Eight Mile Walk

My husband and I went on a walk today.   There’s an eight mile loop around the park that, once committed, is hard to do much other than turn around or finish off.   We weren’t certain what we were planning on doing, but after a few miles in we decided to complete the full loop.

Everything went well with the walk other than a phone call from the plumber asking if we’d be in early because he was done with his earlier appointment.   We were over an hour from home, in a wooded park so we had to ask him to hold until we got back.

I did it.  It was hard.  Here’s the thing, my muscles are trained to run which would make walking sound easier, but it was in fact harder after a point.   I told my husband at about six miles in I was going to have to run for a bit to get some muscles worked out that had been cramping badly.   He ran with me for a while, listening me yell out, “this feels so much better!”  

Walking was fun and we got a lot of time talking, something we do on a regular basis, but time that’s typically spent discussing family/house/children things with regular interruptions from one child or the other (or both).  Today we had a chance to talk at length about whatever we wanted, with no laundry to fold, no beds to make up and no computer work to be done.   It was nice.

The Big Boy Update: My son’s vision is just fine.  He can see things from far away quite well.   From the back seat he saw a song come on and noticed the logo was one similar to the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head.   He told his sister, “I like this song.   It’s called, “Deadmau5”.   He was right, the song was by the artist Deadmau5.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was at my parent’s house the other day.  She was reclining my father’s chair back and forth for a while.   She tried the same thing with my mother’s chair next, but was dismayed when it didn’t recline.  My mother told her her chair was an older model and it didn’t recline.   My daughter asked, “do you think when your chair is older it will recline all the way back?”

Non-run:  eight miles with my husband around the park today.

Euthymic

I like words, particularly learning a new word.  I get this from my mother, who frequently brings me word quizzes from magazines she reads.   When I was growing up I hated language, english class, writing and anything having to do with all things written.   As an adult, I’ve found I like language, words, grammar and writing quite a lot.

My best friend was talking about something the other day and used the word, “euthymic”.  I stopped her and asked her what the word meant.  It was clear from the context it was based on mental state.  I was familiar with “euphoric” and “dysphoric”, but not “euthymic”.  

It means a normal, non-depressed, reasonably stable mood.   I’ve said about myself that I think I’m, “baseline happy” meaning when nothing depressive is acting on me, I’m a relatively happy person.   Now I have a word to go alone with the description.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got his hair cut today.   He’s on and off about wanting to get it cut.   When he got there today he told Hasan, “I just want ten pieces of hair coming off.”   Then, when we got home he said, “I want my hair to grow again!”  All that being said, I think he likes his shorter hair because it’s not in his eyes any more.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has gotten more interested in braille lately,  especially if it’s something she can “read” at night when it’s story time before bed.   Today she came home with a book she made with her Visual Impairment teacher with a single line of braille on each page.   I would bet she can read her book faster than her brother can read the first readers.   But that’s mostly because she has an excellent memory and remembers what she wrote when she created the book.

Helpful Friend

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I call my children, “friends”.   It’s a Montessori thing, I think.   I say, “friends, it’s time to do <insert thing here>” or, “friends, I see there’s a mess in the bonus room”.   It works well because if there are other children over at the house, the “hey friends” phrase works just as well.   Today, I talked to my “friends” and asked if they could help with some of the housework I needed to get done.

My daughter decided she was up for the challenge and took the first load of laundry, comprised of only white cloths from the house cleaning on Friday.  She took them into the bedroom and shut the door, telling me she was working on a surprise for me.  

The surprise took a long time, probably because she was patched on her left eye meaning she was almost completely blind and trying to fold laundry.    We’re not sure what she can see with the right eye, but she’s pretty vocal in saying it’s only light, dark and colors from time to time.

When she finally let me in, this is what she’d done:

This is exactly how we fold the cloths when we give them to the children for a meal.   It’s how we have the cloths in the bathroom when they need one to wipe their faces.   She was accurate and careful in making every single fold—blinded with a patch on.   

She never ceases to amaze me. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son turned into a monster sometimes when he has too much screen time.   Today, however, he was good both on and off-screen.   He finished a video game his father got him a while back and came downstairs to tell me about it.    He’s back online now, but it’s Sunday, so the screen time for the week is almost over.  

Fitness Update:  I exercise so little I forget to write what happens sometimes.   My best friend and I ran twenty miles yesterday in preparation for an upcoming marathon.   Great day, good run.   Nice to get out and do something physical.  

Frozen Experiment

My son has gotten interested in doing experiments lately.   We had some apple cider he wasn’t particularly interested in drinking last week, but he said he might be more inclined if it were frozen like a popsicle.   I suggested putting the whole cup into the freezer to see what happened.

About two days later he remembered the apple cider and was interested in the cup full of frozen juice.   It turned out to be more complicated to eat than he anticipated though.   And from an adult perspective, a spoon jabbing into sticky apple juice, splattering all over the place, wasn’t my idea of good eating.   He didn’t mind eating it outside though, so problem solved.

Tonight I found out about another one of his science experiments.   He wanted to freeze an apple.   He put the apple in yesterday and after dinner tonight he went to check on it.   He tried to bite it, but it was too hard.   He dropped it onto the garage floor, and it bounced with an interesting sound.   He slammed it into the garage floor and it made a sound a lot like a pool cue hitting another ball.

He wasn’t sure what to do with the apple (and neither was I) so we put it back into the freezer until we come up with another experiment to do on it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was over at my best friend’s house several days ago.   Apparently he wanted to do math with her, asking her all sorts of addition and subtraction questions.   She said he knew all the answers, he was just testing her to see if she did too.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Last night one of our friends over for Movie Night told me my daughter said to her, “when I become a mom and the baby comes out, it’s gonna hurt at least a little bit, but that’s gonna be until I’m older, so that’s good.”

Patching

We’ve started a daily patching regime for my daughter.   She’s willing to do it, which has been a big help.   On week days we only do it once since the time after school until bed doesn’t give enough window for more than one session.   On the weekends, we’ll try to do one longer session or two.

She has always asked how much longer she has to have the patch on.   Initially, she was terrified of the patch because it left completely blind.   I’m not sure she’s any less-blind now, but she has more skills and has had time to adjust to a her low-vision world.

Yesterday I was watching the time and she went a full forty minutes before asking if she could take the patch off.   That was unexpected, to say the least.   Today, she has the patch on now and it’s several hours before movie night but she’s said she wants to keep the patch on until Dylan arrives for movie night and so Dr. Trese will be happy she’s patching.  

We’ll see if any progress is made visually with her brain, or if the eye is non-functional and will likely remain that way.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me mater of factly yesterday, “mom, I want to buy a plane.”   I told him he was going to have to start saving his money now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The other day in a conversation with her brother I heard my daughter say, “that’s okay, we’re not dead.”  I have no idea what game they were playing.

The Lawn Mower Maze

I grew up in a house just one off from the corner of our street.   One of my best friend’s back yard backed up to the side of our lot and from the point I was in elementary school all the way up until high school, she and I were friends. 

The lots weren’t big, but they were wooded enough that it took adult intervention to get our side and back yards connected so Veda and I could meet together and play in the little tree houses our parents had built us. 

The connection involved cutting a section of the fence down and making a trail through the overgrown underbrush.    For years this trail would be cleared out once per year and we’d go back and forth, usually as children, sometimes with out parents, to each other’s houses.   It never got old, we always had fun together. 

Then one year, Tucker, the father, decided to clear out more of the underbrush.  I’m not sure why, but he decided to do so by mowing a path with the lawnmower in rather a maze-like fashion through their back yard.    It was a little eccentric perhaps, but as children we loved it.    We worked it into our imaginative play, we chased each other, we played games out there. 

The next year I think we were hoping Tucker would mow his maze again, but I think the inspiration only struck him once.   I haven’t forgotten it though. 

The Big Boy Update:  The children were taking a bath tonight with various toys, one being a baby without a head (they didn’t want the head, they said).   I was working on emails when I heard my son giggle and yell out from the tub, “oh!  The baby’s bot soap in it’s butt!”   This was funny for at least two minutes.   It was funny from around the corner until I came in to find they’d added Mr. Bubbles to the tub and there were bubbles everywhere. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was leaning into the wall this past weekend.  I couldn’t figure out what she was doing so she explained, “I’m listening to hear the power coming in from the wall to charge the iPad.”   

Family Soup

My mother and I made our traditional family vegetable soup today.   I’ve written about this soup before, mentioning that it’s vegetable soup only so far as it has vegetables in it.   The name implies it is only a vegetable soup, which isn’t true as we like to put as much ham into it as we can cram.

We make it every year about this time, using the bone from the holiday ham and surrounding ham remnants as part of the recipe.   We use a pressure cooker to make the overall soup making time shortened significantly.    It used to take a lot longer with an older, less-efficient pressure cooker and different ingredients that took more time to prepare.    These days it’s a fairly quick process, but the end product still tastes the same as I remember from my childhood.

My children typically want to have nothing to do with the soup until they try it, remember it, and then ask for two more bowls.   That was the situation tonight.     We have a lot left over, which is the plan from the start.   It will be a popular item until it’s gone in a few days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son said tonight after finishing his second bowl of soup, “I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee<deep breath>eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally like this soup.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son is in a Lego after school enrichment class.   We didn’t sign my daughter up for it because of her vision impairment and also because she hasn’t shown the Lego obsession my son has in the past.   But she wanted to do some Legos today and after school I went and we selected, “girl Legos” (something she didn’t realize they had).   I explained there were some sets she might like.   We found an Elsa and Anna Frozen set and a Little Mermaid set.   She and dad worked on one while I was out and had finished it when I got home.   She was very proud of it and spent lots of time playing with it with her brother when he got home.

Mamelons

I put up the below picture of my son’s erupting tooth not that long ago.   I haven’t checked to see the progress but I learned something about teeth tonight.

We were at a birthday party for our neighbor, Whitaker, who turned four today.   His father is my dentist.   I walked over to see my husband showing the above picture to Walter.   Walter told us the tooth should be coming in behind the baby tooth, not in front.   He also said, “and those little bumps are called mamelons.”   

I had remembered adult teeth coming in on children but I know adults don’t have them on their permanent teeth, so what happens?   In a child’s mouth, the teeth and bite change rather radically over the span of a few short years.   They have teeth falling out, new teeth growing in, molars adding additional teeth to the mouth, not to mention a jaw that’s growing at the same time. 

During this time children have irregular bites and can hit their teeth together.   The mamelons typically get knocked off during this period of growth, which is why we don’t have them as adults.   

The Big Boy Update:  At the birthday party we went to today I was very proud of my son.   He was playing so well with all the children, including being very good friends with Whitaker, who he sometimes decides is a little young to play with.   At one point a child came over crying, saying my son had pushed him.   I calmly got my son’s hand and walked him over.   My son knew the drill and explained what had happened.  Apparently the other boy had been trying to fight the other girls and the girls didn’t like it so he stepped in.   He said it wasn’t nice to hit though and asked the other boy if he was okay.    He made me smile all night, especially watching him play chase with an eleven-month-old boy who could barely toddle but wanted to be involved with the big children so badly.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter got annoyed at us making noise in the car the other day and yelled at us, saying, “Stop it guys.  You’re bothering me.  I can’t think!”

The Unexpected Thank You

I had my exam for the second post-licensing real estate class today.   I have only one more class to take to remove the provisional broker status to become a full broker.   I start the final class next month.   For now, I get a few weeks off from class, which will be nice.

Tonight while I was working on things, my husband was making dinner.   The children were helping him and when I came up he told me they had set the entire table themselves.    He said, “and then they said, ’thank you’, out of nowhere”.

I couldn’t help but laugh.  The manners they’re learning are touch and go, off and on, but when they happen spontaneously, it can be so cute.

The Big Boy Update:  My son likes to play with his neighbor friends, but sometimes the age difference gets in the way.   Instead of being mean, yelling or pushing, the other day my son said very calmly, “I won’t want to play with you, Whitaker.”   Whitaker took it fairly well and decided to go an play with some of the toys in the bonus room without my son, who was busy with a Lego set.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came downstairs yesterday morning and said to me, “Mom, I’m going to sing you part of a song; can you tell me what song it is?”  She sang something, and I recognized it, but I couldn’t place it.   She told me, “I can’t remember.  It’s the ghost song, but not Ghostbusters.”  We still haven’t figured out what song it is.

Two Parents are Better Than One

My husband is back from skiing vacation.  It’s nice to have two parents here.  It’s so nice to say, “you’re up on the next round of drops” and “if she wets the bed tonight, it’s your turn” and “I broke up the last argument, you go find out who touched the other one first this time”.   That kind of important, crucial parenting stuff you don’t realize is doubled when there's only one of you.

The trip was great I hear.  I’ve seen footage from my husband’s GoPro and the amount of snow they were skiing on was intimidating.   Fifteen feet of snow over the course of two weeks is impressive, with about a foot of snow falling each day.

This is what one of the ski patrol huts looked like on the first day they were there:

This is the same place three days later:

I think they’re going to make the ski trip a yearly trip from now on, next year with maybe slightly less snow to contend with.

The Big Boy Update:  My son did not want to go into the restaurant tonight.   He lay down on the parking lot and tried to crawl and complain his way forward before he got pulled up and walked in.   We knew he was overly hungry but couldn’t do much until the orders had been placed and food had arrived.   I told him he had to wash his hands, which caused a rare, yelling tantrum from him because he absolutely did not want to go into the ladies room with me.   I locked the door and leaned against it and told him I would wait until he was done washing his hands and I hoped we didn’t miss dinner.   Five minutes later (with lots of emails read on my end), my son gave in and washed his hands.   After that he was happy and calm for the rest of the meal.   Maybe he just needed to get some feelings out.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the way home from dinner my daughter told us, “I want children of my own, but I don’t want the eggs to hurt me when they come out.”

Dinner With Six

My husband and best friend’s husband have been out of town skiing this week.   They’ve had a good time I think with only one torn ACL (one of the other people on the trip, who thankfully is doing well).    They’re on the way home tonight with only three delays to their trip, but at this point it looks like they will make it tonight.

My best friend and I decided to spend the afternoon together.  She has four children and I have two which means we hovered somewhere between chaos and calamity for most of the afternoon.   After a point I started handing out iPads so she and I could have a chance to talk.

When we realized it was about dinner time we decided neither of us wanted to deal with a meal at home so into two cars we piled, driving off in the rain to eat pizza and have no dishes to clean up afterwards.   There were complaints (who complains about pizza?) but we held firm.   I lost my temper once in the car because I was full up on whining for the day.   And after a false start to a restaurant that was overly busy and clearly wasn’t interested in boisterous children in their refined establishment, we made it to our local pizza-by-the-slice restaurant and all settled down to an enjoyable meal.

Did you catch the sarcasm in that last sentence?   There was absolutely, positively no “settling down” on the part of the children.   The two adults weren’t settled downed because we were dealing with the running about, loud, ebullient (or petulant) children.    And enjoyable?  I’m not sure I’d call it as such.   It was manageable, perhaps.

The napkin dispensers were the kind where you have to pull out one napkin before you can get a second napkin.   I think we made seven or eight trips to get napkins because there is a lot of grease with pizza and garlic knots and there was a complete lack of napkin conservation from the children.   But we managed.

I’m making it sound bad, but it wasn’t.   I love my best friend’s children.   They are sweet and fun and they like to tell me things and I do my best to listen, even when I have my two children vying for my attention at the same time.    My salad was pilfered.   It turns out we had lovers of olives, lettuce, salad dressing, banana peppers and cheese among the group—but not by the same children.    Five trips were made to the trash can to throw away messes and make space on the table for the food arriving.

But it was fun.   The boys are back tomorrow and everyone is looking forward to seeing their father. I’m looking forward to seeing my husband too.  

The Big Boy Update:  Every now and then my son chews on his shirt.   He pulls the front part of the collar up and puts in his mouth.  I was away for about an hour-and-a-half this afternoon, leaving my children with my best friend and her four girls.   When I got back I don’t know if it was insecurity or something else, but he’d chewed his shirt soggy.   He doesn’t do this often at all, but it was bad enough today that he asked me to get him a new shirt.  After I got him a second one, he was fine for the rest of the day and had fun with everyone.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My mother was trying to put drops in my daughter’s eyes yesterday.   She made several suggestions but my daughter was having nothing of it.   She told Mimi firmly, “I have a plan” and would hear of nothing else.   Mimi followed her lead and they were able to find a place to put the drops in that suited my daughter’s, “plan”.

Ballroom Dancing

When I was a youth (which was some time ago by my reckoning) I was put into Junior Cotillion classes by my parents.   I wasn’t keen on the whole thing at first because I was of that age where boys were in the unnamed land between gross and desirable, but there was no getting out of it.   We would meet once each week and be given a lesson in manners by the elegant lady who was our instructor.    She taught me many things that didn’t seem important then, but I remembered.   Those words of wisdom have served me well over the years.

We sat in chairs around the perimeter of a large room and after the talking part was over, she would teach us a ballroom dancing step with one of the boys or girls to help her demonstrate.   Then, she would tell the boys to get up, walk across the room and ask one of us to dance.  We, as ladies, were not allowed to refuse or act upset by the invitation in any way—because this was what polite ladies did.

We would then try mightily to repeat the step she’d taught us, stepping on each other’s feet and stumbling through the beat.   We’d switch partners and practice some more.   By the end of the night we had it down and had added it in to the steps we’d learned in prior classes.   It didn’t seem fun at the time, but I grew to like it and later took some ballroom dancing lessons as an adult.  

There is a subtle communication that happens between the two partners, with the man leading.   The phrase, “where the man goes, the lady must follow” comes to mind.   It became easy after a while, with me not even thinking about what I was doing, just following along to the lead of my partner.

I’m still doing that ballroom dancing now, only it’s not with a man, it’s with my daughter.   She’s the lady, and she has no choice but to follow the lead of the person directing her either by hand, voice or gentle pressure on her shoulder.    She’s getting fairly good at letting someone else direct her when she doesn’t know the location or situation.  

It’s not a skill I would wish for a child to have to learn so young, but she’s a child and is resilient and doesn’t seem to mind letting someone else take the lead to keep her safe and protect her from bumping into things and hurting herself.

The Big Boy Update:  We were going to our favorite sushi restaurant tonight.   My son, upon hearing we were going there said, “Sushi Thai is my favorite.   Dunkin Donuts is my least favorite, because it makes me fat.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves the salad with ginger dressing at sushi restaurants.   Tonight when I thought she was done and was about to move her bowl away she stopped me and said, “no mom, I want to drink the juice”.   I told her I liked to drink the extra ginger dressing at the bottom of the bowl too.

Dragons Aren’t Real!

My son came inside the other day mad and upset.   Some sort of game had been going on with the friends on our street that involved dragons.   Some of the children (who were also standing in my living room) attested that dragons were real.   My son was on the opposing team with no one else standing by him, insisting dragons weren’t real.

What do you do?   What can you say?   We face this all our lives when we encounter someone who has firm beliefs in something we don’t share.   Yelling at them and telling them what they believe is wrong doesn’t help.  

I told everyone that it was okay for some of them to believe dragons were real and for others to believe they were only pretend.   I said it was okay to believe different things but that didn’t stop us from still being friends.  

I asked if they could continue their game even though they didn’t agree?   They decided since there were no dragons in our neighborhood, that it would be okay.   The went back outside and I haven’t heard anything about dragons since.

The Big Boy Update:  My mother was helping the children get into the bath tonight.  Before he got in, my son was in the toilet and my mother could see he had a large amount of toilet tissue he was piling up in his hands.   She asked him, “do you need any help?”   He said, “no, this is new poop.”   Now this might seem like a strange comment, but you have to understand that “new poop” hasn’t been streaking his bottom, drying out and being a general mess to get off.   Good news is tonight he had only, “new poop” to deal with.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter brought home a, “Christmas present for next Christmas” today.   It was a surprise.   I couldn’t imagine what it was.  She said it took a while for the class to work on because they could only do a few of them at a time.   When we got home she very proudly brought out a jar of butter the class made from shaking heavy cream around during circle time.    She wants dad to see it when he gets home and keep it as a surprise.

That Spot You Didn’t Think to Clean

I was cleaning up after one of the many food events my children have daily at the bar seats in the kitchen.   I have heard rumor they get less messy over time—these things known as “children”—but I have yet to see it.  

Actually, that’s not true.  There were the high chair days.  Food was everywhere then, but less seemed to get into the mouth.   Now food goes in, but remnants still go everywhere.   The problem is, the children are mobile now.   You have to be quick to look up and see a chocolate icing-smeared child heading off to run their hand up the stairway wall on their way to lying down on the couch face forward.    Chocolate.   You heard me right.

For the most part we catch incidents like that.   And in large part the children do wipe their faces and hands after they eat.    They don’t wipe as thoroughly as I’d like, but it’s something.  Tonight as I was doing the cleanup of the bar counter where they eat, I did a brief wipe under the granite top under which their little legs and chair pulls up.  

What came back was not the color I was expecting on the white cloth.   I wiped a second time which provided even more horrific results due to the granite now being wet and the stuck-on substances having been dampened and loosened.

A thorough cleaning has been done and is on my “where mess hides” radar for future cleaning.   I suppose when they’re grown and gone I’ll miss the mess some day.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I were going to his annual wellness check when we drove by a retirement community building we drive by every day.   He must have suddenly noticed it because he said, “Hey, is that the White House?”  I told him no, the White House was in Washington, DC and we  were several hours away from there.   He then said, “oh, I know why–it doesn’t have the American flag there.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I left my daughter in the car, alone, twice today.   The first time I went into the tailors to drop something off and watched her the entire time.   There wasn’t much need to watch her because I’d given her my iPad and she wasn’t budging.   The car locked on its own when I walked away and she had been told to stay put.   The second time was a few minutes later while I ran in to get a few things at the grocery store.   She wasn’t bothered in the least by me leaving.   It certainly made running the two quick errands faster.

Single Parents and Four Hours

I had an all day class today.   My husband is out of town on a ski trip with some guy friends, so I’m relatively on my own this week.    That’s not completely true, as I have help left and right, but it’s one less parent, which translates to twice the children, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming.

Yesterday I had a sitter watch the children while I was in class.  I got home and panicked because the house was a mess, the children were still in their pajamas and the grandparents were arriving in fifteen minutes for dinner.    We got ready to go out, but that still didn’t fix the messy house and get all the other things done that needed to happen before the children and I could respectively crash for the night.

Today I had help from my parents while I was in a second day of class.   They got my daughter to take her to her Orientation and Mobility session, took her back to school, got both children and took them to play therapy and then got dinner and met me at home when I got back from class.  

They stayed for a while and then headed out after a busy afternoon of children chauffeuring.    It was at the point when I arrived home though, at 5:10, with dinner awaiting me on the counter from my parents, that I started four hours of non-stop cleaning, putting up, bathing, changing, discussing, putting to bed, lunch making, email catchup for school and family, garbage, recycling, mail, bed remaking and, hell, I don’t even remember what else, but it was a solid four hours before I got down here to sit and write this blog post.

I don’t know how single parents do it.  They have my utmost respect.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter is not what you would call a typical princess.   She doesn’t quite get into the princess image portrayed on our society these days.   Sometimes we’ll have people (strangers) talk to her who are trying to be friendly.   They’ll say something like, “Are you a princess?  Is pink for princesses?  I bet you love pink!”  My daughter is never quite sure how to respond when these conversations happen.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I lost my temper at my daughter today because she didn’t like something I said or did and maid an angry squeal/grunting sound at me.   I told her I was done responding to that sound and if she wanted me to help her in any way going forward, she could use her words.   Tonight, she remembered when she got mad and talked to me instead.

Dad Abandons Family

There is a calendar entry on the calendar my husband and I share with the above title for the next week.    My husband was invited with some friends to go skiing in Tahoe.   It was for a week and it partially overlapped with other relatives visiting, but we decided it was a good thing (as far as vacations go) and my husband booked the trip.

He and I were at the computers at the time he pressed the “confirm” button and he said, “I feel sort of bad, abandoning you and the children for a whole week.   I told him not to worry about it, I’d get some time back at another point.   But just to be sure he didn’t forget our sacrifice, the calendar entry doesn’t list dad in Lake Tahoe, it reads, “Dad Abandons Family”.

The Big Boy Update:  I came home from class today to find a glorious mess in several rooms.   The sitter had taken good care of some things, including making cupcakes with scratch made icing, but other things were a wreck.   Of note was the children’s room, which was covered in so much bedding and stuffed animal mass the children couldn’t even get clothes on to go to dinner (yes, they were still in their pajamas at 5PM).   The children cleaned up fairly well, with my son helping the most.   At dinner I was telling my father about the mess when my son said in a shy, sad voice, “mom, why did you have to tell him?”   It was then that I realized my son was upset he left the mess and thought I was telling on him.   I changed the story to how I was so impressed with their cleanup.   Later, just before my son climbed the stairs to his bunk bed, I knelt down and told him I was sorry about telling Gramps and would he please let me know if anything like that happened again so I could be sure to know what he wanted to be kept a secret just in our family?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We play “Up and Down” a lot with the children.  You say one “up” thing about your day and one “down” thing.  My daughter said the other night at dinner, “I don’t have a down, I just have a bunch of ups.”  So like my daughter…

Downhill?

My daughter’s vision is getting worse.   We’re not really sure why, but we’re all noticing it.   It hopefully is the cataract in the left eye that’s progressing.   When her retina surgeon saw her last week he said he wanted to wait to see what the right eye looked like at her next appointment in two months and then look at what needs to be done with the left eye (which has had nothing done to it yet other than increasing pressure).

It’s depressing, but we’re trying to remain hopeful.   It’s hard though.   There is just so much wrong with her eyes it’s hard to know what is getting worse, what she’s seeing, if she’s seeing anything with the right eye and how she’s coping and building skills to compensate.

Her vision impairment teachers talked to us on Friday at our IEP yearly re-evaluation meeting how they’ve seen her vision decrease and what they’ve noticed she’s been doing from an accommodation standpoint.   My daughter wants to wear her glasses all the time, including sleeping in them, which may mean they’re helping somewhat.   When I asked her tonight what they helped her see or which eye they helped with, she pointed to her right eye.

I don’t know if the right eye sees anything, but we’re going to hope it may be seeing something.

The Big Boy Update:  We were at a hibachi restaurant tonight with our family who’s been visiting from out of town.   My son was trying to get the last drop out of the soup bowl when he looked up and said, “Best.  Soup.   Ever.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I heard we were going to hear this from the children at some point because it was a common thing their classmates said at their level, but I hadn’t heard it until tonight.  My daughter was frustrated at me and said, “you’re not the boss of me!”

The Tooth

We have a tooth—an adult tooth.  My son told us he had something in his mouth and when we looked, we saw a tooth erupting.    The baby tooth doesn’t seem to be loose yet, but it’ll  come out shortly.    The adults were far more excited about the new tooth than my son is.

 
Wait, more information.   My son just came over to look at the picture of his tooth on my computer screen.   The baby tooth is apparently loose.

The Big Boy Update:  At dinner tonight we were asking my son if he was going to finish his food.   He got annoyed and said, “I’m full, I said that one hundred thirty times.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  It’s hard to know what my daughter sees.  Sometimes things are worse, sometimes they’re better.   She said for no particular reason the other day, “Mom!  My eye is better.  I can see from here!  Maybe Dr. Trese’s idea was better than I thought.”   On the other hand, her vision impairment teachers say her vision has decreased.

Running Happened:  I ran fifteen miles today in preparation for an early March park/trail marathon.   Nice run except for the half-hour we rain in cold rain.

Bali Hai

We have family visiting this weekend.   They’re looking at potential colleges for their daughter, my niece.    We were all in separate places today either meetings, college tours, school or real estate work, but came back together late afternoon in time to catch up and go out to dinner.  

Figuring out what we’re going to do for dinner is a daily discussion my husband and I have.   We don’t plan in advance unless we have dinner reservations with friends or family.   Today was no different.  We had family in town, but we didn’t have specific plans for dinner.

We threw out some ideas and then Nicole, my niece, asked if that Mongolian restaurant we went to years ago ever reopened?   It hadn’t—at that location, something the locals were disappointed about, but it had opened back up in a new location not that long ago.    I’d completely forgotten about it because it was off my radar for so long.  

We all went tonight and ate a lot of food.   There were potential plans for frozen yogurt after dinner but no one had the room to entertain dessert.   We need to go with my parents sometimes soon, they always loved the restaurant too.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was so happy to see his aunt, uncle and cousin today.   He went into the kitchen and made everyone a very nice snack, including three of his favorite things to eat.    He put them in bowls and then handed them out to everyone in the living room where we were chatting.   He was a little gentleman, serving us all and then sitting down to eat with us.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter knows she has a crown on one of her teeth.   I don’t know if she likes it or not.   Sometimes she thinks it’s her special silver tooth, but then she said to me the other day, “I wish my silver tooth was gone.”

Extra Napkins

We use white, cloth napkins at our house for mostly anything you can think of that you’d use a paper product for—with the exception of blowing your nose or things that happen in the “potty room”.    We have dozens of them in rotation in use all around the house.  

We bring food in from outside from time to time from ordering delivery, fast food or buying something at a restaurant and bringing it home.   Many of those transactions involve paper napkin products which make their way to our house in the paper and plastic bags with the food.  

Because we associate a thicker, sturdier cloth with napkin use at the house, even with fast food, we grab a cloth when we sit down to eat.   The result is a stack of napkins I keep thinking we’re going to use someday that only seem to grow in number.   This is what’s in our pantry now:

The Big Boy Update:  My son was exceptionally rude to his sister tonight when he didn’t get a small thing the way he wanted it from me.   He was sent to bed almost an hour early.   By bed, I meant he had to stay in his room.   I did come in when he’d calmed down and we had a very nice fifteen minutes of special time before bedtime.   Sometimes an attitude resetting is all it takes.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter brought home artwork she had made for my husband, son and me today.   They were pieces of paper glued onto larger pieces of paper.   The added, “handles” to each side so we could hold the artwork and look at the whole paper.

The Ice Ball

We were meant to have a lot of snow.   Possibly eight inches of snow.   But it didn’t happen.   We got maybe an inch-and-a-half of snow, but underneath that was an inch or more of sleet/freezing rain/ice junk that crunched under foot until it partially melted and then froze back as a block of ice.   It was treacherous for a while until it started melting.

The melting has taken a lot more time than I expected though.   We’ve been well above freezing for two days now and the amount of frozen stuff coverage is still significant.   I suppose if it were eight inches of snow I wouldn’t be surprised to see a decent bit still here.   It’s just the compactness of the frozen material that’s throwing me off.

This afternoon I was heading out in the car when I saw three children with a big red bucket on the front walkway.   They dumped it out and a huge block of ice came tumbling down.    I rolled down the window and asked what they had there.

They told me they had wanted to make a snow ball two days before but they couldn’t get one made with what was on the ground.   So they filled up a bucket with water and made a large ice ball instead.   It’s still well above freezing, but I think that ice ball is going to be on my driveway for another few days.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is hearing catch phrases and sprinkling them into his general conversation of late.   Just the other day I heard him yell out, “awesome saucesome!’   And then later, “oh yeah, complete success.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  One of my lifelong friends read here how my daughter wanted a “Mermaid Set”.   She messaged me asking for more details as she hadn’t gotten my daughter a Christmas present.    I consulted with my daughter to find out the mermaid had red hair and a green tail.    I further learned she was from “that movie I can see on the iPad”—which I figured out was The Little Mermaid.  Now it all made sense.    Today, thanks to a very kind gift from JoAnn, Ariel arrived.   There was a lot of dancing and jumping up and down, after which my daughter requested, “mom, can you take ‘mermaid set’ off my Christmas list now?”

Silly Putty Pulse Ox

No one ever wants their child to have to go through extensive medical procedures.   No one wants to see their child suffer.    And yet it happens.   In the case of my daughter, she’s not suffering in pain, she just can’t see.   She doesn’t seem to be overly bothered by the reduction in vision, she just asks for help when she needs it.   And she doesn’t even mind the medical parts—as long as we can make them fun for her.

We’ve had our trials on the medical front, most memorable were the months of immunosuppressant injections with the, “flushing toilet” IV she hated.    Now we just have OR visits with or without surgeries and lots of drops—lots and lots of drops.    My daughter seems to cope with all of it fairly well, considering everything.

Sometimes she brings forward something that’s cute and yet tragic at the same time though.   Tonight I was drying her hair—something I do after every bath night.   She is fine with the drying, as long as there is something to entertain her while I’m brushing her billowing hair around.    We’ve done all sorts of things but tonight she made a request for “putty” otherwise known as Silly Putty.

While I dried her hair she made all manner of things.   As I was finishing up, putting the final bows in her hair for the morning, she said, “look mom, it’s the oxygen thing for my finger”.    She had made a cover for her index finger out of the Silly Putty, mimicking the shape of the Pulse Ox meter they put on you before and after each OR visit.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had another one of those evenings where he wasn’t going to eat anything ever again.   He was upset because dad’s homemade pizza didn’t have pepperoni on it.   This just wouldn’t do.   He agonized.    He was almost sick.   He came up with twelve other reasons (at least) why the single piece of non-pepperoni pizza was untenable to him.    We didn’t budge.   He eventually ate it.    This is the second, and likely not the last of the food battles we’ll go through with my son.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  When my daughter and husband were in the plane yesterday, about to take off, she had her headphones and iPad playing.    When the plane started to accelerate she suddenly put the iPad down and said to dad, “oh, this is the best part about flying”.    I have to say, I quite agree.

Cutting It Close

My daughter had an EUA today in Detroit.   We didn’t expect to learn much new, only if things were maintaining from the surgery she had last month.   I don’t have an update yet, mostly because the EUA ran so late that my husband and daughter dashed off to the airport once she woke up from the brief, fifteen minute anesthesia from the evaluation.  Hopefully they’ll make their flight in time.

I did talk to my husband and it didn’t sound like there was anything unexpected.   I’ll update here tomorrow with anything else of note.   For now, I’m hoping the roads have cleared reasonably so I can get to the airport tonight to pick them up.

The Big Boy Update:  I was working on the computer here, just now, doing this and that when my son came to the basement.   He came over to me and said, “mom, can you hack computers?”  I’m not telling you what I answered…

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was in the pre-op room this morning in Detroit while I was at the grocery store here, getting some supplies.   I asked my husband to update the list with anything we needed.   In addition to things I did expect to see, there were several things clearly added by my daughter.   “A real baby” made me laugh so much I sent a picture of a baby to my husband via text, asking if that’s what she was looking for.   He responded back, “she said that’s what she wants.”   Unfortunately the store sold out of them before I could get one in my cart.

Below Freezing

The “not snow” has been fun for our children and their friends.   The last bit of precipitation we got was about an inch-and-a-half of snow on top of the icy, sleety, freezing rain mess that came down for twelve hours.   The accumulation, while not appealing in any way to most adults was still, “snow” to the children and it was still fun.

They’ve spent a lot of time outside today and yesterday.   It’s not gotten warmer, it is much colder than the temperature when the precipitation started.   While some has melted on the black roads, a lot is still in place and is quite icy and as such, most things are cancelled or closed for tomorrow.

The Big Boy Update:   My son has told me, “the snow is freezing”.   We didn’t have a pair of snow boots to fit him so he had to wear his rain boots with multiple pair of socks.   He was warm everywhere else, but his feet did get cold enough to send him in.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and husband are in Detroit, missing the snow day off from school for an EUA one month after her latest surgery.   They’ll be home tomorrow night in time for school on Tuesday.

It’s No Hair Off My Back

My best friend is Korean.   She was born in the United States, but she’s said before that she has been known to mix metaphors.   I’ve never seen this in action until today.    We were talking about something today that was frustrating to her.    As I’m writing this now, I can’t remember the specifics and the point of frustration, mostly because we got sidetracked with the analogy she couldn’t figure out how to make.

It was “it’s like running on a duck’s back” I think at first.   We went through some other options, mostly me trying to figure out what analogy she was trying to make when she got to, “it’s no hair off my back.”   What?

Finally, I realized she was trying to say, “it’s no skin off my back”.   After I stopped laughing I told her I liked her version better and from here on out, that was the phrase I intended on using.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Altercation Chronicles:  My son and daughter get along well.   Sometimes they don’t and usually the one that gets in trouble first is very sure they did absolutely nothing wrong.   Tonight we were at dinner at a neighbor’s house after a full day in the snowy weather.   Everyone was tired and the four children weren’t getting along as well as they had an hour before.   Suddenly I looked up to see my son pull back and hit his sister soundly on the back.   I grabbed him and my husband grabbed her.   I looked at him when I had pulled him away to see his face and lips bleeding from her scratching him in anger.   The explanation behind what happened didn’t make sense on either end, but it was clearly time to go home and get to bed.

Memories of Snow’s Past

It might actually snow here.   There is this black snow hole around our area that likes to divert snow accumulation away from us—or at least that’s how it seems to me.   Sure, we get weather and some of the weather is bad, but it’s typically not snow.  And if it is frozen stuff, it’s not good, proper snow and it almost never accumulates much.

Tonight it is suppose to begin precipitating in an hour or so.  My children aren’t that excited because we haven’t gone on about it to them much.  I told them there may be snow on the ground when they wake up but so far, they’re just glad it’s Friday.

I used to get excited about the prospect of snow—lots of snow that you could trudge through and sled down hills on as the sound of crunching ice crystals assails your ears in the otherwise silent surroundings.   I yearned to get bundled up in my winter’s warmest to go outside and have fun trying to make a snowball with reduced dexterity from my overstuffed gloves.   I looked forward to sledding down a hill or road and not having the street surface break through for a good two days of solid sledding.

That’s what I hoped for for a long time after I became an adult.    I had memories of large snow drifts that lasted for days and days when I was a child.  But now, as an adult living in the same town I grew up in, I think the snow might well have been the same amount back then as it is today, only I was shorter.   It might last for close to the same amount of time before it melts today, but when I was a child, time flowed a lot more slowly.

Regardless, we’re looking forward snow and all the fun it brings with it when we wake up tomorrow.

The Big Boy Update:  I’m not sure if it’s seen as a negative thing these days to say this, but wow, my son is good at video games.   He has an excellent memory just like his father and good fine motor skills to match.   He came down and wanted me to see his new leveled-up something-or-other Ninjago character in Lego Dimensions on the Nintendo Wii U.   It was pretty cool, I have to admit.   His new character could fly.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s teachers have said they’re seeing a decrease in her vision or possibly her confidence at school.   She’s spending the entire playground time holding the hand of the assistant teacher, Susan.   We’re not seeing a reduction in vision here, but there’s a possibility we’re missing something.  On Monday she has another EUA in Detroit.   Hopefully we’ll get good news on the results of the surgery from last month, but even if we do, we’re not sure what’s happening at school to cause her to need more assistance.

My Ghostbuster Friend

I have a best friend.   She’s great.   She listens to me and puts up with all my annoying idiosyncrasies.  We run together, we laugh together and we cry together.     We even survived the, Tupperware Incident of 2016, about which I’m not allowed to talk, on the grounds of it being colossally silly.

I also have a husband.  He's the nicest sort of guy.   He puts up with me but I think there may be this bit of him (perhaps it is the male side of him, but I don’t want to stereotype) that just doesn’t care about all the little things that happen in my life that I feel I simply must talk about.

He doesn’t want to hear me perseverate over my day and the conversation I had with so-and-so and why I don’t think we should get that same type of cheese again because it’s not as good as the other type of cheese.

But I do have a best friend who is as crazy as I am, cares about similar silly stuff and is willing to listen to anything that’s important to me.   Because when the excrement is hitting the fan folks, “Who you gonna call?”  Your Ghostbuster friend.

The Big Boy Update:   I didn’t get a good explanation on this one, but my son said to me yesterday, “Mom, call 991”.  Me, “Why?”  My son, “Because there’s a fire in your brain, because you’ve been thinking so much.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is already getting ready for next Christmas.   She asked me if I could put a mermaid set on her wish list for this coming Christmas.

I Forgot I Ran:  Haha, it’s been so long since I ran I forgot to even mention it here.   I ran four miles the other day.

He Has The Best Voice

Update on my daughter’s back today, or rather a resolution to the problem.    I’ve taken her to my chiropractor six times now, including the initial evaluation.   There are three doctors at the practice and over the course of the last ten days she’s been seen by all three.

Today was her sixth visit, with us going in and knowing there was a good chance they would recommend doing nothing.   Each time she was seen by one of the doctors the subluxations in her back were less and less.   It’s like a two steps forward, one step back kind of thing where progress is made but not completely kept.

Good news is the subluxations were both gone and she’s been discharged.    When we got home there was a new patient welcome letter (standard procedure for medical offices) with some very nice adult words on how they’re glad to have you as a patient and your health care needs are their top concern.   My daughter wanted me to read the letter to her because I told her one of the doctors had drawn a smiley face at the bottom for her.  

When I got done, I read out the names of the three doctors she’d seen at the bottom of the letter.   She said in a quiet, inquisitive voice when I was done, “Dr. McMillon?”   I said, “yes, do you remember which one he was?”   She replied, “yes, he has the best voice.”

When you can’t see facial expressions or even faces, a person’s voice makes a bigger impact on your impression of them I would guess.

The Big Boy Update:  We have a large, foam, fuchsia ten-inch die we got some time ago.   I came into the living room yesterday to find my son yelling out to me, “I have forty-seven points” and then kicking the die across the room.   He ran over to it, saw what number had come up, added it to forty-seven and then kicked the ball again.   He was upwards of a hundred by the time I got back to the living room with the basket full of laundry.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This morning my daughter’s hair was a nightmare.   We don’t wash it every night so sometimes the second morning I have to figure out what could have possibly gotten into it the day before when I’m doing the morning brushing.  I have a spray bottle and some detangling spray but this morning I had to get a bowl of water out and dump big sections into it to try and loosen whatever it was.   My daughter casually said while she ate her breakfast, “maybe its the Ring Pop?”

Weenie Punching

Conflict Resolution as a child can be heavy stuff.   My son and daughter have been getting better and better at it as they’ve grown and gotten more experience.   Sometimes though, negotiations fail and physical means are employed.   That’s when someone ends up crying.   It’s also when my husband or me get called in to referee.

We try to let the children, including their neighbor friends, work things out for themselves, giving them guidance where possible.   This afternoon there were some children in our back yard.   Two of them were our neighbors but two I didn’t know.   My son recognized them as visiting children from another day and told me immediately how he didn’t want to go play with them.    Eventually he did though and I got to work on some things of mine until a short while later when he came in doing that cry thing where the child is so upset they can barely cry.   The “snuffles” I think I heard it called once.

My son was hurt because he’d been punched rather soundly in the ribs by, “the yiddle guy” of the two new friends outside.   When I asked what had happened while my son calmed down I was told I needed to “go outside right now and spank that kid ten times”.   I told my son I didn’t think that would help but maybe if he told me what happened I could understand better.

He told me how he didn’t like this boy because he did <insert thing my son didn’t like> so my son pulled him by the leg.    This child then hit my son, which my son didn’t like so my son said, “then I punched him in the weenie.”   I said, “I see, then what happened?”   The other child was using the Quiddich hoops in some way my son didn’t like and then he hit my son and cut his hand…so my son pushed him…and then the other child punched him in the ribs hard enough to send my son in crying, ending the interaction.

I was a little surprised at this very physical reaction and anger but sometimes things happen.    It wasn’t until a little bit later that I looked outside and watched what was going on with the remaining children.   I saw this child jerk the swing and kick my daughter out of it rather violently.   I watched my daughter look stunned and move on.    I saw a few other things I didn’t expect to see behaviorally, knowing how our neighbor children have good maturity and conflict management skills.  

It was a few minutes later that Keira came to the door to tell my son goodbye.   She had been the one who’d brought him inside when he got punched and was hurt.    She told him she didn’t like playing with that other boy either and would see him tomorrow.    I told my son violence wasn’t a good solution but I understood it was a difficult day and we all had them sometimes.

The Big Boy Update:  The best punishment my son came up with to exact on the little boy he didn’t like from the back yard this afternoon was, “mom, can you make a potion and give it to that boy and when he takes it he’ll be old so when it’s his birthday he’s so old he’ll die.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son and daughter were playing together yesterday.   My son has been recently both the retro game Sonic the Hedgehog as well as a show featuring the same characters.   I don’t know what game they were playing but I heard my daughter tell him, “okay, I’ll call you ‘Sonic’ but not ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’”.

I Need a Tissue

There is some sort of cold-esque malady going around here.   I’m not exactly sure what it is, largely because it’s not the same from person to person.   My husband has chills, his head hurts and he feels bad.   My daughter has a severely runny nose.   I have deep head congestion that clears up only when I make a very loud and ugly noise.   My son seems fine.

My daughter is getting good at blowing her nose.   She likes tissues and she uses them frequently as she has six rounds of drops every day, dabbed each time by a tissue.    Last night she came downstairs at some point during the night when I was fairly deep into sleep.    She said, “mommy, I need a tissue.  We don’t have any more in our bathroom”   I told her she could get one from our bathroom.    I heard her blow her nose several times, open the cabinet and throw the used tissue away.  

I wondered what was going to happen next, knowing the amount of assistance or comfort she would need would be based on her current mental state and tiredness.    Was she going to want to be carried up to bed?  Hand-held walked up?   Did she think she would need to be in our bed for a while before going up?   What I heard from her in her little tiny tinkling girl voice was, “I’m going back to my bed now, mom.”

Okay, I told her and promptly fell back asleep, grateful for the self reliance she had at five-years-old.  Then, later in the night she was back, needing another tissue.   I suggested she take the whole box up with her, an idea she was pleased about, and we all went back to sleep.

Today has been a big tissue-consumption day for her and her nose is now red.   Before bed tonight as she was getting settled she asked me if she could put the trash can from the bathroom beside her bed and the box of tissues on the bed with her.    I agreed it was a good idea.  Nice planning skills for a five-year-old I thought.

The Big Boy Update:  I think my son did this today.   He has an order side to him that comes out sometimes.   These are counting blocks from Christmas.   We’ve been having fun with them, but typically they’re in a bin all mixed up:

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I came over to my husband to give him a kiss this afternoon but said I guess I’d better watch out since he was sick.   From around the corner I heard my daughter call out, “don’t think about kissing daddy.”  I heeded her advice.

The Tooth and the Glasses

My son and daughter each get front and center tonight.   I’m not going to even write about my fun day sleeping in and shopping with my best friend and how we now have matching camo cargo pants.

The Big Boy Update:   My son is getting a tooth.   His lower right molar is coming in and has erupted either today or yesterday.  He’s been pretty excited to know he’s got an adult tooth coming in, although it’s bothersome to him at times.   At dinner he proclaimed that there should be nothing crunchy to eat.    Then he decided the food wasn’t warm enough for his tooth, although the fork was too cold.  The mashed potatoes weren’t right (as in he didn’t want to eat them), but eventually he did eat everything, all which met the “not crunchy” criteria and was able to have a slice of Nana’s chocolate Oreo peppermint ice cream pie.

The tooth brushing tonight was interesting.   He wanted to brush that tooth—to the exclusion of all other teeth.   There was lots of flossing going on, but mainly around the new tooth.    I remember as a child when my teeth were coming in.   It’s uncomfortable, sometimes painful and almost an itchy feeling and you just want it to hurry up and break all the way through.  

He told me it was a baby tooth but soon it would be a teenager and then after that it would be a child tooth (as it grew up into his mouth).    He’s working on a name for the new tooth now.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter can smear a pair of eyeglasses faster than anyone I know.   She touches the glasses a lot and she’s messy and sticky because she’s a child.    My husband and I typically clean her glasses for her when we do the rounds of drops each day.    We’ve tried to build an interest in her cleaning the glasses, but so far she’s not wanted to do it.  

This morning she came into the bedroom while we were still asleep.   She said, “mom, I want to clean my glasses”.   Did I mention she’s been sleeping in them lately?   She wears her glasses to bed and only takes them off to take a bath.   They have a strap around the back and are comfortable so she doesn’t mind them and possibly is getting some visual benefit from having the corrective lenses on.

But back to the eyeglass cleaning.   We got out the spray and the cloth but she couldn’t make the sprayer work.   We tried three different bottles, but they were all too hard for her to press down with her small hands.   I told her I’d work on a solution for her.  

Tonight I’d found what I was looking for—a little doll sprayer that came with one of her toys.   It has a pump spray mechanism and she can do it easily.    I put some of the eyeglasses cleaner in it and she was able to spray and clean her glasses all by herself.  

The next thing was where to put the supplies so she could clean the glasses any time?   We made a spot in the top drawer beside the toothpaste in a small green container.   I’m interested to see if she notices her glasses are as dirty as we do on a daily basis.