So many potential posts, so little motivation - UNTIL NOW! / Penile Adhesiony Goodness

I haven't blogged in ages. I'm fairly certain that no one is even checking this anymore and if they do check it, it's only to link to ThePeach's blog. I know this because my friends say the following:

"Are you ever going to update your blog again or should I just delete my shortcut to your blog and link directly to ThePeach? It seems a waste of a mouseclick to have to go to yours first."

In a jealous fit of resentfulness, I went over to ThePeach's blog this evening while eating a panzerotto. I almost choked on a sausage, her blog is SO FUNNY! God, it's so damn good. It made me think of all the times funny things happened to me (not nearly as funny as hers, don't get your hopes up), and I thought wistfully to myself "That would make a great blog post" and then proceeded to do nothing about it.

I could make smug excuses and say that with a nearly-9-month-old baby, one has no time to blog. But the truth is that I passed World of Goo on the Wii in 3 days AND went back and redid some of the levels to get "OCD" status, all while Dylan napped. (Actually, once I played World of Goo while he stood at the couch next to me and tried to fit a tv remote in his mouth and as a side victory managed to get the back panel off and the batteries out before I noticed).

So here I am. I am determined to start blogging again. I am unsure as to how I ought to proceed. Should I make one enormous attempt at a monster update? Or should I start blogging smaller stories a little every day? We shall see.

Tonight I will blog one very important story. It is the heartwarming story of the little penis that could, and one day I hope that someone will read this at my son's wedding. I am confident that someone will be me.


We circumcized Dylan's penis. Turns out circumcision is a really controversial topic in the world of babies, second perhaps only to vaccination (which I'm not going to touch with a ten-foot pole in this blog - it could literally start a jihad).

The decision to snip or not to snip was left entirely to the boy's father. I have no penis of my own, and while I certainly have an opinion as to what I personally like to see in a man's pants, this would never (ever) be an applicable scenario in the case of my son. Eric decided we should snip. The reason was simple: Eric is snipped, and he wanted his son and him to have matching dongs. I can understand this reasoning, as my mother used to buy her and me matching pyjamas. And so we snipped Dylan's wee foreskin off when he was two days old. It was simply the most traumatizing thing in the entire world - for me. Dylan apparently slept through the entire thing and peed all over the pediatrician. I didn't even watch it, I just sat in my hospital room and imagined it happening and it was enough to have me in tears. I should probably also add that I was a post-partum emotional mess, which may have been a contributing factor.

Anyway, the following week I refused to change any diapers until the thing was healed. It broke my heart to see the tiny little dressing on the tiny little penis I had worked so hard to make. In no time at all, it healed and there before us was the cutest little tiny mushroom-headed penis in the whole wide world. Everyone was happy.

But then a couple months ago, Eric and I started noticing that the mushroom head was no longer so mushroomy...it was more...like a torpedo. Greatly alarmed, we made our pediatrician check it out at his next appointment. After a quick inspection, she confirmed our worst fears: Dylan had penile adhesions.

PENILE ADHESIONS.

Seriously, people. Do you remember who ELSE had penile adhesions?! Yes, this guy. The letters "OMFG" do not even begin to describe my horror. The doctor expressed regret that this had come to pass, and told us to wait until Dylan's first birthday; if it hadn't cleared itself up by then, we would have to go see a pediatric urologist who would probably have to CUT IT OPEN again.

I was so sad for my little monkey. We had screwed up his penis. When I got home, I consulted the most reliable source of information available to me - the internet. The internet told me that when this happens, there is usually nothing you can do. And it told me what I SHOULD HAVE DONE in the first place to prevent it from happening. Eff you, internet!! You suck!!!!

Unwilling to sit around until February and do nothing, I started to tug at his reattached foreskin at every diaper change. Dylan did not like this. Sometimes he reached down with his little hand and cupped his genitals protectively against my prying fingers. But he's just a baby, I easily swiped his hand away and kept on prodding. We also pulled on it in the bath, with the theory that the warm water would soften the adhesions. And then! Last week, after a particularly long soak in the tub, we bundled him up in his hooded towel and put him in his crib to be dressed. I pulled at the skin a little and slowly, reluctantly, the skin started to peel back.

Dylan: "AUGH! What are you doing?!!"

I pulled, and the skin kept coming away. I called out excitedly to Eric, and showed him.

Dylan: "GET AWAY FROM ME!! OH MY GOD!!"

Eric: "Maybe you should stop now."

But as with large pus-filled zits and big crusty scabs, I couldn't stop. I kept on peeling, all the way around his little torpedo until *boing*, his mushroom head popped back out!! It was red and raw and looked really really painful.

Dylan: "AHHH MAHHHH GAAAAAD!!! AHHHHHHHHH!!!! FAAAAAAAAAAACKK!!! FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!"

Carol: "YES!!! YESSSS!!!!!"

And I did a dance of joy that looked a lot like a chicken having a seizure. Then I left the room while Eric dealt with the horrible-looking baby penis.

I'm so happy!! Things aren't great right now. Dylan whimpers and panics at every diaper change, because I always pull the skin back to keep it from sticking. This exposes his raw penis wound to the open air and he totally hates it. Poor thing is also teething again, so he's got unbearable pain in his mouth as well as in his peepee (there's a gay joke in there somewhere). But I don't care about his pain, because this means no pediatric urologist, and no second penis-chopping procedure!

I will end with a spontaneous haiku:

Your penis is good
Mommy kept on touching it
Oh yeah. That sounds wrong.