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Archives from 2002-2006

Trivia: I know pretty much every word to the Bill Cosby “Himself” performance. I listened to it over and over at my grandparent’s house on their record player when I was a kid, and years later when I was working in a video store, it was the one constantly-entertaining-but-still-PG video I could pop in the deck and let roll on the monitors stationed around the shop.

The entire thing is genius but lately I’ve been thinking about the Brain Damage routine, which, well, if you haven’t seen it, please enjoy:

My god, this is a perfect depiction of our house.

Didn’t I just TELL YOU not to do that?

Uh huh.

What did I just say?

[mumble] You said what for not for to jump onna COUCH.

I’ve said this a hundred times, haven’t I? I said no jumping on the couch, that means I do NOT want to look in there and see you guys jumping on the couch. Do you understand me?

Uh huh.

(2 seconds later)

STOP THAT! WHY ARE YOU JUMPING ON THE COUCH?

*high-pitched chorus* I don’t KNOW!

Everyone knows children’s brains are formed of large chunks of Silly Putty and clouds of easily-distracted bees, but man, sometimes I can’t believe the effort it takes just get someone to carry out ONE directive. I feel like a deranged border collie, nipping and nagging at the heels of my kids in order to herd them towards the thing I’ve asked them to do: “Brush (yap!) your (bark bark!) teeth! Walk to the bathroom (yip!) NOW, and pick UP your toothbrush (nip nip) and—PUT DOWN THE TOY, and (yap!) GO BRUSH YOUR—WHY ARE YOU SITTING THERE AAARRGGGH (bark bark bark *overwhelmed piddle*)”

Anyway, I actually sort of have a serious question for those of you with preschool-aged kids. Is it pretty typical for the 4-5 age range to be, you know, not so great with the focusing skills? Like, I have a friend whose daughter is the same age as Riley and she’s reading entire books and coloring big awesome pictures and, well, in my house everyone’s much more about running pell-mell from one thing to another, and the reading skills are coming along but there is SO MUCH impatience and distraction and NO ONE WANTS TO SIT STILL and every drawing looks like a frenzied tornado because HEY LET’S RIDE BIKES.

I’m kind of exaggerating, but really, I am curious as to what age a person should start expecting and demanding better listening/attention skills from a child, because I really don’t know. I know some kids are naturally more inclined to quiet activities that involve concentration and some just want to fling themselves facefirst off the couch all day long (cough cough cough DYLAN), but when does the Cosby-described brain damage start to recede a bit?

I was watching last week’s episode of The Office where Jim and Pam have their baby—oh, uh, SPOILER, if you haven’t watched The Office in a couple years you should know Jim and Pam finally got together—and both JB and I agreed it was oddly stressful to revisit the hospital setting with the tiny crying newborn and and the worrisome feeding processes and remember what it was like to be brand new parents, wondering just what the fuck we were doing.

It made me anxious to watch it, but afterwards I felt flooded with all this happy nostalgia. I can remember that feeling of not wanting to leave the hospital, especially after Riley was born. JB was eager to get back to the comforts of our house but man, I was scared to go home. At the hospital we had all kinds of experts checking on the baby, making sure everyone was doing okay, and even taking him to be fed if JB was gone and I needed to sleep. A steady stream of friendly nurses were a button-push away from bringing me ice water, pain meds, and extra diapers.

Everyone says hospital food is awful and I suppose it was, but I have fond memories of the trays of food and a blessed cup of coffee on the second morning. A delicious pushup popsicle a few hours after surgery. A cookie that I gave to JB, reaching over the warm bundle that was snuggled against my side.

I loved the big comfy bed that could be adjusted to suit my needs. It was crisp and white and even when the sheets got all bloody and had to be changed out from under me it felt like this clean, safe, sterile place to be holding a baby. I could crank it into this Barcalounger shape and nestle my child in my lap while holding a book off to the side.

I dozed a lot, especially the first time around when I was recovering from that awful magnesium and since the UW is a teaching hospital it felt like I had a new nurse every time I opened my eyes. They were all nice.

After my second C-section I got unbearably itchy from the morphine and they gave me an IV of Benadryl. I remember lying there feeling an instant whoosh of that glassy-eyed allergy medicine feeling, while Dylan squirmed and gritched nearby and they cleaned him and put a knit hat on him—the one with the little tied-off piece of yarn—and wrapped him like a burrito in that teal-and-pink blanket and the anesthesiologist came by to check on me and there was this bustle of professional good-natured activity in the room and I just felt like we were so cared for.

When Riley was born an older nurse caught us trying to wake him up to feed him and she twinkled her eyes at JB and joked kindly that one of the rules of caring for a baby is that you never wake them up. (We woke him up anyway.)

One of my all-time favorite memories is from when after Dylan was born and we were in the recovery floor and a nurse checked on him and decided his temperature was a little low. She picked him up out of the bassinet and unwrapped him, then told me to open my gown. She firmly tucked his bare little body against my skin, put a blanket around us both, and left us be. The room was quiet and I dozed in and out, just looking at his tiny perfect face, while outside I could hear the murmurs and bleeps of a busy nursing station. All those people ready to help us if need be. It was like being in a pocket, or cupped in someone’s hand.

Poor Jim and Pam had the grouchy nurse, the shared room, the hasty exit thanks to an ungenerous HMO policy. I know a lot of people have unpleasant hospital ordeals, and hate the idea of intervention. I didn’t plan on having surgical births either, but I couldn’t have asked for better treatment. It’s funny, it took a TV show to make me realize how wonderful my birth experiences really were.

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