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In no particular order...
Humidifier Parts
Enjoy your visit and come again soon...
I'm in Paula's room, sitting on the futon on the floor, with my laptop on its usual perch, the nursing stool I got as a baby shower gift from my sister's birth mom, Barb. Paula is sitting near me on her little potty, taking a long, long time to poop, sucking on a string of beads and enjoying lifting the flaps on some fine cardboard literature. Periodically I hand Paula her cup of water and she takes a drink.
Is this what Virginia Woolf meant when she talked about a room of one's own? I think not. Still, I can occasionally get some writing done here before something else Paula needs takes over.
That is what passes for a semblance of control over the minute-to-minute progress of my life right now. A few minutes to write while Paula plays with her toys and ignores, for the time being, the fun that can be had by crawling on the keyboard.
And that's what I need to accept right now. That's my life. No amount of sleep can change it.
So I gave up on the night weaning project. I realized I was too conflicted about it, and it is too big a deal, and I'm just going to let it slide for the time being. I'll work on other ways to get more sleep, like exercise and more aggressive napping.
I realized my dream of a good night's sleep was really a dream about getting my old life back. My life of going to bed when I wanted to, usually early, and sleeping peacefully through the night and waking rested. My life of getting to be alone almost any time I wanted to be - like this one day I remember laying on the sofa watching an MI5 marathon while a storm raged outside. Blissful solitude. Spontaneous midnight drives through the forest preserve with Joel, a box of chocolates and a bag of Funyuns.
It wasn't all like that. Sometimes it was lonely in a way it isn't ever now. There was a lot of getting up in the morning and going to jobs I hated - though I didn't hate all of them. There was a lot less writing than I do now, and a lot more whining about it.
And no little one to play with while making a bed, no one to entertain by throwing my hair around, no one to dance wildly around the kitchen with. No one to throw my folded laundry on the floor, or motivate me to keep those floors somewhat clean.
On no evenings did Joel hold a baby in his arms and sway side to side singing songs by the Doors till she drifted to sleep. No one insisted on playing at his feet in the bathroom while he shaved. No one slapped the dinner table in rhythm and made him say, "See? She's playing the drums before she can walk!"
Last night around 1:30, Paula got up to nurse for a while, peed in the potty, then woke all the way up and started crawling around the bed. Joel remained knocked out, I tried to ignore her. She talked in our faces and romped over our arms, legs and torsos. She pulled my hair, stuck fingers in my nose and mouth, flopped across my chest to nurse briefly before taking off again. For a while I thought she would go back to sleep stretched out on Joel's chest. I dozed off.
Two nights ago I started night weaning Paula. Let the neurotic parental self-doubt begin.
I decided to do this because I haven't been getting much sleep with Paula nursing every two hours at night. On many nights I would wake up when she started nursing and then stay awake long after she was back in a deep and restful slumber. I spent a lot of time composing really fantastic blog entries in my head, only to lose them once I fell asleep. Other than that I just laid in bed, wishing I had someone to talk to or something to eat - the former much harder to come by at 2:30 a.m. than the latter.
But I think the real reason for this whole drive to get more sleep has to do with not being truly at peace with being a mother. Yes, it's weird, and backward, even. I'm nudging my daughter away from babyhood while trying to get emotionally ready to have a baby at all. It makes no sense. I feel like I'm trapped in the parenting version of "Memento" but without the tattoos.
Actually I do have a tattoo, on the back of my left shoulder (I think - since I can't see it I tend to forget it's there). It's a traditional looking heart tattoo with a banner across it reading "Shawn and Jocelyne." Or "Jocelyne and Shawn." Can't remember. Anyway, Shawn and Jocelyne are two treasured friends from my college years. I got the tat years ago and have since wondered if a nice silk-screened t-shirt would have been more to the point. Hiding the thing from my mother-in-law all these years has been a feat.
It's funny, though, to think about that tattoo and what my friendships with Jocelyne and Shawn take me back to. In many ways it's what I miss now that I'm a mother: spontaneity on one hand, control on the other. Freedom from responsibility. Staying up late for fun, sleeping in to make up for it. Not answering to anyone.
Paula is a delightful baby. As she grows and changes I find I love her more, as though my feelings for her are a reflection of her volume in cubic inches. I truly enjoy her company, and yet life with her often feels like extreme sports boot camp: demanding, thrilling, high-stakes. As soon as I think I've got a handle on things, she changes the rules. It's two naps a day, then no naps, then one, back to none. It's up at 6, up at 8, up at 5:30. To bed at 6:30, 8, 8:30.
If this sounds trivial to you, consider that she won't sleep anywhere but at home and missing a nap makes her cranky, so going out, doing housework, talking on the phone, eating meals, etc. all revolve around her sleep schedule. (Dooce gets it.) So on any given day, when I might wake up thinking, "Today is a great day to go to the store," or wherever, or do whatever project I had in mind, it usually ends up crammed between naps and meals and doing the dishes, if it happens at all. I sleep at her behest, I share my food with her, she has a long-term lien on my boobs. Spontaneity is not part of my life.
I'm up and online at eight o'clock, folks! Paula is playing nearby and has no pants on! I don't know what's gotten into me, but I'm sure I'll soon regret it. But that will be then. This is now!
And how am I spending my dangerous, late-night, baby-waking online binge? Reading Jon Hartmere, Jr.'s columns, of course. Very, very funny stuff. Here's a quote from a recent one called What You Gon' Do?:
This producer was looking for someone who "knows LA" and who is "chill" to drive Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz wherever they wanted to go, "like Fatburger and stuff."
Now, I've been called a lot of things. "Chill" is not one of them.
It's not that I don't think I could hang with Lil' Jon - after all, we spell our names the same and could spend hours, nay days, talking about how hard it is to get personalized items - and I watch 106th and Park, BET's version of TRL, so I know Lil' Jon's recent hits,"Get Low" and "What You Gon' Do." And I can sing them really funny in this trilly, operatic voice, and oh, do you think that Lil' Jon would get a kick out of that? I sure do.
The problem I had was that they wanted someone to drive the Boyz around in a 15-passenger vehicle.
Can anyone see me navigating Los Angeles in a 15-passenger vehicle? I can barely handle my Camry. I pass on spots you could parallel park a gypsy caravan in because they look "tight." Can Lenny see my navigating a 15-passenger vehicle? He's apparently forgotten that I took the paint off the side of his car senior year when I misjudged the passageway into our apartment complex. Anyone who's spent any time with me knows I barely have the spatial sense to understand where my own limbs begin and end; I'd have that vehicle through the window of Fatburger - or whatever burger place I could find, since I don't know where Fatburger is - faster than you can say "Lil' Jon, you wanna bill me for that?"
END QUOTE
As you see, Jon is yet another incredibly talented writer: funny, clever, destined for greatness. I hate him! Not really, since Shawn, whom you've met, is kind of a friend of his. And any friend of Shawn's, etc. etc.
I'm just jealous.
Sleep has been a little difficult for Paula and me lately. Well, it's been difficult for me, anyway. She doesn't seem to have a problem with being awake long after her bed time, or for long stretches in the middle of the night. She likes it.
Last night I got her to bed earlier than usual, by 6:30. Aha! I have been trying to put her to bed too late, maybe. Maybe I've been missing her "window." Anyway, I was so excited to have a couple of hours to watch TV with Joel and feel like a damn grown-up for once.
But due to a technical oversight involving the baby monitor - I won't point any fingers here - I didn't hear when Paula woke up needing to nurse around 9:30. By the time I realized she was up, she was crawling out of her room looking for me. Great.
Thus began last night's Odyssey of Awakeness. I won't go into all the fun crap we did to try to get her back to sleep, but suffice to say my baby Paula can go for quite a while on 3 hours of early evening sleep. Well, here is some of the fun crap we did: walking and nursing in the sling, giving her chamomile and passion flower tea, more walking, more nursing, etc. etc. I gave her to Joel at one point and laid down in bed. He brought her to me around 11 saying he had gotten her to sleep, but she woke up because she needed to pee. All that tea, apparently. Joel declared he was going to bed.
Then it was just me and Paula, alone in her room with the lights off. It's hard for me to have a good attitude at times like that. In fact, I deteriorate pretty fast. Paula was happily playing with her books and toys, and I was fantasizing about letting Paula cry it out, sending mental daggers to my sleeping husband - how dare he sleep? - and wishing I could just fall asleep and let her wear herself out on her own schedule. She's too talkative for that. And she likes to pull my hair.
My parents, bless their hearts, have made themselves my parental stress hotline. Last night wasn't the first night I called them to grouse and cry about how tired I was. My dad usually answers, and is just the sweetest. He sympathizes, lets me cry if I need to until I feel better, makes a couple little jokes to lighten the mood. Everybody should have someone like him to call in the middle of the night when their baby's awake and they feel like they're going crazy.
So there I am, bawling to my dad about how I miss my old life - movies, time alone, time with Joel, SLEEP. I feel so crappy, and then Paula is crawling onto the bed and wrapping her little arms around my neck. She puts her head on my chest, nuzzles under my chin, and pretty much stays there. She's not asleep, or even tired. She's comforting me.
She hasn't learned how to "self soothe," she doesn't know the first thing about bottles or babysitters, or how to get herself to sleep and stay that way all night. But she has learned something important about how to treat someone who is crying.
All this week we've been getting ready for Paula's birthday party tomorrow. I ordered food from a Tortilleria El Milagro, an enormous sheet cake from Sam's, and spent it up at the dollar store buying goody bag goodies. Joel took down the Christmas tree and lights and cleaned out the back bedroom so people won't see the unmitigated disaster it had become. I cleaned. A little.
And all along, on my hip, on my back, in the car seat, or next to me on the floor is my little Paula, patting my shoulder and laughing at little private jokes. As I write this she is bare-bottomed and climbing into a basket of clean laundry. She looks over at me and grins, showing all eight teeth.
I say, "I love you." She says "Ah yay yo!" And throws clean clothes out of the basket over her shoulder and onto the floor.
This girl keeps amazing me. She has actual mannerisms now - her own, not ones she picked up from me or Joel. At dinner she sits next to me in her clip chair, gets Joel's attention then lowers her head to one arm. She smiles and that's it for Joel. I just mop him off the floor and go back to my dinner.
She has a new way of letting me know she's hungry. She crawls over to me with a giddy laugh that sounds like a junky about to get his fix. It's happy and desperate and incredibly cute coming from a baby.
When we go out, she makes eye contact with people, then coyly rests her forehead on my chest as she smiles. Truly captivating.
This little elf who was smaller than her stuffed froggy when we brought her home from the hospital has now gotten into roughhousing. Yes, she likes to be thrown onto the bed, likes to be rolled up in a towel and then expelled with a single strong yank. She has begun initiating games of tag - needless to say, I am perennially "it". She loves tummy gummers and squeaky kisses to the jaw. She has become a master of peek-a-boo.
I can't believe how my life has changed in the last year. It makes me cry a little. Part of me feels totally destroyed, like the person I thought I was turned out to be a ghost. Another part of me is so alive. I wash dishes, do laundry, wipe pee off the floor, shop, nurse, read, tickle - and it feels so rich and so real, like nothing has ever been more invigorating than being Paula's mother.
For a while now I've wanted to have some guest writers on my blog. I've been thinking of people whose writing I like but who don't have blogs themselves. Well, one of those people had the nerve to go out and start a blog, but after reading his piece on New Year's resolutions, I asked if he would let me feature him. He said yes, and the rest, well, here it is:
I first met my friend Shawn at a "matriculation ceremony" for beginning freshman at Lake Forest College. I didn't know what matriculation meant, nor did I understand the keynote speech on God or destiny or something given by a mathematics professor. So I followed in the footsteps of alienated youth before me and made fun of the guy. I didn't know anyone, so I directed my witticisms to the wavy-haired fellow sitting next to me. In spite of my lame, fake worldliness, I cracked him up.
We didn't meet again until the end of that first year of college, when Shawn joined the Richter Scholar program I had been involved in all year. It was basically a way to extend the social stratification between "regular" and "gifted" into college. Needless to say, we called it Rectum Scholar.
Shawn was friends with Bill, who was already an, um, Scholar and had a car, and I was friends with Bill and another RS, Jocelyne. We were all going to be on campus for the summer as research assistants to faculty members. It was supposed to rocket us into amazing academic careers. Judging from the way things have gone for the three of us, I wonder if it had the opposite effect.
Jocelyne and I were roommates in the Soviet-style, cinder-block, worker-housing dorm that smelled like an old tennis shoe we all had to live in. Shawn had a roommate he hated. Jocelyne started staying up late watching Monty Python with Shawn and Bill in Bill's room, and invited me to join. I wanted to fit in, wanted to feel I belonged, wanted a social group, so I went along, even though - and this is still very hard for me to admit - I've never found Monty Python that funny. Some jokes are funny when retold in a different context - like the Ministry of Funny Walks - but mostly I found it not funny at all and still don't. I laugh because I want to be in on the joke.
Shawn, Bill, Jocelyne and I became a little Platonic foursome. We went on midnight drives in Bill's Beretta, with the "Clockwork Orange" soundtrack blasting. Jocelyne and I sat in the back, our hands on invisible reigns, our heads bobbing on invisible horses, as the synthesized William Tell Overture bugled out of the rear speakers. We cracked ourselves up.
Bill started dating someone and soon the little group was just us three: Shawn, Jocelyne and me. We spent a great six or eight months together, united by a quirky sense of humor, a feeling of being outsiders, a disdain for LFC. Jocelyne transferred out at the end of fall semester, then Shawn and I left after the spring. It's been a long time - about 15 years - since we walked flat footed to the dining hall - "stomping to dinner" - or laughed till we cried over the way our eyes still looked right side up when our heads were upside down. But the love remains.
ONE RESOLUTION TO RULE THEM ALL.
Generally, the New Year holds great hope and promise for anyone looking to overcome the personal flaws or self-betraying behaviors that followed them around the previous year like the clouds of dust that followed Pig Pen. January 1 is welcomed like a warm colonic, arriving just in time to gently flush the undesirable qualities out of our systems, the qualities we've held onto throughout December just long enough to let them go with something called, simply, a resolution. Ah! A fresh start.
While we normally dismiss infomercial gurus and other self-help promoters throughout the rest of the year as New Age freaks, suddenly, come the New Year, we're like their best friends. The notion now makes perfect sense to us that if you believe something, you can make it happen - all it requires is a decision.
Making a decision and carrying it through are often two different creatures inhabiting the same body, much like Gollum: the well-intentioned-but-victimy-and-balding host on one side, the mean-spirited-and-also-balding self-saboteur on the other. Deciding on your resolutions may be an epic battle between good and evil for you, depending on what happened in your life during the year (without a new "Lord of the Rings" movie, we are sadly left to ring in the New Year with our own dramas, epic or small). Or it may be like picking out a new shirt at the store with the gift card you got from a friend: no matter what decision you make, chances are you're going to look good - and it didn't cost you a penny.
Sometimes our resolutions evolve into something unintended, or they don't go as well as we'd hoped. For example, when the credit card statements begin to arrive in 2005, you can acknowledge what you knew all along but easily rationalized away in the moment: last year's resolution to "pay it forward" somehow became "shop with credit now," and they really have nothing to do with each other. There's a reason eBay has a "Buy It Now" option, but no "Pay It Forward" option. Alas, come 2005, it's time to pay it back-ward.
And so, many of us make the same resolutions again this year that we made last year - but this time they're for real. This time we mean it!
First, maybe we should step back and ask...
WHAT HAPPENED?
Personally, I think peoples' problem with not achieving their New Year's resolutions is that they aim too low.
You want to lose the fifty pounds you gained over the holidays? Okay. (If I don't support you, I'm sure someone else will.) You want to go back to school and get the master's degree you never finished? Well, if you must. A candle flickering in a drafty mansion is better than no light at all. You want to find the love of your life and finally succeed in a long-term relationship? Sure, if it'll help you keep on keeping on. You want to find a cure for cancer? If "small victories" are your thing, I say go for it.
I want a little more than all of that.
How about a resolution with some attitude? My resolution is to live forever!
THE WAY WE WERE
If you pay attention to where popular culture has led us over the years, it seems like a natural sequence of events guiding us towards immortality. Sure, there have been "super-natural" phases along the way, during which the entire concept was more of an experiment by amateurs than anything else. We all have to start somewhere. I mean, the best they could come up with in the 1960's was an enigmatic time-traveling doctor who had nine "regenerations." People were too scared to say "Oh, just have him live forever," and so they settled. They could make his spaceship infinitely larger on the inside than it was on the outside (overcompensating for something?), but couldn't bring themselves to give him even one or two more regenerations. "Doctor Who" is still the longest running television show of all time, but obviously they never asked me what I thought. Had I been born then, and had they asked me, I'm sure it would have lasted longer... much longer.
In the early 1970's James Bond flirted with a more definitive form of "forever," but safely kept the quality tucked away in diamonds. Not a bad step in the evolution towards truth. We had something to hold onto, or at least something sparkly to wear around our necks as a reminder. Also in the 1970's Barbra convinced us that on a clear day you can see forever, but note that she didn't say on a clear day you could BE forever. If we strip away that thin veil of pretense, we see how constraining the 1970's really were. I'm surprised any of us got out of there with any of our dreams and goals in tact.
As the 1980's arrived, suddenly "forever" became really, really cool. It was so cool it was hot. It was fun. Everyone was doing it. Paula Abdul was "Forever Your Girl"; Alphaville and Laura Branigan wanted to be "Forever Young,"; Diana Ross, Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart wanted in, so they came up with different versions of "Forever Young"; and even country music started asking important questions like, "What's Forever For?" When he wasn't playing with the boys, Kenny Loggins was singing "Forever." If you saw "The Empire Strikes Back" then you knew Yoda was way old, and his death was nowhere in sight. And as "Return of the Jedi" ended, there's no reason to think his death was that at all.
By the 1990's, immortality was all over the place. Celine sang to us in hushed, breathy tones, "Immortality, there is a vision and a fire in me," and then reassured us all in a different song that her heart will go on (and on and on and on and on...). Doubts began to creep into the works, though, as the Spice Girls, like always, kept it real. They showed us that just because you name a CD "Forever" doesn't automatically make it so. They broke up shortly thereafter. Their hearts went on, just into separate solo albums.
In 2005, it's almost to the point where I'm convinced people simply don't die. How many times in how many movies or television shows over the years have we seen major and minor characters die, only to return in a "surprising" twist? Every fan of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" knows what I'm talking about. End of Season 1: Buffy dies. Start of Season 2: Buffy is alive. End of Season 5: Buffy dies. Start of Season 6: she's back. Buffy's mom died in Season 5, and somehow made appearances later in the series in more than just flashbacks, as did many other "dead" characters. And even though the show's premise involves slaying beings that live forever, it obviously takes a lot of work to make them go away. Being human, I'm betting that we have the edge over vampires. An overriding theme of the show is that anything is possible, so maybe immortality is finally sinking its Dracula-like teeth into our collective necks.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
There are some kinks to work out in order to officially live forever. There would have to be contractual obligations made with whoever is in charge of this. For starters, something would have to be done about the aging process. Consider: what if Yoda is an example of what Tom Cruise looks like 750 years from now? That just won't do. Yoda's cute, but green, cracked skin says "old" like nothing else does. I would insist on either a drastic slowing down of the aging process, or else some advance knowledge that by that point in my life. Jedi Master status is unquestionably more important to my self-esteem than retaining good looks.
Side note: I would also want to make sure my immortality doesn't coincide with living alone on a swamp-infested planet where my only visitor has to crash land, and then desperately needs my help in order to save the entire universe, but doesn't even arrive with a good skin cream or ultra-healing lotion for me. Talk about high-maintenance guests! Given that swamp air isn't as kind to the pores as everyone says it is, I'd expect more thoughtfulness from a hero-wannabe. In galaxies far, far away, you still don't get a second chance to make a first impression.
I would also insist on ridding the world of certain expressions that we have grown accustomed to on some level. Have you ever heard or read the saying, "Youth is wasted on the young"? This shows how good, honest, individual words carelessly put together can sound convincing, but are merely a playground for bitter folk who just don't understand. For the rest of us, saying "youth is wasted on the young" at our 900th birthday party would be silly, if not simply distasteful. It reeks of bad manners more than anything else.
We can phase out the word "deadline." What a relief to anyone with a high-stress job. In fact, as we phase out the word "death" altogether, we will have an entire generation of youth saying things like, "Can you believe 348 years ago people actually died? I just don't get it."
We can also do away with, "I just don't have the time" because that would be a blatant lie (as if it isn't in this day and age already). Maybe it'll sink in by the time we turn 450 that we do, indeed, have all the time in the world.
ME = Mc2
Let's say, for a moment, that my resolution isn't as confidence-inspiring to you as it is to me, and this resolution goes the way of many resolutions past. Let's say there's a kink or two I overlooked that a mere decision can't trump, or there's some small print in the contract I forget to read. As with the beloved Spices, I'll admit there is a chance something could get in the way. This is where pure logic comes in handy. You don't have to be Albert Einstein to see that immortality might just be in my bones. Check out the facts:
"Diamonds Are Forever," and they are also a girls' best friend. Shawn's best friend is a girl; therefore, Shawn is a diamond. And then, naturally, Shawn is forever. You can't argue the facts - you just have to interpret them correctly.
Okay, I know... pure logic isn't as desperate as that eleventh-hour move. Scratch that if you want (and scratch the whole concept of the "eleventh-hour move" while you're at it).
As Paula approaches a year old, I'm beginning to reflect on all the things that are no longer part of my life. Like sleeping through the night, sleeping past 7:30, going anywhere at night without major carseat anxiety, eating as much as I want without having to share my food with a very grabby someone.
Sex. With my man.
Okay, all of these OCCASIONALLY make an appearance, but you know what? It's freaking rare.
Lately I've been thinking about night weaning Paula so I can try to get better sleep at night and spend fewer nights tossing around in bed for 2 or 3 hours at a time, trying to get back to sleep, wishing for the days when sleep was just what happened when I laid my head on my pillow.
I'm doing some research into night weaning, but not yet finding What I'm Looking For. Because how do you night wean a baby who doesn't nap without a nipple in her mouth? And, uh, in case you're wondering, that's MY nipple we're talking about. And what about all those things I don't do while Paula naps or peacefully sleeps nipple free? Like dishes, a shower.
This is what I want to find on the web: The Moody Mama's Guide to All Things Baby.
This is the kind of thing it would say:
"When your baby can't nap without nursing and can't sleep without the boob every few hours and all you want is a few hours of sleep you can count on, or to get freaky with that guy you live with, or to remove the weeks of funk on your hair because all your showers seem to be with baby, all you need is to _________________________. This will fix you up in no time."
And,
"Baby doesn't like the carseat? Arches her back, cries and whines? Never, EVER falls asleep there? No problem. Just ___________________. She'll be begging to go in the carseat before you know it."
Of course, if I had figured out that _________________________ part, I could write the book and make a million bucks. But I haven't yet.
I finally unsubscribed from the BabyCenter.com "Your Baby This Week" email series. Every time they came, it seemed like the message was, in short, "Your baby should be doing X,Y and Z by this stage." But all my baby ever does is P, Q and R.
She should turn toward the sound of your voice, they said at some point. "She doesn't turn toward the sound of my voice," I whispered to myself, tip of tongue between my teeth. She should be sitting, they said. "She's not sitting," I whispered. She should sleep through the night. What the hell does that mean? She sleeps, she nurses, it goes on all night.
Okay, not really all night. She does sleep through the night, though, according to my definition. Of course she eventually did all those things. But it seems like it never ends. The most recent BabyCenter installation said Paula should be able to locate her mouth on command. Ummm... That's so not happening.
But I can always tell myself the BabyCenter.com is run by financial interests. And we all know that the less secure you feel about your baby's development, the more likely you are to buy books, toys, and all manner of crap that you hope will magically cause your baby to pull even with the statistical norm.
Paula has never in her life matched that norm, though. She beat the odds by coming out with really powerful lungs after doctors said she might not have any - at all. She was born small and premature, but big enough to nurse and come home with us right away. Even I was at extremely high statistical risk of cesarean because of being induced and bedridden, but Paula and I beat that rap together.
As she's gotten bigger, she has never seemed to match what The Experts said she should be doing in her development. Even worse are the other moms I know online, whose 11-month-old babies are calling out to them, "mama!" and saying "dog." These babies are walking, talking, mouth-finding marvels.
When I read about them, I doubt myself. Maybe I'm falling down on the job by not spending more time telling her, "That is your mouth. Mouth. Can you say 'mouth'?" I do read to her, we play together, she sees everything I'm doing as she rides along in the sling or packababy. She talks a lot, but I don't understand her.
But in spite of all the things those babies are doing, I don't doubt Paula. Paula is tremendous. No, she can't find her mouth on command, but you know what she can do? She can feed herself spinach, pears, bits of sausage without dropping anything on the floor. She can hold her pee till she gets to the potty, and even do the pee-pee dance while I pull down her trousers.
She can beat out two rhythmic sets of four on the table top. She can bounce in time to music, and sing along in her atonal soprano. She can even clap downbeats while Joel claps upbeats.
This baby is not on par, not keeping up, not normal. But she's ours and she's spectacular.
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