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Jul 20, 2009

Summer Barbecue in the Country

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Yesterday we spent a lovely day in the country. This is an annual barbecue where we get to see friends we never see enough of – some we only see once a year. The homestead of our hosts is like a Midwestern Neverland for kids – an enormous backyard of green grass to run barefoot in, a castle playhouse with slide, toys everywhere, and for the barbecue, an unlimited amount of food.

Proof of a day well spent:

Cordy’s first favorite activity: eating

Finding the toys for the big kids

The makings of a perfect evening: a fire, good friends and marshmallows
Mira clapping along to the live music, face covered in dirt

Cordy and Aaron enjoying the fire & music together

All in all? The perfect day. These are the days I hope my girls will remember as they grow older. The days when the TV and computer are gone and we play outdoors with friends all day long until we collapse around the fire in the evening to sing and roast marshmallows with our dirty feet proudly displayed.

Filed Under: family time ·


Jul 17, 2009

Haiku Friday: Miss Independent

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Next week, a big change
for Mira regarding her
summer camp schedule

Two days a week was
her old schedule, but she wants
more time at her school

Mira is our Little Miss
Independent, wanting more
time away from home

So next week, she will
attend five days a week, just
like her big sister

Mira is nothing if not independent. While Cordy struggles every day with going to summer camp, Mira dives right in. She’s happy to be there, throwing her backpack at me by the time she hits the doorway to her classroom. If I stay and talk to the teachers too long, she will come back to me, look up at me, place her hand on my belly and say “bye bye” as she gently pushes me out the door.

But being there only two days a week is not enough for her. On the days when Cordy goes to camp on her own, Mira often throws a fit because she can’t go with her. So after a lot of number crunching and a little help and prodding from family, we extended her summer camp schedule to five days a week for the last three weeks of camp. I think based on her results so far, she’ll love it.

This kid will be trying to move out on her own before she’s six.

To play along for Haiku Friday, follow these steps:

1. Write your own haiku on your blog. You can do one or many, all following a theme or just random. What’s a haiku, you ask? Click here.

2. Sign the Mister Linky below with your name and the link to your haiku post (the specific post URL, not your main blog URL). DON’T sign unless you have a haiku this week. If you need help with this, please let me know.

3. Pick up a Haiku Friday button to display on the post or in your sidebar by clicking the button at the top.

REMEMBER: Do not post your link unless you have a haiku this week! I will delete any links without haiku!

Filed Under: Haiku Fridays, Mira, school ·


Jul 16, 2009

The Amazon Warrior Princess Versus The Tooth

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I woke up before dawn yesterday, and Aaron and I quickly ate breakfast before Cordy woke up. Because of her surgery, she couldn’t eat or drink anything, so having any food in sight before we left would be a problem.

When it was time to leave, we woke Cordy up, dressed her, and got out the door quickly. She protested the entire time, saying, “I don’t want to go to the doctor! I’m too nervous! I’m apprehensive!” (Thank you, Upside-Down Show, for enriching my daughter’s vocabulary.) By the time we were in the car, she was crying, begging to go home and verging on a full meltdown. Aaron managed to get her calmed down again by the time we arrived at the hospital, and she walked to the surgery center with only minor protests.

In the waiting room, there were two other children waiting for surgery. The two started playing together, but Cordy was too distressed to join in despite our attempts to encourage her to play. After about 15 minutes, we were called back to the consultation room.

We met with the doctor who would be caring for Cordy’s teeth. He was very friendly and way too cheery for 7:30 AM. He explained the entire process while Cordy tried to become one with the wall opposite him. She wanted nothing to do with this doctor, no matter how nice he was.

After we signed the consent forms he left and the anesthesiologist came in. Cordy retreated behind my chair, refusing to come out to meet this woman. We went over Cordy’s medical history, and I mentioned her unreliable metabolism of drugs. It was about this time that Cordy poked her head out from behind the chair to tell the room, “I don’t like her!” The anesthesiologist didn’t seem fazed, but I still added, “Don’t take it personally, it’s because you’re a doctor.”

Aaron had to drag Cordy out from behind the chair so the doctor could listen to her heart, although she couldn’t see into Cordy’s mouth thanks to the unwilling (and strong) Amazon. After explaining the entire process to us, she told us it was time.

Cordy walked down the short hall with us, but as we turned into the surgery room, she saw all of the people waiting for her, and all of the equipment, and tried to pull away to make a break for it. Aaron managed to keep one hand on her, pulling her to the ground, then scooped her up in his arms as she screamed and flailed. It took three or four people (I can’t remember) to hold her down on the padded table as the anesthesiologist placed the gas mask over her face. I couldn’t hide the tears in my eyes as I saw Cordy wide-eyed in fear, her screaming muffled by the mask.

It took about 20 seconds for her to start getting drowsy, her eyes rolling around and finally closing. Aaron and I each gave her a kiss and were led out to the waiting room so they could put in an IV and breathing tube and get to work.

The entire procedure took a little over a half an hour, but it felt like hours. I had my mini laptop with me, grateful for wifi access so I could distract myself with reading blogs, Twitter, and mindless web surfing. My stomach was in knots. Some of the other parents in the room were making small talk, but I couldn’t even muster that when I knew my little girl was breathing with the help of a machine while doctors fixed her tooth. (Yeah, I know – dramatic much? Now you know where Cordy gets her dramatics.)

Eventually, the doctor appeared in the waiting room and told us that everything was done and she did well. The cavity that caused the weakness was on the back of her tooth, meaning it would have been very hard for me to see. (Ha! So much for the guilt trip I got from the other doctor!) X-rays were taken and he told us that Cordy’s other teeth looked great and we were doing a good job with them.

The tooth already had an inflammed nerve, but knowing we wanted to keep the tooth at all costs, he did a root canal and capped the tooth. He also cleaned all of her teeth and put a sealant on her other molars to protect them, and he smoothed out the chip she had on one of her front teeth. The doctor then asked if we knew that Cordy had a few wobbly baby teeth already. When we said no, he told us to expect one of her top front teeth to fall out soon! I wasn’t ready to start talking about the tooth fairy yet!

We then were taken to the recovery room. Cordy was still asleep, eyes half open and mouth hanging wide open. The nurse immediately said, “This is normal – some parents are upset to find their kids looking like this.” Looking at Cordy, I smiled and replied, “Actually, this is often how she sleeps at home. Not that different.” The poor kid had been poked four times in attempts to find an IV site. She seems to have inherited my bad veins, too.

We were asked to not touch her or try to wake her. Kids normally wake up in 20-30 minutes, and waking them up too early can make them combative. While we waited, another child was brought into the recovery room and woke up very quickly. We kept waiting while the nurse went over the discharge instructions. After a half-hour, Cordy still showed no signs of waking up, so the nurse gently called to her and moved her a little. Cordy opened her eyes, tried to sit up, then shifted to her side and tried to go back to sleep.

Aaron picked her up and held her until she was a little more alert, and then we were free to take her home. Cordy couldn’t walk – couldn’t even sit up on her own – so Aaron carried her to the car. By the time we got home, she was talking non-stop, telling us her tooth hurt (NOW her tooth hurts?) and she wanted some juice. She was still too anesthesia-drunk to walk. We put her on the couch and gave her a little juice.

The nurse told us that Cordy would likely be drowsy the entire day due to the medication, and probably wouldn’t have much of an appetite. However, about an hour after we got home she wanted to eat everything in sight, and had more than regained her balance, bouncing around the room like Tigger on speed. She was hyperactive the entire afternoon, and ate a total of four meals before bed. Typical.

The final result? Cordy now has healthy teeth, and won’t need to see the dentist for another six months. And she’s got some bling in her mouth now with a sweet silver crown:

(Ignore the PB&J leftovers around her mouth. She was an eating machine yesterday.)

Thank you for all of the good thoughts yesterday! (And for putting up with my neurotic obsessing over a little tooth.)

Filed Under: Cordy ·


Jul 15, 2009

Roller Coaster of Life

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It’s been such a busy 36 hours here, full of ups and downs and uncertainties. I’ve barely had time to sit down long enough to process it all.

The good:
Remember that job I applied for in a local small hospital? I got it! I’ll be working in the Birth Center as a labor/delivery/postpartum nurse. I’m thrilled to be starting my nursing career in a specialty I’m interested in, and the smaller hospital size may work to my favor.

The bad:
It’ll be a long commute – over 45 minutes. And I was a little surprised to realize that the starting pay is equal to what I used to make as a technical writer five years ago. Ah well, it’ll be worth it to be working with mamas and babies.

The good:
After Mira’s well-child check when she turned two, we were told to schedule an appt. with Children’s Hospital for a speech evaluation. Mira had an evaluation with Help Me Grow last fall, but her pediatrician wanted to see a more aggressive therapy schedule. After waiting over a month, we got an appointment and Mira spent the morning with the speech pathologist today. She was amazed that Mira can speak in full 3-4 word sentences. We heard the word “gifted” again.

The bad:
Although she can speak in 3-4 word sentences, good luck trying to figure out what those words are. Mira is a smart little kid, but she was diagnosed with apraxia of speech. It means that somewhere between her brain and the muscles in her mouth, the message is getting garbled, resulting in poor muscle coordination with her mouth.

It’s nothing that therapy can’t fix, although I’m not looking forward to the fight we’ll have trying to convince the World’s Most Stubborn Toddler to cooperate in even more speech therapy.

The not-so-good:
Cordy’s had a rough week or so. She’s been extremely uncooperative, rude and had several outbursts when frustrated. The culmination was at summer camp today, when she freaked out at swimming time, refusing to go into the water, pinching another child, and then when she had a full-out meltdown, she kicked her teacher and then lost control of her bladder, peeing on her teacher. Not her best day.

The uncertain:
Tomorrow Cordy goes in for surgery. It’ll be early in the day, and as long as the hospital has wireless I’ll probably be tweeting to keep from going insane from worry. I’m sure her tooth has been hurting her – maybe it was the reason she’s been acting out so much? – but the thought of my little girl undergoing general anesthesia is hard to bear. Cordy often has strange reactions to medications, and I don’t know which way she’ll react to what they give her.

I’ve had nightmares for days about something going wrong, then waking up in a full panic attack, trying to stop the tears. Were this Mira, I would not be as worried. Don’t get me wrong – I love Mira just as much, but she’s an amazingly tough kid. She’s never seemed as medically fragile as Cordy. Ha, I can’t believe I just called Cordy fragile. My Amazon warrior princess?

So spare a thought for Cordy in the morning, and hopefully I’ll be reporting that her surgery was quick, routine, and we’ll be home in time for her to watch Word World.

Filed Under: Amazons, big issues, Cordy, Mira, the J-O-B ·


Jul 13, 2009

Yet Another Guide to BlogHer for Newbies

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Note: I wrote this post last year, but didn’t see the sense in re-typing all of it again. Enjoy this recycled post with a few edits to make it more relevant to this year.
——–

Can you feel the tension and anxiety building in the blog world? Nearly one thousand (mostly) female bloggers are a week and a half away from traveling to Chicago for BlogHer 09. The posts about what do I wear? and will anyone talk to me? are already in full swing as some newcomers start to panic and wonder if they’ll be mocked if they don’t have a laptop with them or don’t say the right things.

Relax. Seriously…relax.

This will be my fourth(!) year of BlogHer, and thank god I get to escape flying this year and be a part of the GM carpool. (Hate. flying.) I’m ready to see old friends, meet new friends, and party until I drop. However, I was a member of the nervous newbie club once, too, so I know how some of you are feeling. Allow yet one more person to give you a little advice on surviving your first BlogHer:

Hit the parties: There are a lot of parties planned this year. More parties than one person can possibly attend without some kind of time control device, and most are open to anyone attending BlogHer. Go to the parties, especially the Thursday night parties! This is your first chance to mingle and socialize in a low-stress environment. Even if you have a hard time making the first move to introduce yourself to another person, I promise that someone will ask you who you are and will want to get to know you.

Prepare for short attention spans: At the same time, expect most people at these parties to behave as if they have some kind of attention-deficit disorder. It’s only natural – for those who have been to BlogHer before, they’ll be bumping into lots of people they haven’t seen since last year. And others will suddenly turn and see one of their blog friends standing right in front of them for the first time. So don’t be surprised if you’re talking with a group and someone disappears or squeals and runs away. It’s not you – she was probably overcome with happiness to see another friend. It’ll happen all night, and as one person disappears, others will appear to join in on the conversation. It may even be you doing the ADD-wander-off.

Expect happy surprises: Don’t be surprised if others come running to you, too. At my first BlogHer, I felt so lost when I was checking into the hotel. There were women everywhere – many were clustered in groups, and I was far too shy to approach one of these groups to find out if they were bloggers I knew of. I remember walking past everyone, dragging my suitcase behind me, anxious and feeling like I wanted to hide in my room for the next three days, when I heard, “Is that Christina? Hey, woman!” It was Izzy, and she was the first shout out of many I got that night. I was also invited to dinner with Mayberry Mom that night, too, which further helped to calm my nerves.

Hand out your card: If you don’t suffer from debilitating shyness, be sure to introduce yourself to as many people as possible. Have business cards if you can. They don’t have to be anything fancy: name, blog name, URL and e-mail address are plenty. You might think you don’t matter enough to have a business card, but you’re wrong. That card will help people remember you, and will help them find your blog after we all leave Chicago. Without cards, I never would have remembered the blog names of everyone I met at BlogHer, many of whom I now read.

Be unstructured: Once the conference begins, you’ll meet even more people at the panels you attend. These panels are wonderful, with lots of information for beginners as well as advanced bloggers. But you may occasionally find you need a break, or find a session that doesn’t have any panels you want to attend. That’s totally OK. There’s no rule that you must attend every session – hanging out in the hallways chatting with others is often just as valuable or more valuable than the sessions themselves.

Expect to be photographed: There are cameras everywhere. You’re probably bringing one, too. Remember that everything said or done at BlogHer is on the record, so be prepared to end up on Flickr. This especially goes for those who like to drink, but can’t hold their liquor. (However, if you do want drunken antics to show up on the internet, drink away!)

Branch out: You’re going to find bloggers in your niche, but you’ll also encounter bloggers on nearly any topic. Take some time to get to know women outside of your niche, too. Surely you have interests beyond being a mom, right? Mommy bloggers are lovely, but there are some awesome craft bloggers, too. And pet bloggers. And life bloggers. And food bloggers. And shopping bloggers. If you can’t find someone who blogs about one of your secondary interests, maybe you need to start a new blog, eh?

So what I’m trying to say is don’t stress out about coming to BlogHer, because you’re going to have a good time. It’s a crazy, chaotic few days, where you’ll meet new friends, rub elbows with blog “stars” and maybe even find out that someone admires you, too.

Dress in a way that makes you feel comfortable, and don’t worry so much about your hair and makeup. After all, it can’t be as bad as my hair disaster from ’06.

And if you need someone to give you that initial boost of confidence and support, come find me. I love meeting new people and I’m always available for a hug. At my first BlogHer several friends held my hand and made me feel comfortable, and I’m happy to return the favor for others.

Now tell me, who will I be seeing this year?

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Filed Under: BlogHer, BlogHer09 ·