Friday, August 31, 2007

Starvation, American Style

Had a slight crisis with Brian last night - he came down after bedtime, crying that he was hungry, but he was too full to eat. Go figure, right? It took me a while, but I finally realized that he had noticed as he was lying in bed that he could feel his ribs. From that, he deduced that he must not be eating enough. And if he wasn't eating enough, he must be hungry. Got it?

And believe me, this kid eats enough.

I think he's going into an anxiety stage here - today he came up to me (with that scared, worried look kids get when they think they have something fatal) and told me he could feel something, right here, in his chest. I explained to him that that was his heart beating and that that particular symptom had been going on since before he was born. He looked only partly relieved. I don't think he trusts me. Maybe because I laughed at him about the starvation thing. Poor guy.

8 comments:

  1. The heart beating since he's been born line cracked me right up!!

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  2. You sound so heartless! When I complained about different aches and pains I was told it was "growing pains"? I should have used that more with my kids.

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  3. Yes, I believe "growing pains" was the general diagnosis given to our generation for any strange symptom we experienced growing up. That used to upset me, but now I understand. My kids will have any number of nonsensical physical complaints in any one day; and it's impossible to differentiate between the majority which are unimportant and the extremely few which may be potentially life-threatening. So I think our parents used to just play the odds there and tell us not to worry.

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  4. Brian sounds like a kid after my own (beating unevenly? maybe clogged? ) heart...

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  5. He actually looks very cute when he is worried.

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  6. Well, at least you laughed. I just tend to get irritated with my Ana, who cannot walk across the room without announcing that something hurts, her stomach feels funny, her THUMBS hurt (WTH?), she might have a paper cut... I usually say something really profound like, "You think you've got aches and pains now? Wait until you're 42 and drop the soap in the shower!"

    She's not impressed.

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  7. Isn't that the worst when you make the mistake of laughing at them and then you have to spend like half an hour reassuring them that you REALLY DO CARE about their dreadful and perhaps fatal hangnail or whatever.

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