Circus Week

This past week at daycare the theme was the circus. It has been an exciting week for all of us; brightly coloured crafts, face paintings, daily phone calls to Grandma enlisting her to find him a circus we can go to and endless conversastions about clowns, animals and circus acts filled our days. But this morning I realized he hadn't entirely gotten circus-speak down pat.

We were eating waffles with syrup and discussing how much fun it would be to go to a real circus. Toby was imaging what he would see- - clowns, elephants, tigers and dribblers.

DRIBBLERS?

What were dribblers? I asked.

Toby responded by putting his fork down and acting out a juggling act while explaining, “You know, mommy, DRIBBLERS, the guys who poke balls in the air like this!”

I corrected the name “dribblers” to be “jugglers” but left the act of “poking balls into the air” alone. In fact, I think it’s a rather clever way of explaining what juggling is.

Bath time "excitement"

Mia has been working very hard lately at mastering a skill that has taken me weeks to teach her. It is with great pride that I can finally report…that she can kick her feet in the bath.

And cause a splash.

On command.

It doesn’t seem like much, but she has taken this conquest VERY seriously. So seriously, in fact, that she does it with the STERNEST of looks on her little face. She reminds me of one of those crazy kilted dancers whose upper torso is totally immobile while their legs kick in and out at such a fast pace you wonder how they can possibly be attached to the upper body. As soon as she gets in the bath her eyebrows furrow, her little tongue pokes out (this is her look of intense concentration) and then her little legs start kicking and kicking, water splashes everywhere and, while I erupt into hands-clapping-mouth-open-high-pitched-encouraging-baby-voice-laughter she just stares at me in deep concentration.
No matter how much splashing occurs, how hard I clap or laugh; she doesn’t dare even CRACK a smile.

It is fantastic to see that she CAN learn things and that she is even somewhat obedient by humouring me in my insistence that she learn this new skill. But if she weren’t such a smiley, happy baby at other times, I would have serious concerns about her inability to find the “fun” in this activity. From the look on her face the only thing I can imagine that she is thinking is “For some reason you want me to kick and splash in the bath - -well here you go. But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

The Yoga Master

The other day I made the mistake of introducing Toby to the sport of yoga. I didn’t think he’d actually LIKE Yoga- - so far he has just been a busy little boy who loves sports that involve balls and running; turns out he likes the downward dog as well.

Most parents would find it awesome that their 3 year old son readily engages in yoga. At first I found it charming, but today, it was nothing but torture.

I got Toby early from daycare today so he could have a nap and ended up having one of those miraculous moments when BOTH children were asleep. AT THE SAME TIME. I didn’t know whether to sleep, eat or empty the dishwasher and ended up wandering around the house in hypomanic ineptness, accomplishing nothing while marveling at my freedom. Finally I managed to focus my energy and have a snack, do a few chores and then put on an exercise video.

It was one of those ANNOYING videos that CLAIM to be only 40 minutes long (which is a LOONG time when you’re post partum and on severely rationed amounts of alone time) when in fact it was actually FIFTY TWO minutes long. About 41 minutes in I decided Toby’s nap had been long enough and woke him up, rationalizing to myself that I’d finish the video in his presence (while secretly thinking he’d convince me to do something else instead). Sneaky, I know. But there has to be SOME advantage to having a three year old.

My plan backfired.

Two minutes in and Toby was completely enthralled in the video and forced me to finish it. And then he wanted to do yoga. I explained to him that it was time for a snack but he would have none of it. If I got to do an exercise video, he should be allowed to do his YOGA video.

Sometimes, in life, there are fights you just can’t muster up the energy to fight. ESPECIALLY after completing a FIFTY TWO MINUTE exercise video. So I turned the yoga on. Toby held the first pose for all of 5 seconds before declaring it “too difficult” and then sitting on the couch. As I went to join him on the couch I was quickly reprimanded and ordered BACK onto the yoga mat.

This routine continued for quite some time. Six minutes to be precise. Which, I might point out, is a LONG TIME when you’re just completed a full FIFTY TWO MINUTE exercise video.

As I found myself immersed in the agony of dolphin, camel and downward dog poses I started dreaming up schemes to outsmart the yoga master who was bossing me around from the couch.

“Maybe we should have a snack, Toby?”

“No…not yet. Get back on the mat”

“Hey, Toby! Lets watch Sesame Street!”

“…No…I like watching Yoga.”

Every now and then, when he could see me gearing up to stop the video he would join me on the mat for a few poses before announcing his yoga inadequacies and assuming his spot on the couch.

Finally, (FINALLY!!!) I was rescued by my beloved daughter who had the good sense to WAKE UP and save me from the inconsiderate yoga nazi I’d created. Although most people would be proud of the fact that their child is well versed in yoga-speak, I have to say (and my thighs and arms agree)…I think I may have created a monster.

Struction Workers

After dinner tonight we went downstairs to find Toby in head to toe construction worker gear – goggles, tool belt, helmet, and orange vest to boot.

“Wow!” said Rob, “Are you a construction worker?”

“Yes!” Replied Toby, “I’m a STRUCTION worker!”

“Awesome!” Encouraged Rob, “What are you going to fix?”

“I’m going to fix GIRLS!” replied Toby

We looked at each other skeptically before Rob questioned this statement and suggested perhaps that he could fix things like cars and buildings.

“No,” Toby had obviously made up his mind, “I’m going to fix girls.”

“So….does that mean you’re a DOCTOR?”

“NO!” Toby started to get angry “I’m a STRUCTION worker and I’m going to fix BROOKLYN”

I’ll spare you the details of the rest of this (ridiculous) conversation. Suffice it to say that there is a little girl in Toby’s daycare (named Brooklyn) who happens to be sick at home right now who APPARENTLY requires full construction worker gear to fix her ailment. So maybe I haven’t done such a great job at explaining what I do for work to the kid. Looking on the bright side, I’m sure construction school is MUCH cheaper than med school and you DEFINITELY get to wear cooler outfits.

The Cure for Colic

I am scientist. Although I love the idea of romance and soul mates and have been known to flirt with religion, deep down in my core most of my beliefs are backed up by double blind placebo control trials with an n >1000. That is, until Mia came into my life.

Similar to how I felt about the whole “day 5 hormonal surge” I initially didn’t think that “baby brain” would apply to me. In fact it was probably the same group of people that told me about the cry day who warned me that upon delivering the placenta you lose part of your brain. I didn’t believe it. It never happened with Toby (not that I can remember, anyway), so I should have been safe this time, too, right?

Wrong.

I noticed my severely handicapped concentration skills on my first night home with Mia. It was 2 am; she was having a marathon feed and I was watching a movie on TV. I was literally 90 minutes into the movie when one of the characters started to have what looked like an epileptic fit. I found myself thinking, “I wonder what’s going on.” Then I started to question why I didn’t know what was going on and I realized that I had been watching the movie with the sound off the entire time. It wasn’t as if there was a ton of stuff going on; I was sitting in an empty room all alone at 2 am for a full 90 minutes in complete silence before I noticed that my difficulty following the movie was due to the fact that I’d inadvertently pressed the mute button an hour and a half ago. No wonder I wasn’t following properly.

Since then, my IQ has seemingly oozed out of me with my breast milk. When Mia became increasingly colicky at around 3 weeks I decided it was time to do some research into it. I had access to dozens of textbooks and online resources as well as some intelligent colleagues. What did I choose? Yahoo Questions and some “Hot Mommy Chat Boards”.

It was then that I threw all scientific evidence on Ovol drops and Gripe water out of the window and laid down my credit card for substances that have absolutely no research to back them up other than some positive reviews on various new-mom forums. I figured it couldn’t do her any harm…

When neither of the above solutions worked I chalked the colic up to the full moon and focused my internet searching to confirming my suspicion that a full moon DOES mess you up. Unfortunately, not even Google complied with my thoughts on this, but somewhere in the depths of my memory I found, in the sober moments of my Grade 13 grad trip to Cancun, something about the Mayan culture accounting for many behaviours on the cycles of the moon. That was evidence enough for me and the fact that Google hadn’t anything to back this up just confirmed that I was unveiling a new theory into colic.

This theory provided me with enough optimism to get through the next week as I watched the moon nightly and waited patiently for the full moon to pass and my new baby to return to her lovely, sleepy, one week self.

When the full moon passed and the colic continued, I sucked up my pride and took her to my doctor. Turns out there were SOME evidence for probiotics and the fact that EVERY SINGLE PHARMACY IN COLLINGWOOD was sold out of them clinched it for me. I dropped an easy $50 and waited the suggested 4-5 days for them to start working with renewed optimism.

When day 7 came and went with equal parts fussiness and crying, I want back to old faithful; yahoo questions. I believe I typed something like “colic + cure + diet”. Because CLEARLY I was doing something wrong with my diet. It didn’t take long to notice the trend in responses; the culprit was so OBVIOUSLY dairy I spit out my latte and vowed off dairy in my last ditch effort to regain my sanity and “cure” my now 6 week old problem child.

The very next day as evening approached I held my breath. Mia snacked at 5, smiled up at me and opened her mouth to unveil a big yawn. And she fell asleep.

Silence.

The colic was gone.

And so here I am, several weeks later having solved the greatest scientific dilemmas of my career. The solution was simple – forget evidence based trials; all I needed was to go dairy free, stop caffeine, start Mia on probiotics and use the occasional dose of ovol drops.

OR maybe she just needed to turn 6 weeks old. Either way, I learned some valuable lessons in patience, astronomy and life beyond science. Maybe this new “mommy brain” is just what I needed…