A 2 here, a 3 there, and a 4 in the end

My little boy is going to turn 4 years old next week.  That is extremely surprising to me.  Where did the time go?  It seems like he was in my belly, kicking the crap out of me just a few days ago. 

Every April brings about a major milestone – Jackson’s birthday pictures.  We go to Sears and have them done.  We used to go twice a year (every six months) but it was just too much for us.  Getting Jackson’s picture taken is kind of like getting a shark to let go of your leg after he has clamped down.  I’m not exaggerating.  By the time we get home I feel like I need medical care.  To get ready for the special occasion I always buy Jackson a new outfit and we give him a haircut.  The last time Jackson had a haircut was back in December while we were in Florida.  At any given time it took 3-4 people to get that haircut done.  I was not looking forward to another one.  But his hair had grown long and it had to be done.  The mistake I made this time was trying to do it alone.  Kevin was working late and I thought “I can do this.”  Turns out I can’t.  Imagine having one hand with an electric shaver in it and the other hand holding a squirming child’s head, arms and upper body still.  It’s just not humanly possible.  I did incorporate some of my recent relearned yoga moves though.  I put my leg up in the high chair to pin his arms and hands down.  Balancing on one leg I then used one of my arms to pin his head still while using the other hand to cut his hair.  Did I ever mention that I got the Parent of the Year award last year from the Guild School?  They are probably going to ask for it back now.  Anyhoo, even that didn’t work.  I got his hair to what I thought was an acceptable look.  I was fairly proud of myself.  Until the next morning when Jackson woke up and I saw numerous unshaven sections of hair on his head.  The kid looked downright pathetic.  His Daddy laughed when he saw it, I warned his therapist to not laugh but he couldn’t help himself, and his respite care provider laughed almost every time she looked at him.  That night we (I now had help from Daddy) tackled the hair again and it finally came out decent.  2 attempts at a haircut.

This year as we were driving to Sears for the dreaded birthday pictures my optimistic husband said “I think this year is going to be different.”  I love him for his hope.  But I think he also cursed us.  Indeed this year was different.  It wasn’t just one long excruciating visit to get his picture taken, it was 3.  Our first visit didn’t entail any smiles or very many attempts to look at the camera.  I even came prepared this time – food, drink, extra clothes, extra diapers, and of course toys that typically get his attention or illicit a smile.  Those toys were worthless.  Jackson wasn’t having any of it.  It didn’t help that he was kind of lethargic that day.  After about an hour and no response the photographer suggested we come back later.  We headed home with an appointment for later that evening.  We got home, fed him, and put him down for a nap with high hopes that he would wake up smiling and happy.  He woke up a little less lethargic so we decided to give it another try and headed back to Sears.  It was a wasted trip.  He still had no smiles or interest in looking at the camera.  The kid was killing me.  Again we left with an appointment for the next day.  The next morning Jackson woke up in a happy, laughing mood.  Yes!  We were going to get pictures done today, I just knew it.  Back to Sears we went.  As soon as we got back in the picture studio Jackson recognized the place and the non-smiling, camera ignoring kid returned.  Dangit!  We were desperate, so I had to take desperate measures.  I’m not proud of it, and I definitely reached a new low, but I got out the Teddy Graham’s and started bribing him with food.  “See the cookie Jackson?  Smile and Mommy will give you one!”  It worked for a total of 3 smiling pictures and that was the end of our picture session.  We did manage to get those three good pictures, however, the best one of him smiling also showed us a mouth full of food.  You win some you lose some.  3 attempts at pictures.

As Teddy Roosevelt once said “Do what you can with what you have, where you are.”  Point taken Teddy.

Whew!

Someday I would love to be able to sit down and write a post for my blog that simply says “Nothing new to report, same old same old here at the Klim house.”  A girl can dream right?

I really don’t know why I bother planning things.  Curveballs are always being thrown at me and I am constantly adjusting my plans.  But the truth is I’m a planner and I will probably never learn to “Go with the flow”.  I had all sorts of plans for Jackson’s spring break, none of which came to fruition.  Instead I spent Jackson’s spring break being fairly miserable.  Why?  Because Jackson was miserable.  His screaming seemed never ending.  He had his “I’m mad about something” screams and his “I’m in terrible pain” screams.  Mostly it was his pain screams.  When your child is spending his whole day screaming in pain and you can’t identify why, it is the most frustrating and heartbreaking experience you can have.  Since Jackson can’t tell me what is wrong, it becomes a process of elimination.  After going to the ER after a day of screaming, they couldn’t identify anything that was wrong.  They did another X-Ray and discovered that Jackson’s constipation from the week before (oh yeah, we had gone to the ER the week before and after an X-Ray found that Jackson was constipated, again, which accounted for his screaming in pain the week before) was pretty much cleared up.  And they didn’t see anything else in the X-Ray that would explain his pain.  They just sent us home with our screaming baby.  So it wasn’t constipation.  What could it be?  The process of elimination began.  We went to the dentist because when he is screaming he sometimes puts his hand in his mouth.  Maybe it was a bad tooth?  The dentist said his teeth were fine but we did find a canker sore.  Painful yes, but not to the point where he should be screaming all day.  Then we went to the pediatrician, they had no answers but we did have them look at the all the little bumps on Jackson’s tummy and back which turned out to be mulluscom.  One of them was angry (red) so the doctor popped it and gave us a prescription for some cream so it didn’t get infected.  Next up was our neurologist.  He didn’t feel it was anything neurological.   I did tell him that Jackson’s acid reflux had kicked back up in the last week so he told us to increase the Prevacid from one pill a day to two.    He also suggested we get an abdominal ultrasound.  At this point the week was up and I was running out of doctors.  I made an appointment with the gastroenterologist which is tomorrow.  However, since increasing the Prevacid Jackson has had a couple of good days.  In fact, he has had two non-screaming days in a row!  He is even laughing again, a sound I desperately missed.  And his acid reflux has seemed to calm down.  We will still go to the doctor tomorrow, tell him what is happening, ask for the ultrasound, and try to find the answer to the screaming.  I really do think he is feeling better and I think being back in school makes him happy.  I know it is making me happy, especially since I am sitting here in my favorite neighborhood bakery finally writing on my blog again.     

I am going to end this post with some good news, I’m tired of my depressing post endings.  So while spring break wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, we did have some great news on that Tuesday.  Jackson was scheduled to have surgery that day.  He has a testicle that hasn’t dropped so they were going in to bring it down (this is all layman’s terms of course, there are some very medical sounding terms for this condition but basically his ball didn’t drop).  Off we went to the hospital Tuesday morning for a 6:00 a.m. (ugh!) check in.  As we were waiting for the doctor I remembered something the ER doc had said that Friday before.  He had felt the said testicle and it appeared to be dropped.  I said to my husband “Wouldn’t it be great if the doctor came in and found it and Jackson didn’t have surgery?”  We both thought this would be awesome but knew we just weren’t going to be that lucky.  Shortly after my optimistic question was posed the doctor arrived to tell us about the procedure.  I mentioned what the ER doc said and he decided to have a look for himself.  After a few minutes of feeling around he said “Yeah, his testicle feels like I would want it to feel after surgery so I don’t really see a need to do the surgery.”  WHAT???!!!!  SERIOUSLY???!!!  I nearly cried tears of joy.  I believe I actually threw my arms up in the air and yelled “YES!”.  My baby didn’t have to go through all that trauma of IV’s, anesthesia, and cutting.  We grabbed our stuff and hightailed it out of that hospital.  I smiled all the way home.  It was a bright spot in an otherwise stressful time for me.  But most importantly Jackson was spared from surgery. 

On that happy note I leave you with the words of the somewhat odd character Oscar Wilde - "I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me."  That is something I need to strive for!