Thankful

I am so blessed.

I guess you're not a parent until you have to call Poison Control

Shit. I should probably add the word "bad" to that title. Ugh. Yeah, me, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Ugh.

I can't believe I'm fessing up to this in front of the whole world, but it's something of a public service announcement, so here's what happened.

So Phook woke up from her nap. Snuffy was asleep. I went upstairs and got Phook. I had been in the process of organizing some of Snuffy's outgrown clothes in some storage tubs, so Phook and I wandered into that project, and she was rooting through some gear for me, and I was rooting through some gear. And then she wandered downstairs. This happens all the time. We're on one floor doing something, she wanders to the other floor and grabs a doll or a book or whatever it is she wants, and then she wanders back. Only in this instance, she didn't wander back in a timely manner. So I went downstairs to check on her.

Yeah, there she was, squatting at the bottom of the steps, playing with this tiny blue pill case that is normally kept in an interior pouch of the purse I don't use because I always just have my wallet chucked in the diaper bag. I freaked the hell out when I saw what she had, which scared her, and she took off running. I saw her kind of gnawing on something, and I pried open her mouth, and I saw white dissolved something in there. Talk about instant panic. I knew she hadn't had access to enough of anything to be in danger of anything really, really serious happening, but I instantly had visions of her in the ER getting her stomach pumped, being in pain and absolutely terrified because I was an inattentive reckless asshole of a mother.

I ran back to the kitchen to get the phone to call Big K, and that's when I saw the Rolaids wrapper on the floor. I had had heartburn while pregnant with Snuffy, so there were a couple stray Rolaids in that pouch of my purse too. I felt pretty confident that she just ate those Rolaids, because they would have been tasty, and I can't imagine her actually chewing up and swallowing a foul-tasting medication, but I couldn't be sure. I hadn't used that purse or that pill container in so long, I didn't know how many pills had been in it, so I couldn't be sure that nothing was missing. What had been in there was ibuprofen and a generic muscle relaxer that I have for my fibromyalgia-type shit and back pain. There was still 1 muscle relaxer and several ibuprofen in the container. But I could not be sure she hadn't eaten anything from that pill box.

I immediately called Big K at work, and he didn't answer. I called his cell, and he didn't answer. This is common, as he is often in meetings and whatnot, and lets me go to voicemail. I didn't know what else to do, so I just kept dialing him over and over again, praying he actually had his phone on him and would answer. He finally did. He was in court. He asked if he could call me back and I told him it was an emergency. He told me to call the doctor and he'd be right home. I called the doctor, and they said to call Poison Control.

The Poison Control lady was extremely calm and nice. She asked me what the dosage was on the muscle relaxer, and I told her it was 10 mg. She said the toxic dose is 50 mg. I knew there was no way there could have been more than 2 pills max in that container, which means if there was 1 left, Phook could have eaten a max of 10 mg., and even that I doubted. The lady said we were good, and Phook would either get extremely sleepy or could have the opposite reaction and go batshit wild, if she had even eaten anything beyond the Rolaids. I could not believe that it takes 50 mg. to be considered toxic for such a little person, given that I myself at nearly 7 times Phook's weight can barely keep my eyes open if I take a single 10 mg. pill. She said that the ibuprofen was not a concern and that the only side effect of the Rolaids would potentially be constipation. I was so, so, so relieved she would not have to go through some awful medical procedure on a "maybe."

I got off the phone and was panting. Big K was standing here very calmly saying, "It's okay. It's okay. The only reason I even ran home was to make sure you were okay because I knew you'd be killing yourself over this. Accidents happen, even to good parents. Do not beat yourself up over this." I was just like, "I know, I know, I know, I know." But, dude, talk about hating yourself. Then he declared it a "teachable moment" and said down and discussed the do's and don'ts of medication administration with Phook. Then he saw the chicken I was defrosting for dinner, and said, "Are you still going to cook this, or do you just want to make a pizza? You don't need to make dinner."

So after this occurred, I was shook. I left both kids with Big K and went upstairs to finish the organizing project that got me in trouble in the first place, because, seriously, nothing calms me like mindless sorting. As I was sorting and reflecting on what had just happened/nearly happened, I thought that if the shoe had been on the other foot, I would have unleashed a tsunami of fury on Big K the likes of which the world has never seen. I would have told him he was inattentive and reckless and an idiot and an unfit parent. And I would have seen how horrified he was with what had happened on his watch, and I would have found a way to rub salt in his wound. And when I was the inattentive, reckless, unfit parent, he came home not out of fear for our daughter but out of concern that I was beating myself up for something that could have happened to anyone, and he wanted to support me. So I was sitting there sorting onesies, and sobbing like a loser because I am an asshole and my husband is a prince among men in every way that really matters.

I finished my task, using the label maker I mocked him for gifting me, and came downstairs and basically told him the above. And then I proceeded to spend the rest of the evening waiting for Phook to go face down in her dinner or something, but it didn't happen. If she ate anything other than 3 Rolaids, well, she's one tough cookie. As for me, however, it's been 6 hours, and I still feel like I have a boulder in my gut.

You see, the purse hangs on a hook on the wall in our laundry room, which is "always" babygated. Only I hadn't shut the babygate because I was just going up to get her from her nap, and it didn't occur to me I wouldn't be coming back down with her. But that sentence is even slightly bullshit, because it didn't actually even occur to me to shut the babygate or not shut the babygate. I didn't even think of the babygate. I had been doing laundry most of the morning, going in and out, and even as I sit here and type this, I can't tell you if that gate is open or closed right now...it is just so mindless. And it never even occurred to me that that little pill box was even in that rarely used bag to begin with. And this is how bad things happen. Not because you chose to take a risk and it broke the wrong way for you, but because you didn't realize you were taking a risk in the first place. And that scares the ever living hell out of me.

Ugh.

One of the weird things about Phook is that I don't really think of her as a little kid in the sense that she needs protecting, at least not very often. She's the kind of kid who holds her hand over food before she tries it to see if it feels hot. I sit her on the bathroom counter to brush her teeth, and she knows she is allowed to turn the right-hand knob (cold) but not the left-hand (hot). She knows that when we are crossing a street or walking in a parking lot, we have to hold hands. She knows that she needs mittens and a hat this time of year, or she will get cold. She just knows how things work. Our entire home is pretty much set up as a free-for-all kid zone. She can root around in cupboards and closets and baskets and bins, and it's all good...she is safe. So I feel a little bit like a rug has been yanked out from under me. She is two. Two-year-olds can find dangerous things you don't even know you have. She is two. I had almost forgotten. Really. I had begun to subconsciously think of her as this peer of mine in terms of her ability to safely maneuver in the world. What a colossally stupid move.

So as we roll up on Thanksgiving, I would like to thank God for this reminder to never take a small, precious child's safety for granted. And for a husband whose kindness and unwavering support are beyond measure.

I can't help falling in love with you...

I have something to report. My heart has officially been stolen by a little rogue named Snuffle Pig. Oh, I've loved him all along. And I have felt very bonded to him from day one, particularly in a mammalian sort of way. But something has been occurring over these last couple weeks. I've been busy falling deeply, deeply, deeply in love with this child. I want to be physically near him at all times, preferably touching him, preferably kissing him. I can't stop sniffing him. I don't want to leave him. Everything he does makes me love him more. I can't get enough of this child.

He is the most smiley guy in the known universe. Seriously. His smile has the wattage of ten trillion suns. And he smiles all the time. I lift him up in the air (you should see my triceps), and bounce him around, and he just smiles so tremendously huge it'll straight melt you. When I've gone missing on him (which is, in his world, leaving his line of sight), and then I return, he is so excited to see me. This person cares not at all that I am bedraggled, elastic-waistbanded, and generally unkempt. Every time he looks at me, it's like he won the Mom lottery or something.

It is such a different experience than with Phook. I was instantly enamored with every breath she took, every sound she made, everything she did. Snuffy has been a much harder baby. He was just so upset those first couple months, so uncomfortable. It is already a blur, but I feel like I spent that early time just keeping us alive. I was loving him all along, that is for sure, but there were not endless moments of wondrous contemplation as I stared at the beauty of my son. He was too busy arching his back in a rage for me to really get a good look. But now, I can hold him peacefully, snuggle him, play with him, elicit his first grunty laughs as I blow on his belly, and actually see my child. And oh he is a beautiful boy. He is a gentle giant. He is a butterball. He is perfection.

I'm going to go ahead and admit that I didn't know if I could feel the same way about a boy that I did about a girl. I can't really even come up with words to explain that adequately, but I just never longed for a son the way I did for a daughter. But now I can't imagine not having the opportunity to be a mother to a son. I can already feel a special bond with him that is just a slightly tweaked version of what I have with Phook. Not better, but different.

We're not cruising on easy street here yet, not by a mile. Snuffy still is not on a solid daytime routine, despite my Herculean efforts...the 30 minute nap cannot, for now, be overcome. And when he is tired, oh does he wail. And he is still spitting up multiple times per day. But the child routinely goes to sleep in his crib, without major incident, in the neighborhood of 7 p.m. I then nurse him once in the vicinity of 4 a.m, chuck him back in the crib awake, and he goes back to sleep on his own, getting up for the day around 7 a.m. And I have decided, after heaping upon myself several trainloads of self-loathing, guilt, feelings of extreme inadequacy, and general stress and strain, that I am going to enjoy him for who he is. I am not going to view his daytime sleep difficulties as a problem that I must fix. I am just going to enjoy him. I am just going to do my best, do nothing reckless, and roll with it. He may or may not be my last baby. But if he is my last, I don't want to have wasted this precious nanosecond of his infancy fretting about what I am doing "wrong."

I think that allowing myself that basic courtesy has opened my heart to him in unbelievable ways. Instead of saying to myself and anyone who inquired about him, "Oh, woe, woe, he only naps for half an hour at a time, blah, blah, blah," I want to say, to myself and anyone who inquires about him, "Isn't he the cutest, smiliest guy you've ever seen?" Because that is what he is.

I will not waste this.

And here I am. In love.

Wow, an award

So awhile back, one of my frequent friendly commenters, Heather from Stuck on Lunatic, told me she gave me a blog award. I filed that in my brain and then it got covered with spit-up and the toys Phook has been throwing at me lately in inexplicable rages. But for some reason, I just remembered the award.

Here it is:

I've never gotten an award before, but apparently I must bestow it upon 5 other rad bloggers. So here goes.

1. My sister, Miss Lippy. If you people are not reading her blog, you're missing out. She's hilarious, awesome, thoughtful, occasionally educational (she is a teacher after all), and offers her readers some sweet polls that never fail to make my day. Plus, she's just the coolest person ever.

2. My cousin, Wendell, of Wendell's Critter Corner. (Perhaps you're picking up on some nepotism here, but whatever. I clearly come from strong blogging stock.) Wendell is obsessed with critters large and small, and amusingly educates her readers on various animals, never failing to give excruciating detail on how said animal reproduces. Plus there are cute pics of her nephew, random tales of her life, and many mentions of her ancestral homeland, which is none other than my very own Woods.

3. Melinda of Anything Said, who is not my relative, as far as I know. Best blog in the known universe. Just go read it.

4. You know what, I'm tired. I give and I give and I give. And all the best blogs I read, other than the above, are pretty much just places where I happily lurk. So I can't give out anymore awards without being kind of a weirdo. Is that ok? Good.

5. See above.


So here are the rules (this is kind of a lot of overhead, so no big deal if my awardees just smile and nod):

Every superior scribbler will name 5 other super scribblers. If you are named you must link to the author & the name of the blog that gave you the award. Then you must display the adorable award and link to this post, which explains the award. Finally you must visit this post and tell your name to mr. linky list. Then they will have a record of all the people who are super scribblers!

And that is all for now. Except this:

And also. Today, it was snowing big giant flakes for a few minutes. Phook and I were lunching, and she noticed the snow. And then she declared that it was "pop pop"...her word for popcorn. And then she was really excited. Man it is awesome to be a kid...you can actually believe that popcorn rains from the heavens. Why do we have to get old?

The end.

Snuffy has a girlfriend

So all of my pals who have had a bun in the oven lately have ended up cooking girls. Which means that Snuffle Pig has his pick of the ladies. But this coupling with the tiny, perfect newborn of my BFF is my favorite:

Doesn't he already look like he's proud to have her on his arm? (He also looks like a python that is in the middle of digesting her twin, but that's neither here nor there.) Okay, seriously, in 2033, I'm going to be getting hamcocked at their wedding, which will be all the more awesome because my friends will have to pay for it! Ha!

And on that note, I'm going to debate the merits of sleep now.

I'm married to this

Have a nice day.

Drumroll, please...

Snuffle Pig had his 4-month checkup today. And he weighed...

18 pounds, 15 ounces!!!

(He's had two lunches since then, so I'm sure he's over 19 pounds as of this writing.) This, friends, puts him over the top of the growth chart. He was 25.5 inches long, putting him in the 75th percentile for length. We have a fatty on our hands. A fatty who will outgrow his infant car seat, his swing, his bouncy seat, and every other contraption designed for these things you humans refer to as "babies" long before they are intended to be outgrown. He is currently outgrowing 6-9 month size clothing. He is fitting nicely in some 12 month size items, provided I cuff up the pant legs for his stumpy lower half. This is going to dry up my sources for hand-me-downs right quick if he continues at this pace and gets larger than my friends' two-year-olds, which would really chap my hide. Crapper. Let's have a look, complete with thigh-cam, shall we?

The funny thing is, just as Snuffy attempts to outgrow all baby equipment, Phook rediscovers that it fits her just fine:


He's a cute one though, huh?

How do you like me now, ladies?

Oh, yes, and Halloween happened. Phook loved it. Loved. It. "More suckers, please!" The other day, we were rolling around with the stroller, and she was apparently reminiscing about trick-or-treating, because she was saying combinations of the words "bee," "suckers," "thank you," "bye," "see ya," etc. while waving her arms around at all the houses where we had trick-or-treated. At one point, she screamed, "See ya, suckers!!!" That made me pee a little bit. Most things do, but still. Unfortunately, Big K had the camera, and this was the best shot he got of our bee:

Luckily I snapped a decent one of pumpkin boy (He stayed in costume for about 20 minutes. That was $15.99 spent wisely.):


And now I'd like to tell you that my husband, the guy who has spent about 6 months not doing the 20 minute job that is installing shades in Phook's room, came home from work early the other day to tunnel under the earth for 4 hours. The guy who says regularly, "I just don't like dirt." Why, you ask? Well, he wanted to bury a cable, which he encased in some kind of plumbing pipes, underground. How far, you ask? A mere hundred feet or so...from our basement all the way out to the garage, where he has set up a man cave for gaming and computer fixing, and where he specifically wanted wired internet, for reasons I could attempt to explain, but probably not without making myself sound more dumb than usual. Here he and Phook are DIGGING UNDER THE SIDEWALK:


I am just going to casually restate that this man does not have time to hang two window shades over the course of half of a year, but has time to do major excavation projects so as to enhance his gaming pursuits. I'm not bitter, really, I'm not. [Cough.] Phook had fun, at the very least:

In other news, Snuffy is in the grabbing and gnawing on things phase. I truly feel sorry for things. I fear his impending mobility, for it means I have to go through Phook's personal toy store and remove all chokeables from her disturbingly huge stockpile of amusements. I weep for that day already. And it might not be too far off. Last night I put him down on one end of the crib, and when I went in to feed him at 4:30 this morning, he had navigated all the way down to the other end. Which freaked me the fug out. I'm hoping he stays too fat to learn how to crawl. (Ah, how I remember being on the edge of my seat in anticipation of all of Phook's physical developments, and just one child later, I'm praying for a kid who is actually physically limited by obesity. How quickly I have fallen.) Anyhow, here's the maniac at work:

But, you know, this squeaky crinkly toy phase is Uncle Growler's favorite:

So that's what's happening here. If you have a 4-year-old boy, box up his clothes and send them to me, will ya? I'm gonna need them for summer...

Victorification

Last night, I made this giant nacho appetizer thing, and Big K and I settled in to watch that crazy SOB Wolf Blitzer stand in front of his giant electoral map. Big K doesn't do stress without food, and I don't do anything without food. So we ate nachos and watched. And saw the most awesome thing ever unfold before our eyes.

When I saw Obama's family walk out on stage, I felt a tremendous wave of healing wash over me. A little of the guilt I feel when I think about the advantages I have because I was born with white skin became a little less acutely painful. Racism is far from gone, but certainly when the Obamas walked out on stage, it proved that we are, at long last, at least in this moment, a nation capable of judging people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That was someone's dream once, right? My children arrived just in time to see this. They will know no other world. I often get frustrated and worry about the world I brought them into. But last night I felt, possibly for the first time, that I brought them to a good and decent place. What a blessing.

*****

So last night, some newscaster announced that President Bush had called Obama to congratulate him. I asked Big K what he thought Dubya said. He replied, in Dubyaspeak, "Well, ah, ah, congratulations there Senator on winnin'. Good job with that victorification." I suspect he wasn't far off. Man, I am counting the days until that lamest of ducks goes home for good to live out the remainder of his years floating around the oil-slicked pond in Crawford.

It's a good day.