My six year old son has always suffered from a pretty nasty case of reflux. When he was an infant, this resulted in constant shifts in medication, a lot of crying by him and me, and more than our fair share of projectile vomiting.

During an endoscopy a few years ago, his gastroenterologist noted that the ring of muscles around his lower esophagus, which is supposed to keep his stomach contents in his stomach, didn’t function properly. Actually, not at all. His ring simply doesn’t contract when it should, allowing half-digested food to freely flow up from whence it came.

We refer to these moments as “yucky burps”. We’ve all had them, right? Those bile-flavored, liquid belches. Mmmmmm. Delicious!

At his last GI visit, his doctor suggested that he was old enough for us to try to wean him off some of his medications. Considering one of them costs $261.00 a month, we were all for it.

But, my boy doesn’t like to make things easy. When we discontinued the medicine, the yucky burps increased, and some of them weren’t just burps. He has been throwing up a lot too. Does anyone have $261.00 I could borrow?

Yesterday in school, he was goofing off with a straw in his mouth and it hit him in just the wrong spot. He gagged, and that gag brought up breakfast, snack, and my personal favorite, regurgitated milk.

His quick-thinking teacher, who is fully aware of the reflux situation, jumped in and cleaned up the mess, then told all the kids in the kindergarten class about my boy’s esophageal “flap”. She told them that their flaps stay closed and keep food where it should be, but that his flap doesn’t work and sometimes that means his food comes back up.

But I didn’t know the extent of her conversation. Which would explain why I was at a complete loss last night when my son exclaimed, “Mom! My flap hurts!”

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The other day, I was snuggling with my little boy when I asked, “Who’s your favorite person?”

He hugged me and said, “You and Daddy both.”

I tickled him a little and teased, “Both? But I’m the one who feeds you, cleans up after you, does your laundry, drives you to therapy and school, reads with you, helps you with homework, and tucks you in bed.”

He replied, “Yeah, but Daddy throws me in the air.”

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When the market took a turn for the worse, I left my role as stay-at-home-mom and jumped in to help out. I took a part-time job as a teacher’s aide, I sell stuff on e-bay, and I have this here blog. Altogether, that brings in about $2.56 a month.

So, I have spent the past few days looking at employment boards, though I must admit…the last time I had to send out a resume there was no internet. I know the system of applying for jobs online is supposed to be efficient, which is why I have no idea why it takes me forever.

But today, my third day at it, I managed to get through the process more effectively and I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I smiled at my daughter and said, “I did a good job today! I sent in resumes for eight different positions!”

She said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you! There’s a place across from my school that’s hiring!”

I asked, “Really? How do you know that?”

She replied, “Because there was a guy standing out front, dressed like a hot dog, holding up a sign.”

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Yesterday morning we attended an annual Santa Breakfast at our church. The cafeteria hall is decked and filled with loud music, games, face-painting, greasy food, ugly sweaters and a visit from a very large man in a red suit.

A couple of years ago, this was a terrifying experience for my son. When Santa arrived, my boy grabbed onto his Dad and wouldn’t let go. Literally. I have a picture of my husband holding his arms straight out to either side, with my son dangling from his neck like a Flavor Flav necklace.

Yesterday wasn’t much different. Because when the DJ said that Santa had arrived and he was parking his sleigh outside, my son suddenly looked very nervous.

But, instead of grabbing Daddy’s neck, he grabbed his own rear end and then turned to the folks sitting at our table and announced, “I need to go poop!”

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