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 …”

Purrrfection

I swear I’m not bored, not in the least, I’m overworked ... but I’m suddenly aware of a feline soap opera in my neighborhood.

A couple weeks ago, we saw a small calico cat in our backyard with three kittens, obviously fairly newborn. They might have been born right there, possibly under my very nose, while I was trying to set up a three wire trellis for our Mourvèdre vine (yes, poor to mediocre wine coming soon!) or dealing with the loss of the third, littlest olive tree in a pot.

My friend (and former boss) Tim risked blood loss to gather up the feral cats in his neighborhood and bring them in to be fixed before releasing them. I’m an animal lover too. Well, frankly, that’s a silly phrase. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love some animal? Yes, I know, there are the Michael Vicks, but that’s lack of education. No one smart, no one with any empathy can believe animals are any less than humans, especially the ones of the cat and dog varieties. Yes, I digress, but the point is I’m an animal lover too, and instead of making everyone miserable schlepping animals to the pound in a crate, I think of short-term rather than long-term solutions. I just feed them.

This is the microcosmic equivalent of feeding homeless people instead of teaching them a trade. It’s easy, and so I do it. Sorry. Part of my excuse was that I want to teach Mikey about being careful around strange animals while maintaining empathy. (That looks awfully good on paper, doesn’t it?) Here’s how the routine has been for the last couple of weeks:

We’ll be out in the backyard. Mikey will notice the mother cat, who is generally on the other side of the pool fence from us, yowling.

“Mama cat hungry!”

So we go inside and get water (or milk if Daddy is feeling especially generous) and cat food (apologizing to our own cat Floyd) and being very, very careful not to spill, and then more carefully that the cats who might be scared of us don’t scratch, we bring them out to the cat and her kittens. Now, her kittens are adorable. You could watch the three of them (one black, one black with white paws, and one calico like her/his mom) all day long run around our backyard, onto the furniture, playing with Mikey’s cars and pool toys, and wrestling around.

I don’t know if it was Ian or me who first looked at the adorable creatures at play and mused, “Where do you suppose they’re pissing and shitting?”

So there’s that. But they’re so cute, what does it matter?

This morning, the kittens’ charm was lost on Mikey for the first time. He saw them playing with his baseball in the back yard, and hammered on the glass door, “No, cats, that’s my ball!”

“You’ll scare them!” I warned.

“Okay,” Mikey replied, and hammered harder on the window.

Then, just now, I saw a new figure in the backyard. A long sleek black cat, who gave the kittens a obligatory pat on the head, and then proceeded to mount the mom.

The kitten daddy.

And my poor fixed fluffy Floyd cat just watches from the window and thinks, “The drama!”

A Year Ago Today, We Brought Our Son Home

We were a little nervous about meeting the stranger. I had an email from our social worker saying that Michael’s social worker “really didn't express any major concerns and said that you guys were going to fall in love with him.” We weren’t sure if that was just words, since they were desperate to find a quick home for him, but we were optimistic, if, like I said, a little nervous.

Two children we had brought into our home had already been returned, lost back into the system. A 5-month-old infant who had taught us the basics of diaper changes and play, rocking and feeding, and that we really wanted to do this and might be good at it, and then a toddler who taught us not to take our eyes off one of those for a second. We had just kissed Baby A goodbye 24 hours before. This was our third-time-is-a-charm or third-strike, however it turned out.

That was May 27, 2010, one year ago today, when Ian and I brought our son home. He had with him a suitcase of all his possessions: a couple tee-shirts, a couple pairs of sweat pants, a ball, an Etch-A-Sketch, and a small plastic truck.

That’s unbelievable to us now. 365 days have flown by, and yet, it’s hard to believe there was a time when he wasn’t ours, and we weren’t his. How is it possible we weren’t there for his first smile, his first words, and his first steps?

We don’t concern ourselves much with what we didn’t share with him during his first 20 months on the planet, because he’s all about the future, not the past. This week, it’s break-dancing in front of the TV in imitation of the contestants on “So You Think You Can Dance,” and reading a new favorite book "Making the Moose out of Life," and telling our nanny Sally “I don’t miss you, I miss Daddy,” and eating Floyd’s dry cat food in order to get Papa and Daddy to cry, “Mikey, nooooooo!” while he giggles.

Thank you for making May 27th, 2010 to May 27th, 2011 so much fun, little boy, our pride and joy, our son. And infinite years to come.

La Coccinelle Jolie et Son Bébé Dansent!

The lyrics go:
Jolie coccinelle
Emmène-moi, emmène-moi
Faire un petit tour de soleil
Chatouiller le ciel avec toi

Roughly (according to the record company Putomayo who put out this album together with other children’s songs across all cultures) translated as:

Pretty ladybug
Take me away, take me away
Let me take a ride around the sun
And tickle the sky with you

Mikey's First Passport

Ian is British, and his sister, Mikey’s Aunt Helen, who is as of yet still known only from photos, is getting married in August in what will be the second great royal wedding of the year. Once we got a new birth certificate for Mikey, we went to get a new social security card and a passport.

That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some awkwardness at the post office. You can’t get a new passport for a child under 16 without having them be present, and with current budget cuts, the post office is only open certain hours on weekends, so we joined a long line filled with fidgeting kids. When “Tony” (not his real name – oh, wait, actually, yes, his real name), the only person present handling the passport work got to us, he first looked at Mikey’s photo and deemed it unacceptable. Luckily, there was a place right across the street where Ian could take Mikey and get an emergency pic taken.



Yes, it was obviously that Mikey looked too cute and cheerful in the first photo, and that isn’t likely how he would look during a transatlantic trip. Actually, the problem really was that his face was too big in the first pic for the facial recognition software they use. You’d think in this day and age where Picasa and Facebook and dozens of other available-to-the-public programs can recognize your fuzzy, pixellated face from miles away, the feds would know how to do it too, but best not dwell on what that means for airport security.

The other part of the experience which was a little awkward, was Tony slowly catching on to the fact that Mikey was adopted by two men. When I got to his window, Ian was outside chasing Mikey around the parking lot, playing the new game Mikey invented, Spiderman versus Sharkman. All three of us have to be present, so Tony asked for my son to come to the window.

“And you wife,” he added.

“Hold on, I’m waving to my son and partner,” I said, gently correcting him while I gestured to them to come in.

When Ian and Mikey came over, we chatted away while Tony looked to the birth certificate to the application, and back and forth, a couple times, not sure what to say. I didn’t want to say anything and make any assumptions about what he was thinking. Ian chatted with the people behind us in line, and Mikey played on the floor with their kids.

Finally: “Which – who is the father?”

“We both are,” I said. “We adopted him.”

Since I had put the adoption certificate down together with the application and birth certificate, the fact of his adoption shouldn’t have been a surprise. We had filled out the form as appropriately, all Tony had to do was copy. Once it finally sunk in, Tony filled in the form, took our $105, and said we’d get his passport in 4 to 6 weeks. And then we’ll be on an 11 hour flight to London.

Hold on, let me let that sink in.

Oh boy.