Why We Don't Remember Things Until We're 4

Two years ago today, I decided that I had finally had enough of at-home labor and called the doctor, telling him that we were going to the hospital.

Not that I wanted to spend much time at the hospital.

I just wanted drugs. Right then.

Did I get them? No. Not until about 5 minutes before Clara was born.

(Granted, this may not have been entirely my doctor's/the hospital's fault . . . it is one of the risks of delivering a baby in the middle of the night, and I know they did have trouble locating the anesthesiologist. However, given comparisons between my experience and my friends' experiences giving birth in Mexico, they do tend to put off the epidural until the very last minute. I'll be much more explicit with my doctor about my wishes for as many drugs as possible this time around. And I'll keep in mind that I probably won't get them.)

Last year, when Clara turned 1, a friend of mine told me that her mother told her about how she was born every year on her birthday. She remembers these recollections fondly.

Apparently, even a year later, I was still a bit shell-shocked, so I began my story to Clara last year with, "A year ago today, I woke up at 6am thinking, "oh shit--this is going to hurt." It's possible that I elaborated even more.

I'm so glad she won't remember that.

This year I was able to tone it down a bit, saying, "two years ago today, I knew you were going to be born. But you waited until tomorrow, so we could call you Clara instead of Angela."

Much better.

And yes, January 27th is St. Angela's Day (one of my favorite girls' names) and January 28th is St. Clara's Day. We had already decided to name her Clara, regardless of the day she was born on. However, according to my thoughts, if she was born on the 27th, I might just be able to convince Mario that she was really meant to be called Angela.

I guess she decided that she'd rather be called Clara.

Today revealed to me that time really does heal all wounds.

Thank goodness . . . just in time to do it again.

Puppy or Papi?

Clara has finally graduated from calling all animals "baby" to getting a bit specific. Dogs are now universally puppies (as are squirrels, racoons, or anything else "dog-like"), whereas cats are something that sounds like "titty".

My neighbor ladies, however, don't know much English. I have a feeling that Clara will teach them quite a bit in the next few months, at least until she becomes truly bilingual and it dawns on her who she should speak Spanish to and who she should speak English to. She's taught them "bye-bye" already. (Of course, they very likely already knew that one.)

Every week, as soon as we walk in the front patio of Rosario's house, Clara gets all excited because she can see "Muneca," Rosario's German Shepherd, fenced off on the side patio of the house. Muneca no longer barks at us, but Clara knows she's there nonetheless. She always greets Muneca, pointing her finger at the dog, happily shouting in her high-pitched, breathy voice, "Puppy! Puppy!" She'll often continue to comment on the dog for a few minutes while we're inside.

But, as I've said, the neighbor ladies don't understand English. So when Panchita saw Clara pointing out the door, shouting "Puppy! Puppy!" She heard, "Papi! Papi!" This is the Spanish equivalent of Daddy. Right above Rosario's front door is a picture of Jesus and his sacred heart. This brought fits of glee to Panchita's very devout Catholic heart.

"How precious! She's calling the Holy Father, 'Papi! Papi!' How beautiful!"

I just didn't have the heart to explain that was not at all what Clara was going on about.

However, at the end of our Bible study, Rosario commented that she saw us at mass on Sunday, and how cute Clara was, walking in with her hands clasped in front of her in reverence.

Had to think about that one . . . is she really talking about MY kid?

Oh, yeah . . . now I remember. And I couldn't let this one slide.

"Yeah, sorry Rosario, but that wasn't reverence. Her hands were stuck together because I had just given her a big squirt of hand lotion before we left the house."

While sure, I really do hope that some day she'll enter a church with reverence and come to see Jesus as one who is every bit as dear to her as her own father, at this point she is not quite two years old. The happy spaces in her heart are filled with puppies and hand lotion. And at this point, that's how it should be.

Update of Miscellany

Every now and again Clara will do something or say something, and I think, "ooo--I've got to write that down!" And, invariably, I never do.

So what is a fairly accurate snapshot of this 23-month-old? Random thoughts and milestones as they come to me:

* While still not able to run, she does enjoy walking fast. One of these days she'll be able to keep up with her friends!

* She still really enjoys walking around everywhere with her princess bag around her neck. She was very put-out this afternoon when I claimed (as always) that she could not take it with her to bed.

* Whenever she comes across a ponytail holder, she'll trot over to me, put the ponytail holder on her head as a sign that she wants a ponytail. If she finds 5 ponytail holders, then she wants 5 ponytails.

* Her vocabulary really is expanding, and she's beginning to include some Spanish. I've been impressed for a long time that Papa and Mama are consistently pronounced in Spanish, with the accent on the last syllable. This is particularly astonishing, as Mario and I usually refer to ourselves with the accent on the first syllable, rendering Mario into a potato in Spanish. Thank goodness Clara knows the difference and corrects us.

*She shows random interest in the potty, but almost always prefers to sit on it fully clothed. I always ask her if she'd like to take off her pants and diaper, and 85% of the time she refuses. And sits on the potty nontheless.

* She is fascinated with her underwear though. If she spies a pair, she must have it with her, preferably on her. At the moment, she's napping with a clean pair clutched in her fist. The other day her friend needed to borrow a pair, and as soon as Clara saw Katya wearing underwear, she insisted that she needed to have on a pair as well. As I knew it wasn't a good day for potty training, I just scooted them up on top of her pants. She was satisfied. Lord, I love toddlers!

And now she's woken up, so that's it for this update!

All's Quiet . . . For Now

We just returned from a 3-day (really 2 1/2 days) car trip to visit my parents. That's 6 days round trip. With a toddler. And we all survived, trauma-free. How did we do it, you ask?

Chapstick.

I've noticed for months that Clara has a fascination with chapstick. She'll happily walk around the house, chapstick clenched in her chubby fist, liberally applying it to her mouth area for 10 minutes at a stretch.

So Sunday afternoon when she began to get fussy in the car, what did I slip back to her to get her quiet? You got it--chapstick. And now I know that she'll happily smear the stuff all over her face for hours at a stretch if permitted. At each rest stop, we'd scrape pink wax off her face so she'd be somewhat presentable. By three o'clock, the tube was empty (this was after a nap or two, clutching the chapstick all the while). I'm quite sure that towards the end she was digging it out with her dragon-lady fingernails (yeah, we forgot the fingernail clippers at home . . . bad call). Still, it was a small price to pay for a few hours of peace, right?

Despite the enormous balls of wax that we shaved off her face, I feared that we may have come up a bit short on accounting for all the chapstick that disappeared in those hours. She didn't possibly eat it, did she? Not being the kind of parent that freaks out over much of anything, I just figured that if some was ingested, it's made of wax, which IS edible in small quantities. I hoped that the worst it would do to her would speed things up along her digestive track. And as she's more often constipated than not, didn't figure that would be a bad thing.

Fast forward a few hours and we've stopped for the night in Texarkana, making a pit stop at the Waffle House before checking into a hotel. As I finish my waffle, I notice that a horrible, horrible smell is radiating from the direction of Clara. However, as I had left the diaper bag out in the car, my jacket in the car, and it was freezing cold in between the Waffle House and the car, I decided that we could wait twenty minutes to change her once we checked into the hotel.

As I took Clara out of the car at the hotel, I noticed a brown lump the size of a quarter on the label of her carseat. Oh no. This is not good. Gingerly, I held her well under her butt and high on her back, so as not to get any poop on me. Mario, who freaks out about most bodily functions, promptly declared her to be poopy ALL OVER!

Thank you, Mario. I hadn't realized.

Actually, he was right and I hadn't realized how very bad it was. After all, she had been wearing her very long winter jacket over her clothes in the carseat, so if poop managed to get on the carseat . . . yeah, there really was poop ALL OVER. So while Mario checked in, Clara and I bolted for the nearest restroom, and I did my best to clean her up without making the bathroom appear that the toilet exploded. Thank goodness I did have the foresight to pack an extra set of clothes in the diaper bag. After using roughly 10 wet wipes, all traces of poo were cleaned up--even off the winter jacket! The clothes had to be washed in a sink in the room and then quarantined to a plastic bag for the remainder of the trip.

So will I be using chapstick to entertain the child on long car rides in the future? I just don't know. Was the exploding poo related to the chapstick or had a completely different cause?

Perhaps we'll try it on another road trip to test this theory.