Tag: health

children, gratitude, happiness, health, kids, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Clear Heart, Clear Lungs?

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Poor little T.Puzzle.

You know he would pick his first week of Christmas break to come down with a bronchial virus.

He is finally showing real signs of recovery.  Hopefully he will lose his old man’s smoker’s cough soon, too.

He has been a trooper.  Even the night that we ended up on the family room couch at 2am as I held him upright to stave off the cough, he kept a bright outlook.  He kept worrying that my feet weren’t covered and periodically rearranged our throw blankets that I had tossed haphazardly on top of us.

I was grateful for a reason to smile in my tired early morning haze.

So, maybe our plans for Christmas break have been slightly thwarted.

At least we are together, we have a roof over our heads and we have love in hearts.

Next up?

Clear lungs I hope!

children, eyesight, gratitude, happiness, health, humor, life in pictures, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Eye(mazing)

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boys play matchbox cars to pass the time at the ophthalmologist's

We are seated in the tiny eye exam room.  I am so beyond stressed that I actually feel kind of calm.

These visits to the pediatric ophthalmologist are not without uncertainty.

Will Full Speed test well?

Is T.Puzzle in a cooperative mood?

I try to convince myself it’s no big deal.  I mean only the future of my children’s vision is at stake here.

We wait for the eye doctor.

She breezes into the room with grace and confidence.

She clearly adores my boys.

This helps.

Full Speed is an unexpected rock star of vision testing.

He tests 20/40 in his right eye and 20/30 in his left.

I almost faint.

He then proceeds to read a line of print so teeny-tiny, I’m positive that only someone with superhuman eyesight could read it (no, it’s not that I’m old in the least and had to squint to read the line myself).

I almost faint again.

I get goosebumps on top of my goosebumps.  My heart fills with immeasurable gratitude.

It hardly phases me that T.Puzzle is mostly uncooperative.  He holds steady at 20/50 and 20/70.

I’ll take it.

During this arduous process of eye surgeries, doctor’s appointments and visits to the ophthalmologist, I have learned that I cannot control the level of vision that each of my boys will attain.

All I can control is how I feel about it.

And today for the first time in my life, I feel absolutely amazing about their vision.

This is one of the best days ever.

children, eyesight, kids, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Hold My Hand

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This week’s beautiful weather has afforded me the use of a bike to pick up Full Speed from kindergarten.  Mad Dog’s bike has a nifty trailer attachment that turns any regular bike into a tandem.  Full Speed loves it and so do I.  Whenever I greet him outside the school the first thing he says to me is, “Bike, today?”   His face lights up when the answer is yes.

As I grabbed his hand he shared some about his day as we headed to our bike.  He loops his hand through mine out of habit.  He doesn’t need to because we only cross through a crowd of people to reach our bike.  I don’t tell him not to.  I know my days of holding his hand are numbered.  I do my best to memorize the weight of his hand in mine and note that it feels fantastic.  Oh, how I will miss this.

“Mom, I had a vision and hearing test at school today.  I think I did really good for the hearing and I did just okay for the vision.  There’s a paper in my backpack that tells you all about it.”

I can’t help it.  My stomach lurches a little at the thought of reading his vision test results.  Just because I think his vision functioning is more than sufficient for school, doesn’t mean that the school nurse will agree.

When we get home I open his bag with trepidation and read the results.

20/50 for both eyes.  There’s a note attached that he needs an eye exam pronto.

Now my job will be to delicately explain to the school nurse that Full Speed’s had regular eye exams since the tender age of 20 months old and 20/50 vision is downright spectacular for him.

When I speak with the school nurse later I tell her only a slice of Full Speed’s vision history.   Over time I’ve learned that once you have a label, especially one with a medical diagnosis attached, it is hard for people to classify you as anything other than that.

So far I think I’ve been able to strike a balance for Full Speed.  I send him into new situations without disclosing any of his vision issues, and let everything unfold in its own time.  Right now, all he is to the world is an inquisitive and bright kindergartener.

And I’m the lucky lady who gets to hold his hand.

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children, health, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

The Spontaneous Nap

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There is a positive side to raising overly active children.  Honest.  I knew with out a shadow of a doubt that T.Puzzle was feeling under the weather.  He had a pretty good morning and was keeping up with Full Speed.  After lunch we were seated at our dining room table about to work on some fine motor activities.  T.Puzzle politely excused himself from the table.  He went to the nearest couch, laid down, and was asleep within two minutes.

sleep tight!

Turns out he had a temperature of 102 and went on to have miserable, sad evening.  I motrined him up and put him to bed at six.

If only we all could sleep 13 hours straight.  I bet the world would be a better place if we did.

children, kids, life in pictures, mommyhood, motherhood, parenting

Bumped

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We were all set to host our friends for dinner.  Since we are the couple with the young kids, it’s most practical for them to come to our house.  That way they can still see the boys and after we put Full Speed and T.Puzzle to bed, we have the chance to have an actual uninterrupted conversation.

At least this was the plan.

Apparently, plans were made to be broken as well as the heads of overactive children.

Ten minutes before our guests arrive Full Speed does a swan dive off the couch onto our hardwoood floor.  Through his screams of pain Mad Dog was able to triage his damaged noggin.  And wouldn’t you know it, Full Speed managed to land on precisely the same spot that had been the reason for a July trip to the emergency room.

Injury #1

Fortunately this time the goose-egg reached about an eighth of the size of the previous injury.  No emergency room visit was required for Full Speed.

Injury #2

However Mom required many, many glasses of wine with her dinner.