Sunday, October 14, 2007

Inevitable

Perry has given himself his first haircut.

His hair had been getting long, so I gave him a haircut yesterday. We discovered we were a little late to a breakfast meeting with friends, and so I ended up leaving the scissors out on the bathroom sink. When we got home, Perry made a beeline to the bathroom, and modified the cut I'd just given him.

I clipped the rest of his hair a little shorter this evening, to try to blend his handiwork in with the rest of his head.

Oh well, it grows back, and you don't really notice all that much unless you run your hand over his scalp. He's got wonderfully forgiving hair.

Yeah, you want a picture, but I don't have one at the moment.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Pit Empathy

This evening as a before-bed snack, Perry and I ate two lovely plums.

Perry said to me: That pit's saying [squeaky voice] "Don't cut the fruit off of me! Cover me back with my fruit!" But we're eating it. Plum, you're too delicious.

And later, as we were cutting the second plum: The pit's sad, again. It wants its fruit back on. But we cut it, instead. Pit, we're sorry. Would you like to go in the garbage? Would that make you feel better?

I told him the two pits could keep each other company. "In the garbage," he said. "That's where they'll be happy."

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Bribery accomplishes so much

Respectfully considering Perry's privacy, I won't go into detail about his potty training, but I will say the whole family is proud of recent accomplishments in the bathroom. It turns out that Perry is quite willing to perform for a big enough reward. In this case, the reward is ice cream. I'm going to lay in a supply of inexpensive toys to use as non-food rewards, too, and for eventual days/weeks/outings without accidents we'll also give trips to Happy Hollow or the Childrens' Discovery Museum. But right now the ice cream is doing the trick.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Well, eew

It could be anything at all when Perry crouches in the grass and says "Mommy, what's this?" This time it was the hindquarters and liver of an alarmingly large rat.

"Is it your rat, Mama?"
"No Perry, it's Angus's rat."
"Is it broken?"
"Yeah, that rat's pretty broken."

And Perry ran inside to tell Jay "Angus mouse broken!" Perry was really excited when I threw the pieces over the back fence (with a big plastic bag to protect my fingers).

Pardon this entry for having no pictures.

Friday, March 16, 2007

It's been a long time since I posted. Sorry to everyone.

Perry's grandma Sandy came to visit and stayed with us. Unfortunately her luggage didn't join her until the second day, but she's smart and packed the essentials in her carry-on. On March 1 Perry turned 3. Hooray! On March 3 we had a party. Several kids from his daycare managed to show up, which was fun.

Grandma Sandy flew home on the following Tuesday, and has decided that going home to a foot of snow is for the birds, and will be celebrating Perry's birthday (or at least making her "birthday" visit) in May or some other nice time of year.

At the moment, though, Perry is sick. We got a phone call from his daycare asking that we pick him up. He had a fever and chills. He waited until he was in the grownup bed before he threw up (I'm going to learn someday, right?). He's spent the day mostly asleep in front of the tv or having stories read to him. I hope he's better before we leave on Sunday for a trip to Arizona.

Pics from Perry's party later.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Food Shots

Perry has recovered his appetite. Here are some pictures of him eating.



Bagel and cream cheese.

















Rice

















Baskin Robbins "Wild 'N Reckless" (sic) sherbet. It even tastes good!

Sunday, February 11, 2007

crafty

This afternoon we're going to a birthday party for one of the kids from Perry's daycare. He's two, so the card we give him won't be of much interest, but I thought Perry and I could make one, anyway. Perry had a lot of fun glueing squares of tissue paper to the construction paper card, and picking out buggy rubber stamps for decorations. He even scribbled a little inscription. A masterpiece of ephemera.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

and then uglier ... but not really

Okay, last post ended after we got home from the emergency room. By that time Perry hadn't had much to drink for about 6 hours, and maybe a quarter of a banana to eat. We got home hoping not to have to clean up any more vomit. The good news was that he stopped throwing up. The bad news that actually was kind of good news was that he began to show signs of fever. It was bad news because Perry wasn't over being sick, but it was good news because it means that all the vomiting was at least partly due to a stomach virus and not necessarily because of a terrible concussion.

Sometime in the middle of the night on Sat night/Sun morning the diarrhea started. Let's just say that over the course of the next 24 to 30 hours we went through 3 changes of sheets and about 7 different changes of clothes. In between Perry lay nearly motionless on the couch watching endless hours of children's educational programming. He's going to be a toddler genius after this, or something.

Monday and Tuesday have been spent recovering, and sparing Perry's daycare from the horror. But he should be just fine on Wednesday. We should be just fine shortly thereafter.

Saturday, February 3, 2007

And then it got ugly ...

Perry settled just fine last night, but woke at midnight with shivers and woke again at 1:30 in a pool of vomit. He kept puking all night long and into the morning. We stayed up with him watching children's PBS programs (having 24 hour Sprout and KQED Kids on the rare occasions when Perry is sick makes our digital cable bill worth every penny). Perry only slept about an hour in 15 minute snatches, and Jay and I took turns out on the couch. But since it took two of us to deal with the barfing, neither one of us got more than 45 minutes of sleep at a time. In the morning I had an errand to run,, and I called up our hostess to let her know that one of the kids who had been at her party was now sick, and the other parents might want to know. She is in training to become an EMT, so she knew that nausea and vomiting after a blow to the head are a danger sign, and asked me to call a doctor.

The advice nurse at the urgent care heard the situation and told us that we needed to immediately go to an emergency room.

So, off we bundled to El Camino Hospital. They're the place to go if you don't need complex care, and the other times we'd been there Perry didn't have to wait long for medical care. Today, though, even though it was early afternoon on a Saturday, was a total zoo. We waited only 15 minutes before Perry was seen by a PA, but it was another 4 hours before he could get the CT scan the doctors wanted. Ambulance after ambulance kept rolling in with sick ("sick like dead or dying", said one nurse) babies and toddlers, and there was more than one old person who had fallen and banged their heads. Perry was relatively low priority for the scan.

After his scan we waited another hour and a half to get the results. It's frustrating to realize that if it were bad news they'd tell us quickly, but to have to wait forever to be told essentially "You're fine, go home". Eventually a nurse came in and told us "you're fine, go home. Oh, and here is a scrip for anti-nausea medication. Come back if he doesn't get better in a day or so." The scan came back normal, whatever that means. The discharge papers had a diagnosis of concussion, but they think the vomiting was likely because of a coincidental stomach virus. In any case, we did the right thing to take him in, and we're happy there's no swelling or bruising of the brain.

Perry had a little banana and a lot of apple juice and has kept it all down. Hopefully he'll wake up hungry in the morning.

Friday, February 2, 2007

Boom

Tonight the family went to a craft party. The plan was for all of us to go, and I would help Perry make some valentines until it was time for him to go home with Daddy. I would stay and actually get some socializin' and knitting in after the kidlet's bedtime.

All was going well until Perry slipped and hit his face on the corner of a coffee table. I scooped him up, forgetting that I was wearing light-colored cashmere. Yikes! Fortunately I managed to pull off the sweater before any of Perry's blood got on it. My turtleneck ended up with some, but that's all fine. So I ended up going home with Perry and Jay, and now that I'm here I'm really sleepy, probably from all the excitement.

Perry had a small cut over one eye, and will probably have a nasty bruise. We got a band-aid on him, but he refused cold packs, so we're hoping that Tylenol and sleep will keep him from swelling or hurting too much. He went to bed saying "Valentine house dangerous. Be careful."

Saturday, January 13, 2007

tampon applicators up the nose
I don't worry about being a bad influence on Perry. My friends are the ones who take care of that. Those are tampon applicator tubes they've shoved up their noses.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

A breakthrough

Perry, like many kids, has been having trouble pronouncing S sounds at the beginning of words. His friend Sarah is called Harrah, 6 and 7 are pronounced hix and hebben. We've been working on the leading S sound with him, and if we slow down and over-pronounce, he can get out sssss-ix and ssss-ebben. So today after we stopped for a smoothie I was really pleased to hear him say from the back seat "Suck! Suck!" (he's quite fascinated with how straws work, but he was emphatic enough that I wondered at first if he was unhappy with something). He finally has the S! He also said "Bue sky! Sun! Sun in eyes." And he pronounced all of the leading Ss clearly and without prompting.

fvvtgvrvtvgfvgvyvtgvcgtvct4rvv xczazzacv ahgfxjmxe3jnhvgcv5tjuh4r3r4edtgdfedk6yhfghdzdyvb6gd`
^^^^^^^THAT is an example of what happens when Perry gets access to a keyboard, and is why I write this blog, and not him.

Today we are experiencing teeth-chatteringly cold weather as an Alaska blast comes to visit. Our local low temps won't rise above freezing until after the weekend is over. Perry really wanted to play in the park, so we gave it a try, but I didn't have a warm jacket and so had to go home after 5 minutes, just to get warmer clothes. Perry protested at first, but as soon as he snuggled close to me he realized that it was nicer to be warm. When we got home there was a package waiting for us. Perry's grandmother had knit him a beautiful red sweater and matching hat, and it couldn't have arrived at a better time. I put it on him, and he marched around the house declaring "Grandma maded it!" Thank you, Grandma!


Here you can see Poor Bear, or as we like to call him, Winky. He lost the eye in a tragic dryer accident.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Dammit!

It's really funny, but also surprisingly shocking, to hear mild swearing (dammit!) coming from a two year old. At least he is using the word appropriately.

I'm not sure I can tone my language down all the way to a G rating, but it's time to try. Maybe we'll start a family swear jar.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Introducing ...

Here, for your interest and enjoyment, is a blog dedicated to Perry: his development, progress, antics, milestones, trivia, and various data. I'll do my best to include links to the entries I make here in my other blog, and include links here to that blog if I write things about Perry there.

Today was Perry's first day back at daycare after our New Year's road trip to San Diego. He apparently ate, slept, and played well, and is happy to be back to his regular routine. You might not have known it yesterday as we were getting closer to San Jose. Even after 5 hours on the road, when I told him we were getting close to home he demanded that I turn the car around and go the other way. For those of you who can do math and know California geography, it's not 5 hours from San Diego to San Jose, but we had stopped overnight in Santa Barbara, so we were actually doing pretty well. Next time we go, we'll be flying, though. I love the drive if I'm by myself or one other adult companion, but toddler company is trying even at its best.

About Me

My photo
Mountain View, California
This is Perry's blog. Since he can't type yet, and people (actually, mainly his relatives) want to know what's going on with him, I have started this blog as a spin-off from my own. He can take it over later if he wants to, but I'm sure by the time he's old enough to publish his own thoughts, he'll probably upload them directly from his cortical implant or something.