AND EVEN MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY

"Mommy and Daddy have seen real moose poop and it's HUGE!"

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY

"You can pee on the jellyfish, but you can't poo on the jellyfish."

See, Beast has a couple of toy jellyfish that he uses as targets to...oh, never mind.

SO LONG, DOC

Paul Newman, rest in peace.

FLYING SOLO

Her Awesomeness was booked at her school's open house, and that meant me getting to show off my culinary skills for Beast and Noodle, who are generally skeptical if I so much as pick up a fork even though I've fancied myself at least competent in the kitchen.

In other words, yay for Lunchables and pizza delivery.

But the meal and the bathtime and bedtime went off with a minimum of drama and squawking, something I figure can be repeated on a regular basis so long as "once every six months" counts as regular.

ON THE KIDS PLAYLIST

Beast:

Black Coffee In Bed - Squeeze
Cheap Sunglasses - ZZ Top

Noodle:

The Pigtown Fair - Tom Paxton
Dear Mr. Fantasy - Traffic

Said track I now have to track down for a new riding-home-from-school-with-Mom CD, since Dave Mason (once upon a time with Traffic) played a free concert in our town this evening and she and Beast were diggin' it.

AND APPARENTLY I'M OKAY

Noodle and Beast were fascinated by the wires and electrodes and whatnot coming off the Holter monitor I was wearing yesterday. 24 hours of that attached to me was what I got for mentioning offhandedly to the doctor that every three or four weeks I have heart palpitations just as I'm drifting off to sleep. No biggy, sez he, but he had me wear the device as a precaution nonetheless. Which means that YOWCH the nurse OWWWW yesterday ARGHH pulled off YEOWWW seven AIYAYAYAYAAAGH electrodes from my MOMMY chest hair KELLYCLARKSON.

And supposedly I'm fine, though I could stand losing two or three stone. Hard to do what with me being married to a culinary genius whose family hails from the land that invented Molson and poutine.

FOR NOW, THE SARLACC IS SATED

Five waffles the Beast ate tonight, plus a couple of eggs and half a cantaloupe. A growth spurt he is having, yes.

Om nom nom nom nom.

I'M NOT DEAD...I THINK I'LL GO FOR A WALK...I FEEL HAPPY

Here's a change of pace: I'm taking me to the doctor's today. Overdue for a physical is what I am. Yeah, count me as another one of the geniuses who snapped out of it and called their doctors after Tim Russert dropped dead right there in the newsroom. And seeing as I spend much of my working life (like right now) in the newsroom I'd rather not go out Tim's way, and am hoping for something more along the lines of "shot by a jealous boyfriend at the age of 124."

Besides, as George Burns said, I can't die - I'm booked. It's my responsibility to repeatedly tell my daughter she's the most beautiful creature ever to walk the earth (well, she is) and make megaloud fart noises on my son's tummy.

HER REMISSION, YOUR MISSION

Great news for Noodle: her Henoch-Schonlein purpura is finally officially in remission after two and a half years of treatments and medication, and her kidney function is back to normal, and we can take her off the blood-pressure medicine.

Her whothewhat? is in remission?

Don't worry; it's what we said too after the doctors told us that she didn't have leukemia, but she did have this disease that, to the eye, presents almost exactly like leukemia, but is so obscure it needs a name in German and Latin. It ain't fun. To oversimplify, your kid gets a cold, and then a week or so after it's over their immune system for unknown reasons is still looking for something to do, like it's got a case of the Reggie Hammonds: Let's see...what we can (mess) with next. And goes after the small blood vessels in the knees, ankles, elbows, intestines...and kidneys. It gets ugly on the inside and the outside (warning: graphic).

Flashback to spring '06. Most cases of HSP go away on their own in four to six weeks. No sweat, said Noodle's doctors. The kidneys are only affected in one out of ten cases.

Her kidneys were affected.

Still, not to worry - the kidneys only fail in one out of a hundred cases.

Um, yeah. Great. Bartender? Double scotch, straight. And a hug.

Those abdominal pains could be intussusception. Better get her up here.

We're in the spelling bee from hell now, too. Intussusception is when the intestine tries to fold in on itself. Potentially fatal if things get jammed up and infected. And "up here" was the emergency room up at Albany Medical Center, the closest place equipped to deal with Noodle's situation. It's a super place on a Friday night. Only one gunshot wound that evening. In the end, it was just some nasty inflammation down there so we got to go back home.

But we got real familiar with Albany Med over the next couple of years. Kidney biopsy (CHRIST, THAT'S A HUGE NEEDLE), blood tests, urine tests, yummy barium-schmutz drinks, x-rays, weekends of infusion therapy with massive steroid doses, delightful hospital cuisine, and our little girl was a champ through the whole thing. We almost forget that she was just two when all this started, and now...fingers crossed, everybody...it may just really, truly, be over and done with, maybe, we hope.

At any rate, if you're somebody like us who gets to 9/11 and gets the impression they should be doing something useful to the rest of society on the day but damned if they know what, you could do worse than to drop a little something in the bucket over at the Vasculitis Foundation, which does research on HSP and a passel of related diseases in the charming vasculitis family. If that doesn't strike your fancy, try www.mygooddeed.org, which can point you to local charities who could always use a spot of help.

RESISTANCE...GROWING...WEAKER

Gaaaah, my day job is eyeing my recreational bloggage and saying "how YOU doin', baby?"

I promise to you that if when I give in to these base impulses I'll put the political stuff and other ranty things off on some other blog entirely, lest I destroy the goodwill built up with you and among my vast cadre of readers, who now number so many that they could easily fill a minivan.

DAY ONE

There goes our little Noodle, off to dazzle the rest of the world with her intellect.

And in the open space on the bottom goes "To not kick my baby brother even if he did wear my princess hat."


That was orientation day, only 90 minutes. The real first day was the next day. And away we go:


Here's Noodle on the bus. Not in the back with the hoods and greasers, not in the front with the goody two-shoeses. Just right:

I thought there was going to be drama and blubbering the first day, but nope. It's a lot different than when I headed off to kindergarten with a swat on the behind and a "See you when you're 17". Now there's an orientation assembly with parents and kids the first day, and us nervous parents can ask the teachers and principals whatever silly questions pop into our addled heads. I, for one, learned that there was nothing to the rumor that Padma Lakshmi was going to be the school's lunchlady this year. (Drat, said the dads.)

ONE OTHER THING ONLY PARENTS SAY

Well, Beast asked, so we had to answer:

No, you can't be a "peenie" for Halloween.

Only barely did we keep straight faces.

ON THE KIDS' PLAYLIST

Noodle: The Pigtown Fair - Tom Paxton

Beast: Tube Snake Boogie - ZZ Top

MORE THINGS ONLY PARENTS SAY

"You peed on me - you owe me bigtime."

"Master Shifu was a panda so it was okay for him to not wear pants."

"Daddy is not going to explain his boogers to you."

"Awww...my little boy mooned Fenway Park."

(Well, he did. From our 12th floor room at the Cambridge Marriott last month. Fat lot of good it did the Yankees.)

OH, THERE YOU ARE

Been swamped since last week - a couple weeks ago I banged my noggin on the five-foot-high door of our cheesy aluminum storage shed for the 187th time and said to Her Awesomeness never again. And so we bought a proper shed with human-sized doors and everything. Plus the new bookcase for the bedroom, and the new attic door to replace the old one that sounded like it was going to come crashing down at any moment, plus the new playset for the kids so we don't have to drop everything and go to the playground when they want to play outside, plus tomorrow is Noodle's first day of kindergarten, plus a cold has laid me out flat.

It all adds up to a shameful decline in posting quantity and quality. Now that school's back in session, I shall endeavor to improve.

Oh - here's something new. Mildly amusing T-shirts from my mildly amusing morning show:


make custom gifts at Zazzle
(...and if the Flash thingy ain't workin' right, go on over to Zazzle and search for "Obama parody" and it should come right up.)