Hallie and Travis

I haven’t had good luck wearing baseball caps while sailing. At least twice before today I’ve had one go flying off my head and we’ve had to circle back and scoop it up. I wore my “Hallie’s Mom” hat today on purpose, thinking that it had a tighter fit and would stay on. Wrong!

Not long into our day of sailing, my hat took a sail of its own. We were close to shore with lots of boat traffic and unreliable wind. Not a great place to change course, but Mark immediately swung Whimsy around for me to grab the hat. I got up on the edge, holding onto the lifeline, and watched as the hat came closer. I reached (and reached and reached). I could tell I wasn’t going to get it but I gave one last stretch anyway–and joined the hat in the water.

I was so close to the water to start with that there was no time to even sense “I’m going in!” It was more, “Well, here I am in the water!” My first instinct was to let Mark know I was fine, and my second was to grab my hat. (Mark had the same reaction, shouting “Get the hat!” once he knew I was OK.) He brought the boat around again and I tried swimming for her. But my strokes weren’t great while clutching my hat in one hand, and I was losing ground He turned Whimsy sideways and tossed me a line, and up the ladder I dripped.

The kids spent the whole adventure below but knew exactly what was going on (and thought it pretty exciting). As I climbed back on, Hallie declared, “You must have gotten a nice refreshment!” For the rest of the day, she kept referring to my dip as my refreshment. And Mark joked about how he was jealous and wanted his own turn in the water. I have to say that my refreshment really was quite refreshing. Though we’ll have to be sure the kids understand the safety issues involved and how that’s NOT something to do on purpose.

Despite that excitement, this was one of our less auspicious sails. Neither of the kids seemed really into it, and the wind was pretty poor. There was also a TON of boat traffic on the lake, which makes the whole experience less fun and more stressful. Before long both kids were whining, I was feeling seasick from my time tending to them below decks, and Mark wasn’t having a lot of fun either.

So, we made it a very short day and headed for home. Of course the wind picked up nicely after we had the boat out of the water but by that point we were all done. It will be at least three weeks before we can get back out there. I figure by then the experience will be a bit more novel and the kids might get charged up again. We’ll also make sure not to bother if we don’t really like the wind forecast. It makes such a difference!

Yesterday we finally tackled a project almost three years in coming. We painted the kids’ bathroom! For some reason it was two-tone when we moved in–half flat and half semi-gloss. So while it never looked great, it only looked truly horrible in certain lights.

We bought paint and linens about 4 months ago and just now finally got around to doing the painting. And the embarrassing thing is it only took about 3 hours. Not a bad investment for such a big improvement. Though as expected it makes us more eager to get the rest of the upstairs done.

After her quiet hour, Hallie came in to “help” us. Her help, especially in such tight quarters, certainly made the work more challenging. But her enthusiasm more than made up for that. We quickly lost track of the number of times she declared, “This is fun!” Or “This is really hard work but it’s also a lot of fun!” I let her work with a brush and followed behind with a roller. In one section I wasn’t quick enough and you can still see all the brush marks. But I told Mark that those “imperfections” will remain my favorite part of the paint job because I know how much love and energy went into making them. I’ll also think fondly of the area where we encouraged Hallie to paint her name before we covered it over.

Travis contributed in his own way by taking a 3 hour nap. It’s been ages since he slept that long, and it’s even more remarkable since all three of us were right next door being none too quiet. We still have a few painting touch ups to do, but we’re pretty happy with the improvement we made in such a short time. Just in time for guests for Hallie’s birthday weekend!

Today was Hallie’s last day at The Children’s House of Raleigh, and we wrapped it up by going to her graduation ceremony and end of the year party this evening. Hallie took everything in stride–more so than I expected her to. She summed up her emotions perfectly at bedtime when she said, “I had a GREAT time tonight and I’m really happy . . . but I’m also kind of sad.” And that was that and then she moved on to another topic.

It’s not that she doesn’t understand that something has ended. It’s more that she seems to understand it perfectly and is fine with it. She’s made comments throughout the day like, “I’m probably not going to see some of these people again.” And “It’s sad to be leaving Children’s House of Raleigh, but then I’m going to Conn.”

I think it really helps that she’s got such a concrete image of Conn in her mind to look forward to. And it helps that several of her friends are going different ways–she knows she’s not the only one leaving. And it helps that we’ve promised to keep up with some of her closer friends. And, though I’ve wished this for her at various times, it helps that she doesn’t have a true “best” friend from whom she’s being separated. And maybe more than anything I think she’s growing up and getting more mature about events and emotions and how she reacts to things. Not to say we don’t still have plenty of roller coasters ahead, but I’ve been really proud of her today.

The ceremony and party were actually rather chaotic. I was expecting the evening to be an emotional one for me, seeing this as the end of a time spent bonding with parents (who have become friends) over the work we’ve done on behalf of the school. Instead, it was a typical event spent keeping an eye on my kids, helping out where needed with others’, trying to sneak in a conversation or a bite to eat myself. And then it was over. Several sets of parents had extended family with them and were focused there, and many trickled out at various points, so the whole thing felt a bit anticlimactic. For the program, the kids performed several songs they’d been practicing. We couldn’t hear much of what the teachers said by way of comments or introduction, and after about 10 minutes of songs we broke for refreshments.

The kids clearly enjoyed their performance and their graduation gifts. Afterwards they had a fun time snacking and tearing around. Hallie was thrilled with the flowers I brought her and not eager to leave even though we stayed until the end. For the second year in a row, we had a grandfather threaten to take Travis home with him. (And this was a different grandfather from last year–we’ll have to keep an eye on that boy . . .)

I think for me–and maybe for Hallie, too–it will start to sink in more next week when we don’t pick up our normal schedule. It will be interesting to see who we do end up keeping in touch with. I’ve made some friendships I’d like to see continue, but they aren’t all with the parents of the kids Hallie has been closest to. I know for sure we’ll keep in touch with Ms. Gretel–Hallie’s already thrilled about our plans to meet her for lunch at Zest over the summer. And I’ve told Ms. Gretel I’m counting on her being around at CHR for Travis to get through, too. That means four more years. I hope she’s in it for the long haul!

After thinking things over a bit more yesterday, I decided there was no time like the present for a second opinion on T’s teeth. Fortunately, Aidan’s dad is a dentist and generously managed to squeeze us in this morning.

The end result of the visit is still “wait and see,” but I feel much better about the reasons behind it this time. Rich (Dr. Patterson) gave me a better explanation of why there’s extra tissue there–basically, he thinks the gum got pulled out from between T’s teeth in two spots and when the teeth were too tight and the gum too swollen for the gum to go back between them, the two pieces healed to each other, in front of the affected tooth, creating an extra little flap of gum tissue.

Rich said the procedure to remove it is very, very simple and quick but he’s super cautious about anything that would traumatize a kid T’s age and keep him from regular dental visits in the future. The options are to numb it with a shot or to put T all the way under, neither of which is very appealing right now. He stressed umpteen different ways the importance of keeping the area behind that gum flap clean and gave us some good tips for doing that. He said if it gets infected, he’d definitely just snip that piece off. In the meantime, though, if we can keep it really clean and use peroxide on it, the swelling may go down some. Long term, Rich thinks Travis will probably have a little flap there that needs to be removed once his permanent teeth settle into place but there’s some small chance it might shrink down on its own.

Rich didn’t seem to think anything different should have been done at the other practice. He said these days pediatric dentists are very cautious about scaring kids and are much less likely to do sutures or snip something off immediately. So, I feel better about that. And since it doesn’t seem to be bothering Travis at all, we’ll just keep brushing and flossing and practicing good dental hygiene!

I took Travis back to the dentist today. I wasn’t thrilled with how the swelling in his lower gum was going down, and I called them three times over the course of last week to ask about it. Each time they told me that what I described was normal. But I still wasn’t convinced, so I made an appointment yesterday and we headed over this morning. Turns out it wasn’t at all normal, though it’s not necessarily anything to be concerned about.

The place where his gum was torn rather low on one bottom tooth is healing nicely. But the gum in front of the teeth next to that is still swollen and comes almost to the top of one of his teeth.

The dentist said she’d never seen anything like this. She said it looked like how a gum graft would be healing, where you’d added extra gum knowing it would recede a little bit. But in T’s case there was no gum added. She said at one point it was like he was so healthy he was healing “too well.”

It’s not causing Travis any discomfort and it’s not really noticeable unless he opens in a certain way. She said to resume our normal brushing and flossing–that part of the issue is that it’s swollen because it hasn’t been stimulated. She wants the dentist who originally examined him to see him again in a month. She’s expecting the swelling to go down some but it seems like she thinks there may still be extra gum there. Actually, it seemed like she had no idea what to expect because she didn’t know why it’s healing like this. She said the only thing that could really be done is to remove the “extra” gum but she’d be very reluctant to do that since there wasn’t any gum added in the first place. Ironic, since I was worried we’d be looking at a gum graft for the low part but that part turns out to be within perfectly normal ranges.

Dr. Johnson said if it was her son, and if it wasn’t causing any discomfort, she’d give it plenty of time–even to the point of waiting until his permanent teeth come in. I asked if something different should have been done when he was first seen and she said no, that if he’d had a suture then it would have healed up even higher. I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced of this. It looks to me like the flap stayed loose and healed at an angle instead of coming back level and reattaching where it was torn. But we’re past the point of being able to do anything about that now.

So, we’ll see what regular brushing and flossing do and go back in a month. Travis was a terrific patient, opening even before he was asked and generally enjoying the whole event. Though he got pretty tired of me talking to the dentist when he was ready to “go pick my prize!” I guess whatever happens with this it was probably better than having a tooth knocked out.

Despite the extremes described in my Whimsy post below, I’ve noticed several things recently that show me that Hallie’s starting to get a handle on her emotions. Near the end of her playdate with Lily yesterday I offered to Lily’s mom, within earshot of both girls, that if Lily’s mom was in a bind Lily was welcome to stay for dinner. Both girls seemed excited about that idea. But when Charlotte called back to say her conflict had been resolved, Lily decided she was ready to go home.

When Hallie heard this, her face crumpled, she collapsed in a chair crying, and I thought “Here we go!” But before I’d really even braced for her to gear up, she’d hopped out of the chair and was helping Lily build the train track they’d been working on.

A few minutes later, as we got ready to walk Lily home, Hallie asked Lily if she wanted to trade shoes just for the walk. Trading shoes has been the hit of most of Hallie’s recent playdates, and the girls make it work even though I think there’s a range of 3 or 4 sizes among her playmates. When Lily said she didn’t want to, Hallie’s face crumpled again. And then I could almost see her shake it off and they marched happily out the door in their own shoes.

Both of these scenarios had all the makings of full-blown hysteria. Hallie had been playing hard all day with no nap, so she was exhausted and probably overstimulated. It was at or past dinnertime, so she was probably hungry. And it was a time of transition, which is often tough. So, although she did have a melodramatic scene later in the evening yesterday, I was really impressed to watch her handle some touchy situations much better than I think she would have even a month or so ago. I need to make sure I’ve done a good enough job telling her so!

Our Hallie has been from one extreme to the other in the last 24 hours. She had a great day yesterday–until the very end. Her friend Lily from down the street came over after school, and they played together better than they have in a long time. She got some more neighborhood friend time with Mark and Travis while I cooked dinner. And all was well until right before bedtime.

We did a video chat with Gum and Gup the other night in which they read the kids some bedtime stories. We were getting ready to do that again last night, but once Hallie was ensconced on Mark’s lap in front of his camera, she apparently didn’t want to share the space with T. She pushed him away pretty aggressively and then lost it completely when Mark reprimanded her. “No one loves me!” she wailed, flinging herself on the playroom couch. “No one is even being the least bit nice to me!” “This is the worst day of my entire life.” “I wish this entire day had never happened!”

In truth, she had a rocky 10 minutes or so, and by lights out she was fine. But those 10 minutes sure colored her perception of the whole day.

Fast forward about 18 hours to Hallie, at the helm of Whimsy on her own in some pretty stiff wind. “This is the greatest day of my whole life!” “I love this!” “This is even better than Conn!” (If you read the post about Conn, you’ll know what high praise that is.) “I wish I could hug the whole boat.” “I don’t WANT to turn around yet!” “We could just drop anchor and wait until morning comes, couldn’t we?”

If you couldn’t tell, we had a great sailing day today. We were out about 3.5 hours. I hadn’t been looking forward to it all that much, but it was easier than I’d remembered. I’m getting more comfortable at the helm myself, which frees Mark up to be with the kids. And the kids were less needy than they were at the end of last summer, so I got to enjoy the sailing more and feel less like I was just doing kid-duty in a different place. Travis is a lot steadier on his feet, so I’m not as nervous every time I don’t have a hand on him. They played together pretty well during the time below decks. And the best part was that they were both willing to be topside quite a bit, which is where the real fun is.

Mark let Hallie have several turns at the helm, and she was just glowing. She actually did really well at sticking to a course (though always under close supervision). What a great thing for her to get a feel for a boat that size at age 4! She’ll be bored with this and off doing races in no time. At his insistence, Travis got some time at the helm, too. He’s not quite there yet–he was more interested in looking at where we’d been than where we were going. And he doesn’t really get the importance of actually holding onto the tiller while in charge of the boat. He’s still got a little time to learn, though!

Both kids talk about Whimsy like she’s their good friend. “Whimsy wants to run!” Hallie will declare when the wind picks up. “Hi, Whimsy!” was T’s first comment when we pulled up to her this morning. We left the boat rigged and are heading back out for a few more hours tomorrow. I wonder if Hallie has yet another “greatest day of her life” in store?

Travis and I were home alone the other day and playing happily in the playroom. I excused myself to use the bathroom, and about a minute later I heard a shriek of distress from Travis. I flew out of the bathroom, zipping and buttoning as I rounded the corner, to find out what was wrong. Travis sat in the middle of the playroom, in no obvious trouble. He looked up at me and declared accusingly, “Mommy, you didn’t wash your hands!”

If only he was so meticulous about washing his own hands as he is at policing me. And I never did find out what caused the shriek.

As I write, Hallie and Travis are enjoying their second ichat of the day with Gum and Gup. I have a feeling phone calls are a thing of the past! Both kids are dressed as princesses, complete with high heels and wands. They’ve been having fun cutting up for the camera. I’m hoping after the novelty wears off, some more “normal” conversations might be possible.

Hmm. Right now they are all tickling each other through the computers, so “normal” may be a ways away. And now Hallie and Travis are getting a bedtime story read to them. This is going to be a great way to keep in touch. Though Mark’s idea of “babysitting via ichat” still has a few kinks to be worked out.

I was running errands just before going to get T at school today when I got a call from the Y’s youth programs director. She started by assuring me that Travis was fine, but she explained he’d tripped over a toy and conked his chin on the window sill. She said his lower teeth didn’t feel loose but his gums were pretty swollen and she thought a trip to the dentist was a good idea.

I abandoned my trips to the dump and Goodwill and headed for the Y, making calls to the dentist, rearranging Hallie’s playdate, and making plans for Daniel to get home on the way. Travis was perfectly calm when I got there and fine with me looking in his mouth. His gums WERE really swollen and I agreed he should go in. Travis was happy to talk about going to the dentist and getting prizes for himself and Hallie. He explained cheerfully to everyone that he was going to open wide for the dentist. And he was even happier when I mentioned that we’d get milkshakes on the way.

Hallie was remarkably calm about having her playdate canceled (I think the milkshake comment helped her, too) and was very sweet in checking on T. We went through Chick Fil A, killed some time at the library, and headed for Wakefield. The kids played happily for about 45 minutes before they called T (I knew they were squeezing him in so I figured we’d wait). You’d never have known anything was wrong with T.

T was a sport about the x-ray–his first–and very calm and cooperative when the dentist examined him. A piece of his lower gum was actually torn back and there was “degloving” where the gum was pulled loose on 3 or 4 teeth. But the dentist said it was remarkable how well and quickly gums heel and that she didn’t think it needed a suture. (I knew this from Hadley’s experience a few months ago, which made me a little less concerned from the beginning with this one. I was just glad the teeth weren’t loose and reassured when the x-ray looked fine.)

The dentist gave us a prescription for some antibacterial mouthrinse to swab it with, a list of things to watch for, and an appointment to see him again in a month. T was a bit grumpy when we got home, but it was also an hour past his naptime. I gave him some Tylenol and I’m hoping a good rest will perk him and he’ll be good as new in a couple of days.