Langer Loksh

Hot Diggity Dog

Here is cousin Sammy, as captured by Master Lensman Buzz, coming in a spectacular eighth in a field of 45, somewhere in Vermont...

Hot Dogs

I realized almost immediately that the best thing to do was to stay the heck out of Summer's way. Photos by Kendra.

And might I add that having been released for three or four hours, I feel so much more human. So much less bovine.

Post-Partum

I'm losing huge handfuls of hair. No surface is safe, but individual hairs are especially attracted to Oscar's fleece pajamas. My shower looks like it belongs to Sasquatch. After brushing my hair I clean the brush and drop wads of hair into the toilet. Charlie is shocked by these clumps. "Why is Daddy's hair in the toilet?" he asks. (Get it?)

I must keep a box of Kleenex handy when I read the paper. This lovely article had me blubbering. I can't stand to hear about deadly plane crashes (though I'll talk to you all day about the plane that landed on the Hudson) and I especially, especially can't bear any news on that octuplet woman. I had to twist my head around at the grocery store to avoid seeing her picture on the cover of People--which is really too bad, because that was the issue with the pilot of the Hudson plane.

When I was pregnant with Oscar--and even before I was pregnant with Oscar--I wondered what it would feel like to hold another baby in my arms and look down and see a symmetrical little round face. Would I resent him? Would it change my feelings for Charlie, and would Charlie change my feelings for this new kid?

Turns out my feelings for Oscar actually have nothing to do with my feelings for Charlie, or Summer for that matter. Sometimes a jellybean is just a jellybean.

 

Mine's the Cute One with the Snowboard

Thanks to Facebook, I can see Jeff's vacation pictures before he even comes home.

What Would Martha Do? She Does Have Auracanas...

Jeff has been away on his annual ski mancation so I've been flying solo all week. Hence the light posting. One daily activity I hadn't anticipated: scrubbing my hands really hard with Borax powdered hand soap to make sure I get off all the chicken poop before nursing my baby.

A Shirty Dame

The world is a lot less fun without Nancy Z. Anyone whose son (Jeff) buys a girl (me) a bunch of helium balloons when she breaks up with her boyfriend has to have been a kick-ass mom. Clem, Jeff, Heather, Andrew, Carola, and Kim, we're thinking of you.

Everyone else, tell your  mother you love her.

And now, Prinderella and the Cince:

T'once upon a wine, there was a gitty little pearl named Prinderella. She lived in a big house with her two sisty uglers and her micked webstother. All day long, poor Prinderella had to wean the clindows and flub the scroors and pine the shots and shams.

One day the Ping issued a kroclamation that all gelligable goung yirls were to attend the drancy fess ball. Poor Prinderella couldn't attend the drancy fess ball, for all she had was a rirty drag. So she cat down and scried!

All of a sudden her Merry Fodgother appeared and said, "Prinderella, why are you crying?" Prinderella replied, "Oh, Merry Fodgother, I can't go to the drancy fess ball, for all I have is a rirty drag." "Oh, you shall go," said the Merry Fodgother, and in an eyeling of a twink, she changed the cumpkin into a parriage and the rirty drag into a drancy fess. "Oh, thank you, Merry Fodgother," Prinderella replied. "Now I shall attend the drancy fess ball." "Under one condition," warned the Merry Fodgother." You must be home by the moke of stridnight!"

So, all night long, Prinderella danced with the Cince, but at the moke of stridnight, she raced down the stralace peps and on the strottom pep, she slopped her dripper!

The next day, the Ping issued another kroclamation that all gelligable goung yirls were to sly on the tripper. The two sisty uglers and the micked webstother slied on the tripper, but it fidn't dit. However, when Prinderella slied on the tripper, it fid dit!

So Prinderella and the Cince lived afterly ever happiworth, but the two sisty uglers and the micked webstother were left all alone in the big house. Now wasn't that a shirty dame?

The Color of Muppets

From CNN.com (thanks Kerry):

Oscar the Grouch is performed by the same guy who does Big Bird, Carroll Spinney. Spinney said he based Oscar's cranky voice on a particular New York cab driver he once had the pleasure of riding with. He was originally an alarming shade of orange. In Pakistan, his name is Akhtar and he lives in an oil barrel. In Turkey, he is Kirpik and lives in a basket. And in Israel, it's not Oscar at all -- it's his cousin, Moishe Oofnik, who lives in an old car.

I like this for three reasons. The first is obvious. The second I can't reveal for privacy reasons. Sorry, I know, that's so lame! I was just about to type something that would identify where I live, which for some reason I've tried to keep secret from the Internet. The third is that when Jeff was little--of Sesame Street viewing age--his family had a black and white TV, so he imagined what color the muppets were and was shocked when he saw them in color. Jeff thought Oscar was yellow.

Holiday Photo '08 ('09)

These are the photos I sent with Oscar's birth announcement. I embargoed them from the blog so as not to spoil the surprise for friends outside the computer. I took these pictures with my Canon Rebel xTi in no-flash mode.

Annual Craniofacial Appt. Ain't No Thang

On Friday Charlie had his annual visit to the craniofacial clinic. This is the appointment with six or eight doctors and four or five visiting students in a conference room, presided over by the curmudgeonly but surgically incomparable Dr. Mulliken. This year we spent over an hour in the waiting room and maybe ten minutes in the conference room. Which is fine with us. Some other people in the waiting room were clearly in much rougher shape, medically.

Charlie charmed everyone's socks off by crawling under the table to the other side so the jaw lady could determine whether he was an N or a 1 or a 2 based on a mysterious coding system. I asked Dr. Ken Doll, the plastic surgeon, if the impending extra-ear-canal-ectomy will leave problematic scar tissue for future outer ear reconstruction; he said no, it would be OK.

Dr. Mulliken told us that in a couple of years Charlie should start practicing smiling, because you can retrain your brain to work around the partially paralyzed facial nerve. "But I like his crooked smile," I said. "Well," said Dr. Ken Doll, "If he practices, he will still have his crooked smile but he will also be able to smile evenly." I think Dr. Ken Doll was taking me a little too seriously. But I do love the crooked smile.

What I don't love is how Charlie's forehead is so slack on the right side, the way it almost slumps over his eye. (Not to say that I don't love Charlie just as he is, but you know what I mean.) I had thought we could do nothing about that, except for injecting botox in the "good" side so that the two sides would at least be even, but Dr. Mulliken was like "Oh no problem. We just go in there and put some  hooks in and lift it up." Unilateral brow lift. That was an interesting new bit of info.

We waltzed out like nothing doing. With every passing year, this stuff seems less and less important. Of course, we are in a lull. Soon we'll be doing all sorts of ear surgery, and then there will be another lull, and then we'll start thinking about Charlie's  jaw, but only if the jaw lady says there's a medical reason to do something. There was nothing momentous about the appointment. And that was an interesting new bit of... us.

Speech: None is Not Enough, But How Much is Just Right?

On Thursday when I picked up Charlie at preschool I was surprised to see Dr. W., the town's hearing loss consultant. She was observing Charlie in action and taking notes. The town agreed to pay her to do this a few times a year; she is totally on top of making sure she gets in to do it, unlike the pupil services coordinator for the town, who does things like request meetings and then fail to return emails and phone calls EVER AGAIN.

I told Dr. W. that the speech therapist is still rolling her eyes at me and telling me that Charlie's speech is fine. Which I don't think is quite true. Dr. W. said she thought it was much more telling to observe Charlie in a noisy group setting. "In conversations with his friends, he's hard to understand," she said. Which I also don't think is quite true.

Believe it or not it is already time to write Charlie's annual Individualized Education Plan. This is the binding document that says what services the town will give him. Dr. W. wants to meet with me, Cindy the speech therapist, and Carol the pupil services woman in advance of the IEP meeting. Here we go again.