The Sounds of Frosting Holiday Cookies

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. Here’s a sample of the festivities at our house:

COLE: ‘Nother Cookie! "Geen!" Red!

ME: Hey Cole, Why don’t you try putting some frosting on the cookies instead of eating it all?

GRAHAM: Coo, Coo, Coo. (Reaching for the array of frosting and sprinkles.)

OPA: Graham wants to help. (Pushing Graham across the table to the bowel of bright green frosting.) Get in there, Graham.

AUNTIE NUSSY: (Handing Graham a knife loaded with frosting and holding up a cookie.) Frost the cookie, Gi-gi.

OPA: (laughs)

AUNTIE NUSSY: I went to a cookie-frosting party and everyone said MY cookies were the best!

ME: Nothing like these, though.

AUNTIE NUSSY: Look! This cookie has Graham’s big finger smear right down the middle.

OMA: Who gave Graham the knife? Oh no… he’s stuffing it down his throat. Oh no… he’s gagging himself. Take it away.

OPA: (laughs)

AUNTIE NUSSY: Graham loves squishing frosting between his fingers.

OPA: (laughs)

ME: Is frosting a dairy product? Graham’s not even supposed to have any dairy until age 1.

OMA: Well, there can’t be more than 20% dairy in there, because it’s mostly sugar.

ME: Oh, that’s much better.

OPA: (laughs)

ME: Whoa Cole, A whole box of sprinkles on one cookie? That’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

COLE: I did it! (Proudly displaying his cookie masterpiece.)

OPA: (laughs)

COLE: EAT! (Leaning over and planting his nose in a freshly frosted cookie.)

Just Shut-Up Already, Whitebread!

Usually while I’m doing procedures on patients, I try to distract them and pass the time by making small talk. Sometimes I end up saying things that seem right at the time but in hindsight are probably just silly. Here are two examples:


1.
When you work Saturday night overnight, you expect a few drunks or a few bar brawl injuries to show up around 2 am as the bars close. This past Saturday night was no exception. Around 3am I looked over at room 3 and saw a young girl holding a blood-soaked rag to her mouth. The chart in the rack listed "smashed in face with bottle" as the chief complaint.

"Doc," she explained as she lowered the rag from her mouth, revealing a huge bloody gap where her two front teeth should have been as well as a badly cut-up mouth, "Someone smashed me in my face at the club. I look horrible, don’t I? Look, doc… I’m a prissy pretty girl, so you gotta sew on me like you’re Dr. 90210, okay?"

None of her lacerations were anything requiring a plastic surgery consult, which meant putting her face back together was all me. "I’ll do my best," I promised.

While I started getting ready to buckle down for at least a few hours’ worth of laceration repair worthy of Dr. 90210, I sent the nurse in with a morphine shot for her pain since she undoubtedly would have had a hard time swallowing a pill. The nurse came out a few minutes later with a smirk…

"Well, I figured out what she was doing in the club. When she dropped her pants to get the shot in her butt, I found all kinds of cash sticking out of her hot-pink G-string."

I was amused, but in an effort not to be judgmental, I tried to erase that mental image from my brain. But by the time I was repairing her 5th facial laceration, I had been in and out of her room over a 3-4 hour period (alternating between suturing her injuries and continuing to care for all the other patients in the ER), and we had already exhausted all the usual avenues of small talk. Plus, I really couldn’t quit picturing her pink G-string stuffed full of dollar bills… So I went there:

"So, what were you doing in the club?"

"I dance. I’m ‘Baby Phat" and this here," she pointed to her friend. "This here is ‘Sweet Baby’ and we dance together."

"Oh… like choreographed routines?"

"No… there are two poles and we each get on one and freestyle… whatever we think is gonna get us the most tips."

"Oh." You could imagine the mental images I was trying to erase from my brain at that point. This is not a subject I’m used to small-talking about… so I responded with the first thing that jumped into my head:

"I danced on a pole at my wedding."

Baby Phat and Sweet Baby just looked at me. Silence.

Nice one, Whitebread. What exactly are you supposed to say to an exotic dancer without sounding like an awkward mom trying to be cool… and failing miserably.?


2.
The next one is even more classic. This happened 2 or 3 years ago during my residency training at the trauma center. One night the red light outside the trauma room began flashing and in rolled 2 shooting victims. The first patient had been shot by the second patient who had then in turn been shot by police.

The first patient died despite our best efforts. The shooter, our second patient, was luckier and managed to remain stable and awake despite a bullet through the top of his left lung, just above his heart. He had a hemopneumothorax (blood and air in his lung), and as I was preparing to put in a chest tub, many of the ER staff were saying he didn’t deserve any analgesia for the procedure since he had just killed the guy in the next room (allegedly, anyway). That would have been malpractice on so many levels. Of course I numbed him up and made him comfortable. The guy was appreciative because he had heard what the nurses were suggesting.

So, having established rapport with the guy, I proceeded to chat him up in my usual manner as I jammed the chest tube between his ribs and into his chest cavity. "You know, if the bullet had been an inch lower you’d probably be dead right now. Someone has given you a second chance for whatever reason. Maybe you should think about that and make a few changes."

I paused. What exactly are you supposed to say to an alleged murderer? In my case, it was the first thing that popped into my head:

"Like, for starters, try not to shoot people anymore!"

Well-said, Whitebread. Well-said.

Music to My Ears

Cole has learned a new word that has changed our world – "OKAY."

For 4 months now we’ve been listening to "No!"… even when he has not been presented with a yes / no question… even when no one is talking to him. It was bad enough that he seemed to think "no" was the only possible answer for yes / no questions (basically, if he DIDN’T say "no" that meant yes), But then he started giving "no" as his token answer to all questions:

"Cole, how was your day at school today?"

"No!"

And then one morning I awoke to "No! No! No!" coming through the baby monitor from Cole, alone in his crib, apparently warming up for a day full of "no"s.

I kept telling myself, "He’s nearly two. This is normal… They don’t call it the ‘terrible twos’ for nothing. This will pass." And sure enough, it has.

This past weekend Cole has started happily answering "okay" instead of "no" to yes / no questions, finally reserving "no" for times he really means "no." Suddenly the ever-disgruntled protestor has become pleasant and cooperative:

"Cole, help Dada vacuum."

"Okay!"

Or "Cole, put that in the trash for mama."

"Okay!"

It is the best word I've ever heard him say.

From the mouth of someone whose brain is worth a small house? REALLY?

Really. I DID go to Yale Med. You just wouldn’t know it by listening to me sometimes. After all, I have been working in a small southern hicktown for over a year now… inadvertently absorbing the southern lingo that all the nurses use.

Two days ago I stood in the middle of the ER, needing to speak to my patient’s nurse, and when I didn’t immediately see her I yelled out, "Where Ms. Tina AT?"

The secretary looked at me in disbelief and started laughing. "WHAT did you just say, doc?" It was only then that I realized how ghetto that sounded. Damn it, I could have saved myself a lot of money in student loans and still sounded as profound. I swear I’ll never let the backassward local colloquialisms rub off anymore.

To add insult to injury, the son of the brain worth a small fortune isn’t doing much better…

He listened to his dad talk on the cell phone to all his homies the whole car-ride back from our Thanksgiving in Connecticut. Apparently he absorbed every word, because 2 days later he came barreling in the bathroom in the morning yelling ‘Hey MaMA!"

I answered "Yes, Cole."

"Hey MaMA!" (making sure I was listening.)

"Yes, Cole," I repeated.

" ‘SUP?!" (Just like Dada’s "What’SUP?" when he talks on the phone.)

So eloquently put. Glad my higher education has allowed me to impart such refinement to my boy.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

Let’s get this blog train rollin’! I’ve been too busy living my life to blog about it lately. But now that I’ve finally shaved my legs for the first time since before Thanksgiving, I’m starting to feel like order is restored at least a little bit, and I can spare a minute or two to blog some of the highlights.

We kicked off the holidays with a five-day trip up to Watertown, Connecticut to spend Thanksgiving with Dan’s family. A five-day trip translates to 7 days of mom time by the time you allow a whole day to pack and a whole day to unpack and get the household back in order. You cannot possibly fathom the high level of orchestration necessary to drive 2 babies 8 hours for a visit with the en-laws. There were actually a few moments when I would have rather been at work… until the vodka kicked in!

My absolute favorite moment of the whole week happened Thanksgiving night… after the Turkey dinner at house #1 (Dan’s parents’) and the dessert party at house #2 (Dan’s sister’s). We were winding down and putting away all the baby paraphernalia from a whole day of hauling the kids around, since we were staying at house #3 (Dan’s other sister’s). I set Graham up on the floor on his back with some toys and left him with Dan who was pitter-pattering around picking up. When I came back into the room Dan was holding Graham up in the air above his head, and both were grinning proudly. "Tell Mama what you did, Gi-Gi," cooed Dan. "One minute he was on his back," he boasted. "The next time I looked over there he was on his stomach." Another Milestone!

Graham had previously mastered the front-to-back roll, but we had never actually seen him do back-to-front. The little man was holding out for a big day… like his First Thanksgiving. Since then he’s been a rollin’ fool. You can tell he gets a kick out of it – Front, Back, Front, Back! Rollin’, Rollin’, Rollin’! Go G!