Year: 2008

A little sleet is falling around the DC area, schools have been canceled. I am home today with the kids – all day – all by myself, it has been a while since I’ve done this, I’m a little rusty; Vince is still in his PJs watching youtube at 2:45pm.

Ruby is sick, sick, sick. She was scheduled to have her teeth cleaned today, but I had to cancel because she puked twice in the last 24 hours and this morning, she refused to eat her breakfast – such unRuby-like behavior.

This is what it’s been like (I took this photo a few days ago while I was walking to the Metro after work).

Yes, the house is definitely winning.

Tonight, Edda had a little “episode”. I’m doing the regular evening routine and I lay her down on her bed and turn around to get some PJs and my the time I turn back around, I know something unusual is going on with her brain. I don’t think they are exactly seizures because she remains alert to sounds and to our voices, she can drink water and she smiles when we comfort her. But her body is tense, her hands are cold and her eyes are wide, wide open and she moves her head around as if she’s looking for someone above her who is playing tricks on her.

Edda had these 5 minute long episodes almost daily when she was in the midst of her most pronounced regression over a year ago and it especially seemed to increase when we gave her some melatonin to help with sleep. But they had gradually faded away when we stopped the melatonin and actually she started sleeping better on her own. I had hoped that we had seen the last of them. I guess not, but she didn’t seem too bothered by this one…

A few days ago, Edda fell asleep on the floor which has never, ever happened before.

Saturday night. Hanging with the Frank.

Target is my favorite store. When I am blue, I go to Target; when I am happy, I go to Target. This weekend we went to Target to stock up the pantry because the cupboard is bare. Vince is clutching a LEGO set and a twenty dollar bill given to him by Pua Pua for Chinese New Year. Edda is happy that the shopping is almost over, she looks really slim in this photo even with the horizontal stripes on her shirt. I am enamored by the Target house brand. In our cart you will find Target brand diapers, shaving cream, dishwasher powder, wipes and “Ziploc” bags.

Last night, we invited all the DC Martins to Vince’s Chinese New Year’s party. The school had gotten a lot of raffle prizes in the attempt to keep parents around after their kid performed in the show including a Wii, DVD player, a CyberShot camera, lots of red envelopes, etc, etc. Our neice, J. really, really wanted to win the 100 dollars and was camping out in the front of the room waiting, waiting, waiting and fretting that she wouldn’t understand if they read the numbers in Chinese. We lasted only until the first giveaway, and came out with a big fat goose egg – nothing! But we do have a cute video of Vince. And Seth took lots of nice photos!

Saturday mornings are my time for cleaning the bathrooms of the house. The last weekend we were at the Rett Clinic and didn’t get a change to reboot the house in terms of laundry and recharge the house in terms of cleaning and groceries so this week we were a little bit frazzled and unorganized.

On Friday, Vincent had his second appointment to fill the third and forth of the eight cavities. The dentist is great and has a space theme to the whole cavity filling procedure. Vince is the captain and he’s going into outer space which makes the whole thing less scary. That and, of course, a nice sedative and nitrous oxide doesn’t hurt either.

This week was also crazy in terms of scheduling, on Tuesday the kids were at home all day because the schools close down for election day, on Wednesday there was a 2 hour delay due to the ice, on Friday, Vince needed to stay home from school all day to recover from the sedative and our sitter B. could handle all the schedule changes without a problem and because of her, Jeremy and I were able to work through all this without a hiccup. (My mom’s huge lasagna that she made last weekend for us helped also, I ate a slice every night this week.) Whew!

Being a single guy, of course I’ve got no plans on Valentine’s Day. Well actaully, did plan on sitting at home, eating all those chocolates that my parents mailed me (thanks!) and crying myself to bed. JK. 😛

Laff. anyhow about 5pm yesterday, a friend of a friend, Jane, invited me out to come hang out with all of her cute single girlfriends at Farmer Brown’s. I tried to rustle up another guy friend to come with me, but interestingly enough, all my single guys friends were busy, so I just went on my own. So it actually just ended up being me and 4 women of low alcohol tolerance hanging out. Ha. There was some guy at the bar that was trying to sell Jane some boots. I met a poet.

We all went off to eat indian, Where the waiter asked all the tipsy women whether they were okay or not. I think he wanted to swap seats with me. Laff. We gossiped about what movie stars are hot (who’s a hot guy?), restaurants, and what size medical gloves people were. I also learned that a woman is interested in a guy if her pelvis is pointed in his direction, and that all nail salons are run by vietnamese women.

All in all. As fun of a vday as you get when you’re single. Thanks for the invite Jane!

I had taken Vince and Edda’s leftover Valentines (Superman and Dora the Explorer) and I wrote my co-worker’s names on them and handed them out this morning. I was a little embarrassed, but I think they were amused to get a school-aged valentine this morning.

Jeremy and I each agreed to spend less than 3 dollars on each other for Valentine’s Day. I got him one of those giant Hershey bars with almonds. He got me a bag of heart shaped Reece’s peanut butter cups which I inadvertently brought to work to give away not knowing they were my own gift.