Hey, Laura!

It's finally cold enough in Alabama for your beautiful sweaters!

(And also for funny hats.)

A long night

Friday there was the dreaded contagion sign posted on the door of Aerin’s classroom.  “A child is this room has been diagnosed with Conjunctivitis (pinkeye).”  Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes.

Sunday at lunch, after the kids had been in the church nursery happily exchanging germs for half the morning, I noticed Aerin’s right eye was bright red. Whatever good I got from that morning’s thorough churchin’ was immediately undone by the invective that filled my head. I swallowed a couple youhavegototbefuckingkiddingmes and instead leaned across the table to Todd.

“You want the bad news, or the bad news?  Because THERE IS NO GOOD NEWS.”

Back home, we scrounged up an old bottle of Vigamox, dating from our last flirtation with pinkeye, that isn’t set to expire until 2013.  With the dosage instruction missing, we simply donned our Tyveks, poured half of it into her eye, and made the sign of the cross.

That night, a storm rolled through.  Not a bad one, as these things go in Alabama, but enough that it woke Micah, who made a prompt appearance at my bedside immediately following the first clap of thunder.  It was 3AM.  He solemnly and tremulously informed me that there were “pieces of thunder and wightening aww around my room,” and climbed over to the space between me and Todd where he squirmed and kicked for the next half hour.  He was followed shortly by all three cats, who have recently become skittish of storms.  I suppose being left to die in a tornado twice in the past year was too much for them.

At 3:45 the weather radio in our bedroom blared to life, announcing that everyone in South Huntsville was probably going die.  Or something.  I’m not sure, because the small boy to my left and the three cats to my right all jumped out of their skins at the first tone and I missed the details of the announcement as Micah’s arms were wrapped around my head in a starfish-like paroxysm of terror.

At 4 AM, the storm quieted down.  I asked Micah if he was ready to head back to his bed.  He allowed that he was and together we made our way upstairs, where I lovingly tucked him into his bed and tracked down all his stuffed animals.  Then I gratefully crawled back into my own warm bed.

At 4:30, just as I was drifting back to sleep, Todd rolled over and viciously elbowed me in the face, splitting my lip and jolting me awake.  He claims to remember nothing of it and swears it must have been an accident.

At 5 AM, I opened my eyes to see Micah’s face approximately an inch from mine.  “GAHAHHhhhello baby, what’s wrong?”  It was lightning again, you see.

At 5:30 and I cold-heartedly sent him away to make the long, dark trek upstairs to his cold, lonely room alone and turned off my alarm.

At 7:45 Aerin woke us up, yelling at Micah, who had gone into her room, presumably because both his parents were comatose and could not be brought back to consciousness.

 

First Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

Can you please give me a hula hoop?  And also, hi, Santa!

The Polar Bear has torn down the North Pole and also the tree at the North Pole. I have some sticky ink in my machine that I can put where it got knocked over and also in the crack so it won't need tape.

The Polar Bear let the Snowboys blast all the rockets off!*

I would like:

• a head band
• a hula hoop
• a truck to pull a tanker
• a train with a diesel engine that pulls
• a robot fish
• a nutcracker
• a coffee maker that can have water in it that makes the water into pretend coffee
• a robot penguin

Love,


*Can you tell we're on our second round of The Father Christmas Letters so far this season?

Worth at least six new gray hairs

Around 7:45 Monday morning we were, as always, scrambling to pull everything together at the very last minute. Shoes, daycare blankets, diapers, everything that somehow gets scattered to every corner of the house over the course of the weekend, I was trying to round it all up to get us out the door.

As I was standing at the dining room table stuffing the daycare bag, I heard Aerin laughing behind me. I turned around to see her standing on the sofa, bouncing up and down, and grinning at me. She was SO PROUD of herself. I told her to sit down, but because I was busy, I didn't go over and pull her off. I knew full well she'd just climb back on again, and I honestly just didn't have the time to get into a battle of wills.

(Hahahaha, you know what else I didn't have time for?  EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT.)

The next thing I heard was her walking backwards off the sofa and hitting the side of her head on the coffee table on the way down.

She immediately started screaming and I ran over and picked her up. There wasn't any blood and she was crying, so I figured she was okay. I got her calmed down, we got everyone loaded in the car, and we went to daycare.

At 11:30, while Todd and I were at lunch, they called to tell me Aerin was sick. They told me she'd fallen asleep during the gym that morning, then thrown up right before lunch. She didn't have a fever, but she was acting strange and they were pretty sure she had some sort of bug.

Sadly, I spent a good 15 minutes lamenting the presence of another goddamned stomach bug in our home before it finally occurred to me that the child probably had a concussion. And of course, by then, her pediatrician's office was closed for lunch until 1:30.

Todd took her home and I went back to work, Googled the crap out of "baby concussion," and decided she was probably okay. But I called the doc at 1:30 anyway and described her symptoms and asked them if they wanted to see her, or if I should just keep an eye on her. And the nurse immediately told me to take her to the ER. Apparently I should have been a hell of a lot more concerned than I was. So, yeah, I guess I failed that parenting test?

Anyway, once at Huntsville Hospital's Pediatric ER, they checked her out and decided she needed a CT scan, since she hit the side of her head and there wasn't any real lump. Aerin had to be restrained for the scan and holy hell, that sucked, but at least they didn't have to sedate her. Based on the scan, they determined she was fine and probably just had a mild concussion. We were given the okay to go home before our paperwork even made it through registration.

She was still a little off the next day, but by Wednesday she was back to normal. So even though I clearly missed the "freak out about head injuries" portion of the parenting class, no harm no foul this time.

I always told Todd Aerin would be the first of our children to ever visit an ER. And even though I fully expected there to be more blood on her first trip, I'm still going to say NAILED IT.