Over the years

Friday, October 17, 2008

As far as having sex for the actual purpose of procreating this is a first. I’m not quite 28 yet, and I’m having a virgin moment. Having sex while thinking “OMG OMG we’re trying to make a baby, a real wee bebeh, OH OH & OMFG!“ is strangely exciting while at the same time a little off putting. But whatever. I love that my phone is telling me I’m fertile. As if doing the nasty is something that we need a reminder about. By my phone no less!

As if my uterus need more encouragement than it is currently receiving. Which is a lot. GO UTERUS!

There are days where I seriously doubt I can do it. You know, having two of them. Sometimes, when Carlita stretches my patience to the point of ripping my world apart with her little fists, I think about what life would be like without her, and BAM! I know that life without her would be like living the life of real people’s shadows, mimicking their movements. Dancing on the wall, possibly, but shadows nonetheless.

I can’t imagine how her face will change as she ages, just as I couldn’t see in my mind’s eye back then the little girl I see before me today.

Most of all I am just so incredibly excited. Worried, but excited too. And the sex rocks!

So big. I mourn for all the tiny ways she changes every day, and long with every fiber of my being to see what is next. I never knew child. I never knew.

My cup, it runneth over

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Today, at lunch in a restaurant, she held out her arms at me (possibly with sausages still in a fist or two) and said “Dou“, obviously meaning down. She was done, she wanted “dou“.

Both Jelly Man and I were so proud of how well behaved she was. The gap between what she wants to do and what she is able to do is wide enough to cause much frustration, which is made worse by her inability to express herself verbally. The fits she can throw are equally beautiful and horrific in their whirlwind of raw emotion. But we managed to keep her entertained and pretty content throughout, ate quickly and left with no hassle whatsoever.

It is not hard at all to love her then. It might actually be impossible not to. But what baffles me is that I feel the same love for her then as when she is kicking me repeatedly in the chest because she wants to make some kind of point, and she wants to make it while I’m changing her diaper, or when she breaks out in hysterics because I won’t let her load the dvd player, or on the days where I have to present five different foods and not even be certain that she will have any of it.

26 Months Old

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Dear Carlita,

My darling daughter, you had your first vaccination on the 18th. Your dad took you on his own to your 2 year well baby checkup, and he said everything went fine until you had to have your shot. He was very upset that you were upset -  in a way I am glad I did not have to witness your delicious toddler thighs being so savagely violated, and the resulting tears and upset - but he also said that within minutes of having had the shot you went straight back to being your usual cheerful self.

There was nothing to comment on, you are as healthy as ever! You are within all the limits of what goes for “normal” these days, and besides being on track physically you are also catching up to the terrible two’s reputation of, well, being your own little person and wanting to do things on your own despite not having the fine motor skills required to perform whatever task you simply have to do. By yourself. Or you’ll JUST DIE, and what should have been a death rattle when you get this upset is instead a silent vortex until your lungs catch enough breath to stop a furious moose dead in it’s tracks with something that can only be described as “siren like”.

You did end up with a fever a couple of days after getting your jab, and maybe that is when you got spooked by something in the night.

On the night of the 29th you had one of your first real night terror.You have been scanning the bedroom now lately before going to bed, to make sure you know what every dark shadow is before lying down and relaxing. It has been awful to see you so distressed about this, but I am pretty sure this is something that you’re supposed to go through at your age. I had you curled up in my armpit, with the milky lava lamp on, the radio playing softly that night and it’s the first time in a really long time that the two of us were snuggled closely together while you drifted off to sleep. I cherished every single second of it.

You are in such a hurry these days, so that if I’m making you a sandwich on the kitchen counter you have to come check what is taking me so damn long to present this sandwich to you, so you go about the house to find your little blue chair and drag it all the way back to the kitchen so that you might climb it and see, with your own two eyes, that I’m doing it right. By the time you get the chair to the kitchen counter I am usually finished making whatever I was making, but you will have none of it because you want to SEE it being made, but only because it took me so damn long in the first place.

You no longer want to hold my hand when we’re out walking. It makes me both nervous, because you focus your eyes on where you want to go and the rest of the world could be desert mirages for all you care, and it makes my heart hurt just a tiny bit because my baby.. She is growing up so fast.

Sweetheart.. I will let you in on a secret. I read a lot of blogs. And every once in a while I’ll come across a post where someone says “My parents never understood me” or anything to that effect, and something inside me dies every time. I am so SCARED that you will grow up feeling like your dad and I don’t know you, or don’t understand you, or don’t appreciate you for exactly the person that you are and not someone we wish you were. You are exactly who we want you to be just by being you. But should you ever FEEL as if we don’t understand you, I still NEED you to know that we love you no matter what. Unconditionally.

Always and forever.

No wax to blame

Monday, September 29, 2008

It’s hard to know what is “normal” when you have your first child. It’s especially hard for us because we don’t meet other families and experience their “normal” and so we have nothing to compare with - not that I want to compare Carlita to any other child by any means, but it’s hard to get a good picture of how she is doing developmentally when we have nothing but gut instinct to go on.

I’ve been worried about her reluctance to speak. If it is indeed reluctance, and not something that is hindering her. I’ve been wondering if maybe she inherited her father’s dry earwax and maybe can’t hear us too well and that is why the words she try to say are so shortened and, well, kind of distorted. But her 2 year well baby checkup that Jelly Man took her to didn’t show any problems, with wax or hearing, and so it is perhaps just reluctance to speak that is keeping her back.

Carlita will ask for juice, water, or a pie. She’ll ask about the kitty (she calls all three of them “kitten” because the youngest, which is now at least 3 or 4 years old and named Olivia, is still called Kitten by us and so by association they are all “Kittens”). She has taken to say “Bye!“ while waving, she will exclaim “Papa!“ when grandpa comes home and she will ask for “daddy”. She still does not ask for me, she has yet to say Mama, and yes, it hurts a little - but I console myself with the fact that we are in each others faces all day long and she never gets a chance to miss me - but still, it does hurt a little.

Now that we know that her speech is still in the normal range for a bi-lingual household I’m worried that I’ve been wishing for her to speak for so long now, that I’ve been focusing on it so much that I’ve been missing out on how awesome a person she is in spite of her non-verbal-ness. The longing I have for having an actual conversation with her that involves me asking her questions and her telling me what is on her little mind, or all the “WHY?“ questions she must have but is unable to articulate, has taken the place of what actually IS. A clever and funny little girl that is growing and thriving, following her own schedule.

And I worry, still, that she will never, EVER understand just how much I love her.