Hormones

Yup, I've got 'em. It's official.

Last week, I woke up at 4AM and couldn't get back to sleep. So I did some ironing (it's been hot and 4AM is the coolest time of the day) until A got up and then I went into the kitchen and looked at the dishwasher and the counter full of dishes and had a nutty. To his credit, when C heard me slamming doors and dishes and mumbling under my breath to myself ("Sure, I'll unload this thing again since I'm the one who loaded it and ran it and unloaded it and ran it the last five times,"), he sent me out of the kitchen and finished doing it himself and didn't say a word to me about it.

In my own defense, there's something about unloading the dishwasher when you've loaded the dishwasher that makes me feel like a complete drudge even when I'm not pregnant.

Then the YouTube crying attacks started. I teared up to the birth slideshow on one of the blogs I read, because the husband and wife look so in love and newborns are so tiny. People sent me the YouTube video of the bridal party dancing down the aisle and I teared up every time the bride came down the aisle.

I've got no reasonable defense for that.

Last night, I had to print volunteer recognition certificates up for the writing organization I am the Volunteer Coordinator for. All I had was a .PDF file, so I had to run them through twice, once through Adobe for the certificate and once through Word for the names. The paper crumpled or curled or misfeed so it was a complete failure. And that's when C came in and took over for me and got things to a point where I could manage to go to Staples and finish it today.

And my darling husband hasn't once said, "Dear, you seem a bit irrational and crazed," because he's very wise and he knows there's nothing he can do. But, yes, dear, I am aware that I am irrational and crazed and thank you for taking up the slack and stopping me from being quite as destructive as I could be.

I have no earthly idea how I'll make it through a "thank you, wonderful volunteers," speech today without blubbering.

Audiology success

Today was A's third hearing test. This time, he's old enough to try a more interactive test, so he was given small tasks to do every time he heard a beep. Being the old hand at testing that he is, he responded only to the first beep of each frequency. If they tried to retest him, he stared at them like, "Oh, please, can't you leave me in peace?"

The good news is, the test went great. He had some test fatigue that gave him some funky numbers on his right ear, but even if the funky numbers are right, they aren't in a range that would impact his speech development abilities, which was the whole impetus for the testing in the first place.

So it looks like he's got no hearing losses. His eardrums behaved beautifully. The hearing receptor cells in his ears are responding as expected. He's just bored the third time through his hearing test.

Due to funky numbers, we have to go back for a retest in one year, which I am fine and dandy with. And the audiologist was nice enough to give me a copy of the audiogram, which is what the school district wants to show he's been tested and that's not an issue they have to start testing him for on his speech.

Great news. And C and I did the two-car tango today to take car of a punctured tire and and oil change, so the car's in good shape, A's ears are in good shape, and it's almost Friday.

Rock star mommy

Oh no, audiology, I will not be your humble supplicant again.

I got a call from the audiology department. As you'll recall, this is my third time trying to schedule an appointment and I first requested a hearing test August 1, 2008.

"He's cleared from his ENT and his ears look great, so I'd like your next available appointment."

"That would be September 11 at 10AM."

Excuse me? So I cajole and wheedle and reluctantly type it into my calendar, and then I get my inner rock star on.

"May I speak to your supervisor? I'm very disappointed; his ears are clear; we've been through this twice now and I don't want to wait and see if he's sick in September or not so we can go through all this again."

Um, she doesn't know why I'd want to speak to her supervisor. After all, her supervisor isn't here.

"How many supervisors do you have?"

"Well...which one did you want to speak to?"

"The one who can get me an earlier audiology appointment."

"That would be audiology. Hold on."

I hold.

"This is Elisha."

I explain, nicely, that I'm trying to get an audiology retest for my son. Both times the audiologists saw something in his ears; after the second time, they recommended going to the ENT and calling to say, he's clear, he's well, do it soon. And I did that and they offered me September, and while I understand how swamped the schedule is, I don't want to go through this again if he's sick in September when I know he's well now. It seems that by going by the system and always having our next appointment six to eight weeks out, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Elisha says she'll look, and while she's looking I reiterate how busy I know they are and if this wasn't the third re-test, I wouldn't be talking to her.

"How's Thursday at 9?"

"Thursday, like two days from now Thursday?"

Yes. We'll take it. For bonus rock star glamour, I call his preschool teacher and get him rescheduled for tomorrow instead of his usual Thursday. And now I have an extra Wednesday morning free this week!

All clear, preschool registration

So it's been a week. C had comp time for his horrible work schedule of a while ago, and so we had a go about our normal crazy routine week. A couple highlights for you:

A had two follow-up doctor visits so far and he's doing great. One with the asthma specialist at our pediatrician's, who says he's sounding great and is taking him off most of his drugs. One with the ENT (finally) to check his ears to see if they are affecting his hearing tests. His ears are crystal-clear gorgeous and he's fine and ready to go to town on the hearing test, so cross your fingers that we can get that scheduled soon.

While C braved the pediatrician's, I went to public preschool registration, which was a little three-and-a-half hour slice of hell. First of all, when I entered the room (about the size of my grandparents' barn, but louder), there was a violin class for eight-year-olds going on at the front of the room. Thirty little children sawing away on their violins weren't even the worst of the noise. There were randomly arranged tables and hundreds of metal folding chairs that appeared to have been dropped from the ceiling and left where they fell, because there was no order to this room.

The room was filled with screaming, largely unattended children, mostly under six. It was stuffy and hot and the parents were obviously too frustrated with the processes of bureaucracy to care about whether or not their little ones were behaving. There were two sisters who took on the alpha mean girl roles and took toys away from other children and hit them when the other kids complained. They were nasty enough that other parents were just saying, "Stay away from those two," instead of slapping the girls around.

I was number 108. I was second to last.

The system works like this:

1. Go to entry table. Show all documents (birth certificate, immunization record, proof of address, proof of income). They make copies and assign you a number.
2. Wait to be called. For three hours. In kiddie hell.
   
3. Go to the document confirmation table. Woman confirms that you have all the documents and that you filled out forms correctly. She gives you a folder for all your copies. Go back and wait some more, maybe twenty minutes.
4. Wonder if the small children coughing near you have TB. Take your hand sanitizer and wipe out your lungs.
   
5. Go to the proof of income table. Woman does math with paystub to determine whether your child qualifies for Head Start (low income and disadvantaged in some way), preschool (low income but not as low or disadvantaged as Head Start), or School Readiness (everyone else). Smother urge to ask woman if you really needed to go through this charade since you darn well know you are not low-income.
6. Wait again. Cheer up when you talk to someone who made it to the inauguration and how amazing it was.
7. Go to the nurse table. The nurse sees the asthma box checked, hears the word, "hospitalization," and produces four more forms to be filled out by you and the child's doctor. She also tags your folder with a sticky note that says ASTHMA so she'll know who you are later.
8. You're almost the last one, so there's no waiting for the last table, the school choice table. You ask for the school near you that has public preschool for kids regardless of income and a great speech therapy program. She tells you it's almost full. What are your second choices? Um... She makes some suggestions. You accept them, because you have no clue. He's only three. You're beginning to feel like he's not going to get in anyway.

Doctor's followup

Of course, they recommend you see your pediatrician within a couple days of being in the hospital. Of course, our pediatrician was all booked up, so I asked for the asthma specialist instead. I had to get all Bryn Mawr on them when I made the appointment. ("I'm sorry, maybe I didn't make myself clear. My 3-year-old just got out of the ICU and needs to see his pediatrician for follow-up care within one to two days. Would you like to check the schedules again and see where you can get us in?")

So today we went and saw the asthma specialist, and learned the following things:

1. One of our practice's doctors was physically in the same hospital we were all weekend and nobody called him to let him know we were there, which they're supposed to. This makes the doctors in our practice a little pissed.
2. The chest X-ray A had in the ER did show some interesting congestion and was not as clear as I was led to believe.

The doctor wasn't thrilled with the way A sounded, upped his meds again, and wants to see him on Tuesday to double-check the congestion he's hearing.

So that's where we are. A is still much more active and happier than he's been, but he's not 100% yet. But he can do normal activity levels, with lots of drugs.

We got word today that he's been accepted into the preschool he's currently going to once his free services expire, so hey, that's one less thing to worry about.

Hospital alphabet soup: ER and PICU

Happy Fourth. We all had an exciting one here. Very early on the 4th, like 2:30 a.m., C woke me up and said, "A's retracting. I just gave him albuterol and it didn't seem to work. I think we need to go to the hospital."

Now sometimes it takes me forever to wake up, but that one got me instantly awake. I looked in at A and said, "Yeah, we're going to the ER." C had been up since midnight with A (letting the pregnant lady sleep, thank you). When A can't breathe, he can't sleep. But A was pretty pale and lethargic and uncommunicative.

Off we go. We throw clothes for A and some other random supplies into his preschool backpack: a book for me, extra underpants, his immunization card. We make it to the hospital around 3 and park at the curb in front of the emergency room. We go to the front desk of a huge waiting room and explain what's happening to A. The nurse takes a look at A and immediately takes him into the back to put him on oxygen. His first oxygen saturation level was 82-85%. Normal is in the 90s, the high 90s for being awake. At 75%, you pass out.

We were in the ER for about three hours while they tried a couple different drugs on him: albuterol, xophenex, magnesium sulfide. They put an IV in to get stuff to him quicker than the nebulizer. They took blood tests. Nothing was making him better, so then they admitted him to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) where he could get more treatments and continuous monitoring.

So we spent Saturday in the PICU while they worked on A. He slept for about an hour during the day, but spent most of his time watching television (what a novelty!). They changed up his drug cocktails and put him on heliox, which is a helium and oxygen mixture that's not as hard for someone to breathe as straight oxygen. By the end of the day he was stable but not great. He was so hungry but they weren't letting him eat until they were happy with his oxygen levels and drug cocktails, so he didn't get to eat anything until the afternoon. First some juice, then a popscile, then it was the clears for dinner: broth, Jello, Italian ice, juice.

C and I slept in the PICU with him, C on the pull-out chair and me on the window seat that was just shy of five feet long. None of us slept particularly well. Both C and I were up with A at different times. A was hooked up to six different sensors, plus the IV, and all that tubing is hard on a wiggle worm who moves around a lot in his sleep. The nurse eventually knotted it all together into a kind of corset so he wasn't getting tangled every five minutes.

Sunday he looked a lot better. He was alert and had opinions about what movie he should watch and how he didn't want the sensors on him. He ate a bowl of cereal. He was let off the sensors to go to the potty and that became his way to get up out of that bed. [A side note: the kid is potty trained. He wouldn't go in his diaper, even when we told him there was no way to get him off all the monitors and IVs and he should go in the diaper, so he held it until we found a bedpan and took the diaper off. He is so potty trained.]

Sunday night they debated releasing us or sending us to the medical/surgery floor for observation, deciding (with our supporting opinion) that he should probably spend another night just to make sure the maintenance treatments were working. So down we went to another floor, another room. When we got there, we were in one of the few double rooms on the floor with a family loudly watching soccer with two obnoxious wounded children, but they checked out not long after we got there and we had the room to ourselves for the rest of the time.

Sunday night, I slept in the folding chair and C slept on the floor. We were all a bit slap-happy at that point. A was disconnected from all the monitors and his IV, so he slept much better. The nurses checked A's vitals every four hours; the respiratory therapists administered treatments every four, and none of them really woke him up from sleeping, so that was fabulous and appreciated.

Monday, A was much, much better. He spent all the time he could in the playroom and took a nap around his normal naptime for a really long time. The nurses decided around noon that we would go home; we just needed a lot of paperwork and approvals because the PICU was still following A's case. But they let us go around 5-5:30, loaded A up with drugs and us up with filled prescriptions, and sent us home. And our friends and family from out of town delayed our dinner reservations so we could go home, hand off A to our darling neighbor, and go out for a fabulous dinner.

I'm so tired. A's pretty tired. C is tired. We've got new drugs to hopefully keep us out of the hospital in the future; we've got appointments with all sorts of doctors to keep us on track and help us figure this out. But as I write this, A is laughing in the tub and having fun with Daddy so things are much better here now.

Children's Museum, Adieu

We've been members at the children's museum for a year now, and we're going to let the membership lapse. But it expires Tuesday so I thought we'd suck the marrow out of it and go today.

And so we did. A got to participate in a class where we made parachutes out of grocery bags. Goes like this: Take a regular plastic grocery store bag. Cut the sides open a bit to make them more airy. Take two small (1/2-3/4-inch) washers and thread the handles of the bags through the washers. Punch two holes in a piece of cardboard and thread the handles through so that washers are flush with the cardboard. Fold the remaining cardboard over the washers and seal with tape.

Wah-lah. Parachute.

Except that they don't work very well without being launched, and so they have four jerryrigged cannons made of rubber bands, clothesline, funnels, and brightly-painted MDF to launch the parachutes into the courtyard below.

Now, the project was great fun, and then there was some marching, and then there was the launching, and A thought launching was fabulous. Except our plastic bag was a pretty green one from a bookseller (he picked it, not me) and as such did not have the appropriate lightness and capacity to make a good parachute. So it torpedoed onto the gallery below us, where people were painting a car and playing with clay.

A thought this was the most fabulous thing ever, because all he saw from his position behind the balcony was the launch. He could not lean over the balcony to see the landing. I could, and I saw people scurrying out of the way and sometimes getting hit in the head.

Well, once you launch, they drop a bucket down to collect the parachutes. And they kept sending A's back, so I kept letting him launch it. If they're stupid enough to send a projectile back up, I'm stupid enough to let him launch it. He launched it five times. He had a blast.

Anyway, it was a good last day. I think we'll join one of the other, more exciting museums (the Fleet, perhaps) that has share days with the children's museum and that'll suffice. But it's just not as super as we anticipated.

The boy is more right than he knows

Conversation over dinner:

Me: And what's your name?
A: A------.
Me: And what's my name?
A: Mommy.
Me: And what's Daddy's name?
A: Home.

Yes, A. That's what I call Daddy too.

Post 400

In honor of Post 400, we're introducing Baby 2.0. That's right; I'm pregnant. I think most people have heard, but this is the official blog announcement.

A laundry list of answers:

• The due date has gone from being "definitely before Christmas" to "hopefully before Christmas." It should be this year.
  
• I'm fine. I've been sicker and achier than the last time, but I'm into the second trimester now so that's improving.
• So far, everything looks fine with the baby.
  
• We haven't discussed Baby 2.0 with A yet, since time seems to go forever for the almost-three set. We'll probably discuss it after his birthday, once he could feel the baby kick.
• We're not planning on finding out the gender before birth this time either.
• We're going to try for a VBAC instead of a C-peat, since the recovery time last time was oh-so-sucktastic.
• I'm probably showing but my relative pudding-ness makes me just pudgy. As with the last time, my breasts grew first and their size de-emphasizes my belly.
• It's not twins. I've had two ultrasounds and it's not twins.

And I think that's it for potential questions, the polite ones which will get answered, anyway. I've got some older unpublished posts that I'll publish now that Baby 2.0 is public, but there you go. Happy post 400.

Party party party

After a couple of craptastic weeks, we needed to have some fun this weekend. And boy, did we ever. Saturday was the big 0h-Three for our friend H, who had a rocking birthday party complete with bounce house, Cookie Monster pinata, and cake. Boy did A have a good time, and so did we. He even used the potty in the scary park bathroom--twice.

Sunday, we headed up to the House of Mouse for a day of rides. Oh my, rides. We rode Pooh and Buzz and the small world boats, of course. A looked at the map and insisted on going to see Nemo, so I waited in line with him while C ran off to ride roller coasters (it was Fathers' Day, after all). The lines weren't actually that bad at all. And we didn't have an asthma attack and end up in the hospital, so that always makes the day just a little more fun.

I should mention that A is currently in love with Dora the Explorer and maps. He can't get enough of maps. We go to the Zoo, we look at the map and map our route. We go to Disneyland, he gets his own map and wants to know where we are, where we have been, and points to where he would like to go.

We had a learning experience where A wanted to ride "the rabbit ride." This would be Splash Mountain, which is hard-core and has one of the taller height requirements. So I took A over to the dreaded "you must be this tall" sign and stood him there and had the guy explain that he wasn't tall enough yet for Splash Mountain. A is tall enough now for the Matterhorn and the little kid coaster in Toon Town, but we're waiting for him to ask to ride them before we take him on them.

We had Mickey ice cream and burgers and Mexican food and I fed the feral cats to protect them from toddlers. A used the potty and stayed dry all day, hurrah. So that was all grand. And we were in the car so A could be asleep by his normal bedtime and home in time so we could be asleep by our normal bedtime.

He had swimming this morning all by himself, which was good because I could pretty much let the teacher take him and see how he would do in a private, mommy-less lesson, and he'd do relatively well, I think.

Wee wee wee, all the way home

Potty-training minutiae, you've been warned.

Today's been another accident-free day, with the crowning achievement of the day being A telling me in the parking lot of Phil's that he needed to make water, and me without keys or potty to say, "Okay, let's go into the restaurant or into the parking lot."

So I told him, "I'm sorry, we can't go to the potty right now. You can go in your pull-up if you need to." (We had him in Pull-ups for a late night errand run that might have run into bedtime.)

We get home and he is bone dry. Bone dry for a fifteen-twenty minute car ride. He held it. He held it. Wow! Wow wow wow.

And now he's complaining that he wants to wear his big boy pants at night. We're not quite ready for that. We told him when he's dry all night (which he is irregularly) he can have big boy pants for bed. But the end is in sight.

Potty training success

We've had a good twenty-four hours of no accidents, so keep your fingers crossed.

We even went to the Greek festival and ate enough flaming cheese and baklava to make me sick.

Now I'm waiting for C to come home (maybe, since he didn't answer his work phone) and for A's pasta to cool so I can give it to him and he can eat and go to bed.

But keep your fingers crossed for us. A whole day, no accidents, running to the potty and everything.

One week of the suck

The boy's breathing, which is good. The daddy is working massive overtime (still not home), which is bad.

I am tired and getting to the end of my patience. We had potty training again today with not enough nap and that was a bad combination. I'm not even sure at this point if the potty training will actually take, but I know leaving him in diapers will not help. I'm sick of doing all the laundry that potty training entails. I'm sick of doing three meals a day plus snacks (usually, Mistah C does breakfast and often dinner) and loading the dishwasher and emptying the dishwasher. I'm sick of feeling like the Feminine Mystique for a new century.

I don't feel like I get a lot of time to myself this week, and not a lot last week, and so now that I've a stretch with pretty much no creative/play/social time for Kim as grownup non-mommy person, I've decided mommies need our grownup time. I get really cranky without it.

Accidentastic

C came home at normal times for the last two nights and so our lives feel more normal. A is doing well. He had an exit developmental evaluation today, and he's doing great, actually. He had the Bayley developmental assessment today, and that tracked him as on target for all areas of development, including speech. (I know! Speech too!)

The doctor doing the test made two recommendations: one, that we keep him in preschool (which was like, duh, no kidding), and two, that we keep him in speech therapy once or twice a week to work on his articulation. She said the words, vocabulary, sentence structure, and syntax he has are all on target, but that he needs help learning to articulate. This is super news as far as we're concerned.

This all makes me wonder how the hearing test plays in.

Anyway, I felt confident enough (read: not too lazy) today that we went back to potty training, hard core, Supernanny style: underpants, no Pull-ups. (I would like Supernanny to get over to my house and clean up the resulting mess.) But I am resolved and stalwart and he will be potty trained.

Sucktastic

Yup. That's what our lives are doing right about now.

In order of sucktasticness: On Friday morning, A had his second audiology follow-up. He was having some problems breathing but we loaded him up on his inhalers and off he went.

Results: He has good hearing in his right ear but showed a non-moving eardrum in his left ear, which means maybe he's got some hearing loss in his left ear. But he also had the beginnings of a cold and possibly an ear infection, so the audiologist referred him to an ENT (ear, nose, throat) specialist and scheduled him for another follow-up.

Friday he wouldn't take a nap. Wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't. Fought me and cried. And I thought, it's been a hard week for him; maybe he's picked up some new tricks from our young visitor that we'll have to convince him don't work here. But then I remembered that when he's having trouble breathing, he can't sleep. So I looked at his throat and belly, and yes, he's retracting, and I called the pediatrician's office to say that I was bringing him in immediately (because I'm learning and I don't mess around with this shit).

So Friday afternoon, we get a breathing treatment and see our pediatrician who says, "Buddy, you're having issues." Since the nebulizer seems to have a better effect on him than the inhaler, she orders us a home nebulizer, which will be delivered to us this evening at home.

This means my Friday is completely shot and tasks like shopping for the bare essentials our house requires like milk and cereal is bypassed, as well as the fun stuff like the open mic three-minute prose reading I like to go are off the menu.

The nebulizer was delivered by the kind of creepy guy who made me keep my cell phone in hand the entire time he's in my house. He showed up at 7:45pm. (A had fallen asleep on the couch around 7 and I didn't have the energy to move him.) He didn't give his name, didn't have an ID badge or name tag, and didn't have his name on any of the paperwork he gave me. When he said, "So it's just [you and A] here alone?" I wanted to call 911. But I said, "Well, my husband will be home any minute now." And he's big. And scary. And could totally kick your ass.

I seriously wanted to take a picture of him with my phone and send it to everyone I know with a note, "If I'm dead, please look for this guy from Apria Healthcare who probably did it."

My anxiety about this was heightened because my husband was actually not coming home any time soon because he is in a crunch with the eye of the CEO of his company on what he's doing, which is a very bad place to be in. He ended up coming home around midnight. The next morning, he said, "Why were all the lights on?" and I explained about creepy guy. I don't know if lights would keep creepy guy away, but it's better than sitting in the dark.

Saturday from 9am-2pm, I had a board meeting of the writers organization I work with, and that was fine but arduous and not exactly relaxing. Once I got home, C was off to work again and didn't get back until midnight-ish again.

And this morning, after breakfast and (thank you, C) helping me with the shopping, C was off to work again.

A hates the nebulizer and cries every time we get it out. He screams bloody murder and none of the bribes I offer him are lasting.

I'm very, very tired.

And A ate the frosting off the last chocolate cupcake I put out for myself to warm up and eat later while he napped.

But the good news is: A's napping now, and I can go eat veggie chips and ginger ale on the couch like a twelve-year-old whose parents are out of town while I watch me some Ocean's Eleven eye candy.

Cross your fingers for C getting done today, maybe even before midnight.

Zoo freakout

We went to the Zoo a couple days ago to spend time at the new Elephant Odyssey (which is terribly neat if not big) exhibit.

A and I were walking along a path. A family with a couple kids walked by us. One of the kids was a boy about six-years-old. A saw him and started to freak. He was pointing at the kid, jabbering, very upset, to the point where the kid and his family noticed.

"What's his problem?" the mother said to me in a not-very-nice way.

I was trying to calm A down so I could understand, because he kept saying, "No shirt, no shirt," over and over and that was all I could understand.

Finally, I looked at the kid. He's wearing a striped blue shirt that says, "Handsome like Daddy," which I recognized as a pajama top from Old Navy, because A has the same PJs.

The mother and her family were still hanging around making clucking noises at A, so I said to A, "I know that's his pajama top. His mommy lets him wear his pajamas in public, and that's okay, even though your mommy doesn't let you wear yours."

A said, "No pajamas outside."

I said, "Yes, for you, no pajamas outside. You're right."

And the family went speechless and the kid looked like he wanted the pavement to eat him and we walked our pajama-less selves onward.

[To be fair, A is allowed to wear his PJs to Bread and Cie for the first run of the day. But only to pick up, certainly not to eat there.]

Another delayed-date post: Nuchal translucency testing

There's a relatively new test out there called the nuchal translucency screening, which is a screening (read: not a 100% sure thing) for Down's Syndrome (Trisomy-21) and Trisomy-18 (a terribly scary disease that almost always results in death soon after birth). This screening is the combination of a (maternal) blood test and an ultrasound. The tech takes a measurement of the fluid at the back of the baby's neck. A normal range of length would be up to 10-20mm, and an abnormal range would be 35mm or more. The ultrasound is then compared to the bloodwork, where the levels of two pregnancy hormones are checked to see if those levels are abnormal. In certain chromosomal disorders, the nuchal folds are thicker and the hormone levels are off.

I've already discussed my concerns about not getting prenatal screenings here, so I won't belabor it again. Since my doctor is in the process of having a birthing center built that I could actually use, I thought it would be the responsible thing (again) to find out if there was anything wrong with the baby before we made the decision on where to deliver. When I read that the nuchal translucency (NT) gave a 70-90% accuracy in detecting Down's without requiring things that scare me muchly, like amnio or CVS, I was all for it.

I had to go to the swanky La Jolla hospital to have it done, since it's only done by extremely specialized ultrasound techs. C joined me. The baby was not cooperative, although the shelf of fat from the C-section didn't help either. The tech pushed and prodded and had me get up and shimmy and finally the kid was visible.

Anyway, she ran off to get the results. The doctor came back in and I almost fell over, like, oh my, they sent the doctor to tell us the bad news. But no, everything looks great and he just wanted to look himself.

The results are given as odds. Right now, I'm 1 in 6,600 for Trisomy-21 and 1 in 58,000 for Trisomy-18. That's given as 70% accurate. It'll be combined with another set of bloodwork (the quad screen) in the second trimester for a 90% accurate ratio.

The only other thing is that the ultrasound dated the kid one week earlier than my date, but I'm still not sure I trust the whole gestational dating thing for ultrasounds. The gestational dating for A always put him a week or so behind and smaller than everyone thought. At my last ultrasound at the birth center, the tech said, "Oh, just over six pounds. Small like Mommy." (Mommy was over nine pounds at birth, but that's besides the point.) At the ultrasound in the hospital, the doctor said, "Six, six and a half pounds."

And he was seven pounds, 11 ounces. So I think the ultrasound sizing is a lot of hooey.

But I'll take the NT results.

Friday? No, Thursday

It's hard to keep track.

L and K left today, and I have to say we (being all the grownups) were unpleasantly surprised by how little A and L got along. They used to get along fine, but this visit was like a non-stop toddler cage match. They couldn't parallel play or cooperatively play. If one had a toy, the other wanted it. Tug of wars over toys escalated to throwing toys and shoving and hitting.

This was bad. Very bad.

The relatively non-stop screaming was also bad. I think every time C came home, he hit the Advil bottle pretty hard.

Neither of these kids act this way with anyone else. I'd ask at preschool, "Was A acting out today?" No, he was super. It's sad because A and L used to get along fine and after our fabulous visit of last week I thought, two birth class friends, playing together, what could be more fun?

Nope. Fun didn't happen.

Anyway, we're getting back to our normal existence, although tomorrow A has his second audiology exam so normal is relative, I guess.

Bone-freaking-tired

I am tired. Really tired.

We went to bed last night before 10, without any super duper TV viewing.

We got up after 6, which late for me.

And I am still tired enough that I could go to sleep.

But we have company coming--our photographer friend K from Texas with little L is coming and I have to finish moving all of A's bedding from his room to our room to accommodate everyone.

But it's hard to move a bed when I just want to be in a bed.

Cute things A did

Now every time we fly out of San Diego, we are generally stocked with petit baguettes from Bread & Cie and some butter, if not cheese and fruit.

We got to the Portland airport. We go through security and get to our gate.

A looks at us and says, "I'm hungry. Bread, please."

Vacation

Whew.

I neglected to mention it, but we went to Oregon on va-cay for an extended week around Memorial Day. It was fabulous, and I mean fabulous.

First of all, Portland, I love you. I love your verdant gardens overflowing with azaleas and rhododendrons and ripe rose buds. I love your Craftsman-style houses. I love your friendly TSA airport employees and dual-flush toilets. I love your Ramona Quimby sculpture in Grant Park. I love your awe-inspiring City of Books, Powell's, and want to get a job there, although I assure you, I will lose money in the trade.

We stayed with the fabulous D/S/E/M/L family, where M is a cutie pie born three weeks before A, and I've got to say they are the most gracious hosts. I aspire to that level of hospitality. Huge gorgeous house with plenty of rooms for all, piles of books everywhere to read, and kidproof and toy-laden to boot.

Plus we have to say that M and A are so cute together. Really cute. They run around and play like puppies. They are freakishly adorable to the point where I can't quite stand it.

Then our fabu friends the Bumps came to town and (the fabulous D/S/E/M/L family hosted them unseen, I mean, come on, how many people actually open their houses to virtual strangers?) we all went off to the Oregon Coast for the weekend. We went to Lincoln City, and while it was colder than I had anticipated, it was great. We flew kites and looked at the water and cooked and played games. A took a four-hour nap one day and discovered an Elmo's World video, so that was pay dirt for him.

Then back to Portland, where our hosts had picked up another baby (since it's always good to have a spare) and hosted a BBQ and we all had a great time before we had to fly back.

I can safely say we could have spent another week in Oregon and I don't think any of us would have minded. A keeps asking about when we'll be going back to the "green house."

I love vacations where I come home and don't want to kill anyone.

I'm sure there are lots of stories of his cuteness but honestly I can't remember any right now.

We came home Wednesday and since then we've been digging out, C at work, me with lots of phone calls for all sorts of appointments and emails about writerly stuff. A is adjusting to having just boring old me to admire him instead of a crowd of adults, another toddler, and a pair of babies.

And yesterday it turns out another one of our birth class friends is going to come and visit on Monday. So I hope we'll be half as kind as the people who just hosted us.

Potty training progress

We had a day this week where A had a huge accident all over the floor (number 1). I called C to say, no more potty training. He's sick, I'm sick, you're sick, everyone's unhappy and cranky and potty training doesn't help.

So we back-burnered potty training.

And then... A wanted to sit on the little seat on the toilet. First just for fun, now consistently right after he's gone to the bathroom. He feels himself going and asks for the potty. He's doing this at preschool too, and while our nice neighbor lady watches him.

So this is progress. It's still pennies as reward here. Soon we'll be beating the urine to the potty, I'm sure.

Wrangling Insurance

Well, I found Dr. Wonderful. He's amazing. He's opening a birth center that will be freestanding but have an OR so he can do C-sections, he's all for VBACs and has a pretty high success rate, and he just radiates confidence and concern. So he's super.

I need to change my PCP to go to him. Actually, I need to change my PCP so I can see his partner when he's off delivering and is missing prenatal appointments. So I call the insurance company yesterday to do this.

I talk to Jack for a very long time. Jack explains that I don't need to change my PCP and that I should explain that to Dr. Wonderful's office. (Dr. Wonderful's office is pretty clear that I do need to change my PCP.) Jack also says that any changes to my PCP will only take effect June 1st unless I get a supervisor to backdate it, which is only done for medical necessity. Having Dr. Wonderful as my doctor is not a medical necessity according to Jack.

I'm worried, irritated, frustrated. I don't want to get stuck with the closest OBGYN because, quite frankly, some of them sounded awful over the phone and I have to spend a lot of time with them and their office staff.

But I'm calm. I call this morning. I ask to change my PCP, I ask to have it backdated. I ask for a supervisor. I get a nice one. I explain that I'm going to be ten weeks pregnant tomorrow but haven't been to see an OBGYN yet and I really need to get a gestational age and nuchal fold diagnostic ultrasound soon. Could they please backdate my PCP change to May 1st so I could get my tests done in a timely fashion?

I'm so glad I got a nice one. Is it sexist to think that a woman supervisor is more sympathetic to the OBGYN choice issue than a man is?

The supervisor bends the rules and changes it, since we're on a timeline. She is so sweet and helpful and I just can't stand it.

I get off the phone and call my PCP's registration office to make sure my PCP's been changed and backdated. Yes, yes, everything's super.

So now we're set for maternity care with Dr. Wonderful. Yay!

Preschool Romeo

Every day I pick A up from preschool, I ask how the day went. Today it was, "He's such a Romeo." He apparently spent the day holding hands with an inordinate number of girls, culminating in him holding hands with two girls at once. During circle time, one of the girls put her arms around him and hugged him tight against her and he apparently thought that was super. Then he sat in another one's lap later during playtime, and she didn't mind.

The teachers think it's adorable and that he's gotten so sociable.

We've always said he had ladykiller eyes. I just didn't think he'd be unleashing them in preschool.

"Oh, I see."

This is the latest phrase. It's pretty cute. Amazing what it turns out we say all the time.

Today, A and I got bagels for lunch and he carried the bag to the car. He clutched the bag at the very top, and when it started to slip, I stopped, rolled the top of the bag up, and put his arms around the now-smaller bag.

"Oh, I see," he said, and toddled off.

Preschool decisions and potty training

We're approaching A's third (!) birthday, which is monumental in that it's the day his services like free preschool and speech therapy get turned off. Oh no! He's really thriving with preschool and speech, so it's hard for me to imagine his life without them.

In any case, we've just started potty training (although Daddy is the potty trainer of choice, so the rest of us have to get in line behind Daddy), which absolutely positively must be accomplished by three to get him into any preschool. We've established that he can stay at his current preschool (which was more reasonably priced than previously thought, which is good) and enroll in August, which is super and always an option. I have to research other options now.

Potty training is difficult. Really difficult. He's getting bribed with pennies (his current latest obsession, happily cheap) for sitting on the potty, but he hasn't quite made the how things work connection, and really, how do you teach someone how to urinate? The mind boggles.

Second dentist visit

Our dentist's office loves A. They just adore him. An extra sticker, an extra toy, how are you cutie, who does he look like today (C, with my smile was the consensus).

Anyway, he went today for a cleaning and he did great: sat in the chair, had X-rays (no bitewings--too irritating), tartar scraped off his teeth, a good polish, and a quick exam. He didn't complain or cry, just took it all in.

His teeth are great; his bite is good, so far, although we're watching it. And we could see his permanent teeth on his X-rays. Holy cow, he's got huge adult teeth in his little tiny jaw. It's really odd to see.

But now he's got stickers and a toothbrush and an alligator toy and a fish toy (because he had to have two, and my "just one, please," be damned) and sparkling clean white teeth.

Holy cow!

"Holy cow!" I said yesterday in the car.

"Holy cow!" A said.

I'm just glad it wasn't something more expressive, like "Hot tranny mess," or some of the more four-letter words in my vocabulary.

ER: the Disneyland edition

The grandparents descended Thursday night to visit, which was lovely. Friday we all went to Disneyland, where we had a good time. We had the little boy-centered itinerary: Winnie the Pooh, Pirates, Buzz, Tarzan's Treehouse, the train.

At the end of the day, as we were talking about going home, I went to put a sweater on A. He was retracting. C and I took A over to First Aid. We walked in and the three RNs on duty took one look at A's breathing and sprang into action. One of them got us into a room while another got an oxygen tank and the third called the paramedics.

So we were sent via ambulance to the ER about 8 or so. I rode with A. He was pretty scared. They hooked him to the gurney and wheeled him out; if I'd been thinking I would have walked ahead of the gurney so he could see me. C followed with the grandparents in the rented minivan.

Anyway, at the ER, they hooked A up to oxygen, albuterol, and steroid treatments. The nurses were really kind to us and the doctor actually had a respiratory therapist come down to administer treatments. A fell asleep around 10 or so.

He ended up having four or five albuterol treatments and three steroid treatments. His oxygen level didn't stabilize until 1AM. At 2, they discharged us. C, A and I spent some time discovering that the 24-hour pharmacies listed on the sheet Disney had given us weren't 24-hour ones, before C and I realized the only take-out restaurant we'd seen open was a Jack-in-the-Box that said, "Open until 3AM," and figured we'd better get something to eat since we hadn't eaten a meal since lunch at 2:30. I went to sleep with A on the sofabed.

A woke up at 6AM and freaked. Strange room, no Daddy (Daddy was sleeping in the other room). C and I got up and calmed him down, changed him (since he was soaked through his one set of clothes), then took him out to get his meds since the doctor had recommended getting drugs into him first thing in the morning. It took forever to find an open pharmacy because the Neverlost navigation system lies.

Anyway, pick up the grandparents, try to have breakfast but decide the host is skeevy and A's beginning to labor his breathing again. Okay. We debate going back to the ER or going to our own pediatrician's office and decide on our pediatrician. We stop by the hotel and get cereal for A and two bad donuts for C and me. C also gets coffee, very important.

We drive from Anaheim down straight to the doctor's where he gets another treatment and is sent home, where he's okay since then. He's been managing with his inhalers since then and has been much better. It's just not exactly the fun weekend with the grandparents we had in mind.

Stupid audiologist

So two months ago, we had an audiology exam and A had an ear infection. Get that cleared up and we'll call you in four to six weeks, they said.

It's May now. That's two months. I called. I actually got a call back the same day so I must be down in the system as "pissed-off mom."

"How's June 5th?"

Not great. Anything sooner?

"No, the next thing after that would be July 9th."

Fine. June 5th. Let's see how it goes.

Finding an OBGYN

Just a warning: this may be too much information. It's not boy-related.

So I'm pregnant and I have a confession to make: I don't have an OBGYN. I haven't gotten my annual exam since my post-A check-ups. I had one scheduled at the Birth Center and they told me when I showed up that they wouldn't take my insurance and it would cost me upwards of $270 for an annual with labs.

So I didn't get it done.

I've been dragging my heels because I knew I was now a post-C-section mommy, which meant I had to try and find a doctor who did VBACs (vaginal birth after Caesarean). This is not something they put on business cards, and there's apparently a fair amount of bait-and-switch: yes, first-trimester-mom, you can have a VBAC; well, it's week 28, let's start talking about scheduling a repeat C-section. So it's important to find out if the doctor has actually delivered any VBACs.

I don't want another C-section if I can avoid it. I don't have trauma; I don't wake up shuddering in the night thinking, what could have been. If there's a medical reason for a C-section, well, let's schedule the sucker far enough in advance that anyone who wants to be here for the birth can get plane tickets.

But the C-section wiped me out, recovery wiped me out, and this time we'll have both a newborn and a very insistent three-year-old to deal with. I don't need to have four weeks before I can manage a trip to both Target and Trader Joe's again. It is freaking major surgery, after all.

Okay. So I know that once I get that first confirmation exam, our insurance is like a pitbull that won't let go and the doctor who confirms is the doctor who delivers. I know, I can fight to change it, but I like to sidestep the insurance company fights, don't you?

None of my contacts have a decent VBAC doctor to recommend. I get a somewhat helpful list of "not this doctor," but that doesn't help me figure out who to go to.

I gather a list of doctors with positive reviews from yelp and kudzu. I read a couple local midwives' blogs and one name keeps coming up again and again. He's like a midwife in a doctor's body, they say.

I check my insurance list. The website search is inscrutable. I don't have a paper provider directory. I call and ask if he's on my plan. Yes, he is.

Great. I call Dr. Wonderful. I hear you're on my plan. I'm newly pregnant. I'd like a consultation to see if we click before I commit to your practice.

Of course we do consultations, but he's not on your insurance, they say. Not on your group, which is the important thing. You have to change from the Dancing Monkey Medical Group to the Twirling Elephant Medical Group. Then he'll see you.

I argue and plead. I talk to the insurance person. I wait patiently for cross-checking. "Sorry, honey," they say, but in a nice way. "You could switch to the other medical group and it would work."

Okay, no problem, I've got lots of other doctors on my list.

First one: Won't do VBACs. Thinks I'm silly for even asking whether or not they do them since the doctor will determine for me whether or not I can have one.
Second one: Won't do consultations. Quote: "If you're the kind of person who's interviewing doctors, you wouldn't fit into this practice."
Third one: Won't even talk to me because I'm not in the right medical group. I need to call my own PCP and get a referral from him (a blatant lie).
Fourth one: I don't have to time to be messing around interviewing people. I need to get in and have that first-visit ultrasound. "You do ultrasounds on the first visit?" "Sure, how else would we determine gestational age?"

I hang up. I cry. The only office that's treated me with a smidgen of kindness is Dr. Wonderful's and I'm not on their plan.

I sleep on it.

I call Dr. Wonderful's office the next morning. "Hi, I know I'm not on your insurance, but could you schedule a consultation and then if I like him I can meet with your insurance guru and go over exactly what I need to do to get covered?"

"Of course, honey. Our first appointment is..."

So I have one appointment scheduled, with Dr. Wonderful.

Long weekend

When I'm back to normal, I'll post about our weekend visit from the grandparents and our unplanned visit to the ER. Everyone's okay. Don't worry. We're all just a little sleep deprived and sick here.

The first of the delayed entry posts

Well, it happened. Anyone who is struggling with infertility probably doesn't want to talk to me because as far as I can tell, we have the, "Sure, why not a kid?" discussion and that's it. Boom. Each time I expect to spend six months trying to get pregnant and then, nope, a little earlier than either of us are ready for.

We had Vietnamese food a couple days before Easter, and I got sick. Not food poisoning sick, just queasy in a way that made me think, "Hmm, I haven't felt this way since...hmmm." The kind of sick that makes a woman consult a calendar and do some math. Yeah, maybe. But probably not.

Then a friend sent me pictures from our last Read-and-Critique group, and I looked at myself and thought, hmm, my face looks round. Surprisingly round. Round in a way my face hasn't looked since...nah. Couldn't be.

I have been falling asleep during our post-dinner Netflix ritual every night.

Good Friday, I get up at 5am, and since I have a couple spare pregnancy tests around (because after the first time you buy a single test, you realize that either way a test comes out, you'll want a second test), I take one. I'm donating blood on Saturday and so if I'm pregnant, I need to know.

Maybe there's a line. I squint and stare and decide no. No line.

I am in denial.

Saturday I donate blood. I am completely wiped.

Easter Sunday we get up. We have an Easter basket for A. We have breakfast.

I fall asleep on the couch within two hours of getting up.

I wake up from the nap, go upstairs, take another pregnancy test.

And this time, though it is faint, there is an undeniable line.

Daddy's cheese

I went to the restroom earlier today, which is generally a bad idea because two-and-a-half-year-olds only need the exact amount of time it takes a mommy to visit the restroom to wreak havoc on the household. I should get myself a catheter or a drip bag tied to my thigh and give up bathroom breaks altogether.

Anyway, when I came out of the restroom, A met me on the stairs with the, "I didn't do anything wrong at all, Mommy, I swear," look, which means something is amiss. I notice he's chewing something.

"What you got there?" I say.

He smiles and opens his mouth. It looks like frosting, but I know it's not frosting because he ate all the frosting off the cupcakes yesterday.

I go to the kitchen. On the top of the stove, at the edge, sit five half-unwrapped sticks of butter. Two discarded cartons of butter are on the floor.

"Are you eating butter?"

On closer inspection, one of the sticks is completely unwrapped, slightly fuzzy, and dotted with little teeth marks.

"I eat Daddy's cheese!" he tells me.

Of course. I eat olive oil on my bread. C eats butter. When we have cheese on bread, it's usually a soft cheese, which I guess looks a lot like butter. Ergo, butter is Daddy's cheese.

We washed his buttery little hands (God knows where we'll find globs of grease this evening) and put the butter away, even the fuzzy, toothmarked one.

Dinosaur sandwiches

A hasn't eaten quesadillas with me. Sometimes he'll eat them with C (ah, the Daddy power), but he generally turns his nose up at my quesadillas.

I made us a batch of plain cheese quesadillas today, and he announced that he wasn't interested and would rather have a cupcake.

"These are dinosaur sandwiches!" I said. He's had an Elmo dinosaur tape and played with dinosaurs today at preschool, so I thought dinosaurs would have a fresh appeal. "Would you like to eat an actual authentic dinosaur sandwich with Mommy?"

Yes. Yes he would. Enthusiastically and with vigor. And yes, after he finished his lunch, then he got a cupcake.

Birthday for the Devons

Jake and Niles, Devons of reference, turned nine years old this week. To celebrate, here's one who looks like Jake. But trust me, Jake would never do this. Niles, maybe, but not Jake.

Not a seal

When we went to Sea World last week, we spent some time looking at the walrus exhibit. A kept saying, "Seal!"

I would say, "It's not a seal. It has big tusks, big teeth. It's a walrus."

So what is a walrus called in our house now? Notaseal. With big teeth.

First eye exam

I should also report that A had his first eye exam (with our eye doctor, who I met while I was pregnant) and did splendidly well. He's got 20/30 vision right now and is a little bit farsighted, which is normal in kids this age.

Plumeria sale aftermath

I go away for the weekend's plumeria sale and come back to an onslaught of email and 82 new messages in Reader. Yikes.

No sign of the penny yet, so maybe he was just using his imagination.

Anyhow, I had to oversee setup on Friday from 9AM until 4PM, in the Casa del Prado in Balboa Park, which is a lovely place to be, but it's lovelier outside. Since A had speech therapy in the morning, C brought him over at noon to join me for the second half of the day.

He did great. I bought some paint-with-water books in Pooh, Mickey, and Little People themes, and those kept him busy for a while. He had a couple balls to throw and some of the other members would kick the ball around with him and catch it with him. Someone made him a bag of spritz cookies. Someone put him in one of the carts we use to haul plants around and gave him a ride. And it was a room with columns to run circles around and a big square to run around, so that was fun.

In short, he was completely spoiled, probably. He ran around giggling a lot and most of the people who work the plumeria sale are grandparents of older children and teenagers, so they all like those kinds of toddler giggles.

He had such a good time that he had a tantrum when I tried to put him in the car because it was time to go. Then he fell asleep before I left the parking lot.

The penny obsession goes too far

"A, why are you holding your tongue like that?"

"I ate a penny."

"What?"

"I ate a penny, Mommy."

Really? Okay.

Mommy calls the doctor.

"He says he ate a penny, but his speech isn't great and his imagination's really kicked in--"

"It'll pass. Give him lots of fluids, but kids can eat pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters with no problem."

"That's it? No X-rays?"

"Nope, it'll pass." (stifled giggle) "The big hazard is choking, and if he's telling you he ate a penny, he's okay."

"Thanks. Is this your laugh of the day?"

"Yeah, well no, we get these calls every day. Every day."

I don't know if he did or not...but we'll be watching now.

Penny!

A has discovered money.

I'm not sure how this happened. It's certainly not a concept we belabor around here. I think it's all the stupid pressed penny machines, although no, he's never gotten a pressed penny out of one.

Yesterday the car needed a tune-up (periodic maintenance, yadda yadda, car's fine an ouchie $400 later). So A and I went to Sea World while we waited for them to call us and say the car was done, since I thought it would be about the right amount of time. A picked Sea World. I offered him the Zoo or Sea World, and he picked Sea World. Fine.

While I was putting the car seat into the loaner, A went into my purse and got out a quarter.

"Penny!" he told me.

"Quarter," I said.

"Quarter," he said.

He carried that quarter around like it was a good luck charm. "Put it in your pocket," I said. He did, but then he had to get it out again to look at it. Quarter in hand, quarter in pocket, repeat.

Since we arrived when they opened the gates for the Shamu show, we went in and waited for the show. A thought all the hawkers were funny: "Water, ice-cold bottled water here!" "Pepsi, diet Pepsi, ice-cold lemonade!" A liked the lemonade vendor the best; he had a big deep voice and every time he walked by, A said, "Lemonade!"

But then the ice cream novelty vendor came by, and A said to me, "Ice cream, please, Mommy"

"I'm not sure you need an ice cream," I said.

"Ice cream please," he said.

"Have you got any money?"

He put his hand in his pocket and got out his quarter.

"Well, okay," I said. I got out my money to pay, and when I handed my money to the hawker, he gave her his money too.

Yes, it was a quarter he stole from my purse, but it was still awfully cute.

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.

Wet socks!

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but A hates getting splashed with cold water (except for when he's in the pool). He hates it. It's one of the few things I know he hates. If he dribbles water on his shirt when he's taking a drink, he'll fuss until his shirt is a little dried off.

Anyway, yesterday he decided to take some initiative and get the Brita pitcher out of the fridge himself. The Brita is heavy and spilled all over the fridge and the kitchen floor.

A lets out a scream, and I come to see what's happened. He's holding an empty pitcher and yelling, "Wet! Wet! Wet socks!"

"Calm down," I say, and talk some Mommy-talk about how maybe if he asked for help Mommy would get him water. "Take your socks off."

He paced around straight-legged and agitated.

"Sit! Sit down and take your socks off." He sits and discovers that wet socks are hard to take off. When he finally got them off, I made him help me wipe up the gallon of water off the floor.

And he still wanted a drink after all of that.

Baby love

The horde from Portland has left for home (or should have soon), and we had such a good time with them. C and I finally met baby L, who is a smiley little guy. The most amazing thing were how well A and M played together. Oh my gosh, they are so very very cute. E is going to be as tall as C next time.

A and I met up with the fam in Disneyland yesterday, and in due course of taking turns riding the mountains that the little ones can't ride, I found myself with L in a sling, and A and M tasked to hold hands and stick together so we could ride Pooh. I got numerous compliments on my beautiful baby boy (L) and cute and cheerful twins (A and M)--God bless you mothers of twins out there. M herded A like a Border collie; it was funny to watch.

When we got off of Pooh, both M and A saw Tigger and decided we had to meet him. But Tigger was at the end of his visit time. ("Tigger's going to lunch," I told them.) But as we came around the corner, Pooh was there. So they both waited patiently (very patiently, I must say, for two two-and-a-half year olds) and then ran up to Pooh and gave him a big hug. So cute!

The PhotoPass person was prompting, "A, can you take your fingers out of your mouth?" to get a super picture. M looked at A, grabbed his hand, and pulled his fingers out of his mouth. Priceless.

A didn't want to ride the Haunted Mansion, which was a little strange but we didn't push him to go on it. But of course he loved Pooh, Buzz Lightyear, and it's a small world, as always. And I got to ride Splash and Space Mountain, so life's pretty good.

So I'm glad they came, and I miss them terribly, and I'm taking a quick breath before the next horde descends.

And I'm not shilling myself...

But if you'd like to hear a funny, sweet story about someone else's potty training issues, please go to the Dime Stories site, go to the Dime Stories: SD link on the left, and in the February 2009 page, listen to Henry Pruette's story, "Black Friday." I'd give you a direct link but they don't let me do that, apparently.

Emil Wilson's story is great, but only if you have an extremely twisted sense of humor.

Peel me off the ceiling

Today, A took no nap except for the time spent driving from preschool to home. This matches my mood because I didn't sleep very well last night.

I got him home, thought I could do a swift diaper change while he was sleeping, and put him to bed, but no dice. He stayed woozy but awake for a long time regardless of how much Beatrix Potter I read him.

Argh.

So we ate lunch, played for a bit, went to the library and the store since we were in desperate dire need of milk. He almost fell asleep on the way home, but again, no luck. This is all complicated by the fact that the new car was in the shop (broken strut, under warranty, thank you very much) and so I was in the lovely old Volvo parking on the side of the garage I never park on. Parking in our garage is already graduate level parking, I think, but the whole different car/different side put me in a foul mood.

Which I was already in.

Because the boy had not napped.

C came home and I said, "Hi, here is your son, he's having cereal for dinner, and I am going to go away now." A little Jon Stewart, a little cat vibes, a little embarrassingly obsolete Civ, and I'm almost back to normal.

For general relaxation, I can't say enough about the wonders of a huge hot pad on your back with a couple cats for weight. I'm falling asleep just thinking about it.

Baby junk

Not that kind of junk.

We're trying to convince A that he really wants to be potty-trained. He's not keen on it, but we've got Lightening McQueen pull-ups to try and convince him that the toilet is super cool groovy. He has explained to me that the potty is for mommy and daddy but not him.

Anyway, we finally convinced him to sit on this potty without a diaper. We've had this potty since his birthday. This is the second potty we have, since after I foolishly followed the "let your child pick out a potty to make him feel invested in the process" advice, A picked out an Elmo toilet that talked to him in English and Spanish every time he pushed a button ("Muy bien! High five! Great job!"). After an hour, the bilingual Elmo potty disappeared back to the baby hellhole. I replaced it with a mute potty. The design of the potty included a "splashguard for your little boy," which ostensibly is supposed to route urine into the toilet without the child having to aim.

The stupid mute potty is too small. His baby parts did not natually fall underneath him into the bowl. Cramming his baby junk into the splashguard positioned his penis in a way that would ensure he would piss into his own eyes should the momentous day arrive when he urinated on the potty.

So potty #2 is a bust, headed for AmVets. Maybe someone with a skinny little girl child can use it.

This weekend, we went to IKEA and bought potty #3 for four bucks and everything seems to fit. God bless the Swedes.

I'm still not ready for potty training.

Progress reports

Yes, we get them. It's been about twelve weeks now since A started the extravaganza of classes and speech therapy, so we've got progress reports.

Preschool says he's doing super. He participates in circle time, initiates two-word phrases, and they're pressing him to say, "May I have such-and-such, please?" which means the "More such-and-such, please," requests we've been hyping at home are no longer going to cut it.

His speech therapist is thrilled with him. She's caught him saying three-word sentences, and saying everything from descriptions to commands/requests to narratives, which is fabulous. He has mad play skillz, yo. He's demonstrating new uses for objects and toys every time he sees them, which shows his creativity, problem solving acumen, and general astonishing brilliance. And the speech therapist says his family is super too.

His speech is getting more coherent, but I'm not sure how many other people would be able to tell. The swarms of friends are descending from Portland and Denver in quick succession, so hopefully we'll be able to tell then.

Cross your fingers that when they start turning out lights and closing offices all over California tomorrow due to budget morasses, A's speech therapist and preschools still get paid.

Digging out

We went to Disneyland again. It was my birthday; they offer free admission on your birthday, and if you have a pass, they'll give you something else, like a gift card worth the price of one day's admission. Sweet!

A got to preschool, I got to a bookstore, C played hooky, and we all had a fabulous time together. So I'm digging out now and today, but boy, did I have a great day.

Completely irrelevant

We don't have TV. We don't watch American Idol.

If you do, then you should be voting for Adam Lambert, because he's the son of one of my writer friends and he's supposed to be great.

And tell me if he's any good.

Counting confirmation

One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten.

Unbelievable.

First floss

I'm at home trying to write (re-write, but there's a lot of new stuff) and keep A on the floor of our bedroom which means that our bedroom is now a de-facto mess. Every other sentence I stop to ask A to put things back into the bedside tables (we really need those stops installed).

One of the things he's taken out is floss, which A thinks is super: a tiny roll of waxed string that feeds out really, really fast.

Anyway, I am explaining to him what floss is and I hand him a length to play with. He tries to twist it around his fingers and then runs it through his teeth.

"Would you like me to floss you?"

Uh-huh, affirmative.

So I sit him on my lap and make an attempt at flossing a two-and-half-year-old, which I know my dental hygienist is not doing to her own two-and-half-year-old yet. A sits through it very happily, takes the string from me and attempts it again himself when I'm done, and then throws the used string in the trashcan just like Mommy does.

As a child, I had not the best dental care. We didn't floss--it was a stretch to brush twice a day. I had teeth pulled with just laughing gas, which is not enough for me. My subsequent groovy dentists both comment, "Wow, you certainly need a lot of novocaine." My childhood dentist shot himself in his ex-wife's basement before setting the house on fire--true story--and that was the end of regular dentist visits until I was a Grown-Up.

So now I verge on the crazy OCD path of dental hygiene. I brush my teeth after every meal when I'm at home. I try to floss every day and probably manage to do so most of the time. If I skip, it bugs me. If I can't remember flossing on a given day, I'll floss again to make sure that I flossed. (And I've been wearing my retainer pretty regularly.)

Well, apparently, I've set my son on a road to dental OCD. Oh well. There are worse things to pass along, I guess.

Two! Two two two!

We have numbers. We have one and we have two. The number two is our favorite number.

We point out all the twos. So, two panda toys, two tiger toys, two hands, two ears (which makes him laugh although I don't know why), two spoons, two books, two, two, two, two.

We went to the zoo yesterday and (finally) got to see the new tiger cubs (who look more like small cats, but that's okay). There are three cubs and a mom that are put on exhibit at the zoo in rotation with another female and a male. So we go to one of the viewing windows, and there are four tigers right on the other side of the glass--how fabulous. And A is excited and pointing and roaring, and I'm watching him try to explain to everyone else that those are tigers and they roar, when he starts saying to me, "Two, two, two."

"No, honey," I say, "four," and I turn back to count for him and I count, "One, two." Because of course the other tigers have disappeared from the window and we can now only see two.

The preschool reported today that A can count to ten, but I cannot confirm this with home testing.

Friday, I'm in love

I am. So there.

The boy just went down for a nap, but he is adorable and sweet. I've been reading the complete Beatrix Potter to him and it's more charming than I remembered and it puts him to sleep.

We had a trip to Disneyland yesterday to celebrate Miss Julie's birthday, and that was fun. A loves the Winnie the Pooh ride and the Buzz Lightyear one. Good grief, that kid can run, especially when he decides he wants to ride, now! I love it when Julie has friends along who are happy to be on babysitting duty for the day, especially those who A takes a serious shine to.

His speech is coming along. He said his name for the first time this week, which is a big thing. Not terribly coherent, but still, having the concept of his name is a big deal.

His speech therapist tells me he's amazingly smart. He plays with his toys in ways that other kids don't think to. He's brilliant. We know. He's singing: the Wheels on the Bus, the Itsy-Bitsy Spider, the alphabet song, Where is Thumbkin, all the classics. It's starting to be berry season here: strawberries and blackberries. A loves blackberries.

He's moving right along. I sat next to him today and I couldn't stop looking at his legs (it's freakishly beautiful here today even by SoCal standards), since he's got little boy legs now and not little fat baby legs. Sigh.

Sick and story

Sick first: A celebrated MLKJ day by puking, rather spectacularly, as we were getting into "time to go to swim class" mode. Of course, being such a momentous week, he celebrated again on Tuesday and Wednesday by throwing up right after breakfast.

Being with a sick toddler who can talk a little is no fun, because he spent most of his days saying, "Hungry! Cookie! Cookie! Fruit [leather]! Cookie! Drink!" when he was supposed to be getting two tablespoons of Pedialyte or water every ten to fifteen minutes. This was pretty unbearable for a mommy. At least I wasn't sick with the stomach flu this time too, although I've got a riotous head cold going and I felt like I was under house arrest from not leaving the house for three days.

But this morning he was fine, breakfast stayed down, and he went to preschool. He's in a much better mood; the drywallers came to put the downstairs bathroom ceiling back together and it looks much better, plus these guys didn't seem to be on meth, always a plus.

Story: This is from last week. One of the words A has picked up is IKEA. I kid you not. We drive on 805, and there is IKEA in all its shiny yellow and blue Swedishness across the way in Mission Valley, and A yells and points, "KEA, KEA, KEA." When we go to Costco, he asks to go to IKEA, and sometimes I indulge him. I don't know why he wants to go. I really don't. I am told that these are my genes.

So here's the story. Last week, before he was sick, A and I headed to IKEA for the semi-annual sale. At some point, we went to the restroom for a diaper change. After we get done, we both wash our hands, and I hand A a length of paper towel. I tell him, "There's a trash can right by the door, just throw your paper towel out and wait for me," since I'm coming up behind him with the stroller.

A ignores me, takes the paper towel, wraps it around the door handle, and opens the door. Yes, he's opening the door with a paper towel, just like Mommy and Daddy do, especially when they see the lady who left the bathroom before us without washing her hands.

Christmas Wrap-up

Christmas was great. Mistah A ran downstairs Christmas morning and found a beautiful blue tricycle under our tree. He loves it and is getting pretty good at the whole pedaling thing. We ate scones and tea and cheese fondue with fantastic bread and it was a wonderful Christmas even if it did rain for most of the day. It was good cheese fondue weather. It was low-key and quiet and lovely.

Post-Christmas, we managed to get up to the last year of the Wild Animal Park's Festival of Lights and see, among other things, a black light puppet show, which had one of the best anti-photo deterrent routines I've ever seen. A behaved himself so beautifully; there were many brats in the crowd and I was happy to be with my kid.

Then it was off to Colorado for New Year's, with the grandparents bestowing much spoilage and love upon yonder boy. I got a new sewing machine from C and my in-laws, and we saw many people that we did not have enough time with. I don't think there's a good way to have enough time with everyone. We ate at the Canton Palace many, many, many times and are almost done with the General Tao's we brought back. It's so good to visit with people we don't get to see nearly often enough.

A traveled well, although leaving Colorado turned into a panoply (not comedy) of errors. On the way to the airport, the "Low Tire Pressure" light came on. C stopped and got out (on one of the worst, most dangerous sections of I-25) and checked the tires. Nothing appeared to be protruding from the tires, no flats, so we stopped at the next exit with a gas station and filled the tires. Some time between the gas station and the airport, A started really complaining and fussing, pretty unusual for him in the car. We kept driving because, well, we were already late from the tire incident. When we got to the rental car drop-off, I carried A out and--oh. That's why he was fussy. Let's just say that we've traveled with all levels of sick, but toddler with diarrhea is probably my second-least favorite. Small mercies: while we had a fearsome number bunch of changes in the airport, with proper tag-team diapering to keep it fair, A was done and fell asleep on the plane while people were still boarding.

The last week's been spent digging out, resuming routines, returning A to the level of attention he normally receives and not the adoration of the masses. He's happy to be back at preschool; he was thrilled to see his speech therapist. In swimming last Monday, the heater for the air in the pool room was broken, so while the pool was warm and wonderful, getting out was terrible. The steam rose off the water of the pool. Plus they had two cherry pickers in there to fix it, which was astonishing. I hope it's fixed. My toes are curling just thinking about it.

And now I have a new sewing machine. Once A falls asleep, C plays new video games and I sew and we're ridiculously pleased with ourselves. Last night we fixed a seam of C's at midnight. That's how ridiculously thrilled we both are. And tonight will be tea and cookies (thanks, Bump Bump Bumps) and early bed. Unless the lure of sewing and video games proves too much...

Pile of Kittens

Pile of Kittens
Originally uploaded by peter_hasselbom

It is called Tea and Devons, after all. Not mine, but freakishly adorable still.

Good? I'll show you good...

I got sick. A's doing better. I'm doing better. We're crazy busy for the holidays, as I'm sure you all are.

It's pouring rain here. Yesterday, C and I attempted to mail off the Christmas goodness and found a self-service postal office kiosk--with no place to put the packages. So we bought all the postage and slapped labels on things and left them all in the car for shipping on Monday.

This morning, C's late. Our local post office isn't open when we swing by and they don't have a nifty package drop either. A falls asleep on the way home from dropping off C, and I'm thrilled because I've got a list. Bake a quick-bread for his speech therapist, who is coming at 1pm. Wrap presents. Sew stockings. Whip up a gingerbread house dough. Identify any last-minute giftees and figure out last-minute presents. Put together a grocery store list for Xmas. I'm thrilled in the way only mothers of toddlers can be when their sweet cherubs are conked out.

We pull into the garage, and A wakes up.

I snuggle and cuddle and coax and A won't go back to sleep.

Fine. Now I'm mad and snarly mommy. I'm sick. I'd like to sleep. I'd like to be anything other than in charge of a Christmas cornucopia of errands in the pouring rain with a sick toddler, but here I am. Back in the car, off to the post office. We get a spot next to the door, but I am in a bad enough mood that I do not care. A doesn't want to put on his raincoat but no, he has no choice and he is standing beside the boxes on the sidewalk as I run from the trunk to the car in the rain.

It takes me three trips to unload all the boxes. A is screaming and having a tantrum. I have to wait in line because one of the boxes is too big, even though we've already paid for postage. The other people in line look at my snotty, screaming toddler and my red nose and treat us like we have the plague, which I guess we do.

Back in the car. We've got a little under two hours, so we'll go to the grocery store, get our supplies for Christmas, and be able to get a gift for the speech therapist in one swoop.

Now, unless I have driven in a car with you, which is pretty a limited number of people because I really hate to drive, you may not be aware that I turn into Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver when I drive. There's a constant stream-of-consciousness incoherent, delusional rambling commentary every time I get behind the wheel. My most flagrant, eyebrow-lifting obscenity happens when I'm driving. I try to rein it in, of course, since the boy, but when that baby lets something obscene fly there will be no question at all where he learned it.

The underground parking garage is full, with vultures circling. I go up to the uncovered parking lot, since I'm not made of sugar (definitely not today), and I start listening to myself as I pass by parking space. I'm in so much of a snit that I'm saying things like, "Oh, yeah, great space there, should be a handicapped but it's not, and I drove right past it. And by the time I come back, there'll be some idiot there. And there's a great space, parallel that I could get into easy, but no, I'm driving right by it. Oh, that space I saw before, yes, that's full now too."

And I listen to myself, really listen, and I then I start laughing. I am being presented with numerous opportunities to be helped and I am passing by each one with my delusional ranting. I have already benefited from the largess of the universe by getting a spot near the door at the post office and three people who held the door open for me each time.

I apologize to A, and tell him I'm going to be a more cheerful mommy, and turn into the back parking lot and get a space right by the door. Not ten feet from that, under the awnings, is the only Trader Joe's cart that is dry. Bone-dry. And I say thank you to the universe, thank you for being kind to me and giving me two good parking spots in Hillcrest in one hour, a dry place to put my child's bottom, and an appreciation that, even with the Christmas cornucopia and colds and lack of naps, my life's pretty darn good.

I got the speech therapist a big box of Rocher, and I am glad I did, because she brought A a book. And now I am going to go sit with some chai and sew a stocking by the lights of our Christmas tree.

Sick again

A's sick. Again. I'm pretty sick of him being sick. He's sick of it too. He didn't sleep much last night. He's napping fitfully today. He gets a hit of albuterol, a little bit of food, and then he sleeps for a time. Then the albuterol wears off; it's time for another dose, and the whole cycle starts again.

It's been pouring rain here, which means we're cooped up and sick. Not much else to say. Christmas preparations are taking a backseat to baby care, so if your cards and packages are late, this is why.

Disneyland Hiatus

Oh yes, my friends, we went to the big D yet again. It's the Year of Disney here, or at least the fall and winter of Disney. The kid loves Disneyland. We love Disneyland. It's relatively close. We got a great discount on the hotel with our annual pass.

What does A love?

• Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters - now he's figured out he can shoot
  
• Winnie the Pooh
• Tarzan's Treehouse - a surprise to both of us, Tarzan was a big hit
• Haunted Mansion Holiday
• it's a small world
  
• Autopia - Stupid cars on a track. A drove, which means he turned the wheel back and forth as far as the track would let him while I pushed the gas pedal. He loved it. Laughed the whole time.
• the teacups - boy howdy
  
• Peter Pan
• the Carousel
• Dumbo
• Astro Orbiter (although C and I discovered that this is probably the most uncomfortable ride in all of Disney and I had to operate the lifting gear with my feet)
• Alice in Wonderland

We finally saw the Billy Hill and the Hillbillies show at the Golden Horseshoe, so I was pleased. The parks are beautiful at holiday time, really amazingly decorated. We saw the holiday parade, which has extremely cool wooden toy soldiers who actually play their instruments, which is very neat. The much-vaunted snow on Main Street is actually foam, disappointing for those of us who know snow, but the holiday fireworks show is pretty dazzling. And it's a small world is so much better with the holiday carols mixed in so it's not one incessant song over and over again.

The baby swap, more formally referred to as the "rider switch," is possibly the most fabulous thing in the universe. If two people with a baby want to ride something like Space Mountain, one person goes while another person waits, then they switch. The pass allows the person who waited to bypass the line and go pretty much straight to the ride.

The parks were more crowded than we would have liked due to Cast Member Holiday Party days, but we actually walked onto most things with little or no wait. Longest wait: Peter Pan. Fastpasses really help. We rode Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain a lot. I love BTM at night. We rode Indy a lot too; I got to go through all three doors of mystery and satisfied my curiosity that they all look the same.

We discovered too late the legal loophole created by the conjunction of Fastpass and the Rider Switch, but my friends with babies, let me tell you how to work this system. I believe this is legitimate, even though it felt a little sneaky to C and me:

1. You and your smoochie-person pick out two different rides with Fastpass.
2. Get one Fastpass from each ride. It helps if the Fastpasses ripen about the same time.
   
3. Once it's Fastpass time, go to the first ride and ask for a rider switch pass.
4. When the nice cast member directs the first rider to the line, whip out your Fastpass and get in the fast lane.
5. The second rider uses the rider switch pass to bypass the line.
6. Go to the second ride and repeat. Voila! Two rides done as Fastpasses for the price of one Fastpass each. You can double your line-bypassing this way.
   

Also, those of you with more than one kid should be aware that the Rider Switch Pass acts as a Fastpass for two people, so if you've got a friend or another kid who can ride the coaster (Hi, E!) , they can ride twice, once with their own Fastpass, and once with the Rider Switch Pass.

But it was fun, and it was fun to have C off of work, and when A drank too much Jamba Juice and threw up on the carpet of our hotel room, it was fun to call housekeeping and have them come clean it up (with a tip, of course, but it's not like I packed the Nature's Miracle carpet cleaner in my overnight bag, what else were we supposed to do?).

A was so tired he fell asleep at 4PM on Wednesday (3PM, but we woke him up to ride Buzz Lightyear two more times before we left) and slept until the alarm went off at 6AM Thursday morning.

What else? He had preschool today; they painted and played outside and had speech therapy and he cried when I said it was time to go home. So he's enjoying preschool. His teachers tell me he is so sweet and they only have to show him how to do something once and he's got it. Yes, I know. It's a little frightening. Good when it's painting with cookie cutters, bad when it's watering the Christmas tree.

First Day of Preschool

I didn't see him off; his dad did, so I should probably get a guest-blog from him.

But I picked him up. The teacher reported that they played with shaving cream and glue; they played outside on the playground. He dug in the sandbox with another kid and heeded his teachers when they told him to keep the sand in the sandbox. He sat during circle time and paid attention.

The teachers said A did great; he's so even-tempered and easy-going. No tears, no upsets, just a cheerful little guy. Really, he had an excellent first day.

I can't believe he's old enough for preschool.