Well, lookit that.

Yesterday the temperature rose above its six month average of 26 degrees and so the kids and I took a walk. Ezra ran down the sidewalk shouting, "I'm running outside! I'M FREE!" 

No, really. He did. 

Another sad marker of spring is that with the snowbanks melting, Christmas trees from December 26 are being revealed. People put them curbside to be collected after the holiday, lo, they have been buried ever since. It's kind of like Midwest archaeology, but with a fair amount of sadness. Oh! It's like Pompeii. Sub volcanic ash for snow.

So walking outside was nice. We also did a few house projects. I revamped our linen closet and donated ratty towels and sheets and whatnot. When we gave our accountant our 2013 tax documents, she marveled at the number of our Goodwill receipts. I was all, "Laura! You told me to keep them!" Those bags of pilled flannel sheets don't write-off themselves.

T's been doing projects like replacing our kitchen faucet and a broken doorknob and addressing the scariness that is our attic (stating here once again that I do not venture up there) and tidying his workbench area in the basement. Things we've just neglected for a long time. It feels good to be doing smallish projects around the house.

And despite suggesting ever so gently that he get cracking on things he himself has mentioned wanting to tackle (which, then, does that even qualify as hassle?), I tried to not hassle T too much. On Sunday he slept in and I took the kids out for breakfast. 

Oh! And on Saturday night I went out painting with some friends. My dad, who does legit fine art that hangs in galleries, was kind and maybe mentioned I don't quit my day job quite yet. Heh. Noted, Father.

Today

An unsavory someone was booted from the library for a host of reasons, but the last nail in his access-to-legal-research-materials coffin was making me uber uncomfortable first thing this AM.

Then there was a serious work meeting.

Then there was going to Verizon on my lunch and getting a new phone (yay!) but choosing to forego saving my photos to the damn cloud because it would have taken two hours and I didn't have two hours (boo!). I gotta stop being such a dunce and starting using the cloud. Effing cloud. So losing four months of photos makes me sadder than I thought it would. Shake it off.

Then I accidentally dumped my lemonade all over my coat, my dress, my bag and allllmost my new phone. I'm sticky and all of my bag's items are now spread out all over my desk drying out. 

I have cramps. And these always appear on day three like some sort monthly last ditch effort at uterus douchebaggery. You suck, uterus.

There are only two days left in the work week and my to-do list is nutso.

So yeah.

Numbers

This morning Iris was due to have a weight check and follow-up appointment at the feeding clinic. Folks, this appointment has been on our calendars for months (because, um, we scheduled it in December) and we'd been shooting for goals and things based on Wednesday, March 19. We slowly discontinued all of the purees in a careful, methodical manner! I purposefully haven't weighed her on our scale at home because I wanted one number from one scale! I avoided this even though I am fearful she lost weight! T is out of town, so I had to juggle my entire morning (Ezra's breakfast and school drop-off, making sure Iris ate her meal somewhere/somehow, fitting in a pediatrician appiontment for her lingering cough immediately after, then her school drop-off, then my work appearance) around this 8:45am appointment!

And then they cancelled.

The clinic no kidding called at 8:02am and while I don't usually answer the phone, I did. I was so angry--an anger born out of frustration and disappointment.

If she's lost weight, I'd like to know now.

My entire morning schedule got tossed up in the air.

Iris moving out of the early preschool room and into the other preschool room is something we've been discussing and waiting on since January because we've been waiting for this appointment to confirm or deny that she's okay without purees. We've asked for that classroom move to be put on hold because I'd prefer to not train another set of teachers on what to do or how to work with her meal time needs. The teachers and center director are being patient and kind, as they always have been with what Iris needs, and I appreciate this. It also, though, puts on hold other children moving from the Infant Room to the Toddler Room to the Early Preschool Room--it's a line of dominoes and we're kind of holding up the line. 

And so I responded rather curtly to the appointment cancellation.

After I took Ezra to school and was able to get out my calendar, I called back to reschedule. Two weeks. Fine. 



So Muffs and I hung out at Starbucks. I brought the rest of her breakfast--milk and blueberries and a yogurt squeeze-y pouch--and she ate while I drank coffee. She sat on my lap and watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I people watched.

Wiggle Kitty--called so because
the tail wiggles--came along.

It was good.

There was a visit to Target. And then the pediatrician, who was actually running ahead of schedule and so we chatted about lots of things. Iris did indeed some antibiotic, so I'm glad we went. 

And they also weighed her.

Turns out, according to their scale and their recorded weight for her from back in January, she has not lost weight. She's actually gained a tidgy bit. 

I still need further confirmation because I'm worried and kind of obsessed that we're doing the right things with her intake, but that helped set my mind a little bit at ease. Numbers don't really lie that much, right?

T refuses to go in my purse

It's true. He won't touch it. If I say, "Just grab that twenty out of my wallet." He will bring it upstairs and hand me the entire bag rather than just delve in himself. 

Anyway, I'm not keeping vipers inside of it. Just mah goods.

The bag itself is a Boden Crossbody Shopper I got earlier this fall. It's crazypants well made and has many pockets for stashing things. 

Inside:

(Apologies for the smokey haze aura all my photos seem to have. The outside surface to the lens has turned on me.)

• Mega planner and calendar and stasher of my life's details. It's this Martha Stewart one with this and this inside. The planner pages have time designations, I can see the entire week, make lists to the left and then two rows along the bottom let me indicate T's travel schedule + list what is planned for dinner. There are also extra lined sheets in the back for making notes. As for the pockets, I have one pocket for all of Ezra's school details (calendar, tuition, things I've volunteered for); one pocket for bills; one pocket for miscellaneous things like a letter from the landscaper, details on our museum membership, etc. I am anti-paper pile at home, so I either carry it with me in this planner, post it on the bulletin board at home, file it away for record keeping or toss it in the trash.
• Bill to mail
• Paper address book--I like to kick it old school
• Umbrella
• Orla Kiely pouch to hold personal grooming whatnot
• Coupon to Ulta that I ripped out of a mailer they sent me
• Aquaphor
• Hair brush 
• Car and house keys
• Kleenex
• Hand sanitizer spritzer thing

Inside the Orla Kiely pouch:

• Scope
• more hand sanitizer
• barrette
• Burt's Bees cuticle oil
• Essy cuticle oil (hey, this winter has tore up my hands)
• gum
• Burt's Bees pomegranate lip balm
• Smith's Rosebud Salve Balm in a Tube
• Maybelline Baby Lips which is perhaps the creepiest product name ever
• Bobbi Brown lipstick in Heather Pink
• Maybelline pressed powder
• oil blotting sheets from Target

Sometimes I feel like could carry lots more and sometimes much less. It depends on the day.

Fun in the faux wilderness--which is how I prefer it.

This weekend we took the small fries to a Great Wolf Lodge a few hours north. 

We left Saturday morning and I prided myself on keeping it mellow. Sometimes I get wound when traveling with the small people. T thanked me for keeping "the bobcat" at bay. I'm a peach.

We drove, the kids watched Wallace & Gromit in the car, we ate at a really manky Big Boy where I feared dirty food and then I remembered getting food poisoning at an expensive restaurant and cooled my jets. We arrived at the lodge around 2:00pm.

Iris sorted crayons at the
Possibly Dodgy Restaurant.

Ezra had high hopes for the buffet.

Lobby bears warrant the side-eye.

I packed all of our suits and t-shirts/cover ups and shoes in my car bag, so after we registered we just went right to the locker rooms and changed. 




The place was full and Ezra, being Cautious Carl, scoped it all out first. By Sunday, though, he was standing under the dumping bucket of 700 gallons of water (and proceeding to get his suit ripped clean off each time).

The Lazy River was where it was at and both Ezra and Iris loved a leisurely float.

T took Iris down a slide and, unfortunately, underestimated the depth at the bottom of the water slide and the grippy-ness of the textured floor underneath the water and scraped his knee down to the white business. Ezra and I had been floating in the Lazy River and couldn't find them, until we saw them stumble out of First Aid. We'd been there less than 30 minutes.

Iris loved the pool area designated to playing water basketball, but holding her in the deep water was a lot like trying to hold onto this: 




My lands it made me happy she's in swimming lessons. She's just a spaz from excitement. T didn't believe me when I told him, and then he took her himself and I laughed from the side. 

After swimming the entire afternoon, we shuffled back to the room--you can arrive early for swimming, register and receive your room keys, then the front desk will call your cell phone when your room number is ready--and changed for a late dinner. 

Their first exposure to watching
Gilligan's Island. Neither
knew what to make of it.

The food at the in-house restaurant was so-so/not good, but I mostly didn't give a rat's can because I didn't have to: a) plan it or b) cook it. We considered leaving the property and going out, but it was pretty nice to not have to bundle up and leave. 

After dinner we went to the gift shop and Iris picked out a tiny stuffed chick that cheeps and Ezra picked out a flashing, strobe-like necklace with a giant wolf paw hanging from it. It's subtle.

Despite skipping a nap, Iris was pretty darn peppy so we went down to the arcade. It was obnoxious as most arcades are, but the games were pretty cheap. I think I put ten dollars on an arcade card and each kid played five or six games. 

Do not hire Ezra as a chauffer.

Then we shuffled to the ice cream parlor (because why the hell not) and T and Ezra got a mini scoop of ice cream, Iris nothing (she's not a fan of ice cream) and I got a caramel apple to later eat in the dark while the kids slept. 

Once back in the room and in pajamas, I said a quick prayer for something resembling a quiet night. Ezra slept in the top bunk of the Wolf Den, Iris in the bottom and they both passed out relatively quickly. T and I sat in the dark and watched movies on the iPad and Kindle Fire. We also ate snacks in the dark. 

The rest of the night was kind of crappy. I, for the life of me, could not fall asleep. The mattress was cruddy (why don't hotels EVER ROTATE their mattresses?!). Iris was restless. Ezra had to use the restroom at 1:00am and then asked to sleep closer to us (thank the Lord I brought the kids' blow up mattress as back-up), but then was also randomly awake for an additional hour. And coughing. T finally came to bed but once I fell asleep, he kneed me in the ass and woke me up because a queen size bed is ridiculous and small and can never happen again. And then both kids woke up at 6:30am. Yay.

We hung out in bed and then put our suits and cover-ups on to go down to breakfast. Breakfast was slightly better than dinner the night before (it's hard to gink up morning foods...), but T and I were a tick edgy due to lack of sleep. Good times.

We decided to swim for a few hours before taking showers and leaving for lunch and home and that was the best decision ever. We didn't have to pack up our things while snappy and tired first thing in the morning. We didn't have to worry about stashing things in a locker after check-out. We could shower after swimming in the morning and before driving home. It all just felt more leisurely. 

The kids conked out INSTANTLY in the car and Iris slept the entire ride home and Ezra for about an hour. I read Real Simple and stared out the window.

And so here's the thing about traveling: it is easier now. For one, I didn't have to pack up six meals of purees for Iris. Also, one doesn't nap, and one can clearly skip a nap with losing her everloving mind. Ezra can mostly swim and is freakishly tall, so he could touch in most of the pools. I've accepted our fate that hotel sleep is an absolute lie. Ezra and Iris were so darn happy and excited. It was worth it. 

Random useless tidbits

Last weekend, while I was on a coffee run and Ezra was with me, Ezra saw the Starbucks gift cards and said, "Hey! Grammie loves coffee! Let's get her one!" So we did.

When we got home I told him that he should probably make a card to go with the coffee gift card and so he sat in the playroom at his desk and wrote out a card. He sounded out the words he wanted to communicate and wrote them down. 

I mailed it to my mom and she called last night to say that it made her day. Ezra beamed.

His heart is so kind.

****

Some home things have been up in the air since October, then they died down, then they rose up again in January and we've in a type of flux since then.

And, oh, how I hate when other individuals allude to such internal things as it seems a cry for attention or questions or heightened tension building. This is none of those things.

I'm just not free to talk about it, but really want to and so these few sentences help out a little bit.




P.S. I'm not pregnant.

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Do you need a new dress? Then let me recommend this one.

Perfect for work.

Perfect in summer (bare legs, sandals) or winter (tights, cardi). 

It's fully lined. And while the pleats seem suspicious in the picture below, they actually lie quite flat and do not poof up making you look like you just hit a spaghetti dinner at church.

You can order it online and return it to the store if you think it's poop. I ordered the gray and black. 




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The fam and I are heading up to the Great Wolf Lodge this weekend. And while the idea of stuffing my very pasty winter can in a swimsuit is less than ideal, I'm quite jazzed to get away and do some swimming. 

I started packing last night while T was giving the kids a bath, and when he saw what was layed out in the office he groaned and said, "Are you kidding me?" Weasel.

Listen, there is: the bag of books and activities to sit between the kids for the car ride (two and a half hours); the bag of snacks I bought for us to have in the hotel room and also while swimming and hanging out; my one bag that holds my Kindle Fire, magazines as well as everyone's swim suits, flips flops and t-shirts/coverups; and then there's the one suitcase for all of us to put our jammies and clothes and the kids' blankies in. That doesn't seem excessive to me, like, at all.

Also, for reference sake, let us recall that T is the man that went to New Orleans with me when we were dating and while there then had to buy: a) shorts and b) undies. Let us not trust his frame of reference for what should or should not be packed. Fool.

****

Iris has a three month weight check at the feeding clinic next Wednesday. She feels thinner to me--shoulder blades, spine--and combining that with her having a week where she's not so interested in food, has me fretting.

It's been four and a half years of worrying about her weight. Will I ever stop?

****

This morning we were all running late and then suddenly the kids were wrestling on the bed and then T joined in and I was running around in my robe not caring.

Fridays.

You gotta have a plan

I love T an awful lot. He is very often ridiculous and maddening and doesn't know the correct words to songs so he makes up lines that make ze-ro sense, but he's kind and jolly and takes good care of me and I'm glad he chose me to spend his life with.

However.

If something were to happen to him, I have a list of back-up "spouses" I would marry. These are things I love so much that holy crap on a cracker, I know they would love me back. Most are inanimate objects because, let's be honest, I'm not sure that any actual human being would be able to handle my brand of Nutjob like T is legally bound to handling.

The list:

1. My king sized bed
2. Bacon
3. Cream of mushroom soup with port wine from my favorite deli
4. Cherry Pepsi
5. Dill havarti
6. The cut-up fruit all ready to eat that you can find at resorts or slightly dodgy buffets.
7. A new calendar/planner
8. Jazzy iPhone cases
9. A fresh manicure
10. A quiet Target first thing in the morning
11. Cream cheese frosting
12. Pants that aren't squeezy
13. Crescent rolls
14. Corn dogs
15. Spring days that are a perfect 72 degrees

So yeah. That's who I'm looking to hook up with.

Through the lips, over the tongue, look out stomach, here it comes.

Two years ago today Iris was 100% tube fed and starting her first day at the feeding clinic.

She had been doing outpatient speech/feeding therapy since she first came home in June 2010, but by March 2012 still was not taking anything of nutritional value by mouth. Nothing. 

Months on the oscillating ventilator in the NICU; months of a feeding tube through her mouth and nose; a major heart repair that took her lungs and heart months to recalibrate from--through all of this, eating by mouth was not a priority (keeping her alive was) and it all contributed to aversions and lack of just simply knowing what to do with her mouth. Her tongue was uncoordinated. Her cheeks were tight. Her mouth did not know what to do with food. Crumbs would make her cough and gag. A sip of water would have her choking.

So as her body healed, the focus was on her gaining weight and growing. Operation Fattened Calf.

It was successful.

Enter the intensive feeding clinic. One of only a dozen in the United States and based out our children's hospital here, Iris made it off the year long waiting list and started in March 2012.

Within fours weeks, she was taking everything she needed by mouth. She wasn't chewing, mind you, but she was swallowing safely. 

In October of 2012 she had her g-tube surgically removed because she hadn't used it in about six months and had continued to gain weight nor had any setbacks.

In February of 2013 we went back to the feeding clinic for outpatient therapy to help Iris learn how to use her tongue and lips and cheeks for chewing. By that June she was eating some table foods as practice. In December, after painstaking advances forward, she was no longer eating pureed fruits or vegetables. Today, in March 2014, she is no longer eating any pureed foods at all.  

None.

This means so many things for our family and, more importantly, for Iris. 

It means she eats what her peers are eating at breakfast, lunch and snack at school. It means I don't spend hours on the weekend preparing her food. It means that each night we're not weighing grams and portioning her food for school the next day. It means that when we go to restaurants, that I'm not carrying pureed meatloaf in my purse for her to eat while we all order from the menu. It means she is self-feeding (she did some self-feeding of the purees but that tapered off--we, and her therapists, think was due to boredom) and loving food.

Iris loves chicken wings, broccolli, french fries, avocados, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, pizza, spaghetti, pancakes, waffles, bacon, pears, cooked carrots, green beans, pizza, pot pies, cucumbers, veggie dip, chocolate cream pie, lo mein, veggies straws, dried cherries, a Costco churro, raviolis, fish sticks, lettuce, ham, turkey. 

If she doesn't eat much at breakfast, we see her eat more at a different meals. And some meals she doesn't eat much at in a row, but then is ravenous the next week.

When we left the intensive feeding clinic and then the outpatient therapies, I got a bit weepy with her therapists. "You taught my daughter how to eat," I wrote in the cards. Ach, I'm getting teary now.

Eating. Walking. Running. These are not small things to teach, and they are all things we--I--take for granted regularly. I try not to, I try to appreciate every single piece of the puzzle that got Iris to being able to have a plate of food in front of her, but taking it for granted might mean that it's no longer a Thing. 

And that is a blessing.

Random useless tidbits

I watched the Oscars with my gals on Sunday night and it was, of course, laden with laughing like Muttley and being inappropriate. 

Contrary to popular list making, we actually discussed who we would NOT sleep with--even if many dollars were on the line. Mine was Charlie Sheen (obvs). One of us pointed out he "has ALL the Heps."





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I just signed Iris up for some private swimming lessons with one of her former daycare teachers (Toddler Room represent!) who is also a swim instructor/lifeguard at the same center.

Homegirl loves the water but keeping her mouth closed and/or not sinking like a rock are skills she's yet to master, so hopefully Mr. Brad can help her out.

It's awesome because her teachers will get her suited up, he'll pick up her and walk her down to the pool, and then return her to the room 30 minutes later. Ole!

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I am wearing an outfit that is not quite right. I think the dress is a tidgy big and maybe isn't right with tights. It's not heinous, but it's...off.

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I am wearing my new glasses today and rather like them. Uncomfortable glasses and contacts blow and last time I picked glasses out, I chose poorly. These are better.

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Sometimes things turn so ridiculous at work I struggle to accept that I work with: a) adults and b) professionals.



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What's happening with you?