Party on, Garth

I brought the pictures of Lil J's bronchoscopy to work with me today, and I was thinking about posting a picture of his subglottic hemangioma, but I decided that since it's Friday, I'd go with something cute as opposed to something anatomical and sorta gross. I'll tell you what though--he's already outgrown the outfit he's wearing in this picture, and it was only taken a couple weeks ago. We call him Baby Hulk. Not just because of the steroids he's on but because he'll stand up on his feet, stretch his arms down and make this "Hhhhurrrrr" grunt until his face is red. Ain't even poopin' either. Just hulking out.

Engage

Usually, I get a small sense of satisfaction from complaining about my sleepless nights with the baby. I think it's the cathartic effect and the sympathy I get from people. But today I am so exhausted and desperate and hopeless that if I start to think about it, I'm going to cry. So I'll just get started on my 23rd cup of coffee and try to think about something else.

J and I were being such geeks on the way to work this morning. He was quizzing me on plot points from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I was actually getting the answers right. And, mind you, these were questions from episodes I last saw about 10 years ago. I'm such a dork. But, then again, there are all these kids on campus here who go to those comic conventions dressed as anime characters and such, and I don't do that, so I must not be topping out on the spaz scale just yet. Enjoying an occasional episode of Farscape isn't as bad as pretending you're a thong-wearing blue fairy with pink hair, right? Right?

A mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich where the mutton is nice and lean. I love that.

We had an ENT follow-up appointment this morning, and, believe it or not, everything went well and we did not have to get checked into the hospital! Huzzah! That never happens. We still have a bunch of doctor's appointments over the next few weeks, but that seems like a total cake walk compared to being in the hospital. Dig it.

My friend at work had her baby at 5 this morning. I haven't seen a picture yet, and the suspense is killing me. Yesterday, she and I were talking about baby names and she showed me a baby announcement of a little boy whose parents named him Ford Quitslund. I mean, who does that to a defenseless baby? Hey, parents of F.Q. there, is life not hard enough for children? You thinking he needs more challenges in life? Jerks. I can't believe people do that sort of thing. And I won't even go on about the announcements I saw for poor Yenniss-Yedonna and little Norak. Sigh.

Looking rough and feeling downright revolting

Yeah, so we went to the ENT last Wednesday thinking we were just going for a quick follow-up appointment and ended up being in the hospital with Lil J until Sunday. The ENT suspected that the baby had a subglottic hemangioma, and, wouldn't you know it, he was right. Of course, it took a bronchoscopy and MRI to be sure. And, let me tell you something, as cruddy as it is to be in a hospital for 4 whole days, it is even worse to have the image of Lil J sedated in the ICU on a breathing tube pop into my head every once in a while. I hope he never, ever has to go through anything like that again. But, honestly, the little guy rebounded like a champ. He's doing much better now, and it's actually nice to know exactly what is causing his breathing troubles. Now we just have to wait to see how well the medication works long term.

And, here's a bonus, we found out today that somebody broke into our storage unit over the weekend and stole some of our stuff. Nothing valuable, but, I mean, really. Would somebody like to kick my puppy while they're at it?

Ya can't come in!

We had such a tough night on Sunday that the whole family (me, J and Lil J) were all in bed by 8:30 last night. It was like a night at the retirement community after the annual Bowl-a-thon and Gimlet Festival. We were all tuckered out geriatric-style.

We're doing inventory in the library this week. We do this every year, and every year it gets more and more mind-numbing. You seriously have to go through each book one by one and make sure it's in the right place, and we've got something like 60,000 books in here. What I'd really like to do is put an item in next year's budget to hire robots to do this. I'm pretty sure that if I thought about it hard enough, I could re-wire a couple Roombas to take care of inventory in a few hours. Yes, yes, I should do that.

A woman's best friend is a nearsighted man

This is terrible, but I haven't gotten J anything for Father's Day yet. And, honestly, I don't know if I'll get a chance to buy him something before Sunday. I know it's his first year as a father and I should really do something special for him, but I have a feeling he's going to get a granola bar wrapped in tin foil. I have the best intentions, but I'm going on four hours of sleep again, so I don't even have the energy to find him something on the internet. Seriously, it would be so much easier if he was a woman. I'd just order him cookies and have them shipped overnight. But, noooo, he's got to be a man, and men just aren't appeased by food like women are. Hmph. He would be happy if I got him something useful like a drill bit or a gigabyte of RAM. What is that about?

Maxing and relaxing

I'm far too tired right now to write very much (Lil J had a night full of wheezing, gagging, and vomiting, the poor little guy), but I will say this: in the above photo, it may look like I'm contemplating the joys of motherhood, but what I'm actually doing is scraping spit-up off my sister-in-law's bench with a blade of grass. True story.

Photo courtesy of Stacie S.

I showed this picture to my friend, Jamie, yesterday and said "Doesn't it look like he's thinking?" and she replied "Either that or pooping." So true.

This isn't Melrose Place--we don't all love each other

I swear, this will be the last time I mention my hair...well, at least until it starts to grow out, gets completely uncontrollable and I get tempted to shave it all off AGAIN. But I think I finally figured out who this haircut reminds me of. You remember the video for George Michael's song Father Figure? With the black-haired model who, even at the time, I thought was a little mannish to be a supermodel but now it completely makes sense considering what we know about George Michael? But she had my haircut. Hers was a little shorter, darker and shinier, but that's who I remind myself of. So I'm feeling very early 90's right now. Not age-wise, decade-wise. I feel like buying a bedazzled bustier, leggings and a black cord choker necklace...and then never wearing them.

Lil J had more sweet potatoes last night and tomorrow he's going to get some carrots. I hope we don't turn him orange.

Rocky Marciano was 75 when he fought Joe Lewis!

You know what I realized about this haircut? It's the exact same one I had in the second grade. My hair's darker, sure, and I'm less prone to wearing yellow plastic headbands now (although I would if I was wearing the appropriate outfit), but, yeah, pretty much the same basic shape. In fact, several people have said I look years younger with this coiffure. I wonder if I could still pass for an elementary school kid.... I often think that the jungle gyms they have now are much better than the ones we had, and I would love to test them out. At my elementary school, all the playground equipment was made of either iron bars or wood planks with nails sticking out of them. It's a wonder I made it out of there with both my eyes intact.

And it was so much fun yesterday--we gave Lil J his first jar of baby food. Sweet potatoes. At first, he scrunched up his face like "What the?" but then he got into it and was opening up his mouth real wide. That's my boy. Loves the complex carbohydrates.

Darn shame what they did to that dog

I got my hair cut on Saturday. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I went to a nice salon and got a very nice stylist, but I think she determined me to be more fashion-forward than I actually am. I mean, it's nice because it's shorter and I have bangs so Lil J isn't pulling my hair anymore. But she cut a LOT of bangs into my hair. And it looks darker now because she cut out a lot of the old blonde hair. So I think I sort of look like I'm wearing an Egyptian wig. And I really don't have the features to carry off that kind of look. I don't know..maybe I'm still getting used to it. Maybe I should start wearing lots of kohl eyeliner and gold jewelry and go with the Cleopatra look. Bah.

Stay away from my Starburst, yo

Ones who walk away from omelets

Do you ever have this fantasy that you'll be walking down the street one day and a briefcase full of thousand-dollar bills falls out of the sky and hits you in the head? And you won't even care about the gaping wound in your scalp that's bleeding like crazy because you'll finally be able to stop working for a while and catch up on all the sleep you've been missing because your baby wakes up three times a night and won't calm down and stop wheezing until he gets some breast milk? Or is that just me?

I'm actually pretty psyched today because we have tomorrow off. The city's annual arts festival is taking place on our campus this year, so the school is letting all of us have the day off rather than try to find parking spots in that chaos. And, frankly, it's a good choice on the administration's part because if I was here all day, I'd be out eating funnel cakes instead of working in my office anyway. I do love me some funnel cakes.

Have at you!

I'm so relieved. Lil J didn't have any trouble breathing last night, so we all slept so much better. He even slept from 9 to 2 (which is usually his worst time of night), so I had a good 5-hour chunk of sleep there, full of dreams about tornadoes and giant sugar cookies. Curious. This morning over cereal, J and I were trying to figure out what we did differently that made Lil J sleep so well last night, but we're still not sure. It was either turning off the cool mist humidifier or slipping him that horse tranquilizer in his rice cereal at dinner. Could go either way.

But I wanted to thank everybody for their advice yesterday. I wonder if I'll ever get to the point with Lil J that I can turn off the baby monitor or put in ear plugs. It's really hard for me to do anything like that since the doctors told us that if he ever catches an upper respiratory infection, his windpipe could close and he'd stop breathing. And then there's that pause because they want to tell you that the child could die if that happens, but they don't because they don't want you to flip out. Stupid pause. But that's why I actually like to hear Lil J snore like a trucker. Snort away, son. Snort away.

Five is right out

I'm so tired, I just want to cry. The child...he does not sleep anymore.