I am a Mom Part 1

Today is Mother’s Day.

Thirteen years ago, we were wholly unprepared to be married, much less to become parents. We had no idea what we were doing.

My daughter, the War Princess, was jumped into this world as our troops were jumping into Panama for Operation Just Cause. We were watching from the TV at the hospital. It was our doctor’s first solo delivery. He was more nervous than we were. My husband was right there and got blood on himself as the cord was cut. We weren’t expecting a girl, so we were caught by surprise when the nurses asked what her name would be. My husband blurted out, “Elvira!” Then, “Vamperilla!” We ended up naming her after my grandmother and his; I had not just gone through 6 hours of labor and 25 minutes of pushing to start a child off with a name like Vamperilla. My husband went off to bathe her, while I was finishing up. I was starving, but I had to feed her. So, my husband fed me forkfuls of ham while she drank a bottle. I made no milk. None. Not a drop. She was not beautiful. She was yellow, not jaundiced – that was her natural color, a byproduct of her father’s olive skin tone and my dead white one. She had 2 inches of black hair, which stuck straight up – she looked like a troll baby. But, her eyes were deepest purple and she had the tiniest feet. My husband called them “footskas,” which later morphed into foopshkins, which we still call her today. Within 3 weeks, her hair laid down, her eyes turned doe-brown, and she looked like a china doll.

She never slept through the night; she still doesn’t (my mom radar still goes off every time she gets up). Just to get some sleep, once she started walking, we would put some crackers and a cup of water on the chair in her room. We told her that if she turned on the light herself and played quietly, no one would know. So, she would get up in the middle of the night, eat, play and go back to sleep. Then, we got one of those tapes with the heartbeat, guaranteed to make you sleep – we’d hear her get up and turn it over. We gave up.

We used to take her on “Ranger Baby Weekends.” We’d have a lot to do, so she’d basically live out of her car seat for the entire weekend as we dashed about doing this and that.

She has always loved books and reading. My husband and I can recite verbatim all of her favorites – the Huffin’ Puff Express, Good Morning Muffin Mouse, the Foot Book. In fact, her first recognizable word was “feet!” We were eating dinner, and she liked to stick her foot up onto the table from her high-chair. My husband would playfully poke her foot off the table and say, “No feet on the table.” Suddenly she let out a loud, “FEET!” and stuck her foot up there again. She was laughing and just thrilled with herself; we were, too.

Once, we hadn’t seen her for awhile and it was quiet – too quiet. We found her in the kitchen. She had gotten ahold of a sleeve of Ritz crackers. Each one had a perfect bite taken out of it and was laid aside, as if she had been checking to see if they all tasted the same.