4
July
2006
You might have noticed I talked about having Timi in kindergarten. She has actually only recently joined it, because until June, she had a nanny.
You see folks, Timi has inherited my resistance to respiratory infections (read - she has close to none) so after a string of coughing/ sneezing/ fevery weeks we finally gave up, got Timi out of the nursery where she went to until then and asked our acquaintances if they knew somebody reliable that was looking for a babysitting job.
The offer that we liked most was from one of my mom’s co-workers, who was the friend of a woman nicknamed Babi. She said that Babi was clean, realiable, had previous experience in caring for kids and elders, and she was willing to come to our home. She also lived not far from us. We asked to meet her.
She came for the interview and I wasn’t thrilled by her - she had a bit of a cough, a rather masculine voice and asked for half of my salary as a non-negotiable price for her services. We decided to give her a try though, especially since my parents promised to pay a part of the sum.
Weeks went by well after that, my opinion on her becoming more favorable as I saw Timi growing attached to her and exchanging kisses with Babi when she left. I gave her the money on time and she fed my girl, took her out in the park, played with her and took her to potty when needed. Everything was going fine.
Then, out of the blue, she tells us that she found an attorney who asked her to take care of his son and she’d like to start from July the 1st there. We had two more weeks until then, and we got angry and bitter, although we still treated her as before (it’s not a good idea to curse openly at the woman that has the life of your only child in her hands for 6 hours/day, methinks). But we wondered. Wasn’t Timi the best behaved two years old in the whole Transylvania? Didn’t she tell us all the time that she couldn’t believe how easy it was to care for her? Didn’t we give her the sum she asked from us, on time and in whole? Why didn’t she ask for a raise, why didn’t she tell us if she was unhappy with anything in our arrangement? We were at loss.
Still, we had to find something, and quick. I spread my antennas again, and found out about a private kindergarten. The friend that told me about it took me there and I liked it. Big yard with a small gentle dog, lots of grass to run on, everything clean and fit for kids inside. The price was 2/5 of what she was asking and they were willing to take Timi before she turned 3 since she’s fully potty trained and eats well. We made the deal.
So we had Timi going there, had a nice good-bye from Babi (after all, she cared well for Timi, so we preferred to forget about how she leaves and not burn this bridge). I presumed she started from July the 1st at her new place, like she told us. However, since yesterday I was in for a surprise.
Timi and I were returning from kindergarten and stopped at a road crossing. While waiting for the lights to turn green, a lady near us smiled to Timi, called her by name and started praising her lovely temper and beauty. Then she told us she was going to the same park where Babi was taking Timi with a boy she cared for.
“It’s such a pity Timi isn’t coming to the park anymore .. you know, Babi loves Timi so much - I never saw a nanny more attached to a child ..”
“We’re sorry she left too. Is she coming with the attorney’s kid to the park now?”
She looks confused.
“But she told me today you made her leave - and she’ not taking care of anybody now.”
Now I look confused too.
“No, we were announced on a very short notice that she’s leaving to care for some attorney’s child. Starting from July the 1st. We were happy to hve her taking care of Timi.”
“Oh, I know that lawyer .. but no, she’s not working for him. She said she’s at home and misses Timi a lot.”
So here you have it, folks. Could it be that they didn’t strike a deal in the end because of money differences? Or because of chores involved? Maybe they liked her but found another candidate that they liked more? Maybe she wasn’t contacted by said attorney at all, she just wanted to force us into paying her more? We’ll never know.
Posted: Timi
29
June
2006
Timi’s sick with fever - the kindergarten’s token snotty brat passed a virus to her. I could strangle a certain mommy that brought said snotty brat with 39,0 into the community, saying that “nah, she’s not infectious” and leaving the germ spitter with eleven kids for eight hours. Way to go, Einstein.
I started running this week. The legs hurt like hell but tasting the endorphine rush that comes after the effort is well worth it.
Mia went on vacation for a month so I’m left with with both mine and her patients. I don’t complain though - lots of true psychotics and savage murderers are coming my way to be examined / profiled/ expertised and my inner forensic psychologist is somersaulting with joy. Since Monday I had started taking cases from Sancta Sanctorum, the closed part of the ward, where dracones sunt.
And there they were, all dying to meet me:
The “former emissary of Romania at the United Nations”, persecuted by the government because of what he knows, influencing his thoughts and poisoning him with active zinc (isn’t that the main ingredient in acne creams?) in the eye, which poisoning he only escaped by having a doc injecting a tumor in said eye. “The tumor protects me now”, whispered he;
A slim teenager who didn’t trust me one bit, because she couldn’t read my thoughts like she was able to do with everybody else;
A sad lady who felt at fault for everything and less worthy than a dust bunny (so said the voices, which knew what they were saying, for the voices must be obeyed). She had to be longly and painfully convinced to swallow her medication;
and a cleaning lady who didn’t want to let me in when I came there in the morning, because I wasn’t wearing a white uniform and I had pigtails. The look on her face when a nurse jumped her sorry ass for not believing me when I said who I was could easily be chosen as the flagship of Kodak moments.
Posted: Timi, hospital
20
June
2006
From Friday to Sunday yours truly’s human bits were temporarely replaced by a whining mass of virus-spewing jellyfish. On Sunday evening I was finally feeling better,despite the running nose and the occasional sneeze attack. Determined not to et this go to waste, I found a nice birthday cake recipe and hacked it beyond recognition. The result looked a lot nicer than my own birthday cake:
(if you’re interested in the recipe, containing cherries, puff pastry, chocolate, choux and apricot jam, drop me a comment - if there I get more than three, I’ll post it)
However, just when I was preparing the chocolate cream Timi switched the TV on one of the state channels, called TVR2. There were commercials and my kid being a sucker for advertising and TVShop channels, she left it there. When the ads were finished, on came something I definetely wasn’t expecting - an interview with the frontman of Apocalyptica.
Who are Apocalyptica, ye of the not-clicking kind ask? Oh, only four guys playing cellos . What’s the trick? Well, they aren’t exactly playing the music you’d expect from four academically-trained celloists. They started by doing Metallica covers then moved on to sing their own creations. Both me and the husband love them dearly. (yeah, yeah, we’re devout Christians and hard rock is supposedly the music of eeeeeeeeevil. Go eat my socks. Or Robi’s.)
Robi came to watch, and during the interview we noticed a poster behind Eicca, advertising the fact that they were in Bucharest on the 31st of May. And we had no idea, for there wasn’t much advertising of it on the Discovery Channel / Realitatea TV / Cartoon Network, which get the most airing time in our house. Miffedness was all over the couch.
But all was not lost, because after the interview was finished they broadcasted the Bucharestian concert. All of it. And we rocked.
The jaw-dropping part of the evening however, came from Timi. The daughter sang with the guys. Applauded after every song, sometimes even after a longer solo. She accompanied them on our guitar (no eardrums were popped during that part, although they were close). And I swear to you, my kid HEADBANGED. And she did it like a pro. And did I mention she brought her plush kitten to the TV screen to kiss them?
If I ever needed proof of the awesome power of the genes, I have it now. Timi, I’m so proud of you.
Posted: Timi
15
June
2006
Timi, a few days ago
Posted: Timi
4
June
2006
Timi. My daughter, Timi. You know, my sweet, angelic bundle of goodness? Well, you might want to rethink her description.
We left her alone for 10 friggin’ minutes - I had to check something up on the computer and Robi went to the bedroom for who knows what. Out of the bedroom he came, taken by the nose to search for the source of a devilish stench that was taking over our little home. A mere two seconds later, an angry shout was heard. “For the love of God! How could you!”. Was that my quiet husband? Was he unpleased by something I did or didn’t do? Colour me confused, for I didn’t know.
Into the living room I went, only to find a scene I hoped I’ll never see : Timi was standing naked on the carpet, sobbing with Robi looking to her like to a persistent flea (and he’s allergic to those, thankyouverymuch). But that wasn’t all, for there was the SMELL. A rotting outhouse in mid August would match it closely. I looked around and I saw … shit. Yes, take that in it’s literal meaning. Small drops of poop on the couch, on carpet, on an Avon lady’s face and on my favourite chair. Damn, she was quick (and coordonated, since she used the perfect window of opportunity for the mischevious deed).
Some lecturing and sobbing later, she was in bed, no kissing rituals done on her. We scrubbed and washed until all evidence of the crime was gone. The smell went away too after the window was left open long enough.
Around midnight, I couldn’t take the lack of kisses anymore. I went to her room and smooched her tummy and hair to my heart’s content. She woke up and gave me kisses back. Robi came to the room soon and kissed her until his crave was also fulfilled. We went to bed after that. All was well in the world again.
Posted: Timi
10
May
2006
Timi got her shots today. The next round comes somewhere in the distant future, when she’ll be 8.
Posted: Timi
6
May
2006
This evening, while Robi was cutting a vinyl tablecloth to pieces that would be put inside the new kitchen cupboards, and I was stuffing my face with nut muesli (no chips for me, I’m on my life’s first diet), Timi somehow managed to get the bedroom door open and jumped on the bed until she fell, getting her first bump on her head. I watched her for any signs of something goig wrong, like drowsiness or photophobia, but after 5 minutes with an ice pack on her bump, she got back to her active cheerful self.
That got me thinking on all the times her guardian angel (I believe in them. I’m forced to by the circumstances) was really busy. There is a romanian commercial with 3 guardian angels, getting together for a drink after a day of receiving hits instead of their protected mortals. I’d like to give Timi’s angel the entire production of a small wineyard, if I’ll ever meet him/her.
It started with the pregnancy, when during the 6th month an infernal heatwave that lasted over a week gave me premature contractions. Thanks to a quick hospitalisation and a very good doc, we managed to keep the kid inside until she was full term. That’s when the doc told me I should come to the hospital for a tocography. I had it while a gipsy lady was giving birth in the bed next to me, nurses casually chatting with me about work on the gynecology ward compared to psychiatry and praising the kicks of my child while the other human being in the room was groaning and contorting from the most drug-free labor on earth. After a while the nurses went out for a quick smoke and her child was out in a mess of blood and feces. The woman sighed relieved while the nurses rushed back and started cursing her for not calling for them when she felt the need to push, then rolled her out to the delivery room and instructed her to tell the doc she birthed in the room she was rolled in.
My tocography was finished soon after that, the doc came and examined the paper, one eyebrow getting higher and higher the more he looked at it. He summoned me to his office, where I found out my kid’s heartbeat rate went way over the normal during the simulated contractions, which pointed to some kind of fetal distress, and c-section was sugested. 9 months of hippy happiness dreaming about lamaze and hypnobirth went out on the window, but I trusted the guy and said yes. A week later, after waking up from the c-section anesthesia I found out what caused the fetal distress- the umbilical cord, wrapped twice around her neck was strangling her when it contracted . God only knows what would have happened in a normal birth, but after all the patients I saw reduced to the inteligence of a carrot after birth hypoxia, I’m glad I live in time and country that have fetal monitoring and obstetrical surgery available.
Then at two months old, Timi rolled over for the first time. The only problem? She decided to do it while she was on the changing table, half a meter over the bed and more than a meter from the ground, while her father was getting her a clean diaper. Robi just had enough time to catch her while she continued to merrily wiggle and coo.
Fast forward to 7 months, when she’s on a recliner at my parents house, with a stash of newspapers piled on her side to keep her from rolling over and I’m in the kitchen to make her banana puree. She discovers she has enough strength to throw the newspapers down on the floor and then proceeds to investigate what it’s like to slide to the floor with the last stash of newspapers. I run into the room to find her on top of the newspapers, crying from fright but unharmed. Being her first fall, I phone her doc worried about brain damage and banging my head against the wall for being the world’s most negligent mother. The doc listens to my story and laughs her belly out, telling me that any child that doesn’t fall from somewhere until she’s one is simply overprotected.
No notable events until last october, when she starts nursery. One day she comes home and when she sobs because I don’t let her take something from a shelf I notice something hanging out of her nose when she exhales. I try to take it out, but it’s too small and I seem to only push it further it with my attempts. Calmly I message Robi on the Internet about it and since his work hours are finished anyway we decide to have the thing taken out by a professional. We go to the hospital, where the guys at the ER try to take it out but after a few attempts they send us to Otolaringology. We get there, ammused and annoyed by the whole thing, the doc on duty receives us and we tell her about what the problem is.
Then all hell breaks loose . The doc starts screaming at us to keep Timi motionless so she can quickly get the thing out of her nose, Timi cries, kicks and screams like never before in her life, four nurses plus Robi finally manage to pin her down while the doc is poking her tiny nose with the nasal aspirator. Because of all the kicking and poking, her nose breaks a vein and there’s blood all over the lower part of her face. I stand near them, useless and with all life sucked out, pondering if I should start crying or hit the doc that’s causing that much suffering to my kid. Timi loses her voice from the screaming and is only able to let a small grunt out of the throat. They are finally able to get the object out.
It turns out to be a 2-3 mm long piece of rubber, clearly torn out from a bigger something. Regaining her calm, the doc tells us why she panicked- a kid with exactly the same problem died a month before, after his mom took him out of the hospital against the advice of the docs. The bean he had in his nose got aspired in the trachea, where it caused the closing of the airways and he died in a few minutes. The doc then adviced us to keep Timi for a night in the hospital, just in case other pieces were still in her nose. We said yes, I spent one of the ugliest nights in my life with Timi there, (lights on, nurses coming in every two hours, giant bugs having Olimpic Games on the wall, Timi crying in her sleep) but the next day we were at home, safe and sound.
For all you childless readers - I’m actually one of the lucky - and careful - moms.
Posted: Timi, hospital
