Archive for the ‘Ava’ Category
Would you believe I got NO flowers after my surgery? I got plenty of get well wishes and even a few get well gifts but not even one bouquet of flowers – which actually would have been nice seeing that I was pretty much confined to one part of my house for a long while. Apparently I protested too well to folks: “No, no – don’t spend your money on me” and “Flowers just die in a couple of days anyway,” I said. Hmmph, won’t do that again.
The get well gifts were very thoughtful. Spa sets, a cheese basket (still puzzling over this one a bit but I LOVE the basket it came in – it was repurposed right away to hold Ava’s hairbows), and even a snack bouquet.
The snack bouquet was very cute but I think J enjoyed it even more than I did. I had to near fight him for the KitKat bar and he somehow managed to snag the oreos when I wasn’t looking. Although, in all seriousness, food wasn’t even the slightest bit interesting or appetizing at this point anyway (except for KitKat bars). I love the snack bouquet idea though and will definitely use this in the future. It looks pretty easy to make – sticks glued on to the backs of the packages and stuck into florist foam with a little bit of green cellophane arranged to look like grass.
But the best gift?
My visits with this little thing (especially once she decided she liked me again):
That’s the best medicine on Earth.
So how did Ava do?
Well, that depends on how you look at it, I guess.
D-Day itself was fine. Despite our rocky start at daycare drop off (which is sadly not unusual when I take her) she was fine. She spent the evening with her friend, Izzy, and J had her home and in bed not too long past her normal bedtime. Thanks to an occasional business trip here and there she actually doesn’t freak out anymore when I’m gone for a day or two so it wasn’t a big deal when she didn’t see me that night or even the next morning.
We maintained her daycare routine in order to keep things as normal as possible – J dropped her off in the AM and picked her up at the regular time. Once she got home J would bring her into the room where I was camped out several times a day so she could at least see me but he suddenly became the sole provider of hugs, food, kisses, cups of milks, baths, books, and all the other things we both normally handle. I was either too out of it or too sore to do much for the first 3 days but she was always thrilled to see me when J brought her in for a while.
By the 4th day I was feeling a little better so I asked J to pile some pillows around me to make sure I didn’t get toddler tackled in the belly and to leave her with me for a little while so we could bond over some Sesa.me Street. She was thrilled to be able to lay in mama’s bed and watch TV since this is a rare treat for her. Thrilled, that is, until J left the room and all hell broke loose because she did not want a) J to leave and/or b) to be alone with me.
My heart sustained some permanent damage, I’m certain of it. She screamed so loud that J came running back upstairs to see what the problem was. I had him comfort her for a minute and then told him he had to leave so we could sort this out. She yelled some more, wept quietly once she figured out J wasn’t coming to save her, refused to let me touch or soothe her, and scooted as far away from me as she possibly could without falling off the bed. I tried really hard not to take any of this personally but this was the first time she’d flat out rejected me and it smarted a bit. Of course, I also had to worry that this might resurrect any latent abandonment issues and have a negative impact on all the work we’ve done to ensure that she develops a secure and confident attachment. While I think her attachment has been fantastic, there’s a tendency toward anxiety in her that I need to keep an eye on and manage and it scared me to death to see her reaction when J left the room. She was in anxiety overload and was struggling so very hard to control this situation.
Thank goodness for Elm.o, Steve Jobs, and whoever invented YouTube. Between the temptation of that little red monster and my web enabled cell phone I was able to coax her back over to my side of the bed and to forget for a little bit that Daddy left her to the evil, disappearing mama. A few more rounds of the lipdub version of “I Gotta Feeling” and she was putty in my hands.
Actually saying that I was putty in her hands would be way more accurate. I would have done almost anything to be back in her good graces even if it does involve annoying puppets and the Black Eyed Peas.
Clearly she has none.
When I asked her what on earth she was doing, she replied “Cleaning my toes, Mama.”
What could I do but laugh? She answered my question, didn’t she?
And then we had a chat about the appropriateness of putting our feet on the table…especially while eating. So far the message seems to have stuck, thank goodness.
We’re big BBQ fans around here but we pretty much mainly roll with the Carolina style – the more vinegar and hot sauce the better. None of this ketchup based stuff for us…with the exception of an occasional Pierce’s pulled pork sandwich and even then I’m usually grouching about how (too) sweet it is. My favorite local BBQ place is a family owned (near-literal) hole in the wall, complete with a plywood counter, where people line up outside to get food. They have to, considering it’s just about big enough for 3 customers inside at a time. It’s also in a not-so-good neighborhood yet you’ll see folks in business suits and driving $$$ German engineered vehicles standing alongside the blue collar and obviously unemployed people while waiting their turn. Yes, it’s that good.
Ava got her first taste of pulled pork and she quite liked it (despite it being store bought) once she got over that first unexpected tang.
She’s such a good eater. Not terribly picky and will try most anything even if it is spicy or heavily seasoned. Except lentils – she still won’t eat those (neither will I) and has literally thrown up every single time she’s ingested some (only twice).
After dinner and a bath, while getting ready for bed, she asked that she be allowed to sleep with Pooh and Mickey and Minnie. We knew this would be logistically impossible but we let her give it a shot.
While she had a blast with them, she ultimately decided on her own that they were space hogs and kicked them out.
But, sweet girl that she is, of course she kissed them goodnight first.
One thing Ava’s daycare does in spades are art projects. She brings home something almost daily, waving it proudly at us as we arrive to pick her up, before abandoning it in favor of the juice she knows we always have ready for the ride home.
So what’s a parent to do with all of this fine craftsmanship? Well, if you’re J then you let it pile up in your truck for a while and then toss it all into the recycle bin without a second thought once it threatens to take over the backseat. If you’re me then you obsessively hoard every single scribble, collage, or piece of glued on macaroni that Ava has (supposedly) created and justify this behavior by the fact that I was traumatized by only having one, yes only one, piece of my childhood artwork saved. My mom gave it to me when she was unloading her basement of all my crap (still haven’t brought those roller skates home yet) and injured me further by asking me why I had so many ‘m’s scribbled all over the sky. *Sigh.* Those were birds. Obviously my interpretation wasn’t clear which could explain that my mother foresaw that I would not be an ‘artiste’ and therefore didn’t bother to preserve my early efforts for posterity.
My dilemma now is what to do with all of this? I have plans. I really do – some involve scrapbooking, some involve scanning and importing into a photobook, and some involve ignoring them and continuing to pile them in the basket beside my desk…which is now overflowing. Clearly the third option is the one most likely to happen.
Ava spotted the basket, which wasn’t hard to do since it spilled over onto the floor and into her play area, and she was delighted to find a hat that she’d made a couple of months ago for Thanksgiving week. I suspect that she had a fair bit of assistance with this one since the feathers were pointing (sorta) in the right direction and they weren’t glued directly to her head.
At least this was one item that I could toss into the recycle bin with no regret since she wore it for ages and pretty much trashed it in the process.
One down, lots and lots and lots more to go…