Week 14 Clean-up in Aisle Three!

Mac has a stomach ache Monday morning. But he doesn’t come down with said stomach ache until I am showered and breakfast is on the table. Sometime closer to the ringing of the alarm clock would have worked a bit better for me. I send him to the sofa. He wants to lie down but then he wants to read and then Sailor wants him to play. Are you feeling better? Do you want to go to school? No! By mid-afternoon I am crazy, as in stir crazy. I have a long list of errands to do today and I am getting antsy and need to get out. So I boil eggs for egg salad. Then I remember I brought our organic mayo down to my parents’ house a few weeks back. I call my mom. “There is only a little bit left,” she tells me. There has to be enough for a bowl of egg salad. There is not. There is so little mayo left in the jar I cannot fathom any reason why my mother even kept it.

I make whole wheat pitas stuffed with cheese instead. We go out after lunch. Library. Target. Craft store. Staples, twice. Tap class. Mac is fine until the last five minutes of tap. He goes pale and the teacher sends him out to me. He sits on the floor with me until class lets out and then he is running around and fine the rest of the night.

Tuesday. Mac again wakes with a stomach ache. I send him back to bed. A few minutes after nine I call school to say he won’t be there again and then in a flurry I herd both kids out the door and make it right on time to Sailor’s soccer class. Mac seems fine so I am having a hard time believing him when he says he doesn’t feel good, which seems to come and go on and off all day.

We have to run up to the DMV after soccer because I have received two tickets two days in a row for expired plates. The kids are well-behaved because I tell them that the people who work here are crabby and we know better than to further piss off crabby people. When we get the sticker I need for the car both boys want to help me put it on the license plate. I tell them how much I appreciate their willingness to help but that I don’t think it will take three of us to affix a 1" sticker. Sailor wants to carry the sticker to the car. The $78 sticker. I carry the sticker to the car.

Once in the car I realize we don’t have enough time to get to our Trader Joe’s so we drive to the closest one. Mac tells me again that his stomach hurts but I forget when we get out of the car. Sailor is asleep but wakes up when I plop him in the cart. We wheel around the crowded store. The kids stop at the “snack bar” and wolf down salami, cheese and crackers. And then as we pass through the frozen food aisle, that which has been hurting Mac’s stomach for two days comes forth. And he vomits. Scattering shoppers. One kind lady, a nurse, brings us paper towels and directs us to the bathroom. I am the picture of extreme calm. And I no longer harbor any doubt that Mac is not feeling well.

At the pediatrician’s office Mac is diagnosed with epigastric pain and given a prescription for an acid reducer. I try not to be worried. It helps that Mac is starving.

Earlier this week the boys were able to pull off the November page of our calendars. “There’s only one page left,” Mac points out. “Then what happens?” Sailor asks, “We die?”
“No!” I practically shout at him, “We get a new calendar and start all over again!”

It snowed today, yesterday, Tuesday night before. I lucked out this year and the kids have double sets of snow pants and Sailor has two winter coats and three pairs of boots. Let’s hear it for hand-me-downs! Walking to school is a long, tiring, wet, and very cold ordeal. And the kids love it!

I spent yesterday morning walking to school and then shoveling the walk and the stairs in front of our house and the next door neighbors'. It’s not right that an old man with a snore strip still affixed to his nose has to assist my efforts. “Where are the 20-somethings when we need them?” At work, of course. But it pisses me off that not one of them can haul their ass out to shovel the snow, leaving it to the little mommy and the old guy in sweats. I am exhausted and dehydrated when I am finished with my task. But I have no time for the quick stop at Starbucks. I pack up lunches and Sailor’s shoes and we head to French class. It’s parents’ week and I get to sit in his class with him for an hour. I am thoroughly impressed by the active roll he takes in class. And I am also amazed at how much better behaved in class he is at 4 than Mac was at the same age. Different child, different temperament. You’d think two kids in the same house would be more similar but they are so different. Mac and Sailor are like night and day. Mac is so well-behaved now. But he can still be so excitable. Sailor vacilates between being great and the biggest challenge ever.

After French class we have 20 minutes to drive to Mac’s school, find parking and set up an art project for the kids in Mac’s class who choose not to play outside at lunch recess. Sailor tells me he is hungry when we are in the classroom. Our lunch is in the car. I swipe a piece of candy from Mrs. S’s desk. Sailor is afraid to eat it. Mac chooses to stay outside and play in the snow rather than come in and do art projects with Mama. But I am ok with this. I see him for a minute when he comes in and I smooch him before I leave. Sailor and I pick up my sister and we run for a quick coffee. It is snowing like crazy. Sailor wants to know what a snow storm is. “This!” I tell him.

The day goes on and on like this. I just want to lie down in my bed. But I don’t. I do paperwork at the art studio while Sailor takes his class, we run like mad to get to school for Mac before he comes out, I take the kids sledding… I blow dry my wet jeans while popping popcorn and helping Mac with his homework. I go out to what should be a relaxing dinner with two girlfriends, except one of them is on her usual roll of bitching about bad life things she would rather bitch about than fix. I work really hard at zoning out mid-rampage. I would order another glass of wine but there are no prices on the menu so I know the prices are not friendly.

On Thursday morning I run around the kitchen making breakfast then run the kids to school. Sailor runs back home with me. I have a late-morning appointment with my gynecologist. Sailor wants to know why he can’t come with. I am thinking of what to tell him. “I can’t hear you!” he shouts. “I’m thinking!” Finally, “I have to get a check up. I have to go to the peeper doctor.”
“The peeper doctor? What’s a peeper?”
“You know. Where your peepee comes out.” What is wrong with me!? I should be better than this at explaining.
“And the doctor is going be there?” he asks, trying to work this out in his 4-year-old mind.
“Yes.”

“And you are going be there?”

“Yes.”

“What’s a check-up?”

“Like when you go to see Dr. Ahlas.”
“I don’t want a shot.”

“No honey, you are not going to see him today.”

“But when I need a shot I don’t want a shot.”
“I am going to see the doctor today, you’re not.”
“She is going check your peeper?”

“Right.”

“She is going look in your peeper?”

“Right.”
“You haf’ take off your underpants?!”

“Yes.”
“So she can look in your peeper?”

Have I told him too much?
“I am not going tell anybody about this that you are going to the peeper doctor. I’m not going tell Nana.”

My beloved OB/GYNE loves this story when I tell her later in the morning.

I also tell her that I am ready to have another baby. She says she will keep her eye out for eligible bachelor physicians. If only she really could set me up with someone. The kids would be thrilled.

I return a toy to Toys R Us and go to Target for more toy shopping on Santa’s behalf. My boys have refused to sit on Santa’s lap so far this season. And they keep changing their minds as to what toys they really want. I finally told them this morning that Santa’s elves are going nuts making them toys and then finding out that they have changed their minds.

Mac and Sailor have decided they want the new Planet Heroes action figures. The one Sailor wants is now in my parents’ house waiting for Christmas day. The one Mac wants is not available anywhere but ebay. Do I bid on it? Why oh why? This part of Christmas is so not fun!

The holiday shopping bills are starting to come. So now I know that on those last few days before Christmas I will be suffering heart palpitations while I pay bills that far exceed my usual credit card bills. Maybe Santa will leave a few hundred extra dollars in my stocking this year!

Before Mac goes to sleep he complains again of stomach pain. Suddenly I am gripped with a sense of fear mixed with sorrow as I have bad feeling that something is wrong with my baby. I look into his beautiful face. His cheeks are red all the way up to his eyes. I pull his head into my lap and hold him close, closer to me, almost as if I could force him back into the safety of my belly. I don’t know what is wrong and I don’t know how to fix his sore tummy. I will call his doctor again tomorrow.

Sailor wakes crying during the climactic moments of ER. The only show I watch all week. I run to his room. He sounds hysterical. I hold him. He kisses my neck. I put him back to bed. Sweet baby.

On Friday morning I wake to realize the boys are playing in their playroom. I am not immediately alarmed. But I should be. I snooze a little longer, waiting for my alarmed clock to go off. And then I remember something. Late last night I pulled hard on an electrical cord sticking out from under my bed hoping to find the other end of my heating pad. I then remembered the heating pad was wrapped up in my closet and so most likely I was pulling on the cord attached to my wall. I stopped pulling and went to sleep. When I remember all this in the morning I fly out of bed to find my alarm clock black. Wondering just how late it is, I hustle out to the bathroom. 7:20. Ok, we can do this. And we do. We get to school on time. Thanks in part to the piddly lunch I pack for Mac: 5 crackers, ½ an apple, 5 baby carrots and a box of milk. I figure he hasn’t been eating more than a few bites of his lunch anyway so why go crazy making him a five course meal.

Sailor and I sit thru a 2 ½ hour long meeting on food allergies, which I find highly educational. In fact, I am so pumped up on adrenaline from all I have learned that I am all ready to stab the next food allergic child I see an EPI pen! Sailor is so well behaved. I have bribed him with the promise that his friend Sofie will come over if he can stay quiet thru the meeting. He is so good. And when we leave the meeting I check my phone and receive a message that Sofie’s mom is sick and they are not coming. To say Sailor is disappointed would be an understatement but he handles it well. We shovel the front walk and steps again and finally head inside for lunch around 12:30. Sailor makes a tent and goes camping in the kitchen while I make some phone calls. My back hurts and I am out of energy so I tell Sailor I am going to take a 20-minute bath. But he wants to join me. I remind him how hot I like the water but he says he’ll be ok. I won’t go into detail about the bubble bath we shared but I will say that I have a very curious 4-year-old and next time I bathe with him I’ll be wearing a bathing suit! Also, when he grows up and becomes a hairy monkey I think he want to consider a career as a gynecologist.