April 29, 2013: Deja Vu? Well, maybe a little...

Heaveno!

Well, one way NOT to start the week is getting home from the emergency room after midnight on Sunday night with 6 stitches in your youngest's forehead!  LOL.  Oops.  Just did that.

If I hadn't bought him the replica Chattanooga Choo Choo that just happened to be made out of DIE CAST METAL...

... it would have been something else, right?  hahaha.

Seriously, though.  Julian took a header off our bed last night while we were in the room and managed to land exactly on his FACE on his choo choo and slice his little eyebrow.  R-i-g-h-t before bed, too.  Kids in their pj's... the whole bit.  As soon as I saw the wound, I knew we were headed to the emergency room for a few stitches.  That part above your eyebrow is just stretched too tight to heal on its own without scarring and re-opening again and again... Now he'll have a story to tell the ladies...

Luckily, our local children's hospital, CHOC (Children's Hospital Orange County) has a brand new emergency room, and when you visit it (by the time we got there) at 9:30pm on a Sunday night, it's almost allllll yours.  It is totally state of the art and pristine, and I said luckily, because it wasn't ANYWHERE we ever were with Bella, so it helped play down any extra unwanted flashbacks.

Books, ipad, stuffed animal, and milk in hand, we marched in and were taken care of wonderfully by the staff.  They couldn't have been sweeter.  Julian was a trooper, and Ali was a champ.  His biggest pet peeve was the pulse-ox probe they stuck to his big toe.  The nurse then put his sock back on as if he wouldn't notice, but he wasn't having any of it.  They had to give him some versed to help mellow him out, and I am still convinced that he wouldn't have needed it if they didn't put the probe on his foot, but kids are just so much FUN on versed, that we were like, "alright!"  Seriously.  Ask any parent whose kid's been on versed, it makes them a comedian.

Julian heard his birth song sung repeatedly while they put the stitches in, and the Child Life Specialist, Lauren, held an ipad over head so Julian could watch Thomas the Train episodes on YouTube.  Good teamwork!

Yes, there were some flashbacks for all of us, but it wasn't too bad.  Mainly, we just knew that nothing was serious since he showed no signs of neurological damage from the fall.  As Monty Python would say, "It's only a flesh wound, come on!" :-)



Meanwhile, Ali is continuing to film art lessons with my camera.  She wants to have a whole series of online art lessons on her blog.  Got some editing to do!



P.S.  sidewalk chalk is fun... and messy!



P.P.S.  Watching your wife and daughter share a lemonade is always cool.



God night.

April 21, 2013: Happy Almost Earth Day!

Heaveno!

Whoops!  Let a whole week slip by there... sorry about that!  Last weekend, we had 5 parties in 4 days, so you can hopefully extend us some recompense.  It started with Ali's actual birthday on Thursday, then her sleepover party with two of her BFFs on Friday night, followed by a member of our church who was born on the same day as Ali on Saturday morning, followed by Ali's grandma's birthday party  (Ang hosted THAT party, too!), followed by a party for the final round of the Masters.  Phew!  Ang did an AMAZING job of hosting two 7 year old girls on Friday, followed by her parents, brother and sister-in-law and their two kids on Saturday night!  I think Pinterest made her do it personally.  That website has a dark side.  On the top, it looks like a great reference site for creativity, but underneath, I've noticed certain people feeling some sort of pressure to emulate the OAMs (that's Ang's and my joke... "Over-Achieving-Moms") that appear to create such lavish and ornate things at home...it used to be "keeping up with the Jones," but it's evolved into "keeping up with Pinterest!" LOL



Listening to three 7 yr-old girls interact while playing or making projects is one part funny one part totally maddening.  The key is to not actually try to make sense of any of it.  It got me (by "it" I mean the conversation) a couple of times... I had to bite my tongue and remember that this is not my world, it's their world, and the three of them communicate quite clearly... to each other ... and I need to stay out of their way!



Last week was a rough week for Julian.  He had an ear infection to start the week off, and then, just as that got controlled, he started cutting a molar!  Crabby city.  An epic amount things were thrown off the high chair last week! LOL.  The funniest is his little train.  I think we need to get it registered as a lethal weapon.  I bought it in the Chattanooga gift shop and it is all metal and deadly!  Julian uses it as a javelin, dagger, sword, brass knuckles, and hammer.  I don't think he really means to inflict any damage on anyone in particular, but man, that it the little engine that could... kill you!  LOL.  Thank God it's metal, because it would have exploded into a million plastic pieces by now, and baby, it is going strong still!  Well, maybe not strong, since it no longer makes choo choo noises, but it's still going!



Alright, Ang heads off tomorrow on her next business trip, so sleep needs to happen!  We are traveling every other week between the two of us.  Need to stay healthy, and for me, nothing replaces sleep.

God night.

April 7, 2013: Who's On First?

Heaveno!

I gave this post that title, because humans and dogs have been coming and going with such regularity that one's head could spin right off trying to keep up around here!

Oh, the puppies...

The puppies are currently being courted by our neighbors and Ang's parents.  Coco (the white one) is currently spending his second night in a row at grandma and grandpa's house.  Their chihuahua, Lexus, is not thrilled with the new arrival, but she's not thrilled with most dogs, so it seems par for the course.  More important, Coco is unfazed by her cold shoulder! LOL.

Caramel has had a couple of play dates with our neighbors and their yorkie, "Brit," and so far so good. Brit tolerates Caramel surprisingly well, according to her parents.  Caramel hasn't done an overnight over there yet.  They are going to their vet tomorrow to make sure Brit is up to date on her shots and will talk to the vet about what their next step is with Caramel, so everything seems to be moving steadily... fingers crossed.  I will definitely miss Caramel.  He is SO stinkin' cute, and this morning, Julian and he were playing together, and it was amazing.  When we fostered dogs way back when, occasionally there would be a dog I would miss, and Caramel will definitely be added to that list.

Ali and I just got home from Phoenix last night.  Ali is on her 2 week spring break, and I had a conference in Tempe for music therapy, so I brought her along to stay with her nanny for a few days so they could catch up while I worked.  Nanny lives in Phoenix.  That went GREAT.  It was so great to hang with Ali on the road trip on either side of the trip.  She really had fun with her nanny as well.  They went to the Musical Instrument Museum, they went shopping, they went to see OZ, they sewed, swam, painted, and played with nanny's dogs.

While Ang held down the puppy hotel with Julian, I finished out my term on the executive board of the regional chapter of our professional association as vice president.  I now begin a two year term as president-elect of our region, which will be followed by two years as president, then two years as past president, for a total of six years.  The vice presidency was two years as VP-elect and two years as VP, so this will be a ten year run in service, which started during my first year as a music therapist.  I like the fact that I will have served my community every year I was a MT when I hit my ten year anniversary.  I think service is a vital role in anyone's spiritual, personal, and professional growth.  I know it's been so great and healthy for me.  I tell people that by being willing to be a part of the solution, "I have earned the right to bitch!" LOL.  As VP, I was able to pioneer a bunch of improvements to how we run our conferences, and now there are some great new opportunities to expand the organizational structure and operations of the board.  As with any volunteer organization, we are all unpaid and working on this in our spare time, and as such, sometimes it's not a perfectly running machine, but I love looking for ways in which we can make things run smoother, more efficiently, and have an ever increasing amount of FUN while doing it!

In other news, if you would like to participate in this year's TIME TO FLY race in Minneapolis, come join us on Team PUCK!  CLICK HERE to sign up!  However, if you can't make the race, how about plan a small FUNdraiser and make a donation with those funds to our team?  We are shooting for $50,000 this year!  That's just shy of DOUBLE what we raised last year, so we need all the help we can get.  One thing that helped last year was people all over the country doing small events that were easy and fun, and then contributing that to the team.  We're more interested in that, because if you the reader make a donation, that's great, but if 10 of your friends come hang out at your house for a fundraiser and learn about EB and U of M, then 11 people donate, and TEN MORE people know about EB and the work U of M is doing for a cure!

For example, Ian Swarr created an event on facebook.  CLICK HERE to see.

Events are easier than they sound, and people are happy to come.  People like to support good causes, and not everyone has a cause they support, but would support one if they felt personally connected to it.  You (the person reading this) is that connection!  :-)  Also, fundraisers don't need to be gala events.  They can be small get togethers that raise $500-$1,000.  A couple dozen of those happening around the world over the next few months makes ALL the difference!  We have a "fundraiser in a box" on the PUCK website which makes it REALLY easy.  Check it out by clicking HERE.  In addition to THAT, Christie has created a facebook group for Team PUCK where she has posted several great links for fundraising tips, ideas, sample emails to send, etc.  In other words, we try to make it as easy for you as possible to have an event and feel like you are part of the cure!

Okay, okay, enough out of me.

God day.