Thursday

Thursday was not a particularly fun day.

Connor had his gastric emptying study set for 11:00 in the morning. He's not allowed to eat for four hours before hand, so I needed to get him up bright and early to eat something before we left.

Now, I am a morning person. Connor evidently did not inherit that particular characteristic from me, because he it usually takes him a good half an hour to 45 minutes to warm up. First he lays in bed for a little while with his eyes closed and makes little noises, then he opens his eyes up, rolls onto his back, turns his lights on and keeps making little happy noises, and finally he decides it's really time to wake up and ups the volume, which is when I come and get him. Any interruption in this routine is a recipe for a good two or three hours of crabby, sleepy Connor.

I thought that maybe if I woke him up at 6:00, he'd be ready to eat by 6:20 or so, so I gently woke him up and stepped out of the room to let him start his wake up process. Silence. He immediately fell back asleep. I went back in, turned his lights on, turned his music on, gently woke him again, and waited. He rolled back over on his side immediately and fell back asleep. I picked him up out of bed, changed his diaper, got him dressed, gave him his medicine, and carried him into the living room. During the whole process, Connor had the huge pouty lip, was signing "no no no no no no!" and still had his eyes closed.

Lord knows what it's going to be like trying to wake this kid up when he's a teenager.

Connor decided that since I was rude enough to wake him up, he would refuse to eat any breakfast in retaliation. He clamped his lips together when I offered him his oatmeal and drank about three ounces out of his bottle before 7:00 rolled around and it was time to quit eating.

We left the house at 8:00 because I wanted to hit Pike Place Market before we needed to be at the hospital. It's a good thing I left early, because evidently all of the bad drivers decided it was grocery shopping day or something. After gassing up the car, it took us about an hour and 45 minutes to get to Seattle. Since we had to be at the hospital at 10:30 anyway, I decided to go to the market after Connor's appointment and drove through the city to Children's.

They were running late at the hospital, so I spent two hours in the waiting room with an increasingly hungry and crabby Connor. We finally got back into the room around 12:30, and our very nice nurse set everything up. First we gave Connor a bit of radioactive tracer in an oral syringe, and then he had some milk. He lunged for the bottle-- it was kind of funny. He was allowed to drink for about five minutes-- enough time for him to drink about three ounces. Then the little guy was strapped to a table and a camera the size of his entire body was positioned about three inches above him. It looked a little bit like he was in a Frankenstein movie. We had a television and some light toys, but the poor little guy was too small to see out from around the camera, so he had to stare at the gray plastic surface for an hour knowing his bottle was in the same room and totally inaccessible.

You can imagine how much fun this was for all parties involved.

After an hour we unstrapped him and the mysterious doctor (who we never saw) took a quick look at the pictures. Apparently there was still a bit of tracer in Connor's stomach, so we were told to come back in an hour and we would take some more pictures. Luckily Connor was allowed to eat.

Connor and I headed over to the crazy Barnes and Noble across the street and he scarfed down his bottle in the coffee shop. Afterwards we spent 15 minutes shopping, and I grabbed this version of The Night Before Christmas, which I like because the pictures are so high contrast-- good for Connor. It also has a really, really cool popup ending, which is probably not appropriate for kiddos who like to touch things as it's super fragile, but in Connor's case is fine. I also grabbed another book for myself-- The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith. If you are fond of in-depth characters, uplifting stories, and mysteries (an interesting combination) you will probably love The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, of which this book is the eighth. I highly recommend them.

We drove back across the street and were taken back into the Frankenstein room again around 3:00. Our nurse strapped Connor to the table again for more pictures-- thankfully for just a few minutes this time. Connor and I headed out the door at 3:30.

I wanted to go on a Christmas house tour with some of the girls that evening, so I skipped Pike Place and we headed for home. Alas, the house tour was not to be. It's normally about a 45 minute drive from Seattle to our house, but that night it took almost 2 and a half hours. It was stop-and-go traffic literally the entire way. About an hour into the drive, Connor decided he'd had enough and pitched a huge screaming fit. I pulled into the drive way already ten minutes late for the house tour, handed Connor off to Jer, threw the car in gear and drove to where I thought the reception was meeting, neglecting to check the directions. I went to the totally wrong place and missed the tour.

Jer was really sweet and got me some ice cream when I returned, totally defeated, twenty minutes after I'd left the house. He gave me a back massage, took care of the little guy, and made me some tea while I read my new book, so even though it was a lousy day, it ended on a pretty good note.

Jer's pretty good at turning days around like that.

~Jess