News at Eleven

This weekend when Brian was hiking Erik a toy football, it went whizzing by, and Erik said, "I missed it!" Brian and I both stopped in our tracks and looked at each other totally surprised. He has a lot to say these days with "No want it" and "I want-___- please-okay" being a couple of his favorite phrases.

The big news is that he is really picking things up in his occasional days spent at daycare (besides germs that almost kill me). He has napped for this woman every time and Monday actually ATE BROCCOLI AND CARROTS. You may remember that I call Erik a "cookievore." Once I overcame a slight twinge of jealousy, I was so thankful! Since he has gone to this woman's home with the other children, he has successfully napped here once again. Yesterday I bit the bullet and put a little ranch dressing (oh, how I miss ranch dressing) and some quartered baby carrots on his plate at lunch, and he ate them with only a little coaxing. I almost fell the freak over. For his morning snack, I had given him a couple Nilla Wafers and milk, which is something I rarely allow, and I'm thinking that perhaps I need to remove the stick from my backside and relax a wee bit. It paid off! I am learning a lot from daycare, too!

Erik is retrieving his step stool so he can stand at the kitchen sink now, and I sometimes put warm water and bubbles in front of him to play with. Oh, sure, I mix in a couple dirty cups now and then for him to wash, but he doesn't seem to notice or mind. He ran inside last night when I announced it was bathtime (he usually sobs when it's time to come inside) and has very quickly and quietly lowered himself into the bathtub when I turned to get a towel in the last couple of weeks, diaper and all. That boy loves being in the water.

Our IFSP approaches on September 10th, and Erik will attend school and likely take his first school bus ride the very next day. I'm trying not to be a wreck, but I am anyway. My mother told me yesterday that she was a wreck when we went to school for the first time, so she didn't see why I shouldn't be. That made me feel a lot better. It's funny how my time revolves around Erik progressing and succeeding, but when it actually happens after all of that work, it's so frightening! I'm a happy wreck these days.

Little Things

She drew her legs up to her chest and firmly embraced her knees as she sat on the porch. The sharp sound of crickets began to rise from the grass--a pleasant sound that slowly gained momentum and threatened to become abrasive to her ears. As the sun crept lower in the smoky sky and cast grapefruit-colored light across the desert, she suddenly felt like she was drowning but was too tired to fight the sensation or talk herself out of the rising panic in her chest. Exhaustion had soaked into each and every bone, deep under a burning layer of her aching muscles. It took effort at this point to move at all.

The dinner she had once again gathered ingredients for and poured herself into preparing for her son sat untouched in its yellow plastic bowl at the bottom of the kitchen sink, mixing with warm tap water and gradually becoming a cloudy soup of garbage. They had instead filled their son's growling stomach full of random bits and pieces they had found in the kitchen without much thought at all. Tears had threatened to spill from her eyes when he refused to place any of the food she had prepared in his mouth. It had been months since he had eaten much of anything she had prepared for dinner. The cheese quesadilla she fixed for him earlier for lunch was lying in a rejected, hardening ruin at the bottom of the kitchen trash can. She remembered that when her son was born, her breast milk had transformed into battery acid in his tiny throat, causing him to yowl in agony and develop burns on his chin. He had not been able to consume that, either.

When you are in agony, the little things bring you to your knees.

The top arch of the sun finally sank behind the dark wall of mountains, and she drew in a deep, greedy breath of evening air, clearing her head again. The crickets were practically screaming now, and her head felt like it was going to explode like a rotten pumpkin. She rose from her chair and went inside to lie on the bed to await dark, numbing waves of sleep and the hope of one more morning. To her, awakening to a brand new day was like opening a Christmas gift. Every day.

When you are in agony, the little things keep you going.