tiny planet

last saturday we met up with some friends from out of town. erinne and bryan, josh and jodi and their kids, and john and sally, the parents of bryan and josh, who live in town. josh and jodi have a son who is about a week younger than bug, and looks about twice her age. he is HUGE! adorable, and healthy, but ginormous. he's 24 pounds and wearing 18 month clothes.

bug is a little on the small side, so they looked hilarious next to each other, although they seemed to feel a bond. he grabbed her hand and she tried to steal his bink.

we spent a lot of our visit remarking on the boy's size and comparing him to bug.

so sunday at church, i was talking with jan who usually monitors the nursery during service. she was commenting on bug's size and comparing her to her own granddaughter, who is even smaller. then she brought up a boy she knew about the same age who weighs over 20 pounds. well, of course, that brought to my mind jodi's boy. so i started talking about him. when i mentioned jodi's name (to say that her son is already exactly half her height!--she's not too tall), jan stopped me.

"wait, who are you talking about?"

when i gave the last name, she laughed. "no way, how do you know them?"

we were talking about the same kid. (how many 24 pound 7.5 month old boys are out there?)

as we explored our various connections to them we realized that it is a very small world, indeed.

meals on foot

the road to empty doorways is paved with good intentions.


we set out for meals on wheels thursday morning running behind, as usual. fortunately, the suggested arrival time allowed plenty of room for tardiness. there was a welcome/instructional spiel, and then we had to wait for the meals to arrive anyway.


i was a little nervous about what kind of route we would have and if pooka would be enough help to scout out house numbers for me. turns out we got one of the easiest routes. an apartment building, with all stops in one wing of the 8th floor. easy, peasy, right?


first off, i turned the wrong way out of the center (nevermind that they provided us with turn-by-turn directions. anyone who knows me knows i constantly confuse east and west.) by the time i realized my mistake and turned around, it was time for me to pump. so i pulled into a parking lot and took care of business, keeping my head on a swivel and my eyes peeled for any suspicious people approaching. (did i mention we were downtown in the current most dangerous city in the country?)


milk expressed, we continued on our way to a destination less than a mile from the center. d'oh!


i decided to carry the whole box up to the top instead of trekking back to the truck. we ended up just dragging the box along the corridor from stop to stop. on the way up, a community watch-type person in the lobby checked our list and sent us on our way.


pooka's behavior ranged between neutrally cooperative and downright crabby. i think it was partly nerves and partly steroids (i had forgotten that she would be on them this week.) i completely suprised myself with my relative confidence in tackling this mission.


our first stop: no answer. second stop: the guy cracked the door just wide enough to accept the food. he was cordial but not interested in visiting apparently. third stop: no answer. (at the center we were instructed that the food could not be returned and that if we couldn't deliver to our designated recipients we should find some needy soul to enjoy the meals. by this time, i decided to try one of the doors that were not on our list.) fourth stop: a hearty welcome and a five minute visit with someone who possibly did not 'need' the service we were providing. oh, well. fifth stop: no answer. sixth stop: no answer. seventh stop (another non-scheduled attempt): a somewhat suspicious no, thank you. (What? who turns down free food?) eighth stop: no answer. ninth stop: no answer. tenth stop: well, that door had a notice stuck in the door jamb so i assumed no one was home there, either.


5 scheduled stops. 10 doors in the corridor. 3 meals delivered total. not a raging success.


we headed back down the elevator, with me wondering if i should just randomly knock on any door in building. i decided against it, figuring that other volunteers would be delivering to this building, as well. when we got back to the lobby, i approached the watch-person and explained what had happened. she looked at the list and reeled off: probably still sleeping, sleeping, out of town, moved. oh, gee. someone should have updated the center. i told her that i could not bring the food back and she said that she would take it back up later when the recipients were more likely to be awake.


so, pooka and i headed out. it was not even 45 minutes of actual work. i was kind of bummed. pooka took it much harder. she groused, "well this is the worst day ever!"


"what makes you say that?"


"no one was home."


no matter how i tried or what metaphor i used, i was unable to convince her that the day was not a disaster. we tried, with giving hearts, to bring some joy and nutrition to people who might otherwise not have it today. we still get points for effort.


at least we got a great story to tell out of it. and i was not dissuaded from trying it again at Christmas.

skid lid

after much frustration and many phone calls, i found an approved facility that could get the process for bug's helmet underway this week. friday morning we went, prepared to get bug's head all goopy with plaster. we were pleasantly surprised with the advances in modern medicine.

edgar thoroughly explained how we would put her down on a scanner bed and a network of 8 cameras would record the shape of her skull. a computer program would then plot pertinent points of her skull that need molding.

she squirmed a bit on the first try but the second was successful. we got printouts of 3 exemplary cross-sections of her skull. edgar showed us where she needed some work and what changes he would try to accomplish through the helmet.

we even got to pick out a pattern for it instead of going institutional white. (although we were tempted to get maize and blue, we went with butterflies--for the bug, of course.)

we pick it up in about 10 days and gradually work her up to wearing it 23 hours per day. the estimate is 4 months, but edgar stressed that this is ultimately dependent on the progress of her skull growth.

all in all, the visit was not traumatic in the least. hopefully we will all adjust to this new scenario as quickly as we have to our other unique situations.

four-eyed family

pooka got glasses last friday. she is a little embarassed by them, but i think she secretly is also a little bit thrilled to have them. she looks freakin' adorable, naturally.

kisu did a smart thing and paid the extra $25 to get ultimate insurance on them. with a 5 year old, who knows what kind of trauma the glasses might sustain? this way we won't have to pay a penny for repairs/replacement.

now we have to go through the lectures of when to wear, how to don, where to store, who can touch, and most important: don't forget them.

she has mentioned that when she has them off, she feels like they're still on. i remember that adjustment period. sometimes i almost walk out the door without realizing i don't have my glasses on. it's a hazard with a mild prescription.

i checked with her teachers and becca said she's had no trouble with them. pooka was afraid that her friends would try to grab them and break them. i think she's got my worrywart gene.

mobile terror unit

bug's not really a terror, but she might become so now that she's mobile.

she started crawling last weekend. she's been working on it for a while. up on her knees, rocking like a cartoon character about to zoom off. then, one knee forward, give up. finally, she moved several feet across the floor in a crawl-like manner.

actually, since she's unused to mode of locomotion, she's slower than she is when she rolls. she can roll like a lumberjack in Oregon. she pivots on her belly to target a destination and away she goes.

check this out:



oh, that's dried playdough ground into the rug courtesy of her big sis.

bitter bettys

man, football this weekend sucked.

the lions lost a winnable game. the qb was consistently throwing too high.

the bills played new england. 'nuff said.

michigan lost to osu. the senior class is winless against the buckeyes for their career. bye-bye coach carr.

to make matters worse, monday all the michigan state fans at work were cheering on osu for beating michigan. what cry-babies.

kisu and i root for michigan and michigan state, unless they're playing each other. but under only the rarest circumstances would we ever cheer for ohio state.

you are now leaving the comfort zone

this occasionally revealing (like now) blog notwithstanding, i am a shy person. i much prefer the sterility of digital disclosure to soppy, bawling face-to-face encounters. (and bawling there will be, because i am a person who cannot hold her eye water.)

i am uncomfortable meeting new people.

forced into an unavoidable situation i have two responses: hemorrhagic conviviality wherein i share waaaay too much or awkward monosyllabic withdrawal. either option leads people to conclude that i am surely a freak.

i'm used to that.

however, i plan to blatantly disregarded this empirical evidence of my social gracelessness.

spurred by a latent desire to pad my c.v. be a good Christian and galvanized by oh, the joys, i searched volunteermatch.org to see if there was an opportunity that wouldn't paralyze me and might make use of any old body my humble and limited talents.

lo and behold, i was presented with more than 300 opportunities within 20 miles of my home. it was a bit overwhelming. i paged through and found 3 opportunities i would like to try.

one is recording textbooks for the blind and dyslexic and another is a literacy program. they both deal with an issue that is very close to my heart. i firmly believe reading is the foundation for everything you want to achieve in life. (unless you want to achieve the status of, say, a strung out crack-head, or something similarly enchanting.)

the third is delivering food on Thanksgiving. this is the one that's a real stretch for me. (but i thought it would be an excellent way to spend the morning since kisu is working. double ka-ching.) first off, it's DownTown, an area i am not at all familiar with. but a bigger obstacle than that? i have to initiate. i go to the person's house. i knock on the door. i am expected to visit with them. this is a program geared to benefitting seniors and i've always related well to people older than myself, but still, i really suck at small talk. it's a good thing i'm taking pooka. she's a handy conversation piece.

STRANGERS. eeek!

stay tuned to see if i chicken out how this all works out and how pooka reacts. i feel it's time she learned a bit about charity; how she has benefitted personally and how she needs to give back.

a minor relief

well, bug finally got in to see the neurologist. the good news is she doesn't have cranial synostosis. the bad news is she's getting a helmet.

the neuro was concerned strictly for cosmetic reasons. the ct scan and an eeg show that she's otherwise developing normally.

we got an actual scrip for the helmet. i don't know how long it'll take to get one for her; how customized are they? according to kisu, the doc wants to follow up in 4 months and if all looks good at that point, we're done with the neuro.

too bad this is happening during the photo-happy season of the holidays, but at least it should keep her head warm in the winter.

closed for the season

i tore down the garden last weekend. we want to have one again next year, but with slightly different contents. i picked every fruit or vegetable i could find so that it wouldn't seed itself over the winter, but i left all the greens laying in the garden area to mulch and fertilize. i also left all the sycamore leaves that fell into the garden. that should make a nice blanket to insulate all that nutrient-rich soil.

i was surprised at just how much i was still able to harvest. i finally pulled the beets. i thought i could do something with them even though they were pretty small, but they were also very dry and cracked (and i'm too lazy) so i didn't.

the carrots never did amount to anything. as i was clearing, i could see some nubbins that were about the size of bug's fingers. mostly the greens pulled off leaving the carrots in the dirt. we'll see what happens with that. aren't the seeds of a carrot in the greens?

i was completely blown away by the number of tomatos still clinging to life on those monstrous plants. i especially wanted to get rid of those so that the garden isn't one giant tomato patch next year. the cherry tomatos from the small planter the year before ended up all along the fence line this year, thanks to hapless seed distribution. some of them just rotted and fell, others were helped along by the local vermin.

i feel very sad about this baby eggplant that will probably never get a chance to fulfill its destiny, namely, filling my tummy. there are two of these right now, but i don't think they will survive. i had another one earlier in the season but it only got to tennis ball size before a critter took a big hunk out of it.

kisu took this wonderful bounty and made pasta sauce from scratch in the crockpot, with some spicy italian sausage. it was heavenly! it melted in our mouths. pooka even ate two pieces of sausage before she realized it was spicy.

witness the garden's last hurrahs:

oh, and what's up with these squatters? i didn't plant these. i wonder if they're edible varieties?

damned if you do

last night when we were saying prayers, pooka changed it up.

"now i lay me down to sleep, i pray the Lord your soul to keep..." and she pointed at me when she said it.

oh, man. is my soul so badly troubled that even a 5 year old thinks i need help?

granted, i have been in turmoil lately, and i have been praying very hard for a way to get out of the morass, but i thought i was keeping it hidden from the prying eyes of the young ones.

apparently i was wrong.

her need for glasses notwithstanding, the youngest eyes have the clearest vision.

help me, Lord.