Update. OW. Motherfucking ow. Kidney stone apparently totally still in there, nasty stubborn every-bad-word-adjective-you-can-think-of little even-worse-bad-word-noun. More drugs. Shit. Okay, sorry, I know these posts have the potential to become tedious so that’s all I will say for now. Except for Damn. Fuck. Ow.

Friday night, at 2:13 AM Little Elian Gonzales Ard was born. Little Elian measured 3mm in diameter, and weighed less than .01 oz. Both he and mother are resting and seem to be in good spirits although frankly — on closer examination — maybe Little Elian is just some gunk and wasn’t what we were supposed to be collecting at all. In any case, the exciting kidney stone ordeal seems to be over. Tiffany is still a little queasy after being in labor for four days and says that she will cry if she ever looks at lemon lime Gatorade again. Or Sprite. Or water. Or pain pills. Or the other pain pills. Or anti nausea tablets. Or the other kind of anti nausea medicine that they give you as punishment for throwing up the tablets because those tablets aren’t cheap you know.

Business idea! Somebody quick! Make kidney stone catching party hat strainer things out of something besides paper. Perhaps plastic or wood or oh… I don’t know… laminated paper might work better. Also, make the mesh strainer part out of something that continues to drain once it is wet. I’m saying for just in case someone’s urine happens to be made out of liquid. You will immediately storm the marketplace with your infinitely superior party hat strainer thing kidney stone catching product and will become richer than you ever imagined. Even more so if you sell advertising spots on the inside of the party hat — for Ocean Spray Cranberry juice for example, or maybe Glamour Shots.

You could also increase market share if you added an elastic band so that the device could actually be used as a party hat.

That’s all, nothing else to report except that my boys are home and oh my god how wonderful to see them. In only four days – four! – they’ve both grown and matured and GROWN. How does that happen? Nicolaus is being so fourish and scoutish and funny and sweet, and learned a great deal about science and submarine warfare while he was away. The first thing he did when he walked in the house was gather up everything he wished he had brought to my parents’ house. He put all the things he “almost forgot” into a small backpack and has been wearing it since. You know, just in case we should spontaneously give him away to other people with zero notice. Good to be prepared, especially now that we know it’s even an option. Uh – ow! My umm… kidney… hey mom? Dad? We’re going to bring the boys over for a few hour… uh, days. On account of my kidney and all.

Graham is speaking so much clearer… probably because I shoved them out the door on Tuesday without giving my parents any sort of Graham-Dutch-English decoder. So now instead of Waweh, he asks for WaTERRRR. And tells me he’s Tirstyyyy. Instead of mumbling something about a poopie diedahh(unintelligible) he says “Poopie. DiaPER. Chinge Diaper, POOPIE DIAPER.”

and he came over to me with a broken toy and said, “Hilp me. Hilp me!”

But when he wanted me to pick him up he still leaned on my knees, looked up and said, “Daowwwwwwwwwn.”

Ah, how MUCH do I love these boys?? Almost as much as I love not throwing up into a paint bucker and being zonked out on painkillers.

Brains are so weird. I’m typing this right before I take another dose of hydrocodone or whatever it is. Once I take it, I’ll be stupid again so I thought I’d take a second to compose a brief entry that makes a small amount of sense. Then, just so you can laugh at me, I’ll include the entry I wrote earlier under the influence of the good shit.

Last night Kevin and I were both painting. He was painting the bathroom walls, and I was painting big canvases with birds and flowers. Every once in awhile I’d say “I love painting!” and Kevin would say, “Painting BLOWS.”

Around midnight we both finished for the night and started to clean up when my side started hurting. Stomach ache maybe?

The pain quickly went from “Huh, that’s odd.” to “Wow.” to “Holy piss, take me to the hospital.” There was no chance in hell of me driving myself, which sucked because that meant piling up the boys in the middle of the night and taking them to where all the sick people are. The triage nurse called for a bed: “We got a stoner.”

That’s her funny way of saying in her medical opinion I have a kidney stone, and that I smoke marijuana on a regular basis.

It was a fun night. I’ll let hydrocodone Tiffany tell you the rest.

******
First, here’s what I wrote to some friends this morning, right before they made me promise not to write a blog post. These are the same friends who won’t let me wear suspenders, so you’d think I would learn to trust their judgement:
hospital. ER, long looong night holy fuck you guys. CT sscans are creepy how they have the machine giving you instructions in a woman’s voice. “BREATHE” says the machine.
“Fuck you.” i answer back

love,
tiffany

So then I took a nap, peed numerous times into a magical party hat strainer thing, then ignoring their advice, composed this profoundly moving entry:

I shouldsn;t be posting anything – in face I almost definitely will hit saeve draft rather than publish but I’m in bed in a quiet house and awake and i’ve already read everything reddit.com has to foffer today, and even finished the Oprah magazine I bought last month when I was trying to decided whether to take the job in atlantsa. Because it promises on the cover to tell you what to decide.
“TRUST YOUR GUT” says oprah “IT IS NEVER WRONG!”
which is why I eat at taco ubbueno so much.

but last night I specnt the night in the ER mostly crying and puking and -swear- singing “lalalalalalalalalalala.” which was for some reason soothing because they wouldn’t motherfuciking give me the drugs. I’d never taken painkillers before but I’d read about them and hasd heard about them on the television and understood them to be quite effective and important.

I’d like the record to reflect that I didnot curse, not even once because the guy in the bed next to me was ther with his nice older mexican mom and she reminded me of my grandma and if she were alisve today i would never said mothergodcockSUCK in front of her, no matter how much i meant it. Even though tshe was so sweet she wouldn’t have gotten mad, she would have pretended not to hear and siad, tyou’re okay, you jsut have to get it out and feel better. Then she would have given me five dollars and some butterscotch candies, and turned on a spanish soap opera fo us to watch.

so no cursing.

If you’re a man and you go to the ER with kidney stones and you cry — rightfully so beacause holy lord — I think you should know that the nurses make fun of you later to their other kidney stone patients.

Wow. I definitely have a hard time on these drugs finding the letters and things for typing. What time is it? Can I take more medicie? Because the pain is coming back and it MUST NEVER COME BACK. Because last night was unreal. I’ve survived a staph infection in a major joint, unmedicated labor and childbirth, installation of an epidural by a man who’d never had anyone install an epidural in his own back (YOU HEAR ME ASSHOLE? Your epidural installation made my list of most painful things eveR) and heck even an unmedicated passing of a small kindney stone but THIS! This was the magical winner!

At the hospital there were all these very nice nurses and things? And they all asked me a million times how I was doing. How ya doing? How ya doing? You doing okay?

NO. I said, no.

How ya doing?

I told more than one person ‘No! i’m not okay. I need to get to a hospital right away.”

they liked having someone there so witty I’m pretty sure.

I told the IV putting in guy, “Dude you suck at this!” but I was only picking on him. It didn’t hurt, he was just getting blood everywhere and it was funny.

So anyway. Shut up Tiffany! Now I’m home. Kevin’s at work. Boys are with my parents. Mouse is asleep in his favorie cat bed. And here I am with the drugs.

I cnat stop feeling like the bouys are here. Like Graham is in his bed and going to wake up sooon. And wher is N? Usually when I’m sick he hovers and daradraws me pictures and brings me toys to help me feel better. I’m glad theyr’e with my parents who no shit are assmbling a CRANE in their living room to N’s total delight but it’s strange to not have them here. Even though obviousl I’m not in any state to parent today.
****

The good news is, I’m not wearing suspenders.

He told me to bread him.

He doesn’t say Nam anymore. He points to his chest with both hands, scrunches his nose and says “Damn.”

I always thought it would be neat when he became a teenager and was old enough to curse, so me and him could bond over the fact that I have secretly used swear words all these years, and then it would be fun because whenever he did anything impressive I could say, “Damn, Graham!” because HAHA your name rhymes with a bad word.

Even though by then damn won’t even be a bad word anymore; they’ll be using it on Sesame Street in those Journey to Ernie! segments:

“Damn it, Ernie! You were hiding behind the haystack again.”

“Cheeeheeeheeee. And you had NO idea where I was!”

“Whatever. You hide behind the goddamned haystack every time. Mix it up!”

“Chheeheeeheee!”

“Ernie, you are one weird motherfucker.”

“Chhehhhehheeeheeee.”

So. Graham calls himself Damn, and I think that is fine. Nam was cuter, but maybe a little too politically charged what with Iraq and all.

***
There is no convenient segue but I need to also mention that every time Graham hears Woody Guthrie sing he points to the CD Player and says, “Daddy!”

I’m not sure what happens after that because I pass out from how cool that is.

This morning he said his first original two-word sentence. Or phrase, or whatever you call it where they start putting things next to other things that mean new things. I don’t post a lot about Graham and his talking and his impressive (to me) talent for building with blocks and assembling puzzles because it might sound like I’m one of those insane bragging mothers, which obviously I am what with this entire website devoted to how insane I am with my kids and the bragging and oh my god, but I don’t want to SOUND like I am. I mean, it’s embarrassing enough that he is so much cuter than all the other babies on earth. (Except for Sheetal’s babies but that doesn’t count because she’s a selfish baby-hoarding whore who won’t give me any babies. Selfishly. So her babies will grow up to be selfish too I bet which will detract from their cuteness. It’s tragic, really.)

Graham doesn’t talk as much as Nicolaus did at this age, because if he did there wouldn’t be any oxygen left in the house and we would all die. I know you’re judging me because you’re not supposed to compare your children to each other! Well calm down. I’m not comparing them, I’m just noticing… that. Okay, like if I’m carrying Graham out to the car and it’s cold, he’ll hold out his hand and say, “Wind.” Then he’ll push his cheek against my sweater and say, “Told.” Which means Cold.

But Nicolaus at this age would have said, “Wind! Wind here! Wind, Mama. Mama? WIND. Cold wind, cold. Birds right there, over there, right here, over here. Hold it mama, hold it birds. Wind wind blowin’ blowin birds, Car. Car over there right there. Mama’s car, daddy’s car, wind blowin mama’s car.” And on and on and on until the day ended and I fell asleep with him still talking in my ear about the wind and the cold and the birds and the cars.

So Graham is quieter, but it’s a relative thing. He talks a lot for his age, especially about things that he loves. I never realized just how many different things there were in our kitchen until Graham began naming them all. Cookie. Cracker. Star cracker. Bread. Milk, juice, beans, apple, jello, bagel, cheese… on and on… this list is very important to him because he wants to be very specific about the fact that we are not to cease feeding him at any time.

When he wants to be picked up I’ve been trying to get him to say “Hold me.” rather than whining Dowwwwn. Blah to that, he’d much rather say dowwwwwwwn. Even though what he wants is UP. Duh, mother, hello? It’s called irony? Dumb bitch. Now pick me up! “DOWWWWWWWWN.”

So he won’t say hold me.

But this morning he said, “Food me! Food me, Mama.”

Kevin caught on before I did, “Uhhh did he just tell you to food him?”

“I guess he did. Weird.”

“FOOD ME, mama. Pease. Pease. Food me, MMmmmmmm! Food me.”

So even though he had already eaten — no lie — a banana, part of a bagel, half a cup of yogurt with fruit mixed in and two scrambled eggs, what could I do? The kid has curly hair and cute feet and he told me to FOOD HIM. I am powerless to resist him. I fooded him with cookies as fast as I could.

Damn.

Yesterday was traumatic all around. I’m not going to tell you about the thing that traumatized me except maybe to say that I learned that sometimes those guys who make Southpark aren’t being all that silly. Things really can explode out of kids like that. The thing that traumatized Graham yesterday didn’t require bath towels or Lysol, so we’ll go with that story instead.

Four year olds have bodies that just wiggle and squirm and climb and DO things without their knowledge or approval. Even if you don’t have kids you’ve seen them walking around art museums, mindlessly holding their shirts up so you can see their chest. Or suddenly their legs will only let them take h u g e steps. Or they pick their nose and you say, “Hey! Don’t do that.” and they look startled like What? Because they honestly had no idea they were doing it.

All that to say that no one — not even Nicolaus — knows why he was sitting on the giant Dora doll and whapping her in the face with a banana peel.

But what we do know is that Graham lost his ever-loving little mind. He was across the living room, where he stood, paralyzed, screaming her name. STELLLLLAAA!!!!

Shit. No. DORRRRRRAAAAAAA!!!

I was on the phone, but I could see that Nicolaus had no idea why his brother was screeching. Finally I interrupted my sister in law, “I’m sorry – can you – just a second. Nicolaus! He thinks you’re beating Dora up.”

Nicolaus looked up at me, “What? Why? Why does he think I’m beating Dora up?” He said it as he continued to HIT HER IN THE FACE. With a banana peel.

“Because. You’re sitting on her and hitting her.”

He looked down and saw that it was true. He immediately jumped off of the pillow and ran off to go do whatever thing his four year old hands and legs felt like doing next. Graham rushed to her side, “Dora. Dorrrra. Dora.” He hugged her tight and dragged her by her giant pillow head back to the safety of his room.

Every mother needs to have at least one friend she can talk to on the phone who won’t miss a beat when you come back from sorting out a crime scene that is seriously that fucking weird.