Surprise Present

I came home today to find a present for me from my husband.   Should I have laughed, cried or been insulted?   I’m not sure how you would have responded, but I couldn’t stop laughing.    The real question is: do they work?

The Big Boy Update:  I was a substitute in my son’s class today.   I got to see how his focus issues worked in the classroom.   He did pretty well today and didn’t need much help from me.   Or rather he didn’t need more help from me than any of the other students—and I had some that wanted to monopolize my time all day.   It was a nice day with my son and his classmates, all first and second graders.   The students were very helpful to the other substitute and me as we were truly guests in their classroom.   The third years were off on their end of year trip to Washington, D.C. with their teachers.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I hate when this happens:  my daughter rounds the corner in the kitchen when I’ve turned away and slams her legs into the open dishwasher.   She crumpled to the floor, crying, saying, “you didn’t tell me it was there!”   She had been on the deck eating her popsicle or I would have told her I had opened the dishwasher—we always tell her when it’s open.   But I missed my window.   She refused an ice pack and told me to just let her go so she could go and play.    She processed the anger and hurt in another way though, getting very upset at something small only a few minutes later.    This is when as a parent I do a very big internal sigh because I can only help her so much.

Open It To See It

My daughter wanted to get a present for her Braillest at school.   She told me Mrs. Aagaard had two cats.   My daughter likes cats.   I think she would love to have a cat that would sit on her lap and let her pet it.   We have friends with cats and she knows cats like cat toys.

I pulled out my iPad and described to her what the different sorts of cat toys were that we could get for Mrs. Aagaard.   They came yesterday.    These toys are a stick with some feathers, some flexible straw mesh and tiny pompoms on the end.   If you saw the picture you’d understand what I’m trying to describe—and that’s the key point to my post here.   You’d “see” what I’m talking about.

When we get a gift for someone we typically leave it in the wrapping/container it comes in.   The person being given the gift gets to open the package as part of the gifting process.   The cat toy came in clear, crinkly plastic.  I could see it clearly, but if I closed my eyes and felt it, I could tell virtually nothing other than there was a hard stick at one end and some less-hard stuff at the other.

My daughter sees through feeling.   She sees with her hands.   So we opened Mrs. Aagaard’s cat toy, my daughter felt it all over and then she put it back in the wrapping.   She was excited about giving Mrs. Aagaard the toys for her cats this morning.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Thank You’s In Progress:  My children got a surprise gift in the mail from their Aunt A yesterday.   They opened up the package to find a bag for each of them with lots of fun things inside.   Among the collection was slime which has had many experiments performed on it so far.   They want to write Aunt A thank you notes.   My son was about to get started when the doorbell rang and he decided writing a story book with his friend, Rayan, was going to have to take top priority for the afternoon.   My daughter was very interested though and must have called out fifteen or more words for me to spell for her as she wrote her letter.   She’s finished with the letter but I’m going to have to get some translation help to write it in print for Aunt A.   Next she’s going to work on a drawing on the paper.   My son may get back on task tomorrow, we’ll see how it goes.    Thanks for the summer surprise package, Aunt A!

Thumb

My right thumb is a mess.   About a year ago something happened in the joint closest to my wrist.   It was’t injury, it was wear over time that finally gave.   I don’t know if it’s something torn or strained but it jeeps getting worse over time.

I’ve been wearing a brace on and off and I don’t know that it helps but I’m getting good at typing with my thumb and index finger on my phone.   I was hopeful it would get better but I may have to have it looked at because it only deteriorating and hurting worse.

I’d really like to snap my fingers again.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went to school with a roller bottle with some essential oils in it today.   He was interested in making a bottle up that he could roll on his hands or wrists and smell tomorrow as a way to try and focus more during work cycle at school.   I told him the sense of smell is a powerful thing.   He and I looked up which oils are recommended to help with focus and calmness.   We put in Frankensense, Vetiver, Lemon, Spruce Leaf, Ho Wood Leaf, Blue Tansy Flower, Blue Chamomile Flower, and Osmanthus Flower.   When he came home today he said worked better when he came home today.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  There were some balloons left over from and open house my husband held this weekend.   My daughter took the now, partially deflated balloons and placed them on the dresser. She told me, “I want to leave them here because I don’t want them defeated”.   She didn’t want them stepped on and popped.

Graduation Season

It’s graduation season.   We’ve got friends and family members graduating this year and we’re going to multiple parties.   And who doesn’t love a celebration party?   We went to one this afternoon, getting the children out of camp an hour early so we could make the festivities.

The party was at for the third child, and third sitter, who are friends of ours in the neighborhood.   I remember when they had just moved in to the neighborhood.  Kate, the mother, came over with her daughter to introduce themselves and to say that Morgan was interested in sitting if we had a need.   And we definitely had a need.

Hannah, their oldest, is finished with college now but we were very happy to see her, up for her brother’s graduation weekend.   Morgan, our children’s favorite sitter for multiple years, is finishing her second year in college and now their son, Tristan, has graduated from high school and is off to college in the fall.

Tristan loves video games and my son clearly thinks he’s about the coolest sitter in the world as a result.    We got to the party late, but we also left late after finally finding my children in the attic playing Disney Infinity on the Xbox, hiding away from the adults.   My children were trying to monopolize as much of Morgan’s time as they could because she’s not here for the first time this summer, having taken an internship out of state.

Tristan will be around this summer, but it may be some of the last times we’ll get to have him sit for us before he goes to college in the fall.

The Big Boy Update:   My son went to rock climbing day camp for the holiday day today.   His sister went too and is a veteran of camp there as she’s done track-out full week camp as well as some single day camps.   I was a little worried he would be unhappy about his skill level versus hers.   When I left them this morning he looked a little anxious.   When we picked them up this afternoon he told us all about the day and how he liked climbing.  He didn’t have any troubles getting to the top of the various easy and hard routes and had an overall positive experience.   He wanted to know if we could sign him up for a week class like his sister.   He wants to get a t-shirt like his sister, which she told him he would get if he went to camp after he commented about it.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  At the graduation party this afternoon my daughter wanted to do crafts at the house the party was held at.   All three children (who have all sat for our children) and their parents have great ideas and have done lots of crafts with the children before.   It was hard to get her to understand that it wasn’t the best time to do crafts because there was a celebration going on.    They all spent some time with her and at the end lots of pipe cleaner creations had been made.

Secret Rooms

We have a secret room in our basement.   Two actually.   These are areas only accessible through small doors which go into unfinished spaces of the basement.   We have children who are inquisitive, but who also are respectful when we say a place if off limits.

The “hidden” room in the basement I’m surprised the children haven’t investigated yet is beyond the closet under the stairs going down to the basement area.   The, “closet under the stairs” ala Harry Potter, has always been filled with toys for the children.   It’s a big space with lots of shelves.    Over time the shelves have been filled with different toys, games, cards, outdoor toys and things that include lots of small pieces.   The closet is almost always a wreck.

A few times each year I go through the contents to organize, clean and remove toys they’ve outgrown.    When they were younger, the toys on the lower shelves were ones they could play with while the upper shelves contained things we would bring down to use together.    Now that they’re older they can get to anything they want—which sometimes means dumping things from lower shelves so they can get to what’s on the upper ones.  

When my son was very young we had a baby pen we’d prop up against the closet.   We’d put my son into the space and watch him from our office desks, also in the basement, so we could watch him and get work done at the same time.   That’s when we named it, “The Closet Under the Stairs” because he was literally pinned into the space and couldn’t escape.  He never minded as he was in a toy-filled area in sight of us.   He would pull himself up and hold on to the pen and babble at us while he dropped toys over the edge to get our attention.

Right now the closet is definitely due for a cleaning.   I don’t think you could walk on the floor if you tried due to the colossal mess of toy pieces everywhere.    This mess doesn’t seem to bother the children.   It only bothers me if I look inside.   One of the things they’ve never really noticed is the flat door at the lowest point in the back of the closet.   When they were younger I blocked the door with a stool so they wouldn’t discover it by accident.   Today it’s partially covered with a box of toys.  

But it’s only a matter of time before they discover it.   I’m not overly worried if they do at this age—it’s a small space with a carpet remnant on the poured concrete floor and is filled in part with the sub woofer for the surround sound system.  

I’m wondering when they’ll find it and if they’ll come to let me know when they do—or if they’ll use it as a hiding place for hide and seek games or other “treasures”.  

The other secret room isn’t something they can get to, but it’s my favorite secret space in the house.   In the small hallway going to the basement bedroom there is a wall with some decorative trim work.   We had our trim carpenter make the wall look like a giant door, sans door knob.   The top section of the pretend door can be reached with a small ladder.   If you grab the top section just so and pull, it comes off, revealing the entrance to the house’s encapsulated crawl space.  

I had Wayne, our trim carpenter, conceal the entrance for aesthetic sake.  Once open you can climb up the ladder, turn on the light bulb and enter the hidden space below the front half of the house.   It’s not that exciting as an adult what with duct work and one of the HVAC systems inside, but I wonder if it would be exciting to a child?  I know when I was little any space that was secret was a mystery to me.  

We have some other “secret” spaces on the second floor with small doors, as required by code, they haven’t figured out about yet as well.    They’re getting older, I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time until they do.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Rock Climbing Schedule:  Tomorrow for Memorial Day we’re sending both my son and daughter to rock climbing camp.   My son has been before multiple times, including for a birthday party, but his sister has been for week-long camps since that time.   I’m hoping they both have a good time tomorrow, but I also hope he doesn’t gauge his success based on his sister’s additional experience.   He’s looking forward to the day tomorrow; I hope he’s still as enthusiastic when we pick him up.

Not Five Minutes

My children go through clothing quickly.  Part of the reason is they seem to keep growing and getting bigger.   Another reason is the turn of season, causing the current clothing in their drawers to be unideal to the weather conditions outside.   Then there is the wear and tear issue, but let me address that one last.

For the growing part, every year for the “warm weather clothes” and “cold weather clothes” seasons as I’ve nicknamed them, I go through the children’s drawers.   I have to do this because they are still in the “don’t care” age bracket where they are more than happy to put on whatever clothes are in their drawers—regardless of if they are appropriate to the weather for the day.   This is true even if they’ve been told the predicted temperature for the day by Alexa or a parent.   They will doggedly insist on wearing the overly hot or overly cold clothes, saying they’ll be just fine.

The only way to combat this is to remove the offending, out of season clothing in increments so the children can only go so wrong.   For instance, I removed fleece shirts and sweat pants a while back, but long sleeved shirts and long pants were still available.   With temperatures in the upper eighties now, those options need to be stored and not brought back until the more temperate days of fall.

I like to go to the children’s used clothing store to get new things for the children.   The prices are hard to beat, there is a large, well-organized selection and I can see how the clothes will hold up after washings since they’re pre-worn.   Yesterday, I went to get my son some more shorts as his selection was slim and I needed to pull the remaining long pants from his drawer.

I came home with eight pair of shorts and a shirt for him.   For my daughter I got six shirts (some with tactile elements), five pair of shorts and an exercise skort like the ones I wear.   And I got everything for $69, in and out in ten minutes.

My children get pretty excited about new clothes, which I like because I don’t think I cared much about clothes when I was young.   After I showed them their new things, I put things away in their drawers and removed any too-warm items remaining.   Clothing-wise, their drawers were now in full-on summer mode.  

This morning my daughter found the new exercise skort because she and I had talked about it last night.   It was white with a yellow stripe and yellow shorts underneath.    She came downstairs wearing the skort saying she wanted to wear that and the new polka-dot shirt to the trampoline place this afternoon with Blake, their sitter.  

She headed outside and came in not five minutes later.   As I watched her walk past I got up and followed her.   Five minutes, maybe ten and there was a dark rust-colored mark right in the center of the back of her skort.   A big brown mark—like she’d messed up her pants.    Only she hadn’t.    She’d been playing with chalk and the rust-colored one which use I’m guessing real red clay to color the chalk, she had sat on.

This is not a rust color that comes out.   It’s not a color that even bleaches out.   I tried for about twenty minutes with multiple cleaners and I couldn’t get the stain out all the way.   This is so typical of my children.   They’re messy.   But they have fun.    And we don’t yell at them for having safe fun outside.    I just hope that most of the messes I can get clean.    I will never mind having messy  children if they’re safely exploring their world and learning.  

The Big Boy Update:   My son’s hand goes to sleep at night.  He must sleep on it or something.   We haven’t been able to figure out what causes it.   He comes downstairs and has me rub it to help it wake up.   Last night he came downstairs and I was apparently very asleep.   Apparently he also plunked his hand down on the middle of my stomach which caused me to cry out, waking my husband.   I then dropped back onto the bed and was back out asleep, only not completely.   I vaguely remember my son correcting his father on how he wasn’t rubbing his fingers in the proper way.   It’s actually impossible to get the rubbing correct from what I’ve tried over time, so I just do lots of different things until my son's ready to go back upstairs.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I remember doing this when I was a child.   It felt so comfortable.   My daughter was working on a drawing and instead of sitting on a chair, she preferred to prop herself up like this:

Loose Sheets

I like a tight fitted sheet.   I want to get in bed and have a completely smooth surface underneath me.   Conversely, I hate when the fitted sheet is slightly too large for the mattress, resulting in almost a non-fitted, fitted sheet.

We had some sheets we got several years ago.   I liked them a lot the first day I put them on the bed but by the second day I would do that thing where you try to pull the sheet to the edge of the bed and stuff it under the mattress.   This lasts for maybe an hour, less if you toss about a lot.

I got a sewing machine from my mother-in-law a few years ago.   She taught my husband how to sew. which seemed like an extension of the sewing machine gift, now that it came with a resident sewer.   Wait, that’s not how that word should be spelled, is it?   I don’t think ’sewer’ is the word I meant. How about, ‘resident sew-person’ instead?

I asked my husband if he could sew in the corners of the fitted sheet by an inch on each corner.   He did this with ease one afternoon in about ten minutes (which is a sewing minor miracle for those of us who don’t know how to sew).   And it did the trick.   The sheet which perhaps was meant for a mattress three or so inches taller than ours, now fit tightly on the first day and remained that way until wash time.

My daughter had a similar situation with her sheets.   I don’t know what type of mattress these full-sized fitted sheets were made for, but they had to be at least five inches taller than my daughter’s mattress.   I could pull them tight but by morning it was like swimming in a sea of folds.

I decided to do the sewing myself.   I mean I knew words like bobbin, needle and thread.   Surely learning the rest wouldn’t take that much time.   Besides, the sewing machine was already plugged in with the little foot pedal set up under the desk.   I had this…I hoped.

Things did not go as easily as I had hoped.   There were snags in the thread, rethreading everything more than once and then the bobbin ran out of thread.   Getting the bobbin up and going again wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.   But I eventually conquered the bobbin.

Did I mention there were two fitted sheets needing corner reductions?   That’s eight straight lines I had to sew.   I know, it’s a lot.   But I did it.   And actually by the time I was done, I was sort of having fun.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was telling me about his plan the other day.   He didn’t specify what the plan was going to help him accomplish, but he told me the plan had three steps.   He explained, saying you just: “Tell yourself you can do this.   Try as hard as you can.   And stay positive.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Blake was over watching my daughter this afternoon.   She got a lot cards and toys out and then wanted to do something else.   Blake told her before they could do the next thing, they had to clean up.   My daughter apparently didn’t want to clean up because she told Blake (who was already starting to put things away), “I know you don’t know this, but in life, people help each other.”

Self Compliments

My son has a very difficult time saying anything positive about himself.  He and I spent some time this afternoon playing a game.  The game hinged around some new mints I got that my son likes.   Every time he (or I) said something we liked about ourselves or did well, we could have one of the little Ice Chips.

He had a tough time getting started so I gave some funny ones about me like, “I can empty the dish washer in the dark”. (I’m not really sure that I can). My son caught on after a while, citing that he was good at math and numbers, playing with friends, doing parkour, flossing (the dance) to name a few.

He wanted to know if we could play again tomorrow.  I told him I’d keep the Ice Chips on stand by any time he wanted to play.

The Big Boy Update:  my son told me, “my feet and my eyes are really connected.  And my head.   That’s how I can run fast.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asked for us to watch out the window today to make sure she was going to the neighbor's house correctly.   Sometimes we don’t realize how very little she can see. She got lost going across one back yard,got turned around and was walking towards a tree.  Dad called out to her and she was able to reposition and make it to the neighbors house without more help.

Locked Out

How many stories have you heard from friends, colleagues, relatives, random people even, that when they were little their parents would lock the door to the house, saying they weren’t allowed back in until dinner time.

So far we haven’t done this, but we’ve come close.   Actually, that’s not true, my husband locked them out just the other day for a short period of time while he got dinner prepared.  

It’s a balance of age and maturity I think, more than anything.   And safety.   We’re in a fairly safe neighborhood away from fast streets.   We have known families all around us with children that all play together.    My children are older now and can entertain themselves outside.   And they are almost always good at making wise choices.   Sometimes they aren’t the same choice an adult would make, but my children and their friends aren’t unnecessiarly reckless.

Maybe we’ll start locking them out more often and see what kinds of creative things they come up with with only the entire outdoors to entertain them.

The Big Boy Update:  My son took some sunglasses and was doing something with them.   I wasn’t paying attention but he came over to me in a bit and told me how they looked much better in blue.   Blue?  Invisible blue.    He had taken a blue sharpie and colored (very thoroughly) the inside of both lenses.   I gulped because I didn’t know if they were expensive glasses and had a conversation about asking before drawing on someone else’s things.   He walked into the pantry and said, “hey Mom, no offense, but I think the pantry looks pretty awesome with these on.”   I put them on and yeah, he was right.   Dad found the glasses later after the children were asleep.   The glasses were very cheap and he didn’t like them anymore and when I told him to check out the pantry with them on, he laughed, and agreed it did look cool in blue.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had a sheet of homework to do tonight.   We don’t know what it was because the directions were in braille.   But she knew.   She put the paper into her brailler and started typing.   She typed one full page and then started in on a second page.   It turns out there was only one page of homework but she decided to write a story on a second page after finishing her homework.

Grenana

The Big Boy Imaginary Country:
My son has his own country.  It’s named Grenana. He helped me with the spelling because he studies geography in school and I thought he was talking about Granada.  No, that wasn’t it, this was a special country, he told me, who's name is made up of his name (Greyson) and Nana's.

He’s been bringing up Grenana from time to time over the last week or two.   They have a flag and their own language, he told me one day.  He launched into a long slew of 'fa la ba la' syllables to show me he could speak it.  A few days later he told me the laungage of Grenana had a name and was called, 'Grain'.

But not all inhabitants of Grenana are equal.  “Oh, it's an island mom, did I tell you that?”, he informed me in the car.  “There's a lot of tech on one side and the other side is full of primitive people.”   I asked him if he meant primitive or poor.   He said he meant like cavemen.  Like when The skeleton of Lucy was found.

They must have hit on this at school recently because he came home and wanted to know about The Lucy cavemen.   I asked him if he meant Lewis Leakey's discovery of a skeleton?  I told him they all weren’t Lucy, just that particular one they found was nicknamed that.  I asked if he wanted to see a picture of what they found and he was excited.  I remember hearing about it when Lucy was discovered during my childhood.   I also remember being very disappointed when I saw the meager few bones, so I prepared my son.    But he liked the skeleton nonetheless, I think.

I got off the subject of Grenana.  I’ll let you know more as developments come in on this new nation my son's discovered.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter knows her environment well in our house.  How she was half-way up the basement stairs and slammed her forehead into the handrail I don’t known.  It was darkish, but she doesn’t rely on light.   I heard the sound and jumped up, running to find her.   She got two dents in her head in the shape of the railing but seemed okay dater she stopped crying and the ice pack was no longer needed.   She is very good at dealing with pain.  I hate that she has to be.

Oscopy Buddies

Today it turned out my mother-in-law and I both had procedures done.   I had an upper GI endoscopy and she had a lower one.  I don’t know if she knew I was having mine and I definitely didn’t know she was having hers.   My husband was the middle man, letting us each know about the other.

My mother-in-law’s procedure was routine and, “she passed with flying colors” as my mother would say.  My procedure was elective or perhaps becoming more necessary as time went on.   Mine was to address the swallowing issue I’ve had that’s been progressing.

I have a lot of hardware in my neck, which has compressed my esophagus in one area.   Three years ago I had the same procedure done to make sure there was nothing wrong, and as a result of the scope itself, I was able to swallow without problems for over two years.  

Today’s procedure also showed no issues other than a small area of extrinsic compression found in the upper third of the esophagus.  I’ll know soon if it helped with my swallowing issue.   There were no areas they needed to stretch or biopsy, which is good news indeed.

If all I need is a ten minute scope every three years to continue to swallow with ease, I’ll be more than happy to have one.

The Big Boy Update: My son drew this picture of his father.   He told dad (who has dark brown hair), “someday you’re going to have to dye your hair red to match this picture.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter hates to have shoes on.   Or socks.   The moment she gets into the house she takes them off and waits until the last minute to put them on before we leave.   She’s always preferred to have her feet uncovered.

Nature’s Candy

It’s hard to get children to eat healthful foods.   It’s easy to get them to eat foods that don’t provide for a balanced diet.  Candy, ice cream, birthday cake, etc.   It seems there is always a reason for there to be something special (not necessarily dessert-specific).    And when you have a taste for those foods, they become the preferred-foods.  

We have things we do to encourage and ensure the children have a reasonable diet.   For example, my son doesn’t want to pack his own lunch, so I pack what I think would be the best for him.   Since he doesn’t get a choice when he’s at school, he eats what I send or he’s hungry.

My husband does a good job of making meals that have a good nutritional content and typically aren’t fried or overly sugary.  My children have learned to love broccoli and spinach, for example through his cooking.

We encourage fruits as well, keeping a good selection of options at the house.   We run into phases with the children though—particularly with bananas.   Either I can’t keep them in stock or no one will eat them.   And with the ripeness timeline of a banana looking something like the image below, I end up eating mushy bananas a lot.

But the children do like fruit.   My son called me upstairs to do something with him this morning.   He was beaming in excitement and said, “look at this, mom.”   I saw a very ripe strawberry in his hand—not in the kitchen, over cream carpet, in a room he wasn’t suppose to eat in.  But his next sentence made me forgive him and just go with it for the day.   He said, “it’s nature’s candy!”

I got some cherries at the grocery store later in the day and while he was eating dinner I asked my son if he wanted cherries or, “nature’s candy” in his lunch box for tomorrow?   He said, “mom, cherries are nature’s candy too.   All fruit it.  But I want the cherries and can I have some mango too?”

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked his sister on Friday night, “can I borrow your braille cards?  I’m working on a magic trick.”   She said yes and after donning a black blanket transformed into a cape, my son said to me, “pick a card.   Now put it back”   Then he peeked at where I put the card.   He told me about my card in stages, telling me first the color, then the suit and finally number.  He was very pleased with himself and I was definitely impressed I told him.   He demonstrated several other tricks in progress he was working on, mostly of the hide it under the blanket cloak so you can stick it under your arm and then say it’s disappeared.   He was so excited though to be fooling me.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has a new thing going.   It’s the, “I can hear you” thing.   Today she got sent to her room and did an impressive rendition of a tantrum because we asked her to come to us so that we could talk to her (she had pinched another child).   Four times as she walked away from us she said, “I can’t hear you”.   And she can hear.   Better than anyone I know.   She admitted later she didn’t want to tell us what happened.

Uncluttered Perspective

I got a necklace in the mail today.   I had ordered it a while back.   I had hoped it would look in person like the pictures did online and when I opened the package, I was pleased to see it did in fact look the same.

The necklace was too long so I did a few iterations of chain length reduction to get it to a length that would hang right on my neck.   I’m not much of a jewelry person, but I thought this particular necklace would be fun.    There were flat, round discs connected in a sequence.   If one flipped over it would drag the neighboring ones with it.    But if I shortened the chain so it was tighter around my neck, there was less play in the necklace and the discs didn’t have an opportunity to flip over.

I got ready to go out to celebrate Uncle Jonathan’s birthday tonight, wearing my new necklace.   I thought my son might like it.   I wondered what he’d think about the necklace because I think I got it thinking of him more than anyone.

After I put it on I found him in the bonus room and asked him, “what do you think of my new necklace”?

He didn’t disappoint me at all.   He glanced over and said, “it’s a bunch of planets”.   He saw the solar system immediately.   He didn’t see it as jewelry but as representations of each planet.    They have an uncluttered perspective on things.   He came over and looked at the necklace and told me which one was each planet, as well as the sun.    Then he went back to the Legos.

The Big Boy Update:  For Uncle Jonathan’s birthday my son drew a picture of either himself or Uncle Jonathan.   It’s hard to tell.   He wrote, “Happy Birth Day” on the page and then told me he wanted to give him his chain.   This chain is a gold chain about a third of an inch in diameter.   It’s been something my son has had for a while but wanted to share.   Uncle Jonathan wore the chain all night at dinner.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wrote Uncle Jonathan a very nice birthday card in braille that I translated.    She did some drawing that is nigh impossible to tell what is.   Then she selected a heart, ‘LOVE’ plush and a tiny Mickey Mouse, “with a hook” she said, so he could hook it onto his things.

You’ll Understand When You’re Older

I spent some time tonight with my best friend and one of her four children.  Ellie and her fraternal twin sister, Maddie were going to their first junior high school dance tonight.   Only they were getting there in different ways.    My best friend had called me up a few days before, asking if I would come over and curl Ellie’s hair.    She said we could go to dinner and make the evening before the dance special.   So I found a sitter and said sign me up for the night.

Last night I had seen all four of my best friend’s children at a multi-family dinner.   I was sitting next to Maddie, who told me that she had been invited to a pre-dance party, but since the students involved in the party were her friends, her sister hadn’t been invited.   And then it made sense.   The hair curling and special dinner was to make sure Ellie felt included in something fun and special for the dance night.

This happens with siblings, even twins.   Different friend mean different activities, parties and social gatherings.   But that doesn’t mean it always feels good when you’re left out.   This evening we went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and then met back at their house.   Ellie asked me what she needed to do to prepare her hair to have it curled.

She and her mother and I had a lot of fun.   I took direction from Ellie on what she was looking for and we all agreed her hair, beautifully black and Asian straight, not only held the curl well, but made her already thick head of hair even fuller bodied.

Ellie got on her dress and the three of us headed to drop her off at the dance.   On the way somehow we got onto the topic of limericks.   I told them two I knew from my childhood and explained that there was nothing more maddening than being told, “you’ll understand when you’re older.”

My father is a scientist.   When I was quite young he taught me some limericks.   Here’s the first one:

There once was a lady named Bright
Who’s speed was much faster than light.
She departed one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night. 

“But dad, how could she return the night before?” I would ask.   Try as he might, traveling back in time just made no sense to me and eventually I think he told me I’d understand when I was older.

There was another limerick I loved to say because it was almost a tongue twister on top of being mystifyingly confusing:

There once was a man named Fisk
Who’s fencing was exceedingly brisk.
So fast was his action
That the Fitsgerald contraction
Reduced the rapier down to a disk. 

As we drove to the dance we swapped other funny poems and laughed together.   When we arrived, Ellie jumped out and headed off to the dance—alone—without any signs she was anything other than looking forward to the evening.    I don’t know that I would have been as easy going about walking into a junior high school dance alone when I was her age.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was having a morning yesterday.   It wasn’t good and he was really pushing everyone in the family with his crummy, demanding and angry behavior.   So I snapped.   I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not the only member of this family and everyone was trying here.   I was trying to get his lunch just the way he wanted it, help with his breakfast, etc. etc. and I was so sad he hated himself and didn’t want to be a member of our family anymore.   I said I was so sad because I didn’t want him to dislike himself and dad and I were doing everything we could and wanted him to be happy.   Something clicked in him at that point.   He came quietly over to me and hugged me.   He said, “I feel like you’re trying really hard”.    I thanked him and told him that no matter what, I would always love him.   And that I would love him forever.    He asked me how I loved him and his sister and was it different?   I said I loved them each for their own special reasons and did he want to finish getting ready for school and I’d tell him more in the car?   He got ready without delay and in the car we had a very nice conversation about how he and his sister were different.  He even suggested some ways I loved his sister.    It went from a bad morning to a very special one for both of us.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter asks me to play a song sometimes.  “You know, mom.  That song.  Remember?”  And after lots of questioning I can sometimes figure out what song she means.   This one had me confused for a while though because she wanted, “Mechanical Girl”.   I was thinking robots and transformers but she kept saying no.   “Oh wait, do you mean, ‘Material Girl’ by Madonna” I asked?   “Mechanical Girl” has been playing a lot on Alexa now that my daughter knows what the real name of the song is.

Can We Order This?

We went to dinner tonight with two other families to a Korean restaurant.  My best friend is Korean and the food there is quite good.   When we've been in the past we just let her and her husband order and eat what shows up.   I eat it all.  I like it all—even the kimchee.

Tonight she was running late and was texting me.  We were sitting down at the fourteen-person table waiting for the waiter to arrive when my best friend started sending me texts on what to order.    We had a menu and had picked a few things to try, but when the waiter arrived I just handed the phone over to him and said, “can we order this?”   He wrote it all down on his pad.  It made for very fast ordering for a large group.

Everything was good, as usual. The table was a complete mess of cleaned plates when we were finished.

The Big Boy Update:  my son wanted to give his sister the Advil chewable pills this morning.  His stomach had hurt a bit the day before and she had just said hers was hurting too.   After giving her the pills he turned to me and said, “Mom, I need to have a private talk with Reese”. I have no idea what they talked about but she seemed to feel better afterwards.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had a fever and an upset stomach today.  He stomach hurt but she was hungry.  We kept her home from school but she seems completely fine other than the fever in the middle of the night last night.  We shall see how she's feeling in the morning.

I Wish I Had My Cane

My daughter typically doesn’t want her cane.   Or rather she didn’t want it when we offered it to her in situations away from the house for a long time.   Recently though she’s started to trust and rely on the information her cane gives her, and as a result she has been wanting to have the cane with her more often.

Today she had a day off from school as the school system’s teachers were rallying downtown for more funding for education.   We signed my daughter up for a day camp at the rock club near us.   When we were getting in the car this morning I thought about her cane but since all we were doing was getting out of the car to go into the building before she would put the cane away, I didn’t think she had much of a need.

I got out on the driver’s side of the car when we arrived and she exited the passenger’s side.   I went to the trunk to get something and I heard her fall.    My daughter stumbled on the curb, just about the only thing she could have had an issue with on the very short walk in.    I came around the car to find her squatting down, holding her palms up with tears dripping on the ground already.  

She didn’t scrape her hands, just hit them hard, but the impact hurt.   As I looked over her hands she said in a sobbing voice, “I wish I had my cane.”  

The Big Boy Update:  Sometimes children say the most random things.   It is at these times that I never have my phone with me.    My son sat down to dinner this even and announced, “Dad, Mom?  I don’t really think about grass that much.”   I said I’d be back and went to get my phone.   My son knew I was writing down what he said for my blog and helpfully informed me it must be that when I don’t have my phone, he and his sister say things adults find funny.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  When we arrived at the rock club this morning I went to the counter to check my daughter in.   I heard a child come over and greet my daughter enthusiastically.   Lexi, a fifth-grader, was in the rock climbing camp with my daughter during the last track-out.   She really enjoyed spending time with my daughter and they became fast friends.   I was happy to see Lexi too, not realizing she would be in the same day camp.   I hope we see her again.   My daughter loves rock climbing and wants to go back next track-out.

Her Cane

My daughter uses a cane to help her when she’s in unfamiliar places.   If you’ve seen a blind person with a cane before hers is like that, only it’s shorter and has a roller ball at the end instead of a tip.   It collapses into four segments and has an elastic wrist band that can be used to hold the cane in its collapsed state.  

We have multiple canes because as she gets taller we need to get one a few inches longer.   Currently her newest canes are thirty-six inches.   They’re inexpensive and you can order them in a collection of mix-and-match colors.   She doesn’t use a cane at home or in familiar environments, but when we’re out, she will bring it from time to time if she thinks it will help her.  

It’s more of an inconvenience for her than a help as she relies on the adults around her to guide her safely.   But it’s nice to have and she does like the color options she has.    As we get newer, slightly longer, canes, we put the older ones in the trunks of our cars in case we find ourselves out without a cane.   I think we have five canes in multiple lengths right now.  

My son has been interested in the canes in the last few days.   There are rules about using them because it basically is a stick with a hard plastic ball on the end which can look a lot like a make believe light saber or other weapon if the expectation on how they’re suppose to be used isn’t firmly set.

This morning I asked him after realizing he didn’t want to give his sister’s cane back to her as she was leaving for school if he wanted to bring one of her canes in to show his classmates for sharing time.   He nodded and looked pretty excited.  I showed him how to collapse and then open it and talked to him about why his sister used the cane and what it did to help her.  

He’s seen her use the cane for a while now, but he wasn’t connecting why the cane was helpful to her.   It’s hard to imagine a world in which you can’t see when you’re an adult but I think he understood fairly well what the cane did after a demo or two.   We talked about how she put her hands in front of her body if she didn’t have the cane sometimes and he remembered how she had run into walls in the past.   It seemed to connect with him.

This afternoon I asked where the cane was because it wasn’t in his backpack.   He said he would bring it home on Friday.  Friday, I asked him?  He said it was there in the classroom for the other students to look at and try out until then.   We asked his sister if that was okay, and explained why.   She said, “sure”.  I suppose it’s a good thing we have extra canes.

The Big Boy Update:  The trash smelled bad in the kitchen the other day.   My son has a sensitive nose.   So sensitive in fact that he told us, “I’d rather not have a nose than to smell that garbage.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  After OT today we were driving by the chiropractor’s office.   I asked my children if they needed to see him because in the past if they’ve said yes, they do have something that needs to be addressed.   My daughter said yes, that her neck and shoulders were hurting.   Then she asked if he could help her cheeks?   I asked her if she meant her jaw?   She said yes.    She was subluxated on the right at the C3 vertebra and left at C4.   Her jaw was tight on the right, her doctor said.   He also said C3 issues can be a contributor to TMJ.   It’s so interesting the children can tell us something like, “my cheeks hurt” and there’s something specific causing it.  

Headphones

My husband and I had a conference with my son’s teachers today.   Without even discussing it in advance we all knew what the topic would be: my son’s inability to focus.    His occupational therapist has said she doesn’t think he’s doing it intentionally, he’s doing the best he can.

We’re very fortunate to have my son’s teachers.   They both expressed their concerns, which we share and echo, as we’re seeing the same behavior at home.   If he’s doing a preferred activity, he has an ability to focus for long periods of time, but on things he’s not excited about—or sometimes even if he is interested in the subject, he just can’t seem to maintain any level of concentration.

It’s affecting his ability to complete work and keep up with the remainder of the class.   What I was impressed with with his teachers is they want to find out what they can do to best help him be successful.   They genuinely care about his progress and his emotional state as he faces the challenge of his daily classroom routine and work.  

Constant redirection tells him results in a negative self-image, which we’re seeing in him both at school and home.   So the question is: how can we facilitate him so that he can be successful in a positive way?  

One thing we’re going to try is sending him in with his father’s noise-cancelling headphones tomorrow.   He loves wearing his headphones at home, even when he’s not using them.   With the noise-cancelling feature he may be less distracted (one of his biggest problems to staying focused).

I’m going to have a conversation with his occupational therapist tomorrow to see if she has any other suggestions.   His teachers have said her work with him has been beneficial.   We agree and are seeing changes as a result at home.   We’ll find out in the coming weeks if the headphones help him concentrate.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Combination Session:  Tomorrow we’re bringing my daughter to my son’s occupational therapist appointment.   His therapist is more of a, “life coach” as she calls herself, helping my son understand himself and what’s happening in his brain.   She helps by giving him clearly defined explanations of things in a way he can understand.   My son writes or draws up the work they do at each session and takes it home for us to put on the refrigerator so he can refer to them.   One thing that’s come up is the sibling rivalry between with his sister so tomorrow we’re bringing him to his session so Liz can meet Reese and see them interact.    We may bring them in together in the future if she thinks it will help him, her or both of them.

It Was Mother’s Day And…

…I was going to sleep in.   But you know how that goes with young children—it doesn’t happen.   Although, in this case it was my alarm that woke me up.   I had pressed the snooze button and was trying to maximize those nine minutes with more sleep while at the same time trying to wake up because I’d told my best friend I was available to run.  

About that time my daughter came to the edge of the bed and sweetly told me she had made me a Mother’s Day card.   I wasn’t fully awake and told her if I could have just a few more minutes to sleep I would come find her so she could read (or translate) her drawing/writing to me.

I did get up and made it to the run, which turned out to be a walk because my best friend had injured her ankle.   Just before I left I asked my daughter to read her card to me.   It included cake, which looked delicious in grey sharpie.

After the run, er, walk, we went as a family to get smoothies and then to get vegetables and herbs for the garden my husband is working on creating with the children on our deck.  My daughter wanted to grow carrots while my son wanted jalapeño and poblano peppers.   My son doesn’t like jalapeño peppers, but that’s what he wanted.   We picked out some things for me to plant for my Mother’s Day present from the children.   The real present will be when my husband gets the drip system set up so we don’t have to water things every day.

This afternoon Nana and Papa came to town and took the children to the pool while my husband prepared to make Butter Chicken for dinner.  When they got back we all sat down to dinner and then spent a good bit of time as my children explained all the Mother’s Day things they’d made for me in their classes (plus any other crafts they’d made recently).   Then they presented Nana with their cards, reading or braille-reading what they’d written and describing what they’d drawn in the pictures.

As we finished dinner, cousin Kyle, on his way from Florida heading home to home in New Jersey after finishing his year of college, stopped in to spend the night before the second half of his drive tomorrow.   Everyone was happy to see Kyle, including Nana and Papa, who left to drive home soon after.

All around it was a nice Mother’s Day with sun, family, a little bit of exercise, and fun.

The Big Boy Update:  For Mother’s Day my son wanted to play a new song he’d created on the piano.  He played a very slow, discordant and yet positionally symmetrical song.   After his sister played something he wanted to do a second song.   This time he sang as he played and although he was quiet I could hear the words which were all about a child who didn’t have parents and was sad.   After he finished playing he wanted us to know the names of his songs were, “Oh No” and “No More Mother”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:    My daughter is finished with her bladder infection antibiotics and is having no more itching or other issues.   When I was giving her the medicine the other day she remarked, “‘bladder’ is a very interesting word.   Maybe a little inappropriate.  I bet it wold hurt if someone stepped on your bladder.”

Didi Seven

I have a new shirt I like a lot.  It’s relatively new, has orange stripes and a hood.   It’s sort of t-shirt material and it is both comfortable and versatile.   But I got a stain on it.   I don’t know how I got the stain; had I noticed it at the time I would have done something about it quickly before whatever it was set in.    And it wasn’t one stain, it was three, as though I dropped something down the front of my shirt as I ate.

Knowing me, that’s exactly what happened but since I didn’t notice it, it wasn’t until it came out of the laundry, was hung back up in my closet and then put on again one morning that I noticed the clean yet stained shirt.   So I washed it again.   No luck though, the stains remained.

So I got serious.    We have a collection of stain removing things in our laundry room but I wasn’t concerned as the first option I usually tried fixed most things.   I treated the stain and came back in an hour to find it the exact same, not even lightened.   So I went for round two.  

I didn’t know if it was food-based with some sort of oil or something else non-food related.   So I tried two more stain options to clean certain types of stains.   No go.  I used some OxyClean at full strength and a dry cleaning stick and a new stain cleaner I’d gotten a while back but hadn’t had need to use yet.   But the stain remained, steadfast, not even lightening in the slightest.

The three little stains were on the white part of the striped shirt.   Or at least I think the shirt was white.   But if I put pure bleach on the spots with a cotton swab I was fairly sure I’d find out the shirt wasn’t actually white but something more like ecru.  So I passed on the bleach.  

I counted six different stain removing options with no success when I remember up in my craft room, in the back of a drawer, was a tube of Didi Seven from back in the late 1980’s.   I don’t know why I kept it all this time, save for the possibility I’d need it someday.  

Two minutes with the Didi Seven and the stain was completely gone.   Not a trace.  Didi Seven production was stopped in 2017, which is about fifteen years longer than I realized it was around.   The only memory I have of it was the infomercial when I was in college.   Apparently there’s no expiration date on the product based on the results I got.

The Big Boy Update:  I was putting together a birthday gift for Madison, our neighbor, this afternoon in the craft room, which has no door lock.   I told my son if his sister and Madison came back to the house to come let me know so I could keep her present a surprise.   I told him to not tell them they couldn’t go into the room. because that would arouse suspicion.   Sure enough, not ten minutes later I hear the girls come inside.   My son, who is more concerned about, “modesty” now that he’s older, ran up and opened the door, shutting it quickly behind him.   “They’re here!” he told me breathlessly. He was completely naked, apparently about to put his bathing suit on.   He opened the door to find the girls standing just outside.   He put one hand in front of his crotch and one hand on his butt and said to them, “you can’t go in there right now” and then fled.   I gave him extra stamps for being such a trooper.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came downstairs last night, saying she had a scary dream.   Hey, did I tell you (aside here) that she’s not wetting the bed anymore?  Darn us for not believing she could have a bladder infection.   So my daughter came downstairs, said she had had a scary dream and got in the bed per my invitation.   She was there about two minutes and then said, “I think I’m going back upstairs now.”   I gave her a kiss and off she went.

Why Does Everyone Want To Say Hi To Me?

My son’s school had their Spring Expo this evening.   My husband and I went with him and his sister to the event.   It’s a nice time to catch up with parents we don’t get an opportunity to see often with children running amok around the outdoor learning environment as we chatted.   There were activity stations, a drum circle and food from a local restaurant.  

My son was looking forward to the performances he would be doing with the Lower Elementary students, in particular the “solo” he had with five other students in his class.  The songs were cute with hand motions and dance moves.   The “solo” was a few lines spoken into a microphone with his classmates, but he was proud to be selected—which is the important thing.

My daughter was mostly interested in finding the two horizontal bars and playing on them for as long as we’d let her.   The bars are held in place by three large tree trunks into which the bars are inserted. The children enjoy playing on the bars and climbing onto the tops of the sawed-off tree trunks which allows them to stand far taller than the adults.

My daughter was interested in listening to the performances, sitting quietly and paying attention to what was being sung.   She liked listening to Tea’s performance on the violin and she had fun participating in the drum circle.

What was surprising to her was why everyone wanted to say hello to her.   She was at my son’s school for four years, attending less than a year ago.   That’s a long time in the mind and memory of a child however.   As teacher after teacher and old classmate one after another came to greet her and say hello she said to us, “why does everyone want to say hi to me?”  

She’s an anomaly, walking around with a colorful blind cane.   People want to know how she is and say hello because they miss her.   There were parents and teachers who didn’t really know her, but know her story and came over to ask how she’s doing.   These are adults who genuinely care and are interested.   I would give my elevator speech and then answer any additional questions they had.   But it wasn’t the bars and tree trunks, so it wasn’t that interesting to my daughter.

The Big Boy Update:  My son did very well in the performances at Spring Expo tonight.   He knows all the words of the songs, but he still gets a little dazzled by the size of the audience and forgets to sing a lot of the time.   He did do a great job of his solo though.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had a field trip with her class today to the local hands-on children’s museum.   My husband was one of the chaperones.   She liked having dad there and liked that she was paired up with Layla, one of her favorite classmates.   Hopefully she and Layla will be in the same class next year.

I Love You Because

Today I was invited to my daughter’s class, along with the other mothers, to join in a Mother’s Day celebration with the children.   I didn’t know what to expect save that my daughter was very excited about it.

When I arrived I got hug after hug from my daughter—which is a little atypical of her, she’s more of a drive by hugger, moving on to the next thing at a rapid pace.   She had two things in front of her that she’d worked very hard on.   One was a poem each of the children had written out for their mother.  My daughter had braille hers and then had made a hand print flower arrangement on a large sheet behind it.  

She read the whole poem to me, including many words that were tricky for her due to length and composition.   Her braille teacher told me some of the words were fourth grade words.   After that she presented me with a paper purse.   Inside the purse (which was more of a booklet in the shape of a purse) there was a story about me.   It was things she thought about me and things I did and how much I meant to my daughter.   It was very sweet.

Next there was a performance by the class.   They stood in the front of the class and all danced and sang to. You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful” by One Direction.   There were dance moves that were cute and the children loved doing the song so much they did a second round at the end of the celebration.

We had tea and cookies next with the tea being sprite with rainbow sherbet in it.   And then Mrs. Wentz, their teacher, invited her own mother up to the rocking chair in the front of the class and told her, “I love you because” and gave some beautiful reasons she loved her mother.   Mrs. Wentz asked if any other children wanted to have their mom sit in the chair and tell them why they loved their mother.

The first child stood there for a second, looked dazed and then said, “My mom dropped her phone in the toilet.”   Everyone laughed and they sat down.   That pretty much set the tone for why children loved their mothers in the class.   One boy, who’s father had come in his mother’s stead as she was traveling and couldn’t make it, said, “my mom dropped my sister into the washing machine.”   That one went untopped”.

My daughter was almost last and she said what I was almost expecting by now, “my mother dropped her phone into the toilet.   And mommy, I love you because you take care of me.”   The second part I hadn’t expected.  All the parents in the room did a simultaneous, “aww”.  

The last person in the room to go was Mrs. Wentz’s daughter who is in high school.  She came up and read from her phone a very moving speech.   She said she had to write it out in advance so she wouldn’t cry.   Mrs. Wentz and she cried a bit anyways.

As we were wrapping up my daughter asked if I could take her home with me, and since it was forty-five minutes until dismissal I told her we could go home together and skip the “taxi” for the day.  Tonight she reread me the things she wrote about me.   We’re going to put them on the refrigerator for Mother’s Day.

The Big Boy Update:  As I was drying my hair today my son said, “you’re getting wrinkles.”  I explained it happened as you got older.   He then asked, “is it because you’re getting smaller and you have extra skin?”  I told him we could look up why adults get wrinkles and see if his theory was correct.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   After Mrs. Wentz’s daughter, Cassidy, gave her, “why I love you” speech to her mother today my daughter leaned over to me and said, “Cassidy sounded different than I thought she would.”   Which is interesting.   She knew Cassidy was visiting the classroom and she knew she’d arrived.   She knew she was serving the punch to us but she couldn’t see any of that.   The first time she experienced Cassidy herself was when she heard her talk.   I suppose it’s not unlike when we say someone didn’t look the way we expected when we meet them for the first time.

I’m Sure Dad Has It Covered

I picked my son up from school today and asked him if he wanted to run a fun errand with me.   We had the last scheduled meeting at our house this afternoon for the Head of School search committee for a while.   We needed to meet off campus and needed a location we could Skype as a group.   Our basement worked well for the Skyping and proved to be convenient in location to the school so we kept convening here.

For my husband and me it was easy; we like entertaining.   We had someone handle the food which left drinks and snacks all we needed to coordinate.   Before each event we would set up some things to eat and drink in the basement and be ready for people to arrive.    After about the fifth time we had it down.  

So this afternoon when I picked up my son from school I asked him if he’d like to help me out by going to Whole Foods to select some cookies to get for the meeting.   And get this—he said he didn’t like cookies.   That’s right, cookies.   I think he just wanted to get home and play with his friends but since the cookies needed to be bought, he went along somewhat reluctantly with me.

When we got into the store I thought he’d be excited by the cookies but instead wanted to know what the gelato was behind the glass display.   Since he didn’t want a cookie I told him he could have some gelato instead.   He picked lemon sorbet and cookies and cream—together.   Which sounded like a flavor clash to me but he liked it quite a lot.

After eating his gelato we got into the car and I realized people were arriving at our home in forty-five minutes.   I must have sounded worried but my son wasn’t.   He said, “don’t worry, mom, I’m sure dad has it covered.”   And sure enough, dad did.

The Big Boy Update:   Tonight my daughter was distraught after lights were out for bed.   She wanted a story from Alexa but was told it was too late by dad.   She was so upset.   Instead of lashing out at her like my son has done in the past he opened the door and called down to me saying, “mom, I think you need to come up, Reese really needs you.”  I gave him a big hug and thanked him for making sure his sister was okay.   I sat on the bed to talk to her and he got on the bed too, giving her a hug while she cried.  

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been telling me I get to go to her class tomorrow for a Mother’s Day celebration.   It’s a good thing she’s always correct with information because not only was she correct, she told us where to look to find the information on one of the online resource spots for parents.   Tomorrow I’ll find out what she and her class have planned.

The Fastest Way To Write A Blog Post...

...is to be too tired to go downstairs and sit at the computer.  Couple that with the lack of usability of the iPad keyboard and the post is sure to be brief.   Guess where I am right now?  If you guessed not at my computer, you’d be correct.

It’s been a long day. I got up at 4:00am to fly to Detroit with my daughter to have an in-office visit with her retina surgeon.  He was running very late.  Four hours after arriving at his office and we had to rush back to the airport, unable to get any food for lunch, now 3:15pm and board the plane as the gates were shutting.

My daighters eyes are stable with an EUA to be scheduled locally with her doctors here and a follow-up in Detroit in four months.   We arrived home to rush-hour traffic to attend a meeting already ongoing at my house that we were hosting for the school.  I jumped into the meeting which went until after seven o'clock.

Somehow things needed to be done and I find myself at ten-thirty writing this post on my iPad, sitting on the bed, hoping to sleep shortly.

The Big Boy Update:  more on this later, but my son is in need of lots of positive reinforcement.  We spoke with his ocupational therapist yesterday and have a plan.  She gives us such confidence in how to best help him; we're very grateful to have her.

The Tiy Girl Chronicles:  The only thing I had to give my daughter for late lunch once we boarded the plane was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  She wanted McDonalds but decided a special lunch of chocolate wasn’t all that bad.

Early Detroit Morning

we hosted an event at our house tonight and I’m just getting to writing a post now.  I’ve got to be up at four o'clock to head to Detroit for an office visit with my daughter's retina surgeon so I’ll make this brief.  As in I’ll write more tomorrow, brief.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Friendly Children Visits:  our guests arrived tonight right about it bedtime.  When I arrived with the other guests I found my daughter writing a Braille letter to her new friend and first arriving guest, Mike.  After she was done, she politely excused herself to go up to bed.  My son came down shortly afterwards to introduce himself to the guests and then he too, went up to bed.  They both really impressed me tonight with how respectful they were of the adult gathering we were having.

The Tickly Hand

Every few weeks in the middle of the night, my son comes clambering down the stairs in a great hurry.   He jumps up on the bed and goes straight to where I sleep.   He calls out, “MOM!” in a loud whisper and thrusts his hand at me.   By now I’m marginally awake, but I know what’s happened—his hand is asleep.  And when his hand falls asleep, it really falls asleep.   He wakes up and makes it all the way downstairs to me and then it takes me several minutes to get him sorted enough to go back upstairs.

I suppose I unknowingly started a routine with him the first time it ever happened.   He would tell me his hand was, “tickly”.  After figuring out he had pins and needles from reduced blood flow and telling him his hand was “asleep” I started working on his hand.  I wiggled his fingers around, did some massaging, shook his hand and lower arm to try and get circulation going.   When this first started several years ago I did all sorts of things, not really paying attention to what, because I had been asleep and I wasn’t that awake through the process.

These days when my son’s hand is sufficiently awake and past the burning, painful post-asleep stage, my son leaves of his own accord and goes back upstairs.   It’s what happens in the interim of arrival and departure that’s interesting.

First off, my son yells at me.   Not real yelling, whisper yelling.   He can be particularly forcefully loud and quiet at the same time.   He’s desperately trying to get me to do what he envisions in his mind as the best and most appropriate move for me to work on his hand at that specific moment.   What he doesn’t realize is I’m just randomly trying things because I don’t know where the discomfort is.

He redirects me again and again as the pain moves from one area to another in his hand and fingers.   He is fairly strict with what I’m suppose to do and what I shouldn’t be doing.   He tells me that I’m just not doing it right and tries to show me where exactly, only he’s frantic at the time because his hand hurts.  

He’s gotten better at telling me where exactly and what “move” he wants me to do to help. And I’ve gotten better and figuring out what he actually wants.   Someday when he’s older maybe I’ll let him know I just made it all up.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband had made some tacos for Uncle Jonathan, Margaret, the children and me tonight.   He sent my daughter upstairs to let the rest of us know dinner was ready.   My son jumped up and headed for the stairs, calling back over his shoulder, “hey guys. let’s go down and meet dinner.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My children tried my bubble tea a few days ago and suddenly decided they wanted to try one themselves.   I told them they were like smoothies and they could choose from flavors like mango or strawberry.   My son got mango but insisted he didn’t want the boba balls in his.   My daughter was adventurous and got them in hers.   She had fun sucking up the tapioca balls in her straw and chewing them.

Six Miles:  That’s right, I ran.    I am as shocked as you are.

Social Play

The Big Boy Update: 
My son gets in trouble a lot when he plays.   I have a hunch it’s because his sister cries and tells on him, but it’s for reasonable cause a lot of the time because he’s hit her or called her names or won’t let her play and they’re intentionally excluding her.   A lot or most of the time it’s due to reasonable reasons, mostly instigated by her I would suspect, but since my husband and I aren’t there to see it happen, we don’t truly know, and so we try to help resolve things and invariably this causes my son to get in some manner of trouble or discussion with us on reasonable and kind behavior.

Tonight I went to a party at a friend’s house.   It was in another neighborhood where my son didn’t know any of the children save for meeting their two children once before briefly.   My husband wasn’t feeling well and he kept my daughter at home since it’s harder to navigate a busy and unfamiliar location with her vision.  

My son and I arrived to find boys in the front yard with nerf guns.  He opened his car door and ran off.   And that set the tone for the night.   He managed himself the entire night—about four hours—with zero incidents.  No one complained about him; no one cried and said he’d done something unkind or mean and he wasn’t upset at any of the other children.

On the contrary, I had parents tell me how he was being very nice to one of the much younger children.   My son played with lots of children across a good sample of ages and did so happily the whole time.   When he was hungry he came to find me and then got himself his own food (only letting the dog eat one or two of his self-prepared tacos).

We ended up staying until after ten o’clock because he was having such a positive, good time.  He and his sister love each other, but he told me on the ride home they’re frenemies.   I would have to agree.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter takes screenshots on her iPad.   Constantly.   I’m serious about this.   I went in and deleted them all yesterday without her knowing.   She intentionally takes the screenshots because she wants them—although we’re not sure why.   In three weeks she took 2963 of them.  

Some Days

Some days are good days pain-wise.  Some days are bad.  The situation in my spine is progressing and although I’m a long ways off from needing surgery I was told by my orthopedic neurosurgeon in January, it’s getting worse over time.  I expected this based on everything I’ve been told over the years, but that doesn’t make it easier to deal with even so.

I had a steroid injection in my spinal column earlier this week that may help in a week or two and I have a second injection in a month.  Options other than medication are good, but I’m having to use more nerve medication and other things over time like NSAIDs and muscle relaxants and pain medication when it gets very bad.

I don’t like it, but they do help and they're better than surgery, which will be significant. Hopefully I’m a decade or so off from that, but only time will tell. The space in my cervixal spinal column continues to decline with bone spurs and disc degeneration.  For now though we're going to keep on with all other options and hope things stay stable for as long as possible.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband got a big package in the mail today and my son insisted on opening it unassisted.  He was having a hard time getting through the copious amounts of tape but we left him alone.  About five minutes later I heard him call out from the living room, “I found a weak point”.  Another five minutes and he was in and dad's new pull-behind golf bag with orange wheels was freed from the box.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came in today and asked if I wanted to know what they listened to in the taxi during the rides to and from school.  She asked Alexa to play the call letters of the radio station and a religious radio station came on.  She says she likes the music and the commercials.  We played the station on the house speakers for a good while this afternoon.

I Don’t Want to Write a Blog Post Tonight

Some nights I don’t want to write a blog post.  Most nights I look forward to getting to the basement after the children are in bed to write about something from the day or thoughts that have been mulling about in my mind.   But some nights I go to the bedroom to change into my pajamas and think how nice it would be if I didn’t have to go to the basement to write a post.

What happens though is I get to the basement, pull up the chair, have my watch unlock my Mac, open up my browser and start typing.  And then I just keep going.   Last night, for instance, I thought was going to be a very short blog post.   We had hosted an event at the house and after the preparation for the day and subsequent cleanup afterwards not to mention the meetings and appointments in addition of the day and I just wanted nothing to do with the keyboard and Blogger.com

But once I started typing I got into a mental story and the post turned out to be fairly long.  It’s hard to tell what will come out when I start typing.   For tonight, I’m going to bed right after this post.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has a teacher workday tomorrow.  He wants to play Uno with me.   Specifically “Uno H2O”, which is just the standard card game, only on plastic cards that can get wet. I hope he doesn’t want to play in the bathtub together.   We set a calendar entry for tomorrow at 10:00AM to play.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has been on her antibiotic for a urinary tract infection for a day now.   She did wet her pants late in the day a bit, but she was very busy on the playground swinging as high as she could with lots of friends around playing with her.   And who really has time to stop to go to the bathroom when you’re having fun like that?

Not What We Thought

My daughter has been itchy for a while now.   It wasn’t just when she would go to the bathroom, it was most of the time she said.    She said there was no stinging or burning when she urinated, but there was a lot of itching.    She’s had this happen before and we had gotten some advice from multiple doctors on it, saying it was uncommon for children to have urinary tract infections, but they could have a mild yeast infection that we could treat at home.

For an adult female you go a more internal medication application route, but for children, applying yeast medication cream externally typically solves the problem.   So we did that, but it continued to itch.    She was urinating in her pants sometimes and was wetting the bed at night as well, which was unlike her.

But she wasn’t going to the bathroom with a significantly increased frequency, which would be another sign of a UTI.   She had no fever and aside from complaints that things itched, and some wet linens, she wasn’t complaining that much of bad symptoms.

We gave her bleach baths (a capful of bleach in a full tub) on prior recommendation from her dermatologist.   It sounds like a lot, to put bleach in the bath, but it’s less intense than the chlorine in a chlorinated pool we were told.   We also found out today from her pediatrician that children with MRSA infections have a bleach bath every night for multiple weeks and that it can make a significant difference.  

We were trying avenues.   We also put steroid cream on her because her eczema itches on other parts of her body and her brother gets it on his genitals, but that didn’t help either.

So today we took her into the doctor and, guess what, she has a UTI.   She’s probably had it for some time now but because we’d been told they were uncommon in young children and the fact that she wasn’t demonstrating typical signs, we had convinced ourselves it just couldn’t be one.

She’s on an antibiotic as of this evening and should hopefully feel much better soon.   I was talking to her doctor today, saying we felt like negligent parents for not bringing her in sooner but we weren’t the type to rush to the doctor at the first sign of something possibly being wrong—because with children, many times there’s nothing wrong.

This time we talked ourselves out of what it would now seem like were clear signs.   Next time we’ll know.   She’s been so good through it all and not much of a complainer I’ve been impressed.   I’ve had UTI’s before and I wouldn’t have handled it as easily as she has.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Party Visitor Update:  We had a gathering at the house tonight.   The children were meant to be upstairs and out of sight when the guests arrived as it was shortly before bedtime.   They wanted to meet the guests though and couldn’t help coming down to say hello when they heard guests arriving.   I was at the forum at school prior to our trustees and search committee members coming to our house for the post-meeting gathering and left my husband to heat and put out the food and get the children ready for bed.   It turned out he had more to do than anticipated so he told them they could help by completely getting themselves ready for bed without him.   And they did and then went upstairs and were quiet.   Both he and I were impressed with their initiative and respectfulness tonight.   They got extra stamps in thanks.

Faucet Fixed

My children make a mess of things when they brush their teeth.   My son is pretty good in some ways while his sister is good in the ways she can be, but she has limitations.   For instance, how do you get toothpaste on your toothbrush when you can’t see if the toothpaste is coming out?

We had to come up with a plan where she holds the toothbrush and puts one finger on the bristles and then squeezes the toothpaste until she feels it coming out.   When enough is on the toothbrush (usually it's too little or way too much) she drags the toothpaste downwards to cut off the blob and leave it on the bristles.   Then she has to find the cap, which she’s lost by now.

That’s just one of a collection of things she has to do differently to get her nighttime routine complete.   Only this post isn’t about her, it’s about the faucet and the leak—a leak I didn’t realize was a leak for a good while because I thought it was her and my son making a mess with the cup, the faucet, spitting into the sink, washing their hands and the swish.

But there was a leak.   It was a slow leak trickling out from under the cold water handle.  I was pretty sure it was the o-ring, but hey, it was a slow leak and I was probably going to have to do a heck of a lot of research to find out how to get a replacement o-ring (it that was indeed the problem).   So I put it off and wiped up the small amount of water every night.

Then today I’d had enough of the procrastination and set to work on the handle.   But I got stuck.   Or rather it was stuck.   The installers hadn’t left us with the manual for the faucets but some Googling, removal of a cap and two screws and I thought I had it.  The handle should have lifted free but it wasn’t and I didn’t want to break it because I’d rather have a leaking faucet than a broken faucet.

So I brought in my husband.   And he couldn’t get it off either.   It was probably mineral deposits a Google search said.   Hit it with a mallet (gently) it said.   Use some spray lubricant.   Pull upwards really hard.   I tried them all and just as I was about to give up, the handle came off.

That’s when my husband got interested.   We pulled the faucet apart and found the o-ring.   It wasn’t torn or in bad shape but it was being replaced, darn it.   We pulled out the, “Complete Set of Every O-Ring You’ll Ever Need” kit I had ordered from China a while back.   Actually, I’m not sure that was the name of it, but it has a vast collection of o-rings and I had gotten it because hey, who knows when you’ll need an o-ring and what do you know, I needed an o-ring.   Having the right o-ring on hand pretty much made my day.

But the faucet still wasn’t fixed.   I made the mistake of not taking pictures of every step in the disassembly process with the key one of what orientation to put the pieces back into place so the off and on orientation of the handle was where it should have been.

I removed buildup from the pieces, we replaced the o-ring, reassembled it three times using trial and error and a little rotational deduction to get the orientation correct again and turned the water back on.    And it worked.   And it didn’t leak.   There were high-fives.   I don’t know a damn thing about plumbing but with Google and a box of o-rings from China we got the faucet fixed.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came out of the bedroom after bedtime tonight.   He has very low self-esteem sometimes.   He was talking about how he didn’t deserve to go to his school and was never a good role model like his classmates.   He said he hated himself and he couldn’t do anything well.   My husband talked to him for a while and tried to turn his feelings around.   We’re not sure it sunk in, but we’ll keep trying.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We’d backed out of the driveway today and my daughter apparently hadn’t gotten her seatbelt clicked in yet because she said in an exasperated tone, “my seatbelt’s not cooperating with me!”