Passenger Pics

Today was a whirlwind adventure, to be sure. We started off the day with a visit to the doctor for our last official look at the passenger before his big arrival. Now, we may get another look if I get panicky or something, but this is the last SCHEDULED look...the one that is especially exciting because you get a real good preview of the new family member. Penny tagged along because Mom wasn't feeling up to watching her this morning.

Penny had a great time sitting next to me on the recliner, watching the baby on the screen. Looking at his legs, saying "Brain!" and "He's a scary monster" and other such fun things. She REALLY wanted to take my blood pressure with the cuff on the wall since she knows how to work one (come on, there's a doctor in the house!) and she knows the one at the office would work better than the toy one at home. She was pretty cute and remarkably patient, considering the appointment went from 8:30am until about 11am. I seem to have a penchant for choosing doctors with a long wait/visit time.

Because she'd been so good and it's relatively close, we went to the beach afterward. It's a NYC beach, so we had to dodge the tampons and other random trash, but she really enjoyed looking at shells, checking out the birds and even the teeny mussels I pointed out on the pilings. She was scared to let the water touch her at first, but eventually warmed up to it and even started playing as if the waves were sucking her in as they rolled back out. Thankfully, that led to nothing more than splashing a little above the knee, because even I'm a little wary of the harbor water around here. We didn't spend much time there because it was brutally hot and she started getting hungry for lunch. We had a little KFC picnic on a blanket in a shady nearby neighborhood, then headed off to the eye doctor so Mommy could get some contacts.

There were two reasons I needed to get contacts. One, I've got awesome eye benefits for once in my life. Two, Penny's been doing a lot of diving at me and really brutal head hugs that drive my glasses frames into some tender spots on my head. Now we were in prime nap time, so the eye doctor was more of a struggle, but she continued to generally not be horrible, so we went to the "Once Upon a Child" next door and picked up some pretty cool used toys (kitchen for only $10!). Having missed nap time, we toughed out the rest of the evening at home.

So, we're having a really tough time recently with Penny. She is getting considerably more willful and sobbing a lot whenever she doesn't get her way. It's pretty darned obnoxious. Then when we hug to make up, she's darned violent, taking dives at my lap and squeezing my head with all her might. I've been losing it with her on a regular basis it seems, yelling at the top of my voice or shoving her away after she throws herself at me for the umpteenth time. This, of course, just leads to more crying, which then requires a makeup hug that goes awry, ad infinitum.

In talking with a friend of mine, she mentioned that she had been a real bear with her existing kid during her most recent pregnancy and now that the new baby is starting to sleep on a regular basis, she is only slowly regaining her patience. She said she wouldn't want to have more kids because it would be unfair to the existing ones for her to be short with them for a full two years. I mentioned this to Dan and it seemed to provide him a great deal of relief to hear me expressing a similar sentiment about my behavior with Penny. I know I've been short with her a lot and I definitely regret a lot of it. I'll admit I am in a bad state of mind at times. Some of it, though, I'd like to think is more driven by the phase she's going through being a real trial of patience. Hopefully we'll figure out some coping/discipline strategies that will allow us to address some of the challenges and make our household a little less loud and crazy. In the meantime, keep us in your prayers as we figure out the new phase.