Tuesday, November 15, 2005
She stood! And everything changed.
So yesterday. The posting thing -- didn't quite work out, as Lindsay had a triple cocktail of cold, teething and general baby fussiness. She was awake for all of, oh, 10 minutes after I got home, but Nicola and I spent the rest of the evening clearing the decks in the house, having dinner, doing the dishes, taking out the garbage and the rest of the Cleaver house chores. Lindsay awoke repeatedly throughout the night, leaving us both tired and, in Nicola's case, already behind the 8-ball and facing another long day of tending to our Little Bean the Big Huge Snotty Red-Eyed Mess.
I came home early to help out, and to do some quick work on the crib. See, this is the day that Lindsay decided to learn how to pull herself to a standing position in the crib. Dripping snot and tears, there she teetered at the crib rail...and Nicola could no longer safely leave her in there to work out her wake-ups and little issues. Daddy to the rescue, johnny on the spot with an allen wrench! I lowered the crib mattress two notches, and we put Lindsay to bed at the ripe hour of 5:30 p.m. And now, barely two hours later, she's already woken up and shown us that she can still pull herself to a standing position. If you haven't been in these shoes, you can't understand the incredible change in circumstances and perspective. But look -- our kid can now stand up! And she got there under her own steam! And she is steamed all right -- mad that she feels like crap and getting a hot moist blast from the vaporizer next to her crib.
Nicola called this the toughest day in a long time, and I don't blame her. The helpless feeling of the parent of a sick child is no fun. All you want to do is make it better, in a simple Hallmark-card kind of way, and that's just about the only thing you can't do. So you wipe the snot -- usually on a shirt sleeve or back of the hand -- and you sing the lullabys and you hope that it doesn't take too long before your little darling is back to her normal happy, smiling, blossoming-before-your-eyes self.
Tomorrow -- that would be a good time for that, OK?
I came home early to help out, and to do some quick work on the crib. See, this is the day that Lindsay decided to learn how to pull herself to a standing position in the crib. Dripping snot and tears, there she teetered at the crib rail...and Nicola could no longer safely leave her in there to work out her wake-ups and little issues. Daddy to the rescue, johnny on the spot with an allen wrench! I lowered the crib mattress two notches, and we put Lindsay to bed at the ripe hour of 5:30 p.m. And now, barely two hours later, she's already woken up and shown us that she can still pull herself to a standing position. If you haven't been in these shoes, you can't understand the incredible change in circumstances and perspective. But look -- our kid can now stand up! And she got there under her own steam! And she is steamed all right -- mad that she feels like crap and getting a hot moist blast from the vaporizer next to her crib.
Nicola called this the toughest day in a long time, and I don't blame her. The helpless feeling of the parent of a sick child is no fun. All you want to do is make it better, in a simple Hallmark-card kind of way, and that's just about the only thing you can't do. So you wipe the snot -- usually on a shirt sleeve or back of the hand -- and you sing the lullabys and you hope that it doesn't take too long before your little darling is back to her normal happy, smiling, blossoming-before-your-eyes self.
Tomorrow -- that would be a good time for that, OK?
Update added 11/16: photographic evidence (and please don't notice the droopy drawers -- she's sick, after all)
// posted by Bill @ 7:28 PM 
