Piano

Allison and Jacob's piano teacher has a cup with the Suzuki songs written on slips of paper.  Allison likes to pull the song titles out of the cup and play them in "random" order.  We've created a similar cup at home, and it has gotten Allison excited about practicing.  Well, excited Monday-Wednesdays - she insists she doesn't have to practice Friday or weekends.

Jacob practices every day, mostly without being told.  He likes to master the songs, make up his own songs, gets upset if you correct him, but manages to learn at least one hand's part to one full song per week.

At first, I wasn't too happy that Jacob was on the "waiting list" for almost a year before starting lessons.  Allison started in first grade, Jacob in second grade.  This puts Allison at a three year head start.  That being said, Jacob is going to pass Allison more quickly than I anticipated.  For example, Allison began putting together the right and left hands of the song "Cuckoo" about 2 years into lessons.  Jacob is almost ready to learn that after 7 months.  Even now, she hasn't totally mastered Cuckoo, and since then has learned two more "together songs" - for a total of 6.  Jacob knows three of the six already. 

One reason is probably that he's been hearing the songs for several years, so they are familiar already.  Also, as mentioned before, he practices twice as much.  Another reason is that as Allison's songs have gotten harder, it's taken her longer to move on (and we've also added sight reading, which is harder for her than we thought). 

So, I'm plotting ways to get the kids in different books, or on different series, so they can't compete with one another quite as obviously.  Jacob seems to be pretty good at the piano, but it's the one thing we've managed to get Allison to "stick with" even though she's learning slowly and frequently (very, very frequently) grumps about it.

Coffee anyone?

So, it was an interesting week.  I won't recount the whole thing because I have a general aversion to all things regarding the inner workings of the human body.  So, I'll summarize with this: two trips to the ER last weekend (me), resulting in admission, surgery, two fewer ovarian cysts and one less ovary.  No worries, they were all benign.  In hindsight, I should have had them cut the cord on the remaining ovary and solved any future birth control issues while they were in there.... I guess that was a missed opportunity.

But the point here is that I was forced into unplanned caffeine withdrawl.  Luckily, tylenol administered directly into one's veins is moderately effective in the pounding headache department.  However, now I'm faced with a quandry.... to begin again, or not?  After 5 days with no coffee, coke, or black tea, I have to ask if I want to restart the habit.  And I don't really know.  I did have two baby cups on Thursday and Friday, and a full cup this morning - so maybe that question really is already answered.

I enjoy taking a mug of coffee with me to school each day.  I can sip it in the morning (rather than being tempted to snack), it wakes me up, keeps me away from the tooth-dissolving sodas, and I love the smell.  However, it stains teeth, gives pounding headaches when you skip it for a day, and possibly disrupts my sleep.  Ack.

Maybe with Brian's new tea's I can switch over to that.  Or maybe I can limit to a small cup a day (which is supposed to be good for you, right?).  Or maybe I should just use this as an opportunity to go without for a month and then decide (once the habit is fully broken).  Choices, choices. 

(Also, thanks to my friend Leslie who was a great emergency kid-watcher, and Bruce and Sue who were great emergency visitors/cleaners/laundry doers/drivers).

O Christmas Tree

 There once was a prelit Christmas tree.  Loved and decorated.  Some of the lights didn't work, so the tree was given a good shake, and most of the lights came back on (minus a strand on the bottom).  After much soul-searching (ok - not much), it was decided to retire the Christmas tree.  And when I say retire - I mean:

 completely and totally disassembled.

From the ashes and spare parts of the tree grew: four working strands of lights, a nifty light extension cord, two metal pole weapons which must be hidden/thrown out before the kids find them and...

 

one prelit baby tree for the kids to decorate next year, and one...

new door wreath.

Plus, wreath supplies for my friend and helper Leslie and a bin of garland to be re-purposed next year.

The Land of Teeth

I cannot wait for Jacob to lose that silly front tooth.  Every night: I'm going to lose the tooth tonight.  Want us to pull it?  No. 

I could go on, but this post is about Allison and my wish that SHE would lose those silly teeth.  So more could come in.  So that we could spend less money fixing teeth.  And spare her some discomfort too.

Allison needs to have 5 baby teeth pulled.  She will also have to have 4-8 permanent teeth pulled, but that's a roadblock for another day.  She needs to grow them before we yank 'em out.  But we've been waiting patiently (somewhat) for the 6 year molars to come in (almost there!!) so that they can make room for all the other teeth.

So, she's scheduled for minor surgery on March 1st.  They plan to knock her out because of her general intolerance for any sort of goings on in her mouth - dental-wise.  I can't quite figure out the undersensitivity when it comes to eating but oversensitivity when it comes to dentists - another post for another time.  While they have her out under general anesthesia they are also going to fill a couple cavities (again in baby teeth, but given the rate she loses them, these molars might be around for 10 more years). 

After approval from the insurance company (because surgery would be a health issue - though thankfully they said yes), and scheduling with the dentist (shall we say "two available dates" before the insurance fairy renegues our cost-covering blessing), the next call was to Brian because I'm fairly certain I'm not the one to accompany a child to surgery.  Yikes.  But I think overall it should be OK. 

I wish, at times, that her journey didn't include quite so many specialists, therapy hours, and accommodations.  Sometimes, I want to go to a checkup with no questions or concerns or stacks of paperwork.  Maybe I should schedule an appointment with a doctor or dentist just for that purpose.  :)  But, I realize it could be worse, and for that I'm grateful too. 

Holidays, Holidays

Somewhere, I have pictures from Christmas.... other than those that I took with the awesome new camera I got for Christmas (and therefore are mostly after Christmas).  So, I'll find those sometime, post them, and write about Christmas.  It'll be a wonderful post.

Sometime, I'll write about 125 page tenure dossiers, cancelled winterim classes, anemic activity reports, and the fact that my salary was published on the newspaper's website.  Maybe after a few bottles of wine, which I could clearly afford more of if I worked for the technical college system teaching truck driving.

Somehow, we made it through a late night New Year's Eve party with our children and - even more amazingly - people later stopped me in the hallway to say how nice and well-behaved our children were.  This was clearly linked to the very serious directive I gave them that went something like "you guys don't usually get invited to the adult's party - so you'd better be on your best behavior or else."  Without the Santa's naughty/nice list to lord over them, I'm surprised they listened to me.  I've probably gone and used the annual "Ok, I guess I'll listen to mom" instance, and I used it on the first day of the year.

Ah, but it's time for me to go be an honorary "Whoever is Playing the Packers" fan - in this case, the Vikings.  Because last week, I actually rooted for the Packers, and they sucked.  So, that was a bust and won't happen again. 

Trip to Madison

Yesterday was Allison's 6-month check-in with the endocrinologist (wow - first time I spelled that correctly without spell-check) in Madison.  She briefly begged me to reschedule because it was pajama day at school (as if I knew that when making the appointment in JUNE). 

She continues to grow, albeit slowly.  Things they look for - BMI over 10th percentile (check), weight up (check - closing in of 50 lbs!), height up (check), growth velocity on par with the "late-bloomer" trendline (almost check).  She didn't grow as fast in the second half of the year as she did in the first.  She's still growing about 1 and a half inches per year. 

In the next few years, even if she continues to grow, her percentile will drop because her peers will hit puberty and shoot up.  We are going to stay in watch and wait mode for another 6 months (when they may repeat the bloodwork and x-rays).

Lots of fire!

 I already posted about Allison's birthday party.  On her birthday - we took cookies to school.  She wanted cookies, not the "healthy snack" options that the school recommends.  "Everybody else brings cookies, mom!" so cookies it was.  And then we made a ton of them because they were small (pillsbury take-n-bake being the only cookies I could find, other than oreos, that aren't processed on equipment that also processes nuts) and there are 34 kids in her class.  Ack.

For her birthday dinner, she shockingly chose the Japanese hibachi grill.  Onion volcano:

 She ate very well!!  Grandpa Jim and Grandma Darleen were visiting, so they enjoyed the meal along with us (and this odd group of three people who shared our hibachi table).  I spent most of the night trying to figure out their exact relationship and several minutes near the end convincing their 3-yr old that stabbing at the koi in the little tank with a fork (borrowed and then replaced from the adjoining table) wasn't a good plan.

Then it was home for cake and presents!  Allison enjoyed all her birthday gifts - dresses, caramel apples, a suitcase, a puzzle, and a button factory.

Happy birthday to the girl who is now in double digits!  That's a lot of candles!