It's Been a Week...

A week ago, I was kicking back on the beach in Santa Barbara.  Oh my, how I wish I were there right now.  It almost feels as if I need another one of those weekends.  I think I do.

I haven't had a chance to write and even right now, there is a hamper full of laundry waiting to be washed, 3 loads of clean clothes that need folding, a bedroom and bathroom that need cleaning, a salad that needs to be made for tonight's BBQ and 2 kids who both are not falling asleep. 

Yet here I am, taking a moment for me.  Lovely.

2 days after Ryder cut his first tooth, he cut his second.  Exactly the same as Kai did, only 2 weeks earlier.  He is about to venture out in crawling territory, but the kid is so incredibly top heavy (23 lbs. at almost 7 months of age, wearing 24M. clothes) that he has a hard time getting himself in motion.  It's funny to see.  It reminds me of Kai at this age.  He hardly crawled and went straight to walking.  I have a suspicion that Ryder might do the same.

Other than that, he is loving his solids.  I find myself so much more laid back with him than I was with Kai.  As much as I would love to start making my own baby food (all organic, just like I did with Kai), it is just too much at the moment.  Besides that, my freezer is popping out of its seams as it is, as it is filled with frozen breast milk, which leaves hardly any space for the grown-up food, let alone frozen baby food.  As soon as he can, Ryder is going to enjoy our 'human' table food as I am already soo done with the jarred version.  However, in the 2 years between the two kids, Earths Best has come out with a ton of new flavors, which makes this process just a tad more exciting.  If not for the baby, then at least for mom.

On Wednesday Kai finally made it to the dentist.  All went well; everyone (including dad and the dentist) survived and Kai walked away with a cool robot and a Sesame Street electric toothbrush.  The pay-off for him?  Ice -cream.  Something he made sure he reminded daddy of all the time while he was in the dentist chair...gives a good impression on our parenting doesn't it?  Except for the bedtime sippy, we are now a sippy-cup-free-house and are transitioning to regular cups.  Obviously, this leaves mommy mopping and cleaning a bit more than she would like.

These days naps are hit or miss for Kai.  He will gladly play by himself in his room for 2 1/2 hours after which the afternoon is usually a bit challenging as he is tired, but when he sleeps, he sleeps well.  However, he tends to prefer the floor over his bed.  Really?!?!  David contributed it to the fact that "he is a boy".  That's it?  Oh well, he has the choice of sleeping on the floor or his bed.  If he prefers the floor, then I assume it has something appealing his bed doesn't have.  Whatever-that-may-be.

Finally, potty training.  Or should I say "Potty Training Refusal"?  Potty training isn't really happening in this household and it looks as if we're still a long way off.  I finally got Kai to sit on his seat by giving him 1 M&M's.  I put it on the sofa.  It worked.  I put it on the toilet lid.  It worked.  I opened the lid and put in on the seat.  It didn't work.  And that's where we're stuck.  On the toilet seat.  He will not sit on it.  I can offer him the entire bag of M&M's and he still will run away screaming.  I'm seriously starting to think that maybe I'll be training both boys at the same time in a couple of years... :-0

And then there is Monday...this upcoming Monday...the day-after-tomorrow... The day that I am returning to work.  Sigh...  I'll only be teaching 1 class in the morning on Mondays - Thursdays, so it's not bad.  I'll be back by 10am, but it does mean that I will not be there 4 out of the 7 days to see Ryder's bright and smiling face when I walk into the nursery.  It'll mean that I won't be there 4 out of the 7 days to sit with Kai on the sofa while he watches Sesame Street and Curious George.  I'll miss it.  Then there is all the extra work that comes with work: grading assignments, keeping track of attendance and dealing with students who think they don't deserve a certain grade.  Ah, the things we get to look forward to as the Fall semester fast approaches.

On that note, I am going back to my housework.  Kids are still not sleeping, so who knows how long I actually have until all hell breaks loose and they request their immediate release from either crib or train table.

Oh, and the Friday Faves...they'll be back next week.  I am sorry for skipping this week, but with this only being half of what happened this week, I just didn't get to it.

Dentist and Ice Cream Please!

{Sept. '08 - Kai at 7 Months old}

Kai was supposed to have his first dentist appointment yesterday.  An appointment I dreaded going to, so this was one that got passed over to dad.  You betcha I wasn't going with him!  Now, this decision was by no means affected by my lack of love for dentists, but rather by Kai's strong temperament, combined with the fact that, if I want to look in his mouth, I will have to be prepared to get my fingers bitten off.  No, that's not the kid I want to take to the dentist.  He's a daddy's boy to begin with, so all that makes this little excursion perfect for father and son.

David was at work Sunday night, so while I was brushing Kai's teeth, I explained to him what was going to happen the next morning.  I told him about the dentist, that she would look in his mouth and clean his teeth, etc.  All the while he was nodding, delighting me with the thought that he might actually understand what I was saying.  ('Cause these days I sometimes wonder what he does and does not understand.)  So when I was done explaining, I concluded by sharing that they would go for ice cream if he'd be a good boy at the dentist.  (As per the agreement daddy and I had).  Yes, sometimes we default to some good ol' conditional parenting.  Can't live without it :-0

As I mentioned, we were supposed to have the dentist appointment on Monday morning.  That Sunday eve, after the kids were down, David called me from work with the news that he had a last minute meeting come up at 9am, so that he wouldn't be able to take Kai to his 8am checkup.  Long story short, I called the office, left a message canceling the appointment while apologizing profusely and asking them to call me back to reschedule this joyous event.

Monday came and went.  Kai didn't mention the dentist and I was convinced he'd forgotten about it.  So, fast forward to tonight and imagine my surprise when all of a sudden, in the midst of brushing our teeth, Kai pushes the tooth brush out and says: "Mommy, dentist and ice cream please!!"

Ha!  I guess he listened, understood and remembered.  I am amazed by the fact that he did, but I think it is largely due to the fact that ice cream was involved in the explanation.  Simply, because there are things that I have explained over and over and over again and he still doesn't seem to (want to) get (it).  Ah, the joys of selective listening and selective memory.  I wish that I could get away with it the way he does.

Ignorance Is Bliss

This morning was the morning: the ever-feared, absolutely dreaded, wish-I-could-escape morning: my 8:30am appointment with the dentist.  I fear those appointments.  All because I suffer from severe childhood trauma (at the dentist).  My mom always used to be afraid of the dentist, so I am sure some of that sentiment rubbed off on me.  In retrospect, I totally get why she was terrified of the guy:  I remember my first cavity all too well.  Well, not the cavity, but the experience of having it drilled and filled.  The drilling part is engraved in my memory: no anesthetic (they're not big on that in The Netherlands.  You have to ask for one.  At the dentist and even in the hospital when birthing a baby!!).  Anyways, it hurt like he*l!  And the kicker: he told me "10 more seconds".  Well, I was old enough to count to ten, and guess what...the sadist repeated that 6 times!!  6 x 10 seconds my friends!!  That's a friggin' minute of drilling and laying in that darn chair in excruciating pain.  See where my anxiety comes from? 

Back to the present.  A while back I had a cavity that had comfortably positioned itself between my 2 molars all the way in the back, nicely tucked in between them.  Yeah, nice.  Long story short: it was filled, but it kept bothering me.  So, this morning I was going in to have it all 'fixed'.  The filling was going to be taken out, and replaced.  

Traffic wasn't as bad as I suspected, so I was early.  No chance to quietly read through some of the mind-challenging and brain stimulating gossip magazines in the waiting room as they were ahead of schedule as well.  So before I knew it I was in the chair.

First we had to locate the problem and make sure that it was the previously filled cavity.  "I'm going to put some cold on your tooth.  You tell me when you feel it and when the sensation is gone, okay?"  she said.  She walks off and when she comes back, she's holding a stick that has steam coming off it.  Whaaaaat?!?!  Is that Liquid Nitrogen you're about to touch my teeth with??  I wish I hadn't seen that.  Well, pointing out where the problem was turned out to be an easy exercise.  Holy crap that hurt!!

Then I get my anesthetic.  Despite having had 2 children, birthed them at the hospital, had almost every test done available during my pregnancies, I am still terrified of needles.  The one thing I knew to do this morning was to keep my eyes closed when she pulled out the numbing drug.  They use big ole needles for that.  Can't deal with that early in the morning. Anesthetic starts working, but before I have a chance to tell my dentist to give me double shot (anesthetics never completely work on me in their 'normal' dose), the drill gets whipped out and there we go.  As I said, anesthetic didn't work fully.  Mommy gets second dose.  Within a minute, mommy gets third dose.  At that point, all I want to do is sleep.

A few times I semi-opened my eyes to get an idea of what they were doing, but the tools I saw going into my mouth seriously resembled a nutcracker and some of the tools that David and I have used when we were adding our master suite onto our house.  I don't want to know what went in, what came out, what they did.  I am much happier not knowing.  In this respect, ignorance is DEFINITELY bliss!!  All I knew was that I was numb up to my eye lid and I seriously wondered if I would ever get my straight face back.

Well, here I am.  Early afternoon: my cheek is still a bit numb, but the rest works fine again.  My face is straight again (talking was difficult earlier), but I still feel like a walking zombie.  My cheek is sore as I apparently bit on it a few times in the past few hours.  My tooth still feels sore, which is not surprising when I think back to the tools that it came in contact with and other than that, there's 1 thing I cannot get out of my mind: ice cream.  Ben & Jerry's New York Super Chunk Fudge... Why now?  Why?  Probably not a good idea to dive into that when you just had the nerves in your tooth exposed.  Crap!

I just want to indulge.  I think I deserved that!  Forget about the losing weight thing for a day!  I lost 2 lbs. last week, I am 1 lb. under my pre-pregnancy weight.  I feel like crap, I need comfort food.  As soon as the kids are awake from their nap, we're going on a little afternoon excursion...to the grocery store!!!