Beyond the Pale

Dear Ava,

You can accomplish a lot in this world without melanin.

Just take it from me.

Think of those twins who sing "500 Miles" from the movie Bennie & Joon.

Or the recently departed Margaret Thatcher.

Or former Vogue contributor, author, and foodie goddess Nigella Lawson.

Or half the cast of Twilight.

As insignificant as this is, I used to see my failure to bronze in the sun as something that significantly affected one's quality of life.  Growing up during the belly-baring 90's, you could imagine how much this fashion made me look like a Coleman lantern, especially if I wore olive green.

Since the sun had scalded me enough times for me to get serious about skin protection, I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a bummer as a lakeside companion.  I'll always have to do the majority of my swimming at night.  Random strangers will forever ask me if I'm Irish (and I don't know why that makes them feel like they're the most brilliant people in the world!  It's mostly Scotch-Irish on my dad's side, from what I understand.) And there are some colors I just can't wear without looking like a TB case -- pastels and bright white, mostly.  Yick.

But in any case when you stand as an extreme case of anything (which in our situation, my fair darling, is paleness), you stand out, and standing out can make you stronger.  When you get chilly and your skin becomes transparent and marbled in appearance like Gorgonzola cheese (my favorite, might I add), I've learned to expect questions of whether that coloring is normal.  I don't even raise an eyebrow, because I know that it is -- I remember my complexion behaving the very same way as I froze my way through high school.  (And if you people had brought the air up to a decent temperature in the classroom, you wouldn't have caught me sleeping in my hoodie in April.  So there.)

As your Mommy, I know I'll have to do a lot of explaining on your behalf, especially early on.  I know that not everyone will understand the things you do, or the way you are, no matter how fascinating or adorable or unique those attributes are to me.  The world isn't comfortable with "different", or those who stand out, whether it's out of defiance (eh, me), or whether it come naturally (like you, my popsnorkle!). I came to terms with that a long time ago.  I think your Daddy did, too.  So much so between the two of us, we've adopted it as a trait characteristic of our little family.  Maybe that's why God gave you to us.  

Until today, I guess I never considered your fair skinned loveliness to be one of those things...  So I suppose I had simply better learn to be patient with the world and get used to explaining why I won't ever allow you to spend the day at Magic Springs without hosing you down with SPF 1,052 every two hours.

Don't get me wrong -- I love that you're colored like me.  I also secretly enjoy making your Daddy feel like gingers are taking over his world.  Just don't ever let anyone make you feel like you're any less of a lovely little lady because you're fair.  Take it from a gal who's received nothing but a few extra freckles and an itchy butt from the couple of times I've flirted with a tanning bed.

Burns and blisters are nature's way of reminding us that pale is beautiful, too.

In honor of pale princesses everywhere: 

Baby Riverdancing!

In a name

If you didn't know I was hanging out with an eleven week old and you heard me babbling around the house, you'd think I've gone crazy as a Betsy bug (whatever those are, besides a colorful southern expression).

Take this morning, for instance: 

"I like to swing-swing-swing, swingidy-swing!  I like to swing-swing-swing, swingidy-swing!"

 

.....which became:

"I like to sing-ah, I like to swing-ah, I like the moon-ah and the June-ah and the spring-ah!"

(And if you've ever seen the special features from the movie Happy Feet, you'll know that's not a product of my own genius.)

Around Ava Leigh, odd words and songs abound.  For example, today she's Monkey-Moo.   I was so happy that her chubby little baby body was big enough to sport her sock monkey onesie for the first time this morning, it seemed appropriate.  Never mind arguing the reproductive incompatibility of primates and cattle.  

Then we get to the real brilliance.

Pooter-scooter.  Moon pie.  Baby popper.  Snoozle.  Snortle.  Puglet.  Pea pod.  Peanut butt.  Squishy.  Pretty girl.

And then there's my favorite, the name I find on my lips more and more as her personality blossoms: Baby Bright Eyes.  The way her entire face lights up when she locks eyes with Mommy or Daddy.... Forget puppies, kittens, rainbows, and jellybeans.  This is The Stuff.

This weekend, as I attended a women's retreat at church and took the opportunity to   simply focus on being a child of God, I wondered what names I would inspire him to give specifically to me.  Would I be his bright-eyed girl? His lovely daughter?  His faithful servant?  His strong-willed child?  His quiet, thoughtful one?

Those are what I'd want to hear.

The names I have for myself sometimes aren't so loving, even if they carry a grain of cruel truthfulness.

Hermit.  Failure.  Inconsistent.  Big-haired, googly-eyed college dropout.

Sometimes we need to hear someone call upon us in a way that reminds us that we're worthy of love.  When you hear something repeatedly regarding who you are, it tends to stick with you, whether you believe it or not.

So today, daughter, I tell you that you are brilliant.  And I will tell you this over and over throughout your life.  Because in so many ways I will never be, you already are. 

You love me already, every day, consistently....and I really needed you to.  

Daddy Dressed Her...

Gumdrops & doo.

Put down your Reuben with extra Swiss.  We're about to talk about poo again.

(Thought it better to be blunt than to be stuck with your Brew Heaven tab because I ruined your scrumptious lunch.)

Learning the rhythm of a first child's excretory functions is a comedy of errors -- a comedy smeared and trickled up and down countless onesies, with the errors accomplished by the overwhelmed newbie parents for the sake of entertaining the public at large.

I know this because...I am that parent.  I've recently learned that there's nothing more useful than a Ziploc bag for containing the misjudgements of exactly how much doodle is in her newborn-size diaper.  By the dim beams of the Avenger's dome light, sometimes it's hard to tell.  And when the damage is done and the writing is on the wall ( and the backseat, and the seat belt, and her left sock), the best thing you can do is seal up the polluted garment, make a panicked attempt to mop up the mess with 1001 Wet Ones, and deploy the emergency onesie.

Sometimes unpleasant occasions like public full diaper blowouts can be reframed with humor -- moments to throw my head back and laugh at such jokes Mother Nature plays upon parents.  Just like my Grandma Bennett used to advise me when she'd offer to feed me something I didn't like: "Just close your eyes and pretend you're eating gumdrops."  Please don't misunderstand my metaphors; I'm not passing off poo as candy. In clearer terms: pretend that the hand you're dealt is the hand you anticipated anyway.  Crap happens.  I expect it to.  Sometimes, when I'm lucky, it doesn't affect anything in a long-term way, and if I'm mature enough to see that, sometimes the hand of crap I'm dealt is downright hilarious.

Grandma's trick has seen me through some difficult times.  

Ramen noodles can be a great dinner if you serve them in a fancy bowl from an estate sale.

Shopping for clothes at a thrift shop can be so much more interesting than dropping a wad of bills at the mall.  What I'm making up for with resourcefulness and creativity, I'm saving as peace of mind during the lean months.

When I wake up in the morning and the sky is sunless for the third day in a row, I slip into my riding boots and pretend I live in the James Bond's Scottish moor house from Skyfall.  (I have seriously considered tracking down some stag statuary to mount on stone pillars in the driveway since I've seen that movie.  That image was so imposing, it gave me chills!)

And when I'm carrying Ava to the cash register to pay the bill for my lunch and my remarkably observant five-year-old niece draws every eye in the joint by exclaiming, "SHE'S PEEING!!!", I'll take that moment to capture a mental snapshot of my horrified face as I realize that the contents of my daughter's saturated diaper are running down her pants as well as mine.  Because it's going to make a darn hilarious story to tell the kids in ten years when we're all huddled in the storm cellar awaiting a tornado to blow us to kingdom come and have nothing better to do than laugh at ourselves.

Squish.  Yay!!!

Dreamy.

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that being considered "normal" has never been a concern of mine.  (This, from the gal who still enjoys doing cartwheels in her backyard at 30 when no one is looking.  Hey, if you don't use it, ya lose it.)

When it comes to being a mom, I've come to think of this tendency to buck the trend as a virtue, for her sake as well as mine.  If I'm held hostage to the idea that our daughter has to have a such-and-such whizbang educational gadget to develop mentally, do this-and-that activity in order to be well-adjusted, or eat in a way that agrees with someone else's self-righteous opinion of early childhood nutrition, then I might as well hang up my Moby right now.  

It's a good thing that I'm an obstinate jerk.  Otherwise I might've believed that our daughter would be as physically incapable as we were originally told she'd be.

From the beginning of our odyssey to become parents, Jason and I admittedly approached the idea of raising children from similar, and maybe sometimes unusual, points of view.  We believed that no matter what our children's abilities were, we would strive to raise them in a home where a balance of joy and structure would reign.  No matter who they are, we were both convicted that children need both a functional home that provided a safe and comforting place to be nurtured, and a set of boundaries that would communicate that WE as parents were in charge.  I'm a firm believer that you can raise a disciplined child without squelching their individuality or sacrificing the intimacy of a parent/child relationship.

As we learn more about our Ava Leigh each day -- her behavioral tendencies, her personality, the way her physical capabilities affect the way she relates to us -- I have a difficult time seeing her as much different than the daughter I'd originally pictured when I was pregnant.  I'll come right out and selfishly admit that when I learned that we were going to have a girl, I dreamed about all of the Mommy/daughter things we might do: do a few local baby pageants, share a pillow with her as i help her make up wild bedtime stories, start gymnastics so she could improve her school recess tumbling abilities, lay the foundation for a music education as soon as she could climb onto the piano bench..... 

It's funny how someone can deflate those dreams in a split second with a word like "diagnosis".  I've been told many times since Ava's birth to allow myself to mourn those dreams that I have for her.  And maybe some day, I WILL mourn some of them.  But the part of me that rejected the label of "normal" thrust upon myself rejects the label "disabled" that's been attached to her.  

When I heard her responding to her Daddy's voice in a repetitive way this morning, and later again this afternoon as she babbled to our friend Leann, it shocked me to realize that what she was doing was trying to responsively communicate.  During this past week since she's had her hernia surgery, she's answered our smiles with her own as she fixes her gaze intently on us.  She KNOWS what she's doing.  She's holding her head up and wobbling it around like Stevie Wonder as she catches quick glimpses of the world around her before her muscles fatigue and she's face-first in boob again.  She's strong.  She's determined.  And she's aware.

She's telling me that it's safe to have expectations again.  Expectations of her victories in life over difficulty.  Expectations of her ability to fit in with those around her and interact with them in a meaningful way.

I've recently made up my mind to move ahead with some of the previous dreams I had for her, even if it means we might have to take them a little more slowly and cautiously than previously planned.  So I'm gonna find her the floofiest, most cupcakey dress in town and carry my gorgeous girl like a sparkling sack o' taters in the Timberfest pageant this October.  And I'm going to keep showing her books and making up much wackier stories to go with the pictures until the day comes when she can make up her own.  And I'm going to continue playing the classical music station to her every morning and Paul Simon in the car until she doesn't know why she understands music...she just will.

She can still enjoy these experiences.  I can tell that she already does, even this early in her life.  It's a talent in itself to be able to enjoy such simple pleasures in life as music or beauty or one-on-one interaction.  I've known a lot of very "intelligent" individuals who seemed completely incapable of such enjoyment.  Sometimes that individual was me.  

But I get the feeling that enjoyment of life is just where Ava Leigh's talents will begin.

Hurricane Ava!

Back To Our Normal!

Dear Ava Leigh,

You're a funny little goober pea.

Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve the blessing of being Mommy to the most agreeable baby in the world.  I love taking you out in public, because once I get our rolling circus of baby gear in the car and on the road, your exotic-looking eyes light up at the sight of each new person or place you encounter.

(That is, after you're strapped securely in your carseat and are sufficiently calm enough to roll.  Is there any child who doesn't tear the place down after that final bottom buckle snaps across their tummy?)

I love that even if you have a NASCAR-style blowout in your diaper, you don't wail or  holler.  You'll just scrunch up your face and pooch out your lower lip to demonstrate your discomfort, or simply look at me with smug self-satisfaction as pee runs down your leg (and then mine!).  Such untidy little public events make me cackle now, whereas they might have frustrated me if your arrival had been easy.  My mantra now, as it will ever be: perspective, perspective, perspective.

Looking back over the burp rag over my shoulder at the past week, it's bewildering to think that a week ago today, you were recovering from surgery this very hour.  Since that day, you've had a grand total of ZERO barfing events.  Heck, you haven't even spit up, and you've only had a couple of wet burps, and the only reason I knew you'd had those was because I would brush across sticky little threads of milk on my sweater as I brushed my hair.  Having your hernia repaired did you a world of good.  Now you only fuss if I interrupt your nap, or if you absolutely refuse to fart.  Thank goodness both of those issues have simple fixes: Daddy or I just lift you onto our chest, and as you draw your legs under you like a scruff-carried kitten, we pat-pat-pat your little behind until the rhythm lulls you back to sleep.

I know that caring for you won't always be as simple as it this very moment.  Eventually, you'll become more mobile.  Our methods of soothing you will become more complex, and sometimes we won't discover the keys to your contentment, o matter how hard we try..... But right now I get the feeling that you're easier to care for than most babies, and for that, I'm overwhelmingly grateful that God would see fit to give our family such precious moments of peace.  He knows that you've certainly earned them, little cabbage rose!