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On Friday Shaun and I took Willem to the hospital for his echocardiogram. Normally he would have gone to the pediatric cardiologist's office, but her machine doesn't have the same recording capability that the one at the hospital does.

Now, the technician in the pediatric office is some sort of crazy kid-whisperer. He knows EXACTLY how to deal with kids. I think he might be magic.

The poor hospital technician, on the other hand, did not know what to do in the face of a two year-old's full-blown temper tantrum. She was so nice that I felt awful as I watched her face fall when Willem ignored the cartoons on television and settled in for some good screaming. I knew he'd be fine once we had a moment to work it out, but she had no such assurance. I could tell she thought there was no way she was going to be able to successfully do her job.

Another staff member heard the shrieking and came (she thought) to the rescue, proffering a handmade bear that had been lovingly sewn by kind volunteer ladies. I'm sure the technician's worries were not assuaged when Willem reached out to take the bear and then hurled it across the room with a howl. I was a little horrified but still had a hard time not laughing.

Of course Willem eventually settled down. (Though not before we had to pin his arms to his sides to restrain him from peeling the stickers off his chest.) We turned the channel to Public Television. Thanks be to God, Sesame Street was on. I sat back on the bed and Willem stretched out on me, and he was good as gold for the entire procedure.

I have been really busy working on my "don't worry about things you can't control" attitude, so I was actually taken a bit off guard when the cardiologist reviewed the results and said that it may be time to go ahead and do surgery. She will present Willem's case to a group of surgeons and they will get back to us with a recommendation within a few weeks.

This should not have surprised me, but I felt disoriented for the rest of the day nonetheless.

Friday was a big day overall, as Shaun had a phone interview with a software company in Vancouver, WA that afternoon as well. He's so well-adjusted compared to me. He sat in our home office for the interview, asking "Did you hear that?" when he was done. Had it been me, I would have gone out to the car rather than let anyone hear a snippet of anything I said. His well-adjustedness paid off well enough that they are going to talk with him further.

Those are the big things. There have been smaller things as well: we had another unfruitful open house; Nels got a common childhood virus called Fifth Disease which makes him look like he's been slapped in the face; my boys and I got stood up for a playdate this morning (the mom and the kid forgot); and we took a trip to Baskin-Robbins to ease the pain of it all.

Here's to little boys and ice cream.