The Ice Cream Truck Cometh

This morning started out what a happy meeting of my best friend's new family dog, Remy.   He's a Golden Doodle they got last night, surprising their children up until the moment they were in sight of the dog.  Matisse and fifteen-week-old Remy had the best time, playing together much like Matisse and Daisy, my brother- and sister-in law's Golden Doodle had played together when we were at our family reunion. 

Everyone had fun watching them, and my daughter enjoyed giving them both treats and petting the amiable Remy.  They left, and things went back to normal here at the house with my son spending his screen time watching YouTube videos about games he plays or would like to play.   He got a bit in trouble for bad language on one of the channels, but he was excused because he was browsing for new things to watch and didn't know the channel he had picked was inappropriate since you don't know if there will be swearing until you get into the video itself. 

My husband went off to a Tesla meetup while my daughter waited for the ice cream truck.   She was obsessed with the potential arrival of the ice cream truck.   She knew it came on Saturday, but it hasn't always happened and the time has varied significantly in the past.   She remained resolute. It was coming, however.   She was so sure she had had her father get some money out and put it in the bowl at the front door.  

For the next bit, my daughter would say she heard the ice cream truck, go outside and then find it wasn't there.   This went on for a while until my husband left and told me as he was driving off, "the children are going over to Maddie, Ellie, Gigi and Juju's house to see puppy again."   I grabbed my shoes, the dog's e-collar and controller, and she and I headed out to catch up with my son and daughter. 

Their puppy was tired.   Remy played a little, but he'd had a long night and big first day, and he just wanted to fall asleep, much to the disappointment of our dog.   My daughter was remaining close to their front door, convinced the ice cream truck was going to arrive momentarily.   

I told everyone she was certain, but the rest of us were not, that the ice cream truck was a guarantee and time was a total unknown.   My daughter went outside to wait, saying she thought she might have heard it. 

Not two minutes later she came back in and said the ice cream truck was coming.   I didn't believe her.   She'd hopefully heard it already several times today.   I went out to confirm it was another false alarm when, surprisingly, I heard the ice cream truck. 

Much mayhem ensued in which I thought my children were going back to our house but they weren't.  I lost the dog and then spied her barking, happily, several houses away at a dog inside a fence.   She didn't come when I called her so I used the e-collar (something I don't have to often do).   She came running towards me and we went home. 

My children found me later, after eating ice cream.   Someone paid for it.   I think my son got on his scooter and ran in to get the money.   They said they were sorry I had missed the ice cream truck.   To them, as children, the ice cream truck is something of a magical experience.   It's just ice cream to me.

The Big Boy Update:  My son wasn't that interested in meeting the puppy today.   He likes our dog and other dogs, but he doesn't love dogs like my daughter does.   This morning he was more interested in the children than the dogs.  He loves our dog, but he doesn't want to be around her and do things with her like my daughter does. 

The TIny Girl Chronicles:  When my daughter arrived back at our house from getting ice cream, I could tell what she selected.   She had ice cream sandwich all over her hands and her face and glasses hadn't been spared.   We had to wash her face completely and her hands up above the wrists.   She didn't mind—she had gotten ice cream from the Ice Cream Truck.

Five Below

Some years ago when we had gone to New Jersey to visit my brother- and sister-in-law and their children they talked about a store called Five Below.   I think the store came up because we had mentioned the dollar store and my undying love for shopping there.

Had we heard of it?  We hadn't and when we found out the store had a similar model of low price-point items, everything costing five dollars or below, well, as you can imagine, I needed to go check it out as soon as possible.  

We went and I shopped.  Everyone shopped.   The children got some things to entertain themselves while we were on vacation.   Or, and I might possibly be remembering this wrong, I bought them things I thought would entertain them because the children were too young to effectively shop for themselves.

Not two weeks after returning home, I was at a shopping center I went to from time to time and noticed a, "Coming Soon: Five Below" banner.   Once that store opened, I frequented it, most notably during the holiday season for stocking stuffers.  

The children like the store because as a reward for good behavior or when they met some goal, they could ask to go to Five Below and pick out any one thing they wanted.    My son made sure to get the maximum value and usually selected something costing five dollars.   For the longest time, my daughter only wanted the ten pieces of candy for one dollar as her reward.

A few weeks ago I noticed they were opening a Five Below closer to us.   Today was the grand opening so I messaged Margaret, asking if she'd like to go with me to check it out.   She and I spent a long time going up and down the aisles, not really trying to buy or not buy anything, but looking at everything a store could procure and offer for five dollars and under.

I did get some things.  I even got a 3'x5' rug for five dollars.  I brought home some fun items and some useful things to keep the children (and me) entertained.   I like the total bill amount at Five Below.  It doesn't ever get that high.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was part of The Big Bang at school today.   He wore a black shirt with a picture on the front but when it was time for the third years to do their rendition of The Big Bang, he and the other students turned their shirts wrong-side out.   He wasn't specific as to what happened after that, but he enjoyed being part of the demonstration.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter helped me make a braided tug toy for my best friend's new family dog.   Her children are finding out tonight that they're getting a dog, a golden doodle, and are bringing him home.  We took the neon pink, orange and green felt sheets that stay in the children's bedrooms and are used for tent making and cut a three-inch strip off each color.   She helped me braid the strips into a colorful tug toy.   Our dog wants to play with the sheets of felt the whole time we work because her tug toy is also made from strips cut off those same sheets.    I don't know if we'll get to meet their dog, which they're naming Remy, tonight or tomorrow.   We're all excited to meet him.

Creepy

I've made a decision.   It's time   It's taken me a long enough to get here, and I won't lie that fifty, barreling down on me, is ready to attack me at my birthday in several months and declare, "you're half a century old, don't you think you should know how to put makeup on by now?"

Makeup seems to wax and wane over time with more or less going up and down like skirt lengths used to.   When I was in high school, there was a lot of powder blue eye shadow and rosy cheeks, but I don't remember much else.   The blue eye shadow is all I can pick out in my pictures from that era.

I don't think I wore much more than that, though.   Mascara was a nightmare I thought, and the rest of it just felt gross.   Lately though with my aging and looking older and dowdier, combined with the flamboyant makeup styles currently in fashion, I thought I'd give it another go.

I got some makeup and a lesson.   I tried to put on the makeup, but it takes time.   Mornings with two children are short on time, and I like to sleep, so I wasn't getting much practice in.   This morning I was determined to put the makeup on, for no particular reason other than I'd said I was going to give it a go, even though we were running late.

I had forgotten by now some of the instructions from the lady who had helped me when it came to where the eye shadows should go and how they should be blended, but I thought I got it kind of close.   Maybe it didn't look like she did it, but could it be that bad?

I called out to my son to head to the car, and when he caught up with me, he stopped in his tracks and said, "you look creepy, Mom."   I grabbed a sponge to try and remove some of it, and we got in the car.   I asked him which parts looked creepy.   He said, "I love you, Mom, but you have too much eye makeup on."

At stoplights, I tried to tone things down, and by the time we'd gotten to school, I asked him again what he thought.  He said, "I've watched makeup videos on YouTube, I can show you how."   Then, as he was exiting the car, he said, "just keep wearing the sunglasses."

So while he was at school today I watched some YouTube videos myself and by the time I picked him up at school, I had redone things.   He smiled and told me I looked good.   Which is high praise from an eight-year-old who will tell you exactly what he thinks.   He said he wanted to do my makeup.   I told him he could help me out this weekend.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was serious about the makeup.   I thought my children were brushing their teeth but my son had out the makeup star box Nana had given my daughter and was about to do her over.    I told him he could when they got home from school tomorrow that makeup wasn't best to put on right before you got to bed and got it all over the pillow.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to do her own makeup.   Not being able to see what people look like or remember faces, she wanted to draw pictures mostly on her face as, "makeup".  She put her name on her forehead and squiggled blue and purple all over the sides of her face.   She loved it.

Scheduling

I'm short on time today so I'm going to write about scheduling here and how it's gotten crazy with the start of the school year.   Thankfully we have friends, grandparents, and sitters that can help us.   And we only have two children.   My best friend has four.   I don't have a clue about how she manages their household.

My son had school today.  Drop-off by one parent, check.  Meeting after drop-off that I attended, check.   After school my son had a three-day field trip preparatory meeting my husband attended with him, check.   While he was doing that, I was driving to the next town to pick up my daughter to get her back to our area in time for a five o'clock therapy appointment.   Long drive, wait in the pick-up line, check.

My daughter needed food so I ran through a drive-through because I didn't have anything at the house I thought she'd go for.   French fries and orange juice, check.   She and I ran home for forty-five minutes to get her homework done.   She typed up silly sentences for each of her vocabulary words ("I have only one limb because my other three fell off" was one of her sentences.).

While she did that I got books she needed to return to school repackaged into her backpack, responded to her VI teacher's daily note in the communication book she and I pass back and forth, added a snack in for tomorrow and pulled out completed work that had been sent home.

Homework done, she and I got into the car to head to Dhruti.   She spent the time reading to me to meet the fifteen minutes of reading aloud to a parent she must do every night in order to qualify for, "Fun Friday" which she does not want to miss.   The book her teacher had sent home, The Catawampus Cat, was simple but was written in fully contracted braille.   All the library books are, only the specially prepared books for my daughter come with mid-level contracted braille.  

So reading was frustrating to her, but she tried.   When we got to Dhruti's office I read to her what the book actually said.   She was close in a lot of cases but enough of it was hard to read that she was ready to give up.

I gave my daughter her two braille typed up pages of things she wants to do with Morgan tonight.   Morgan is picking her up from Dhruti and they have two hours to eat dinner and do whatever my daughter wants to do.   She had to hurry with the homework because she's staying out with Morgan until. eight o'clock, her bedtime.

The other half of our family, my husband and son, had finished the field trip meeting and my husband had walked him two doors over to Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Margaret's house (so convenient how close they live).   They were having a special evening with him.

He brought his Nintendo Switch so he could play video games with Uncle Jonathan.   Aunt Margaret had taken orders for Pei Wei and they were going out to dinner together.   My son, a car seat, his switch and also his iPad so he could text message us (a new feature I'll have to write about soon) were all dropped off and my husband headed home.

I got home after leaving my daughter at Dhruti's.   He and I caught up on the events of the day and then I rushed in here to write this.   We're leaving in five minutes to go back to my son's school, one of the reasons we needed both children elsewhere tonight because we have a classroom orientation meeting for parents.

I'm not sure when we're getting dinner.   We have to come back to the house to meet both children who will be arriving at bedtime, 8:00pm, to get them ready for bed and hopefully calmed down enough so they can go to sleep.  

That's today.   Tomorrow is complicated but somewhat less so.  I'm counting this as the children's updates for the day on account of I'm out of time and have to leave for the school meeting now.   My husband and I have flexible schedules with our work.   How do parents do this with inflexible work hours?  How does a single parent do anything at all?   We're fortunate we have all the support and help we do.   I don't know how we'd do it otherwise.

Penance Jar

We have some behaviors we want to improve on in this family.  My husband and I have tried to come up with ways to either encourage good behavior or discourage bad behavior.   My son is easy because he wants screen time.   He wants screen time above all else.   We can use screen time as both a punishment and a reward.

My daughter is a quandary though in that there isn't much to take away.   She doesn't have a single significant thing or multiple small things we can use.   That's not to say we need to bribe our children for appropriate behavior, but it's nice to have options.

My daughter and I came up with a new family challenge the other day.   It came about because my daughter had called her brother doofus or an idiot or some other name.   We've told them name-calling is not ever okay.   We were having to dole out consequences and it didn't seem to be working well at getting them to think about things before they said them.   So my daughter and I came up with a plan.

I sort of orchestrated things and we came up with this solution together.   We would have a "Penance Jar" that would take dollars.   If either of the children called someone a name, a dollar from their banks would go in.   I needed to have some accountability for better behavior too, so we decided if I said a swear word I had to pay penance and put a dollar in myself.

The plan was, at the end of the week, anyone who had zero dollars in the Pennance jar would get to have (or split) the funds.   If no one had zero, the pot would build for the following week.

We had a bit of a problem though: what was their dad going to do to pay penance?   So far, we haven't found anything penance-worthy for him, but we're not giving up.  Surely he has something we can find that he can improve on?

The next morning my daughter came into the bathroom where I was getting ready and asked me, "mom, what are the swear words?"  Here's the thing: my daughter has heard all the swear words a hundred times over—by me—but having to say them calmly, without the emotion behind them, directly to her, took some doing.   But I took a deep breath and told her.   We covered that darn, drat, dang, and heck were not considered swear words in this house (mileage in other families may vary, I said).

At the end of the week, no one had zero and I was at seven, a respectable number knowing me.   Will there be a winner next week?  We shall see.   So far, the Penance Jar is virtual only with no money actually being exchanged.   I've got to find a suitable jar and have them decorate it.   The act of putting a dollar in from their banks will only add to the deterrent I suspect

The Big Boy Update:  My son came inside last night just before bed.   He was mad.  Some boys were biking by that I didn't know well and they'd told him something.   He had said there were these girls and they were making fun of my daughter because she was blind.   My son wanted to go tell his sister.  I had to stop him and have him think through what positive could possibly come from telling her.  I explained that sometimes people say unkind things when they don't understand something.   He was visibly upset but agreed not to tell her.   Then he told me, "Mom, I hope you won't make me put a dollar in the penance jar or take away screens for this, but I want to kill those girls."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves the "pizza" game Dhruti gave us to work on.  Tonight I went upstairs when she was in bed with the light out, reading in the dark.  She gladly put her book down to have me do a longer version of the pizza game.   Not only did we make pizza, we washed the dishes, dried them and put them away—all by doing hand movements with firm pressure on her back.   It relaxed her and she was quite calm by the time I was done.   Her brother, wanting to participate too, asked me if I could make a cake on his back after I was done with her.

Developmental Trauma

My husband and I just got out of a meeting with my daughter's play therapist.  It was a lot, what she told us, both in what's happening with my daughter and what will need to happen to help her going forward.

She told us, "remember when I told you you don't need me anymore?  Well, that's changed.   You need me now.   I couldn't discharge your daughter even if you wanted me to."  Serious sounding, right?   We assured Dhruti we were going nowhere and then we spent the hour understanding what's happening.

My daughter is in deep-seated denial about being blind.   If she were blind from birth, things would be different.   But she wasn't blind at birth and didn't begin to lose her sight until just before she turned four-years-old.  The "trauma" is the blindness.   Secondary to that is the trauma from having to go through medical things again, and again, everyday drops and medication, all the things she has to do and doctors she has to see resulting from her loss of vision.

Dhruti sees classic trauma triggers in my daughter.  My daughter is hyper-vigilant with sounds.  Her body response to an unknown sound is a physiological one.  Her body becomes tense.   She becomes overly alert in an anxious way.   She's afraid to go in her room alone, even in the daytime.   This is new.   We're seeing lots of fear lately.  That and other physiological responses Dhruti is seeing show telltale signs that indicate she's suffering from ongoing trauma.

She avoids talking about her blindness.   She's never liked talking about it.   If a child asks about her cane, I have to explain because my daughter doesn't want to.  My daughter's references to her blindness are almost always covert.   Dhruti says if you pay attention, you'll notice everything she does implies she can see.  She's approaching things mentally as though she can see.   She's hasn't surrendered to the fact that she can no longer see.  Her feeling of loss is profound.   Dhruti says she's in crisis.

She is talking some, but it's few and far between.   She and Dhruti were talking about running into things and hurting yourself, which she does to minor degrees multiple times some days.   My daughter said, "I know what that hurt is like, and I don't want to talk about it."   She sometimes gives you a window into her processing of the blindness though.  She told Dhruti, "Rayan and Keira can do things I no longer can."

My daughter wants control.   She wants to not be treated in any way that indicates she needs help.  Dhruti said she knew my daughter had been pushing back on me.  Some of the reasons why is how I'm talking to her.  Yes, of course as her mother I want to help her, but I used the phrase, "let me help you..." and "do you want me to show you..." which my daughter will immediately balk at.  Dhruti said my daughter is smart enough to know when we're making up reasons to try and sneak help in a lot of times and when she thinks that's the case she turns into snappy, curt, rude even Reese.

This isn't exclusive to adults in my daughter's mind.  She loves her friends, but if those friends at school, out of genuine care and affection offer to help her, she will push them away, saying things like, "there are too many people here.   I don't want you here."   That's not my daughter typically.   But those words can hurt her friends who don't know there's an underlying issue causing her to act that way.

In short, if my daughter senses her disability is the reason any help is offered, she is going to refuse.  What can we do to help her?  Saying, "I found a new way to make a bracelet." will open the door for her to ask how on her own terms.  Working collaboratively with her, saying, "you can do this.  Let me know if you can't."  Try not to fix things, let her come up with the answers.   Never until the last minute do we offer to help.   Sometimes she'll walk away from something while she thinks about it and will come back with an idea or solution, so give her a chance.   Any time she asks for help, help her—this means she's ready to accept help.  Anything that doesn't make her feel like she needs help because she can't see.  Ultimately, and tangentially to this, we will be working to help her be better able to explain to us what she sees in her mind's eye.   That, in and of itself will help her feel grounded and better.

What is life like for my daughter right now?  It sounds grim and dim when Dhruti describes it.   She has trauma triggers all the time.  Her sensitivity is very high.  Her brain stem isn't communicating well with the amygdala in a normal fashion and her amygdala isn't communicating with the prefrontal cortex like that of a child not in a constant trauma state.  She isn't aware of her body responses as much as she would be.   The higher functioning prefrontal cortex that would allow her to reason things out isn't able to do its job because things aren't getting beyond the amygdala.

So we have to help her.   This is where Theraplay comes in.   There are specific things we'll be doing with my daughter that involve touch.   These are things that are games to my daughter.  I think I mentioned the one where we turn her into a pizza.  Yhrough the process of the "games" her brain makes connections she isn't able to normally make in her heightened emotional state.  It calms her as well.  You can see it happening.   Theraplay is grounding, and it will change her cognition, but it will take a little time and work on our part.

We showed Dhruti a video of my daughter reading braille last night.   She's so good at braille, so quick.   Dhruti said if we were to have an FMRI of my daughter's brain it would show the left side of her brain as very dense, because the academic and logical parts of her brain are highly developed.   In contrast, the right side of her brain would be much sparser, with gaps because developmentally, she's behind due to the loss of vision.

There is work to be done.   We've risen to every challenge so far and we're not going to let this one stop us.   As I write this, my daughter is happily screaming and laughing as she and Madison swing at full tilt on the playset outside.   It's not all bad news, it just seems like it some days.

The Big Boy Update: Today was my son's first day as "Third Year" otherwise known as third grade.   He's a leader in his class, one of only four third years.   There is a staggered start for the class, and only those four students attended his class today, discussing what they'd be responsible for as classroom leaders.   He has a multi-day field trip coming up in just a few weeks he excited about and told me about the five-day trip to Washington D.C. he'll be going on where "we're going to walk about fifty miles total."   I think he had a good day.   He's looking forward to this school this year.

The Tiny Girl Chronicle:  Traditional calendar school started today, and the cab situation is a complete mess.  Some students apparently weren't even picked up.   My daughter's cab arrived twenty minutes early, but my daughter was in the cab for an hour-and-a-half and was so late to school she was marked as absent.   It is now 5:30 and she won't be home until close to six o'clock.   The first few weeks are a bit crazy but get worked out.   With everything going on with my daughter in the above blog post, we might drive her to and from school for a week or so until the route gets sorted out.  Unless she's made friends in the cab and has been having fun.

Blanket Tents

The dog loves to lie on the air vents when the air conditioning is on.   She is going to be devastated come winter when her favorite cooling-off spot starts blowing hot air.  My daughter likes to find the dog, wherever she is and "snuggle" with her but when she checked the vent right beside the dog's crate today she found it empty.

She had gone over with a blanket wrapped around her, something she does a lot because she's frequently cold.  We misnamed her when we gave her the middle name of Winter From a temperature tolerance perspective perhaps the name Amazon would have been better.

Without the dog at her vent, my daughter decided to curl up in a ball over the gushing air conditioning outlet just like the dog does.  She pulled her blanket over her head and body and then noticed something interesting: the air blew up into the blanket and lifted it up, not unlike how a parachute catches air when sky diving.  She called out to me that she's made a blanket tent.

She was excited about her discovery.   After a few minutes, she went to get a second blanket and had the dog in tow with her.   I've mentioned before how flexible and understanding our dog is.   For the next hour, she and the dog got under three air vents and tested all the ways she and the dog could trap themselves inside to cool off together.  The dog never complained, she followed all requests without question and made her a very happy little girl just by being the sweet dog she is.

My daughter was only unhappy when the air conditioning was off.   I explained to her it would be back on when the room heated up ad needed to be cooled again.   I got a modified version of, "are we there yet" as my daughter asked me what felt like every two minutes if the air was back on.

The Big Boy Update:  My son was talking to Uncle Bob about his name.   Uncle Bob explained that his middle name was his mother's father's name.   He asked my son if he could figure out what his middle name would have been if he was named using the same method.   My son thought about it and said his name would have been, "Greyson Gramps."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter likes to play a game in the car where she's a genie, and we go on adventures.   Today I asked if we could go on her magic carpet to the Giza Plateau to see the Great Pyramid and the Sphynx.  After we looked at them she wanted to dig to find a new tomb.   We, with the help of our rented red-clad and blue-clad camels, found a tomb with an unbroken seal on the entrance.  The undisturbed tomb turned out to be Hatshepsut's, including her intact sarcophagus.   She wanted to call in people (I told her she meant the media) so they could let the world know.   She said, "does this mean we're going to be famous?"

Healthy Fail

My mother-in-law reminded us the other night of a time several years ago when we had "ice cream for dinner."   One day we all went to Dairy Queen, and instead of having dinner-type food, we just ordered ice cream.   Whatever the children, several years younger at the time, wanted.   I had forgotten all about that day, and since that time we haven't repeated the special meal.

This morning I had gotten up later than usual, mostly on account of the children sleeping late after a complicated night.  My daughter had wanted to go to sleep listening to an audiobook on her iPad.   I've been trying to get her interested in listening to audiobooks more since she can't watch television, doesn't like movies with assistive audio and can't play games on the iPad anymore.

She, just like her brother, resists anything new.   But just like her brother, if I can just get the movie or book started, even if only for a few minutes, I can get them hooked.   Last night I'd downloaded the month's free Audible Original children's book, but it wasn't very long time-wise.   I'd been hoping she'd get interested in the Ramona Quimby series, which totaled over eighteen hours of audio time.

Of course, she didn't want to have anything to do with it.   So I started playing it, hedging and saying I had to download the other book first and in the meantime, I wanted to see if I remembered what the Ramona Quimby books were about.   Sure enough, two minutes later, I asked what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to keep listening to find out about Ramona's sister, because, "she is so annoying!"

We took her iPad up and stuck it in the bed with her, and I assumed she'd fall asleep.   Over an hour later, I brought her brother in and found out she was awake and still listening.   Her brother wanted to read to me, and I stayed up in his bed with him, letting him excitedly read to me the cartoon story of DogMan for a half-hour, after which she was still awake.   I gave her some melatonin and figured she'd drop off to sleep soon since she rarely stayed awake long once she laid down each night.

Two hours later, her brother came down in a panic.   The lights were off in the room, and I was confused by what happened next.   Suddenly my son was in bed with me, upset, and something hard and wet was thrust in my face.

His arm was itching terribly inside the cast, and to try and make it better, he'd run water all over the cast.   He was trying to dig his hand down into the upper part of his inner arm and wanted to know what we could use to scratch deep inside there.   He was shoving all the batting into the depths of the cast and was in enough distress that I couldn't reason with him well.

I told him we could put baby powder in there, but we had to dry the cast first, or it would stick, clump, not get deep enough to help and he'd be no better.   I got the hairdryer out and started drying off the cast with him jumping about and fretting.   That's when his sister arrived in the room, indignant that there was so much noise and she hadn't gone to sleep yet (it was after midnight) and what was happening?

They nearly went to blows at this point, but thankfully my husband arrived.   I ordered Benadryl to be administered to both of them: her for sleep and him for help with the itching in his cast.

I was able to get most of the cast dried and did manage to get some baby powder down into the area he was itching most.   And then they both, thankfully, fell asleep.   And that is why I got to sleep in this morning because they were also sleeping in.

I got up and decided to get donuts since it was the last weekend before my son starts school.   I came back with late-morning donuts.  My husband was out working, and I was trying to get lots of things done while he was away in preparation for the start of the week and the first day of school.   My son came in at lunchtime and wanted to know if he could have another donut.   I told him yes, but that after he ate it, he had to help with a load of laundry—that his sister was finishing folding the first basket of laundry and his basket was next.

This was sort of tactical, a bribe perhaps because I wanted him full of calories and willing to help.   The last laundry folding with him was a battle and a half, and I didn't want a repeat.   He said sure (shocker there) and had taken about two bites of the donut when my daughter, finishing up folding the white cloths in the bedroom, cried out, "ICE CREAM TRUCK!"

They both ran out the door, telling me they'd hold the truck while I got the money.   There was no, "can we have ice cream?" question even, the children were just beside themselves with excitement.   The time was odd for the icecream truck to arrive; typically it's late after dinner and just right for dessert, so I don't think they realized it was smack in the middle of mealtime.

I got the money, they got ice cream, and I had to finish most of my son's because he was already full of donuts.   When they came in, we talked about donuts and ice cream for lunch, and that it was a special day.   Then we talked about the laundry and how they were helping the family by doing the folding.

It was a delicious lunch, but a healthy fail on my part.   Both children had a good time, and I got the laundry folded without complaints, though.   We'll have a better dinner tonight.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and I watched some home improvement YouTube videos while we folded laundry together.  He was interested in it all: backyard landscaping, kitchen redo, man cave, and craft room.  They were short segments, but he was excited about each of them and has decided we need to redo our whole house and yard as a result.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter loves to climb in the tree in the front yard.  I should be concerned about either of my children outside, climbing in a tree alone without someone to call out to in case they fall.   I remember when I was a child, I was up in a tree in our front yard for hours and my parents didn't make me have a buddy, and there was no such thing as a watch phone.  And how is climbing a tree any different than anything else they could do outside where they might get injured?  I can either helicopter parent or hope they stay reasonably safe.   The fact that my daughter is blind should be no different, and yet I worry more about her.   She got lost today on her scooter and was several houses down the road.   She realized she wasn't on our street when she encountered a sidewalk, but wasn't sure where our street was to get back.   She asked someone where she was, and it turned out to be friends of ours (she was only five houses away).   She asked Alex if he would walk her back home and he did.   She told me she would have called if her watch had been on.  She decided she would make sure to wear it more.   She wasn't bothered by the experience at all.   She self-advocated for help and got home and told me about it when she got in.  She's learning every time something like this happens.

Credit Locks, Cards and Reports

Many years ago, my mother suggested I lock my credit.   This was an exciting idea, and she was way ahead of her time by doing this.   If you lock your credit, no one can open a credit card in your name.   You can't get a credit card for yourself though.  Or buy a car.   Or get a mortgage for a home.   But neither can anyone else.

The key here is that you can unlock your credit any time you need to.   You're the one that locked it.   So, let's say you're going to buy a car and you're filling out the information for the car loan.   As long as you know which credit bureau they're going to run a credit check on, you can go and unlock it.   Once complete, you can lock your credit back.

This used to be complicated at the time my mother initially did it because it was way before we had the level of online services we have now.   I think my mother had to call in, go through some phone rigamarole and then the unlock could be put in place for seven days or something.   Options were limited.

Today, it's all online, and it's all easy.   I haven't had a reason to unlock my credit for years.   Today I went to get a new case for my phone at Apple.com, and I started reading about the Apple Card.   If you know me, you know I'm an advocate for, passionate even, about using Apple Pay.   I read about the card, compared features it offered and decided there were better features and more benefits than the credit card I'd associated with Apple Pay.

With some things, I'm all about change.   Other things, I don't budge.   With Apple Pay I had assigned an existing credit card as the underlying payment mechanism. That card was one I applied for and got back in the 1990s.  The bank that card has been with had changed many times over the years due to mergers and acquisitions.   But it's the same "card" in that it says on the front "member since 1993."

Aside from business credit cards, of which I've had many through the different companies I've worked for, that was the last time I applied for a credit card.  Today, things are different.   I applied for the card right there on my phone.   Apple knew who I was and had the majority of my information.   I entered in the additional few bits and waited for the application to fail because my credit was locked.

I wasn't disappointed.   I got a message telling me, "You have your credit locked.   We verify with TransUnion, please unlock your credit and try again."   That's what I was looking for—which credit bureau.   I didn't want to unlock all three.   I went over to TransUnion, unlocked my credit, went back to Apple, said try again and five minutes later went back to the TransUnion page, and relocked my credit.

Disco!  I had a new credit card.   Or, well, whatever Apple is calling the Apple Card.   You know Apple; they have to be "innovative" and different.   All I needed to do now was let my watch, phone, iPad, and Mac know the Apple Card was my default for Apple Pay.

Sort of a fun, credit card, credit report, cool new technology, thanks for making sure my credit was safe all those years back Mom, kind of day.

The Big Boy Update:  My son left at 7:30 to go to Morgan's lake house.   Her father, Dave, went with them.   I don't know what they did, but they're only getting in now.   When I messaged Morgan and asked if he would be hungry when they got home she said he told her, "he had a snack right before we left but has informed me that his stomach is a black hole and he will need probably two dinners."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter came inside from school today sad.   Her driver, Mrs. Grimes, is being reassigned on Monday.   We love Mrs. Grimes.   She said the new route they want to put her on has her arriving at dispatch at 4:30AM and getting home at 7:30PM.  She has three children and can't do that schedule.   She's going to have to find another job.   I hope they reconsider, for her and her family if nothing else.

The Thermostat

I spent a lot of time at my parent's house today.  Their air conditioning unit had died, and it was time to replace it.  It took several hours, and I worked on the computer and made calls while they banged and clattered around in the basement and outside.

At one point a man came in to change out the thermostat in the hall.  He was putting in a smart one that had an app and remote access via your smart device.   As he was pulling the old thermostat off the wall, I said, "I want to keep that."

That thermostat, unless I'm mistaken, has been in their house since I was a child.   Maybe it was changed out at some point, but it looks like the one I always remembered:



This is the very thermostat over which the question, "who turned the heat up?" or "did you turn the temperature down?" types of questions were asked by my father to my mother and me.   Perhaps I'd touched the thermostat a time or two, but as a child, I didn't remember noticing the temperature much and was always surprised when my father wanted to if I'd changed it.

My mother would commonly say to me, "it was probably him, don't worry about it."   This was sort of a joke between my mother and me after a while.   So today, when the thermostat was in danger of being thrown away, I had to save it as a piece of my childhood.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went swimming in a quarry today.   He's going to his sitter's lake house tomorrow.   He's having all the fun the last week before school starts.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was in a good mood today when I picked her up from school to go to her therapist.   It was tactile week in art apparently and she told me about all the different textures the whole class was working with.    

Sky The Blue Fairy

My daughter has to read aloud for fifteen minutes every night to an adult as part of her second-grade homework.  Or,  I suppose I've assumed it has to be an adult, she could read to a friend just as well.  It's the process of reading aloud that's important.   We've used the opportunity to have her read to anyone who's stopped in for dinner or to visit including my parents, my in-laws and Uncle Bob, who is visiting with us currently.

Each day we have to log what book she reads—including the author.   My daughter is insistent we write the author's name in the log and confirms we're spelling the name correctly.   On Monday, she read to me a book she wrote herself titled, "Cultures of Kindness."  I didn't think it was going to be very long or interesting, but I was wrong.

The all-school Cultures of Kindness event happened while I was out of town in Cancun with my friends and somehow I missed the book she'd written about her experiences during it—including tactile stickers to represent many of the things she wrote about.

But on the whole, she's been reading books she's brought home from school that are specifically for her reading level.   We have books from the state library for the blind, but they're either completely uncontracted, which is slower and longer to read, or they're fully contracted, using letter, word and symbol combinations she hasn't learned yet, causing them to be frustrating to read.

She's been reading a series of chapter books about different colored fairies.   She's very proud she's moved up to reading chapter books.   Not only is she reading them, but she's reading reasonably quickly.   Her fingers seem to fly over the page.  It's hard to fathom how her brain can discern dots speeding past her fingertips.   Uncle Bob asked her if she'd read the book before, she was reading so rapidly.

Tonight we talked about where those books come from, and the answer is complicated and goes to show how her education is custom-tailored just for her.   The book, Sky The Blue Fairy, is sent home in the compact, printed version from the publisher in a large container bag.  Inside the bag are also two large 11"x12" bound braille books containing the same content as the smaller printed book.  Uncle Bob asked tonight about the braille versions and where they came from.

And that answer is interesting because the content of those braille books is tailored just for my daughter.  it is neither uncontracted braille nor fully contracted braille but somewhere in the middle, containing only the contractions my daughter has learned thus far.  To build the custom printed books, my daughter's braillest downloads a version of the book that's been converted to be printed in braille from an online library (provided one exists).   Then she goes through the text, manually, and removes all the contractions my daughter doesn't yet know and replaces them with uncontracted braille.

It's a bit complicated to explain, and I hope I'm not getting this entirely wrong as I know Mrs. B., my daughter's braillest, reads this blog.   Contracted braille isn't like changing "hasn't" into "has not."   Contractions can be multiple things.  For instance, some words are shortened like "good" is represented by "gd."   Then there are single cells of braille that have no representation in our alphabet, such as the word "the," which has its own single character in braille.   There are also letter groups like "ch" or "st" or "ing" that are written as a single braille cell.

All of these shortcuts are done to reduce, or "contract" the braille, so the total volume of braille someone has to run their fingers over to read  is less.   There are about 180 contractions in Unified English Braille.  My daughter knows a good bit of the contractions, but not nearly all of them.   So Mrs. B goes through the book word by word and replaces anything my daughter doesn't yet know with the fully spelled out word.

Then she sends the modified file to a braille printer, known as an Embosser which prints out the custom version of the book for my daughter.  She binds the book with a cover and writes on it for us so we can read at a glance what the "sea of dots" is about and sends it home with my daughter.

And that's just for one book.  Soon my daughter will be able to read fully contracted braille, but for now, that's the amount of work that's done just so my daughter can read about Sky The Blue Fairy.   I think this is the fourth colored fairy book Mrs. B. has done for her.   So thank you, Mrs. B., for all you do.   My daughter is loving being able to read and has been particularly proud to read to us each night.

The Big Boy Update:  I don't know where my son and his sitter, Morgan, are going tomorrow, but he needs hiking shoes, a float, swimsuit, goggles, and a towel.  He smiled conspiratorially at me when I mentioned it tonight and said, "I think I might know."  We'll find out tomorrow when he gets home.   He really likes spending time with Morgan.   My daughter has been very cross; she's missed out on seeing her because of school.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Nana, Papa and Uncle Bob were at dinner here tonight.  In the end, when discussion about dessert came up, Uncle Bob said, "oh, I forgot, there are no second desserts in this house."  My daughter said in a bewildered voice, "what do you mean?  I've had four desserts before."

Kokomo

I was in the car going somewhere the other day when The Beach Boys song, "Kokomo" came on the radio.   My mind went back to a memory of college, some thirty years ago when the song was popular.   Wait, has it been thirty years since I was in college?  Okay, that's a sobering thought.  So it would appear the song is thirty years on at this point as well.   With that number of years gone by I think can officially say, "back in the day," right?

Back in the day, when I was a Freshman in college, the song "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys was in full swing popularity.   One day while my roommate and I were likely not studying, doing homework or anything else remotely academic, her mother called.   The local radio station where she lived had had a contest.  Remember when you had to call in, trying to be the first or fifth or hundredth caller to win something?   Well, her mother had won.

There were ten winners, each of whom could invite twenty people, to go on a day trip to Jamaica.  Specifically Montego Bay, which is one of the words in that Beach Boys song.   My roommate's mother wanted her to come (as well as her hairdresser).   Only my roommate didn't have a car, and we were hours away.   But I had a car.

A that's how I got to be one of the twenty people in her mother's group.   The whole trip was entirely comped by all the businesses involved, trading advertising time for services.   We'd fly down to Jamaica early in the morning on Saturday and come back late that night.   It was indeed a day trip—and only two days away, which meant we had to get on the road the very next evening to get to her brother's house, get three hours of sleep and then board a plane full of winners from the radio station.

I'd never been anywhere tropical.  I'd never been to an all-inclusive resort like Sandals before.   And I'd never been old enough to drink alcohol anywhere.   I was only nineteen-years-old at the time.  We did everything, looked at everything, went shopping in the downtown market.  We went into every pool and lounged on the beach.   We also swam up to the bar...in the pool, a decadence we had never even known existed.   As the sun was setting, we got back on the plane and then drove back several hours to our dorm room.

It was only a day trip, but we were in the lap of luxury for the entire day, living life like the rich and famous.   And ever since, whenever I hear the song "Kokomo" I flashback to that day in Montego Bay when I was nineteen.

The Big Bot Update:  My husband and son played basketball tonight.  They haven't done this in a long, long time.   If we can get my son interested in playing, I think he'll get his friends in the houses around ours playing too.   Competitive sports they can do outside that he would prefer doing over screens would be a good thing.  Hopefully, they'll start playing together more.  My husband wanted to get the basketball hoop when my son was less than a year and clearly couldn't play.   It factored into "ball" as my son's first word though.  He watched his father play a lot when he was tiny.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We've had a bit of a fright with the pressure in my daughter's eye.   If the valve is functioning correctly, it should begin to drain when pressure is at nine or higher.  So yesterday when we had a morning reading of nineteen, my husband and I got concerned.  There is a chance we'll have to add pressure reducing drops back if the valve can't keep up with fluid production.   And that would be for life most likely.   And that's not good.   We decided to take an evening reading, and it came in at nine.  Okay, whew, an anomaly.   But this morning we got a measurement of twenty-one, which is higher than the valve should allow.   But again tonight, the pressure was back to eight.   So maybe there is some variance in how the valve lets fluid out overnight or while she's prone or some other factor we don't yet understand.  Thankfully, her pressure isn't continuing to rise, and it's dropping back down to the normal range.  When we have a non-school day, we'll have to take some readings a few hours after she's been up and moving around to see how long it takes to lower from the overnight high.

In Memory of Uncle Jim

This afternoon I got a call from my cousin, Rebecca.   She told me her father, my Uncle Jim, had died earlier in the day.   It wasn’t completely unexpected as his health had been steadily declining, but that doesn’t make the news any less saddening.

Uncle Jim and my father went to high school together.   They remained close friends and after college  shared a house together.   My father was dating my mother and when her sister, Pat, came to visit she met my uncle.  And that was that, they were destined for each other.   Which is how my uncle became my uncle.

I grew up going to visit my aunt and uncle fairly regularly.   They lived about an hour-and-a-half away, which at the time seemed like a very long trip when I was a child.   We played the counting cows game as we drove down the country roads to visit Uncle Jim, Aunt Pat and my cousin, Rebecca, who was four years older than me and was my idol.   She Becky, not Rebecca back then.  I called her Becky all my childhood and when, after college, she wanted to drop Becky and be called Rebecca, I had the hardest time making the change.  Today, I can’t imagine her as any other name.

Aunt Pat and Uncle Jim liked dachshunds.   There was Bud (short for Budweiser) and after that they had Bud Lite.   Summers and holidays we’d go and visit them at their house on the lake.   I didn’t know anyone who had a house on a lake besides my cousin.   They had a dock and fishing poles.

Uncle Jim was quite the fisherman.   He caught the largest bass ever recorded from that lake.  He had the fish mounted and put on the wall.   It was a big fish.   I liked the fish that got fried up and served for dinner better, myself though.

Today when Rebecca called and told me about her father, we talked about life and mortality and how we thought we were going to live forever when we were young.   We talked about fun times together and about children—ours.   We talked about how raising them was sometimes infernally hard, especially as the rules kept changing as they grow.

Rebecca has far more experience in being a parent and is always there to say, “don’t worry, you’re doing a good job, children do that.”   She and I swapped stories of children and childhood and laughed.   Maybe we laughed because we didn’t want to cry for the loss of her father.  Laughter is a good thing in a way.   We laugh because it hurts sometimes, because laughter can help make the hurt feel better, even if only for a moment.

I’ll miss Uncle Jim, but he’s in my heart and my head.   I can picture him now, talking about fishing with my father while my aunt and mother cooked dinner.  Good times.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has decided he wants to be a DJ when he grows up.   He was playing some hip hop music when I came downstairs after helping his sister with her homework.   He was dancing to the music as he brushed his teeth.   Tomorrow maybe I’ll ask him if he knows what DJ stands for and if he knows what it means.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter got a letter today from Sydney, her cousin who she spent so much time with at the family reunion.   Sydney is five but she wrote her a very nice letter and included a loom band bracelet as a present.   My daughter typed a letter to her after completing her homework.   I told her she could ask Sydney if she wanted to be pen pals.   I got a lot of questions on what that mean.   The phrase made no sense to my daughter so she wrote instead, “will you write back to me?” in the letter, explaining that Sydney would understand that better.  Tomorrow we’re going to see if we can figure out something fun to put in her return letter and then mail it off.

 

Bored

My son lost screens today.   He lost them last night.  Today he had a brief bit of screens when he helped his sister with 3D Minecraft.   Their father had created a house for her against a lake and handed over the headset and controllers to her.   She asked her brother to help create a few things for her (one of them was a hot tub with magma at the bottom causing the water above to bubble up).  But otherwise, he was “bored” for the day he told us.

He didn’t realize his reasons were only going to backfire on him.   Just that little bit of screens with his sister and he was a menace to his father, whining, complaining and acting the victim (of boredom among the milder of his complaints).   He bordered on being insulting, insinuating that we were using our screens, probably having fun, stating something about his father and Fortnite.   I shut that one down pretty fast although he hassled his father for a while longer, asking if he’d please do something with him.

Our neighbor’s children got home from out of town in the afternoon and they all played together until after dinner.   Our neighbor came over and the adults talked while the children cleaned up everything they’d pulled out.  After everyone had gone home it was back in on the boredom and screen time discussion.  He was playing martyr and acting like his life was over—his very privileged life I might add.

So I did what I do best and I snapped.   Well, I didn’t snap at first, I incrementally snapped.   It was a building to a “pancake splat” because he did his very best to make things worse for himself.   I told him he was folding laundry with me because he was bored and I needed help and that was just that.   His resistance was impressive.   At one point he fell off the bed (slowly, intentionally) and told me he’d hurt his head and was injured.   I threatened to take him to the emergency room and have him explain to the doctor that he slid off the bed, landed gently on the carpet and insisted he had a head wound all so he might hopefully get out of folding laundry.  AND, I told him, he would still be folding the laundry when he got back from the hospital.

When he found out he had to fold his sister’s laundry, oh the misery that created.   Also, and this is just crazy, a lot of the items were wrong side out.   His complaining and resisting and telling me he was, under no circumstances, folding the laundry.   Not nobody.  Not nohow.   I’ll shorten the story a bit at this point by saying he got an education on what his father and I did—regularly—to keep this household running, including the laundry.  Laundry that was put in the hamper wrong side out, despite my requests to help me out and put things in right side out, including lessons to the both of them on how to pull off clothes without inverting them.   There was a lot more said on both sides and resistance on his part culminating in him loosing screens for two days (which overall is a good thing).

He folded the laundry.   All of it.   He turned it all right side out and then he put it up in the drawers when he was done.  He listened to The Wizard of Oz while he folded, which reminded me of the, “not nobody, not nohow” phrase from the movie I saw so many times as a child.  Once he accepted his fate he was in a good mood, talking happily to us and folding (slowly) but doing a good job.

We talked about allowance and I said there would be more laundry folding in the future.   There should have probably been laundry folding help by now, but it takes infernally long when they do it.   It’s just easier to get it done while they’re gone.   But they’re both capable.

The Big Boy Update:  While my son was folding the laundry he asked me something interesting: could he have some money, go into a store, buy something all by himself and then come out and meet us?   Could he do that whole process without an adult?  This wasn’t about having money to buy something or buying anything in particular, it was about the independence to do that whole process by himself.   I told him I though it was a great idea.   The conversation dovetailed into the allowance topic.   We might start with him running into the grocery store to get something we need that he could find easily.   I’m glad he wants to do this on his own.   I never really thought about it before, but he’s always bought anything with us there with him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter not once, but twice today, made slippers.   Literally, they slip across the floor.   There are lots of staples involved, but somehow they’re not at the bottom part of the pieces of notebook paper she used to make them.   She showed them off to Dave and Kate when they came over today she was so proud of them.  I wasn’t paying attention to what she was doing the first time she made a pair.   I was at her braillewriter, writing up a full page of Alexa games and things she could do that had recently come out.   I’m not bad at braille, but I invert things and have to focus to make sure my e’s aren’t i’s and I’m only using contractions she knows.   When I got done with the list she had these ready to show off:

The dog is in the picture above, checking out her new creation.   The dog, whom we all love, is a very laid back Wheaton Terrier.   She looks like this sometimes (and yes, I’m putting this picture up because it’s too cute.   Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

Trauma Based Anxiety

It’s been a busy day here.   And I only realized I completely failed on something as we were getting my wailing and moaning daughter ready for bed after a long day, finished off with a long dinner with close friends—I had completely forgotten to do drops.

It’s not like we’ve been doing drops every day for four years or anything.   We got some in, but not nearly as many rounds of the steroid drop we should have.   My husband was busy the whole day with real estate work in the morning followed by pulling off our neighborhood pool party completely by himself, save for people who helped while they were there at the pool during the party.

Everyone left my husband by the end of the party and he scrambled to get the last things in the car, back in the clubhouse and returned to other people so he could get home, shower quickly and head off to dinner with us.   It all went well, with us realizing before my son ate anything at the Korean restaurant with food being ordered family style by my best friend and just appearing at the table, that we’d better find out which dishes had peanuts or fish in them.

I gave my son a prophylactic Benadryl and he successfully avoided all allergens while managing to consume more food by relative body weight than anyone else in the group of fourteen of us.  We didn’t take any leftovers home because our refrigerator is stacked full outside with an entire Mexican serve yourself bar full of food items from the pool party.   We’re going to share some with people tomorrow as it’s far too much for us to finish alone—even though we love that specific restaurant’s food.

My daughter was doing somewhat better today, with me spending some time with her doing things she loves like making pictures in braille on her typewriter.   I call out the symbols and she types them.   We made a large teddy bear and she memorized how to make a small heart she can add to her free work whenever she wants.

She still had trouble though, quite a lot of it.   I had texted Dhruti last night and she replied that from my brief description, coupled with the knowledge she got from my daughter's recent therapy session she had, she thinks my daughter is suffering from trauma based anxiety.  It’s not going to be a quick fix unfortunately, given what I was telling her.  Dhruti thinks it’s fairly serious.

We don’t know what the, “trauma” is.   Is it the surgery itself?   She seems to have no problems with the eye and has the vision she had prior to surgery from what we can tell.   Is it the restrictions on her activities for two weeks while the eye heals?   Is it the new school year and new grade which is much more academically serious than last year?   We don’t know, but it’s affecting her all day long and with everyone she interacts with.

She’s going to see Dhruti twice a week for the next month, which is more than we’ve needed in the past with her.   She goes long stretches without needing to see Dhruti at all.   Dhruti has even, “graduated” her when she’s been doing well and doesn’t need her.   This is going to take some getting to the bottom of.   Unfortunately, there is only one open appointment next week and we’re going to let my daughter have it.   If something cancels my husband and I will take the appointment to discuss what we can do to support her and how her teachers can approach things while she’s at school.   In the meantime, I have a call scheduled with the occupational therapist, who also works with similar situations, only from a different direction.

So it would appear it isn’t just me and it isn’t that my daughter doesn’t like me.   It’s her coping with trauma and dealing with a large amount of anxiety as a result.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got to the pool today and completely managed himself, made friends and played in the pool for hours.   He’s only eleven months older than my daughter, but he’s entirely different from a parenting perspective.   He’s not necessarily more mature, he just doesn’t have the same amount of need she does.   My daughter wants to be equally independent, it’s just not possible unfortunately.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter wanted to go get ice cream after dinner tonight but it was too late.   My husband and I know she’s struggling right now but she pushed and pushed, cried and wailed, wouldn’t stop asking why, complaining and moaning about it on the way home.   My son lost it and pinched or punched her, which he got in trouble for and yet she still could’t let the ice cream go.   We offered to give her ice cream at home, but it wasn’t the same.   She pushed back so hard on that, using ugly words, that she lost the opportunity to have that option.   The night ended badly for her.   We tried being positive for as long as we could, but it’s like she wants to get in trouble.   I know that’s not the case, I just don’t know how to diffuse the situation.   We try every option we can come up with but she escalates so much she only loses in the end.   I really need to get some advice from Liz or Dhruti soon so we can keep this from happening more.  It’s very hard on her I know.

The Word List

My daughter has “word banks” in a lot of the work she does at school.  These lists are for spelling or using in sentences.   Sometimes they’re used for word searches—which my daughter does in a grid of braille letters that her teacher makes for her, cool, no?   She’s made word banks at home from time to time but last night she made a special list.

She and my mother were at her braillewriter, typing up something for their ride home conversation today.   Every afternoon, unless my mother is busy, she calls my daughter on her GPS watch and they have special conversations, songs, discussions of who knows what while she rides in the back of the minivan driven by Ms. Grimes as she’s on the long ride home.

My mother and father were driving back to the mountains today and my mother was hoping to get back in time to call my daughter for their regularly scheduled call.   I didn’t know what they planned on talking about, but surely there would be some sort of hint in that word list they were typing up.

My mother did get back in time to call my daughter and they talked as they were slowed down on their ride by a heavy, wind-driven rain storm.  When my daughter got home today I found the word list and transcribed it.   Their secret is out…or is it?   I’m not sure what they were planning based on the list of my daughter’s favorite words coupled with her favorite things I found on their list:



The Big Boy Update:  My son agonized through some summer homework this afternoon.   He wanted to get some downloadable content for the Zelda game he’d just finished so we made a contract with him for a good amount of homework he’ll have to complete over the next two weeks.   He was very happy to make the commitment today, we’ll see if he’s equally happy about doing the homework come Monday.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   The issues I’m seeing at home aren’t just me.   My daughter’s teacher called me and I got a detailed message from her VI teacher this afternoon.   She’s exhibiting the same behaviors at school, not only towards her friends, but also to her teachers.   I’m seeing if we can get her into the therapist as quickly as possible, as well as have a session for me so I can get some possible insight into what’s happening and how we can best support her.

I Don’t Want Gramps to Die!

It’s not what it sounds like, all is well with Gramps.  In fact, today is his eighty-third birthday.  My parents are in town for a few days and we’ve had an opportunity to spend some time with them both. Tonight they’re coming over for a spaghetti and meatball dinner my husband and daughter will be preparing.  There will be singing of the birthday song, some cake Nana sent in honor of my father’s birthday and a good’ole time had by all.

That’s the plan.   Some of you, I’d venture most of you, know how children don’t always want to follow the plan.  Sometimes they’re not happy about the plan because it’s not what they want to do.   Teaching our children to think of others and not be selfish is an ongoing process in our family here.

My son got home from three days with Nana and Papa this afternoon to get his splint changed out for a cast.   He arrived with his splint in tatters.   It wasn’t much better when we sent him off a few days ago as the wrappings weren’t prone to staying still.   His arm was wrapped above the elbow and locked in a ninety degree angle but it was held in place by the wrappings alone, and those kept slipping.   Before he left I’d wrapped a secondary bandage around his arm which would have kept it immobile, only it turned out to be infernally hot and he couldn’t bear the sweating and itching so it had to go.

After lunch, at which my son got hot sauce smeared on the bottom of his wrapped arm, we went to the orthopedist.   They unwrapped his arm and took a follow-up X-ray.   Good news, active bone growth was clearly visible around the buckle fracture.   And that meant he could get a regular cast.

It also meant he didn’t have to have the cast above the elbow—and the cast could get wet.   And to add to the good news, it would likely be only four more weeks, instead of five or six.   The most difficult thing about the whole appointment was picking the color cast he wanted.   He settled on blue and fifteen minutes we walked out of the office with his arm swinging by his side.

We got home and I told him he could play Fortnite if, and only if, he, without complaints of any kind, or delay tactics, stopped playing when Mimi and Gramps arrived because he and she were going to the store to pickup dessert for Gramp’s birthday dinner.   He has promised.   I hope all goes to plan, because I don’t want to exact another consequence on him today, he already lost his Switch ten minutes after he got home for name calling.

And how does all this relate to Gramps dying?  I’m getting there.   Another thing my mother did was message us saying Gramps was going to bring some magic over to show to my son after dinner if he would be interested.   Here’s the thing: my son is very interested in magic.   My father is quite an accomplished magician.   I had the rare privilege of growing up in a house with magic all around me. Magic and science and math.   Maybe those aren’t subjects everyone is interested in, but for me, all three were fun.

I went on to get a Math/Computer Science degree but I never picked up on the magic.  I love watching magic and find the skills behind pulling off an illusion or some sleight of hand much more impressive than the “trick” itself.  But magic wasn’t something I was interested in pursuing myself.

Enter my son, who is eight now and is interested in magic.  He’s done some simple tricks up to now but he hasn’t had the maturity to do more meaningful magic yet.   He’s getting to a good age though and my mother, father and I would like to nurture his interest in magic.   To that end, my father is bringing some magic over tonight to show my son (in secret from us non-magic folk).

My son is one track mind when it comes to Fortnite right now (I think there’s a new “Season” out) and he’s prone to being rude to anyone and anything that might get in the way of procuring that precious screen time to play it.   So I had a talk with him.

I explained that today was Gramp’s eighty-third birthday and he was bringing magic over to show him, and only him, tonight.   That it would be a special birthday present to Gramps to be able to teach his magic to his grandson.   I said I knew he’d been interested in learning more magic from Gramps and today Gramps had prepared some things just to teach him.   I told him he would have time tomorrow to play Fortnite since it was still summer and that (and here’s where I laid it on too thick) Gramps wouldn’t be able to teach him magic for many more years.

My son burst into tears at that point and said, “I don’t want Gramps to die!”   I hugged him and said, I never wanted Gramps to die either, that he was my dad.   I told him what I meant was that Gramps had arthritis and it is getting harder for him to demonstrate the magic as he gets older.   Then I got to explain arthritis.   You’d think that as an adult I’d think these things through before I said them.   Is it any coincidence I picked the phrase, “Age does not bring wisdom, but it does give perspective” for the title of this blog?   I don’t think I’ll ever be wise.   There are too many mistakes I have yet to make.

So Happy Birthday to Gramps today.   Let there be many more birthdays and magic tricks to come.

The Big Boy Update:  My husband picked up my son at Nana and Papa’s house today and called to tell me they were on the way to the Mongolian restaurant to meet me for lunch.   My husband told me I was not to hug my son when I saw him.   When I met them my son reminded me about the no hugging and I asked him why?   He said he wasn’t ready yet.   About five minutes later he was ready though and came over to give me one of those, as Olaf calls them, “warm hugs”.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We’ve had a lot of cab drivers since Kindergarten.   We’ve liked most of them, particularly the ones who drove her for the longest.   My daughter’s new driver is one of my favorites though.   My daughter and she like riding together and she told me a story today how my daughter helped her with a particularly difficult child who did’t want to get in the cab.  My daughter said words that made me laugh when Ms. Grimes told me, because I could completely tell where she got them from, namely me.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say...

My daughter doesn’t like me.   I can’t figure it out.   Coincidentally my daughter and I had gone to see her play therapist, Dhruti, who asked me to come back for a few minutes before she started the session with my daughter.   She said, “because she’s going to push back on you more than anyone else,” which I didn’t expect her to say, because I hadn’t talked to her about my recent challenges with my daughter, but somehow she knew.

My daughter tells me I’m rude, I’m mean and other negative phrases when I’m asking her to do things she needs to do.  Now granted, she doesn’t want to brush her teeth, get her pajamas on, brush her hair or do drops, but I’m only one parent who asks her to do these things.   My husband has a different approach than I do, but he also loses his patience with her when she ignores his requests, refuses to respond to him when he asks her things and avoids requests to do things or doesn’t stop when requested.  

So I don’t know.   I don’t understand.   This morning she pushed back on just about everything she could with the morning routine.  She was playing dumb, dawdling and acting like she had no idea it was time to do drops, or that we were running out of time.   When I lost my temper at her she said, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I told her I thought that was an excellent family rule and we should all adopt it.   We could add it to our family rules when you get home this afternoon and tell your brother when he’s back from visiting with Nana and Papa.   She didn’t like that.   She didn’t want the rule to apply to her, only to me.

This afternoon she got home and insulted me fairly straight off because I told her I was ready to do drops when she was.   She wanted to go to play with friends and asked if she could.   When I told her she could absolutely, that all we needed to do was a pink drop in her left eye first.   She didn’t have to do her homework until later if she wanted to play with friends.   I was told I was “so mean” in response.  

I waited until she was ready, thinking letting her do things on her own timeframe when we weren’t on a time crunch might make things easier for her since she was in control of things more.   But it seemed to do nothing for her mood or her feelings towards me.  

Is it how I approach her?  Is it my tone of voice?  Are we too similar in personality?   I really don’t know, but I need to figure it out because we’re butting heads all the time and it’s not making either of us happy.  

The Big Boy Update:  I’ve gotten my son’s paperwork, including allergy plan, ready to turn into school for the beginning of the school year.   With the addition of his fish allergies I’ve had to get additional information from his pediatrician for the school.   He’s old enough to not eat anything he’s allergic to, and fortunately his reaction isn’t that bad.   But we need to have it documented for the school just in case.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has to read fifteen minutes every day.   She’s been reading some books from the state library for the blind that are fully contracted.   It’s been challenging for her and she’s getting a little frustrated, but she knows enough contractions she can guess a lot of the words.   She’s going to be able to read fully contracted braille by the end of the year I suspect and then she’ll be able to read anything.

Watch Calls

My mother and daughter have a regular conversation they have.   When my daughter gets in the cab on the way home my mother tries to call her while she’s on the long ride home.   I’m not sure how it goes in the cab, because the GPS tracking watch my daughter has only has speaker phone options, with my mother’s voice coming out in a tiny, tinny sound from my daughter’s wrist.

Today my parents drove to town to get some things done here.   They come here from time to time during the months they reside in the mountains.  We have dinner planned with them and before dinner my mother thought it would be nice to come here and greet my daughter when she got home.

Right now they’re having a conversation on my phone and my daughter’s watch.  My mother had her guess where she was making the call from and when my daughter found out she was here, waiting for her to get home, she got very excited.   Excited, but not nearly so as much as the dog.  The dog has some favorite people with Mimi being one of her short list.   I had to place the dog on her cot by the front door several times so she wouldn’t jump up and bowl my mother over.

The dog’s excitement continues with her wanting attention from my mother in any way she’s willing to give it.   My mother and daughter are on the phone now and are playing some of the games they usually play.   It’s very reminiscent of when I was a child and played games with my “grandma”.

My father’s mother knew just how to speak to a child.   She always let me lead the conversation and I always seemed to know things and without fail, won any game she and I played together.   It wasn’t until later that I realized she was letting me win the games we played.   It’s a special skill, pretending a child knows everything and you know very little.   It is apparently a skill grandmothers have a surfeit of.

We’re going to our favorite sushi and Thai restaurant tonight.  My son is with my in-laws until Thursday so my daughter will have four adults all to herself tonight.   She’s sure to take full advantage of the situation, knowing her.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has diarrhea.   We’re not sure what caused it or why, but he’s had it for over a day now.   It’s very rare to the point that I don’t remember him ever having it before once he got out of diapers and was eating solid foods.   He’s eaten the same things the rest of us have for the most part so we’re at a loss as to the cause.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  I thought of something my daughter said to me the other day as I watched our dog overjoyed in happiness to see my mother—so much so that she wasn’t able to control her body and tried to get as close to her as possible, including sitting on top of her, in order to maximize the attention she received.   I said to my mother, “Reese said to me, ‘can you handle all this happiness?’"

Fartail

My daughter has taken to lying lately.   I mean certainly, in the past she has been known to lie.   This is a different type of lying though that belies an underlying state of mind.   She wants to know things other people know.  She also wants to also know things no one knows.

For example, she’s been really into making loom band bracelets lately.   She connects small, one-inch, colorful rubber bands into chains and then hooks the chains together with a c-clip to finish it off as a bracelet, necklace or ring in length.   She was so interested in them I ordered more and our dining room table has been covered with the materials and little containers of rubber bands for over a week now.

One of the things I ordered was some trinkets she could hang off her chains.   When they came in I looked online to find out the best way to connect them.   When I told my daughter I’d figured out how to best hook them in she told me she already knew how.   She didn’t want any help, she knew.   She knew three ways even, she said.  Did she know how?   Well, she came up with something.   It didn’t hang evenly, but it didn’t matter to her.   What mattered was that she didn’t need help and she knew something I hadn’t known.

When Keira came over she asked about the pattern I was making.  I told her I should show her how, that it was several different steps in a row repeated.   My daughter started talking about “startail” and how she was making a startail bracelet.   One of the patterns is called “fishtail” that I’d taught her.   Startail was her own creation.   She talked about it and asked if we wanted to learn it.   She wanted to teach us something—know something no one else did.

We stopped what we were doing and learned her new pattern and complimented her on how it was definitely new and different.   Even while she was teaching us startail she was asking if we wanted to learn “fartail” which was something else she had thought up.   We had to keep her on track with the one thing until we learned it she was so interested in showing off all her ideas.

Today when she came home, Madison came over almost immediately.   My daughter was sitting on the floor in the foyer and said, “I don’t want to play!”  I had opened the door about that time and had put my daughter in a bad spot I suppose, so she lied and said, “I’m sick, I can’t play!”  I told Madison maybe she would want to play later to which my daughter said, “I have a sore throat and I can’t play because I could get Madison sick.”  

I walked outside with the dog and shut the door and then told Madison that she wasn’t sick, but that for some reason she didn’t want to play.   I said I’d text her mother if she changed her mind.   As we hooked up the dog my daughter came out and said, “I’m not sick.  I do want to play actually.”

When Madison came in she said to us, “I got a loom band kit and I learned to make this” pointing to the rings and bracelets on her hand.  I complimented her and asked if she could let my daughter feel them so she’d know what she had made.   I asked Madison if she could show her how she had made it.   My daughter immediately launched into, “I can make fartail and I can show you how.”

She wants to be like everyone else and know things.   She has to have help all the time on so many things.   She wants to be independent so badly.   We’re trying to let her be the teacher any time she can.  It helps her self esteem to be able to do so.

The Big Boy Update:  My son’s cast wrappings continue to come undone.   It’s not his fault, the layers are slipping past each other.   I’ve rewrapped it several times and this morning I’d had enough. I put everything back in place and then wrapped his whole arm in self adherent camouflage wrap.   He was sort of excited about it saying, “now people can sign my cast.”  Thursday we get the main cast.   Hopefully the wrappings will last until then.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter went back to school today.  We sent drops in with her for the nurse to give while she’s at school.  There were complications with the medicine and the form, which was very complicated and convoluted based on county requirements.  My husband had to go to school mid-day to straighten things out.   I think they’re going to be able to do the drops there now.  The nurse was very nice.

2800

Every day when I sit down to write a blog post I go through the same process in Blogger, the service that’s hosting my blog here.   I don’t have a fancy layout, I created something simple at the outset intentionally.   My focus was to write words, not tell stories primarily through pictures.  To create a post I click the New Post link, add a title and then type something here.  When I’m done, I click the Publish button.  That takes me to a summary page for the blog as a whole.  

At that point, if I have time, I go back and read the post.   If there are ever lots of typos or grammatical errors, I likely was in a hurry.   I decided at the outset that I wasn’t going to spend lots of time doing lots of edits to each post.   The point wasn’t to have a flawless story each day, it was to get down my thoughts for the day and a thing or two about each child.  

But I do edit.  Sometimes I edit a lot if it’s post I’m going to share with people such as the day my daughter had surgery last week.   When there’s specific information I need to document and share, I make sure it’s doesn’t stumble through it’s read.

Today I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about.  I opened up Blogger and was about to look at my topics list when I noticed the total number of published posts at the top: 2800.   For 2800 days in a row I’ve been writing a blog post here every day save for a very few exceptions.  That’s a lot of days.

In a way, it seems like I’ve always been doing these posts.   I’m still surprised by the total number of posts.   It’s a pity I didn’t have a love of writing when I was in school, I would certainly have made English class much easier.

The Big Boy Update:   My son, husband and father-in-law went to a minor league baseball game last night.  My son had a good time but his arm got hot and itchy in his cast and it got unwrapped somehow.   He’s been very good at not moving his arm any time we have to adjust the cast wrappings.   Still, I’m looking forward to the permanent cast.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter is through Alice in Wonderland and has started Through the Looking-glass, and What Alice Found There.   When she gets into audio books, she can go through hours a day.   She also does braille reading a good bit, and has to do some every day for homework now that she’s in second grade.

Never Really Over

It’s not, but title of this post could be about my daughter’s eyes.   It’s definitely appropriate because since August 2015 it has been one thing after another with my daughter’s eyes.  Every time we get hope something will help or her vision might not go down anymore or even might possibly improve, things get more complicated.

We used to have hope.   Initially we even thought things would all get “fixed” and her vision would be back to normal.  It took us a while to adjust our expectations that her vision wasn’t going to return.   After that when we figured things would get better, back to somewhat functional, but those were thoughts we had to abandon after her eyes went more downhill and more things happened.

Today I would say it sounds a little strange, but we almost expect things to get worse.  Maybe it’s a protective thing mentally, but we don’t ever expect good news.   So when things happen, my husband and I are actually okay about it.   Is it sad?  Yes.  But that’s what the situation is.   We either adapt to it or we get depressed.  And that helps no one, especially my daughter.   It sounds strange to say we’re fine with her vision declining.   We’re not.   But that’s the reality.

Those three paragraphs aren’t at all what I was planning on writing about.   When I sit down to write a blog post I have a topic in mind and some things I want to say, but it’s not uncommon my fingers write something wholly different from what I planned at the outset.   Now let me get back to the topic of this post.

"Never Really Over” is a new song by Katy Perry.   When I have a new favorite song I have a habit of wearing it out.  I can play something over and over and not get tired of it.   I’ll tell the children, “oo, I have a new favorite song” and ask Alexa to play it.   Two days ago my daughter said, “oh Mom, not this song again” when I played it.   My daughter had heard it only two times but something changed in that second hearing and she decided she liked it too.

Yesterday Margaret and I were taking to my daughter to get pedicures together.   We’d gotten in the car and my daughter asked me to play the song.   She learns things quickly and from the back seat started belting out the lyrics.   It was so cute Margaret and I couldn’t help but smile.  This morning my daughter wanted to get donuts, and who am I to say no to donuts, so we got dressed and got in the car.

The entire ride there and back we played the song over and over.  We listened to the lyrics, talked about the vocals and the drumming.   I paused the song as we got close to home and said, “do you know what ‘down the rabbit hole’ means?”   I had a chance to tell her about Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.   She asked if it would hurt when you landed falling down a hole and how Alice climbed through the looking glass.   We decided to get the audio books so she could hear the stories herself.

When I got home just now I went to Audible and got them with my monthly free credit via my Audible membership.   We’re big fans of Audible here given that my daughter can no longer see anything on her iPad and can’t play games anymore.   I can’t wait to hear how she likes the books; they’ve been favorites of mine since I was a child.

The Big Boy Update:  My son has had a lot of itching in the top of his cast area.   He can’t quite reach it with his fingers.   Jen suggested last night that we put some baby powder in the upper opening.   We did so and suddenly he started getting itchy around his nose.   I was very worried he was allergic to something in the baby powder and I was going to have to completely unwrap the cast and clean off all the powder.   We had to rewrap some of the cast already and it’s a trick to get it locked in a ninety degree angle with the wrapping alone.   Fortunately ten minutes later his nose was not longer itchy and the itching at the top opening of the cast had gotten much better as well.   This morning he seems to be working with the cast much better than yesterday when his arm was bothering him with the lack of mobility.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The implant is working.   My daughter’s pressure is back to normal.   After the surgery she went from 47 to 17, which they set via fluids during surgery.   The day after surgery her pressure was 21, which is high normal.   We heard her pressure may drop in the next few days and sure enough, today her pressure was six. My daughter was worried it was going to be too low and go to zero again.   We’re not particularly worried because the implant only lets fluids out when pressure is at a certain level.   Her eye is expelling the healon and the air bubble so things haven’t had a chance to settle down.   We’ll know more when we go  back for the week follow-up.   For now, things are, for once, going well with her eye.