... and a goal!

Youth hockey has lots of benefits, and not just for the kids who play.

Toddler 3, now nearly 2 1/2, has made lots of friends among the other hockey siblings. Even better, she can navigate the greater Chicago area from the backseat, guiding herself by the many hockey rinks she has been too. Getting off the Edens at Touhy? "Hockey!" as we approach Heartland. Heading west on Lake Avenue through Glenview? "Hockey camp!" Traversing Dempster in Morton Grove? "Hockey store!"

She's been to rinks in four states and I don't know how many towns, taking it all with remarkable good grace, so much so that occasional tantrum is an anomaly.

That doesn't even consider the oceans of stale popcorn and acres of greasy pizza she's consumed ...

Just like her big brother ...

When Kid 2 was walking around in his shorts, Toddler 3 stripped down to her diaper.
When he had a sandwich on a paper towel, she demanded first "bread" and then "towel" to carry it around on.
When he gets his things in the car, she yells, "Hockey!
I think she wants to be just like her big brother.
Except, of course, when she wants to put on her "pretty dress" over her Blackhawks jersey.

Is driving kids around a competitive sport?

If it is, I think I deserve a medal for today. My afternoon-into-evening schedule:
3:10 p.m.: Leave work @ 35th and Lake Park.
3:40 p.m.: Pick up Toddler 3 at Nana Phyllis' house.
3:45 p.m.: Pick up Kid 2 at school, where he stayed late for homework center.
4 p.m.: Arrive home. Walk dog/get mail. Change Toddler 3's pants, shoes and socks after she jumped in puddles while walking dog. Get snacks, pack up laptop.
4:15 p.m.: Leave to pick up Kid 1. Slight delay when Toddler 3 drops bag of popcorn on stairs. Kid 2 (now dressed in baseball uniform) stops to pick it up.
4:32 p.m.: Pull up outside auditorium.
4:33 p.m.: Kid 1 emerges from drama. Head for West Loop area for baseball. Delayed by traffic on Ashland; stalled car just before Milwaukee intersection costs at least 5 minutes.
5:10 p.m.: Pull up at north end of Sheridan Park, where Kid 2 hopes out to join warmups in progress for 5:30 game.
5:15 p.m. Hand Toddler 3 off to Big T, who has arrived at Sheridan Park directly from work. Switch cars so he has the one with the car seat. Head home with Kid 1.
5:40 p.m. Arrive home. Make baked potato for Kid 1, eat leftovers, read morning paper.
6:25 p.m. Leave to drop Kid 1 at evening theater program. Go directly to Maine Township High School District 207 school board meeting for Patch.com.
7 p.m.: Arrive at Maine South High School for meeting.

Gotta wear shades

No, I don’t think I’m Joe Cool.


I think I’m the person who forgot to put her glasses away in their case when driving to watch Kid One sing at an outdoor festival and then fetch her home. I am also the person who didn’t realize the glasses were in her lap when she got out of the car, thus dropping them on Lawrence Avenue in Chicago. And I’m the person who didn’t know my glasses were gone until I got home and looked in the case for them. By which time they had been run over and smashed to the proverbial smithereens. I know. Tony found them in the gutter.

Further, I am the person that had only one pair of clear prescription glasses, even though I know I have an unusual prescription that no eye-care store has ever had in stock. So I am now the person stuck wearing prescription sunglasses day and night, indoors and out, for the next one to two weeks.

Seriously, it’s a little (OK, a lot) weird to wear shades all the time. I can’t really get by with out them; if I didn’t have them on now, the screen at the end of my fingertips would be nothing but a vaguely glowing blur, and the difference between my two eyes gives me a headache and makes me nauseated within 15 minutes if I try walking around without corrective lenses.

Baby Three, 18 months old today, doesn’t much like having me in sunglasses all the time. She tries to take them off my face, then looks at my eyes and smiles and lets me put them back on. Then she finds her sunglasses.

Everyone else I deal with seems to be coping (except for me, because I feel compelled to explain the sunglasses to everyone I see). But I give my sincere thanks to my colleague Ala, who told me the sunglasses provide a don’t-mess-with-me kind of look. “I like it,” she said.

Tony would be OK with it, except that it had the indirect result of him getting a flat tire. Because he didn’t want me driving around in sunglasses after dark, he drove me to and picked me up from a meeting I had to go to. But when we got home, he ran over a shard of broken glass near the curb (broken glass, not glasses), cutting a gouge in the sidewall of the front tire and making the whole adventure even more expensive.

But now, at least, I have another story to use on the kids when they don’t put their things away. I can say, ”Do I have to remind about the time I forgot to put my glasses away?” and they can roll their eyes and put their belongings away because it’s just easier than listening to another lecture.

Postcard from the infirmary

It’s not a road trip until someone throws up.


That’s the post I put on Facebook Sunday as we returned from Kid Two’s hockey tournament in Michigan.

At the time, it seemed like it would just be a funny story to add to the stories about the kids getting sick on trips: Do you remember the time Baby Three threw up in the car in the middle of nowhere in Michigan, and we stopped at that liquor store outside of Galesburg (MI) to clean her up? How when we got her out of the car, in 45 degree weather, it started to rain? How the lady who was working let us come in and use the employee-only washroom – and gave us as many plastic bags as we needed?

So far, so good.

And Baby Three made it the rest of the way home without incident.

But once we got here, she had diarrhea. Then she threw up again. And again.

There went work on Monday.

Monday morning, she got up to nurse – and threw up again, before she could. She nursed, and threw up again. A 6 a.m. call to the doctor – in hopes of getting an early appointment – resulted in being told to take her to the emergency room. One wet diaper in 12 hours was a lot too few.

So to the hospital we went. Spent about 20 minutes in the ER waiting room, and a while in the ER exam room waiting for a doc. The doc was calm, reassuring, but not happy that she hadn’t really peed in going on 14 hours. It was time for an IV.

The nurse who put it in – an Indian man who said he learned to put gauze under the tape so it wouldn’t pull on skin at the University of Bombay – couldn’t have been nicer, but he still earned Baby Three’s eternal dislike. He was concerned because with all the screaming, there were no tears.

They gave her about 200 mls of saline, then looked for urine. None. Three hundred more milliliters. Still nothing.

And in all the time in the hospital, no vomiting or diarrhea, either.

Then they stuck a urine collection bag to her groin, to make sure she wasn’t peeing at we were missing it, and started more saline.

Eventually, she did pee – a little in the bag, and more in my lap. Then she threw up, some in a towel, but more in my lap.

A quick check of the urine in the bag showed no serious problems, so they gave her some IV Zofran (anti-nausea medication) and sent us home with good news and bad news. The good news? She had a stomach bug that should not cause any more problems. The bad news? They only way we wouldn’t get it is if we had this particular version before.

Apparently, Big T did. But later Monday, Kid One, Kid Two and I were fighting for the bathroom. At one point, all three of us threw up within 15 minutes. I got to spend time Tuesday scrubbing out the bathtub and the high chair, both victims of diarrhea – and still managed to keep down tea and toast.

Now it’s Wednesday. Kid Two, who usually gets sick fast and gets over it fast, has already been back to school, and Kid One will be back tomorrow. Baby Three still has diarrhea, and will visit the pediatrician tomorrow. But she seems on the mend, having added bits of toast and banana back into her diet today, and being able to stay awake more than an hour at a time.

O Christmas Tree

This holiday season has not been the most festive around our house.
My in-laws, who live downstairs, are both in a local rehab center. Their care has absorbed lots of time and energy. Money is tight, and the kids are busy, and just when am I supposed to make 12 batches of Christmas cookies? My days seem to consist of work, baby care and driving the big kids around.
So far, most of the Christmas decorations are still in their boxes in the basement.
But not the Christmas tree ornaments.
I was feeling very proud that we got our tree up a week earlier than usual this year. It, too, was a break from tradition; with my in-laws not home -- and our apartment more crowded with Baby Three on the scene -- we decided to just decorate one tree and set it up in my in-laws living room, where we will celebrate Christmas Eve and where the kids like to watch TV and play video games (they have a much bigger TV).
It was lovely, and with 12- and 10-year-old helpers, it only took a couple of hours to get all the ornaments on.
We have lots of ornaments.
Then, it only took a couple of days to topple over.

It did so all by itself, when no one was downstairs. Big T set it back up, more securely, I rehung the ornaments and we thought that was that.
Until it toppled over again, this time when Kid Two was playing a game downstairs. He came to get me and I wrestled it back up -- dropping it a couple of times in the process -- and started to rehang the ornaments. Then Baby Three woke up and I headed upstairs to nurse her. When I went back downstairs to check on Kid One, it was on the floor again.
I began to think it had the wrong holiday; Jesus fell three times on the way to Calvary.
Anyway, enough was enough. I stripped the ornaments and lights off and Big T went out to buy another tree -- one that isn't really bushy on one side and really bare on the other. (You'd think we would have seen the problem, which is compounded by hanging the ornaments on the bushy side, because that's where the branches are).
I guess that in at least one way this Christmas will be like last year's; we have to buy two trees. But at least Home Depot is giving us half off the second one.

Why do boys do that?

Howard Cosell hasn’t been on the air for a very long time, but I still remember my brother imitating the iconic sportscaster’s voice as he called the play-by-play for any game in which he was involved – be it a pick-up football game in the backyard or an imaginary game that existed only in his mind.

As I grew up, I noticed the same tendency in most of my male friends and relations. The need to do sports commentary seems to come with the package a Y-chromosome brings.

And in Kid Two, this tendency is developed to a huge degree.

“Fourth and eight. This one doesn’t look like an easy conversion at all,” Kid Two just said, playing an NCAA football game. “First down! First down Northwestern!”

He seems to alternate between play-by-play and color commentary, and he has not compunction about being evenhanded; he’s a homer for whichever team he’s controlling.

But he doesn’t just call the games he’s playing on Wii or Playstation. He calls the game as he’s putting laundry in the hamper, the game in his head at hockey practice, the game as he fields grounders off the garage wall. He even calls the games he watches on TV, even though somebody else is already getting paid to do that job.

Last year, while waiting for hockey practice after dressing, he was watching a Blackhawks game on the lobby TV. And doing the play-by-play.

“Who is he talking to?” his coach asked.

Who knows?

But if ESPN is ever looking to expand its broadcasting stable, he’ll be ready to audition.