What do people do all day?

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Richard Scarry's "What Do People Do All Day?" I was fascinated by it. The book made me realize that there was so much more out in the world than what was happening on our farm (though I always knew that what was happening on our farm was pretty cool).

Of course these days I find myself wondering at random moments while at work what Jackson is up to while he's hanging out at daycare. When he got home the other night, this is what we decided. I'm sure one day he'll be more than willing to go on and on about what he did all day without us, but until then, we'll just have to guess.

Bubblelicious

Dog + Baby + Bubbles = Hilarious

We all should have a few things we put away in the back of our minds in case we're ever having one of those days.

Well, today, I found another "thing:" A baby's reaction after watching her dog chase bubbles. As the icing on the cake...this is the daughter of a high school classmate of mine who shares videos of his child on YouTube (like we do) for long-distance friends and family. It just so happens that this video has gone viral and, since April 7, has been viewed over 224,000 times (and counting!). Ellen DeGeneres featured it on her show. Local TV stations have been broadcasting it all day. And celebrities have been Tweeting about it.

If this doesn't bring a smile to your face, well, I'm afraid there's just no hope for you.



I might need to see what Lucy thinks of bubbles. If I could recreate this scene on demand in our living room, I might never be in a bad mood again!

Wake-up call

Jackson was scheduled to get his four month shots over a week ago, but he woke up last Monday with a fever and his first cold. After eight days of sneezing, coughing and not a whole lot of sleep, we went in for his shots today. I spent all day dreading it. I remembered too well what happened last time and was wishing he was old enough that I could bribe him with a McDonald's sundae, as mom used to do with me if I was good while I was getting shots.

When we got up to the second floor, I realized I had forgotten something in the car. I asked the receptionist if I had a few moments before we were called, and he suggested they keep Jackson while I ran down to get it. When I returned, Jackson was holding court in the waiting room with three nurses, the scheduler and even a pharmaceutical sales rep crowded around his car seat watching him laugh and giggle for everyone. Must have been a slow afternoon in the office.

This time, the shots were a piece of cake. (As one of the nurses said, "With those thighs, he probably won't even feel them.") We were in and out in 20 minutes. He hadn't shed a tear.

On our way out of the building, I was feeling particularly euphoric. Our little boy had charmed the whole office, he wasn't fazed by the shots, and we were heading home on a beautiful spring day for a few hours of playtime before bed. I couldn't believe I'd spent much of the morning with a pit in my stomach thinking about this.

When I pushed the down button on the elevator, it opened instantly. A mother and her son - about six years old, give or take - had stepped in right before us and were taking the elevator down as well. She wrapped her arms around him and asked in the world's most cheery tone if he wanted to stop for Chick Fil A on the way home. Oh good, I thought, it's still ok for moms to bribe their kids for behaving at the doctor.

I smiled at the little boy, and instantly did a double-take. He was tall, but appeared fragile. His Superman t-shirt and blue pants were hanging off his wiry frame. He seemed tired. His pale blond hair was fuzzy, and growing back in patches. It was then I connected the dots: Our pediatrician's office shares a floor with the Children's Center for Cancer.

As I held on tightly to our perfectly healthy, giggly kid, I snuck a glance at this mother. She seemed so put together given that she was clearly dealing with the absolutely agonizing uncertainty and pain that must come along with having a seriously ill child. She's got far more strength than I ever will.

Suddenly, dreading two shots seemed like the most significant waste of time in the world.

Heartstrings

There are moments in any given day where I look at Jackson and I think one of the following:

1) Now what am I supposed to be doing with you?
2) How much longer until bedtime, again?
3) When will we ever understand each other?

But when he sleeps, I check in on him.

Seeing him lying there crooked and contorted in his crib - watching the slow up-and-down of his breathing - fills my heart to more than it can hold. He's so vulnerable, and so perfect. I love him so much that I almost can't handle it. I forget the frustrations and the monotony that fills my days and I just want to pick him up and hold him all night long because I know he's not going to be this small forever.

That's what I said. Period.

I've always been a bit of a grammar nerd. I'm not sure if it's because my mom would constantly interrupt me when I was using it poorly or if I was just so bad at math and science that I needed to find something I was good at. Regardless, I can spot an error a mile away. (That's not always a good thing. In fact, it often drives Chad crazy.)

This morning, I was finishing up a few things in the kitchen before heading out the door. Jackson was still sleeping. Chad was in the shower. I wanted to make sure he knew about a couple of things, so I left him a post-it on the kitchen window.

I scribbled it quickly, slapped it on the glass and started to laugh. This note would read very differently without the period, wouldn't it?

Food for thought

I love the simplicity of this perspective.

Rude awakenings

Act I

Jackson has been sleeping like a champ for the last few days (as in, 8-9 hour stretches without waking up!). The downside of this is that my body hasn't adjusted to this expanded schedule. So last night at 2 a.m., after being asleep for my requisite three hours, I woke up completely unsure of what to do with myself. I wandered around. I checked the nursery to make sure he was breathing. I remembered that I needed to fill out some paperwork for the daycare lady and spent 45 minutes downstairs looking up the info of our pediatrician and the emergency contact folks.

At 3 a.m., just as I was getting ready to go back to bed, Jackson woke up hungry. (In fairness to him, he'd been asleep for nine hours - even I can't go that long without eating!) He's always been very good about eating and going right back to sleep, but last night after he ate he kept wiggling and squirming - which was frustrating both of us.

Yesterday, it was hot. Outside was 88 degrees and our house had cooked to a toasty 75 by 3:30 a.m. Holding a baby for 45 minutes wasn't cooling me off any, either. Once I realized he wasn't going back to sleep because he was too warm (even my cold-blooded self had changed out of my flannel pajamas!), I took him out of his sleeper. I opened the windows, rocked him again, and he went right to sleep.

Success! 4 a.m. And - bonus - a nice, cool breeze blowing through the windows.

Act II

Fast-forward 15 minutes. I was somewhere in that great state between asleep and awake. I felt something looking at me. I opened my eyes and less than an inch from my face was Lucy's nose, huge eyes and ears flat to the side of her head. I mumbled something about "It's ok, Lucy, time for bed..." and she didn't move.

Not 30 seconds later, it started pouring. I mean, raining harder than I have ever seen - sheets and sheets of blowing rain (of course, in Jackson's windows, which I had only opened moments earlier). We did the maniacal run-around-and-close-all-the-windows drill that I perfected when growing up in a house without air conditioning, and went back to bed.

But Lucy doesn't mind the rain. She minds the lightning and the thunder. For over a half hour, she was as close to being in our bed as you could be with two feet still on the floor. She had herself stretched halfway across that thing. And she shuttled between my side of the bed and Chad's - back and forth, back and forth - until, exhausted, she nestled herself in a tiny little ball next to my nightstand.

I fell asleep.

Thirty minutes later, at 5:30, my alarm went off. That's the one part of that new 7 a.m. - 3 p.m. schedule I hadn't thought through.

As I told Chad this morning when we were both stumbling around looking for our sanity and caffeine, someday we'll laugh about this.

Daycare, Day 1

After stressing out about where to take Jackson when I went back to work, we found a good short-term solution with the in-home provider where our friend April takes her little boy, Braden. (Long-term, one of the spots at the daycare we really wanted opened up for this July.)

I wasn't a total mess when I dropped Jackson off yesterday, but it wasn't easy. I will withhold all judgment on this "working mom" gig for two weeks, or at least that's what I promised Chad.

The woman, Farhana, has a master's in child development and goes back for continuing education every year. She had an opening, is very convenient for drop off and pick up, and has plenty of things for kids to play with. (Though Jackson spends most days just playing with his hands at this point.) I absolutely trust her, which was the most important factor for us in finding someone.

I dropped him off about 8:30 and checked in midday to a good report. (As Chad said, "I wonder if Farhana and her helper take bets on what time the new mom will call?") Then, with my new 7-3 work hours, I couldn't get out of here fast enough. He was sleeping when we dropped him off and sleeping when I picked him up.

And when we got home, he was all smiles. In fact, he often gets to laughing so much that he gives himself the hiccups - yesterday afternoon was no exception.

April Fool's

A year ago today, I had one of the biggest surprises of my life: I found out I was pregnant.

We haven't shared this journey widely, but having a baby didn't come particularly easy for us. In fact, we were close to the realization that perhaps this all wasn't meant to be.

After seeing one specialist on and off for the better part of a year, we were told that I wouldn't be able to get pregnant without a costly procedure. We thought about it and prayed about it and decided against that option, at least for the time being. Since I was never too thrilled with her, I decided to go for a second opinion. Ready to try this all one more time, I met with the doctor, they explained the testing and took some preliminary blood work. I was encouraged but knew it was going to be a long process. As in, months.

Here we go again, I thought. And if this doesn't work, we'll just be the world's coolest aunt and uncle (and be able to take lots of kid-free vacations in the process).

I went for a second opinion on March 31. On the afternoon of April 1, I was working from home when my phone rang. It was the nurse I'd met the day before.

Well, she said, your blood work came back. I've got some good news and some bad news.

The good news is, you're pregnant. The bad news is, the hormone levels are really low. It will likely end in a miscarriage.

It was April Fool's Day. The irony did not escape me. Based on all the testing they'd done, there was no way I should have been pregnant. A big part of me thought that maybe the lab had screwed up the test.

How did Chad find out? It was very anticlimactic: I called him at work and said something along the lines of, "Well, you'll never believe this. I'm pregnant though it's not going to last. But the good news is it can happen." We didn't celebrate but we were encouraged for the long term.

Over the next few weeks, I returned multiple times for blood work. Instead of going down, my numbers kept going up. And up. And up. By about the middle of April, I started to wonder if this was really going to happen. The next several weeks went painstakingly slow as we kept getting morsels of good news but needed to be realistic that it was still very early.

We all know what happened next but in case you need a refresher...

One year to the day later, I'm on my last day of maternity leave with a beautiful little boy who makes me laugh more than he makes me crazy. While I dream of sleep and a real vacation and an impromptu evening out, I can't really imagine our lives without him anymore.

Oh my, how life can change in an instant. That April Fool's was apparently no joke.