Pity Party- Table for One

Today is the first day where I truly felt the single, working mother guilt. I have had twinges here and there but today I felt it from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. In many ways, it's probably a ridiculous over reaction on my part but I am a strong believer than if you need to cry or sulk or fume over something you get 24 hours and then you figure out how to move on. So since I'm still within my 24 hours here I go.

Today I took Grace for a weight check at her pediatricians. As I have mentioned eight bajillion times before, Grace is on the small side and I am a crazy woman about it. She has been eating better of late so I stupidly put a number in my head that I expected her to be. The number I set was 14 pounds. She was 13 pounds 3 oz about 7 weeks ago so I thought 14 pounds was a reasonable guess. In actuality, I was hoping for more but would have settled for 14. Today she weighed in at a whopping 13 pounds 10 oz. Now, I know any gain is positive, but I would be a liar if I said I wasn't worried that she had only a seven oz weight gain in almost two months. So here's where the guilt comes into play. As soon as I heard the weight I thought, this is your fault because you work. If you stayed home with her you could feed her every hour and a half. You could make sure she drank every ounce of every bottle and every drop of baby food. But because you decided to be a single mother, now your baby is suffering. Now, let me say two things here. 1. Grace could not be in better care and my sister Kate could not be more in tune with her needs or more dedicated to making sure she eats, even if she were her mother. She is super on top of the eating and she sits with Grace until she's eaten but lets face it, some days she just won't eat enough no matter how you try. So in no way am I attributing her lack of weight gain to my sister. If it wasn't for her dilligence, we would have had a smaller gain (can you imagine what a whack-a-doodle I would be if that happened? Not a pretty image I imagine). 2. I realize my line of thinking is CRAZY. I know that I am doing everything possible to make sure she's as healthy and loved and well cared for as possible. And the rational side of my head knows that if I tried to feed her every hour that child and I would be ready for the looney bin. I know I add a lot of stress to the eating situation and I have been really good about backing off. If I were home with her all day I could likely cause a big set back. But the bottom line is that you feel like she's missing something because I only have limited time with her. I give her everything I have when I'm home and I know that it's a lot. I also know that I have unrealistic expectations of what enough is and I need to let go of it. Overall, she's a healthy girl who is developing well, is pretty well adjusted and happy. I need to focus on that. And I will........in 11 more hours when the pity party is over. While the nurse Practioner was not alarmed at the weight gain she did say that if she doesn't have a good increase by her one year appointment at the end of April, we'll need to go see a feeding specialist. The important thing here is that we get her issues worked out.

On a more positive note she crawled forward last night!! She only did four crawls and then I got so excited that I called my sister and the kids down and sure enough, she refused to perform. My daughter is super stubborn and she likes to play with her mama. I kept saying Gracie, crawl for Auntie Kate, please crawl for Auntie Kate! And at one point she looked at me, said Mama and then shook her head no wildly and then gave me a wicked grin. Like she was saying I know you want me to crawl but uh-uh. She kept teasing us though. She would move one knee forward and then move it back. Then she would giggle. She's something.

I'll report back soon with a new attitude. Well, not so new that you wouldn't recognize me.

Baptism

Yesterday was Grace's Baptism and frankly, it turned out well beyond my expectations. I know that Grace and I are loved by many people. I know that many of them shared the anxiety and excitement and uncertainty while I was waiting to bring her home. So I wasn't surprised that just about everyone of the very intimate group of friends and family that were invited came. It's one thing to know you're loved, it another entirely to see it displayed on their faces and in there actions. It was a day filled with love and excitement and blessings for a baby girl who was embraced into God's family the way she has been embraced by my own.

She wore a dress that I bought her while I was in Ethiopia. She was not crazy about the head wrap so there aren't a lot of pictures of her wearing it but here are a few.


She really did well. She whimpered a little bit when the priest put the water on her. She gave me this horrified look like hey, I already had a bath today, what's up with this? Other than that, she did really well.





Afterwards we had a small dinner at a restaurant. It was really nice and everyone seemed to have a really good time and Grace was really social and engaging.

Ok,so now I'm going to make this very long post even longer by telling you about the most incredible gift that my cousin Ann gave Grace but before I do that I have to give a little back ground.

My mother passed away almost 8 years ago from cancer. I miss her every day but since Grace came home I think I feel the loss a little deeper than I had. And while I know she would adore Grace, it makes me sad to know that she'll only know her through stories and pictures. My mother and my cousin Ann's father were brother and sister and extraordinarily close. Their mother, my Grandma Connolly passed away when my mother was 14 and my uncle was 12. They and their father were a super tight family and because of that, their children have always been close.

When Ann and her twin Jenny were baptized in 1982 it was important to my mother that they have something from her parents. My Papa had given Grandma Connolly a promise ring and it had an emerald and two side diamonds. My mother inherited the ring when her mother died and she had the two side diamonds taken out of the ring and made into pendants for Ann and Jenny. Somewhere along the way we lost the emerald, but that's neither here nor there. So fast forward to yesterday. I open up the gift that Ann had for Grace and there in it's original box is the pendant that my mother gave her 28 years ago. And with it was the card that my mother had written her on the occasion of her baptism. Ann wrote in her card to Grace that the necklace meant the world to her but it means more for her to pass it on to Grace from her grandmother and her great grandparents. I will never be able to adequately express what that meant to me because my vocabulary is not that broad, and I am not that eloquent. But to know that Grace has a piece of our family history sitting in a box in her room means more to me than I can say. Especially since our family tree is not about sharing the same bloodlines. Grace happens to be adopted and so are my cousins Ann, Jenny and Eric. I don't think any of us has ever felt like we were less of a family because we didn't share the same biology. We've just always been family and it didn't matter how the process of becoming family happened. It just mattered that we all ended up together. I'm still teary eyed thinking about what a self-less gesture that was and how Grace will always have that special necklace because of Auntie Ann's loving an generous spirit.

I think that this is the first of many occassions where Grace will someday look back and be in awe of how loved she is.