A Day At the Zoo

Dear Connor,

Daddy and I took you to the Bronx Zoo yesterday and you had so much fun! You'd been to the zoo before when you were 11 months old but you were more interested in the animals this time around. You were especially impressed by the giraffes and kept pointing at them and saying, "Ooooo!"

You also liked seeing the pretty peacock and the big, ferocious tiger:

You enjoyed playing in the field of daffodils, too:

But my favorite part of the day was when I knelt down to fix your sweatshirt and you grabbed me and surprised me with a sweet little kiss:

Love,
Mom

Dining Disaster

Dear Connor,

"It'll be fine," I told your dad.

"But it never is," he replied.

"He'll be good this time," I said.

Oh, but you were not, little boy. The three of us went to a restaurant tonight, a casual Indian place in Jackson Heights. We sat down. We ordered. And then my sweet baby boy was replaced by a crazy monster child. Your dad knew this was coming. We've seen it happen before in other restaurants. But I'm an optimist. I always try to believe that everything will be okay, that people are good and that children will be well-behaved when they should be. But what I call optimism, your dad calls naivete and tonight, he was right.

You screamed because you didn't want to sit in your highchair. You screamed when we took the menu away from you but then you threw it on the floor when we gave it back to you. You screamed because you wanted to play with my earring and I wouldn't let you. You generally like Indian food but the only thing you would eat tonight was the papadam, so you basically had a bunch of chips for dinner. You spit out the idli. The samosa. The uttapam. And you smashed it all in your hands and wiped it on the table, your clothes and my jacket. When you became bored with playing with your food, you started crying and kicking the table. You made such a scene that when the waiter came to take our dessert order, he didn't ask us, "What would you like for dessert?" but just told us matter-of-factly, "You can take dessert to go." 

So we took it to go, as we will be doing with all of our restaurant meals from now on because we are never eating in a restaurant with you ever again.

Love,

Mom

Mr. Clean

Dear Connor,

Toddlers are messy and you are definitely not an exception. You have a playpen where I'd like you to keep your toys but you prefer to scatter them all around the living room, dining room and kitchen. When you're sitting in your highchair, you enjoy throwing pieces of food onto the floor. You get cookie crumbs everywhere. I think I spend about 70% of every day cleaning up after you, especially since I like to keep things very clean. But you know what? I think you do, too. Because as messy as you are, you have learned to pick up after yourself. You put your toys and books away when Daddy or I sing the clean-up song and when you find a crumb or bit of food on the floor, you pick it up, say "Ooooo!" and bring it over to me. And today, when you knocked over my water bottle and spilled water on the floor, you grabbed a paper towel and started wiping up the water. Thank you for being such a good little cleaner!

Love,

Mom

I Heart Mom

Dear Connor,

I have loved you ever since I found out that you were growing in my belly and one of the most rewarding things about being your mom is knowing that you love me, too. You are too young right now to actually say, "I love you" but you express it in so many other cute ways. You smile and run over to me when you see me. You like to hold my hand. You wrap your arms around my neck and pull me in close to hug me. You give me sweet little kisses all the time. You cry when I leave the house. You love me . . . and you don't seem to want to share me! When you see Daddy and me hugging, you squeeze in between our legs and try to push Daddy away from me. And when Daddy put his arms around me the other night, you shouted, "No! Mine!" I guess Daddy has some competition now! 

Love,

Mom

Ai Yi Yi

Dear Connor,

When you are doing something that you are not supposed to be doing (ripping pages out of your books, trying to grab things that are on the dining table, opening Daddy's underwear drawer and taking out all of his underwear . . . the list goes on and on), I scold you by saying, "Connor yi yi!" ("yi yi" is Chinese for misbehaving). So now when I catch you doing something bad, you beat me to the punch and say, "Yi yi yi." Sweetie, if you know you're not supposed to be doing something then stop doing it!

Love,

Mom

Back To Normal

Dear Connor,

Your fever is gone, you are breathing well and you only coughed a few times today, yay! You also tried to climb up the stand we keep the microwave on, ate an old carrot stick you found under the kitchen island (ew), pulled a gallon of water off of the table and spilled it all over the floor, managed to reach up onto the mail table and grab the letter opener when I wasn't in the room (oh my god, do you want to poke out your eyes?!?) and kept trying to touch the dirty dishes in the dishwasher while I was trying to load it. So yeah, you are back to your healthy, active, gets-into-trouble-every-five-minutes self! But I'll take that any day over the pained, listless, sad little guy you are when you're sick.

Love,

Mom

Medicine Woman

Dear Connor,

Even though you received the steroid injection, you were still having some trouble breathing and you developed a fever so your pediatrician put you on an aggressive course of antibiotics yesterday. And I mean aggressive--you have to receive not one, not two but THREE different kinds of medication every day for five days. You have to take the first one three times a day, the second one twice a day and the third one once a day so yeah, you have to take medicine six times a day. You do not enjoy this. At all. When you see Daddy or me pick up the medicine dropper, you whimper and try to run away. 

Of course, I don't blame you. I'm pretty sure the medicine tastes pretty awful, especially when I see how much you kick and scream when we try to squirt it in your mouth. But you have to take it so when it's time to give it to you, I hold your arms and legs down while Daddy keeps your head still and shoves the dropper in your mouth. I am SO sorry. I know you probably won't believe me, but it hurts me just as much as it hurts you. If I could take the medicine for you and spare you the anguish, I would. Please don't hate me. 

It's hard enough giving you the medicine when Daddy and I double team you. While Daddy was at work today, I had to give you the medicine by myself. The first few attempts didn't go so well. I don't have enough hands to hold your head still, pry your mouth open, stick the dropper in and keep your hands and legs away so I got more medicine on your cheek, in your hair and on the floor than in your mouth (and oh my god, you managed to kick me really hard in the face). So I developed a new system. I lay you down on the couch and straddle you, using my legs to pin your arms to your sides. I can then squeeze your cheeks with one hand to open your mouth and squirt the medicine in with the other. I feel uncomfortable and incredibly inappropriate sitting on top of you like that but it works.

Again, please don't hate me.

Love,

Mom

A Trip to the ER

Dear Connor,

When your Uncle Tony was about your age, he had to get three stitches in his chin. PoiPoi was giving him and me a bath and kept telling him to stop standing up because he was going to slip and fall. He didn't listen and did in fact slip and fall (See? That's why I am always telling you to stop standing up in the bathtub, too!). Uncle Tony also hit his chin on the side of the tub and cut it open. When PoiPoi realized this, she quickly dressed the two of us and rushed us to the hospital. That was my first and last time in an emergency room.

Until yesterday. You started coughing after you woke up yesterday morning and it didn't sound like a regular cough. It sounded hoarse, raspy, almost like a barking seal. I'd never heard you cough like that before but nothing else seemed wrong and you were eating, playing and behaving like you normally do, so I decided to wait and see if the cough got worse. It got worse. By 4pm, you were coughing more frequently and wheezing whenever you took a breath. I called your pediatrician but he wasn't in the office and the receptionist told me emergency office hours had been that morning (Um, what? How do you have set emergency hours??? Like emergencies only happen on Fridays between the hours of 10am and noon???). She then told me to take you right to the emergency room, so I hung up with her, called Daddy to tell him to come home and then burst into tears. I never knew fear until I became afraid that something would happen to you. I scooped you into my arms, gave you a big hug and shakily started to pack your diaper bag. Thankfully, you were oblivious to my anxiety and just continued to push your toy bulldozer across the floor.

Daddy, you and I arrived at the emergency room a little after 6pm. I had heard horror stories about emergency rooms--when your Uncle TT's appendix burst, the emergency room was so busy that he had to wait seven hours until a doctor could examine him--so I was expecting us to be at the hospital for a long time and had packed your diaper bag with extra snacks, toys, books and stickers. But fortunately, we didn't need any of that because they called you in almost immediately (I guess because you are so young--it'd be pretty cruel to make a suffering baby wait very long). A nurse and a doctor examined you and determined that you have croup, a viral infection that causes your upper airways to become inflamed. I'm pretty sure I turned sheet-white when I heard the diagnosis but the good news is that your case is not serious and that we caught it early enough and could treat it with a single injection of steroids. You obviously did not enjoy getting the shot but several minutes afterward, you were fine and even flirting with the little baby girl sitting in the bed next to yours!

I think about a zillion things every day: what I should cook for you, when our next playdate is, why you don't like wearing socks. But when you are sick, that is all I can think about. Why did you get sick? How much pain are you in? What can I do to make you feel better faster? You seem good today. You are still coughing, but only occasionally and there is no hoarseness or wheezing. I am so grateful that you are getting better and that you were able to be treated so quickly. We were only in the emergency room for about an hour.

And let's make that our first and last time in an emergency room, okay?

Love,
Mom

Mama's Boy

Dear Connor,

You often fidget or fuss when Daddy tries to feed you but you usually finish all of your food and milk when I give it to you. Both PoiPoi and NaiNai have trouble getting you to take naps but you quickly fall asleep if I cuddle with you. When you're hurt or scared, you always run to me and want me--and only me--to hold you. You are a total mama's boy. And I love it. 

Love,

Mom