There is no POO in our L, please keep it that way

Today was swim class day, and we jumped into the pool, got wet-suited, and then our fabulous instructor Jessie came in, staring at the pool floor.

"What's up?" I said.

"I think that's poop," she said, and yes, right between us, it certainly looked like poop. Oh my stars and garters.

So we wandered off and sat on the stairs until the confirmation came that it was poop and we all got out (ew ew ew). We get a make-up session and so on. A screamed his little head off since he'd just gotten into the pool and Jessie was there and he didn't understand why we couldn't just swim in the pool if we weren't going to have class.

By the way, if someone poops in the pool and you have a toddler, just get a big sign saying, "It wasn't him!" for over his head, because you are the prime suspects, even if your kid was in a wetsuit for the entire time he was in the pool and there is no physical way poop could pass from him to the bottom of the pool. The little old ladies clucked at us until the staff pointed out that the poop was in the pool before the baby class, when the little old ladies were the only ones in the pool. Hmm.

When we finally reached the locker room, the minute we walked in, the lights went out. Power was out all over Mission Beach, apparently, and there's no windows in the locker room, so it was pitch dark in there. At least we were right on the threshold and not in the shower.

The club dispatched a staffer to stand in the locker room with a flashlight pointed at the ceiling to reflect light into the room. I waited until my eyes had adjusted, then took a shower with A (we did just get out of the poop pool) and got dressed. Actually, as always, I got A dressed and then got dressed myself, which in this case coincided with the staffer announcing, "We have to evacuate the locker room since it's not safe for you to be in here, so I need everyone out now."

"Um, can I put my clothes on before I go into the lobby?"

"Oh, yeah, sure." I'm normally not fond of locker rooms, but getting dressed under flashlight in a blacked-out locker room is a bizarro porn-meets-Blair-Witch dimension I was uncomfortable inhabiting.

So we went to Sea World instead, watched the dolphin show, saw the penguins and the seals, chased pigeons, then watched them bathe a Clydesdale. I think Shower #2 is not too long in my future.

A literalist

It's common in the morning for C and I to ask each other, "How did you sleep?" This is after years of insomnia (mine--C could sleep through a rock concert, I think) followed by years of babydom.

Anyway, so out of habit, I asked A, "How did you sleep?"

He looked at me, laid down on the floor and curled up and said, "Like this."

Bye, Pooh! Bye, Tigger! Bye, Piglet! Bye, Rabbit...

When we leave the house, we have to say goodbye not only to the cats, but to Pooh and Tigger and the whole Hundred Acre Wood gang because there's a Pooh movie in the house. It makes leaving a long long process.

I'm making a half-assed attempt to clean my own bedroom that has just been derailed by the discovery of my best bra, which I had thought lost forever. Does the fact that I have discovered something that was missing because this room is so terribly cluttered and filthy inspire me towards even greater cleaning? No. It makes me want to have lunch and quit, since now I have accomplished something.

In any case, A is walking around with an apple (and has proudly discovered one of his toys which I have unearthed in the great bedroom cleaning). He just finished speech therapy for the week. His teacher says he's becoming too sophisticated for her toys. He'll play with her toys--in conjunction with his own toys. For example, she had some blocks. He used his dustpan to lift the blocks from the floor into the bed of his dump truck until he decided that was taking too long. Then he dumped the blocks from her box into his truck. He's a smart cookie. His language is getting much, much better.

I got him another haircut, this one more severe. His hair was just too long to keep brushing to the side. He looks a lot older now. I wasn't impressed with this salon either. I think he'll go to Supercuts or something like that or his dad's barber shop, because it's silly to spend so much on a quick trim. I'l ask my stylist how much her kid cuts are, but I can't imagine they are even in a spectrum I'd like to pay.

Not much else to report. I bought plane tickets for our vacation getaway to Oregon for Memorial Day, so now that trip's all set as far as I am concerned. This is the last unplanned weekend we have before two weekends chock-full of activities, so I'm hoping to just relax and mostly enjoy it. And I desperately want my son to have a nap today, because he didn't get one yesterday, and only the fact that he went to preschool so I could have some run-around-and-do-errand time in the morning saved us from complete insanity.

Two kitties, three books, one apple.

He's been chanting the numbers one through ten for some time now, but we thought it was a sing-songy chant without any true understanding of the concept of numbers. (It's amazing all the things you figured out in your life, right?)

But in the last few days, he's been counting. Four slices of bread. Six blocks. Three trucks. Two kitties. Two mommies, two daddies (the word parent isn't in his vocabulary yet, so C and I are two mommies or two daddies, depending on who he starts counting with). It's a little disconcerting because he says, "One two three four five six," first, as if he needs a counting warm-up or intro like the Sesame Street Pinball song, and then he'll come up with the right number, "three bread."

If the blog is slow, I am sorry. I am now on two Boards (who knew?) and have events in back-to-back weekends to help with. So every spare minute of my life feels like it's consumed. Friday night I fell asleep on the couch while C put A to sleep. I need more sleep.

"I did it!"

This is A's new phrase, which is fabulous, three words, two pronouns. His speech teacher's thrilled because he's now initiating three word sentences, some with subject-verb-object ("Daddy push truck") construction, instead of three words as verb-noun with modifier ("Push big truck" or "Push truck fast"). This is a Very Big Deal around here. We're pushing him for more around here, but he's doing really well.

He does have an ear infection, which we're in the process of trying to clear up, and then it's back to the doctor to see if he has any fluid in his ears, which would mean a referral to the ears-nose-throat doctor.

A is very sweet and lovey these days, lots of kisses and hugs and cuddles. So adorable, really.

This week he announced to me that he wanted to make cookies and took a cookie cookbook off the shelf. So I showed him the pictures in the Betty Crocker Cooky Book, he picked a cookie out from the pictures, and we made cookies. I'm the mommy and we make cookies, even when the mommy's trying the 30-day Shred and is hopped up on arnica and Advil.

Audiology

So the second band of merry wanderers have been through and back again, and they were a pleasure to have around, as always. Now they're gone and it's all drudgery here. Sigh. But this post is about A's hearing.

As part of any normal speech assessment, they want to do a hearing test (because if you can't hear or hear clearly, you may not talk). Way back in August when all of this assessment stuff started, the First Five people told me that it would take forever to get the state to do a hearing test and that it would be more expedient to pursue a hearing test through our private insurance. At A's two-year checkup the first week of August, his doctor wrote him a prescription for an audiology referral.

That test was originally scheduled for December, the day he had his massive asthma attack and was almost hospitalized. I called in the day before (when he was just coughing and not yet limp) and left a message canceling it. There's no way to talk to a human; they promise to return your call in one business day.

They rescheduled him for today. Three months later! Unbelievable. I know it's unbelievable, because the next time he was sick for an assessment appointment, I marched him down there, let him cough all over their office, and then asked them to reschedule. That time I got an appointment two weeks later and the supervisor's personal line to call with any problems. I should have asked for the audiology to be rescheduled then, but I didn't. So we're having the test seven months after I requested it. Argh.

An audiology test for a toddler works like this: they put tiny tubes in his ears to transmit the tones. Then he sits on my lap in a controlled room where there are shadowboxes containing animatronic animals which light up at various times. Through the tubes, the tester asks him to point to where he hears the tone. I assume the animals light to make sure he's responding to the tone and not just stimuli in the room. Also, they keep it interesting. He was pretty bored by the end of this.

Then they did two separate tests to show how his eardrum and inner ears are responding to sound. His right eardrum was not as responsive as it should have been. The tester looked in his ears and said the right one looked red.

So the audiology tests were inconclusive. The tests could show some minor to moderate hearing loss, but his eardrum looked bad and he's had a cold. The audiologist refused to make a diagnosis based on these tests. She said we should get him to the doctor, get his ear issues cleared up, and then do the audiology exam again in four to six weeks.

I'm not sure what to think. He doesn't seem to have any hearing loss to me, but I'm not an audiologist. There are members of our family who have hearing loss (and not just the ones who were on carriers) so it's a real possibility. I liked the audiologist; she seemed to know what she was doing and half-way through our assessment, another audiologist pulled her in for a consult, so they think she knows what she's doing too. Happily, there's nothing I can do either way but take him to the doctor tomorrow and have his ears checked.

The worst part is that he had a fever on Tuesday and couldn't go to preschool. No preschool at all this week for him--poor boy, poor mommy.