The Lilting House Archive

Of Fowls and Fun

Yesterday my three oldest kids went to a workshop at the San Diego Museum of Art. A docent gave a short talk about elements of art—line, shape, color, etc—and then they split into small groups and went to look at four paintings up close. Afterward, they did an art project focusing on copying details from the paintings they'd viewed. I missed most of the workshop, because I was outside with the little ones. The girls had a splendid time, and Beanie was especially impressed by the dead chicken.

"Huh?" I asked her, ever so articulately, upon receiving this report.

"A dead chicken! In a painting! I saw it, and I drew it!"

I do remember seeing a painting with a dead fowl in it when we first visited the museum. I think it was a duck, not a chicken: Merganser by William Michael Harnett. (I don't know if that link will work—the URL says "index." I don't think the SDMA site has direct URLs to the paintings. But if you're really interested in seeing the deceased bird, you can click around to get there. Beanie thinks it is worth the effort. Me, I prefer a nice landscape with haystacks.)

During the workshop, a couple of the other mothers and I walked down to the Science Center with our little ones. There's a kiddie room upstairs where a mama can park herself on a bench and watch her younguns play with all the interesting toys. Wonderboy loved the air chute made for putting balls in: whoosh! Up goes the ball and pops out the top of the tube. Rilla enjoyed filling the toy shopping cart with plastic fruits and vegetables. It was so easy and pleasant to sit there chatting with my friends while our toddlers and preschoolers bustled around. I remember when I thought tending two little ones in a children's museum was a tiring day's work. Now it's a mini-vacation.

One thing I'm really enjoying about our proximity to Balboa Park is that we can drop by for short, frequent visits without feeling like we have to do and see everything all at once. We've barely begun to explore all the park has to offer. After I picked up the girls, we were strolling back to our car and we passed the little Timkin Museum, a small, free-to-the-public art gallery next to the big SDMA. Erica had mentioned that it's an incredible collection. Jane and I noticed a huge sign advertising a special French Neoclassical exhibit, which is exactly the movement we've just been reading about in Young People's Story of Fine Art, so that was a pretty exciting discovery. We'll have to squeeze in a visit sometime soon.

Jane is also keen to see the Journey to the Copper Age exhibit at the Museum of Man—she wondered aloud whether her daddy could take a day off and take her. And I'd like to get to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Natural History Museum while it's still there...but tops on the girls' wish list is to go climb a certain enormous, low-branching tree they spotted on the way into the park. And when I was watching how happy my wee ones were yesterday in the kiddie playroom, I made a little mental note to remember that as important and wonderful as all this cultural stuff is, it's even more important to allow ample time for Climbing Very Big Trees and Dipping Fingers into Fountains. Sometimes the dead chicken really is the best part of the art museum. Even when it's a duck.

The Art of the Warm Welcome

I loved this post by my friend Laura at A Cup of Tea with Me. She is living in London (after several years in Cyprus) and shares some observations about greeting-the-new-neighbors customs around the world.

Over the summer, FOR SALE signs pop up in front of two houses directly across from yours. New families move into both houses within a few days of one another. Do you:

A) Peer at them from behind your net curtains, trying to figure out who they are but making no direct contact;

B) Wave politely when you both happen to be outside at the same time;

C) Knock on their doors, introduce yourself, give them a plate of muffins and welcome them to the neighborhood?

The neighborhood we left behind a year ago was a plate-of-muffins kind of place, and it was marvelous, and very hard to leave behind. Here in San Diego, we've had almost no contact with the neighbors on our street, but when the kids and I rolled into town one year ago today, my online friend Erica (now a beloved real-life pal!) surprised us with a welcome of pumpkins and mums adorning our front steps for my first sight of the rental house, and two huge bagsful of Trader Joe's goodies to fill our empty pantry! Talk about love at first sight.

And on day two of our California life, one of Erica's friends (now also my cherished friend too!) arrived bearing not one but two meals—one she'd cooked herself, and a Honey-Baked Ham feast from the wonderful family who had given Scott their spare room for several weeks over the summer. I'm still blown away by their hospitality, a year later.

This Day Last Year

Was the day we reunited with Scott after three months apart. A very happy day. We picked him up at the Phoenix airport and drove another couple of hours west, stopping for the night in Yuma so that we could make the last piece of the journey to our new home in the daylight. We got the very last room in town, after being turned away from about six motels. Two queen beds for the seven of us, but we didn't care. We ate at a Cracker Barrel that night, and a woman at the next table couldn't stop giggling at us because of the way Wonderboy was staring nonstop at Scott with a huge grin plastered on his (Wonderboy's) face.

So today I'm thinking about how happy we are to be all together again, and I'm thinking about the children whose daddies are in Iraq and Afghanistan. If our separation was agony, it must pale in comparison to what those families are going through.

Now If Only She Were that Good at Keeping Track of the Library Books

The kids and I went to the library today. When we left, I was lifting Rilla into her carseat and she started to fuss, pointing back toward the library and saying in her imperious way, "Nuh! Nuh!" She's using lots of sign language these days (which utterly melts me), and she began making a sign I'd never seen her do before: L shapes with both hands, touching, banging together.

I thought maybe she was trying to sign run; Rose and Beanie had raced down the wheelchair ramp on their way to the car. To test my theory, I took Rilla out of the car and put her down on the ramp. Sure enough, she took off running—all the way up the ramp and straight to the library door.

Now I was really curious. She was clearly on a mission. I opened the door and followed her in, even though I was pretty sure this wasn't going to end prettily: if she was wanting to go back in and play for a while, she was going to be disappointed, and 18-month-olds tend not to suffer disappointment quietly. But she seemed so intent upon her purpose and I was dying to know what she was thinking.

She made a beeline for the children's section, straight to the back bookcase—and turned to me with arms raised, wanting to be picked up—and pointed triumphantly at Jane's sunglasses sitting forgotten on the top shelf.

I was, and remain, amazed. No wonder she falls asleep at the table. She's busy all day taking note of every little thing.

Reason #41: Ramona Stories

In response to a French book containing "40 reasons not to have children," the inimitable Karen Edmisten has written a list of her own: 40 Reasons to Have Children. It's a gorgeous, powerful, right-on-the-money list.

One year ago today I had the immense pleasure of meeting up with Karen and her three children, Anne, Betsy, and Ramona-who-makes-me-laugh, at a motel in Salina, Kansas. They had driven all the way down from Nebraska just for the rendezvous. Karen and I had been close online friends since 1998, but this was our first time meeting in person. It may as well have been our 500th, like we were meeting at a park for our weekly playdate. The kids hit it off like they'd grown up together. In a way, they had. I've been regaling my children with tales of the Edmisten girls' hilarious exploits since all these lasses were teeny tiny. They'd read all the same books, shared a common lexicon, enjoyed the same brand of mischief. An hour in their presence and I could come up with another forty reasons for Karen's list.

Wouldn't be half as lyrical as hers, though. Go read and you'll see what I mean.

There Is Also Real Life Happening

And part of it is the way the kids' minds work, and how I marvel at it. Rose mentioned that she likes to listen to "music without words" when she is reading or painting. "You know the kind," she said, "sort of soft and dangerous."

Soft and dangerous. I kept turning the phrase over in my mind. It's perfect; I know just what she means. I iChatted Scott, our music guru, to ask for CD suggestions. He fired back a list. (Or rather, John Stossel did. Don't ask me why, but that's my husband's current IM avatar. I think I liked last week's pirate hamster icon better.)

First I had to laugh for about ten minutes because John Stossel knows there is no way in tarnation I would voluntarily listen to Brian Eno. I know, musical genius and all that, but ambient music makes the fillings want to leap out of my teeth, and my eardrums shiver like aspen leaves.

When I finally stopped howling, I found the Shostakovich and put in on. This was at lunchtime; the girls were just sitting down to sandwiches. Rose listened to the opening notes of the symphony and said, "Yeah. That's just what I meant."

"I know what she means by 'soft and dangerous,' Mom," mused Jane. "To put it in math terms, I'd call it XYZ music. You know—it's about variables."

"Signing Time!" yelled Wonderboy.

"Do you like my mustache?" purred John Stossel.

I couldn't answer. I was busy pouring milk for children who are soft, dangerous, and variable. 

Breakfast with Beanie

She is perched beside me, eating a bowl of Life cereal. We are enjoying a peaceful lull between waves of happy chaos: the utterly fantastic week-long visit with our beloved Virginia Joneses (or Jonesii, as Scott calls them) and a still-in-the-planning stages rendezvous with the Cottage Clan.

(Beanie: "Mommy, did you know whales nurse their babies?")

Our Jonesii visit passed all too quickly, a delicious blur of San Diego sightseeing, cinnamon bear devouring, Settlers of Catan playing, sandwich making, late-night giggling, air mattress bouncing, sunscreen slathering, ant battling, and talking, talking, talking. The six girls (her three, my three) managed to share four mattresses and a futon in one room for eight nights without mishap, which is a notable achievement, if you ask me.

(Beanie: "I'm afraid you will be sad to hear that I poked my stomach on the corner of the table. But don't worry, I'm OK.")

There is tons to write about last week, but I don't know when it will happen. This is one of the busiest Augusts we've ever had. Our globe-trotting friend Keri will return to the States next week, and we get her first. If you want lots of visits from friends, San Diego is the place to reside, let me tell you!

(Beanie, who is now interlocking arms with me as I type and she reads 1001 Bugs to Spot: "I can tell you a lot about honeybees, you know.")

Travel seems to have been the theme for this year of my family's life. We've hung breathlessly on Keri's adventures and Alice's. We made our own epic journey and have had a glorious time exploring this new frontier. More adventures await—some this very day, in fact. I'm off to prepare...but in the interest of leaving you with something useful, here's a post I wrote a long while back about how even when we were stuck at home for a long time during Wonderboy's precarious infancy, we managed to make many circuits of the globe in the company of a charming flagbearer named Mr. Putty.

Recently the kids and I hit upon a new idea that has brought an extra layer of interest and mirth to our morning read-aloud sessions. We decided to make a little marker that we could move around the globe to the location of each story we're reading. We started with a little blob of blue putty—you know, the kind that was supposed to hold our timeline to the wall without marking up the paint. It didn't. Instead, it seems to travel all around the house in the busy fingers of my children.

Well, now it travels around the globe. A little piece of it, at least. Such a simple idea, and such fun! Yesterday Mr. Putty began (as he always does) here in Virginia; hopped over to Palestine; sojourned down to Egypt; zipped to Italy to visit St. John Bosco; flew back across the Atlantic to New England, where Robert Frost was picking apples; escaped to Germany to avoid hearing my children mangle the language in our sitting room; reunited with us in Greenland, where a windswept traveler was regaling the household of Eric the Red with tales of a new land to the west; hurried to Scandinavia, arriving just in time to see some strange folks pop out of the armpit of Ymir the frost giant; and there he lingered for the rest of the day.

The girls take turns assisting Mr. Putty with his travels. (Beanie often has to be dissuaded from allowing him to visit her grandparents in Colorado instead of venturing to his next book-inspired rendesvous.) At some point, our intrepid explorer sprouted a tiny American flag (complete with gold-painted toothpick flagpole) from the top of his blobby self. While I'm a little uncomfortable with the imperial overtones of such an adornment—Mr. Putty is, in effect, planting the U.S. flag in the soil of countries all over the world—it does make it easier to see where he's stuck himself now. And it's such a sweet little flag.

Dear Mr. Putty! I wonder where in the world he'll go today?

Newborn Hearing Screen: A Piece of Advice

OK, so I'm 15 months late making this little PSA. I've been meaning to share this advice since the day Rilla was born—the day she failed her newborn hearing test.

Yup, that's right, she failed. Just like her brother had failed, three years earlier.

Hearing loss can run in families, you know. When the hearing-screen tech gave me the news, it came as a bit of a blow. To be perfectly honest, the first thing that passed through my mind was: Oh dear God, where are we going to come up with another five grand for hearing aids?

(Did you know that most insurance companies do not cover hearing aids, even for children? Don't get me started.)

But then I managed to collect my wits, or at least enough of them to ask some questions. Had she done the test in the newborn nursery? Yes, she had. Aha.

I had learned from our experience with Wonderboy that many newborns don't pass the initial screen in the nursery, especially in a NICU (as with Wonderboy, but not with Rilla) where there is so much ambient noise. Wonderboy was tested three separate times on his discharge day before they gave up trying and sent us home with instructions to have him re-tested as soon as possible, but not to worry, it was highly unlikely he really did have hearing loss, it was just all the background noise in the NICU mucking up the test results.

"Ask for the newborn hearing test to be administered in the quiet of the mother's room."

OK, in his case, it turned out NOT to be the ambient noise skewing the results; the kid really does have hearing loss. But still, that didn't mean Rilla's test had necessarily been accurate, and I wanted confirmation before leaping to conclusions.

I asked the tech if she could re-do the test, right there in my hospital room, where it was nice and quiet. I didn't even have a roommate.

The tech was kind and sympathetic, but doubtful. "Honey," she said gently—they always call me honey, these hospital personnel about to deliver potentially upsetting news—at least, the female ones above age forty always seem to—"I'm willing to give it a try, but this is a brand new machine, state of the art, and it's especially designed to NOT be affected by ambient noise. And with hearing loss in the family..."

"I know," I said. "But I think it's worth our time to try."

"Well, what you need to do is have her re-tested in one month."

I sighed and explained that my HMO would make me go all the way to Richmond, 80 miles away, for further testing (this I knew from prior experience), and it would be a big pain in the neck, and if there was any chance today's test wasn't 100% accurate, it would be a huge help to me to give it another try.

Now it was her turn to sigh, and you could see her thinking thoughts about how you have to humor these post-partum mothers, and she shrugged and said, "All right. We'll try. I'll go get the machine."

She wheeled in the contraption and attached the little sensors to Rilla's head, and stuck the thingamajig in her right ear. Then, while the test started running, the tech popped back into the nursery for a chart she'd left behind. When she returned five minutes later, she took one look at her State of the Art Machine and gasped.

"It's finished already! It took me 20 minutes to get a finish before!"

Me: "Finished, good?"

But already I knew it HAD to be good, because the way this test works is the machine sounds little clicks into the baby's ear, and the sensors record how many times a nerve twitches or something like that, in response to the clicks. You need a certain number of clicks within a certain window of time to get a "hearing is normal" result. If the twitches aren't happening, the machine will keep on sounding clicks until a biggish chunk of time has passed, and then you get a "hearing is not normal" report like the one Rilla had already been given.

A finish in five minutes meant the machine had already counted enough nerve-twitches to know that Rilla's right ear was working just fine.

The tech was openly flabbergasted. This is where this becomes a really satisfying story, because it is one of those rare times that an expert admits frankly, and with pleasure, that she was mistaken.

"I'm stunned," she said. "It's not supposed to be affected by ambient noise, but obviously it is."

I could have kissed her.

She tested the other ear, and that side too yielded A-OK results in under five minutes. Rilla's hearing was pronounced normal, and the stern document instructing us to take steps X, Y, and Z toward further testing was removed from her chart, ripped in half, and pitched into the wastebasket.

Of course, it's possible for a child who passes a newborn hearing screen to show signs of hearing loss later in life, and sometimes it is years before a parent realizes there is a problem. If Rilla had been diagnosed with hearing loss at birth, or six months later like her brother was, or at any point in the future, we would deal with it, and it would be fine. The point of my pushing the tech to re-test, and the point of this story, has simply to do with a tip that can save parents time and unnecessary anxiety. When the hospital wants to administer a hearing test to your newborn, request that it be done in the relative quiet of the mother's room or some other isolated place, not in the nursery.

The tech seemed somewhat dazed, but she was awfully sporting about it. She told me, "This is really going to change things for me. It usually takes me up to an hour to test each baby. I think you've just saved me a ton of time."

I can't tell you how much I appreciated those words!

But I appreciated being spared the drive to Richmond, and the stress of putting baby Rilla through further testing (stress on her, I mean), and the month or more of back-of-the-mind worry we'd have had to deal with while waiting for the next test, even more. I was able to take her home without any questions gnawing at me, and when I think back to that peaceful, happy babymoon,

I'm terribly grateful the tech was willing to honor my request.

Today's Math Lesson

(1 stomach virus)(3 children so far) - 1 toilet = ARRRRRGH.

How to Save a Lost Tooth: Take Everything I Did, and Do the Opposite

Lesson #1: When you move to another state, put "find a dentist" near the very top of your list.

Don't assume you can sit on that job while you're attending to all the other million-and-one matters pertaining to the aftermath of your move—not even if the kids all had a check-up right before you left your old home.

Sigh. I really was working on getting a dentist. Just ask the moms I was grilling at a homeschool gathering last week. I was on it! So close! Not close enough!

If we'd already been established with a dentist, my poor little Wonderboy's knocked-out tooth might have been able to be saved. We'd have had someone to call the moment calamity struck, even on a Sunday night—someone with more sense that the three, count them THREE, medical and dental personnel I spoke to on the phone yesterday in the hour following Wonderboy's tumble.

I know, I know, it's only a baby tooth. It was going to fall out anyway. But I don't care. I love baby teeth. Adore them. The first time I read Peter Pan, the real version, not the Disney, I was an adult with three children already, and when I got to the bit about how Peter still had his baby teeth I understood in an instant what his charm was, and why he had such an effect on Wendy even when he acted like a jerk. Baby teeth make my heart melt. Wonderboy's baby-toothed grin in particular, is (was, oh no) a thing of magic for me. His high muscle tone makes his mouth a little tight, so that he has this funny stretched grin with those perfect, even teeth behind it: oh, so utterly cute. I'm not ready for it to be gone.

Lesson #2: Do not wash the knocked-out tooth.

The dentist we wound up seeing yesterday morning told me this. If it is intact, it is possible to re-insert it. I knew that, but all the people I talked to on the phone said no one bothers doing that for a baby tooth. The dentist, on the other hand, said she would definitely have put it back in. Her own son lost two front teeth as a three-year-old and SHE KNOWS. She says if I'd gotten HER on the phone Sunday night, she would have met me in the office right away. I didn't know whether to hug her or cry.

Anyway, she told me what to do if it (please no) should ever happen again. If the tooth is intact and not dirty, she says DON'T WASH IT. If it has sand or grit on it, she says to immerse it in milk—yes, milk!—to rinse the tooth off, but DO NOT SCRUB. The tiny root-fibers can be rubbed off as easily as the scales of a butterfly's week.

This makes me feel a tiny bit better, since of course the first thing we did when we found the tooth (an hour after cleaning up All! That! Blood!) was to wash all the sand off it. So even if we had connected with the dentist, the tooth would have been past saving.

Her advice was to wash out the child's mouth, carefully get the grit off the tooth, and then just stick it back into the hole. Yup. Then get to a dentist as fast as you can. She said if you're too squeamish to put the tooth back yourself, put it in a cup of milk and hurry to the dentist.

Of course don't take this as official medical advice; I'm just passing on the info. I wish I had read a post like this two days ago! Sob!

And yes, of COURSE I know we've been through much worse things than the premature loss of a baby tooth, and this is inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. But here's the thing. When Jane was in the hospital getting chemotherapy, we often shared rooms with kids who were there for reasons far less serious than cancer. The post-op patients for routine procedures were given beds on the cancer ward for lack of a better place to put them. So some nights I'd be sitting there next to the mom of a child who had had his tonsils out, or adenoid removal, or a hernia repair. And every single one of those mothers, at some point during our chats, would express embarrassment to be so upset over "something minor" when...their words would trail off, and they'd glance at little bald, pale Jane with the tubes coming out of her. And I felt bad that they felt embarrassed, because it doesn't matter if your kid is "only" getting his tonsils out: it's still surgery, and anesthesia, and a hospital stay, and your child in pain. That is always hard. It doesn't matter that things could be worse. Even we, parents of a toddler with high-risk leukemia, considered ourselves lucky not to be dealing with one of the more aggressive cancers.

Whatever health crisis your child is dealing with is a big deal at the time, even if there are bigger deals out there. We had one doctor, a youngish resident, who had her first baby about six months into Jane's treatment. And the newborn got a fever and had to be admitted to the NICU. It turned out to be nothing, and the baby was fine and went home the next day. But that doctor came to our room and said to me, "I have to tell you this. I had NO IDEA. Here I am, a doctor, and I knew this was standard procedure and the baby was going to be fine, but the second I was alone with her in the NICU, I bawled my eyes out. I had no idea it was this hard."

I bet she turned out to be a terrific pediatrician. She knows, now. When it's your baby, it's always hard.

So I'll mourn the loss of my little boy's even-toothed grin, and I'll get used to the new one. Even as I wiped away the blood and sand and sobbed over the lost tooth, I knew it could have been worse, and I was grateful.