Time. Marching on. Thank all that is holy.

By golly, is that the time?  Time to sit down and consume all my remaining outlandishly overpriced and calorically overdense foods before reentry into reality tomorrow morning?  Yes, it is time, apparently, since I sat down to blog with a crusty roll (less crusty than a few days ago) the last wad of pâté (I am so hoping Blogger can read pâté as pâté and not pate because, ooooh, ICK!) small slices of dilled Havarti, half a cheese danish and a chocolate caramel nut thingie (name of which escapes me but this goody will NOT escape me).  And an eggnog with rum, natch.  Sadly, this year I couldn't even keep up with my previously set standards for eggnog consumption because this year I was too busy to drink.  Yes, strange but true, we haven't restocked our eggnog from Costco for three weeks, and that is not like us.  Over the past few weeks I have countless times found myself failing to urinate when the urge occurred, only to realize that hours have passed before I finally decided I could pull that off.  Now you may hate me for this, and I do apologize, but I lost four pounds in December.  Before you throw something heavy at my post, do remember I am actually overweight, and fair is fair - someone has to lose pounds in any social circle because the number of pounds compounded between any group of people is a constant, shifting back and forth between the folk according to a fairly complex mathematical statement that if I revealed, you'd have to kill me, so my lips are sealed.  Will you feel better when I tell you that not one person set foot in my house over the holiday season?  Not one?  Not my sister, my niece, my aging parents, my bestie, my other lesser but still beloved friends, not even a neighbor (they left their shit on the doorstep and ran).   So I have to eat the food now, before the break ends, because no one else did.  I don't think people meant to ignore us, I think I only invited people who were unavailable, or so I like to think.  My bestie was in Puerto Rico, my aging parents are too decrepit to climb three stairs to my front door and so prefer we gather as a family at my sister's house, and everyone knows people with kids don't actually have friends. 

So what did we do from that point about three weeks ago until now, when I finally did three loads of laundry and put it away in the same 36 hour span rather than allowing it to mound on the window seat amongst the toys and handmade, glitter saturated Christmas decorations (glitter, as you may know, is Satan's dandruff, and remember the Satan / Santa conundrum, then add laundry and I think you'll see what I mean).   Well there was the shopping, and the wrapping, and the sickness, and the illness, and the wrapping, and the shopping, and the unwellness which delayed the shopping and the wrapping.  Anyway, the aging parents decided to go for broke and check into a nursing home and a hospital simultaneously two days after we had a child with a serious illness which requires the maintaining of a constant normal blood sugar barf her way through the night, Christmas night (bringing our percentage of children who barfed on Christmas to a respectable 50% of the four children in the household).  If it were me, and I were three years old, I'd be pretty upset to find vomit in my hair and my naked parents running around rapidly doing laundry and making me bathe in the middle of the night, but she handled it with all the grace a three year old can muster when she hears "good job, honey, you got it in the bucket!!" 

We did have fun.  We did have lovely gifts, some loud and some not, and some that brought great joy to their new owners.   We fully and finally realized just how much work my dear departed dog was doing to keep the floors clean - having now noticed that the rate of increased mopping is causing the kitchen floor tiles to buckle and rise up (the sort of uprising which leads to an all out revolution, eventually.  I know other parts of the house are planning insurgencies and I am turning a blind eye to the rebels, like many a colonialist before me).

The de rigueur photo post is coming . . . the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future are coming . . . and possibly so will I when you tell me this whole rigmarole going on repeat is at least nearly one year away. 

Blame it on Harry Potter. It's appropriate.

Often when I am avoiding something I busy myself in reading, which has become increasingly harder as my children develop more needs that must be met.  In the last four weeks I have reread all but one of the Harry Potter books and now am working through The Tales of Beedle the Bard.  When I needed one to help complete the set, and the girls and I went to the library, Claire saw that I'd found another very large Harry Potter volume, and looked me squarely in the eye and said "Daddy is not going to be pleased to see you got that, Mommy."  Horrors!  How can she (or he) have turned into the book police while I wasn't even looking?  So just exactly why am I off the blog and in the books?  I think there is something I want to write about, and think about, and process, and I am self censoring.  But not for much longer, I think.  It might just come bursting out soon.  Stay tuned. 

In the meantime - Hannah has turned into someone who goes up and down some stairs without always holding onto something for support - which both delights and terrifies me.  She is also now someone with whom one has conversations.  Her words are still second child murky, and she doesn't have Claire's startling ability to communicate at a level years above her age, but she can be well understood - and often says things that are abstract, not related to things going on in her immediate environment, and uses words I didn't know she knew.  I wish her speech were more clear, but I am so enjoying talking with her these days.  She showed me a craft she'd made in preschool today - a spider made from a piece of an egg carton saying "looka mah 'pider!"  "Oh, I love it Hannah" I respond and she looks at me with total delight and says "(s)pooky!" 


And in other news, Claire's father told her of an idea he had for something and Claire looked at him with approval and said "that's appropriate."

My girls.  I love 'em.

Please stand by . . . or, walk this way

Folks, you've been mighty patient with me, and I thank you for that.  I never finished boasting about Hannah's birthday.  I haven't yet told you of the process of closing out our case with Early Intervention and the bittersweet farewell to the occupational therapist we had for more than two years, and the sixth bureaucratic caseworker in the same span of time.  And of course, having the relationship change between our family and Michael Workman, the Angel of PT, without whose Bamboo Brace we would not be where we are today.  And then I didn't get to tell you about our preparations for kindergarten for Claire, or the choice to keep Hannah in the group of the people on the younger end of her day care class - the ones who are "not quite ready" to be a Busy Bee and so will be Big Ladybugs, at least for the time being.  And how this decision concerns me as it makes me wonder of the wisdom of keeping Hannah, with her late summer birthday, in the cohort that would be her regularly assigned class or might I, instead, hold her back a year so the physical disparities are not so great between her and her classmates and yet leaving her less intellectually challenged.  In her preschool class, no one else knows all their letters (and has done so for eight months) and yet many others can speak more clearly about the letters they do in fact know.  I haven't told you how I worry that the decision I make for this year will not bind us to a certain result in kindergarten - but the choice I make in our kindergarten year will indeed bind us for the rest of her school career.  How will I get that one right?

I also haven't told you how delightful the two girls are to be around.  Fart jokes aside, they have lovely manners and they are wonderfully loving to each other (excepting the odd and oddly lethal sounding disputes over the toy of the moment).  I think they truly miss being in the same school even though they didn't play together on a daily basis there.  Hannah was given a chance to select a sucker from a large jar as bribery for allowing a medical assistant to weigh and measure her, and she took two - so she could give one to her sister - and then wouldn't even open hers until she saw big sis later on and could present it herself.  I haven't told you how joyful Claire really is - even in the roughest moments.  Case in point - the new kindergarten schedule has us waking so, so, so early  (compared to last month, that is) and when I went to wake her she threw her arm around my neck and said "Mommy!  Mommy! Woo-woo-woo!!" (the traditional family way to praise someone about virtually anything).   At 7:40 a.m.!  I think she likes kindergarten.

I haven't told you how discombobulated I am to not have to consider the dog when I want to slip out the back door unnoticed, or I start to pour water in her bowl until I realize her bowl is no longer needed.  We failed to adequately recognize the extraordinary effort she put into cleaning the floor, and have had to increase the mopping schedule considerably and we still are not up to Sophie's standard of cleanliness.

And finally, I haven't told of Hannah's extraordinary progress in gross motor skills generally and in foot function specifically that led her treating physician to decide that she didn't need to wear an AFO, and we'll re-evaluate in six months but it looks quite as if this is a child who might not spend her childhood in braces.

And so we say goodbye to footwear like this:

And hello to cheap footwear from Target - every girl's dream.

Walk this way, please!

They say it's your birthday . . . you're gonna have a good time!

My baby left babyhood.  Those of you who find me sentimental, well, overly sentimental, should perhaps skip this post.  I am going to wax sentimental, and I won't likely wane.  May I introduce my daughter, Hannah Rose?  We've been working on saying "pleased to make your acquaintance" and formally shaking hands (mostly because it is a nice OT type maneuver to get that hand to turn thumb up) but also because it is fun.  I remember when Claire had just been born and I asked Lord Honey if he had been practicing saying "and have you met my daughter, Claire?" in his mind, in anticipation of introducing her to someone.  He was baffled that I might practice such a thing, but I was excited.  I wanted to say "my daughter" far and wide and frequently.  I liked that daughter so much I wanted a second child and hoped mightily to get another daughter.  And fortune smiled on me, and I got this daughter.

 

Have you met my daughter, Hannah? Born on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year, and under a lucky star.  As much as we could say we were unlucky that she had this annoying metabolic disorder, and more unlucky still to have had a metabolic crisis and a stroke in her first two days of life, we were lucky that Claire's lucky and unlucky c-section birth set in motion a need to have another c-section, and that having had Hannah delivered by c-section meant she was still at the hospital when her temperature dropped and her blood sugar tested low and after feeding didn't work she was eventually given a glucose IV (coulda been faster, like oh, say, STAT, the way it was written in her chart, but still) and that administration of glucose put an end to more damage occurring then and there.  So the luck and the unluck combine, the yin and the yang, the peanut butter and the jelly, and you still get a lovely girl, a lucky one, my daughter.

Some say she is lucky to have me, but I think I am luckier still to have her.  Go back and look at that first picture here.  Go on, I'll wait.  She is airborne.  She is brave and bold and funny and strong and beautiful and wicked smart.  And best of all, she is mine.  She says "I got you, Mommy! I got you!"  I got her.

She worships her sister, and who wouldn't.  Claire is so sparkly she competes with the sun.  Really, she does.

Look at that muscle tone!

Admire the hand placement.

Even at a birthday party where three-year-olds get amped up on Costco cake and become increasingly irrational, who wouldn't smile with a daughter like this one? Costs of renting a bounce house facility for a private party - more than some say is appropriate for a toddler.  Seeing her airborne?  Priceless.

A-B-C, easy as 1-2-3, simple as do-re-mi, baby you and me

Note how she tries to take the camera with Righy? That's my girl. When you have a beverage in your hand, just get what you want with the other. I's no big deal, when you are Hannah the Bold.

Only six months to get back up on that horse again

Six months after Hannah got this hobby horse for her birthday she was finally willing to take a little ride in the basement.   Right after she tried to stick some keys in an outlet.  Age two is evertyhing we could have hoped for. 

Thing 1, Thing 2

Sisters are doing it for themselves . . .

Hell's bells, I don't know where the time has gone. Mo specifically asked me to write about the results of constraint therapy for Hannah, and so I will, but first I'll give my excuses for why I am so very absent. I had meant to blog from Disneyland, but I was really in a lot of pain after oral surgery to extract a tooth and begin an implant process, so every time my kids were down and I could rest I didn't feel like getting on the computer. On the night before Thanksgiving, I slipped on ice carrying Hannah, two glass bowls and the school photos, all of which needed protecting and so I torqued my body in the air to not land on Hannah and thereby tore my hamstring.  When folks picked us up and dusted us off the baby wasn't even damp. I win! I really seriously injured myself though, so now when I get my kids down in the evening I need to lie down and try to elevate my hamstring/thigh above my heart to reduce swelling (not easy). So, I beg your pardon if I normally comment on your blog, or if I normally give you something to read, and I've been letting you down.  I look forward to things getting better in six to eight weeks.  Yeah.  Good times.


Hannah did three and a half weeks of constraint casting. The half week was added because I wanted someone professional to take the cast off, because my daughter is a smart cookie and if we do this again in six months I didn't want her to remember that I could take her cast off, I wanted it to be done by a therapist. We definitely see improvement in the use of her affected hand/arm. I would absolutely recommend this therapeutic approach. Hannah was upset but less so than I expected. I was a bit wound up for a while before the cast was put on because I thought she might cry for days and we would wimp out and give in and take it off. She really was fine at the outset, but she did have difficulty sleeping, and staying asleep, largely because the cast literally weighed ten percent of her tiny body weight. Those of you with bigger kids might not have this issue. My treating therapists have a child wear the cast and simply go about their daily lives, we didn't do the six hours of special OT that make up the basis of some programs in other parts of the country, so this was probably a lot easier. Hannah's biggest challenge was with eating, she simply would not use her right hand to put food in her mouth and she seemed indignant that she would be fed like a baby, but she did let us feed her. I was flexible about letting her use her binky more than we had, since I've been trying to reduce use and encourage more speech, but she foxed me by getting her day care minions to put her binky in her mouth. After a morning therapy session I dropped her at the day care and stayed to eat lunch with her so of course I fed her.  Her little friends gathered around us to monitor the mom in their midst. I kept the binky clipped to her shirt so she'd have to use her right hand to get her binky in her mouth. When she would try to do it the movement really exposed that supination is something that we really need to work on but she developed a work around. I saw her look at her two favorite boys, and say "binky" and they both leapt in and tried to be the one to get the binky first and get it in her mouth. Minions! At age two! She has since moved to the next up aged class and now is at the bottom of the pecking order, where the toddlers take her binky out of her mouth and say "binky in your pocket, Hannah!"

Results: extraordinary. the first week after removing the cast we were in Disneyland so I couldn't observe much in the way of the results because Hannah was not often in a place where she might pick up smaller items. I did buy some toys to encourage bilateral tasks - cookies in little plastic "jars" and things of that nature and we worked on those in the car. Now that we are home, I can see more of what she is doing with her affected hand. What is most noticeable is that she uses her hand much more automatically, or when necessary, she uses her hand to hold the thing she picked up first then picks up a second item with her good hand. She is much quicker to use her right hand to balance a cup or bottle, or hold a bowl of Cheetos while she feeds herself with her good hand.
 

Go Righty, go, get that foam number. 

Long time no blog

In the last two weeks since I managed to write a post I have:

• had Hannah's first constraint cast removed, after 3 1/2 weeks and having only cried when people asked me about it if they were people I knew and who loved me but I never once cried to a stranger (this pleases me to no end)
• tears may have come to my eyes when my daughter clubbed me with the cast in my sore jaw
• finished getting ready for the iconic family trip to Disneyland in the minivan, six family members and my best friend, who I think will now no longer travel with my whole brood.  I'm going with her.
• had a tooth extracted ( I think when body parts are taken from you you should get paid, not the other way round)
• had some other guys' squashed up sand like bone and a titanium implant placed in the hole described above, having been told going out of town with my decayed tooth holding a a bridge was "ticking time bomb"
• gone to Disneyland with my family and my best friend, who is a Disney expert and who makes every trip more fun, even when my jaw was throbbing and I'd periodically find not two but three different child applied stains on my clothing in all the usual suspect areas representing food and other fluids roughly equally (I just did the laundry) and I still had a fantastic time
• had two sick kids at Disney (you should buy stock in Kroger grape flavor children's ibuprofen - just a little tip from me to you)
• did not divorce my husband or at least send him packing for a most aggravating incident
• took some lovely pictures of my kids at the beach, which was one of my goals and which the children obviously loved, and which was the source of the friction that made me want to divorce my husband and I think I'll just stop with that there and throw in a little pixie dust

• after pulling in last night around 3:00 a.m. the garage door worked well enough to let my friend's car out and let us park the van.  We put the kids in the bed, came back to get stuff and found the garage door would not open or close.  Since I would access back of the van through the back, this presented some difficulty.  We were held captive but I did get a lift to the store from my husband's ex-wife, then I got a ride home with my groceries from a dear friend who lives hear me, and when I got home the job was nearly done, so only $175 later we are now allowed to leave the house using our own vehicles. 
• After the last two weeks, putting a turkey in oven sounds easy

She said it, she finally said it!

My favorite PT, the Angel of PT as we call him, taught Hannah to say "I do!"   We can say "who loves butter?!?"  "I do!" she says.  Who loves Mama?  Who loves doggie?  " I do, I do!"

Tonight, during our nighttime cuddles while I put her to sleep, when she gets all generally squirmy and excited at first because she has her Mama's undivided attention and then snuggles happily into the breasts of comfort and joy, I said "I love you" and she repeated it.  She really did it.  It sounds like "I yuvyou" and it made my heart melt.
I love you too, honey.

Constraint therapy, the middle

Hannah is still winning. Mama still whining. Nobody got a black eye from being clubbed with the cast yet. Success!



We have seen Hannah do many things with her right hand that she would never have done had lefty been available to her. Obviously the real measure of the technique's success will come when we see what stays with her later, but she is racking up experiences of Righty getting out there and doing things so I am sure neuronal pathways are being laid for future experiences to further the neuronal transmission, and so on. Lord Honey tried to get me to do something the other day and I said "no, I'm rewiring" because I was holding Hannah and doing something or other getting Righty in the game.  We've been using the Lauri peg board shape sorter, and I think Hannah knows all her colors and shapes, the tricky bit is picking up a dropped shape that hits the floor, while getting one off the sofa is fairly accurate. The first few days she wouldn't try, she might just club it with her cast, and now she'll work at it, usually til she gets it. She is turning pages more in books we read, which I've been moving her hand to do for 18 months, but now I tell her to turn it and turn it she will (board books, obviously). She normally carries Ken around, but Barbies are heavy enough that you have to hug them, our better doll figures are the Playmobil people and the wooden doll family members you get at the crunchy toy stores who can be grabbed around the body or at least the feet by a hand as small as Hannah's.  Our real failure is food, she will not make an effort to self feed with Righty. At first I could get sandwich chunks in there but now she squawks to be fed like a baby bird, and it makes her angry to be fed at the day care, possibly she doesn't want to look babyish with her friends? So I told them to bribe her with chocolate milk, because I am full of awesome parenting techniques like that. Sometimes I get a broccoli floret in her fist and she'll eat that, if it is well buttered. She can't hold her bottle, and her sippy cups are all too big. We get some success with the sippies with handles and she holds it with Righty and rests the weight on her casted arm, since it is so much stronger.

If anyone gets here just about to do this, or is thinking of it, get in touch with me and I'll give some tips if I can, and maybe a care package like sweet Mo sent.  See the beads, Mo?  I wish I had more shirts with big sleeves, but baby's big sister is only slightly bigger so we struggle even to find jammies and shirts. 

Right now, I'm glad we are doing it, but when she lies about draped across furniture looking wiped out from carrying ten percent extra body weight all day, I really look forward to taking the durn thing off.  And I am glad no one has a black eye.  Knock on wood.  The girl has a wicked left hook

To Lord Honey, on his forty first birthday

We love you, Big Muffin. 

I thought this day would never come.

When she would like her cowboy hat, and autumnal weather would finally arrive so I could dress the girls in their new clothes.  Yes, that is a purple corduroy dress with a horse print.  Yes it is.  Wait 'til you see the jeans. 

And then she pushed the other button in the elevator

Lately, as Hannah has experienced just an explosion of social behavior and skills she never possessed, and never flaunted before, she has now started to do things regular ol' babies do. I was sort of pleased when she started trying to get out of the car seat on her own during arrivals and departures. I was pleased she was taking initiative. Like reaching up to touch a pan on the stove! We had a perfect outcome, it was hot but not blistering and didn't cause any injury and she learned the word hot and has not been seen trying that again. These new skills also include using excessive flirtiness and smiles to get her way. She hits you if you anger her. She runs away when you call her, laughing maniacally. She can also do all of these things:

Copy big sister



Climb up on stuff


Not refuse to do things with her right hand (full disclosure, I stuck the ball in her hand, but her ability to keep or dump an object is vastly improved)


Weight bearing on her affected arm during play



And be wicked fast at doing things that Claire never did, like pushing the call button in the elevator at the Children's Museum, summoning staff to our aid in the blink of an eye.

Smell the glove Wordless Wedenesday

Dear Hannah, little love

My darling girl, I have not yet made a habit of writing to you yet, or to your sister, and I should be doing so. I have filled my time with telling others of your exploits but I will make an effort to periodically record a moment of reflection for you, just about you, just to tell you of my love for you.

Two years ago today I sprung you from the hospital. For a little while I wondered if I'd get to, or if I'd end up taking you back over and over. As it turned out, your metabolic disorder, though terrifying to me at the outset, has been much less of a worry, while an absolutely unfair brain injury has plagued the two of us much more. I was worried we'd be getting IVs all the time, and then, after finding you didn't move as I expected you would, I started looking for reasons why, and after the diagnosis of hemiplegia at eight months, now we are constantly on the move getting you to every kind of therapy we think might help you really get on the move on your own. I'm sorry to keep you going so much, but I think you'll thank me later, or I wouldn't be so insistent.

My dear, you are fantastic. All your therapists are pleased with you, saying your the best at this or that they have ever seen for a girl with your level of CP. You are praised for the many ways you overcome or work around the disability caused by the brain injury you have, but more importantly, you are enjoyed by all who meet you. You may not like your first meeting with some folks, for others you do, but in the end, when you love someone or just feel like charming a receptionist, you sparkle and shine like the most brilliantly cut diamond. The volunteers at the center where we do hippotherapy thank me for letting them work with you, they enjoy you so much. I am fairly certain they fight over who gets to assist you.

Your winning personality shines through your every action. You've been practicing flirting for ages now, but now you are a star performer. I am delighted with you, my darling girl. You are the icing on my cake.

The yinyanginess of bittersweetyness

My little mind is all a jumble. We had the joy and excitement of Hannah's second birthday, which marks a major milestone not only in her transition from baby to toddler but also in that she has not been hospitalized for an MCADD related illness since her release from the hospital after her birth. We have made two nighttime rushes to the pediatric ER, but were held captive only a few hours and turned away. I'm proud! I'm successful! I don't suck! We've also now had the two year anniversary of her metabolic crash, a date which I believe marks the fatal drop of oxygen that bought us the CP of which we are so very, very fond. I spent that day, last week, hiding it from the world but I felt myself counting down the hours to the time two years ago when they charted she had signs of hypoglycemia, the time I know they did the first blood draw, tried to give her formula, drew the next blood for testing, and then waiting 45 more minutes to test again and place the glucose IV that saved her life. And where was I? In and out of the nursery between bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, but still, trusting in the nurses to pull it all together. We didn't get the MCADD diagnosis for days and there would be no way for the docs to know and anticipate that waiting on that glucose level would be catastrophic because of her MCADD, but still, in the textbooks, they say you always treat hypoglycemia in a newborn. Always. I wonder and I ask why, and I kick myself a bit and feel really angry with the universe because I actually love nurses and don't really want to blame them, since I actually credit them for getting people well. I know they waited for the nurse who is the best at newborn IVs. I wish they had given me second best on a faster timeline. I hate that Hannah has to battle to walk, to learn to use her hand, will have her good hand immobilized so we can motivate her weak one, will maybe need botox or surgeries, and mostly that instead of just enjoying her, every moment is a moment I should be teaching and encouraging her use of her body, even as I know my family has far fewer burdens than many others carry. I'm still pissed off.

And then here is Hannah, in all her Hannah-ish glory, who is making enormous progress in all her therapies and charming all her therapists and as far as I can tell having a pretty good time. She just learned to say her name as "Hnana" with her sweet girlish voice. She'll tap her chest and say it quietly, and smile at me, if I touch my own and say "Mama." She is so obviously delighted with her increasing mobility and strength. She runs! Somewhat crookedly and drunkard like, but she is moving quickly. I love to see her walk over to the window seat, and casually lift one foot halfway, standing as if balancing is no chore and her feet can just sit around looking dainty and girlish while she gets a toy or shares a laugh with her sister. She'll move into the group of kids closer to her age at day care in two weeks, possibly skipping the not quite twos and head for her age group, who passed her by when she didn't walk on schedule. Her therapists all agree on this for her cognitive and social development, and to show her a model of her movements on kids who are on target, and I do agree, except the part of me that says she is small, and light, and tippy, and will maybe have setbacks with growth spurts and therapies that will have her coming to school in casts or getting uncomfortable treatments. And then the day care administrator showed me the kids who she'd be with, who will be her kindergarten cohort, and I watched a girl maybe 8 months older than Hannah fly up the curved ladder of a jungle gym and felt my heart sink. She will do that, but not with her hand as it is now, not yet.

So I'm all mixed up. I'm up as can be and I'm down in the depths. Every time I sit with her and spend a moment on working on her opening and closing her hand, I see how far she's come. She likes to feed me blueberries with righty. I have to lick a squashed piece of fruit out of a questionably clean hand but she is learning to turn her hand up, so I eat the berries and it pleases her. I'm up, and light as air, and Hannah is a joy forever, and I'm dark, and guilty, and not even as guilty as I am mad that she carries these burdens. What should be a normal little MRI and a doubled up dental procedure for her will be a day of general anesthesia for her on Friday (I waited this long so I could keep her at home the day before and not admit her as a precaution to emptying her system of food before a sedative - Hannah will never have easy peasy outpatient surgery) and it literally took something like thirty phone calls and emails to get it scheduled only to have it all nearly dashed when no one wanted to be responsible to move her from one floor of a pediatric hospital to another. But today I heard that the dental suite scheduler pulled some kind of miracle together and I'll be bringing her sweet rolls so my baby doesn't go under twice just because "that isn't the way it's done, ma'am." An office administrator angel in disguise. Perhaps she'll let me sit by her and knit while the dental work gets done.

I wish my camera could do justice to the loveliness of this girl. She has learned so much about how to communicate, I think she doesn't talk much because she doesn't need to, but today she said car and moon on our evening walk. But better still, she can fairly talk with her eyes, her beautiful eyes and joyful smile. When she is awake.






This childhood of my darlings passes so quickly, too quickly. Bittersweet is the right description "more sweet than bitter, bitter than sweet." I want her bigger and stronger and yet to stay so perfectly sized to be held in my arms with her head tucked under my chin. It must cause mothers physical pain when their grown children can't fold up onto them anymore. I don't know how I'll stand it except taking comfort that I got them along in the world that far even when some of the battles were harder fought than was really fair.

They say its your birthday . . . you're gonna have a good time

Wordless Wednesday: tiny pirates

Fifth disease, because six is too many and four is not enough

Well, we need not have feared what Claire would learn watching Grease and hearing the entire crowd singalong, because the night was scuttled by the contracting of the fifth of classic childhood illnesses diagnosed by a distinctive rash, fifth disease, also know as "slap cheek disease" which sounds a little more like something I'd like to inflict. This is how Claire looked coming home from day care:



Normally Claire looks like this:



As Claire mended, I was felled, then Hannah, who was spotty from head to toe. I actually had one evening where I took to my bed then had the bonus symptom saved for adults, with aching arthritic joints that normally feel quite spry, like hips and elbows. So we lost days of work, days of day care fun, therapy and Little Gym sessions, took a lot of pain meds and fever reducers and generally had an ass kicking time. And a big who-hoo to that week, don't think you'll be getting some whiz bang Friday Haiku, because I have to get ready for an upcoming holiday celebrating the baby turning two. Bite me, stupid week. Wait, is that begging for trouble? Let's agree to detente, shall we? It's just a flesh wound and we'll call it a draw.