You people, with your sensible suggestions to call my doctor. Sheesh. Can you not just reassure me based on fuzzy pictures and vague descriptions?
Ella’s belly button turned out to be normal. The NP we saw said something about some ring or other that hadn’t yet closed but would do so. I don’t know. It was hard to concentrate what with all the screaming she was doing at the moment. It now does, indeed, look normal.
Funny story: Before the cord fell off, when her belly button was all swollen, Gatito asked whether, once the cord fell off, her penis would be smaller.
As for my stomach, I saw Dr. WCS today. He had me come in to check for pools of blood that may have formed. Everything checked out fine and it was declared to be sore muscles. (And they are not separated. AND he complimented me on the strength of my abdominal muscles. AND he said that a lot of my fat clearly had the texture of water and would therefore come off easily.* Great appointment!) The pain is extremely mild and not an inhibitor at all, so good to know it’s normal. He recommended wearing shapewear types of garments, which I am already doing, for support (but not for more than 3-4 months).
* 28 pounds down, 16 to go. Good god, I gained a lot of weight.
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Last week, on my own without Tata, went shockingly well. I mean, it was exhausting, but everything really came together and I managed to care for two kids by myself just fine. It was a good boost to my confidence. The hardest part was that I could not get a break when A came home from work, since there were still two kids who needed attention and Gatito really needed some one-on-one by then. The best part was that the weekend and the past two days, with Tata back, have been amazingly easy by comparison!
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Gatito started viola this week. He has a private lesson on Saturdays and a group on Tuesdays, to which Tata will take him when I go back to work. He started with a box viola, which is just what it sounds like (made out of cardboard) but I believe after this Saturday we will be allowed to order his real viola. He was almost asleep when we arrived at the music school for his lesson this afternoon and was grumpily refusing to get out of the car. Finally, sullenly, he said, “I don’t think my viola sounds very good.” I just started to laugh and then he started to laugh and we went in and everything was fine.
There were four boys in the lesson, two on violin and two on viola, and it was rather amusing to watch the poor teacher try to deal with them… not to mention their parents. One four-year-old had to be told not to put his bow in his mouth. “Pizza and apples are food, not bows,” he told him. Another six-year-old simply could not sit still or kept answering questions not addressed to him. Gatito was in his element, particularly because I’d emailed the teacher in advance and told him about Gatito’s anxiety in new situations and suggested ways to help. One of the mothers had her younger child (2ish) in the room with her and the child sang along to Twinkle Twinkle… and then kept singing long after the class had moved on. Another had her four other children there, including a newborn and a two-year-old, neither of whom, obviously, could keep quiet. Suzuki is all about parental involvement, but the teacher had to ask them to wait with the younger kids outside next time.
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Gatito’s school seems to be going well. After that first day, I did not find him happily playing on the playground, Cow forgotten. I have since found him holding onto Cow and talking to a teacher on the sidelines. I would rather see him playing, of course, but I do feel at least that the school is responsive and dealing with it. When I mentioned it to the director last week, she promised to raise it at the staff meeting that afternoon and assured me that the would never leave a child alone. I can see that they are trying to help him interact (and they reported that he painted with another little boy today) and that it does not seem to make them resent him, as in his other school, and so I will just wait and see what happens. I wish I could understand what are the triggers that sometimes enable him to run around and play like a “normal” preschooler and sometimes not. It’s a process, I guess.
Oh wow! Lots of great news and great stories!
Since I was the one who spent grade school, to a great extent, on the sidelines talking to teacher, let me ask you – does Gatito do better interacting when there’s a structured activity in place? I didn’t know how to “break in” to a group, and I wasn’t good at suggesting games, but if someone was already playing tetherball… I was fine. Just asking.
I remember shortly after delivering Ainsley, my OB’s partner came in and looked at my stomach. He lacked the bedside manner my OB had, so needless to say I FREAKED OUT when he took out a blue pen and drew a line across my stomach. “Tell your husband to let me know if that red mark goes above the ink line I just drew. That means there is blood pooling in your abdomen and we need to drain it out.” He walked out and I burst into tears. Of course, we watched it like hawks for days and the redness never moved.
So glad that you have watery fat. (hehe – I wish my fat was watery!) And that everything else seems to be going pretty well!!
I agree about the structured vs. non-structured activities. I was and am the same way, as is my daughter. I think it might have something to do with being a first or only child. These kids are often used to the calm, polite, give and take of interaction with adults. It’s a different world with unpredictable kids where you don’t always have the opening for your “in”. If you’re naturally shy or introverted it cab be really difficult to figure out how to work your way into that unstructured environment. There are times when my daughter plays wonderfully “normally” and other times when she seems so painfully shy that I feel guilty for inflicting my genes on her. I just have to remember (which is hard when you’re anxiety prone as I am) to focus on the highs and not the lows. It sounds like this school is more on the ball and will value him no matter what. So cross that off the worry list.
Everything okay? Not to be all stalkerey, just hoping all is well, and that you are just too busy enjoying life with two incredibly cool kids.