Monday of mishaps

I know it's Tuesday. :-P

It's Tuesday, May the 4th... be with you... and maybe I was in a bad mood, a little nervous, because today was our adoption clinic appointment. Maybe I was also annoyed about falling behind on the housework, too, and I'm not a pleasant person when I'm doing housework. I'm a Person Doing Housework. I don't multitask.

It started off great, with AwesomeCloud endlessly begging for food and me running out of things to offer him except Cheerios. I backed into him while sweeping the floor and knocked his Cheerios all over the floor, and he cried over them for a long, long time.

(There was no milk. Go figure.)

Then I figured we'd cheer ourselves up with a trip to the butterfly garden. I got the sunscreen, and AwesomeCloud took a fingerful of sunscreen and planted it in his eye.

There was more crying, but this time, his tears helped wash out his eye. I washed it out as well as I could, but I could only do so much. I could have held his face under running water, but that seemed like a bad idea. With my luck, he would have found a way to drown.

So we got to the butterfly garden, where I discovered I'd forgotten my gloves and trowel. So we decided to look for rocks to decorate the edges with. There's a wooded path from the garden to Audubon HQ, and we walked along it with the stroller. I should get a wilderness-friendly stroller. The stroller I have can barely get over the occasional root.

We saw Ian, the Audubon guy, and AwesomeCloud offered Ian his shoe. Ian politely declined. But then he promised to send me an info sheet for my garden plot. Yay! Now I can find out what all the plants are while I take care of them.

Soon it was time to leave for Boston. We packed water and more Cheerios, and we got a donut on our way up. When we reached the adoption clinic, AwesomeCloud suddenly realized where he was, and in an involuntary knee-jerk reaction he spilled his Cheerios aaallllllll over the waiting room.

He was shocked and upset to see what he'd just done, and cried to tell me so. I told him I didn't blame him one bit - that was an awful lot of Cheerios he'd just wasted in the single jerk of an arm, and in fact it was the only snack I'd brought him.

I don't blame him for crying when his vitals were taken, either. He has hospital fatigue. I have it too. I know what it feels like.

It got better after the toys came out. I got interviewed and questioned a lot while he played. He failed performed poorly on the Standardized Development Test. At least this time he passed the object permanence test - he looked for, and found, the yellow bear, in spite of the fact that he hates toy animals.

He also picked up a doll and threw her across the room. That was... um... new. I don't think he's ever touched a doll before. Certainly not voluntarily.

He failed to respond to verbal instructions of any kind, which was hilarious. Because then when we went back into the waiting room to wait for Part II, guess what he did. Yup, he listened to me. Sneaky little kiddo.

The assistant thought he has a hearing problem. The MD grilled me about what I thought, later, and I admitted that I seriously doubted that AwesomeCloud has a hearing problem. He can hear the fridge open from the bedroom. He's like a cat. In fact, sometimes I mentally group him with the cats. They all clamour for my attention, and lately, I've really craved solitude. Catless, kidless solitude.

And a clean house.

I blame the seasonal changes for that. I love early spring. It's too early for tourists but warm enough to go outside. Last year I'd wake up around 6 AM every morning and walk around the yard barefoot in the dew, checking my garden and my shrubs with a cup of tea clutched in my hands. I did that this morning. I miss that routine.

Cloud has apparently hit his curve. He's done with his rapid growth-spurt catchup, and now he's leveling off and settling happily into the 10th percentile. This means he will probably always be very short. The MD is pleased with his rate of growth, however. She thinks 10% is pretty decent, compared to how scrawny and undersized he used to be.

She also complimented the holy heck out of me. I wonder if she picked up on my trepidation. Or maybe she remembered our last meeting, during which I responded to her snarky comments with, "Grumble grumble." And then when she asked me what was wrong, I said, "I don't like being scrutinized."

Then she said, "Are you worried that you're inadequate as a parent?"

"Not generally," I said. "Only when I'm being scrutinized. At home I don't think like that at all."

So, yeah, a little lack of subtlety on my part. But that was 4 months ago. Who knows; maybe she remembers stuff like that after 4 months.

In any case, she complimented me till the cows came home today, and I, as is typical, can't take a compliment. I don't know; I just feel the urge to deflect compliments. I want to grouch about them. I don't feel the slightest urge to smile at them.

Sometimes I smile anyway. Compliments are fleeting things, and so are smiles, so I figure what's the difference? However, I didn't smile this time. I grouched.

I'm incorrigible, I guess. And so is my son.

I can't believe he didn't point to the picture of the cat! He's been able to identify pictures of cats since last year! Oh well, his low Development Test scores just means he'll qualify for Early Intervention for awhile longer. And I know he can do it. He finds and identifies pictures of cats when nobody else is even paying attention to them.

She asked him to point to the "kitty." Maybe that was it. She corrected herself after I interjected that we use the word "cat" at home, but maybe AwesomeCloud has a thing against the word "kitty." Maybe he can hold a grudge like I can.

On our way out, the MD gave him a sticker of a kitten. I stuck it on the front of his shirt. For awhile afterwards, he pointed to his chest and proudly announced, "Caaaaat! Meow!"

So, yeah, the folks in the elevator and the parking garage know he can ID a cat.

Then more things went wrong, but half of them were traffic-related.