Brodyisms, and gossip from daycare

Brody is starting to tell me the news from daycare. We always ask how his day was (then he asks how ours were). It's very cute.


Lately, he's told me the following:

Zach called the teacher "stupid" and then he ran under the grey table and the teacher was maaaaad. And he said, "Miss Susan, you are stupid" and then he ran.

Cadence cries a lot because she takes toys that aren't hers and puts them in her cubby.

Noah pooped on the floor of the bathroom, and Mr. David had to clean it up and he wasn't happy at Noah. (Brody laughed and laughed and laughed)

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Also, I took Brody to work one day, and as we were driving home, we passed by the State capitol. I said, "Look Brody, that's where the people make the laws!"

He said, "Day make da laws?"

I said, "Yes! That's where they make laws!"

And then he said, "And where day eat squirrels?"

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Also, he received a transformer Bumblebee for his birthday. It's one of the ones that actually transforms from yellow car to yellow robot. Last night at dinner, he was examining underneath the car, and proclaimed, "Dere's Bumblebee's arms, and feet, and penis." Because, really, why wouldn't a transformer robot have one?


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The boys went to Shriners last week - a post for a different day - to have an exam done on Brody's right hand. The right hand is back to 90 degrees off the wrist, and the fingers are very stiff and not moveable. For example, when Brody shoots webs while playing Spiderman, he only uses his left hand (this becomes important in a second). The issue up for discussion is whether to do another surgery on that hand to get it straighter (and increase his reach by 3 inches). I talked to Brody about whether he wanted the surgery. I told him I really like his right hand just the way it is. He thought about it, and then said, "No I want da doctor to make my hand straight. So I can shoot webs wis it."

And that's why Brody is not quite in charge of his medical care.

Down and dirty

The good news is, I have a lot brimming in my wee head.

The bad news is, I don't have the time to write it.

So, in uninteresting prose, the latest:

1. We are getting the surgery done again to re-straighten Brody's right hand. In addition to his earlier comments, he offered up the following gem:

Me: (driving out of the daycare parking lot) Ok, Brody, which way, right or left?

Brody: RIGHT! And I tell da doctor to huwee up and make my wight hand straight!  I say, "Huwee up docta!"

Except for what I've mentioned here, we have NOT talked with him about his hands or the surgery. In law, we call what Brody said a "spontaneous utterance." I'm concluding it's okay for him to have the surgery. Timing is after the trip to Europe, because I'd rather not travel with a chance of infection, a metal rod in his ulna that could poke out of his skin, or a metal rod that would make the metal detectors flip out.

2. The 40 before 40 list is coming this week. I swear. No one cares but me, I realize, but I say it anyway.

3. Brody had a playdate with my co-worker's daughter, who is his age. Ann loved Brody and it was so cute to see them play together. They raced horses on sticks. Then another girl's mom at Brody's school asked us to get together with them for playdates. She has two daughters, one older than Brody (she is 5 and is in B's class) and one younger (she is 2). The older girl invited Brody to her birthday party a few weeks ago. He is in demand.

4. Our house faces east. Since having a child, as we all know, I am awake before dawn many times. I never noticed until Brody though how beautiful the colors are in the sky. When Brody was learning his colors, and really because the sky was just ridiculously stunning, I would hold him and ask him to name all of the colors he saw in the sunrise: purple, orange, pink, red. . .

One morning this weekend, I was making coffee in the kitchen (facing west) and Brody was in the living room. He said, "Mommy! Come see all da pretty colors in da sky!" I walked into the living room, picked him up and listened as he told me all the colors he saw in the sky.

I thought, "My work here is done." He's 3 and appreciates sunrises.

5. We had a meeting with the occupational therapy team at Brody's preschool. I was, naturally, anxious about it. It's my go-to reaction for everything. In my defense, I thought we were only supposed to meet once a year, for the assessment. The OT team is two sisters, who look very much alike, and it was a bit unsettling.

Until they started telling us how sweet, and brave, and courageous, and smart Brody is.

Their job is to make sure he can get through the day in the classroom. Some days, they said, they wonder what they are doing there, because he can get through the day without assistance. He does everything the other kids do, just perhaps a bit differently.

We talked about how he holds a pen. It's not the classic tripod, how you and I hold a pen. We thought that was the way to do it - remind him to hold it how we hold it.

He doesn't. He holds it his own way.

The OT sisters said for us to not care how he holds it, but to care what he is drawing, the output. If the output is legible, then how he holds it is irrelevant.

The OT sisters also said, and I love this, we have to honor how Brody is creating connections between his brain and his hands, we have to honor how Brody figures things out.

Our brains go the path of least resistance, they explained. So it may take Brody a few attempts to figure out how to best perform certain tasks. Coupled with that, the sisters said, Brody is at an age when he learns at a furious pace, and his brain is acquiring thousands of pieces of information each day. I suppose the message was, relax. He'll figure it out. 

His goals for the 2009-2010 schoolyear: draw a sun, a cross, a circle, stand up without using his head for balance. Completed (three months early).

That's why we were meeting. We needed to create new goals because the darling boy is ahead of our timeline.

Other improvements: At the start of the school year, he refused to go on the slide at the school. Not because of the slide, but because to get to the top of it, you have to climb, using your hands. Brody just said he didn't want to do it and wouldn't try.

Now he does it regularly, without assistance. Just figured it out himself. He doesn't climb like the other kids, but he gets up the ladder, and slides down the slide.

With abandon.

Summarizing

How do you summarize how much it has meant to your family to have a world-reknown micro-hand surgeon straighten your child's hands and move his fingers around his hand so he has thumbs?

For free?

Nevertheless, this was the task that Shriners asked of me. Write the blurb for the announcer to read at the rodeo this Friday. I did:





Brody is 3 ½ years old. He was born with a rare condition called radial hypoplasia, which means he does not have radius bones in his forearms and he was born without thumbs. Brody’s arms are a little shorter than most, and his hands tend to grow at 90 degree angles instead of straight. Without thumbs, Brody’s hand function was decreased by 50%.

In January 2008, Brody began a series of surgeries at Shriners. Shriners surgeons straightened Brody’s wrists and his hands, which increased his ability to reach for toys and utensils. Then, in 2009, Shriners moved Brody’s index fingers into thumb position on each hand, increasing his hand function by 50%!

Thanks to Shriners, Brody can play lacrosse, tennis, and baseball, and he can even shoot webs like his favorite superhero, Spiderman.




Tonight, we are going to Richard's house. Richard, President of the El Jebel Shriners Medical Staff, and with whom I have spoken telephonically many, many times since January 2008, who paid for and made all the arrangements with Frontier Airlines to fly us to Salt Lake and back and forth and back approximately 12 times. Richard who cannot be at the Stock Show because he is flying to Juarez, Mexico to do the quarterly Shriners clinic there.





I spoke with Richard last week and thanked him profusely for choosing Brody to be the Shrine child at the Stock Show rodeo. I explained that with the unpaid furlough days we've had recently, this is really the only way Brody would get to see a rodeo, at least this year.





He then immediately asked if we wanted to be the Shrine's guests at the Shrine Circus that comes to town in April. I told him I work with 500 people and I'd like to sell some tickets, too.





It's an odd position I'm in, someone like me, who was raised to be independent and self-sufficient, to be given so much with barely a please out of my mouth. It feels. . . humbling, confusing, exhilarating, and embarrassing.

But I'll take it.





Richard also sent a photograph of a prior year's Shrine child in the carriage at the rodeo:

I can't wait to see the look on his face.

Unless he has another tantrum.