Silly Sally - I Am Loved

Sally on her 1st Birthday

If you see a very chubby one year old, with huge blue eyes and the world's longest eyelashes, crawling toward you with an emphatic intensity, you may be seeing Sally. Our granddaughter, Sally Jo Mason, who was born November 2, 2016 to Mama Lana and Papa Rich. Sally is a fierce little spirit. Sally is a force.

Sally's arrival followed her cousin Lila's dramatic, premature entrance by three months. The babies were due five weeks apart, but Lila was a stinker and thwarted the plan by arriving nine weeks early. Unlike her mother, Lila is quite easygoing by nature. She's a good traveller and adapts well to new situations. Sally, unlike her mother, is so dramatic! Teething, schedule changes, her first cold - it's been very traumatic for all concerned. Lila is golden haired. Her mom is brunette. Lana was a towhead. Sally has much darker hair. Clearly these were cousins who were switched in utero!

It was stressful to have two simultaneously pregnant daughters. We were thrilled when Lucy shared her news with us. My first child was going to have a child! Lucy, Lana and I planned a trip to see my mother and stepfather. Lucy was going to tell them the happy news. When we picked up Lana I asked her if she'd like to drive. She said the strangest thing in response. Horrified, she blurted, "I can't drive. I'm pregnant! " And then there were two. I drove because Lucy was feeling tired and queasy.  I'll never forget how nervous I was out on the highway with two newly expecting daughters.

Happily, Lana recovered her ability to drive while pregnant and continued on to have the world's longest pregnancy. At least that's how it felt to me. Lana and Rich had been trying for a while so it probably just seemed that way. There was suspense and a little disappointment each month, usually on holidays. Lana found out that she WASN'T pregnant on Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Then Lucy got pregnant and Lana was sure she was also pregnant. I grabbed a gestation calendar and calculated that the babies were due five days apart! WHAT?! That meant they could easily be born on the same day! How could I be there for them? I'm a good mom, but even I'm not good enough to be in two places at once. It would be like having twins born in different locations. Cousins of sisters from different misters.

Lana's "pregnancy" was a false alarm. Praise the lord! I knew they were a little sad about it because they so much wanted to get the baby making machine fired up, but I was privately relieved. It was too much to process at once. However, the next month they did, indeed, get pregnant and we were off to the races. Sally was on her way.

Lana waiting for Sally

I got to go to one of the ultrasounds and I'll never forget the sight of her dancing and twisting inside her mom like a tiny John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Amazing.  When it was discovered that she was a girl we were so happy. We do girls very well in our family. I'm one of three sisters and a stepsister. I have three daughters and a stepdaughter. I now have two granddaughters. It's how we roll. It's how Rich's family rolls, as well. Rich has a daughter, two sisters, one nephew, three nieces and another niece on the way.

No child has been more eagerly awaited than our Sally. I thought Lana would go out of her mind the last few weeks. She literally could not wait for her baby to be born. Rich took some time off work, which was great. Lana needed the moral support. We were all hoping the baby wouldn't be born on Halloween. The very next day Lana went into labor and Sally was born in the early hours of November 2nd.




In perfect health other than a little jaundice, Sally looked like her mother as a newborn. In a foreshadowing of things to come, Sally wasn't exactly a champ at breastfeeding. As in, she refused to drink at all from the breast. She drank breast milk from bottles until Lana got her straightened around. All was well until the screaming began. The poor baby! Poor mommy and daddy. I've never seen anything like it. Sally had colic and cried for a large part of five months.

Anything could set off the wailing, and once she started it seemed impossible to stop. It was hard to know how to help Lana and Rich. One weekend we convinced them to leave Sally with us while they went out for a beak. Everything went perfectly for about six minutes. I put Sally on our bed and she began to cry and would not stop. We tried everything. Eventually we put her in the stroller and Eric pushed while I ran alongside holding the pacifier in Sally's mouth.

Wearing her "I Am Loved" shirt

It's almost difficult to recollect now that it's over. After many months of being sprawled on Lana' s chest day and night, she's like a different baby. She's not sad Sally, anymore. She's silly Sally. When Lana was a baby the pediatrician, old Dr. Brown, took a look at her and declared, "This one's got a touch of the whimsy."  If Lana had a bit of whimsy, Sally has a lot. She's a goof.

Now Sally is seventeen months old and an excellent walker. She crawled for the longest time and one day just quit cold turkey. Crawling was for infants. Sally was clearly a toddler with her sure and steady footsteps. Sally and I recently had a date. I took her to feed the ducks in the creek just like her Mommy used to do. I handed her a piece of bread to toss in the water. She ate it. I handed her another. She ate that one, too. So much for feeding the ducks.

With "big" cousin Lila

Sally loves to dance and read books. She loves to throw balls. The kid has an arm! With her sturdy build and great throwing skills I'm thinking she could go gold in shot put at the twenty-something Olympics. Sadly, all the running around has made her a bit more svelte. She even has definition in her thighs instead of Michelin man rolls. No matter how much she stretches out she will always be the Chunky Monkey to me. Silly Sally, you are loved!

And she's off!