Gametes In Love

Lemme give you a glimpse into my future. This was a conversation with G this morning

(as G was getting his undies on for the day)
Me: Wow, G! You have Incredibles on your under-wear. Are you incredible?
G: No!
G: Mommy, you have giraffes on your shirt. Are you a giraffe?

Smart ass in the making.

A few weeks ago, I was really preparing for the worst in regards to Neko. Today, after yet another follow-up appointment, my heart is happy — his pulmonary edema is cleared, and he is no longer in heart failure. This has been his third x-ray in a month, and he’s  shown steady improvement each time.

I’d love to be able to say that his heart disease is gone too, but alas this is not so. His heart condition has progressed since last November, but he was at least able to recover from this episode.

Neko will remain on his medication for the rest of his life. I am now able to give him both his morning and afternoon pills on my own (S is happy about this). He’s being very cooperative about it though, which helps a lot. It also helps that these pills are tiny. When he was a kitten we had these huge tablets we had to get him to swallow. Believe you me, that was a major pain in the butt!

We may need to change his diet. He’s not eating much. He’s still a fan of his dry food, but lately is leaving his wet barely touched. Since he had urinary tract issues in the past, we can simply switch him to something different. However BOY does he like the Fancy Feasts Appetizers. As his vet said: that is like McDonalds’s, so I’m thinking I’ll give it to him as a very special treat once or twice a month. Those I know he polishes clean 🙂 His weight is an issue. Even though his lungs are clearing, his weight has kept dropping. Today he’s 14lb 10oz, which for a Maine Coon is nothing. Yes, he was always small for his breed (a measly 17lb when males are on average 23-24lbs), but this is a new low, and I’m keeping a close eye on it. Dropping even 6oz more is an alarm.

The start of the month did force S and me to have some hard talks about what we’ll do in the end. While I’m thrilled not to have to act on our plan, I’m also content we know what those steps will be. Because quite frankly, when the time does come, I want to go based on our script, and make as few hard choices as possible while I’m an emotional wreck.

G has also been so awesome these last few weeks in regard to Neko. He acknowledges kitty is not well and asks if he’s getting better. I’ve started reading him books on lifecycles for living things, and a few on loosing pets. My favorite is Lifetimes: A beautiful way to explain death to children. It is a very well written book, the illustrations are beautiful, it stops short of talking about what happens AFTER death, and it doesn’t make me want to loose my $hit by the end of reading it. Saying Good Bye to Lulu on the other hand? One of us was bawling by the end of that book, and it wasn’t the short one. Ms. S at school, as a favor to me, has also been doing some reading and discussion on the subject of pet loss too. The class has a new hamster pet, so it’s relevant to them too to some degree.
Still, G’s sweetness to Neko has been really awesome. Neko in turn has been returning the love by spending more time in G’s room, and the other day he even got in G’s bed with us and night-time.

I’ve been gifted more time. For this I am grateful.

S2 is on his way of making sentences. He now has 3 phrases that I’ve heard:

• Al-da (all done)
• Opa puhs (open please)
• Rd boo-h (read book)

The first, last night, I disregarded because, quite frankly, the way we use ‘all done’ could very well be a single word in a little kid’s mind.
But this morning he went from ‘Opa!’, ‘Opa!’, ‘Opa!’, asking me to unscrew the top off a bottle of sunblock to ‘Opa puhs’. And then right to S, carrying a book, requesting ‘Rd boo-h’.
We’ve got sentence forming here!

I’m not a fan of bugs. Really. I’m not. And spiders? My dad will tell you, he’s had to escort quite a few out of my room through my teens. Yep, escort, because while I can’t stand the 100-eyed hairy beasts, I can’t stand to kill them for a good reason either. Violating the boundaries of my domain just hasn’t been a good enough reason.

Once I got my own place, and no bouncer to kick the 8-legged invaders out, I learned to tolerate their passage, and I leave them alone, as long as they leave me alone. It’s an unspoken respect thing.

Except now with kids things are a little bit trickier. I can’t quite ignore them, because the kids won’t allow me to. They chase the spiders, and other crawly things as the bugs occasionally happen to obtain passage into our home. They don’t know their own strength, so a curious kid, often equals bug squash-er. I’m trying to curb that and teach them respect for things that are alive. Even when it’s gross. You know what this means? I have to touch the damn crawly things, as I gently try to scoop them onto my finger and take them outside. I’m approaching a new level of zen here as I do this.

Of course, to date, this approach has only worked for bugs no bigger than 5mm in length. Any bigger than that, and I might have to cry uncle. S fessed up last week that he came across a spider in G’s room big enough that it didn’t go gently outside. It went for a swim down our toilet.

There are definitely going to be limits. Like pincer bugs — they will meet the bottom of my shoe, or other very heavy object if ever found inside.

Eh, this whole respecting living things lesson is hard!

Once upon a time, in this land that is ours I managed to get a lot out of G by simply bribing him with a penny. Really!

“Eat your breakfast, and you get a penny.”
“Get in your car-seat fast, and get a penny.”

He was a cheap date. And it was blissful. Until it ended. Why, you ask? Well… do you see these feet?

These feet are tip-toeing on this stool:

This stool is placed by this closet:

And THIS is the closet where daddy keeps his loose change. Clearly Monkey#1 has realized that he need not perform for a mere penny a day, if he can fill his piggy-bank simply by raiding daddy’s loose change.

I revel in how bright he and S2 are. Really. I just wish they wouldn’t use their smarts against me 🙂

Happy Father’s Day babe!

Oh, and here is G’s declaration of love for his daddy… and the reason why he loves him

Neko had his re-check yesterday. I wasn’t expecting a full recovery — this is not possible, but he’s not worse and the medicine he’s on is helping. We’re to increase the dose of his fluid retention medications for a little while and re-check him again in two weeks. He’s eating better — not what he used to, but I’m hopeful that as the medication keeps doing it’s thing, the appetite will keep getting better too. We did have to do two doses of the appetite enhancers, but we’re scaling back on those, since his lack of eating will be the only thing to tell us if he’s getting worse.

But, for now, we have more time with him. I don’t know if this will be another 6 months, or a year, or many years. But he’s still here with us, and this is good.

G went to his very first movie this week-end, with a few friends.

He was excited to get his ticket
And climb up the tall escalator

And get the HUGE bag of popcorn (ps. don’t order medium — you can feed a family of 4 for a week with it)

And sit in his seat

And watch the previews

… But apparently not the movie

This surprised me to be honest. The movie flick was Madagascar 3. He had seen the previous two (while getting his hair cut over the years), and I figured it would be fun for him to see characters he recognized. Yes, clearly there has to be conflict in this movie in order for the parents not to want to poke themselves in the eye with a blunt object, but the villain wasn’t really that scary. Heck, the previews for the next Tim Burton movies were scarier and he sat through those mesmerized. So all in all we lasted the total of an hour in the theatre. He was very respectful asking to leave, and comitted to his decision. So we left.

We’ll try again in another 6 months. I just hope it won’t be an hour of Teletubie that will bring him back to the theatre.

We visited Swanton farms two week-ends ago. We tried over Mother’s Day, but Swanton’s current fields are much farther than any of the ones we’ve visited in the past, so we didn’t drive out long enough. Still it was a fun trip — S2’s first where  he got to walk around and pick his own berries, although in his case, he would grab a berry, bite into it, and instantly throw it to the ground. G meanwhile was on the hunt for the biggest strawberry he could find. I’d say he did pretty good 🙂