My son broke his wrist.  Three weeks ago. We just got back from the orthopedist’s office today.

How does anyone wait three weeks to get a broken wrist looked at you ask?

When he broke his wrist I tried to get him to go to the ER to have his wrist looked at. The boy refused.

When he was little it was easy to just load him into the car and go.  At 17 years of age and a foot taller than me it is not so easy.

I should have insisted that he go, though I am not convinced it would have made much of a difference.

Three weeks ago my son took out his frustrations on the main support beam of our house. He hit the concrete brace with his fist. The beam isn’t any worse for wear, you can’t even tell it took the hit. My son’s hand looked like an eggplant once the swelling and bruising set in.

My son is not a violent person. He does not go around hitting the walls of the house, or anything else for that matter. He is usually very laid back.

So what set him off?

I did.

I had a bit of a meltdown and bitched to anyone within earshot that I was tired of picking up after everyone.  It’s usually pretty mellow around here.  Most of the shouting comes from the daughter who wants her brother to stop touching/looking/farting/laughing/thinking about or at her. So to have me suddenly lose it was probably upsetting.

That wasn’t what set him off, however. What set him off was an exploding pop (soda) bottle.

I’d had a cold and the boy wanted to borrow the car. I said fine and asked him if he would pick up a can of pop for me.  Something like 7 up or Sprite is what I told him.  As some of you may know I used to have quite the Diet Coke habit. When I quit the Diet Coke it was difficult to say the least. My son saw my withdrawal and decided to nip his pop addiction in the bud. He gave up his Mountain Dew habit cold turkey. Getting off the Diet Coke was a lot harder for me.

I started drinking Tab when I was six or seven. The hard stuff, the kind with saccharin in it. I tried Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Free and other diet sodas but none of them had the punch that Tab did. When Diet Coke was released in 1982 I made the switch and never looked back.  It was an expensive habit and one that wasn’t all that healthy. At the height of my addiction I was probably drinking 6 cans a day. So I quit and started drinking tea. I had headaches and was crabby for several days but once I got through that it wasn’t so bad.

And then I caught a cold.

There is something about the bubbles in a pop that just seem to clear my head. So when I asked for him to pick up a 7 up or Sprite what I really wanted him to get me was a Diet Coke. I was jonesing what can I say.

He returned with the asked for 7 up. He placed it on the coffee table and went down to his room. He was still upset with me for losing it in his direction. We were having alone time apparently.

I think I might have cried a little when I saw that it was not a Diet Coke. I left it there and didn’t open it because I just didn’t want a 7 up.

A few minutes later the daughter came in and saw the 7 up, she asked if she could have some. Sure, I didn’t want it, I wanted Diet Coke. Drink up, I’m just going to wallow for a bit longer.

She asked if I could open it for her so I grabbed it off the coffee table and twisted it open.

It exploded all over the couch, the blanket I was wrapped in and the shirt and sweater I was wearing.

I made a few assumptions in that moment.

None that I am proud of, but nonetheless I made them and went downstairs to accuse my son of shaking the bottle of pop vigorously before he gave it to me.

He didn’t and he didn’t like the idea that I would think he would do such a thing. And he was still smarting from out last conversation.

He hit the wall.

The next morning when I noticed his hand and suggested we go to the doctor he refused.  We both blamed me for his stupidity. I gave him a brace to wear but said we should really go to the doctor.

Eventually the swelling went down, and the bruises went away. He could use his hand for most everything but lifting something with any weight to it was painful and he was unable to bend his hand back at all. Last night he decided that maybe we ought to have it looked at.

So off to the doctor we went this morning.

They took an x-ray and confirmed that it was indeed broken. I don’t remember the name of the bone but the doctor said it is one of the bones that takes the longest to heal. The doctor offered him three options.

Do nothing

Have surgery and place a screw in the bone

Wear a cast for the next 12 weeks

I was shocked at how much the doctor pushed the second option. He said if he had a broken wrist he would have the surgery without thinking twice. Of course he is a doctor who performs surgeries for a living. 12 weeks without being able to do his job might put a big crimp in his pocket book. My son doesn’t perform surgeries, he makes pizza and he plays video games.

I decided on the cast. I can do that because I am his mother and for one more year I get to make these decisions for him.

Having a cast was actually okay he decided. He could have all his friends sign his cast which would be much better than just signing his arm. We were escorted into a room where the doctor’s assistant, a man who had no sense of humor, would apply the cast.

My son had a smile his face the whole time his arm was getting wrapped. He was giddy with excitement about having a cast. Go figure.

He ought to get the cast off about the same time he gets his braces off.

We made another appointment for two weeks from now and left.

Before we were even a block away my son realized all the things he will not be able to do easily or at all now that his right hand is completely set in a cast. Video games will be challenging, texting will take twice as long, writing notes for school or taking a test will be extremely difficult. He did get the waterproof cast so taking a shower should be easier, though washing his hair and other parts of his body is going to be awkward. He didn’t mention it to me, but I am pretty sure that other thing that teenage boys do with their dominant hand will be challenging at best.

He is just going to have to become ambidextrous.

I refuse to talk about Tiger Woods, the Masters or his cheating. I will say this however, the editors of Vanity Fair should be ashamed of themselves. I know they want to sell magazines, something few of us buy anymore, but don’t they even for a minute, consider Tiger Woods’ wife Elin or their children? I think not.

Moving on.

Do you know who this is?

I didn’t until last week. Now he is all I hear about.

My daughter is in love with Justin Bieber. She’s only in first grade. I don’t think I had my first crush until I was in third grade but I guess they grow up a lot faster now.  She is already talking about their wedding.

My first love was Donnie Osmond. I was also convinced that if he just noticed me he would fall madly in love with me and we would be married and live happily every after. And then I fell in love with Shaun Cassidy whom I was also sure would find me irresistible once he met me.

I’m actually relieved that nothing every developed between Donnie and myself. Our political views are not compatible, we could never see eye to eye on religion, I wouldn’t under any circumstance had as many kids as he wanted and he looks funny with all that plastic surgery. I dodged a bullet on that one.

Shaun Cassidy on the other hand would have been a great catch. He still looks cute, he’s an amazing writer and he hasn’t gotten into any trouble since he was a pop star, at least none that I am aware.

I’m not prepared for puppy love yet. I don’t know how to handle it except to not make a big deal out of it. When I told my mother about my love of Donnie and Shaun she belittled it considerably. She called it puppy love, and basically made fun of me for having a crush on someone who would never notice me in a million years. Yeah maybe, but only because I lived in flyover country and unless my parents were willing to take me to Los Angeles I wasn’t going to meet either on of them.  They weren’t.

I’m sure Justin will be the first in a long line of crushes my daughter has, especially since they are churning out these young stars much faster than they did when I was a kid. YouTube and Facebook have made stars out of people who wouldn’t normally get the kind of exposure necessary to become a one hit wonder at most.

For now, I am going to try to get excited with my daughter when she plays one of his videos or one of his songs comes on the radio. Why not? Just because his voice hasn’t changed yet and it sounds like fingernails on a blackboard to me doesn’t mean that I can’t get wrapped up in the love as well.

Last week I had a parent/teacher conference for my daughter.  A standard conference, she hasn’t done anything to get into trouble. We’d known about the conference for a few weeks and we, as in the daughter, had been pretty worried about the meeting. That she was so concerned about the conference made me a little worried but I figured if she was really in trouble I would have had a note or something and there hasn’t been any. Daughter has been asking for the last couple of weeks if I plan to ground her after the parent/teacher conference so I wasn’t going into it expecting to hear rave reviews.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she is doing extremely well.  She is excelling in all of her coursework.

I was not surprised to learn that she has turned into the class clown and that she chats a little too much.

We aren’t here today to discuss my daughter’s mastery of first grade, however.

During the review of her homework I learned the answer to this problem:

Remember this? If you don’t you can catch up here.

I received a whole bunch of really great answers but none of them were any better than her answer, which was wrong.

The answer is:

|||||..

Apparently the | represents 10 and the . represents 1. There is also a square which represents 100. The teacher even showed me the plastic toys that the kids used to figure out the problem.

Too bad she never sent home the directions.

When I asked her the answer to this problem specifically, and I told her that I didn’t get it, her response to me was:

“Well, she should know how to do it.”

To fully appreciate her response you really need to read the original post if you haven’t already.

After I learned the answer to the problem I mentally spaced out, the rest really didn’t matter to me all that much. I was told about my daughter’s new found sarcasm to which I laughed (inappropriately) and I reminded that she is a wee bit stubborn. Like I didn’t know that already.

There was no grounding, no need for it but if there had, I wouldn’t have because I was so tickled to finally learn the answer to this stupid first grade math problem that had been bothering me for at least six weeks.

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Today would have been my daughter’s 18th birthday.  Not the little one who keeps me on my toes but my first born daughter, Abby Annette.

I was going to write a post like this last year but my son totaled my car four hours after getting his drivers license and I ended up posting about that. You can read it here if you want.

Abby Annette was diagnosed with spina bifida and anencephaly about a week before she was born. She never had a chance.

I had been experiencing contractions that were strong enough to bring me to the hospital but like a car that makes a noise until you bring it to the mechanic they stopped as soon as I got to the hospital. After the third trip down there and seeing how big I was the doctor decided to do an ultrasound.

Because I had been down to the hospital so many times, and it was getting to be routine, I sent my husband off to his meeting. I could tell something was wrong by the look on my doctor’s face but he wanted to wait until my husband returned. I’m sure you all know I wasn’t going to stand for that.

I heard the words and the explanation and I understood that my daughter was going to die. I however, was not going to cry at that moment. I would later but I knew if I let go I wouldn’t be able to stop. I bit my lip and started singing a song in my head. A song we must have heard on the way down to the hospital. Justified and Ancient by KLF featuring Tammy Wynette of all things. I didn’t like the song and I could only remember the chorus, and I didn’t quite “get” the lyrics. In fact to this day I have no idea what the song is about. All I know is that it distracted me enough to keep me from losing it.

All bound for Mu Mu Land
All bound for Mu Mu Land
(hey)
(hey hey)
All bound for Mu Mu Land (justified)
(hey hey)
All bound for Mu Mu Land

I thought it was Moo Moo Land. Which struck me as somewhat amusing.

When my husband arrived I told him what was happening. The doctor came in and told us that for now the contractions had stopped but due to the circumstances they wouldn’t try to stop them. They told me I could go into labor at any time. I asked if I could drink and they said yes.

On the way home I made my husband stop at the gas station to pick up a pack of cigarettes for me, then I made him stop at the liquor store.

When we got home we started making phone calls. I made one call. I called my father and told him what was going on. We lived next door to my parents, if I made the call in my kitchen and my father picked up in the kitchen I could see him. I told him what the doctors had told me, that the baby had spina bifida and anencephaly and that she would most likely die within minutes of birth.

My father was a doctor. He questioned me about the diagnosis. He wanted to make sure they had said anencephaly rather than hydrocephaly. Hydrocephaly is an abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain, it is a common companion of spina bifida but it is treatable and the baby can live. With anencephaly the child is born without a forebrain and can not live. I explained that I had not gotten the diagnosis wrong.

That was the first time I had ever heard my father use the word “fuck”.

I asked my father to make the calls to the rest of the family. I didn’t have it in me to explain to everyone. I also asked him to tell my mother even though he suggested I do it. I couldn’t deal with her at that moment. My mother had short term memory loss as well as other brain damage from a stroke when she was 29. I couldn’t tell her the sad news and then tell her again and again and then comfort her for not being able to comfort me.

About ten minutes after hanging up with my father my brother called me. He didn’t say much, just that it sucked and then we sat there on the phone for about 15 minutes not saying anything. There was just nothing to say but it was comforting to not say anything with him.

The next night my brother stopped by with a lasagna and his daughter. My husband was the gate keeper and tried to keep them out. His heart was in the right place, he thought seeing my niece, who was only a year old at that time, might upset me. My brother wasn’t having any of it and forced his way in the house. My niece ran into my arms and though I did cry a little it was because she was such a wonderful sight to see. My niece and I had bonded from the moment she was born, I was the first person besides her parents to hold her. I was her aunt Nenny. Seeing her was and always is one of the best things in the world. They didn’t stay long but wanted to stop by to say hi. My brother mentioned that my sister in law was going to stop by a little later.

When my sister in law arrived we sat in the kitchen and smoked and drank. We cried too. I was playing a waiting game and drinking was probably not the best thing considering it relaxed me which prevented me from going into labor. I am forever thankful to my sister in law for sitting with me night after night. She had a family to care for, she had work, she had a life to get to but she spent each night of that week with me.

After a week and no contractions the doctor decided to induce labor. He started my on Pitocin. A lovely drug that makes your uterus contract. At the rate they were giving it to me they anticipated I would go into labor in about three days. Three days would have brought us to March 25th which happened to be my husband’s birthday. I suggested we wait a day or two to start the whole Pitocin routine but my husband said he didn’t mind if everything happened on his birthday. He was not convinced that it would necessarily happen on schedule.

The doctors and nurses had briefed us on how the delivery would most likely happen. If the baby was born alive they would do everything to make her comfortable but the general consensus was that she couldn’t feel anything. They said she wouldn’t be able to live more than a minute or two beyond birth.

The baby had been active the whole time. I could feel her kicking and hiccuping up until the night before I went into labor. I was sitting in my kitchen by myself. I hadn’t felt any kicks for an hour at least. I tried to make her move by pushing on my stomach, something that had always worked before, but it didn’t work this time. I knew she had died. I didn’t tell my husband. I don’t think he was home, but I am not sure at this point. I just didn’t.

The next morning we went into the hospital for another dose of medication and the doctor decided to hurry things up just a bit more by inserting seaweed sticks into my cervix. Apparently the sticks then expand and dilate the cervix causing labor to begin. I’m not entirely sure how they work because as he was inserting them he broke my water. Because of the birth defects I was carrying a lot of extra fluid. As bad as things were at that moment it felt wonderful to get rid of some of the pressure I was feeling.

I was in active labor for no more than half an hour. There were no monitors wrapped around my belly. The whole room was incredibly quiet. After she was born the nurse cleaned her up and took her foot prints. I was checked to make sure everything was okay. At some point the priest from our church came in the room. I wasn’t fully there. I was in Mu Mu Land. Trying to hold it together so I could get out of the maternity ward and go home.

Shortly after a nurse came in and dressed Abby Annette in an outfit with yellow bunnies on it and some booties that had been knit by someone who hung out at the hospital or something like that. I couldn’t understand why she was dressing her up until she pulled out the camera. She posed the baby with toys, in my arms with my husband standing beside me and in several other positions. It was surreal. I didn’t want pictures. The nurse said maybe not now, but one day I might. She took four or five Polaroids and two rolls of film.

I didn’t want pictures. At that moment I just wanted to move on. In my minds eye my daughter was an adorable little redheaded girl. In reality she was not. She had many birth defects that are probably part of the whole neural tube defect. Her spine had not closed, she had very long limbs but this was an optical illusion due to the fact that her head didn’t exist beyond her face.  She had what the nurse called a cleft pallet. In reality she had two mouths. I kept laughing because the phrase a face only a mother could love kept running through my head.

And I did love her. I knew her as only a mother could. I had already planned her life out. She would be smart, funny, beautiful. She would grow up to do the things that she had a passion for. She wouldn’t settle for anything less.

We tried to donate her organs but they were too deformed to be of any use.  After making arrangements with the funeral director we were allowed to go home. Because the hospital was expanding the regular entrance was closed. To get out we had to walk through the children’s hospital, the cancer ward. As bad as things were at that moment I knew they worse for someone else.

The next week, hell, the next month, was a blur. We made all the appropriate arrangements. I received flowers and cards from friends and family and from people I didn’t even know. I received one of the nicest and most heartfelt cards from the cashier at our neighborhood grocery store. The kindness of people never ceases to amaze me.

I held it together for the most part. I was busy making arrangements, canceling my baby shower and just trying to get through each day without screaming at any pregnant women or moms walking down the street with baby strollers. I probably could have used a little therapy at that time.

My husband and I decided to bury Abby Annette in the cemetery where his mother was buried. This was one of the few things that made me happy. I had never met my husbands mother, she died when he was 15, but it gave me great comfort to know that my daughter would be with her grandmother. She couldn’t be buried next to her, she had to be buried in the childrens section of the cemetery but it was close enough. As a mother I felt as if I had let her down. I wasn’t sure what I believed as far as an after life but I felt horrible that I wasn’t there with her to take care of her. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t know how to be her mother given the circumstances. Having her grandmother there helped a lot.

My husband and I didn’t talk about any of this. Our marriage was already ending I just refused to see it. I had held it together pretty well I thought. I knew I would eventually have myself a good cry, maybe for a couple of days, but I wanted to get through all the ceremony first. I didn’t want to make anyone more uncomfortable around me.

We had a small funeral, just immediate family. I don’t recall what the priest said, I wasn’t really listening. I was just singing the Mu Mu song to myself. When my sister in law saw the casket, the tiny little casket, she lost it and started crying. This set me off and suddenly we were both bawling our eyes out. Something my stoic family just didn’t do. Of course it set all the women off who were in attendance.

I don’t remember much that followed the funeral. Life returned to normal for everyone else but me it seemed. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had quit work in anticipation of being a mom. I could have gone back to work but that didn’t seem like something I was ready to do. I decided to get pregnant again. My husband wanted to wait but I wasn’t going to not be a mother for long if I could help it.

He didn’t understand. When mother’s day rolled around a couple of months later he didn’t get why I was so mad at him for not making any kind of deal about it.

“But you aren’t a mother” was his defense.

I’m pretty sure I was. I gave birth to a child, I named her, I buried her. That makes me a mother in my book. He didn’t understand and really wanted to wait but when we had to put down my dog only a few weeks later I think he knew, as I did, that having another child just might save my life. And it did.

My son was born less than a year later.

If you are still with me I’m wrapping it up.

Like the bag I have of all the cards I received and the rolls of film I never developed I never know where to put her in my life. When people ask me how many children I have, I tell them two. I don’t mention Abby Annette because for the most part it isn’t something I want to explain. It makes people uncomfortable and it makes them sad for me. When I get to know people better I have no problem telling them, it just isn’t something for acquaintances.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my first born child. It isn’t something my ex and I discuss but it is a bond that we have between us. My children know they have a sister but it isn’t something that comes up in everyday conversation. Life goes on.

Around the time that Abby Annette died, in fact only a few days before, Eric Clapton’s 4 year old son died when he fell off a balcony. I don’t recall it being in the news at the time, though I am sure it was. He wrote the song Tears in Heaven for his son. That song pretty much sums up everything I have tried to convey here.

And it’s much better than Mu Mu Land.

* It’s funny what no longer seems pertinent but I should say that the neural tube defects could have been caught in a series of tests in the first trimester. I chose not to have the test. I figured I was 25 and healthy and if something was wrong we would deal with it. I never imagined that they would or could discover something like this. I was thinking about Downs Syndrome. I knew if I took a test and it revealed something was wrong I would be faced with decisions I didn’t want to make, nor was I willing to make. When I found out I asked if they terminating the pregnancy was a possibility, if I could have a c-section. I was told that that would be considered a third term abortion which my doctor was not permitted to perform. He could induce labor but he could not terminate the pregnancy. I was also told that a c-section was not a possibility because there was no reason for one. It was shortly, only a few months later, that it became public knowledge that taking folic acid supplement greatly decreased the risks of these kinds of neural tube defects. Now breads and other foods are supplemented with folic acid. I should also note that I had had a miscarriage before this pregnancy. Knowing that, I was put on progesterone to help maintain the pregnancy. I had been on Clomid to get pregnant and I was also on Lipitor at the time of conception. I don’t know if there is any correlation to taking a statin and birth defects but they now they say if you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant you shouldn’t take them. While in the hospital I was approached by an ambulance chasing lawyer. I told him to go to hell.

Please don’t feel sad for me. I got 8 1/2 months with my daughter which is something no one else had. If this hadn’t happened I would not have my son who was conceived five weeks after Abby’s birth. I don’t know why things happen I just know that sometimes they do. I have been blessed with two wonderful children and I have an angel looking over me. Not everyone can say that and I feel pretty lucky.

One more side note. When the diagnosis was made my brother suggested that I shouldn’t bother playing the lottery since I already hit my one in a million chance on something. Actually the odds were much better something like 1 in a 1000 if I recall correctly. In those five weeks between pregnancies my ex and I went to the opening of a casino in our area. I hit the jackpot three times winning over $10k. I haven’t bothered to play ever since.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

My daughter wanted to wear green today. Her wardrobe consists mainly of pink and red but I recently bought her a green shirt and a pair of pants. However, because she spends ever other weekend with her father I wasn’t sure the green outfit was here.

I dug through her dresser and thankfully located both shirt and pants. I was happily surprised to see that the green on both items matched. I really thought I had done well and also dodged a bullet.

“That’s not green” she said when I presented the clothes to her.

“Sure it is” I insisted.

“No, that’s greenish blue”

I took a closer look and sure enough the shirt and pants were teal. Still close enough in my book.

The daughter was not having any of it and was getting ready to cry.  At seven she is far too concerned with what other people think, specifically one little girl who will grow up to be a Mean Girl in high school, a leader of a clique.

I am surprised I haven’t bought more green clothing for her. She is a redhead and redheads wear green. Except my daughter’s favorite color is red so that is what we have. When she was younger I could get her anything I wanted, now that isn’t the case.

My daughter is a redhead but my son is a toehead. Actually right now his hair is jet black but that’s from a bottle. He is the only non redhead in the family. All of my nieces have red hair. When my son was little I dressed him in green, red and yellow. The same colors my nieces were wearing. At one point my sister in law remarked that I was dressing him as if he were a redhead.

Interestingly my son didn’t see himself dressed in shades of green. In every picture he drew of himself he is wearing a red shirt and blue pants, with yellow hair.

When my daughter came along I wasn’t as interested in dressing her like a redhead. Dressing her like a girl was much more entertaining. Her clothing was frilly, it had bows and beads, it was pink. It has remained that way ever since. The only other green item of clothing is a holiday dress in velvet. Not practical since it is not Christmas and it is two sizes too small.

We were running out of time and I had to get her moving. I told her I didn’t care what she wore but she needed to get something on quickly. She suggested we stop at Target and get a shirt with a few shamrocks on it. Luckily Target wasn’t open yet.

Daughter has recently decided that she needs glasses. She isn’t willing to get a second opinion however and is happy to wear my glasses. She has been begging me to let her wear them to school for the last couple of weeks.

I made a compromise.

“You can wear a pair of my glasses to school if you get dressed right now. I think I might even have a pair of green ones you can wear”

I have gobs of glasses. My father was an ophthalmologist and I used to work in his office.  Save for one pair of prescription sunglasses, I have never lost a pair. I started digging through the junk drawer (which I have still not organized) looking for a pair of green glasses I was wearing around the time of my brother’s first marriage 20 some years ago. I couldn’t find the green ones but I did manage to find the red ones. Remember glasses in the 80′s? The lenses are so big they cover your cheeks. That’s what I had.

I tried to pass them off as unique. No one is wearing big glasses. You wear these and everyone will want a pair. I also tried to sell her on transition lenses. I told her to put them in the sun and they would turn into sunglasses. They didn’t work. I don’t know if they wore off or what but they remained regular old glasses.

She bought it.

Either my kid will be  the trailblazer in her St. Patrick’s Day teal and huge red non transitioning glasses or she is going to come home in tears.

Thankfully, it’s Wednesday and her dad picks her up.

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There is this tree on the boulevard in front of my house. It is going to fall. The city doesn’t think so but the general consensus in the neighborhood is that it will and when it does it will fall on my house. It has been ripping apart for the last couple of years and now the squirrels have made a home in the trunk. When the ground thaws and the leaves come out it will fall. This will be the fourth boulevard tree on this block that has fallen since I moved here three years ago. If it does fall it will not be the first time a tree has targeted me.

When my children were infants I played the game Imagine the Worst Possible Scenario. If you aren’t familiar with it, it goes something like this:

You bring your brand new baby home from the hospital and then you panic because even though you baby proofed the house with things like outlet plugs and doorknob doo hickeys that make it impossible for an adult to open a door, you haven’t secured the chandeliers. So what that they have been hanging from the ceiling for decades and have given no indication that they will suddenly fall? They are only held up there by a thin piece of wire and maybe some decorative metal.  Now that you have this brand new baby you realize you are so much more likely to be robbed at gunpoint, tied up and tortured by bad guys. The cat must go because everyone knows that cats sneak into the crib in the middle of the night and suck the life out of babies, which really isn’t a problem because as a new parent you vigilantly watch your child sleep for the first year anyway. The dog will think the brand new baby is a chew toy so he must be kenneled. You can’t place your slumbering baby, carrier and all, on the table because it will topple over and kitchen counter tops are a no go too. The refrigerator could kick on and the vibration which resonates through the cabinets (even though no one can actually feel it) will push the baby and carrier off and onto the floor. The only safe place for the baby is in the car because you have stuck a Baby on Board decal onto your back window.

Admittedly it has been a while since I played this game. The new kid smell is long gone and I don’t worry about those kinds of things anymore.

Until my neighbor pointed out the tree. Now it is all I can think about.

When the tree hits it will hit my daughter’s bedroom. So daughter has been sleeping in my room for the last few nights.

It’s been one big slumber party.

Last night I let her watch TV before going to sleep. I did it because I didn’t want to stay up all night and that was her plan since she didn’t have school the next day. Usually she falls asleep by nine but not last night. TV was the only thing I could think of that would have at least prevented her from writing another book or paper macheing the dog.

While she was watching TV in my bed she started to play with her loose tooth, I was almost asleep when she announced that she had lost another tooth. Thankfully the tooth letting has gotten easier since the first one finally came out.

In my half awake state I told her to put it under the pillow. I figured the tooth fairy would have a much easier time of it since she was already so close. My plan was to wait for her to fall asleep and then take care of business. Guess who fell asleep first?

At 5am I sprung awake. Tooth Fairy!

Shit.

I crept out of bed and went to my purse. I don’t usually carry much cash but I had a few ones and a five. I grabbed a bill and shoved it under the pillow. I searched for the tooth but couldn’t find it. It occurred to me that maybe she didn’t lose a tooth, I hadn’t actually seen the tooth since it was dark and I was half asleep. Maybe she was testing the tooth fairy. My son had done this, he lost a tooth, didn’t tell anyone and the tooth fairy didn’t come. This was actually very handy since I didn’t have to pretend anymore.

I searched for the tooth one more time, considered taking the bill back but decided not to risk it. I got up, got a cup of coffee and went into the living room.

Daughter woke up an hour later and came into the living room. She was pissed off.

“The tooth fairy didn’t leave anything” she said.

“Oh yes she did” I said as I stomped into the bedroom to investigate the situation.

I looked under the pillow, found the missing tooth, pocketed it but didn’t see the bill I left.

WTF?

I started throwing pillows all over the place in search of the money. I know I left a dollar. I couldn’t have dreamed it.

I lift up the pillow that makes up the headboard. A left over body pillow from when I was pregnant. It was under there thankfully. However, in my half sleep state I had grabbed a five and not a one, out of my purse.

Damn.

For a brief moment I considered making the switch except my purse was in the other room and daughter had just grabbed the five.

This just raises the bar for the next tooth.

When the tree comes down and the city is forced to replace my roof, I am adding the extra $4 on to the tab.

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