Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Can you say snow, snow, and more snow?  I think on the news this morning they said we are well on our way to setting records for having more than an inch of snow on the ground for such long periods.  We are at 42 days today and the record is 63 days AND it is snowing today AND it is supposed to snow on Friday.  I am so tired of it.  I decided to remove the three feet of snow from the third lane of our driveway on Saturday.  I worked on it for probably two hours and was only able to remove half of the snow.  It had to be broken up using a regular shovel first before I could use the snow shovel and throw the snow onto the growing mound on the grass.  I went back out again Monday afternoon to finish and spent another two hours.  Sadly, the snow had been so heavy on the concrete that it depressed the bottom section of the driveway 2 to 3 inches below the sidewalk line.  Hopefully with warmer weather it will rise up again.  Hopefully.

Amy had an appointment on January 12 to see a new orthopedist at the Longmont Clinic.  We switched insurance companies this year and no longer use Kaiser Permanente.  So they x-rayed her leg once again and removed the cast.  Dr. Wood said that she was okay to walk on it now, but when it came time to put her socks and boot on, Amy didn’t want to put any pressure on it.  Great!  She rode in the wheelchair down to the car.  Fortunately the nurse came with us since I also had Kristen in a stroller and Misha was not able to maneuver it very well.  I made the mistake of taking the girls to Kohls to spend their Christmas gift certificates from Grandma Ball.  I didn’t have Amy’s wheelchair with me so had to push her and Kristen in a cart.  I should have just gone home.  By the time I finally gave up and took them home, I was one crabby Mom.

We took the girls back in to town on Saturday.  Much easier with Christopher’s help.  Amy still hadn’t walked much on her leg and was back to using crutches in the house.  For some reason she suddenly got brave at the mall and began slowly walking while hanging on to the wheelchair.  Within a half an hour she was walking without the wheelchair, though with quite a pronounced limp.  She has done better throughout the month and still limps.  Stairs are a bit of a challenge for her, but she is doing so much better.  Dr. Wood asked us to come back in February to have the leg re-x-rayed just to make sure everything was healing okay and that the growth plate wasn’t affected at all.

Amy’s first bath was pretty disgusting.  The dead skin just floated off her leg and filled the water.  I had Amy scrub as much on her leg as she could to get the excess skin to come off and then we emptied the tub, washed it out and filled it once again.  She stayed in the tub for at least a half an hour enjoying her self. 

Misha is doing well in school.  I went to school last Wednesday to help out and was impressed by her.  So many of the kids in her class are much farther behind.  I know that I could do more with her and do plan to spend more time just listening to her read, but she is doing well.  Her biggest challenge is listening and not getting distracted.  I think that will likely be a challenge she will always face as it is just so much a part of her personality.  But we can work on it.

Kristen is becoming more two all the time.  She doesn’t say “no” yet but is quite proficient at “nuh uh” when she doesn’t want something.  She doesn’t say too many words yet though I work with her.  She can identify many body parts and is beginning to know more animal sounds and names.  Kristen loves going to the library.  The story lady, Miss Jan, has a bubble machine that she uses at the end of class, and Kristen identifies story time with bubbles.  ‘Course once we are there, getting Kristen to wait until the end of the session for bubbles is a bit of a challenge.  We have been going a couple of months now, and even in that time she has improved in her sitting still and interaction with other kids.

Tuesday, 2 January, 2007

The kids are back to school today.  Hooray!  Amy is in a walking cast which means that I only have to make ONE trip to the school each day.  Amy was home from school on the Friday and Monday after she broke her leg.  That Monday night, December 4th was her school Christmas concert and she was anxious to attend.  Mostly to show off her cast and wheelchair and only partly to sing.  While the rest of the class stood up on the stage, Amy and her two singing partners stood on the main floor in front.  Pretty much the center of attention-and she liked it that way!  As the concert was ending, Santa Claus arrived, much to the excitement of the children.  But as Amy succinctly explained afterward, “First the kids went to see Santa and then they came to see me!”  She basked in the attention.  Chris and I were grateful for our first successful outing in the snow with the wheelchair.

Amy decided to try a half day of school on Tuesday.  I dropped her off at the school, very handily making use of my new handicap parking tag (gotta really love that).  And two hours later I received a phone call, “I have to go to the bathroom.”  So I got back into the car and drove to the school to take her to the bathroom.  The next morning, we left for school early and headed right to the bathroom upon arrival.  She was going to get a quick lesson in how to maneuver into the bathroom stall and onto the toilet all by herself.  And thus began the cycle for the last two weeks of school before Christmas holidays: I drove Amy to school each morning; loaded her in to her wheelchair; and helped her get to her classroom.  On Tuesday and Wednesday of that week, I picked up Amy at the same time that I picked up Misha from kindergarten.  By Thursday she had had enough of that and was ready to stay at school for the full day. 

Amy had plenty of helpers willing to help push her around the school and be a part of the wheelchair excitement.  She came home one day with her cast covered in signatures of her friends and teachers.  She wasn’t able to go outside for recess during that time, but didn’t really seem to mind.  Her teacher, Miss Place, was great at making sure that Amy was out in the front lobby at the end of the day when I went to pick her up.  It was amazing to me how fast I became frustrated at people who blocked the handicap parking spot or parked there when they shouldn’t.  It gave me a new appreciation of what people must feel who park in these spots all of the time.  Finally, the last day of school arrived, and I was soooooo grateful.

Amy’s birthday came and went during this time.  The excitement for that day was a doctor’s appointment to make sure that her leg was healing as it should.  Grandpa Kline flew in for a mega short stop at our house.  I think he arrived around 4:30 pm on Monday the 11th and left shortly after I left to take the girls to school Tuesday morning at 7:40 am.  And, bless his heart, he came when he was sick!

That’s a lot of news about Amy, so let’s just say that Misha was both a saint and an angel to her bigger, bossy sister who had even more reason to “request” Misha’s help.  Most of the time Misha brought things for Amy without even being asked-especially her crutches.

The girls had Christmas vacation for two weeks plus New Year’s Day.  Chris was off for the last week of that time.  Though he undertook the task of scanning all of his family and mission pictures into the computer and spent a lot of time at his computer.  Didn’t seem a whole different than if he was working.

I planned a special dinner for Christmas Eve.  Normally we would go out to dinner on Christmas Eve (our tradition has changed from Chinese food to going to Olive Garden), but since Christmas Eve was on Sunday, we stayed home for turkey and all the fixings.  The girls were impressed with the napkins folded like a fan and wanted the table to be set fancy every night.  After clearing the dinner away, we had a special evening planned to talk about the birth of Christ.  The girls always enjoy following along with their felt nativity pieces.  After that we exchanged our traditional pajamas and Kristen was off to bed.  She goes to bed around 7:15 now which is a wonderful treat.  The girls weren’t quite ready for bed, so they got to watch tv in the guest room for awhile.

Once we finally put the girls to bed, we brought the presents down from my closet and the Santa gifts out of hiding.  Chris had hidden Amy’s bike in his trailer in the side yard.  With all the snow from the days previous, it took a bit of effort to dig it out.

Talking about snow, we experienced two blizzard-like snow storms.  The first dumped close to two feet and the second storm about 10 inches  one week later.  With drifting and blowing snow, we had some areas that were almost as tall as Christopher.  It took us literally hours to dig out from the first storm and then days after to recover from the sore muscles.  The next storm wasn’t quite so bad, but by then, I believe I had lost my enthusiasm for shoveling snow.

Christmas Day was wonderful.  I, of course, was up early to exercise.  Chris thought I was nuts, but I just told him that it is a Christmas present to myself to keep on exercising.  Amy woke up shortly before 7 am and Misha was still sleeping soundly.  However, Misha was out of bed faster than you can say “Merry Christmas” and ready to go.  We like to record their expressions as they come downstairs, so I made them sit on the landing of the stairs with their eyes closed until Chris made it downstairs.  The excitement just builds that way.  Kristen wasn’t awake until 7:30 so the girls were able to check out their stockings and see what Santa brought them.  We mostly relaxed throughout the day and ate leftover turkey.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

After the big dumping of snow, Misha wasn't about to stay away from the sledding just because it had claimed Amy as its victim.

The yearly visit of Santa in the neighborhood.

You may recognize the colorful jumpy castle in our Christmas pictures.  We bought a similar one for Misha a couple years ago.  It didn't last very long, but we decided to take a chance again for Kristen.  Here's hoping it lasts longer.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Holy monster snow storm Batman!  Seriously, I started shoveling shortly after breakfast and made it partly up the front walk when I told the girls to have Chris come and help me.  The snow was wet, heavy, and over a foot deep.  It took us most of the morning to get two lanes of our driveway cleared.

Misha couldn't get dressed fast enough to come outside and play.

Our street was one of the first ones plowed because a policeman got stuck in the snow.

That is a lot of snow!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

We had a low-key, family celebration for Amy's birthday. 

Kristen decided to bake her a cake!  Just kidding.

Saturday, 2 December, 2006

Last week was Thanksgiving, but I can’t say it was that great of a holiday.  The girls had the entire week off and we had hoped to do some fun things as a family.  Amy and I started it off with sore throats.  We were feeling quite a bit better by Thanksgiving, but Kristen became sick on Wednesday and by Thursday was pretty sick and miserable.  We had been invited to Siders for dinner at 3:00 pm on Thursday.  So, I stayed home with Kristen and Chris took the girls.  Kind of a bummer, but Chris did bring me a plate of food around 5:30.  He went back to Siders and returned home about 8:30.  By then he was feeling awful and went right to bed.  He was sick all day Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday.  So, like I said, it wasn’t a very great holiday.

What a trying few days we have had recently.  It snowed on Wednesday for most of the day.  Both girls were so excited to be outside playing in the snow.  By Thursday, they had whined enough that Chris climbed up to the rafters of the garage and pulled down their sled and snow board.  They bundled up and headed over to the catch basin behind our house to sled down the hills.  I had noticed that some boys had walked up the street from the mobile homes below us with their snow boards to make use of the hill as well.

After awhile, I noticed Misha walking with two of the boys toward our house.  I wondered, “What on earth... Misha?”  I figured she had volunteered our bathroom or something.  When they got to the door they told me that Amy had crashed on her sled, was hurt, and needed help.  Fortunately, Chris was home and dressed up to go get her.  By the time he got outside, the boys had loaded Amy onto her sled and pulled her most of the way home.  She laid on the couch for the rest of the night and cried because her leg hurt so much.  We iced it and wrapped it.  Her ankle was a little bit swollen.  We figured we would give her the night to sleep and see how it was in the morning.  She was up before six and crying more.

I called the doctors office just after 7:00 am and scheduled an appointment for Amy at 9:25.  Both Chris and I were thinking that it was, at the most, a sprain and that there wasn’t a whole lot they could do for us.  Fortunately, Chris was able to leave work and come with us.  He carried Amy; I carried Kristen.  What a blessing to have him around so much.  They x-rayed her ankle and found that she had broken both her tibia AND her fibula about an inch above the ankle.  Because of her age and the nature of the break, they called the Orthopedist at the Rock Creek Center in Lafayette and scheduled an appointment for us at 2:00 pm.  We doped her up with Tylenol with Codeine after they splinted the leg and brought her home to rest for a little while.  I, in the meantime, had to cancel our dental appointments and find a place for Kristen and Misha to stay.  Fortunately, my friend Maria Burnham agreed to watch the girls.  Kristen was tired enough that she slept for about an hour and a half.

We checked-in at Rock Creek and got right in without waiting more than a minute.  We had been blessed most of the day to get right in to the doctor without a lot of extra waiting.  Fortunately she wasn’t going to need any surgery or even to have the leg set.  They put a cast on her - bright pink- and then x-rayed her hip and femur because she had complained of pain there as well.  With the cast on her lower leg, she began to feel so much better.  However, she cannot walk on her leg at all for the next three weeks at least, maybe more.  We go back for another appointment on the 11th of December - Amy’s 7th birthday - where they will remove this cast, x-ray the ankle again, and make sure everything is healing as it should.

They ordered a child’s wheelchair for us and gave us paperwork for a handicap parking tag.  The wheelchair was delivered this morning - Saturday - and we picked up the parking tag on the way home.

I slept with Amy in the guest room last night.  We were both exhausted and fell asleep around 8:30 pm.  Amy woke up around 11 but was able to go back to sleep.  At 3:30 though she woke me up and said that her leg was really hurting and could she have more medicine.  You know she is in pain when she asks for more medicine that tastes awful.  She follows it up with a big swig of water.

The next few weeks with school should be pretty interesting.  We’ll have to drop Amy off and pick her up with her wheelchair.  Not sure what we’ll do about her birthday party.  Maybe just something short and sweet for a few friends.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Chris is visiting Grandma Andrews in Mt. Shasta, California this weekend.  We miss him but know that it is important for him to be there.  She has had a lot of loss in her life, most recently with her dog, Sasha, passing away at 14 years.  He flew to Medford yesterday where she came to pick him up.

Chris was able to attend church this morning at the local ward and make contact with some of the members with the hopes that they will keep an eye on her and give her a little extra help.  This afternoon Chris is getting a chance to meet Grandma’s next door neighbors, Joe and Alice, who do a lot to help Grandma.  He will stay until Tuesday afternoon.  Since Grandma has meetings and a luncheon tomorrow, Chris will stay at her house and work for part of the day.  Knowing him, he’ll probably try to get a full day in. 

Chris is working on an Invention Disclosure for his latest project.  This is the first step in the patent submission process, and he is hoping that a sixth patent will begin to be processed.  Can’t remember if I made note of one of his patents being granted in September, so he is an official patent-holder now.  He is also up for an award, not sure of the name but basically it is for outstanding achievements at IBM.  The minimum financial portion of the award is $15,000.  It would also include a trip for him and I to San Diego where they would present the award.  We are keeping our fingers crossed.

One night I asked Misha to call Amy from the basement for dinner.  She yelled, of course, while standing at the top of the stairs.  As she walked in to the kitchen, she remarked, “Whew, I had to dig deep for that one.”  I laughed and then asked, “Well, do you think you could dig a little deeper and call Daddy now?”

I have been taking Kristen to “Twinkle Babies” story time at the library.  She is getting so that she understands more of what is happening.  She has learned to do the actions to “If You’re Happy and You Know It”.  She loves to clap her hands and shout “hooray” but especially to stomp her feet.  I think her favorite part of the story time is at the end when Miss Jan brings out the bubble machine and blows bubbles all over the kids.  Kristen stands in the center of the room and just lets the bubbles fall around her.

Last Sunday as Chris was closing our fast, he prayed for Kristen and her teeth and that they would come in quickly without a lot of pain and sleepless nights.  Suddenly during the prayer, Kristen starts biting her teeth together and making the noise “na na na”.  That’s how I have shown her what her teeth are.

Brad came to visit a couple of weeks ago.  He was celebrating his 40th birthday and we were glad that he chose to come celebrate with us.  His birthday is on Halloween so he has always had to take second place next to the trick or treating.  Our friends, the Millers, invited us to a trunk or treat activity at their home.  I tried to convince Brad that it would be fun, but he opted to stay home and handed out candy for us here.

While Brad was here, we went to Loveland to shop for an afternoon.  I treated him to lunch at P.F. Changs.  Misha and Kristen were with us as well, but I can’t say that they ate too much.  My kids are not really big into Chinese food.  In fact, it is a holiday tradition from my family to have Chinese food on Christmas Eve, and we have had to change it because the girls wouldn’t eat anything ever.  Our new tradition is going to Olive Garden on Christmas Eve.  This year that will have to change a bit since Christmas Eve is on Sunday.

Anyway, back to Brad, he was here from Saturday evening until Wednesday morning.  I enjoyed having him around to talk with during the day.  We went on a walk two separate days for exercise and that was really nice.

At the dinner table, Amy was trying to make her face turn red by holding her breath and straining her face.  Misha just looked at her and said, “You look like you’re pooping.”  Kids say the darndest things.

On Thursday of last week, Misha came home with some scissors that her teacher, Mrs. Stephen, had given to her.  I’m not sure what kind of sob story she gave her teacher so that she could have a pair of scissors at home, but nevertheless, she brought some home.  I didn’t really think much of it until I walked over to talk to her as she sat watching tv and noticed pieces of hair on her sweatshirt.  “What did you do?”  I asked increduously.  She immediately burst into tears because she knew she had done something wrong.  I took her to the bathroom and looked over the damage that she had done.  She could have done a lot worse, but still her hair was going to have to be cut.  And it was just starting to get longer.  I went back to the pillow she had been laying on and lifted up the smaller pillow next to her.  There sat a rather large pile of blond hair.  I almost started crying.  She was crying.  “Ahhh Misha.”  I took the handful of hair upstairs to show Chris and his mouth dropped when he realized what it was.

He came downstairs with me and held Misha who was still crying.  There wasn’t much to do to salvage her hair without cutting the rest to be as short as the sides, but I didn’t want to try and even it up.  So, while Kristen slept, Misha and I headed in to town for a haircut.  It looks quite cute on her.  When I got in the car after the haircut, I told her that her hair looked really cute, BUT “if you ever cut it again, I will have them shave you bald.”  Two down, one more to go with Kristen.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

What a yucky day today.  They say it is supposed to be back up in the sixties by the weekend, but it sure is a nasty one today.  We’ve got snow, wind, and cold temperatures.

I volunteered in Misha’s class yesterday.  She was pretty excited to have me come.  She had been sick and even stayed home on Tuesday (Monday was a day off so she was home anyway), but she didn’t want to miss school when her mom was going to be there.  She seems to be in a good group this year.  Not too many extremes as Amy had in her class last year.  Guess what Misha wants to be for Halloween?

On Monday, Chris and I attended parent teacher conferences for both girls.  They are both doing well.  It was good to see Misha in her class setting yesterday to get an idea of how she fits in and gets along with other students.  The one thing she needs to work on is better coloring.  It has never really been her thing.  Amy is the artist and can spend hours coloring and drawing, but not Misha.  She just needs to be doing something more.

Amy is also doing well in class.  She needs to work on her Spanish comprehension more as well as waiting for Miss Place to call on her instead of always blurting answers out.  No big surprise there.  She is still doing well on her spelling tests-hasn’t got one wrong yet.  She is pretty proud of herself.

Kristen continues to grow.  Two of her eye teeth have poked through and the other two aren’t too far behind.  No wonder she has been crabby lately.  Mostly she has been waking up in the middle of the night.  She was a year and a half old last week and went to nursery for the first time.  Chris was pretty excited for this day to come.  Since I am teaching in Primary, Chris watches Kristen through Sunday School and Priesthood.  She did well.  He stayed with her for a couple of minutes and then slipped out when she wasn’t looking.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Amy was thrilled to go on a field trip to Miller Farms.  I think she was just as thrilled to not have to wear her uniform.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Christopher celebrated another birthday surrounded by the lovely women in his life.

Wednesday, 27 September, 2006

The girls are beginning to get excited about Halloween coming but have rather horrible memories of one Saturday morning last October when we all went into town and ended up at the Kaiser clinic for flu shots.   They’ve already started to protest and to try and get out of the experience.  We won’t have the element of surprise to rely on this year, so instead of starting to cry at the clinic when they realize what is happening, they’ll be whining for the entire month of October and November.

Kristen loves her shoes.  I think partly because she knows that sometimes putting on shoes means she gets to go somewhere and partly because the non-slip soles on the bottom of her jammies aren’t so non-slip after all.  She has learned after a few falls to walk with more care once she gets on to the hardwood floor.  I guess a few knocks on the head will do that to you.  So with the cooler weather, she needs to wear socks during the day, but that, too, causes her to fall, so she wears her little pink and white tennies all day long.  She can say “shoes”, “there it is”, “see ya”, and “come on”–some of the new phrases she has picked up lately.  If you don’t get up quickly enough when she says “come on”, she will try to pull you up out of the chair.  She still says “na” for milk.  I think it is a cross between milk and night night.  She is smart enough to ask for it though.

Tuesday, 12 September, 2006

I made the girls play dough today.  I could hear them throwing it against something so I go to the living room where they are standing suspiciously next to the carpet.  "Stop throwing the play dough on the floor!'  "We're not." Amy answers.  I know they are throwing it somewhere, and it takes only two seconds to figure it out.  "Are you throwing it on the ceiling?"  Amy nods sheepishly.  "Stop!"

Monday, 11 September, 2006

I just wanted to share a funny story about Misha.  She was sitting in the living room watching tv while I was eating lunch and suddenly discovered that she has hair on her toes.  She brought those toes over for me to look at and wanted to know what we could do about it.  Can we take them off?  I reassured her that everyone has hair on their toes, but she's not convinced nor is she pleased with it.  "I don't like growing up" she lamented.

Then, later in the afternoon we were in the office.  She sat on a stool at her computer and noticed that something wasn’t smelling so good.  So she hopped off the stool, bent over, and sniffed it.  Misha suddenly noticed that the chair stinks after you sit on it.  In perfect Misha-style she says, "Why?  Why does it have to be me with the stinky bottom?"

Kristen’s fourth molar has finally poked through the gums in her mouth.  I guess that’s twelve down, eight more to go.   I hope the next bunch are a little easier on her (and us), but I doubt it.  She seems to be constantly chewing on things with drool dripping down her chin and soaking the front of her shirt.  These spongy things are her favorite thing to chew and they are holding up for now.

The girls are both enjoying school.  Amy had her first spelling test and did really well on it.  I think that it will be a weekly event now with the words becoming more and more challenging each week.  Amy’s reading is improving.  We sat and read or rather she read to me a “Hello Kitty” book that she borrowed from school.

Misha needs to focus and has already found herself on the “refocus” chair at school.  We try to talk to her about not worrying about what other students are doing and to listen to her teacher better.  She has improved since her first stint on the chair and hasn’t had to “refocus” since (or at least she isn’t telling us about it).  Her teacher says that she is a good student and her first new friend is Claire.