Grade: B

A Latin teacher once told me I was probably smart enough to do well in almost anything if I put an honest effort in to mastering it. However, she also said I was probably not smart enough to be great. If that were true, it would seem the key would be finding something extraordinary to be good at. After all, being good at counting to ten is rather underwhelming. However, a good family man or a good manager is one of those things for which we all hope. I never took offense at what my teacher said. I just figured I had to find something worthwhile at which to be good. I hope being a good parent for a sick child (or any child) is good enough.

In that vein, I recently had the honor of being left alone with A. for the weekend. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t a little scared, and I can’t even attribute all of the fear to my sinus infection making my sight blurry (though that didn’t help). It’s funny how before any big test or event, I find myself trying to picture how it will go and what I’ll need to know: how to change a diaper, how and what meds to give, how much food to give and how fast, etc. All of that knowledge was in fact needed, but thankfully I had a cheat sheet provided for me by my wife before she left.

Even with the cheat sheet, not everything went as I had seen it in my mind when I thought about how the weekend would go. A. had a cold and diaheria which definitely made her life a little harder. I still feel a little guilty for the gasping cries as I changed her diaper making her bottom bleed for the umpteenth time. I think that cry will forever get to me every time I have to incur it. I guess I still get the better in that unfortunate trade though so I shouldn’t complain: me a catch in the throat vs. her in pain.

Still, when I thought about the weekend beforehand, I was looking forward to her little squeals as she sees the mouse in If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I had thought I could keep her happy reading to her and then we’d head out to hang with friends on Friday and Saturday where she would get lots of attention. We made it out Friday, which was great because my friend C. made her belly laugh for the first time I have heard. Awesome. But I couldn’t go out again the next day as my eyes kept getting worse. Of course with the eyes making driving less appealing, they also made reading to A. impossible. I guess in hindsight, I should have just made it up. We’ve read the books enough, and I suspect she would have been happy regardless. Well, I live and learn. Speaking of living and learning, life got a bit easier when I was carrying A downstairs and she inadvertently covered my right eye. I can see! I just have to remember to keep an eye closed. I really wish my eyes would just get better.

Still, I can’t help but think that overall, the weekend was pretty good. That’s why I grade my parenting job for one weekend as good (a B grade). I think of the things I could have done better, and there are definitely some. I also think one of the best parts about this parenting thing is that I’ll get to do it again. I’m no where near as fast as my wife giving meds or changing diapers, but thankfully when I get to do it again at least the test will still be the same. Practice makes perfect right? I wish I could have taken the same test over and over in high school or college.

Since it’s been a while sine I posted (eyes still messed up), there have been some cool things that have happened. Some of my favorites were A. meeting two of her great grandmas. There is something awesome about watching a young kid bring happiness to a great grandparent. It just feels instantly special and rare.

My wife and I also took A. out of state for the first time to head up to NY State on a long weekend. All I can say there is that I’m impressed with both with how good A. is in the car and how much my wife can do over a weekend. I was pathetically little help, and with the meds for the sinus infection all I want to do is sleep. Still, A. had a great time meeting some of the young kids of my wife’s friends, and I think she had a great time at the NY state fair. All in all, that was a great weekend.

A is doing great when it comes to sitting up when she gets help to get to sitting up. She can sit up and watch Sesame Street for about a half hour before she gets tired and falls back. She’s also starting to examine her toys and try to figure out the different ways to interact with them. We no longer have to show her to push this or twist that. She’s trying to figure it out herself which is great. Now we’re just working on getting her to clap and hold two different toys (one in each hand). In any event, I’ll post pictures as soon as I can. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to post them the last few times I have tried.

I’ll post again when I get back from heading down the Grand Canyon next week.

I guess everyone has one of those moments that we would have wished we had put the peaces together in a more timely fashion. I still have a hard time believing that my first reaction when A. threw up was to grab a napkin and try to catch it/wipe it off. One would think that with all the times I “helped” drunks in college, my first reaction would have been the correct one: turning her over so she’s not on her back. Sometimes, I’m just a little slow. Hopefully next time my first reaction will be the right one without J having to remind me what I should have known… Ah well, thankfully this was a no harm done situation. I guess it just goes to show it’s easy to deal with that which I’m familiar and expecting. It’s the other stuff that gets me. Setting up the feeding pump, giving dozens of meds a day through a g-tube, rubbing A. down with various ointments and salves to ease her exema, etc. are no problem now. Still, it’s the normal baby things that get me when I’m not expecting it or when I haven’t done them before. Heck, changing a diaper was a nightmare to be avoided whenever possible at first. Now it’s a ho hum occurrence that happens all the time. I guess I’ll get the rest down pat too, and in the meantime I’m just happy to have somebody who knows what she’s doing living with me (J).

All that being said, we got great news this week. A. went to the cardiologist, and she is doing better than he had hoped for her. At this point she’s cleared to travel, and riding in a plane shouldn’t be a problem for her. Now that doesn’t mean we can actually travel with her as we still need to get clearance from her social worker to take her out of state, but at least it’s not a medically unable to travel at this point. It always nice to have the tests show what we’d thought, that she is doing well. We just have to make a mental note that she should not have the sedative given to her for that test again. It shouldn’t have put her under (not anesthesia), but evidently her body didn’t like it, and she ended up out for a few hours with J having to do some basic body functions for her like swabbing out the spit from her mouth since she was no longer swallowing…Did I mention I’m glad J is a nurse? I’d have been freaking out. At least she came out of everything fine and the test results were positive. We just won’t let her have that sedative again.

Experience of the week that probably only makes me smile: My quintessential American fast food experience:
J and I decided on McDonalds for lunch over the weekend. It’s close, you know what you’re getting when you order, and most importantly I was feeling lazy. Five minutes after deciding on the meals, I was there. That’s what is great about fast food here in the U.S. It’s everywhere. When I get there, there is only one person in line ahead of me so I thought “woohoo, I’ll be out of here in no time flat.”

I should have known better, but at that point I didn’t know it was to be a lunch where all of the stereo typical things that can go wrong at a food joint would go wrong. It turns out the guy ahead of me was ordering for his family, and he got in a bit of a spat with the order taker (who was wearing a manager pin). She in turn took her time getting the meals together making sure not to grab more than one thing per trip. After all carrying a cheeseburger and an apple pie might cause her back to strain. So much for being a quick trip, but at least she was only moderately surely to me as I ordered my two Big Mac meals. 5 min after getting our food, I was comfortably sitting down in my recliner in front of the brain-suckage machine back at home. It was at that point that we opened the bag and discovered that our two Big Macs with no onions had been turned in to 2 quarter pounders. No fair! Ah well, we said we’d just eat them (sheepishly goes back to me feeling lazy). We’d just made our peace with eating our non- Big Macs when J. opened up her quarter pounder to find mold on the bread. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I drove back to the McDonalds. The meal was now a complete stereotype of all the things people complain about with fast food. Surely, slow service combined with getting the wrong food, and suitably topped with moldy bread makes for a complete American fast food experience. I should probably add that at least the McDonalds refunded us what the meals cost as they gave us replacements. Quality may be out the door, but thankfully recognizing a mistake and doing what’s possible to rectify it has not yet gone the way of a tipped hat and held doors.