So I finally got braces. I figured now was better than later when I’m out practicing. My super nice orthodontist expects it to take about 18 months. 18 months ago, Zoe was almost 11 months old, and that seems like yesterday, so perhaps this will go by as quickly. I kind of wish I had waited until after our upcoming 10 year high school reunion, but whatever. We all saw each other at various stages of idiocy and awkwardness, so it’s cool.
Though I look like an utter goof, so far it doesn’t hurt too badly – I haven’t had to take any ibuprofen or acetaminophen. It only hurts a little in my actual teeth. I read online that it takes 72 hours for the tension to break down the bone and 90 days to build it back up. We’re taking a picture every few days so we can see the progress over time. The first couple of days I had this claustrophobic, cagey feeling, but that’s lessening.
One side effect is that eating is no longer fun. At all. Not that I ate for sport before, but the inconvenience of actually chewing and then cleaning my teeth afterward has severely curtailed my snacking. And of course, I have eliminated the foods and behaviors that could cause a bracket to break, which ultimately benefits my long term health. No nail biting or ice chewing. White flour is gone. Sugar is ALMOST gone. Flavored, unsweetened tea has become my very, very good friend. Cold soy milk. Baked fish. Tofu. Soup. Pureed beans. Pureed hot brown rice cereal. Mashed plantains. I have returned to eating only enough to make me not hungry anymore, which before required willpower, and now is a pain-saving mechanism.
After discussions with Jenna about gluten and dairy, I ditched gluten and am limiting dairy to my Greek yogurt, which doesn’t seem to bother me. I’m also mammal-meat-free, and I don’t miss it. My skin has cleared up, my fatigue is considerably less, and my abdomen is flattening. In fact, today my belly saw the light of day for the first time since Zoe entered our lives. I spent some time in the pool swimming laps, floating, and generally acting like a kid for about a half hour, and it felt phenomenal. I could spend my whole life in water. I’m probably half mermaid. I guess that would be the top half. I wore my favorite vintage two-piece – Mom’s bikini from the 1960s. I’m not ready to don that in more public than there was today (the girl who was frying her skin while reading a book), but given a little more time… Perhaps.
Some of these improvements could be attributed to the fact that Sophie has a new home in Brenham. I am getting good reports from her new family that she is doing very well, and they love her. Zoe’s nose runs less, and I’m breathing easily, completely off my Zyrtec and Flonase. And I rage less.
I kind of wish I had been more scientific about these things so I could figure out which made the biggest improvement, but then I might be obnoxious about it. My family has always said I have infomercial potential. So I’ll just say that they’re all very good changes, and it’s nice to feel more normal.
Yesterday Zoe woke up around 9:00 AM. We played, cooked, played some more, swam, played, bathed, and played. At one point in the mid-afternoon I thought I might die from exhaustion and took a 20 minute break on the couch in a twilightish stupor, never falling asleep, but it was enough that when she asked to go swimming I thought there was a chance I could continue living. We had a great time in the pool and the subsequent bath, and a nice evening after that.
What I mean to say is that there was no nap, and at no point did Zoe even appear to be tired. Around 9:00 PM, we cuddled and watched her current favorite show, Imagination Movers, on the cozy sac. A couple of times during our cuddle, I was smelling her hair, kissing her warm little head, and generally floating on a cloud of bliss, when she said, sweetly and contently, “I luhboo.” Those last 30 minutes with her were more recharging to my heart than a whole week of beach bum vacation. Finally, she drifted off to sleep for the night. I watched a movie and a half, wishing I would never, ever, have to put her down.
I told Joel that what I missed most about the baby time is that it’s basically all like that, except for when they’re crying or needing to be changed. The majority, or what I remember anyway, was holding her while she slept and nursing her. And it was sweet. Really sweet. Now there are fewer of those times, but it’s extra sweet, because she chooses it. As a baby, they really don’t have a choice, and I could be loving the heck out of the cuddling, while the kid might be totally unaware of me beyond a comfortable place to lie and a food source. We definitely communed when she was a baby, and I felt like she was digging me, too, but now, the happiness seems more reciprocal. Maybe because she can talk or hug back or choose not to wriggle away.
I asked if I still will get to cuddle her when I go back to school in a month. If she’ll allow it, if she’ll begrudge my more frequent absence and commitment to something else and resent me. Not just in August, but later. Because she’ll never have a closely spaced sibling to share my attention. Med school, and then my profession, is the new baby dividing my energy. Only she won’t get the built-in best friend down the line.
I guess that’s the price of doing things a little backwards. I waffled in undergrad and abandoned pre-med, changing my major with no real plan. I got married before I was a grown-up. I had ovarian cancer before having children, creating an urgency to have a family. My experience with illness also reignited what I feel is a call to medicine. Despite my poor performance thus far, I know it’s what I need to do.
But it makes things more difficult. A lot more difficult. And I feel selfish. I don’t want her to pay the price for my doing things backwards. The fact is that Zoe has more adjusting to do than she would if I had been able to wait until I was all set up to have children. But if I had been all set up, I might have had two kids, and then she would adjust to that. Or something else. Life is a series of adjustments, right?
I swear I had a point. I wanted my baby, and I wanted to pursue medicine. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to do both. The timing may be off by most people’s standards, but I have what I want. I just hope we all can get what we need.
I have come to the conclusion that Zoe just does not require the same amount of sleep as most other kids.
Here’s what happened last night. After a long, no-nap day, she went to sleep at 9:30 PM – very, very early by our standards. She woke up at 5 AM, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. What two-year-old can survive on such little sleep?
She has never been much of a predictable or regular napper. She has been known to sleep for several hours on occasion, and for a few weeks she might take a nap within the same window of time, but for the most part, sleep has always been an issue.
I have blamed myself, our schedule, my inability to set and stick with a routine, and my resistance to stop nursing or kick her out of our bed. I take responsibility for these things and recognize their contribution to our difficulty.
I’ve had family, friends, counselors, and doctors tell me just to “put her down at 8 PM.” It all sounds so simple. The idea would be for her to go down then, I get some studying done for the next two hours, and then go to sleep myself around 10 PM. Then I wake up around 6 AM, get more done or get ready and leave to get to school, and she wakes up around 8 AM and Joel takes her to school. Sounds awesome, right?
My kingdom (which isn’t much right now, sorry!) to the person who can do this in a meaningful way.
Because the girl only sleeps for 8 hours at the very most, usually with one wake-up sometime in there, usually about 6 hours after falling asleep. If I don’t fall asleep with Zoe at night, I stay up, on average, two additional hours. And I need to in order to get things done. Which means that I never get more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time, and very rarely will I get more than six hours total unless I go right to sleep when she does, which means I don’t get anything extra done. If I put her down at 8 PM, she’ll be up at 6 AM IF I’M LUCKY, and probably before that. When I’m not in school, who wants to get up just for the heck of it at 6 AM? I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with a toddler at that hour and for that long.
It’s all moot because I AM returning to school in a month. She’s in her school now, and they nap there. Well, she doesn’t. But that’s the idea.
Maybe she would nap, eventually, on that schedule. Maybe we should try it. Maybe we will. I’m working on something to put here in public as an accountability measure.
Whenever we part with someone, Zoe says her goodbyes, and after the door is closed or they walk away, she says, “Well, I guess so!”
When we’re chatting in the elevator and someone exits on his or her floor, it’s, “Well! I guess so!” After saying goodbye to her Gigi and the car door closes, “Well, I guess so!”
I have no idea where it came from or who might have said it, but it seems to have made an impression on her. Apparently this is what one says when someone leaves.
In other cute things Zoe says news, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard her say “quinoa,” as in, “I spilled it quinoa, Mama.” and “I sweep it up quinoa, Mama.” She says it correctly – it’s just so cute.
(If you have returned looking for Zoe’s submitted contest photos, here they are.)
Zoe’s too cute, and we’re too biased. Could you help us narrow down her 5000+ flickr photos to six for a cute kid contest?
This is my first attempt at a poll. You can choose as many as you want and vote as many times as you want until sometime tomorrow, when I have to enter the contest. We’ll be submitting the photos – this poll is totally unofficial and just to help us decide. Thanks!
Joel loves girly flavored, caffeine-free teas. He prefers his hot, while I’ll drink mine room temperature or iced more often. Just about daily he offers to make some tea, and I appreciate his enthusiasm. We got a sampler box at the store awhile ago, and I tried the cranberry apple zinger. WAY tasty. I think it may help me in my quest to reduce my sugar intake and lose the belly.
Tonight after a swim, Zoe and I were in a bath when Joel’s tea craving struck. I accepted his offer – blueberry, please – and Zoe piped up as he was walking out of the room. “I want red tea, please!” Red tea, it is! She thanked him when he brought it, and upon letting it cool and taking a sip, she proclaimed, “I like it!” SO CUTE.
Around here we LOVE pizza. It’s Zoe’s number one request for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack most days. Frozen, make our own, or restaurant-bought, we definitely eat our share.
Roughly twice a week, it goes something like this:
Me, realizing it’s getting late and we probably ought to eat something, sucking up my feeling of dread and wondering why it comes as a surprise to me every single night that an evening meal is inevitable, putting on a very convincing and confident air, beginning cheerfully: What do we want for dinner?
or Joel, squinting from the computer and scratching his mane: Are we going to eat sometime tonight?
or Zoe, from the stroller, returning from our walk: I want dinner. I’m hungry.
Me: Well, I thought about lemon pepper salmon with quinoa and spinach, or I could cook some chicken something, or we still have leftover turkey chili… (trailing off as the cheerfulness fades and is replaced by more dread as no one perks up at my suggestions)
Joel: Again? Why don’t we ever have beef? I’m wasting away here. How about hamburgers? Or spaghetti and meatballs? Or beef flavored hamburger helper with grey beef gravy and a side of beef?
Me: UGH
Zoe: I know! I know! How ’bout piz-za?!
Instant sunshine on all our faces. It’s perfect! Zoe’s a genius! Let’s have pizza, indeed!
Here we insert the mind-numbing discussion of the source of said pizza, during which I vow for the fortieth time to keep homemade dough on hand so we don’t have to wait forever or spend dough at a restaurant or wedge giant boxes of sodium-laden discs into our freezer.
In the absence of the ingredients/time for homemade or frozen in the freezer, where do the Wattses get their pizza? We might:
1. Decide to visit the local New York Pizzeria, where all our pizza dreams are fulfilled and there’s Coke on tap; each person gets the giant slice of his or her choosing, and two or more items from the table are knocked to the ground in an embarrassing display in a mildly child-hostile environment.
2. Discuss eating at the restaurant, decide we’re not up for the humiliation, and order it for pick-up. The upsides: we always have a $2 off coupon, and the leftovers make a good lunch the next day. Downside: this option also necessitates an exhausting discussion of toppings, with Joel in the corner of greasy pork/beef/mash abomination, Blake in the cheese/veggie/experimental/what Joel calls “non-pizza” corner, and poor Zoe probably wishing we’d order the damn pizza and get it in her belly five minutes ago.
Keep in mind that Zoe, who rarely eats more than a few bites of anything, loves pizza so much that she will inhale a quantity that would shame the burliest NHL player. Spiciness doesn’t bother her while she’s eating it, but we discovered that she will spit up or even vomit if the toppings are too spicy. This is unacceptable, so we make sure she gets something a little more bland.
You may have noticed that your options only include NYP pizza. This is because it puts all others to shame.
If you selected option #1, you are a winner. Any and all public humiliation is completely acceptable in exchange for NYP. Good choice!
If you selected option #2, you may or may not witness a tirade, depending on the night.
Joel believes that pepperoni is the only true and acceptable topping for pizza. He’ll consider and even eat other toppings, though each suggestion is met with, “Sure, if you want to ruin the pizza.”
In the past couple of years, we have coexisted with a compromise of turkey pepperoni on our homemade pizzas, as I will not purchase and cook with the other. I’ll even pick off real pepperoni should it suit the group, rather than be a stick in the mud.
Usually we can agree on a half pepperoni or pepperoni and sausage, half something to my liking. To both our credits, we have shared many a supreme pizza, each of us picking off the offensive items, but some nights just aren’t that simple. Ah, marriage.
My resistance to pepperoni is undoubtedly as frustrating to him as his insistence on it is to me. Neither of us is railing against a particular topping, but against the other’s infuriating stubbornness.
Truly, though, I see pizza as an opportunity for culinary experimentation, even though I recognize and wholly appreciate the beauty of a classic. Why limit yourself to one topping time after time?
Now, because I tweeted that I would, here is a list of fifty things I would rather see (and have had) on my pizza other than pepperoni. I’m including dessert pizza, because it’s awesome, too. And because I shot my mouth off and said fifty.
