We also had a nice celebration of Nona's birthday, which is the day after Lemon's. Thanks to some careful planning (ie, not sitting down to dinner until the kids were asleep), we even managed to enjoy a civilized meal, a celebration befitting the person who has essentially made our lives possible the last four years.
The number four has cropped up in our lives this week in some other, less miraculous ways. One of the ways is Lime's current sleep schedule, which involves waking up at 4 (or, sometimes, 4:30). Every day. For the last two months. I am an endurance athlete, but this is starting to push my limits. I feel that one of the perks of adulthood should be getting to stay awake past sun-down, even in the summer. And also not waking up when even the two-year-old acknowledges that it is "ni-time" and "dar(k)." Of course, then he will detect the presence of his best pal, Daphne the cat, who usually appears when she hears me stumbling around into the kitchen, blindly attempting to fill a cup with milk. Since Lime can't say the letter "k" yet, for a long time he called the cat "chee-chee" (kitty). Now, in an appellation that more befits her dignity, he's advanced to "chee-tah!" (kitty-cat). Something about a two-year-old delightedly screeching "Cheetah!" at a sleepy house cat at 4 a.m. cracks me up every time. By 4:06, though, I'm ready to go back to bed.
The other tale of four is that we are now up to four, yes four, separate pharmacies for Lemon. We of course had standard CVS, which handles all but one of his prescriptions. Then we had CVS Specialty Pharmacy, which handled the last one. Then we had the home pharmacy that handles all his feeding tube supplies and formula. Well, that was an insufficiently complex arrangement, it would seem. The home pharmacy decided to switch the type of feeding tube that they supply. Fair enough, the new ones do seem to be a better design in that the new feeding tube has a little threaded bit at the end that actually screws onto the tube coming from the bag with all the formula in it, so it won't magically disconnect during the night and flood the bed with formula. Fair enough.
The only little problem with the new feeding tubes is that because they have the little threaded bit on the end, you can't use them with a standard syringe anymore. You now need a syringe that has a little threaded bit on the end to match. And, of course, the home pharmacy can supply us with the 60mL syringes with the little threaded bit on the end, because those are part of tube feeding. But the dozen or so smaller syringes that we use every day to deliver medicine and flush the tube with water and whatnot? Well, those are not part of tube feeding, so the home pharmacy can't provide them. Oh, and of course, by the way, CVS doesn't carry them either, because that would be too convenient. No, no, you need to get them from the pharmacy at the children's hospital, and you need a separate prescription for them, and you can only get four syringes per medication per month, and you can't set them up to auto-refill, although they will call you every month to see if you want to refill the prescription. 
This is the kind of insanity that really pushes people managing a chronic illness over the edge. It doesn't sound tremendously bad, but when you're already juggling about as many balls as you can and are in fact already dropping a ball or two on a semi-regular basis, adding one more to the mix is supremely unhelpful. Why is it that neither the pharmacy that does the feeding supplies, nor the pharmacy that does the medicine, is capable of supplying the spiffy new syringes? Seriously.
Anyhow, that concludes my tale of four. We managed to catch some nice glimpses of an 85% eclipse on a 100% overcast day. Lemon got a big kick out of the eclipse glasses and talking about the sun going in front of the moon. We're looking forward to making a trip to the totality zone in 2024, when the barriers to travel will hopefully be a little lower than they are now!
