Seattle

Last summer, Gabe went to the eye doctor and the doctor discovered that he had very small optic nerves. This isn’t a big deal, but it could indicate that he has a small pituitary gland, so we needed to get an mri to check. If so, we may need to start talking about growth hormones.

Gabe has always been tiny. We’ve never worried about it. My family has always been small, he started tiny and the kid never stops moving. But he’s the size of a four year old. I’ve had multiple people ask me if the boys are twins. He was the only kid in his class last year still using a 5 point harness car seat rather than a booster. He’s perfectly well proportioned, but everything about him is tiny.

We’ve had lots of conversations about it. It doesn’t usually bother him, but sometimes kids say mean things, so we talk about the advantages of being small. He likes being small, which is great. But as much as he loves playing sports, his little tiny legs can’t keep up with the bigger boys. I’ve refused to sign him up for basketball because I don’t want a hard season to ruin his love of the game.

All that to say, it’s worth asking the questions. If he’s tiny, he’s tiny. We’ll deal with that. But if his hormones aren’t doing what they’re supposed to, then let’s get that taken care of.

So Gabe and I went to Seattle to get an mri.

When he was a baby, he and I used to travel all over the place just the two of us. But then Josy showed up and covid hit and Pat started taking him to appointments so that they could go visit Grammy at the same time, so I think the last trip he and I took together was when I was newly pregnant with Josy, over 4 years ago. It was so much fun to go on a trip with him again. And this time, it was so much easier because we didn’t have to worry about diapers or strollers. We just packed our backpacks and went. It was great.

We caught the very early flight, which worked out great because we both sleep the whole time. Then we caught the light rail into Seattle and got breakfast.

We were right next to Pike Street Market, so we bought some fancy pasta, looked at fish on ice, found the gum wall and got humbow.

There was a guy playing the piano and Gabe insisted on giving him some money. I love his generous nature,





Then we caught the monorail over to the Seattle Center.





There were found the Seattle Children’s Museum. This was our first view of it and Gabe was trying desperately to figure out how to get in. If you look closely, you can see him running around the perimeter, trying to find the stairs.



I asked him if he was excited:

G: I’m way beyond excited. Right now I’m between over reacting and crashing myself into the wall.

This was a pretty cool museum…





I spent the entire two days telling Gabe to not do things where he could smack his head. So naturally he went sock ice skating… You can’t see him, but he’s actually singing songs from White Christmas while he skates.









I made him take a break to eat out humbow. He did not love it, which I found very distressing.



Then we went back to the museum where Gabe built an army tank out of those big blue blocks and then convinced a random dad to pitch to him.



I finally convinced him that we had to leave when the museum closed. We then checked into our hotel and Gabe crashed. We almost just got dinner at the hotel bar, but he took a shower and that perked him up a bit. First we stopped at the terrace, just to take in the view.



Then we got pizza.



By then he was too tired to walk back to the hotel, so I had to carry him. Luckily it was only three blocks.





We got back to the hotel and he crashed hard.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to sleep in because Gabe wasn’t allowed any food after 7:30am, so we had to get up early so we could get in a good breakfast. But then we went back to the room and watched some TV.



Eventually, we checked out of the hotel and went over to the park to play for a bit. It had been raining, so he tried to avoid the slides, instead just climbing all over everything, which was super easy on my head, as I kept thinking about him and head injuries… He is in all three of those pictures.







Then we took the monorail, then the light rail and then the bus to get to the hospital. Gabe was still worn out from all that playing the day before.



But we finally made it to the hospital. We got all checked in and someone charmed all of the nurses. Even Timmy got ready to go to sleep.





We sent some “I love you” messages to Dad.



We almost lost him for a bit…



Then finally took him back, made him fall asleep and then did the mri. Then they wheeled him back and it took him awhile to wake back up. He woke up enough to eat a couple of crackers and then he fell asleep for another hours. When he finally woke up from that, he was good to go. Then we headed back to the airport to fly home.

We’d been talking about getting ice cream the whole trip, but it never happened. So instead we got tiramisu at the airport. It seemed like a good way to end the trip.





We had so much fun. He is such a fun kid to hang out with. I’m glad that we had a day to just play before our hospital day, which definitely wasn’t nearly as fun. We made the most it, but we were both nervous and it was pretty obvious. But we made it through and hopefully we can get some answers.

Funny quotes from the trip…

Gabe saw a movie poster.

G: Look, it’s Wallace!

M: Who?

G: Wallace. From White Christmas.

M: Oh Bob Wallace. You mean Bing Crosby?

G: Yeah

M: No, that’s William Shatner.

Probably the only time in history someone has confused Bing Crosby and William Shatner…

G: My stomach doesn’t feel good.

M: What kind of not good?

G: Somewhere between poing and…

M: You may not use White Christmas references to describe your stomach.