Freaks & Geeks Parenting

Where’s Ronan? There he is! (Repeat many times.)

Ronan is teething. This isn’t as bad as I was led to believe – but also Ronan is a calmer baby than most, according to grandparents and friends who have had children. I didn’t even know his front bottom teeth had come in until I saw them. We could see a bump in mid-August but he cut his new teeth in his sleep and suddenly they were there. He’s more cranky than usual but he’s still smiley happy baby.

For the past two weeks I’ve been working on a giant presentation for my Communications Law class. I’ve gone back to school for an MFA in Television, and my first really big project – 50% of my grade – involves summarizing and analyzing 20 cases and a 45-minute oral presentation to the whole class. 

My friends and family know that I’m not really a clotheshorse. Even though I’m 38 years old I still prefer wearing sneakers and sweats. I can look like I’m a businessman if I need to, I just prefer not to wear suits. So I like to think of myself as not particularly vain, but everyone is vain about something.

My vanity, apparently, is that I like my nose intact. Ronan, partly because of teething and partly because of his age, is at the point where everything goes into his mouth. Terry asked me to take a break from my paper and hold him for a moment while she got ready to feed him.

Ronan was hungry, apparently, because without any fanfare he dropped forward and latched onto my nose. Any port in a storm, I guess, and he started to suck away.

At first it was cute, but then he clamped down with those new teeth of his.

Ouch!

I have newfound respect for Terry. While Ronan’s bite left me with a small chunk out of my nose, I don’t have to latch him onto my nose for his very survival, but she latches him on several times a day for breastfeeding. So God was helping me to understand what she was going through by having Ronan slice off a sliver of my nose, so I could fully understand that he’s immensely strong, he has little concept of pain in others, and he’s armed to the teeth (pun intended) and willing to use them.

Not that I really needed any empirical data to add to my imagination of what it’s like to have a barely sentient being with razor sharp teeth bite your nipple, but I’m sure there was a good reason why Ronan mistook my nose for a breast, and proceeded to chow down. I’m just  not going to find out in this lifetime.

Ronan thought this was great fun. My nose really hurt (there’s lots of nerve bundles there, apparently)[1] and it wasn’t until later that I realized a small chunk of my nose was missing.

While the presentation for my Comm Law class went really well, no one commented because the small cut on my nose had shrunk by then, and looked like a really large pimple. Which wasn’t great either, but at least it didn’t look like what it was, which was a missing piece of my nose.

The whole thing should heal up in a few days, and there won’t be any mark of the time Ronan took a bite out of his father. I’m not sure Terry will be the same though. Maybe someday, as Ronan is reading this before pulling the whole thing offline, he’ll appreciate the pain and suffering his mother went through to feed him.

I know I owe my Mom some flowers!