Week 288: One hundred

I believe this was our first relatively peaceful week in 2019. Still cold, still snowing, but only one kid threw up, and only once (knock on wood), and our collective cold seems to be waning. What more could one ask for?











At the end of last week, Lemon's school celebrated the 100th day of classes (a few days behind schedule, of course). The kids were asked to decorate a shirt with 100 of something. Always fussy about what he wears, Lemon was not having any of it. I offered stickers, beads, beans, grains of rice, pieces of yarn. Nope. Eventually we compromised on cutting a piece of fabric, decorating it with markers, and attaching it to his shirt. He was very pleased with the result, but of course wouldn't actually wear it to school on the 100th day. Oh well.

 With Papa Bear out of town for a few days, I decided to take the kids out for dinner one night. Now, remember, like any parent, I have struggled mightily to find things that the kids, especially Lemon, will eat. If you are a long-time reader, you will remember that I spent literally a year trying to teach this child to eat solid food. You know what he could not get enough of? Spaghetti with tomato sauce prepared by Denny's. True story. I am trying hard not to be offended.

This quiet week was well-timed, since it gave us a chance to gather ourselves for next week, when Papa Bear will be away for a few days, we have our make-up clinic visit, and then I go away for a couple of days. Once all that's done, we should be really close to spring. Right?

Week 287: And a half

February is a competitive month. January set a high bar, but February is doing its best despite being 3 days shorter. As anticipated, we had yet another snow day on Tuesday. And Sunday would have been a snow day had it been a school day, but luckily, it wasn't. I will refrain from commenting about this coming Wednesday except to say the forecast contains some kind of shape like an asterisk followed by a high two-digit number and a percent sign. At least I have been getting my money's worth out of my 3 different snow shovels and my roof rake.

To continue with last week's parallel themes of planning, weather, and the interaction between the two, here's one I bet you could never have anticipated (I sure didn't). I'm taking a course this semester to try to learn a new skill for my job. Luckily, I live close to a university, and the class I'm taking doesn't start until 4pm. So the whole thing works out perfectly: I go over to Lemon's school, meet him for pick-up at 3:30, get home with him at 3:40, hand him off to the babysitter, hop in the car, and am in my classroom a couple of minutes before 4. So far so good. Except that school has been closed so many days due to weather that if the schools took no actions, we would finish the school year below the minimum number of required instructional hours. What actions are they taking, you might wonder. Well, obviously, they are extending the school day by 11 minutes every day until the end of the school year. Because kids learn A LOT between 3:27 and 3:38pm. I don't usually say that I can't even, but really, I can't even.

Other than that, Lime and I have had a cold all week. Lime almost certainly picked it up at the germ hive (aka preschool), and then I caught it from him since his favorite thing to do when he isn't feeling well at night is to crawl into bed with me and cough directly into my face. Since I've caught this cold from him, every time I cough, he reminds me "Mama, cover your mouth when you cough!" Great tip, kiddo, better file that one away in case it ever becomes relevant to your life. Luckily, Papa Bear has managed to escape thus far. Lemon may have a touch of it, it's hard to tell. He's definitely a tick above baseline in terms of cough at the moment, but not as bad as Lime or I, and I sure hope he escapes it. We could really use 3 more healthy weeks to put on some weight.

Tomorrow is Lemon's half-birthday, which we are celebrating with cupcakes at school.This is the first year where he's expressed any interest in his half-birthday, or in being something and-a-half. He also has his first real loose tooth, which he is very thrilled about. To look at the huge mountains of snow around our neighborhood, you'd be hard pressed to believe that it's ever August here, never mind that such a thing could happen in 6 months time, but here's hoping it's true!

Week 286: Nothing to go on

At least once per month (week/day/hour), I tell myself that I am officially giving up on ever making a plan about anything. But, the planning instinct is strong within me, so moments after resolving to no longer attempt to plan, I start planning again. This is where planning got me over the past 10 days or so:

1. I planned to have Lime's dentist appointment on January 30, but it was cancelled due to the polar vortex.

2. The next available date they had was the morning of February 6. Without looking at the calendar, I accepted.

3. I realized after consulting the calendar that Lemon had clinic on the morning of the 6th.

4. I cancelled the dentist appointment and took their next available, which was in mid-March.

5. On the morning of Wednesday the 6th, the clinic called me saying our nurse practitioner had a family emergency and they had to cancel our appointment. Sigh. Net of zero children receiving scheduled medical care. Now we're going March 6. More time to gain/lose weight I suppose?

6. I had scheduled Lemon to do his multiple breath washout test for his clinical study at 11 a.m. on Friday the 8th, since that was a day on which he was not supposed to have school, and I was not supposed to have any important phone calls for work.

7. The no-school day was replaced with a school day due to so many days off for the polar vortex (see above). And, some changes at work meant that the 11 a.m. phone call went from being optional to mandatory. Perfect. I begged off of the 11 a.m. call, figuring it would be no trouble to make the other mandatory call of the day at 1 p.m. given that the test was supposed to take an hour.

8. Thinking that the test started at 11 a.m. and would only take an hour I planned (you see the problem, right?) to also quickly run Lemon over to the lab afterwards to finally have his blood drawn for his liver tests. I had the lidocaine cream, Saran wrap and tape in my coat pocket to get him ready while the breathing test was going on (more planning, very bad).

9. I also planned (I am incorrigible) to take him to McDonald's when all this was done as a reward.


10. We got to the clinic right on time for the multiple breath
washout test. The test basically involves biting down on a thing that looks like the end of a snorkel and breathing through it. The only trick is to do all the breathing through one's mouth, so that all the breaths go through the apparatus and can be measured by various sensors. The solution: a nose clip, to make sure you don't accidentally breathe in or out
through the nose during the test.

11. Unfortunately, the 3 staff people involved in administering the test were clearly long-term members of Team Zero Planning because, although this is the pulmonary function lab at a children's hospital and the test subject was known to be 5 years old, NONE OF THEM BROUGHT ANY CHILD-SIZED NOSE CLIPS TO THE TEST.

12. We spent a very substantial number of minutes trying to retrofit one of the adult sized ones so it would stay on Lemon's nose. We tried having me hold his nose with my fingers, but then he couldn't see the videos playing on my phone in my other hand (because Team Zero Planning had failed to load the tablet they have FOR THIS EXACT PURPOSE with any videos that might remotely hold the attention of a 5-year-old.).

13. The lead guy who was administering the test then offered that, in a specific drawer of a specific cart located in a specific room in a distant part of the hospital, he had a variety of nose clips, some of which might potentially work.

14. One of the other people was then dispatched to retrieve the above. Much time passed as this other random person attempted to locate the specific room/cart/drawer.

15. The correct nose clips arrived, Lemon did 3 good trials of the test in about 15 minutes, and we were done. It only took 1.5 hours (!?!?).

16. I wasn't about to not take him to McDonald's given that a) he'd been very good, and b) he needed to eat lunch before going back to school. So we scrapped the idea of the lab and went to McDonald's, and I managed to convince him to eat his lunch at an unusual rate of speed (for him) so that I dropped him off at school at 12:59:57 or thereabouts, and then dialed into my work phone call at 1pm. I drove home, but realized that I didn't want to risk going to my downstairs office because my phone almost always drops calls when I walk into my own house (technology, we call this).

17. So, instead of doing my call from my office on the land line, I did it with my cellphone from my car, parked in the garage. Not wanting to asphyxiate myself, I turned off the engine, and the temperature in the car rapidly equilibrated with the outside world at around 8F. Also I didn't have a notepad, so I took notes (wearing gloves) on the back of the envelope containing the $50 we received for Lemon participating in this aspect of the study.

18. We are supposed to get 10 inches of snow overnight.

19. I give up.

Week 285: Vortex Redux

It's good to occasionally be right about something, even if it is something you would prefer not to be right about. In this case, for example, I would have preferred not to be right in terms of my prediction that schools would only be open one day last week. Alas. We managed it somehow, although as with most of these things, in retrospect I am not sure exactly how. It was a growth experience for everyone (note: given the kids new toys with LEDs and musical sound effects is a mixed bag). And, honestly, I don't really second-guess the school's decision to close, it really was too cold for the kids to be outside. I myself only went outside briefly and wearing every piece of clothing I own, and it was bitter out there. This weekend, of course, it was over 40F, just to mess with our minds.

 From the perspective of things I was wrong about,  I was wrong about which week our clinic visit is. It is in fact this Wednesday, not next Wednesday as I had thought. Luckily, eating and tube feeds have been going well and we have managed to get back to where we were in early December! I am using an exclamation point to try and cause myself to be enthusiastic about this fact. We have done far too much work to be standing still, and yet of course things could be much worse, so I should be enthusiastic.

Just to keep things interesting, this week has been laden with scheduling shenanigans. Lime was supposed to go to the dentist on Wednesday of last week, but they had to reschedule his appointment due to extreme cold (this is a thing that happens in Wisconsin it seems). But, they had a spot open this coming Wednesday morning. Yay, until I realized that despite 5 years of parenting I can't actually be in two places at once and Lemon's clinic visit has to take priority. So Lime is going to the dentist in late March, when hopefully weather will be less of a factor in oral health.

Lemon is participating in a clinical study where he is being asked to do some extra tests, including a multiple-breath washout test. I decided it would be too much to tack it on to our already long clinic visits, so I would schedule it for a separate day. I chose this coming Friday, because school was going to be randomly closed. Yay, got that all set up so it would not disrupt his schedule. Then, the school district decided that, given that they missed 4 days of school last week, they would be open on Friday after all, so now I have to pull Lemon out of school for a few hours on both Wednesday and Friday. Fantastic.

I'm thinking the one upside to keeping the appointment on Friday is that maybe at long last we will get his liver labs drawn. We got the orders put in way back when we had our consult with the GI doc months ago. But, I wanted to make sure Lemon was healthy when the labs were drawn, since in the past his liver labs have been high when he's fighting off something. And, well, honestly we have not had enough healthy weeks since the GI consult to actually get the blood drawn. But, this Friday, I'm hoping. Keep your fingers crossed for me!