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.

Preschool #2: the marshmallow that broke the camel's back

A's feeling better. Friday is our official check-up, but he is ornery and running around and happy with only vestiges of a runny nose.

Today we went to check out the other preschool vying for contention as the place where A goes to get enriched twice a week. On paper, it sounds fine: focused on kids with speech issues, small classes, structured play, 1-to-3 teacher-student ratio. I thought it sounded like it was better suited to A's needs, actually.

Physically: It's small. There's no outside area to play in, no play structures. There are some climbing things inside, but not a lot. It seems clean and the toys are in good shape.

We're twenty minutes late because I got lost. (It's in an obscure area, and I get lost easily.) We join in time for circle time, which is more of a semi-circle but that's not the point. They sing some songs, which is more of the teacher singing sometimes with a CD while the kids sit in their chairs.

I notice that most of the kids (five others) don't seem to be having any fun. A has fun with the singing.

Then circle time is over and it's activity time. They're doing snowman pictures, gluing pieces of paper together to make a snowman. The kids sit in a half-circle while a teacher comes by and gives them something to glue to their paper. The kids don't pick what to glue or are given working glue to play with, just pieces to stick to the paper. The snowmen all look suspiciously the same when they're done.

A is bored. He wants to play with the toys.

The teacher announces snack time, and I think, "Hmm, maybe this will re-capture his attention." The snack is Juicy Juice grape juice box, Scooby Snack cookies shaped like dog biscuits, and strawberry marshmallows. Sugar, sugar, and more sugar. Only my indoctrination as a consummately and sometimes detrimentally polite citizen keeps me from yanking him out of the chair, out the door, and home to our organic-o-rama of low-fat yogurt, apple slices, and diluted organic juice.

A eats his marshmallow and cookie and asks for another. He eats the second cookie but not the second marshmallow. The juice box is history.

They begin to play a game, a matching game, match your card to a picture on the poster. A goes first and quickly. Then he gets bored waiting for it to be his turn again (because it takes about ten minutes, people, to go through six kids who don't all match things yet). He heads over to the bookshelf, picks out a book, and starts flipping through it. (Ah, yes, that would be my son.)

The teacher takes the book away and tells him to sit in his chair. She tells him not to do things by saying, "Thank you," in that "Thank you, you're done now," way. This is not how we say thank you in our household. Thank you is what we say when A complies with what we've asked him to do. She takes the book away and he's pissed. I calm him down, but he doesn't want to sit in the chair.

Then it's story time, so they get to move from the chairs to a big stuffed animal and listen to a story, then it's the bye-bye song, where the kids individually get farewelled and get to leave the teacher's sitting kingdom to wait for their parents. A is farewelled first, picks up the book the teacher took away from him, and sits behind her, looking at the pages. I subdue the compulsion to give him a high-five and a fruit leather for subverting the paradigm.

I talk to the teachers after class, if nothing else to make sure this was a typical day, typical activities, typical snack, but the whole time I'm thinking: it didn't look like the kids had any fun. It's way too early to teach A that school is no fun. An hour and half is too long to expect my two-year-old to sit quietly without serious entertainment.

And I pretty much outright despise anyone who scolds a child for looking at books.

So tomorrow, he'll start at preschool #1. The snack there was bagels and cream cheese and healthy Goldfish knock-off crackers and they specifically asked me not to bring cookies or candy as a snack for him. I feel a lot more comfortable leaving him there.

We are thankful for nebulizers

Thanksgiving kind of petered out around here, and I feel like we need a couple days to recover from the weekend.

Thursday A was very sick with a head cold, so sick he couldn't sleep. We didn't do our fancy Thanksgiving dinner because A and I both felt like crap. C spent Thursday night holding A upright so he could try and sleep. It didn't really work. A and I both got sick enough from coughing Wednesday night that we both threw up. I spent most of the night on the couch so I could sleep.

By Friday morning, A was lethargic and not breathing really well, so I called the doctor's office when they opened. They didn't have any appointments until 1:20PM.

"Well," I said, "I guess the emergency room wouldn't see us before then if we left now and I'd rather he saw you guys."

"Just come on in," she said. "Bring him in and we'll look at him." We were there about twenty minutes later.

If you've ever waited at a doctor's office, you'll appreciate how serious it is when you show up and are immediately shown to a room and have a nurse come in to take an oxygen reading, about 92-93%. The nurse then says, "The doctor will be right with you; you're next."

Then the doctor comes in, not our regular one but one we like, the one who makes jokes and plays with the kids, although A is not interested in playing at all. A gets three albuterol treatments, one with oxygen. After second, the doctor prepares us that if the third treatment doesn't have a measurable effect, A will be spending the night in the hospital.

But it does work. We're given a scary list of things to watch for changes that indicate A needs to be hospitalized immediately (color, shoulders, belly, the hollow at the base of his throat), we're sent home with the nebulizer and prescriptions for albuterol and steriods, with instructions to treat him every two hours through the day and night andcome back tomorrow for a check-up. Diagnosis is bronchiolitis, with the definite possibility that he has asthma on the horizon.

We go to the drugstore. We get a boatload of albuterol. We give him treatments every two hours. He hates it. He cries and yells. But he is breathing and smiling and getting more towards his normal self. He sleeps more that night.

Saturday, we get to see our actual doctor. She says to decrease the frequency to every four to six hours and come back for a check-up next week.

Now he seems a lot better, although he still does not care for the treatments. We spent the rest of our weekend (Saturday afternoon-Sunday) doing errands, cleaning up the vomit from the rug (which still smells, sigh), getting and putting up a Christmas tree.

So what am I thankful for? Air. Being able to breathe. A getting better. Good doctors. The nurse who heard the tension in my voice and got us in without an appointment. A husband who spent many nights sitting up with a sick boy so I could sleep. A boy who is sleeping, finally.

Lastly, I am thankful for our health insurance, because I'm pretty sure the line-item for that visit would have been in the hundreds if not thousands of dollars, including the equipment we were sent home with. A's life literally depended on the treatments he received. They weren't optional or elective. And we came home only worried about his recovery, not how we were going to pay for a staggering doctor's bill. We're worried about him having asthma, but we're not making financial decisions based on paying for a possible future chronic health problem out of pocket. I can't imagine how making any parent worry about finances when their kids are sick makes this a better country.

Preschool #1

A just finished his speech therapy, during which he said absolutely nothing, but he picked up a fire engine for a week and his play is "fabulous." (I think the fire engine will have batteries before the weekend gets very long.)

I never realized until we started going through all this that play could be graded and assessed.

This morning A and I headed to a preschool for a test-run. I was concerned because he didn't sleep well and I think the cold has boomeranged back on him. He started motioning and pointing the minute we saw the playground, and then he didn't hesitate to run right into the room and start playing with a toy garage once we got there.

This is a regular preschool that has some developmentally disabled kids mainstreamed in the classroom. The DD kids have two teachers who specifically watch and guide them among the other two teachers for the regular kids in the room. It would be for two hours, twice a week.

The preschool itself seemed to be pretty loosely structured: free play time, snack, music/dance time, and then a special visit from the speech therapist (not ours). The time they would have spent on the playground today was spent with the speech therapist. He had a grand old time. I was concerned because all the art on the walls seemed to be from the regular kids, but I asked and was told that the DD kids always have the option to put their art up but most parents just take it home with them.

What else? The teacher asked me if I'd like the speech therapist to do an evaluation of A, and I said, no, not really, he's been evaluated a lot. The speech therapist took a minute at the end to ask me if I really had no concerns because she thought he certainly should see someone for his speech. I explained that no, he's been evaluated about six times by now, he's tracking here for expressive and there for receptive, and we've been prompting two- and three-syllables from him, pressing on two and celebrating three.

A had to be dragged to the car, crying. I think this preschool's certainly a contender, but there's still one other one I'd like to see.

He's sick. We did Costco and IKEA (his idea; he kept frantically pointing at IKEA and would not let up, so we went, jeez) and he fell asleep by the time we pulled into the garage; unfortunately, he wouldn't sleep for longer than half an hour before he'd wake up, crying and sniffling. He took a two-hour nap in half-hour increments with me rubbing his back. He may be sleeping in the car seat tonight.

And tomorrow's Thanksgiving, and we're having raclette and sweet potato pie, which just made me remember the sweet potatoes steaming on the stove. Yikes.

Last Day of First Five

Sigh. I'm melancholic here. A is trying to figure out all the ways the Aquadoodler pens interact with the humidifier.

Today was A's last speech class with his wonderful teacher. I made blueberry muffins for the staff there and C and I baked several batches of fussy butter cookies from Cook's Illustrated which I put into cute tiny gift bags for his caseworker and his speech teacher.

The other kid (who has some issues, shall we say it kindly?) in his class didn't show, so she got A all to herself for their last class, which they both enjoyed.

His teacher was teary-eyed. She talked about how much she loved working with him, what a sweetie he is, how far he's come with his language. He has come far. He can produce three-syllable phrases now, puts two words together, has expanded his vocabulary significantly, by at least fifty percent if not more, and imitates our speech more often. She's been really good for him. Besides, how can you not love anyone who recognizes how amazing your child is and enjoys him as much as you do?

It's hard to have a melancholic farewell with a two-year-old, though. We were saying goodbye and she and I were teary. I was trying to emote the fact that we wouldn't be back again to A when another family with a dog showed up. He completely focused on the dog and didn't give his teacher a backwards glance, let alone a goodbye hug. Happily, she knows the ways of two-year-olds, and I do too, so we left it at that. The upshot of two-year-olds not having a concept of time is that they don't have a concept of grief.

One phase over, another begins. Tomorrow we try out our first preschool, then home for a nap and lunch before the speech therapist comes over. At least I've already vacuumed. (This is an issue of consternation when you have a virtual stranger sitting on your floor for an hour.)

Return of the voice

I can speak again, quietly and mumbly, and that is a good thing.

A has always mimicked us when it comes to cats and his food. A cat would approach him and he would say, "No, no, no!" and vocalize a lot of irritated, urgent scoldings.

Well, this week he discovered that if he fed the cats turkey, they would come to him and sit by him and even lick his fingers. So he's changed modes now.

The cats are growing more tolerant. I just put A down for a nap (he fought sleep dreadfully today) on our bed, which is occupied during the day by Jake and Niles. The cats were curled up together in the center of the bed, so there really wasn't a place to put a mostly-sleeping baby without being next to them. Niles gave it a minute and then left; Jake stayed because Jake is a pudding. Very sleepily, A pet Jake on his legs, and Jake watched him carefully and didn't move. Now they're both asleep, close together. It's so freaking cute.

UCSD Study

A's taking part in a UCSD study on 27-month-olds. They're studying something about autism; A's a control subject. We went this morning and he had basically the same assessment process he's had everywhere else for the past few months, so it was very familiar to him, at least.

He'll get a toy out of the next visit, which will require the infamous skull cap of many sensors. Oy. This is why we needed the haircut.

First haircut

Still no voice. It's pretty sad here. I tried calling my darling husband, and after rasping, "Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?" for what felt like forever, he said, "I can't hear you, so I'm going to hang up. Maybe you should text me." So we texted. No voice sucks.

A's signed up to be part of a study this week where they'll put a cap with gooey gel on his head and track his brain activity. Fun, no? This meant that I needed to get his hair cut.

Which I did. It's a little shorter overall, but still the same boy. Pictures will be uploaded as soon as I get someone small and sweet down for a nap, which he's been fighting all day, and I have no voice to sing him to sleep.

Sigh.

Chewbacca and R2-D2

House-bound and a little nutty. I don't feel like I can take him out since I can't talk to him to give him directions, so we've been at home all day, which is not our normal mode and makes us both cranky. He's provoked me a couple times to loud grunts not unlike Chewbacca, which he finds a little disturbing; conversely, it's difficult to calm someone down who's howling when you can only hoarsely whisper at a tiny, tiny volume.

And I have done pretty much nothing to help him with his speech today, since it seems odd to prompt for speech when I can't speak. But this doesn't make me feel better about his speech development. I whisper and grunt; he babbles in R2-D2-ese.

In short, today has been like Chewie and R2-D2 doing Waiting for Godot. This sounds great as a two-minute YouTube clip, but bad as an all-day thing.

Laryngitis

I've been sick. Yesterday, I lost my voice and am reduced to a tiny, hoarse whisper.

I woke up this morning and--no voice. Still. Do you any idea how difficult it is to parent a toddler without a voice? At least C's here as my knight in shining, talkative armor, but boy, my voice better return before tomorrow or it'll be an exciting day.

Torque

I don't know why we're on a physics theme for subjects but...

A can open the fridge. And the doors to the TV cabinet. And anything else that just requires torque.

It's a brave new dawn around here.

You can't push a string.

A had speech therapy for the first time this week. These are in-house visits, where the speech therapist comes to our house (which requires a certain amount of cleaning, of course) for an hour or so. (Of course, A turned over a glass of water on the couch, which required the couch being disassembled for the course of her visit.)

So she showed up, said, "Hi, I'm Janis," and in she came with a bag of toys, sat on the floor with A, and played with all the toys.

I sat nearby and watched and tried to stay out of the way. She played with him and talked to him in short, one or two word sentences about what they were doing. He was interested in the toys and didn't say much at all, like he normally is with new people.

I had to restrain myself from not translating when he did speak. He was funny. He would decide a toy was boring and sing a little bit of the clean-up song and put the toy away so he could move on to the next toy--what a fabulous little guy.

Janis desperately wanted A to play with a fishing set. This had: various small felt fishes, two fishing poles with strings that had a Velcro piece on the end.

A has a fishing set, a pole tipped in Velcro (no string) and some fish, so I guessed he would be pretty bored with her fishing set, and he was. She was firm in trying to redirect him to play with the fish, finally showing him how she fished. She put the string over a fish, pressed the Velcro piece into the fish, and picked it up by the pole. "Look, fish! Fish up!"

With a look I can only characterize as bemusement, he took the other fishing pole, pressed the Velcro to the fish with his hand, picked up the pole, and dumped it into her bag. Yes, this is how it works and this is the most efficient way to play with it instead of messing around with that string; next toy please.

So at the end of the session, I asked what I should be doing or if this was representative of how their sessions would go. She said she's using short sentences to urge him to imitate her and eventually she'll encourage me to use short sentences for periods of playtime throughout the day (though not obviously the whole day, since we can't live our lives in caveman-like grunts).

She said his receptive language is extremely high and she was surprised by his focus, because the report she read said he could be somewhat distracted.

He's two. Distracted is the name of the game. But A is a pretty focused kid.

So I'm not sure how it went, but I think he had fun and she left a toy here for him to play with, so it's all good.

Drive-by parenting

We were in the library yesterday, picking up my book on reserve (and damn you, SD Public Library System, for receiving eight (8!) of my holds the day after I pick up my one lonely book on reserve). A loves the library but the whole waiting in line to get checked out makes him cranky, because it's right next to the kids' DVDs and he wants to go look through them all again.

Anyway, I'm saying no and he has a tantrum. I'm calming him down as quickly as I can--I can't leave with an armful of books; I have reserve items I need to pick up or I'll get fined--and he settles easy enough. It's never quick enough in the library, though. In the process of having a tantrum, he's kicked a shoe off.

There's an older woman behind me. She says to me, "How old?" and I tell her he's two. She picks up his shoe, but instead of handing it back to me, she says to A, "Look at this nice shoe I found. Maybe someone doesn't want it any more. Maybe I'll take it." She mimes putting it on her own foot, and A holds his hand out for it. "Maybe if you said, 'Please, can I have my shoe back?' Hmm? Nice boys ask for things." A holds his hand out again and makes an agitated grunting noise, which to my mommy-sense, means tantrum #2 is on its way.

"No, not until you ask nicely," this woman says.

"He doesn't talk," I say. "He's got a moderate speech delay." A is pressing his hand against his chest in the sign for 'please.' "He's signing please."

She hands the shoe over to me. "I didn't know," she said. "But he was certainly loud enough before." Yes, lady, thanks; I didn't feel enough like a crappy parent before you decided to turn into the question Nazi and of course all children are silent angelic cherubs until they gain the power of speech.

"Car, please?"

We're back. C's putting A down for a nap while I sort years of cosmetics, bath gels, and expired medications that are taking up valuable space in our too-small bathroom. The purge is on.

I forgot to blog about Halloween. We had Halloween. We have a costume for A but did not dress him up. C got off work early, which allowed him and A to carve a pumpkin together. Then dinner, birthday cake, and bed for A.

Tuesday night, basking in the warm glow of Obamarama, we headed to Disneyland. C was off work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We bought annual passes (for an absurdly low price compared to the WDW tickets, good God) and rode rides: the new Finding Nemo submarines (very cool), the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (for the small boy who loved every minute and was ready to go again), Space Mountain (smoother and darker than its WDW counterpart), and all sorts of other stuff. We walked onto every ride. We left at four-ish so I could make my read-and-critique group.

Thursday A had speech and a vision test. C had a meeting at work to check in for. His vision is fine (-0.25 in the left eye, 0 in the right, which for right now, is within normal tolerances). His speech class went great; he was the only one and the teacher adores him.

Friday we were slated to go to the last of our parenting classes, the review and post-test, and C and I decided we would rather spend the day going to Disneyland. So after breakfast, we bundled A into the car, drove up, and were at the front gate not much later than we were Wednesday morning. Plus, A got his normal morning nap in the car. It worked out beautifully.

It was more crowded than Wednesday but still mighty manageable. We had completely skipped Fantasyland on Wednesday, so we took some time letting a small boy point us from ride to ride. After Peter Pan, the carrousel. After the carrousel, Dumbo. And so on. The pommes frites at Cafe Orleans are fabulous, btw. We drove home at seven or so, got home in time for our normal bedtimes.

So Saturday morning, A leads me to the door to the garage and points. "Car?"

"You want to go in the car?" I say. Happy acknowledgement noise from A.

"You want to go in the car and go to Disneyland?"

Happy dancing from A. "Car, please!"

It's bizarre to me that Disneyland is within a reasonable drive. I think of it as being very far away, but it's not any farther than Park Meadows used to be from our house in Colorado.

Obama won

We're going to Disneyland.

Seriously.

Vote, vote, vote

I voted weeks ago, but C voted first thing this morning, fourth in line at our local polling place. But get out there today and vote.

See, I'm not introducing politics, because I think anyone who reads this blog already has made up their stubborn minds as to whom they're going to vote for. But I'll shamelessly plug a No on Prop 8 again, just for any Californians who really haven't come to their senses and want to spread hatred and fascism. No on Prop 8. Hopefully there will be lots of celebrations in the morning.

Second dentist visit

He's got good teeth, happily.

First of all, the people at our dentist's office love A. I was in there all the time when I was pregnant, got my braces off and had a bunch of work done postpartum when I could wheel A in in the stroller and have him stay put. So they've known him since before his debut and they adore him.

So we go for his cleaning today and everyone in the office has to say hi. He high-fives everyone. He doesn't want to sit in the chair, but he sits in my lap in the chair. Then he doesn't want to open his mouth. He takes a toothbrush, brushes with his lips tightly shut, and drops the toothbrush on the floor.

And then Chris the tech lets him have the air/water gun. And we're off to the races. There's water everywhere: on me, A, the tech, the walls, the floor. Everywhere. But A figured out that he could squirt the water in his mouth for a drink, and then he would open his mouth to have a drink and blow air on his tongue, and voila, the tech can check his teeth.

He brushes and she gets a mirror in to inspect his teeth, then she says, "Do you think he'd let me polish them with the magic toothbrush?" Sure, why not? She shows it to him and lets him lick the (bubble gum flavored) toothpaste, and sure, he'll let her polish his teeth.

Then the dentist comes back to examine him, and yes, with the tech there, he'll let the dentist examine his teeth.

Happily, it all looks good. His teeth are plaque-free, even in the front where they expect toddlers to have plaque, and there's no signs of decay, even in his molars. His bite looks good; he may have a deep bite but the dentist wouldn't be worried about that for some time anyway. And he does officially have all twenty teeth, which is super.

So he's doing good, we're doing good, and the only improvement to A's dental regime that the dentist could offer was brushing after every meal instead of twice a day. But that's it.

This kid has had two parents in braces for most of the time he's been alive. He's seen a lot of tooth brushing and tooth maintenance. C says I spend an inordinate amount of time brushing, but that's because I am not a slave to the timer on my Sonicare.

We go again in six months. Whee! I'm so glad his teeth are turning out to be more like C's than mine.

Individual Family Service Plan

That's the IFSP, which sounds like a Meyer-Briggs personality type. C and I met with the intake coordinator to establish an IFSP for A. This sets up goals (that the family--that's us--can measure) and, more importantly, lists what classes and services he'll be getting.

Right now, he's set up for twelve sessions of speech therapy and an hour or two of pseudo-preschool twice a week. The speech therapist will be coming to our house weekly (eep); A and I have to tour all the available preschools until we find one we like (maybe not the one for behavioral issue kids, for example).

A just went down to sleep and he was so tired that I'm tired. He didn't want to sleep; he kept being almost asleep then waking up to say, "Daddy?" Daddy should be on his way home from work.

A had speech today; they played musical instruments to practice blowing air. He's only got a couple weeks left there; I'm hoping they'll let him finish. There will be one week of overlap with the Regional Center stuff. I can't mention enough how immensely thankful I am that all of this assessment stuff has moved so quickly. I know government and bureaucracy is bad and evil, especially in an election year, but man, I'm glad they have all this stuff available for free, so quickly. These little people grow fast.

Please!

Everyone's braces-free in the C/K/A household, and there is much rejoicing. We are now accepting your donations of toffee, sugar-crusted nuts and pizza bones.

A had the speech teacher all to himself today, and he talked up a storm. He did all the animal noises with his teacher, then sang (sang!) and said, "Please!" He's signed please for the longest time, but now we're supposed to make sure he says it consistently. His teacher places a finger under her lower lip sometimes to remind A to talk, and if he's not paying enough attention to her, she'll do it to him, so that's something we're supposed to work on with him.

But she thinks he's making excellent progress, so there we are.

A and I went to the Birch Aquarium today after speech with a writer friend of mine and her two-year-old (who is huge! huge!). We all had a good time. They have these elaborate water tables with partitions you can move around to create currents and flows and float tiny boats down. A loved that. C would love it. I would have loved it more if I wasn't on baby duty and got to play with it myself.

They have tidepools (which we did not go into since A's apparently allergic to starfish protein) and fake tidepools with all sorts of rubber creatures (lobsters, starfish, crabs, shells, shrimp). Unfortunately, they're right next to each other, so A decided he would reallocate a rubber tiger shrimp to the tidepool. "Happens all the time," a docent told me, but they had to debate how best to remove it because A threw it pretty far. They needed a stick to get it.

It's a small museum but it's pretty neat. The displays are well-thought out. I think the boat thing alone is probably worth a membership.

Hatetriots: yes, a political rant

Oh, come now, you didn't think we'd get through this kind of an election year without a rant, did you?

That's pronounced "hate-triots" to rhyme with patriots. I'm a little sick of them here.

Right now, gay marriage is legal in California. There's a proposition on the ballot to amend the California state constitution to make same-sex marriage illegal; it's called Prop 8.

The "Yes on 8" movement is out there with big fat lying ads stating that if Prop 8 does not pass, gay marriage will be taught in schools and churches will lose their tax-exempt status if they don't perform same-sex marriages. These are both big fat honking lies.

If Prop 8 fails, nothing changes. There's no change to the law. There's no change in how your kids are going about their daily lives. If your church or synagogue or mosque won't marry a same-sex couple, it'll still count as a church just as much as the churches that practice love thy neighbor as thyself do. (Sorry--that's my "who's actually Christian?" rant sneaking in.) A No on Prop 8 changes nothing.

This kind of crap really pisses me off. There's no legal reason to deprive a group of people of their civil rights--and I think marriage, with all its social/economic/political constructs, counts as a civil right.

I can't think of any reasons to shoot down same-sex marriage other than fear and hatred. I'm calling the politicos who spew hatred and fear in order to scare people into voting their way hatetriots.

I don't know if A will be gay or straight, but I want him to get married--if he chooses--with the minimum amount of bureaucratic governmental interference either way.

I really hope this thing fails. Down with the hatetriots.

Overtime

C's working overtime. He worked yesterday (although that was a short day, because he was home before A went to bed) and he's still working today.

A and I are spending a lot of time together. A's begun to put two words together again verbally, like "Bye, Daddy!" and (sadly, with big eyes) "Go car? Go Daddy?" Sigh. He's coming out with entire strings of jargon that sound like a complete sentence ("What is this over here?"). We meet with his service coordinator in another week or so to set up speech services. Also, he knows how to operate the DVD player, including swapping disks. From closed cases. Oy.

I've been reading Nigella Lawson which always makes me feel like roasting chickens and baking cakes and being all domestic goddess-y, so today I roasted a chicken and some potatoes for A and I to eat for lunch. They came out perfectly. Perfect moist crispy-skinned chicken, perfect crispy roasted potatoes. And A wouldn't touch either of them until I produced (organic, non-HFCS) ketchup, which he's never eaten before.

Well, he loved it. And he loved chicken as a ketchup conveyance device. But he's still not really interested in potatoes. I know he's mine, but good grief, where's his potato love?

How's the fam?

We're all sick and cranky.

C's work is in the crazy schedule stage. He's sick. He's coughing up a lung all the time. This is coming on the heels of having enough mouth pain that he couldn't speak coherently for a week.

A's sick. He's got a slight fever, stuffy nose, occasional cough, bad attitude. He's not sleeping well. He's tired enough that things that usually don't bug him make him break out in tears. He's not even napping well, which means I spend a lot of time that I normally get to myself soothing him back to sleep. Poor baby, he's sick.

I'm sick, but I'm the least sick of the three so I don't get to be sick. A late night Tuesday turned into an early morning (4AM) Wednesday which turned into a late night last night and really, I could use a nap and maybe some Advil.

C's schedule has turned ugly, coming home at midnight last night, with a week of awful scheduling ahead (working Saturday, Sunday, and 3AM on Tuesday morning, woo hoo), which means my schedule has turned ugly because I love my boy, but I love having time to myself once a day too, which is not happening (unless you count the drive to and from the orthodontist's this morning, which I do not).

Buh, buh, buh; puh, puh, puh; muh, muh, muh

Today A had speech and he was the only one there--lucky! His teacher dotes on him (and really, who doesn't?). She's working on the bilabial sounds with him: B, M, P. So they colored in baby birds and momma birds and then played crash with the buses and trucks and blew bubbles. He said bubbles, beep-beep, and pop. I haven't heard pop at home, so that's good.

She invited me to a parenting class that starts tomorrow on how to help A speak, so I ran over and got the kindly old lady next door signed up to watch A for the next few Friday mornings and we will be in class.

A has a flu shot today. This will not help the doctor rehabilitation program.

Monkey see, monkey do

Yesterday was Free Tuesday here in sunny San Diego, and the boy and I went to the Natural History Museum. Free Tuesday is this great program where every Tuesday of the month, certain Balboa Park museums are open for free. The Natural History Museum has dinosaurs and a baby elephant and a room with a bucket of puppets, so he's happy there.

Since it was Free Tuesday, it was packed, not as packed as it could be, but still packed with kidlets. I kept smelling poop, and kept checking the back of A's pants to make sure it wasn't him (it wasn't). My current theory on the vast amounts of poop is that I saw a lot of dads with kids, and I think dads can feign more oblivion to poop than moms, in general.

Anyway, at some point after I'd checked his pants for the fortieth time, A came around behind me and tried to check my pants, at which point I decided maybe I was sending the wrong message about what we do in the museum.

Regional Center Assessment

Today we had another speech evaluation. It's the same-old, same-old: two assessors, one graduate student observing, playtime for A, talking to me.

His official assessment is 27-30 months for receptive language - with some 33-36 month behaviors - and 15-18 months for expressive language. So he understands everything and says hardly anything. He's very bright and right on track for all his other developmental areas. They mentioned how outgoing and sociable he was. None of this is different from any of our other assessments.

So he meets the 33.33% delay requirement in expressive speech, which is the cut-off line for qualifying for Regional Center services. So next week our coordinator (who was out today) will start setting up a plan for him. He'll probably see a speech therapist regularly as a start.

I just wanted to thank everyone who's asked about how he's doing and how the assessments are going. It means a lot to me that other people are interested in him.