Milestone, unexpected

[Thanks for all your questions! I'm working on answers -- they'll go up in my next post.]

Last night, Munchkin passed another milestone I didn't see coming.

She's 19 months old now, and, like her cohort, is in full tantrum mode, a toddling bundle of wild desires and poorly enunciated words and clumsy gestures and imperfect balance, a developing will incompletely able to achieve its goals. It's not been pleasant around our house this week. Tuesday, we had a 75 minute screaming meltdown precipitated by a not-timely-enough sliding on of the tray to the highchair. Monday was a bathtime-to-bedtime scream-a-thon, too. Wednesday, we moved dinner dramatically forward, which helped, but she completely lost it just as, pyjama-clad, washed, and with soother clipped reassuringly to her zipper, she was handed into my arms for her goodnight bottle. Half an hour of screaming and flailing and punching and kicking and slapping later, her father managed to soothe her into bed.

We were not surprised to hear her wailing again at 9:45pm. I went up to her, earplugs stuffed into my head, bottle in hand. She was sitting dejectedly in the crib, her head tipped forward, hands clutching her doudou, sobbing quietly but insistently. I picked her up and she slapped me: half-asleep, she wanted to lie down but couldn't figure out why she was sitting up. She needed help but didn't want to be awake, period. I held her under her bum and let her decide when to ask for her doudou, for her suck-suck. Her eyes would shut and her mouth drop open, slack and snoring: yes, she kept falling asleep, sitting upright against my hip, jerking herself awake, confused. Finally, she dropped her head against my shoulder and rubbed my arm softly through her doudou. She asked for her bottle and we sat in the chair together. She fell soundly asleep almost immediately but woke up when milk dribbled onto her chin.

"All done," she muttered, arching away from the nipple and extending her arms back into a 'biiiiig stretch.'

I kissed her head, gave her a hug, and lifted her, like always, prone from the rocking chair to the crib. I laid her down on her back, her head on her little pillow, pulling the blankets up to her chin.

And then it happened: stretching and sighing with relief to be once more almost asleep, she rolled neatly onto her side, pulled up her knees, and tucked doudou under her chin as she drew her fists into her body.

I almost burst into tears. I've never seen her do anything but lie there when put to bed, cooing and wriggling maybe, but passively waiting for sleep. Her roll and tuck manoeuvre struck me as so ... grownup? Solitary? Personal? I'm not sure, but it felt significant to me. Heartbreaking and adorable, my poor little girl who's having such a hard time not being a baby, not being a big girl, sweaty golden curls wisping back from her face, a profile I've never seen before, by nightlight, calm at last.

If it's not love, then it's the bomb the bomb the bomb

Okay.  Beck did it, and it looked like so much fun I'll do it too.

Got a question?  I'll answer it.  Go on, shoot.  Anything at all.  Don't leave me hanging, 'k?

The power of two?

Some of you might be wondering if Pynchon and I have flip-flopped on our one-child decision already. Nope! I have been considering the power of two, though, this week.

Two: case 1

The plumber has been here twice this month. To rescue the same toilet, if from two different problems essentially related to the crappiness (if you will) of said toilet. Actually, it was two plumbers, from the same company. The first plumber, a hearty and avuncular short and round fellow who whistled a lot, arrived just before Christmas, knocking at the side door. He entered the house, then, through the kitchen. He stopped short.

"Wow," he said, "you guys have done a lot of work here, eh? It's looking pretty open for such an old house."

"Thanks," I replied, morose. "We did, but it looks like we're selling it soon."

The second plumber, a tall and thin whippersnapper more than a decade younger than your humble narrator, rang the bell at the front of the house. He entered through the vestibule into the living room / office area. He stopped short.

"Wow," he said, "this place is really modern looking. You must've done a lot of work, eh, cause it's a really old house."

"Thanks," I replied, rolling my eyes, "we were aiming for modern. We just sold it."

Weird, eh? So on the one hand, the plumbers admire the architecture and the interior design. On the other hand, these plumbers were not, shall we say, invited over socially. At least the first guy gave us a ten dollar off coupon we were able to give to the second guy.

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Two: case 2

My new MacBook Pro arrived yesterday! I was soooo excited, and so was Pynchon, because a new MacBook Pro for me means a PowerBook G4 falls into his sole and entire possession. I was very excited by the much-touted Setup utility that would just zip the contents of Machine A into Machine B.

Theoretically.

Until I spent 40 minutes on the phone with Apple technical support, and then it finally worked just after the tech and I had given up, but then it took two hours of work and I stayed up wayyyy too late last night doing something I had imagined being a breezy and fun afternoon of file transfer.

Ha.


But, after time-to-the-power-of-two longer than I expected it to take, it's done. And now everyone has their own computer. Woo!

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Two: case 3
Old Navy is having a smoking good sale (apologies to those who are off the shopping cart until March) right now. I bought Munchkin a load of spring clothes. As she is fitting just perfectly into her size 2T clothes right now, I bought size 3T for the next lot.

We tried some pants on her when we got home.

Here's the thing: kids wearing size 3T? Are supposed to be toilet trained. So, the rise on the pants is really really low. How low? When I was pulling them up over her bum, so confident was I that there was more material to come that when I hitched up the waistband, her feet lifted off the floor and she pitched forward. Whoops. Munchkin will be very stylish in April, wearing hipster baby pants with a generous swath of Pampers hanging out the top.

What are you supposed to do when your 19 month old is straining out of her 2Ts?

WW: "Cahhhp-CAKE!"

Partial victory, and a triumph of the will

We sold our house, Friday.

It was awful and acrimonious and the would-be condo tycoons tried to ruin our Christmas, but we held fast, and sure enough, on January 4--yeah, right after the holiday--they offered to give us 'one more chance.' Pynchon reminded them that they, and not us, had walked away from negotiations, in no uncertain terms, and in terms, indeed, that seemed manipulative and cruel.

A representative from the city acted as mediator.

Pynchon went to the negotiation without me; I was far to angry and scared and righteous. We did a lot of homework and prepared reams of paper backing up our position and showing Those Jackasses to be manipulative liars. I will spare you the details of what, even with a third party observer, was a petty and argumentative process.

I will tell you, though, that the offer we accepted is quite likely to buy us a home on a par with our current one, on a more desirable (ie, quieter, more kid-friendly) street in our same neighbourhood. I will tell you that it is significantly higher than the offer they made in December, and that we got a higher settlement than our neighbours who chose to put themselves out of their misery before Christmas. I will also tell you Condo Jerks were so ill-willed about it that they removed the clause from the contract that set out to pay our moving expenses. Did we get more than the house would have fetched on the 'open market'? Yes, we did. Did we get a price that reflects the value of this property as part of the package for redevelopment? Probably not.

Too frazzled to work that afternoon, I sprung Munchkin early from daycare, and met Pynchon for a celebratory? consolatory? sugary treat at Starbucks, as, dazed, we tried to figure out whether we were happy or not. The process left a very bad taste in Pynchon's mouth, and he hated to do anything to make Those Bastards happy. I never wanted to move at all, and was trying to find a way to see the sale--at any price--as a victory.

We sat. Munchkin ate an entire oat bar, and helped Tiger, Boy, and Hippo 'sip' from Mommy's latte. Pynchon swirled the straw around his Iced Grande Passion Tea, listening with eyes downcast as I tried to rationalize it. Did we do the right thing? We did the right thing. We did. Didn't we?

As we sat there, it became clearer and clearer that what mattered was that, as a family, we were going to be okay: we can now afford another house, we won't have to worry about the high speed bus line, or the student rental across the street (although we might miss the new couple we've been trying to arrange a wine-drinking evening with, and we will miss Bill and Helen); we will stay in our neighbourhood, running into Munchkin's daycare classmates at the grocery store, all my colleagues at the liquor store, the regulars at Starbucks.

We're going to be okay. Maybe even better than just okay, maybe with a similar sized house on a larger lot with an actual backyard and no need to wear earplugs to block out the whizzing, constantly whizzing, traffic.

I took this picture when we moved in. I was in love. Writing this post, and pulling together the links, I was startled to see how much of this blog centres on my house and my neighbourhood, how much my place is my life. But now? Even still? I'm starting to think, tentatively, of moving on.