Gogo, too?

"It's kinda like I love you, but it's SNOT!"  (get it?)  YoYo's favorite joke.  Thank you, mystery infection/cold thing.

Well, we had our first freakishly scary episode with the little man.  I left for the grocery store the first evening of our elephantine antibiotic round, and Shane called me 20 minutes later, asking, "Can you please come home right now?" in a voice that frightened me.  He'd left YoYo on the couch to start dinner, and a strange behavioral episode ensued which seemed an awful lot like a seizure.  When he couldn't get YoYo to respond (no eye contact, no body language, no vocal response), he was terrified.  We paged and paged our pediatrician, unwilling to risk a visit to the ER to explain to some random intern our little man's laundry list of rare issues that may or may not coincide with this kind of thing.  The good doctor reassured us, and as YoYo drifted off to an exhausted, sicky-boy sleep, we breathed sighs of relief.

Of course, there is nothing that YoYo goes through that GoGo shouldn't go through, so it happens that GoGo's ear fell off suddenly and without explanation-unless you count, "I don't know.  I just kissed him and his ear came off."  (I can't tell you how many times I've heard that one.)  I donned a stethoscope and played doctor as GoGo came to the Kitchen Table Memorial Hospital (complete with 3-year-old-siren blaring, thank you).  

After a shot and a good sewing-up, GoGo let YoYo trim his paws for good measure, and then he had the kind of cleaning that I think may only be able to happen one or two more times before he is beyond repair (oh, please, God, give us some years before we get there).  Hovering over the bathroom sink with homemade soap and a lice comb (the only thing that could comb out the pills in his fleece), I suddenly remembered all the times I wanted to give a special doll or stuffed animal a bath and grooming that would make him as good as new. So when this turned out really well, I took a picture.  Is it me, or does GoGo look a little indignant?

I feel like I'm learning to breathe.  I worry so much about doing the wrong thing that when we're around friends, I bring YoYo up short constantly--I'm so afraid he'll push another kid or break something that belongs to someone else or cause a fuss--and I've always been afraid of that for me, too.  When we went to the theater for the first time on our own, my brother and I nearly killed each other because I wanted us to be so perfect in our behavior that I jumped on him for every breath he took!  So today, I didn't fuss when YoYo wrote all over his palms, or when he stuck the ball-point pen in the screwdriver hole on his table, or when he wiped his mirror til it was cloudy with a fresh wet wipe.  He's trying to experiment with so much, and I am so ingrained in 15 years of not having a kid that I'm used to focusing only on what I think needs to get done.

Mercy.

p.s. I took every box I could find in the house and shed last night and made a "train" in the living room.  He's crammed every toy and stuffed animal he owns in there.  And it makes him happy!  He made tickets for all the animals to board the train and is counting them into a bag.