Barely promoted

The plot thickens

First of all, Miss T. went on several lurching laps around the house this weekend, all on her own.

Second of all, Miss T.'s pediatrician is entirely unconcerned with how she's doing. And he was a bit baffled at what, exactly, Box-o-Tots was asking for. "You want a note saying what?" He wrote something brief and utterly neutral: "It is fine for Tabitha Maple to stay in the infant room."

We brought it to the director's office. She said it wasn't good enough.

Then, she said that we could write our own letter, asking for whatever we wanted to be done. "The teachers told me that you were very concerned, and were talking about keeping her in the infant room for maybe another 2 or 3 months?"

Um, that was strange to hear. Since keeping her in the infant room was, as far as I can tell, the teachers' idea... so they told us it was coming from the director, and apparently told the director it was coming from us!

So I'll write a note asking that she start transitioning in about two weeks, after Beaker gets back from his next business trip. Which is what we want to happen.

My cortisol levels...

... were most likely raised by reading through to the end of a Observer story on England's current hard-nosed baby expert. Suddenly the story switched gears to, you know, the other thing about baby experts they had to write about:

Next week research will be presented at a conference for the charity What About the Children? claiming that babies and toddlers who spend their days in group childcare get stressed.

Michael Lamb, professor of psychology at Cambridge University, will argue that the answer is not to preach that mothers should stay at home, but for parents to spend the evening de-stressing the babies through hugs, a quiet atmosphere with no toys and an early night.

Without the one-on-one attention, aimed at reducing the levels of the hormone cortisol, babies can grow up to be badly behaved and less able to cope with stress, he will say.

Question: "no toys"? How could one possibly have "no toys" around someone who can be entranced for 10 minutes by her own reflection in a spoon?

Whining about walking

For the last several days, I have been complaining to anyone who would listen that Tabby is "getting left back at day care." Which isn't a fair way to put it, but has a streak of truth.

She'll be 18 months old on Tuesday. The Box-o-Tots Center has rooms for 3&ndash18 month olds, and for 18–36 month olds. Miss T. has been the oldest in her room for a couple of months now. The question is, when does she switch? They've asked us to get a note from our pediatrician requesting a delay, because they don't want to transition her yet, but mumble-mumble-regulations-licensure-"well, we need a note from someone else, even though it's our idea to not move her up."

Why? She's not walking. And she's shy.

Of course, the two are related. She's a cautious baby all round. Beaker and I have wondered for a long time whether to get some kind of evaluation done. When she wasn't pulling up at 12 months, I got a phone number from the pediatrician. But he didn't seem too concerned, and then she did start pulling up, and then she crawled, and since then there's been steady progress and change: crawling up stairs and scooting down them, at long last cruising, and now several weeks of walking with Mama holding both hands. Just this past weekend she skipped to refusing a second support hand most of the time—except on the stairs. Tuesday morning she lurched a good 12 steps from Dada to Mama, with no support at all.

I had been planning to ask at the 18-month checkup anyway. But we're far less worried than we were at 12 months. And I'm annoyed that I'm being told to ask, and told to get certification on paper that something is wrong.

So: what to do. Pragmatically, well, Beaker's going on a business trip in about 10 days, and I think that's going to be very hard for Miss T. If we can put off change at Box-o-Tots until after he gets back, that's unquestionably going to be better for her, no matter why the center thinks it's being done.

Box-o-Tots is also being pragmatic. Yesterday they got her to nap in a (toddler) cot, rather than a (baby) crib. They know change is coming, and they are starting gently. And at least one of the toddler teachers thinks she should move as soon as she can, modulo the walking thing, for the change in toys and books and environment.

In the big picture: what matters is Miss T. We do need to get some sort of physical evaluation done, because we might be missing something and that's not right for her. And my annoyance with Box-o-Tots doesn't change that.

Measure

Last July, we convinced Miss T. to sort-of-sort-of stand against a wall and made a little tick mark. She's grown a lot since then, through two sizes of clothes, and this morning we figured we'd try again.

Standing she's pretty happy about now. (Walking? Wthout two parental hands holding hers? Well, no. But that's another entry.) Then she saw the pencil. And saw that Beaker had marked the wall with it. What a terrific idea!

I tried to grab the pencil quickly, but I wasn't fast enough to block the NEED. She threw her head back preparing to cry... and hit the wall.

You knew it was going to end in tears, right? No, she's not actually toddling yet. But her world is becoming a complicated place, and she's all of a sudden developing opinions about so many features of it...

Not dead...

... it's just been a challenging few weeks, but not even for particularly interesting reasons.

Beaker's out of the hospital and doing, well, well enough we hope; PFTs are up some, although still below last year's, and he's getting tired easily. Too much work and too little sleep are not helping.

Miss T. is still scooting and babbling, rather than walking and talking. But she can climb stairs and she's pulling up. And there are some definite word-like utterances: "MMMMMmmmmm," at chunks of apple or avocado. "SSSSHH!" at pictures of fish. "SGUUUUUH!" when she suspects there might be a squirrel outside the window. And both Beaker and I have heard "REEeeedaaaaaBOOOOOuuuuhh" a couple too many times as she stalks a parent with Goodnight, Gorilla to think it's coincidence.

How she played with the DoodlePro we got her today: she drew. She stamped. She dragged it from room to room. And she sat on it.

As for more minor issues: our washing machine broke a month ago. Our car broke down (4 days out of warranty). And I broke my elbow at the laundromat. But all those are fixed, or close, and I'm trying to keep up with everything else regardless.

New: comprehension

"Tabitha? Can you bring the banana to mama?"

Scoot scoot. Grab. Turn. Scoot around the corner of the bed, past the ever-tempting shoes. Hold up the banana with a grin.

I offered her a piece as I was eating it, but, as always, she refused.

Hypocrisy and Phlebotomy

The only time I've ever made anyone angry, truly angry^* with this blog was when I said mean and sniping things about those who choose not to vaccinate their kids. I meant the things I said at the time, and I'm still appalled, just appalled, at the number of people who think that avoiding important and successful public health measures is good for their kids.

So why did Miss T. not get any shots at her 12 month checkup? Because I was too afraid of dealing with a feverish and sleepless baby with Beaker not around. And when I mentioned my selfish concerns to her pediatrician, he pointed out that several of the vaccines were live virus, and were perhaps not the best thing to administer to a little drooler who was spending quite a bit of her time visiting a children's hospital. (Yes, pediatric pulmonologists care for CF patients, even adult ones.)

We'll start back up at the 15 month appointment. But I realize the contradiction, yes.

Miss T. did get blood drawn for a second lead test. They stabbed both arms to get enough, and on the second they poked and wiggled and OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'RE DOING THAT TO HER ARM IF IT WERE ME I WOULD HAVE PASSED OUT ALREADY AND I'M GOING TO CRY TOO until they hit the vein. The level came back at 4.6. At 9 months it was 4, so yes, it's gone up a bit, but given the change her mobility has wrought in her exposure to floor dust, given the amount of work we've done around the house (mostly devoted to removing known lead paint), and given test-to-test variability, that small of an increase doesn't feel like a failure.

I asked for a test on me, too, but her doctor apparently can't open my file to place the order. Sigh.

^* S., formerly of C.W.—are you still out there? You moved blogs and I lost the link! So I don't know if you went and built your yurt, or how you and your wonderful baby R. are doing. Please send a link if you read this!

Wallowing in sentimentality

I. The most beautiful thing I've heard in a long time: myself, singing "Happy Birthday" to Miss T. We just had a tiny little celebration at home—a frosted cream puff with a "1" candle played the role of the cake. Beaker was about to go inpatient, and it just wasn't the right time for a party. We took pictures of our little sweetie bathed in the golden glow of the sunset and glazed with chocolate goo.

II. Driving home from the hospital tonight I listened to Prairie Home Companion. The part where Garrison reads out his audience members' wishes for their dearest alternated crazily between the just-married and those past their 90th birthdays, but in the middle there was a couple who'd flown to St. Paul to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. Twentieth, I thought, I want to have a twentieth anniversary. We're more than halfway there, we're years and years past what I'd dared to hope for when we married—and Miss T. would be all of nine then.

III. Beaker gets lung function tests Monday. If he's doing better, then he stays for more treatment. As long as there's improvement from the antibiotics, then they keep on administering them. Plateau equals go home. So I have to hope he stays for a while yet.

IV. So far as I know, no doctor has ever brought up lung transplantation with Beaker. The Times tells me that they've recently redone the way they run the lung waiting list, in ways that make it easier for people with CF to get organs. This must be good news, right? But it simply highlighted the fear behind my hopes, both large and small.

Spreading confusion

(with apologies to Laura for the title)

ITEM Does the author of this piece honestly, honestly believe that kids' hanging out at Starbucks and drinking mocha Frappucinos is as bad as she makes it out to be? Obesity epidemic, addiction, eating disorders, overcommercialization, blah blah blah. (In Oakland? In Oakland, they're worrying about this?)

ITEM I tend to give the commentors over at Crooked Timber the benefit of the doubt. For one thing, I'm not an expert in many things that get discussed. But the discussion following this piece, on the difficulty of getting epidurals during labor in the Netherlands, betrayed such ignorance and misjudgement.

My goodness—pain was so not why I was interested in having (although not obsessively committed to) an unmedicated birth. I didn't want drugs for the same reason I didn't want to be induced: I was hoping to avoid a C-section, and one way to do that is to avoid unnecessary medical intervention in the early stages of labor. Nothing earth-mothery about it.

At least I learned from the original piece that one issue in Holland is the cost of intervention. I would have appreciated a nice bouquet from my insurance carrier the day after.

ITEM A few days later, Crooked Timber sent me to David Velleman's article on why people who have children using donor gametes may be doing something Very Wrong. (Because an important, or perhaps primary way to make sense out of one's own identity, according to him, is by observing and hearing about one's genetic relatives.)

Um, as someone who (a) was fathered via donor sperm the old-fashioned way (also known as "abandonment") and (b) spent several tens of thousands of dollars trying to bear the genetic child of her husband, but (c) would have switched to donor in a heartbeat if it all hadn't worked out, um, well, um.

At the end of the paper he argues that people who hate their (biological) parents illustrate his analysis nearly as well as those who love them. But I have to wonder why he never addresses the actions of the donors. Are they doing something Very Wrong, too?

New: turnabout

Last night Miss T. paused and sat up in the middle of her nursedown. Grabbed Miss Spider's ABC off the table next to my chair. Flipped through a few pages, then collapsed back down pulling the book with her. Kept one eye, and one hand, on the zebra butterfly as she went on eating.

(Of course, I'm not allowed to read or surf while she's nursing. Not anymore.)