The Sprayer Solution

I wrote a while back about the failed Christmas present for my husband of a sprayer bottle for the dish soap.   I’ve been on a hunt for about four years now to find a replacement for the foaming dish soap and sprayer we liked that’s no longer made.   Foaming dish soap is limited in options, but it’s out there.   What’s been harder to find is a trigger sprayer that works with the foaming dish soap.   But I found a solution—I just had to look in a place I wasn’t expecting.

I was in Bed Bath and Beyond, looking for something unrelated to dish soap and saw this EVO olive oil bottle:

Trigger sprayer and a nozzle that could be channeled vertically or horizontally.  It looked promising so I got it.   I poured in some of the foaming dish soap (not a lot in case it was a total disaster like my last option) and put it by the sink, waiting for dirty dishes to arrive. 

And it woks.   It works well.   The trigger sprays enough but not too much and the directionality option on the nozzle is a handy feature.   The next test was if my husband liked it.   He did.  He liked it a lot.   

So I did what I do in situations like this—I ordered two more bottles from Amazon in case they stop making them.   Back stock.   Insurance for when the current bottle wears out in case I can’t find them any more.   Now I’m just hoping they keep making the foaming dish soap. 

The Big Boy Update:  I was in the car with my son in drop-off line on Monday.   He was about to get out of the car when he said to me, “Mom, what day is it?”  I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the day because I replied, “it’s Tuesday”.   He replied in an alarmed voice, “what happened to Monday?!”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  On the way home from free running class tonight my son and I were in the car when we got a call, via Alexa, from my daughter.   She wanted to know when we would be getting home.   We must have been hard to hear because she said, “you’re breaking up”.   That’s a phrase my children have probably heard many times, but it’s not one I was expecting to hear from her.   I laughed and told her we’d be home in five minutes and then I heard her say, “Alexa, hang up.”

Pachelbel’s Cannon in D

Alexa seems to play a lot of roles in our house.   Tonight for instance I was in the bedroom with my children trying to get them to calm down and go to sleep.   I said they could each pick a song on Alexa—as long as they were calming songs.   My son selected a quiet song from Thor: Ragnarok the movie that he heard earlier in the day.   Then my daughter picked Moon Rise.  

They know the artist or movie name or how to ask Alexa specifically so the’ll get the result they want.   When my daughter’s song was over my son said it was my turn to select a song.   I thought about it for a minute and then picked Pachelbel’s Cannon in D.   My daughter said she knew the song.   I told them this was the song I walked down the aisle to get married to dad to.   That started some questions and I told them we could watch the video of it sometime if they were interested.   They were surprised there was a video as well as pictures.   I told them it was in the attic but I could show them.

It got quiet for a minute while they listened to the song and then my daughter said, “Alexa, add this song to Reese’s playlist”.   My son asked to have the song added to his playlist next.    Then the song was over.   My son said, “can we play that again, Mom?”   I said sure.   They were asleep before the second playing was complete.

As I was sitting in the rocking room in the children’s bedroom now listening to the sounds of sleeping children to classical music, I looked at our shopping list—also built and maintained by Alexa.    I noticed ‘Dignity’ had been put on the list.   I have no idea where to go to buy dignity.   I’ll have to ask the children if they know in the morning.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me rather unsolicited one day recently, “I’ll never be a doctor.   I’m gonna be an actor.”   After asking some questions I got out of him he wants to be an actor so that he can be a power ranger.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me yesterday, “Mom, can Alexa die?”  I told her not that I know of, what did she mean?   She said like the iPads and did Alexa need charging.   Oh, I told her, no, Alexa is plugged in.

Cloth Sorting

My daughter helps me with laundry from time to time.   We have two types of laundry loads for the most part: white cloths and clothes with white cloths intermixed.   We use 13” square white cloths for mostly everything.   We have dozens and dozens of them in locations around the house.

Over time they get worn out.  Some get stains in them that won’t come out with bleach.  They get holes or fray on the edges and make a big fluffy mess in the lint trap of the dryer.   When our cleaning lady cleans the house she uses the cloths and then runs a specific load of laundry just for the cloths.   Whenever I run a load of clothes I add in all the dirty white cloths we’ve used in the general course of the day.

My daughter can help with a lot of the folding and sorting with laundry, but she’s the most adept at the cloths.   She will pile through all the laundry items, finds the white cloths and make a nice, neat stack.   Yesterday she was stacking white cloths from a full load of cloths and a second load of regular laundry.  

I went into the kitchen and was cleaning up when she came in, holding about seven cloths in her hands and said, “here, mom, these are the ones without tags.”   I told her thank you and followed her into the bedroom to see a huge stack of fifty or so cloths in another stack.   And I thought about what she’d just done.

I had replaced all our old cloths with the new ones.   But there are always outliers that I don’t catch.   It sometimes takes a few weeks to get all the old cloths retired.   I had told my husband that my plan was to leave the label on the new cloths until I didn’t have loads of wash with old cloths.   Apparently my daughter heard me say this.

So she took the cloths, felt around all four sides to see if there was a tag.  If there was, she put it in one stack.   If there was no tag, she put the cloth in a second stack.   This took time, but she could do it without seeing and she did it very well.    She surprises me with her tenacity and perseverance.

The Big Boy Update:  I saw my son scratching his penis last week so I asked him if he needed any medicine on it as it sometimes gets itchy due to eczema.   He replied, “no, I’m just messing with it because it’s cool.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter informed me yesterday, “the best thing about restaurants is that you make new friends.   Because there more than one person there.”   She had met a nice gentleman who was an architect eating alone at the table beside us.   He drew a picture of a house on a napkin and talked to us about Tesla cars and how much we liked ours.

Treasure Hunt

My husband had to go to the office yesterday to do some work.   He was rushing (something he does rarely) because, he told me, he had promised my daughter he would do, “special time” with her.

Special Time is fifteen minutes of time doing whatever the child wants with you.   My son usually wants my husband to do some sort of Minecraft mod of late.   With me he wants me to play Minecraft with him.   I let him tell me what to do and ask questions and I actually do need help because he’s played a lot more Minecraft and he likes to put me in strange and unusual worlds, run away from me and then tell me to come find him somewhere so he can show me something, “cool”.

My daughter’s Special Time requests are somewhat more physical in nature.   So yesterday I heard my husband coming downstairs from the second floor on the carpeted stairs.   He was going slowly down the stairs.   When he got to the bottom I didn’t see him, but I heard a plastic, “tick, tick” sound I couldn’t figure out.

He rounded the corner into the kitchen, still bent over, with a stack of Zingo tiles in his hand.   He was walking backwards and placing one about every six inches, slowly making his way to the pantry. My daughter yelled out from upstairs, “Are you ready yet?”  A minute later he called back that she could start.

This is a treasure hunt game they came up with together.   It’s a breadcrumb game she can do without seeing anything.   The game yesterday before dad left for the office was specifically for a, “something to eat” treasure.  

As my daughter followed the trail, picking up the tiles and effectively cleaning up the game as she went, she met dad part way.   He told her it was a food treasure and when she found the bag of goldfish crackers at the end she agreed it was a good treasure.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was not listening the other day.   I had to come up with a consequence and fast.   I looked at him in the eye and said, “I’ll remove all of your Minecraft shirts”.   His eyes bulged, realizing I was serious and ran off to comply.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter wanted to send dad a text message on my laptop today.   She told me I could type and she would tell me what to say.    The message was, “hi daddy, or if you prefer, Chris.”

One Day Turnaround

My mother made a decision to get a new laptop.   I’m not sure I remember when she got a laptop last.   I know she got one in 2001 when she retired, but I think she may have been working with my father’s old laptops ever since then.   But regardless of the timeframe, her current laptop was old and had some issues that weren’t easily solvable and a new laptop sounded like a good plan.

And this is where the major decision was: Mac or Windows machine?   I went Mac in 2013 and you couldn’t pay me to go back to Windows.   The little bit of tech support I do with my parents and other friends is enough of a taste to be frustrated with some of the complexity and confusion that lies with Windows-based operating systems and the huge varieties of hardware the operating system has to support.

So today my mother and I went to the Apple store, waited in one of their lines to get in line to wait to be helped just so we could buy something.   But we got the laptop and a mouse and headed home.   My mother went back to her house and I started working on setting up her…strike that, I couldn’t set up her machine because there was child-based interference.

I did make it to the laptop a bit later and got Office, the remote access software, a bunch of things configured, favorites/bookmarks moved over, lots of things logged in and I was suddenly done.   It was a few phone calls with my mother and we had it covered.   It was easy.   All I had to do was go to her house and move her files over after getting her on their network.

I didn’t make it out of the house until later but it was before dark, which I count as a win.   There were network issues with a printer and then ten minutes moving files and we were done, short some questions and my discussion about how Mac is different and how it should be a LOT easier because there’s just not as much stuff to contend with.  

Tonight I left and my mother had already send me two emails.   Tomorrow I’ll see what questions she has.   She’s doing great with no Mac experience.   I hope she ends up liking her Mac as much as I do mine.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is playing some mod on Minecraft while I write this blog post.   I can barely write because he keeps interrupting me to tell me about the jump block or the quicksand block you can hide using the camouflage block.   I keep having to, “look Mom”.  He’s pretty good at this game/exploration environment

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told me for no apparent reason tonight as we sat at the bar and had dinner together, “the worst part about cats is you have to clean the litter box.”  She asked me how litter boxes worked and was quite confused about how liquids turned to solids and could be scooped.

Cutco

We love Cutco knives and products.   When I was in college I had a friend who started selling Cutco and he gave me the demo one weekend.  I didn’t know much about knives other than my father liked to find them at yard sales and we had a smattering of different knives in our kitchen.   Some were sharp and some were not.   But these Cutco knives were beyond sharp—they were dangerous.  

I didn’t have a real need for them, what with living in a dorm room at the time but I said one day I would own some of those Cutco knives for myself.   Later in life I did buy a set of knives and over the years I’ve added to the collection.    When I met my husband it turned out that he as well as his family were avid Cutco people as well.   He remembers their Cutco sales rep coming to their house when he was a small child.  

When he and I got married I had quite a large collection of knives, cooking utensils and flatware.   We combined our sets and put the duplicates in the attic.   Since that time I’ve added a thing or two here and there and gotten Christmas presents for people.   We also have their cookware.   Basically, if it’s Cutco, we probably have it in our house.

Our sales rep contacted us recently to come and sharpen our knives.   He came and I got a few more things because there were some new non-knife items my husband and I liked.  Our order came in the mail and the next day I got a call from our next-door-neighbor’s son, who is a senior in high school and one of our children’s favorite sitters.   He spoke in a very scripted voice about how he was starting a new business endeavor to help him with money for college next year selling Cutco knives and would we be interested in hearing about them?

I told him we already had a Cutco rep and had most of the Cutco products but we’d be glad to have him come practice his presentation if he wanted.   He said he got paid by Cutco even if we didn’t buy anything (there is a nominal fee I knew they got) and that he understood we had a sales rep already.   We set a time for this afternoon after dinner.

Blake has been to our house many times, but he’s never noticed the brand of knives because it wasn’t something he had interest in before.   When he got here he realized I wasn’t joking, we really had it all.   He looked through all the items we had and we talked about how we used the knives and other products from Cutco and then he asked if he could do his presentation via the script he had since he was still learning it.  

He did a good job and we found out we didn’t have the Cutco vegetable peeler so we ordered one with him before he left.  The thing we all had a laugh about was where the script asked for us to find our “sharpest serrated and non-serrated knife” so that he could do a comparison with the Cutco knives.   We looked.   We didn’t have one.   We had also just had our knives sharpened.  

But Blake did a good job of the presentation and we talked a lot about our experience with Cutco products and how satisfied we’ve been with them and their “forever” guarantee.  I hope Blake does well selling Cutco, he’s got a dollar amount he’s hoping to sell.   He said he’d keep us updated on how it goes.

The Big Boy Update:   My son was with me at lunch the other day.   There was a man in line with us to place our food orders and noticed my son was doing “moves” (I don’t know what to call them, but my son basically never stands still).   He asked my son, “are you strong?”  My son said, “I don’t drink milk, but I do do conditioning.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter made a butterfly tonight and it was a pretty good one too.   She cut out two wings, two antenna and two, “legs”.   She asked me if I could get the tape to help tape it all together.   Then she asked if I could find one of the legs, which had gone missing.   Once she got it taped together she colored it in with sharpie and for the most part didn’t get sharpie marks on our dining room table.

Color Mutations

My daughter doesn’t see colors correctly anymore.   There is pigmentation or scar tissue behind her left retina.   I thought it was two different things or one thing and then later another thing but apparently it’s the same anomaly behind her retina, Dr. Trese has just described it in different ways.

Will it resolve?  Highly likely that it won’t and there isn’t a surgery to correct it.    Is it changing though or getting better?  That’s hard to say.   If my daughter could analyze and give us objective data over time I could tell you more but we’re going on observational data from a six-year-old that doesn’t want to talk about it other than asking us what color something is and then happily operating under the new information once we tell her it’s a green seven or a blue six card in Crazy 8’s.

Her music therapist was able to get information from her last week though and the interesting thing about it was my daughter offered it up voluntarily.    They were doing a game with the silks Chelsea keeps with her music materials and my daughter explained to her she gets the following confused:

• Purple, Red and Orange
• Green & Blue
• Light Pink & Yellow

I don’t know how or if we can help her out with those specifics yet, but if we can make accommodations in something she does regularly, we’ll try to. 

The Big Boy Update:  I was driving my son home from occupational therapy on Tuesday and we were coming up on our chiropractor’s office.   I said to him, “do you need to go to the chiropractor, we’re driving by his office.   Last time you didn’t tell me when your back had been hurting for a while.”  My son asked questioningly, “you mean Dr. Baldie?  Wait, what was his name?  No, I’m good.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked me, “when we make cookies next time can I help with a knife?”   I asked her how she thought she could help with a knife.   She said, “I can cut the butter; it’s very easy, I did it at Morgan’s house.”   She is very careful with a knife, I told her she could certainly help next time.   

Dinner With Uncle Brian

Uncle Brian arrived tonight at dinner time via plane.   He is doing a presentation tomorrow morning and then will return home tomorrow afternoon.   We’re excited to have him stop in and stay a night with us though.

My son and husband were off at Free Running so my daughter and I planned for Uncle Brian’s arrival.   My daughter did this by knocking on the door when I had gone around the corner and fooling me into thinking Uncle Brian had arrived.

When she tired of that, she called Uncle Bob on Alexa and told him all about the programmable Lego model she was controlling on my iPad.   Her programming made lots of ‘boops’ and ‘beeps’ and was probably far too loud over on Uncle Bob’s side of the connection but she was quite proud of the programming she was doing to make the small car move in various directions.

When Uncle Brian did arrive we left to go to dinner at Pei Wei where my daughter made friends with an architect and pilot who saw our car and wanted to talk Tesla.   He drew her a picture of a house and said as we were leaving how he’d always wanted to have a daughter but he and his wife never did.

Once home it was pajamas and teeth time and then Uncle Brian read to the children from the Minecraft Island book he and Uncle Bob had gotten for them.   They are very keen on what happens next in the book and it’s nice reading to them because it has zero pictures and good sized chapters.   That means both children have to imagine what things look like as they hear the story.

The Big Boy Update:  There was a song playing in the car this morning called, “Battle Cry”.   My son asked me what a battle cry was so I gave him a description and then did a demonstration.   I did it quietly, but I had hoped he’d get the idea as I didn’t want to full-on yell in the car.   He was somewhat unimpressed I think because he told me, “you sound like you could use another hour of sleep/“

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was getting ready for bed.   She had finished brushing her teeth and started to walk away with her flosser towards the toilet.   As she shut the door she told me, “I’m multitasking right now”.

Playlists

My son asked me a while back if he could have his own playlist.  The children know about playlists as I have them and refer to them from time to time.   I told him he could have his own playlist if he wanted to.  

I created the list on Amazon Prime Music and he asked for his two current obsession songs to be put into it.   Now, when we’re in the car or I have my phone with me we can play his playlist.   We had to do some figuring out how to get the playlist so that Alexa would recognize a voice command to play said playlist.

That part turned out to be harder than anticipated, even though it should have worked easily.   We did a collection of things over the next two days while in the meantime my daughter had decided she wanted a playlist too—with the exact same two songs as her brother.  

I asked Alexa to play her playlist and it just worked.   Alexa wasn’t even mildly confused.   My husband finally had an idea that worked, which was renaming the playlist to an alternate spelling of my son’s name.

So now we have two children with two playlists running around the house asking Alexa to play their songs and skip to the next song and play the playlist on random.   By this point I had had requests for several more songs each, but with mostly the same songs on both playlists.

Then two days ago they figured out how to add a song to their play list.   But they’re not adding with discretion, they’re just adding to add songs.   I think in a few weeks we’re going to have to clean up the playlists.  For example, this morning at breakfast my son had asked for his playlist to be played in random order.   He didn’t want to hear the first song so he asked for it to be skipped.   The second song came on and my daughter said after a few measures, “Alexa skip”.   She looked at me and said, “it has some bad words in it so it’s not really appropriate.”

The Big Boy Update:  On the way home from school today my son wanted to have some of my can of seltzer water.   A few minutes later I heard what was clearly the sound of a can tipping over in the back seat.   I asked my son in an alarmed voice, “is it spilling?”   He calmly replied, “not anymore”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  During dinner my daughter asked randomly, “mom, how much longer do you think until you die?”

Best Pork Chops Ever:  My husband was making pork chops tonight.   He ended up trying something new with the new pan he’d recently gotten.   I had arrived home but was in the car in the garage finishing up a phone call when he messaged me, “these are the best pork chops ever”.   My husband isn’t prone to bragging so I went inside to see for myself.  I think he was right because I couldn’t stop eating them.   I told him if he cooked them for dinner tomorrow I’d eat just as many.

Words From The Children

Sometimes I have too many things to write about that the children say or do to just put one in per day.  

The Big Boy Update:
Adam:  My son and I were going to school this morning and as we were leaving I said I saw Adam and their dog, Milo, walking.   My son asked me, “Is Adam made of atoms?”   The words sound the same to him.  We drove up beside Adam, I rolled down the window and my son asked Adam his question.   Adam smiled and said, “I am made of atoms!”  On the rest of the ride to school we talked about spellings and the fundamental particles of the universe.

FedEx:  After seeing Adam this morning we continued on to school.   My son saw a FedEx truck and said, “FedEx is my enemy!”  I asked him why he would say that, his Uncle Dale was a pilot for FexEx and they bring us packages we like to receive sometimes.   My son replied, “I like Postman Pat.”   Our mailman is a very nice gentleman.   I’ll have to tell him my son is partial to him the next time I see him.

Dinner Demands:  We went shopping before dinner to get my children some ski clothes they’ll need for our upcoming ski trip (and for any additional inclement weather we might have here).   We told them we would go out to dinner afterwards.   My son yelled out “Chick-Fil-A!”  My daughter yelled out the same.   We said no.   They yelled louder and repeatedly.   We said no.   So my son came up with another tactic, saying, “If we don’t go to Chick-Fil-A Dad’s going to have to wear high heels for the rest of his life and Mom’s going to be bald for the rest of her life.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:
Flight of the Bumblebee:  My mother had Alexa play the Flight of the Bumblebee song the other day.   She talked to my daughter about what was happening in the song.   My daughter listened and then said, “I can see myself running from the bee.”

Pocket Tissues:  My mother has kept tissues, or ‘Kleenex’ as she refers to them, in her pockets for as long as I can remember.  She wears pants with pockets just for this purpose.   This has come in handy when my daughter has a runny nose.   A few weeks ago she told my daughter she could keep tissues in her pockets too.   For a few days after that I would see tissues half-way stuffed into my daughter’s pockets as she liked Mimi’s idea and definitely needed the tissue.   But I’m glad her runny nose has passed.   She didn’t know to take the unused tissues out at the end of the day and we had one very fuzz-filled laundry load from the dissolving tissues in the wash.

Crab Cakes:  My daughter asked Mimi what she and Gramps were having for dinner the other day.   Mimi told her they were having crab cakes.   My daughter said in an alarmed voice, “but that’s dessert!”

The Little Napkin

I was at a restaurant the other day eating my meal when a waitress dropped a large stack of napkins on our table unsolicited.   The stack was more than we would reasonably use and we had cloth napkins already.   Perhaps my children looked messy (they do and are) but we were managing well with what we had as far as damage control on the mess front.  It reminded me of a lunch spot I ate at frequently with coworkers in Sao Paulo, Brazil many years ago.

I had been sent down by IBM to do some consulting work with Banco Itaú.   I didn’t speak Portuguese but fortunately English is commonly spoken fairly well by most of the demographic of people I was working with.   I was teaching some classes and then working with their various development groups to help implement the software development platform they’d adopted from IBM.

I probably have a hundred stories from that time, including when President Bush stayed in our hotel while we were there, which was a mess from a security standpoint—I was glad when he moved to his next location.   This particular story is about napkins and lunch though, which is much less-exciting than the president of your country staying several floors above you, but I don’t think about that visit much whereas I’m reminded about the napkins frequently.

My typical work day there was coming in to teach class in the morning and then around one o’clock I would dismiss everyone for lunch.  We had limited options on where to eat as we only had so much time for lunch.   Travel in the downtown area was congested and slow so we were limited to the cafeteria or a few local restaurants interspersed between the buildings.

There was one restaurant just across the street that had a walk-up line and served a variety of things.   I couldn’t read the menu so I tried multiple things until I settled on a beef and broccolini dish that I liked and stuck with for the remainder of the time I spent with Banco Itaú.   You would place your order, pay and then find a table with your bottle of Guarana soda.   A short time later your food would be brought out and you’d be giving utensils and a single napkin.

The napkins they had were single-ply and smaller than a bar napkin.   And they were thin.   The dish I had included a good bit of sauce and I had the hardest time making through the meal with the single napkin that wouldn’t even begin to cover my lap.   After a few days of this I asked one of the people I was working with if there were more napkins as there were no dispensers to be seen.   He looked a little confused as to why I might want more than one napkin and said if I needed one I could go back in line and ask, he supposed.

So I did and five minutes later I was given a second, single small napkin.   After that day I did my best to be conservative with napkin use.   In the United States we seem to have the “excess is better” motto.   I was reminded of this when I saw that ample stack of napkins placed on our table.   When this happens I sometimes bring the napkins home because I know they’re just going to be thrown out.

I do miss that restaurant though and the dish I have no idea of the name and that little, thin napkin.

The Big Boy Update:  We were driving to dinner with friends after parkour tonight and my children wanted to know what was on the menu.   I pulled up the website and started reading off things.   I didn’t realize my son had been there before and when I got to the drinks I said, “oh, they have milkshakes.”  My son said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I know that, spoiler alert.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were eating dinner the other night with my parents.   After dinner my daughter was very helpful when she explained to everyone, “Mommy has a bigger tummy”.

Right On Time

When I was young I had one of those clocks that flipped over a flap of plastic or metal every minute of every hour.   It had a little radio I could listen to and it the radio or a terrible loud beep could be used as an alarm.    It was by my bedside for years of my childhood.

I eventually got a watch.   It was the beginning of the digital age and the watch I had had numbers instead of hands.   I was cool.   I was so cool.   Or at least I thought so.    But the watch was only so so on keeping time.   It seemed to get a wee bit off and I would have to set it forwards by a few minutes.   Then the battery would die.

Thought most of my childhood my friends and people I knew would get watches or clocks.   There was a big to do back then about quartz crystal accuracy.   The timepiece you had just had to be accurate and not lose time.  

There was a lot of talk about who had the most accurate and reliable of the clocks and watches we had.   Money was spent, accuracy was gained and yet we still would be late to something, saying, “my watch must be off”.

Today no one talks about the correctness of time.    Everything is synced with central, super accurate time devices.   All of our cell phones flip to 9:13PM at the same time.   It’s nice to have the accuracy but it means there are no more excuses for being late anymore.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was caught.   He was cornered, and he knew he had no way out of telling a story that just wasn’t true to me.   But he tried as he said, “I wasn’t lying, I just got confused with the sentences.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:    On the way to dinner in the dark tonight we passed the hospital.  My daughter asked, “are doctors awake at nighttime?”

Missing Computer

It’s very disconcerting to come downstairs at the end of the day to write your blog post and not be able to…because your computer is missing.  

For most of my computer-using life I had a desktop machine.   It would either sit on the floor beside where I say or underneath my monitor.   It stayed in place.   It didn’t travel.  It was always here.   The whole concept of having a single machine that’s powerful enough to do everything I want it to do while I look at this big monitor in front of me as well as be small and portable enough to go with me anywhere I need, wasn’t a reality.

But for some years now I’ve had only one computer—my laptop—which for the vast majority of the time sits beside my large wide-screen monitor but on occasion, travels with me wherever I need it to go.

When I take it places, such as to the office today, I get home and sometimes forget to bring it back downstairs before I sit down to work or as in tonight, write this blog post.   I’ve been known to sit down, put my hands on the keyboard and track pad and wonder why nothing is coming up on the screen, only to feel chagrinned to discover my laptop is elsewhere, unable to assist me in my computing needs.  

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Wrong Pajamas Conversation:  My parents were watching the children tonight while my husband and I were at a neighborhood post-holiday party.   My mother said they were very well behaved with both children getting dressed and ready for bed without being repeatedly asked.   My daughter went first, getting her pajamas on all by herself.   She came out of the bedroom to have my son look up and inform her, “those are my pajamas”.    She wasn’t phased by his comment or that she couldn’t see which pair of pajamas she had put on, she just went back into the bedroom and changed into the other set.

Tracking

It’s all about small increments with my daughter’s vision.   We’re not going to get a full return of normal sight with her, we understand and have accepted that.    But we do hope for improvement and that hope is something we will continue to have, regardless of time.  

Things that have gotten better over time since the original unknown insult occurred in her eyes has been hard to gauge.   She’s lost pressure in her eyes multiple times and they dropped to zero.   The right eye was covered in internal scar tissue, preventing her from seeing anything (even if she could, which is questionable).   The left lens grew into a cataract.   The left eye was traumatized and had an internal hematoma, blocking all of her vision.   In short, it’s been a rocky road.

But there are some good signs that hopefully mean stabilization and no more reduction in the minimal vision she has remaining.   First, her ciliary bodies seem to have healed some.   This is not a confirmed thing, but her pressure hasn’t dropped in a while.   Not having to artificially inflate her eyes to normal pressure for the rest of her life would be a wonderful thing.

Second, her vision is a known thing.   We have a +18.5 prescription for her eyes and she’s wearing bifocals which give her near vision of +21.5.   It’s a dramatic prescription, but without natural lenses to provide the lion share of refraction, her glasses have to do a lot more work.   At this point her glasses seem to be serving her well.   When we take them off her to clean them she complains that she can’t see.   The fact that she can “see” is a win in and of itself.

Her right eye has an opening in it through which she can see.   What can she see?  We’re not sure.   Probably light since she’s light sensitive there, and possibly colors and vague forms.   But there is a chance for healing in that eye and her brain can map the vision she sees now that the aperture has been opened.

Her left eye hasn’t had surgery since the lens removal and aside from steroid and dilating drops she’s had relatively stable vision in that eye for over half a year.    It’s this left eye that gives her almost all the visual information she receives.  

She relies on her hands quite a lot to understand her world.   Originally she used her vision and was frustrated because she couldn’t see.   Now that she knows how to use her hands to experience the world she disengages her eyes in a lot of situations and doesn’t even try, which is a good thing overall because it’s a skill she needs.

She does have vision though and she seems to see more and more (in small increments) over time.   For instance, she has to stand on a bar chair to see the television when we put a show on.   She puts her face about six inches from the screen and watches the show.   It wasn’t long ago that she would stare straight ahead and look at whatever color was in front of her, but now she seems to be doing some sort of tracking—following things on the screen—and looking around while the show is on.

She is now and will almost certainly always be a braille reader, but any increase in what she can see is something we’ll celebrate.   I remember when my mother-in-law came to town two months ago and my daughter wanted to play cards.   Nana ran out of the bonus room when she saw me and excitedly whispered, “she can see the cards!”  

So things are from a conservative standpoint, “marginally better”.   But it’s something.   And we’ll take any somethings we can get.

The Big Boy Update:   My mother quietly say by my son while he played Minecraft on his iPad last week.   He must have liked her sitting there watching him because he would lean over from time to time and hug her.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My husband made bacon yesterday, something we only do occasionally.   He said to my daughter, “do you want some bacon?”   She replied, “of course I do.”

Snofall

One of the handles I use in video games is ‘Snofall’.   I like the name which would indicate that I like snow.   I do like snow, but from where I live in the South it rarely seems to happen.   We get the threat of snow and sometimes we get bad winter weather that resembles snow but is more an icy, dangerous mess that melts before you can have fun with what’s on the ground.   Usually what falls isn’t fun to play with nor is it any meaningful quantity.

As a result, I’m a huge snow fall skeptic.   People in our area tend to get excited about the possibility of snow, a lot of times believing in the maximum amount of predicted snow, even when the forecast changes to less-favorable conditions.

But today we got snow.   It came hours later than the original prediction but it snowed and after a bit started to stick and we got what may be five or six inches of fun, fluffy snow.  My children went out several times and towards the end of the day when there was enough accumulation to have fun in, I went out to join them at one of our neighbor’s houses who had a hill that worked well for sledding.

A snow fort was made, there was an on and off snow fight with adults and children playing together having no particular teams, only temporarily taking sides.   There was bourbon and paper cups at the edge of the garage and hot chocolate inside for those who got cold.   I was diving into and rolling around in the snow with my children.   It was enough to have a lot of fun in.  

We stayed until dark and enjoyed a walk home in the eerily bright street lit streets.   It’s going to remain cold tonight which will give everyone another day to enjoy the snow before it melts.   In the dark as I look out, everything looks beautiful.   Here’s a picture of the Japanese maple in our front yard.   It looked so nice up-lit that my husband and I both independently took pictures of it.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had little interest in participating in the snow ball fight.   What he wanted to do was to attack you and knock you down.   He got me several times but I got him back by grabbling and use him as a human shield from the onslaught of snowballs.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter couldn’t see enough to participate in the snow ball fight, but she did like making and collecting snow balls.   She had us help her fill up one of the sleds and then she would say, “my store is open” and hand out the snow balls for free.   At the end of the night she gave a sled full of snowballs for my husband to run and dump on three of us while she laughed.

I’m Missing Something

My husband and I were texting back and fort this morning trying to schedule two upcoming events.   We’d RSVP’d yes to one about a month ago and the other one we’d planned on going to and had on the calendar.   Sometimes when we schedule things we immediately secure a sitter for the time block, but other times we miss grabbing a sitter until one of us realizes we missed that important step.

My husband had asked who he should ask first and I suggested our next-door neighbor’s children.  He texted me back a short while later saying neither were available and who should he go to next.    When I got home he said none of the three were available.   As we were talking I was trying to figure out who we should ask next.   I was thinking of several options but something was bothering me—I was missing something.  

I couldn’t figure out what it was so I told him let’s try these next two sitters and then we’d go to third string support if we didn’t find anyone at that level.   And then it hit me—my parents were back in town for the winter.   My mother, “Childcare on Wheels” as she likes to call herself, was most likely available and would probably like to have an evening with the children.   Certainly my husband and I would love to have her and my father come over and spend time with their grandchildren.  

Five minutes later and I had our events covered with the gracious help of Mimi.   I hung up and my phone rang almost immediately.    Due to incoming weather, or the strong threat of weather, one of the events canceled and rescheduled for several weeks from now.   So I called my childcare on wheels representative back and she said that wasn’t a problem and moved our reservation.  

It’s nice to have Mimi and Gramps in town for four months of the year.

The Big Boy Update:  I was talking to my son about my back and neck bothering me tonight.   We talked about our chiropractor and how he helped me.   I figured my son probably didn’t like it when the “popcorn” sounds happened when his back had to be adjusted the two times he hurt himself and I took him in, but I was wrong.   He said, “It feels good.   And I like the sound.”  I told him I thought so too.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  While my son and I were at his OT appointment and then his Free Running class today my husband and daughter played a treasure hunt game.   But this treasure hunt was with a twist—the directions on where to look next (in front of the fireplace, under the bed, on the garage door, etc.) were written on pieces of paper in braille by my husband.   My daughter loves this game and having it done in braille so she could read the locations was even more fun for her.   We saved the cards so she could play the game again with her friends tomorrow since there’s no school due to weather.   This will be the first time she’ll be able to read the location instead of everyone being able to read the card but her.    She’s pretty excited about playing with them.

Fasting

I have to fast today for some blood work tomorrow.   Just some tests to make sure I’m not old.   Or possibly to verify that I am.   Routine stuff.   Still, it involves fasting.    And the whole fasting thing I don’t understand.

That’s not true really, it’s completely understandable, it’s just the rules that don’t make sense.   Fasting seems to follow the same set of guidelines as pre-surgery rules.   It has nothing to do with the total number of hours before said event (surgery or blood draw) but the time of day the evening before: midnight.

It doesn’t matter if you have an eight o’clock appointment or a 1:15 surgery time scheduled, you can’t have anything to eat or drink after midnight.   So what does this tell us?   In the case of surgery, you don’t have much choice as the surgical schedule is out of your control.   But for an office visit the message is clear: schedule for first thing in the morning.  

So tomorrow my husband is taking the children to school and I’ll be at the doctor’s office for a blood draw and other vitals at 8:15am.   I’ll have to delay my morning hot tea by an hour-and-a-half, but that’s about the only disruption to my schedule there will be.

The Big Boy Update:  I heard my father say to my son tonight, “no, I’m not pregnant.  I just have a pot belly.”   The rest of the adults turned and all laughed as we figured out what my son had asked Gramps.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was taking to Richard this weekend while we were waiting to be seated for dinner.   I don’t know what the conversation was but I heard her say, “I only like my dad’s broccoli.”

Simon Says You’re Out

I took my children to their private tumbling/parkour class tonight.   It’s private because my daughter needs to be in the gym with an instructor who can give her more personal attention.   My son goes with her and has a fantastic time doing all sorts of practicing on the skills he’s learning in his other classes.

On the way there I was on the phone and both children played games together happily in the car.   I didn’t pay much attention because I was talking, but voices weren’t raised and they seemed to be doing creative imaginative play in the back.   I wasn’t sure what it was until we got in the car to go back home.

While they were in their class tonight I joined an adult class on the other side of the gym.   The class was specifically a handstand class.  It seemed pretty specific but from watching the students the week before I thought I’d give it a try.   We did some stretching to warm up—which I needed.   I think I could do with some stretching most days.   I don’t stretch before or after running or really any other time unless I’m trying to get some muscles in my shoulders or back to release.

Stretching complete and we move into conditioning.   Five stations, consisting largely of strength work related to doing and holding handstands in various positions.   Let’s be clear that I haven’t done any upper body work in close to two years.   I can run for hours, but this wasn’t easy.   But it was fun hard.

We moved into handstands, which I can do without a problem.   But handstands with pushups against the wall and piked handstands and cartwheeling out of handstands and balancing handstands.   It was good stuff, but I have this “old” thing going on that made it difficult.   In this case, the “old” thing consists of damage-based injuries.

My right thumb has something torn or worn and when my hands are holding up my entire body it’s less than comfortable.   Then there is the thing that happened when I fell the day I ran eight miles for the first time.   I fell and rolled on my right elbow and damaged something.   Things move in ways they shouldn’t move—scary ways.    It’s not so worrisome when it happens while I move clothes from the washer to the dryer, but when I’m holding up my body and I’m afraid to lock out the elbow because of what might happen, it becomes more scary.

The class was fun and it was exercise, something which I haven’t had any of since I ran the last marathon in November.   I’m not sure if I’ll join the class again, but since it happens at the same time as my children’s lesson, I just might.

On the ride home my children told me I was going to have to play with them this time because I wasn’t on the phone.   The game turned out to be Simon Says.   They have played enough to know there are certain things the driver can and can’t do.   For instance I can scratch my nose, but I can’t close my eyes.

I did a few things and then when requested, I raised my hands and immediately heard my daughter shout, “you’re out!”   And I was, because there wasn’t a “Simon says” preceding the hands up request.   What surprised me was that my daughter could see me put my hands up in the twilight light from the back seat.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Red Pepper Advice:  My husband made dinner tonight including some red peppers.   My daughter was initially very upset because she said they were spicy.   We explained that it wasn’t the spicy part, but the red flesh part that she liked a lot.   She wasn’t happy at all and used some words not allowed like “disgusting” and “yucky”.  That, coupled with an overall cranky attitude and she got herself sent to her room for an attitude adjustment.   Once she’d calmed down and was back she still said she didn’t like the red pepper taste.   My son said, “let me give you a tip, don’t pay any attention to the taste.”

Our Inn

We have been having people visit with us a lot lately.   I love it.   I don’t know what it is, but I do like a house full of family and friends.    Last night our friends from Maryland came to town, arriving around ten o’clock in the evening.   I wanted to stay up, but I fell asleep shortly before they got to the house.  

This morning I woke up to the smell of coffee and toasted bagels and some warm welcome hugs from our friends.   Alice asked me how I was sleeping last night when they came in, making noise as a family arriving would typically do, and to the loud television on the other side of the wall to our bedroom.    I told her I was sleeping soundly, not even noticing the noise because a loud house here typically means a happy house.

Today as I say down to write this post I had an email from my cousin, asking if we were available for visitors on two weekends in the coming months for swim meets Olivia had in the area.   A short calendar check and entries added and one email response later and our house will have more visitors soon.  

We’re very fortunate to have friends and family that like to spend time with us.   We’re also very fortunate to have guest rooms in which they can stay.   Years ago when my daughter was three months old we performed, “Operation Cohabitation” and stuck her in with my then fourteen-month-old son.   I’ve been asked many times why we did so when we had a room she could have had as her own.  

I have two answers: the first is that we wanted them to be together, to be friends, and to be used to sleeping in noise when it the other child was awake and crying.   And that goal has been highly successful.   They like being in the same room.   Some day they’ll want to have their own space, but they like being together quite a lot now.

The second reason is that I love guests.   Having more than one guest room is something I’m always glad to offer.   So if you’re coming to town and need a spot to stay, send me an email and I’ll check the calendar.   We look forward to having you visit.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is very excited.  He has a Minecraft party on Monday while school is out.  It’s some friends from school who are all passionate about Minecraft.   He’s not had a lot of opportunity to play with friends online so this will be his first real event.    I can’t wait to hear about it when he gets home.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is very happy to have Andrew and Julia here visiting.   For lunch she was adamant she got to sit beside Andrew in the car and at the table.   This afternoon and morning though she spent a lot of time with Julia playing cards and doing other things.    Andrew and Julia are older than her, but that hasn’t stopped her from making them some of her best friends.    My daughter loves friends.

She’ll Hunt You Down

My daughter may be visually impaired, but that doesn’t stop her from finding you when she needs you.   Actually, that may be to strong a phrase, “when she wants you” is probably more accurate.   She uses her hearing and will call out your name to find you.   If that doesn’t work, she moves into second-level tactics.

These additional tactics involve using technology to locate you.   I’ve mentioned before how she will call my phone using Alexa and I always answer the call if I can because the call comes in as though it was from my husband.   It’s my daughter though, wanting to know if I remember where she put ‘Cutie Bear’ and how long until I’m home and what and I doing, etc.

There is a third level of contact she uses that drives me nuts.   For instance, tonight she was eating dinner and I went into the bedroom to fold laundry.    She “drops in” on the master bedroom Alexa and wants to talk to me from two rooms away with an echo on both ends due to proximity.

Tonight she combined all her Alexa skills, following me via Drop In to multiple areas of the house and then when she couldn’t remotely find me that way, she just called my cell phone.   Sometimes I want to turn the Alexa’s off because I just don’t want to be found that badly.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is upstairs watching Jurassic Park (the original) with my husband.   There are some scary parts in the movie and my son was warned they would happen, but everything would be okay.   We’re not sure how he’ll handle them when they happen, but so far he’s loving the movie.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   “A pest” is the phrase that comes to mind to describe my daughter when she gets into one of her ‘must find you’ modes.   Shs's tenacious.

Going to Breakfast

My son made me proud today.   It was in a strange, only would make a mother—this particular mother—proud kind of way, but it was enough for me.   He asked me why we didn’t go out to breakfast.   He said he wanted to go out to breakfast and could we do that one morning.  

I told him sure, we could do it one day this weekend as my brain quickly ran through breakfast restaurants in my mind that wouldn’t be too busy (I hate long waits or waits at all for that matter).  I also like good breakfast food.   I came up with one idea but it wasn’t my favorite.

My son said, “what about Biscuitville, mom?”   If I could have hugged him from the front seat, I would have.   Biscuitville isn’t high-class; it’s fast food breakfast food—but it’s good.   Or at least it’s what I call good mostly because I’ve eaten it since college and it has a special place in my mind when it comes to breakfast food.

So we made a date to go one morning, possibly even a school morning if he wants to get up early enough.   Hopefully soon because now I want some Biscuitville breakfast food too.

The Big Boy Update:   When we talked about Biscuitville this morning my son asked me, “do the Vietnamese all work there?”  I  have no idea where he got this idea, but I told him no, it was all sorts of people who worked at this southern breakfast restaurant.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My husband likes to make his steak dinner spicy.   My daughter does not particularly like her steak spicy.   But she likes dessert more, so she suffered through six bites so she could have a popsicle.   Everyone won I suppose.

Global Period

Medical Insurance.   Lots of people have issues with their medical insurance.   Aside from premium increases which has been happening across the board, we’ve been fortunate that our medical insurance is fairly good.  

My daughter has procedures, surgeries and office visits in an entirely different state and we’re still covered.   Bottom line, I’m not complaining.   Although my spreadsheet on non-reimbursed medical expenses continues to grow every year.   But I dare you IRS, audit us again.   I’ll have documents and summary information to you by return mail.   I’m that organized, just in case.

We’ve got reasonably high deductibles and since it’s only January tenth, we haven’t met them yet.   Except some things seem to be already covered.  My daughter was in Detroit yesterday to see her retina surgeon and after the appointment we went to check out to pay and schedule another follow-up in a month.   I asked if there was a co-pay for today’s appointment.   She looked at her computer and said, “oh, you’re still within the global period, there’s nothing due today.”

Global period?   Apparently this is a window of time post-procedure/surgery where costs for the follow-up are included in the total cost of the procedure.   I’ve decided I like global periods.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wanted to know if his name was famous.   I told him I wasn’t sure, what did he mean?  He said he saw his middle name a lot on things he watched on YouTube and television.   I was still confused until he told me he meant his middle name.   Ah yes, ‘Fox’ is my son’s middle name.   It also happens to be a big network.   I told him he had a famous name and I didn’t even realize it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter went to her favorite sitter’s house today to do some fun things.   I don’t think I’ll ever be able to compete with Morgan for fun, because she’ll be the winner, hands down.   My daughter came home with four hand-painted pictures on real canvas.   She made beads out of clay, including beads with the letters of her name.   And—and this is my favorite part—warm chocolate chip cookies.     They were so good I ate them in lieu of dinner.   I won’t tell you how  many I ate because that would be embarrassing.

Thirteen Hours

Today’s entire trip to Detroit and back was a total of thirteen hours.   My alarm went off at four o’clock in the morning and I pulled back into our garage at five in the evening.   My daughter is a seasoned traveller and aside from being disappointed we didn’t have time to go to the mall, she was a great travel partner.

The report from Dr. Trese today was good.   Her pressure from what he could tell from pressing on her eyes is normal (and trust me, this man knows what he’s doing with his hands, I’d trust his hands any day).  The opening he put into her right eye is looking stable, which is also good.   One thing he mentioned was that there was a separation in the cornea to the iris in her right eye.   This will disrupt vision, but we’re not sure how much vision she has in the right eye so for now it’s not much of an issue.  

The left eye he talked about scar tissue behind the retina and I asked him if that was in addition to the pigmentation behind the retina.   He said it’s the same thing he’s talking about, then said a long-worded label for the condition that I couldn’t get down.   At this point in time there is no surgical procedure to repair/remove the aberrant tissue, although he said in the future there might be.   It won’t resolve on its own, so it will cause her colors to be not true (or in some cases off).   We’ve seen this, although she doesn’t particularly mind.   Color blind people see colors differently and it doesn’t prevent them from leading functional lives, so I’m not overly concerned there.

The one thing he said that was encouraging was that he saw her eyes move in tandem, or together, and that was a good thing.  Her eyes have moved independently for a long time, which is reasonable and happens when the two eyes see significantly different views of the world.   That doesn’t mean the right eye is seeing much, but I’ll take what we can get in terms of good news.

My daughter drew Dr. Trese a picture and I had her give it to him.   We nodded and he remarked what a nice drawing it was.   She wrote his name and some other things on the page and had a drawing of him in his gown with some surgical tools in his hands.   He said, and he’s correct, it was a huge improvement from a year ago.   She can also do that from more than three inches from her face, which is what we had back then.   She got marker on her face all the time then but we had to let her use marker because she couldn’t see crayon or pencil marks.

Dr. Trese said he used to keep his patients drawings in their files but he couldn’t any more because everything has gone digital.   He said he’d have to find a spot for her drawing.

I also asked Dr. Trese about the long-term plan for drops.   My daughter gets compliments every time when it comes to drops from any person who works with her because she leans her head back, holds down her eye lid, waits for the drop and then switches to the other eye.   If you’re ready with the bottle you can get two drops in in five seconds.    But it’s a lot of drops for a little girl to endure every day.    Dr. Trese said he didn’t think anyone would have advice on that because no one has the same set of conditions in her eyes that she does.    So for now we’re still at four rounds of drops per day.

We return for another trip in a month.   Thirteen hours travel for a fifteen minute appointment.   But he’s where we need to be.   We’re glad to have Dr. Trese.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and mother went to the mall today.   He asked her how motion sensing doors work and he and she spent a while trying to find where the trigger point was for the door.   My son looked at Mimi and said to her when they’d figured it out, “you know, you’re interesting.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves to bring home presents.   She brought her fortune cookie from lunch to dad and gave her brother the candy cane stick she got for doing drops so well from the technician.    She also brought dad home an appointment card for her next appointment since he’s the one who makes travel arrangements.

Day Tripper

Tomorrow, a scant few hours from now, early in the morning I’ll be dragging my daughter out of bed and dressing her in the dark.   We’ll head to the airport and board a plane before sunrise to head to Detroit.    This is one of those very expensive fifteen minute visits with her retina surgeon.   She had surgery the week before Christmas and he needs to see her again to make sure her healing is progressing well.  

I’ve had a lot of people say they can’t believe we’re going to Detroit for the day, meaning it’s a short trip, not a multi-day thing.  But this is really ideal.   Early morning flight, mid-morning appointment, lunch out where my daughter picks and then back to the airport to fly home.   It doesn’t seem like a big event to me, but then again we’ve been going back and forth to Detroit for over two years now.

I don’t think there’s going to be much snow on the ground, which will be a disappointment to my daughter.   She won’t get to do a lot of the things that make Detroit fun for her such as swim in the pool and thrown pennies in the fountain at the mall, but I’m sure we’ll have a chance again at some point.

I’m not expecting any surprises at the appointment tomorrow.   The one thing that will be interesting is how long it will be until we go back.   It might be a number of months at this point since her vision has stabilized in the left eye.   A lot will depend on what he can see in the right eye and specifically if the right eye can actually see.

The Big Boy Update:  My son told me something interesting yesterday.   He said he and his friend Atticus had similar names.   I asked him how so?  He said his name was Greyson, which was Grey-son, but that people pronounced it Grey-sin.   His friend Atticus’s name was At-ti-kus but that people pronounced it At-tic-cis.   I never thought about it before, but we all really do mispronounce my son’s name.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted dad to do something a lot of times.   She asked me, “what’s that sideways eight number?”  “Infinity”, I told her.   So interesting, I didn’t even know she knew there was a symbol and second, I didn’t know she knew what it looked like.

The Little Toilet

I got a phone call from my husband today while I was out getting a pedicure.   This happens a lot lately, I answer the phone, expecting it to be him but instead it’s my daughter calling from the Amazon Alexa.     Typically when this happens it’s because she has a question, with the most common question being, “where are you?”

I told her I was getting a pedicure and she wanted to know what that was.  I explained about having the nail polish changed on your toenails and she said, “but you can do that here, mom”.  I said that I could, but they did it a lot better than I did it at home and did she remember going with me a while back to get her toenails painted?

I think this was back before she lost her vision because she said, “I remember there being lots of chairs in a row.”   That’s right, I told her and then asking if she remembered how she put her feet in the warm water while you sat in the chair.   “Oh yes, I remember mom, you put your feet inside a little toilet.”

She said she’d like to go with me next time I went and then said, “I’m going to hang up now, mom”.

The Big Boy Update:  No idea where my son heard the word, but he wanted to know what ‘prom’ meant.    I think he was satisfied with my answer but it was hard to tell.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter went to tumbling class tonight for the second time as a private lesson.  She tried for the whole hour, but I think she had some anxiety and stress.   She can’t see what the instructor is showing her and we had to tell him it was okay to physically move her body so she understood.   He told me later he always was careful with that because some parents had issues with it.  I told him it was pretty much a requirement for her.

I Only Have One Sister

We have some close friends that made an announcement yesterday.   We had heard about this beforehand, with their family visiting with us and staying at our house for a week this past month.   Their eldest child, who turned seventeen yesterday, decided that after sixteen years living as a female, she wanted to present to society as a male.   Did we have a problem with this, the mom asked on text to me in November, because they would understand if we didn’t want them staying at our house.

I believe my response was, “oh hell no we don’t have a problem, come on down”.    We’ve had an opportunity to talk to them, including their son who picked his new name but when asked, told his parents, “you named me the first time, I think you should have a say so in the name the second time.” They looked up names, all voting for keeping the first and last letters from his birth name and ‘Keaton’ was picked as the one they liked the best.

There are some very heartwarming stories I’ve heard since we first heard about it on the day in November when they decided to let family and select friends know.   The first is how much positive support they’ve all been given.   Keaton has virtually zero negativity surrounding him, which I know is tough for some children going through this same identity struggle.   Keaton says he’s known since he was in kindergarten that he felt he was male.   That’s a long time as a child to feel not at home in your birth identity.

I know when I told my children about our friends coming to visit and that I had some news to tell them that they took it rather in stride.   To children at six- and seven-years-old, it’s a pretty easy thing to explain.   She was born a girl but she wants to be a boy and we can be respectful of his wishes and call him Keaton because that’s his new name.   Yes, we will love Keaton just as much as we love Kaitrinn, that will always remain the same.

So my children rolled with it easily and we all made mistakes from time to time and got the pronoun incorrect but the name correct or vice versa, but Keaton is ever patient with us and knows it was many years of knowing him by another name and change can take time.

So at two o’clock in the morning on Friday, Kaycee, Keaton’s mother, announced on Facebook to the larger community and to her 800+ friends.   She went to sleep and woke up to over two-hundred likes, loves and comments.   And not one of them was negative.   Including the one family member they had been worried about.   Keaton added a comment as well, thanking everyone for their support and wishing every child going through the same thing could have parents, family and friends as supportive.

Kaycee also told us that in her very typical way, whenever she has something new in her life, she joins online support groups and did so as soon as Keaton came forward with his decision.   But she told me something I didn’t expect, or maybe I should have.   She said she can barely read the forum posts.   It’s so negative—a parent who won’t call their child by their selected name/gender pronoun after three years, parents who want to ‘fix’ the ‘problem’, etc.   I can’t imagine how hard that would be.

My husband and I talked last night to Kaycee, Keaton’s mother, about how it went within their family of five with two younger siblings, one girl and one boy, she said it was just a done thing.   They had a family conference, explained and told them Keaton’s new name and from that point on it was just how things were and everyone was fine with it.

There is an interesting side note on their transition to Keaton as male.   My son went to tumbling with Gavin, Keaton’s brother.   On the way home in the car Gavin mentioned something about his sister.   My son asked a question about which sister to which Gavin replied, “I only have one sister”.

We had a sleepover last night to celebrate Keaton’s seventeenth birthday.   There were four teenagers, who stayed over in addition to the movie night adults who all went home after the movie.   I found out that teenagers don’t get up early, unlike mine, who are up as soon as the sun rises, even if they went to bed three hours late.

The Big Boy Update:  My son found another song I really like on Amazon music.   As he was dancing around I asked him how he found all the good songs.   He told me, “I’m the king of music.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter keeps going to the piano and playing almost melody-like tunes.    She doesn’t do it all the time, but it seems to be getting more sophisticated.   Her music therapist, who is also a piano teacher, is working with her to introduce the piano incrementally so that she loves playing.

Teen Sleepover

It’s movie night and we have a lot of people at our house.   We’re also having a sleepover, only it’s not with my children’s friends.    I’ve been upstairs all night doing various things and didn’t watch the movie.   We just had lemon cake to celebrate Keaton’s seventeenth birthday and he and three of his friends are spending the night.

My son is mostly incensed, primarily because Gavin, one of Keaton’s siblings and my son’s idol, can’t spend the night.   My daughter is cranky because she doesn’t want to go to bed three hours after her bedtime and can’t she stay awake for longer?

I just want to go to bed.  But I’m old and tired or maybe I’m just older and more lazy than the children.

The Big Boy Update:  Last week we were looking at possible vacation spots for our family for next Christmas.   Aunt Kelly would show one on her iPad and then Kyle would say he’d found another option.    These were all beautiful houses, large enough to host our entire family.   One of them we liked a lot had a second, small house to the side.   We jokingly kept calling it the Cabana Boy house.   My must have been confused because he asked us who the. ‘Commander Boy’ was.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This morning my daughter came to my bedside and said, “mom, guess what?  I don’t have strep throat anymore.”   I told her the medicine was helping but she had to keep taking it until it was gone so the sore throat didn’t come back.   She, like I and many other children in this world, didn’t understand why we had to keep taking medicine when we felt better.

Electric Sledding

I had a sled when I was a child.   It was fairly rudimentary it would seem, while being sophisticated at the same time.   It had two metal runners and some wooden slats.  You could nominally steer by pulling on a rope connected to the front that would bend the metal runners to the left or right.   It got us down the hill.

When we were at the bottom of the hill, after shouts and squeals of delight, we had to trudge back up to the top of the hill to have a second go.   We did this for hours.   It was what we called back then “fun”.  We had some snow today and I saw a different kind of fun being had by my children’s generation.

For starters, it wasn’t really what I’d call snow.   It was about an inch, which in the south is akin to snomageddon, but it required schools to be let out one day early, cancelled the next day and start on a delay the third day.   Regardless, my children were excited.   Snow gear was donned and they went out in the dusting, carrying their now high-tech formed plastic sled with them.

I went out to run an errand, braving the sunny, just below freezing weather while they went off to enjoy the minor accumulation.   When I returned I saw a neighbor, on his golf cart, with four sleds strapped to the back of his cart.   He was driving them around the streets.  

Electric, no-hassle, no work sledding.

The Big Boy Update:  On the ride to school two days ago I told my son there was a chance we’d get a little snow, but to not get his hopes up because it was likely only going to be a little.  He said, “it’s okay if we miss snow this year, all I care about is Christmas”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter wanted to, “eat the snow” she told us earlier today as she went out for the third time after hot chocolate and lunch. After trying it three times she wiped her mouth and I could hear her saying, “blech” at the results.

I’ll Be Glad When My Christmas Present Is Gone

My husband has a dry sense of humor.   Sometimes he says things that are so sincere you don’t realize he’s joking until you play through what he said a second time.   Last night we were in the kitchen, Uncle Jonathan was visiting and I was cleaning up from dinner.   My husband casually said out loud to Jon and me, “I’ll be glad when my Christmas present is gone.”

I looked around and had to laugh.   He was right, I can’t wait for it to be gone too.   We have a thing with dishwashing soap.   Method made this great foaming dish soap for a while and then stopped making it.   The soap smelled great like a lot of their hand soaps do, but the thing that made this particular soap so nice was the container and how it functioned.   

It was a grip pump not unlike you’d have in a bottle of window cleaner, only it spewed out this nice foam dish soap.   It was easy to grip and easy to spray and it worked well.    I don’t know why they pulled it, other than it was easy to go through a bottle fairly quickly. 

I tried other options but the ones I found were top pumps that were awkward to hold as you picked them up and aimed all around at the greasy pan the potato wedges were just baked in.   But I tried other options.   I found online the last of the soaps available and ordered them at a higher than typical price because I wanted the containers, not the soaps so much.    The one remaining container we had worked well with any foaming dish soap, but it was wearing from use of more than two years and needed to be replaced. 

I’ve checked eBay and keep looking from time to time but there just isn’t any more of that particular soap container that I can find.   So I branched my search out and found what was touted as a foaming soap industrial grade bottle.   There were good reviews.   It was large and held a lot of liquid and the pump looked easy to manage.   

Christmas day and my husband opened up an empty spray bottle and I told him I though I’d found a solution.   I filled it partially up with one of the other foaming dish soap options I’d found—for baby dishes, which made it super safe apparently.    And we tried it out.  

And it was awful.   Not only was there no foam, it doesn’t even spray, it just oozes out and makes a mess down the bottle.    The one thing the bottle is good for is a laugh though.   Every time we have some over since Christmas my husband makes sure to be grateful in front of them—which always makes me laugh. 

And he’s right, I’ll be glad when his Christmas present is empty so we can recycle the bottle and I can continue my search for a foaming dish soap dispenser. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son went back to school today.   On the car ride to school we had an in-depth conversation about GPS, including what it stood for for starters.   I explained about the satellites, which he was disappointed in because he could’t see them.   We talked about how their signal was read by the car and how that told the car where it was on the road.   Then we got into how cars (and devices) had a map they could place our current location on to determine where we were in the road.   And those same maps would help us navigate to any destination we could drive to.   At about that point he had to get out of the car in carpool line.   Maybe he’ll have more questions about GPS and satellites tomorrow.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is still sick with strep throat.   She took the day very easy and spent a lot of time on her iPad.   We like her on the iPad because it’s visual work at a distance she can be successful in.   She does drawings and is pretty good at finding buttons in the games she plays.   Tonight she wanted to play something on the Wii U that my husband got her a while back.   She was playing on the small screen on the controller itself and aside from not being good at the game in general, she was doing okay.   Lack of contrast made it hard, but she was moving Kirby around and she was happy about it.   I called her down to dinner in a while but she fell asleep in a ball on the bar chair and didn’t eat dinner.   I put her to bed with her clothes on, only waking her to give her some ibuprofen because I think she still has a fever.  

Strep And Scorch

Let’s get the first part of the title out of the way—my daughter has strep throat.   She’s had a head cold and today after a week of congestion she woke up with a sore throat and a fever a few hours later.   Fortunately doctor’s offices are quick to get a sick child in and cultures work within minutes in-office so we had a diagnosis.    She has antibiotics now which Dr. Baldwin said has zero incidents of not killing that strep strain.   With odds like that I’m not too worried.  

The scorch part of the title is about the heater not working in our basement and master bedroom.   The part was ordered and came in over the holiday weekend.   Today the technician came back and replaced it.   There was a scorch mark on the original board.  It’s not a large area, but it was important for the heat to work.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son returns to school tomorrow after the holiday break.   He’s not ready for school mentally and we should have had him do more reading I know over the break, but he did so some productive things and he is getting better at reading.   Tonight as he got out of the bath I heard him ask, “does that say ’nay-quill’?”   I told him he was close and that it was pronounced NyQuil and that dad was taking it for his cold.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter, now diagnosed with strep throat, spent most of the day on the chair in the living room.    She fell asleep multiple times and was quietly cranky or just exhausted when she was awake.   She’s had her first dose of antibiotics and hopefully will feel better tomorrow.

New Year’s Wish

I wanted to stay in bed all day.   I’ve done it before, but only when I’ve been sick and I’m not sick.  My husband has a head cold and has been doing some impressive snoring the past few nights.   My daughter has a bad runny nose with the same head cold but my son and I have remained mucous-free for now.   We’ll see how the cold plays out in our house over the next week or two.

So about staying in bed—I nearly accomplished it.   I got up a few times to answer calls for help from my children.   I had them bring in a game to play on the bed at one point but for the most part I was in bed until close to six o’clock this evening, so I’m going to count it a successful New Year’s day overall.

The house is nearly cleaned up from Christmas excepting the tree, which we’ll get done tomorrow and the thank you notes are almost complete.   School starts for my son on Wednesday although my daughter has three more weeks off with her track out year-round school calendar.  

I’m finishing this post and going back to bed in our coldish bedroom.   The master isn’t as cold as the basement since there is warm air right outside the door from a working heat system.   Hopefully that will get fixed tomorrow too.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has been writing some thank you notes and drawing pictures on them to indicate the presents he was given.   His favorite part, and the incentive I’ve been using to get him motivated, is sealing the envelopes with sealing wax and some seals I ordered from—wait for it—China.   He loves sealing the envelopes with all different colors of wax.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been writing her thank you notes and surprise, she wants to write the letters, not use braille.   She’s good at writing, although she doesn’t optimize space on the page well.   She writes in print but honestly, she’s not that much behind her brother in writing.   I wish I could tell how much and what she can see when she does it though.