Nursery Jewel

As Mikey was being put down to sleep tonight, Ian came in and held out his fists. “Choose one,” he said. Mikey chose the right fist, and Ian opened it up to show a brilliant blue plastic gem. Our friends had given it to him a week ago, and Mikey loved to play with it. Sometimes it put it in his mouth a little, and we’d quickly tell him no, and he’d relent.

After lights out, Ian heard Mikey coughing, and when he came into his room, he found Mikey on the floor. “Mikey, where’s the blue diamond?”

Mikey pointed to his mouth and giggled.

“Ted!”

Ian and I tore the room apart, looking for evidence that Mikey hadn’t swallowed the two-inch diameter disc. While we did it, we kept grilling him, “Where is the diamond?” If you listened in, you’d imagine we were agents of a smuggling king pin, “Where is the diamond, Mikey?”

Mikey just pointed to his mouth and articulated it very plainly, “I put in my mouth, and I eated it.”

Of course, I rationalized that if the diamond had cleared his windpipe, he must be fine, but Ian pointed out that it wouldn't digest at all and would end up stuck in his small intestine and cause a blockage. We kept telling Mikey that this was serious, we were going to the doctor if he really swallowed the diamond, and he stuck to the story through laughter and tears. We knew the diamond had been in the room and couldn’t be anywhere else except inside him.

We live just a few blocks from the Valley’s only pediatric trauma center at Northridge Hospital so we brought him there.

They got us through in no time, though we shared the ER with some pretty sick folk and Mikey spent the whole time in a fabulous mood for a toddler at midnight. There were choruses of “Spiderman! Spiderman! Is he strong? Listen, bud, he got radioactive blood!”, there was practicing his rolls and somersaults (“You know, these floors are regularly splattered with blood and vomit,” a passing orderly let us know, in case we didn’t know), and there was telling the 12-month-old with the high fever weeping in his grandma’s arms, “Don’t cry, baby. Don’t be sad.”

I used my phone to check us into the hospital on Facebook, “Ted Peterson & Ian Smith are at Northridge Hospital Medical Center – Oh Mikey, did you really swallow that plastic diamond?” And the replies were predictable. “Don’t worry, Ted; it will come all right in the end” was one. “This too shall pass” was another.

The doctor was good, though there was a passing moment of weirdness. (“You’re both his dad? How that happen?”) The results of the xrays were inconclusive. He said to be on the look-out for abdominal distress and faintness of breath. We went home and put Mikey to bed at 1:30 am.

While padding down his pillow, Ian found this in the pillowcase.



So the good news is that Mikey doesn’t swallow huge plastics gems, and doesn’t need surgery. There will be no abdominal distress or faintness of breath.

The bad news is that when asked where something is, if he doesn’t know, he points to his mouth and says he ate it.

Top 10 Father's Day Songs

There are a lot of great songs out there for Mother’s Day, but for today, in celebration of my first Father’s Day of being an actual legal dad, I thought I’d try to find the best songs about being a dad.


I’m not counting songs with Papa or Daddy or some combination in the titles which use the words for something other than a father. For example, “Oh Daddy” by Fleetwood Mac which is about Christine McVie’s bandmate Mick Fleetwood, “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” (I don’t think that’s a real Daddy, unless incest in implied, in which case, shame on you, Cole Porter and Mary Martin!) or “Gone Daddy Gone” (as much as I love the Violent Femmes).

Honorable Mention. “Father Figure” by George Michael. Misses the list because although it’s a good though slow song, it’s not really about an actual father. Still I think it fits, in a weird way. As for the video, George Michael smokes like it’s his hard duty, and this has to be the apogee of shoulder pads on thin women. Bless.



10. “Whatta Man” by Salt n Pepa (featuring En Vogue): Not specifically for Dads, though there is a shout out to her man spending “quality time with his kids when he can” and, of course, “You so crazy. I think I wanna have your baby.” Mostly it’s about a “mighty mighty good man,” which is what a dad needs to be.



9. “Daddy Cool” by Boney M. Okay, the Daddy in this is probably not a real great Dad. He might be the same kind of non-Dad Daddy that is in the “My Heart Belongs To Daddy,” but it’s so funky and Boney M is such awesome awesomeness, I can’t leave it off.



8. “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna. Madonna doesn’t get much credit for depth, but now that I’m a dad, I realize what good advice is in this song, and not just about pregnancy.



7. “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” by James Brown. Of course.



6. “Papa Loves Mambo” by Perry Como. Unh!



5. “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon. Must be the sweetest song written by a father to a son. Made bittersweet by that father leaving too soon.



4. “Children Will Listen” by Stephen Sondheim. I think of this so many times when I look into the boy’s eyes.



3. “Color Him Father” by The Winstons. “I think I’ll color him love.”



2. “Blessed” by Elton John. Sir Elton just became a father, but this song from 1995 shows that he was ready to be one 16 years ago. “You’re a child in my head. You haven’t walked yet. Your first words have yet to be said. But I know, you’ll be blessed.” I don’t know about the people with the bat heads in the video but I’ll repeat after Mikey each night that I promise you that, I promise you that.



1. “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens “I know I have to go.” Perfection.



(The Anti Father’s Day Song) Papa Was A Rolling Stone by the Temptations

A Blog Entry to Embarrass You in Years Ahead, Mikey

Mikey has been practicing his potty skills and so has been spending more and more time sitting on the toilet or his potty with his big boy underpants around his ankles. Tonight, as usual, we talked about this and that while he sat on the potty.

He decided that everyone was a color. I’m blue. Papa and Mikey are pink. Grandma is orange, and Grandpa is purple, and sorry, Dad, so are monkeys. That led us to sing about eight silly monkeys dancing on the bed. Then we discussed how our fingers individually were one, one, one, one, one, one, but they were also one, two, three, four, and five, which we agreed was interesting.

Then there was a pause, and Mikey looked at his todger, still waiting for the impulse to pee, and retracted the foreskin, and said, “Look, Daddy. It’s Sir Topham Hatt.”

If you’re not familiar with the bald-headed character from the Thomas the Tank Engine series, he looks like this.




Mikey later incorporated my reaction to that into the act when he repeated it for Ian’s benefit.

“Oh my God,” Mikey said, holding his head in his hands, giggling. “Oh … my … God …”