Ollie Update

Oliver and the Tarantula

/ Shane / Leave a comment

“There’s a tarantula under my bed,” said Oliver.
“Buddy, we don’t have any tarantulas here. It’s too cold for them.”
“No it’s not,” he said. “They’re on the stairs, too.”

Oliver and I had been having this conversation for a long time. He insists every spider that he sees is a tarantula. I don’t know where he first heard about tarantulas – school maybe? – but he considers himself an expert and will hear no evidence that contradicts his vast knowledge of arachnids.

It’s kind of amazing how much this tarantula thing has captured his imagination. Why tarantulas? Nobody knows.

“Oliver, what’s this tray doing here?”
“That’s for fighting the tarantula that lives under my bed.”

He had literally stocked his bed with weaponry. I imagined him huddled up on the bed, afraid to let his toes dangle, ready to smoosh any tarantula that dared to show so much as a leg. It was kind of funny in that “all kids go through something like this” way, but I was also starting to worry that perhaps he was dwelling on tarantulas a little too much. I didn’t really want him afraid to spend time in his bedroom.

“Mama, come quick!” shouted Oliver one day during his relaxing time. “The tarantula is on the floor!” Sara came sauntering into the room. “Oh!” she said, encountering an ENORMOUS SPIDER. “Oh.”

Now, it wasn’t mythical proportions or anything, but it was just under. Somewhere between the size of a quarter and a half-dollar. We’re not talking about a little Daddy Longlegs here. It was probably about as close to a tarantula as you are likely to see in Chicago.

Sara grabbed a book and smashed it. “I already did that!” shouted Oliver, but he had apparently only stunned the beast. Later he told me, “I could see it under my bed, so I kept blowing on it to make it move until it came out.” Sara went to get some toilet paper to dispose of it, but Oliver just picked it up by the legs and disposed of it.

So there WAS a tarantula under his bed (kind of)! And he wasn’t frighted of it, merely being practical. Remind me never to doubt him about something like this again.

Except now he says there’s another one under his bed.

Radiant

/ Shane / Leave a comment

some pig

That’s some pig…

GI virus: the gift that keeps on giving

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Oh, this poor boy, Ollie. What a week he had last week. He had some kind of GI virus from hell that just went on, and on, and on.

This is the virus that never ends! It just goes on and on my friends!

He first started feeling sick Monday afternoon, but we didn’t think too much of it. However, Sara and I had just fallen asleep Monday night when we were awakened to blood-curdling screams. I mean, absolutely terrifying, up-and-out-of-bed-and-into-the-hall-before-I’m-awake-oh-my-god-my-kid’s-dying kind of screaming. My first thought was just that he was having a bad dream, but Sara said later she thought maybe he had fallen out of bed with his leg caught in the side and broken it. It was that kind of screaming.

It turns out, it wasn’t either of those things; it was just his reaction to waking up covered in vomit. I couldn’t blame him. “I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I’d do in that situation,” I confessed to Sara later.

It was a rough, rough night. Aside from one 3 hour stretch, he was up about once every 45 minutes. Considering we had to strip the bed and clean him up most of those times, we’d usually just be falling back asleep when he’d need us again. Despite the fact that we managed to come up with 4 mattress pads, we ended up starting laundry at about 2 a.m., when we realized we weren’t going to make it through the night.

Tuesday he was sick all day, not even able to keep water down. A sip of tea only lasted about 90 seconds in there before being violently rejected. Needless to say, Tuesday night didn’t go well either. Wednesday he felt sick, but he slept soundly through the night, which was much appreciated by everybody. By Thursday he was eating some regular food and we thought we were finally out of the woods, until we hit nighttime. Another really bad night, with multiple bed changes.

Friday was okay again, and Friday night was fine, so once again we thought we were through the woods. Maybe Thursday night was just a little hiccup? Nope, here comes Saturday night, and he was back to his old tricks again. By that point, he was nearing in on a full week of being violently ill.

We have done a *lot* of laundry in the past week.

The good news is, nobody else caught it, which seems like a minor miracle. I’m a little confused why it seemed to come and go, only showing up every other night. The thing is, it’s so hard to know what’s going on with him. It’s that old, easy-going attitude again. He never tells you when he feels sick, and he generally maintains his good mood. So it’s entirely possible he felt absolutely awful the whole time, but just didn’t show it. That would be very much like him.

I don’t think he even really understood what was going on. He would feel sick to his stomach and then one second after it passed it was like he thought it was over for good, and he’d never feel like that again. Rinse and repeat, every 30 seconds or so.

This was particularly true when it came to eating. I think he might have recovered faster if he could have just gone easy on his stomach, but he wouldn’t. He just couldn’t help himself. As the week wore on he got hungrier and hungrier, and he didn’t appreciate us preventing him from eating whatever he wanted. He would get physically violent at the mere suggestion that he take it easy and sip some water, or restrict himself to only 3 pancakes. Even while he was gagging when someone even talked about food, he had to list all the things he was demanding we give him to eat.

By Sunday he hardly had the energy to stand, and would just sort of lay on the floor in various rooms. I felt pretty bad for the poor boy. I can only imagine how being that sick for that long would affect me, and I’m an adult who can understand what’s going on.

A week is a long time to be sick. I’m so glad he’s finally feeling better and we can get back to a more normal routine (and sleep schedule!)

The many faces of Oliver

/ Shane / Leave a comment

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Re-learning to talk

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Ollie, like many kids, has historically had a little bit of trouble saying a few letters. For example, he used to say ‘w’ instead of ‘l’, like “ow-iver”, or ‘f’ instead of ‘th’, like “firsty”. With age and a few gentle corrections, these have mostly disappeared. However, there are still a few words that he says that are not quite right.

I don’t remember how it came up exactly, but it turns out that he’s not mispronouncing the words, he actually thinks that’s how they’re said. It was a total revelation to him that some of the words he’s saying are actually different than what he thought they were. When Sara explained that it’s “animal” not “amimol”, he absolutely thought she was putting him on. He kept giving her a look like, “When are you going to say, ‘just teasing!'”

Suddenly this light bulb has gone on. It’s like he’s learning all of his words all over again. I don’t know how he didn’t notice that when we said them we said them differently, but somehow he just didn’t. “Mother”, not “mudder”. “Pitch black” instead of “pinch black”. He knows all of his letters and can even write most of them, but he still says, “…h-i-j-k-em-oh-em-oh-p”.

It’s actually kind of sad; I’m not sure I want him to learn the right way to say things. I never know if I should actually correct him or not. I don’t want my little boy to grow up, I want him to keep saying “hooza-hoop” until he’s 20. So sometimes I correct him when he says something wrong, and sometimes I don’t.  Now that he’s aware of it, he’s paying closer attention to some of the things, so he’s correcting himself whether I like it or not.

As an adult, I would be horrified to learn that I had been saying something so wrong, loudly and often in front of others. That’s actually one of the great things about kids: they have no such self-conscious reflex. He’s actually just really interested in learning the correct way to do it.

Even if he’s got to learn to talk all over again.