Monday, November 12, 2012

Blog Fodder

I try to plan my blog posts ahead of time, as much as possible. It's so difficult to sit down at the end of the day and try to get started when I have not an idea in my head yet. Some days are difficult; not much happens that I find interesting to write about. But other days are rich with amusement, and my children do so many things of note that I often can't figure out how to fit them all in (or forget the details by the time I get a chance to do so).

Whenever Abby or Michael surprise us with something novel, Tom and I jokingly declare, "Blog fodder!"

And Abby made sure that today was a day chock-full of it.

To start with, she didn't sleep well towards the early morning. I first heard her awaken around 5:00 am, at which point she spent a good 15 minutes chanting, "Dada, dada, dada, dada." Though her chatter kept me from falling back to sleep, it was nice to know that someone was listening to Tom and me during our fruitless attempts to encourage Michael to repeat the sound.

She grew quiet after that, for a time. However, just before 7:00 am, I heard her cry out. Then, she began to plead, "Need help! Need help!" I was somewhat alarmed, because I'd never heard her call for help from her crib before, though my panic was tempered by the lack of any pain or panic detectible in her voice. She sounded more frustrated than anything. Still, I moved quickly, fearing that she had perhaps fallen from the crib and hurt herself, and was perhaps too shocked to properly voice her urgency.

It turned out that she had managed to pull her left arm out of the sleeve of her thermal pajama shirt, and couldn't figure out how to get it back in. I had her fixed up in no time, popped her binky back into her mouth, and tucked her in to catch one last hour of sleep.

I filled Tom in on what had happened, and when he went up to bring her downstairs later that morning, he questioned her about the event. He said, "I heard Mommy helped you with your sleeve."
She responded, "Mommy put the arm in the sleeve. Thank you, Mommy!"

As he sat her down to breakfast, he recounted to me his conversation with her, and then turned to Abby to say, "So, what do you say to Mommy?" She got a big grin on her face and said, "Thank you!"

Of course, some of her best stuff happened in the afternoon, and my useless brain has already forgotten what it was that she said. I keep telling myself that I need to write this stuff down, right away, but then I make the excuse to myself that I'm sure I'll remember. Nope. Doesn't happen.

Maybe it will come to me tomorrow, and I can slip it in then.


My fear of her falling from the crib was not totally ungrounded, by the way. About four days ago, Tom came into her bedroom to find her sitting on top of the changing table, which is attached to her crib. So, though she has not attempted to go from that position down to the floor (yet), she has technically figured out how to climb out.

I guess we'll be moving to a toddler bed soon, after all. Once I figure out how to make her bedroom safe for a relatively unmonitored, wandering toddler, that is... {sigh}