fun with food

Daniel is moving onto finger foods, or rather, I'm handing him cooked 'til they're mooshy enough to not choke him should he inhale at an inappropriate moment tidbits (and as an aside, the gag reflex babies have? Is scary. How does one determine which is a gag and which is a prelude to turning blue and keeling over?) because, had I read any of the books, they'd be saying that at eight months, dude is ready to start exploring food with his hands.

What happens is, he grabs onto the mooshy tidbit and squishes it in his chubby little hand, and then punches himself in the face. He's not yet worked out that he needs to release his vise like grip to facilitate the transfer, so when nothing goes in, he looks at his hand, which is still hanging on to the sodden mess much like a bull terrier hangs on to a postman's leg, tilts it this way and that way as he tries to work out what the fuck is going on, then smacks himself in the mouth again with his balled up fist.

Lather, rinse repeat.

Seriously people, if you're sitting at home wondering whether or not to have a baby, go ahead and have one, if only for the entertainment value.

bid, motherfuckers!

So I'm selling a shit hot pair of Levis (an aside: this v key is really annoying) on ebay.

Shit. Hot.

No shit.

They're fucking Leis, or Levis, if I slam the damn key adequately hard, so at retail, are already overpriced, then factor in the total one of a kind, um, factor, and you know it. These babies are worth around about a million dollars, and knowing that you'll NEVER bump into anyone wearing the same pair of jeans anywhere? Priceless.

I think I wore them about three times before I was too pregnant to support the low rise without also supporting an awesome plumber's crack, and now that this current muffin top has taken over, and now that Daniel is eight months old, I think I've got to let go of my delusion that one day I won't spill over the top of my old jeans much like one of those volcanos you made in Science class when you were nine, and just go the fuck out and buy myself some granny pants. I'm thinking a nice pair of polyester slacks with a fifteen inch zipper will look fierce with my t-shirts, I'm sorry, blouses tucked all the fuck of the way in.

So yeah, I'm selling my jeans, or as I like to call them, The Last Remaining Memory Of My Once Hard Bod, and with a little over nine hours to go, it looks I'll be doing it for one measely dollar.

A final aside: Xanadu is on TV in the other room, so I'm sitting here singing along and wishing I was a damn muse too, because roller skates are never uncool.

Also, has anyone else noticed how I complain a lot these days? Which is probably another aside. Hmm.

for he's a jolly good fellow, redux.

Dear Son

You were eight months old last Saturday so in keeping with tradition, a letter from your loving mother.

Happy eight months and five days old today, kiddo.

love,
mama

Crawling? Pah. I'll be really impressed when he graduates to fluffing and folding .

livefeed of my brain imploding

The deebs is whining his heart out and I'm so not going in because if I do, I may throw him out the window. Seriously, it scares me how AAAAAARGH!! I feel when the whining goes on and on and on and on and on and on. He's on a no sleep kick apparently, which probably means a milestone is being reached so his poor brain is stressed and all that crap, and I should be understanding but I'm a shit mother and boo hoo etc. I don't deal well with shit like the whining, I really don't. I just want to yell at him to shut up and go to sleep, which I've done in the past because please see above reference to shit mothering, and let me tell you, it doesn't work. It's not even whining though, it's a baby's way of asking for help. Poor kid. I'm about to go nuts here, and he's probably gearing up for a troubled childhood.

And, uh, yeah. Excuse the free associating or whatever in hell that was.

Hae a nice day. And there appears to be a crumb under my v key because there should hae (see? SEE?) been a v in there.

numb

The friend I've known for ever was diagnosed with breast cancer yesterday. She'd been complaining of a sore shoulder and chest, and that's how the doctor found the lump. A needle biospy was done and the report came back featuring the word 'malignant'. Her doctor though, said the lump didn't look cancerous. In fact, apart from that surprising result, there was nothing at all about that lump that even hinted that it was anything more than your standard, every day fibroadenoma. So the lump was removed this Monday just gone, and the surgeon took a little more tissue from around it so that if it was cancer, there'd be no need to go back in to remove any more.

The doctor was right too, the lump wasn't cancerous. Her entire breast, on the other hand, was.

They're taking it off on Monday, but that's okay, she said. Her doctor said he'd build her a new one. "And", she also said, "he's going to use my tummy fat to do it so two birds, one stone, yannow?".

She's always so friggin' brave that for her, it isn't even being brave, it's just her being her.

Between now and next week she'll be undergoing a barrage of tests. Bone scans, blood draws, chest x-rays...this is a woman who has gone through so much already.

She lost a daughter three years ago, one of twins, at only six months of age, and my friend had to endure that while loving and living for her other children. The remaining twin has the same rare blood disorder that took her sister, so even a small sniffle is enough to knock her for six and scare the shit out of the rest of the family. Now there's another baby girl in the picture too. She's just turned one so my friend should be enjoying her family without worrying about how much longer she's got left with them.

It wasn't fair when she lost her daughter, it wasn't fair that her other daughter is so chronically ill, so it sure as hell isn't fair that she has to go through this too, this cancer bullshit. It simply isn't fair.

next on the agenda

Daniel had a tough night last night, and spent the bulk of it wiggling and scrambling around the bed and when he wasn't crawling all over me, but because he wasn't whining, I thought he was just being a pain in the arse. Ask me now then, how guilty do I feel now for not being more sympathetic? Oy. He slept in til after 10.30 this morning though, to make up for being awake all night, and when he woke up, he was miserable. A regular Mr Whineypants to the point that, if I put him down for a second, he'd start with the whimpering as he lay face down on his playmat, without even trying to move. His cold has all but gone, he wasn't pulling on his ears, he wasn't drooling or frantically shoving his fingers into his mouth, so I had no idea what was wrong.

Daniel already has an appointment with our regular doctor, but as it's not til on Thursday, I called the surgery to see who was available today. I figured nothing was really wrong as he didn't have a fever or anything, but also figured I'd rather hear that as a professional diagnosis. Dr C had a time available, so off we went this afternoon.

As expected, there's nothing really wrong with the boy. There's some residual congestion in his ears, and he's teething. Or something. Point being, he's not sick, he's just miserable. In any case, Daniel had perked up somewhat by this point, what with Dr C being a new person and all, and Daniel LOVES new people, so was merrily chewing away on my car keys oblivious to what came next.

What came next was that this doof, who isn't even our regular doctor, looked into Daniel's notes and asked about his six month vaccinations, which he hasn't had, and then he pissed me off.

Now, I may be hippy-eqsue, but that's not enough reason to deny my son what we're told are potentially lifesaving substances. I've read what I can and have sought several opinions, from the medical fraternity as well as the 'crackpots' (as this dickweed refered to them), so my decision to vaccinate (or not) has been well thought out, and because I'm a reasonable human being who understands that life comes in shades of grey, it's also often been second guessed. I'm second guessing it right now actually, not because of what this dogmatic fuck had to say, but because I always consider and reconsider decisions I've made about my son's future because nothing is cast in stone, and life and circumstances are always constantly evolving anyway.

It's not an easy decision to make. It'd be easier to just go ahead with all the jabs because that's what you do when you have a child, just as it would be easier to refuse them all because that's what dirty hippies do when they have kids. It's hard to know which is the right choice, because you decide what to do because you want to prevent an event, either the disease itself or the consequence of vaccinating against it. It's only if your child contracts the disease or suffers the consequence that you're given reason to think "oops". You're as unlikely to waste energy congratulating yourself that your kid dodged Hep B as you are to pat themselves on the back for having an child who isn't autistic. Point being, you'll only ever decide you made the wrong choice if fate shits on you and your child suffers for you not taking the other choice. Even then though, you may still get the disease or suffer the event despite the decsion you made, because sometimes life just sucks.

Aaaand, bla bla bla.

So anyway, this dickhead, who doesn't know me at all, lectured me for a while about how Daniel would suffer catestrophic brain damage from the measles I'm allowing him to contract. I should ahve just walked out on him, then I may have dodged the bit where he turned to conversation toward a patient of his who has just lost twin baby girls to some congenital kidney disease. The poor thing lost another child to the same thing a few years back, which is cruel as she only has a twenty five percent chance of passing on this genetic defect, and so far, she's gone one for one with all her, now deceased, babies. I, of course, fogged up, what with my empathy gland being on high alert every since I beame a mother myself, and when I was sufficently tearful, the doctor looked me in the eye and said "She would have vaccinated her children...*da dum*.... if any of them had lived...".

Uh, okay.

I don't even get why he said that. Did he mean she loved her kids more than I love mine, and that's why she'd vaccinate them? Or that, unlike me, she'd be so grateful to be a mother that she'd do anything to protect them? Or was he just being a wad? What? I feel guilty even without his input, which is why his two cents chaffed my hide, but regardless, was he largely inappropriate? I think so, but I'm kind of sensiotive already about conversations about why I don't love my child enough.

Now I accept that it is written in the doctor's handbook that thou shalt counsel parents to vaccinate, because to each his own and etc, but I honestly thought the bit about thou shalt also be a control freak about it was one of those unwritten things. Who knew?

I hate colds

We've had three of them in as many weeks here at the casa di bee, and judging by the booger bubble Daniel was blowing this morning, my guess is numero quatro is just around the corner.

Daniel brings 'em home from childcare, which is a place I've not yet explained to y'all, not because it's a secret but because I don't know, and is a bit sniffy for a day or two (granted, numero trois, which he recovered from yesterday in time for los quattros today and that I'm still knee deep in, did render him quite the grizzly little whiney head this past weekend. He was all "Pick me up, put me down, pick me up, waah" and I was all "Dude, jeezuz, would you like fries with that or what?") but then the mucus train dumps a whole fuckload of its crap onto me and I'm wiped out for considerably longer.

I haven't been this sick so constantly since, well, never. There was that one year I worked in an abbatoir and was sick a lot. It was all stress related, mind, mostly because everyone hated me there so I worked forty hours a week surrounded by hate which, as I'm such a friendly fucker, was awful. It was in a hills' town with a hills' town mentality (think Deliverance ), and because my dad was one of the engineering big knobs at the factory, they figured he got me the job because I was his precious sweetcakes, which who the fuck cares anyway? In any case, nothing could have been further from the truth. I'd left home that year so dad wasn't talking to me which, I know, what the fuck? Anyway, living where I was and needing a job because I'd been kicked out of university for failing everything so spectacularly, when this one came up, I took it. Dad, learning that I was about to start working there, continued with the silent treatment and would even ignore me if he happened to see me at work, which given that it was prehistoric times relying on an internal mail system involving hard copies in envelopes being delivered by an internal mail round post officer person thingy, and given that that was one of my jobs, was at least twice a day, more if I was needed to fill in for the receptionist in the front office. For those of you who are wondering, no, I didn't slaughter any livestock. I have a smal but useless observation from my entire time working there and here it is: nothing turns a man into a wild eyed freak like a career on the kill floor does. Or maybe they're the only ones that apply for the job in the first place? I never thought about it til now, but it's quite the chicken and the egg scenario there, isn't it? And in wrapping this little digression up, my dad began talking to me again the minute I moved back home, ta da. So bla bla bla, and really, is it any wonder I was sick a lot during that period in my life?

Since then though, and that was over twenty years ago, I could count the number of times I've been ill on two hands. Three, tops. Even when I weighed 33 kilos, it wasn't this bad. I think being emaciated does something to your immune system though, revs it up or something, maybe because if you've that underweight, you can't afford to get sick, so your body won't let you. I might have just made that up, so don't go quoting me or anything. No kidding though, apart from the something horrific I caught last year, I haven't had a cold in forever, and even the something horrific only hung around for two weeks, when every one else was wiped out for something ridiculous like six.

These past three weeks it's literally been one cold ofter the other for both of us, and I might be some kind of tough sumbitch, but when it comes to colds, I'm a big ol' bag of whinge. Also, what son? Could I talk any more about me or what? I could, so yeah, I feel like I'm dying here, mostly because oxygen and I have this thing going on where I need it on a regular basis and I'm used to getting it when I want, and if I'm not dying, I think the whole world should respect that I feel like I am and feel sorry for me, fercrisake.

I'm also trying to run a business here which (oh! There it is, a partial explanation for the childcare thing) isn't running so well when I have to reschedule my one, possibly two (woot!) clients, and it isn't good for making the money I need to make to pay for childcare in the first place.

Speaking of daycare, they love him there. LOVE him. I caught them talking about him last week, and heard them carry on about how he's so cute and how much they all want to take him home because he's such a happy baby, and yes, I know they say that stuff to every parent's face, even if junior is some kind of monster, but listen up people, I caught them talking amongst themselves about my delicious little boy. When I walked through they looked up guiltily and were all "uh, yeah, sorry, we were talking about your son". So as much as I don't want to be one of those annoying fucks who think their child is the best kid ever, mine kind of is so I kind of am. Sorry 'bout that. Seriously though, does every mother have strangers constantly coming up to comment on what an adorable child you have? I assumed everyone did until I was between colds, so went out with a friend and her baby. We stopped in a cafe and sat with our kids in our laps. Daniel smiled at everyone and was generally being his regular self, but everyone stopped to talk to us and kind of ignored them. It was embarrassing actually, almost as embarrassing as when we went to a friend's boy's first birthday party and the guests were grabbing their cameras and going gooey over my little ham instead.

stylin'