I’m having a complete meltdown, and I have nowhere to pour it out but here.  With motherhood comes inordinate amounts of guilt.  Guilt for wanting to take a shower more than you want to feed your newborn.  Guilt for not keeping up with the housekeeping.  Guilt for stopping by McDonald’s during the chicken tender phase now and then.  I laid there today a few inches from his face watching him fall off to sleep for his nap.  I had a damp paper towel to dab his cheek, which I’ve been doing all morning.  I just stared at him, and the tears started rolling.  I got up sobbing and called Scott.  I don’t know what I expected him to say, but I just sobbed into the phone.  That I should have known better.  I’m his mother and I should have been more proactive.  More stern and clear about my wishes.  I knew better than that.  I knew he shouldn’t have been near Gilda.  He wants her to like him so bad too.  If she wags her tail in his general direction, he starts laughing and saying over and over that “she wikes me, she weawwy wikes me.”  God I don’t know what I would have done if it was worse.  I keep thinking, this could have been his eye.  He could have lost his eyesight on one side.  Every time I look at him, my heart breaks.  I know you think I’m crazy.  I’m overreacting.  You didn’t see his face though.  I just can’t get that out of my head.  My mom says he tripped over Gilda’s leash, because Mom hooked her around the damn chair leg right next to him.  Right in his path.  She said she knew he was going to trip, it was in slow motion for her, she just couldn’t get there fast enough.  He didn’t fall on her though.  She had no reason to do that.  I’m just having a lot harder time with this than I anticipated.

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blah

Dec 31

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, caleb isaiah, current events, family, memories, parenting

Yeah, I don’t think I would go so far as to say it looks better. I’m still sick about this.  Literally.  My stomach was in turmoil yesterday.  I’ll spare you any additional details.

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I put Caleb in bed with me again last night in hopes of keeping him on his back or opposite side (not putting pressure on the cut).  I’m not sure the swelling has really gone down much, maybe spread out a little.  When I was laying there with him, I asked him if he remembered what happened, how he got hurt.  He whispered, “Gilda.”  I shook my head yes, and told him that I was so sorry and it would never ever happen again.  He said, “Because you upset.  And I upset.”  I shook my head yes.  “And the nice doctor put the purple on and make me better.”  Even with all the stress of the ER, he remembered that the liquid bandaid solution was purple.  And somehow he knew when we pulled up at the hospital, that it might hurt there.  Scott pulled up to the door and he  started fussing and said he wanted to get back in the car.  Not much gets by this kiddo.  He knows so much more than I even realize.

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We went to my Mom and Dad’s for Christmas yesterday. I wish we had never gone. I wish I had just let my mom come here for Christmas, and been done with it. They couldn’t leave my dog Maggie at home. She has failing health and could not be boarded. So we went there for the day yesterday. We got my mom and dad a digital frame, and loaded a memory card. I didn’t have time to test the frame before we went. Of course, it didn’t want to work. We could see the pictures, but it wouldn’t ever run the slideshow. Scott went to Best Buy to get another memory card to see if we could fix the problem. Still no luck, but all hell broke loose will he was gone.

My mom has this rotten little dog, she’s a fox terrier. The professionals can say what they want, animals do act out of spite. When I bring my baby and he gets all the attention, so she hops up and takes a leak on my bed…that is spite. When she seeks out our older dog’s bed to take a dump…that is spite. She’s very unpredictable. She attacks Maggie (the older lab) at random times. My mom has gotten her hands caught in the tangle four times. She’s had stitches more than once. Whenever she senses a weakness, she decides now would be a good time to go ahead and finish them off. Well she decided that was what she would do with my child yesterday. My mom has been asked to keep Gilda clear of Caleb. To put her outside or in another room. Just because she is so unpredictable, you can never tell when she might turn on you. My Dad put her outside twice yesterday, but Mom brought her back in. She puts her leash under a chair like that will help. Caleb doesn’t understand not to go near her. He doesn’t understand that his height makes her feel threatened or that his quick moves agitate her.

He was sitting on the floor a few feet from the side door yesterday. My mom was trying to take Gilda outside to potty and she attacked his face. My mom tripped over the leash and fell across the room, but blood was already streaming down his face. He was screaming, I was screaming, Mom was screaming. She got him right underneath his left eye, I guess in that respect, it could have been a lot worse. I just couldn’t believe how much it bled, his face and shirt were covered, my hands, shirt, the washcloth. My mom thought he had another place on his ear because when I laid him down, it poured in his ear. A doctor lives across the street from them, he works in the ER. He has three small stairstep children, and the wife is a RN. Mom called her, Dr. Anderson was at work, so she asked Kelly to come over and look at it. I was in tears by the time she got there. She said it looked deep, and thought we should take him. About that time Scott came in. So that meant at least the carseat had returned. We put him in the car and my Dad went with us. Kelly called her husband and let him know we were coming. There must have been over a hundred people in the emergency room. I think we waited about 30 minutes before jumping ahead of 85% of the people. They didn’t even have a room to send us to, Dr. Anderson met us right behind the triage reception area in a triage supply room. Caleb was so good, he let the doctor clean it and he was able to use the liquid stitch/glue stuff. For that I am so thankful. Otherwise, they would have had to sedate all three of us. The only part that upset him…his eyelashes are so long that when he put the liquid bandaid on, it caught some of his bottom lashes. He had to get some scissors, and Caleb kept closing his eye as an automatic reaction. I did NOT want his top lashes getting trimmed! Which we managed not to do. So you can’t even tell, except for the few you can see if you look closely at the glue.

By the time we headed home last night, it had already started swelling. We stopped three times in the two hour trip, for drinks, snacks and motrin. I put him in the bed with me last night, and he seemed to sleep okay. I’m not sure whether it was him laying on that side, or the swelling, or a combination of, but it bled some during the night, and has continued to seep today. His eye is nearly swollen shut.

We are having a hard time. We’ve both been pretty upset that it ever happened. My mom is blaming herself. It is nobody’s fault. Could it have been avoided? Yes, probably. And part of me is still angry over that. I don’t want my baby to have to be a hero or a trooper. I wanted it to be me 10 times worse. I just wanted to bawl this morning when he whimpered that his “booboo hurwt weawwy bad.” He uses Charley’s tail (his stuffed giraffe) for comfort, and he will tap it lightly on anything that hurts, so he keeps trying to put Charley’s tail around the cut, and we’re trying to keep it as clean as possible… He says “Charwee make my booboo feel better. Charwee can heawl it.”

And trust me, his shirt is no art project gone wrong. I came home and treated all the clothes, and they came clean.

So my little guy has had his first ER visit. I think Scott and I are having a harder time today than he is. We just wish it was us instead. We wish it had never happened. We’re thankful it wasn’t worse. Needless to say, Gilda is no longer allowed here, nor will she be in the same room with him ever again. I shouldn’t have let my guard down.

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oh yeah, I forgot…

Dec 28

Posted by: Rachel in: blog, christmas countdown 2007

This might have been better if I had posted the day after Christmas, but I was too busy taking pictures!

Click here and start at the bottom to see the tree get decorated!

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Hi, I’m Rachel. And welcome to my photography blog. I have been on a picture taking role here lately. When I take pictures of something, you might notice there are often several shots with the same theme. If you see three or four pictures that are decent and have a similar theme, chances are there are 50-150 more that you aren’t seeing. I have a “File Cabinet” folder on my desktop where I deposit all of my pictures and movies. I backed up my pictures last on October 30th. I just remember the date because it was right before Halloween. My file cabinet is now 18GB!!! I put pictures on two hard drives, one internal and one external. I want to burn copies of all of them to keep in a fire safe, but as you can imagine, that is a daunting task. You’re looking at over 40GB of pictures. I don’t even know how many DVDs it would take. Anyway, enough about my photography obsession. Here’s some more pictures. As usual.

Safety first, always wear your safety goggles when working with tools

I hate that I couldn’t get the red eye out of this one

Last night, Scott had gone in the kitchen to make coffee.  Caleb came in and said “Whatcha doin Dad?  Oh you makin coffee.”  Answered his own question and then started dragging a kitchen chair across the room.  Scott asked what he was doing and he said, “I have to call somebody,” and he parked his chair below the phone and climbed up.  We keep our phone unplugged because of telemarketers, and rarely ever use it.  We just enjoy paying $85 a month for internet (phone + DSL courtesy BullshitSouth, I mean BellSouth).  He said he was calling the Ghostbusters.

“Don’t take pic-shuwah of me”

No matter how many times you play peekaboo, kids this age never tire of it.  It doesn’t matter how many times I snatch the blanket off and snap the resulting picture, it will be the same expression every time.

Doh, I messed up

Sharing milk with TJ (Maaan, now I got dirt in my rims! - Are we Cars fans?  I think so.  Check out the shirt…Pitstop!)

Can you find Caleb?

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I’m trying to decide whether to turn Poopy forward facing in his carseat. Of course I have to make a big deal over anything concerning carseat safety and analyze it from every possible angle. I asked on the carseat forum that I frequent. They didn’t help any, as I got a mix of answers. I’m getting inconsistent readings from our scale as to his weight. He has barely eaten the last two weeks or so, he starts off with a good breakfast, and usually refuses lunch and may or may not pick at dinner. So there is no way he has gained a pound! I was expecting him to have lost. My head knows that he will be perfectly safe forward facing. I’ve kept him rear facing until almost three years old, which is two years longer than most kids. But I just can’t stop comparing the crash test videos in my head and wishing we could move to Sweden where they rear face to 55lbs. Look at the difference here, you’ll see what I mean.

Huge difference, yes?  The rear facing weight limit on his seat is 33lbs.  I honestly think he’s still around 31, but I keep getting totally different readings on my scale from day to day ranging from 30.5 last week to 33 last night!  Tell me he’ll be fine.  I want him to have the best of everything, and it bugs me knowing that Sweden is so far ahead of us, they have better seats.  And even though it would cost a fortune to import it, and it isn’t legal to use here, it is still eating at me.  It also will slightly complicate riding with anyone else.  Neither of my parents’ cars have top tethers, and I won’t put the seat in there without it, because I’m obsessive like that.  I’m not sure what they say about me asking them to install one.  I don’t know if I even should ask, because he only rides with them a few times a year.  Some days I can’t decide whether it is a good thing or not that I’m so OCD about this!

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So he just randomly named his horse Rosie. We have no idea where he got it from, but at some point yesterday, he introduced me. He said, “Dis is my horse. Her name Rosie.” Well okay then. So here are a few of Caleb and Rosie. He got one of those Fisher Price kid tough cameras and now we have about 100 pictures of the back of Rosie’s head (from sitting on Rosie taking pictures) and several pictures of the inner workings of Rosie’s nostrils.

A new favorite picture!

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As a kid, my parents were always very organized people. Neither of them liked clutter. Of course I don’t remember when I was this age, but I can remember as a kid, just wanting to tear down the stairs and start ripping into presents, but I felt that it would be inappropriate. Like it was against the rules or something. We had to open things slowly and clean up as we went. After the first few gifts, Scott asked who wanted to be on cleanup duty. Nobody, I replied. I want it just like this. A sea of wrapping paper and tie wraps and boxes. It is only one day a year and it doesn’t take that long to clean up. I sat right on top of a pile of wrapping paper. When I called my parents later in the morning (like 10:30), we were still buried in wrapping paper and my mom said, “I have all of our wrapping paper folded flat and your dad is vacuuming.” I said, “Well we misplaced our living room floor. I know it has to be under here somewhere.”

It’s like Where’s Waldo, only I would never name my kid Waldo.

What I always wanted to do Christmas morning

Wubbzy says Wow, Wow!

He did NOT want to eat breakfast, there were entirely too many important things to be done than eating. We ate a late breakfast, so there was no lunch. At dinner he ate two and a half pancakes and two pieces of bacon!

Put me down, put me down. I’m stressed.

Ugh!

Yipee-ki-yay!

M.I.T - Mechanic In Training

Those geniuses at Cranium…this thing is really neat, he loves it!

The castle blocks, mailed December 16th via Priority, and arrived December 24th! They cut it a little close!

Doorway puppet theater…he kept saying “Ladies and gentleman! Welcome to the show!”

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We finally went to bed about 3:30am Christmas morning, I’m not sure either of us got much sleep. We were so excited and anxious. We got up about 6:30. Caleb had come and gotten in the bed with me about 6:20, so I waited until he was back asleep and got up. By 7:20, we could no longer contain ourselves, so Scott went and woke him up. It was really dark in one half of the house and really bright in the living room…

“You wake me up, make me immediately get out of bed, it is too bright in here, I don’t know where Mommy is, and, and….”

“…and…whoa. I think I need to sit down for a minute. Take everything in.”

“Okay, done taking in. Let the wrapping paper fly.”

Opening the first present

The mile long eyelash picture

I’m so glad he liked this Wubbzy book. Because I went through hell to get it! It came with a beanie baby sized Wuzzby and a book not much bigger than the plush. So it shouldn’t be too much right? Only $12.99, not too bad. Here’s the catch. The only Wubbzy merchandise is made by Scholastic. And only sold at book fairs. Since I refused to pay over $30 for this on eBay, I made some phone calls and wrote some emails and waited. For over a month. I had given up and forgotten about it by the time someone randomly called from Scholastic. She let me mail her a check and she mailed me the book. It was a lot of trouble, and phone tag, but in the end, he seems to really like it. The show comes on Noggin, it’s really cute.

Checkin out the new horse

Working on Percy the train

Santa drank all the milk!

But he left me a cookie.

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