Langer Loksh

It Would Be Funny

if it were not NOT FUNNY AT ALL.

All three of my children, including four-month-old Baby Oscar, have pink eye. Pink eye! Crust on the gossamer eyelashes of PRECIOUS BABY OSCAR!

Jeff assures me that someday we will look back on this time and laugh.

BAHA Trial: Day One

We got the loaner BAHA, and then we went to Florida, and then I spiraled into hyperventilating panic mode because of pink eye--which by the way isn't even really over, because even though Charlie did four days on Polytrim drops and then 10 days on Vigamox drops, he still has a blob in his eye, but his eyes are white and not crusty, so we're ignorning the blob, which means every day I wake up in hyperventilating panic mode wondering if Charlie's eyes will be sealed shut--

whew! Deep breath!

Anyway, I've been avoiding the BAHA. Today was the day to start. Rainy day, no one fun around to play with. Just 15 minutes would get us going. So I showed the hearing aid to Jeff. I replaced the battery--the batteries are these tiny cylinders that you have to pull a tab off of, and then they react with air and thats how they work, so even if you aren't using the hearing aid, the battery dies after two weeks.  It took me several minutes to remember how to put  it on Charlie, who was just a little balky. I flicked the little switch to "M" for microphone. The trial was on.

Immediately Charlie's face transformed in fascination. "Mom," he said, "Can you talk more?" We walked down to the garage where Jeff was wrestling with the paper recycling. Charlie held his hands over his ears; the crumpling sounds were too loud. We went back upstairs where Charlie stomped across the linoleum, just to hear the sound. Then he happily built a secret hideout with chairs. Then he went into the secret hideout... and took off the hearing aid. It had been maybe 12 minutes, tops.

"Are you done with that for the day?" I asked. He replied "Yes," and I took it and folded up the sweatband and tucked it into its little box. I want zero fighting over this thing.

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Oscar can roll over! I caught tha brothas like this the other day, but wasn't sure who had torqued the torque:

Then today I changed Oskie's diap in the sun room, went into the kitchen to deposit the dirty diap in the trash, and came back to find this:

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPer Osc!

I Lak You Too

Today I made a presentation to Summer's first grade class about Ireland. Another mom whose daughter takes Irish step dancing classes did it with me. (Previously, Auntie Alissa presented on Antarctica, with photos of penguins. I am sure that was a lot more exciting.) I made soda bread and brought in a slide show and some Irish things like handknit mittens and a Waterford crystal glass and a souvenir road sign in English and Irish.

The teacher has the kids make thank you notes for these presentations. Here is a sampling of what came home in Summer's folder:

Dir Mom
You did a gate job. I was in pist. You shood got a job like ttat. Thak you. I love you. Fam Summer.

and "fam" other children:

I like the bed with the budr.

I like the dasing. Hoo long did Kathin do Irish step dasing?

I liked the slid sowe.

It is wert haw the frst fod in iearlind was a ptato.

I lic the bred.

Thaks for techin use about irllind. I lakt yro strory.

Easily Amused

I never, ever, ever, ever, ever watch television. This is not because I do not like television, but because I am never without short people, and they like television too, and what they like is Scooby Doo, so I unload the dishwasher instead. Also, we don't have a television in our bedroom. Which is why Jeff and Charlie both sleep on the Big Papi sectional with NESN blaring deep into the night. Ha ha! Only, not so funny.

Anyway. While we were in Disney World, I turned on the television in our hotel room every night and subjected everyone to The King of Queens. Because it was either that or hyperventilate to DEATH from my pink-eye panic disorder.

So. There was this episode where Carrie was trying to get out of a funk because she'd lost her job, and though she'd planned to launch a crafty cell-phone-case business and do a lot of reading (including The Great Gatsby), she pretty much sat on her butt in front of the television in her bathrobe. When Doug called her out on it, she said she'd felt lost. Doug tried to make her feel better: "Everyone feels that way! Don't you think the Great Gatsby felt lost before he became a magician?"

And I am still laughing from this.

It reminds me of when we were on our honeymoon in a little cabin in Jasper National Park and I was reading a Rolling Stone article about Mike Myers, and there was this line about Mike Myers and Rob Lowe having a "protracted evil laughter competition"--oh my God, here I am ten years later, I'm like, squinting and snorting. I am SUCH a LOSER!

The Birth Defect Time Forgot

One day during our trip to Disney World, on a shuttle bus from the hotel to a theme park, Charlie said to me, out of the blue: "Mom, when yiss ear would be like yiss?" He took his little ear and kind of rolled it back. I wonder if he thinks it's something that changes as you grow up, like his sister losing her teeth.

"Oh," I said. This is the question I'd waited for and worried about for years--how will I handle it? what's the right answer?--and then forgot, because we were too busy building with Legos or learning how to put pants on without getting "mermaid legs." Now here it was. 

"Would you like that?" I asked him.

"Yeah," he said.

"OK. We can do that," I said.

End of conversation.

I Went to Disney World...

and all I got was this crummy pink eye!

No, that's not all. I got to ride Big Thunder Mountain with my two big kids, and take Oskie on his first carousel ride. I stood on a hotel balcony and watched the space shuttle launch, and celebrated when Summer lost her tooth in faux France, and watched Charlie shyly meet Mulan and Peter Pan. And swam in a pool. And nursed my baby while walking--which I've never done before--thanks to Sarah's Over-the-Shoulder-Baby-Holder.

 

So even though there are six pink crusty eyeballs in my house right now, and I'm desperately scanning Oscar's milky whites all day for signs of goop, I guess we've got to call it a win.

Here are Summer and Charlie passed out on the plane home in their St. Patrick's Day shirts. Because who cares about highly communicable diseases. It's so much nicer to rub your face all over your sibling.

 

Thanks very much for the trip, Jim!

MISS LUCY IS HERE!

Congratulations to Julie, Tom, and big sister Annie! I got to hold Lucy and she seemed so, so, tiny, but she's a whole pound bigger than Charlie was! She's really very lovely.

Deeply Ambivalent

Picked up the loaner hearing aid. It's a conventional hearing aid connected by wire to a small processor that vibrates the skull. Charlie will now hear what someone on his right side says, but he'll hear it in both ears because you can't only vibrate part of your skull. So he'll get more of what's going on, but the aid will not help him locate where sound is coming from. The mom of the kid who had this loaner before we got it managed to attach the pieces to a soft sweatband that happens to also fit Charlie's head, and it's kind of the same color as his hair. I was expecting a metal band so this is better--I worried I was going to end up struggling to get Charlie to wear something that isn't even anything like the one we'd buy if we do decide to buy one, but this is actually pretty close.

I plugged my ears and tried it myself. It's such a cool technology. I could hear the audiologist but her voice was a little robotic sounding.

We put it on Charlie and he looked a little surprised. He said he could hear, and after a minute or two asked us to turn down the volume, which is what most kids who get their first hearing aids do. Then he played with the toys in the room and periodically put his hands up to the band, as if to take it off. The audiologist made a pinkie promise with him that if he wore it until she came back from the photocopier he could have a sticker. (Never mind that another patient in the waiting room had already given him a sticker.) When the audiologist left the room I said, "Hey Charlie, do you have superhero hearing?"

And Charlie said, "What you said?"

Then today, when the kids were watching cartoons after school, Charlie said "Mom, you are whistling?" He could hear Jeff whistling OUTSIDE THE HOUSE, like 40 feet away from where Charlie was sitting, OVER the sound of the cartoons. Maybe because that's a high-frequency sound? I don't know but it was weird.

We're going to Florida for a couple of days so I decided not to try to break him in on the hearing aid until we get back.

Finery

Summer looked spectacular on her way to the daddy-daughter Princess Ball. Sadly you'll never know just how spectacular because my camera battery ran out. "This year I'll be dressed properly," she said, twirling in her shiny magenta dress. "Weren't you dressed properly last year?" I asked. She rolled her eyes. "I was wearing a Barbie dress-up dress," she reminded me. SO grown up now compared to last year.

As Jeff came down the stairs, Charlie hopped in excitement, clutching at the front of his own shirt. "Dad, you are all dressed up! You are dressed up like Charles Gibson!" Charlie has probably never seen Jeff in that exotic accessory worn by news anchors: the necktie.