katehaney

07:42 pm: in which Teddy shows his gratitude
Today was the Thanksgiving show at Teddy's school. The children did three readings - two poems and an endless alphabet of Thanksgiving (A is for Adventure, B is for Big ship, etc.). Each child participated in one of the readings and they all sang songs at the end, including a rousing rendition of "All Together Now."

Teddy acquitted himself nicely. He said his line ("we give thanks") loudly, clearly, and on cue. He did try to sit when he first came in (which is usually what happens when the whole kindergarten gets together), but stood up promptly.

The kids in his group said their lines, then held up signs showing what they were grateful for. "My Mommy and Daddy," "Books," and "My family" all made appearances.

And guess whose sign said "My Two Ewoks"?

Yep.

:sigh:

At least he wasn't the kid who said "V should be for NOTHING."

07:51 am: Thanksgiving 2: The Backup Plan (still with the me me me)
Everyone in my family is sick (except my Dad, so far, send karma, knock wood, cross fingers, toss salt, whatever works to keep him well!), so Thanksgiving has been canceled.

I don't think I've ever missed a Thanksgiving with my family; it's going to be weird to celebrate without them.

There will be a LOT of jello and lemon bread involved (without ~20 people to share), 'cause those are the 2 things I'd already made when the cancellation was announced.

I think we'll have a roast chicken, some veg, and the aforementioned jello and lemon bread. I'll probably do a practice run on the tarte tatin as well, 'cause I have the ingredients and I've never made it before. All the ingredients for everything else have been stowed away for later use.

So, um, yeah. Sh!t.

* * * * *

And yet, that is the trivial news. In the non-trivial news, four* people I know have lost parents recently. Four people my age: three colleagues (all close-ish, friend-like colleagues) and one old friend (a guy I dated in high school). I'm finding myself very weepy. Peter doesn't know how to deal with me. I don't know how to deal with me.

Teddy, on the other hand, pats my leg, tells me not to cry, and asks me to read him books. The snuggles do help.

I feel awful for the people involved, of course. I've sent letters to each, expressing condolences, sympathy, and my willingness to help however possible. And of course that's not enough and probably won't help, but there's nothing else a person can really do, eh?

And I Can't. Even. Go. There. with thinking about how I would cope in their situation. If I just stick my toe over the edge in sympathy, I break down.

I love my parents so much, both as people and as friends, and the idea of losing them is more than I can handle. And yet three people I know well are dealing with just that.

How do they do it?

* * * * *

I suspect the labyrinthitis isn't helping. After skipping Friday night, I took a clonazepam again last night. It does seem to keep me steadier, though the hangover isn't so fun. I can't tell any difference with the meclizine at all, so I'm not going to take that any more. The clonazepam is the addictive one, so I hope I can cut that out too (I'm supposed to take one a night for a week, than half of one a night after that, but I prefer none).


* Edited to add the 4th, dammit.

06:42 am: viral labyrinthitis (in which I reflect upon my own state, sorry g'rents)
This doesn't have much to do with Teddy, except insofar as my wellness affects my parenting ability. I'll return to your regularly-scheduled Teddy program next time, 'k?

So, yeah. I'd been experiencing vertigo for about a week. I thought it was my new glasses or my new foot spray or my period or somethin'. The first couple of days were pretty brutal, then it seemed to be getting better, then it kept not getting better, then my boss said "hie thee to a doctor!" (or something like that), and so I did.

After lots and lots of testing, including a comprehensive hearing test (100% HA! It's not that I can't hear, it's that I'm not listening!), the ENT tells me I have viral labyrinthitis. There's apparently something going around (more on that later).

:shrug:

So he gave me a couple of prescriptions to help with the symptoms: meclizine (for dizziness) in the day and clonazepam (an anti-convulsant that's also used to help with panic attacks) at night. Both can cause drowziness, so I haven't tried the meclizine yet (big meetings today). I took the clonazepam last night and it was... weird. It took longer than I expected to take effect, but I slept soundly once it did. Only woke up for the loo once, which is unusual. Didn't get the spins when I turned over in bed, which was very nice.

Mostly, it kinda took the edge off. I wouldn't say I've been having panic attacks, but I have had little, er... episodes? Moments of anxiety, I suppose. Fairly fleeting, mostly. I get a little pang somewhere and need to do some deep breathing to convince myself it's not a heart attack, stroke, brain tumor, etc.

Since I have a tendency toward Teh Melodrama anyway, I dunno if this is specific to the labyrinthitis or just a touch of hypochondria.

In any case, the whole thing is very, very different from the last time I had labyrinthitis (~25 years ago). That was a really bad case that involved a great deal of screaming and extreme panic. Chlorpheniramine took care of the major symptoms, and time handled the rest, though I still have the severe motion sickness that kicked in afterward.

Weird, though.

The interwebs tell me labyrinthitis is not contagious, but the virus from which I got it is. So apparently I'm not contagious any more. My guess is that whatever gave Teddy croup gave me labyrinthitis (research tells me this is quite likely, though no one seems to know why the symptoms manifest so differently in different people).

Oh well.

07:00 am: Weekend Highlights
Teddy had a great time at the birthday party Saturday. He says he wants to take gymnastics classes (after the last gymnastics party, he said he wanted to do gymnastics, except for the part where he throws his body around).

The birthday girl opened her gifts at the party (I hate that, because it sets the kids up for baaad situations, like jealousy of gifts, rudeness about gifts, boredom from sitting and watching someone else open gifts, etc.), which led to Mama's Public Embarrassment #1*, when the birthday girl opened a Hannah Montana gift.

Teddy pushed his way to the front, pointed at the gift, and said "Mommy and Daddy and I all think Hannah Montana is STUPID!"

er... what? While I do indeed think Hannah Montana (and Power Rangers and Teletubbies and just about every other mass-produced, media-enabled toy franchise) is stupid, I don't recall having said so, and would never have done so so emphatically in any case (more likely that Teddy asked what some toy was, and I said "that's Hannah Montana; Mommy thinks she's kinda stupid).

Oops. So now we're working on keeping hurtful opinions to ourselves. When I asked Teddy last night what he should say if someone gave him a gift that he didn't like or already had, he responded, without any parental prompting, "THANK YOU!" :phew:

* * * * *

The Nutcracker was fun. I've been spoiled by years of seeing the Boston Ballet, whose production is spectacular, but I'm awfully glad Teddy got to go. He behaved beautifully and was, despite his whinging to the contrary, riveted through most of the show. He especially liked the battle between the soldiers and the mice (natch) and the animals in the second act (elephant for Arabians, bear for Russians, etc.). This production didn't have a hot-air balloon or a dancing bear, alas, but I missed the live orchestra even more.

He now says he doesn't need to see ballet again, but he would like to take classes.

* * * * *

Monday, we reserved the party room at the movie theater for Teddy's birthday. The room is WONDERFUL, but there isn't much room to move. So it'll be a sit-and-snack hour, rather than a run-around-and-burn-energy hour. Not perfect, but good enough.

The theater provides the decorations, the invitations, the plates & stuff, and popcorn and soda. I've addressed the invitation and written half.

How far in advance should I send them?

* * * * *

Under pressure from various sources (including my boss, whom I didn't feel it was prudent to ignore), I made an appointment with an ENT for tomorrow. And haven't had any vertigo today. :shrug:


* I think. I don't recall having been embarrassed by Teddy in public before. But my memory is short and faulty, so I'm probably wrong.

06:51 am: birthday planning
Teddy and I are attending a birthday party this afternoon, at another gymnastics place (I was going to write "gym," but didn't want to associate "5-year-old's birthday party" with "Gold's" or somethin' - look! your kid can pump iron!). I realized as we were discussing the weekend plans that...

:gulp:

...we need to plan Teddy's party. Unlike past years, Teddy will be having a party with, y'know, kids. So I can't do the "fambly? please come on Teddy's birthday? kthxbye" routine. (Though I plan to also do that. Fambly, please come, etc.)

Around here, people seem to do parties at various venues. Bowling alleys, gymnastics places, etc. We haven't been invited to any pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, musical-chairs, cake-at-home type o' parties.

I thought Teddy was going to go that cheaper, but higher-effort, route until I realized that he was only voting for it 'cause he wanted friends there.

Oops, my bad communication.

So he seems to have settled on the movies, which we'll do a couple of weeks before his birthday (thus the need to plan, like, now). We'll get the "party room" (which I won't see until later today, so this plan could change abruptly) for an hour before the movie with popcorn and drinks (and cake and ice cream, of course). The kids get Go Boxes (popcorn, drink, and candy in an easy-carry box) and the movie, of course. Gotta figure out favors.

We'll see how it goes.

Most of the kids' parties we've been to have NOT involved opening gifts at the party, which I think is an excellent idea. But how long does eating cake and ice cream take? How much entertainment do I have to plan? What kind of entertainment? Is the movie enough, I hope?

Advice from experienced partiers much appreciated.

07:08 am: baguette
Teddy insisted that we buy a baguette at Trader Joe's the other day, and even agreed to eat the :gasp: crust if I bought one.

And he did indeed eat the crust. Hot diggity!

Seems Simone (his French teacher) has been telling him about how people buy baguettes every day in France, but there are to be no leftovers because the bread will be stale.

I got lectured about NO LEFTOVERS, but he did concede that it tasted fine the second day. And there will not be a third.

07:37 am: Curse you, Sunkist!
Teddy and I arrived at my folks' house just in time for dinner (YUM - thanks Dad!) Tuesday night. Teddy was being Sir Cranky, the Crankmeister of Crankendom, having been rudely awakened from his lovely car nap when we arrived. He snuggled on my lap and refused to eat, drink, or interact with anyone but me.

When he finally settled down a bit, I let him have a small glass of soda as a treat. Orange soda, one of my favorites when I was a kid. Just the thing to rinse down his American cheese and apple slices (sauerbraten being deemed Unacceptable by the Crankenheimer).

Turns out this particular orange soda has caffeine. Caffeine. A beverage with a kick. A kick that Teddy has never before felt in any significant amount (chocolate has comparative traces of Teh Kick).

YOWZA. And the child, he did awaken. Within about 15 minutes, he was careening around the house with his cousin M, having a great time.

It was heart-warming to see the two of them together. They see each other rarely, but they get along like a house a-fire. A caffeinated house a-fire.

He fell asleep sometime after 9, and would probably not have slept yet if he hadn't still been on Benadryl.

* * * * *

He woke up earlier than I'd have liked (though later than usual) yesterday and would. not. let. me. sleep. I had a hard time falling back asleep after his 12:30 awakening (I was worrying about this and that) and would really have enjoyed a lie-in. Nope.

So we got up, visited with my folks, and bundled all the cousins (M, her older brother A [Teddy's idol], and Teddy) off to the New Balance outlet, where new shoes were acquired for all, then to the Children's Museum.

I'm so glad we're members of the museum. Great organization, lots of fun, and the line skippage is most excellent indeed (as is the discount at the store, natch)... especially on holidays when the regular line winds outdoors and past the milk bottle.

What a fun day! Teddy and M were wonderful together, and A? What a great kid (an 18-year-old, 6'1" kid whose diapers I changed and whose very adultitude and heightification make my head explode). He was so wonderful with both kids. It was an absolute pleasure spending time with him, and he was an enormous help, too.

Get this! I got to go to the bathroom. BY MYSELF. In the Children's Museum!! You do not know privilege until you get to the bathroom by yourself at a kids' venue when your kid is also there but NOT with you in the bathroom while you're doing your thing all by yourself. I'm a blithering run-on sentence idiot from the sheer joy and surprise of it!

:ahem: Anyway. We had a great time.

The kids wound down around the same time, which was quite a happy coincidence, and we headed home (without having seen the Nutcracker rehearsals we came for, because the line for free tickets was so outrageous and no one really cared but me anyway). Stopped by my office for nothing (grr... the benefits vendor with whom I was supposed to meet had already left, dammit, though I was there two hours earlier than I'd thought I might be).

There was still time for a nice little visit with my folks, a quick drink and potty break, and an even quicker stop at Trader Joe's for the all-important Apple Crushers (because other brands just. will. not. do.). We were home again before dinner.

* * * * *

aaaaaand I woke up with vertigo. wtf?

04:39 pm: Ladies and Gentlemen, we have... the metaphor (via movie soundtrack)
On our way to Southwick* yesterday, Teddy said: "We're about to get on the life!"

"What?"

"Because life is a highway!"

And so it is.


* Why Southwick, you ask? An excellent question. Peter likes to pick semi-random towns in the area to check out. They're semi-random because he always picks the ones with yoga studios, so he can see whether the drive is worth going to a class there. So he picked Southwick, MA, which I'd never heard of. We had dinner at the Summer House, a pretty good, very cheap little family ice cream place. And drove back a most circuitous route that made me really, really wish I had my new glasses.

03:20 pm: do you know how much I love you?
Teddy has no patience for this question any more. He used to love teasing about it, with all kinds of variations (deeper than the sky, higher than the ocean, bigger than the whole wide eyebrow; deeper than the toilet, higher than the ceiling, bigger than the whole wide vacuum cleaner; etc.) leading up to the right answer: "higher than the sky, deeper than the ocean, and bigger than the whole wide world."

Now, he rolls his eyes and says "I know, I know! You love me infinity."

The "get on with the next thing" is only implied so far.

Still, I suppose it's a good thing that he knows he's loved.

09:04 am: Sir Teddy the Cautious

06:13 am: mostly about reading
Teddy's decided to use his Halloween candy money for the Lego Star Wars dictionary (which I've just learned costs half as much on Amazon as through Scholastic, grr). A good deal, I think, as I wouldn't have bought him the dictionary myself.

* * * * *

And yes, we have made our first Scholastic Books selections. I'm more excited about this than is perhaps seemly, but I loved Scholastic Book orders when I was a kid. No matter how broke they were (which was generally "very"), my parents always bought us books. And usually my stack was the biggest in the class. I remember how lucky that always made me feel. "More books! I have more books to read!"

I hope Teddy finds it just as exciting as I always did. He certainly enjoyed the selection process.

* * * * *

It's my reading day at Montessori. On the agenda are Llama Llama Mad at Mama (by request, after I read Llama Llama Red Pajama last week), The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and The Big Fat Enormous Lie.

* * * * *

I've been reading Harry Potter to Teddy at night, which I love. Reading aloud makes me slow waaay down, too, which is a first for me in reading HP.

Teddy's favorite parts? When Hagrid gives Dudley a pig's tail and when Peeves refuses to tell Filch something because he doesn't say please.

Figures.

08:36 am: You don't know the power of the dark side


Sir Teddy to be uploaded soon. Ish. I hope.

12:25 pm: Haney's Halloween Index
Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

• 800 pieces of candy given away (less Laffy Taffies for Peter, SweetTarts for Teddy, and a 3 Musketeers for me)


• Several hundred trick-or-treaters (at our house -- more in the neighborhood)


• 10% of ToTs who actually live in the neighborhood (guesstimate)


• 3 costumes: futurist knight, Optimus Prime (or so I'm told), and Darth Vader


• 3 hours to distribute the aforementioned candy to the aforementioned ToTs


• 27 pieces of candy collected by Teddy


• 13 pieces of Teddy's candy sold to Mommy for Storm Trooper helmet money


• 1 piece of Teddy's remaining 14 pieces eaten by Teddy on Halloween


• 50% of houses rejected by Teddy as "too scary" for trick-or-treating


• 1 rolling pirate ship that made its way around the neighborhood for everyone's entertainment


• 30 or so jack-o-lanterns at the Pumpkin House


• 0 non-costumed ToTs


• 0 trash in the yard

Most popular costumes: Mario Bros, SuperGirl, storm troopers, Michael Jackson
Personal favorites: candy machine (takes rather than dispenses), anything on a small, polite child

I love Halloween in this neighborhood.

(Sir Teddy and Darth Vader videos coming soon)

06:11 pm: Some Halloween Pictures
( pictures under the cut )

03:37 pm: gearing up for Halloween
Last year was a blast, so I have high hopes for this year. Low probability of rain tomorrow, which is good. If we don't get the usual rush of trick-or-treaters, I'm screwed. 'Cause we have 800 pieces of candy (we got about 500 TOTs last year).

Teddy's Halloween parade at school was fun, I think. I missed the parade part (though I got to see the pre-schoolers' parade, which was completely adorable, of course), but got to see the show (Halloween songs in English and French, as well as a dance of some sort that I didn't entirely understand). I'll preview the videos I took, but I suspect they're all too awful to post.

Teddy is a knight this year, with glow-in-the-dark stars on his helmet and glow-in-the-dark stars and a rocket (with flames) on his shield. He's got kind of a medieval space age thing going. Pictures coming in a couple of days, though I'm not sure how to capture glow-in-the-dark, which is the coolest part.

In any case, he's very excited about getting lots of candy and selling it to me so he can buy something. Preferably either a Millennium Falcon or a Storm Trooper helmet.

I love Halloween.

09:56 am: NO WRKIN, the flip side
I'm working diligently on a project, while Teddy plays by himself next to me (Peter is in the shower).

When Teddy stuck something in front of my face, I said:
"Teddy, what am I doing?"

"You're working on something slow and boring."

"Actually, I'm working on something really interesting that matters a lot to me." (Truth: I love this project.)

"I know what you're doing!"

"What?"

"You're making money so you can buy me toys!"

And he smiled all over his face.

09:06 am: That's enough of the video

07:07 am: Teddy's opinion of my working




That's a picture of me sitting at a computer with a big ol' "X" through the picture.

Caption: "NO WRKIN"

06:50 am: Peter the stealth blogger
I found out the other day that Peter has been blogging almost as long as I have, about the Moravian separatist movement.

My husband. Blogging.

My husband, who makes fun of me for blogging, blogs.

I'm mostly thrilled about it. He's passionate about politics. He's blogging in Czech, so he's keeping up his language skills. His blog gets a lot of traffic, including the chairman of the Moravian separatist party (Jan Kryčer, I think, but Peter's asleep so I can't confirm that right now), who comments regularly.

:happy chair dance:

How totally cool is that?

I don't know (or care, except insofar as my husband does) all that much about politics, particularly Czech politics, but from what I can tell, living in some parts of the Czech Republic is very much like living in Western Massachusetts: it's as if you're in a totally different state/country from the bits that get all the attention (and money and other resources, too). In MA, it's all about Boston. Boston, Boston, Boston.

Don't get me wrong: I love Boston. But there is more to the state than Boston and its immediate environs.

Similarly, there's more to the Czech Republic than Prague. But you wouldn't know that to read about it in the newspapers or to look at budgets. Moravia, where Peter's from (Nové Město na Moravě, specifically), doesn't get much respect.

...and Peter's working on that. Which is, as Teddy would say, AWESOME.

On the other hand? He's been blogging about this for four years and I found out two days ago (he told me as proof that he was not using the computer to look at porn - which I had not accused him of doing, but there was a breakdown in communication, as happens periodically between people with different native languages, cultures, and genders).

He says he would've told me before he was elected to office. In the Czech Republic.

I'm pretty sure he was joking. I think.

07:40 pm: na zdraví, dude!
Tonight I served sparkling cider with dinner, just for the heck of it.

Teddy saw the champagne flutes and said "AWESOME! Na zdraví dude glasses!"

"Na zdraví" is "cheers!" in Czech. The "dude" is Teddy's own addition.