Disney World Photos
We took our biggest family vacation ever November 9th through the 14th. It involved ten months of planning, an airplane, a week long stay in the biggest hotel accommodations, and four super-charged day at various Disney World parks.
Air travel
Ansley's last airplane trip was at four months when she came with me to visit family in Portland. Hailey and Emberly had never ridden before. It was interesting riding with three young children in coach. On the way there, we were lucky enough to have an entire aisle to ourselves, complete with an empty seat next to both Michael and me, so Emberly had two seats to choose from. The benadryl worked like a charm and she slept almost the entire time on Michael's lap. The way back was a booked flight, so no empty seats, but Emberly still slept for most of it, and spent the rest of the time getting passed over the aisle between Michael and me. Ansley and Hailey had their little backpacks full of dollar store treasures, activities, and snacks, and didn't complain once.
Hotel
We stayed at a Disney deluxe resort, which is the nicest accommodations available on Disney property. Our room was really a house. It was 2400 square feet, two stories tall, with a living room, kitchen, laundry room, three hotel-sized bedrooms and four baths. The standard price for this house was way way beyond our price range, but we discovered that you can pay a Disney vacation club member to use their points, and that is much much more affordable. These houses are very popular, apparently, and we were lucky one was open for the week we wanted.
We met our good friends the Mings there. They had one bedroom, we had another, and Hailey, Ansley, and Vivian enjoyed sleep-over style status in the third room.
Transportation
One advantage to staying on Disney property is the transportation. They have a very slick operation at the airport that gets you on a bus that drops you off at your resort. And buses drive from the resorts to the various parks every day. They say it is every twenty minutes for each park, but we discovered that sometimes their drivers got off schedule and you'd see two buses at the same time going to the same park every 40 minutes instead. That said, it was still worth the perk of no rental car, no parking and riding in on the golf cart hassle, etc.
Dining
The other advantage to staying on Disney property is you can opt for the Dining plan. You pay a flat fee per adult and per kid per day of your hotel stay, and get that many sit-down and fast-food meals, plus snacks. It more than paid for itself, partially because the food is so outrageously expensive there, partially because we made reservations at the most expensive options available. I also brought a whole pantry worth of snacks and convenient breakfast items, because we chose the non-breakfast dining plan, and I knew my kids would want more than their one allotted snack a day. As it turned out, we had 21 leftover snack points when we checked out, so we just went through the little store they had by the check out desk and loaded up on stuff to eat on the plane.
Strollers
The parks have very easy to push (even with all three of our kids in it) plastic molded strollers available to rent. They are expensive and it adds up (about $15 a day for a single and $30 for a double), so if you have a small child who rides in a stroller anyway, bring your own. Also, they are hard molded plastic and not comfortable to sleep in. Emberly refused to sleep in ours, and caused us a lot of cranky baby stress. The Mings would lend us their stroller when their baby wasn't in it, and she sometimes slept in it (and sometimes there was just too much excitement to miss by sleeping). The big stroller does come in handy for pushing the elementary school aged child who has just gotten tired of walking for hours and hours.
Sunday: Downtown Disney
After we settled in on from our flight, we caught a boat ride to Downtown Disney, their shopping strip area. We ate dinner (we made reservations for every sit down meal six months prior) and then hunted down adult-sized Mickey and Minnie t-shirts. We had purchased the kid shirts at the Disney store before we left, and wished they had adult ones, but the selection for grown ups was poor. I had read somewhere to buy all your clothes and toys at the Disney Store ahead of time instead of the park, and boy, was that good advice. The items for sale at Disney World were almost identical to the ones in our local mall, but at three times the price. If they had the right adult tees at the Disney Store, we could have saved twenty bucks per shirt. I was very glad I had packed surprise Minnie mouse dolls and princess barbies. It gave the girls something to remember the trip by without being painfully expensive. We also bought autograph books and personalized mouse ear hats at Disney World, two great souvenir ideas. The girls picked pink mouse ear hats with little tiaras and veils. Very girly. And they filled up their autograph book almost to the very end, mostly because we went to so many character meals (SOOO much better than standing in line for a character meet and greet). I like that their books have a slot opposite each page for a picture, because we have some great photos to put in them posing with each one.
Monday: Magic Kingdom
We toured Mickey's and Minnies house and rode all the classic rides like tea cups and dumbo. And some of the cool ones like Space Mountain. Ansley is a regular thrill seeker. I am more of a wimp than she is, although that's not saying much. At two or three in the afternoon, we took a bus back to our hotel and put kids down for naps. We had problems getting on a bus in time to make it back to our dinner reservation, but everything turned out okay in the end. We ate at the Crystal Palace and met Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet and Winnie the Pooh. Emberly went berserk over the characters, and kept throwing herself at them with gusto. Poor Tigger. Emberly's body slams were right at crotch level, and he had to protect himself after the first onslaught. The food at Crystal Palace was very good, and the bill made us happy we had the dining plan.
The park closed early for a special Christmas event, which we had tickets to. It involved snow on main street (fake soap bubble kind as it turned out), a special fireworks show, and really late closing. The best part was that the park was more empty and all the good rides had no lines. So Angelica and I took the babies home to sleep, and the Dads stayed and took the girls on several more rides until late into the night.
Tuesday: Epcot
The next day we slept in (very late) and rode a bus to Epcot. Epcot was a smaller not so busy park. The different countries were neat, but not something small kids would be interested in exploring, so we didn't spend too much time there. We rode the soaring and mission space ride, along with the nemo ride and the future something ride. We enjoyed dinner at Ashkeraus (or something like that), a Norwegian sit-down meal that had really small portions, but got us quality time with the very best princesses. Belle, Cinderella, Jasmine, Aurora, and the most elusive of all princesses, Ariel. The bill was astronomical and we had a big smile as we handed them our dining plan card.
Wednesday: More Magic Kingdom
This time, we returned with our princesses in full dress-up garb. The royal table breakfast inside Cinderella's castle is THE eating event at Disney world and sells out 180 days in advance, between 6 and 6:15am (when the phone lines open). It was amazing to be inside the Gothic style castle, and the food was superb (another kings ransom that made the dining plan a miracle). We met Cinderella, Jasmine, Aurora and Snow White.
After our very very nice breakfast, we went to the other part of Cinderellas castle for a little girl makeover in the Bippity Boppity Boutique (advanced reservations here were also a good idea). The fairy god mother hair stylists were so sweet and fawned on our little darlings as they gelled and tied up their hair, applied make up and nail polish, and generally pampered them in the way every grown woman dreams of. (Another tip: buy dress up dresses at home, not Disney World) They came out almost unrecognizable in their princessy fanciness. Ansley had a simple bun with a tiny tiara. Hailey had rainbow punk hair with french twists. And Vivian had pink punk hair with rhinestone mickey clips. They were so adorable all made up and in their sleeping beauty and cinderella dresses that groups of adults visiting from other countries asked us in broken English if they could have their picture taken with them.
We found a few more rides we had missed the first day, and planned on staying until the park closed at 7, but it rained in the afternoon, and was so relentless by 6 that everything was soaked. The first two days had been nothing but sun, so we decided to leave most of our rain gear behind (ha ha). The kids were tired, everything was wet, and we had done just about everything. So we called it a day and enjoyed a quiet evening at the hotel and early bedtimes.
Thursday: Hollywood Studios
Our last park day was Thursday, and, unlike Monday through Wednesday, we had left our park decision until the last minute. We had used up all our sit-down meal points, so we didn't have to worry about any dinner reservations, and we weren't sure if we would want another day at Epcot or the Magic Kingdom. Well, Epcot only took one day for people with small kids, and we had covered the Magic Kingdom well with two days. We were all very tired, so we opted for Hollywood studios, where there would be a lot of shows, where we would be doing a lot of sitting. We decided that would be better than animal kingdom, because we could always go to a zoo at home, but Broadway and Hollywood shows were not as easily available. We saw the Muppet 3-d show and the Indiana Jones stunt show and the best of all was the Beauty and Beast musical. It was so entertaining even the babies were mesmerized. And I love Beauty and the Beast anyway, so it was fun to hear songs I could sing in my sleep and watch all the neat dancing and costumes. I rode the tower of terror with Ansley, which she enjoyed, but which scared me silly. Ansley and the Dads rode the Aerosmith roller coaster while I watched a finally sleeping Emberly and Angelica took Vivian and Hailey to see the Little Mermaid show.
The Fireworks show at the end of the night was really cool. All the seats surrounded a lake with a mountainous island in the middle. Fireworks came out the top, boats with movie characters floated by, performances with Mickey and other Disney characters took place on the island, and in between each act, a wall of water would rise up and become a backdrop for a projection movie. It was the perfect way to end our entertainment stay.
Rides
Throughout all the parks, the best rides for me were the ones where all the seats were on a conveyor belt (or a boat in a slow moving river) and you went through nice and easy, sometimes up and down slopes, so it allowed lap babies like Emberly. She was mesmerized by the entertainment on these rides most of the time and really enjoyed it. There were a surprising number of these kinds of rides. Haunted mansion, buzz lightyear, pirates of the Caribbean, It's a small world, that future something ride, finding nemo, and probably a few more I can't think of right now.
This was definitely not a leisure vacation. But, then again, when you are with kids, no vacation is truly a leisure vacation. I like to refer to our trip to Disney World as the Mount Everest of family vacations. It was, as my mom likes to say, High Adventure. I would like to go back in say, five or ten years. But not really before that. I'm good for a while.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The problem with Isabella Swan
First warning: this is a really long post.
Second warning: this post reveals plot details about the twilight series, so don't read this if you want to read the series and be surprised.
I have to give Stephanie Meyer credit. She knows how to write a best seller. End chapters with a cliff hanger. Find a timeless myth and juxtapose it with modern middle class America. Give characters gut-wrenching choices, and delve into their personal agony as they try to decide what to sacrifice. Stay in the moment with all five senses and don't pull away from that unless absolutely necessary. Carry the reader through sub-climaxes and denumuas at just the right tempo, so their anxiety and relief for the characters don't start to feel stale before moving onto the next crisis or resolution.
She does all these things right. So why does her main character drive me absolutely crazy?
Isabella Swan is a human teenager who falls in love with a vampire, and is sort of adopted into the vampire family and social circles. She also is very good friends with a werewolf who has fallen in love with her.
I love the universe Stephanie Meyer created. And every character in that universe is great except for one. It took a self-help book for teenagers to clarify why I can't stand Bella Swan.
I read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers. And Isabella Swan is a highly INeffective teenager.
Her boyfriend, Edward, is a highly effective vampire. Jacob, her friend, is a highly effective werewolf. Even Isabella's parents are reasonably effective. But the main character, the one you're supposed to relate to, is like a candle in the wind. She has a personality of a lap dog.
Perhaps Stephanie Meyer thought that by making the main character out of rubber, the vampires and werewolves would seem like steel in comparison. I'm not really sure what her motive was. But I do feel manipulated as a reader. Because the books were written in first person, you automatically click into association mode with the main character. It's almost like if the book were written in third person limited, you would realize just how horribly unlikable and pitiful Isabella Swan was, and wonder why everybody was competing for her love and attention.
But I still read all four books, and within a week (thank you Michael for allowing me that decadent indulgence). That's how good everything besides Isabella Swan was.
The Seven Habits book talks about paradigms. Basically, your paradigm is what your universe revolves around, what you use as a north star. Seven Habits explains that if you base your happiness on success or relationships with other people, you set yourself up for misery because people and achievement will fail at some point and leave you high and dry. You flunk math or your best friend stabs you in the back, and if your sense of self is based on being a good student or having a best friend, then your universe turns upside down.
It is better to make principles your north star and stick to those. Honesty, kindness, hard work, etc. Principles won't change, and don't depend on a reaction or outcome to make them right. And being a person of principles makes you powerful because you are not easily influenced by people or circumstances in your life. Basically, if you take action based on your conscience, you can be a force to be reckoned with.
Guess what? Isabella Swan does not check in with her conscience. She reacts to the moment without regard for the consequences of her actions. She does not have a set of principles she follows. The center of her universe is her boyfriend, Edward, so everything she does is based on that relationship, that and what she feels like at the moment. Renee, her mom, noticed that Bella acted like an orbiting moon around Edward, following him where ever he went. She can't live without him, which is obvious from her choices in the second book. And according to the famous psychiatrist Scott M. Peck, if you say "I love him, I can't live without him," then that isn't love. That is co-dependence.
She is weak. And the funny thing is she knows it. Bella says she is tired of being Lois Lane to his Superman. She wants to be Superman, too. She thinks it is all about being immortal with super human ability, that becoming a vampire will balance their relationship so they can be equals.
My really big beef is that Stephanie Meyer makes it about the physical transformation, too. All the other vampires are betting that Bella will completely go out of control when she becomes a vampire, because she is so reactive and instinctual as a human. But guess what?! Somehow, through some mystical magical process, Bella becomes the most conscientious, controlled, principled vampire to date. It's a miracle!
I was so relieved to finally have a main character that I liked that I didn't even notice at first. But after a while I started to feel cheated. The rest of the human race gains character by hard work and discipline, but Bella Swan gets turned into a vampire, and wham! She suddenly has a very impressive set of principles.
And not only principles, but also inner strength. Like she was a waste of space as a human, but as a vampire, she values herself suddenly and sees herself as worthwhile.
If her self-depreciating behavior didn't bug you, I'm surprised. She hated positive attention, like the parties and make-overs Alice insisted on. She hated gifts, because that meant she was worth other peoples effort. She preferred the door mat persona, and got upset when anyone sacrificed or took risks on her behalf. She really thought she was worthless.
Seven Habits also talks about making deposits in your personal bank account. Every time you listen to your conscience and make a carefully thought out choice based on what you believe is right, you value yourself a little more. And every time you do what you feel like at the moment without considering your values, you value yourself a little less.
Guess what? Since Bella doesn't listen to her conscience, she has a zero balance in her personal bank account.
And guess what else? The moment she becomes a vampire, she "magically" starts valuing herself and her stake in the universe. It is easy to see she starts to see herself as worth something, and stops complaining about attention given to her. It probably has something to do with the fact that Bella finally starts using her conscience and principles. It is just pitiful that Stephanie Meyer can't get a human girl to love herself without giving her super human powers and a need to drink blood. I'm just saying.
The series really is to die for. Just ignore Isabella Swan and savor the amazing Jacob and Edward. Why they vie for Bella's love is beyond me.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Lot of Hot Air
Festivals can be hit or miss for family fun. They do have ambiance and entertainment, but they also have lots of crowds, overpriced goods from vendors, expensive or hard to find parking, and lots and lots of walking (not to mention a slim chance of pleasant, bug-free weather; we're talking Texas here). With small kids, we just haven't risked it very often.
So even though the Plano Balloon Festival takes place less than a mile from our house, we've never been. We know when it is because they block off roads, put streamers along medians to keep people from parking on them, and send traffic cops out to direct the enormous flow of incoming and outgoing people. We know that is the weekend to take the northern alternate route out of the neighborhood if we want to get anywhere on time.
One perk is we can see a lot of the balloons from our house. It is sort of fun to look up into the sky as we drive to church or the grocery store and see a REMAX balloon or generic rainbow balloon with Elliot's Hardware pasted on the side.
This year, we got an extra special treat. We were all inside lounging in the living room Friday night, when Michael interrupted a conversation to ask what was that noise?
It sounded like an airplane to me, but his face lit up, and he jumped from his seat and ran to the window. Sure enough, there was a Balloon landing in the culdesac behind our house.
We all ran outside and saw that a dozen or so balloons were lowering themselves into our neighborhood. Some were ordinary and some were fun like the shape of a pirate's head. They all found some large empty area, like an undeveloped lot, green belt, or park, and landed, deflated, and packed up and went home. The whole thing lasted about half an hour. It was amazing. And we got to see it all without leaving our driveway.
That night, Ansley thanked God in her prayers that hot air balloons could land in our neighborhood.
So even though the Plano Balloon Festival takes place less than a mile from our house, we've never been. We know when it is because they block off roads, put streamers along medians to keep people from parking on them, and send traffic cops out to direct the enormous flow of incoming and outgoing people. We know that is the weekend to take the northern alternate route out of the neighborhood if we want to get anywhere on time.
One perk is we can see a lot of the balloons from our house. It is sort of fun to look up into the sky as we drive to church or the grocery store and see a REMAX balloon or generic rainbow balloon with Elliot's Hardware pasted on the side.
This year, we got an extra special treat. We were all inside lounging in the living room Friday night, when Michael interrupted a conversation to ask what was that noise?
It sounded like an airplane to me, but his face lit up, and he jumped from his seat and ran to the window. Sure enough, there was a Balloon landing in the culdesac behind our house.
We all ran outside and saw that a dozen or so balloons were lowering themselves into our neighborhood. Some were ordinary and some were fun like the shape of a pirate's head. They all found some large empty area, like an undeveloped lot, green belt, or park, and landed, deflated, and packed up and went home. The whole thing lasted about half an hour. It was amazing. And we got to see it all without leaving our driveway.
That night, Ansley thanked God in her prayers that hot air balloons could land in our neighborhood.
All the Big To do's
Here is a compilation of big events from the last two months.
At the beginning of August, Michael's friend Dan married our new wonderful friend Vickers. My mom flew in to watch our little ones and we enjoyed of weekend of freedom in beautiful Arkansas. The trees were gorgeous there, not to mention the weather. The festivities were the kind of grown-up fun I always dreamed of. Fancy parties with fancy dresses and fancy food, not to mention wonderful people to keep us company. It was an awesome getaway for just the two of us.
Ansley had her first day of second grade on August 25th. This year she has Karla Hughes as a teacher, who we know and love from when she taught Ansley in Kindergarten. She is an awesome teacher and Ansley loves being in her class.
Then we had the Spongebob dual birthday party for madam 8-year-old and madam 5-year-old. Hailey picked the theme since Ansley is now eight and got a special trip later in the month with two friends.
Of course, I had to get creative with the cake, like I do every year (except last year's mermaid minimum, but we won't talk about that).
I also made these party favor bags out of lunch sacks. I had a fun time with the craft paint.
And what party is complete without a pinata? Spongebob was reinforced with concrete, apparently, and needed extensive whacking to break open.
Unlike motion pictures that promise no animals were harmed in the making of their movie, I openly admit all kinds of Spongebobs were harmed in the making of this party. The party bags were crammed with candy and mashed in little kiddie hands. The Spongebob pinata was beaten mercilessly by a pink metal bat. The spongebob plates and napkins and tablecloths were smeared on, stabbed with forks, and wadded up before being thrown in the trash. And the cake, well, see for yourself...
Hailey started private Kindgergarten on September 8th. She has Mrs. Hannon as her teacher, who is new to us, but Hailey comes home from school every day bubbly and bursting with happy stories to tell, so things must be going well.
Ansley took two girls from her church class to Planet Pizza to celebrate being eight with her friends. They enjoyed roller coaster type rides and chuck e cheese style games for several hours before a happy meal at McDonalds (you don't go to Planet Pizza for their pizza, trust me). There was a lot of giggling and fun.
At the beginning of August, Michael's friend Dan married our new wonderful friend Vickers. My mom flew in to watch our little ones and we enjoyed of weekend of freedom in beautiful Arkansas. The trees were gorgeous there, not to mention the weather. The festivities were the kind of grown-up fun I always dreamed of. Fancy parties with fancy dresses and fancy food, not to mention wonderful people to keep us company. It was an awesome getaway for just the two of us.
Ansley had her first day of second grade on August 25th. This year she has Karla Hughes as a teacher, who we know and love from when she taught Ansley in Kindergarten. She is an awesome teacher and Ansley loves being in her class.
Then we had the Spongebob dual birthday party for madam 8-year-old and madam 5-year-old. Hailey picked the theme since Ansley is now eight and got a special trip later in the month with two friends.
Of course, I had to get creative with the cake, like I do every year (except last year's mermaid minimum, but we won't talk about that).
I also made these party favor bags out of lunch sacks. I had a fun time with the craft paint.
And what party is complete without a pinata? Spongebob was reinforced with concrete, apparently, and needed extensive whacking to break open.
Unlike motion pictures that promise no animals were harmed in the making of their movie, I openly admit all kinds of Spongebobs were harmed in the making of this party. The party bags were crammed with candy and mashed in little kiddie hands. The Spongebob pinata was beaten mercilessly by a pink metal bat. The spongebob plates and napkins and tablecloths were smeared on, stabbed with forks, and wadded up before being thrown in the trash. And the cake, well, see for yourself...
Hailey started private Kindgergarten on September 8th. She has Mrs. Hannon as her teacher, who is new to us, but Hailey comes home from school every day bubbly and bursting with happy stories to tell, so things must be going well.
Ansley took two girls from her church class to Planet Pizza to celebrate being eight with her friends. They enjoyed roller coaster type rides and chuck e cheese style games for several hours before a happy meal at McDonalds (you don't go to Planet Pizza for their pizza, trust me). There was a lot of giggling and fun.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Save the horny toad!
While the horned lizard is not officially on the endangered species list, it's range has declined 30% in Texas and California.
Oh, no! You say. How can this be? What would become of this world we live in if there were no horned lizards to bring us joy? What can I do to help this lone star treasure?
The horned lizard, commonly known as the horny toad, feeds mostly on red carpenter ants. You might know them as Texas Red Ants or native fire ants.
But Texas Red Ants are declining in population. For a very sad reason. They are competing with foreigners and losing.
That's right. In the 1930's, a boat docked on the Eastern Seaboard with cargo infested with another breed of fire ants from South America. These red imported fire ants (RIFA) spread slowly across the country, settling in Texas in the 1950's. And they love it here. Lots of open plains, average rain, mild spring and falls, and best of all, no natural predators.
Some might say good riddance to Texas red ants. While both fire ants are a pain (literally), the Texas red ant has a much much more painful sting. That's right. Sting.
Fire ants, unlike other biting ants, do not spray venom on the bite they make. They simply bite to get a foothold, and then inject an alkaloid venom from the stinger in their thorax that gives humans the sensation of being on fire. Thus the term fire ant. This is also the reason you can get multiple welts from a single fire ant. They clamp down and then sting you over and over. They can make it seem like a sneak attack and get halfway up your leg sometimes. But that is simply that they go by their built-in motion sensor, and only bite things that move (or things that their other ants buddies are biting). I have never been bitten by a Texas red ant, but I have been bitten hundreds of times by a red imported fire ant. And that was not pleasant; I don't feel the bite, but I do feel the slow onset of the sting, and man, it it burns for quite some time. And the next day the white puss shows up and it itches like crazy. I don't think I would want to have an encounter with a native ant.
You can tell the difference not only in the ant, but also in the mound. Imported fire ants build up a soft mound of dirt, especially when it is humid and moderate in temperature (this is perfect condition to raise young in the dirt above ground). Texas red ants have a hole in the ground surrounded by pebbles of mud.
The problem with the newcomer is not only their negative affect on the horny toad population, but also their pervasiveness. The RIFA are like the weeds of the ant community, and will pop up anywhere and everywhere. You are much less likely to see a Texas red ant community in the city or suburbs, but mankind is no barrier for the maniacal genius of the red imported fire ant.
So even if you are not a friend of the horny toad, it is still in your best interest to control the imported fire ants. They are simply too entrenched for us to eradicate completely, but there is hope for your eighth of an acre. The Texas Imported Fire Ant Research and Management Project suggests using the two-step approach.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Pushing your buttons
Emberly loves music and anything musical. Ansley got a My Little Pony Teapot House for Christmas, which has a dance area on the first floor, complete with circular platforms that spin and light up different colors in time to the music (a little like a disco dance party). Anyway, there is a small button you push to make it play for fifteen seconds. Emberly was doing her pointing and grunting, trying to get anybody nearby to make the teapot dance floor spin and light up again so she could dance to the My Little Pony theme song for the fiftieth time.
Ansley told her, Emberly, you push the button to make it go.
Emberly looked at Ansley for moment, then lifted her shirt and pressed her finger to her belly button several times in a focused manner.
I guess fifteen months is one of the few times in your life when your first reaction to the word button is to poke a body part.
Ansley told her, Emberly, you push the button to make it go.
Emberly looked at Ansley for moment, then lifted her shirt and pressed her finger to her belly button several times in a focused manner.
I guess fifteen months is one of the few times in your life when your first reaction to the word button is to poke a body part.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
appreciating their personalities
I am big on understanding. I love coming to understand ideas and also people. And I find the more I understand a person, the more I love them for who they are instead of being frustrated by who they aren't. I came across a website:
www.personalitytype.com/quizkids.html
This helped me see my girls in a whole new light.
Ansley is a warm-hearted, reliable, and realistic angel. She is every teachers dream because she gets along well with others yet also sits quietly and stays on task. I can almost always count on her to be patient and loving with her little sisters, and guide them through some rules of life that Ansley has come to know so well. In fact, Ansley is the rule expert. She is always aware of what she is supposed to be doing, and gently persuades others around her to follow along. Ansley figures out the finer details of rules by asking "When?" if we say "Not Now," or "How Much?" if we need the house clean. For the most part, she now remembers to first ask permission, instead of jumping straight to when and how much. Ansley is always considerate of others feelings and loves to share. She independently and carefully plans little tokens of love to give to people who are important to her, like cards and crafts. When she was little, she used to give away toys to other toddlers in play group, and as she got older, she would say goodbye to visitors with a toy of her own she had picked out of her toy box as a gift for them. Sometimes disappointing details in her life can get her down, but recently she has started conquering those moments by actively deciding within herself to be a happy person even when the chips are down. She has come a long way in conquering her perfectionism, and realizes more and more often that making people happy (including herself) is more important than making sure everything goes just right.
Hailey is a charismatic, sweet, and joyful surprise. She asks why all the time, and in so doing, is starting to figure out things like chores are important because they help out the family, and eating healthy foods gives you a healthy body. She is growing past her tendency to blurt out "I don't want to" as she begins to see that every choice has a consequence, even abstaining from green peas at dinner. She has an amazing imagination and can create a multi-character play in her head, then act out all the parts in different voices for hours by herself. When she was smaller, she used to pretend she was the chicken nugget and say in a squeaky voice, "No! Don't eat me! Help!" and even sometimes there were mommy and baby chicken nuggets, and her little enactments just got more complicated from there. She is spontaneous and energetic. If she is upset, it might be a loud and sudden outburst, but it only takes a very small distraction and she is happy as a clam again. I used to joke that I could handle any of her toddler tantrums with a single cookie. We lovingly call her our space cadet because she is not always down to earth, but the things she brings back from outer space always put a smile on our face. Her bizarre and quirky humor makes us laugh every time, like her jokes about eyeballs, and especially her more serious attempts like thanking God that we can eat eggs (when she doesn't even like eggs). My favorite part of Hailey is the spontaneous and random acts of love. She runs up to me for no apparent reason and tells me she loves me with a sudden and frantic hug. It feels very genuine to me because of her spontaneous and quirky nature. It catches me by surprise and opens up my heart every time.
It is hard to say much about the intricacies of Emberly before she is able to talk, but there is so much about her style that makes me smile. Like her determination. She is the bulldozer, the tank, Emberly the destroyer. She plows her way through life, and not much will stop her. If she is foiled, she'll give out a pterodactyl shriek that is hilarious when viewed in the right light. She gets into the no-no areas with a smile on her face, looking back at you, the mischievous imp that she is. She is a dance-a-holic, and will hum to herself or push musical buttons on toys just so she can do a baby jig. She loves to play the monster and chase her big sisters while growling and roaring. She does this adorable little wiggle with her torso when she wants Michael to play "ride the horsie." She loves "Bat baby" and wants to be hung upside down all the time. She is a little bit of a thrill seeker and is fearless on slides and swings. And when we even mention the word prayer, she folds her chubby little baby arms and stands very still. It's so sweet it makes me want to cry sometimes. Of course, five minutes later, I am trying to change her diaper and she squirms out of my grasp and runs across the house naked and giggling. Oh, that girl.
www.personalitytype.com/quizkids.html
This helped me see my girls in a whole new light.
Ansley is a warm-hearted, reliable, and realistic angel. She is every teachers dream because she gets along well with others yet also sits quietly and stays on task. I can almost always count on her to be patient and loving with her little sisters, and guide them through some rules of life that Ansley has come to know so well. In fact, Ansley is the rule expert. She is always aware of what she is supposed to be doing, and gently persuades others around her to follow along. Ansley figures out the finer details of rules by asking "When?" if we say "Not Now," or "How Much?" if we need the house clean. For the most part, she now remembers to first ask permission, instead of jumping straight to when and how much. Ansley is always considerate of others feelings and loves to share. She independently and carefully plans little tokens of love to give to people who are important to her, like cards and crafts. When she was little, she used to give away toys to other toddlers in play group, and as she got older, she would say goodbye to visitors with a toy of her own she had picked out of her toy box as a gift for them. Sometimes disappointing details in her life can get her down, but recently she has started conquering those moments by actively deciding within herself to be a happy person even when the chips are down. She has come a long way in conquering her perfectionism, and realizes more and more often that making people happy (including herself) is more important than making sure everything goes just right.
Hailey is a charismatic, sweet, and joyful surprise. She asks why all the time, and in so doing, is starting to figure out things like chores are important because they help out the family, and eating healthy foods gives you a healthy body. She is growing past her tendency to blurt out "I don't want to" as she begins to see that every choice has a consequence, even abstaining from green peas at dinner. She has an amazing imagination and can create a multi-character play in her head, then act out all the parts in different voices for hours by herself. When she was smaller, she used to pretend she was the chicken nugget and say in a squeaky voice, "No! Don't eat me! Help!" and even sometimes there were mommy and baby chicken nuggets, and her little enactments just got more complicated from there. She is spontaneous and energetic. If she is upset, it might be a loud and sudden outburst, but it only takes a very small distraction and she is happy as a clam again. I used to joke that I could handle any of her toddler tantrums with a single cookie. We lovingly call her our space cadet because she is not always down to earth, but the things she brings back from outer space always put a smile on our face. Her bizarre and quirky humor makes us laugh every time, like her jokes about eyeballs, and especially her more serious attempts like thanking God that we can eat eggs (when she doesn't even like eggs). My favorite part of Hailey is the spontaneous and random acts of love. She runs up to me for no apparent reason and tells me she loves me with a sudden and frantic hug. It feels very genuine to me because of her spontaneous and quirky nature. It catches me by surprise and opens up my heart every time.
It is hard to say much about the intricacies of Emberly before she is able to talk, but there is so much about her style that makes me smile. Like her determination. She is the bulldozer, the tank, Emberly the destroyer. She plows her way through life, and not much will stop her. If she is foiled, she'll give out a pterodactyl shriek that is hilarious when viewed in the right light. She gets into the no-no areas with a smile on her face, looking back at you, the mischievous imp that she is. She is a dance-a-holic, and will hum to herself or push musical buttons on toys just so she can do a baby jig. She loves to play the monster and chase her big sisters while growling and roaring. She does this adorable little wiggle with her torso when she wants Michael to play "ride the horsie." She loves "Bat baby" and wants to be hung upside down all the time. She is a little bit of a thrill seeker and is fearless on slides and swings. And when we even mention the word prayer, she folds her chubby little baby arms and stands very still. It's so sweet it makes me want to cry sometimes. Of course, five minutes later, I am trying to change her diaper and she squirms out of my grasp and runs across the house naked and giggling. Oh, that girl.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
getting unstuck
I have recently been thinking a lot about being stuck. Stuck in a loop of thought, stuck on a certain habit, stuck with an insatiable craving. These stuck moments can lead me to stay up well into the night thinking about something over and over, trying to figure it out so I can just go to sleep. It can also mean I eat the same cheddar turkey spinach and tomato on bagel sandwich almost everyday for eleven months in a row (mmm, I'm craving one now). It can mean when I am into a really good book, it takes herculean effort to stop in the middle for the sake of eating, sleeping, or even going to the bathroom, not to mention being a responsible mother (which is why I can't read good novels in good conscience more than once a year).
I recently read Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, by psychiatrist Daniel Amen. And guess what? I am stuck on this, too. It is absolutely fascinating to me and it's all I can think about. The irony is of course that this book talks about the part of the brain that causes you to get stuck: The cingulate gyrus.
The cingulate gyrus is the gear shifter of the brain. It allows you to jump from topic to topic, from view point to view point, to go with the flow, to be flexible in habits and in ways of thinking. A person with a normal cingulate gyrus is easy going, open to new ideas, understanding of other people, enjoys doing things a variety of things in variety of ways, experiments, branches out, cooperates, adapts, etc.
It is important to note that an overactive cingulate leads to addictions, anything from computer time, to gambling, to alcohol, to shopping, and for me, even sometimes reading. Your brain is in am infinite compulsive loop that says, just one more website, just one more drink, just one more purchase, just one more round of cards, and for me, just one more chapter. The addicts thought is, this is the last one, after this, I'll be good. But then the cingulate jumps in and starts the thinking all over that one more is needed before you stop, and thus you never do.
If you have addictive personalities in your family, know that there is speculation of a genetic trait towards this problem. In my family, there are alcoholics all over the family tree. And it seems to be a black or white condition. Either a relative is fine and never had a problem, or they struggle all through their life with being addicted with anything and everything.
Overactive cingulates also lead to obsessions, especially worrying. You can't shake certain thoughts. They keep coming up again and again. What if something went wrong? Do they hate me? Will I lose my job? These are normal fears, but the cingulate takes them and plays them over and over so you have to confront and soothe them over and over, instead of just the first time.
Maybe it is obvious by now how OCD comes into play. Obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors are things you do or think over and over. For instance, you might obsess that there are germs on your hands. You can't stop thinking about it, even though you know it is normal to only think about germy hands on rare occasions, like when you have to wash the toilet with only a washrag and you lost your rubber gloves. But some OCD people think about germs all the time and can't shake the thoughts, and often even realize they would be fine and happy without these thoughts, and wish their brain would just shut up already about the germs. The compulsive side is when they have to wash their hands to feel better and soothe the thoughts in their head. It works for a short period of time, just like one drink makes an alcoholic feel better for a few minutes, but is never enough. You have to do it over and over again. You can't stop.
Perfectionists have over active cingulates. Instead of just one more drink, or one more hand washing, they think, just fix one more flaw. People with road rage think "that jerk cut me off" over and over until they are livid and out of control. Alcoholics can't handle stress when sober, germ-a-phobes can't handle being dirty, road ragers can't handle bad drivers, and perfectionists can't handle things not being perfect.
So what can you do if you have obsessive thoughts or compulsive habits? Most of us don't get stuck so bad we need medication. The rest of us an simply use techniques.
1. distract yourself. You find yourself getting stuck in a loop, and you go do something completely different, sing a song, meditate, take a walk, do a chore, play with a pet or get involved in what someone else is doing. Then come back to it later and see if you can stay loop-free.
2.Stop and think before you automatically say yes or no. Give the rest of your brain a chance to decide what is best for you and what fits in with your long term goals. If you always say yes to the pta president and always say no to your kids, you aren't really following your conscience for each instance. Take ten seconds, think about what is best, then answer.
3.Write it out (like I'm doing here...haha! I feel freer already). This is great if you can't go to sleep because your brain keeps replaying a problem. Write down the problem, like you fear a layoff. Then list out the things you can do, perform better, be a team player, show off your best work to get noticed. Then list what you can't do: make your boss like you, want your job more, change the outcome by worrying more, etc. I also think this will work in what you are trying to understand and figure out by listing out what you understand and what still perplexes you. Having it written out gives your brain permission to put it on the shelf for a while.
4.Get advice. Imagine you are a hamster and your brain is the wheel and you can't stop running because the wheel won't slow down. A wrench you can throw in the works is someone else's point of view (if you are looking for it and it is not offered unasked). Then the hamster can go and do other things, like eat and chew up wood chips. Unasked for advice is like an unwelcome interruption to your precious hamster workout; the hamsters reaction is to bite and resume running. But you're the kind of hamster that really wants to stop running, there is nothing like a little outside perspective to slow that wheel down.
5.Recite: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
6. Diet and exercise. Certain foods increase serotonin and make you more flexible and open minded. Carbohydrates like pasta, bread, and popcorn. Or foods rich in tryptophan, such as turkey, salmon, peanut butter, eggs, green peas, and milk. Exercise calms worries and makes you more flexible mentally. Tryptophan is a small amino acid that promotes an easy going temperament, but it is often crowded out of the brain by bigger amino acids. Exercise is like initiating a football game during recess; the big kids go to play on the field and the shrimps finally get their turns on the swings and monkey bars. You're most flexible when the shrimp gets his turn on the playground.
And what do you do if you live or work with such a stubborn willful person? They go on and on about their soapbox. They stop listening to anything you say, especially if you are being reasonable. They dig in their heels. They get what my mom calls a case of the "yes-buts." Sometimes they even make outrageous claims just to avoid admitting their original line of thought might have a flaw.
1. Attack, retreat, and change the subject. Say what you want to say in one sentence as short as possible, then contradict yourself and then let it go. "Maybe you're failing in school because you're friends think being smart is uncool and you don't want to lose them. Actually, never mind, that probably has nothing to do with it. I'm hungry, do you want a muffin?" What does this do? This gives the rest of their brain a chance to absorb what you've said and seriously consider it without the cingulate taking over. Talking too long, failing to contradict yourself, or failing to change the subject will allow their cingulate to get stuck in contradicting you.
2.Use reverse psychology. Reverse psychology works on people with overactive cingulates. But be sneaky by acting nonchalant, indifferent, and completely accepting of your proposed opposite. "You probably don't feel like giving me a hug, going with me to the store, helping me with this chore, get dressed by yourself, etc." Or "You probably can't get it done by Thursday, or without getting upset, or by yourself." If you do this right and nothing else stands in the way other than just plain stubborness, you'll get the reaction you want.
3. Give options. Nothing makes a stubborn person dig their heels in more than someone else trying to tell them what to do or what is best for them. They will do things contrary to their own happiness just to prove you wrong. So give them two or more choices and make sure you show no preference whatsoever for any one of them. "For our fast food dinner, what do you think of Arby's or Wendy's or McDonalds? Those all sound good to me."
4. If your kid automatically says no more often than yes when you ask them to do something, these rules can help: 1. Do what mom or dad says the first time 2. no arguing with the parents. As a parent, it is important to intervene and enforce consequences without reminders or warnings (because a cingulate-crazy kid will need more reminders or warnings than you are capable of giving without losing your temper), and even more important is to carefully choose your battles, letting most little stuff go so you can save your energy for the tantrums that are likely to ensue when you stand your ground on the important stuff. Explain to the kid that their opinion is important and they are free to express it once. Repeat back what the child told you so they feel heard, "Sounds like you are tired and don't feel like cleaning up your room. Please do it anyway." But tell the child that more than two times is technically arguing and you won't put up with it. For example, "You have two choices. You can clean your room now, or you can take a time out and then clean your room. I don't really care which one you pick." This kind of parenting usually works best when the child is emotionally bonded with the parent and feels like the parent loves them and therefore does this in their best interest.
When I told a friend of mine that I had control issues, she said, "Who doesn't?" And while not everybody has them, many many do. Any given family is likely to have somebody with a drug, alcohol, smoking, gambling, or even shopping problem. And any given person is bound to either have these issues or be frustrated by someone they have to interact with who does (or both). I'm struggling to let go and be more moderate in my life. It is an ongoing process.
I recently read Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, by psychiatrist Daniel Amen. And guess what? I am stuck on this, too. It is absolutely fascinating to me and it's all I can think about. The irony is of course that this book talks about the part of the brain that causes you to get stuck: The cingulate gyrus.
The cingulate gyrus is the gear shifter of the brain. It allows you to jump from topic to topic, from view point to view point, to go with the flow, to be flexible in habits and in ways of thinking. A person with a normal cingulate gyrus is easy going, open to new ideas, understanding of other people, enjoys doing things a variety of things in variety of ways, experiments, branches out, cooperates, adapts, etc.
It is important to note that an overactive cingulate leads to addictions, anything from computer time, to gambling, to alcohol, to shopping, and for me, even sometimes reading. Your brain is in am infinite compulsive loop that says, just one more website, just one more drink, just one more purchase, just one more round of cards, and for me, just one more chapter. The addicts thought is, this is the last one, after this, I'll be good. But then the cingulate jumps in and starts the thinking all over that one more is needed before you stop, and thus you never do.
If you have addictive personalities in your family, know that there is speculation of a genetic trait towards this problem. In my family, there are alcoholics all over the family tree. And it seems to be a black or white condition. Either a relative is fine and never had a problem, or they struggle all through their life with being addicted with anything and everything.
Overactive cingulates also lead to obsessions, especially worrying. You can't shake certain thoughts. They keep coming up again and again. What if something went wrong? Do they hate me? Will I lose my job? These are normal fears, but the cingulate takes them and plays them over and over so you have to confront and soothe them over and over, instead of just the first time.
Maybe it is obvious by now how OCD comes into play. Obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors are things you do or think over and over. For instance, you might obsess that there are germs on your hands. You can't stop thinking about it, even though you know it is normal to only think about germy hands on rare occasions, like when you have to wash the toilet with only a washrag and you lost your rubber gloves. But some OCD people think about germs all the time and can't shake the thoughts, and often even realize they would be fine and happy without these thoughts, and wish their brain would just shut up already about the germs. The compulsive side is when they have to wash their hands to feel better and soothe the thoughts in their head. It works for a short period of time, just like one drink makes an alcoholic feel better for a few minutes, but is never enough. You have to do it over and over again. You can't stop.
Perfectionists have over active cingulates. Instead of just one more drink, or one more hand washing, they think, just fix one more flaw. People with road rage think "that jerk cut me off" over and over until they are livid and out of control. Alcoholics can't handle stress when sober, germ-a-phobes can't handle being dirty, road ragers can't handle bad drivers, and perfectionists can't handle things not being perfect.
So what can you do if you have obsessive thoughts or compulsive habits? Most of us don't get stuck so bad we need medication. The rest of us an simply use techniques.
1. distract yourself. You find yourself getting stuck in a loop, and you go do something completely different, sing a song, meditate, take a walk, do a chore, play with a pet or get involved in what someone else is doing. Then come back to it later and see if you can stay loop-free.
2.Stop and think before you automatically say yes or no. Give the rest of your brain a chance to decide what is best for you and what fits in with your long term goals. If you always say yes to the pta president and always say no to your kids, you aren't really following your conscience for each instance. Take ten seconds, think about what is best, then answer.
3.Write it out (like I'm doing here...haha! I feel freer already). This is great if you can't go to sleep because your brain keeps replaying a problem. Write down the problem, like you fear a layoff. Then list out the things you can do, perform better, be a team player, show off your best work to get noticed. Then list what you can't do: make your boss like you, want your job more, change the outcome by worrying more, etc. I also think this will work in what you are trying to understand and figure out by listing out what you understand and what still perplexes you. Having it written out gives your brain permission to put it on the shelf for a while.
4.Get advice. Imagine you are a hamster and your brain is the wheel and you can't stop running because the wheel won't slow down. A wrench you can throw in the works is someone else's point of view (if you are looking for it and it is not offered unasked). Then the hamster can go and do other things, like eat and chew up wood chips. Unasked for advice is like an unwelcome interruption to your precious hamster workout; the hamsters reaction is to bite and resume running. But you're the kind of hamster that really wants to stop running, there is nothing like a little outside perspective to slow that wheel down.
5.Recite: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
6. Diet and exercise. Certain foods increase serotonin and make you more flexible and open minded. Carbohydrates like pasta, bread, and popcorn. Or foods rich in tryptophan, such as turkey, salmon, peanut butter, eggs, green peas, and milk. Exercise calms worries and makes you more flexible mentally. Tryptophan is a small amino acid that promotes an easy going temperament, but it is often crowded out of the brain by bigger amino acids. Exercise is like initiating a football game during recess; the big kids go to play on the field and the shrimps finally get their turns on the swings and monkey bars. You're most flexible when the shrimp gets his turn on the playground.
And what do you do if you live or work with such a stubborn willful person? They go on and on about their soapbox. They stop listening to anything you say, especially if you are being reasonable. They dig in their heels. They get what my mom calls a case of the "yes-buts." Sometimes they even make outrageous claims just to avoid admitting their original line of thought might have a flaw.
1. Attack, retreat, and change the subject. Say what you want to say in one sentence as short as possible, then contradict yourself and then let it go. "Maybe you're failing in school because you're friends think being smart is uncool and you don't want to lose them. Actually, never mind, that probably has nothing to do with it. I'm hungry, do you want a muffin?" What does this do? This gives the rest of their brain a chance to absorb what you've said and seriously consider it without the cingulate taking over. Talking too long, failing to contradict yourself, or failing to change the subject will allow their cingulate to get stuck in contradicting you.
2.Use reverse psychology. Reverse psychology works on people with overactive cingulates. But be sneaky by acting nonchalant, indifferent, and completely accepting of your proposed opposite. "You probably don't feel like giving me a hug, going with me to the store, helping me with this chore, get dressed by yourself, etc." Or "You probably can't get it done by Thursday, or without getting upset, or by yourself." If you do this right and nothing else stands in the way other than just plain stubborness, you'll get the reaction you want.
3. Give options. Nothing makes a stubborn person dig their heels in more than someone else trying to tell them what to do or what is best for them. They will do things contrary to their own happiness just to prove you wrong. So give them two or more choices and make sure you show no preference whatsoever for any one of them. "For our fast food dinner, what do you think of Arby's or Wendy's or McDonalds? Those all sound good to me."
4. If your kid automatically says no more often than yes when you ask them to do something, these rules can help: 1. Do what mom or dad says the first time 2. no arguing with the parents. As a parent, it is important to intervene and enforce consequences without reminders or warnings (because a cingulate-crazy kid will need more reminders or warnings than you are capable of giving without losing your temper), and even more important is to carefully choose your battles, letting most little stuff go so you can save your energy for the tantrums that are likely to ensue when you stand your ground on the important stuff. Explain to the kid that their opinion is important and they are free to express it once. Repeat back what the child told you so they feel heard, "Sounds like you are tired and don't feel like cleaning up your room. Please do it anyway." But tell the child that more than two times is technically arguing and you won't put up with it. For example, "You have two choices. You can clean your room now, or you can take a time out and then clean your room. I don't really care which one you pick." This kind of parenting usually works best when the child is emotionally bonded with the parent and feels like the parent loves them and therefore does this in their best interest.
When I told a friend of mine that I had control issues, she said, "Who doesn't?" And while not everybody has them, many many do. Any given family is likely to have somebody with a drug, alcohol, smoking, gambling, or even shopping problem. And any given person is bound to either have these issues or be frustrated by someone they have to interact with who does (or both). I'm struggling to let go and be more moderate in my life. It is an ongoing process.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Lasik
On May 15th, I got Lasik, which is laser assisted in-situ keratomileausis (basically that a laser shapes your eye). I opted for the IntraLase laser as opposed to microtome blade. I also opted for CustomVue with wavefront techonology, which corrected internal refractive errors and higher order abberations within my eye.
It started on Monday May 12th, when I went to see Christ Peterson, our optometrist and long-time friend, at First Eye Care. He dilated "the crap" out of my eyes so they could get a precise vision measurement independent of any control I had. Having my eyes dilated was very freaky. Everything was blurry except for a one inch margin about eight inches away from my face. I was left with some paperwork to read over and could only read it at this exact distance (and even that gave me a headache). Putting my glasses on made it worse. It was a panicky sort of feeling to know that even though I had my glasses right with me, I wasn't able to see anything except for stuff on an invisible plane eight inches out. I got my distance vision back by the time I left the office, so I could drive. I got my up close vision back that evening, so I was able to read my mothers day card. I never realized how much I read things during the day until I was unable to do so. It drove me absolutely crazy.
Just as freaky is the process of having your eyes numbed and then having a technician poke your cornea with a pen-like instrument to measure the thickness of your cornea. You don't feel a thing, but the pressure of the pen creates a ripple effect in your vision that makes you feel like you are looking up from the bottom of a pool and something disrupts the surface of the water. I felt a little sick to my stomach and the tech reassured me that any symptom I might have would be psychosomatic (i.e. all in my head).
Fortunately, my vision measured almost exactly the same as when not dilated, and I had nice thick cornea somewhere in the 600+ range. They also took a wavefront scan of my eye, which measures internal aberrations, much like astigmatism is aberrations for the outer shape of your cornea. I don't even remember which machine did it, so it obviously was not as scarring as other machines (like the puff of air machine that everyone dreads). The scans looked like a topography map with hills and valley, slopes on one side and dips on the other. Since there were no intense changes in elevation, this was also promising that the surgery would be successful.
On Wednesday the 14th, I went to see the surgeon at Cornea Associates of Texas. I had a very nice tech named Myra, I believe, who wore the same Asics gel tennis shoes as Michael. She said she ruined her feet and the alignment of her hips and back by running along a tilted beach for most of her early twenties. She measured my eyes on all the same machines as First Eye Care had done, but without dilating, numbing, poking, etc. These were just to double check measurements, so I was glad they didn't go all the way for the sake of perfect accuracy.
Then the doctor, Tyrone McCall, came in. He was a fast, smooth talker, but that was fine, because I wasn't worried about his people skills. Chris Peterson said he was his favorite of all the surgeons there, and I figured that was as good as I was going to get on ranking one over the other. He answered all my questions (especially my concern about rubbing my eyes). I asked about the risks, and he said that most of the risks were either from flap dislodging or infection. He said if I took the antibiotic drops, then I wouldn't have to worry about infection, that he had zero patients get an infection with Lasik in the ten years he'd been doing it (although he had other clinics refer patients to him who had gotten an infection because he is a corneal surgeon and treats such things). He said if I used the steroid drops as indicated and didn't rub my eyes and avoided air borne debris like smoke and dust, then the flap would not dislodge.
Then I went and saw Candice, who looks surprisingly like Jennifer Aniston (she said since her new hair cut that she got that comment all the time). She was the paperwork lady, who gave me prescription for my antibiotic drops (kill bacteria in my eyes the morning before surgery), and gave me brochures, disclaimers, fee totals, etc. She also explained the procedure step by step and said Dr. McCall was the one who did her eyes (although she had PRK due to the extreme astigmatism on her eye surface). She said that Dr. McCall is very reassuring and will tell you over and over again what a great job you are doing (which he did, even though I was doing nothing but staying calm...and even that was due to the Valium and not my skill). She also explained that your brain subconsciously knows not to rub your eyes after eye surgery, and you just won't let yourself do it (true...I've woken up in the night about to rub my eyes before, and stopped myself just in time...your subconscious never sleeps).
Michael stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday to help me out and watch the kids while I recovered (and I was doing so great by the second day that I let him go on a bike ride in the afternoon). Thursday I went in about 1:15, and was ushered to a side room off the lobby of the regular office. A skinny older lady with a slow but chatty southern belle style and jewel encrusted horn-rimmed glasses instructed us. From her, I got my shower cap and Valium. Before the Valium, I was a little tense and worried. After the Valium started to work, I couldn't even control the volume of my voice. I said to Michael, "I think the Valium is working now." And he shhd me. Then I could really tell it was working because I could care less that my husband had just shhd me. Chris Peterson also came because he hadn't seen the new surgery center yet.
It was just us in the waiting room. They said it was a slow day, but there were only four chairs in there, so even their busy days can't be too bad.
Dr. McCall came in about 2pm, and I donned my sweatshirt (the surgery room was about 60 degrees...I think it kept the air cleaner so nothing got in my eye, or the equipment works best at that temperature). They had a dentist-like chair with two big white machines on either side. I laid down on the chair and they covered my legs with a blanket (very nice). I have to say I felt like I was going to get my hair shampooed and not my eyes cut open. Valium is a magical little pill.
They put the numbing drops in my eyes as close to the surgery as possible so they would last for as long as possible afterwards (too many numbing drops eat away at eye tissue so they can't send you home with any, believe me, I asked). Then they taped one eye shut and put eyelid holders and a plastic ring in the other eye. I hardly even noticed the eyelid holders, which look totally horrific to somebody watching. The plastic ring hooked up with the first laser machine and pressed down, like pressing the heel of your hand into your eye socket. Just pressure, no pain or pinching or discomfort. When it presses down that much, your vision goes black, and it feels like you have both your eyes closed and you're pushing with the heel of your hand against one eye. Then I heard a machine noise like a laser printer, and then the flap was apparently cut, because they took the ring out, I got my vision back, and then with tiny eyeball tweezers, he pulled back the flap. To me, it just looked like someone was slapping a blurring sticker onto the windshield of my car.
They swung the head of the chair so it was under the machine on the right. I looked at this black circle with white rings in it and a light at the center, like a high-tech bullseye. I was told to focus on the light in the middle and not look away. The machine started up with a loud CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK and the black circle started to look very interesting. There were various rings of super intense colors growing and shrinking, It felt very much like that weird sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I also imagined this is what people high on drugs saw when they hallucinated (and hey, I WAS on a drug!). When they were finished, it smelled a little funny like ummm a hot computer? It's hard to describe and sort of hard to remember now.
They swiveled me to the center of the two machines and used a very tiny tiny brush to wipe my flap back into place, which looked like a windshield wiper cleaning the blur off my eye in a big sweeping motion. They put steroid drops in my eye (and maybe antibiotic, too) and taped it shut. Then they untaped my right eye and repeated the whole thing. Then they untaped both eyes and gave me some tinted goggles, which Michael referred to as "Riddick" glasses, because they looked like the ones Vin Diesel wore in the movie.
I got up and I could read the clock on the wall. Not perfect, but maybe 20/40. Michael drove to pick our kids up from the Reeds (oh, the wonderful Jennifer Reed who is always happy to watch my kids in times of dire need). Then we drove home and I went to sleep. I slept over six hours. I think it was the Valium and all the tension from before the Valium that wore me out. When I woke, it looked and felt like I had really bad contacts in. There was a whitish haze over my whole area of vision, and my eyes were ever so slightly irritated. Being the kind of person who over-wears contacts until they are this bad all the time, it was really no big deal at all. And since I was allowed to rub anywhere I felt bone, and could pull my eyelid away from my eye to rub it, I actually didn't need to rub as much as I thought. I did ask Michael to empty the vacuum a few days later, and refrained from taking part in sanding the beds we were working on.
On Friday, I saw Chris Peterson for a post-op visit. My right eye was 20/40 and my left eye was 20/20. By a week later, both were close enough to 20/20 to call it a success.
Three weeks later, I still need sunglasses to leave the house, and sometimes wear them in our window-rich home by afternoon. It hurts my sensitive recovering eye muscles to have to tighten my iris that much. Other than that, and perhaps the occasional headache, everything is normal now. I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have contacts to take out at night, and that I don't have to reach for my glasses getting out of bed in the morning. But of course I consider those moments perks rather than drawbacks.
It started on Monday May 12th, when I went to see Christ Peterson, our optometrist and long-time friend, at First Eye Care. He dilated "the crap" out of my eyes so they could get a precise vision measurement independent of any control I had. Having my eyes dilated was very freaky. Everything was blurry except for a one inch margin about eight inches away from my face. I was left with some paperwork to read over and could only read it at this exact distance (and even that gave me a headache). Putting my glasses on made it worse. It was a panicky sort of feeling to know that even though I had my glasses right with me, I wasn't able to see anything except for stuff on an invisible plane eight inches out. I got my distance vision back by the time I left the office, so I could drive. I got my up close vision back that evening, so I was able to read my mothers day card. I never realized how much I read things during the day until I was unable to do so. It drove me absolutely crazy.
Just as freaky is the process of having your eyes numbed and then having a technician poke your cornea with a pen-like instrument to measure the thickness of your cornea. You don't feel a thing, but the pressure of the pen creates a ripple effect in your vision that makes you feel like you are looking up from the bottom of a pool and something disrupts the surface of the water. I felt a little sick to my stomach and the tech reassured me that any symptom I might have would be psychosomatic (i.e. all in my head).
Fortunately, my vision measured almost exactly the same as when not dilated, and I had nice thick cornea somewhere in the 600+ range. They also took a wavefront scan of my eye, which measures internal aberrations, much like astigmatism is aberrations for the outer shape of your cornea. I don't even remember which machine did it, so it obviously was not as scarring as other machines (like the puff of air machine that everyone dreads). The scans looked like a topography map with hills and valley, slopes on one side and dips on the other. Since there were no intense changes in elevation, this was also promising that the surgery would be successful.
On Wednesday the 14th, I went to see the surgeon at Cornea Associates of Texas. I had a very nice tech named Myra, I believe, who wore the same Asics gel tennis shoes as Michael. She said she ruined her feet and the alignment of her hips and back by running along a tilted beach for most of her early twenties. She measured my eyes on all the same machines as First Eye Care had done, but without dilating, numbing, poking, etc. These were just to double check measurements, so I was glad they didn't go all the way for the sake of perfect accuracy.
Then the doctor, Tyrone McCall, came in. He was a fast, smooth talker, but that was fine, because I wasn't worried about his people skills. Chris Peterson said he was his favorite of all the surgeons there, and I figured that was as good as I was going to get on ranking one over the other. He answered all my questions (especially my concern about rubbing my eyes). I asked about the risks, and he said that most of the risks were either from flap dislodging or infection. He said if I took the antibiotic drops, then I wouldn't have to worry about infection, that he had zero patients get an infection with Lasik in the ten years he'd been doing it (although he had other clinics refer patients to him who had gotten an infection because he is a corneal surgeon and treats such things). He said if I used the steroid drops as indicated and didn't rub my eyes and avoided air borne debris like smoke and dust, then the flap would not dislodge.
Then I went and saw Candice, who looks surprisingly like Jennifer Aniston (she said since her new hair cut that she got that comment all the time). She was the paperwork lady, who gave me prescription for my antibiotic drops (kill bacteria in my eyes the morning before surgery), and gave me brochures, disclaimers, fee totals, etc. She also explained the procedure step by step and said Dr. McCall was the one who did her eyes (although she had PRK due to the extreme astigmatism on her eye surface). She said that Dr. McCall is very reassuring and will tell you over and over again what a great job you are doing (which he did, even though I was doing nothing but staying calm...and even that was due to the Valium and not my skill). She also explained that your brain subconsciously knows not to rub your eyes after eye surgery, and you just won't let yourself do it (true...I've woken up in the night about to rub my eyes before, and stopped myself just in time...your subconscious never sleeps).
Michael stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday to help me out and watch the kids while I recovered (and I was doing so great by the second day that I let him go on a bike ride in the afternoon). Thursday I went in about 1:15, and was ushered to a side room off the lobby of the regular office. A skinny older lady with a slow but chatty southern belle style and jewel encrusted horn-rimmed glasses instructed us. From her, I got my shower cap and Valium. Before the Valium, I was a little tense and worried. After the Valium started to work, I couldn't even control the volume of my voice. I said to Michael, "I think the Valium is working now." And he shhd me. Then I could really tell it was working because I could care less that my husband had just shhd me. Chris Peterson also came because he hadn't seen the new surgery center yet.
It was just us in the waiting room. They said it was a slow day, but there were only four chairs in there, so even their busy days can't be too bad.
Dr. McCall came in about 2pm, and I donned my sweatshirt (the surgery room was about 60 degrees...I think it kept the air cleaner so nothing got in my eye, or the equipment works best at that temperature). They had a dentist-like chair with two big white machines on either side. I laid down on the chair and they covered my legs with a blanket (very nice). I have to say I felt like I was going to get my hair shampooed and not my eyes cut open. Valium is a magical little pill.
They put the numbing drops in my eyes as close to the surgery as possible so they would last for as long as possible afterwards (too many numbing drops eat away at eye tissue so they can't send you home with any, believe me, I asked). Then they taped one eye shut and put eyelid holders and a plastic ring in the other eye. I hardly even noticed the eyelid holders, which look totally horrific to somebody watching. The plastic ring hooked up with the first laser machine and pressed down, like pressing the heel of your hand into your eye socket. Just pressure, no pain or pinching or discomfort. When it presses down that much, your vision goes black, and it feels like you have both your eyes closed and you're pushing with the heel of your hand against one eye. Then I heard a machine noise like a laser printer, and then the flap was apparently cut, because they took the ring out, I got my vision back, and then with tiny eyeball tweezers, he pulled back the flap. To me, it just looked like someone was slapping a blurring sticker onto the windshield of my car.
They swung the head of the chair so it was under the machine on the right. I looked at this black circle with white rings in it and a light at the center, like a high-tech bullseye. I was told to focus on the light in the middle and not look away. The machine started up with a loud CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK and the black circle started to look very interesting. There were various rings of super intense colors growing and shrinking, It felt very much like that weird sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I also imagined this is what people high on drugs saw when they hallucinated (and hey, I WAS on a drug!). When they were finished, it smelled a little funny like ummm a hot computer? It's hard to describe and sort of hard to remember now.
They swiveled me to the center of the two machines and used a very tiny tiny brush to wipe my flap back into place, which looked like a windshield wiper cleaning the blur off my eye in a big sweeping motion. They put steroid drops in my eye (and maybe antibiotic, too) and taped it shut. Then they untaped my right eye and repeated the whole thing. Then they untaped both eyes and gave me some tinted goggles, which Michael referred to as "Riddick" glasses, because they looked like the ones Vin Diesel wore in the movie.
I got up and I could read the clock on the wall. Not perfect, but maybe 20/40. Michael drove to pick our kids up from the Reeds (oh, the wonderful Jennifer Reed who is always happy to watch my kids in times of dire need). Then we drove home and I went to sleep. I slept over six hours. I think it was the Valium and all the tension from before the Valium that wore me out. When I woke, it looked and felt like I had really bad contacts in. There was a whitish haze over my whole area of vision, and my eyes were ever so slightly irritated. Being the kind of person who over-wears contacts until they are this bad all the time, it was really no big deal at all. And since I was allowed to rub anywhere I felt bone, and could pull my eyelid away from my eye to rub it, I actually didn't need to rub as much as I thought. I did ask Michael to empty the vacuum a few days later, and refrained from taking part in sanding the beds we were working on.
On Friday, I saw Chris Peterson for a post-op visit. My right eye was 20/40 and my left eye was 20/20. By a week later, both were close enough to 20/20 to call it a success.
Three weeks later, I still need sunglasses to leave the house, and sometimes wear them in our window-rich home by afternoon. It hurts my sensitive recovering eye muscles to have to tighten my iris that much. Other than that, and perhaps the occasional headache, everything is normal now. I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have contacts to take out at night, and that I don't have to reach for my glasses getting out of bed in the morning. But of course I consider those moments perks rather than drawbacks.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Breastfeeding
Disclaimer: Those of you who know me well know that I am very open about breastfeeding. And I know that this topic is not necessarily comfortable for everybody else. So if you don't want to be exposed to the details and terminology of breastfeeding, then skip this entry. It is not for you.
It is with sadness and relief that I wean Emberly. It has been a long road, but worth the journey. I pumped for the last time last Thursday morning.
I started out wanting to properly breastfeed Emberly, since Ansley had always breastfed through the nipple shield and Hailey had gotten breast milk in a bottle. But I ran into the same problem in the hospital that I did with Hailey. It just hurt so bad. I had been more careful this time about proper latching from the very first feeding, but I suppose I am just one of those people that experiences the first two weeks of breastfeeding like a plumbers wrench twisting the nipple. The lactation consultants came a lot and watched and advised and even printed out articles for me. I started pumping half the time to give my nipples a break.
At home Emberly wasn't happy. She would pull away with letdown, and her diapers were very scary. I tried cutting all sorts of things out of my diet. I read a lot of books and online articles, and I attended a few la leche meetings. I learned that I have overactive let down and overactive milk supply. Emberly did not like the force that came with the first few sucks of milk, so she pulled away and wouldn't latch back on. And with over supply, Emberly was getting full on the fore milk and not getting enough hind milk, which meant she was having a lot of diarrhea, gas, and colic. The la leche leader liked my idea of pumping and feeding at night, and then pumping off the overactive letdown and some fore milk during the day and then latching Emberly on to take advantage of nursing with more hind milk.
It was nice to pump at night. I could just get up every four hours and pump, and then hold the bottle out to her while still half way sleeping if I heard her cry. It was a pain to pump and dump an ounce, and then nurse at every single feeding throughout the day. It was a grand production that needed to be choreographed, and kept me home bound because of its complexity. After a few weeks, the pain subsided, and after about six weeks, the let down got better, but Emberly was less and less interested in nursing when she could still remember the ease of bottle feeding from the night before.
So it reached a point, about 3 months, when I had to give one up. I thought about it long and hard before I decided to give up breastfeeding and simply pump and bottle feed. I knew it meant more bottle washing. I knew it meant double time because of pumping time and bottle feeding time. But I also knew I could hand off the baby with a pumped bottle at any time. I was not tethered. I would never get engorged from baby boycotts to the boobie. And I could empty my breasts on my terms and my schedule. That was great freedom to me and worth the hassle of the extra steps necessary. I think the hardest thing to give up, though, was the bonding. There is something very special about looking down at your baby as they nurse. There are all sorts of chemicals involved that help you feel relaxed and loving, and to have those synchronized with the process of getting your baby full is very powerful. I'm grateful I was able to nurse Emberly at least during the day for the time when she was very little. Those memories are very precious to me.
One thing I realized with Hailey is that I cannot cut back on frequency of pumping for a long time. I continued to wake up in the night to pump...twice a night until Emberly was four months, then once a night until she was six months. By the time she was six months old, I had literally four hundred ounces in the freezer. I had to cut out my last night time pumping because there was simply no other place to put the extra milk. And I am glad I waited until six months. That is when babies really start thinking about eating food, and can handle a drop in milk. Because when I cut out that night time pumping, my supply dramatically dropped from overproduction to underproduction, and I started using the milk in the freezer to supplement, about a bottle a day...and that was in addition to rice cereal. With Hailey, I didn't have a freezer full of milk, so by 8 months, I had to start supplementing with formula in order to have enough.
Two weeks before her birthday, I cut back to one pumping a day. That was the beginning of the end. And it certainly felt like the Apocalypse, at least to my hormones. You would think they had never made this transition before. With Ansley and Hailey, my body performed the change seamlessly. With Emberly, it was like driving a car with the transmission going out. Each gear change was a huge jolt, and it would die at stop signs. I had acne for six weeks, hormonal crying fits, daily bouts of heart arrhythmia's, six pounds of weight loss, unsteady hands, nausea, and several other unmentionable side effects.
Last weekend, when I went more than 48 hours without pumping, I finally started to feel my skin clear up. I could finally use conditioner in my hair again.
Emberly warmed up to cows milk at the last minute. Actually it was about three weeks ago, but that was too close of a call for me. She loves cheese sticks and yogurt, but I don't think she could handle 16 ounces of those two things daily. I still have about 30 ounces in the freezer, which I also consider a very close call.
So now I am relieved. Relieved to give up the pumping and scheduling of pumping, and the responsibility of pumping. Relieved to give up the bottle washing and the dry hands you get from washing bottles several times a day. Relieved to get my body back. Maybe it will be easier to lose those last ten pounds.
And I am sad. Sad that Emberly is not a little baby anymore. Sad that I don't feed her from myself. Sad that a chapter has closed that part of me loved.
There is a time and a season for everything in our lives. I have a hard time living for the moment with a lot of things in my life, but I think breastfeeding, even with a pump, was something that I loved in the moment and enjoyed as I experienced it.
It is with sadness and relief that I wean Emberly. It has been a long road, but worth the journey. I pumped for the last time last Thursday morning.
I started out wanting to properly breastfeed Emberly, since Ansley had always breastfed through the nipple shield and Hailey had gotten breast milk in a bottle. But I ran into the same problem in the hospital that I did with Hailey. It just hurt so bad. I had been more careful this time about proper latching from the very first feeding, but I suppose I am just one of those people that experiences the first two weeks of breastfeeding like a plumbers wrench twisting the nipple. The lactation consultants came a lot and watched and advised and even printed out articles for me. I started pumping half the time to give my nipples a break.
At home Emberly wasn't happy. She would pull away with letdown, and her diapers were very scary. I tried cutting all sorts of things out of my diet. I read a lot of books and online articles, and I attended a few la leche meetings. I learned that I have overactive let down and overactive milk supply. Emberly did not like the force that came with the first few sucks of milk, so she pulled away and wouldn't latch back on. And with over supply, Emberly was getting full on the fore milk and not getting enough hind milk, which meant she was having a lot of diarrhea, gas, and colic. The la leche leader liked my idea of pumping and feeding at night, and then pumping off the overactive letdown and some fore milk during the day and then latching Emberly on to take advantage of nursing with more hind milk.
It was nice to pump at night. I could just get up every four hours and pump, and then hold the bottle out to her while still half way sleeping if I heard her cry. It was a pain to pump and dump an ounce, and then nurse at every single feeding throughout the day. It was a grand production that needed to be choreographed, and kept me home bound because of its complexity. After a few weeks, the pain subsided, and after about six weeks, the let down got better, but Emberly was less and less interested in nursing when she could still remember the ease of bottle feeding from the night before.
So it reached a point, about 3 months, when I had to give one up. I thought about it long and hard before I decided to give up breastfeeding and simply pump and bottle feed. I knew it meant more bottle washing. I knew it meant double time because of pumping time and bottle feeding time. But I also knew I could hand off the baby with a pumped bottle at any time. I was not tethered. I would never get engorged from baby boycotts to the boobie. And I could empty my breasts on my terms and my schedule. That was great freedom to me and worth the hassle of the extra steps necessary. I think the hardest thing to give up, though, was the bonding. There is something very special about looking down at your baby as they nurse. There are all sorts of chemicals involved that help you feel relaxed and loving, and to have those synchronized with the process of getting your baby full is very powerful. I'm grateful I was able to nurse Emberly at least during the day for the time when she was very little. Those memories are very precious to me.
One thing I realized with Hailey is that I cannot cut back on frequency of pumping for a long time. I continued to wake up in the night to pump...twice a night until Emberly was four months, then once a night until she was six months. By the time she was six months old, I had literally four hundred ounces in the freezer. I had to cut out my last night time pumping because there was simply no other place to put the extra milk. And I am glad I waited until six months. That is when babies really start thinking about eating food, and can handle a drop in milk. Because when I cut out that night time pumping, my supply dramatically dropped from overproduction to underproduction, and I started using the milk in the freezer to supplement, about a bottle a day...and that was in addition to rice cereal. With Hailey, I didn't have a freezer full of milk, so by 8 months, I had to start supplementing with formula in order to have enough.
Two weeks before her birthday, I cut back to one pumping a day. That was the beginning of the end. And it certainly felt like the Apocalypse, at least to my hormones. You would think they had never made this transition before. With Ansley and Hailey, my body performed the change seamlessly. With Emberly, it was like driving a car with the transmission going out. Each gear change was a huge jolt, and it would die at stop signs. I had acne for six weeks, hormonal crying fits, daily bouts of heart arrhythmia's, six pounds of weight loss, unsteady hands, nausea, and several other unmentionable side effects.
Last weekend, when I went more than 48 hours without pumping, I finally started to feel my skin clear up. I could finally use conditioner in my hair again.
Emberly warmed up to cows milk at the last minute. Actually it was about three weeks ago, but that was too close of a call for me. She loves cheese sticks and yogurt, but I don't think she could handle 16 ounces of those two things daily. I still have about 30 ounces in the freezer, which I also consider a very close call.
So now I am relieved. Relieved to give up the pumping and scheduling of pumping, and the responsibility of pumping. Relieved to give up the bottle washing and the dry hands you get from washing bottles several times a day. Relieved to get my body back. Maybe it will be easier to lose those last ten pounds.
And I am sad. Sad that Emberly is not a little baby anymore. Sad that I don't feed her from myself. Sad that a chapter has closed that part of me loved.
There is a time and a season for everything in our lives. I have a hard time living for the moment with a lot of things in my life, but I think breastfeeding, even with a pump, was something that I loved in the moment and enjoyed as I experienced it.
Friday, March 21, 2008
She's a Dance Machine
I read an article on Baby Center about milestones. I just find it interesting to see where my kids fall. Because every baby is different, I wonder how they even make up these charts with any degree of confidence, but it's still fun to look.
For instance, Emberly is in the advanced category of babies for sitting, crawling, cruising furniture, standing, stooping, and walking. But she is right on track or a little behind with words, fine motor skills, and indicating gestures.
And here is my big bragging moment...apparently, advanced 17-month-olds are learning how to dance, but Emberly started that at ten months. She holds a musical toy, and rocks her weight from one foot to the other in rhythm. Her favorite is a Sesame Street faux-CD player that plays RocknRoll, Hip Hop, Country, and Disco versions of Sesame Street songs with Elmo and Cookie Monster DJing. It is sooo cute to watch. Maybe early walkers turn into early dancers. I'm sure she'll love ballet at the rec center when she is four.
For instance, Emberly is in the advanced category of babies for sitting, crawling, cruising furniture, standing, stooping, and walking. But she is right on track or a little behind with words, fine motor skills, and indicating gestures.
And here is my big bragging moment...apparently, advanced 17-month-olds are learning how to dance, but Emberly started that at ten months. She holds a musical toy, and rocks her weight from one foot to the other in rhythm. Her favorite is a Sesame Street faux-CD player that plays RocknRoll, Hip Hop, Country, and Disco versions of Sesame Street songs with Elmo and Cookie Monster DJing. It is sooo cute to watch. Maybe early walkers turn into early dancers. I'm sure she'll love ballet at the rec center when she is four.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Ballerinas Recite it all
Ansley and Hailey had their Ballet Recital on Tuesday. It was very cute with a group of ten 4 and 5 year olds doing (or not doing) all sorts of ballet movements to orchestral versions of disney songs.
Ansley was the oldest in the class by two years. Hailey was one of the youngest. So most of the girls in the class had abilities in between our two little ladies. Ansley followed every move the teacher made, in time to the music, with agility and precision.
Hailey followed some, but got distracted easily and danced off in her own direction instead of following the line across the room. A couple times Hailey stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth in concentration. Ansley would look at us out the corner of her eye and pose extra nicely if she suspected we were about to take a picture. Both Ansley's perfect posing and Hailey's staring off into space while she twirled five seconds longer than the rest...they were both just adorable.
Grandma Whitley made a special appearance, as well as Daddy, who took all the photos while Grandma and I took turns holding Emberly. Daddy was particularly brave to run up and photograph all their ballet slippers together in a circle because no other parents jumped up to capture the moment on film.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
7-week update
Apparently 7 weeks is too long to go without a post. I freely admit that, as a writer, I do a lot less writing than others. I am happy to know that my posts are so exciting that people have noticed when I am behind.
Emberly has eight teeth. She is walking all the time now. I regret not catching more crawling on video. Oh well.
Ansley and Hailey are taking a ballet class at the city rec center. They perform on March 11th at 3:15, if anyone is interested in coming, let me know.
Ansley achieved junior self-manager this week, the first in her class to do so. Because of her responsible behavior, she doesn't need to send home daily progress reports anymore (as if they were anything other than a+ everyday anyways). She also gets to sit at a special table in class that allows her to sit next to a girl if another girl acheives the same rank (all other students have to sit boy-girl to cut down on chit-chat).
Most of us had influenza a couple weeks ago. Ansley got it first, and since it was influenza B with a lower fever of 102, we didn't catch it until a few days later when we took her in for an ear infection. I had a low fever and flu symptoms, but couldn't be tested because my doctor ran out of tests. And since I couldn't take tamiflu while nursing anyway, I just toughed it out and didn't worry about being tested. Hailey was next and we got her into the doctor less then 12 hours after her fever started, so the tamiflu did wonders for her and she recovered quickly. Emberly has had colds and fevers on and off for weeks, so it is hard to say if any of them were the bonified flu or not, but since she couldn't be treated, it didn't really matter. Michael never caught it, but he's coming down with a bad cold or strep or something now. It's just a rotten winter with a lot of diseases floating around.
Emberly had a reaction to the sugar alcohols in the iron supplement, and apparantly they don't make a version without sugar alcohols (they gave her more gas than humanly possible, which kept her up all night and killed her appetite). We had to special order an iron supplement with plain old sugar from a compound pharmacy in Dallas and pay $25 for a two week supply that insurance wouldn't touch because it was over the counter. Her iron levels went up to 12.3 from 10.2, so they say to keep on doing it just to be sure. They also told us there was a closer compound pharmacy, so hopefully that will make it a little more convenient, although probably just as expensive.
We're going to Disney World in November. We just booked our "villa" in Disney's Old Key West Resort for 5 nights on the 9th. Ansley prays every night that she can have fun at Disney World. When she and Hailey get together, they decide to draw pictures of how they think it will go. I think they might be a little excited. LOL.
We signed Hailey up for the same private kindergarten Ansley attended when she turned 5. She talks about school alot these days and how she is getting to be a big girl and that she is smart. She keeps asking me when school starts and I tell her after her birthday, which seems like an equally far distant event, but at least it's accurate. :)
The girls are dying to swim. They keep asking me if it is summer yet.
Emberly has eight teeth. She is walking all the time now. I regret not catching more crawling on video. Oh well.
Ansley and Hailey are taking a ballet class at the city rec center. They perform on March 11th at 3:15, if anyone is interested in coming, let me know.
Ansley achieved junior self-manager this week, the first in her class to do so. Because of her responsible behavior, she doesn't need to send home daily progress reports anymore (as if they were anything other than a+ everyday anyways). She also gets to sit at a special table in class that allows her to sit next to a girl if another girl acheives the same rank (all other students have to sit boy-girl to cut down on chit-chat).
Most of us had influenza a couple weeks ago. Ansley got it first, and since it was influenza B with a lower fever of 102, we didn't catch it until a few days later when we took her in for an ear infection. I had a low fever and flu symptoms, but couldn't be tested because my doctor ran out of tests. And since I couldn't take tamiflu while nursing anyway, I just toughed it out and didn't worry about being tested. Hailey was next and we got her into the doctor less then 12 hours after her fever started, so the tamiflu did wonders for her and she recovered quickly. Emberly has had colds and fevers on and off for weeks, so it is hard to say if any of them were the bonified flu or not, but since she couldn't be treated, it didn't really matter. Michael never caught it, but he's coming down with a bad cold or strep or something now. It's just a rotten winter with a lot of diseases floating around.
Emberly had a reaction to the sugar alcohols in the iron supplement, and apparantly they don't make a version without sugar alcohols (they gave her more gas than humanly possible, which kept her up all night and killed her appetite). We had to special order an iron supplement with plain old sugar from a compound pharmacy in Dallas and pay $25 for a two week supply that insurance wouldn't touch because it was over the counter. Her iron levels went up to 12.3 from 10.2, so they say to keep on doing it just to be sure. They also told us there was a closer compound pharmacy, so hopefully that will make it a little more convenient, although probably just as expensive.
We're going to Disney World in November. We just booked our "villa" in Disney's Old Key West Resort for 5 nights on the 9th. Ansley prays every night that she can have fun at Disney World. When she and Hailey get together, they decide to draw pictures of how they think it will go. I think they might be a little excited. LOL.
We signed Hailey up for the same private kindergarten Ansley attended when she turned 5. She talks about school alot these days and how she is getting to be a big girl and that she is smart. She keeps asking me when school starts and I tell her after her birthday, which seems like an equally far distant event, but at least it's accurate. :)
The girls are dying to swim. They keep asking me if it is summer yet.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Emberly 9 month
Her measurements are 28.25 inches, 19lb 11.5oz and 17.75 head, which works out to 75%, 72%, and 75%.
No shots, only a finger prick for a hemoglobin test. She scored just over a 10, and apparantly anything under 11 means low iron. So we bought Ferinsol from Walgreens (a tiny dropper bottle with a cute picture of Beatrice Potter's Peter Rabbit on it). We are supposed to give her a drop three times a day for six weeks.
Guess how her first drop went? She pulled a face, then cried, then gagged dramatically. If I'm not able to successfully hide it in her food, then the next six weeks will be tons of fun.
I doubt the illustration of Peter Rabbit makes it more palatable to Emberly, but I enjoyed looking at it.
No shots, only a finger prick for a hemoglobin test. She scored just over a 10, and apparantly anything under 11 means low iron. So we bought Ferinsol from Walgreens (a tiny dropper bottle with a cute picture of Beatrice Potter's Peter Rabbit on it). We are supposed to give her a drop three times a day for six weeks.
Guess how her first drop went? She pulled a face, then cried, then gagged dramatically. If I'm not able to successfully hide it in her food, then the next six weeks will be tons of fun.
I doubt the illustration of Peter Rabbit makes it more palatable to Emberly, but I enjoyed looking at it.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Diastasis recti
That is my diagnosis. Also known as rectus diastasis. It is sort of creepy that I can tense up my stomach muscles and stick my fingers in the middle, but I guess few people could escape carrying an 11 pound baby with a fluid index of 31 all the way to 41 weeks completely unscathed. This condition is more likely with multiples and multiple births. Emberly is the third birth, so that's one strike. And while she wasn't a twin, she weighed more than the twins born in our ward put together, not to mention my four pound placenta and all that extra fluid. I think she definitely qualifies.
So instead of a six pack, I have two three packs. It sort of feels like a zipper down the center of my body, undone from my rib cage to my belly button, in a sort of Y formation. If it was only cosmetic, I could consider it a badge of honor like stretch marks. I stick out like I'm three months pregnant. Since Michael still thinks I'm sexy (and his opinion counts for a lot :), so I'm not too worried about the appearance.
But the truth is it is killing my back. At least it is mostly when I sleep. Apparantly, your spine relies heavily on your abdomnal muscles to hold it in place. They call it a disruption of the muscular core. I also have a good "baseline." I'm not really sure what that means, but it sounded like a good thing.
I went to a physical medicine doctor today. I believe she's called a physiatrist. She said it would hopefully heal without surgery over time if I got the right exercise, which of course involves physical therapy visits for a while. Haven't quite figured out what to do with the little ones during that. Maybe they'll have night slots or something. Physical therapy was actually like a mini vacation when I worked, because I got to take off in the middle of the day with no worries. Sick time doesn't work the same when you're a mom.
So instead of a six pack, I have two three packs. It sort of feels like a zipper down the center of my body, undone from my rib cage to my belly button, in a sort of Y formation. If it was only cosmetic, I could consider it a badge of honor like stretch marks. I stick out like I'm three months pregnant. Since Michael still thinks I'm sexy (and his opinion counts for a lot :), so I'm not too worried about the appearance.
But the truth is it is killing my back. At least it is mostly when I sleep. Apparantly, your spine relies heavily on your abdomnal muscles to hold it in place. They call it a disruption of the muscular core. I also have a good "baseline." I'm not really sure what that means, but it sounded like a good thing.
I went to a physical medicine doctor today. I believe she's called a physiatrist. She said it would hopefully heal without surgery over time if I got the right exercise, which of course involves physical therapy visits for a while. Haven't quite figured out what to do with the little ones during that. Maybe they'll have night slots or something. Physical therapy was actually like a mini vacation when I worked, because I got to take off in the middle of the day with no worries. Sick time doesn't work the same when you're a mom.
Christmas and new years
We had a great holiday break.
Christmas we went to Michael's parents. My nephew was sick, so the girls were the only kids there, but Auntie M was back from BYU Idaho, and that made Christmas so much fun. Santa brought a glo-e bear to Hailey and a My Little Pony teapot house to Ansley. They both got Scooby doo figurines as well as a few other gifts from mom and dad. After all the gifts were opened and Christmas breakfast was finished, Auntie M and Hailey and Ansley painted toe nails and the grown ups got to relax.
New Years Eve, we turned the clocks back a few hours so we could celebrate midnight at 9pm with the girls. We had gone to party City earlier that day and bought fun hats and noise makers. We also got donuts as part of a new tradition Michael started last year (no black eyed peas for us). We counted down, had a parade of noise makers through the house, and attacked each other with silly string. The girls just loved it.
Christmas we went to Michael's parents. My nephew was sick, so the girls were the only kids there, but Auntie M was back from BYU Idaho, and that made Christmas so much fun. Santa brought a glo-e bear to Hailey and a My Little Pony teapot house to Ansley. They both got Scooby doo figurines as well as a few other gifts from mom and dad. After all the gifts were opened and Christmas breakfast was finished, Auntie M and Hailey and Ansley painted toe nails and the grown ups got to relax.
New Years Eve, we turned the clocks back a few hours so we could celebrate midnight at 9pm with the girls. We had gone to party City earlier that day and bought fun hats and noise makers. We also got donuts as part of a new tradition Michael started last year (no black eyed peas for us). We counted down, had a parade of noise makers through the house, and attacked each other with silly string. The girls just loved it.
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