Thank you Christine. Without you, I would have never reailzed I was wearing flannel AND biker shorts in this picture. This was flannel day in our freshmen year dorm house. Why? Because it was 1993. Didn’t all grungy people wear biker shorts?

matt says all i ever talk about is the kids because i’m such a mom. fine. i won’t mention the monkeys for one whole post. i won’t even tell you how they got into the petroleum jelly yesterday.

miss zoot posted some scanned collegiate photos so i was inspired to put my scanner to good work (though she had a better idea in paying her son to scan them). i have thousands of prints from good old fashioned film and i have also worried about a firing consuming my photos before i had a chance to digitize them. some of the photo albums i bought in the acid free, lignen free, plutonium free photo safe album days are starting to damage my photos and some pictures are stuck to glue lines on the pages. some still smell like cigarettes and the smokey remnants of one unfortunate apartment.

i am in awe of how fucking young i look in those photos from fifteen years ago. hooley shit how come i didn’t realize i was so skinny? why didn’t anyone tell me? i mean, they told me but i thought they were being patronizing because i had outgrown a size seven. i mean gawd. i want to slap my 18 year old self. i want to slap her not just because she thought she was fat, ugly and awkward but because she never smiled in any photos. i look like a pissed off refuge from a nirvana concert. i smile more now.

if you want to see them, get thee to my flickr. if i were mentioning the monkeys, i would tell you that they are currently throwing cans of pediasure across the kitchen and it sounds like i’m blogging in a bowling alley. i hate the world blogging. it sounds like i’m writing in the basement of a bowling alley (which tom robbins book had a bowling alley setting? dude lived there? may have been black velvet paintings on the walls?)

we can only get outside in the morning now because summer has become sauna-like. I dressed the babies in variations of red, white and blue because any occasion to dress them thematically is worth while. everyone is recovering nicely and we are looking forward to fireworks and eventual swimming. i may take a blog respite for a few days (shocking, i know).

(click for whole set)

i am fairly sure i have poison ivy just under my left jaw. not cool.

the boy is doing very well. he is in my room right now playing need for speed two underground on the playstation. there is a version of the doors’ classic “riders on the storm” with snoop dogg that plays when selecting your virtual race car. when i walk in the room to hear this odd combination of music merged and pumping out of my t.v. while my kid changes the color of his ground effects on a pimped out accord, i have to do a double take.

the first day after his four hour surgery was pretty bad. when he woke up from anthestia, he was disoriented, crying, moaning, screaming and it was fucking awful. he started getting better the next day and continues to do well. his head is bandaged in such a way that he resembles a storm trooper. he has a grenade shaped bulb draining blood in a constant, disgusting way but it comes out tomorrow. we don’t get to see the ear till friday’s appointment. i keep thinking of the twilight zone episode where they unwrap the woman’s face after the operation to make her beautiful but you don’t realize she is gorgeous and the doctors and nurses are ugly pig people and are disappointed she isn’t “fixed” like them.

Before and After

lily’s scope is also tomorrow which will end the worst week ever. hooray! i should celebrate.

i really need a laptop.

My oldest son was born two months early when I went into sudden, pre-term labor during a class on Microsoft Access. I stood up during break and a co-worker asked me if I had to go to the bathroom. I thought he was odd and said no. I didn’t realize that I looked like I was in labor and he had noticed me gripping the edge of the table until my fingernails were white. I called the OB’s office, told them I was hurting but thought it was maybe a kidney infection and they told me to come in. I drove my sporty little Saturn (a stick) to the doctor’s office and sat in the office for thirty minutes until they called my name.

When I stood up to walk back to the examining room, the nurse, Helda, stopped and said, “You look like you aren’t feeling very well, dear” in a thick German accent. She wooshed me into a room and the doctor followed her. “Is it okay if I have a medical student with me in the room?” he asked in a way that wasn’t really asking but telling and was surprised when I answered, “No.” The OB wasn’t my normal doctor, he was her father and I had only seen him once. I was in a lot of pain and not in the mood for a 22 year old peering into my vagina alongside Doctor Dad. He persisted and I said “Fine” in the hopes of speeding things along since I felt like I was dying.

Within seconds, I was laying on the table trying to ignore their painful probing when the doctor loudly asked for the phone and told me I was going to the hospital because at 29 weeks, I was 4cm dialated and my water was about to burst. Helda told me to come with her and she drove me to the hospital in her very appropriate Volkswagen Jetta. I called my Mom on the 2 mile drive to the hospital and told her to hurry up and come to the hospital because I was having the baby. I guess my Mom was my birthing coach but we never made it to the birthing classes so we were winging it. I was single and the doctors and nurses kept saying things about me being a teen mom even though I had turned 25 seven days earlier. I kept protesting that I wasn’t a teenager but finally gave up and ignored them.

We walked into the hospital, through the lobby and took the elevator to labor and delivery (Why not the ER? Good question). The floor nurses started handing me forms and asking questions while we stood there until Nurse Helda, God love her, barked at them that I was 29 weeks pregnant and 4 centimeters dialated. They shut up and got me a wheel chair.

Soon, I was upside down in a hospital bed (Trelemburg position where you fight gravity by
putting the patient’s feet up and head down) being pumped with magnesium and other drugs to stop the contractions. Nurses ran in and out of the room and a representative from the NICU handed me a folder showing a scrawny preemie with an IV in its head. They told me my baby was going to be very early and would probably weight between two and three pounds. He may have respiratory difficulties and I wouldn’t get to keep him in the room with me. They were going to give me injectible steroids to strengthen his lungs, drugs to stop the contractions and hope for more time.

My labor stopped after an hour and I started my seven day bedrest in the antepartum unit of the hospital. Time had no meaning when I was on drugs that made me feel like I was moving under water while on fire. I couldn’t eat or drink anything because the drugs they were giving me could cause pulmonary edema. It was hell.

On the seventh night, there was a bright full moon shining outside my window and I was feeling better than I had all week. I fell asleep peacefully and woke up suddenly four hours later racked with pain. I was back in labor and this time there was no stopping the contractions. I was wheeled into a labor and delivery room and moved off the comfy bed to the delivery table-like bed. My Mom and my two sisters were in the room while my Dad and younger brother were in the hall. It was 8 am on a Saturday morning. After a short labor and three pushes, he was out. He came out crying loudly and the first thing I said when I saw him was, “He’s NOT that small!” Everyone was surprised to find out he weighed 5lbs, 2ozs and had very few problems. I got to hold him for a few minutes before he was taken away to the neonatal unit for observation and was relived my baby wasn’t going to look like the preemie they warned me about.

After the neonatalogist examined him thoroughly, he calmly told me that there was a problem with my son’s ear. He mentioned that his ear wasn’t formed completely and that there wasn’t an opening to his right ear canal. This condition, called microtia, could be fixed later on but other than that, he was perfect. I was over the moon. If he had been born full-term, maybe I would have been more upset about his small birth defect but I was just happy that he was healthy. I joked that the hospital couldn’t mix him up with the other babies now and I would always know which kid was mine.

I met my now husband when my oldest was three years old. A few weeks after we started dating, he accompanied us to the children’s hospital where we met with a cranio-facial team about his ear (The fact that he came with us to the big appointment made me fall deeper in love with him because he really didn’t have to but knew we needed him). The team evaluation was a six hour appointment where we met the plastic surgeon, audiologist, speech pathologist, child psychiatrists, pediatric dentists and Ear, Nose and Throat Doctors. He also had a hearing exam, his eyes checked and X-Rays of his head while we fruitlessly tried to entertain an increasingly bored three year old who didn’t care about his “closed ear”.

The pediatric surgeon wore a bow-time when he walked in with an entourage of residents. He told us that my son no other problems but was functionally deaf in his closed ear. It had not formed correctly when he was developing in my womb and though his inner ear and cochlea were perfect, the middle ear bones were fused in addition to the malformed outer ear. The ear could be repaired but not until he was older, at approximately seven years old and his other ear had grown to full size. There were multiple options for the reconstruction but we would have to wait a long time until this toddler became a boy to fix his “little ear”.

Four years later, that toddler has become a full-fledged boy. He runs around all afternoon with his friends, comes back sweaty and flushed to devour everything in the refridgerator. He loves video games, chapter books and has seen a few PG movies. He gets embarassed by his Mom sometimes and last week tried to feel up a mannequin at Macy’s. He is seven going on seventeen.

Tomorrow, my big seven year old boy is having a new ear created by a bow-tie wearing kid’s cosmetic surgeon who specializes in facial reconstruction. We have to leave at 6:00 in the morning and he is scheduled for surgery at 8:50 am. The surgery will be done at the same hospital where he was born almost eight years ago. I will sit in the waiting room, chewing on my cuticles while aimlessly wandering around and praying he doesn’t get an infection or have complications. I will be as nervous as a long tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.

I had surgery today to remove the pins in my foot and I couldn’t have cared less. It is my child’s surgery that is weighing heavily on my mind and I would gladly trade places with him. He is nervous but trying to be brave and I hope the nurses find his vein for an IV on the first try or he may cry and then I’ll sob. Mike will be there with us again to hold us up and make sure everything’s alright. Four years later, he is Dad and he’ll be pacing with me outside of the hospital with his fingers crossed.

I am spending the night at the hospital, spoiling my son and patrolling for bitchy or inattentive nurses. I’m getting Momma Bear on their asses so they better watch out! It will be odd to see my son without his “small ear” but I’m excited for him because it will hopefully make his transition from boy to man just a little easier and that is the best thing we can do for him.

My younger sister is getting married in August, resulting in a mass family exodus to Florida to witness her nuptials. I am not taking the baby boys because they will be with Mike and his Grandparents for a week so I don’t lose my mind flying and vacationing with THREE ALMOST TWO YEAR OLDS while preparing to be a co-matron-of-honor. My other co-matron of honor is my other younger sister who will be 8 months pregnant. The bride? Six (or is it seven) months pregnant. It will be one hell of an estrogen fest. Maybe it will be like a sitcom and the one sister (who will be 8 months pregnant and pretty much out of harm’s way) will go into labor at the church and the family will gather ’round in formal wear in the labor & delivery ward to welcome the new baby boy. That would be exciting!

The sister getting married just found out she is having a baby girl and that was the point of this whole post. I am getting a new nephew and a new niece. I can’t wait.

The masses are calling for an update. Well, okay my friends are asking for an update- not really masses. But aren’t you glad I’m here? Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?

There has been lots of almost summertime activities up in here. We spent a well worth it $19.99 for a plastic, baby pool so it has been nekked baby heaven in our backyard. We’re running a grassy nudist club for toddlers because damn those swim diapers are expensive. The boys have been running wild giggling while dive bombing the plastic slide- I think they may replace Bear on Man vs Wild (Haaaawt) in 20 years.

Lily has exploded into her toddlerhood and has started running, climbing, tackling her brothers and occasionally drinking water out of a sippy cup (but only the damned Nubees that have the evil screw on lids that dump the water all over the unsuspecting child if not attached in a very specific way) which is gigantic because she is usually 100% G-tube fed. She is having her bi-annual airway scope next Monday which will be the tail end of surgery week in our household.

I am having the pins taken out of my foot on Wednesday- can I get a hell yeah? My oldest is having reconstructive surgery on his ear. He was born with microtia, a birth defect where his right ear did not properly develop in the womb. He is functionally deaf in that ear and it has no opening to his folded over ear cartlidge. Kids and honery old people often ask why his ear is folded over. My Grandma told me how glad she was the triplets had “normal ears” when they were born. She also hates my hair and the way I pull my hands into my sleeves but makes damn fine baked goods and loves us so I forgive her remarks.

We originally visited the cranio-facial kids’ plastic surgeon when he was three years old but had to wait until now to have the surgery. Wanna know why? Because human ears are the size they will be as an adult by the time they are seven years old. They didn’t do the surgery earlier because the ear sizes wouldn’t match unless they kept upgrading the ear size. There are multiple ways to fix this deformity, including harvesting rib cartilage and sculpting a new ear “frame” out of the child’s own tissue. This can require three or four surgeries and a painful graph from the ribs. We chose to have an implant inserted under his skin which is less surgery, less pain (knock on wood) and hopefully only one surgery. The surgeon will also take a skin graph from his inner thigh and other, good ear to match the skin color on the new ear. It is going to be strange to see him with two “normal” ears because it has become such a part of him and I’m very used to it but I don’t want him to get more teasing as he gets older and meaner. We left the choice up to him and he decided he wanted to pursue the operation. He is nervous but excited and I’m bribing him with a cool new toy to take to the hospital. There will be an overnight stay and I’m praying for a complication and infection free procedure. It will be done at the same hospital where the triplets were born and dammit, they better do a good job or I’m going to um, do something like mail a nasty complaint letter because that’s how gangsta I am.

So, that’s what is going on in my world. Hot, humid summer days filled with sunscreen and naked babies, ice-cream & Popsicles, surgeries and hospital stays.

The oldest has always had a temper. When he was a baby, he used to glare at us if we didn’t do what he wanted so there is a definite precedence for his current acting out against electronics. When the computer doesn’t respond as fast as he wants, he has been known to slam the mouse down on the desk and yell. He finally broke it a few weeks ago and was grounded from the computer for a while. Since then, he hasn’t hurt my new, wireless, infared fancy pants mouse. All good with the oldest. The problem, however, is whenever I let the triplets downstairs, they play a fun game of “Hide Mommy’s Mouse!”. I’ve lost and found it three times today. I could just keep them quarantined upstairs but every time someone opens the gate, Ethan and Jack RUN towards the stairs, turn around to back up and shimmy through the gatekeeper’s legs as fast as they can. They wind up downstairs faster than seems humanly possible and stand at the back door waiting to go outside. To hide my mouse.

Pictures oldest drew in school about being angry (I love the faces, “When I’m angry, I feel like my head is crooked on my body and my feet swell”):

I conceed, David Chase is a much better television writer and producer than I am because I cannot stop thinking about The Sopranos finale. As you read a few entries ago, I was originally disappointed, unsatiated and a little pissed off but it has stayed with me and that is a testament to how powerful it was. I was reading a Fark forum* on the finale (will link later because I can’t farkin find it because the cached google version is blocked by farkin ads and I can’t find the link. Fark!) there are many interesting ideas people are discussing. Yes, the end was a bit of a cop-out in a Bobby is really showering and it was all a bad dream (That’s Dallas for you youg’ins) but it was also genius. I feel like I’ve been whacked because I didn’t see it coming and I’m left wishing I had seen the conclusion and isn’t that what death is? Okay, that is an entirely different philosophical discussion but it is gabbagool for thought.

*Found it

Innernet, I have a confession. I love to run full speed with my shopping cart (sometimes hopping on the back but not lately due to the bum foot) and shove my empty grocery cart with all my strength into the cart keeping corral. It is more satisfactory if the keeper is full of carts to smash into but merely pushing it into the metal rails is fun if done fast enough to produce a giant “CRASH”. I’m such a rebel.