Post-party review

Lilah's birthday party, though almost a month early, was a huge success. I did a little baking all week so as not to be stressed the day of the party. There were 6 dozen mini-muffins of the raspberry and blueberry persuasions, skewers of fruits, veggie sticks and humus, tuna salad on whole wheat triangles, banana chocolate chip bread, Irish soda bread, raspberry lemonade, tropical fruit tea, and a green teapot-shaped chocolate cake with raspberry cream cheese frosting and marshmallow fondant with pink and yellow fondant buttons. The cake alone made me sweat gave me several sleepless nights due to nightmares it didn't turn out or it was gorgeous and I dropped it. It turned out nearly perfect (I had never fondanted before so there were flaws, but I covered them all up with decorative buttons) and I received many ooohs and aaahs. I insisted on being the only one to transport and carry the cake for fear of wrecking it and I held my breath until it was safely at its final destination. Here's a photo of the finished product
 
Lilah began teething the day before her party and her nerves were on edge anyway because her cousins (almost 6 and almost 3) were visiting. My child's perfectly constructed world would apparently crumble to pieces any time a small boy cousin squealed in play or tackled the other. Zeddicus (the almost 6 year old) was very conscientious of her, taking the time out of his play to make sure she had a toy or explain what he was doing to her. He is a born oldest child. Ephraim (the almost 3 year old) experiences life at 100 mph with the volume on high. He's almost always going and shouting a narrative of his actions to whoever happened to be within earshot. He would never be purposefully mean to Lilah, but he wasn't quite as attentive as his older brother and once or twice "needed" the toy Lilah was playing with. I have no issue with this, as Lilah will not always be a coddled little angel and needs to grow a thicker skin if she's ever going to have playmates. Every time Ephraim would take a toy, laugh too loudly, or look at her wrong, Lilah would burst into hysterical tears and look at me as if to say, "Mama! How can you let this happen to me?!" I just smiled back at her and let her deal with the trauma on her own. By the day of her party, she was much more adjusted to the noise and activity level of her cousins, but I still worried for her mood.

The morning of her party, she was rather a crab and clearly woke up on the wrong side of the crib. I gave her Motrin for teething pain and gathered things for the party while Dano fed her breakfast. The plan was to allow her to have her morning nap at home while I went to his parents' house to set up for the party. Then I would pick them up at 10:45 and be back at the party by 11:00 when it started. I dressed in a pretty new purple and brown dress. Several people throughout the day remarked that Lilah and I matched, which made me smile because I'm an idiot about matching. Her birthday outfit was a purple corduroy dress with purple and blue butterflies over a lilac long-sleeved onesie with a hideous embroidered collar I removed from the equation. The dress came to her knees and underneath she had grey, purple, blue, and green striped leggings. For warmth she had a lilac sweater with blue and green flowers. Lilah looks excellent in purple.

I arrived to Ann's and Larry's house to find oatmeal on the stove, Ethiopian coffee steeping in the French press, and a flurry of cleaning going on while two little boys played tag. I set Max up with decorations and he did an incredible job. There were purple tulle bows in the corners of the party room, pale yellow balloons in clusters here and there (the boys and Kazyz the dog graciously popped the extras), and pink streamers twisted from the chandelier to the four corners of the room. In the center of the table, I set up a floral garden teapot with 6 beautiful white roses Dano bought for Lilah (ruefully reminding myself my husband has never brought me flowers. I told him when we were dating that I would rather receive a live flowering plant than cut flowers that would die. Manlike, he understood this to mean, "Don't ever get me flowers.") with a flowering purple lily in the center. On the buffet table, I set up party favors - everyone would receive a teacup and saucer filled with a fudge-dipped spoon, an organic local honey stick, and a pocket-sized anti-bacterial sanitizer from Bath and Body Works. Dano said this was a nerdy, nursey thing to do. I thought it was very practical and dismissed this. The table was laden with food as it was prepared. Kim was very helpful in helping me assemble things. Ann was even more helpful by suggesting we all take a more-than-generous shot of Baileys in our coffee. I was shaky from a combination of nervousness (why, I couldn't begin to say), stress, unease that Lilah would be a bear to everyone, being intermittently chilly from running out to the car for supplies, and low blood sugar. The Baileys seemed to help all of these. I ended up sending Larry to fetch Dano and Lilah, as guests started to arrive early. 4 people came from church, 2 friends from work, and 2 friends from NMU. Dano was gentlemanly and served drinks on a tray. Brightly colored piles of presents started to form on a high-backed chair. Lilah and her cousins eyed these with interest.

Food was served buffet-style and everyone greatly enjoyed it. Lilah herself ate 2 tuna triangles, a plate of fruit, carrot sticks with humus, and several muffins. She ate daintily with the grace of a buffalo but was in excellent spirits after consuming large amounts of food. The 2 from work had to leave early and go to work, and after they left Ann served coffee (sans Baileys) and I nursed Lilah. She's been wanting to nurse more since she's teething. This is probably her last little "hurrah" of breastfeeding before weaning completely, so I'm letting her nurse as she desires it.

Ephraim helped assemble all of Lilah's presents in front of her at my feet and her eyes lit up with all the colored paper. When I gave the word (since they were such well-behaved and patient children), Zedd and Ephraim helped Lilah tear into them all. What followed was a flurry of tissue paper, squeals, and much excitement. If a bag contained clothes, they were flung at me and the troupe moved on to the next bag in search of toys. Books were hastily skimmed through and tossed to me as well. Cards were rescued by helpful adults (children have no use for cards. They are not toys. Clothes are nice, but they are not toys. Books are entertaining, but you need an adult to work them for the most part. Toys are toys.) and Ann tried to keep track of who gave what. She got a new coat, many adorable spring and summer outfits, a pile over a foot high of new books, a musical learning tea set that made tea-pouring sounds and taught "please", "thank you", and counting, a set of refrigerator magnet letters, a gift card to Target which we used to buy her Up!, two Mellissa and Doug wooden food sets, and stackable pink and yellow cars that play songs.

When the excitement died down, we served the cake. Part of me physically hurt to see it sliced. Lilah stared confusedly at her candle while we sang to her, and Zedd helped her blow it out. By helped, I mean he blew it out. She just looked at it. Dano was in charge of scooping ice cream (everyone complained at his stingy scoops). Lilah's plate was placed in front of her and she looked at me in askance. I smiled at her and she proceeded to beat the slice into submissive and bite-sized pieces with the palms of her hands. She shoveled it into her mouth with minimal assistance and made short work of the whole experience. She had never encountered cake before. She was a fan.

After this, the guests disbursed and Lilah and Ephraim took long naps. When the door closed behind the last party-goer and Lilah was sound asleep in the pack-and-play, I started to shake again and realized the Baileys had worn off and I hadn't eaten anything yet. I ate a large plate of food and felt better. I didn't get a slice of cake until the next day. All in all, it was a tremendous success, and one she will never remember. I kept congratulating myself throughout the day on keeping it intimate and low-key. The dining room looked like a spring garden and God gave us a beautiful sunny day for the occasion. We spent the rest of the day eating leftovers, snacking on fudge spoons and honey sticks, and playing Rock Band. Lilah has since finished teething and has two more teeth to call her own making for a grand total of 6.

Milk, or lack thereof

Lilah has been systematically weaning herself for many weeks now. We'd settled into a comfortable routine of nursing first thing in the morning, after lunch (mostly just for hydration), in the evening after dinner (same as before), and before bed to calm her down and get her into sleep-mode. I'd been noticing, however, that little by little, I was the one initiating the nursing sessions during the day. Lilah would be happily playing or beginning to make discontented peeps to let me know she was getting hungry for her meal. I would have to literally track her down (as she is very fast), trap her (as she is very clever), and bring her to the couch to nurse her. Now that I'm not breastfeeding so frequently, my milk doesn't let down automatically at certain points in the day like it used it. She has to nurse for several minute, just getting small mouthfuls, until the "good stuff" lets down. Previously she was so eager to get to the milk she would throw herself into nursing so it would let down as fast as possible. Now she has no patience for this whatsoever. I put her to the breast. She sucks for a moment. She detaches, looks around the room, and hisses if there happens to be a person present (she is very fond of hissing). Usually it's just the cat, so Lilah makes happy noises and says, "Cat!". The cat perceives this as an invitation and crawls into my lap as well. Lilah recognizes these advances and seizes a rare opportunity to capture the cat with very little hunting and trapping involved, so she throws her arms around Soup, chanting merrily, "Cat. Cat. Cat." I guide her back to nursing but, being my child, she willfully bucks against any guidance. "No, no no!" or "Nein, nein, nein!", depending on her mood. She writhes and wriggles and struggles to free herself and slither onto the floor. She knows full well that if she gets there, she has the advantage of crawling speedily using four limbs. I am generally stronger (both in will and physical strength) than my daughter, and she usually never reaches the ground. She shrieks unhappily for a few minutes, my milk eventually lets down, and she begrudgingly nurses for a grand total of 120 seconds on each side before deciding she can't be bothered and has a host of better things to be doing. I reluctantly release my captive and she shoots away from me as fast as she can go.

Dano witnessed these proceedings and afterwards we had a talk. Lilah will be 11 months old in one week. I had been so committed to breastfeeding her until she was a year old that I hadn't really stopped to consider her opinion in the matter. She's a baby. Don't all babies like to breastfeed until they're done with it? Aren't they done with it on their first birthday? Doesn't blowing out a single candle with the help and supervision of adults, then proceeding to smash cake into every orifice on her face trigger a response in the brain that shuts off her desire to nurse? Surely that's how it happens. Or maybe not. So for the past two days, I've been mixing some expressed breastmilk with cow's milk and giving it to her in a cup to replace her nursing sessions during the day. She's been doing exceedingly well and now only nurses when she first wakes up, before bed, and as needed for any bumps, falls, or crabbiness during the day. 

My mind takes me back 22 months to the day I found out I was pregnant. I'm reminded of the life-lesson from that day that is continually drilled into my thick, human skull (since I apparently haven't learned it well enough yet) - nothing goes according to plans. Nothing. At 18 with the determination of the young and naive, I planned to "live it up" for many a happy year and graduate college before settling down and getting married. 2 years later with rings on our fingers and a world of possibilities at our feet, Dano and I were going to be happy newlyweds, travel the globe, and have our desired degrees in hand before the thought of a baby entered our minds. 9 months later when that vile plastic test revealed a faint pink plus sign, everything shattered. During my overlong, 10 month pregnancy, I firmly planned out everything from there on out to compensate for the control some audacious, bold-as-brass little alien had taken from me. The nursery, my labor and delivery, and my due date were all planned to every last detail. However, even as a fetus Lilah had a very unladylike devil-may-care attitude. The world was her oyster and she was going to experience it however she saw fit. Dano had originally wanted to name her "Leila". After laying his head on my stomach one night after my due date, he said softly, "It's okay. We're ready for you. You're all done in there. You can come out now." His sweet little daughter kick him violently in the face. After that he thought (as I had thought from the beginning) she might benefit from a name with a bit more...spirit. In addition to the dreams I'd had about her appearance, I got a distinct feel for her personality (I was the host of her growth and development, after all). I felt she was going to be a combined effort of two stubborn people with generations of willfulness behind them. A grandfather of mine in the late 1700s was quoted telling the rebel militia, "If the captain wants me, he may come himself, and if he does, I will shoot him." That spirit has been passed on for hundred of years and is now in its full-glory in Lilah Rose. She refused to leave the womb until she heard they were coming in after her. Then she was getting the hell out of there, and on her terms, no less. All of this should have clued me in to the fact that not only life, but the very essence of my little daughter, was unexpected, surprising, and in short (to coin a word), unplannable. Why would mere breastfeeding be any different?

Growing up

Lilah is extremely fun, and very busy. Some of her favorite activities include removing all the books and DVDs from their shelves. She likes playing with and chewing on her pacifier. She's getting to be more interested in books and reading, trying to turn the pages of her cardboard stories. Her attention span still never lasts through more than one or two. Dano finished A Wrinkle in Time without me. I just found this out a few days ago.

I've been busy planning her birthday party. It doesn't feel real to me. I'm going through the motions, but still it hasn't quite hit me - Lilah Rose has graced the world for an entire year. I can think it; I can type it. It still isn't reality to me. Most of this year has been spent simply keeping her alive. At least for the first few months, her physical needs took their toll on the time we had to spend with her. As she grew to be more interactive, her mental and emotional needs became just as important. Now, she's becoming more independent by the day and her personality blossoms more every morning she opens her eyes. It's one thing to parent a tiny baby. Although it was wonderful, it took much more brain than heart. Heart kept me going when I was frustrated and overwhelmed, but it was my brain that always whispered the next step, her routine, cuing me in to what each of her initial cries might mean. I feel like this next stage of parenting will be a stage more of the heart. Setting limits, guiding through new stages, encouraging exploration and learning.

In my efforts to consciously wean her, I've realized just how much I'll miss breastfeeding my baby. I'm not cutting out any feedings until she gives them up, but once she quits one, I make sure to stick with it - offering other forms of comfort in place of a nap time feeding, for instance. She might still be nursing once or twice a day at her first birthday, but that's just fine with me. I've laughed to myself, remembering the tentative first days of breastfeeding. Lilah was so over-eager to eat, she wouldn't latch on properly. When she discovered no milk was running into her mouth, she would get so frustrated and angry, Dano would have to hold her hand  and stroke her palms gently to calm her down enough to latch. The days he was at school were especially difficult. Now, she crawls into my lap and takes my shirt in her chubby fists and touches her forehead to my chest. If I don't catch on right away, she looks up at me and whines, "Mama!", then does it again. While she nurses, she swings her fat little legs, waves to anyone around her, or cuddles the cat (who maintains a regal and watchful pose, never more than a foot away while Lilah nurses).

Her vocabulary seems to expand daily. She's constantly making noises or trying to imitate new words. She correctly uses and knows the meaning of Mama (sometimes she calls me "Mom-mom, which I think is cute), Dada, cat, ni-night (when she's sleepy), num-num (anything edible or presumed to be edible. Also meaning, "I'm hungry"), and bye-bye. If I say, "Lilah, would you like a milk?", she gets very excited and puts her forehead on my chest, so I know she understands me.

Her tricks include catching water from a spray bottle in her mouth, waving goodbye, clapping, playing peekaboo, playing pat-a-cake, raising her hands in the air when you said, "Soooo big!", and playing hide-and-seek around corners. We work on tricks often. Everyone likes a baby who can do tricks.

I will keep preparing for her birthday, both mentally and physically, but I don't think the reality will hit me until March 24, 2010. Lilah really is getting to be "sooo big".

The Library pt 2

After being a very short-tempered, unpleasant person for the past several weeks to do winter entrapment in my house, I decided I would attempt a day out with Lilah yesterday. The wind-chill had been hovering around 20 degrees below zero for almost a week, so I refused to take my daughter out, no matter how well she was bundled, unless absolutely necessary. During said week, the sun would shine deceptively and hatefully through my window, and not even the faintest of breezes whispered through the frozen branches of the trees. I'd test the waters by getting the mail while Lilah napped, and I never even made it to the back porch without snapping my eyes closed and letting several expletives fly inside my head before turning around and coming back inside. It was so cold, breathing itself was painful. Not cool. 

Yesterday was supposed to be between 15 and 20 degrees above zero, so I decided to take Lilah...somewhere. We were both crazed with cabin fever and had to get out. Our plan of action was to drop Dano off at school and head to the library to kill a half-hour or so until the UP Children's Museum opened, and we'd spend a few hours there. We didn't have to get up any earlier, as Lilah (having tricked us by sleeping in until 10:00 the first 6 months of her life) is now always bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by 8:00. I fed her a bowl of oatmeal in the car and took my coffee with me so no time had to be wasted on breakfast. 

I sat in the car looking at the stately building looming ahead of me and found myself almost dreading it. Bratty, loud kids we could work around, but it was the moms, always the moms, that made me want to grind my teeth to nubs. Telling myself we were just killing some time, we passed through the glass doors and made our way to the lowest level which housed the coffee shop and Children's Area. The air there smelled of something warm and comforting, and curry. I glanced into the coffee shop as we passed it. The chalkboard sign read, "Soup of the Day: Curried Squash". That explained it. 

The first thing I noticed upon entering the Children's Area was the silence. No shrieks, no mindless chatter, no crying, no impatient voices. The only sound I could hear was the aquarium filter. The librarian looked up from her desk and smiled at us, and I genuinely smiled right back. The sun was just barely up, and the morning light filtered through the glass ceiling, creating streams of light here and there. Lilah stared at the bright room in awe. I got her out of her car seat and set her down in the middle of the floor. She looked at me for permission and I smiled at her. Then she took off crawling so fast I couldn't see limbs, just a blur of brown leggings and the folds of her pink linen dress flapping. 

She spent a good 20 minutes just crawling as fast as her legs could go, occasionally looking back to make sure I was still smiling at her (my daughter, like all girl babies, is exceptionally good at reading faces. Oftentimes I don't even have to tell her "no". She can tell by my expression she should back away or turn around. This has been studied extensively, and is also why girls tend to be people-pleasers). After that, I showed her that there were actual toys and things to play with in addition to wide open crawling spaces. She loved the train table (although keeping the public toys out of her mouth was a daunting and sometimes impossible task) and had a lot of fun knocking over towers we made out of the wooden blocks. She destroyed the kitchen set and spent a good deal of time banging metal pots and pans together. We read stories and she wove through the bookshelves, playing peek-a-boo around corners. She discovered the fish tank and sat on the tiny chair in front of it for quite a while, tracing fish with her fingers and saying, "Cat!" Any animal is, apparently, a cat. She crawled to the giant stuffed Paddington Bear and laughed at him, clambering into his lap and pulling his floppy red hat over his eyes. I think she was trying to play peek-a-boo, but she quickly lost interest when he didn't seem enthusiastic about playing.

After almost an hour, another woman and three small boys joined us. She was very friendly and looked/acted like a normal person. I quickly regretted thinking to myself that one of the younger boys was behind in his speech development - he talked how my nephew Ephraim did when he was barely 2!. She told me her boys were 5 and 2 but very tall for their age, and she babysat the other 2 year old. I would have guessed him to be at least 4! The boys played blocks and trains, and the woman talked to me. Not fake soccer mom talk. She actually talked to me. And I talked to her. Lilah seemed delighted with the company and even crawled over to her and touched her, giggling. The only negative part of the experience was one of the little boys taking every toy Lilah attempted to put in her mouth (all of them) so she wouldn't "get germs". I thought it was cute and thoughtful. Lilah Rose did not. 

They only stayed for an hour, and then we had the place to ourselves. At one point, another mom came in with a 5 or 6 year old. She stayed on her laptop and he read to himself quietly. Lilah got a little crabby, so I nursed her, and she fell asleep in my arms. I wrapped her in a blanket and grabbed a book for myself from the fiction section upstairs. I read for 45 undisturbed minutes before heading to pick Dano up. My mood and outlook were improved 100 fold; Lilah was so exhausted she woke up to eat her lunch and went back to sleep for another 2 hours; Dano was just happy his girls were not psychotic any longer. We never even made it to the Children's Museum, but we just might give the library another try. We're 1 for 3.