A year ago today I had an appointment with my OB. It was my "due date" (amorphous and misleading term, but Chaya took it semi-seriously). An exam indicated I was no further along than prior weeks. I declined to have any mucus stripping (don't ask), and we discussed the next steps if I went too far "past term.
The exam itself left me a bit uncomfortable, as they sometimes do. I thought little of it. That evening, we went out to Super Buffet for my very last meal there. I was uncomfortable to distraction - curt, cramping, digging my nails into the chair. Again, I'd had contraction-type things after exams before and thought little of it except "everyone is very boring, this food is annoying and OWW". That night I slept in uncomfortable twenty minute jags. The next morning, I thought maybe I had food poisoning. It took my mom coming over to confirm I was probably in labor. And of course by the time I went in, I was almost fully dilated.
And here we are at fifty-two weeks of peak (and pique) Chayosity. A pittance of a day before Miss Chaya's grand appearance on The (W)right Scene. Boy has it been a month of an approach.
The eleven month sicko-slump persisted beyond those first two weeks. Her Grandpapa Wright did indeed fall ill with our little lurgy. And in turn he shared once more with the family. Chaya relapsed. Gramma Pam had a day or two of dyspepsia. My gutsy guts did a few cartwheels. And we shelved, once more, any delusions of dairy, fiberful foods or tidy diapers. As for that sleep schedule thing? Pshaw!
Another week of miserable baby and rancid diapers and peradventure things began to ... settle? We hope! But cannot be certain. And with a whole new petri dish of peripatetating family to swap sick with, who knows? That's right, Chaya has met her (genetic) match:
The Falconers are back in town.
Oh heck yeah. And we can't confirm that they are truly the pesky harbingers, but it's very possible that they were the peripatetic Patients Zero who imported Chaya's brand new head cold to our humble home. Or... she chewed on something pretty much anywhere in public... But we'll blame family and call it a birthday gift. As a result, of course, Chaya no longer has any appetite. Oh I take that back. An appetite for mayhem, an appetite for waving her fork and spoon around, an appetite for stacking utensils and food and cups, and an appetite for distributing the contents of her plate with some inscrutable discrimination between the floor and her seat. I don't blame her. No matter the torture we undertake with saline drops and aspirators, she continues to have a plugged up nose.
She's currently down to actually eating freeze dried strawberries. Hey, all five calories of them were definitely worth the half hour sitting at the table, the half hour to clean up and the half hour to try to figure out anything else she might just feasibly eat just in case... But hey... vitamin C.
This is why toddlers live off of McDonald's
Oh and she kind of stopped sleeping. Our Friday evening was a traumatic three hour ordeal of sleep untraining. I'm pretty sure none of our measures to sooth and comfort her deserve the credit for her eventual eight hours of restless sleep. I'm pretty sure she just cried herself out. But we tried fruitlessly And there was much sobbing. I currently live in terror of bed and nap times. Though I'm hoping the fact that she no longer has any appetite should curtail her vexatious habit of pooping herself awake during naps. Fingers crossed.
And so without further ado (but many sneezes and sniffles), she slips right out of infancy and into the terrifying and terrific toddler years. Toddler! Yikes! It's so different now. It's hard still, but in such a distinct way. Caring for a young infant is so primal. Even the terror is the most basic and primordial of tremors - it's all ounces: ounces of baby weight, of milk pumped, of coffee shot directly into the eye to keep partially conscious).
Dealing with an older baby is fully cro-magnon. It's about handling a teeny tiny little person hellbent on destroying herself, and digging up every imaginable emotion and personality conflict that could roil under the stew of our human egos.
It's running, laughing, crying, and trying to remember that they totally understand shockingly complex words and emotions. They're in your head and they haven't developed the capacity for empathy yet! And that - little person though they be - they have not mastered some of the moderating abilities of mental processing that make this crazy life tolerable. Constantly ambushed by new and confusing feelings, sensations, desires, and drives. Both delighted and surprised and truly distressed at things we silly grownups imagine are old and tedious. It's a rush going through that again with your own flesh and blood. While trying to handle your own raging ego and screeching inner child. It's different.
One years old! Toddler! Ack! Personhood. Albeit a little person who does not talk or walk like I was promised she might at this age. Seriously, I thought she'd be walking by now, after she popped up and starting tromping around with such determination
Chaya may in fact not be particularly exceptional in any objective way. She is a bit bigger than an average female her age, though after this month of constant ailing not by much. She's been ahead on some milestones and behind on others. She pulled herself up and started walking with help on the early side, but has pretty well stuck with honing that skill for the past couple of months. She was determined to crawl at four months, but waited until eight to really do so with any skill. She scales stairs like an expert, but doesn't climb the couches. She made a series of complex syllabic and intoned sounds months ago, but still doesn't appear to have identifiable words (except "mamamaama" happens when she wants something or is unhappy and the ever popular "bababu" which clearly means something but we have no idea what). She's just sort of in the middle.
Not particularly social or anti-social. Neither fully independent, nor clingy. Yes, people have commented on what an attractive baby she is ("and not like with other babies where I don't mean it... she is genuinely attractive"), but she also has cradle cap and funny hair and isn't exactly 100% gerber baby. A baby who gets sick, but not more than average. Not an easy baby, but certainly nothing like the truly difficult babies. Regardless, she is absolutely the hands-down best Chaya Wright in the land. She's so aware. So bright. So engaged. So willful and determined and full of humor and wonder. Brash and bold, yet sensitive. She of the alacritous eyebrows and So very... Chaya. I couldn't ask for a more Chaya baby ever and I wouldn't settle for anything less.
I love my little crazy fiendish snotty drool bugaboobabe.
So today, on this anniversary of something quite surreal and spectacular, I think of fortune cookies and wontons and very uncomfortable chairs and raise a glass of jasmine tea to my snotty, underslept bobbling little toddler. May she one day remember how to sleep and eat.
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