The hands and the blue ball

There are stories that I keep in reserve, either waiting for the right time to tell them or the right way to tell them. Often they are of the more personal variety or have deeper or spiritual type of undertones that are a little more difficult to convey thoughts and feelings about.
  There are those moments in our life that we can't explain. You know something happened, watched it happen, felt it, yet you are left to question what really happened if anything at all. I have learned while watching Apollo and Orion grow through their infant and toddler years that some things that appear to be totally random, may very well not be.
  It was early January, on a Sunday evening I believe. I was home with Apollo and Orion while Melanie was at a church function. Orion fell asleep earlier than normal, and woke up about 7:30pm and was completely inconsolable, to the point that he only wanted his mom. After a about 90 minutes, I called Melanie and she hurried home and took Orion to the bath. Within minutes, he was back to his happy normal self. I could hear him laughing and splashing in the tub and squealing with excitement. Moments later, a dripping wet, naked baby emerged from the bath room.
  "Brrrrrrrr...Dada I need a tow-w-w-w-wel!" Orion announced as he ran in place, bent arms to his chest and his teeth chattering.
  I wrapped a towel around him and scooped him up into my arms. Orion was smiling from ear to ear. I carried him down the hall with me to retrieve a diaper from the living room. The whole time we were talking about who knows what... idle toddle chatter I am sure. Upon returning with Orion to our bedroom, I laid him down on the the bed on his back. The lights in the room were off but the lights in the walk in closet were on and the door was open all the way. The room was fairly well lit and the light was to my back. I unwrapped the towel that surrounded Orion, and began to put his diaper on. Immediately Orion's gaze was drawn off from my eyes up to the ceiling above his head.
He pointed to the ceiling and asked, "Dada, is that your hands?"

"My hands?" I replied, "my hands are right here silly," blowing off the seemingly random comment from a 2-year-old.
"Dada, that your hands right there!" he insisted pointing towards the ceiling over my head. In that moment, I realized that Orion was really seeing something. I assumed that he was seeing a shadow on the ceiling, so I looked up expecting to see the reflexion of a moth in the light or something causing a shadow. There was nothing there.
"See dada, that your hands, right there," he said again.
"I don't see anything Mungie," I replied.
"Right there dada!" Orion pointed insistently.
  I began to think 'this is really weird'. I searched his eyes and face and watched his eyes follow something on the ceiling. In that instance, I had the realization that there were two possibilities; Either he was seeing something that I could not, or he was hallucinating. My heart sank a bit as I was worried something might be wrong with him.
"Dada! Is that your blue ball?" Orion asked with excitement, his face and eyes lit up.
"What blue ball?" I asked laughing, while fastening his diaper.
"That blue ball right there!" This time reaching with both hands towards the ceiling trying to grab something.
  I reached out and grabbed Orion's hands and pulled him up to his feet, while he rotated his head back not to loose sight of the "blue ball."
"Huh," Orion's eyes searched the ceiling, "Its gone!" he continued, "I want to see it again!" Orion closed his eyes tight, held them shut for a few seconds, opened them and searched the ceiling again."
I was chuckling out loud at his antics.
"It not working!" he went on, "I want to see it again!" Again he closed his eyes tightly for a few moments, opened them and once again scanned the ceiling.
  After a few moments, he gave up the search, looked at me and said, "Its gone. I'm hungry dada," climbed off the the bed and ran to the kitchen.
  A million  thoughts were racing through my head. I kept coming back to the fact that Orion was hallucinating. There ways no two-ways about it. It made me sick to think that there was something wrong with him. Brain tumor, epilepsy, some sort of mental disorder...my mind raced with all kinds of horrible things. I made the decision to keep it from Melanie until the following morning so only one of us was lying awake at night stewing about it and not both.
  I told Melanie early the next morning and had her set up an appointment with the pediatrician. With in a couple days we were awaiting the results of a full blood panel and scheduling an EEG brain scan (electroencephalogram).  It was a nerve racking couple weeks as we waited for the EEG and the impending results.
 I am happy to report that Orion is perfectly normal and healthy. But in the end, I am left perplexed. I was there and experienced this with Orion. I watched his face and his eyes and there is no doubt in my mind that he saw something, or shall I say hands and a blue ball. I am further perplexed by his reaction when I stood him up and whatever he saw disappeared. Why would he think to close his eyes tightly and then reopen them hoping that what he saw would reappear? At the time of this incident, Orion was 29-months-old. I feel that he has a better understanding of what happened than I do. In the months that have passed since, Orion often looks to the bedroom ceiling, searching for the hands and the blue ball. As recent as a week ago, Orion looks to the ceiling as he climbed into our bad pointed at the ceiling and told me, "Dada, I don't see your hands right there."

The Sweet Smell of Success...Part 2; Orion

6:00am. I step out into the cool, pre-dawn air. The street is silent and still. The sky is clear and dark and Mars is shining redder than I have ever seen. Venus is just cresting the hill top to the east of my house. I breath in the day and can't help but marvel at the celestial spectacle as I head off to work knowing that I may go all day with out a glimpse of the sun, which in and of itself, by contrast, makes me a bit sad.

  With some major changes at my place of employment, I have found myself in a precarious position. I have, by necessity, taken on the workload of a second person and suffice it to say, I have been working long days and 6 to 7 days a week. I am at the top rung of the company ladder and feel the weight of dozens of others dangling below me, knowing all too well that much of their livelihood is dependent upon me doing my job correctly and efficiently. Talk about pressure.
  The irony is that I left my company behind 4 1/2 years ago to leave that feeling and burden behind me by working for somebody else. I am not trying to sound prideful, unthankful, or arrogant; I know that if I left or if something happened to me, the company would be fine and there would be others happy to step into my shoes. I am thankful for my job and love the people I work with and work for. My point is that, sometimes I wish I didn't care so much. I work my ass off because I know that others are relying on me to land contracts that will ultimately give them the means to put food on their own table. It has been a rough couple of months for me as the company goes through this transitional period. I don't mind the long hours, the spread sheets, number crunching, problem solving, etc. , but what I do mind is the reduced amount of time I have to spend with my family. I would not be doing this if it was not temporary. There is no amount of money that is more precious to me than the time that I can spend with my family. I miss them and I know they miss me.

   While I have been busy with work, Melanie has been busy potty training Orion. This blog is long over due as we declared victory in mid January and now it is early March and I am just getting around to finishing this post. Yes Orion is potty trained and I have to give Melanie 100% credit for this. I think it was a 70%/30% effort with Apollo, but as busy as I have been, and with Orion refusing to wear diapers any longer, Melanie stepped up to the challenge and made it happen. I have to tell you that we had a few heated discussions about potty training this past December. Melanie was ready to throw in the towel and take a break for a few months, and I wanted her to keep going. Trust me, she did not bend to my will at all; through research she found that stopping the process of potty training would send mixed signals to Orion and possibly make potty training harder. So, Melanie bared down and spent the better part of three whole days sitting on the bathroom floor reading stories and putting on puppet shows for Orion as he sat upon his potty chair.
  She did employ one of my tactics though; bribery. It worked like a charm for Apollo. Offering up a small toy for each success. Apollo potty trained a lot quicker than Orion, but Apollo milked the prizes for months. Orion, on the other hand, realized that he was being bribed and after a few days he quit asking for a toy for every turd.
  It is almost like finding a stash of money once you are done potty training. We spent a small fortune on diapers and wipes. It seamed like every other week we bought a case of each. Diapers and wipes alone made a Costco membership necessary.
  The baby phase is done in our house. I have mixed emotions this. While I am glad to be rid of diapers, I really miss the little baby that was so easily held, took midday naps, and was happy to sit in the bike trailer on long bike rides. on the other hand, I am looking forward to all the things we can start doing now that Orion is older and more able.
  The surplus diapers have become a bed wetting safety net while the wipes are now for hands faces instead of wiping butts, and I am basking in the glory of the sweet smell of success.