love and marriage

Today is my fourth wedding anniversary with my wife.  We have been together nine years.

That sounds so long to me, and it feels so short. This last year in our life and marriage have been hard.  No sleep, four kids, a new job, a new house. Stress and demands from every angle. A sick, sick baby that we can’t stop worrying about.

Sometimes, we were not that kind to each other. Sometimes, we used each other as a receptacle for all of the BS we could not hold inside anymore.  Sometimes, we fell asleep, exhausted, without a kiss or even a goodnight. Sometimes, we yelled.  I think sometimes that I will look back and this will be one of the hard years of our marriage.

Last night, at 1:48 am, I was trying to fall asleep. I could not, because I was honestly just waiting for the part of the night when Bumby shrieks for me and I go sleep on his floor. And my wife was snoring, just a little, and I was looking at her, and I thought:

This would be hard no matter what. At least we are in it together. At least there is someone to yell at who loves me anyway, and someone I can be a sounding board for when it’s all too much, someone I still love desperately, nine years later.  At least we have each other.

And that, I think, is what the hard years of marriage are all about.

eighteen months

So Bumby is 18 months, nearly 19 months by the time I am writing this.  I kind of can’t believe it.

He still does not sleep through the night (sorry, new mamas). Well, he doesn’t anymore. He did, fairly consistently, for a while, but now he has super-sized separation anxiety and also words. Which means he begs me “Mama, don’t go away” and “STAY. STAY.” each night at bedtime. It is heart-wrenching. We have a lot of travel over the next couple of weeks, but once school starts (HALLELUJAH) we are going to have to make a concerted effort to get him to fall asleep on his own in there, because right now I am falling asleep on his floor all the time. I agree to stay, then I lie on the floor to show my commitment to staying. An hour later, my wife wakes me up and I come back downstairs, groggy and grumpy. I spend some time with her or the rest of the family, then can’t fall asleep at bedtime, having taken the edge off. Sometime between 3 and 5 am, he will cry, and I will go up. He begs me to stay, I fall asleep on the floor again until morning. It’s miserable, but not as miserable as listening to him cry and scream, and nowhere near as miserable as having him in our bed, sleeping on my face and kicking my wife in the stomach all night long.  So we are riding this out for now, and secretly I hope that when the schedule normalizes a bit, he goes back to his old sleeping habits.

He nurses now about 3 times a day. He says “mahk” for milk, which is adorable. He also reaches his hands inside my shirt and rummages around for the goodies, which is slightly less adorable. He likes mahk at bedtime, and also on a boat. Don’t ask me why, but every single time we are on a boat or a ferry, the kid wants his mahk.  I do not want to wean him, ever.  He still uses a pacifier too, and I am unsure whether it’s better to wean him first, and use the pacifier as a transition, or to get rid of the pacifier first, then wean.  Either way, I am not weaning until after age 2 unless he drops it on his own, which seems entirely unlikely at this point.

He has been talking a blue streak lately, getting new words every day. To the big kids’ delight, he learns tricks like a dog. He can whip, and nay-nay. He shouts “NUTS” if you say “dese” (thanks to the brother for that one). He high fives, and fist bumps. He says “wet” or “stinky” if he needs his diaper changed. He loves to kiss people.  He pats your face and says “gentle” if you are crying.  He also bites when he’s mad, then points at the spot and says “Bite. No.” and gives a kiss or a gentle pat to show how sorry he is.

I thought I would be so sad to have a toddler instead of a baby, but I love it. I love the way he says “Mama” when I come home from work, and I love that going to lunch with him no longer feels like going to lunch alone.  I love how sweet and affectionate he is. My big boy.

parenting hack

Now that back-to-school days are upon us, my FB feed has been full of promoted articles about “life-hacks” or “parenting hacks” aimed at making our lives as parents easier. These inevitably involve things like how to more quickly cut your kid’s cheese into the shape of a flower, or how to pack apple slices without them turning brown.

Here’s an idea. Cut the cheese into a fucking square. Put the whole apple into the lunch bag without cutting it up.

You’re welcome.

the beach

It has been ages since I have written anything. Isn’t that one of the cruel ironies of blogging, that when you have time to write, nothing is going on and you have nothing to say. When ALL OF THE THINGS are happening and requiring much thought and analysis, you don’t have even a few minutes to write anything.

Accordingly, you are owed one of those omnibus update type posts.  This is not that.  This is the post where I write about one very bad thing that has happened.

The Bumby is very sick, again.

On Friday he started to seem out of sorts. No appetite, a desire for extra napping, that kind of thing. We had planned to go out to Fire Island, where we have a beach house, and so we did. Friday night, he felt warm.  This kid kind of gets fevers at the drop of a hat, so we gave him some Tylenol and went to dinner. He perked up and ate some bread, and charmed the waiter by saying Thank You every time he brought something to our table.  It was all very uneventful.

Saturday morning, he was still warm. We don’t have a thermometer at our beach house, so I don’t really know how warm is warm, but he was… you know. Warm.  We gave him some more Tylenol and discussed our plan.  We decided to take him down to the beach because it is actually cooler than the house, and he could play in the water. Even for having a fever he was behaving pretty normally. He was energetic, and happy.  Plus he kept saying “Walk, walk. Beach, beach.” So off to the beach we went, promising ourselves we would stay only an hour.  He played. He tried to eat small crustaceans. He filled a bucket with sand, dumped it out, and filled it again. He drank “wa-wa” the entire time.  Then he crawled up into my lap and asked for milk, so I nursed him. And he fell asleep, just as our designated beach time was up.

After much hemming and hawing, we decided he needed the sleep and it would be a disaster to take him home and risk waking him up and ruining his nap when he obviously needed one, because he was a bit sick. I put a towel over us to keep the sun off of him. It wasn’t hot under the towel, honestly. I swear.  I get hot very easily, and I was comfortable.  After 20 minutes or so, Bumby made a meowing sound and picked his head up.  He looked at me, and he was terrified.  His eyes were all wide and his mouth was open. Just then, his arms started shaking and he collapsed down onto my chest. “Something is wrong with Bumby!”

I was too afraid. I handed him to my wife so she could look at him, and he went totally limp. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he was completely non-responsive.  We started running to the boardwalk to take him to the clinic in our town.  As we got off the beach, he stopped breathing and started turning blue. I ran ahead to get the doctor, and our friend called 911 while my wife ran behind me, holding the limp and non-responsive Bumby.  I thought he was dying.  I was actually fairly sure that he was dying.

By the time she caught up with me at the doctor’s office, Bumby was responsive, the proper color for a baby, and wet.  My wife had a guy watering his plants hose down Bumby.  Apparently, what happened was a febrile seizure.  This is a harmless event and happens to some kids when their fever shoots up too fast.  Frankly, I don’t care if it’s not unusual, and I don’t care if it’s harmless.  I never, ever want to see it happen to my little guy again.  It was terrifying.  Regardless, we were med-evac’ed off the island and rushed to the ER.

Even though he was hot, and feverish, we were told not to give him water in case he had another seizure and threw it up and aspirated. After no less than five attempts, they decided they could not give Bumby an IV to re-hydrate him. He is too small, too fat, and his veins are too little.  Five times, I held down my screaming baby and let them stick him with needles for no reason.  Finally, hours later, I was allowed to nurse him and give him water and apple juice. It took several hours to collect urine from him because he was so dehydrated at this point. His fever hovered around 104. Which I know, because they shoved a thermometer up his ass on an hourly basis. He refused the Tylenol, so guess what they did?  Yep, they held him down and forced it.  He was choking and spluttering the whole time, and after they were done he promptly vomited up not only the Tylenol but the potato chips and 4 oz of water I had convinced him to eat and drink.  So then they gave him the Tylenol by suppository.  It was a total nightmare, and in the end they did nothing for him.  I hated the hospital, all of the nurses, and one of the doctors.  There was a PA that I liked, and she was the only thing that made the visit even remotely bearable (that, and the fact that the EMT liked Bumby’s real name so much that she and her wife are going to name their soon-to-be son after him).

He is still sick. He has had antibiotics for an ear infection, which maybe caused the super high fever, but maybe did not.  In addition to the ER visit, he got a trip to the pediatric urgent care and his regular pediatrician. They can’t find anything wrong other than the ear infection, but it’s been six days now and his fever is still in the 101 range (I have been calling him the Heatmeiser, because he’s Mr. Hundred-and-one).

So, what’s wrong with Bumby? No one knows.  Did this happen because we stupidly took a feverish baby to the beach? No one knows.  In any event, I am partly glad we made the decisions that we did, because if we had gone home or not gone to the beach in the first place, he would have been napping in his crib. Which means he in all likelihood he would have had the seizure anyway, only he would have been alone instead of in my arms. I might not have even known it happened, because the whole thing was basically silent. This realization has caused us to sleep with Bumby for each of the last five nights, so that we can be sure he is breathing and alive at all times.  So far, so good.

We are supposed to go back to the beach this weekend with some friends. Obviously, if Bumby has even the hint of a fever, we are not doing that. But if he doesn’t have a fever… I still don’t know. I am scared to have him someplace where we can’t easily get to a good hospital. I am just sort of scared in general.  I haven’t gone into work all week because I am afraid that he will take a turn for the worse and I will be an hour away. If I knew what was wrong with him I might be able to deal, but I don’t and I might not ever. He might just be a kid who gets scary-high fevers from nothing or anything.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s the very bad thing that has happened. Is happening, whatever.

sweet summertime

Babies napping in a diaper with the fan blowing. 

Long afternoons at the pool. 

Dirty bare feet. 

Late night sunsets while sipping rose. 

Days at the beach getting sunburned shoulders and ears. 

And also:

Teenagers in pajamas at 3 pm. 

Bored, bored children who one week ago couldn’t wait to have nothing to do. 

Early wake ups with an early sunrise. 

“Outside? Outside? Please?” when we all know there are dishes to do and things to unpack and worker men in the basement with 100 questions. 

Sweaty back, and face, and neck after biking to the train station in a suit. 

And yet, I will take the bad with the good any day of the week. A crappy summer day beats a perfect snowstorm, if you ask me. 

in which I try the blood-absorbing underpants

Shortly after Bumby was born, when my mother-in-law discovered that we were planning to cloth diaper him, she told me about her experiences working in hospitals in the ’60s and ’70s. Disposable diapers were relatively new, and the new mothers were afraid of them. What were they made of, that they could absorb such massive quantities of liquid without feeling wet? The prevailing fear was that they would absorb all of the water right out of the baby, leaving nothing but a shriveled up husk lying in the crib.

It was with this same sense of trepidation and awe that I purchased the blood-absorbing period underwear.

In case you are not familiar, they are called Thinx, although for some reason in my head I always call them Spanx. I don’t know why. I realize that this is another brand with an “x” where there should be a “ks,” but common misspelling aside, I don’t know why I get the two brands confused. You may be familiar with Thinx because of their bizarre ad campaign involving women covering up each other’s ears and eyes:

or falling to the ground:

I have no idea what these ads are supposed to convey (maybe she has fainted from lack of blood?). Also, the orange and brown is not that flattering.  Anyway.

Now is the part of the post where you hear a lot about my particular period. Fair warning.

Despite exclusively breastfeeding, I was lucky enough to start my period right away, six weeks after Bumby was born. Thanks, body, that was awesome of you. I was still sore, and did not want to wear tampons. “Fortunately,” I had a huge pack of super-sized overnight pads in my wife’s closet, and even some of those free hospital underwear to put them in, so as not to ruin my beloved maternity underwear (I seriously love and still wear my maternity underwear). I was sexy, y’all. Since then, my period has followed a familiar pattern:

Day 1 – Light flow, always a fucking surprise now that I am no longer tracking my cycle.
Day 2 – Super heavy in the morning, then gradually tapering off to something normal. Need to wake up to change tampon at least once overnight in order to avoid a murder scene in bed in the morning. Almost always ruin at least one thing because of walking all the way to the bathroom at work and forgetting to bring a tampon, or not realizing that one hour has passed so clearly I am about to start hemorrhaging all over the place.
Day 3 – Same as day 2.
Day 4 through ??? – Very light, just enough that I have to wear something all day or I ruin underwear and clothes, but not enough that I can really use a tampon because pulling out a dry tampon hurts like a mother and yet you can’t leave it in because of toxic shock and all kinds of other grossness. Usually at some point I “forget” I am on my period and just wear dark underwear and hope for the best. I never know how long my period actually lasts because my annoyance and “forgetting” ranges from day 5 to day 7 and I don’t know when it actually ends.

So, there it is. I still don’t love tampons, since Bumby was born. I just feel a little uncomfortable still, and don’t really like putting bleach and asbestos and who knows what else in my vagina more than I have to. Don’t say diva cup at me, either, I just can’t. So I thought, what the hell, I will give these things a try.

I bought one pair of hip huggers (for heavy days), two sportys and two cheekies (each for medium days). In retrospect, look back at the list above, and ask yourself why a person with two heavy days would only buy one set of “heavy day” underwear? I don’t know. It was stupid of me. Anyway, this ran me about $135.

Do they work?

Yes, they work. I tested this by pouring 1/4 cup of water into one of the pairs before putting them on my body, to make sure I wasn’t about to ruin (yet another) pair of pajama pants or set of sheets. They somehow absorb a lot of liquid while still feeling relatively dry and not getting all bulked up and weird. Science, is all I can say. For the record, I also did not wake up as a shriveled up husk. I am still a normal person with water in my body.

For my first heavy day, I wore one of the medium day underwear as a backup (the cheekies), and used tampons anyway. I was going to work, and could not risk an “issue,” plus even the heavy day Thinx are not designed to absorb 900 tampons worth of blood. The bottom line was that I could relax a little. When I walk all the way to the bathroom and forget to bring a tampon with me, no big deal. I can still take out the old one and just put a new one in next time. That kind of thing. No issues, no smell, not wet feeling, overall pleased.

The second heavy day, I was at home, so I thought I would see what happened if I just wore the Thinx alone. I decided to go to a yoga class that morning for a lot of complicated reasons that are irrelevant here — normally I do not spend my weekday mornings doing yoga, but particular day I did. At the end of the class, I had a feeling much like the feeling I had in seventh grade band class, when I did not expect my period so all that was between me and my ergonomically correct chair were my jeans and white Hanes Her Way. You know the feeling I mean. It’s a scary, scary feeling. I was like, please Spanx, please work. (By Spanx, I meant Thinx, of course.) And they did, but they could not handle what all of the twisting and lunging and warrior poses had caused. Luckily both my yoga pants and the seat of my car are black, so that unnecessary embarrassment was avoided, but let’s just say I need to do the “backup” method for the heavy days, and leave it at that.

For the light days, these things are perfect. I can just go about my business without worrying about the dry tampon problem or wearing pads like I am back in the 7th grade band class and also without ruining anything. Also, my days of waking up overnight to change tampons are over, because I use the Thinx as a backup for the tampon overnight.

Overall, 8 out of 10, I would say.

Washing: You are supposed to rinse them, then cold wash, then dry. The first time I washed them, I rinsed right away and then put them in a wet-bag (the kind you use for cloth diapers) until I had collected enough to wash. But after the fateful yoga class, I was in the shower with my Thinx soaking in the sink. Bumby was tooling around the bathroom doing Bumby things. And wouldn’t you know, that little shit threw my wife’s toothpaste into the sink where my Thinx were soaking. I didn’t even know he was tall enough to reach! Gross. Oh well, at least it wasn’t my toothpaste. So then the next time, I washed them the way I do my cloth diapers – throw them straight into the wet bag all nasty, and then when it’s time for a wash, dump the whole thing into the washer, run them through a cold-water rinse cycle first, then a regular wash cycle. Seems fine.

Now, the cost: I had hoped that these things would prove cost-effective in the long run, like cloth diapering, but because I can’t eliminate tampons all together, I am not sure that is the case. So let’s do some high-school algebra:

5 pairs of Thinx, which is enough to get me through one cycle having 2 washes = $135.

Tampons, in this stupid city where everything is more expensive than it should be = $0.36 each.

Number of tampons before Thinx: Maybe…… 30? or so? = $10.80 per cycle

Number of tampons after Thinx: Maybe…. 10? = $3.60 per cycle (and 1/3 of the bleach, asbestos, etc.)

So that’s a savings of about $7 per month. So these babies are paying for themselves within about 2 years. This is not SO bad, but it’s not going to make all the difference in your budget, either. Especially since, if I could do this again, I’d probably buy 7 or 8 pairs to space out the laundry a little more. I always have this feeling like they are a little scarce, and I am about to run out. And although you technically do not need to change them during the day, I liked to put on a fresh pair at night. I don’t know how long they will last, either — it is possible I will need to buy new ones after two years.  Although, I will have saved a lot more if you think about the number of sheets and pajamas I will have avoided ruining, and my entire family is probably grateful that instead of waking up overnight to change my tampon during a time of the month when I am not at my most patient anyway, I can now sleep through. God and Bumby willing, that is.

one

In 2009, my wife and I talked about having babies. Specifically, I informed my then-girlfriend, who was already the mother of three, that if she did not want to have more babies, that was it. It was a deal-breaker for me. “BABIES,” I said, “plural. Not BABY.”  I wanted, specifically, two babies.  Also, she had to want the babies, not just be willing to go through it for me. Because babies should be wanted, all of them, each of them. There is a big difference between wanting a baby and agreeing to have a baby because the person that you love wants one. She did not answer right away. She said she would think about it, and come back to me. And she did.  A day or so later, she said she was in. Whole-heartedly in.  Babies I wanted, and babies I would have.

And then, you know, life happened. For one reason or another, it wasn’t time to start trying to conceive until late in 2013. Then it took us nearly a year to get pregnant. So it wasn’t until six years after that original conversation that we had our first baby together.

By the time Bumby was born, the other kids were kind of… old. The next-youngest was 9, and the oldest was 14. Having another child when your next-youngest is 9 is very different from having another child when your next-youngest is 3.  To further complicate matters, the Big One was decidedly moody about the topic of adding a fourth child to our nest, and made those moods known throughout the entire experience of talking about a baby, getting pregnant with a baby, being pregnant with a baby, and having a baby. It was, frankly, rather miserable for my wife and me. Although Bumby and the Big One are fast friends now, it is far from clear that she in particular, or any of the older kids more generally, would welcome another addition with open arms.

Then there is my wife. She agreed to babies, this is true. She knows she agreed to babies. But she has reneged. She is happy with our family of six. She is not getting any younger, and although she loves our children fiercely, she also looks forward to our empty nest years (as do I!). She would like to have those empty nest years when she is still young enough to do fun empty nest things and does not have to take too many prescription medications. Before I ever got pregnant with Bumby, she made it clear. She wanted this one more child very much, but only this one more child.

So that leaves me.  I wanted babies. I have been quite clear on this, always. I did not want just one pregnancy, just one baby. But I agreed to stop after one, because I still feel just as I did in 2009, that each child should be wanted by its family. Knowing how the rest of the family felt, I almost hoped that being pregnant would not live up to my expectations. Maybe I would feel about it the way so many women do — it is acceptable as a means to an end, but not altogether a great experience in and of itself. I may even be miserable, or have complications. It is weird to almost hope for these things, but I wanted it to cure me so that I would not yearn to go through it again. So that I would be content with just one baby.  No such luck. I had an easy, uncomplicated pregnancy.  I was at home in my body for the first time since puberty. I felt beautiful. I marveled at the changes and adored having Bumby close to me and with me, always. I wasn’t even really uncomfortable until around 37 weeks, and slept well. Something about the pregnancy hormones agreed with me, and I was just happy the entire time. I can count on one hand the number of times I was angry or sad for the entire pregnancy. Then, I had an uncomplicated vaginal birth just one day past my due date.

After which, I met Bumby. I fell in love with him, hard and fast. Postpartum came with all the rawness and separation and plummeting hormones that it always does. Sometime in those early weeks, I became furious with my wife.  How could she, knowing how amazing it is to have a child, knowing how fast and fierce and primal the love is, how could she say I can’t do it again? When I agreed that maybe just one baby would be enough, I didn’t know what I was giving up. But she has been through this before. She knew what she was asking of me, and she asked it anyway.  How could she? She didn’t answer.

I cooled off, and my hormones balanced out.  I still wanted another child, but I stopped being mad at my wife for being done.  She could not make herself want another child any more than I could make myself not want another child.

My confidence as a parent grew, and I found I can actually manage four kids on my own, while my wife works or has a late dinner. I make decisions about the older kids that I previously would have deferred to my wife. I love them more, and have more patience with them.  Bumby started sleeping, and I started getting my life back. I went back to work part-time, and found a work/life balance that works for me.  Bumby started walking, and talking, and making jokes. I went from staring at him adoringly, to interacting with him. The love grew. I got my hair cut, without Bumby in my lap. I left Bumby with the sitter so I could go to the 5th grade science fair with his big brother. I started planning our spring garden, now that I have a fun toddler to plant it with, instead of a baby who won’t be set down long enough for me to plant even one tomato plant. I became me again. But now, me with Bumby.

And you know what?  I can’t imagine having another baby. I sometimes would like to have an afternoon of baby Bumby back, where we just nurse and nap and I eat strawberries in the sunshine while he stares at his own hand. My pregnancy and our first year as a family of six were the hardest and most wonderful months of my life, and I will remember them forever. But I don’t want to do them again, and I don’t want to do them with another baby.  I am done, with one.  I am sure that I will still have my moments of longing, but in the main I am, shockingly, at peace with this.

Before Bumby was born, we were a blended family. A family, yes, but there always seemed to be shifting alliances — me on the one side and my wife and the kids on the other, or the adults on one side, and the kids on the other.  Various divisions. Bumby has brought us all together. We have gone from a collection of people, to a whole family. One family. We are all brought together by loving this little guy more than we thought we ever could. We don’t need another baby, because we are complete now. I don’t need another baby, because I had the baby I was meant to have. Thanks, Bumbs.

medicine free by May 3

About three weeks ago, we put Bumby on amoxicillin for an ear infection. He’s had the same nasty ear infection since about mid-February, and just can’t seem to completely kick it. We had suspected a mild penicillin allergy the last time he was on it, but ultimately decided it was a combo of the high fever, pneumonia, and two horrible viruses that he had — and not the amoxicillin after all. So I said sure, okay. If that’s the best for ear infections, let’s give it to him and hope it clears it up once and for all.

For a week, he seemed fine. Ear clearing up, no reaction to the amoxicillin.  We simultaneously decided it was a good time to try to wean him off his Prevacid. The problem with treating a chronic condition like acid reflux is that the only way to know if you still need the meds is to take the person off the meds and see how they do. Prevacid weaning is known to cause “rebound acid,” meaning reflux symptoms in a person that would otherwise be fine, so you kind of have to push through the discomfort and see how they do once they are completely med-free. We opted for a very slow wean, using an entire month to take him down step by step. We also started a probiotic regimen and a low-acid diet to try to get his gut healthy and comfortable.

Then, on day seven of the amoxicillin, this happened:

I was rather terrified, and rushed him in to the pediatrician. An allergic reaction, they said. Give him Benadryl to keep him comfortable and let us know how it goes. It should start to clear up within 24 hours. The following day, he was worse, so they prescribed a low-ish dose of prednisone (a steroid) to help him clear up what was now an “inflammatory” reaction, which I guess is worse than an allergic reaction.  The day after that, it was even worse. I will spare you the photos, because they are completely heartbreaking. He was miserable — itchy, hot, covered in red splotches. His eyes were starting to swell shut.  I was even more terrified, and rushed him back in to the pediatrician. They gave him a shot of steroids in his fat little arm because the inflammation had progressed to his mucous membranes. THIS POOR KID, you guys. Also, for the record, he still had the ear infection.

The steroid shot kicked his inflammatory reaction’s ass, though. Five hours later, his skin was completely clear, although it was a little bruised looking in certain places where the inflammation had been really bad. But now, we had to taper him off the steroids. Apparently you have to give the body time to adjust and take over the work that the steroids were doing. So we were on a 10-day wean from the steroids.

You want to know what’s worse than a toddler with an ear infection?  A toddler with an ear infection and roid rage.    He was so mad, all the time mad. No, you can’t go out that door, let’s go out this one. Head-slamming against the ground, tears, screaming, kicking tantrum.  It got worse and worse as the week progressed, because the steroids amped him up so much he couldn’t sleep. He was also literally eating as much as I was, which meant he was constantly hungry.  Always eating, always running, always crying, and never, ever, ever sleeping.

After a week of this, I was totally fried. On Saturday morning, my wife got out of the shower and I told her that in the hour we had been up, Bumby had seven tantrums. I tried to calm him and sit on the couch with him, and he slithered off my lap to the floor and started SLAMMING the side of his head against the ground. My wife sat down next to him, and stuck her finger in his ear. He immediately calmed. Oh yeah. The ear infection.

We went back to the pediatrician, where the receptionist greeted the lot of us by name. The ear was scary-infected still, so they gave him a z-pack after we refused an antibiotic that could cross-react with a penicillin allergy in about 10% of people. So starting on Saturday, he was on Prevacid (although down to a half-dose by then), steroids, and antibiotics. It’s going really great weaning him off the meds, we tell ourselves. Oh hey look! A molar! Awesome. Also, he has broken 30 lbs due to eating everything in sight while on the roids.  I guess that’s why people take them to “bulk up.”

It has, however, improved since then. He finished the steroids on Monday and I gleefully threw that shit in the garbage. Today, he had his last dose of antibiotics, and I gleefully threw THAT shit in the garbage. The ear does not seem to be bothering him, nor does the stomach. He is back to eating a normal-for-Bumby amount of food (which is to say, approximately as much as your average 10 year old). He’s down to 1/4 dose of Prevacid and doing great with weaning off of it — he only has half of his nighttime dose and nothing in the morning anymore. After about a month of frequent night-wakings, Bumby has slept through the night for two nights in a row. Honestly, the 2mL of Prevacid he is on probably does almost nothing to reduce his stomach acid, so I expect he has really and truly outgrown the reflux. We’re keeping on with the low-acid diet and the probiotics. We’re going to delay his 15 month booster vaccines, which are due on Friday, because HOLY SHIT this kid has had a lot of crap pumped into his body in the last month.

Now, he is happy and healthy. We had a laughing fit this morning after I told him “Nopity-nope-nope” could he open the drawer and eat Mommy’s earrings. A week ago this would have been 30 minutes of screaming. Instead, he pointed at the drawer and said “Nope nope” and cracked up, over and over.

On May 2, he will get his last-ever dose of Prevacid.  On May 3, our little boy will be completely medicine-free for the first time in about 10 months. Hallelujah.

houses and disappointment

A while ago, I mentioned that we had bid on a house and our offer had been accepted. It’s a long story, but what basically happened is that after accepting our offer, and after we paid $1,300 for an inspection, the sellers informed us that they had actually received another, better offer that they had decided to accept instead. We pushed ourselves, upped our offer, and were again out-bid. Imagine our “surprise” when we later learned that the same agent was representing the sellers and the new buyers. In other words, the new buyers knew exactly what we bid each time, and out-bid us by the bare minimum amount. Legal, yes. Ethical, not so much.

So there we were, one Wednesday night with a bottle of wine, an internet browser, and a lot of disappointment. We looked at the other houses on the market in our town. A few piqued our interest, so we decided to e-mail our agent and set up time to go look at them. We weren’t set on moving, but since we had started the process, we thought we might as well explore our options. When we lost the other house, my wife had a rant that lasted about 5 minutes about all the things she hates about our current house, and none of them were changing any time soon. Plus, it is now or never with the move. The Big One will be a junior next year, so if we’re moving, we’d like to do it at a time where she can really settle into the new house before going off to college, so that when she comes home, she really comes home, not just back to her parents’ house that she never actually lived in.

We saw a few houses. Some were too small, some needed too much work, some had the master bedroom on the first floor, which doesn’t really work when you have small children. One had leopard carpet.  Then we got to the last house.  It was five bedrooms, plus an office. One of the bedrooms is really small, but one of our children is also really small, and by the time he cares about the size of his room, the Big One will be about 24. The yard is huge, and awesome. The layout is better than what we have now. It was built in 1910 but has been well cared for all along, so it is full of charming details but not run-down. The first floor has French doors between many of the rooms, so we can keep Bumby in eye-shot without having baby gates all over the place. We fell in love, and when we brought the kids back, they did too. It’s only a tiny bit bigger than our current house in terms of square footage, but the layout gives it more usable space. We wanted to make sure that if our offer was accepted, the sellers would want to sell to us, rather than someone else. So when we put the offer in, we wrote a heartfelt letter about why we thought this was the perfect house for us. Each of the kids contributed a paragraph (except for Bumby who cannot read, write, or speak).

Long story short, we got the house. We put ours on the market immediately, and after three stressful weeks, it also sold. YAY, we’re moving.

When we told the kids, the Big One said, “Well, you know how I feel about this. I don’t want to move,” and left the room. We were stunned. We actually did not know how she felt about this, since she seemed totally excited when we looked at the new house originally. Boo was excited (the new house is three doors down from her best friend) but said, “We have had seven Christmases in this house.” The Big Brother acted like we hadn’t said anything, and Bumby obviously had no idea what was going on. It was…. anti-climactic. What happened between writing a letter about how excited we were to buy this house, and selling ours three weeks later?  It’s hard to say. All we can come up with is that to the kids, they were separate events. Getting a new house is exciting, but leaving the old one is sad. Also, the Big One realized she would have to share the bathroom with her sister. I actually don’t know a single teenager with her own bathroom, but this has become monumentally important to the Big One for some reason. We were really disappointed that the kids were no longer excited. It took the wind out of our sails.

So we scheduled time to go see the house. My wife and I have been back a few times for various reasons, and each time we get more excited. In our contract, we’re allowed to come in to “take measurements” so we thought we would bring everyone back, walk room to room, and talk through with them how they wanted to set up their bedrooms. They could remember why we were excited about this house in the first place. We went to Home Depot and got paint cards for them to look at in their rooms. We were psyched up.

When we got there, the house was TRASHED. Apparently, the seller is preparing for an estate sale, so there were card tables set up all over the place with knickknacks on them. Every room was cluttered with half-packed boxes and the whole house smelled like mothballs from the stuff that had been dragged out of the attic. There were dirty dishes in the sink, and every inch of counter and table-space was just covered in crap. The floors were dirty and there were crumpled up paper towels all over the bathroom counter. The master bedroom closet looked like it had been hit by a tornado. There was a half-eaten bowl of rice on the desk in Big Brother’s room, and none of the beds were made.  On and on, each room more disgusting and cluttered than the last. Our trip to get the kids excited about the move had backfired spectacularly. Now even Boo, who was the only excited one, was disappointed. It was so hard to see past how dirty and cluttered the house was. It felt small and dingy even though it’s actually bigger than our house now.

We were all worried about how cramped it felt. And all the French doors on the first floor, which at first had seemed like a dream come true, now seemed like a nightmare as Bumby ran from room to room, careening around card-tables covered in tiny breakable things, slamming the original 1910 glass doors into the walls. It turns out he is already tall enough to reach the handles.

I was angry. How could they have left the house like that? We couldn’t even get the measurements we needed because there was so much stuff in our way. We couldn’t see ourselves living there at all.  It seemed, frankly, like a shithole. When we got home, my wife announced that she thought the whole thing was one big mistake and locked herself in our bedroom. I felt the same, minus the locking myself in the bedroom, because it was already taken.

I know that the house was just dirty. It obviously won’t be full of all that crap when we live there. We will come in, with our paint samples and our mops and brooms and our cute furniture and we will make it our own. It is still charming, it still has amazing views and a great layout. It still has an office and a bedroom for each of us. But… if even the adults are having a hard time maintaining any enthusiasm after that experience, how are the kids supposed to feel about it?

The one silver lining is that I really got the opportunity to explore the yard. There is a perfect spot for the vegetable patch — bigger and sunnier than what we have now. There are at least three spots that are completely hidden from view if you are in the house or on the street, perfect for secret kid-stuff. There are steps and rocks and flowers everywhere. It’s perhaps the most amazing yard I have ever seen. I am hanging onto that, and trying to get us moved in with enough time to plant our summer vegetables in the spot I have chosen.  We will have to push through the disappointment we all feel, because it is what it is. We have sold our house, and bought this one, and now we’re moving.

dads at the playground

With the first nice weather for the spring, and a budding toddler who loves to play outside, we took a couple of walks to the playground this weekend. In our sexist town, we were literally the only moms there with our kids. Don’t get me wrong, the playgrounds were packed. But all the other kids were there with their dads. 

“But how BAD did you pee your pants? …. Oh, that’s fine. We can stay, then.”

“I SAID YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG. BUT YOUR SISTER GOT KICKED IN THE FACE. SO WE HAVE TO GO.”

Most of the dads were engaged and having fun, playing with their kids. We even had a nice chat with the dad of a two year old and a four year old who will eventually be at the same elementary school as Bumby.

I know that Bumby is really lucky to have two moms who love him so much. But for the first time, I was a little sad for him that he won’t also have a dad. Probably I will lose my lesbian-card for saying that, but there it is. 

I can’t quite put my finger on why it matters. My wife is amazing at sports. I can fix things around the house. He has a great male role model in his older brother. I logically know there is no reason for him to “need” a dad — we can provide him with all the stereotypically masculine skills he needs, and big brother can instruct him in how to make his penis blow up like a balloon by holding his foreskin shut while he pees (this is a real thing that boys do). I guess I just don’t want him to miss any experience in life, or be left out in any way, and he will be. I wish I could protect him from feeling different, even while I know that being a little different will make him a stronger, happier, better-adjusted person than walking through life with no adversity at all.