December 5: Teeth Extraction, Exit signs, and Ooooh!

Last Sunday we got our Christmas tree and decorated it. This process was less stressful than it has been in some years. I gave myself more time to get organized before the kids came to help, and I set up a card table with hooks and ornaments. This made for a more controlled process instead of a free-for-all during which I usually scramble to keep up with their pace. 

Sarah had a rough Monday because she had two grown-up teeth extracted that morning to help with overcrowding in her jaw. She took a pill to help her be relaxed and the oral surgeon also used laughing gas. Carl reported that in the middle of the procedure the surgeon said, “Sarah you are amazing.” She responded in her best drawled sing-song voice, “I am?” She had a low-key day after that, skipping her swim lesson because exercise isn’t allowed within 24 hours of an extraction because it could raise blood pressure and break clots. She didn’t seem upset about missing swimming, which tells you that she wasn’t feeling the best. She did go to her piano lesson because she really wanted to do so, and I figured that would be ok. Tuesday she stayed home from school. At first I wasn’t sure if that was the right decision because she woke easily and was acting like she felt well. But at the mention of school she screamed and protested vehemently. It is easy for me to have a substitute teacher on Tuesdays while I have teachers-in-training, so I stayed home with Sarah. She slept all morning and wanted me snuggled by her side the whole time. 

The rest of the week was a bit challenging in terms of meals and mornings. Sarah could only eat very soft food but didn’t want many options that I thought might work. Thank goodness for yogurt and ice cream. As for mornings, even when no one has any teeth removed, Sarah’s mornings are always a bit of a gamble as to how they will go. Some days she gets ready for school easily, and other days she protests a lot and complains of a host of ailments even when the rest of her behavior indicates that she feels fine. She also pretends to be her teacher calling me to tell me Sarah isn’t feeling well. This gets me doubting myself in sending her to school. She can feel that doubt like a dog smells fear, so she ups her game of protest. Luckily, Carl is skilled at connecting with her about something non-school related and using that to get her moving in whatever direction is needed. 

Sarah’s latest favorite thing is to make exit signs and tape them around the house. I write the outline of the letters and she does the coloring. She is doing a much better job coloring the whole shape and staying in the lines than ever before. She also makes some signs independently. We now have exit signs above almost every door leading into a room as well as on walls. Amy likes to take such wall signs literally and walks gently but directly into a wall while laughing.

I wanted to get Playdoh advent calendars for the kids, so Sarah and I went to Target. As soon as we entered the store I felt like maybe I had made a mistake in not going alone. Sarah repeatedly ran to items that we passed while saying, “oooh!” and describing the thing and saying that she wanted it. This made for slow progress. At one point when I asked her to come with me she said, “I want to find more stuff to say ooh about.” I cracked up. Maybe we should all have more of that perspective in life. We eventually found the last two Playdoh advent calendars and returned home. Amy is  beyond thrilled to have more Playdoh and molds to go with it. I’m glad that this year we aren’t navigating making them share and take turns with one advent calendar. In this house there is no such thing as too much Playdoh. Amy is prolific with her artistic creations, and she lets them dry to preserve them. So we don’t get the brown mush of all colors mixed together that has been reused repeatedly. We just run out of dough and get more. 

May you have something to run and say “ooh” about.

November 28: Feasts, Dancing, Sledding, and Waiting for Snails to Deliver The Mail

Happy Thanksgiving! This year was possibly the least stressful, most relaxed Thanksgiving I’ve had since becoming a parent. I kept thinking that I must have been forgetting to do something. I did almost all of the cooking ahead of time so it was just a matter of reheating for the actual feast. Carl facilitated packing for our weekend and listening to Sarah’s bigger-than-usual upset when her technology turn was over. Later, when Sarah asked to do “Sincere my dear” 15 minutes before our target lunch time, I was able to say yes! I wasn’t rushing around doing things.  Sonia and her partner also brought a lot of delicious food, as always. We had a wonderful meal and a relaxed time hanging out afterwards. Somehow the subject of dancing to Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” came up, so Carl put it on and all the grownups instantly started dancing. Amy sat there looking at us as if we were a little bit nuts. That made us laugh and dance all the more. 

We spent the rest of the long weekend at our mountain house, enjoying a bit of snow. The good thing about our driveway is that it is so steep it makes for great sledding. The bad thing about our driveway is that it is so steep our car sometimes can’t make it up if it is at all icy. When we first arrived it hadn’t snowed and it was fine, but we also hadn’t brought snow pants and Amy was the only one to bring boots. So on Friday after it snowed, I drove home to grab snow gear. When I returned, I couldn’t make it up the driveway. Luckily Carl was able to get the car half-way to the garage so he could use an extension cord to charge the car, which is fully electric. Otherwise we would have been in a pickle with not enough range to get home. We also have another hill that works for sledding so the car in the middle of the driveway wasn’t a deterrent. 

Yesterday the little bit of snow melted slightly and Amy was extremely upset. She had had so much fun with the snow on Friday, and she felt like there wasn’t enough left to do anything with it. I’m all for feelings and clearing them, but sometimes it seems like she gets stuck in intense feelings and that they won’t abate on their own. In such situations I make her have some water and a snack. So far that has seemed to help. I remind myself of this sometimes when things feel overwhelming for me. Just pause and take care of basic human needs and then reassess the situation. Amy rallied after her water and snack, and Carl added snow to the sledding hill so they ended up having a good time. 

Earlier in the week Sarah and I assembled a marble run together. That was a refreshing change of pace from her just wanting to do “sincere my dear” snuggles/napping with me and nothing else. Another nice Mom-Sarah time happened on Friday when we went on a long walk together. That walk started when she headed out from our time sledding. We thought she was heading into the house, but luckily I noticed her going towards the walking path in the woods. I trailed about 20 feet behind her, following her bright pink hat. She went quite a distance before looking back and noticing me.  She told me she was exploring. While I’m glad she wanted to go for a long walk, I did remind her that she needs to tell us before starting such a thing. It is one of those moments that is scary to think about how it might have gone if I didn’t see her when she left our driveway. 

Yesterday Sarah sat on my bed and pretended to be Toad waiting for the mail. This is from a Frog and Toad story by Arnold Lobel. Sarah delighted in saying it was her sad time of day, just like Toad. I pretended to be Frog sitting next to her waiting for the mail. I also wrote her a letter, as Frog does, and used a stuffed animal to be the snail delivering the letter. She loved it. We all took turns writing letters to Toad and pretending to be the delivery snail. Sarah read each letter, even the ones she wrote herself, and then resumed happily being in her sad time of day. 

May you all have warm snuggles, timely food, and company in your sad time of day.

November 21: Thumbs, Socks, and Baking

On Monday Amy fell during an indoor flag football game in PE and hurt her left thumb. It was swollen and bruised. She told me about it just as we were getting ready to go to swim lessons, so I didn’t do anything about it. Tuesday  Sarah and Amy and I tried in vain to get Amy’s thumb checked to make sure it wasn’t broken. We tried Urgent Care because I wanted a place with an x-ray machine. There was no wait to check in, but their x-ray machine was broken. We went across the street to Med Express. When the parking lot was filled to capacity, I should have just driven home. However, I parked two blocks away and we walked to the door. The door had a sign saying to wait in your car and call to register. I called. It was busy. On the fourth try I got through and was put on hold for 5 minutes. When I spoke to a person they said they were at capacity and couldn’t even put us on the list. I was told that we could come back in an hour to call to get her on the list, but we would have to be in the parking lot when I called. Um. No. We went home. Amy’s thumb has steadily been getting better so I am assuming all is well. 

About two weeks ago when Sarah had her piano lesson, her teacher was wearing piano key socks. As soon as we got home, Sarah put on her piano key socks. This was a huge change from her constant choice of Elephant and Piggie socks. This past week the girls received gifts of socks from a friend. Amy’s socks had cats and books, and Sarah’s socks had staffs and musical notes. Sarah put hers on immediately and didn’t want to take them off again even after two days when I said they needed to be washed. To her credit, despite some yelling, she did part with them. I ordered a few more pairs so now she can wear her new favorite socks daily.

Yesterday Sarah was excited to have two Anat Baniel Method lessons. She has been receiving such lessons since she was a baby. It is really gentle bodywork that helps wake up new neural pathways. Sarah has been requesting lessons for months. She loves her practitioner, who travels to Pittsburgh a few times a year, and she really loves watching buses as they pass the office window. In between her lessons we went to Starbucks and watched more buses. It was a good day.

The girls have been doing mostly-independent baking lately which I fully support by buying box-mixes. Amy is getting more confident about putting things in and taking them out of the oven. Sarah has been doing that part for a while, but ovens are hot and scary so Amy has been nervous and tentative. Amy loves baking. Sarah likes it but her real love is to make sauces with Carl for Hello Fresh meals. Or sauces that she makes up and uses with anything. She likes to combine ketchup, mustard, and mayo plus some spice packets, and then she dips every aspect of her meal in the sauce, whether it be a hot dog or grapes.

Sarah has grown 1/4 inch since March! This is huge because I thought she had stopped growing entirely. She is 4’9” and 1/4.” Amy has grown 2 inches since March and is 5’1.” Didn’t I just have infants?!

November 14: Balancing Acts

Carl had Veteran’s day off, which was fortunate since Sarah had a half day, but I was teaching and wouldn’t be home in time to meet her bus. Carl met her bus and later picked Amy up from her after-school activity. He also took Sarah to the park to ride her bike. She is getting better at using it as a balance bike and even used the pedals some when he held the bike to help stabilize it. Given that she has done her stationary Zwift biking for 2900 miles (over 200 hours) over the past year and a half-ish, she certainly knows how to pedal. So once the balance is there for her, she will absolutely be able to bike in a non-stationary pedaling way. To  put her biking distances and time in context, she has biked only slightly less than Carl has in the same time period. His biking has been outside on trails and in races for much of that, which is harder than Zwift, but still! The amount she has biked is notable.

Sarah’s mouth has some overcrowding of teeth on the bottom, so her orthodontist wants two removed. Several months ago she had 5 removed and had to be completely sedated. Given that she did well when her EEG leads were placed with the aid of laughing gas, I asked the oral surgeon at our consultation if we could try this surgery with just laughing gas and a pill to help her relax. He said that would be fine. So she is scheduled for the Monday after Thanksgiving, which is a day she has off from school anyway. 

Grandma made new pajamas and pants for Sarah out of multicolored musical note flannel. Sarah loves them. It is really wonderful to have someone who can custom make clothes to make dreams come true. We also had a nice dinner with Grandma and Grandpa on Friday night. 

In general I’ve been starting play relaxing music in the background while we have dinner. I’m aiming to expand the scope of what we all listen to and recognize, especially regarding classical music. Sarah usually balks a little because she would rather listen to her new favorite song, Josh Ritter’s “Girl in the War.” Otherwise it is going well, despite Carl and Amy insisting that all Enya songs sound the same.

Carl and I are enjoying an overnight date thanks to Sonia and her boyfriend who arrived yesterday at 1 and are staying with the girls until today at 1. Carl and I went out to dinner for the first time since the summer and this morning we will have brunch at a place that has tree-house dining areas. Unfortunately those specific areas are booked waaaaay ahead but we will still appreciate being surrounded by trees in the regular dining area. 

Yesterday Sarah and I had some clashing moments of discord. I don’t know why some things always catch me by surprise when they are as predictable as the sunrise. Almost every weekend day just as I am about to fix lunch, Sarah asks to me to do “sincere my dear.” That means she wants to snuggle in my bed and trade favorite phrases or take a nap. And every time she asks I feel frustrated because I’m hungry and want to fix lunch! Going forward my plan is to put her Sincere My Dear times in my calendar and plan around them. Maybe an earlier lunch or a mid-morning snack and a later lunch. Anything so I’m not thrown off balance and feeling grumpy. 

May you all be prepared for what you know to expect and may you find your balance easily.

November 7: Hip Hip Hooray

Trick-or-treating went well. It wasn’t too cold and the sun was even shining when the girls started out. Amy went with some friends of hers and Sarah went with Anna. Carl and I stayed at home to hand out candy, realizing how little we were needed as parents at that moment.

Everyone was well all week! We are still well! In theory, I know we are all well most of the time, but given the previous week with Sarah this still felt notable. Sarah didn’t have school on Monday so after 4 days at home she was in the groove of being home and did not want to go to school on Tuesday. It didn’t help that Amy had Tuesday off because her school is a polling place so it is always closed on Election Day. When Sarah protests largely in the morning it is easy for me to feel tense and anxious. Tuesday Sarah was full of screams and resistance. Carl was patient, creative, and loving as he encouraged Sarah through every step of getting ready for school. He didn’t panic about the time ticking away, but focused on keeping Sarah in good spirits even if there were detours from her normal morning preparations. He encouraged her to put on a bathrobe and slippers so the two of them could match for coming down to breakfast. They talked about lightbulbs and ceiling fans, specifically the one in the master bedroom. After breakfast they detoured to the basement to get a new lightbulb to replace one that had burned out. Thanks to Carl's brilliance, Sarah was happily ready for the bus. I will give myself credit for not interfering. That took serious effort too!

Sarah and I met with her neurologist on Wednesday. I asked about giving her CBD since her night-time startle seizures still happen despite increasing her anti-seizure meds. The doctor said actually, given the type of seizure he thinks she is having, he would not recommend CBD at all because in some cases it makes things worse. I’m so glad I asked! He did order bloodwork and will see us again in three months. Sarah handled the bloodwork like a champ as she always does. I told the nurse that the last time she had bloodwork done they needed to use a vein in her hand. This nurse felt confident she could find one in the front of Sarah’s elbow. After an attempt that involved moving the needle all around in vain (ahem), the nurse switched to Sarah’s hand. Next time I will be more forceful in saying to use Sarah’s hand and not attempt another location.

Amy got the first dose of the covid vaccine!! Her school held a clinic, which was great in terms of location. What wasn’t quite ideal was that one nurse didn’t show up so they were short-staffed. The line was looooong and slooooooow despite having an appointment. Luckily half way through our hour-long wait to get the shot, we realized that Amy could sit at a cafeteria table and do some of her homework. I was able to get my booster at the same time, so that was great too. Still, the whole process took 90 minutes by the time all was said and done and we were home.

We had been waiting until Amy got her vaccine to tell the girls about our plans for December. We will be going to Florida and spending a couple of masked days at the Harry Potter World in Orlando before we go to a rental house by a beach. They were both super excited, but Amy was bursting at the seams with joy given that she is the one most into witches and HP.

My hip is in much better shape now. A fellow Alexander Technique teacher suggested a way of resting a few minutes each day that takes all of the pressure off of my hip, and that definitely helps. The most strikingly impactful thing, though, was when I did my Alexander teaching. When I was in that mode it was almost as if I had never had a hip issue at all. How I held myself and moved changed to be clearer, more fluid, and less jammed down on my legs. Giving massages also helped me use myself in this good way. So it seems that all I have to do to recover is keep working and teaching. 

Carl had an exciting week that included a trip to New York City. He was in Times Square when Aurora, the company he works for, went public. Aurora develops self-driving technology for cars and trucks. 

I hope you are all well.

October 31: Halloween Preparations and Health Mysteries

Happy Halloween! Tonight we will have one house, two sorceresses, and one intersection walk sign that changes color and flashes. Carl’s costume, that he made, is the walk sign and Sarah absolutely loves it. When she first saw it she held it against herself, said she was a walk-sign robot, and said, “beep boop beep boop” as she walked around the house.

Last Sunday we carved pumpkins. The kids needed very little help. We cut the tops to make lids and helped with the innards. Amy can’t stand the feeling of the seeds and other wet entrails. Sarah needed a little help with the carving, but that was it. Amy made a cat silhouette, Sarah made a Peppa The Pig head, I carved around a tracing of my hand, and Carl created a bat. 

There have been a couple of moments in the past months when Sarah spontaneously felt sick and then seemingly as quickly felt well again. I have no idea if these are related to her nighttime startle wakings which would relate them in some way to seizures. I do know that on Tuesday morning Sarah’s teacher called to say Sarah wasn’t feeling well. It didn’t seem to be a passing thing so I went to get her, leaving one of my teacher trainees in charge of my class. Sarah said her head, throat, and ears hurt. When we got home I gave her a Gatorade and she rested. She didn’t nap. She had more to drink. She drank quite a notable amount before needing to pee at all, which made me think she had been dehydrated. She also seemed perky and well after having the fluids. Wednesday and Thursday she went to school because she really seemed to be totally herself. 

Thursday when Sarah got off the bus she clearly wasn’t feeling well at all. She listed the same complaints as before but also seemed sick to her stomach. I made an appointment to see her doctor within the hour. About 15 minutes after making that appointment, Sarah was covered in extremely itchy hives! I freaked out, wondering if I should take her to the emergency room. Since she was still breathing normally and her lips and tongue weren’t swollen we decided to stay with the original plan of going to her regular doctor. Sarah kept asking me for medicine to help her feel better but I didn’t know what to give her. It had been less than 24 hours since she last had Claritin so I didn’t think I could do that. The nurse and the doctor both asked about/suggested Benadryl. I had to remind them that Sarah can’t have Benadryl because it lowers the seizure threshold. Her doctor then said she could have more Claritin because it was close enough to 24 hours. That started helping within about 10 minutes. We have no idea at all what caused the hives. As far as we can tell she didn’t have anything that she is allergic to. While we were at the doctor’s, I asked Sarah how her head, throat, and ears felt. She said they were fine! She tested negative to strep and covid and her ears looked clear. And yet she had a fever. I assume that may have been related to the hives since her skin was flushed and she didn’t have a fever before the hives erupted. She didn’t have school on Friday anyway, but also seemed totally well again by that morning. This all felt like one big mystery. 

The difficult thing with Sarah and sickness is how to evaluate what she says. We know from the past that sometimes she says things hurt because she knows that is how to get out of school or to sleep in our bed. She also sometimes says “no, no thank you” when asked if something hurts because it actually does hurt but she wishes it didn’t. At least, this is my best guess as to how to interpret what she says. Ever since Tuesday Sarah has continued to occasionally say that her head hurts. This is often reported at bedtime, so I think it may be her way of saying she wants to sleep in my bed. But when pushed on the details she maintains that her head really does hurt. Yet she acts totally well! So either she actually is totally well or she has had a headache possibly since Tuesday in which case I freak out a bit. We see her neurologist on Wednesday. I don’t know if he will have any ideas, but I’m glad to have the appointment. 

I may have jinxed my hip with my last update in which I said I had found a yoga routine that was really helping. I don’t know if I did the yoga routine too many times or what, but this past week my hip has been extremely unhappy and painful. I’ve been limping and walking as if I had a wooden leg, especially on stairs. I’ve had times when it is slightly better, but it’s still not back to normal. So this is frustrating and not at all what I ever envisioned for my 44 year old self. 

I hope you are all well and solve all of your mysteries.

October 24: Doors, Musical Notes, and Cats... Tailoring Many Aspects of Your Life To Fit You

We are enjoying a wonderful weekend with Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop. There have been Conversations with Mom-Mom, where Sarah and Amy play with Mom-Mom in her room. Sarah, sometimes known as Door, falls and breaks her nose and needs the aid of Dr. Mouse, also played by Sarah. Speaking of doors, Carl and Sarah went to Lowe’s to get something and Sarah was delighted by a display of 6-panel doors. Among many other names, I am often called Mama Door and Sarah is Baby Door. 

It is that time of year when we assess fall and winter gear and realize how much the kids have grown over the past year. Sarah needed new coats and wanted a Musical Note coat. As you might imagine, this wasn’t readily available at Target. Instead, we purchased a small white coat from the women’s section and used a Sharpie to draw musical notes and symbols on it. She loves it. Meanwhile, Amy has outgrown many pairs of pajamas so she helped Grandma make a pair of pajama pants that are long enough for her ever-lengthening legs. 

Amy had some math homework to do this weekend that required her to know the order of operations, such as attending to what is inside the parentheses first. She wasn’t understanding why so I translated it into cat language. For instance instead of looking at 6x(3+4), we looked at Litterbox x (cat poop + cat pee). Obviously, before you scoop (multiply by) the litterbox, you would want to wait for the cat to do all of its business inside the (box). I also revised the Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally to Persians (Persian cats) Eat Mice, Dining After Sunset. I think this helped, but time will tell. 

Mom-Mom used to tutor people with math anxiety. She has talked with Amy about how Amy has a smart math brain and if she doesn’t understand something in class she could be very brave and ask a question and that probably other kids would like the help too. I don’t know if this will lead to anything at school. I do know that many kids are struggling and having feelings about math this year. It can’t hurt to have many people assuring Amy that if she is struggling then she isn’t the only one. I also think it is ok if she is the only one struggling and that doesn’t make it less valid. But it could make it harder to ask for help if she thinks she is the only one. I know she is learning a lot at school, but when she has homework we often need to go over things as if for the first time.

I am tentatively hopeful about my right hip. For many years it has intermittently been uncomfortable to varying degrees. It often doesn’t interfere with my life, but I almost always can feel a difference between my left and right sides. And sometimes I am sort of limping instead of walking. Yoga has helped, but recently I discovered one particular routine by Yoga With Adriene on youtube that really makes a positive difference. So for the past week I have done the same routine every day and I have had moments of walking when I realize I’m fully comfortable and faster in my pace and my hip isn’t hurting at all. Knock on wood, my head also seems to be in good shape in terms of headache whispers. I still get them, but they are the kind that I can get to go away if I change my thinking and become more present in my body.

Yesterday Amy made bat cupcakes, with broken Grabbit cookies for wings and candy eyes for the, well, eyes.  She did almost every step herself. I was just around to offer some light guidance and to frost the cupcakes. Evidently when Amy was describing the plan to Mom-Mom, she said that the candy eyeballs don’t taste like real eyeballs. This lead to much laughter about whether or not Amy had eaten real eyeballs in order to know the difference. 

Another highlight from the week was Amy getting American Girl dolls clothes from Grammy. The best part was a tiny pumpkin basket to match Amy’s basket for trick-or-treating. Amy and I were beside ourselves about the cuteness. 

May you have an abundance of your equivalent to musical notes, doors, dolls clothes, and cats.