Playing at daycare

Just some fun pictures of Zack playing at daycare today that I snapped with my iPhone.

He's really standing a lot and also about to crawl.

That's Elsa in the background with the glasses.  Whenever I call and ask about Zack, whoever answers says, "Hold on, I'll get Elsa."  It's like we have a nanny, really.

Um, he got a little stuck here, but we worked it out.

It's so great watching him explore the space over there.  This place is really good for him.  They have a big area for the babies to run around and play in, and it's a completely safe space.  He loves those mats.  They also have a nice outdoor area with grass, and the babies  crawl and walk around there, too.

So I just got a call from Mom saying she's terrified to even spend the night in her new place.  They're not giving her water, medication, oxygen.  I talked to the nurse and well, they are giving her all of those things.  Something I'm starting to notice is that Mom's sense of time is distorted.  But mostly I believe she is panicking because I was not able to go to the new care facility with her.  I couldn't leave Zack in another long day of daycare.  It's just been way too much for him, and cries when I leave now.  This may be just a developmental thing, but anyway I just couldn't do it again.  So I brought him to Orange with me.

It went mostly great.  He got to see Mom, although he couldn't get close to her.  And everyone in the hospital got to ooh and aah over him.  I was much more relaxed because I wasn't rushing to get back to LA to pick him up or asking Jeff to leave work early.

And then we went to Great Grandma and Grandpa's and ate dinner, and Zack just gobbled up the rice cereal and sweet potatoes I had left there for him.  And then we ordered Chinese, and Zack ate some Buddha's Delight broccoli (he really loves broccoli) and some rice.  He ate it off my fingers.  Then when he was done, he rubbed his eyes and nursed himself to sleep at 7:15.  He's wavered very little from that bed time.  He's pretty regular with it.

But unfortunately, Mom didn't get into her new place until around 5:30, and by that time, I did have to feed the boy and then he was asleep.  There was no way I could see her.  I couldn't bring him asleep to the nursing home, and I couldn't skip dinner.  I think this really broke her spirits.

I have spent a day with very disoriented people.  Mom says some strange stuff at times.  Jeff and I have this funny in joke about one time when I was drifiting off to sleep and I said the weirdest thing, and we cracked up about it for maybe 45 minutes.  We could hardly breathe.  Sometimes talking to Mom now is like hearing that sort of pre-sleep weirdness, but all day.  She was drifting off when I was talking to her this evening, and I was assuring her we'd get her out of this place, look into her Afflac coverage, yada yada yada.  She said, "You'd have made a better straight man today."

Huh?

"I don't know.  I don't know why I said that.  I keep hallucinating.  I keep seeing things in front of me that aren't there."

"Like what, Mom?"

"I don't know.  I just said it off the cuff."

"I think you need to sleep."

Then Grandma, who's well, blind, told me tonight that she also sees many things that aren't there.  "Like, do you see a grey kitten on the side table?"

"No, but there's a cloth there.  Maybe that's what you see."

"But I see that kitten on the table, and then running on the floor.  I know it's not there, but it's hard to convince myself it's not there.  And then I see a blue red dog near the couch.  But I think it's actually your socks."

Great.

Mom told me that Grandma once insisted she saw a man in Mom's bed and did not believe otherwise until she got Grandpa to verify that Mom wasn't lying about it.

Grandma also forgets just about everything.  We always order from this one Chinese place, and the reason we order from there is that they love Grandma, and they only deliver to her.  But tonight she said, "Oh, they don't deliver."  Grandpa and I reminded her that yeah, of course they do.  She said, "It's slowly coming back to me."

Grandpa was actually pretty helpful tonight, getting me a plate, getting a cup for Zack.  He's still pretty with it. But then he gave me a pie he said he shouldn't be eating.  He'd gotten a sugar free banana cream pie and wanted me to take it home.  I realized in the car that it sort of smelled funny, and when I got it home, I took one look at it and had to throw it away.

Sorry, Jeff.  I guess we will have to make due with the Girl Scout cookies I bought. But if you don't get home soon, I am going to eat an entire box.  It's just been that kind of day.

Grandpa has been looking into assisted living facilities for Grandma.  The strange thing is how fast this is all going down.  But I guess I've been shielded from it, and now that Mom's out of commission, I'm just getting my nose rubbed in the entropy.