Our Kids

Move live-blogging! (sort of)

I’m putting the girls to bed right now… around 7:45pm. I started the process around 7:35 after teeth-brushing. Read a book each for the girls (More Cat in the Hat for Lela — darn Dr. Seuss made his books long!). And now starts the fun.

Piper is notorious (in our household, at least) for dragging out bedtime. So far these are the conversations I’ve had:

7:38pm: Piper: “I want my baby reba.” (Rebe is her elephant)
Jason: “You’re holding baby reba.”
Piper: “No, my grumpy baby Reba.”

7:39pm: after locating grumpy baby Reba I return to Piper:
Jason: “Here’s your baby Reba. Now it’s time for bed. You cannot get out of your bed anymore, ok?”
Piper: “Ok!”
Jason: “Do you understand you cannot get out of bed?”
Piper: “Yes, I understand!”

7:41pm: I hear the door open. I know it’s Piper. Lela *never* comes out. She either sends Piper out for her, or she ‘suggests’ to Piper (in a Jedi-like manner I’m sure) to go out. Anyhow. Door opened.
Jason: “Piper, are you supposed to get out of bed?”
Piper: “Nope. Lela wants her star sheets on her and I want the soft side of my blanket on me.”
Jason: “In bed.”
Piper: “Ok!”

I of course put Lela’s star sheets on her and take a guess on which side is the “soft” side of Piper’s blanket. This time I guessed right.

7:48pm: All is quiet. Except for the clickety clack of Otto wandering about looking for stray food, socks, or stuffed animals left below the 4-ft high OttoZone. Something must be up in the bedroom. Luckily Landis is asleep in our bedroom already so I’m not having to juggle three kids.

7:51pm: I knew it! I hear the door:
Piper: “Hi Dad!”
Jason: “In bed.”
Piper: “Is mommy there?”
Jason: “No. Now you cannot get out of bed.”
Piper: “Ok!”

I’m not quite sure she’s grasped the definition of ‘cannot’. Interesting.

7:57pm: Good news… Landis is up! I shouldn’t have said anything!

Well, it started with Lela… seems to have landed a glancing blow on Piper (so far) but then landed completely on Landis. What is it? The nasty-cough-runny-nose-makem-feel-puny bug. Wheee… it provides loads of entertainment, especially for parents!

It’s certainly painful for a parent when their child is sick… there’s only so much you can do and at times you just feel completely helpless. But with Piper and Lela at least you can sit down and explain things with comforting words… they can even have some relief purely by distraction (Leap pad, Doodle pad, Cat in the Hat, etc…)

But when it hits Landis… ouch. It’s terrible hearing her cough then cry because the cough just hurt her throat. And then her cry is so hoarse it makes things even worse. Poor thing.

Uber-kudos to Mystique, though, for taking care of not just Landis, but a sick Lela, a somewhat-sick (but certainly grumpy) Piper, while still managing to make wonderful meals for her goofy husband. All the while surviving on just decaf, too!

So that’s what is going on around here… a couple of sick kids. Who knows how we got sick but we like to blame it on a nearby park that we’ve nicknamed, “get-sick-quick park.” That nickname has stuck so well that Piper was even referring to it by that name when she was talking with my parents over video-Skype. I’m not sure my parents caught it, but when they asked her what she did that day she replied in a cheerful voice, “get-sick-quick park!” Cracked me up.

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

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

Hard to believe, but Lela and Piper are three years old today. This is kind of a fun birthday because it’s the first one where they’re actually aware of it.

This morning the girls got up a bit early while Mystique and Otto were out for their exercise. When Mystique came back to the bedroom she sat down and said, “Do you know what today is?” The girls laughed and smiled as we started singing Happy Birthday to them.

If you ask Piper how old she is today, she’ll hold three (usually) fingers and say, “FREEEEE!” If you ask Lela, you’ll get random answers… last night she was 39. But she’s really excited about being 39!

Had a nice family breakfast this morning. The girls even got a free cinnamon roll because it was their birthday. Of course, I took it to work

Tomorrow we head out on our road trip to California! Should be fun. I hope the California Slocums knew what they were getting into when they invited the five of us and are even allowing us to bring Otto the wonder dog. Yikes!

That’s all for now. A huge happy birthday to Piper and Lela. Love you.

jason

I really need to get video of this because no matter how much I try, I won’t do it justice with words. Here goes anyways:

This past weekend Piper and Lela got two holiday shirts from Grammy and Grampy. Amazingly Piper went for one shirt while Lela went for the other without any fuss. Lela’s has a big picture of Santa, which is funny because of the holiday party the day before where she didn’t want to be in the same room with Santa.

Piper’s shirt is green and, I think, says Merry Christmas on it. But the best part about Piper’s shirt is that there are little jingle bells attached to the front. She loves them. She’ll run around just to make them jingle. But it gets better.

I don’t know how she started this, but if she really wants those bells to jingle, she’ll fire up uber-jingle: she’ll bend over at the waist, get her arms all up under her shoulders with her elbows out like she was running, and then just twist her torso back and forth and back and forth so fast. Just like a dog shaking out the rain.

And those bells will j-j-j-JINGLE! She gets such a kick out of it and I swear, every time she does it I can’t stop laughing. It’s too funny.