Julia

Kid's Menu

Patrick made me take him into the pediatrician by day three of the Great Hives Disaster. The doctor said what I expect you would have told me if I had been able to stop holding Patrick's scratchy hands long enough to type: in the absence of any new foods/detergents/bug bites we can assume they were caused by a virus; it is normal for flare-ups to continue for days or even weeks; treat topically with cortisone and orally with Benadryl as needed.

Oh and here's a word of advice. Unless you want the child to droop onto the floor of the exam room like Gloria Swanson and dramatically tell the doctor, "I'm DYING!" try to keep your cool when you discover that your baby is covered from head to toe with angry looking welts. I noticed that Patrick was scratching a lot so I pulled up his shirt to check and holy corrugation! but he was a mess. Scalp, chest, back, ankles, hands... yikes. I screamed "STEVE! STEVE! HURRY! Patrick is all... LUMPY!"

From that moment on Patrick decided he was very, very precious and in urgent need of medical care beyond what I might be able to google. Patrick's trust in my abilities is tenuous even under the best of circumstances. When I freak over him you can pretty much forget about him continuing to believe any claims of my omnipotence.

So I took him to the doctor.

The nice thing about the pediatric practice we use is that it is enormous, so they have always been able to see Patrick within an hour of my calling for an appointment. The downside about the practice is it is enormous, so they have a range of physicians and you never know just who you are going to see. It's like sticking your hand into a barrel of Bertie Botts' beans. This time we pulled out puke.

Have you ever had a doctor that seems so gruff and odd and ill at ease that you spend the entire visit wondering what on earth possessed them to go into a clinic setting? Especially one specializing in children? When Patrick did his graceful swan dive onto the floor and announced his impending demise she scowled. Actually scowled and said, "Nonsense!" Which it was, of course, but she could have been more tactful. She had barely been in the room for thirty seconds at that point; there is NO WAY she found Patrick as irritating as I did. I, after all, had been with him all day long and I managed to refrain from telling him to stop acting like an ass.

Anyway, she looked at his hives, confirmed his hive-y-ness and then took me through possible triggers. This was a process that involved a detailed discussion of what he had eaten prior to the onset of the hives, which in turn elicited the fact that Patrick has had a peanut butter and strawberry jelly on 12 grain bread sandwich for lunch every day for the past sixty-one days. And the reason he knew it has been exactly sixty-one days is because I accommodate him in the little things and I have daily cut the sandwich into sequential numbers.

What? Are you looking at me the way she did? Is it the number thing? The same lunch for two months things? Peanut butter? See this is one of those situations that do not strike me in the least bit strange (what's the harm? it only takes me an extra minute, it makes him happy, and he'll outgrow it soon enough) but she was appalled.

I would classify Patrick as a fairly good eater but I realize that I have no one against whom to compare him. Our play date guests have all been heartier trencher(wo)men than Patrick but I assumed it was because they were suitably dazzled by my sandwich origami skills (the star was easy but the dinosaur impressed even me) where Patrick has grown blase.

For breakfast he eats: Cheerios, oatmeal, yogurt and dried strawberries or cherries, pancakes if Steve makes them. Bacon when he can get it. He firmly believes eggs are the work of the devil and will have nothing to do with them. English muffins on occasion. Bagels and cream cheese but no lox.

Lunch: see above re. sandwiches plus his choice of red pepper, carrots, or kiwi. He almost always picks red pepper.   

Dinner: he eats what we are eating although I sometimes have to separate things ahead of time or remove a particularly spicy sauce (usually by licking it off- very primitive). He loves mixed baby greens salad, particularly baby spinach and the dark green and red leafy things. He likes salmon, tuna, cod, shrimp, beef, chicken, and pork. He is suspicious of scallops (did you know scallops have blue eyes?)  I had to wean him off A-1 a few months ago. He only got into it because, you know, the letter A and the number 1. TOGETHER. SAUCED. How could he resist? He wanted it on everything and the stuff is 175% salt. He likes Ian's frozen alphabet french fries but will not touch a potato in any other form. He prefers brown rice and bread. He was a great vegetable eater for such a long time that it annoys me to have to cajole him into eating them now. He'll eat broccoli, green beans, carrots, peppers, asparagus, zucchini..... that actually sounds acceptable as I typed it but it made me  tired just thinking about it. He hasn't eaten fruit other than the dried kind in a long time, which is even more annoying but other than continuously offering him a nice apple or ripe plum I don't know what to do about it. Short of prying his jaws open, of course, but I think that would be a choking hazard. Finally, sometimes we have dessert and sometimes we don't and he is usually fine with that. 

Good heavens why I am writing about this?

Oh I know. The pediatrician made me feel bad about Patrick's diet so I guess I must be looking for reassurance. I once read something somewhere that said "by now your two year old is sharing the family meal... ." I thought they were high. Patrick at two wasn't even close to eating the same things that Steve and I had for dinner. Even as he approaches five his tolerance for flavor is much lower than ours and his insistence upon food compartments (meat here, vegetable there, grain thusly) shows no sign of abating.

I don't know what I am going to do about it if you all scold me as well (work harder I suppose) but I might as well ask... does all this sound ok to you? 

And as long as I am asking questions: am I crazy for thinking my sinus infection is going to clear up on its own? Patrick and I had some sort of virus thing just as he started spring break. His went the pink eye/hives route while mine tended toward the raging sore throat followed by congestion track. Two weeks later I am completely fine except for the small area above my left molars. They ache, my face aches, I cannot bend forward and (avert your gaze if you're squeamish) there is... blood and gunk and bloody gunk. I called to see my primary care physician today but they are booked until next week. The nurse suggested urgent care but... I don't know. I am not MISERABLE just uncomfortable. I've never had a sinus infection before. Won't it just go away on its own?   

To You

I had an English professor in college who was obsessed with the concept of greeting cards. The idea that one would mass produce something as personally specific as wishes for a happy birthday slew him. Rather than sit down with your notepaper and some stamps and jot off sincere hopes that grandma might enjoy her special day it quickly became more acceptable to purchase Happy Birthday to YOU printed by the thousands, preferably with garlands and a few cherubs. As far as he was concerned the fact that someone thought of this, someone manufactured it and billions and billions of people have subsequently utilized it epitomized everything that was everything about the modern age. We not only accept the loss of individuality we expect and embrace it.

Patrick, however, must be an Old Soul. A pre-industrialized child who harks back to the days of craftsmanship and personal hallmarks. As I tidied the house this morning I found the birthday cards he had made for the cats, each hand-delivered to whatever place was most likely to be seen by the animal in question. Under the bed for Darwin, tucked in with the shoes for Jam.

For Rusty (he of the chronic renal failure):

Rusty I wanted to nknow you are better Happy BIRTHDAY Love Patrick

And DarwinFish got this one:

Darwin Goood Boy! GIVe cat hugs Happy birthday Love Patrick

Closet cat:

Jamy - scaredey cat and sometimes not scaredey cat but happy birthday Love Patrick

And finally for Kelvin, a cat whose name Patrick categorically refuses to believe is spelled with a K:

Celvin your birthday is in Septmber so you are not happy yet Love Patrick

Oh DAMN IT. This wasn't what I was going to write about at all. I got side-tracked by the cards on my desk and I am already five minutes late for a cup of tea with a friend before picking up Patrick at school.

I'll have to come back to ask about the hives. Remind me. Very important. Hives.

 

De Pilo Pendet

I like North Carolina. I like the vinegary barbecue, the gorgeous lighthouses, and the delicious cool of the charming mountain towns. I am glad that the fine young men who represented her university's athleticism this weekend have so much awaiting them at home. I would hate to think that they might be despondent after folding like a stack of paper drink umbrellas in that ludicrously unexpected overtime. It would trouble my joy to imagine that their otherwise exemplary year was marred when the entire team sat down on the court in the last five minutes and began to knit. But how sad can you be, really, surrounded by friends and gentleness and all that pulled pork? So I can just be happy the Hoyas won.

What is a Hoya? Is that what you just asked me?

Well I am so glad you brought it up.

Back in the days of yore a very high, very long stone wall was constructed around Georgetown University, built (one assumes) to protect the scholars within from the attentions of the residents of the adjacent convent school. I am not entirely sure what the Catholic girls of the 19th C were like but if they bear any resemblance to the ones I knew in high school those early Georgetown students needed all the protection they could muster. In due time the university grew and prospered and, ever mindful of the maxim mens sana in corpore sano, the young men of Georgetown devoted themselves not only to their studies but to the pursuit of healthful exercise. As other schools did likewise it soon became the fashion to participate in various sporting contests, which would pit college against college while the exhorting cries of their classmates urged them ever onward towards victory. Seeking a name by which to identify themselves the student athletes looked with pride towards the enclosing structure that sheltered them so well: they became the Stonewalls.

"What rocks?" the yell leader would ask. "STONEWALLS!" came the thunderous reply.      

Georgetown's athletes, protected long those many years from the distracting influence of a fine pair of eyes or a nicely turned ankle, excelled not only on the field but in study of the Classics. They were men of brawn and brain and grew anxious to display their versatility to the competitors they esteemed.

Their cheer evolved:

"Hoya saxa?" became the cry, while the gentlemen of Georgetown, shiny-eyed and apple-cheeked, would bellow their beloved refrain.

Then there were some wars and everything went to hell in a hand basket and it all got horribly confused and they became the Georgetown Hoyas, which cannot be literally translated but if it could be it would read as the Georgetown Form-of-a-Questions.

At least that is how I remember the story, recounted to me over bourbon 18 years ago.

Anyway, they won, I picked 'em and I am in now in THIRD to last place. Hoya saxa? I do, baby.

Guilty

The trifecta of spring break (Patrick's), pink eye (also Patrick's) and a miserable head cold (mine) has created a whole lot of nothing this week. Patrick made a bazillion Lego spaceships and I have dutifully admired each and every one. Right now he is making birthday cards for the cats. 

Patrick is still winning the basketball pool, by the way. For those of you unfamiliar with basketball, or pools, or, um, winning, just imagine your hamster successfully performing an appendectomy. Oh, and to correctly factor in my chagrin over Patrick's giggle-click-and-score strategy, imagine that you were up for the job of chief surgeon or whatever and you only had that one appendectomy to do before the position was yours but your hamster did it instead. So they gave the job to him.

From this day forward March Madness and I meet as enemies.

For internet reference, I started my period nine days after beginning Provera. This was in time to stay with the intended PGD dates so I guess I am doing another IVF cycle next month. Lupron starts in two weeks. I was completely expecting to be postponed until late summer so I have not  managed to whip up any excitement about this yet. But I will. Say what you will about assisted reproduction, it certainly has drama. And on some level I must believe this has a chance of working because otherwise I would not be doing it, right? On every other level though, up to and including underground parking, I think the odds of our actually having another child, ever, under any circumstances, are hollow laughably low. So why are we doing this? Why does anybody do this? I used to have all these passionate answers to such questions and now I just feel like a dope most of the time.

Can we keep using our desire for more children as the reason for continuing to try to have more children, do you suppose? It is all we have, but as time goes on it seems like our justifications should be more grandiose, like the survival of the human race depends upon it (I think I have made this joke before but I actually just made myself laugh aloud with the idea that all human existence could hinge upon Steve and me- think Terminator 3). That way when my friend, gently incredulous, greeted the news of our upcoming cycle with, "Oh, are you guys STILL trying?" I could have said, "Well if it were up to me we'd have started collecting circus memorabilia by now... but, you know, HUMANITY." Instead I was just a little embarrassed.

Last night Steve sat bolt upright from a dead sleep and said, "That's IT! I am going to start smoking in bed!"

And all I was doing was reading. Well, reading and eating garlic croutons directly from the crinkling cellophane package.

The combination of loud and crumbly and odoriferous pushed him right over the edge. He said I smelled like a Roman. A dead one.

I didn't realize that he had the authority to do this but I checked the pre-nup and apparently... anyway he has BANNED croutons of any size brand or flavor from the marital bedroom.

Reducing my guilty pleasures list to a meager:

1. Regency romance novels by the hogshead

2. Adding sugar to Sweet Tea

3. Eating croutons in bed

4. Outback Steakhouse (the extra ingredient? MORE SALT)

5. My supersecret ipod compilation labeled only "WW" (hint: A-ha! and Alphaville. oh and Dream Academy)

I've just made up Guilty Pleasures Friday the, uh, 13th Friday of the gladsome year.

Yours?

Halftime

Patrick is currently leading our March Madness pool with a ten point lead over one of Steve's business partners and a sixty-three point advantage over the last place person who is... well it doesn't matter who I am. That's not important. What is important is that it is apparently possible to do pretty well in the first round if you follow a pattern of clicking on every other link. But he's going down in the second round. There are no mommies in bracketology- each man stands alone. I don't spend hours studying the collected works of this country's greatest sports columnists only to be humiliated by someone who thinks there might be a state in these United named "Butler" and who can't tell the difference between a steal and a foul. 

Besides he has Florida picked to win it all and CLEARLY Georgetown will prevail.

Would you like to hear something very sweet?

Yet another person who did not know Steve existed was the mother of Steve's half-brothers, his birth father's wife of some thirty-odd years. They divorced about five years ago (just as Steve contacted his birth father for the first time) and he had never told her that Steve had been born or that he had gotten in touch as an adult.

Steve's brothers were a little worried about how she might take the news. The divorce had been bitter and followed many years of infidelity on his part. Would she feel like Steve was another betrayal; like another secret her husband had kept from her? Because she had a lot going on professionally last month, they waited until this week to tell her about Steve.

He got this in an email yesterday:

"Mom was thrilled.  She is very eager to someday get all 3 of us at her place for some spoilings.  Family invited too.  I must admit, she was a little jealous that I have a half nephew and she doesn't get any grandkids out of the deal. She was mostly thrilled that Kevin and I have a little more family to know and love."

What a lovely and gracious response.

Basketball's on. More later.

Almostly Patrick

Patrick is wrong a lot.

Tonight he had a mini ice cream sandwich for dessert and told us, "In 1961 these were made with chocolate ice cream." He sounded so certain, too, that I looked it up. I know, I know, four year olds are 95% fantasy and 3% dirt but I dunno, maybe they had Ice cream History Day or something at preschool and he had actually learned that factoid. But he was wrong.

After watching Arrested Development on Netflix last Fall Steve and I picked up the habit of occasionally thrusting our arms skyward with an exultant, "STEVE HOLT!" Patrick did it himself tonight for the first time but said, "STEVE HOLE!" which is much much funnier, especially when he turned to his father and pointed and said, "YOU! are STEVE HOLE!" Funny but, you know, wrong.

He is interested in roman numerals right now but refuses to believe me when I insist that they only make sense when they are arranged from biggest to smallest (excepting the minus ones). The more I assure him that VIXLMDC is not a number the more he scribbles it on sheets on paper and puts them where I will find them. He's like a tagger. A roman numeral graffiti artist. He's also wrong.

I spend all-day-every-day-less-nine-hours-a-week-for-preschool with Patrick and it sometimes gets a bit wearing. I don't mean Patrick personally is wearing but spending all day every day with anyone gets to be a bit much. Especially when that person never shuts up, rarely believes anything you say, usually occupies an imaginary world that at the moment is dominated by an extremely accomplished imaginary cat, and has started to begin most sentences with the phrase "If I were you Mommy I would..." finished with anything from "... change lanes" to "...give me a cookie" to "... clean out the pantry".

Sometimes I find my son annoying. Sometimes he makes me want to scream. And then cover him in loving kisses, of course.

Thank you. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

Apart from the sense that I am hallucinating when I listen to him for too long I am really enjoying this age. He has reached a level of self-sufficiency such that I can actually read a book when we go to the playground. Prior to this I felt obliged to hover more, just in case he fell or something. I now realize a) he probably is not going to fall and b) it doesn't really matter if he does. Kids fall. Life continues. See, we are both growing. 

I ignored the over-the-top comments (and I completely refused to visit any off-blog commentary on the subject although thank you for the link) on the last few posts but, for the record, I really did not intend for that story about the Y woman to be anything other than an anecdote about an incident that I found strange. I certainly did not see it as bragging about Patrick. I have gone back to re-read the post a few times and I will be honest with you, I still don't see how it was interpreted as boastful with regard to the kid. I am not saying that people were wrong to gnash their teeth and howl, oh Julia, thine pride, THINE PRIDE! just that I did not mean it that way and it confuses me that it was taken like that. I guess my instincts aren't very good sometimes.

Anyway, to be on the safe side this time I am adding a header:

MY SON IS SO GREAT AND I AM BURSTING WITH PRIDE ABOUT THIS:   

Another YMCA story:

Patrick was at his sports sampler class this morning. Patrick is pretty much awful and uncoordinated at every sport they have tried thus far but he likes being there and he is trying his best. Which is, of course, all that matters in youth sports.

I watched from the track above the gym as he and another kid raced on an unwitting collision course. I winced as they bounced off each other, head-to-head. Patrick started to cry and put his hand to his forehead where he had been hit, but as he did so he said, "Are you ok?" to the other boy.

And I BEAMED.

Kindness and courtesy are very important to us and we have spent a lot of time trying to convey this to Patrick. I was very proud of him today. And proud of myself.

Now WHERE IS MY DAMNED PERIOD?? GARRRRRRGH! 

Smarch

For someone who does not get migraines I seem to be getting a lot of migraines.

Yesterday Patrick and I were reading Where the Sidewalk Ends while I tried to ignore the fact that I was having trouble focusing. I was not in pain, exactly, but my vision was all squidgy. Hard to explain but it was a weird combination of blurry, nauseating and pressured. Next thing I knew I was curled in the fetal position with a towel wrapped around my head in the darkest room in the house- our closet.

"Are you ok?" Steve asked from the doorway.

Uhhhhhhhhhh.

I guess I should see a doctor about it but what do I say? Once every two years or so I get a headache so crippling I am unable to move for ten hours but more recently my eyes have starting acting funny? It just doesn't sound like a medical emergency to me. On the other hand it would've been nice to have something in the medicine chest stronger than baby aspirin. Opium maybe. Or, well, opium.

See. I'll go into my primary care physician complaining about my so-called migraines and making vague references to opiates and his eyes will narrow and he will mark Abusing Con Artist on my chart. I just know it.

Speaking of medicine and bodies and whatnot... WHERE IS MY DAMNED PERIOD?

Unbelievable. All I needed was one normal cycle before starting the pill and then Lupron if we are going to do IVF next month and----- nothing. Not a hint. Nary a whisper. And I am entering 35+ days over here. NOT NORMAL FOR ME. I know I am not pregnant because we used, literally and concurrently, three forms of birth control all month. I was determined, you see, not to screw things up with my devil-may-care irrepressible sexuality. We are supposed to go for our big administrative appointment next Monday (the one in which we pay them. oh and sign the forms that indicate our desire upon death to leave any embryos still extant to Julie. for her adorable craft projects) but prior to that I need Day 3 blood work. Which means, you see, that I need to have a Day 3. So if you carry the 6 and divide by 72 you can see that I needed to start my period, like, yesterday.    

I feel cursed.   

Although

Patrick has been charming lately. He has started coloring pictures of things (as opposed to writing letters or words) and he builds free-form Lego structures (as opposed to meticulously following the enclosed diagrams). I always assumed he would get around to this stuff eventually but I confess it is nice to see him being all cute and boyish with his lopsided crayon cars and funny-looking green people. He learned how to do multiple-digit addition last week (thusly: "Mommy, what happens to the eleven when you add these two numbers?" "Oh, you just carry over the ten. Like this. See? And then you keep adding." Long pause while he studied the numbers. "Got it." And he did) so now the quickest way to get him to shut up is to write the longest problem you can fit on a page and hand it to him. We went out to dinner on Friday night and one equation saw us all the way through the appetizers.

He has concluded that everything has an easy and absolute answer, mathematical or otherwise- not that he expects Steve nor I to be remotely familiar with any of them.

On cosmology:

"The earth is going farther and farther, faster and faster away from the start of the universe. To the east."

On literature and entertainment:

"Rhyming is harder than not rhyming but it should just be a song if you are going to do it."

On relationships:

"Mommies are better to cuddle with than daddies." When challenged on this: "Because mommies have long hair and they cuddle better." When asked repeatedly by Steve for an "I love you" as he left Patrick and I enjoying a quick bedtime cuddle: "Goodnight." Anything else? "Yes. Close the door."

He has an imaginary... well, an imaginary cat actually. Which is odd because we have four cats already, but this one is named Sassy. She was born in 1987. And she talks. And can drive. And dress herself. And she frequently makes guest appearances on an imaginary television show Patrick likes to talk about called "Kelvin & Friends". Tonight at bedtime Patrick told me about an episode of Kelvin & Friends in which Kelvin found an atom but before he could bring out his special microscope the wind blew the atom away. And then Sassy came and started dancing. Then the wind blew the atom back just as Kelvin got the microscope set up.

He waited.

"And then what happened?" I asked.

"That was the funny part," he told me, coldly.

"OK," I said.

"You are supposed to laugh."

"Oh, right. Ha ha ha ha," I offered.

"I need to get better laughing for Kelvin & Friends," Patrick complained.

Just in case you have ever wondered who thought the laugh track was a good idea? Patrick. That's who.