Archive for December, 2009
My fears were well founded. As soon as I got to my parents for the New Year holiday it snowed. With some ice thrown on top for good measure.
I spent 25 years living where it snowed with some regularity. I have many memories of sledding down the very steep hill in front of our house, of the joy of unexpected snow days, of snow cream and hot chocolate, of cobbled-together snow suits, and of bread bags pulled over your feet to try and keep them somewhat dry while spending hours and hours outside no matter the weather. I mention these things because, despite the fond memories of those experiences, I would be very happy to never see snow again. I do not like it. It’s cold and wet and, now that I’m an adult, I’ll pass.
Ava doesn’t like it either. She didn’t like being in it when we were in China nor did she like it the one time it snowed here (maybe 2″ max) the first winter she was home. But really, I thought she might dig it now that she was a little older.
Nope.
We did a quick walk outside which she did fine with until she realized that this was real, live snow. Or maybe it was the lack of snow boots that did her in?
And nope, no bread bags either. Apparently my mom quit saving those once she was all out of kids at home. Up until then she had about a gazillion tucked away for our use.
So – now that I have an unhappy toddler what do you think I did? Well, I video recorded her, of course. I even tried to distract her by tossing a snowball at her (which I have on tape) at which point she collapsed sobbing on the ground while I felt like a heel. (I’ll try to update the post later to add the video. It’s in the car right now and I’m too lazy to walk outside to get it.)
My payback for our approximately six minutes outside in snow hell was a wrenched back when I had to pick her up and carry her back inside on the slippery snow.
So, I rang in the New Year with one of my dogs, a heating pad, Dick Clark, and my Kindle (and the characters from a certain vampire book series that won’t be named) while crashed out on my parent’s couch. I called and woke J up just before midnight before heading to bed at a shameful 12:10AM.
Not my most exciting New Year’s Eve ever – but not my worst by a long shot either!
J and I sort of planned our holiday time off badly. For some reason he thought I was taking the whole week of Christmas off whereas I thought he was taking the week after Christmas off – either way our lack of communication was evident since our vacations weren’t exactly scheduled for the same times and he ended up having to work most of the New Year weekend leaving Ava and I to make the road trip to my parents’ place by ourselves.
Despite my best intentions of leaving early…it didn’t happen. (This is totally normal for me, by the way. I can’t imagine anyone actually believes me anymore when I say we’ll be there on time, much less early.)
Ava’s packing assistance left a lot to be desired.
I asked her to put her blankets and toys that she wanted to take in the bag. Not so much help, as you can see.
We did finally get on the road and made it just in time for the snow and ice to start. Since I loathe anything remotely winter, I was uber stressed about the weather and the possibility of getting snowed in. All this was on top of not being able to spend the New Year with J and Ava being quite confused as to why her daddy wasn’t around.
There were quite a few visitors over that night so Ava was a little more wound up than usual. She also didn’t eat much of her dinner (too many people around), started giving me attitude (still too many people around, some of whom thought obnoxious things she was doing was cute – they weren’t), didn’t get a bath, and got to bed a little later than normal. Since Ava is a creature of habit and routine all of these things were Not Good.
Also not good was the fact that I didn’t set up her pack and play but instead put her onto her Aero toddler mattress. We’d done a very successful trial run with this during a hotel stay earlier in the month so J convinced me to try it. So I did.
Let’s just say it was a big fat FAIL.
I got her to sleep relatively easily. She was so tired that she fell asleep in my arms and only stirred a teeny bit when I laid her down on the mattress. I surrounded her with her blankets, books, and stuffed animals and headed back out to watch a little TV with my folks. There was nary a peep from the baby monitor all evening so I figured we were golden.
Yeah. Until I walked in the room a couple of hours later and couldn’t find my baby.
I tiptoed in, shut off the music playing for her, and quietly got ready to climb into my own bed. As is my habit, I walked over to peek at her and found…nothing. Her bed was empty.
At first I thought she’d simply rolled out of bed so I turned my phone on to use the light before realizing she wasn’t there. I thought maybe she’d climbed into my bed – not there, either. Nor was she beside the bed or anywhere else easily visible.
I flipped out, of course. I was terrified. Seriously, my heart stopped beating for a moment. I looked everywhere.
And then I found her:
She’d scooted the rocking chair over to the head of the air mattress, climbed under it, tucked a blanket under her head to use as a pillow, and was sleeping on the very cold, hardwood floor.
And yes, I did stop to take a picture of this before scooping her up because this was my proof to show J that we did actually try the air mattress (with near disastrous results). Picture quality is poor because it’s my phone camera and it was dark-ish in the room.
Needless to say, I scared the heck out of her (but not nearly as much as she scared me) when I woke her. I then promptly deflated the air mattress and then dragged out and set up the pack and play conveniently stored there. Fortunately she was back to sleep in a matter of minutes, safely caged and secured for the remainder of the night (and for our entire visit).
I didn’t sleep much that night. That kind of fear, just that short moment of not knowing where she was, kept me up and checking on her all night long. I’m really not going to handle the teenage years well, I don’t think.
I can sum up this month for Ava in one word.
“Why?”
I never, ever thought I’d get tired of hearing her talk. But I have. Because we have the same conversation over and over and over again…
Ava: “Mama?” (usually repeated at least 49 times)
Me: “Yes, Ava”
Ava: “What are you doing?”
Me: <insert applicable answer here>
Ava: “Why?”
Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Endlessly.
So, in honor of her figuring out the one question that drives me absolutely bonkers after about the millionth time I’ve heard it (in a 10 minute period) so I’ll just go ahead and ask myself some WHY questions.
WHY on earth did I think using a black background (with no backlighting) was a good idea for a child with gorgeous, glossy DARK hair?
WHY did I think handing her two humongo ornaments was a good idea? I mean, really. Did I seriously think she would simply hold them while posing prettily?
Ha. Joke was on me. Mama & Daddy playing fetch is obviously much more amusing.
Ready to launch!
As if the virtual cannonballs weren’t enough, WHY did I think an enormo candy cane was a smart move when a velour and (faux) silk dress with crinoline was involved?
And WHY does she look like Fred Astaire working his cane here?
And, by this point, WHY did I think switching to a smaller candy cane would make any difference at all?
WHY did I put myself through the absolute worst photo session EVER?
Well, because she’s so wonderfully stunning (and wonderful and stunning) that I want to document every single minute that I can with and for her. And it WAS fun…in hindsight.
“A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.”
“If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”
“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.”
All quotes courtesy of A.A. Milne.
After a long, long nap we all bundled up in our raingear and headed out for the 2nd Annual New Family Tradition Chinese Christmas Dinner. The restaurant (complete with life size replicas of the Terracotta Warriors) that we went to was packed but we were able to get a seat in short order and dove right in to the buffet.
Food was good, Ava did great as always, we ate a lot…yadda, yadda, yadda.
As y’all now know, Ava isn’t much on sweets. We don’t really keep many in the house since I have no innate willpower and it’s rare that we ever eat dessert at a restaurant. Well, unless there’s a soft serve ice cream machine anywhere around J. He’s like an addict when confronted with soft serve – gotta get his fix. Me? I don’t really like ice cream (I know, sacrilege) so I’ll have it about once a year, if that.
We’ve (mostly J) offered it to her in the past and she would usually take one bite, make a face, and spit it out before refusing to try it again.
So – what was up with this kid? Everybody (except me) likes ice cream, right? So what were we missing?
Ahem. Sprinkles, obviously.
Apparently sprinkles make the difference. J dished it up and she, well – you can see for yourself.
(Bad picture quality courtesy of my iPhone in a dark restaurant but the cuteness still shows, I think.)
As you can tell, she’s now gone to the dark side of soft serve-itude and J has a co-dependent to assist in supporting the ice cream habit. And boy, was she screaming for (more) ice cream once that bowl was gone. Kudos to Daddy for saying no and distracting her with a trip to an as yet unvisited potty before our mad dash out into the rain once again.
A quick change out of soaking clothes and into new pajamas, courtesy of our friend, and she was back to the drawing board as soon as we got home.
So glad Christmas is finally over. Oh wait, it’s not. There’s still more. Visit to my family (and more gifts!) coming up in the next installments.