The Life of Pi
By Yann Martel
This week's book is all about wild animals, and how one young man gets stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger. All this talk about wild animals made me start thinking: the easiest way to make me come at you like a spider monkey or tiger or fill in the blank wild animal, is trying to harm my child. Be it being rude or telling them something scary...I will find you and I will give you the worst tongue lashing you have ever had. Even before we left the hospital with our first born child, I realized I was going to have to always have my child's needs met. Our little monkey baby (he was very fuzzy and looked like a little monkey) had a patch of hair on his lower back the made the doctors think he might have spina bifida or a tethered spine. After an MRI in Indianapolis, a week after we lost my mother, it was discovered our son was just a fuzzy little man. The next day we had to rush him to the ER for one of the worst case of croup that the hospital had ever seen. While I sat in the hospital room trying to not completely lose it I thought to myself “okay this is as hard is it's going to be.” Before we had even introduced food we had discovered our little fuzzy man had asthma, eczema, and was allergic to EVERYTHING………(dairy, eggs, chicken, peanuts, strawberries, pineapples, honeydew, cantaloupe, green peppers, raspberries, bees, mosquitoes, cats, dogs and all the seasonal crap that's always in the air). I had to fight every doctor I was faced with telling me that it could have just been that one time he tried something for the first time. Every cold or sniffle sent him into a horrible coughing fit that would lead to him to vomiting so much. It has made my husband and I into label reading, food tasting, fighting with family members fools over our child's health. I have actually had to make printed off lists and given it to all of my family so they can know the ever changing allergies that our little man has. When he started school my biggest fear wasn't his grades or bullying, it was a Reese's cup. Even though some of his allergies have lessened, I still have a hard time not reading every label before I put it in my shopping cart. On Halloween I pray that he doesn't sneak a piece of candy because even though he knows to avoid the orange wrappers, they change candy wrappers for every holiday every year. My husband and I have to educate the school nurse because she doesn't have students that need ep-pens or have a whole plan for an allergy attack, or asthma for that matter. Everytime I think I have a handle on this whole parenting thing or all his allergies in check, something throws me for a loop. Little man's kindergarten teacher gave up on him after a month of school, so what happened when they set up a team meeting about our little guy….I opened a whole can of Mama Bear protection on the whole team.
This year has been so much better, I'm pretty sure his teacher is an angel in disguise. So the hubs and I take a sigh of relief and wouldn't you know it, the bus driver that was just amazing last year has called me more than once to complain about the kids on his bus. I'm not going to lie to your face, I know our kiddo isn't perfect but I didn't need to be verbally talked down to by the driver for twenty minutes during my husband's Christmas Party. Maybe if was the half a glass of wine or the fact that this was the second time he called me, but I went off and told him he wouldn't need to worry about our son being on his bus anymore because I was going to be taking him to and from school. Don't call and complain about other children singing songs about porn stars and calling the driver naughty words when my son has done neither. The children on this bus had been shoving our son, calling him stupid and one kid even was nice enough to tell him the plot of IT and nothing was done about it. As parents, we are never done standing up for our children. Perhaps little man's health scares have made me a more protective and more of a helicopter mom, but I don't think I can turn it off at this point. I had imagined the kind of mom I was going to be, and allergies and Benadryl have blown that image into a million pieces.
Wow that was much more than I thought I was going to say. But just this week I have had two friends find out their little boys have very scary allergies and I truly am sad for them. As a mom of a very allergic kiddo, I know it's very scary and hard sometimes. It's manageable and it can be done, it just seems like being a mom is pretty hard without having to watch every single thing that goes into their mouths for the next fifty years.
So you don't think I have totally gone off the rails, I listened to Life of Pi on CD while I did some quilting/napkin making and wasn't super impressed. It's just a lot of information about different animals thrown together and then at the end there is an alternative option and you don't know which is “true”. If you haven't read The Life of Pi yet, you can skip to the next book on your to-read list.
No comments:
Post a Comment