Month: March 2010

It’s Vince’s eighth birthday today. We had a low-key celebration today, mainly bacon for breakfast and a Coke for dinner, an oh yeah, Legos out the wa-zooo. Do we know how to party or what? We had a family celebration last weekend and a friends celebration schedule this coming weekend, so don’t fret that he only got bacon and a Coke. The friends celebration is making me a little nervous as it’s at the house and we have zero activities planned except for the pizza, cake and armored-tank pinata (don’t ask).

There is such a huge emotional build up towards the actual birthday DAY for Vince that today, there was so much extra DRAMA. At some point today, Vince was in the kitchen wailing, “It’s my birthday today, why is everybody treating me so badly?!” ARGHHHHHH!!!!

Vince also had the pleasure of going to the dentist today, he loves the dentist so much, he considered it a special birthday treat. The hygienist told me gently that I should not allow my son to have Kool-aid for breakfast (which he did along with the bacon and had the tell-tale red mustache, I was totally busted at the dentist.)

Often, in our travels around the world (or neighborhood), there are events or trips that we go on where they advertise “free childcare!” – it ranges from PTA meetings to the Disney cruise. It’s pretty much impossible to take advantage of these pre-arranged child care options for Edda as it’s hard to just drop her off with someone who hasn’t met Edda before and also has 8-10 other kids to look after.

Jeremy and I went to a potluck at church on Saturday night, and of course, there was free childcare. I asked to put Edda on the list, I haven’t done this before and normally I would ask Eliana to watch Edda at home on Saturday night, but it was Eliana’s birthday and also the church is always, always telling me that they can handle Edda (which I know they want to be able to do).. Anyhoo, we show up and there are like 40 kids packed with very little intersitial space between them and a few adult babysitters who seemed already overwhelmed (only 25 kids had signed up for the child care). I don’t want to be like, OMG, they totally weren’t prepared for Edda, because everyone was very nice about it all and they were already SO MANY KIDS.

So we took Edda with us to dinner and Edda had a nice time. Edda is pretty low maintenance these days at dinner, she’ll eat and watch TV and be pretty easy to manage until it creeps close to 8:30ish when she’s ready for bed. Vince, of course, had a great time elbow deep with the other kiddos.

On Friday afternoon, Edda fell asleep at 4:30pm and was down for the night. Pretty unusual for her, but I’m sure it was her body resting after the bout of whatever was upsetting her stomach.

I came home after a fabulous day at work only to find that our little Edamame is sick! Poor thing, puking until her stomach was empty and running a little bit of a fever. She missed dinner, hung out in a sleeping bag on the doggie bed on the floor. Slept with her last night just to make sure she wouldn’t gag on her own puke.

This morning, Edda and I are watching Curious George and Finding Nemo together. I have some knitting and the internets. I’m good. Edda’s good too, working on keeping some Sprite in her tummy and a dose of Motrin down. Eliana should be back this afternoon so I can go back to work, she’s off trying to get a MD drivers license and is dealing with that especially infuriating bureaucracy that is the DMV.

Both of the kid’s schools have “spirit week” this week. It’s been PJ day, wacky hair day, dress like your parent day, wacky sock day and wacky hat day ALL WEEK. It’s hard enough to keep the kids clean and dressed each day, but throw something wacky into it and I get all flummoxed. Although I’m usually only responsible for remembering that it is spirit week and not to confuse the days – god forbid you send Edda in PJs on wacky sock day. Since I’m usually already working on patents when the kids are getting dressed, Eliana and Jeremy are responsible for the execution of the wacky plan.

It’s been kind of a roller coaster ride at both of our jobs this week. Everyday we come home and tell each other of the WACKY things happening at work. I have to go into the office tomorrow, maybe I should wear some wacky socks under my plain old work pants.

It’s Tuesday – date night. We went to Costco – finally (folks at work made fun of me for going to Costco on date night, yes, I acknowledge it’s a little lame). After years of not going to Costco, we finally joined tonight and paid the membership fee, our big reason is that we all need to get our eyes checked and Consumer Reports said that Costo was the best place to get glasses and you can also get your eyes checked there. Anyways, I figured this is our one year experiment with Costco.

Jeremy treated me to a “Chicken Bake” – chicken, bacon and ceasar dressing all wrapped in a breaded dough.

Costco is both fascinating and disgusting to me at the same time. I mean, it’s awesome to be able to buy 24 packs of gum for 8 dollars, but it’s so totally disgusting to think about buying 3 pounds of cream cheese for the 12 bagels we just bought. (We didn’t buy the cream cheese). How would we fit the cream cheese into the fridge? I don’t doubt that we could eat the cream cheese, it’s just that to see its total volume all at one time and imagine it passing from my lips straight to the cellulite on my thighs is a bit more graphic than I want it to be.

Costco reminds me so much of Taiwan, which I know is a really strange association. When Vince was less than a year old, we moved with a bunch of American families to Taiwan and lived about 90 minutes from Taipei; this was for Jeremy’s job. All the wives would get together in a van and make a pilgrimage to the Costco in Taipei. In our small town, there was only the local Taiwanese food, so the only way you could get Kraft mac and cheese was a 90 minute drive to Costco in Taipei. Those were good times.

When Edda was first diagnosed with Rett Syndrome, I had a few pals tell me that it just wasn’t fair and that I didn’t deserve to have a child with such a serious disability. I don’t often think of it in that way; for me, I’ve always understood that random mutations in DNA happen all the time and sometimes they result in someone who is stronger/swifter/smarter and sometimes it just doesn’t work out that well at all. So I always figured that Edda having Rett Syndrome is just the randomness of the universe.

But it doesn’t mean that I don’t try to find a more spiritual meaning in raising a child like Edda. Of course, Edda and her disability have taught me to become more understanding and patient. But my secret belief of why Edda is the way she is, is that somehow, somewhere I’m suppose to meet a person that will change my life. How will the person change my life? In what way? I dunno. That is the big mystery to me. I’ve met so many wonderful people via Edda and I continue to do so everyday.

On Saturday night, I met a group of local mothers who each have a daughter with Rett. We ditched the husbands and the kids, met up at a local grill and had a few maragritas (I got carded! Woo hoo, Asian genes at work!) and talked and talked and there was still more left to say. It was really, really wonderful.