We’ve known since birth that L is allergic to milk and soy, but with the onset of some recent food aversions we really wanted a complete, concrete picture of what he still is and is no longer allergic to.
We met with a pediatric immunologist and for the quickest results we agreed to a few panels of skin tests, which involved a small game of “prick the skin and measure the welts”. Since we got out of bed on the lucky side that morning, we were greeted in the testing room by Angry Standoffish Uncommunicative Nurse Lady. The dirty black oil her heart pumped apparently got in the way of performing the tests properly, and we were initially told he had one hell of a rice allergy and we should run home and throw out our entire fridge’s stock of rice milk (the last milk substitute he was allowed to drink). They also claimed he was no longer even slightly allergic to cow’s milk, so we scheduled a tolerance test called a “milk challenge”, which is surprisingly not at all related to Double Dare with Marc Summers.
We hadn’t quite made it back to the returns desk at Hippie Whole Foods when we got the phone call that Angry Lady read the test upside down or sideways, and for safety’s sake we should just repeat the tests, on their dime.
The corrected results showed violent allergies to milk, eggs, soy, peanuts, and beef. All I could think of when I saw his back was the fistfight joke from our parents’ generation, “Boy, if that’s what Panel A looks like, I’d hate to see the other guy”.
Though the peanut allergy is cause for alarm, what spooked us more was the doctor’s comment that the projectile vomiting and hives that went along with his severe milk allergy were most likely an anaphylactic reaction and we’re lucky nothing more deadly serious happened.
Aside from the more obvious detriments to having potentially fatal allergies, this also means we’re doomed to years of misunderstandings with well meaning people trying to relate, where we have to explain that no, their husband’s plumber who is lactose intolerant is not in the same situation as our son with an off the wall milk allergy and no, fatal anaphylaxis is not the same as a bad case of the farts.
E and I had joked for years that with our respective ailments and horrific allergies, we should consider never having children, never actively polluting the gene pool with such obvious disdain. We never dreamed that our jokes would come half-true, and our diaper bag would be filled with hypoallergenic stuffed toys and Epipens.
Time has a habit of running together during the madcap adventures of a munchkin growing up from age zero, I could have sworn I was thirty four last year. Regardless, I managed to squeak by the Grim Reaper long enough to reach this new and somewhat anticlimactic milestone. I’m constantly surprised I made it past twenty with all the shenanigans I pulled as a youth.
In sharp contrast to my violently unstable teens and twenties, life today is mostly white-picket-fence and HGTV. And it sure as hell better be, we are shaping the life and future of a little one, so anything but stability is entirely selfish. At some point right around thirty, the proverbial fork appeared in the road. Either I was going to continue to hold onto the dream and act like I was twenty two, recklessly pursuing fast music and even faster cars, or I was going to grow up and go the age-appropriate route, calming down enough to start a family and mold a happy, healthy home.
I obviously took the path that has speed-bumped around to finally arrive at a stable home life, and I’ve not had a single regret. I’m frequently asked whether I’m enjoying family life, and I have to fight off the dry heaves as I actually find myself standing on the brink of using words like “fulfilling” or saying “I’ve found my greater purpose”.
To celebrate my birthday, E treated me to a trip out to Fort Worth to see the Zoo’s Museum of Living Art, their newly constructed reptile and amphibian house. What started out as an excursion allowing me to take some photographs of the animals happily turned into a chance to watch L see all the wildlife for the first time.
By the time we ran around the Zoo a few times trying to escape the unmistakable stench of elephant poop, L was wiped out and went narcoleptic on the car ride home. Italian food and films capped off the day’s indulgences, and we all slept soundly that night to the sound of a thunderstorm. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday.
Three months with no updates has felt like an eternity. Between all the food feeding, poop scooping, day care driving, and rerun episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba, the Internet had all but disappeared.
Liam is now eighteen months old, and trying to either disassemble or climb on everything he sees. I keep my camera ready, looking for those rare quiet moments.
In April our friends planned an Easter egg hunt for the kiddos. After looking upon individual eggs with wonder, and giving all his eggs to mommy to make sure she had enough, he wound up with very few himself.
Though he inherited my horrible allergies, his newfound love du jour seems to be slobbery dog kisses. We finally brought in the big guns and let the lawn service conquer the backyard jungle, so it’s quite the little place to run around now. The pup pups are enamored with him, and tolerate even the most awkward of ear tugs and tail pulls.
L’s other newfound love is the telephone. Every ring elicits a loudly yelled “MAMA!!”, no doubt having had the phone associated with E’s evening calls to home during late work nights. Though we continually position the phone out of reach, he continually finds chairs to push over to the high table and scoots himself up to fiddle with the buttons and call people from the saved phone number directory. At one point we caught him having successfully started dialing “011 44″ followed by not much of anything on his part as we quickly snatched the phone away.
But no matter what destruction befalls our home by his hand, every night when he sleeps our twenty four hour amnesia kicks in, and to us he reverts back to being just our pure, angelic little munchkin.
Speaking of fickle weather, a few days after the snow melted, Dallas saw some gorgeous weather up in the low sixties. I took L outside for a walk while E had a few go-rounds with the camera.
Though my idea of a walk is the standard cinematic father and son mosey down the sidewalk with some rock kicking and the occasional stumble, L is more inclined to tear ass down the street as soon as his feet leave the lawn and hit pavement. Half the time the walk is more of a chase, and what appears to be a comforting hug on film is more a grab and lift in the case of approaching traffic.
E got me over my phobia of being too far from the front door by going and actually locking it, so I agreed to roll down to the park for some swings and slides. We hit the mulch and L nearly forgot he had parents.
At first we thought the swings would be innocent enough, but after placing L in the swing in the correct direction he somehow found a way to make it weird and uncomfortable. He refused to sit up, and just drooped his limbs down like dead weight and leaned his head over the edge pointing everything straight down like a dead sack of potatoes.
Finally we turned him around in the swing so he was sitting backwards, the higher back portion of the swing under his armpits. He straightened up a bit and gave us some high fives.
As soon as we freed him of the swing’s shackles, he made a beeline for the slides. He was able to climb most of the stairs himself (under supervision), and took to the smaller slide like a fish in water.
Just as suddenly as he lit up at the idea of the park, he was done. He gave us the big adios, and tried to tear ass across the park to wherever it was he thought he was going.
Just out of frame, of course, is E giving chase.
As New Yorkers, we never get used to the fickle Texas weather. Last week it went from sixty degrees and sunny, to below thirty and snowing. When all was said and done, we received twelve inches of snow in a twenty-four hour period.
Having been let out from work early to get home safely, I picked up L from daycare and went home to the warm house. We played in the living room for most of the afternoon, but I couldn’t resist bundling him up for a few minutes outside in what was then roughly six to seven inches of snow.
He stomped around with big stomps for a few minutes, made it all the way down to the sidewalk and back onto the front lawn, before the fun ended and he started getting cold and uncomfortable.
He at least managed to avoid the yellow snow left against the base of our trees by the neighborhood dogs, for which I am quite thankful.
The first words I heard from E on her way past the dogs’ part of the house were, “Uh, B? What has Tre gotten into?” I walked over unsuspectingly and saw the whole front of the dog’s body covered in blood.
My immediate thought was that she killed something in the backyard and did a little munching (my second thought was that she just finished teleporting through a wormhole in the space time continuum which, based on what an oddball she is, was less of a stretch). As it was pitch dark outside, I scoured the house for our Mag-Lite, which has seemingly disappeared somewhere into the void.
The next best solution was the 50 foot extension cord and our super-bright halogen utility lantern, which we dragged around the yard combing for patches of blood. Coming up empty, we went over her whole mouth and body with a fine toothed comb looking for any sort of injury, and found nothing.
The next step is to check for some sort of salivary gland cyst or something else in the region underneath her tongue, to see if something possibly ruptured. The verdict is unfortunately that we still have no idea what happened. We do, however, know two things now. One, Tre hates baths worse than any of our dogs and two, we need to buy more flashlights.
This is how Christmas dreams end up: stripped bare, dead on the side of the road, surrounded by scattered elements of covering, waiting to be discovered by the trash man.
The week before Christmas it was a balmy sixty-something degrees in Dallas. My mother and sister flew in to spend the holidays with us. One afternoon we took L for a walk around the block since the weather was so nice. He ran around the sidewalk, which more resembled fast hobbling with some arm flailing thrown in.
Christmas Eve brought not only a whopping Texas blizzard sized half inch of snow, but also nausea and lots of vomiting for one and all. Apparently L had picked up a stomach bug when he went to the doctor for his bilateral ear infections, and gave us the ultimate Christmas present. The only one who wasn’t sick was E, we’re presuming that’s because her stomach is made of hate, and not even bacteria can live in such an environment.
One of the more fantastic things about a tree with sharp needles is that it has built-in baby deterrents. Anytime L put his hand on any of the branches, he’d automatically yank it back and walk away in disgust. Finally he realized he could at least steal a candy cane off one of the lower branches, and figured the best way to eat it was with the plastic on. That got deep-sixed with the quickness.
We finished decorating the tree and wrapping all the presents at two in the morning, as is customary last-minute fashion for our family. E suggested I snap a photo of the tree with everything laid out and peaceful, before the morning comes and L declares war on anything wrapped.
Morning finally came, and in between vomits L cautiously crept his way through the stack of presents not really knowing what to make of any of it. We helped him unwrap a few, and he again trotted around flailing his arms and throwing the wrapping paper into big piles.
He finally calmed down enough to brave the big red doggie, and giggled as we hopped the blue one around while making barking noises.
Whether or not he fully appreciated all that was Christmas, we still had a lot of fun watching him and listening to his squeals and cackles of laughter.
After drooling over the film’s trailers for the months it was in the theater, my wife and I finally rented 500 Days of Summer with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. Based on the film’s popularity and the tidbits publicized about the plotline, I wouldn’t be giving anything away by spoiling that it’s about the guy losing the girl and not getting her back. I will, however, give other things away, so if you’ve stumbled onto this page via Google and haven’t seen the film, go ahead and stop reading.
The film presents itself with an undertone of conflict as to the nature of fate. The female love interest, Summer, doesn’t believe love exists or that she has found or will ever experience love while the male protagonist, Tom, believes that the idea of a soulmate is not only possible but can be laced with destiny.
In keeping with the aforementioned storyline, Summer decides after getting closer to Tom than she has anyone else before him, she does not want to be with Tom anymore. After his depressed weeks of emotional churning over the loss of what he believed was his “one true love”, Tom runs into Summer in a train car on the way to a mutual friend’s wedding.
Summer is visibly warm to the poor guy during the wedding reception, dropping inside jokes from their relationship, dancing with him to Etta James’ “At Last”, the most romantic of songs. Toward the end of the night she invites him to a party at her place, to which he shows up to find her sporting a large engagement ring.
Further depressed weeks of emotional churning find Summer successfully married when she shows up to Tom’s favorite spot in the city and backhandedly gives him “closure” on their relationship. He explains that having been burned, he no longer believes in fate or love. She explains that she now believes in fate and love, just not with him.
While the switch in positions was foreseeable when it became evident that Tom was not going to ever win back the object of his undying affection, the film in hindsight was less about the overt struggle over the idea of fate and love through apparent love and loss, and more about the underlying exercise in exploring the unbridled depths of a girl’s selfishness.
At the height of his inner turmoil, Tom has a conversation with his younger sister Rachel, during which she puts the idea in his mind that perhaps Summer wasn’t really “the one”. This is news to both Tom and the film’s viewers, as Summer in some respects has been so far portrayed without flaw.
Tom begins a memory montage of the previous months, taking the viewer through each previously lived-through scenario from a different perspective, one filled with warning signs and perhaps more reality-based than his prior fantasy-laden rollercoaster ride. To Tom, the memories are laced with indicators that she may not have liked him as much as he believes she had, that maybe it wasn’t the fated love he believed it to be. To the viewer, the memories are laced with signs that Summer has been as toxic as a waste dump. She is what gentlemen refer to as a “tar baby”, once the surface is penetrated, there is no chance of ever being extracted from complete, hopeless submission.
Tom’s interactions with Summer began innocently, he initiated light conversation right up until the point that a friend let it slip to her that Tom liked her. From that point on, she initiated all interactions and escalations. She kissed him unprompted in the copy room, she undressed in his bed, she pulled him into the Adult section of the video store, she told him her deepest darkest secrets. When he angered at her seeming lack of outspoken commitment, she showed up at his apartment in the middle of a rainy night. She expressed every action indicative of physical and emotional intimacy, all the while refusing to outwardly admit she was even dating him. She drove the proverbial bus, and took Tom for a ride.
She also initiated the breakup of this mind game of a relationship, going her own way free to find someone else to pretend not to date. When Tom ran into her at the aforementioned wedding, she couldn’t help herself but to see if there is still any fertile soil in which to plant, stringing him along emotionally for an evening while she not only had no intention of making her actions amount to anything, but was also about to get engaged to someone else.
Her visit to Tom’s favorite spot in the city, during which she bestowed on him the “I now believe in fate, just not with you” conversation, ended up in even more manipulation, as she placed her hand on his for a long, dramatic moment before she got up to leave. Even as a married woman, she couldn’t resist riding him around one last time. It was ultimately the height of both selfishness and inappropriateness. Tom clued in to this a bit, he made a passing comment during the conversation that she “gets to do whatever she wants.”
By the end of the film, Tom begins the first of an open-ended number of days with his new love interest Autumn, with whom he strikes up a conversation waiting for a job interview to begin, and who coincidentally shares the same love for Tom’s favorite spot in the city. The audience can presumably stand up and cheer due to Tom’s renewed belief in fate, and the credits can roll as the film has upheld the existence of the classic religion of America, the Church of Romantic Love. This viewer stood up and cheered for a different reason. I suspect Tom didn’t even realize how lucky he was to rid himself of the sick and twisted Summer and her selfish, manipulative grasp.
Though it has been days since I’ve watched this film, I can still taste my disdain for the Summer character in the back of my mouth. It would normally appear that I didn’t care for the film and its unpleasant storyline. On the contrary, I felt this film was fantastic. The writers, directors, and cast succeeded in the most important aspect of film making: they created a character that they developed enough to cause me to have an exceedingly strong emotion toward that character. To create a piece of art that evokes emotion at all is, to me, a success, and this film’s storyline and characters will be memorable for some time to come.
Last Tuesday, E decided it was time for L to undertake the rite of passage every child embarks on during the first memorable Christmas holiday of their lives. It was time to meet Santa.
She dolled up L in his proper little dress shirt and bow tie, and let him run around the bedroom while she got ready to bring him down to Santa’s Workshop.
Unfortunately, L didn’t realize that when he continues to pull the caps off the toilet screws in the bathroom, each “NO” will get progressively louder, and will be eventually followed by a smack on the hand. He crumpled into a little pile on the bathroom floor to show how horrible and dreadful it was to be reprimanded.
I did not go down to see Santa with them, so unfortunately all I received are two pieces of information secondhand: Everyone loved L and his bowtie, and L hated, hated, hated Santa.
