Ears again and Santa

Tomorrow morning we will be calling Alice’s ENT, because she has yet another ear infection. The left tube came out sometime before her 1-year checkup, and she did fine until about 6 weeks ago, when she had an infection. That cleared up with antibiotics, but she now has another one. Her left ear smells like dirty feet and is oozing yellow stuff. Nasty. And she’s grabbing at the right ear, too.

And she’s crabby. Well, crabby for Alice, anyway. This is not like the “crabby” you’ve seen on other babies. This is just not-quite-Miss-Mary-Sunshine. Just… off. Alice is bizarrely happy, almost all of the time (unless she’s hungry or thirsty). An ear infection just makes her… like other babies. I don’t like other babies. I prefer my Alice.

We’ll be going straight to the ENT rather than via the pediatrician for the simple reason that it’s December. We’ve already paid the deductible on Alice’s medical insurance this year, so if he decides to reinsert the tube(s), it’ll be cheaper to do it sometime in the next three weeks.

So. Jerry will take her to the appointment if he can get in before 10, and I’ll take her if the appointment has to be after 10.

The girls have an appointment to meet Santa Claus tomorrow at 3:30. I hope Alice is feeling up to it. We’ve been talking it up the past few days so that Helen will actually be willing to go. I’m hopeful.

Helen needs time to transition from one activity to the next (as well as PLENTY of warning), so the twenty-seconds-in-Santa’s-lap-at-the-mall thing just doesn’t really work for her. She freaks out because it’s so sudden: in last year’s photos she was crying and Alice was asleep. Some friends of mine (one of whom really looks like Santa) are doing half-hour photo sessions so that the kids get a little more time to interact with Mr. Claus, and hopefully some cute pictures will come from it. Because of Jo’s reminder last week and my friend Kristen’s recommendation, I called and got the latest available appointment for tomorrow.

I told Helen we were going to see Santa on Monday after rest time.
“I don’t want to sit in his lap.”
“You don’t have to sit in his lap. You can just talk to him.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You don’t have to talk to him either, if you don’t want to. But Alice wants to see him, so we’re going. Don’t you think we should make a list of what you want for Christmas? That way you don’t HAVE to talk to him — you can just hand him the list.”
“Okay.”
“And you and Alice can wear your stripey long socks and the red skirts and the shirts with roses on them.”
“And our pretty shoes. But I don’t want to sit in his lap.”
“Not a problem, Helen. You don’t have to sit in his lap. I’m not going to make you sit in his lap, I promise.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“That’s okay. You can hand him your list, and then just play with the toys and stuff while Alice visits with him. Will that be okay?”
“Okay. Is it Monday yet?”

Pomegranate

One of my annual indulgences this time of year is to eat pomegranate seeds. Pomegranates show up in the grocery store around the beginning of November, and a huge display of them is there until mid-December sometime, I guess. Maybe later than that. Here is the mythology behind the pomegranate, with which I am well acquainted because of my affiliation with Chi Omega.

They’re somewhat labor-intensive to prepare, because you have to stand over the sink and peel the seeds out of the membranes and into a bowl. And then when you eat them, you don’t chew — you crush them against the roof of your mouth and then swallow the seeds whole.

I remember the first time I saw someone preparing a pomegranate. It was my junior year in college, and there was a strange girl from Long Island living on my hall. Sororities at Duke are not — or weren’t at the time — residential, so Greeks and independents all lived together. I always liked that, because we didn’t live “in a vacuum,” so to speak — there were all kinds of people sharing the dorms with us, rather than just living and eating and socializing with the same people all the time.

Anyway, this girl: she was also in a sorority, but not the same one as me. I remember that she took forty-minute showers, lived in a “single” (without a roommate), and was constantly studying for the MCAT even though she was just a sophomore and wouldn’t take it for at least another year. She was very reclusive. But one night, she stood over the bathroom sink and carefully peeled the membranes of this strange-looking fruit, presumably to go back to her room and probably pick at the seeds all night while studying the ATP cycle or something. She was always nice to me, though. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t as career-driven as she was (admittedly, I was an oddity at the school I chose), but she still talked to me when we were both in there at the same time.

So I asked her about it, and she gave me a few seeds to taste. They’re like liquid Sweet Tarts with little chewable seeds in the middle. Very good, but very strong. And the acids in the juice are pretty strong, too. Good for you, apparently. And somewhere in the last few days, probably in Cooking Light, I read that pomegranates are high in fiber.

I need fiber. Lots and lots of fiber.

So today, since I was NOT wearing white or anything light-colored (pomegranate juice STAINS…. BADLY), I decided to have one of my pomegranates. Yum. They’re always a special part of my year.

And they always make me think of my ChiO sisters. Love you, ladies! 🙂

Early Morning Announcement

Wanna watch Elaine FLY out of bed to see the carnage?

Helen is very good at this. Today, she came up to me and announced, “I’m a good artist, Mommy! Look at my fingernails! I painted them.”

Oh, NO.

At first in my slumber-haze, I thought it was just nail polish remover, because she’s been obsessed with cotton balls lately. No such luck. She actually did manage to get a bottle of nail polish open and she painted her nails.

Thankfully, she used clear polish, and stayed in the bathroom to do it.

I immediately put all nail polish in the linen closet on a shelf up over MY head, in a basket, out of sight, in a difficult-to-reach spot. And I may move them from there today since she saw where I put them.

Baby Book

I’ve been feeling pangs of guilt lately because I haven’t done anything in Alice’s baby book since pictures that were taken in February. So I needed to get moving on it before I forgot stuff.

It is no secret that I HATE doing baby books. HATE THEM. They’re tedious, because you have to be totally organized before you start a page (like a milestones page or a visits-to-the-doctor page), because things in a baby book aren’t really chronological.

However, I LOVE looking back at Helen’s baby book. And Helen loves looking at Helen’s baby book. So I definitely see the benefit in doing the silly thing.

So. Last night I did March, April, and half of May in Alice’s baby book. So now we’re up to First Steps, First Day at the Pool, Helen’s birthday, a trip to the Zoo, and then Alice’s First Birthday.

AND THEN I’LL BE DONE. Except for journaling.

Thank God.