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Chicks, Charlie, and Coming Full Circle

You know that crazy realization that you’ve, holy crap, become an adult?

Well, I’ve got another one to add to my list of “Obvious Realizations.”

Over Spring Break, we spent some time at my parents’ house . . . and let me tell you, that’s starting to get a bit surreal. You see, I don’t remember being a wiggly, squishy little baby . . . but I do remember some of being a toddler, and it’s beginning to get weird watching Charlie hang out at my parents’ place. This weekend was the kicker.

My obvious realization is this: I used to be a little kid.

Duh, right? I know. Sometimes, though, you get caught up in adulthood, and it’s hard to wrap your mind around the fact that you used to be the height of your parents’ knees.

When I was little, we’d go trek over to our neighbors’ house and play with their baby chicks. This year, we took Charlie. When we pulled into the driveway, I was fairly blown away by how the same everything was. The clothes line is still there, laden with T-shirts and other laundry, and the old doors of their tornado cellar are still sticking up out of the ground behind their home.

Life is just . . . crazy, isn’t it? The little chicken coop with the circular pen for the chicks is still there, and I can just close my eyes and see my little sister, Alli, holding a fuzzy little yellow chick up to her cheek.

I tried to find some pictures of us back in the day, but it looks like all my parents took was video. That’s okay, because as much as things stay the same, we all know that change keeps rolling out. Change, in this case, takes the form of a sweet little toddler (bulldozer) named Charlie.

(Speaking of my parents . . . if I’m feeling weird about this, can you imagine what they were feeling?)

From what I remember, Alli and I would usually show a quiet, almost reverent awe of the little chicks. We’d put them up against our cheeks and give them tiny kisses, careful not to squeeze them too hard.

Charlie, on the other hand, jumped in that little pen just as quickly as he could, and chased those poor little chicks in fluffy, terrified circles.

It was great. Well, not the chicks’ fear, but Charlie’s delight and fascination with them was enough to make anyone’s day. He could pluck up one of those fluffballs mid-run, and did a fairly good job of holding them.

He only almost squeezed the guts out of one of them. He wasn’t successful, though, so the chick (as far as we know) cheeps on. As you can see here, he was awfully sad when we had to leave them.

What do you do with these feelings? I know there’s nothing, really, you can do . . . other than cherish the awesome cycle. I used to be a little kid. I have memories of being small . . . and now I’m the mother of a little kid . . . who is very busy right now, creating hismemories of being small.
And so on, and so forth, right? Time marches on, whether I can believe it or not . . . and I’m so excited to watch Charlie make all his memories.

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Windows Down, Lungs Sung Out

Some things change and break your heart. Other things change and make you smile.

Driving a car with the windows rolled down, listening to the music that makes you feel the most and singing your lungs out is one of the most spectacular things in the universe. Doing it in those fleeting days of true Spring where there’s still a cool Winterish breeze whispering under the eager shouts of Summer is absolutely a treat.

And for me, although the circumstances and the music have changed, the experience hasn’t gotten any less awesome.

When I was in high school, the car was a bright red 95 Eagle Talon, the music was John Mayer’s Room for Squares, and I was usually headed to a small town an hour away to visit my then-boyfriend.

Rule #1 in my High School Survival Book: Never date in-town.

Back then, John Mayer was purely likeable (pre-douche John, how I miss you so), and I was driving a very sexy car. I may not have been popular, and the car may have been a bank-repo, but I felt good in it, and the music seemed to sound even better coming out of its speakers. I had the school play to think about, was on my way to see the boy I “OMG am in looooooooove with!”, and had the road, the wind, and my thoughts all to myself. For that hour of driving I’d let my still-active imagination let me be cool and confident . . . someone who knew exactly what she wanted and was fully capable of obtaining it.

Sophomore year of college, the car was a white-and-rust ’88 Mercury Sable station wagon, the music was Minus the Bear, and I was either headed to play rehearsal or a ridiculous night of shenanigans with the friends who would become some of the most important people in the world to me.
You know those giggle fests that are pure, innocent, completely sober, and incredibly soul-filling? These ladies (you beauties know who you are) made my sophomore year of college one of the most influential years of my life. I learned that women cannot thrive on boyfriends alone.

At this point, the car is a ’96 Chrysler Concorde (that I own with my husband!) and the music could be just about anything from Feist to The Backyardigans.

And now I’ve got a back-up singer. He doesn’t sing very much . . . it’s mostly just a random “wahwahwah,” but I think he compliments my vocal stylings very well. He actually even likes it when I listen to my favorite old pop-punk albums, and I can’t tell you how happy thatmakes me.

When I look in the rear view mirror I can see pale hair getting whipped around in the wind, toes wiggling (because bare feet in a breeze are just fabulous), and the pure enjoyment of my sweet little driving buddy.

I may not be some carefree college girl driving around with memorized lines in her head anymore, but I’ve got the windows down and I’m still singing my lungs out . . . and I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

What’s your favorite thing about Spring?

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These Dreams are Unacceptable

You know when you wake up from a bad dream and, even though nothing is actually wrong, you feel like something horrible is going to happen? Or that something bad happened and you’re just quietly waiting to find out about it?

I’ve had TWO of those this week. Normally, I don’t remember my dreams. I used to, but anymore I think I’m just so tired at the end of the day that my brain is like, “Pillow!? I’m DONE.” You can imagine my dismay, then, when I found myself waking up twice this week with that something-horrible-has-happened feeling.

The first one was the worst. Like, the WORST. I haven’t talked before on here about my zombie problem. I just simply can’t handle them. I could watch vampire movies all day long (even real vampires, not sparkly vampires), but I couldn’t even get through Zombieland. In college, when I was stronger and braver, I watched Shaun of the Dead. Even with the humor, I hated (insert hipster protests of “it’s brilliant!” and “such clever humor!”) every second of that movie. No amount of British wit could take my mind off the flesh-eating. The problem is that it’s so widespread. Other horror movies are generally an isolated incident, but Zombie movies promise the death and destruction of everything I hold dear. I just can’t handle it.

So yeah, obviously, it was a zombie dream. It started out with my friend Ashley (who is totally responsible for this dream, as she was talking about The Walking Dead on Facebook.) and I hearing about the zombies on the news. I, of course, flip out and immediately start trying to find a way to get to Paul and Charlie. Ashley is worried about her Grandma, and explained that her Grandma has a shotgun, so it would be smarter for us to get to her Grandma first. So, on the way to her Grandma’s house, Ashley gets touched (did I mention it spreads by touching? Even my subconscious can’t handle the flesh-eating) and is out for the count.

(She deserves every bit of her fate for planting this in my head.)

So, I find her Grandma (and her shotgun), and then I find Paul and Charlie. I cannot explain to you how exponentially worse a zombie dream is when you add in a toddler. I am, in fact, getting a little choked up just typing about it.

As we’re escaping the mass of zombies, Paul gets touched by one of them. Now, the zombieness doesn’t happen immediately, so we managed to elude the big group long enough to have a heart-wrenching goodbye. . . complete with the move where we clutch fingers as we part and they slowly slide off of each other as I leave with Charlie and Paul begins convulsing and turning into a zombie.

I don’t even remember what happened after that. Hopefully I woke up. Ugh. I can’t believe I just sat here typing about zombies with tears in my eyes . . . you’d think I was writing some profound blog post about the injustice of child slavery.

Nope. Zombies.

Finally, and I’ll make this one quick, I just had a dream last night about ALMOST being unfaithful to Paul with the guy who plays Fowler on White Collar. Seriously? Yuck. Yeah. I decided about halfway through the shenanigans that it wasn’t worth it, and as I was clearing all of my stuff out of his dorm room (really, what?) and explaining why I had to leave, I saw some Reese’s Pieces on his desk and nervously threw a handful in my mouth.

Note: I gave up chocolate for Lent.

So, as my brain was screaming “Nooooooooooooo!” but my mouth was screaming “Yeeeeeeeesssssssssssss!” I scramble out of the room, chewing frantically and tripping on random guy stuff. I then, of course, wake up feeling like a dirty, horrible lady.

I’m sure there are some dream analyzers out there thinking I’ve got some marital problems, but I’m pretty sure it’s actually because I watched the entire second season of White Collarentirely too quickly AND zombies are just the worst.

The WORST.

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The Croup is a Big Bad A-Hole.

When you are pregnant, or thinking about having a baby, people will have plenty of things to tell you about your future . . . some of them awesome, some of them daunting:

“It’s like having your own little best friend to hang out with all the time.”
or. . .
“It will be years before you sleep for more than 6 hours at a time . . . if you’re lucky.”
or. . .
“You will have no idea how you could possibly love someone that much, but you will, and it will be awesome.”
or. . .
“Sex life, schmex life!”

Now, here’s something they never got around to telling me:

There will be times where you will be terrified out of your mind, battling an epic war of indecision in your brain, while, at the same time, having to be responsible for this little person’s well-being.

Enter Croup. Croup is when the vocal chords and larynx get inflamed, causing breathing difficulty for the child. If your kid starts coughing like a baby seal, you need to take them in to the doctor. Sometimes (and by sometimes, I mean BOTH times that Charlie has gotten Croup now) it gets bad enough that they have to give your kid a shot of steroids. The other thing you have to watch out for is something called “Stridor.” This is the name for the sound your kid makes when the croup is making it difficult for him to breathe. The nurse described it to me today as a “raspy, vibrating, inhalation” sound. If you start hearing this, take him in. (Also, sometimes taking the kid out in the cold air will clear up Stridor, but you should still probably take him in, just in case.)

Ugh. This . . . is . . . a HORRIBLE feeling. “Is that Stridor? Is he . . . stridoring? Or is it just nasal congestion? Am I being paranoid and just terrifying myself? Or do I need to take him to the emergency room? Is it blue around his mouth? Is it a shadow? IS HE GOING TOEXPLODE!?”

That’s what it feels like. It feels like your child is about to explode, and if you don’t do something, the exact right thing right now, he will explode. Or . . . maybe he won’t, and you will have gotten up in the middle of the night, put off sleep for everyone involved, and used up a lot of money and resources because what you thought was imminent explosion was actually just a little nasal congestion.
That’s the other side of the coin. “What if it’s nothing? What if an entire trip to the emergency room could be prevented by sucking the snot out of his nose with that blue thing? What if I take him in and the doctor calls me a paranoid fool and slaps me across the face?”

(Here’s a little secret: You’re probably not going to get slapped.)

In fact, if the doctor’s not a total jerk-nozzle, the worst you will get is a “Better safe than sorry!” and you will go home with a safe and (mostly) healthy kid. You may feel a little stupid, but at least you’ll know for sure that your child is fine.

Now, I am by no means an expert (like, at all) on Croup, but I think I’ve gathered some information that would have been useful early on:

1. Know where the emergency room is, so you’re not scrambling on Google Maps at 2 in the morning trying to find out which one is closest to you. This may sound like a no-brainer, but, hey, I’m just sayin.’

2. Find out if there is a nurse-on-call number for your physician/city and program it in your phone (or put it on the fridge . . . whatever works).

3. When you get ahold of the nurse on call, keep this in mind: No one is ever going to say “Pshhh, he’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” because that’s a liability issue. Now, while they won’t tell you to stay home, they may have information (such as what Stridor sounds like, or whether or not a marble can be pooped out) that will help you make your own decision. Paul thinks I use the nurse-on-call number as an excuse to have a legitimate reason to bring him in, because they never tell me, “Naw, it’s cool.” As much as I hate to admit it, he’s right.

4. On a similar note . . . listen to your gut. If your gut is feeling unsettled enough that you can’t sleep, or are setting your alarm for every 20 minutes just to make sure your kid is still breathing, quit fracking around already and just go into the ER. I dilly-dallied around all evening, looking things up on the internet, checking on Charlie, calling the nurse on call, checking on Charlie again, laying down for bed, and then finally waking everybody up for the 50th time at 2 AM after finally deciding that we do, in fact, need to take him in. Had we just gone in as soon as my gut started telling me to be really worried, I think we would have all gotten a lot more sleep that night.

5. Finally, PLEASE call your doctor before you get on the internet. The internet isTERRIFYING. The information you find is rarely consistent enough to be truly helpful, and will most likely convince you that your child has some kind of mutated extra-terrestrial alien flu.

I’m going to stop rambling now. Sick kids are scary and stressful.

If you’ve got croup stories, lemme have ‘em!