One small step for Jackson....

Jackson took his first steps today. First steps are arguably the most iconic of childhood milestones. He took his sweet time taking them, too. Even though he’s 13-months, and 15-months is considered “average”, it seems like everyone I talked to had kids walking before a year. He’s the only kid in his Gymboree class that can’t walk. And of course, in typical mom-style projection, I was terribly upset by this; as if Jack’s inability to walk early was the result of some failure on my part.

But then today, he just walked. There was nothing essentially amazing about it: he took two steps, and then just sat his little butt back down. But I was absolutely ecstatic.

I was excited for several reasons. First and foremost, Jackson was getting really heavy. He’s roughly the size of a collegiate shot-putter, and while I like having enough upper-arm strength to lift a Volkswagen, it would be nice to set him down every so often.

Second, there are lots of times when we’re out in public and he wants to wander around, but I refuse to set a crawler on a public floor. Dirt, I’ve learned to handle. But I can’t shake the feeling he’s going to catch something crazy like scurvy or The Consumption from public floors. Once he starts proficiently walking, I think I’ll feel better letting him explore. Until then, he just sits in my lap shrieking and trying to wrestle out of my grip in a vain effort to get down onto the malaria-riddled floor.

Third, there is just something indescribably adorable about the way a new toddler walks. They waddle around with their fat little diapered butts looking like a drunken Donald Duck from behind. It’s hilarious and painfully cute.

Finally, as I’ve mentioned before, I was beginning to think he was just never going to walk. He expressed zero interest in it. I had visions of him crawling around his college campus and crawling down the aisle at his wedding.

But with those first steps, all my fears were assuaged. Granted, it’s a long way from two steps to full-time walking, but it’s a start.

It was also an affirmation of exactly why I stay home. My sanity has taken a serious hit, and we have to live on one income, but seeing my son take his first steps made it all worth it. The thought of an indifferent daycare worker being the first person to see my son walk reminds me why we’ve sacrificed so much so that I can stay home. But I’m the one that got to see it, and I’m the one who got to hug him and shriek with joy and hug him after.

Now we just have to work on his talking….

Worry = My New BFF

Jackson has been awake most of the night for the past three days. Fortunately, this time it was not due to illness (as it had been the past week) but teething. He has two molars coming in, and judging from the shrieks of pain coming from my child at midnight, 2 am, 5 am, and 7 am, it HURTS.

I have yet to meet a parent who wasn’t totally exhausted. I saw an episode of “The Twilight Zone” where this guy when totally insane, and at the end of the episode, you find out that he was part of a military experiment in sleep deprivation.  HA. They could have just filmed any given parent for that episode. We’re all permanently exhausted.

New parents have it worst, with babies waking up every two hours to be fed for two solid months (if you’re lucky!). But even when they’re older, they’re keeping you up due to illness, teething, nightmares, or the topic of today’s blog: WORRY.

Much like True Love, a tattoo, or that Lady Gaga song you’ve had stuck in your head since 2009, once you become a mother, worry will never leave you.

Worry accompanies you at every stage in your child’s development. From the moment they are born, you start worrying, and it doesn’t stop. Are they eating enough? Why are they crying so much? And don’t even get me started on the sheer horror that is SIDS.

Now that my child has passed his first birthday with all his fingers and toes and most of his mental faculties, my worries have changed. I worry that he’s not getting enough social interaction with other children his age. I worry that I don’t play with him enough. I worry because he’s not walking yet. It seems I’m always encountering moms who have amazing stories about their child walking when he or she was 6-months-old, talking at 10 months, and solving differential equations by one-year. Then there’s Jackson, who has yet to show even the slightest interest in walking.

From what I hear, worrying doesn’t ebb as time goes on. When they go off to school you have to worry about bullies and oh-dear-God, pedophiles. I have so much to say about pedophiles that they should probably be a separate entry, but this is my blog, and I’ll go off on a tangent if I want to. The abridged version goes something like this: I have to be careful when I look up the registered sex offender list, not because I’m afraid of what I’ll find, but because I know that if I DO find a sex offender living on my street, I’ll get a posse together with pitch forks and torches and show up at their house demanding blood. And since severely premeditated murder is a capital offense in the Great State of Texas, I probably don’t want to go there. Instead, as a precaution, my son will go off to school with a homing beacon strapped to his head, a Taser in his lunch box, and a 200 pound Rottweiler by his side. (I looked into getting a Navy Seal for a body guard, but they ended up being prohibitively expensive.)

Anyway, psychotic child-molesting freaks aside, there’s plenty of things to worry about. Soon they start driving and dating. The very thought of that makes my stomach churn, and suddenly I understand why my own parents were so paranoid and hovering as I was growing up. 

Since I still have a few years before I have to worry about the more treacherous aspects of raising a child, I’ll just stick to what I know: that being a mother is terrifying. It’s terrifying because for the first time in my life, I love something more than life itself. Before, there was always a sense that I was invulnerable. I could handle anything that life threw at me. But when you have a child, your soul starts walking around outside your body, and you can only protect it so much.

So from the moment your child is born, you get to wander around sleep-deprived. I figure I’ll be able to finally get some rest when I die. Until then, a good night’s sleep is a distant memory.

We're Still Alive...

Yes, I've been ridiculously bad about blogging. My sincere apologies to those who read this on a regular basis. But I've been absent for some pretty good reasons, I promise. Primarily, Jackson has been sick. Like, constantly. Thankfully, he was never VERY sick- just a little bit sick- but for almost 3 solid weeks.

I won't bore you with the details of Jackson's illness, but suffice to say, EVERY SINGLE TIME he started to recover from one malady, he was hit with another. We went from croup to ear infection to some nebulous virus that came with vomiting and fever. And while *knock on wood* he seems better now, it's been a rough time for us both.

I'm fairly certain there is no worse feeling than having a sick child. Even when they're not dangerously sick, they are miserable, and you are worried. While I have no scientific proof to support this assertion, it's been my observation that when we get sick, we revert back to our last developmental stage. For my toddler-ish son, this means regressing back to newborn behavior. I spent 2 solid weeks rocking and singing to Jackson. He didn't want to play or crawl around- all he wanted to do was lie there pathetically in my arms.

In my own selfish way, I kind of liked the baby conduct. I was mired in depression for his actual newborn months, so I didn't get to enjoy them. It's kind of nice rocking and cuddling a baby. And despite the fact that my singing voice resembles that of Fran Drescher mixed with a hyena, babies are genetically programmed to love the sound of their mother's voice, so for a few weeks I felt like Celine Dion.

Because Jackson was continually sick for so long, I started to go a little nuts. First off, we didn't leave the house the entire time for fear he would either get sicker or infect another child. Cabin fever started to set in as I declined lunches, play dates, parties, and dinners.

Second, I read our Curious George anthology like 17 million times. That stupid little monkey and his yellow-donning friend almost broke my brain, but it kept my son happy.

Third, I just became really stressed out, wondering why he wasn't getting better. As I mentioned before, he was never sick enough that we thought his life was in danger (unlike the time last November when we rushed him to the ER with a fever of 106, thinking he had meningitis. Want to know what a 5-hour-long heart attack feels like? Just ask me...). But I was genuinely concerned. And my natural propensity for drama really doesn't help in those situations.

You start to wonder what you did wrong to make your baby so sick. Maybe I didn't install the shopping cart cover properly. (For those of you without children, a shopping cart cover is like a reverse sneeze-guard, but for shopping carts.)  Maybe I didn't vacuum enough. (And by "enough", I mean "at all".) All these ridiculous scenarios play out as to what you did wrong, and before you know it, you've driven yourself crazy with guilt.

I've stated in previous blogs that I don't believe in maternal instinct, but after this whole ordeal, I have to alter that pronouncement slightly. I still don't think the skies open up and knowledge beams down into you from the heavens, but I do have to admit that I gleaned some intuition over the past year. While Jackson was still battling the croup, he started acting worse instead of better. Since I spend all day every day with my child, I knew he was getting sicker. I called the doctor, and she kind of blew me off, implying that this was normal, and I had to let it run its course. Still, I insisted that they look at him again. And sure enough, he had an ear infection.

So it was kind of a nice affirmation that I do know what I'm doing (at least to a small extent). It was also an affirmation that I should find a new pediatrician, but that's a whole other story.

It now seems that Jackson is on the mend. And just in time, because there are only so many Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs that I can sing to him. (I don't know many lullabies, and the ones I do know involve babies falling out of trees and birds that refuse to sing, which always seems kind of morbid and depressing to croon to a child.) 

Anyway, I did come away from this experience with some education: trust your gut. Even when your pediatrician thinks you're a hypochondriac, go with your instincts. (Which, as it turns out, you actually DO have.) A strong course of antibiotics cleared up the ear infection that would have been overlooked were it not for my vigilance. You may look like a crazy person, but you may also actually be RIGHT. And while I still don't really know what I'm doing, I'm better at this Mommy Thing than I thought.