Mothers' Day

I know that every Mothers' Day will be special to me simply because that is kind of the whole idea for the day. But this one is especially sweet due to the events of the past eight months. I give thanks every day that God gave me more time with my daughter instead of taking me from the accident, or the operating room, or the next operating room, etc. I know that it is completely His grace that has allowed me this time here with Lily.

Even with the difficulty of the past couple of weeks, I have been thankful. The whole family has been sick at one point or another, I've started working again (which is much more exhausting than I remember!) and Lily is pushing teeth through like she's running out of time for it. She has sprouted five front teeth and one molar in the past couple of weeks. Poor girl is exhausted and, frankly, sick of being in pain. No amount of teething tablets and frozen washcloths or teething rings will stop it. She's been a real trouper, but I'm just as ready as she is to be done with this stage.

Today Lily was even more clingy than usual. I could credit the Mothers' Day holiday for that. I really don't mind her being clingy. I don't mind her only wanting her momma. I don't mind that I am the only one that has the power to soothe her just by being in the same room. Even when I'm exasperated with another pained tantrum, I'm thankful to be here to try to help her in any way that I can.

So, Mothers' Day was wonderful. Even the random tantrums, frantic biting of her fingers, and the refusal to eat much of anything due to the pain was okay by me. I sat in her room with her at bedtime and rocked her to help settle her down for the night. I was teary-eyed just holding my baby girl in my arms. She has grown SO much these past few months, and I still feel like I missed so much that I will never have a chance to get back, but as much as she has grown, she still fits me perfectly.

16 Again

I really wouldn't want to go back to being 16 again. Once was enough. However, I have finally been cleared to drive again after seven and a half months of being a passenger! It is a feeling of freedom SO much better than the one I had when I got my license the first time as a teenager. Now I can pack Lily up and take off when I want to. I can take her to the library or the park or her cousins' house...or to the grocery store. Yep, today we took a trip to the store because our mayo was past its expiration date. I was just looking for a reason to get out on my/our own and the mayo fit the bill.

I think that this will really help my mental state. I have been dragging a bit lately since my physical therapy progress is literally one degree at a time and it is hard to notice a difference each time. Driving gets me somewhere...a heckuva lot faster than walking will! So, hopefully, this new energy will help me get back to painting again-I'm falling behind on projects...blogging on a regular basis-seriously, Lily does something new and amazing every second!...and working (money is always nice.) Now, we just need to get a car to replace my smooshed one.

The Mom Who Cried Tooth

Ah, my 50th post...quite a milestone.

Even more of a milestone? Lily's first and second tooth. No, really. No, really, really. Just a few days ago, I spied a lovely little pearl on the top and the tip of one on the bottom. They look so foreign! As soon as I can get her to voluntarily show them off, I'll snap a picture to post.

On the downside of this development is the fact that they seem to be coming on in groups. This, of course, is quite painful for Lily and quite taxing on all of our nerves since she is usually such a pleasant little ball of fun. Here's hoping that some teething tablets will soothe the savage pain!

Cousins

I love watching Lily interact with other people...(I secretly love it even more that she would often prefer to observe while sitting contentedly in Mommy's lap.) Two of her favorite people are her cousins. Jake is older by almost three years and Evie (aka Doo-Dah) is six months younger. If I even mention that we are going to see them or her Auntie later in the day, she will not stop talking about them. Every time a car door shuts outside, she will look at me with excitement and say "Doo-dah?" "Auntie?"

Can't you just see lots of future sleep-overs here? Poor Jake. They will drive him crazy!

Booook-kah!

Lily literally will not get out of bed in the morning without a "boook-kah!" Once she is standing up and sees that I am looking at her, she points to her bookshelf and asks for a book. Thankfully, we keep a ton of books on the shelves in her room...and on the shelves in the living room...and in a bin in her playroom...and on every other available surface in the house. She loves to look through the books and is just starting to recognize aspects of different illustrations. Today, she identified pictures in a book that I didn't even really know she knew. I opened up the book and she pointed to the turtle and said "tuh-tull!" Later, when we sat down in the rocking chair in her room to read our last books before bed, she just laughed and laughed as I turned the pages of the book. She voiced the sounds that the animals make and just giggled at the ones she didn't know the sounds for (penguins and kangaroos, anyone?)

Mommy's girl

Agh! Lily is growing up so fast I can barely keep up! She is constantly pointing to things and naming them: "ball!", "apple!", "book!", apple-ball!" (a.k.a. an orange) and "cane!" Yes, I know that last one is not a common vocabulary word for an 18-month old girl, but when mommy uses one to get around, it becomes one. When she wants me to get up and come with her somewhere, she will look at where I'm sitting and say "off? cane?" and then go get my cane. Once I'm up, I have to stand for a second to establish my balance (it is kind of like getting up too fast EVERY time!) While I'm getting balanced, Lily will put her hand up in the air and say "hand!" so that I will hold hands with her while we walk. Sometimes she will take short, straight-legged steps so that she walks like mommy.

But I'm the one she runs to when something happens that surprises or upsets her, so she can do her "mommy walk" as much as she likes.

Pigtails

S.W.A.K.-Just in time for Valentine's Day!

Updates

First the easy one-Lily's teeth are STILL not all the way through. Yep. Her 18-month birthday is tomorrow and there is not a clear view of a tooth to be seen. If I had a dollar for everytime I've said "someday soon" I would be able to buy a car to replace my demolished one!

And speaking of fallout from car accidents...I went to the doctor yesterday to get the results of my most recent MRI-the one on my "good" foot. The good news is there is no real damage to the tendon in my foot. Kind of pales in comparison to the bad news that there is damage to my ankle joint from the accident and arthritis has set in. She even blithely mentioned fitting me for permanent braces on my ankles. Of course, they are ones that I could wear in a "regular" shoe and would be hidden under pants. Is this supposed to make me feel better? Yes, I am grateful to be alive-but it is still so hard to know that I may never be what I had hoped to be. I still have a long life ahead of me to miss what could've been. And, yes, I get to say that and feel that way if I want to right now.

Still waiting...

Well, Lily's three new teeth are not so much teeth as they are pink little bumps in her mouth. Seriously. Still waiting for those teeth to come all the way through. This is the slowest teething process ever. Her cousin, Evie, started pushing a tooth through the same day Lily's started to show. Now Evie has two little teeth poking through and Lily has...well...pink little bumps in her mouth.

On the flip side, she is SO grown up in other ways. I think she says a new word every couple of minutes or so. She can babble along for hours and a large portion of it seems to be recognizeable words. Or, I'm so tuned in to her babble that I recognize the words. Either way, it is very entertaining.

She has also taken to coloring and painting lately. A girl still after Momma's heart! Here we are at a preschool party at church painting frog rocks. (Ours promptly fell apart-but the process was cute!)

We are also discovering that she really only needs to see us do something once and she can mimic it-or figure out things we don't want her to figure out. Any time a cabinet door, refrigerator door or dishwasher is open, she wants to "HEP!" close it. You should see the lengths we go to in order to keep her from seeing how to lock and unlock or turn on the dishwasher. A couple of weeks ago, Gram (my mom) took the tupperware lids out of Lily's cabinet and put one cheerio on each one. The idea was to keep her occupied with different shapes and colors. Now, almost every time Lily is in the kitchen she goes to her cabinet, pulls out the lids and waits for her cheerios, or goldfish, or crackers...and yes, her hair does typically resemble this every morning. "Good Morning Crazy Hair!"

Pearl

Yes, it only took 17 months and 12 days, but there is finally, FINALLY a glimmer of a tooth in Lily's precious little mouth. She has been working her tongue against her bottom gums tirelessly lately and for good reason. Of course, I am assuming that if it took this long to get the first tooth, the others will either come in rapid succession or she will only have two by her second birthday. I wonder which it will be?

Chilly Lily!

It's a good thing Lily has her new coat (a Christmas gift from a former student of mine) because it is 25 degrees outside right now...although the weather site chirps that it "feels like 14 degrees!" Nice.

Almost like old times

Today Lily did not get a good nap. She slept for a pretty normal length of time, but I could tell when Pete brought her in the room that she was having a very cranky wake up time. So, a couple hours later, Pete went to meet some friends at an Ethiopian restaurant in town (I'll skip anything with curry as a major ingredient!) and I was left with little Miss Crankypants. I asked her if she wanted to go take a nap with mommy and she just kind of nodded in relief.

Off to my room we went. Now, you'll remember that when she was a tiny four-month-old, she only sleep during the day in my bed with me next to her. Now, she usually gets pretty squirrly if we put her up on our bed, so I wasn't sure how this would go. I knew that if she was going to get restless it wouldn't work because that usually involves rolling up next to my stomach and the gigantic scar and still-tender ribs were not going to put up with that! I hoisted her across from my wheelchair to the bed with one arm and pushed myself in after. I lay back and she crawled up on my tummy-uh oh, I thought. Nope, she snuggled her head under my chin, stretched her little body along mine and tucked her hands under my arms for a very hard snooze. It was almost like being mommy again!

Eyeful

Lately, I'm kind of obsessed with Lily's facial expressions and especially her eyes. Her personality is almost too much for her little body to contain right now. It just comes bubbling over into our lives every moment.




She's my angel baby.

Orange ball

I just think this picture is kind of funny. Lily is really puzzled by and a little wary of this ball. She tends to walk around it if it is on the floor. She certainly wasn't sure what to make of it sitting next to her!

Contentment

I have been relishing my time with Lily a lot lately...understandably so, I think. She has so much personality! Right now, we have a morning routine down: when she wakes up, I go in and she hands me everything out of her crib-dolly, bunny, two blankets-before she will let me pull her out and into my lap. Then, I do a slightly painful balancing act next to her changing table while I change her diaper and she begins her morning repetition of "apem-bau?" When we finally make it to the kitchen to eat breakfast, she starts bopping from side to side in her high chair to the imaginary music-girl LOVES to dance! So, we end up with our daily dose of Michael Buble or Natalie Merchant or some such music. Really, most children grow up with Itsy-Bitsy Spider...mine gets Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Eating typically takes an hour. We chat and dance and sing along to our morning music. These are the memories that will be with me for the rest of my life.

The best part is that right now Lily's favorite thing is our Christmas tree. We go in and I turn on the lights. Every time I do, she makes this delighted gasp with eyes widened. She promptly sits down on the ground to stare up at the tree and point at all the ornaments. Once I get myself down on the floor, she will get up and back into my lap for a cuddle. We sit there looking at the tree and the sparkly lights and I tear up just thinking about what "coulda been." This is going to be a very special Christmas indeed.

Her other favorite thing right now is walking with Momma in her electric pink, bedazzled walker. Cute, huh?

Baby Talk

I love listening to Lily talk. Her babble is so precious-especially when she tilts her head to the side a raises her eyebrows to make a point. Now, she has started to mimic everything we say around her. My favorites:

thank you = dane-koo

applesauce = apem-bau

amen = AYE-meh!!

Refocus

I've decided on a lot of things the past couple of days. Something about massive amounts of family around will do that to you. My mom's mom, dad's mom and aunt were all here for Thanksgiving which was fun for everyone-especially the kids. Gram and Auntie kind of dive right into baby care. Within minutes of unpacking Lily, Jake and Evie, they are on the floor with them playing, or pushing them around the backyard in toy cars. Needless to say, Lily has slept in past 9:00 every morning they've been here.

I digress. I've decided that my personal well-being, physically, mentally and emotionally are extremely important. I've decided that I will make every effort to build a fantastic relationship with any family member interested. I've decided that the alone time Lily and I get will be the best mother-daughter time I can manage. This, of course, will be much easier once I am more mobile. In the meantime, I will sing, play and boogie along with her to the best of my ability.

I missed a good solid month of her life. That's a pretty large chunk right now, but in another year it will be a small blip on the radar. She waited to walk until I could see her. The only new word she picked up is "uh-oh". She stopped using a pacifier and a bottle. On the other hand, she maintained the words she had uttered before the accident-I still think her first words are "thank you"...very polite child! Also, she has saved the joys of teething for me. Thanks, Lil.

But looking forward, I know she will be able to wax nostalgic over her childhood. She will have memories of her mommy playing games, teaching her songs, reading books and creating art and imaginary worlds. I will be that mommy. The one that relishes life and will pass that onto her daughter.

What can you get for $25?

Apparently, that is all it costs to get out of a traffic ticket given for hitting a car, killing the passenger and critically injuring the driver. Well, that's all it cost the woman that hit me.

Drama

We've had all sorts of drama going on around here lately. I'll choose to focus on the drama that really affects me...Lily drama.

The other night, she woke up around midnight and talked and talked and talked for about an hour and a half. Then she kind of fussed a bit and slept and fussed a bit and slept. Around 2:45 am, she started wailing. By this time, I was already up in my wheelchair to go get her. I opened up her door and she just got quiet and still. She reached down to get her bunny she sleeps with and then waited patiently for me to get across the room to her. When I put her in my lap, she clutched my pajamas so tightly and buried her face into my shoulder. I decided to bring her to my bed to see if she would sleep...just like the old days when she was learning how to nap!

I think she understands that mommy does not move as easily as she used to, because she held tightly to me and did not wiggle while I maneuvered back to the guest room (I'm still in this transitional bed) Once I laid down next to her, all the tension left her body and she went limp. She slept, unmoving, for almost four hours straight. I didn't sleep too much, though. I was pretty wistful about days gone by and what I could have missed if things had been a bit different the day of the accident.

Tonight, we went to my nephew's fourth birthday party. Lily threw up twice while we were there. First time ever for her. Yipee. The bonus for me on this one is that I can't get into the room very quickly to check on her if she throws up again overnight. Looks like this stomach bug is daddy duty!

Halloween

Lily is a lamb, Evie a duck, and Jake is the cowboy.





































I hope thes two will always have this much fun together...
and that Jake will always look out for his little cousin...