Thanksgiving cousins

Check out the AmigoNet link to see some great pictures of John and his cousin Naomi over the Thanksgiving holiday!

http://amigonetblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/cousins.html

Quick update

All of the South Carolina Pennas are back home now.

John and I flew from Newark to Columbia, SC, on Saturday, then took a cab to GSP. They overbooked our flight and no one else wanted to volunteer, so we did. Don't think I would do it again, but now it's over with and we have $800 in travel on Continental.
Tony got back to SC from Louisville yesterday morning, and also started tech rehearsals for a show in Greenville yesterday afternoon. So, he'll be shuttling back and forth between Clemson and G'ville all week until the show opens on Friday. He assures me that he will be able to spend at least 45 minutes at home each afternoon... It's definitely a lesson in not taking time together for granted! I will be EXTRA thankful this year when the semester is over, and his traveling is over for awhile.

We have an appointment with Feiste this afternoon for the weekly ear check. Still haven't heard from the new ENT. I'm planning on calling them today, if I can get my work done before we have to leave for the doctor.

John and I had a great time in New York over Thanksgiving. Although it took him a day or two to warm up to everyone, he was hugging everyone continuously by the time it was all over. More details about the trip soon, but the highlight was seeing my mom's brother and his family, all of whom we rarely see. They are as wonderful and welcoming as always, and their three boys are articulate, friendly, and very grown-up!

Hope that everyone's Thanksgiving was as full of love and food as ours was!

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder!

It's 5:40 am, and I popped awake about an hour ago, realizing that if I changed John's and my seats to the row immediately behind the bulkhead (which were available when I checked in at 4:30pm yesterday), he would disturb two fewer people because he wouldn't be able to bang on the tray table of the people in front of us. So I printed out new boarding passes, then discovered that you can't actually change your seats within 24 hours of the flight. However, I now have two sets of boarding passes for two different sets of seats. [This seems like a serious security breach!] We'll see where we end up. I always wait until the last minute to get on the plane anyway... Previously, I always envied the "parents with small children" who got to board first. But now that I'm older and wiser, why would anyone want to get into a small, cramped space with 100 cranky people any sooner than they have to??? Particularly with a wiggling, giggling, screaming toddler!

So, we have been cleared for take off. John had an ear checkup with Feiste yesterday afternoon and he got an antibiotic shot and another prescription, as well as a followup appointment the day after we get back. He's definitely going to have to have tubes, and that's fine. Having tubes was never really the issue for me, it became who was going to put them in. Hopefully we can time the surgery so that it is completed (and recovered from) before our trip to Chicago early next month.

Anyway, I have been getting today's work done (I only took a half-day of vacation today), and just watching the time go by, hoping that everything will go smoothly today. It probably won't, but now as I type, I'm realizing that it WILL go smoothly, if I can STAY smooth in my reactions to whatever comes up. Yes, I know, that's obvious, but that seems to be my personal lifelong challenge. I KNOW the lesson: "Getting upset is not worth the energy, doesn't help, and usually makes things worse." Maybe this time I'll remember that lesson. Because now I see (I'm full of epiphanies this morning!), I actually have learned the lesson, I just have to practice and APPLY the knowledge EACH time.

Whoa. I did not mean for this post to be so philosophical. I just wanted update "Ear Crisis 2007" and let everyone know that we are planning to take the NJ trip!

Super-Feiste Saves the Day ... Again!

So once again, Feiste had all the right words of reassurance, knowledge, wisdom, and humor. Thank God for pediatricians who are passionate about what they do!

We will NOT be having the surgery next Thursday. We will be getting a second opinion from some "wonderful" ENT's in Anderson. We have a nebulizer, an oral steroid, and an antibiotic to get us through.

More detail soon. It's 7:15pm and John is down, hopefully for the night, and I have to get the rest of my work-work done, and maybe get the dishwasher loaded so we have stuff to eat with tomorrow.

Ears

So John and I went to Dr. R-o, the Ear-Nose-Throat doctor, yesterday afternoon.

It was rough. Feiste had warned me that R-o was "dry," but I didn't really get what that would mean. He was very short with his answers, didn't volunteer extra information or opinions, and was very brief with John's exam. I think that the first thing that he said when he walked into the room was "Does he need to go to the bathroom or a diaper change?" about John, who was crying, because he was bored, because we had been waiting 45 minutes...

So he said yes, John should get tubes, an adenoidectomy, and sinus lavage. I was prepared for the tubes but thought it was an office procedure. It's not, it's an outpatient procedure at Oconee Memorial Hospital. I had never even thought about having his adenoids out and was plunged into shock. And sinus lavage, doesn't seem like a big deal. He shot a bunch of rapid statistics about non-success rate of the tubes for ear infections, the possibility of permanent damage with the tubes, and added that John probably has a dairy allergy, because his cheeks were red. Which was because the weather just turned cold.

The whole experience was very trying, complicated by the fact that Tony is out of town today and tomorrow, and was in tech rehearsals all day yesterday. I asked about flying next week, and R-o asked if we had to go, but said John should be fine after the surgery.

The surgery is scheduled for next Thursday morning at 6:30 am. Which is really fast, which as my dad said can be good or bad...

We have an appointment today with Feiste, because I need to get reassurance that this is the way to go.

I am most freaked out that this is hospital (albeit outpatient) surgery and that he's going to have a "functioning biological organ - until the age of 3" removed. When asked, R-o said that it creates white blood cells and ENT's remove it because they THINK that bacteria gets concentrated there.

So I am pretty weepy today, and have to pick up John early to get to the doctor, and haven't been getting a lot of work done because I'm searching the web for more info.

I know that I'm overreacting, but that's what I do.

Tutu and Ma Bee

Each time Tony carries John down the stairs, he asks "Who's that?" sometimes referring to the picture of Tutu (Tony's grandmother) that we have on the wall. John excitedly responds "Tutu!" Now sometimes John points to Tutu's picture. It's very cute the way he says "Tew tew," sort of rhyming with "chew chew." My apologies to Grandma Henn, Grandpa Don, Grammie Gail, Grandpaparazzi, and Grandpa Mike, whose names we have not so diligently worked on... Of course, after weeks of identifying Tutu and Dada, Mama has FINALLY been identified in the photo lineup!

"Ma Bee" is John's name for his blanket. It sort of sounds French to me. (Or, I think of the Beatles song "Michelle, Ma Belle.") We sometimes say "Bee" when we refer to it, but mostly we still say "blanket." Is that term as annoying for you people out there as it is for us when someone calls a pacifier, a "passi"? (I don't know why I hate that nickname so much, but I do.)

Can you bear more bear?

Sorry, I love puns!

Halloween in the Deep South

John actually went trick-or-treating three times on Halloween.
Once at Southern Wesleyan University, with his daycare. I actually pulled the wagon with John the Bear (or lamb, everyone thought he was a lamb) and Meghan the cheerleader. All the ladies in the admissions office, library, and other business offices cooed over the "one's" (1-yr-olds).

Then John and I went to the downtown Clemson festivities. The police closed down the main street to traffic and all the store clerks sat in front of the businesses giving out candy. It was crowded. This is where John had his picture taken on the tractor.

Then Tony took John in our wagon to selected houses in the neighborhood. Our neighborhood isn't quite the best for trick-or-treating: no sidewalks, very dark, lots of hills, and twisty, dead end streets. But they hit all our friends houses. I handed out cookie and goldfish cracker packets. I think I had 5 or 6 groups total.

We didn't give John candy, but he did manage to get a little sugar and chocolate by chewing and sucking through the packages on a couple of treats. All in all, a successful start to the holiday season!

B-U-S

Tony and John finally took a CAT (Clemson Area Transit) bus ride on Monday. Tony said that John just sat quietly taking everything in.

A bear in his natural habitat