a cold day in July

Last weekend, we celebrated the birthday of one of C’s good friends over at Mimi & Pop’s pool. Who knew that the 3rd weekend of July would be 68 degrees (high!) and rainy! The kids were completely unaffected, though, aside from the violent shivering and blue lips.

C shows off her fine form. I wish she weren’t still using swimmies, but because of her short stature, she is unable to touch the bottom of pretty much any pool that we are in. So there were several younger children there, none of whom were wearing swimmies. I think she’d be perfectly capable of swimming on her own, were it not for being stalled at 36 (?)-ish inches tall!

C & E try to warm up during a mom-enforced mandatory thawing period:

C in her royal robes – the girls came out as princesses, the boys had various numbers of “Thing”, “Spiderman” and other costumes with fake-foam-abs included. It was a riot!!

Girth. Not so much mirth.

Soooooooo ready…

Cardiac Physiology 201

C has become really, really interested in her body and the human body in general since she got a very simple book about the human body from Mimi while we were on vacation. This book was definitely her age level, maybe a bit above, but she loves to read it, look at the pictures, tell us about what it says, ask the same questions over and over…which of course I love, being fascinated with the human body myself. Hearing your four year old explain that you make 3 cups of saliva per day and that one side of your brain helps with things like counting and one side of your brain helps with things like coloring is just, well, kinda funny. She asks what things are, I tell her. Why not? We’ve moved from ‘arm bone’ to humerus, radius and ulna. She asked what that space was on the inside of your elbow [a common site for having your blood drawn]…I explained that the back part of your arm there is called the elbow; “but what’s this part called?” she asked. So I told her, that’s the antecubital fossa. “What’s the antecubital fossa?,” she wondered out loud…

But we’d conquered the vacation body book, so at the library on Saturday, we scouted out some new ones. The one she picked was quite thick, probably aimed at an older school-age child. Lots more drawings and pictures and figures, some electron microscopy photographs (“Oooooooh, what’s that?!?”, she says, on seeing electron microscopy of a macrophage engulfing a germ. She totally understood my explanation of phagocytosis, but not so much electron microscopy), x-rays, all that fun stuff. When we got to the pages devoted to the heart, there was one picture showing a cross section of the heart, similar to this:

She was intrigued by the valves. “What’s this called?,” she asked. I explained that they were valves. “What’s a valve?,” she inquired. So I showed with my hands, it’s something that opens and closes. She recalled a toy she had gotten at Family Fun Night about 3 months ago, one of those clapper things on a handle that is exceptionally loud and annoying, but also happens to be strangely enough like a valve that she knew exactly what I was describing.

“Who pulls those strings?,” she wondered. “What strings?,” I said. “Those strings there, those white strings, who pulls those strings on the valves?” I said they sort of operate on their own, no one needs to pull them, they just pull the valves open and shut on their own. She said, “Well I mean you can have Jesus in your heart but where are the people who will pull those strings, is there room for those people if you have Jesus in your heart?”

Too much of a good thing

The inferiority of being a WOHM is never more apparent than in the summer. Everyone else (seemingly) is out lounging by the pool, bouncing from vacation to play group to day camp and back to the pool, while my days continue to slog along at the office. “Why doesn’t mommy’s work ever stop?,” C asked her dad recently. Hmmm, well that’s a great question, and I’ll explain it one day when I figure it out myself.

At any rate, enter the SAHD, at least for the summer…being university faculty does have its advantages, and one of those is the celebrated “school schedule”. Brian has done a magnificent job this summer of taking C to and fro. At the beginning of the summer, I scouted out a whole bunch of possibilities and printed out a monthly calendar with opportunities on different days. Some things are scheduled, some are not…all the names and operating hours of our local (within an hour) Children’s museums, exhibits, special park events, etc. Within the past 2 weeks, they have been to a Cincinnati Reds game, swimming at Mimi’s, picnicking/bike riding at the Reservoir, weekly gymnastics, came to Dayton and had lunch with me one day…I mean, the child is clearly not suffering. But, in my haze of the waning days of this pregnancy, I just wasn’t sure I was doing enough. Had to do some more.

So this past Saturday, after having to go into work yet again (but only was there for about 15 minutes, max!), and having to take C with me and make her sit in the patient education room while I saw a patient, I attempted to make it up to her yet again. We went to The Greene afterwards, shopped for slippers for her, found the perfect pair (clearance at Stride Rite no less!), putzed around Books & Company, found a few new Easy Readers for her, ate delicious macaroni & cheese at the Noodle Company, and headed home in a driving rainstorm (which we desperately needed). We hit the library on the way home (MORE BOOKS!) and picked up a few CD’s and movies too. God bless the library system, though ours is about to go under…

On Saturday night, we went to our Saturday evening service so we could hear the start of a series by one of the associate pastors that we’ve been looking forward to. Saturday evening, Brian headed to a friend’s for card night, and C and I came home to paint toenails and have Movie Night.

Oh, but I couldn’t stop there. Nope, on Sunday morning, we headed to Dayton to the local dinner theater which was featuring their production of “Annie.” They have a Sunday brunch that I thought would be just perfect for C and I. She was extraordinarily patient but I definitely overestimated her attention span, interest, and overall tolerance for the activity. There was lots of waiting (wait to check in, wait to be seated, wait to get food, wait again to go through the buffet line, wait for the show to start) but when the show started, she seemed totally captivated. That lasted for two songs. Then she had to go potty – we almost missed “Tomorrow” when she said she had to go, and I said, “Let’s at least hear this song, then we’ll go.” At one point, she was so fidgety she actually fell off her chair and I had to carry her (stifling very loud crying) and kind of run out of the nearest exit. After intermission, she had more interest in drawing on a pad of paper than she did in the show. And, of course, the fascination with the bathroom. I think we visited six times total, make that seven if you count the trip right before we left.

By Sunday evening, she was in desperate need of a reset, but that unfortunately did not happen. I guess I thought she would sleep it off. Turns out, she did not, and she was receiving her first spanking about 6:56am this morning. Not a pretty picture. After a few more spankings, some breakfast, and some room time, she apparently made a full recovery and was an absolute peach for her dad all day. They spent somewhere in the neighborhood of THE ENTIRE DAY swimming at Mimi’s, without a break. She even played in the sprinkler after dinner.

After bath and jammies and a couple books, it still seemed as though she’d never close her eyes. She finally did, though and now sleeps peacefully. Here’s hoping for another dandy day tomorrow.

Academic Excellence & Spiritual Vitality

The last weekend of June, we traveled down to Wilmore for our 10-year college reunion. It was a short trip, but we had a great time. It was about 115 degrees in the shade, and all of our functions were outside! A kind-of not happy surprise, but I made it. We met up with friends in Lexington and headed down to Wilmore for our lunch at a pavilion out by the reservoir, which I had absolutely no memory of ever visiting during my four years there. The picnic lunch lasted several hours and by the time the photographer showed up, we were all melting. I did think it odd that they picked the class most likely to have the most young children & pregnant women to be at the location with NO CLOSE BATHROOMS. Maybe next time put the Class of ‘29 out there- they’re probably all in diapers, they wouldn’t care…

At any rate, we walked around campus and took in a lot of the improvements that have taken place since we were there. The “new” library is already 8 years old, but is a 1,000% improvement on what we had. The old library has been turned into a neat student center with coffee shop, gathering areas, game tables, lounge space. Things we’d have enjoyed…but then again, I’d probably have overdone it even more on the caffeine if I’d had access to a coffee shop in those days.

We finished the evening with a stop at Graeter’s and an overnight at the Kretzes, and headed home on Sunday morning. We stopped at IKEA for a few baby-room essentials and made it home mid-afternoon. I was tired, of course, but then again…when am I not tired??