BC (beloved child the elder) – Page 29

Category: BC (beloved child the elder)

ask a silly question…

Posted on March 3, 2004 by wrekehavoc

BC: momma, where do you park a love car?

Me: (not knowing where this is leading or what a love car is, but realizing we just read the book “Wig,” a very silly children’s book that is an illustrated book set to the B-52s song): i don’t know, honey. where do you park a love car?

BC (spoken like barry white) : in the loooooooooove parking lot, mama!

i don’t know what that means, but i nearly fell off BC’s bed when she said that.

in other news, BS is sick. basically, we got home, he went upstairs, and that is pretty much all i’ve seen of him. i am currently living a glamorous life. i am cleaning poopy baby clothing (someone had a blowout this morning that covered him, literally from head to toe, in poop — and apparently, he had another one at school. joy.) i am doing dishes. i am ordering water filters for our system – apparently, we have lead in our water system, just like DC. i meant to do this a month ago, but today’s washington post was definitely a kick in the pants.

yes, as a matter of fact, i want a medal

Posted on February 8, 2004 by wrekehavoc

caution: bitter woman alert

last tuesday night/wednesday a.m., my baby jools went to the ER and was diagnosed with RSV. BS took him because i spent the evening throwing up, thanks to the stomach flu.

wed night/thurs am, BC as BS started throwing up at 11pm thanks to the stomach flu. jools threw up his antibiotic at midnight. i spent a few hours running between BC, who couldn’t stop barfing, and jools, who couldn’t breathe well despite two neb treatments and who was having a fever. at one point, i was trying to hold down the mask on jools’ face while holding a bucket under BC. it was surreal. at 4, i took jools to the ER for dehydration and trouble breathing again. his temp was 105.2F.

thurs nite, jools was admitted to the hospital for RSV treatment. i spent thurs night there; BS spent fri nite there as i had literally had 4 hours of sleep in the prior, er, i don’t know, 72 hours maybe? jools luckily got out of the hospital late sat nite. (the baby with whom we shared a room last night was in there for 3 weeks; i think we’ll fare much better.) what i will do once jools is out of the hospital, i don’t know, as if he is in a weakened state, he can’t go to daycare. i guess i have to figure this one out, too. in the meantime, hopefully, jools will get some rest.

what really struck me after this episode is how very alone we are down here. there is no one to help us in this sort of situation – just BS and me. and if BS is out of commission, like the other night, it is all down to me. there’s no one to buy food or make dinner/lunch/etc, no one to watch a kid, no one to let us nap. and now that we may be facing a few weeks at home, we have no choice but to beg our respective supervisors to let us work partial weeks to help each other out.

welcome to parenthood, indeed.

G-d Bless Sir Spandex

Posted on November 6, 2003 by wrekehavoc

i start my new job on the 17th. the job looks challenging. i’ll work four days/week – which is considered part time, believe it or not. today i was out shopping, as i do not own work clothes that actually fit me; and i saw a thousand chubby-cheeked babies shopping with their mamas. all i could think was – am i making a colossal error by going back to work? i was missing drooly jools terribly. he of the squash-messed face. (he ate his first non-cereal food last night – squash – and he loved it.)

i am actually enjoying jools’ babyhood a whole lot more than i enjoyed BC’s. true, jools is a poor weight gainer and has reflux to beat the band. and he is going for that MRI next week to boot. but i am so much more relaxed about all of this trauma. you see, i have seen this movie already, and i know how it ends.

it ends with a skinny but very healthy and delightful child.

with BC, i was so stressed that i ended up with shingles. it was horrible – my doctor says it was the second worse case he has seen in his career. i really didn’t start enjoying her i think until nearly her 2nd year. it is a pity, too – she is such a delight, and it makes me sad to think that i will probably not look very fondly upon her first year on earth. so i have been working to make up for it ever since.

in other news, nothing fits. i have developed a new appreciation for lycra/spandex. whoever invented it should be knighted.

how time fries…

Posted on November 3, 2003 by wrekehavoc

i don’t know why i bother to put in an entry for mood. you can safely assume when someone is living with a five month old baby that the mood is perpetually sleepy. in fact, if i had my choice at this moment between a wild night of passion or a night of complete sedation, i would not hesitate to choose the latter.

and i know one day i will look back on these days wistfully 😉

between BC, who left hebrew school the other day singing “FIVE GOLDEN RINGS! Four calling birds, three french hens, etc.” at the top of her lungs, and jools, who needs an mri because he has a vascular ring around his esophagus which may merely be an interesting abnormality or may be something that will make him choke on his food, i would truly appreciate a little sedation.

i start work in two weeks. i negotiated four days/week. can you believe that is considered part time? heh. clearly someone single and childless considers it that.

blahblahblah. my brain is so amorphous, congealed, so downright mushy. i sure do miss my brain. of course, a few weeks ago, BS and i were arguing. he felt he needed more sleep because he “actually uses his brain during the day,” whereas i merely ran after our little baby. so i would like to outline ways in which i use my brain, for those who are still involved in my blathering.

1) care for infant (including not diapering child on head, not poisoning child with overdose of zantac, feeding the poor weight gainer at every chance in every creative way possible);

2) errands (including how to maximize errand time with an infant who hates driving in the car and SHRIEKS when the car stops at red lights);

3) housework (those dishes and clothes do not jump up and do themselves);

4) developmentally appropriate activities for infant (including songs, books, and just some fun rolling around on the floor, cos that’s what we do).

5) occasional work for day care center board (i surely have not pulled my weight on this over the past few months and i am quite surprised that no one has kicked me off, despite how i beg them to 😉

6) occasional bouts with two children while spouse is either working or at school. yep. juggling a 4.5 year old girl and a 5 month old boy is a cakewalk.

ok, so maybe i don’t have to solve all of the world’s problems each day. but for sheer endurance, no one matches me.

not at this point, anyway.

precedent

Posted on May 23, 2003 by wrekehavoc

heehee, BS is living in fear that this morning, i will walk into my 39th week OB appointment and the OB will decide that i need to toddle my butt up to labor and delivery and get induced, just like what happened when i was pregnant with BC.

somehow, though, i don’t think that will happen. i don’t think my blood pressure is through the roof. but blood pressure is one of those things you can’t really feel or tell. i certainly couldn’t when, after a picture-perfect pregnancy, my blood pressure suddenly went insane with BC.

we shall see.

that's a friend

Posted on May 18, 2003 by wrekehavoc

here’s a great big shout out to my friend jacks, who will probably smack me in the head (after i deliver the baby, of course) for writing about her.

we were paired up with jacks when BC and jacks’ daughter anya were in the nursery at daycare and we became her nursery buddies/mentors. BC was a veteran baby there, and anya was new in the place. how we got so lucky to be paired up with her, i will never know. some things are just like kismet, i guess. she’s a long island girl; i’m a jersey girl. i am sure we both had our stints with big hair. and despite the fact that she is italian and i am a red sea pedestrian, we are probably related. same bizarre sense of humor, same values, same hair (when mine isn’t in what might be termed as early chrissie hynde, which it is since my most recent haircut. basically my haircut from most of the 1980s. but everyone is polite enough not to say that to my face 😉 anyway, at this point, she is chair and i am vice chair of BC and anya’s school board. we don’t agree on everything (although we agree on a whole lot), but it is nice to be able to say so and not worry that she will hate me or think i am a blithering idiot. or maybe she is just too polite to tell me i am, but hey, that’s part of friendship sometimes, too 🙂

anyway, this morning, she was in the neighborhood with madame anya. because i have had such a piss-poor week, she brought over wonderful daisies and yummy thornton’s chocolates from her UK friend who is in town. (and scally, if you read this, you can add this to the things you can bring me from the UK 😉 friends who share chocolate are true friends.

but it gets better.

BS went out on the roof to clean out the gutters while jacks was over. suddenly, i heard BC screaming, “mama, there’s water coming out of the toilet!” i ran (yes, i really did, 38 weeks along) to find the toilet overflowing. i took the cover off and held up the thingy in the toilet that stops the water. jacks came in, held up the thingy while i got the plunger. then, she took the plunger from me, plunged the toilet, AND wiped up the water from the floor. now, it is awful enough when this happens to you when you are in your own house, but to do it in another person’s house, with another person’s kid’s dookie/etc in the bowl, well, THAT is friendship.

i am one lucky chick. thanks, jacks 🙂

i love the smell of burnt plastic in the evening.

Posted on May 14, 2003 by wrekehavoc

yes, virginia, good things come in threes.

1) i have a hurt child.

2) on the way to get hurt child xrays, BS and i inadvertantly became witnesses to a car accident. both insurance companies have contacted us.

3) our TV just blew. the house reeks of something burnt. i get to run after aforementioned child AND find a TV repair guy tomorrow.

life just doesn’t get better than this.

pain and suffering

Posted on May 13, 2003 by wrekehavoc

it is so hard to watch your child feel terrible pain and not be able to do much about it.

on monday, i got a call to come downtown and get BC. apparently, one of her teachers at school was playing a little rough with her, and in the process, really badly hurt her left arm. the details aren’t entirely clear to me, although i get upset when BC tells me that she told him to stop throwing her around – that her arm hurt – and he didn’t believe her at first.

anyway, she has been x-rayed, she saw her pediatricians twice on monday (and yes, for you trivia buffs out there, if you ever wondered, you do have to pay two co-pays if you see the doctors more than once in a day), and today she saw an orthopedic specialist. they seem to have ruled out nursemaid’s elbow, and there is no apparent break. the orthopedist wants her to come back on monday. i am guessing she has had some mighty strain or bruise, though her wrist is not really looking swollen at the moment. of course, i am not a doctor. i am just a mom. a mom with a very desperately unhappy child.

her screams!

you know the sound wolves make when they have that high-pitched yelping? then you know what BC sounds like… getting on and off the couch. getting in and out of bed. getting in and out of a car seat. lifting her hand anywhere near her tummy. basically, any movement of her left arm sends her screaming and howling. you don’t even want to know about when two pediatricians moved her arm around to see whether she had a range of motion in her arm. it was one of the ugliest moments. ever.

basically, we are giving her children’s motrin for the pain. it isn’t cutting it, but it is literally all we can do. she won’t wear a sling to immobilize her arm; frankly, she can’t even lift her arm to put it in the sling, anyway. so instead, she walks around, clutching her bad arm with her good arm. all day. she even has trouble eating because it is a struggle between balancing herself and eating with her good hand.

i know she will feel better at some point. but it kills me that there is so little i can do to make the pain go away. i’m her mom, and that’s my job, you know.

and at the moment, i feel like i am somehow failing miserably at it.

happy mother's day

Posted on May 11, 2003 by wrekehavoc

i think it hit me at lunchtime today.

BS walked over with three mother’s day cards this year. if i had been a cartoon character, you would have heard me exclaim, “DOING!” or something equally brilliant. but it hit me, and i said, “three cards, huh?…pause… THREE CARDS!”

one card was from BS. one card was from BC (and she wrote her name all by herself, which is just wonderful 🙂 and one card is from julian. BC helped.

i started to cry when i read the cards. BC looked at me puzzled. “remember, honey, how i told you that sometimes, when grownups are really happy, they cry?”

“yes, mama.”

“well, i am so very happy, and i am crying. i am not sad. trust me, when you are a grownup, you will understand this better.”

“let me go and get you tissues to dry your eyes, mama.” and she ran off to her room and brought back probably the only box of tissues left in the house. and she started dabbing my eyes.

i received three cards this year. three wonderful cards. because there is another person who has helped me to qualify to celebrate today.

and he’s almost here.

when the going gets tough…

Posted on May 2, 2003 by wrekehavoc

…the tough get pedicures. that’s exactly what i did. and i feel fine.

afterwards, i stopped by starbucks to treat myself to a “why bother” (READ: something without caffeine and without fat) and ended up winning a tall chocolate frappucino. the trivia question was: “what fruit is used to make calvados?” (answer: apples.)

see, it pays to drink.

but seriously, i actually learned that from high school french class. madame donovan (i swear), the wackiest french teacher ever, at some point mentioned calvados. why we ever discussed that as underage chillin, i have no idea. (and no, as a 35-week preggo, i have not been imbibing, so please, don’t call the division of family and youth services.)

see, high school can be useful.

in the funniest news of the week, though:

last night, BS, BC and i went to dinner at one of our favorite, hole-in-the-wall southwestern/mex restaurants. for some unknown reason, they were playing a ton of ’80s hits. it was kinda fun, despite the fact that BS and i were probably the only ones there who remembered the ’80s in quite that way. at one point, they played the j. geils band hit “centerfold” and we started tapping on the table. and the conversation went something like this:

BC: “mama, what is this song about?”

BS and i look at each other and smile guiltily.

BS: “well, honey, it is about a man who is upset because he sees a friend from a long time ago and she has changed. but you know, people change over time, and that’s ok.”

BC: (thinking in her little 4-year-old-way): “how did she change, dada?”

BS and i open our eyes. i decide to answer.

me: “well, honey, his friend looks different now then she did when he knew her long ago. she is wearing different clothes…gee, we can all sing this part of the song — c’mon bunny — ‘na NA na na na na, na na na na na na na na na!”

BS and i look at each other and, i imagine, are psychicly high-fiving each other.

what a save.