Father's Day

It's Lilah's second Father's Day. It's going to be fairly low-key, due to the fact that (like every other day ever, it seems) I work at 3. Lilah and I have finished a light morning snack and a shower and have ordered a large breakfast from Toast downtown Ferndale - Eggs Benedict for me and Grand Marnier French Toast for Dano. I would have dearly loved to cook said breakfast, but work is stealing my soul.

I'm increasingly thankful with every day that goes by to have such a devoted and loving father for my daughter. He gets down on the floor and plays with her. He sets boundaries and limits for her gently. I can tell her to stop doing something and she laughs. One word from Daddy about it and she dissolves into heartbroken tears. He's with her while I'm at work and never does it even cross my mind that she's not being excellently cared for. He doesn't see it as a job or a responsibility. He loves his little girl and would do anything for her.

I was in an insuppressible mood this morning to hear the album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. Now I enjoy Panic at the Disco as well as the next girl, but I'll be honest. The first album is little more than a catchy guilty pleasure. Nothing of musical or lyrical substance to speak of. I chose to analyse why I might be in the mood for this particular album. Probably a poor choice. This was the album that I listened to most when I first moved out of my parents' house in Nashville. And it's a day dedicated to thanking and loving your father. Aaand mine refuses to have a relationship with me. Total Father's Day buzzkill. I started getting into my traditional "holiday/birthday/Mother's Day/Father's Day/family member's birthday mood" last night. This mostly consists of systematically ushering those closest to me to the door of myself and telling them to come again soon. I prefer to spend these days deep inside myself with a sardonically-smiling facade. The way I see it, I'm entitled to a couple of days out of the vast remaining 365 to be a human girl and miss my family. I miss my dad. He called me Pigeon when I was very little. He was the dad to pick us up from school and take us to the circus, just because. He was the best at science projects and when my mother was in the hospital with Zack for pretty much two straight years, he learned how to be a parents to a little girl who liked having her hair done and helped me with all of my badges for Girl Scouts. He has the best sense of humor and could always get me to smile and laugh even when I got in a mood where I was dead-set against it.

Most people who know me are appalled that I work every Mother's Day, Father's Day, some major holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and especially my birthday. Let's think about it. I could keep myself busy with taking care of very sick/recovering people, or I could stay home and kill everyone else's good day by being soberingly introspective about my pseudo-family off someplace having a lovely time while I'm here by myself and sad. Pretty obvious choice. I still send my traditional email wishing the parents a lovely day. I tell myself ahead of time I won't get a response. I still feel foolish and furious with myself for "casually" checking throughout the day to see if this year they'll prove me wrong. They don't. It's family tradition, after all.

One of the things I love best about having a child (since that is, after all, the theme-topic of this blog) is the chance to start over. All the majorly fucked up things about my childhood and dysfunctional relationship with dysfunctional people who share blood and genes with me will never really cease to exist. But I can look at Lilah and her starry blue eyes, laughing pink-lipped smile, upturned nose, and sunny blonde hair and all I feel right now is relief at the chance for redemption. That's how this Creator God I love works. No matter how dismal the feeling or how long it lasts, he never fails to gently point out a chance to redeem it into something beautiful. Dano being such a wonderful father armed with nothing but instinct and his own examples in his life reassures me that my childhood and adult relationships with my parents aren't the norm. They aren't the automatic default. There are many beautiful parents in the world, and my husband is one of them. So thanks to all the fathers in the world who love their little girls. Don't ever stop. It means more than you know.

Misc.

I'm mostly updating this blog out of a sense of obligation, which leads me to wonder as to its life expectancy. Lilah is still stubbornly refusing to walk. She stands with an ever-increasing sense of purpose but plops down forcefully when anyone holds their hands out to encourage that magical first step. Her favorite word is "Hi!", which she chirps to everyone. If there are no people present to greet, she simply sits by herself chanting, "Hi, Lilah, Hi Dada. Hi Mama," and then running through her ever-increasing list of friends' names.

She had her belated one-year photo shoot yesterday. My old friend Mitch Haarer is an incredibly gifted photographer and I wouldn't hear of anyone else doing her photos. We drove the nearly-two hours to Hillsdale, MI and Lilah slept until the last 20 minutes when she started to cry and chant her signature, "All done!" The shoot itself was a success. Lilah charmed the camera, sat where she was posed, pointed, played coy, and smiled winningly. However, Mitch had three locations planned, and even though it was a short drive to each, she still managed to fight getting back in her carseat and wail when strapped in. After a very long hour, we bid the Haarers farewell and drove 20 minutes to Coldwater. Lilah screamed the whole way. Dano dropped me, Lilah, and her purple carseat off at Biggby Coffee so we could spend time with the Sevens (Mike was transporting us to their house after he got out of work) while Dano jammed with Brent Yuhl. Lilah was given a chocolate chip cookie which she ate at record speed before exploring the store and generally trying to wreck everything. I had planned to read American Gods again while she sat and played with her toys quietly and we waited for Mike to be done. I'm not sure what possessed me to believe that was possible. We made it to the Severn's around 9:30, and fter Lilah made the rounds of "hellos", I could see she was over-stimulated and over-tired so I attempted to get her to fall asleep. That "attempt" lasted 3 hours of her mostly screaming. Dano got there and tried for a few minutes to no avail. I tried one more time and we both fell asleep.

Today I felt her gums and they are, for lack of a better describing phrase, riddled with teeth. At least four swollen little bumps that I could tell. She screamed most of tonight at home as well, so we gave her an ice cream, infant Motrin, and sent her to bed with fingers crossed for a regular baby in the morning, and Dano asking when he could schedule a vasectomy.

I'd take childbirth any day

So today, May 6th of 2010, I pinched a nerve in my back/neck. I've done it before but never to this extent. I had been feeling strange for about 10 minutes, like I had a muscle cramp in my back. I asked Dano to rub it and leaned forward. Immediately upon doing so, I felt like something inside my nervous system had literally exploded. My eyes saw only colors and I think I cried out because Lilah started screaming and Dano said, "Babe, you're scaring the baby," and all I could say was, "Don't touch me. Don't anybody touch me." He took the baby and I stood up hoping to relieve the pain positionally with no luck. I sat in the rocking chair and it kept growing until I thought I'd die. The pain was radiating to my neck, the crown of my head, my right shoulder, my right hip. Everything tingled and I clamped my jaw shut and forced myself to breathe short, shallow, controlled breaths. Lilah was still crying and staring at me and I just told her I was sorry in my head. I was frantic with pain at this point and maneuvered myself onto the living room rug and laid flat on my back, spine aligned. My head was spinning even though I was still and flat. My whole body tingled and all I could think was, "I have to go to work. I have to leave in two hours." Dano sounded light-years away when he said, "You're not going anywhere. You can't even move. Your job requires lifting! How can you take care of others if you can't take care of yourself?" He was right. I knew he was right. But I couldn't even process it at that point. "I'm sorry."  "You don't have anything to be sorry for."

He fed Lilah her lunch and I whiled away the minutes on the floor attempting to call Bekah for more nursing advice to see if I'd missed anything. She suggested different ways to position my affected arm and side to reduce the nerve compression. Her ideas helped. I felt my phone continuing to vibrate next to me after I hung up. I knew it was Mike texting me and was again furious for making myself unavailable to yet another person who might need me. Patients, friends, Lilah, Dano, coworkers. The pain tingled and throbbed with the feelings of inadequacy. "I'm broken. I have a problem," I thought. "I'm have the mental incapability to be selfish. I'm crazy." Dano left to run to CVS and buy me copious amounts of Icy Hot and Ibuprofen. I laid on the floor, alone with my brain. She's my arch-nemesis. It hurt to breathe deeply, and the hurt was exacerbated by worry, which was my primary mode of thinking. I looked toward my phone, which buzzed merrily again. "You have a text message. Hope nobody's dying in a fiery crash because you can't answer your phone." Thought #1: I'm a horrible person! What if my phone is right?! Thought #2: I am certifiably bat-shit crazy. And my phone didn't tell me anything. No one is dying. Mike is probably just bored of Bekah's checking in again. Thought #3: Could my phone be the devil? Or worse, 10-Speed (the demonic bicycle of the Coheed and Cambria's Amory Wars graphic novels) reincarnated? I came back to Thought #2. I'm not normally incoherently insane. I really was in enough pain to make me delusional. My thoughts then meandered to the origin of the phrase "bat-shit crazy", one I am oh-so-fond of (incidentally, aerosol-transmitted rabies has been known to occur in caves with high numbers of, you guessed it, bats. Thanks Google). I stared at the ceiling. It appeared to be moving in weird white swirls, so I looked away. I closed my eyes and went through my yogic mudras. I even visualized the nerve cluster that was currently ruining my life and pictured the pain ebbing away like the tide going out and that actually helped considerably. I opened my eyes when the pain was manageable and watched a muscle group from my obliques to my right hip spasm and ripple. It looked too cool to be alarmed. My mind then wandered to wishing for Valium to relax said spasms. "Yeah, at this point, I'd risk my nursing license for it." I started shivering because for some reason my body was struggling to maintain my core body temp. "It's like my nervous system's giving me the finger today," I lamented to the cat who stared back unblinkingly and (I felt) unsympathetically. I spent 5 minutes (I clocked it) rolling from my back to my stomach before realizing I liked it better on my back but could now not get back there. I started feeling tingly and crawly and was convinced there were bugs crawling on me. To make matters worse, a lone ant tracked across the floor about 16 inches from my head. I was on the verge of screaming. Dano came back. He put Icy Hot on the affected areas, killed the offending ant, assisted me off my stomach (which took 10 minutes and I still ended up almost passing out from the pain), helped me swallow 5 Ibuprofen tabs (he only bought 200mg tabs!) and answered my question with no, he didn't believe he knew anyone from whom he could score illegal Valium or Vicodin.

Currently I am resting on the couch on my back. I can't move anything but my hands, so my laptop is resting on my legs and my phone is on my chest. Dano is cooking me a pizza and Mike is texting me his usual endearing craziness and I'm actually able to respond at this point. No one died in a fiery crash, and I have exactly 15 minutes to be at work. I don't think I'm going to make it. Oh well.

Where to start

I haven't been able to blog in what feels like years! We have officially moved and are slowly but surely unpacking and making our sweet little house into a home. This house chose us more than we chose it. I had looked at it online but was deterred by the price they were asking. It looked to be a decent place, but more than I was willing to spend on a 2 bedroom, so I passed on seeing it. I looked at a few other places and saw some that would adequately meet our needs, were affordable, and met our specifications. Something just didn't feel right about all of them. The clock was ticking, since Lilah and I were staying with Dano's sister and her beautiful family for 2 1/2 weeks while we made the moving transition and I started my new job. Finally (a little against my better judgement) I set up an appointment to see the house on Wrenson. I pulled into the driveway a few minutes early with the dulcet tones of Claudio Sanchez gracing my speakers rather loudly and Lilah babbling/singing in the backseat. I sat in the driveway with an adorable house on my left and lilacs in full bloom on my right and tried not to get my hopes up. I looked at the tree-lined, double-lot backyard, huge covered front porch, 2-car garage, and tried not to picture our family here. The realtor shower up and showed us inside. The living room was large, the ceilings were coved, the doorways arched, there was an office adjacent to the living room, a library/dining room, many windows with lots of natural light, laundry room, kitchen with counter space that caused my husband to ask, "Be honest, sweetheart. Did it turn you on a little when you saw how much cooking space you'd have?" The bedrooms were perfect for us. The spirit of the place seemed to embrace me the moment I walked in the door. This house wanted us. I told the realtor I liked what I saw, but weren't willing to pay that much for it. I got my application approved and made an offer to the owner for what we were willing to pay a month in rent. He accepted with a 2-year lease. This may sound strange, but this house loves us as much as we love it. When I pull into my driveway after work, it says, "Welcome home." When I sit on my porch and watch Lilah caper about the yard, it says, "This is where you belong." When I cook in my kitchen, the whole spirit of the place goes into what I'm making and somehow makes it better. When I look out my big kitchen window to my backyard, the house suggests places for my garden to go. "What about a melon patch behind the garage? Herbs close to the kitchen door so you can get to them easily. Flowers would look great here." The owner is very friendly and plans to repaint the porch and put new floors in the kitchen for us next spring. He's also offered to let us buy it if we would ever like to. We're trying to think up a name for our house now. It seems to need one.

I've started my new job, and Lilah has plunged headlong into separation anxiety. I work 64 hours a pay period. Unfortunately, they have me working 6 days one week and 2 days the next. I expressed my concern that it was too much time in one week away from my poor baby who's used to having me at her beck and call 5 days a week. The scheduler was more than willing to adjust it...on the next schedule. So this is my schedule until May 26th. Great. Lilah is absurdly clingy with Dano when I'm gone, and when I'm home, she cries if I even look like I'm going to go somewhere and she glares at Dano like he's the enemy and might take her from me at any moment. He's trying his best not to take it personally. We both realize it's a hard adjustment for all of us. She just left all that was familiar to her and had a parents go back to work full-time. She'll settle down soon.

She's also gotten very adept at chattering away and saying new words. She adores her cousins and likes to follow them around squealing. "Zedd! Ephraim! Zedd! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Adam (her uncle)! Bye bye! Bye bye!" She also lets us know when she's hungry. "Num num, Mama?" and sleepy. "Night night." She loves to greet people. "Hi. Hi. Hiiiii!" God forbid they ignore her. Dano took her upstairs to lay with her in hopes she'd nap yesterday. He ended up dozing and she waited until he was asleep and slithered down off the bed and let herself back down the stairs! She entertained herself for about ten minutes before her daddy realized in horror that she was gone. She's gotten very crafty. She was great on the drive here. There was one point in the UP that she woke up from her nap starving and started crying, "Num num! Num num, Mama!" My heart broke for her because we were about 30 minutes from the nearest anything. She didn't understand, obviously, and thought I was just withholding food from her. I shared a chocolate shake with her to say I was sorry after letting her devour a platter of pasta and garlic bread. I'd never felt so guilty as a mother, but I hadn't had any other options. I had kept handing her graham crackers but she was still hungry. She was an angel after she ate until about 20 miles from our destination. She started fussing mildly. "All done, Mama. All done!" I handed her what I thought was my empty to-go cup of chocolate shake for her to kick around or whatever, since she had tossed all her toys on the ground. She had the straw out in seconds, tasted it, and was pleased. She popped the top off and flung it. She then took the cup and turned it upside down on her face/head to inspect the bottom for any remaining contents. I was horrified as I watched in the rear-view mirror to find that the cup wasn't quite as empty as I'd thought. It had a bit left in the bottom and that "bit" was dripping down Lilah's hair and trickling into her eagerly awaiting mouth. By the time we got to Hazel Park, she was a sticky, chocolaty mess, but I was so relieved to have made it that I didn't really care. 

Too much too fast

Lilah turned one a week ago. I took her to her yearly check-up the very next day. We were to see Alice, the PA-wife of the doctor who owns the practice. The nurse weighed Lilah and got 17lbs, 6oz. I was shocked. I weighed Lilah at home the day of her birthday party and she had been exactly 20lbs. I kept to myself my opinion of the infant scale they use (the same model used to weigh baby Jesus) and was ushered into the exam room where Lilah proceeded to try to wiggle away, tear the paintings off the walls, eat the blood pressure cuff, and cause her usual ruckus. The nurse asked if I had any concerns (I didn't care for this particular nurse. Having had her before, she is very friendly but altogether inefficient when it comes to dealing with babies, especially while giving shots). I informed her of Lilah's milk fiasco.

When Lilah had decided about 4 weeks shy of her first birthday that she was finished nursing, I pumped every drop I could produce and mixed it with 1% cow milk. She tolerated that well. I gave her just 1%. She had diarrhea. I was unsure if that was milk-related or perhaps the GI bug many people at work had come down with. I gave her whole milk the next week. She tasted, loved, and consumed all of it in minutes. Then proceeded to projectile-vomit for 12 hours. Hoping against hope it was, indeed, the remnants of some foul virus, I waited a week and gave her 1% in a cup. Diarrhea again. She was lactose intolerant. Great. Just great. 

The nurse bobbed her head in understanding and scribbled notes in Lilah's chart. She told us Alice would be in shortly. Alice (what do you call a PA?) didn't keep us waiting long. She was a shorter, middle-aged woman with past-shoulder-length salt and pepper hair. She had a kind face and Lilah took to her right away. She spent many minutes just holding and talking to Lilah. I found myself sighing again that I would be leaving such a wonderful family practice in just a few short weeks. She asked about Lilah's recent growth and development, as well as our problem with milk. I voiced my hesitance to give her formula for so short a time, and that I had been willing to nurse longer had she any interest in participating, but was unable to pump much at all anymore. Breastmilk is, after all, a supply-and-demand-based product and my Demand was more interested in the cat than nursing. Alice said it was unnecessary to give her formula, but she needed to gain back her weight. She suggested whole-milk yogurt, high-fat and nutrient-dense foods like cheese, avocado, fish, and humus. Thankfully, Lilah loved all these things and was only intolerant to milk, not dairy. She suggested going across the street to the Food Co-op and talking to those fine, educated individuals. They frequently serve vegetarian and vegan families and would have no trouble finding a substitute suitable to our needs. Everything else about Lilah was more than satisfactory. She wrote me another prescription for birth control and also suggested a CBC with differential and ferrous level for me, since my hemoglobin and thyroid like to go on holiday from time to time. I chose not to get them drawn before moving. She ordered a lead test at my request for Lilah after finding her merrily chomping away at paint chips she had scraped off the window sill.

We made our way to the top floor of the building to the MGH lab. The same woman is always there. She's an overly chipper, short, thin woman with very curly brown hair and glasses. Her lab is always cluttered and is approximately the size of a walk-in closet. I have no problem with blood-draws, but that room makes even me a bit queasy. I warned the woman that Lilah is very headstrong and will mind being held down more than the pain of the finger-prick. She smiled back at me, then at Lilah. I could tell she underestimated the tiny person smiling up at her. Never underestimate her. It took both of us to hold her down while she screamed first in pain and surprise, but then in anger as she realized she wasn't being released after the poke like she was used to with her immunizations. When the vial was full, she released Lilah and I held her. She instantly stopped screaming and looked at us with disgust. The woman gazed at Lilah in disbelief, then at me. "She just...stopped." I nodded. "I told you. She was just mad you were holding her down. She reacts this way to getting her nails clipped." I was reminded of what her ophthalmologist had said when she was just 6 months old. "Some babies will let me cover one eye while I look at the other, and some absolutely refuse to do it. The ones who refuse turn out to be very stubborn later, every time. Miss Lilah wants nothing to do with it." Yeah, that's Lilah to a tee. 


We drove to the Co-op since it was too cold and blustery to walk. I looked at all the alternative milks - soy, almond, hemp, oat, coconut, rice. So many! I compared the fat content for all of them and chose hemp and coconut. Together they out-fatted even whole cow milk! I also picked up some whole-milk yogurt made from fresh organic cream. This was unavailable at the regular grocery stores. While I was checking out, Lilah made eyes at the cashier, showing her the band-aid wrapped around her finger. "Oooh you have an owie! You poor thing!" I kept my eyeroll to myself. She sure knows how to play people. The cashier asked if my purchases were for the baby. I nodded and explained her issue with milk. She said her son had weight-gain issues and she did exactly what I was doing. She told me the properties in hemp milk that were second only to human milk in calcium, fat, omega 3s and 6s, and B vitamin content. I was thrilled. Had I known all that, I would have chosen hemp over cow milk even if Lilah could tolerate it! Since then, Lilah has been filling out again and doing wonderfully. Hemp milk even treats eczema from the inside out! She enjoys the coconut milk because of its natural sweetness and eats the cream yogurt by the bowlful. I have gotten several strange looks and comments. "Isn't hemp what marijuana is made from." Yes, clearly that's the same thing. Idiots. Anyway, all that took place not 10 days before I had to pack my house and move 7 hours downstate to start my new job without Dano. I leave in 3 days. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Pros and cons

It's been a year to the day since Lilah's birth. The details of that day are etched into my memory like an intricate design on glass. I remember my labor with her, but it always feels like I was hovering above my own body, watching someone else hurt and labor and fear. Jewish mystics hold that while in utero, the soul of the infant is watched over by the angel Layla - the midwife of souls. Upon the entwining of the egg and sperm, Layla is charged with retrieving the soul God chose for that body from the Vault of Souls and sending it into the fertilized seed. While the body is growing in the womb of the mother, the soul is elsewhere learning the wonders, secrets, and languages of all the world. Upon birth, Layla puts her finger to the lip of the newborn, causing it to forget all the secrets it learned and also causing the indentation on the upper lip that is a universal characteristic of human babies. The soul is then charged with spending its lifetime re-learning the secrets it forgot. In a way, I feel like labor removed me from my pain and I hovered in that in-between, the place for souls who haven't quite forgotten the secrets of all the world. The pain melted away; my fear was gone. There was only me, and yet I wasn't.

The moment my child was delivered from my womb, my soul plummeted downward and collided with my body again. There was a cosmic "snap" and I was wholly myself again. I could hear the people around me. I could see out of my eyes. I could feel again, making the fuzzy numbness I had just experienced feel merciful in comparison. Most of all, I could gaze into the eyes of the alien little person resting on my chest. She was real, and she was beautiful. Our eyes locked in a look of understanding. "I know you," her mind said. "You're my mother." And she was my daughter. People like us get the angel Layla a divine slap on the wrist. We never completely forget what we learned before we were born. Some innermost part of us hides it away, calls on it later, seeks it out wherever we can find it.

Many times this year I have lamented that my tiny, helpless little one fades more with every milestone Lilah masters. She fades from being, but never from memory. Today, watching her playing at my feet, I realize I wouldn't trade her. Yes, 3-hours-old Lilah needed me for everything but breathing, slept in the crook of my arm every night and on my breast every day, couldn't even imagine drifting off to sleep in a midnight world where Mama's lips didn't press softly against her velvet fontanel with Mama's breath sifting through her satin hair. But 1-year-old Lilah can roar at the cat while holding fistfuls of her fur and exultantly chanting, "Cat!" Brand New Lilah couldn't sing "La-la-la-la-LA!" along with Australia by the Shins, or "Badapapapapa!" along with Army by Ben Folds. Helpless Lilah wanted to sleep on me more, it's true, but she couldn't crawl exuberantly to me, stand, hold up her pudgy arms and say, "Mama!". She didn't nuzzle close to me when I picked her up, sucking on her fingers and cooing contentedly and occasionally saying, "Mama," just in case I'd forgotten who I was. She couldn't crinkle her nose and hiss at complete strangers in the grocery store or mimic perfectly the "prawns" from District 9 after watching it. She couldn't belly laugh for no apparent reason or make an unholy mess out of a simple meal. She couldn't use my phone to call and text anyone she deemed necessary, leaving lengthy babbling voicemails. She couldn't fake cough and she certainly didn't think an "epic sneeze" (as we call them in this house) was the funniest thing ever. She didn't like to grab fistfuls of my hair and shove it in my mouth (I could live without this, but it's a strange quirk of hers. Perhaps she's trying to make me appear bearded like her Daddy). She couldn't have a pretend tea party or bake pretend cookies and take so much joy in her parents pretending to eat and drink with her.

All those things made me realize today that I wouldn't go back. It went too fast and I'd love to have an hour for each second that went by this year, knowing I can never replicate it or go back except in my mind. But I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Happy birthday Lilah. Your Mama loves you more than you will ever know.

You can't always get what you want

I've said it before, and I'm sure this won't be the last time, but I have a very willful child. She's an angel most times, but she's headstrong. When she sets her mind to something, it will happen (in her eyes). She hasn't lived long enough to know anything different.

As many of you know from personal experience, Lilah has commandeered my phone and has learned to dial, change settings, and (believe it or not) text using the preset templates that came with the phone and are unfortunately undeletable. I hate my phone and therefore wouldn't care if it got ruined, and it's easier for me to apologize for her babbling voicemails and erroneous texts stating "Watcha Doin?" and other obnoxious phrases than it is for me to put the effort into keeping it constantly out of reach. This being the case, Lilah has come to the understanding (quite unintentionally on my part) that any object that seems remotely interesting and is within her line of vision is automatically hers. Today I got my camera out to take some photos of her cute pigtails and ribbons. The only ones I snapped were either blurry with her arms reaching for the phone or of her bawling her big blue eyes out because I didn't let her have the camera. She nabbed it a few times throughout the afternoon, but I redirected and distracted her away from it.

After a few more episodes like this, I was getting a little impatient. I struggle with this with the residents at work from time to time. It's always the same cycle - "Behavior. Redirect. Behavior + anger at the redirection. Distract. Behavior + kick you in the shins." It usually never ends well for me. This time I wouldn't get a kick in the shins, only a screaming baby. Lilah and I went upstairs and I put on a Veggie Tales movie. I was going to choose Lyle the Kindly Viking because it's her favorite, but I chose Madame Blueberry: A Lesson in Thankfulness instead. The premise involves a "very blue Berry" who is sad because her neighbors all have nicer things than she, so she goes to the local "StuffMart" to buy her way to a happy heart. On the way, she sees a very poor family celebrating their little girl's birthday with only a piece of apple pie, and a little boy whose father can't afford to buy him the train set he really wants. Instead of being unhappy, the little kids sing, "I thank God for this day, for the sun in the sky, for my mom and my dad, for my piece of apple pie, for the love that He shares, cuz He listens to our prayers. That's why I give thanks every day. Because a thankful heart is a happy heart. I'm glad for what I have. That's an easy way to start. For our home on the ground, for his love that's all around, that's why I give thanks every day."

This is the kind of mindset I want Lilah to grow up with (and I would do well to follow it more myself), so I wanted to get it in her head early. After the movie was over, I sang her "You Can't Always Get What You Want" to really seal it into her brain. She resumed playing and I congratulated myself on a lesson well-taught as I dabbed some mineral powder onto my face to hide the purple shadows under my eyes that I'm learning to accept as a permanent fixture. I saw Lilah's hand snake into my lap for the little jar of powder and I caught her wrist. "No, Lilah. That's Mama's." I handed her a toy. She looked at me with disgust and threw the toy. I raised an eyebrow and went back to what I was doing. Over snakes the little arm again and we repeated the same thing, only I was a little firmer this time. I picked her up sat her down about a foot away and handed her the toy, making it dance happily in front of it. She tossed it aside and made a grab for the jar. I raised my voice a hair. "Lilah, No." She burst into tears and threw herself back onto the floor, then sobbingly held out her arms for me to come get her. I made an executive decision and went back to what I was doing. She screamed and kicked her legs, then came back for the jar again! This went on for about 10 minutes before she accepted that she was not allowed to have something and just cried quietly to herself until I was done. She did not, under any circumstances, understand the lesson from the movie and it's going to be a long, uphill battle if she responds like that to a gentle and firm "no". It's a battle Dano and I are willing to fight if we want a little girl with a happy heart and unfortunately for her, that not only means she has to be glad for what she already has, but most importantly she can't always get what she wants.