Dancing Without Rhythm

I may have created a monster. A sweet, cute, happily playing one, but a monster nonetheless. It's 10:46 pm and Avee is contentedly sitting in the sink playing with the toothbrushes. I put her to bed at 8. I put Benja to bed at 8. He fell in a drunk heap onto the bed and was never to be heard from again tonight. She, on the other hand, sang drunkly, wailed, whined, cried, and cursed until I went back and got her. She has never objected to bedtime. She enjoys bedtime.

But today, while she was napping, I was outside with the baby monitor on to cue me when she woke up. I kept waiting to hear her hearty guffaws (from whatever jokes she tells herself when she first wakes up) or her loud yells to be retrieved. But they never came. I finally went near her room and just heard a desperate, exhausted, lost-hope wail. I have no idea how long she had been crying. The monitor had been unplugged. She usually will play happily in her crib for a good 20-30 minutes (I know from the 7:00 am wake-up calls she sometimes gives) without ever crying. And then she'll sort of whine for another 15 minutes. Not that I ever let it go that long...

She had long passed those stages and when I got to her she had clearly been crying for a very long time. Nothing makes me feel more crappy as a parent. Fortunately she suffers from short-term memory not-having and she was over it soon enough. But man, what a lousy way to spend an afternoon!

However, I think I'm paying for it now. She wants nothing to do with that black hole of a crib where no one hears her cries. Can't say I blame her. I'm going to indulge her in a little late night carousing. I owe her at least that. And as soon as she's done with her diet cherry coke, we're both going to bed.

I'm mostly just blogging so you don't think I got eaten alive by a poxed up, broken granola bar-bearing couple of kids.

Avee seems in better spirits, (extreme neglect aside) and she still hasn't scratched a single chicken or pox.
Here's how she looks. After she's been crying an indeterminate length of time, it looks a little worse.
Her face is the worst, and as you can see, it's fairly minimal. Not bad for a pale skinned redhead who's bound to suffer some skin difficulties in her formative social years. I'd say there were a couple of jr high days weeks years in somebody's past that didn't fare as well as this.

Her back is probably the next most poxed. The biggest reddest mark is a birthmark. Do not be alarmed. Yes I've seen it. I gave birth to her, I saw it when both she and it were 30 seconds old. It is only a birth mark. No it's not growing. Yes I keep an eye on it. No it's not moving. Yes it has its own zip code, but as far as I know, that doesn't make it fatal.

Aren't those little curls precious?

Posted by Angela on Thursday, September 14, 2006 at 9/14/2006 | Permalink