Strange But Nice

My in-laws had my children over for the night while we hosted a retirement party at our house.   While the party was going on I was too busy doing party things to notice they were gone.   The party was lovely even though not all the wine was drunk.   There were a few people who drank a good bit, but they were happy people and nice to be around.   The people that stayed the latest jumped in and helped with the clean up while some of the other people went downstairs and played pinball.   It was a late night for me, typically I’m long asleep by the time the last people left.

We did something I haven’t done before—we didn’t clean up completely before we went to sleep.  That’s hard for me.  I have always had the house back to the state it was in before the party at the end of the evening.   I was in a decent bit of pain last night and just wanted to get in bed when the house was empty.   I was out of energy, which also ins’t like me.

I had one glass of champagne, which we passed out for toasts.   There were a lot of glasses to be washed what with almost forty guests drinking both wine and champagne.   My husband put all the food away and cleaned up quite a lot after I had gotten in bed.   It was interesting though in that it didn’t bother me that there would be cleaning up to be done in the morning.   It’s calming to my mind to have everything done, nothing waiting for me in the morning left to do.   But I just let It go and climbed under the covers, started one of my documentary shows on my iPad and fell asleep about two minutes later.

This morning I woke up at the regular time and let the dog out.  I got coffee, washed most of the glasses and then I got back in bed.  And I didn’t have to answer a single “mommy” question.   I didn’t have to deal with any bickering, I didn’t have to explain to an angry child why they couldn’t do something.   The house was quiet.

It was strange, but it was nice.   My in-brought the children back mid-afternoon.   The house is much less quiet now.

The Big Boy Update:  On the way home in the car, Nana was singing and apparently my son wasn’t enjoying it.   He said, "Nana, if you don’t stop and behave yourself I’m beginning to think that Papa is the better one.”  Nana could help it and started laughing.   My son followed up with, “well, if you just behave yourself, I’ll consider you both equal.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and son were at the pool yesterday with their grandparents until the pool was closed.   Today she must have been tired still because when they got home she had a slice of cake from the party last night, got a blanket and fell asleep on the hardwood floor in the breakfast nook.

Long But Fun

It’s been a long day, preparing for and then having the party.  We knew everyone but one person from out of town and the group was a fun bunch.  It’s late though and I’m tired.   I’ll write more tomorrow after we get the house cleaned up.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was helping make wine glass charms yesterday but was moving rather slowly, taking twenty minutes on a single charm that should have taken about two minutes to pick out and string up.   When I mentioned it he said, “I’m not done with it.   Art is a great sport."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Gaddyn asked my daughter if she knew what she looked like.   My daughter said, “not really.”   Then she got up on the counter and looked in the small 12X magnification mirror I have stuck to the main mirror.   She tried very hard to see what she looked like.   She didn’t comment on what she saw though.

Party Preparations

We’re hosting a retirement party at our house tomorrow night.   It’s a pot luck event, but there is still a lot to get prepared.   The house is tidy, that’s sort of never an issue here because I have a tidy disorder and my husband caught it when we got married.   The children seem to remain uninfected though as they have thus far showed no signs of an obsessive need for organizing.

I’m doing that whole packing for the boat trip thing but today took the day off for several things, mostly party-related.   I’m getting to bed late and I’m tired, but I got these made (with the help of my son) to put on wine and champagne glasses as well as send home to the guests.  The ones on the right are all modes of transportation (including a pumpkin carriage) while the ones on the left are all motorcycles.



Our head of school, the one retiring, is a motorcycle enthusiast and goes riding when she has time from her busy work life so we’re throwing in some stereotypical motorcycle fun.    She most definitely does not fit the stereotype, but we couldn’t resist.  She and her husband plan on traveling now that they will both be retired, notably traveling around in an Airstream they plan on getting in the spring.

We’ve got motorcycle tattoos and I’ll have a basket of tattoo sleeves for the guests to don upon arrival, all different patterns:



I got my son to take a picture of one on me.   They’re like a thick hosiery material and are quite comfortable:



And yes, I’m wearing a Fortnite t-shirt.  I got it for my son but it was too big, so I adopted it.  The Fortnite craze continues in our house still.

The Big Boy Update:  My son’s sitter, Blake, took him to an Escape Room today.   They didn’t make it out in time, but I hear they had fun.   Here’s their after photo:



The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter knew I was tired and was trying to get them to bed,   She had gotten her stuffed animals all arranged and I was about to leave the room when she said, “mom, after you rest your feet, do you think you could bring me my monkey stuffed animal from downstairs?”  I don’t know where she got the ‘resting your feet’ phrase as it isn’t one we typically use, but it was very sweet.   I went downstairs to get her monkey and her new “flip” blue and silver sequined gecko she yelled down from their room as a second request, it being another stuffed animal she couldn’t possibly go to sleep without having in her bed.

Staging

We’ve been preparing for our upcoming sailing trip for a while now.   I have a packing list that continues to grow as we think of things we need that we wouldn’t consider on a typical trip.   I’ve been building a pile of things off in a corner and as of yesterday, we moved everything up to what’s known as “the craft room” in the house, using it as a staging location for everything we’ll be packing for the trip.

The craft room works well because it’s an end point in the house and no traffic flows through it.   The children aren’t allowed in there without an adult because they need permission to use most of what’s in the room and that permission comes with limits on amounts.   The room is large and there are a lot of flat surfaces like desks on which we can spread out the contents we’ll be packing up.

My husband and I prefer to pack light.   I like to take the smallest amount of an item necessary for the given trip.   This trip is different because we have to plan for things that may or may not happen.   We’ll be out to sea, outside the continental U.S. and if someone gets an infection, we need antibiotics.   If someone comes down with a ferocious case of sea sickness, we need multiple ways to knock it back so the person can be comfortable.

We’ll be snorkeling so there’s all the gear entailed with that.  My children will be wearing life vests any and all times they’re on deck, which will be most of the day, so we needed vests that were comfortable for long days in hot weather.

Clothing is different than normal though because most of the time we’ll be in bathing suits—more suits, less clothes.  And then there’s the entertainment issue.  Issue meaning no wifi, no cellular, off the grid, back to card games and board games.   Reading real books (or electronic books they can read via text or braille.)

There’s more in the way of entertainment I’ve been working on, which I’ll likely post when I get finished with the compaction and packing.   I got some excellent ideas from my daughter’s braillest and VI teachers the other day at school using library hanging book bags.   I’m revamping a closet, saving lots of space in the process and making many things easily available to my daughter.   I’m side tracked here, but imagine you knew there were all these things in your house, only you had no idea where they were.   We go and look in the games closet as sighted people and see all the games available.   She can’t do that, she can’t even feel them to find out what the games are because all the game boxes are just that—boxes.

Talking to her teachers gave me some very exciting ideas and thanks to Amazon Prime and Lowes, in only two days I’m implementing a new organizational scheme for my daughter so she can be more independent.   Sometimes it makes me almost cry, thinking of all the things she doesn’t “see” or know, simply because she can’t see great swaths of information like we do as sighted people.   Her input devices are her fingertips.   And while her fingertips are excellent at discerning things, they can only “see” what we make available in a tactile format she can understand.

Oh my word, I seriously got myself sidetracked.   Let me see if I can reel this back in.   To sum up, I’m very excited about an organizational project that will benefit my daughter well beyond our sailing trip, but will be useful while we’re on the trip as well.   Okay, enough said until I have pictures so I can explain more easily.

Back to the craft room and the four huge suitcases.   My husband and I travel with one medium-large suitcase and one carry-on suitcase for the four of us typically—even in winter months with bulkier clothing.   For this trip we’ve borrowed three similar medium-large suitcases and will be traveling with more luggage than I have ever travelled with before.

I made huge progress today.   Things have been bought, like extra bathing suits for the children, snorkel gear, life vests and water socks.   I got carried away with bathing suits for my daughter, but they had so many cute ones at Target I couldn’t control myself.   She will be the fashion diva of the trip, I am most certain.

Our travel packing list is longer than it’s ever been before too.  It’s so large I had to divide it into sections and then I shared it via Google Drive so my husband and I could both make edits.   I thought I had a pretty good handle on the lists but just like every other trip, once I started the packing process I discovered many, many things (little things) I hadn’t thought of.

I’m about half-ish done.  Half done by volume, over half done by planning, but less than half done by time.   There are several time sucking project that will keep me busy until we leave a week from now.   The largest one I think is finishing the folding Monopoly board.   Today was a good start though.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband let my son watch Thor this morning and then he decided he could watch Thor: Ragnarok.  They decided to skip the second movie.   It’ snot bad, but not as good as the other two.   My son loved them both.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter took Chutes and Ladders to school yesterday for “bring a game to school” day.   This is the game my husband worked diligently on making it tactile and then gave it to my daughter for Christmas.   Apparently they played multiple games with several friends yesterday.   We’re taking it on our trip with us.

An Inch Off the Bottom

My daughter’s hair grows frighteningly slow.   People don’t believe me when I tell them, but it’s true.   She has very fine hair that used to break off a lot, and if we’re not careful it will still come off in piles when we put it in a ponytail or other style of hair that requires more than a headband.

And when I say slow growing, here’s what I mean.   At the start of kindergarten my daughter had bangs.   I know this because the picture from the first day of school had long little bangs, right at the top of her glasses.   During the kindergarten year we cut her hair just twice.   That’s two hair cuts in an entire year—a year in which we were trying to grow out those bangs.  

This year in first grade we’ve cut her hair three times.  Each time I asked Sue to cut less than an inch. She desperately needed the ends cut off and each time we got her hair cut she liked how it was easier to brush.   We’ve asked her if she wanted to keep her hair long or cut it short.   With just a few exceptions she’s wanted to keep it long (and I always held out to see if she’d change her mind, which she always did, thankfully.)

Today I took her for her semi-annual hair cut (or around there about).  We had a whole inch cut off.  There was barely a wisp on the floor of her blonde little locks when Sue was done with the cutting.  I think she is starting to really like it long because we can do things like French braids, double French braids, regular braids, pig tail braids—all of which don’t require her to wear the headband that’s been permanently affixed to her had for close to two years while her bangs have grown out.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went bowling today with Blake.   I think he had fun, but when he got home all he said was, “okay, you can go now Blake.”   He really likes doing things with Blake, he’s having a hard time understanding that just because he’s off from school for the summer, it doesn’t mean his father and I are off and have no parental responsibilities as well.   I offered to have him help with the preparations I was working on for our upcoming sailing trip but he said he thought he’d rather take a nap instead.   He doesn’t nor did he nap.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Two more days until my daughter is finished with school for the year.   This last week of school they’ve been working hard, including two days where they bring games in and play with their friends, a read in the dark day (my daughter had that one down, easy, no flashlight needed) and a pajama day to end the school year on Friday.

I Looked Like a Fool and Cried

This is sort of a complicated story, but I can hit the highlights, cover the key points and explain how things got to last night, me looking like a fool and then crying.   Things started back in 2011 when my son started at the Montessori school he still attends.

I was asked to join the Board of Trustees a few months later and at the first board meeting I attended we were presented with a pivotal decision, one that would change forever the future of the school.   We had outgrown the current school we’d been renting since the school had been started some eleven years prior.   We had not just minorly outgrown the location, we had majorly overrun the space.

There had been a search for a location on which to build our own school so we could escape both the small space and the rental situation we were in.   The search had taken six years.   There were reasons it took that long, much of which had been finding a good location which continued to change as the search drug on while the school grew in enrollment.

At that first board meeting I attended, we were asked to vote on moving forward with one of two sites and builders, each finalists in the search, based on information they presented to us that evening.   We were unable to make a decision that night because the pros and cons of each option made it so there was no clear winner.

After many phone calls over the spring break week that ensued, we made our decision and today, several years after the completion of the new school, we’re in that very location.   It was back then that we noticed there were two adjacent properties beside the plot we were purchasing and developing.   Those two lots had houses circa the late 1950’s that might be possible to acquire for future expansion.   And given how the school had grown thus far, we might need those properties sooner than later.

At the time, our board Vice Chair told me, “you’re in Real Estate, see if you can find someone to buy the properties to hold them for the school.”  This was before we’d even closed on the primary location, something we were just starting to raise capital for.   Expansion seemed a long way off.

But those words never left my mind and ever since that time I’ve been trying to see if we could come up with a way to do just that, have the properties in safe hands that would be willing to sell to the school when the time was right.   There were complexities of course.  Were the current property owners interested in selling?   Was the price workable with what the school would ultimately be able to afford?   Who could we find that would be willing to buy and hold the properties?  Would it need to be a group of investor families who would together rent the home(s) until such time as the school wanted to expand?

That’s a very, very short list of all the questions that needed answering.   The number of meetings, potential buyers, discussions with property owners, offers that fell through, middle men that were involved, rezoning meetings that were attended, property that changed hands to a new owner that didn’t have anything to do with the school and wasn’t interested in selling to the school.   Panic.   Worry.   But ultimately, after years of work, both properties were acquired by new owners who did indeed want to hold them for the school.

We then needed to come up with a legal way to both protect the new owners while at the same time giving the school the option to purchase the properties at a fair price in the what was now turning out to be much sooner time frame than we had originally thought.   The school, having just finished a capital campaign to build the main campus, may need to launch into another campaign to expand sideways to those two properties.

We came up with the idea to put in place an Option Contract.   This is a legal document that in this case gives the school the option to exclusively purchase the properties at a pre-determined price at any point in the next five years.   To reserve this right, the school pays a fee to the owners, while letting the owners retain full use of the property until such time as the school decides to exercise their right to purchase.

My husband and I have been knee deep in this entire process from the very beginning in 2011.   We worked with our real estate lawyer to draw up the option contract and the school had their counsel review the contract.   At the board meeting last night the board discussed the contract and, if approved, have it be the first thing our new head of school signs when she starts in August.

Because of my involvement, I wasn’t part of the discussion or any potential vote from the board.   I wasn’t concerned though as I knew the contract had been sent to the school’s council only a week before.   I fully expected multiple rounds of changes on both sides before the contract was approved to be signed.

So when I was called back into the board room last night (at a restaurant, celebrating our last board meeting of the year), everyone cheered, held up their glasses and wanted to toast.   I was confused.   I must admit, I looked like a fool, asking if this meant the board approved?   It turns out, there was only one change in the contract being a small discrepancy in one number that was to the schools advantage, but they wanted to let the owners know so they could have the contract corrected (didn’t I tell you this was a great board?)    The board had approved it to be signed though, pending the one change.   The long, arduous haul to secure the properties was effectively over.   The properties had been acquired and the school would be able to buy them easily now.

I did feel rather foolish at the time, but the board meeting went on and we celebrated those members leaving the board and toasted to our Head of School given that it was her last board meeting before retiring.   It was a fun and relaxing evening.   Our board meetings always are.   When I got in the car to go home I suddenly started crying.   Relief?  Happiness?  Both I think.   I am very happy for the school.   I’m so grateful for everyone who played a part in making this happen.   The future expansion of our school has been secured.

The Big Boy Update:  My son didn’t want to do anything fun Blake suggested today.  Not trampling, not going to play mini golf, not going to Dave & Busters, not go cart racing, not even batting in the batting cages.  Until Blake drug him off.   Guess what?   He had fun.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter’s end of year party at school was today.   Each child got some candy from their teacher, the name describing one of their characteristics.   My daughter got Gobstoppers—because she types gobs and gobs on her braillewriter.

Your Son Just Said...

When Gaddyn was over this weekend my son very much wanted to be involved.  Gaddyn’s older and confident.   She’s friendly and bubbly in personality.   He was looking forward to her being here for the sleepover just as much as my daughter was.

The children were excited and counting down the minutes before Gaddyn arrived.   My daughter was bouncing around while my son disappeared into the bathroom.   He came out a few minutes later and I noticed his hair was mildly wet.   I looked at him and realized he’d wet his hair with his hands and slicked it down from its typical unruly mess.   My son was trying to make a good impression.  And that’s unheard of.

Gaddyn arrived and they had a fun day and evening.  There was some disagreements about if my son would be sleeping with them in the bonus room in his sleeping bag too.   He was being bossy and forceful and even physical in his misguided efforts to be liked while trying to impress Gaddyn at the same time.  Most of his behavior wasn’t settling well with the girls although they eventually said it would be okay for him to join the sleepover after we’d given him a bit of time away from them so he could calm his energy down.

Gaddyn has a cell phone.   She kept in touch with me as needed during the two days she was here.   Shortly after they had settled into the bonus room with the lights out she messaged me, “your son just used the ’s’ word” followed by, “and he’s playing a video game.”   I told her I’d address the language with him in the morning (not wanting to correct him in front of the girls).   Then I told her I’d come up casually to check on everyone to see how they were doing since he was on his switch and shouldn’t have been.

I snuck up and asked if anyone needed anything and, “oh, Greyson, you’re not suppose to be playing video games now” to which he sighed and handed it over without a complaint.   I went back downstairs and sent Gaddyn, “remote high five” and she sent back, “good teamwork”.

I forgot to talk to my son about the language in the morning.   He knows all the bad words and also knows they’re adult words he’s not allowed to say.   I’m pretty sure he said it to be cool in front of Gaddyn.  He never says them where we can hear him.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is on borrowed time for screen time today.   There were several simple, easy things he could have done to not only catch up but also earn extra screen time.   Faced with the daunting task of cleaning his desk up (three minute job), putting the dishes up that were already unloaded and stacked ready on the counter (five minute job) and cleaning up his place from lunch (two minute job) he decided he would escape the house altogether to run errands with his father.   He didn’t realize it, but the jobs would still be waiting for him when he got home still.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is obsessed with “flip” clothing.   This is the latest iteration of sequined sections on an item.   The sequins when all pointing downwards show one picture and when flipped up, show a second picture.   I got some bathing suits for her for our upcoming trip today and when I told her she said, “did you get me a flip bathing suit?”   This is a ridiculous idea.   Sequins on a bathing suit sound completely uncomfortable.   And yet, she was right.   One of the suits had an emoji face on it with different expressions for the up and down sequin positions.

Fort

This post isn’t about Fortnite.   There is a lot of Fortnite action at our house.  My son is obsessed with it.   He mostly likes to watch videos of other people playing and glitches in the game.   My husband is excellent at it, which is very like him—he’s very good at computer games or anything that requires precision and accuracy.  This post is, instead, about an actual fort.

My daughter’s new friend, Gaddyn, came over yesterday for a sleepover.   They and my son went back and forth between the two houses several times until this evening when Gaddyn had to go home.   Gaddyn has a cell phone, what with being twelve, which proved to be very useful as she could message me or call me when needed.   She was very diligent at making sure my daughter was safe and more than that, was incredibly interested in all things having to do with my daughter’s vision impairment and how she perceived and accomplished things.

Gaddyn learned all about braille, tried on a pair of my daughter’s glasses and couldn’t see at all with them, declaring, “I’m blind like you are now!”  My daughter was incredibly happy.   They got their own breakfast and lunch and had ice cream.  Swinging happened regularly and trips to Gaddyn’s house gave them time on her trampoline.  

And then they built this, which my daughter has asked if we can keep up…forever:



It was so large it had it’s own floor plan plat:



And of course it had the all important placard on the front:



The Big Boy Update:  My son decided to create a television show with me, as a superhero.   He created this and taped it to the television in the bonus room last night:



The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told me tonight while we were drying her hair, “I had 1000 more fun with Gaddyn here.”  I texted Gaddyn’s mother and told her Gaddyn was welcome at our house again, any time.

Real Quick, Emergency

My children went to the pool with Blake, their sitter, this morning.   I was texting Blake about what time I should be home when he called me.   We talked about the best time for me to get in so he could get ready to go to his other job.

I thought we were done and was about to hang up when he said, “real quick, emergency…”  He didn’t sound upset or concerned, and yet he’d said it was an emergency.   I asked if everything was okay and he told me, “Greyson wants to know how women get pregnant.”

I laughed and told him that I could see what he meant about the emergency.   I told him to tell Greyson to ask me when he got home.   My son has completely forgotten about his question now that Gaddyn (I had her name spelled incorrectly before) is over for a sleepover.   We’ll see if the question resurfaces tomorrow.   Right now he’s more interested in impressing Gaddyn.   He even went to the bathroom and slicked back his hair with water from the sink—and if you know my son, that’s saying a lot.

The Big Boy Update:  I told my son he would love sleeping in the bed at Mimi and Gramps house in the mountains.  I told him not only was it the biggest bed he’d slept in before, it also had bamboo fiber sheets on it.   He didn’t seem to care when I told him, but before he left he told Mimi, “this is the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is simply beside herself that Gaddyn messaged me and wanted to know if we could still get together this weekend.   We confirmed a sleepover and her parents dropped her off just a bit ago after spending a day at the lake.   Gaddyn has been learning braille, closing her eyes and being blind like my daughter and has been learning all sorts of things about what my daughter’s life is like as a blind child.  They are having lots of fun.  We’re so glad she wanted to come over today.

Turnkey Dog

Our dog, Matisse, has been at a board and train program (otherwise known as “bootcamp” to my children) for two weeks.  We’ve been getting daily written updates, pictures and videos from Sammy, her trainer.  It’s been impressive what she’s accomplished over the two weeks from what she’s been singing via those updates.   It’s what I’ve been calling a, “turnkey trained dog” because two weeks after dropping your dog off, they come home trained.

My daughter has been very interested in the updates Sammy sends, but she can’t see the pictures or videos.   When I dropped Matisse off, I asked Sammy if she could verbally describe what was happening in each of the videos. Sammy did a very thorough job of this, something she might have experience with given that her father is legally blind.

I was a bit anxious about continuing the training once Matisse came home but so far we haven’t had any troubles.   A good bit of the time at handoff today was teaching me how to use the e-collar Sammy and their company use when training dogs.  It’s not what I though and it’s likely not what most people think about when they hear the dog is using a, “shock collar”.

The collar works like a TENS unit, which conducts electric signals through the skin.   TENS units are used by humans to reduce pain, not cause it.   I have one and have had it on for hours on end and can attest to the helpful, not harmful or hurtfulness of it.

An e-collar is used to communicate, not to correct or punish a dog.  You don’t use it when the dog gets something incorrect, you use it every time you give a command.  But you always start it out on zero, which is effectively off,  If the dog comes or sits or heels, that’s all you do.  If the dog doesn’t, you gradually increase the level of the collar.   It goes up to one hundred but Matisse only needed six to ten to feel it and understand you were asking her to do something.

I tried it out on me and even without fur, I didn’t feel much at all until it was at twenty-five.  Every time you do something new, you reset the collar back to zero.  One of the things Sammy and I worked on was how minority the dial on the remote needed to be turned to get to three or six so Matisse could feel it.

Matisse wants to work.  Terriers apparently are most happy when they have a job to do.  She easily complied with anything.  The thing that was the most challenging to her was heel, which requires paying constant attention to the handler.  There is no stopping, no putting your head down and sniffing, just keeping her ear right at your left pants seam and falling you wherever you go.  We walked around the block this afternoon after bringing her home—with the leash unconnected around my neck in case we needed it, and she didn’t waver.

She needed some reminders to keep place, mostly when I did a u-turn to keep her on her toes.   She knows where my left is and always got back in place.  There were a few times when something would have startled her or caused her to be anxious prior to the training.  She has had a huge increase in confidence.  Workers, other people, dogs, nothing bothered her.  When I stopped walking she immediately sat and waited for the next command.

A heel walk is a great way to tire her out because it uses her mind just as much as her body.   When we got home she drank some water and then had a nap on her place cot.  “Place” is another command that means, “get on this clearly defined ‘place’ and stay there until released.:   So much of what Sammy worked on with Matisse was to build stability.   All of the commands she uses have an implied stay with them, meaning if you ask the dog to sit, go down, or get on a place, the dog stays there until released.

Stability is hard for a dog and has to be built over time.  I knew when I picked up Matisse today that when I arrived, she would be “on place” and wouldn’t be immediately released with the “break” command.   I marveled as she calmly lay on the place cot, wagging her tail, while Sammy went over the e-collar with me.   When she released Matisse ten minutes later, she came over to say hello to me but did so in a much calmer fashion than I’ve ever seen before after a long absence.

Edna, our housecleaner, was here this afternoon.   The change in Matisse was remarkable.   She has always been afraid of Edna, not because she’s not a nice person, but because she wields the vacuum cleaner.   She let Edna pet her and had no interest in leaving her side.   Then, when the vacuum cleaner came around, I had her on place on the cot in our bedroom.   I had to remind her several times to stay in a down while Edna vacuumed around her but she did so with dramatically less anxiety than she ever has before.

I took her outside shortly afterwards, without a leash on her to let her spend some time in the front yard.   Suddenly she started running to the neighbor’s yard.  I looked up and saw her heading towards their two dogs, out for a walk.   She wasn’t barking, just interested in them.   I called to her to come, using the e-collar.   She didn’t come the first two times so I turned it up where she could feel it—and she immediately came back to me and sat beside me.   That, was truly exciting.   Blake brought his dogs over and they said a friendly hello and then left for their walk, all with Matisse listening to me the entire time.   I’m impressed.

The Big Boy Update:  My son came home today with a “Life Guard Off Duty” shirt on he got from the mountains with Mimi and Granps this week.  He had a great time.  He talked about everything he did on the ride home with his dad.   He without a doubt wants to go back.   He told me his favorite part was Mystery Hill.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I didn’t realize how bonded the dog was with my daughter until this afternoon.   I was walking from the back yard to the front with my daughter and was asking for Matisse to heel.   She wasn’t coming over to my left side.   I asked about five times before I realized she was faithfully and precisely heeling on my daughter.  He’s sat under her chair and followed her around much of the day since she returned home from school.

Damaged Morning Stars

My daughter has been playing D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) on Alexa a lot lately.   Her brother is jumping in, playing some, but she’s really the expert in the family now.   When I was young, we played with pencil, paper and physical dice.   I brought them a set of the various dice used in the game so they could see what they looked and felt like.   Alexa was saying how they had to get higher than a certain roll on a ten-sided die, for example, and the only thing they’d seen before was a standard six-sided die.

I haven’t paid much attention to it in general.   I’d come into the room and hear my daughter tell Alexa to block up high or go north or use a potion and then Alexa would give them the status of where they were or how much health they had left.   My daughter has gotten fairly serious about the game though.   I came in the other morning and she said, “mom, I have two damaged morning stars now.”  I asked her if she knew what a morning star was and then described what the weapon looked like so she could picture it in her mind.

Over time you move through the dungeons by telling Alexa which direction you want to go.  I was up in the bonus room working on something yesterday while my daughter was playing the game.   She was typing on her braillewriter at the same time.   I didn’t know what she was doing until I asked her to end the game to get ready for bed.

I asked her if it remembered where she was or if she had to start over.  She said it remembered where she was in the game, so I asked how she knew where she was in the dungeon and did she get lost?  No, she said, she didn’t and then pointed to what she’d been typing.  It was a history of the navigation directions she’d gone on the left and the items she had in her inventory on the right.   Smart girl.

The Big Boy Update:  My son didn’t want to go to the mountains at one point because it was an unknown.   Now that he’s been there since Monday, I fear we’re going to have trouble getting him to come home.   He’s been spending time with Rainey, who is just about the same age.   My mother and Rainey’s mother have made sure the two of them have been more than busy, doing fun things all week.   We’ll never measure up to the level of fun he’s had back here at home, I guarantee.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tomorrow our dog, Matisse, comes home from a two-week training program.   My daughter wrote a letter to Sammy, our trainer and to her dog, Abe, thanking them for all the help:

That Crazy Balloon Update:  Remember that balloon that floated for an entire week instead of eight hours?   It’s now been two full weeks.   This is what the balloon looks like as of an hour ago:

Father’s Day Letter

My son’s father’s day present was a verbal presentation.   We think this is because my son just didn’t want to take the time to write something down, which makes sense as without the Adderall he’s not nearly as focused and has a hard time concentrating long enough to write down anything lengthy.  His sister, on the other hand, wrote her father a letter.   She only wrote two pages, which is short for her, but in her usual fashion, it was charmingly sweet.

The Big Boy Update:  My son knows what it means for something to be tactile.  It means, to him, that you can feel what a thing is like without having to look at it with your eyes.   He doesn’t understand it in the way his sister does, but he is on the lookout.   The other day we were out shopping.   He called over to me and said, “look, this shirt is tactile.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Sometimes we get a window into how the medical trauma my daughter endures affects her.   She doesn’t want to talk about it, ever, but it creeps in in unexpected ways sometimes.   She was writing sentences using vocabulary words the other day.   Two of the ten sentences were: “I said hi to the nurse today.” and “I hurt my self today."

Not Helicoptering

My son is in the mountains with my parents this week.  My mother has planned a jam-packed week for my son, designed to keep him busy, entertained and of course tired out by the end of the day so he falls asleep without a complaint.

My son is sleeping in a king-sized bed for the first time.   Or maybe it’s a queen bed.   Never mind, it’s big.   I told him he was going to sleep on the softest sheets he’d ever slept on before, after he told me he didn’t want to sleep in a big bed and he was going to miss us at home.   I explained to him that the sheets were made of bamboo fibers and I couldn’t wait to hear what he thought about them when he got home.

With luck, friends of our from town who have a vacation home on the same street as my parents are also visiting this week.   They have a daughter who’s a year younger than my son.  They got together today to go zip lining, play in the park and attend an art class at the local art museum.   My son enjoyed every bit of the day as evidenced by the pictures Mary Louise was sending as the day progressed.

I talked to my mother today and she told me everything went very well.  We also talked about parenting (or child watching/managing) and my mother did a great job of not “helicopter parenting” as the saying goes.   She told me she just sat back and let him have fun—just as it should be, I agreed.

We were on the phone at the end of the night.  My daughter wanted to monopolize Mimi’s time playing games and singing to her.   When we asked if we could speak to Greyson he got on the phone and said about two sentences.   The next thing I knew, my father was saying, “hello?”   It turned out that was all my son wanted to say, so he handed the phone over to Gramps and went his own way.   It would appear he’s not missing us at all.

The Big Boy Update:  At the zip line today my son zipped by Mimi twice.   On the third time he passed her he yelled out, “I’m a natural!”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was unhappy about the door being removed from their bedroom as a consequence to it being slammed.  Tonight the door was added back but it startled her because it was noisy.   We gave her a hands-on tour of how doors work, including the hinges and pins, so she could understand what we’d done and why it had made such a clatter as we re-installed it.

At Mini and Gramps

My son has, for the first time, gone to spend a week with ny parents in the mountains.  Well, not a full week, five days, but it’s a good long time when you’re only eight-years-old.  He has vacillated back and forth between being excited about going and adamant he was not about to leave here during his summer vacation to go anywhere, let along Mimi and Gramp’s where he was sure to have a good time.

My mother prepared for the trip by collecting all sorts of things they could do in leaflet form and printing out other items, putting it together in a large envelope and mailing it to my son.  He got the package and then got on the phone with Mimi to discuss which things he most wanted to do.

This morning my son and husband headed off in the car for the three-and-a-half hour trip to where my parents live in the mountains.  My son was upbeat and my husband was ready to address some technical issues they’d been having that are just his sort of specialty at fixing.

They arrived late lunch and had Mimi’s vegetable soup before my husband started in on their punch list of electronic and computer-based work items.   My husband headed out late afternoon and has just arrived home as I started writing this post.

My mother and I have been texting back and forth, making sure we had everything covered, such as what time is bedtime and don’t forget to ensure he actually brushes his teeth because he’s started trying to get away with things lately that he doesn’t prefer doing.

Tomorrow they’re going zip lining.   My mother has a week’s worth of activities packed into the four days he’ll be there before they drive halfway back, meeting in the middle to hand him off.   I think he’s going to have a good time.  I’m looking forward to hearing all about it when he gets home.

The Big Boy Update:  My son loves listening to the Movie Music station in the car.   Today on the way to the mountains the theme for Edward Scissorhands came on.   He read the title and asked his father what the movie was about.   After my husband explained, my son said, “I bet Edward Scissorhands always does scissors when he plays Rock, Paper, Scissors.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I was playing the daily videos from Sammy, our dog trainer to my daughter this evening.   Sammy describes what’s happening because she knows my daughter can’t see the videos.   The dogs were at the edge of the water at a local lake.   The terrain was tricky with rocks and a steep edge of dirt and rock wall about where the trees were.   Sammy described what the dogs were doing, saying they were going to try and get up onto the cliff as her dog, Abe, loves to play King of the Mountain.   My daughter got suddenly upset sating, “What!? A cliff?”  I had to explain, using objects around us, what Sammy meant when she said “cliff” wasn’t an actual cliff you could fall off of.  My daughter, after understanding the dogs hadn’t been in danger, said, “okay, because I was about to tell Sammy she could never take care of Matisse again."

The Only One

We went to the pool today.   There were a decent number of people there including some children that were friends of my son and daughter.   I was going back to the car to get the second of two new floats we’d gotten at Target when I came in to hear a commotion going on, surrounding my daughter.

She was very much wanting to be on the new watermelon float we’d gotten but there was competition  from some of the boys.   My son was yelling, “That’s Reese’s float.  She needs it to be SAFE!”   Then one of the other boys admonished two other children saying both loudly and repeatedly with emphasis, “yeah, she’s BLIND!”

I hate hearing this.   We never, ever try to make my daughter feel anything less than capable.   We don’t point out how she’s different in a, “she can’t do something” kind of way.   And yet here were these children, clearly standing up for her, but doing so in a demeaning way.   There were two other parents from my son’s school and we all exchanged frustrating words about how the exchange went down.

The boys didn’t mean anything by it.   They were trying to help, especially since my daughter is still not sure she wants to get her eye wet after surgery.   What I was worried about wasn’t her eye, I was worried about her self-esteem.  

My friends and I sat back and watched to see what happened next.   It wasn’t what we expected.  I looked over to see my daughter with a twelve-year-old girl, floating on her super max-sized unicorn float.   They were talking together.   They seemed to be calmly having a good time.  

This continued.   They were together in the pool, on and off the float, for the next hour.   When they got out they came over to our seats, my daughter being skillfully led by the girl.   My daughter introduced her as Gadden—the only one—and could she have a towel.

What she meant was that Gadden was the only one with her name.   She’d searched the Internet and the only reference to her was, well, her.   Her name was unique.   And that’s saying a lot these days.  We shared snacks and got to know each other.   Gadden was interested in my daughter’s vision and asked questions.  Her questions were direct and specific.   They were the kind of questions my daughter feels uncomfortable about because her blindness isn’t a positive feature to her.   It’s not fun. It’s not something she’s proud about.

But she didn’t mind like she normally did, talking about Cane Quest, sighted guide dogs and what she could and couldn’t see.   Gadden stood up to get something and saw my daughter’s cane and was excited because she’d been wanting to see if she could use one.   She followed two people on YouTube, one who was blind and one who wasn’t.   The blind person had taught the sighted person a lot about sighted guide, how to use a cane and had had him try to navigate using a cane.

Gadden wanted to try it herself.   And here’s the interesting thing: she knew more about my daughter’s cane than I did.   She knew the name for specifics of Sighted Guide that I hadn’t even heard of.   It’s tricky using a cane and having your eyes closed, trusting only on the information you glean from the cane to keep you safe.

Gadden’s step-father told me as the children were playing that she loved to marshal smaller children. She had that special quality that made young children gravitate towards her, wanting her to spend time with them.   My daughter and son told me before we left the pool (as Gadden helped us get our two new floats wedged into the car) that they wanted to have her over for a sleepover this coming weekend.  

Gadden and I exchanged phone numbers.   I messaged her later, telling her my daughter told me something I’ve never heard her say before: “I don’t even mind when she asks me about being blind.” And that, folks, is a first.   I told Gadden we’d love to have her over any time.

The Big Boy Update:  My son finished dinner while he and his sister were listening to short stories on Amazon Story Time.   He put up his dishes, went to the freezer and got a small caramel ice cream cone.  He finished it a few minutes later.  Not three minutes after that he turned to us and said, “can I have dessert?”  We told him he’d just finished dessert.  “Oh yeah,” he said.   Five minutes after that I was getting some ice cream out of the freezer for myself and my son asked again, “can I have dessert?”  We told him he’d already had dessert.  He was confused.  I held up the box of cones and he said, “Oh yeah.”  He was so focused on the stories he really had no recollection of eating dessert.   He is so his father’s son when it comes to singleminded focusing.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter made a Father’s Day card in braille and filled up a small wooden box with all sorts of fun little things that small children like but aren’t overly exciting to an adult.   She and her friend, Aditi, had fun decorating the boxes and deciding what to put in them.   Both fathers liked their presents, I hear.

The First Mummy

I love ancient Egyptian history.   The pyramids, mummies, Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel, hieroglyphics, the Book of the Dead, you name it, I find it fascinating.  I’m not sure exactly what triggered my obsession with Egyptian antiquity.   It could have been a combination of things, but I remember two things specifically.

When I was quite young my parents went with a group of college students for a summer-long study abroad program.   My parents were two of the instructors on the trip.   It is probably to this day the most memorable trip I’ve ever been on.   Everything seemed so different in England, where we spent the majority of the summer.

I remember how ice cream tasted different and there were licorice AllSorts, a candy I developed a lifelong love of.   The bacon and eggs tasted different but somehow the same.   The churches were huge and old.   Everything seemed old in comparison to where I lived.  Hundreds of years old and carved out of stone.

That summer we went to a lot of museums.   We saw a lot of exhibits, mostly forgotten by me.   One thing I remember clearly was a mummy, or rather a naturally mummified body of a pre-dynastic Egyptian man.   He was curled up in the fetal position, lying in sand with pottery around him.  He was over five-thousand years old and yet you cold still see wispy hair on his head.

I was in awe as I looked at the naturally mummified body.   When we returned home my parents found a book on ancient Egypt and gave it to me.   The section on mummies wasn’t long, but I read it over and over, referring back to it many times over the following years.

When I went to college I went on my own study abroad program, this time to Egypt.   I saw many mummies, went in the Great Pyramid of Giza, descended the steps into Tutankhamen’s tomb, explored the temples at Abu Simbel, walked up the grand incline into Hatshepsut’s temple, rode on a boat down the Nile, and that’s just the highlights.   It was truly a trip to remember.

I still love to watch documentaries on ancient Egypt.  I found several series on Amazon Prime a few weeks ago and have been watching them at night.  In one show the other night, the host (an archaeologist I’ve seen in many shows and feel I know her well) went to London, to look at an exhibit of a pre-dynastic mummy, saying what I’ve heard many times before: that perhaps that by seeing bodies desiccated and preserved naturally by the sands in Egypt, the Egyptians got the notion to try and replicate the process, ultimately culminating in the mummification process that preserved so many Egyptians over the millennia.

As I watched the show, I looked at the mummy I had seen forty years before, looking just as it had when I was in England as a child.  The thing that may have started my lifelong obsession with Egypt.

The Big Boy Update:  My daughter has a friend over for a sleepover today.  My son desperately wants to be with them and do everything they’re doing—including putting his sleeping bag and pillow in the bonus room so he can camp out with them.   The girls don’t want anything to do with him.   He is sad.   He told me, “I just want to be included.”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and her VI friend, Aditi, have coordinated their own sleepover, unbeknownst to her mother and me.   Fortunately we were able to have today work out.   Aditi goes to India for a month on Tuesday and then we’re gone for a good while when they return.   The next time they’ll have to get together won’t be until August.

It Feels Like Half Summer

I can’t figure out what it feels like here.  It sort of feels like summer because my son’s first day of summer break was today.   But my daughter still has two weeks of school to go before she completes first grade to become a rising second grader.  

Summer for my son is the typical three months.  My daughter, in contrast, has only one month off between finishing one grade and starting the next.   We have to pack in any summer vacations during the month of July.

And a packed July we have.   We’re on a ten-day sailing trip starting right after the Fourth of July.  We return and have a one day turnaround to unpack, wash everything and repack before heading to a family reunion for a week.  

We return from that trip and my daughter goes back to school two days later.  In August we’re trying to figure out what to do with my son.   He has the whole month and not a lot to do.   So if you want to have him visit you for a few days, let me know.

The Big Boy Update:  The screen time blow up last night turned into a calm conversation this morning.   My son was pretty positive about it and contributed a lot to the discussion.  We have revamped the whole system to be less argument prone and more restrictive while giving him more chances to earn screen time.   He had some good suggestions.  We’ll see if he decided to do any of the extra work.  So far today, he’d rather be bored, instead of doing any of the optional items.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles;  My daughter and her VI friend, Aditi, are having a sleepover tomorrow night.   Where?  We don’t know.   They have been so adamant this was happening that one of their VI teachers emailed me about it.   I texted Aditi’s mother who laughed and said she’d been avoiding the topic, thinking it might go away.   They have some commitments and don’t know if they can make it work.   But if they can swing it, it looks like our little planner daughters will indeed be having a sleepover here tomorrow night.

Framing the Picture

My daughter did some painting what I think must have been two summers ago now with her sitter.   Her sitter, who has now just graduated from college, a fact I can’t get my head around because I could have sworn she just finished her second year.   So much so that I asked her if perhaps she got her degree in three years instead of four.   But no, she went to college a full four years back, which goes to show you that thing about time passing more quickly as you get older is true.  

When my daughter and Morgan made the paintings, they did them right.  It was on real canvas and used what I’m going to call, “real paints”.   The designs were abstract and yet they had some interesting style to them.   This was not surprising, considering Morgan was an artist already, well before she went off to get a degree in design.

My husband decided to frame one of the paintings, which has been hanging in the entrance to our bedroom ever since.   My son has done a decent bit of art work at school, mostly what I’d call, “refrigerator art” you get from a child.   Then, just before school was over this year, my son brought home a piece with a white dove on some paper in black with a hard to define quality about it.   It was interesting visually.   My son went on to tell us how the piece was made, which included painting, crinkling the paper, painting over again, deciding it wasn’t what he was aiming for and then adding more layers.

He didn’t particularly like the piece but mostly I think this was because it wasn’t what he was picturing in his mind.   My husband and I liked it better than anything he’d brought home before.   My husband said to me, “I think we should frame it and put it up beside his sister’s painting.”  I agreed and today my husband went to pick up the piece from the frame shop.

When my son got home we had an unveiling.  He didn’t know what to think.   I don’t think he though his work was good enough to frame, but you could tell he was very happy about it.  I can see it from the bed where I’m sitting, typing this post.  The framing brings out the imagery even more.   I’m glad my husband thought to frame it.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son saw his integrative therapist today.   She’s never seen him while he’s had the Adderall active so we had him take one of the pills today.   We haven’t seen him on it for that matter either.   It was not a good day, to say the least.   He might be more focused at school for work-purposes, but he’s highly emotional and easily disregulated.   I’m glad it’s there and available to help with school, but I’m also glad it’s short-acting and we don’t need to use it otherwise.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  There was some door slamming upstairs.   We called up and asked that they please not bang the door.   My daughter said, “it’s okay, that was an accident.  Madison just shut the door on my face.”  Normally she’d be very upset over this but she didn’t seem to be bothered by it at all.   I didn’t tell her she has a red scuff right between her eyes where the door hit her when I saw her later.

The Passing of the Arrowheads

My son is, as of the end of the last day of school today, is a rising “Third Year” in his class.  This is traditionally known as “Third Grade” in non-Montessori terms.   He will be one of the leaders in his class next year with the First and Second Year students looking up to him.   He is very proud of this new responsibility and in a way, can’t wait for school to start in the fall.

A tradition in his class is the passing of the arrowheads.   Each arrowhead has a special meaning and is held by each of the third years.   When the year ends and the students graduate on to another classroom, they pass on their arrowhead to a rising third year on the last day of school.   There were eight third years this year but next year there will only be four so my son received two arrowheads.   I asked him if that meant he had twice the responsibilities as a class leader?  He gave us a long explanation of things that didn’t really answer the question other than giving us a good feel of how excited he is.

The half-day at school was not without incident though.   As we drove to the end of year party at a local park after noon pickup, my son told us, "A lot of people cried.  It was a sad day because some friends were leaving. But I held my own.  What I did was I just thought of the people that are going to upper elementary and how I’ll still see them next year.”   He went on to explain which people cried the most.

I thought that was the end of it until we got in the car to go home after the park.   Suddenly my son realized all the people he wouldn’t be seeing in the future.   There were three students who were leaving to go to another school.   One of his teachers is changing jobs to work at a school closer to where she lives due to a long commute and our Head of School is retiring.   He started crying and was very upset, thinking how he might never see some of these friends he’s known for years, again.   We talked about play dates and birthday parties and that there was no reason he couldn’t see his friends again.   He was pretty broken up.  He’s a sweet little guy.

Hi-Float Update:  Remember that balloon I inflated five days ago?  A latex balloon which typically has a 12-16 hour float time?   It’s still floating and from the looks of it it’s going to stay up for another day or two.   I was skeptical about the product when I ordered it.  I have gone from a skeptic to a fan.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got angry this afternoon, ran up and slammed the door to their room.   We’ve been planning on a consequence for this type of behavior (that both he and his sister do from time to time) because it’s unsafe.   Someone could get caught in the slamming, or the dog could.   We’re going to start removing the door from it’s hinges for a few days when they do this.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has become an expert at Dungeons & Dragons on Alexa.   She knows all the shortcuts, upgrades and is getting pretty good at strategy too.   It reminds me of when I played as a youth—only without pencil and paper.

Just Remember, You Asked For This

I’ve been mulling over something for a week now.   I’ve been messaging a friend back and forth, getting his advice since he’s a professional in this area.   It would have been easy to not do it, but sometimes you’ve got to go with a gut feeling.

This morning I looked up what time the store my friend had suffused would open.   It didn’t open until noon, which I though was unusual, until I remembered it was a music store and probably those musicians all worked late nights which meant opening later in the day was better for business hours.

The store I went to sold drums.   Just drums.   I didn’t know there was such a thing as a store that sold only drums and not other music instruments—but there was.   The store was big.   There were more drums and cymbals everywhere.  

I asked the man who opened the store for help, saying I wanted to get a drum set for my children.   And because I’m not particularly shy, I told him I knew zero about drums.   There were, I knew, drums and "cymbal thingies" in a set, but that’s all I really knew.   He laughed at me, which was what I was going for, believing it is better to intentionally look ignorant than accidentally.

He showed me the various sets, what the names of the different components were, what they had for sale new and used, what he though would work well for my seven- and eight-year-old children that would also grow with them and not wear out in a year.   I wasn’t going for a children’s toy set.   I wanted real drums, hence the specialty store.  

As we talked the other two men who had come in were giving me advice too.   We collectively decided on a set and then I picked the cherry red over the muted blue set.   Would it fit in my car?  Sure, he said I cold probably get two sets in the car given how they break down and stack.   They did delivery and installation for fifty dollars, but he said he’d show me and I could easily do it myself.

I took pictures, which I’m glad I did because some of the heights and relative positions I would have gotten wrong when I set it up at home.  It’s all set up now, waiting for my children to get home.   Will it be used a lot?  Will the children and their friends want to have a band?  We set the keyboard of mine circa 1990 beside it and moved the tall table to another room, dedicating it the new “Game Table” for all the monopoly and other games we’ve been playing.   We have an electric guitar Uncle Eric gave my daughter some time back.   All we need is a band name now, right?

I sent a picture to my friend who helped me with all the advice.   He replied, “nice looking set.  When they won’t stop playing it and you’re tired of the loud noise, just remember, you asked for this.”  He’s promised to come over to give my children a lesson soon.   I tried playing them myself.   I’m going to need a lot more than a single lesson.   Regardless of my ineptitude at playing the drums, they’re so much fun to play.



The Big Boy Tiny Girl D&D Update:  My children found a Dungeons and Dragons game on Alexa recently.   It follows how real D&D is played based on my memories from when I was younger.  They sit at the bar in the kitchen and pay rapt attention to which cardinal directions they can move, what their options are for attacking or defending against mobs and try to get further each time they play.   Alexa tells them what roll they need to get on the dice in order to be successful for each given action.   She uses the same dice used in D&D including dice with four, six, ten, twelve and twenty sides.   I went downstairs last night to the big bowl containing my dice collection that resides on our bar, got one of each type of die and brought them up for the children to see (or feel).   They were rolling the dice along with Alexa this morning while they played and ate breakfast.

Family Ties

When I was young I had a best friend, who, not unlike many children’s childhood best friends, lived across the street from me.   Time, when you’re young, moves at an entirely different rate.   Jenny was four years younger then me and when they moved away in 1980, she would have been six-years-old.   Or at least that’s my memory of the time they lived across from us.   That meant Jenny and I had six years together, although it felt like so much longer than that. 

Jenny and I did everything together.   I remember her losing her tooth while we were swinging in our hammock in the front yard.   She didn’t realize it was the tooth at the time and dropped the hard, white thing she thought was an anomalous part of the Oreo she had been eating on the ground, under the hammock.   When we realized what it was sometime later, an exhaustive search ensued, but we never found the tooth.  

That was only one of many memories I have of the time Jenny and I spent together.   Their family moved three hours away in 1980.   We got together several times each year, resuming our friendship where we had left off, even though time was passing and we were getting older. 

Our families have stayed in touch through the years.  Jenny and I both have two children now and live states apart.   I hear about things in their lives from time to time through my mother.   Joan, Jenny’s mother, sent my daughter a bag of pennies that have been taken to many trips to Detroit and deposited in the fountain in at the mall.   We have Jenny’s children’s tricycle, big wheel worn out and replaced and yet still used, despite the fact that my children are far too old to use it.   My daughter doesn’t seem to mind that her knees are in the way as she pedals around the house, filling the back compartment up with ice, declaring she’s an ice truck and could she have some ice cream to tote around so she could be an Ice Cream Truck.  

I got in the mail this week a copy of Southern Living magazine with a note to read the article titled, “Family Ties”.   The article was about John and Joan’s home in Charleston.   The article featured pictures of their home and the design process Jenny, an interior designer, and their architect had gone through build their home.

I was smiling as I read the article, remembering John and Joan and their passions for antique furniture.   Before they had even begun building their house Jenny had found the wallpaper for the dining room.   A stunning mural that would end up setting the color pallet for the entire home.   Their home is beautiful, but my favorite part was the picture of John, Joan and Jenny at the end of the article.   Time has past and we’ve all grown older, but the look just the same to me in my heart.   

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a doctor’s appointment today.   I had sent an email to school saying he’d be late.   The appointment went quickly but as we got in the car to head to school my son said, “uh on, mom, today is a field trip.”   His class had left thirty minutes before on the last field trip of the year before school is out on Wednesday.   Or so I though.   I called the school, planning to ask if I could drive him to the field trip location to drop him off with his class when I found out that due to the heavy rains, they were only going to the second half of the field trip to the lemur center after lunch.   Close call for a calendar fail on our part.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter informed me yesterday, "I think whipped cream would go better on bacon. Don’t you think?"

Retirement Celebration

Our head of school retires in less than a month, with the last week of school for the year this coming week.   Today we had a celebration for her, inviting all families, past and present to the event.   There was a surprise flash mob at the start of the presentations.

My mother-in-law and I have been practicing.   I’m not much of a dancer, but it was fun and short at two minutes long and she and I decided we didn’t care how foolish we looked, we were dancing.  My husband and father-in-law got videos of the event from two different angles.   When the music started, our choreographer turned to my mother-in-law and me and asked why everyone was backing up?   Not to worry, we said, we’d stay up front with her.

It was fun, we didn’t mess up too much and our head of school loved it and was touched at the same time.   My son joined in too, which I’m ever so proud of him for doing.   The rain held off for the most part and the event was a both fun and successful.  

I got to see many people, both students and parents, that are no longer at the school.   We’ll miss Dominique as she leaves for retirement.   She is planning to get an Airstream with her husband, to travel around the country with their Harley Davidson motorcycles in tow behind.

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a difficult time being social with other children at school for a good while.   I watched him interact with friends today and was impressed how calmly assured he was and how easily and well he played with the other students at the event.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was mostly interested in the Italian ice at the event today.   She had five servings.   She wanted more, telling us, “the reason I’m eating su much is I’m donating everything in my stomach to people who are hungry and poor."

Hi Float

This is one of those posts that's unrelated to any other post I’ve written before.  It’s what you might call a "one-off".   Sort of like an X-Files episode which has nothing to do with the alien conspiracy mytharc but is instead about some strange sludge-based life form that’s killing people by sucking out their adrenal glands.   Did I lose you there?  Did I go overboard with esoteric sci-fi references?

Okay, let’t start from the top.   This post is about latex balloon helium float times.   Typically a helium inflated balloon will last until the next morning (at most) before enough helium has permeated out and the balloon sinks to the floor, a sad version of its former buoyant self.

I went online to buy some bulk balloons in white and blue for the open houses we host when I noticed a product called Hi Float.   It boasted extending float times by five-fold.   It wasn’t expensive and came in a small bottle so I added it to my order.

Yesterday, when my order from BalloonsFast.com arrived, I did a test: I inflated two balloons to the same size, one with Hi Float and one without.   The Hi Float is a clear liquid plastic very much like hair gel in consistency.   You squirt it into the un-inflated balloon, squish it all around coating the inside and then inflate as normal.   When complete, it looks just like a regularly inflated balloon.

Last night both balloons were the same size.   This afternoon it’s clear which one has the Hi Float.   Test complete—it works as described.  My son is in the above image.   He was in no way interested in the balloons.   He had climbed up on the counter so that he could eat something while technically remaining in the kitchen so that he could watch a YouTube video about fifty cool things to know about the Avengers.

The Big Boy Update:  My son, husband and father-in-law are going to a baseball game this evening.   They’re about to leave shortly.   I think they’ll have a good time together.  The ladies have our own evening planned out.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  This morning Aunt Margaret picked up my daughter to take her to get a pedicure.   She came back several hours later after not only getting a pedicure, but a manicure and a fun lunch out with Uncle Jonathan.   Plus, there was time at their house playing with Peek-a-boo, their cat.   My daughter has each hand and foot in five different colors.   Her little nails look like jelly beans with the color choices.   My daughter had SO much fun.   She wants to get back together with Margaret soon, soon, soon.

What Am I Suppose To Be Doing?

My daughter and mother have what would appear to be a regular, standing call happening afternoons during the time my daughter is riding home in the cab.   There are other students in the car with my daughter, but she doesn’t seem dissuaded from talking to or singing at, Mimi wile things happen around her.

Sometimes my daughter gets distracted.   For instance, today she told Mimi to hold on, she had to help someone.   And while my daughter us having a good time regaling Mimi with her songs, stories and instructions, it can be sometimes hard for Mimi to figure out what’s going on due to noice.

Today, when my mother had tried multiple times but couldn’t understand what my daughter was saying.   She said, “can you tell me again what I’m suppose to be doing?”   My daughter replied an almost indignant tone, “you’re suppose to be listening!”

My mother couldn’t help it, she laughed.   And once she started laughing, she couldn’t stop laughing. After a bit my daughter decided whatever it was she’d said had been pretty funny so she started laughing too.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and daughter had a sitter over before, during and after my son’s screen time window for the school evening.   I wondered if he was going to try and work the system with Blake.   Aside from making sure Blake knew he needed to be home and ready to start his screen time at spot on six-thirty, he did just what he should have done, including stopping screen time without arguing at the end of the hour.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Our dog went off to two weeks of a board and train program.   My daughter, who is very unhappy about the dob being gone, projected her feelings on her good friend and next door neighbor, Madison, as she told my mother, “I just earlier today when she had a conversation about her, “I don’t know how Madison is going to make it.   She’s going to have to go two weeks without seeing Matisse."

Two Adults Help

I just lost my temper at my daughter.   I’ve done this several times lately with the same thematic message.   Typically when it happens we’re trying to do something like get drops in, brush her hair or get some clothes on in a timely fashion.   My daughter can do many things by herself, but some things she needs assistance with.

She’s had some experience with drops, although they’re expensive and she’s prone to missing so we dp those ourselves.   She’s very helpful, holding her eye open, unless she doesn’t want to do drops at that point.

She can dress herself easily.   She also brushes her hair and puts it in a pony tail all on her own.   She can do a lot of things without help but we run into a problem that almost all children seem to have—zero sense of time.  

She would happily do drops at some point in the future.   She will get dressed for school or bed, but later, not right now.   So we get time crunched and my husband and I both find ourselves surrounding this small human, making her do things she doesn’t want to do because they have to be done for either he medical health, so that she can attend school without being truant or other reason that is reasonable from an adult’s standpoint while being cruel and unusual punishment from a child’s point of view.

So the thing I’ve been losing my temper about is why my daughter dawdles, ignores, tries to get away and flat out defies us sometimes when things need to get done.   In order to make, say, carpool pickup in the morning both my husband and I have to jump in and help her—all the while as she’s cranky about it.

The temper losing I did today was saying how it shouldn’t take two adults help when she is capable of doing it all by herself.   I was’t particularly nice about it either because I said, “when you want to do things with us, keep in mind that instead of using our time to get our work done, we’re using it to help you because you’re refusing to do it on your own.”

I was hoping that would sink in to her—she loves spending time with either of us.   She must have been equally annoyed with my because she said, “you never want to do anything with my anyways.”   I have to give it to her, that was a pretty good low blow.

I told her it hurt me to hear her say that.   I’d spent fifteen hours working on the Monopoly modification.   I was sad because maybe she didn’t see that as meaningful time with her, but it was, I hoped, a way to make the game more fun for her.    

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I have been going out to get breakfast at McDonalds some mornings lately.   While we’re in the card I ask him what he wants to eat when we get there so I can be ready to order.   This morning he though about it and told me, “I’m a B-man.”   He further explained, “B for biscuit, B for butter, B for bacon and B for breakfast.”   I knew exactly what he wanted for.breakfast after that: a bacon biscuit and a butter biscuit,

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   I got a new comforter for our master bed yesterday.   After school I had my daughter come into the room to lie on the bed so she could tip her head back for drops.   She had her eyes patched over so she couldn’t see anything at all.   She sat on the bed, leaning back and putting her hands down.   She had literally be on the bed for three seconds when she said, “Mom, did you get a new comforter?"

Call Me Maybe

My daughter went to school this morning wearing two large blue and silver shields over her eyes.   The pair of shields had been combined together with some matching blue cord I found in the craft room.   Additional cord went over her ears and behind her head, tying in a bow at just enough tension to keep them up and in place, doing the job of protecting her eyes.

Both her carpool driver and her teachers said they would ensure no one teased or picked on her about the shields.   My daughter had come over with a rather serious case of anxiety over this, saying the other children in her cab played tricks on her a lot of the time and they would tease her.   She was less concerned about her class mates as they have all been friends for two years now and their teacher has set a good example on both kindness and understanding of others, including how we each are different.

So her first day back was a good one.   She even came over and whispered to me while we were talking to the neighbors outside, “I just opened my eye.”   I can’t really say how I felt.   Unsurprised internally but excited and conspiratorial with my daughter, perhaps.   She was happy she’d opened the eye up so soon.

Did she want to talk about what she could see?  No.  Ah, of course not.   We’ll get to that information maybe tomorrow or the next day.

The Big Boy Update:  My son’s end of year CDs came home today.   Each student picks their favorite song of the year.   My son, hot off the breakdancing lesson from yesterday came home and had Alexa playing all the songs for him.   Because why do we need CDs of the music when my son doesn’t even know what a CD player looks like?   Alexa could play the songs for him though.   I had to stop him dancing to the seventh song in a row and send him up to his bunk.   I was going to send him up a song earlier but when he said, “Alexa, play ‘Call Me Maybe’”  I had to jump in and dance beside him to our reflections in the bathroom mirror.    What song did my son select for the end of tear classroom collection?   A Mad Russian’s Christmas by Trans-Siberian Orchestra.    You’ve probably heard this instrumental song before.  If you’ve ever seen the Tesla Model X Christmas Easter egg demo, it’s set to the first part of this song.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  How much different is the vision my daughter had before Monday’s surgery and now with a fully closed eye?   We know the latter is zero vision.   The former doesn’t seem to be much more than that.   She’s navigating around like she can see, only she doesn’t have the eye open, which means we’ve been underestimating her skills and overestimating her vision.   Example: she gets home and says, “I’m going to go over to Madison’s”.  She’s not taking a cane and she has to go without touching things all the time.   There are open stretches of just grass or concrete. Turn wrong or not protect yourself and you could run into a basketball goal post or a knee wall or step.   She does this all the time now, including today when I knew she couldn’t see anything.

Rapid Recovery

My daughter recovered well after surgery yesterday.   Eye surgery isn’t like, for the lack of a better term, “body surgery”.  I remember the first time she had eye surgery.   My husband and I thought she would probably be admitted overnight to the hospital or something.   We expected some convalescence for a number of days post-op and a heightened need for both medical and personal attention involving things including but not limited to constant bedside attention, spoon feeding meals of chicken soup and assisting in liquid consumption via a straw held up to my daughters lips.

I’m exaggerating, but it’s not far off.   We were confused the first time my daughter had eye surgery and was being discharged two hours later with nothing more than a, “we’ll see you tomorrow to remove the bandages”.   We didn’t know what to do with my daughter.   She was fine.   We were not. It would have been easier for us to have her groggy, calm, disinterested in much at all because she needed to recover from the big surgery.   What we got that first surgery back in December of 2015 was a normal, four-year-old child that just wanted to play, despite the patch over her eye.

Now we know better.   We’re experienced.   We’ve done this thing before.   We know that as soon as my daughter wakes up she’s going to want a popsicle.   After the first popsicle she’s going to want a second popsicle.   She will probably want a third popsicle, but don’t let her have one because in about ten minutes she’s going to be in a wheel chair being escorted out to your car and once you get in the car, she’s going to suddenly tell you she’s freezing and you’re going to have to blast the heat at max until she warms up.    And that’s what happens with only two popsicles.

I’m telling you all this because I have a picture to show you.   My daughter had fairly major eye surgery yesterday.   It is nearly the same surgery she had back in December of 2015 on her right eye.   Back then we didn’t know what to do with our child after surgery.   Today, it’s a different story.   Here’s my daughter three hours after being in the operating room:



The Big Boy Update:  My son had a break dancing lesson after school today that was a school auction item my husband got for him.   He had a blast.   He’s really good.   When I picked him up, Ben, George and he were practicing all the moves.   He had it down.   He did not do the one where you stand on your head and spin around.   I was relieved.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter may well have more skills navigating blind than we suspect. Either that or she can see less than we think she can.   With a patch over her eye yesterday blocking all vision, she asked if she could go get ice down the hall in the hotel.   She took the ice bucket and Blueberry (her cane) and left the hotel room alone.   My husband was going to give her four minutes and then check on her.   When he went to go out and see how she was doing, he found her back at the door, ice bucket full, about to knock to be let back in.

Left Eye Vitrectomy

My daughter and husband are in Detroit for surgery on her left eye today.   The surgery is over and everything went well.   My husband recorded the post-op discussion he had with Dr. Trese, which is good, because neither he nor I would have been able to remember all the specifics of what he said.  It gets a little technical, but I’ll detail all the things he said.   For reference, before I start, here’s a diagram of the eye:



Dr. Trese performed a vitrectomy which is removing the jelly-like substance in the large part of the eye, pictured above as "vitreous body".   He made two small incisions in the conjunctivia for his instruments and removed the vitreous via those same two incisions.  By making small incisions and not dissecting the conjunctiva, her eye will be better prepared for the next procedure in which a pressure reducing valve will be implanted on the surface of her eye.

The front of my daughter’s lens capsule was stuck to the back of her iris, which is already badly scarred and stuck open from the original infection that caused the cascade of events which ultimately led to her permanent loss of vision.  Her vitreous had also seeped into the lens capsule area.  Her lens  capsule is open as well as empty due to the removal of her lens some time back.  A normal lens capsule is closed and contains the lens.   In her case, her lens became clouded, becoming a cataract, and she was unable to see as a result.  She had her lens removed and as such, there are large openings  in the parts of the lens capsule that remains.  Dr. Trese was able to remove the extra vitreous that was in the lens space in the procedure today.

There is some dark colored material in the lens area called "pigment epithelial” that isn’t in a normal eye. He was able to trim back a bit of the lens capsule but he chose not to peel more of the lens capsule than necessary because it would liberate a lot of those pigment cells which would ultimately settle in her eye and would block the trabecular meshwork, making her glaucoma worse.

After removing the vitreous he added a fluid to the eye that will circulate (or permeate out) just like the normal aqueous fluid the eye naturally produces.   Over time, the fluid Dr. Trese added will be replaced by the aqueous fluid my daughter’s eye produces naturally.

The pressure in her left eye had been a high forty when they started the procedure.   They left it at a normal pressure at the completion of the surgery and also checked her right eye (which only has a small amount of light perception).   The pressure in her right eye is fortunately at a normal seventeen.

Dr. Trese didn’t remove 100% of the vitreous even though it has a chance of blocking the pressure reducing device she’ll have added to her eye in the next procedure.  He thinks that won’t happen given how that her vitreous is very mild in viscosity.   He elected not to remove the vitreous along the retinal surface because it is probably adherent to the retina as removing it runs some risk of tearing the retina.   Her retina is damaged from the exudated detachment that was the initial and primary cause of her vision loss when fluid built up behind the retina, between the retina and choroid space.

He said the procedure went very well over all and doesn’t expect her vision to change much as a result.  My daughter has a large opening to see out of.   She has two stitches in her eye which I’m guessing she isn’t going to like the feel of as this was what happened with the cataract surgery, after which she refused to open her eye for five days.   I discussed the possibility of this with her beforehand.   She cried and was unhappy.   We talked about how it was a short-term discomfort and it had to happen if she wanted to be able to keep seeing the leaves in the trees.

Dr. Trese then talked about the future of ophthalmology and recent advances in this area.   His son is an ophthalmologist and had called him recently saying he had read an article Dr. Trese had written some time ago stating the future of ophthalmology is in the sub-retinal space.   Dr. Trese said that’s exactly what my daughter needs.   She needs an intervention in the sub-retinal space to grow appropriate cells.   He said it’s one of the reasons he’s still working and hasn’t retired is his working in regenerative medicine.

He said just this last week they got an enormous piece of information that shows they’re on the right track.   And that’s why keeping my daughter’s pressure down and doing everything we can to keep the vision she has is important.   Dr. Trese thinks if we can keep the pressure in my daughter’s eye at a reasonable level, even though her function isn’t that great because the outer retina isn’t working, if the inner retina continues to work then maybe the tissues in the sub-retinal space can be rebuilt.

There is even the possibility ganglion cells can be rebuilt.   Ganglion cells are important because they’re responsible for taking messages to the brain.   They’re also the cells killed by high pressure.  If we can keep my daughter’s pressure down and the inner retina continues to work then there is a possibility for hope in her future.

It’s a long shot, but it’s a possibility.   Dr. Trese is working on getting funding so that he can develop his regenerative medicine approach and begin trials in the reasonable near future.   We don’t know if it will help my daughter, but Dr. Trese thinks this is just what she needs.   It’s a ways out and a lot of ifs, but it’s a possibility where we had none before.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was in the hall closet this morning, covered up by his weighted blanket, lying on the floor.   He wasn’t sure why he wanted to go there but he was comfortable in the dark for the hour before we had to get up and get ready for school.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and husband went to Chuck E Cheese last night for dinner.   They got a gaming pass card for an hour and could play as many games as they could wedge into that time.  They found a game that dispensed tickets where my husband could consistently get a top score.   So they played it a lot and my daughter came away with a black and purple stuffed dragon with a tactile chest of sequins.  She always has such a fun time with her father in Detroit.