Author: Doris

We are so boring, it almost kills me. Yes, we got the plain white subway tiles for the back splash. This only took three weeks for us to decide – which included ordering samples from a least 3 online tile places and going to 2 tile shops in person. Our decision making process is so overwrought that sometimes it amazes me that Jeremy and I ever got our wits about us enough to decide at the same time that we should get married.

In contrast to the dragged out time it took us to pick the tile out, I picked out my eyeglass frames in about 5 minutes as I needed to get back to work and Vince was whining, whining and (what else?) oh yeah, whining. I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see so clearly, it’s AMAZING. Now the only thing I am suffering from is that the eyeglass arms are just a schoch too tight so that my head feels like it has been grabbed with a set of tweezers all day.

Vince has strep throat – so he got to stay home from school today. Since he’s on antibiotics, he’s feeling very chipper today, unlike yesterday. Here’s his lima been plant which has grown another 5 inches since this photo was taken.

Kids are sick today – low grade fevers, therefore no school for either of them. It looks like Edda can be back at school tomorrow, Vince is a little bit on the fence.

Lots of streaming Netflix cartoons and, of course, Finding Nemo for the seventeen thousandth time. Also lots of 7-UP.

Vince needed more attention than Edda today – his fever hit 39.1 C and needed a bath to cool down. We moved a mattress into the living room so he could hang out with Edda and me and still be in bed.

Now that Vince has gone to bed, look who is taking advantage.

Happy Mother’s Day to all, especially to my own wonderful mommy who is not easily reached by phone today – I hope you had a nice day today. Thank you for raising me, it was not an easy job.

We had a wonderful weekend. Very relaxed and we puttered around the house doing many little household chores – like napping after a lunch of raviolis.

I taught Vince the manly art of making a running stitch.

I’m typing this post as I’m watching Nikki:A Girl Who has Rett Syndrome. I ask for this DVD for Xmas more than a year ago, but this is the first time I am watching this documentary. I guess I had to be in the right mindset to see this movies – a sort of detached type of mood.

Anyhow, today we went on a hike at Black Hill Regional Park. This was part of a Scouting program called Jamboree on the Trail where scouts all over the country go on a hike!

We prepped for the hike by going to McDonalds. Edda is eating and trying to fall asleep at the same time.

And off we go!

Very exciting day! Jeremy got to ride a school bus today! Vince’s class went to Brookside Garden – our local botanical garden. The kids have been studying the life cycle of butterflies and the gardens have a live butterfly exhibit going on. I had signed up to volunteer to chaperone, but I had to go into Alexandria for work today, so Jeremy pinch hit for me (which I really appreciate because he is terribly swamped at work).

There was only one other adult volunteer for Vince’s class, which kind of shocked me because at Edda’s school when I chaparoned on the farm trip, it seemed like there was an adult for every 4 kids. Based on that experience, I thought that I had volunteered for some sort of reasonable kid-management project. Alas, Jeremy spent the day wrangling 15 kids around the grounds. The weather was awesome, the kids had fun.

Because of this science unit pertaining to caterpillars, Vince has been collecting caterpillars from around the neighborhood and he brought one into the house last Saturday or Sunday. I asked him (maybe I pleaded) with him to release it into the wild as I was sure that it would die a slow painful death in the tupperware jar. He told me not to worry, that he knew how to take care of it and I shrugged and waited for the poor thing to die. On Tuesday, Vince showed me that he indeed knew what he was talking about as the caterpillar has been happy enough in the Tupperware container to settle down and make himself a fuzzy cocoon.

This past weekend, Jeremy took our new drill and put a new wooden gate on our outside deck. Now Edda can enjoy the deck without someone standing guard at the top of the stairs – which will be awesome for when we grill and want to keep the sliding glass door open. Although it now occurs to me that it’ll be kind of a pain for the kids who tromp up and down the stairs during the cookout and I’ll have to remind them a million times to shut the gate. Oh well. It is what it is. Maybe we’ll have to install a self-shutting mechanism. No matter! We revel in our wooden gate glory!

It’ll also be nice for Ruby because she can be left out sunning herself on the porch without disappearing. When she disappears from the deck, it’s usually because she wants to be let back in and for whatever reason, she leaves the deck and goes to the front door and waits for someone to let her in. This usually freaks out the person who let Ruby sun herself out on the back porch who ends up yelling “Ruby, Ruby!” all over the backyard before coming back into the the house and opening the front door for a “Ruby!” yell and she’s just sitting there – looking at you expectantly.

Last week Edda had back-to-back dental/orthodontic appointments. The dental appointment was a surprise – Edda’s spacer was falling out. She had the spacer put in when she lost a baby molar tooth when it abscessed about a year ago. The spacer is suppose to hold the space where the lost tooth is suppose to be so that it doesn’t slide closed during the 3-4 years we are going to need to wait for the adult molar to come in. The regluing took 5 minutes.

Then Edda and I went out to lunch at Whole Foods. We tried a bunch of stuff from the salad bar. Edda was having a blast and happily making a lot of noise. It was a lot of fun to have a girls only lunch. I was trying to shush her a little, not that I think it would have worked, but basically because I think it makes other people around me more comfortable if every 3 minutes I just say “Shhhhh!” so it seems like I’m trying to make her quieter. A Whole Foods employee walked past my while I was saying “Shhhhh”, and she said quite loudly, “That’s all right, you know, she can be as loud as she likes!” Very sweet.

My splurge these days is Greek yogurt.

Next: the orthodontist. I love my pediatric dentist who recommended the particular orthodontist. I was a little nervous going to the orthodontist. Edda has a terrible underbite and her front teeth are a little splayed, so I was a little worried that I’d be “convinced” to do a lot of orthodontia which would both be painful/uncomfortable for Edda and expensive for me. However, I fell in love with the orthodontist who said the perfect thing, which is that he knew that what I wanted for Edda are low risk / high benefit procedures and that although he could recommend starting to correct the underbite, that frankly as she is chewing and eating well, it would be not worth the effort and pain. It turns out, he has a nephew with Angelman’s, which meant that he has a familiarity with disabilities and has a now has an orthodontic practice which takes care of a lot of special needs patients. Hooray for folks who know and work with people with disabilities. So we are going back in a year just to keep an eye on Edda’s teeth..