Of Baby Food, Concerns with Smiley, accidents, and Mango Baby

I love baby food.

It's not just a cute opening line, it happens to be the truth. Mix up some rice cereal with a touch of soy formula and maybe the odd hint of mango juice and booya!. I wind up eating more of it than the kid - and in fact, I'm often asked to finish off the bowl.

It's better than Mickey D's baby!

I mention this because we are finally begining to get Baby into the swing of eating solids. For awhile she was good with experimenting with it, then went through this long period where she turned up her nose at cereal.

Now, it's chomp chomp. Oh, her first tooth cracked the surface too - yesterday the bottom middle tooth, sorta/kinda on the right side, broke through. About time I say.

Meanwhile Smiley is down with a double ear infection. I thought the ear tubes were going to prevent this sort of thing but here we go again. It tears me up thinking about all the days that boy has lived in a world of hushed and muted sounds. His speech still isn't up to par and while we have that big panel evaluation scheduled for March 5th we've yet to hear back on when his first psych examinations will take place.

And I'm worried.

Today I put on a DVD for him and left the room to go change the wash, then do this or that. I could see him sitting quietly on the chair, staring at the TV. No big deal, not in America at least. But when I finally went back in the living room I noticed the DVD had never advanced past the 'menu' screen.

He'd been staring intently at the same static picture for ten minutes.

That frightens me.

So does his seemingly random mental departure for parts unknown. He can understand complex directions and sometimes even anticipate your request. . .and then there are times when you hand him some pajama's and say 'put them in your dresser'', even point to reinforce the idea, and he goes and puts them in the corner of the room or in the linen cupboard, sincere as all can be that he did what you asked.

He is my only son, the last of my name, and in my heart of hearts I think something is wrong, and the knowledge is tearing me up.

Oh, and get this - the doc also says he has ringworm on his hip!?? Despite what I thought it isn't an actual worm/animal/insect, but a bacterial growth. In fact, his prescribed medicine, which we dilegently picked up from the pharmacist, turned out to be nothing more than a package of athelete's foot cream with a prescription label slapped on for twice the cost of the same thing two aisles down.

For an ox that boy sure can ring up the doctor bills.

* * *

On the way to the doc Lisa lost control of the van for a second and slammed into a snowbank. Luckily no one was hurt and there was no mechanical/structural damage to the van, but the bumper is cracked and the grill knocked in. It could've been a lot worse.

It got me thinking about YaYa's time in K5. She went on a field trip to the museum with her class and when she came home I asked her how the trip went.

"Fine," she said, " 'cept for hitting that car on the freeway"

Yup - her school bus had hit another car on the freeway, tossing several kids around and leaving the class marooned on the bus for two hours while the police and emergency services sized up the scene.

Again, no one hurt beyond the odd and random bruise, at least on the bus (I think the same for the car, as I have the impression it was a glorified, if significant, fender bender). Still, we were we furious! My kindergartner gets into an accident on the freeway and she's the one who breaks the news to us?

Can you believe that??

In closing I want to point out how proud I am that we have yet another baby that's a fan of mango juice (mixed in with cereal at this point - the older kids drink it straight).

When YaYa was an infant our Pakistian neighbors (the same ones who once shared a dish of goat with me) were insistent that she be exposed to mango, which at the time seemed very exotic and foreign to me. She loved it so much she eventually came to be known as 'Mango Baby'  (or more phonetically 'maaango babee!')

It's nice to have that quirky preference hold out through all four of my kids.

 

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Tags: baby food, Baby, Mango, Smiley, YaYa, bus, accident