You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

The good: Alyssa's surgery is finally scheduled. While the scheduling department never actually called me back, I did manage to get hold of them myself. Her surgery is scheduled for Wednesday. Yes, this coming Wednesday.

I cleaned the fridge this weekend. I know, big deal. Except...it can be. Refrigerators, our as least, can get so dirty and the cleaning process is such a chore.

But yay, done.

Another good, Alyssa spent the day with a friend yesterday. She was there from about 12:30 until 8pm. Nice long day with a friend.

The bad: After I got Alyssa home last night, she felt warm to the touch. A minute spent with the thermometer in her mouth told me she had a fever of 101.1. Boo.

She's asleep on the couch right now (it's about 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. Most nine year olds I know don't nap in the middle of a beautiful, sunny fall day.)

We did make a trip to Urgent Care this morning to be sure she doesn't have strep again. No. 'Just' a virus. The doctor who saw her this morning thinks they'll still do the surgery on Wednesday.

We'll see. I'm going to call the clinic tomorrow and see.

So you take the good, you take the bad and there you have the facts of life.

Smart

We use the word ‘smart’ a lot in our house. It’s always used as praise. When Alyssa brings home a perfect spelling test, she’s praised with, “You’re so smart!”

Olivia hears this often too. When she tells me the letters on a page of the book we’re reading or counts the correct number of items, I declared, “You’re so smart, such a smarty pants!”

Last night when I got to my mom’s I told Olivia I’d received an email from her teacher. I hugged Olivia and told her that her teacher was so excited to tell me that Olivia has talked to her yesterday, that Olivia was warming up to her and giving her grins and giggles and WORDS.

Ohh, the joy in reading that message from Mrs. H.

Olivia grinned at me and nodded, acknowledging that she’d done well. She then took me to Gram’s fridge where O had taped her school work for all the see.

This paper was full of letters with the instructions to circle every M on the page. Then, after circling the Ms, the students were to count them and write the number of Ms.

Olivia had done it perfectly and as a result, she got a sticker and a smiley face on her work. She was so proud of that sticker and smiley face. She was proud to be smart.

I hugged her in response to the school work and the report from her teacher. Then I told her how smart she is.

I went on to tell her that when she doesn’t talk to her teacher, Mrs. H can’t know how smart Olivia is, she doesn’t know all that Olivia knows. But when Olivia TALKS to her, she’s showing Mrs. H just how much she knows, how very, very smart she is.

I know that Olivia has challenges. We all do.

She works so hard to overcome those challenges. I’m so proud of how well she’s doing so far and I know that she’ll continue to surprise the hell out of everyone who meets her.

Yes, her processing is slower than that of her typical peers. We’re learning that if we give her more than two choices of something, it stresses her out. So for now, were sticking with two choices. That works for her. It gives her a bit of control without making things too hard.

And we’ll continue to tell her how smart she is, how proud we are of her, how amazing she keeps proving herself to be.

Not to be outdone, when Alyssa saw O's worksheet hanging on her Gram's fridge, A reminded us all that she has not yet had to take the final spelling test given each Friday. Her teacher has made it a rule that if any student manages to get every word correct on the 'practice' test on Thursdays, they don't have to take the final test on Friday. A hasn't missed a spelling word yet.

I love that my girls take pride in being smarties.

ENT

Due to recurrent strep infections, I took Alyssa to see and ENT specialist on Tuesday. Upon examination, he declared her to be a good candidate for a tonsillectomy and went so far as to say while she was under, why don’t we go ahead and remove her adenoids too.

Sure, I declared, sign us up.

Except…they don’t schedule appointments from the clinic. See, the doctor drives up to our very small town every Tuesday to meet patients but he does his surgeries in the larger city about an hour south of here.

Okay, no problem, right?

Except those who do schedule the surgery won’t answer the damned phone.

Seriously, I spent what felt like hours on the phone yesterday, pushing 1 to hold only to hear the stupid phone ring three times and repeat the message over and freaking over again.

This morning, I actually got a real person on the line the first time I called. Wheee and away we go, let’s get this thing schedule.

But wait, the doctor we saw was Dr. W? Ohh, his surgeries are scheduled by the other girl, who is on another line. Can we take your number and have her call you back?

That was six hours ago.

I just love to hurry up and wait.

Irritations

Olivia has discovered the fun of being irritating for the sake of being irritating.

You know the type, the person who will put their hand an eighth of an inch from your face and say, “I’m not touching you.”

Yeah, that’s her. Except, she’s figured out that Alyssa really hates it when she (Olivia) breathes on her. This means that Olivia will breathe on or near Alyssa every chance she gets, which leads to Alyssa constantly screeching, “Stop breathing on me!”

Talk about annoyances.

I know this is just sibling rivalry at its finest. I know this is a stage they will both outgrow, but I feel really stupid each time I have to tell Olivia to stop breathing on her sister or when I have to tell Alyssa, “She’s not breathing ON you, she’s breathing AT you.”

Like that somehow makes the act less irritating.

I’ve been in Alyssa’s shoes. His name is Aaron and he’s my cousin who is two years younger than I am. When my parents divorced, he and his mom moved in with us because my mom and dad had recently divorced.

Aaron liked to sit across from me at the table in the mornings and stare. His stare was intense, like irritatingly intense. I could often be heard hissing, “Stop looking at me!”

My mom or my aunt would inevitably put a cereal box between us so Aaron couldn’t stare and/or I couldn’t see him staring. My poor brother Jason just tried to stay out of the way when it came to Aaron and his stares and me and my hisses.

We were really annoying kids and I realize that I’m just getting back what I gave to my mom and aunt.

Stash

Olivia has what she calls a ‘secret stash.’ It’s a shelf on our entertainment center where she puts any toy she thinks she might want to play with again later that day, tomorrow, next month.

Yeah, it’s not so secret since everything is right there where everyone and their cat can see.

But she loves that that shelf is her place to put things she wants to keep safe and accessible.

O has declared that Alyssa’s secret stash is the shelf above her own. Huh. I just thought that was a place where clutter has been accumulating.

On our drive to Huntington on Sunday, it came up that I had a secret stash too, but it happens to be the closet in the guest room. Except, I don’t stash my own stuff there, I stash Olivia’s off-season clothes. Clothes she’ll be able to wear next spring and summer.

Alyssa lamented that my area for my secret stash is so much bigger than hers and Olivia’s.

I replied that it was all relative. As compared to a couple of shelves, yes a closet seems large. But when you compare it to a detached garage and a small barn, it’s pretty dinky.

She asked what I was talking about.

I explained that while my secret stash is the closet in the guest room, Tom’s secret stash is in the detached garage and the barn.

“Oh…” she said, taking it in.

And that got me to thinking…with all this stashing of secret things, are we on the verge of a starring role on “Hoarders”?

I shudder at the thought even as I plot ways of getting rid of some of the clutter in our home.

Reality

Back in July, I attended the baby shower for my stepson D and his girlfriend S. While at the baby shower, S said that D wanted at least six kids.

She was pregnant with her second, his first.

Now that the baby we were ‘showering’ with love back in July is here, D has decided that maybe two kids are plenty.

I laugh but only because I get it.

Once upon a time, when I was young and inexperienced in the whole parenting thing, I thought I’d like at least three kids, maybe four. Of course, I also thought I’d have enough money to be able to by a stay at home mom and be able to get out and take the kids places and have a grand old time just raising my brood.

Ahem.

Then reality hit. I married a man who already had three kids who were teenagers when we got married.

I turned 32 and then Alyssa was born.

Almost four years later, Olivia was born and I was 36 years old. And Olivia was such a hard baby. She didn’t mean to be, she just hurt so much and there was nothing we could do to help her except comfort her and allow time to pass so she could outgrow the reflux and low muscle tone and the immobility.

We were the lucky ones.

I asked S yesterday if adding a second child had been easy. Before she answered, I told her a woman I worked with told me that the second child just eases right into the family and no adjustments have to be made and it’s just so easy.

And I decided after Olivia was born that my co-worker is either a liar or she just didn’t remember how hard the infant stage is.

S admitted that while having a second baby hasn’t been as hard as she’d expected, she absolutely wouldn’t say it’s been easy.

Noah appears to be a pretty easy baby, though, so there is that.

D did tell me that he’d like to be done having kids by the time he’s 26. He turned 24 in July, so there you go.

He admitted with an eye roll that his sister-in-law, who was also at the shower I attended back in July and who has three kids already, hopes to have two more before she’s 30. She’ll be 26 in November.

I relayed (gossiped?) that news to Tom and he shared D’s eye roll. He also suggested that J and K (the older stepson and his wife) have time to realize that three kids really is a great number and to stop.

I probably sound judgey here. I don’t mean to.

Those with large families have my utmost respect. I think if you can manage it both financially and emotionally, good for you.

I just know I don’t have it in me, not now at this stage in my life. I’m very, very happy with my two girls. The reality of them is enough, sometimes it can even feel like too much.

We Finally Saw the Baby

Tom, the girls and I finally made the trip south to visith with Tom's youngest son and see his (the son's) new baby.

D's and S's baby will be five weeks old on Thursday.

He's beautiful.

Seriously.

He was one of the snuggliest babies I've ever held. At almost five weeks old, Noah is still only about 7lbs, 6oz, so he's a little bitty guy.

He was born three weeks early but when you've been a part of an online community hosted by the March of Dimes, three weeks doesn't seem like a big deal.

Heck, even three weeks early, this little guy was bigger than both of my girls when they were born.

But still, holding a baby who is five weeks old who still wears newborn sized clothes was pretty amazing.

And the hair...oh dear Lord does that boy have a lot of hair. It is adorable.

Sadly, while Tom did take the camera, it stayed in the car (we're losers) and so I have no pictures. Though, I kind of think I wouldn't post them anyway, he's not my baby, I wouldn't feel right about posting pictures of him without his parents' permission.

His big brother, who turned two a couple of weeks ago, was so flipping sweet too.

All in all, it was great to finally see the baby.