The Small Family     

Based on the title of this week’s blog, I bet y’all are thinking I’m going to go on and on about my favorite piece of punctuation, right? I do, in fact, love semicolons; however, that’s not what I’m referring to here. (Notice how I used a semicolon in that sentence? So fun!)

In reality, it occurred to me this week that because my Mom was having half her colon removed on Friday, I now have a new nickname for her: Semicolon! Besides the fact that it's quite physically appropriate, my Mom loves a good joke. But better still, she loves semicolons--I mean, she really loves them. Many of you probably know that my Mom is a really good writer. Sometimes she asks me to edit her pieces, and nearly every time, I tell her, “Some of these semicolons need to be commas; they aren’t used correctly.” (Hey, there I used another one!) And every time, she’ll look at me for a moment and then say, “But I like semicolons. I’m going to leave them.” And so, perhaps it is fitting that she is now Semicolon!

Anyway, joking aside, her surgery went very well. There were no complications and nothing unexpected. Well, almost nothing. When she was in the pre-op area, waiting to be taken in, her surgeon came up to say hello and check her chart, and then he casually said, “Hey, do you want me to take out your ovaries and [Fallopian] tubes while I’m in there?” He said it in the tone of a fast-food service person asking, “Would you like fries with that?” so we thought he was kidding! But no--actually, he had reviewed my Mom’s cancer history and decided that unless she was partial to her ovaries and tubes, it was a good idea to take them out while he was already doing surgery. It drastically cuts down her cancer risk--no risk of ovarian cancer now, and it cuts down the risk of a breast cancer reoccurrence, too. So Mom gamely agreed to have those removed, too, and then jokingly asked him if he wanted to do a tummy tuck while he was in there! (He, of course, declined.) Surprisingly (to me, anyway), her recovery time is not changed by the additional surgery--I guess because it’s all in the abdominal region, the healing time is the same.

I was at the hospital for the better part of 12 hours on Friday (after only three hours of sleep the night before...yuuuuuuck!), but I was able to see Mom get settled into her room, so I was happy. Then I finally went home and visited with Chris’s parents, who had come up to see Theo (and us, but let’s be honest--Theo’s the one everyone really wants to see!). They took us all out to a delicious dinner at our favorite Turkish restaurant, where my skinny child polished off nearly an entire plate of chicken fingers, rice, and salad, leaving only a very small amount on the plate.  (WHERE does he put it all???)

Theo was delighted to see Grandpa Tom and Grandma Kathy, as were we. And even skittish Miss Zoe was much calmer this time than the last time they visited! They came back over for a bit on Saturday morning, before driving home, and we all walked to the park with Theo, who had a fun time playing with a little boy named Austin, who was quite close to his age.

This week is actually the first time Theo has actively tried to engage another child in play. For a long time, babies and toddlers play near each other, but not with each other. Over the past few months, Theo has started to play with other children if they approach him, but he has never initiated play. He’s not the least bit shy--he just tends to do his own thing unless someone else comes up to play with him. He loves to see other kids and play near them, but he usually does his own thing unless approached. However, I took him to the park Thursday morning, and he actually initiated play with a little girl who was there. He kept saying, “Little girl come over here?” when he wanted her to follow him over to the play structure. The little girl was actually barely two, so she’s not quite at the playing “with” stage yet, but it was fun to see Theo actually attempt to initiate play with her!

We actually spent two hours at the park on Thursday because the weather was just unbelievably gorgeous! After a couple weeks of cold, damp fog all day (or rain), the sun and temperatures of 60 degrees are pure heaven! Apparently other mothers felt the same way I did, as there were a ton of kids at the park on Thursday. A couple of little girls had electric ride-on motorcycle toys, and Theo was positively entranced. After a while, the mother of one of the girls asked Theo if he’d like to try riding the motorcycle. He immediately said, “Yes!” very enthusiastically and climbed on. He rode it all of three feet, then dismounted and proceeded to spend 15 minutes examining the workings of the motorcycle and the pretend motor on it. He was pointing to all manner of exhaust pipes and such and asking me what they were. My grandma used to say of Theo, “He is ALL boy!” and I think I have to agree. Maybe a girl would do the same thing, but it just struck me as such a boyish thing to be fascinated by the engine. Or maybe it’s just a Theo thing. ;-) He was actually not pleased when I told him we had to go home, as the motorcycle was leaving. (By then he didn’t care so much about the little girl riding it--he wanted the motorcycle!)

The other thing he did Thursday that cracked me up was also at the park. He found a small hole in the concrete, and he immediately lay down on his tummy next to it. I thought he was just trying to get a closer look, but no--he was attempting to stick his tongue into it. For some reason, this reminds me of something Chris would do, so it makes me laugh. Not that Chris sticks his tongue in holes on the sidewalk, but he will occasionally do odd things that I would never think to do, and he assures me that it’s a boy thing. For example, when we were choosing paint colors for the inside of our house, we got several small sample cans at Lowe’s. On the top of each one, the paint mixer put a spot of the paint, so we’d know which color each can contained. What did Chris do? Immediately stuck his thumb in the wet paint on purpose! Why? Because “I wanted to see whether it was wet.” Well of course it was wet--the guy just put it on there! See--this is the type of thing I would never do. But Chris does, and I have no doubt Theo would! (Hmmm, is Chris secretly a toddler in a 34-year-old’s body??? Nah, he doesn’t have tantrums. Otherwise, I might wonder!)

I have also determined that Theo will make an excellent music fan at a rock concert someday. Theo loves, loves, loves music. It is the only thing that will hold his attention for long periods of time inside the house, other than a TV show. (Outside is a whole other story--he can play outside for hours, perfectly happily.) He is just crazy about music. So the other day he was at the gym’s playcare, and when we went to pick him up, they were playing a CD. As usual, he was listening intently and didn’t want to leave. I finally went into the playcare area, took his hand, and tried to lead him out. We were just about to the exit when the song about the ducks ended--and Theo pulled out of my hand, yelled, “SONG OVER!!! WHEELS ON BUS! WHEELS ON BUS!!!!!!!!” at the top of his lungs, ran back over to the CD player and started dancing--to the beginning of a rendition of “Wheels on the Bus.” (I guess he has their CD memorized.) But I can just imagine him in 15 years or so, in the audience at a rock concert, singing like crazy at the top of his lungs and dancing. That kid loves music! (Then again, he’s still talking about the march music my Uncle David played for him when we visited Virginia in September, so maybe he’ll be at a John Phillip Sousa concert in 15 years, yelling and dancing like crazy….)

As for Chris and me, we’ve been keeping busy this week. Chris is doing a freelance proofreading project in addition to his normal day job (trying to save up money to see if we can work in a trip to Disneyland in the next couple of months!), so he’s been working a lot--and taking care of Theo while I helped my Mom with her surgery and various prep things leading up to it. (Kudos to Chris--he is just terrific about taking Theo anytime I need to help my Mom out with something and I can’t bring Theo along. Not all husbands would help out as much and as willingly as he does, and I so appreciate him for it!)

My work is quite busy right now, too--which is why I did not have time for my stupid cold to rear its ugly head again. This is the same one I had back in November--the cough hung on for about six weeks, and then last weekend I started feeling awful again. Wednesday, I finally broke down and went to the doctor--turns out I have a sinus infection. I’m on antibiotics for a few days, but I’ve also been told to use a nasal irrigation system. Gross, right? Some of you are cringing right now and wondering whether I’m going to give you far more information than you ever wanted about my sinuses. Nope, I won’t do that to you. But I’m sort of chuckling because I have an aunt (not the one we visited in Virginia; my Dad’s other sister) who has a tendency to give a lot of medical details, as she is a registered nurse and is thus involved in the medical field day in and day out. Some years ago, she was singing the praises of the nasal irrigation system to me, and I was cringing because she told me in great detail how it works and what would come out of her nose when she used it. And I thought, “I’m never using that.” But my sinuses hurt so bad with this infection (I felt like I had a couple of black eyes!) that when the doctor suggested it, I gave in and bought the kit. And I must admit, I’m a convert. One treatment with that plus a dose of antibiotics, and I felt like a new woman the next day. For the first time in weeks, my sinuses weren’t killing me. So I guess I can now agree with my Aunt Susie that the nasal irrigation system is my friend. (Chris, for some odd reason, turned down my offer to let him watch me irrigate my sinuses. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why. Theo, however, gamely joined me in the bathroom and was pretty interested in the whole thing. Until he discovered he could use his plastic teacups to dump water all over the bathroom counter. Then that took precedence, as it was much more fun.)

We wrapped up the weekend with a morning trip to the Folsom Zoo (it’s a small animal sanctuary for animals unable to live in the wild) and the bordering park. Theo had great fun scaling the rock wall at the park, as well as various ladders, and he quite enjoyed playing in the sand, too. He also climbed his first tree, though thankfully he only got about a foot off the ground. ;-)

I visited Mom Saturday and Sunday, and she’s doing well--already up and walking a couple times a day. I suspect she’ll be released midweek sometime, but we’ll see. It remains to be seen whether she’ll go right home or spend a few days in a skilled nursing facility/rehab center. They’re a little leery about sending her home because she lives alone, so we’ll see how she’s doing in a few days. (She could stay with us except (a) our stairs would be difficult for her, and we don’t have a first-floor bedroom or foldout couch, and (b) trying to keep Theo and the two dogs from bothering her/climbing on her would be all but impossible.)

Anyway, hope you all had a wonderful weekend!