The Maker of Mayhem

At his 15-month check-up, we found that the fluid behind Porter’s ear drums still hasn’t cleared out. This, coupled with the fact that he is still yelling at us in some unintelligible Eastern European dialect meant we were directed by the pediatrician to take him to an audiologist and ear-nose-throat specialist. After a string of hearing tests and some poking and prodding, it was determined that he would need tubes. As the ear-nose-throat doc so scientifically put it: “Once that fluid sits in the ears for a while, it turns into Jell-O; we call it glue ear, because once it’s there, there ain’t no getting rid of it without forcibly removing it.” I could tell from his explanation of the procedure that he has done it no less than a gazillion times. I don’t know if it is because every child in Humboldt County has “glue ear” or if it is because we found the most popular doctor in the area, but we couldn’t even get in for the procedure for 4 weeks.

Both the audiologist and the ENT indicated that although both ears have fluid, the left one is definitely the worst, and where he is experiencing the most hearing loss. Given this knowledge, we are now known to talk loudly and slowly as though he were 80, and use insanely crude and ridiculous sign language. We are also getting used to saying catchy things to each other like, “Make sure you are talking into his good ear.” Our sensitive and nurturing tendencies shining through, as always.

We are confident this will be a fairly routine procedure, and are looking forward to having his hearing back at full speed so that he may actually begin using speech and language and quit barking at us like an angry, pint-sized dictator. Who can’t speak English. And has no patience. And throws things.

What he lacks in speech and hearing, he is making up for in physical activity and his iron-willed determination to get his way. Do not leave this child unattended. Ever, ever under any circumstances. Ever. I realized – a little bit too late – that I needed to be photographing all of the various and sundry predicaments he gets himself into these days. Missed, were the photos of him disassembling, climbing into and frolicking in the ashes of the free-standing fire pit. Or the photos of him eating handfuls of catfood. Or the photos of him “typing” on the computer (read: banging fists wildly against the keyboard).

As for that last item, it was accomplished because of his new favorite pass-time – climbing onto table-tops. He is wicked fast, and once up to his desired elevation, begins dancing around in sheer delight over his accomplishment.

porter

porter

There are days where I am almost certain his head is going to explode because of his rage feuled tantrums over fairly benign issues. On this particular day, I didn’t have the strength to get into another battle of wills with him over whether or not he could abscond with an entire package of toilet paper. I managed to negotiate him down to a single roll. Of which, he made quick work of shredding:

porter

porter

And if you have the audacity to deprive of utensils at mealtime, you may as well just call CPS right now, because you are obviously THE WORST PARENT EVER:

porter

And this day? This day, all he would eat was cup after cup of frozen berries. I think I managed to cut him off somewhere around his 4th serving. (I can only assume it had something to do with the 4 eye teeth he is getting simultaneously!)

porter

And, all I can say is that when he asks for your sunglasses, you had better damn well give him your sunglasses. (Also know as: the number one reason why I no longer own sunglasses whose replacement cost is over $20 per pair.)

porter

porter

porter

But that’s okay. Because around these parts, cute? Yeah, it goes a long way.

porter

 porter and natalie

Gerd, the newest member of our family.

Okay. So here’s how it shakes down.

Porter is about this close to becoming a pharmacological poster child. I took him to the doctor this week due to a seemingly endless list of symptoms. A list that was punctuated with the item CRYING, LOTS AND LOTS OF CRYING (yes, all in caps). When the doctor asked me to explain the symptoms, I told him to get his pen ready, ’cause this was gonna take a while: teething, fluid in the ears, persistent runny nose, lack of appetite, intermittent goopy eyes, sleeplessness, throwing up, CRYING, LOTS AND LOTS OF CRYING – did you get that last one? Of the whole list, he immediately zeroed in on the one thing I have begun to take for granted – the throwing up. He said that chances are pretty high that he has GE reflux, also known by the ridiculous sounding acronym GERD. (Yes, Sharan, I know you already told me this.) He prescribed heartburn meds and said that we can probably attribute just about every item on the list, save teething, to the reflux. The remaining symptoms, he quickly surmised, are allergies. The give-away: his skin. Both of my children were lucky enough to inherit their father’s lizard skin. And in the world of relationships, apparently, eczema and allergies are like peas and carrots. With one, comes the other. And there you have it.

Final med tally: 5 [Dimetapp, Zantac, Cortizone Cream, Ibuprofin, Anti-bacterial eye drops]

…which may allow me to finally discontinue my self-prescribed med list of alcohol, caffeine and M&Ms.

Trouble. Starts with T, which rhymes with P, and that stands for Porter.

Last week, Porter started attending a new day care facility.

Although I lucked out in getting Stella into an amazing preschool program, I knew that with Porter, I couldn’t count on that luck again a second time, and so I needed to jump on my opportunity to get him ‘into the queue’ (so to speak). Plus, the logistics of having them in two different towns was really beginning to take its toll. It was a truly difficult decision to make, as Grani-K has been the central force in allowing us to easily and comfortably balance our lives between work and home. She took care of Stella from the time she was 8 months old, and Porter from shortly after his 4 month birthday. She has practically become part of our family, and we will forever be thankful for her seemingly endless generosity, kindness and flexibility. We will all miss you, Kathy.

And so began a new routine.

Not only had Porter just officially transitioned from infant to toddler, but he was tossed into a whole new routine, new environment, new napping, new faces, new diet – you name it. And have I mentioned the teething? The big, ugly monster molars that have been s-l-o-w-l-y creeping through his gumline? And that stubborn fluid buildup in his ears? Blech. What does all of this add up to? An irritable, obstinate, toddler who moves like the wind and exhibits an endless supply of tenacity.

It’s a good thing he still has all that cute going on, because it has just started sinking in that we are all on the the bus back to toddlerville – and I’ll give you one guess who’s driving. Our home is no longer a safe haven where I can freely tend to things while he plays innocently on the floor. I have learned the hard way how much damage can be done in under 30 seconds. There are times where he is actually mid-stride towards my jewelry box before his feet even hit the ground. Aside from his bedroom, every door in our house has to be securely shut. And not just mostly shut either, because Porter? Yeah, he knows the difference. Even in his room (one of the only ones he is still allowed free access to), he has managed to wound himself, and/or seriously mangle the various items he has figured out how to pull off shelves. He has yanked Stella’s lamp from her nightstand and shattered the bulb (twice), removed an entire layer of skin by jamming his his thumb into Stella’s CD player, and taken a header into something (I’m suspecting the coffee table) hard enough to have a huge scabby remnant just above his left eye. Each time, ironically, getting mad at me for attempting to remove him from the scene of the crime. I get read the riot act by a 1-year-old about 500 times a day. And take it from me, his manifesto – it’s a long one.

His new day care also allows him a leisurely morning snooze, which means there is no more easing us into our afternoon with a well-timed nap. Instead we get home in a giant, rolling ball of elbows, backpacks, and empty stomachs. The first couple of days I had to strategize my unloading process so as to not leave The Destroyer to his own devices for any length of time. Plus, he gets mad if Stella gets to leave the car before he does. Tough. I need time to secure the perimeter before I can turn him loose.

Fortunately, his perpetual motion personality also comes with an amazing amount of humorous moments. We often find ourselves laughing just about the time we might otherwise want to set him on the curb. Just the other night, Stella and I were quietly laying in her bed (something I routinely do with her for a few minutes just before she goes to sleep) listening to the one-man house party going on in Porter’s crib. Stella and I both began to giggle uncontrollably listening to him talk to himself, the wall, the stuffed animals. Then we watched his silhouette as he stood there waving – at what, we still are unsure. More times than I’d like to count, I have walked by his room only to spy an unusual amount of daylight pouring out from underneath his door. Ah yes, instead of napping, he has yanked down the curtains and is now busy surveying the backyard. Again.

So you had better get prepared for me to start making all those whiny toddler posts again. Like the ones where I bitch and moan about never being able to get anything done because of the Toddler Effect, but rest assured, I will also be making the ones where I get to wax poetic about how it really is the time that, later down the road, I will want back the most.

The Facts

If you are curious as to where I have been, look no further than the following two faces:

porter

stella

My little angels: dipped in a vat of adorable, sprinkled with a fine dusting of mischief, and covered with a thousand kisses of what I can only describe as emotional volatility. And as such, I could go either way with this post. And so, perhaps it will be safest to just stick to the facts.

Fact 1: Stella stopped napping a little over two weeks ago. Finito. Kaput. Nein Nap. It snuck up on me in the fashion that most things do in my role as parent of a child who, I am sure, received the child equivalent of Special Ops training. The first couple of days it was no big deal – I’d work at it for a while, then eventually let it slide, (naively) thinking that she would just catch up the next day. Then came the next day. And the next. And the next. Right around day 5 or so, I began realizing that we had moved from minor deviation, to newly entrenched routine. Just. Like. That. And so here we are, entering week 3 of my complete and utter surrender. Barring some rare planetary realignment, my only real hope at this point is going to be getting her to chill in some pre-alotted down time, the trick being that I am able to keep her contained without a padlock. (Damn fire regulations.)

Fact 2: In light of Fact 1, I ended up having to stage a protest of my own. It had to do with that tiny little 30 minute window I had managed to carve out for myself during the household naptime. Once she decided to stage her napping coup, I was all of a sudden faced with having to relinquish the one and only time, other than my shower, wherein I am guaranteed an opportunity to do something by myself, for myself. And so it was that we sat down eye to eye, and I explained that come hell or high water, I was going to exercise and she was going to play quietly, and she was NOT going to bother me unless she, the house, or Porter were on fire. And I’m not talking about little fire either – I mean the sets-the-alarm-off kind of fire. It took her about one time of interrupting me (for the highly important task of finding a puzzle piece) to learn that it was NOT the equivalent of fire.

Fact 3: Porter down-shifted from throwing up to snotty, then changed lanes to teething. Yes, everyone, he is finally getting that errant 4th bottom tooth. I even think I have glimpsed a couple of purple bulges where some of those monster-molars are in the back. Ouch. It figures that just as we seem to be rounding a corner towards some reasonable night-time sleep schedules, he is going to begin monster teething again. Whatever. Sleep is for weenies.

Fact 4: Stella has become a human juke box. Out of nowhere, her song repertoire grew from Itsy Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle to an endless array of tunes about frogs and monkeys and space and days of the week. The other night in the bathtub, she was singing me a song that invoked one of the most amazing recall moments I have ever had. As she chirped along about the 5 little monkeys swinging in the tree teasing Mr. Alligator, I (from places in my brain that I didn’t even know existed) began singing along with her – even going so far as to remember how the tempo of the song slowed down as Mr. Alligator came along as quiet as can be, and he SNATCHED that MONKEY right OUT of that TREE!

Along with the laundry list of other titles she has committed to memory, there is the days of the week song. This song has been particularly important to her because she has really begun to latch on to how each of the days has relevance to her life – with the most important ones being Friday (because it’s the one day of the week where she gets to go into Grani K’s when I pick up Porter), Saturday and Sunday (because they are not school days). Each day she asks us what day it is, and then does her best to figure out where it lies in proximity to the High Holy Day of Friday. So, you can imagine how excited I was when she stopped singing this song as Thursday-Thursday,Thursday-Thursday, Thursday-Thursday, Thurrrsdayyyyyyy.

Fact 5: Porter is almost walking. This video isn’t all that great, but it gives a pretty good visual on his drunken-like stagger, and lack of any speed or direction control. Mostly he just plows forward as quickly as possible until he runs into something. He is a boy, is he not? At least that is what I am constantly reminded of each time I open his diaper and he does a man-jewels check. Yup, still there.

Fact 6: Each day, my life inches one step closer to maximum capacity. You tell me the time of day, and I can tell you exactly where I am. 7:24 am? I’m at the intersection of E & Buhne. 12:24 pm? I’m passing the homeless guy right by the Tomo Cafe. 3:24 pm? Surveying the fridge to make sure we have all the ingredients for dinner. 8:24 pm? Deciding whether I am going to sit down at the computer to make a blog post or go to bed. And round and round it goes.

Fact 7: There is no amount of busy or hectic that could ever outweigh the fun, the silly, the cute, the lovable. It’s a fact.