Oh, The Toe

This is a big, big disclaimer that there will be a picture lower in this blog post of my toe.   It is not a pretty picture.  If you like looking at daisies, pretty sunsets and fluffy puppies, this is not a picture for you.    Let this be your notice to delete this email, close the browser or put your device down because the picture is coming and it’s ugly.

Back in April (I think it was April) I ran the Rock and Roll marathon.   We didn’t complete that one because my friend was worried about her foot so we ran seventeen miles and ended when we could get back to the start line.    The weekend before we ran a marathon in a state park on single track trails and groomed bike and bridle trails.     At some point during one or both of those runs I injured my left big toe.

This happens when you run.   You get one toe hammering into the front of your shoe for several hours and it gets bruised.   It’s bruised enough that the nail doesn’t grow well for a period of time and when it grows out it gets disconnected from the nail bed and falls off.   Usually this has happened to me with my second or third toes.   It’s not common and I try to prevent it from happening by getting running shoes a full size larger than my foot size so there is plenty of room in the toe box for my feet to have ample room.

Feet swell when you run, so that added shoe size helps and is recommended.   Sometimes, for example if you get stuck in a downpour, your feet can slosh around in wet shoes and cause problems. In my case, I don’t know what happened, but the toe got injured.

Toenails grow slowly—very slowly it seems, and there is a reasonable portion of the toenail not visible that has to grow out before you even see there was damage sometimes.   In this case, a few months later I discovered there was going to be a problem.    The problem got worse as the toenail disconnected from the nail bed and then became concerning because I didn’t want to risk infection underneath the loose nail.

So I cut the nail off.    It was going to fall or tear off if I didn’t so I didn’t have too much choice in the matter.    Are you prepared for the picture?   Here it comes.  It’s not a happy toe, but it’s not as bad as it looks:

The nail bed is red and has done some bleeding, but it’s not infected.   So don’t worry, it’s all right—It’s just raw and freshly exposed.   I’ve been keeping it bandaged, but it needs to air out from time to time (usually overnight).   Does it hurt?  Well, yes, but not as much as you might think from looking at that raw, red picture.   I have several weeks before I need to be toe-ready to run two marathons.    Hopefully it will be happier looking by then.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son’s main teacher has changed and the new teacher is making a big difference for my son.   He has continued to become a kinder, gentler, more positive person since the change and we’ve been very pleased with his progress with the new teacher.   Even our music therapist today said he was a totally different child from what he’s been in past months. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been “scared” recently during the night.   She will come down to our bedroom with an unspecific scared feeling happening.   We will let her get in bed with us and try to talk to her about what happened, but she isn’t able to verbalize it well.   What we’ve found that works is giving her a flashlight.   For some reason this is empowering and fun.   She will take the flashlight and walk herself back to bed, content and calm.

Up and Down

My children were settling down into their beds after reading an interactive braille version of Going on a Bear Hunt when my daughter said, “let’s do our favorite parts”.  I had to think for a minute to figure out what she was talking about before I realized she wanted to do the Up and Down parts of our day.

We don’t always do this—we should, but we’re forgetful.   It’s when we talk about the best and worst parts of our day, or “Up and Down”.    My daughter started and had gotten into her third “Up” part before I said I wanted to share my Up part of the day—and this is the point I want to interrupt the story and go back in time about an hour.

My children aren’t that difficult, but they’re not completely compliant either.   They can dither, delay and be the cause of much adult infuriation when it comes to listening and moving their little bodies to do the thing you just told them (three times) they had to do.    Tonight it was bath-related and I lost my temper with both of them, explaining when I said a thing, I meant a thing.  

Some of this is good because if children realize they can ignore you three times because you never mean what you say until the fourth time, then why bother hurrying up when there’s time before they get in trouble?

I’ll spare you the details, but I got short and straight with both of them more than once during the end of night routine.  My daughter was particularly upset because I wouldn’t play the, “where’s the egg” game with her under the towel as she had run off and not listened when she got out of the tub.    Crying notwithstanding, I wasn’t swayed.   Hair was dried, teeth were brushed and we all three made it upstairs within the story telling window before bed.  

That’s when the Bear Hunt story was read and we moved into the Up and Down discussion.   And here’s the interesting thing—neither of them thought the worst part of the day was me being upset at them.  It was when Madison hit my daughter by accident or when the friends had to go home.   It wasn’t, “when you were being mean to us, mom, and you’re a terrible mom”.   It wasn’t that, even though that was the most recent negative experience they’d had in their days.

I’m not saying I’m happy about getting mad at the children, because I never am.   But I am somewhat relieved it’s not the black mark on their whole day in their minds.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told his Up and Down parts and shortly after that I left to go work in the basement.   My daughter found me downstairs a few minutes later, saying she needed Dolly and could I help.   I told her she knew how to turn on the lights in the closet and she could find Dolly herself and if she needed help, she could ask her brother.   She cried but went back upstairs.  About ten minutes later I went to go check on her to see if she’d found Dolly.   She had, and had asked her brother.   I told him thank you for helping her and he said in a groggy voice, “I was asleep and she woke me up.   That was my second down part of the night…”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Just before I left my children’s bedroom tonight my daughter decided to tell me about her plans for becoming a mother.   She told me: “Mom do you know when I grow up I’m gonna be a mom?   I’m gonna name my little sweeties.  I'm going to have eight. One is going to be Alyssa and one is going to be Goldie. How many more until eight?”

Toenail Update:  I damaged my left big toenail in April during the Rock and Roll marathon.   It’s been slowly growing out ever since (emphasis on ’slowly’).   I’ve had to trim some of it off in the past week because it was starting to, well, dangle.   The part under the nail is not happy.   It has been demonstrating this by bleeding regularly.   I don’t normally have injuries like this and while it’s not particularly painful, I hope the skin toughens up before the two upcoming marathons.

Blue Sky Crying

Sometimes children are upset by things that make simply no rational sense to adults.   These unexpected responses are not understood, but but are almost universally accepted by those of us who have experienced any time around young children.   Let me give today’s example…

My mother sent our two children postcards in the mail.   The children are always excited to get mail and when we told them they had something from Mimi, they were both interested in what she’d sent—only they were busy at the time playing with friends.

Dinner came and went and the postcards sat on the counter but the time wasn’t right to share them so we waited until after the children were dressed for bed and in a more calm mood.    My husband read the card to my daughter, which read: “This is what the sky looks like from our deck.   We hope you can come see us soon.   We miss you, Mimi and Gramps”

My daughter burst into tears.   She was upset, but why?    She was unhappy because the picture of the sunset in the mountains was of a deep, dark red sky just before the sunlight faded.    She didn’t like it.   She complained loudly how the sky should be blue and not red.    She said she wanted to fix it and where was a blue marker—the kind we used on the calendar that didn’t come off (Sharpie).

I got her the marker and she went to work “fixing” the post card.   Here’s her corrected version:

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Career Aspirations Update:  My daughter asked me in the car this morning, “Mommy, what will you be when you grow up?”  I explained I was already grown up, and I was a teacher from time to time.   My son said, “I think she’s talking about when you’re going to be a grandpa.”   My daughter jumped in, saying, “no, she’s going to be a nana.”

Substitute Teacher Training

Tomorrow is the substitute teacher training class for potential substitutes at our school.   I have been looking forward to this class, talking about this class and mostly saying it isn’t coming fast enough.    From last year there weren’t many substitutes that were willing to remain on the sub list for the school and this has posed a problem up until now.

For the first four weeks of school there have been needs for teachers to take sick children to the doctor, go to an appointment themselves, be out for being ill or take planned vacations.   These teachers needed coverage for their classrooms and the available substitutes compromised a thin list.  

The number of substitute requests I’ve turned down so far this year has been far too many, and by that I mean we need more substitutes.   We had a fever going around—that both of my children caught—which put many of our teachers out at once.  I couldn’t help as I was home with two sick children myself.

So tomorrow we have nineteen people attending the substitute training class, myself included.   I’ve been talking up the role of substitute because I think it’s one of the best ways to understand what happens in the classroom, even if you’ll likely not be in your child’s class.  

Hopefully we’ll have a “deeper bench” of subs after tomorrow’s class.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband went to the Halloween store with my son today.  My son loves all the costumes but doesn’t like to be scared overly much.   When dad would put on a scary mask he would like it but then he would change his mind, saying, “take it off, dad.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been coming downstairs at night recently.   She told me two days ago she didn’t think her bed was comfortable.   She has made several comments about not liking her bed lately.   She didn’t have a mattress pad and her mattress was rather uncomfortable feeling to me being a sheet over a plastic mattress protector.   Today we added a comfortable mattress pad.   Tomorrow she’s going to put on a new comforter and sheets she selected.   We’re hoping she’ll be happy to be in her bed after the changes.

Going Downhill

I think it’s been three days in a row now that this blog has been a bit of a downer.  I’m not depressed, but sometimes there just isn’t good news to report.   But before I go in that direction, let me tell you about the children yesterday…

It was dinner time but you wouldn’t have known it was because the children were out in the front yard and road with their friends.   My son was on the scooter going very, very fast with Whitaker, his neighbor.    They would go so fast the adults would cringe and then at the last minute they’d press the brake on the back wheel and stop smoothly and quickly.

My daughter was on—guess what—her tricycle.   She had to be talked into wearing shoes because she likes to stop abruptly, sometimes with her shoes.    We got them inside for dinner and bath eventually, but they do love playing outside on things that move fast.

Okay, so to the downer part.   My daughter has been having more difficulty seeing colors lately.   I’m not jumping to conclusions on this mostly because I’m a skeptic.   I’ve been wanting her vision to be better, okay, not that bad, improving, etc.  Basically anything other than getting worse, but in this case, I’m noticing her having difficulty discerning colors she didn’t have some months ago.

I saw her vision impairment teacher today and we both happened to mention it.   She said she’s noticed a change in her vision since June at the end of last school year.    The change is most likely due to the cataract in her left eye.    It unfortunately means things are going to get worse until it’s removed, which will then cause the color clarity to be fixed, but we’ll have to get her corrective lenses for her eye so she can see somewhat like she did with her natural lens.

So for now, until November when her next EUA is, we hold on and hope things don’t get too much worse in the meantime.

The Big Boy Update:  My son brought home more drawing work today.   He’s had a change of teachers in his classroom and has been responding very well to the new teacher.   He came home with drawings of Oklahoma, Michigan and Virginia yesterday and he had some Metal Inset work today he was fairly proud of.   We very much like his new teacher.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter brought some pin punching work today.   She told me all about the “poinking” she did through the paper with the poinker (sharp point on a wood stick).  I asked her what she put the paper on when she did the punching work and she kept saying she punched the paper.   But what was under the paper? Ohhhh…she said after a few more times of me asking.   There is a felt pad we punch through the paper into.

I’m Not That Sore Update:  Twenty-seven miles and I expected to be pretty sore and tired today.   I’m pretty much okay though.  A bit sore, but not bad.   Hopefully that means I’ll make it through the upcoming marathons.

So Many Eyes

I think I whined last night about not having a blog post topic I wanted to write about.   Some days that’s true.  I have a list of topics on my mind, but some are more “heavy” than others and I have to be in the right frame of mind to write about them.  I’ve had this particular post topic on my list for a long time but haven’t been able to write about it yet.

Eyes.   They’re everywhere.   They are all over television all the time.   They’re in advertisements.   If there’s not a close up picture of an eye, there will be talk about “seeing <something> clearly”.   Vision, in all its important forms, is everywhere.   It is just that important.   And I hate it.

I look at those eyes in the television ads.  I look at the cover of the National Geographic magazine that came last month and I see a beautiful iris and a functioning eye.    My daughter’s eyes used to be beautiful.   They used to be blue and she used to be able to look around and see things.  

Now her eyes are grey from the underlay of the iris folding over during the original injury period.   Her irises don’t function normally and they don’t look round.    Her right eye has almost no iris visible and her left eye looks more like a blob than an iris.    If they looked bad but could see, I think I wouldn’t care about all the actors on television.    Even older people have eyes that might not look so attractive, might not be piercing in color, but they work.  

Eyes are everywhere.   I never paid attention to all the eyes.   I don’t care about any of those eyes, I wish we could get a little improvement with the two eyes I do care about.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is feeling more confident lately (I think).   He has been doing kind things and nice gestures on his own.   On the way home from a birthday party yesterday he said from the back seat, “mom, I’ll share this piece of candy with you.”  I told him thank you but I was driving and couldn’t get a piece right then.   He wasn’t deterred, saying, “I’ll save it for you until we get home and you can have it then.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter loves “Special Time”.   She asked the other day if she and I could have special time at the end of the night in the bed.   She wanted me to spend the fifteen minutes in her bed after the lights were turned out and the story was over.   She and I whispered and had a good time talking in the dark.    I gave her a big hug at the end and told her thank you for the special time together.

Marathon Run:  We ran twenty-seven miles today in preparation for the New York and Las Vegas marathons.   We were shooting for 26.2 but there was some overage distance before we got home.   It wasn’t a hard run, but it was a long one.   We really need to work on our pacing to drop some time off.

It’s Not Budging

I thought I had something to write about tonight but on review of my blog post topics list I find nothing new or even interesting.   For some reason I thought I had one of those, “that would make a good blog post, I’d better write it down” moments earlier today but apparently not.   When this happens I usually sit here for a few minutes, reviewing the blog post topics I have on my list that I’ve been avoiding writing about because they’ll be long posts, their time may not yet be right or I’m just not in the mood.   That’s tonight—I’m sitting here, looking at the topics list not really knowing what to write about.  

I have another option though.   I can look at the list of topics for my children’s blog sections and make it into the main blog post.    That’s what I’m doing tonight.  

My daughter had one of those days where she said far too many cute, funny or memorable things.   There was fifteen minute period I had with her outside, her in a frilly dress trying to drive the tricycle on the grass.    She is much too big for this tricycle, given to us by our friends John and Joan, but she persists in riding it around the house.

I hid it in the attic one time but she found it and managed to carry it down two flights of stairs to the main floor.    So today when she said she wanted to take it outside and could I hold the front door open for her so she could carry it out, I wasn’t surprised when she said, “mom, I can carry it down the steps myself.”   I told her I knew she could carry it all over the place.  

She went out on the road but when she realized I was next door looking at some tie dying laying out to dry.   She pedaled up their sloped driveway and when she couldn’t pedal any more, she got off and picked up the tricycle, carrying it up the remainder of the way.

She looked at the drying, colorful shirts with me.  I told her I was going back home.   She decided instead of going on the paved surfaces she wanted to go with me, through the tall grass, pedaling the tricycle.  

It was tough going.   She asked for a push.   She pedaled so hard the front wheel spun.   She didn’t get angry at all, but after the third time getting stuck she sighed and said, “it’s not budging.”   Then, she got off, picked up the tricycle and carried it the rest of the way to the sidewalk.    She got back on and happily pedaled off, knees almost hitting the handlebars.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted spaghetti with the sauce only in the middle of his bowl tonight at the restaurant.   I think he wanted to see some untouched noodles on the side.   He was disappointed to see sauce over all the noodles when his meal arrived, but he managed without getting upset.   Then he proceeded to put more spaghetti in his mouth than I’ve seen him eat in a long time.   He managed himself very well at dinner, wiping his mouth and hands on his napkin and being polite. I was quite proud of him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been known to like salad.   At dinner tonight Nana shared her salad with my daughter and Papa.   There was some silent eating for some time, punctuated with crunching of croutons from my daughter’s direction.   As everyone was finishing their salads my daughter looked up and said, “could I have some more lettuce?”  Fortunately there was enough for her to eat until her meal arrived a few minutes later.

The Gas Shortage We Didn’t Notice

Okay, the title of this post is untrue, because we did notice there was a gasoline trunk line rupture, we were aware there was dramatically less gasoline available in the southeastern United States and we did know people were going a little over the top worrying about what they’d do with only three-quarters of a full tank of gas and four days before there would be more to purchase.

People were not acting completely rational from some of the stories I heard.   Some people do need to drive long distances and need the fuel.  Others only get gas once per week or less given their commute but since it was a potentially scarce commodity, there was a lot of queueing up at gas stations to make sure you had as much gas as your vehicle could hold.

I don’t pay attention to the news, or as I like to call it, the “Negative News” on account of the large proportion that simply isn’t positive or happy.  My husband keeps me apprised of things and for the most part I stay a happier individual because of all the sad, bad or horrible things I never know about.

Back to the gas though—my husband told me a few days in and we realized we didn’t have to worry about it at all.   We didn’t have to rely on one electric car in case gas ran out, because we had two electric cars.    If we had had gasoline cars, during this particular shortage I think we would have been fine as we drive low milage in general and could have just waited to refuel until the situation was over.

Still, about those electric cars.   It was nice not to have to worry.   But, we’re not immune.   What if it had been a power outage for some time?   If it was in the winter during a snow storm we’d be fine because we wouldn’t be driving in a storm anyway.  If it was in clement weather, well, who knows what would happen on our end.  

We can charge the cars from a regular wall outlet powered by our solar panels, so I suppose we could get enough charge over several days to fully charge the cars back up, but we might not have to worry about that anyway because by then the zombie army would have made it to our city and we’d have other issues to contend with.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has gotten a little jealous my daughter has two special teachers, Ms. Jane and Ms. Raffaella, who visit her.   He wanted to know when he would get to have them come to his classroom.    How do you explain to a child the last thing they want is to need to have a vision impairment teacher need to work with you?    Instead, I reminded him about Bethany, his Occupational Therapist for handwriting (which is getting better) who came to visit him and was his special friend.   He likes Bethany.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is very honest—or at least I thought she was.   I asked her the other day if dad had done her drops.   She said he had.   I asked her, “are you sure?  What would daddy say if I asked him?”   She sighed and said, “okay, no.”

And the Question Is…

I was in a class today.   We were learning policies and expectations and all sorts of things you might need to know.   The person giving the class did a lot of talking and explaining.   From time to time someone would raise their hand and she would stop to listen to their question.  

During the class there were multiple people asking questions and I started taking notes after a while because I suppose it was interesting to me.   Instead of asking, “what should we do if we think the child has a fever?” the question asker would say, “my question is: what should we do if we think the child has a fever?”

I heard, “so, I have a question, <asks question>” and, “so, quick question <asks question>” the latter of which was never “quick”.  

I wondered if I did the same thing when I asked a question.   I’m a big participator, question asker, involved student in things like these.   But I was also a corporate instructor for ten years and I am neither shy nor unsure when I ask a question.  

Maybe it was because much of the questions asking was being done by young ladies, eager to learn but possible anxious about how much they didn’t know.    I’m not sure, but I’m glad they were asking questions.   We all found out a lot of good information.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son could well sleep in his new halloween costume.   He’s very happy about it.   Tonight we told him he had to take it off to eat.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been coming downstairs multiple times each night.   I talked to her before she went to sleep last night saying she didn’t need to come downstairs unless there was a reason to, but if she had a reason, she could come down and tell us.    Later in the night she came down, climbed in the bed and said to me, “I don’t know what to say.”

Paying the Bills

I don’t like being late for a payment on a bill.   Some bills require late or delayed payment, such as medical bills which may not have been fully resolved with the insurance company.   Other bills, like a credit card bill are going to happily sit there, not particularly upset if you don’t pay it for some time because they make more money if you don’t pay or pay very little.

Credit card bill payments came up the other night with my best friend and we discovered we have the same odd behavior about how we pay them.   We both are known to make more than one payment on to the credit card in a month.  I don’t want to pay past the due date because I don’t want interest or fees applied.    But sometimes I might pay it more than once per month—and that part is perhaps the uncommon thing.

There are multiple ways you can have regular, recurring payments made to a credit card, but I just go in from time to time, checking the balance and making a payment.   If there has been a large purchase like a new computer or airfare, a few days later might make an early payment.  

My friend has some of her motivation in the points she gets from using the credit card.   I don’t pay much attention to the points or rewards or whatever it is I get from using the card.   I’ll have to have my husband check if we can “get anything good” sometime.    I just like knowing things borrowed have been paid for.   Perhaps that’s it, it’s the not liking owing money to another entity.   Maybe that’s why paying the bill feels like a good thing to me.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wants to get a Lego character for the video game we let him play on the weekends.   He told us several times at dinner how he wanted to get, “Barp Simpson” and could it be put on his wish list?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  It was raining this morning.   My daughter asked me, “how do mud slides get out of the way of houses since they don’t turn so well?”

Some Days Are Downers

I’ve mentioned before that when picking the title for this blog I almost went with, “Nothing to Complain About” so I would have a daily reminder to be positive and not use this blog as an avenue for complaints or negative thoughts.    Still though, some days it’s hard to be positive.

We’ve been trying to, “travel in hope” with my daughter’s vision but as of this point we haven’t seen really any vision improvement from her initial loss last year at this time.   She is more functional due to her acclimation and adaption to what she can see, but there’s no real improvement.

Will she need to read braille and use a walking cane if she doesn’t get some sight back?  Yes.   Will she need to go to a special school (a half-hour drive away) for what might be the best education/attention she can get starting next year?  Possibly, maybe even probably.  

It’s depressing.   I’m a bit depressed about it.   I typically manage fine but sometimes I spend time facing the facts of her situation and it’s hard.   This is called, “coping” which is important and I don’t try to avoid thinking about her future; but I don’t try to wallow in it either.  

Her right eye just isn’t seeing much of anything at all.   That leaves the left eye in not a good state and doctors who are hesitant to act on the eye in case it makes things worse.   I have a husband who’s afraid anything done to the left eye could be disastrous or make things worse and I don’t know that I disagree with him.

I just want her to see a little bit better.   She can’t see or recognize one-inch letters right now and she’s not able to discern reasonably large shapes in front of her like a heart or star.    This doesn’t bode well for improved vision.

So right now, I’m down.   I’ll probably be fine tomorrow, but some days are hard when you’re dealing with a reality you don’t like.

The Big Boy Update:  On to happier things—my son’s halloween costume came in today.  He selected it from a catalog and it looks great on him.   Here he is posing as the NinjaGo character, Lloyd:

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I’ve been doing my daughter’s hair one way for a while: pulling back the front into a little elastic band on the right side.   This bundle of hair seemed to get in the way a lot when she leaned over, even though it kept the hair out of her face.   Recently I decided to try doing the same thing on both sides with a part down the middle.   It looks nice on her and her hair doesn’t get in the way nearly as much.    I think she likes it better too.

Plastic Plates

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Plate Update:

I hate plastic cups and plates.  It’s not so much the plates and cups but the material, which doesn’t dry well in the dishwasher.   We can run the dishwasher with the full dry cycle and they get more dry—aside from what resides in the wells where water sits stagnant—but they don’t get completely dry.   That cycle takes a lot more energy and time and doesn’t get everything dry even so, so we’ve abandoned it as a reasonable or useful option.

We instead use the quick wash, short, cycle which gets things clean but not dry, knowing we’ll need to let the dishes dry for some time with the dishwasher open before we put the dishes away.  Or we can hand dry everything, which neither my husband nor I prefer.  

At some point we’ll move away from plastic plates and cups but I didn’t think it would be soon, that is until this morning when my daughter asked for a, “big girl plate” for breakfast.    I was all about this as an idea and had her plate already served to her when my son said from upstairs, “and it would have to be a ‘big boy plate for me, mom’”.   I quickly moved his breakfast from the plastic plate I had prepared onto an adult plate and told him he had a, “big boy plate waiting for him when he got downstairs.”

The Yogurt Reduction

I do not want “Low Fat Yogurt” for my children.   Fat removal is typically replaced with various forms of sugars, simply so the label can have that “low fat” claim.   My children don’t need more sugar (trust me, they get enough of it already).

I had thought we were taking a turn away from the low fat craze based on documentaries I’ve seen and articles I’ve read, but apparently the yogurt industry isn’t changing directions because there are even less “regular” yogurt options now than there were not that long ago.

The good news is the few basic flavors my children like (peach, strawberry, vanilla, blueberry, black cherry) are still available in the regular variety.   There are two little people in this house who are quite fond of yogurt.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is going to have a new teacher in his class tomorrow.   I told him about it tonight, thinking he would be excited since he knows and really likes this other teacher.   His response?  “But she doesn’t have smooth skin.  I’m shy at people who don’t have smooth skin.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter has a new favorite song.  She found it herself and I agree with her, it’s a good song.   She asked Alexa to, “play Moonrise”.   Alexa offered Moonrise by Brian Crane.   We’ve been listening to it a lot—very calm and soothing.

Not as Far as We Wanted:  This weekend was our twenty-four mile run, but schedules are schedules and with children, work and activities, there was just no way we were getting in twenty-four unless we started running at four-thirty in the morning—which neither of us wanted to do.   So we got in eleven miles, which seemed like a short run after our last several weeks.

Gone!

I had some work I’d committed to doing for my children’s school to get completed.   With the fevers and school days being missed and the other commitments I had this past week I wasn’t able to get to it until today.  It was what I’d call, “fun” work because it was moving lots of data around across multiple spreadsheets.

Fun, you might be asking?  I can’t explain it, but it’s like putting things into order from disarray.  I like working in spreadsheets.  There was raw data I needed to analyze for our annual fund drive, sorting families into buckets of past contribution or perhaps into hopeful future contribution.   It was annoying, it was tedious and yet it was somehow satisfying.

I worked for I suppose three hours today and had everything finally completed.   I made a backup of the spreadsheet to a second file and was about to send an email as I closed out the reference spreadsheets and then the main and backup files.   I got some strange prompt about “active page” and did I want to save it.  I said yes and cleared my desktop.  

As I was getting ready to send the email I opened the main file again to confirm all eleven of my “bucket” sheets were there and I found it was all gone.   The only thing remaining was the first sheet which contained my notes.   Gone.   All of it.   I was confused, but not worried because there was a recovery option, only the recovery option was greyed out.   What had happened?

Then I discovered I’d been working in .csv files the entire time.   The database exported the raw data into “Comma Separated Value” (CSV) data instead of Excel files.   These .csv weren’t capable of storing more than one page and since I didn’t convert the files when I agreed to “save the active sheet” I was agreeing to throw away all the other data.

Three hours of work was well and truly gone.  I’m not sure how I felt because at this point there are so many protections for not losing data I haven’t lost work in a long, long time.   I went out on the deck and made a phone call to someone who had message me.   I complained to her.   I saw my neighbor and I told my sad story to her.   They were both sympathetic.

Then, I started all over.   A small portion of what I’d done was still in one of the other files but I had to do most of it over again.   I finished a short while ago, making backup after backup and checking to make sure I was storing my work as I went.   It wasn’t as fun the second time, but the data is now all bucketed and organized and it’s still nice to see everything organized in a single spreadsheet.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Bicycle News:  My children have balance bikes, which they love.   They also have bicycles without training wheels they are wary of, but would like to learn how to ride.   This evening we spent some time with them both and they did quite well.   They can ride the bicycles themselves, but they still need some guidance.   I think with just a few more sessions/lessons, they’ll forget the balance bikes and want to ride their real bicycles going forward.

Sleevless

This morning I had a doctor’s appointment.  I had to do the getting undressed thing at the beginning and then get dressed again at the end.   I was out by 9:00AM and had multiple errands during the morning.  

I got my daughter at 12:00 for an off-site Orientation and Mobility session at the local children’s museum.   We met two other visually impaired children and their parents as well as her Orientation and Mobility teacher.   We had a very nice two-and-a-half hours there, doing a lot of comparative talking between parents.

I got in the car on the way home and realized something was wrong with my shirt.  It’s short-sleeved, but the shoulders are open.   It’s sort of a tank-top, off the shoulder, short-sleeved kind of look that’s popular.   I’ve never had one of these shirts before and had just gotten it earlier this week.  

What I realized was I had hurriedly put my shirt back on and had put my right arm through the “shoulder hole” instead of the arm hole, leaving the short sleeved part dangling beneath my armpit.

Smooth.   Suave.   Cool.   That’s me.   I asked my husband why he didn’t tell me in all that time we were together at the museum.   He said, “is that a new shirt?”

The Big Boy Update:  My son got in more trouble than he’s possibly ever been in today.   He was having a hard time.  It’s hard to tell why he gets worked up sometimes, but when it happens, he struggles.   I was in my singing lesson and came out to hear he was asleep, something he only does when he has to decompress from a very bad incident.  He had gotten a knife from the kitchen block and had come into the living room where my husband and daughter were with it—in anger.   Was he going to use it?  No.  But where did he get the idea knives were used for anything other than preparing food?  I know we’ve never used our knives in any other way.   My husband took the knife and my son has hopefully been given enough dose of fear from the incident he won’t even think about it in the future.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I were waiting for her new friends to arrive at the museum today.  She was playing with large foam blocks, having fun piling them on top of me.   I asked her if I could have a hug.   She looked at me and said, “um, there are no hugs today.”

Mutual Frazzlement

I don’t know what it was about today that had me on edge.   I think I could tell you twelve different, not very interesting stories about the word, “mommy” being repeated.   There was a lack of listening when I said, “I will help you in five minutes when I finish this.”   There was moaning and crying because no one wanted water for lunch, the water wasn’t the right temperature or wasn’t in the ideal cup.

None of the stories in and of themselves warrant me losing cool.   It was the culmination of event after event, crying for no reason after crying for no (discernible) reason, the need for help even though no help was needed and the overall lack of more than five minutes of time at a stretch to try and get some work done I’d committed to doing.

So I yelled at my children.   I beg-yelled.   I begged them to please try and help me out because I was trying to work and yes, I know my daughter needed help with random app X to find the green sprinkles for the cupcake and I did understand how my son wanted to show me Cool Move #7 in his app, but could they give me a little break and show me these things later or try another app?

My best friend texted me and asked if I had time to talk over lunch.  When my husband got home I drove to her office and we went out for lunch.   Guess what?  She said she was so frazzled from her children this morning that she slammed the refrigerator and almost hoped it would break she was so mad.  

Her stories mirror mine in individual minor-ness, but they built up and caused her to snap.   She and I sat on a bench, drinking smoothies, talking about how we hated it every time we yelled at our children.  How we knew what to say, the words to use, the positive methods to employ, but it didn’t always work and at a point—after trying several different options for a positive result—we just lose it.

It bothers me because I think there has to be a, “right way” or just a, “better way”.   We came up with some suggestions for each other’s children/situations and will be back at it again tomorrow, trying to be the mothers we want to be.  

The Tiny Girl Big Boy Breakfast Story:  My daughter came downstairs early and chanted, “daddy, daddy, daddy” on our bed.  My husband told her he would get up in ten minutes to get her breakfast and to please stop asking.   He lost his temper and put her in the living room, shutting our door, when she didn’t stop.   She cried loudly.  She wailed.   She started chanting, “mommy, mommy, mommy” through the closed door.   I went out and told her as long as she was making noise, neither of us would make her breakfast.   We had heard her and saying our names wasn’t helping.    She cried more, she yelled some.   Suddenly, my son was downstairs and in a calm, quiet voice said, “I’ll help you get breakfast.   You said you wanted cereal?”   She sniffled, said yes, and went off with him to the kitchen.   He offered her a drink and helped make her entire breakfast.   Can I just say I was so proud of him?

I Have a Whim That Needs Catering To

For most of the day today unless my two sick children weren’t sleeping, I think my children wanted their every whim catered to.    “MOM!” was the most repeated word in the house today, by far.   It was spoken in many different tones of voice from whispery soft to an angry shout.   Usually the volume got louder and the tone more harsh when I didn’t respond immediately, dash forth and see what I could do to help.

I say this in relative sarcasm—I have five- and four-year-old children who were feeling crummy and needed help.   But they weren’t sporting dangerously high fevers today, they just weren’t feeling great.  My daughter had a tiny fever for some of the day.   My son wasn’t interested in resting as much as his sister.   He was more interested in his iPad which he hasn’t seen in a while since school has started.

My son would call me over from working at the computer to the couch where he was sitting.   I’d ask him what he needed.   He was sitting up, arm right beside the end table but he wanted me to help him have a sip of his lemonade.    I helped (multiple times) but had to laugh because the whole thing reminded me of this picture I saw years ago:

Last night was fairly good for both children.  Several times though, multiple times my daughter yelled for us at the top of her voice to come upstairs.    We ran up, worried she’d vomited or worse to find out she wanted a sip of water or, “the cooler blanket instead of this hot blanket”.

So good news, neither of my children are that sick and are making sure to take advantage of all the special treatment they can (my daughter even talked me into a popsicle for lunch).   Tomorrow they’ll be home again because they can’t go to school as they had had fevers for some part of the day today.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said on the way to school yesterday: “treat other people the way you want to be treated.”   I told him I thought that was a great example of the grace and courtesy I knew he practiced in his class at school.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves tactile things (as her vision is less-functional).   She’s been playing with the kinetic sand recently, creating some interesting things.    She also made some great hairy people with the play doh set over the weekend.   Remember how you would squeeze the play doh out of the head of the character and he’d grow spaghetti hair on top?    That’s her favorite.

It’s A Little Early For A Bug

Yesterday my daughter came home from Madison’s house, saying Madison had gotten angry at her.   About twenty minutes later I got a text from Madison’s mother saying she was sorry and just realized Madison had a fever, which explained why she’d been snappy earlier.  She said hopefully we didn’t catch it—whatever “it” was.

Last night at three-ish in the morning my daughter came downstairs fresh from some nightmare about a bunny rabbit and a monster.   Details were sketchy and after a bit I took her back upstairs.   She was fine.   Then, at 6:45AM she had a fever.   It got worse during the day and for the first time in a long time that I can remember, she stayed in bed all day.

My son was fine all day and then at 4:30PM caught it too.   They have fevers and feel terrible.   My daughter just vomited after complaining about a n uncomfortable stomach for hours and the proceeded to eat a full meal.

They both just asked to go to bed, asking what to do if they felt like they were going to throw up (what considerate children we have).   I suspect it’s going to be a long night.  It seems a little early in the school year for such an intense bug.

The Big Boy Update:  My son felt so bad today after school he didn’t even want to eat his favorite dinner, which must mean he feels very bad indeed.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to spend most of the day without a shirt on, saying that made her feel better.   While my son can watch television, she can only do so via her iPad, what with the closeness she needs to see things.   She couldn’t hold the iPad she was so tired.   We brought down her stand in the hopes she’ll want to watch something on it tomorrow.   The most worrisome thing is she was complaining about her vision, saying she couldn’t see and needed her glasses.   She was dehydrated and squinting, which is hopefully what the main issue is.   We made sure to give her extra doses of the steroid drops, which help with inflammation, because we just don’t need more eye damage at this point.

Something is Better Than Nothing:  We walked two-and-a-half miles today in the hot end-of-summer sun and did a lot of talking during what was a long time for a short distance travelled in comparison to the running we normally have done.

Sushi Husband

For those family members reading this, prepare to be astounded—my husband ate sushi tonight.   It wasn’t his first time either.   We went to our favorite sushi and Thai restaurant, where he’s been ordering Thai food for years and not only did he order sushi, he tried some of my rolls.  

When I first knew him, he didn’t eat too many different ethnic cuisines.  Or rather, as my children would say, “he didn’t prefer” other cuisines.   Personally the cuisines I find most boring are “American” and “backyard grilling”—I’d rather eat just about anything else.  Unusual, uncommon or something I haven’t tried before and you’ve got my interest without even telling me where.

So tonight when he asked me if he could have the little “a la carte” paper on which you mark which types of sushi you want to order so he could add to the list, my heart swelled with pride.   He’s been branching out into new things for years now.    Go dad.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a challenging first two weeks at school from an adjustment perspective.  I could tell when he got home because he’d dropped back into his low self-esteem, high anxiety behavior which looks outwardly like he’s being a jerk.   Today he was calm, gracious and courteous with his sister and friends.   He was doing collaborative play with his sister and getting along well.   I’m hoping he’s settled back into the routine of school.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the way to dinner my daughter asked if we could have a lemonade stand (or “len-na-made” as she insists on pronouncing it.)   She thought an orange juice stand might be nice on second thought.   Then, she wanted to know if a water stand would be good?   What about an ice truck stand?  Then, after a period of silence she said, “I know, we could have a singing stand!”

Your Current Reality

Last night was the back to school social at our children’s school.   It’s always a good time, talking to other parents, teachers and friends about children, school and what happened over the summer.   We stayed to the end and left after cleanup was well underway, we were having so much fun talking with friends.

I was talking with one father who has three children.  We’ve become reasonably close since starting at the school.   He asked how my daughter’s eyes were and I gave him an update.   I asked how his children were doing and he said to me, “Teà has something going on with her eyes that’s worrying us.”   Then he looked sheepish and said, “I feel bad bringing it up given what you’re going through.”

I told him to not apologize.   We’ve all adapted to our current realities.   They have a child with Down Syndrome who is frequently hospitalized.   His twin daughter has febrile seizures that have been very scary to them.   They have a lot going on in their family to deal with—but that’s their current reality.    Our current reality is a child with a significant vision impairment.  

What’s new is Tea’s eyes doing unexpected jagged, irregular movements.   It’s not nystagmus and they’re worried it’s something neurological.   They’re scared.   It’s new and it’s a big unknown.  

I hope Teà is all right.   They have a lot going on in their current reality and they don’t need an additional thing to deal with.

As for our reality, we are traveling in hope that our daughter will have improved vision in the future.  But for now, we are dealing with the reality we have as best we can and with lots of love.

The Big Boy Update:  My son can eat a chicken drumstick clean.  He likes meat, but when he has an opportunity to, “eat like a caveman” it really makes him happy.   If only he loved to wipe his hands on his napkin instead of his shirt…

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter did not want to get dressed for school the other day.   She was lying on our bed complaining loudly.   Finally she said, “how about no pants, no shirt and lots of socks?”  

Wow I’m Tired: Today we ran twenty-two miles.  It was hot, it was humid and it was sunny.   We were in partial shade in the park but I still got a good bit of sun.   We stopped regularly for lots and lots of water until we felt like we were sloshing inside.   Even so, when I got home I’d still lost four pounds in water weight.  

The Penny Present

My children got a package in the mail yesterday from the parents of my childhood best friend.   Jenny, my very first best friend, and I were inseparable for the first years of our lives.   Her family needed to move for work when I was ten, but we remained close, even though we didn’t see each other that often.   Jenny will always have a special place in my heart as there is nothing quite like a first best friend.   But back to the package in the mail…

My mother had told me something was coming for the children, she didn’t know what, but to be sure, any present is an exciting thing to a child.   My children tore open the box (quite literally) and my son immediately found the Lego box, claiming it was for him.   Right there he opened it up and began putting the Spiderman set together he was so happy.    My daughter complained loudly, “where is my present?”

I told her to look further into the box and out she pulled the cutest little panda purse.   She made a happy noise and hugged the purse.   I told her to see if there was anything inside.   While she unzipped the package I found a card in the box and started to read.   About this time I heard a disappointed cry from my daughter because she had found a piece of tissue paper in the panda purse.

I could tell the purse had weight to it so I told her to keep looking.  She reached in and had to tug and pull and eventually got out a ziplock bag crammed full of pennies.    I had been reading the card and told her Joan and John knew how much she loved to throw pennies in the fountains in Detroit and they wanted to send her some pennies for her next trip.

You would have thought the bag was made of gold.   She hugged the bag, squeezed the bag and did this little gleeful happy dance that I wasn’t fast enough to get recorded because my phone was in the next room.   Suffice it to say, she was thrilled with the pennies.

A little while later I found my daughter and two of her friends with the largest tupperware container we had, brimming with water.   The three-year-old was trying to carry it without dropping it to, well, I don’t know where, because I stopped them.   When I asked what they were doing they told me they were making a wishing well for the pennies.  

“Oh”, I said.   “What a great idea.  Why don’t you take it onto the deck?”   They did and they managed to put every single penny into that “wishing well”.   I don’t know what they wished for, but with that number of pennies, some of their wishes are bound to come true.

My daughter is looking forward to taking her panda purse and her cache of pennies to Detroit when she goes back in November.   What a fun and unexpected present in the mail from parents of my best friend from childhood.   Thank you, Joan and John.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter went to a tie dye event at school today.  My daughter got some of the dyes on her, but my son did a much more thorough job of coloring himself.   We decided to wait until the bath tonight to see what color the water will turn when they get in.   My son wanted to know if he could put his crocs in as well, because they had ink on them too, he told me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter not only enjoyed throwing the pennies into the container (wishing well), she liked cleaning them too.   She helped dry them by spreading them out and patting them with a cloth.   They’re now back in her panda purse, awaiting the fountains in Detroit—or the next time she needs to do some wishing here at the house.

In Just A Minute…

I have gotten frustrated at what I seem to hear frequently with children.   Say something unpleasant is happening like cleaning and bandaging a bad knee scrape and the words, “I’ll be done in just a minute” are used  The message is genuine, but the fact that that same “just a minute” message might be said again, and again, and again, can cause a  child to distrust the message overall.

My daughter had a hard time yesterday at the dentist and we all (including our dentist) wanted the procedure over as quickly as possible.   Was it longer because my daughter was upset, crying, combative and resistive a good portion of the time?   Yes, it was significantly longer.    But the message she heard I don’t know, at least ten times was, “in one more minute, I’ll be done”.  Done, yes, but only that step in the filling process.  

A while back I became more aware of these, “kind lies” we as adults tell to children because of something my daughter said.   She said, “they always say it won’t hurt, but it always does.”  

I made a mistake yesterday (I think) by not preparing my daughter for what was going to happen at the dentist.   She was fine until the needle.  I think I should have warned her about the overall filling process at a high-level such as, “it will hurt for just a bit and then your mouth will go numb and they will work on your tooth to make it  better.”    I think she would have understood and hopefully been able to go through the procedure more calmly.

I try to not tell those “kind lies” to my children.   I hear other parents saying things over and over such as, “we’re almost there” when there is still a significant duration to drive in the car.   Or maybe there is one more mile to run, which isn’t “almost there” by any stretch, and yet it gets thrown around as a phrase every time says they’re tired of running.

In the end, parents are all trying to help, trying to comfort and trying to calm a child who is having a hard time about something.   My way may not be any better, but it makes more sense to me.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Tree Conversation:  My son was mad the other morning going to school.   Things just weren’t going his way and he had to get it out somehow.   He suddenly burst out, “I hate trees.   I want to cut all the trees down” and then he made a grumping sound.    The next day my daughter and I were driving in the car after school.   She said, “look at those beautiful trees.”   I was happy she could see the trees, although I’m fairly certain they’re just a green blob to her.   Then she said, “My brother wanted to cut them all down yesterday.”   She and I decided it was best to keep the beautiful trees as they were.

Toothgate

This is like Watergate, only Toothgate involves a single child, just one tooth and a very bad dental experience.

The experience wasn’t the fault of the dentist—she’s our neighbor, she’s great.   It wasn’t the fault of the staff—they were so composed and positive throughout.    It was really the situation and my daughter’s expectation about what might happen.    Come to think of it, this isn’t like Watergate at all—the name just sounded good so I went with it.

Let me recap the past to start.   My daughter has had a lot of doctor experiences.   They haven’t all been fun.   She has a lot of medical things done to her such as drops daily in both her eyes.    She’s a stoic little girl, but things do get to her and when they do—feisty, fearful terror appears.

My daughter has two lower sub-molars that didn’t form normally on the back half of the teeth.   There is a fold thing and a texture of the enamel component in play from what I understood, all of which led to two cavities in those teeth.    

We crowned the first one a few weeks ago.   She had Nitrous and did okay (emphasis on the okay, meaning she was manageable, but still quite upset).   This tooth was going to be a filling only.   She was find with the mask, breathed in well and was okay with the numbing swab but when the needle hit, she lost it.

I though she would calm down for the procedure itself but she fought us and we had no choice but to hold her down so Dr. Brooke could finish the tooth—she couldn’t leave the tooth in a half-completed state.

My daughter was combative with a metal dam in her mouth and a spreader keeping her jaw open.   She at one point explained it was hurting her lip, which we tried to help, but it didn’t help her state much.    We had to abandon the nitrous early on because you don’t scream and cry from your nose, you do so from your mouth, which meant she was getting no nitrous.  

She’s okay, and wasn’t upset much fifteen minutes after the procedure, but she’s going to see Dhruti in two days because I know she needs to work some of the fear out afterwards.  

Dr. Brooke said it’s common for a child to have a stronger reaction/response the second time they have a procedure.    There are other options involving more sedation, which we will do if she has to have any other dental work.   For now though, the two odd teeth have been addressed.

The Big Boy Update:  There was a discussion at dinner with my parents on who was the strongest.   My son told us, “I’m stronger than my sister because she’s lighter than a chicken.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter didn’t like how her cheek and lip were, “feeling jelly” as she called it.    She and I got a smoothie after the dentist appointment based on Brooke’s suggestion, which I think helped.

OLE

We had an event at school this evening to celebrate the opening of the new Outdoor Learning Environment.  This is the large courtyard area inside our school grounds where the children play (and learn) outside.  

It’s not a playground insofar as it lacks most of the things you’d see on a typical playground.   There are no swings and there aren’t play structures like you’d find in a typical playground.   There is a large sand area, stepping logs, a performance platform, lots and lots of large boulders and stones and even a swail.   There while environment is almost completely devoid of plastic or metal but instead incorporates natural materials into the play elements situated by ground cover and plants.

My children were told we’d be having the opening ceremony today.    We (as well as their teachers) had told them the OLE or Outdoor Learning Environment was going to be available to play on now.   My children wanted to remember the letters, but they didn’t have any frame of reference for why it was O, L and E.  

This is easy, right?  ‘Outdoor’ starts with ‘O’ but ‘outdoor’ starts with an “awh” sound.   How am I going to make that connection?  No matter, ‘Learning’ starts with ‘L’ but again, the first sound is ‘lerr’ and not anything like “el”.   Bother.  “Environment” is no better with ‘E’ and “en” not matching at all either.  

The reason for my difficulty here is in how letters are taught in a Montessori school.   The name for the letters doesn’t match much at all to the actual sounds the letters make when used in words.   Quick, say the alphabet in your head and see how many, if any, of the names match the sounds.

My children do know their letters though.   They know the entire alphabet, easy, snap.    They also know letters have both sounds and names.    Putting everything together with letters, sounds, words, sentences and eventually term papers takes time though, so for now we’re not so worried about technicalities.   It’s far easier to know the ‘l’ sound, the ‘e’ sound and the ‘g’ sound because if you do, you can figure out the letters in the word ‘leg’.

Oh dear, it seems I’ve gotten off track from my original point.   Let me sum up.    I gave up trying to associate the letters O, L and E with the phrase, “Outdoor Learning Environment” and told the kids they could just pronounce it “Ole!” (as in Spanish.)   They liked that option a lot.

The Big Boy Update:  My son, who is typically present-focused, said on the way to Mimi and Gramps house tonight, “I don’t care if I get a present, I just want to give Mimi a big hug.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In the car my daughter asked us, “do my brother and I eat much?”   My husband told her that for their size, they ate a lot of food.   She said, “I want to stay small…no, wait I want to grow up.”   She’s decided to continue eating all the time and growing quickly, it would seem.

Bubble Gum Biting

Some posts are long.   This one will be short.   When I was a child I chewed lots of gum.   I liked bubble gum balls, stick gum, and particularly Hubba Bubba or any other large block of gum that let you blow bubbles.  

I could blow bubbles for hours.   I’m not sure what the constituent components of bubble gum was in the seventies and early eighties, but there was a point at which the gum would break down.    Something chemically transformed—rather suddenly—after an hour or so of chewing and that was that, the gum turned into a gritty, sticky mess.  

Today’s gums are a bit more technologically advanced.   They don’t have the breaking down problem, but they have introduced a new problem—lip biting.  Have I gone mouth clumsy?   It seems every single time I chew gum of any type that I invariably bite right into my mouth—in a rather disastrous way too.   There is blood there is swearing under my breath.  

I don’t know what changed in me since I was a child but apparently my mouth is more clumsy than it used to be.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a rough day today.   He went to his play therapist, who is magical.   He didn’t want to go in a very vocal and violent way—I had to almost drag him to the car.   When he left, he was so happy.   On the way home he said, “I want to go back to Dhruti’s and do it all again.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter was icing cookies with Nana this weekend.   At one point Nana told her to do something (I don’t remember what) and I heard my daughter reply, “okay, your majesty”.    It was too cute, but the real question is, where did she hear that phrase from?

I Ran Again:  Five miles.   This is starting to become a habit…

Finding Dad

My son rarely comes downstairs in the middle of the night.   My daughter comes down more frequently, for a variety of reasons.   It could be the, “I wet my pants” one which involves a change of sheet and new clothes for her, or it could be the, “I’m scared because of <insert thing of the day>”.

My daughter knows just where to find us too.   I’m always on my side of the bed, but dad isn’t always on his.   He falls asleep commonly while watching a movie in the basement.   When he wakes up varies, but when he does he comes up to bed.  

My daughter seems to know if she’s woken up late night or hours later in the early morning.   If it’s still night, she goes straight to the basement to find dad, bypassing me entirely.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a hard day today.   I can’t quite explain it other than to say he was feeling anxious, shy, wanting to control things and wanting to be by himself to play.    Some days are like this with him.   His music therapy teacher told me he curled up in her guitar case, something he’s done before and seems to like to do.    I’m surprised he fits in her guitar case.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me this afternoon, “mom, what was your favorite part of the day?”   We talked about our favorite things that day and then she said, “my down part was when I pinched Madison and said ‘I’m sorry’”.

That Running Thing I Do:  I wasn’t sore from the twenty miles yesterday but after running a quick five miles this afternoon, suddenly my legs have reminded me they’re tired.  I’m running again tomorrow…this marathon training doesn’t let up.

First Week of School

My children started school this past week.   Sometimes it’s a hard transition going from relaxed, lazy summer days which are lightly-scheduled and packed with friends who come over to play at all hours of the day.   Both children enjoyed their summer and in part, didn’t want it to end.

They were also looking forward to starting school again.   We talked to them about the friends they had been missing and how they’d get to see them once school started.   We got their school purple bags ready and talked about their teachers who were waiting to see them on the first day of school.

Monday and Tuesday were staggered, partial days for the children as the teachers took time with old students and new students, giving them an opportunity to meet with smaller groups of children to acclimate them to the classroom and outdoor learning environment.

Wednesday started full days for both children and they seemed to be happy to be going and back into the school routine.   I say, “seemed” because we don’t get a lot of dialog from our children about what they did, who they played with, what the teachers said, what work they chose to do, etc.   They seem to live in the moment and aren’t interested in recounting their day once they’ve come home.

Once home, they picked up right where they left off with neighbor children play time.  The iPads were removed and school day breakfasts were given to allow them to focus on school work.   They didn’t seem to mind the change and adapted overall to the new school year easily and effortlessly.

In the next few weeks we’ll see how much they’re enjoying their classes hopefully with some feedback from their teacher and maybe, if we’re lucky, from our children.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been building things with Plus Plus blocks a lot lately.   They’re small (less than an inch across) and completely open-ended in what you can make with them.   His constructions have become more intricate and complex as well as recognizable.   He will sit for long periods making all sorts of things with them.  He’s always happily calm when he’s working with the Plus Plus.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter says things suddenly sometimes.   Today she came into our room and said, “oh my God, I forgot to do my homework!”   I told her, “oh my God” was an adult phrase, but she could say, “oh my gosh.”   Then I asked her where she heard the phrase, because she’s never had homework at her school.   She didn’t know, she said.

What I Did To Burn Calories Today:  We ran twenty miles today in training for the New York Marathon in November.

Was My Childhood Happy?

Do we have happy childhoods?  This is something that’s come up multiple times recently that I suppose surprised me.  “Of course my childhood was happy”. was my initial reaction to the question. But upon further discussion, I’ve re-evaluated my stance on the default, obligatory response.  To jump to the end, as I know my parents read this blog, I do firmly believe I had a happy childhood.  I also know that’s not everyone’s experience.

The first time this came up was in conversations with my children’s music therapist.   She commented how people remember their childhoods as a happy time, but was it really happy, or was it more carefree?  She remembers times of sadness and angst.  Children don’t always get what they want (frequently).   Teasing and even bullying is common among children and disappointment is frequent.  She contends adults think of their childhood years as lost good times as opposed to a collection of tumultuous emotions they really are.

Did I have every toy I ever wanted?  No, my parents were teachers and while I was never lacking for any need I had, I wasn’t lavished with toys, games and extravagant vacations.  Was I teased?  Certainly—I was never in, “the popular crowd” and while I was okay with the person I was, there still is the need to be accepted by your peers and the hurt feelings when you find out you’re abnormal in the eyes of your classmates simply because you didn’t conform to their notion of normal.  Was I bullied?  I wasn’t.   I never was the victim of a sustained attack from multiple people, something for which I am grateful.

I was one of the nerdy, weird people in school and even though I was on the cheerleading squad, it was because of skill, not popularity.   I wasn’t seen as “cool” by my fellow cheerleaders, but I wasn’t an outcast either.   In college I was comfortable enough with who I was to not be bothered as much by what people thought of me.   I had found my way and a group of friends that matched my interests.

I recently had a conversation with one of my friends and discovered she had a much more difficult childhood than I did.   Upon hearing what happened to her in high school and college my response was one of outrage and an exclamation of, “you were being bullied, that’s terrible!”  Did she have a happy childhood?  I don’t know, I didn’t have a chance to ask, but it seems her time as a youth and adolescent was much more difficult for her and contains more sad memories than happy memories.

I know there is cruelty in the world, children display it all the time.  Young children tell people right to their face exactly what they think about them.   At first they do it out of truthfulness as in, “I don’t want to play with you because you’re no fun.”    When they’re older they do it to feel powerful or because they don’t feel good about themselves, “you’re stupid, you’ll never go to college.”   When we get older, we learn to keep our thoughts to ourselves and more often than not just talk about people behind their backs.   But as a child—nerve ends all over—it always hurts when someone is verbally or physically mean to you.

I hope our children will happy childhoods and as they mature we raise them to respect others so they don’t impact other’s happiness

The Big Boy Update:  My son came upstairs today with a small, red plastic box that was his father’s when he was a boy.   He said he wanted to show me a magic trick.   See, he said, there is no coin in the box.   Then he shut the box he’d been jostling around, clearly giving away the secret compartment, opened it and showed me the now present coin.   He showed his sister, who was duly amazed, even though I don’t think she saw it.   I reminded my son Gramps was a magician and if he wanted to learn more magic tricks, he should ask him the next time Gramps was in town.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   While we were on the playground today my daughter asked me, “Mom, what was your first word?”  I told her I didn’t know, but I could call Mimi and ask.   I got my mother on the phone and found out, “dada” was the first word I said.   My daughter told me that wasn’t a word.   I explained it meant “daddy” but she still insisted that it wasn’t a valid word.   I asked Mimi if she knew the second word I said because apparently my first word didn’t count’

The Side That Isn’t There

My daughter has been overreacting to situations lately.   My husband and I have been trying to figure out how to best handle a situation in which, say my son pushes by his sister to get to the kitchen first.    In these types of situations my daughter will cry like she’s wounded or mortally offended.   Her reaction doesn’t seem to match the level of insult or injury she received.

I talked to Dhruti, Reese’s play therapist, about what we’d been observing and she gave me some great insight and advice on how we can help.   The first thing she told me was that while we think my daughter is overreacting, our perception of the magnitude of the event isn’t the same as hers.

Let’s do a test first: take your right hand and cover up your right eye completely.   Then squint your left eye so you can barely see out the eye.    What you’re seeing right now is probably significant more visual information that she can see.    Now that you’re limited in your vision, invite few boisterous children over and run around your house with them; see if you bump into anyone or anything without even knowing it or they were there.

That’s what’s happening to my daughter.   She has zero peripheral vision on her right side and the rest of her vision is sketchy.  Her right side is a complete blind spot.   So when she gets bumped by her brother or runs into the tricycle she didn’t realized had been moved, her space has been intruded.   Alarms go off in her head.   She wasn’t prepared.   She is in sensory distress from the unexpected contact.   There could also be pain associated with the event.   She feels threatened, violated and upset because she either didn’t know the contact was coming or she thinks she should have been able to prevent it.

All of this happening makes what seems like a non-event to us, a big deal to her.   How do we handle it?   Dhruti’s advice: say nothing.   Be there for her and comfort her with a hug or an ice pack, but don’t talk about it in any way.   She will work through it herself.   Telling her to be more careful or to watch out for her brother is the wrong thing to do.   It tells her she’s not capable of some things.  It reminds her of her vision loss, something she is painfully aware of.   Words of advice or warning are actuality interpreted as us judging her, and she doesn’t need that.

So now that we understand what’s happening in my daughter’s mind, we’ve been able to react to physical intrusion situations with her in a better way.   Helping her like this over time should also extend into other areas, making her feel lest threatened when it comes to other, similar things in her live.

The Big Boy Update:  We drove to my in-laws this afternoon.   My son was asleep when we arrived and came into the house groggy.   He knew there were toys in the basement and after eating a snack went downstairs to play with them.   Grandpa came down to see my son who was met with, “I’m shy, go upstairs.”   When Grandpa came down a bit later my son said, “when I’m over being shy I’ll come upstairs.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I were rolling out cookie dough and stamping out cookies with Nana before dinner tonight.   My daughter was having what I’d call one of her “bad days” vision-wise.  She wasn’t easily able to see the dough or what any of the cookie cutter shapes were.   At one point, Nana was across the room looking through a bag of other cookie cutters.   The bag was plastic and was making crinkling sounds.   My daughter suddenly said, “I want to pick a cookie cutter from the bag.”   She is smart like that, using sounds to figure out what’s going on.   She couldn’t see a bag across the kitchen, but she knows what a bag sounds like and knew Nana was looking through a collection of cookie cutters.

Slower Than a Ladybug

My best friend and I ran five miles today.    We get up in the dark, get dressed and then meet half-way between houses.   Sometimes I make it to her house first and sometimes she gets to me before I get out the door.   Sometimes we have technical difficulties causing one of us to be later than expected, such as a child appearing in the bedroom door right as you’re about to leave.   But for the most part, we meet outside at about the same time and then start our run around the neighborhood.

I don’t think we even think about where we’re going anymore when we run.   We’ve been doing this for several years now and we always go around the neighborhood in the same pattern.   I think we tried running the pattern in reverse about a year ago but decided it didn’t, “feel right” and aborted the attempt, turning around and dropping back into our regular routine.

We have running sides too.   I run on the right and she runs on the left.   Every so often we get on the opposite sides of each other due to cars, people or other hazards.   Our changed relative positions seem wrong to us and we’re usually back in formation a few seconds later.

All that regularity in our runs and yet every run is always interesting.  It’s because we enjoy the time together.   This always means talking.   This almost without fail means laughing.   And sometimes, it even means crying.

Today we were at about mile three when my friend said, “look at that, it’s a ladybug in flight.  You hardly ever get to see them in flight.”  I looked up and sure enough, right in front of us over our heads, was a ladybug heading somewhere.   I’ve seen them fly, but usually you encounter them sitting somewhere, looking comfortable, not particularly interested in moving.

I was watching to see how it managed to fly considering it has two half-domed shell pieces of questionable aerodynamic merit.   It was flying slowly, which we remarked on.   Then we realized it was flying slowly, yet it was outpacing us.

We started laughing.   We couldn’t stop laughing.  We knew we ran slowly, but we never thought we ran slower than a ladybug.

The Big Boy Update:   My son likes Legos.  He likes video games.   My husband got him something that combines both: Lego Dimensions.   There is a video game, but there’s also a pad onto which you place lego figures.   When placed on specific parts of the pad, the characters appear in the game and you can play that character and use their special skills.   Of course, there is a financial catch—you need lots of different little Lego Dimensions characters to take advantage of all the features of the game.   For now though, my son has no idea there are more than the included four characters.   Don’t tell him otherwise if you see him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Post-bath my daughter likes to play the, “you can’t get me” game on the bed.   There are things that need to be done like pajamas and eye drops.   She may not be able to see well, but she can run around on the bed, avoiding wherever you’re moving next indefinitely.    She laughs every time she outsmarts you.

Juliette’s Wish:  My best friend said today her daughter, Juliette, had told them she wanted to move to Canada.  My friend was worried her daughter was having a hard time adjusting to the new class at school.   Juliette replied, “No, Mom.   I want to move to Canada if Donald Trump is our president!”

Slower Than a Ladybug:   Five miles today at the breakneck speed of “Ladybug Flight”