Auction

I just got in from being at our school’s auction for the past eight hours.   I had sneakers (I love that old term for athletic shoes) but I spent much of the time in a dress and heels and now my feet are angry at me.   I can run a marathon and my feet never bother me, but put me in heels and the change of angle, additional balance needs and pressure on toes from being force forward due to angle and my feet complain.

I didn’t start this post to write about my feet though.   Sometimes this happens—I start a blog post, planning on writing about one mundane thing that happened in my day and I get distracted by a side issue or nuance of the story and wander into the land of digression.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, about the auction.   We’ve been planing it since close to the start of the school year.   The group on the committee was small but we were able to bring in more people who then brought in more people and our committee ended up at close to fifteen people, all who were interested in helping and willing to take on sections of the auction and run autonomously.

Usually just before the auction things felt frantic as we scrambled to get it all done and finalized in time.   This year our final meeting before tonight was more to make sure we didn’t miss anything and confirm our final plan.

I walked into the space a few hours after setup began and I was wowed by the transformation of the space.   We hosted the event at an art studio that had old wood floors and a warm, welcoming yet open feel.   We finished the set up, I got into my heels and we started to welcome the guests.

I ate a lot of the catered food and drank water and watched the other people drink wine, beer and a special cocktail one of the staff, who is a bartender on the weekends, made especially for the event.    The social hour was so successful it was hard to get people into the live auction area, but we got started eventually.  

We raised a lot of money, thanks to some very generous donations from our families (beach home rentals, authentic cultural dinners, tickets to sports games, etc.)   As soon as cleanup began I got back into my sneakers and start the cleanup.  

One of the things we offered this year was a mystery box tower.  There were thirty boxes wrapped in different papers.   You could purchase one box for $50  Inside each box was something, like a gift certificate, free movie tickets or a handmade child’s upon.  One of the boxes contained a $500 Apple store gift card.    At the end of the evening people got the box number they signed up for.  I told them to ask my husband when he got in and I was sure he’d sign up.   Then, on second thought, I told them I’d sign up for number thirteen, my husband’s favorite number.

As I was starting cleanup, Liz, the person who had organized the mystery boxes came over to me and said, “did you hear?”   I thought she was talking about the auction totals for the night and said I hadn’t.   She said, “you won the mystery box.  It was number thirteen.”

I told my husband and he decided since it was his number, I should let him have it.

The Big Boy Update:   My son was playing with some of the boys (Sophomors in high school) that were visiting my neighbor’s son tonight.   He was having fun playing with them, but, his sister (and our sitter for the night) told me, “he has a thing about butts.”   I told her it was a popular topic at this age.   She said he was hitting people on the butt, especially her, and then sometimes in the front.    I told her I would have a talk with him and let him know we don’t touch people in those areas because they are private.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was invited next door to watch a movie in their new movie room.   I’m not sure how she’s sitting proximity-wise in front of their large projection screen, but she must be enjoying it because she didn’t come home.

Chaos

We met with my son’s (and daughter’s) play therapist, Dhruti, today.   She reviewed with us the observations she had from the one hour session she recorded of my son and me doing tasks in her office.    There are things that need to be addressed, on his side as well as ours.   Some of the things we learned today were how to help him with the way we offer choices and give direction.   She is also going to work with us and him in future sessions to give him some tools so he can handle things better.

She said a lot of the time it’s like he’s dealing with a chaotic situation in his head.   Information is coming in and sometimes that information is too fast, too much, and he tries to handle the situation by exerting control over small aspects of his world.   This comes across as him being defiant or controlling, but she said it’s not that at all, it’s his way of coping.

She said he has a self-esteem issue as well and some of the need to connect and unsureness of how to do so stems from this as well.    She explained that information comes in to him quickly and he doesn’t know how to compartmentalize it so he can move on to the next input.   As a result, he is missing social queues which factors into the social situation.

From our side, my husband and I left with a list of notes and some excellent guidance on how we can do small things to modify our behavior to help him.   She said we would be amazed in how just a few changes from us will make a big difference in him.    Three things:

1) Less question:  he may or may not be ready or able to answer as many questions as we’re asking him, especially about making decisions on minor things.   This leads into the next thing…

2) Less choices:  yes, give him choices, but don’t let him choose everything.   It’s compounding his feelings of chaos in his mind.  Make choices for him, don’t negotiate, don’t let him change your decision once you’ve made it.    And the big one…

3) I need to chill out.   This was a bit of a joke, but I do want to be the best parent I can be and Dhruti laughed at me and told me to not worry so much, we were doing a great job of being parents.

She also said this is a short-term thing, maybe only three months and we’ll see a huge difference in his behavior and confidence.    I’m looking forward to him feeling more comfortable and happy being who he is.

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked me the other day, “mom, can we walk to school to save electricity?”   I told him it was a bit far to walk, but we were hoping to bike to school with him and his sister on the back of our bikes and would that do.   He was skeptical, not knowing if biking would save electricity in the same way walking did, but I think I convinced him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter leaves on Sunday with my husband to return to Detroit for another evaluation under anesthesia.   We will hopefully leave with a refraction on the right eye for a prescription that we’ll get as soon as possible in her glasses.   Her left lens is scratched and will need to be replaced.   It is here that I have to confess, I was the one who scratched the lens.   It doesn’t block vision when I look through the eyepiece, so for another few days it will be fine until we have more information from her doctor.

Fitness Update:  I got back on my bike today.   I rode with my triathlon partner who is also the husband of my running partner and best friend.   He rode alongside me for eleven miles, possibly because that’s the pace he would have gone, but probably because he was being nice and riding at my speed.   He gave me many tips about riding that will serve me well when I do the triathlon later next month.   It was a great day for a ride.   I got home without being tired, which is a good thing since I have to swim 1500 meters in a lake before the bike ride, ride an additional twenty miles and then run ten kilometers before I finish the race.

Remember, Mom, I Don’t See Very Well

“Remember, mom, I don’t see very well” was something my daughter said to me one day a while back.   It was one of those times where you realize other people, namely my daughter, are handling things better than I am.  

As a parent, I desperately want things to improve, for progress to be made, for her to be able to see better.   One of the ways I manage my expectations is by constantly testing her.   I’m not overtly testing her, but instead, take any opportunity that circumstances may present to ask her a question such as, “do you see the yellow truck passing us?”   Since my daughter isn’t interested in giving us updates—can’t give us updates really—on the current state of her vision, I try to gather information whenever I can.   Ultimately though, I’m testing her and in so doing, I might be frustrating her.

We were doing something, I don’t remember what it was now, but I asked her if she could see something that I thought she might be able to see.   We think, but aren’t sure, that her far vision is improving in the right eye.    When I asked her, my daughter calmly said, “remember, mom, I don’t see very well.”  I told her that was okay, there were other ways to find out about the thing we were doing.

It’s a fine line, testing versus not pressing her.   We need to know how things are going because her doctors need that information when we see them to help with their plan going forward.   I think my husband does a better job of leaving it alone and letting her behavior tell us things than I do.   But then again, he’s a much more patient person than I am.

The Big Boy Update:  Tonight at dinner my son called to me and told me, “look, I’m folding this over”.   I was confused at what he was doing and why he was folding the corner of his paper place mat over.   We were at an Italian restaurant and he pointed to a picture of the colosseum on the page and said, “I want to go there”.    It was then that I realized I’d shown him how to dog ear pages in a catalog to mark the things you like so you could go back to them later.   Of particular note, the catalog was at the hair cutting place while he was waiting to get his hair cut.   The catalog was of ladies clothing.   He was marking pages with shirts he thought I would look “beautiful” in.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter saw her play therapist today.   They have been working on making plans together.   She’s been teaching my daughter how to plan out things because in some cases, specifically with a visual impairment, planning out how you’re going to accomplish something is an important skill to have.   She said my daughter is liking very much to make plans and tell her all about what she is going to do to get a certain difficult job done.

Training

Did I mention I’m doing an olympic triathlon at the end of next month?   Have I told you how I haven’t been training much?   I need to get on it, but boy it’s nice to be lazy.   Lazy is my middle name.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me the other day, “my true potential is iPadding.”  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s Orientation and Mobility teacher sent a report that my daughter has been doing an excellent job of navigating around the outdoor learning environment at our school.   She’s so pleased with her progress that she’d like to take their O&M sessions off-campus to other sites my daughter doesn’t know well.   They’re going to start that next week.   I’m keen to see how well she fares in unfamiliar places.

My Name is Rodan

My son’s hair has been getting longer and longer.  Of late, it’s been hanging in front of his eyes and he brushes it aside when it gets in his way.   We’ve asked him many times if he wants to get it cut but the answer has always been no…until today.

Yesterday we went to Tae Kwon Do and on the way he told me his forehead was hot.   Fine, I said, we can put your hair up in a top knot like the other boy does in the class before, I told him.  We’ve put his hair up like that before, mostly in a joking manner and he’s always laughed and pulled it right out.   Yesterday though, he’d had enough of the heat and he didn’t mind.  

We arrived and I fixed his hair.   I took a picture on my phone and he laughed at it when I showed him.   But the top knot stayed in all throughout class.   As soon as we were done and heading to the car he said he wanted to take it out.

Today after school he and I were running an errand and he said he thought he wanted to get his hair cut.   Not wasting a minute, I called the salon and asked Hassan if he had an opening.   Sure, how fast could we get there, he said.   We were back in the car in five minutes and on the way before my son changed his mind.

Hassan did a very nice job on his hair, telling my son all the while how he looked older and very nice in the new, shorter hair style.   I told my son I hardly recognized him as we walked to get our traditional post-haircut smoothie.    On the way home I told him I wondered if dad and his sister would recognize him.

When we arrived he told me to tell dad and his sister he was, “closed” (which means no longer available to him from school) and that I had brought home a new boy named Rodan.

He looks nice with shorter hair—older too.

The Big Boy Update:  Today my son had his first play therapy session.   It wasn’t with the therapist, but with me, being recorded for an hour.   She thinks his need to hug people and act out has to do with his need to connect with people but a lack of skills to interact in an acceptable manner.   My son and I had fifteen tasks in zip lock bags to work on together during the hour.   We had a lot of fun doing the tasks.   Starting next week he’s going to have a session with our therapist, my husband or me and him.   She said this is something common and we can get it easily addressed.   As far as my son is concerned, it’s a lot of fun visiting Dhruti’s office.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tonight we were cleaning up and then the children could watch some television before bed.   My daughter went downstairs and I yelled down to get undressed and I’d get her things out in just a minute.   I came down to find her completely and correctly dressed for bed standing in the bathroom getting ready to put toothpaste on her toothbrush.    She said, “I wanted to do it all myself.”   The thing is, the pajamas are in a high drawer she needed a stool to get to and she hasn’t gotten them from that location since losing her vision.   I was, as always, impressed with my little girl.

Chinned Again

I just got back from the urgent care with my daughter.   Earlier tonight at bath time I came in to see water splashed on the floor.   They get a bit out from time to time but this was big splashing.   As I told them they had to get out and clean up the water, my daughter made a very large, intentional splash that went everywhere.  

There was madness…on my part.   There was complaints of innocence…on their part.   I got them out and in spite of all manner of reasons they told me they couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to clean up the mess, they got towels and started wiping up the water.   My daughter got back into the now drained tub to help me with the blinds and window area.    As she was getting out she either slipped or tripped and hit her chin.

She was initially upset, but after seeing there was not much blood she calmed down.   I, however, could see the depth of the cut and I knew we had another stitches situation.    My husband came upstairs from working in the basement and helped to get both children dressed in their pajamas.   I brushed my daughter’s wet hair and then we got in the car and headed to the urgent care near us.

As I checked in I told them in a whisper to not say, “stitches” because I didn’t want my daughter to get upset.   At that point there was no blood at all and she was happily playing with her Paw Patrol dogs.   After looking at the cut Dr. Matt checked her jaw and asked if her head was okay.   They gave her some numbing gel on the chin and twenty minutes later her chin was ready.

I had talked to her about laying very still so Dr. Matt could do his work.   He told her he was going to wash her chin and then lace it up like a shoe.   We all very much wanted her to lie still because if she struggled too much they would have to send us to the hospital for sedation for the stitches and it was already past eight o’clock.  He finished in about five minutes, adding three small, dissolvable sutures.

We never once said stitches and I don’t know that she knows that’s what she has, but she lay very still, didn’t cry or even whimper.   She was calm and cooperative.   I was so happy it was a good experience for her.

The Big Boy Update:  On the way to Tae Kwon Do my son told me, “this part of my head is getting hot.”  I looked back and saw he was lifting his shaggy, long hair up from his forehead.   I told him I know you don’t want to get your hair cut, but long hair can be hot.    He asked if I could put it up for him when we arrived.   Jokingly I’ve added a top knot to his hair before and he’s laughed and pulled it out but last week we saw another male student holding his hair back that way.   I put it in at the start of class, took a picture of him and let him laugh at himself and as soon as class was over he told me it was time to take it out.    I told him he looked like a Samurai.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was a terrified, fighting, screaming and crying child for the punch biopsy and tonight, getting stitches, she lay completely still and was very cooperative.    There are ways you can approach things as a parent and with her, we’re still learning what those best ways are.   Tonight was a good experience for her, even if it involved a doctor and stitches.

Slap Bracelet

My children have these slap bracelets they got a while back.   They’re plastic covered but inside there is a metal that if hit the right way, curls up.    Whenever they find their bracelets they have fun slapping them on and off and wearing them around all day.    I don’t remember where we got them.   It might have been in a gift bag from a birthday party, Nana may have given them to them or we got them at the dollar store.   They’ve been around a while and are showing some wear by now, but each time I see them it reminds me of an adventure my mother and I went on as a child.

The details are obscured, as is common with childhood memories, but my mother had gotten some supplies from a company and they had given her a one foot ruler that did the slap bracelet curling behavior.   We’d never seen something so fun before and my mom wondered if we could get another one or two.  

The location of this company was a bit out, but she said if we went there and asked if we could have two along with the materials I think she was planning on getting, maybe they’d give them to us.   On the way, my mother told me about what a fun name the company had: Cooper Group Lufkin.   She said when you called, the receptionist would answer, saying the company’s name very quickly in an upwards lilt.   She and I practiced saying their name and indeed, it was fun to say quickly.

We arrived at what looked like a large factory and parked.   My mother told me to wait and she’s go inside.    I sat in the car and hoped and hoped they would let her have some of those curling rulers.   In a few minutes she came out looking rather normal, but when she got to the car she had a big grin on her face and handed over two rulers.

We played with them until we over bent them and they lost their coiling capabilities.   From the amount of hours of fun we had, I think it was worth the long drive out to the Cooper Group Lufkin building.   Thanks, mom.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came into the house from outside with his friends this morning.   He said he needed a bag.   I asked what size of bag and he said, “to put a transformer in”.   This was confusing to me although I guessed it had something to do with the transformer toys and shows he loves.   I showed him several sizes and he picked the smallest bag.   Later, they came in with a butterfly they found that had died gently placed in the bag.   When he said transformer, did he mean an animal that transforms like a caterpillar does into a butterfly?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wants to ride her bicycle now.   With some starting help from my husband she can pedal and stop without a problem, but she can’t get going without assistance.   With the weather we’ve been having, she’ll be able to get in more practice soon.

Fitness Update:  I ran a 5K yesterday and completely forgot to write about it.   Something was bothering me, like I was missing something and indeed I was, only I didn’t realize it until today.  My cousin and I ran in a small race that started and ended at a new farmers market that was opening for the first time yesterday.   The race was mostly on greenway trails and was a relaxing, beautiful environment in which to run.   We had a good time chatting as we ran.    We didn’t run fast, but that wasn’t the point.   I don’t ever run fast if I can help it though, so that suited me just fine.

Hang Up?

Sometimes we don’t realize we’re saying things that have historical meaning but no current contextual meaning until they’re pointed out to us.   For example, we don’t “roll down the window” in most cars these days, but that’s still the phrase we use.   I was caught off guard by my son the other day when he asked me, “mom, what do you mean ‘hang up’” after I told him Mimi had already hung up the phone.

He wasn’t completely on board with my explanation because imagining a phone that hung on the wall was one thing, but having a hand piece connected to a cord that you “hung up” on a cradle when you were done talking didn’t make any sense to him.   We have a house line, but we only have cordless phones.   The cell phone has a hang up button on it, but it just says, appropriately, “END” to terminate the call.  

Even their play phones, including the real flip phone that Nana no longer uses has no mental connection to “hanging up”.   Like children do though, he believed me when I told him the reason behind the saying and just moved on to the next question about how the world worked.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s update goes first tonight because my son’s follows in time. This morning my mother was watching the children while my husband and I were out.   When I got back she told she had had a very nice time singing with my daughter.   She sang “How Much is That Doggie in the Window” to her and my daughter sang along and particularly liked saying, ‘RUFF RUFF!” when that part came around.    I don’t know that my mother knew, but dogs are all the rage in our house right now due to some small character stuffed animals representing characters from a show the children like.    I think the “pups” are currently upstairs on the table, each being served a large array of play food my daughter set out for each of them.

The Big Boy Update:   My son was putting together a Lego this morning while my mother was playing and singing with my daughter.   To all accounts, he looked like he was focused on the Lego and not paying attention at all.   However, when they took a break from singing my son suddenly said in a loud voice, “Alexa, play ‘How Much is That Doggie in the Window’”.   Alexa complied and played the Patty Paige version.

When I Say…

I need to be better at something with my children.   For the most part when I say something I mean what I say.   They know when I tell them it’s time for bath they have to go in the direction of the bathroom, get their clothes off and get into the tub…but they dawdle.   Recently my son asked me what ‘dawdle’ meant.   He loves to dawdle.

Another example would be if I tell them they can have two M&Ms I mean two, although sometimes I get talked into more if they give me a reason they should get (and they always have reasons).   When I say its time to get their shoes on and go to the car, I mean it…only I have to say it more than once.

I heard my daughter’s play therapist say, “no, when I said one more thing, I meant one more thing.”   My daughter didn’t argue, she just accepted Dhruti’s statement.    I’ve been flexible too many times and as a result I’ve opened a door for negotiations in situations there should be no negotiations.  

This is something I need to work on.   Consistency as a parent is always a good thing—for both the parent and the child.

The Big Boy Update:  My son helps my daughter with directional information.   I’ve seen him tell her things like, “I’m straight ahead of you” when she’s trying to find him.   Even at five-years-old, he’s beginning to be a good helper to her when her vision isn’t able to give the information she needs.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  It was International Peace Day celebration at school today.  My husband and I joined all the children on the playground to share in lunch and spend time together.   After lunch was over my husband noticed my daughter watching a tetherball game from about fifteen feet away.   He came up and asked her if she could see the ball spinning around the pole (he had seen her visually tracking it).   She said, “yes, my eyes are getting better, remember?”   Are they getting better or was it the high contrast ball and the movement that she was following?  Is she able to see more or is she telling us what she knows we want to hear?  It’s very hard to tell but we remain hopeful.

They’re Watching What?

I don’t know what my children are watching.  I would say TV, but they don’t do a lot of watching television since my daughter can’t see the TV without getting on a bar stool, standing up and holding onto the mantle to get right on top of the television over the fireplace.   My husband figured out another solution that does let my two children watch a show together using the bonus room television that’s only two feet off the ground coupled with my daughter leaning through the opening in the back of a bar chair so she can lie across the seat and be at eye hight with the show.    That’s a new development though (and an interesting one to see in action.)

What my children do is watch shows on their iPads when they’re allowed time on them.   For my son, that time is only on the weekend unless there is a special exception.  For my daughter, she uses hers less and less, but we still ask her to take a break to lie on her back and watch the iPad so the heavy substance can lie back on the retina in her right eye.

That’s not really getting to the point though, which is I don’t know what they’re watching when they are on their iPads.   It sounds like a real parenting failure, I know, but there are good things happening behind the scenes that make me not worried about it at all.   I control what apps they have on their iPads which is limiting enough itself.   One of the things I’ve put on though are television channel apps, specifically children’s television channel apps.   These apps are age-specific in what they show (Nick Jr., Disney Jr., Sprout, PBS Kids for example) and due the requirements by the government for educational content and commercials, what they’re watching isn’t that bad.

In fact, a lot of it is good stuff, teaching them morals and problem solving as well as core educational things like letters and math.   The networks also compete against each other and parents are keen to have their children watch good, quality shows.

Every now and then I hear they’re watching a new show because they’re talking about the characters.   I look into the show and am usually fine with the premise and content.    It’s nice to have checks and balances in place that help ensure our children are spending their “screen time” in a more positive way than what I’m sure I was watching as a child.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got in big trouble a while back.   He saw a Lego in my spot, where I keep my things and without asking opened it.   It was a birthday gift for the following day for a friend’s party.   He had to spend his chore money to help buy a new present.   Today, he noticed another item in my area.   He asked about it but didn’t open it.   He’s excited that this is a birthday present for Hollis on Saturday and he’ll get to give it to her.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter and son wanted to help dad cook dinner tonight.   My daughter kept saying she was a “shoe cook” and my son and I didn’t know what she was saying.   Then, I realized she meant she was a “sous chef”.

Fine China

Children say the funniest things.   They may have juxtaposed two things together or misunderstood how something works, or in a lot of cases, they use a similarly sounding word in the place of a word they don’t know.   When I listen to my daughter sing along with pop songs in the car I think thirty percent or more of the words she’s replaced with words in her vocabulary.

I had a friend tell a story of one of these verbal word replacements that I couldn’t help but laugh about.   She told me her cousin’s family didn’t use proper names for body parts when they were children.   Instead of saying ‘penis’ they had another word like ‘your ting ting’ to represent the body part.   As a result, she didn’t know the word ‘vagina’ and was confused when she heard it.  It was only later that weekend that she figured out what they meant and told her cousin, “oh, I thought you were saying ‘fine china’”.  

I laughed and told my friend I thought it wasn’t a bad alternate name if we had to have one.

The Big Boy Update:  My son doesn’t get that telling his friends they’re the worst friends ever, that he hates them, that they aren’t invited over anymore and that they’re stupid does not make them want to come back inside and play with him.   He was about to do something with two friends when they decided to go see the new rings on the playground instead.   He didn’t like being left, but he didn’t handle it well either.   We gave him some advice but I think it will take some time and reminders for the message to get across.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Remember that punch biopsy we had done on my daughter’s bottom?  Well, we had to have another one today.   A new, large bump appeared and her dermatologist wanted to get a sample for culture this time.    My daughter was great until the procedure itself at which point she was an irrational, screaming, fighting, terror-ridden, crying child.   It was quick, but she isn’t much on reasoning at this point.   The bump was an active abscess, which gleaned great material for culture.  Hopefully we’ll know more soon and we’ll have a treatment that will help her get better.

One Inch of Juice

Some years ago I had my cousin, husband and toddler daughter, Olivia, over for dinner.  I didn’t have children and as a bit of background, I didn’t babysit when I was younger.   Suffice it to say, I knew very little about children other than they were cute and said funny things.

They arrived to dinner and my cousin walked over to the table, which I had set out for everyone.   For a meal you set out plates, napkins, forks, spoons and knives.   I put a glass at each seat and a nice place mat under each place setting.    When my cousin saw the table she immediately began to clear off almost everything at one place, saying, “we won’t be needing these” in an upbeat tone.   She pulled out a plastic plate, cup and utensils and told me that would work better for Olivia.

When it was time to pour the drinks I asked what Olivia might like.   I took the glass and was about to fill it up when my cousin said, “just pour one inch in her cup”.   One inch?  That didn’t seem like a lot of liquid.

But today is a different story: I have two children and I completely get it.   Small children don’t eat on ceramic plates, they eat on plastic because they drop things.   Small children do better with plastic utensils because they’re not the most graceful or accurate with their limbs.   And small children don’t need a full glass of juice of milk, they just need one inch.

We’ve been operating on a one inch mode for a long while now.   I don’t think my husband or I ever talked about it specifically, but it was just obvious that you don’t give a child who makes frequent spills a lot of liquid.   You also don’t give a child a drink that’s so large they drink it all and then have no room for the meal.

Our children are a bit larger now and they’re able to drink more (and spill less).   I think they’re ready to graduate to two inches of liquid now.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me they tried coconut at school the other day.   He said the milk tasted funny.   I asked him what he thought about the coconut meat.   He said, “I didn’t like it, but I lied to people and said, ‘oh, this is so good’”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got new sandals today.  It’s very hot, eighty-six degrees I think right now, and she needed some new summer shoes.   They’re silver and sparkly on the top.  She loves them.

What’s In a Box

I ordered air filters for our house last week.   We have multiple sizes of filters and I order a batch at a time so we have them on hand every three months when the calendar reminder pops up and my husband does the replacement rounds through the house.   When they arrived, they came in two very large boxes.   My daughter dragged in the quite light packages and eagerly opened them by managing to rip off the top piece of tape.   She excitedly looked into the box to find crumpled brown paper and exclaimed, “there’s nothing in there”.

After looking under the paper she pulled out the first six-pack of filters and proceeded to carry them into the bathroom, where my husband was showering, to let him know we had air filters.   I don’t think she had any idea what air filters were, so I showed her the return vent in our bedroom, opening it up and letting her feel the recently replaced filter.   She was interested, but more interested in what else might be in that big box.

After pulling out two more packages of filters she went to the smaller box and found similar contents.   She wasn’t unhappy though, because, hey—boxes!  She climbed in and closed herself inside.   She went to find her “pups” and put them inside with here.    Imaginative play followed for a while.   My son was busy doing his own thing but later he came to see the boxes.    When we had a sitter come over later, he was informed that we had boxes in a happy tone by my daughter.

They had received a package the day before but hadn’t had a chance to open it.   It was from a childhood family friend of my husband’s and an unexpected present for my children lay inside.   When they opened it they found a set of scented markers.   My husband and I immediately wanted to open them up and smell them because we both remembered them from our childhood.   We talked to the children about the different smells.   We guessed what the yellow one might smell like (pineapple, lemon or banana) and everyone correctly surmised the orange one was probably, well, orange.  

A short while later my daughter’s music therapist arrived to give my daughter a lesson.   At the end of the hour it was my turn to have a lesson, only I had two children to watch with a husband out for the morning.   I took my daughter downstairs and asked her what she thought those big boxes might be (a car? A dog house? A boat?)  I wondered if she might want to draw what she envisioned on the boxes while I had my singing lesson.    Her brother was interested too so I dragged the boxes out onto the sunny deck and left them to have a good time.

I went back upstairs and didn’t think much more about them while I tried to engage my diaphragm, relax my jaw, sing an ‘R’ without singing an ‘R’ and attempt to sing with two fingers between my teeth holding my jaw in a fixed position.   When I came downstairs later I found what had happened to the boxes.

There was a plane and a house (the house was the smaller of the two boxes, for reasons apparent only to my daughter).   There was marker everywhere, including my daughter’s face—specifically her nose.   She had made sure to smell all the markers each time she used one I think.  Oh, and her hands,  I should have taken a picture of her, it was quite the sight.   She was so pleased with the result.

The boxes are in the basement now and have been used in the back yard as a construction site while my son and his friend made something with hammers, nails, a saw and some pieces of wood.   The second box is flattened now, but has proved to have other uses in it’s new, two-dimensional form.

At some point I’ll recycle them, but for now they’re great entertainment.

The Big Boy Update:  After Tae Kwon Do tonight we headed to the new “Flying Car”.   We have several friend families in the class and I knew one of the children would want to see the car.   The falcon wing doors are pretty fun to demonstrate.   The mom said it looked like a Storm Trooper car what with the white and black.   My son also wanted to show off the feature he thought was most exciting—the cup holders.   He showed how there were cup holders in the middle row, the back row and yes, even in the front row there were cup holders.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son and I were at Tae Kwon Do this evening and while we were there, my husband was making dinner.   My daughter wanted to help (she loves to help) and got the table on the porch ready for our return.   She cleaned off the chairs and table top, got adult and child plates from the cabinets, set out utensils for everyone and even rolled up a cloth napkin and placed it at each seat.   When we returned home she wanted to know what we wanted to drink so she could put our our beverages.   She may be almost blind, but she’s still very capable.

The One Line Song

I’ve been taking singing lessons.   I asked Chelsea, my daughter’s music therapist, if she knew someone who I could contact about some instruction.   I was hoping she could help me out, because I know absolutely zero.  I like to sing and I’ll sing along to any song, even if I don’t know the words.   I’m sure my husband loves it when he’s in the car with me but he’s been polite enough to never complain.

As Chelsea was thinking about who she could refer me to, I began to tell her how I wanted to learn enough to sing casually and successfully, giving her some examples of how and when I liked to sing. It was at that point she said, “oh, you’re wanting help with ‘functional singing’, I can do that”.

We’ve had two lessons together so far and it’s been more than helpfully informative.   I don’t have a bad voice she said—which is good—I just need to learn how to use the voice I have.   She had me sing to her at the beginning of our first lesson and she said, “you sound like you’re scared”.   I wasn’t scared, but I agreed with her, I was sounding timid and constrained in what I was doing.    We worked on some warmups, drills and she gave me many pieces of advice on where your voice should come from, how to engage your diaphragm, bad habits singers get into and how to practice.    It was a lot for a first lesson but I was committed to practicing and we scheduled our next lesson for when we both returned from vacation in a month.

Yesterday we had our second lesson.   I showed her what I’d been working on by singing a bit for her and explained how I felt like singing was more natural and I could hold a tune more easily.   Then we started into our next lesson.  

She said we were going to work on one song, Moon River, because it had a lot of components to it that lent itself well to building voice skills.   Then, and this is the good part, we worked on the first line of the song for almost the whole hour.   We would try something and then she’d tell me how I could change what I was doing and we’d try again.    We even went into the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror to do some specific exercises.

My homework was to download two versions of the song from iTunes she though demonstrated good vocal style and listen as well as practice until we met next week.   Maybe next week if I’m making progress we’ll make it all the way through the song…

The Big Boy Update:  My son has picked up some children’s rhymes lately.   I’m guessing it’s from school because his neighborhood friends didn’t teach it to him.   We had a lot of playing in the back yard today and I heard him saying to them, “Keira, Keira, sitting in the tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”   Later I heard, “Rayan, Rayan, pumpkin pie, kissed the girls and made them cry…”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We got my daughter small plush versions of the dogs from the show, Paw Patrol when we were in Florida.  My daughter has been spending a lot of time playing imaginative games with the “pups” including having tea parties with them and her friend next door, Madison.  

The Cereal Tea Party

My daughter has a tea set she got from my brother- and sister-in-law for Christmas (or was it her birthday?) that she likes to bring out and play with.   Typically it’s with her friend, Madison, who lives next door.   They’ll set out all the places and put water in the tea pot.  We were letting them have some cheerios to serve for a while until we found out they were getting all sorts of things from the pantry to bring upstairs that made a mess.   Let’s just say I’m glad I have an attentive dog.

Today I had our next door neighbor, Shane, watch the children so I could go out for two hours to get some things done.  When I came back the tea set was on the ottoman in the living room and my daughter was all set to have a nice tea party—only Shane had to leave.    So she asked if I could help and, oh, could we have some cereal for the party?

Sure, I told her, but let’s move the party to the dining room table where we could have real food served.   She and I relocated the party and she told me all the things she thought should be served for tea.   We put milk in the tea pot, sugar in the sugar bowl and cereal in the creamer pot.   Then she told me how the party should go.

She’s gotten some helpful lessons from Nana in the past and she knew just how to serve “tea”.   We were adding a second cereal in another container for sharing when my son realized there was real food in play and suddenly he ran over and joined us.   He has also had experience with Nana on tea party etiquette, loving in particular the large tea set my husband has from his childhood that stays at Nana and Papa’s house.  

We served each other milk, passed the sugar, stirred the sugar into the milk and enjoyed several kinds of cereal for snack.    We had some standard favorites of theirs including Uncle Bob’s favorite, Raisin Bran.   Lots of milk was consumed and many pleasantries were exchanged.   My daughter was a delightful host and my son at one point said, “this is the best day ever.”

The Big Boy Update:  I took some time to do some drawing work with my son this afternoon to see what his teachers had been talking about with his penmanship.   He’s left handed and holds the pen well, although it looks like it’s a bit of a cramped, upright grip, possibly making it harder for him to write easily and fluidly.   When he was done drawing each of the characters from one of his favorite shows he would tell me about them and their weapon.   Then, I had him write their names above the character.  He’s not making a good mental connection with what he sees and has difficulty matching a letter I write on his paper.   He did fairly well writing over letters I’d written although he wasn’t able to remember the order of the strokes from one try to the next copy of the letter (I wrote each one out five times for him to practice on a separate piece of paper.)   Overall he did well though.  I think with some more practice and some guidance and he’ll get it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I cleaned out the cabinet of the children’s toys in the living room this afternoon.   It gets piled full over time from things in other areas of the house and has to be emptied so they can find anything.  I showed my daughter where her favorite Paw Patrol figures were going to live in the cabinet (she does better if she knows where things are stored) and she spent the remainder of the afternoon doing imaginative play with her favorite six pups.

Better Phrases

I was invited to sit in on my daughter’s play therapy session yesterday.   It was interesting to observe and I was only able to do so because, well, she’s blind and didn’t know I was there.   Her therapist sent me a text about ten minutes in saying I should try to sneak into her office.    This would have been an easy feat if her office door opened silently.   I opened the door quietly and slowly but there was the inevitable ‘click’ and my daughter immediately said, “who opened the door?”  

I stood outside the cracked door and her therapist and I decided to shut the door with some hand gestures and she would try again in a minute.  I waited and this time she opened the door to her small office.   I walked in slowly and quietly and sat down behind her on her sofa.   I was able to watch the entire session without my daughter knowing I was there, even as they got up twice and went to get water for painting and then left again a second time at the end to wash up.

The session in and of itself was interesting, especially watching my daughter make a big mess of things with the paint while her therapist seemed not to mind at all that her office walls might get splattered.    What I thought was interesting was some of the phrasing she used.  

Instead of saying, “here, you need a paper towel to wipe your hands”, she would wait until my daughter was clearly frustrated with the paint on her fingers.   She would ask her what she needed.   My daughter would make a squeaking noise.   She would say, “is that your frustrated sound?  You look like you’re frustrated; is there something I can help you with?  Is that your frustrated sound?”   When my daughter would ask for a paper towel, she immediately got one.   We see this behavior at home sometimes.

My daughter was interested in mixing colors and I watched as Dhruti gave her paint and let her pour them into the containers and then mix the containers.   My daughter then wanted to stir the two colors together to see what the new color would be.   She began stirring quite quickly the paint in the small cup.   I think I would have said something like, “you need to be careful, you’re going to spill the paint.”   Instead, Dhruti said, “if you stir fast, you’ll get paint on the floor; if you stir slowly, the paint will stay in the cup.”   This phrasing appealed to my daughter’s personal desire to have the paint where she could paint with it so she slowed down her stirring.    She reminded her several more times and my daughter began to slow more slowly without being reminded by the end.

Then at one point my daughter was about to spill one of the containers because she was being a little reckless at the time.   Instead of telling her to be careful, she took the paint and said very matter-of-factly, “I had to take that so it didn’t spill.”  No emotion, no judgement, just an adult doing what adults do to manage a situation with a child.   My daughter wasn’t bothered at all by any of what she said.

The Big Boy Update:   My son’s teachers had a meeting with us and said many good things.   They also said he’s struggling some with forming his letters and needs some practice formally with a therapist (short term) to give him some extra time to catch up.   My son has a lot of manual dexterity, he’s just never been very interested in drawing so this makes a lot of sense.   They don’t think there is anything developmentally or physically wrong, he just needs a little more focus on writing and some extra help would help.   She said he’s very proud of his writing journals.   I bet he’ll be even more proud when he can write words.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  “Who drew this picture?”   This is a question I ask my daughter a lot.   She brings home drawings frequently from school.   The thing is, many times they’re not her drawings.   The other children like to make pictures for each other.   Generally it wouldn’t matter but when we see some good visualization of forms, we want to know if she’s seeing better and able to draw more accurately as a result.  

The Pollen Picture

It’s pollen season in the South.   Well, perhaps the size of the area is bigger than the South but it’s in full swing here.   Everything gets covered with it this time of year.   It doesn’t last too terribly long, unless you have allergies and then it seems like a very long time.   For several weeks it’s rather foolish to wash your car because the next time you go out it only going to wind up yellowed again by the time you get home.  Fortunately it rains a lot this time of year which sends the yellow coverage down the drains soon enough.

My daughter, even in her vision-impaired state summed it up well in the picture she painted today:

When I asked her what she had painted she said, “there’s the sun, and that’s a rainbow and the blue part is the rain.”   I asked her what the yellow part was and she said, “oh, that’s the pollen.”

The Big Boy Update:  My son has a lightsaber friend.   He and Hudson, who lives two houses down the street, meet up in the front yards and bring out their various light sabers (some foam, some plastic, some parts of other toys being repurposed as makeshift lightsabers due to color, and have battles.   Today, Whitaker joined them in a three-way battle. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the painting front, my daughter was painting during her play therapy session today.   In the category of “advantages having a visually impaired child” her therapist text messaged me and said to come quietly into the room.   Because she couldn’t see me sitting five-feet away, I watched the entire session play out.   She was painting and describing things.  She started a new piece and told Dhruti this about what she was planning to paint, “it’s going to be a rainbow of a rainbow picture of a square.”

Morning Mail Check

My alarm goes off in the mornings each day.   Sometimes it’s my alarm, mostly it’s my children, but either way, I’m alerted to the fact that morning has arrived and it’s time to get up and get my day started.    It was this morning that I realized my mornings have changed from years ago in a way I would not only have not expected, but would have been completely against had you asked me some years ago.

The first part would be the having to get up each and every day of the week to wakeful, buoyant, happy and/or whining and complaining children.   That, I’m accustomed to and it doesn’t bother me at all.   What’s changed that I wouldn’t have expected is that each morning, one of the first things I do—typically while I’m still in bed—is read my email.  

There are several very nice technological advancements that have made this not the arduous task it once was.   The first way is my iphone/iPad.   It is both easy and convenient to pick up my iPad from my nightstand, notice the little ‘7’ red circle on the email icon and know without doing anything else that I have seven unread emails.   The user interface for reading emails is quick and easy as well as comprehensive—showing the same graphical detail and information as I would otherwise see on my computer.   And it’s right there on my nightstand taking me only a few minutes to scan or read them so I know what’s happened since last night when I read the last emails of the day before going to bed.

The other thing that’s made email so much less of a burdensome task is spam blocking and filtering.   I’m using Gmail, although other email services offer similar features, and the amount of email I don’t have to “handle” is dramatically reduced.   Categories of emails are sorted together and bulk deletion is simple and quick.

In the mornings these days I even pick up my phone with the intention to check email to see if anyone was up later than I was, emailing about that school thing happening next week or the dinner we’re hoping to schedule with friends, and two minutes later I’m out of the bed starting in on breakfast preparations.

Email used to be an annoyance to me.  Now it’s friendly and useful.

The Big Boy Update:  When I was leaving my children’s room tonight after reading them a story my son told me, “when I grow up and marry someone, I’m going to marry them in the bathroom.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s Orientation and Mobility teacher started working on building a map of the large play area that recently opened at school.   She emailed today with some details:  “We started by taking a walk around the play area to review what was there and where things were in relation to each other. Then we built a large map/model of the grounds. I have this map/model making kit and I added stones, cork stumps, a paper roll tunnel, etc. so we could make our model as close as possible to the real thing. Reese loved the activity and was quite serious about building things correctly. She was curious about where the various play areas were in relation to each other. Her main critique was that we hadn’t used real mulch and that we hadn't gotten the steps correct..."

Open Drawers

I may have mentioned this before but it’s something that’s been on my mind so much it’s turning more into paranoia than I’d like lately.   I am scared of leaving any drawer open.    Typical behavior would be, for example, to open the drawer with the brush and bows for my daughter who’s standing by, fix her hair and then put the things back into the open draw, closing it as I’m done.    Maybe it’s the drawer with the utensils and I’m pulling things out to set the table, coming back multiple times to get different items.   Or, I’m putting up laundry and I have several drawers open while I put up the items.    I didn’t realize until lately how often I left drawers open for short periods for different reasons until recently.

My low-sighted daughter knows our house very well.   If you came into our home you’d have no idea she has very poor sight because she runs around and navigates perfectly—that is until something is out of place like an open drawer.

If the drawer is lower than her head she will most likely see it and stop short just in time (unless she’s in a hurry).   If the drawer is chin height or higher, she is most likely not going to see it at all because she looks down, watching where she’s walking.   She will run straight into it, hitting her forehead or worse, her eyes at what might even be the sharp corner of the open drawer.

It takes only a few of these accidents to make you fear for your child’s safety so much that you shut drawers just after opening them—even if the children are in school.

Next month I’m hoping we’re going to see some improvement in her vision with a refraction to determine her prescription in the right eye, a corrective lens to match the refraction results and some patching of the left eye to help the brain begin to utilize the right eye.   That, and of course we hope the now flat retina actually is functioning—that remains to be seen.

For now, I will continue to be militant about keeping drawers closed at all times.

The Big Boy Update:  I was watching a nature show about animals.  My son came in and watched it with me.   He loved the island and the creatures on it.   He told me he wants to visit Zanzibar some day.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wants to go next door to play with Madison nearly every day.   She has made a very good friend and I always enjoy watching them play together.   Today she was sad when she knocked on their door and they weren’t home.   Fortunately, Madison was available later and they got a chance to spend some time together.

Trailer Hitch

We’ve never had a car with a trailer hitch.  Or wait, rather I’ve never had a car with a trailer hitch; I’m fairly certain my husband and his family had when he was younger.   My family wasn’t the camping type and we didn’t have motorcycles, bicycles or other things that needed to be towed behind our cars.   Mostly I grew up with sedans…

Okay, hold the phone just a minute.   As I’m writing this and picturing in my mind my parent’s cars from my childhood I distinctly remember a trailer hitch ball on at least one of them—possibly a blue Mercedes they had for years.   I’m not sure, but because my parents preferred to buy used cars over new ones, there’s a chance they did have a trailer hitch.

But with all ambiguity aside, I have exactly zero experience adding a hitch ball to a car, adding a thing that will be towed to the hitch ball and then towing said thing around.    Not a clue how it all works.    

The Tesla Model X has the capability to tow things with an optional added hitch that we decided to get.   Who knows, my husband might make a camper out of me yet; we might need to cart bikes around or he might want to tow his motorcycle somewhere.   We weren’t sure but it made sense so we added the hitching option.

Today we got a bicycle rack that attaches to the trailer hitch.   The interesting thing with the hitch is it’s hidden.  It’s so very Tesla to have it all out of the way for aerodynamic purposes.   With the removal of a plate and the addition of the hitch hardware, suddenly we can tow very large things behind us.

I’m looking forward to taking the bicycles somewhere for a ride as a family.  Oh, that and I have a triathlon I’m going to need to get training for soon since it’s next month.

The Big Boy Update:   My son doesn’t say he loves us very much, but I think that’s a boy thing.   He does some days and sometimes, but it depends on his mood.   Yesterday he told dad he loved him.   Dad said he loved him too and then my son said, “I love you more.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Sometimes we get fooled by how well we think our daughter can see.  Today we went to an outdoor, natural play area to meet some other families after school.   There is a pine needle lined path that leads to the play area through some woods.   My daughter couldn’t tell the difference in the path (darker) from the sides (sticks, growth, variation in color).   I had to help her several times to get back on the path.   When we got to the paved black path I thought she’s fare better but she was having difficulty still and almost walked off the edge where cinderblocks lined the side.   She said to me, “mom, remember I can’t see that well.”   Sigh, I know.  I just keep hoping it’s better.

Rock and Roll for Boston

I ran another marathon race today.   I run slowly, there is no arguing that and today, my running buddy and I did indeed run slowly, crossing the finish line at about five hours.   It wasn’t our slowest run or our fastest run but since neither of us have been running or speed training, it was a fine time we decided.

We had friends who ran too.  One was the husband of one of my girlfriends, who decided to sign up shortly before the race.   He didn’t want to get up early and since the race started right near his office downtown, he brought an inflatable mattress into his office and slept there, waking up and joining the race just before the start.

The person we were most excited about was our very own Uncle Jonathan, who had been training for months to be ready for this race.  He has been hoping to qualify for the Boston Marathon for some time but injuries have made it not possible.    We waved him a good luck as he headed off for corral one where the fastest runners start the race.   Our corral was eleven so we started about fifteen minutes after he did.

Not that long after we’d past the half-way point in the race we got a text from Uncle Jonathan.   He’d not only run the race at his fastest ever by a full half-hour, he qualified for the Boston Marathon’s 3:05 for his gender/age and got a 2:59 finish time.    So yeah, wow.   We’re all very excited for him.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said this tonight: “hello, comma, goodbye, comma.”   I said to him, “are you working on punctuation in your class?”  My husband said, “no, he’s copying me when I talk to the phone to dictate text messages and emails.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to do the color game tonight.   She wanted to see what colors she could see with her right eye.   This is scary for her because we patch her left (good) eye with a blackout patch and then shine a light through theater light gels.    She was willing to not only have the eye patch, she got all the colors correct and was very specific about them.   Then she walked (holding hands) to the pantry with us and got some jelly beans as a reward.    She was completely unable to determine the color of the jelly beans, but her near vision may be where she sees the worst from what her ophthalmologist said.

Fitness Update:  Today was my sixth marathon race and my tenth time doing a marathon distance rum.   It’s hard to believe I’ve done so much running.   I always thought running was something people did to punish themselves.   Today’s race was sunny and chilly, but it was lots of fun…aside from the hills on the last four miles—those were awful.

Don’t Be a Donkey

We went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday last night.   Eight of us, all neighbors on our street, had a very filling dinner with some robust conversation.   Somehow we got onto the topic of young drivers and our own experiences learning to drive a car.   We each have children, with some of us getting closer to having new driving-aged family members than others.   Suffice it to say, none of us are ready for that yet.

I have a very specific memory of the first time I ever drove a car: my mother took me to a large parking lot on a weekend when it would be empty.   She gave me some good information about driving and then let me get behind the wheel of her car.   I have no idea how I drove—most likely very slowly—but I can tell you what I do remember: the car felt huge.   It had so much mass and just felt heavy, like a block of lead with leather seats.    Being able to control such a large machine simply by turning a wheel and pressing some pedals was both novel and frightening.

One of my neighbors told us about her memory of early driving, specifically about her driver’s education teacher.  He told the students many things about driving but the one thing he kept saying was, “don’t be a donkey.”   She said it wasn’t until later that she realized he was telling them not to be jackasses when they were driving.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has hit commercial susceptibility.    If whatever he’s watching has commercials for children, specifically toys, he wants every one.   He doesn’t even realize he’s asking for every single thing that’s being offered, he just gets excited as each new commercial starts and says he wants that nerf gun or light saber or flying disk.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Today in the car my daughter was wearing her sunglasses.   She said to me, “I putted my glasses on top of my head like daddy does.”  And sure enough, she had her sunglasses up on the top of her head like my husband does all the time.  It was cute, but I was hopeful.   Had she seen dad doing this recently?   I asked her when she saw dad put his sunglasses on top of his head.   She said, “a long long time ago when I was three.”   Oh well, maybe next month after we get a refraction done and a correcting lens on her right eye.

Lack of Fitness Update:   I’m running a marathon tomorrow.   I haven’t done much running in the last month.   I hope I remember how to run.   It’s going to be freezing at the start and very windy.   It’s going to be an interesting race.

The Chicken Neck

I was talking to a friend the other day about how she always takes care of everyone else and puts herself last.   I told her, “you’re the chicken neck.”   Then, because it’s a strange thing to call someone, I said, “let me explain.”

When I was young my mother told me a story about her mother.   I never met my mother’s mother because she died before I was born but I’ve heard lots of stories about her.  My mother said they didn’t have a lot of money when she was growing up so they didn’t waste anything.   When they had chicken for dinner, they used every piece.   She told me her mother always ate the chicken neck, saying how much she loved it.    My mother told me it was many years later that she figured out her mother was letting her family have the better sections of the chicken and taking the least desirable for herself, and just saying it was her favorite.

That’s love.

The Big Boy Update:  We have a box of forty-two chalks of all different colors.  My son pulled out these specific six because they’re the colors of the Power Rangers.   The yellow one is actually the gold one but there wasn’t any gold chalk, oh, and the gold one is a “bad guy”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We had a meeting today with my daughter’s teachers and her Orientation and Mobility teacher who is an expert in visually impaired children.   They wanted to make sure she was able to play safely on the new outdoor learning environment at our school.   There are lots of large boulders and the steps are low contrast, making it more challenging for her to navigate.    There were some good ideas we’ll all work on implementing going forward. 

Impossibly Long

The title of this blog involves the word ‘perspective’ which as we grow older tends to grow in magnitude.   Yesterday I had one of those perspective moments that in and of itself is harmless, boring and blasé enough to not matter at all, but it was something that made a mental impact on me.   It was about hair.

There was this television series I watched a few years ago.   The main actress had this lovely long hair that I envied, mostly because of length.   My hair grows slowly, so attaining her hair length seemed an impossibly long task.    Over the course of the five years the show ran, I always liked her long, straight hair.    The show ended and I didn’t think any more about it.

Then, last week, something reminded me of the show and I decided to watch the pilot.    As the episode unfolded I realized the main actress’s hair was as long as mine is now.   My hair, that even though it’s relatively long, still feels mentally short in my mind.   And yet, here was this actress with the impossibly long hair and my hair was the same length.    There’s nothing like time to give perspective.

The Big Boy Update:  Nana and Papa got my son a Harry Potter wand as a gift for when he arrived in Florida last week.   My son thought it was pretty keen how it turned on when he waved it.   What he thought was exceptionally cool was how he was a “fire starter” and could start their fireplace.   What he didn’t realize until the third day was that Nana was pressing the button on the fireplace remote when he’d wave the wand at it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has started saying daddy with a British accent as, “dadday”.  It took us a bit to realize she was repeating the pronunciation from Peppa Pig, a British cartoon that’s currently popular.   Once we realize that we started to notice other words she’s getting from the show.

Fitness Update:  I had another swim lesson today.   We worked on my flip turns (comical) and my breast stroke (pitiful) but by the end of the lesson I have a list of things to work on that I think are achievable.

Sweet Harmony

My children were separated for close to three days early this week.   My son and I came home and my husband and daughter flew to Detroit a day after us for an appointment with her retina surgeon.   It was clear both children missed each other because they talked about it to us independently and when we got on the phone they said nice, even kind things to each other without prompting such as, “I love you.  I miss you.”

Late last night my husband and daughter arrived home from the airport.   My son had elected to sleep in his sleeping bag in the middle of the floor so he could be woken up to welcome them home.   He was unable to be woken up by my attempts to wake him, my non-attempts to wake him when I carried him up the steps and ungracefully dumped him into the top bunk (he’s getting heavy) or by the screams of his sister who was so tired she thought she wasn’t tired.  

At any rate, my children reunited this morning and breakfast and the morning routine went about as normal as it usually does.   We got ready and headed to the car.   As I drove out my children started this happy and yet aggressive conversation with each other in the back seat.   I tried very hard not to laugh.   There was initially discussion on who was going to hit whom.    It escalated from there.    By the time we got to school I had my phone out, ready to write down what they were saying.

My daughter, “if you push me down the hill, I’m gonna bite you in the face!”
My son, “oh!  Well I’m really gonna bite you in the face now!”

The Big Boy Update:  My son was sitting on my daughter the other day.   It was unclear what was happening or how they even got into the situation but since no one was crying, I assumed it was a game they were both happy about.   When we asked him, my son told us he had decided to use his sister as, “a butt pillow”.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   We got a report today from my daughter’s visual impairment and orientation and mobility teachers.   They went over the goals they had for her and how well she was progressing.   While she may never need it, she has been introduced to a cane.   Her teacher, Jane, has an adult cane and my daughter has a child-sized one.   In the report, Jane mentioned my daughter had named her cane, “baby cane”.  I asked about her cane at dinner tonight and sure enough, we heard all about baby cane.

Florida to Detroit For an Hour

It’s time to do one of those “fly a long way for a short office visit” trips.   My husband and daughter flew to Detroit from Florida to be seen today by her Retina surgeon.   Below are the notes my husband sent about the appointment.   Since things looked like they were doing well, most of the talk was about his plan going forward:

Dr. Trese examined her in his office and commented that there was a very good orange reflex in the right eye indicating a reattached retina. The cornea was clear which is a good sign that the oil and PFO has not caused any clouding.

He said that the fact that she is sensitive to light and wants to wear her sunglasses is good and the retina is receiving information. Her eyes not tracking together is normal when the two eyes are seeing different things. He was not worried about that.

He did not see anything acute that would worry him, such as high or low pressure (visually), infection, or any other problems so he said he would like to schedule an EUA on May 2nd with a possible angiogram and Healon injection if the pressure is low. He will not remove the PFO (not hurting her and would require more than an EUA).

He now thinks that it is time to get a refraction during the EUA and the process for restoring vision would follow with her ophthalmologist.   He will be seeing her ophthalmologist later this month at a conference and they have been in communication regularly.

He would like to keep her eye drops the same as they are now--atropine twice daily and Predisolone four times (or Durezol 3 times).

When asked about the silicone oil and long term worries he said that it could cause corneal clouding or high pressure. Her cornea looks clear and higher pressure would actually help in her case. He said that people can tolerate the oil for a long, long, long time.

The Big Boy Update:   My son told me the other day, “Quai got Jin always wears brown pants.”  He pays attention to all the Star Wars details, folks.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  InUnConsolable.  I’ve made up a new word.   It reflects how my daughter was feeling in her tired state tonight when she got home from Detroit.   She was cranky, uncooperative, angry, irritable, whiny, screaming, complaining and seven or nine other adverbs all rolled into one.   She was inconsolable and uncooperative.   She has finally fallen asleep.   I hope she’s in a better mood in the morning.

Armpit Hair

I know, you’re thinking, “ew, I’m not sure I want to read this post.”   It’s not what you think.   I have this thing that’s happening to me that’s never happened to me before.    It’s probably been happing to ladies all along, only I’ve never been in this situation myself so I didn’t even know it existed: the hair from my head gets captured in my armpits.

Okay, it still sounds gross, I know, but let me explain.   Let’s say the weather has turned nice outside and you decide to wear a tank top shirt.   You get dressed and head out of the house.  You drop your children off at school and then go shopping at the grocery store.   As you walk around, selecting cabbages, tomatoes and cucumbers, when you pull your arm back from selecting an item your now long hair gets pinned by your arm against your body. 

It’s strange.   Still, I like the long hair enough to keep it for now. 

The Big Boy Update:  When my son was at Lego Land last week he was eating with my father-in-law and father but wasn’t feeling well and didn’t eat his hamburger.   When asked, Papa declined to eat the hamburger to which my son said, “Papa, you’re suppose to clean up everyone’s plate.”  And he was usually right, Papa is always good to help finishing off extra food.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is in Detroit with my husband in preparation for a doctor’s visit tomorrow.   She had a bit of a rocky start to the trip, being inconsolable from the point they got to the airport until they got close to the gate when she finally calmed down.    She and my husband got in line to purchase some food before the flight and the lady in front of them accidentally spilt her water bottle onto my daughter’s pants.   More inconsolable followed.    Once they got into the plane she was fine though for the rest of the flight.   

Separated

My husband and I split up today with our children.   I took my son home and my husband and daughter will be heading to Detroit tomorrow for a check in with her retinal surgeon.   It’s nice having two children but a lot of the time the children are either both with you at the same time.   My husband and I try to do things separately with the children but we don’t usually get multiple days alone with a particular child.

My son and I had a very pleasant trip home via two plane trips.   He listened, was full of energy but payed attention and was mindful of my requests and we had fun together on and off the planes.   When we got home he was disappointed his friends hadn’t also returned from vacation as he wanted to go play with them in the yard.  He stood outside the front door for a while and looked around hopefully while I got the groceries in before dinner.

We went to my parent’s house for an impromptu meal and my son had a chance to clip some of their spring flowers to take to his class tomorrow for their flower arranging work station.   He was pretty excited about the flowers I think because they cut a lot in a variety of colors.   Tomorrow he’ll take a bucket in to share with his classmates.

My children sleep in the same room so tonight when it was time to go to bed I did our normal routine and then left, shutting the door behind me.   I went to the kitchen and asked Alexa to play my audio book from where I’d last left off.  My son opened the door a minute later, confused because he thought someone was in the house talking to me.   He asked me if he could keep the door open tonight.   I think he missed having someone in the room with him.

I called my husband a short while later and he said he’d have to call me back because my daughter was yelling from down the hall in her bedroom in Florida.   He called back a little later to tell me he thinks she just didn’t want to sleep alone and was coming up with excuses to keep him in the room with her.

I was an only child, but I loved sleepovers.   I’m sure my children will be happy when they’re back together again on Tuesday night.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told our house he had missed it.   My mother and I were talking when he did this, shortly after arriving from being away for a week.   She and I looked to see him kiss the door to the pantry.   Then he kissed the wall and then the door to the garage, telling the house several times how much he’d missed it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My mother- and father-in-law have a convertible in Florida with a back seat.   My children got to take turns riding in the car seat in it when we went out.   After deciding my son would ride over on the way to dinner my daughter asked him politely, “when we go home, can I have a ride in the vertical?”   He nodded and told her yes.

The Dopp Kit

I’ve been packing up this evening in preparation for our spring break vacation to end.   Tomorrow my son and I head home on one flight while my husband and daughter remain behind to leave the following day for Detroit and a checkup with her retina surgeon.    I typically do the packing for the children and since this was a more complicated return home trip I spent some time deciding what should go with which parent and in which bag.

As I came to the Advil bottle we purchased the other day when my son showed up with a fever (he’s fine now) I decided to send it on with my husband to Detroit, remembering the last trip where my daughter got very sick but likely completely unrelated to the surgery the day before.

I came into the kitchen where my husband and father-in-law were and told my husband I was putting the Advil into his…”dopp kit”…   I asked him and my father-in-law if they knew what that phrase meant because it had meaning to me, but I wasn’t altogether sure I was saying it correctly or that it actually meant anything to anyone other than me.

My husband didn’t know what I was talking about so I said, “that leather thing you guys keep your toiletries in when you travel.   My father-in-law, however, knew exactly what I meant.  

My father always traveled with something he called a “dopp kit” when I was a child.   When I look at one, it is just called that.    But other than my father’s leather container from my childhood, I didn’t know if it was an actual thing so when I went into the kitchen to tell my husband about the Advil, I asked about it.

So it turns out it was the name of something and not a nickname my father had for his toiletries case.    You laugh, but you haven’t heard the story about the goats on the mountains with the legs longer on one side my father told me about when I was eight-years-old.

The Big Boy Update:  On the way home from dinner yesterday my son chimed out from the back seat of the car, “when I grow up I’m gonna have 10 children.”  I asked him what he planned on naming them.   He immediately replied, "Max, Rafter, Raider, Creeper, Crank, Roo, Cram, Cree, Raurow, and there is no more. Wait, Cutie.  And their nicknames are, Sample and…”  And folks, I’m sure there would have been more but it was at that point that my husband and I couldn’t help but laugh and we interrupted his train of thought.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My father-in-law was getting the pool cleaner hose and attachment out this afternoon so the pool would be clear for the guests arriving shortly.    The cleaner component (nicknamed ‘Little Guy’) disconnected from the hose and sat at the bottom of the three feet of water.    My daughter swam down and brought up the not-light cleaning head.   My father-in-law and I were both pretty impressed, saying things like “wow” and “that was great, thanks for the help!”   My daughter said nonchalantly, “thanks, just doing my job.”

Watching a Movie Together

My children get along well a lot of the time.   There are times when they don’t agree about who should get their way, which is sometimes followed by shoving, yelling, pinching, punching and especially complaining to the adults around.   But generally, they’re good friends.

Yesterday my son came home from Lego Land with a fever.   Today he’s still in his pajamas and is fine other than some lethargy with an accompanying fever.   My daughter is fine.   She’s so fine we had a big issue getting her out of the pool for lunch and I speculate we’ll have another issue getting her out of the pool again later today for bed.  

One thing we haven’t been able to do much with the children together is watch movies as a family.   When you have one child who can’t see a screen unless it’s less than three inches from her face, watching something as a group isn’t really possible.     We try to introduce movies to them both at different times.   My husband is good at putting movies on the iPad so my daughter can watch them in her own time.  

Lately they’ve both been into the Star Wars movies.   My son is mostly crazy about  everything about Star Wars.   He knows all the characters names across five of the seven movies.   (He hasn’t seen the last two due to his age and content.)   He gets my daughter interested in playing games and imagining they’re the robots.   They love BB8, even though they haven’t seen the new movie he’s in.

This afternoon I went down the hall to hear my children talking to each other.    They had the iPad balanced on the bed so they could both see the Star Wars movie playing.    They both had their faces close, but it didn’t matter to me because they were both able to watch the movie at the same time.

Now they’re running around playing some Star Wars game they’re making up.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is sick with a fever.   He didn’t want to eat breakfast for a while this morning.   I asked him if he felt okay and he told me his stomach hurt.  When I asked him how it hurt he told me, “it’s like my stomach is fighting each other”  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The pool rules.   Seriously, that’s all that needs to be said.    Oh, well there is one thing.   We made a sunscreen coverage error on the first day we were here and she got burned in a few spots.   Two of the spots are peeling now.    That’s one for the, “ugh, I feel like a terrible parent” list.