fine, thank you

With a car wreck every two miles on the highway, it took me forever to get home last night. When I walked in, I was greeted by a worried wife, a huge dog that decided that he must bark his fool head clean off. Then David started squeeling in the other room and came running up to me at full speed and volume until he hit my legs like an enthusiastic little tornado siren.

Nina spent the evening working on this:

"David, how are you?"
"Fine, thank you."

Sometime in the middle of the night I heard him talking--either awake or in his sleep, I'm not sure--"Old MacDonald E I O, Old MacDonald E I O" over and over.

no titu pwease

Sometime in the past week or so, David matured. It is difficult to notice when this happens but suddenly one day, he is able to do a bunch of stuff that he wasn't doing so long ago. It's kind of like when your wife gets her hair cut and, a couple of weeks later, you notice something different, but can't quite put your finger on it. Or at least that is what I hear from other guys with other wives. I don't have that problem. In my life, the wife getting a hair cut is an event on par with the 12 major feasts days of the church.

So David's new mature thing is sentences. Not the old sentences that we carefully teach him like "Cookie, please." He is saying new sentences that has simply heard recently and is repeating.

Examples:

• If anyone expresses excitement or emotion (interjections), he asks, "wh'happ'n [daddy]?" (what happened, daddy?)
• The other day I totally lost my patience with his screaming about some thing or another and told him to shut up. I felt terrible, really. My payment--"shut up, daddy" every so often.
• "Come'ere [daddy]." (come here, daddy)
• "Sit down, [mommy]."
• "Move, please, [Nina]"
• "No titu, please" (no thank you, please)

This last one requires some explanation. Sometimes we ask questions that are actually rhetorical, like "would you like to go to bed now?" Other times we ask something like, "would you like an apple?" It is an honest question, but he thinks it is merely us informing him of his fate. He whines, "Noooo." I explain that the answer is "No, thank you" or "Yes, please." Well, he doesn't have it sorted out and so he has come up with "No, thank you please."

He has more sentences, I promise, but I can't remember them. Generally, his frequency and level of parroting others has really increased lately, sometimes to the degree that it is difficult to carry on a conversation because he just repeats whatever you are saying rather than actually replying.

Better late than never

I hope you have not been waiting on the edge of your seat wanting to know how David did with the surgery.

If so, you should know better considering the authors of this site.

I am happy to report that David pulled through with flying colors.

The day started at 5:30am when Jason and I seriously questioned why we were doing this. After all, antibiotic shots to the legs aren't so bad. But after much prodding we finally got out of bed and an hour later woke up the D.

As we entered the admission area at the hospital we saw three other binky clad toddlers, blurry eyed and wanting to go back home. When we got back to our pre-op room the nurse informed us that David would be the third child to go back. (Two hours AFTER we got there) In the mean time we were given a wagon to pass the time with. At one point David sat down, looked up at me and pat the seat in front of him saying "mommy ride, mommy ride". After demonstrating that my rear would not fit in the wagon with him he agreed that it would be best if I just pulled him around.

Jason and I took turns going to eat breakfast as we knew David would kill us and devour our food if we tried to eat in front of him. I took second shift and just as I was about to go the nurse came in wanting to give David the oral sedative. Thus Jason scored the best part of the day with Drunken Baby David while I ate hospital food and had a cup of bad coffee. Lets just say David hasn't been that cute since he was 9mo old.

Just as I came back the nurse arrived to steal my baby. Then we waited and waited. After a bit we were taken to the little closet where the magical doctor appears from behind a door and informs you that your child (insert name) has had a successful (insert procedure) and within (insert time frame) should be up and running like normal. Then we went back to the waiting room, were saved by Granny and Grandpa Great with some wonderful cinnamon rolls and finally the nurse came to get one of us to meet David in the recovery room.

When I got to the recovery room David was a crying mess. As the nurse handed him to me she asked if he was a "daddy's boy". I said no and she stated he had been asking for daddy ever since he woke up. He tried about a hundred times to rip off the heart monitor they had taped to his toe and they finally let us leave after he sucked down half a cup of water. In our post-op room he sucked down two containers of apple juice and started threatening to hurt people if we did not provide a cookie or steak soon. We were out of there and home by 10am.

David proceeded to throw the biggest fit after we got home. I couldn't even hand him a cookie he was so upset. He remained pretty touchy the rest of the day (as long as I was around) until he finally went to sleep around 3:30 or 4:00. Before he went to sleep he managed to reach up and unscrew a light bulb from the socket which is right above his crib. I of course freaked out so that evening the three of us rearranged the bedroom. At one point his crib was pushed up against our bed and David finally put two and two together and started crawling in and out of the crib. Every time he did this the crib would roll away from the bed and one time he got going without one of us standing there and slipped between the bed and crib. Luckily he has practiced this move before and managed a perfect tuck roll maneuver.

All that's left is to practice our blow dart skills so we can sedate him before giving him ear drops in both ears twice daily.

Give me Ham on five, hold the Mayo

I wanted to update everyone on David's surgery.

He is to be at Saints on Thursday at 6:30am. The surgery will be at 8:30. After they are done he will be transferred up to the eigth floor pediatric unit for recovery until "mid afternoon".

Here's to a little bit o pain for mucho gain and No More Ear Infections!!!!

autumn

autumn-davidoverrail.jpg
Originally uploaded by jandjgilbert.

I've posted some new photos of the boy. Jaime took these over the weekend while papa was rakin' leaves

tubed

David is still (again) sick (er?). Let's see if I can remember what all has happened. At the end of last week, he had a cold. The there was the barfing. A trip to the doctor revealed another infection in both ears. Then his eye swelled up and started leaking goo. So he was on antibiotics for his ears as well as an antibiotic ointment for his eye. Through the course of the week, he seemed to just get more sick. This last weekend he seemed to really feel worse. This could partially be because we also started him on an antihistamene (sp?), which makes him sleepy. He and I stayed home from church on Sunday. On Monday (yesterday), we reached the end of the antibiotic regimen with no improvement. Jaime took him to the doctor again. She scolded us.

See, the ENT recommended tubes to us over a month ago. We have seen of success with chiropractors who are able to make an adjustment that opens up the tube that runs from the ears to the throat. Drainage problems in these tubes that cause ear infections. The pat answer is that these tubes are short, flattened, and at the wrong angle in toddlers so they don't drain properly so kids get ear infections so there. But I'm not satisfied with that assumption. Could there be something else causing the problems? I wanted to investigate this. Sometimes, food allergies could be the cause, othertimes, just a little adjustment is needed.

Well, our doctor has ordered a stop to the investigating (to the degree that she is able). Tubes. Now. So, he is going to the ENT again tomorrow. But he still has a raging ear infection--two of them. Our options: 14 days of nasty-tasting oral antibiotics, or three days of shots, two of them, in the thighs.

Which did we choose?

Well, David is normally great about medicine. You see, researches waited until you and I grew up and then, when all was clear, created medicines for kids that taste really good. David equates medicine with treats. At least he used to until we tried to give him kids Robitusen (sp?) last week. They didn't get the "tastes great" memo and it was like feeding him a dead fish. Since then, all medicines have been akin to getting a cat to eat hot coals. And I mean that for David. He is just a miserable screaming thrashing beast. So we voted (which is to say Jaime decided) on the shots. They cause an equal amount of trauma, if not less, and it is only three days.

So we will be getting tubes put in David's ears. For those of you not familiar with the procedure--what cave have you been hiding in? Essentially there is a chamber in the ear behind the ear drum. It is where the ear guitars and other sound equipment is kept. Fluid gets into this chamber--I forget how, the levies break, or something. In a normal person, this fluid simply drains down a little tube into the throat where it gets hacked up with other lugie material. In David's ear, this fluid cannot drain for reasons that doctors apparently don't care about. It sits there, creating the warm, moist environment favored by germs. Germs grow and pressure builds up and the infection spreads into other chambers in the head until the pressure is so great that one of these chambers burst open, showering the brain with germs resulting in an inability to turn left. If you poke a hole in the ear drum, that fluid can drain out and everything is groovy until the ear drum heals itself. Then you start over again. So, the doctor, who has taken an oath to do no harm, pokes a hole in the ear drum and then places a little tube in that hole to prevent it from healing, leaving a hole there for swimming pool water to get to the brain. This creates a disorder called "water on the brain," which causes the patient to like movies like "Waterworld" and "Swimfan."

If that is just too technical for you, then read this.

you can probably smell it from where you are

Oh, gross. And I don't mean gross like, "ew." I mean gross like "oh, the humanity." Sinking, burning metaphors-of-mankind's-hubris levels of disgusting, foul, rotten, grossness.

It wasn't just the volume, although it was easily in the top three for his lifetime. It wasn't just the smell, even though I'm going to need smelling salts to get rid of the memory. It wasn't just the texture even though we could market that texture to a house of horrors.

About 40 minutes ago, David woke up crying inconsolably. Jaime had been trying and trying to comfort him to no avail. She was in the bedroom rocking him and I was working at the computer since I am useless during these situations with my current, nearly presidential, lack of popularity in the 0-2 age range.

Then I heard a noise. This is the funny thing--I didn't note hearing a noise at the time that I heard it. It was kind of like noticing the heater turn off even though you did not notice it was on. I couldn't describe the noise now, but it registered for later use. Specifically one second later, when Jaime called for help.

"That was the sound of barf hitting the floor," I thought to myself as I rushed from the office, "a lot of it."

Specifically, everything he ate today looking almost like the first time we saw it, but with extra grossness added, and smelling like long-dead animals. I ran in and grabbed towels and began catching what continued to come out of him in a slow, unforced way. It wasn't so much throwing up as it was simply giving it back--with a smell.

He felt better after that. We mega-cleaned while he sat on the bed, sipped water, and played with keys.

After half a box of wipes, a laundry load of clothes, towels, and unfortunate stuffed animals, Jaime is coaxing him back to sleep.

I can still smell the smell.

Update: 6:30 am 11.3.05: he awoke again at 1:00 am crying and crying. Again, Jaime was trying to console him. We were discussing options. She said he was sick. I said I didn't really think so. David broke the tie vote by barfing again! Cheney should do that on the Senate floor next time they are deadlocked. Court clerk, "On S.659--The Human Chimera Prohibition Act of 2005" the vote is 42-42. How do you vote, mr. Vice-President?"
Cheney: "[technicolor cough]"
Clerk: "um, is that a yay or ney?"

Three good GK Chesterton quotes about art

"Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame."

"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere."

"Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs."