Literary Potato Chips

I've been looking for a book to read. I've been wanting to read Steve Lopez's The Soloist for awhile, but unwilling to pay full price, or even near full price on http://www.half.com/. It's taken a bit of patience, but finally I found a used copy at a decent price, but I now must wait for media mail, which is the postal equivalent of strapping the book to the shell of a snail and sending it forth.

Meanwhile, I took a step off the beaten path for me by getting into Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Serices (aka the Sookie Stackhouse series) which the HBO show 'True Blood' is based upon. The first book come from being between books, at Target, and possessed by a desire to see how the original book differed from the series (i.e. I wanted to rip it apart), but then it became like potato chips, one after another after another, until now the wait is on for the ninth book in the series, due out in May 2009. They're a hoot, both funny and weird, and strangely addictive. And it takes the mental wherewithal of a sea slug to follow the plots.

So in the span of about one per day, I went through:

1. Dead Until Dark
2. Living Dead in Dallas
3. Club Dead
4. Dead to the World
5. Dead as a Doornail
6. Definitely Dead
7. All Together Dead
8. From Dead to Worse

And I can't wait until The Soloist arrives and I'm back to reading something that isn't going to damage my three remaining brain cells, meanwhile I'm into Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, thanks to a blurb on the cover by Lisa See, another of my favorite authors (who should get back to writing books instead of promotional blurbs, IMHO.)

Bonus: I just scoped out Amazon.com and Lisa See has a new novel coming out in May, Shanghai Girls (hint: would make an EXCELLENT Mother's Day present), and Pat Conroy will have a new novel, South of Broad, coming out in September 2009. And another the next vampire potato chip, Dead and Gone, will also be out in May, just in case one of those three brain cells is getting ornery and needs to be bumped off.

The Countdown Begins. . .

Monday marks four weeks exactly until Micah turns three. Today is two weeks since we had his eligibility meeting with the Child Study Team at Orchard Hill Elementary school - and since we signed off on the 'wait and consider' portion, it's time for us to sign the official documents accepting the placement at Summit Speech School's preschool. Of course everything from the speech therapist coming this morning, taking another Friday train ride with Micah (more on that below), grocery shopping and getting my car's front tires checked out got in the way of calling the case manager until just a moment ago. And since it's Friday, the CST staff probably blew out of there the moment that the school day was over (and I don't blame them), so the voice mail will wait for Monday.

On our rides on the Dinky to Princeton Junction, Micah has positively drooled over the double-decker trains that come through on the Northeast Corridor line, so today I thought we would venture a little bit farther afield and ride from Princeton to Princeton Junction and transfer to a train going to New Brunswick and then return. NJTransit trains run fairly frequently, or so the online schedule shows.

This was the first time at the Princeton station that we actually had to wait for the Dinky, and naturally it had to be the coldest, grayest of all the days we've gone for train rides. It was a good lesson in keeping back away from the edge of the platform. ("Big owwieeeee, Mommy?" Yes, big owwie, of the Humpty Dumpty sort.) Our 'usual' conductor was back this week - he indulges Micah by giving him used tickets and encourages him to ask the driver for a chance to toot the horn.

At PJ, we climbed down the stairs, went through the tunnel under the tracks, with Micah hitting every small puddle along the way, climbed all the stairs back up to the northbound platform and waited for a few minutes for the next train. Unfortunately not a double-decker, but he seemed content to be on a new train, though confused that Mr. Usual Conductor was not the one to take his ticket on this train. The trip to New Brunswick is all of 14 minutes - which works nicely when you have the attention span of a house fly.

At NB, we had to skip the ever so convenient elevator because a man with more luggage than Ivana Trump and a nice case of psychosis to boot was unloading his ten or twelve full-size suitcases. In the station itself the escalator was out of service, so we had to schlep down the four sets of stairs, climb back up one set to go through the tunnel to get to the southbound side, and then once more get in touch with our inner mountain goat and make another trek back up. Only to find out that it was 12:20 pm and the next train wasn't due until 12:43 pm. And the Dunkin Donuts and the coffee that would keep my fingers from freezing off was back down those four flights of stairs and back toward where we had just come from.

The cool thing was that two or three Acelas and a couple of generic Amtrak trains came through the center tracks while we were hanging out, and that kept Micah occupied. The bad thing was that just as we got on the train back to Princeton, one of the double-deckers pulled into the northbound side and Micah was transfixed. He wanted to ride a B-I-I-I-I-G train, as judged by either height or number of rows of passenger windows. By his estimation a B-I-I-I-I-I-G train was not one with eight passender cars (as compared with the two car Dinky, which usually has one car closed off during the times we're riding). Size does matter, if you're Micah.

So he asked if he could ride a B-I-I-I-I-I-G train with Daddy later, as we were getting in the car. Sure, maybe Steve can deliver the goods, I'm done with trains until the temperature hits a minimum of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I still haven't thawed out yet.

Meanwhile, at our pre-train trip run to the post office, it looked like one of my car's tires was going flat, but it was hard to tell since it was sort of parked in a puddle. At the Princeton station parking lot I was pretty sure, and by the time we were in the ShopRite parking lot I was darn sure - and the car seemed to be pulling toward the side with the bad tire. So rather than go home to have naptime for rail-riders, we had to make a run to the tire shop.

Change of Heart

Thea's been saying that she wasn't going to perform in Saturday's Lunar New Year show that her school is doing as a fund raiser. No real reason other than she didn't want to do the full version of the show. Too boring. Period. End of discussion.

But tonight at dinner we had a successful application of parental guilt/pressure. Her friends Lucas and Kalani recently returned to school after absences for travel or whatnot; they were not able to be at last Friday's show at the Senior Center and were just learning the songs and skits at today's in-school rehearsal. So I used the "wouldn't you like to be there to help your friends?" schtick and (for now) the message took.

Good news ! This means her costume will get another wearing and not be a complete frivolous waste of money. And I am also prepared for a reversal of fortune, just in case she changes her mind once more.

==============================================================

I got another (quasi) international hit on the Feedjit map, which has become a bit of an obsession lately. Montreal, Canada. Probably another one hit wonder via The Mom Blogs or whatnot. Anyway, it's still a small thrill. If you're a mom of a child with atresia/microtia, leave me a comment, or if you're a mom with children adopted from China (particularly ChongQing and Hubei), leave a comment.

Stuck at Home

Sometime around 6:30 am Liu Laoshi from Thea's school called to say no school due to the snowstorm, then around 7:30 am Ela called letting us know Summit was also closed and Group was cancelled. What happened to getting up around 8 am and confirming at NJ 101.5's web site the schools were not opening?

On the other hand, Princeton University is business as usual. You'd think that a major university could do the humane thing and give its employees some extra time to chisel and scrape their cars clear of the ice. (I'm on a major rant about that because I was stuck last week behind one of our across-the-street neighbors who was driving his or her white SUV in front of us down River Road at a crawl because he or she had just scraped a small opening in the ice and was hoping the defroster would do the rest. Moron, moron, moron. Thank you for thinking yourself so much more important than the rest of us. I don't give a fig if you endanger yourself, but do it when I'm not sharing the road with you and you are slowing me down.)

It is not that much snow, complete over-reaction. If I was still living in Illinois it would be business as usual. I remember the first major snowstorm after we moved to Bolingbrook, it was deep enough and had enough drifting for my brother to construct tunnels in the backyard. After school, because the buses ran and we went to school as usual. Reason #1 to want to move back to the East Coast in the mind of a 14 year old. (Not that anyone cares what any of the other reasons are, but #2 would be the combo platter of Long John Silver and Red Lobster are not authentic seafood restaurants and no crab cakes to be found until you drive about 750 miles to the east. #3 would be flat, flat, flat and more flat, like living on a topographical ironing board. The only good thing was that I learned to drive in snow and ice during the time we lived there.)

So now I am stuck with the brat who spent 10 minutes yelling, "I WANT MY BREAKFAST NOW!" a few hundred times despite being told she had to maintain a civil tone of voice and add a please to the end of that sentence to guarantee my immediate departure from the warm covers, and her brother who is walking around in a t-shirt and diaper proclaiming, "MI-cah's nay-KEE!"

So the plan to throw him in a snowdrift when he gets on my nerves and dig him out in the spring thaw isn't going to work on two counts: the snow is turning into freezing rain or sleet, and I don't think it would much bother him being out in the elements without proper clothing.

Lunar New Year - The Real Thing

The holiday on Monday was not celebrated in the traditional fashion, no hong bao (red envelopes), no new clothes, no traditional Chinese cooking, and most of all I did not bust my behind cleaning the house to welcome the new year or burning up the Kitchen God so that he would ascend to heaven and give a good report on us.

Thea did have the day off from school, so she got to hang out with Micah, Ela and me for Micah's session. She was resonably patient with Micah and only a little bit bossy (to both Micah and Ela).

After that the three of us struck out for MarketFair to have lunch and see the movie 'Hotel for Dogs' - I thought Thea might like it, and because it had dogs in it, I also thought it might hold Micah's attention for more than a few minutes. The Regal Cinema at MarketFair has stadium seating, and this became a blessing because Micah seemed to wander checking out almost all of the seats, except those occupied by two other patrons; Thea only wanted one change in seating to go up higher. My prediction that Micah would eventually fall asleep thanks to lunch and the two hour session with Ela did not pan out, not even close.

Thea liked the plot, but got a little bored thought the middle, and I think if I'd offered to bail out, both would have followed me. But for $7 a ticket for me and $6.50 for Thea (Micah was a freebie), we were sitting tight until the end. It was cute, but not exactly something I am going to rush out and buy when it's released on DVD.

By evening Thea had a little bit of a sore throat, so she got to have a mug of tea while sitting in bed listening to Chapter 15 of The Penderwicks. That was probably the best part of the day for her. Micah also seemed like he's fighting off something, he got a session with Mr. Nasal Aspirator since trying to get him to blow his nose doesn't seem to working. He makes the sound effects orally but doesn't push the air out through his nose.

This weekend we're going to try big boy underwear to try to win him over to the world of those of us who don't wear port-a-potties on our privates. He likes being naked, so maybe this will feel more naked than diapers - but he also likes going commando which is not going to happen. If I take off his diaper and turn my back for one second, he's taken to scooting away and pulling up his pants and doing a little free-ballin' happy dance.

Micah and I are going for his intake interview at Summit Speech School on Tuesday, February 3rd. The case manager/social worker from the school district called and said that the school offered three dates: 2/3, 2/5 and 2/12. I picked the first date just to get it over with - and as dumb luck would have it, the case manager (who doesn't need to be at the meeting) isn't available that day. Works for me, even though I will miss a morning at work.

The Year of the Ox

. . . officially starts on Monday with the first day of Lunar New Year. School is closed on Monday for the holiday, so today Thea's school put on a performance to celebrate this at the Princeton Senior Center.

What a difference a year makes! Last year Miss T said a firm "No!" to wearing a costume, and as her class was filing in for their first number, she had a case of last minute jitters and spent the rest of the show on my lap.

This year she picked out a costume from http://www.orientbox.com/, it's boy's costume since she's not into dresses or qi paos, but it is a costume and she looked sharp. This year I was told that performers get to go backstage, but Micah and I couldn't go there. Relegating us to the land of non-performers and other peasants who had better remember to clap at the appropriate moments.

And best of all she was an absolute blast on stage with her friends.

Meanwhile out in the audience during preparations for the show, Micah was cruising for spare grandparents. He hooked up with a small cluster of elderly Chinese people sitting near the 'backstage' area and proceeded to work his charms on them. At one point, he was sitting on one man's lap and then running over to an older lady to play with her. Last year when we were in Guangzhou I bought a little quilted navy blue satin jacket for him, and it still fit, so he was also outfitted for the occaision.

My first attempt at putting a short video on the blog:

My first overseas blog hit. . . .

Doha! Someone Qatar read my blog (and was probably bored senseless, never to return), but still on the map that shows where readers are located, I got my first international hit.

How cool is that! For me, it's way cool because I've been hoping for a little dot from somewhere outside the US and thought that it would either come from Germany or Spain where I have family (and I tried to guarantee via a shameless little piece of self-promotion, including address of the blog in our Christmas letter) , but no such luck.

So dear reader from Doha, you are probably a one time wonder, but I thank you. You made my day.

Another Snow Day, Etc.

Monday Thea was off from school for the MLK holiday. Since her best friend Emily goes to a different school they rarely get together to play. We (Thea and I) called Sunday and left a message to see if Emily wanted to come over for a playdate - and luckily, she did.

We had snow again, so Ela called to cancel Micah's session - and it would've been a whole day of entertaining my children and refereeing their squabbles. The solution was occupying one child with a friend. And fortunately this friend has a younger brother around Micah's age, so she's tolerant of having someone small want to shamelessly adore her and constantly try to horn in on their fun.
The girls shut themselves in Thea's room to make a mailbox decorating project. I had hit the sale bins at Michael's so I had notebooks for them, one with a "T" and one with an "E", stuff for them to decorate mailboxes for their Valentines, and Post-Its in the shapes of the letters "T" and "E". That stuff plus a round or two of Candyland kept them busy until lunch time.
Then Micah went upstairs for his nap and they occupied themselves emptying all the wooden play kitchen foods into various baskets and containers. We've had that stuff since Thea was little, and I don't know what possessed me to buy it. It was just so darn cute - all organized into colorful containers and cannisters. Until there are a thousand little pieces all over the floor and then I question my reasons for thinking the little tins of wooden potato chips, beef stew, champignons, and green beans were somehow a necessity. When it's all back together again, I do love the wooden kitchen and all the accoutrements so much better than the plastic ones. When they've outgrown it, I am going to store it all away for Thea's or Micah's children, so they will have all the fun of sorting it all out some day.
Since we had fresh snow, two toboggans and one saucer, going out to play in the snow was almost guaranteed - and 90 minutes into Micah's nap, the girls were itching to get their snow pants and coats on so by 3:30 pm I was encouraging Micah to wake up a little. Then it was all the fun of getting three children into snow pants, jackets, gloves, hats and scarves and dragging the toboggans and saucer up the hill.
It was a powdery snow that didn't have the nice icy crust that made the toboggans really fly last weekend, but they seemed to have fun. I even took the saucer for a ride down the hill. The girls made snow angels, Micah got to ride on the back of his toboggan with Emily steering, and everyone had fun trying to pound the one person who didn't have snowpants and much else in the way of insulation with snowballs.
We also went to our neighborhood park, after the toboggans started to get a little old, and surprisingly, snow is not a deterrent to getting on the swings, going down the slides and climbing on the monkey bars. Which is what Emily's dad found them doing when he walked over to the park.
Poor Emily, her face just fell, and instead of 'Hi Daddy', Adam got hit with "But I haven't even had a chance to have hot chocolate yet!" So Micah and I trudged home to get him out of his snowsuit and start the hot chocolate.
And that's what I was doing when the telephone rang with Steve calling to say he'd gone to the ER to get the chest pains and tingling in his arms checked out. I took Emily's cue and told him that we were in the middle of a playdate and I had two cold wet girls coming back to the house.
We followed Adam and Emily home (after the hot chocolate, and each girl drank two cups to warm up) and the children stayed there for dinner so I could go to see what was up in the ER. This was my first trip back to the ER ER, Micah's little mishaps have landed us in the Fast Track. Steve was bored enough to request his reading glasses and a SuDoKu book from home (sorry, I was not up for driving the icy, slippery backroads; I did go to the Gift Shop to get him something to read.) He was on a low-risk cardiac protocol so he had to wait for a second set of enzymes to be drawn six hours after the first set (which were drawn while I was there and was more than 90 minutes after he arrived). This meant he wasn't going to be getting released until after midnight, and he'd left his car at the office.
So I made another trip back to our former neighbors' home and Adam went with me to retrieve Steve's car and put it in the hospital parking lot, then back to fetch the children - who were annoyed that the second phase of their playdate was being interrupted.
Segue to Tuesday night, after returning from a long day at work capped off by conscripting two of the front desk staff to hold Micah down to remove his stitches (helped out by my putting his coat on backwards with his arms at his sides), after the children have gone to bed and I'm back at the computer working on my charts, there is still charts to be done. There are also a few of tropical Tootsie Pops sitting on the counter. Perfect! One lime one helped me think so well that I had a second, which led to trying a lemon one - and all three helped me finish 20+ chart notes, 10+ lab/radiology letters and other tasks in the EMR.
Then I went upstairs to brush my teeth and go to bed. In the course of puckering my mouth to brush me teeth I notice these two enormous swollen blobs on the inside of my upper lip. It was freakish - and my tongue was fine, the lower lip was unchanged. If this was some sort of allergic reaction to some dye or ingredient in the Tootsie Pop, it was a bizarre one. I popped a dose from a leftover Medrol Dose Pak and hoped for overnight improvement. No more lollipops for me.
And whatever weird karmic cloud I'm under, I wish it would blow away.

Could it be this EASY?

The IEP that was written by our school district recommended sending Micah to Summit Speech School's preschool program. I saw it, in print.

I was there for the bottom line, having read all the reports, but to get there we had to hear a verbal recap of all the testing that was done from the speech therapist and the social worker/case manager, then they got down to the nuts and bolts: Summit's program is the best available for Micah's speech delay and hearing impairment.

Duh, duh and double duh. I've known that for about eighteen months, and have been having angst for at least the last six months over Micah's aging-out of the services he receives through Summit.

But the case manager did say that, of course if we wanted to keep Micah in district that they would make every accomodation for him. Right. That would be like choosing between Disneyland and the rides at the county fair, and I don't even like or ever want to go to Disney (and that's a subject for a post of a different kind. )

So to make it look like we weren't pouncing on this IEP we signed the "we've received this and have 15 days to respond" section.

And the social worker/case manager said that she knew from the first meeting that he would be going to Summit. Way to work the poker face, lady - the line I got from her was that "the district is more than able to meet his needs." Which I interpreted as, 'Bite me, you greedy fools, and abandon any hope of sending him out of district." Silly me.

So now I need to regroup, make plans that Micah will be on his way to preschool on March 2, and rework the timeline for getting his CT scan and follow-up appointment with Dr. Choe scheduled to allow him to get adjusted to his new routine.

And some poor special education/disabilities lawyer will not be getting our business.

Which as the Visa commercial says is PRICELESS.

IEP Eligibility Meeting

Today, at 11 am. The Child Study Team presents its reports. Which basically say that Micah is a sweet, inquisitive average child with a speech delay due to a conductive hearing loss.

Duh, duh and double duh.

Then we get to ride the Dinky, which is turning into a regular Friday thing.

Back in the E-E-E-R ...you don't know how unlucky you are, Boy

5:00 pm Boy attempts jump from tiger chair in living room, hits right temple on unknown toy or piece of furniture, comes into the kitchen, crying with half of his face smeared with blood.

5:05 pm Crying has stopped, until Boy sees his palms are covered in dried blood and he has a fit until they are wiped down with baby wipes. One paper towel is soaked in blood getting the very small laceration under control.

5:10 pm Call goes out to Father of Boy to come home to be with Oldest Child, who does not want an adventure to the ER. Father proposes alternatives such as meeting us at the ER which are rejected by Management as too much drama for the ER waiting room.

5:25 pm Boy and Management leave for University Medical Center at Princeton, which is close to us (at least until 2011 when it moves to a new building across Route 1), chanting, "Mama called the doctor and the doctor said, 'No more Micah's jumping off the chair'. . ."

5:35 pm We sign into Triage and go into the waiting area. Micah promptly finds the kids' area and is playing there when the unit secretary comes to slap on an identification bracelet. Since she neglected to push up his coat sleeve he pretty much can take it on and off at will.

5:45 pm The triage nurse does her thing and walks us over to the Fast Track, where we sit and vegetate for awhile until the doctor sees us, then the physician assistant sees us and essentially does the exact same assessment that the doctor did. Then we vegetate some more while the tech assembles the papoose board and all the other supplies for suturing.

6:00 pm Boy is strapped down and is beginning to get the notion that the party to fix his boo-boo isn't going to be a barrel of laughs, especially after the PA starts numbing up the laceration. That stuff burns and no one seems to mix 1 mL of bicarb into the anesthetic to adjust the pH to something more physiologically neutral.

6:02 pm PA starts suturing. The last time he got about five or more minutes for the anesthetic to take effect. Other than that she is remarkably cool about suturing a howling child.

6:20 pm Boy is released from the papoose board and immediately stops crying.

6:30 pm We get our discharge instructions and head for the car.

Five days until the sutures can come out. He got Thomas the Tank Engine stickers and seems no worse for the wear. I wish I could say the same for me.

Life is a Box of Cracker Jacks . . . .

Friday the social work at OHES left a message for me while Micah and I were out riding the Dinky and doing errands. I didn't think too much of it, so I put her on my Monday To-Do List and in between taking Thea to school and Ela arriving to work with Micah, I'd call.

She beat me to it, as I was sitting at the computer updating my Half.com account (I'd just mailed out an almost 20-year old Naguib Mahfouz paperback for the princely sum of $1.00 plus postage and handling) the phone rang.

Here's the stun gun part: She asked me if I would be willing to consider going to Summit Speech School for an intake interview for Micah. (For the bored and curious, http://www.summitspeech.com/)

Say whuh?

That's what I've wanted all along, but since the Service Coordinator at Early Intervention fired off that first horrific salvo in the battle to get Micah into the right preschool (aka "the parents want an out-of-district placement" debacle), I've been going along and getting along figuring that I'd save the going ballistic for the IEP meeting.

And here, before we even have the meeting to present the findings of the CTS testing, I'm being offered The Prize.

I was shocked. I promptly called the Parent-Infant Group coordinator at Summit to give her the news - but the district had already called the school, so she knew about 30 minutes before I did.

And - here's the punch line, the OHES social worker said to the school's executive director (Dr. Pamela Paskowitz) that Mom might take a little convincing to accept the placement.

Say whuh?

And when I talked to Miriam at Summit, I asked, if this has all be put into words, can it be taken back? I don't want to have the The Prize snatched away at the last second. She assures me it won't happen, and that if the district is placing him at Summit School, the cost of transportation will also be underwritten.

So Micah will be riding the bus (van) five mornings a week to/from Summit. Lucky for us, he's a seasoned car traveler.

I spent the morning practically spastic from joy, relief, whatever. Fortunately Ela and Micah had there own agenda so I was superfluous anyway. They made a photo book (from pictures I was up until 2 am printing, must find better photo printer), played with trains, made patterns while I fluttered in and out with supplies (tape, glue stick, paper).

Fingers crossed that I didn't wake up in some parallel universe where everything goes right, and tomorrow I wake up back in regular old New Jersey.

Snow!

The last two times there has been enough of something white and cold on the ground I've not been around - and I've missed being able to take pictures of the kids on their toboggans that Oma bought last year at the end of the season. Allegedly these toboggans go fast. . .and today the camera and I will be around to capture the moment(s).

And other than making a trek to Speedy Mart to pick up a New York Times, I don't really need to go out. Neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night will keep me from the the NYT crossword puzzle, it's a Sunday obsession. Most weeks I finish it, which gives me (false) hope that spending too much time watching Noggin and PBS Kids hasn't completely gnawed holes in my white matter.

Micah has new boots, rain boots as the shoe store clerk was quick to point out. Mr. Clerk doesn't know that with Mommy Ingenuity and a few extra pairs of socks, a form of snow boots is possible. He also got a new pair of shoes because almost overnight the shoes we bought in September while visiting Oma started to disintegrate. And his shoe size went up one complete size in four months. Maybe he won't be the family's little peanut after all.

Micah, wearing his German cousin's snow overalls, his cousin Willi's jacket, a pom-pom hat that was Thea's - and his brand-new Thomas the Tank Engine boots.

Thea zipping down the hill.

Can I go farther and faster with an extra 30 lbs. on my toboggan?

BAHA-HA - double the hearing aids, double the fun

This morning when I was half-dressed and my hair was half-dried and we were trying to get on the road to the kids' schools, the call came. . . . the Speech and Audiology department phoned to say that Micah's second BAHA had arrived.

And with an appointment slot available at 3pm, my day went from:

- drop Thea at school at 9 am
- drive 40 miles or so to Summit School for group 10 am until noon
- drive 35 miles back towards home to be at OHES for the OT evaluaton at 1 pm

To all of the above, plus finding a route from OHES to Edison (another 30 miles, give or take) in a state that has no decent East-West roads and then driving 30 miles down Route 1 back home . All on a grey, cold, miserable, grungy, rainy day.

Despite this, I was high-fiving myself. Months of nagging, pushing papers along, more nagging, making phone calls and we're finally at the finish line. For 15 seconds in my own mind, I was a Rock Star. Then, back to my multiple neurosis already in progress.

And throughout all of this Micah survived on just a 30 minute nap, a snack while at school and lunch after the hearing aid fitting, and he managed to even have some fun at the OT evaluation. This kid is so adaptable, he just rolls with whatever comes his way.

He was so excited to go to his school today, he was singing about it in the car. It was so adorable - right up until he said, "Play with 'Laina?" Ouch. Not possible, sport. His best pal turned three in mid-December and has left group for preschool. Doesn't pay to fall for an older chick, sometimes.

At the hearing aid fitting, he was properly excited to have two BAHAs on - I don't know how much more sound it brings to him, and it may take some time to figure out one side is vibrating more so that means the sound is coming from that side, but in the sound booth he was able to hear the audiologist telling him to point to his nose at 15 decibels, which is great. The staff at JFK, particularly his audiologist, love him and he flirts with them shamelessly.

When we got home the mailbox held another bonus, the second set of blocks for the BAHAs had arrived from Forwerd, so I can rig up Micah's baseball hat again (for only one BAHA); I pinched the block from the hat to put on his elastic band. Unfortunately, I had put a message on the order asking for two thin blocks instead of the one thick, one thin in the starter pack which was ignored. But if that's the worst thing that happened today, it's not a disaster. I just hate it when a provider of a service fails to listen to me, especially when I'm paying good money for that service.

We were back in the car one last time because there was a message from The Optical Shoppe that my new glasses were in. Tomorrow the shop is only open until 5:30 pm and I'm working, so it was today or wait until Friday.

Now we're home, I'm trying to upload a picture of the double BAHA, but Blogger or Kodak is thwarting me, so dinner first, photo later.

After dinner addendum: Success, finally with the photo - though even with cropping and enhancing it is still tough to really see the two BAHAs. During dinner I just realized that this two-year old is sporting $8K worth of miniature electronics on his head. Yikes. That gives me a bit of pause considering the Crash Test Dummy wannabee lifestyle this boy lives.

Wednesday

Today Micah and I are going to Summit School for group, and then on the way home we are stopping at Orchard Hill Elementary School so the Occupational Therapist can do her part of the Child Study Team evaluation schtick. This should be interesting, because he's usually asleep during the drive home, and he's not the speediest as waking up and being congenial.

Still no word on the second BAHA. I called to check on it yesterday and the audiologist said they had gotten a shipment in but she still hadn't had time to go through it. I was hoping for a message on the answering machine when I got home from work, not today. If it has come in, I'd love to be able to get it ASAP, but I don't know how that will fit with going to Summit, back to home to stop by the school, and then over to Edison. Got to check that out on randmcnally.com.

Tuesday was not a good day, Micah was upset for the last part of the drive to the babysitter's, wanting to go to "Mommy's offisssssss" - he's still in a snit that Thea went to work with me on NYE. He wants to go to "Micah school" - and the concept of tomorrow just doesn't figure into his mindset.

Coming up on the 16th, the Child Study Team is going to present its assessment to us. . . . .

Good-Bye Winter Break

Tomorrow it's back to school for Thea (she's looking forward to it), and back to the last eight weeks of Micah's routine of Ela on Mondays, group on Wednesdays and Estra on Fridays. This year I think I worked more than all previous winter breaks combined - especially this past week when January 1 was the only day I didn't work.

Back to school uniforms, though I've enjoyed seeing Thea in her 'regular' clothes. . . .

Back to packing lunches - I stocked up on lunch supplies today while grocery shopping. . . .

Back to keeping to a more regular schedule, especially with bedtimes. . . .

Back to making 1,000,001 phone calls to get the missing part of Micah's evaluation scheduled, to talk with the Wednesday teacher before she talks to the social worker from the Child Study Team, to check with JFK's Audiology Department to see if Micah's second BAHA has been delivered, to check with the company that makes the blocks that we use for the BAHA since the double BAHA band from Cochlear is on back order for months and months.

What I learned from over the past few weeks:

- I suck at making potato latkes, and the ability to make hash browns (a sort of giant latke in my book) has no bearing on one's ability to make a decent latke;

- the quality of latke recipes availabe via Google sucks;

- I need to work on taking a holiday card picture in October, given the level of cooperation I receive from the photographees around here, but if push comes to shove as it did this year, I can take a picture, make a card on-line, bang out a letter and address labels in a relatively short time;

- in December 2009, if I use all the ornaments, including those that were held back to avoid any breakage due to a two-year old's curiosity, we're going to need a nine to ten foot tall tree - and a small step ladder would be a good gift;

- the batteries never wear down as fast as you'd like them to in the noisiest, most obnoxious toys;

- holidays are better when viewed through my children's eyes, I am thankful that they don't have a lot of expectations as far as presents, so they are thrilled with it all, especially the boxes.

- Thea is gorgeous in her red velvet dress, tights and 'high heel' shoes; with any luck she might not completely outgrow it by the next holiday (dream on, Mom - she's a weed).

Happy 2009

New Year, new background colors. I'm bored with pink and it's not my favorite color, it just matched the print background the best.

New Year's Eve was a total non-event here, at least three out of four of us were asleep when the ball dropped.

Wednesday the office was open from 8:30 to noon, and the office manager was desperate enough for the extra body, she said it was OK for me to bring Thea to work, and Micah's sitter was also working today. Thea brought her traveling art box and set up shop at the empty desk next to mine. I actually broke a few child labor laws by asking her to take a few charts I'd managed to strip for scanning into the EMR to the file clerks. It was nice to have the instant gratification of getting the stuff off my desk, and she felt very self-important.


Meanwhile, Micah was peeved that he didn't get to come to the office, but he seemed to have a good day at Lisa's since it was just him and two others.

Dinner was take-out Chinese, and Steve's take-out place gave its usual suboptimal, indifferent performance. But at least I didn't need to cook.

So far 2009 doesn't feel all that much different that 2008.