Elisa and I tried since early on to get Eden to communicate with hand signals. Lots of babies are able to say simple things with signs long before they know how to speak. Eden just never got it though. For example, we would hold our hands in front of us and spin them while we said, “ALL DONE???” From the 6 month mark until now she never would do the sign back to us when she was done eating. She would just whine until we got her down. Then finally a couple weeks ago she did the sign to us. She shook her hands around really frenetically. We asked “All done?” and she did it even harder. I think she was pleased that we understood her. Ever since then she has been using the sign more often. Within about two days, communication broke down again. She was having so much success with the sign that she started using it for “more” and “I’m hungry” and “I want to move.” We pretty much don’t understand her anymore when she makes the sign. It was almost the beginning of better communication with her, but it ended up being just a near miss. We aren’t giving up quite yet. We are still trying to help her communicate. Babbling to us seems to be her method of choice still.

In the last week she has started to give us a one-handed wave for “hello” and “goodbye” and “good night.” It’s really cute. It’s easier on her if Elisa and she wave goodbye before Elisa leaves for night classes.

Eden wants to sit with me at the laptop. Here’s another one of her attempts to communicate.

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I wouldn’t really fret about our blog’s title if the falling down the stairs incident hadn’t been followed two days later by a disaster.

Eden has been a little whiny with all her little teeth cutting. So when I heard her I’m-hurt-cry, I didn’t think too much of it. Nevertheless I hopped up from by seat and went to comfort her. She had been crawling around my parents’ front room and had hunkered down to play under the kitchen table, right behind me. When I turned around I was not prepared for what I saw. Eden had two one-inch fishing hooks, attached to about a foot of fishing line in her hand. She was pulling on the fishing line in pain. One of the hooks was pierced completely through deep on her bottom lip.

I grabbed her and disabled her hands so she wouldn’t make it worse. I turned to my dad who was right there working on dinner, and cried “Dad, I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to do!” He called for my mom, who was in the next room. Daniel came in too. We were all shocked and horrified at what we saw.

Dad started to try and clip off the barb with pliers. Daniel thought he was trying to pull it out the “wrong” way. Daniel took over and cut off the string end. He tried to get the hook out but the pliers were too big to work in her little mouth. Eden was screaming, I was crying. She kept pushing her tongue up against the inside of her mouth where the hook was. While someone went and grabbed some smaller pliers, I moved around to have Eden sitting in my lap with one arm hugging her arms down and the other arm covering her eyes and bracing her little head.

All the crying and saliva made the bleeding look worse. Daniel said, “Don’t look, Elisa!” He tried a couple times and was finally able to pull the barb through. He had been faced with something similar when he was life guarding. He was amazing. I knew there was a right way to get a hook out but I didn’t know how to do it. Too bad it involves causing more pain and making the hole bigger.

There was next to no bleeding after the hook was out. Eden has a little spot on her lip down by her chin. It could have been SO much worse! (Which my dad and brother started talking about afterward–it makes me sick to think about.) We were all pretty shaken up, but poor Eden was just traumatized. I just pulled her close and cried with her. After a few minutes my mom grabbed one of Eden’s new noisy toys. Eden got a hold of it and totally calmed down. She was completely distracted. It hasn’t bothered her at all since.

All we can think of is that my mom’s big fuzzy dog, Sheba, must have gotten the hook in her fur in the garage and brought it in. Eden must have seen it, put it in her mouth and when she realized it was sharp tried to pull it out with the fishing line, piercing it through. I still cannot believe what I saw.

It may be time to change the name of our blog to: “The Reason Eden Turned Out the Way She Did” or “Chronicles of Imperfect Parents” or “That Explains a Lot” or “Reasons Elisa Would Fail as a Single Parent”. I could continue but I think my point is clear.

Eden has been learning to traverse the stairs safely. She does a pretty impressive job. I was taking care of just one last thing in our room at the top of the stairs, at my parents house, while she began her backward crawling down the stairs.

I thought to myself, “Eden could probably use some supervision. I would hate for her to fall because I wasn’t there!” It is pretty obvious that she did fall, right?

Well I walked to the top of the stairs intending to help her out. She looked up at me and perched up onto her knees. As she did she arched back too far and then there she went. Down, down down. She managed to twist into a barrel roll and then crashed on the wood landing. My words were, “Shoot! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!” As if each “No” would stop the next bump and ensure she didn’t brake an arm or snap her little neck. My exclamations didn’t stop her swift decent but she survived.

Had I NOT gone to HELP Eden, I think she would have made a nice, slow and calculated journey down the remaining 2/3rds of the staircase.