Tonight I did something good, on accident. It was one of those things that ‘parent enthusiasts’ would read in a How to Raise Your Kids book.
Rachelle and I spent most of the day packing our house to move, so there are bins scattered throughout the living room. Layla sees these bins as nifty blocks provided for her climbing pleasure.
It was getting late; probably around 9pm. Layla climbed on a bin and stood up. I corrected her and hit her with a firm “no” (I’ll bet you thought I was going to say ‘left hook’), and lifted her off the bin and onto the floor. She did the ’spaghetti leg’ thing and collapsed to the ground like a puddle of ooze. Then, she straightened every limb and muscle in her body, and stood up. The transition from putty to cast iron was almost cartoonish. She took her pacifier out of her mouth and hurled it across the room as an act of defiance.
Not because I did my parenting homework, or because I know what the hell I’m doing, but I instantly darted across the room, grabbed the pacifier, and threw it back to her side of the room. I don’t know where the energy came from…because it didn’t hit me until I was about three strides in: “Why the hell are you skipping around like a sprite?”
But something happened. Layla was dumbfounded. Most likely it was a combination of someone defusing the situation by showing her that her throwing isn’t an effective way of expressing her anger, and also the sheer sight of watching a grown man sprinting through the house and throwing a pacifier at her.
After a few seconds of being frozen. She ran to the pacifier and threw it back to me…but SMILED. It turned into a game. In a matter of seconds, she went from being borderline hellish to laughing hysterically at a game. She forgot all about the bin that she was forbidden to stand on.
Again, I have no idea what I’m doing but tonight I kept my kid from danger and turned a negative situation into a positive. If I can do that until she’s 20 I’ll be in good shape.
I got a call from Rachelle about an hour ago telling me that she’s having contractions. She called the doctor, who ordered her to report to Labor and Delivery so that they can figure out what is going on since we’re only in our 35th week. If this sounds familiar it’s because it happened with Layla at almost exactly the same time as logged in this post.
My lack of urgency is due to the fact that they will most likely give her shots to stop the contractions. I’m going to leave work now to keep Rachelle company. Check out my Twitter feed (which is located on the right-side of this page) if you want to follow the updates.
Update (10:00 pm): We’re home from the hospital and with the baby still in Rachelle’s stomach. When I arrived at hospital this afternoon, Rachelle was hooked up to machines to monitor the contractions. After close to two hours of the contractions getting closer and closer together, they decided to take an ultrasound and to see if the cervix has dilated. Luckily the cervix was not dilated so they were able to give Rachelle drugs to halt the contractions. This should give us a few more important weeks.
This post will be a release from the usual, incessant blabbering. I’ve been trying to show Layla how to perform very basic tasks on both the computer and my iPod Touch. So far she can swipe her finger across the iPod and scroll through picture albums. When she reaches the end of an album she knows to swipe back the other way.
On the computer she doesn’t understand the concept of the pointer, but she does know that clicking the mouse “does something”. Over the weekend I put on a paint program and she realized that clicking down on the mouse and moving it was making colors on the screen. This is stuff that a primate could do but forgive me for feeling proud that my 18 month old can probably work my iPod better than you.
When I got home from work, Rachelle asked if I wanted to go to Friendly’s for dinner. Friendly’s is on my list of toddler-approved restaurants, and even though Layla was acting cranky and immature, I rolled the dice and agreed to tag along for the ride. Let the record show that I didn’t have a good feeling about it from the get-go.
Friendly’s is an interesting place. It’s full of germ-spreading children, and old people eating soup. Then there’s always that one young couple who have no children of their own and are flashing each other the eye across the table signaling “why the hell didn’t we pick Applebee’s?” Rachelle and I like it because if the baby throws food and starts behaving like a wild animal we don’t care. People should have known what they signed up for when they go to Friendly’s.
Not long after we sat down, Layla started acting up; but it wasn’t the typical throwing of food, or tearing the paper children’s menu in pieces. She seemed cranky and agitated. Eventually Rachelle picked her up and let her walk around. “Stay around here, Layla”, she said, like Layla was 7 years old and willing to obey boundries.
We noticed that she was doing this weird thing with her mouth. She was sucking on her bottom lip. It looked like she was chewing something. We pried her iron jaws open and immediately blood started dripping out of the corner of her mouth. Rachelle slipped into a panic which always helps the situation. I took her out of the dining room, careful not to let a bleeding infant ruin everyone elses’ meal, and cleaned off her face. Layla was again, cranky, but not in hysterics like I’d expect.
When Rachelle put herself back together, we checked the baby’s mouth again and it was bleeding even more. We decided to take her to the doctor’s office which was around the corner.
On the drive over she cried a bit, but I let her play with my iPod and she was fine. By the time we pulled into the parking lot she seemed completely normal. Her mouth wasn’t bleeding, and she was rather pleasant. To be safe, we went into the doctor’s office anyway.
Rachelle waited in line while I brought Layla to the kid’s waiting area so she could keep busy. When Rachelle got to the front of the line she explained to the receptionist:
“We were just at Friendly’s and noticed that our daughter’s mouth is bleeding terribly!”
The receptionist leaned her head over the desk to peek into the waiting room to see the ‘bleeding child’. What she saw was Layla open-mouth kissing an 18-month-old boy.
“She doesn’t seem to be in distress”, said the nurse.
No, she doesn’t, does she? We waited for about 15 minutes…basically until we witnessed Layla having the time of her life and then I scooped her up and we left the office without ever seeing the doctor. We stopped at Wendy’s on the ride home to get Layla some dinner and a Frosty. She tore through chicken nuggets like a Great White, which assured me that her mouth was just fine.
