Juliet Martinez

Daylight saving time has proved to be a curse for me since Paula's very first one. It messes up her body clock for the days to last so long, I guess. Summertime has just never been a very successful sleep time for Paula, and as a result it's been tiring and stressful for me. Lately I've been getting nervous about Paula's sleep as she has be unable to go to sleep till after 10, and none of the sleep aids we've given her are having any effect.

But now I have a secret weapon! Okay, it's actually something really obvious that I could have used a long time ago if I had thought of it.

Let me explain: when Paula resists putting her hearing aids in, I tell her, "Don't you want to hear the music? How can you dance to it if you can't hear it?" And then she lets me put the aids in, no problem.

I'm selling it to her, right? My friend Frank, the personality guru, told me ages ago that the way to motivate her is to basically say, "Won't it feel good to have a clean room / a full tummy / fingers that don't stick together?" Well, last night I figured out how to take his advice.

So I addressed my daughter.

"Paula, when you go to sleep early and sleep all night, you will wake up feeling healthy, strong and happy! You will be ready to learn and play! Also, if Mommy sleeps all night she will be happier and wake up ready to play with you. So from now on, let's go to bed early and sleep all night. Let's also take a nap during the daytime. This way we'll both wake up feeling happy, refreshed, and ready to play."

When I finished, she had an enthusiastic expression on her face. She got up off the couch, signed BED, and led me in towards her bed. She drank a bottle, struggled to get comfortable for a while, but then did fall asleep. This morning when she got up, I asked her if she felt strong and refreshed after sleeping all night. She beamed!

So this is another piece of the puzzle. And now to remember to put it in place when I need it.

Comments

Wed, Apr 19 2006

April

I thought this winter would never end. I got Paula's diagnosis in September and headed into fall feeling for all the world like the ground had dissolved below my feet.

As winter set in and Paula demonstrated a clear intolerance for her hearing aids, my outlook darkened with the days. Just before the shortest day of the year, I looked at my daughter - non-verbal, uninterested in amplification - and said to myself, I will accept the fact that she is deaf.

Then, as the days lengthened by seconds or minutes at a time, I began to see that I had been wrong. She rocked in time to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," when she had her hearing aids in. She needed surgery to make the aids more tolerable, and she got it. When she said "all done," it sounded the same as when she said "arms up," but she was saying something.

And now it is April. Now we can leave our house without coats, scarves, hats, gloves (that were only pulled off anyway), boots. Now we can return to the back yard and actually play.

Now Paula doesn't blink at wearing her hearing aids for most or all of every day. When she talks I hear how hard she is working to pronounce every sound in "frog," "dog," "star," "all done." Every day she comes out with new words and signs - a couple of days ago it was "I know."

She became obsessed with swinging on the swings. She entreated me over and over, "SWING! SWING!" voicing it in a way that sounded like "hwee! hwee!" We finally went to WalMart and bought one of those free-standing porch swings so Paula can now bug me to take her outside at seven in the morning to cuddle with her as we swing back and forth. After four days of swinging to her heart's delight, the object of fascination is now her little bitty slide. "SLIDE! SLIDE!"

Last night after an outing with Daddy - to the park, I thought - she signed to me, SHOPPING DADDY.

"Did you take her to the store?" I asked Joel.

"Yeah, the one at the gas station. I got a Pepsi and I got her a lollipop."

Then she came home and told me about it. Amazing.

Today we went to the zoo with Marylu and her kids. Before we left, Paula was signing "Z-O-O," which is how you sign zoo in ASL. She saw the lion and signed LION, the tiger and signed TIGER, the seal and signed DOLPHIN. No, I corrected her, that's a SEAL. SEAL, she signed back.

In the underwater viewing room for the seal and walrus tanks, I rested on a bench while Paula pressed her face against the thick glass. The light filtered in from the water's surface, and the cool air felt damp on my warm skin. The seals flew through the water, graceful, weightless and totally silent. I wondered what she will discover now that things have names, now that questions can be asked, things can be discussed. I found myself thinking, yet again: It's all brand new from here on out.

Comments

Thu, Apr 13 2006

The briefs

1. Paula is getting over her first ear infection and a simultaneous outbreak of cold sores in her mouth. She is also cutting three molars. Joel was out of town for the weekend when she was the most sick. You do the math.

2. Today Paula got her first vaccination, first injection of any kind, first band-aid. She handled it pretty well, cried for a little bit, then, still crying, got up and resumed playing with the rocking horse and plastic dishes in the doctor's office. After ice cream and a long nap, she is going strong this afternoon.

3. Hooray! My parents are talking about visiting in early May when Joel is on the road.

4. Joel has been on spring break this week, which has given us a lot more time together. A lot of it has been spent doing errands, cleaning house, joking, cooking, eating, talking, arguing. It's nice to have him around.

5. Paula's hair is growing in light gold-brown and curly. It's my dream hair, growing out of my very own life-sized doll!

6. After at least two weeks of tender breasts, morning sickness, fatigue and mood swings, I found out that ...

wait for it ...

I'm not pregnant. So now I can go back to my normal, crazy life.

Comments

Mon, Apr 03 2006

She walks, she talks, she wears barretts

Paula has had a great little language explosion the last week or so. Last Wednesday we were sitting at the table, eating lunch and playing peek-a-boo. This is normal.

I got bored of just saying peek-a-boo, so tried to mix it up a little with "there you are!" and "there's my girl!" I know, still not very exciting. If I were a pithy mom-blogger worth my salt I would mix it up by shouting out "dog boogers!" or "less filling!" when Paula peeked out from behind her hands.

Yeah. Anyway, at one point Paula responded to my "there's my girl" by signing GIRL. That's right, I said, you're a girl, and Mommy's a girl, and Daddy's a boy.

BOY, she signed. Then, UP, FLY CLOUD BIRD.

Huh?

I realized she was referring to a scene from one of the Signing Time videos, a song that says "I'm a boy, I'm a boy, I'm proud to be me, yeah ... I'm a girl, I'm a girl, etc." The featured boy then appears to fly (he's on a harness in front of a green screen), past some clouds with a bird flying in front of him. Yes, boy up fly cloud bird - you got it, kiddo.

Paula has also learned to sign and recognize the letters of the alphabet. But true to form she does not reproduce this on command. No, she does it when she wakes up in the middle of the night. No matter how many times I have tried to get her to do the alphabet with me when I want to show her off, she only consistently does the ABC's (with about 95% accuracy) between 1 and 3 a.m. Deeee-lightful. Still, I am proud of her ability to not only make the manual alphabet handshapes, but also recognize most letters on sight. If you want proof of this, plan to get up early.

And sometimes she breaks out with the most amazing spoken phrases, stuff I really don't expect. No, she doesn't pipe up in conversations with questions about the socio-political nature of bass fishing. But, for example, the other day when I said, "Let's go shopping," she signed and said, "Doe tapiz! Doe bye-bye ina cah!" Which, if you don't understand, is her version of "Go shopping! Go bye-bye in the car! Race through the toy section of Target grabbing every kitten, princess, Barbie and teddy bear in existence!"

True biz. She's all that and some cute little hair clips. For her hair, which she now has enough of to clip.

This kid continues to amaze me, recounting scenes from movies, pausing after being upset to sign to me CRY, SAD. She signs part of the Sesame Street classic, "Sing, Sing a Song," and most of the good-night song we learned from Signing Time volume 7. You should see her:

SUN SET, DAY SLOW

FAMILY PLAY ALL DAY GATHER

STARS SHINE, MOON WAIT

GOOD FRIEND, FUN

NOW TIME SAY GOOD NIGHT.

Good night.

Comments

Posted at:Mon, May 01 2006 06:38:44 AM