Long time human, first time parent

We've been feeding Sydney increasingly chunkier pureed mashes consisting of different types of vegetables for almost three months now, and for the most part they've agreed with her. She's also developed some sense of what she does and does not like; for instance, carrots and cauliflower are on the do-I-have-to? list, while applesauce is on the I-can-not-will-not-Sam-I-am list. Winter squash, rice cereal, avocado and beets are on the favorites list.

Anyway to make a long story longer, Sydney's last meal the night before had been beets.

I put her to bed with no incident at 7:30, and then we spent an enjoyable hour watching TV, a luxury which has only just begun to return to us, puttered around for a little while, took the dog for walk and finally climbed into bed around 10:30.

I swear she has radar in her head. Okay, now's the time to do my trick! At first it was a just a cough and a whimper, then it became more insistent, finally it was definitely something I had to deal with; so I strode into the darkened room and found Sydney covered in what could only be a puddle of blood.

Did I mention Sydney's last meal had been beets?

When I turned on the light to see what was going on, I found that Sydney had deposited her very last meal onto the bed, her clothes and herself, creating perhaps the most horrifying, disgusting sight I have ever been subjected to. And it was up to me to clean it up. Talk about your Dirty Job. Also, while my very first instinct was to pick her up and reassure her that everything was alright, my second instinct was to hold her like a dirty rag, well away from me and everything else. I compromised by holding her close but away from me, in case any more of the beets should make their appearance.

Two baths and several retches later, we finally had her cleaned up enough to reassure her that everything was fine, whereupon she deposited more of her dinner onto herself and the floor and we had to start over. Eventually there was nothing left, which left us free to call the Night Nurse, a service which has been started presumably so that pediatricians can be shielded from anxious, clueless first-time parents and their stupid questions like: "Pedialyte?? What's that?"

We substituted apple juice instead, but it just wasn't the same.

Finally, around 3am, on the recommendation of the Night Nurse, we bundle Sydney up to take her to the hospital to be evaluated for dehydration. We trundle sleepily outside, put the baby in her car seat, turn on the car, and start down the road.

"Car's awful loud," my husband said.
"How's it handling?"
"Okay. Well...." he stopped the car, I got out, and sure as rain, the right front tire was flat as a pancake.

We turn the car around, limp back up the driveway on our flat tire, take the kid out of that car and put her in the other one, turn it on and remember that this car is low on gas. We debate whether we think we have enough gas to get to the nearest gas station, twenty minutes away. We decide we probably do, and drive to that gas station only to discover that it isn't the 24 hour variety of store we were led to believe it was. The attendant isn't moved by our plight, repeating that they were open at five am, but finally relents enough to inform us that the Cumberland Farms down the road is open now.

So we finally get gas at the Cumberland Farms and head off towards the hospital, about an hour later than we'd planned.

When we got there, Sydney was wide awake, quietly smiling at her surroundings and interested in all the new pull toys such as the nurse's station button. The doctor pronounced her fine, repeated the story about the Pedialyte: Elixir of Good For All Babies, and sent us home.

Was it a wasted trip? I don't know; we apparently needed the Pedialyte anyway, and our country bumpkin drugstore isn't open at all hours of the night. Plus Sydney fell asleep in the car ride over there, and we weren't sleeping anyway. We might as well be on the road. Finally, isn't it a given that the first time parent will over react the first time their kid vomits (beets or no beets)? We're just following the same story line that's been carefully laid out before us. We can't wait to see what happens next.

Creepy Crawly

We have officially entered into the next phase of baby-hood. Sydney is crawling.

At first it was a just a few hesitant missteps before falling back on the much more reliable "commando crawl" which involves slithering forward on your belly lizard style to get to your desired object. Then it became more insistent. Now it is what Sydney does best.

Now we live in constant fear of what might be on the floor or what Sydney might walk into. We are not neat people, but we've cleared out the spaces the baby crawls in as best we can and we're becoming intimately acquainted with our vacuum, broom and mop. We've gotten down on our hands and knees and scrutinized the rooms from a baby eye's view, and tried to put ourselves in the mindset of a fearless but clueless 8 month old, discovering electrical cords and outlets for the first time, interesting items in the wide cracks of our pine floors, and completely uninterested in basic physical concepts such as gravity.

Even so, she still manages to find and chew on things which the more mature of us do not consider edible. So far we've pulled the following out of her protesting mouth:

moss
scotch tape
dog hair
paper
unidentified fuzz
flower petals
half a dead lightening bug
a burr

That's just the things we've found before they were swallowed. Who knows what's made it down into her digestive tract. So far, nothing obvious has been spit out the other side but I fully expect to see, reconstituted in way I've never seen before, inedible, inorganic items which have followed the same path as all the other stuff that goes into her mouth.

The crawling has also made us both uneasy enough that it invades our sleep. I sat up the other night and asked wildly where the baby was. My husband, woken up from his own uneasy sleep, assured me she was in her own bed. "Did you put her back?" I asked, because I had been dreaming that she was in bed with us but kept crawling away. My husband was silent for a time but decided to humor me. "Yes," he said, " I put her back." So far she's been unable to escape from the crib or the playpen but I suspect it is only a matter of time before those monkey instincts kick in. She'll progress from crawling to swinging from the trees before I know it.