stuff
For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, Himself is about to change jobs and that means we'll lose the health insurance I've been so pleased with since the second month I was pregnant with the prince. For those of you in regions where this is meaningful information, we're with Kaiser Permanente and I know they're not right for everyone but they are absolutely right for me and my family and I'm pretty bummed to have to leave. Like not bummed enough that I think the man should stay in a job that's no longer right for him, but bummed enough to suggest that if any of the several places he's interviewing with - he is preposterously employable; one thing that hasn't been worrying me is cash flow - offers it, maybe that should be a Considerable Factor in deciding between competing offers.
Alas, it doesn't look as if that's going to be a decision he has to make, and although I've also said to my own employers, "Hey, you know, I bet if you added a KP plan as an option alongside your various non-HMO offerings, a really nontrivial number of your employees would appreciate it," even if they do agree that's a brilliant idea and revise our benefits package accordingly, it's not going to happen in time for this year's open enrollment in five weeks or whenever that is. So we're looking at having to go out there and find other doctors (and deal with working out which specialists/labs/whatever are and aren't in network, which is the biggest hassle and reason I would switch back to KP in a heartbeat and not leave this job as long as we had it; you're restricted to providers not just in their network but in their building, but on the other hand, they've bloody well got everything in their building and you don't have to call for preapproval from someone looking at a pulldown menu on a computer screen in a windowless office; if your doctor recommends a thing it's approved ipso facto and you don't have to spend time and energy on advocacy when you should be spending it on recovering or on taking care of your sick kid or sick parent or whomever). For ourselves I figured we could mostly handle it; I had a primary care doc and an ob/gyn practice when I was on my own insurance and they were fine, nothing to sing songs about but almost entirely acceptable (and I think the one gynecologist I bounced off left the practice before I switched insurance, so avoiding getting scheduled with her would be a matter of no effort at all). But finding a new pediatrician - ugh. I don't even know how to begin looking for someone. We poked at the find-a-doctor feature based on the benefits information from one offer Himself already has, and it spit out a whole list of names, none of whom of course we know anything about, and there are sort of Yelp-style reviews available on Google (as well as plain Google reviews of course), and that doesn't seem like the way to decide on a health professional? One candidate seemed to be the most promising until she really, really stopped seeming that way and we were left reeling back to nowhere. The whole concept was frankly stressing me out more and more each day, like listen, maybe we go back on our own respective employers' insurances and just pay full price for the kid to have his own KP plan, that was seeming like a good idea for a while. Put another way: I am sufficiently wigged by this problem that I am willing to throw a fair amount of money at it to make it go away. (This seems like as good a point as any to note and agree that the U.S. health care system, where medical insurance is -a- a profit-making business and -b- tied to employment, is utterly fucked. If Medicare For All gets me a Kaiser Permanente plan - and I don't see why it wouldn't; they take Medicare now - then I'm even more for it on a personal level than I already was on a philosophical level. GET ME A SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM. Name it after Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, I don't care. Just, for christ's sake, what we have doesn't work, and I'm a quite comfortable quite healthy middle-class White person saying so; jesus.)
Anyway. So while I still can, I emailed the kid's pediatrician to ask how soon in advance of his third birthday (!) we can bring him in for his 3yo well child appointment, so we can get that taken care of before we jump, and while I had her attention could she recommend a non-KP pediatrician in our area - and she did, and I looked at the website and read the doctor's bio and the sense of relief I felt was stunning and almost overwhelming. I don't know if I'd have felt that great reading this particular information if I'd come at it another way, but at the end of a recommendation from a doctor we already know and trust I suddenly, for the first time in weeks, feel like - okay, we'll be okay. Better than okay. Whew.
On Saturday afternoon, the boy and I went to the library while his dad did the grocery shopping. (We normally do the groceries all together on Saturday mornings, but Himself and I both had choir rehearsals on Saturday so a friend came to babysit and I returned just in time to put him down for his nap.) One of the books he picked out was Dozy Bear and the Secret of Sleep, which is a very soothing sort of guided-relaxation thing for children - I found it charming and it seemed to make him yawn and snuggle even right there in the children's room at the library. He asked for it as the second of his three bedtime stories Saturday night, and partway through seemed a little concerned that he didn't know where Dozy's mom was, but we got through the story and whatever he picked for his last story (I don't remember), after which we always turn off the storytime lights and have a song and a bit of a cuddle before he gets in his bed. He was almost in tears when he couldn't fit all the books on his bookshelf and he asked me to put two of them on the footrest in front of the rocking chair, but I assumed he was very tired - he'd played hard at the park with Auntie L and then only napped for an hour before pooping woke him up - and he settled right down, although then once he was in his bed he was a little teary when I kissed him good night and he asked me (as usual) to leave his door open. A mystery.
Then on Sunday, he picked Dozy Bear for his last bedtime story; gave every appearance of enjoying every word of it; showed me where it did in fact fit on his bookshelf; and then put his face in my shirt and cried. At first he was sobbing quietly like an adult trying not to be obvious, but when I picked him up he just wailed and it was a minute or so before he could even tell me what was wrong.
Well - answer questions. He was upset about the book. He’s afraid Dozy is lonely sleeping by himself. He thinks Dozy misses his mom and dad. He does not want me to take the book away.* He thinks Dozy does like having his own room, and sleeping in there and waiting for his mom and dad in the morning. He was a lot calmer by the end of that conversation than he’d been at the beginning.
Naturally I held him until he stopped crying, and rocked him a little longer than usual, and by the time he got in his bed he was his usual good-humored sleepy self. My best never-took-psych guess is that he is in fact super identifying with the protagonist in the bedtime story but missing the point a little bit, thinking the bear is lonely (= he misses us when it’s time to go to bed by himself); or maybe it’s right on the point and he’s upset to still be awake after the end of a story about falling fast asleep? But he’s not even three and I don’t know how much to read into this; he may even be giving me the answers he thinks I want to hear, when I try to work out what’s bothering him, because in that state he can’t answer open-ended questions, and yes/no questions are leading by their nature.
Feh. Poor buddy.
* (I didn't think we should read it at bedtime anymore, and his dad agreed, but the kid was not on board. I mean of course we’re the adults here. I decided that Monday I was going to bring it downstairs during the day and not take it back up at bedtime. But I bet five pretend dollars he'd ask for it anyway and then get mad when we said no.)
Anyway, Friend Child-life Specialist said she agreed with not having it available but recommended not refusing to read it to him if he did ask for it, because it seemed he was working through something he couldn't verbalize and the book might be helping. So I did bring it down out of his room yesterday, but I didn't put it away or hide it, and when his dad was getting him ready for bed (I was out at rehearsal), he picked it up and said "I want to bring this book too. I won't cry." Volunteered this, that is; his dad didn't so much as ask if he was sure, much less remind him he'd been upset after reading it the day before. And then he didn't cry - Himself didn't even have a sense that the kid wanted to or was trying not to cry.
So who knows. I'm back to assuming it was exhaustion after the non-normal weekend; he apparently also had a shorter-than-ideal nap at his grandparents' on Sunday, so by bedtime Sunday night he must have just had it.
Meanwhile, yesterday when I picked him up at day care he and a friend had just finished dumping sand on each other's heads in the playground. Brushing play sand off a sweaty kid is a treat and a half, I tell you what, never mind getting it out of superfine hair. He normally has a bath Sunday and Wednesday, and I've been thinking it won't be long before he needs to bump up to 3x/week, but maybe it could wait until next spring - but depending what condition he's in when I pick him up today, he might get tomorrow's bath tonight, because oof. (It's easier when both parents are home, and Himself has his own rehearsal tonight - but it really does only take one adult to bathe a child, so it's not like either of us can't do it on our own. And I might.)
Alas, it doesn't look as if that's going to be a decision he has to make, and although I've also said to my own employers, "Hey, you know, I bet if you added a KP plan as an option alongside your various non-HMO offerings, a really nontrivial number of your employees would appreciate it," even if they do agree that's a brilliant idea and revise our benefits package accordingly, it's not going to happen in time for this year's open enrollment in five weeks or whenever that is. So we're looking at having to go out there and find other doctors (and deal with working out which specialists/labs/whatever are and aren't in network, which is the biggest hassle and reason I would switch back to KP in a heartbeat and not leave this job as long as we had it; you're restricted to providers not just in their network but in their building, but on the other hand, they've bloody well got everything in their building and you don't have to call for preapproval from someone looking at a pulldown menu on a computer screen in a windowless office; if your doctor recommends a thing it's approved ipso facto and you don't have to spend time and energy on advocacy when you should be spending it on recovering or on taking care of your sick kid or sick parent or whomever). For ourselves I figured we could mostly handle it; I had a primary care doc and an ob/gyn practice when I was on my own insurance and they were fine, nothing to sing songs about but almost entirely acceptable (and I think the one gynecologist I bounced off left the practice before I switched insurance, so avoiding getting scheduled with her would be a matter of no effort at all). But finding a new pediatrician - ugh. I don't even know how to begin looking for someone. We poked at the find-a-doctor feature based on the benefits information from one offer Himself already has, and it spit out a whole list of names, none of whom of course we know anything about, and there are sort of Yelp-style reviews available on Google (as well as plain Google reviews of course), and that doesn't seem like the way to decide on a health professional? One candidate seemed to be the most promising until she really, really stopped seeming that way and we were left reeling back to nowhere. The whole concept was frankly stressing me out more and more each day, like listen, maybe we go back on our own respective employers' insurances and just pay full price for the kid to have his own KP plan, that was seeming like a good idea for a while. Put another way: I am sufficiently wigged by this problem that I am willing to throw a fair amount of money at it to make it go away. (This seems like as good a point as any to note and agree that the U.S. health care system, where medical insurance is -a- a profit-making business and -b- tied to employment, is utterly fucked. If Medicare For All gets me a Kaiser Permanente plan - and I don't see why it wouldn't; they take Medicare now - then I'm even more for it on a personal level than I already was on a philosophical level. GET ME A SINGLE-PAYER SYSTEM. Name it after Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, I don't care. Just, for christ's sake, what we have doesn't work, and I'm a quite comfortable quite healthy middle-class White person saying so; jesus.)
Anyway. So while I still can, I emailed the kid's pediatrician to ask how soon in advance of his third birthday (!) we can bring him in for his 3yo well child appointment, so we can get that taken care of before we jump, and while I had her attention could she recommend a non-KP pediatrician in our area - and she did, and I looked at the website and read the doctor's bio and the sense of relief I felt was stunning and almost overwhelming. I don't know if I'd have felt that great reading this particular information if I'd come at it another way, but at the end of a recommendation from a doctor we already know and trust I suddenly, for the first time in weeks, feel like - okay, we'll be okay. Better than okay. Whew.
On Saturday afternoon, the boy and I went to the library while his dad did the grocery shopping. (We normally do the groceries all together on Saturday mornings, but Himself and I both had choir rehearsals on Saturday so a friend came to babysit and I returned just in time to put him down for his nap.) One of the books he picked out was Dozy Bear and the Secret of Sleep, which is a very soothing sort of guided-relaxation thing for children - I found it charming and it seemed to make him yawn and snuggle even right there in the children's room at the library. He asked for it as the second of his three bedtime stories Saturday night, and partway through seemed a little concerned that he didn't know where Dozy's mom was, but we got through the story and whatever he picked for his last story (I don't remember), after which we always turn off the storytime lights and have a song and a bit of a cuddle before he gets in his bed. He was almost in tears when he couldn't fit all the books on his bookshelf and he asked me to put two of them on the footrest in front of the rocking chair, but I assumed he was very tired - he'd played hard at the park with Auntie L and then only napped for an hour before pooping woke him up - and he settled right down, although then once he was in his bed he was a little teary when I kissed him good night and he asked me (as usual) to leave his door open. A mystery.
Then on Sunday, he picked Dozy Bear for his last bedtime story; gave every appearance of enjoying every word of it; showed me where it did in fact fit on his bookshelf; and then put his face in my shirt and cried. At first he was sobbing quietly like an adult trying not to be obvious, but when I picked him up he just wailed and it was a minute or so before he could even tell me what was wrong.
Well - answer questions. He was upset about the book. He’s afraid Dozy is lonely sleeping by himself. He thinks Dozy misses his mom and dad. He does not want me to take the book away.* He thinks Dozy does like having his own room, and sleeping in there and waiting for his mom and dad in the morning. He was a lot calmer by the end of that conversation than he’d been at the beginning.
Naturally I held him until he stopped crying, and rocked him a little longer than usual, and by the time he got in his bed he was his usual good-humored sleepy self. My best never-took-psych guess is that he is in fact super identifying with the protagonist in the bedtime story but missing the point a little bit, thinking the bear is lonely (= he misses us when it’s time to go to bed by himself); or maybe it’s right on the point and he’s upset to still be awake after the end of a story about falling fast asleep? But he’s not even three and I don’t know how much to read into this; he may even be giving me the answers he thinks I want to hear, when I try to work out what’s bothering him, because in that state he can’t answer open-ended questions, and yes/no questions are leading by their nature.
Feh. Poor buddy.
* (I didn't think we should read it at bedtime anymore, and his dad agreed, but the kid was not on board. I mean of course we’re the adults here. I decided that Monday I was going to bring it downstairs during the day and not take it back up at bedtime. But I bet five pretend dollars he'd ask for it anyway and then get mad when we said no.)
Anyway, Friend Child-life Specialist said she agreed with not having it available but recommended not refusing to read it to him if he did ask for it, because it seemed he was working through something he couldn't verbalize and the book might be helping. So I did bring it down out of his room yesterday, but I didn't put it away or hide it, and when his dad was getting him ready for bed (I was out at rehearsal), he picked it up and said "I want to bring this book too. I won't cry." Volunteered this, that is; his dad didn't so much as ask if he was sure, much less remind him he'd been upset after reading it the day before. And then he didn't cry - Himself didn't even have a sense that the kid wanted to or was trying not to cry.
So who knows. I'm back to assuming it was exhaustion after the non-normal weekend; he apparently also had a shorter-than-ideal nap at his grandparents' on Sunday, so by bedtime Sunday night he must have just had it.
Meanwhile, yesterday when I picked him up at day care he and a friend had just finished dumping sand on each other's heads in the playground. Brushing play sand off a sweaty kid is a treat and a half, I tell you what, never mind getting it out of superfine hair. He normally has a bath Sunday and Wednesday, and I've been thinking it won't be long before he needs to bump up to 3x/week, but maybe it could wait until next spring - but depending what condition he's in when I pick him up today, he might get tomorrow's bath tonight, because oof. (It's easier when both parents are home, and Himself has his own rehearsal tonight - but it really does only take one adult to bathe a child, so it's not like either of us can't do it on our own. And I might.)