Tall-hand Luke & The Leper

Luke is saying such funny things every day now. I'm happy to have this place to keep track of them. In the car yesterday we asked him to try to reach a toy that Teo had pushed too far away. We heard Teo stop crying and then Luke said, "I reached it, Mommy. I have a tall hand." I started calling him "Tall-hand Luke." Then later he cried out and told us, "My penis is ouchie." He is also using the word "very" now all the time, in place of the word "really," as in "But I very want to," and "I very like ice cream."

Matteo's eczema is terrible. We think it's because Tina has chicken adobo, which has soy sauce in it. Today she didn't eat anything she's not supposed to, and all of a sudden he broke out into hives all over his belly and his back. They looked awful, raised white bumps and bright red, angry skin below them. We took him to the pediatrician on Thursday and he recommended taking Teo to a pediatric allergist. He gave us a referral, and when I was looking the doctor up on the internet later to find his phone number, I found a CT Magazine article that called him the best pediatric allergist in the state. I couldn't get Teo an appointment to see him until September 12, though! Later I was telling my colleague Judy who has the office next to mine at work about it, and it turns out the doctor is a good friend of hers. She said he was away for the Memorial Day Weekend, but that she would call him early next week and get Teo an appointment. Yay! Today when we were driving home from camp (Teo's first day at camp!) I looked back at the boys and said "What handsome boys we have! Even the leper!" He really does look like what I imagine a leper would look like with his face so rough and raw. He's so cuddly and smiley and cute, though. One of my students said last week that he was the cutest baby she'd ever seen and that we should send his picture into Pottery Barn Kids. :-)

Cross-dressing Spidey

Last weekend we spent the day visiting our friends Anita & Tish. Their little girl Hannah has a drawer full of beautiful, frilly ballet costumes, hand-me-downs from a cousin who needs new costumes for recitals all the time. Luke, who I used to call our cross-dressing truck drvier, has stopped dressing in his "tap" shoes and fancy clothes in this last year, replacing them with the shirts and underpants splashed with superheroes he had never heard of before the boys at school made them required uniform. I was so upset the day I cut myself and he was helping me choose a band-aid, and he said "Do you want a Barbie band-aid, because you're a girl?" I asked him who told him that Barbie was for girls, and he said, "I don't know. I just know. I learned it at school." I told him, "You tell those boys at school your mommy says boys can wear Barbie if they want to, and girls can wear spiderman!"

Anyway, at Anita and Tish's house, Matthew, our friends' son who is seven or eight, dressed up like a princess in all of Hannah's finery and was delighted with himself. Luke put on a frilly pink leaotard with a half-skirt and shiny heart on the front and took off all his other clothes and ran around like that until we left. When I made him take it off to give back to Hannah, he cried and was very upset. Anita asked Hannah to pick out a leotard to give to Luke, and Hannah generously picked out this blue leotard, which Luke has been wearing almost non-stop since. He wore it as underwear under his clothes to school one day last week. Tina had to teach him the age-old secret of pulling the crotch aside so he can go to the bathroom without taking off all his clothes. He calls it his Elastigirl outfit, and on some days his Power Rangers outfit. Sometimes he wears it with the gloves from his Spiderman costume and runs around striking superhero poses. He's a little bit country, he's a little bit rock n' roll. I am so grateful to Matthew and his moms, to Hannah and Anita; I hope we can help him continue to be true to who he is.

Half Birthday

Half Birthday

Matteo is so done with this baby thing. He's had it with the whole thing. At the ripe old age of 6 months, he's decided that sitting up by himself isn't the thrill it was, say, three weeks ago. Now he wants to stand. For a while now he's been standing up steady and straight, holding onto something sturdy, like the sides of his bassinet. He is gleeful, triumphant, until he topples over. Then he screams in rage. Tonight I put out my fingers for him to grab so he could pull himself to a standing position, one of his favorite games. I swear, though, he worked to find his center of gravity and tried to let go of both my hands! The kid is already trying to do a free stand by himself! In the bath tonight, Tina said she could see him working on discovering how to balance while he was standing in the water holding onto the side of the tub. You can almost see the wheels moving in his head.

He has also, in a short time, become quite the pro at swallowing. He is eating Earth's Best organic whole grain rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and carrots. We tried him on peas, too, but they seemed to give him more eczema so he's off those for a while. In a couple of weeks he went from eating about a teaspoon of sweet potatoes, doled out in miniscule bites that he mostly ejected from his mouth with his little tongue, to scarfing down tablespoons of sweet potatoes mixed with rice cereal (and acidophilus powder, his chiropractor's orders).

He is really starting to resemble an eager, enthusiastic fraternity brother in all he does. On Saturday we were visiting with a bunch of friends, and he started making raspberries at one of the 8-year-old boys at the party. The older boy was delighted, and made raspberries back. For the next hour, Teo made raspberries like his life depended on it, looking at us all for our response, delighting in the power he had over the crowd.

He is especially obsessed with laptops and if he is on the bed with Teen or me while we are working on a laptop he will mount an excrutiating effort to lunge himself at the laptop and scritch-scratch his little fingers on the keyboard. It is making both of us crazy. If you want to get any work done around him, you have to simultaneously type and use your whole body to fend him off. He is really trying to crawl; at this point he lies on his stomach and stretches out one hand in the direction he wants to go, stretches and stretches until the force of it makes him roll over onto his back. Then he cries for someone to come rescue him.

Last Wednesday we celebrated his first half birthday with cupcakes (his had a big 1/2 on it) and a little present--his first sippy cup. We let him demolish the cupcake with his hands, which he loved, although I had to keep catching his arms as he tried to bring his frosting-and-cake-covered hands to his mouth. In the paradox we always live as parents, it's hard to believe six months have gone by since Teo's birth, and also hard to believe he has only been a part of our lives for six months.

Nasty Girl

Today we all watched The Incredibles on DVD, which Teen bought "pre-viewed" at Blockbuster. Luke was really into it, even though it was his second viewing. He spent the rest of the day running everywhere and making us call him Dash. I was psyched because I'm hoping I can inspire him to run around the bases like Dash. Tonight while Teen was cooking and I was feeding the baby strained peas, Luke asked me to be Violet to his Dash. Then he asked Tina to be the mommy. Tina said, "You mean Elastigirl?" and he said, "Yeah, Nasty Girl." He continued to call her "Nasty Girl" for the rest of the evening; she wasn't quite as amused as I was by it.

Job

Teo, who has mastered sitting up well before he's even six months old, is now standing on his own, too, while holding on to something. Today we were at a cloth diaper swap and he stood for a long time holding onto a toy wagon. He's pretty thrilled with himself, it's clear.

He was in a great mood today. Yesterday, Tina took him to a chiropractor who works solely with children. We're at the point where I'm ready to kill a chicken under the full moon if it will help him get over all of these nagging health issues.

It started with an ear infection that we gave him antibiotics for. The atibiotics cleared up the ear infection, but also killed off the good bacteria so he developed thrush and a terrible yeast diaper rash. We got his pediatrician to prescribe drops for his thrush and ointment for his bottom, but the drops made his excema flare up again. This after Tina has mostly got it in control by giving up all dairy, eggs, peanuts and soy products. So the kid has terrible cradle cap, excema, thrush and a diaper rash. My dad said he's like Job.

So Tina took him to the chiropractor, who explained that often babies who are delivered using the vacuum end up having problems getting a good latch on the breast, which can lead to more ear infections and other problems. She brought in their massage therapist who did craniosacral therapy and myofascial release on the little guy. She told Tina to stay off all the foods she's given up and also to go off wheat. I told Tina it might be easier, at this point, if we ask the doctor to give us a lit of the foods Teen CAN eat. She presecribed grapefruit seed extract and acidophilus powder for the thrush, and castor oil for the eczema. We're also continuing to use the prescription hydrocortizone and a lot of aquaphor on the excema. We've started using mostly cloth diapers for him because of the rashes, and Tina has bought all these really cool new combination cloth diapers/plastic covers with velcro closures. (These are not your grandmother's cloth diapers.) Of course, we've had to develop a system for dealing with the dirty cloth diapers now, too.

We really need a full-time nurse to keep up with all the treatments this kid is getting. It's a good thing he's cute and sweet and clearly thinks I'm the coolest person on the planet. Otherwise I might be tempted bring this one back to the hospital and exchange him.

Go BlueJays!

After last week's torture session at T-ball, I knew we needed a strategy. A plan. It would need to be multifaceted. I would need to consult experts.

I started with propaganda. Not too much. Not enough so that some day he'll make a Mommy Dearest-like film about me. I was subtle. Well, okay, subtle if you're three. T-ball rocks. Mommy can't think of anything more fun. I live to play catch (actually, this is true).

Then, we worked on skill-building. We focused on catching, the thing that tripped him up last week. I spent the whole week working on getting him to stop holding his glove right in front of his face so that any ball that bounces out of it hits him right in the face. I didn't have a lot of success with this, but I figure about another thousand times of saying "hold your glove lower" ought to do it.

Finally, the piece de resistance...I took him to Charlie's baseball game. Charlie, my friend Christina's son, has two step-brothers who spend pretty much all their waking hours out of school playing baseball. We watched baseball for a while, and then went to the back of the field with our gloves to play catch. Luke immediately started whining, hanging from my back pocket, and trying to crawl back into the womb. I told him I was playing catch and if he didn't want to play with me he could sit and watch but he couldn't hang on me. He cried and looked as if I'd just told him I was dropping him off at social services on the way home. Then he got a bloody nose (his fourth in two days) and gushed blood all over the place. Now he really looked pathetic. After he bled about a pint of blood onto his clothes, his glove, my clothes, the grass, and every tissue I had, he finally stopped bleeding and Mark, Christina's husband, was able to get him to play catch with him. Then he played with Mark's oldest boy, Michael, for a long time, and they rough-housed and did boy things together. He had a blast. I played catch with the boys and Mark and we all had a good time.

Finally, we all went to Friendly's. This is also part of my strategy. Baseball is followed by fast food and/or ice cream. I figure the exercise the kid gets on the field will balance off the extra calories.

This morning I made sure we were at the field early. Before we got out of the car, Luke started trying to negotiate with me. "How 'bout if I do everything except the catching part?" He seemed mostly relaxed though. We were the first BlueJays there. Shortly, though, the rest of the team showed up, including coach Joe, who was apparently at a birthday party in NJ last week. Coach Joe has a bit of a paunch and a daughter who spent most of the game doing things like lying in the outfield and taking her shoes off. Coach Joe actually introduced himself to me and had some social skills. He's my kind of coach. The kids started with batting practice, which is Luke's favorite part. Luke batted southpaw, although he usually bats righty, but he got a great hit so Coach Joe said maybe he's a switch hitter. I figure that makes sense because the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree.

The rest of the practice and game went great. They played two innings this time. Luke stayed with his team and there was no crying at all. He is a hell of a hitter, better than many, but definitely needs to work on the catching and throwing. In the beginning I got right up in there and worked with the coaches, helping show the kids what they were supposed to be doing and compensating for the dads' poor communication skills. When the game started, though, I sat down on the sidelines and cheered like crazy for all those little BlueJays. Luke's T-ball game was actually a lot more fun than watching the big kids last night. It's much more entertaining watching the kids do things like hit the ball off the T, then run after it and field it themselves. There was a kid on the opposing team today, Parker, who was born to be an outfielder. He went and got the ball after he hit it, and then after they eventually managed to get him to first base, he ran and fielded the ball hit by his next teammate at bat. It was a riot.

Anyway, we went to Mickey D's after practice, and I turned on the propaganda for a little while in the car. This week we'll work on running the bases, which turned out to be a new concept for Luke and one he hasn't quite mastered. We might even watch a pro game on TV if I can stand it. Next week is team picture day. Pray for sun.

The "T" is for Torture

So. Luke started "T" ball today. I've never been quite sure what the "T" stood for. I guess I assumed it was just a nod to the shape of the plastic thing that holds the ball so kids can whack at it. Turns out, in our case, it stood for tears, terrible, and torture. Oh yeah, and tornado.

I must accept some of the blame. I thought we were going to be there right on time; in fact, we pulled into the parking lot of King Philip Middle School at 11:00 a.m. precisely. I guess I should have been clued in by the very small number of cars in the parking lot that I wasn't in the right place. Instead, I unloaded Teo, put him in his stroller, got Luke out of the car, strapped his knapsack of baseball gear onto his back, and headed out into the freezing cold gale-force winds in the direction of the sounds of sports fans in the distance. Did I mention it was cold and windy? Luke was supposed to start T-ball two Saturdays ago, though, and got rained out. He got rained out last week, too. I guess this week they figured they'd better start playing pretty soon or the kids were going to age into the next league. Anyway, we walked past a middle school lacrosse game and all around the ginormous building until we found the baseball fields, a looooong way from where we had parked. There were a million cars, owned presumably by people who somehow knew where the "baseball" entrance of the school was. There were eight teams of three-year olds already wearing their little shirts, at different stages of practice. We were late, and I had no idea which team Luke was supposed to be on. Meanwhile, Luke had started worrying as soon as we came within 100 feet of the fields. He began saying, over and over again, "I just want to watch."

Finally I found a man with a roster and found out Luke was a "Bluejay" and we headed for the little blue sluggers on the far field. The kids were all lined up, and three men were throwing balls into their little mitts and trying to teach them how to catch. Poor Luke was still whining about watching and also probably missed the secret handshake or something. He joined in, though, after some coaxing and was doing really well for about five minutes. I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe this would be different from swimming, which we eventually had to give up on when he wouldn't get in the pool without me.

Then one of the balls thrown to Luke bounced up and hit him, pretty gently, in the lip. He was okay for about 15 seconds, and then he headed over to me in the first stages of a total meltdown. Things pretty much went downhill from there. The other kids ran around the bases. Luke cried and clung to my leg. The other kids practiced hitting the ball. Luke cried and finally, after I basically dragged him to the T, practiced hitting the ball. Then the game started. After every other kid on the team had hit once, I pushed Luke out again and he hit the ball and ran all around the bases, essentially scoring a home run, although it was sort of by default, because, as there were no real "outs" as far as I could tell, the innings ended when every member of one team had been up to bat once.

Then the rest of Luke's team donned their mitts again and headed for the outfield. For one brief moment Luke looked like he was going to run right after them, but then he turned around and the crying and leg clinging began again.

At some point I basically bribed him by saying that I would take him out to lunch at McDonalds if he would play with his team and stop crying. He spent pretty much the rest of the hour crying and saying, "I want to go to McDonald's"--basically, get me out of this hellhole and take me to paradise. I said many other things, too; I basically became psycho Olympics mom--"You WILL play T-ball, and like it!" I talked about how you stay with your team, that even if you're scared, you try to be brave and you stick with your team and try to help them win. I told him I wished his Grandma and Poppy had taken me to play T-ball when I was a little girl. At one point, as Luke begged to leave, I told him that he could go if he wanted to but I was staying and supporting his team. Basically, it was a bloodbath. And my ears were freezing. Seriously, it was like thirty degrees. I also told him that McDonald's was a reward for boys who played T-ball and stayed with their team without crying. Then he really started bawling. It was a proud moment in parenting, I tell you.

The other kids on the team were eating it up; they were slapping five with their dads and hitting the ball like Sammy Sosa. Not one of them cried at any point. They also kept staring at Luke, and then looking at me, too, as if they were thinking, "What's wrong with this kid?" I started to feel like this was entirely my fault, that if only I had some Y chromosomes, my kid would be out there looking like he was headed for the minor league next year, too. The coaches were no help at all, either, so I blamed them too. What about introducing the kids to each other? What about learning each other's names and shaking hands?

After one inning, the game ended. The five and six-year-olds started showing up for their round of torture, and we said goodbye to the coaches and started out on our mile-long uphill trek back to the car. Luke was too tired to walk, so I put him on the cup holder of the stroller and pushed the both of them, while I made Luke take deep breaths and try to calm down. He kept asking to go to McDonald's, and I told him that we'd talk about it when we were warm in the car.

Finally, we go to the car and we all started to cheer up a little, although I hit my head really hard on the door while I was trying to put Teo in his car seat. I talked to Luke about why T-ball was important, why I really wanted him to give it a try, and I told him I'd take him to McDonald's if he promised that next week he would stay with his team and play without crying. I told him I'd take him to McDonald's next week, too, if he played. He started negotiating, saying okay, but he wasn't going to do the catching part. I told him he had to do it all, but that I would practice the catching with him at home so that the ball wouldn't hit his face because he'd know how to catch it before it got there.

Then we ate cheeseburgers and fries.

Sweet Potato

Last night we fed Teo some sweet potatoes--his first solid food. Although he has been very persuasively trying to convince us to share our solid food with him for months, like is usually the case in life, the realization of the fantasy did not live up to expectations. He gagged a couple of times and is clearly new at this whole swallowing thing. He did, on the other hand, do great stuff with the spoon. He's got utensil use down. We managed to get some sweet potatoes in his belly and some in his nose but most of them ended up on his face and his bib. Pretty exciting stuff. Today, sweet potatoes, tomorrow, mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. Well, not exactly tomorrow...but you get the idea.

Happy Mother's Day

So, Luke's been working on a top secret mothers' day project for us all week. Our only hint was that we were supposed to bring in 12 quarter-sized pictures of family members. Now, it seems to me that a mother shouldn't have to do difficult work of this kind for her own gift. Nevertheless, I complied.

Yesterday Luke presented us with this lovely family clock and a card that said, "Mommy & Mama, I heart U around the clock. Happy Mother's Day!" It also said, "I love my mommy because...she plays computer games with me, sometimes she paints my face, she packs me cheese sticks in my lunch." "I love mama because...I like watching TV with her, she plays video games with me, I like going to water parks with Mama."

Clearly electronic forms of entertainment are a big part of our family life. Thank God for water parks.

Belatedly I realized that we had left Tina's side of the family entirely out of our 12 pictures. It hadn't even occurred to me until Tina mentioned it. I realized how recent it is for me to really consider them a part of our kids' family. Then I felt bad, of course. We decided we would find out where Miss Randi and Miss Geralynn got these materials and do a clock of Luke and Teo's filipino family, too. Tina had the idea of keeping that clock on California time, which I think is just brilliant. I can never keep the time change straight.

The Dinner Arm

This morning Luke hopped into my bed and asked me if I would take him to the Dinner Arm to eat on the roof. It took me a while to figure out he was talking about the Elbow Room, a restaurant in West Hartford Center with a roof-top cafe that Luke has been begging us to take him back to.

Pharoah's Trapo

Thank God Passover is finally over. Trying to find food to put in Luke's lunchbox every day that didn't have any yeast, soy, corn syrup, or legumes was a pain in the butt. Tina bought Matzoh to send in his lunch (cream cheese and jelly matzoh sandwiches) and while we were packing his lunch one day we noticed something written on the side of the box: "Not for Passover use." I scanned the ingredients carefully. What, were these lobster matzohs or something? No, it was all legit. Apparently the matzoh company didn't spring for a rabbi to make the Passover blessing over their matzoh. Can you believe that? Matzoh that isn't for Passover use? It was like buying a bag of candy corn with a label saying, "Not for Halloween use." It was quite the moral quandary. Who would be harmed, really, by unblessed matzoh in my son's lunchbox? Who would know, once it was out of the box, that it was not, strictly speaking, Passover matzoh? On the other hand, couldn't sending this matzoh to school be considered an act of Antisemitism? Wouldn't we be sullying the entire Jewish Community Center with our sacrilegious matzoh? What do you think we chose to do? The lady, or the tiger?

In Luke's preschool room they have an imaginary play area that they change every few weeks. So far this year it's been a grocery store, a veterinarian's, a hair salon—you get the idea. Anyway, for the past few weeks it has been Pharoah's workshop. The kids have been playing with fake bricks and pretending to be Pharoah's slaves. I kid you not. One day last week, Luke was feeling sad in the morning and asked me if he could bring his trapo (his blankie--a white men's undershirt) to school with him. I told him he could bring it and leave it in his cubby. Well, apparently his teachers had put out a plea for parents to send in old men's shirts for the imaginary play area so the kids could dress up as Pharoah (apparently they've already figured out it's good to be Pharoah). When Miss Randi saw the undershirt in Luke's cubby, she figured we'd responded to her request. She took it out and made a big deal out of it, "Look, Luke's moms sent in some clothes so we can dress up as Pharoah!" Luke looks up and sees Miss Randi with his trapo and immediately starts crying and telling her it's his trapo. I'm sure he couldn't figure out why Miss Randi was trying to steal his blankie. What a culture clash.