Today the Wonderful Ms. Wendy the Wonder Nanny came over and watched the kids for the afternoon and evening.
YEEEEAAAAAAA!!!!
I didn't have any plans, but she stopped by last week for a visit and we just decided that she would start coming over maybe once a week or so to give me a break. I didn't have anywhere to go necessarily and was kind of tired, so I went over to D's and plopped on the couch. Wonderful Couch Plopping, I had. Then D said, well, do you want to do this, this, and this for me? And I said, No. If I was going to come over here and work for you while she babysits, I might as well have just handed her the cash I earn and let her go home and bring the kids over and work for you. Dumbass. He doesn't understand the miracle of being able to plop on the couch and sit there uninterrupted for as long as I damned well feel like it without having to get up and serve somebody. Paying someone $8 bucks an hour for Couch Plopping? Totally worth it. Paying someone $8 bucks an hour so I can make $9 bucks an hour doing the same things for a grown-up that I do for the kids all day long? So NOT worth it.
After I couch plopped for a while, I made D take me out to eat at Macaroni Grill and then we went to Bello's for coffee. This is in a outdoor mall that is right across the street from where D and I used to live. The weirdest thing about going there now is that when we lived there, the whole place was a field that I let my dog play in. Now it is completely paved over with the likes of Abercrombie and Finch. I miss my dog.
I stopped by the organic store to get Aaron this Particular Kind of Apple Juice and this Particular KInd of Prune Juice which, when mixed together in the proper ratio, allow my often constipated son to poop properly and thus makes the whole world a more beautiful place to be for all of us. We love us the Pectin around here.
So it was nice to get out for a while. I have absolutely no worries leaving the kids with Wendy. She Rocks. And the kids know her, so they like it, too.
Yesterday we went to the kid's pediatrician. He is, I don't know what he is. When we are finished, I'm always asking myself, "What the hell was that about?" I went without D, so we wouldn't have to talk about the foot. Well we talked about the foot anyway. We also talked about how my eye was "twitchy" but now it's better, whether I am good at music because I am blind, whether D misses his foot at all, whether I should have any additional children because of my "situation," and why I don't have lenses in my eye. Now this sounds like we talked a lot about me and D, which we did. But, well, he did. He talks about us and our disability, draws his own conclusions, and pauses just enough to get me to agree with what he is saying. He jumps from subject to subject talking nonstop, and asks me a million questions about what its like to be disabled without waiting for an answer. One thing he doesn't talk much about is my children. It's kind of like if you went to your dentist, and he started in on a whole question, but no answer session on your menstrual cycle. He "smelled" D's infection the last time we were there and "knew" that D needed to get his foot amputated. Now he wants to know why I look different than he remembers. Is it the glasses? Because last time my eyes were so "twitchy." I think he is the one who is twitchy.
Its not that I don't know that my eyes don't always look especially normal, but I don't need someone pointing it out to me, you know? It's like, would it be okay for your kid's pediatrician to tell you that you are fat? I thought it was kind of out of line. When my open enrollment period comes around on the kid's insurance, I'm going to try to change peds. The kids are healthy now, but if they ever got sick...I don't know if I could deal with this guy.
Kid's got their polio vaccine and whatnot. they both weigh in at 19 lbs. Well, 19.6 for Aaron. Naim is 28 inches and Aaron is 29 inches long. They are both between 25th and 50th%tile on the growth chart so that is up from where they started, which was below 3%tile. I did get my referral to the pediatric ophthalmologist for both of them, but mainly to check out Naim's strabismus. I'm loathing what will probably come out of that, which will be patching Naim's better eye so his poor eye gets a workout. I had to do this when I was a kid and it didn't work (it was probably too late for me), all I remember was how much that thing itched and made my eye water. I hate having to put them through some of the crap that I went through, but I guess I lived through it, and I will hopefully be a bit more understanding of the pain of it all than my own mother was. I'm a bit nervous to get their eyes checked. There is guilt there if anything is wrong. But on the other hand, I knew going in that they might inherit some of my lousy stuff, and I think my life is worth it so theirs will be, too. I'm not seeing any indication of visual or hearing problems, except for the strabismus--which a lot of kids have--so maybe they will end up being the non-disabled members of the family.
I had "lazy eye" diagnosed in kindergarten, but they just gave me glasses--no patch. I think I wore them about two years and they declared it corrected.
I still wake up sometimes with a crossed eye. It goes away after a few minutes, though. Maybe if he needs anything, it will just be temporary glasses and no patch?
Posted by: shannon | October 20, 2005 at 07:18 PM
Dang, your pediatrician is an idiot. D seems to think you are his nanny. Your nanny sounds great! I only had a patched eye once, when I poked myself and tore my retina on a branch and had to get a stitch in my eye. I had no idea how handicapped I would be. I thought, oh, the other eye will work fine. Nope. I got splitting headaches, nausea, couldn't judge depth, walked like a drunk person on drugs. It was really hard. So my condoleances for your patched eye. I hope that they can just get you to do some sort of exercises with him instead.
Posted by: cluttergirl | October 21, 2005 at 06:56 PM