Open House and the Switch

Yesterday was Back-to-School night, where parents go to school (apparently with children in tow) and talk to their children's teachers. A mercifully passed out after school yesterday, so our neighbor watched A while I went in. C was swamped at work and could not make it, which was a pity all around. I got to talk to his teacher and his speech teacher.

His teacher is, to quote a friend, "funny and formidable." She just turned 60. She loves the kids, loves doing art with them, and loves reading to them. There are so many books in that classroom that it almost made up for the unhappy fact that preschoolers don't have library privileges at school. Almost. I'm a little sensitive to library privileges.

But she explained to me what she likes to read to the kids and what kinds of stories she looks for, and I'm happy with her tastes and selections. She doesn't like to read down to them; she likes stories that have some theme or moral or meaning. The next unit they're going to do is folklore, starting with Anasazi stories and going through stories from around the world.

They had paintings up on the wall, each captioned by the child's reflection on his/her painting. A's painting said, "I paint for Mommy and Daddy." What a sweetie.

The good news is that A's being switched to the morning class starting Monday. This is really a blessing for us. The days have been hard--A hasn't settled into any set routine for naps. Sometimes he's been exhausted and passes out at 10:30AM, which is enough time (maybe) for a good nap before school, but leaves a long afternoon. Sometimes he's been exhausted and passes out on the way home from school, which is understandable but pushes bedtime back to 8-9PM, which is approaching my bedtime these days and cuts into C and my time together. Sometimes he refuses to sleep and ends up passing out at 5:30-6PM and sleeping until morning, which bypasses our whole bath/teeth/PJs bedtime routine and leads to earlier mornings.

So starting Monday, he'll be in the morning class. Aside from juggling his swimming classes, it'll be a lot better.

Cobblers and sewing and more, oh my

We're having a baby. It's due in December.

This may not have been clear previously, but I'm a wee bit Type-A sometimes, particularly about holiday preparations. I like to have my Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving. I like my Christmas plane tickets bought by mid-August. I like schedules and order and predictability.

This whole baby in December thing throws me for a loop. I'm trying the serenity prayer and deep breaths. I can't change when Baby 2.0 shows up. I can't change the onslaught of the holidays (although I can embrace the fact that we will not be traveling this year over the always-exciting holiday season).

But I have the wisdom to produce cobbler. Lo, behold: one of two cobblers I made this weekend. The peach season is almost over here, but we had a bunch on our counter perfectly ripe, too many to eat. Our peach cobbler recipe comes from Cooks Illustrated. You bake the fruit until the juices start to extrude, then drop a sugar cookie batter on top by the spoonful and bake until it's done. Delicious, pretty simple.

Fruit went into the disposable pan, topped with parchment, frozen. Cookie batter got dropped by the ounce-ful onto parchment, then plastic bagged. When December and the baby come, we'll be able to pop the pan in the oven per instructions, drop the frozen cookie batter on top, and have summery delicious peach cobbler. As long as we remember to take the plastic bags out.

We have made this with great success with frozen fruit before, but there's something satisfying about not having to mix or measure anything. Now I'm waiting for apple season to be in full swing so I can freeze some pies.

Contrary

The word for A at three is contrary. There's a lot of not listening, a lot of testing, and a lot of outright disobedience--a "give me that" turns into throwing said object in the absolute opposite direction. Happily, he does this to both me and C, so it's not just me.

Sometimes he's so sweet and cute and adorable, and sometimes I'd happily lock him in a closet for an hour. I figure those impulses will pass--oh, maybe when he's thirty, if we're lucky.

The mantras: It's just a phase. This too shall pass. Consistency is the name of the game.

Getting Ready

I've found myself more easily irritated by the world in general in the last few weeks, and I think it's a sign that I need to be slowing down, taking it easy, and preparing for Baby 2.0.

C and I have been struggling with how to making the concept of Baby 2.0 real to Baby 1.0, and we're unfortunately both pragmatic enough to say, "Oh well, none of us have any clue what we're about to get into and it'll happen when it happens. Let's go to Disneyland instead."

We've read books; A talks to the baby and feels it move (this one's a stretcher, not a kicker, which makes it more difficult for A to tell). We talk about babies and families when we see other people with them; we talk about how babies sleep and cry and nurse. (This he remembers, at least to the point of pointing to other people feeding their little babies juice and French fries and telling them, "No juice for baby; babies drink mommy milk!" Alas, there are times where I'm happy A is not completely intelligible to others.)

One of the things we did as a family this weekend was make Baby 2.0 a play mat according to Amanda Blake Soule's Handmade Home. A picked out fabric and ribbons for it (with Mommy vetoes on the pink safari animal fabric and the snapping crocodile fabric); we all colored on the top fabric together. I assembled it yesterday and poof, it was finished. That gave me more comfort than a lot of the other things I've been doing recently have.

I'm trying to embrace more of those experiences. This means yes to finishing the family-related sewing projects like family stockings, yes to lazy time just spent reading (even the non-baby stuff), yes to freezing cobblers and pies for use later this year, and no to taking on more responsibilities with my various volunteer activities, like not volunteering to bake a hundred cupcakes for a party. Just because I can do it doesn't mean I should.

Dr. Horrible

I know it might be odd, but some of you may not be familiar with Dr. Horrible or his sing-along blog. You can watch it on Hulu and I'm sure lots of other places, but it's Neil Patrick Harris.

A is not among you. He's decided he's Dr. Horrible. I just ordered him a costume through the Old Navy baby sale, but jeez, I'm tempted to try and find a baby Dr. Horrible costume.

Three-hole drilled book recommendation

While I read voraciously, I don't usually recommend books to people randomly. I read pretty quickly, so a lot times I'm not sure if the time investment a book represents to me is worth the time investment to other people.

But I read this book recently (within the last month) that seems to creep into a lot of my conversations since then, so I thought I'd put it out there. It's by Paul Tough and it's called Whatever It Takes. I heard about it on This American Life, which is a good teaser if you want a preview of what the book is about: Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children's Zone, which is (crediting This American Life's description) "the most ambitious and hopeful solution to urban poverty in the country."

It's the program President Obama is hoping to replicate in twenty cities around the country, just for your current event edification.

There's a lot in the book that talks about how to get kids to move up and out of lower socioeconomic levels and how difficult it is to get kids to move beyond where their parents are and how early those things are set (you know, like age three or seven or ten). If you want to go to college, there's a lot of skill sets that go into that beyond math and reading proficiency; there's the soft skills of patience, persistence and delayed gratification/long-term goal setting. Research is showing those soft skills needs to be in your makeup by ten-years-old or they're near impossible to learn. If your parents don't have those skills and thus couldn't achieve those goals, where will you learn them?

These topics have been coming up a lot in our household what with the onset of preschool.

Like yesterday. I went to Target (Tar-zhay) because we were out of toothpaste and our laundry basket died and so on and so forth. As I wandered office supplies looking for crazy glue, a woman stopped me, a normal-looking woman, just like me.

"Do you know what this is?" She showed me her shopping list, which was a school supply list, and tapped the words Three-ring spiral-bound notebook.

"Are you wondering if they mean a three-ring binder or a three-hole-drill notebook?"

She looked mystified. Absolutely mystified. So I walked with her to the notebooks and explained the differences between a three-ring binder and a spiral-bound notebook and showed her how to look for the three holes on the notebooks.

I walked away thinking, how the hell can you be a grownup and not know what a three-hole spiral notebook is? But then I thought about the child that she was buying the supplies for, and I thought about Geoffrey Canada.

There are advantages I knew A has in life: the basics of two parents who both live at home, a safe place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear, medical care, not to mention all the enrichment opportunities he gets like the zoo; parks, playgrounds, and the beaches; lots of good books and toys; swim classes; speech therapy and preschool; trips to museums, Sea World, and Disneyland. But I hadn't considered having a mom who recognized a three-hole spiral notebook an advantage until yesterday.

Preschool! Chocolate milk!

Wow, he's at preschool now every day.

He's in the afternoon sessions, which I don't like but apparently nobody does and the new people get stuck with afternoon classes. Yesterday he took a nap after school; this morning, he conked out two hours before school. I'm not sure how this nap pattern is going to pan out.

First day, we're there early with the other early birds. The kids run around and play on the grass; the parents chit-chat about how old the kids are and how many we have. The ages in class range from three to four, with A being one of the youngest.

Time for class comes, we all sign in our kids, off they go. One or two are crying, some walk hand-in-hand with their parents, but A runs right in without a backwards glance at me.

The parents all wander in and stand around snapping pictures while the teacher calls the class to order, has them sit on the floor around her. She goes through attendance and my motherly heart swells with pride as A is one of only two kids in this class of twenty-four who knows to raise his hand and say, "Me!" when his name is called.

After roll call, the teacher says it's time for us parents to go, and as I'm wandering out, he turns and waves at me with a big smile and says, "Bye, Mommy!" Then he blows me kisses.

It was too much for my little pregnancy-hormone-drenched heart to bear. I made it to the car before I teared up.

Anyway, the first day, he did great although he had some bathroom accidents, probably because he was just too darned excited to excuse himself to use the facilities. They get free lunch (who knew?) and all he would tell me he ate was two Pooh cookies and chocolate milk. (Damn you, school district and your chocolate milk; we were keeping him away from chocolate milk's addictive pull.)

Today we got to school and he played with the early-birds again and then gave everyone big hugs. Oh my, he's sweet. When I picked him up, he was accident-free (hurray) and cried when I said it was time to go home. The teacher reassured him that he'd be right back tomorrow.

And today's lunch? A Nemo cupcake and chocolate milk. (It was someone's birthday today, hence the cupcake.) I need to get a copy of that lunch menu.

In awkward conversation news, I called his previous preschool and explained:

• We found out last minute he'd been accepted by the school district when we thought he'd been rejected,
  
• he would be receiving speech therapy through the school,
  
• and unfortunately, it was just easier to send him to the school district's preschool.
  

I did not reiterate that the school district's preschool is free, which has amazing appeal, or that since he's in at three he'll probably be in at four. No, I said that we had no qualms about the school or the teachers and everyone was wonderful and I hated to do it. And she was fine and cheerful so that's all well. So I've officially given notice and just need to go by and pick up his stuff.

The school district speech teacher and I are playing phone tag to get A set up for speech, so that should be coming along soon. Then we'll have to have tearful goodbyes with his speech therapist. Sigh.

Preschool drama

I got a letter, oh, a couple weeks ago saying A got turned down for public preschool.

I got a call yesterday reminding me that preschool orientation was today at 1pm.

You know, for the preschool he got turned down for.

So I went.

He got in.

He starts next week. Tuesday.

Now I have to figure out how to explain this to his current preschool.

Carrots

A's really into carrots recently. Raw, cold peeled carrots. He'll eat them instead of apples, which is the fruit of choice around here.

Today we hit our local farmers' market. We asked A if he wanted to get anything (as we ask each other, what do you want today?).

And A said, "Carrots." Of course.

Not peaches, nectarines, plums, tiny wonderful grapes, figs, avocados or cheese. Carrots.

When we finally found some carrots, C held A up so he could pick some out. And the guy gave A the carrots for free.

"Do you want a brother or a sister, A?"

"Um, a sister."

"Really? You want a little girl to come live here?"

"Um, a brother."

"Another little boy?"

"Um, maybe a dinosaur."

Yeah, I guess this is a pretty inane line of questioning. Dinosaur it is!

Cough cough cough doctor

The best way to get into a doctor's office the same day is to say you're a pregnant woman with shortness of breath.

Anyway, I headed to my doctor, my regular one, not the OBGYN, and she said, hmm, some asthma, definitely bronchitis. I'm getting a boatload of steroids, bronchiodialators, and antibiotics. But my lungs sound clear, so they don't need an X-ray, which is nice.

She also gave me the scary talk about getting a swine flu and regular flu vaccine: pregnant women go to the front of the line, asthmatics go to the front of the line, mothers of young children go to the front of the line. I'm a trifecta and everyone should get out of my way for the flu vaccines. When will the vaccines be ready? They have no idea. Call back in two weeks.

The Name Game

I just got edition 2 of my favorite baby name book in the mail, and let me tell you, the naming this time is a puzzler. We've got to come up with male and female names, and we've got to come up usually with more than one so we can dither up until B-day about whether we like this one or that one and whether the baby looks more like name A or name B.

I'm mostly using the royal We here, because while C holds the veto power, the name finding committee is mostly me until the later months. Besides, he usually suggests "Rocket" at first chance, which gets him kicked off the naming committee.

Anyway, here's the complex mix of rules we're grappling with:
- No two-syllable names ending in "er" due to duo-syllablic -er ending of child's last name. This seems like a minor thing until you look at how many cool -er names are out there, including my sentimental favorite of Cooper, which we will have to name a cat someday since the cats get my last name. (True. Jake and Niles have my last name.)
- No "oo" (as in Cooper) sounds in the first syllable of the first name, to eliminate assonance issues.
- No H first names. I will not have alliterative first and last names.
- No first names ending in a phonetically soft A or H sounds, so no Anna. This is because I can't stand when people's names all blend together. Names should be crisp and distinct so you know, when you hear them spoken, where the first name ends and the last name begins. (There's a discussion on whether or not the first name needs to not end in S so it doesn't blend into the child's middle name, but honestly, the only times you hear your full name is when you're in trouble or graduating, so it's moot.)
- No names that can be easily given an -ie or -y nickname. Nope. I might entertain a -y ending on the full name, but those names I've liked have been few and far between.
- The name should be somewhat compatible with the ethnography of the last name, which is a pretty common American name, an Anglicized German surname. So English names get first dibs.
- The child's name must lend itself to whatever permutations of nicknaming and reforging of identity they'll go through in their tweens and teens; however, it should not be a nickname.
- No made-up names. Uh-huh. We don't do that.
- No bizarro spellings, like Khryctoffyphr. I know that's the trend, but no.

- Full names must pass the oration test, which is: say the full name aloud. If it sounds like it fits after, "Introducing the President of the United States," and "Doctor." If it doesn't, this is not the name. [I'm not saying I would wish the presidency or doctorates on my children, but I wouldn't want them to be limited by their names and I can't think of anything higher office than a president or a doctor. And before you scoff, C and I know two children--not related--who are going to be limited for the rest of their lives by the terribly hick and backwater names their parents gave them. I wouldn't dream of publishing them here, because they are sweet dear people, but those poor kids are going to have a hard time if they don't get some decent nicknames.]

Sidenote: If the name sounds perfectly fine after, "Now entering the courtroom, convicted serial killer..." this is really not the right name.

- And the gotcha one: the name must not be popular. If it is, it needs to be rising in popularity, not falling in it.

Nobody talks about how after you name your first child, the name of the first sets the tone for the name of the second. Our first child's name is not Bob or John or anything normal like that. Heavens, no. This child will never find his name on a mug or a license plate or a key chain. (Those of you who have sent personalized things are greatly appreciated.) Still, it's a great name.

So the added constraints of A's name to the name game:
- No names starting with T. Why not? Well, in shorthand, we'll have T&A. I could get over it and say A&T but I won't.
- The name has to be somewhat compatible with A's. This is a subjective rule, but it's like pornography: we know it when we see it.
- The name cannot rhyme with A's, which seems like a silly thing to note, but it's kicked a couple names out of consideration.

Any suggestions? At this point, it seems more like a logic puzzle than a joyous naming extravaganza.

Cough cough cough

I'm down with something, a cough, shortness of breath, some body aches, but no fever. This makes me terribly cranky. We're going into Week 24 with Baby 2.0, which means I've now got a pregnancy-tight belly. During my ultrasound last week, I was surprised by how far up the kid is already (between my ribs, right below my sternum). This means when I cough, my lungs are competing for room with a baby the size of an ear of corn housed in a uterus the size of a soccer ball. Let me tell you, the baby always wins.

Unfortunately, the boy is in full-fledged contrary mode. The whole last week post-birthday-party has been very trying. A says "No!" and "Get out!" to me when asked (told) to do something. (Lots of timeouts.) Yesterday, I watched A run his father's patience ragged, which made me feel like, well, at least it's not just me. He's testing all of us.

What can I tell you that's cute? A knows about Baby 2.0, although it's still a nebulous pretend item like the dinosaurs that occasionally stalk him. I told him he could talk to the baby, and he leans over my belly and says, "Hi, baby, I'm A. I'm big brother. Don't worry, you're fine. Mommy's got you."

Checkup update

Everything's fine with me and the babe. Just normal cramping, apparently. If there's spotting or bleeding, I should worry, but other than that, it's take it easy and go with it. The joys of pregnancy.

When I was pregnant with A, I had such a cheerful disposition, and he has such a sunny disposition. If this next one has the temperament I've had while I've been pregnant this time around, this child will be fearsome.

Birthday soiree and other weekend summaries

Saturday was A's big three party and he had a great time. One other kid, H, was able to come, and while the two of them could not be more different, they had a great time together. We're bridging the gap between A's parties being his friends and our friends. Next year, we won't be able to put the party off for two+ weeks.

A was all about the presents. People came in the door with them and he wanted to open them. Ah, well. No, first food, then cake, then presents. And pinata--a dinosaur one, not a Dora one, because Mommy couldn't find a Dora one. It was also filled with toys and fruit leather and no candy, so it was certainly a gringo pinata bash. He now has way too many presents, but he adores them all.

A had a great time with his grandparents. The weekend felt action-packed and I think all the adults were sleep-deprived. Thursday we ended up in Encinitas for the evening since I had an ultrasound at 6:30PM (more like 7, and it took an hour). But the good news is that Baby 2.0 looks great and on track for development. We found an excellent Greek restaurant up there that I'm going to be visiting again once I have another appointment, let me tell you. They had a lemon-chicken-rice soup which sounds terrible but is exactly what I want to eat the next time I'm sick.

Sunday the grandparents left, which is sad. Not enough time. A got up the next day (a normal day, with everyone back at work or home) and told me, "I don't want you. I want Daddy; I want Grandma." Sorry, kid. You're stuck.

Of course, A is sick again, somewhat, with a little head cold. We're watching his asthma meds to make sure his head cold doesn't turn into a hospital stay.

I'm taking it easy, since I'm having some cramping, which I've had since yesterday. I was supposed to get into my OBGYN's today for a checkup but of course, they canceled it--both doctors were delivering one hour before my appointment. So I'll be rolling out of bed before dawn tomorrow to get there at 8:30AM with the traffic (yuck).

That Day

Today was not supposed to be That Day. Today was supposed to be busy but doable. A had a playdate with H where JJ would took both boys to Balboa Park and I was alone in the house to clean. (Yay JJ! There are probably not two toddlers less alike, but they genuinely enjoy each other's comapny.)

And I cleaned: scrubbed toilets, scrubbed floors on hands and knees, once with degreaser, once with bleach, dusting, clearing clutter, laundry, and even some mild outside work. I banged out some thank you notes and the minutes from Sunday's meeting. I made vanilla gelato to chill for the ice cream machine later, plus cupcakes, plus simple syrup. Plus lunch for everyone when they returned from the park.

My domesticity just astounds you, right? And I'm good in bed too.

But somewhere between this wildly productive morning and now, things fell apart. A toilet broke. A wouldn't take a nap between lunch and speech therapy. I got out of the shower I finally had to take to find A standing in a puddle of urine in one of the clean bathrooms. And then there was a wipeout in a puddle of urine, which means he'll have lovely bruises for his birthday part. Plus, A needed a quick shower instead of a bath because his speech teacher was coming in fifteen minutes and I had already scrubbed the tub once today.

So once he was clean and dry and clothes, I scrubbed the bathroom floor (again). Scrub number two plus cleaning a urine-soaked boy meant I needed shower #2.

And then the shower door fell on me.

I'm fine. My back hurts, but that's being pregnant and scrubbing floors.

This doesn't mean that I'm happy. If I were a cat, my back would be arched, my ears flat, and my hair standing straight up.

So instead of using my speech therapy downtime to call people on various organizational-related business matters, I'm blogging, listening to This American Life, and playing Civ. That shit will all just have to wait until tomorrow because I am in no shape to be charming or gracious right now.

The calm before the storm

It's Saturday. C is better but not great; still sounds like he's going to cough up a lung every now and again. A and I avoided the flu, so I'm thrilled.

Today is the deep breath before the plunge of this week. Tomorrow I am going to meetings, meetings, meetings: San Diego Writers Ink, followed by the plumeria society. That'll take me from 9AM to 5PM pretty easily, if not longer. C and A are going to a Padres game. It's both of their first baseball games. A and I are doing the summer reading program at the library and for reading twenty books with Mommy, he got two tickets to the Padres. Go A! They're playing the Mets; I'm a little jealous of C.

The grandparents roll into town at Wednesday midnight, so there is shopping and cleaning that needs to happen between then and now. Wednesday my fabulous friend JJ offered to take A off my hands in the morning for a playdate so I can house clean and bake a cake, plus A has speech therapy that day. Plus the grandparents will be getting there late.

Thursday we're jam-packed with preschool and grandparents and my twenty(-two, nice scheduling there, guys) week ultrasound. Friday C's off work but I'm sure we'll be busy running around and doing party prep.

Saturday will be the official birthday party for the little boy. We are not bounce housing or petting zoo-ing or anything like that. Brunch at home, wading pool on the lawn, a pinata, and cake, of course. "A Dora pinata, Mommy," I was told this morning. Right. Dora.

And then the whole whirlwind will be over. So this time next week, I should be a lot more relaxed.

Sick sick sick

C is sick sick sick. It's the flu. Our doctor doesn't think it's the swine flu, which is good, because flu is bad enough with everyone in this house besides C being a high-risk group (a pregnant woman and an asthmatic toddler).

C is spending time sleeping and playing of Xbox and looking like a zombie.

A is not happy when C is sick. I tried to put A down for a nap (C was already napping) and A said, "No, I want to sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed." With Daddy, of course.

No, honey, Daddy's sick.

Protest, protest, fit, all made worse by the fact that A needed a nap.

So out we went for a drive and he fell asleep and now he's down for a nap. And I am going to have some chocolate to medicate my headache.

Happy birthday!

It was my sweet baby boy's (who is more boy than baby now) birthday and he had a jam-packed day. First, preschool, where they gave him a crown and had muffins (mommy-baked, peach and blueberry) and sang "Happy Birthday." His teachers gave him the run of the place for the day, so he had a good time.

Then lunch at Chick-fil-a with Mommy, always a hit, then a nap, then speech therapy. His teacher brought presents for both him and Mommy (nice!). Daddy came home early and grilled him his own pizza and then it was cake and presents and bed.

For three, a pretty full day. The party will come later when his friends are back in town and Grandma and Grandpa are here (and Mommy is not double-booked for meetings).

But he's so amazingly cute and sweet. Liz and Bill sent a box of stuff (a wonderful surprise) and A tore through it like mad as a before-dinner treat. But he's so amazingly smart. He opened a book he's never seen and said, "Oh, it's Dr. Seuss!"

We just got back from Balboa Park. I took him to the puppet show (Pirate Paul) to get a birthday surprise: a crown and a card and a little frog prince finger puppet. Then an auditorium of people sing "Happy Birthday" to him. They called his name and he just ran down (we were sitting in the very back row) to the front without one look back for Mommy. He's getting so grown-up and worldly.

Hormones

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

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

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

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

I've got no reasonable defense for that.

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

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

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

Audiology success

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

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

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

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

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

Rock star mommy

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

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

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

"That would be September 11 at 10AM."

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

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

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

"How many supervisors do you have?"

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

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

"That would be audiology. Hold on."

I hold.

"This is Elisha."

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

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

"How's Thursday at 9?"

"Thursday, like two days from now Thursday?"

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

All clear, preschool registration

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

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

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

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

I was number 108. I was second to last.

The system works like this:

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

Doctor's followup

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hospital alphabet soup: ER and PICU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Children's Museum, Adieu

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

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

Wah-lah. Parachute.

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

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

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

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

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

The boy is more right than he knows

Conversation over dinner:

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

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

Post 400

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

A laundry list of answers:

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

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

Party party party

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wee wee wee, all the way home

Potty-training minutiae, you've been warned.

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

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

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

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

Potty training success

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

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

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

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

One week of the suck

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

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

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

Accidentastic

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

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

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

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

Sucktastic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm very, very tired.

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

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

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

Zoo freakout

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

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

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

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

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

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

A said, "No pajamas outside."

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

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

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

Another delayed-date post: Nuchal translucency testing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I'll take the NT results.

Friday? No, Thursday

It's hard to keep track.

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

This was bad. Very bad.

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

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

Nope. Fun didn't happen.

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

Bone-freaking-tired

I am tired. Really tired.

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

We got up after 6, which late for me.

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

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

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

Cute things A did

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

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

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

Vacation

Whew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Potty training progress

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

So we back-burnered potty training.

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

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

Wrangling Insurance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preschool Romeo

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

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

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

"Oh, I see."

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

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

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

Preschool decisions and potty training

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

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

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

Second dentist visit

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

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

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

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

Holy cow!

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

"Holy cow!" A said.

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

ER: the Disneyland edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stupid audiologist

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

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

"How's June 5th?"

Not great. Anything sooner?

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

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

Finding an OBGYN

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

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

So I didn't get it done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sleep on it.

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

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

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

Long weekend

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

The first of the delayed entry posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am in denial.

Saturday I donate blood. I am completely wiped.

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

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

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

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

Daddy's cheese

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

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

"What you got there?" I say.

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

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

"Are you eating butter?"

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

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

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

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

Dinosaur sandwiches

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

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

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

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

Birthday for the Devons

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

Not a seal

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

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

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

First eye exam

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

Plumeria sale aftermath

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

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

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

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

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

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

The penny obsession goes too far

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

"I ate a penny."

"What?"

"I ate a penny, Mommy."

Really? Okay.

Mommy calls the doctor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Penny!

A has discovered money.

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

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

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

"Penny!" he told me.

"Quarter," I said.

"Quarter," he said.

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

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

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

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

"Ice cream please," he said.

"Have you got any money?"

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

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

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

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

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

"What's up?" I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A literalist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two kitties, three books, one apple.

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

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

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

"I did it!"

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

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

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

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

Audiology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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