Breakthrough: Secret To Patience Is Drugs!

While recuperating, I have finally finished the crosstitch I started for Eli before he was even born. I also resigned myself to reality and filed away in albums a bunch of pictures that I had been optimistically stashing away to use for scrapbooking. Apparently that long-awaited moment when getting out glue and scissors and cropping tools seems like the best use of my time is never going to come.

Regarding Vicodin: I've stopped taking it every four hours at this point, but the last few afternoons I have given in around two or three o' clock and allowed myself to lie down on the couch and take a pain pill. I watch The Office (Jim got me the last season as a get well soon present!) while Eli naps and Addy plays quietly on the floor. Or sometimes even naps herself, a remarkable and timely gift courtesy of the head cold which struck down each and every one of us the day after my surgery. It's really fun to cough and blow your nose with a painful incision right in the middle of your abdomen! Wheee!

So to get around to the title, I've discovered that the meds render me a somewhat more patient and creative type of mommy. I am normally more of a "Why don't you color here at the table while Mommy unload the dishes!" type of mother, but lately I've been doing a lot more coloring WITH Addy. I also showed Addy how to form her play-doh into pretzels, but rather than doing it herself, she required me to continue showing her until the entire coffee table was covered in pastel pretzels. Which in retrospect means I probably spent about a half an hour making play-doh pretzels, but I don't remember getting antsy or impatient about it. UNUSUAL. And today, strangest of all, I actually instigated an honest to God craft project.

Fact: Addy loves helping me get the mail. So today when she finished industriously scribbling one line on about ten pieces of paper, I helped her fold them up like letters. But then, of course, she wanted to put them in the mailbox. Commence tantrum, right? WRONG! I averted a potential disaster by quickly helping her (pause for effect) FASHION A MAILBOX OUT OF A SHOEBOX. And further DECORATE it with construction paper, stamps, and pictures of My Little Ponies, Dora the Explorer, Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake which I SKILLFULLY CUT OFF OF HER LEFTOVER BIRTHDAY CARDS. I may photograph it later; I am that proud of this little project. I was very possibly more excited to show it to Jim than Addy was.

*On an unrelated note: I had a good moment today at CVS which led me to believe I am pretty much over my depressed phase. I was walking in with Addy to get diapers and milk when a woman walked out carrying a newborn little boy, snuggled sweetly in his carrier and pretty much looking like an advertisement for baby-having. And you know what my first thought was? Boy, I'm glad I don't have to haul my kids around in one of those thigh-bruising contraptions anymore! Then I squeezed Adelay's hand and continued on. Progress, no?