Um... what?!

I took Iyyar for his followup sleep study last night. Sleep study #1, as you may recall, was something of a horror show, with upwards of 80 episodes of apnea per night, in addition to his refusal to go to sleep, keep the wires on, etc. I wasn't there for that one--Abba took him, since Avtalyon was still nursing too much for me to leave him overnight.

We fully expected study #2 to be a formality. I took him, and he was out like a light in less than fifteen minutes. The tech put almost all the leads on him without waking him up, but the nasal cannula did him in, and once he was woken he was restless from that. I'm not sure how much of an impact the wires etc. had on the results, but when I asked the tech how things looked as we were about to leave, he said, "Oh, he still has it." Still has what? "He still has obstructive sleep apnea." His O2 desaturated down to 88, which is better than 72 but still not what you want to see. And while the tech was sure he wasn't rousing 80 times an hour, he also was sure it was "a lot more than 5" which is the cutoff. I asked for a ballpark and he said he hadn't counted yet.

I'm not sure what is next. Iyyar has an appointment with the ENT in a couple of weeks, for both a checkup and a hearing test. I know his hearing isn't quite normal--he does fine mostly but I've noticed him not hearing things and other people have mentioned it to me too. And we also have a followup with the GI doctor the week after that.

I know he's better and doing the T & A was worth it. He visibly sleeps better, doesn't snore anymore, and did have that huge growth spurt right after surgery. But he's still tired, still cranky, still climbing into bed in the afternoon and falling asleep during time-outs. And he's still flying off the walls the rest of the time. But he's a three-year-old boy! Surely they all bounce around sometimes, and get tired sometimes, and nap sometimes. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not. What I know is not normal is the digestive stuff. It's not normal that he only poops when on Miralax. Which is, so far as I'm concerned, like Tylenol--it makes him feel better but isn't actually addressing the underlying issue.

Anyway. Time for me to leave my lair. Anybody know of any connections between OSA and, um, IBS?

All clear

I took Avtalyon to the doctor this morning to get his ears rechecked and they were pronounced just fine. Yay!

I wanted to take Iyyar in to get his bloodwork done, too, but a) it's raining and b) I had an appointment for myself, too, and it seemed a little more than I could reasonably handle. So we need to go back this week sometime, when the Good Phlebotomist is there.

Beety

I made picked beets last week. I really love pickled beets. I always thought it was a Hungarian thing, but Avtalyon, who has never even been to Hungary, liked them too. He liked them so much that, when presented with a bowlful, he employed the two-fisted hand-over-hand eating technique in which one hand shoves beets into mouth while other hand grabs more beets from bowl, continuing with this until there are no more beets left, at which time the hand discovering a beetless bowl presents said bowl for refilling (before the other hand has even finished cramming the last few in the gaping beety maw).

He ate a LOT of beets this way. Afterwards, we had this:





And then, of course, the dreaded beet diaper. "Imma! Imma, look Imma! Avtalyon pooped PURPLE!"

Even more disorganized than usual

But better than nothing, right? Right?

1. Barak's latest Lego creation is a laserbeam airplane. It's a pretty impressive airplane with a flower piece on front. This is the thing that shoots the laser. He's done a lot of little Lego lately, mostly courtesy of his star chart Lego but this past week courtesy of some birthday money from Bubbe & Zayde. I got him a set of pirate Lego, soon to be discontinued. It was much bigger than the kind I usually give him for star charts, and I didn't want to up the ante with that, so I gave it to him as a late birthday present. He was, naturally, thrilled, and happily crept out of bed after the other two were asleep erev Shabbos to tackle it. He did it all by himself, by "looking so so carefully at the constructions."

2. Avtalyon is being HILARIOUS lately. He really seems to be feeling better and, par for his course of trying to be like his big brothers in all things, has started doing Lego. By this I mean that in the last couple of days he has figured out how to attach Lego. When he does this, he does one of two things; either he attaches it into a tall stack and brings it me or someone else available to take it apart for him (this is harder than putting it together?); or he puts it together into an amorphous blob and drives it around the floor, saying "Beep! Beep!"

3. Avtalyon also just started saying "meow" and "please!" which comes out sounding like "bee!" He still has zero patience for waiting for anything while in his high chair, but now sometimes inserts a few hopeful "bees!" into the frantic wailing.

4. Iyyar has really had some setbacks on the tummy front this week. As in, back to screaming and constipation. I called the GI doctor back this week and talked to the nurse clinician. "It's been eight months and he's still not OK. I'd like to bring him back in, and also, I think we should look more into the possibility that he might have celiac disease." He's showing so many of the signs that I wanted her to try a different test to be doubly sure--there are a few. We talked about his antibody levels, which were tested for in February. Except--surprise! They weren't! They didn't get enough blood! And nobody told us that the tests were canceled! In fact, we were told that if no one had contacted us, then everything was normal! Does this ring a bell with anyone else here?

We've been giving him Miralax this week, which has brought him from constipation to diarrhea. An improvement from the point of view of his comfort, but it still doesn't give any answers or any long-term solution. Also looming on the horizon: preschool. If he isn't toilet trained by the end of August, he can't go. I don't even want to think about that possibility. I'm bringing him back in for another blood draw Tuesday (fun for everyone!) and he's going back to the GI doctor at Children's in July.

5. Barak's latest invention on the fantasy animal front is the dragon cheetah tiger. I know that they are black and they have big teeth and they are scary, because he drew one for me. VERY big teeth. Don't meet one of those in a dark alley.

6. I told you this was going to be disorganized, right?

7. I am way way way behind on work. WAY behind. I've been distracted, and I've been tired, and I'm burned out on this year. And I want a break, but one is not forthcoming.

8. It is the time of the Annual Ant Invasion. Barak and Iyyar think this is great. I do not. I also don't like it because I don't want to teach the kids to smash bugs for fun. But I do a lot of bug-smashing these days. Fine line, etc.

9. A friend of mine from grad school came for a brief visit today. It was really, really nice, and my kids were as beautifully behaved as they've ever been in their lives. She was impressed. "They're so good!" I did tell her that they're not like this all the time, but I admit to the shepping of some nachas in that regard. They really were being awfully good.

10. Oh, I forgot this--it should have been attached to #1. Last Friday, when Barak was doing pirate Lego, we had dinner guests. We had made early Shabbos but even still, by the time we sat down to eat it was after 8. Barak sat with us for kiddush and motzi and then sneaked off to the kitchen (with my permission) to do his Lego. I let him stay up until 11 PM. Crazy, I know, but he was totally fine the next day. And he had a blast.

What this made me think of was the Make-A-Plate. You know those melamine plates that you made in nursery school, or that your kids made? I made mine in 1976, and it was a picture of my mother in a blue dress and high heels with curly hair. Barak's obviously criminally negligent preschool did no such project, so I ordered the kit online and we did them at home. Iyyar's is covered with scribbles. Avtalyon's is handprints--I stuck his hands on an inkpad and then on the paper templates you are supposed to use. Barak's plate is a drawing of a house erev Shabbos. It is dark outside (colored in blue) and the Imma is lighting candles on a table. There are brothers in bed, and one brother who is not in bed. This, he informed me, is the brother who is getting out of bed to play little Lego in the kitchen.

Deja vu all over again

I think Avtalyon's about to blow another eardrum. This is getting a little old, don't you think? First he ruptured two, and got 10 days of Amoxicillin. On day 7, I brought him in for a checkup, and he had one ear clear and one still cloudy; on day 13, he ruptured another ear. That got him 14 days of Cefprozil. We are now on Day 8 and he is giving every indication of being on the brink of yet another rupture. I called the doctor earlier asking for a referral to see an ENT; she said she'd request it but I should bring him in in the morning anyway, so they could switch his antibiotic. Not sure to what.

It's been a rough week. A lot has been going on, most of it, frankly, bad; the major thing has been a death in the community that has everyone pretty shaken up. Without getting into too many details, a mother a little older than me with kids a little older than mine got up out of bed one day and died, in front of her kids, for no clear reason, with very little indication beforehand that anything was wrong. She was not someone I was close to or had a lot in common with, but we have known the family for years, my husband worked closely with her husband for several of them, and she was a really, really good mother. Better than me, and too good to lose. That's terrible enough, obviously, and there are other aspects of it that have blown a lot of my own mother/child/no mother issues out of the water. I haven't been sleeping well or thinking about much else. Compartmentalizing has never been my strong suit.

In the absence of any ability to do anything helpful for the family, beyond paying shiva visits and getting on the list to make meals, I've been trying to work on other things; I invited a few Shabbos guests who really need invitations, and have been trying so, so hard to focus more on the kids and what they need from me. Which has been hard, because Barak and Iyyar are currently in a state of ongoing conflict--not constant, but much more frequent than has been the case historically--and Avtalyon, for whatever reason (ears, probably) has been really, really fussy. Plus I'm just very tired. The busiest time of the year at work is ending now, and while that is good it means that the pile of put-off tasks must be dealt with. The laundry never seems to end, and now that I'm in my fifth month (yes, I'm just sneaking that one in there) I can't just get by on five or six hours of sleep. This morning I was just too tired to think so I decided to lie down for fifteen minutes (at around 9:15). Need I even tell you what happened? The two-and-a-half-hour nap was awesome, but I have to make those hours up somewhere.

Oh, and we still need to figure out a way for my kids to see their grandparents this summer. We have a trip scheduled to see Grandma E in early August, but getting to see Bubbe & Zayde is a lot more complicated logistically; my MIL does not fly, their home is not somewhere we can stay with the kids (they'd be happy to have us, but it doesn't work practically), the one friend who lives nearby has a new baby of her own and almost certainly can't host us, and neither MHH nor I have flexible vacation schedules--if it doesn't happen between mid-July and mid-August, it isn't going to happen until next summer. The initial plan was to meet up with them in Boston, but that isn't working out for a number of reasons, even though it would have been by far the easiest and most enjoyable thing (IMHO, anyway). I feel awful putting a visit off indefinitely. The kids haven't seen their grandmother since before Avtalyon was born, and haven't seen their grandfather since we were in Israel. It's not like any of us lives on Mars. It's not like we all have a superabundance of family, either. Just not sure what to do about it.

Pause while I try to think of something cute or cheery to end this with...

Oh, the firetruck. I can tell you about the firetruck. That really was cool.

We had an absolutely awesome surprise visit to the fire station last Thursday. There is a single-engine company about five or six blocks from us, on the way to Barak's new kindergarten, where I had to drop off some registration forms last week. On the way there, we saw the firetruck parked on a corner, and saw firemen get out. This was from a few blocks down the street, as we were coming up toward the intersection of the main commercial stretch. Neat! we said. We'll get to watch firemen! A few minutes later, as we approached the corner, we saw them all get back into the truck. Oh well, show over--oh. No. Wait. What's that they're holding?

Ice cream cones. They had, apparently, stopped on the way back from a call for ice cream. I caught the look on Barak's face. "Barak, do you think that's fun? I bet that would be fun. Would eating ice cream cones in a firetruck be about the most fun anyone could have?" Barak, somewhat dreamily, agreed. Then we discussed further and upon careful reflection decided that the absolute most fun, the pinnacle of fun that one could have in this lifetime, would in fact be eating ice cream AND chocolate chip cookies in the back of a firetruck.

Got that? Good.

So we went on our way, passing the fire station, where we got to see the truck backing into the bay (remember, it is on the way to school--this is all along the same semi-major street). We dropped off our forms. We came back, on the other side of the street so as to get a better look through the doors at the firetruck. It was a warm day, and the door was still open. What the heck, I thought. I poked my nose inside and saw a fireman sitting by the door doing a crossword. Can't hurt to ask, can it?

"Excuse me? Would it be okay if my kids looked at the firetruck?" He got up. "Sure! Come on in."

We went in, Iyyar and Avtalyon in the double stroller and Barak holding on, all of them looking sort of... stoned. They all really like firetrucks, if this needs mentioning, and none of them was expecting this. Even Avtalyon, who can actually (sort of) say "firetruck" now, was awed by the big red machine. They stood and gazed, openmouthed. The firemen looked at them.

"Do they want to go inside?"

Um.... WHAT?!

Long story short, he let the bigger two play in and on the firetruck for at least 20 minutes. He even let them sit in front and pretend to drive. He answered their questions. He let them look around the bay. He asked me if I had a camera to take pictures with (I didn't, but I did have a phone and used that). He was SO NICE.

We are planning to make cookies to bring them this week, so that next time the firemen get ice cream, they can sit in the firetruck and eat cookies and ice cream and have the most fun anyone could possibly have. I think they deserve it.

Avtalyon

Avtalyon is asleep now, with his first dose of Cefprozil (twice a day for two weeks) inside him. Fortunately he loves this kind of medicine too, although as with the Amoxicillin he tries to grab the empty medicine dropper so he can chew on the bulb.

I know I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been busy with work, the kids need and deserve my attention, and I'm still knitting more than I really should. And both Barak and Iyyar were sick last week--fevers, stomachaches, etc. So... yeah. Not much with the blogging.

I feel bad, though, not documenting this incredibly cute and funny phase in Avtalyon's rapidly-vanishing babyhood. He's sixteen months old, and just stopped nursing this week--a couple of days ago, in fact. He's still so much a baby in so many ways--he weighs 25 lb as of his last checkup, he's still got hardly any hair, and he just got in his seventh tooth (bottom left). And he's still really little and soft, and has a hilarious potbelly, and gives great kisses, and is just amazing to snuggle.

He's just enough of a baby that when he does non-baby things it still really startles me. Mostly, probably, because of the contrast between him and Iyyar and Barak. Today, I had to take Barak and Iyyar with me to the pediatrician, because of the short notice and all. Barak is still feeling under the weather and was not thrilled about the walk; Iyyar and Avtalyon were busily pestering each other in the double stroller, and even the really short wait we had in the exam room before the doctor came in was too long. Barak and Iyyar both wanted to climb up on the exam table, Iyyar was pushing the stroller around, Avtalyon wanted to bang the mouse on the keyboard, etc. It was already a little hairy in there when the doctor came in, and Avtalyon was in no mood to have his ear poked at. When the doctor was done looking at him, he (Avtalyon, not doctor) wiggled out of my arms and hustled across the room--to get my large, pink, quite heavy backpack, haul it back across the floor, and push the handle into my hand. Subtle, isn't he?

He's also been mimicking things the boys say, usually with no apparent idea of what those things mean. That's why we often here a phrase that sounds suspiciously like, "I needa go potty!" Other favorites are "I want it!" and "I don't want it!" ("Ah na wa na!") Today, though, when he went over to grab Iyyar's Batman car, it was pretty clear that he knew what he was saying: "Mine!"

Right now he seems to want nothing more than to be big, or at least, big enough to play with his brothers. Sometimes they let him in on their Lego and block activity--sometimes not. Sometimes he is forced to resort to grabbing a kippa and running away with it to get them to pay attention to him. (That one works really well.) He loves fruit, and cucumbers, and grated cheese, and noodles, but not his high chair--as soon as he's done eating, or has emptied a bowl, or has no further need of something on his tray, over the side it goes. "No" has proved unproductive, so I've resorted to removing his entire tray instantly upon the first infraction. We'll see how that one goes, but I'm not about to mop my floor after every meal and snack.

Oh, and he loves shoes. I think it's more the association with going out--often, after he's got his shoes on, he'll go straight to the back door and wait there. Sometimes he picks up his sun hat on the way, which is kind of funny because when the sun hat is on his head, outside, the sun hat immediately becomes the bane of his existence. It's kind of, "Okay, here's my sun hat, let's go!"--but that doesn't mean I'm going to wear it once I'm out there, you understand.

Pretty soon he'll be too big for me to want to post pictures of him on this blog, but here's one from yesterday, of him modeling the engineer's cap sent to us by Grandpa M a couple of years ago.


Pretty cute, if I do say so myself.

What, again?

Last night Avtalyon was fussy again, as in, waking up every few minutes crying, settling back down, then crying again. I gave him Tylenol at around midnight and then he slept through till 8 am--and woke up happy. With a ton of brown goo oozing out of one ear.

ANOTHER ruptured eardrum? Seriously? Three days after he finished a 10-day round of amoxicillin? I brought him in last Wednesday for a well baby visit cum ear recheck, and the pediatrician said one ear was clear, the other cloudy. And the nurse, when I called this afternoon, said that the antibiotics can kill the bacteria without taking care of the inflammation. Um, okay.

Back to the pediatrician this afternoon, with everyone in tow, even though Barak and Iyyar are just getting over being sick themselves and are not going to appreciate the shlep--especially not Barak, who's going to have to walk the mile each way. Oh, and it's looking pretty threatening out, too.

What I'm more worried about though is what effect multiple eardrum ruptures have on hearing. It can't be good. Wonder if he'll send us to the ENT and Avtalyon will end up with tubes...

She lives!

I know, I know, it's been a while since I posted anything real. About a month, in fact. And I have no outstanding excuse to offer except for the insanity of my job (at the busiest time of the year), as well as the time-consuming nature of motherhood in general and laundry in particular.

Even though it's been a month I can't promise anything of great interest, and in fact have no idea what I'm about to write, but I'll just start a list and see what I come up with. That okay with you? Great.

1. I took Iyyar and Avtalyon for their three-year and fifteen-month checkups, respectively, this morning. Iyyar--are you ready for this--has grown THREE INCHES and gained three pounds in the less than three months since he had his tonsils etc. out. And I'm pretty sure most of that happened within the first month, because that was when he outgrow all the last of his 2T clothes. He's going up stairs fine now, his muscle weakness seems to have diminished greatly, and while he still doesn't look as coordinated as the other kids in his playgroup you wouldn't immediately pick him out as the klutz the way you would have a few months ago. So, yeah, it looks like all of that was indeed growth-spurt related. But holy cow. Three inches!

2. Last Wednesday Avtalyon was Fussy. Capital-F Fussy, which he hardly ever is. He had a ton of hard earwax in both of his ears that seemed to be uncomfortable, and it was clearly interfering with his hearing, so I'd made an appointment for what I knew was going to be a miserable and traumatic earwax excavation; in addition to the annoyance that seemed to be causing, he had one tooth barely broken through on the bottom and two more poised to strike on top. So, itchy ears and teething--plausible explanation for a baby who toddled miserably around Yehudis's basement playroom, periodically tumbling into my lap to nurse, wail, scrabble around for more nursing, and wail some more. Right? Anyway I thought so.

Until the next morning, when I went in to retrieve a suddenly happy Avtalyon and saw that he seemed to have thrown up a little in his crib. No, wait, that's not vomit. It's... poop? No. Dirt? No. Oh wait. What the... is that earwax?

It was. It was earwax that had erupted from his ears when, um, both his eardrums ruptured from the huge nasty infections that had been percolating away in both ears for however long. The force of the explosion was such that it did an excellent job of earwax removal--it was all in his crib. The amount of pus and goo leaking out of his ears, however, was more than moderately alarming, so off to the pediatrician we went. She gave him antibiotics--oral, not ear drops, because, as she said, "I don't think you could even get them in his ears, and if you did, they'd probably get washed right out by all that... gunk."

Oh, and by the way, Avtalyon LOVES his antibiotics. He grabs the dropper out of my hand and sucks them right down--and even goes to the fridge himself and, if I open it, pulls the bottle out and hands it to me. Forget the cheese, I want more of THAT! Good thing it's a seriously childproof bottle.

3. Barak had his "nursery graduation" this week. I think this is a completely ridiculous concept, but admit it was pretty cute to see him dressed up as a chet.

4. Ooh, here's a thrilling one. Sterilite just came out with a new size of 15-quart latching bin that fits perfectly into the spaces in the wall of cubbies I have in my office cum guestroom cum fiber cave. I confess to having bought 20 of them, and lovingly sorted a whole lot of yarn into them. I do like how it looks when it's all kind of loose and crammed in there--sort of a horn-of-plenty effect--but concede that this is both more organized and probably more moth-resistant.

5. I've been knitting a lot, at least, a lot more than I really have time for. I just finished Iyyar's alphabet sweater, or, as he calls it, his ABCDE sweater; it's a kid-sized (obviously) Lopi into the yoke of which I knitted the alphabet. And it worked out perfectly, too--I only had to make the J a little narrow. Ends are woven and it's blocking now, just in time for summer.

6. They had cherries in the grocery store yesterday! I bought a bag and ate them all myself.

7. I feel like I should be doing more cute-kid updating but... I can't think of much. Iyyar is being pretty trying, to be frank--a lot of testing, testing, 123. What will you do if I do this? How about this? How about this? He is totally uninterested in potty use, which has the potential to be a real problem if he doesn't get his act together soon--no clean dry underwear by the end of August, no preschool. I really don't want to push it with him--he is the kind of kid who does not respond well to that--but I'm going to have to get serious about it when school is out. I'm giving myself until July 1--he's out of school so in my clutches all day, and Abba is still at work, ergo not here to freak out at the sight of a three-year-old running around the house commando.

Complicating the potty issue is that the constipation seems to have made a return visit. I have no idea what's causing it this time, unless (best case scenario I can come up with) he inadvertently ate another kid's dairy snack at school. I kind of doubt that though. He associates "cow milk" so strongly with feeling terrible that every time he sees me cooking or preparing anything in the kitchen, his first question is whether "that's a cow milk one." If I say yes, he won't touch it, although if it's something particularly appealing he might argue with me for a while about whether it really is cow milk, or whether I am merely misinformed. I feel bad about giving the other two cheese in front of him, especially when he loves it so much, but I just can't take dairy out of everyone's diets--especially since Avtalyon won't drink milk and Barak won't touch meat. They need the calcium and the protein.

8. I got a new mouse, since the old one barely worked anymore. The new one lights up in a sequence of five very bright colors--I did not notice this when I picked it out. It is not cool at all--it is, in fact, spectacularly distracting. And you CAN'T TURN IT OFF.

9. Hmm. Nine. Do I have a nine? [Thinks.] No, I don't.

10. The usual division of household labor around here is that Abba deals with the laundry (the schlepping-to-basement part--I fold and put away), the garbage, and gives baths when he is available. I do pretty much everything else. Lately, Abba has taken to emptying the dishwasher in the morning, which is really really nice, but has been so busy with work (seriously, he is almost never here) that the laundry has been sliding by the wayside. To the point where none of us really had much in the way of socks or underwear, etc. It had sort of gotten to the point where he was so overwhelmed with the backlog that he just couldn't deal, so I said, fine, I'll do all the laundry and clear out the pile and then you'll take it from there. Which proposal was gratefully accepted.

Eight. I did EIGHT loads of laundry in the last day and a half. And we have huge Maytag extra-large-capacity washers and dryers, that easily take a very full, very large basket of laundry. It's all folded and put away now, and everyone's sock drawers are overflowething. It's a nice feeling.

Okay. That's enough blogging for tonight. Off to knit something, and then go to bed.

What's been keeping me busy that isn't this blog

(Click to enlarge picture and see stash in all its woolly glory.)

Vroom

I mentioned a few days ago that Ada stopped by last Sunday to bring the boys birthday presents. Because she knows them pretty well, she turned up with some serious hits: Batman and Superman pajamas for Iyyar and Barak, respectively, which came with actual capes; and a Batman and Superman car (one of each) that you can shake, put down on the floor, and watch zoom away, with sound effects. "Turbocharged!" and "To the bat cave!" and so on. These were, Ada cheerfully admitted, the kind of presents you buy for other people's kids.

Barak and Iyyar, it goes without saying, are in love with their new cars. Barak is so possessive of his that I haven't seen it for a while, because he has it hidden in his bed; Iyyar has been playing with his all the time, but occupied less with the car itself than with the task of keeping it out of Avtalyon's hands. Iyyar's new goal in life, apparently, is preventing Avtalyon from ever getting any toys; whatever Avtalyon gets, Iyyar confiscates, with a merciless "no no baby! That's not for you!" I intervene in this at what seems like two-minute intervals all day, and while I remember that Barak used to do the exact same thing to Iyyar, it doesn't make me any more sympathetic. The house is FULL of toys, that baby rattle or toy wrench has been around since before you were born, and only now that Avtalyon's holding it it is the only toy you can possibly play with in the whole wide world? Give me a break.

Part of me is waiting eagerly for the moment when Avtalyon finally clops him one across the face (it won't be long); part of me knows all too well what will happen when that line is finally crossed. Anyway, by Sunday afternoon both the supercars were having time-outs, to reappear Monday morning (which they did). Of course, Monday morning both Iyyar and Barak went off to school, leaving Avtalyon... alone. With TWO supercars.

Asnat was here Monday and when it was time for her to go, I came out of my office to see Avtalyon hoofing it down our long hall in hot pursuit of the Batcar. Then he grabbed it, spied me, and came hustling back to present it to me for re-shaking and relaunching. But on the way, he wasn't just holding the car. He was driving it through the air, with a distinctly identifiable "Vroooooooooooooommmmm..."

news flash

This morning, Avtalyon said "hello" AND "wow"! And in the stroller this morning, said "baby" really clearly--not "baba" but a genuine "ba-bee!"

Now that I have a keyboard

My keyboard up and died last week, literally midsentence, for no apparent reason. I thought something had gotten inside and took it apart (with a screwdriver and Barak's able assistance), cleaned it, and put it back together, but no dice. The old keyboard is now serving as a computer-assisted navigation system for the pirate ship, formerly known as the living room couch, and I was keyboardless until I installed the new one about fifteen minutes ago. It's kind of surprising though what you can do without a keyboard if you really really have to. Like, put in your password by right-clicking and copying one letter at a time. Tedious, but it works.

Anyway. It's been a busy week. In short:

1. One of my most demanding clients at work is leaving soon, and he gave me, by way of appreciation, silver hors d'oeuvres forks and spoons. They are very pretty and were probably very expensive--his assistant thinks his wife picked them out. I had no idea what they were. I thought they were for the kids, but noted that the forks looked awfully sharp. His assistant told me what they were. Then, after a short pause, she told me I needed to get out more.

2. It's my birthday tomorrow. I'm going to be 36. I find this a little bit... unsettling. Not too much, but somewhat. Mostly because I am now on the Other Side of 35, and I want more kids, &c. My musician friends all freak out about 35 because that's the age Mozart died at ("and I haven't even written one opera! Not one!") For me, it's all about the fertility. Say what you will, but please don't.

3. I let Iyyar have a cookie with butter in it a couple of days ago, to see what happened. BIG mistake. The exact same thing happened that happened last time: he screamed and cried off and on all day until he finally pooped. It was awful and I felt terrible. Remind me not to try that again for a really, really long time.

4. Lately, Iyyar has been asking me to put on his "gloves", which are actually his Shabbos socks. He doesn't seem bothered by having socks on his hands and they seem to hinder his dexterity surprisingly little. Tonight he ate dinner wearing Barak's old blue car pajamas, a "pirate tichel" (my green-pink-and-sparkley tie-dyed one--highly piratical, of course) and gray socks on his hands. I should have taken a picture.

As a side note, do you know the German word for "glove"? It is literally "hand shoes." It is my favorite word in the German language. I mean, we know they are literal, but come on... "hand shoes?" It's almost as good as my favorite Hungarian word, which is "lightbulb." Literally, it translates as "electric pear." Which is, of course, exactly what a lightbulb is.

5. I have been knitting a LOT. I'm just on a huge knitting kick lately, and, in a departure from my knitting tendencies for the last few years, I've been wanting to do really gnarly, complicated knitting with lots of cables and charts. I've got my list of summer knitting all laid out, and first on the list is fall Shabbos vests for the boys in the navy blue Galway I have had sitting around for years. Pattern suggestions for cabled vests in sizes 2, 4, and 6? I could of course just wing it, but feel like branching out.

6. Avtalyon is getting impossible to cook with. He's suddenly started noticing that sometimes I have/am eating food, and takes this very personally. I have food! Which means that there is food that he does not have! And this cannot be allowed to stand! He tries his best to lunge out of his high chair (fortunately, he can't, but he tries reeeeeally hard), arms pitifully outstretched, wailing REALLY REALLY loudly about how much he WAAAAANTS it. Usually, he already has whatever it is I have. He doesn't care. He wants THAT ONE.

7. Other Avtalyon updates: he now says "book," "baby," and "peas," and has demonstrated a marked preference for the books containing pictures of babies. He LOVES books. He also loves his blankie. Like Iyyar, he sucks on the tag, but unlike Iyyar at this age, he prefers having his pacifier in his mouth. So what to do with the tag? Why, stick it in the next available aperture, of course. Which is why, when he's ready to fall asleep, you'll often see him sucking away on his pacifier while poking his blankie tag into his ear.

8. Last week, Avtalyon got a hideously high fever after a day and a half of throwing up everything he ate. "Hideously high" means that I just did not believe the thermometer, because come on--106? No way. Then Ada the Awesome stopped by, to give the boys birthday presents, and that was when we noticed that his hands and feet were kind of... well... dusky. And that he was breathing really fast. And that his heart was going awfully fast too. And that he looked really, really terrible. It was one of those moments where you truly don't know if you're being a neurotic mother or if there really is something bad going on, and given the choice of being laughed at in the ER for rushing in with a feverish baby and ignoring, say, a cardiac infection, I am all for option A.

Have I mentioned before how spectacularly great it is to have a babysitter who works in a pediatric ER? Not only did she drive us there, she came in with us, and it was kind of like going to the airport with a platinum frequent flier card (not that I would know.) She walked up to the registration desk and had a quiet word, after which we were ushered inside for a totally competent triage check by an RN (fever at 103.8, with Motrin), and then sat down to wait. Which we didn't do. Because about two minutes later, Ada poked her head out from around a corner and crooked her finger at us in the manner of a speakeasy proprieter during the early days of Prohibition. You can come this way now, but don't draw attention to yourself. So, as inconspicuously as possible, we coolly breezed in past a packed waiting room, and were seen right away by an honest-to-God DOCTOR (an MD! a real one! with a degree, and everything! I think she was at least as old as me, too!)

She thought he had a bug, but wanted to see clear chest films and his fever down before being sure about that. So Avtalyon got more Motrin than I would ever have given him at home, and a chest x-ray, and we hung out for a while in the ER while he nursed and perked up, and not two hours later we were out of there. Amazing. And we also had Ada around giving us the first-class treatment and bringing us stuff. If you have to take your baby to the ER, that is definitely the way to do it. But don't even ask me for my babysitter's phone number, because YOU CAN'T HAVE IT. We are not sharing.

9. As we get more and more serious about the idea of making aliya next summer, the question of what to do with our condo has been looming pretty large. It's pretty clear we can't sell it; even if we could find a buyer, selling it now would mean a financial loss that we just can't handle if we're going to be moving. Next option, of course, is renting it out. With that in mind, I've been making some inquiries about refinancing at a slightly lower rate to try to get the monthly payments down as much as possible. It transpires that, unless we qualify for one of the new federal programs, we actually won't be able to refinance because--get this--we don't have enough equity. We bought our apartment for $240k. We owe $173k on the mortgage, by dint of extreme thrift over the last few years and extra payments to principal almost every month. But we have about $7k in equity, because of how much value it has lost in the last year.

It's hard to think about like that. I can, however, think about it as, "If MHH had not gotten a job and had spent this entire year unemployed, how much worse shape would we really be in?" Or, "If someone had told me that Iyyar had [terrible disease] and it would cost $60k to cure it, how fast would I have forked that money over?" Yeah, it stinks, but when it comes down to it, we both have good jobs, we're still saving money every month, and if we've just lost most of our last six years' savings in the real estate market, well--a lot of people are a lot worse off. Perspective.

We might qualify for the program, anyway, which would mean we could refinance and possibly bring our monthly payments down a hundred or so dollars a month. I still don't think we can rent it out for what it costs us to carry it, but even if we are subsidizing it by a couple hundred dollars a month for five or six years, and it regains even half its lost value, it will still be worth it. Also, oddly, rents have not dropped by nearly as much as I would have thought. Three-bedrooms around here are still in the neighborhood of $1300, plus heat. And we have free laundry and deeded parking. So... yeah. We'll see. In the meantime, MHH heard today that he can, if he likes, renew his contract for a third year, so that's a good option to have even if we don't avail ourselves of it.

10. Part of the effect this whole condo-buying and equity-losing experience is having on me is to make me rethink my practices of daily thrift. I am the kind of person who buys a lot of generics, doles out the expensive parmesan cheese only in combination with the cheaper, if less tasty, varieties, and is clothing her youngest kid entirely in his big brothers' hand-me-downs, because, well, what does he care if he's wearing someone else's tomato stains? Now, I can't help but think that with that money we could have all gone to visit my grandmother, or Grandma E. I'm really glad we forked over all the money to go to Israel last year. And today, when I went to Target to get cat litter and diapers, I didn't buy generics. I bought Pampers. And I got Iyyar a concrete mixer and Barak a garbage truck, too.

Next week, back to our regularly scheduled thrift. But tonight, I'm eating straight Parmesan on my noodles, baby.

The week in fifteen words or fewer

1. Vomit
2. Fever
3. Emergency room (does that count as one word or two?)
4. Nonstop nursing
5. Noodles AGAIN
6. Work?
7. Laundry
8. Lost phone charger
9. So... tired...

Just happy

Not much blogging these days--not for shortage of bloggable episodes, more because of competing interests (such as laundry, knitting, and sleep).

Just a quick one, then, so you don't give up on me entirely:

Yesterday I was sitting on the living room floor watching Iyyar and Barak play, and contemplating how big Iyyar is getting. I felt the need for some cuddles. "Iyyar, can I have a kiss please?" He obligingly came over and gave me some kisses, then consented to sit in my lap and get squeezed for a minute or two before running off to play again. As he got up, he turned around to check that my need had been satisfied. Head solicitously forward, eyebrows up: "You happy now?" (It sounds kind of... accusatory, but it was actually very sweet. He really did want to be sure that I was in fact happy.) I assured him that I was, and away he went.

An hour or so later, now in the kids' room, I was again sitting on the floor, wiped out after a particularly athletic Avtalyon diaper change (that baby is SO STRONG, it's not normal). Iyyar came over with a bulldozer and started explaining to me that he needed a straw, I think to use for the bulldozer's exhaust pipe.

"I don't have a straw right now."

"Yeah! Do have a straw!"

"No, I don't. See?" I held up my empty hands.

"Have a straw inna kitchen!"

"I know, but I don't want to get up and go into the kitchen right now. I'm tired."

"No! Not tired!"

"I am too tired."

"You not tired. You just happy."

"I'm happy, but I'm also tired."

"No! I give you kisses. Now you happy. Not tired. Just happy!"

I didn't quite realize it was supposed to work like that.

In other news, the local utility company is doing a ton of work near Iyyar's playgroup, putting in streetlights and I don't know what else. Iyyar loves this and always wants to watch. "Wanna watch it worker man!" Avtalyon is surprisingly okay with this--back when it was Barak who wanted to watch, Iyyar would always flip out eventually and we'd have to move on. Now, the limiting factor to watching length is how long it takes my feet to start hurting. Sometimes we're there for an hour or more, to the amusement of the worker men.

Avtalyon's favorite activity right now is emptying the bookshelves of all the books, so that he can sit on the floor and peruse them all at his convenience; Barak seems to get taller and skinnier by the day, and now loves to whisper "secrets" into Iyyar's ears. Sometimes I overhear him. "Iyyar! Poopy pop! It's a secret! Don't tell anybody, 'kay!"

He hasn't yet.

Pesach roundup

Late, and incomplete, but it's been sitting here as a draft so days so here you go.

1. My CSIL commented to me last week that she loves the stage that both Avtalyon and his youngest cousin are in, where all they want to do is walk around and pick things up and put them down. Add to Avtalyon's list, though, going up and down stairs. We live in an apartment, and ergo have no stairs; my CSIL lives in a three-level house with an extra set of stairs to the basement. That means no fewer than three flights of stairs, conveniently carpeted for your stair-climbing pleasure. Avtalyon got quite good at going up. Going down, however, was more of a problem, because he was convinced--in the absence of any evidence whatsoever--that he could go down like an adult, as in, standing up, one foot at a time. I caught him most of the time; he does have a couple of pretty shtark bruises, too.

2. The city that my CSIL lives in has a very large indoor mall complete with a rather impressive amusement park. As in, with a rollercoaster and everything. None of us were about to get on that, but both Barak and Iyyar had a blast on the kiddie rides--especially the one where you could get into various vehicles (firetruck, tractor, forklift, helicopter) and go around and around. The helicopter even went up and down. As soon as the ride stopped, instead of getting off, they'd just run to the next appealing-looking vehicle and get on (the operator was very nice about it, since there wasn't a line). Next to that was a similar ride with motorcycles. You can just imagine Iyyar on that one. He came off it looking dazed. "Go onna motorcycle. Go vroom vroom. I like it!"

3. The house that my CSIL lives in is equipped with not only stairs, but two couches with paranormal properties. When you sit in them you can't... get... up.

4. Today (This is where I am starting to finish off this days-old draft) I decided to try to start in earnest with the toilet-training business. I have enlisted Barak's help in this by promising him equal share in any available potty treats, thereby acquiring for myself a more than willing assistant. He has, a few times, demonstrated the Art of Pishing in the Potty without Getting Your Pants Wet to Iyyar. Iyyar has been impressed, but uninclined to follow suit. Today, I saw Iyyar look like he was about to poop, and whisked him off to the toilet--only to have nothing happen.

Barak turned up helpfully with a box of trucks, and sat there entertaining Iyyar for a while, periodically exhorting him to poopage. No dice. I was in the kids' room with Avtalyon, listening in, feeling it better not to interfere. After a while, Barak popped his head in the door.

"Imma, I needa poop potty right now."

"Okay, go in the other bathroom."

"No, I think I'm going to show Iyyar how to do it. Then he'll know how."

"Um, okay. That's a great idea." Right?

You'll have to forgive the graphic nature of the following, but it was so hilarious I can't resist. This is the conversation (one-sided) as I overheard it from the next room:

"Iyyar! I'm going to poop potty now, Iyyar. This is how you do it, okay? First you take your pants off. Not all the way, just like this. Then you sit on the potty. [Sound of Barak ascending.] Then you put your penis here, so that you don't pish on the floor. Then you let all the pish come out. [Sound effects left to imagination.] Then you need to poop. You have to wait for the poop to come out. When you hear [I swear I am not making this up] a squishy sound, that means the poop came out. Okay? [More sound effects here.] That's the poop coming out. Do you hear it? I have to let it all come out. [More sound effects.] There! Now I pooped. Now I have to wipe my tush. [Pause.] Imma! Where are the wipes? There aren't any wipes in here, Imma!"

I attempted to deliver the desired item with a straight face. I think I failed.

For the record, Iyyar spent most of the afternoon naked from the waist down and did manage to pish, but not poop, in the potty. He kept asking for a diaper, and I kept returning him to the bathroom; eventually Abba got home and clearly was going to have a nervous breakdown when he saw the diaper-free child on Shabbos afternoon, so I gave Iyyar a diaper, into which he promptly pooped. And Abba got to change it.

5. Avtalyon, for the first time, showed me his nose today! I've been trying to get him to do this for a few days. "Iyyar, where's your nose? Barak, where's your nose? Abba, where's your nose?" Everyone dutifully puts index finger on nose. "Avtalyon, where's your nose?" And Avtalyon puts his finger in his... mouth. But today--nose!

Avtalyon is being particularly hilarious lately. Today he figured out how to get on and off the blue living room couch, a situation which requires close monitoring because once he's up there he's so excited he jumps. He's also very, very into books lately. He'll bring me books to read, and sit on the floor looking at books, pointing at things, explaining them to me in great detail, and--funniest of all--laughing, a lot, at whatever it is he finds so funny.

6. One more Avtalyon thing. While we were away for Pesach, I was sure he was close to stopping nursing. He never nursed for more than a few seconds during the day, a few minutes at night. He was just too busy, too distracted--more than once he'd slide off my lap after an abortive nursing session and go straight for a sippy cup of water. Well, fine! But the day after we got home, that was all over--he's back to a nice luxurious nurse first thing in the morning, after naps, and at least once at night, not to mention a snack or two in the afternoon. He's only just fifteen months, so I'm glad--I wasn't ready to stop yet.

7. I'm going to post this now, but remind me to tell you about Avtalyon and the grape ices. I want to do that one justice, but it's time for me to go to bed!

One more

I almost forgot this one, so before I do:

Iyyar had a cold over Pesach, complete with abundantly runny nose. It ran so often and so fulsomely that he did not object to nose-wiping, but, on the other hand, he did not have any inclination to stop what he was doing to go wipe his nose himself on, say, a tissue. Too much trouble, you see. The result of this was layer upon shiny layer of snot on both forearms of all his shirts, deposited before he'd even finished with breakfast, and me chasing him, mostly futilely, with Kleenex for much of our stay.

Usually he'd get to his nose with his sleeve long before I got near him with the tissue. Sometimes, though, it was close. And on one memorable occasion, as I reached toward him, tissue in hand, to stem the tide, he looked right at me and held up his hands in the manner of someone about to graciously and generously, with great self-sacrifice, save another the trouble of a particularly distasteful task. Hands out, shoulders up, head a little back:

"It's okay, Imma. It's okay. I just gonna use my sleeve."

Home, no place like.

We are back after a lovely and fun-filled Pesach trip to my CSIL, formerly known as my DSIL. (Formerly Domestic, now Canadian). The ages of the children in residence during our stay: 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and 1. Parent: child ratio of 1:2, which sounds like it should really be manageable, doesn't it? In fact it was: the "big kids," defined for these purposes as any child 4 and over, played so independently that much of the time we weren't sure where they were--upstairs or in the basement? The babies spent their time doing what one-year-olds do best: walking around in circles picking things up, chewing on them, and dropping them for something more interesting a few minutes later. As for Iyyar and the cousin a few months older than him... well. Some of the time they played beautifully. There were a couple of memorable afternoons of peaceful playing of Lego. But there was also cousinly war on a scale only seen at that exact age, an age where a particularly offensive wave of the hand can be cause for... well...

Scene: the van. We are all piled in on the way to the airport, to which we are being chauffered by Uncle Yaakov.

Me: Iyyar, did you have fun at Tanta Sara's house?

Iyyar: Yeah!

Me: Did you play with [cousin]?

Iyyar (less enthusiastically): Yeah.

Me: Is he your friend?

Iyyar: No.

Me: Why not?

Iyyar: He bited me. He bited me with his teef. He bited me like DIS (giving graphic reenactment of teeth on fingers.

Well then.

That aside, the kids had a fantastic time, which I may or may not recount more fulsomely later on if and as time permits. However, I won't postpone what was possibly the sweetest moment of the whole stay. To wit:

Tanta Sara's house has three floors. (This is not the sweet moment. This is exposition.) There is a basement, where we were sleeping, which has two bedrooms, laundry and a playroom; a main floor; and the upstairs, where the kids' bedrooms are. Iyyar is still not enthusiastic about stairs, but he was going up and down them a lot at Tanta Sara's because he didn't have much choice. He does seem to be doing better on them (and continuing to eat like crazy and sleep 13 hours a night--he's got to be growing). At some point last week I was in the basement with Iyyar when I noticed that he had a dirty diaper. I'd changed the last diaper in the main floor bedroom, and had left the diaper-changing equipment up there.

"Come on, Iyyar, let's go change your diaper." I started up the stairs, with Iyyar coming along behind, surprisingly cooperatively. Once in the bathroom I realized, oops--no wipes. Oh no, wait--I left them upstairs. So I started up the second flight of stairs, meaning to grab the wipes and meet Iyyar downstairs. I didn't expect him to follow me up, but he did. Which is why, as I started down the second flight of stairs, I heard, around the bend in the staircase, Iyyar, huffing and puffing his way toward me, hand over foot over hand, giving himself a little pep talk with each step:

"My Imma's up dere. My Imma's up dere." Pause. Heavy breathing, gathering of strength for the next step. Then again, "My Imma's up dere. My Imma's up dere!"

His Imma came down to meet him.

From the mouths of, &c.

1. On Thursday, I was feeling in a generous kind of mood and decided to bake cupcakes for No Reason At All. (Well, Yehudis's kids were coming over, so that was the excuse, but really it was because I was so relieved about Iyyar.) I had meant them to be for Shabbos too, but by the time Friday afternoon rolled around there were only 6 left and we were having lunch guests. This is how I found myself baking another batch of cupcakes at 5 PM on Friday with all of my children in eager attendance in the kitchen.

Iyyar dropped the paper liners into the pans for me and Barak was standing at the counter observing. I was using a mix, because of the time constraints, and thought I'd try to save a bit more time by pouring the batter directly from the bowl into the cupcake tins instead of spooning it in. Bad idea; predictably, I spilled it all over the place.

"Imma, you spilled!"

"I know, I know. " I got a paper napkin and wiped off the top of the pans.

"I don't think there's enough in there. Are those ones going to be filled?"

"When they're baked they'll be full. They rise in the oven. If you fill the cups up all the way with batter, they spill over the side."

"You spilled it over the side."

"I know, but that's because I was in a hurry and I wasn't being careful. I wasn't being careful and that's why I made a mess."

"Yeah, I noticed that."

2. Iyyar is still not feeling great, still kind of wobbly on his feet, and still not into stairs. If I try to get him to come up or go down, mostly he just cries and waits for me to carry him. Most of the day he's happy, but he definitely seems off to me. I guess I'll just bring him back for another checkup after Pesach if he's still out of sorts. In the meantime, he does seem to be growing. He's certainly eating enough. Yesterday I wanted to make some pre-Pesach pizza, which was a challenge because I had a) no tomato sauce and b) no parve cheese for Iyyar. So I made myself a pizza with regular cheese and Trader Joe's red pepper dip (adequate, but not really recommended) and made Iyyar a pizza with dough, olive oil, and a little sea salt, and a bowl of dip for, well, dipping purposes. His pizza was a good inch thick and filled a 9" pie pan. He ate the entire thing, singing the happy food song the whole time.

3. Iyyar's speech is really picking up, and I hear him also using some of Barak's turns of phrase. "I willn't" instead of "I won't," is a big one. He also gives great kisses. Sometimes I try to get one by pretending to cry. "Iyyar, I need a kiss!" [sob, sob]. He comes over and diligently gives me a kiss on the cheek, sometimes even two. This week, I asked for a kiss without first going through the crying routine. He promptly came over and gave me the requested peck on the cheek, then, eyebrows up, in a tone of voice that was sort of preemptively scolding: "No cry. Don't cry, Imma, kay? Don't cry."

4. Avtalyon likes to wave. He's been waving for months, but lately he's been getting more of a kick out of it, just as a way of sort of keeping the lines of communication open. Sometimes he even waves at me while nursing. Hi, Imma! It's me! It's me down here! He doesn't nurse that much during the day anymore--places to go, people to see, you know--but is back to waking up once or twice a night for a nice long nurse. I know it won't last long, so I don't mind much.

5. Barak is really, really excited about our upcoming Pesach travels. For days he's been asking me when it's going to be Tuesday, how many airplanes we're going to go on, when we're not going to be eating chametz anymore, etc. However, he seems to have a little bit of confusion over our actual destination and the cousins who await us there, and Israel and the cousins he knows there. The other day he let me know that really, he'd rather be going to Israel, and when are we going to be moving to Israel to live the whole day? I told him not for a while, but first we're going to go away for Pesach. And on the way, we will stop at the doughnut store. He seemed satisfied with that, for the time being anyway.

In which we return to our regularly scheduled blogging

Still wobbly-legged with relief and feeling like someone who has just dodged a hailstorm of bullets. It seems slightly unreal to just go back to cute kid stories, but that's why I'm here, right?

This is what happened this morning:

(Background: I am a little bit of an, um, eclectic dresser. I don't pay much attention to what I wear and do not stop to think, say, what color my tichel and shoes are before putting on a purple raincoat, a bright pink backpack, and multicolored gloves made of sock yarn. Sometimes the tichel is orange with sparkly stripes and the shoes are light blue and the socks are... oh, well, you get the picture. I tend to be pretty colorful, and most of the other immas and mommies around here tend to wear an awful lot of black.)

This morning I came into the kitchen wearing a black Parkhurst beret, for no reason other than that it was on the top of my tichel drawer. Midway through breakfast-cooking (I made scrambled eggs) Barak noticed this.

"Imma, why are you wearing a hat?"

"You mean, why do I wear a hat, or why am I wearing a hat and not a tichel today?"

"Why are you wearing a hat and not a tichel today?"

"I don't know. It was the closest thing to my hand. Do you like it or do you not like it?"

"I don't like it."

"Why not?"

"I think it's not so pretty."

"Why isn't it pretty?"

"It's just black. I think a tichel is more prettier than that."

"Black hats aren't pretty?"

"No. They're just boring. I think you should wear a tichel."

"Okay. Go find a tichel in my drawer and I'll change."

He ran and got me a long pink stripey tichel, which I put on. He looked pleased.

"Is that better?"

"Yeah. That's much more prettier than just black."

Personally, I agree with him.

In which I am delighted to assume the role of mother who worried herself sick for no reason

Iyyar does not have Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

See, I can say [horrible disease] now because he DOESN'T HAVE IT.

Although, from reading this list and looking at him, you might understand why both the doctor and I were worried. More than half the list is applicable to him to some degree. But there is a blood test that, while not diagnostic if positive, rules it out if negative, and it was totally, definitively negative.

Thank God.

The doctor thinks he's just a little weak and uncoordinated, which is what I thought before I noticed the stairs. He doesn't have a good explanation for why stairs have suddenly become a problem, and just said to keep an eye on it; my regular pediatrician put in a referral for physical therapy. I don't see any other new changes, and am not worrying about anything (else) dire. I'm assuming it's just a growth spurt.

Thank God.

* * *

We now return to our regularly scheduled kid updates. Want a few? Oh, I knew you did:

1. Iyyar (Iyyar! Who is fine!) has had nary a whisper of tummy trouble since the triple whammy of pinworms, dairy sensitivity and tonsils were all dealt with. He is, however, now having multiple bowel movements a day--usually two or three. Tonight, I'd changed his diaper and gotten him into pajamas and I heard a suspicious noise. Iyyar knew I'd heard it, and gave me a somewhat defensive look.

"Iyyar, did you poop?"

"No! Not poopy!"

"Can I check!"

"No! No want you to grab it!"

"What?"

"I don't want you to grab my pants!"

2. We are, B"H about a billion times over, going away for Pesach, to visit my husband's sister and her family (Hi Sara! Iyyar's fine, Sara!). We are all tremendously excited about this and, secondarily, I am personally thrilled not to have to be making Pesach. I always feel that I owe sort of a karmic debt to the universe when I don't have to make Pesach, which I attempt to repay by facilitating the Pesach-making of others. So tonight, we had over most of Yehudis's kids so that she could turn over her kitchen. Dizzy with relief this afternoon, I decided to make cupcakes AND franks in blanks in addition to the spaghetti and meatballs I had planned; when Yehudis's kids walked in the door, they were mightily pleased.

YK: What smells really good? Did you make pretzels?

Me: No, I made cupcakes.

YK: You made CUPCAKES? For Shabbos?

Me: Some of them are for Shabbos, but I made enough that everybody can have one right now.

YK (reverently): Wow. And we also get meatballs and spaghetti?

Me: Yup. And also franks and blanks.

YK (quietly): Wow. You use your oven a lot. You use your oven a lot to make all of your really great food.

I will point out here that I do not make franks and blanks OR cupcakes with any regularity. I just made cupcakes for the second time in about a decade; the franks and blanks are Yehudis's favorite so I usually make them when she's involved. I would never consider such a menu for just my own kids, certainly not on a weeknight. But I don't think I have ever heard such total mealtime silence from so many kids as when everyone was shoveling in dinner tonight.

3. Speaking of food, one of my more reliable vegetable delivery vehicles is carrot pancakes. I make the Joy of Cooking basic pancake recipe, with no sugar, whole wheat flour, and three large carrots, peeled and grated fine, added at the end. Everyone loves these and I let Barak and Iyyar eat theirs with maple syrup, or, as they both call it, "maple syriup." Avtalyon ate four and a half of them, and they are not small. After dinner, Barak had an announcement.

"Imma! Imma, you know what Imma? You know what I think? I think you should make just carrot pancakes. I think you should make them for dinner every night. That way, I'm not ever going to kvetch. I'll just eat them all up. Okay, Imma? JUST carrot pancakes. EVERY night. Okay?"

I didn't agree to that, but I appreciated the compliment.

4. Avtalyon has recently figured out how to climb onto Barak and Iyyar's toddler beds. He had about one day of doing this with some difficulty and now can do it in a heartbeat with no trouble at all. The only trouble involved is that once he's up there, he's so delighted with himself that he stands up. And jumps. That part is a problem.

5. A friend of ours gave us some pirate hats lately, left over from Purim. She gave us three. I had in mind that the big boys would have two and the third would be in reserve for the inevitable Hat Tragedy. But no. Avtalyon wants his hat as well. He can't quite get it on himself, and when you put it on for him it is so huge it sags all the way to his shoulders on both sides. But he is about the cutest little potbellied pirate you ever did see.

I am so, so, so relieved I can't even begin to express it. I am so grateful to be able to just write updates on my kids. My kids, who are here, and safe, and healthy, and fine.

Thank God.

In which I attempt optimism

I took Iyyar to the doctor today. He (doctor) said that his (Iyyar's) muscle weakness is not what he would expect in a kid with [horrible disease we talked about last night], which is reassuring. However, if he's weaker/less coordinated than he used to be, that's concerning, and so we did a blood test, which will be back on Friday. "He doesn't look to me like a kid with [horrible disease], but I've been wrong before, and what you're telling me is something we need to follow up on." So.

My hopeful idea, as of half an hour ago--could this (wobbly legs, bumping into things, not being able to get up without hands) just be a post-tonsillectomy growth spurt? Growth hormone is secreted during deep sleep, of which Iyyar has had practically none for probably months. He's got his appetite back and is doing some serious eating these days. Surely he's doing some growing. Could that be it? Maybe?

Please?

Blindsided

I don't read a huge number of blogs regularly--about a dozen or so. Each is interesting to me, or speaks to me, in a different way.

Some of them are written by people like me, in whatever way. Some of them are written by people I know. And some of them are written by people to whom bad things have happened.

One of the worst things you can say to someone dealing with something terrible--a health crisis, a loss--is, "I don't know how you do it." It is a way of saying, I couldn't do it. I couldn't be you. I can't be you. What happened to you can't happen to me, and it won't.

I've thought for a long time that there are two categories of people in the world; people to whom nothing really bad has ever happened, and don't think it ever will; and people to whom it has. I'm in the former category. Once something bad has happened--something that changes your life in ways you never thought to expect--it changes the way you see everything, and it changes it forever.

I worry. Grandma E tells me that there is no use in borrowing trouble, and she's right. But I know that the bad things that people think you're silly to think will happen really do happen. To someone, somewhere, they happen. Maybe today it will be me.

I read, or have read, a few blogs that started out as ordinary blogs--about work, about family, about anything--that turned into Bad Things blogs. Someone is diagnosed with cancer. Someone has a terrible accident. Sometimes it is the blog writer. Sometimes a child.

Yesterday I watched Iyyar go up the stairs. He has trouble going up the stairs. I've noticed it for a while, but chalked it up to his big heavy boots. Yesterday he wasn't wearing boots, and I saw his legs tremble and give under him, unable to support him. He grabbed onto the railing, and went the rest of the way on all fours, unperturbed.

And suddenly I started thinking about all the little things I've seen him do in the last few months--things I haven't thought much of because of being busy dealing with the tummy issues, the tonsils, the sleep. The way he walks sometimes. The way he can't stand up by himself, without grabbing onto something. The way he can't lift his head off the floor and sit up if he's lying on his back--something none of my kids can do. The way people have mentioned to me that he seems uncoordinated, that he doesn't seem to have a lot of muscle strength, that he's cautious physically. Individually, not things that are a big deal. Maybe he needs some OT. Together, those things are on a list of signs of something so terrible I can't think about it too much.

So I called the doctor last night. I told him what I'd been seeing. I knew he wasn't going to say it was nothing, but I was hoping for a little reassurance. I told him the diagnosis I was worried about--the worst case thing. And he said, "That was my first thought too." It's very concerning, he said. He needs to see a neurologist. I should bring him in, right away, so we can get started on this.

It could be nothing. It's probably nothing.

But maybe it's not.

Kol simcha

I tried to post this morning but Blogger wouldn't let me sign in, and now I'm tired and can't quite remember all the things I wanted to post. Oh well.

In short: I took Barak to his first chasuna last week. It was hilarious. We went shopping that morning, initially just to find a white shirt free of grape juice, blueberry yogurt or chocolate stains, but ended up buying an actual suit: Target had little boys' polyester suits in navy blue for what I would consider a reasonable price, so I bought a jacket and two pairs of pants. It was worth it just for the look on Barak's face, of barely suppressed glee at this unexpected initiation into the world of adulthood. A suit! An actual suit! (He thought it was black, like Abba's, but I couldn't quite go that far. He's four and a half; he gets navy blue.) I also bought him shiny new black Shabbos shoes, which he was in line for anyway; his current pair have an actual hole.

I had to hem the pants, but the jacket was fine, fortunately. He was incredibly excited, totally dressed and ready to go an hour early, and standing by the window asking every minute WHEN exactly our ride was arriving. WHEN? In five minutes? Two? Maybe she came already, and we missed her? He looked positively chassidish, with the white short, dark suit, no tie and payos. Hesat beautifully through the whole chuppah, stood up when everyone else did, and was completely entranced by the dancing. I couldn't get him to dance with me at all--he just spent the whole time staring at the men. When dinnertime came along, he was unimpressed.

"What's that?"

"That's chicken."

"It's chicken?"

"M-hm."

Pause. Then, with unconcealed disgust,

"Is it dead?"

"Yes, it is dead."

"I don't want to eat that."

"Okay, you don't have to. But enough with the commentary please."

"Okay. Are we going to have dessert?"

"Yes."

"Can I have it even if I don't eat the dead part?"

"Yes!"

"Okay."

I should point out here that after our Target trip, we'd stopped at the grocery store, where they have a fish case, which was full of whole dead fish, which Barak had asked about. So... yeah. Dead food was a topic of interest.

I should have taken pictures, but didn't. Alas. He'll be wearing the suit again soon enough, but it'll be yom tov when he does.

Oh, and there are plans afoot to toilet-train Iyyar. Stay tuned. I did buy him, on the ill-fated Walmart expedition, two packages of Sesame Street underwear that included two with Super Grover, if you can believe that. He loves them and carries them around by the handful, but does not seem to have connected the underwear with the act of potty-using. We'll have to work on that one.

Friday roundup

1. After several nights of almost-hourly night terrors ending with a shrieking Iyyar in my bed, kicking me, Iyyar more or less slept through the night last night. He did start a few times with the slow, monotonous wailing that has, to date, portended hysteria to come, but the full-blown howling, screaming, flailing attack never materialized--he settled himself back down without my having to do anything. This, clearly, is a Very Very Big improvement.

2. Pre-tonsillectomy, and the week or so following, Iyyar's nighttime breathing was so loud you could hear him in every room of the apartment. Now, you have to bend way over and put your ear right by his mouth even to hear him breathe. It's disconcerting, but definitely an improvement. The other thing that appears to have stopped, along with the snoring, is the drooling: yesterday I realized that his shirt, which is usually soaked in front and requires changing at least once midday, was bone dry. Wow.

3. Last night I went to Wal-Mart, which I think I've done now twice in my life. I'm hoping that the third time will be the last. I HATE Wal-Mart. When I was a kid and would go shopping with my mother, she used to say I got shopping-itis; after twenty minutes in A & S, I'd start complaining that my head hurt, I was tired, and I wanted to go home. Now, I do most of my shopping either in small local stores (food) or online (almost everything else). The main exceptions to this are Target shops, which I do once or twice a month. Target doesn't bother me; other than the rampant consumerism, I like going there, because I know where everything is, I can stock up on everything quickly, and then I won't run out of garbage bags for a while. But Wal-Mart, holy cow, it was like being 14 again. I literally got tunnel vision, it was hard to see anything clearly, and I starting feeling a sense of impending doom. I had to wait for my friend Yehudis to finish shopping before I could leave, since I'd gone with her; otherwise, I probably would'be abandoned my shopping and run for it.

4. Avtalyon has been so hilarious lately there must surely be something specific to mention here. Oh yes. Remember this song? Avtalyon loves it. Every time I play it, which is often since Jasmin decided to be a total enabler and send me the CD, he stops whatever he is doing, his eyes get really big, and he dances.

5. One of Iyyar's playgroup-mates is a boy named Moishy who likes to sing the Hashavas Aveida song, the first line of which is "Hashavas aveida, what does it mean?" I don't know what any of the other lines are, other than a mention of "return it right away," because Iyyar hasn't picked those up yet. Moishy has a toy guitar and he likes to play the guitar and belt out Hashavas Aveida at top volume. Iyyar does not have a guitar, but belts out the song at volume regularly. "Ha SHAAAVAS AH! VEI! DAH! What! DOES IT MEAN...!" He does this not quite all the time, but almost. Today, on the way to playgroup, he started singing it. And I couldn't resisit. "Iyyar, what does Hashavas Aveida mean?"

Pause.

"I don't know."

6. The amount of candy Barak gets at school is incredible. He gets candy for Shabbos party, he gets candy to make projects with (!) and every time there is a birthday he comes home with a pekel full of junk. He even got two (TWO!!) huge bags of shaloch manos from the school. Now, Barak is four and a half and he really doesn't react well to sugar. But oh, does he love it. So I did what any sensible mother would do in this situation: I bribed him. I sent him to Target with Ada, and let him pick out a small box of pirate Lego. Then I made a sticker chart, with 16 spaces on it, and every time he handed over a piece of candy he got at school, I put a star in one of the spaces. When he filled up the chart, I told him, he could have the Lego.

It took two weeks and one day to fill fifteen of them. (To be fair, Purim was in there. But still. Fifteen pieces of candy from school in two weeks and a day!) He handed everything he got over, not only willingly but enthusiastically. He's got one space left, and he'll probably fill it via the school's Shabbos party. If he doesn't, I told him he could earn a last star by doing an extra Shabbos job (usually, picking up toys/books/whatever). He'll be pretty happy tonight. His behavior has been noticeably better after school. And I already have two more little boxes of Lego stashed in the closet. I thought about whether this was a really good idea as an ongoing thing, and I decided yes, it was; the boxes of Lego are the $5-6 ones (the first one was more, but he doesn't know that) and would I pay $6 to prevent Barak from eating half a pound of sugar and artificial color? Yes, yes I would.

The next chart might have more spaces on it though.

7. Iyyar's tummy seems to be doing much better, after something of a setback following surgery. I've got him off dairy completely and taking probiotics and acidophilus, which can't hurt. Now that he's not having dairy, I've been doing a lot more fleishig cooking: one of the few meals that everyone will eat happily without complaining is chicken soup with matzo balls, so I do that midweek at least once a week. And it never fails to amuse me that neither Barak nor Iyyar ever distinguishes between meatballs and matzo balls: they are as likely to ask for matzo balls with spaghetti as they are to ask for chicken soup and meatballs.

8. Avtalyon has developed a taste for cucumbers. He loves them and will shove every available cucumber into his mouth before touching anything else. I find this very amusing: personally, I think eating cucumbers is like eating crunchy water. Harmless, but unappealing.

9. Barak also likes cucumbers. His standard favorite Shabbos lunch is cucumber and bologna sandwiches. No need for bread. He puts bologna between two slices of cucumber, nibbles off the excess bologna, and then has himself a sandwich. He'll make several that way before eating them all.

10. Avtalyon wants so much to be one of the big boys. When Iyyar and Barak are on the floor playing, he's always skulking around, poking his nose in, trying to get in on the action. Sometimes Iyyar and Barak are tolerant of this. Sometimes not.

And finally, a picture of said big boys, courtesy of Ada:


And one of the little boy, who is getting bigger daily.

Day Three

It says in the Torah that the third day after surgery is always the hardest. We had evidence of this today, with a lot of rolling around and wailing and "my mouth hurts!" After that first fantastic morning Iyyar slowed down a lot, but he's basically been okay; three-hour naps in the afternoon, kind of fussy etc., but all right as long as he gets Tylenol every 4 hours. Oh, and that bit about "he'll have bad breath"? Not a joke.

Some friends brought us Shabbos food on Friday afternoon, which was amazing--much more food than I would ever have made for us, plus apple cake, which the kids loved. And bologna! Which Avtalyon thought was fantastic.

Barak is very much enjoying the new routine of frequent popsicles, jello, and sorbet morning and evening (in which Iyyar's antibiotics have been hidden), and seems to accept the idea that this will only last until Wednesday. Oh, and today Avtalyon decided he was old enough to drive and climbed into the Little Tikes car, with not terribly successful consequences. He's too little to sit on the seat and have his feet touch the floor, so he can't actually go anywhere, which he found rather frustrating; also, climbing up on the seat was such a challenge that he kept sliding down and getting stuck underneath, requiring frequent rescue missions. None of this dissuaded him from trying again and again, of course. If at first you don't succeed, &c.

On an unrelated (is any of this related) note, I love how Iyyar pronounces "sandwich." It's "shammish." And he likes it "sho muchsh!"

Home!

Iyyar and Abba came home this morning, after getting discharged at the crack of dawn to allow Abba to get to work. Iyyar had a great night; his SpO2 never dropped below 96, which is fantastic, especially compared to the horror show of his sleep study.

I got the amoxycillin down him this morning by melting an Italian ice, mixing in the medicine (which I'd had the pharmacist flavor lemon, just to be safe), and freezing the whole thing back up. Down the hatch, no problem; same thing for the chewable grape-flavored Tylenol. If you come at him with a medicine dropper, the teeth clamp shut, so the skulduggery was definitely in order.

I can't believe the difference in him already. He's been off for months, and while a big part of it was obviously the tummy issues it looks like a lot of the general unhappiness must have been the sleep. He got home with Abba while I was dropping off Barak at carpool, and Asnat was here with Avtalyon. I walked in the door and the first thing she said was, "I can't believe how happy he is! It's the old Iyyar back!" I forgot that he used to be Tigger--just less furry, and twice as loud.

So far...

Iyyar did great in surgery and afterward. He set some kind of popsicle-eating record, such that the nurse who initially said "no such thing as too many fluids, just keep bringing them on" finally called a popsicle time-out at around 8:30 pm after the seventeenth popsicle (and that's not counting the Italian ices, or the juice). He spend the afternoon zoned out in front of Sesame Street with the popsicles; the only thing that really seemed to be bothering him was the IV and the ID tag, which he cried about every time he noticed them.

I came home an hour ago and Abba is at the hospital now, which I'm starting to feel was a mistake; I called a little while ago and heard a lot of howling. It's not that Iyyar needs me more or is more attached to me (not at all, in fact) but he doesn't settle as well with Abba, who he knows is, well, more or less wrapped around his little finger.

If all continues to go well he'll be discharged in the morning. Right now the main issue is seeing how he breathes when he's asleep. Here's hoping that all goes well, and he'll be eating his popsicles at home.

601

When I signed in to blogger I noticed that I have just hit 600 posts. So here is post number six hundred and one.

Iyyar's surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning; we have to leave at 6:30 am to get there at 7:30 for surgery at 9:10. I wish he'd gotten to bed earlier, but it was hard with Purim.

I think I'm packed; the food is in the fridge, but everything else is in two bags on a kitchen chair. Carseat in kitchen. Iyyar's blankie, a few books, Grover, and the fireman that is a present from his morah are all in his backpack (or as he puts it, pack-pack.) I'm bringing my laptop and some Sesame Street DVDs, which should come in handy. I'm not bringing overnight clothes for me; I'm going to have to come home tomorrow evening to nurse Avtalyon, and either Abba will spend the night at the hospital or I'll grab what I need and go back.

I should be editing a speech, but I really really really can't concentrate. I should probably just go to bed.

Just Tonsils

Not heart surgery, chas v'shalom. Nothing huge and scary. Just. Tonsils.

I took Iyyar for his preop physical on Friday, and asked if the results of the sleep study were in the computer. They were, and holy cow. One of his apnea episodes was so bad that his oxygen saturations dropped into the 70s. I kind of thought that if your sats were in the 70s they'd call an ambulance but my pediatrician didn't seem worried. "He really needs his tonsils out." But they wouldn't have just sent him home if they thought he wouldn't wake up the next morning, right? Right?

When Barak had his adenoids out, almost exactly two years ago, I was worried in advance but recognized that the fear [that he would die] wasn't really rational. I was worried because I was his mother, not because there was anything that wasn't totally routine about an adenoidectomy and ear tubes. With Iyyar, they're treating him as high-risk, which, I have been assured, is a Good Thing; the problems come when the high-risk kids are not identified as such. They know he tends to stop breathing (she says calmly) and are prepared to deal with such eventualities. (Me to pediatrician on Friday: "What would they do if he did stop breathing?" Her, with a casual shrug, "Bag him, put a tube down his throat. Get him breathing again." I managed not to actually faint.) He is not having his tonsils out at the local hospital where Barak had his ear tubes; instead we are going to the less local but still fairly nearby children's hospital, which has an excellent reputation and is one of the best children's hospitals in the country. Not only that, but Ada works there (though she won't be there when we are). We've been there before and have been impressed. They know what they're doing.

I know I shouldn't be this worried, and that IY"H he'll probably be just fine, and we'll be there for a couple of days or maybe three for them to keep an eye on his breathing and then he'll be miserable for a few days at home. There will be a lot of tears and ice cream and Sesame Street and then he'll be happier and he'll sleep better and this will all be behind us. And in a way I wish we could just fast forward, not even to next week, but just to Wednesday morning, just to have the waiting over with. Good thing it's Purim tonight, right?

Just tonsils. It's just tonsils.

Bits

1. Iyyar's surgery is scheduled for this coming Wednesday, as in, the day after Purim. At least I won't have much time to worry the day before.

2. It's getting really really obvious how much he needs his tonsils out. He sleeps so badly that he is impossible to wake up most mornings. To get to school on time he needs to be up by 7:30 at the absolute outside, and that means eating breakfast in the stroller. This morning he got up at five minutes to 9.

3. Avtalyon said Barak's name this morning, clear as anything. He said it a few times.

4. In other good news, Iyyar's tummy issues are, for the moment at least, gone. He says nothing about his tushy hurting, poops without commentary, and has been eating much better. I don't let him have anything with even traces of dairy anymore. Last Sunday he had some cereal that was OU-D (whey all the way down in the ingredient list) and the next day he was screaming. I think we have moved past the point where this could possibly be coincidence.

5. I need to figure out hospital knitting. When Barak got his adenoids out I did the stupidest thing imaginable, which was bring along an Eris to finish. Ha ha ha. It stayed in a bag for months before I could bring myself to repair the wreckage. This time I'm thinking Noro stripes. Interesting, but brainless.

6. The anxiety about Iyyar has settled into a sort of moderate level of panic that is almost, but not quite, enough to prevent me from doing anything else.

7. I'm feeling much better physically, though. As in, I actually cooked dinner last night AND the night before, for the first time in about a week. Now my kids have to get used to the idea that no, we do not eat cereal for dinner, all over again.

Soha soha senki

Today's been hard. Nothing in particular, just one of those days when I didn't manage to do anything right. And as if that wasn't enough, I have this stuck in my head, which, well... you probably have to be Hungarian to get the full gloom value of it. Don't bother with the English version either--it's pointless, as most English translations of Hungarian poems are.

As a point of side interest, the poet (Jozsef Attila) once wrote love letters to my great-great-aunt, who was a psychiatric nurse in one of the hospitals in which the poet (Hungarian poet, remember) spent time. (This is less impressive if you are Hungarian. Apparently he wrote a lot of love letters.) She tossed them, because, well, he was crazy. He later killed himself by jumping in front of a train. (Not because of her, I assume.) And they named a university after him. (The one I went to, in fact.)

Only in Hungary. Seriously. I mean, just imagine that here. Sylvia Plath University? Not so much.

Listen to this instead. More fun.

Sometimes

Last night was hard. I couldn't sleep, my head too full of worries about Iyyar. The minute I heard my husband fall asleep, I got out of bed, pulled on a sweater and went back to reading journal articles on obstructive sleep apnea (which, truthfully, was good for me; it's better to be informed). By the time I was really ready to sleep, it was 2 am; as I walked past the boys' room, I heard Iyyar wake up and cry for me. I went in and settled him, but it was too late; Avtalyon was up. I nursed Avtalyon back to sleep and got into my own bed, but just as I was getting under the covers I heard Iyyar wailing again. So I went back into their room and just climbed into Iyyar's bed next to him. "I'm right here," I whispered, "Go back to sleep." He gave me a look of mingled surprise and delight, and went right back to sleep with a contented smile still on his face. I went to sleep too, after a while, and slept till around five, but curled up on half (okay, two-thirds) of a toddler-sized mattress bordered on three sides by headboard, wall, and footboard (and on the fourth side by a sleep-disordered toddler) is not the path to restful slumber. I woke up at around 5:30 and got into my own bed; a few minutes later I heard Avtalyon, up for the day. My husband got him up and changed and let me stay in bed until 7:30 or so, at which point I did finally stumble out of bed and into the kitchen.

Barak was already there, dressed and ready go to. "Am I going to school this day?" he asked me, as he does every day, in his own peculiar turn of phrase. "Yes, but Iyyar's still sleeping. Did you eat breakfast?" "No." "Okay, go get a banana while I nurse Avtalyon, okay?" He did, and found the banana good. "There's no squooshy stuff and no brown! It's just white! I'm going to gobble it all up!" Avtalyon, having at this point been up for over two hours already, was ready for a nap by the end of the nursing session; I went to put him down and was surprised to find, on my return, Barak standing there in coat and mittens, totally ready to go. I was so tired it was as though someone had hit the fast-forward button--wait, wasn't he just standing there not in a coat? What happened? I looked at the clock, and saw that we still had ten minutes. I looked at the counter, and saw a bag of Brussels cookies. I wanted one.

"Barak, if I do something that I am never ever going to do again, are you going to want me to do it again or will you just accept it as a pleasant surprise?"

"I'm going to just assept it as a pleasant surprise."

"Okay." I took out two cookies and handed him one. I cracked open a diet coke and took a swig. We stood there munching, and just as I was contemplating a second cookie for each of us, Abba walked into the kitchen. "Abba, I've been meaning to talk to you about these hallucinations you've been having. Because you're not seeing anything at all unusual right now. You and your dad both have this problem, I've noticed it before." I passed Barak another cookie and we crunched on companionably.

"Yeah, I should probably look into that, shouldn't I."

"Uh-huh." Crunch, crunch, crunch.

"Abba, can I have some milk?"

"That part's not a hallucination. You can give him the milk."

"Um, okay."

Someone, at least, had a very pleasant morning.

In which I don't even know where to begin

Earlier today I had in mind the post I was going to write tonight. It was going to be quite the post. I was going to bring you all up to date on the soap opera that has been our household for the last week or so. I was going to vent. I was going to yell and scream. I was going to bellow my outrage to the very corners of the Internet.

Yeah, well, I was going to. But it's 11:20 and I'm too tired, and I already told it all to Grandma E on the phone earlier. So you get the short, drained, low-volume version.

1. I have bronchitis. I had another episode of asthma or bronchospasm or whatever you want to call it on Shabbos, and on Sunday I got antibiotics. It all sounds so quick and easy when you put it in one sentence like that, doesn't it? Believe me, it wasn't.

2. Iyyar needs his tonsils and adenoids out and it all sounds rather scary and urgent. At the last ENT appointment (which, at the time, sounded scary to me) I was told to schedule the sleep study, and then make a followup appointment two weeks later to discuss the results, which (said the good doctor) took two weeks to come in. I was surprised, therefore, to get a call from the doctor this morning. Somehow or other he had the results already. I did not feel that this boded well. I was correct.

The sleep study was awful. Really really bad.

[Blog post interrupted to go deal with screaming children.]

One of the numbers that should have been, at most, 5 was in fact 80. That one sticks in my head. Anyway, he has very severe sleep apnea, and while this means he really needs his tonsils out, it also means that he is considered very high risk, which means doing it at the children's hospital, with an ICU available, etc. The doctor was explaining to me all the risks (yes, I want to know, but I don't!) and at the end there was a bit of a pause. Which I filled by telling him, point blank, "Don't kill my baby."

There was another pause after that. Apparently no one has ever told him that before. Strange, isn't it?

3. Work is insane. Quite literally in at least two respects. I can't get into more detail here because I don't blog about work. But oh, if I did... I would have a lot of material.

4. It's my anniversary today. Six years! And we still like each other most of the time. (Okay, there were a few minutes yesterday when I wanted to kill him. But only a few.)

5. I'd like to tell you about the appointment I had on Sunday morning about my inability to breathe. I'd also like to tell you about the total jerk of an osteopath I saw, and about his inability to imagine that I had accurately read the package insert that came with the albuterol inhaler, or that I knew the difference between "teratogenic" and "tumorogenic." I'd like to tell you about how much his attitude, and his disinclination to get his information right, ticked me off. But I'm tired, so I won't. Instead, I'll let you read the following, cut and pasted from the original. Note that the correspondent who can't read package inserts is, inexplicably, the only one capable of using the shift key.

----- Message -----
From: UBERIMMA
Sent: 3/1/09 07:38 PM
To: NAME WITHHELD ON THE ADVICE OF THE CHOFETZ CHAIM, DO
Subject: Medication Advice

Dear Dr. Withheld,

When I came home I checked up on albuterol online. It is indeed an FDA category C drug, with both teratogenic and tumorogenic risks, not a category A as you assured me this morning. Also, so far as I can tell the categorization system is per the FDA, not the WHO.

Summary can be found here:

http://www.drugs.com/albuterol.html

Fuller info here:

http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/archives/fdaDrugInfo.cfm?archiveid=3780

The package insert advises to either discontinue the medication or discontinue breastfeeding.

I thought you should be aware of this.

Uberimma

To:

Uberimma

From:

NAME WITHHELD, DO

Received:

03/02/2009 1:20 PM

thanks for the update. i must have misspoken if i used the term "class A'.
as you know, the FDA category system refers to drugs in pregnancy, not drugs in lactation.
in our discussion yesterday i was referring to the World Health Organization listing, which for albuterol is
"1. Compatible with breastfeeding
Drugs are classified as compatible with breastfeeding if there are no known or theoretical
contraindications for their use, and it is considered safe for the mother to take the drug and continue
to breastfeed."
different organizations and dr's do use different classification systems and have differences of opinion.
cautions for using a drug are weighed against expected benefits and i knew you were aware of the information on albuterol since we discussed it. i'm sorry for the mix up.