Are You Sitting Down?

Friday morning I got the most shocking news of my life. I felt like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation when he tells Cousin Eddie, "If I woke up tomorrow morning with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn't be more surprised than I am now."

You see this news has changed my entire outlook on life. All of my expectations and plans have changed. These plans haven't been rendered useless, but they do need tweaking. Before today I was confident that I had a good grasp on how our lives would unfold. Just when you start thinking that, God steps in and says not so fast my friend.

I was waiting for the right time to share some news with all of you. Well the time is now. Arica is pregnant. We have known for a little while, but tried to keep it secret. We finally gave up on that and told our families last week. Now I am sharing it with you so I can tell this story.

Today I went with Arica for her first OB visit. We went a week earlier than scheduled because Arica was having some pains that we wanted to have checked out. After listening to the doctor I was a bit concerned. He thought everything was OK, but it was clear from his mannerisms that he wasn't completely sure. He requested that Arica get an ultrasound to make sure everything looked good.

As we went across the hall with the tiny little ultrasound lady, my heart was in my throat. Butterflies were flying around in my stomach. What if something was wrong?

The ultrasound lady played a little picture pages and then had an opening question. From those words I could tell that she had some news to share with us. We knew Arica was pregnant already so I didn't really expect good news. I certainly didn't expect in my wildest dreams what was coming next.

WE ARE HAVING TWINS!!!

Stitch Me Up Scotty

Today Braden goes to have his stitches removed. What? You didn't know he had stitches?

That's life at our house. Things happen so fast that I can't get them recorded. Without being recorded precious moments like baby's first stitches could be forgotten. Recording them here ensures the memory will last at least until computers rise up and take over the world.

So as I make this digital journal entry about Braden's accident I am reminded to be thankful for this blog.  Without it I certainly wouldn't be able to remember every exciting detail of these early years.

So back to my story. Braden took a flying leap last Wednesday November 30, 2010. He didn't reach his intended target and fell backwards smashing his head into the corner of a door. Screaming and blood flowed from the poor little man or so I heard. All this ended with 4 stitches.

I've tried unsuccessfully in recent days to put into words what life with this little dude is like. Remember Avatar?

I tease his Mom that she is going to be a nervous wreck for the next 20 years. I still believe that. I just didn't know it was going to start so soon.

A Toddler Scorned

Braden's adenoid and tubes procedure was Monday, and for some reason I haven't found the time to write about it yet. I am slacking big time. Part of it is because I have been busy at work thus leaving me less time to goof off.

The procedure went great. The doctor's exact words were, "He did great, and everyone loved his monkey." My exact thoughts were, "Thanks for all the info doc. You were a great help. No wonder you made thousands of dollars for this 30 minute procedure. I love you."

My words were something more socially acceptable.

We were warned by practically everyone who had experienced a small child being on anesthesia, but I still wasn't fully prepared for the recovery room scene. What I witnessed made me think of throwing out the age old adage "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Even though this statement has its merit I am still considering replacing it with "Hell hath no fury like a toddler coming off anesthesia."

Braden hit two nurses, two parents, a few stuffed animals, and maybe even a few fellow patients. He refused to drink anything or eat a popsicle so they could remove his IV. Instead he struggled to remove it on his own to the point that the nurse finally gave in and just took it out.

Within 10 seconds of having it removed Braden already had taken off the bandage. Then he took off the bandage on his arm. Then he continued his angry tirade.

When we finally got him home he took a nap and woke up feeling better. Since then he has often had a fever so he is on a steady dosage of Tylenol.

Basically Braden is his normal self for the majority of the day. He just gets tired more often due to the fever and Tylenol. Hopefully that will all go away soon.

So there you have it. Everyone survived the procedure. We all hated it, but hopefully it will mean a healthier winter for the little man.

Anesthesia Is Not a Pop Singer

Surgery.

Anesthesia.

Those two words terrify me. I just can't help it. Call it negative connotation. Call it my own irrational fear. Call it what you like. I just don't like them.

Monday morning my fears will be magnified a million times.

Braden is being put under for surgery. I will be a bundle of nerves pacing the floor with sweaty palms. I will be trying my best to help comfort Arica while another part of my brain is engaging in a little self-help therapy.

Braden is getting tubes in his ears and his adenoids removed. It is a simple thing that only takes about 15 minutes, but I promise you they will be the longest 15 minutes of my life.

I can't help but be nervous. My little man will be undergoing his first real medical procedure since his first few days of life, and I won't be able to help out. I won't even be able to hold his hand.

So while you drink your coffee Monday morning or alternately partake in a caffeine free morning ritual of your choice, think about us. We will either be waiting in the surgery clinic or tending to a recovering toddler. Either way we could use a little extra support.

After clearing this hurdle we should be ready for a much more enjoyable winter season. Without this procedure the doctor assured us Braden would not get well for the rest of the winter.

We have had enough ear infections. We have spent enough time watching our son go through pain and discomfort. The pain all these colds and infections cause is enough to completely change our normally happy little man into an angry tyrant.

So we will take our nervous selves to the surgery clinic Monday morning and deal with the anxiety in order to help our son get better. That is all part of the parenting gig. You make decisions that you think are best for your child and then you have the courage to ride them out.

Monday morning Arica and I will be riding this one out from uncomfortable chairs situated along the wall in our own personal white tile prison. If we are lucky we can at least read some year old magazines while we wait.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Good in this story does not come from a character named Blondie, nor does it come from Clint Eastwood himself.  There is a character involved, however. Before Saturday I had never seen or spoke to this character. She was just another unfortunate person stuck in medical purgatory with us. Then out of the blue this stranger approached our little family circle and offered us her turn. She was next in line to be freed from Emergency Room Waiting Area #1, but she was ceding her spot to us. The lady said she couldn't bring herself to go ahead of a crying baby. It's a sad commentary on society that whenever someone does something nice I am completely floored. I only expect rude comments and totally self involved behavior from everyone I encounter. But on this day God sent a kind, compassionate person to help us out. Arica hugged her. I thanked her time and again, and we hurried off through the swinging doors.

The bad should seem obvious by now. We were in the emergency room with a crying baby. Yes, that baby was Braden. He had hurt his arm earlier that afternoon. When this woman interceded and got us some help we had been in the waiting room for over three hours. In all that time Braden had not moved his right arm. Even the slightest movement or jostling would elicit a painful cry from the little trooper. As long as we could keep his arm still things were manageable. Still Braden had been crying for the better part of four hours and that is heart wrenching for a parent. Equally as terrible was watching him try to do things while his right arm hung limp. It was awful.

Sharing the bad moniker in this story is the hospital. What kind of place doesn't cater to children. We watched several people that looked OK come in after us and get medical attention before us. The powers that be were letting people jump a crying baby in line. There were a few emergencies, and that is certainly understandable. Short of people that need immediate attention, crying babies with limp arms should go first. Children are the helpless, defenseless future of mankind. Surely that warrants special care. Thank goodness that one of the patients had more decency and good sense than the hospital. In this case the inmates running the asylum was a blessing.

The ugliness in this story lies in the genesis of the whole situation. The man that caused my son this pain will bear the title of The Ugly. That man is me. I sent my own son to the emergency room.  I was swinging him around by his arms and legs. Nothing snapped or popped. There was no violent jerking or collision. Yet, when I sat Braden down he began to cry. He was holding his arm. He wasn't moving it. I kissed it over and over because this normally cures all his ailments. Still the crying continued. Finally I called Arica who was on her way home. She called the doctor's office only to find that the clinics were closed for the day. Our only option was the emergency room. So here I was holding my crying child, cradling his lifeless little arm, and staring straight into the ugly truth that all this was my fault. That is a tough burden to shoulder.

Of course this story can't end there, and thankfully it won't end on a grim note either.This story will have to become The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, and The Blessed. We were truly blessed there was no serious injury. The doctor came in, looked Braden over, and proclaimed he thought it was something called Nursemaids Elbow. If you twist and pull a little ones arm just right the ligament in their elbow will pop out of place. Apparently that had happened to Braden. The doc bent Braden's arm, Braden screamed, and in a few minutes all was well. Braden went on like nothing ever happened.

Other than all that it was just a normal Saturday including a good woman, a bad injury, an ugly feeling, and a blessed and healthy child.

Note to self: Stop swinging Braden by his arms.

Doctor's Office Blues

We took Braden to the doctor for the fourth time in two weeks today. According to them Braden is well. His problem is now allergies. That's great. The tree pollen season only lasts THREE MORE MONTHS! I feel so sorry for him.

Combine the facts that we have been so often, Braden now has a good memory, and they do unpleasant things to him and you get a little boy that hates the doctor. Braden starts crying when we leave the waiting room and head for the back. He doesn't like the nurse because she gives the shots. He cries until she leaves. At least he still likes the doctor.

I am not a big fan of going to the doctor either. The waiting room is the worst. I hate waiting. The dirty hill people in the waiting room scare me. The dirty hill children running around like wild hyenas trying to touch  me and my family make my crazy. The whole experience is nauseating.

To further explain our distaste for doctors visits Braden and I got together and made a list of things we would rather do than go to the doctor.

1. Daddy: Be staked out naked on an ant hill.
2. Braden: Give up whole milk for a year.
3. Daddy:  Give myself an enema.
4. Braden: Watch someone beat Barney to purple pulp
5. Daddy:  Throw my TV in the lake.
6. Braden:  Stay out of all the cabinets for a month.
7. Daddy:  Watch a 24 hour marathon of Nicholas Sparks books on film.
8. Braden:  Wear a dirty diaper for an entire day.
9. Daddy:  Jump in a shark tank with killer great whites.
10. Braden:  Sleep without a pacifier.

Please Go to Sleep

We are undergoing some changes in the Life of a New Dad household. Braden had his one year doctor's visit recently and changes were ordered. The doctor says he should be off formula and drinking regular cow's milk now. He also said that he should be getting off the bottle.

We have now finished with all our formula. Of course we weren't going to throw away any of that powdered gold just because someone with a few letters after his name told us to. We went ahead and got our money's worth. Now it is all gone and we shall never buy it again, at least for Braden.

With the end of formula we have stopped giving Braden a bottle as well. He was weaning himself off the bottle anyway. He would only take a few ounces before he went to bed. I think the end of bottle feeding is a significant milestone. It seems like an official end to having a baby in the house. No more bottle must mean no more baby. Now we have a miniature human running about. He eats what we eat. He drinks what we drink. He is growing up fast.

The biggest change we are experiencing was not doctor mandated. Braden has stopped sleeping through he night. He goes to bed just fine at first. Then he sleeps for several hours. After that he wakes up and cries. Several nights Arica and I took turns sleeping with him. The main reason for that was to get some sleep ourselves. Neither of us was happy to revisit the sleepless life we thought we had left behind months ago. Finally last night we toughed one out until 2 am. We went in and reassured him a few times, and put his pacifier back in his mouth. Other than that we just waited him out. Finally he went to sleep.

I hope that our effort was not in vain. Hopefully it puts an end to Braden's crying for Mommy and Daddy during the night. We are taking several steps forward, but the loss of sleep would be an enormous step back. As the old country song says, nobody gets to far like that.

Waiting for the Doctor

We took Braden to the doctor Monday. The place more closely resembled a circus or maybe even a family reunion for all the mountain dwellers in the county. After an hour and a half with all the sick hillbillies we had to reschedule for Tuesday and leave.

Tuesday was more of the same. The parking lot was full. There was standing room only in the waiting room. There is nothing quite like standing and waiting. There have been a large number of documented cases of H1N1 in our town so clearly every kid with a runny nose was in the doctor's office. There is notching like spending an hour with every diseased kid in a 30 mile radius.

Braden finally got in to see the doctor. It turns out he has allergies. I don't know how that feels because I don't have problems with ragweed and other airborne allergens. Arica does, and it looks like she passed it on to Braden. The telltale sign according to our pediatrician is the "allergic black eye." I love that term and have used it repeatedly. It's not every day that I get to learn a new term, much less a medical term that sounds like pure silliness. That was a good find.

The good news is Braden has no fever. He has no pig virus. He is disease free. The bad news is that every year for the rest of his life he will have allergy problems. Right now Arica spends plenty of time with the nose plunger sucking snot from the far reaches of his brain.

I guess the even further reaching good news is that one day he will learn to blow his own nose.

Baby Shots Round Two

This morning was Braden's 4 month doctor visit. At his last visit he received his first round of shots. While I wrote here that the shots were not so bad last time, Braden seemed to be much more anti shots today. He clearly voiced his displeasure when the nurse plunged her needle into his chubby little thigh. It's hard to watch them cry from pain, but it has to be done. The painful crying doesn't last long before it turns into an I am mad scream. The I am mad scream can be gently calmed by a loving mother. It is at times like these that a baby just wants mommy. After getting dressed and put back in his car seat all was well again in little Braden's world.

The bigger news is that Braden has been cleared for green veggies. That is the doctor's term not mine. I would be more inclined to call it jars of green goo. Some of the jars I have seen remind me of the Veggie Boy drink that Woody once hocked on Cheers. It was a supposedly nutritious green slime that Woody advertised but hated. Frasier then hypnotized him into liking the drink which subsequently went out of business. Woody now a crazed Veggie Boy fan plans to grow kale so he can make his own green drink. You can be certain that no matter how much Braden likes his new Veggie Boy slime we will not be planting a garden and buying an industrial size food processor. I fully expect to have further stories to share on this topic after we take a test run.

The doctors tell you that it is of the utmost importance for your children to get proper nutrition during their early years. Our pediatrician said that a child grows about half of his total height by the time he is 2 years old. This is why proper nutrition for babies is so important. As I watch my new favorite show, Mark and Olly, I can see what the lack of proper nutrition can do to a person. The Machigenga men are about 5 feet tall. While they are certainly on breast milk at first their nutrition following that must not be too great. Apparently eating monkeys and bugs does not a tall Machigenga make. Knowing what is at stake Arica and I will forge ahead with feeding our little man spoonful after spoonful of the gooey goodness that will now makeup a vital part of his diet.

Immunization Baby!

I own about 15 Pearl Jam CD's most of which are live recordings from various places over the years. So I basically own about 10 different renditions of all their popular songs. For the last week or so I have listened to a live Pearl Jam concert rocorded in New York City over and over. This has warped my brain and thoughts a bit as I try to write. I am channeling a little Eddie Vedder from "Evolution" in the title today. If you don't know Pearl Jam you can see the video for "Evolution" here or you can just imagine I am a foreign visitor to our great country trying to describe what happened yesterday by screaming in broken English.

That's right yesterday Braden got his first round of immunizations. I was worried that we would have a Chernobyl type meltdown so I took off work an hour to provide my support. Mom's don't do too well when they see their little baby boy screaming from pain or at least the one living with me doesn't. Much to my surprise I was not needed at all. Braden cried but I have heard him cry louder before. The nurse was so quick it was all over before I knew it. She stuck him 3 times bowed to the crowd and made her exit. I am glad it wasn't too bad but I still don't look forward to doing it again in 2 months.

In other news from the visit Braden gained 2 pounds to reach the weight of 12 lbs 7 oz. He has grown 4 lbs 2 oz in 2 months and 3 days. It is amazing how fast the time goes by. I blame some of that on 6 weeks of a sleepless zombie like haze but still yet the boy is getting big. He holds his head up on his own and likes to be sitting up so he can see everything. He talks and laughs and is very interested in what is happening. He even laughed at our dogs through the sliding glass door the other day. I guess time goes by fast when you are having fun.