How phobias are born

The photo feature is back up! I like this picture, except for the chocolate ring around John's mouth, and the pooped out look on Joan's face. But I still think it's cute.

It was a day of ups and downs. I decided to check in on John at school today. He had a great day! Every Wednesday, they have an artist come and do creative things with the kids. At the end of class, John was busy at work with her, one-on-one, building a tower out of various cardboard boxes and coloured tape. He was so proud, he came over to me, took my hand and led me back to meet the lady, and see his tower. It was great.

We got a little newsletter today, which was nice. It explained their teaching method. They call it "emerging curriculum". In a nutshell, the kids' interests direct the curriculum. Obviously, in an all boy class, the curriculum is very vehicle heavy, which is where the idea for the fire station field trip came about. Makes sense to me. It's so fun to see the effects of school infiltrating him. He's started to use one of the teacher's favourite sayings "we rock!" He's also expressing his feelings very well. Today, he was trying to play one of the preschool games on the cbc kids website, but couldn't get the mouse to move the way he wanted. So he sat down and said "I can't get it to work. I'm upset."

After school, we headed home for some lunch and a little rest. Then came the first of many trips we'll be taking to Mac for Joan - this time to get the bloodwork done. The bus went well. There's so little outdoor walking involved, it wasn't an issue. John thought the hospital was a pretty cool place, even though we wound up walking what felt like miles to find the right clinic. Once we got there, we barely had to wait, even though they had a giant sign apologizing for long wait times, and being short staffed. Besides, they had toys and a dinosaur book in the waiting room, so John didn't even notice. But that's about where the happiness ended.

I had warned John that Joan was going to be scared, and that she was going to cry, but I don't think it registered, until things got underway. He watched in horror as they tied the elastic around her arm. His jaw really dropped when a second technician came to pin her arm down, and the first, who seemed so nice until then, jabbed a pointy thing into his sister's arm, causing blood curdling shrieks to ring out far and wide. Not to mention the dripping blood all over her arm. The technician had a heck of a time keeping the needle in her tiny little vein, so she kept having to wiggle it around to find it again. With every wiggle, you'd think we were trying to kill Joan from the shrieks she let out. It was horrible. They took eight big vials, which seemed like a lot of blood from such a tiny body. When it was finally over, Joan burried her face in my neck, and sobbed big sobs, while John just stared, slack-jawed and dumbfounded, with fingers firmly planted in his ears. It took a minute to calm everyone down, but just as I did, the technician who had pinned her came back with tape, to hold the cotton ball in place. Poor little kid started screaming and flailing all over again, like the boogy man himself was trying to touch her. John, the protective big brother he is, was also upset by her reappearance, and yelled "go away, doctor! You hurt Baby!"

I don't think Joan will have any memory of today, but I'm pretty sure John will never see people in lab coats the same way ever again. I felt so terrible, I let him have both a donut and an ice cream cone at the hospital cafe. Sugar heals all wounds, right?

Anyway, the process is underway. I'm assuming the next real hurdle will be the MRI, which thankfully, should only be hard on me.

On a humorous note, I saw a little glimmer of Mike in John the other day. I was cleaning in the bedroom, when I heard a BOOM, followed by "Mom! That was close! That was really, really close!" coming from the stairwell. John had found a flattened cardboard box, sat on it, and slid all the way down the attic stairs, toboggan-style. I said "John, you could have been really hurt!" To which he answered: "But I'm not hurt at all! Look - I'm safe." Can you say "like father, like son?"