I haven’t driven an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car since April until today. At home we turn on our little electric cars and they glide silently out of the garage (with the exception of the radio blaring to some children’s song). There is no rumble of the engine at any time because there is no engine, only a motor. It's become something I’ve gotten accustomed to and until today I hadn’t been reminded of the differences.
Today was not unlike the first day I drove our Tesla Model S insofar as the experiences of driving electric and a gas-based car are different. I remember being in awe of how different our new car was in little ways from my eight cylinder enthusiastic gas consuming BMW. After that, for a year-and-a-half, I transitioned daily from the electric car to our Honda minivan without thinking much of it. When you’re driving both types of cars you just accept the differences because that’s how each car drives.
Today my daughter and I arrived in Detroit for another one of her eye evaluations. I got into the rental car, put the key in and turned it on. It was a 2015 car but I worried for a second if it was in proper repair because the rumbling was, well, rumbly. That’s known as an "engine idling” and is normal, I reminded myself.
Then I put the car in reverse and was surprised because I took my foot off the brake and it started moving backwards. Creep, or idle speed, is something an electric car doesn’t have (unless it’s on a hill). This creep thing got me for the first few stops going forward too. I stopped at the check out gate for the rental car place, took my foot off the brake and had to quickly put it back on again.
Then there were the brakes. I mentioned in a post right after we got our first electric car how regenerative braking caused a significant reduction in the need to press the brake pedal. If you use regenerative braking to as much potential as is reasonable, you regain charge on the battery and reduce wear on the brake pads, which is like a double win. A gas-powered car goes faster, not slower down a hill and doesn’t slow down much without you pressing the brakes to prepare for that upcoming red light, sharply turning off ramp, etc.
And the last thing, which has absolutely nothing to do with the electric car, but is a feature I’ve gotten accustomed to is the keyless ignition feature. Lots of cars have this: you keep the key in your purse or pocket and press a button or some other option to start the car. I got out of the car today to get my daughter and it wasn’t until I leaned in to get my purse in the passenger seat that I realized I’d left the keys in the ignition. I was so used to our cars simply locking up after the key was out of range I completely forgot. How embarrassing.
It’s been half a day now and I’m back to not thinking about driving an ICE car. We have two days more in Detroit with my daughter’s EUA in the morning. Hopefully it will be just a look and he won’t have to take any action. If her pressure is good we’ll may be able to move forward with having her cataract removed in the left eye. But more on that front in tomorrow’s blog post.
The Big Boy Update: My father-in-law had gone upstairs with my children for bed the other night. Papa suggested my son go and pee before sleeping. He told Papa, “I can handle it, I don’t wet my bed”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Thanksgiving morning my daughter was very excited to have so many family members in town visiting. My husband and I were being exceptionally lazy, taking a rare opportunity to sleep in (until eight-thirty) since other people had gotten up early. My daughter got onto the bed, stood at the foot and said, “when are you going to come join the fun?”
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Balloon 1, Lamp 0
We had a lamp accident today. I should have seen it coming, it was my fault, I have to admit. I’ve been ordering all sorts of fun little things in the mail and one of the items was a ten-pack of very large balloons. They’re bigger than the punching ball balloons you may have played with as a child with the rubber band attached to the end. These balloons are over two feet across once inflated.
With these big balloons slightly under-inflated they’re resilient and exceptionally bouncy, so we started playing bouncing games in the house. We had fun with the first balloon for almost a week until my daughter decided to lay her entire body on top of it and bounce up and down until it burst, which was a surprise to her but not to the adults in the room. The second balloon had a “no body slams” rule and we proceeded to come up with all sorts of games with the most popular being a point system for hitting the balloon hard enough to tag the ceiling, the railing of the second floor bridge in the vaulted area of our living room and most importantly, getting on or over the bridge for serious bonus points.
My son was perhaps the best at this game, possibly because he refused to have his points reset after each game, tallying up over two hundred by the time the lamp incident happened today. I had gone out and called my husband to ask about lunch plans when he put my daughter on the phone as she was crying miserably. She said the lamp had broken and then said some other unintelligible words through her tears. My husband got back on the line and talked about the shattered ceramic lamp base and the cleanup process which was underway.
I changed my shopping plans and headed off to find a replacement lamp. My husband sent a picture of the remaining, matching lamp with height dimensions. I was lucky in that I found a reasonable priced replacement at the first store I went to. The lamp was in a set of three, which was nice because we’d still have matching end table lamps and an added floor lamp for a spot that sorely needed light in the living room.
I came home and we’d assembled the lamps in short order. We’re not sure we like the new lamps as much as the old ones because they aren’t quite as large and our living room, being a two-story valued space needs big feeling lamps to fill the space, but we like them and we’re going to see if they grow on us. The floor lamp added a nice touch to the room as well.
My husband said the broken lamp wouldn’t have happened in most cases. Indeed, the lamps had been hit by the balloons before, but because they were heavy and big, it just off-kiltered the shade a bit which was easily righted. My daughter did some sort of slam dunk at just the right distance to cause the lamp to crash. But to be sure, the balloon was “accidentally” popped and thrown away, thus ending the game.
Not an hour later, my neighbor’s daughter was in the house and had found one of the smaller, punching bag balloons from somewhere else and hit it in the living room—right into the new lamp, which fell over and crashed onto the floor. The bulb broke but thankfully the lamp survived. That balloon suddenly suffered another deflation at the hands of some scissors. Now we get to see how well the lighter lamps (which look quite nice) manage with two five-year olds in the house.
The Big Boy Update: Uncle Bob and I were in the craft room this evening doing some wrapping when my son came in. He saw cardboard boxes and went to my jewelry plier drawer. He asked if he could do “plier work” on one of the boxes. I let him select five different types of pliers and sent him to the front porch with a cardboard box. He was out there happily for some time mangling the box in all sorts of ways. He asked me to keep the box for him so he could do more “work” on the box tomorrow.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Not knowing what my daughter can and can’t see sometimes makes simple observations interesting. She was at the park late this afternoon, walking along, holding Uncle Bob’s hand. She said to him, “your shadow is so long”. It’s exciting to know she can see some things, I just wish she could tell us what the world looks like through her eyes.
With these big balloons slightly under-inflated they’re resilient and exceptionally bouncy, so we started playing bouncing games in the house. We had fun with the first balloon for almost a week until my daughter decided to lay her entire body on top of it and bounce up and down until it burst, which was a surprise to her but not to the adults in the room. The second balloon had a “no body slams” rule and we proceeded to come up with all sorts of games with the most popular being a point system for hitting the balloon hard enough to tag the ceiling, the railing of the second floor bridge in the vaulted area of our living room and most importantly, getting on or over the bridge for serious bonus points.
My son was perhaps the best at this game, possibly because he refused to have his points reset after each game, tallying up over two hundred by the time the lamp incident happened today. I had gone out and called my husband to ask about lunch plans when he put my daughter on the phone as she was crying miserably. She said the lamp had broken and then said some other unintelligible words through her tears. My husband got back on the line and talked about the shattered ceramic lamp base and the cleanup process which was underway.
I changed my shopping plans and headed off to find a replacement lamp. My husband sent a picture of the remaining, matching lamp with height dimensions. I was lucky in that I found a reasonable priced replacement at the first store I went to. The lamp was in a set of three, which was nice because we’d still have matching end table lamps and an added floor lamp for a spot that sorely needed light in the living room.
I came home and we’d assembled the lamps in short order. We’re not sure we like the new lamps as much as the old ones because they aren’t quite as large and our living room, being a two-story valued space needs big feeling lamps to fill the space, but we like them and we’re going to see if they grow on us. The floor lamp added a nice touch to the room as well.
My husband said the broken lamp wouldn’t have happened in most cases. Indeed, the lamps had been hit by the balloons before, but because they were heavy and big, it just off-kiltered the shade a bit which was easily righted. My daughter did some sort of slam dunk at just the right distance to cause the lamp to crash. But to be sure, the balloon was “accidentally” popped and thrown away, thus ending the game.
Not an hour later, my neighbor’s daughter was in the house and had found one of the smaller, punching bag balloons from somewhere else and hit it in the living room—right into the new lamp, which fell over and crashed onto the floor. The bulb broke but thankfully the lamp survived. That balloon suddenly suffered another deflation at the hands of some scissors. Now we get to see how well the lighter lamps (which look quite nice) manage with two five-year olds in the house.
The Big Boy Update: Uncle Bob and I were in the craft room this evening doing some wrapping when my son came in. He saw cardboard boxes and went to my jewelry plier drawer. He asked if he could do “plier work” on one of the boxes. I let him select five different types of pliers and sent him to the front porch with a cardboard box. He was out there happily for some time mangling the box in all sorts of ways. He asked me to keep the box for him so he could do more “work” on the box tomorrow.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Not knowing what my daughter can and can’t see sometimes makes simple observations interesting. She was at the park late this afternoon, walking along, holding Uncle Bob’s hand. She said to him, “your shadow is so long”. It’s exciting to know she can see some things, I just wish she could tell us what the world looks like through her eyes.
Friday, November 25, 2016
Do Aliens…
Children say the darnedest things. Wasn’t that an Art Linkletter saying or the name of a show? I didn’t understand it until I had children and now I understand it and it makes so much sense and it’s great.
As adults we have brains full of lots of things. We have brains constrained by what we’ve learned and observed over the years and what we know to be “the way things are”. It’s why we don’t think to ask why the sky is blue, because we already asked that question long ago.
Children aren’t hampered by knowledge. They don’t know how things are suppose to work and they don’t have years of observational data on how our world behaves. The result is interesting questions and funny statements.
On Tuesday my daughter asked me, “do aliens grow smaller or bigger when they have a birthday?” You can follow the logic, right? She knows children grow bigger as they get older because we just measured her height on the wall and marked off another year in her closet. She knows about aliens because even Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has an episode with “Martian Mickey” and aliens are mentioned in all sorts of places. But do aliens grow the same as we do?
How do you answer that question though? We try to always be honest with our children and we try to keep fantasy to a reasonable minimum, because we know children are trying to make sense of the real world and throwing in imaginary characters and places only makes things more confusing.
So I told her we didn’t know the answer to her question. I explained how we, as humans, hoped to find other forms of life, but so far we haven’t been successful. My daughter and son asked questions about where aliens might live and how we might meet them. I told them there were people who dedicated their lives to looking for signs of other life in our universe and that if we did meet aliens some day, we could find out if they grew bigger or smaller on their birthdays.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked for me to come up after Grandpa had read a story to them tonight. It turns out he didn’t like the color of his bed sheet and wanted it changed. It was dirty and in need of being changed so he and I changed it together. As we were finishing he said outlaid to himself, “ugh, my tongue is dry as sand”. He went to the bathroom and got a drink of water from the sink and then went up to bed and went right to sleep.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: At dinner tonight my daughter said, “there are two kinds of sweet. Candy is sweet because of the taste, and I’m sweet because I’m nice.”
As adults we have brains full of lots of things. We have brains constrained by what we’ve learned and observed over the years and what we know to be “the way things are”. It’s why we don’t think to ask why the sky is blue, because we already asked that question long ago.
Children aren’t hampered by knowledge. They don’t know how things are suppose to work and they don’t have years of observational data on how our world behaves. The result is interesting questions and funny statements.
On Tuesday my daughter asked me, “do aliens grow smaller or bigger when they have a birthday?” You can follow the logic, right? She knows children grow bigger as they get older because we just measured her height on the wall and marked off another year in her closet. She knows about aliens because even Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has an episode with “Martian Mickey” and aliens are mentioned in all sorts of places. But do aliens grow the same as we do?
How do you answer that question though? We try to always be honest with our children and we try to keep fantasy to a reasonable minimum, because we know children are trying to make sense of the real world and throwing in imaginary characters and places only makes things more confusing.
So I told her we didn’t know the answer to her question. I explained how we, as humans, hoped to find other forms of life, but so far we haven’t been successful. My daughter and son asked questions about where aliens might live and how we might meet them. I told them there were people who dedicated their lives to looking for signs of other life in our universe and that if we did meet aliens some day, we could find out if they grew bigger or smaller on their birthdays.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked for me to come up after Grandpa had read a story to them tonight. It turns out he didn’t like the color of his bed sheet and wanted it changed. It was dirty and in need of being changed so he and I changed it together. As we were finishing he said outlaid to himself, “ugh, my tongue is dry as sand”. He went to the bathroom and got a drink of water from the sink and then went up to bed and went right to sleep.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: At dinner tonight my daughter said, “there are two kinds of sweet. Candy is sweet because of the taste, and I’m sweet because I’m nice.”
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Except for the Yeast Rolls
Today was a lovely Thanksgiving day. We had my parents, my in-laws, two of my brother-in-laws and some close family friends over for dinner, socialization and camaraderie. Everyone was in good humor, starting with the sampling of the champagne (or sparkling wine) selection we’d been collecting over the past several years.
My husband and I had been given a bottle of sparkling wine at our wedding, nearly seven years ago, from the Bellagio in Las Vegas. We’d never gotten around to drinking it and that bottle had collected along with four other bottles of sparkling spirits since that time. We started with our wedding bottle and made it through four bottles before dinner was through. I think, on the whole, our wedding bottle was the best, although perhaps I was somewhat biased by the occasion on which we got the bottle. I wasn’t alone though in thinking it was better in quality than some of the other options.
I was excited because finishing by finishing up those bottles, we were going to gain not one, but two door shelves in available space in our refrigerator in the garage. Those shelves had been occupied by bottles for years until tonight and I, for one, am looking forward to using them for other purposes.
There was one calamity with our dinner though—dinner rolls. It was my fault I suppose. My husband had phoned, asking if we needed thirty-some rolls from Costco on his trip on Wednesday. “Seriously?” I think I said, commenting on the thirteen guests and the overabundance of bread products in our house already. So he didn’t buy the rolls and as a result, we were bread-free for our Thanksgiving meal.
This lack of bread was no problem to me as I find the bread the most mundane and least exciting item on the menu. I prefer to spend my stomach space on dishes people have made for the occasion instead of bread from a store. But some disagreed with me.
I was the brunt of incessant “lack of yeast roll” jokes all night. It was great. Although I’m not completely sure if a few of our guests are planning on boycotting Thanksgiving dinner in the future unless there is a guarantee of rolls, buns or some sort of bread item to go with the meal.
Good times. Good food. Good family and friends. Even if we didn’t have rolls…
The Big Boy Update: This morning I said to my son, “good morning”. He turned around as he was walking away, thought and then said, “good morning and happy Thanksgiving.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: “It’s not fair” is my daughter’s new saying. As I’m writing this I have heard her say it twice already. It must be a five-year-old thing.
My husband and I had been given a bottle of sparkling wine at our wedding, nearly seven years ago, from the Bellagio in Las Vegas. We’d never gotten around to drinking it and that bottle had collected along with four other bottles of sparkling spirits since that time. We started with our wedding bottle and made it through four bottles before dinner was through. I think, on the whole, our wedding bottle was the best, although perhaps I was somewhat biased by the occasion on which we got the bottle. I wasn’t alone though in thinking it was better in quality than some of the other options.
I was excited because finishing by finishing up those bottles, we were going to gain not one, but two door shelves in available space in our refrigerator in the garage. Those shelves had been occupied by bottles for years until tonight and I, for one, am looking forward to using them for other purposes.
There was one calamity with our dinner though—dinner rolls. It was my fault I suppose. My husband had phoned, asking if we needed thirty-some rolls from Costco on his trip on Wednesday. “Seriously?” I think I said, commenting on the thirteen guests and the overabundance of bread products in our house already. So he didn’t buy the rolls and as a result, we were bread-free for our Thanksgiving meal.
This lack of bread was no problem to me as I find the bread the most mundane and least exciting item on the menu. I prefer to spend my stomach space on dishes people have made for the occasion instead of bread from a store. But some disagreed with me.
I was the brunt of incessant “lack of yeast roll” jokes all night. It was great. Although I’m not completely sure if a few of our guests are planning on boycotting Thanksgiving dinner in the future unless there is a guarantee of rolls, buns or some sort of bread item to go with the meal.
Good times. Good food. Good family and friends. Even if we didn’t have rolls…
The Big Boy Update: This morning I said to my son, “good morning”. He turned around as he was walking away, thought and then said, “good morning and happy Thanksgiving.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: “It’s not fair” is my daughter’s new saying. As I’m writing this I have heard her say it twice already. It must be a five-year-old thing.
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Woe Is a Day Without Pants Pockets
I am telling you, if there is to be a day my children are bound to say the cutest, funniest, most outrageous things, it is sure to be a day I don’t have a pocket in my pants large enough to hold my cell phone.
Today we were at the house all day so I wasn’t worried about losing track of the phone. If anything happened notification-wise, I’d get the passthrough information on my Apple Watch. If I needed to take a call and I really wanted to talk on my watch, I could do that (I typically don’t want to do that because holding my wrist to my head isn’t all that much fun.)
Most of the people involved in our day were arriving at one point or another thus signaling the start of our Thanksgiving long weekend. It was a fun day, it was a happy day—it was a day full of children crying at each other at eight-thirty in the morning because of some sort of insult or intentional injury due to hard feelings.
I think that may have been the overriding theme of the day: “I don’t like what you did and I’m going to exact revenge on you as a result.” We have six children in a four-house proximity, all of whom move in and out of our house as the flow of friendship moves them. And all of them seemed to have short tempers today. I say this as the one adult in the area who had equally poor temperament today. I don’t know what it was, but I was on edge. So my apologies to the my children who are reading this years from now, because yes, I was in a crappy mood today.
But enough of that, let’s talk about blog-worthy sayings. There were a lot. There were at least five, maybe more, which is a bumper crop in the land of blog ditties I try and capture each day. Only on account of my new pocketless pants, I got none of them written down. Tomorrow, there will be pockets, that’s for sure.
The Big Boy Update: My son said, “turkey makes me sleepy.” I told him there was scientific evidence behind his statement that made what he was saying true.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter thinks my name is in Malted Milk Balls. I hated to correct her, telling her they weren’t actually called “Mama Milk Balls”.
Today we were at the house all day so I wasn’t worried about losing track of the phone. If anything happened notification-wise, I’d get the passthrough information on my Apple Watch. If I needed to take a call and I really wanted to talk on my watch, I could do that (I typically don’t want to do that because holding my wrist to my head isn’t all that much fun.)
Most of the people involved in our day were arriving at one point or another thus signaling the start of our Thanksgiving long weekend. It was a fun day, it was a happy day—it was a day full of children crying at each other at eight-thirty in the morning because of some sort of insult or intentional injury due to hard feelings.
I think that may have been the overriding theme of the day: “I don’t like what you did and I’m going to exact revenge on you as a result.” We have six children in a four-house proximity, all of whom move in and out of our house as the flow of friendship moves them. And all of them seemed to have short tempers today. I say this as the one adult in the area who had equally poor temperament today. I don’t know what it was, but I was on edge. So my apologies to the my children who are reading this years from now, because yes, I was in a crappy mood today.
But enough of that, let’s talk about blog-worthy sayings. There were a lot. There were at least five, maybe more, which is a bumper crop in the land of blog ditties I try and capture each day. Only on account of my new pocketless pants, I got none of them written down. Tomorrow, there will be pockets, that’s for sure.
The Big Boy Update: My son said, “turkey makes me sleepy.” I told him there was scientific evidence behind his statement that made what he was saying true.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter thinks my name is in Malted Milk Balls. I hated to correct her, telling her they weren’t actually called “Mama Milk Balls”.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
My Little Punishment
My daughter had her five-year wellness check yesterday. I don’t think they were called, “wellness” appointments when I was a child so if you haven’t heard of the phrase before it means the periodic appointment children have with their pediatrician to check on how things are going. Growth metrics are collected, questions are asked, the child is looked at and talked to and you, as a parent, have an opportunity to ask about all the things you’re concerned are indicators your child may not be well or normal or is it a bad thing that you can’t get them to eat peas?
It’s also your chance to ask questions like, “why does my son prefer to stand around in soiled pants for hours instead of just going to the bathroom when he needed to in the first place? In the case of my daughter conversation tends to be around her eye situation, particularly and especially when there is a new doctor (because your old doctor retired) and a medical student in the room with you.
We were told there would be shots in the case we’d like to prepare my daughter. Then they decided to get a blood sample from a finger prick to check for iron levels. We did prepare her for the shots, which she was not thrilled about, but understood they had to happen, we all got them and the pain would be over quickly.
We also told her there would be a little “poink”, as she likes to call things pointy, that would be on her finger first to catch a drop of blood. I’m going to jump ahead and tell you that this little tiny poink turned out to be one hell of a problem. But at the point of explaining what would happen to my daughter, it was just a little prick and a drop and it would all be done.
The nurse came back in and my daughter wasn’t thrilled, but was manageable. The “Poink” machine jabbed into my daughter’s little tiny finger and she went nuts. She was screaming and kicking and fighting and, woah, we were telling her, it was over, no more pain, just collecting of the blood. She only needed to stay still so we could get a few drops of blood into the collector tube that didn’t hurt at all and we would release her.
We were holding her because she was combative and bleeding quite freely. The poink happened to hit just right and we had blood—and it was going everywhere. It wasn’t so much overall, but it was getting on my hands, my husband’s hands, the nurses’s hands and of course my daughter’s hands. There was far more blood than would have been necessary to collect in the little tube if only she had calmed down for twenty seconds.
She yelled at us to let her go. She screamed that it hurt. She cried out in general insult and injury. And by the time she relaxed enough for us to get the tube up to her finger, there was enough clotting factor in her blood that we couldn’t get a drop down into the reservoir for the test.
We moved on to the shots, which were very fast and involved screams for less than thirty seconds as my husband, the nurse and I held her down so she could get them done quickly. My daughter fought well though or it would have taken only ten seconds.
With a bandaid on her finger and one on each leg, we took her back to school. I found out later that her legs did hurt her during the day when she was playing outside. I apologized to her because I didn’t think the shots would hurt after they were done. We try to be honest with her because she needs that honesty with all the medical intervention she’s had and I felt badly I hadn’t thought to tell her she might have some soreness later in the day.
As she was talking to me she told me, “and my little punishment hurt too.” What? I had to turn around in the car to find out what she was talking about. She was pointing to the finger that had the prick on it. I realized she thought we had been saying, “a punishment” when we’d been saying, “a punch test”. I told her we weren’t trying to punish her at all. I hope she understood.
Later in the day I heard her talking to herself as she was playing an imagination game. She talked about how she had had two shots and they didn’t hurt at all.” She was definitely putting on a strong face for her imaginary friend.
The Big Boy Update: My son told me the other day, “I have the most magnificent teacher, Miss Cathy.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: I told my daughter that, “her little punishment” was not intended to be a punishment at all and we never want to hurt her. I hope she believes us, although with all the medical things happening to her, sometimes it’s hard to convince her of our good intentions.
It’s also your chance to ask questions like, “why does my son prefer to stand around in soiled pants for hours instead of just going to the bathroom when he needed to in the first place? In the case of my daughter conversation tends to be around her eye situation, particularly and especially when there is a new doctor (because your old doctor retired) and a medical student in the room with you.
We were told there would be shots in the case we’d like to prepare my daughter. Then they decided to get a blood sample from a finger prick to check for iron levels. We did prepare her for the shots, which she was not thrilled about, but understood they had to happen, we all got them and the pain would be over quickly.
We also told her there would be a little “poink”, as she likes to call things pointy, that would be on her finger first to catch a drop of blood. I’m going to jump ahead and tell you that this little tiny poink turned out to be one hell of a problem. But at the point of explaining what would happen to my daughter, it was just a little prick and a drop and it would all be done.
The nurse came back in and my daughter wasn’t thrilled, but was manageable. The “Poink” machine jabbed into my daughter’s little tiny finger and she went nuts. She was screaming and kicking and fighting and, woah, we were telling her, it was over, no more pain, just collecting of the blood. She only needed to stay still so we could get a few drops of blood into the collector tube that didn’t hurt at all and we would release her.
We were holding her because she was combative and bleeding quite freely. The poink happened to hit just right and we had blood—and it was going everywhere. It wasn’t so much overall, but it was getting on my hands, my husband’s hands, the nurses’s hands and of course my daughter’s hands. There was far more blood than would have been necessary to collect in the little tube if only she had calmed down for twenty seconds.
She yelled at us to let her go. She screamed that it hurt. She cried out in general insult and injury. And by the time she relaxed enough for us to get the tube up to her finger, there was enough clotting factor in her blood that we couldn’t get a drop down into the reservoir for the test.
We moved on to the shots, which were very fast and involved screams for less than thirty seconds as my husband, the nurse and I held her down so she could get them done quickly. My daughter fought well though or it would have taken only ten seconds.
With a bandaid on her finger and one on each leg, we took her back to school. I found out later that her legs did hurt her during the day when she was playing outside. I apologized to her because I didn’t think the shots would hurt after they were done. We try to be honest with her because she needs that honesty with all the medical intervention she’s had and I felt badly I hadn’t thought to tell her she might have some soreness later in the day.
As she was talking to me she told me, “and my little punishment hurt too.” What? I had to turn around in the car to find out what she was talking about. She was pointing to the finger that had the prick on it. I realized she thought we had been saying, “a punishment” when we’d been saying, “a punch test”. I told her we weren’t trying to punish her at all. I hope she understood.
Later in the day I heard her talking to herself as she was playing an imagination game. She talked about how she had had two shots and they didn’t hurt at all.” She was definitely putting on a strong face for her imaginary friend.
The Big Boy Update: My son told me the other day, “I have the most magnificent teacher, Miss Cathy.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: I told my daughter that, “her little punishment” was not intended to be a punishment at all and we never want to hurt her. I hope she believes us, although with all the medical things happening to her, sometimes it’s hard to convince her of our good intentions.
Monday, November 21, 2016
What Does It Look Like?
We have no idea what things look like to my daughter. She can’t tell us what things look like in comparison to what they’re supposed to look like because she doesn’t know what they should look like. We know she doesn’t have a simple prescription-based solution where a lens correction would fix her vision problems. We just don’t know.
She has a wrinkled retina on which the images coming in to her eyes are distorted, only we don’t know how much those images are distorted. And by images, I suppose I mean image, since her right eye really doesn’t see anything measurable at this time. As an aside, maybe the right eye can see things but the brain isn’t paying attention to them or maybe the right eye will begin to see things in the future or maybe it won’t ever see anything again. For now, let’s just talk about that one, left eye and see what it might be seeing.
This is the view from our front porch. The top is the actual view and the bottom is my husband’s estimation of what the view might look like. We think it may look more like the right side of the picture (which is more obscured) than the left side. For instance, there is a small path light pole just to the left of the walkway at the mulch line. My daughter has no idea that’s there and has run into/over it before.
This second view is our kitchen. My daughter is low down, just like the picture. Her colors are off so she sees things not true and sometimes gets colors wrong. Again, the right side of the picture is more distorted and may be a better idea of what she is and can see.
She has a wrinkled retina on which the images coming in to her eyes are distorted, only we don’t know how much those images are distorted. And by images, I suppose I mean image, since her right eye really doesn’t see anything measurable at this time. As an aside, maybe the right eye can see things but the brain isn’t paying attention to them or maybe the right eye will begin to see things in the future or maybe it won’t ever see anything again. For now, let’s just talk about that one, left eye and see what it might be seeing.
This is the view from our front porch. The top is the actual view and the bottom is my husband’s estimation of what the view might look like. We think it may look more like the right side of the picture (which is more obscured) than the left side. For instance, there is a small path light pole just to the left of the walkway at the mulch line. My daughter has no idea that’s there and has run into/over it before.
This second view is our kitchen. My daughter is low down, just like the picture. Her colors are off so she sees things not true and sometimes gets colors wrong. Again, the right side of the picture is more distorted and may be a better idea of what she is and can see.
My husband had an idea to try and make some guesses at her actual vision and decided to take some pictures into Photoshop to see what he could come up with. They’re a good guess I think, although I think they likely show more than she can actually see. Still, she seems to be able to navigate around with the information from the bottom halves of the pictures, so maybe it’s not too far off.
The Big Boy Update: My son wanted to take our triangular prism to school today for show and tell. We don’t let them take things to school too often but this seemed like a good one to allow. I told him to be careful and keep the prism in the protective container. He agreed. My husband, before we had gotten into the car had further told my son four times to be careful with the prism. I asked him to give it a rest, because he was going to be careful and the repeated reminders weren’t going to make him any more careful and were conveying the message in fact that we didn’t think he was trustworthy or careful enough to be entrusted with the prism. Furthermore, it was a $10 prism and we could get another one if something untoward happened to our current one. I picked up my son from school with a bandage on his thumb, an incident report from his teacher and some very kind words from her that there had been an accident with the prism. I told her (and my son) it was okay, we’d get another one. My son had been upset about the whole thing and hadn’t been able to focus for much of the day after the prism incident. We talked and he had, indeed, been careful—only he was excited too, especially since the prism was so interesting and he didn’t ask to take things to school very often. He knows we’re not mad. I told him I put on my holiday wish list not only a triangular prism, but a pyramid prism too. Maybe we’d get both, who knows?
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had her wellness check today. There was a finger punch (one of those quick stabs) to get a few drops of blood for an iron test. My daughter didn’t hear what we had called it (a quick punch) and thought instead she had had, “my punishment test”.
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