The Wait for BAHA #2 and Weekend Update

...is still on-going, but I have got to put a major thanks in to the ENT we saw back in May. When our service coordinator emailed me about needing all the documentation for the secnod application (something she could have told me back in September at our six-month review), I used the personal email address that the ENT had given us at that appointment (and I called his office as well, the OCD kicks in when it comes to anything related to the children). He responded within 24 hours and said the needed documents would be in the mail. What a dude. In addition to being one of those surgeons with really big brains with energy to match, he's not some remote Wizard of Oz type who only speaks to his patients from behind the velvet curtain.

The promised letter and prescription reading "Medically cleared to wear a hearing aid" arrived over the weekend, so after getting Thea from school we went off to FedEx Office to copy and fax it to our service coordinator.

Next move is to contact the social worker at Orchard Hill Elementary to see if she received the signed document giving the Child Study Team permission to evaluate Micah. I've heard there is a history of documents going missing, which does not sound promising - especially since I hand-delivered it. According to The Rules, the CTS has 20 days to respond to this and 90 days to complete the evaluations.

Meanwhile and far away, the children had a great weekend at Oma's, and since it was only two days, I don't think we drained Oma as much as one of our four or five days stays does.

Micah managed to wake up at 3:30 am, slide down onto the air mattress where I sleep and wake me up by saying, "WHERE OMA?" in his loudest voice. Fortunately he bought that Oma was sleeping, had a bottle and a diaper change and went back to sleep snuggled next to me.

The NLH fall festival was the usual. We tried our best to be out the door early, but since it takes 90 minutes or so to get there, most of the baked goods and fudge had been snapped up. There was a silent auction, and Mom's quilting friend had made a donation of one of her quilts. I was told not to bid on it since she had quilts at home for me to buy, but the thought of some unknown peasant getting their mitts on a prize-winner from the Montgomery County Fair for a pittance was not doable. Thea picked out some 'jewels' - a star pin that looks to her like a sheriff's badge and a pin that looked like it would tell the world that she was a knight; Micah got a little bear with a bib, mostly to keep him from wanting something bigger.

We scoped out the Christmas room, but right inside the door was a giant electrical Elmo with a Santa hat. Micah just about lost his mind, and the sounds of "ELLLL-MOH..." bounced off the walls as I dragged the stroller out of the room. Elmo Santa does not figure into my Christmas decor, no way, no how.

Our umbrella stroller got a work out, because Thea wanted to ride (shopping fatigue had set in), and Micah wanted to ride as well, so I plopped him on her lap. Surprising she-who-does-not-like-kissing-or-hugging-her-brother put up with holding him on her lap, and since he knew she was a captive audience he periodically gave her a smooch on her cheek.

In the Book Room, which is usually good for finding a few good quality used books, we ran into two older women who asked what the box on Micah's head was. And one of the ladies, midway through my preprogrammed atresia/microtia schtick, asked, "Is that one of those LOCKLEAR implants?" I thought it was a) pretty cool that she would even have a vague idea of cochlear implants and b) it put a weird image in my head of Heather Locklear implanted into someone's head to help them hear, but that was a nice segue into my 'no, he has functioning cochleas, neither of which is located in his frontal lobe; this is a bone conduction hearing aid' patter. They were overall very interested in a non-nosy way, but they ended with the whole "it's such a wonderful thing you're doing" routine that just bugs me. But rather than tune out and glaze over, I just said that it's the complete opposite and shoved the 90 pounds of squirming children in stroller forward to make my escape.

After lunch we waited around for the results of the silent auction. Micah and Thea played in the fountain in front of the entrance while we waited for Oma to finish up - it was a nice warm day, but the water was darn cold. Thea was out at the fountain by herself when Mom's friend came walking up and Thea actually recognized her and said hello. I was hoping not to be found out but there I was busted with the nap quilt sitting in the stroller.

We stopped at Mom's friend's house and the kids occupied themselves with toys that have been around since the 1960s. The best part of catching up was both my mom's friend and Mom saying how nice it was to talk with someone whose hearing was unimpaired. So many of their friends are hard-of-hearing (HOH) that it can be exhausting to have conversations with them - and both of them really haven't been hit too hard by aged-related hearing loss.

Sunday Thea and I went out to Border's to grab a New York Times, and we drove through LaPlata to see if things were gearing up for the Veterans' Day Parade. There were three huge semis with the Budweiser Clydesdales on them unloading in front of the County Administration Building. Unfortuantely, Micah had decided to take a nap so we waited until 12:45 pm to go to the 1 pm parade. I unloaded Mom and children where the parade had started and went to park on a side-street. Instead of having the Clydesdales as the grand finale, they had led off the parade, so we got to wave to a bunch of high school bands, ROTC units, librarians, people driving antique cars (though how a car from 1971 could be deemed an 'antique'; nothing manufactured during my lifetime should be given that desgination) and the Charles County EMS and fire department - and for the finale, the three semis for the Clydesdales.

The parade route was relatively short so we moseyed along, saw some of the things we had already seen while waiting to cross Charles Street, and then we followed the crowds seeking the horses. The Clydesdales and the wagon, complete with driver and a very blase' Dalmation, were in front of the Town Hall. Micah stood stock still and just looked at the horses from about six feet away, with the occasional "RIDE HORSEY?" chant. There are eight horses in the team and they are huge. All were decked out with braided manes with red and white (fake) roses sticking out. They also had their tails beribboned and styled as well, which if I were a large male Clydesdale, I'm not so sure how I'd feel about having my tail styled so that my puckered not-so-little anus was out there staring down the world.

Anyway, even though I'm not a beer-drinker or a fan of parades, it was fun. After the parade we went back to Hunan Star, scene of last month's meeting with one of the universe's more tactless creatures, for dinner. We were given our 'usual' booth, in the back away from diners without children. Thea actually said hello and ordered her drink in Mandarin, which disappointingly seemed to make no impression on the waiter - and I don't know if it's a Mandarin versus Cantonese thing or he was just peeved that he was assigned the table with the two children.

Since we spent the better part of the afternoon at the parade and chasing after a glimpse of the Clydesdales, both kids slept for most of the trip home, so I was able to commune with NPR in peace. And there was a station just off the Turnpike with $2.04/gallon for regular gasoline.

And we're off. . . .

. . .it's a short weekend in Maryland. (Damn that whole Kindergarten, got to send your kid to school thing; I miss the days we could leave on Friday and come home on Monday or Tuesday.)

If all the dominoes fall into place, we'll be at my mother's by 5:00 pm, I'll get the kids settled in and then be off to see Lindsey to get the grey out. Tomorrow we go to the National Lutheran Home's Fall Festival; the spring and fall shindigs have been regular events on our social calendar for years now. A long, long time ago, when the Home was at 18th and Douglas Streets, NE in DC, these events were a kid's dream. My mother would parole me from school on the afternoon of the Spring Festival, there would be huge, white tents on the lawn, the tables of crafts (Barbie clothes!) would just boggle the mind. The Fall Festival was usually in the evening and we went as a family with my grandparents. When I got old enough (7th/8th grades) I got to put on an apron along side my Grandma and serve dinners. I thought I was all that and a bag of chips.

Some of the links to the past remain, there is still a "Stamp Table" where collectors can buy stamps. My Grandma volunteered for years in the Stamp Room. She brought home bags of the corners of envelopes with the stamps on them, she soaked them off and put the stamps between sheets of newspapers and then placed the newspapers under the dining room table to dry. This was also how I started stamp collecting. The costume jewelry table, which used to be manned by ladies from St. Peter's, my former church in DC.

Instead of the thrill of hand-sewn and hand-crocheted Barbie clothes, it's going to my mother's friend's home. She quilts, and quilts are the Barbies for adults (or at least the adult me.) She made Thea's bed quilt, our 100 Good Wishes Quilt and multiple nap quilts that are around the house.

Anyway, enough of the memory lane meanderings and pre-quilt viewing droolings, I've got to pack.

Sunday there is a parade in LaPlata for Veterans' Day - Oma has said there will be Clydesdale horses at the parade. Micah will either a) be thrilled beyond his wildest horse dreams and want to ride or b) shriek in fear at the size of those beasts. I'm hoping for fear, much of our rides to and from the babysitter's involve conversations about riding horses:

M: Ride HORSEY, Mommy?
L: Not today, sweetie.
M: Ride cow, Mommy? (We pass a farm with cows.)
L: No, you don't RIDE cows, I don't think that the cows would like that.
M: No ride cow, RIDE HORSIE (giggle). RIDE HORSE NOW? Puppy dog RIDE HORSEY?
L: Your puppy dog is too little to ride a horse, he would need to ride in your backpack.
M: Micah RIDE HORSEY with BACKPACK?

The variations on this theme are seemingly endless, at least to Micah. Our other constant conversational thread is "RIDE CHOO CHOO, Mommy?" which goes something like this:

M: Micah go Oma's, ride choo choo?
L: Choo Choo is sleeping. (It's closed for the season, but try to get that concept into the two-year old mind.)
M: Ride Choo Choo LAY-TER.
L: Right. (Much later, like Spring 2009).
M: Micah ride Choo Choo with Daddy?

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Did you notice that I've put a photo in the Profile section? It was made by an artist who is on etsy.com. She took pictures of the kids and turned them into little dolls, complete with their favorite stuff animals. The mommy figure bears no ressemblane to me, except for maybe the wide bottom and stupefied expression. Have a good weekend.

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.

Post-Election Day Numerology

The President-Elect is younger than me, for the first time ever. The doors to near Geezer-hood have begun to creak open and beckon me in. . .

But I have children younger than his. The Geezer-hood doors shut, for now.

Those thoughts sort of churned out of my head after figuring out when Thea and Micah are eligible to vote.

Election Day

It's the dawn of a new era, life is good, all is well with my world.

Given the date, you would probably think that I am talking about the election, but no, this is blog is not about politics. There are far more witty, engaging and pithy pundits who blog out there, and you can read them if you like.

No, the source of my good vibe is not the predictions of the election results, but the new Dunkin Donuts at Princeton Shopping Center finally opening for business. Be still my caffeinated little heart, bliss just got that much closer to home. No more driving up Route 206 to Hillsborough (though the drive-thru there is sweet) or out to Route 1. Caffeine and concentrated carbohydrates are a two-minute drive and two traffic lights away from my driveway. Truly the heavens are smiling on me. Unfortunately the shop was quieter than a mortuary and the teenaged counter help doesn't know how to measure one teaspoon of sugar to save his pimply-faced little life. If that's how it stays, I give it six months because it occupies a large chunk of pricey retail space.

This discovery brought to you because Micah and I went to Radio Shack to buy an odd-size 23A battery for our doorbell and Radio Shack is in the same shopping center. I'd completely forgotten about it because the 'coming soon' sign had been in the window for what seemed like months.

Even though it's Tuesday, I'm not working today; I worked yesterday, the first Monday in ages. If I were in the office it would be too hard to concentrate, plus worrying that I'd be finished in time to get home, get dinner done and get to the polls.

Today we had Ela at the house in the AM and then Micah went down for a nap. I think it's a sign that he's not completely adjusted to the time change yet since he went down for his nap by 12:15 with nary a protest. He just chugged his bottle, watched Sesame Street for a few minutes and was out. Elmo has that effect on me, too.

Instead of charging downstairs to check in with MSNBC, CNN and NPR, I made a salad and just sat and watched "House" for 20 minutes. Somehow, despite washing my hands so many times in the day, to the point they feel like sandpaper, I have managed to pick up a head cold so I feel like road kill. I stopped in at MSNBC while the other channel was on a commercial and there was an aerial shot of long lines at the polls in New Jersey. Fortunately, I think our district is relatively small and I've never had much of a wait and am hoping that today will be no different.

I'm glad that it will be all over tomorrow. . . .no more auto-dialed phone calls, no more reams of political mailings clogging the mailbox.

Thea got to 'vote' twice today, once with her father on the way to school, and once after school. And she was elected Kindergarten class leader of the day in what her teacher described as a unanimous vote. The leader of the free five-year old world then proceeded to order her brother in a somewhat intimidating tone of voice to put the cars and trucks away so we could go to the polls. There is no such thing as a secret ballot with Thea in the booth; this time instead of just pressing the CAST VOTE button, I let her push the individual candidates buttons, with her saying, "Daddy, didn't hit that button. . . ." most of the time. I was too busy trying to make sure that Micah didn't smack the brightly like CAST VOTE button prematurely.

Then we left the building and walked down to the Millstone River bank behind the polling place and threw rocks and sticks in the water.

Thea and I calculated that the first presidential election she'll be able to vote in will be in 2024, the same year as Micah turns 18 and will also be eligible to vote. I won't tell you how old I'll be; the thought that I'll be over 50 the next time I vote in a presidential election was a chilling enough thought.

Addendum:

Thea and I have started our first chapter book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo (she wrote Because of Winn Dixie, in case anyone is interested). We're four chapters into it, Thebes fell asleep during chapter five.

And I'm on call tonight. Fortunately, most everyone is either in line at their polling place (until 8 pm when the polls close in NJ) or watching the returns on TV instead of ruminating over their own miseries, aches and pains. Only one call so far, a mother of a kid whose prescription for an antifungal cream was sent electronically to the pharmacy at 4:53 pm (much as I detest the EMR software being on our home computer, it's good for somethings and time stamping records is one of those things) and at 5:47 pm the answering service was calling because the prescription wasn't at the pharmacy. I want to do my part to save the world from dermatophytes, a fungus is NOT a medical emergency.

What was probably not made clear to the patient is that it takes an hour or more for an electronic prescription to transit cyberspace and land in the hand's of the pharmacist. I was a little annoyed when I checked out the details in the EMR and found that it was not quite 60 minutes from the time it was sent. I phoned the pharmacy and repeated the Rx on the voice mail and then wrote up the note on the computer and sent it to the patient's doctor, which beats the heck out of the little pink call slips we once used.

Dinky-Dinky-Doo

Yesterday I finally got Micah to Snip-Its; he was desperately in need of a haircut. With the stretchy headband for his BAHA pushing his hair up, he looked like a demented Muppet. Thea wanted her bangs trimmed; she always has a strand here or there that somehow managed to elude the scissors. Fortunately 'our' stylist, Flo, was working. She loves Thea and has kept up Thea's wedged bob for almost a year. Both were well behaved while the scissors and razor were skimming around their heads. Micah scammed a lollipop from Flo; he's been high on lollies since Friday and has been raiding the leftover Hallowe'en candy basket with such determination that it finally got relocated to the top of the TV armoire.

As a reward for behaving during the haircut (since this is only Micah's fourth haircut or so), we went to the Princeton NJ Transit Station and bought tickets for a round-trip on the Dinky, the short (hence the appellation "Dinky" who says Princetonians aren't creative as well as smart?)NJT train that runs between Princeton and Princeton Junction, the station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. $3.50 for me, $1.75 for the children - and Micah probably didn't need a ticket, but if Thea's going to have her ticket punched, Micah will want to have it done, too.

The train to Princeton Junction was near empty, so I wasn't too bothered that Micah was yammering "CHOOOO, CHOOOO" every five seconds. On the way back, the train was filled with student types returning from their weekend jaunts, acting world-weary ("Uh, I'm still on Paris time." Poor thing.) They seemed annoyed at Micah's joyous exclamations about being on a train, which made me enjoy him that much more. The Dinky left Princeton station at 4:30 pm, and we were back in the car heading home at 4:48 pm.

The unfortunate thing about the Dinky is Steve's office is right by the train, so tonight when we went to his office to pick up Thea, Micah started up again with "MI-cah RIIIIIDE CHOOOOO CHOOO?" Not tonight, peanut.

Our Happy Hallowe'en

We did not win prizes for our organizational skills on Hallowe'en. Micah and I went to Thea's school to pick her up at 3:30, but since she was having so much fun playing with Lucas (who was in his Indiana Jones costume and was absolutely adorable), we hung out at school for a while. Usually there are more children around at 3:30, but yesterday it was just Thea and Lucas.

On the way home we stopped to see if the local grocery store had any larger pumpkins for a Jack-O-Lantern, but came up empty-handed. Fortunately the Blawenburg Market had $4 large pumpkins, so we quickly picked one out and zipped home to start carving. Micah and I had put up a few decorations outside before leaving for Thea's school, and our candy was in the basket ready to go.

Thea drew the face for the pumpkins, helped scrape the gooshy stuff and seeds from the inside and pulled out the pieces for the face while Steve and Micah did a little bit of trick-or-treating. Once the pumpkin's candles were lit, Thea went out for a little pre-trick-or-treating; the main event would be when her friend Emily and Emily's family arrived.

Last year we got bunches of trick-or-treaters, all the way up to 8:30 or so. This year - with a ton of candy on hand - we had many fewer.

While the girls and the dads were out accumulating more candy, Micah and Emily's brother, Nate, played a little, coveted whatever mylar balloon the other had (Thomas the Tank Engine or Elmo), and snacked. Micah had to have consumed at least a half-dozen mini Tootsie pops - unless checking the sofa cushions proves otherwise.

I managed to not hear the timer go off so the pound cake (home-made, my mother's recipe) had a dog-biscuit consistency crust on it from the extra 15-20 minutes it spent in the oven. Fortunately I had oatmean chocolate chip cookies as a back up, and if those failed, there was ice cream. It was nice having grown-ups around, and to see Micah playing nicely (more or less) with someone his own age.

Emily and Thea had a sleep over, so it was nice having Emily do the honors of being with Thea, listening to the Backyardigans "All Around the World" CD. They got up around 7 am, but didn't appear for another hour or so because they occupied themselves with playing doctor to Thea's great big tiger. They can do really well together and seem to keep each other entertained without a lot of adult involvement or supervision, which is so nice.

This morning we did eggs and pancakes, and then the girls played downstairs. (Micah sort of has a little crush on Emily, the first thing he said this morning was, "Emily here?")