Sunday, June 24, 2007

Smilin' Sam and Glossolalia Gus

Okay, no, we don't actually call him Glossolalia Gus -- though he does appear to speak in tongues sometimes. (Joke! Just a joke!) Gus loves to look deep in my eyes and proclaim (in a peculiarly resonant voice for such a small guy), "Awoooo! Guh. Guh. Rrxxxllrr... [sort of a growl sound there]. Ah, awoooo. Oooo. Oo." He says all this with such authority and conviction that he really seems to mean something by it -- though in actuality, I think he has simply twigged to the idea that the grownups produce interesting sounds, so why shouldn't he? Then he sticks out his tongue (which he has lately discovered) and looks pleased with himself. And then Gus smiles at me and his sky-blue eyes light up, and I completely fall apart and have to kiss every square inch of his exposed skin.


After all that, I finally get around to changing his diaper. And D wonders why it takes me twice as long to change diapers as it does him?


On the other hand, we do actually call our other little guy Smilin' Sam, because he has discovered that he has a killer smile, and loves to use it on every occasion. His beautiful little doe eyes seem to be turning a lovely hazel, and together with the smile, they make him completely irresistible. My female friends who come to visit practically trample me to get to Sam. Sam smiles at me, D, Grandpa (who has been visiting us for a couple of weeks), the cats, his toys, the ceiling fan, and the chandelier (a favorite, for some reason). With apologies: He liked whate'er he looked on, and his looks went everywhere. You would think that the star power of Sam's smile would be somewhat diluted by such widespread application, but it has the same effect on me as his brother's smile. I smile back until my cheeks hurt, and tell him how wonderful he is and how lucky and blessed I am to have him and his brother, and kiss his forehead (three times, that's our rule, thank you) and cheeks and nose, and completely fall apart.


Oh, yes, and then Sam gets his clean diaper.


In other news, the boys are sleeping for about six hours at a stretch during the night. Last night was very promising: we got them down about 8:30, and they slept until 4:30 a.m. Hallelujah! Unfortunately, that was also the night that my very old cat Georgina (who is blind, and basically lives in our bedroom, sleeping beside my pillow every night) decided to go completely dotty, and meow (LOUDLY) right beside my ear every fifteen minutes or so. In case you are wondering, a (LOUD) meow right beside your ear at 3 a.m. has about the same effect as a howitzer going off outside your window. One is unlikely to just sleep through it. So I'm a little short on sleep at the moment, despite the boys' cooperation. Also I'm concerned about Georgina. I think she has a UTI since she has a track record of same, and I started her on her usual antibiotic that the vet gave us for her, but if that's the issue, the Zeniquin doesn't seem to be helping yet. A visit to the vet is probably in the cards for tomorrow.


In still other news, the boys have had thrush for about a month now. We've been treating them with Nystatin, which helped a lot, but we could not seem to get a complete cure. I whined piteously via email to their doc, who then prescribed fluconazole, which is a systemic drug, but appears to be very safe. Fluconazole is, in fact, widely prescribed for thrush -- but you would never know it by the reaction from Our Humongous HMO, which acted as if their doc had prescribed gold dust pounded by dwarves and suspended in dragon's tears. They gave me a big song and dance about how it is a "rare" drug and that's why they couldn't get it to me for nearly a week. I finally got them to allow me to get it from a different pharmacy, but to get reimbursed for it, I had to go to Humongous HMO and pick up The Blue Form, THEN go across town to the pharmacy that actually had the fluconazole -- oops, I mean the pounded gold in dragon's tears. Three hours I spent on this nonsense yesterday, while dragging around my dad, who as I mentioned is visiting.


And that is happy news! (That my dad is visiting, not that I dragged him around yesterday.) He is obviously quite taken with the boys, and they seem to like him as well, bestowing smiles freely and letting him charm them out of crying (well, most of the time). My dad is wretched at anything approaching house work, so he certainly isn't doing anything like pitching in around the house ... but actually, just stopping the boys from crying has been worth a lot. And it has been so great having him here. Three generations under one roof -- I wondered if it would ever happen. But it has. And that makes me very happy.



Thursday, June 21, 2007

Unobservant mom

So shoot me, I'm an unobservant mom. Which pisses me off about myself, since one of my primary complaints about my own mother was how she seemingly could not manage to see things that were right under her nose (like, oh, my losing twenty pounds in one month, when I was 14 and in my Depressed Anorexic phase) ... and here I am, blind as a bat myself to something even more obvious. Gah.

A club that we belong to has a big picnic for all the members once a year, usually at a very nice big park in St. Helena. The park is filled with big ol' coastal oaks (75 feet tall at least, craggily romantic in their twists and turns, and providing lots of shade), and very pleasant. The other members of our group urged us to bring the boys so that everyone could meet them, and since it was likely not to be too hot, and it's a very shady area, I said okay. Mind you, I went on a hunt the day before for appropriate sunscreen for babies (ended up with one with an SPF of 50!), and freaked out a bit about keeping them cool enough ... but still, we managed to get out of the house that day only about 45 minutes late, and with me more or less keeping it together, despite my anxiety about this first big outing to the great outdoors.

Of course, our friends all oohed and aahed over the boys, which I was expecting -- but to my puzzlement, they kept referring to Gus as a redhead. "Um, excuse me," I'd reply politely, "but he's really more blond." He was ash blond when he was born (with tons of hair, as babies go), and while it had turned somewhat more golden rather than ashy as the weeks went by, still, I know what my kid looks like, right? And he's blond. So there.

Except that when enough people called him "Red," I finally took a really good look at his hair, there in the filtered sunlight. And you know what? Yeah, you're way ahead of me. Yup, it's definitely beyond "golden" now -- his hair has morphed all the way into the strawberry blond category, and is just a click short of what I would call true red hair.

So this is good news in one way. My mom was a redhead born, with beautiful auburn curls and translucent pink skin, and I always envied her the red hair. Which is a bit nonsensical, actually, since I was ash blonde myself when I was younger, and actually had really gorgeous hair for a long time (down to my waist until just a couple of years ago). When I was pregnant, I said that if I had my druthers, I'd like one redhead and one blond. (Hm -- kind of looks like I got both in one, actually.)

But the bad news is that I MISSED THIS FOR WEEKS. Gaaaaah. I mean, I just can't believe how unobservant I was. Truly, this makes me nervous about the future. I've always felt I would be a good mom in at least one way: I would never miss things because I'd be watching my kids like a hawk, knowing firsthand the dangers that are out there.

And now this.

Well, I've been needing new glasses, but put it off since they tell you not to get them while you're pregnant. (Believe it or not, the shape of the eyeball changes while you're knocked up. No, I am not making this up.) So maybe if I get new glasses now, I can convince myself that I missed this (major!) development due to my crappy old scratched-up glasses. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Lordy ... it's going to be a long 18 years.

Monday, June 11, 2007

The Boyos


Fussy Gus (though not fussy at all in this pic -- actually, he looks like he wants to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge!)

and

Smilin Sam
More soon!