I pride myself on my apparent inability to get sick — flu, strep, stomach virus, all those common ailments that debilitate most of you mortals several times a year just pass me by. This viral untouchability could change now that there is a germy child in my life, but I always presumed that I have this super-immunity because I daily rode public transportation yet maintained a clean bill of health throughout my 20s and early 30s aside from 1 day of extreme fatigue, various crampy incidents that I will spare you, and a semi-yearly head cold that affects nothing but my sinuses. I thank genetics, because it sure ain’t clean living.

So this morning, I woke up feeling pleasantly revived from my weekend diversions. I went to the gym and labored moderately on the stepmill while watching MSNBC. I returned home, bantered with Mr. P over a light breakfast of toast, and drank some raspberry leaf tea to try and mitigate my crampy condition that I will, again, spare you (here’s a good time to mention that I am definitely not preggers.) Mr. P hurried out the door to work and A. woke up, and my son and I cuddled and tousled on my bed before the lure of his matchbox cars brought him into the living room. And that’s when my nausea started.

I can’t even remember the last time that I threw up when it was not alcohol-induced (that would be about ten years ago, not-coincidentally around the time I forever stopped drinking hard liquor). My mind immediately focused on the scallops that we ate for dinner last night, so I Skyped Mr. P, who said he felt fine. (And that also used to be another braggable feat — my iron stomach, which happily devours copious amounts of raw oysters and sushi, and held strong over a 2-year long Taco Bell addiction). Before I knew what was happening, I was rushing into the bathroom with my hand clamped over my mouth. A. ran after me, and became extremely upset when I managed to shut the door in his face before dropping to my knees and retching once into the toilet. He began crying in earnest as I huffed and puffed and sweated. He was still crying as I brushed my teeth, opened the bathroom door, and took him in my arms.

After the tears subsided, he began asking to go outside. The morning rain had tapered off and normally I would be pulling on his sneakers and getting ready to go to the playground, but my nausea persisted so I asked him if he’d like to watch a movie. Would he! I felt guilty turning to the electronic babysitter, but it was absolutely necessary. I went to my bed and curled up in a little ball, exhuasted and achy. Soon A. got bored of the movie and came to join me.

“Mommy and A. tenny!” he said, excitedly crawling onto the bed. (Tenny means sleep). He didn’t really want to sleep, of course. He wanted to cuddle and tousle some more. When he started to tickle my sides, I had to take his hand and say nicely but firmly, “A., stop. Mommy sick.”

“Mommy sick-ee?” he repeated. He doesn’t know this word, although he knows hurt, so I said “Hurt” and pointed to my stomach and head and repeated “Sick” before placing my head on the pillow.

“Mommy and A. sick-ee!” he sang out happily, cuddling up against me, touching my hair, slapping a sticker on my sleeve, poking my feet. “Mommy and A. sick-ee! Mommy and A. sick-ee! Mommy and A. sick-ee”

My child nearby, I allowed my consciousness to slip a little bit, although sleep is difficult when there’s a two-year old boy pushing matchbox cars along the length of your legs. The nausea began to intensify, intensify until it felt inevitable, and part of me wanted to purge the poison out but the other part of me dreaded that vile gushing in my mouth, and I stumbled into the bathroom and hunched over the toilet and vomited one, two, three times.

When I stopped, I looked up to find A. standing in the doorway, staring at me with curiosity and slight disgust. I took a cleansing spit into the toilet and slurred with a husky voice, “Mommy sick-ee.”

A. gave me a wary look. “A. no sick-ee,” he said, as if I was trying to make him do something unpleasant, like regurgitate the contents of his stomach. He shook his head firmly. “A. sick-ee, no. No.”

LB’s natural and spontaneous smile is beautiful. It melts my heart and brings me infinite joy. But it is nearly impossible to capture on film. Whenever a camera is pointed at LB., he becomes gravely solemn. When we prompt him to smile by flashing our teeth, he bears his teeth and locks his lips into a fierce grimace. Fiercely cute, that is.

Posing by the brook during a Memorial Day Hike

It looks as if he is trying to ward off Mr. P by threat of bite, but no, that is his camera smile.

Close-up of LB’s Smile

This weekend we’re moving to our new condo in a neighboring town! Because adopting a two-year just wasn’t hectic and exciting enough! As a co-worker told me, “Just think, the rest of your life will seem really boring compared to this.”

A. seems unfazed by how I’m slowly putting everything in our apartment into boxes, although we haven’t gotten to any of his stuff yet. I don’t think it will hit home until his toys are taped into a box and we unleash him in his new environs. Yesterday we did the final walk-through of our new place with the real estate agents and we took him on a tour, showing him where he would slept and take baths, and he seemed a little like “Okay, whatever, I’m going to run around now because there’s no furniture.”

Courtesy of the packing process, he has learned a new word, “box,” which he pronounces “bock-ess” (and when its plural, it’s “bock-ess-ess.”) He likes to get into the empty boxes and hide, goading me verbally into pretending I don’t know where he is and then “finding” him.

Fragile!

As part of the post-placement adoption process, we have to show our social worker 10 pictures of A., and as cute as he is, I don’t think that will be one of them.

Later that day he curled up into another box and took a nap. When he awoke, he was very proud of himself, pointing repeatedly at the box and saying “A. tenny” (which means sleep.) When Daddy came home, he saw the picture and said, “Is he pretending to be homeless?”

Sleeping in a Box

When A.’s not playing with boxes, he’s working on his English. He’s very eager to communicate with us.

• A. has mastered “hot” and “cold,” though he doesn’t understand “warm.”
• We’re working on the colors using play-doh.
• I used a book of photos of children playing happily at a day care to teach him “boy” and “girl,” a concept that he really got into and began pointing at all pictures of kids and labeling them as such; in doing so, I inadvertently created a third gender, “baby.”
• I also screwed up by demonstrating the concept of “bad” by slapping my wrist, which probably won’t help with his proclivity for hitting (though this behavior has lessened).
• He calls baths “bubbles” and knows that Mommy and Daddy take “showers.”
• One of his favorite words is “careful;” he using it to refer to the act of being careful as well as the effect of not being careful (e.g., dripping yogurt on his shirt — “A. no careful”) and if a situation is not as dangerous as Mommy and Daddy are telling him (e.g., standing on a chair and not falling –“careful no”).

So he’s definitely making an effort, but it’s hard. Yesterday he kept pointing to a surface scratch on his arm and I kept telling him it was “okay;” he pointed to a deeper scratch on my hand (that he made while flailing in bed) and said “Okay? Okay?” “No,” I smiled. “Not okay.”

5 weeks home and A.’s really starting to flourish. He seems very comfortable with us and with his surroundings, and the initial sensory overload has subsided to allow his natural toddler curiosity to satisfy its need to know, do, touch, and see everything. He’s thriving in his routine yet open to new experiences. And he has seemed to accept that he will have to learn English.

Routine:

7-8 am wake up. Some days he’s hard to wake up; other days he stares blankly at nothing for a few moments and then demands to do something (go outside/watch Barney/eat). He sleeps like a dream, rarely getting up in the middle of the night crying or for the bathroom. He sleeps on his stomach, with his legs tucked under him and his little bottom sticking out — truly a Child’s pose, like in yoga.

Sleeping in Mommy and Daddy's bed

8-9 am. Some mornings he’s not interested in food at all. We’ve had to start giving him daily medication that needs to be taken on an empty stomach, and since he refused to take it straight, we mix it with some orange juice and demand he drink the juice before he does or eats anything. Some days it takes 15 minutes to coax him to drink the juice; other days, an hour. I can only hope that the juice will become automatic because he needs to take the medicine for the next 6-9 months.

After he drinks the medicine juice, we’re supposed to wait an hour before giving him food, but that gives him horrible stomach pains so it’s okay to give him some food before. Some days he demands meat for breakfast; other days, yogurt, bread, or cereal bars; a few days he decided after his juice he’s not hungry and then have stomach pains and then refuse to eat anything until well into the afternoon, when he will do nothing but eat.

9am. Brush-your-teeth is all one word to him, and he uses it to refer to anything having to do with brushing his teeth (toothpaste, toothbrush). Last week I took him to the dentist but he refused to open his mouth and we decided not to force him. He’ll brush his teeth for about a minute; we suspect he’s really only brushing his tongue. Then he’ll let me take the brush and go at it, and his gums inevitably bleed. After brushing his teeth, we’ll get dressed (he needs a lot of help with this) and be ready to face the world.

Mornings. Depending on the weather and day of the week, A. will either go to the playground, go to Gymboree, play indoors with his trains and cars, have a playdate, run errands with Mommy, watch Sesame Street or (on weekends) go on an adventure with Mommy and Daddy. He loves going to stores. The other week we went to Old Navy and he spent a inordinate amount of time picking out his socks. Unfortunately, his favorite pair were sold out in his size, so I grabbed another pair and told the cashier not to ring up the pair he liked. He forgot all about them when we got home… parental sneakiness is usually the best policy.

Shopping for Socks at Old Navy

Lunch is a bigger version of breakfast — he usually asks for the same thing he had for breakfast.

Afternoons. We’ve given up on naps, although if we lay down in a bed he likes to lay down next to us, cuddle and play. The recreational swim hours at the pool are 2-3pm, so if the weather is bad we’ll go to the pool; if it is nice out, it’s another trip to the playground or sometimes Middlesex Fells so he can experience the “real” outdoors. Yesterday we played basketball at a local playground, which he enjoyed though the ball was easier for him to kick than throw.

Basketball with Daddy

Dinner is around 6, and again, he usually wants the same thing he had for breakfast and lunch.

7ish bathtime (unless we went to the pool that day and he already had a shower), which he usually love once he’s in the tub.

Mommy and Daddy eat at 8pm, and we always give him a plate with a little bit of whatever we’re eating. Some days he’ll try a bite. He professed to like the sweet potato mash but then refused to eat any more. Yesterday we had scallops cooked in bacon and he looooved the bacon (who doesn’t)? One day he tried some white fish, another day some salmon. We taught him to do “cheers!” and he loves clicking glasses with us.

Bedtime is 9pm. After another round of brush-your-teeth, on some days we’ll watch a nature documentary and he’ll fall asleep on the couch and be easily transported to the bed. Other days one of us will “read” a book with him on his bed and then turn the lights out. He’ll usually fall asleep pretty quickly, although some days he’ll try to get out of bed or loudly demand the other parent (he actually does this a lot, all hours of the day, no matter who he’s with. He’s happiest when we’re all together.)

Sleep!

After he goes to sleep… party for Mommy and Daddy! (“Party” usually being reading.)