Dog, Thwarted

In which Ceiba is introduced to the new laminate floors in the basement...

MY GOD WOMAN.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE.

WHAAAAAT HAVE YOU DONNNNNNE.

MY VERY BEST FAVORITE CARPETED PEE SPOT! IT WAS RIGHT HERE!

I WILL SEEK OUT RESPONSIBLE PARTY. THEN DESTROY.

AHA! PREPARE TO BE SNIFFED AT FORCEFULLY.

HMM. OKAY. HI. IS MAYBE NOT SUCH A BAD SORT AFTER ALL.

WILL JUST GO UPSTAIRS TO POUT.

WAIT A SECOND. WAT'S THIS?

***

So that's been happening. Randy came and ripped up the hideously befouled carpet and put down laminate and my dog is all THERE IS NO TRACTION OR ABSORBENCY PANIC PANIC BZZZZZTTT OVERLOAD.

Oh, and everybody please say hi to Randy, as he is a long-time blog reader, at least he was before I was all, "Thanks for reading! Now please come fix everything at my house that is broken. Which is a lot of things. Also, BEWARE OF ALL THE PILES."  Then I wandered around in my pajamas and a ponytail all the time, just to completely shatter the illusion that bloggers are cool, together people who are at all worthy of respect or admiration. But then I bought his silence with a couple Chipotle burritos. I think.

The other day I told Noah that no, he couldn't have a snack because it was too close to dinner. He got...fairly angry with me over this, and announced his intention to go ask RANDY for a snack, which he prefaced by pleading with him to please rescue me from Mommy. Who is mean. You need to defeat her! 

I thought this was actually pretty cute until I realized he was requesting my vanquishment from the dude holding the circular saw. 

***

HEH. MISSED A SPOT, BITCH. 

(Not Yet) Born This Way

Or, I Was In The Very Front Row At A Lady Gaga Concert While Six Months Pregnant And All I Got Were Some Crappy Camera Phone Photos

My ticket said NO CAMERAS, in very big capital letters. So I did not bring a camera, lest the Imaginary Authority Figures decided to yell at me.

They DID yell, kind of, but not about the camera thing. 

Jason bought me these tickets way, waaaaay back last summer for our anniversary, and included a upgrade to a special Little Monsters package, which meant we got to get in before anybody else and snag the primo floor real estate up front. At first, this did not seem to be much of an upgrade at all, since it ALSO meant my friend* and I got to start standing up a full FIVE FREAKING HOURS before Lady Gaga actually came on stage.

Five hours. Of non-stop standing up, minus exactly two incredibly hurried pee breaks. Not exaggerating. I can't even spend five hours SITTING down before I feel wiped out enough to move to full-on LYING down. 

Our spesul sort-of VIP status meant nothing to the event staff, however, who screamed at us repeatedly that if they saw ANY OF US not walking single-fucking-file, or cutting in front of people, or trying to run to our spots once we got inside, SWEARTOGOD, they would yank us out of the speshul line and toss us in the way back of the outside-round-the-block-general-admission line, IMEANITREALLYNORUNNING.

No one ran. I'm not sure any of us were even comfortable BREATHING DEEPLY until we made it to the stage barricades in the most orderly, kindergarten-line fashion possible.

*Jason bought the tickets, but SHOCKINGLY had absolutely no interest in attending the concert himself. I know, right! I think he totally would have rocked some caution tape and a tutu, but WHATEVER.

My place at the stage barricade, which completely blew my mind, being all of five puny feet from the stage.

(I do wish I'd managed to take a few more photos OF MY OWN STUPID ARM, though.)

Even though this backdrop was actually for Scissor Sisters, it set the mood for the evening nicely. Standing up, plus naked boobs.

The baby was relatively chill up until the opening act, when he woke up and started kicking like crazy, all WTF WAS THAT. Before that moment, I'd only really remembered that yes, I was indeed waddling around a Lady Gaga concert while pregnant when I saw everybody else's outfits and costumes. Twitter felt VERY STRONGLY that I should go using my belly as some sort of egg-related prop, perhaps with a side of bacon hotpants, but I didn't quite have the nerve to attend bare-bellied. At one point I was seriously considering a Naughty Pregnant Cop* outfit, but it wasn't as...ahem...STRETCHY in the abdomen area as I thought, and I couldn't get it zipped up. 

I went with a black lacy minidress that, if you squint, could POSSIBLY be interpreted as 80s-Madonna-ish-by-way-of-Target, bright purple tights, and a pair of over-the-knee black boots that I affectionately refer to as my Hooker Pirate Boots. Oh, and glow-in-the-dark Silly Bandz and a glittery purple headband that dug into my skull after an hour but bitch, I kept that sucker on all night like it was my own Alexander McQueen Lobster Shoe. I WILL SUFFER FOR MY HALF-ASSED FASHION. 

*If you have to ask why I had the resources on hand to even attempt a Naughty Pregnant Cop outfit, well, yeah. I...I'm sorry for this monumental bit of oversharing, but I did. 

For the record, you can absolutely bring a camera to a Lady Gaga concert. It's actually ENCOURAGED, to the point of being part of the show at least two times. Every single goddamn other person in the audience apparently knew this, meanwhile, I'm stuck with mementos of The Time I Was 10 Feet From Lady Gaga that all look like this:

And this:

And this:

Yeah, I was totally trying to get a picture of her ass. IF YOU'D SEEN IT IN REAL LIFE YOU'D KNOW WHY. 

Usually, I'm not a big fan of pop/dance music, and even less of a fan of giant, expensive stadium shows. But obviously -- thanks to all the guilty-pleasure confessing I do at Mamapop -- I've developed a very deep affection for Gaga and her craziness, in part because underneath it all I get the sense that she's just messing with us about 99% of the time. 

This show was like a big-budget rock opera: part Rocky Horror, part Andy-Warhol-art installation, part-self-mocking melodrama, part motivational Up With Tolerance & Self-Acceptance & Equal Rights seminar, and part cracked-out acid-fueled I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT. 

None of it was lip-synched, and goddamn, she can sing. 

(And performed live, Born This Way, weirdly, doesn't resemble Express Yourself nearly as much as the radio single does. Almost not at all. I mean, it helps that it started off as a near-acapella gospel choir song before morphing into a frenetic dance number with Very Hot Simulated Gay/Straight/Bi action by her Very Hot Back-Up Dancers, but still.)

I pulled the "I'M PREGNANT" card exactly twice:

Once while trying to navigate back to my spot before the show started after a bathroom break, and encountering a wave of assholes who were simply REFUSING to budge to let anyone through, refusing to believe or care that sorry, you WERE there first and had a spot being held by friends. I mean, I've held my ground to a point at shows too, especially when it's GROUPS of people obviously trying to push their way up front, but COME ON. It actually got the point where a grown man tried to body check me, with elbows out, and push me over into a group of other people. So I freaked the fuck out at him for being a fucking asshole to a SIX MONTHS PREGNANT WOMAN, LET ME THROUGH. Then I started screaming my friend's name so everyone turned to look at the stupid jerk getting physical with the little pregnant girl.

He then tried to lecture me about being at the concert in the crowd in the first place, since I was pregnant. I told him that he'd been the first and only thing to make me feel at all unsafe all day, so congratulations. Also: I've been holding my damn spot over there for FIVE HOURS ALREADY. You think you're gonna stop me, Gandalf? LEMME BY, YOU AMATEUR.

The second time was probably less noble. I yelled at a 16-year-old to stop crushing me against the barricade every time Gaga stepped close to us and shoving her camera directly in front of my face. I think my exact words were something like "YOU NEED TO CHILL THE FUCK OUT."

Or maybe "GET OFF MY LAWN."

Oh, and I saw Kathy Griffith, sitting in the seats right behind us, but did not get the opportunity to freak her out in the bathroom line or anything. Though I did strike up a conversation there with a nice grandmother who couldn't wait to see the crazy costumes, and hoped Gaga would sing Poker Face. (She did.) I also saw a lot of girls wearing just their bras and an even greater number of boys wearing...well, not very much clothing at all. 

And thus concludes my list of reasons why I think attending a Lady Gaga concert should definitely be on every woman's list of Top Five Things To Do While Six Months Pregnant, because I had an absolute fucking blast, and would do it again in a heartbeat.

From the Rooftops

The thing, with Noah, is that his victories, however small, are so hard-fought for. And harder won. Little things like preschool, karate class, swim lessons, riding a bike, talking to another child or simply using an idiom or bit of slang correctly are huge for him, and for us to witness. He is playing a constant game of catch up. 

And we are his cheerleaders, celebrating every baby step and breakthrough, screaming from the rooftops. 

And then there's Ezra. 

Things come easily for Ezra. What once was a sigh of guilty relief over his "typicalness" is now a gasp of wonder at all the things he can do already, at his seeming bottomless well of innate talents and abilities. 

He doesn't just talk. HE TALKS. Full sentences. Every word he hears he immediately absorbs and starts to use. He talks about things he sees and thinks and did earlier that day and would like to do tomorrow Nouns, verbs, abstract concepts and feelings and scenarios playfully pulled from his imagination. He asks questions, he wants to know what and why and when and how come, and he ponders your answers with a seriousness in his eyes that looks so out of place right above his chubby baby cheeks. I might not catch every word of it -- his two-year-old tongue is not always up to his much-older-than-that vocabulary -- but I understand more than enough. We have conversations.  

He is social and affectionate. Strong-willed and determined. He will not let fear or failure stand in his way of trying new things. "Too young, too small, too little" mean nothing to him in his furious quest to master all big-kid things. The self-critical, perfectionist streak I admittedly passed on to his older brother seems to have skipped over Ezra completely, replaced with boundless optimism and a refusal to quit trying until he gets something right. 

Not that he even needs to try that hard, that often. He can pedal a bike, kick a ball, hold a crayon, use a spoon, run and jump and climb and balance. He can count to 12 and name all his shapes and remember EVERYTHING after a single viewing, hearing or doing. He's funny and he knows it, irresistably naughty and mischeiveous and he knows a hug and a kiss will melt any and all of my defences. "Thank you you're welcome," he says, after offering me some pretend pasta from his pretend picnic spread.

He is the biggest little person I've ever met in such a compact, cuddly package. 

He followed Noah to karate and watched from the sidelines, once, then rushed in to demostrate a perfectly mimicked forward kick at the target. The teacher's eyes grew wide. "Wow. He's a natural," he said, genuinely impressed.

"Hi-YAH!" Ezra said. Then he put his arms down and bowed. HE BOWED. HOW DID HE KNOW TO BOW?

I worry. I worry that it will be hard for Noah to see his little brother naturally excel at the things he struggles with. And God, aren't enough things hard enough for him, already? Ezra, of course, idolizes Noah. Worships the ground he builds Lego castles on. They bicker and argue, but things only get really heated when Noah is doing something that Ezra can't, or simply can't yet. I worry that those roles are already getting reversed.  

So I say things like, "Noah is soooo talented musically, you know, he has perfect pitch and already makes up his own songs and if we can just get his fine motor skills up where they need to be I bet we can really set him loose on a piano and..."

Ezra sings loud and terribly off-key, you see. And then I worry even more, because I know what I'm doing, right there, and it's awful and not fair, that my pride in my second child gets colored by concerns for my first. 

Oh Ezra, you are so uniquely, breathtakingly amazing. I hope I tell you that enough. You blow my heart up every day with pride and laughter and I love you so, so crazy much.

I'm your cheerleader too, and you're never going to get rid of me embarassing you from the sidelines of whatever thing you choose to do, because I already know you'll be the greatest and most brilliant boy to ever attempt whatever that thing you choose to do is. 

The Oh Shit Moment

It's a pregnancy rite of passage. At least for me, anyway. That moment when it actually, finally dawns on you that you are going to have a baby. 

Like, a baby. Is going to come out of your body, one way or another, and then that baby is going to stay here. With you. In your house. And life. And you will be expected to do things with and for that baby. Fuck you, figurative state, shit just got literal up in this bitch. 

I've had this moment strike me right around this same point, bolt-of-lightning style, every single time so far. You would think I would start noticing the general pattern of pregnancy = ACTUAL BABY, but I seem to be able to gloss over that little detail for most of the first two trimesters, and then suddenly:

OHSHIT.

A bunch of baby-related purchases arrived over the weekend, and I realized my system of shoving them all in a far corner of the nursery is no longer working, because there's now enough crap in that pile (including a sub-pile of older-brother handmedowns and outgrown jackets with no place to go) that you have to walk around it almost as soon as you step into the room, and I can't NOT step into the room because I haven't moved Ezra's clothes out of the closet in there and now the simple act of fetching my toddler a fresh t-shirt is causing nesting-related hysteria and freakouts because I need to move Ezra's clothes out of the closet in there and do something with that pile of baby stuff and get the other pile of baby stuff out of the attic and check in the basement too and we haven't bought a new car or maybe just a very narrow car seat and THEY WON'T LET YOU BRING THE BABY HOME WITHOUT A CAR SEAT, YOU KNOW, GASP WHEEZE PANIC.

But hey! At least I bought some closet organizers. They are still in the box, in a pile by our front door. But, much like the boxes of diapers and onesies upstairs, they at least represent SOME form of half-assed progress. I'm not exactly nesting, I'm piling. 

I know we have time and all that. But then again, our to-do list looks pretty much exactly the same as it did back in October, when we sat down and wrote out everything we needed or wanted to buy and get done around the house "before the baby gets here." And look how great we did with all THAT time we had, back then, when it was a whole different calendar year and I was going to be pregnant for-evvvvv-errrrrr.

So far, we:

1) Purchased bunk beds, moved Noah and Ezra into the same room. Clothes, toys are yet to follow. 

2) Replaced the carpet in the basement with pet-pee-resistant laminate. Well, that's only happening RIGHT NOW, like TODAY, so not exactly past tense yet. Ceiba registered her protest over the proceedings by peeing on my sneakers.

3) Talked about getting hand-me-down baby gear and accessories out the attic, because I don't know what's up there and what's usuable or remember what size batteries everything takes. Did not do. 

4) Talked about purging basement of mountains of useless crap so we'd have space to keep all the not-useless hand-me-down clothing and baby accessories organized. Did not do.

5) Bought paint for both upstairs bathrooms. Did not paint.

6) Measured windows in children's rooms for new black-out blinds. Did not buy.

7) Talked about new bigger car vs. expensive narrower car seats approximately seven hundred million times. Did not decide.

8) Talked about how much that faulty toilet in the master bathroom bothers us when it randomly decides to start noisily filling up with water in the middle of the night. Did not fix, called it a shithole cocksucker.

9) Talked about turning small den off master bedroom into walk-in closet or grown-up office (instead of current Room Where Useless Crap Goes To Die Because The Basement Is Full) approximately eight hundred million times. Did not decide, bought an Xbox.

10) Played a lot of Xbox.

But beyond the semi-nesting bullshit, it really only just started to hit me that I am going to have three children. That I will be dealing with a high-maintenance newborn along with two existing high-maintenance small people, and whether or not I've purchased the exact recommended number of newborn-sized prefold diapers and covers won't make a lick of difference when it comes to the reality that I have no idea how to really make a family of that size work. 

We go out to eat and I mentally size up the four-top table they seat us at and try to picture another high chair tacked on the end, then a booster, then another chair. I try to picture myself getting three kids out the door on time, on escorting Noah to summer camp with Ezra and a baby in tow, on driving one kid to one class and another to the other activity and how not to shortchange the third one because everything he wants to do overlaps with something else. What if this one has special needs, or a health problem, or is just difficult and colicky and blah blah neurotic cakes.

We joined our local YMCA this weekend -- we were planning to sign the boys up for swim lessons anyway and decided to just take the plunge and get a family membership. It's a pretty bare bones facility in dire need of a makeover (several of the restroom stalls are perma-flooded with a good inch of run-off from the showers), but for a family "our size" there's honestly no better value anywhere close by. I signed up for a prenatal swim class and am looking SUPER FORWARD to using the free childcare center in exchange for some alone time on the treadmill. And of course, all the free swim time we want. On Sunday we all crammed in a family changing room and took the kids to the nice heated indoor pool -- Jason always with one, me with the other, my belly in the middle quietly reminding me that oh my hell, even THIS is going to get so much more difficult in just a couple months. 

The worst part of the Oh Shit Moment is that it makes it easy to focus on what you'll lose, and clouds your ability to see what you'll gain. 

"What were we THINKING?" is my now near-daily lament to Jason. I'm joking, of course.

(Most of the time.)

"I have no idea," he always answers. "But it's going to be fine."

"I know it will," I always say back. "We'll figure it out. It's going to be crazy fun."

I believe that, too.

(Most of the time.)

 

Wrap-Up

You know? All things considered and ruthlessly mentally compartmentalized, we had a really lovely week around here. 

Jason made me an amazing dinner for Valentine's Day. I opted for Just Buy Something Shiny route and picked out a Le Crueset tagine for him, thus ensuring that he would ALSO make me dinner for the rest of the week in his excitement to try it out. Our house smells like a Moroccan restaurant all the time now, and Noah thinks couscous is the best thing ever. Noah is not wrong.

On Wednesday, I had my 24-week OB visit, where I finally got to celebrate the packing on of FOUR WHOLE POUNDS. I know I sound like such a dick every time I bring this topic up, but holy hell, this pregnancy is so weird. 

Me at 24 1/2 weeks (and looking so very terribly excited about it!). No, those are not maternity jeans. Yes, that is a belt. Because somebody ate my hips off. 

I at least look pregnant from the side, right? The kid is big and strong enough to visibly jiggle a bowl of pudding balanced on my belly with the force of his kicks (what? it was a test for SCIENCE), so he finds other ways to make his presence known. Besides, obviously, being a voracious calorie-parasite sucking up everything I eat. And then apparently working it all off with a nightly gymnastics routine right when I'm trying to sleep. 

I go back in two weeks for the glucose test and another ultrasound. (At the last one, the baby was breech, though I think he still is.) And then I keep going every two weeks after that, because we're officially At That Point Already Oh My God We Are Not Ready At All. We've nicknamed the baby IKEA, in part because we've put off several much-needed shopping trips to there for so long now that it's entirely likely that he'll just be born at the store, among the meatballs and closet organizers. 

Yesterday, we emerged from our weather-and-illness-fueled hermitude and played outside in the neighborhood for the first time in months. And so many of our neighbors were shocked to see me out of a bulky winter coat and timidly hinted around that oh, hey! It's been awhile, WHAT'S NEW WITH YOU GUYS? And then they eyed my stomach with a mix of panic and confusion, locked in an internal struggle over whether to say something and risk the chance that I just got kind of fat in that one localized area. And also got a boob job. Because yeah. I've totally gained four pounds. IN MY BRA. 

We rode bikes and scooters and other various things with wheels (of which I realized we own a frightening, military-sized fleet of, at this point), and Noah invented a game called Harry Potter Escapes From Voldemort, which mostly involved running along the path behind our house until you get to the woods, then turning around and running right back, screaming on the top of your lungs. 

Ezra liked it because even he could understand the rules. Also because it involved screaming.

Ezra insists on wearing the bike helmet whenever we go outside, by the way. Even if we're just sitting on the front steps blowing bubbles. Considering he actively works to thwart my every effort to keep him safe 99.9% of the goddamn time, I'm guessing it's more of a fashion statement than anything else. 

Safety is badass, man.

Noah, on the other hand, outgrew his bike helmet over the winter. 

Along with his fear of the big-kid bike. 

And any trace remainders of toddlerhood.

In exchange for full-on little boyhood. 

PS. Obligatory reminders/thanks-for-visiting links to Mamapop, Moxiebird and the Advice Smackdown. Triple-handedly keeping us in couscous and puddings.  

Countdown

The American Cancer Society asked me to write an additional post for the More Birthdays campaign. (I was supposed to write one more, next month, and that was it.) I suppose I can assume this means they've been happy with the response so far and you guys have been clicking over and retweeting and like-buttoning or whatever the hell it is you youngsters do these days with your Internets and smartyphones and...and...

What was I talking about? I got distracted by some deep thoughts about prunes.

Oh! Right. Another post for ACS. Another look at a topic that should inspire at least a dozen entries from me on any given day, eleven of which are all but guaranteed to make a significant portion of the Internet cry. Or at least, lie about crying in my comments section. Don't think I don't know you do that. (And don't think that I don't love you for it.)

But oh. I'm tired of it. It hurts like a bruise, and some days just thinking about it feels the same a swift kick from pointy shoes.

My dad...well. Things are about the same. He still believes he'll be able to continue chemo, somehow. And that the chemo will work. Meanwhile, I've learned more about what late-stage leukemia does to the human body than I ever, EVER wanted to know. 

When he first got the cancer diagnosis, back in September, the prognosis was three to six months. We're currently five months into that range, and I hate -- hatehatehate -- the fact that things seem to be moving along, like morbid clockwork, right on their horrible schedule.

So instead, I've started shopping.

I've bought onesies and rompers. Everything in bright, summery colors and patterns. Impossibly tiny cloth diapers and sun hats. Teething toys, pacifiers and an infant bathtub. Swaddling blankets and lightweight nursing covers. My Amazon cart is littered with stuff "saved for later" that I know we don't need, but I will probably buy anyway. Because it's small and cute and it makes me smile.

I've entered his name into sample birth announcement templates, just because seeing it all typed out and real makes me ridiculously happy. Those are saved for later, of course. We'll need his photo and birthdate/weight specifics. And we'll have those soon...in about three and a half months. 

I've stopped wondering if that's soon enough. I've stopped doing the gap math, the subtraction. I've stopped fretting over the potential lack of overlap, the idea that he won't be here when the baby is born, even though it was never promised to us, beyond just HOPE and MAYBE and YOU NEVER KNOW. 

There may be loss -- a specific, profound loss. But there will definitely be life, and another birthday.

I'm excited for sure. And also: Hopeful. Maybe. And you never know. 

"Birthdays Are For Kids" by Sarah Rowland, courtesy of MoreBirthdays.com

 

 

Hormones & My Hair: A Reproductive Retrospective

Okay. We need to talk about something important. For once! We need to talk about my hair.

This topic is so intensely important, I felt compelled to create some illustrations. You know I'm serious when I bust out the stick figures and paintbrush tool, yo.

First, this was me (and my hair) back before I ever decided to have babies:

I mean, not that thin or out of proportion, but you get the idea. Stick-straight, fine hair that did very little besides sit there. It was very good at sitting. Also: hanging, limping, and flopping. I found it incredibly boring, and spent every other year wondering if "bangs would help," and then every other year in between THAT attempting to grow out my stupid bangs.

Then, I went on Clomid, fertility pill of the devil himself:

That shit made my hair curly. Suddenly, I had tons of natural wave and body.

Of course, I also had NO BABY and a raging case of major depression, panic disorder and OCD. So I had to stop taking the Clomid.

I still kind of miss That Hair, though.

A few months later, though, huzzah! I was pregnant. And sometime around the second trimester, I realized I stopped shedding hair, and even though it was still fine and stick-straight, I had a freaking shitload of it:

Our tub drains rejoiced as well.

Until I was about five or six weeks postpartum, when suddenly every non-shed-over-the-previous-nine-months hair decided to fall off my head simultaneously in giant-ass chunks.

The exact same thing happened when I got pregnant the second time. Lots and lots of hair.  Lots and lots of hair that saw no reason to stay confined to my head: 

Postpartum hairballs and a five o'clock shadow on your LEGS. I'd like to see MTV bring those topics up on a very special episode of 16 and Pregnant. 

Baby is born, hair falls the fuck out, everything once again returns to normal, which is boring, so I decided to dye my hair red:

Despite looking absolutely terrible in web-only color format, I like it. The semi-permanent dye agrees with my hair much better than the permanent blond highlights I used to get, so I sometimes even see a return to the days of the awesome Clomid waves. So when I got pregnant AGAIN, I was genuinely looking forward to how COMPLETELY AWESOME MY HAIR WAS GOING TO LOOK THIS TIME YAY.

But...this time, it's different. I still shed hair at my usual pre-pregnancy drain-clogging rate. 

Instead, my head has simply decided to grow more hair from scratch. This sounds good, right? Except do you know how long it takes to grow more hair from scratch?

Have you ever seen a Chia Pet?

Yes. That. Right there, is EXACTLY how I look right now. Six months' worth of new hair growth means I have a thick coat of three-inch freakazoid hairs sticking straight up and out all over my head. They will not lie flat, they will be tamed, they will NOT just sit there and stand by while The Man attempts to suppress their attempts to unionize. 

(On the plus side, my leg hair has all but stopped growing. I can shave about once every three weeks or so.)

(Don't be jealous, though, my eyebrows have decided to pick up the slack. If I stop paying attention to them, they quickly start creeping upwards towards my forehead, Donald-Trump-combover style.)

(Whatever. You can totally be jealous. Me and my bushy old-man eyebrows are totally used to it by now.)

But what I'm REALLY starting to wonder, though, is what will happen this time at that six-week postpartum hair-fall-out-ing point. Will the Chia Pet hair fall out? Or will I lose nothing but chunks of my PRE-EXISTING HAIR, and thus look something like this in about four or five months:

 

Moral of the story: I think I'm going to buy a wig. 

Happy Dog Germs Day

I have it on good authority that Noah picked out my Valentine's Day card entirely all by himself this year:

 

Not that I really needed much convincing otherwise. Honestly, the only card that could have possibly given this one a run for its money would have been one that like, hit you in the face with a pie when you opened it. I guess they were sold out of that design.

Anyway, happy Valentine's Day from Noah and Ezra! If you've ever wondered what it's REALLY like to live my highly glamorous, fancy-blogging-lady life, I suggest you simply hit "play" on that video about 1,758,920 times in a row. Then ask yourself for some more candy about 2,169,083 times.

That'll at least give you the abridged version. 

Over, Part One

Yesterday, the doctors told my dad it's time. It's time to stop. No more chemo. It's not working. 

At first, he misunderstood, thinking they just meant his current chemo drug. Then, I guess, he argued. What about a port? Another protocol? Something stronger, harder, newer? There has to be something else.

No. There is no "something else" they can do. 

For the cancer, that is. That, for all intents and purposes, has already won. But there's always something they can do to your body, some procedure, some test to gauge or stem the related fallout without really touching the cause or buying more time. More transfusions, blood work, CT scans, MRIs, chest X-rays, all stuff they continue to order because that's what their patient is choosing -- to go down swinging from a hospital bed instead of accepting hospice care, and I know, I KNOW. 

For the love of God, I know. Trust me, this would not be my choice. But...this isn't my choice to make. It's his. I don't know whether it's determination or denial, because it's simply not up for discussion.

No hospice talk, no canceling the invasive tests to find out what we already know talk, no special-diet whole-foods raw-kale-enzyme talk, no alternative hippie-dippie wheat grass herbal supplement talk and I can't say that I even blame him on a couple of those topics, because it gets awfully tiring having to listen to someone who "cured" someone else's stage four cancer with nothing but vegetable juicing and fish oil because it's all a conspiracy, maaaan, and my mouth is like, mmmhmm wow that's so interesting and my brain is like, no you fucking didn't, shut up.  

If my dad wants to eat nothing but processed artificial franken-comfort-foods topped with an entire container Cool Whip, I'm not going to argue with him about that. I'm not arguing with him about his choice to refuse hospice and continue medical interventions, either. It's not agreeing, but if the point of everything is to make our remaining time together as good as possible, well. Okay. We can find plenty of other things to talk about, and we do.

I did make him some turkey meatballs with organic sauce and whole-grain pasta that he really liked, at least. 

It'd be easier -- especially on my mom, who is so tired of hospitals and tests and doctors and just wants him to come home and stay there with her, so badly -- if he'd accept hospice and all that goes with it, but then...damn, "easier?" Did I really just type that word? Really? 

Because either way, I'm going to lose my dad. And it hurts so very, very fucking much. 

Grasshopper

Noah went to his very first karate class yesterday.

Long-time readers: Yeah. You know the deal. You know that this was kind of a big step.

Newer peeps: There's no way to nicely sum up three-plus years of developmental delays, meltdowns, evaluations, diagnoses, successes, failures, therapy, IEP meetings and God knows what else in a sentence or two, except to say that yeah. This was kind of big step. 

After our success with the homegrown hardscrabble soccer practices, we started wondering what other organized activities Noah was ready for. Soccer is on hold until the spring, since we could no longer consistently track down indoor venues and the constant switching of locations was driving the kids a bit batty. 

Jason suggested karate, mostly because Jason always, ALWAYS wanted to learn karate as a kid but Jason's parents wouldn't ever let Jason learn karate and yes, sometimes parenthood is little more than an ongoing experiment in Surrogate Childhood Wish Fulfillment. He then let Noah watch the original Karate Kid movie.

(Not only was karate completely off the table for me as a kid [GIRLS DID BALLET, YOU KNOW] [P.S. I HATED BALLET], I wasn't even allowed to see the Karate Kid movie. So as I watched it for the first time with Noah, I was sucked into some crazy mothering timewarp wormhole where I became the asshole who had to sit there questioning the appropriateness of the movie choice, especially since the main takeaway lesson Noah seemed to pick up on was that kicking people's knees means YOU WIN.)

But, the movie cemented it. Noah wanted to learn karate. Like, immediately. 

The place we took him to starts off with a short, private introductory lesson-slash-evaluation session, where an instructor teaches your child a couple basic stances and drills and sees if there's really an interest in karate (versus, you know, chucking ninja stars at thine enemies and shit). We'd prepared Noah for the fact that there wouldn't be other kids there at first, but chose the unfortunate wording of "If you do a good job and listen to the teacher, you can go to a real karate class afterwards."

During the private session, Noah was a ball of trembling, vibrating excitement. He couldn't stand still. He wiggled and jumped and wanted to talk the whole time.  He had problem keeping eye contact and was easily distracted by other people walking around or his own reflection in the mirror.

Still, though, the interest and motivation was obviously there. He was just so freaking EXCITED. He mimicked the stances and did some blocks and kicks and never once insisted on busting out his perfected-at-home Ralph-Macchio-crane pose instead of standing at attention. He earnestly promised to practice self-control, first-time listening, and never use karate on friends, family or pets, and I never realized that martial arts could be so damn adorable. 

(Plus, I highly, HIGHLY doubt anyone with a valid credit card actually gets turned down for white-belt preschooler karate. Just a hunch, though.)

We went into the office to get him officially signed and suited up for the class. Noah sat on my lap and suddenly we realized his eyes were red and brimming with tears.

"I didn't do a good job," he said. "I can't do real karate now."

HOLY SHIT. WHAT. 

Well! Best parents ever, right? Oh my God. 

Noah, you did a great job. You can absolutely do real karate now. 

(Not pictured: One poor, hysterically jealous little brother sobbing just beyond the glass door because he totally mimicked everything they taught Noah and showed off a great forward kick and the teacher said he was a natural but you have to be three years old for a class and it's not fair and you guys are mean and the worst parents ever.)

(Totally pictured: Pride, child having time of his life, money well spent.)