March 2016 Update #89

First childhood

Both kids did very well with their dental exams in February. Adam still has some teeth coming in and Julie will start losing her first teeth soon. Oh, joy! Losing my teeth accounted for 37% of my childhood fears. I can hardly wait to begin that process all over again.

Julie celebrated her fifth birthday with a trip to the St. Louis zoo, a cake, and lots of presents. We started with the petting zoo and graduated to the larger animals. She loves all the animals, but she really wanted to see the lions. Adam enjoyed the activities and both kids surprised us with their stamina throughout a long day. Julie ate an ice cream cone for the first time, and Adam got his first real hotdog in a bun with the fixins.

Did I mention that Julie loves animals? She has most of her bed covered with stuffed and plastic animals – large and small. Sarah has to fight Julie to reserve enough room on the bed for the five-year old to sleep. Adam has gained a new appreciation for his stuffed animals, too. He tells them goodnight and stacks them up on one side of the crib. Their nighttime rituals have great spiritual and emotional significance.

As we expected, Julie graduated from the special education preschool program she attended for about one year. She met or exceeded every goal that they set for her in speech and fine motor skills. While her teachers would have loved to have kept her in the program, they couldn’t justify continuing to have the state pay for her tuition. We finally have a piece of paper which definitively states that she no longer qualifies as disabled!

Sarah and I have tried to get Julie to put on some extra weight since Christmas. She has done well eating on her own since we removed the button last summer – more volume, faster speed, and greater diversity. She keeps getting taller, but not heavier. Although Julie began eating more just before her appointment, her doctor has directed us to redouble our efforts. We have a mission to add a couple of pounds by our next appointment towards the end of April.

Julie endured a blood test after her appointment and has a new appreciation for my story of getting an iron shot because I wouldn’t eat meat as a preschooler. We decided to buy the kid another toy after the bad news at her doctor’s appointment. Julie picked a Lion Guard toy. Did I mention that she loves lions?

Julie’s doctor also found an irregular heartbeat at the same time, so we went to see a new cardiologist this past week. Julie survived a prolonged echo-cardiogram session with a technician in training, but they checked out her heart thoroughly. The EKG showed extra heartbeats, so the doctor had us take a portable monitor home overnight. My father, Tony, would have been impressed. He pioneered this technology fifty years ago and this portable unit had all the features he wanted. We now wait for a week while someone analyzes the data and reports back to the doctor.

Adam graduated from speech therapy last week. He started the program about six months ago at about 5% for his age group and now speaks at about 75-85%. He has become belligerent with his therapist (probably bored) and so we will give him some time to develop on his own. He has a large vocabulary and can form 3-5 words sentences, but he still resists proper pronunciation. He continues to surprise the therapist with his comprehension, but just doesn’t want to cooperate.

Sarah decided to take over from where the pre-school teachers left off with Julie. She ordered a full pre-K curriculum in February. I installed some apps suggested by Adam’s therapist on a couple of left-over iPad and iPod devices, so both kids have some games to help them learn sorting, counting, and smashing egg-stealing pigs. Julie excels at language and math. Sarah guides Julie through a series of science experiments and helps her with fine motor skills that her preschool teachers hoped to work on this semester. Julie does better writing words with a paintbrush than with a pencil. Both of my girls have enjoyed this mother-daughter time.

Julie had her first tooth fall out this weekend. She didn’t notice when it came out so she doesn’t have the tooth to place under her pillow for the Tooth Fairy. She has become increasingly concerned throughout the day and keeps asking Sarah whether the Tooth Fairy will come tonight.

Second childhood

In the meantime, I started playing with blocks. The wooden retaining walls around the back of the house fell down completely just before Christmas. My father Tony put them in place about 30 years ago. I noticed when we arrived two years ago that they had already fallen over in several places, but when the final straw came, I knew I would have to replace everything. I moved 6 ½ tons of material – blocks and gravel – to the house and began to remove the debris and dig trenches for the bottom wall.

I got sick just as I began to rework the brick walkway (for the third time in my life) last weekend. The grueling work in 40-degree weather just exhausted me. I understand why my father didn’t want to do it this way. He was ten years older than me the last time he worked on this project. I have renewed my appreciation for him all these years later as I unearth reminders of his tireless work around the house for thirty-five years. I found a stake buried in the ground about three feet under the current grade which shows how much earth has moved over the years. I still have six medium-sized stumps to remove, five walls to dig, and tons of earth to shift. I hope to finish in four to six weeks before the really hot weather begins.

After hours of pestering, Sarah finally admitted to Julie her true identity as the Tooth Fairy. Julie’s response was shock and amazement. Then she asked about Sarah’s wings. Julie still isn’t sure what to make of the situation and how Momma could place a surprise under her pillow while she slept – superpowers!

Before the weather allowed for outside work, I finished several writing projects including a commentary on Revelation. Overall, I have written about a hundred thousand words this quarter. Most of this consists of background material (word studies, etc.) that support my books. I had hoped to publish my next book by the end of March, but the retaining wall has taken a lot of time and energy out of me. I keep finding little mistakes (spelling, grammar, etc.) as I reread the manuscript.

My next job continues to dawdle as my potential boss waits anxiously for another large customer. I haven’t worried about it one little bit since I have blocks and mud to play with. He volunteered to come over and help me next weekend since he did this kind of work during college.

My mother, Helen, had a bad few weeks of depression and sickness. She appreciates phone calls and needs some encouragement.

Don’t tell anyone about Sarah’s true identity and superpowers. I wouldn’t want it to get around the internet.