Avtalyon is 13 months old today. In his honor:
1. We have a First Years handsfree gate in the entrance to our kitchen. The pedal that opens the gate requires 40 lb of pressure to open, so babies and toddlers can't open it, but an adult (or a smart preschooler who jumps on it really hard) can. Today I noticed Avtalyon holding on to the gate with both hands, putting one of his pajama'd feet on the pedal, and pushing--trying to open it himself.
2. Avtalyon loves light switches. Every time I walk past one holding him, he wants to flick it on, then off, then on, then off. Sometimes he does it without my even slowing down for him. This can come in very handy on Shabbos, but you have to be careful that he doesn't get his own ideas about which lights should and should not be on.
3. He splits his nighttime sleep between the big crib in the boys' room and the pack and play in my office. He sleeps fine in either one now, but if Iyyar wakes up in the night (as happens often these days) he wakes up too, and has a hard time settling back down.
4. He is in size 4 diapers now. And they're not too big at all, even the Pampers.
5. He likes his little soft blue leather shoes with the turtles. When you're putting them on him, he is interested enough to let you hold him still.
6. He really, really, really wants to get his hands on the cordless phone.
7. He likes drinking water from a sippy cup. I tried giving him whole milk the other day, though, and he was unimpressed. Cheerios in whole milk, fed to him with a spoon, are acceptable.
8. He likes to go to sleep with a pacifier in his mouth and his blankie tag in his hands. He must suck on the tag in the night, though, because it's getting all ratty there.
9. He's got three teeth on top and two on the bottom. I think a fourth one is coming in on top--he's been fussy lately.
10. He's not totally bald anymore--just starting with the peach fuzz.
11. Yesterday, when Ada left, he walked after her, waved, and said "ba ba!" as in, bye bye! And when he heard Barak come in the door, he said Barak's name, absolutely clearly.
12. It's impossible to nurse him if anything else interesting is going on in the room. He's too distracted and keeps flipping around sideways to look, without troubling to break his latch first. Ouch.
13. He's just started to display signs of baby temper. Last week, he threw a full-blown baby tantrum, as in, he flung himself down on his stomach, beat his hands and feet on the floor, and howled. I laughed, and I think he was slightly insulted. Then he forgave me.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tired
This'll be a short one--much to report, but not much time.
Iyyar's been coughing for a while. Not a lot, but when he does it sounds pretty bad, and it's really not going away. I mentioned it to the ENT when we were there, and he didn't seem bothered; I mentioned it again to the nurse practitioner last week, and she said that if the whole family was coughing (well, I am, and Abba is a little) and nobody had a fever, I didn't need to bring him in. Yesterday, though, he really sounded bad, and I was feeling worse myself--I'm always tired, but it's usually because I don't sleep enough. Lately, I've been tired in an I-can't-move, all-my-muscles-ache kind of a way.
Last night, though, I woke up and couldn't breathe. My chest hurt too much to inhale, and it was going up my neck, down my arm, into my back. It was pretty scary, and I couldn't even get enough air to tell my husband that I was having a problem. I managed after a little bit to get up and get into a hot shower--the theory being that maybe I'd pulled a bunch of muscles coughing. (All of them at once, though? Really?) That was when I realized that it wasn't just really cold in here, I was having chills, and then I found a thermometer and realized I had a fever. Great. I found another blanket, got back into bed, and by that point was breathing okay--well enough that I'd discarded the idea of going to the ER but thought a trip to the doctor in the morning was in order.
I called in sick, spent the babysitter portion of the morning napping, and kept Iyyar home from playgroup because there was no way I was going to be out pushing a double stroller in the cold. This afternoon, we both went (by cab) to the doctor. "Does anyone in your family have asthma?" he asked me. I said no, not that I knew of. He pulled out a little tube with beads in it. "Look, I'm going to blow into here." He stood up and blew and the bead went up to 700. "Okay, now you do it. Take the deepest breath you can," (it wasn't very deep) "and blow." I did, thinking, hey, that wasn't too bad. Then I looked at it. 300. Oh. "Try again." I did; 300 again. "Let's get you an inhaler." What? I took two puffs and ten minutes later blew into the thing again. 400 this time. Huh.
Anyway, he thinks I had an asthma attack brought on by a respiratory infection; he gave me an inhaler. My chest still hurts and I still can't get a good breath, and I'm still dragging around, but I feel a whole lot better than I did last night. Better than walking pneumonia, anyway, which was my guess as of yesterday.
And Iyyar is fine; lungs clear, and the doctor mentioned getting him an inhaler as well but when I said he didn't seem bothered by the coughing said, then let's just let it go. Oh, and he looked into Iyyar's ears and said they looked fine. I guess we'll see what the ENT says next time--followup in two weeks, after Iyyar's sleep study, which is tonight. Iyyar and Abba are leaving in half an hour, so I'd better go make sure everything's ready.
Iyyar's been coughing for a while. Not a lot, but when he does it sounds pretty bad, and it's really not going away. I mentioned it to the ENT when we were there, and he didn't seem bothered; I mentioned it again to the nurse practitioner last week, and she said that if the whole family was coughing (well, I am, and Abba is a little) and nobody had a fever, I didn't need to bring him in. Yesterday, though, he really sounded bad, and I was feeling worse myself--I'm always tired, but it's usually because I don't sleep enough. Lately, I've been tired in an I-can't-move, all-my-muscles-ache kind of a way.
Last night, though, I woke up and couldn't breathe. My chest hurt too much to inhale, and it was going up my neck, down my arm, into my back. It was pretty scary, and I couldn't even get enough air to tell my husband that I was having a problem. I managed after a little bit to get up and get into a hot shower--the theory being that maybe I'd pulled a bunch of muscles coughing. (All of them at once, though? Really?) That was when I realized that it wasn't just really cold in here, I was having chills, and then I found a thermometer and realized I had a fever. Great. I found another blanket, got back into bed, and by that point was breathing okay--well enough that I'd discarded the idea of going to the ER but thought a trip to the doctor in the morning was in order.
I called in sick, spent the babysitter portion of the morning napping, and kept Iyyar home from playgroup because there was no way I was going to be out pushing a double stroller in the cold. This afternoon, we both went (by cab) to the doctor. "Does anyone in your family have asthma?" he asked me. I said no, not that I knew of. He pulled out a little tube with beads in it. "Look, I'm going to blow into here." He stood up and blew and the bead went up to 700. "Okay, now you do it. Take the deepest breath you can," (it wasn't very deep) "and blow." I did, thinking, hey, that wasn't too bad. Then I looked at it. 300. Oh. "Try again." I did; 300 again. "Let's get you an inhaler." What? I took two puffs and ten minutes later blew into the thing again. 400 this time. Huh.
Anyway, he thinks I had an asthma attack brought on by a respiratory infection; he gave me an inhaler. My chest still hurts and I still can't get a good breath, and I'm still dragging around, but I feel a whole lot better than I did last night. Better than walking pneumonia, anyway, which was my guess as of yesterday.
And Iyyar is fine; lungs clear, and the doctor mentioned getting him an inhaler as well but when I said he didn't seem bothered by the coughing said, then let's just let it go. Oh, and he looked into Iyyar's ears and said they looked fine. I guess we'll see what the ENT says next time--followup in two weeks, after Iyyar's sleep study, which is tonight. Iyyar and Abba are leaving in half an hour, so I'd better go make sure everything's ready.
French fries
Yesterday, more or less on a whim, I took the boys for French fries after school. I had asked the person who takes Barak home in the afternoon to drop him by Iyyar's playgroup, and so we were all together and out for a walk, right by the French fry store. Too much to resist.
We had our fries, and I supervised Barak's desire to feed Avtalyon: "Not the hard ones. The long soft ones, like these. He only needs one at a time. " Avtalyon managed to suck down a couple of fries, Barak had a blast, and Iyyar, who doesn't have much appetite these days, played with his and sang but didn't eat very much. At one point Barak asked me what was inside the fries, and I told him potato. When we were done, I asked Barak to put his garbage in the trash can, which he cooperatively started to do. Then he noticed the picture on the French fry bag--a very happy-looking potato, complete with face, arms and legs, leaning smugly against a large pile of fries.
"Who's that? Is that a potato?" he asked.
"Yup, that's a potato."
"What's he doing?"
"I think he's saying, look at all these yummy fries."
Pause. Then, softly and almost horror-struck,
"Were those his friends?"
I don't think I came up with a very convincing explanation for that one. Instead, I changed the subject. "Barak, do you know who really really likes French fries?"
"Who?"
"Grandma. Grandma really likes French fries."
"Does she eat them a lot?"
"I don't think she eats them a lot but when she gets them she really likes eating them."
"Does she gobble them all up?"
"Yup. Just like you do."
Solemnly, in an attempt to determine exactly how Grandma eats French fries: "Does she slurp them up like a vacuum cleaner?"
"No, she's politer than that. Grandma has very good manners."
"Oh."
We had our fries, and I supervised Barak's desire to feed Avtalyon: "Not the hard ones. The long soft ones, like these. He only needs one at a time. " Avtalyon managed to suck down a couple of fries, Barak had a blast, and Iyyar, who doesn't have much appetite these days, played with his and sang but didn't eat very much. At one point Barak asked me what was inside the fries, and I told him potato. When we were done, I asked Barak to put his garbage in the trash can, which he cooperatively started to do. Then he noticed the picture on the French fry bag--a very happy-looking potato, complete with face, arms and legs, leaning smugly against a large pile of fries.
"Who's that? Is that a potato?" he asked.
"Yup, that's a potato."
"What's he doing?"
"I think he's saying, look at all these yummy fries."
Pause. Then, softly and almost horror-struck,
"Were those his friends?"
I don't think I came up with a very convincing explanation for that one. Instead, I changed the subject. "Barak, do you know who really really likes French fries?"
"Who?"
"Grandma. Grandma really likes French fries."
"Does she eat them a lot?"
"I don't think she eats them a lot but when she gets them she really likes eating them."
"Does she gobble them all up?"
"Yup. Just like you do."
Solemnly, in an attempt to determine exactly how Grandma eats French fries: "Does she slurp them up like a vacuum cleaner?"
"No, she's politer than that. Grandma has very good manners."
"Oh."
Sunday, February 22, 2009
more updates
1. First things first--Iyyar did in fact poop yesterday. Three times. (I know, you were all holding your breaths, right?) But this morning he didn't eat much breakfast or lunch, moped around, and then by lunchtime burst into tears saying he didn't feel good. Half an hour of rolling around on his bed with his blankie and Grover later, though, he seemed fine. He happily shared a bowl of cereal with Abba and is out with him and Barak now. Avtalyon is napping and I should probably be cleaning up, but I choose to sit here lumpenly instead. And blog, of course.
2. Avtalyon is shattering all known cuteness records. Today he picked up a toy phone and intoned "Iiiiiiiii," into it, very seriously, several times. His other fun activity of the day was picking up an empty, capless Avent bottle, dropping a yellow piece of Lego (the medium-sized kind) into it, and trying to get it out with his fist. The proportions of his hand to the bottle neck make this impossible, so it's kind of a frustrating exercise; after a while he gets mad and cries, I take the bottle off his fist and tip it upside down, and the piece of yellow Lego falls out. He then looks at me and grins, picks up the Lego, drops it back into the bottle, and puts his hand back in. Lather, rinse, repeat.
3. Last week my husband needed to put a program on his laptop, which is almost six years old and very full of stuff. So he took all the pictures on there--of which there were many--and moved them onto my computer. This meant that I rediscovered a bunch of knitting pictures I'd forgotten I had taken, some of them of knitting I've already given away and had forgotten I'd even done.
Naturally, the next thing to do was start adding those projects to Ravelry, which I did. One of them was a pi shawl--an Elizabeth Zimmerman creation that is my only piece of lace knitting to date. I made some mention of it being my "first and probably last lace shawl."
Can you see where this is heading?
After I added the project I took a look at some of the other pi shawls, saw one done in Trekking XXL, thought about getting a similar effect with my box of Koigu scraps, and, well... I'm on the 568-stitch section now.
4. I am running out of ideas for things to cook. I've taken Iyyar off dairy again, and since he's not feeling good he's being really picky. Barak is always picky but does have a reasonable range of things he'll eat; however, most of them contain dairy or things Iyyar won't touch (like raw vegetables). If you were to draw a Venn diagram representing the range of healthy food items that Barak and Iyyar like, there would be very little overlap.
My general philosophy on picky eaters is "This is dinner, take it or leave it." I don't force anyone to eat anything, nor do I offer alternatives. However, given how Iyyar's been losing weight I can't let him skip meals--meaning I really need to be offering him something he'll eat at every meal, and it wouldn't be very nice of me to only make things that Barak hates. This means that currently, we're down to about three recipes.
Complicating things massively is that Barak won't eat meat, except for bologna and hot dogs (yecch) so if I make, say, spaghetti and meatballs, Iyyar and Avtalyon are thrilled but Barak ends up eating plain spaghetti with spinach. And I truly don't think meat as it is produced in this country is good for anyone, so I don't want to be forcing Barak to eat it--especially since I was myself a vegetarian for 12 years and fully understand his "I can't possibly eat THAT!" reaction.
Any ideas for pareve, kid-friendly, quick and easy meals? Ideally, I'm looking for ideas that don't involve scrambled eggs, Hungarian noodles, Trader Joe's chickenless nuggets, corn, carrot pancakes, peanut butter sandwiches, or spaghetti, because I've got those covered already.
5. Barak is being really sweet lately. Not every second, obviously, but often. He's bigger now--closing in on five in a couple of months--and much more interesting to talk to. It's also getting more interesting to listen to him play. Last Friday both of our guests canceled on us at the last minute (as in, half an hour before licht, but that's another story) and my promise to Barak that he could come out of bed when our guests arrived, as long as Iyyar was asleep, hit a snag. Not only that, but Iyyar's four-hour nap that afternoon meant that he wasn't interested in falling asleep, and in fact stayed awake until past 9--pestering Barak the whole time.
At 9:15 pm, after Abba and I had finished eating our own dinner and he'd gone out to a shalom zachor, out came Barak. "Iyyar's asleep. Can I play with little Lego?"
What to do? I'd told him he could come out if he stayed in bed quietly till Iyyar fell asleep, and he'd kept his part of the bargain. I'd also told him he could play with little Lego, which he hardly ever gets to do, since it's a choking hazard for Avtalyon and Iyyar scatters it on the floor.
"Okay," I told him. "But just for a little while, and very, very, very quietly."
---
This is where I comment that Blogger autosave is not to be trusted. I had finished this post with an entertaining roundup of Barak's Lego session, wherein I got to witness the construction of an amphibious helicopter and listen to Barak's commentary on same. I also mentioned the ridiculous cuteness of his green bear pajamas, how Avtalyon likes to toddle around the house with one hand on his chest a la Napoleon, and how Iyyar has been spending a lot of time lately talking about his boot powers (apparently, his boots have superpowers. And to think I got them on clearance at LL Bean.) Alas, the end of the post is gone, so you'll have to content yourself with this, I suppose. And I'll have to go clean the kitchen, because it is incredibly unlikely to clean itself.
2. Avtalyon is shattering all known cuteness records. Today he picked up a toy phone and intoned "Iiiiiiiii," into it, very seriously, several times. His other fun activity of the day was picking up an empty, capless Avent bottle, dropping a yellow piece of Lego (the medium-sized kind) into it, and trying to get it out with his fist. The proportions of his hand to the bottle neck make this impossible, so it's kind of a frustrating exercise; after a while he gets mad and cries, I take the bottle off his fist and tip it upside down, and the piece of yellow Lego falls out. He then looks at me and grins, picks up the Lego, drops it back into the bottle, and puts his hand back in. Lather, rinse, repeat.
3. Last week my husband needed to put a program on his laptop, which is almost six years old and very full of stuff. So he took all the pictures on there--of which there were many--and moved them onto my computer. This meant that I rediscovered a bunch of knitting pictures I'd forgotten I had taken, some of them of knitting I've already given away and had forgotten I'd even done.
Naturally, the next thing to do was start adding those projects to Ravelry, which I did. One of them was a pi shawl--an Elizabeth Zimmerman creation that is my only piece of lace knitting to date. I made some mention of it being my "first and probably last lace shawl."
Can you see where this is heading?
After I added the project I took a look at some of the other pi shawls, saw one done in Trekking XXL, thought about getting a similar effect with my box of Koigu scraps, and, well... I'm on the 568-stitch section now.
4. I am running out of ideas for things to cook. I've taken Iyyar off dairy again, and since he's not feeling good he's being really picky. Barak is always picky but does have a reasonable range of things he'll eat; however, most of them contain dairy or things Iyyar won't touch (like raw vegetables). If you were to draw a Venn diagram representing the range of healthy food items that Barak and Iyyar like, there would be very little overlap.
My general philosophy on picky eaters is "This is dinner, take it or leave it." I don't force anyone to eat anything, nor do I offer alternatives. However, given how Iyyar's been losing weight I can't let him skip meals--meaning I really need to be offering him something he'll eat at every meal, and it wouldn't be very nice of me to only make things that Barak hates. This means that currently, we're down to about three recipes.
Complicating things massively is that Barak won't eat meat, except for bologna and hot dogs (yecch) so if I make, say, spaghetti and meatballs, Iyyar and Avtalyon are thrilled but Barak ends up eating plain spaghetti with spinach. And I truly don't think meat as it is produced in this country is good for anyone, so I don't want to be forcing Barak to eat it--especially since I was myself a vegetarian for 12 years and fully understand his "I can't possibly eat THAT!" reaction.
Any ideas for pareve, kid-friendly, quick and easy meals? Ideally, I'm looking for ideas that don't involve scrambled eggs, Hungarian noodles, Trader Joe's chickenless nuggets, corn, carrot pancakes, peanut butter sandwiches, or spaghetti, because I've got those covered already.
5. Barak is being really sweet lately. Not every second, obviously, but often. He's bigger now--closing in on five in a couple of months--and much more interesting to talk to. It's also getting more interesting to listen to him play. Last Friday both of our guests canceled on us at the last minute (as in, half an hour before licht, but that's another story) and my promise to Barak that he could come out of bed when our guests arrived, as long as Iyyar was asleep, hit a snag. Not only that, but Iyyar's four-hour nap that afternoon meant that he wasn't interested in falling asleep, and in fact stayed awake until past 9--pestering Barak the whole time.
At 9:15 pm, after Abba and I had finished eating our own dinner and he'd gone out to a shalom zachor, out came Barak. "Iyyar's asleep. Can I play with little Lego?"
What to do? I'd told him he could come out if he stayed in bed quietly till Iyyar fell asleep, and he'd kept his part of the bargain. I'd also told him he could play with little Lego, which he hardly ever gets to do, since it's a choking hazard for Avtalyon and Iyyar scatters it on the floor.
"Okay," I told him. "But just for a little while, and very, very, very quietly."
---
This is where I comment that Blogger autosave is not to be trusted. I had finished this post with an entertaining roundup of Barak's Lego session, wherein I got to witness the construction of an amphibious helicopter and listen to Barak's commentary on same. I also mentioned the ridiculous cuteness of his green bear pajamas, how Avtalyon likes to toddle around the house with one hand on his chest a la Napoleon, and how Iyyar has been spending a lot of time lately talking about his boot powers (apparently, his boots have superpowers. And to think I got them on clearance at LL Bean.) Alas, the end of the post is gone, so you'll have to content yourself with this, I suppose. And I'll have to go clean the kitchen, because it is incredibly unlikely to clean itself.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Square one
Last Sunday, Iyyar started looking uncomfortable. And didn't poop. Monday same. Tuesday, he started in with the kind of crying and screaming we haven't seen since early January. Wednesday was more of the same, and last night he woke up at 10 hysterical, rolling around on the floor and wailing that his tushy hurt and he couldn't poop. My friend Yehudis, in a great act of chesed, drove over to the 24-hour drugstore for us at 11 at night to get suppositories--which didn't work (and by the time she came over, he was all happy again, after an hour of Grover videos in my office). Then he started crying again, then he fell asleep, then woke up screaming with a dirty diaper (but not dirty enough) at around 3 am. This morning he seemed okay, woke up on his own and wanted to go to school, because he's supposed to be Shabbos Tatty today. We got as far as the door of playgroup when suddenly he fell apart. "I don't feel good..." and we turned around and went back home, by way of the drugstore, where I picked up more Miralax, even though I don't think it does him a bit of good personally.
So, looks like starting the dairy again was a mistake. He got the second pinworm pill yesterday--so that can't be the problem, because he was already miserable before that. I talked to the GI doctor's nurse practitioner yesterday, and have another call in today. They don't seem to have any more ideas. The stool samples came back negative for parasites and all his bloodwork, B"H, looks good. But clearly, there is something wrong.
So, looks like starting the dairy again was a mistake. He got the second pinworm pill yesterday--so that can't be the problem, because he was already miserable before that. I talked to the GI doctor's nurse practitioner yesterday, and have another call in today. They don't seem to have any more ideas. The stool samples came back negative for parasites and all his bloodwork, B"H, looks good. But clearly, there is something wrong.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Motzai Shabbos
I just put sitemeter back on here, after a few years of having it off. I discovered that I have an average of 25 visits per day, which is nice; I'm surprised that many people read this. I also discovered that on Saturday, I get ten readers. Which, I guess, says something about my readership.
So... where to begin?
Avtalyon had his birthday last week. That was fun. He got chocolate cake and ice cream, which he ate, of course, with his hands, and while I'm sure some of it made it into his mouth (he was singing the happy food song, so it must have) the rest wound up evenly distributed over his face, pajamas, and high chair. Also last week was Avtalyon's introduction to spaghetti and meatballs. Eating spaghetti and meatballs is fun, but nothing like as fun as seeing them eaten by a pair of one-year-olds (we had some very small guests that night too).
In other news, all the boys are now sleeping in the same room. I tried this a couple of weeks ago and it didn't work out very well, because when Barak woke up screaming (which doesn't happen every night, but often enough) I ended up with a lot of screaming, and Avtalyon got relocated back to the pack and play in my office pretty quickly. I have cribs in every bedroom right now; the regular crib in the kids' room and pack and plays in both our bedroom and my office. The walls are thin and the kids are loud, and Avtalyon is a light sleeper, so he frequently gets moved from one crib to the next, often in the middle of the night. Anyway, I just put him down in the kids' room for the first time, and it's still quiet there. The night is, of course, still young.
And as for the Iyyar medical saga... well, it continues. The GI doctor, as you may remember from our last thrilling episode, ordered a bunch of tests, including stool samples for parasites and some blood work. Early last week, I noticed Barak sticking his hands in his underwear and scratching his bottom. "Barak! Don't do that!" He withdrew his hands, guiltily. The next day we were at CVS for something and I saw him doing it again. "Barak!" This time he didn't stop. "It's so itchy."
Hang on. Did I blog about this already? I did, didn't I?
I need to sleep more...
Anyway, yes, so, Barak had pinworms, which meant dosing both him and Iyyar, which I did, and now Barak is no longer itchy Iyyar is doing way better, so much so that I reintroduced dairy gradually last week and he is now back to his usual diet and seems fine. He occasionally complains that his tushy hurts him, but not in a major way, and he's been going every day. So, that's good.
Thursday, I took him to the ENT, fully expecting to be told he needed his tonsils out. I was rather taken aback, however, to hear that the doctor first wanted to do a sleep study, because otherwise my insurance would not approve doing the surgery at the local children's hospital, and he wanted to do it there because they had a PICU, and Iyyar might need one, and they wanted to be cautious.
??????!!!!!!!
I do think Iyyar needs his tonsils out. I don't think he breathes easily, I don't think he sleeps well, and I am pretty sure his enormous tonsils are a cause of that. I also think that his tonsils are part of how prone he is to choke on food--I still feed him like I would feed an 18-month-old, with nothing hard and no chokeable pieces. I think the tonsils should come out. But, hello, NOT IF IT'S GOING TO LAND HIM IN PEDIATRIC INTENSIVE CARE!!
I think what happened--and I told this to my pediatrician on the phone late on Friday--is that I started giving the ENT doctor the abbreviated saga of Iyyar's GI woes, and the doctor heard this and immediately thought that he was looking at some kind of medically complicated child, and decided to be really cautious. I am all for caution. I applaud caution, especially in people who are considering performing surgery on my child. But I thought the communication might have been a little lacking there.
I asked him to explain to me exactly why he was being so cautious--whether it was something he was seeing in Iyyar, or something I had said. He said it was what he'd heard from me. Fair enough. He also said that Iyyar's ears were packed with gunk--I can't see anything, but clearly he did--and that he had no motility in his eardrum, his ears were full of fluid and he couldn't hear (he also wanted an audiogram). I have no problem with an audiogram but I'm really sure Iyyar can hear--maybe just in the other ear, which he couldn't look at because of the gunk, but he doesn't have any hearing loss that's affecting his communication with me, at least. (I told this to the doctor and got the body language loud and clear in reply. "You don't believe me. That's okay. You see what you see in his ear, which is that it's full of gunk. I'm telling you what I see, which is that he communicates fine. Now you have more information.")
Barak could not hear at all, which is why we got the ear tubes. Iyyar hears fine. I don't have a problem with doing a sleep study, which is at worst an inconvenience--okay, a fairly major one, being that we have no car and a nursing baby--but we'll manage. I don't know why I came out of the appointment so mightily freaked--maybe it was that I felt I wasn't communicating, or that the doctor wasn't listening, or maybe I was just flipping out from having heard the phrase "pediatric ICU" uttered in conjunction with MY CHILD.
The next morning I called my regular pediatrician and left a message saying I wanted to talk to her. She called back right before Shabbos and I communicated my freaked-dom to her; I also said that I was worried because the ENT was making clinical decisions based on things I had said about Iyyar's health, and I didn't know what the heck was going on with him myself. I think it's pinworms, but am I really sure? No. She was reassuring; do the sleep study anyway, she said, because it can't hurt. Go to the followup, and take it from there. Your insurance will cover a second opinion, especially if it's for a surgery, because they'll be hoping they won't have to cover the surgery. So, that's the plan. And open enrolment is coming up soon at work--I'm going to look into switching to the PPO.
Anyway. Sleep study scheduled for Wednesday night. I'm supposed to make a followup appointment two weeks later, for an audiogram and another checkup with the ENT. Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.
So... where to begin?
Avtalyon had his birthday last week. That was fun. He got chocolate cake and ice cream, which he ate, of course, with his hands, and while I'm sure some of it made it into his mouth (he was singing the happy food song, so it must have) the rest wound up evenly distributed over his face, pajamas, and high chair. Also last week was Avtalyon's introduction to spaghetti and meatballs. Eating spaghetti and meatballs is fun, but nothing like as fun as seeing them eaten by a pair of one-year-olds (we had some very small guests that night too).
In other news, all the boys are now sleeping in the same room. I tried this a couple of weeks ago and it didn't work out very well, because when Barak woke up screaming (which doesn't happen every night, but often enough) I ended up with a lot of screaming, and Avtalyon got relocated back to the pack and play in my office pretty quickly. I have cribs in every bedroom right now; the regular crib in the kids' room and pack and plays in both our bedroom and my office. The walls are thin and the kids are loud, and Avtalyon is a light sleeper, so he frequently gets moved from one crib to the next, often in the middle of the night. Anyway, I just put him down in the kids' room for the first time, and it's still quiet there. The night is, of course, still young.
And as for the Iyyar medical saga... well, it continues. The GI doctor, as you may remember from our last thrilling episode, ordered a bunch of tests, including stool samples for parasites and some blood work. Early last week, I noticed Barak sticking his hands in his underwear and scratching his bottom. "Barak! Don't do that!" He withdrew his hands, guiltily. The next day we were at CVS for something and I saw him doing it again. "Barak!" This time he didn't stop. "It's so itchy."
Hang on. Did I blog about this already? I did, didn't I?
I need to sleep more...
Anyway, yes, so, Barak had pinworms, which meant dosing both him and Iyyar, which I did, and now Barak is no longer itchy Iyyar is doing way better, so much so that I reintroduced dairy gradually last week and he is now back to his usual diet and seems fine. He occasionally complains that his tushy hurts him, but not in a major way, and he's been going every day. So, that's good.
Thursday, I took him to the ENT, fully expecting to be told he needed his tonsils out. I was rather taken aback, however, to hear that the doctor first wanted to do a sleep study, because otherwise my insurance would not approve doing the surgery at the local children's hospital, and he wanted to do it there because they had a PICU, and Iyyar might need one, and they wanted to be cautious.
??????!!!!!!!
I do think Iyyar needs his tonsils out. I don't think he breathes easily, I don't think he sleeps well, and I am pretty sure his enormous tonsils are a cause of that. I also think that his tonsils are part of how prone he is to choke on food--I still feed him like I would feed an 18-month-old, with nothing hard and no chokeable pieces. I think the tonsils should come out. But, hello, NOT IF IT'S GOING TO LAND HIM IN PEDIATRIC INTENSIVE CARE!!
I think what happened--and I told this to my pediatrician on the phone late on Friday--is that I started giving the ENT doctor the abbreviated saga of Iyyar's GI woes, and the doctor heard this and immediately thought that he was looking at some kind of medically complicated child, and decided to be really cautious. I am all for caution. I applaud caution, especially in people who are considering performing surgery on my child. But I thought the communication might have been a little lacking there.
I asked him to explain to me exactly why he was being so cautious--whether it was something he was seeing in Iyyar, or something I had said. He said it was what he'd heard from me. Fair enough. He also said that Iyyar's ears were packed with gunk--I can't see anything, but clearly he did--and that he had no motility in his eardrum, his ears were full of fluid and he couldn't hear (he also wanted an audiogram). I have no problem with an audiogram but I'm really sure Iyyar can hear--maybe just in the other ear, which he couldn't look at because of the gunk, but he doesn't have any hearing loss that's affecting his communication with me, at least. (I told this to the doctor and got the body language loud and clear in reply. "You don't believe me. That's okay. You see what you see in his ear, which is that it's full of gunk. I'm telling you what I see, which is that he communicates fine. Now you have more information.")
Barak could not hear at all, which is why we got the ear tubes. Iyyar hears fine. I don't have a problem with doing a sleep study, which is at worst an inconvenience--okay, a fairly major one, being that we have no car and a nursing baby--but we'll manage. I don't know why I came out of the appointment so mightily freaked--maybe it was that I felt I wasn't communicating, or that the doctor wasn't listening, or maybe I was just flipping out from having heard the phrase "pediatric ICU" uttered in conjunction with MY CHILD.
The next morning I called my regular pediatrician and left a message saying I wanted to talk to her. She called back right before Shabbos and I communicated my freaked-dom to her; I also said that I was worried because the ENT was making clinical decisions based on things I had said about Iyyar's health, and I didn't know what the heck was going on with him myself. I think it's pinworms, but am I really sure? No. She was reassuring; do the sleep study anyway, she said, because it can't hurt. Go to the followup, and take it from there. Your insurance will cover a second opinion, especially if it's for a surgery, because they'll be hoping they won't have to cover the surgery. So, that's the plan. And open enrolment is coming up soon at work--I'm going to look into switching to the PPO.
Anyway. Sleep study scheduled for Wednesday night. I'm supposed to make a followup appointment two weeks later, for an audiogram and another checkup with the ENT. Stay tuned, as always, to this exciting channel.
Friday, February 06, 2009
It worked last time
I've been thinking lately of two books I loved when I was little that I'd really like to find for my kids. One of them is A House for Barbapapa, which isn't in print anymore in English but is on Amazon in French (no problem, I can read it to them in English and the pictures are the best part anyway). The other one is harder.
Does anyone remember a picture book (okay, this is a good one) about a little girl who goes sailing on a boat all by herself, except that she brings her baby brother along? The illustrations are very soft watercolors, and very detailed of the inside of the boat, and I think there's a peach tree on the boat that she puts there so that she can feed her baby brother peaches (or something like that... sorry, it's been about 30 years!) I have a hazy recollection of the ship being called the Morning Something, and I definitely remember a wonderful illustration of her and her little brother in a bassinet and the inside of the ship, and my own fantasies of having such a ship myself.
Ideas?
In other news...
[If you're reading this while eating your breakfast, maybe it'd be a good idea click away now. Go read the news or something, and come back later.]
pinworms!
Yes! More pinworms! A couple days ago I started noticing Barak reaching inside his underwear to scratch his bottom. At bathtime, I saw a lot of red marks on his tush, and thought, hmm, that doesn't look like a rash but what is it? And then at night, he woke up wailing and crying--real tears and everything--saying that his tushy hurt him. I told him to go to the bathroom. He said he didn't need to. I told him I could put some cream on if he had a rash and maybe he should be careful to wipe himself very well when he went to the bathroom. Then I saw that he had his hands in his underwear again and was scratching like crazy. "Barak, does it hurt or does it just really feel bad?"
"It feels really really bad!"
"Is it itchy?"
"It's iiiiiiiiiiitchyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! It itches so so much!"
Thick, aren't I?
This time I bypassed all natural remedies recommended by the Internet and went directly to the thermonuclear approach. Both kids got dosed with mebenzadole on Thursday (Avtalyon's too little, so he gets lots of vaseline--he's not unhappy) and have had diarrhea ever since. Iyyar's diarrhea has little white things in it. Some of them are squirming.
I told you not to keep reading if you were eating, didn't I?
So... today's pre-Shabbos recreation will involve a lot of hot water and laundry. I'm really really hoping that the pinworms have actually been in Iyyar's system this whole time and are the cause of the GI woes. I'm less convinced right now that the dairy was the culprit; he was immediately better for a week, but the problems have been coming and going over the last month and he hasn't had dairy, except for the couple of times he's sneaked it, in almost 6 weeks.
In further news, Avtalyon, after a week or so of being generally under the weather, is back to his happy perky self. This is a very big improvement for him and also for the household at large; he was being pretty pitiful and we all felt sorry for him, especially Barak, who kept trying to get him to smile with endless rounds of peekaboo. Iyyar pooped on the potty a couple of days ago, and got ice cream, which was great; the timing could have been better, though, since his ice-cream-lust-fueled desire to use the potty came just when the pinworm-fueled-diarrhea-avalanche came. I have been scrubbing a lot of poop out of a lot of different pieces of flooring, carpet and furniture lately.
Okay. I'm done. You can go finish your breakfast now. That is, if you still want it.
Does anyone remember a picture book (okay, this is a good one) about a little girl who goes sailing on a boat all by herself, except that she brings her baby brother along? The illustrations are very soft watercolors, and very detailed of the inside of the boat, and I think there's a peach tree on the boat that she puts there so that she can feed her baby brother peaches (or something like that... sorry, it's been about 30 years!) I have a hazy recollection of the ship being called the Morning Something, and I definitely remember a wonderful illustration of her and her little brother in a bassinet and the inside of the ship, and my own fantasies of having such a ship myself.
Ideas?
In other news...
[If you're reading this while eating your breakfast, maybe it'd be a good idea click away now. Go read the news or something, and come back later.]
pinworms!
Yes! More pinworms! A couple days ago I started noticing Barak reaching inside his underwear to scratch his bottom. At bathtime, I saw a lot of red marks on his tush, and thought, hmm, that doesn't look like a rash but what is it? And then at night, he woke up wailing and crying--real tears and everything--saying that his tushy hurt him. I told him to go to the bathroom. He said he didn't need to. I told him I could put some cream on if he had a rash and maybe he should be careful to wipe himself very well when he went to the bathroom. Then I saw that he had his hands in his underwear again and was scratching like crazy. "Barak, does it hurt or does it just really feel bad?"
"It feels really really bad!"
"Is it itchy?"
"It's iiiiiiiiiiitchyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! It itches so so much!"
Thick, aren't I?
This time I bypassed all natural remedies recommended by the Internet and went directly to the thermonuclear approach. Both kids got dosed with mebenzadole on Thursday (Avtalyon's too little, so he gets lots of vaseline--he's not unhappy) and have had diarrhea ever since. Iyyar's diarrhea has little white things in it. Some of them are squirming.
I told you not to keep reading if you were eating, didn't I?
So... today's pre-Shabbos recreation will involve a lot of hot water and laundry. I'm really really hoping that the pinworms have actually been in Iyyar's system this whole time and are the cause of the GI woes. I'm less convinced right now that the dairy was the culprit; he was immediately better for a week, but the problems have been coming and going over the last month and he hasn't had dairy, except for the couple of times he's sneaked it, in almost 6 weeks.
In further news, Avtalyon, after a week or so of being generally under the weather, is back to his happy perky self. This is a very big improvement for him and also for the household at large; he was being pretty pitiful and we all felt sorry for him, especially Barak, who kept trying to get him to smile with endless rounds of peekaboo. Iyyar pooped on the potty a couple of days ago, and got ice cream, which was great; the timing could have been better, though, since his ice-cream-lust-fueled desire to use the potty came just when the pinworm-fueled-diarrhea-avalanche came. I have been scrubbing a lot of poop out of a lot of different pieces of flooring, carpet and furniture lately.
Okay. I'm done. You can go finish your breakfast now. That is, if you still want it.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
This morning
did not start terribly well. Well, last night was good; Avtalyon slept in a regular crib all night, with his big brothers in the room, and everyone slept fine from when I moved Avtalyon in there at around 9 through till 6:45 this morning. I had to leave at 7:30 to take Iyyar to the doctor, and of course at 7:35 there was no cab. Many back and forth calls later (during each of which I reconfirmed my exact address) I got a call that "my cab had arrived"--ten blocks away. Gah! So we left half an hour late, for the appointment that it had taken a month to get, with me practically in tears thinking we'd miss it and Avtalyon hysterical because I kept coming in and out the front door with the car seat. (Oh, and Avtalyon has a fever. Forgot to mention that part.)
We did make it, in the end, with about a minute to spare. The appointment went well. We were there all morning, from 8:40 till around noon. Iyyar was down another half pound to 31. We checked in with the nurse, who took the back story, and then we spent a good half hour talking to the GI doctor, who listened, asked questions, examined him, and then told me what she thought the possibilities were: behavioral constipation (I really don't think that's it at this point), celiac, a thyroid problem, parasites, or something with a very long name that means a sensitivity to milk protein in the small intestine. She ordered a bunch of blood work and we also need to bring in stool samples for the parasites etc. Unfortunately, Iyyar has very small veins and the phlebotomist could only get enough blood to do the chem labs. We were told to come back, but I'm going to see if I can get the labs done at our local hospital and have them sent over. The place we went to today is half an hour away by cab, which means at least two hours of babysitting plus cabs etc.
We also saw a nutritionist, who thinks that the weight loss is mostly to do with a) taking dairy out of his diet and b) him not feeling good, partly because of the tummy issues and also partly because of his huge huge huge tonsils. (We're seeing the ENT next week, and I fully expect to be told that the tonsils have to go. Did I mention they're HUGE?) I told her exactly what Iyyar eats in a given day--it doesn't vary much--and she said I needed to be adding fat. More peanut butter, which he loves, or olive oil on his noodles. I've been worrying about getting vegetables into him, but she said I should be focusing on fats (which also help lubricate the digestive system, as it were.)
In general it was reassuring. The doctor told me point blank that she doesn't see signs of anything extremely concerning; Iyyar was happy and bouncy and playing the whole time we were there, ate his whole snack (strawberries, crackers, raisins and apple juice) with great gusto, and seemed to forgive her for the indignity of the rectal exam. She wants him back on Miralax, even though it did nothing at all that I could see, and also agreed that we should go back to daily warm baths and lots of A & D in the diaper in case the problem is fissures that are making pooping painful.
The nice part about going to a specialist at a children's hospital is that the whole place is so well set up for kids. The exam rooms are kid-friendly, there are tons of toys, everyone there deals well with kids. The hard part is seeing so many kids in such bad shape. There was a little girl in an examining room next to ours whose wheelchair was sitting nearby; she was lying on an examining table while the adults were talking a few feet away, and my instinct was, "careful, she'll roll right off!" Then I looked again and realized that she wasn't capable of rolling herself anywhere. I am not good at seeing such things and telling myself how much I have to be grateful for. I know exactly how much I have--but that doesn't make it hurt less to see people with much harder things to deal with.
Anyway. That's the update for today. No poop to report, but no poop-related misery either, which is something. As for me, my house is clean, my kids are abed, and it's time to write some speeches.
We did make it, in the end, with about a minute to spare. The appointment went well. We were there all morning, from 8:40 till around noon. Iyyar was down another half pound to 31. We checked in with the nurse, who took the back story, and then we spent a good half hour talking to the GI doctor, who listened, asked questions, examined him, and then told me what she thought the possibilities were: behavioral constipation (I really don't think that's it at this point), celiac, a thyroid problem, parasites, or something with a very long name that means a sensitivity to milk protein in the small intestine. She ordered a bunch of blood work and we also need to bring in stool samples for the parasites etc. Unfortunately, Iyyar has very small veins and the phlebotomist could only get enough blood to do the chem labs. We were told to come back, but I'm going to see if I can get the labs done at our local hospital and have them sent over. The place we went to today is half an hour away by cab, which means at least two hours of babysitting plus cabs etc.
We also saw a nutritionist, who thinks that the weight loss is mostly to do with a) taking dairy out of his diet and b) him not feeling good, partly because of the tummy issues and also partly because of his huge huge huge tonsils. (We're seeing the ENT next week, and I fully expect to be told that the tonsils have to go. Did I mention they're HUGE?) I told her exactly what Iyyar eats in a given day--it doesn't vary much--and she said I needed to be adding fat. More peanut butter, which he loves, or olive oil on his noodles. I've been worrying about getting vegetables into him, but she said I should be focusing on fats (which also help lubricate the digestive system, as it were.)
In general it was reassuring. The doctor told me point blank that she doesn't see signs of anything extremely concerning; Iyyar was happy and bouncy and playing the whole time we were there, ate his whole snack (strawberries, crackers, raisins and apple juice) with great gusto, and seemed to forgive her for the indignity of the rectal exam. She wants him back on Miralax, even though it did nothing at all that I could see, and also agreed that we should go back to daily warm baths and lots of A & D in the diaper in case the problem is fissures that are making pooping painful.
The nice part about going to a specialist at a children's hospital is that the whole place is so well set up for kids. The exam rooms are kid-friendly, there are tons of toys, everyone there deals well with kids. The hard part is seeing so many kids in such bad shape. There was a little girl in an examining room next to ours whose wheelchair was sitting nearby; she was lying on an examining table while the adults were talking a few feet away, and my instinct was, "careful, she'll roll right off!" Then I looked again and realized that she wasn't capable of rolling herself anywhere. I am not good at seeing such things and telling myself how much I have to be grateful for. I know exactly how much I have--but that doesn't make it hurt less to see people with much harder things to deal with.
Anyway. That's the update for today. No poop to report, but no poop-related misery either, which is something. As for me, my house is clean, my kids are abed, and it's time to write some speeches.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Twelve months
I took Avtalyon for his twelve-month checkup yesterday. Friday afternoon in the winter is not really the ideal time to schedule a well baby visit, but it's the only time I can do it without paying for a babysitter, so that's when we went. It went fine. Great, actually. I was kind of looking forward to it, truth be told. Because usually, these well baby visits around here go kind of like this:
"So, is he walking yet?"
"No."
"Holding his own cup?"
"No."
"How about blocks? Is he stacking blocks?"
"Ummm... no."
"Pointing?"
"No."
"Clapping his hands, how about that?"
"Uh, no, but I haven't been trying to teach him that one."
"Well, how about words? How many words is he using regularly?"
"Words, as in, English words that anybody could recognize, or... um.. I... not really any, actually, now that you ask."
And so I was greatly looking forward to walking in to a 12-month checkup with a baby who'd been walking for two months already, who uses something like 10 words, who plays games, does give-and-take, points, plays peekaboo, holds his own cup and! yes! knows his own name! Alas, what happens when you walk in with a child who is clearly developmentally normal is THEY DON'T ASK YOU ANY OF THOSE THINGS. Unfair as all heck, isn't it?
He was holding my credit card; the pediatrician took it, he took it back, and then offered it back to her. "Oh, he does give and take!" Then, "What are you feeding him?" I blathered on for a while about his outstanding pincer grip, his ability to hold his own cup, his shocking facility at sleeping through the night with only one nursing break--all those things that, you know, weren't quite happening at this point with Barak or Iyyar. "Mmm-hmmm," she said politely, after listening to his lungs and peeking in his ears. "You can turn his carseat around now if you want, you know." I launched into a diatribe about how it was really safer to keep them rear-facing for as long as possible, but installing convertible carseats rear-facing is a lot trickier, so, sometimes when we take a cab...
Through all of this, Avtalyon was being a rock star. He was toddling around the exam room, stopping every so often to shoot me a blinding grin and then demonstrate his royal wave. I mentioned his Abba; he crowed "Abba! Abba! Ah ba ba ba!! Ha ha ha!! Abba!" I said his name and he stopped what he was doing and looked at me. "Yes? You called?" He tried to open the garbage can, he made a good attempt at reaching the keyboard, he came over to visit me and drool companionably on my knee. He's 25th percentile for weight, 40th for height. He got his Prevnar and his last Hib shot yesterday, resulting in a fever this morning that disappeared quickly with some Tylenol. "He's doing great."
I felt a little guilty about the whole thing (shocking, isn't it? Me? Feeling guilty?)--as though I were somehow saying, "I know the first two were totally substandard babies but look, I got it right this time!" Which of course isn't how I feel at all. It's just that the first two had what one might call a total disregard for the foolishness contained in What to Expect the First Year, a volume of uselessness dumped in the trash by Iyyar's 6-month checkup as nothing but food for my neuroses. I think they're both fine developmentally, and cheerfully ignored the letter home that Barak got about his inability to draw X's and circles on demand. He draws houses full of dragons sleeping and eating chocolate cows. That's enough for me.
I also, while at the doctor's, got Iyyar's records and growth charts to take to the GI doctor's visit next Tuesday. Iyyar has been much better generally since we stopped with the dairy, but things have been going less well this week; there's been a lot of "my tushy hurts me," and "I can't poop!" He isn't really constipated though; regular dirty diapers lately. So I don't know. I did notice when looking at his records that he seems to have gone down a pound a month since I first brought him in about this in November; 33.5, then 32.5, then 31.5 at our last visit. I know that the first visit he was horrifically constipated so I can easily imagine that extra pound being all poop; he's also had a major source of fat and calories (dairy) removed from his diet. Still, I didn't like seeing that.
Anyway, we've got the records now, and his films from the hospital, and we had the visit with the allergist, so I've got everything I need for the GI doctor next week. Let's hope she's got some answers for us.
"So, is he walking yet?"
"No."
"Holding his own cup?"
"No."
"How about blocks? Is he stacking blocks?"
"Ummm... no."
"Pointing?"
"No."
"Clapping his hands, how about that?"
"Uh, no, but I haven't been trying to teach him that one."
"Well, how about words? How many words is he using regularly?"
"Words, as in, English words that anybody could recognize, or... um.. I... not really any, actually, now that you ask."
And so I was greatly looking forward to walking in to a 12-month checkup with a baby who'd been walking for two months already, who uses something like 10 words, who plays games, does give-and-take, points, plays peekaboo, holds his own cup and! yes! knows his own name! Alas, what happens when you walk in with a child who is clearly developmentally normal is THEY DON'T ASK YOU ANY OF THOSE THINGS. Unfair as all heck, isn't it?
He was holding my credit card; the pediatrician took it, he took it back, and then offered it back to her. "Oh, he does give and take!" Then, "What are you feeding him?" I blathered on for a while about his outstanding pincer grip, his ability to hold his own cup, his shocking facility at sleeping through the night with only one nursing break--all those things that, you know, weren't quite happening at this point with Barak or Iyyar. "Mmm-hmmm," she said politely, after listening to his lungs and peeking in his ears. "You can turn his carseat around now if you want, you know." I launched into a diatribe about how it was really safer to keep them rear-facing for as long as possible, but installing convertible carseats rear-facing is a lot trickier, so, sometimes when we take a cab...
Through all of this, Avtalyon was being a rock star. He was toddling around the exam room, stopping every so often to shoot me a blinding grin and then demonstrate his royal wave. I mentioned his Abba; he crowed "Abba! Abba! Ah ba ba ba!! Ha ha ha!! Abba!" I said his name and he stopped what he was doing and looked at me. "Yes? You called?" He tried to open the garbage can, he made a good attempt at reaching the keyboard, he came over to visit me and drool companionably on my knee. He's 25th percentile for weight, 40th for height. He got his Prevnar and his last Hib shot yesterday, resulting in a fever this morning that disappeared quickly with some Tylenol. "He's doing great."
I felt a little guilty about the whole thing (shocking, isn't it? Me? Feeling guilty?)--as though I were somehow saying, "I know the first two were totally substandard babies but look, I got it right this time!" Which of course isn't how I feel at all. It's just that the first two had what one might call a total disregard for the foolishness contained in What to Expect the First Year, a volume of uselessness dumped in the trash by Iyyar's 6-month checkup as nothing but food for my neuroses. I think they're both fine developmentally, and cheerfully ignored the letter home that Barak got about his inability to draw X's and circles on demand. He draws houses full of dragons sleeping and eating chocolate cows. That's enough for me.
I also, while at the doctor's, got Iyyar's records and growth charts to take to the GI doctor's visit next Tuesday. Iyyar has been much better generally since we stopped with the dairy, but things have been going less well this week; there's been a lot of "my tushy hurts me," and "I can't poop!" He isn't really constipated though; regular dirty diapers lately. So I don't know. I did notice when looking at his records that he seems to have gone down a pound a month since I first brought him in about this in November; 33.5, then 32.5, then 31.5 at our last visit. I know that the first visit he was horrifically constipated so I can easily imagine that extra pound being all poop; he's also had a major source of fat and calories (dairy) removed from his diet. Still, I didn't like seeing that.
Anyway, we've got the records now, and his films from the hospital, and we had the visit with the allergist, so I've got everything I need for the GI doctor next week. Let's hope she's got some answers for us.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Pro-life, pro-choice
I don't usually write about politics here. The politics I care about most are in Israel, and I don't have the knowledge or the stomach to get into that on a regular basis. So far as American politics go, I don't get too wrapped up in it; we don't have a TV, I was almost completely oblivious of the election until a few weeks before it was time to vote, and so far as my personal make-or-break political issues, they are limited to the environment, Israel, and, yes, abortion.
I am very firmly of the opinion that the men in Washington (and the few women) should not be the ones making the reproductive choices for us all. They should not be the ones deciding for people like Julia, with miscarriages numbering in the double digits because of an unbalanced translocation, or the woman I know who waited six years to be pregnant, only to find out through an ultrasound that the baby would not survive to birth. They should not decide for the women with preeclampsia, or those with HELLP. And they should not be deciding for the women with no partner, no source of income but her own job, and no one to help her with a baby.
Every abortion is a tragedy, for everyone concerned. Yes, it's killing a baby. I'm very fond of babies, and I don't want anyone to kill babies. We can agree on that, surely. Isn't everyone (okay, not Hamas, but the rest of us) pro-life, when it comes down to it? Who's pro-death? Who's actually pro-abortion? Those of us who are pro-choice recognize that sometimes, all the choices are bad.
Which is why this organization gets my money. What a concept! Let's actually give women--at least some of them, those we can help--choices. Let's give them better choices. Let's acknowledge, for once, that most women have abortions because they can't take care of a baby--and give them a better choice. How about help with the baby? How about a crib, a stroller, baby clothes, diapers, and food? Oh--and while we're at it, how about help with daycare, so that the mother won't be unemployed and destitute as soon as she gives birth?
Great idea, isn't it? In a tiny country like Israel, it stops 4,000 abortions a year.
Wouldn't it be nice if, in this country, we could do something similar? How about, in this time of too many people needing too few jobs, if some of that stimulus money went to creating a program of--gasp--government-paid maternity leave? How about government-funded daycare? Think how many problems that would solve. More women would be able to take care of their babies, resulting in fewer abortions. Jobs would be created in daycares by the babies whose moms worked, and jobs would be left open by the women choosing to stay home with their babies.
Wouldn't that make everybody happy?
It'd sure make the babies happy.
How about if, now that we're all believing in change, we think about changing things for them?
I am very firmly of the opinion that the men in Washington (and the few women) should not be the ones making the reproductive choices for us all. They should not be the ones deciding for people like Julia, with miscarriages numbering in the double digits because of an unbalanced translocation, or the woman I know who waited six years to be pregnant, only to find out through an ultrasound that the baby would not survive to birth. They should not decide for the women with preeclampsia, or those with HELLP. And they should not be deciding for the women with no partner, no source of income but her own job, and no one to help her with a baby.
Every abortion is a tragedy, for everyone concerned. Yes, it's killing a baby. I'm very fond of babies, and I don't want anyone to kill babies. We can agree on that, surely. Isn't everyone (okay, not Hamas, but the rest of us) pro-life, when it comes down to it? Who's pro-death? Who's actually pro-abortion? Those of us who are pro-choice recognize that sometimes, all the choices are bad.
Which is why this organization gets my money. What a concept! Let's actually give women--at least some of them, those we can help--choices. Let's give them better choices. Let's acknowledge, for once, that most women have abortions because they can't take care of a baby--and give them a better choice. How about help with the baby? How about a crib, a stroller, baby clothes, diapers, and food? Oh--and while we're at it, how about help with daycare, so that the mother won't be unemployed and destitute as soon as she gives birth?
Great idea, isn't it? In a tiny country like Israel, it stops 4,000 abortions a year.
Wouldn't it be nice if, in this country, we could do something similar? How about, in this time of too many people needing too few jobs, if some of that stimulus money went to creating a program of--gasp--government-paid maternity leave? How about government-funded daycare? Think how many problems that would solve. More women would be able to take care of their babies, resulting in fewer abortions. Jobs would be created in daycares by the babies whose moms worked, and jobs would be left open by the women choosing to stay home with their babies.
Wouldn't that make everybody happy?
It'd sure make the babies happy.
How about if, now that we're all believing in change, we think about changing things for them?
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
But wait! There's...
... more.
But we're not going to get into that. A few updates instead.
1. I took Iyyar to the allergist today and the test for milk allergy was negative. She (allergist) told me that it is possible that it is another kind of sensitivity that is not a true allergy, and recommended keeping him off dairy anyway since he's been doing so much better without it. I was going to do that anyway, of course, even though Iyyar is Not Pleased about the sudden lack of cheese in his diet. Vegan not-cheese is not doing it for him, and I can't say I blame him. I can't blame him for getting mad about seeing Barak and Avtalyon get the real stuff, either. But I simply can't take dairy out of Barak's diet. He's such a picky eater that if I stop giving him dairy there'll be nothing left to give him but wheat, cucumbers, and fruit. I think it'll be easier after next week, when school is back in session; that way I can give Barak and the baby dairy without Iyyar looking on and feeling deprived.
2. I got a new laptop at work. It's pretty shpitzy. I haven't really played with it yet but will do so as soon as I get my desk excavated.
3. I lost weight this month. I have no idea how I managed this, but I'm not complaining. I am back to X + 11, for those keeping score at home.
4. All I want to do is spin and knit. I know, not really an update. But worth mentioning.
5. Mr. Fixit came yesterday to put light fixtures in the two closets that didn't have them, in the name of moth deterrence. I've done what I can with laundering and freezing; I also ordered moth traps, which don't actually kill the moths but lets you know where you've got them. In the meantime, I've been fixing a lot of holes.
6. There is no number six.
7. I just got a pretty impressive care package today from a friend in Boston. This may sabotage #3, but that's okay.
8. I am enjoying the kids' winter break much more than they are. I love sleeping that extra half an hour, and I really really love not having to haul out the double stroller in all this ice.
9. I've gone to bed before midnight every night so far this week. This may not sound like much, but it's pretty unusual around here, and I'm hoping to keep it up.
10. There's no number ten, either. Off to clean.
But we're not going to get into that. A few updates instead.
1. I took Iyyar to the allergist today and the test for milk allergy was negative. She (allergist) told me that it is possible that it is another kind of sensitivity that is not a true allergy, and recommended keeping him off dairy anyway since he's been doing so much better without it. I was going to do that anyway, of course, even though Iyyar is Not Pleased about the sudden lack of cheese in his diet. Vegan not-cheese is not doing it for him, and I can't say I blame him. I can't blame him for getting mad about seeing Barak and Avtalyon get the real stuff, either. But I simply can't take dairy out of Barak's diet. He's such a picky eater that if I stop giving him dairy there'll be nothing left to give him but wheat, cucumbers, and fruit. I think it'll be easier after next week, when school is back in session; that way I can give Barak and the baby dairy without Iyyar looking on and feeling deprived.
2. I got a new laptop at work. It's pretty shpitzy. I haven't really played with it yet but will do so as soon as I get my desk excavated.
3. I lost weight this month. I have no idea how I managed this, but I'm not complaining. I am back to X + 11, for those keeping score at home.
4. All I want to do is spin and knit. I know, not really an update. But worth mentioning.
5. Mr. Fixit came yesterday to put light fixtures in the two closets that didn't have them, in the name of moth deterrence. I've done what I can with laundering and freezing; I also ordered moth traps, which don't actually kill the moths but lets you know where you've got them. In the meantime, I've been fixing a lot of holes.
6. There is no number six.
7. I just got a pretty impressive care package today from a friend in Boston. This may sabotage #3, but that's okay.
8. I am enjoying the kids' winter break much more than they are. I love sleeping that extra half an hour, and I really really love not having to haul out the double stroller in all this ice.
9. I've gone to bed before midnight every night so far this week. This may not sound like much, but it's pretty unusual around here, and I'm hoping to keep it up.
10. There's no number ten, either. Off to clean.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
And even more!
On Shabbos, Avtalyon started feeling a little warm. Then he felt warmer. Then he felt really, really hot, and that was when I decided to check his diaper and realized that it had stayed totally dry for over 5 hours, and then I checked his temperature with a fancy infrared thermometer (after Shabbos) and it came up at everything from 101.7 to 105.1 and then 106.2. So much for fancy infrared thermometer. Motrin, then Tylenol three hours later, and a lot of screaming. B"H he's better today. I think it's teething. He wanted to nurse, but couldn't at all, and was pulling at his ears a bit. Don't tell me teething doesn't cause fever--I'll nod politely but know you're wrong.
This afternoon Iyyar very deliberately sneaked a good long swig from Barak's cup of milk, which I saw only after it was too late. Tonight I went to Target with a friend to pick up, among other things, more baby Tylenol; when I came home, Iyyar had thrown up, Avtalyon was screaming, and Barak was coming out of bed whining that nobody was paying ANY ATTENTION TO HIM AT ALL! I snapped at Barak, saying something I immediately regretted, and managed to get everyone else to sleep pretty easily. Then I spent a little time making it up with Barak and explaining why I'd been angry; he didn't seem to have hurt feelings and went to sleep happily with Middos Machine, the pink CD (Episode 3, in which Shnooky gets into Dr. Middos's Time Machine, with all the consequences you would expect).
It really is looking like a dairy allergy. I have an appointment for Iyyar with a pediatric GI specialist at the local children's hospital a week from Tuesday; I'm going to see if I can get him in with the allergist at our pediatric practice too. There wasn't much of a wait the last time we took him (right before Avtalyon was born--remember the hives?) and the more information I can bring to the GI doctor, the better.
This afternoon Iyyar very deliberately sneaked a good long swig from Barak's cup of milk, which I saw only after it was too late. Tonight I went to Target with a friend to pick up, among other things, more baby Tylenol; when I came home, Iyyar had thrown up, Avtalyon was screaming, and Barak was coming out of bed whining that nobody was paying ANY ATTENTION TO HIM AT ALL! I snapped at Barak, saying something I immediately regretted, and managed to get everyone else to sleep pretty easily. Then I spent a little time making it up with Barak and explaining why I'd been angry; he didn't seem to have hurt feelings and went to sleep happily with Middos Machine, the pink CD (Episode 3, in which Shnooky gets into Dr. Middos's Time Machine, with all the consequences you would expect).
It really is looking like a dairy allergy. I have an appointment for Iyyar with a pediatric GI specialist at the local children's hospital a week from Tuesday; I'm going to see if I can get him in with the allergist at our pediatric practice too. There wasn't much of a wait the last time we took him (right before Avtalyon was born--remember the hives?) and the more information I can bring to the GI doctor, the better.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
More
1. More moth holes. Many more. I am in the middle of washing all my sweaters and taking them outside to freeze. But the stash! Do I take out the entire stash? There is so much stash. I have hundreds of pounds of wool in the house. I can't deal.
2. More Iyyar woes. I had to take him to the dentist today because he was crying that his teeth hurt. The dentist saw nothing--$95 and $48 of babysitting later. He and Avtalyon are also just getting over major diarrhea, with attendant major diaper rashes.
3. More work stress. The assistant to my main client is mad at me because I screwed up. I didn't get everything done this week I should have done (because of sick kids) and I sent the wrong speech, plus one speech with the wrong tag. She is under a lot of stress herself and reamed me out in front of people. I don't deal well with things like that.
4. We're going away for Shabbos. I have to pack, and before I can pack, I have to iron a bunch of shirts.
5. I can't do that because I'm supposed to be writing speeches.
6. I'm not writing speeches because I'm dealing with moths.
7. My house is a trashed wreck. It was totally clean on Tuesday night. I was caught up on laundry then, too.
Off to dump a lot of wool into trash bags.
2. More Iyyar woes. I had to take him to the dentist today because he was crying that his teeth hurt. The dentist saw nothing--$95 and $48 of babysitting later. He and Avtalyon are also just getting over major diarrhea, with attendant major diaper rashes.
3. More work stress. The assistant to my main client is mad at me because I screwed up. I didn't get everything done this week I should have done (because of sick kids) and I sent the wrong speech, plus one speech with the wrong tag. She is under a lot of stress herself and reamed me out in front of people. I don't deal well with things like that.
4. We're going away for Shabbos. I have to pack, and before I can pack, I have to iron a bunch of shirts.
5. I can't do that because I'm supposed to be writing speeches.
6. I'm not writing speeches because I'm dealing with moths.
7. My house is a trashed wreck. It was totally clean on Tuesday night. I was caught up on laundry then, too.
Off to dump a lot of wool into trash bags.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Knots
I am feeling really really really stressed out right now, and I thought it might be helpful to sit down and list the reasons why. Just, you know, to get a handle on it.
1. Barak and the biting business. I talked to the early childhood director today and she did not seem terribly worked up but she said that his teacher will be calling me tonight.
2. I found a great big m*th hole smack front and center on Barak's dragon vest. The dragon vest he last wore last week. Those are some pretty brazen moths. This means I have to go wash all my sweaters (we are talking high double digits here, household-wide) and should probably go inspect all my yarn, too. Not a minor undertaking, especially in winter.
3. Speaking of winter, it is really, really cold here. We are all stir-crazy. The snowplows do not worry about pedestrians, so leave snowbanks that are between knee- and thigh-high at the sides of the roads. For me to get over with my double stroller. If the stroller sinks into the bank, I'm sunk, and have to turn around and haul the thing out from the front--you know, on the side of the road, which is slippery and has cars on it. Gah.
4. Work. Work is busy. Work is stressful. There is a lot of it, which is good, but my place of employment is in financial trouble (show me one that isn't!) and we are having a meeting on Thursday to discuss our new austerity measures. I have been told that we are not at the layoffs stage. Which implies that there might be one later, doesn't it.
5. Iyyar's tummy. Today was fine, after a lot of diarrhea last night and this morning. I really hope it is just the dairy. Could one cookie's worth of butter (two cookies made with half butter, half margarine) have done that? Or is it something else? Should I be following up on that referral to the pediatric GI specialist at the children's hospital, with all the un-fun testing that that will entail? Or should I wait and see?
6. An old friend wrote me today and asked if she could give my email to a relative I have not heard from in several years--well, I haven't heard from any of my relatives in years. It's possible that this is just a friendly gesture. It's also possible that something is up.
7. Oh, and the war. Yes. That. And the threats against the Jewish schools in town. One of which is my son's.
8. I should not have checked the estimated value of our apartment right now. It was a bad idea. Because now I know that if we were to sell it now to, say, make aliyah, we'd probably get just enough to cover what's left on our mortgage. Which is $63,000 less than what we paid for our apartment 3 1/2 years ago. I think the best move right now is to refinance in a week or two, on the assumption that rates are as low as they will ever be, to get the lowest monthly payment possible, and then try to rent it out.
9. Money, generally. We are barely saving anything, despite what seems to me like a good income for both of us. It just goes... in mortgage, utilities, babysitting, tuition, playgroup, clothes (they keep growing! and destroying their pants!) and food. I go through all of our bills and credit card charges every month and this past month the only thing that I could have reasonably cut was $56.00 on wool. This month we bought plane tickets to Edmonton to visit my SIL at Pesach. That was a lot, but realistically not much more than we would have spent making Pesach here. It meant taking money out of savings to get to the end of the month. And this was supposed to be our last year to save. Next year, it's full tuition for Barak: almost $10,000 a year for kindergarten. I don't think we'll be eligible for scholarship for one, although we'll apply, of course.
10. That's really enough, isn't it? But one more thing. This afternoon I was taking pictures with the kids and letting them take pictures of me (with me holding the camera). That is never a flattering way to be photographed, but do I really have that many chins? And do I really look that... old and tired?
Sigh.
Off to write some speeches. And not get any spinning in. Maybe tomorrow?
1. Barak and the biting business. I talked to the early childhood director today and she did not seem terribly worked up but she said that his teacher will be calling me tonight.
2. I found a great big m*th hole smack front and center on Barak's dragon vest. The dragon vest he last wore last week. Those are some pretty brazen moths. This means I have to go wash all my sweaters (we are talking high double digits here, household-wide) and should probably go inspect all my yarn, too. Not a minor undertaking, especially in winter.
3. Speaking of winter, it is really, really cold here. We are all stir-crazy. The snowplows do not worry about pedestrians, so leave snowbanks that are between knee- and thigh-high at the sides of the roads. For me to get over with my double stroller. If the stroller sinks into the bank, I'm sunk, and have to turn around and haul the thing out from the front--you know, on the side of the road, which is slippery and has cars on it. Gah.
4. Work. Work is busy. Work is stressful. There is a lot of it, which is good, but my place of employment is in financial trouble (show me one that isn't!) and we are having a meeting on Thursday to discuss our new austerity measures. I have been told that we are not at the layoffs stage. Which implies that there might be one later, doesn't it.
5. Iyyar's tummy. Today was fine, after a lot of diarrhea last night and this morning. I really hope it is just the dairy. Could one cookie's worth of butter (two cookies made with half butter, half margarine) have done that? Or is it something else? Should I be following up on that referral to the pediatric GI specialist at the children's hospital, with all the un-fun testing that that will entail? Or should I wait and see?
6. An old friend wrote me today and asked if she could give my email to a relative I have not heard from in several years--well, I haven't heard from any of my relatives in years. It's possible that this is just a friendly gesture. It's also possible that something is up.
7. Oh, and the war. Yes. That. And the threats against the Jewish schools in town. One of which is my son's.
8. I should not have checked the estimated value of our apartment right now. It was a bad idea. Because now I know that if we were to sell it now to, say, make aliyah, we'd probably get just enough to cover what's left on our mortgage. Which is $63,000 less than what we paid for our apartment 3 1/2 years ago. I think the best move right now is to refinance in a week or two, on the assumption that rates are as low as they will ever be, to get the lowest monthly payment possible, and then try to rent it out.
9. Money, generally. We are barely saving anything, despite what seems to me like a good income for both of us. It just goes... in mortgage, utilities, babysitting, tuition, playgroup, clothes (they keep growing! and destroying their pants!) and food. I go through all of our bills and credit card charges every month and this past month the only thing that I could have reasonably cut was $56.00 on wool. This month we bought plane tickets to Edmonton to visit my SIL at Pesach. That was a lot, but realistically not much more than we would have spent making Pesach here. It meant taking money out of savings to get to the end of the month. And this was supposed to be our last year to save. Next year, it's full tuition for Barak: almost $10,000 a year for kindergarten. I don't think we'll be eligible for scholarship for one, although we'll apply, of course.
10. That's really enough, isn't it? But one more thing. This afternoon I was taking pictures with the kids and letting them take pictures of me (with me holding the camera). That is never a flattering way to be photographed, but do I really have that many chins? And do I really look that... old and tired?
Sigh.
Off to write some speeches. And not get any spinning in. Maybe tomorrow?
Ohm....
Barak is driving me crazy.
Yesterday I got a phone call at noon from the director of early childhood education at his school. Barak had bitten another child and I needed to come pick him up, right away. I told her I couldn't--it was an hour until school ended and I couldn't make it there that fast on foot in all the snow with a double stroller. He came home in regular carpool, and spent the rest of the afternoon whining, complaining, doing things he wasn't supposed to do, and whining some more. He didn't want to use the bathroom. Wouldn't eat his dinner and campaigned loudly and obnoxiously for cereal instead. Didn't want to go to bed. Needed a different Middos Machine CD. Add to this that Iyyar had had a cookie made with butter on Sunday and was right back to square one with the tummy distress--so while Iyyar was writhing and wailing on the floor, howling that his tushy hurt and he needed to POOP, Barak was hollering even louder to make himself heard about NEEDING THE PINK MIDDOS MACHINE CD BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WANT THE GREEN ONE AND HE NEEDED IT A GOTCHION MUCH AND IF HE DIDN' T GET IT HE WAS JUST GOING TO SCREAM.
Good thing I am opposed to corporal punishment, isn't it?
We got through the day somehow and this morning was all the same. I need oatmeal. I need raisins. I NEED THEM! I NEED RAISINS! I know he is four but his total inability to see that I AM ALREADY IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING YOUR RAISINS or I CANNOT GET YOU RAISINS RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM NURSING THE BABY is a little hard to take. (Sound familiar, Zahava?) Before I had gotten him anything else he decided that in fact he wanted granola and yogurt. I got him granola and yogurt. He took one look and announced that THERE WASN'T ENOUGH GRANOLA IN HIS YOGURT. I told him he could eat it or not eat it but he had kvetched and therefore was not going to get what he had kvetched for (policy around here--ineffective at quelling the kvetching, but consistently applied in an undying hope that it'll work eventually). He sat down and started eating. Sloooowwwlly.
All this was going on while Iyyar, who had pooped out two days' worth of post-cookie poop over the course of the night, was getting de-pooped in the bathtub, while Avtalyon was proclaiming his righteous outrage from the highchair. Decibel level climbing, nerves frazzling.
And on the way to carpool: "Imma, there wasn't enough granola in my yogurt."
AAAAARRRRGHHH!!!
Uh-oh. I hear Iyyar crying for me. I kept him home from school today because by the time he got out of the bathtub it was already time to take Barak to carpool; if I'd come back to get him and taken him to school I would have lost half an hour of work time. Easier to keep him home with Asnat and Avtalyon. He's been fine tummy-wise for more than a week, but on Sunday he had two of the cookies I made for Sunday night, which had butter in them--and then started crying a couple of hours later that he needed to poop and his tummy hurt. I really want to think that this is not mere coincidence and dairy is the culprit, because it's something that's relatively easy to manage. So why am I hearing him crying now?
Sigh.
Oh, and did I mention that when I was packing Barak's bag this morning, it was full of toys he'd taken home from school? "Did your morah know that you took those?" "No." "Were you allowed to take those or not allowed?" "Not."
He's four. I know he's four. And much of the time he is sweet and charming. He is usually obedient and always happy to run get me a rag or a box of wipes when I need them. He plays nicely with his brothers 90% of the time. He gives the baby kisses. He likes school. He's polite. He draws pictures for the lady at work who doesn't have anyone to draw her pictures. He is getting a huge kick out of learning the alphabet and reading the signs that say OPEN on the stores. He knows STOP and ONE WAY too. On Sunday he took three polite bites of a vegetable omelet without spitting anything out. True, he took cookies he wasn't supposed to take on Sunday--but he told me the truth right away.
He's a good boy. He really is. He's just driving me slowly insane.
Yesterday I got a phone call at noon from the director of early childhood education at his school. Barak had bitten another child and I needed to come pick him up, right away. I told her I couldn't--it was an hour until school ended and I couldn't make it there that fast on foot in all the snow with a double stroller. He came home in regular carpool, and spent the rest of the afternoon whining, complaining, doing things he wasn't supposed to do, and whining some more. He didn't want to use the bathroom. Wouldn't eat his dinner and campaigned loudly and obnoxiously for cereal instead. Didn't want to go to bed. Needed a different Middos Machine CD. Add to this that Iyyar had had a cookie made with butter on Sunday and was right back to square one with the tummy distress--so while Iyyar was writhing and wailing on the floor, howling that his tushy hurt and he needed to POOP, Barak was hollering even louder to make himself heard about NEEDING THE PINK MIDDOS MACHINE CD BECAUSE HE DIDN'T WANT THE GREEN ONE AND HE NEEDED IT A GOTCHION MUCH AND IF HE DIDN' T GET IT HE WAS JUST GOING TO SCREAM.
Good thing I am opposed to corporal punishment, isn't it?
We got through the day somehow and this morning was all the same. I need oatmeal. I need raisins. I NEED THEM! I NEED RAISINS! I know he is four but his total inability to see that I AM ALREADY IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING YOUR RAISINS or I CANNOT GET YOU RAISINS RIGHT NOW BECAUSE I AM NURSING THE BABY is a little hard to take. (Sound familiar, Zahava?) Before I had gotten him anything else he decided that in fact he wanted granola and yogurt. I got him granola and yogurt. He took one look and announced that THERE WASN'T ENOUGH GRANOLA IN HIS YOGURT. I told him he could eat it or not eat it but he had kvetched and therefore was not going to get what he had kvetched for (policy around here--ineffective at quelling the kvetching, but consistently applied in an undying hope that it'll work eventually). He sat down and started eating. Sloooowwwlly.
All this was going on while Iyyar, who had pooped out two days' worth of post-cookie poop over the course of the night, was getting de-pooped in the bathtub, while Avtalyon was proclaiming his righteous outrage from the highchair. Decibel level climbing, nerves frazzling.
And on the way to carpool: "Imma, there wasn't enough granola in my yogurt."
AAAAARRRRGHHH!!!
Uh-oh. I hear Iyyar crying for me. I kept him home from school today because by the time he got out of the bathtub it was already time to take Barak to carpool; if I'd come back to get him and taken him to school I would have lost half an hour of work time. Easier to keep him home with Asnat and Avtalyon. He's been fine tummy-wise for more than a week, but on Sunday he had two of the cookies I made for Sunday night, which had butter in them--and then started crying a couple of hours later that he needed to poop and his tummy hurt. I really want to think that this is not mere coincidence and dairy is the culprit, because it's something that's relatively easy to manage. So why am I hearing him crying now?
Sigh.
Oh, and did I mention that when I was packing Barak's bag this morning, it was full of toys he'd taken home from school? "Did your morah know that you took those?" "No." "Were you allowed to take those or not allowed?" "Not."
He's four. I know he's four. And much of the time he is sweet and charming. He is usually obedient and always happy to run get me a rag or a box of wipes when I need them. He plays nicely with his brothers 90% of the time. He gives the baby kisses. He likes school. He's polite. He draws pictures for the lady at work who doesn't have anyone to draw her pictures. He is getting a huge kick out of learning the alphabet and reading the signs that say OPEN on the stores. He knows STOP and ONE WAY too. On Sunday he took three polite bites of a vegetable omelet without spitting anything out. True, he took cookies he wasn't supposed to take on Sunday--but he told me the truth right away.
He's a good boy. He really is. He's just driving me slowly insane.
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Another Iyyarism
Earlier this week, at bedtime, as I was rooting around in Iyyar's drawer for pajamas:
"Iyyar, which pajamas do you want? Do you want the doggie pajamas?" (It's actually a reindeer--pajamas purchased on post-Christmas sale at LL Bean--but he thinks it's a doggie and I haven't corrected him.)
"Not doddie. Dat one moose!"
"It's a moose? I thought it was a doggie."
[with conviction and very great earnestness] "Not! Is moose! Not doddie!"
"Oh, okay. Do you want the moose pajamas then?"
"No!"
"Which ones do you want?"
"Want it dis one! Want it truck jajamas!"
"Truck pajamas? Okay, you want truck pajamas. Oh wait. Iyyar, we don't have the top of those. They're in the wash. Do you want your doobie [bear] pajamas? Do you want to match Avtalyon?"
[Iyyar surveys his pajama options, then inspects Avtalyon, who is already in doobie jajamas.]
"Yeah! Match!"
"Okay, you're going to match!"
"Match it baby jajamas! Match it Talyon jajamas!"
"Right, you're going to match Avtalyon's pajamas!"
Eyebrows two inches above normal position, eyes wide: "Also Barak have jajamas!"
"Right, Barak has pajamas too."
"Abba not have jajamas."
"Yeah, he does. You just never see them because he's up before you ."
"Abba has jajamas?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."
"Oh." Iyyar considers this. Then, shaking head regretfully, palms pointing skyward,"Not Imma has jajamas."
That's true, actually. My nighttime nursing wardrobe is pretty... eclectic. "No, Imma doesn't have pajamas."
Iyyar looks at me sympathetically. "Not have."
They're going to be called jajamas around here for a while, I think.
In other news, the no-dairy seems to have worked--that plus warm baths plus lots of A & D. He last had dairy last Thursday. Friday was the usual, Saturday morning was awful. Saturday afternoon he started with diarrhea that lasted through Sunday afternoon. Monday was maybe half an hour of crying in the morning, followed by much much more poop. Monday night, as I was putting on his jajamas, I suddenly noticed that his potbelly had vanished. How awful must that have felt? Tuesday night he was back to his sweet troublemaking self; yesterday and today has been normal poopage without fanfare. (Well, normal except that it smells incredibly foul. Can't blame him for that, though, given what I've been feeding him in the roughage and fiber department.) It's so nice to have my happy little boy back.
"Iyyar, which pajamas do you want? Do you want the doggie pajamas?" (It's actually a reindeer--pajamas purchased on post-Christmas sale at LL Bean--but he thinks it's a doggie and I haven't corrected him.)
"Not doddie. Dat one moose!"
"It's a moose? I thought it was a doggie."
[with conviction and very great earnestness] "Not! Is moose! Not doddie!"
"Oh, okay. Do you want the moose pajamas then?"
"No!"
"Which ones do you want?"
"Want it dis one! Want it truck jajamas!"
"Truck pajamas? Okay, you want truck pajamas. Oh wait. Iyyar, we don't have the top of those. They're in the wash. Do you want your doobie [bear] pajamas? Do you want to match Avtalyon?"
[Iyyar surveys his pajama options, then inspects Avtalyon, who is already in doobie jajamas.]
"Yeah! Match!"
"Okay, you're going to match!"
"Match it baby jajamas! Match it Talyon jajamas!"
"Right, you're going to match Avtalyon's pajamas!"
Eyebrows two inches above normal position, eyes wide: "Also Barak have jajamas!"
"Right, Barak has pajamas too."
"Abba not have jajamas."
"Yeah, he does. You just never see them because he's up before you ."
"Abba has jajamas?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure."
"Oh." Iyyar considers this. Then, shaking head regretfully, palms pointing skyward,"Not Imma has jajamas."
That's true, actually. My nighttime nursing wardrobe is pretty... eclectic. "No, Imma doesn't have pajamas."
Iyyar looks at me sympathetically. "Not have."
They're going to be called jajamas around here for a while, I think.
In other news, the no-dairy seems to have worked--that plus warm baths plus lots of A & D. He last had dairy last Thursday. Friday was the usual, Saturday morning was awful. Saturday afternoon he started with diarrhea that lasted through Sunday afternoon. Monday was maybe half an hour of crying in the morning, followed by much much more poop. Monday night, as I was putting on his jajamas, I suddenly noticed that his potbelly had vanished. How awful must that have felt? Tuesday night he was back to his sweet troublemaking self; yesterday and today has been normal poopage without fanfare. (Well, normal except that it smells incredibly foul. Can't blame him for that, though, given what I've been feeding him in the roughage and fiber department.) It's so nice to have my happy little boy back.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Iyyarisms
Maybe it's because he hasn't been feeling well, and I appreciate it more when he's being his usual self, but Iyyar has been ridiculously cute lately. He's had a big jump in his expressive language and every five minutes comes out with something that I know I should write down or blog or remember to tell Abba when he gets home. And later? I can't remember it at all.
So I'll open a window in blogger and see what I can remember.
1. I've been teaching Barak his ABC's, which he won't be learning in school till the year after next (Hebrew first, then English). Barak is okay with this but not wildly into it. His visual memory is not the greatest--he still has a hard time with a number of Hebrew letters and usually needs hints to differentiate gimel from nun, hay from chet, etc. Iyyar, on the other hand, can be told a letter once and, if he's in the mood, remember it forever. Last week Barak made an A page for his ABC book. I gave Iyyar some coloring to do at the same time but did not mention A to him specifically, even though obviously he was in the room at the same time. Next time the box of Weetabox comes out: "Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa A"!
Hey, he's right. "That is an A! Good job!" Then,
"Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa oder one A! Iss two A's!" What do you know. It is!
I showed him B and he spent some time picking out B's. I showed him S yesterday and he already knows C from C is for Cookie. Sometimes he mixes them up, showing me an S and saying A, but he usually gets them right.
2. The last three days have been better poop-wise. (Hmm, blogger seems to consider "poop-wise" a valid English word. There must be a lot of mothers of small children on blogger--ya think?) Yesterday morning he spent about half an hour crying and saying he needed to poop, but then he spent the rest of the afternoon pooping with little fanfare. I can't imagine he's still constipated with everything that's been coming out. I took the suggestion of Miriam and Dr. Google and stopped giving him cow's milk as of last Thursday, which seems to be helping.
Yesterday I had a serious talk with Barak about why we can't give Iyyar milk or things with milk, how they make him sick, etc. He told me about kids at school who are allergic to bananas and so on and seemed to get it. Which is why I was both surprised and un-thrilled to find him and Iyyar hiding under the kitchen table, with Barak spoon-feeding yogurt from a full quart container into Iyyar's mouth. I heard them giggling under there but they didn't seem to be getting into any trouble--then I saw what they were doing. I really gave it to Barak, who knew very well what he was doing--I just hope it doesn't put us back at square one.
3. I was going to talk about cute Iyyarisms, right? Okay, so, he still says "od" in Hebrew when he means "another one." So if he sees a second letter A, sometimes it's "od A!" If he sees more than one of something and wants to count, it's always "two!"
4. On the subject of numbers, this isn't an Iyyarism but it is worth noting. Barak likes numbers, the bigger, the better. "Million" and "billion" and even "trillion" and "googleplex" didn't do it for him, so he came up with "sillion" and "gotchion." As in, "I love cinnamon cereal! I love it a hundred thousand gotchion ten much! I just want to eat it the whole day!" A gotchion, apparently, is more than a sillion, so that's really a lot.
5. Iyyar is into Emese lately. He likes to follow her into our room and peek under the bed to check that she's there. All cats are Emese, including the Lego cat, which is, to be fair, small, round and gray.
6. Avtalyon is getting three upper teeth at the same time. The top front left tooth is through as well as the one to the left of that, which gives him an oddly lopsided appearance; the top front right tooth is almost through. This means that he is slightly cranky (which, for the record, would have equaled an incredibly calm and even-keeled day for either Barak or Iyyar at that age) and wants to chew on everything, including Grover's nose.
Iyyar has a Grover doll--I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this--who is now his best friend. He takes Grover just about everywhere and if he does not have Grover in his crib he will wake up and call me politely to find him. Right now, Avtalyon wants nothing more than to grab Grover and shove that big pink nose right in his mouth. There are few that Iyyar wants less. "No! My Grover! No baby! No Talyon! Not your Grover!" I'm going to have to find Avtalyon a similarly appealing Elmo or something to prevent escalation of hostilities.
7. Iyyar is picking up a few of Barak's less great habits, like the urgent screaming for whatever minor desire he might have at the moment. I'm not sure why he thinks this is a good idea, since it never gets Barak anywhere, but I guess it is part of the little brother territory. So sometimes I'll here Iyyar, in his little two-year-old voice, bellow, "Imma! Needa JUICE! NEEDA! JUICE! RIGHT! NOW!" with accompanying foot-stamps. What is very funny about this is that when he does this, he is not actually after juice. He knows quite well that he will not get juice by doing this. He just thinks it's fun. So sometimes, I'll hear him hollering in the living room, throwing a tantrum for juice--without ever bothering to come let me know about it.
8. Lately, Iyyar has taken to imitating a fire truck siren. His idea of a firetruck siren, however, is a one-second earsplitting shriek right at the upper ranges of human hearing, before you get into the frequencies of, say, dog whistles. "Imma! Fire truck do whooop!" "Actually, I think it makes a sound more like this: woooOOOOOoooooOOOO." "No. Firetruck do whoop!" At this point I agree with him, just because my ears hurt and I don't want him to do it again.
9. Sometime last week Iyyar woke up at 2 am in so much pain that, in desperation, I brought him into my office to show him Grover videos on YouTube just to distract him. It worked somewhat--he was interested in Grover even though he was doubled over and crying--and so it's not that I regret that exactly. The trouble now, of course, is that he knows that Grover is inside my computer. He knows about Grover and the soup, and Grover and the big and little hamburgers, and Grover in the baftub, and Grover singing about around, over, under, and through. "Want see Grover! Want see Grover 'nair! Want go office, Grover!" (feet stomp) Sometimes I let him see one or two, but when I've got all three of them back here it gets pretty perilous. This room is just not set up for free-ranging small children.
10. There has to be a #10, right? Ummm... oh yes. Iyyar and Avtalyon. When Iyyar and Avtalyon are together without Barak around, it is very very cute. Not always, because sometimes there are the dread Grover Wars, and sometimes Iyyar wants nothing so much as to take every toy Avtalyon touches and put it on the highest shelf he can reach--but sometimes, sometimes it is very cute. Sometimes, in fact, Iyyar is downright solicitous of Avtalyon. He shows him how to do things. "Wook, baby! Wook, Talion! Openit--no! Not like that. Not like that, baby. Wook! Dis! Dis way!"
And Iyyar and Avtalyon have something else in common, too, besides the shared love for Grover. They both sing the happy food song.
So I'll open a window in blogger and see what I can remember.
1. I've been teaching Barak his ABC's, which he won't be learning in school till the year after next (Hebrew first, then English). Barak is okay with this but not wildly into it. His visual memory is not the greatest--he still has a hard time with a number of Hebrew letters and usually needs hints to differentiate gimel from nun, hay from chet, etc. Iyyar, on the other hand, can be told a letter once and, if he's in the mood, remember it forever. Last week Barak made an A page for his ABC book. I gave Iyyar some coloring to do at the same time but did not mention A to him specifically, even though obviously he was in the room at the same time. Next time the box of Weetabox comes out: "Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa A"!
Hey, he's right. "That is an A! Good job!" Then,
"Imma! Wook Imma! Wook! Issa oder one A! Iss two A's!" What do you know. It is!
I showed him B and he spent some time picking out B's. I showed him S yesterday and he already knows C from C is for Cookie. Sometimes he mixes them up, showing me an S and saying A, but he usually gets them right.
2. The last three days have been better poop-wise. (Hmm, blogger seems to consider "poop-wise" a valid English word. There must be a lot of mothers of small children on blogger--ya think?) Yesterday morning he spent about half an hour crying and saying he needed to poop, but then he spent the rest of the afternoon pooping with little fanfare. I can't imagine he's still constipated with everything that's been coming out. I took the suggestion of Miriam and Dr. Google and stopped giving him cow's milk as of last Thursday, which seems to be helping.
Yesterday I had a serious talk with Barak about why we can't give Iyyar milk or things with milk, how they make him sick, etc. He told me about kids at school who are allergic to bananas and so on and seemed to get it. Which is why I was both surprised and un-thrilled to find him and Iyyar hiding under the kitchen table, with Barak spoon-feeding yogurt from a full quart container into Iyyar's mouth. I heard them giggling under there but they didn't seem to be getting into any trouble--then I saw what they were doing. I really gave it to Barak, who knew very well what he was doing--I just hope it doesn't put us back at square one.
3. I was going to talk about cute Iyyarisms, right? Okay, so, he still says "od" in Hebrew when he means "another one." So if he sees a second letter A, sometimes it's "od A!" If he sees more than one of something and wants to count, it's always "two!"
4. On the subject of numbers, this isn't an Iyyarism but it is worth noting. Barak likes numbers, the bigger, the better. "Million" and "billion" and even "trillion" and "googleplex" didn't do it for him, so he came up with "sillion" and "gotchion." As in, "I love cinnamon cereal! I love it a hundred thousand gotchion ten much! I just want to eat it the whole day!" A gotchion, apparently, is more than a sillion, so that's really a lot.
5. Iyyar is into Emese lately. He likes to follow her into our room and peek under the bed to check that she's there. All cats are Emese, including the Lego cat, which is, to be fair, small, round and gray.
6. Avtalyon is getting three upper teeth at the same time. The top front left tooth is through as well as the one to the left of that, which gives him an oddly lopsided appearance; the top front right tooth is almost through. This means that he is slightly cranky (which, for the record, would have equaled an incredibly calm and even-keeled day for either Barak or Iyyar at that age) and wants to chew on everything, including Grover's nose.
Iyyar has a Grover doll--I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this--who is now his best friend. He takes Grover just about everywhere and if he does not have Grover in his crib he will wake up and call me politely to find him. Right now, Avtalyon wants nothing more than to grab Grover and shove that big pink nose right in his mouth. There are few that Iyyar wants less. "No! My Grover! No baby! No Talyon! Not your Grover!" I'm going to have to find Avtalyon a similarly appealing Elmo or something to prevent escalation of hostilities.
7. Iyyar is picking up a few of Barak's less great habits, like the urgent screaming for whatever minor desire he might have at the moment. I'm not sure why he thinks this is a good idea, since it never gets Barak anywhere, but I guess it is part of the little brother territory. So sometimes I'll here Iyyar, in his little two-year-old voice, bellow, "Imma! Needa JUICE! NEEDA! JUICE! RIGHT! NOW!" with accompanying foot-stamps. What is very funny about this is that when he does this, he is not actually after juice. He knows quite well that he will not get juice by doing this. He just thinks it's fun. So sometimes, I'll hear him hollering in the living room, throwing a tantrum for juice--without ever bothering to come let me know about it.
8. Lately, Iyyar has taken to imitating a fire truck siren. His idea of a firetruck siren, however, is a one-second earsplitting shriek right at the upper ranges of human hearing, before you get into the frequencies of, say, dog whistles. "Imma! Fire truck do whooop!" "Actually, I think it makes a sound more like this: woooOOOOOoooooOOOO." "No. Firetruck do whoop!" At this point I agree with him, just because my ears hurt and I don't want him to do it again.
9. Sometime last week Iyyar woke up at 2 am in so much pain that, in desperation, I brought him into my office to show him Grover videos on YouTube just to distract him. It worked somewhat--he was interested in Grover even though he was doubled over and crying--and so it's not that I regret that exactly. The trouble now, of course, is that he knows that Grover is inside my computer. He knows about Grover and the soup, and Grover and the big and little hamburgers, and Grover in the baftub, and Grover singing about around, over, under, and through. "Want see Grover! Want see Grover 'nair! Want go office, Grover!" (feet stomp) Sometimes I let him see one or two, but when I've got all three of them back here it gets pretty perilous. This room is just not set up for free-ranging small children.
10. There has to be a #10, right? Ummm... oh yes. Iyyar and Avtalyon. When Iyyar and Avtalyon are together without Barak around, it is very very cute. Not always, because sometimes there are the dread Grover Wars, and sometimes Iyyar wants nothing so much as to take every toy Avtalyon touches and put it on the highest shelf he can reach--but sometimes, sometimes it is very cute. Sometimes, in fact, Iyyar is downright solicitous of Avtalyon. He shows him how to do things. "Wook, baby! Wook, Talion! Openit--no! Not like that. Not like that, baby. Wook! Dis! Dis way!"
And Iyyar and Avtalyon have something else in common, too, besides the shared love for Grover. They both sing the happy food song.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
A vagany mellett kerjuk vigyazzanak
I can't tell you how nostalgic this makes me. I used to take that train every Sunday morning at 5:23 am. The music doesn't really do it for me though--it should really be Sipos F. Tamas or something. Oh, oh my gosh, this.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Everybody's a critic
Last Friday Ada came over to help out, since Asnat was out of town and I had to take Iyyar for the GI and then, theoretically, work, although that part never did happen. As she was leaving I noticed her wrapping a polyester fleece scarf around her neck. With what was probably barely concealed disapproval, I asked her if that was warm. She said it wasn't and she'd been looking for a better (read: wool) scarf. I don't actually like knitting scarves that much--they're boring as anything--but this situation simply could not be allowed. "I'll make you one," I said. "What do you want?" We established that the scarf should be pink, that it did not have to be especially soft, and that wide was good.
I thought about spinning something, then decided in the name of speed to, um, make a directional scarf in Silk Garden Sock. (Yeah. Speed. In sock yarn. I know, I know.) I cast on this morning and by midafternoon sometime was into the first short-row section. Then Iyyar came over and inquired as to what I was doing. The conversation went something like this:
"What dat?"
"That's for Ada."
"Dat socks?"
"No, that's a scarf."
"Garf?"
"Yep, scarf."
"Not garf. Sock."
"No, it's a scarf."
"No gike it."
"You don't have to like it."
Pause during which Iyyar wrinkles nose in expression of total disgust. Then, shaking head disapprovingly,
"I gink Urda no gike it. Ewww."
The scarf is sitting on a shelf until Ada is here next. I'm not making an entire scarf out of sock yarn if it's going to be ewww.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Hurt me
Friday's GI series went fine. Iyyar did not enjoy himself but drank the stuff he was supposed to drink and generally cooperated as much as could be expected; the radiologist said everything looked normal. Friday night he (Iyyar, not radiologist) pooped with minimal crying and hopes were raised. Today, though--two straight awful hours of screaming and crying and writhing and stomping his feet, pulling each knee up to his tummy in turn, all while pleading and wailing. "Hurt me! Hurt me tushy! Poopy! Owww..." I tell him he needs to poop and then he'll feel better. "I can't..."
I don't know. One second he's in agony and the next something catches his interest, then you can see on his face when something hurts again. It seems like it's abdominal cramping from his behavior. He isn't really that constipated though, in regards to how much is in there--not so much poop showed up on the scan and he's been going at least somewhat almost every day. So why does it hurt so much? I don't know. We'll see how tomorrow goes--one more day on Miralax--and then I'll call the doctor on Monday to see what's next.
I don't know. One second he's in agony and the next something catches his interest, then you can see on his face when something hurts again. It seems like it's abdominal cramping from his behavior. He isn't really that constipated though, in regards to how much is in there--not so much poop showed up on the scan and he's been going at least somewhat almost every day. So why does it hurt so much? I don't know. We'll see how tomorrow goes--one more day on Miralax--and then I'll call the doctor on Monday to see what's next.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Poop
Iyyar is constipated.
Let's just get that part right out in the open to begin with. This has been going on for a while now, since before Thanksgiving at least, since the weekend after Thanksgiving is when Sarah came to visit and accompanied us to a memorable family photography session at which Iyyar alternately smiled cheesily for the camera and bent over double howling, "Poooooopyyyyyyyy! Imma, I need poop potty! Hurt me! Tushy hurt me! Imma, tushy hurt me!" A few minutes after the end of the session, he pooped--cataclysmically--and felt better.
Since then, it's been sort of off and on. He's had a really bad cold, and some kind of a bug, and he's thrown up a few times (once rather memorably when Sarah was here). Now the cold is gone, the bug seems to be gone (although he did throw up a little last Friday night) and he is really, really, really constipated--as in, last Thursday he woke up from his nap crying and screaming and writhing so much that, in the absence of an open pediatrician's office to take him to, I brought him to the ER.
Without going into too many details, let me just say that none of my several visits to our local ER has greatly inspired my confidence. This one was no exception. They did give Iyyar an x-ray and pronounced him impacted; they gave him a suppository, which, much screaming and wailing later, produced four very full and very foul diapers and a much happier Iyyar. They told me to follow up with an appointment with my regular pediatrician, and sent me home with an extra suppository just in case. They seemed to think the matter resolved and so did I; but less than a day later, we were right back where we'd been with the pain and the wailing. I gave him suppository #2, which worked somewhat. Sunday night, it all started up again, and I wasn't happy about waiting for my Wednesday appointment but circumstances around here (an unexpected trip out of town for my husband) weren't really conducive to my trying to go elsewhere.
Last night at around 9, he started crying, and then the crying escalated to wailing and writhing and howling and the whole nine yards. I called a neighbor who had mentioned sometimes using suppositories on her own kids and asked if I could have one; I used it on Iyyar with no results whatsoever. I tried all my tricks (this is, obviously, after a couple of weeks of the full-on anti-constipation diet, which Barak has been loving--hey, juice! Imma never lets us have apple juice and now we get apple juice and applesauce and raisins and dried apricots ALL THE TIME!), to no avail; the only thing that calmed him down at all was, between around 1 and 2 am, some time on my lap in my office watching Grover clips on YouTube with occasional pauses to cry and strain and try to poop. "I can't! Poop! Hurt me! Hurt me Imma!" It was awful. At around 2 we called the doctor's office for any ideas; she asked why he hadn't been prescribed a laxative or given an enema and I gave the bitter rundown of the ER visit. Sigh.
Fast forward to this morning, far too few hours of sleep later. Barak went to school and I took Iyyar, still unhappy but no longer crying, to the pediatrician. The pediatrician checked him out, prescribed Miralax, and said he wasn't that concerned. "He's not really that impacted. I don't feel anything up there, so let's see what the Miralax does. It's not as though he's been throwing up and..."
"He has been throwing up, actually." Hmm. I'd forgotten to mention that.
"What?" This, apparently, makes a big difference. Now we are scheduled for an upper GI series for Iyyar on Friday morning, with the barium and the rest of it. I'm still not sure exactly what they are looking for--I have been told not to worry yet but this is just about the worst thing to say to me if you really think I shouldn't worry. I told the doctor as much. "If you tell me what you're looking for, I'll know. If you don't, I'll imagine all kinds of catastrophic things, so you might as well just tell me." Congenital anomalies, I have been told, or any kind of a blockage.
In the meantime, I gave him the Miralax and he's had three dirty diapers since. He does seem to feel much better. Here's hoping that this will all turn out to be nothing much and will resolve itself speedily, with no more lasting adverse effects than Avtalyon having figured out that stray sippy cups found on the floor might contain something he now knows he likes very, very, very much.
Let's just get that part right out in the open to begin with. This has been going on for a while now, since before Thanksgiving at least, since the weekend after Thanksgiving is when Sarah came to visit and accompanied us to a memorable family photography session at which Iyyar alternately smiled cheesily for the camera and bent over double howling, "Poooooopyyyyyyyy! Imma, I need poop potty! Hurt me! Tushy hurt me! Imma, tushy hurt me!" A few minutes after the end of the session, he pooped--cataclysmically--and felt better.
Since then, it's been sort of off and on. He's had a really bad cold, and some kind of a bug, and he's thrown up a few times (once rather memorably when Sarah was here). Now the cold is gone, the bug seems to be gone (although he did throw up a little last Friday night) and he is really, really, really constipated--as in, last Thursday he woke up from his nap crying and screaming and writhing so much that, in the absence of an open pediatrician's office to take him to, I brought him to the ER.
Without going into too many details, let me just say that none of my several visits to our local ER has greatly inspired my confidence. This one was no exception. They did give Iyyar an x-ray and pronounced him impacted; they gave him a suppository, which, much screaming and wailing later, produced four very full and very foul diapers and a much happier Iyyar. They told me to follow up with an appointment with my regular pediatrician, and sent me home with an extra suppository just in case. They seemed to think the matter resolved and so did I; but less than a day later, we were right back where we'd been with the pain and the wailing. I gave him suppository #2, which worked somewhat. Sunday night, it all started up again, and I wasn't happy about waiting for my Wednesday appointment but circumstances around here (an unexpected trip out of town for my husband) weren't really conducive to my trying to go elsewhere.
Last night at around 9, he started crying, and then the crying escalated to wailing and writhing and howling and the whole nine yards. I called a neighbor who had mentioned sometimes using suppositories on her own kids and asked if I could have one; I used it on Iyyar with no results whatsoever. I tried all my tricks (this is, obviously, after a couple of weeks of the full-on anti-constipation diet, which Barak has been loving--hey, juice! Imma never lets us have apple juice and now we get apple juice and applesauce and raisins and dried apricots ALL THE TIME!), to no avail; the only thing that calmed him down at all was, between around 1 and 2 am, some time on my lap in my office watching Grover clips on YouTube with occasional pauses to cry and strain and try to poop. "I can't! Poop! Hurt me! Hurt me Imma!" It was awful. At around 2 we called the doctor's office for any ideas; she asked why he hadn't been prescribed a laxative or given an enema and I gave the bitter rundown of the ER visit. Sigh.
Fast forward to this morning, far too few hours of sleep later. Barak went to school and I took Iyyar, still unhappy but no longer crying, to the pediatrician. The pediatrician checked him out, prescribed Miralax, and said he wasn't that concerned. "He's not really that impacted. I don't feel anything up there, so let's see what the Miralax does. It's not as though he's been throwing up and..."
"He has been throwing up, actually." Hmm. I'd forgotten to mention that.
"What?" This, apparently, makes a big difference. Now we are scheduled for an upper GI series for Iyyar on Friday morning, with the barium and the rest of it. I'm still not sure exactly what they are looking for--I have been told not to worry yet but this is just about the worst thing to say to me if you really think I shouldn't worry. I told the doctor as much. "If you tell me what you're looking for, I'll know. If you don't, I'll imagine all kinds of catastrophic things, so you might as well just tell me." Congenital anomalies, I have been told, or any kind of a blockage.
In the meantime, I gave him the Miralax and he's had three dirty diapers since. He does seem to feel much better. Here's hoping that this will all turn out to be nothing much and will resolve itself speedily, with no more lasting adverse effects than Avtalyon having figured out that stray sippy cups found on the floor might contain something he now knows he likes very, very, very much.
Doughnuts
Chanuka just ended yesterday and we finished it off in the traditional jelly-filled sugar-topped way, with sufganiot. And it reminded me of a granny story, possibly one of my favorites.
I was sitting in my granny's kitchen watching her fry doughnuts (fank) which were to be filled with homemade apricot jam and eaten warm. If you've never tried this, well... what can I say, you haven't lived. Anyway, there I was in the kitchen, watching this very normal thing (granny frying doughnuts) when suddenly it hit me what I was seeing.
She was turning the doughnuts. In the boiling oil.
With her fingers.
Erm.
It's better in Hungarian, but this is the exchange that followed:
Nagymama, az Neked nem faj? Grandma, doesn't that hurt?
Granny smiles without looking up. Most mar nem. Not anymore.
I was sitting in my granny's kitchen watching her fry doughnuts (fank) which were to be filled with homemade apricot jam and eaten warm. If you've never tried this, well... what can I say, you haven't lived. Anyway, there I was in the kitchen, watching this very normal thing (granny frying doughnuts) when suddenly it hit me what I was seeing.
She was turning the doughnuts. In the boiling oil.
With her fingers.
Erm.
It's better in Hungarian, but this is the exchange that followed:
Nagymama, az Neked nem faj? Grandma, doesn't that hurt?
Granny smiles without looking up. Most mar nem. Not anymore.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Why I don't blog about Israel
Because you can all just read David instead.
He pretty much says what I would say if I knew as much as he does and could put it as clearly.
He pretty much says what I would say if I knew as much as he does and could put it as clearly.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Anybody there?
Hello? Hello?
I'm still here, just otherwise engaged. The kids go to bed, whatever needs to get done around the house gets done (or not) and then when it is a choice between spinning and blogging... well...
I'm still here, just otherwise engaged. The kids go to bed, whatever needs to get done around the house gets done (or not) and then when it is a choice between spinning and blogging... well...
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Quiet
Sorry for the infrequent and badly written posts. It's been busy around here.
Avtalyon is walking more and more; he can now lurch from couch #1 to couch #2 without face-planting. He likes playing peek-a-boo and Barak has fun playing it with him and making him laugh. Personally, I totally don't get why it's so funny, but it's cute, so who cares?
Iyyar still talks like Yoda, but surprises me more and more often with a fully formed offering like, "Imma, put that down!" when I've tipped the jogging stroller up to turn it. He also does an entertaining Hebrew-English patois, in which he demands "doobie one blankie" or "od doggie!"The constipation continues off and on; yesterday I broke out an intended Chanuka present (a Sesame Street sticker book with pictures of Grover) to distract him from his misery before he (finally) pooped. Good thing he likes prunes ("big raisins") or we'd really be in trouble. He no longer eats everything indiscriminately as he once did; he eats the knaidlach out of his chicken soup, leaves the rest untouched, and holds out the bowl demanding "More chichen soup!" That stuff in there? That's not soup. That's just, you know, soup waste. Carrots and whatever.
Barak is getting taller, and will loudly proclaim to everyone that this is because he is EATING HIS VEGETABLES. After said proclamation, he will consume one (1) noodle with one (1) shred of spinach attached. He still seems happy at school, though I have heard other rumblings that all might not be well. My friend up the street told me that her daughter told her that she'd been told by another child "Don't like Barak!" And today he was upset because another child tried to take his cookies and his morah had to intervene. Sigh. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not, because my own experience was anything but. When is it really appropriate to step in? I keep telling myself that as long as he's happy and loves school I am not going to worry about third party commentary, and will just check in with his morohs monthly or so. Not sure if this is the right thing to do.
For myself, I am very happy with the new wall unit thingie I have back here, bought off of craigslist from someone who had a Curves that went out of business. It's 5' high and 5' across, with 16 cubbies that are 15" deep. Lots of stash fits in there and it now looks like a yarn shop back here. In a good way, of course. I am finally knitting a second sweater for Abba, out of some White Buffalo Unspun I bought from elann some years ago. It's three strands of very fine roving, held together, and I am knitting it on 10s so it's going quite quickly. Of course, very fine totally unspun roving is also incredibly fragile to knit, and I am doing a lot of knitting in the eye of the storm that is three boys aged 4 and under. Oh well. It spit-splices very nicely, and it'll still be warm.
Avtalyon is walking more and more; he can now lurch from couch #1 to couch #2 without face-planting. He likes playing peek-a-boo and Barak has fun playing it with him and making him laugh. Personally, I totally don't get why it's so funny, but it's cute, so who cares?
Iyyar still talks like Yoda, but surprises me more and more often with a fully formed offering like, "Imma, put that down!" when I've tipped the jogging stroller up to turn it. He also does an entertaining Hebrew-English patois, in which he demands "doobie one blankie" or "od doggie!"The constipation continues off and on; yesterday I broke out an intended Chanuka present (a Sesame Street sticker book with pictures of Grover) to distract him from his misery before he (finally) pooped. Good thing he likes prunes ("big raisins") or we'd really be in trouble. He no longer eats everything indiscriminately as he once did; he eats the knaidlach out of his chicken soup, leaves the rest untouched, and holds out the bowl demanding "More chichen soup!" That stuff in there? That's not soup. That's just, you know, soup waste. Carrots and whatever.
Barak is getting taller, and will loudly proclaim to everyone that this is because he is EATING HIS VEGETABLES. After said proclamation, he will consume one (1) noodle with one (1) shred of spinach attached. He still seems happy at school, though I have heard other rumblings that all might not be well. My friend up the street told me that her daughter told her that she'd been told by another child "Don't like Barak!" And today he was upset because another child tried to take his cookies and his morah had to intervene. Sigh. It's so hard to know what's normal and what's not, because my own experience was anything but. When is it really appropriate to step in? I keep telling myself that as long as he's happy and loves school I am not going to worry about third party commentary, and will just check in with his morohs monthly or so. Not sure if this is the right thing to do.
For myself, I am very happy with the new wall unit thingie I have back here, bought off of craigslist from someone who had a Curves that went out of business. It's 5' high and 5' across, with 16 cubbies that are 15" deep. Lots of stash fits in there and it now looks like a yarn shop back here. In a good way, of course. I am finally knitting a second sweater for Abba, out of some White Buffalo Unspun I bought from elann some years ago. It's three strands of very fine roving, held together, and I am knitting it on 10s so it's going quite quickly. Of course, very fine totally unspun roving is also incredibly fragile to knit, and I am doing a lot of knitting in the eye of the storm that is three boys aged 4 and under. Oh well. It spit-splices very nicely, and it'll still be warm.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Baby steps
1. Avtalyon is walking. Seriously. He hit ten months last week and he is now launching himself fearlessly from pieces of furniture, sometimes even making it to the next piece of furniture before crashing to the floor. I've seen him do three steps at a time. He also stands and sits easily in the middle of the room, without anything to grab onto, and can stand unassisted for as long as he wants. Incredible, especially around here. Other milestones: first pizza (this morning), first cookie (yesterday--I was doing some creative homeschooling with aleph-beis cookies and he got in on the action) and 1000th bowl of chicken soup. I know that technically there is probably very little wrong with a baby living off breastmilk, Cheerios and chicken soup vegetables but it's probably unusual.
2. Iyyar thinks that he can fit into a size 3 diaper. He is mistaken.
I don't think that I have mentioned here that Iyyar is very, very fond of Grover. He knows about Grover because the Pampers I buy for nighttime have Sesame Street characters on them, and he always digs through the drawer to get those out first. The predictable result of this, of course, is that he runs out of Grover diapers--while Avtalyon still has plenty of Grovers. In size 3.
Iyyar is still in love with the Grover doll I succumbed to in the Newark airport a couple of weeks ago. He carries it around the house with him and takes it to bed every night. And whenever you find Grover for him, he gives you a big smile. It's sweet.
3. The huge box is still in our living room. I saw it while walking through our back alley with Sarah last week: a great big dryer box being unloaded from a truck behind the building next door. I asked the man doing the unloading if it had staples and he said no, it was glued; I asked if we could have it and he said sure. It spent a few days as a dragon cave and is now a pirate ship. I told the kids they could have it till Chanuka--not sure what, if anything, will be left of it by then.
2. Iyyar thinks that he can fit into a size 3 diaper. He is mistaken.
I don't think that I have mentioned here that Iyyar is very, very fond of Grover. He knows about Grover because the Pampers I buy for nighttime have Sesame Street characters on them, and he always digs through the drawer to get those out first. The predictable result of this, of course, is that he runs out of Grover diapers--while Avtalyon still has plenty of Grovers. In size 3.
Iyyar is still in love with the Grover doll I succumbed to in the Newark airport a couple of weeks ago. He carries it around the house with him and takes it to bed every night. And whenever you find Grover for him, he gives you a big smile. It's sweet.
3. The huge box is still in our living room. I saw it while walking through our back alley with Sarah last week: a great big dryer box being unloaded from a truck behind the building next door. I asked the man doing the unloading if it had staples and he said no, it was glued; I asked if we could have it and he said sure. It spent a few days as a dragon cave and is now a pirate ship. I told the kids they could have it till Chanuka--not sure what, if anything, will be left of it by then.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
More updates
Sarah was here! She came, she brought much gorgeousness (including, among other things, a quilt for Avtalyon, which I will photograph when I have some light), and she even stayed an extra day because she just couldn't bear to leave us. Many latkes were eaten and much knitting was accomplished. It was my designated weekend to finish Things in Bags, and so I did:
Celtic Dreams, which I started more than ten years ago now and stuffed in a bag minus a sleeve and 3/4 in December of 1998. I sent it to Sarah sometime last year, and she arrived with it complete but for the cuffs, which I did before she left. The whole thing, blocked and fitting perfectly, despite the intervening 10 years and (mumble mumble) pounds:
I also finished these, which have been minus the top two inches of one mitten since the week before Barak was born, when my hands swelled so much I couldn't hold size 1 needles:
They're made of Dale of Norway Tiur, now sadly discontinued, and Koigu.
And I finished a pair of pink and white mittens, which I didn't photograph before I gave them to Sarah.
The visit was great--just what I needed. We sneaked out to knit at Borders, stayed up way too late, ate cookies and takeout, hung out with the kids and just generally did knitterly things. You know you have a good houseguest when she not only is unfazed by a geyser of toddler vomit, she even cleans it off the rug for you while you're busy de-vomiting the toddler. She was quite tolerant of all the discussion of poop, too. And all this with a bathroom that lacked towels and soap until about twelve hours before she left.
There is much that I could blog about the visit, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't. I have some knitting to do.
Celtic Dreams, which I started more than ten years ago now and stuffed in a bag minus a sleeve and 3/4 in December of 1998. I sent it to Sarah sometime last year, and she arrived with it complete but for the cuffs, which I did before she left. The whole thing, blocked and fitting perfectly, despite the intervening 10 years and (mumble mumble) pounds:
I also finished these, which have been minus the top two inches of one mitten since the week before Barak was born, when my hands swelled so much I couldn't hold size 1 needles:
They're made of Dale of Norway Tiur, now sadly discontinued, and Koigu.And I finished a pair of pink and white mittens, which I didn't photograph before I gave them to Sarah.
The visit was great--just what I needed. We sneaked out to knit at Borders, stayed up way too late, ate cookies and takeout, hung out with the kids and just generally did knitterly things. You know you have a good houseguest when she not only is unfazed by a geyser of toddler vomit, she even cleans it off the rug for you while you're busy de-vomiting the toddler. She was quite tolerant of all the discussion of poop, too. And all this with a bathroom that lacked towels and soap until about twelve hours before she left.
There is much that I could blog about the visit, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't. I have some knitting to do.
What I've been up to
Spinning and more spinning. The skeins on the far left and far right are spun from fiber contributions from Grandma E; the orange, yellow, pink, and purple skein second to right is from the roving Harmless gave me when I saw her in Newark two weeks ago now.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Drained
I had Barak's first parent-teacher conference this week. Last week, when I was in New York, my friend Naomi tried to warn me. "Every time I walk in there, the teacher sits there and tells me about a kid I've never met or heard of."
Yeah. Well.
Apparently Barak's morohs are not so pleased with him. There are two. One was only moderately negative. The other one told me, "He doesn't finish his projects," in the same doom-laden tone of voice in which she told me he was hitting the other children and they were afraid of him.
???!!!
First off, this is Barak. It's really, really hard for me to picture that. But I know that some kids are polar opposites behavior-wise at home and at school, so it's always possible. But... what? If he's been hitting kids, why has no one called me over the last three months?
The meeting was strange. It was supposed to be ten minutes, which is not enough to begin with, and I got less because the people who came before me were late and ran over but the people after me walked right in at their scheduled time. It was also strange because I had the vague impression that they weren't sure who Barak was--an impression strengthened when one of the teachers, when I asked a specific question, turned to the other, saying, "I don't know him that well." Um... hello, you should.
It wasn't malicious, she said, or at least she didn't think it was malicious. He's very deep, she said, and very bright and creative, and he likes pirates, and he's been pretending to be a pirate, and some of the other children have been scared. And one of them said that he hit her.
At the end of the meeting, I managed to overcome my shock and paralysis enough to ask some rational questions, among them, "How serious of an issue is this? I am not getting a clear picture of how concerned I need to be and what I should be doing. "
The response: "Well, we're observing him. "
Which means... what, exactly?
I walked out of the classroom and directly into the office of the early childhood director, where I said, nicely, that this would not do: either there was a real problem, in which case telling me about it for the first time three months into the year in a 10-minute meeting with no warning was inadequate, or the problem was not that big of a deal, in which case that was not a meeting well handled. She was more reassuring, saying that it was only November, they did not expect or want perfection from small children, and that if I felt there was not enough communication I could call any time.
It's hard to know what to do with all of this. His actual progress report did not look that devastating; it was more their tone of voice, facial expressions, body language etc. I know that Barak is a little bit funky and a little bit different. I know that he has a vocabulary that is not normal for his age (his teachers both agreed that he was very bright...) and interests that are probably a little unusual in your typical chareidi school. (Gilbert & Sullivan, chaveiros?) But to me he seems like your normal four-year-old kid who likes trucks, Lego, cookies and Sesame Street. He is downright solicitous of Avtalyon, and plays nicely with Iyyar about 85% of the time. The problems that I see at home--his tendency to scream when frustrated, his constant need for attention--were not even whispered of. And in the end, he loves school, he says that he has lots of friends, and he loves his teachers. When I see him play with other kids, he seems to do just fine.
Like I said. Hard to know. MHH called the early childhood director yesterday and left a message saying he wanted to go over Barak's progress with her; he's going to ask the specific questions that I was too shocked to ask, as in, "Has he been seen hitting anyone, or was it reported by other kids?" and "How are his interactions with the other kids generally--does he have friends?"and "Where do we go from here?" One of my concerns especially is that I have heard stories about all kinds of things getting sprung on parents in nursery--from the kid who got kicked out for hitting (whose mother knew nothing about any problem until, you guessed it, parent-teacher conferences) to the kid who was kept back a year for not knowing aleph-beis, whose mother had no idea there was an issue until March. Communication: not their strong suit.
If I'd had a happy experience in school, maybe I could handle this in stride and see it as normal behavior for a 4-yo boy. But I didn't. I got eaten alive, socially and emotionally, and my dread of seeing that happen to Barak is, well, intense. And up until now all I saw was a happy well-adjusted kid, the same happy well-adjusted kid who was reported to me all last year. So maybe... maybe what? Maybe he's changed? Maybe the environment has changed? Or maybe his teachers are just a little bit freaked out by scary scary pirates?
Yeah. Well.
Apparently Barak's morohs are not so pleased with him. There are two. One was only moderately negative. The other one told me, "He doesn't finish his projects," in the same doom-laden tone of voice in which she told me he was hitting the other children and they were afraid of him.
???!!!
First off, this is Barak. It's really, really hard for me to picture that. But I know that some kids are polar opposites behavior-wise at home and at school, so it's always possible. But... what? If he's been hitting kids, why has no one called me over the last three months?
The meeting was strange. It was supposed to be ten minutes, which is not enough to begin with, and I got less because the people who came before me were late and ran over but the people after me walked right in at their scheduled time. It was also strange because I had the vague impression that they weren't sure who Barak was--an impression strengthened when one of the teachers, when I asked a specific question, turned to the other, saying, "I don't know him that well." Um... hello, you should.
It wasn't malicious, she said, or at least she didn't think it was malicious. He's very deep, she said, and very bright and creative, and he likes pirates, and he's been pretending to be a pirate, and some of the other children have been scared. And one of them said that he hit her.
At the end of the meeting, I managed to overcome my shock and paralysis enough to ask some rational questions, among them, "How serious of an issue is this? I am not getting a clear picture of how concerned I need to be and what I should be doing. "
The response: "Well, we're observing him. "
Which means... what, exactly?
I walked out of the classroom and directly into the office of the early childhood director, where I said, nicely, that this would not do: either there was a real problem, in which case telling me about it for the first time three months into the year in a 10-minute meeting with no warning was inadequate, or the problem was not that big of a deal, in which case that was not a meeting well handled. She was more reassuring, saying that it was only November, they did not expect or want perfection from small children, and that if I felt there was not enough communication I could call any time.
It's hard to know what to do with all of this. His actual progress report did not look that devastating; it was more their tone of voice, facial expressions, body language etc. I know that Barak is a little bit funky and a little bit different. I know that he has a vocabulary that is not normal for his age (his teachers both agreed that he was very bright...) and interests that are probably a little unusual in your typical chareidi school. (Gilbert & Sullivan, chaveiros?) But to me he seems like your normal four-year-old kid who likes trucks, Lego, cookies and Sesame Street. He is downright solicitous of Avtalyon, and plays nicely with Iyyar about 85% of the time. The problems that I see at home--his tendency to scream when frustrated, his constant need for attention--were not even whispered of. And in the end, he loves school, he says that he has lots of friends, and he loves his teachers. When I see him play with other kids, he seems to do just fine.
Like I said. Hard to know. MHH called the early childhood director yesterday and left a message saying he wanted to go over Barak's progress with her; he's going to ask the specific questions that I was too shocked to ask, as in, "Has he been seen hitting anyone, or was it reported by other kids?" and "How are his interactions with the other kids generally--does he have friends?"and "Where do we go from here?" One of my concerns especially is that I have heard stories about all kinds of things getting sprung on parents in nursery--from the kid who got kicked out for hitting (whose mother knew nothing about any problem until, you guessed it, parent-teacher conferences) to the kid who was kept back a year for not knowing aleph-beis, whose mother had no idea there was an issue until March. Communication: not their strong suit.
If I'd had a happy experience in school, maybe I could handle this in stride and see it as normal behavior for a 4-yo boy. But I didn't. I got eaten alive, socially and emotionally, and my dread of seeing that happen to Barak is, well, intense. And up until now all I saw was a happy well-adjusted kid, the same happy well-adjusted kid who was reported to me all last year. So maybe... maybe what? Maybe he's changed? Maybe the environment has changed? Or maybe his teachers are just a little bit freaked out by scary scary pirates?
Saturday, November 22, 2008
B'kitzur
It's been a while, and there's been a lot to post about--nothing big, just a lot of little stuff. Sorry it's not fabulously written, but it's motzai Shabbos and I got me some spinning to do.
1. The pirates obsession continues. A few weeks ago--I didn't blog about this but should have--I took Barak to see a local production of Pirates of Penzance. It was fabulous. The production itself, considering the unpromising venue (local middle school!) was surprisingly good; the cast were better singers than actors, but much better that than the other way around. The orchestra, with the exception of the guy on drums during the first act (who got replaced somewhere around the time Frederick meets Mabel--wonder what the story was there), was really good too.
Barak really had no idea what to expect, having, obviously, never been to the theater before. When we got there, a few minutes early, and settled in our seats, the orchestra was busy tuning up, and Barak noticed snatches of a few of his pirate songs. We talked about how the orchestra was going to play more pirate songs, and I pointed out some of the instruments, and Barak and I confirmed that yes, we were here to see pirates and also to hear the pirate songs. The lights went down, the overture started, and Barak was totally rapt watching the orchestra--and oblivious to the closed curtain behind it, which meant nothing to him.
The overture over, the orchestra stopped playing for a moment, and Barak looked back at me, clearly wondering if we were leaving--and then the curtain rose, the pirates leapt onto the stage, and he just about jumped out of his skin. It was fabulous. We were in the front row of the balcony, and he could stand up if he wanted to without bothering anyone, so he did, some of the time; he was rapt for the entire first act, and when intermission came around he was unwilling to leave, because what if he missed the rest of it? (We didn't.) He was so wrapped up in the show that he did not even comment on the concession stand, which, for my sugar-obsessed son, is saying something. In short, he behaved beautifully, and the row of retired ladies behind us said so. "I've never seen any child behave as well as your son did! Not even much bigger children." And then he got his own round of applause of behaving so nicely. :)
Further to the pirates: he and Iyyar have lately been going to bed every night listening to the Pirates CD, which means, naturally, that Barak now knows a lot of the words, or at least thinks he does. ("And pay a manky monious part, with a pirated and a pirate heart!") Naturally, he asks me what they mean. Have you ever tried to explain something like, "When I can write a washing-list in Babylonic cuneiform" to a four-year-old? Or even, "We observe too great a stress/on the risks that on us press/and of reference a lack/to our chance of coming back"? Or how about, "For when threatened with emeutes/and your heart is in your boots/there is nothing brings it round/like the trumpet's martial sound"? We tried that one this week.
"What does it mean, Imma?"
"Well, are the policemen really brave, or are they really scared?"
"They're really scared."
"Do they want to fight the pirates, or do they want to go home and take a nap and eat some cookies?"
"Probably go home and eat some cookies." [He omitted the reference to the nap, funnily enough.]
"They're singing about how they don't really want to fight the pirates, but how singing about it makes them feel not so scared."
"Oh."
2. Avtalyon had his first non-Cheerio cereal today: Rice Chex. He approved.
3. He also cut tooth #2. Ouch, for both of us--he keeps wanting to chew my finger. He's been standing unassisted for longer and longer stretches, and cruising around expertly on the furniture--he's also coopted the garbage can into service as a walker, and uses it to hobble along up and down the hall. He looks like a tiny old man, only much cuter.
4. Avtalyon and I had a little adventure last week; we, just the two of us, flew to Newark on Thursday morning for a chasuna in Spring Valley on Thursday night. By happy coincidence, my good friend Harmless had the afternoon off and came to pick us up at the airport, accompany us on a Century 21 run for a tights-drawer resupply (DKNY opaque black, all the way), and drive with us all the way to Paterson because it did not occur to me to find out what number on Main Avenue in Passaic we were going to, and so we drove all the way the wrong way down it, as in, all the way to Paterson. Oh dear.
Fortunately, Harmless is also Patient, and also fortunately, the price of gas has gone down considerably in recent weeks. One google maps text message and one quick meal of kosher Chinese takeout later, and Avtalyon was released from the cruel baby jail (carseat! wicked, evil carseat!) to which he had been confined for much of the day; I stayed with a friend whose many kids kept Avtalyon entertained while I got dressed in my de rigeur New York wedding black suit, and then abandoned Avtalyon to the care of said kids as we (friend and I) went off to the wedding. I will admit to second (and even thirty-seventh) thoughts as I walked out of a house containing my precious baby, a bunch of little kids without medical degrees, and a responsible party aged 14, but I came home to a happy, sleeping baby in clean pajamas, so it was all good. The wedding was lovely. We made it back in time for Shabbos. And now I have new wool to spin, courtesy of Harmless. :) Because, you know, I totally don't have enough wool.
5. Iyyar has, inexplicably, been having a really rough time sleeping for the last few weeks. He's been waking up screaming and inconsolable multiple times in the night, either wanting to be held or not wanting anything identifiable but rolling around on the floor hysterical and writhing. Every night, I'd think, "he's sick, I'll need to take him to the doctor" and then the next morning he would be totally fine, except for being so tired that by early afternoon he turned into a miserable wreck. I thought it was nightmares, but couldn't think of what could have set them off; I called his morah (my friend Yehudis) to ask if there was anything going on at school that I didn't know about, but no.
"Maybe he has pinworms?"
Pinworms? WHAT?! I haven't seen any pinworms.
"They come out at night. Take off his diaper and shine a flashlight on his bottom. They look like little white hairs." This was last Wednesday night. Considerately, Iyyar started wailing just a few minutes after that conversation, so I went in there with a mag-lite to change his diaper. I took off the diaper, shined the light on his tush and OH MY G_D ARE THOSE LITTLE WHITE HAIRS ACTUALLY WORMS?! I wiped at them with a wipe--and the hairs were gone. It was all I could do to not start jumping around and screaming then and there because it was SO GROSS. If you don't know about pinworms, count yourself lucky. Or click here. Go on. I dare you.
I was leaving for New Jersey the next morning and couldn't take him to the doctor, so I asked Yehudis what she'd done when her son had had pinworms. And she'd covered a clove of garlic with vaseline and stuck it up his rectum to kill them. "It works!" she told me, as I tried not to gag. After some consultation with Dr. Google, I decided for the middle ground of a) feeding child lots of garlic, b) smearing tush with vaseline and c) putting a couple of crushed garlic cloves in his diaper. The next day, we had a few huge and disgusting diapers; last night, Iyyar slept through the night for the first time in weeks. It seems to have worked.
But boy, does the house reek.
6. I went to the dentist on Tuesday. All hail fluoride rinse; no cavities, no bleeding, and the whole thing was practically painless. Seriously. Brush and floss, people, and get yourselves a bottle of ACT if you don't have one already. It's disgusting, but you get used to it.
7. This post is now long enough, but I will leave you with this:
Avtalyon in his elf suit, courtesy of Tanta Cecilia. If elves hung out in baby swings, that's totally what they'd wear to do it in.
1. The pirates obsession continues. A few weeks ago--I didn't blog about this but should have--I took Barak to see a local production of Pirates of Penzance. It was fabulous. The production itself, considering the unpromising venue (local middle school!) was surprisingly good; the cast were better singers than actors, but much better that than the other way around. The orchestra, with the exception of the guy on drums during the first act (who got replaced somewhere around the time Frederick meets Mabel--wonder what the story was there), was really good too.
Barak really had no idea what to expect, having, obviously, never been to the theater before. When we got there, a few minutes early, and settled in our seats, the orchestra was busy tuning up, and Barak noticed snatches of a few of his pirate songs. We talked about how the orchestra was going to play more pirate songs, and I pointed out some of the instruments, and Barak and I confirmed that yes, we were here to see pirates and also to hear the pirate songs. The lights went down, the overture started, and Barak was totally rapt watching the orchestra--and oblivious to the closed curtain behind it, which meant nothing to him.
The overture over, the orchestra stopped playing for a moment, and Barak looked back at me, clearly wondering if we were leaving--and then the curtain rose, the pirates leapt onto the stage, and he just about jumped out of his skin. It was fabulous. We were in the front row of the balcony, and he could stand up if he wanted to without bothering anyone, so he did, some of the time; he was rapt for the entire first act, and when intermission came around he was unwilling to leave, because what if he missed the rest of it? (We didn't.) He was so wrapped up in the show that he did not even comment on the concession stand, which, for my sugar-obsessed son, is saying something. In short, he behaved beautifully, and the row of retired ladies behind us said so. "I've never seen any child behave as well as your son did! Not even much bigger children." And then he got his own round of applause of behaving so nicely. :)
Further to the pirates: he and Iyyar have lately been going to bed every night listening to the Pirates CD, which means, naturally, that Barak now knows a lot of the words, or at least thinks he does. ("And pay a manky monious part, with a pirated and a pirate heart!") Naturally, he asks me what they mean. Have you ever tried to explain something like, "When I can write a washing-list in Babylonic cuneiform" to a four-year-old? Or even, "We observe too great a stress/on the risks that on us press/and of reference a lack/to our chance of coming back"? Or how about, "For when threatened with emeutes/and your heart is in your boots/there is nothing brings it round/like the trumpet's martial sound"? We tried that one this week.
"What does it mean, Imma?"
"Well, are the policemen really brave, or are they really scared?"
"They're really scared."
"Do they want to fight the pirates, or do they want to go home and take a nap and eat some cookies?"
"Probably go home and eat some cookies." [He omitted the reference to the nap, funnily enough.]
"They're singing about how they don't really want to fight the pirates, but how singing about it makes them feel not so scared."
"Oh."
2. Avtalyon had his first non-Cheerio cereal today: Rice Chex. He approved.
3. He also cut tooth #2. Ouch, for both of us--he keeps wanting to chew my finger. He's been standing unassisted for longer and longer stretches, and cruising around expertly on the furniture--he's also coopted the garbage can into service as a walker, and uses it to hobble along up and down the hall. He looks like a tiny old man, only much cuter.
4. Avtalyon and I had a little adventure last week; we, just the two of us, flew to Newark on Thursday morning for a chasuna in Spring Valley on Thursday night. By happy coincidence, my good friend Harmless had the afternoon off and came to pick us up at the airport, accompany us on a Century 21 run for a tights-drawer resupply (DKNY opaque black, all the way), and drive with us all the way to Paterson because it did not occur to me to find out what number on Main Avenue in Passaic we were going to, and so we drove all the way the wrong way down it, as in, all the way to Paterson. Oh dear.
Fortunately, Harmless is also Patient, and also fortunately, the price of gas has gone down considerably in recent weeks. One google maps text message and one quick meal of kosher Chinese takeout later, and Avtalyon was released from the cruel baby jail (carseat! wicked, evil carseat!) to which he had been confined for much of the day; I stayed with a friend whose many kids kept Avtalyon entertained while I got dressed in my de rigeur New York wedding black suit, and then abandoned Avtalyon to the care of said kids as we (friend and I) went off to the wedding. I will admit to second (and even thirty-seventh) thoughts as I walked out of a house containing my precious baby, a bunch of little kids without medical degrees, and a responsible party aged 14, but I came home to a happy, sleeping baby in clean pajamas, so it was all good. The wedding was lovely. We made it back in time for Shabbos. And now I have new wool to spin, courtesy of Harmless. :) Because, you know, I totally don't have enough wool.
5. Iyyar has, inexplicably, been having a really rough time sleeping for the last few weeks. He's been waking up screaming and inconsolable multiple times in the night, either wanting to be held or not wanting anything identifiable but rolling around on the floor hysterical and writhing. Every night, I'd think, "he's sick, I'll need to take him to the doctor" and then the next morning he would be totally fine, except for being so tired that by early afternoon he turned into a miserable wreck. I thought it was nightmares, but couldn't think of what could have set them off; I called his morah (my friend Yehudis) to ask if there was anything going on at school that I didn't know about, but no.
"Maybe he has pinworms?"
Pinworms? WHAT?! I haven't seen any pinworms.
"They come out at night. Take off his diaper and shine a flashlight on his bottom. They look like little white hairs." This was last Wednesday night. Considerately, Iyyar started wailing just a few minutes after that conversation, so I went in there with a mag-lite to change his diaper. I took off the diaper, shined the light on his tush and OH MY G_D ARE THOSE LITTLE WHITE HAIRS ACTUALLY WORMS?! I wiped at them with a wipe--and the hairs were gone. It was all I could do to not start jumping around and screaming then and there because it was SO GROSS. If you don't know about pinworms, count yourself lucky. Or click here. Go on. I dare you.
I was leaving for New Jersey the next morning and couldn't take him to the doctor, so I asked Yehudis what she'd done when her son had had pinworms. And she'd covered a clove of garlic with vaseline and stuck it up his rectum to kill them. "It works!" she told me, as I tried not to gag. After some consultation with Dr. Google, I decided for the middle ground of a) feeding child lots of garlic, b) smearing tush with vaseline and c) putting a couple of crushed garlic cloves in his diaper. The next day, we had a few huge and disgusting diapers; last night, Iyyar slept through the night for the first time in weeks. It seems to have worked.
But boy, does the house reek.
6. I went to the dentist on Tuesday. All hail fluoride rinse; no cavities, no bleeding, and the whole thing was practically painless. Seriously. Brush and floss, people, and get yourselves a bottle of ACT if you don't have one already. It's disgusting, but you get used to it.
7. This post is now long enough, but I will leave you with this:
Avtalyon in his elf suit, courtesy of Tanta Cecilia. If elves hung out in baby swings, that's totally what they'd wear to do it in.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Monday, November 03, 2008
Click this link right now
I can't believe I didn't know about this already.
Edited two hours later:
How, how, HOW is it possible that I have not a single ball of black worsted-weight superwash in my entire stash? My entire stash which one might, if one were to be absolutely honest, fairly describe as, ah, extensive? The ONLY black superwash in the entire house is half a 50g ball of Dale Baby Ullgarn--enough yarn for a hat for a newborn. A premature newborn.
Gah!
I can pick up a ball tomorrow at the LYS by my office for Hat #1--for the rest (and there will be more) I'll have to wait for a delivery from cheap wool yarn central.
Edited two hours later:
How, how, HOW is it possible that I have not a single ball of black worsted-weight superwash in my entire stash? My entire stash which one might, if one were to be absolutely honest, fairly describe as, ah, extensive? The ONLY black superwash in the entire house is half a 50g ball of Dale Baby Ullgarn--enough yarn for a hat for a newborn. A premature newborn.
Gah!
I can pick up a ball tomorrow at the LYS by my office for Hat #1--for the rest (and there will be more) I'll have to wait for a delivery from cheap wool yarn central.
Updated
The current sock yarn stash.
If it's missing from the old sock yarn stash, it's probably been knitted. Because, even though I feel like I've been whining nonstop about not having any time to knit, I cannot deny the mysterious appearance of a finished object or six.
Like these. The largest gloves ever, knit for a friend with very, very, very big hands. I started them last August. Look at the tracing for scale. Now try putting YOUR hand on a sheet of 8 x 11 paper and see how much of the paper your hand doesn't cover.
And this: a Cobblestone modified to require as few purls as possible. See that line up the yoke? That's where I wrapped and turned at the beginning and end of each row/round, because the idea of having to purl to achieve garter stitch--garter stitch!--was just too much to bear. Begun before we went to Israel; finished a couple of weeks ago. Back in the day, I could have done it in less than a week, but, well, I have other things going on now. No idea why Blogger insists on turning the picture sideways; that's not the way it is on my computer and I have no idea how to make Blogger rotate it.
What's next? Mmm, well, maybe some of this...
If it's missing from the old sock yarn stash, it's probably been knitted. Because, even though I feel like I've been whining nonstop about not having any time to knit, I cannot deny the mysterious appearance of a finished object or six.
Like these. The largest gloves ever, knit for a friend with very, very, very big hands. I started them last August. Look at the tracing for scale. Now try putting YOUR hand on a sheet of 8 x 11 paper and see how much of the paper your hand doesn't cover.
And this: a Cobblestone modified to require as few purls as possible. See that line up the yoke? That's where I wrapped and turned at the beginning and end of each row/round, because the idea of having to purl to achieve garter stitch--garter stitch!--was just too much to bear. Begun before we went to Israel; finished a couple of weeks ago. Back in the day, I could have done it in less than a week, but, well, I have other things going on now. No idea why Blogger insists on turning the picture sideways; that's not the way it is on my computer and I have no idea how to make Blogger rotate it.
What's next? Mmm, well, maybe some of this...
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