Beth passed another milestone this week: she was abandoned at a non-relative’s house for a solo visit this week. We went through all the common symptoms: the look of betrayal, the clinging to one leg, the repeating final request (“just one more hug daddy”), and finally the period of mourning after the final separation. Lest you worry, Beth did survive the experience, but I’m not entirely sure her host’s house did. We offered to pay for the damages, but they refused.

The weekend was not all bad, we got to see Beth’s much anticipated Ballet recital on Saturday. Is there anything more precious than a bunch of preschoolers doing just about everything except the rehearsed number on stage in front of the live audience? Beth only had a couple of classes leading up to the recital, so she hadn’t had as much practice ignoring the pleas of the teacher. She was a good sport, and gave her best shot at following the lead of her more experienced classmates, so there were at least two people doing something similar on stage.

Beth is holding three pencil erasers in the shape of teeth. She advises me (in her typically loud fashion, as if from half way across the house) she has three toothes. Recognizing the grammatical error, I explain to her she has three teeth, not three toothes. Beth, being a relatively stubborn child, insists she has three toothes. This goes on for about a minute or so before I convince her there is no such word as “toothes.”

Finally, she seems to be catching on, so I decide to quiz her.

“Beth, what do you have when you have three?”
“Three TEETH daddy!”
“Good! Very good Beth! Now, what do you have when you have just one Beth?”
“Two missing teeth daddy!”

Tonight we reached another milestone.
We’ve crossed one more bridge for the first time.
We can look back, but we can’t go back.
We can only hope not to cross it again,
or at least not very often.

When her tower of legos unexpectedly tumbled, and consumed with the fire of extreme frustration, Beth exclaimed, “OH SHIT!!!”

She said it with emphasis.
She said it with gusto.
She said it with passion.
She said it with no shame.
She saved it for me.

It’s hard to be angry. I’ve said to Cheryl on several occasions that it’s tough not to swear in such situations. Nothing comes close to the necessary level of catharsis that a good dose of profanity provides. And yet. . .

I am going to have to be more careful.

And while it is nothing to be proud of, I must admit a dirty little secret. I laughed while typing this message. . .out of range (measured in time and distance) to an impressionable set of little ears.

“Hey Beth, do you want to go outside and feel how cold it is this morning”, daddy asked at 8 a.m. this morning. “Yeah!!”, Beth replied enthusiastically. “O.K., I’ll pick you up and carry you since you don’t have any shoes on.”

They go just out side the door and rush back inside without hesitation.

“Daddy, what temperature is it in here?” asked Beth. Daddy replied, “well, its about 70 degrees in here.”
“And what temperature is it out there?” asked Beth. Daddy replied, “its 40 degrees out there now.”
“Ooo, that’s a lot of cold daddy.”

DUNEDIN – Using only the objects available to her: a toilet (the sink was too high to reach) and the brush beside it; Elizabeth Kauffman did her best to clean her parents bathroom early this evening. “I put the brush in the water and I put the water there and there and there and there and there” said Elizabeth, describing the scene to her father. Those on the scene describe the bathroom as “wet.” “You wouldn’t believe how much water there is in a toilet”, said Beth’s father, arriving late on the scene. “There was water everywhere. . .and there was still some in the toilet. . .!@#$%^& unbelievable!”

The child’s mother was reportedly working this evening and was not available for comment.

Beth started the day, like nearly every other weekday, at 6 am. Although this is not out of the ordinary, getting up any earlier than 8 am is inherently bad. I’m neither looking for, nor do I expect any sympathy from those of the medical persuasion, but I think we all can agree to this in principle.

From there, Beth went to school and suffered through a long day. When she arrived, she discovered her teacher would not be there. Instead, she had a substitute – which is almost never a good thing. She didn’t get in a nap which is definitely never a good thing.

Tired from a lack of sleep, and already weary from suffering through a substitute teacher, Cheryl picked her up early to go to the dentist. It was her first time with the poke, prod, scrape, and polish routine. When the pain in her mouth was still around an hour later, we called on our good friend Motrin.

Not until later that night, when Beth was on the potty struggling with something too gross to describe, Beth pitifully announced: “Mommy, I’m having a bad day.”

In the last week or so, Beth has been doing an excellent job of: as we say, “putting her pee-pee and poopy in the potty.” (This weekend was an exception, but I won’t get into that now.) She has even graduated to wearing underpants to school, and she wears the same pair all day. Today however, she had a bit of a set back, but its hard to blame her. As a general rule, Beth has been very afraid of things that make a lot of noise; and vacuum cleaners in particular. Well for some reason the staff at her school decided that it would be a good idea to do some vacuuming while the students were in the room. Beth was caught off guard and did not react well. I understand she was quite a sight; a mostly four year old child screaming at the top of her lungs, dirty from her good time on the playground, with a steady stream running down her legs and emptying into the puddle of fear in which she stood. The appropriate response of a parent would be one of sympathy, and I swear that I was at least in part sympathetic. But when Beth confided to me later that “the vacuum scared the pee-pee out of me”, I just had to giggle a little, even if it was just to myself.

“Her bowels blew!” said Beth’s teacher, describing Beth’s explosive trip to the potty this afternoon.

The “big” potty at home took the brunt of another sudden burst this evening. When you get a good deal of the product on the under side of the toilet seat, you know your dealing with a powerful force not to be reckoned with lightly.

Pop Quiz: What do you get when you take an extremely constipated young girl to a specialist; he gives her Enulose (to loosen her up); she takes it for four days without a movement; she goes to her regular doctor for something unrelated; he determines that she has a sinus infection; and, he prescribes an antibiotic which she takes for two days (along with the Enulose)?

Answer: A great big mess.

Break out the 409, it’s Bounty time.

Reflux rears it’s ugly head, and Christy’s email probably remains unaccessible; but the show must go on.

Beth went to see the latest doctor in what has been called, “the Grand Tour of Pediatric Specialists”; or, in honor of my in-laws: “le Tour de Docteur Medecin Enfant Specialiste.” (Bet you’d never guess I don’t have a lick of French in me, and I made that all up on the fly.)

The most recent addition to the tour was the G.I. specialist. We went because Beth was full of crap, or so we were told. The G.I. Guy said it was more likely our primary was full of it. The good doctor said Beth’s only problem was a strong desire to hold it in. He prescribed lactulose to loosen her up – to force the issue, if you know what I mean.

We quickly passed that however, because he seemed to be more interested in another one of her quirks: her thing with mixing-up a common cliche. In Beth’s case it’s: “what goes down must come back up.” He seemed to think she still has reflux, noting it’s not normal to throw up so often. He prescribed Zantac and Reglan.

As a result, our mornings now start with a virtual parade of prescription medications. To finish off her bronchitis and ear infection, we start the morning with Zithromax. We immediately follow with a Zantac/Reglan/Delsym cocktail chaser. She gets a half hour break to eat breakfast. If we’re lucky we get a pinch of vomiting in between. Last, before leaving for school, we give a dose of lactulose to send her off on her day nice and loose. When we all get home, we get to do much of it all over again, with a vitamin and Zyrtec added into the mix.

Ah, the joy of prescription medications. Perhaps an appropriate toy for our next child (if we have another) would be the Fisher Price “My First Pharmacy.”