

We did a couple of arts and crafts first, to sort of warm up to the fair. But there was no line for the bounce house, so we headed that way soon. In fact, nobody was even watching the bounce house. Claire crawled in with two or three other little kids about her age and started doing her thing. Several minutes later, a pair of older boys crawled in. They were maybe 8 or 10 years old. Their size made me a little uneasy, but everything seemed fine as the older boys gave the littler kids some extra space. Even if I really wanted to, I had no good way of getting Claire out of there. The entryway was too small for me to climb in and grab Claire. Plus I had Muffin to keep track of. And have you ever tried talking a kid out of a bounce house? That must be like trying to talk a fish out of the water.

Then it happened. Claire fell down, as she had may times before in these bounce houses. But this time one of the big kids landed on her leg. Claire screamed and started crying. Everyone stopped bouncing. I pushed through to the entryway but again could not get in to rescue Claire, who was laying down grabbing her left knee and crying. The big kid looked confused and just said, “What happened?”

Claire dragged herself over to me at the entryway, crying. I picked her up and hugged her. I had completely forgotten about Muffin. Fortunately, Muffin is not the type of dog to run off. Plus a nice little girl had stepped on her leash to keep her from getting away. This was the only help I received from anyone during the whole ordeal at the park.

At this point, I did not know Claire’s tibia was broken. It turns out when you break a bone, it does not necessarily make an audible “crack” sound or any other obvious sign of breakage. I thought it was just a “normal” injury, as in “Ouch, someone bonked my leg!”, or worst case some sort of twist or sprain. After a few minutes, Claire has stopped crying, and I tried getting her to stand up so she could walk back with me. We had been through many seemingly similar situations over the years, and the standard drill I had worked out is to say sorry that hurt, now let’s move on and not wallow in it. But even though Claire had stopped crying, she would absolutely not put any weight on her left leg, and I ended up carrying her and walking Muffin back to the car.

One I got home, I called Kit to let her know what happened and to get her medical perspective. Claire was in decent spirits, but she would not walk. She was just happily watching TV while I talked to Kit. But Kit came home to check out the situation. Thinking it was still some sort of sprain, we put Claire to bed that night with one Tylenol to help ensure a good night’s sleep and waited to see how her leg was feeling in the morning.

Monday morning came, and she still would not put any weight on her leg. I took Claire to her regular pediatrician that morning. Claire was very excited about seeing the pediatrician because she usually gets a lollipop at the end of her visit. The pediatrician — much to my surprise — told me to take Claire to the emergency room! She said it was possible the leg or knee had a fracture or tear, and the ER would be able to do an x-ray and determine what was really wrong. We got back in the car, and Claire said, “Bummer.” I asked her if she was bummed about going to the hospital. She said no, it was not that. She was bummed because we forgot to get a lollipop from the pediatrician! Feeling guilty and knowing that we would be in for a long day at the ER, I got Claire a milkshake from the McDonald’s drive-through on the way to the hospital.

We went to the ER right by where Kit worked so she could come visit us and help provide some more seasoned medical perspective. Claire and I were very glad to see Kit. She made us both feel better from the shock of actually being in the ER, and she got to look at the x-rays to see what was really happening. After several hours of waiting, x-rays, more waiting, talking, taking calls from work, more exams, and more waiting, we left the hospital around 5:30 pm with a full-leg cast on Claire’s left-leg. Kit went back to the hospital to finish up her work late that night.

Amazingly, through this long day of boredom and uncertainty, without a nap or a regular meal, Claire stayed almost entirely calm. She had a few short moments of frustration and eagerness, but for the vast majority of the day, she showed amazing steadiness and maturity. At one point later that night, looking at our sweet little girl in a full leg cast, I started to tear up. Claire saw this and said, with genuine curiosity, “Why are you crying, Daddy? I’m not crying, and my leg is hurt. See?”

Not knowing if Claire could even put any weight on her leg, we were not going to just send her right to daycare the next morning. I had already missed a full day or work and canceled several meetings, with several more scheduled tomorrow. This ordeal was not only rearranging my own schedule, but some of my peers at work as well. So we called Kit’s parents late Monday night. They were on their way back to Texas from a long trip to the Northwest. They were in Kansas and said they could be in Dallas by 3 am so they could watch Claire on Tuesday. They snuck into the house undetected in the middle of the night and were ready to take over Claire duty in the morning. Their showing up on such short notice helped keep this difficult situation under control. My parents were unavailable because my dad was back in Houston recovering from a dislocated shoulder, which like Claire, he had suffered while out with me having “fun” (in this case working out) in uptown Dallas. I am bad luck, people.

Claire slept well, and when we woke her up the next morning, she saw her cast and said, “Can we take this off now?” That’s when Kit and I explained that the cast was going to help her leg heal, and she needed to leave it on until June or July to make sure her leg was okay. Claire listened paitently and accepted the news calmly. Until we got the new routine figured out and saw a specialist who would tell us exactly if and when Claire should walk around, we settled into a new routine which involved a lot of carrying Claire around and letting her watch a lot of TV, including her new obsession, Finding Nemo. I wonder if she will forever think of that movie as the “broken leg” movie.

That first day at home with Grammy, Claire scribbled a long note. She said it says, “Dear Mommy, thank you for coming to the emergency room with me and Daddy. And Daddy, thank you for loving us!” She and I really did appreciate having Doctor Mom with us at the emergency room.

Movie Mistake

| patmcg

Today we were looking for a fun activity to fight the post-Christmas blues. It was too cold for the zoo, and we wanted to do something new anyways. So we decided to go to a movie. This would be Claire’s first real movie in a theater!

The theater at the nearby mall had two cartoons showing in the late morning.The Tale of Despereaux was about a mouse who lives in some sort of castle and maybe sings or something. Then there was Bolt, about a scrappy superhero dog. We leaned towards Bolt since it looked cute and was about a dog, which is always fun, right? The reviews on imdb also favored Bolt, plus it was showing earlier in the morning. So it was clinched, we would take our sweet little girl to the cute movie about the scruffy white dog.

Bolt started out promisingly enough, with the expected cute puppy playing around with a little girl. I whispered to Claire that the little girl looked just like her. She seemed to enjoy the giant movie screen and the engrossing sound, all of which really shamed our little TV at home. Her eyes and mouth were wide open.

Ten minutes later, we had witnessed roughly three helicopter explosions, a pair of bad guys being “shaken down” for information with their car dangling off a bridge, the violent deaths of several evil guys in black suits and masks with deadly electric shocking hands, the destruction of an entire dessert valley along and the entire army of evil guys populating it, and of course several near-death incidents involving the scrappy white dog and the little girl who looked just like Claire.

Claire was terrified. Well, may not quite terrified, but she was definitely scared and grasping her mom’s arm really hard. She tried to say something, but I could not hear it. I asked if she wanted to leave the movie for a while, and she nodded her head. I took her out to the lobby to get some delicious theater popcorn. We sat in the lobby for a few minutes enjoying our popcorn. When we returned to the movie, it had settled down. In the movie, all of the mayhem was revealed to have been fake — a show within a show. But of course Claire did not understand these concepts. It was just scary to her, really scary. When the little girl in the movie got dragged off by bad guys at the protests of her howling dog, who was being dragged off somewhere else, Claire calmly asked to leave. And so we did.

Uh, what was this thing rated? Oops, it turns out Bolt was rated PG, which basically means, “think about leaving your sweet little three year old at home”. Normally we pay pretty close attention to what Claire sees and hears. But not today! We had assumed that Bolt was rated G, or maybe we just hadn’t thought about it at all. Either way, it was the idiot moment of the day.

We snuck next door to try out The Tale of Despereaux, which was just beginning and really was rated G. It started out as a nice sweet movie about some soup — yes, soup. Things picked up, and eventually a bunch of people were chasing down the silly protagonist rat, who was running for his life. There were no explosions or scary evil guys. It was standard old-school little kid cartoon stuff, lighthearted and decidedly more funny than scary. But Claire’s mood for this sort of thing had already been ruined by Bolt, and she politely asked to leave.

We spent the unexpected free time getting a little post-Christmas shopping done at the mall. Ann Taylor Loft had a kid’s bench set up outside the fitting room, filled with Dr. Seuse books, which was a nice touch. I read Green Eggs and Ham and Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? to Claire while Kit tried on sweaters. Claire may actually enjoy Bolt in another 10 years. It’s supposed to be a good movie, at least for the right audience. But for now, Dr. Seuse was just the ticket. It was silly and colorful and very G-rated.

I Did a Poo!

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Claire did her first poo in the potty at home!

Right before her bath tonight, Claire got real quiet and just stood still, looking a little red in the face. This means she is about to poo.

I picked her up and set her on the toilet in our bedroom. After about two seconds, she said, “I’m done!”, which is pretty much the normal routine. But she obviously still had to poo, so I told her I would read a book to her if she would stay on the potty. She agreed, and I read her Goodnight, Texas twice. Around the end of the second reading, she did her poo and then got a happy smile on her face and said, “I’m done!”

Kit and I clapped and hollered and hopped aroound and told her we were so proud. She seemed a little surprised by all the attention. She has purportedly done this particular “trick” numerous times at school, I assume without receiving this kind of attention.

We went downstairs and picked out a special sticker for her potty sticker poster. Since this was an extra special case, we also gave her a little bit of lemon sorbet as a treat. For some reason, this ended up being called simply “flavor” later, as in, “I want a flavor!” Anyways, she liked it a lot and went off to bed proud and happy.

Claire has done the same trick a few more times, but usually in her pants. Afterwards, she sometimes asks for a sticker and “lemon flavor”, so maybe she is missing some of the point about using the actual potty. Or maybe it is just wishful thinking, and it can’t hurt to ask, right?

I Did a Tinkle!

| patmcg

Tonight, Claire took her first big step away from diapers.

This was the first time she did it at home, anyways. Claire has purportedly had some luck with using the potty at school, where she had been going diaper-less this week. Claire did have some accidents at school over the last few days, as proven by the wet shorts coming home with her in the evenings. But besides the wet clothes and several fruitless attempts at home, Kit and I had been pretty much in the dark about potty training. Tonight, though, Claire finally let us in on her potty training success.

After playing at the Abbott Avenue park for a while, we all headed to Dickey’s Barbecue Pit for dinner. At the restaurant, Claire started wiggling around and looking worried and then sort of screamed, “I don’t want to go pee-pee!” Kit took her to the bathroom for another fruitless attempt. Claire repeated this exercise a few minutes later, and this time I took her to the bathroom with no success. On the five-minute drive home, Claire worked herself up into a lather, screaming that she did not want to pee-pee.

We got home just in time for her bath, a now-dreaded routine which leaves Claire mad and me and/or Kit soaking wet from hold Claire in the bathtub. Interestingly, we had started to think Claire now hated baths because she was afraid of having an accident, as she had done a couple of times, when her daiper was off. As if to confirm our suspicions, Claire had recently started in on her same routine about screaming, “I don’t want to pee-pee!” during her baths.

But as always, we put Claire on the potty before her bath tonight. This time, after a couple of minutes, she declared, with a smile on her face, “I did a pee-pee!” Punctuating the point, I could hear a tinkle sound in the water. Kit and I jumped around and cheered and clapped, and Claire seemed real proud. We put a congratulatory sticker on the “My Potty Poster” that Noni had given us.

The bonus was the usual screaming and fussing was absent during her bath. It was just a relaxed, civilized bath. Afterward, Claire even wanted to use her fun green froggie towel, which she had not asked for in a long time, and she declared with a smile that she was Katie the Frog. It was the most relaxed I had seen her (and myself) for bathtime in weeks.

This is just the start of diaper-independence, and I am sure many accidents and challenges lay ahead, but at least Claire is on her way now.