Surgery times three

The boys had surgery today. All three, one after another. Lots of people have been asking me what sort of surgery they are getting, and I am uncertain as to whether or not I should make an effort at privacy on their behalf. Since this blog has such a limited following I will go so far as to say, in the words of their doctor, they are "having their stems trimmed". Painful. In addition to that Andrei got his tonsils and adenoids out and Alex had tubes put in his ears. And something else private, but now he will be able to have children. Enough said.


Alex is staying overnight in the hospital because he has a bad history with anesthesia reactions. Dan is staying with him, reading books and coloring and playing with toys with him. I took Andrei and Pavel home and they are sleeping and being grouchy alternately. We went to the library and got 24 videos out to keep them still, but it looks like we might not have much of an issue with that early on. They are supposed to stay still for at least a week, though, so we might have need of them in the future.



OK, fast forward 1.5 weeks because it has been busy around here recently. We watched 23 of the 24 movies. Ugh! My kids act weird after they watch too many movies. They get hyper, and emotional, and clingy, and very difficult to manage when they all do it at once. Plus I guess I have to allow for the fact that they were in pain every four hours when their narcotics wore off. I was actually really happy to unload those movies back at the library drop box! Well, not exactly, since I miscalculated the due date and they were one day late and now we have a whopping bill.

The whole summer in one post

We have been in Maine for the summer, and are leaving tomorrow to begin the journey back to real life. One of the biggest things I will miss will be late nights watching movies with Mandy, but I am already practicing getting over it since Mandy left us for Ben and Julie last week.
But while she was still here, Mandy introduced us to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This did not come out of the blue--Brad started the whole thing when we were out in California and we watched the first few episodes of Angel. From there it just spun out of control. One and a half seasons later, I realise that in order to support my Buffy habit Dan and I need to sign up for a Netflix account or something. Only we are going to go with Blockbuster, mostly because we are doing the cheap version with only one CD at a time and I am too impatient to wait for stuff in the mail so I will just trade in to Blockbuster if I actually want to watch a movie two nights in a row (which is pretty unusual during the regular non-Maine year, but might happen). So, after that boring explanation, I have to say something interesting:
Last night I finally realised who reminds me of Angel. Or, actually, the other way around. It's Brad. Wait, don't shoot me down--the dark, unattached, brooding, mostly silent guy with strong opinions that don't really come out unless you know him fairly well and hang with him for a while...see, I'm right, aren't I? And he always comes through, doesn't he? And he may not necessarily be openly friendly with the masses but is fiercely loyal to those he holds near and dear (like sisters). Just in case anyone thinks the contrary, this is a COMPLIMENT. Way to go Brad, you stud!

Real life comes soon. We have known for a year now that Inga would be going to her Daddy's school for second grade. I've been preparing for it all year and I think I am finally ready and I know Inga is way ready. It's fun to think that Moira and Inga are entering the world of the school classroom at the same time. We don't have all the same battles, though. Inga will wear a uniform, so that solves the clothes issue (it actually makes it easier). My biggest issue is outfitting a particular school bathroom stall for Inga's use, and then hoping that when she needs to use the bathroom it will be available to her. Her teacher, Jayme, is awesome. Jayme has an aunt who is quadriplegic and became quite famous when she started a foundation for accident victims who became paralyzed (this is Joni Eareckson Tada http://www.joniandfriends.org/, for those of you who have heard of her). So this teacher has all the right attitudes toward Inga (which is to say that she will not be making any excuses for her), and has already started getting Inga excited about being in school by sending her home from church with various second grade-y type things like an extra baby praying mantis they had left over from a science project. So this is perfect, right? It's still hard to let go, though. At least I have my other kids still at home to torment with lessons.

Toilet Paper

Hmmm...Mandy mentioned something in her last blog that inspired me to post. Why two rolls of toilet paper? I thought the same thing myself a few moments before I read her comment, but the difference is that I know the answer. Kids. Inga and Elena have to have the toilet paper on the floor in order to use it, and adults feel a need to put their paper on the top of the toilet seat in order to have it conveniently available (after you twist around, groping desperately behind you because you can't quite see back there) for adult use. And some people just put it on whatever nice modern toilet paper holding appliance has been placed on the wall for your use (which, as you can imagine, doesn't exist in Dad's still-being-built house). Combine these three customs with a house full of people who don't normally live together and you have multiple rolls of toilet paper making their appearance at the same time, in different places, until someone neatly puts them all in a row, causing Mandy to blog about it. OK, I just wanted to sound smart and provide a complete answer for someone today.
Oh, and if someone is visiting my site for the first time because you Googled the word "toilet paper", I'd love to hear the history in the comments section!

Inga's Toe Walk

We are going to look into enrolling Inga (and possibly Elena) in a dance school next year. Inga has a peculiar talent for dancing on her toes, the very tip ends of them. It's uncanny.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Ever since Anne Marie gave me the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire a few Christmases ago I have had a soft spot for the Wicked Witch of the West. Especially since her younger sister was born without arms. However, I have never seen the musical because, silly me, I figured that once you read the book you knew what it was about and how could a musical possibly be better than the book when the book came first? Then I heard a song from the musical and I can't get it out of my head and I really want to see the musical. This particular blog post is in honor of Jaime, since she sent me an e-mail full of handy tips and tricks for doing all the things I have been very un-subtly hinting at needing help on over the past several months (and she hit every item, so she must have been keeping a list or something!). I am about to use one of those tips and actually paste a real live YouTube thingy on here. It is of my favorite song, called "What is This Feeling". If it doesn't work, then you know who to blame (I learned this after years of being a teacher...it is never the student's fault, but always the fault of the teacher and I might add that this rule still remains in effect in spite of any technical issues the student may have with just about any website she has ever visited):




If you want to listen to a really good recording of the music (which I do, because I don't necessarily like the way this particular YouTube version acts it out nor do I care for the sound quality but I couldn't get the other one I know of to work properly), then you have to go to this guy's blog I found who somehow posted the audio track directly to his blog. He also posted the lyrics, which is very helpful. His story is interesting, since he is ex-LDS (Mormon) and he ties the entire musical into his journey into adulthood and out of the Latter-Day Saints. Anyway, don't watch his YouTube version, it's British and the singing isn't as good (not that one is a cause of the other, mind you, I just don't prefer it). Just listen to his incredibly good audio track (I really need to buy this CD for myself.)

N.B. The above testimony is a good example of how YouTube and the ability to post tracks to blogs actually encourages the sale of music legitimately--that was a plug for any economic gurus that happen to drop by my blog anytime soon while policy is still being debated

Happenings

I didn't know what to call this post, because it is basically just a random selection of happenings around our house recently. Hopefully of the sort that is vaguely entertaining to relatives who don't live nearby (which is all of them).
Dan and I are into House recently. Jaime already posted the Valley Girl House takes from the second disc of the second season (OK, I'm going to try this link thingy, Jaime, let me know if it works!), but Cameron's "That's hot" at the end makes us go into conniptions!
Elena has a kidney ultrasound tomorrow, so she couldn't eat anything with fat tonight from dinner time on. I had no idea how many things have fat in them! Yes, Mandy, I know, but I am not the incredible dieter that you are. Speaking of, I think I will be "en regime" while I am in Maine this summer and one of my reasons for choosing that time to lose a little weight is because I am hoping you (still talking to Mandy here) will encourage me to stick to counting calories. Feel free to make me feel guilty constantly. Anyway, Elena had dry rice and stewed tomatoes with peas for dinner, can you imagine? I was practically gagging just watching her eat it. But I gave her jell-o for desert (wow, the computer actually made me put that hyphen in for "jell-o"), so my Mommy rating isn't too low...yet. Wait until she can't have breakfast or even drink a glass of water in the morning, then we will have cries of impeachment. I am comforting her with the promise of French Fries after the ultrasound is over. This picture I have of her is from Hilton Head on a Gregg Russell boat tour and she is watching the dolphins playing in the water. It was really hot that day, so her sunglasses were sliding off her nose.
Alex has new glasses. Actually, he has had glasses for months and months now but he keeps eating key parts and so we had to break down and buy a second pair for him, one for wearing and one for fixing after he destroys it. This has worked well for him, but not for our budget. I am amazed at how expensive and annoying poor eyesight can be. I know lots of people go through the glasses/contacts thing every day and pull it off with style and grace but I'm not sure it isn't up there with missing limbs on the disabilities list...just more common, so no one thinks much of it.

Today is father's day (happy Father's Day, Dad!!), and we gave Dan a shirt from St. John's College that says, in Greek, "If you can read this you are over-educated". Obviously Dan loved it! He decided that he wanted to go camping with the kids in the back yard tonight, so they set up the tent and we all went out and played "hot potato" and now everyone is sleeping peacefully. It's sad, really, because we have to work ourselves up to using this thing properly. The first time we set up the tent Dan and Andrei slept in it. Tonight everyone is sleeping in it except Pavel and me. Next time we will all try it together, and then hopefully the next step after that will be to actually go somewhere with it. I remember all those camping trips to that lake (in Kentucky?) when Sam had the earaches and Anne Marie and Mandy were little and Ben I had the raging nightmares and I guess I am really happy to go slow with the whole tenting thing.

Andrei has new Spiderman sheets. I have this thing about waiting until Christmas and Birthdays to get my kids anything they might actually want, but my oldest son was sleeping under my comforter from college that has flowers on it and when I saw the Spiderman bedding on sale I rethought the whole thing (Christmas is a long way away) and went ahead and got it for him. Now his bed is the most popular spot in the house. Pavel plays in it rather than playing with toys like a normal human child, and even Alex will slip under the bedcovers every once in a while and pretend he is the lucky one. It's a good thing Andrei is pretty easy-going about sharing his things.
And now an Inga story. We had a storm here, and Inga and Dan ended up stuck in Blockbuster while the rest of us huddled in our basement during a tornado warning (who was it that hates tornados? Jaime? I still have nightmares about them from my childhood!). Inga, being Inga, made fast friends with a little girl named Anna she met there and managed to get herself invited to this little kid's birthday party the next day. She in turn invited Anna to her Adoption Day party, which was the day after. They exchanged phone numbers and then began to work on their parents. I have never seen Inga beg so hard for anything in her life, and from what I understand after calling Anna's mom the same thing was going on at the other end. So we went to the store and bought a gift for this kid we didn't know and then I spent 4 hours at this party with about 12 girls who were all in the first grade. Inga and Anna were inseparable. Inga made several other friends and exchanged more phone numbers and tried to invite more kids to her own party the next day (I put my foot down, though). Life will never be dull with this kid...

Doctors

This is the season of doctors.
Today Sam went in for an MRI, and did all the things I had really hoped he would not do. He fought with the nurses when they put an IV in, and then he fought with them the other two times they put the IV in (because the first two times didn't work). He fought with me when I told him to go to sleep, then finally when they had given him so much medicine he had maxed out and his eyes were forced to close against his will he continued to fight it, which was really funny because the nurse kept thinking he was truly out and got ready to move the bed and then he would rise up and start talking and swinging around some more. The cute thing is that toward the end he turned all sweet and started giving me kisses and telling me he loved me very much (with his eyes closed).
When he woke up he was a grouch. He scream-cried at everything, and demanded cookies and water and then cried when I gave them to him and choked on the water because his muscles wouldn't work right. I put him on the couch for just a moment to fill his cup and he fell off in slow motion (didn't really hurt him, in other words) and couldn't raise his head up--it was like watching the chickens at the Boneless Chicken Ranch on Far Side. He's fine now, sleeping like a log, and hopefully he'll be coordinated tomorrow because he is really getting heavy to carry!
Anyway, I never want to do that again, at least not with this child, so I hope they got everything they needed. Now I just need to get through the next week and a half, which involves Andrei getting an MRI (general anesthesia for that one!), Elena getting a kidney ultrasound, Alex getting his hormone levels checked, Inga going to dentist for possible teeth pulling (her adult teeth are growing in behind her baby teeth, which is why she isn't losing any), Elena and Alex getting immunization shots, Andrei spending the night at the hospital for a sleep study, Alex and Andrei having speech evaluations with a new speech therapist (the public schools are not doing a good job, so we have to go private), Alex getting an intensive hearing test, Andrei and Alex getting evaluated by an ENT for surgery in August, and Sam's first opinion hand surgeon appointment. Then we go to Maine to live with Dad for the next 6 weeks, free of all doctor visits but enjoying the company of the one doctor that doesn't ever want to operate on them. Although it would be fun for the kids to try on some fake casts like the good ol' days...