Dino Attack

Last week when we were up visiting my family, Jackson had a sleepover with his younger cousin, Kai. According to my brother the boys did not fall asleep until well after midnight. The following night was Christmas eve and we all stayed over at my brother and sister-in-law's house. Jackson and Kai had been together for two days, up way too late the night before and were very excited about Christmas the next morning. So it should have been no surprise that a few minutes after putting them to bed in the same bunk one of them would be crying. I don't know exactly what happened but from Kai's hysterics and the guilty look on Jackson's face I knew something bad had gone down in that bunk. While my brother took Kai from the room to comfort him I launched into Jackson with questions about what had happened. But the kid wouldn't talk. I could tell I wasn't going to get anywhere with him unless I played the really mean mommy card; I threatened to burn every single present of his under the tree. He fessed up and told me he had done a "dino attack" on Kai. What?! "Why did you do that?!" "I don't know! Don't ask me that. It's too hard to explain!" I stopped the questioning because his last answer made perfect sense to me. When you're a five year old who has been anticipating spending time with your only cousin for weeks and you've played intensely together for the past two days while dealing with physical exhaustion and the excitement of Christmas, the next obvious thing to do with that cousin when put in close quarters together with a complete lack of adult supervision is to go dino on his ass. Am I wrong here in thinking that Jackson's actions were completely justified? Certainly not the way one should behave, but behavior to be expected under the circumstances. Once I understood it from his point of view the night went much more smoothly. Sometimes it helps me to get in touch with my inner 5 year old.

I'm going to cheat here... but just a little bit

I've been following all the media hype concerning the bullshit about mandatory "Christmas" cheer. While I would love to offer my completely invaluable take on the whole crock I'm too busy gearing up for the misunderstood holiday with the rest of my herd. Instead I'll offer you these completely hilarious thoughts by Powazek.

This one's about poop

Turns out the world is not going to hell it was just trying to warn me. Everything I wrote about in my last entry was the work of some higher and wiser power trying to stall our holiday vacation plans. And for good reason. We left for our family fun trip early Saturday morning with Sam's Pediasure and half of the Christmas toys that we had ordered through the school. Arrangements had been made to have the other half shipped to us. And Sam's wheelchair was finally on its way. I embarked on our trip feeling good, powerful, like I had faced the evil forces of stupidity and apathy and had emerged the victor. Little did I know that my moxie would soon bite me in the ass. So as I was saying, with my battles won, we set off on our road trip. Upon arrival we encountered small hassles like the driving rain that soaked us and our stuff every time we walked back and forth between my parents' house and their motorhome where the four of us were sleeping. I also had to deal with my extreme allergic reaction to my parents' house; a little thing I always seem to forget until about 15 minutes after arriving when I find myself surrounded by piles of my own snotty tissues. And if snot dripping out of your nose is not obnoxious enough, try fits of sneezing so body jolting that no amount of Kegeling will save you. Now let's add in a husband who was feeling sick to his stomach and a 3 year old up past his bedtime who hadn't pooped in days. On this particularly fateful night David went to lie down in the motorhome while I was left to deal with Sam. Sam had grown very irritable and despite the fact that he really could have used a good dump, was dead set against letting anything gas or solid escape from his bum. So while I struggled to get him into his pajamas, he wiggled and contorted all in an effort to keep those butt cheeks closed. Then snotting and sneezing, through the rain the wriggling child and I went. As soon as we got to the motorhome I layed Sam on his bed and David emerged from his exclaiming, "Oh shit!" Apparently David's ass wasn't quite as tight as Sam's that night and he immediately required the use of the bathroom in the very small, not well ventilated motorhome. The ensuing sounds and smells sent me into a fit of dry heaving while Sam writhed on his bed still trying to keep everything inside. I gagged and heaved all the way back into the house where I was able to get myself under control. I felt terribly guilty leaving my children out there with their sick father so I went back to reclaim Sam since Jackson had slept soundly through the events. After several more trips through the rain to collect all the items we needed that night, Sam and I settled down to go to sleep in the house. However, Sam's determination not to poop was stronger than I could have foreseen and the little bugger refused to relax until 4:30 in the morning when sleep finally overcame him. But he still hasn't pooped.

The world is going to hell

It must be. Everything is going wrong lately and it must mean that the end is near. I'm in disbelief over all the miscommunication, mistakes and oversights that I've dealt with lately. I have to reason that something is terribly amiss with the world because there can't be that many imbeciles in the small circle in which I operate. I was being kind when I referred to the miscommunication, mistakes and oversights; these people are just plain retarded. Harsh? Yes. Judgmental? Okay. Totally un-PC? You betcha. But really there's no other word that is more appropriate. Unless it's worse. Maybe these people know exactly what they're doing and they just don't care. Is it possible that the man at the medical equipment company and the woman at the insurance company don't care if my son gets his new wheelchair? Could it be that the pharmacy and the insurance company (again) have no concern whether or not Sam receives his Pediasure, his main source of nutrition? And possibly the woman at Jackson's school who (mis)organized the holiday toy catalog orders to raise funds for the school is callous to the notion that many of the kids at school will not have their Christmas presents on Christmas morning. I don't know. Stupid or apathetic. The world is going to hell either way.

An eye opening experience

Earlier this week David and I had a meeting at a school nearby to discuss Sam's IEP (Individual Education Program). We walked into the meeting room and were greeted by a team of therapists, educators, health care professionals and administrators who have been working on Sam's case. All 759 of these people introduced themselves...okay, really it was only 10 but what's the difference when you're talking about all those people for one little boy? I started wondering what the hell I'd been doing these past 3 years busting my ass trying to fill the role of all of these people for Sam. No wonder our schools are in financial trouble when they pay these people just to do one job. They should hire themselves a few good moms.

After the 3 hour meeting was over we were able to visit the classroom which Sam would be in next month. We were aware of the type of program Sam was being enrolled in. We knew the student-teacher ratio was low in the class due to the severity of problems most of these children had. And yet I was not prepared. I was not prepared to walk into a room full of 9 children of various disabilities and picture my little boy fitting in. Logically I realized that Sam does not walk, talk, crawl, feed himself or even sit unassisted. But that's just Sam, you know. Everything atypical about him is just typical to me. But these children.... And then it hit me: this is how others see Sam. When we enter a restaurant out in the "normal" world of walking, talking, romping, laughing children, and I wheel Sam by some unsuspecting diners, they're caught off guard. Sam's stroller does not contain their idea of what a child should look and act like. Because they do not know Sam they can't see past these differences to the beautiful child. And it probably disturbs them. Of course I've seen many children out in public with disabilities, but my reaction in the classroom was different because Sam was clearly being identified as belonging with these children. And, as his mother, I was having a hard time making that connection. Don't get me wrong; I know after spending time in the classroom with all the other children I will get to know them and see their individual personalities. Then this will all seem less intense. But that day was overwhelming.

I swear I won't make any jokes about bananas

The other day Jackson and I were watching the Discovery Channel series "Walking with Prehistoric Beasts" where they use computer generated images set in real locations to recreate what life was like a very long time ago. One of the shows followed the life of some super-sized mammal from birth through the first 3 years of life. We witnessed as he fell out of the birth canal, learned to walk, avoided being eaten, had his first swim, weaned from his mother, and attempted to interfere with the mating between his mother and another super-sized mammal. Now this last part is important because the show portrays a male of the species mounting the mother from behind and humping away while the juvenile looks on scared and confused. Jackson, having seen animal sex before but not really understanding fully, didn't bat an eye. The next show in the series featured a group of apes, Australopithecines, that walked upright and are much more closely related to humans than the super-sized mammals. Like the previous show we again follow along as different life experiences are encountered. So when the boy ape started putting the moves on the new girl ape I expected we might see some ape sex. But, no. See, unlike other animals Australopithecines do it facing each other. Instead of mounting from the rear, which to me suggests anal sex and is just wrong, Australopithecines sex evolved into a more civilized act. (Okay so that last part was completely my opinion and does not reflect the opinion of any other parties, especially my husband). Anyway, you get the point: this ape sex more closely resembles human sex. So when boy and girl ape start getting down and dirty their images are suddenly blurred out. They could have handled this in a more cinematically pleasing manner by having the two apes lie down in the tall grass so their bodies are obscured and maybe play some romantic music to drown out the moans of pleasure. But, really, how far of a stretch would it have been from seeing the super-sized mammalian sex to seeing the ape sex? You do the hokey pokey and you turn the ape around. That's what it's all about. Now before you start thinking I'm making a big deal out of this because I really wanted to see some primate porn let me tell you that I was mainly concerned with how Jackson would interpret this censorship. Suddenly the mating of two animals has become something that must be hidden from his eyes. Really it would have been much easier to explain, in 5-year old terms, what the two apes were actually doing instead of why we shouldn't be privy to it. I swear he's going to be more curious than ever now to see exactly what it looks like when two apes mate.

Not just another old wives' tale

I was searching online for the Bella Band which is a stretchy band of fabric that you wear around your belly during pregnancy. The band allows you to wear your regular clothes a bit longer and fit into maternity clothes a bit earlier. Genius, really. But this stretchy band of fabric sells for $28. So I was trying to figure out how to make a cheap duplication of this product with material I might have at home. The closest thing I could come up with involved the use of, you guessed it, duct tape. Which leads me back to my internet search that brought me to a page with an ad picturing a smiling woman holding a pregnancy test pee stick and the caption said, "Want to know the sex, too?" Well, yeah. I clicked and found the Baby Gender Mentor. With a few precious drops of blood, a stamp and $275 a pregnant women can now find out the sex of her baby as early as five weeks after conception! The website is full of testimonials from satisfied customers. Parents who used the kit express their gratitude for being able to begin their gender-specific baby shopping early. The test claims a 99.9% accuracy rate so I wasn't surprised not to find any comments from disgruntled parents who had to repaint the nursery after the baby came out the wrong sex. Curiously absent were those comments from parents who used the test for gender selection. "Thank you Baby Gender Mentor! You saved us a lot of grief and financial hardship. We were able to successfully terminate my first 3 pregnancies after the test results showed they were all boys. We finally have our precious baby girl to enjoy without the distraction of 3 rambunctious brothers." I wonder if the makers of this test are marketing to China?

Deja Blue

I had to resuscitate Sam the other night after his day at the hospital. After the dumb ass anesthesiologist, who thought he knew everything, shoved a tube down Sam's throat several times with much difficulty because he refused to accept that David and I had any knowledge of how Sam would react to being intubated. So we brought Sam home with a very sore, swollen throat and something set him off and he started crying... but he couldn't catch his breath because his throat was so thrashed and then something in his brain just shut down so when he finally relaxed his airway he still didn't breathe. And I had to breathe for him until he came around. It's been over a year since I've had to do this and, yet, it all came back to me. And it still sucked just as much as it always has.

Surviving the Joint

Sam before going under general anesthesia for some dental work....

... and Sam after.

Today's hospital visit took me back to when Sam was first born and we spent 3 1/2 weeks imprisoned in the NICU. Today's visit was not nearly as unpleasant as the NICU stay, but there were moments during the day in which I was reminded just how inhospitable hospitals are. Awhile back I put together some tips on how to survive the neo-natal intensive care unit and thought I'd put it here on my blog for the sake of any parents who might be facing a similar stay:

~ Trust no one. Doctors can, will and do lie. And the nurses often have no choice but to back them up. It helps to have a contact on the outside to get factual information. Hospital visitation hours serve well for these purposes, but if that doesn't work info can be passed along via the card accompanying a nice bouquet of flowers.

~ Shift changes are the best time to learn “private” info about you and your baby. Nurses will tell you there are no visitation hours during shift changes (yes, the parents are considered “visitors”) and you must leave, so try to arrange to breastfeed (or pump) in the middle of shift changes. The nurse at the end of her shift won’t want to wait until you’re done because she’s eager to get home. She’ll share all the updates with the nurse coming on while you sit and pretend to be involved with your baby (or pump).

~ Sleep with one eye open. Bad things happen at night. If you’re not watching an x-ray tech might try to come into your baby’s room at 2am to flip him onto his back and x-ray his lungs, putting pressure on the surgical site where he just had brain surgery earlier that day, all this despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing wrong with your child’s lungs. And when you, in your groggy state, try to convince him he has the wrong room he will continue to argue with you while fiddling with your sleeping babe who had a hard time getting to sleep in that room with the beeping machines. You’ll have to have a clear enough head to rip his files from his callous hands and point out that the name on the file does not match the name on the ankle band of this baby who is now crying because some dumbshit woke him up.

~ Better yet don’t go to sleep. Did I mention bad things happen at night? When it’s time for your baby’s scheduled middle of the night feeding one of the “compassionate” nurses might decide to let you sleep and shove a tube down your baby’s nose and into his throat to feed him while he screams his protests. Because she just hates to see him “struggle” with the bottle. Then you can secretly cheer when he vomits the pumped breastmilk into the nurse's mouth... and politely refuse to consent to an HIV test.

~ Lie, lie, lie. They do it why can’t you? When talk starts turning to GI tubes for feedings you do everything you can to convince them it has only taken your baby 15 minutes to drink 4oz... when it’s really taken 45.

~ Avoid eye contact. Sometimes the doctors and nurses don’t want you in the room while they’re performing a procedure but sometimes your baby just needs you anyway. If you can avoid eye contact with the medical staff while they politely ask you to leave and focus only on your baby they will usually leave you alone – as long as you don’t interfere with their work, of course.

~ If you want the private room then birth at home. Doctors and nurses hate those germs you bring from home and like to keep you and baby separate from the other patients. They call it quarantine but I call it a private room with a view.

~ BYOB. If your baby was one of the lucky ones to have been born on the outside then you’ll have to bring your own beverages. The staff treat their own new mothers to complimentary sippers full of gatorade... but maybe this is just to make up for the fact that those mothers got nothing but ice chips during labor.

~ Kiss up to the nurses. Say whatever you want behind their backs but make nice when they’re looking. Your stay will be a lot more manageable with the nurses on your side.

~ Do whatever you can to (reasonably) avoid going back to that place. Doctors might tell you that your child is an “urp and a burp” away from death or that if you don’t get him to the hospital he might “meet his maker” but sometimes they have to say these things just to cover their own a$$es (those dollar signs aren’t just there to soften the word). And what if you heard this, “When I was an ER doctor I saw kids brought in with exactly what your son has and they died shortly after arriving.” Why the heck would anyone want to take her baby somewhere to die? I’ll keep him at home where he’ll be safe, thank you.

The Great Conspiracy

Jackson's Kindergarten class is participating in a "Garden of Light" celebration tomorrow night. Here's a description from the teacher:

The celebration begins with a path laid out on the floor, spiraling inwards. Greenery edges the path and a tree stump stands in the center of the spiral, bearing the "Candle of Life". Stars of gold card shine at the sides of the path. The room is lit by a few candles and the families take their seats; quiet lyre music will set the mood. Then the candle at the center of the spiral will be lit. Each child will be given a candle secured in an apple and will then be guided through the spiral, lighting his or her candle with the "Candle of Life". The child will then place the apple candle on a golden star along the path as he or she walks out of the spiral. Soon the room is filled with twinkling candlelight and warmth.

My child's typical school day consists of fairies, gnomes, and fire filled fruit. What does your child do at school all day? For whatever reason he actually really digs his school. Maybe it's because we have stripped all magic from his life for fear that one day he'd come to us bitter by the inevitable disillusionment that comes with growing up. Might as well tell him from the start that Santa's a fraud and believing in him is only for the simple-minded. Although, due to a harmless and completely unintentional blunder on our part, he has come to believe in the Great Pumpkin. This Great Pumpkin visits on Halloween night after he has gone to sleep and replaces his sweet bounty with some cheap toy from Target. He gets a nice surprise in the morning and we get to keep the stash of candy. Now don't you dare ruin this for him!

The Pallid Patriot

I saw a bumper sticker recently which had an image that was badly bleached by the sun. The words were still legible and I immediately recognized the popular post-9/11 sticker, which displayed a barely discernible American flag and words that read, "These colors don't run." Okay, but apparently they fade.

Personally I prefer this sticker which I've been assured is made with fade-resistant ink.

Nightmare Before Christmas

Apparently Christmas decorations and fierce animals go hand and hand in a 5 year old's mind.
Here is the entire scene constructed by Jackson while I was putting out our holiday decorations over the weekend. I wonder if this is how Tim Burton got his start.

Grateful for Children

Yesterday we had Thanksgiving over at the home of my mother-in-law and her new husband. Also in attendance were various family members we see on a regular basis, all of whom are conservative Christians who have not always approved of our lifestyle choices. David's pre-pubescent cousin actually wrinkled her nose at us one time when she saw us drinking beer. Apparently beer is the devil's distillate. See, we used to hide our drinking from the in-laws but our alcoholism has spiraled out of control these past few years and we just can't go anywhere without bringing our hooch. Yesterday, however, was a dry Thanksgiving since I managed to give up alcohol for the sake of the baby.

So with both parents sober we were looking like one happy, almost normal family. Until Jackson very loudly begins calling his uncle a "friggin' fucking" over and over again while I quickly, yet very calmly make my way over to him. Leaning over I quietly say,"Jackson, that's not something that's okay to say here." Because if I had left out the "here" portion he would have surely outed David and I as the foul-mouthed heathens that we truly are.

Later David asked me if Jackson actually knew which of the two words was actually the bad one. I really don't think so.

Sleep Sell Outs

Well, we've finally done it. We've crossed over to the dark side and given Sam a little something to help him sleep at night. He had plenty of time to develop healthy sleeping habits on his own before we hit him with the "darkness hormone" aka melatonin. It's only night two so it's too early to tell how it's working. This is something I hoped to never have to do. I like to get away with as little medical intervention in Sam's life as possible. But we were getting desperate. And, hey, melatonin is still a far cry from elephant tranquilizer. Plus, it's a big improvement over the old duct tape standby.

Welcome to my new site!

It has occurred to me that Sam is past that critical period requiring frequent updates (which is probably why I have updated his site infrequently lately). At the same time there is still a lot going on in our family that I feel is blog worthy. For that reason I've created this new site to post my own thoughts and relate experiences that will probably relate to my family more often than not. I won't be sending out notifications any longer so if you are moved to do so you'll have to check back often. I do plan on updating much more frequently - hopefully daily. And I will be adding photos occasionally as well. I hope most of you will enjoy this new and improved blog. I know I will!

Some of you might be wondering what the meaning is of the blurb under the title. Well, it kind of has multiple meanings but for now I'll stick with this one: we're expecting a new addition to our family in June :-) Life just got more exciting. More on that later.....

Now be sure to check out Sam's slideshow below!

Sam's Slideshow

Sam is turning 3! To celebrate my sweet boy's first 3 years I've created a slideshow. Click here or to the picture at the left to view it. Make sure your sound is on to listen to the accompanying music.