Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Franklin Goes to the Hospital

is just one of the books that my mother sent our way to help explain to kiddo what's going to happen to him next month. DH and I secretly loathe the Franklin TV show, on account of it's so treacly sweet my gag reflex kicks in. Although the obvious Canadian accents are kind of funny. But the book seems OK. Except for the part where Franklin doesn't want an X-ray because it'll show he's scared inside and not brave. I'm pretty sure an actual kid is not going to be thinking along those lines. More like, "I don't wanna wear the apron! Moooooommmmmm!"

Kiddo is fascinated by the books. (There are two others. One involves stickers.) I've explained to him that he'll be going to the hospital just like Franklin and the doctor will fix his eyes. Which he seems all right with. He had his physical today to get the all-clear for the surgery, and now we know he's in the 75th percentile for weight and height, shocking us not at all because Daddy is 6-foot-2. We also know that he is not cool with tongue depressors, unless there's a lollipop in it for him after.

The surgery is set for the hour of Ungodly Early in the Morning. Probably better to get it over with, and easier to keep him from eating beforehand, but harder to get to the hospital on time. We might have to get a hotel room in the area the night before. Slightly ironical, since that's more or less the area we used to live in. I guess we couldn't crash at our old place overnight, since the new owners might get irked.

He said out of nowhere this morning that his eye hurt. I think that means the surgery is the right thing. 

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Do I have to hand in my secret blogger ID card?

On account of I haven't written in a month or so. But I've been painting/unpacking/keeping the kids from running off a cliff/planning kiddette's first birthday party/attemping to find an agent to sell my novel/working on a short story/catching up on Stewart and Colbert/you know, sleeping. And shoot, those diapers don't buy themselves.

Anyhow. Party went splendidly except that there were barely no children there, because kiddo caught a cold the day before and it scared them all away. So now we must have a separate party with actual children at it, which I suppose we should've planned on in the first place, instead of trying to make our relatives deaf with the screeching and the switching on of toys. But the next time we have that much leftover birthday cake in the fridge, I am tossing it in the trash right away and of course I am lying because mmm. Cake.

Amazing that she's a year old. It's always more amazing with smaller kids because they get so much more done in a short span of time. I age a year and I get an extra wrinkle or a gray hair. Kiddette about triples her weight, develops a hairstyle, learns to eat from Mommy's plate (she likes risotto, we discovered tonight) and starts to think about walking. And she can kind of pet the cat without causing injury. To the cat, I mean.

Kiddo had a rough patch at school but seems to be doing OK now. His surgery is next month. I carefully broached the subject this morning on the way to school to see how he'd take it.

"The doctor is going to fix your eyes. How do you feel about that?"

"No want doctor fix my eyes. No want go doctor's office." Pause to watch the trucks go by. "Go doctor, then go school?"

"No, we're not going to the doctor today. That's later."

"Just go school?"

"Yup, just school today."

And then he lost interest. So that could've gone worse.

My parents sent us a bunch of "let's go to the hospital!" type books to help explain what surgery is like. They seem OK. I think I'll give it another couple days, then show them to kiddo. In the meantime, I found several helpful sites; this one goes over the process in detail and tells you what to expect. And now I know he might cry slightly bloody tears afterward, and that would be normal. I'm sure you're grossed out too. This nice family wrote a book about their experiences with it, which seem to have been positive. There also appear to be YouTube videos of actual surgeries, which there is not a snowball's chance in hell that I will be watching.

His eye turn is to the point where other people notice now, so it looks like now is the right time. Still an unsettling thing.