Langer Loksh

Chuck B. Cheese

Jeff's six-year-old cousin Alison, who is Summer's idol, invited Summer to Chuck E. Cheese. Summer didn't know what Chuck E. Cheese was and even now that she has visited the place she calls it Chuck in Cheese. I figured it was going to be like a casino without the cheap watery cocktails--too loud, too dark, too many flashing lights. I thought Charlie might be overwhelmed. Here he is looking miserable:

(Never mind previous comments about Charlie in photos; this just makes me plain old happy.)

Chuck E. Cheese is in fact a perfectly fine place to entertain a youngster! The volume is totally bearable. All the games cost one token and you get prize tickets every time. They have this hand stamp system so no one can abduct your kid while you are distracted by a giant, furry, purple, singing, animatronic character. It's like being at the Jersey Shore without that pesky little drowning hazard, the Atlantic Ocean. I guess my transformation into a suburban mommy is officially complete. I'll go ahead and say it: I like Chuck E. Cheese.

Here are Summer and Allie with the man himself.

Me Behaving Badly?

Charlie had his hearing tested at Mass Eye and Ear this week. First, of course, we had to wait an hour. We made a nice big pile of bagel crumbs on the waiting room carpet. Then we were whisked into a testing room with a soundproof booth. The audiologists put a piece of pantyhose on a piece of fishing line and tucked it into Charlie's good ear. (Probably there was more to it than that, but that's what it looked like.) They pressed a button to make a noise in his ear. Then, in the corner of the room, a cabinet lit up to display a pink mechanical bunny playing the drums. They did this just a couple of times before Charlie learned that when he heard the noise, he should turn his head to see the bunny.

One audiologist distracted him with toys while the other made noises go off in his ear. With each noise, Charlie looked for the bunny. His hearing is still perfect in that ear--and seeing him turn to look for that bunny was so cute, it was hard for me not to crush him in my lap.

Before I knew what was happening we were down in the lobby waiting for the valet. (Mass Eye and Ear has valet parking!) Due to my Swiss cheese brain, I tipped the valet with a ten instead of a one. Once we crossed the river I started to cry. I had wanted to know if anything had changed in his funky ear since six months ago, when he was sedated and his brain waves were tested and the audiologists determined that he has moderate hearing loss in that ear. But this time they didn't even look into it with a scope. I'm supposed to be Charlie's champion. I have this Yahoo! group and my Early Intervention parenting group, where they give me pamphlets that say things like "Questions to Ask Your Audiologist." I'm so on top of all this, and all I did was accidentally give away nine bucks.

When I got home I called the audiologist. She explained that they have limited windows of cooperative behavior with babies, that it would be hard to fit the pantyhose/fishing line device into the mushroom ear, and most importantly, that we don't care about that ear right now. At this age, all we care about is that he has one good ear so he can develop speech. She said they'd be following him all along and we'd get lots more information about that ear as he gets older. All this makes sense, but I still wish I'd pushed for more while I was there. I feel like a total slacker. 

Just a Really Big Doughnut

from Heav'nly Donuts in Plaistow, New Hampshire.

The Fairest One of All

The first time I held Charlie up so he could see the baby in the mirror, I looked at his face in the mirror and saw his delight, and then turned my eyes to my own reflection and saw a mask of horror.

When we look at our fair Charlie, our brains sort of resolve the asymmetry of his face. To see him in the mirror is to see the asymmetry reflected backwards and therefore doubled. Charlie looked so disturbing in the mirror, I cried. I was so scared that he would one day look at himself in the mirror and have a startling realization and feel awful about the way he looks.

Fortunately (as Langer Loksh readers have by now noticed) I have no filter between my brain and my mouth (or my typing fingers) so I told the craniofacial doctors about my experience with the mirror. They erased my fear by explaining that the way we see Charlie face-to-face is the way he sees himself in the mirror. His reflection will look normal to him. He may, however, feel strange about the way he looks in photographs--that view, to him, will be the opposite of what his brain is used to processing.

Sometimes Charlie looks unremarkable in photographs. Other times he looks really crooked. It has to do with the camera angle and the expression on his face. I find it's best if he's smiling, but not too hard. Tonight I took this picture of Jeff's mom giving all three of her grandchildren a horsey ride on her legs at one time. (Notice the positioning of the children. It is not happenstance. If Charlie were behind Nosara, he would be grabbing her by the ears, nose, and hair in an attempt to shove her entire head in his mouth. And if he were any closer to Summer, he would snag himself a hank of her hair too. We have learned these facts the hard way.)

As you can see, Charlie is experiencing unadulterated joy. He is smiling with abandon, bless him, so his facial paralysis appears more prominent than usual. This is the perfect expression of my bittersweet emotion. He is so happy, which makes me so happy, but he looks just a little bit strange, and that's just a little bit painful.

Stop the Madness

Charlie was fussing in the back seat but we were close to home so I opted not to pull over and nurse him in a parking lot. Then, just before our exit, traffic came to a total standstill. I turned onto a cut-through street where one of Summer's schoolmates lives and knocked on the door to see if we could pop in and feed in their comfortable den. Elsa's mom greeted us cheerfully, but turned sheepish as she confessed: "I'm doing the bad parent thing."

What, praytell, do you think "the bad parent thing" is? Allowing the children to eat the toxic pesticides kept in the unlatched cabinet under the sink? Leaving the baby in the bathtub unattended? Handing out guns? No. "The bad parent thing," apparently, is letting the children watch a video of Green Eggs and Ham.

Do I have to say anything else? Do those of you who finished raising your children a few decades ago see what I am dealing with here?

If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Overdoing

Summer dipping her bacon in butter.

Charlie wondering whether he can cram in a second paci.

Golden Girl

Gorgeous U.S. bobsledder Vonetta Flowers was pregnant with twins when she became the first African-American to win a gold medal in a Winter Olympics in 2002. Her twin boys came early and one of them had bilateral microtia and atresia. That is, two little ears, neither of which have canal openings. Plus, his hearing nerves don't work. Charlie, you will remember, has unilateral microtia with a small canal and a somewhat functional nerve.

Flowers is competing in Italy right now, but in December she was in Italy for a different reason. Her son underwent surgery in Verona for something called an auditory brainstem implant. It can restore some hearing (I don't know the details). It's something that doctors do not do here. Only 17 other children in the world have had this operation. Here is an excellent story about it, first printed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Flowers told her story on Good Morning America. I am very, very psyched for her. To give your child hearing has got to be a totally amazing thing. But I am also psyched for me because how many gazillion people watched Good Morning America and saw this cute little kid with these oddly shaped little ears? And now they know what it is and they won't think it strange if they meet Charlie or someone like him. Thank you Vonetta Flowers, for kicking ass for the United States of America (sometimes while pregnant!) and for showing the world your awesome little dude and his soon-to-be-hearing ears!

My Brain Hurts

The stroller thing makes for a good story, I guess, but I'm starting to worry about myself. A week ago I blanked on the fact that I signed up for a Drumlin Farm program called "Cheese, Glorious Cheese" for Summer. We simply didn't go. On Friday, Alissa asked me to bring two sticks of butter to work. I put the butter by the back door. Paging Rod Serling: the butter is not in the house, the car, or the office. Where is the butter? Last night, after changing Charlie into his pajamas at my book club meeting, I left his clothes and shoes under the hostess's coffee table. And today I forgot to go to Charlie's music class, the one that happens every Tuesday morning. I LOVE Charlie's music class. What is wrong with my brain?

Well, I did manage to bring Disney Princess valentines to put in the 19 heart-shaped envelopes labeled with the names of each child in Summer's preschool class. And I sent a 60th birthday card to my mother's former cleaning lady. Is the problem simply one of dimensions? Maybe my brain just cannot contain everything a part-time-working-mom-of-two needs to remember, so some things leak out. The butter had to make room for the birthday card. Or is it an age thing? Is this what I have to look forward to--a brain that works about as well as Michelle Kwan's groin? 

Yabba Dabba Doo!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have consonants! Even though Charlie has his own personal speech pathologist from Early Intervention, and she told me not to worry, and Dr. J. told me not to worry, I couldn't help it. I worried. I tend not to be a milestone-crazy person but with Charlie's hearing loss, I just got hung up on the consonant babble. And now, at nine-point-five months, which is not so far off schedule, we have consonant babble.

Today the nutritionist came from EI to help me with the screaming. Do you know about the screaming? Every day Charlie sits in his high chair and yells angrily at me, and since he is a baby he doesn't say "Yo Mom, those pureed sweet potatoes are fantastic, please feed them to me twenty times faster" or "Hey lady, I am not hungry at all, why have you placed me in this plastic prison" or "Bitch, these crackers are so pointy they are hurting my mouth," he just says, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" so I can't tell what his problem is. The nutritionist says that he does not have any reflux or chewing problem or anything that would cause him pain. It is just behavioral and I have to calm him with his paci or distract him with toys or just bail on the meal and yank him out of the chair if the prolonged cries of anguish cause me to wish myself dead.

After Charlie sweetly ate baby cereal, baby bananas, baby puffs, a baby cookie, grown-up French toast, grown-up pear slices, and water through his bear cup straw, he smiled fetchingly at the nutritionist and said "Ba da ba da ba." I gripped her arm exactly as I gripped the speech pathologist's arm the day he rolled over for the first time. I said "Did you just hear that? Did he just babble consonants?" She said, "Yeah, doesn't he do that all the time?" and I said "That was the first time!" and jumped up and down and made a general fool of myself. Then Sarah and Matthew came over and heard it and Jeff came home and heard it and I called Maya and she heard it over the phone.

Consonants! We have consonants! Without consonants, how could we say "Mommy, I love you," or "Mommy, I fed antifreeze to the cat" or "Mommy, I joined the Marines!"

Crustaceans Exonerated

Thanks to Heather for following up on the killer shrimp.