Rocketman

We've had some changes around our house lately. Not David Bowie changes, but not Tupac changes either. I dont know any other musicians who had a song called changes, so that's about the end of that thought. Primarily, we've been dealing with changes that are happening on and in Tommy's head.

The first change is his rockin new helmet. Week one of the helmet was pretty terrible. It rubbed his head raw in a few places, and if I remember correctly, we were in there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the first week. Please always know that when I say we and it's in relation to some horrible waiting room, it always means Karen.

But it started to get a little better. They got the fitting right and he stared to adapt to it. Karen went to Sharon's Sticker Shack to decorate his helmet and talk to other spinsters about the latest in fabric trends. He's got spacemen and rockets all over it and Grandma T says he's just another boy with his head in the clouds now.

We get to take it off for an hour or so a day and now when I look at him without it, I feel like something's missing. There's also the smell. He wears it all day and for the better part of March it was 85 degrees outside. He sweated that helmet up so bad in the first few weeks it turned yellow even though we cleaned it everyday with rubbing alcohol and a toothbrush. And the smell, if we're being honest is a lot like a pair of gym socks that you bring home after a week in your locker. But just like his head looks funny without the helmet now, I've come to associate that stinky smell with his sweet little smile and God help me, I actually like it now. Kids are funny that way I guess.

Change number two is his poor skin. He's very lucky that he has my dashing looks. He has my eyes. Thank goodness he has his mother's ears. He's got Ryan Howard's nose, so there's a bit of suspicion involved there, however I don't see Ryan Howard as much of a skier so it's probably just a coincidence. But he most certainly has my skin, and for that I owe him a sincere apology.

I had pretty terrible eczema from the day I was born. I think it lasted for a year or two when I was a baby and then came back like wildfire in my last year or two of high school. I finally got it under control for the most part towards the end of college. It's awesome, and if you have some free time, you should go down to the dermatologist and see if they can hook you up with a case of it.




















So he's definitely got that, which has been challenging in conjunction with the helmet. The helmet makes him sweat. Sweating makes him itch. Itching makes him scratch with tears up his skin, and you can see the pattern here. He's got it on the inside of his elbows and the back of his knees too, which are the same places that bothered me for so long. His head and face seem to bear the brunt of the attack, but it has good days and bad days and we're starting to get it under control a little bit. We're thankful that the helmet and skin are only minor little inconveniences and they don't seem to bother him too much.

The best change is that his brain is starting to figure things out. He's sitting up a little bit, and reaching for toys, and generally just more conscious of the world around him. We've got a mess of toys on our living room floor, and he's been sitting up lately--with one of us as a backstop--and figuring out what all of his toys do. For the most part, he's determined that almost all of them are meant to fit in his mouth, or to be thrown aside if they don't.




















He also has an exer-saucer, which has proven invaluable for me personally. He loves standing up--again with assistance--and as God ironically designed it, when you sit on the couch and help your kid stand up, he's going to absolutely crush your testicles at least once a day. So that exer-saucer comes in handy.

He's eating now too, if you call semi-swallowing mush without chewing it eating. Karen kept talking about feeding him cereal and I pictured Cheerios and Lucky charms. But basically, it's powdered rice and oats that we mix with milk to turn into this warm slush. He likes it, but something tells me he would eat construction paper if we boiled it down for him at this point. Fear not though, we would never feed him paper. In fact, this particular "cereal" is organic, fortified, non-engineered, and is processed in a machine that is powered by a goat who only eats fruit that has fallen from local trees. We're doing our part here, folks.




















He's a big boy, and a happy boy and we're excited for him to keep figuring things out. Next up, how to fill out a job application.