There was a little girl in one of the pre-op rooms next to Mr. Cheeks who was obviously having a hard time with what was about to happen to her. I have no idea what that something was, but the whole time the nurse was in with us we heard intermittent, "Oh my God"'s coming from the next room. There was no crying, no wails of terror or please No's, just, "Oh my God" like a mantra, in a little voice that snaked its way into our room.
While we were waiting for Mr. Cheeks to return in his tiny hospital gown, with new holes punched in his tiny eardrums, she was wheeled down the hall on a gurney. The sides were up and the black bumper obscured all but her tiny 6 or 7 year old sock encased feet, and a small but heart felt, "Oh my God" escaped as she rode by.
Mr. Cheek's surgery went well. He somehow knew that it was going to be an early day, and we woke up at 5 am on his own. More proof that this child is some anomaly, this is what he looks like at 5:45 without any breakfast as we bundled him in the car:
I'm not sure there was a cuter baby in a hospital gown. This must be why they state explicitly in the instructions that you will not be allowed to leave with the gown. I almost stuffed it in our diaper bag, except it probably cost $154, and I bet insurance doesn't cover stolen hospital gowns. (TP would be upset if I didn't share the fact that I tried to put the gown on backwards and said I thought it might be "kimono style, which he thought was hysterical.)
I think the hospital bracelet makes him look like a tagged wild animal, but we had learned our lesson when we went for the inital appointment on Monday, and he managed to all but cut the circulation off in his hand trying to get the paper bracelet off. I let a man who I have seen for a total of 19 mintues put my child to sleep and with a giant microscope and a micro scapel insert pieces of plastic in my child's head. And I'm really ok with that. Especially if it means fewer trips to the dumbasses at CVS.
He was the first patient on the slab that morning, so there was minimal waiting, and boy was he pissed when they brought him back.
About 15 minutes later, we went home. We shoved that ginormus head back in his pajamas and were gone. TP barely had time to drink his second free Pepsi.
After a bottle, I figured it was time for a nap. Oh, hell, who am I kidding, I was tired, and I thought I could talk him into laying down too. But he was fully recovered. Jumping in the bed, crawling all over me, patting on the headboard and general wiggliness had returned. But I prevailed, and we slept for a few hours.
Then we got up and he played all day. Crawling, laughing, playing, banging, chasing the dogs and being a general busy body ALL DAY LONG. And I wore my pajamas the whole time.
Saturday work has started, and when I finally made it home at 2, TP and Mr. Cheeks were still in their PJ's and the house was a mild disaster area. TP stood in the kitchen doorway, and said, "Is this how he was yesterday? Because I could barely keep up." And then the whole family retired to the bed for a long nap. Dad, welcome to 10 month old-hood.
We're almost ready to come home guys (I'm sure I was ready after Tuesday, but now I'm really ready). And it's the official start of the Christmas season!
If you're out shopping, you are insane.
Go Hogs!
We love football at our house.
We do not discriminate on the basis of NFL, college, or High School. TP is at home with frozen pizzas, beer, dogs, and football, and I'm sure he's in heaven. If I come home and the house is dirtier than when I left it though, there's going to be hell to pay.
Last year I asked him to refinish the bathroom door while I was gone. The bathtub got re-caulked. He listens well, doesn't he?
My mother is dog sitting for the week, which means her dog is at our house
In our PJ's. TP was appaled I would actually wear my house shoes over there. Mr. Cheeks didn't seem to mind one bit.
He had supper:
And read some catalogs:
He played with TJ:
"I would like something on page 8 in a size big enough for a 175 pound Great Dane, please, or I will be forced to eat you." (TJ had just had his supper, which consisted of several pounds of raw chicken. Some days he gets pork loin, and some days he gets chicken liver. He sleeps on his very own crib mattress, on sheets with a higher thread count than the ones on my bed. He also has a treadmill, and his stud rates are about what I make in two months.)
TJ didn't really care for the picture taking.
It was probably my poorly manicured toenails that drove him away.
The dog sit-ees have three dogs. TJ, Mae, another great dane and Dixie, a 40 pound mutt. Last time my mom was the dog sitter, they had four dogs, but Pearl, who was sort of old and arthritic, died while she was there. The owners were in Florida. "Hi, this is Kelly's mom, and your dog just died..." She had to get some employees from the owners' business to come and put Pearl in the back of the grocery van and take her to the vet for cremation. "Welcome home, here's your dead dog's ashes..."
Once we got home, TP and I had a couple of things to do before I could put Mr. Cheeks to bed, so I popped him in his exersaucer and I heard him playing. A few minutes later I came back and his face said, "Holy shit, what just happened here?!?" His supper was proudly displayed all over the exersaucer, the floor, and him. (You'll be happy to know that I resisted the urge to grab the camera. "And he's what he looked like the first time he threw up, future-daughter-in-law, look at the artistry!") So we cleaned him up and put on new pajamas. And he did it again. And again. The poor thing had no idea what was going on. The whole process of changing clothes would have been made much easier if I had folded the mountain of his clothes that we have been shuttling between the laundry basket, his bed and his chair.
We have been throw up free since then. I have no idea what prompted this spell of food regurgitation. But it's stopped, and I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Particularly one that could cover me with undigested prunes and bananas.
When I was kid, we never carved our pumpkins until the night before Halloween. Where we lived, they would turn to mush in a matter of days so we waited as long as possible to cut into them. I can remember being so excited sitting on the newspaper covered floor thinking about what I was going to do that year with my vast expanse of orange canvas. And how proud I was to sit on the front steps with my brother and sister, my smile as wide as the jack-o-lantern's, my arm around my creation. After Halloween, we would go to the un-guardrailed bottom-of-a-boxcar bridge and ceremoniously dump them over the side (this was also the repository for Easter eggs after they had been hunted to death.)
I got pumpkins on Sunday and my mom "held" (and by held, I mean controlled his wiggles for as long as she could) Mr. Cheeks while I cut out the bottom and pulled all the guts out. This is one of those things that I hope our family can share until Mr. Cheeks and all his siblings go off to college.
I can't wait for him to reach in and pull all the guts out himself. He liked feeling the gunk I pulled out and also wanted the pumpkin to have a taste of his passie.
We also decided what Eleanor would be for halloween:
A pissed off dog with some fisher-price beads around her head. Can you see the quiet fury in her eyes? I'm sorry to say big girl, but this will probably be one of the many indiginites you have to suffer at the hands of a child.
TP was absent because he had to keep the nursey at the church for a meeting. When I called to ask him to pick up a Coke for my mom on his way home, I tried to convince him that I had cut off my finger while carving the pumpkin. I lost it though, when he said, "how bad?" and I said "like, the whole finger." I was going to tell him that I was preserving it in some milk until he got home, but I was laughing too hard.
The whole set is here.
