sheep.

One of my best friends sent me the link to an adorable craft project to do with Ethan while we were housebound. It was to make sheep using simply empty toilet paper rolls, cotton balls and some tissue paper. Not only was it a seemingly simple craft, but the cotton balls and tissue paper were great sensory objects for Ethan to play with. He loved the texture of the cotton balls and the crinkly, crunchy sound he could get the tissue paper to make.

Because I am notoriously skilled in the art of never throwing away empty toilet paper rolls, we were able to excel at this craft and make an entire flock of sheep.

I mean, they ended up looking a little bit more like a fluffy white alien mixed with my beloved guinea pig, Schubert, who I had while growing up. I said I was skilled at never throwing away empty toilet paper rolls, not craft projects. It was a pretty awesome and adorable way to spend an afternoon, and now we have some mighty odd looking sheep to play with.

i know i'll feel better in the morning but this is how i feel right now

I'm going to do something that I didn't want to do: take a moment to have an almost-breakdown about the RAD and the RSV and the other aggravating acronyms that make me cringe and want to throw something across the room whenever I see them attached to my son's name on his medical documents. I never like to whine too much about these things around other people because I know that it could be extraordinarily worse and in the grand scheme of life, I should be keeping my mouth shut and my concerns to myself. I recently read a blog in which the writer was feeling similar to the way I was feeling when a commenter said that life is subjective, that it's not a competition, that just because someone's hard might be harder than yours doesn't make yours less hard or unpleasant. I really couldn't find a single ounce of anything but the honest to goodness truth in that notion.

The thing is, I'm feeling defeated. I was driving to the pharmacy the other day to get refills on one of Ethan's nebulizer medications. Halfway there -- and mind you, it's about a three minute drive -- he began choking. Choking on mucus, making this awful grinding noise with his throat as I watched his eyes well up in the backseat mirror. I pulled over at the playground I was passing, flung him out of the car seat and stuck my fingers down the back of his throat and removed a huge glob of mucus. He proceeded to vomit all over me and then cried, cried, cried as he clung to my neck. And that was a good day.

When his RAD is flaring up, we can't leave the house. It's fine the first couple of days but once we reach the one week mark, we're both ready to begin start climbing the walls. I walk around with snot stains on my jeans and a worry in my heart because Ethan has refused ninety-five percent of the food and drink I've offered for the day. I take forty minutes getting him down for a nap and within minutes, he's coughing and hacking and choking and unable to sleep. He spends the days exhausted, wanting to sleep but being unable to, coughing, hacking and sounding like Darth Vader. That wheeze is the worst. I can never get the sound out of my head.

These days are hard and they oftentimes are lonely. I try to explain to people how I can't even use the bathroom alone because I can't let Ethan cry, even for a second, when he isn't breathing properly. It's difficult restricting the activity of a baby who just wants to go. It's difficult trying to be one step ahead of them so they don't cry, don't stress, don't excite themselves too much. It's difficult trying to get them to eat when they don't want to because even taking a moment to chew or swallow makes them feel scared that they cannot breathe otherwise. Mostly people remind me that this goes away, that maybe it will return once every few months, that we really are lucky. They're right, I know that, but these days are still so hard. The walls close in on me while I listen to my son wheeze, listen to him cry and cough and roll around in discomfort at nighttime.

I just wanted to take a minute to say that it's temporary, but it's still hard. These last few days have been some of the hardest. Today Ethan was also diagnosed with his very first ear infection. It was one of those things that just made me laugh at how life can sometimes be, challenging us to see how much we can possibly take. Ethan went to sleep smiling tonight. A good friend of mine managed to find him a replica of a toy he adores at his swim school and his day was entirely made. It's the memory I'm trying to keep with me of today as I get ready to close my eyes and wait for tomorrow.

can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all

I think I more or less have gotten the hang of this parenting thing -- in general, I mean -- except for when it comes to people touching your child. While the obvious is that he's my child so keep your grubby hands off, I can never actually get that (or a kinder, more subtle alternative) out. Especially when it comes to the elderly.

Case in point: at Target, I was trying to put the shopping cart cover into the shopping cart when the contents of my diaper bag spilled upside down all over the floor. I tried to juggle a squirmy Ethan while trying to bend and pick up what I could, noticing all of the people who sympathetically smiled as they walked on by. Eventually, a nice elderly man came over and offered to help. I thanked him profusely as he put the shopping cart cover onto the cart for us and made silly faces at Ethan. And then he shook Ethan's hands, tousled his hair and was on his way. I immediately broke out the sanitizing wipes and gave Ethan's hands a rubdown. I felt ungrateful and kind of guilty in that moment, but still a little frustrated at how easily people seem to gravitate towards touching a random baby. Or is it just me who gets all squirmy and germophobic when this happens? Is it really not even that big of a deal?

A few months back at a restaurant, we were waiting for a table to be ready when some man walks past us. He reached down and shook Ethan's hands before walking into the restaurant with his wife. My mother nearly jumped out of her skin. Or there are the countless times at Ethan's pediatrician's office, which is inside of a large medical building, when people will ride the elevator with us and squeeze his feet, pinch his cheeks, lift his chin to see what color his eyes are. Don't even get me started on people pushing their way inside his mouth to see how many teeth he has. I feel like I'm always a goalie trying to keep people out and off of my child especially when he's sick and especially with his immune system troubles. I've seen signs people will attach to their strollers warning passerby to look with their eyes and not with their hands at the baby riding inside and sometimes I feel I need to pin one to the front of Ethan's shirt. And the back. And anywhere where maybe, just maybe, people will see it and be reminded that it's probably not the best idea to start touching a random baby they've met for the first time in a medical office elevator or down the aisles at Target.

Now let me step off my soapbox, put aside my imagined comfort with confrontation and say that it just takes one elderly man in the deli line to say how much Ethan reminds him of his grandson a million miles away in another state somewhere, one he has only met once, one whose pictures arriving in his mailbox is the highlight of his week (and do I want to see them?), one who is named after him, one who he hopes he can hold one more time before he's no longer here anymore. All it takes is one elderly man with a pocket full of 4x6 photographs and a sad story about his baby grandson in Arizona to make me feel like maybe a little hair tousling and a handshake is okay and, more than that, makes me think that maybe I actually should chase him down the aisle and ask him if he wants to spend the day with us.

how the notes all bend and reach above the trees

Ethan inherited his daddy's handsomeness. And he inherited my respiratory system. Sorry for that, Ethan. Sorry for that.

Ethan has RAD -- or restrictive airway disease -- which despite the acronym is really anything but rad. It was just one of the many gifts that his bout with RSV back in October stuck him with. We get by and we adjust and each week that doesn't require usage of the nebulizer is worth a celebration. In this case, we've been able to celebrate almost two months without the nebulizer (which I credit entirely to salt therapy). I jinxed it a few days ago, probably like I just did now. We spent today practically attached to the nebulizer, internet video clips from Sesame Street and Max & Ruby books. Restricting the activity of a precocious 10 1/2 month old child is one of those things that probably sounds a lot easier when you're the pediatrician telling the parent to do this.

In actuality, it was cause for me to cry in the bathroom where I spent Ethan's complete nap for the day -- all 8 minutes of it -- washing my face to make myself kind of feel human and dreaming about a double-tall non-fat latte from Starbucks.

It wasn't all bad, though. I realized that one surefire way to get Ethan to kind of sit still is to listen to music. He recently learned to clap his hands (at this stage, though, it's more like slapping the opposite elbow) and so we clapped along as the music played on. We listened to records for a good two hours this afternoon as the rain tapped along against the window of his playroom. It was the bright spot in a cloudy afternoon filled with wheezing and odoriferous mists of Albuterol.

first mother's day as a mother

Yesterday was my first time celebrating Mother's Day as a mother myself. It has been an incredible year in every sense of the word. I can still vividly remember last year, sitting on bedrest and imagining what life would be like when my baby was here with me on the outside. Being Ethan's mommy is better than I could have ever imagined.

The morning began with breakfast on couch (which is what happens when you wake up at 6:30 a.m. and have an early morning marathon of Pregnant In Heels, foiling your husband's breakfast in bed plans) from my favorite local deli. Once Ethan woke up, we joined my parents and sister for a day at the Miami Seaquarium. Despite the initial weather forecasts claiming beautiful weather for Mother's Day, it did begin to rain. The drizzle only cooled things down as we walked around admiring the sea creatures big and small. It was a perfect day.

I was completely spoiled this Mother's Day but I have to say that being Ethan's mommy has been the greatest gift of all.

I have learned a lot in the short time that I've been a mother. I've learned that motherhood means leaving your expectations behind and learning to take each day for what it is, as something fresh and new and exciting. No day is ever like the one before.

Happy (albeit a little belated) Mother's Day to all of the wonderful mothers out there!