Well the title says it all. Yesterday, January 30, 2010 marks our first trip to the hospital for an Andrew injury. He made it exactly 1 year, 5 months 1 week and 6 days. Which isn’t a record overall but sure is for our family. I can only imagine that a) this will be the first of many trips and b) that mommy and daddy can only do better from here on out.

So here’s what happened, and it’s so mundane it’s hard to imagine how it could possibly have been prevented. It was around Andrew’s afternoon snack time. He gets a cup of milk and usually a few apple slices or Cheerios. So A. handed him his sippy cup of milk and an apple slice, not unlike what he or I do on a regular basis. He walked into the other room, slipped on the floor the way babies do and fell forward. What he did amounted to biting his lip. Only, he bit the hell out of it. There was so much blood that at first I was sure all his teeth had fallen out and been swallowed. There were several minutes of “oh my God, check his mouth again, are you sure he has all his teeth still?” But then we realized that yes, he did in fact have his teeth and that the blood (and OH the blood) was coming from the holes he’d made in the space between his lower lip and his chin– really right below his lip line. He’d bitten right through. We knew his teeth were sharp but this is clear proof. I’m considering putting a sign on my door that says “Beware of the Child”. Thankfully he’s not a biter!

So anyway, he calmed down and I wiped him off and as an aside, yes I did manage to wash all the blood out of his clothing thankyouverymuch, I must be what is that word again? Oh yes, domestic. I thought he was going to be okay but the pediatrician on call told us to take him to the After Hours Emergency clinic. Well now I for one didn’t think we should go. He was perfectly calm at that point and the bleeding had stopped but A. thought he should go. He told me to stay home and get some rest (which I desperately needed). So I did, I stayed home and fell asleep thinking he’d be back 20 minutes later with some derma-bond on his lip. Instead I get a semi-frantic call which led to me getting in the car and racing down there for what I wasn’t sure. That’s when I finally hear the word “stitches”. Yup, my baby got his first stitches. Two of them.

I’m proud to say he’s handling it like a champ. Better than his blubbering parents. I mean, who can handle seeing their child strapped down to a board in a straight jacket like contraption while their child’s face is stitched up? Well if you can you’re a stronger person than we are. I have to give daddy a lot of credit because he was actually there for all of it and I got there as they were finishing up. It pains me to think that I wasn’t there for him but I honestly thought it wasn’t that bad. Just goes to show what I know. And since he didn’t even make it to age 1 1/2 before needing his first stitches I cringe as I say, next time I’ll do better as a mommy. I just hope next time is a LONG time from now.

It’s 11 days into the new year and you know what? My house is still clean and relatively organized. I am still on top of my todo list and despite the fact that I’m enrolled in my last and supposedly hardest course of my graduate degree, I am right on top of things.

Wow! Now that I said that a million things are going to fall on top of me to get done in the next week.

The thing is, I AM busy. I just can’t tell if maybe I’m finally getting the hang of all this. That’s a little scary in a way but wonderful nonetheless.

I won’t bore you with my actual routine. It’s fit for the elderly but oh how I love it! After being busy busy and on the go for so many years I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to get in bed before 9:00. I only hope I can keep it up.

And moving on to another order of business, this blog.

I have a long list of blogs I follow on Bloglines (If you don’t have it, get it. It’s wonderful!) And I’m starting to notice a trend among my mommy friends. All their blogs are about their babies. I’m starting to feel like Andrew is getting the short end of the stick on this one because this blog is and never has been all about him, especially since I started it long before I was even pregnant.

So what do you think? More Andrew stories? Let me know.

In the mean time, I will share just one (or two) things about my favorite little munchkin. I am ever amazed at how quickly he is growing up. I have this milestone chart from Babycenter.com and I look at it every now and then just to make sure he isn’t falling behind in any areas. I was shocked to find that he is performing skills that would be considered advanced for a 21 month old (He is 17 months this weekend). He is also doing some things at the level of a 24 month old. I about fell over when I saw that one! He’s a talker and would be perfectly happy to spend the entire afternoon looking through his books and identifying the things in the pictures. One of his latest words is “yellow” which comes out sounding ever so cute as “yeh-woah” complete with adorable high pitched little boy voice. He likes this color so much that he will identify everything as yellow.

“Andrew, what color is Elmo?”
“yeh-woah”
“Andrew, Elmo is red.”
“yeh-woah”
“Can you say red?”
“yeh-woah”

The whole exchange is quite adorable so I find myself asking him the color of things all the time just to hear him say the word.

Another thing he likes to do lately is have phone conversations with or without another person on the line. The conversation is short and consists of “Hi, hello. Bye-bye” If you happen to get a random call from me now you’ll understand.

Several years ago, we went to Downtown Disney around Christmas time which is one of my favorite things to do. This is before we had Andrew and really before we were even thinking about kids but we went into the giant toy store anyway. They had this humongous display of Mr. Potato head parts. You could buy a box for about 20 bucks and stuff it with as many parts at it would hold from the giant potato head buffet.

Naturally I wanted to get my money worth so my brother and I spent 30 minutes off in the corner of the store packing the box to the point where it may well have been close to spontaneous combustion. The woman gave me an annoyed look at the check out– sweet vindication from getting my money’s worth out of Disney! Haha!

Well of course I got it home and dressed up the potato head and thought, “now what”? Yeah, that’s what happens when adults buy toys. I put all the pieces in a basket on the shelf in our bedroom which is where it sat until now.

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I love the layout of our home. Except now that we’ve lived here 4.5 years I’ve started to notice some of the quirks. For example, I’m certain that whoever designed the master bathroom did not have children. This is because there is no door on the master bathroom. Yes, the room for the toilet has a door but the shower and bathtub are open to the bedroom. When Andrew was tiny he sat in his bouncy seat while we showered or got dressed. Then as he outgrew the bouncy seat we moved the jumper into the bathroom. But now that he’s 15 months old and weighs 25 pounds he has outgrown all his containment devices. We are left to allow him to roam free or scream his head off in the crib. We baby proofed the room and went for the scream free option.

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So you may see where I’m going with this excessively and inappropriately long story.

Andrew discovered the Mr. Potato Head basket and all the parts. He waltzes over to the basket as though it was put there for him. And maybe on some level it was, even though I didn’t know that several years ago.

He has his favorite parts. Noses and eyes, various hats, arms, lips and glasses. He carries them around the house and they have slowly infiltrated every room, every crevice, every drawer or cabinet. Only it is just a part or two here or there. I find eyeballs on the stair case and an arm in my bedside table. It is like a twisted toy massacre as I find body parts all over my house. I doubt we’ll ever find where he’s hidden them all until we move out and even then we very well may leave a part or two behind. It’s just a good thing that all those years ago, I spent that quality time ensuring that I fit every single possible piece in that box so that I could now provide endless hours of entertainment for my son

My mom used to tell me that becoming a mother would change me as a teacher. Of course motherhood changes you as a person first and foremost but she assured me that it would make me see things differently. I accepted that she was probably right and went on my merry (tired) way.

I can honestly say I didn’t give that idea much thought until now. When I returned to teaching I went right back into my groove. It took a few weeks to get adjusted to starting in the middle of a school year but now here we are in the middle of October and I feel like I never really left for any sort of maternity leave.

But I do think being a mom has changed me.

Maybe it’s in the way that noise doesn’t get to me the way it used to. I can block out a noisy classroom a little too well and my kiddos have helped me do the alternative– block out a crying baby. I also found that I am more patient. Maybe it’s because my students are so much more capable of doing “grown up” things like helping out in the classroom and helping each other. I like watching them, and I like imagining what Andrew will be like when he is their age.

I find myself putting myself in the shoes of the parents. When Andrew is in school, I know I’ll want his teachers to take good care of him so maybe this is my way to “pay it forward”.

Today is the end of the 1st quarter and I got my list of pink slips so I could take them into consideration when writing report card grades. Pink slips are what we give out to a student who is not behaving appropriately. In years past, I have written upwards of 80 pink slips in a quarter. I think once I even wrote over 100. Granted we have an EXCELLENT group this year but this quarter I wrote 4. Yes, FOUR. That’s like, unheard of. I guess that goes back to the patience thing.

But what made me sit down to write this? Well today while writing up my lesson plans for next week I actually took the time to plan {gasp} HALLOWEEN activities for my students. I despise Halloween but for some reason I’m excited about it this year and I don’t have to think hard to know why. It’s because I want to make it special for my little lion who will be able to walk from door to door this year and who I know with each passing year, will come to enjoy Halloween more and more. I used to ignore the holiday altogether but now I’m starting to understand that even though I hate it, it’s important to kids and if I’m going to be a good mom and a good teacher, what’s important to them has to be important to me too.

It’s funny how strongly some memories stay in your mind.

It was a little over 8 years ago, Summer 2001. I was getting ready to go back up to Gainesville for what would end up being a very trying semester. Summer 2001 was still a time of innocence. So much has changed since then.

My mom and I were out shopping. I found some cute dresses on sale at Gap but they were not in my size. We decided the sale was good enough that it was worth driving across town to a different mall to find the dresses. We ended up at University Mall which is up near USF. We found the dresses and were getting ready to leave when I saw the mall pet store.

Now we don’t usually go into pet stores. They make my mom sad and me too for that matter– all those animals who need homes. I don’t know what made us go in there that day. Pet stores don’t usually have cats and we’re total cat people. I walked by the cages and I saw one that was empty, or at least it appeared empty at first. As I was standing there, I glanced into the covered litter box and as I did, a dusty gray cat turned his head around to look me in the eyes. He had the most stunning blue eyes I have ever seen on a cat. He was shockingly beautiful and sad. He was sleeping in a litter box. My mom was every bit as taken aback by his beauty as I was.

I’m not sure what made us ask but we found a woman who worked at the store. His price? $900. This mall remember, is only a couple miles from the university. It is otherwise in a very poor section of town. Not an audience for a $900 cat. The woman scooped him out of the cage. He was huge, or at least, not kitten sized. The woman told us he was 5 months old and because of his age his price had been reduced to $500.

But that was enough. We had to go. $500 for a cat? It was too much. We thanked the woman and left.

But he certainly didn’t leave our minds. Though we said little about him in the following days I couldn’t help but think about the blue eyed cat who’d spent the last 3 months of his life sleeping in a litter box (and as we came to find out later, the first 2 months in a kitty mill).

Over the next couple of weeks he was mentioned here and there, the gorgeous cat at the pet store. A ragdoll. We’d never heard of ragdolls before. I did a little bit of reading on the breed. They are naturally big, that’s why he was so huge already. People wanted tiny kittens, not cats that already looked full grown. Would he ever be adopted?

One Sunday morning after church my mom said, “I can’t stop thinking about that poor kitty.” As it turns out, the government had just recently sent out stimulus checks. Wouldn’t you know ours was for $500. It seemed to be a pretty certain sign. Without another word the decision was made. The only question now was would he still be there. We raced home and called the store?

“Do you still have the ragdoll?”

“Yes”

“We’re on our way.”

As I recall we drove across town pretty quietly. I think we all felt a sense of urgency. Now that we’d decided to get him, what if someone else decided the same and got to him before us? What if after all the time spent in that cage, two people came for him at once.

We burst into the store, our rescue mission nearly complete. I quickly found the woman who we’d spoken to before.

“We’re here for the ragdoll.”

She paused for a moment, with a look of surprise and alarm and then walked over to the cage and gently removed him from the litter box where I guessed he’d spent most of the time since our last visit. She had tears in her eyes. She had become very attached to him but of course realized that he needed a real home.

I remember very little of the purchase process, I just knew how happy and relieved we all were that he was still there and that he was finally coming home.

Dusty didn’t get his name right away. At first we talked about calling him Zach since he was so floppy (typical ragdoll) that he seemed relaxed or like he was “on proZACH”. But that name just didn’t seem to fit. He wasn’t all that relaxed after all, in fact he was pretty afraid of his new environment. His leg muscles had atrophied due to lack of use and it was a couple weeks before he could walk well. He was fearful of his new, much larger surroundings and the old cat Mickey didn’t exactly welcome him home. He hid a large part of that first afternoon home and when he came out from behind the washer and dryer he was covered in fluff and dust. He became Dusty from that point forward.

He was never a lap cat but he dearly loved my brother and I know D. felt the same about him. He always carried a regal air about him, as though he knew just how very beautiful he was. He never snapped, hissed, bit, scratched or otherwise hurt so much as a fly and I’ll never forget bringing Rosie home for the first time and seeing him fall in love with the tiny kitten. I’ll always remember catching the two kitties in the bathtub licking each other on the face, “kissing”.

Last June, Dusty got sick. It was hard to tell he was sick because he was never one to eat much or be very playful. He sat and observed the world as it passed him by. By the time we realized he was sick it was already pretty serious but tests, medication and a tremendous amount of care got him through. We thought we were going to lose him last June but he held on for just a little while longer. Then, over the last month or so, he started developing breathing problems. My mom would race him to the vet’s office, to find that his lungs had filled with fluid. Four separate times, the vet removed several ounces of fluid from off his lungs. My mom and brother tried a least a dozen different therapies but the last and most promising never really got the opportunity to work. His lungs filling with fluid so quickly that he would have needed to be tapped every other day if not more frequently. His pain was quietly ended on Saturday.

Were it not for Dusty, we would not have known about ragdoll cats nor would we have gone on to adopt 4 additional raggies. And during the course of time he was sick, my mom, eternal cat lover and animal activist, managed to adopt 3 additional cats from the vet’s office. So all because of Dusty, 7 more cats found places in our lives. And anyone who says shelter animals need to be rescued never saw what it was like for a sweet and loving cat to be trapped in a cage with no place to rest but his litter box. He was rescued too and I hope we gave him a good life. I hope he knows how much we loved him. Rest in peace sweet Dusty.

The day we got him.

June 2009