Hospitals and haircuts
Posted on July 4th, 2009 by Ben
Happy 4th of July!
Today has been filled with excitement so far. We invited Richard and Sariah over for dinner last night. We had Hawaiian Haystacks — Laura makes a mean batch. Anyway, after dinner, we decided to watch some of the BBC Pride and Prejudice on Blu-ray (it looks and sounds SO much better than the DVD — maybe the most striking difference I have yet observed when comparing. However, Sleeping Beauty also looks much better…). We were watching the 3rd episode, and were about halfway in when Sariah said “I don’t know what that was, but I need to find a bathroom.” My first thought was “I wonder if her water just broke.”
Sure enough.
About 10 minutes later they were on their way to the hospital, the end result being the birth of Caleb Merrill Bateman this morning at 7:01. I’ll let them cover the rest of the details. While I’m not exactly sure I’d want my birthday to be the 4th of July, at least Caleb won’t have to worry about taking his birthday off of work when he’s older!
Being the 4th of July, we came up Laura’s parents’ house so we can go watch the fireworks at Sugarhouse Park tonight; apparently, this may be the last year they do the fireworks, so the end of a bi-annual tradition. Before coming up, I was talking with Thomas about haircuts, and he said he wanted “haircut today.” Of course, he didn’t really mean that — he passionately despises haircuts — but that didn’t stop me from giving him one. So, we plopped him down in his booster, strapped him in, and put him in front of Signing Time on the TV as a bit of a distraction. He fought and screamed until I started, but then he calmed down when I turned on the clippers. For about the first 60% of the haircut, he was fine. Then he started whining, moaning, squirming. Then he started vehemently struggling for freedom.
Remember the story of the first haircut? How we cut his ear? And remember how his ear got cut when we took him to Cookie Cutters too? Well, his ear got cut this time, too. Both of them, as usual.
I have a theory. Thomas is young, with very soft skin. So, there’s strike one. Also, when he screams and fights, his face gets bright red. Well, everyone’s does. So you combine the two things, and you have soft skin with a lot of extra blood in it = extra blood pressure = easier to cut, and when it does cut much easier to bleed. The cut on his right ear bled so badly that it was dripping onto his shoulder, legs, etc. I took him in to have a bath, and when he saw some blood drip onto his arms and leg he absolutely flipped out. Screams of pure terror! So, I washed him off, put him in the tub, and put in some bubbles so he wouldn’t see how the drips of blood kept discoloring the water. After a couple minutes of bath he calmed down, his ears stopped bleeding, and he is good as new. You can barely tell he was cut. As always, Thomas looks about a year older now that his hair has been cut.
So, there’s our day so far. Hopefully the rest of the day isn’t quite as exciting…
Hairbrained
Posted on January 3rd, 2009 by Ben
Yes, I know it is harebrained, but that simply isn’t applicable in this instance. And what kind of English major would I be if I couldn’t create and pass off my own words? Honestly.
One of my cousin’s blog posts reminded me of cutting Thomas’ hair, and while leaving a comment on her blog, it turned out to be a little bit long so I decided to turn it into a full-fledged blog post of its own. Thomas doesn’t mind the clippers when Daddy is getting a hair cut, he’ll just run around yelling ‘hair!’ But once it is his turn, he gets violent!
So, a few weeks ago we gave Thomas a haircut (he hadn’t had one in about 5 or 6 months, so it was definitely time), right after Laura finished giving me one (thinking that since I just had it done, he would be okay with it… pipe dream, I know). The entire time, he screamed at the top of his lungs, thrashing, squirming, and I had to hold him like a vice. I’d hold one arm around his body to keep his arms from entering single combat with the clippers (or Mommy), and the other I would wrap around his forehead to hold it in place. Traumatic for the little guy? Quite possibly.
Then a few hours later, after he was bathed and cleaned up all nice, we noticed a red mark under his now-short hair, some red on his shoulder, and he had a red mark on his forehead. Then I noticed the red on his arm was shaped strangely like my fingers. I told you he thrashed! He’s not exactly a weak kid. Traumatic for Mommy? Absolutely.
Laura is determined that next time Thomas needs a haircut, we are taking him somewhere and getting someone else to do it. And hopefully he’ll be a better boy, and we can see what they do that we didn’t (if he IS a better boy) so we can repeat the performance.
Oh, and we also managed to nick his ear and neck a bit, so he was bleeding as we finished up the haircut. But both of those were done bleeding (and didn’t scab) by the time he got out of the bath tub, so you couldn’t tell anything had happened (aside from his pockmarked appearance).
Upon seeing the fruits of our labor, Laura lamented “if anyone saw Thomas now, they’d think we beat him.” On the up side, he looks fabulous with his hair cut, just like a junior adult.
