Month: January 2016

I was going to write this post last night, but I got distracted.  Anyways, both kids are sick and home today.  Jeremy is feeling better.

Edda starting to feel crappy.

Morning rush.  One boy in a suit, the other in shorts.  Off to the races (aka, Monday morning).

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A few days ago, Kiki texted us – “large package coming, open instantly and hang outside!”.  What could it be?  Curious minds wanted to know.

We got it today!  Thank you!  We hung it from the bird feeder post for now.  What should we cook with it?

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I enjoy hearing from our previous au pairs, they are off living their lives carrying a piece of us with them.  Makes me happy – look!  Denise is in a band, in fine form.

Jeremy presented today downtown on biofuels – he said it went well even though he feels crappy.  Edda and I spent most of the day in our pajamas, we watched Finding Nemo (I’m very much looking forward to Finding Dory this summer, I hope it’s good).  Vince came down and ate my lunch of dumplings.  But in exchange for stealing my lunch, I got him to do a round of Chinese vocabulary words.  Finals are next week for him – he’s working on a bunch of essays, projects and studying.    

Edda and I went to Sunday night dinner where I kind of watched the Packers / Redskins game.

Jeremy is sick.  Selfishly, I hope it is the same illness I had last week, so I don’t get it again this week.  Today (Sunday), he needs to go to a three-hour networking event where he’s planning on giving a talk.  He lamented that networking is hard even when one is feeling well because, being of a typical non-looking-forward-to-networking personality, one needs to gird oneself up to meet people you don’t know but want to know – however, feeling crappy, it’s next to impossible to pep-talk yourself into feeling charming.

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The Christmas slight splurging continues – Jeremy got these padded gloves for biking on Donald’s recommendation to dampen the vibrations on the trails.  But first, he needed to try it out driving.

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Vince wanted a sub for lunch and there’s a new Jimmy John’s in town and he’d never tried it before.  I used to eat at Jimmy John’s all the time when I worked in Alexandria, I was happy to find one near my house.

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I hurt my hamstring last week running, so I’ve switched to swimming.  They renovated the pool I learned to swim in and just re-opened it in the new year.  Something about swimming in that pool makes me feel both young and old.  On an evolutionary level, I think that being surrounded by water on all sides reverts you back to the un-rememberable feeling of being in back the womb, where you are being taking care of in all the ways you need to be taken care of.  That’s a nice feeling.  It also makes me feel like I’m seven because I do remember spending so much time in that same pool when I was in elementary school.  And then I see seven year olds having their swim lessons and then I just feel old and wish I was seven again.  I’m comfortable in the water, but I never had formal swim lessons, so I’m flailing around – arms in all directions, water splashing, no clean fluid streamlines around my body – being beat by seniors with their kick board drills.

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A couple of Vince’s co-scout members made Eagle Scout rank and they had their Court of Honor last night.  It was a nice celebration.  Making Eagle Scout is a lot of work, I’m hoping Vince’ll be inspired along the way.

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Finally, a last minute thing.  To get together for drinks and dessert with a couple of my favorite Rett mom friends.  So much to talk about as we all go through middle age and as our kids get older – as we get older.

Last year, I discovered that I could download books for free from the library.  The library app is fantastic, if a book is on hold, I just click on it and it puts me in line to get the book.  I get three weeks to read each book.  Once it’s due, it disappears back into the ether from where it came.  I don’t have to even leave the house.  After admitting to too many people that I didn’t read any books and fearing that I only read Internet memes and short click-bait pieces, I kept track of the number of books I read last year.  I made it to 17!  Not bad, I think considering that when I started, I thought I’d be lucky if I managed 4.  At this rate, if I’m lucky, I think I have only 500-1000 books left I can possibly read in my lifetime.  I reacted to this realization by getting rid of bookshelves full of books.   If I didn’t think it made the cut, out it went.  I started out this year by reading a hard copy of “H is for Hawk” – a book I got for Xmas and I wanted so much to love.  I love the idea of falconry and I love memoirs about grief, yet “H is for Hawk” was disappointing to me.  Each sentence was beautiful.  I do love a beautiful sentence, but I need a little forward motion, a little plot.  I can’t just admire each sentence for 300 pages.

Out!

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I tried to get a better photo of Edda’s curved back, but this is what I got instead.

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I might have made a poor parenting judgement this Christmas.  I gave Vince the game – Cards Against Humanity.  It’s a little not politically correct. I’ve never played it, but I heard from a reliable and hip 9th grader it was really hilarious and fun.  Now I think that maybe I don’t want other parents knowing that I gave him this game.  Anyways, Vince insists it’s perfect for his age group.  He won’t let me play it with him.  He declared that he’s never going to play it with any relatives. 

I signed up for my pediatric clinical rotation for spring term today.  This will be my 4th clinical course.  The first three were adult health, psych and OB.  I was lucky enough to do adult health and OB at Shady Grove.  I did sign up for psych at Shady Grove, but that one ended up cancelled and I went to NIH (which at 5:30 am is only about 15 minutes away from the house).  For peds, my choices were Baltimore, DC or Annapolis.  All far from the house, all an insane commute away.  I know tons of people commute more than that every day, but I’ve gotten used to commuting the 10 feet from my bed to my desk.  I ended up choosing Children’s Hospital on Saturdays.  I’m not sure I’m excited about working with kids and their parents.  Lots of people know they want to work with kids.  I’m a little nervous about shoving an NG tube down a protesting kid’s nose.  I also am, yet again, starting with a new cohort – so I gotta find some friends.

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Speaking of Children’s, Edda’s back is curving as she’s growing into puberty.  You can’t really tell from this photo – her neck is tilted from her hand mouthing, but she’s developing an “S” curve.  We have an appointment in early Feb for an ortho to eyeball her back.  I thought we would be able to dodge the scoliosis part of Rett Syndrome since Edda has been able to walk so well, but now I think the scoliosis is due to her constant, repetitive hand tapping.  The tapping causes her to lean in one position all the time and now as her back is lengthening as she’s trying to add height, the curve is becoming more pronounced.

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Vince is trying to figure out his version of a philly cheesesteak.  Steakummmmmmssss..

Jeremy wants you to admire the mitts that are attached to his bicycle that keep his hands warm.  I think he told me they are really for motorcycles.

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I did give Vince a ride to school this morning, but he had to scrape the ice off of the car.  Note the complete disregard for the 17 degree weather by the lack of jacket.

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Math.  The final is in a couple of weeks.  The county gave him a 30 page review packet he needs to slog through.  I’m trying to instill the love of the mechanical pencil (swoon!), the love of checking the answer, and the love of writing all the algebraic steps out.  Oh, also the love of flipping the inequality sign when you divide by a negative number.   It’s not sticking very well.  He mostly just loves being done.

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To those who gave Jeremy some Christmas $, he’s happily spending it on bicycle accessories.

So cold today!  Vince and I have a little passive-aggressive fight when the weather gets cold.  I’m of the mind he should still bike to school in bright, sunny, bitter cold weather.  He thinks otherwise.  I want him to ask for a ride.  He wants me to offer him a ride.  There is a morning brittleness that rivals the temperature outside. We are at a morning impasse.  Jeremy comes and rescues us by giving Vince a ride to school.

Jeremy is such the peacemaker in the house, he rescues all sorts of situations.

Jeremy and I went on a supermarket date tonight where we bought fixin’s for our own Philly cheesesteaks.

Everyone went back to school and work today.  Like the rest of the US, we’ve been letting our sleep drift later in the day.  Somedays we were still in bed at 7:30 am which was so luxurious.  I do like getting back into the regular routine even though our winter break was relatively quiet, I like being regular in all the ways one can be regular.

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It’s finally properly cold in DC, Jeremy and Vince are still biking.  I think Jeremy has on all his windproof gear.  Vince may be riding still in his shorts, he is a determined middle schooler when it comes to fashion.

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Ruby will be 15 years old next week, that’s 105 in human years. We are planning on frying up a delicious piece of steak for her to celebrate.  So rarely do we bring beef into the house, it’s going to be a special treat for all of us.  As she’s aged, she’s grown some lumps and bumps all over her body.  We decided a few years ago that we wouldn’t mess with them, we’d just leave them be.  Vince hadn’t really noticed them until yesterday one appeared, rather quickly, on her cheek.

Tony & Natasha and their pal Minna came over for brunch today.  They offered to cook!  It’s a little weird being in the kitchen cooking and not seeing Jeremy at the stove.

Jeremy and Tony talked a lot about race in America.  The rest of us chimed in every once in a while, but it was mainly Jeremy and Tony hashing it out.  Here are some of the topics:  affirmative action, Ta Nehisi Coates (TNC), transit, SmartGrowth, Asian American sororities (Do these exist?  I guess they do now.), unions, middle school math classes, charter schools, smoking cessation and a BonaVita coffeemaker.