Month: June 2009

The first rule of summer: do not talk about summer

his first broken bone
does a nose count as a bone?
healthy summer fun

The wee one got walloped in the face today by a big piece of wood – the seat on a rope swing. A good lesson on perimeters and physics. Can you ask more of Tinkering camp? I think not.

He was apparently not too bothered by it, cleaning the wounds by himself, refusing the band-aid, not crying, and eager to get back outside and play after the triage.

Once he came home we made him clean it again with a 50/50 mix of peroxide and water (mean!). Then I dragged him to the doctor because I didn't like hearing that his "eyeball hurt."

The doc said his eyeball was fine, though there's a cut on his eyelid which is kind of scary. (No stitches. Yay!) But when the highly technical "here, kid, see if you can use one nostril to air out this kleenex in front of your face" test was administered, the doc was all, "Hmmm. This nose might be broken."

So we'll keep an eye on it and if he can't pass the kleenex test again in a week or so we may take him over to Ike-a-saurus' ENT. I don't anticipate any problems, though. It really doesn't look that bad – not a lot of swelling or anything.

We are highly highly anticipating the shiner in the morning. He is going to be quite disappointed if it doesn't materialize.

Photo(20)    Bonk

Advertisements

Epic pear fail

trying out new things
always an exciting time
for better or worse

Last week, we got the go ahead from the GI doc to start trying out solids with Ike-a-saurus. He's ready developmentally, and has been for a while now. We've been holding off, just because he's only 6 1/2 months adjusted, and even when the other two kids were at that age we had just barely started trying solids. Plus, we're so constantly concerned about the amount of calories he gets, we didn't want to fill up his tummy with lower calorie solids, when he really needs the crazy breastmilk/formula/thickened concoction we give him.

So we were excited, but cautious about starting the solids. Adding to the anxiety was the very pessimistic outlook from some OTs that ALL kids with trachs develop oral aversions (really? all of them?) and that we should be prepared. I don't like blanket statements like that, so I wanted to go ahead and get him started to show them what they can do with their blanket statements.

Food number 1: avocado mixed with breastmilk. Success! He didn't make a funny face or anything, he just went for the spoon like he was starving. He took the avocado, swallowed it without gagging or pushing it all out of his mouth, and grabbed for more. No signs of aversions to the texture or taste, though both were admittedly probably pretty close to the taste and texture of his regular milkshakes. Still, though, very encouraging.

Food number 2: pears. Not so successful. I didn't puree them well enough, so they were both chunky AND watery. A bad combo. He made the "bleh what is THIS?" baby face when he tried them, which was super cute. But then he started doing that cough – the one he used to do when he was aspirating. And then he barfed everywhere – including into the trach – and kept up the red-faced, teary-eyed coughing fits for a good ten minutes after eating. EPIC PEAR FAIL. So now we are on a 24-48 hour fever watch to make sure he doesn't develop aspiration pneumonia or an infection from barfing into the trach. I am feeling like both the worst mother in the world and the worst baby food chef in the world.

I am feeling daunted, but trying not to. We'll go back to the avocados for a while, I think. Then maybe try some bananas. I should have known better than to try the fancy fruit right off. We need to stay away from juicy things. Far away.

So our takeaways from all of this? He's ready for solid food. He might need some special preparations of certain foods (like, cereal added to the pears would be OK, I think). And I need to really smash the shit out of the stuff I give him.

Maybe he can just eat avocados all the time.

Photo(19)

I don't think he'll mind.

Dear Adorable Hipsters,

Yes, that was me. Your future. Driving past you tonight in a minivan, with the far backseat light on because the kids won't stop messing with it.

Yes, I was picking up dinner for myself at 9pm. Not because I'm cool like you and go out to dinner at 9pm. But because it was the first time all day I'd had a minute to find any anything to eat.

Yes, I had the minivan sunroof open and I was listening to Kelis sing about her milkshake.

Yes, I was singing along.

I saw you staring at me. I saw the look of abject horror on your faces. Your pastel, too tight button up shirts wrinkled at the sight of me. Your retarded breezy, messy, too long, bangy haircuts sneered at my practical barrettes.

Yes, I saw all of that.

But you know what?

It totally doesn't matter. Because I am your future. That's right. Your future. For real.

One day, you too, will be driving a minivan out for dinner at 9pm. And you will be so tired you'll be wishing you could just go to bed starving. But you'll be happy to be out of the house, away from shouting kids and suction machines (well, maybe you won't have to deal with the suction machine part – I'll give you that). You'll be excited to sing along to something that isn't kid music, even if the kid music is by Mudhoney or They Might Be Giants, or Arcade Fire, or whatever cool band you can rustle up to add a soundtrack to your drives around town with the tiny people in your life.

You will have your iphone set on shuffle (yes, you will still have an iPhone, but mostly so you can sync calendars with your spouse and text your BFF from doctor waiting rooms). And when your spendy, vaguely justifiable mobile device finds some Marilyn Manson, you'll rejoice in the Beautiful People lyrics and wonder why that song never made its way onto the show Weeds. Because you, too, live in a little box made of ticky tacky, and you realize that maybe Marilyn Manson is singing about Agrestic, which means he's singing about your neighborhood, too.

Yep. This is your future.

But don't fear it, Adorable Hipster. Just because your house is made of ticky tacky doesn't mean it's awful. It's actually pretty nice. The ticky tacky is an interesting melange of cool stuff you've collected over the years, toys, kid drawings, candy pieces and receipts. No longer do you live in the Adorable Hipster world of sterile furnishings, expensive beer no one is brave enough to admit sucks compared to a Lone Star, clothes that give you yeast infections, and random bouts of loneliness. Nope. Your life is full of color and mess.

Sometimes that color and mess bleeds out into the real world and you drive by your past and it is horrified by you. But you don't care because the dreaded minivan has a pretty good sound system, 16,000 cupholders, and doesn't require premium gas like your old convertible.

So don't sneer when your future drives by. It's bad karma.

And believe me. You don't want bad karma. Especially when it comes to your future.

Former Adorable Hipsters with bad karma end up being the people in charge of selling frito pies at their kids' elementary school carnival. So watch out.

Those people have to stuff their retarded hair into hairnets.

Yes, we laugh at them. From our minivans. As we drive away. Back to our houses made of ticky tacky. Listening to Sexyback. And singing merrily all the way.

Sincerely,
Kari
aka: Your future

The Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel book trailer!

Sorry I can’t get it to fit within the parameters of my crappy blog layout. If you click the full screen square at the bottom right of the movie, it should pop out so you can see the whole thing!
Oh – and one more thing – right now the slide that appears down there is kind of weird. I don’t know how Youtube decides which slide to feature as the thumbnail of the movie. I’ve changed which one it should be, but I guess it takes a while for the change to show up.
These are probably technical details you don’t care about, huh? I’ll stop my blah blah blah-ing so you can watch it!

Here’s a little story for you

a mature adult
should not laugh at the poop jokes
but I can't help it

Today, the nurse and I took Ike-a-saurus to his doctor's appointment. This involves great feats of strength now that we have The Monstrosity to cart the little dude around in.

Monstrosity  

12 pounds of baby and about 100 pounds of crap. You think toting around crap for a baby is crazy, try adding all the extra trach stuff to the mix. Even if I had four arms (which essentially, I do, with the nurse, or my husband, along for the party) it still wouldn't be enough.

Anyway, we managed to weave our way through traffic, remember the handicap placard (so conflicted over that – do we really need a handicap placard? Really? And yet… so.much.stuff.), and keep Ike-a-saurus reasonably happy in the car. We got to the doctor's office and suddenly I realized I had to get The Monstrosity into an elevator.

Tricky.

We had to crush an innocent bystander, but we managed to make it to our floor in record time.

Once in the doctor's office, I bumper car'd my way into the back and into an exam room. It was a tight fit, but we did it.

Then, the doctor arrived.

The Monstrosity was pushed as far to back of the exam room as it could go, but with the table, a little desk, three other chairs and two other people, it was a close fit for all of us. The doctor was carrying Ike's chart and a laptop and he was trying to finagle a little rolling chair out from under the desk so that he could perch on it at the end of the exam table.

That was when he said it.

"Excuse me," said the doctor. "I just need to squeeze out a little stool."

Time.

Stood.

Still.

In slow motion, his eyes connected with mine. He knew what he had just said. I knew what he had just said. Neither one of us were willing to gain eye contact with the nurse because we knew that she knew what he had just said.

So there we stood. Eyes locked. "squeeze out a little stool" floating in the air above us.

I did not say, "Lucky for you there's a big pile of magazines right there!"
I did not say, "Do you need some privacy?"
I did not say, "That's totally what Ike would say right now if he could talk! Jinx!"

Instead, I smiled – the briefest beginnings of a complete guffaw -  and the spell was broken. Eye contact severed, the doc grabbed the rolly chair and began asking questions. It took all of my strength to not bust out laughing. And by "laughing" I mean full on snorting and heehawing.

Alas, I had to be a grown up. Boo.

But at least now we know the Monstrosity is good at two things: 1) fitting into tight spots 2) causing them as well.

A big win for the stroller folks. A big win.