toddlerspit

This is such an intense period right now, with so much begun but unresolved, and a little scary and a lot exciting.  I’m having a lot of nervous energy, which is making it difficult to sit down and grade the jabba-sized mound of freshman papers on my desk.  Really, we’re just doing a lot of waiting, and trying to keep all of our balls in the air at the same time. 

You know what I mean.

We’re busier than we’ve ever been in our lives.  Most days I can’t even tell you what day it is.  Seriously.

Addie drooled through four shirts today and was a bloody pistol to deal with.  Every four hours she needs to take her medicine, and every four hours we plead, cajole, demand, threaten, and lose our minds through the process.  Then, when the whim strikes her, she’ll down the medicine and look up at us, beaming.  “Yum!” she says.  “That tastes good!“  Right! we say.  Maybe you’ll remember that in four hours so we don’t have to take minutes off our lives going through this again.

I am hoping soon to go in to Addie’s room while she’s sleeping and to not hear a death rattle, to see her breathing through her nose.  I am ferverently (man is that a weird word.  I had to look it up) hoping for this.  But as of tonight, she is still rattling and snurgling away in there, as if the tonsils and adenoids have magically grown back. 

Nolie has a horrible cold, with a fever and a barking-seal cough that is just short of croupish.  We’re sort of pretending it isn’t happening, but the words “emergency room” did pass through my lips today, which made us both shudder.  No no Nolie.  Don’t get sick.  Wake up tomorrow and be much, much better.  It doesn’t help matters that she is doing her best to push that little tooth through.  And still she smiles and laughs at us, and is getting more adorable everyday.

Here she is asleep on Eric.  I can’t decide who is more precious.  It’s a dead heat.

We also started loading up our storage unit today, and our realtor comes tomorrow to get our price and list date, and to give us the low-down on some houses in Golden.  We’ve started spackling up nail holes and cleaning floors and hiding stuff behind cupboard doors.  It’s starting to feel really real, which also makes me feel a little like I have to barf.  Also knowing that we could have a long wait ahead of us is strange, given that we’re pushing so hard to get the house ready to sell.

The bad news continues to be Burley, who bit me today.  He had eaten some of Addie’s cheese, sending her into yet another drooly cryfest, and I moved the dining room chair to “invite” him to get out from under the table where she was sitting.  He viewed this as an “invitation” to bite me.  So now we’re considering the possibility of turning him over to a shelter, since nobody we know can take him right now.  Which sucks so hugely.  I just want him out of here, and also just want him to be happy in a new home.

But I’m not losing my mind yet, even though it sounds like I may be.  I’m hanging in there, and even enjoying the chaos here and there. 

I just can’t believe how fast it’s all going.

Don’t we feel like the most loved people on the planet.  Cards, phone calls, emails, gifts, and visits have been pouring in for Addie.  It’s like Christmas again.  But without tonsils.  You people are amazing.  Addie is still up and down in terms of how she’s feeling, but these reminders of your love make us all feel like we’re going to get through this just fine. 

You know what else is making me feel good?  Here is my top ten:

10.  My new discovery is that, for $7.99 a month, I can stream yoga videos from http://www.newyorkyoga.com/on_demand/.  I can stop and start the videos as needed (that is, when I’m needed by some member of the family).  Sweet, sweet workouts for a small, small price.

9.  Listening to new music for free at http://www.pandora.com.  All you do is enter in a song or artist you like, and they start playing that artist plus a whole bunch of people you never heard of but that you might like.  And you tell them if you don’t like them, and they then use that information to pick new music for you.  It plays like a radio station.  Did I mention it’s FREE?  Awesome.

8.  The best thrift store on the planet.  I’ve let a few people in Denver know where this is now, but I’ll say no more (they don’t believe me once they find out where it’s located, anyway).  This is my best kept secret.  Let’s just say I scored some awesome Steve Maddens and Anne Kleins for a few bucks each last week. 

7.  It’s supposed to start warming up here in Denver starting tomorrow.  Like, it might be almost 50 degrees here by Monday.  We might actually get to see our front yard, and walk outside without full body armor to protect us from the cold.

6.  Any cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen.  But here is my favorite.  You can get it at Amazon for $24, or at Costco for $16.  Money well spent.

5.  http://www.remax.com/.  My new addiction.  Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.

4.  This lipstick.  Addie can drool all over me giving me kisses and it still stays on.

3.  The public library.  Seriously.  All those books.  I’m finally almost done with The Milagro Beanfield War, the “Denver Reads” book selection.  God, the first 20 pages were painful, but now that I’m near the end, I’m really appreciating it, and am glad I didn’t quit when I was tempted to.  Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is up next, for book club.

2.  The custards with mix-ins at Good Times.  I think about these several times a day, everyday.  Yum.

1.  The new floors.  Aren’t they gorgeous?

They’ll never look that good again, but man we’re enjoying them for now.

Both kids are screaming–Addie from exhaustion (she won’t take a nap) and Nolie from a vicious head-cold.  Enough of the inventory, anyway, eh?  Life is good.  That’s all.  Time to turn this thing off.

Here’s a toughie:  How do we mentally prepare Addie for the surgery?

I mean, do we need to?  Let’s imagine a few scenarios:

1)  We explain to her that she’s going to the hospital, and that the doctor is going to give her some special medicine to help her sleep.  Then he’s going to “fix” her nose and her throat so that she won’t get sick so much anymore.  She’ll be able to breathe better and smell things and taste her food.

The problem with this scenario, of course, is that she won’t immediately feel better.  My fear is that she’ll wake up and look at me and Eric and be like “What in God’s name have you people done to me?  This is making me FEEL better?  You people are crazy!”  Then she’ll barf up blood all over both of us.  Honestly, if Eric ever did this to me–took me to the hosptial for a surgery and then promised it wouldn’t hurt when it really hurt a lot–I’d be pissed.  “Oh no, honey, it’s just a hysterectomy.  It won’t hurt.”  Right.  I’d kill him.

2)  We explain to her that she’s going to the hospital, and that the doctor is going to give her some special medicine to help her sleep.  Then he’s going to “fix” her nose and her throat so that she won’t get sick so much anymore.  She’ll be able to breathe better and smell things and taste her food.  But, we also tell her, it’s going to hurt some before she gets better.

The problem with this scenario is that if you tell a two-year-old that something is going to hurt, she will freak out.  We’ve told Addie that the doctor is going to take her tonsils out, and even though she has no clue what this means, she already screams, “NO!  I don’t want the doctor to take my tonsils out!  Noooooooooo!”  Plus, does it make sense to prepare her for pain?  Won’t that just scare her?  I mean, she doesn’t really have the mental schema to understand what’s going to happen anyway, and chances are she’ll forget all of it in the long run, so what’s our responsbility here?

3)  Do nothing, say nothing.  Just get up on Wednesday morning, go to the hospital, and pretend we’re playing a big game in which the doctor puts a mask over her face (peek-a-boo!) and, whamo, when she wakes up?  She’ll never know what hit her.  We’ll just focus on all the ice cream and jello she’ll get to eat once she stops horking blood all over the place.

But this doesn’t feel right either.  I mean, this kid really trusts us, trusts us more than anybody ever should, probably.  And we’re sending her in for an (albeit short-lived) world of hurt.  Don’t we have some responsibility to help her understand it?  To communicate what’s coming?

I don’t know.  I remain unresolved.  We have told her she’s going to the hospital Wednesday, and that she’ll get to eat lots of ice cream when she wakes up, and that the doctor is going to take her tonsils out, just like Mommy’s are out.  We’ve also just told her how much we love her, and love her, and love her.  But beyond that, I’m not sure what to do.  She handled the CAT scan far better than we ever thought she would, and she’s a tough girl.  But she’s also just a kid, and she’s going to be hurting some.  So. 

I’m guessing we’re in for a learning experience.

Addie update, for the folks

Eric talked to Addie’s ENT doctor today, and he said her adenoids were “huge,” her tonsils “protruding,” and one of her sinuses blocked.  We’ll try to get her into surgery this week, but it will most likely be next week.  We’ll keep you posted.

Addie has a few favorite phrases right now:  “A couple of weeks ago…” “Sometimes…” and “Sure do.”  These get used in almost every sentence Addie speaks right now, whether she understands what they mean or not. 

We were on the way to the ear/nose/throat specialist this morning, and Addie, quiet for a few moments, finally pipes up. 

“Mommy?”

“Yes, Addie?”

“A couple of weeks ago, Daddy lost his mind.”

I almost spit out my coffee.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, Addie?”

“Where did he lose his mind?”

Which entailed an overly long discussion of what “to lose one’s mind” might mean, and when we say it.  It also led to a discussion of how long “a couple of weeks ago” is, as I believe I told her just yesterday that her father was losing his mind.  Glad that stuck with her.

Anyway, the bad news is that it looks like Addie’s a prime candidate for having her tonsils and adenoids removed.  She’s got hearing loss in one ear, and fluid for miles in there.  She has to have a CAT scan later this week, and then probably surgery.  I feel a little sick even writing that, and am trying hard not to imagine what she’s going to look like, cotton packing and swelling and all.

At first, I felt like I was taking all this in stride.  It’s a pretty minor surgery, after all, and she’s a tough kid.  But in my head I keep piling up the list of things on our plate right now:  Eric needs a deviated septum fixed or he’s going to snore us out of house and home.  Addie has this surgery.  And, I don’t want to impinge on anyone’s privacy here, but I will say that a cherished member of our extended clan is fighting a second bout with cancer.  Like I said, a lot on the plate. 

I thought I was staying fairly calm about everything, which is not my m.o.  Usually, I make a big drama out of everything, make it all about me.  But I haven’t really been doing this lately, and was sort of congratulating myself about staying relatively even-keel.  And, checking in now, I’m breathing a lot, and focusing on my love for those around me, and just doing the daily stuff.  No huge panic attacks or meltdowns on the horizon.

But this stuff appears to be working itself out in my sleep.  I’ve been grinding my teeth for a few years now, and the dentist keeps harping on me to get a night guard, but it’s $350.00, and our insurance doesn’t cover it (those a-holes).  I figured it could wait–we just shelled out an arm and a leg to get our dilapidated old Subaru back on the road, and we have to spend a lot to get the house on the market, so I just didn’t get it done.  But last night I discovered there is a chunk of one of my molars missing–ground off in my sleep. 

I’m tempted to just throw my hands up and say, “Add it to the list!  Get in line!”  But the whole martyrdom thing isn’t so appealing.  I was telling someone about Addie’s surgery today, and they said, “Phew!  I thought you were going to say she had something much worse.”  Which reminded me there are different ways to view all these things, and to view them as catastrophes is one way of going about it, though that way involves much gnashing (or grinding) of teeth and pulling of hair.  Or, I could view them as just the stuff of life, opportunities to look at my loved ones with fresh eyes, with renewed appreciation that they are in my life–whatever the circumstances may be.