So. My middle child turned 4 on Sunday. His actual birthday capped off a week of celebrating, starting with a ninja-themed birthday party at a Tae Kwon Do studio and once again I found myself planning a party that I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be throwing.
And yet I have, in
the past few months, come around on the whole ninja thing.
Sure, ninjas are historically known for espionage, sabotage and assassination. But I'm fairly confident that my four year old won't be taking me out any time soon.
Sure, ninjas are historically known for espionage, sabotage and assassination. But I'm fairly confident that my four year old won't be taking me out any time soon.
For one thing he can barely manage to hop
on one foot (we just had his four year old check up -- more about that
later).
For another, he told me the other day that I'm his best friend. And unless you're a thirteen year old girl, you don't sabotage your best friend.
So here I was, frosting cupcakes with ninja faces on them that may or may not have resembled tasty little butter cream terrorists and making ninja headbands out of torn muslin with each guest's name artfully hand-painted on (finally that fancy art school education pays off!).
I'm not sure if I was honoring or mocking the ancient warrior tradition but, really, who doesn't appreciate a theme party? If ninjas can't appreciate the co-opting of their culture by Lego people and sewer-dwelling turtles named after great Renaissance artists, well... OK, I get it. In all my research of ninjas I haven't come across anything that mentions their great sense of humor.
My mom likes to say that children's birthdays are really more of an accomplishment for the parent - that they managed to keep their child alive for yet another 365 days.
I used to think this was just her way of making my life about her.
And then I had my own kids and I realized the truth - it kind of is.
In my soon-to-be 4 year old's case, the accomplishment seemed to be 365 days of me bribing him with trips to Target in order to get him to eat his vegetables, brush his teeth and wear pants.
For another, he told me the other day that I'm his best friend. And unless you're a thirteen year old girl, you don't sabotage your best friend.
So here I was, frosting cupcakes with ninja faces on them that may or may not have resembled tasty little butter cream terrorists and making ninja headbands out of torn muslin with each guest's name artfully hand-painted on (finally that fancy art school education pays off!).
I'm not sure if I was honoring or mocking the ancient warrior tradition but, really, who doesn't appreciate a theme party? If ninjas can't appreciate the co-opting of their culture by Lego people and sewer-dwelling turtles named after great Renaissance artists, well... OK, I get it. In all my research of ninjas I haven't come across anything that mentions their great sense of humor.
My mom likes to say that children's birthdays are really more of an accomplishment for the parent - that they managed to keep their child alive for yet another 365 days.
I used to think this was just her way of making my life about her.
And then I had my own kids and I realized the truth - it kind of is.
In my soon-to-be 4 year old's case, the accomplishment seemed to be 365 days of me bribing him with trips to Target in order to get him to eat his vegetables, brush his teeth and wear pants.
365 days of me enduring
temper tantrums because I wouldn't let him bring play doh in the car,
because I gave him the red cup instead of the blue cup, and because I
wouldn't let him go to school without pants.
365 days of me wondering
what happened to my docile, independent, happy baby.
And why he hates pants.
And then, about ten months into his third year, I started wondering if maybe what we were going through was more than just typical three year old stubbornness. Maybe it was more than 'middle child syndrome' (Is that even a thing? It kinda sounds like something a psychologist made up to sell books).
Maybe something was actually wrong.
Something that could be fixed.
You see, Kid #2 was starting to show the signs of a kid with enlarged tonsils. I know this because I googled it.
He drooled like a St. Bernard on a hot day. His speech was often hard to understand because his mouth was so full of saliva that he wasn't swallowing.
He woke up frequently at night in an agitated state and woke up in the morning cranky and tired.
His eating habits had gone from picky to super picky to borderline nonexistent as he only allowed soft foods or food cut into very small pieces past his lips.
And then the kicker - six cases of strep throat in one year. This meant six trips to the doctor to have his throat cultured. Six times having to hold him down to pour medicine down his throat, or, once he started spitting it back in our faces, having to hold him down so the doctor could give him a shot. And then ducking while he waved the syringe that he'd just pulled out of his own thigh and out of the doctor's hand in the air. And then, once his two brothers started showing the telltale symptoms of strep, twelve more trips back to the doctor for more of the above.
If you look at each of those symptoms individually it's easy to write them off as "bad eating habits, "bad sleeper" and "bad immune system." But put them all together and you have webmd's list of reasons to have a tonsillectomy.
Now, the pediatricians I see were reluctant to actually condone what some would consider elective surgery on a three year old. Apparently tonsillectomy's have 'fallen out of fashion' in the pediatric world. They are last year's IT bag.
Gluten Free is the new black.
But if I've learned one thing in the last six years it's that as a parent sometimes you have to speak up and be your child's own advocate. Doctors are great, but they're busy people and they don't see the day-to-day lives that we as parents live with our children. Last week at Kid #2's four year old check up my baby dropped the granola bar he was eating on the ground and the doctor rushed to toss it in the garbage. What she didn't know was that he had eaten a chick'n nugget off the garage floor as we were getting in the car to go to the doctor's and I had allowed it because I was psyched he was getting some protein.
So instead of waiting for a referral to an ENT from the pediatrician I made my own appointment and met with a respected doctor who basically walked by my child's open mouth and announced "his tonsils are taking up 90 percent of his airway, they need to come out."
And why he hates pants.
And then, about ten months into his third year, I started wondering if maybe what we were going through was more than just typical three year old stubbornness. Maybe it was more than 'middle child syndrome' (Is that even a thing? It kinda sounds like something a psychologist made up to sell books).
Maybe something was actually wrong.
Something that could be fixed.
You see, Kid #2 was starting to show the signs of a kid with enlarged tonsils. I know this because I googled it.
He drooled like a St. Bernard on a hot day. His speech was often hard to understand because his mouth was so full of saliva that he wasn't swallowing.
He woke up frequently at night in an agitated state and woke up in the morning cranky and tired.
His eating habits had gone from picky to super picky to borderline nonexistent as he only allowed soft foods or food cut into very small pieces past his lips.
And then the kicker - six cases of strep throat in one year. This meant six trips to the doctor to have his throat cultured. Six times having to hold him down to pour medicine down his throat, or, once he started spitting it back in our faces, having to hold him down so the doctor could give him a shot. And then ducking while he waved the syringe that he'd just pulled out of his own thigh and out of the doctor's hand in the air. And then, once his two brothers started showing the telltale symptoms of strep, twelve more trips back to the doctor for more of the above.
If you look at each of those symptoms individually it's easy to write them off as "bad eating habits, "bad sleeper" and "bad immune system." But put them all together and you have webmd's list of reasons to have a tonsillectomy.
Now, the pediatricians I see were reluctant to actually condone what some would consider elective surgery on a three year old. Apparently tonsillectomy's have 'fallen out of fashion' in the pediatric world. They are last year's IT bag.
Gluten Free is the new black.
But if I've learned one thing in the last six years it's that as a parent sometimes you have to speak up and be your child's own advocate. Doctors are great, but they're busy people and they don't see the day-to-day lives that we as parents live with our children. Last week at Kid #2's four year old check up my baby dropped the granola bar he was eating on the ground and the doctor rushed to toss it in the garbage. What she didn't know was that he had eaten a chick'n nugget off the garage floor as we were getting in the car to go to the doctor's and I had allowed it because I was psyched he was getting some protein.
So instead of waiting for a referral to an ENT from the pediatrician I made my own appointment and met with a respected doctor who basically walked by my child's open mouth and announced "his tonsils are taking up 90 percent of his airway, they need to come out."
I mean, not that I really expected
him to turn down our business, but his confidence that this was the way
to go settled it for me. My son's tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy was
scheduled for two weeks from that day.
The morning of the surgery when my son woke up in an unusually good mood after an unusually quiet night and practically skipped his way into the operating room holding my hand. Of course, some of this could be attributed to the fact that he was skipping school and had both of his parents all to himself for a change, but do you know what it's like to take a perfectly happy, healthy kid in for surgery?
The morning of the surgery when my son woke up in an unusually good mood after an unusually quiet night and practically skipped his way into the operating room holding my hand. Of course, some of this could be attributed to the fact that he was skipping school and had both of his parents all to himself for a change, but do you know what it's like to take a perfectly happy, healthy kid in for surgery?
It's the worst.
I started to panic. Was I doing the right thing? Was this really in his best interest or was I acting in mine? Was I looking to the doctors to fix something (what appeared to be a permanent case of PMS) in my child that was maybe not fixable after all? Was his crabbiness and mumbling just part of what made him HIM?
But before I could change my mind, they were showing my three year old how to decorate his anesthesia mask with ninja stickers and smearing the inside of it with Bonne Bell Lip Smackers so that he could drift off to sleep peacefully while inhaling the scent of Dr. Pepper lip balm.
This was the part of the morning that felt totally surreal to me. You see, in my 'past life' as a graphic designer I worked in the art department of The Bonne Bell Company. If you put a mask over my face that smelled like bubblegum, banana berry, or watermelon lip gloss I might have a panic attack thinking that I had a looming deadline and was still waiting on the copy from marketing for the packaging artwork.
Also, when I was a 25 year old designer worried about paying rent and my next Jdate, if you had told me I'd one day be smearing the very same product whose caps I was picking Pantone colors for into a mask used to sedate my child for his tonsillectomy, I....well, I would have been pretty psyched because my biggest fear in those days was that I'd never actually have kids to take to the hospital. Hence all the Jdates.
Flashback over. The next thing I knew I was helping two nurses, an anesthesiologist and the ENT doctor to physically restrain my child while we held the greasy fruit scented mask over his nose and mouth.
I started to panic. Was I doing the right thing? Was this really in his best interest or was I acting in mine? Was I looking to the doctors to fix something (what appeared to be a permanent case of PMS) in my child that was maybe not fixable after all? Was his crabbiness and mumbling just part of what made him HIM?
But before I could change my mind, they were showing my three year old how to decorate his anesthesia mask with ninja stickers and smearing the inside of it with Bonne Bell Lip Smackers so that he could drift off to sleep peacefully while inhaling the scent of Dr. Pepper lip balm.
This was the part of the morning that felt totally surreal to me. You see, in my 'past life' as a graphic designer I worked in the art department of The Bonne Bell Company. If you put a mask over my face that smelled like bubblegum, banana berry, or watermelon lip gloss I might have a panic attack thinking that I had a looming deadline and was still waiting on the copy from marketing for the packaging artwork.
Also, when I was a 25 year old designer worried about paying rent and my next Jdate, if you had told me I'd one day be smearing the very same product whose caps I was picking Pantone colors for into a mask used to sedate my child for his tonsillectomy, I....well, I would have been pretty psyched because my biggest fear in those days was that I'd never actually have kids to take to the hospital. Hence all the Jdates.
Flashback over. The next thing I knew I was helping two nurses, an anesthesiologist and the ENT doctor to physically restrain my child while we held the greasy fruit scented mask over his nose and mouth.
I left the operating room sweating and a little shaken, but not
surprised. Kid #2 acts the same way when we try to give him Children's
Motrin, clip his toenails, or wipe his nose.
Forty-five minutes later it was all over, and we were left with a groggy, morphine-addled three year old screaming for us to take him home.
What followed was seven days of pain and misery. Kid #2 was probably not feeling well either.
Forty-five minutes later it was all over, and we were left with a groggy, morphine-addled three year old screaming for us to take him home.
What followed was seven days of pain and misery. Kid #2 was probably not feeling well either.
He subsisted on ice cream,
popsicles and his great-grandma's Tollhouse cookies of which he took
teeny tiny bites but ate an entire tin of, proving my long-held belief
that my grandmother's cooking cures EVERYTHING.
He barely spoke above a
whisper and responded to everything with a slight nod or shake of the
head. After forty-five minutes of playing with our next-door neighbor
Mukund three days post-op, the five year old Indian boy looked at me and
said "Chase isn't talking." Proof that you can send your kid to Kumon five days a week but true intelligence can't be taught with flash cards.
Even worse than watching my child navigate the world with a throat that (I'm told) felt like he'd swallowed broken glass (always a possibility when eating off of the floor at my house, btw), were the night terrors that began five days after surgery. He would wake up screaming incoherently and stare straight at me asking for Mommy. Once he tried to pee in the corner of his bedroom. Three times he peed in his bed. Twice he peed in mine. I started going to bed with an extra set of clean sheets ready and waiting in the hallway.
A quick search on the internet revealed that night terrors are a common and normal response to anesthesia in small children. Something about neurons being separated and needing to mend. In layman's terms, that shit messes with your head
Side note - I had two surgeries as a small child and my parents like to tell me every once in a while about how I had night terrors until I was six. I used to think this was another way of them making my childhood trauma all about them.
Now I realize that payback is a bitch. After three nights of terror I called my parents and asked them how they managed to survive my childhood without killing each other - or me. I could practically see their smiles through the phone.
Luckily Kid #2's night terrors were short-lived and, three weeks out from Kid #2's surgery, I'm happy to report that things are back to normal.
Even worse than watching my child navigate the world with a throat that (I'm told) felt like he'd swallowed broken glass (always a possibility when eating off of the floor at my house, btw), were the night terrors that began five days after surgery. He would wake up screaming incoherently and stare straight at me asking for Mommy. Once he tried to pee in the corner of his bedroom. Three times he peed in his bed. Twice he peed in mine. I started going to bed with an extra set of clean sheets ready and waiting in the hallway.
A quick search on the internet revealed that night terrors are a common and normal response to anesthesia in small children. Something about neurons being separated and needing to mend. In layman's terms, that shit messes with your head
Side note - I had two surgeries as a small child and my parents like to tell me every once in a while about how I had night terrors until I was six. I used to think this was another way of them making my childhood trauma all about them.
Now I realize that payback is a bitch. After three nights of terror I called my parents and asked them how they managed to survive my childhood without killing each other - or me. I could practically see their smiles through the phone.
Luckily Kid #2's night terrors were short-lived and, three weeks out from Kid #2's surgery, I'm happy to report that things are back to normal.
Actually, they are better than normal.
Kid #2 is sleeping through the night, meaning for the first time in about 16 months I am sleeping through the night.
He's also turned into a total chatterbox - enunciating better without that mouth full of spit and because he's not a sleep deprived zombie he's actually making acute observations about the world around him like "the moon is full" and "my brother is stupid" and instead of asking me to hold him all day he's started asking the really important questions like "what does fall feel like?" and "why is tomorrow called tomorrow?" and "what does one plus one plus infinity plus light blue equal?"
Side note - If anyone knows the answer to any of the above questions can you please let me know? Because "I don't know" and "It just is" and "I'm not a mathematician" only go so far around here.
He's still a picky eater but has started trying more foods and asking for seconds (and thirds!) of the ones he used to like but had started to ignore because they were too difficult to swallow.
It's too soon to tell if the surgery will keep him from getting sick as often, but I'm happy to say that when strep swept through Kid #1's first grade classroom two weeks ago my entire family remained streptococcus free.
So.
Last week I took Kid #2 for his four year old checkup.
The pediatrician came in and did her usual line of questioning to make sure I know what is expected of me - er - my kid - at this point in his development:
"You're reading to him every night and limiting TV time?"
Kid #2 is sleeping through the night, meaning for the first time in about 16 months I am sleeping through the night.
He's also turned into a total chatterbox - enunciating better without that mouth full of spit and because he's not a sleep deprived zombie he's actually making acute observations about the world around him like "the moon is full" and "my brother is stupid" and instead of asking me to hold him all day he's started asking the really important questions like "what does fall feel like?" and "why is tomorrow called tomorrow?" and "what does one plus one plus infinity plus light blue equal?"
Side note - If anyone knows the answer to any of the above questions can you please let me know? Because "I don't know" and "It just is" and "I'm not a mathematician" only go so far around here.
He's still a picky eater but has started trying more foods and asking for seconds (and thirds!) of the ones he used to like but had started to ignore because they were too difficult to swallow.
It's too soon to tell if the surgery will keep him from getting sick as often, but I'm happy to say that when strep swept through Kid #1's first grade classroom two weeks ago my entire family remained streptococcus free.
So.
Last week I took Kid #2 for his four year old checkup.
The pediatrician came in and did her usual line of questioning to make sure I know what is expected of me - er - my kid - at this point in his development:
"You're reading to him every night and limiting TV time?"
Yes to the first part and, um, OK... to the second.
"He eats a variety of foods, including fruits and vegetables?"
"He eats a variety of foods, including fruits and vegetables?"
LMAO, oh
wait, she wasn't kidding. Fruit snacks count as fruits, right?
"He's drawing pictures of people with faces?"
"He's drawing pictures of people with faces?"
Isn't that kind of
subjective? In my freshman year of art school I had a drawing teacher that wanted us
to close our eyes make random, unidentifiable marks and lines on our newsprint with charcoal and a gummy eraser so that we could
experience learning to draw the way a three year old does - with no
expectations or preconceived notions of how art should be.
Clearly this
doctor did not get her medical training at Rhode Island School of
Design.
Which is probably a good thing considering the amount of the
above bullshit that comes with a fancy art school education.
However, I did have to wonder a little bit about her credentials when she wrapped up the visit with "So, it says here in the charts that your son had strep five, no wait, six times last year! Should we discuss taking his tonsils out?"
Shit, I could have been a doctor.
But really, if there's anything that the last year has taught me, other than how to have survive a sleep-deprived meltdown (my own and my child's) and change bedsheets in the dark, it's that a mother knows her kids.
However, I did have to wonder a little bit about her credentials when she wrapped up the visit with "So, it says here in the charts that your son had strep five, no wait, six times last year! Should we discuss taking his tonsils out?"
Shit, I could have been a doctor.
But really, if there's anything that the last year has taught me, other than how to have survive a sleep-deprived meltdown (my own and my child's) and change bedsheets in the dark, it's that a mother knows her kids.
How could she not? She eats, sleeps, breathes and lives her
kids. She might question her parenting skills, her methods of
discipline, her own sanity, but she also has a sixth sense when it comes to her kids' basic needs. So when something is off
- when that red flag in her mom-brain goes up, she responds, she
reacts, and she takes over. Call it maternal instinct or just a deep
desire to sleep through the night, but a mom books the appointment with
the specialist and the mom gets the help she needs.
And that is why my mom was right - birthdays aren't really about the kids. I mean, yeah, it's great for them to have a day where they are showered with presents and overloaded with sugar (because that's totally not every day around here). It's fun to see your kid show you with their fingers how they've gone from 'that many' to 'this many' in a matter of hours and celebrate them for the person they have become in the past 365 days.
But really? It's a celebration for and of the parents, who've not only kept their children alive for the past 365 days but who have kept their own selves alive while caring for these little people whose wants, needs, and well-being inevitably come before their own.
It's a celebration of 365 days of making sure your kid is fed before you get a chance to sit down and eat.
365 days of checking on them after they fall asleep to make sure their covers are just-right and their breathing is even and their teddy is tucked in where they can reach it.
365 days of making sure that who they will become in the next year is true to who they are and not who you want them to be.
And in Kid #2's case, I think that everything we went through in the past year, and specifically in the past month, is proof that both Kid #2 and I can have our celebratory ninja cupcake and eat it too.
And that is why my mom was right - birthdays aren't really about the kids. I mean, yeah, it's great for them to have a day where they are showered with presents and overloaded with sugar (because that's totally not every day around here). It's fun to see your kid show you with their fingers how they've gone from 'that many' to 'this many' in a matter of hours and celebrate them for the person they have become in the past 365 days.
But really? It's a celebration for and of the parents, who've not only kept their children alive for the past 365 days but who have kept their own selves alive while caring for these little people whose wants, needs, and well-being inevitably come before their own.
It's a celebration of 365 days of making sure your kid is fed before you get a chance to sit down and eat.
365 days of checking on them after they fall asleep to make sure their covers are just-right and their breathing is even and their teddy is tucked in where they can reach it.
365 days of making sure that who they will become in the next year is true to who they are and not who you want them to be.
And in Kid #2's case, I think that everything we went through in the past year, and specifically in the past month, is proof that both Kid #2 and I can have our celebratory ninja cupcake and eat it too.
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