Revisiting.

I meant to do this last week, and didn't. I meant to do this sooner this week, and didn't. I finally got around to it briefly and at the last minute and now I want to find the time to do all of it all over again.

Lately I've been missing the School of Metaphysics.

My coach training group call last week had the topic of "transcending the ego," this week's topic (which I admit I am listening to them discuss right now) is "relationships." We did a great deal of talking about the ego, what it is, how it works for you, how it works against you, how to recognize it, all kinds of things, while I was at the School of Metaphysics, so knowing that "transcending the ego" was going to be our topic last week really made me want to get out my old SoM lessons and read up on the Ego stuff to refresh my memory, for one, and to give me more to offer the conversation as well. I never did. This week I wanted to do the same, as we learned a lot at SoM as well about relationships ("friendship" is the word used there most often) and what they can do for you and your own personal growth. I still didn't, until 7:26 this evening, in preparation for a 7:30 call. So I guess I was exaggerating when I said "last minute;" it was technically last four minutes.

I started skimming the lessons looking for the titles that could have what I was looking for, skimming through the lesson content a bit, and two things struck me. One: they are terribly new age hippie we are one with the universe cheezy, and Two: Wow, I miss the new age hippie it's okay to sound cheezy because we are one with the universe feeling I had when I was there.

I suddenly want to read all of the lessons again, one at a time the way they're meant to be read, to re-learn what I learned before, to refamiliarize myself with all of what I loved learning the first time, to remember all the deeper things I forgot I'd learned that got me prepared for the you create your own reality type of profession I am currently training in.

I've said the whole time I've been in coach training - multiple times, even, lots and lots and lots of times - how well the SoM prepared me for going into the coach training program. They both teach the same concepts, only differently, in different depths and from different angles. I feel - even when I can't remember the specific ideas - that I understand the training concepts better because I learned them somewhere else before. I feel like it gives me a greater understanding of the coaching process, because again, even if I can't remember the specifics, even if I can't put it into words, I just get it because it's not a new idea. I have felt so (and I never use this word) blessed that I had the SoM experience before I started training because it all just clicks so well. It all fits.

And, have I mentioned that I decided several weeks ago that the topic for my 10-20 page paper for my "independent project" is going to be Coaching and Metaphysics?

So of course it makes sense that the SoM director called me recently about a seminar coming up called The Power of Personal Connection, and of course it makes sense that the peer group topics have been those which would remind me of some SoM lessons. It's me creating my own world, laying my own path - creating opportunities in a variety of different ways for me to remind myself that, oh yeah, this all ties together withthe everything of everything, and that I have the opportunity to relearn the SoM stuff with the training knowledge I have now, and the opportunity to write out in 10-20 pages, double spaced, Times New Roman 12 point font, exactly how this all fits together and could give you (me) an amazing life to have the knowledge and therefore use of both schools of knowledge and sets of skills.

I mean, you know. Duh.

Snap to!

Lately, we've been halfway potty training - not really pushing it, just sitting him on the potty before and after sleep times. Within the last week, I've started putting him on the potty during diaper changes as well, so he can make more of a correlation. He has the general concept figured out, but not to the degree that when he feels he has to go, he asks to go to the potty. And he has yet to "poopoo" on the potty, only "peepee." Even though he has occasionally poopood in his diaper (or on the floor while Mommy's hunting for a diaper...) mere seconds after getting off the potty. Ahem. However, he is aware of when stuff is happening, and informs us afterwards. *shrug*

Recently, he's been kind of hilarious about it. Anytime he goes poopoo in his diaper, he will tell me, "Mommy, I poopoo peepee. Change my diaper." And then he'll lay down, right where he's standing, and wait. This was the point where I started putting him on the potty for diaper changes, because, what?! Did you just tell me to change your diaper and then lay down and expect it to happen?!

Last night he did this in front of Daddy, too, and we both just started laughing. I looked at my child and said, "I don't think that's how it works, Mr. Baby! You don't just tell Mommy to change your diaper! We go sit on the potty!"

And, still laying on the floor, he said, "No, change my diaper," then clapped twice, Snap to, woman, put his hands back on the floor, and stared at me.

While the husband muttered, "Wow, he has you figured out!," I raised an eyebrow and told the toddler, "Potty."

He told me, "No, change my diaper," and clapped twice again. It was really hard not to laugh, and equally hard to watch my language and not turn and say to the husband, "What the hell is this?!"

I told him again, "No, potty," clapped twice myself and pointed to the bathroom.

He thought Mommy clapping, too, was hilarious, and followed.

I won, but I still can't help but feel a little defeated by my minihuman.

Becoming.

After a decade of knowing that I wanted to help people somehow, 8 years of knowing I wanted to help others feel better about themselves, 6 years of knowing that a profession such as life coaching exists, 4 years of talking friends through rough spots and being told I should get paid for it, 3 years of finally having put the pieces together and realizing I could get paid for it, 2 years of wanting it, 1 year of doing the research, 8 months of intense work on Self to get myself in the ready position, and 3 months of filling out forms and waiting for approval, my Life Coach training starts on Friday.

Everything has finally pulled together, everything points to this being the right move at the right time, and this is happening. I'm excited, in a very zen sort of way. I'm also a little scared. While the training itself is simply a 3-day weekend in Chicago, sitting in a room with a bunch of other folks ready to learn and practice the same information, it signifies the beginning of the new life I imagine for myself. This is Step 1. It sets into motion a much longer series of events leading to a whole lot of work and a whole lot of rewards, a lot if initiative needed on my part, a lot of job satisfaction, a lot more time with my kid, a lot more time to keep up my house so we have more family time rather than after-work-chore-time, a lot of I-don't-know-what-else that I can only imagine will be good. And it all starts this weekend. I'm not quite sure what about that makes it scary, but it is. Maybe just because it's real, and maybe because I have no idea what to expect in Step 2. I know there will be a time committment involved for coach/client practice and conference calls, and it's entirely possible that I'm concerned about those taking up family time that's already limited.

Technically speaking, the trip itself will be a 5-day weekend. I'll be driving there Thursday and getting back Monday. It'll be the longest time that I've ever been away from my little guy since he was born, and I am acutely aware of this, as well. It'll be the longest time that the husband has to be on full-time Daddy Duty with no Mommy reprieve. He seems to be going between excited to spend extra time with the little guy, and worried that he won't get any sleep since nights are a Mommy job. Myself, I'm going between being excited to see how they handle 5 days and 4 bedtimes by themselves, and concerned that it'll mess the little guy up - and make the separation anxiety we're just starting to get past flare up again - to randomly have no Mommy for so long. I guess only time will tell, and whatever happens, I'll still be happy to see my guys again when I get home. It'll be weird to sleep in a strange bed in a strange hotel by myself, when I'm used to sleeping with a husband half the night, and a toddler the other half.

The rental car, the directions to the hotel and training, the list of things to pack, and the hoping I make a couple of friends while I'm there, are all on my radar screen, too.

But mostly, I'm excited, because after nearly 28 years, I finally really feel like I'm taking my own steps in my own desired direction, and I like that this feels good. This feels right. And it's all starting this weekend.

And a bowl full of mush.

It seemed for a while like I was the only Mommy on the continent who didn't have the book Goodnight Moon to read to her child every night at bedtime. Hence, when I saw it at Barnes & Noble several months ago (when I was actually there shopping for a birthday present for my dad, but just had to wander over to the kids section), I snagged it, plus a book of nursery rhymes with a velvety spine. "For his birthday." His birthday came and went and I forgot I'd bought the books and put them back, so instead, they became Easter presents. He already had a couple of books that were his bedtime staples - Curious George Rides a Bike, The Very Busy Spider - so Goodnight Moon took a while to work itself into his rotation. Actually, I think I just snuck it in one night when he refused to decide on a book. "If you don't choose, Mommy will choose." Mommy chose something different, because Mommy was tired of George and Spider.

It's still not one of his favorites, really - those are George, Spider, The Little Engine that Could (or "train book") and Mother Goose for Babies ("mudder doose") - but it sneaks in a few nights a week if he's just not quite ready to sleep yet after we read one of the other main books. His favorite part is the kittens; I explained one night that a kitten is a baby cat, so when we get to "Goodnight kittens," he says, "Goodnight baby dats." He also likes "Goodnight nobody." Go figure. And a few nights ago I was especially proud of him when he pointed to the picture of the phone, which does not have its own "good night" in the book, and said "Goodnight moh." Moh is phone. He speaks toddler, work with me here.

The part I am actually intending to get to is this: "And a comb, and a brush, and a bowl full of mush."

Mush.

When I was a kid, Mom worked a lot and didn't cook often, so the meals that I do remember having with her - especially the ritual meals, like the time period where every Sunday we'd get 3 orders of biscuits and gravy from Hardee's and split them between the two of us - ring a special happy-childhood bell for me. As I've grown up, I've discovered that two of my favorite mom-breakfast foods were apparently pretty uncommon. One was rice - cooked rice, flattened on the top rather than lumpy, with enough evaporated milk poured over it to juuuust reach the top, and a sprinkling of sugar on top of that, then you stir it all up to mix in the sugar, and flatten it back out again, because that's just how it's done. The other was cornmeal mush, eaten about the same way, only I usually skipped the milk on that and just stirred in a little sugar.

Since reading Goodnight Moon with Raiden more often, I have started craving "a bowl full of mush." So finally, the other morning, I called my mom. "Mom, I'm sorry to bother you at school, but I have a very important question." "I'm not at school yet," she said, "what's going on?" "How do you make cornmeal mush?"

She laughed, and then hemmed and hawed because, apparently, it's one of those things that isn't really measured - she just tosses it all into a pot until it looks right and cooks it until it looks right cooked. The recipe I got from her was:

- A cup or two of water

- Three or four soup spoons of corn meal

- Oh, and salt it, not much, just like you would macaroni

Cook it on high until it boils, then turn it down low and let it cook until it looks done.

Amazingly, that recipe was pretty accurate. Though as it turned out, it would've taken longer to cook than I had time before work, so instead, it was my dinner that night. Rich looked at me like I was crazy, and asked if that's even good for you. Probably not, but he's the one who introduced me to biscuits and chocolate gravy, and I don't think that's good for you, either.

Anyway, I'd made a little extra, too, so I'd have leftovers to use for fried mush.

Yep, fried mush. Am I the only one who's heard of any of this? It doesn't matter, the fried mush didn't turn out quite right, anyway. Not crispy enough. I'll have to ask Mom on that one, too.

The mush tasted so good to me that night, though, that I've also had it for breakfast the past 2 mornings, tossing it all together on the stove as I'm getting ready for work, then dumping it into a bowl, rushing out the door, and eating it when I get to work. 

I'm sure this odd craving will get out of my system soon, but everytime I read, "And a comb, and a brush, and a bowl full of mush," especially now that I've reminded my mouth how it tastes, it just sounds so good. And every time, it has been, except I think it would taste better if I were eating it with my mom.

Big kid swing.

I intend to fully catch up at some point, but right now I really need to say:

Where on earth did this large child come from and what did he do with my little baby?!

Gash.

So, yesterday was pretty much the scariest mommy day thus far.

The short version: We spent 4 hours at the ER, and Raiden has 10 stitches in his forehead.

The long version: I got a call from MIL at 10:something yesterday morning with Raiden crying in the background. She said he was running, "and I told him to slow down, and he didn't," and he tripped and fell and hit his head on FIL's gun cabinet. (Side note, he's been wanting to move the guns to a gun safe and take down the cabinet, anyway, before Raiden gets big enough to know what they are and get interested in touching them. Even though it's locked, he just doesn't want them around him. Good call. But this really has nothing to do with Raiden falling into it.) MIL said she thought I ought to come look at it, so I grabbed my stuff, told my coworkers what was up, grabbed Rich, and took off. Rich called his mom on the way,  we ended up meeting her at Urgent Care, and OMG, Rich is actually a little mad that she didn't just take him first thing. I can agree with him, though I can also totally understand wanting to calm him down and stop the blood before trying to wrestle a screaming bleeding baby into a car seat by herself. Luckily Urgent Care is only about 1 block from her house, so not much time was wasted, anyway. But yes, we met her there and as I said, OMG. He had a GASH in his head that was 1.5" long and a good 1/4" deep. It was AWFUL and I felt weak just seeing that in my BABY'S head. But he? Was happy. Drinking milk. "Hi mama. Hurt!" He freaked out more when they tried to put gauze and tape on his head, than he was freaking out about the GASH in his head hurting.

The receptionist and a nurse, I think, at Urgent Care said that with how deep it was and how much he was fighting them, they weren't equipped to possibly sedate him if needed and that we had to go to the ER. (I'm wondering in the back of my mind if we'll still get charged with an Urgent Care visit even though we never left the waiting room and just got gauze, tape and ice. The ice, by the way, was pointless, because the gauze was an inch thick.) The car ride there? He was pointing to his head saying "hurt," telling me that Daddy was wearing sunglasses, that I was wearing a coat, and all kinds of normal things that a baby with a gash in his head would not be expected to do. Acting totally like himself. I seriously couldn't believe it and kept telling him how proud I was of him being such a brave boy.

The drive from Urgent Care to the ER too approximately seven years. We had to wait a few more minutes at the ER before being called back to take information and try to check his vitals, which he also freaked out about. We waited a few more minutes before seeing a nurse practitioner, who said that as feisty as he was we may have to do a "conscious sedation" to get the stitches done, which meant being transferred to another area to see another doctor and having another series of waits before officially deciding anything. The trauma doctor made the sedation sound like a much bigger deal than the nurse practitioner had, and made it sound much more possible to just have nurses wrap him up and hold him without bothering to sedate him. In the end, we decided that a local anesthetic and 10 minutes of screaming would be healthier than medical sedation knocking him into lala land and waiting for that to kick in and then wear off and hope that he didn't have a reaction to it. (And now I wonder, if we'd decided that in the first place, if we could've just done it with the nurse practitioner instead of having to be transferred.) I was holding it together on the outside but kept getting light headed due to freaking out internally about it, especially once they took the gauze off his head and the gash was right there in plain sight, and the light headedness was not making me happy. Rich and I decided that it would probably be better overall if he and I were to step out while they did the stitches, so that I wouldn't pass out watching it. We gave him hugs and kisses and told him, "We'll be right back!" while he was reaching for us, and left him with strangers to bundle up his little toddler body and hold him still to do the stitches. I had to walk away where I couldn't hear him, and cried for a few minutes over hearing him yelling "Mama! Mama!" while I was walking out the door and away from the room. Rich went over to check after 9 minutes (not that I was obsessively watching the clock or anything) and heard him yelling. He wasn't screaming much at all, he was simply saying to them, "Mama! Dada! All done! Alllllll done!" which, after they were finished, the nurses confirmed and seemed to find amusing. Immediately after they were done, he was perfectly fine. Definitely the correct decision to not do the sedation.

They took a couple of x-rays, which he was not happy about, either, and then waited an hour and a half (watching cartoons, walking the halls, drinking orange Gatorade) for them to be reviewed; they were perfectly clear. The doctor wasn't even concerned about him napping or sleeping at night. We finally got to leave after 4 total hours in the ER, lots of cartoons, and 10 stitches in my baby's head. 

We got take-out on the way home because we were ALL starving, and Raiden took a very late nap right after he ate. He slept for about 3 hours, but a lot of it was broken; the cut was finally starting to hurt him, it seemed. He would yell for me occasionally, but didn't seem to really be awake while he was doing it. I laid with him for a good portion of the nap, and that seemed to help. He woke up happy, though, and went to bed easily (albeit, late) at night as well. I fell asleep with him, which I was okay with :), and when I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't fall back asleep, I was perfectly content to just lay with him, listen to him breathe and feel him squirm. I was even okay with his feet digging into my side.

MIL kept apologizing, but it wasn't her fault. He's a little boy, he runs, and he falls, and this time he just hit something just right on his way down to cause a good sized gash that needed stitches. The only thing that bothered us was that she thought we needed to look at that GASH before taking him to the ER, but on a good note, we got this out of the way early so now if something really serious ever happens, we have a "we'll meet you at Urgent Care" protocol. 

Rich stayed home with him today, but Raiden is really doing well enough I felt okay coming on into work. He was trying to be a daredevil this morning, and seems confused with us telling him to walk instead of run, and not to sit on his kick ball so close to the door frame. Our parental eyes can only see sharp corners, hard surfaces and trip hazards right now. (Rich wants to get Raiden a pillow suit for a few days.) We explained to Raiden that he just needs to be very careful for a few days until his owwie starts to heal, and then things can go back to normal. He pointed to his head and seemed to understand, but he gets excited and forgets. And then we have heart attacks :).

It's a really clean cut, though, and I don't expect there to be much of a scar in the long run. My mom informed me that this won't be my last trip to the ER for stitches, and my boss said a very similar, "At least you got that first ER trip out of the way." Really, it could have been a lot worse. I'm just so proud of my brave little boy being. I think he did better yesterday than I would have.

Added later:

Blurry fonecampic from lunch today.

Ow.

Remodeling.

The husband has been working on the downstairs bathroom for a few weeks now. I could explain to you what's going on with it, but instead, I think I'll let the little guy do it for me.

Slosh slosh.

A few minutes ago, I overheard an I.T. guy telling a coworker how to get to a network location by going to Start, Run, and then typing "whack whack, networkaddress, whack, folder." 

Whack whack? 

That reminded me of my recent personal confusion over slash vs. forward slash vs. back slash. I have to tell people fairly often, as well, how to get to a different network location, and I'm always concerned that in telling them "backslash" I'm confused and telling them wrong (and I usually end it with, "the one above Enter"). I decided to look it up today and as it turns out, I was using the term "backslash" as being "the one above Enter" correctly. Good.

As it further turns out, "whack" is a nickname for "slash" (or "forward slash," though a lot of internet sources say that "forward" is redundant and unnecessary).

However, "slosh" is a nickname for "backslash."

So he was still saying it wrong. He should have said "slosh slosh." 

Personally, I'm considering referring to the (forward) slash as a "sepratrix" from here on out, just to see who I can confuse by trying to look smart.

Then again, it's not "smart" to use words you're fairly sure your audience won't understand, as it simply hinders communication and makes you look like a wiseass. So perhaps not.