by mayberry on January 20, 2010
I have learned a new secret to compliance and pleasantness at the dinner table. I trust you’ve heard the one about letting kids help plan the menu and cook. This really does work, at least when you can get them to actually do it. Last week we made “Brownie Soup,” which doesn’t actually contain any chocolate or any little girls in uniform. It is a recipe from the Brownie Try-It book. I hooked the children by suggesting we make it. Then I reeled them in by allowing them to help, and most especially by allowing them to use knives. Sharp ones. Sure we ended up with some 1/2-inch pieces of celery and some 6-inch ones, but who cares?
Finally, the big finish: I left my laptop on the dining room table and set up the screensaver option that plays a slideshow of photos randomly selected from your files. Kids can never get enough of seeing pictures of themselves. So use their natural egomania to your advantage, I say. It’s not like reading or watching TV at the table (which I don’t allow), because you are still talking to each other. In fact, we talk more and sit longer because of the photo display, discussing when and where the picture was taken, and so forth.
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Via the Parent Bloggers Network, I had the opportunity to ask Dr. Dean Ornish a question about health and wellness. Dr. Ornish is the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California. He advocates comprehensive lifestyle changes as a means of preventing and reversing disease, so I asked him about how to lower our kids’ risk or high blood pressure (there is some history of it in our family). I mentioned that my children are pretty active and eat fairly well, but there is always room for improvement. Thanks to PBN, I received an answer from Dr. Ornish in the form of a personalized video he made after reading this blog. I tried to embed it here but could not–I hope if you click on the link you’ll be able to see it.
by mayberry on November 17, 2009
Today is Prematurity Awareness Day (thank you, Christina and many others, for writing about this, asking us to post today for a baby we love). It’s also 10 months exactly since we lost our baby boy prematurely. He wasn’t born too early; he never even got that chance. But so many families are affected by unexpected, unexplained premature birth. My friend Selena is one of them. Her son, Nolan, was born just shy of 27 weeks’ gestation. I didn’t know her then, so I didn’t meet Nolan until he was about a year old. But I’ll never forget the first time I saw Nolan’s first footprints, framed and displayed on a shelf in his room. Taken together, his two feet were no bigger than the pad of my thumb. Impossibly tiny.
Nolan is now six years old. Taking him home from the hospital alive (after four months in the NICU) was only the beginning. While he can walk, climb, swim, and play with his brothers, he cannot speak, and he struggles with eating and swallowing. He was fed through a tube in his stomach for several years. He has other developmental delays and medical issues. He sees an endless parade of doctors, therapists, and other specialists. His playroom is stocked with toys designed to stimulate his brain and his body (play food and a kitchen, for example, to help him learn to eat and enjoy food).
Of course, he is also a joy to his family, including his two younger brothers–both of whom were born at full term, thanks in part to closer monitoring of Selena’s pregnancies. I just found out yesterday that she is expecting another baby in the spring. As it would for any parent who’s been through such an emotional wringer, this news brings both joy and fear. So today I am posting for Selena’s new baby, for Nolan, for my little Simon, and for all babies born too soon. Please visit the March of Dimes to learn more about prematurity and what you can do to help.
by mayberry on November 16, 2009
of being sick and tired, you know? I know no one cares what you had for lunch or whether you have a headache, but Hi! I still have a headache. Two weeks and five different, increasingly toxic treatments later.
Sometime on Saturday I got to the point where I just wanted to cling to my children and hope that their goodness and sweetness would somehow cure me. It was probably a drug-induced delirium, but I really started to believe in this theory. You know how sometimes little kids just need you to pick them up and hold them to make everything all better? Couldn’t that flow in the other direction too?
By last night, I was feeling just the tiniest bit better. Here’s hoping.
by mayberry on November 9, 2009
1. Good news follow-up from my last post: Both children are at school today. All day (if my phone rings I am not going to answer it). I had a celebratory egg sandwich from Starbucks.
2. Bad news follow-up from my last post: Day 11 of the migraine. Have tried three potent drugs (one of which was delivered by jab where the sun don’t shine) which didn’t work and am now on a course of steroids. And yes I do feel just! a bit! hyper!
3. Apropos of nothing follow-up from my honesty post: Because of #7, if you use pseudonyms for your children on your blog, I am deadly curious to know their real names. Not for any nefarious reason, though.
4. Not a follow-up, but a prelude: If you consider your blog “small”–in readership, reach, presence or absence on PR radar screens, however you want to define it; and if you think you might be going to BlogHer next summer (in New York City, August 6-7), would you raise your hand? In the comments or by email, mayberrymom2006 at yahoo.
by mayberry on November 6, 2009
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to get swine flu, because it’s really no fun at all. Just to recap:
Week One (10/26): Opie misses 1.5 days of school due to fever. Jo’s school is closed for 2.5 (different) days for teacher inservice.
Week Two (11/2): Jo misses 4 days of school for coughing, congestion, and oinking.
Week Three (11/9): Jo will miss 2.5 days of school due to parent-teacher conferences.
Did you notice that the week she was sick was the only full week of school in the series?
And somewhere in there, I got a migraine that won’t go away. I even dragged the flu kid to the doctor’s office to seek help. Got drugs so expensive my insurance would only cover four of them. That’s four pills. They didn’t work. Awaiting further instructions from Dr. Feelgood right now.
Here’s my swine flu advice, by the way. Buy yourself a case of Kleenex right now, before anyone gets sick. A CASE, like at least 24 boxes. You will need them and you will not be able to go to the store and buy them (oh, did I mention my husband was out of town for umpteen business trips recently?).
by mayberry on November 4, 2009
(Is that how you spell that?!)
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you have one sick child and one healthy child. The sick child is firmly parked on the couch in his/her jammies and feels lousy. The healthy child needs to be taken to school.
If you lived in a super-safe neighborhood; and if the doors were locked; and if you had a really loud, annoying dog; and if the round-trip school drop-off would take 10 minutes or less; and if the sick child could be trusted 100% to remain on the couch no matter what;
would you leave the sick child home alone while you took the healthy one to school?
Or would you at least be really, really tempted?
Just wondering. Hypothetically.
by mayberry on October 31, 2009
Jo woke up yesterday morning coughing, sneezing, and with a fever of 102. Since then she’s probably consumed all of 100 calories and none of that was candy. So who knows if it’s swine flu, but it definitely sucks.
She rallied long enough to put on a costume (basket o’ puppies!) but over all, this was nowhere near as fun as last year. Or the year before that. Or that.
We did, however, continue our streak of running out of candy (10 bags’ worth) by evening’s end. So there is that.
by mayberry on October 4, 2009
I have had headaches almost as long as I can remember. As a tween/teen/young adult, I saw general practitioners, neurologists, dentists, rheumatologists, and gynecologists. I got X-rays and MRIs and answered, ad nauseam, the question “on a scale of one to 10, how painful is your headache right now?” I was variously diagnosed (and then undiagnosed) with conditions ranging from TMJ to lupus. There was nothing to see or quantify objectively. I was treated with painkillers, antidepressants, and biofeedback therapy.
Nothing really worked. Things got a little better, life went on. Until I started having babies. With each successive pregnancy (and with every cycle in between), the headaches got worse and worse, and were enhanced with a heaping dose of nausea, lightheadedness, exhaustion, and heartburn (you know, the fun stuff that pregnant women get to enjoy anyway). My doctor smiled ruefully and handed me some T3s. Those don’t work, by the way. Neither did acupuncture.
Nowadays, my head hurts during PMS week and then any other time that routine deviates even slightly from the norm: a little too much work/not enough sleep; travel beyond a 100-mile radius from home; two glasses of wine instead of one. Today I’m at the tail end of a 10-or-so-day span, and that’s after I took one of those aforementioned T3s and slept for 11 hours straight. (Sleep usually is the only remedy.)
I’m not sure what the point of this whine is except to say that it’s hard to think of much else when I’m in the clutches of one of these headaches. I wasn’t going to write about it, on Captain Obvious grounds. Then I heard about this. Son of a …. scooped again. (And no, I haven’t tried Vicodin, only because I know that narcotics make me feel even crappier than I started out feeling.)
by mayberry on July 9, 2009
On or about my 38th birthday, my little girl’s appendix ruptured, which pretty much ruined the rest of our summer.
About three months after my birthday, I quit the job I’d had for almost eight years, not entirely voluntarily. I struggled to adjust to freelance life.
A few weeks later, I got pregnant. That was good! Except I felt horribly, horribly ill. That was bad (that post does not, in the least, do justice to the utter misery of 24/7 nausea, heartburn, and migraine).
About six months after my birthday, everything caved in.
Since then, I move tentatively, afraid of blindsides.
39, you are going to have to bring it. And 38? Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
by mayberry on April 7, 2009
If you don’t like gossip, you can skip this one (I’ll probably delete it in a few days). If you’re in more of a Dorothy Parker mood and would like to sit by someone who doesn’t have anything nice to say, stick around.
We had both kids’ birthday parties this weekend, one Saturday at home and one Sunday at a roller rink. Saturday I had to clean up vomit (canine) before the party. Sunday I had to clean up crap (human) before the party. I’m glad we didn’t have a party on Monday because I wasn’t interested in mopping up any blood.
Since Opie wanted to have his party at home, we kept the guest list small–a bunch of his friends from child care plus a few neighbors. The response was abysmal. Out of nine kids, only one showed, and only three others actually sent regrets. At the last minute I invited some other neighbors, a family of four kids–thank God, because they made up pretty much the entire party.
Luckily, Opie didn’t seem to care. His best buddy from school was there (and his parents did some heroic schedule-shifting to make that possible). He had a Superman cake and a Superman pinata and everyone got to wear a cape.
Jo’s party was the opposite. Her guest list kept growing as she begged to invite “just one more” kid from her class. And all except one replied in the affirmative. Which, fine. The roller rink was a dirt-cheap venue: $5/kid. (The place clearly has changed neither its decor, or its music selections, or its prices since 1985.)
(Here’s where the gossip comes in.) A few days before the party one of her friend’s moms, who I know, called because she was having transportation issues. We eventually worked out that the child’s cousin would bring her to our house, then we’d take her to the party; another friend would take her home. Easy.
Then another mom calls–someone I don’t know at all. And she gives me chapter and verse on her recent hysterectomy/gallbladder surgery/”total abdominal reconstruction” and how she can’t drive and is there any way I could … ? So I say yes, of course, we can pick up your daughter and take her to the party and bring her home.
I’m glad she asked for help and I was glad we could offer it. I really didn’t need so many details. But it got better. An hour before the party–when I was cleaning up the aforementioned crap, which happened to land on the one small patch of white carpeting we have in our house–Hysterectomy Mom calls back. This time she wants to know if her son can tag along. She’ll pay for him, he can just skate, etc. Once again I get a whole saga of a bad night’s sleep, Xanax didn’t help, yadda yadda. I quickly calculate whether we can fit all of these kids in our station wagon and determine that we can. So I promise to pick up the birthday guest and the brother in half an hour.
We pile into the car and I am wedged into the front passenger seat with a huge box filled with goody bags and party favors. I can’t move at all. We get to the kids’ house and I make Jeff get out to say hello to the kids and the mom. She comes out in her pajamas and proceeds to pull from her pants pockets:
two drainage pouches filled with pus.
Like we needed proof that she had had this surgery. Good gravy. Really, how do you respond to such a thing? We backed out of the driveway as quickly as we possibly could. I think she was still talking about how many cc’s of fluid she needed to allow to drain before she could have the tubes removed.
At the end of the party, some other mom volunteered to take those two kids home.
We said yes.
