First steps

Today Voov took her first steps. She's 17 months old and a bit slow to get on her feet. Hidden B has been taking her to physical therapy, and she had an appointment today, which is when she chose to demo her mad walking skills. Hidden B called me at work--sharing good news, for once, instead of the usual "Shmoop's temperature is 102 degrees" or "I think Voov might have swallowed a piece of Lego."

I get home, and demand that Voov walk for me. She complies--a few rickety steps, wide crooked grin, giggling at the attention, and collapses into my arms. We make her go back and forth between us until it verges on child abuse. In a few weeks she'll be running around the house terrorizing Shmoop, having figured out that her hands are free now to grab things and pull hair.

Tonight it's my turn to do Voov's bedtime. We alternate: each parent gets boy one night, girl the next. First they take a bath together. Each kid has pros and cons. Shmoop's pro is that his skin is perfect and all you have to do after the bath is put him in diaper and pajamas. His con is that he requires a long story (he's keen on animals so you sometimes end up going through a National Geographic book reading all the photo captions) and then a song and then a recap of what he did today. Voov's pro is that she only needs to be read two short stories and do a brief stint of nursing. Her con is that you have to put steroids (Desonide 0.05% ointment) on her flares and then lube her all over before pulling on her nightclothes, trying not to get grease all over the table and walls. While she flails around clawing at herself.

Tonight, it's Desonide for her right foot and splotches on her torso. And socks to pull over her pajama bottoms so she can't scratch her foot, because we've run out of the pajamas with feet.

Of late we have been putting CeraVe on her left side (all the way up--her face is divided into halves) and Vaseline on her right side, to see if there's any difference. We're not sure yet. CeraVe is about $17 a jar compared to $4 for Vaseline, so you can see why we might care.