nine months! part 1

man, am i behind, but i'm trying to get this done before she turns 11 months in ten days. eek. also, this is probably going to be very long, but i just wanted to get it all down for posterity's sake, so feel free to skim or what have you. in fact i think i will break it down into two parts.

so nine months. this month (end of June/July) we had lots of "excitement". to start off with, papa went to Canada to surprise his mummy in honor of her retiring from teaching for 11 days and so it was just us girls. he also took the camera, so there won't be any photos to document the events that follow. :(

you came to work with me the first Sunday papa was gone. usually you stay at home with him and he helps you to practice standing and to learn how to crawl, neither of which you show any interest in doing at all. i could have had someone else babysit you, but i thought everything would go peachy. and indeed it did until the very end. we were up in Erbalunga, about 45 mins- an hour from home, and you were getting hungry. so rather than make you wait til we got home, i decided to breastfeed you. i didn't let you feed for too long as it was soooo hot out. i just wanted to get us in the car and turn on the air conditioning.  by the time i got the stroller in the trunk, you fastening into your "cage" as papa calls it, i had sweat rivulets running down my temples from the heat. and then the car would not start. it's like it wanted to start, but it too was weakened by the heat. i could tell it was the battery, but i just didn't understand how it could have died. i hadn't left the lights on or a door open. so now we're stuck, hot, half-fed, with no jumper cables, and no knowledge of what the French word for jumper cables even is. also, it's around 12:30, smack dab in the middle of island nap time.

so i piled you back into your stroller to go in search of someone to help us. i also put a call into our pastor as he lives on the side of the island i was on and thus he was the closest person to us. i got through to him and explained the situation, but then we got cut off. i tried calling again, but the line kept being busy. arg! so i decided to ask for help at the restaurant that's right by two of my work apartments. i stopped one of the servers and explained the situation. he told me that he would love to help me, and he even has jumper cables in his car, but he's working and so too bad (literally he said, "c'est dommage"). he looked over at what must have been his boss who was sitting with a few other guys at a table just shootin' the shit as it were. the server guy went over and whispered in his ear. the boss dude shook his head but gave him a phone number to give me for a service station a couple of kilometers down the road.

i tried the phone number and it just rang and rang. thanks for nothing pals! i mean seriously. i totally thought having a baby with me would have won some sympathy. maybe i should have pinched you to make you cry or something.

next stop was a little tourist crap shop that was just closing for the sieste. the girl running it was from an Asian country and spoke worse French than me. she realized i spoke English and said, "i close, i close, sorry." grrr.

while crossing the street to try at a hotel, i tried calling a few cousins, and no one, i mean, no one was answering. it was so frustrating! i started thinking the world was somehow conspiring against me.

at the hotel, i finally tracked down a  lady, who passed me off to another lady, who passed me off to their boss. he wasn't too happy about it, probably taking him away from his nap, but he agreed to come help me. he came out after a few minutes with some sort of contraption that was not jumper cables. i'm still not sure what it was exactly. he measured the water level of the battery and was poking and prodding at other things, but i don't think he really knew what he was doing. he was in the middle of telling me that he couldn't help me when, hallelujah! our pastor drove up. i was so happy to see him. the bummer thing was that he didn't know anything about cars either.

in the end, we decided that it would be best to go back to his house with him and leave the car. you needed to eat and i was a little stressed and needed to eat too. so we had a good lunch at their house and then he took us back to Patrimonio. it was a really long day, but Muffin, you were fantastic! i would have stressed out more if you had been whiny or crying, but you were calm and patient.

on Tuesday Philippe and Jean-Michel went and got the car. they ended up buying us a new battery because the old one that died wasn't even strong enough for the car to begin with. nice. so maybe that's why it died?

the next day i decided we should go down to the camping to see the family and be sociable. plus i needed the boys to reset something having to do with the new battery and the car stereo. no biggie, i thought. now, the road to the campsite is not paved. it's fairly rocky and has a lot of potholes that you need to watch out for. can you see where this is going? we're tooling right along and all of a sudden i hear/feel a bit of a boom. oh no. now what. i got out of the car to investigate. right front tire: shattered, shredded, flat. you have got to be kidding me! well good thing i'm going to see Philippe and Jean Michel, the two car guru guys.

on Friday afternoon, we were invited to Baptiste's 7th birthday party and then to stay for dinner. you tried to play with Mateo, but he's a boy, and sometimes boys just don't know how to play with girls. plus your hair is just so fabulous and so who wouldn't want to touch/pull the curls. it sure got a lot quieter when the two of you went down for the night, that is, until you fell off Philippe and Laetitia's bed! thankfully, their bed is really low to the ground and so you weren't hurt as much as you scared the crap out of yourself. how you unswaddled yourself and rolled over two pillows amazes me.

the next day, you were playing around on the floor having a good time by yourself. it was past time for your second nap, but you were having so much fun, i decided to let you play a while longer. suddenly, you started crying, i mean really crying! it freaked me out as i had never heard you cry like that before. i could tell that something was wrong only i had no idea what. i picked you up and tried to calm you down, but there was no calming you down. i tried a soother thinking maybe you were just really tired. nope. i tried to breastfeed you a bit, but you didn't want any of that. it took me a little while, but i finally realized that you weren't moving your right arm. so now we're both freaked out. i tried to call Laetitia, but she didn't answer. i tried Philippe, Marie-line, Annick and finally Jean Michel answered. by this time, i'm practically crying because i didn't really know what to do and i was worried you had broken your arm when you fell off the bed. i had you in your car seat ready to go. Jean Mi was with Laetitia, so he handed off the phone to her. she was at our house in five minutes and we took off for the hospital, 25 minutes away.

as long as your arm wasn't moved, you only whimpered. if i budged it, you cried and cried. it was so sad. and extremely hard to get you into and out of your car seat without hurting you more.

the hospital emergency room, unsurprisingly for a Saturday, was packed. we couldn't even get into the front door without pushing and squirming through. there wasn't even anyone manning the counter. the whole situation looked a little hopeless. so Laetitia got on her cell and called her sister, Lise-Laure who works in a clinic. she recommended we go to this semi-private clinic 15 minutes away, and so that's what we did.

when we got there, the place was practically empty. in the waiting room, there was only one couple who came in after us. i still don't really understand the situation. i did hear Laetitia tell the admin person that the hospital sent us over as they were too busy, but at that point i was too worried about you to wonder what was going on exactly.

we saw a doctor, a stinky B.O. doctor, after a wait of less than five minutes which was awesome. Doctor Stink had me place you on the counter while he asked a lot of questions. i explained what i thought had occurred and while doing so i realized that you couldn't have hurt your arm from the fall as you fell on your left side and it was your right arm that was hurt. so you must have done something while turning over while playing on the floor. it really helped having Laetitia there as she filled in many of the holes in my lousy French explanation. then the doctor sent us to get x-rays taken of your arm. this freaked you out. you were not a happy camper and did not want to lay still on the table while i held your arm in order for the machine to do it's business. the x-ray technician kept telling me that in the future, i should never pick you up or pull you up by your arms. the first time was ok, but the third and fourth times really started getting on my nerves. your papa and i never do that, just so you know.

the x-rays showed that there was a slight pull in the ligament in your elbow, or at least i think that's what they said. the doctor then played around with your arm like it was a spaghetti noodle. you cried and cried, i cried, even Laetitia left the room because she was crying. it seemed to last forever. i had to fight to keep from taking your arm back from the B.O. doctor. finally he seemed satisfied and stopped manhandling your poor little arm. he said that you should be back to normal in a day or two, and if you weren't than we should come back to see him. in the meantime, i could give you some Advil for the pain. thank you God that it was nothing more serious than that!

for the rest of the day, you didn't cry as much, but you didn't move your arm at all either. we skipped your bath, i gave you some Advil before bed time, and thankfully you slept normally.  the next day was Sunday, but there was no way i was going to be bringing you in and out of the car while i worked. you still weren't moving your arm, although now you only whimpered when i moved it. it was so sad to see it just laying limp at your side. Laetitia had volunteered to babysit so that's where you spent most of the day. they reported back to me, that just before i came to get you, you had started to cautiously use your arm again. great news! and by Tuesday, you were back to normal. whew.

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picture 1: you and papa at the airport. we had to be there at 6:30 AM! we haven't been up that early since you were a brand new baby.

picture 2: meme in her classroom on the day of her retirement party

picture 3: the village of Erbalunga

Comments

[Jennifer]

POOR PUMPKIN!

you can take that to mean Ayva or you. golly, that sounds like it was rough.

[Sarah]

What a rough month that was. Have things gotten better? I guess we'll have to wait for the next installment to find out.

When Misaki was one and a bit she fell off the couch and hurt her collarbone. Fortunately it wasn't broken but for two weeks we could only pick her up by wrapping our arms around her entire body instead of just holding her under her arms. We looked odd!

Now it's Natsuki's turn and she is just freaking me out. She has no fear so she just steps off or flies head forward. It's awful. At least they grow out of it, right?