Month: August 2010

First things first, please go here and vote for IRSF to win $$ from Pepsi. Top 2 vote getters get $250K for their cause. There is one more day of voting and we’ve been knocked down to 3rd before rebounding back to 2nd place. Please vote! Thank you!

Jeremy took Vince and Edda to their schools for open house on Friday. Edda saw her teachers and aides, all familiar faces and they were all excited to see how much Edda has grown over the summer. Jeremy reported that Edda was not full of smiles, she seemed a little nervous.

Thank goodness that it is Friday! School starts Monday – everyone is relieved. We are eating ice cream to celebrate.

Edda! Don’t sleep through the ice cream!

Jeremy enjoying his gelati.

Edda and me!

About noon today, Vince hobbled into my office clutching his stomach and doubled over in pain. I poked around his stomach and there was a specific point of extreme pain, so I thought, crappy, appendicitis. I rushed him over to the hospital – I carried him over from the car to the ER because he was in so much pain he couldn’t walk. We were in a room within 10 minutes.

Ten minutes after settling into the room, Vince was still in a lot of pain, the doctor felt around his stomach – the sharp pain was on the left lower quadrant of the abdomen. Apparently that is not the location of your appendix. Appendices are in the lower RIGHT quadrant of one’s abdomen. Anyways, long story short, took an X-ray and determined that Vince was just CONSTIPATED. Two hours after we checked in, Vince was back to his normal self.

He is fine. I feel silly.

I never knew constipation can be really painful, but we (Vince and I) surmised that Edda (who is often constipated) must often feel pain in her belly and maybe being constipated makes her scream sometimes when she is trying to fall asleep.

Is the mascot of the Nationals a chicken?

It was a blow out last night – final score 9 to 1 with the Nats in the losing position. Pizza and cotton candy. No rain. Strasburg is on the DL. Vince insisted on staying until the final out – so they didn’t come home until 11:40 pm. Edda and I were already way asleep by then. Today, as Vince was explaining the game to me, he told me about all the “touchdowns” that happen when you go around the bases. Hmmmm. He has a lot to learn.

Eliana and Vince are headed downtown to see the Nationals game tonight with a bunch of people from Jeremy’s work. We are trying to save him from being a Yankees fan, which I suppose is not in vogue these days. It looks like it’s about to pour outside – I don’t think getting really, really wet will be helpful in convincing Vince that the Nationals are the team to root for – although maybe it will be a plus, you can never tell with that child.

Edda and I are suppose to have a spa night, although I forgot to borrow some nail polish from Eliana as I am a tom boy through and through and don’t own any makeup to save my life. Edda might have to settle for a shampoo and blowout and hand massage with some lotion. Now that she wears her helmet for most of the day, you can’t really see her beautiful hair and her head does end up smelling like a rugby player after practice.

I have been a little worried about Little’s (the tadpole) development. He has grown tiny, tiny back legs which don’t seem to be able to move and he grew them weeks and weeks ago. And even though he eats enough and poops an ungodly amount of green poop, he does not want to seem to transform into a frog.

Last night we headed up north (40 minutes or so) for the end-of-summer picnic/BBQ/potluck for our local Rett Syndrome support group. The food was so good! The kids are so cute! And the evening out on the deck was perfect.

Recently, we lost our free high-speed Internet link from our nearby High School (guessing.) We do have the dial-up Netzero slow link everywhere in USA though for our secured banking stuff via land line.

Therefore, we discovered that our local library and McDonald’s can help – they provide free wifi services. Since it is a small town and distance-wise, anything in it really does not make that much a difference. But, guess what, library isn’t that reliable as McDonald’s.

That reinforces my feeling (bias, maybe?) that government isn’t as reliable as private sectors doing the right thing in economic matters. The government can only set up policy as well serve as a watch dog on behalf of its citizens.

As employment sinks further, government employment is increasing at an alarming rate. I don’t think this Obama-noics is going to work. he is working on health care, wall street new regulations with a brand-new agency (where is the old SEC?) &, of course, the mosque a lot (an unfornate distraction.) But, how about the unemployment ?

As an early birthday present request, Jeremy asked for a ukulele. He wanted an instrument that would allow him to sing to Edda while she fell asleep (although she is often asleep when Jeremy gets around to playing). The ukulele is also known as the simplest instrument to learn to play according to the Guinness Book of World Records. Right now, Jeremy’s playing Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Earlier, he was playing Beatles songs and I’ve Been Working on the Railroad. Learning from internet and youtube videos.

When Jeremy’s interest in the ukulele was just starting to take hold, we found the following youtube video of a 5-year-old kiddo playing the ukulele and singing (in Japanese/English) I’m Yours and I thought that if a 5 year old can do it, certainly Jeremy could do it no problem. But, of course, this kid is simply amazing and it will take a long time to learn to play like him.