In Maryland. . . .

. . .it's 9:05 am and the boy is still sleeping.  The older one is happily capturing Pokemon with her Nintendo DS, and I'm watching CBS Sunday Morning with my mother.

Yesterday we made our semi-annual pilgrimage to the National Lutheran Home for its Spring Festival.  It's lost much of the 'wow' factor that it had when I was a child; the event was formerly held on a Friday and my mother would parole me from school for the afternoon.

When we started going back to the Spring and Fall Festivals, there were still members of St. Peter's, the church I grew up in, living at the home.  Most have since died, and those that volunteered have gotten older and given over their responsibilities to others.  Not to mention that back in the 1980s, while we were living in Illinois, the Home moved from 18th and Douglas Streets in Northeast DC out to Rockville, Maryland.  Not much of the old, familiar other than the photographs of the original Home on one of the walls.

Now we got to see friends from Lewisdale who living in the Independent Living homes surrounding the Home, we go in memory of my grandmother who used to volunteer for years in the Stamp Room.  She would bring home bags filled with the corners of envelopes in them, soak the stamps off, put them between those sheets of newspapers to dry which she put under the pads on her dining room table to keep them flat.  It was a great way for a kid (me) to start a stamp collection.

Now the tradition is that Thea is given a budget of $5 (and Micah got $2) to spend as she likes.  Yesterday, she bought a sunflower pin for me ($0.25), because she said as she presented it to me "you are always buying things and doing things for us", she spent another $0.25 on an X-Men hand-held video game, and $2 on a used Othello game (ages 8+, she's been playing it since kindergarten).  Then as we were at the Ladies' Auxillary's table, petting Roxie one of the volunteer's dog,  Thea opened her purse and took out a dollar and made a donation to the Auxillary.  The volunteer wrote out a receipt for Thea because she was impressed.  Thea was impressed with the receipt and over the fuss that was made over her.

Meanwhile, Micah practiced deficit spending by finding one of our friend Eleanor's doll blankets with a puppy wrapped in it, so he handed over his $2, helped by another $10 from me.  ("But I L-O-V-E him, Mommy" and since he was being good at keeping his hands off to himself, how could I resist when its for a good cause?)  He scammed another Beanie Baby dog (in a hideous shade of aqua) from his Oma in the Grandma's Attic section.

Then after lunch at the Home comes the best part of the afternoon, we go to the Eleanor's and I buy quilts. This time I needed enough doll quilts for Micah's class, because next week is Q-week at his school and two nap quilts for gifts.  At school it is Q is for Quail week starting on Monday.  These children stand as much chance of seeing a real quail as I do of waking up skinny tomorrow morning, so to exert my influence that Q is for QUILT, dammit.  Screw the quails.

On the way home from Rockville, Micah fell asleep as we got on the Beltway, which revved him up enough so that we unloaded the car, switched from sandals to sneakers and went to Oma's Special Park (which is the kids' name for Laurel Springs Park in LaPlata).  I love that they are now at an age when I can say "go, run, just check in every now and then" and then I park myself on a bench to thumb through the Post's Sunday Magazine section.

They ran like maniacs for almost an hour, making friends with various children and drawing them into their games.  And after turning themselves into sweaty, panting messes, they were more than happy to go back to Oma's.

We had take-out from Hunan Star III.  Micah came with me to pick up the order.  Micah was his usually charming self, so the lady at the counter gave him a flower fan, the kind used to decorate drinks.  The best part was that one of the ladies working at the restaurant who is talking to Micah, says to me, "He is Chinese?"

Do you think?  Really?

But I politely said, "Yes."  Rather than try to pronounce Jinzhou, I said we traveled to Wuhan.  And then the woman said, "Yes, I knew he is Chinese."  Genius!  She is the Queen of the Amateur Anthropologists!  The whole world can look at Micah within about a nanosecond or so know that at sometime in this child's past there were family members who came from China.

Thea was so tired, she started falling asleep while waiting for Micah to finish his bath, so I gave her a pass on showering until Sunday morning.

Strangers in the House

I am fed up with and tired of real estate tourists, real estate agents and home inspectors who move curtains and our belongings around and DO NOT PUT THEM BACK in their original places.  It's bad enough knowing that total strangers are waltzing through the house, peering at the trappings of our lives, but when they leave the evidence of their presence, it is offensive.

Having gone through about a dozen or so homes during our search, I know that I did not touch or move anything while touring any of those homes.  Even Micah and Thea kept their hands to themselves during the two or three houses they went through with us - we watched Micah like a hawk.

Coming home and having to put curtains back in place, put other things back where they belong is a waste of my time.

Today we had the home inspection for the current house.  Mr. Home Inspector, a.k.a. the next person I am wishing shrinkage of the family jewels and a prostate the size of a cantaloupe, moved things around in the purple bathroom, leaving them where he tossed them and moved things in the attic all around.  Did none of these people learn the principles of clean up as you go or put things back where you found them?  Honestly, what is wrong with the world?

I'm also annoyed that the pair who showed up for the home inspection accosted the babysitter with a "You the homeowner?"  (Not even proper English, but I digress.) When Tesh said, no she was just the sitter who was there to pick up Micah from the school bus, they made some sort of annoying comment implying disbelief.  Again, what the heck is wrong with people? 

I am done with this whole process and now realize I am much better suited to renting.

The New House in Plainsboro

Bot

Both current house and new house are out of lawyer review and are one step closer to the point of no return.  We'll have about one month of purging and packing to get ready for the move.

Communiversity

A street fair with 45,000 people wandering aimlessly looking for the freebies that various tables were giving away and waiting in line forever for a lemonade, somehow Communiversity has gotten bigger and more crowded than I remember.

And my right knee is killing me, so schlogging through crowds just was not my thing.  The kids seemed to enjoy it: give Micah a balloon and he is a happy guy, give him two and he's twice as happy.  He also got a Save-the-Dinkiy t-shirt with an image of the train on it, the first train he ever rode.

29 Days Later

We're four weeks and one day out from Micah's surgery, and today was another follow up with Dr. Choe.  Micah has been doing great, which in Mom-speak means that he now has two ear canals and two tympanic membranes to exercise his right to the selective hearing of the average preschooler.

Today was the day the little Silastic disk that has been sitting up against his new ear drum was removed.  First the right ear had some debris/wax cleaned out, then the little disk got pulled out - and I remembered to bring the little container of preservative that has the first disk floating in it so the second could be saved.  Right now Micah has no appreciation of those tiny pieces of silicon, but one day I want to be able to show him that sometimes the smallest of things can have enormous impact. The first disk looked like a perfect circle, the one pulled out today looked more like one that was custom-cut.

Micah spent most of the time he was having little bits of debris pulled out of his ear canals giggling because he felt a tickling sensation - and he knows that good behavior means he gets to pick something out of the toy basket.  Right now he's collected two plastic zebras (which he insists look like goats, go figure), and he said he was going for a third.  But alas, even though the basket of treats was full, no zebra.  So he selected a giraffe - which will join the other two plastic giraffes.

And back for another recheck in two weeks because this is about the time Micah's first ear canal began to show some stenosis that resulted in Dr. Choe putting sponges back in and changing his ear drops to an antibiotic and steroid combination.  He said that he made Micah's left canal a little bit bigger with that experience in mind.

Meanwhile, I called our contact in the school district to break the news that Micah will be graduating from Summit Speech School one year ahead of schedule.  Since this will be happening roughly at the same time we are moving to a new school district, after she got over her surprise (and delight, since the district will be off the financial hook either way - from Micah's graduation or our move), she got in touch with Summit and scheduled a meeting for an IEP review so that Micah will move on to the new school district with an updated IEP recommending that he be placed in an integrated preschool program for the upcoming school year.

For the summer, we are probably placing Micah in YingHua.  He is interested in learning Chinese, most likely because of Thea, and he was told if he had his second surgery he could learn Mandarin.

And I deleted the post about the new house - as usual, talking about it jinxed the process and the process of selling the house hit a snag when the first buyer pulled out during the three-day lawyer review, so I got bogged down by having to spend about 48 hours or so wishing that the male half of the couple buying the house have his prostate enlarge to the size of cantaloupe, his testes shrink to the size of raisins, that he have grief and misery from his spouse and that his daughter grow up to became a liberal arts major when she goes to college.  Somehow it is healthier for me to be very specific rather than just being mired in generic anger.  The bad thing is we knew he was a weasel, because he was pulling out of another home purchase during the three-day review to put the offer on our house.

The other bad thing is that we're back to showing the house again. . . .so we're back to trying to keep things organized and clean.  Which with two young children in the house is a major pain in the butt, especially with Micah and his seemingly limitless number of Matchbox cars, plastic animals and other toys.  Even with a good bit of the stockpile of toys in the storage space, he can still create a rather large debris field.

When everything is on solid ground, I'll put the pictures back in a post.

Micah's cute phrase of the day, "Mommy, sometimes I get grouchy when you pinch my butt."  Somehow we were on the topic of being grouchy and I said to him that he's usually not the grouchy member of the family (that would be either me or his sister vying for that honor.)

15 Days Later

Today I picked Micah up at school to drive back up the Turnpike once again to Dr. Choe's office.   I am now back in the groove of going up there and don't really need the GPS.   And we were early for our appointment despite the elevator being broken and having to climb up five flights of stairs to the PH level.   My knees did not like the climb up or the trek down, though Micah thought the acoustics in the stairwell were interesting.  As I am sure everyone who heard him did as well.

Today the sponges came out of Micah's ear canal.  The silicon disk is still at the end of the new ear canal and is propped against the new ear drum, and in two weeks that, too, will be removed.  We're also down to putting the Floxin otic drops in once a day, instead of twice.

All good news, just rather dull the second time around.

Happy Easter

Thea's Easter Basket

Micah's Easter Basket

Bunny Bear Checking Out Micah's Basket

I got a puppy!

Got to love a kid who gets excited over lip balm!

Doesn't he look like he's up to something?

Can't we just get to the Easter Egg Hunt part of the day?

Easter Baskets were thrown together in haste this morning.  Micah had a fever and a bout of "my belly hurts" last night after we got home from Sesame Street Live.  He fell asleep on the sofa, so I don't know what was up with him.  He seems fine this morning, but there is the incentive of the almighty Easter Basket and an extra toy that I bought that didn't fit in the baskets.  Anyway, last night I just went to bed with Micah instead of putting together the baskets and hiding the eggs.

Today we're going to be moving stuff out to the storage facility to de-clutter the house.  Next weekend the realtor is coming to take pictures so it can be up on the MLS by Saturday.   I had to shove aside six cartons of books to get to the plastic bin with the Easter decorations, though with my children and their suitably low expectations, I could have given them a plastic grocery bag with their Easter swag and they would have been perfectly happy.

Happy Spring Weather to All.