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Krista Schmitz <Kristaschmitz>

	Poop, Teeth, and Shoes Revisited	974 jours il y a
	Since every one wants to know where the teeth come in, here it is. The original essay where I rant on and on totally full of myself because it is my blog and I can cry if I want to. Try to keep in mind that you asked for it. Teeth, shoes, and poop? 522 days ago On Halloween we were all happily driving to Lou Lou's to borrow her neighborhood for trick-or-treating since we live on a busy street. We were eating sack lunches in the car for dinner. Jonah announced that he couldn't eat his apple or vegetables because his front teeth were loose and they hurt. I said why don't you wiggle them and get them out? And he said, are you crazy? After seeing Mallory and Noah almost bleed to death? No thanks. Noah has decided it hurts too much to get his baby teeth out, and is letting all his big teeth grow in behind his baby ones. The dentist isn't worried, he thinks Noah will get them out himself eventually. He doesn't understand Noah. Noah will be taking those rotting baby teeth to his grave. But anyway, I tell Jonah he has to eat some vegetables before he can have any candy. For the rest of the trip I think about teeth and shoes. One of the teachers at school once joked to me that kindergarten was all about teeth and shoes. She meant losing them and tying them repsectively, but I have come to the conclusion that it is *ALL* about teeth and shoes. (And poop, but that is later.) These constitute the tough philosophical work of parenting. They encompass economics, values, truth and lies. They take in power struggles and Who Exactly Is The Boss. Do you make the kid pull his teeth? (Tried it, unwise...) Do you let him have his double rows of shark teeth so he can learn the consequences later when he has torturous braces? Do you even get him braces, which by all accounts is a lot of money just so your kid can have a painful cosmetic procedure done so he can look like everyone else? What kind of message does that send about self worth? And what about the tooth fairy? Is it good to fill their little heads with stories of strange coin-toting women who will enter their rooms at the dead of night to take bloody body parts for cash? I for one, am the crappiest tooth fairy on earth. Christmas, Easter, birthdays- all of those are done well over the top at our house, but by the time the children are sound asleep enough to actually get their horrible little tooth out and replace it with cash, I am exhausted, and I always forget. The next morning I remember when the boy complains over his cereal that the tooth fairy forgot AGAIN. So I stammer out wildly fanciful lies about how she probably had to fight off the cats and anyway, being the tooth fairy is a tough job, who knows how she manages with that ladder! Noah, who is in the know, looks at me cynically. He wants his 25 cents. And then there are the shoes. Noah tells me every day that his shoes are too tight. The day after they are brand new, they are too tight. So I start ignoring him. Pretty soon we get to the Sunday morning when his shoes literally will not go on his feet. I look at them more closely and realize they are about 2 sizes too small. Once again, I qualify for Mother-of-the-Year. Then there is buying them. This is where we find out who is really in charge. They want character shoes with stormtroopers on them. I want the absolute cheapest sneakers I can get away with buying because I know they are headed for mud puddles the biggest pile of dog poop they can find. (Look, poop. But that is not all of it by a long shot.) Noah always picks out the most outlandish sneakers in the store. But I am finally on to him. It is actually a Karl Rovian strategy on his part. He knows if he picks truly awful sneakers I will compromise and get him something more like what he really wanted and less like what I wanted. (I generally pick what we used to call BLS's when I was in junior high; Blue light specials. Nothing is too good for my little darlings.) Once again we have philosophy, value judgements. Do you cave and get him the stupid $50 sneakers so he can feel good and avoid ridicule by his peers? Do you get him BLS's so he can build character and learn not to be a sheep? Do kids really need shoes with advertising on them? So back to the story. We go trick-or-treating. The boys have a huge wrestle mania with their Dad and Uncle Andy in Mom's family room while Mom nearly has a heart attack because she is positve someone is going to break their arm. We go home, and put the sleeping cherubs in bed. Half an hour later Jonah is up and he is screaming bloody murder. His stomach hurts. On his right side. He tells me he wishes he was dead and goes on screaming. Great, I'm thinking, he busted his spleen wrestling. I'm never going to hear the end of this one from Mom. Stupid thoughts like this continue to race through my head as TJ calls the hospital. We call my visiting teacher in to watch the kids and take off for the emergency room while Jonah screams in agony. We get there, Jonah is drenched in sweat, shivering, in shock. The docs look at him and are really cheerful but give each other that look that tells you they think something is up. You know you are in trouble when all of a sudden you have all kinds of cheery efficent nurses swarming in saying we just going to give you a tiny IV, it won't hurt a bit, and then they are giving us serious instructions about how he shouldn't eat or drink anything. Oh man, it is his appendix, they are prepping him for surgery. Why does this always happen on a holiday? The long and the short of it is they give him an x-ray and find out that it is not his appendix. We weren't being stupid at least, they thought it was his appendix, too. It turns out that he is only constipated. But horribly constipated all the way up to his stomach, with a big pocket of gas right over where his appendix is located. The older doctor gleefully shows his apprentice (who looks 15) how to feel poop-filled intestines from the outside. The doctor is asking me how much candy he ate- and looks at me unbelieving when I wail he only had two pieces!(He did, you can ask Mom!) Then he proceeds to give ME, the Nutrition Nazi, a talk on proper diet and nutrition for avoiding this in the future. After talking to Jonah, who is now feeling just fine and laughing his head off, we find out that he hasn't been eating any of his fruit or vegetables because they hurt his loose teeth. Teeth, shoes, and poop. That's all there is to it.
	posté par Krista Schmitz

1 commentaire:

	Molly Chandler a dit...	Il y a 973 jours
	K. Really? Ya gotta love the kid for his persistance of not pulling out his teeth... And all the domino-effect drama it's caused!! --It makes for good story telling at least! :-) The shoes?? Go for the compromise... The cheapest compromise available! He'll live, and even if he is persecuted? Sounds like they won't fit in 2 months anyway...... Tooth Fairy? We always put out teeth in a glass of water on our dresser. If the Tooth Fairy couldn't make it, it was a blessing in disguise, because that meant more money the more days it took! And the Tooth Fairy had collected silver dollars which always showed up in the bottom of the glass of water if enough days had been passed... I thought the silver dollars and quaters she left were magic, and saved them all... And actually still have the collection in my drawer at home. hahaha. Hey! They're magic!!?
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