Our Kids

It was shameless and I know it. In a recent post I threw myself on the cross and requested brownies if anyone felt sorry for me. Well guess what, it worked and today the Fairytale Brownie Fairy arrived with a special box of chocolately goodness just for me. Never mind that my butt is bulging out of my pants as we speak (that is a drama for another day) today is a blissful day. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the brownies and for reading:)

We’ve written about Piper’s fingernail in the past… it’s been almost a year since it darkened a bit and lines appeared on it. We’ve been to a few dermatologist appointments, including twice to a forum where a whole bunch of dermatologists look at her finger and talk about it later. It’s been an interesting time and through it all Piper’s been a true champ. Never complains, proudly shows her finger to everyone that asks, and gets a kick out of daddy laughing because it’s her middle finger.

Today, though, was going to be a true test of the limits of Piper’s ability to go along with anything involving her finger. We were scheduled to get a biopsy done of her fingernail bed today at 7:30am.

We got up at 5:30am since we had to get to pre-op around 6:30. Showered quietly, got dressed, Mystique packed me a bag of goodies in case we were there a while, and then Piper and I drove to the surgery center and got there right on time. We had already gone over with her what would happen, and she seemed to understand and be ok with it.

We checked-in and Piper was already being an angel, smiling and waving at people as they walked by, holding on to Reba, her favorite stuffed elephant, still dressed in her “footy-pajamas”.

While we were waiting to get into the pre-op room, I got down on my knee to her level and again told her what we’d be doing. She asked, “will it be scary?” I said no, it wouldn’t, and told her she would just go to sleep, wake up and have a band-aid on her finger (she usually loves band-aids).

We got called in, got weighed, took our temp, etc… and then waited and listened patiently to the nurses and doctors as they explained their role in the surgery. Everyone was very nice and Piper continued to wow them with her calmness and willingness to answer questions and show off that (middle) finger.

When it was time to go I was unable to actually go to the OR with Piper. I was hesitant about this… I wasn’t sure how Piper would handle it. I again got on my knee, looked her in the eye and told her what was going to happen. I gave her a kiss, didn’t make too big of a deal about it, and then she held one nurse’s hand and walked through two sets of doors with her nurses. I couldn’t have felt more proud of her and how she handled everything. I guess I was watching the closing doors for a while since one of the other nurses stopped as she walked by and asked, “are you ok?”

I went out to the waiting room, called Mystique, talked to Lela… and then within 20 minutes or so, I was called to the recovery room.

I walked back there just as they were carrying Piper (not wheeling in the bed — very nice nurses, like I said) to the lazy-boy chair they had setup for me. She immediately hugged me but was still a bit disoriented and was visibly upset. She had been under general anesthesia and from what I’ve heard and seen before, it’s a bit weird coming out of it. The doctor had met me as I walked in and said that everything went great, they took two little slivers and just seeing the way the spots were on the nail bed, he was quite sure it wasn’t melanoma. We’ll get the official results in a few days.

So there we were in an empty recovery room (large area)… me and my lazy-boy, Piper cuddled up with me crying a bit, confused. She had a large bandage on her one finger and that’s when I noticed that she still had her Reba and the nurses had bandaged up Reba’s right foot just like Piper’s.

Piper did not like the bandage whatsoever and tried taking it off a few times. Seeing that, the doctor decided to remove the gauze and padding and just replace it with two daffy duck band-aids. I took a quick glance at the finger and the nail, from what I could tell, was gone. Because we were afraid that she might take the band-aids off during the drive, the doctor wrapped her hand up like a mitten (matching Reba). Piper seemed fine with this, especially since her other hand was occupied with a lollipop (“little jewel on a stick”).

We were able to leave as soon as I was ready and I just wanted to get Piper home. So we left after thanking everyone, but Piper was still crying a bit and asking for her Mommy. We got in the car, I called Mystique, and within five minutes of driving, Piper was fast asleep and we were headed home.

We got home, walked in to the smell of freshly baked chocolate cookies, and were greeted by a happy mom and Lela. Lela was cute… she was sitting on a stool by the cookies, turned around and yelled “Hi Piper!” I asked her what she was doing and she said, “Making cookies for Pipe!”

And that’s it! The gang was headed off to the museum to look at dinosaurs and it was like nothing happened. Except we all got chocolate chip cookies… and maybe bigger hugs than usual

Today was our second day of preschool and yesterday was our second day of gymnastics. I am happy and somewhat sad to report that the girls did excellent in both classes. The happy part is that they did not cry, participated and followed directions, yeah! The sad part is that I felt like I was missing out because I could not watch the class. So they said they had fun in school and Mrs. Mae said they did great and that they helped out with the letters and colors. So bully for them, my little big girls. Then after class we headed over to the playground and so did most of the kids from their class and they played on the playground with other kids!

I am so proud of them for being so brave and I am proud of myself for letting them take their time and for letting them go. Sniff Sniff Sniff. If anyone feels sorry for me (and you should, I know many of you have done it before but that really doesn’t matter to me right now, LOL) then send me some brownies. My new motto is “Exercise and Chocolate” that is what I need to get by, I need as many endorphins as I can get.

We had a new adventure yesterday, we went to the Riparian preserve. It is basically a large plot of land where the town of Gilbert has funneled all its reclaimed water so they can distribute it around the town to water plants, golf courses etc. Phoenix is great at cleaning and reusing its water instead of just flushing it out to sea. Anyway among the large water basins they have created pathways filled with native plants. They have done it so that the migratory birds come for a rest while…..migrating:) So there is lots of wildlife, great paths to walk or ride your bike on, cool plantings and they even put in two dig sites for the kids in addition to an excellent concrete wall for climbing on and using your imagination. It was a super place and we spent 3 hours with no fighting, yelling or other nonsense:) It was absolute bliss for me. We met someone from our parenting group and her little girl Natalie and another friend of her and his son Sasha.

The girls were done and ready for some downtime when we left. I asked if they wanted to get some lunch and they said yes so we called Jason but he had already had lunch. So I decided to take them home. As we turned into our neighborhood Lela got very upset and said she did not want to go home she wanted to get burritos (probably because I mentioned lunch with Dad), so I was faced with two choices. 1) Agree to get burritos, they are cheap, I would not have to make lunch and she would be happy or 2) tell her we could eat burritos at home (because we had all the stuff) and go home but she would be mad so I wanted to do what was easiest and would not cause a tantrum, which did I choose? Now it seems like an easy choice but the correct answer is……..NEITHER! Here is a tip, when your toddler is on the verge of a tantrum not matter what you do or say the tantrum will come, maybe not at that second but a few seconds later you will turn left to quickly, smile at her the wrong way, tell her you love her at an inappropriate time or something else. We made it back home with our burritos and promptly took a nap and ate our burritos later:)

Mystique and I enrolled in a monthly parenting “class” and our first one was this past Monday. I found it very interesting… the class leader is very enthusiastic and obviously very interesting in the subject and even within the first 15 minutes of the class I began to understand things a bit better.

One side comment that I heard in the class a few times was that the age the girls are entering (3-4) was the hardest time for a lot of people. At age four things suddenly got better. Awesome. I don’t want to say I’m looking forward to 12/21/2008 too much (mainly because I can’t imagine missing any day with the girls, no matter how hard it is), but honestly it is in the back of my head.

So yeah, it’s been hard lately… and it’s not knock against the girls, it’s not their fault that their discovering their voice, the power they (can) wield, and cause and effect. It’s growth. But their growth forces my growth and it’s hard to teach this old dog new tricks.

Especially this trick called “patience.” Not sure if you’ve heard of it. I thought I had, but it’s been taken to the next level. Times two. The great part about being a parent is that usually after things happen I can laugh about it. Sometimes that grace period (of no laughing) is minutes… sometimes it’s days. Once or twice it’s a week.

For example… I think it was last night (yes, it also helps when days and nights blur into one) when Piper was “bothering” Lela. So I stepped in to try and figure out what I could do. Lela looked right at me and almost yelled, “take care of Piper!” And she didn’t mean that in a sisterly, love-my-sister way. She meant, Get. Her. Away… NOW.

One of the things I took away from our first class was presenting the girls with two options and asking them what would work best for them. I know, it might be an obvious way of handling things, but I never thought about it and according to the instructor, the “what would work best for you?” question and the end stimulates some good brain cells and helps with development.

So anyways… last night Lela was not interested in brushing her teeth. So I presented her with her two options. And before I get to these two options (have I added a disclaimer to every other sentence in this post?), I’d like to say that sometimes thinking up of two options which ultimately end up the way you want it is hard, especially late in the day. So anyhow… I said, in my calm, soft voice so she would have to lean in to hear me, “Lela. You can either go to bed right now or you can brush your teeth and we can read books. What would work best for you?”

As soon as that was out of my mouth I knew I had messed up because I just gave her the option of going to bed without brushing your teeth. Ugh. And of course her reply? “Go straight to bed” in an equally soft voice where I had to lean in to hear it (hmmm).

I literally took a deep breath at that moment because thoughts of failure went through my head, and then I watched her turn around and bounce (yes, she actually bounced) out the door towards her room.

At that point I thought to myself, “well, that sucked,” and I turned my attention to Piper who was still willing to get rid of Mr. Plaque.

Thankfully, less than a minute later, Lela came back to the bathroom and said, “I want to read books.” I said, “well, we’ll have to brush your teeth then.” To which she replied cheerily, “Ok!”

So we brushed our teeth and thoughts of success ran through my head. But so did thoughts of running my head into a wall fifty times, so that was an odd state of mind.

I won’t get into how that night went… we’re still having “fun” with sleeping but I think it’s getting better because Mystique and I realized what we were doing. She posted about it previously… we slowly regressed back to what we’re not supposed to be doing. Which is funny (now) since we used to do that with putting the girls to bed when they were one year old. It’s always a learning process.

jason

That is what Piper says all the time, we are not sure why or where she picked it up from. Piper might be having a wee bit of regression or she is still recovering from the holidays. Yesterday she peed in the reception area of the doctor’s office and today she has wet her pants twice and wet her bed last night. On top of those things she also has been crawling a bit and was insistent on having a pacifier last week (not this week). I don’t think that she resents the baby at all because she is the first to come over and tend to her when she cries, she rocks her, she tries to soothe her in the car etc. In a nutshell I think she needs a little more TLC so tonight we are implementing one on one time and she is the first winner of the booby prize:) One on one with one of her tired parents, sounds like she did win the booby prize eh? Anyhoo, we will pay lots of extra attention to her and hopefully we can reassure her that she is still the apple of our eye:)

So the doctor’s appt went well. We talked about vaccinations and Landis, she told me what vax she highly recommends, what she has been seeing lately with kids etc. I know it is something that we are going to do and I just have to do it. I will make an appt this week or next week. I am not going to get all of them but I am going to get some of them (she even mentioned the Rotavirus one and that she was not concerned with that one). Landis is12# 10.5 oz and 23.25″. So she is doing great growth wise and is healthy as a clam:)

While in the waiting room Piper peed her pants. She just stopped and started crying as pee ran down her leg and puddled on the carpet. I threw Landis at Erin and scooped up Piper and ran back to the potty. Thankfully she was wearing the yellow sweater dress that JJ gave her and I was able to strip her down and put on Landis’ fuzzi bunz cloth diaper:) LOL! So it went okay after that. Piper is 27#8oz and 35 7/8 inches tall. She is doing super too, she did not comment on their height, weight, diet or anything. She was more interested in their sleeping, appetite (in general) and academic. She also did some physical tests, checked their spines, looked in their ears and mouth etc. Gave them a general once over and said they were great. Also after the biopsy she said we could give 1.5 tsp of childrens liquid motrin instead of the codine, so we need to pick up some of that.

Lela is 30#8oz and 38 1/8 inches tall. We talked a little about her anxiety and fear tendencies and she said to allow them unless the situation was really safe. For example, don’t indulge her fears in a totally safe environment, but in all other situations let her express her fears/anxiety and be considerate of them. Don’t indulge them though. She also said that if Lela is totally fixated on TV maybe we should try not watching it at all anymore (someone shoot me now). I asked about the sleeping and nighttime. She said it was okay to move bedtime to 8AM but she also said that it was okay to put them down early and let them play a bit but when it was bedtime that was it. We are to tell them that they don’t have to go to sleep but they can’t get out of their beds end of story.

So as you might have expected it was an easy appt with no problems with any child. The girls she won’t see until next year and Landis in 6 weeks.

Well the girls had their first day of preschool as well as their new gymnastics class this week. Jason and I also started our parenting class and had our first date night and it is only Wednesday! What a busy 2008 we are having already, LOL!.

Anyhoo, the gymnastics class went well. I was a little worried because it was a male teacher but it turned out that he was great. The class is hands off for the parents although we are welcome to watch. Piper went right in and was not afraid of him, Lela stood back. Coach Mike is very good at coming down to their level and talking to them, not down to them but in a super friendly kid voice, Piper took to him right away and Lela thought he was funny but not someone she wanted to hang out with:) Class started and Piper went over with the other kids, Piper and Lela are the youngest in the class. Piper followed all the directions but did not want to get in with all the other kids. She acted like a baby Jaguar and stayed by Coach Mikes feet most of the class. One activity was having them jump on the trampoline 10 times and then jump off and continue around the circle doing different activities. Piper sat at his side patiently on all fours pretending to be a jaguar, when Coach Mike said one more minute she decided to climb on the tramp (still as a jaguar). Coach Mike was great about asking the other kids to step back, he told Piper she had been very patient and helped her jump on the tramp. He was like that with all the activities, he made sure she had enough space and that the other kids did not crowd her if she wanted to do an activity. When there was about 5 more minutes in the class Lela looked at me and said “can I do that” and I said yes. So she went over and sat next to Piper, Piper greeted her with what looked like some sort of special twin hand shake and then they hugged and laughed. Then Lela watched the last activity until at the end Coach Mike asked all the kids to stand back and then encouraged Lela to do the activity, she did it twice. She had fun, she spoke to him in a very quiet voice that he could not understand but he was awesome with her as well. That was a very exciting class and I expect next week to be even better.

On Tuesday we went to our first preschool class. It is taught by Music, Movement and Magination. The idea is that they use music and large movements to engage the kids, as well as shapes, colors, letters, instruments and such. They were both very excited to find their classroom. We found it and went in, the girls went in and took seats at a table and started to color with the crayons and workbooks that were on the table. We met the teacher and she explained how the class would work. We chose this class because it is a transition class and it is only 1 hour per week. Both of the girls like music and know all the stuff they are going to learn in the class so it is non threatening. I talked with the teacher about how to handle any anxiety etc., and we decided to just see how it went. Before the class started Lela turned around and said, “Mommy don’t leave” so that kind of set the tone. When class started Mrs. Mae asked all the kids to come over, Piper did and Lela did not. She did not want to go over to the class and came to stand by me. During the course of the class we moved up closer and once I left. When I left she came to the door and started crying for me and knocking and saying Mommy but very softly. I went back into the class and told her I could stay but I had to stand in the corner and she had to participate. She went up and sat with Piper and participated in the class for the last 10 min or so. The teacher was very nice and made a point to talk to her about the day and what we would do next week. Both of the girls love the idea of school and said they had fun, Lela told me that she cried but I said that was okay. I think next week she will be fine with me leaving but if not I can stay in the back again as long as she participates. Like I said it is a transition class and we are in no hurry to boot them out of the nest. All in all I thought they did great and that they will enjoy it. There were about 8 kids in there and a few of them had way worse reactions to being left by their folks and then there were 3 year olds literally kicking their parents out. During the class Piper kept coming over to show me what she had done so my being there is probably not the best thing for her but it is all a work in progress.