juanita



So one of the yearlong projects that the kids in Cal's class has is taking turns bringing home the "classroom pet," a blue stuffed something of indistinct phylogenic origin named "Juanita." Juanita also comes with a journal, and we (the parents) have been instructed that we are to help document Juanita's adventures during her visits home with us in words and pictures, all the better to share with the class at large the day of Juanita's return to school before being whisked away to another family's waiting arms. The determination of who gets to go home with Juanita is apparently determined by raffle, and when Cal's name was picked (he is the second kid in the class who is getting to visit with Juanita so far this year), apparently all the kids cheered and started yelling his name, which made Cal very proud, after which a good deal of the rest of the afternoon strutting around with her. So that part was fun. However, when I started to look at the rest of the assignment--the photojournalistic element of it all, along with the fact that my three year-old (I don't know about yours) has dubious grasp of the intricacies of actually taking photos and writing words, this seemed like this was turning more into a homework assignment for me than for him.




Also, when I picked up Juanita's journal on Thursday evening, I noticed that the first family that had taken Juanita for the week had apparently also happened to take a trip to DISNEYWORLD that very same week, so Juanita's journal entry from her visit with them was filled with photos of the Magic Kingdom and mentions of rides and balloons and More Fun Than You're Going To Have This Weekend. Curse you, other family. Way to set the bar so high. DISNEYWORLD, for chrissake.






Anyway, we hung out with Juanita this weekend. And Cal had fun with it all, talking to her like she was alive and dragging her around everywhere. Even to Ikea, where, it turns out, Juanita originated. It somewhat took the mystique out of the endeavor to find that one and only Juanita was, in fact, mass produced by the Swedes, and could easily be purchased by the armful from an endless bin. However, given that it was what I would consider the equivalent experience of seeing twenty Salvation Army Santa Clauses sitting around McDonalds with their beards half pulled off, eating burgers, Cal seemed nonplussed.




Full photo set here.

wouldn't have believed it otherwise

One of the nice things about Cal's school is that, at least for the nursery school children, the teachers are pretty committed to taking pictures of the daily goings on in the class and e-mailing these pictures home to us. This serves two purposes. One is so that we can actually get a straight answer of what Cal actually does at school. Ask him very specifically if he had fun in gym class rolling down the foam ramp, and he possibly will elaborate, but ask him open-endedly, "So, what did you do in school today?" and you will be subjected to an earful of whimsy and echolalia of questionable origin or fidelity.

The other purpose of getting these photos home is, at least in my mind, photographic evidence.




So he actually is capable of sleep.

all clear!

I never intended to create drama by not posting (or updating Twitter, or Flickr, or anything) for a month, but things around here just got really busy and I didn't post one week and then I didn't post the next week, and then next thing you know the very thought of this blog made me cringe, as did every e-mail I got that (for good reason) started off screaming, "Not to be alarmist or anything, but ARE YOU DEAD?" No, not dead. Not even maimed. I am fine. Joe and Cal and Cooper are fine. Giant Fetus is fine (about which more later). And I know (hence the cringing) that it really was unspeakably rude, not to mention panic inducing, to leave people hanging mid-pregnancy right before our Big Anatomy Scan on September 4th (about which! more later!) but that is why I was HIDING from my blog and from my e-mail for the past few weeks, because dude, I KNOW. And I apologize! But let's just hop back into it, shall we? Because so far, the only positive thing that has happened during this unplanned hiatus is that maybe I can express my dismay over all aspects of Sarah Palin publicly without being told that I'm just jealous that she's hotter than me.

Anyway, the anatomy scan.




For those unfamiliar with the various views of fetal parts on ultrasound, let me say that this picture is the equivalent of having the fetus sitting upright on a glass table while you sit under the table pointing the camera up into its parts. So yes, that's his butt, and yes, we're having another boy. Yay for boys! And not to perpetuate the whole "second-child-getting-the-short-end" stereotype, but--dude, we are going to save so much money on clothes. Of course, I haven't been able to stop myself from getting a few things (mostly cold-weather items--since Cal was born in July, our newborn clothing stash is conspicuously short on such important items as, oh, say, PANTS, or anything thicker than a single layer of thin cotton), but overall, this new kid is going to be living in (barely worn, highly fashionable) Hand-Me-Down City. Which, as we know, is just down the road from Second Child Syndrome-Ville.




I really didn't have a preference either way for the gender of our second child (nor did I have A Feeling, as some people purport to, though I figure if you do, hey, you have a 50-50 chance of being right--well, a 49-51% chance, anyway), but I have to say that the first inkling I had that this baby might be penis-y is when Joe mom was rhapsodizing about how she was dying to have another girl in the family so she could someday take her to Claire's. I figure that such a strong preference is a sure setup for disappointment. Not that she's disappointed anymore, mind you, but it's really surprised me now that the Vienna sausage is out of the can how strongly people feel about having sexual parity. For example, the most common responses when I tell people (after they ask) that we're having another boy:

"I guess the next one will have to be a girl!"

"TWO BOYS? Oh man, you're in trouble!"

"So are you going to try for a girl?"

I'm not offended or anything by all this family planning, but what I usually say is, "We're just going to concentrate on this baby first." And then I point out again how DUDE, WE ARE GOING TO SAVE SO MUCH MONEY. But anyway, we're all very happy, and excited to meet him in January.




None of the still screenshots they took during the anatomy scan turned out too well, since frankly, the kid was moving around like in those Tasmanian Devil cartoons, but everything else--that is to say, everything that was important--looked great. It did confirm my suspicions, however, that this kid is going to be large. I mean, Cal was on the larger end too, weighing in at 8 pounds, 3 ounces (that's 3.72 kilos for you metric system devotees out there. You're welcome.) but this time around, I feel like I can feel more, and more specific body parts poking around earlier than with Cal. Indeed, the ultrasound confirms that New Kid is measuring at the 84th percentile for dates, which, you know, is big. So the good news is that all his parts look to be in the right place, he's growing, and abundantly perky. The bad news is that HE'S FREAKING HUGE. But let's just worry about that later, shall we?

And, in answer to another popular question, we do have a name picked out, including his Chinese middle name, though I am going to practice some uncharacteristic restraint and wait until he's actually born to announce it. The reason is not superstition, but more because the last time around, with Cal, people took it less like me saying, "We're going to have a son named Cal" and more like some sort of open solicitation for opinions. So I got more than a few comments in Ye Olde Comments Section that were like, "CAL? WHAT THE HELL KIND OF NAME IS THAT? THAT'S DUMB." or "That poor kid, the second he turns 18, he's going to court to change his name" or "CAL? What are you going to name your next kids? HAL and MAL? Bwah ha ha!" Well, guess what people, we now have a three year-old son, and his name is Cal. And we look forward to introducing you to our new kid when he's born, and not quite so theoretical that people feel the need to contribute to the naming process. We do live in a democracy (for the most part), but this is not up for a vote. (And no, he will not be named Hal, or, as others have suggested, Stanford.)

In other news (read: everything else in life) things are going well. I have been working a lot. Not a lot compared to residency, and not a lot compared to probably a good number of people out there, but life is busy. I love my job. I'm not going to talk overmuch about it since, you know, I would like to keep it, but I'm with a great group, working with a really excellent team of people, and I am having fun while getting paid to do it. I am also really pushing myself with respect to my skills, which, coming straight out of training, makes me happy, and there are many days that I go home and feel like I have done a reasonably good job and am proud of myself. So that's a good thing. Liking what you do for a living isn't the most important thing, but it's one of the more important things, I think. Anyway, I'm lucky is what I'm saying.




Cal is doing really well. As expected, by now he has gotten over most of his school-related peccadillos, including his fear of the school toilet, though the last took an hour and a half of me kneeling with him in the bathroom after school one afternoon, and Joe taking a morning off of work to coach him in class to just pee in the damn toilet, for chrissake. (Also, there were jellybeans. Many jellybeans.) I never quite figured out what it was that set him off on that one--was it the multiple stalls? The lack of privacy? The other kids? The loud flushing?--but I've stopped trying to analyze it. Kids are weird is all. Anyway, I don't get to pick Cal up from school every day, but I do get out from work early enough on average about once a week, and every time I get him, he tells me with complete sincerity, "School is so fun. I love school." So either he's being brainwashed by the PTA fundraising committee, or we're going to have a hell of a time keeping him as happy and entertained at home during Christmas Break.

Joe is doing well, making him useful by assembling various baby items, surgically repairing sundry torn eye-parts and the like. He's busy too, but enjoying work, and I think we're both enjoying Atlanta a little more now that it has decided to turn the corner from HOT AS THE SURFACE OF MERCURY to Less Hot. Apparently, the temperate autumn here lasts damn near forever, so that's something to look forward to. Especially since I don't think I have a winter jacket that will fit me until after January.

So, in sum:


1.) Sorry!

2.) Not dead!

3.) Quite well, in fact!

4.) I'll try harder to keep up.


Thanks for sticking around.

i still had to say it

Hi!

How about them politics?

Anyway, good discussion with the last post. Every time I post about politics, I end up regretting it in some way (people tend to get very impassioned, which is good, but it's a short step from impassioned to vitriolic and, "Yo Momma so fat she got a bunch of little Mommas in orbit around her!") but I guess that's a better alternative than apathy, which we've also seen enough of these past eight years. So there you go.

After school on Thursday, Cal felt a little queasy, and ended up puking copiously all over his nanny after school, and then on me when I came home from work. (Down my shirt. Into my bra. If he wasn't my kid, I probably would have puked myself, because ugh.) I was unclear whether or not it was related to something he ate (some kid in his class had a birthday party in school that afternoon, apparently--though I didn't see any cake in the mix, who knows, that may have come up with the first round) or if it was an actual GI bug, but my threshold for keeping him home the following day was fairly low, mostly for concern of spreading around some sort of class-wide contagion. However, he was absolutely perky for the rest of the evening, and bounded out of bed on his own at 6:30am the following morning, demanding cereal and ready for school, so I chalked it up to a tainted grilled cheese sandwich and off he went.

This weekend, Joe is puking. Which illustrates the basic pattern of outbreak in this household: whatever Cal gets, Joe gets, and I almost always remain basically untouched. I blame (or credit) my many months in the Peds ER in days gone by, which has apparently endowed me with the immune system of a bison. You know, one of those bison that never gets sick. Not that I didn't pay the price at the time. My second year of Peds residency, I got pertussis, for god's sake.




Anyway, we're in week 21. There's lots of moving around down there, and I'm starting to be able to discern actual limb movements rather than the more mysterious bumps and burps from a month ago that were more like, "could be baby, could be gas." My anatomy scan is this Thursday, wherein many important parts of the anatomy will be delineated, and one less-important piece of anatomy, but the only one that anyone else seems to care about, will hopefully be visualized. As for preference, I honestly don't care (I know everyone says that, but really, I don't) but I am taking predictions.