Separation Anxiety

Jack starts Mother's Day Out in a little over a week. Twice a week for 4 hours a day, he'll go to a classroom type environment where he can learn some social skills and experience a structured environment so that he'll be better prepared for kindergarten. Our motivation in getting him into the program was so that a) when he goes off to school he won't be The Creeper, and b) to give me a few hours a week to myself.

When I registered him for the class back in March, I was pretty much counting the days until September 1st rolled around. I was practically delirious with thoughts of being able to schedule a doctor's appointment, take the friggin' dogs to the vet, get some projects done, or even (gasp!) take a nap.

But now that the time for him to spread his proverbial wings is drawing nigh, I'm inexplicably sad. Don't get me wrong, the mental image of my little nugget bringing home macaroni-art practically makes me high, but at the same time, I'm kinda bummed that his childhood is flying by so fast.

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with me? I'm the person who used to think being a SAHM was a chore (the most important chore in the entire world, mind you, but a chore nonetheless). And now that my "baby" is a small child, I'm having mixed feelings about spending a whopping 8 HOURS A WEEK away from him. It's 8 hours a week that I won't have to deal with tantrums or diapers, but it's 8 hours a week that I'll be deprived of hugs, kisses, and the sweetest little face I've ever seen in my entire life.

I generally think people who lament the progression of their child are total saps, and yet here I am, doing just that. Good God, I hope I'm not gonna be one of those moms that cries. Ugh. Being a parent makes you weird.

Anyway, now that I've confessed my somewhat pathetic heartbreak over my son's maturation, I have to admit I'm actually pretty damn excited about it.

I ran out and bought him the most impractical yet adorable Lightning McQueen lunch box (it's in the actual shape of a car, but it holds maybe 2 food items), I've already packed all his stuff, and I find myself fantasizing about the little friends he's going to make, and the little class parties he's going to have.

It's a strange sensation to be SO excited for your child, and at the same time be SO sad that it's flying by.

I honestly believe that being a SAHM is one of the absolute most important things you can do for your child, but I always had a nagging suspicion that I was horrible at it and really not cut out for the job. But now I realize I have the best job in the entire world, and my son brings me so much joy that I frequently find myself worrying my head might actually explode from being so happy. So happy that I can't help but get a little sad when I watch him grow.

But seriously, the first time he brings home macaroni-art, I might spontaneously combust.

The Disease Saga Continues...

For those of you just tuning in, a week ago, I took Jack to the doctor on suspicion of chicken pox. My suspicions were confirmed (despite the fact he's been vaccinated for it) in a most bizarre and hilarious chain of events. Since then, we've been cooped up in the house, losing our sanity, and waiting for the illness to run its course.

Then last night, David was giving Jack a bath and pointed out that Jack's pox had gotten worse but in a weird, different-looking way. I told him I thought it was probably just the virus pulling a Custer's Last Stand, but he said, "No, seriously, I think this is a totally different kind of rash." So I made an appointment with the doctor.

So once again, Jack and I were ushered in the "special" entrance, and once again, we were treated like we had West Nile Virus.

The pediatrician took one look at Jack's new outbreaks and said, "Um... this doesn't look like chicken pox... this looks like... shingles... but, I don't even know if that's physically possible."

A little epidemiology lesson: shingles is a re-activation of the chicken pox virus. It usually occurs when you're around 50 or 60, but it is possible to have the virus reactivate as early as a month after having chicken pox. It looks more like a rash, whereas chicken pox looks more like mosquito bites. It's apparently extremely painful, but usually not fatal.

Back to the story...

My pediatrician pulled out all her medical books, trying to see if it's possible to have the virus reactivate while you're still sick with the original virus. When she didn't find anything, she called the pediatric epidemiologist at Dell Children's Hospital.

According to that guy, it actually is possible to get shingles while you still have chicken pox. Apparently it only happens in about one in every MILLION cases of chicken pox, but it does happen.

So basically my child managed to get chicken pox even after he was vaccinated for it, and THEN he managed to be the one kid in a million who gets shingles on top of it. I really feel like the CDC should send someone out here to document this, as the odds of this happening have to be like one in a billion. (I'm clearly not a mathematician, so that's the best estimation I can come up with.) I'm really tempted to go buy a lottery ticket just in case we've fallen into some karmic loophole of beating astronomical odds.

So it seems that we'll be locked away in this house for about a month while this thing runs its course. If anyone needs me, I'll be in a corner rocking back and forth while Jack watches more Barney.

Adventures in Chicken Pox

So Jack has chicken pox.

If you don't have kids, you probably don't know this, but due to the accessibility of a vaccine, chicken pox has been almost completely eradicated. Yet my child still managed to get it, even though he's HAD the vaccine. What amazes me is not that Jack GOT chicken pox, but how he was treated for it. Here's what went down:

A few days ago we started noticing that Jack had a lot of "mosquito bites". Weird, considering we're pretty much hunkered down in the AC 24/7. Then he had a runny nose, cough, and fever, but that seemed normal, too, because our family from Tennessee was just here, and one of my cousins had a nasty cold.

When the "bites" didn't go away, I decided he had chicken pox, despite the fact he had the vaccine already. David insisted I was insane, but Jack's fever was getting worse, so I called the doctor and booked an appointment, telling the receptionist, "I think my son might have chicken pox".

This is where it got weird:

The receptionist got really serious and said, "Ok... when you get here, DO NOT come into the office. Call from your car and someone will come out to you." Hmm. Ok? So I show up to the office and call from the car just as I was instructed, and my doctor comes out within seconds, covered in plastic. She looked like an extra from the movie "Outbreak". She looked Jack over for about 3 seconds and announced, "Yep, it's chicken pox. We're going to bring him into an exam room, but we have to go in the back entrance."

So instead of walking through the front office, they take us in via what appeared to be a fire escape and took us straight to an empty room. And I mean, literally, an empty room. The room was stripped of EVERYTHING. No toys, no medical instruments: even those ridiculous posters with diagrams of ear canals were stripped off the walls. There was nothing in the room but a small wooden stool to sit on.

The doctor checked him out to make sure he didn't have any other infections, and as she was doing this, one of the other doctors in the practice came in. Now, I should preface this part of the story by pointing out that this guy is probably in his mid-to-late forties. He's probably been practicing medicine for at least 15 years.

And he came in to look at Jack because he had NEVER SEEN CHICKEN POX.

Apparently chicken pox is like the Sasquatch of diseases now. People have heard of it, and a few crazy rednecks claim to have sighted it, but other than that, it's basically an urban legend.

They then ushered us back out the "special exit" and sent us home with an instruction sheet and well-wishes.

The whole experience totally blew my mind. For starters, I had chicken pox myself as a kid, and it was no big deal. EVERYONE got chicken pox. I can even remember a few totally insane individuals who used to throw "Pox Parties", wherein people would bring their healthy children over for a party with a sick kid. The motivation behind this was that the earlier a child gets chicken pox, the less-severe the case is, so by forcing their kid to get the disease early on, they were sparing him/her a worse case. My own parents did not do this (probably because it's slightly inhumane and smacks of Munchausen by Proxy), but still, it was not unheard of.

Fast-forward 27 years, and chicken pox is all but extinct and considered highly dangerous. It was the most hilarious spectacle I have ever witnessed. It was like something straight out of "Andromeda Strain". You'd think he had Ebola or leprosy or something.

Since I was born with the inability to remain serious in the face of absurdity, I started cracking up. I'm laughing hysterically while trying to ask the doctor what the big deal is, and she explained that we now know chicken pox is a very serious illness and highly fatal to newborns. Since babies dying isn't funny, I got myself back under control, but still, the entire experience was completely surreal. By the time we left, I half expected to get a call from the President, ordering an official quarantine of the entire city. And after what we'd just been through, I wouldn't have considered it weird.

So anyway, Jack and I are now under strict orders not to leave the house until the bumps "scab over" (ewwww, right?), which should be within a week. And since there's nothing more fun than being stuck in your house with a sick kid, I'm anticipating some brushes with insanity. And lots of Barney.

Self-Esteem

I had a sad revelation the other day. I was sitting at a red light where a (presumably) homeless man was begging for change. I reached out of my window to hand him a bottled water and some crackers (I don't give out money because I don't want to support a potential crack habit) and I noticed that he was dressed about as well as I was.

We both had on ratty, stained t-shirts (granted, mine was stained from furniture varnish and his was stained with what appeared to be pigeon feces), faded jeans, and sandals that were clinging on by a thread. It was kind of depressing, but I went about my way.

Over the past few months, I've gradually started dressing dumpier and dumpier. This is, in part, due to my new-found hobbies like refinishing furniture, spray painting light fixtures, and shellacking everything that can't run away. It's also due to a new-found frugality that I'm employing where, as my deep-South mother would say, I "pinch a penny until Lincoln hollers".

As a mom, it's hard to justify doing anything for yourself. I would surmise that this is even worse among stay-at-home-moms because we're not contributing anything financially, so therefore the "I Deserve This" mentality shuts off more easily. I find that if I DO have any extra money on my hands, I'm buying something for Jack, David, or the house.

My unwillingness to buy anything for myself, coupled with the fact I banished all my stylish pre-baby clothes to the back of my closet because I was too fat to wear them resulted in a repertoire of t-shirts, athletic shorts, and the same pair of jeans I'd been wearing since the Bush Administration.

My very dear friends tried staging an intervention by buying me a new outfit for my birthday. That helped, because I then owned at least ONE outfit that didn't look like it came from the "Derelict" fashion line from the movie "Zoolander". But for the most part, the parade of "What Not to Wear" continued.

The game-changer came this week when my mom was visiting. We went shopping, and I was wearing my usual ensemble, with the slight variation that I had on a faded polo shirt as opposed to a faded Boston Red Sox t-shirt. To make a long story short, my mom coerced me into trying on a really cute outfit, and I realized that the 15 lbs I had lost since having Jack was visible, and I looked GOOD.

It was kind of an eye-opener for me that my MOTHER was dressing better than I was. (No offense, Mom.) So we got that outfit, and two more. To my immense surprise, David jumped on the bandwagon too, insisting that I now needed new shoes to replace my current pair, which resembled something out of an American Eagle catalog, only smellier. He also bought me new make-up. I'd been so bent on saving money that even when my old make-up ran out, I tried to make do by mixing remnants of make-up that was too dark with make-up that was too light, stirring in some moisturizer, and hoping for the best. The result was that I looked slightly vitamin-deficient.


To top it off, my new wardrobe success prompted me to excavate my entire closet and try on everything I was "too fat" for. I nearly had a heart attack when I found that it all fit again. After a few dozen prayers of thanksgiving and what can best be described as a rain dance mixed with a seizure, it occurred to me that I'd been dressing like a vagrant for so long that I didn't even realize I'd lost all the baby weight. (Actually to be more precise, it was the weight that one of my medicines had caused me to re-gain, since the PPD had me back at my pre-baby weight within weeks, but we'll go down that road another time.)

As I sit here typing, I'm totally bombing on the happy-vibes that can only come from feeling good about the way you look. Maybe I'm indulging archaic stereotypes of women, and maybe I'm even being a little vain, but it's just what this disheveled mommy needed.

Stupid Baby Products

Every so often I get hit with an overwhelming urge to be a "good" parent. It usually manifests itself in stupid ways, like the time I vowed to stop laughing at Jackson every time he cries (that only lasted about a week). Most recently, about a month ago, I felt the compulsive need to protect Jack against the imminent perils lurking around every corner of my home. For the price of a small yacht, I gained the peace of mind that Jackson will NOT die from falling furniture.

The website I bought the stuff from just sent me a catalog, presumably under the assumption that if I was dumb paranoid enough to drop $15 on what is essentially a modified zip-tie, I might be persuaded to do so again. Looking through the catalog today, I was struck by how many really stupid things you can waste your money on.

Here are a list of the worst ones. Some of these are incredibly dumb safety items, and some of them are just incredibly dumb stuff.

Sun Smarties

It's a swim suit for parents who don't want their kids to get sunburned. I get it. Sunburns are a bummer. Fortunately, sunscreen was invented like 100 years ago, so your child can go outside without a HAZMAT suit. Because nothing says "Fun In The Sun!" like looking like you're dealing with a uranium leak.

Safety Trampoline

The idea here is that your child can "safely" enjoy a trampoline with this product. The only problem is, you have to jump in place. Like, straight up and down. Repeatedly. While holding a safety bar. If your child considers this fun, you might want to reconsider their sugar intake.


Safety Harness

It's okay to put your kid on a leash as long as it has a cuddly lion face. Oh wait. It's still a leash. 

In all seriousness, I realize that there are some kids out there with genuine problems who truly need something like this, and I'm NOT making fun of them. But for everyone else, just try actually WATCHING your kid. I know it's annoying, and there are so many interesting shiny objects you'd rather be looking at, but seriously, you're a grown-up now, and I think you can handle it.

Knee Pads

Whether your child is stealing 3rd or just, I don't know, LEARNING TO CRAWL, these are a definite "must-have". My God. I don't know how the human race made it 200,000 years without these.

Baby Nasal Aspirator

 
Sure, they give you a nasal aspirator for free at the hospital that DOESN'T require you to literally suck the boogers out of your kid's nose. But THOSE aspirators rely solely on the unreliable principles of physics. This way you can spend $15 AND inhale your kid's snot. It's clearly the better alternative.

Thumb Guard

 

How do you stop your kid from sucking their thumb? By humiliating the living hell out of them. (PS: this thing is $75. I'm not kidding. $75.)

Shampoo Visor

Nobody likes getting shampoo in their eyes. It stings really badly and kind of temporarily blinds you. But now there's a way to prevent all the agony and suffering for your child. No, not teaching them to tip their head back or just close their eyes. The Shampoo Visor! 

My issue with this product is two-fold. First, how does it prevent any and all water from dripping down? Water is a squirrelly substance, and unless you DAP that thing to her head, it seems unlikely that it's going to stop every drip. Second, how to you keep from pointing at your kid and laughing the entire time its on their head? 

And Last, But Not Least: The Baby Helmet

I really hate it when Jackson bonks his head. Not only does he scream his head off, but it always forces me to wonder what critical function he will never be able to perform as a result of the brain damage. (Oh damn, there goes his ability to remember to zip his fly...) However, I'm pretty sure NOT making your kid wear a helmet is worth a few whacks on the head.

For starters, every baby falls on their head. Einstein fell on his head, and he still managed to comprehend quantum physics. Luckily for our species, God had the foresight to give us skulls. Unless your child is regularly encountering the blunt force trauma of an object moving at 60 mph, this is totally unnecessary.


Second: WHY? WHY? WHY? would you do this to your child?

(PS: I just realized that if you look closely, the kid in the picture is also wearing the knee pads I mentioned above....)

I'm so far from being "The Perfect Parent" that it borders on the absurd, but I think these products are proof that sometimes it's better to just let your kid be normal.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage...

Ahhh, rainy days... even though we desperately need the rain, the fact that Jackson can't go outside has caused him to go stir-crazy.  He's now taken to following me around the house crying at me. (If that sentence sounds unidiomatic to you, then you must not have kids, because everyone else knows kids will totally cry AT you...and it's the most annoying form of crying there is...) Anyway, moving on...

It occurred to me that although I blog ad nauseum about myself and my son, I have said relatively little about the other most important man in my life- my husband. Seeing as how he's a pretty key player in all of this, I'm dedicating this blog to my relationship with my husband, David.

David is genuinely the nicest man I've ever met. This was a huge impetus in my decision to marry him over, let's say, Gerard Butler. He has lots of other amiable qualities, like his ability to tolerate my incessant relating of actual events to episodes of South Park, but it was probably his general kindness that won me over.

David and I dated for three years before we got married, and then we were married for 6 months before I got pregnant, so it's safe to say that we had a pretty established way of relating to one another before Jack entered the scene. Having a baby changes your relationship in ways you can't possibly imagine. In many ways it's better than it ever was before, but with that comes a huge number of new challenges.

First, a baby really cements your marriage. The following assertion is really UN-kosher, but bear with me: before you have a kid, your marriage can be called a trial-run. Think about it: if you get married and it doesn't work out, you can always just get divorced and move on. Sure, it will be awkward for a year or so when you have to tell everyone they wasted their money on that expensive wedding gift they got you, and then there's the unpleasant decision of who keeps the dogs, but really, no one will be worse for the wear when it's all over. That exit-strategy gets pretty much shot to hell when you get pregnant. Now you're REALLY stuck with this person for the rest of your life. Go ahead and judge me for saying this, but I think that in a society where more than half of all marriages end in divorce, it bears mentioning.

Fortunately, I genuinely like David and plan to stay with him for the rest of my life ANYWAY, but there's always the small chance he could develop an affinity for online poker or I could gain 30 pounds and start watching The Bachelor, both of which are pretty solid grounds for divorce as far as I'm concerned.

But assuming David doesn't take up golf and I don't start scrapbooking, I think we'll be fine. And although having a kid has made things tough on our marriage (before we had Jack I never yelled at David for leaving his shoes in the middle of the floor where Jack can get to them and chew on them) it has strengthened our relationship in a lot of ways. Namely, it's cool to see that David stepped up to the plate when it came to parenting.

(Editor's Note: As a general rule, I try to avoid using this blog to tell people what I think they should do. For one thing, I think pontificating makes you a jerk, but also, I have about as much business telling people how to parent as Bristol Palin has telling people about Abstinence. Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and bend that rule for a minute.)

I really believe men should do 50% of the work in parenting. That means changing diapers and (yes, I'm going there) waking up with them in the middle of the night. Even if you're breast-feeding, your husband should get his butt out of bed, change the baby, and bring him/her to you to feed before passing out. All bonding benefits aside, it means you're a team in this freakish psychology experiment called "Parenting". Ok, I'm done ranting.

David has thus far been pretty cool about sharing the unpleasant aspects of parenting with me. I don't know whether he's involved because of a sincere desire to present a united front or a legitimate fear that I will kill him in his sleep if he tries NOT helping, but either way, he's done it all without ever being asked.

In addition to the appreciation I have for David for manning-up and doing half of the heavy-lifting, it's also pretty amazing to see the man you already love become a Daddy.  Sure, I get a little jealous of my childless friends because they get to go out to dinner with their significant other without spending the entire time worrying (and dropping $10/hr for a sitter), but then again, they don't get to watch their son fly to the door and shriek, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" when he hears the car pull up the driveway.

Now, if only I could teach David not to fling the door open (because Jackson is ALWAYS behind it and he ALWAYS smacks him in the head as a result) we'd be perfect.

Picture Perfect

I had Jackson's Easter/15-months portrait made today. God Almighty.

I had anticipated that getting Jackson to sit still for a portrait might be a bit daunting. I can't get him to sit still for a diaper change, so I figured getting him to sit for a portrait would be tricky. I had no idea. The only thing I can really liken it to is running a 10k while trying to teach Calculus to a cat. I am physically and emotionally exhausted.

My first mistake was going alone. If I do ever decide to take Jackson to a portrait studio again, I will be accompanied by no less than 5 other adults, and possibly an air-traffic controller.

The actual PHOTO SHOOT wasn't the worst part. Yes, Jackson ran around like a meerkat on PCP, but I'm kind of accustomed to that.

While we were waiting our turn, Jackson spazzed out and made a bee-line for the escalator, which was just outside the studio. When I caught him and tried to pull him back, he threw himself on the floor and rolled around like he was on fire, thereby completely wrinkling his Easter suit, which I had just ironed. For those of you who know me, I don't iron. The Pope could come to my house, and I'd be wearing something wrinkled. By the time I got him off the floor, he looked like a crazed Garbage Pail Kid.

But the hardest part was when they loaded the photos and I had to sit down and pick the one I wanted. I'm trying to look through 10 billion shots, all of which are heart-breakingly adorable, while my son flies around the studio, ripping USB cables out of computers and trying to jam things in electrical sockets. My blood pressure shot through the roof. Fortunately, God took pity on me.

There was a little 4-year-old girl who was there with her mother and siblings having THEIR Easter pictures done, and while she waited patiently on her mother, she saw my plight and came over and played with Jackson while I finished choosing my shots. I don't know who this little girl was, but I'm half tempted to track her down and send her a pony.

Then came the fun part.

The people that run these portrait studios are trained in sales tactics that have been devised by Satan himself. They lure you into their studios with these mail-out coupons advertising a portrait package for 10 bucks, but once they have you in there, they start pushing you to buy these insane packages that cost as much as Jackson's college tuition.

Reading between the lines, this is the sales pitch:

"Well, first you have our Platinum Package, which gives you blah blah blah, and it's $390. Since you love your child, this is obviously the package you're going to get. Then there's our Gold Package blah blah blah, it's $300, then the Silver Package, blah blah blah it's $250, and then there's our crappy Bronze Package, and it's $200, but that's only for people that hate their kids."

I'm sitting there staring at these packages like a dog listening to a high-pitched sound. I love my son tremendously, but I don't feel the need to plaster a portrait of his angelic face the size of my living room on my wall. My purpose in getting his picture made was to have an 8x10 for David and me, some 5x7s for the grandparents, and a bunch of wallet shots to foist on friends.

So they offer you these crazy photo packages that only a certified Narcissist would buy, and it's up to you to bring up the $10 mail-out package that sucked you in. I felt like a complete jerk saying, "Uhhh... can I just order a few photo sheets? Because I really had that $400 earmarked for my mortgage."

To make a long story short, I managed to escape from the portrait studio for less than $50, but the guilt-trip they laid on me will probably take a few grand in therapy to correct, so I'm not sure I made the most fiscally savvy decision.

But we survived. And I have some adorable pictures of Jackson to show for it.