Bad, Bad Blogger

I have chosen quilting over blogging.

I have chosen reading over blogging.

I have chosen hanging out with my kids over blogging.

Add to the list movies/TV, sleeping.

And unfortunately I've chosen Facebook over blogging, though Facebook is a form of addictive, time-wasting micro-blogging.

The headlong rush at the end of the school year swallowed up free time.  The seemingly endless cascade of  the last Girl Scouts meetings, the last Cub Scouts meetings, the end of Mandarin school, the end of religious school (though I like that one best because it drops off the calendar first), the end of Tae Kwon Do class, field days as schools, end of year parties rolled through our lives and dumping us into summer.  Where camps, trips to the pool and other just everyday stuff took over, along with work, there is always work.

There are a few unfinished posts, started before extended hiatus from the blogosphere was in its early days.  They might eventually be posted. Or not.

Right now gearing up for school has started.  Physicals, eye exams, cleaning out closets and dressers.  Teacher assignments won't be posted until the 21st (for Micah) and the 22nd (for Thea).  I've read through the fifth grade supply lists and am hoping she is assigned the teaching team that uses spiral notebooks.  I am so over composition books.  I despised them when I was a fifth grader in Mrs. Isenock's 5th/6th combination class, and that sentiment has not faded four decades later.

Thea has commented on how quickly the summer has gone by - with as few viola practices, as little work on the summer Mandarin homework and as little recreation reading as she can manage.  I have not used time this summer honing my nagging skills.

So I'll either reform my non-blogging ways, or not. 

3,000 Hits

It took three years, plus a month or so, but today the hit counter reached 3,000.  I like the map showing where the hits are actually coming from better, but it's only been counting the flags for a little more than a year or so.

Meanwhile in about the same amount of time it took the blog to accumulate those 3,000 hits,  Micah has made monumental progress with his hearing and speech.  As of this week, both of Micah's preschools have said that he is on par with his normal hearing peers.  Which means that for a child who has only been amplified for three years, he has managed to catch up to children who had an eighteen month head start in terms of speech and language, and he's funnier and smarter than quite a few of them.

Much to be thankful for: Micah, his ENT surgeon, Summit School and its teachers and therapists, Early Intervention, the audiologist who fitted and adjusted his BAHAs, every person who has spent time talking and interacting with Micah, and so on.

1,000 ! ! ! !

The little 'hit' counter that I put on the blog almost 15 months after I started writing registered it's one-thousandth hit today. Proof that a watched pot does not boil, I checked in yesterday three or four times only to see 998 each time.

I'm probably more excited than one should be under the circumstances.

Flags, Mars Landing, Etc.

I am still addicted to seeing the little flags pop up on the map, so much so I added a second flag counter just for the heck of it.

The blog got a hit from Sitka, Alaska - how cool is that? And Mars, Pennsylvania - someone in Mars stopped by, though it would sound more interesting if it was 'on' Mars instead of 'in'.

I sort of know that the Mid-Atlantic East Coast/I-95 corridor hits are friends and family, but som many of the other flags are complete mysteries, intriguing little mysteries.

Thanks to all who have stopped by, I have no idea how or why you found this corner of the blogosphere, but I'm glad you stopped in.

600 Hits in Six Months, Etc.

I've said I love the little counter widget that keeps track of visits to the blog. Yesterday six months and one day after I installed it, the number hit 600. Which is relatively tiny compared to some of the blogs I read, but most of what I write is very snore-worthy and intended for a niche market of family and close friends - my guess is that at least half, maybe more, of the visits are my husband, which seems to save him the time of actually engaging in conversation though what he does with that saved time remains a mystery to me.

I love the ten little foreign flags on the Feedjit map, too. Canada, France, Portugal, Greece, Qatar, Kazakhstan, India, Viet Nam, China, Philippines. Still hoping for that hit from Germany or Spain, but I will be patient.

Yesterday was also my mother's birthday. Forgot to send a card, but I did mail her one of the invitations to the party which arrived yesterday, so I'm not completely horrible.

The hideous behemoth (aka the minivan) arrived Wednesday night while I was at the PTA meeting for Thea's school. Oh joy. I have no intention of driving it until the first weekend in May when we go to Oma's; my mother is thrilled that she can bring a friend along to the NLH Spring Festival.

Tiny Flags

I have to confess: I am totally addicted to checking out the Feedjit icon on the blog, it's almost better than chocolate or shopping. Five months after I installed it, it still gives me a shiver of absolute happiness to see more flags (for the US readers) or new flags from other countries. Though I did spend time mulling over why someone in Qatar, Greece and even Canada would drop by for even a quick read and how they found my little corner of the blog-o-sphere. But don't misudnerstand, I am happy they did and by leaving their electronic footprint (and flag) on the Feedjit map; it makes me feel like I've won the lottery.

And now this morning, two enormous surprises: Kazakhstan and China. Thank you whoever you are for dropping in, hope I didn't bore you to tears and please come back anytime.

If you're in the mood for a laugh, find a video clip of Eddie Izzard's comedy bit on flags (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTduy7Qkvk8), he's one of my favorite comedians - and the way things have been going with our plans to send Micah to Summit Speech School, I might need to go in search of a laugh for myself.

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.

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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.

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.

Cheap Decorating Thrills

I' ve been redecorating the blog. It's cheaper than re-doing a house (though the house needs it more desperately).

Since reader comments have been few and far between, and http://www.blogpatrol.com counter didn't give me a precise lock on who is reading this, with the exception of my husband whose email address shows up on the activity report while everyone else remains anonymous, I put the Feedjit map as one of the widgets. Now I can guess, based on location, who is out there.

The Baltimore flag is my cousin, but I knew that already from the comment she left (and I wish she'd email me the name of her blog. Hint, hint.) Illinois is Steve's brother. Somehow the stupid Feedjit thing calls our home location Belle Mead instead of Princeton. Texas is likely my best friend since freshman year of high school.

King of Prussia is a mystery. I hope its not someone from our former adoption agency because that would be too weird and nosey.

California is also a question mark, though I think that might be a mom who is a member of one of the atresia/microtia groups on Yahoo! that I belong to.

It feels a bit like cyber-stalking, but it doesn't cost a dime so and it keeps me occupied - otherwise I'd be changing the font colors sixteen times a day trying to find the palette that goes best with the background.

Not much else is new. I clipped a Land-o-Lakes Best Sugar Cookie recipe, then actually read it. Two tablespoons of orange juice is part of the flavoring. What foulness! Blech, blech, and double blech. Into the recycling it went. I was looking for a good recipe to make cookies with the kids since I discovered my cookie cutters in an obscure corner of one of the kitchen cabinets.

An Emu?

Today was a day that I have been anticipating, though not expecting it to actually happen until a few years from now, say in the second or third grade.

"Mommy, Miss Anita is coming tomorrow for drama, and I need an emu costume." By tomorrow. And I wouldn't really know an emu if it moseyed over from Australia and bit me on my cellulitic pink tushie.

And I was supposed to go to a dinner program with CME credit with Karen and Candy, but Karen was feeling like early onset roadkill, I've been fighting head congestion since Monday and I stayed up a little too late last night watching election returns, so rather than pick up Micah, pick up Thea, deliver them to Steve's office and then head back down I-295 to Mount Laurel in the rain, we cancelled.

And by cancelling, it meant that I could go to the first PTA-like meeting at Thea's school (they're still debating what to call it since many have negative connotations about using PTA, PTSA or the like - it's all just window-dressing no matter what's decided, IMHO; the consensus was to call it the school's Family Association).

The route home from the Lawrenceville campus is conveniently near a Michael's, which I thought might be a likely source of the raw material needed to turn my daughter into a bird that looks like a motley toupee on sticks with a bird head on a skinny neck and a semi-vacuous expression on its face.

Fortunately after the meeting, I asked YanHong's mother (who is also the science teacher) about the costume issue - and her daughter has also come home saying "I need to be a blue start by tomorrow. . . ." and she found that the children made their costumes. Panic averted. I still stopped at Michael's and got a brown/grey/white maribou boa to help Thea create the mood. She's on her own for the beady-eyed vacuous expression and the twig legs.

This is the 100th post on the blog! I thought it was just #99, but I just checked. I never thought I'd keep on going much beyond our return from China in July 2007.

Weekend Update

I'm typing with a bandaid on my right ring finger. Last night I was in the powder room, picking up some of the debris left behind by one of the kids and as I bent down to pick up the item on the floor, my finger ran down the edge of a wooden crate in the corner and got what looked like a large splinter rammed under the nail. Major, major ouchie.

After cutting the nail down and trying to root around for an end of a splinter to grab, I finally went back to the crate to investigate and I think the splinter didn't actually lodge under the nail after all. Doesn't mean it hurts any less - I went through two ZipLoc bags of ice last night, and it's now got the padding of two Bandaids on it which is making me feel like I'm typing with my elbows.

Tomorrow typing on a laptop keyboard is going to be a real joy. . .but fortunately (for my sanity) or unfortunately (for our finances) I'm only working two days this week.

We had a parent-teacher conference at Thea's school on Friday. She's doing beyond wonderful in Kindergarten, both in Mandarin and in English. Only one area needing improvement: not getting upset or impatient that she doesn't get called on as much in the English portion of her day - where pretty much all of the children are on equal footing, language-wise.

Thea worked on Thank You notes for her birthday presents on Sunday morning, and I took them to the Post Office this morning (no extra postage required for either size or weight). She put in a picture of herself at Red Green and Blue after finishing her canoe creation. I'm proud that she was pretty diligent about it, even when I kept updating the number of cards needed (eight was the final total).

After Saturday's heinous community meeting I went to Crate and Barrel Outlet. I bought two picture frames and used them for pictures of Micah and Thea, each at about eighteen months, with Steve's computer glasses upside down on their faces. Because they're 4"x4" pictures you really have to look closely to tell who is who in the photos, though Thea's pink outfit sort of makes it a give away. A small slice of Mommy guilt is erased now that there is at least one photo of Micah on the walls.

I'm closing in on the 100th post on this blog. . .something I never imagined back in June 2007.

Bean Counting

OK, I patted myself heartily on the back about two weeks for installing a counter on the blog. Now it's driving me nuts. It tells me how many people have viewed the blog, but not WHO. From the comments I've gotten here and there, I know a few of the people who have stopped by on occasion, but I'm wondering about who has kept on reading beyond the time we returned from China with Micah and every day life took over.

I'm amazed that 35 or so times (as of today) someone has stopped by for a few seconds. Compared to some of the blogs I read, that's hardly a blip, but it's about 34 more than I expected. Marriage and motherhood have scaled down my expectations, obviously.

Drop a comment now and then, it's free and it gives me a cheap thrill.

I'm smarter than I look....maybe

Because I managed to find and install a counter on the blog, so now I will be able to tell if I'm just in this for my own amusement. (Reminder to self: Insert audio of sound of my own hand patting myself on the back.)

Today was our (Micah's and my) usual Wednesday: drop Thea off at YingHua and zip up to Summit School (with the minor pit stop at D-n-D for the large coffee), then homewards. Lately Micah sacks out in the car on the way home even before we get to the on-ramp for I-78, but today he kept me company until just below Bridgwater Commons Mall. He's now wakes even before transferring, so there's no hope of extending the nap beyond the actual time in the car. Therefore a trip to the Village Farm in Lawrenceville would extend his nap a little bit beyond the 45 minutes - but the little twerp woke up as we were getting off of Route 206 to take the back roads to Lawrenceville.

In addition to the tomatoes I was hoping for, I picked out a gigantic pot of mums and Micah chose a pumpkin, so decorating for fall has begun. Since we also killed off 30 minutes playing at the train table in the school's lobby, it was nearly time for the speech therapist to come. (She rescheduled her usual Friday morning.) Today we worked on saying mitt and meow-meow: mitt was just a new word and part of the cutting with scissors activity she brought, meow is to try and reform Micah's use of niao-niao for cat. And much to my surprise the BMW-driving therapist is a Phillies fan and listens to baseball on the radio whilst tooling around to her appointments. Not quite what I imagined. Of course listening to any sport on the radio is just below submitting myself for a pre-frontal lobotomy on the list of things I would even remotely enjoy doing.

Today at Thea's school, she started telling me The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in Mandarin - but she sort of lost the thread because her pal, Kalani, came over and was listening. The surprising thing was if I truly listened, I could pick out the numbers and some of the fruits. Thanks to the Learn with Jade DVDs. She promised to do it tonight, using her English copy of the book to help her remember how many of each fruit. This impressed her friend Lucas's mother; he's another kid in school whose parents are English-speaking so zero reinforcement of the Chinese-immersion on the homefront - one more reason I love Lucas.

One month later. . . .

It's been almost a month since I last wrote anything here - I've written numerous witty, amusing posts in my head that have never survived long enough to be typed into the computer.

At work we've moved into the world of the EMR, electronic medical record, so now in addition to my prescription pad, stethoscope and PDA, I drag a laptop along with me into the exam room. It's been an interesting transition, and I'm not sure whether I love it or hate or am somewhere in between, but I do know that I am so bleeping tired of hearing "It's going to be great, eventually. . . ." The amount of time I now spend on the computer at work definitely lessens the amount of time I spend on the computer at home. And yesterday I found out that the additional time we get in our schedules to catch up is going to be phased out over the next few months. It's definitely making me think that if I ever move to another practice, it had better be one so small, poor or non-profit so as never to be able to afford instituting an EMR system. There is something so much more deliberate in writing down what one did and said rather than ticking off a bunch of boxes.

Meanwhile and far away, we've made another trip to Washington last weekend, Thea finished up Pre-K and will be starting summer camp next week, Micah is going to be evaluated next week by a speech pathologist to see if he has any other impediments to acquiring and producing speech other than his hearing impairment, the kids are going in for their check-ups Monday and Monday evening our social worker will be making a visit to be able to write up our 12-month post-placement report for Micah, which will officially end our relationship with the adoption agency and is a cause for celebration since there isn't a whole lotta love flowing in either direction. (Fortunately, we love our social worker - she's not affiliated with the adopton agency.)

Two weeks ago on the 6th, in the midst of that hot spell, the kids and I went to Target to get a pump to inflate the pool we got from Aunt Shannon last year - and upon opening it discovered that the pump had to be charged for ten hours before using. So we hauled out the pump that came with the pool. Whether due to the heat, general crabbiness or just because, Thea and Micah fought like badgers in a sack over pumping so we resorted to ten pumps for one, then ten for the other - and if you've seen the size of this pool, it was going to take a lot of pumping to get it anywhere close to blown up. I was ready to lose it because Micah wanted to 'drive' the pump (spin the pump handle) rather than contribute to the cause, so I said to him, "Micah, I am going to kill you." Which passed unnoticed, until Thea piped up, "And if you get up, she'll kill you again." Fortunately after an hour of torture, the pool was up and ready to be filled. The down side is that once in the pool, it's hard to get Micah out, even when his lips start to acqure a purple-y blue tinge from cold. I had to lure then to the front lawn with a promise of bubble goop and chalk to get them out of the water.

New Layout

Caption: On our walk around the Princeton University Stadium.

I got bored with the monochromatic look of the old blog, so I went to http://www.suckmylolly.com/ to look for something a little more visually stimulating. After a few false starts and screw-ups, this is what I chose, I'm having a little thing for stuff that looks like 1930s/1940s fabric.

So if you like it, leave a comment, if you hate it leave a comment. I've learned how to delete comments - I found a comment on a recent post and was all atwitter, until I found that it was the blog comment equivalent of spam. Somebody in Brazil whose information links to a site that looks like it is selling something (my complete lack of knowledge of Portugese makes me only able to speculate.)

Zap went that comment, buh-bye - though the evidence that there once was a comment is still that. That's another trip through the help menu. And now if someone gives me a cheap thrill by leaving a comment, he/she work just a bit harder by copying the letters in the box before the comment can be left, and somehow will prevent spam comments.

R.I.P. FiFi

Our 7+ year old guinea pig FiFi died right before the kids and I left for my mother's at the end of March. Since Steve was going to clean up and get rid of the cage while we were away, Thea and I had a little talk about death while driving down the NJ Turnpike. (Steve was in favor of telling her that FiFi had gone back to be with her family, a la our neighbors who used that stories while flushing their dead goldfish down the toilet. Why would the goldfish's family live somewhere downstream of where the poop and pee goes? It just didn't seem right.) Anyway, we survived. Thea doesn't want to be buried in the ground (where she thinks FiFi is, out in the backyard with Marco Polo and Mrs. Whaley, but I think Daddy took a few short cuts.)

Anyway, to FiFi, who despite her semi-snotty attitude in her younger days, was a fairly good rodent. May her next incarnation bring her further along in the food chain.

I'm having trouble transferring photos. I spent 45 minutes in a chat mode with some geek at Kodak who was utterly useless, I definitely was interrupting him from cruising on-line porn or clipping his toenails. I'm going to try getting new cables for the camera and see where that gets me.

Miscellany

A) Micah got shorn this week. He was getting this very unflattering muffin-top from his new mesh BAHA band making him look like a demented aerobics instructor, so off we went to Snip-Its. Just as the stylist was prepping the clippers to have at it, he looked over at her and said, "Uh oh" but he sat still and let her clip and snip until a good bit of his hair was on the floor. Thea also got a haircut two days later. Flo, Thea's stylist at Snip-Its, only works Saturdays and Sundays so we had to trust someone new, but this stylist did an amazing job shaping up the cut that Flo originally did and getting Thea's random wisps under control. Thea was decked out in her knight's costume and green dinosaur backpack for the occasion, her sword and helmet stayed at home.

B) Thea's One Hundred Good Wishes Quilt arrived today. It's been almost four years in the making - or rather a few months in the acquisition phase, many more months in the sitting around phase and then the hand off of the fabric to Eleanor, the expert quilter, who volunteered to pull the project out of the abyss into which it had sunk in November 2007. It's beyond amazing, somehow she made all the random patterned fabric squares work together - and she added squares with the state flags of Maryland and New Jersey, the US flag, a crab, and better still the hideous Redskins fabric was relegated to the side while the Bears fabric had pride of place further in. Photos to follow. It was such a nice surprise because I had to work this morning and I returned home to a living room that was trashed. (Steve took the kids to visit his mother and then to Seaside for a walk on the beach so I came home to a quiet house.) I saved opening the box until after the debris field was cleaned up and order restored. Then after giving the quilt the proper amount of admiration and attention, I remembered to look upstairs - and yes, the bed still needed to be made.

C) I went to the most amazing continuing education program last Saturday. And it was free. Granted the presentations started at 7:30 am, which is just way too early - though breakfast was provided and copious quantities of Starbucks. It was at the Westin Forrestal which is just a hop and a skip from home so I could leave home at 7:10 and be signed in and on my way to the buffet by 7:20. The speaker on conjunctivitis totally rocked and had wonderful, really gross slides to go along with his talk, turning what I thought would be a total post-lunch snooze fest into the best session of the day. The two quotes of the day came courtesy of one of the co-presenters of the HPV (human papilloma virus) session: "Cancer is yucky" and "The anus is interesting." I think that cancer is a little, itty-bitty bit BEYOND yucky, and even in the context of HPV, the anus is, at best, approached with gloved hands and a bit of K-Y, if at all. Interesting? I don't think so.

D) This year I recertify so I need 150 contact hours of continuing education. My last re-cert was 2003, the year before Thea arrived. Since 2004, with free time at a premium, I felt like I had accomplished next to nothing in the way of CE and was getting very nervous because the recertification application will be arriving some time in the next couple of months (even though my certification doesn't expire until November 2008, the accrediting body wants its $400+ fee early, greedy buggers). Then a brochure for a national conference conveniently taking place in late June/early July practically in my mother's backyard arrived, followed by another for an NP conference in Philadelphia in May. Between those two events, the program last week and another two-day freebie in April, I figured I might just squeak by. So Thursday night, in a fit of inspired panic with a purpose, I dug out all the CE certificates from 2003 until now and put them in an Xcel spreadsheet. I have 118.1 hours. (Insert sound effect of me breaking my arm patting myself on the back.) Things are not dismal AT ALL, and I am much more industrious than I give myself credit, especially when those 118 hours are comprised of mostly one and two hour increments. Now I just need to make sure that I meet the requirement in terms of percentage of credits acquired through an ANCC-certified continuing education provider - that's probably where I'll fall short.

E) I got a comment on one of my more recent posts. Comments on posts since returning from China have be nil, giving me the feeling that I am pretty much writing this blog for myself - and for the kids if they are ever eventually interested in reading it. So if you're reading this regularly or just passing through, leave a note once in a while, it's like getting a present when I find one.