More of the letters

August 14, 2006

Oh heavens, what a day! Zander began waking this morning at 1 am. He then really woke about 3:14 am. I finally put him down in his bed, at his request, at 4:30… just in time to go take a shower and grab a cup of coffee before Tom had to leave for work. Then, at 5:15, Zander began to call out again so in I went. Got him back down to sleep by 5:45 and came out. Jason woke at 6:30 and I ended up waking Zander at 7:45 am. He woke happily enough, smiling at me, and set to eating his ‘cappy crunch’ cereal with delight. At about 8 am, I loaded the boys in the car – though Zander complained a bit as he wasn’t quite ready to leave his cereal (he is a bit of a slow eater) – and we headed over to collect Teri and her son, Christopher. Seems she was dropping their car off at the cleaners and it was going to be there for three hours minimum. Rather than leave them to wander about the parking lot while the car was being cleaned, I suggested they come back here. All the boys were glad to see one another – not a surprise since Chris, at least, considers Jason and Zander to be his brothers. Then, about 8:30 am, Donna showed up to stay with Jason while I took Zander to Mary Bridge for the various tests that his pediatrician had ordered. Dr. Oriel is troubled by Zander’s recurrent sinus infections. He suggested, therefore, that it would be wise to rule out possible causes – not the least being Cystic Fibrosis. He hastened to assure me that he doesn’t think it a likely diagnosis but that he wanted to be absolutely sure.

At any rate, I left Jason with Teri, Chris and Donna and took Zander off in the car. We stopped through Starbucks on our way and collected an eight grain roll for Alex. He polished most of it off before we reached Tacoma. Now according to everyone, finding Mary Bridge should’ve been easy but somehow I managed to get lost. So I pulled off and, with Zander singing happily ‘We lost, we lost, we lOST!’ I called Tom. He gave us directions and we found a building marked ‘Tacoma General and Mary Bridge Childrens’ Hospital’ After trying several different parking garages, we finally found a place to park and were able to get out and go in… Only, well, turns out that Mary Bridge is in a separate building! Off on foot we went and found the lab where Zander’s sweat test and blood work were to be done. He was so well behaved. He sat next to me quietly while we waited and I read to him from the Nemo book. Then the lab tech called us in and attached electrodes to his arms to stimulate his sweat glands and to inject blue dye. After about 15 minutes, we were told to go out and run around to encourage Zander to produce the sweat needed for the test. He was quite happy to do that – we played tag and pretend soccer then went in and bought Zander a green (he insisted) lollipop. ( I had read somewhere that the sucking motion, whether on a binky or a breast, released endorphins in children and helped ease the discomfort of injections. It occurred to me that the same might be true of a lollipop…) They removed the sweat collection rounds then it was time for them to do the blood draw. He sat on my lap, sucking away on his lollipop. The tech placed the butterfly needle in his arm. Zander blinked then removed the lollipop from his mouth and said only ‘Hurry please’ before replacing it. The tech looked rather stunned. “What did he say?” I repeated his request and she assured him that she would. It was a rather large blood draw since there were quite a number of tests but he sat stoically through the process and when she was done, he again removed the lollipop, said ‘Thank you’ and ‘Goodbye’ and out we walked. To get back to car as quickly as we could, I put Xander up on my shoulders. I neglected, however, to retrieve the lollipop from Xander. A serious mistake, it turned out. Seems that his hand was getting tired of holding the thing and, up there on my shoulders, the closest and best place to rest it was… my head. YUCK! It did provide several older men a good bit of amusement – we met them in the elevator on the way up the car and they seemed to find the sight of a woman with a green lollipop in her hair and a child on her shoulders to be enormously funny… In the car, he requested water and announced that he was hungry so I called Donna and took a lunch order – picked food up for everyone from McDonald’s. OF course, once we were home, Zander was more interested in playing with the other two boys and the only thing that he really ate was the fries… but still. We should get the results on Wednesday. Wish us all luck.

All of this comes on the heels of a rough day yesterday. Tom had gone off to get a massage that I had scheduled for him. He was coming home, was, in fact, stopped, waiting to turn left into our housing community when BAM!!!! Apparently a young man, driving a Corolla, was not paying attention. He slammed into the back of an F-150 pick up truck hard enough to dent the truck’s rear end. The truck was flung forward into the car in front of it and that car hit Tom’s Honda. We got word this morning that the Insurance company has been in touch with the mechanic and Tom can get the car in whenever convenient. I need to call him, in fact, and let him know.


Sigh. And that is our excitement to date – this afternoon, a high school girl is coming over to meet the boys. She may be a possible babysitter. Then tomorrow afternoon, we will go to collect my mother from the airport. That should be very interesting and exciting for the boys.

Back for a moment in the evening. We put the boys to bed early tonight – both were so obviously tired. I woke Zander up from both his morning sleep and his nap and he had a long and stressful day, what with the hospital trip. And Jason, poor baby. He didn’t sleep well last night. I am not sure if it was because his brother didn’t sleep well or if he is himself coming down with a cold or if all the various recent stresses are adding up. All I know is that he tossed and flipped and was very active all night long and that is usually a recipe for an exhausted day. He had dark shadows under his eyes. He was amazingly well behaved for being so tired, however – managed to hold it together until this evening when we went to Mongolian Grill for dinner… and even there, he was well behaved. Had either of his parents been less tired, we would probably have been willing to help his stock his own bowl but no – we were both wiped and neither was willing to spend the extra time and effort. As it was, I was ready to scream by the time we got through the line. Something to do with basically not sleeping after 1 am this morning and then feeling stressed out about… everything. When Tom called and told me that he’d been in an accident, first – I was shocked. Then I was relieved that he was in one piece. Then it hit me, and hit me and hit me – what if something had happened to him? How would I maintain this family? I certainly don’t have the background, skills or training, nor yet the work history, to pull down the salary that Tom currently commands – and as it is, though he gets paid a really decent wage, we are still struggling, still working to pay off all the debts we have accrued in the 9 years of our marriage. God, I was shaking. Tom thought I was over-reacting but I kept remembering what the lady from the Food Bank had said. Many of their ‘customers’ are people like us, people who had had a good solid job – or two – and suddenly hit a bump.

But I am not going to go on about that. I will figure out something, some way to budget to build up a base. That will be hard but…

On to happier thoughts, though. Jason continues to build amazing items out of legos – today he built a flashlight! What will that child think of next? He is so fascinated by the idea of creating ‘new’ items that I have started taking pictures of his projects and plan to build a family website where I can publish them for him. Mind you, I shall keep it a private site. There are just too many threats out there. He will get a kick out of having his pictures up there and this way other people will get to see what he is doing. Okay, I admit it. I am over the top proud of him. He is so bright, so talented and so funny. He is also exhausting but I suspect, if I were better rested and had some outlet, some sort of ‘time off’ for myself, it wouldn’t be such an issue. When I am not exhausted, when my batteries are charged, I have the creative energy to keep up with him… and I find it much easier to remember that he is, after all, only five. When I am bone weary, all I want is to sleep and anything that demands energy is too much for me. Truly I begin to understand Mom’s favorite saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ It is not just about providing the child with a range of knowledge and experiences, it is about maximizing the ‘restedness’ of the adults involved. We will see how everyone fares this coming weekend when there are five adults and two kids.