Me: I love you!

Bean: I love you for you!

Me: Aww…you’re so cute!

Bean: You’re the cutest!

I swear she does stuff like this just to mess with my head. But it does help to store it in the memory banks, and then pull it up in my mind when she’s acting like a bratty little devil.

Here,  click this link and press the big red button. (Make sure your sound is turned on.) It will make you feel better. CLICK HERE.

The reason I haven’t posted much, even though I do have some time on my hands (read: between projects at work and running out of silly jobs like cleaning the cubicle), is I’m afraid of what I might say. That is, I’ve found myself frequently annoyed and pissed off and just generally RAGING MAD about all the stupidity that I see around me (on both a micro and a macro level) and I don’t want to fall into the trap of doing any of the following:

- Start talking politics and end up having to delete hateful comments*
- Say too much about first-hand observations of stupidity in the workplace and maybe get myself fired
- Run my mouth about shit in a place where some future employer might see it and get offended

Anyway, you get the idea.

(*Yes, I delete comments that I find hateful. Luckily, it only happens about once a year or so. Oh, you thought you had First Amendment rights here on somebody’s private blog? Oh, oh wait a minute…HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! OK, I’m better now. So no, there’s no free speech on a blog. There’s the blog owner’s speech and the speech of commenters that the blog owner allows at her sole discretion and whim. The end.)

Did that seem bitchy? SEE WHAT I MEAN? I start typing and things just go downhill! I blame the weather, perimenopause, and a sugar addiction that I’m really trying (and failing) to kick.

But let’s talk about something cheerful, like my amazing kid. The other day I was eating a Milk Dud (hello, Halloween candy and sugar addiction!) and a crown that I have on one of my lower left molars popped out. Yikes! Well, it wasn’t such a big deal – the dentist was able to get me in the same day to glue it back in, and luckily it wasn’t damaged at all (or – gulp! – swallowed). Veronica was fascinated by it. She asked me quite seriously, “Mommy, will the Tooth Fairy come for you now?” Awww, so sweet. I had to explain that no, no visit from the Tooth Fairy was imminent and in fact I was going to the dentist’s office to have the “toof” glued back into place.

Veronica hasn’t lost any baby teeth yet (she’s only four and a half) but she grows more fascinated with the concept every day. I remember when I first told her that her baby teeth would fall out some day and grown-up teeth would come in. She was kind of upset! She was scared about her teeth falling out, but felt better after I explained that it doesn’t hurt and they don’t all fall out at the same time. Plus, there’s the Tooth Fairy situation, which certainly helps.

Anyway, here’s some completely unrelated entertainment for you. Eat your hossenfeffer!

Yeah. My pre-schooler knows who the Dalai Lama is! ADMIT IT, I WIN.

We also watched another documentary called The Giant Buddhas, which was a depressing look at the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001. Wow, what a downer. The Bean fell asleep during that one, and I was glad. It was just too sad.

Anyway, I have taught her how to say “om” and she loves for me to tell her stories about how Siddhartha became the Buddha and taught about the Noble Truths and so forth. I guess we’ll have to rent Little Buddha from Netflix (it’s not available on streaming) next. She’ll love it. She wants me to put the large golden Buddha that resides in my office in her room, but I have hesitated, mostly because he’s made out of plaster and sort of delicate. I guess I’ll try to find her something sturdier, but in the mean time I gave her my Squeezing Soft Buddha from J-List.

I’m sure this is a temporary obsession, but I can’t help but be tickled by it. I’ve been really into Buddhism for over 20 years now but never said anything to Veronica about it. I know she’s really too young to understand the spiritual aspect of it, for her it’s more about the imagery and the fun stories. Still, it’s kind of cool — and definitely preferable to her brief obsession with documentaries about the Dark Ages. I’ll take explaining meditation over describing the Plague any day.

Bean’s doctor called me last Friday to let me know the results, and they were a mixed bag. On the positive side, there were no arrhythmia’s of any kind. But the bad news is, the evidence of an accessory pathway did show up intermittently. In other words, she does still have WPW, although the intermittent nature of its appearance on the monitor means that the accessory pathway is most likely weakening. It might still go away on its own, someday.

Needless to say, at first I was pretty bummed. However, the doctor was optimistic. First, since she stopped taking heart medication three years ago, Veronica has never had any episodes of SVT or other arrhythmia. Second, as mentioned, the intermittent nature of the evidence of the pathway means that it’s probably weakening. He felt that all we needed to do was continue as before, and have her come back again to be checked out next summer. Further, he didn’t think that surgery was necessarily indicated next summer, even if the WPW is still present. He actually said that if the condition is still present when she’s a teenager, at that time we might consider the ablation that we had previously discussed with other doctors in the practice.

So overall, the prognosis is good. While I was a bit depressed and let down at first, on further reflection I’m actually feeling pretty positive about this. Honestly, every day that Veronica is alive is really a gift. I know that sounds ridiculously melodramatic, but let me just tell you…after you’ve stood in an emergency room hallway, watching eight people surround your three-week-old baby on a giant bed, trying desperately to find a vein where they can insert an IV to give her medication to slow down her heart, beating a wild 300 or so beats a minute; after you’ve watched in horror and disbelief as paddles are applied and her little body jerks wildly as they try to re-start her heart, which they finally slowed so much it stopped; after you’ve seen your baby strapped to a cart and attached to many machines rolled down the hall away from you to a waiting helicopter that you can’t ride in, to go to the regional children’s medical center; well… After all of those things and more, when you see that same little girl at four years old, happy and healthy and funny and creative, it really does seem like every day with her is a blessing.

Therefore, if we need to take Veronica to the cardiologist once a year until she’s 18, or have a Holter monitor every year, or even give her medication again at some point, I’m not going to complain. I’m just glad she’s healthy, and that at least she doesn’t remember any of those horrible things that I’ll always remember.

I was pretty happy when the doctor looked at her EKG and told us that he sees no evidence of WPW anymore. He mentioned a slight heart murmur, which is apparently normal for her age and nothing to be concerned about. He listened to her heart via stethoscope for a long time, then they ran an electrocardiogram, just to be sure. Everything looked good. My baby is cured!!

They still want her to endure a Holter monitor, just for thoroughness. I suppose I shouldn’t fault them for that, but try explaining to an active four-year-old why she has to wear all those stickers and some device for 24 hours (along with pulling off the very sticky leads later). Not fun. So we go back in a week and a half to get that. Then we just have to follow up every two years or so.

And THAT news is good for MY heart.

It freaks me out how fast she’s growing up. But just tonight, when we were eating dinner, she stopped me in mid-sentence (I don’t even remember what I was talking about) and asked, “But Mommy…I’m still your baby, right?”

Aww.

The Bean had a birthday. Oh, Bean. I love you, but you frustrate me SO MUCH. Our Bean was kind of cranky and naughty on the day itself, and her party almost ended up canceled. But things worked out in the end:

With her favorite cousin and her Barbie cake.

She’s so into girly stuff right now. She definitely had a little bit of a tomboy phase but now it’s all pink, all the time. She loves dressing up, Barbies, ballerinas, fairies, and princesses. I remain neutral on all of these issues. For example, I had Barbies when I was little, and honestly loved them. I loved dressing them in all kinds of outfits and acting out all kinds of little soap operas with them. But that was several decades ago, and I willingly admit that my interest in Barbie has waned. I haven’t gone out of my way to encourage Bean’s interest in Barbie, but since she has clearly shown that she has it, I haven’t discouraged it either.

So I bought her the Barbie cake that she specifically told me she wanted, every time we passed the bakery department at Target. I bought her a new Barbie doll (which she loved) and her father bought Barbie balloons and decorations for her party. As a feminist, I have some problems with Barbie now, but you have to admit she’s 100 times less offensive then those hideous Bratz dolls (thank God those things got discontinued).

I guess I could refuse to indulge her taste for Barbie, or for Hello Kitty or Disney princesses for that matter, but what would that get me? An unhappy kid? No, thanks. So she likes girly stuff, so what? She also loves to draw and paint, kick the ball around, ride her bike (and her new scooter), sing and dance, and tell secrets to her teddy bear. I think she is becoming a well-rounded, well-adjusted person, and I love her just the way she is.

On her new scooter...

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