This was the weekend of another family trip, kind of a pair of day trips that got melded into a weekend getaway. The occasion was a celebration of Kat’s birthday (29 years young tomorrow!), and the destination was the Plymouth/Carver area of Massachusetts for some beach shenanigans and adventures at King Richard’s Faire.

Which went okay. King Richard’s Faire was, ultimately, a wash. We got there around 10:30 and were thrilled to get front row-ish seats for the tiger show, but around the time the show started, so did the rain. Within a few minutes, it went from spitting to a downpour, and the awesomeness of seeing big cats jump around the stage and show off their majesty was rapidly overpowered by the misery of palming handfuls of water out of our faces.

Sam dressed up as a pirate but had no interest in the fair whatsoever because of the rain. He and Kyle went on a swinging boat ride, but after that, the whines set in and our attempts to keep Sam entertained despite the storm were mostly futile. He felt better once a few performers teased smiles out of him, and even better after he had a large pretzel and ice cream (look, you don’t go to the faire and eat healthy, ok), but the realization that we weren’t going to drop $300 on a shoulder dragon hit him kind of hard towards the end of the day.

Kat had initially planned an elaborate costume for this excursion, all feathers and corsets and the like. She wanted to portray the Raven Queen from Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder lore, but after we found out the weather would be iffy at best, she pared the costume down to just a feathery mantle and a gorgeous wrap that looked like wings. She looked awesome (though she won’t let me post the pictures; I have them on my phone, so I have proof) but also got drenched and learned that the black feathers of her mantle weren’t actually black feathers–they were rooster feathers dyed black, and the dye wasn’t set enough to not trickle down her arms during the downpours. That said, she got a gorgeous tooled leather collar as a birthday gift for herself, so all wasn’t lost there.

Kyle spent the entire time with a soggy Sam because I can’t carry anything that weighs more than 10 lbs (doctor’s orders; that along with pelvic rest make me basically the most pathetic wife ever). That said, Kyle was also sad that we didn’t have $300 to spend on a shoulder dragon.

As for me, I managed to acquire a barometric pressure headache at around 3:00 in the morning before anyone woke up. The right side of my head felt like it was cracking open like an egg, and I ultimately shuffled off to the hanging swing chair building to rest both my pelvic muscles (which scream at me if I walk for more than 10 minutes or do physically strenuous things like rolling over in bed) and my head. To say I was disappointed is the understatement of the year; I LOVE King Richard’s Faire. I love exploring the shops, watching the shows, and overall just exploring. But my god, I was so miserable, I couldn’t even keep my head up.

And that headache lasted for two more days, until the stupid tropical rainstorm that caused it finally shuffled out to sea.

(I tried SO many remedies to calm things down, but ultimately, with a barometric pressure headache, you just have to weep and soldier through)

But that was just Sunday. Saturday, which we spent in Plymouth, was a fantastic day.

We went to Plymouth last summer, just on a fun day trip to Plimoth Plantation and to wander around on the beach for a bit; it wasn’t a bad day, though it was agonizingly hot. The beach was crowded, as beaches tend to be at the absolute peak of summer grossness, too crowded for us to get much farther down the shore than a tiny sliver of sand right beside the parking lot. This was meh in and of itself, but poor Sam had the worst time of it–being all of two years old, he was terrified of both the sand and the waves and remained either firmly planted in one place or attached to either me or Kyle like a lamprey.

So my expectations for a beach day on Saturday weren’t terribly high, especially as it’s October, and though the weather was nice, it was a little cool for the beach.

We started our jaunt at the Cabby Shack (if you’re in Plymouth, I recommend them very highly, though be forewarned that the cheese in the mac and cheese is basically queso–not bad, but a surprise), where we feasted on the thickest clam chowdah in the world, fried clam strips, and coconut shrimp. Sam was game to get his picture taken with one of Plymouth’s infamous lobsters…

…and once we’d done that, we headed back to the same beach we’d visited the year before. Again, my expectations weren’t particularly high; Plymouth beach isn’t a bad beach, but I always prefer my autumnal beach jaunts to take place on rockier coastlines or somewhere on Cape Cod that’s removed enough from streets and bustle that all you can hear are crashing waves and seagulls.

(maybe I’m a beach snob)

(but not as bad as Kat is, though in her defense, she spent most of her life living in Santa Barbara)

Once we’d parked, Kat headed off to explore and Kyle and I escorted Sam down to the water’s edge. Things were already a little different–Sam eagerly kicked off his flip flops and ran through the sand, not at all wigged out by the different textures beneath his feet. He hesitated just a moment when confronted with ridiculously cold North Atlantic seawater (look, you don’t go swimming at New England beaches, unless you like turning into a popsicle) but a beat later, he was splashing through the waves and laughing gleefully as he found rock after rock to toss into the water with Kyle.

And they had a blast. Kyle isn’t a big beach person–his beach experiences mostly come from the Gulf Coast of Texas, and in his own words, those beaches “aren’t the best” (he’s very polite). Even when he’s not out of the car and splashing in the water, he’s expressed that the vastness of the sea and sky make him skittish (to which I always say, “You’re from Texas? Where you have nothing but sky?”), so when it comes to beaches, he’s reluctant, to say the least.

But on Saturday, he and Sam dove in together. He tried to teach Sam how to skip rocks (that went about as well as you’d expect), and then they got to work trying to build a sandcastle. Kyle led Sam into the waves (pretty tame at this beach; nothing that went above Sam’s knees), and they both had an impressively great time frolicking about, as if neither had felt anything but love for a beach in their lives. Sam loved the beach so much that, at one point, he scooped up a handful of seawater in joy and tried to drink it as I squawked, “No, don’t do that!”

Well. It was a learning experience. And it didn’t ruin the day for him; he spat the water out and then went right back to playing happily, jumping up and down in the water and screeching, “Yay beach!” as loudly as he could.

Kat, meanwhile, returned to us with a handful of seashells (always her gift to me when we hit the beach) and a $20 bill (she called it her birthday gift from the ocean and used it to buy that tooled leather collar on Sunday).

Once we were all beached out, we packed up the car again, de-sanded ourselves, and headed back to the hotel. Most of Plymouth’s hotels are quaint little B&Bs or fancy spas, so our choices were either squeeze into a way-too-fancy room at a spa or B&B or the Hilton. Of the two, the Hilton seemed the better option, and we had a nice room on the second floor, just a quick walk from the pool and jacuzzi.

Yes, pool. An indoor pool, at that. Nothing terribly deep (the deep end was 4 feet even, the shallow about 3’9”), nothing too fancy, but we all wanted to get some swimming in, and Kyle and I wanted to give Sam a chance to try a swimming pool again, this time accompanied by our guiding hands.

He was reluctant to step into the pool, to say the least, but Kyle was right there holding onto him the entire time, and I was nearby (in a super cute suit, I might add; thank you, ModCloth, for still having cute plus-sized bathing suits despite your turn towards the awful lately). Gradually, Sam’s fear of the water began to disappear. He still didn’t want to try floating on his own (and every time we tried to sneak it in, he screamed, “I want to get out!”), but he liked “swimming” between me and Kyle and splashing about and playing overall. I couldn’t hold him as much because, again, lifting over 10 lbs (I gave myself some leeway because water makes things buoyant and that helps with lifting), but I held his hands and guided him around the pool and helped him get over his fear of putting his hair in the water.

So it went really well! Sam likes playing in pools now, though he’s still not quite independent in the water, but we’re getting there. Overall, Saturday was a day of redeeming water adventures, and I’m happy about that.

We ended the day with a trip to a local IHOP, an IHOP that was… surprisingly really nice inside. Most IHOPs have that really casual “yeah, we’re IHOP, don’t expect much” feel to them, but this one was decorated like some sort of fancy independent restaurant, with exposed industrial ceilings and the kind of shabby chic decor that would make it feel totally normal on any given HGTV renovation show. The food remained IHOP-y, but the fanciness and the fact that we were the only ones there turned it into this strange sort of liminal space, and I’m still not sure that it was a real experience.

And it was a good weekend. A wet weekend, a weekend that ended with us eating McDonald’s food instead of turkey legs at King Richard’s Faire and driving home at 2 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. like we’d expected, but a good weekend nonetheless. And best of all, Sam is no longer afraid of large bodies of water. Hallelujah.

It’s been a big weekend for Sam, for a number of reasons.

The first reason is the most exciting for me: he actually has started running to the potty when he recognizes that he needs to pee!

This is a HUGE milestone in potty training. For weeks now, he’s been reluctant to go, even when he needs to use the potty, and as a result, we’ve seen tons of accidents. Today, though, several times, he dropped what he was doing and RAN to the potty, doing a little dance as he did. You know the dance. That little panicked potty dance that toddlers do.

(this one)

And holy crap, I was out of my mind with joy about it! This is potty training! This is success! He still doesn’t like to use the potty when he’s pooping (he’s super constipated because of it, which is SO MUCH FUN let me tell you), but he recognizes that he needs to go and he goes. That is potty training. I’m so pleased.

So that’s my celebratory thing. The second reason this was a big weekend for Sam was that he had his first ever birthday party at a friend’s house.

The friend was his best friend Hunter; the two of them are absolutely inseparable at all times. Hunter’s mom said several times today, “They’re meant to be best friends,” and it’s so true. They just will not go anywhere without each other, and I’m so glad. I love that he has a best friend from such a young age, and I’m hoping that neither of us ever move away from each other so that he and Hunter can go to kindergarten and first grade and every grade of school together forever.

So it was Hunter’s birthday today, and Sam had an absolute blast. Hunter’s family live on a wonderful plot with acres and acres of green land, apple trees, barns, the works. They pulled out all the stops for the party–they had a bouncy house and a piñata and music and everything. Sam had a fantastic time, he really did.

A couple of things stood out in particular, though: the pool incident and the Power Wheels incident.

The Power Wheels incident first, because that one doesn’t make me look like as bad of a parent. As toddlers do, Sam and Hunter have a hard time sharing things. At school, this isn’t a huge deal because nothing “belongs” to them–it’s just the school’s stuff that everyone has to share. At Hunter’s house, though, all the toys were Hunter’s, and it was harder to talk to either of them about sharing (I let Hunter’s mom take charge of that, because I’m not going to tell someone else’s kid to share with my kid).

So the Power Wheels incident began at the sandbox. Hunter had a cool front-end-loader type of gadget that he was using to “dig for treasure.” Sammy thought this was the coolest thing in history and wanted a turn, but Hunter was, of course, uninterested in sharing. Sam sulked and refused to play with much besides a large shovel until the managed to trick Hunter off the front end loader and steal it for himself. You could almost hear his little victorious thoughts. “Ha ha! You thought the front end loader was yours but IT IS MINE! Ha ha ha ha!”

Hunter didn’t seem too bothered at this trickery, though, and a moment later, we saw why: Hunter came rolling out of the family garage on a Power Wheels John Deere tractor. He and Sammy met each other’s eyes, and he looked utterly smug as they passed; Sammy,  by contrast, was immediately awash in envy. Hunter had a tractor? That he drove? By himself?

Thus began Sammy’s quest to acquire a tractor of his own. In a shed next to the sandbox, he found a tractor, but it definitely didn’t drive on its own–it required foot power to go, like a Flintstones car. Sam discovered this the hard way by putting his feet on the footrests of the little tractor and not moving forward.

A beat or so later, Hunter abandoned the tractor for a four wheeler version of a Power Wheels that he maneuvered expertly around the apple tree and the sandbox and the shed and everything. Sammy was once again envious because although he’d snagged the tractor, he couldn’t get it to go forward. He wasn’t keeping his foot pressed down on the pedal, and the tractor was stopping and starting like an old jalopy driven by someone who’s never even seen a stick shift before. He thought the issue was with the tractor itself and watched sadly as Hunter zipped around without a care in the world.

Eventually, Sammy was so sad overall that he wasn’t running around playing. He stuck close to me and held my hand with a crestfallen expression. Hunter’s mom had to come over and convince Hunter to let Sammy have a turn on his four wheeler, and after that, they tag teamed–whatever it was they were doing. Zipping around, jumping in the bounce house, eating cake together. They had the best time.

The pool incident makes me look like a bad parent. Hunter’s family has an in-ground pool, and it’s pretty nice. We’ve been looking forward to it for ages. I got Sam some puddle jumpers and a new swimsuit, and I imagined hanging onto him and letting him get used to the water–after all, he’s never been in a big pool before.

He took a while to warm up to the idea of the pool–after all, there was a bounce house and a sandbox and Power Wheels–but eventually he decided that it would be fun. He’d been watching the other kids bellyflop into the water all day, and they were having a blast, so he was ready to give it a try.

We brought him back to the car and changed him into his swimsuit and puddle jumpers. Kyle then started stripping down to his swimsuit (I was feeling crappy; I swear to god, if there’s not at least one gestational sac and heartbeat when we go in for the ultrasound on Thursday with how awful I feel this pregnancy, I will burn something down), and we both figured that Sam would take his time getting into the pool.

(expectations)

See, Sam is kind of… not the bravest child. He’s skittish about a lot of things, including being barefoot, petting cats OR dogs, eating new foods, sand, fried pizza, rain, and oh, ten billion other things that I could list that he has no reason to fear but does. When in a new situation, he usually sticks to me or Kyle like a barnacle until he’s feeling more comfortable. At the beginning of the party, even though he knows Hunter and Hunter’s entire family, he still would not leave us alone until Hunter finally wheedled him into coming into the bounce house.

So we figured the pool would be the same way. Even as he started to take the first step, we thought it would be the same way–the water was deep enough that he’d have felt that buoyancy right away, and considering that he’s scared of LITERALLY EVERYTHING, I figured the buoyancy would give him at least pause long enough for Kyle to get his shorts on.

Not so. In slow motion (from my perspective), Sam took the next step and the next, not pausing. His puddle jumpers lifted him up so he was floating. In the moment of confusion about “wtf is going on I’ve never floated before” he panicked. He flailed and sputtered. Never for a second did he go underwater (thank GOD, and thank you to everyone who suggested puddle jumpers), but his face went down for less than a second and came back up again in time for him to wail in terror.

He did an impressive doggy paddle for a kid who’s never swum before (thank you, puddle jumpers) as Kyle (also in slow motion, so it seemed) finished stripping down and got into the pool. He and Sam caught each other and Sam screamed and sobbed until Kyle put him back on the concrete.

I was frozen the entire time. From the instant I realized “that child is not stopping” right until he was back in my arms and wrapped in a towel, it was like I couldn’t move (which bodes REALLY WELL for future Situations). The other moms chuckled understandingly. “Ohh, is it his first time in a big pool?” they asked and chuckled knowingly when I nodded. They probably weren’t thinking anything beyond, “poor kid, oh well, now he knows,” but my guilt definitely projected into them thinking, “what terrible parents to let him just jump in like that.”

(my expectations for the rest of the party)

We were watching him and right there the whole time. It was maybe three seconds between Sam stepping off the bottom step and Kyle getting to him. Logically, I know that he’s fine and we didn’t do anything wrong, but I’ve still been thinking that GOD, I should’ve been holding him, I should have yelled at him to wait for Kyle, I should have done anything to prevent that moment.

Anyway, despite his (understandable) fear, Sam tried the pool again with Kyle, but once he got a taste of buoyancy again, he shrieked and panicked and that was the end. He sat on my lap shivering and sniffling until he’d dried off and then mostly told us about the pool, “I was really scared until you got me, Daddy.” He didn’t have anything even remotely resembling a breathing problem, so we know he didn’t inhale any pool water, and his energy level was high until we got home after the party and he absolutely (and understandably) crashed.

And, of course, I’m now in a frantic search for well priced swim lessons near us because Sam thinks floating is the enemy.

But in the end, his memories of the party were good ones, and he had a grand time. He and Hunter remain inseparable, and he’s begging for both his own Power Wheels and a bounce house for his next birthday party (I told him “we’ll see” by which I mean I’ll be depending on Kyle and Kat and everyone I know to help me make Pinterest-worthy Star Wars stuff for said birthday party so that Sam doesn’t feel sad about the lack of bounce house). He fell asleep with a smile on his face. So overall: a win? Maybe?

T-minus four days until the ultrasound.

This weekend, we confronted an old and familiar enemy–the ear infection.

I’ve written before about how Sam dealt with monthly ear infections from roughly the time he started attending daycare until we got ear tubes put in when he was about eighteen months old. He inherited this physical annoyance from Kyle, who had so many ear infections when he was a kid that his ears are permanently scarred and ringing. One time when he was visiting me, he suspected that he had an ear infection, and so we went to the ER. The doctor looked in his left ear and remarked, “Wow, yeah, you’ve got some really bad scarring in here,” to which Kyle replied, “I know, but I came in to see you about the other ear.”

After Sam started daycare, we slipped into a frankly obnoxious routine: Sam got a cold that turned into an ear infection. He’d spend a good week recovering from the cold and ear infection, ten days on antibiotics, and then have about a week of decent health, only to get another cold and ear infection immediately thereafter. We went through so many bottles of the pink stuff that you’d think we’d invested in it. Kyle and I lost so many days of work because Sam couldn’t go to daycare when he had an ear infection, not until he’d been on antibiotics for twenty-four hours.

The worst ones sneaked up on us; they happened when the fluid built up so much in Sam’s middle ear that he got carsick. And at his age back then, carsickness couldn’t be avoided by a small voice from the backseat whimpering, “Mommy, my tummy feels sick.” We’d just hear him start coughing, and before anyone could grab anything to catch it in, he’d puke all over himself and the backseat. And then we’d have to turn around and drive home with that delightful smell permeating everything.

At Sam’s eighteen month appointment, his pediatrician brought up the idea of ear tubes to us. “It’s a really quick procedure,” she said. “He’ll be in and out in time to have a perfectly normal day, though you’ll want to keep him home so that he can rest and heal.”

After a few more doctor visits, Kyle and I found ourselves in a surgical center with a groggy baby. The surgical center was, for some reason, located in a pretty seedy neighborhood. It was under construction, and large pieces of plywood covered the windows, spray painted to direct us to the front door around the corner. In broad daylight, this would have been discomfiting, but we arrived at the center before sunrise on a mild December day, and that just made the whole thing worse.

A handful of families were already there, all of them with carriers holding sleepy babies. The nurse who’d scheduled the surgery explained that they liked to do procedures in descending order by age, and so we knew that the two babies called in ahead of us must have been really, really young.

Sam was game for the whole thing, at least at first. He toddled around the waiting room in flannel pajamas, tried to go through the doors to the recovery area, tried to sneak into the nurse’s office. Gradually, however, he began to remember that he was hungry; after all, you’re not supposed to eat before surgery. We’d been in the waiting room for about an hour when he started to whimper; by the time they called us in at two-plus hours after we’d arrived, he was howling.

And he didn’t stop. I couldn’t blame him, though; surgery is a weird thing when you’re an adult, and I imagine it must be even weirder when you’re a baby. He begged the nurse to take the blood pressure cuff off him (inasmuch as an eighteen-month-old can beg: “Off please?” he asked her with fat tears rolling down his cheeks). He said “no” a lot. He didn’t listen at all when I pointed out that the six-year-old sitting across from us was taking this whole experience in stride. And eventually, he clung to me as we made the trip down the hall and to the surgical suite where he’d get the tubes put in.

He didn’t like lying down on the table, but the nurses distracted him with some spinny, glowy toys that made a pleasant whirring sound. That said, my son is not one who will be distracted for very long if something Strange is happening, and sure enough, when the anesthetist came to knock him out, he started howling again. This was particularly difficult to watch, at the anesthetist was approximately 500 years old with palsied hands and the bedside manner of a midwinter bear. He held a mask over Sam’s face with one shaking hand and, with the other, pressed Sam’s jaw shut. Sam screamed for a beat and then was sound asleep, a furious expression still twisting his features.

A nurse took me out to the waiting room, rubbing my back as she did (nurses are awesome). “It’s always harder for the moms and dads than it is for the babies,” she promised. “The surgeon will be out to get you in a couple of minutes.”

I sat down next to Kyle, both of us bleary-eyed and wishing that we were the ones getting a dose of sweet, sweet knock-out juice. Not fifteen minutes later, the surgeon came to get us, as promised. “He’s in recovery. The procedure went really well, and the tubes should last him about six months to a year.”

We followed a nurse to the recovery room where we found Sam very much awake and twice as angry as I’d last seen him. He didn’t stop howling until Kyle administered a large bottle of apple juice; Sam isn’t usually a juice kid, but he was so hungry that day that he’d probably have chugged a bottle of black coffee if we’d offered it (author’s note: black coffee is nasty y’all). And he didn’t really calm down until we gave him donut holes at home (because if your kid has surgery, they have a right to enjoy sweet treats afterwards). He then slept for five hours and returned to normal so quickly that it almost defied belief.

And then, no more ear infections! Oh, it was a gift. Granted, Sam still got sick sometimes, but far less frequently than he had before and with far less severity. The tubes functioned beautifully, and they stayed in for another year and a half, all of that time blissfully infection-free. It’s been wonderful, it truly has.

But then Saturday happened.

Sam and I have both been dealing with a cold all the last week, and it’s a doozy. It started for both of us with a nasty migraine, and that was followed by horrendous head and chest congestion. For me, it’s mostly involved a lot of wishing that I had less to do this week so I could afford to take a sick day and sleep. For Sam, however, it’s involved a lot more physical bleh.

He’s had a headache pretty much all week, and though Tylenol keeps it at bay, it doesn’t make it go away entirely. He was in this state Saturday, after his nap; Kyle brought him downstairs, and he was whining and whimpering and cuddling, clearly not feeling well. I went to lie down for a little while myself, also feeling gross, and I’d only been up stairs about half an hour when I heard Sam start screaming. He’s three, so this isn’t entirely abnormal, but what was abnormal was Kyle coming upstairs and informing me that Sam was complaining of ear pain.

We took him to the urgent care clinic, and long story short, it looks like he’s managed to perforate his eardrum. This isn’t the end of the world; Kyle’s had it happen to him more often than he can count. We guess that the tube in the infected ear fell out but that the hole didn’t have enough time to heal before an infection set in, leaving it vulnerable.

The good news is that Sam isn’t in any pain. It hurts like a BEAST when you rupture or perforate your eardrum… at least for a couple of minutes. Once the eardrum is actually perforated, the pressure alleviates and the pain goes away. Sam was back to his usual hyperactive silly self by the time I’d thrown jeans on and gotten down to the car on Saturday; with the help of the pink stuff and ear drops, he’s doing just fine.

As for me, I’m just hoping we can get a new tube put in before we return to the old pattern.