The heat went back off last night. On the fritz, busted, malfunctioning or plain broken. But it hasn’t been that bad. The temperature delta across the rooms is interesting, but not extreme. Our bedroom only got down to sixty-four degrees last night but walking out into the main room through one door and you’re hit with what feels like summer weather just because of a few degrees difference.
I’ve been running the other two systems at a higher temperature so that the flow over to the other rooms will make more difference but that causes us to be too warm in some parts of the house and chilly in other parts. It’s confusing knowing what to wear—unless you’re a child, and then you don’t seem to notice.
We’re doing New Year’s Eve quietly tonight with one family coming over with their children. Our sitter is coming over too so we’ll see if she can keep them busy until midnight. Speaking of, I need to see if we have some New Year’s hats and noise makers in the attic I can pull down when I finish this post.
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Too Loud Commentary: Our neighbor is lighting some fireworks as I write this. For some reason my children are incensed about this. They don’t like the noise and have declared Walter a rude person, interrupting other people’s evenings with such a cacophony of sound.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Saturday, December 30, 2017
On Again Off Again
Two mornings ago I woke up cold. Or rather I was cold in the middle of the night. I turned up the temperature on the thermostat but it wasn’t heating to a temperature I should have been cold with. Then in the morning I was colder still, only the thermostat wasn’t set to anything other than normal. So I brought up my iPad and looked for details and got concerned.
The master bedroom temperature was set correctly, only it was fifty-nine degrees in the room. The basement temperature was a bit warmer, what with it being half underground, but it was still cold—and the heat was not in fact on. The main floor wasn’t responding at all, saying the thermostat was too low on power to report at all and the upstairs thermostat was happily heating, only it was on auxiliary heat. What was going on?
I went out to the living room and sure enough, the thermostat wasn’t even powered. So I woke up my husband and told him we had a problem. While he was in the basement I looked up the setting on the second floor heat pump system and found out the report I was getting was accurate and correct given the outside temperature was as low as it was. So at least we had one out of three systems working correctly.
My husband came upstairs about that time and said he’d figured out what happened in the basement. When we converted our mechanical room to a game and work room there was a switch that could look like a light switch off to the side, but was in fact the switch to turn off the heating system—and that’s what had happened. Without power to the system, even the thermostats had no power. The main floor system and thermostats were back online and my husband had plans to mark the switch for the future.
Now we had two systems online and working correctly, but the third system was stubbornly not working. He got into the crawl space and checked the condensate pump, that being a component we’d had troubles with in the past on one of the other systems. That was fine, switching the unit off and on was fine but there was a pesky light blinking saying there was a pressure switch failure (whatever that was). After about a half hour of tinkering in a land in which my husband has little experience he said to call the company.
They could come out later in the day and when the technician arrived in the afternoon it turned out there was power going into one of the circuit boards but not coming out of it. An expensive part was ordered and we were told it would be Tuesday until the part came in. So five days without heat to the two areas that unit heated: the master and the basement.
We got a fan and circulated some heat for the night and everyone was reasonably warm. It wasn’t too much of a problem with the other two systems taking up for the one that was down. And then this afternoon I noticed the heat on in the master. Back on. Working as expected.
We don’t know what the issue was, but we’ll find out more when the technician comes back out on Tuesday. For now, I don’t have to sleep with several blankets added on top of my sheets, and for that, I’m happy.
The Big Boy Update: My husband and son have decided to watch all the Star Wars movies in order over the holiday break. Tonight they watched Revenge of the Sith. My son was very engaged, mostly doing parkour around the basement while the movie played. At one point when Anakin walked into a room with children training to become Jedi my son did get upset and started chanting, “don’t kill the kids, don’t kill the kids”. At the end of the movie he handled Anakin becoming Darth Vader because he already knew it was going to happen. I thought the movie would have scared him a lot, but my seven-year-old son isn’t as easily scared as he would have been a year ago.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter laid down in a ball on the floor in a pile of blankets she made for herself and told my husband she wasn’t going to make it through Star Wars because she was tired. She wanted to know if he could carry her upstairs when the movie was over. I packed up Christmas decorations and missed her sleeping but he dutifully carried her to bed once the movie had finished.
The master bedroom temperature was set correctly, only it was fifty-nine degrees in the room. The basement temperature was a bit warmer, what with it being half underground, but it was still cold—and the heat was not in fact on. The main floor wasn’t responding at all, saying the thermostat was too low on power to report at all and the upstairs thermostat was happily heating, only it was on auxiliary heat. What was going on?
I went out to the living room and sure enough, the thermostat wasn’t even powered. So I woke up my husband and told him we had a problem. While he was in the basement I looked up the setting on the second floor heat pump system and found out the report I was getting was accurate and correct given the outside temperature was as low as it was. So at least we had one out of three systems working correctly.
My husband came upstairs about that time and said he’d figured out what happened in the basement. When we converted our mechanical room to a game and work room there was a switch that could look like a light switch off to the side, but was in fact the switch to turn off the heating system—and that’s what had happened. Without power to the system, even the thermostats had no power. The main floor system and thermostats were back online and my husband had plans to mark the switch for the future.
Now we had two systems online and working correctly, but the third system was stubbornly not working. He got into the crawl space and checked the condensate pump, that being a component we’d had troubles with in the past on one of the other systems. That was fine, switching the unit off and on was fine but there was a pesky light blinking saying there was a pressure switch failure (whatever that was). After about a half hour of tinkering in a land in which my husband has little experience he said to call the company.
They could come out later in the day and when the technician arrived in the afternoon it turned out there was power going into one of the circuit boards but not coming out of it. An expensive part was ordered and we were told it would be Tuesday until the part came in. So five days without heat to the two areas that unit heated: the master and the basement.
We got a fan and circulated some heat for the night and everyone was reasonably warm. It wasn’t too much of a problem with the other two systems taking up for the one that was down. And then this afternoon I noticed the heat on in the master. Back on. Working as expected.
We don’t know what the issue was, but we’ll find out more when the technician comes back out on Tuesday. For now, I don’t have to sleep with several blankets added on top of my sheets, and for that, I’m happy.
The Big Boy Update: My husband and son have decided to watch all the Star Wars movies in order over the holiday break. Tonight they watched Revenge of the Sith. My son was very engaged, mostly doing parkour around the basement while the movie played. At one point when Anakin walked into a room with children training to become Jedi my son did get upset and started chanting, “don’t kill the kids, don’t kill the kids”. At the end of the movie he handled Anakin becoming Darth Vader because he already knew it was going to happen. I thought the movie would have scared him a lot, but my seven-year-old son isn’t as easily scared as he would have been a year ago.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter laid down in a ball on the floor in a pile of blankets she made for herself and told my husband she wasn’t going to make it through Star Wars because she was tired. She wanted to know if he could carry her upstairs when the movie was over. I packed up Christmas decorations and missed her sleeping but he dutifully carried her to bed once the movie had finished.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Annual Playlist Time
I have a playlist that’s been persistent on my devices since 2012. Anything I download I put into this playlist because if I’m downloading it, I want to have it handy to play. I don’t download album after album where the playlist would become unmanageable, it’s mostly some hits one at a time and a few albums here and there.
Because of that the playlist stays relatively manageable. But at the end of each year I have a reminder on my calendar to remove all the songs that aren’t that I’m not as interested in anymore—meaning I’ve overplayed them.
I’m down to only thirty songs now. It’s not a bad way to start the new year; I’m ready to find new music to add.
The Big Boy Update: There was a restaurant we were talking about going to for lunch named, ’Spanky’s’. My son asked, “does it mean that people that work there spank everyone?”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: A package arrived yesterday. My daughter asked her friend, Madison, if she could read the letters to her so she would know who the package is for. She can spell very well and knows a lot more about reading than her brother in many ways.
Because of that the playlist stays relatively manageable. But at the end of each year I have a reminder on my calendar to remove all the songs that aren’t that I’m not as interested in anymore—meaning I’ve overplayed them.
I’m down to only thirty songs now. It’s not a bad way to start the new year; I’m ready to find new music to add.
The Big Boy Update: There was a restaurant we were talking about going to for lunch named, ’Spanky’s’. My son asked, “does it mean that people that work there spank everyone?”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: A package arrived yesterday. My daughter asked her friend, Madison, if she could read the letters to her so she would know who the package is for. She can spell very well and knows a lot more about reading than her brother in many ways.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Full House Again
My husband’s brother’s family are visiting. We’ve had a lot of visitors this month, which has been nice. January is going to feel lonely in comparison. My in-laws came to visit today too. Sometimes more people is more fun.
We decided on a new mission today—plan a family vacation over Christmas for next year.
The Big Boy Update: I told my son there were a few peanuts in the Chex Mix and to watch out for them. As I said it I was holding up one of the peanuts. My son looked at it and said, “I didn’t know what a peanut looked like.” He’s allergic, but I never realized he hadn’t seen a peanut (or been told what it is) before.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter’s nose is runny again. This morning she was getting a tissue for the second time. I told her she could take the box with her. She reminded me of Mimi when she said, I put some more in my pocket.
We decided on a new mission today—plan a family vacation over Christmas for next year.
The Big Boy Update: I told my son there were a few peanuts in the Chex Mix and to watch out for them. As I said it I was holding up one of the peanuts. My son looked at it and said, “I didn’t know what a peanut looked like.” He’s allergic, but I never realized he hadn’t seen a peanut (or been told what it is) before.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter’s nose is runny again. This morning she was getting a tissue for the second time. I told her she could take the box with her. She reminded me of Mimi when she said, I put some more in my pocket.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Looking Left
I have neck/spine/back issues. This is well known. Some things I know about while others I notice or discover over time. We break down and wear out as we get older. There are things we can fix with surgery or help with medication but the slow deterioration of our bodies marches on with time.
I remember when I was in junior high school swinging in the hammock in the back yard. I would look left a lot because the road was there and I was looking for friends to ride by on their bikes or arriving home in the cars of their parents. I think that’s my first memory of being left preferential in a direction to look or rotate my neck.
Likely whatever injury had happened to my neck was years before this time from gymnastics or several other incidents my parents and I identified as we reviewed my childhood. Later the damage would cause me to have two spinal fusions and I live with pain in varying degrees most of the time.
I’ve noticed that looking at my phone I hold it with my left (dominant) hand but I also look down and to the left because it’s more comfortable. Fine, that might just be a hand or side of the body thing, but then I noticed when I write these blog posts that I put the window on the left side of the screen.
There is no reason I need to do this. I could easily put the window right in the middle of the screen, but I rarely do. I don’t know why looking left is more comfortable, but it’s rooted in decades of body deterioration and damage. At least it’s comfortable—I won’t argue with that.
The Big Boy Update: My son didn’t want to go to bed tonight because his aunt, uncle and cousins came to town this afternoon. He complained bitterly when I told him he had to go to bed, “but I want to party!”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a head cold. She’s the only one in the family with is (so far) but it’s wrecking havoc on her nose, especially as she wipes her nose continually on whatever shirtsleeves is handy. She’s gone to sleep early two nights in a row. I think this is mostly due to the Benadryl I’ve been giving her, but she’s been tired as well.
I remember when I was in junior high school swinging in the hammock in the back yard. I would look left a lot because the road was there and I was looking for friends to ride by on their bikes or arriving home in the cars of their parents. I think that’s my first memory of being left preferential in a direction to look or rotate my neck.
Likely whatever injury had happened to my neck was years before this time from gymnastics or several other incidents my parents and I identified as we reviewed my childhood. Later the damage would cause me to have two spinal fusions and I live with pain in varying degrees most of the time.
I’ve noticed that looking at my phone I hold it with my left (dominant) hand but I also look down and to the left because it’s more comfortable. Fine, that might just be a hand or side of the body thing, but then I noticed when I write these blog posts that I put the window on the left side of the screen.
There is no reason I need to do this. I could easily put the window right in the middle of the screen, but I rarely do. I don’t know why looking left is more comfortable, but it’s rooted in decades of body deterioration and damage. At least it’s comfortable—I won’t argue with that.
The Big Boy Update: My son didn’t want to go to bed tonight because his aunt, uncle and cousins came to town this afternoon. He complained bitterly when I told him he had to go to bed, “but I want to party!”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a head cold. She’s the only one in the family with is (so far) but it’s wrecking havoc on her nose, especially as she wipes her nose continually on whatever shirtsleeves is handy. She’s gone to sleep early two nights in a row. I think this is mostly due to the Benadryl I’ve been giving her, but she’s been tired as well.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Luminary Donation
We had our neighborhood luminary event earlier in the month. I collected checks and cash donations and today I took the total to the local Ronald McDonald house. My best friend and I choose this charity because my daughter’s pediatric ophthalmologist said it’s a location they’ve had many patients stay at in the past. I didn’t want to do something completely vision related, so this worked for me.
I parked and was talking to the person at the front desk about our donation when I realized a friend was sitting in front of the large, roaring fire in the entry hall. Bill was the business manager at my children’s school for the first three years we went there. He retired and not unlike many retired people, still wanted to do something. He started out volunteering a few hours here and there and now works part-time.
He offered to take me on a tour. Since I had no idea about anything they did I accepted. He showed me the quad kitchen which was four full kitchens around a huge island and a row of refrigerators. Cabinets surrounded the room with labels such as, ‘soup’, ‘macaroni & cheese’, ‘peanut butter & jelly’ were labeled among other things.
But food is also brought in for lunch and dinner if you want to eat in the dining room, he told me. There were people bustling around, some making cupcakes, some having conversations in the dining room. It felt welcoming and comfortable—not like a hotel at all.
There was a large conference room filled with toys and things for children from newborn to eighteen. They receive about $900,000 of their three-million dollar operating budget from gifts in kind. Families got to pick whatever they wanted from the toy room for their child and possibly siblings that might be staying there for a week or up to a year even. The gifts in kind aren’t just toys. They have 15,000 paper towel rolls and another 15,000 containers of wipes donated every year.
We went down the hall so he could show me one of the rooms and he told me about the ceiling tiles. Every family that stays is given a tile and asked to decorate it however they want and then it’s hung down the halls.
The rooms themselves had their own kitchen, washer and dryer included and came with a welcome bag that included all the basic toiletries you might possibly need. This is a common need, Bill told me, as sometime families arrive and have nothing with them because their child was life flighted from a city far away or even out of state. They had a family who came in last week who had no clothes other than what they were wearing.
I hope we would never need the services offered by the Ronald McDonald house, but it’s very nice to know it’s there for people who need it.
The Big Boy Update: My son was spending time with his older friend, Gavin, last week. There was a lot of giggling as he would ask us what “sex” meant and then when the adults completely failed to get what he was talking about by explaining all about gender, he would try again and ask us if we knew what, “cock” meant? We were all apparently dense on that word as well, exasperating him but not stopping his giggles.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: When my daughter was washing her hands at my sink she looked forward into the mirror and said, “I never saw a sink over there before” pointing to the sink’s reflection in the mirror. Sometimes I’m struck by what she can’t see. I guess I’m glad she’s seeing it now.
Monday, December 25, 2017
Boxes Are More Fun
So it’s Christmas day and we had a lot of fun as a family. There was chaos, there was mess, there was food and singing of carols and opening of presents. Now the day is over and the first thing I’d like to say is a big thank you to every adult member of my family who likes to keep things neat and clean. At the end of the day I’m sitting down here at my computer and everything is put away, the dishes are washed, the linens are in the dryer, the toys are all put in their place and the general hubbub of Christmas has been tamed. My family is the best.
My daughter got a red Tesla Model S child-sized car and my son got a hoverboard. And they were both very happy about their presents—my daughter being the most excited of everyone. But there were big boxes and those proved to be more fun during the opening of presents. We had to stop opening presents for a while so that my son could get into the big box, Nana could close him in and my daughter could write in sharpie on the box To: and From: so that my son could be a present. Then, breaking from the present theme, we all sang Pop Goes the Weasel song and my son would pop out of the box on queue. Eventually we got back around to presents, but that saying about the boxes being more fun than the presents is still true at ages six and seven.
The two boxes that were large enough to fit my children in were from the “American Falcon” my husband got. My daughter was calling it that, confusing everyone until we told her it was the Millennium Falcon. My husband and son love Legos. The boxes were so big because the Lego model is the largest Lego has ever made. I don’t remember how many pieces, but if the boxes are any indication, it’s a lot.
My husband worked in the kitchen most of the afternoon, making appetizers, a turkey and side dishes. At one point he got on my son’s hoverboard, having mastered riding it quickly, and said, “I think I’m going to cook with this thing so I don’t have to walk.” The hoverboard takes a bit to get used to, but it is pretty fun.
Fun day. Happy children. Happy family. I’m very fortunate.
The Big Boy Update: Nana had set the two tables for dinner so that eight adults would be in the main dining room and she would be with my two children at the breakfast table. My son caught on though and said in a loud voice while pointing to his table, “we need more population at this table”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: This morning I told my daughter I had to brush her hair. I said it was Christmas morning and we were going to be taking pictures so her hair should at least be brushed. She got angry and complained, “I don’t want to take Christmas pictures, we took Christmas pictures last year!”
My daughter got a red Tesla Model S child-sized car and my son got a hoverboard. And they were both very happy about their presents—my daughter being the most excited of everyone. But there were big boxes and those proved to be more fun during the opening of presents. We had to stop opening presents for a while so that my son could get into the big box, Nana could close him in and my daughter could write in sharpie on the box To: and From: so that my son could be a present. Then, breaking from the present theme, we all sang Pop Goes the Weasel song and my son would pop out of the box on queue. Eventually we got back around to presents, but that saying about the boxes being more fun than the presents is still true at ages six and seven.
The two boxes that were large enough to fit my children in were from the “American Falcon” my husband got. My daughter was calling it that, confusing everyone until we told her it was the Millennium Falcon. My husband and son love Legos. The boxes were so big because the Lego model is the largest Lego has ever made. I don’t remember how many pieces, but if the boxes are any indication, it’s a lot.
My husband worked in the kitchen most of the afternoon, making appetizers, a turkey and side dishes. At one point he got on my son’s hoverboard, having mastered riding it quickly, and said, “I think I’m going to cook with this thing so I don’t have to walk.” The hoverboard takes a bit to get used to, but it is pretty fun.
Fun day. Happy children. Happy family. I’m very fortunate.
The Big Boy Update: Nana had set the two tables for dinner so that eight adults would be in the main dining room and she would be with my two children at the breakfast table. My son caught on though and said in a loud voice while pointing to his table, “we need more population at this table”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: This morning I told my daughter I had to brush her hair. I said it was Christmas morning and we were going to be taking pictures so her hair should at least be brushed. She got angry and complained, “I don’t want to take Christmas pictures, we took Christmas pictures last year!”
Sunday, December 24, 2017
A Useful Tool
It’s Christmas Eve here. Dinner of some odds and ends we had around the house with my in-laws and parents joining us. My daughter is currently on my husband’s shoulders “driving” him around the house, yelling ‘STOP’ to keep him from running into things. This is a useful vision test for us and a game of continual laughing for her.
My son has retired to the iPad while we wait for the icing to warm up a bit from the freezer. My husband made it earlier to add to the tops of the gingerbread houses for decoration. My son and daughter are in high spirits, possibly too high as they’re keyed up for tomorrow’s Christmas morning. The tumbling that’s happening on my bed is making me nervous for both of their bodies, but especially my daughter’s eyes. But I can’t keep her from being a child and having fun so I try to intervene only when I have to.
The tree has too many presents under it. Note to self: put bags to collect all the wrapping paper for tomorrow morning on standby. My son on his own found a cookie, poured a glass of milk and brought it all down on a plate to put beside the tree. My daughter made some food for Rudolph that’s in a bag that she put beside the cookie and milk.
I’ve got stockings ready to go as soon as my son and daughter are asleep. My husband is charging our traditional one gift from Santa for each child. My daughter is getting a car that she’s been asking about incessantly. She wants a blue car but the only option was red as we got the child-sized car free from Tesla via the referral program when friends of ours bought their own Teslas. My son is getting a hoverboard.
Today my father came over with some things he’d found at yard sales for the children. My son’s has been the most fun though. It’s a claw hand with three pulls that close the various fingers. My son was thrilled about this hand and has been going around the house, seeing what things he can pick up with it. He came into the bedroom to find me and said, “I have a useful tool” and then walked out. He came to find me later to hand me a wooden spoon.
For the adults it’s been more funny than useful as we all discovered you could make a certain gesture if you pulled only the first and third handles.
The Big Boy Update: My husband came downstairs this afternoon to find his computer locked with the message, “Recover Password” up instead of the standard password prompt. Apparently my son had been trying to get in and didn’t know the password. He left a sticky note on the desk with the one word “PASSWORD” as a silent message.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: In the car yesterday my daughter said she wanted us to listen as she sang a tune to see if any of us knew it. We listened to a tune that was familiar to me but I couldn’t place it. My husband said, “it’s the song that plays when the washer or dryer finishes.” If it’s sound, my daughter hears it.
My son has retired to the iPad while we wait for the icing to warm up a bit from the freezer. My husband made it earlier to add to the tops of the gingerbread houses for decoration. My son and daughter are in high spirits, possibly too high as they’re keyed up for tomorrow’s Christmas morning. The tumbling that’s happening on my bed is making me nervous for both of their bodies, but especially my daughter’s eyes. But I can’t keep her from being a child and having fun so I try to intervene only when I have to.
The tree has too many presents under it. Note to self: put bags to collect all the wrapping paper for tomorrow morning on standby. My son on his own found a cookie, poured a glass of milk and brought it all down on a plate to put beside the tree. My daughter made some food for Rudolph that’s in a bag that she put beside the cookie and milk.
I’ve got stockings ready to go as soon as my son and daughter are asleep. My husband is charging our traditional one gift from Santa for each child. My daughter is getting a car that she’s been asking about incessantly. She wants a blue car but the only option was red as we got the child-sized car free from Tesla via the referral program when friends of ours bought their own Teslas. My son is getting a hoverboard.
Today my father came over with some things he’d found at yard sales for the children. My son’s has been the most fun though. It’s a claw hand with three pulls that close the various fingers. My son was thrilled about this hand and has been going around the house, seeing what things he can pick up with it. He came into the bedroom to find me and said, “I have a useful tool” and then walked out. He came to find me later to hand me a wooden spoon.
For the adults it’s been more funny than useful as we all discovered you could make a certain gesture if you pulled only the first and third handles.
The Big Boy Update: My husband came downstairs this afternoon to find his computer locked with the message, “Recover Password” up instead of the standard password prompt. Apparently my son had been trying to get in and didn’t know the password. He left a sticky note on the desk with the one word “PASSWORD” as a silent message.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: In the car yesterday my daughter said she wanted us to listen as she sang a tune to see if any of us knew it. We listened to a tune that was familiar to me but I couldn’t place it. My husband said, “it’s the song that plays when the washer or dryer finishes.” If it’s sound, my daughter hears it.
Saturday, December 23, 2017
Oh Christmas Tree
Watching movies is always hard in our house. My son only wants to see things he’s already watched before, vehemently stating that he doesn’t want to watch whatever new thing it is we think he’ll like. My daughter is willing to watch anything aside from being uninterested in everything because she can’t see it. But sometimes we force the issue on them.
Tonight my daughter and I were making banana bread for some neighbors as well as for us. I put on the Charlie Brown Christmas special while we worked in the kitchen. She talked to me through most of the show but then towards the end she got very excited because the song, Oh Christmas Tree came on. I didn’t know she knew the song. She came back into the kitchen when the show was over and asked if we could play the movie again, but could we skip to the end where the song was.
My husband came upstairs at this point and helped her find the spot so she could sing the song again. Then he decided to put on Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. My son came up shortly after that and promptly sat down to watch too. He’s a sucker for anything on the television, you just can’t tell him you’re putting anything on.
We put them to bed and told them maybe we could watch some other Christmas movies tomorrow. Chances are they’re going to ask for the same two they saw (or listened to) tonight.
The Big Boy Update: My son ran into the bedroom to find me tonight, asking if Monday was Christmas because his sister had told him it was and he wasn’t sure she was right. I don’t know if he even knew what day of the week today was but when I confirmed that yes, Monday was Christmas, he ran out yelling in excitement.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has been asking for the brightness on her iPad to be turned down—something she hasn’t done in a long time. This means light is getting into her right eye that was surgically opened up on Monday. She also doesn’t want much light in their room at night, demanding the one string of lights on the baby Christmas tree be turned off so she can sleep. I don’t know if she can see any form vision in the eye, but she can at least see light.
Tonight my daughter and I were making banana bread for some neighbors as well as for us. I put on the Charlie Brown Christmas special while we worked in the kitchen. She talked to me through most of the show but then towards the end she got very excited because the song, Oh Christmas Tree came on. I didn’t know she knew the song. She came back into the kitchen when the show was over and asked if we could play the movie again, but could we skip to the end where the song was.
My husband came upstairs at this point and helped her find the spot so she could sing the song again. Then he decided to put on Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. My son came up shortly after that and promptly sat down to watch too. He’s a sucker for anything on the television, you just can’t tell him you’re putting anything on.
We put them to bed and told them maybe we could watch some other Christmas movies tomorrow. Chances are they’re going to ask for the same two they saw (or listened to) tonight.
The Big Boy Update: My son ran into the bedroom to find me tonight, asking if Monday was Christmas because his sister had told him it was and he wasn’t sure she was right. I don’t know if he even knew what day of the week today was but when I confirmed that yes, Monday was Christmas, he ran out yelling in excitement.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has been asking for the brightness on her iPad to be turned down—something she hasn’t done in a long time. This means light is getting into her right eye that was surgically opened up on Monday. She also doesn’t want much light in their room at night, demanding the one string of lights on the baby Christmas tree be turned off so she can sleep. I don’t know if she can see any form vision in the eye, but she can at least see light.
Friday, December 22, 2017
Battle Hymn of the Republic
My mother’s mother was a piano teacher. I never met her on account of her dying while my mother was pregnant with me, but we talked of her often. One of the things that reminded us of her was playing the piano. I remember my mother telling me how they would have a piano tuner come from time to time. The piano tuner was blind but had excellent hearing. My mother said she never understood why her mother would talk to the tuner in an extra loud voice, but she always did.
We have a piano in our house now and have had a piano tuner come to tune it once it got acclimated to the humidity in our basement. He said he could tune by ear, but using technology like his iPad with a tuning app was better on the piano because it was less adjustments on the various strings. He told me a lot about piano tuning, much of which went way over my head. But the piano is tuned now and people who can tell a difference like my best friend who was a concert pianist in a prior life and our music therapist say it sounds good. It sounds about the same to me but I lack training and knowledge.
My mother and I have co-written a Christmas song together the last two years. This year we didn’t get started in time but we’ve revamped the plan and are going to sing Christmas carols on Christmas day with our family members who are coming to town for the holiday.
My mother is bringing “mimeographed” copies of some Christmas songs, which must mean old classic since I haven’t seen a mimeograph machine since I was young. This works because my children already know some of the old classics.
My cousin and her family are coming for Christmas Day dinner which has brought to mind some times from my childhood with her and my mother and a piano. From time to time either my mother would want to play things and have us sing or we’d ask her the same. I always marveled at my mother’s ability to read music—complicated music—and play along shifting keys to whatever we needed to sing in our vocal range. There was one song though that Rebecca and I liked to ask for: The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
This was a fiendishly difficult piece if the number of notes on the page was any indication. It also was a fun song to sing. My cousin and I would sing along, watching her play and flip the pages of the sheet music. She would get to this interlude where we didn’t sing but my mother would hammer through chords with a level of focus that would have brought beads of sweat to my forehead, and then we’d finish the piece together.
I remember the sheet music being worn and almost falling apart. My mother still has the same piano. I wonder if the music is still inside the piano bench somewhere?
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Knock You Down Game: Edna got my son a set of inflatable chest balls for Christmas. You add air and wear them like a large vest. Then you go somewhere preferably large and soft, run at each other and try to knock the other child down. My husband just sent me a video of the two children in the yard about to smash into each other with my son yelling out, “let me show you what it’s like to get knocked down!” My husband sent a preparatory text beforehand about how he warned them on head trauma and eye surgery. Their friend, Gavin, stood on the side and gave them pointers on how to knock each other down more effectively. My husband sent a text shortly after sending me a video of them saying, “better not tell Dr. Trese about this.”
We have a piano in our house now and have had a piano tuner come to tune it once it got acclimated to the humidity in our basement. He said he could tune by ear, but using technology like his iPad with a tuning app was better on the piano because it was less adjustments on the various strings. He told me a lot about piano tuning, much of which went way over my head. But the piano is tuned now and people who can tell a difference like my best friend who was a concert pianist in a prior life and our music therapist say it sounds good. It sounds about the same to me but I lack training and knowledge.
My mother and I have co-written a Christmas song together the last two years. This year we didn’t get started in time but we’ve revamped the plan and are going to sing Christmas carols on Christmas day with our family members who are coming to town for the holiday.
My mother is bringing “mimeographed” copies of some Christmas songs, which must mean old classic since I haven’t seen a mimeograph machine since I was young. This works because my children already know some of the old classics.
My cousin and her family are coming for Christmas Day dinner which has brought to mind some times from my childhood with her and my mother and a piano. From time to time either my mother would want to play things and have us sing or we’d ask her the same. I always marveled at my mother’s ability to read music—complicated music—and play along shifting keys to whatever we needed to sing in our vocal range. There was one song though that Rebecca and I liked to ask for: The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
This was a fiendishly difficult piece if the number of notes on the page was any indication. It also was a fun song to sing. My cousin and I would sing along, watching her play and flip the pages of the sheet music. She would get to this interlude where we didn’t sing but my mother would hammer through chords with a level of focus that would have brought beads of sweat to my forehead, and then we’d finish the piece together.
I remember the sheet music being worn and almost falling apart. My mother still has the same piano. I wonder if the music is still inside the piano bench somewhere?
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Knock You Down Game: Edna got my son a set of inflatable chest balls for Christmas. You add air and wear them like a large vest. Then you go somewhere preferably large and soft, run at each other and try to knock the other child down. My husband just sent me a video of the two children in the yard about to smash into each other with my son yelling out, “let me show you what it’s like to get knocked down!” My husband sent a preparatory text beforehand about how he warned them on head trauma and eye surgery. Their friend, Gavin, stood on the side and gave them pointers on how to knock each other down more effectively. My husband sent a text shortly after sending me a video of them saying, “better not tell Dr. Trese about this.”
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Winter Solstice
It’s winter solstice today. I don’t know which I like more, winter solstice or summer solstice, they’re both good times of the year. Typically around about summer solstice I’m running a lot, which requires getting up very early. By the time winter solstice comes around I’m not exercising at all and trying to curb my enthusiasm for consuming holiday calories as best I can.
So what happened during our short day today? I don’t typically do day in the life type posts but today seems like a good day to try it out. So here goes…
My son’s last day of school before winter break was yesterday which meant we let him have a day of screens today. He played Minecraft most of the day with his friends, Gavin and Rayan. They played outside and broke my yoga ball after I had very clearly told them it was not allowed outside. The fact that they did so dressed as a horse and Spider Man did not make the loss any less painful.
My daughter’s last day was today. She had “Pajama Day” today which means she’s wearing pajamas now and has had them on all day long. I got her and her brother matching red and green-striped pajamas with their names on them. She picked those pajamas to wear today which was a bit of a relief because a lot of her pajamas have weathered lots of washes and make her look like a disheveled child.
I’m going to a girls wine party tonight. I went last year with my best friend at her request. We both knew the cohost, but no one else. We’re going back again this year. It’s a bring a bottle of wine and take a bottle of wine home. I’m not drinking right now so I think I’m going to pass on the wine part.
Other than that it was a nice day here with a lot of jewelry making happening with our visiting friends. Earrings and necklaces were made. I assisted on finding materials to accomplish what they were looking for and doing some of the finishing things like adding lobster clasps and doing wrapped loops. I had a monster time with my right shoulder and had to lie down for a while and over-ice it to get it to back off.
My husband made chicken parmesan for our friends staying with us and my son and I ran off to get his green, extra long hair cut only to get back just as dinner was being served. My husband makes a good meal, there’s not much left.
The Big Boy Update: When my son heard our friend’s guinea pigs had did he asked if they had a “san-ra-mom-ery”. We figured out he meant ‘ceremony’. He liked his pronunciation better.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter got gifts from her teachers today. I didn’t know teachers did that but all of hers did. My favorite is a braille set of UNO cards. She played UNO with Keaton for an hour-and-a-half this afternoon.
So what happened during our short day today? I don’t typically do day in the life type posts but today seems like a good day to try it out. So here goes…
My son’s last day of school before winter break was yesterday which meant we let him have a day of screens today. He played Minecraft most of the day with his friends, Gavin and Rayan. They played outside and broke my yoga ball after I had very clearly told them it was not allowed outside. The fact that they did so dressed as a horse and Spider Man did not make the loss any less painful.
My daughter’s last day was today. She had “Pajama Day” today which means she’s wearing pajamas now and has had them on all day long. I got her and her brother matching red and green-striped pajamas with their names on them. She picked those pajamas to wear today which was a bit of a relief because a lot of her pajamas have weathered lots of washes and make her look like a disheveled child.
I’m going to a girls wine party tonight. I went last year with my best friend at her request. We both knew the cohost, but no one else. We’re going back again this year. It’s a bring a bottle of wine and take a bottle of wine home. I’m not drinking right now so I think I’m going to pass on the wine part.
Other than that it was a nice day here with a lot of jewelry making happening with our visiting friends. Earrings and necklaces were made. I assisted on finding materials to accomplish what they were looking for and doing some of the finishing things like adding lobster clasps and doing wrapped loops. I had a monster time with my right shoulder and had to lie down for a while and over-ice it to get it to back off.
My husband made chicken parmesan for our friends staying with us and my son and I ran off to get his green, extra long hair cut only to get back just as dinner was being served. My husband makes a good meal, there’s not much left.
The Big Boy Update: When my son heard our friend’s guinea pigs had did he asked if they had a “san-ra-mom-ery”. We figured out he meant ‘ceremony’. He liked his pronunciation better.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter got gifts from her teachers today. I didn’t know teachers did that but all of hers did. My favorite is a braille set of UNO cards. She played UNO with Keaton for an hour-and-a-half this afternoon.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Couple of Things
My Mobile Office: Some days I feel like I spend more time in my car doing work than going places. This does not mean I’m texting and driving at the same time. (I had to say that because someone was going to get on my case if I didn’t.) What it means is I get to a destination and before I go to the next destination I end up on my phone electronically or on the phone proper and/or on my iPad and sometimes even on my laptop for periods of time. This morning I left at eight o’clock to take my son to school. I ran three quick errands and was home after eleven o’clock with the majority of the time on my phone in parking lots. But I suppose as long as I’m getting things done it doesn’t matter where I’m working.
Thin Blood: It’s the time of year when I’m cold all the time. I need to just deal with the cold so my body will adjust but instead I’m drinking more hot tea and turning the heater on in the car. I’m adding a blanket on the bed and I’m turning the heat up a few degrees. At the rate I’m going I’m not helping things, I’m making them worse because I’m not acclimating. I thought my son was going to complain today because I had the heat in the car on high for so long today but he didn’t seem to notice. I hate being cold.
Three Inches: I’ve started having troubles with the laundry. I’ll pull out a pair of jeans and I won’t be sure at first glance if they’re mine or my son’s. My son isn’t particularly tall and he’s only seven-years-old, but I guess I’m not that tall either. So I did a check and held his pants up to my waist the other day and his jeans are only three inches shorter than what mine are. I felt better about being confused, but I also felt shorter.
Tesla Geofencing: This is just a cool feature of our cars. We had a clunk we were trying to diagnose with the tech at the Tesla service center the other day. We drove off, parked the car and lowered the suspension with the suspension option on the touch screen. Then we tested the backup and turn option to reproduce the problem. When we got back to the service center I went to the suspension screen to raise the suspension back up to normal but it was already there. The tech saw what I had done and told me. “we have the cars automatically raise suspension when they enter the geofenced service center area.” So yeah, that’s cool as far as I’m concerned.
The Big Boy Update: My son was watching our friend, Louie, work yesterday. Louie had two laptops and my son asked what he was doing. Louie said, “I’m monitoring work over here and playing a game over here” and pointed to the laptops respectively. My son nodded and said, “ah, multitasking”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: When I go to Detroit with my daughter as soon as she’s out of the OR and discharged she always wants to go to the mall and have Chick-Fil-A. It’s just what she wants to eat every time. I wrote about that the other day and my husband read the post. He told me he’d never told me this but when he’s with her in Detroit she has no interest in Chick-Fil-A but instead wants pasta from Sbarro.
Thin Blood: It’s the time of year when I’m cold all the time. I need to just deal with the cold so my body will adjust but instead I’m drinking more hot tea and turning the heater on in the car. I’m adding a blanket on the bed and I’m turning the heat up a few degrees. At the rate I’m going I’m not helping things, I’m making them worse because I’m not acclimating. I thought my son was going to complain today because I had the heat in the car on high for so long today but he didn’t seem to notice. I hate being cold.
Three Inches: I’ve started having troubles with the laundry. I’ll pull out a pair of jeans and I won’t be sure at first glance if they’re mine or my son’s. My son isn’t particularly tall and he’s only seven-years-old, but I guess I’m not that tall either. So I did a check and held his pants up to my waist the other day and his jeans are only three inches shorter than what mine are. I felt better about being confused, but I also felt shorter.
Tesla Geofencing: This is just a cool feature of our cars. We had a clunk we were trying to diagnose with the tech at the Tesla service center the other day. We drove off, parked the car and lowered the suspension with the suspension option on the touch screen. Then we tested the backup and turn option to reproduce the problem. When we got back to the service center I went to the suspension screen to raise the suspension back up to normal but it was already there. The tech saw what I had done and told me. “we have the cars automatically raise suspension when they enter the geofenced service center area.” So yeah, that’s cool as far as I’m concerned.
The Big Boy Update: My son was watching our friend, Louie, work yesterday. Louie had two laptops and my son asked what he was doing. Louie said, “I’m monitoring work over here and playing a game over here” and pointed to the laptops respectively. My son nodded and said, “ah, multitasking”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: When I go to Detroit with my daughter as soon as she’s out of the OR and discharged she always wants to go to the mall and have Chick-Fil-A. It’s just what she wants to eat every time. I wrote about that the other day and my husband read the post. He told me he’d never told me this but when he’s with her in Detroit she has no interest in Chick-Fil-A but instead wants pasta from Sbarro.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Chanukah Stockings
This is our fourth year going to our neighbor’s house during Chanukah to have dinner with them and swap stockings. Their children had never had stockings before and I liked putting little things into stockings and we didn’t know that much about the celebration of Chanukah so we decided to get together and swap traditions.
I’m tired or I’d write lots more about the crazy things we as mothers found to put in the stockings as we make stockings for the other family’s children. Bryna had some good things in my children’s stockings but I think I may have won with stacks of $100 bills and sticky poop—oh, and a severed hand.
After Matzo ball soup and potato latkes we played an eleven-person game of dreidel using Hershey’s kisses as currency. Somehow my son and daughter ended up with all the Hershey’s Kisses to go home…imagine that.
The Big Boy Update: At one point at our neighbor’s house tonight my son stopped running around for a few minutes. Blake asked him what he was doing. My son said, “I’m strengthening my hearing”. About thirty seconds later my son hopped out of the seat and said aloud to himself and anyone bothering to listen, “okay, good, now my hearing is a little bit better.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: During the game of Dreidel tonight my daughter was quite impatient on waiting for her turn to come around. But she was generous too. When she found out Shane was out of Hershey’s Kisses to ante and continue playing she handed one over. She looked over at Shane and smiled and said, “I want to plat Dreidel with you every day.”
I’m tired or I’d write lots more about the crazy things we as mothers found to put in the stockings as we make stockings for the other family’s children. Bryna had some good things in my children’s stockings but I think I may have won with stacks of $100 bills and sticky poop—oh, and a severed hand.
After Matzo ball soup and potato latkes we played an eleven-person game of dreidel using Hershey’s kisses as currency. Somehow my son and daughter ended up with all the Hershey’s Kisses to go home…imagine that.
The Big Boy Update: At one point at our neighbor’s house tonight my son stopped running around for a few minutes. Blake asked him what he was doing. My son said, “I’m strengthening my hearing”. About thirty seconds later my son hopped out of the seat and said aloud to himself and anyone bothering to listen, “okay, good, now my hearing is a little bit better.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: During the game of Dreidel tonight my daughter was quite impatient on waiting for her turn to come around. But she was generous too. When she found out Shane was out of Hershey’s Kisses to ante and continue playing she handed one over. She looked over at Shane and smiled and said, “I want to plat Dreidel with you every day.”
Monday, December 18, 2017
It’s Just Unbelievably Wonderful
The above post title was a quote from my daughter’s regina surgeon today when he saw her playing cards. He’s seen her vision go up and down and while she won’t ever see normally or even near normally or even good enough for glasses to correct her vision, her vision has improved.
There were complications with my daughter’s surgery today, namely her surgeon getting stuck in the Atlanta airport with a power outage. But he made it in and while there was a delay in her OR time and a more hungry child, the surgery happened.
We weren’t sure for a while this morning if he was going to do surgery or elect not to. Before surgery my daughter had a Visual Evoked Potential test. This involves putting goggle-like things over your eyes and a mesh over her head with some electrodes and then a series of red light dots are flashed in front of your eye. One eye at a time, fifteen minutes per eye.
My daughter counted red light blips up to a hundred for the left eye and then said she was tired of counting now that it was over a hundred. On the right eye she wanted to know if the red light was going off. She saw nothing. She actually scored a zero on the test. But something was registering apparently on the electrodes because the graph showed enough for Dr. Trese to decide to do the procedure. We weren’t sure what she could see, honestly what with scar tissue blocking her entire field of vision and red not being a color she can see well.
When Dr. Trese came out after the surgery he said there was hardly any bleeding. In the prior operations where they’ve opened up this area in her eye there has been bleeding. The bleeding can cause the scaring response to be more severe. So less bleeding is good and almost no bleeding was optimal. He said waiting this long to reopen her eye was probably a good thing because the vessels in the scar tissue had kind of dried up.
The other thing is that both eyes were at seventeen pressure. Maintaining her pressure and knowing if her eyes will ever be able to produce fluid or if we’ll have to add Healon for the remainder of her life to keep her eyes at pressure. So this is good news as her eyes have maintained pressure for six months now.
We don’t know what she can see or if she can see but we’ll find out in the weeks to come. In the past all she’s has was light perception with some color discerning. That means no form vision. What Dr. Trese did say was that with dramatic retinal detachments and damaged rods and cones it can take ridiculously long periods of time for things to heal, sometimes years.
The Big Boy Update: My son got in trouble tonight. I was at a board meeting and when I got home a half-eaten pop tart was on the counter and his soup wasn’t eaten. Skip ahead to the moral of the story here and never, ever leave a half-eaten pop tart as evidence. My son did a lot of creative lying on who and why and what happened but there was no helping it, there was going to be a consequence. I told him he couldn’t put the tooth he lost only hours before under his pillow tonight. This did not go over well, telling me I’d made a good choice in consequences. He threatened and complained and then threatened some more. My favorite one was, “I’ll give you a choice: die or give me my tooth and live on.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: After surgery today my daughter didn’t want to go to her favorite place in Detroit—the mall—to get Chick-Fil-A. This is one of her favorite things to do. Why? Because she didn’t want people to see her with a patch on her eye. This is the first time she’s ever shown any signs of being upset about how she looks or anything else visual. Since they weren’t going to have time to go tomorrow to go though she decided it would be okay.
There were complications with my daughter’s surgery today, namely her surgeon getting stuck in the Atlanta airport with a power outage. But he made it in and while there was a delay in her OR time and a more hungry child, the surgery happened.
We weren’t sure for a while this morning if he was going to do surgery or elect not to. Before surgery my daughter had a Visual Evoked Potential test. This involves putting goggle-like things over your eyes and a mesh over her head with some electrodes and then a series of red light dots are flashed in front of your eye. One eye at a time, fifteen minutes per eye.
My daughter counted red light blips up to a hundred for the left eye and then said she was tired of counting now that it was over a hundred. On the right eye she wanted to know if the red light was going off. She saw nothing. She actually scored a zero on the test. But something was registering apparently on the electrodes because the graph showed enough for Dr. Trese to decide to do the procedure. We weren’t sure what she could see, honestly what with scar tissue blocking her entire field of vision and red not being a color she can see well.
When Dr. Trese came out after the surgery he said there was hardly any bleeding. In the prior operations where they’ve opened up this area in her eye there has been bleeding. The bleeding can cause the scaring response to be more severe. So less bleeding is good and almost no bleeding was optimal. He said waiting this long to reopen her eye was probably a good thing because the vessels in the scar tissue had kind of dried up.
The other thing is that both eyes were at seventeen pressure. Maintaining her pressure and knowing if her eyes will ever be able to produce fluid or if we’ll have to add Healon for the remainder of her life to keep her eyes at pressure. So this is good news as her eyes have maintained pressure for six months now.
We don’t know what she can see or if she can see but we’ll find out in the weeks to come. In the past all she’s has was light perception with some color discerning. That means no form vision. What Dr. Trese did say was that with dramatic retinal detachments and damaged rods and cones it can take ridiculously long periods of time for things to heal, sometimes years.
The Big Boy Update: My son got in trouble tonight. I was at a board meeting and when I got home a half-eaten pop tart was on the counter and his soup wasn’t eaten. Skip ahead to the moral of the story here and never, ever leave a half-eaten pop tart as evidence. My son did a lot of creative lying on who and why and what happened but there was no helping it, there was going to be a consequence. I told him he couldn’t put the tooth he lost only hours before under his pillow tonight. This did not go over well, telling me I’d made a good choice in consequences. He threatened and complained and then threatened some more. My favorite one was, “I’ll give you a choice: die or give me my tooth and live on.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: After surgery today my daughter didn’t want to go to her favorite place in Detroit—the mall—to get Chick-Fil-A. This is one of her favorite things to do. Why? Because she didn’t want people to see her with a patch on her eye. This is the first time she’s ever shown any signs of being upset about how she looks or anything else visual. Since they weren’t going to have time to go tomorrow to go though she decided it would be okay.
Sunday, December 17, 2017
Santa’s Workshop
I have mentioned before my son’s obsession with Minecraft. He’s not alone as this is a common thing for children in a wide age range to enjoy. It’s a world in which you can build things in the shape of cubes. It’s an open-ended activity and he’s been doing a lot of creative things in the game.
Today he wanted me to play with him. I’m a video game veteran but I haven’t played Minecraft like he has so he was the teacher and showed me what to do. I asked if there was a Christmas world he could load. There are worlds people have created that you can load and look around or play in. Sure, he said, let me find it.
This world was impressive. The creator had made building blocks representing all things Christmas. There was an entire village with a huge Christmas tree in the center replete with presents underneath. My son said, “can I be the TNT master?” I said sure, knowing this meant he planned on blowing something up (he loves blowing things up).
He got the TNT block and placed lots of TNT “presents” under the tree, promising me they wouldn’t blow up—and then he blew them all up. He explained that by doing this it destroyed “the prize”. I didn’t get an explanation of what the prize was because at that moment he said, “hey, there’s a secret tunnel underneath the base of the tree!”
We both climbed down the ladder and followed a very long tunnel and then climbed up, opening a secret trapdoor in the floor. As we looked around he said very decisively, “we’re in Santa’s workshop.” I asked him if he’d been here before and he said he didn’t know about the tunnel or this secret place. How did he know it was Santa’s workshop I asked, “I can just tell” he said.
The Big Boy Update: My son gets worried when his sister leaves town to have eye surgery. This afternoon he wanted to spend time on the bed with me with our iPads, side by side. It’s sort of nice to have him want to be around me, usually he’s off and about doing his own thing.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and husband just landed in Detroit for eye surgery on my daughter’s right eye tomorrow. My husband got a call shortly after they touched down that Dr. Trese, our surgeon, is stuck in Atlanta with a power outage. He’s trying to get back in time for surgery in the morning but we won’t know until tomorrow. While this is frustrating news to my husband, my daughter is thrilled there is snow on the ground.
Today he wanted me to play with him. I’m a video game veteran but I haven’t played Minecraft like he has so he was the teacher and showed me what to do. I asked if there was a Christmas world he could load. There are worlds people have created that you can load and look around or play in. Sure, he said, let me find it.
This world was impressive. The creator had made building blocks representing all things Christmas. There was an entire village with a huge Christmas tree in the center replete with presents underneath. My son said, “can I be the TNT master?” I said sure, knowing this meant he planned on blowing something up (he loves blowing things up).
He got the TNT block and placed lots of TNT “presents” under the tree, promising me they wouldn’t blow up—and then he blew them all up. He explained that by doing this it destroyed “the prize”. I didn’t get an explanation of what the prize was because at that moment he said, “hey, there’s a secret tunnel underneath the base of the tree!”
We both climbed down the ladder and followed a very long tunnel and then climbed up, opening a secret trapdoor in the floor. As we looked around he said very decisively, “we’re in Santa’s workshop.” I asked him if he’d been here before and he said he didn’t know about the tunnel or this secret place. How did he know it was Santa’s workshop I asked, “I can just tell” he said.
The Big Boy Update: My son gets worried when his sister leaves town to have eye surgery. This afternoon he wanted to spend time on the bed with me with our iPads, side by side. It’s sort of nice to have him want to be around me, usually he’s off and about doing his own thing.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and husband just landed in Detroit for eye surgery on my daughter’s right eye tomorrow. My husband got a call shortly after they touched down that Dr. Trese, our surgeon, is stuck in Atlanta with a power outage. He’s trying to get back in time for surgery in the morning but we won’t know until tomorrow. While this is frustrating news to my husband, my daughter is thrilled there is snow on the ground.
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Trampoline Party
My son had his seventh birthday party today. He wanted to do so at one of the indoor trampoline parks and he wasn’t that particular on who was invited. We sort of let him have our way by suggesting he invite our friends who are visiting from out of town for a week with us and his good neighbor friends. That and one other child from our Movie Night crew and we had a total of eight children, which was a good number, even though ages ranged from six to sixteen on the children front.
My son also wanted to have Pei Wei for the food—something difficult to do since the trampoline place was in the other direction entirely from Pei Wei, but was solved by having people come back to the house while my husband went to pick up the food.
There were four grandparents, some parents, Uncle Jonathan and his girlfriend, Margaret. Most of the adults didn’t choose to jump but Uncle Jonathan, Margaret, my husband and threw middle-aged hazard to the wind, donned jumping sticky socks and went into the fray with the children.
Finding my son and his friends in the large place was a challenge some of the time for those adults who were wanting to get pictures but since everyone was having fun, no one seemed to mind. My daughter spent a lot of the time with Margaret, whom she doesn’t get to see often but loves to spend time with. As my mother would say, my daughter thinks Margaret, “hung the moon”.
I forgot just how loud our house can get with piles of children in it. Or rather I didn’t forget but I had a headache and my head was un-thrilled with the volume level so I hid after lunch and fell asleep for a while. Thanks as always to the grandparents for keeping everyone (mostly my daughter) occupied.
Tomorrow my husband and daughter leave for Detroit for eye surgery in which they’ll open up the scar tissue inside her right eye that is preventing her from (possibly) seeing. We’ll know more after Monday if her right eye has the ability to see at all.
The Big Boy Update: Why are boys so loud? My son and his friend, Gavin, were having fun all day if volume is any indication of their level of happy.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has been saying for a while now that she wants a blue car for Christmas. She very specifically told me tonight, “I want a big blue car that’s just my size so I can drive around for Christmas.” She further said, “and I want a hoverboard”. She is fixated on the car thing, bringing home a sheet she brailled herself that reads, “For Christmas I want a car that is blue that goes fast, and is my size.” This is a singular request because for Christmas the children are getting a Tesla child-sized electric car.” There is a referral program with Tesla and since we’ve had a few referrals and Tesla mailed us a car. It is red (the only option) but my husband has figured this must be because Santa likes red.
My son also wanted to have Pei Wei for the food—something difficult to do since the trampoline place was in the other direction entirely from Pei Wei, but was solved by having people come back to the house while my husband went to pick up the food.
There were four grandparents, some parents, Uncle Jonathan and his girlfriend, Margaret. Most of the adults didn’t choose to jump but Uncle Jonathan, Margaret, my husband and threw middle-aged hazard to the wind, donned jumping sticky socks and went into the fray with the children.
Finding my son and his friends in the large place was a challenge some of the time for those adults who were wanting to get pictures but since everyone was having fun, no one seemed to mind. My daughter spent a lot of the time with Margaret, whom she doesn’t get to see often but loves to spend time with. As my mother would say, my daughter thinks Margaret, “hung the moon”.
I forgot just how loud our house can get with piles of children in it. Or rather I didn’t forget but I had a headache and my head was un-thrilled with the volume level so I hid after lunch and fell asleep for a while. Thanks as always to the grandparents for keeping everyone (mostly my daughter) occupied.
Tomorrow my husband and daughter leave for Detroit for eye surgery in which they’ll open up the scar tissue inside her right eye that is preventing her from (possibly) seeing. We’ll know more after Monday if her right eye has the ability to see at all.
The Big Boy Update: Why are boys so loud? My son and his friend, Gavin, were having fun all day if volume is any indication of their level of happy.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has been saying for a while now that she wants a blue car for Christmas. She very specifically told me tonight, “I want a big blue car that’s just my size so I can drive around for Christmas.” She further said, “and I want a hoverboard”. She is fixated on the car thing, bringing home a sheet she brailled herself that reads, “For Christmas I want a car that is blue that goes fast, and is my size.” This is a singular request because for Christmas the children are getting a Tesla child-sized electric car.” There is a referral program with Tesla and since we’ve had a few referrals and Tesla mailed us a car. It is red (the only option) but my husband has figured this must be because Santa likes red.
Friday, December 15, 2017
Mental Map
My daughter has the ability to map out her surroundings. She has to do this by necessity to protect her body from injury. She has enough vision to see some things—what things she can see we really don’t know as she can’t adequately explain it. She saw a huge blow up last night and knew it was Mickey Mouse. She also knew some of the houses in our neighborhood had lights on the roof line while others didn’t.
But there are things she takes guesses at and is way off. You’re driving and say you see something out the window and she’ll look in the wrong direction and say she sees it too. But the mental map is a lot more important than what she doesn’t see. Being safe is a good thing, especially when the person you’re protecting yourself from is you.
My son is pretty good at spacial relations but I didn’t realize just how good until last night. After our neighborhood holiday party we got in the car and drove around our phase of the neighborhood to see the luminaries lit up along the fronts of people’s houses.
We did a lot of talking about the houses and decorations and my daughter saw some of it but lots of it was just big colorful blurs to her. When we got home my children, now very late for bed, got their pajamas on and my son said he needed to draw something before going up to bed. It was a map, he said. He didn’t tell me what it was as we went upstairs, leaving it on the table now that he’d gotten his thoughts down on paper. This is what he drew:
The Bit Boy Update: My son likes listening to the Movie Music channel. A Star Wars song came on and my son said, “why are there always trumpets in Star Wars music?”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had fun at the neighborhood party last night, but she was a little bored. She has trouble connecting with children and playing with them. She loses them when they run off and a lot of times they don’t know how to interact with a blind child. We’re working on some ways to help her in the future.
But there are things she takes guesses at and is way off. You’re driving and say you see something out the window and she’ll look in the wrong direction and say she sees it too. But the mental map is a lot more important than what she doesn’t see. Being safe is a good thing, especially when the person you’re protecting yourself from is you.
My son is pretty good at spacial relations but I didn’t realize just how good until last night. After our neighborhood holiday party we got in the car and drove around our phase of the neighborhood to see the luminaries lit up along the fronts of people’s houses.
He drew a map of all the streets in our neighborhood with dots representing the lit luminaries. At the bottom right is the clubhouse. There is one larger red dot on the lower left area—that’s our house. When I asked what the other large red dot was this morning he told me that was his new friend from last night.
I had no idea he had such a complete map of the neighborhood, especially since he’s not old enough to travel much beyond our small cul-de-sac street to see friends. I suppose I’d better find out who this new friends is.
The Bit Boy Update: My son likes listening to the Movie Music channel. A Star Wars song came on and my son said, “why are there always trumpets in Star Wars music?”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had fun at the neighborhood party last night, but she was a little bored. She has trouble connecting with children and playing with them. She loses them when they run off and a lot of times they don’t know how to interact with a blind child. We’re working on some ways to help her in the future.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
The Month of Visitors
We have a series of people coming to stay with us this month. I think we’ll have fifteen people staying with us, although not all at the same time. I’m pretty happy about this because all the people that are coming to stay with us are either family or are in that category of, “might as well be family”.
So a full house. That involves more chaos than I typically am comfortable with, but this can be a good thing. I have a problem with chaos. I fight it with excessive order. Left unchecked this can turn into obsessive compulsive behavior. Say for example the blinds having to be just the right amount of open or closed and when, upon entering a room, it turns out the blinds have been disturbed, they have to be restored to their “proper” or “correct” orientation. And yes, this is something I have done and do notice. So injecting my life with some chaos—three additional children for example—is going to do all kinds of good.
It makes me happy though when people come to stay with us and enjoy their time here. You might remember back about two months ago when we had my childhood friend, Richard stay with us. My children rated him a “solid eight” and we all didn’t want him to leave when it was time for him to go. This week Richard’s wife, Alice, has been staying with us as well as Richard’s mother whom my children call, “Aunt Jo”.
I think everyone has had an enjoyable and relaxing time together. I think the nicest thing though was when Alice got up after her first night here and she said, “I slept so well last night”. Alice had to return home today and Aunt Jo is leaving in the morning.
Tomorrow our friends who took their life on the road in a forty-five foot rig are coming to stay with us for over a week. My children are very excited to see their three children and my husband already has a movie scheduled with Louie at 9AM tomorrow morning to see the new Star Wars release.
We have more family coming later in multiple sets, all the way through new years. It’s going to be a busy but fun month here at our house.
The Big Boy Update: My son was playing with some children he’d just met tonight at the neighborhood party at the clubhouse. He’s getting better at these types of social situations. He was playing some sort of Minecraft Wars and getting along easily with the other children. I did’t see him for most of the time we were there.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter is so social, but she has a hard time interacting with social groups in many cases because she can’t see what’s going on or where the friends are going. So she hangs out with the adults she trusts. While my son had a great time tonight at the neighborhood holiday social, I think my daughter was mostly bored. I didn’t realize this until we had gotten home and she said something about it. Some things make me sad when I don’t realize they’ve happened until its too late.
So a full house. That involves more chaos than I typically am comfortable with, but this can be a good thing. I have a problem with chaos. I fight it with excessive order. Left unchecked this can turn into obsessive compulsive behavior. Say for example the blinds having to be just the right amount of open or closed and when, upon entering a room, it turns out the blinds have been disturbed, they have to be restored to their “proper” or “correct” orientation. And yes, this is something I have done and do notice. So injecting my life with some chaos—three additional children for example—is going to do all kinds of good.
It makes me happy though when people come to stay with us and enjoy their time here. You might remember back about two months ago when we had my childhood friend, Richard stay with us. My children rated him a “solid eight” and we all didn’t want him to leave when it was time for him to go. This week Richard’s wife, Alice, has been staying with us as well as Richard’s mother whom my children call, “Aunt Jo”.
I think everyone has had an enjoyable and relaxing time together. I think the nicest thing though was when Alice got up after her first night here and she said, “I slept so well last night”. Alice had to return home today and Aunt Jo is leaving in the morning.
Tomorrow our friends who took their life on the road in a forty-five foot rig are coming to stay with us for over a week. My children are very excited to see their three children and my husband already has a movie scheduled with Louie at 9AM tomorrow morning to see the new Star Wars release.
We have more family coming later in multiple sets, all the way through new years. It’s going to be a busy but fun month here at our house.
The Big Boy Update: My son was playing with some children he’d just met tonight at the neighborhood party at the clubhouse. He’s getting better at these types of social situations. He was playing some sort of Minecraft Wars and getting along easily with the other children. I did’t see him for most of the time we were there.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter is so social, but she has a hard time interacting with social groups in many cases because she can’t see what’s going on or where the friends are going. So she hangs out with the adults she trusts. While my son had a great time tonight at the neighborhood holiday social, I think my daughter was mostly bored. I didn’t realize this until we had gotten home and she said something about it. Some things make me sad when I don’t realize they’ve happened until its too late.
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Undo Undo Undo
There are a lot of things I find absolutely essential in working with computers. There are things that taken away, would make the task of getting daily work done both arduous and much more time consuming. Take the mouse for example (or touch pad). Can you move around with the keyboard alone? Actually, you can. There are keyboard commands and shortcuts to get mostly anywhere, but it’s so much easier to just move the pointer and click, or double click or drag.
But my favorite and indispensable feature is Undo, Undo and Redo. I can take every word I’ve typed so far in this blog post, select it and press the delete key and—oh crap, it’s gone—or is it? All I have to do is Undo and it’s back, right there, just like it was before.
Not only can I undo once, I can undo many times, as the computer is keeping a stack of all the actions I’ve done, letting me back out one, three, ten or more changes. I use this feature all the time when I write presentations. I put things on a slide, move them around, change font size, delete and add things. Do I like the new layout? If I don’t I just press Undo, Undo, Undo, etc. until I get back to the starting point of the slide.
It’s like a sandbox you can play in without penalty. So why don’t people know about Undo? I was over at my best friends house the other day, showing her some things on her Mac. I was helping her with a presentation and mentioned Undo. She didn’t use it, she said. So I gave her a demo: I deleted some text, I dragged a paragraph into the middle of another paragraph, I went over to the slide deck on the side and selected ten slides and deleted them—I basically destroyed hours of work.
She screamed (which was fun) and was visibly upset. Then I calmly said, “watch this” and pressed Undo until it was all back. And she marveled at the power of Undo. I showed her Undo and Redo. She said she had retyped things from scratch before from accidentally deleting them. And my friend isn’t alone. I’ve met many people over the years that don’t know about this one incredibly powerful feature of our computers.
It’s not just within applications, it can be files you accidentally deleted or moved and don’t know which folder your fingers mistakenly dragged them to. It’s in almost all applications and it’s one of my favorite features. I don’t think I want to work on a computer that doesn’t have Undo.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked me yesterday, “is right zig or is left zig?” I said, “as in ‘zig zag’?” He said that was what he was talking about. I told him I didn’t know and could he let me know if he found out?
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter likes to be useful. Or maybe what I mean is she likes to be capable. It’s a strong urge she has because of the blindness. When we were distributing luminary materials on Sunday for three hours she helped scoop sand and put candles and white bags in stacks. She kept asking what else she could do to help. I know in part she wanted to help, but another part I think (but don’t really know) is the other children were running around chasing each other and climbing on large, sharp rocks on an embankment. She couldn’t see or follow them and she didn’t know the unfamiliar terrain, which could hurt her. But she was the best helper we had at the whole event.
But my favorite and indispensable feature is Undo, Undo and Redo. I can take every word I’ve typed so far in this blog post, select it and press the delete key and—oh crap, it’s gone—or is it? All I have to do is Undo and it’s back, right there, just like it was before.
Not only can I undo once, I can undo many times, as the computer is keeping a stack of all the actions I’ve done, letting me back out one, three, ten or more changes. I use this feature all the time when I write presentations. I put things on a slide, move them around, change font size, delete and add things. Do I like the new layout? If I don’t I just press Undo, Undo, Undo, etc. until I get back to the starting point of the slide.
It’s like a sandbox you can play in without penalty. So why don’t people know about Undo? I was over at my best friends house the other day, showing her some things on her Mac. I was helping her with a presentation and mentioned Undo. She didn’t use it, she said. So I gave her a demo: I deleted some text, I dragged a paragraph into the middle of another paragraph, I went over to the slide deck on the side and selected ten slides and deleted them—I basically destroyed hours of work.
She screamed (which was fun) and was visibly upset. Then I calmly said, “watch this” and pressed Undo until it was all back. And she marveled at the power of Undo. I showed her Undo and Redo. She said she had retyped things from scratch before from accidentally deleting them. And my friend isn’t alone. I’ve met many people over the years that don’t know about this one incredibly powerful feature of our computers.
It’s not just within applications, it can be files you accidentally deleted or moved and don’t know which folder your fingers mistakenly dragged them to. It’s in almost all applications and it’s one of my favorite features. I don’t think I want to work on a computer that doesn’t have Undo.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked me yesterday, “is right zig or is left zig?” I said, “as in ‘zig zag’?” He said that was what he was talking about. I told him I didn’t know and could he let me know if he found out?
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter likes to be useful. Or maybe what I mean is she likes to be capable. It’s a strong urge she has because of the blindness. When we were distributing luminary materials on Sunday for three hours she helped scoop sand and put candles and white bags in stacks. She kept asking what else she could do to help. I know in part she wanted to help, but another part I think (but don’t really know) is the other children were running around chasing each other and climbing on large, sharp rocks on an embankment. She couldn’t see or follow them and she didn’t know the unfamiliar terrain, which could hurt her. But she was the best helper we had at the whole event.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
28…In Hex
I can’t remember the concatenation of thoughts that brought me to this particular memory as I was getting ready this morning. Every now and then I think of this memory from what is now twenty-five years ago and it always makes me smile.
I was in college, working at IBM as a co-op. I’d been working there for a while and had a lot of friends in the large software product group I was working for. I’d been dating the same person for the majority of the time I’d been working there but the relationship had waned and he and I had decided to part ways.
I remember sitting in my office telling a co-worker who had stopped by about the recent split when this guy (his name was Bob) suddenly stuck his head into the door of my office and said, “you’re single?” I said something clever like, “yeah” and he said, “do you want to go out?”
Wasn’t this guy older? I mean I knew he wasn’t one of the co-ops because we all hung out together and knew each other. He didn’t look that old but heck, I was still in college and everyone not in college seemed really old to me. I looked at him and said back, “how old are you?” Unfazed, he replied, “I’m twenty-eight.”
Twenty-eight didn’t seem that bad. It was under thirty and I was twenty-two and he had been a nice enough guy from the times I’d interacted with him at work even though I didn’t know him well. And hell, I was on the rebound, so why not? I said sure, gave him my number and said to call me about the weekend since I was at loose ends.
He did call, I think later that evening after work. And then he told me the truth. He was very nice about it, saying he liked me and was interested in going out but when he told me how old he was he had said in a much lower voice a second half to the sentence which was, “I’m twenty-eight…in HEX.”
OH…okay then. I did the quick math in my head. This was nerdy computer stuff. He and I worked in software development, so this was a fairly simple translation code. Hexadecimal is base 16. Everything we humans do is in Decimal, or base 10, for our numbers. Computers don’t like decimal math on account of it not being binary enough. Hexadecimal makes a computer much happier (not to mention the programmer).
Back to the problem at hand. The first digit of 28 is a two, which in decimal would mean twenty, but in hexadecimal would mean 2*16 or 32. The second digit of eight is just an eight, but it has to be added to the 32, so 32 + 8 = 40.
This guy was forty years old. I was twenty-two—he was almost double my age. I don’t know why I asked him what I did next. I had been quickly doing some birth year math. I was born in 1970, which meant he was eighteen when I was born. So I asked him, “how were the 60’s?” He told me, “they were pretty wild”.
And then he said he understood if I didn’t want to go out, what with the age deception and all. I thought he was pretty clever and honest so I told him the date was still on. We didn’t work out, but I’ll never forget how he asked me out.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked us in the car yesterday, “do we celebrate spring cleaning?” My husband explained that, “Mom does about eight times a year.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter came downstairs this morning without getting dressed for school. She didn’t want to go back up. She tried, “but it’s creepy up there” and “but my legs are tired” and then realized she wasn’t getting breakfast and would have to go to school in her pajamas and without shoes in the cold and changed her mind on not going back upstairs.
I was in college, working at IBM as a co-op. I’d been working there for a while and had a lot of friends in the large software product group I was working for. I’d been dating the same person for the majority of the time I’d been working there but the relationship had waned and he and I had decided to part ways.
I remember sitting in my office telling a co-worker who had stopped by about the recent split when this guy (his name was Bob) suddenly stuck his head into the door of my office and said, “you’re single?” I said something clever like, “yeah” and he said, “do you want to go out?”
Wasn’t this guy older? I mean I knew he wasn’t one of the co-ops because we all hung out together and knew each other. He didn’t look that old but heck, I was still in college and everyone not in college seemed really old to me. I looked at him and said back, “how old are you?” Unfazed, he replied, “I’m twenty-eight.”
Twenty-eight didn’t seem that bad. It was under thirty and I was twenty-two and he had been a nice enough guy from the times I’d interacted with him at work even though I didn’t know him well. And hell, I was on the rebound, so why not? I said sure, gave him my number and said to call me about the weekend since I was at loose ends.
He did call, I think later that evening after work. And then he told me the truth. He was very nice about it, saying he liked me and was interested in going out but when he told me how old he was he had said in a much lower voice a second half to the sentence which was, “I’m twenty-eight…in HEX.”
OH…okay then. I did the quick math in my head. This was nerdy computer stuff. He and I worked in software development, so this was a fairly simple translation code. Hexadecimal is base 16. Everything we humans do is in Decimal, or base 10, for our numbers. Computers don’t like decimal math on account of it not being binary enough. Hexadecimal makes a computer much happier (not to mention the programmer).
Back to the problem at hand. The first digit of 28 is a two, which in decimal would mean twenty, but in hexadecimal would mean 2*16 or 32. The second digit of eight is just an eight, but it has to be added to the 32, so 32 + 8 = 40.
This guy was forty years old. I was twenty-two—he was almost double my age. I don’t know why I asked him what I did next. I had been quickly doing some birth year math. I was born in 1970, which meant he was eighteen when I was born. So I asked him, “how were the 60’s?” He told me, “they were pretty wild”.
And then he said he understood if I didn’t want to go out, what with the age deception and all. I thought he was pretty clever and honest so I told him the date was still on. We didn’t work out, but I’ll never forget how he asked me out.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked us in the car yesterday, “do we celebrate spring cleaning?” My husband explained that, “Mom does about eight times a year.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter came downstairs this morning without getting dressed for school. She didn’t want to go back up. She tried, “but it’s creepy up there” and “but my legs are tired” and then realized she wasn’t getting breakfast and would have to go to school in her pajamas and without shoes in the cold and changed her mind on not going back upstairs.
Childhood Friends
Today was my son’s birthday. He’s seven now and is numerically a year older than his sister, which makes him happy, although he wasn’t that upset about it really. He likes his sister for the most part. For dinner he wanted to go to Pei Wei. We went there the other day and he wants to have Pei Wei for his birthday party meal as well, making Pei Wei a sort of a mini food obsession for him right now.
While we were at dinner he and my daughter were trying to monopolize their father’s personal space and time. I was eating my meal, glad to have a break but I had to laugh when my husband said, “guys, don’t fight over me.” I called my son back to our side of the table and asked him about his day and the friends he was talking about from school. He talked for a bit and then he asked me, “mom, did you have any friends when you grew up?”
I did have friends. I had some great friends, I told him. I told him about my best friend from my youngest memory, Jenny. I said that Jenny had been across the street from the house Mimi and Gramps still live in in the winter months and that up the hill on the side of their house lived Veda, who was a close friend through high school. On the other side were two boys, one older and one younger than me, named Jeff and Joey. Which one was older, he asked. I said it was Jeff. He knew it was Jeff, he told me.
Then I told him about Rob, who moved in down the street and the first day we met I was on my Big Wheel and he’d come pedaling In on his Green Machine. I had to explain what these two things were, saying they were three wheel tricycle like things only different. It was about this time that my son had grown bored with my childhood reminiscing and moved on to my husband, and did he have any friends as a child.
It turns out we both had friends growing up. The most surprising thing was when my husband said his best friend from childhood was Stephan, my daughter immediately said, “oh, I know him.”
The Big Boy Update: My son wanted to get water from the ocean and make it into drinking water today and could he do that. We explained that it was possible, but complicated and not cost-effective. For him, the most challenging part would be that we’re not near the sea. Yes, he said, but if he got a cup and a paper towel surely he could get the process started. We tried to explain how taking the water out and leaving the salt wasn’t hard, but getting the salt out and leaving the water was the tricky part. He learned the word desalination and has decided to think more on how he’s going to purify water for our family.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a friend at school named Madison. She really likes Madison (we’ve only met her once). She told me, “she’s the best friend I could hope for.”
While we were at dinner he and my daughter were trying to monopolize their father’s personal space and time. I was eating my meal, glad to have a break but I had to laugh when my husband said, “guys, don’t fight over me.” I called my son back to our side of the table and asked him about his day and the friends he was talking about from school. He talked for a bit and then he asked me, “mom, did you have any friends when you grew up?”
I did have friends. I had some great friends, I told him. I told him about my best friend from my youngest memory, Jenny. I said that Jenny had been across the street from the house Mimi and Gramps still live in in the winter months and that up the hill on the side of their house lived Veda, who was a close friend through high school. On the other side were two boys, one older and one younger than me, named Jeff and Joey. Which one was older, he asked. I said it was Jeff. He knew it was Jeff, he told me.
Then I told him about Rob, who moved in down the street and the first day we met I was on my Big Wheel and he’d come pedaling In on his Green Machine. I had to explain what these two things were, saying they were three wheel tricycle like things only different. It was about this time that my son had grown bored with my childhood reminiscing and moved on to my husband, and did he have any friends as a child.
It turns out we both had friends growing up. The most surprising thing was when my husband said his best friend from childhood was Stephan, my daughter immediately said, “oh, I know him.”
The Big Boy Update: My son wanted to get water from the ocean and make it into drinking water today and could he do that. We explained that it was possible, but complicated and not cost-effective. For him, the most challenging part would be that we’re not near the sea. Yes, he said, but if he got a cup and a paper towel surely he could get the process started. We tried to explain how taking the water out and leaving the salt wasn’t hard, but getting the salt out and leaving the water was the tricky part. He learned the word desalination and has decided to think more on how he’s going to purify water for our family.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a friend at school named Madison. She really likes Madison (we’ve only met her once). She told me, “she’s the best friend I could hope for.”
Sunday, December 10, 2017
The Hungry Cash Register
For the past three years my best friend and I have coordinated a luminary evening in our neighborhood. It was initially her idea because she wanted to do something in which her children could give back to the community. I’m not sure it’s really worked out that way as much of the work of purchasing supplies, transporting heavy loads of sand and coordinating signup genius lists has to be done by us, the parents.
But all six of our children were there as we distributed the materials to our neighbors and they did work hard to help families get their luminary bags, luminary candles and sand to weight down the bags. They also helped to collect the money and did a fairly decent job of asking politely if the families would like to donate anything extra to our charity for the year.
There was a lot of interest in counting the money collected. My best friend’s children had brought over their toy cash register to store funds in. My parents have this same cash register at their home in the mountains and my daughter loves to play with it when she visits.
But all six of our children were there as we distributed the materials to our neighbors and they did work hard to help families get their luminary bags, luminary candles and sand to weight down the bags. They also helped to collect the money and did a fairly decent job of asking politely if the families would like to donate anything extra to our charity for the year.
There was a lot of interest in counting the money collected. My best friend’s children had brought over their toy cash register to store funds in. My parents have this same cash register at their home in the mountains and my daughter loves to play with it when she visits.
As we collected more money the older children would take it out, count the bills, add in the value of the checks and then store things back in an orderly or perhaps less-than-orderly fashion in the cash register.
This went on for a while. The pile got larger as we got close to the end of our time at the clubhouse where people could pick up supplies. After hearing one excited tally total I went over to look in the register drawer. For some reason the now “counted” bills were all in a single draw slot. I could barely get the drawer open.
When I got the drawer open and pulled out the money I felt backwards and discovered some wedged bills. Then I noticed the drawer wouldn’t close properly. To jump to the end here, there was $120 in money that had gotten wedged behind and then pushed underneath the drawer. It would turn out some of the money was play money in addition to the $120 cash. And there wasn’t an easy solution to get the money out.
The drawer wasn’t removable and due to the electronics surrounding opening the drawer and putting money in, unscrewing it and taking the bottom off wasn’t straightforward either. So we got a coat hanger and used the arm of a pair of sunglasses and took turns trying to get the money out.
Every time we thought we’d gotten the last bill out, more appeared. Some of us were for giving up and hoping the bills that remained stuck would be play money, but my husband was having none of it. And he did, with the help of some banging, a second person holding the cash register and a third person using an iPhone light, get the last of the cash out.
Next year we’re using a cash box.
The Big Boy Update: We got a tree today for Christmas. My daughter wanted to know what the machine was like that put the netting around the tree. My husband said it wasn’t a machine so much as a tool. My son piped up and said, “a machine has to have a piston.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: I was downstairs getting ready yesterday morning. I’d told my daughter she had to go upstairs to get dressed so we could go. She went upstairs and then I heard the Amazon Alexa come on in our bedroom. I said, “yes, can I help you?” My daughter replied, “I’m calling you because I don’t want to be lonely up here.”
Saturday, December 9, 2017
Good At Math
I like math. I’ve always liked math. My mother was a math teacher so perhaps I had a predisposition to it. I know neither she nor my father pushed math on me, but I far preferred it over the other subjects in school.
My children seem to like math too. It’s a little easier to tell with my son because he’s learning subjects in the traditional order you would as a sighted child. Granted he’s doing so in a Montessori way, meaning not all children are exposed to a trinomial cube when they’re four-years-old (see related post here: Trinomial Cube). Even so, he’s being exposed to the math concepts in a similar order as a traditional curriculum.
My daughter likes numbers but she’s having to learn math tactilely, using an abacus. But she’s also doing a lot in her mind. She’s got the concepts, just like her brother does. They both seem to be able to make mental leaps once they get the idea behind something in the world of numbers.
This morning my daughter wanted to do math problems. My husband and I were trying to sleep but her need to add “24 + 24 + 24 + a million billion” was strong. I don’t think in kindergarten I was doing such math, but we helped her figure it out and then she was satisfied and went off to get breakfast.
My son prefers to do math work over his other work—to the detriment of his other subjects sometimes. But he does love his math. He put some problem he was working on on his water bottle a few days ago. Now he can easily remember what 10,000 x 10.000 is when he gets his water bottle out of the refrigerator:
The Big Boy Update: I told my son his favorite sitter was coming home from college soon and hopefully we’d see her over the holiday break. He told me, “Morgan’s in college. She’s going to marry someone soon.” I thought he might have meant that she wouldn’t be available to sit if she were married so I asked him what he meant and he asked me, “do you find someone to get married to after college?” For the rest of the ride we talked about getting married and when and why people did it. In the end I think he was just glad he was going to get to see Morgan again soon.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We still have “The Song Seat” and “The Favorite Seat” in our car. The song seat actually seems to be more of a favorite of late though. Today there was some verbal parlay but my son was in the song seat and asked to hear, “Alone, by Alan Walker”. At this point I’d like to say my children are finding all sorts of interesting music through Alexa and Amazon music. I was just getting into this song when my daughter, clearly having forgotten her ire in not being able to pick the song, chimed in saying, “I love your choice, Greyson.”
My children seem to like math too. It’s a little easier to tell with my son because he’s learning subjects in the traditional order you would as a sighted child. Granted he’s doing so in a Montessori way, meaning not all children are exposed to a trinomial cube when they’re four-years-old (see related post here: Trinomial Cube). Even so, he’s being exposed to the math concepts in a similar order as a traditional curriculum.
My daughter likes numbers but she’s having to learn math tactilely, using an abacus. But she’s also doing a lot in her mind. She’s got the concepts, just like her brother does. They both seem to be able to make mental leaps once they get the idea behind something in the world of numbers.
This morning my daughter wanted to do math problems. My husband and I were trying to sleep but her need to add “24 + 24 + 24 + a million billion” was strong. I don’t think in kindergarten I was doing such math, but we helped her figure it out and then she was satisfied and went off to get breakfast.
My son prefers to do math work over his other work—to the detriment of his other subjects sometimes. But he does love his math. He put some problem he was working on on his water bottle a few days ago. Now he can easily remember what 10,000 x 10.000 is when he gets his water bottle out of the refrigerator:
The Big Boy Update: I told my son his favorite sitter was coming home from college soon and hopefully we’d see her over the holiday break. He told me, “Morgan’s in college. She’s going to marry someone soon.” I thought he might have meant that she wouldn’t be available to sit if she were married so I asked him what he meant and he asked me, “do you find someone to get married to after college?” For the rest of the ride we talked about getting married and when and why people did it. In the end I think he was just glad he was going to get to see Morgan again soon.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We still have “The Song Seat” and “The Favorite Seat” in our car. The song seat actually seems to be more of a favorite of late though. Today there was some verbal parlay but my son was in the song seat and asked to hear, “Alone, by Alan Walker”. At this point I’d like to say my children are finding all sorts of interesting music through Alexa and Amazon music. I was just getting into this song when my daughter, clearly having forgotten her ire in not being able to pick the song, chimed in saying, “I love your choice, Greyson.”
Friday, December 8, 2017
It’s Coming Out
My daughter lost her first tooth today. It had been bothering her for a while and tonight she worked it back and forth through dinner trying to get it to come out. My son and husband showed up at dinner after we did and when my son realized she was about to lose the tooth, he gave her some helpful advice—him being a veteran with two teeth lost himself already.
She had finished he second dinner, it being the second bowl of low mein they had brought to her because the very helpful bus boy cleared our table while I took her to the bathroom mid-meal.
Two bowls of noodles and the tooth had to come out so she worried it back and forth until it came off I her fingers. She wasn’t upset about it; I think she was relieved to get it out because it was becoming annoying.
The Big Boy Update: when my daughter her tooth come out, I asked her if I could have it so she could hold the napkin up to her mouth for any blood. As I reached for my purse my son asked me, “do you always have extra bags on you?” I sort of have a thing with little tiny bags, which I guess my son has noticed.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has her tooth in a bag under her pillow. Or maybe there is a dollar already there, I’m not sure if my husband, ahem, the Tooth Fairy, has made the swap yet. My son has told her it’s dad and me that does the money, not the tooth fairy. Dad very correctly told both children that we'd never seen the Tooth Fairy. The ruse may not last long though
She had finished he second dinner, it being the second bowl of low mein they had brought to her because the very helpful bus boy cleared our table while I took her to the bathroom mid-meal.
Two bowls of noodles and the tooth had to come out so she worried it back and forth until it came off I her fingers. She wasn’t upset about it; I think she was relieved to get it out because it was becoming annoying.
The Big Boy Update: when my daughter her tooth come out, I asked her if I could have it so she could hold the napkin up to her mouth for any blood. As I reached for my purse my son asked me, “do you always have extra bags on you?” I sort of have a thing with little tiny bags, which I guess my son has noticed.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has her tooth in a bag under her pillow. Or maybe there is a dollar already there, I’m not sure if my husband, ahem, the Tooth Fairy, has made the swap yet. My son has told her it’s dad and me that does the money, not the tooth fairy. Dad very correctly told both children that we'd never seen the Tooth Fairy. The ruse may not last long though
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Done But Not Doing
There are some things I like when I’ve done them, I just don’t like doing them. I’ve been known to say many a time that I like having run, but not necessarily doing the running itself. Fortunately for me I have a running friend who makes the time go by quickly and as a result I sort of like running.
Then there are the decorations. This October my son told me we were sort of looking like losers because we didn’t have our decorations out for Halloween and the neighbors did. I tried to tell him we had some neighbors on our eleven house street that were competitive—particularly when it came to decorations—and each year it seems to be earlier and more grand.
So we got the Halloween decorations up and my son had a hand in putting things here and there and some of it didn’t make design sense to me but he was happy so I went with it. The Christmas decorations are a little more specific and some are more delicate or breakable so I’m doing it myself. I got partway done tonight but it’s late so I came down here to write this post.
I’m hoping to be done putting the Christmas decorations up tomorrow, or at least the parts I’m responsible for. My husband is working on the outside components and he’ll be the one doing the tree shopping and decorating. I’ll just be glad when it’s done so I can get on to the next holiday task—present wrapping.
The Big Boy Update: My son was with his grandparents this weekend and he must have had a conversation with them about the newspaper that they have delivered and read. He explained, “there are no newspapers anymore. The news has developed—it’s on your iPhone.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We are having to set some rules with my daughter’s door frame climbing obsession. She fully feels you are obligated to walk through the door under her legs, regardless of the height of the door or the tallness of the person. We’ve explained it is not always a good time to walk under her legs. She is not thrilled with this new development, I think she thinks she owns the doorways.
Then there are the decorations. This October my son told me we were sort of looking like losers because we didn’t have our decorations out for Halloween and the neighbors did. I tried to tell him we had some neighbors on our eleven house street that were competitive—particularly when it came to decorations—and each year it seems to be earlier and more grand.
So we got the Halloween decorations up and my son had a hand in putting things here and there and some of it didn’t make design sense to me but he was happy so I went with it. The Christmas decorations are a little more specific and some are more delicate or breakable so I’m doing it myself. I got partway done tonight but it’s late so I came down here to write this post.
I’m hoping to be done putting the Christmas decorations up tomorrow, or at least the parts I’m responsible for. My husband is working on the outside components and he’ll be the one doing the tree shopping and decorating. I’ll just be glad when it’s done so I can get on to the next holiday task—present wrapping.
The Big Boy Update: My son was with his grandparents this weekend and he must have had a conversation with them about the newspaper that they have delivered and read. He explained, “there are no newspapers anymore. The news has developed—it’s on your iPhone.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We are having to set some rules with my daughter’s door frame climbing obsession. She fully feels you are obligated to walk through the door under her legs, regardless of the height of the door or the tallness of the person. We’ve explained it is not always a good time to walk under her legs. She is not thrilled with this new development, I think she thinks she owns the doorways.
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Where Is He Looking?
There is an interesting phenomenon that happens when more than two people are having a conversation together. The person speaking typically tends to look at one of the parties more than the other one. Let me give you an example:
We had our HVAC seasonal check-up recently. HVAC isn’t my thing, with me firmly deciding this should be something my husband cares about more than I do. But at the end of the technician’s checkup he gives us a rundown of what he saw and what his recommendations were. As he talks to the two of us he primarily looks at me. My husband is asking questions—better ones than mine—but the technician is still directing his answers in my direction. Why?
I’ve noticed this time and time again. My brother-in-law and I were talking not long ago and he was giving me an update on his latest appointment with his eye doctor. He has a complex eye situation but he is well-informed and engaged with his medical care. And yet at the checkup he noticed the doctor directing both conversation and answers to question towards my brother’s partner instead of him. Why?
There are complex social dynamics in play with the why to both of those questions. Today I ran into an entirely new one though. We took my daughter to her six-year-old wellness check. We’d seen this new doctor once before after our favorite doctor moved away and were looking forward to seeing Dr. Baldwin again.
Dr. Baldwin was great. My husband and I liked him and my daughter got along with him as well. But when he answered questions or talked to either of us he stared at this spot in the wall behind us. It was strange. If there had been a television hung on the wall behind us showing the news or a sports game I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but there was nothing there—just a wall.
It didn’t affect anything related to patient care though and we like him a lot, maybe in January when we take my son for his wellness checkup we’ll see if there was a hidden television on the wall after all.
The Big Boy Update: My son was angry at me the other day. I was telling him he had to do something or he wasn’t able to do something and I was telling him he had to calm down before he could do the next thing. I can’t remember exactly what the situation was, but I wasn’t expecting his response, “I have my own DNA!” he cried out. I agreed that he did. We got sidetracked into a discussion about DNA and before you know it he was calm again.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and I were talking tonight as she was going to sleep in her bed. I told her it was time to be quiet and I started a song playing on Alexa. My daughter said calmly and quietly, “that’s my girl…that’s my girl…that’s my mommy…DNA of my heart…Mommy.” This was a very eloquent and poignant thing for my daughter to say. I told her that was incredibly sweet and she made my heart happy. I went over to hug her and she hugged me back and gave me a kiss. Then I asked the inevitable question, knowing the answer: “where did you hear those words?” “On a show”, she said. But she said them to me and she knew what they meant. That’s what matters to me.
We had our HVAC seasonal check-up recently. HVAC isn’t my thing, with me firmly deciding this should be something my husband cares about more than I do. But at the end of the technician’s checkup he gives us a rundown of what he saw and what his recommendations were. As he talks to the two of us he primarily looks at me. My husband is asking questions—better ones than mine—but the technician is still directing his answers in my direction. Why?
I’ve noticed this time and time again. My brother-in-law and I were talking not long ago and he was giving me an update on his latest appointment with his eye doctor. He has a complex eye situation but he is well-informed and engaged with his medical care. And yet at the checkup he noticed the doctor directing both conversation and answers to question towards my brother’s partner instead of him. Why?
There are complex social dynamics in play with the why to both of those questions. Today I ran into an entirely new one though. We took my daughter to her six-year-old wellness check. We’d seen this new doctor once before after our favorite doctor moved away and were looking forward to seeing Dr. Baldwin again.
Dr. Baldwin was great. My husband and I liked him and my daughter got along with him as well. But when he answered questions or talked to either of us he stared at this spot in the wall behind us. It was strange. If there had been a television hung on the wall behind us showing the news or a sports game I wouldn’t have thought much of it, but there was nothing there—just a wall.
It didn’t affect anything related to patient care though and we like him a lot, maybe in January when we take my son for his wellness checkup we’ll see if there was a hidden television on the wall after all.
The Big Boy Update: My son was angry at me the other day. I was telling him he had to do something or he wasn’t able to do something and I was telling him he had to calm down before he could do the next thing. I can’t remember exactly what the situation was, but I wasn’t expecting his response, “I have my own DNA!” he cried out. I agreed that he did. We got sidetracked into a discussion about DNA and before you know it he was calm again.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter and I were talking tonight as she was going to sleep in her bed. I told her it was time to be quiet and I started a song playing on Alexa. My daughter said calmly and quietly, “that’s my girl…that’s my girl…that’s my mommy…DNA of my heart…Mommy.” This was a very eloquent and poignant thing for my daughter to say. I told her that was incredibly sweet and she made my heart happy. I went over to hug her and she hugged me back and gave me a kiss. Then I asked the inevitable question, knowing the answer: “where did you hear those words?” “On a show”, she said. But she said them to me and she knew what they meant. That’s what matters to me.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Pliers and Rope
My son has a tooth that needs to fall out. It’s the right front tooth on his upper jaw. It’s one of the two front and center teeth you see when you smile. And his tooth is crooked. The permanent tooth has been pushing downwards from his jaw for some time, but as it did so for some reason it started to push the baby tooth to the side instead of uniformly downwards.
Maybe his baby tooth didn’t resorb evenly on both sides or maybe the baby or permanent teeth are in just the right position to cause his tooth to veer off to one side. I started noticing it because the spacing between two of his teeth looked larger. Then it got larger still. Now the tooth is not only almost overlapping the other front tooth, it’s angled down at a kilt that makes my son look snaggle-toothed.
The tooth itself must be bothering my son because he decided last night that he, “wanted to tie a rope around his tooth and then to a doorknob so we can pull it out”. We talked about the whole “rope” part of that idea and the difficulty from a relative size perspective. I suggested dental floss and we tried for the next ten minutes to get dental floss securely tied around my son’s tooth.
He was very helpful. I think he wanted this tooth out (he’s only lost two others at this point). As it turns out, teeth are slippery—especially teeth that taper down like this tooth did. But not to worry, my son had a second idea—pliers.
That’s right, he wanted to see if he could pull out his tooth with pliers. Sure, why not, I thought? My daughter wanted to help get the pliers, knowing where my jewelers pliers were in the craft room. She practically shoved me out of the way to get there first she wanted to help so much.
I got several types and she carefully brought them downstairs, holding them pointed downwards in her hand and telling me she learned how to walk safely with sharp objects from school when I asked. After giving them over to my son, she went off to get ready for bed and I watched to see if my son was really up for the job of ripping a tooth out with pliers.
Did I mention teeth are slippery? He tried. I tried. We could get the tooth and we could wiggle it some. I was even able to get the tooth from the sides because it was sticking out so much and wiggle it in a perpendicular direction. But the tooth wasn’t coming out. Or at least not without some violent action taken and I didn’t want tooth number three lost to be a memory by which all other teeth would be judged—meaning in fear, blood and/or pain. So we let it lie.
Today, one day later the tooth is still in place. He has another tooth on the lower half of his mouth that’s getting more “wiggly” and might escape his mouth first.
The Big Boy Update: My son sometimes streaks his pants. He’s focused on working or playing and doesn’t want to stop to go to the bathroom. He has to clean his underwear when this happens. Sunday he had indeed streaked his pants. I must have said something along the lines of it being a lot. My son was absolutely incensed. When you read this next imagine my very indignant son as he said, “that’s a tiny bit! What’s wrong with you? Do you have bad vision? It is not that big. I’m not cleaning them—I’m tired.” (He cleaned them.)
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had her six-year-old wellness check today. All is well other than a little eczema she has on and off. No allergies, no other problems to speak of aside from the vision. One thing that was interesting was the nurse asking if she could do a vision test. We don’t really know what my daughter can see. I suggested she do the test where she looked into the machine because I didn’t think she could see the one where she stood down the hall and read the chart. She put her eyes up to the machine and looked and I watched as she moved her face and eyes around to try and see something. She could tell something was there but couldn’t see what it was. So down the hall we went. From ten feet away my daughter could see there was a lighter area (chart) against the door but not what was on it. The nurse was going to abandon the test but at this point I had a daughter who was willing to try (a lot of the time she isn’t). I brought her forward until she could see the biggest letter on the chart. The one that’s 20/400 from ten feet away. My daughter could read the letter at one foot away. But she could see some of the smaller things lower down on the chart at that distance too. She has no ability to focus because she has no natural lenses but she does well within the confines of that limitation.
Maybe his baby tooth didn’t resorb evenly on both sides or maybe the baby or permanent teeth are in just the right position to cause his tooth to veer off to one side. I started noticing it because the spacing between two of his teeth looked larger. Then it got larger still. Now the tooth is not only almost overlapping the other front tooth, it’s angled down at a kilt that makes my son look snaggle-toothed.
The tooth itself must be bothering my son because he decided last night that he, “wanted to tie a rope around his tooth and then to a doorknob so we can pull it out”. We talked about the whole “rope” part of that idea and the difficulty from a relative size perspective. I suggested dental floss and we tried for the next ten minutes to get dental floss securely tied around my son’s tooth.
He was very helpful. I think he wanted this tooth out (he’s only lost two others at this point). As it turns out, teeth are slippery—especially teeth that taper down like this tooth did. But not to worry, my son had a second idea—pliers.
That’s right, he wanted to see if he could pull out his tooth with pliers. Sure, why not, I thought? My daughter wanted to help get the pliers, knowing where my jewelers pliers were in the craft room. She practically shoved me out of the way to get there first she wanted to help so much.
I got several types and she carefully brought them downstairs, holding them pointed downwards in her hand and telling me she learned how to walk safely with sharp objects from school when I asked. After giving them over to my son, she went off to get ready for bed and I watched to see if my son was really up for the job of ripping a tooth out with pliers.
Did I mention teeth are slippery? He tried. I tried. We could get the tooth and we could wiggle it some. I was even able to get the tooth from the sides because it was sticking out so much and wiggle it in a perpendicular direction. But the tooth wasn’t coming out. Or at least not without some violent action taken and I didn’t want tooth number three lost to be a memory by which all other teeth would be judged—meaning in fear, blood and/or pain. So we let it lie.
Today, one day later the tooth is still in place. He has another tooth on the lower half of his mouth that’s getting more “wiggly” and might escape his mouth first.
The Big Boy Update: My son sometimes streaks his pants. He’s focused on working or playing and doesn’t want to stop to go to the bathroom. He has to clean his underwear when this happens. Sunday he had indeed streaked his pants. I must have said something along the lines of it being a lot. My son was absolutely incensed. When you read this next imagine my very indignant son as he said, “that’s a tiny bit! What’s wrong with you? Do you have bad vision? It is not that big. I’m not cleaning them—I’m tired.” (He cleaned them.)
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had her six-year-old wellness check today. All is well other than a little eczema she has on and off. No allergies, no other problems to speak of aside from the vision. One thing that was interesting was the nurse asking if she could do a vision test. We don’t really know what my daughter can see. I suggested she do the test where she looked into the machine because I didn’t think she could see the one where she stood down the hall and read the chart. She put her eyes up to the machine and looked and I watched as she moved her face and eyes around to try and see something. She could tell something was there but couldn’t see what it was. So down the hall we went. From ten feet away my daughter could see there was a lighter area (chart) against the door but not what was on it. The nurse was going to abandon the test but at this point I had a daughter who was willing to try (a lot of the time she isn’t). I brought her forward until she could see the biggest letter on the chart. The one that’s 20/400 from ten feet away. My daughter could read the letter at one foot away. But she could see some of the smaller things lower down on the chart at that distance too. She has no ability to focus because she has no natural lenses but she does well within the confines of that limitation.
Monday, December 4, 2017
10-6-5-4
My husband and I have the new iPhone X. We’ve been doing a phone handing down process of the older phones to other people in our family. My in-laws have theirs now and we have their older phones which will be erased and reinstalled for other people, one on the West Coast. It’s a process but everyone gets an upgrade in the end.
While we were doing this my father-in-law was looking through his things and found an old iPhone 4. It’s not functional today or it wouldn’t be useful functional with the later iOS operating system and requirements from current app versions. But he had it and gave it to us and we put it in a stack.
The change in phone sizes has been upwards and outwards in the past few years. The stack of phones pictured below is the iPhone 10, 6, 5, 4 with the 4 on top. I didn’t check actual weights, but the smallest iPhone 4 feels about the same weight as the much bigger iPhone X.
I miss the small phones for ease of storage in pockets, but the screen size and clarity on the newer phones is hard to beat. That, plus Animoji's, so yeah, win.
The Big Boy Update: On the way to school we pass by my best friend’s office. I pointed out to my son six beautiful trees that had all turned a stunning shade of red at the same time. This morning on the way to school my son said to me, “Eleanor’s trees are gone.” I looked around to figure out what he meant and saw those trees, now almost completely leafless.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter wanted to play Crazy 8’s, the card game tonight. She understood the rules and could tell most of the numbers on the cards. She is getting better at not expecting the deck to be stacked in her favor and she may well be on the way to becoming a good sportsman. She did win two out of three games tonight though—without intervention on either of our parts—which is good for understanding that losing is part of playing games with friends.
While we were doing this my father-in-law was looking through his things and found an old iPhone 4. It’s not functional today or it wouldn’t be useful functional with the later iOS operating system and requirements from current app versions. But he had it and gave it to us and we put it in a stack.
The change in phone sizes has been upwards and outwards in the past few years. The stack of phones pictured below is the iPhone 10, 6, 5, 4 with the 4 on top. I didn’t check actual weights, but the smallest iPhone 4 feels about the same weight as the much bigger iPhone X.
I miss the small phones for ease of storage in pockets, but the screen size and clarity on the newer phones is hard to beat. That, plus Animoji's, so yeah, win.
The Big Boy Update: On the way to school we pass by my best friend’s office. I pointed out to my son six beautiful trees that had all turned a stunning shade of red at the same time. This morning on the way to school my son said to me, “Eleanor’s trees are gone.” I looked around to figure out what he meant and saw those trees, now almost completely leafless.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter wanted to play Crazy 8’s, the card game tonight. She understood the rules and could tell most of the numbers on the cards. She is getting better at not expecting the deck to be stacked in her favor and she may well be on the way to becoming a good sportsman. She did win two out of three games tonight though—without intervention on either of our parts—which is good for understanding that losing is part of playing games with friends.
Sunday, December 3, 2017
The Wall Alcove
My husband and a business partner are buying a house tomorrow. The plan is to invest some money into it and flip it in six months or so, hopefully at a profit. My husband and his partner, Peter, work well together on this type of venture. They’ve done it once before in a limited sense and decided to expand their partnership gong forward.
They started looking for a house and shortly one came on the market just down the street from where Peter lives that met the criteria they were looking for in a home to flip. This particular area has old homes but the area itself is in the middle of an economic increase. The homes are small but are very close to both a large university and a renowned hospital. Location alone makes even smaller, older houses worth far more than they would be elsewhere.
The house was in a state of disrepair due to the mother of ninety-six living in it being unable to take proper care of it. There was extensive mold that had grown up due to a leak that went un-repaired. To my husband and his partner, this wasn’t a problem as they were planning on gutting much of the home to update it. They planned to keep the structure but change some things like making the kitchen somewhat larger and making the porch/patio add-on not feel so much like a basic enclosure and more like real living space.
Tomorrow is the closing on the property, Tuesday the demolition begins. Today we were walking through it and as we came out one of the daughters was coming by to pick up some final things. We had a very nice conversation with her talking about her childhood growing up in the house and the changes her father had made. She was seventy-seven years old and this was her childhood home.
I took some pictures of the inside of the home for before pictures. One of them was this, that I found in the hall:
Do you know what this little alcove was for? I doubt most people college-age or younger would guess.
The Big Boy Update: My in-laws were talking tonight about the town they live in. The question of village versus town came up. My son was explaining the difference using finger quotes and verbal emphasis and sounding oh so knowledgeable as he said, “it’s more of a ‘village’. If people built their house there like the Indians, then it could be a ‘village’”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter happily explained to everyone at the table tonight, “I can’t wait to celebrate Cheesus’s birthday on Christmas.”
They started looking for a house and shortly one came on the market just down the street from where Peter lives that met the criteria they were looking for in a home to flip. This particular area has old homes but the area itself is in the middle of an economic increase. The homes are small but are very close to both a large university and a renowned hospital. Location alone makes even smaller, older houses worth far more than they would be elsewhere.
The house was in a state of disrepair due to the mother of ninety-six living in it being unable to take proper care of it. There was extensive mold that had grown up due to a leak that went un-repaired. To my husband and his partner, this wasn’t a problem as they were planning on gutting much of the home to update it. They planned to keep the structure but change some things like making the kitchen somewhat larger and making the porch/patio add-on not feel so much like a basic enclosure and more like real living space.
Tomorrow is the closing on the property, Tuesday the demolition begins. Today we were walking through it and as we came out one of the daughters was coming by to pick up some final things. We had a very nice conversation with her talking about her childhood growing up in the house and the changes her father had made. She was seventy-seven years old and this was her childhood home.
I took some pictures of the inside of the home for before pictures. One of them was this, that I found in the hall:
Do you know what this little alcove was for? I doubt most people college-age or younger would guess.
The Big Boy Update: My in-laws were talking tonight about the town they live in. The question of village versus town came up. My son was explaining the difference using finger quotes and verbal emphasis and sounding oh so knowledgeable as he said, “it’s more of a ‘village’. If people built their house there like the Indians, then it could be a ‘village’”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter happily explained to everyone at the table tonight, “I can’t wait to celebrate Cheesus’s birthday on Christmas.”
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Little things
One of the things I like most about the holiday season is getting little presents. Or rather finding them to give. I like stockings and as a parent I find a lot of joy in hunting down things to put in the stockings. My children are too young to realize it’s me filling them, but I fear we have precious few years left on that front.
This year my husband and I decided to do an advent calendar. In a bit of decoration exuberance I bought an advent calendar to put at our front door. The children opened the first drawer on the 1st which pointed them to their other, Lego-based advent calendars.
Which leaves me with twenty-three more days of the month to put something small or a note on where to find something dimensionally larger that’s hidden elsewhere in the house. I have more than twenty-three days of things to put in their advent calendar. I like buying little things that fit into something small.
Oh, and apparently I’m doing it wrong. My husband asked if we were supposed to start with the drawers at the bottom and go to the top, ending on the one at the top of the tree. I told him I didn’t know and uh, oh, we’d already started with December 1st being at the top. The children had counted out to when my son’s birthday was. So it’s a done thing. I think we’er going to have to do the advent calendar backwards, at least for this year.
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Energy Overage: My son and daughter went to visit Nana and Papa this weekend. When they arrived they both had so much energy they couldn’t calm down. Even when they got towards bed time and they were reading the story, they couldn’t let go of the energy to try and go to sleep.
This year my husband and I decided to do an advent calendar. In a bit of decoration exuberance I bought an advent calendar to put at our front door. The children opened the first drawer on the 1st which pointed them to their other, Lego-based advent calendars.
Which leaves me with twenty-three more days of the month to put something small or a note on where to find something dimensionally larger that’s hidden elsewhere in the house. I have more than twenty-three days of things to put in their advent calendar. I like buying little things that fit into something small.
Oh, and apparently I’m doing it wrong. My husband asked if we were supposed to start with the drawers at the bottom and go to the top, ending on the one at the top of the tree. I told him I didn’t know and uh, oh, we’d already started with December 1st being at the top. The children had counted out to when my son’s birthday was. So it’s a done thing. I think we’er going to have to do the advent calendar backwards, at least for this year.
The Big Boy Tiny Girl Energy Overage: My son and daughter went to visit Nana and Papa this weekend. When they arrived they both had so much energy they couldn’t calm down. Even when they got towards bed time and they were reading the story, they couldn’t let go of the energy to try and go to sleep.
Friday, December 1, 2017
The Long Conversation
I was involved in another long conversation tonight. Have you ever had a friend or friends who were going through something exciting, anxiety provoking, frightening or saddening that was so forceful a situation that it couldn’t be blocked out, had to be thought about all the time?
Death of a family member or friend is one example—the feelings are so strong, the thoughts just swirl and swirl around in your head and you can’t get away from the impact the change in your life is causing.
I have two friends who are in the middle of one of these types of situations. And while they have a lot of support to help them through it, the retelling of the story to new people takes time, especially if the story needs to be told from the beginning. And particularly if the story is being told by a storyteller who doesn’t want to miss any of the points.
I’ve heard the story, was involved when the story was happening originally and have been talking about the ramifications and repercussions since Sunday. But tonight I was out to dinner with some friends who had no idea—so we started at ground zero again.
A five-hour dinner to discuss and my listening skills were strained (I have poor listening skills to start with). But the talking was helpful. Sometimes we need to get things out to process them.
The Big Boy Update: My son has a Lego advent calendar. There was a little bag in the little cardboard section of the calendar with small pieces. My son put them into a train engine by looking at the picture. He’s pretty good with pictures alone, commonly not needing step-by-step instructions for smaller models.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a Playmobil advent calendar. For the first day in December and here introduction to advent calendars she had a mini figure to put together of a lady ice skater including little ice skates that fit over the feet.
Death of a family member or friend is one example—the feelings are so strong, the thoughts just swirl and swirl around in your head and you can’t get away from the impact the change in your life is causing.
I have two friends who are in the middle of one of these types of situations. And while they have a lot of support to help them through it, the retelling of the story to new people takes time, especially if the story needs to be told from the beginning. And particularly if the story is being told by a storyteller who doesn’t want to miss any of the points.
I’ve heard the story, was involved when the story was happening originally and have been talking about the ramifications and repercussions since Sunday. But tonight I was out to dinner with some friends who had no idea—so we started at ground zero again.
A five-hour dinner to discuss and my listening skills were strained (I have poor listening skills to start with). But the talking was helpful. Sometimes we need to get things out to process them.
The Big Boy Update: My son has a Lego advent calendar. There was a little bag in the little cardboard section of the calendar with small pieces. My son put them into a train engine by looking at the picture. He’s pretty good with pictures alone, commonly not needing step-by-step instructions for smaller models.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter has a Playmobil advent calendar. For the first day in December and here introduction to advent calendars she had a mini figure to put together of a lady ice skater including little ice skates that fit over the feet.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Only On Top Of The Head
This post is about my son and hugging. He doesn’t really like being hugged. It’s not so much that he dislikes hugs for hugs sake, I think it’s more that it’s an interruption to what he’s doing or that he’s not in control of his body when you’re hugging him.
He doesn’t run away from hugs, but he doesn’t run to hug you either. So I decided to work on it. I’m thinking, like most things, that as parents we had a big factor in the hug (or lack of hug) stance my son has. We made sure the children were find when we left to go out by not making a large event of our leaving, giving hugs, saying we’ll be back and to not miss us, etc. And on that front we’ve been very successful.
We’ve done the same with bedtime and I’m glad to say our children don’t need a lot of external comfort to go to sleep. They can give self-comfort well and nightmares excepting, they go to sleep easily all by themselves without a big to do.
But I do like to hug my son and with the recent sensorial evaluation and issues at school I’ve been making an effort to come over to him at random times and hug him. Hug just his shoulders or legs if he’s busy, but do so in a way that gives a firm, steady contact with his body.
Initially my son wasn’t so sure about it but he’s gotten interested more and more. He doesn’t even flinch now when I come up to him and he’s busy, I think he even likes it as sometimes just my proximity will start a thoughtful dialog from him.
But he’s still a no way on the kissing. Apparently I would hug and kiss him at the same time, wherever my face was so a hug with a kiss on his shoulder for instance. We had some negotiations in which it took days for him to believe me that I wasn’t going to kiss him, I promised, only hug. Once he was okay with that he let me do the hugging, initially with resistance but now with what I hope is happiness.
But I had to ask. I asked yesterday if I could give him a kiss. I could tell he wanted one, but he had to hold up that air of hating kisses so he begrudgingly said yes. Then tonight I came downstairs and asked if I could give him a kiss—on top of his green hair’d head—and he said yes again. After I kissed him he said, “you can kiss me any time if you want, but only on the top of the head.” I told him I’d take it.
The Big Boy Update: My son is interested in infinity and in a not related to infinity way, dragons. So I had him watch Vi Hart’s dragon doodling on YouTube. It’s high-level math concepts, but it’s done in a way that’s still somehow intriguing and interesting even to a child who’s not quite seven-years-old. He kept watching her and started making math doodles on his notebook while he watched.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter experienced the loss of a stamp today. We debated if it was a bad thing to use stamp loss as a negative motivator or if we were only using the stamps as a positive motivator like we do the pompon bowl. But it worked, she lost a stamp and even though she had loads saved up, that was important enough for her to not want to have it happen again.
He doesn’t run away from hugs, but he doesn’t run to hug you either. So I decided to work on it. I’m thinking, like most things, that as parents we had a big factor in the hug (or lack of hug) stance my son has. We made sure the children were find when we left to go out by not making a large event of our leaving, giving hugs, saying we’ll be back and to not miss us, etc. And on that front we’ve been very successful.
We’ve done the same with bedtime and I’m glad to say our children don’t need a lot of external comfort to go to sleep. They can give self-comfort well and nightmares excepting, they go to sleep easily all by themselves without a big to do.
But I do like to hug my son and with the recent sensorial evaluation and issues at school I’ve been making an effort to come over to him at random times and hug him. Hug just his shoulders or legs if he’s busy, but do so in a way that gives a firm, steady contact with his body.
Initially my son wasn’t so sure about it but he’s gotten interested more and more. He doesn’t even flinch now when I come up to him and he’s busy, I think he even likes it as sometimes just my proximity will start a thoughtful dialog from him.
But he’s still a no way on the kissing. Apparently I would hug and kiss him at the same time, wherever my face was so a hug with a kiss on his shoulder for instance. We had some negotiations in which it took days for him to believe me that I wasn’t going to kiss him, I promised, only hug. Once he was okay with that he let me do the hugging, initially with resistance but now with what I hope is happiness.
But I had to ask. I asked yesterday if I could give him a kiss. I could tell he wanted one, but he had to hold up that air of hating kisses so he begrudgingly said yes. Then tonight I came downstairs and asked if I could give him a kiss—on top of his green hair’d head—and he said yes again. After I kissed him he said, “you can kiss me any time if you want, but only on the top of the head.” I told him I’d take it.
The Big Boy Update: My son is interested in infinity and in a not related to infinity way, dragons. So I had him watch Vi Hart’s dragon doodling on YouTube. It’s high-level math concepts, but it’s done in a way that’s still somehow intriguing and interesting even to a child who’s not quite seven-years-old. He kept watching her and started making math doodles on his notebook while he watched.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter experienced the loss of a stamp today. We debated if it was a bad thing to use stamp loss as a negative motivator or if we were only using the stamps as a positive motivator like we do the pompon bowl. But it worked, she lost a stamp and even though she had loads saved up, that was important enough for her to not want to have it happen again.
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Office Record
I broke an office record today. It wasn’t a record I was looking to break. It wasn’t even a record I knew existed. It also wasn’t my office.
I had an appointment a doctor today. It’s not one I see frequently and his office isn’t close to where I live. The last time I saw him I found out he had a few days a month that he saw patients in an office a single block from my son’s school, which is quite close to where we live. Sign me up, book me in advance and make sure it’s on a day he’s at this much closer location.
Today was the appointment and everything was fine, going well, nothing wrong, glad to see you, etc. We discussed some things and decided to run blood work to make sure everything was still good there too. The doctor left and said his nurse would be right back in to draw blood.
She came in and we kept chatting while she got ready to draw three vials of blood. She complimented me on my veins, saying they looked very easy (I suppose that means they were bulgy). She stuck me with the needle and nothing happened. She moved the needle around and still nothing. Strange, she said, it looked like a good vein.
Not to worry, she’d try the other arm. It might be good at this point to mention I don’t really have a problem with needles, because if you’ve read this far I’m betting you have an idea where the rest of the post is going—it’s needly.
She tried the other arm. I did exactly as told and kept still. But no go. Did the vein roll on her? It looked so good, she said. She said she didn’t miss usually and this was making her look bad. We laughed about it and she went back to the first arm, different vein because the first vein had a nice sized hematoma under he skin from the jiggling around of the needle.
I asked her if she had to throw away the needle assembly every time considering it was the same body she was poking. Apparently she had to. Back to the third try, no go. So back to the second arm, this time trying the first vein because it didn’t look that bad after the first try. Maybe a little bit happened but it was like the veins were avoiding her.
Had I had liquids? Was I dehydrated? I ran through my morning of two large hot teas with excessive amounts of milk and estimated I’d had over thirty ounces of liquid since I’d gotten up. After the fourth try she went to get another nurse from the other side of the office who was an expert. When Lasha came in she said she had this and not to worry.
Back to the, heck, I don’t even remember what arm and vein we’re on at this point but try five was also a failure. And now Lasha is telling me she’s taking me back to her lab because this just doesn’t happen.
Things I’ve said at this point include, “I can go drink a lot of water and come back in a few hours it that will help”. They said I didn’t look dehydrated from the state of my veins. I also offered to come back another day and be sure I was hydrated then. But that caused another issue. Remember how my doctor was only at this location every so often? This blood work had to be drawn today and if they couldn’t get the blood drawn they’d have to send me to the hospital. This sounds extreme, especially for an elective running of blood work I had initially suggested. But processes had ben set in motion. Electronic documents had been completed. Signs had aligned and there were reasons once committed to having my blood drawn, going back to having having it un-drawn was akin to declaring oneself legally not dead.
I didn’t argue because we were sort of having fun and they were trying their best. I said I thought my heart was still beating and if I was patient zero in the zombie apocalypse I was going to be annoyed, because I had holiday plans.
We went down the hall to the other side of the clinic and Lasha got me set up in her chair. We had postulated that their needles were possibly a bad batch because I’ve just never had problems with my blood being drawn before; I’m typically fairly easy. Try six with a different batch of needles and Lasha got exasperated. They weren’t just sticking my arm, they were investigating each time, trying to find the vein. And that was particularly exasperating to them.
Lasha said she’d be back and brought Keshia back. Keshia also never failed and the karma with three nurses who did this every day in the room, the seventh try just had to work. And it finally did. Once they got in the vein there was plenty of flow and the test tubes were filled up quickly.
Lasha said I had beaten the record of most sticks. I don’t think there actually was a record but I said I expected to have my name on the wall going forward and that I hoped no one beat my record because hey, no one enjoys being stuck with a needle.
The Big Boy Update: My son was building in Minecraft this weekend. I came down to the basement to see what looked like a graveyard of three grave plots. Indeed they were graves, my son said. He had even made a little sign and had spelled, “Rest in Pese Steve” on it. I said, “oh, did Steve die?” My son backed up in the game and said, “yes, he’s right here.” My son removed the ground layer in front of the gravestone and sure enough, he’d buried the Minecraft character Steve.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My son had terrible eczema for a long time when he was younger. As my daughter gets older she’s gone from none, to bad bouts of it. She’s got it all over in a minor way and badly in a few spots. She would rather scratch than let me put lotion on her, which isn’t helping her skin heal. I got some steroid cream on the worst spots last night though and she looks better today.
I had an appointment a doctor today. It’s not one I see frequently and his office isn’t close to where I live. The last time I saw him I found out he had a few days a month that he saw patients in an office a single block from my son’s school, which is quite close to where we live. Sign me up, book me in advance and make sure it’s on a day he’s at this much closer location.
Today was the appointment and everything was fine, going well, nothing wrong, glad to see you, etc. We discussed some things and decided to run blood work to make sure everything was still good there too. The doctor left and said his nurse would be right back in to draw blood.
She came in and we kept chatting while she got ready to draw three vials of blood. She complimented me on my veins, saying they looked very easy (I suppose that means they were bulgy). She stuck me with the needle and nothing happened. She moved the needle around and still nothing. Strange, she said, it looked like a good vein.
Not to worry, she’d try the other arm. It might be good at this point to mention I don’t really have a problem with needles, because if you’ve read this far I’m betting you have an idea where the rest of the post is going—it’s needly.
She tried the other arm. I did exactly as told and kept still. But no go. Did the vein roll on her? It looked so good, she said. She said she didn’t miss usually and this was making her look bad. We laughed about it and she went back to the first arm, different vein because the first vein had a nice sized hematoma under he skin from the jiggling around of the needle.
I asked her if she had to throw away the needle assembly every time considering it was the same body she was poking. Apparently she had to. Back to the third try, no go. So back to the second arm, this time trying the first vein because it didn’t look that bad after the first try. Maybe a little bit happened but it was like the veins were avoiding her.
Had I had liquids? Was I dehydrated? I ran through my morning of two large hot teas with excessive amounts of milk and estimated I’d had over thirty ounces of liquid since I’d gotten up. After the fourth try she went to get another nurse from the other side of the office who was an expert. When Lasha came in she said she had this and not to worry.
Back to the, heck, I don’t even remember what arm and vein we’re on at this point but try five was also a failure. And now Lasha is telling me she’s taking me back to her lab because this just doesn’t happen.
Things I’ve said at this point include, “I can go drink a lot of water and come back in a few hours it that will help”. They said I didn’t look dehydrated from the state of my veins. I also offered to come back another day and be sure I was hydrated then. But that caused another issue. Remember how my doctor was only at this location every so often? This blood work had to be drawn today and if they couldn’t get the blood drawn they’d have to send me to the hospital. This sounds extreme, especially for an elective running of blood work I had initially suggested. But processes had ben set in motion. Electronic documents had been completed. Signs had aligned and there were reasons once committed to having my blood drawn, going back to having having it un-drawn was akin to declaring oneself legally not dead.
I didn’t argue because we were sort of having fun and they were trying their best. I said I thought my heart was still beating and if I was patient zero in the zombie apocalypse I was going to be annoyed, because I had holiday plans.
We went down the hall to the other side of the clinic and Lasha got me set up in her chair. We had postulated that their needles were possibly a bad batch because I’ve just never had problems with my blood being drawn before; I’m typically fairly easy. Try six with a different batch of needles and Lasha got exasperated. They weren’t just sticking my arm, they were investigating each time, trying to find the vein. And that was particularly exasperating to them.
Lasha said she’d be back and brought Keshia back. Keshia also never failed and the karma with three nurses who did this every day in the room, the seventh try just had to work. And it finally did. Once they got in the vein there was plenty of flow and the test tubes were filled up quickly.
Lasha said I had beaten the record of most sticks. I don’t think there actually was a record but I said I expected to have my name on the wall going forward and that I hoped no one beat my record because hey, no one enjoys being stuck with a needle.
The Big Boy Update: My son was building in Minecraft this weekend. I came down to the basement to see what looked like a graveyard of three grave plots. Indeed they were graves, my son said. He had even made a little sign and had spelled, “Rest in Pese Steve” on it. I said, “oh, did Steve die?” My son backed up in the game and said, “yes, he’s right here.” My son removed the ground layer in front of the gravestone and sure enough, he’d buried the Minecraft character Steve.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My son had terrible eczema for a long time when he was younger. As my daughter gets older she’s gone from none, to bad bouts of it. She’s got it all over in a minor way and badly in a few spots. She would rather scratch than let me put lotion on her, which isn’t helping her skin heal. I got some steroid cream on the worst spots last night though and she looks better today.
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