The butterfly emerges from her cocoon tomorrow...

I've been thinking for the last few days what it's really going to be like when Cecilia is set free from her three month prison sentence. For some reason it's almost difficult to remember what it was like to see her kick-kicking with excitement, or standing up holding on to the back of the couch, or sitting in the sand on the beach playing in the shallow pool of water. When she was swaddled she would let us know she was done sleeping by thumping her legs together in the crib.

Since she hasn't slept but more than a night or two in the crib in three months, both the crib and the changing table have both felt like decorative, but fundamentally useless furniture.

It's a wonder how only three months time feels like another lifetime. Now it makes more sense why people say they need to relearn everything when they have a second child; the constant feeding, the sleepless nights, and the most common, how little a newborn is. We've been told that only the latter two will apply in our case. She should maintain her diet but will be sore and uncomfortable for a while and she will seem smaller now that the giant cast isn't filling out her pj's for her. She'll also be pretty soft and squishy. I won't be able to hang onto her bar and prop her on my lap without squirming.

All of these things I've gotten used to, but I'm sure the alternative will be much better. Since I was asked to list the things that I'm most looking forward to here goes:

I can't wait to tumble around with her. Once she starts to crawl (which will hopefully be soon) she can crawl all over me en route from one place to another.

I can't wait to see her smiling glance up at me when she is able to grab my fingers again and take a few steps and collapse in her waiting mother's lap.

I can't wait to see her explore new things that she finds on her own without us having to put something on her table for her to play with. Granted, her rocking chair table has been unbelievably helpful and I can hardly imagine living for three months without it, but to be free of the chair will be amazing.

I can't wait to tickle her tummy and see her squirm with excitement. (I may be reversing my position when I have to buckle her onto the changing table because she won't stay still).

I can't wait to take her swimming. I'm sure Katie already mentioned the bath and I am excited for that but I bet she is more. I did buy a big rubber duckie at the Sugar Shack in Vegas last week for her to play with in her first bath. We'll see how that goes - the bath I mean. I'm sure by the time she likes the bath, she will love the duck.

As I've been writing this, I'm thinking of the sweet little girl on my flight home from Phoenix this morning. Her mother, who I think has the same condition, was taking her to Shriners Hospital in Salt Lake for a doctor visit. Though they could both walk somewhat, they both had a deformity of their legs. As I was overhearing parts of her conversation, I was struck by how chipper and pleasant they both were. We all have unique challenges. Some are more difficult to deal with but we take them in stride. When people see baby C they always say, "she seems to be dealing with it just fine." My initial thought is to ask, "how else would she deal with it?"

I'm grateful for the challenges we've had to go through, I guess, mostly because I know that my daughter's are temporary. When people say they can't imagine going through something like we have, I have to think of others going through much more difficult circumstances.

If this is our challenge, I'll take it. But, hey, I'm glad it's over tomorrow.

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, Tomorrow!

On this, the last full day of Cecilia being in the cast, I decided to document some things I haven't yet. This week I've been trying to better document this period of our lives. I know someday Cecilia will be interested to learn about what she went through.

I noticed I have a ton of closeup pictures of her in her spica chair, but not many where you can see the whole chair. So we put her on the wood floor and let her rock out while eating dinner.



The chair was the first saving grace in this whole thing, the second has been walks in the stroller. Cecilia loves birds, the duck pond is her favorite thing at the zoo. A few weeks ago I took her to Sugarhouse park because they also have a pond of ducks, geese, seagulls and other birds. The first time I took her, she jumped up and down in her cast and squealed the whole time. So yesterday we had to get a video, not as good as the first time we went there, but you get the idea.



Now to two home pictures. She loves to look out the window and only recently would she stand on the couch. Here I got a great full body shot. I can't wait to put her up there when she can really stand and see how tall she is!


Lastly, how she sleeps. We tried putting her in the crib and prop up her legs with pillows. But the urine would just run up the back and get the cast wet. Plus she loved this beanbag. She just snuggles right into it. So we bailed on the crib and put her in this to sleep. As I was putting her into it tonight I realized that after tomorrow's nap, she will never sleep in it again. It was a little scary because she loves it and I'm nervous she won't nap in her crib.


That is about it for our lives for the last three months. Tomorrow we start a new era. I'm more nervous about it than I thought I would be to tell you the truth. Cecilia hates change and this one is going to be a big one for her. We have to relearn how to do a few things (like pick her up), and I don't know how long it will take for life to get back to normal. Don't get me wrong, I'm still really excited, but just nervous too.

Things I'm looking forward to

This post may take me a couple of days to write, but I think it will be fun to look back on in a few weeks or months from now so it will be worth it. I'll even try to get Shaun to find sometime in his busy schedule to weigh in too.
There are so many things I'm looking forward to when Cecilia is out of this cast. Hopefully writing them down will make me appreciate them more when they happen. In approximate order:
1. Hug my daughter. She has this giant bar that gets in the way of me really being able to hug her. You can get close from behind, but it just isn't the same.
2. Give her a bath. She doesn't stink too bad now, but I can't wait to not worry about her getting really messy, or spilling milk down the front of her, or the giant blowout she just had. Not to mention the fact that she used to love them and would burn an half hour just playing in the water. On a side note, I have learned that most babies cry through their first bath (or more) after they get the cast off. Some moms think it is the shock on their skin, some think they are afraid of the water now because they haven't been in it. So while this first experience probably won't be all that it could be, hopefully it won't take too many to get there.
3. Set her down for just one minute while I run and do something. There have been more times than I can count when I'm holding her and just need to set her down for a minute and run in the other room, or even put my shoes on. Now I have to buckle her into something first, the chair or the stroller.
4. Get sleeping back on track again. She has missed more naps, woken up more at night, missed more sleep than I ever expected. I think this is the one thing that surprised me the most about this experience. I really hope she will take two naps again once she is more active. If not, I will cry. And no, she doesn't just need one nap. Any child who goes to bed at 5:30 needs two naps.
5. "Wear" her while I run an errand. I have this carrier that hugs her to my hip and I can't wait to use it again. I want to pick her up and run into the store for something quick, rather than get out the stroller, or dead weight a 21 pound awkward baby around. Like going to the library, it will be so much better.
6. Watch her roll over. She did this about a week before she got the cast on and we worked so hard to get her to do it. I wonder how long it will take this time.
7. Watch her learn to crawl. We wonder if this won't happen and she will go straight to walking because she was doing it with our help before the cast. But I see these babies at church crawling and I just can't wait to see Cecilia doing that too. Maybe then she won't whine so much when a toy is out of her reach.
8. Tickle her. This one is farther down my list than it will be on Shaun's because I can still reach under the cast and tickle her tummy (see this video). But she has this spot between her butt and her upper thigh I'm dying to get at.
9. Dress her in pants. This one is also farther down my list because I have a girl and putting her in a dress everyday for the past three months hasn't been that bad. Although it probably will change the way I look at dresses for the rest of my life, now I look at it wondering if it will fit over a cast :) But it will be so nice to have unlimited options to dress her again.
10. Use a nursing pillow. Let's just say nursing a baby in a body cast is not the most comfortable thing and my arm muscles have gotten a lot stronger. Perhaps I should have put this one higher on the list as it really will change our lives quite a bit, but I know it is short lived in the grand scheme and we have adapted. In fact it is hard for me to remember how I used to hold her and worry we will have another learning curve here.
11. Watch her learn to walk. Like I said, she was getting the hang of moving her feet in front of the other before the cast and it will be so exciting to see it happen again and see how long it takes her to walk. This is one of the things that are totally up in the air. Shaun and I talk about it often. We can't help but think it will happen quickly, but the doctor says this is one of those things that are hard wired into the brain and you can't make it happen faster than they would normally do it. Also if they were going to learn to walk while in the cast then they will come out and do it quickly. So the million dollar question is, when will Cecilia's brain tell her to walk?

Time

As we near the end of this era, hopefully forever, I've been thinking about time. It is interesting to me how the same amount of time can pass quickly for one person and slowly for another. As you can guess the last 3 months have gone by slowly for me, but for many people I tell Cecilia gets her cast off on Monday they say "Wow, has it been 3 months already? That has gone by fast." And I say "for you." But when you are looking forward to an event in the distance it seems like you will never get there. Here we are, just 4 days away (I count the days as finished when I get Cecilia down to bed) and it has felt like 6 months, or more. Shaun and I were discussing how hard it is to remember her without the cast. How did we pick her up, and how will we when it comes off? Changing her diaper is certainly different, I vaguely remember a day when I had to dodge the legs to get it on her, but it feels like an eternity ago. I have to go back and watch the video's of her kicking her legs and standing on the couch and try to envision it. It is hard.
I'm getting side tracked. Time. Sometimes it takes looking forward to an event for a long time to really look at each day and take stock of what happened. It isn't until you do that, that the days are counted. And once the days are counted, they slow down. I don't think I would remember the last three months as well if I were just living my life from day to day. I don't know if this makes sense to you, but in my mind it does, and it has enlightened my brain to think about it. So take stock of your days, and you will remember them better. Even the ordinary chase your kids around and change their diapers kind of days. For they will pass quickly, and you never know when a sudden change will come and change those ordinary days completely.

7 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes and 40 seconds

Ok so I don't know the exact second the cast will come off, and the doctor will probably be running late so it might be closer to 3 hours, but the fact remains... 7 DAYS LEFT!!!!

When people ask me "How much longer does she have?" I can officially say, "Monday" (and proceed to jump around and grin from ear to ear). No more of this __ week stuff, we are down to days.

Cecilia is excited too, see

Major Accomplishment

First let me say, TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY!!! Can you tell I'm excited? I started a list of all of the things I have to do before then and I think it is enough to keep me busy. Which will be good because hopefully I won't be so antsy.

Now on to Cecilia's major accomplishment of last week. She DRANK FROM A SIPPY CUP!!! Ok so maybe I'm a little over excited today, but really it was a huge deal. We've been working on it for a long time. Since she got in the cast really, which we all know was 10 weeks ago. She would drink from a sports bottle that drips liquid into her mouth, she would open her mouth for it. But until last week she would never suck anything. But they say the key to getting them to take a sippy cup is to keep trying different kinds of cups, with different liquid, at different temperatures, until you find what they like. Well I finally found the perfect cup. It was made for her and her peculiarities. I won't bore you with the details. But she picked it up, tentatively tasted what was inside, and sucked down about an ounce.

She is such an apple girl. The first time I got her to actually open her mouth for food was for applesauce. And the way I get her to let me trim her nails is to give her an apple slice to suck on (although now that she has teeth and knows how to use them I can't do it anymore). So of course the way I would get her to take a sippy cup would be with diluted apple juice. I tried it before, but I guess I didn't have the right sippy. But now... Well see for yourself and if you watch to the end you will see her famous clap (that I proudly taught her to do).



Oh and another major accomplishment of last week, she started sleeping through the night on a regular basis. Maybe that is why I'm so excited today, because I'm better rested. Nah, I'm still not sleeping through the night even though she is. I guess I'm too trained and wake up waiting for her to get up, or wake up to go to the bathroom. Shaun keeps thinking he slept through me getting up and wakes up in a panic. Who sleep trained whom? :)

Wave Hello and Goodbye

My parents recently came to visit and they were waving goodbye to Cecilia and it looked like something clicked and she waved back to them. It was amazing! Well I was recording her eating yesterday and caught these anomalies on tape. Enjoy!

Less than 4 Weeks!

I meant to post on Monday, which was the day that we had 4 weeks left. But it didn't happen. Oh well, less than 4 weeks is even better. I hope they go by quickly!
So some milestones that have happened since I last wrote are:

Cecilia has decided she doesn't want to be swaddled anymore. This experience has been a lot easier than I thought it would be. I think the real lesson here for me was, she will let us know when she is ready for something. We have tried a couple of times to break her from the swaddle because she was getting so old for it and thought maybe that was the cause of her not sleeping in the past (instead of looking at the elephant in the room with is the CAST!). But our previous attempts didn't go well and Shaun ended up rocking her to sleep every time. The difference came last Wednesday night when she kept breaking out of the wrap and crying because she didn't know what to do after she got out. After we reswaddled her, changed her diaper, and fed her we realized it was the wrap that was the problem and time to let her cry it out. It is really difficult to let your child cry at 3 am. You want to sleep and every minute seems much longer than that when you are laying in your bed watching them go by. But we knew it was time and she made the decision to break out of the swaddle. It only took her a half hour of hard crying to start to calm herself down and after an hour she was back asleep. I knew once we started the journey we had to finish it. So it was cold turkey from there. Next night she was awake when I put her down, which isn't normally a problem, but I was nervous about her putting herself to sleep with her arm flailing. But she talked for a little while and then fell asleep WITHOUT CRYING! Shaun and I were both shocked and I worried that she was just gearing up for the fight. But no, every night since then she has either put herself to sleep, or stayed asleep when I put her down with no fuss. I have been so incredibly proud of her and really think it was because she was ready for it and it was her decision. I need to remember this next time I'm trying to make a change and it isn't going well (especially when we potty train her). Naps took a lot longer to get back on track, but we are used to that with this cast on. In fact today was the first day she put herself to sleep for a nap. I knew naps would be harder, but decided it was best to do it all at the same time. Hopefully she will be back to normal again, for the next four weeks and then everything is in the air again :)

The other update is Cecilia is totally a pro at feeding herself now. Any food I put on her table that is finger food, she picks it up and gets it in her mouth first try. I have to be careful with how much bread I give her because she just shoves them all in her mouth at the same time. It has been so much fun to watch her figure things out so quickly. I'll have to take a video to show you.
That is about it, just hoping 26 days go by fast!