shoebox medicine

Baba and Anne shower the new baby with love.  I know all grandparents do, but theirs is so unrestrained and expressive.  Batuhan smiles every time at Baba's voice.  We all do.

Before coming here, Hakan worried, "Is Ankara too cold for the baby?"  Tolga pointed out that there are cold places all over the world that babies are raised - not to mention we have central heating.

After one night, Hakan and his wife decided their baby was sick.  I gave them our humidifier.  The air here is very dry, polluted, and elevated - even Tolga and I have a hard time adjusting too it, so we could only imagine the effects on new little lungs.

The second day they began giving him cold medicine.  I'm not sure if he had a cold, but he went from a quiet baby to a fussy one with a funny sounding cry.  Maybe his voice was changing from being tired, or thirsty, or maybe indeed sick - but by Sunday night, everybody was getting anxious.  (Baba said, "Why did you make him cry?")

At one point, the baby started sucking on Hakan's finger, and instantly became happy again. We realized he was teething, and when Hakan rubbed his gums, it was feeling better.  We all laughed at the soothing effect of Hakan's wrinkling finger being sucked dry.

Tolga laid with Batuhan on his chest, while Baba fished through his medicines.  Baba has a shoebox full of medicines that he carries with him everywhere.  He's like a walking pharmacy with hundreds of prescriptions that he takes as he feels is needed.  (ie. - an inhaler from the 90s).  Baba  has also very eager to prescribe his medicine to others - on more than one occasion he's tried to shove eye cream in my eye and shoot me with his diabetic tester.

Last night he found a cream in his box and demanded we give it to the baby.  He has crossed a line here, and while everyone laughed, it was followed up by adamant "No Baba1"   Baba was instantly mad that no one would accept his suggestion and became insistent, almost demanding that the baby take the cream.  Tolga told Hakan too read the label, and Hakan relented, and sure enough . . . Baba had in his shoebox pharmacy a cream to sooth a teething baby's mouth.  While Hakan was examining the label, Baba put some cream on his finger and rubbed it on Tolga's gums just to prove his point.  Tolga couldn't stop him - his hands were holding Batuhan, and his mouth was already open from laughing at his father.