My Son's Asleep

What a weekend.

It rained.

It also rained on the day we drove downtown to get married three and a half years ago, so we had a good association with rain in L.A., now it’s made permanent. The press conference was at 1 o’clock, and we were the first court case at 1:30. We arrived at about ten after, and the first person we saw was my brother, Mikey's Uncle Moosh, holding a Buzz Lightyear mylar balloon for Mikey. Buzz Lightyear is Mikey’s latest obsession ever since Disneyland, and he calls him “Eyte Ear.”

On the fifth floor, the press conference was behind schedule, but all our friends had arrived early, ahead of us. In addition to Uncle Mikey, Aunt Kelly, and Cousin Natalie, we immediately were embraced by 25 other local friends who insisted on being in court in the middle of a day on a Friday. Susan and Lee Cummings and their son, Mikey’s buddy, Lanyon arrived shortly thereafter to Mikey’s delight, and just in time since Mikey was in the middle of his normal naptime and feeling overwhelmed.


The actual hearing was quick. After the conference, we went into room 419, where Judge Michael Nash made a speech, and then the actress Nia Vardalos asked us some questions, to which the answer was always “Yes.” The court asked us for our names and to spell them, which I stumbled over, and then to identify our friends in the audience and I drew a blank. Mikey grabbed all the stuffed bears in sight and fell out of his chair with a thump. When Nia Vardalos started crying during the questions, Ian lost it too. Basically, it was a shambles. A glorious shambles.

Afterwards, we had a couple interviews with local and national newspapers, and Mikey’s lawyer Cynthia Billey and all of her associates at the Children’s Alliance made sure the paperwork was all done and we were out.

On Saturday, we packed up the car during Mikey’s nap, and then as soon as he opened one eye, he was out in his seat, being whisked away again. He said, drowsily, “Home!” But we said, “You’re going to a party at Theo’s!” And he said, “Theo?! Party!” and got very excited. At Theo’s (and Graham, Ali, and Sophia Bradstreet’s) home, we had a party for most of the people who came to the court hearing, plus the Bradstreets and a number of other folk who couldn’t take off the middle of the day for the court but wanted to celebrate. Among them was Ian's boss Norman and Lyn Lear and their family, and another of Mikey’s attorneys, his education advocate, Sasha Stern, also made an appearance, to tell us that cases like Mikey’s is the reason she can get out of bed in the morning.

It was a blast with champagne for the grown-ups, trampoline jumping for the young ‘uns, and high calorie, low nutrient snacks for all. We lost track of how many people Mikey got to surreptitiously sneak him a cupcake.

Today is totally low key. We went to the Farmers Market, had some tamales (Mikey’s two requests of today, reflecting the Most Multicultural Child On Earth was “Marmite!” and “Tamale!”), and picked up some exotic mushrooms for dinner. Mikey is theoretically having his first uninterrupted nap of the last two days, but in true fashion, isn’t interested in sleep now that he can do it.

There is finally silence in his room. My son's asleep.

It's Official: He's Legally Ours Now

Here we are at Mikey's adoption today.

Details to follow. We are celebrating now, no time to blog.

Happiest Place On Earth Adjacent

I went to Disneyland for the first time in my life on Sunday, and I suspect it won’t be the last time, given Mikey’s reaction. It wasn’t a trip we had planned far in advance. Growing up in Ohio near Kings Island with grandparents in Orlando near Disneyworld, my lack of amusement at amusement parks was based on experience. On Saturday, however, we were at a park in West Hollywood and met up with my friend and former head huntress Susan and her son Lanyon who is Mikey’s age, and she launched into a pitch on Disneyland. All my concerns about cost, age appropriateness, and lack of alcohol were addressed and dismissed, and once Ian had turned, I crumbled. So Sunday morning, we left at 7:15 and breezed down to Orange County 45 minutes later when the park opened.

I was in the front seat looking for a parking space, and Ian was in the back with Mikey. I heard simultaneously Ian say, “Oh … dear,” and Mikey burst into tears.
Mikey, it seemed, had greeted Disneyland by vomiting down his shirt.

He was fine, so we changed into his (only!) spare and met Susan, Lee, and Lanyon at Jamba Juice where Mikey had a smoothie to make up for the lack of food in his belly -- and it went all down his spare shirt. This is before we made it through the ticket gates.

So Mikey wore Lanyon's spare shirt, and we went into the park. Lanyon was content at sitting in his stroller, grinning, and saying, "Disneyland! Disneyland!" while Mikey had to be out of his stroller, racing around in the crowd, saying, "Wow!" We saw our first cartoon character, Buzz Lightyear, the hero of Toy Story 1, 2, & 3, and Lanyon said, "Buzz!" and Mikey said, "Ahhhhhhh!" and ran into my arms. Not a big fan of people with masks over their faces, and no idea who Buzz Lightyear was.

We educated him by taking him on his first ride, which is a Buzz Lightyear ride where you fire lasers at the evil Emperor Zurg while spinning in your cart. You can actually control the spin with a lever, so Mikey saw to it that we were constantly spinning. The whole time, shrieking with joy. We also picked up a Toy Story 3 tee-shirt, so Mikey would have a commemorative article, and Lanyon could have his spare shirt back.

That was the theme for the whole day. He has a blast. He high-fived Sully, the giant blue monster from Monsters Inc., he sat through fully 3/4 of a Disney show which felt like 4/3rds of one as Handy Manny droned on, he went on the merry-go-round five times and six or seven other rides, he ate and ate and ate. Many highlights, but when he and Lanyon held hands and ran around giggling, it was not only one of our favorite parts, from the Oohs and Aws of the crowd, it was the favorite part for many strangers. We're going to sell this video of them to Disney, or we should.


He fell asleep in his stroller at 2 pm, and we drove back. And then we learned at home how to wash vomit out of a car seat! Talk about a happy ending!

Actually, the happy ending or happy beginning occurred last night when Mikey’s lawyer notified us that she had received official confirmation that we will be at the courthouse adopting Mikey on the 19th at 1:30 pm. We will be the first on the docket for National Adoption Day. Hooray!

The Birthday, The Bed, The Ear, The Adoption.

I’ve had my first practical use for this blog. I’m using it to help me put together a baby book as a gift for Mikey for his adoption day, which will hopefully be next month.

It’s been a pretty busy month since the last update, too busy to update on how busy everything has been.

Mikey’s birthday went brilliantly, though he took the notion of the “birthday suit” literally, and didn’t wear his clothes through most of it. The theme of the get together with family and friends was Bubbles, Balls, and Balloons. The latter two were great successes, but the former was a flop – the cheap bubblemaker I got spit out a zillion bubbles in the first twenty seconds and then stopped. The next day at the All Saints Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills, Mikey’s little cousin Natalie was baptized, and Ian and I were godfathers. Mikey, to Ian’s horror, would only wear the very dirty tee-shirt his grandparents brought him of a basketball to church.

He got an embarrassingly huge pile of gifts for his birthday, considering we hardly made a big deal of it. We had to open up one or two presents a day for two weeks to go through them all, and meanwhile the cards had gotten all mixed up, so we don’t know who gave the good stuff and who gave the crap. Ian’s boss gave a great present though: Mikey’s first big boy bed. It’s from Pottery Barn Kids, the Catalina twin bed, which we liked because it gets down low so he can crawl in now, and later can rise up with room for a trundle bed for sleepovers. (And no, this isn’t Mikey’s bedroom, this is the bed from the catalog – I’ll take a pic of the bedroom later)



At school, he’s moved up to the “older kids’ class” which is filled with 2-year-olds, up from the babies class he’s been in up to now. He loves it, but Ian and I have asked the teacher to tell the kids to let him do some things on his own. We know that Mikey just points and people run to get him whatever he wants … it’s the curse of being cute. As I know all too well, alas.

Last Friday was a bit of drama. Mikey had a bit of a cold. Nothing serious, we thought, just a bit of a sniffy nose. We put him down at the usual time of 7:30 after a great night of sushi at Akari, and at 9:00, he was awake, calling, “Daddy! Papa! Daddy! Papa!”

When we checked on him, he was touching his ear, “Ear, boo boo!” I figured he had a bit of sinus thing like I get when I have a cold, and I was looking at his medical records to see whether he was approved for children’s ibuprofen, when Ian said, “I think we should take him to the emergency room.”

Mikey had quickly turned from whining to screaming, and we quickly threw our clothes on, and got him in the car and to Northridge Medical Center in three minutes – it’s about ten minutes away by foot. I haven’t been to an emergency room in decades, and so I was picturing a scene like you see in “e.r.,” but it was very calm and orderly. In fact, Northridge is the Valley’s first pediatric trauma center.

Despite Mikey’s howling, it took us an hour and a half to be seen, and when we told him that the doctor needed to look in his ear to see the boo boo, he calmed down and let her do it. She said it was an impressive otitis media middle ear infection, and sent us off with a prescription for codeine and antibiotic. Mikey was so exhausted at two o’clock in the morning that he had the hiccups and still fell asleep, hiccupping with his head resting on his chest.

He’s better now. Tomorrow, he’s dressing as a puppy for his first of several Halloween parties. And, like I said at the beginning of this blog, on November 19th, we’ve been told, which is when National Adoption Day is celebrated in Los Angeles, we will be able to adopt him!

Shoe Business

The week ahead looks to be interesting. This weekend we have two birthday parties for two little girls, Monday is Labor Day, and Tuesday, I start at a new job. I’ll be working for The Mouse on the massively multiplayer game for kids, Toon Town. Appropriate given my daddy status. On Thursday, my parents come to Los Angeles to stay with us. On Saturday, Mikey turns 2 and we have a party with a couple family and a handful of friends. On Sunday, Mikey’s cousin Natalie gets baptized.

A lot of major events in a short period of time. And then today, Mikey just put his shoes on by himself.

The way it went down was this. Ian had left early, and I was getting Mikey ready for preschool. We had juice (Naked ™ Green Machine + Essential Greens ™ Veggie Harvest), then breakfast (Farley’s rusks, banana, and milk), then brushed teeth, combed hair (no crying today!), and put on clothes (red Paul Franks monkey tee-shirt, red and blue checked shorts), and were debating the merits of different shoes. Red shoes were considered and rejected because they have laces. Sandals were in the diaper bag and not part of the equation. So, blue shoes or gray shoes? Before we had settled it, the phone rang, and I went to chat with Ian for five minutes.

When I came back, Mikey was in his nursery, playing with his Legos ™ and wearing the shoes he had put on by himself. And the right foot was in the right shoe, and the left foot was in the right shoe. (This is something which my mother can tell you, it took me more years that it ought to have to figure out) Mikey had even worked out a compromise between blue and gray shoes.

As you can see.

Rhapsody

On August 14th, Ian and I took Mikey to see our friend Rachel Worby conduct the Pasadena Pops for one of the last times, since she is leaving after this season. The theme of the night was “All That Jazz,” and it began appropriately enough with Kander’s “All That Jazz” from Chicago, and then went through Mancini, Monk, Ellington, and several by Gershwin. Normally, as close friends of the Maestra, we get a good table up front, but at the last performance we decided that with Mikey, we were best off on a blanket in the back. It turns out that was a great decision.

It had been a month and a week since we had visited the parents and grandparents in New Bern, North Carolina. And it had been a week since I got an email from my mom with the title “Dad Is Dead,” referring to her father, my grandfather, Mikey’s great grandfather, who he only had a chance to meet the one time. How is it possible for a death to be a shock when it isn’t a surprise? I don’t know, but it was. I think it’s simply that I’ve been lucky for 41 years: no one I’ve truly loved has died before now. I am so grateful that we decided to hitch a visit to North Carolina onto the back of my cousin’s wedding in Wisconsin. The photos that we have of Mikey and Grandpa giving each other high fives are ones I will always treasure, and when he’s old enough to know what a remarkable man his great grandfather was, so will he.

So, it’s been a sad week. Add to that that Mikey has begun preschool, so he’s not home for several hours during the day. Apparently, according to his teachers who know what to say, he misses us enough that he’s called out “Daddy!” or “Papa!” after his nap, and once or twice looked for us in the preschool kitchen (the place where naturally we’d be), but the truth is that he loves it. He’s so social, it’s a good fit for him.

When you’re with Mikey, there’s not much time to reflect on your grandfather passing on and your son growing up. You’re feeding, chasing, laughing, and doing all the other present-tense things you have to do to keep up with a 23-month-old. Even at a concert like Saturday’s, you can’t sit and reflect on the music much, because the kid requires your attention. Then there was the plaintive, warbling glissando of the clarinet – which Rachel described as a bit of humorous improvisation at the first rehearsal of Rhapsody in Blue which Gershwin decided to keep in – and Mikey froze and began his dance.

The pity of it is that unlike the visit with his great grandfather, we were unable to capture it on film. Our video camera undoubtedly has a night light, but damned if I know how to find it in the dark. As he danced among the blankets and chair in the back rows of the concert, we heard various witnesses describe it as somewhere between a contemporary interpretative dance, a Charlie Chaplin routine, and a drunken jig. In fairness, Rhapsody In Blue, which closed the concert, began about two hours after Mikey’s usual bedtime, so the normally energetic kid was even more punch drunk than usual.

For me, Rhapsody In Blue was first associated with the black and white fireworks in the beginning of Woody Allen’s Manhattan. Then, when United began playing it in their commercials, I began associating it with flying. Now and forevermore, it will remind me of a warm August evening outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and our son jumping, tumbling, shaking, and skipping perfectly in time with the score. A rhapsody indeed.

Score!

In order to stay certified as foster parents, Ian and I need to take 15 hours of classes on some subject or another related to parenting. We took a big whopper of a class a couple months ago, the Beyond Consequences workshop, which was interesting but since we didn’t then have a child let alone a deeply troubled one (knock on wood), we mostly did it for the hours. Two weekends ago, SCFFAA had a parents’ round-table which included daycare and was only 2 hours, so we thought we’d check it out.

The first big take-away from the seminar had nothing to do with the speakers, but with Mikey having a good time playing with the other kids and barely even noticing we were gone, leading us to the conclusion that he’s ready for preschool.
The second take-away came from some of the advice the parents on the panel gave about keeping score. It’s apparently pretty easy to become resentful, only notice the things you’re doing to make the whole family thing work, and rack up a lopsided scoreboard in your head, picking up points for every time you have to get up during the night to feed or attend to tears, deal with a bad diaper or a temper tantrum by yourself, do laundry and clean the house while your partner has fun playing with the kid, or do whatever it is which isn’t your favorite part of being a parent. I don’t know if there is a multi-point system, but if so, how would one calculate the number of points for getting the poop out of the tub when our relaxing bath-time went terribly wrong last night? And is that score multiplied when your partner unhelpfully chimes in, “It’s breaking up! It’s breaking up!”

No, the advice was, basically, don’t keep score. Open your eyes and recognize all the things your partner is doing which you aren’t noticing, enjoy the parts of raising a child that are truly magical, and get over yourself. Which is pretty good advice, whether you have a child or not.

So, Ian and I don’t take score on who does what, or we don’t keep score, which is slightly different. What, after all, is the point of keeping any score? As a game designer, I can say it’s a way to quantify your degree of success, usually compared to other players. Since you and your partner – as defined by the word “partner” – are both members of the same team, it’s counterproductive to make that a competition.

Where score matters are on things like developmental tests which Mikey will be taking soon courtesy of the north Los Angeles regional center. And scores matter on the playground, where life is tough.

We just got back from the playground in Tarzana, where I met up with my good friend and parenting mentor Suzanne and where Mikey was literally mobbed by a gang of boys and girls who looked to be between 6th and 8th grade who were hanging around, waiting for their day camp field trip. About a dozen of them passed him around, getting high fives and fist bumps, pushing him in another kid’s push car, and generally oohing and ahing over his every grin and giggle. Meanwhile, every other kid in the park, including Suzanne’s own absolutely adorable and sweet little girls, were ruthlessly ignored no matter what.
Suzanne and I laughed about it, and then I was thinking about this whole notion of competitive childrearing afterwards. Giving Mikey a point for every minute with every teenager looking on him with adoration. Subtracting points from Suzanne for such sad cheats as her prompting her youngest daughter, “See, show them you can do fist bumps too!” That kind of thing.

It’d be funny to be that shallow and that competitive. I would never do it. But if I did, the score would probably be 89 to 4 in Mikey’s favor. Approximately. ;)