A Day With Janna

Today was a complex day right from the start. By the end of the day, two things needed to be accomplished. Rogers needed to fix our cable TV (hasn’t been working for three weeks!) and, more importantly, Janna needed to have some blood work done so that we can eventually find out whether or not she is a Celiac (one who is antagonistic to wheat).

Chrissy had it perfectly planned out. She would take Jesse to work with her, leaving me to hang out with Janna until 11, at which time I would feed her and put her to bed for 11:30. She would sleep blissfully until 1:30 while the Rogers tech fixed out television issues, and then I’d take her to CHEO to undergo the upsetting process of having blood drawn.

This was a great idea! However, it’s actually really rare that I have Janna by myself for that much time, and I realized that, without Jesse around, I wasn’t really sure what to do with her for the next four hours until 11am. I took her outside for about ten seconds, and then it started raining on us. Chrissy had the van, and the stroller. I had the nineteen-month-old girl and a rainy day. What should we do?

Well, we started off by playing with her pop-up toy. I tried to figure out as many ways to play with it as possible. I popped up all the little pop-up things and dared her to push them down. She laughed, and pushed them down. I popped them up again. She pushed them down. Repeat, repeat. She walked away, opened the pantry, and walked away with a bag of sugar. I knew I had to change strategies fast.

Boots! This was actually her idea. She brought the boots over to me, and I figured I’d get another three minutes of entertainment out of this. Somehow, we stretched it to nearly ten minutes. It went like this: she handed me the boots, sat down on my lap, and screamed. I understood this to mean that she wanted me to put them on her. (Just for clarification, this wasn’t an angry or prolonged scream, it was just her standard, short burst of high-pitch sound she currently uses as a general means of communication.) 

Once they were on, she smiled with contentment for approximately one second before she tugged at the boots and screamed again. She wanted them off. Once they were off, she took the right boot and tried to stick it on her left foot. When it wouldn’t go on, she screamed, this time slightly irritated. I helped her put her boots on the wrong feet, for which she was again thankful for a full second, and then she was tugging at them again. Repeat, repeat. 

I thought she was going to do this forever, when she abruptly disappeared and brought me my dress shoes. “Alright,” I thought to myself, “I know how this game works!” I helped her put on both shoes, but man, was that ever a mistake! 

Somehow I had deeply offended her. She began real screaming at me and swatting at me with her hands. I had had enough of this, so I let her know in a stern voice that she wasn’t to speak to her dad that way.

Tears ensued. The next three hours were a little rocky.

Janna has this amazing ability to be intensely interested in something for ten seconds before it loses all attraction to her. She brought me books, and before I was finished the first page, she was hopping off my lap to find a new book. Same thing with toys. We had some great moments, but I started to feel a little frayed around the edges by the third hour.

What saved me in the end was our movie collection. Despite our childproof cabinet doors, Janna managed to sneak a hand through the crack and pull out all of the movies, one by one. Then she opened all of the cases and took out the DVDs. She seemed to love trying to figure out with case each DVD went into. She has her mother’s love for organization!

Eventually 11:30 came and went, and Janna went down for her nap. The Rogers guy came a short time later and tried three different boxes before deciding that nothing was working. He said that something was wrong on their end, and that he’ll call me back when they get it sorted out... hopefully we’ll hear from him tomorrow?

Two hours later, and Chrissy and Jesse were home. It was time to take Janna to get her needle. Chrissy had a deeply sympathetic look in her eyes as she sent us off. She was thinking back to the horrible experience she had had with Jesse, when she was asked to pin his arms down as the nurse stick the needle in his arm, Jesse screaming the whole time and looking at her with a sense of betrayal.

Janna is a completely different kid. She was so happy the whole way there, and when the doctor asked me to pin her arms against me, she just got a little quiet. She did cry pretty hard during the needle, but once the nurse pulled it out, it was as if it had never happened! She loved the sticker she received and munched happily on the (gourmet) jelly beans I bought her. Tough girl!

That’s it for now. Somehow, I feel twice as exhausted as when I’ve been watching both kids for the day! I’m not sure how that works, but Janna definitely has lots of energy. 

Until next time...