Assorted Epilogues

I.

Jason, the last man standing, is down. I repeat, THE HUSBAND IS DOWN. He is by far the least disgusting patient, at least, and his illness has resulted in absolutely nothing I had to clean up.

II.

But! Noah is fine. Ezra is also, finally, oh-thank-God fine and at back at school today.

I don't think I need to tell you that, humor and poor-poor-me snark aside, I was really, really worried about that one. I have never seen any of my children that sick, for which I know I am lucky, because it obviously could have been so, so much worse. He's lost a ton of weight and is still sleeping approximately 18 hours a day, but last night around dinnertime he asked for scrambled eggs and meatballs and macaroni and steak and polenta and cheese and chicken and was basically grabbing anything from the fridge he could get his hands on to eat. A jar of mustard! A pomegranate! Parsley! Whatever!

(Except for what's left of the raspberries. Those are being pointedly ignored.)

Ike is improving but probably needs another day to be back at 100%. I'm still washing a lot of diapers. And if you, like Jason, wonder why in the world I wouldn't cut myself a break and use disposables in the meantime, I will give you the Official Party Line, which is that the disposables equal blowouts and give him a rash.

(That's sort-of the truth. The rest-of-the-way truth is that I seekritly ordered some more diapers and doublers that I absolutely 100% did not need but just plain waaa-aaanted so this allows me to wash and prep them faster all seekritly-like. "What? Those? We've had them for ages, I don't know what you're talking about. Go back to bed. YOU'RE CLEARLY HALLUCINATING.")

III.

No word from the school re: the lice issue. I like to think that they are waiting until they have had time to have an Official Emergency Response Strategery Meeting and can respond with a concrete and satisfying Serious Business Is Serious battle plan, but the more likely reason is that my email read like it was written by a crazy person at the end of her fucking goddamn rope. 

IV.

Last night some animal(s) got into our backyard and attacked a bag of trash we'd left on the patio table. (Stupid, yes. But I have an excuse: Carrying it across the yard to the covered trash receptacle would have required me to put on shoes.) The mess was epic. Wrappers and plastic bags and various bits of grossness were everywhere, and unless I felt like dealing with approximately 1,237,942 requests from Ceiba to go OUTSIDE OUTSIDE OUTSIDE throughout the day so she could eat some Shitty Plastic Wrap^TM remnants, I had no choice but to -- sigh -- clean it up right then. 

So that's how I ended up in the backyard at 7 am this morning, in my pajamas and rainboots, picking up every individual paper towel befouled during the original Raspberryhorkgate 2012, every shop rag and pair of underwear I'd decided was too unspeakable to even deal with laundering, and other assorted disgusting momentos of this weekend. Again. For the second time. That is some next-level, insult-to-injury, Alanis-Morissette-style-irony karmic bullshit, right there. 

V. 

The babysitter offered to stay a couple extra hours today, in case I had any "work" I needed to "catch up on." 

I fibbed and said that yeah, there are a couple things I need to do. And while a lunch out alone, a pedicure and maybe some aimless wandering around the mall aren't exactly "work," at this point I think those things all practically come with a prescription. 

How Bad Was My Weekend

...let me COUNT THE WAYS.

I cleaned vomit off the top bunk.

I cleaned vomit off the bottom bunk.

I cleaned vomit off the bunk bed ladder and the floor.

I cleaned one child's vomit out of the hair of another.

I cleaned up after the world's grossest fucking diaper, BAR NONE.

I cleaned up...the crib. Enough said.

I cleaned vomit off the wall of the nursery, and the rocking chair.

Also my brand-new, dry-clean-only sweater that I was stupidly wearing because that was before reality set in and all hope was shattered into a million disgusting, crusty pieces.

I called the on-call pediatrician to find out if I needed to take my terrifyingly listless, still-unable-to-keep-solids-down-after-72-hours toddler to the ER or not. 

I went to the store for more Pedialyte only to realize I was standing in the stationary aisle, staring at sympathy cards and slowly going mad with fever.

I came home and experienced some...digestive distress. 

I lay in bed and moaned at the ceiling fan while Jason baked the children COOKIES, since Noah was feeling so much better and Ezra...well, Ezra would probably be fine too, right?

I lay in bed and muttered feverish I TOLD YOU SO'S while Jason cleaned vomit off the bottom bunk. Again.

I cleaned up three puddles of cat vomit off my bedroom floor because why the fuck not, you useless lump of hairballs. 

I noticed my six-year-old suddenly scratching his head a lot, because ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.

I composed a pointed email to his school mostly to satisfy my need to tell another adult to DO something already. FIX something. HELP ME with something. I CANNOT SOLVE THE ONGOING KINDERGARTEN LICE SITUATION SINGLE-HANDEDLY OVER HERE, ESPECIALLY BECAUSE WE ARE ALL THE FUCK OUT OF CLEAN SHEETS AND TOWELS.

I treated, combed, shampooed, cleaned, sprayed, laundered, bagged, quarantined and combed again.

I called a different on-call pediatrician to find out if I needed to take my still listless, able-to-keep-some-solids-down-but-now-having-diarrhea-every-30-minutes toddler to the ER. 

I did not take anyone to the ER.

I got better.

Mostly.

Now I just have a really bad cold and a need to make up for about a million hours of sleep.

(But hey! I made the Huffington Post!)

Everybody else got better too.

Mostly.

So far, as of this minute.

It's been a good minute.

I'll take it.  

(Just like I happily took Jason's "I'm Sorry Everything Is Terrible, Go Take A Bath And Let Me Handle Things For Awhile Before You Have A Psychotic Break" gift of Lush and red wine. He really is SUCH a good one, misguided mid-onslaught baking attempts aside.)

 

:(

After a brief turn for the better last night and this morning, we're now back to taking it one sip of Pedialyte at a time over here. Even popsicles are too wild and crazy for this party. And the less said about that banana, the better.

Fuck this week. I'm out. Let's meet up on Monday for a do-over, deal?

Because You're Worth It

Warning: This is probably going to be the grossest thing I have ever written about on the Internet. And I have written some gross fucking things. So, proceed with caution. Or don't. Just leave. Run away! Look out, behind you! It's a compulsive oversharing blogger in her pajamas! OH MY GOD WE'RE DOOMED.

Yesterday afternoon, Ezra shuffled from his room post-nap. "My tummy hurts," he whined. We had a little chat about Poop, Do You Need To Go Do That, and I expertly diagnosed him with Who The Hell Knows, But Let's Try Some Cuddling On The Couch. 

So we cuddled. On the couch. Which is where we were when he suddenly bolted upright and vomited on me. A entire container of raspberries came up in repeated waves of bright reddish-magenta-colored puke all over my chest and lap and then the couch and on the floor as I picked him up and hauled ass towards the bathroom, where it also just. Kept. Coming. Holy. Fucking. SHIT.  

When it was over and the bathroom walls and surfaces were as coated with splattered raspberry hork as we both were, he burst into terrified tears and put his arms out for a hug. 

This is one of the things that you know, logically, going into parenthood, is a distinct and likely possibility. I mean, kids get sick and throw up and when they're little they have no idea what's happening to them, and no instinct to run for the bathroom and barf into the toilet like a civilized person. As a former child yourself, you probably have at least one memory of a truamatic throwing-up event in your bed or on the floor or all over the backseat of the car. 

You probably DON'T, however, have any memory of cleaning up the carnage after the fact, because you didn't fucking have to. No, you got cleaned up and put to bed and left to wallow in your own snuffly misery with a popsicle while your parents dealt with the rest of it, desperately praying to the Clorox gods that they would escape coming down with it themselves. Because even if they do get violently ill they'll STILL have to take care of your helpless ass and cater to your every Saltine-and-Ginger-Ale-related whim.

So I totally had one of those moments of Hideous Soul-Breaking Clarity while peeling off my vomit-soaked clothing and giving us both a bath, while I spread a sheet across the freshly-scrubbed (but still rank-smelling) couch so he could lie down and watch Blue's Clues. I put a trash can next to him (which would be repeatedly ignored and/or missed during the next five or six bouts of vomit that were still to come) and went back to wiping off befouled surfaces that like, did not even MAKE SENSE, from a PHYSICS PERSPECTIVE, because HOW DID HE MANAGE TO VOMIT ON THE UNDERSIDE OF THE SINK COUNTER. 

I meticulously scraped smelly day-glo goo from in between the planks of the hardwoods, all while realizing that 1) no one was going to come help me, and 2) no one was ever going remember that I once did this for them.

And that I would do it again, and let's be honest, probably will. 

And I'm more okay with that than I ever thought I'd be.

P.S. Except for the part when I realized the baby -- who was scooting around on the living room floor during our initial frantic dash to the bathroom -- had something in his mouth and it was part of a raspberry and OH MY GOD THAT PART WAS NOT OKAY AND MADE ME CRY NO NO NO.

Babyproof Your World, Girl

Over the weekend, Ike developed an obsession with the step in our living room. He spent a couple hours scooting back and forth in front of it, touching it, putting toys on top of it. At one point I caught him lying on his back and intently examining the lip from below. Fucking steps, how do they work? 

He was like a raptor in Jurassic Park, investigating the electric fences. Looking for weaknesses. 

Yesterday, he found one.

???

!!!

About five minutes after discovering the finger-gripping, body-dragging properties of the floor vent, he managed to pull himself up and over the step. And then, resisting the siren call of That Random Power Cord That I Need To Move Right After I Figure Out What It's Even Bleeping Connected To In The First Place, he was so pleased with his new skill that he promptly rolled right back off it, just so he could climb up again.

Pride & Doomudice

There's something indescribably awesome about watching a baby purposely figure things out, as they scrunch up their faces and drool from all the tremendous effort it takes to get soupy brains and uncoordinated limbs in gear. And yet so bittersweet, because slow down, baby! Your head still bruises like a peach and the world is just so sharp and pointy.

Noah is very proud. Noah is still a bit unclear on the concept that baby brothers turn into actual little brothers. 

HIDE YO KIDS HIDE YO LEGOS

(I should acknowledge that yeah, I don't actually have pictures of him making the final leg of the climb, because I decided to videotape this attempt instead. I got some absolutely terrific footage of him losing his balance and thwacking the shit out of his forehead on the wall corner, though! Look for it in his first birthday montage video, or perhaps a parental competency hearing.)

The Plastic Wrap That Ate New York City

Happy Monday, Innernets! How was your weekend? Ours was fine! I learned two things:

1) When Ike comes down with his big brother's cold, he gets this hilariously gigantic cough -- CAAAAHHH-UGH CAAAAAHH-UGH-UGH-CAH -- and sounds exactly like an old man having a top-volume coughing fit at a quiet restaurant. So the next time you hear a cough like that and start looking for the person to scowl at, like GO OUTSIDE, DUDE, NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOU COUGHING UP YOUR LUNG, be forewarned that it could be my baby.

    1a) I mean, you can still scowl at him, if you want. He won't care. Old-man cough badger don't give a shit.

    1b) CAAAAHHHHH-UGH-GGG-CAH-UH-ETC.

2) Before you bundle your children up and send them outside to frolic in a couple inches of freshly fallen snow, you should PROBABLY confirm that the white stuff on the ground actually is snow. As opposed to a deadly, pointy mix of 10% snow and 90% ice. And you should confirm this fact through a testing method OTHER THAN watching your six-year-old pelt your three-year-old in the face with an iceball. 

    2a) He's fine! The cut didn't even need stitches. 

    2b) (dies)

    2c) Though I have to admit, the sight of both them lying on the icy ground, flapping their arms and legs in a desperate attempt to make snow angels while shrieking "WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING?" was pretty damned funny. But obviously I am tremendous jerk who routinely derives humor in the pint-sized suffering of my children. (See item 1. Also every blog post ever.)

***

Anyway. Enough about them! I need to talk about plastic wrap! SHUT UP THIS IS IMPORTANT.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I made the fateful decision to buy a box of generic plastic wrap. 

And when I say many years, I am not (for once, not even a little bit) exaggerating. This roll of plastic wrap is like the goddamned loaves and fishes, because it never, ever runs out. It just keeps going and going. An endless, magical supply of plastic wrap.

I should maybe call the Vatican. Or the Paranormal Activity people. 

Because this is the absolute WORST plastic wrap in the history of human kind.

I can't even express how terrible this plastic wrap is. It clings directly and desperately to itself, and nothing else. Put it on a bowl or dish and it will just...sit there, all non-sealing-like while its edges curl in to create an un-straightenable mass of gummed-up plastic wrap. It puckers and creases and instantly folds up into a three-inch-wide strip of uselessness the second you tear it from the box. That is, IF YOU ARE LUCKY ENOUGH to even get it to tear from the box, since instead of those fancy metal tearin' strips the hoity toity brands come with, this stuff has an edge of slightly perforated, long-since-worn-to-the-nub cardboard "teeth":

Hello! Do you need some plastic wrap! Okay! I will start gumming my way through that shit now! You come back in an hour or so. With the scissors. 'Cause we both know this ain't happening.

We HATE this plastic wrap, is what I am saying. Neither of us can use this plastic wrap without vocally complaining about how much we hate this plastic wrap. And while we're not like, AVID plastic wrap enthusiasts, or anything, the topic does come up quite frequently. Several times a week, for YEARS, one of us has bitched out loud to the other about this terrible, terrible plastic wrap.

Giving old boring married people something to talk about since 2007. Can your name-brand products deliver on that promise? For pennies on the dollar? I don't fucking think so, son.

And yet, the plastic wrap keeps going and going and going. I know I bought the big economy size, but this is RIDICULOUS. I should not still be paying for one single crime of frugality, all these years later.

Every once in awhile -- usually while muttering and cursing and trying to rip my third sheet of plastic wrap off the roll in order to mummify an ice cube tray of baby food -- I do stop and think, "Fuck this. I'm throwing this crap out and buying some new plastic wrap. Because life is too short for shitty plastic wrap. Because I am worth it!" 

But then, for whatever reason, I don't. I don't throw the box out and I don't buy a new one. Is it guilt? The fact that we're not using some recycled BPA-free hemp-paper alternative to the shitty plastic wrap? Or because we've made it this far so we might as well see this never-ending shitty plastic wrap storyline until the end? Because we maybe don't even believe that end will ever come so what's the point, we might as well just suck it up? Is it because the SHITTY PLASTIC WRAP IS FULLY IN CHARGE NOW?

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. YOU WILL ALSO GET A SURPRISINGLY NASTY PAPER CUT ON MY WEAK-ASS CARDBOARD TEETH. 

I don't know. It's an easily-solved problem that instead has become an epic years-long struggle for no particular reason. If this was a Paranormal Activity movie you'd probably be yelling at us to move or call an exorcist, so maybe we'll just try one of those things. 

"Teachers Don't Have Phones."

And with that, the question over whether or not he was telling me the truth was answered. 

We caught Noah in his first big, sustained lie yesterday. The details are exhaustively boring, but suffice to say he'd figured out a way to game his token/reward system at school and make us think he was earning more points for good behavior than he was. Then exchanging those points for treats at home like playing video games or getting some Halloween candy. (That is not actually from Halloween, but just what the boys call candy year-round here.)

I'd grown suspicious and questioned him a few times, and he remained consistent with his cover story (his teacher couldn't find the stamp so she marked his paper with a crayon instead) and insisted that he was telling the truth. 

"I promise, Mom," he'd say, cooly and calmly, with perfect eye contact and an earnest, dimpled smile.

That was what made me back off, every time: the eye contact. Noah remains a jumble of different quirks from both on and off the Spectrum -- at his last IEP his teacher said she absolutely didn't want to change his diagnosis code from the catch-all "Developmental Delay" yet because she simply cannot figure him out, because he simply ISN'T just one thing or the other and doesn't seem to really fit any of the "usual" codes -- but eye contact is a big deal. If he's upset or overwhelmed in the slightest, it's the first thing to go. 

But yesterday the cover story took a turn for the improbably convoluted. I listened to him chatter on, asked a question and sensed the teeniest, tiniest bit of "OH SHIT MAYDAY MAYDAY" in his voice as he quickly tried to backtrack -- yet his words never seemed to fail him, and he continued to speak clearly and articulately. He wasn't making sense to me, but in a different way. There was no hint of his word retrieval/processing problems; he just sounding like a typical kid attempting some verbal gymnastics while trying to assure me that I'd misunderstood the first version of events he'd just described.

Finally, I told him I was going to call his teacher and ask her about it. He jumped back three feet and froze. "Don't call her," he whispered. 

He wouldn't tell me why he didn't want me to call her. He repeated the story again. He promised he wasn't lying. 

"Why don't you believe me, Mom?" he asked, his voice so full of hurt that I wavered again, because if there's one thing Noah is not, it's an actor. He still won't wear costumes or pretend to "be" anyone during play, and he gets unnerved when Ezra incorporates emotions into their games, like fake crying or anger.

But still, I didn't believe him because my gut didn't believe him. The developmental stuff was a convincing smokescreen, but if I pushed it back and stared at the piece of paper covered with suspiciously childlike scribbles that he insisted were done by an adult, well. Come on, dude. 

I repeated my intention to call his teacher. 

"You CAN'T!" he wailed.

"Why not?" I asked. "Is she going to tell me something different?"

"No! I don't know!" he paused. "You can't call her because...TEACHERS DON'T HAVE PHONES."

Aaaaand there it was. The wheels were falling off. We'd hit the limits of the logic ceiling. 

I gave him another chance to fess up -- I assured him that I cared much, much more about the truth than I did about how many points he was getting at school, but that there would be definite consequences and loss of privileges if I had to find the truth out from someone else.

Instead, he opted to double down. "I am telling the truth," he said, with a perfect poker face.

I went upstairs to get my shoes on -- we needed to leave in a few minutes for his occupational therapy appointment, after all -- but apparently Noah thought I was calling his teacher right then. Jason found him staring up after me with a look of nervous, stomach-churning agony. 

I was halfway back down the stairs when the confession started. 

"I just wanted more Halloween candy," he admitted.

***

Lying is bad and wrong, of course. And being lied to by your child is annoying. Choosing punishments and reinforcing the importance of the truth while curbing your own white-lie fibbing habit is an exhausting and not-particularly rewarding part of parenting.

But oh, you guys, it's also just so normal. 

Dear Social Media: Please Invent A Button For Things I Simultaneously Like & Unlike At The Same Time

First, I want to thank y'all for making me feel SO MUCH BETTER about the Tooth Fairy thing. I'm so glad we're not the only parents who have forgotten about lost teeth and woke up to devastated, disillusioned children. GLAD, I SAY. I AM COMFORTED BY YOUR CHILDREN'S PAIN. WE ARE ALL TERRIBLE PEOPLE, HOORAY!

Second, I'm hoping today's confession will likewise be met with understanding instead of gasps of pearl-clutchy horror.

Ezra is home sick today. Cough, fever, general whimperiness. 

I totally don't mind though, because Ezra is my favorite sick child. 

It's not that I enjoy seeing him sick and miserable or anything. It's just that he's just so...so...

...awwwwww poor little angel buddy when he's not feeling well.

He's by far the most good-natured of the three when sick; the most likely to try his darnedest to Brave-Little-Toaster his way through it, right up until the moment when he decides instead to just curl up on the kitchen floor with a stuffed animal and a plastic waffle and take an impromptu nap. 

Noah, on the other hand, tends to get extra difficult -- illness brings out more of his, shall we say, challenging sensory/Spectrum-y behaviors, plus that kid will fight a restorative nap and/or doses of Tylenol with every ounce of fever-fueled strength in his body. And Ike...well, Ike's a baby, and as I've discussed before, sick babies stress me the hell out. 

A sick Ezra, though? Who basically melts into a warmish puddle of I Needs A Cuddle, Mommy and Read Me Anodder Story, Mommy and I Loves Your Hairs, Mommy and Shh, Lets Goes Sleep, Mommy?

Yeah. I can deal with all that. Lets goes sleep. 

When you wake up I will make you some soups and we'll watch Wonderpets. 

The Day The Magic Died Because I Accidentally Murdered It

So if you were around on Friday you're already aware that it took Baby Ike all of an hour and a half to make a complete jackass out of me. Post About Thing Baby Is Not Doing, Baby Immediately Up And Does It, All Casual-Like.

Perhaps his reading comprehension is better than I previously thought as well. 

Highlighting their mother's general incompetence was a theme for the weekend, actually. On Saturday Tracey and Charlie came over for an evening of...um. I dunno. Food and baby stuffs. Dogs and Instagramming and YouTube and heavy metal on Pandora. We made slow-cooker jerk chicken and collards with bacon and while the kiddos were eating their frozen mini-pizzas from a box LIKE YEAH, Noah started hollering to me about his cheese falling out. 

I was in the middle of some REALLY IMPORTANT discussion about something that I no longer remember and wasn't particularly interested in pizza-cheese drama, like "Okay dude, whatever, just eat it anyway," but it turned out he was actually trying to tell me that his tooth had fallen out. 

Oh! Yeah. Don't eat that, after all.

Everybody clapped and high-fived and made an appropriately big deal over it. We put the tooth in a little plastic treasure chest he'd gotten from the nurse's office when he lost a tooth during P.E. back in September and discovered that...oh, there was already another tooth in there. He lost three teeth in such rapid-fire succession a few months ago that he apparently lost interest in the Tooth Fairy concept and hadn't put the last one under his pillow. Given the market's high going rate for human baby teeth and our tendency to not ever have any cash in our wallets, I guess we forgot to remind him after a couple days of disinterest. 

But now, of course, Noah was thrilled. Holy shit! Two teeth! Do you know how much money that is, right there? Do you know how many Legos that will buy? Probably only like, five spare blocks, really, since Noah is still a little fuzzy on just how much we've spent on those bloody things, but hey, whatever. It's Legos or college. He's made his choice. 

We put the bounty under his pillow and went right back to our hosting duties, which naturally included making one of our guests put our baby to bed. Charlie acted like I was "letting" him put the baby to bed but HA HA HA. Yeah. Ike went down like a very sleepy rock and did not wake up ONCE, AT ALL, EVER, until almost 9 goddamn o'clock in the goddamn morning. Charlie can come over and put that baby to bed any night he wants to and I'm not even going to ask questions re: whether black magic or bourbon are involved because I AM STILL SO TIRED.

Noah and Ezra woke up a little earlier than that, and I was just slowly starting to become aware of their voices and chatter and Ezra was...crying about something? Maybe? And then Jason bolted upright.

"OH SHIT."

"WHAT?" 

He didn't need to answer, because by this point I was awake enough to hear what the boys were hollering about. 

"TOOTH FAIRY!" They were both shouting. "TOOOOOTH FAIRY!"

"Oh. SHIT." I muttered. "That."

Yeah. THAT.

Noah had managed to open their window (thanks, handy integrated childproof locks!) and they were shrieking in despair at the early morning sky, thus broadcasting our parental ineptness to the ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD.

*headdesks*

So we spent Sunday morning coming up with various excuses for the punk-ass tooth fairy, including traffic and weather and maybe there's a pre-dinner-time cutoff for same-day money delivery? (And the more truthiness-based "she probably just made a mistake and forgot.") 

He seemed to get over the disappointment before too long, though I'm sure this moment of shattering disillusionment in both magic and his parents' general trustworthiness will come up in therapy one day as the source of ALL OF THE PROBLEMS, so I figured I best beat the inevitable bestselling tell-all revelations and confess that yeah, we forgot about your tooth and felt really shitty about it. 

Noah, this morning, one tooth poorer but eight damn dollars richer. 

Babynonsitter

Okay, Internet. Here goes. There's something I haven't told you about Baby Ike. I don't want to sound all dramatic and hand-wringy about it, but I really can't pretend that it's not worrying me a little tiny teeny bit.

MY BABY CAN'T READ!

Wait. No. Wrong thing.

Ike cannot sit up unassisted. In fact, he can't even really sit up if he's anything less than *fully* assisted, as in, sitting in a Bumbo or with both of my hands on him. 

Meanwhile, he's army-scooting around all over the place and occasionally getting up on his hands and knees. His neck control is perfect. Yesterday he pulled himself to almost a full stand from his changing table using nothing but the front of my shirt and the ends of my hair. 

Yet in a high chair -- where he's currently devouring three or four ounces of food at a time and making really excellent pincher-grasp progress with self-feeding -- he still needs the support cushion to keep him from slo-o-o-w-ly pitching forwards and off to the side. 

Being that this is not, after all, my first rodeo, I've been almost fanatically determined to not make a thing out of it.

Sure, both of his brothers were sitting up by well before this age, but comparing and contrasting babies is an exercise in stupendous futility. It's also stupid. And going through the developmental delay roller coaster once already sometimes actually helps with the inevitable parental worry and freakouts over nothing. I'm supposed to know what things will work themselves out and what's a true red flag. I've read books! I have worksheets! WORKSHEETS, GODDAMMIT. 

Noah actually hit his first-year milestones the earliest of any of 'em -- one of the advantages, I think, of being born the size of a two month old. Ezra fell more into an average sort of timeframe, then made up for it by going all Evel Knievel on us in the go-go toddler years, which is when Noah mostly decided he was a fan of sitting still and not doing things or going places or touching stuff or talking about any of it. 

And technically, seven-and-a-half months isn't really that "late." (At least according to all the people talking about their non-sitting eight- and nine-month-olds on Yahoo Answers, which I admit is not really the best place to be getting your parenting yardsticks, but HOT DAMN did someone SEO the shit out of that mess, because it's always the first 72 results on the page.) The Internet is a fount of anecdotal shit about babies who sat at five months and babies who sat at eight months, and every variation up to and including babies who didn't even roll over until 10 months but then stood up and starting walking the next day. 

I'd at least reassured myself it's not "call the doctor and get an extra appointment" late. More like "I really hope he figures it out by his nine-month check-up so it won't be a THING" late. I blamed his long torso, his not-exactly be-thundered thighs. I mentally berated myself for every minute spent in the exersaucer or swing and dedicated 20 straight minutes a day to no-bulky-diaper bare-butt Sitting Practice. I reminded myself that babies are goddamn jerks who do things when they are ready to do things and had some more wine. 

On the other hand, Christ, why isn't he sitting up yet?

Yesterday, at Noah's occupational therapy appointment, I finally caved and decided to be That Asshole. (You know, the asshole at a dinner party who learns there's a dentist in attendance and is all, "Can you take a look at my mandibular third molar?" and then doesn't technically wait for an answer.)

His therapist -- who has known Noah since he was three years old and still laughs about the day she met him, when he threw a fit and got himself wedged and stuck in a preschool cubby -- is incredibly chill and relaxed but obviously knows her shit. She was admiring Ike's tummy scoot and amazed at how close he is to full-on crawling, then started to talk about Noah's appointment...at which point I was like, "YEAH FINE WHATEVER THAT KID'LL BE JUST FINE BUT SINCE I'M PAYING FOR THE FULL HOUR CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT THIS OTHER ONE?"

I set Ike up on his butt to demonstrate. He wobbled for the barest fraction of a second with his hands tripodded for support, then started bobbing down towards his toes before executing a full-on faceplant on the carpet. SPLAT. I doubt I could have counted to two-Mississippi in the meantime.

And, well, I saw the Look. Her eyes darkened, her brow furrowed. 

Oh, how I know and hate that Look.

And suddenly I wanted to simply flip Ike back over and go back to praising his tummy-based mobility LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAA.

"Hmmm," she said. 

"LA LA LA LA LAAAAA," I countered. "JOKEY DOWNPLAYING DEFLECTION. SARCASTIC COMMENT. LOOK A SQUIRREL."

What had I expected? You go looking for trouble, you'll find it. For every dozen babies who sat up a tad late there's the one who didn't, and GUESS WHICH ONE an occupational therapist who specializes in childhood developmental delays is gonna likely have as her point of reference?

We talked about it for a few minutes -- how much time does he spend in baby-containment things, do we let him practice sitting every day, we discussed his neck control and eye contact, etc. I did another non-sitting facesplat demonstration while she debated his core strength, at which point Ike was all, STOP THAT, IMMA BLOWING THIS JOINT, and scooted off like a half-paralyzed turtle in search of germy waiting-room toys to shove in his mouth.

"He's borderline," she said. "He's still got time. Everything else looks fantastic. Keep doing what you're doing."

(But I still saw the Look. 18 hours later and I'm still thinking about the Look.) 

This morning I finally remembered that I have one extra special secret weapon: Blog about it.

Blog about it, knowing that the speed at which your baby rushes to make you sheepishly publish a "never mind!" retraction is directly proportional to how big of a freaking deal you make over whatever it is that you're worried about. It works every time. 

Based on the number of words I've just dedicated to this non-topic, he'll be sitting by tomorrow, I bet. 

(Not pictured: Me holding his hand while snapping the picture quickly before the faceplant.)

(Pictured: EYEBALLS. GIANT DELICIOUS EYEBALLS.)

****************************************************************************

NOT-EVEN-KIDDING-YOU-RIGHT-NOW-WITH-THIS-SHIT UPDATE, 4:10 PM:

Whut?

lol u mad, bro?