Each morning and each night I go through a ritual of pulling different medicines up into little plastic syringes to administer to Charlie throughout the day and night. As I measure out the various doses and line up the 5 mL vials, I can't help thinking of the lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": "For I have known them all already, known them all;/ Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,/ I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." I feel like I am measuring out Charlie's life in teaspoons.
Yesterday, the specialist added one more medicine to try, one more half teaspoon. He thinks this really might make a difference, that things will drastically improve to the point of even being off the reflux medicine in a matter of a couple months. We left the doctor's office yesterday almost dazed. Could it really be so easy? What if it really works? What if Charlie gets feeling better and soon, to quote Eliot, in the "afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!"
I realized pretty quickly last night that this may be one of those situations where it has to get a little worse before it gets better. Once again I was up about every hour with Charlie, trying to soothe him. Sometimes I'd feed him, sometimes I'd just walk with him a bit, sometimes I'd try one of his teaspoons. With Prufrock streaming like a song stuck in my head, I'd pat his back to the rhythm, "In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo." I wondered if the lines really held the significant commentary on artistic values as I had taught young university students a few years ago, or if Eliot just liked the meter of Michelangelo's name. That certainly had some effect on Charlie.
Early this morning I tried to cradle Charlie as he squirmed and writhed in pain. He was still asleep and I knew he needed to sleep more. I also knew I wouldn't. He would alternate between the picture of sound sleep to a grimace that would turn to crying and squirming, trying to find relief. We go through this routine for a couple hours every morning. There is really nothing I can do for him, but somehow holding him keeps him from fully waking and becoming inconsolable. After a while, he settles to a whimper, then back to peaceful sleep for a stretch.
My sister once asked me how being a parent doesn't just break your heart every day. On the one hand kids will do things so sweet you just can't stand it, like Ellie refusing to say her prayers unless she can hold Charlie's hand, or Charlie's big laughs and smiles when you know he's having a hard time. On the other hand, you have to watch them go through such difficult things you can't stand it, like Ellie being in so much pain she could only eat in her sleep as a baby, or Charlie whimpering in his sleep. It really can be heartbreaking sometimes. But we are hopeful.
I am pretty sure that I will never have the magnum opus like Eliot that students and scholars praise and analyze write about. I used to want to be a writer or an academic; perhaps one day. But tonight I am preparing for another night with Charlie, lining up the teaspoons. For now, that is my love song. "Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky."
Friday, March 23, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
A More Monumental Post
The last post was our family's 100th post. What a pathetic marker for that milestone. Here is a more upbeat post.
So, some positive things. For starters, Charlie now sits in a chair.
Who wouldn't be excited about that?
Charlie also turned 4 months old this week.
He is getting bigger: 16.5 lbs (that's 80th percentile).
He is quite the little charmer.
And Ellie is excited about hats lately.
I mean, really excited.
That floppy hat she is wearing is actually a hat that belonged to my dad's dad. He gave it to my older brother when he was little. Needless to say, it has seen better days. I think there are pictures of every single one of my siblings and me wearing it, and probably just about all of my nieces and nephews. Once upon a time, it was a real cowboy hat, with an actual shape and everything. My grandpa really wore it. Over the generations it has shrunk and gotten pretty battered. I'm sure there's a good metaphor to develop in there somewhere. Maybe some other time. Tonight, it's just a great picture.
So, some positive things. For starters, Charlie now sits in a chair.
Who wouldn't be excited about that?
Charlie also turned 4 months old this week.
He is getting bigger: 16.5 lbs (that's 80th percentile).
He is quite the little charmer.
And Ellie is excited about hats lately.
I mean, really excited.
That floppy hat she is wearing is actually a hat that belonged to my dad's dad. He gave it to my older brother when he was little. Needless to say, it has seen better days. I think there are pictures of every single one of my siblings and me wearing it, and probably just about all of my nieces and nephews. Once upon a time, it was a real cowboy hat, with an actual shape and everything. My grandpa really wore it. Over the generations it has shrunk and gotten pretty battered. I'm sure there's a good metaphor to develop in there somewhere. Maybe some other time. Tonight, it's just a great picture.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Ides of March
What an ominous-sounding day. Today lived up to the infamy. We faithfully avoided soothsayers and the senate all day (probably a good idea any day) and still rotten. My back has been out all week, so wrangling two babies is both very painful and next to impossible for me. We are dealing with a toddler not coping well to the random time change this week. (You know, I can get behind a lot of Ben Franklin's ideas. Electricity. America. All great. Daylight Savings Time, though, I think is a mean trick.) Throw on top of that a freshly vaccinated 4-month-old who is having some kind of tummy trouble that the pediatrician decided was worthy of a specialist referral and you have all the makings for a pretty bleak day. Did I mention the 2-year-old's grouchiness? Epic tantrums. And it's been raining all week. Here's hoping for a happier St. Patrick's Day.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Whistle while you work, hum while you eat
This is a little quirk of Ellie's that I just had to capture.
She's been doing it ever since she started taking solid food as a baby. It's like as soon as the spoon hit her mouth, we've been re-enacting the dinner scene from What About Bob? She even does it at church when we give her crackers, mistakenly thinking it will keep her quiet. Her nursery leaders love it. You can usually hear her from any part of the house when she is in the kitchen eating, which has gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion. She has a tell when she is trying to sneak treats when Mom and Dad aren't looking. She actually hums louder when she's eating some kind of treat, she gets so focused on it, so it's even harder to hide.
Lately, though, I've noticed this unconscious habit of hers slipping now and then. She spends more time talking during meals, more time playing with her food. It makes me realize how quickly she will outgrow some of my favorite quirks of hers right now. Soon enough she will learn to say "orange," instead of "orjange." She will stop requesting "cutecumbers" with her dinner, and will stop riding the "elegator" up and down at the library. She will learn how to use pronouns correctly and no longer say, "I want to carry you me," a request that was so much more difficult to turn down after the C-section than a demanding, "pick me up!" would have been. As she is growing up, sometimes I just want to turn the camera on all the time to capture her playing, not to forget anything. If the reader will indulge me, I do want to write a bit here, as I don't have better places to keep records these days, before Ellie outgrows any more. I will reward you with a video of Charlie laughing at the end. (Or you can just skip to that, I guess.)
Lately Ellie's speech is punctuated with a sense of urgency. Lots of "have to" and "need to" phrases. "I have to go outside." "I have to go upstairs and sing a song." "I gotta play." "I need to drive the car." (Nice try, kiddo.) She has a lot of demands on her. The other day she got into closet (that doorknob has been removed and is now on a shelf in my room--interior decorating for a two-year-old is another post altogether) and was pulling out items stowed away in the 3/4s of the closet she doesn't use. As I was reloading, Ellie spotted her Christmas dress and declared, "oh, I have to wear my Santa Claus!" I told her no, she needed to wear her jammies. Before I even turned around, she was unzipped and had wriggled out down to the footies. Who am I to question her agenda?
She seems pretty comfortable sans clothes and even diaper lately. She gets pretty excited about the idea of taking a bath and gets all ready, but once it's time to get in, for some reason she refuses. No tantrum usually, just lots of excuses. "No, no. Too hot, " or "too cold." She does the same thing with food she's not interested in. I rue the day we told her the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." I keep telling her that the bath is "just right," but then she insists, "No, I have to sleep," and curls up--completely naked--on the bathmat and lets out fake snores. What follows is a parade of discovery around the bathroom, playing with the scale, climbing onto the toilet seat. The other day she grabbed her toothpaste and toothbrush and did a nice little march on top of the toilet, belting out, "Toothpaste, DAH-DAH! Toothpaste, DAH-DAH!" She's getting better about going through the bedtime routine. It takes a lot of creativity, blowing bubbles in the tub, playing "Geronimo!" with the tub toys, making her tell us stories so she will keep her mouth open while we try to brush her teeth. It can be exhausting, but pretty funny if you let yourself laugh about it instead of getting frustrated.
Ellie is enjoying playing with others more and is trying to learn about sharing and taking turns. That said, I think her best friend right now is Jessie from Toy Story. Specifically, the Jessie decal on her wall close the the crib. Jessie is her friend, admirer, and confidant. Ellie tells Jessie everything. I came to tell Ellie it was time for dinner and she climbed out of the rocking chair where she had been looking at books, ran to Jessie and said, "I have to jump down and go eat dinnertime now, Jessie." She will tell Jessie when she gets a sticker on her sticker chart, about trips to the library, or have lengthy discussions with her either when she shuts herself in her room alone or after being put to bed. Over the baby monitor I've heard her tell Jessie, "I got curly hair, Jessie." Also, "I like the trampoline, Jessie. I like it," as though having a debate about the best outdoor play equipment.
In the interest of reader interest, I will wind down now. I guess the moral is that I should keep a separate journal for myself to not lose track of all this cuteness. We sure do love trying to keep up with this little girl though.
Now, as promised, here is Charlie laughing. The video is actually a couple weeks old. Brady was trying to get Charlie calmed down late one night and Charlie seemed to really like the small mirror in the hallway. The lighting isn't great, and he makes Brady work pretty hard for the laughs, but it's a pretty good moment.
I guess I should have called this post "funny sounds my family makes."
She's been doing it ever since she started taking solid food as a baby. It's like as soon as the spoon hit her mouth, we've been re-enacting the dinner scene from What About Bob? She even does it at church when we give her crackers, mistakenly thinking it will keep her quiet. Her nursery leaders love it. You can usually hear her from any part of the house when she is in the kitchen eating, which has gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion. She has a tell when she is trying to sneak treats when Mom and Dad aren't looking. She actually hums louder when she's eating some kind of treat, she gets so focused on it, so it's even harder to hide.
Lately, though, I've noticed this unconscious habit of hers slipping now and then. She spends more time talking during meals, more time playing with her food. It makes me realize how quickly she will outgrow some of my favorite quirks of hers right now. Soon enough she will learn to say "orange," instead of "orjange." She will stop requesting "cutecumbers" with her dinner, and will stop riding the "elegator" up and down at the library. She will learn how to use pronouns correctly and no longer say, "I want to carry you me," a request that was so much more difficult to turn down after the C-section than a demanding, "pick me up!" would have been. As she is growing up, sometimes I just want to turn the camera on all the time to capture her playing, not to forget anything. If the reader will indulge me, I do want to write a bit here, as I don't have better places to keep records these days, before Ellie outgrows any more. I will reward you with a video of Charlie laughing at the end. (Or you can just skip to that, I guess.)
Lately Ellie's speech is punctuated with a sense of urgency. Lots of "have to" and "need to" phrases. "I have to go outside." "I have to go upstairs and sing a song." "I gotta play." "I need to drive the car." (Nice try, kiddo.) She has a lot of demands on her. The other day she got into closet (that doorknob has been removed and is now on a shelf in my room--interior decorating for a two-year-old is another post altogether) and was pulling out items stowed away in the 3/4s of the closet she doesn't use. As I was reloading, Ellie spotted her Christmas dress and declared, "oh, I have to wear my Santa Claus!" I told her no, she needed to wear her jammies. Before I even turned around, she was unzipped and had wriggled out down to the footies. Who am I to question her agenda?
She seems pretty comfortable sans clothes and even diaper lately. She gets pretty excited about the idea of taking a bath and gets all ready, but once it's time to get in, for some reason she refuses. No tantrum usually, just lots of excuses. "No, no. Too hot, " or "too cold." She does the same thing with food she's not interested in. I rue the day we told her the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." I keep telling her that the bath is "just right," but then she insists, "No, I have to sleep," and curls up--completely naked--on the bathmat and lets out fake snores. What follows is a parade of discovery around the bathroom, playing with the scale, climbing onto the toilet seat. The other day she grabbed her toothpaste and toothbrush and did a nice little march on top of the toilet, belting out, "Toothpaste, DAH-DAH! Toothpaste, DAH-DAH!" She's getting better about going through the bedtime routine. It takes a lot of creativity, blowing bubbles in the tub, playing "Geronimo!" with the tub toys, making her tell us stories so she will keep her mouth open while we try to brush her teeth. It can be exhausting, but pretty funny if you let yourself laugh about it instead of getting frustrated.
Ellie is enjoying playing with others more and is trying to learn about sharing and taking turns. That said, I think her best friend right now is Jessie from Toy Story. Specifically, the Jessie decal on her wall close the the crib. Jessie is her friend, admirer, and confidant. Ellie tells Jessie everything. I came to tell Ellie it was time for dinner and she climbed out of the rocking chair where she had been looking at books, ran to Jessie and said, "I have to jump down and go eat dinnertime now, Jessie." She will tell Jessie when she gets a sticker on her sticker chart, about trips to the library, or have lengthy discussions with her either when she shuts herself in her room alone or after being put to bed. Over the baby monitor I've heard her tell Jessie, "I got curly hair, Jessie." Also, "I like the trampoline, Jessie. I like it," as though having a debate about the best outdoor play equipment.
In the interest of reader interest, I will wind down now. I guess the moral is that I should keep a separate journal for myself to not lose track of all this cuteness. We sure do love trying to keep up with this little girl though.
Now, as promised, here is Charlie laughing. The video is actually a couple weeks old. Brady was trying to get Charlie calmed down late one night and Charlie seemed to really like the small mirror in the hallway. The lighting isn't great, and he makes Brady work pretty hard for the laughs, but it's a pretty good moment.
I guess I should have called this post "funny sounds my family makes."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)