I caved to blog tradition for my 100th post and wrote a list of 100 things about me. I don’t expect you to read it, really. But it was fun to write!

Why do I feel like crying right now?

Thinking about my many far-away friends—old ones, new ones, those who’ve just moved away and those whom I’ve not seen in years.

Why does the Lush bubble bar Annalie is using in her bath right now make me gag?

It smells sickly-sweet like the air-conditioning on the Trailways buses that I rode from Omaha to Houston and a round-trip from Omaha to California the summer I was eight years old. I spent several days on those buses with my mom and little brother, thanks to Cheerios offering free kids’ tickets in exchange for a certain number of proofs-of-purchase. At the time it was an adventure, but that smell has nauseated me ever since.

Why am I sitting here with a heating pad on my back?

I really don’t know. I slept in a funny position? I’ve been hefting a 35-pound child in and out of shopping carts and carseats for the past month? I bent over to pick up a sock? Who knows, with back pain.

Why I am suddenly playing Chutes and Ladders by myself, listening to Annalie wail as she clatters down the stairs?

Because I had the audacity to suggest that we play by the actual rules at least once. She refuses to believe that just because I go up a ladder on the first turn while she is stuck on a plain square doesn’t mean that I am winning. I want to show her that anyone can jump ahead or fall behind with the next spin, and that’s the whole reason the game is fun. But she refuses to let me.

Why did helping Annalie make a birthday card for a playgroup friend who moved away last year make me feel so much better?

Markers! Glue! Sparkly plastic jewels! Preschooler handwriting! CREATIVITY!

(As long as I’m on the subject, I’ve been meaning to blog this birthday card Annalie made for her friend Dylan last week. She still has to be coaxed a little, but look how good she’s getting at writing! This is all Annalie’s own handwriting—no tracing over letters I had written or connecting dots. She just looked at an example I wrote out for her and copied it. She drew the heart over on the right side, too! Look at what my super-duper, specially-gifted child hath wrought! I truly don’t mean to brag, but…I’m kind of amazed that my BABY is writing words. Plus I want to have a record of it.)

Do I have any idea how to end this post?

Not really. How about I show you a photo I took of Troy this morning, as he was heading out the door to work? I added this to the 30 tiny moments pool on Flickr. I think I do a pretty good job of capturing all of life’s moments—not just the big occasions—with my camera, but Kerflop’s post has stayed in my mind and I’ve been more consciously trying to grab my camera when something catches my eye. Like this:

or this:

Blessings abound. I just have to remember to look for them.

I’m sure some of you have been wondering how Annalie’s foot is doing. Troy and I suspect that it is almost completely healed, which isn’t surprising considering she didn’t put any weight on it for nearly three weeks.

Then she surprised us at dinner this past Sunday by standing up in our restaurant booth to look at the tables on the other side. She stood on her tippytoes, without any prompting on our part, and then grinned and waited for us to notice. I don’t think we cheered as much for her when she took her first baby steps.

Since then she has been willing to “practice” walking only if one of us is holding her hands, and only on her toes, despite the fact that when she’s lying on the floor and isn’t thinking about it she often will bend her knees and plant both her feet flat on the ground. She also will push hard with both of her feet on our hands or legs when we’re tickling her or wrestling around, which we’ve been doing a lot lately in an attempt to get her moving around and in the hopes that she would use her foot without thinking about it and realize it didn’t hurt. Well, she does use that foot all the time when she isn’t thinking about it. Are you noticing a pattern here?

We’re pretty sure that most of Annalie’s reluctance to walk is because she accidentally jumped off a chair a few hours after she injured her foot, and she remembers quite clearly how painful that was. Annalie has a great memory, and a vivid imagination, and she’s extremely sensitive (she scored 20 on this test). When we’re at a birthday party, Annalie covers her ears all through “Happy Birthday to You” in anticipation of the clapping and cheering after the candles are blown out. If we’re reading a book and a character in the book does something naughty—say, eating a cookie even though he was told not to—she whimpers and says, “I’m done with this book!” because anticipating the scolding that will happen five pages later is just too much for her.

I am sympathetic to Annalie’s sensitivity, because I’m that way myself (I score 25 on this test). People used to call me shy when I was little, but really I was often just overwhelmed by the number of people in the room, the noise level, the people looking at me, make them stop looking at me! I don’t come off as shy anymore, and I’ve learned to control my reactions so most people don’t notice them, but I am still sensitive to noise levels and crowds. I can usually tell when a television is on somewhere in the house even though I can’t hear the sound. Many times I have spit out an orange section, grimacing at its bitterness, only to hand the orange off to Troy and watch him enjoy the rest of it.

So when we try to talk to Annalie about walking, and she stiffens and clamps her hands over her ears, I understand that she’s feeling overwhelmed by the emotions evoked by the thought of walking and feeling pain. When we encourage her to try standing on her good foot or to get herself up onto a chair (both of which we know she can do) and she gets upset and cries, I ache for her and am frustrated because I know what she’s feeling but I don’t know how to make it better.

There have been a couple of times her agitation has evolved into full-fledged tantrums (like the x-ray attempt), and we’re never quite sure if we should stand our ground or back down. The other day she lost it over the idea of getting down off a chair by herself. She asked me to help her down, and I said something like, “You can get down by yourself, I know you can! You’ve done it lots of times!” Apparently what she heard was, “I’d like you to stick this red-hot nail through your foot! Then drink this rat poison!” because she burst into tears and curled into a little ball on the chair. I thought if she was scared, it was important for her to just do it, especially since this was something I knew she was capable of doing. So I sat down in another chair and cheered her on, asked if there was something I could do to make it easier for her, offered to leave her alone, sat with her in my lap, prayed with her, talked to her about how she gets a little braver each time she’s scared to do something and does it anyway…you name it, we tried it. Finally after thirty minutes she calmed down and got down off the chair by herself with Troy lightly touching her bad foot so she would remember not to put it on the ground.

Then there was this morning, when I asked Annalie if she wanted to practice walking, and at first she thought that was fine, but it ended up being 45 minutes of her crying and not wanting to put her good foot on the floor. Here’s part of the email I sent Troy after it was all over:

From: Bethany
Date: Jan 23, 2008 10:55 AM
Subject: help
To: Troy

Okay. I just wanted to vent a little bit. I’ll be fine. I probably just need to eat something.

And I did, and then Troy came home for lunch which gave me a bit of a break, and all was well.

Seriously, I’m fine now. That line about venting applies to this blog post, too. I’m not depressed, I can handle my daughter’s tantrums (which I realize are actually few and far between and about something specific), I don’t need anything more than an occasional pat on the back and maybe some coffee and peanut butter cookies to help me along. And when she is walking again, I am sure I’ll say something dumb like, “Wow, it was so much easier when she was stuck sitting on the couch all day!” forgetting what a pain it was to have to carry her every time we walk from the car to Target.

Ugh. This post had a point way back there at the start, but I’ve meandered so much it’s starting to feel like a big mess. I’ll end here, even though I could rant on about this for another thousand words, easy, because I’ve been writing this post in bits and pieces all day and am getting tired of it. I’m kind of amazed I am even hitting ‘publish’ because I am a private person and I don’t usually talk about my frustrations to anyone but my mom or Troy or my closest friends. I guess I feel like you all deserve something for coming here to read time after time, so you’re getting a little bit of trust. Thanks for listening.