The one where Eliot gets his adnoids removed and Mommy grows robot arms.

Wow. It's already the 6th and this is my first blog post of 2010. I feel a year of slackerdom coming on! On Monday, Eliot underwent surgery to place a second tube in his right ear and remove his adnoids. Nothing like a fun surgery to ring in the New Year, I always say. Thankfully, he bounced right back from it, literally bounced, as by Monday afternoon he was jumping up and down on our bed, running around the house like a maniac, and sassily mouthing off anytime I tried to convince him to settle down. I had expected to nurse a tired, sickly little boy who wanted to lie on the couch and watch cartoons for most of the rest of the day. Not so. Apparently the anesthesia did not cause him to vomit (like the poor kid to the right of us in the recovery room) or wail uncontrollably (like every other kid in pediatric surgery); instead, it merely made him go completely insane.

Luckily, the hyper/sassy energy petered out by 5:30 that evening, when he crashed in front of the computer while watching "Mighty Machines" and then didn't wake until 6:00 the next morning. Thank you, lord, because I probably would have strangled him otherwise, rendering the surgery completely unnecessary.

Tuesday morning he woke up magically his old self again, the Eliot who is (mostly) polite and kind, and laid back, and who doesn't pop his Momma straight in the nose and pull her hair and then yell, "No, YOU go to timeout, Mommy!" Welcome back, son. Did I mention that I do not like your evil twin?

On Tuesday Eli had to go back to work, and despite his appearing completely healed, I wanted to keep Eliot home with me at least another day. It seemed heartless, if not a little negligent, to ship him off to daycare only one day post-op. Also, it's not like I would have been doing anything productive anyway. (Update my syllabi? What? I'm not teaching until MONDAY--why work on syllabi until Sunday evening?! *sigh*) So the boy and I stayed home and we played and played and played and played until I was pretty well played out. We painted watercolor pictures; we played farm (which mostly involves setting up little plastic fences to separate the little plastic cows from the little plastic goats, from the little plastic sheep, and using the tractors to move hay bales around until each group of little plastic animals has been properly fed); we constructed a "cage" for the fire-breathing dragon (otherwise known as "Eliot") by stretching a blanket over the backs of the dining room chairs. We colored; we ate cheese and crackers; we watched "Dora the Explorer." It was pretty much a toddler's paradise around here all day long yesterday.

Well, a toddler's paradise, with the exception of the robot arms, that is.

Apparently when Mommy dons electric blue hospital barf bags that cover her arm from hand to elbow and then staggers around growling "Robot arms! Mommy has robot arms!," little boys tend to get hysterically frightened. Who knew? I mean, how is that not funny? But at the mere sight of the robot arms, Mog screamed, "No, Mommy, NO!," ran down the hall to his bedroom and slammed the door. I could hear him crying behind the closed door.

I went into the bathroom and held my arms up to the mirror. "Roooo-botttt arms," I whispered to my reflection. Hmm. I don't get it. That's definitely funny.

But Mog refused to come out of the safety of his bedroom until I assured him that I did not, in fact, have robot arms. And then a few hours later, I tried the barf bags on again, just to check and see if maybe it would be funnier the second time.

It was not.

When it was time for bed, as he has every night for the last couple of weeks without fail, Eliot requested that I tell him a story about Farmer Eliot. (Eli claims that he started this particular storytelling trend and that every time I tell a story featuring "Frank" the Cow, whom he claims as his imaginative creation, I have to pay royalties directly into Mog's piggy bank. Well. I don't happen to know any stories about "Frank the Cow," but I sure do know a lot involving a cow named HANK. *cough, cough*)

Most Farmer Eliot stories involve tractors. Tractors breaking down and requiring repair, tractors stopping in the middle of bean fields so that Farmer Eliot can rescue a bunny rabbit, tractors getting stuck in the mud and needing to be pulled out by even heavier farm machinery. Basically, if I'm not feeling up to creating a new story line, I can just say something like "Farmer Eliot blah blah blah tractor," and he's pretty well appeased. The story doesn't need to make any logical sense or have a plot, so long as it involves the words "farmer," "Eliot," and "tractor." The combination of these three words, in pretty much any scenario soothes my son so that he can sleep soundly and dream of farming.

Eliot's favorite story, though, the one he asks for most often, he calls "The one Where Farmer Eliot Goes to the Grocery Store."  This one gets longer and more detailed every time I tell it, but essentially it involves Farmer Eliot realizing he needs to make an unexpected trip to town; meanwhile, the cows get bored and invite all the other animals to the big red barn for an animal party. Farmer Eliot arrives home to discover the party in progress, but instead of getting angry, he joins them in singing and dancing. (I do a great impression of a horse doing the cha cha, just so you know.)

Oh yes, and then Farmer Eliot rides the tractor.

And the moral of this story? Farming = good. Robots = bad.

The End.