Olivia's Favorite Ticklie Water

Children sometimes like something new.  They'll try it without a second thought like splashing into the pool deeper than they can swim or eating something spicy, even when you warn them in advance.  Other times, you can't get them to try it no matter how appealing you make it sound.

"The slide is fun, you'll love it," may be met with a resounding "no" that the child won't budge from the entire afternoon.  My son told me today that they had popcorn for snack at school.  I asked him what kind of popcorn he had and he told me, "red and blue popcorn".  Later in the day for their afternoon snack I put a few pieces of caramel corn on their plates.  Both of my children refused to even touch it.  My daughter looked at it and told me it was, "yucky".  Saying it was "candy popcorn" helped not one bit. 

One way we've found to get them to try or keep trying something they may not like initially is to tell them it's someone's favorite.  Tonight at dinner we got them Sprite instead of lemonade.  It's pretty much the same: sugar, water and flavoring, with one having carbonation and the other having coloring.  I wondered what they'd think of it.

My children have had carbonated beverages on rare occasions in the past.  My son dubbed them, "ticklie water" because of how it makes his mouth feel.  Tonight, after they took their first sips and made strange faces, I jumped in and said, "you have Sprite tonight.  Sprite is your cousin Olivia's favorite ticklie water." 

It worked, they kept drinking after hearing that.

The Big Boy Update:  My son went to the bedroom in the afternoon and came back with his arm over his mouth, just like he was preparing to cough into his elbow.  What had he done?  He had decided he could sneak his pacifier out of his room and keep playing if we didn't see the pacifier in his mouth.   After Mimi and I got done giggling, we told him he had to take it back to his bed.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter, after seeing her brother do the sneaky pacifier trick, ran off to the bedroom and came back mere seconds later with her pacifier in her mouth and her arm hiding the evidence.  Quick learner.  It's a pity their ploy didn't work.

Strawberry Jello With Bananas

My best friend from all the way back to elementary school gave my mother an unexpected present at the baby shower for my first born.  The gift was a book for grandmothers.  It had lots of questions in it that the grandmother would answer, such as, "where were you born?" and, "who was your best friend when you were young?"  I had never heard of a book for Grandmothers before.

My mom worked on it on and off for some time.  It doesn't sound like something that would take a long time to complete, mostly because the book isn't physically large, but some questions needed thought or research like, "what was the address of your first home?"   Every so often, my mother would tell me she was working on the grandmother book (by this time, I had two children) and I'd tell her how much I'm sure they would appreciate the effort she was going through for them.

This Christmas, which is just after my son's third birthday, "Mimi" gave her book to our two children.  They can't read.  They don't have an understanding at all about the career choices their grandmother made in her life and what hobbies she liked to do as a child.  But they will some day, because she wrote it down for them.

I read through the entire book and there were so many things I didn't know.  I found out my mother loved strawberry jello with bananas, something her grandmother used to make that she said, "I could never get enough of."  So recently, when she came over for dinner, we had strawberry jello with bananas for her.  My children loved it almost as much as Mimi.

When my mother gave the children her book at Christmas, I took a picture of it on my cell phone and texted it to my friend who had given it to her.  I told her, "thank you for the wonderful gift.  Mom has just finished it and we will cherish it always."

Then, I ordered one for my running friend.  My friend's mother was recently diagnosed with cancer and she was having a radical operation on January 6th to remove her esophagus and in doing so, the cancer.  My friend has had her mother's mortality on her mind so much since she was diagnosed two months ago.  She had also never heard of a grandmother book either and was very touched by the gift.  Her mother has four little granddaughters she can think of as she fills out that book now that her surgery is over and was the success we all hoped it would be. 

The Big Boy Update:  "We're going to get our shoes so we can sing songs outside while swinging."  He told us this this afternoon when he and his sister decided they wanted to go out in the back yard.  They were both wearing only underpants and a shirt at the time.  He got his shoes and went out.  She walked around in the wet grass for a while and came in saying her feet were cold.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Wellies.  She has these pink Hello Kitty rain boots she likes to put on.  She gets them out of the drawer, sits down, usually gets them on the wrong feet, and then stomps around the house in them.  Tonight after it was dark, she put them on and went out in the front yard for a while wearing only a shirt and underpants as accompaniment.   She didn't seem to get cold so I had to lure her (and her brother who was similarly dressed) back in with the promise of a game of hide and go seek.

Fitness Update:  The cortisone shot in my elbow has reduced the pain a good bit.  But I can hear it make a crunching noise every time I do something with it under tension.   The MRI didn't show anything much (like floating debris) but something's going on still.  Oh, and I went to the gym this morning.  Don't tell my trainer, but 7.0 speed at 7.0 incline isn't as hard as it used to be.

Put Soap In Your Eyes

I've been having some dryness in one of my eyes, which can happen for some time after PRK surgery.  As I had PRK on one eye only, I only have one eye that has this bothersome "feature".  We've tried several things and they all help some, but I wish my eye would hurry up and get back to pre-surgery hydration levels.

My eye doesn't seem dry, but I have symptoms that cause my vision to be less than ideal when dryness does occur.  I get the sense there's a sort of haze that I can't quite wipe away.  It's confusing because this hazy sensation isn't there all the time.  When it does happen, it fools you into thinking you need to wipe or rub your eye to make it go away, only that does nothing to help.

I've learned a lot about ocular hydration as we've been working on the problem.  First, we tried temporary drain duct plugs.  That helped.  I have permanent ones now and they help.  I have drops that help with hydration that I use fairly regularly.  It turns out that when your eye is dry, adding moisture right then (let's say you burst into tears and started crying because you were watching a sad movie) will help for that moment, but it doesn't solve the problem over a longer period of time.  By the time the movie is over, your eyes will be dry again.  You need to have a sustained amount of moisture on the eye so that the tissues can maintain the proper hydration level.

Now let's talk about oil.  Not only do you have tears that keep your eye moist, you also have a film of oil produced by your eyelids that flows over the moisture from the tears.  The bit about oil and water not mixing is exactly what should be happening in your eye.  If everything is working well, the balance of oil to water is good and your eye stays hydrated.   I was told I have "viscous oil".

It appears my oil is of the thicker variety.  It can get backed up and block the pores it comes out of  or flow more slowly than desired.  This contributes to an overall dry eye situation.  There are things you can do to help get the oil flowing more readily, such as putting a very hot towel up against your closed eyes to heat the oil.

The best suggestion though, was to literally put soap in my eyes.  It sounded awful, but it turns out to be fairly easy and not painful at all.  When you're in the shower, take a bit of baby shampoo on your finger tips and rub it into your lashes on the top and bottom.  Then rinse.  This will unclog or help the oil flow.

Remember how baby shampoo is touted as, "no more tears"?  I can personally attest, it's true, it doesn't bother your eyes at all.

The Big Boy Update:  Crackers.  I gave my children some cheese on top of crackers yesterday.  My son really liked the crackers.  He wasn't as interested in the aged white cheddar cheese.  He negotiated a swap with my daughter, giving her his cheese and taking her crackers.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Cheese.  She liked the cheese on top of the crackers yesterday and asked for more cheese after all her crackers were bare.  She loves cheese.  She gladly took her brother's cheese and didn't even care that he grabbed her crackers because she was too busy stuffing the cheese into her mouth.

Fitness Update:  Last night (for some strange reason) I decided I wanted to do two-hundred pushups.  I did them...just not all at once, while I watched something on television.  Other than that, it was a lazy weekend.

It's Only Two Blocks Away

This afternoon I had a flashback to a cold memory from years ago.  It's the middle of January here and much of the country is having record lows.  What is our temperature today?  Over sixty degrees.  Several days ago it was in the teens, but it's nice outside now.  It's been rainy all day and we had a wild storm pass through with tornadoes (rare for us) mid-afternoon. But other than that, it was a very nice day.

My two children and I were at our next door neighbor's house for a while and when we came home, my two got very excited about the water running down the curb towards the drain.  They splashed their way all the way down to the cul-de-sac and I had to corral them in, only to find out they wanted to go back for more splashing.  It was nice enough weather so I told them to take their pants and socks off, put on their crocks (fully plastic shoes) and have at it.  It was tough to get them in, even after it started to rain and we were all getting a bit wet overall.

While they were splashing around following, "the river" my son decided the rivulet was, I had a flashback to a January many years ago when I was doing some business in the city of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.

It was cold.  It was twenty-seven degrees below freezing.  I discovered several interesting things during that week there.  First, my curly, frizzy hair became straight and smooth with the complete lack of humidity in the air.  Second, I had to go buy something called, "nasal gel" to put in my nose to keep it from cracking internally as a result of this same dryness.  And third, I found out they put sand on the streets instead of salt, because salt only helps to a certain temperature because after it gets below that temperature, it's not going to help with any melting.

Also, I found out about something called the "Plus Fifteen."  I was teaching two buildings over in the downtown area from the hotel in which I was staying.  There was a sidewalk that took me straight to the entrance of that building and I planned on Monday morning to walk there.  When I spoke with my on-site contact, he told me about this plus fifteen thing and how I could get to their building via these walkways on the second floors that connected all the downtown buildings together.  They were called "Plus Fifteen" because they were fifteen feet off the ground.

I went to the lobby and got some directions.  To get two blocks over, I was going to have to walk seven blocks going out of my way via this enclosed walkway network.  "Pft," I thought.  "I can make it two blocks, easy."  Monday morning I walked out the front door and started walking to the site.  That's when I realized I didn't know what I was talking about.  Good grief, it was cold.  I fairly stumbled into the building one block over and stood there for ten minutes warming up before walking the second block to the site.

For the rest of the trip I praised the wonder of the Plus Fifteen and was thankful for remaining warm.   As a life-long tenant of the south, it was quite an experience.

The Big Boy Update:  Pacifier separation.  He is down to two, sometimes one pacifiers.  One, he likes, the other he doesn't want at all.  When the one he likes has gone missing (fallen under the bed) he doesn't seem to care much and goes to sleep with out it at night.  I think he's about done with pacifiers and we might suddenly lose his favorite one in short order.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Pacifier dependence.  She is only allowed a pacifier when sleeping, but with the new freedom to get in and out of their room at will, she keeps getting her pacifiers and toting them around the house.  She had one "thrown in the trash" yesterday when she wouldn't put it back in the middle of the day.  She was quite upset.  We're going to have to put hers up and out of sight until she gets into bed at night if she keeps this up.  Before, when they only went into their bedrooms to go to sleep at night or for naps, she didn't seem to care as much.

Three Cents From a New Car

This is a post about stocks and how they go up and down and how we like to hope they go up a whole lot and what we plan to do with the money if that were to happen.  That is, if they went up a whole lot and we decided to sell them at that high price.  Wait, did we factor in capital gains?  That's going to take a significant chunk.  And is it really good to sell it and spend it or would it be better to just sit on it and let it grow (hopefully) over the years?

Stocks tend to cause more theoretical speculations on money than almost anything other than the lottery.  And I've done enough speculation over the years.  I have been fortunate to have both stock options and stock shares from one of my prior companies and over time, those shares have increased in value.

Or rather, they did until the economy fell down a deep, dark, dismal hill, at which point I pretended the stocks weren't there for a number of years, because looking at the net value of them only made me put on one of those sad faces and shake my head. 

But things are improving, and this company (the one I used to work for) has been pacing well with the economy.  Back some years ago, my husband and I had these "magic numbers" that, were our respective stocks to hit, we would spend money on something big.

It's been some years since we had those dreams for higher-valued stock shares.  I've been excitedly watching my old company's stock price because it has been getting closer and closer to that magic number that, for me, meant I was going to sell some and get a new car.

The other day on a Friday, it closed at just three cents below that "new car" price.  I couldn't believe it had gone that high.  On Monday, it dropped over a dollar and I was, I have to say, a bit relieved.  As much as the idea of selling stock shares to buy a car sounds fun, I'm not sure I was really ready to do so.  It hasn't gotten close since that point, but hopefully it will not only get there, but exceed that price as the months go on.

I asked my husband what his stock was doing and his stock is well over his target price.  Only we couldn't remember what, if any, he had planned when that happened.  It looks like we're just going to sit, watch and continue to speculate for now.

The Big Boy Update:  "You are very cute," I told my son as he went off to play with some toys.  "I know," he told me as he walked out of the room.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  V8.  I wanted to try something new with the children today so I offered them each a small can of V8.  Both of the children decided it tasted good, but my daughter was the one that really liked it.  I told her Gramps loved V8 and I was glad she did too.  She got overly enthusiastic at one point and it poured down her shirt and pants.  But she liked it. 

Fitness Update:  These circuit workouts we've been doing lately have been fun.  He's been pushing us on one component, the running part.  In between rounds of circuit work he'll have us do some cardio.  He puts one of us on the treadmill and has the other one do something like burpees with two pushups each.  The one on the treadmill is running at something like 6.0 pace/6.0 incline for a minute and then we swap roles.  That's not bad, but since we were doing well at that he's decided to keep pushing us.  Today he got us up to 8.0 pace/8.0 incline.  We're panting getting off the treadmill and falling into the first burpee.  I don't know that I want to know how fast and high the treadmill goes.

Soup is Available (and Other New Expectations)

We have been intentionally flexible with our children when it comes to food.  We want to give them options on what they can eat at meals, while kow towing to their demands.  For example, I give them several things for breakfast like grapes, dried craisins, yogurt and toast.  They may eat some or all of a particular item and they may choose not to eat all of some of any one choice.  And that's fine.  I stick the remainder back in the refrigerator and offer it again at a future time.

We're starting to see patterns now.  For instance, they love bananas, but only for a period of time.  At that point they decide they've had enough bananas and any bananas we offer for the next several weeks will be largely wasted.  I don't mind a child phasing through foods--I do that myself.  But what I do expect is the child to eat what is offered to them without expecting a replacement meal just because it doesn't suit their mood.

For example, my son would like pancakes for breakfast most mornings.  He doesn't get pancakes very often and when he does, it's usually on the weekend.  I expect him to eat the toast or cereal or English muffin (which is equally delicious) because that's what we're having this morning.  And I don't expect either child to pitch a fit about it.

However, giving them choices and expecting them to eat what's offered to them can be somewhat in conflict.  Last night we decided to offer our children soup for dinner.  If they ate their soup, they could have dessert.  My daughter ate lots of soup and had two helpings of Jello.  My son decided he didn't want soup and rebelled for two hours, almost going to bed without dinner, until he gave in and ate the soup (that he loves).  He had a small dessert as a result.

These children are one battle after another.  If you're not prepared for a fight to make them flexible and able to adapt to all kinds of situations, you can give in any time you like, thus making your like more difficult in the long run.

The Big Boy Update:  "I want a close up."  My son came downstairs this morning and announced it was light outside so it was time for breakfast.  He looked at the clouds, which were just getting some color as the sun rose, and said, "look at the purple clouds.  I want a close up."  At which point he moved closer to the clouds by walking towards the window. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  "They're upstairs."   This morning she brought down her pacifiers when she and my son escaped their room before breakfast.  I told her she had to put her pacifiers upstairs before she could eat breakfast.  She disappeared for a few seconds, came back and said, "they're upstairs."  And they were--she showed me where they were, upstairs two steps from the bottom step.

Fitness Update:  I missed a running opportunity with Uncle Jonathan today where he ran a half marathon (so jealous) but I did make it to the fitness room for some upper body work.  That was fun in a whole different way from workouts with other people as I was alone the whole time.

This Drinking Is Going to Get Me Yet

It's not what you think.  It's not the alcohol.  It's the delicious hot beverages.  I love a delicious hot beverage.  I love them all day long.  I love one when I wake up in the morning and I love one just before I go to bed.  In fact, as I write this at nine o'clock at night, I'm holding my mug with a delicious beverage in it.  (Okay, I'm not holding it right now, because I'm typing, but I was.)

This holiday season has brought me additional beverage choices and I have been over-indulging in them all.  There was the Russian Tea my mother made for me that sent me down memory lane.  I was drinking that daily and making more mix for friends and family. 

Then there was the hot chocolate Keurig cups from Uncle Brian.  I do love a good cup of hot chocolate.   I also got some specialty hot chocolate mix from Uncle Eric and Aunt Kelly.  Uncle Eric did some extensive research and this mix he made for us, he says is the best.  And it is very good. 

Oh, and chai latte.  I always have room for a chai latte.  I also like hot teas.  I like English Breakfast, Indian Chai and Earl Grey in particular and I have gone through a lot of K-cups over the past two months in teas.

So what's the problem?  It isn't the caffeine, that doesn't' bother me.  It's the calories.  I like my tea, hot chocolate and lattes with lots of milk, say a third of a cup.  Some of those drinks already have a decent number of calories in them without adding milk on top.  And don't get me started on the Russian Tea, which is mostly sugar with a power punch of flavor added in for fun. 

I prefer to "eat my calories" instead of drinking them.  It's why I don't have a soda or lemonade or other drink with calories at meals.  But when I'm drinking lots of calories during the day via tasty, hot beverages, it's adding up...but they're so tasty!

The Big Boy Update:  "Seat belts are my favorite."  For anyone who's seen the movie Elf, I swear, my son said exactly that statement...and I had to laugh.  He was driving around in his plastic car/plane thing and he had fashioned a seat belt out of a Mardi Gras necklace.  When Mimi told me he had made his own seat belt, he proudly showed me and said, "seat belts are my favorite."

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Wedgie.  I hate'em.  Truly.  My daughter, on the other hand, cares not.  She put on underpants tonight both inside-out and backwards.  The waist band was partially folded under and she had pulled them way up in the back, making the front part (which was on her back side) even higher up on her little cheeks.  It looked so uncomfortable.  I asked her if I could help her with her pants three times, but she said she was fine and carried on jumping on the bed.