Catfishing

It's National Turn-Off TV week and we are trying our best to keep the kids away from the television and computer. And it's hard. Seriously. Where did all these kids come from and why are they calling me "Mom?"

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of it. A lot. It's just that I can't figure out how to make dinner when they are nipping at my heels. I want to say, turn on PBS and leave me alone! But maybe this week is God's way of reminding me to donate to public television.

We've cooked together. Some of you may remember Nat's quest for strawberry pie at Christmas. Well, we got the strawberries, we made the pie. And you know what? Apparently what she really wanted was pumpkin.

But the cherry on the top of this week was getting Daniel up at 5:30 to go to the hospital for his adenoidectomy. I'm so not a morning person, and this is a trait I have passed onto my son. But I was pleasantly surprised when I went into his room, rubbed his back, and he sat straight up. "Is it time for Dr. Garside to take out my adenoids?"

So as we waited for his turn in the O.R., he was asked by many people what he was having done. "I'm getting my boogers out so I can breathe through my nose."

He was given yellow hospital socks, you know, the ill-fitting, non-skid ones with the grippy stuff on both sides. (Am I the only one who thinks that's weird to have it on both sides? Is it so you can turn them around if they get dirty? That's like turning your underwear inside out from the day before.) These socks would prove to be his most prized possession. For those of you who don't know, Dan's favorite color is yellow. And the yellow socks match the yellow rain boots. The yellow rain boots seem to match everything, or at least Dan thinks so, since he wears them with...everything. And he loved his new socks so much, he brought them for show and tell today.

Dan was given some Versed, which I have seen Eve take with little to no effect. However, this stuff worked great on Daniel, and after he spritzed on some Eau de Chill, he melted into a puddle of calm in my lap on the hospital bed. Normally he can't sit still and is always elbowing my face or kneading my stomach like a cat in an effort to get comfortable. With Versed, he would have been comfortable on a bed of rocks, or even a sofa bed! It was to my supreme disappointment that the hospital does not offer to-go cups of it.



The doctor came in and Dan asked what he was going to do with his adenoids after he took them out. "I'm going to go catfishing with them!" To which Dan would later repeat the story as, "Dr. Garside is going to take my adenoids out and give them to a fish cat because it has whiskers and eats yucky things!"

And after the surgery, the doctor told me Dan's adenoids were in fact quite yucky. Huge and nasty if I remember correctly. Maybe I'll skip the fried catfish dinner this weekend.

Daniel woke up completely disoriented and terrified of the tubes and leads taped to him, and his first instinct was to start disrobing. (I hope he doesn't start stripping when he gets that fight-or-flight response later in life.) It took a good while to calm him down enough where he would take one sip of juice so he could be disconnected from the IV, but it was done with the help of the yellow socks. The yellow socks await if you take a drink, Daniel!

I politely listened to the nurse go over the discharge instructions during Daniel's wailing. I almost pulled out my laminated cancer card to let her know she could speed things up. Sedation? Been there, done that, at least 15 times in the past six months. But I decided to pretend I was a normal parent who hasn't been through all of that other stuff and acted as though this was a very big deal and vowed to make sure he didn't participate in much physical activity for the remainder of the day while giving him Tylenol with codeine to relieve any discomfort.

Codeine naps are the best!