Something to Talk About

Since my last post was about things I've been saying to Luke (and Other Baby), I thought it was time to post some of the things Luke has been saying to me (and McMoose).

He still has a habit of putting things in his mouth, so we were spending a lot of time telling him not to do that. He's picked up on that now and says, "Yuck, no eat shoe," as he's putting the shoe in his mouth. The other day, we were at a children's museum and he said "No eat beads," and then proceeded to shove a handful of ball bearings in his mouth. He then said, "Aaah, see Mama?" and proudly showed me the contents of his mouth, which caused me to have to fish all the ball bearings OUT of his mouth and then surreptitiously slip them into my pocket because...um...slobbery ball bearings in a communal exhibit? No, thank you!

We let him hold The Dog's leash when we go on walks sometimes and he spends a lot of the walks saying "This way, Toto! Come on, Toto! Toto! No eat poo-poo!" Because sadly, The Dog does, indeed, have a tendency to eat other animals' poo-poo.

Lately, he's been telling me what he'd like to eat for lunch. Usually, applesauce is included somewhere in the request, but the other day, I asked if he'd like to eat cheese and crackers and he responded with, "No crackers. Guk eat sandwich. Guk eat Me-eh-eh cheese. Guk eat pear. Guk eat peas. Guk eat cup-cup." Me-eh-eh cheese is goat cheese and cup-cup is almond milk, if you're curious.

We got him a little calculator from the dollar bin at Office Depot yesterday because he likes pushing buttons and I figured pushing buttons on his own calculator would be better than pushing buttons on our remotes or phones. He now pretends it's a cell phone and carries it around constantly and uses it to "call" Other Baby and his parents. This morning, he said, "Other Baby? Other Baby Mama? Other Baby Dada? Ok," and then put the phone down, turned to McMoose, and said "Other Baby house now, ok?" Gotta love the imaginary invitations to people's houses.

And of course, my favorite: I often tell him to pass on a message to Other Baby and he'll run through the apartment, yelling, "Other Baby! Other Baby! Get shoes! Go outside!" Or "Other Baby! Eat lunch! Sit chair!" And amazingly, Other Baby is actually starting to listen and do what Luke says. (I also ask Other Baby to pass on messages sometimes. His response is usually to just poke Luke with a stick. Surprisingly, it also works.)

Cabin Fever

I decided today that 40 degrees is plenty warm enough to spend an hour at the park. Why, you ask? Because here are some things I've had to say over the past two days that really should never need to be said:

• "Yellow Cat does not want to be put into a box and pushed around the room."
  
• "It's not nice to throw our friend across the room."
• "Suitcases are not trampolines, get DOWN from there!"
• "I know there's a picture of a banana in that book, but please don't eat the book."
• "Markers are not delicious. Here, eat an apple instead."
• "I'll help Other Baby into the high chair, Luke, DO NOT try to pick him up."
• "My phone is NOT a toy. Who are you calling???"
• "We. Do. Not. Lick. Batteries. EVER."
• "Ouch! No biting toes!"
• "Play-doh doesn't belong in the toilet."
• "You ATE the foam football? Ok, no more foam toys until you're 12. At least."
  

The Ridiculous Book of Unrealistic Disciplinary Tactics says something about phrasing all your requests to children positively. Which works great when I want two toddlers to roll their little toddler eyes at me and continue chewing on my shoes.

This is How Circus Elephants Feel

You know how American kids are told from a young age not to stare at others, that staring is rude? I've been here in the U.S. since I was eight years old, so this message has seemed pretty ubiquitous to me, but like so many other things, rudeness is very culturally defined, and in India, staring? Not considered so rude. This might explain why I find the no-staring thing so. difficult. when confronted by an interesting sight.

When McMoose and I went to India two-and-a-half years ago, there was staring, to be sure. Especially when we were out with my mom and step-dad, who is also white. There was lots of speculation, particularly by cab drivers, about how we were all related. In the end, most of them seemed to come to the conclusion that (a) my step-dad was married to my mom, (b) I was married to McMoose, (c) my step-dad was McMoose's dad, and (d) I was my mom's daughter. So in other words, they assumed I was married to my step-brother. Because, you know, here in the exotic and immoral Western World, that's how things work. Yep.

But as humorous as the staring and speculation were last time, it was NOTHING compared to how people reacted this time. Because this time, Luke was there. And while Indians have seen white people from time to time, apparently, they have NOT seen half-Indian toddlers who look white. The staring was at a whole 'nother level. We would go to restaurants and the waitstaff would stand two feet away from the table and just look at McMoose and Luke. We would be riding down the road in a car and people FROM OTHER VEHICLES slowed down, pointed, and stared.

We went to a family wedding while we were there and when we went to the dinner after the wedding, there were rows and rows of tables with people eating. If I had to guess, I'd say there were probably 200+ people down there eating. And as we were led to our table, every. single. head. turned and watched us walk by. And? The photographers who were there to take pictures of, you know, THE BRIDE AND GROOM spent an unreasonable amount of time taking pictures of Luke and McMoose instead. And then? One of the photographers TOOK LUKE from McMoose and scurried away because he wanted Luke to MEET HIS FAMILY.

I am not even making this mess up.

Of Course There Were Skin Things Involved

Remember how I mentioned that Luke got his first ear infection and pinkeye the day we were leaving town? So like diligent, caring parents, we got him antibiotics--which, by the way, I probably wouldn't have done if we'd been staying in town, but since we were traveling out of the country, I just wanted the situation FIXED--and headed off. And he took the first few doses of the antibiotics with no problem. Or at least, we didn't notice a problem right away.

But then, one morning, about 30 minutes after giving him his medicine, I noticed that he was covered in red patches...and within each red patch were several raised spots. Now, I have to say that skin things are my domain. I hate, hate, HATE skin issues, they freak me out, and the universe, in its infinite meanness, decided that the way my body should react to stress of any kind is to break out in hives. Awesome. So I know hives. And when I saw the weird rashy thing Luke had going on, I KNEW it was hives.

Of course, no one believed me. Because after all, we were in India. The Land of The Mosquito. Never mind that no mosquito bite has EVER resulted in multiple raised spot per bite. Never mind that I was standing there, watching these welts appear on his body AND THERE WAS NO MOSQUITO IN SIGHT. Never mind that I. Know. Hives. Never mind all of that because my uncle, who is a doctor, proclaimed that they were mosquito bites.

The next day: about 30 minutes after he got his medication, the same thing happened again. Only this time, there were more hives and it was slightly harder to argue that these were the bites of a killer horde of invisible mosquitoes. And then, the next day, it happened again. And every time it happened, it got a little bit worse. So of course, by this time, we knew it was an allergic reaction. But given the new environment, the new food, the new EVERYTHING that was going on at the time, we had no idea what he was reacting to.

After many discussions in which McMoose and I considered taking him to a pediatrician (pros: getting some anti-histamine on the off-chance that his throat started closing up in reaction to this unknown allergen; cons: being prescribed some crazy thing that wasn't an anti-histamine, contracting a worse illness from people in the waiting room, death, etc), we realized that hey! This is happening every time we give him his antibiotics. So what if we just...stopped doing that?

As with most allergic reactions, when we stopped shoving the allergen down his throat, the reaction went away. That should be the end of this very long story, right? Yeah, not so much. Because I still thought it would be a good idea to at least HAVE an anti-histamine with us, just in case we were wrong about what was causing the reaction. So we called a pediatrician. Explained the problem. And she gave us the names of three medications to try. Not ONE of which was an anti-histamine.

Lessons learned: (a) Doctors are not my favorite people; (b) invisible mosquitoes do not exist; (c) always have benadryl when you leave the country. Always. Oh, and (d) the antibiotic that Luke was taking is a cephalosporin. The antibiotic that McMoose is allergic to? Also a cephalosporin. The nurse practitioner who told me that medication allergies aren't inherited is getting bad thoughts sent her way.

Flying High

And then, came the dreaded plane ride. As it happens, toddlers LOVE airplanes. From the moment we told Luke he'd be getting to ride on an airplane, there was a non-stop, very whiny, halfway hyperventilating stream of "Airplane? Big airplane? Sit big airplane? Guk sit big airplane? Mama sit big airplane? Dada sit big airplane?" etc. Luckily, we've learned from our on-the-job training, so we didn't mention a word about the airplane until five minutes before boarding, so we only had to endure about four minutes and fifty seconds of this torture. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG FOUR MINUTES AND FIFTY SECONDS IS?

We got onto our airplane--our very small, very ill-equipped airplane that was supposed to fly us over the Atlantic--and noticed that hey, not all the seats were taken. I'm not usually one for a sense of entitlement, but we had a baby with no seat...and there were extra seats on the plane...and a happy, well-rested baby would be better than a tired, grumpy, loud baby for EVERYONE on that plane. So we were hoping that the nice flight attendant who kept patting Luke's head might offer us an extra seat.

No dice. The nice flight attendant finally came and said something to the effect of, "Gee, I wish one of those empty seats on the airplane was the seat next to you guys so that you could have an extra seat. But unfortunately, the seat next to you seems to be taken. What a conundrum." (Ok, so I paraphrased that a bit.)

At this point, my stepdad stepped in and suggested that since there were three of us in two seats, while across the row from us, there was one woman in THREE seats, perhaps we could switch with the woman, and then there'd be three people in three seats and one person in two seats, so everyone would win. (Well. I guess the woman who went from having three seats to herself to having only two didn't exactly win. But again, if you factor happy, rested baby into the equation, we're back to everyone winning.)

Dude, you should've seen the look of revelation on the flight attendant's face. It was like he had seen the light. This solution, this seemingly very simple and common sense solution had NEVER occurred to him. And he thought it was the Greatest. Idea. Ever. So great, in fact, that my stepdad and my mom got free beverages of the alcoholic persuasion for the entirety of the flight, just for coming up with this piece of brilliance.

And thanks to the extra seat, Luke slept almost the entire way from New York to Brussels, woke up and ran around the airport for two hours, and then conked out again for the next six or seven hours on the flight from Brussels to Chennai. And then, he woke up and ate yogurt covered berries and watched Animal Planet the rest of the way. As a result of which this will go down in history as the easiest 20 hour plane trip in the history of airplanes.

The Beginning

There's so much to write about, I don't know where to start, so I guess we'll start at the beginning. In the beginning, there was darkness...no, wait. Too far back. Ok. In the beginning, there was Other Baby, who came back from Thanksgiving with a cold he'd brought all the way across the country. And of course, Luke promptly caught this well-traveled cold.

As it turns out, California Colds are serious business because for three weeks, we waded through snot and boogies and grumpy, coughing, sneezing babies. And then, the day before we left, Luke's eyes started looking extra teary. And the night before we left, he woke up approximately every 20 minutes complaining of "Ouchy eyes." So that morning, I made a desperate call to his pediatrician and wonder of wonders, they told us to come right in--on a SATURDAY. (Could I take just a minute here to mention yet again the fact that we have found the Holy Grail of pediatricians and that I would actually consider proximity to said pediatrician an important factor when looking to buy a house? Because THAT'S HOW MUCH I LOVE THEM.)

So in we went, only to discover that hey! Luke has pinkeye. And? His first ever ear infection. Because obviously, THAT was exactly what we needed to make our trip a success. So we got our prescription, packed up the car, dropped off the Dog, and headed off to D.C., where we were going to be spending the night at my mom's house before embarking on The Part That Came After The Beginning.