I have had to cancel all of Eric's and my activities today because he seems to be coming down with a cold, complete with his first constantly-running nose ever. Poor little guy. And poor me. I was really looking forward to playgroup this morning--and it was going to be filmed for a TV commercial, so I was planning to dress him extra-cute. But, alas, I decided that it wouldn't be good advertising for the program to have an obviously sick baby in the commercial. "Bring your baby to playgroup and take home a bonus cold!"
He has so rarely interfered with any of my plans that I was quite taken aback to realize this morning that I was going to have to actually change my agenda to accommodate him today.
He has been busy learning new things. The other day, having a bath in the kitchen sink, he figured out that he could reach under the water to pick up submerged items. He was quite excited about that. He has been pulling himself up onto his knees quite a bit as well. His favorite trick is to pull up on the side of his toy bin so he can root around in there. He does a pretty good job of supporting himself one-handed while he touches the toys in the bin, and I think soon he will figure out that he can pull them out and play with them on the floor.
He is remembering things more and more. He gets visibly excited when taken into the chiropractor's office (because he loves Dr. Whitfield and her staff so much and always has fun there), or when taken into the bathroom if the tub is full. He looks toward the bottom of the stairs and starts smiling when he hears Scott coming down in the morning. He leans and turns his head to watch people disappear around corners. He knows that when I put him into his highchair there is going to be solid food. And he knows how to take his thumb out of his mouth so the bottle can go in, a big step forward from the days when you had to pry it out of his mouth with so much force that you feared breaking his wrist.
He sucks his thumb, traditionally, on two occasions: when he's sleepy, and when he's hungry. Since learning to get up involves falling down a lot, he has now added a third time: when I pick him up to comfort him after he has fallen and knocked his head on the floor, or has managed to pull something big on top of himself. I pick him up, he clings to my shoulder and puts his thumb in his mouth, and over the next two or three minutes he gradually releases his grip and relaxes, until he is sitting comfortably upright and smiling, at which point I put him back on the floor so he can do it all again.
Despite my daily sweeping and vacuuming, Eric usually requires lint-rolling after he has been playing on the kitchen floor, and most of his toys need to be at least dusted, if not actually washed, before being put away at the end of the day. Plastic does a good job of attracting dog and cat hair with static electricity. Anything that has to be fished out from under the piano or couch (or the basement stairs, for that matter) has to be shipped to a secret government laboratory in Butte, Montana, to undergo sanitation by a top-secret method the FBI learned from those aliens who landed in New Mexico a few years back. I just finished picking up--and dusting--about six dozen Mega Blocks, and have decided that, even though tipping over the Mega Block bucket and pulling all the blocks out is one of Eric's favorite games, he can't have them back again today. I need a break!
I took Juno to Rochester Hills on Monday to meet with the oncologist. I had to laugh at myself because when the receptionist gave me directions, all the street names sounded vaguely familiar. Julie will know this: exit at University. Take University to Squirrel. Take Squirrel to Walton. Walton to Brewster. But it wasn't until I got off the freeway that I realized it all sounded vaguely familiar because I went to college there. The University/Squirrel/Walton path makes a square around the campus of Oakland University, where I began my adventures in higher education, and where I met Julie. "It's sure changed around here," I thought. And then realized it has been almost 18 years since I've been there.
Juno and I spent many hours at the Animal Cancer Clinic. David says that he is still in denial about the seriousness of Juno's illness, but being at the clinic got me over mine, and I have been feeling very sad since then. Being at the oncology clinic is not like being at the regular vet, where, no matter how sick your own pet is, other people are there for regular checkups, for itchy skin, for worms. Sitting in the waiting room looking at all the dogs, and knowing that all of them were there because they were very ill, was striking.
We have not made a final decision about chemotherapy, but went ahead and had them give Juno the first dose of chemo drugs on Monday. She has also started on a four-week regimen of prednisone, which seems to be helping her appetite. The vet asked me whether any of the other animals had ever been on steroids; was I familiar with the effects? "None of the animals have been," I said, "but I have. It made me clean my closets in the middle of the night. Will Juno clean my closets?" She laughed.
I have had a very busy week. It is almost a relief to have the excuse of Eric's cold to spend the day at home today. On Sunday at worship, I was approached by a member of the Worship and Pastoral Care committee to ask if I could visit an attender who was in the hospital for a knee replacement. So on Tuesday I went to visit, and I told her that tomorrow I would call her at home to see whether she and her husband needed anything, like a dinner brought over. "Oh, we'd hate to put you to the trouble," she said. I said, "Look, I have only just learned to cook in the last couple of years, and I am so excited to be capable of preparing food worth eating that I am thrilled to have the opportunity to feed people." "Well then, it might be nice to have a little something brought in the first day or two." So I suspect I will be carrying dinner to them tomorrow evening.
Going to the hospital to visit a sick member of meeting gave me one of my "oh my god, I'm a church lady," moments. I have them whenever I have taken dinner to people or visited people at home after surgery. How did I get to be a church lady? How did I become a dinner-carrier, a hospital-visitor? I don't even feel very good at it. But it is a responsibility I feel I have to the people in my meeting. Julie has done a lot of that kind of thing in her work as a pastor this last year, and she is very good at it. I am learning not to be terrible at it.
Carla and Adrianne are plaintiffs in an ACLU-assisted lawsuit against the University of Montana, where Carla is a professor (Carla is a professor! I still think that is so cool), to get same-sex domestic partner benefits. As I understand it, the university welcomes the lawsuit as it would like to extend benefits, but has not been allowed to by the state legislature. The lawsuit was announced on Monday at a press conference, there was an article in the local paper about it on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, thanks to the amazing efficiency of hate-filled sickos, Adrianne and Carla got their first death threat in the mail, complete with "anthrax" spores that were probably talcum powder or powdered sugar but require analysis nonetheless. I haven't talked to Carla since then, but Adrianne was shaken by it, as you can imagine. Adrianne told me last week that Carla was practicing possible responses to negative reactions she might receive from colleagues and students; I don't think it occurred to them to practice reactions to mailed death threats.
I just heard Eric give an angry cry (the angry cry is new in his repertoire: "Mom, stop washing my face! Mom, I don't want a clean shirt right now! Mom, why am I not sleeping yet?"). I went to check on him, and he had tipped over the Duplo bucket, only to discover that I had snapped the lid on tight and it was not possible to remove all six dozen blocks and scatter them gaily about like rose petals. "No, sweetie, I'm not going to open it for you," I told him. Thwarted, he is now making his way across the entryway to the living room, where he hopes to have some fun crumpling the contents of the magazine basket.
Eric is in the entryway working on the vexing problem of how to get hold of the phone cord now that I have tied it up out of his reach. He is not doing anything physical, just lying there on his stomach looking up and studying the problem.
People keep telling me that any day now Eric will hit the Stranger Anxiety stage. He does occasionally protest if I leave the room, usually if he is getting tired; at those times, having Mom nearby is nice, I guess. But rather than getting nervous about strangers, he has started actively soliciting attention from people. The other night in a restaurant, he sat in his high chair and devoted most of his energy to getting the people at the next booth to smile at him, and in stores, riding in the cart, he will twist around to see people coming toward us and smile at them. He used to study new people seriously, and would usually smile at them after a minute or two if they smiled at him and talked in baby-voice. Now he smiles first.
Except that he needs his nose wiped pretty much constantly, and is having shorter intervals between naps, he seems to be bearing up well under his cold.
I got last semester's student evaluations the other day. Uniformly positive. A sampling of responses to "Do you have any comments about the instructor?":
"She was very helpful."
"Su Penn is a good instructor."
"Su did a good job of letting us know her expectations for the class. She was clear in all lectures and is a good instructor."
And my favorite:
"She is cool."
Much better than the semester in which one of my students responded to the question of how to improve the class by writing, "Get rid of her!" And that was about the nicest thing any of them said.
Posted by Su Penn at February 7, 2004 09:03 AM | TrackBack