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...

My reason for living...

Yes, before you wonder, I am going to continue the therapy that I started in the hospital. I have been having a lot of "mad at the world" days lately. I'm angry that I'm in this chair, I'm angry that my daughter won't get to know her Nanny Pam, I'm angry that months of my life have been altered in ways I could never have imagined, I'm angry that I'm letting myself feel this way when I know that there is nothing that can be done about my physical state until I am completely healed. Mostly, I'm angry that I can't run around and play with Lily in the way that I should be. Everyone is doing a very good job of taking care of her, but no one can care for her the way that I would...simply because I'm her mommy.

But, when I watch her walk all over the place in her wide-legged baby gait, I am so grateful to be here. I have these moments-like today when I watched her walking around the deck at my parents' house with a flower clenched tightly in each fist-that I realize that I almost missed this. Just a slightly different angle of the SUV during the accident, or a wrong move by a doctor, or God simply deciding that now was my time and I would have missed her grow up. The scariest part of that is that she is so young now that she wouldn't have had any conscious memories of me.

So, in between my pity-party moments and rantings to my new therapist (poor lady!) I revel in the moments that Lily looks up at me and grins her still toothless grin.

The worst of times...

Well, this is the post that almost wasn't. On August 9, 2006, I was driving home from the airport with my mother-in-law and Lily when a large SUV crossed the center, grassy median and struck my car head-on. My mother-in-law and I had to be removed from the car from emergency personnel. Lily, thankfully, was unhurt. My mother-in-law, Pam, died in the helicopter ride to the hospital. I was transported via helicopter as well to a large trauma hospital in Memphis. My prognosis was bleak. In fact, the doctors asked my family if I was an organ donor. That tends to put my family (and all their friends and acquaintances in non-stop prayer mode.)

In the hours/days that followed, I had surgery to remove my spleen and part of my pancreas, repair two collapsed lungs and a broken right kneecap. I don't remember those days at all. I am told that I was awake after a few days and trying to communicate even with machines doing my breathing for me, but I don't remember. What I do remember shortly after I was breathing on my own, is the hallucinations. I had something called ICU psychosis-coupled with the morphine being pumped into my body-which made me see and experience terrifying things that were not really there.

Once I was taken off the morphine, reality started to get a small foothold. I began to realize my state of being, which was sort of a blessing and a curse. In addition to the surgeries that I already had, I found out that I had several cracked ribs, a broken collarbone, cracked C7, ligament strains in my left leg and no movement in my left arm due to nerve damage. I still had two surgeries to endure on my right ankle, and another lung surgery to remove fluid, but I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened to the rest of my body and my life. I was pretty broken. I remained in the trauma hospital, trying to wrap my brain around the situation for 20 days.

After completing the remainder of my surgeries (and experiencing a level of pain I had never felt before-childbirth included) and having the first round of staples removed (32 from my abdomen) I was discharged to a rehabilitation hospital. There I was pushed to do things that had always been done without a thought-dress myself, brush my teeth, feed myself, get in and out of bed, etc. Now, each action required intense concentration and superhuman effort. I was trying to teach the fingers on my left hand to move on command and trying to withstand the discomfort on my right side whenever I moved my arm. The hardest part of it was/is the emotional turmoil.

As thankful as I was/am to be alive...

I missed my baby girl's first birthday. I wasn't even lucid that day. I didn't get to make the choice to stop nursing-it was made for me. I missed weeks of being the first person that she saw in the morning and the last person that she saw before going to sleep. So many people jumped in and helped, and I am so grateful. But, now my Lily was being cared for by other people. Mommy was someone that wasn't around anymore. I will never, ever get those weeks back. Even now I can't take care of her like I want to. I can't pick her up, roll around on the floor with her, stand with her perched on my hip, get her in and out of her crib, or even change her diaper and get her dressed. I am so grateful to God for being here, but missing these things cuts me to the core.
I am improving, though. Everyday I try so hard to make some little improvement so that I can stay on track with my rehabilitation. I want to be able to start walking at the end of November. I want to be able to pick my little girl up and hold her in my arms. She has learned how to kiss me when I ask for one, but I can't bend far enough down in my wheelchair to claim it. I want to pick her up and nuzzle her neck just like I used to. I'll get there, but I have a very long and hard road before me. Bear with me; I'll make it.