Category: parenting
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The Backpack
Should I keep this? Marie Kondo whispered, “Tidy up!” in my ear as I studied the small, missile-shaped backpack. There were a few tears along the bottom, a grommet was missing. A long-forgotten zip-tie still prevented worn zipper from falling open and allowing the heavy oxygen tank inside to tumble out and put a…
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Better, Lighter, Stronger: A Tale of Hope
My eyes were as big as the moon when the orderly wheeled in the new Bipap machine for the Baby. The machine looked like someone had told a child, ‘Draw a Transformer with no arms and octopus feet with wheels and a heavy boxy head with a screen face’ and then brought it to life.…
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Captain’s Log: Baby’s First Flight
Tuesday, 7/11/2023, Nashville Airport 2:08 pm I wasn’t anxious about this until we popped open the back of my sister’s van. It’s not the actual flying that concerns me. The Baby is almost chronically un-anxious, as in, he is not anxious even when he probably should be, like when he tries to drown himself by…
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Adventures in Ableism: “Is he a dog?”
(BIG OLD ASTERISK RIGHT HERE AT THE BEGINNING: My proximity to disability is almost negligible. I parent a child with disabilities. I do not have any disabilities myself. I only know what I can observe and what happens to me within earshot of The Baby. My hope in sharing these stories is not that you…
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“Is He Dead?”: Teaching Kids Inclusion
One of the gifts that The Baby’s developmental delays gives us is that he doesn’t care what people think about him. Once, I had him in a backpack and The Kid and I were ordering snow cones. The Baby leaned over and emptied his stomach of all the water I had just painstakingly given him.…
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Plan G- Update
So, the Baby got his g-tube placed a few months ago. As a surgery, it was pretty straightforward. He came home with the site covered in gauze so we couldn’t even see any of the…recovery process. It took a few weeks for him to get back to normal. In short…it’s been awesome. He’s still eating…
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Behold, My Sister Wife
I have several distinct memories of observing parents whose kids had nurses in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Sometimes we would get caught on the elevator with them, other times they would make their grand entrance into the waiting room- a parent or two followed by a kid in a wheelchair with a…
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On Medicaid
Well, today the Wise family said hello to a new bed and goodbye to two of The Baby’s teeth. A few months ago, we started the laborious process of getting a SleepSafe bed approved through The Baby’s insurance because his crib had become unsafe. He was able to stand up in it and when he…
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The Honeysuckle Vine
The other morning, The Kid and I were on our morning walk with Baby and dog in tow. The dog had stopped to poop so The Baby and I paused on the sidewalk in one of the Top Three Most Interesting Yards on our street. For some reason, three artsy hippy families bought houses in…
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Girl, Interrupted
During this quarantine, I’ve been doing this app called 1 Second Everyday, where you basically create a video montage over a period of time made up of, you guessed it, a video clip of 1 second from each day. The Kid, who is a perpetual optimist and doesn’t want to think about or remember anything…