Smarty Pants

Yesterday I had my first visit at the regular OB's office. They did an ultrasound. Baby looks great - it is most definitely a thumb sucker. After that the tech asked me for a urine sample. You'll never guess what they did with it... A pregnancy test! It came back positive, thank GOD, because if it hadn't I would really be concerned about the THING growing in my belly.

I told Alice about this and she thought it was hilarious. Then she became very sober and said, "You know, Mom, maybe you should go to a different doctor. I don't think this one is very smart."

For what it's worth, I didn't actually see a doctor this time. It was an orientation appointment that normally takes place at 6 or 7 weeks. I will see the OB for the first time next week for my 12 week appointment. I will be 14 weeks....

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A few weeks ago Alice was lamenting that she was frustrated because she hadn't met her reading speed goal on a computer program at school. We asked her how many words per minute she was reading. 178. The goal was 212. This seemed crazy to us, so Tim looked up some statistics.

The average 2nd grader is reading 90 words per minute at the END of 2nd grade when tested on 2nd grade level material.

Average 5th graders read 130 words per minute at the end of 5th grade.

Adults read between 200 - 300 words per minute.

Alice was very excited to tell me that she met her speed goal today. She is now reading 214 words per minute on above level reading material.

Wow. Just wow.

Me: Ugh. I feel sick...

Alice: Did you take a Secretariat? You should really take a Secretariat. Or maybe 1/2 a Secretariat.

(I'm taking zofran and phenergan for nausea. They are definitely not horse pills...)

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Me: Did you know the baby is getting fingerprints this week?

A: Really? Wow..... What if it doesn't get fingerprints?

Me: Um. I guess it wouldn't be able to pick things up very easily.

A: Well, Daddy has arches on his fingerprints but you and I have whorls on ours. I wonder what Speck of Dust will have..... What if it has ALIEN fingerprints?!?!

Me: (trying to figure out how the heck she knows what kinds of fingerprints we all have) Huh?

A: You know, aliens??? Like, from outer space??? I'm going to be really mad if Speck of Dust has alien fingerprints.

Me: okay... Why?

A: (looking at me like I'm an idiot) Because I want alien fingerprints.

Exhibit night!

Earlier this month, Alice's school had its first "Exhibit Night." The school is the arts magnet elementary school for the county (as well as housing the honors program). They do all sorts of neat things. There is an actual dance studio, multiple rooms for music, and art has a main classroom and second classroom with a kiln. At exhibit night, the whole school was transformed into an art gallery. It was really neat to see all the student work.


A student-made mural of ceramic tiles


2nd grade ceramics - Alice's is the yellow and brown cup in the center.

This map is in the hall near Alice's homeroom. It is HUGE!




Art by the other 2nd grade classes:


Alice's class did an extensive unit on Japan. They went to a museum to see Japanese artifacts, learned how to play "rock, paper, scissors" in Japanese, and had a visitor come talk to them about Japanese culture. All this was in addition to the more typical types of learning that go on in a classroom!
They learned how to write their names in Japanese:

They also each learned to write another word and created a picture around it. Alice's word was "school":


Next we went to see the instrumental music teacher. He is AMAZING. He had all kinds of instruments laid out all over the classroom for kids to play. Everything was very hands-on. His room was loud and chaotic in a good way. Everyone who walked into his room that night left having learned something new - myself included.

A piano Mr. Reynolds took apart so the kids can see how it works.


Demonstrating sound waves and vibration with a ping pong ball dancing on a speaker.

We also got to meet some of Alice's new friends.

Jesus Mummy

Me: "How was Sunday School?"

Alice: "Great! We learned all about when Jesus died! He died on a cross and then, after, they prepared his body. They took out his organs and put them in jars and then they got a hook and took out his brain through his nose!"

Me: (long pause) "Did they tell you that in Sunday School?"

Alice: "Yeah! They really did that, Mom! Remember? We read it in that book."

Me: (the lightbulb coming on) "Alice, Jesus wasn't a mummy. They didn't take out his organs or his brain. You're thinking about the ancient Egyptians."

Alice: (greatly disappointed) "Oh."

Me: "Also, this is probably another one of those things you shouldn't talk about at school. I mean, you can talk about mummies and you can talk about Jesus, but you probably shouldn't talk about Jesus being a mummy...."

Alice: "Why?"

Me: (weighing the pros and cons of trying to explain the dark side of Southern religious culture -again- and deciding against it.) "Well, because it's just not true and you might confuse some people."

Alice: "Oh. Okay. But can I just pretend that Jesus was a mummy, you know, by myself?"

Me: "Absolutely."

This led to another very interesting conversation about what she plans to do with my body when I die. No cremation for me, apparently!

Note to self: next year we should not study ancient cultures during Lent.

Afterschooling - March 31

We have been agonizing over what to do next year for school. (I know - this is a dramatic way to put things, but its true.) 2nd grade is 2nd grade. I know that. My biggest concern is that sitting in a classroom day after day without sufficient challenge will start to erode the love of learning that Alice currently has.

We looked into private schools. There was one that was a good fit, but it was too expensive. Homeschooling is a possibility, but no one's first choice. Alice is in the running for the magnet school honor's program lottery - but there aren't many seats available.

A few days ago I discovered that Tennessee treats "intellectually gifted" as a subgroup under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). (Tennessee is the only state that does this. Suddenly I like living here a whole lot more...) This means that we can request an IEP (individualized education plan) solely because Alice is gifted! This could be a game-changer for us. An IEP is legally binding - the school would be required to make accommodations. Alice has already been identified as "intellectually gifted" by the district's own test.

Tim and I are planning to meet with the school sometime soon.

Anyhow, finding that out has been so exciting to me, I had to share.

Here is what we're working on with afterschooling this month:

Science: Plants - what do plants need to grow? Sprouting seeds. (Lima beans in wet paper towels, etc.) Different parts of the flower. Bees and pollination.

This is Alice's request. They are sprouting lima beans at school. She wanted to do the same thing at home, but made her request while I was in the middle of cooking dinner. I told her she needed to wait, but she could draw out the experiment if she wanted to. She stormed off to her room. A few minutes later I heard her reading a book about plants to her dolls. This is another great thing about afterschooling - you can take the curriculum that is being covered in school and explore it much further.

We will also probably start something with elements and the periodic table. She keeps asking me questions about it and is not satisfied with, "I don't know. We'll have to look that up later."

Math: Hammering addition and subtraction facts (always), telling time, counting money. (also supplementing school) I have a kid's clock kit with gears that I've been holding back since summer. That will probably come out this month as a daddy-daughter project.

Language Arts: Synonyms and Antonyms (school supplementation), letter writing.

History / read aloud: Little House in the Big Woods

Superbowl

We watched the entire Superbowl this past Sunday for the very first time. Alice insisted on it. Since Uncle Ron and Aunt Bonnie visited in early January, she has been all about the Packers. Of course, she was calling them the Blue Bay Packers because she had just read a book called The Mystery of Blue Bay...

I asked her why she was so excited about the Packers and she said, "Steelers steal things. Besides, I'm a cheesehead! Except my head isn't really made out of cheese. That would be weird."

We let her watch until half time. She was really into it - she especially liked the "female" players with long hair. She was elated Monday morning when I told her that "her" team had won. And then she was disappointed when I told her that was it for football until the fall.

Ah well, there's always hockey.

What Doesn't Kill You - Part 1

January was a spectacular month for us, and not in a good way. I've gone back and forth about whether I wanted to write about everything that has happened. Miscarriage, for whatever reason, is not something people talk about. If it makes you squeamish you might want to skip out on this.

Right after Thanksgiving I found out I was pregnant. (don't get excited.) As I've shared before, I don't "do" pregnancy well. Actually, that is a gross understatement. Without serious ongoing medical intervention, there is very little chance that I will ever carry a pregnancy past the first trimester. Alice was (is) a miracle.

In the month of December, I saw my doctor 10 times. I had so much lab work done that my one decent vein went on strike. Every day I injected myself with an anticoagulant. When I woke up in the morning I prayed for strength and grace to get through the day and when I went to bed at night I thanked God for another day spent pregnant.

In 30 days I had 3 ultrasounds. The first two left us hopeful; the last, devastated. On New Year's Eve, while people were making merry and counting down to midnight, I was sleeping off the good drugs the anaesthesiologist gave me and wondering what the hell went wrong.

We were shocked and grieving. This is my first miscarriage with my current doctor, but it is officially my 4th. He had started to give me the usual speech about grieving, then paused and said, "Unfortunately you are an expert at this." Indeed.

This is by far the worst loss we've been through. I always thought that having an ultrasound and not seeing anything was the worst thing in the world (at least in the baby-making world). I was wrong. Watching your babies heart flutter at one appointment only to see complete stillness at the next is a pain that is indescribable.

In the days that followed, Tim and I had very little patience for poor Alice. A few days after my surgery I was feeling pretty good physically, so we decided to visit friends in Nashville. They have three busy children and we felt the change of scenery would do all of us good.

A few days into our visit, Alice got sick. She started throwing up and couldn't stop. All day, and all the way home from Nashville my poor girl couldn't keep anything down.

We got back into town and Tim suggested that maybe we should bypass home and take her straight to the ER. From the back seat Alice yelled, "I'm STARVING!!!! Can we please go to the Mexican restaurant and THEN go to the hospital? I want an enchilada."

Surely a child who is requesting enchiladas can't be that sick, right?

Wrong.

Pleasant Purple

So, things are going well at Wondergirl's school. About a month ago she won the Good Citizen award for her class. It was a big deal and involved walking across the stage in front of the whole school to get a certificate, ribbon and pencil from the principal. Wondergirl's class operates on a color system for behavior. Every day the kids start out on "Pleasant Purple." Then, if they make bad choices, they move to Oops Orange, Yucky Yellow, and, finally, Ghastly Green. (It's not really ghastly green, it's some other "g" adjective that I can never remember. We call it ghastly green here.) When a child lands on Ghastly Green, their parents are called. Kids can also move up to Beautiful Blue if they do something exceptionally good.

Most of WG's class winds up in the orange to yellow range by the end of the day with several hitting the dreaded green. Her teacher has her hands full. The class is rowdy, and it is also her first.

WG is coming up on 50 consecutive days of being pleasantly purple. Tim and I think that's a pretty big deal, so I think she will be getting some sort of surprise reward when we visit Granny Julie and Friend John for Thanksgiving.

Happy Halloween!

Jumpy Balls

We have been on pantry probation for a little over a week. I was trying my best to make meals from what we have around. I've done a pretty good job with it and have found some things along the way that I'd forgotten I had. The 5 pound bag of frozen cranberries, for instance.

Wondergirl loves cranberries. She always has. When she was in speech therapy, her therapist encouraged us to talk to her constantly. I did. Not being one to baby talk, I explained things to her. One of those things being how cranberry farmers separate the bad cranberries from the good. Cranberries bounce like little balls when they are fresh. The bad ones won't, so somewhere I read that the bounce test is how you easily separate the good cranberries from the bad. I thought bouncing fruit was fascinating, and apparently Wondergirl did too because a year later, at age 3, she confounded me one day by asking me to buy "jumpy balls" while we were in the fruit section. (which shows you that pre-verbal does NOT mean pre-comprehension!) I had no idea what she was talking about. After a lot of frustration I figured it out. And I bought a bag of jumpy balls. Which she ate, raw, in about two days. The thought of eating raw cranberries makes my face hurt a little bit, but WG is all over them. She just ate some this afternoon, in fact. I'm sticking to muffins.

Better

This morning marked 24 hours without a fever, so I am officially un-contagious. I celebrated by going to the grocery store. You know things are desperate when you wonder if mixing jello and applesauce is a good idea and start looking at sweetened condensed milk as a viable alternative for the real thing. Still feeling under the weather and moving slower than usual. I have much more energy now than I did yesterday though. I even cut WG's Halloween Costume out tonight. It was a kind of now or never situation and the pink sequined dinosaur costume she's worn for two years has been promised to another little girl... WG is going to be a bird this year. A pink bird with lots and lots of feathers. Maybe a crown, too. I'll post pics when I get it sewn up.

Oink

Yup, we've got the dreaded H1N1. Actually, Wondergirl has the dreaded H1N1. Tim and I just aren't feeling great. All three of us are taking Tamiflu, which a wonderful wonderful drug. Really. The exhaustion with this, even with the Tamiflu, is incredible. WG described it as feeling wobbly. That's a pretty good description. We're all slow and taking lots of naps, but I imagine we'd all be in bed all day if it weren't for the Tamiflu.

So, lots of TV and quiet crafts for Wondergirl. Here she is making yarn pom poms. I used to make pom poms all the time at Grandma G's house and I'm tickled that Wondergirl is enjoying them too.

Tim's Revenge

Wondergirl is constantly asking questions that I have no answer for like, "If God drove a car, what kind would it be? Would it be a rental car?" or, "You don't work when you get dead, so what do you do all day?" or, "We can't see God, so does that make him an imaginary friend?" More often than not I take the easy way out and tell her that would be an excellent question to ask her father. I justify it by telling myself that Tim is the family expert in all things philosophical since he has a degree in ministry, even though he has never really used it.

Last week, Tim got revenge. Wondergirl and I were in the car when she said, "Mom, how EXACTLY do babies get out of your body? I asked Dad and he told me to ask you." Touche, Tim, touche. I suppose I am the family expert on childbirth.

So I explained the basic mechanics of childbirth. When I was done I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see WG looking at me, horrified. She asked me if I was joking. I assured her I was as serious as could be and then, thinking maybe it would make her feel better, I told her about C-sections. Bad move. WG started shrieking that she didn't want to hear anymore. Then she started sobbing that she was NEVER EVER EVER going to have babies but she was really sad because she wanted to have a husband someday and when you have a husband, you HAVE to have babies. (from what I could gather, this was information she picked up on the playground. Oy.) I explained to her that simply was not true and then gave her some examples of couples we know who don't have children.

Then she said, "But how do you not have a baby when you have a husband?"

I told her I would tell her when she's 10.

Kindergarten Update

I have been lax in my Wondergirl updates lately. School has started, the symphony season has started, and I've just been lazy. I apologise.

School is going well. WG adores her teacher. After a little bit of a rough start Tim and I like this teacher, too. The school as a whole we're luke-warm about. They just have some strange rules. If kids get there before the first bell in the morning they have to sit in lines in the gym. They aren't allowed to talk and they have to listen to classical music. Which isn't bad in itself, but they always have the slowest, saddest classical music playing. Maybe they are trying to depress them into docile behavior or bore them into submission. I like classical music (obviously) and even I wouldn't choose to listen to the stuff they play every morning.

They also have the 5th grade safety patrol directing traffic in the parking lot for Kindergarten pick-up. There is a reason why kids have to be 16 to get a drivers license. It's called judgement. It is my opinion that 5th graders do not have sufficient judgement to direct traffic in the parking lot, so I park across the street and walk to pick WG up. I did the car line once. It was enough.

But Wondergirl is getting along well. She has friends. She seems to like the work except for math. She doesn't like math because right now they are working on sorting things and they have to cross off pictures that don't match. She always likes the picture that is different the best and gets mad that she has to cross it out. Today she had to turn in homework that consisted of a big letter A filled with pictures of A words. The kids were supposed to cut pictures out of magazines. We only had seed catalogs. WG cut out all the pictures of flowers whose formal names started with A. Somehow I don't think this is what the teacher had in mind... The kids have to present their letters today, so the whole class will get a horticulture lesson.

I Blinked

What You've All Been Waiting For...

I'll save the vacation recap for later. I know y'all are much more interested in seeing pics of Miss M and WG.

Wondergirl -vs- The Garden

Remember this?


That was taken last summer when WG ventured into the "jungle" at the back of our yard, picked some poison ivy and smeared it all over her face.

I took these today:



No, it's not poison ivy. She learned that lesson. (And, can I say that I cannot believe how much more grown up WG looks compared to last summer?!?!)

WG and the neighbor girls often play together through the fence. I thought things had been peaceful for too long and when I glanced out the window I saw elder neighbor girl slamming a cucumber over and over into the fence. WG and the elder neighbor child decided it would be a good idea to make slop stew in WG's wagon. WG picked 1/2 our garden, including every single one of our peppers, and both girls smashed it all up in her wagon.

Needless to say that was the end of playing outside for WG that day. She came in, sobbing. She was in her room and all of a sudden started screaming that her face hurt. All of our peppers were hot peppers. Even the bell peppers cross bred with something and became mutant gigantic hot peppers. She must have had pepper juice on her hands because she BURNED her face. It is actually a lot better now. Right after it happened on Monday her entire eye was purplish red and puffy.

Next summer we will laugh about this. Maybe.

Lost in Translation

A few weeks back I mixed up some sprite and orange juice and gave it to WG. She was suspicious. I told her it was a kiddy cocktail. She tried it and loved it. Today we went to McDonald's for lunch. I mixed up some sprite with orange drink for her. WG's face lit up and she said, "Thanks for making me a cocktail, Mom!" I parked her at the table and went back for some ketchup. There were a few older women sitting at the next table and when I got back, WG was telling them all about how I make her cocktails and how they are her most favorite things to drink. I explained what she was talking about but I don't think they bought it.

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WG loves flowers. Gardening is definitely her thing. When she sees a flower that she doesn't recognize she asks what it is. Her violin teacher has peonies lining her driveway. WG was impressed by them and asked me what they were. I told her they were peonies. She told me she thought pennies were money. I repeated, "No, not pennies, PEE-oh-knees." "Yeah, that's what I said! Pennies!" Then it hit me. She was translating from the Southern accent. When people say "pennies" here it comes out "peonies." Now we call those flowers pennies.

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The lyrics: "The house is a-rockin! Go, go rock it!"

WG's interpretation: "The house is a rocket! Go, go rocket!"

How Did We Get Here, Anyway?

It occurs to me that our reason for having WG on a gluten free diet is no where on this site. A lot of you know the story, but for those who don't, here it is.

The summer before WG turned three she got sick. The symptom we noticed most was her thirst. She was guzzling water. Knowing that doctors like hard data we started tracking her intake to see if it really was a problem worthy of a phone call. She was drinking up to 80 oz of water a day. We would put her to bed with a full sippy cup and she would drain it and cry for a refill in the middle of the night. We called the pediatrician's office and were advised to cut her off or offer her alternatives like fruit or popsicles. We were also told that since it *was* summer and we *do* live in the South drinking a lot of water was not necessarily an abnormal thing. It was not unreasonable advice.

We tried to limit WG's intake. That lasted exactly one day. First she screamed when I wouldn't refill her sippy cup and then she got creative. I caught her drinking from the cat's dish. Later I saw her headed for the toilet with her cup. What goes in must come out. WG was also urinating A LOT. She wasn't potty trained yet and I would put a fresh diaper on her only to have to change her clothes five minutes later because she had peed through the diaper.

The pediatrician did a diabetes test. It was negative. The pediatrician ran some other tests which showed some abnormalities in her kidney function. At that time we were refered to a pediatric nephrologist as well as a pediatric endocrinologist.

The pediatric nephrologist was a jerk. His nurse was a jerk. I wasn't wild about his office staff either. He ordered the tests that showed her wonky kidney functioning to be repeated because, in addition to the excessive peeing, WG had a pattern of diarrhea followed by constipation. He told us that would skew the test results and that we needed to bring her in for labwork after she had had normal bowel movements for at least 3 days.

Nearly a month later this is the conversation I had with his jerky nurse:

Nurse: "We are waiting on WG's lab results. Why haven't you had her labs done? This is really important."

Me: "Well, the doc said the first results were skewed because she had diarrhea. He said to wait until she had normal bowel movements for three days before having the labs drawn. She has not had normal bowel movements for three days in a row yet."

Nurse: "You really need to have her blood drawn."

Me: "Well, I can bring her in, but she hasn't had normal bowel movements for three days and I'd really hate to have to repeat this test for a third time. What would you like me to do?"

Nurse: "She needs to have normal bowel movements for three days."

Me: "Okay, but then you're going to have to wait awhile because I don't think she has had three days in a row of normal bowel movements her entire life."

Eventually we got the labs drawn. I think we were "blessed" with three days in a row of constipation and I decided to define that as normal to get the nurse off my back. These labs still came back somewhat abnormal but the pedi nephro dismissed them and us. I was not sad. Of all the docs that WG has seen he is the only one that I knew I could not work with on a regular basis. He has gotten rave reviews from other patients, by the way. We just had a complete personality clash.

The pediatric endocrinologist was not a jerk. I actually liked her a lot. She tested WG for a bunch of things. WG tested negative for all of them.

Finally she said, "I notice that there is a family history of mental illness. Excessive water drinking can be a sign of schizophrenia. You did mention she has terrible temper tantrums. Do you think there is a possibility that WG could be schizophrenic, bipolar or OCD?"

We were a bit stunned that someone (and someone who was NOT a mental health professional) would postulate that our 2 year old was schizophrenic. I think our answer to her was something along the lines of, "No, we don't think that's a possiblity. Perhaps in 10 years or so we might consider that, but not right now."

Our pediatrician (whom we completely adore) was a bit stumped at that point. She sent us back to the GI doc that WG had been seeing on and off since birth. She had been talking to him about WG and he suggested that the excessive water intake was actually due dehydration from her chronic pattern of constipation / diarrhea. He tested her for Celiac Disease and made a follow up appointment to find out the results.

Around that time a friend and I had decided to give the South Beach diet a whirl. I don't short order cook for my family, so WG and Tim were basically eating what I was eating: lean meats, fruit and veggies. Grains were minimized.

WG started to get better. I mentioned to my mom that the GI doc was testing her for Celiac Disease and my mom told me that quite a few people in our family have been diagnosed with Celiac. With that knowledge, we took WG off gluten completely. Quite simply, she got better. She stopped seeking out water. The dark circles under her eyes disapeared. Her tantrums significantly diminished. She gained some weight (which was a good thing!), and she had normal bowel movements for the first time in her life.

Thinking that maybe we were seeing results because we were desperate for answers, we added gluten back into her diet to see what would happen. Her symptoms returned full-force.

At WG's follow-up GI appointment, we were told that her tests for Celiac were negative. She does not have the Celiac gene. Can she eat gluten? Absolutely not. Her pediatrician and her GI docs have said that she needs to stay on the gluten free diet as long as it is beneficial to her.

The gluten free diet has also been beneficial for Tim and I, but that is a whole other post!

The Gluten Free Guest

WG is entering the age of the Birthday Party. Parties are magical and intriguing things to her right now. She has been planning her own party since February. She wants a strawberry cake with green, yellow, and chocolate frosting. Hmmmm...

Parties present a challenge when you must eat gluten free. WG understands that she eats differently than other people and she is okay with that for now (knock on wood!). It is important to us that she be able to take part in social events and we don't want her to feel out of place because of her food. We are used to packing our own food by now. When there is a party I try to find out the menu ahead of time so that I can try to come up with something similar for WG to take. She loves rice cakes with peanut butter but that would not be an acceptable alternative when the other guests are eating pepperoni pizza.

We never expect the host to accommodate her dietary restrictions. It's touching when they do, but we never assume that there will be something safe for her to eat. We always pack our own.

The rule of offering something better definately applies here, too. Party food should be appealing to the child who has to eat it.

It should also be appealing to their friends who don't have to eat it.

Think about it. If you send food that looks and smells weird to the other kids they will tell your child and your child will be more likely to reject what you've sent and try to cheat. If you send something with real appeal, like a cupcake with a ton of swirly frosting and M&M's, suddenly your child has a hot commodity and eating gluten free just got a little bit more desirable.

This rule applies to your own child's birthday party, too. An ice-cream sundae bar with all sorts of toppings or an ice cream "cake" (without the cake) are safer choices than a gluten free cake. Even if everyone you know LOVES your GF cake, it only takes one young guest to declare it weird for things to go downhill fast. Save the cake for the family celebration.