It has recently come to light that a member of my family is hopelessly addicted to a powerful substance, one that has such a grip on this person that it even disrupts her sleep.  She wakes several times a night for a quick fix, though during the day she is able to function normally, if a bit crabbily.

Yes, my boobie milk is that good.

Paige has recently regressed to the newborn stage, where she insists upon waking every hour to have a wee sip of breast milk. I know that her waking is not out of hunger. She eats heartily at dinner, especially now that she's added some table food to her diet. And many nights John puts her to bed with a nice fat bottle of formula. But still, from about 11 o'clock on, she insists on waking and fussing until I let her nurse. She latches on for about 5 minutes and then goes right back out. And it's getting very very old. Very very very old.

I know, I know, I'm a sucker. If I wasn't so wimpy, I'd be a mama with a backbone who makes her too-old-to-nurse-every-hour 9 month old cry it out. But I've always had trouble with that technique. Something in me just won't let me leave my babies bawling and wondering why I'm not coming to the rescue. I have no problem with the technique itself; I just can't seem to follow through.

So I'm walking around rather blearily these days, biting everyone's heads off over the slightest indiscretions.

This hasn't been the best of weeks anyway. We've been casually browsing real estate a nearby town, and I've developed new house fever.  Right now it's about a 30 minute drive to and from Owen's school, and since we want all the kids to attend there, it makes sense to move closer, especially since we're past ready for more space anyway. But realistically, we won't be ready, financially or otherwise, to move until at least the spring. I've worked myself into a lather over a couple of perfect houses I've come across in my browsing, lying in bed wracked with angst that we can't do anything about these perfect houses. So I've decided to stop looking for awhile and trust that the right house will appear when we're ready for it. (It will appear, right? RIGHT?)

Another not-so-great part of this week: an email from Owen's teacher asking about his noise sensitivity. She told me that he's been falling apart before the intercom comes on in the morning and in the afternoon, crying and covering his ears. Apparently he also lost it during class, as well, when his reading teacher used an electronic timer during their classwork. We knew that the intercom was bothering him, but he had not shared with us that he'd been as upset as his teacher indicated he was, and it breaks my heart that he has been struggling with this on his own. That he hasn't told us tells how scared he's been shows me that he's trying hard to work through it and that he's a little embarrassed. Poor kid. We do have an appointment set up with a child psych that a friend recommended. I'm hoping it will help. This anxiety is only getting worse, and I'm afraid of what it will grow into if we don't teach Owen to cope now.

And to top it off, it's been over 100 degrees every day this week. Dog days for sure. Yipp-flippin'-ee.

We took this video of Paige tonight after dinner. Background noise courtesy of Owen, Mitch, and Bailey.

It's a little bit long, but cute as heck. Also, I was holding my camera sideways, forgetting that the video feature wouldn't automatically reposition it for the computer. So just tilt your head sideways while you watch.

Yes, gratitude. Oddly, that was my most salient emotion yesterday morning, a morning spent at the hospital for Paige's kidney tests.

Gratitude nearly overwhelmed me when they handed us the baby-sized hospital gown for her to wear during the x-ray. We were alone in the room as I pulled it over her arms and began tying it closed in the back. Fumbling with those ties as Paige wiggled and squirmed, leaning forward to chew on my arm, I felt a lump rising in my throat, not just for my baby, who would wear her hospital gown for no more than an hour, but because baby-sized hospitals gowns exist at all.

In half-an-hour I'd be allowed to take this sad garment off of Paige and dress her again in her bright cotton dress, take her home, snuggle her to sleep for her nap, then feed her dinner at our kitchen table. Gratitude.

And beneath that, Fear. Bad things happen. Horrible things happen. To babies. To children. Families have to live through bad things. Children spend weeks, months, years in tiny hospital gowns.

Once she was dressed, they catheterized her and began to fill her bladder with a contrast dye. They had to wait a bit for the dye and for the doctor to arrive, so they left us alone in the room for a few minutes. I could tell the catheter wasn't hurting her once they'd gotten it in place because Paige was in a good mood as we waited, giggling at my funny faces and playing her favorite game: tug mommy's bottom lip then laugh when mommy grimaces.

I was standing over her, hovering above her radiant little face as she giggled and kicked, and I felt a strong sense of her spirit, a sudden consciousness of the difference between the soul and the body. I'm not sure how to explain it, but as she laughed and wiggled, lying there catheterized with kidneys inside her body that possibly weren't working right, I sensed the divide between body and spirit, this realization that the spirit exists in spite of the body--and that in a baby especially, the spirit is nearly oblivious to the body. Paige seemed to exist only in her happiness while we waited, aware only of our playing, unaware of what could be going on in her body and of what she was doing on that table.

Overall the VCUG wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it was heartbreaking all the same. I don't think it caused Paige much pain, but it certainly caused her a great deal of fear. They asked me to stand at the head of the table, so she couldn't see me, and I was afraid even to soothe her with words as they took the films, because I knew she'd try to flip over to see me, and they needed her to stay on her back, keeping as still as possible.  Finally, I reached over her shoulder and held her little flailing hand, and that seemed to relax her a bit. I could tell she knew it was my hand she was holding, though she couldn't see my face.

She does have reflux. While I'm not happy about it, it's not an awful thing. Most children outgrow it, and the treatment is usually a low dose of antibiotic, administered daily until the reflux is gone. We can manage that. I'm grateful that we've been handed something we can manage. Grateful that, again, we have escaped tragedy, though lately I'm aware that the line between us and those families who are facing terrible illness and suffering is thin, thin, thin. Even the relatively minor brushes we've had with bad luck recently remind me that the abyss is out there. It's always out there, like some heavy, dark creature. Crouched and waiting.

The 8th month was a busy one for Paige, lots of firsts, many milestones. I'm just taking a moment to get it all down.

This month, she learned to:
Crawl
Get into a sitting position
Pull up
Cruise
Babble "mamamamama" and "dadadadadada"
Pick up and eat Cheerios and Fruit Puffs
Find a hidden toy

Right now, she loves:
Standing up
Playing with cups and buckets
Baby Einstein and Eebee
The bead coaster
Books with photos of babies
Ripping paper
Baths and swimming
Getting into anything she shouldn't bother

Lately, we call her:
Missy
Paigers
Paigey
Boops
Sweet Pea
Littlest One
Beauty (what Mitch calls her)

Her favorite foods are:
Pears
Sweet Potatoes
Bananas
Watermelon
Carrots
Oatmeal

Here are a few pictures we took tonight during our weekly picnic at the Sunday Evening Concert in Fletcher Park



  



She's such a happy girl! And she will grow up well loved by all of us, especially her doting big brothers.

Paige (the bubble blowing baby, as Owen has recently nicknamed her) is nearly fully recovered from last week's kidney infection, thank goodness. I say “nearly” only because she’s still on an antibiotic and has to go through another catheterization at the end of this round of meds to be sure she doesn’t have any left over infection. So I will refrain from pissing off Karma’s best friend “Jinx” and say that we’re hopeful the antibiotic will have worked. In fact, the doctor’s office called today to tell us that the bacterial culture indicated that it would respond well to the medicine they prescribed (which is a good thing since it was darn expensive and we’ve already had to switch meds once).

I'm such a sucker. I cannot think of one other person in world for whom I would go through the rigamarole that is required to get Paige to sleep lately.

I took all 3 kids to Roanoke Park today--it's a "mini-park," just a little strip of jungle gym, sandpit, and blacktop between 2 one way streets in Five Points. The kids love it because the blacktop has become a repository for people's cast off ride-on toys: cozy coupes, small bikes and trikes, scooters, even a seen-better-days Power Wheels. It's also known to my boys as "the park where you can pee in the bushes" because there is no bathroom and once--ONCE--I let them go pee inside a big, hollow bush in the corner of the park. The hollow bush was so great, they stayed in there afterward and played "secret fort." Only boys. No qualms at all about playing where they'd just peed.

Paige hasn't been sleeping well this week. Last night she was up from about 1 until 3:30 or so. John and I were both up with her, trying various things to make her happy, but nothing was really working.