I think it's time to get medicated...

Okay. My head just spun off, flew across the room and landed with a dull thud on the floor. I should have known that writing about the Great Poop Success of Autumn would cause a giant jinx. The same thing happened when I thought it was safe to say that he had been sleeping through the night for four whole months in a row when he was a baby. Since I wrote that blog, I have slept a grand total of 17 minutes.

Rewind to 20 minutes ago...

Oliver was doing his poop dance. I took him to the toilet. Bam. The crying starts. Why the crying? He is not constipated, so it doesn't hurt. I am beginning to think he is just conditioned like a Skinner Rat to turn the water works on as soon as his butt hits the seat. And the seat, by the way, is a cushy, soft insert for the regular toilet that is small enough for an Oliver-sized bum to rest on without falling through. And there are handles on the sides. Handles! I wish I had one of those! If I did, I just might start reading in there! (okay, sometimes I read in there now. It's my only time to myself. But the book has to be REALLY good.)

Anyway, today, I was really trying to keep him from creating the usual nightmare poop scene. It's so hard when EVERY time, the situations begins like this:


And inevitably ends up like this:


So he's crying, and I talk him off the ledge. I use my calming voice. He relaxes. I ask him if he wants to get a toy for going poop. He says, "No, thank you. Not today."

Sigh.

I decide to clean him up, make sure there are no hidden gems anywhere on his body, and then I take him to my favorite chair in the living room so we can really chat about this poop stuff. I leave him pantsless so we can have our talk and then maturely head back to the bathroom after he sees the light with my brilliant parenting skills. He first stands up with his back against the chair back. He's listening, he nodding his head. Then he sits. I am trying to be supportive and ask him questions about poop when I spot a moist dot on the back of my chair. I touch it. Um, it stinks. I pick Oliver up and there is a smudge of poop on my chair. Poop. Chair. MY. Favorite. Chair.

I sweep him up, tell him that I don't understand how a kid who pees in the toilet and never has accidents, a three year old who counts to FORTY, can just decide not to poop, and plop him back on the toilet. It WILL catch up with you. It WILL find a way out. And apparently, the escape route includes my chair.

He knows I am livid, and he sits there quietly. And then I crouch down in front of him and try to talk some more. And that's when I stepped in it. Another refugee from Oliver's bowels. I did not have shoes or socks on.

Which brings us to the present. Can someone help me locate my head?

WARNING: the word "poop" appears frequently.

I went back to work yesterday for the first time in a week-ish, due to a flu situation at my house. If there was an I Hate Throwing Up fan page on Facebook, I would be a charter member. I was nervous to head in after so much time on the couch and in bed, but it turned out great and I ended up staying after class and chatting with Amory and Jill, who work at Vega, about the bizarre displays of etiquette displayed by some of our students. They aren't downright evil or anything, but just nutty enough to make you scratch your head and wonder what they are like away from the studio, in real life. Examples: scrunching up your face and telling the front desk person how much you hate one of our classes (except that the front desk person was the teacher of that very same class), or insisting that last week, Breakdance was on Monday when really it was on Tuesday and it's always on Tuesdays and has been since May(no kidding - INSISTING), or changing the instructor's choreography to make it "better", or interrupting two teachers discussing class by wedging yourself in the middle of them, directly in front of one teacher's face and cutting off the other with your back. There are a few more, but I think you get the drift.

It's easy to go on and on about the audacity of such people, simply because 98% of our students are so wonderful and are downright good humans. They compliment us, they have good manners, they try hard to do new things, they cheer for each other and they bring their friends to a place that makes them proud. We all have so much fun working there because of all of those people. And we DO sit around and talk about all that goodness, we do. But that's why the other behavior is so SHOCKING in comparison. We're spoiled. So we have to have a therapy session and hash it out sometimes. I usually never ever mention things like that on this blog, just in case someone from Vega reads it and thinks I demonstrate open season on anyone and everyone on the internet. Not the case at all. I keep Vega separate and sacred, even when someone threatens to sue me for discrimination because an instructor did not pick them at the end of class to perform the routine for the rest of the group in order to demonstrate what he was looking for out of the choreography (true story). Chances are, though, if you read this and you go to Vega, you are in the 98% and know full well what those two percenters are like. They shock you, too.

Anyway, I was intending to teach and head straight home after class to avoid a relapse of sickness, but got waylaid by this fascinating conversation instead. After a while, I thought to myself that I hadn't heard from Joe since my class was over. I tried his phone - dead. Hmmm. I wonder if he needs me, I thought. Oliver was so dreadfully sick this past week, there was an episode at 4AM of barely being able to breathe, blue lips and fingernail beds and a rush to the ER... So I checked my email from my phone. The first one I saw said HOME ASAP, Oliver -

And that's all I saw. I grabbed my keys and told the girls I had to go and I would call them later. Heart racing, I ran to the car and threw myself into it and then pulled my email back up so I could write Joe back and tell him I was on my way. Then I saw two more emails, something about STAT, Target, and Oliver. Wait. What?

So then I actually READ the emails. This is what they said, in order:

1)HOME ASAP
"Hey Phone is dead we have to go to Target ASAP and Oliver has something he wants to tell you!!!!"

2)Stat
"Home STAT Oliver has something to tell you!!!!

3)OK we are waiting, hurry hurry
no text, just the subject.

So after reading all of these, I suddenly knew what it was all about and I felt a little silly about panicking and running out the door.

If you know Oliver's history with poop, you know that he has battled constipation since he was 18 months old. It has been heartbreaking at times, to watch him cry in pain during a necessary bodily function. He had one horrendous episode in particular that left him scarred for life, and now he won't even poop when it's NORMAL consistency. Like, ever. He holds it. And dances around. And cries. And wants to be held. And races to find a hard surface to sit upon so nothing will escape. Because to him, the sensation of needing to poop equals terrorizing agony. He doesn't know that it isn't going to hurt.


Try potty training THAT. He wears only underwear these days, as he refuses to pee anywhere but in the toilet, even if he did have a diaper on, so we're good in that department. If he wasn't scared of poop being painful, this would have been a no-brainer long ago. But I have a small child. You don't get freebies. So in order to get him to want to poop on the toilet we told him he would get a toy at the store if he did it. Nope. Weeks went by.

Finally, during one of his poop dance episodes, I am struggling to sit him on the toilet and encourage him and he is bawling and screaming and I am trying not to cry/yell/rip my hair out, and then...silence. He can't help himself, he just goes. In the toilet. And of course, it's pain free.

The hoots and hollers that erupted from my face probably alerted the neighbors that trouble was afoot in the gray house on the corner, but I didn't care. And off to Target we went, where he picked out a Bosch chainsaw. For kids. It's not a real chainsaw.

That was about a month ago. And he didn't poop in the toilet ever again. Apparently, the ease and convenience and cleanliness of doing his business in the toilet was not going to change his mind. That must have just been a fluke. A freak accident. Nope, I think I'll just not poop. I do not care for it. And the cycle began all over again. Begging, pleading, bribing. Tears. Nothing would convince my son that having to go poop was going to apply to him. I have even shed all dignity and let him watch me go. I have. He gets it. He knows we poop. He knows his cousin who is the same age poops in the toilet, and he has seen her do it. It doesn't bother him or make him afraid for our well being. He just doesn't choose to participate in this particular rite of passage. Ahem. So to speak.

And so, last night when I read Joe's emails, even though I knew in my heart that whatever poop was pooped was done so under duress and resistance, I didn't care. No one can walk around that long without GOING. It's just not right. So last night, when I careened around the corner and screeched to a halt in front of my house, I honked the car horn a few times. I jumped out of the car, ran into the house, but. Balls.

I was too late. They were in bed. Screw it, I thought. I burst into the bedroom, all smiles and hellos, and Oliver sat bolt upright in bed and threw his arms open wide and said, "I POOPED! In the TOILET! I get to go to Target!"

Hell, I wouldn't have cared if he had pooped in the tub or on my bed, as long as he pooped. So I scooped that kid up in his fleecey, rocket ship footie pajamas and said, "Well, then we'd better GO! Come on!"

And the three of us piled into the car and drove to Target, where we let him walk around in his pajamas, ride the escalator and pick out a tool kit that matches his chainsaw. He picked it up, and said we had to go pay for it, and he proudly held its handle and marched with his back straight and chin up, to the checkout line. The angel-me on my right shoulder prayed that he wouldn't announce the Target employee that he "POOPED ON THE TOILET!" The devil-me on my left shoulder slyly hoped that he would. Devil-Me lost.

And that's when I lost my mind and forgot I had an iPhone. I didn't even take a picture. But the mental picture I have in my mind will last forever. The entire time we conducted this quasi-illicit trip to Target past bedtime, I was grinning from ear to ear, and I am pretty sure that I hiccuped and, in a flash, my heart came up through my chest, out my mouth and flew to kiss the top of Oliver's head and then back in again, to resume it's job of happily beating and keeping me alive.

This morning, he made a beeline for his tool kit and tinkered with all the pieces for quite some time. After a while he hopped off the couch and came to let me know that he was all done. With what, I asked. I made you a house, he said.

You guys, he made me a house.

Letting the cat out of the bag.

The only part of the cat still IN the bag is maybe the tail, and a clump of furball, anyway. But, here.


Baby G 2.0, due May 14, 2010.

The Candy Corn of Life...

Hello, friends and fam.

Where have I been? The answer is everywhere and nowhere. So much is going on the lives of the Grahams these days that I can barely keep my head on straight. I believe that you have to create your own pathways and then actually have the guts to travel down them, but wow. Sometimes there is a lot of mud and piles of who-knows-what to wade through until the path is dry and clear. The possibilities are so exciting and wonderful, but man, you HAVE to put in the time and the hard work. And the knowledge that it's worth it keeps us from poking our own eyes out.

We're in the muddy phase of creating some new adventures for ourselves in regards to work as well as our personal lives. Some of it is the kind stuff you have drop everything and jump on, no matter how busy or tired you are, for fear of passing up an opportunity that could change your life.

So there's that. On top of "that" we are still working furiously toward our remodel of the studio and it has created some strict schedules and zero social life. In summary, there just aren't enough hours in the day if you actually ever want to sleep.

And somehow, life has a way of reminding us that no matter how busy we are working on what we think is important, everything pales in comparison with family situations. Namely, an illness in the family. It's the type of thing that stops the earth from turning and real life from moving forward. I have too much experience on the subject, as far as I am concerned, but that's a story for a later time. Or maybe never.

But most recently, my mom's partner, Dan, had knee replacement surgery. No big whoop in grander scheme of things. Unless you are of the older persuasion and not the pinnacle of health to begin with. He is currently back in the hospital because he was having a hard time breathing and my mom urged him to let her take him in to see a doctor. Turns, out he's got two blood clots on his lungs, and today there will be an ultrasound to see if there was something going on in his leg and if it was traveling up his thigh(BAD).

We just returned home from seeing them last night, and this happened right after we left their house. We will know more today, but basically, if it's just his lungs, they will train Mom to inject him with blood thinner shots and he can go home. If there are more, then he will remain at the hospital for further care and observation.

[UPDATE: Since the above was written, we learned that his leg was clear, and they trained my mom on the injections and released Dan from the hospital. He's doing well thus far...]

I feel so bad for my mom, who has barely slept in the past week since he returned home from his knee surgery and she's doing all the care taking and has basically been lying awake at night making sure he remembers to breathe. And yet... her entire house is decked out in Halloween decor.

And if you knew first hand what that means, you'd know what an amazing feat it must have been even under regular circumstances, let alone coupled with being someone's nurse.

I used to make fun of her fervor for decorating, or over-decorating - there is not one single room or surface NOT containing holiday fanfare. Not one. I have an entire photo album dedicated to documenting this phenomenon. However, on the way to her house the other day, I started getting really excited for Oliver to see all her cool stuff. Like the mini Halloween town that's all set up on top of her roll top desk, and it lights up and makes sounds. And then I remembered that although it was never really as excessive as it is now (save for Christmas), she has always decorated for every holiday since I can remember. Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. It was magical to me as a child, and I will never ever forget how it felt to come home from school each day to get the holiday tingles all over again as soon as I saw the goofy ceramic pumpkins and clay witch on the kitchen table. And I decided that from now on I am going to copy her.

Oliver was fascinated by the Halloween wonderland at her house, and I am excited to continue the tradition long after he starts making fun of me for it.

So, life, here's to you. You are exciting, infuriating, surprising, and glorious. You are what we make you to be. Thank you for inventing holiday decorations.