Thursday, May 27, 2010

"Momopoly"

New words for the English language.....

Momopoly(N) - The hogging of all the baby's time by the mother, or "Mom."

Momopolize(V) - The ACT of hogging all the baby's time by the mother.

Used in a sentence.... Brooke momopolized Zoe tonight, all I could do was enjoy her from afar.

Ha haha ahahahahahahahahahahaha

It's been awhile

Haven't seen any updates on Zoe in awhile? That's cause there haven't been any. Not that Zoe isn't doing fabulously cool things, each day is a new adventure with her, she's amazing! But we've been busy, it has been a big adjustment. I know I like to fill this blog with all the good and great things Zoe does, and put my fun little twist on even the rougher parts, but I haven't felt like doing that lately. So in the interest of keeping this blog honest and real, I'll fill you in on life at the Grall house lately.

Not all has been bad, my parents came in for Mother's Day Weekend and Baby Dedication at Church. We practically had to rip Zoe from my Dad's arms anytime we needed to go somewhere, and Zoe seemed to realize she was looking into an odd mirror image of herself, in a carnival funhouse sort of way, cause Papa got A LOT of smiles from his newest Granddaughter. Grandma didn't do to bad either and although it was a quick trip in and out, it was good to see them and great for them to meet Zoe. Oh, and baby dedication went great, Zoe slept through most of it, I think she woke up as we were walking out, but she looked super cute with her flower in her hair as big as she is. It was nice to go to lunch after with friends and family at La Hacienda, cause nothing says Mother's Day like a Tex-Mex meal.

Brooke enjoyed her first Mother's Day and her last week of maternity leave, or as one 6th grader put it, "vacation." Ha, that kid is lucky to still be breathing and doesn't even know it. So 17 May came and Momma had to go back to work and Grammy took over, with the help of Reba, Robin, and Jan Harrison. Carol had agreed to accompany a bunch of band kids in their solo competitions so we enlisted a lot of help. And although many of you heard how well Brooke's first week back was, and it was, but it wasn't if you know what I mean. This has been hard on Brooke, going back to work. She's been Zoe's Mom for only 12 weeks and now had give some of that up, it didn't help that in her first week back to work, I had 3 days that I got home at 10pm or later and my earliest day was 7pm. So I got home just in time to give some relief to a frazzled Mom trying to put her baby to bed.

See Zoe is a great sleeper, she'd win an award for napping if there was such a thing, but at night, she is a party animal(just like Dad....used to be) and she is not interested in sleep. Generally after her bath and nightly feeding(see attempt at routine) we try to put her down(call her names, tell her she's fat) but it never works. It usually requires rocking AND walking her around upstairs in low light, I've tried rocking without walking, doesn't end well... this can take up to 2 hrs, but eventually she stops trying to stay awake and falls asleep. Well this makes nighttime kinda long, and when you need sleep and have to get up early in the morning, something has to give and that would be nerves and tempers.... let's just say the fuses are cut a bit short lately and there a simply too many fires burning to keep them from lighting.

To add to our stress, both my Dad and Brooke's Mom have been in the hospital recently. And both sort of rushed there under bad circumstances. Both are okay now, but seriously, as my Mom was telling me the story of all of this, I had to stop her and ask, "Does this story end with me getting on a plane and coming to a funeral?" Yeah it sounded that bad, and my Mom does not have the gift of brevity.

Now, we did have a great visit to Scottish Rite last week. This place could be a model for health care reform, our appointment time was 0745, we went to the back at 0746, we saw our first group of specialists right after, then about 15 min later the next set came in, having read the comments of the first, and so it went, each new specialist coming in promptly after the last, having read all of the comments previous. Such a well run organization! Dr Adams runs a tight ship. Zoe did great at the appointment and everyone had positive feedback for us. We still have no idea what any of that means, and they are talking about getting her a walking aid that sort of resembles a chariot for when she's ready to start taking those first steps.

But again, we have not stopped needing your prayers, we won't either. It has been rough at times, we can easily get caught up in just taking care of Zoe and forgetting about taking care of each other, not that any new set of parents doesn't experience the same thing, but it's different when it's happening to you. I need to learn that although I spend my days fixing other people's problems, I'm allowed to clock out when I'm home and don't need to fix everything there too, sometimes, I need to just listen, that may require duct tape to keep my mouth shut, but I'll try. I do know that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. And I have not seen how this all turns out but I have the faith to know that this trial will pass and devil will not take our joy or run our house. I'm not much of a snow skier but I do know that moguls(bumps) are what make a run worth it, but they can also be what causes you to spill and stumble down the hill. So we may stumble on the bumps in our journey, we know that in the end, we will look back and know it was worth it.



Cheers,



Jay