Im not sure yet if she's plotting against Mary and I, but I do know she aims to take down the dogs. Its not that the dogs bother her, they simply don't give her the respect she thinks she deserves. If she can't earn their respect through petting and delighted squeals, she'll earn it through intimidation. She runs the floor, they need to know that.
Meeting with her war cabinet. Left to right: Lt. Gen. Jiggle Ant,
Field Marshall Lion, Col. Krinkle Owl.
Her crawl was unconventional enough to lure them into a false sense of security. She drags herself along the ground with her right arm and kicks her feet while her left arm swings in the air ready to grab, push, pull or slap. It looks as if half of her is trying to swim in a winter coat while the other half is crawling up the beach. On first glance its not a crawl to be feared.
Its not graceful, but what she's pieced together is deadly, a sneakily efficient utilitarian scoot. She's fast and quiet. Her knife hand is free is anyone gets mouthy.
The dogs are in flight. I've told them Abby will be eating real food soon and then they'll be best friends. They don't buy it. As soon as they settle Abby runs them off. Respect will be earned.
Abby gets monthly visits from a wonderful, helpful woman from First Access, an organization that helps kids that are at risk for developmental delays (in Abbys case, being born two months early).She checks where Abby is at developmentally, gives us advice if theres something we need to work on and generally makes us feel better about one of the more terrifying aspects of having a premature kid. She's fantastic.
We also go to the developmental center at Blank Childrens Hospital once every couple months. Its a sparkling new facility at the hospital where Cheeks lived for her first month or so.
Walking into Blank throws me off my game. It shouldn't, the people were great to us and everyone left healthy and happy. There just something about that place thats an accelerant to my neurotic awkwardness. Its weird. A picture of her from her NICU stay is hanging in the lobby of the developmental center. What should make me happy and proud makes me uneasy. I hadn't looked at pictures of her in the hospital in a long time. That stay seems like a lifetime ago; shes small and vulnerable, nothing like the kid I'm struggling to hold onto in the lobby.
I barely recognize this kid
We were ushered into the room, Abby got stripped down to her diaper and weighed and measured. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Abby in her diaper, wrapped in a flimsy blanket. Me pacing around the room trying to keep her distracted. After 30 minutes of pointing out various pictures, lights and mirrors shes had enough and is filing various complaints with me. Abby and I spend a lot of time waiting around at Doctors offices. We're not getting any better at it. Tank is
getting worse. After 45 minutes my irritation is turning to anger, I'm gaming out scenarios in my head, most of which involve something radical like writing a strongly worded letter. Cheeks is out of control, screaming epithets,
throwing things,making threats.
I go back to whats usually the Tank neutralizer, the giant mirror in the room. I realize its a two way mirror and shut off the lights. Sitting behind the mirror is the lady we have the appointment with. We see her, Abby cusses and she comes into the room to start her assessment.
When I ask here what she was doing behind the mirror she says paperwork. I think back to the time in the room, cataloging any curses, threats or bodily noises made by me or Ms. Cheeks.
The next 45 minutes are spent making me pay for my insolence. The questions are all asked as accusations, like someone emphasized the wrong words in her script and also maybe put in random exclamation marks. The cumulative effect of the questions is to make me think I don't know my kid at all.
"How much does she eat a day?"
Uhhh, well theres a bottle in the morning afternoon and evening and some of that mashed up gunk.
*annoyed sigh* How much!"
Oh ahhh...hmmm. Carry the one, minus spillage...uhhh 28 ounces?
"Is she crawling?"
Well shes kind of scooting. She gets where she needs to go. That kid is a monster scooter. Fastest scooter I've ever seen, thats for sure.
"Crawling. Knees tucked. Crawling"
Well no. She kind of drags herself with one arm and keeps an action arm free for slapping or grabbing. She's developed her own technique, like Bruce Lee with Jeet Kune Do.
"Hows her talking?"
Well, she yells a lot. Sometimes its excited yelling. Sometimes it angry. Rarely sad. The happy yell is fun, though I think technically thats a squeal. Technically.
"But talking.Goo goo. Gaa Gaa. Daa. Daa. That. Talking. Any of that?
No, no babbling.
This is a problem. She's lagging in communication, they'll need to see her again in a couple months. Its likely that her hearing issues are the causebut they're not sure. We know she's not deaf, she responds to our voices and noise. We dont know how well she can hear, or if she can just now hear us after the tubes.
If Abby had showed up on time and everything had gone smoothly I'd still be a worrier. The fact that she was early and had a bumpy first month makes me freak out over everything. The constant monitoring of development means I'm always thinking about where she should be, why she isn't there and what we can do about it.
I need a subscription to Fretful Father
The meeting with the developmental robot has me worried she cant babble because of my bad parenting. It seems all we can do is wait. I already babble at the kid all day. I beg her for a Da Da everyday. I have long, rather one sided conversations with her all the time. If anything I talk to her too much! We went grocery shopping Saturday and I was talking to her about the role of regulatory agencies* and a lady buying milk gave me a very worried look.
Now we wait and enjoy our beautiful little girl. And I worry.
Chill out, Im fine.
*In my defense, Abby started bashing the EPA. She started it
Mary points out new white hairs on my head and beard every day. The highlight of my weekend was getting ten hours of sleep Saturday night. I went to bed at 9 and slept until 7.
Abby wakes up at 6 at the latest, she's our alarm clock. Last weekend I woke up before her and felt great. "Wow, Abigail slept in! I feel great!". It was 6:20 in the morning. I "slept in" until 6:20am on a Sunday. OLD.
I traded in my Honda Civic last week. It was the first new car I ever purchased. The Civic treated me well in our time together, the first car I ever owned that was good to me. I thought she was pretty. She was reliable. She was always there.
The car I was in a relationship with before the Civic was a 1993 gold Chrysler Imperial. She was unreliable, big and ugly. She was horrible to me but I couldn't get out of the relationship.
I should have seen it coming when, after having her for a month, she broke down on me right in the middle of our college campus. There is nothing the ladies love more than the sight of a guy pushing a broken down gold boat down the middle of the street.
I broke it off with the Imperial when the power brakes and transmission both went out simultaneously as I parked on the top floor of a downtown parking garage. The garbage barge would now be impossible to stop. I constructed my gameplan for getting out of the garage: 1. If the breaks don't slow me down pull the emergency break. 2. If that doesn't work throw it into park, the transmission is already screwed. 3. If all else fails consult a bible.
Basically, the parking ramp turned into my own personal terror luge. The minute I got rolling downhill I forgot the plan and just laid on the brakes and horn as much as I could until I hit the street. The security footage would show a gold blur , horn blazing with me behind the wheel screaming in terror.
That was it. I managed to get the car back to my aunt and uncles and found a place that would tow it away AND give me forty bucks.
When I get back from work that day there was an envelope in the door containing fifteen dollars. The guy pulled up, looked my car up and down and decided no way in hell he was going to give me forty bucks for it. Nope, thats not a forty dollar car. Thats a fifteen dollar car.
Screw the Imperial. The Civic treated me right. I would driven that car until the wheels fell off if it had four doors. A fat guy, a two door civic and a baby is fine as an intro to a terrible joke but makes for an irksome reality. Getting a car seat in and out of the car was a pain. I had to tilt and twist Abbys car seat to get it in. She enjoyed the cut rate amusement park ride, my back didn't.
When we were looking for a replacement car our priorities were roominess, safety and reliability. Responsibility is sexy! We ended up getting a 2012 Ford Fusion and really like it so far. Abby misses her daily carnival ride but is enjoying the smoother ride, the quieter cabin and better sounding Yo La Tengo.
Smooth ride. Quiet cabin. Airbags. If I keep aging at this rate I'll be eating Abbys pureed chicken and peas in under five months.
Session is done. My bitterness level is down from "I hate everyone" to "I hate a lot of people but probably not you". I think I can write again.
Lets play catch up.
Abbys health: It was a rough winter for Abigail. She was illness free all of two weeks from January to May. The rest of the winter she had a bone rattling cough and a double ear infections.
Listen to this cough. This is the worst thing I've ever heard. I'd listen to Fran Drescher sing the entire Kid Rock catalogue before this cough. It pained us every time she went into a fit. There was nothing we could be but try and calm her down, then worry. Abigail felt like this for months. Terrible.
Cheeks ended her first Easter in the hospital with Pneumonia. She'd been sick all week, we thought she sounded terrible and the urgent care clinic agreed. We decided we needed to take Abby to urgent care after dinner at my folks house. Not knowing where we our day was headed I gorged myself as is my easter tradition (its a holiday I honor everyday). This is not a sound strategy for a night at a hospital. Instead of passing out in a chair I fought back deviled egg burps while talking to an emergency doctor. If I've learned anything from Abbys health problems, its that if you burp deviled eggs into your doctors face your room will be a recently converted utility closet.
Abby was a trooper at the hospital. She's been a champ throughout all of her illnesses.The only thing she knew was sickness. The fact that she resigned herself to feeling terrible depressed me. She'd cough, look up at me with tired puffy eyes and shrug her tiny shoulders. "Hey Dad, this is life and life sucks."
sick sick sick
The children's hospital emergency room is never a happy place, but it has to take on a special grimness on a holiday. People dressed in their sunday best sitting next to wailing, sick or bloody children. One of the things we discovered at the children's hospital is that there may need to be a looser definition of child. The patient across the hall from us was in his early teens and getting his shoulder popped back into place. It was Kenny Powers muppet babies. "AAHHHHH YOU ************ IMMA CUT YOUR **** OFF YOU AHHHHH MOMMA **** THIS ****** ***** DONT TOUCH ME AGAIN YOU ***** OH **** YOUR ICE CREAM ************." The poor kid sounded like he was in tremendous pain, but he was cursing just beautifully in a prepubescent high pitched voice and it was killing me. I wasn't laughing at his pain. I was laughing at his art. One of the few things I'm good at in life is cursing. If you can make me blush you should graduate to the regular hospital.I tip my hat to this vulgar Shakespearean tadpole.
Also, one of the medications they put her on made he stool look like red velvet cake. That was interesting. Dark red velvety stool. It made it look like Abby had a chest burster alien gestating in her stomach. I wonder how often they forget to give warning about the side effects, leading parents to sprint the emergency sure their baby just crapped out a kidney.
Abigail was released from the hospital after a day of treatment. The doctors referred us to an ENT for the ear infections and a pulmonologist for her cough.
Go home, you're both too pretty for the hospital.
Abigail has failed her hearing tests because of fluid behind her ears. The ENT said they have to assume she has hearing loss until she proves them wrong. I understand this, it makes sense. That doesn't make it less terrifying. "We're going to assume your house is burning down until you get home and its not". "We're going to assume you got fired until you get to work and your badge works." Oof.
The first step to proving them wrong was getting tubes in her ears. The fluid behind her ears was thick, she was really sick. We've noticed a big improvement in her mood since the tubes were put in, she's more vocal and seems to be able to actually hear us. She goes in for a new hearing test this week, we're hoping she proves them wrong.
The pulmonologist has been treating her cough with allergy medication, breathing treatments and an inhaler. The treatments have made a big difference, but she hates them. Gassing her has never been easy, its almost impossible now that she's 18 pounds of wiggling fury. Hopefully we can ween her off of the treatments as the summer goes along.
Development: She's catching up to the punctual babies in almost every area. They want her to be at least at -2 months on all her developmental goals, so at the last check up they looked for her to be at 6 months. She was at 8, her actual birth date. Fantastic. She's catching up in weight and height, her head continues to grow at superhuman rates.
She's crawling, she's sitting up, her teeth coming are in. Fun. She doesn't want to be held, she wants to be on the ground causing trouble. I was playing with her on her xylophone today and it occurred to me that this kid was really damn boring up until two months ago. Always cute, always loved but kind of boring. What was a nice art installation has turned into this fun badass kid. She's chasing the dogs all over the living room, bullying them out of their favorite spots. Their quite life of leisure is over. If she had been born on time she'd be king of the babies. A mad, bulbous cheeked tyrant ruling polk county babies with chubby iron fists. Generalissimo Cheeks.
The teeth make her dangerous, two on the bottom and fangs on the top. I was playing with her yesterday and she bit down on one of my fingers. If I had been asleep I would have woke up with a bloody nub where my index finger used to be. The fangs are impressive. She either wants to taste dog flesh or is really excited about True Blood coming back next week.
She's feeling better. She's playful and talkative. She's happy, we're happy. Everyone is happy except the dogs, who are just looking for a place to lay down in peace.
