Kid Amnesiac

Most days around here are categorized as good (Simon sleeps and eats well and isn’t frustrated much or often) or bad (Simon sleeps or eats poorly and seems fussy most of the day). But today wasn’t really either. Today was just funny. It was also a day that he blew several of our dearly held theories.

Theory 1: Simon sleeps through the night, never wakes before 7, and has no interest in sleeping with us.

Our day began inauspiciously enough at 6:45 a.m. when Simon awoke. 6:45! Our baby doesn’t get up so early, especially not when the previous night ran a bit late. He doesn’t wake up crying either; he wakes up jabbering. But today at 6:45 Simon began to fuss, and he didn’t settle down after we ignored him for 10 minutes or so. Reluctantly, Matt got up to get him and bring him in with us. Whereupon he wriggled about and cried intermittently for 45 minutes or so, then fell soundly asleep on his tummy, head facing the foot of the bed, tush up high in the air, right leg crooked over my left leg. He stayed this way until just past 9:00.

Theory 2: Simon doesn’t watch TV or know who characters like Elmo are.

Despite this rather lengthy lie-in, the little guy still seemed a bit tired and off his game for substitute babysitter Valerie today. When nothing seemed to make him happy and he rubbed his eyes a few times, Valerie suspected he needed some quiet time. So she set him on the sofa and popped in a DVD, whereupon was Matt was astounded to later find Simon, comfortably situated with his head on a pillow, full body length stretched out, turned slightly towards the TV, engrossed in Elmo. I think we bought this DVD for our flight to California in April, and it hasn’t been out of the box since. Moreover, Simon only watches TV when Matt and I have something on-usually a nature show, basketball, or King of the Hill rerun-and he never sits on the couch for more than a few minutes or lies on it at all. Regardless, Simon stayed put today for the full length of the video. A little sad, but also quite amusing.

Theory 3: There are safe times to let Simon go diaperless.

And the coup de grace came tonight. My Dad was over for dinner and socializing, and towards the end of the night Matt took Simon upstairs to give him a bath. A bit later, a wet and naked toddler came downstairs and commenced to unselfconsciously run around the living room. As my Dad laughed, Matt explained his theory that since Simon probably pees in his bath, it must be safe to leave him undiapered right after. The bladder is empty, right? Well, the words were barely out of his mouth when we all saw a tidy little arc of pee spurt out of Simon and land on our living room rug.

So much for theories. We were 0 for 3 today!

Following the advice of our First Steps physical therapist, we are trying to get Simon to spend more time playing on his feet. To quote Amy, we’re moving Simon’s world up off of the floor. To this end, we’ve moved a train table into our living room and put many of Simon’s toys on it, installed a mini-basketball game next to it, and have set up a sand and water table by our front steps.

The results have been mixed.

The train table has been a smashing success. We put all his favorite toys on it, and Simon spends literally hours playing standing up. Yesterday was our first full day of all-standing play, and he capped it by sleeping for 13 hours straight last night. Good boy! Better still, he frequently drops objects, then bends over to pick them up again. Amy has suggested we do this for him to get him out of his single, Frankenstein-like standing pose. And best of all, Simon will periodically break out into a dance while standing. If his bouncing, fist pumping, head shaking moves cracked me up when he was sitting, the addition of some hip action has sent me into uncontrollable gales of laughter.

Basketball has been a modest success. He likes the game and can certainly get the ball in the hoop, but he’s not ready to post up Mr. Fundamental (that’s Tim Duncan, by the way) or drive to the goal just yet. The goal (no pun intended) of this game is to see if we can get Simon to stand unsupported without realizing it. To date, we’ve managed a barely there lean against an adjacent table while putting the ball in the hoop, but he hasn’t gone totally solo yet. Still, I’m buoyed by the progress.

As for the sand and water table, I’m beginning to wonder if the engineers were drunk when they designed this sucker. The pitch must have gone like this: “When kids play in water, they make a mess. When kids play in sand, they make and even bigger mess. Let’s combine the two so the kids can be covered in wet sand that will stick to their skin and clothes and get all over the house, too. It’ll offer all the mess of a trip to the beach without the scenery. Perfect.”

Perhaps this will get better when Simon has a better idea of what to do with the thing. For now, his play is mostly limited to throwing water out of the table, throwing sand out of the table, throwing sand into the water, and eating the sand. On the plus side, Simon enjoys it and it keeps him standing, so we’re not giving up on it just yet. On the minus side, at his present rate he’s going to go through fifty pounds of sand in about a week.

Pictured at top right, my beautiful boy shellacked with sandy concrete.

The thing about being a blabbermouth, is that when you broadcast your every thought, your words have an unfortunate tendency to come back to haunt you. Not quite 11 years ago, at Matt’s and my rehearsal dinner, my sister-in-law Stacy gave a toast in which she recalled with cheek-reddening accuracy a monologue I had given a few years before. The essence of which was that the entire wedding industrial complex is a blight on smart people and that I would never don a white poufy dress with a veil to exchange vows. As it happens, I wore an ivory poufy dress with a veil to exchange vows with Matt, so I suppose I get off on a technicality.

Last month, two other friends in California recalled with similar cheek-reddening accuracy my declaration that I’d probably never have kids and that, if I ever did, they would almost certainly be adopted. I couldn’t see myself wanting kids, and I really couldn’t imagine choosing to get pregnant or give birth in the unlikely event of changing my mind.

My imagination has never been my métier.

The first time these anti-baby thoughts had a chance to haunt me was when Simon was about three weeks old and an old friend from graduate school called to check in on us. He and his wife were considering having a baby themselves, and so he asked me, “Now that you have Simon, can you imagine your life without him?”

At the time my friend asked, Simon was a colicky infant and I was terribly sleep deprived. Could I imagine my life without him? You bet! I wouldn’t have minded a brief dip into the pre-baby waters at all. I earnestly reassured him that while I was loving being a mom, I was sure my life would be equally fulfilling had a chosen a different path. At the moment I spoke, I have to say, I’m not sure that either half of that statement was true.

When Kelley and Christine reminded me of my earlier anti-baby stance, it was as though they were describing a different person. I could imagine someone who looks a lot like me saying or thinking what I said and thought, but I couldn’t effectively empathize with her. Then, oddly, I got choked up-partly from the sense that I need to protect Simon’s feelings from thoughts that predate him, but mostly because at that moment I realized how close I came to blowing a major life decision.

Because truly, it’s not just that I can’t quite imagine my life without Simon, it’s that I don’t even want to try. I’m not deluded about the daily grind of motherhood. Lately Simon has been fighting diaper changes and getting more stubborn and emotional in general, and at times during his whining or thrashing about I’d love to put him in a straight jacket and/or toss him out a window.

But those are small moments and small truths. The larger picture is that-yes, yes, cliché, I know, a horrible, leaden cliché-Simon fulfills me in a way that prior attempts at self-fulfillment have not. He’s made me appreciate daily life. He’s freed me to play again. And the way he loves me is astonishing. Everyone tells you that you’ll love your kid more than you can imagine. What they don’t tell you is how much your baby will love you. That, I think, is the greater revelation.

When I consider how close I came to missing this, I get a shiver down my spine. Truth be told, my primary motivation for having Simon was that I was bored and unfulfilled, and it seemed like a good way to shake things up. I had also considered divesting of my worldly possessions and working a sheep ranch in Scotland or joining the Peace Corps and running off to a developing nation, but we had just bought the house, I know nothing of sheep other than their wool, I have no skills the Peace Corps need, and I’m kind of attached to my stuff. Ergo: baby.

One person alone knew how wrong I was: my mother*. She told me I’d feel this way if I ever got around to having a baby, and I spent the better part of a decade demurring. Now I have to admit that she was right and that I can’t remotely imagine my life without Simon. So happy Mother’s Day, Mom. You were absolutely right, and on this score at least knew my own heart better than I did.

* OK, so two people knew: my mother and my friend Beth. But Beth said less, and hey, it’s Mother’s Day after all…

Traveling with a baby is a little (lot) stressful, but being with friends makes it all worthwhile. Our first full day in the Bay Area, a friendly bystander in a park got this group shot of all of us–originally a group of five couples, who have now morphed into a group of five families.

Our friend Yun captured many fabulous shots of the two days we all spent together, which can be found in her album. Thanks so much, Yun!

Apologies to Yeats for this one, as my terrible eyesore is nothing as profound or lyrical as the “terrible beauty” he describes in his poem about the Irish uprising of 1916. Still, 92 years later I’ve just wrapped an Easter day that included plenty of polite, meaningless words interrupted by a variety of odd, unsettling events.

On paper, the day was rather simple: Wake up, spend morning with Simon, take him to Jim and Evie’s for the afternoon while Matt and I attend the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors’ Theater of Louisville, return to have dinner with the Whitworths, and then enjoy the final hours of the weekend at home while Simon slumbers.

If you look at the day as a checklist, we succeeded on all fronts. There were, however, a few curveballs tossed our way.

1. I hated the play and considered ditching at the intermission, but Matt encouraged me to stay the course. Several factors contributed to my dislike, not the least of which is that entire play sounded to me as though it had been written by one of its characters-specifically the 18-year old girl running away from her upscale home trying to pose as a 24-year old while slumming with the have-nots. The local paper called the 24-year-old playwright precocious. “Precious” is the word I would have used. Another factor contributing to my dislike? The set. Meant to invoke the look of squalor and neglect, it succeeded so well that I had a hard time looking at it. The carpet was dirty. The walls were dirty. The area under the couch unspeakable. Even one of the characters was squalid. That was one terrible eyesore.

2. I expect Easter to coincide with somewhat spring-like weather. We had a nice warm Friday, but the weekend has been quite cold. And tonight, at Easter dinner, it snowed. It was a gorgeous snow-the kind you get when it’s only barely cold enough to change wet drops to huge snowflakes that look like nothing so much as giant feathers coming out of pillows in heaven. I last saw a snow like this in 1990 in Oxford. I was captivated then, and I was again tonight. And yet, there is something inherently terrible about a beautiful snow that happens on a day that began as a celebration of spring and fertility.

3. Quite possibly the coup de grace, my dad is in the hospital tonight having hand surgery because he had an accident while cleaning a gun (yes, a gun, one of those things Dad and I don’t talk about because our disagreement cannot be bridged) this afternoon and shot himself in the left hand. Sigh. Seems he shattered the bone in his left ring finger and took the key nerve and ligament with it. Did I mention my Dad is left-handed? Or that he was due to go to Rochester MN next week to accompany my uncle for heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic? There is a tiny bit of humor to be found in the situation as my dad, bless his heart, DROVE HIMSELF to an immediate care center for treatment. And my stepmom, poor woman, had been out of the house at the time of the incident and arrived home shortly after it. In the brief interval between her arrival and her being notified of the day’s events, she stood alone in her home, surveying a scene that included a gun on the floor, blood everywhere, a nick in a door-frame from the bullet’s ricochet, and my Dad and his car’s notable absence. What must she have thought?

4. And then there is Simon himself. Just as I was marveling about his impressive attention span, he made me consider seriously for the first time whether it’s attention or OCD I’m witnessing. Tonight he enjoyed playing with a shape-sorter. Once he figured out where the star shape went, that’s all he wanted to do. So he’d put the star into the star-shaped hole, take off the canister’s lid, remove the star, put the lid back on the canister, and repeat. He must have done this twenty times in a row, quite likely more. It would have been funny were I not thinking about my own sock sorting habits and other OCD inclinations.

Also, tonight we put to rest any thoughts about Simon’s inherent “boyness” on two counts. Count one is that Simon got two new stuffed animals to play with today, and he hugged, leaned into, and kissed both of them. He’s totally sweet, this little guy, with nary a trace of macho. Count two is that we have temporarily misplaced Simon’s winter hat. So Matt grabbed one of my hats for him to wear. It’s a teal blue cloche with a scalloped edge, and I swear to you that once it goes on him he transforms from “handsome” to “pretty” in no time at all.

Simon cruised tonight! Not a hesitant step or two around the ottoman either, but a full, confident cruise at a respectable pace.

Hurray for Stinkpot! I was so proud of him that I almost cried. Okay, I did cry a little.

We brought home a ride and walk toy from our friends the Braunsteins a couple of weeks ago. Simon likes the toy to ride on and he loves the horn, but the siren on it scares him and has made him approach the toy with caution.

Today was a Camp Whitworth day, though, and Jim and Evie have a Pooh themed walk and ride toy at their house. It’s modeled like a little plane, and when you hit a button on it you hear, in the gentlest imaginable voice, “Welcome, friends. I’m Pooh Bear. Are you ready for a ride?”

We stood Simon up in front of this, gave him his paci to let him work through his fear, and held the toy while he took his first hesitant steps. He looked something like a cross between Frankenstein’s monster and a stroke victim in rehab, but we applauded him wildly. So bolstered, Simon managed to cry (from fear) and smile (with pride) at more or less the same time as he walked behind the toy with increasing speed and steadiness.

It really, really did my maternal heart good. So much so that I brought the toy back home with us, and we treated Simon to sausage pizza (he won’t be getting that at Keneseth Israel pre-school next fall!) at Bearno’s* on the way home.

*One score and just over one year ago. Matt and I went out on our very first date at this same Bearno’s, possibly sitting in the same booth. Being back home is hilarious.

If my Aunt Marcia is up in heaven watching over her family, I sincerely hope she’s so busy keeping track of my Uncle Sam, her three children, eleven grandchildren, and one great-grandchild that I’m lost in the mix.

At her funeral just over six months ago, I promised her family that I’d finish up her last knitting project, an afghan intended for a family member’s engagement present. You can’t just go back on a promise like that-and I won’t. But I’m sure in for a long, difficult slog.

The thing is, I’m old and set in my ways when it comes to knitting. I’ve been at it off and on for 18 years, and that’s plenty long enough to develop strong preferences and habits. I like knitting intricate, traditional blankets and garments composed of Scottish, Irish, English, and German stitch patterns. I like sheep’s wool and alpaca best. I am most comfortable on straight wooden needles. And I like small needles best, preferably somewhere in the 2-6 size range.

The half-finished project I have inherited is a large-scale diamond and cable afghan. Not too bad of a start. It’s knitted in a synthetic blend. That could be better. My aunt was working on round, nickel-plated needles. That’s not playing to my strengths. The needles are size 17. Oh dear God in heaven, that’s an ergonomic disaster for me. Imagine if you suddenly had to write using a first grade pencil and you have a pretty good feel for what I’m up against.

To add a little more fuel to the fire, my aunt left off mid-row, meaning I have to rip out her work-the last needlework of her life!-to figure out where she was and continue.

To quote the Mason Dixon knitting ladies, this is the knitting equivalent of nuclear waste. You can’t touch it and you can’t get rid of it, so you just move it around and pretend it doesn’t exist. In this case, I tucked it away in the secret depths of Matt’s closet, told the family I’d get to it once I finished a baby project, and then hoped they’d somehow forget.

Meanwhile, I tuck Simon into bed every night under the pretty afghan my Aunt Marcia made for him, a situation that makes forgetting impossible and ratchets up the guilt quite nicely. This past week my Uncle Sam called to gently inquire about the afghan, putting an end to my procrastination and denial once and for all. Tonight I breathed deeply and dove in. I tried not to think about the work I had to rip, I figured out where I was quickly, and then I got to the real work. Work is the operative word here.

It was worse than I had feared. The needles felt huge and ungainly in my hands. The yarn snagged on the cord connecting the round needles in the middle, forcing me to stop and shove loops over mid-row. At the same time, I dropped stitches left and right off of the super-slick metal tips, and the metal needles themselves draw heat away from the hands, making them stiff this winter night.

And the coup de grace? My gauge is tighter than my aunt’s. It’s completely expected that an uptight thirty-something would knit tighter than a septuagenarian hopped up on morphine in the end stages of cancer, but it’s a problem nonetheless unless I can convince the family that the afghan is supposed to be four inches narrower beginning at the half-way point.

The joke is on me for sure, because I know exactly what the textbook solution for this is: It’s too hard to try to adjust your natural tension; the best route is to go up a needle size! I am, without a doubt, the butt of the knitting universe’s joke tonight.

It’s not like I expected to celebrate turning 38 the same way I celebrated turning 10, 16, 21, or even 30. It’s just that I thought I might celebrate turning 38 the same way I celebrated turning 37.Turns out it wasn’t in the cards for me this year.

I first surmised that this would be a very different birthday when Matt ran his gift idea by me. He wasn’t sure if it was something I really wanted, so he decided to forgo the element of surprise and ensure getting it right. Would I like my own iPod? Boy would I ever—what a thoughtful, generous idea. But we just ran up a four-digit vet bill and have an expensive roof repair coming up, so I told Matt thanks but no thanks. This just isn’t a great time for grand gestures. Instead I suggested a Rilo Kiley CD and a bag of Riesen.

Today, my actual birthday, started well enough. We played in the house, and I took some extra time over my tea and the morning newspaper. The travel section even had a feature on Iceland, my dream vacation for the last 15 years or so. Things were looking good. So when Simon got fussy in the car this afternoon, I didn’t think much of it. When he cried a bit on our walk, I assumed the wind was to blame. And when he woke up from his nap early, I assumed it would blow over in a few minutes.

Instead his tone got hysterical in a hurry, and I sent Matt upstairs to check on him. Within seconds, Matt declared a “baby emergency” and called me upstairs for backup. The poor little guy had thrown up and was lying face down in a puddle of his own sick. Matt hustled him into the tub in a flash, only to discover that he was also suffering from diarrhea. While Matt cleaned Simon up, I tackled the soiled clothes, stuffed animals, and crib bedding. It was, as you can imagine, an unpleasant task. As soon as I finished with that, I got to work sterilizing all his sippy cups and pacifiers and theorizing the cause of his illness while Matt changed his clothes and tried to calm him down.

At this point, we canceled our dinner plans and settled on take-out. Simon himself hardly ate dinner at all; we just hoped to get enough Mylanta and ginger ale into him to settle his tummy and allow him to rest comfortably.

So the day went off the rails a bit—a real bummer. But the funny thing is, I’m just not that bummed about it. We have a vet bill that’s high, but we’re lucky enough that it’s not a hardship to pay it. Simon is sick, but it’s his first time ever being sick and it appears to be just a little bug—not one of the much more serious ailments I’ve watched friends and friends of friends deal with in recent years. And I’ve got a husband who quickly and gamely stripped down and cleaned up a baby boy stinking from both ends.

It looks like we’ll all be OK, and there will be plenty of gadgets to buy and restaurants to try out for my birthday next year.

I’ll blog later today or tomorrow about Simon, but for now I have a new Tristan update.

He’s still in the kitty hospital, and I still miss him a whole bunch. With luck, he’ll come home tonight.

I went to see him yesterday about noon, and to my pleasant surprise he had already had his ultrasound test and his catheter had been removed. The doctor could see some sediment in Tristan’s bladder, but no stones or crystals. That was very good news. While he was in the room with me, he got so happy and comfortable that he even flipped over on his back and purred. More good news. Then he sat up and howled again, and I could see a spot of white on the tip of his penis. That was not so good.

Turns out it was some sediment mixed with mucus, and Tristan needed some help passing it. He might have passed it on his own, but it was hurting him and there was no point in taking a chance of hurting him further. That restarted the clock for us; Tristan has to urinate on his own without trouble or a catheter for 24 hours before he can be discharged. So now he’s getting more IV fluids to flush him out, and if he continues to do well, we’ll get to bring him home tonight.

I’m spending the day cleaning out our gross attic and making it into a nice, baby-free kitty sanctuary for him. The litter box will stay up there, but I’m spot cleaning, vacuuming and deodorizing the carpet, I’m clearing out some boxes to free up more room for drinking and napping, and I’m putting a kitty bed and a kitty water fountain up there to encourage relaxation and hydration.

My fingers are crossed that my next trip to Jefferson Animal Hospital will be the last for a while.

I just came back from the hospital’s visiting hours, and Tristan is doing well. He purred quite a bit and even ate a little of his prescription food for me.

Today his creatine and BUN levels are both normal, so his kidney function was clearly only temporarily and mildly affected by the blockage. Today they will continue to run fluids to flush him out and to keep his glucose and potassium levels normal. Tomorrow they will search for more stones and/or crystals with the ultrasound, and that’s when we will learn more about his case and long-term prognosis.

From what I can gather, he’s doing very well now–In fact, he was eager to jump around (a no-no with the catheter) and managed to shake loose his IV line while I was there. The acid test will be taking him home and seeing if he immediately re-blocks.

We’ll keep you posted.