Polygamy

Ethan and I have had a lot of dinner dates lately since Jeff has been working late for a deadline. All this alone time has resulted in some enlightening conversation. We were out for pizza when Ethan posited the following:

"I am going to marry you someday, Mommy."

"Oh yeah? Well, I am already married to Daddy and in Maryland, you can only be married to one person at a time. Sorry bud."

Reflects on this for a moment, "Well, are there places where it is ok to be married to two people at once?"

"Hmm. I think in some parts of Utah that is legal."

"Well then, we will move to Utah. When should we tell Daddy?"

School & Fish

Ethan was accepted into the private school of our choice. Yay! That means, for those keeping score at home, that Ethan passed his testing and Jeff and I passed our parent interview. Before acceptance letters had been mailed out, we met with the administration to review the scores from Ethan's testing. The principal was pleased to report that Ethan scored 99/100 on his assessment (good genes). However, she was concerned about his "deficiency in scissor skills." As evidence of the magnitude of the problem, she showed us a ragged circle that Ethan had cut from construction paper; it looked like it had been fed through a paper shredder, then given to a herd of deranged cats to claw at. Naturally, Jeff and I took immediate action. You will be happy to know that Ethan was grounded for three weeks - no TV, no toys, no after-school friends - just solitary in-room confinement with multiple pairs of safety scissors and 500 sheets of card stock. We have also decided against sports camp this summer in favor of enrollment at an Intensive Scissor Workshop run by one of the leading minds in scissor research at Johns Hopkins, in hopes that we can correct this issue before it gets out of control. Other than that humiliation, the post-mortem test review went very well.

To congratulate Ethan on his school acceptance and as a late birthday present, we took a trip to the pet store to select his first pet, a blue Beta fish. I fully realize that a fish is inarguably the least fun pet ever, but since Ethan is allergic to both dogs and cats and Jeff is anti-anything-in-a-small-cage-that-needs-to-be-cleaned (by him), we did not have a lot of options here. I suggested a special type of hybrid hamster, called - no joke - "a Robo Hamster" - which retails for around $75 and is specifically bred to have a sweet and cuddly disposition. Jeff sagely pointed out that we had just paid a pest control service $500 to "remove" the FREE rodent that had taken up residence in our basement, so.....? Really, I could not argue with that logic. So, fish it is.

Ethan named his fish, ingeniously, "Fishy." Fishy was a fun novelty for about ten minutes. Then came the death questions. I think Ethan is in the throes of some sort of existential crisis because he has initiated multiple discussions during the past month about what happens to things when they die. Ethan was both horrified, yet fascinated, to learn that dead pet fish get flushed down TOILETS! Now, the highlight of his morning is asking if Fishy is going to die today so that we can FLUSH HIM DOWN THE TOILET!? It is a good thing we did not get him a hamster.

Five

Ethan Charles-

You turned five on Wednesday, March 5th. Happy birthday to you!

Because you are our very favorite (and only) child, we had two separate birthday parties for you. The first was a simple affair involving twenty-two of your preschool and neighborhood buddies and a healthy handful of their younger siblings. Oh, and (literally) twenty-eight pounds of cupcakes, served right before dinnertime. You are very welcome, other parents. The second was our celebration with Grandma and Grandpa at a local burger place. You opened a new set of toy cars - which thrilled you! At the end of the meal, the servers gathered around and there was clapping and singing as dessert was brought out. You pretended to be embarrassed by all the commotion, but I know that you secretly loved it because you had your carefully practiced "Aw shucks, for ME!?" expression on.

Your father and I are convinced that, objectively speaking, you are the smartest five-year-old to ever walk the earth. You possess the vocabulary and verbal self-assurance of a forty-year-old news anchor. We went to the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore on your birthday and you not only correctly identified the "first bird" by only its fossil skeleton ("Oh - LOOK mom - an Archaeopteryx...!") but you corrected one of the volunteer scientists when he told you that you were a carnivore like T-Rex because you eat meat ("Actually, I am an omnivore because I eat both plants and meat...."). Since squeeze yogurt in a tube and Skittles are the only green things that have passed your lips in the past six months, I think you may, more accurately, be defined as a chickennugget-macaroniandcheese-processedsugarproduct-ivore but I was not going to correct you because it is entirely possible that green yogurt in a tube and Skittles have recently been reclassified on the food pyramid as plants, and that you are aware of this fact and did not want to make me feel bad by pointing it out.

Your father and I are convinced that, objectively speaking, you are the cutest five-year-old ever to walk the earth. Your hair is the color of good champagne. Your blue, blue eyes are fringed with lashes that many of my girlfriends (and a couple of my guy friends) would pay big bucks for at Sephora. You are the tallest child in your class and getter taller by the second, which proves that Skittles are, in fact, not only a nutritiously sound food item, but should be eaten as often as possible, in large quantities.

Your wry commentary on life makes your father and I laugh. A few months ago, I was out for the better part of the day to attend a baby shower. When I returned, you demanded to know what had taken me so long?! When I said that the shower had taken a long time, you furrowed your brow and replied with sincere concern that perhaps next time, it would be faster to give the baby a BATH instead of a shower so that I could return home sooner.

You love sea creatures, dinosaurs, race cars, and riding your scooter around the block. You proclaim that you want to be a race car driver when you grow-up. You never tire of staging loud races around the dining room table with your fleet of miniature cars, all of whom have distinct personalities and names.

You like to quiz your father and I regarding inane details about rare sea animals that you have learned about. When we cannot list exactly what, say, beluga whales eat, you will roll your eyes at our stupidity and quote from your sea animal book verbatim. ("Beluga whales are opportunistic feeders. They are known to prey on about 100 different kinds of primarily bottom-dwelling animals. They eat octopus; squid; crabs; shrimp; clams; snails; sandworms; and fishes such as cod, herring, smelt, and flounder.") Then you will turn to the page in the sea animal book that you are referencing and point out the exact paragraph you are quoting - which, I'll be darned - will be right on - even though you cannot read the words yet.

The first time you did this I called your father at work to report that you would be attending Stanford or Cal Tech before the age of fourteen and we'd better up our college savings efforts right now. Princeton might also be acceptable, but you are not allowed to go to Harvard because both your father and I, right before we met that fateful night in a smoky dive bar -- I mean, at a Save-the-Whales rally -- dated (different) Harvard law alumna who were uniquely obnoxious in their respective smug Harvard-ness. Plus, Boston is cold and I want to visit somewhere sunny with palm trees. There will be no arguing about this, young man; I am your mother and I say so.

So, happy birthday, Ethan. I wish you a lifetime full of happiness and laughter and green Skittles.

Love, Mom

Mass in Brain - Revisited

If you read these posts because I am funny, the following is not one little bit funny. I am not even going to attempt to be funny because I am feeling unfunny at the moment and will not apologize for it (dammit!).

I saw a second neurosurgeon last Friday at the UMD Gamma Knife Center for a second opinion on brain mass (we cancelled Harvard and UPitt after Hopkins consult). So this UMD surgeon thinks the mass in my brain may be a "very slow-growing" tumor. In his opinion, there is absolutely no way to tell what type of tissue the mass is without a highly invasive biopsy, but he cannot recommend a biopsy at this point, or any type of surgery, because of the deeply entrenched location of the mass inside the ventricle. Basically the mass cannot be accessed for biopsy because a needle cannot get to the center of brain.

In fact, my particular mass is quasi-inoperable. There have been about 100 surgeries TOTAL (not only at University of MD, but at all medical centers in the U.S.) to remove masses from this specific location; many with "high mortality and morbidity." This thing is in the dead (pun not intended) center of my brain, next to all sorts of very important brain stuff and to hack away at it, a surgeon would have to root through the entire "good" brain to access "bad" blob, which intuitively, does not require a medical license to recognize that it would cause a lot of messed-up stuff along the way. In his words, surgery to get to this mass would pose an "extremely high risk of death and severe disability." Wonderful.

Usually when there is a brain mass, treatment is to remove it immediately and "type it" for pathology, but not in this case. Right now, the recommendation is "watchful waiting [code for scans and prayers]." Oh - and a lumber puncture - which I am SUPER excited about, because I love needles. Given that I am a such a patient and low-stress sort of person, this is perfect news - just sit around, calmly, not worrying about it, hoping I do not go blind or develop seizures.

Course of action: UMD surgeon recommended MRIs (with contrast and IVs - more needles!) every few months for the rest of my life (!) to see how the mass changes ... may stay the same, but may not. If it stays the same, it will be fine. If it changes, then I am screwed. As previously stated, there is very little "wiggle" room inside the brain's ventricles for foreign objects to grow. Plainly speaking, even a "benign, congential" mass can be considered "malignant" in the ventricles because of the high degree of damage even a tiny mass can cause. There is no way to know at this point as there is not much precedent on how such masses behave. The location of this mass is "exceedingly rare" and occurs in @ one in two MILLION people.

I was informed: "to add to [my] neuroses - [the surgeon has] patients who have had masses that did not change for twenty years and then all of a sudden started to grow and needed to come out - brain tissue can be weird and unpredictable." He concluded, "I wish I could tell you not to worry about this and go get a life - but I can't - see you in a few months."

I have been trying to process. It may be fine, it may not be. Lots of scary questions, not many answers. Stupid, stupid brain.