Anticlimactic

It all started on Wednesday. I got a call from the school secretary telling me that A. Peevie was having trouble breathing. "I can't catch my breath, Mommy," he said when she put him on the phone. "It's hard for me to get air into my lungs." Well, that didn't sound good, so I called the doctor on the way to school, and she said to bring him in.

"I can tell even without the stethoscope that he's wheezing," she said. "It's bronchial spasms." Asthma. She prescribed an inhaler and a steroid to help clear him up, and we went on our way, with yet another diagnosis. This kid collects diagnoses like they're baseball cards.

The next day A. Peevie inhaled his albuterol at 8 a.m., and didn't need it again until more than 12 hours later. Then around 10 p.m. he started asking for another puff.

"You can't have your medicine again until midnight," I told him. I could tell he was tired, and I urged him to try to go to sleep.

"No, mom, I really need to take the medicine again," A. Peevie insisted. "It's hard for me to get a whole breath into my lungs." To demonstrate, he tipped his head down and dramatically sucked air, inflating himself upright like an air mattress. I wasn't convinced--not that I thought he was lying or exaggerating, but that perhaps his anxiety was making it worse than it really was.

"A.," I said, "I can't give you your medicine. We have to wait four hours. You have two hours to go. If you really need it sooner, I have to call the doctor first."

"Call the doctor," he instructed. "I need the medicine." Sheesh. Kids these days. A little airway constriction and they're all "Oh, call the doctor! I need medicine! I can't breathe!" Babies.

So I called the doctor, and she said we had to go to the ER. "I really don't think he's that bad off," I said, trying to talk her into a different course of treatment. "Can't I just give him another dose and see how he does?"

No, she said. If he really needs the inhaler again so soon after taking his last dose, then he needs to be checked out at the ER. A. Peevie burst into tears when he heard this news. He cried as he put his pants on, he cried as he hugged his daddy goodbye, like it was the last time he was going to see him.

"Do you want to just try to go to sleep, A.?" I said, making one last ditch effort to avoid a late-night trip to the hospital.

"No," he said, hiccupping--and now, with the crying, even I could tell his breathing was a bit more labored. "I need my medicine."

So Aidan packed his Gameboy DS and drawing materials into his briefcase (adorable!) and off we went to visit the ER docs at Lutheran General Hospital. Again. We've been there so often that I recognized the attending ER physician. He recognized us, too. "You've been here before, haven't you?" he asked when he saw us.

"Um, yeah," I said. "Nine or ten times."

We went through A. Peevie's complicated medical history with the resident, Dr. Dave, who looked like he was about 14 years old. I was impressed when he appeared to be familiar with the cardiac diagnoses and surgeries as I ticked them off. A. Peevie's medical history is complex and rare enough that often the interviewer asks for clarifications and definitions. Then they usually ask me if I'm in the medical field myself, because of the way I sling around the polysyllabic medical terminology. (I secretly love this--although I guess it's not a secret anymore.) I'm not, I say, but being A. Peevie's mom has certainly given me an education that I would not otherwise have had. Thanks, A.!

To make a long, anticlimactic story short, three hours, one chest X-ray, and lots of stethoscoping later, we headed home. No nebulizer treatment. No treatment at all. And the breathing? Miraculously improved.

Sometimes anticlimactic is the best way for a story to end.

A Christmas Story

We decorated the Christmas tree Friday night, and set up about 50 Santas, tiny nativity scenes, candles, and assorted other holiday-themed decorations around our relatively tiny living room. It's cluttered and Christmasy, and looks especially sweet when the tree lights and candles twinkle in the dark.

I put a final sparkly ornament on the tree, and turned around. M. Peevie was bowed down on her knees in front of the tree in prayer, her head resting on her folded hands. I watched her for a moment, and then inquired, "Um, M. Peevie?"

"Yes, Mommy," she answered, her head still bowed.

"You're not actually worshipping the Christmas tree, are you?" I asked.

"No, of course not," she said. "The tree and the decorations make me think of Jesus being born. That's what I'm praying about."

Ahh. All-righty, then.

When we finished decorating, all the kids had different ideas about what we should do next.

"Let's all go downstairs and play Mario Party of Five!" said A. Peevie. "It would be a fun family thing for us to do together."

"I'm gonna go over and play at T-Dawg's house," said the teenager, anxious as always to zoom out the door.

"I know, I know!" said M. Peevie. "Let's sit around the tree and read verses about the Christmas story from the Bible!"

I thought it was a great idea, but everyone else just looked at her, wondering what planet she was from; and then they each reiterated their own preference. "I'm outta here," said C. Peevie, heading for the door.

"It would be more fun to play Mario Party," said A. Peevie, heading to the basement.

"FINE," M. Peevie said peevishly, "If you DON'T want to WORSHIP the LORD!"

That's my girl. If you can't teach 'em, shame 'em.

Resign, Already

Scandal and speculation continue to roil the Illinois political scene in the wake of Governor Blagojevich's arrest and the release of a 76-page affidavit detailing shocking charges of blatant corruption.

The last line of the 12-page Department of Justice press release announcing the arrest reminds us that "The defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to a fair trial at which the government has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." Good luck finding 12 people in Illinois who can meet that requirement.

The top issue of concern for our state at this moment is the filling of the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama on November 16. Technically, the governor is still the governor, and still has the power to appoint someone to fill that seat. He would not try to pull that fast one, would he? I don't know; if he really is a sociopath like some people say, then he'd be able to rationalize anything.

Yesterday, Jesse Jackson Jr. adamantly denied any knowledge of Blagojevich's "pay to play" shenanigans. He wanted--and still wants--the Senate job, he says; but he didn't pursue it in an unethical way.

I can't find a transcript of Jackson's speech yesterday--but I think I heard him say that if Blago offered him the appointment even now, he would take it. I could be wrong. I hope I am--because no one, not even Mother Teresa, should accept an appointment from our disgraced governor at this point. Well, she wasn't an Illinois resident, and she's dead, but even if she were, and wasn't, she shouldn't. If you know what I mean.

(Make your voice heard about the next Illinois senator by voting in the poll to the right!)

"At the end of the day, the top priority for our office is to serve the people," the governor said yesterday. The best way for Governor Blago to serve the people of Illinois is to resign. He should fight the charges if he wants, and continue to maintain his innocence--but his resignation would allow our state to move forward. Even if we lived on the Planet Oh Yeah, Sure and he were innocent, he could not possibly argue that it is in the best interest of the State of Illinois for him to remain as governor with all of this scandal and suspicion swirling around him.

Here, I'll even write his resignation statement for him:

I am not a crook. I did not break the law. I did not compromise the integrity of the process of appointing a Senator. The charges are based on parts of conversations taken out of context. I am committed to the well-being and welfare of this great State, and I would never put self-interest ahead of the public good.

However, in order to allow our state government to function as effectively as possible in these economically challenging times, and in order to restore the people's confidence in the government and leadership of this state, I am stepping down from the office of governor. This is in no way an admission of guilt, but rather a clear indication that I am willing to set aside my own self-interest for the public good.

Yeah, I don't think it's going to happen, either.

Oh, and BTW, a lot of folks are getting hot about all the F-bombs the governor dropped in those taped conversations. That doesn't bother me. Sometimes you just gotta blow off some steam in the privacy of your own home, away from the kids, by tossing off a few "swears", as my kids call them. I totally get that.

But the content of those taped conversations? I'd say the governor has got a lot of 'splainin' to do.

Landfill, Part Two

In case you missed it, you can find Landfill, Part One here.

The next day, M. Peevie and I set to work cleaning up the landfill that had somehow accumulated in her loft bed. We got some empty bins from the basement, set up a trash can nearby, and started sorting and tossing. Mostly sorting, because every time I tried to toss something into the trash, M. Peevie would retrieve it and tell me why it had particular sentimental value to her.

"I have to keep these pages from the Target catalog, Mom," she told me seriously. "I need to show Daddy what I want for Christmas."

I tried to throw out a crumpled, blank piece of notebook paper, but M.P. objected. "Mom, I might need that for drawing," she said. Because we don't have 30 reams of notebook paper elsewhere in the house.

"How about this giant wad of toilet paper?" I asked her. "Can we throw this out?"

She looked at me and knit her eyebrows together in concern for my mortal soul. "That would be wasteful," she said. "I have it in my bed in case I need to blow my nose."

"A thousand times?" I wanted to ask, but instead I just set it aside for secret disposal later on. Used wrapping paper, bits of ribbon and string, a lipgloss with no lid, the stretchy strap from a pair of swim goggles, mittens, a plastic stadium seat cushion, marbles, and assorted office supplies all eventually reached their appropriate bin; and for some reason I kept thinking about homeless people and shopping carts.

While we cleaned and sorted, we talked. "So what's this all about, M. Peevie?" I asked her. "Why are you hoarding all this stuff in your bed?"

"I don't know," she said sadly, and then she added, "Well, I do know, but you didn't believe me when I told you." Um, ouch. Bad, bad mommy.

"Uh, yeah, about that," I said. "Tell me again why you like to keep tons of stuff in your bed, and this time I'll listen, and I promise I won't get mad."

"It's because I feel safer when I'm near my things," she said. "I don't feel safe when you're not with me." This time, instead of invalidating her feelings and rejecting her reasoning, I listened, and asked her a few questions. In the end, we agreed that she'd keep four or five stuffed animals in her bed, but that everything else would be put back into its place before bedtime.

That night when I went in to say goodnight, M. Peevie was sitting up in her loft like a princess, leaning against her blanket-covered lump of stuffed animals. "Hey, M.," I said, "I'm glad we had our little talk this morning. I'm glad we were able to figure out..." I paused because I noticed that the bed tumor seemed bigger than five stuffed animals, and also M. Peevie seemed to be suspiciously nonchalant as she struck a protective pose in front of it.

"M.P.," I said. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

Her eyes got all big and innocent--like that's not a total giveaway. "No, mom," she said.

"M., I'd like to see what animals you have under the blanket," I said firmly. She started to cry. I pulled back the blanket to find ANOTHER HUGE PILE OF CRAP. I am not even kidding. Apparently, I need to get the psychiatrist on speed dial.

The story hasn't ended yet. I did a slightly better job of parenting in that frustrating moment than I had the night before, and we talked as we dumped the landfill over the bed rails. "M. Peevie," I said, "I have to tell you: I have no idea what's going on here or how to help you. But we are going to keep on working on this until we figure it out. I promise that I'm not going to scream at you about it any more. Can you promise me that you'll try to do better at not piling crap in your bed?"

She agreed. Since then, every night she swears there's nothing in her bed that doesn't belong, and every night I check and find a pile of crap. The piles are getting smaller and smaller. Last night it was just a couple of books, some scraps of paper, a medieval princess toy, some pennies, and a few other miscellaneous items.

"Am I doing better, Mommy?" she asked me plaintively.

My amateur psychological analysis tells me that her fear and obsession are indications that she's not getting what she needs from me in terms of comfort and security. I might need some parenting help with this one, but for the moment, I'm going to try more listening and cuddling before bedtime.

Which totally sucks, because that is seriously going to cut into my TV watching and wine drinking time. Sigh. I can sacrifice David Boreanaz and the Prison Break guys for the sake of better parenting, I suppose--but this whole landfill-in-the-bed scenario better be resolved before January 11, 2009.

I'm just sayin'.

Landfill

Apparently, my beautiful, brilliant, and talented daughter has inherited my genetic disposition toward slovenliness--and she has taken it to an all new level.

As a baby, this girl would not allow any toy, blanket, or even the tiniest stuffed animal in her bed. We'd put her down in her crib, and she'd toss everything out before laying down and promptly going to sleep. This need for a pristine sleep environment continued for years, even after she switched to a big girl loft bed. It was kind of endearing.

But lately, she started to keep a giant Pooh bear plus a couple of other smaller stuffed animals near her at night. She'd cover them up with a blanket, and sometimes she'd go to sleep on top of the lump. Gradually, a few more animals joined them, and the bed tumor grew. It became less endearing.

Meanwhile, I had been making a gradual attempt to organize and de-clutter the kids' bedrooms. I sorted through drawers, filling bags with too-small pants to give away or too-stretched out tops to toss in the trash. I picked up tiny Polly Pocket shoes and Zip-Locked™ them with Polly Pocket outfits and Polly Pocket purses. I filled up two bins with current-age-appropriate books, and packed up a bag full of If You Give A Mouse a Muffin-type books for Salvation Army. I was feeling good about M. Peevie's room: it was more neat and organized than it had been in months, and possibly years.

Then we had a set-back. I was alarmed to notice that the lump had metastacized to the point that there was only a sliver of bed available for M. Peevie to sleep on. The situation required drastic and immediate measures.

"M. Peevie," I said, getting out my stern voice and reaching for the blanket. "We have got to make this bed lump smaller, or pretty soon there won't even be room for you in your bed. What the heck is under here, anyway?"

"No, mom!" M. Peevie said with a tiny bit of hysteria in her voice, "Don't take away the blanket! I like having my things in bed with me. It helps me feel safe."

"It must be done, darling," I said grimly, and as M. Peevie screamed, "Nooooooo!", I pulled the blanket away from the HUGE PILE OF RANDOM CRAP that filled her bed. My jaw hit the floor in astonishment.

"M.P.," I hollered, "What is going on here?"

She started bawling. "I'm sorry!" she wailed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

I began to grab stuff and toss it onto the floor. It wasn't just stuffed animals and dolls under the blanket. It was like Pod and Homily and little Arrietty and all their cousins had moved in: scraps of notebook paper, markers, paper clips, torn-out pages from catalogs, a giant wad of (unused) toilet paper, doll clothes, Woody's cowboy hat, an entire collection of Junie B. Jones books, a three-foot long tree branch, socks, a jacket, and enough other random shit to fill two 30-gallon plastic bins.

"Stop crying!" I yelled, putting my excellent parenting skills to work. "Just get all this crap out of this bed RIGHT NOW!"

M. Peevie climbed up into the loft and started tossing things out one by one, still sobbing, her eyes getting redder and puffier by the second.

"Why did you put all this crap in your bed, M.?" I asked, in a Guantanamo kind of way. "What were you thinking?"

"It helps me feel safe," she said between sobs.

"No, it doesn't," I said harshly . "No way. That's not it. I'm so angry at you, M. P.! I spent hours cleaning and organizing your room, and now you've turned your bed into a giant dump!"

Again with the primo parenting skills. M. Peevie just cried harder, picked up a Chinese restaurant menu, and tossed it over the edge of the bed. I watched it flutter to the floor, and decided that I needed a parental time-out. Mr. Peevie took over and I took my angry, lame-parenting self out of there before I did more damage.

After about 30 minutes, I went back in. M. Peevie looked at me sadly from red, puffy eyes, and I gingerly stepped through the landfill that covered her carpet to stand next to her bed. "I'm sorry, Mommy," she said. "I'm sorry I'm so bad."

Geez. Shoot me through the heart, already.

"M. Peevie, you are not bad," I started. "I'm the one that behaved badly. I raised my voice and spoke very harshly to you. I'm very sorry." I told her that we'd take some time the next day to clean up the mess and to talk about the problem.

"We'll figure it out together," I told her. "We'll talk about it, and we'll clean up the mess and we'll figure out how to help you not do it again, OK?"

"OK, Mommy," she said. She held up her arms for a hug, and I gave thanks that this child, like most children, was so resilient and forgiving.

Tune in tomorrow for Landfill, Part Two.

In Which I Am Thankful and Also Make the World's Worst Mashed Potatoes

Happy Thanksgiving (belatedly)!

What are you thankful for today? I'm thankful...

...that I'm not a vegetarian.
...for pajamas.
...for a day when I don't have to wear a bra.
...for pumpkin pie.
...for Thanksgiving Day parades.
...for freedom.
...that Mr. Peevie has a job.
...for elastic-waist pants.
...for presents.
...for mental health professionals.
...for good story-tellers.
...for forgiveness.

In other news, I totally ruined the mashed potatoes this year. It's like they were cursed or something.

I had asked Mr. Peevie what he'd like to see on the Thanksgiving Day menu, and he made only one request: the hugest mountain of mashed potatoes ever seen by man. So the big day comes, and I start cooking. I pop my bird in the oven using this recipe. It turned out fabulous, BTW.

But the bird was done about an hour before I expected it to be done, and I was caught with my mashed potatoes down, so to speak. I quickly quartered a bunch of white new potatoes, skin on, and briefly debated with myself whether I had time to boil them on the stove.

The microwave won. Quick and simple, or so I thought. I pulled them out after three minutes, but they were still hard. Two more minutes later and they barely winced when I poked them with a fork. Three more minutes. By this time, I was thinking, I could have had them boiling away on the stove--but you know what they say about hindsight. It's for whiners.

Finally, they're ready to be mashed. Or so I thought. I dumped some sour cream on them and started squishing with my hand masher thingie--but they refused to submit. I can't get the right angle, I thought to myself, so I dumped them into a different bowl and tried again. This time, the bowl was too shallow and they squirted away when I pressed down with the masher.

The beaters! I'll try the electric portable beaters, I thought. When I started mixing, the electric blades started flinging potato chunks all over the kitchen. I got out still another bowl, and tried again. The beaters chased the tough little clods around the bowl without leaving a mark. These spuds were determined not to become mashed potatoes.

Maybe they're just not soft enough yet, I thought stubbornly. Back into the microwave they went, and I decided that I just wouldn't think about what microwaving would do to the sour cream that had already turned soupy on the hot, hard gobs of potato. Two minutes should do it, I estimated.

I pulled them out, and they seemed to be in a more cooperative mood. I went back to the hand masher and started pounding and hollering, "DIE, SUCKERS! MASH! MASH!"--but to no avail. They remained chunky and hard, but by now there was also a layer of paste that had formed in the bowl from all the attempted mashing.

C. Peevie strolled into the kitchen, and offered to give it a try. He pounded until his bicep was sore, and made a tiny bit of progress. I looked into the bowl and saw what looked like chunks of quartz sitting in a sticky pool of paper mache. I gave up.

I served those damn potatoes anyway, and they were just as horrible as they looked: pasty and gluey, with rock-hard chunks. My poor family. They were so sweet and kind to me--they said things like, "That's OK, Mom; they don't taste too bad. Remember that macaroni and cheese that you made on Monday? Now THAT was bad."

Even Mr. Peevie, who doesn't ask for much, was incredibly gracious. "It's OK, honey," he told me. "Everything else is really, really delicious." And it was. In fact, I think the mashed potatoes were so bad that they made everything else taste even better--so in a weird way, I'm thankful for ruined mashed potatoes.

Eleven, Part Deux

Darling A. Peevie,

So where was I? Oh, yeah: Standing next to your hospital bed, crying.

At 2 a.m. we sat down in a conference room with the chief of pediatric cardiology at Lutheran General Hospital, Dr. Ira DuBrow. We got a short but thorough course on complex cyanotic congenital heart defects (CHDs). I can't even remember your initial diagnosis--it's changed a half dozen times since then as the specialists got more information--but the first issue was a coarctation, or narrowing, of your aorta. It would need surgical repair as soon as you were stable.

I had tons of questions for Dr. DuBrow. I wanted to know why a level II ultrasound at 20+ weeks wouldn't have picked up on these issues. They only check for four heart chambers, he told us. They wouldn't have seen A. Peevie's issues unless they were trained and instructed to look for them.

And of course I needed to understand why this had happened to you. Was it something that I had done while pregnant? Was there an unknown genetic cause? Nope and nope. Turns out most of the time doctors don't know why embryonic hearts develop structural defects--even though heart defects are the most common birth defect, affecting nearly ten percent of all newborns.

Your severe congestive heart failure triggered a systemic shut-down affecting most of your other major organs. You were in such bad shape, Dr. DuBrow told us much later, that they did not think they could save your life. The beeps and alarms kept the intensive care team busy while you struggled to stay alive, and Daddy and I watched helplessly.

I told God in no uncertain terms that I was very angry at him for allowing this to happen to you, and that I could not lose another child. Caitlin was very much on our minds as we held your tiny fingers and watched your fluctuating oxygen saturation rate on the monitor.

We called both sets of grandparents the next day. "We" meaning "me." Daddy's emotions choked his words in his throat, and he could not speak. Grandmom and Grandpop M. cried and got on their knees to pray for you. Grandmom and Granddad B. drove all the way to Chicago from Florida to stand with us in your hospital room.

Finally, after four days, they stabilized you enough for the first surgery to repair the coarctation of the aorta. As they wheeled you out of the room and down the hall, surrounded by a dozen doctors and nurses, the four of us cried and held each other.

We met with the pediatric cardiology team, including the surgeon, to find out exactly what they'd be doing, and why. From that point forward, every time you faced another surgery or a new procedure, I asked three questions: What was the worst possible outcome? What was the best possible outcome? What was the expected outcome?

In an earlier report, Dr. DuBrow had written, "Because of the complexity of the abnormalities, the prognosis is guarded; however, I have reason to be cautiously optimistic that the baby can be brought through with reasonably good result."

Now, eleven years, three heart surgeries and dozens of procedures later, I watch you run, play, draw, read, imagine, climb, ride and generally experience a happy, healthy childhood--and I am grateful beyond words that you have been brought through with way better than reasonably good results.

Happy birthday, A. Peevie. I love you with a passion unfettered by reason.

Mom