Bites for Sights

Simon usually takes forever to eat supper. One way I discovered I could get him to take bites is to practice the sight words at the same time. In the beginning, he had to take a bite for every word, but now he can read faster than he can chew, so we do multiple words per bite.

The Little Things

Since re-entering the world after my surgery, I have a child-like fascination with everything that seems beautiful or visually interesting. Really, I'm always like, wow, that's amazing, and it's something simple like blue sky through the skylight after days of rain... 

...or the cat's shadow...

...or the view of yellow mums through my glass of water...

...or the moon, some clouds, and the pedestrian bridge over the highway in the evening...

...or leaves on the greenway during my walk through the woods.

I'm not going to say it was worth it to go through so much  misery just to be able to experience the world anew, but it is a really nice side-effect of feeling well again.

Second Surgery Scheduled

I drove to Chapel Hill this morning for my follow-up appointment after my surgery. It was a rainy, bleak day.

But, good news! I get to have my second surgery, where they create the J-pouch, on Dec 13th.  This is the perfect date because:

• it is soon (I'm not a fan of the ostomy bag)
• I can go back to work for 2 1/2 weeks to give my poor sub a break
• it is before midterm exams and winter break, so I won't have to miss so many days of work (I'm fortunate to get a total of 45 paid days, which is amazingly generous, but with two surgeries back to back, plus the days I missed for all my doctor's appointments in the weeks before the surgeries...I will still end up with some unpaid days. But I am NOT complaining.)
• it is on this calendar year, which means insurance should cover all of it since I've already met my deductible and out-of-pocket expenses for the year.
• it is early enough that I won't be in the hospital over Christmas unless something goes terribly wrong

The weird thing about the appointment was that they pretty much determined I was ready for the second surgery by looking at me and saying I looked a lot better.  Good thing I put on my makeup this morning!

How to hide a turkey

Simon was given a project from school to hide this turkey, then they were going to have to describe it to their classmates or something. I didn't quite get it.  Luckily, Simon had recently learned about the existence of cotton balls when doing a craft at the fossil fair this weekend (the cotton balls represented ice), so he had the idea to hide his turkey behind "ice." He had great fun making it.

It didn't look very impressive in the end, but we figure the main point of the projects is for our kids to do it themselves and learn to take ownership, rather than to have something that looks awesome but is all our idea and work. There is never any doubt that the kids' projects are done by themselves!

Siblings and Sight Words

We've been practicing sight words with Simon a lot lately, and he loves it.  Alice found her old word ring from kindergarten, and tried to teach Simon some new sight words during afternoon snack.

Then they worked on their hand stands.

Portraits of the Artists

I love seeing the kids' art develop.  Simon still mostly draws houses, but will dabble with a few other subjects.

Meanwhile, Alice is still really into owls and mythical creatures. Here are some more of her pictures from the last week or so. (Except this first one is from before Halloween. She put her collection of black widow spiders on it.)

These last three are made on some paper that had eye holes pre-cut.

Out and About

Since I've been feeling good enough to be out and about again, I'm taking the kids somewhere every weekend and booking as many play dates as possible, before I have my second surgery. I don't know how to describe how good it feels to just be normal again, and to be able to get out and about again.

On Sunday I met our friend Robyn and her three boys at the Durham science museum.  I failed to take many pictures because I was enjoying chatting with Robyn while the kids all played.  I did manage to take this one picture of Simon, who was so happy because he found a bed in a tree trunk where he could take a nap.

The last time I was at this place was Alice's birthday (June 13) when I brought her and Parker here. It was pretty much the last time I went anywhere before my health got so bad that I didn't want to even leave the house.  And I remember that it was a pretty hard day for me, but I still wanted Alice to have a nice birthday.  So it was nice to come here again and have energy and none of the suffering I had before.

Kindness

Before I got so sick, I remember I would occasionally worry about not having a support network in case things ever got really bad. Growing up, we had plenty of actual family living close by, plus my family always went to church, and those people became our extended family. Whenever someone died or got sick, the church people would organize meals and other support.  Who would help us?

Well, there's nothing like actually getting very sick to find out.  Through this whole ordeal, I have been so touched by how many people helped or offered various forms of help. Our friend group through the kids' daycare offered to take the kids any time we needed. Neighbors who had just moved in and that we barely knew brought us meals and offered child care. People at work offered to watch my kids or even go grocery shopping for me. My principal and colleagues at work also stepped up in various ways to cover my duties while I've been out for surgery and to make sure I had as little work and stress as possible.

But out of all that, here is what stands out the most. The mother of some of my students (I taught one daughter last year and one this year) wanted to help too. She drove out to our house on a Sunday to bring us a meal and she even brought books and beanie babies for the kids.  Unfortunately, I was still in Durham with the kids and Zac was in the attic installing lights and didn't hear the doorbell, so we weren't even around to thank her in person.

But the real kicker is that this woman's mother had just died and she was traveling to her funeral the next day (my friend at work, Amy, who helped coordinate this, let me know).  So how, in the midst of your own grief, do you put such an effort into helping someone else (who, honestly by this point didn't need it, but alas, the meal train was set up way in advance before we knew how quickly I would recover, and who am I to turn down pre-made meals?).

I sent her an e-mail that evening thanking her and included this picture of the kids with the gifts she brought for them. I also expressed sympathy for the loss of her mother. She responded: Thank you so much for this note & sweet photo! It made our night! Your kids are darling. Hope your recovery is going well & we are thinking about you. Thank you too for your kind words about my mom.  

So here's what I think I've learned from all this: I do indeed have a network of people that care about me. But also that caring for others is healing for your self too. I think this mother, whose name is Alice, found that helping us helped ease her own sadness at losing her mother. I will try to always remember this, as well as all of these acts of kindness, and try to return the same to whoever needs help. I think it's too easy to make excuses that I'm too busy with my own kids and job and I probably don't reach out to help others enough. I have been writing a lot of thank you cards lately, though!

Alice's Chicken Dance

Just watch it.

Fossil Fair and Fireworks

On Saturday morning I took the kids downtown to the science museum for their annual fossil fair. At one of the stations, it became clear that Simon needed a lot more practice with puzzles.  He just forced the pieces together and was pretty clueless that the picture did not make any sense that way.  It was only a nine-piece puzzle, but boy did that boy struggle.  But, true to form, he didn't give up and kept trying until he got it right. (Although I may have set the last three pieces very close to where they needed to go in order to speed things up a bit.)

Another activity that Alice really liked was pouring grains of rice into the cranial cavities of various creatures' skulls to measure which ones had the largest brains. (Hint: it's not always the ones with the biggest skulls.)

One station had the kids color fish, and then they took pictures of the fish and put them on a screen that made it look like they were swimming. It was a fun activity, and it was interesting to see how each kid chose to embellish the picture.

Simon added seaweed, waves, and a sun.

Alice added some extra markings and claws.

***

Later that night, the primitive theme was continued when our neighbors Kim and Mike invited us over for a bonfire. We brought our stash of fireworks (actually just sparklers and glorified sparklers) that I'd bought for Simon's birthday and Zac's father's day. We never ended up using them in the summer because it stayed light so late and the kids needed to go to bed. Plus, I was really sick and life was hard. But now that it gets dark so early, we were able to do them and still get the kids home to bed at a reasonable hour.

Simon has a love/fear relationship with them. He's terrified of holding sparklers, but watches mesmerized.

After using up all the little sparklers, we went down by the pond and used up the bigger ones. Again, Simon was terrified and wanted to run to the other end of the pond to watch. I was ok standing really far away as long as I held him and promised the fireworks weren't going to get us. In this video, he keeps asking if it's the last one because at some point Zac mentioned he would save the biggest one for last, and Simon was very worried about how big the last one would be and how far away he would need to get.

Finally, it was indeed time for the last one.  Simon ran really far away to watch it.

Fall walks

I'm still taking my walks every day that I can, and I just love them. I haven't gotten over how beautiful it is on the greenway trail yet, especially with all the fall colors. I always appreciated this trail, but I appreciate it so much more now that I had to go months without walking here, just cooped up at home.

And I always feel so fortunate that this is the happy home I come back to.

Alice's parent-teacher conference

We had Alice's parent-teacher conference today.  Ms. Smith, her teacher, seems to understand our Alice, but I became skeptical when she kept referring to Alice as "sweet."  Alice is a lot of things, but sweet is about the last word I would use to describe her.  The consensus is that she's doing fine and is on grade level, but needs to work a lot on handwriting, spelling, and writing in general.

This was really apparent when we looked at the displays in the hallway where the kids had to write a story.  Most stories were much longer than Alice's, had way better spelling, and much neater handwriting. Alice is the classic case of a very capable child, who just doesn't apply herself. Sigh.

Here's a picture of hers from outside the art room that she proudly showed us.

After we got home, it was still barely light enough outside to have the kids play in the leaves a little bit.  You can't see it very well, but Simon is happily throwing leaves in the air and Alice is doing some raking in the background.

A tale of two...horses?

I'm not sure what the story is behind these pictures the kids came home with, but it seems like they both traced a similar shape, and then embellished them differently.

From Alice, we get a flying unicorn with claws. The design on it is a constellation, she says.

From Simon, we get a flying horse that is about to crush a house that has a van inside with a person driving it (if you look closely).

Simon's tummy

Simon has a great sense of humor, and gets great joy out of stuffing things under his shirt, then parading around saying, "Look at my big tummy!"

A proper walk - first time in a long time

I cannot explain how good it feels to be able to walk again. Today I finally felt confident enough in my strength that I did the full greenway path. This has always been my favorite walk, but I haven't done it in about five months. There were so many days when I honestly couldn't fathom that I had ever been able to walk this far (it's about 3 miles). It just seemed so impossible, when I would be exhausted just walking from my front door to the car, or from my car to my classroom. It was so horrible being anemic in addition to everything else that was wrong with me, and to not have hope that I would ever get better. Now I am gaining weight easily and I can feel that I am getting stronger every day. I don't trudge around like a zombie anymore; I can do a proper walk!

Bag Hop

My wonderful colleagues have been doing a meal train for us, so we get dinners delivered every other day or so. It has saved us so much time and energy! Plus, we've gotten to try lots of great recipes. Many people go all out-- providing a main dish, sides, and even dessert.

The meals are often brought in these large bags. I left them out one day, and the kids quickly put them to good use.

As always, things were more exciting before it occurred to me to make a video. But you get the idea.

Election Day!

Simon's Houses

A lot of Simon's art lately has featured houses.

And here's our house, framed by fall leaves.

Alice's Owls

Alice's class has been doing some sort of research project on owls, so she's been obsessed with drawing them for the past week.

Well, not quite an owl...