Happy Birthday Lucas!

Both of Thea's best school friends have turned five within the past ten days. Last weekend was Kalani's pizza parlor party (with his actual birthdate a few days prior to the party) and today we went to Lucas's party (actual birthday four days ago.) They will all be in Kindergarten together at YingHua this fall.

It was a great party because there was a huge playground to run around, and it was a semi-unstructured event. Run, play, make up your own adventures interspersed with time for pizza and juice boxes and another break for cake. And I just love Lucas because as he and his mother were putting together party bags, Lucas spoke up and said, "I don't think Thea will like the pink princess stuff." Here's a kid who pays attention to detail - and I've got to appreciate his mother as well because she had extra stuff set aside to swap out of the bag that Thea found on the treasure hunt. So my baby came running up to me happily exclaiming, "Look Mommy, a rake and a car!" This put her in such a good mood she actualy shared her party tooter-thingy with her brother.

So now the heat is on to plan Thea's 5th birthday party - both one for school, and one for her friends. Fortunately her birthday is a Monday, so we can have it in school on a day I'm not working. But it's the theme, the party favors, the cake, the ice cream, the where to have it that is all swirling through my mind. . . .

The camera and the connector is acting wonky again, so I haven't been able to upload to Kodak and put any new pictures on the blog. They're both growing like weeds, so I've got to solve my camera issues to show them off.

After Labor Day: The Return of Ela - Micah's speech instructor (I hate the title teacher of the deaf because he is NOT deaf) who is coming back from maternity leave that started around the beginning of July. We were very, very lucky to have Nancy take over for the past two months, and both Micah and I will miss her, but it will be nice to have Ela coming back to us, especially after Micah's summer speech explosion. She's going to be in for a shock, which will be kind of fun to see.

Update

Today would have been my Dad's 78th birthday, so Happy Birthday, Dad, hope you're celebrating.

The first week back from vacation is always tough, mostly for Micah. He who loves his babysitter, Lisa, almost as much as his family wailed piteously both Tuesday and Thursday when I dropped him off. So I got to go off to work cloaked in that mist of Mommy-guilt. Of course when I checked up on him, he snapped out of it once I was out of sight and got into playing with the other children. I don't know if it was truly traumatic for him, or if he was just being a bit of a Drama Queen, which he does seem to have a certain flair for.

Last Wednesday Thea and I had a wonderful afternoon on the beach and playing in the water -we had to stick pretty close to the water's edge or be eaten alive by green-head flies. I have never, ever had the experience of seeing a small dot of blood well up from a fly bite and if there was a system of voting on next species to be wiped off the planet, these pests would get my vote. We made sand castles, buried each other in the sand (to hide from the aforementioned blood-sucking pests) and collected shells. Thea started getting brave about letting the surf come up and wash over her legs. When Steve and Micah came down to the beach, Steve brought our bottle of Off!, but this brand of insect repellant seemed to be more of a marinade/condiment or aphrodisiac for the damn flies because there were more bites rather than fewer after applying the stuff.

Friday we were back at the beach, after going on a fruitless quest to both Seaside and Point Pleasant looking for miniature golf. Despite threatening skies, we had Kite-y with us, and I managed to get it airborne, though with the sky greying and a few drops of rain falling, Thea's vote was for reeling Kite-y in and going back to the beach house. Fortunately, even though we reeled Kite-y in, we stayed on the beach and the clouds and sprinkles passed and the kids had a blast terrorizing two abandoned sand heaps complete with moat and throwing shells back into the waves. And since most of the wind was coming off on the water, the green-heads were not out en masse.

Since I worked last week while commuting from the beach, getting back into the routine wasn't too hard - and the drive was cut in half even with two separate drop-offs for school/daycare. Tuesday I had a patient with a really angry sebaceous cyst between the shoulder blades. With just a little help from a #11 blade and despite being covered with two gauze 4x4s, it blew, spewing its contents three or more feet at which point it splatted on the wall. Then I covered it even better and reapplied a little pressure. And again it spewed a swath through the room. It was simply amazing. Unfortunately, our rather small exam room soon smelled like someone opened a Limburger cheese shop, and the aroma lingered even though we washed down the wall, the exam table and sprayed enough air freshener to asphixiate half the office. Even Micah knew something was up, because I got "Mommy stinky" when he put his head on my shoulder when I picked him up from the babysitter's.

And somehow word must've made it back to the Sebaceous Cyst Fairy, because Thursday I had another patient with a nice bump at the nape of the neck with a nice little puncta in the middle. This one emptied more like Silly String or Cheez Whiz, but that same tell-tale odor hung in the room afterwards. I wish the Ear Lavage Fairy would send a few people my way, that has the same delightful ookiness factor, but without the smell.

Thea is being a 'five-day' kid at school, practice for starting Kindergarten in the fall, so today was just me and Micah-man. He's going to be banned from grocery shopping soon, at least from going with me to the Lawrenceville ShopRite. Damn the grocery stores with their displays of balloons and Beanie Babies. Micah is currently in a Mylar balloon and puppy phase - and unlike Thea who is steadfastly loyal to her two white tigers, Micah is a stuffed animal polygamist. He has his #1 lovey, Bunny Bear, and then he has a small horde of sister and brother stuff animals that he also seems to be devoted to, and his philosophy is the more, the merrier. If all of his 'favorite' stuffed animals were put in his crib, there would be no room for Micah.

I was privilege to Micah's first in-mall sit-in outside of Pottery Barn Kids on Monday, protesting his mother's lack of sensitivity to his need for a life-size toy dog (and mind you, if this were the real deal, wagging its tail in front of him, he'd be quaking in his booties and clawing his way up my leg and into my arms.). I was scoping the sale items and he found two dogs, a Jack Russell and a Boston Terrier, both life-size and he was in love. He carried the Jack Russell around the store, playing with it in the PBK toy kitchen, babbling away to it, until we put it back ($34 for a stuff animal, I love my son, just not in that way). I put it back, picked Micah up and strolled out of the store and then put him down again. And he promptly sat his shapely little butt down on the pavement and pouted. So he got picked up, tucked under my arm like a football and carted back to the car. Mommy can be such an insensitive b*tch a times, all in a day's work - one more thing he can share with his future therapist if he ever gets through being adopted, the ears issue and whatever other trauma to his psyche we have inflicted on him.

Tool Time

A few weeks ago, my darling boy yanked the kitchen phone's cord, which connected to the wall via a plastic connection in a metal frame (made for a wall-mount phone) ; the plastic did not resist the boy tugging on it with all of his almost 30 pounds and a piece of plastic holding the cord in the socket snapped off. And the phone wouldn't stay plugged in without a small quantity of packing tape.

So...I went to ACE Hardware, home of the helpful hardware man, who must've been on a coffee break and was replaced by the idiot, pimply-faced adolescent hardware man wannabe who pointed me to a $5.98 replacement - not an exact copy the part (which I dutifully brought along in my Teutonic "I want one JUST LIKE THIS" mode). Once home, with screwdriver in hand, I found that the nitwit had steered me to a connector with SIX wires and in the wall was FOUR wires, so once all was said and done, screwed and connected, there was still no dial tone. May his face remain a festering topographical map of the Rocky Mountains well into his twenties.

So...a few more days go by, and Micah and I went to Home Depot on our Monday shopping rounds. I wanted the above-mentioned thing for the phone and a winder-up thingy for the garden hose, which had been sitting on our front walk like a trip-and-fall lawsuit waiting to happen. This time I found a phone wall receptacle, manufactured by GE, which definitely brings good things to life because the packaging was transparent so I could easily see that there was a red wire, a green wire, a yellow wire, and a black wire - all for the bargain price of $4.99. We went home and the screwdriver came back out and lo and behold, the phone works. I am so proud of myself, therefore I'll keep the story of how much I hate the Self-Checkout at Home Depot and the bad words that I said over what was an amazingly slow and time-consuming pain in the rear of a process to myself.

So...Micah's tab is now one toilet and one phone receptacle, so his first five years or so of allowance is basically a big IOU. His tab stands at about $500+. Plus time lost for two ER visits.

Photos to follow - I've go to put them on the computer first. Another day, I am done. I brought the kids' medical charts home tonight to put their immunization histories into their medical records - now I just need to find my immunization history and fill in all the dates and shots.

Happy Anniversary, Micah!

Wednesday was the one year anniversary of when we met Micah in person and were granted 24 hour custody by Hubei Province, followed the next day by the one-year anniversary of his actual adoption. Fesitivities were rather sparse Chez Us - Nancy came for two hours to work with Micah. She's replacing Ela whose due date is Monday, so we'll be waiting for word on when Elzby makes her entrance into the world. Thursday Micah was back at Lisa's while I was at work.

Micah's sitter, Lisa, has another child in her care who has a smaller version of Micah's Buh-Buh (bunny bear, given to Thea by Lori and Jamie but never loved by Thea as much as her white tigers). I have been wanting to find a back-up Buh-Buh for awhile, and Lisa called the other mom to find out where she bought it. And there is was on Amazon, just sitting there waiting for me to buy it . In pink and in blue. Bunny Bear is a bear wearing a hooded track suit with rabbit ears. Obviously designed by someone having some sort of cross-dressing animal fetish. Micah has since discovered that the manufacturer has cut costs by not having the track suit come off - and he was sorely disappointed at this and still can't figure out why the blue bunny bear can't get nekkid.

Thea marked the occasion - or some day right around the anniversary - by telling me that it was time for Micah to find a new family. Sorry, dear daughter, but despite his occasional naughtiness, I've sort of gotten used to having the little pest around.

Happenings and other miscellany

1. Thea lost her first tooth on Monday, June 30 while at Oma's. It had been loose for about six days. It was a slightly traumatic event, for both of us - for Thea because it bled a little bit and came out somewhat unexpectedly and for me because she's not even five yet. The tooth fairy had to be contacted so that she could delay her visit until we were back in Princeton the following night. (I was attending the AANP conference through the 1st.) She got the Tooth Fairy's 1st tooth bonus of $5. Future teeth will be compensate at the regular rate of $1 each (4x the quarter that Mommy used to receive. . . )

2. AANP - what a great conference! I have to thank my mother a thousand times since she made it possible for me to attend What a great birthday gift. And aside from the registration fee, my mother, who took on babysitting both children for the last two days of the event. Both kids were on their good behavior on day #1, but one who shall remain nameless acted up a bit on day #2. (And my money was on Micah giving her grief, and he actually was the better of the two. . . ) And I got lots of CME credits so things should go smoothly for renewal of my NP certification - smoothly other than coughing up $400 or so for the privilege of renewing for another five years in addition to paying for whatever classes I have to take for the CMEs. What a racket.

3. Micah's assessment from the speech therapist was that he has all the appropriate sounds for a two-year old and his expressive language is in the 21-month range, so he's made some amazing progress considering that his initial assessment last August put him in the six to nine month range.

4. After 45 minutes on the phone with a computer geek for our EMR software, my laptop for work finally works at home. Doesn't sound like much of a big deal, but it gives me access to medical records and the ability to send prescriptions electronically while on call. Of course I was on call from the 4th through this morning and the laptop was here all weekend waiting for me to have time without someone trying to interrupt. What a pain in the butt - and all this work so I can work at home on days that I am not in the office, oh rapture.

5. The box from the new stove has been refashioned into a house, a project started last Friday and continuing through the weekend. Yesterday Thea and I went to Michael's to buy paint, spray paint and tempera, to spruce up the drab brown. It's architectural style is more shack/out-house than Architectural Digest, but Thea is quite taken with it. This afternoon we made a paper fireplace to put inside, but I am getting attitude from the homeowner because the glue stick didn't do a great job in getting the project to adhere to the walls. If she can work this much attitude at four, I am dreading fourteen. This semi-artistic monstrosity, too large to fit through the front door or the door to the garage, is now sitting on the landing, listing to one side - I've got to come up with some way to shore up the one side with the door cut into it.

NP Conference, Etc.

I'm in the weird vacuum of a professional conference - the sort of time-warp where days start to blend together and you get to know all the obscure restrooms in odd corners of the conference center, and we're not even staying at the conference hotel.

We drove down late Wednesday night, after our first dinner with the brand new stove. Unfortunately it was just quick spaghetti and broccoli, the oven was unused other than the 30 minute trial after installation. We also have a new dishwasher, which, if all goes well, will not flood the kitchen on its maiden voyage.

Mom/Oma made us a reservation at the Sleep Inn; she was due for another of her injections for macular degeneration and her eye usually bothers her for a few days afterwards, so the hotel seemed to be a good alternative to having four house guests and feeling miserable after an injection to her eye.

Thursday we came to the conference center at National Harbor so I could register and check out where things were. Most of the attendees had gone to Capitol Hill for visits with their states' representatives, so it was pretty empty. The Gaylord is very nice, though grossly overpriced (bottle of water $3.00; large cup of coffee and a plain croissant $7.00). I feel sorry for those actually staying here because there is no easy access to a Wawa or grocery store - I could make a killing by bringing in provisions for people or shuttling them to the supermarket if I were so inclined.

The Sleep Inn has an indoor pool, which is nice if the weather is bad. Micah seems to love it; Thea had a slip and dunk in the whirlpool so she's a little water shy. Yesterday was day one of the 'real' part of the conference so Steve had to entertain both for the entire day - and I stayed for the 5:30 performance of the Capitol Steps, which was funny and fabulous. I think I saw them almost 20 years ago at another conference and they were just as hilarious then. Imagine a Robin Williams-ish rapid fire wit with a political bent.

Anyway, I'm sitting around waiting for the exhibit hall to open at 6:00pm. Both the sessions I went to yesterday and the ones today were really good; it's nice to feel somewhat energized and enlightened. Steve and the kids will be coming down and we'll have dinner later on.

Sorry this one is mostly about me, me, me.

L.

PS: On the Wednesday before we left for Maryland, in addition to the new stove and dishwasher being delivered and installed, going to Sound Beginnings with Micah in the morning, we also met with a speech pathologist to have Micah evaluated. He's more or less on track for sounds that he should be producing at this age, but she'd like to see more spontaneous production of language rather than response to our prompting, so she'll be seeing him for an hour a week for awhile.

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.