All Good

TIMEOUTS

And she’s back in full force – better than before, if that was possible. The last two days have been perfectly perfect, with hilarity found in the most random places – a roll of tape, the bath tub, and even timeout. As she’s regained her energy back, she has decided to test the limits. Which makes me both proud and frustrated.

She’s landed herself in timeout a few times for simple things, like not helping to put away a puzzle, to really big things, like hitting. When I tell her she has to “go sit by herself” her reactions vary from devastated to ho-hum-la-de-da. The highlight of this new phase, aside from the conversations that follow, is the singing that she belts out from the rocking chair. It comes at show-tune volume, even through the bedroom door. So far her specialties have been “Puff The Magic Dragon” and “Take Me home, Country Roads,” her latest two favorite song books.

I have to work very, very hard to gather myself before going into see her – because if she’s singing, she’s in a hilarious mood and I love a hilarious mood. She now grasps the concept of time-outs and so far it has been effective, we’ll see when it needs to happen in public sometime, which I’m hoping won’t be for a long, long time.

FAMILY LOVE

I meant to write about how amazing both my mom and Barry were last week, during The Week That We Shall Forget, and maybe I did? But both of them were rocks. Barry was calm,  steady and reassuring, as always. He also spent his days divided between home and work, a stress in its own right. My mom was all of those things as well, but in a flurry of activity – prepping food, wetting cloths, and jumping at a chance to hold Maggie. I felt kind of like a wet rag, full of emotion and on edge, just wanting it all to be over.

When it seemed that we’d finally turned the corner for the better, my mom came down again and Maggie finally was alert enough to appreciate her presence. This meant that I got to take a long, long shower and even go to the store. When I was showering, and even when I was at the store,  I kept thinking to myself how similar the feeling I was carrying was to having a newborn. That shower made me feel like a million bucks and being at the store made me feel like I’d flown around the world in the hour I’d been gone.

When the clouds cleared and our house started to feel like the same old house again, we started to get visitors. My grandparents arrived with jam and a bouquet of flowers from their garden, my grandmother claiming that she’d held my grandfather away as long as possible. They played hoops in the backyard and we all ate popsicles.

Greg came by as well and worked with Maggie on her sticker book and went over the ins and outs of playing catch. Maggie delighted in the attention and was zonked out after both visits – still recovering. Aside from having visitors, we also started to revisit toys that we’d forgotten about. Maggie worked on covering her rocking horse in tape and we dug out some old favorites, but it’s hard to beat some simple cuddle time with Papa….