Today, after a failed attempt to cross New York Harbor on a ferry that would deliver us to Governor’s Island, we stopped at a pier along the Hudson River Park, just north of Christopher Street, for some relaxing outdoor time. I laid a blanket on the artificial grass and released little m to the wild. She was in her element there, giggling and smiling and laughing and all around occupying herself so much (especially with my water bottle after she finished her afternoon meal) that I was able to write this note. (I did get distracted a few times.) Under the shade of a small tree (the only shade I could find south of Chelsea Piers) the heat was bearable. It felt quite cool, actually. As our time turned towards 3pm, though, and the sun edged further west, we began to feel her warming rays. Little m grew tired of the blue bottle–grew tired in general, really, until her head fell onto the blanket and her eyes slammed shut. That’s when I knew it was time to go.

This parenthood thing is hard. Hard not just because of the kid that requires constant attention (except when she’s sleeping, when I get the brief chance to write missives like this), but because of the strain it puts on every other aspect of life. Three months ago M and I had only each other and the world seemed to revolve like that, two planets circling each other in the cosmos. Two months ago, all that changed and we are two planets circling a star in our middle. Occasionally, those planets pass each other as they zoom around their orbits, but more often than not they are hurtling along at different altitudes and different planes and can only call to each other from across the sun around which they orbit. Which can make it hard for those planets to coordinate things like schedules and weekend plans, and especially coordinate outlooks on how things are going, and expectations for today and tomorrow and each other.

I don’t think we’re the only people to ever go through this. Little m is a new addition to our lives, and that takes some time to get used to. We are each feeling out this new aspect to our lives, each trying to figure out where we stand and how far back we can stumble before we reach the cliff and fall off. I don’t think either of us will actually fall off. We’ll stumble a little, but the other will reach out a hand and grab hold before we edge over the side. It’s a process, like life, and once we get used to things one way, they’ll change and suddenly we’ll be doing things a different way. Or little m will change things for us. Like start to get up on her knees and then push herself along the floor and then this simple life we know now, where we can put her on a mat in the living room and surround her with toys and leave her play by herself for a spell–that time will be over as soon as she starts moving around on her own. (For the record, I really don’t know what we’ll do then.)

Last weekend was a visit with another set of grandparents. Two weeks ago, my father and step-mother came to town for a visit, along with my brother. They spent some time getting to know their granddaughter over a long weekend. They spent most of their time around the apartment (unusual for visitors to New York who often want to get out and see the sights) and we all sat around and watched the little one learn to sit up on her own and laugh and play. We were nervous in part because it would be the first extended visit by any family, and that meant sharing our little girl. (I think I’ve mentioned how hard that’s been for me, and I think hard for M, too.) We got through the weekend, though, and I enjoyed the experience of seeing my father’s face light up when he looked at his granddaughter. We played in the apartment a lot, but also took a few walks and toured both my and M’s workplaces. Overall, it was a simple weekend with reminiscing and relaxing and enjoying the baby.

At M’s parents’ house last weekend, it was little m’s first weekend away since coming home. We had nothing planned except staying around the house. My in-laws live in a huge house in a small town in Connecticut. (I found out this weekend that they are completely off the grid–they only get power from the city and they have a backup generator. I know where I’m going in case of the zombie apocalypse.) Ammama is a stickler for order and cleanliness, and M and I were both concerned about how she would handle having a little one in her home. Aside from the fact that there was no place for little m to sit and play (except a big black shag rug that was dragged out of a closet for the purpose) it wasn’t bad. She’s young enough now that she doesn’t need a lot to keep her occupied, and the few toys we brought, along with Miles, the new dog, were enough to keep little m thoroughly entertained. What was more was how good we both though Ammama was with the baby, giddy and happy and willing to get down on the hard wood floor to play with her (though not for long–her knees can’t handle it; for that matter, neither can mine). She made noises that brought little m to actual giggles of laughter and was much more willing than I to repeat the same noise or phrase over and over and over again if it meant bringing a smile to little m’s face. Her downside was that she is, to put it bluntly, a bit of a baby hog, not even letting Poppy hold the baby much. She also has a tendency to tell other people what to do, about everything (a trait which drives me crazy), and out handling of little m was no exception. Despite that, she was wonderful with the baby, and we had a great weekend.

What bridges both of these grandparent experiences is the way M and I dealt with them, and the way we’ll have to deal with them from now on. Our parents all did fine jobs raising us, but M and I have talked a lot about the ways in which we don’t want to be like our parents. It is those traits, perhaps, those methods of raising a child, that can cause the most consternation, and how to deal with that. How to jibe our parenting method with our parents’ and how to make sure that of the things that are important to us, our parents to not conflict with. (Ammama, for example, after a long Saturday, sat little m on the couch with her to watch television, something both M and I agree should not happen until she’s at least two, and I’m hoping even later. I don’t want my child to become a TV zombie.) So we have to learn to accept and compromise and be fair and level-headed and be prepared to let our parents spoil the kid, even if that’s something I’m desperately trying to avoid.

If I thought I was the only person to ever feel this conflict, I probably wouldn’t write this. But I suspect I’m not alone in my feelings. I suppose I’m a little more public in my expressions, writing them here, even though I know that most of my readers are people that know me, know us. Getting these thoughts out is the way to keep myself sane.

And now I’ve run out of time. Little m has awoken from her morning nap, and I am off to start the first day of my last week as a stay-at-home dad. I’ll miss it.

This is one of the best of the Haiku Diem I’ve seen (#6):

new sign of aging:
unlock your phone, then forget
which app you wanted

Uncle Sam sent us another gift yesterday, something we weren’t expecting. Little m’s immigration paperwork was approved, and rather then send us a simple notification telling us this, Uncle sent a small envelope that contained a pamphlet entitled “A Guide for New Immigrants.” Stuck to a letter inside the envelope was a small envelope large enough for a card of some type. “We recommend use of this envelope to protect your new card and to prevent wireless communication with it.” (Not the greatest of phrasings, but I’ll let that slip.)

Stuck to the other side of that was the card in question, the size of a credit card with a photo of little m on the left and shaded a certain verdant hue, the card is titled “Permanent Resident.” So, while little m may not be a citizen yet, she is currently a green card holder.

It’s just another document that I cannot ever lose.

Here’s the way it’ll happen: on a day that will come sooner than I realize, I’ll look at my daughter and she’ll be walking. Not crawling or shuffling around, but just plain walking. And she’ll walk right up to me and ask if she can borrow the car, or can she have twenty bucks to have dinner with friends, or her computer needs a software update, can I take care of that for her, or she’ll tell me I’m a cruel father for not letting her stay out past midnight. She’ll plead with her mother to let her go, but M and I will be on the same page and we’ll both take the brunt of her anger. At some point, she might even throw her adoption back at us, get angry and tell us we’re not her real parents anyway. That will hurt, but we’ll try not to let it bother us too much, because we’ll know she won’t really mean it. This will happen without my even thinking about it, barely even noticing.

Yesterday we went for a bike ride on a cloudy day. I covered her with the rain shield from the running stroller, and it fit just the way I had hoped it would: perfectly. Well, not quite perfectly, but it covered her, left some air circulating, protected her from the rain. Not that it actually rained. She was quite taken with the clear window, pressed her fingers against it to test the resistance. Through my new mirror I watched her as I biked, stare both through and at the rain cover as though it were some sort of creature shielding her from the world. She would press two fingers against it like it was a gel. We went to Toys-R-Us to get an alphabet foam mat for the apartment, something she could crawl around on without us worrying about stray hairs from the carpet wrapping around her fingers, creating a tourniquet around her wrist. Also, she could use the mat to learn the alphabet. While there, I discovered something about that store that made me never want to shop there again. The item was listed at a regular price of $24.99 online, and when the item rang up as 28.99 in the store I brought up the online page and pointed out that the price was different. “Oh, we don’t honor the online store. That’s a company policy.” So the company policy is to not honor itself, basically. The internet shopping experience will not go away, and a company that can’t correlate it’s online business with it’s store business is a company that should go out of business. (There’s a great story in today’s NY Times about Nordstrom’s, which has improved it’s sales by coupling it’s online inventory with what it has in stores.) Couple that with the fact that I stood in a line twelve customers deep while a register manager stood off to the side and yawned and six employees at the customer service countered argued about who’s turn it was to take a break.

Anyway, by the time we got home it was bottle time. Little m enjoys the bike seat, but when she gets hungry she hates everything. I pulled into the park across the street from our apartment and we took a seat on a bench and she gobbled up the nipple and drank heartily of the Similac. When the bottle got about halfway empty, she did something that startled me. She held the bottle herself. I was not propping it up high enough, apparently, and she pushed it up herself. When I took my hand away, she was holding it on her own, adjusting it to suit her needs, and gulping down that vitamin rich formula. I was amazed, shocked really. We had been trying to get her to hold a bottle on her own for a couple of weeks, using some sippy cups we’d purchased and filling them with water. She drank from them, but never seemed to want to hold them on her own. She would drink if we held, but once we let go she’d let the cup fall, and if she had a hand on it, she’d bang it against whatever surface was available. I snapped a photo and texted it to M, then called her to tell her the news. We were both stunned.

Today, during laundry time, she was sitting on my lap. I took her hands in mine and pulled her to her feet. Rather than hold her up under her arms, which is what I usually do, or put one hand on her but, or prop her up from the hips, I held onto her hands for balance and just let her stand. She stood on my lap for about two minutes, occasionally buckling her knees but catching herself enough that she was able to stay where she was while I offered balance and support.

These small steps are only the beginning. Within a few weeks, she’ll be crawling, and within a few months standing and walking on her own. Which takes me back to the future, when she’ll approach me one day and say, “Hi, dad. Want to go for a run?” And I’ll have to ask her to slow down for me.

Little m had quite the day. She woke early–she’s been doing that for a few days now, rising just a little earlier each day. First it was bed at 730pm and up at 730am. Slowly we’ve worked out way to sleep by 630pm and up 12 hours later. This morning was the early side, before 630am, which wasn’t bad considering all thatched to be done by the time we were to leave the house an hour later.

Here’s something I’ve been struggling with as a father and a spouse: time share. I find myself being frighteningly possessive of little m. It’s worst in the morning, when she’s just woken up and she’s all smiles and sweet and warm and wonderful. (Not that she isn’t wonderful all the time.) want to be the one to feed her, which might be fine if M and I did a trade-off. But since the docket has gone back to work, she’s had to work longer hours. Unlike when I went back to work our second week back, M leaves the house at 730am and doesn’t get home most nights until after 7pm. That’s made it understandably hard on her since she misses out on the nighty ritual of bath time. Rather than being understanding about this, I was a jerk yesterday. When little m woke up, M said she wanted to feed her and I put on my best four-year old whiny voice. “You got to feed her last night,” I said and could have followed with, “But I’ve got diverticulitis.” M was understandably angry. I backpedaled and tried to explain it away. Truth is, I want to spend lots of time with the little girl and for some reason feel that M intrudes upon that time. It’s not true. She’s a wonderful mother and a great wife and wants nothing more than what’s best for little m. Like our first night with her in Ethiopia, I feel quite scared of the task I’ve got, not only over the next month but over the coming years. If I’m going to be the stay-at-home dad, I’ve got to learn that I’m not alone in raising this kid, that there are two of us in this together and that together we can accomplish anything. This isn’t something I feel all the time, but it does creep in there. I need to keep myself aware so that when the feeling creeps in I can ward it off before I say anything stupid–or whiny.

So this morning that meant working together to get us both our the door on time to get M to work and me and little m to a friend’s house by 8am to borrow a car for a drive to Briarcliff Manor, where I had scheduled a computer client today. Originally I wanted a babysitter to watch little m while I did the job, but none of my babysitters were available today. No matter: the client was excited to have a baby in her house again. In order to get to the car, we had to take the bike. This was little m’s second time on the bike and this time I felt a little more prepared. With M in the house, I was able to go downstairs early and get the bike out of the basement so I wouldn’t have to do it while holding little m. We left the apartment at 730am with everything I thought I’d need and M carrying m. M figured she’d carry the little one downstairs and then take the train to work. But getting her and all the gear on the bike takes more than just a few seconds. First, I had to strap the stroller to the freeloaders, then I had to get my bag on there, which included the diaper bag. Then I had get the helmet on little m, and strap her into the bike. It seems easy, but all told it took about five to ten minutes to get everything situated and strapped into place.

I felt a lot better riding this time than the first. The first time was a nerve wracking experience. I gripped the handlebar so tightly I thought my fingers would crush the metal. I stopped at every light, worried that I’d topple over, worried that a car door would hit me, worried that she’d stick her arm out and get it caught on something. I worried about everything that I usually think about when I’m riding, only that worry was magnified by the presence of the little one on the back. With her back there, I didn’t want anything to happen. This time, I still had all those thoughts, but felt more confident riding. I wasn’t as concerned about her reaching out to grab anything, because her arms aren’t long enough to reach past the seat. Nor was I as worried about toppling over because she’d shift her weight or because I’d lose balance. I’ve fallen off my bike only twice in three years: once because of a cab, once because I was riding on the sidewalk and not paying attention. I learned many lessons from both, and one of those lessons was that I never want to fall off my bike again. So I ride careful, safe, deliberate, fully aware of my surroundings and never out of control. I certainly wasn’t going to ride out of control with little m back there.

She handled the ride wonderfully. She was cheering and babbling back there, slapping her hands against the bar. When we arrived at our destination, she was smiling and giggling and looking around like this was the best place in the world to be. It was great to see. Shortly after getting her in the car seat, she was fast asleep. Perfect timing, really, and an indicator both that she was ready for that morning nap and that she found the car seat comfortable enough to sleep in. I was way early to Briarcliff and stopped to get a muffin and a cup of coffee. She woke up so I took her into the little pastry shop and she looked wide eyed at all the cookies and stuffed croissants. I parked next to a small park in Tarrytown beneath a large oak tree where I gave her a bottle and ate my muffin. We took a stroll through the park, touched the trees and the rock wall, finally headed up to the client’s house about half an hour early.

J was wonderful about having a baby in her house. I had been at J’s house the day after we received our referral, way back in March, and she was probably the first person I told. I think I even showed her a photo, because at the time I thought I’d never be back to her place. I was wrong about that. I’ve been back to J five or six times since then. It was through her as a client that I made enough to buy the Xtracycle. J was ready to take little m as soon as I walked in the door, and within five minutes she had whisked her away for a walk in the stroller while I worked on the computer. She called me shortly to tell me m had fallen asleep and was that all right. “That’s great,” I said. “She’s never fallen asleep in the stroller before.” Either she was exhausted or really comfortable. I’d have to go with comfortable, since she’d only just woken up from an hour long nap.

We were in Briarcliff much longer than I thought we would be, which happens almost every time I go there. No matter. J was a gracious host, looking after little m until the little one really did need to go because she really needed a proper nap and she wasn’t going to get one there. No bed for her to sleep in, no place to rest her weary head. I propped her into the car seat and within fifteen minutes she was fast asleep. I took my time driving back to the city, giving her as much time to sleep as possible. As soon as I stopped the car, she was awake again. She gave me the babbling yells as we rode the bike home again, and as we got closer she started to cry. It had been a long day and she was exhausted and probably hungry. I locked the bike to the rail in front of the building and managed to carry up the stairs the baby, a backpack full of all her stuff and my stuff, a stroller, two helmet and a bag of bagels. It was a long slow walk and when I got in the door I dropped most of it on the floor so I could look after her. First, there was dinner–sweet potatoes. She loved them. Then we played for a bit, keeping her distracted before bath time. Then she got a bath, which she loved, splashing and kicking in the water. She seems to really like having water poured over her head and face. That makes her squeeze her fists in excitement. After the bath, she had a bottle and then I put her in her sleep sack and put her in bed. On Monday I started reading the Little House books to her. She seems to like them, and I’m enjoying reading them again. Tonight, it was in a bit of a southern accent. Probably not the way the Ingalls actually spoke, but she doesn’t know the difference now anyway.

Remember that video I linked to last week? Today, little m got a message from her favorite uncle: a welcome message.

Welcome to the United States. We have received your immigrant visa packet from the Port of Entry where you entered the United States.

This letter represents the first step in getting our little girl citizenship to the U.S. Currently, she is an Ethiopian citizen, carrying an Ethiopian passport. Our first step to citizenship is to finalize the adoption in the U.S., a process that can only begin after we have had her home for three months. Since we live in New York state, that process could take years. And in the middle of it, we may be moving out of state. Not sure how that’s going to work. One thing at a time, though.

I feel glad to know that my favorite uncle is really on top of this, too. This is the second notice we’ve received.

Rather than go to bed when I was exhausted at 930pm like my lovely wife, I decided to stay up and watch Meet John Doe on WNET 13 tonight. It was a thoroughly enjoyable movie with a simple story, compelling characters, excellent writing, a great cast (including Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck) about a simple man who gets caught up in a fake story that becomes much bigger than anything he thought it could be. The world, in the words of one of the characters, becomes full of heelots. After enjoying this old movie, I brushed my teeth and laid down in bed–wide awake. Nothing really was racing through my mind, unlike previous times I’ve had insomnia. Tonight, I just lay awake thinking: about my daughter asleep in the next room. How much she has changed and grown in just the last week. Seven days ago she couldn’t sit on her own. My wife, the pediatrician, called in tripodding, and this is apparently a pretty important milestone in a baby’s development, one they usually have long before they turn six months. By Monday, little m was sitting for long periods, with pillow support. By Wednesday, when my father and step-mother and my brother arrived for a visit, she could sit up on her own, completely unaided. We put a stack of toys in front of her and she’s happy as a bear in a pot of honey, banging those little plastic disks like they’re the best thing on the face of the earth. After about twenty minutes or so, when she starts to get tired, she topples over on her side. She doesn’t put out an arm to protect herself, so she winds up landing on her side and bumping her head against the carpet, which startles her. That leads to a bout of crying which is a good indicator that she’s simply ready for bed.

On Thursday I braved the bike. After her morning nap, I carried little m downstairs to the basement and put her in the bike seat. I was worried about her getting comfortable in the seat, so I moved the bike back and forth in the small room where I store it. She seemed happy. Unsure how I was going to get the bike out of the basement while carrying her, I decided to try an experiment. I pushed the bike up the stairs with her in the seat. It was not an easy push, but we managed it–me without dropping the bike and her without crying about it. While I was getting situated, figuring out how to store the stroller to the saddles and what to do about the sun, I struck up a conversation with a woman sitting on the stoop of my building. She said she knew the guys that invented the Extracycle, had been on a few bike trips with them (I think). She seemed a nice lady, took quite a liking herself to little m. She said she was moving to the neighborhood having gotten accepted to Columbia and then gave me her e-mail address. “This is weird,” she said, “but if you ever need a babysitter, I’ll probably live around here. I can give you references and I’m cheap and she seems like such a sweet little girl.” I thanked her and took her address, thinking that I had lots of offers from others who were willing to watch little m that I probably didn’t need a stranger, too. But a backup option never hurts.

Writing here seems to always help me fall asleep. Just having written this little bit, I feel myself getting tired and I think I might be able to actually fall asleep. Next week begins my first week on my own with little m. I’m a little worried about how I’ll fare, having no one around as a backup, no one around to help if I need it. The little girl asleep in the crib in the next room will be relying on me, completely on me, to keep her fed and rested and happy. I think I’m up to the task. To some extent, being a writer had prepared me for this. Both jobs involve spending a lot of time with something that can’t really talk back except in my own mind, and really give no instant feedback. Both also require spending a lot of time at home, and both require a lot of undivided attention. It’s that last one that may cause me the most problems. Recently I’ve had a lot of trouble with my attention span. If little m is any influence, I hope it’ll improve and I’ll again be able to focus on my writing and let all these other troubles (work, money) float away. At the same time, I don’t want to be like little m and focus on something for only about ten minutes at a time. I have to stay focused and remember that this month she’s the most important thing around.

Thanks to a generous friend, I now have the bike seat to attach to my TreXtracycle on which I shall cart little m to and from day care on a daily basis. I installed the thing on Saturday (after running a 5M race in 30:30, not bad for a guy who hasn’t run a race in four months) and am mostly happy with the results. I rode it Sunday and it handles great. The seat itself I installed a little too far back on the new Flight Deck and as a result the deck itself is completely useless for hauling stuff, and the Freeloaders are not quite as, well, freeloading. I need to move the seat up two or three inches to make it work a little better. I’ll have to make sure not to kick my leg back that way when I mount the bike now, something that will take some getting used to.

M has been worried about what I’ll do when it rains, as we don’t really want little m stuck on this thing with New York rainwater pouring down on her. We’ve both spent the last few days browsing the web looking for options. The best one seems to be one M came up with: a sun canopy that we think we can attach to the Peapod seat itself, perhaps with the aid of a bar we’ll have to bolt into the back of the headrest. Then, we’ll use the rain cover that came with the jogging stroller to cover her up.

I found another option, one that seems even more interesting, though not something I think I can try at this point. My bike is still stored in the basement of my building, and I have to haul it up a short flight of stairs every morning and bring it down every night. How am I going to accomplish that with a baby in my arms? Not sure, but I know I’ll be able to figure it out. Anyway, I found the blog of a man in Ithaca who has virtually eschewed automobiles in favor of his Big Dummy with a built in Xtracycle. He designed and built, and then posted on his website the DIY instructions for, a rain canopy that covers the entire LT kit. This option is one I’ve been searching for a while, because one problem with the Xtracycle is how poorly it works in the rain. There’s not really anyway to cover it, the company doesn’t sell a rain cover, and the bars themselves are not impervious to the elements. The rain canopy would be a great solution.

It’ll have to wait, though. I’ve got no space for either constructing it or being able to move my bike inside after I’ve installed the pipes to hold it in place. But it has given me some ideas. Maybe I can make some NYC modifications. I’m happy for now, but I will have to think about this soon. The dry summer months are soon over.

We had a visit from a team of early intervention specialists today. The state of New York offers a free program for children ages birth to three years and who have developmental delays or disabilities. I called for an evaluation into the program the first week we were home and in that time little m has come a long way in her development. When we brought her home, she wasn’t rolling onto her stomach, she wasn’t making any sounds (except the occasional scream), she wasn’t bearing any weight on her legs, couldn’t sit without falling over, and hated being on her stomach in general. In the last three weeks she’s started to do all those things, and more. She can roll from her back to her stomach, and has three or four times rolled the other way. (Apparently that’s a much more challenging feat for babies.) She bears some weight on her legs, though not much and she doesn’t place her feet below her. She just lets them fall where they go, which is usually splayed out in a way that makes it hard for them to bear any weight. She started making sounds the first week we were home, aaaahhhing at first and then gaga and baba and sometimes dada though I don’t labor under any delusion that she’s actually referring to me.   

Yesterday, three physical therapists came to our house to evaluate her. The first to arrive was R, a gregarious and friendly man with a small laptop on which he took all his notes. “I type faster than I write,” he said. When we told him that little m was born on a false banana leaf, he took that and ran. It would be his story of the day. When tattooed B arrived it was almost the first thing he told her about our daughter. “She was born on a banana leaf,” he said, then turned to me and smiled and winked. “I’m going to tell that story forever.” R is the occupational therapist, focusing on fine motor skills like grasping and transferring objects from one hand to the other. Can she take a peg out of a wooden board? Can she grasp a string? Can she grasp a small object, like a piece of puff cereal? The answer to all these questions was yes, she can. She stared at him a lot, wondered why he kept handing her a block and then taking it away, wondered why she couldn’t put everything he gave her into her mouth. But in the end she was fine. R typed away on his little laptop (alas, it was a Windows machine) and told B that this was the only way he could make sure to get his report done in a timely fashion.

B took over when she stepped into the apartment. She’s a big woman with tattoos up both arms and a head of dark, wild dreadlocks that contrasted with her pale skin. She put little m on her activity mat on the floor and worked on the gross motor skills, the issues that our daughter is having the most trouble with: sitting up, rolling over, bearing weight on her legs. She thought little m favored her right side over her left (giving M a little fodder for a discussion of CP later in the day) and scored her at 4 1/2 months, which means she favors therapy. R did not support therapy, as he scored her in the 50% percentile, which meant she was not off the charts. There was a lot of talk among all three therapists about scoring and giving credit for things she’s doing or not doing, stuff we say we’ve seen her do but they can’t get her to do. M, having read these reports a lot at the hospital, knew what they were talking about. I sat on the sidelines trying to follow as best I could while watching these three wildly different personalities interact with m.

The third therapist to arrive was C, whom R referred to as the generalist. She focuses on overall development, both physical and cognitive, and she asked even more questions than the other two. C flipped through stacks of papers on her lap, back and forth, an answer to one question prodding her to flip to another page earlier in her stack and check a different box, which led to another question and another piece of paper twenty pages further into her stack. C was a tall chocolate skinned woman with brown scarves wrapped around her head that matched her cool cotton shirt and loose fitting cotton pants. While B complained about the heat (“I never wear tank-tops to a job, but it was just too hot today.”) C seemed nonplussed by the temperature and humidity. “She doesn’t have the humid gene,” B said. Within five minutes of C’s arrival, R packed up his computer and his notebooks and his little bag of toys and hurried off. “Sorry to run, but I’m double parked up the street,” he said. “Just so you know, I’m not recommending,” he told us. B repeated it later. C sat on the floor and tried to interact with m, but by this time m was getting tired of all the attention. She was crying and I offered to distract her, let her sit in my lap, which she seemed to enjoy. Just sitting and watching all the happenings, as opposed to being in the middle of all that hubbub. She still needed to get evaluated by C, though. M and I figured it had been almost three hours since her last bottle, so we fed her and she got through five of her usual six ounces and stopped eating, but was then a happy little subject. She stared at the card with the happy face on it that C moved slowly to test m’s tracking. C rang a bell and m turned to it suddenly. M called m’s Ethiopian nickname (Mesey) and m responded immediately to it. C spoke so quietly that despite sitting only four feet from her I had a hard time making out anything she was saying. M was right next to her, and C was mostly talking to her anyway, so I figured I’d get filled in on the details later. (My hearing is probably vanishing in my old age anyway.)

Having a wife and a mother who is also a pediatrician can be a boon and a bane. On the one hand, she knows completely how to navigate this system. She knew what each person who arrived would do, knew what the forms they were going to complete looked like. She knew the diagnosis (“hypotonia”) and knew when to say it and when to resort to more layman’s terms. The therapists seemed quite happy to have a parent who knew exactly what was going on. At the same time, as a doctor she wants to anticipate their questions, wants to have answers ready and wants to say the right things to make sure to get the result she wants. As a doctor, she knows it all; but as a parent, she really has no idea what’s going on. She’s never seen the system from this side, and though she understand what’s going on behind the scenes, it’s different when you’re in front of the camera. It’s different watching it happen to your own child.

In the end, I think we’ll get physical therapy for her, to help with her core muscles and help with bearing weight on her legs. I suspect that by the time the evaluation meeting takes place, she may have developed far enough that therapy isn’t even required. Part of me wants that to be the case, wants my daughter to get to her physical age developmentally on her own, without the need for early intervention. Part of me, though, wants her to get every opportunity she can, and this is a great one that could certainly help both now and for the future.