February 13, 2010
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Sparkles hosted her first tea party today, serving chocolate ice cream, peas, bell pepper, orange, tomato, bagel and a cookie. The two babies who attended enjoyed themselves a great deal, but seemed a little tired or to be having back problems, it wasn’t clear which. The home furnishings and place settings were less traditional, showing the casual and spontaneous style of the host. Everyone involved is looking forward to more tea parties in the future.
February 11, 2010
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Do you know that moment, the one where you tell your kids “It’s time to go home now” and your heart races just a bit and time seems to slow down while you wait for the answer, while you wait to see if they believe you, that Yes, It Is Time To Go Home Now.
Because Sparkles, Buttercup and I are at the Texas Memorial Museum on the Univeristy of Texas campus and if Sparkles decided it wasn’t actually time to go, it wouldn’t be easy to get home. (Buttercup is easier to convince, because she isn’t walking a lot yet, and I’m carrying her in a wrap.) I give Sparkles the 5 minute and the 2 minute warnings, but sometimes she decides that she must stay wherever we are and while she is still 2 (and for a while longer than that), I get to decide when it is time to go.
My backup, backup, backup plan is that I can carry my two girls. With Buttercup in the wrap and Sparkles in my right arm like a sack of potatoes while she is kicking and screaming, I can carry them both to the car if I need to. But when we are inside the museum and the car is outside in a parking garage and I’m not in great shape for carrying fifty pounds long distances, it makes me a little nervous.
I don’t let Sparkles see me sweat. I tell her with matter-of-fact and confident voice, that it is indeed, Time To Go. She doesn’t like this part. She doesn’t like to leave when she has found a place she likes. Who does really? She is giving me that look, the one that says she is on the fence about this, it could go either way.
I have found it is easier to divide the trip into smaller parts, ones that she can see. I ask her, ‘Hey, do you want to ride the elevator?’
She can see the elevator from where we are and she likes that idea. Back on the ground floor, she is having doubts about leaving the Great Hall with the flying Pterosaur soaring above our heads.
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I ask her, ‘Hey, do you want to see some horses?
She likes that too and we head outside. There is a long walkway down a set of steps and she is having fun with them, half skipping and half running.
She sees the statue of the horses and likes them a lot. We have more fun heading back up the steps and then we turn into the parking garage. It is all good now.
I like going places with the girls. I’d rather end up in places that might be difficult than staying home where we are well contained by walls and doors. I’d rather have Sparkles be in a situation that might be hard for her and see her make good choices. Making these little bitty good choices for every day things will give her more will power when something more difficult comes around.
The museum was nice. It is a good size for small kids, taking about an hour and it is free. (Well, except for the parking garage, which is $5.) Sparkles didn’t understand much about the fossils from different time periods and the biological diversity of Texas, but she liked looking around and asking questions. In the picture at the top of this post, she is learning about prehistoric fish. This Saturday, the museum is celebrating Darwin Day. That sounds like fun.
It is a dance, Sparkles testing her independence and me getting us home in time to make dinner. It takes some fancy moves sometimes, but we mostly make our way around the floor without incident and we have some fun along the way. Yes, my sweet girls, it’s time to say goodbye to the dinosaurs and make some dinner. It’s time to go home now.
January 28, 2010
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Sparkles, Buttercup and I were walking around Lady Bird Lake in their new red wagon when we run into Donna Howard, one of Texas’ state representatives. (Oh, wait, before you think I must have lost Buttercup, she is sleeping in her wrap when I take this picture.) Donna Howard is another reason why I love Austin. She is a politician, sure, but have you heard her talk about policy? Oh, my, she has really studied the issues and she is articulate and smart. Think Sarah Palin, but opposite, because of her personality, but because she is a Democrat too.
I said “Hello!”, then got to thinking. I have been so strange about this blog – Am I doing it or not? What is the theme again? What are the kids names or will I just pick new names every time I post like I have been doing from the beginning? (Update – I finally decided on names and updated the posts.)
Well, I decide that in that moment I was feeling confident about this blog so I ask Donna Howard if I could take a picture of her for my blog. And pretty soon after I said it, I changed my mind. I mean, I went ahead and took a picture, but I knew then I wouldn’t use it, because how annoying! What if someone stopped me on the way to the gym and asked me if they could take a picture, in my work out clothes, no makeup, hair in a pony tail. Oh, my, I wouldn’t be that into it.
Now, I’m not saying that Donna Howard didn’t look amazing, because she did. It just felt weird to take her personal time and energy when she was just wanting to get in a work out. I should have just said “Thanks”. Working in politics can’t be easy and I would like to say “Thanks” to the people in Austin who take this on.
We had a nice walk at the lake. The red wagon has been great, because Sparkles is less likely to want to climb something with her broken collarbone and Buttercup isn’t quite walking yet. And, another thing I love about Austin, is that we are doing this without jackets in February. I LOVE that.
January 24, 2010
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| Photo courtesy of wonderground.com. |
I’ve been thinking and writing lately about how things have changed now that I have little kids and this morning it came up again. Both of my little girls slept through the night and all the way until 7am. 7am. That is a magic time, because it is later than 5:30 or 6:00 when they sometimes get up. I would have never thought this before these little kids, that 7am was sleeping in…
January 17, 2010
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The top of the mattress on Sparkles’s toddler bed is 13 inches from the floor. The bed is against a wall on one side and has a rail on the other. Her running across the yard, jumping off rocks, walking along anything off the ground that looks like a balance beam and doing aerial stunts with her Dad, all of that seems more dangerous than sleeping in her bed at night, but it took one second for her to fall out of bed last night and break her collarbone.
Here are some highlights of our adventure.
Sparkles was mostly OK as long as she didn’t move her shoulder, but she also tosses and turns a lot in her sleep, so she kept waking up and crying.
I drove to Dell Children’s Hospital first and the parking lot for the emergency room was full and I could see through the windows that it was a standing-room-only night. So I kept on driving the the Heart Hospital near Central Market where Sparkles was the only patient.
The staff didn’t see a lot of children in this hospital, but they did a pretty good job. They gave her crayons and paper when she had to wait and they brought in a portable x-ray instead of bringing her to the big x-ray room, which could have been scary.
The x-ray technician had a small triangle-shaped lead apron, except it wasn’t an apron, just a triangle, and it was to cover Sparkles’s ovaries during the x-ray. I guess it is good that x-ray technicians think ahead that far. It freaked me out a little bit, to think ahead that far, that my little girl has ovaries that might reproduce one day.
Sparkles was brave and sweet, but very quiet with the doctor, she couldn’t describe what hurt or why she was crying. This would have been scary, if this was a complicated case, but when I touched her collarbone she screamed and the x-ray showed it was broken, so it worked out fine.
The communication was harder the other way. I wanted to explain how keeping the wrap on, a really big Ace bandage, sort of, that kept her arm in place against her body, would keep her arm from moving and hurting. But she didn’t understand that, she just didn’t like how the bandage felt. I wanted to tell her her collarbone is broken and it will hurt for a while, but it will get better, but she didn’t understand that either. It just hurt.
I asked the doctor if the bandage was for comfort or if it was needed to help the bone heal, because I know my girl and I know she won’t want to wear it and the doctor doesn’t get why Sparkles wouldn’t wear it. She is an emergency-room heart specialist after all, the trade-off between this emergency room and hours of waiting at the Children’s Hospital. The nurse understands what I’m asking. He says the wrap is for comfort, it isn’t necessary for the bone to heal.
For being in the shortest emergency room line ever, the trip still takes three hours, between waiting for the nurse, then the doctor, then the x-ray technician, then the doctor, then the administrator, then wait for 30 minutes to be sure she doesn’t react to the pain medicine, then drive around for 20 minutes on the way home so she can calm down and fall asleep.
You just can’t know what will happen in one second and 13 inches. I’m glad we didn’t reeaalllly need the Children’s Hospital last night. I’m glad we weren’t upstairs at the Heart Hospital with something serious. I’m glad my husband took care of the kids in the morning and let me sleep. My husband moved the area rug under Sparkle’s toddler bed for extra cushion and I tell her it will be OK. Everything will be OK.
January 14, 2010
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Friday and Saturday aren’t looking too good in Austin, with cold, wet weather making it hard to get outside. The girls and I got started on the weekend early today and went to the Austin Children’s Museum where it was warm and dry.
Since Buttercup is too little to have a very strong opinion, Sparkles gets to pick where what to do and how long to do it. It is fun, because a lot of her days are organized by her parents, going here or there without her having much of a say. But at the Children’s Museum, she decides. She loves the colored light sticks at the front of the museum. She helped make the picture above. Sometimes I play with her and other times I just watch, imagining her mind at work and wondering what she is thinking.
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Buttercup played too this time, instead of me carrying her in her wrap. She walked on her own, with me holding one of her hands. She could pick things up and play with the balls and books. She is so ready to take it all in.
This was a good day.
November 29, 2009
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| Photo courtesy of New York State Department of Health |
“Can you get the ear wax out of her ear?” I ask the doctor.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” she replies. “Let me call my boss and ask.”
I didn’t know getting ear wax out of a kid’s ear was such a complex procedure.
Sparkles and I are at the West Isle Urgent Care in Galveston, Texas on Friday night at 10:30pm. Sparkles has an ear infection and she is miserable and crying. She has ear tubes, so doesn’t get ear infections like she used to. But, ear wax is blocking one of the tubes and the infection is trapped in her inner ear. Removing the ear wax seemed like a good idea.
Our doctor is about eighteen years old. She could be my daughter, if I had gotten married younger. Not only are we at the Urgent Care Clinic off-season in a vacation town on a holiday weekend, but there is a Pediatric Urgent Care right next door. We would be there, but they are closed for the holiday, so we have an eighteen year old doctor and Sparkles might be her first child patient ever.
I’m glad for many things. It is Thanksgiving weekend, after all. I’m glad Sparkles isn’t super sick with an unknown and dangerous illness. The ear infection is painful, but the survival rate is 100%. I’m glad we had so much fun before she got sick – playing with her cousins, getting hugs and kisses from Mimi and Grandpa, collecting shells on the beach, riding on a boat with her Uncle, watching the University of Texas beat Texas A&M, blowing bubbles on the deck and eating and eating and eating lots of good food. It has been a very good week.
The doctor gets back from calling her boss. I wonder how old he is. He recommends against the complex ear wax removal procedure and instead recommends ear drops that will dissolve the wax in a few days. The young doctor says the antibiotic will get rid of the infection even if it is trapped, so the pain won’t last any longer than if the wax was removed right away.
We get a prescription for an antibiotic and ear drops and drive to Texas City for the closest all-night pharmacy. The clerk at the pharmacy insists that there is no prescription for Sparkles. I explain that we are from out of town, we went to the Urgent Care, they faxed it 30 minutes ago, I just drove 30 minutes to get it, etc. She leaves and comes back, saying, “Oh, I guess I didn’t check the fax machine, here it is.” Then, “When would you like to pick this up?”
We get back to the beach house at midnight and begin a fitfull night of sleep.
I think about more that I’m thankful for. I’m thankful for Dr. Bell, Fia’s pediatrician back home, who knows about kid’s ears and ear wax. I’m thankful for the West Isle Urgent Care and the young doctor that helped us get medicine for Sparkles as soon as possible. I’m thankful for the all-night pharmacy in Texas City and even the spacey clerk. I’m thankful for our health insurance, that makes this all affordable. I worry about families who don’t have that.
It is Sunday now, we are back in Austin and Sparkles is doing much better. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
