october preview

Yo, you know you're jealous of our nose-picking, robot-making, cute-smile-generating, pumpkin lite-brighting, medal-winning, thumbs-up giving, classy black-and-white-pumpkin-guts-taking skills. So check yourself.

the great communicator...some day soon

I was so afraid for them to put Elliott under to insert tubes into his ear drums. The only horrible part was when they made him not drink any milk and tried to put a plastic hospital bracelet, and blood pressure and oxygen monitors on him, all of which promptly ripped off, all the while kicking the nurse and turning red and screaming horribly. The surgery itself went well because he was unconscious.

They did it over a week ago, and he has become a new man. He doesn't scream at random intervals (okay, he does, but usually only when he is hungry). And he is trying to talk more. Still, when went to his 18 month check-up, we discovered that, like Ben, he is behind in his speech. Very behind. But I'm not worried about him. He wants to communicate. He looks into our eyes. He babbles. He thinks that that Macho Man Randy Savage is hilarious. (Ryan has been showing him YouTube videos.) So I know that when we begin speech therapy with him next week, he will be okay because he can hear better now and he really wants us to understand him.

hey sarah palin!

ben's birthday weekend!

i'm four now, mom

Ever since Ben's three-day birthday extravaganza last weekend, Ben has matured dramatically. When walking in the parking lot, he tells me, "I don't need to hold your hand. I'm four now, Mom." Okay, I say, but I make him wait until we are up on the sidewalk and off of the car-laden asphalt before he lets go. Once he is free of me, he runs ahead, looking back only to see how far away from me he's managed to get. It's very sad. I know the central goal of being a parent is to help foster your child's independence, but I'm not ready for him to stop wanting to hold my hand. Yesterday when we were in the car, he told me, out of nowhere, "Mom, I'm going to go downstairs by myself. In the dark." I assumed he meant he was going to wander around the house in the middle of the night. I told him that at night it is time to sleep and that he shouldn't roam the house unsupervised. "I'm four now, Mom," he replied, as if this was all the evidence he needed. After I put him to bed last night, I went up to check on him, and his door was closed. He normally hates it when his bedroom door is closed, and we always leave it open to prevent him from screaming at us. But now his door was closed, and he's the one who had closed it. I guess this just means that he is four now.

in loving memory...

Yesterday, Ben looked into the fish bowl and said, "Look Mom, Phil is sleeping." Phil was our beta fish, one of the heartiest varieties. I noticed he wasn't interested in his food the other day, but I figured if he was hungry, he would eat. The woman at the pet store said they only actually need to eat once a week, but to put food in there every other day. Which I did. So Phil, why were you lying upside down at the bottom of your bowl? Ryan and I had to figure out how to explain death to Ben, which isn't easy when you are not religious. Things are more complicated. We stumbled through it. We told Ben to come to the fish bowl. We told him that Phil went to sleep, that he wouldn't wake up. Ben looked at Phil thoughtfully and said, "I'll fix him." We told Ben, no, he couldn't be fixed. "He's dead," Ryan finally said. "He's going to heaven to be with his family." Ryan leaned to me and whispered, "Do we believe in heaven?" See, that's the thing about being agnostic. The definition of agnostic is not knowing whether or not these things exist. But try explaining that to a four-year-old. In any case, Ben shrugged his shoulders and ran into the other room on his skinny legs. "I'm Super Ben!" he yelled. "Come on, Super Daddy!" So I don't think he's broken up about it. One thing is certain: Ryan and I need to get our act together on the subject of death.

I do feel bad about Phil, though. What kind of a caretaker am I that this fish died within weeks of moving into our home? What kind of a household do we have? A household of death? Pets have never fared well in my family. We had a bird die in a bathtub, a dog that was both hit by a car and shot by a farmer (on separate occasions), a cat that ran away to live down the street with a neighbor. Mona, our current cat, loves us for some reason. Mona, I hate to tell you this, but no matter what we do, your days are numbered.