Bigger Girl Bed

Before Shrike even woke up this morning, I was disassembling the not-so-big girl bed, and getting ready to rearrange furniture.

A little perspective: That's the mattress that we've been sleeping on, on top of the new twin bed. You see what I'm talking about? I wish I had thought to get a photo and me and Peeper in the youth bed, to show just how close the quarters were.

And the new bed, (almost) all put together! (I later added a black fitted sheet to the box spring, which really classes it up a lot. Someday, we'll put a frame under it all. But not this day.

You'll notice that the glider is next to the bed again. For now, I'll be stuffing Mr. Panda in between them to act as a bed rail.

I even got crazy and fixed up these shelves. I removed all the stuffed pandas, vacuumed them and declared them toys. I then took everything off, vacuumed / dusted / wiped it all down, and put it all back together.

Here's a crappy photo of the dresser in its new location (the bed is now where it used to be). I also went through all the baskets on top of it, threw out a ton of stuff and relocated almost all of the rest. All that's left are the "hair basket" full of hairbands and the back-up hair basket, full of headbands, barrettes and other things that she doesn't actually wear, but might some day.

The alarm clock is new to the room, as of yesterday. Many moons ago, I bought a third clock for our bedroom, to live on Shrike's dresser, which is opposite the bed, because when I am was nursing Peeper in bed, I couldn't see through Shrike to her clock and I couldn't roll over to see mine.

I figured that's a moot point now, but I do need to know what time it is when I'm in bed with Peeper in her room. Of course, as of today, it's behind me when I'm in bed nursing her, so maybe I'll just stick to taking my phone in with me. The better to Facebook in the middle of the night with, anyway.

Another shot of the bed, with some of the panda art that had to be relocated when the dresser moved. I'm thinking about moving a few more.

Moving the bed and dresser means that the bookshelf had to go right back where it started. With a few additional pandas.

All that stuff on top of the changing table is waiting to go downstairs and into storage. As are the diapers, as soon as I super wash them one last time. The middle shelf is now stuffed toy storage, as well. I've thought about selling the changing table, but I don't know what we'd do with all those toys.

Oh, and of course, just in time for the less-uncomfortable-for-Mama bed, last night Peeper went down around ten, woke some time before one (I had her settled and I was out within about fifteen minutes) and I didn't hear from her again until eight o'clock this morning!

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I think I've mentioned that Peeper "wears panties all the time, now that she's three years old," but I've not given any sort of update on how that's going.

Actually, it's going quite well.

On her birthday, we went to playgroup in training pants, plus some extra absorbancy, and changed them twice, because she'd already peed when I took her to the potty.

A chat with the mom who was hosting us that day (she has two girls, four and six years old) gave me the confidence to go ahead and take her out in public (and, more importantly, to other people houses) in just panties, and she's done great.

(Basically, she assured me that nobody is going to hate me if Peeper pees on their carpet. I sure hope she's right.)

We still have to tell her when to go potty, she's not telling us at all yet, but in the, what, ten days (!?) that we've been doing this, she's gone on the big potty at friend's houses, Target, Red Robin, the grocery store, the convenience store, and Michael's, that I can think of off-hand, has learned to keep herself from falling in - sometimes with no hands! - and has only had three pee-pee accidents - one at home, one in the backyard, and one at T's house. (Sorry, T!)

Each of those times, I'd either said or at least thought that it was about time to go to the potty, then saw something shiny and didn't take her. Then saw something peedy.

She's had probably the same number of panty-poops, but that's nothing new. Two were at friend's houses, but that's only a issue in terms of having to change panties. Better than peeing on someone's carpet!

(My new diaper bag routine is a couple of pairs of spare panties, a pair of pants, a pair of socks (although we generally ditch our shoes at the door at friends' houses), plus one pair of training pants and a diaper, just in case it comes down to that.

I have pre-ordered (for my store, with the plan to snag one for Peeper) some newly-released bumGenius trainers, which are pull on/off, but with a side-snap escape hatch for poopies. One shell comes with five replacable liners, so you don't have to change the whole thing.

My plan was that when they arrive (late November or early December) we'd probably ditch the old faithful (and getting really short in the stride, and increasingly leaky, the poor dears) bumGenius 3.0s in favor of the trainers for night time, but now I'm starting to wonder if we'll need to do that.

That's right. What you're looking at there is Peeper asleep in her big girl bed, wearing nothing but panties.

(What you're looking at beside the bed is Mr. Panda's booty. He's our make-shift bed rail / floor cushion.)

This is the fourth night that she's slept there, and the second night that she's gone diaper-less, and so far - knock wood - so good.

On Friday, I had her all bathed and diapered and jammied when she either pooped (which she often does, as soon as her jammies go on) or had a pee-pee leak (see above, re sad, old diapers) so I was changing her. When she was nakey, she escaped, and hopped up into her big girl bed, which she'd not slept in since before we got sick at the beginning of September.

I offered to finish her diaper there, but she hid under the blanket and said something about going to sleep there.

I asked her if she wanted to get her night-night goody in her big girl bed, and much to my surprise, she said yes.

To my bigger surprise, she actually fell asleep when I nursed her in it (that's a first), which was around 11:30. Shrike got in around midnight and we talked for a while. Peeper woke up, nursed down, woke back up almost immediately (I guess I snuck out too soon) and nursed back down, before we went to bed around 1:30.

To my astonishment, I didn't hear a peep (so to speak) from her until 8:30 the next morning!

On Saturday, she took a long, diaperless nap in her bed (yeah, I wasn't thrilled, but she was soooo tired) and was up until about 1:30 am. She woke back up at 3:30, and I just crawled in with her and slept there for the remainder of the night. Which was not nearly as long as I'd hoped, given that we had no plans to get up early for the next day.

Last night, she was really tired, and was just having a rough time all around. There were tears and wailing and much very uncharacteristic distress.

When I tried to get her diapered and jammied, she was having none of it. She really would have rather stayed nakey, but eventually started crying for panties. I told her that she had to wear a diaper to sleep, because "It's a really long time, and if you're just in panties, you'll get pee-pee in the bed."

To which she responded, "III wooon't doooo daaaat! III wooon't doooo daaaat! III wooon't doooo daaaat!"

Oh my God. What could I say?

At this point in potty training, am I going to force my kid into a diaper, when she's begging for panties and promising (?) not to pee the bed.

No. No, I am not.

I did tell her, though that she could sleep in her big girl bed in panties (It's a crib mattress, thus waterproof), but if she wanted to sleep in the big bed, she would have to wear a diaper. (We do have a zip-on plastic cover on it, but it has ripped - right down the middle. Thus, the only part that's not protected, is right where she sleeps. Of course.)

She opted for the panties in the big-girl bed.

She fell asleep around 9 in my lap, but like a big dumb ass, I blew the transfer and woke her up. There were a couple of false starts at nursing to sleep in the bed, but she finally conked out in my lap around 11:30 or so.

She had pee-peed maybe fifteen or thirty minutes before that, so I just crossed my fingers, and made plans to wash the sheets in the morning.

I crawled into the big bed and snugged my wife (again!), and Peeper slept until about 5:45. The first thing I did when I got to her, was feel her booty - and she was dry!  Before I got in bed, I took her to the potty and we both peed while she whimpered, then I spent about an hour in bed with her before I snuck out. She slept until 7:57 (seriously, clock is going off at 8, can I get three more minutes?) and was still dry!

I told all the moms at playgroup about it, and she went around the room collecting high-fives!

Tonight, we were torturing her on the way home, around 6 pm, to keep her awake, and around 8, she was begging to "go nighty-night in my big girl bed" but when I relented and laid down, she nursed a while and caught her second wind.

While she was back up, Shrike and I rearranged her bedroom, primarily to make it more comfortable for me to nurse her in that bed.

See, the thing is - in the big bed, she's on my right, but I can just roll a little farther over toward her and give her the left breast just about as easily as the right. But that works because the left one is bigger, and stretches farther. (Oh, come on. You aren't symmetrical either. If you think you are, go strip down and stand in front of a mirror. I'll wait. . . . See?)

But, the way we had her big girl bed set up, I had to lie with her on my left, and it was very hard to get the right breast to her. I had to lean way over and tense up to keep from just rolling on top of her, and usually use my hand to keep it in position.

Lately, my neck and shoulders have been really tense and sore, and I'm thinking that it could be related. I was sort of feeling it before she started sleeping there, but it's gotten much worse over the past few days.

So, we finally got around to shifting things around to the places (more or less) that we've been talking about ever since we converted the crib into the big girl bed.

We unanchored the book/toy shelves, put the crib dresser in that corner, scooted the bed up against it, so it's a headboard, and put the shelves on a different wall, then re-anchored them. I also moved a couple of the panda prints (calendar cuts, actually) because they looked funny with the furniture in the new places.

Other than figuring out where the hell the shelves could go, it was really much easier than we evidently thought it was going to be.

I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with where everything is, but it is much more comfortable, and the little dresser is no longer sitting in the big middle of the floor.

The "book nook" isn't so nooky (huh?) any more, but that's okay. When she's taller, we can flip it upright and stick it in the corner, and it will be very cozy.

Shrike really would have liked to have taken both the glider and the changing table out of the room, but for absolutely no logical reason, I just wasn't ready to do that yet.

We've never actually used the glider for rocking/nursing, and evidently, she no longer wears diapers (I'm not promising that we're done with them - that may have been  fluke, and she may not have another dry night for years), but I just can't do it.

Yes, I know, there's plenty of room for diapers - or the new trainers - and "washies" in the crib dresser, if we even still need them, and there's a nice, comfy bed to sit on, but nope, just not ready to make it that much of a "big girl room."

I'm not really sure how I feel about all this.

The potty-training thing, I'm mostly thrilled with, but it is just a little bittersweet.

The big girl bed, I'm very ambivalent about.

On the one hand, I am so proud of her for being big enough to make this decision (at least for these past few nights, who's to say she won't be back in with us tomorrow, for another six months) and to be doing it so smoothly, and on that same hand, it sure is nice to be able to actually snug with Shrike at night again, but on the other hand, I have so loved our family bed, and I sort of miss it.

One thing I'm certain of is that these past few nights have made me even more glad that we've chosen to cosleep for the past three years, because this thing about having to get up out of bed when the kid wakes up in the middle of the night is bullshit. I don't know how people do it with a newborn.

I keep asking myself if I'm pushing her on this, but it really does seem to be her decision. I gave her the option and she really ran with it. I've mentioned the very same option numerous times over the past few weeks, and she's had no interest (except when A and J slept in her bed, of course) but for now, at least, she's all about it.

I've also been trying to "check in" with Shrike about her feeling on the whole matter, and I think she's about in the same place that I am.

She was saying this evening, that while there are, no doubt, things that we are doing wrong with Peeper, and there are, surely, things we're doing that are "spoiling" (ugh, I hate that term) her, that she's sure that letting her decide when she's ready to move out of the family bed and when she's ready to stop getting goody are not among them.


I told her that, in a way, it seems a little unfair, because I still get to cuddle her in bed when we nurse to sleep (and back down) and I sometimes (well, one night, so far) still get to sleep with her, if I conk out before she does.

Shrike acknowledged that, but said that, on the other hand, she doesn't miss it nearly enough to make it worth sleeping in that bed.

I hear ya.

Update - Morning: She woke up around 1:30 or so and I took her to pee and nursed her back to sleep, but she wasn't settling down solidly enough for me to escape. When I woke up around 5 am, I was able to sneak boff, but that only lasted about half an hour. Took her to pee again, went back to bed with her and we both slept until it was time to get up around 8. With those two potty trips, she and the bed stayed dry again!

Big Girl Bed Update

So, last night, I tucked a sleeping Peeper into her Big Girl Bed around 11 pm, Shrike went to bed (all alone!) at about 1 am and joined her (all alone! just us!) about 2 am.

Not a peep from Peeper until about 4 am.

When I went to her, she was crying for "goody on the couch" and I figured I might as well take her there, rather than let her get any more upset and associate it with the Big Girl Bed, so we "watched" (slept in front of) The Wizard of Oz until I woke up and moved us into the big bed with Shrike around 5:30 am.

Peeper started stirring and nursing around 9 am, and sure enough, around 9:15, she said "I want to get up," checked the clock, and said, "Oh! Look at dat! It turned into a nine! What dat on dere?"

I explained the wake-up time note, and we got up to face our day.

Once she was fully awake, I told her that she'd spent "HALF the night!" in her Big Girl Bed, and "Wow, I bet you're proud of yourself!" and she was just beaming.

I asked her if she'd like to go pick out some "Special Big Girl Sheets" and she thought that sounded like a dandy idea. And then we got an email coupon from Kohl's for 15% off everything - and bedding is on sale, up to 55% off. Woo hoo!

When we actually got to the store, she wasn't quite so excited about picking out the bedding, though.

I think it was a combination of an overwhelming variety of choices and the import of the whole situation.

We reassured her that she only has to sleep in it when she wants to, and she didn't have to decide today.

We thought she'd made a choice, but it turned out that she wanted the littel demo bed, not the bedding that was on it.

So, we ended up at Target, where we started with a coffee and cakepop, of course, and then finally made a decision - after a bit of a meltdown, which ended with me pulling her out of the cart, plopping down in the middle of an aisle, and nursing her back into some semblance of reason.

We are mixing our black and white animal metaphors a bit, but I thought she made a great choice to fit in with her existing decor.

Here a hint - she is wearing the little bag that the sheets came in.

After Target, we grabbed some lunch at took her over to Shrike's parents' house. They're at the beach, but our friend MommyA and ToddlerJ are house/dogsitting, and the afternoon/evening, they were Peeper-sitting, too, while we drove way farther than should be necessary to see The Help with some MOMS Club friends.

If you've not read this book and seen this movie, you must do both. Just take plenty of tissues.

We checked in with them after the movie, and she was doing fine, so we went to dinner, and by the time we got home, it had been six hours!

That's one of Peeper's longer stretches away from us (all the others have been for doctor's appointments), the first time she's stayed with MommyA, and the first time we've actually paid for babysitting.

Two out of three of those things were reasons to celebrate.

(If you'll remember, MommyA has paid us to babysit, so of course, we paid her the same rate.)

After all that, we came home and made up the Big Girl Bed with the new sheets, and here it is!

She doesn't really use a pillow at this point, so I'm not sure whether to look for a toddler-sized one, or just put a fullsize one on there, for me.

And here she is, all tucked in, around ten o'clock this evening, after nursing down in the chair. (The lights are off, and her panda nightlight - retrieved from where it was hidden when she learned to walk and started messing with it - is turned on. It just looks all lit up because of the flash.) We'll see how long it lasts.

And I'm worn out, so I think I'll go join my wife in the big bed, all by ourselves, for a little while!

Big Girl Bed

A few weeks ago, Shrike and I were bemoaning our lack of us-time, when suddenly, I was struck with an inspiration. I realized that, most nights, Peeper nurses to sleep in my chair or on the couch sometime around 9 pm, and I move her into bed, where she (most nights) sleeps all by herself for about four hours until Shrike goes to bed, and then (most nights) sleeps with her, while not nursing, for another two or three hours until I go to bed and then (most nights) sleeps with both of us, not nursing, for a few more hours until morning.

Or, maybe she nurses to sleep in the bed, or maybe she wakes every hour before we go to bed, or maybe I wake her up when I crawl into bed, or maybe she's latched on from the time I get there until we get up in the morning.

But more often that first thing.

So, I thought that if we could get all the crap out of the crib, and then convert it to a twin bed, maybe, at least sometimes, after she falls asleep, I could put her down in there, and we could actually go to bed all by ourselves for a little while, until she wakes up and joins us.

Mind you, neither of us (none of us, I assume) is ready for her to completely be out of our bed, but for my part, at least, when this plan hatched in my mind, the thought was a teeny bit sad, but mostly very liberating.

And, I figured that, given her recent interest in playing "go to bed" based on her Sesame Street videos, this might be a time that she would be receptive to the idea or, at the very least, she'd enjoy having the bed available to play in.

Last night, I got some of the clothes and other junk cleared out and moved to the basement, and this morning before Shrike went to work, we move the rest of the clothes down to the basement, at least until the weather turns. (Note to self: You have three bags of 24 months / 2T and one bag of 3/3T winter clothes, plus one "2T and up" - Do not buy any more clothes until Spring. If then.)

At that point, Peeper insisted on getting in there. I figured I'd better take a picture, since it was the one and only time she'd be in a crib. (Actually, that might not be true. I think Shrike stuck her in it for a few minutes to play a long, long time ago. I didn't like it one bit. Oh yeah, and that whole open-heart surgery recovery period thing. Doesn't count.)

Then the walls come a-tumblin' down, and . . .

Big Girl Bed!

(Look at the adorable little mini-mattress that fills in the place where the dresser was, and makes it a twin bed. When it's just by itself, it looks like a bed for a doll. There's a tiny little spring thingy that goes under it, too!)

The whole set-up is probably going to change a bit, mostly because the dresser section is too freaking heavy to move downstairs, so I want to find a place for it in her room. Also, I like have the drawer space, and I want her to have some sort of nightstandish kind of thing.

My plan is to move the bookcase out of that corner and put the crib dresser there, with the bed up against it, so that the dresser is like a really wide headboard. Then, I think the best bet might be to flip the bookcase vertically and put it in the corner at what will then be the foot of the bed. And switch the two mattresses, so the joint isn't actually underneath her, that doesn't seem comfortable. And buy sheets.

She's already discovered that it's good for lots of things.

Including sleeping!

We talked to her a lot about how "when you're ready you can goody to sleep in Peeper's New Big Girl Bed, or when you goody to sleep in my lap, I can put you in Peeper's New Big Girl Bed, and then when you wake up, you can come in the big bed with Mommy and Mama."

I suspect that when she wakes, she'll just cry and I'll either go get her or just go get in with her (This is why we went to the full twin, rather than leaving the bookcase on and making it a toddler bed!) but just in case, the plan is to use the babygate in the hallway, so that the two rooms (across the hall from each other) - and probably also the office, which shares a closet with her room, and the bathroom, because eventually she'll go to it in the night - are isolated from the rest of the house, so the doors can be open and the critters won't be getting in bed and stomping on anyone.

This evening, after her bath, I asked her if she wanted to get goody "in the chair, in the big bed or in Peeper's New Big Girl Bed" and she said "Not Peeper's bed," but after one unsuccessful attempt at bedtime in the big bed, we were playing in her room and I suggested "Would you like to get your goody in Peeper's New Big Girl Bed?" and she said - and I quote - "Let's do it!"

She pile at least three pandas into the bed, and I went and got Bingo, and I wasn't sure there was going to be room for her and me, but we got settled in - with a thin blankie under us and a quilt over us, because we don't actually have any bedding for it yet - and she nursed for quite a while, before decided that she wasn't sleepy after all, and would like to go read books.

That's about the point at which I asked her, "This afternoon, when we were goodying in bed, did you maybe fall asleep for a little while?" and she nodded "Yes."

I don't know if she really did, but I suspect that I did, so it's entirely possible.

While we were reading, and she was nursing on the couch, finally looking sleepy, I tried to get her to tell me which bed she wanted me to put her in when she fell asleep, and she wouldn't answer, and just said, "Don't talk about it," and "Not choose."

So I said, "I think you're thinking that it might be fun to sleep in Peeper's New Big Girl Bed, but you're not sure if you want to, because you've never done it before. Is that right?" She neither confirmed nor denied, so I suggested that I put her in her bed, and then when Mommy and Mama go to bed, I could move her, or when she woke up, she could move to our bed.

She fell asleep shortly after ten, and I moved her in there a bit before eleven. (I may have slept a while on the couch, myself.)

It's almost one now, Shrike just went to bed, and Peeper's still snoozing away in there.

I'm not sure what to do when I go to bed, I sort of left it open about moving her or letting her move when she woke, maybe. I'm a little worried that if I move her, she'll wake up and be awake, so I'm leaning toward just letting her stay til she wakes, and she won't really know if I'd gone to bed yet, right? I mean, she knows that I go to bed after Mommy, so Mommy being in there asleep won't mean anything.

Of course, after I get done posting them, I'm going start on a design for a new website, so I may be up for a while, so she may wake before I got to bed anyway, and might be moot.

I can't imagine that she'll get very awake at all without crying and moving (or me joining her there) but I'm prety impressed that she's been there this long, because when I peeked in on her earlier, I did see her wiggle around and roll over and bonk into the wall (that's new!) and go back to sleep, so that's pretty good.

I've put out a request to the MOMS Club folks for a used (cheap or free) set of sheets, and was planning to let her pick out some Special Sheets of Her Own in a little while - after payday, at the earliest (Have you priced kid's sheets? That's crazy!) but possibly as late as her birthday or even Christmas, depending on how it was all shaking out - but if she really sleeps there a good portion of the night, or even if she doesn't, I'm thinking that we probably need to go pick out sheets tomorrow, to celebrate her First Night in Her Very Own Big Girl Bed.

And how am I feeling about it all?

Ambivalent.

I really love sleeping with her, and I never want her to feel like she's not welcome in our bed, at least to come in for a while when she needs to, but I'm actually quite surprised at how okay I am with it, because the idea of at least a bit of grown-up alone time in the big bed every night (and maybe even the occassional Grown-Up Alone Time in the big bed) also sounds very appealing.

Of course, that would require actually getting off the computer and going to bed. . . .

Daily Peep: Panda Play Time

Daily Peep: Walking, Talking and Reading (sort of)

Walking


Talking


Reading

Baby Proofing: Peeper's Room

We know that our days with an immobile baby are numbered, so we're working on getting the house baby-proofed.

On our list of things-to-do is an inventory of drawers, cabinets and electrical outlets, so we can make a trip to Lowe's for latches and covers to keep her out of them.

In the meantime, I've been making some changes in her room, to put things that she does need access to within her reach, and get those that she doesn't need to mess with out of her reach.

While this was really cute:

This is a lot more practical. The fabric drawers will have toys in them. So far, I've put a bunch of puzzles in one.


I've also removed the package of disposable diapers (which I'm sure are way to small for her by now anyway), miscellaneous bottles, tubes and tubs of messy, "for external use only" stuff, and a box of of garbage bags from the bottom shelf of the changing table, and replaced them with toys - including some storage cubes for little things.


Okay, we still have some work to do here.

The can that you see to the right used to be a trash can, when we used disposable diapers and wipes, but it's now the diaper pail.

It's lined with a washable bag (we have two of them) which goes in the washer with the dipes and wipes. Over by the door, we have a clothes hamper for clothes that don't have bodily fluids on them. (Or that do, but are colors that we don't want to wash in hot water.)

We're now using the cloth diapers exclusively, and I use only cloth wipes, but Shrike prefers disposable wipes, especially for poopie pants.

(I know. I can't convince her of that, though.)

So, we still need a trash recepticle of some sort, but it doesn't need to be very big.

We've been hanging a plastic grocery bag on the corner, but the other night, I noticed that Peeper was getting interested in it, so I thought we ought to look for another solution.

I'm thinking this is not it.

Not pictured, is the $1 yardsale toy box that we repainted. Right now, it's full of books that she's not yet ready for (pretty much anything with paper pages, rather than cloth or cardboard), and has some stuffed animals sitting on it.

We need to replace its lower-slower hinge, and try to figure out how to put spacers under the lid to keep it from closing on her fingers, but for now, she has no idea that it opens, so we'll just let her think it's a bench, and the whole storage aspect will be our little secret.

Speaking of storage, this large bin has come in quite handy for holding Mr. Panda, our baby carrier stash, out-grown and still-too-big clothes, boxes of toys, and who knows what else might be in there.

I suppose this might be a problem if there were, say, a child sleeping in the box, huh?

Good thing that never happens!

Daily Peep: Pants!

Pretty much since Peeper came home from the hospital, I've been annoyed that she's got tons of really cute onesies that we really can't let her wear much because it's usually too cold to be sitting around with bare legs.

I finally realized that she just needed some pants to wear with them, so I then I spent a few weeks bitching about how she needs pants, and we should look for some pants and you never see just pants for babies, and blah blah baby pants blah blah blah.

A week or so Shrike's sister told us she'd seen baby pants on sale at Target!

Peeper now owns one pair of every "girlie" color they had available in newborn size.


And, as soon as I get a chance to to visit them, LawyerFriend's new arrival, Baby W. (congratulations!!!) will own every "boy" color because, based on my weeks of parenting expertise, I picked out pants to go with all the cute little onsies that I bought for him today.

Daily Peep: Party on the Changing Table

With the possible exception of my boobs, this is Peeper's favorite place to hang out these days:

The big attraction?

Cardiologist's Report

Peeper saw the cardiologist again today (at yet another of his satellite offices; I think we've been to all of them now) and had another echocardiogram.

We were hoping to see some shrinking of the hole in her heart, but he said that there's been no significant change.

We have a regular check-up with him in two weeks, and at the appointment two weeks after that, he'll do another echo.

If he's still not seeing any restriction of the hole, he will send a tape of the echo to the surgeon for his opinion.

If that's the case, we would probably be looking at a surgical repair in March or April.

When I pressed him to tell us what he thinks is most likely to happen, he put the odds of her needing surgery at 50%.

Which, I suppose, is rather a non-answer, but sounds much more professional and doctorly than, "Fuck if I know," which is probably what he was thinking.

But, six weeks ago, he told us that 80% of ventricular septal defects completely close on their own, and others shrink to the point of having no impact,

Given that, her odds of surgery seemed to be about 10% at that point, so I'm thinking that the fact that we've not seen any improvement yet is not particularly encouraging.

Yesterday, the pediatrician told us that some VSDs can be repaired just using a catheter, but that Peeper's is in a bad position for that, so her repair would require open-heart surgery.

At four to five months old.

Yeah. I know.

The doctor tells us that this is the most common congenital heart defect and the surgery is almost routine and that the risk is comparable to an adult having their gallbladder removed, but still.

Even if we had a 100% positive guarantee that nothing could possibly go wrong, they are still talking about cutting open our child's heart.

How can that possibly be an okay thing to do to anyone, let alone someone so tiny?

We are, of course, hoping to see some change in a month, and hoping to avoid the surgery, but realize that it's just as likely that it will happen.

As always, your heart-healing mojo is greatly appreciated.

Daily Peep: Heirloom

Here's Peeper in the cradle, at our family Thanksgiving dinner (which was today).

We got a photo of her with everyone who's slept in it: Shrike's mom and uncle, Shrike and her sister, her sister's two kids - and now Peeper.


Well, technically, she lay in it for the photo, and might have dozed off for a minute. She did have her eyes closed. We're not letting her actually sleep in it, because it's not exactly built to twenty-first century safety standards. (More like 1940s safety standards!)

I mean, look at those bars. Forget her head - her whole body could fit through them!

We also took one with all those folks, plus Shrike's grandparents. Even without the cradle, it's a great four-generation photo of them with all their progeny, but the cradle makes it all the more special.

We're going to send it in to both Shrike's newspaper and our local paper, which ran the Thankgiving story last week.

We also took another four-generation of just Peeper, Shrike, Mom and Grandma.

Shrike is holding Peeper, her mom is standing beside her, and Grandma's on the other side of mom. They are all looking at Peeper, and Mom has her arms around everyone. It's beautiful.

Baby Booty

As promised, here are some photos of our shower gifts.

Gear & Supplies






Accessories: Socks, Hats, Mittens, Bibs, Hair Bows, etc.


Washcloths - Notice that the shark is no longer in his packaging. Shrike insisted on opening it during the shower and playing with it!


Blankies and Swaddlers


Decor and Keepsakes
The red stripey box in the back contains a Democratic Donkey Christmas ornament - in honor of Baby's First Election. The panda banner was handmade by the same friends who make the windsocks. They actually gave her an Obama windsock as well, but it somehow didn't make it into the photo. I thought about putting it up on the house for the next week or so, but I think I will save it for her, in its packaging, so she'll have it as a momento of the historic events that occurred (knock wood!) while she was in utero.


Clothes, newborn - 3 months


Clothes, 3 - 6 months


Clothes, 6 months and up