Over the weekend we, like millions of Mormons around the world, attempted to watch General Conference. I know that we're luckier than most, because even though we don't live in the intermountain west, we do get the BYU channel on our sattelite dish, so we were able to watch the eight hours of conference from the comfort of our family room. I use the word "watch" loosely, since I spent most of the time boomeranging between the tv and whatever spot in the house or the yard I heard my name being shouted at full volume.
I'd sit down, take a second or two to pick up the jist of what the speaker was saying, and then hear "Mooooooommmmmm, I need you noooooooowwwwww. I can't find an emperor penguin at the San Diego Zoo." Returning to my seat, I'd try to ignore, "Mommy, Isaac's eating the purple marker" but in the interest of my carpet, would rescue it from his hands, which would inevitably start a round of screaming, and by the time I got all three kids happy, the talk would be over.
Do I sound like a general conference martyr? Because I certainly felt like a martyr this weekend. Yeah, we tried to get the kids to watch with us, but c'mon, it's not Noggin people. They did watch for a little while, but soon drifted off to other corners of the house and entertainments more engrossing than old men in dark suits talking in somber tones.
Our options seemed pretty simple: 1) turn off the tv and play with them and read the talks in the Ensign later-- we've gone this route before, but the only problem is that we rarely, if ever, get around to the reading part; 2) ignore the din and watch, which sounds good in theory but could potentially be dangerous; 3) make them watch with us, which would be torture for all five of ous, or 4) watch and put out fires as needed, which is what we did. Or rather, what I did. Funny that they never call for "Dadddddyyyyyy!"
So after a weekend of being jerked in every direction, I was feeling pretty fried by Sunday night. Unfortunately, that didn't put me in the best frame of mind for Bryce's surgery yesterday. Somehow I totally blocked out all of the unpleasant details from Bryce's first surgery. It had been almost three years since he had a hernia on the other side repaired, but just like I look back on my natural childbirth experience fondly now, I had forgotten all of the gory details of surrendering one's baby to a team of doctors and nurses.
He did very well with the actual surgery. Didn't complain too much about not getting anything to eat or drink or waiting forever in a drafty hospital gown. When they called us to recovery to see him, I felt like we were out of the woods. But my marionette strings have been tugged more in the last 24 hours than in any other mommy experience I can recall (but remember, I tend to block out unpleasant memories). Once the nurses ascertained he had a pulse and recognized us as his parents, they doped him up with narcotics and whisked us out the door. Then the fun began. For the next twelve hours he screamed that bugs were crawling on him (they weren't), lost his ability to make a coherent statement (calling a duck a puck), whimpered, rolled around on the bed, and threw up over and over again. Annie and Isaac, who hadn't been too happy about being shipped off to a friend's house at 6:30 in the morning, decided they needed to be needy too. Eddie went back to work to check in. Bryce needed a constant minder, otherwise he'd get out of bed, fall down, and hurt himself.
Today, thankfully, he's not acting crazy anymore. Grumpy as all heck, oh yeah, but not demented. He's always a little bit high strung and demanding, so I'm taking the grumpiness as a good sign. Not that it makes my job any easier. We spent most of the morning watching Return of the Jedi, and he'd scream bloody murder if Isaac came in the room or if I couldn't answer some obscure trivia question from the saga ("How did Boba Fett die?" "No, that's not right!"). After that, he yelled hysterically for an hour while I tried to search (in vain) for a zoo in a snowy climate with a searchable picture directory that has a hippo, an Emperor penguin, a walrus, a seal and an octopus. Now he's asleep. I got the other kids lunch and got the baby down too. Now Annie and I are eating cadbury eggs and painting our toenails while she peppers me with questions.
But I've only got one puppeteer pulling on my strings for a while and that's a very good thing. I think I have whiplash from being pulled in so many directions this weekend.
--originally published 4/4/06
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