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This morning Rebecca had her 18 month well exam. Her "stats" are as follows-- weight: 24 lbs 10 oz (50-75th percentile) height: 33 inches (75-90th percentile), head circumference: 19 inches (90th percentile).Joel had asked me to ask Rebecca's doctor to draw a couple labs to check her iron levels (as part of Joel's ongoing paranoia about iron deficiency anemia). Given Rebecca's love of milk and carbohydrates and her pretty much universal disdain for every other food item that might possibly contain iron including but not limited to any type of meat or vegetable, I thought this might be a reasonable request.Unfortunately, in addition to the unscheduled blood work, Rebecca was also scheduled for two vaccinations today. So after the physical exam (during which she kicked and screamed and cried) she got two shots which made her kick and scream and cry some more. Then, as if that weren't enough trauma for one day, it took two nurses plus myself to hold her down for the blood draw. She screamed during the needle stick, while I was getting her dressed, all the way out to the car, and all the way to day care. When I got home I called Joel and told him that the next time he wants Rebecca to have blood drawn he can be one of the three people holding her down, not me!
I took the kids to the Laurie Berkner concert this afternoon, leaving Joel home get some more last minute studying in for tomorrow's board exam. It was almost an incident-free excursion. The almost occurred shortly after we had arrived (early) and found our seats. There I was, congratulating myself on having found the concert venue with no problems and all of that, and Rebecca had to go and ruin it for me. Our seats were in the balcony section. Since we had like 20 minutes to go until showtime, I was letting Rebecca walk back and forth instead of making her be in her seat or on my lap. It's kind of hard to describe the layout but what happened was is that she was walking to a wall about four feet from me, then turning around and walking back to me. What I couldn't see from the angle I was sitting at was that there was a very small gap between the wall and the row of seats in front of us. So here I was thinking she was perfectly safe with nowhere she could hurt herself, and then she turned around, took a step backwards, and fell through the gap between the wall and the seat in front of her. So basically, down one concrete step, backwards, headfirst. (Can we say OUCH?)I jumped out of my seat and over the row of seats in front of us and grabbed her, but of course she was crying hysterically. After a moment I saw that her lip was bleeding, and we had attracted all sorts of attention by this point and some ushers escorted us to the first aid station where a medic from CMC looked her over and gave me gauze pads and an ice pack for her lip. Rebecca was probably more upset over a strange man trying to put ice on her lip than she was of the actual pain she was in. After we got back to our seats -- after having to file an incident report also -- Rebecca calmed down. I saw that in addition to her lip, she had bit her tongue when she fell so that had been bleeding too. She drank some ice water and put her head down on my shoulder.As soon as the music started, she picked her head up off my shoulder and squirmed around in my lap to watch and clap and bop her head to the music. After a while her injuries were totally forgotten and she looked like she enjoyed the show even more than Ben did. I let her stand right in front of me, and she held onto the back of the chair in front of her and bopped and swayed and clapped through the whole show (which was an hour and a half long). So that, by the time it was over, I had almost forgiven myself for making her miss her nap and almost subjecting her to traumatic brain injury.
I just got back from taking the kids to watch some of the AKC National Agility Championships, being held this weekend in Concord (about 40 minutes from here). The GPS got us there without a hitch, and it is worth mentioning that I would have been really nervous attempting to take the kids someplace like this by myself, relatively far away and someplace I had never been. But with the GPS the drive was no problem - Yay! There was definitely no lack of dogs there. Dogs in the parking lot, dogs being exercised next to the arena, dogs coming out, dogs going in, and of course dogs in the different arenas running obstacle courses. We found seats at the biggest arena and watched for quite a while. Rebecca sat on my lap and was just as entertained as Ben was, and she clapped along with everyone else when each dog finished. The dogs had to jump over hoops, crawl through tunnels, go up a see-saw and down the other side and through a bunch of other obstacles all in a certain order and as fast as they could. This kept Ben entertained for quite a while.When he started to get restless -- saying he wanted to pet some dogs -- we went outside where there were plenty of dogs for him to pet (though I made sure he asked permission first). Ben was very good at identifying the different breeds. If he didn't know what it was he would ask, or if he did know he'd say "Excuse me, is that a .... (insert breed)?" He got quite a few correct, and the owners were very impressed. He even saw and correctly identified a Puli, among others. Way to go Ben - Mommy's little dog breed savant.
Joel is spending the weekend doing some last minute cramming for his board exam, which is Monday in Raleigh (he's driving to Raleigh Sunday afternoon and staying overnight). The forecast is calling for rain. Up until about 4pm today I had no idea what I was going to do to keep this kids occupied and out of Joel's hair this weekend. Then I did some internet research and came up with a plan.
Tomorrow I am going to take the kids to the AKC National Agility Championships, which are being held... well... somewhere vaguely near here, north east of Charlotte someplace I think. All I need to know is my GPS knows where it is ;) I figure this will be perfect for Ben and his new-found love of dog breeds... I mean, what could be better than getting to watch all different kinds of dogs run obstacle courses? And even better, admission is free. Hopefully Rebecca will enjoy watching all the dogs too (as long as we don't get too close to them, then she will freak).
Further research led to the discovery that the Laurie Berkner Band is playing in Charlotte on Sunday afternoon, and tickets were still available. If you have kids you probably know who Laurie Berkner is. It' s a good thing the dog show is free because Laurie Berkner tickets so aren't free. In fact I was rather amazed by how NOT FREE they are, even for children under 2. I hope they like it, and I hope Rebecca doesn't mind missing her nap for it!
Anyway, wish me luck with my ambitious solo plans, and wish Joel luck on his exam!
Last night I was on the phone with my brother-in-law, insisting that he could let me drive his new Lexus sometime because even though I appear at times to be a terrible driver, I have never been in an accident.*Today I was in an accident. How's that for ironic?For those overprotective relatives reading this (Mom) I will say right up front that it was a minor accident and everyone is fine.As I have indicated in the title of this post, it was SO TOTALLY NOT MY FAULT! This is what happened: I picked up Rebecca from the day care and was on my way to pick up Ben from preschool. I was waiting to turn out of our development onto a busy road at rush hour. An old lady was standing on the median in the middle of the street waiting to cross. There was no light or crosswalk or anything. There was a break in the traffic. I started to turn. The old lady stepped off the median and into the path of my car. I stopped suddenly. The car behind me (also waiting to turn) rear-ended me. It felt like a pretty hard hit, but happily my car was only very minorly damaged. I cannot say the same for the hood of her Cadillac though, which was pretty well smashed. Since I drive a big car (Honda Pilot) the hood of her car hit the rubber rear bumper of my car, scratched it up a bit, and popped out one of the reflector thingies (which didn't even break). The woman driving the Cadillac was very nice and very sorry, the old lady was very nice and very sorry, and a woman who witnessed the accident and stopped was very nice and very indignant at the old lady for stepping in front of my car. Rebecca (my only passenger) was indignant at me for leaving her in the car while I got out to talk to all of the above-mentioned people, but fine.Anyway, I got the woman's insurance information (turned out she has USAA same as we do) so I am sure getting my very minorly damaged car repaired will be no problem.*Except for one accident when I was 16 and had just gotten my learner's permit (so totally my fault) and two car vs cement pole in parking garage incidents. (Two separate cars, same garage, two different poles).
Joel's brother Mike got a new car this week. Hey Mike can I drive it??
I took Ben to a birthday party this afternoon at the Charlotte Nature Museum. Since I have only been there once -- even though it was last weekend -- I didn't really remember how to get there (yes my sense of direction/memory is that bad). So I used the GPS. It worked very nicely though I noticed it did not take me home the same way it got me there. When I walked with Ben inside, the birthday girl's mom informed me that if I wanted to, I could leave and come back when the party was over. Normally my thought process would have been "hmm well I'm not really sure where I am or what's around here so I don't know where I would go so I might as well just stay." But today my thought process was "I have a GPS and it can tell me where the closest Starbucks is -- SEE YA!" So I went to Starbucks and had a cup of coffee. I love you, GPS.I bought airline tickets last night, so that makes it official that we're going to Puerto Rico with friends from June 1 - 7. Our friends have relatives who own a beach house that they're letting them (and by extension us) use rent-free for the week. Now that it's official I'm getting really excited!!We invited Joel's parents over for dinner tonight and Joel used the grill for the first time this season to grill salmon and chicken kabobs. His friend Jon talked him through the salmon-grilling and it came out pretty well. Just slightly over-cooked. Ben, surprisingly, ate the token piece of salmon we put on his plate, then asked for seconds and even thirds! Becca, not surprisingly, smeared her salmon, chicken, rice and salad all over her high chair tray and then whined until she got a banana.
Since June 19, 2008