Month: June 2009

(Photo has nothing to do with the post. I just think every post needs a photo and I haven’t been photographing lately. Jeremy is practicing his soldering in the kitchen. Why not in the garage? I dunno.)

Jeremy’s been busy all week at work, as I mentioned before, Jeremy’s work has really been exciting and interesting for him, lots of people to see, lots of work to do. At my own work, I’m reviewed quarterly, and today is the end of the quarter and I’m preparing for my certification exam next week and so there is also a little bit of scrambling involved. Also, the kids are out of school, so we are condensing or juggling our work schedules a little so Eliana doesn’t have to watch the kids for 11 hours straight. Just little things, no real complaints, happy to be employed and healthy and busy.

I got the insurance straightened out, I made the insurance company bend to my will! No, I just called the next day and got a different person and explained it in a new way and he put me on hold for a few minutes and voila! the anesthesia bill will be “readjusted”. Thank goodness.

Here’s Edda at Vince’s end of the year picnic, she’s not really thrilled to be there, but she did eat a hot dog. She’s wearing a lovely dress from Micronesia sent across the ocean by her grandmother Kiki who is galavanting across Asia this summer. This is one of the few pictures of Jeremy sitting on the ground. He is so inflexible that sitting on the ground cuts of circulation to his legs.

Remember Edda’s dental surgery? Well, we are slowly getting the bills from the hospital. Apparently, insurance will cover 90% the hospital charges (total was about $10,000, so we are out $1000 – can you believe it? She was there about 5 hours), but the anesthesiologist – (otherwise known as the whole point of going to the hospital rather than strapping Edda down in a dental chair with tie-downs from Home Depot) apparently not covered (approx $1300 $1900). You know, I’m coming to terms (painfully) that our health insurance won’t cover a stair lift, a conversion seat for the van and/or a communication device – but this action confuses me. Yeah, come to the hospital, enjoy the jello! But hey, no anesthesia for your oral surgery. Makes perfect sense, who are these weird insurance people? Woo hoo!

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Today, Vince’s school had their end-of-the-year picnic. They had pizza, ice cream and a DJ. Vince loved it, Edda did not.

YMCA:

Hanging upside down, shirt inside out:

Crossing the jungle gym.

Remember Edda was fussy? It most likely was her teeth. We went to the dentist last week who confirmed that she had an abscess due to a molar coming in a crooked angle. Anyways, the whole time I was setting up the appointment to the time that I actually got to the dentist I was thinking 2 things. One, please, please, please let this be a dental problem which does not involve general anesthesia and two, it just will kill me if Edda had been in intense pain for 2 weeks (I looked up abscess on the internet and all over the entries was written INTENSE PAIN!!!) and I did nothing about it.

So regarding worry #1, the abscess does not require going under. Thank goodness. And worry #2, I asked the dentist and hygienist about the pain and they both said they’ve seen kids with really bad teeth and abscesses and they seem fine and relatively pain free. So whatever, it seems if Edda was in great pain, she would have let me know somehow. Anyways, we have a follow up appointment in a few weeks to see how the dental saga ends.

There was something wrong with the gas cook top that was pretty simple to fix and Jeremy started fixing it at 7:30 this morning (note coffee mug and bed head).

By the time we finally stepped away from the stove at 1:30 this afternoon and called a temporary truce between us and the stove, we had made 3 trips to Home Depot, taken a hacksaw to one of the burners and also called the repairman for a Tuesday appointment. Don’t even ask.

Between the two of us, I’m a work-a-holic and Jeremy is not. When we first met in graduate school, in the midst of falling in love and being totally infatuated with each other, Jeremy actually got more work done because I insisted that I needed to go back to lab after dinner and he would agree to come with me and work and extra two or three hours. I knew when I married him, I would more likely to be guilty of staying late at work than he would ever be.

So it is with some surprise that at lunch today, I asked him, “You are working all the time, aren’t you?”. Even though his hours at home vs. work have not changed, I notice that he tucks in an email or two as he’s making breakfast, he’ll also go over something right before bed. Over the weekend, we’ll carve out a few hours for him to work on a report. It’s all so quick and subtle that I hardly notice that it’s happening – but he did tell me, “yeah, I’m working a lot.”

Even though there are a few days left in the school year, Edda graduated from preschool tonight. We love(d) Edda’s preschool, teachers and aides all wonderful and hard working, I could not have asked for a better place for her.

The graduation was a little like a European soccer match, the fans were a little out of control. When the graduates walked out, all the parents rushed the stage with phones (do they take video now?) and fancy cameras (me included) and no one could see anything. Not a single butt is in a seat.

I missed the cute little dance numbers, I missed most of the kids getting their little paper diplomas. I almost missed Edda’s march to the front of the room. Edda was not thrilled to be at school at 7:15 pm. She wanted to be in the middle of her bedtime routine. Vince rushed the stage and managed to take his shoe off at the same time. All and all, a good time. Ha!

The wonderful Ms. Sarah who taught Edda so much this year. (Photo by Vince, hence the low, upward angle of the photo!)

I’m hoping that as Edda grows up, she will learn to turn her love of Barney, ABBA, and the Avenue Q soundtrack (a little inappropriate for little kids, I know, but she can’t talk, so she won’t be telling) into a love of live music. Right now, it’s a sure bet that we won’t last a whole performance (we get persistent whining a lot of the time), but I figure a regular exposure to live music will someday lead Edda to sit through a whole high school performance of Grease (or at least learn that auditorium seats are a nice place to take a nap).

This weekend, Edda and I went to see a live performance of the Baltimore’s Men’s Choir. It was at the church, I figured it would be pretty low-key, there was a sound-proof crying room to retreat to and also we could just turn home if we needed to.

Started by being asleep in the main concert hall:

and then retreated to the crying room.

Jeremy had made fun of me for dressing Edda in a dress and then stretchy capri pants that did not match the day before, so on this day, I went way in the other direction which, at home, looked OK to me, but when we were out an about, I realized that Edda was showing way too much leg (there were shorts under there… they were just short shorts).