About surgery:

Everyone means well when they find out your kid is going into surgery. But sometimes it doesn’t come out well.

For example …

My sister said, “I wonder if this surgery is going to change him.”

(that THUD! you hear is my heart hitting the floor.)

What she meant, later explained, was that she wondered if he was waking up at night because he was in pain because of this. So she thought having this surgery would make him consistently sleep through the night. Which, uh, he HAS been doing. But whatever.

This is, was, whatever, my biggest fear about the procedure. I didn’t want my sweet, gentle boy to be afraid of things. To wonder, every time we get in the car, if it meant he would be taken away from us. To think that I wouldn’t be there for him. I didn’t want it to set us back in our speech progress, our sleep progress. In short, I didn’t want Grayson to change at ALL because of this.

Not even if it meant that he would wake up after general anesthesia and suddenly start spouting poetry.

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Then there’s my mother in law.

You know, sometimes she confuses me. On the surface, she is kind and sweet and generous. But look a little deeper and you’ll see that she is uptight and controlling and very, very selfish. She wants to be the center of the universe, but she’s very subtle about it. You’d never really know it if you met her. You wouldn’t believe me.

But PK will back me up.

Anyway, so we told her (and the rest of PK’s family) about Gray’s surgery on Sunday at dinner. And she got all teary eyed and came over and (intrusively) hugged me. And held on for dear life and softly, gently, said things like “it’s going to be ok” and “he’s going to make it through” and “it’s harder on you than it will be on him.” All stuff that writing here looks like oh, how NICE she is!

But it wasn’t like that at all.

I didn’t want or need her sympathy. It was like she was TRYING to get me to cry. She wanted me to be able to turn to her for comfort, and I didn’t need or want her comfort. She, in essence, was making it about HER, not me, and certainly not Grayson. She could’ve said those things in a matter-of-fact voice from the other side of the room. She didn’t need to press herself against me, holding me there for long, long minutes.

The best part is that when she pulled away, SHE had tears in her eyes. And I was all like, “don’t cry!” and she said, “oh, I’m NOT (after making sure that I was not crying); it’s just allergies!”

Like, she wanted this beautiful mother/daughter moment. And I ruined it.

On seeing someone again when you haven’t seen them in a long time:

We went to a, well it really was a big PARTY, on Tuesday night. I don’t want to tell too much about what it was or was for, but let’s just say it was an event in which I saw many, MANY people I used to work with. People I liked and people I didn’t like. And some people I’m still friends with.

OK, so anyway, at the party. One of my good friends was there. She and I email all the time, but we rarely get to see each other because of our schedules. We hugged fiercely and she exclaimed: “Oh! You’re hair has gotten so long!”

Which, of course, it HAS. But um … isn’t that a stupid thing to say? I TOLD her I was growing it out. I dunno. OK, moving on then, because I realize that it just sounds childish to complain about something nice my friend said.

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Other people at the party hadn’t seen Grayson in nearly a year or longer. Oh, there were a few people there who’d seen him more recently, but most people hadn’t. If I had a dollar for every time someone said this next comment, I would’ve been able to buy gas this morning: “He’s gotten so big!“

Um, seriously? What were you expecting? He’s not going to stay an infant forever, dudes. He’s almost two.

On children:

Finally — finally — I cannot TELL you how many people, recently, have said to us. “Oh, he’s so cute!” (me: “thank you.” them) “How old is he?” (me, smiling fondly: “almost two.” them, SHOCKED) “HE’S SO BIG!“

Yes, thank you. I have a giant baby. Have you SEEN his parents lately? We are NOT small people. We don’t expect our son to be small.

Then, the person who makes the comment invariably says something like, “He must be off the charts!” or “What are you feeding him?” or “He’s going to be HUGE when he’s older.”

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY do people feel they must comment about this? He doesn’t look all that big to me. But maybe my eyes are skewed. What’s a normal almost-two-year-old supposed to look like? Grayson doesn’t look fat. He’s well-proportioned. He doesn’t look like a four-year-old. So what’s the big deal?

People are dumb.

 
giant baby is sad he will have to eat you to keep up strength NOM NOM NOM