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Wednesday, April 19, 2006 

How I Will Miss Her

Today was our first dental appointment. To be clear, it was Little J's first dental visit, but of course I felt totally on the hook for the whole thing - what if there were cavities, what if I wasn't doing a good job brushing, what if Little J totally freaked out and puked all over himself while the doc looked at his choppers. Hey, I'm a high-stress sorta person, I like to cover ALL the bases. So here's how the day actually went:

6 am - wake up and get ready. 6:30 - wake up both the kids (a. the teenager who likes to sleep until noon normally and b. the cranky baby who didn't go to sleep until 11pm the night before) and get them ready and loaded into the car. Take Big J to work, go get breakfast and groceries at Whole Foods. Little J napped from dropping off Daddy until I was almost finished with my breakfast - thank you sweet Jesus. 10:30 - go to craft store, get yarn, let kidlet run around and pull things off shelves. At one point, Little J picked up a fifty dollar train set and carried it over with that "hey, this should be mine" look. Yikes. Can we say dis-TRAC-tion, anyone? Then, it's off to the playground to eat some lunch and run amok. Yeehaw. Then, the dentist. Pleasant waiting room, easy to find, nice people. Five minutes with the sweetest and gentlest hygenist IN THE WORLD (who totally got Jack warmed up and interested in the fish tank so that he totally didn't mind her picking him up), then another five minutes with the dentist to take a look. By 2pm we're back home, and having fallen asleep in the carseat, the kid is napping away in our room.

So, does that dental visit sound totally anticlimactic, or what? It cost half of what I expected, and the doc said he was totally not worried about the little bit of yellow buildup on the front top teeth. The most bizaare part of the whole thing was when Jack was stressing out so I asked if the doc would mind me nursing in front of him. He looked like a deer in headlights, poor thing. And it isn't like he got to see boob, for crap's sake. We didn't even do a cleaning because the little guy is too little. Easy, squeezy.

Throughout this whole thing, my step-daughter, Miss Mere, was patient and easy going with Little J. The baby loves her to bits. I feel like I couldn't have had a better time of things, and I feel like it is all due to her. This is the stuff that makes me think twice about moving. She's still underage, so in a way she really needs us. And after we move, we won't have the moola to fly her out (not to mention we won't have a place of our own!) for her entire summer break, which means the first opp to see her will be Xmas, whether East or West coast. That just doesn't seem right, somehow.

I'm SO glad to have found you again, this time through CoffeeSister, Dave's wife. It's hard to be an almost-blended family isn't it? We have a similar thing going with the mother, stepfather and stepsister of our granddaughter whose father is our son Chris. I love them, and want to stay connected, but there are bumps in the process. Still, we all work really hard at it.
Moving is hard, but are there ever some great rewards, whether it's frrom one coast to another or across the city, like we just did.

I've mentioned before, but the closest thing I have to a daughter is goddaughter Emily, who's mother had to freakin' up and move them to FLORIDA.. grrr..

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