Darkness has Come Over the Land

Quin had his two-month checkup on Thursday.  It's Sunday and he still hates us.  The good news is Sarah has recovered.  She took it pretty hard.  When she got home she was a much darker person than I remembered.  Her eyelashes were clumped and splayed out.  She had a Goth Tammy Faye thing going on that I was quick to compliment.  She told me she'd been crying for a good part of the day.  Not only did she come apart when her baby was administered several prescribed stabbings, but on the way home he'd lose it every time the car stopped moving.  The ped's clinic is on County Line Road.  It's one of those thoroughfares that should be a major highway but all the neighbors fight to keep it small.  It's riddled with bottlenecks and stop lights.  At every intersection concerned citizens would peer down from their SUV's at the chaos in our Corolla.  They'd see a woman on the edge carting around an apoplectic child.  It took her a very long time to get home. 

Upon hearing about her trials I was quick to offer the first thing that came to mind.  She did not want to have sex.  As she was quick to remind me in stern prose, "Do you hear that screaming?  That's sex." 

Sarah has since cheered up but Quin refuses to smile.  He's holding happiness hostage until we can regain his trust.  I'd hoped some nose "booping" would set his prisoner free.   It hasn't worked.  Neither has my cadre of baby games and songs.  The bouncing pilates ball song "Cowboy Quin" falls on deaf ears.  Mr. Moosey and Eddie the Elephant haven't helped either.  Not even the once beloved Kissing Bugs get a giggle.  Now they make him cry.

 

Not only that but the whole household complains of cold-like symptoms.  We're chugging orange juice, Airborne and Throat Coat.  I have a vitamin diamond forming in my kidney.   Sarah's family tradition of gargling saltwater has helped, too.  Sarah and I are religious about it.  Deer follow me to work.

We may also try my father's standby of a shot of whiskey.  

Last night was really rough.  Quin, who might also have a touch of something...or, who knows, might be slightly affected by the 9 different diseases injected into his body, was near impossible to get down.   Sarah crashed in front of my Netflix pick of Some Like it Hot.  I'm sure those cross-dressing jokes were pretty fresh in the 50's.  Today the Marilyn Monroe movie didn't make much of splash at the Ewy house.  Quin simply seemed annoyed by the whole idea that we'd want to look at something other than him.  

With all of my conventional tricks out of favor, I grasped for anything, and ended up with a guttural loop of what I knew of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  It worked.   But in the time it took to get him back to sleep, a Palestinian got a kidney.  

It was some documentary on the poor state of medical care in the Middle East. 

 
His eyes were closed.  He was at peace.  Then I gently bounced with each step up the stairs.  And that's hard to do.  It's like trying to multi-task while brushing your teeth.  I had to really exercise my brain to get the gentle rocking to work with the necessary climbing.  Sometimes I'd end up stuck in place rocking instead of stepping.  Finally, in his room, I  lowered the child into his crib.  This is a tricky maneuver because it's easy to startle him with the descent, and you must maintain chest compression so he thinks he's still getting a loving hug and not getting dumped off so his parents can see if a shot of whiskey helps a cold.  You've seen those burglar movies where they have to quickly replace the world's rarest Faberge egg with something of equal weight before all the alarms start screaming?  Well thats the delicacy with which the cradle drop must take place.

Everything was great until I got my hand caught under the baby.   I over committed the head cradle and my left arm became his pillow.   I tried to extract myself but it only made the little cherub stir.  For a few minutes I maintained my hunch and kept up the throaty groaning of the Spaghetti Western theme song.   I couldn't help but feel like a deformed miscreant trying to steal a baby.  

After about five minutes my back reminded me that I hadn't exercised since my wife and I took a yoga class in February, 2003.  His two month appointment had him weighing 11 pounds, 2.6 ounces.   As of Thursday, November 8th he's 23 and 1/4 inches long.  By last night he had me pinned. 

I went with table cloth trick.  In one, quick rip I had freed my arm from the baby.   I leapt back from my son.  I held my breath and watched him wriggle.  He nodded his head back and forth.   He whipped his little hands about.  He crawled out of his sleep and back into our very, very late evening.

So yah, over 11 pounds and 23 inches.  And his head is 41 centimeters.  I don't know why they mix in the metric system, and of all places the head.  41 sounds like a lot, so why not say he's 50 centimeters long and go for a smaller sounding 10 inches on the head.  That would be nicer to hear.  Everything his mid-percentile except for the head.  That's in the 75th percentile.   Plenty of room for forever emblazoned the dark days of the two-month checkup.