Naptime Chez Tipton

Home schooling Feng Shui; the back of our piano is against the wall of my Littles' bedroom (their new napping room) and my daughter, Grace, practices piano intently during the Littles' nap time.

After the wiggling, flopping, and humming settles into snuggling my two Littles start noticing Grace's piano music.  Lately Grace has been starting her sessions with "Star Wars" themes because she knows the Littles enjoy it. 

 The first time Grace sight-read through Darth Vader's Theme I was still in the Littles' bedroom watching them settle down.  I could see Jack's eyes looking off into space as he relaxed into his pillow, his eyes tracking from side to side as Grace played.  At her first stumble his eyes froze, only to resume tracking as she resumed playing.  Anytime she had to pause to work out the music his eyes stopped tracking and he almost seemed to hold his breath, waiting for the musical resolution.  

I'd love for both Littles to be musically inclined but if the end result of their early exposure to music is merely less time required memorizing math facts... it's all good.

Fall Break

This week has flown by. I want a "repeat" in order to accomplish all that I foolishly thought I could accomplish in one week off school.

Why have I been going to bed each night feeling as though school has been off-track? I spent a morning this week looking over my schedule to find out where the flaw was. I found one major no-brainer flaw. When I put together my schedule for this Fall I didn't take into account travel time for the various classes my high schoolers are taking as dual enrollment. No wonder I can't figure out where the time has gone. It's gone the same place as my gasoline budget...

Live and learn, we've never done dual enrollment and tutorial before. Though I think the programs are valuable they certainly take a chunk out of the week.

Really, I Just Have Something In My Eyes

May 30th, 2009

A loud-breathing presence at my bedside, I open one eye.  A small face is peering at me.  I attempt to focus through the pre-dawn darkness on my 19 month old, Samuel, as he shouts "JUICE!"  I try pulling him into bed in the vain hope that he will simple cuddle up and go to sleep.  Nothing doing, he struggles back to the floor.  Through squinted eyes I can see him retrieve my water cup from the bedside table and gulp down the last of the water with shaking hands.  My brain is starting to send alarm signals.  

Samuel shouts, "Juice" again, and then quivering from head to toe,  throws the now empty cup.  The cup bounces comically off my head with such force that it ricochets and knocks my bedside lampshade askew.  Now I am wide awake.  Samuel is not quivering with rage, he is quivering from a blood sugar crisis.  His first one. I'm too familiar with the symptoms of hypoglycemia in Jack not to recognize them in Sam, especially when hit in the head.  A handful of raisins later a suddenly calm Sam politely asks for breakfast.

Sam's first crisis occurred almost exactly a year after Jack's first hospitalization.  A year in which we were told that Sam was probably fine, probably free from the genetic disorder that Jack has.  It was also the morning of a chapter meeting of The United Mitochondria Foundation.  I went on to the meeting (my first one ever), feeling unreal from the events of the morning.  Have you ever had allergies that made your eyes water uncontrollably?  After I got to the meeting, that's what happened to my eyes.  They just started "leaking".  I quietly went to the rest room a couple of times and held paper towels to my eyes- willing them to behave, only to have them start watering again within 10 minutes.  The meeting's featured speaker spoke on grief.  She stressed dealing with the grief of chronic illness or your grief would "splash" over into other areas of your life when you least expect it.  Duh, I was the better than any power point presentation, exhibit A in "splashing".

During the following brunch I took the opportunity to corner the geneticist who is on the board of the local UMDF chapter.  He'd seen Jack before, so I re-introduced myself and asked if a normal child in the absence of an acute illness could just happen to have episodes of blood sugars in the 40's that resolve with carbohydrates.  A long pause followed, during which I'm sure he was thinking something along the lines of, "Crap, she's already looks stressed and she's asking me a loaded and stupid question, and the door to the room is blocked by the bloke eating cake."  He of course advised me to get in touch with our doctors and start Samuel on corn starch at night until he was seen...

My eyes continued to leak off and on for a couple of days.  I wasn't prostrated on my bed with  flower petals scattered across the floor during this time.  I was cracking jokes with Greg and the kids, doing chores- doing all the normal weekend stuff.  Just occasionally my eyes would start streaming.  It was completely unlike anything I've experienced before.  Samuel, whom we had thought was our round, sweet, sturdy, healthy, bonus-baby was suddenly all those things minus the healthy.  Yet at the same time I knew we were so blessed to already know the basics of how to recognize and handle metabolic issues.

 

I knew that Samuel's diagnosis would be difficult.  Our family doesn't bother with garden variety illnesses.  I was right, a few months later and we are working with a diagnosis of Ketotic Hypoglycemia for Samuel, but we don't really know.  Lately he's been having more frequent morning episodes of hypoglycemia even on his corn starch regime.  I'm watching, praying and researching, but I'm not "leaking" anymore.  However, I don't think it was such a bad thing.  Embarrassing perhaps, but the slow release of tears as I went on with normal life was a bizarrely helpful way to process my grief and fears.   Moms are all about multi-tasking, I just never thought to multi-task grief before.

The Colors of Autumn

Artist at work.

Perhaps "washable" and "indelible" are actually synonyms?

My proud minimalist next to his "pièce de résistance" entitled "Red."

Black and White and Brass. Doesn't she sound great?

Smallday

Some Mondays seem maliciously and anthropomorphically bent on proving what a small person I am. Today was such a Monday. True suffering, and momentous calamities, are different from mere aggravations, yet there is something peculiarly difficult about quantity of small troubles regardless of their quality.

Aggravations on top of aggravations can lead one to entertain thoughts representing smallness of mind:

1. Recalcitrant math student? One might be tempted to respond, "Fine, double-digit addition with carrying is stupid, don't learn it!"

2. 8 yo with flu symptoms? One might picture a backyard quarantine-yurt.

3. More month than money? One might idly wonder how much is in the 3 yo's piggy bank.

Monday, in anthropomorphic glory, saved it's coup de grace for the afternoon mail. A letter bomb arrived- well, actually a post card from a dear friend. The picture was of a beautiful vacation spot on the Adriatic. As soon as I saw the picture I was there, sitting at a cafe in loose white clothing while a waiter poured my drink. Greg inexplicably had a dark moustache. I could feel the heat of the sun on my skin, hear the water and sounds of the children playing at a distance while their nanny carefully looked after them.

Zap. Then I remembered I was in my dining room setting out bowls of cauliflower soup (yuck, but the kids like it) on a tablecloth that hadn't been properly cleared since breakfast.

I love the sender of the post card. She is one of my oldest friends, and the most beautiful of people. I'm so happy that she's on vacation as a celebration of finishing her Master's thesis. However, my first reaction was of utter jealousy instead of joy for my friend. That's the definition of smallness.

Smallness, meet me. Me, meet Smallness.

Did God know today would knock me flat? Is that why during my morning shower the hymn, "Be Still and Know That I am God," kept coming to my mind? God, the antithesis of smallness.

I'm glad tomorrow is Tuesday...

Silly Similes, S'Aliteration

Gray days, for days on end, get me down, make me cranky. Time to look at silly, sunlit, Summer photos. Tennessee Teen Takes Toddler from Tuba would be a great headline.

My 15 yo daughter (who, minus the toddler, plays above-pictured Tuba) was given a writing assignment to compose a poem using similes, but instructed to strictly avoid cliches. She too gets cranky and contrary on gray days. She just couldn't resist. If you make your teacher smile does that off-set doing an assignment exactly wrong?

A Poem of Cursed Similes

The blue of the sky,

was as blue of the sea.

The clouds were as ships sails,

waving o'er to me.

The green of the grass,

was as green as sea-weed,

Those greeny masses

that came and then flee'd.

The brown of the tree-trunks,

was as brown as the mast,

from which a sailor,

was crying, "Avast!"

The red of the flower,

was as red as the face

Of the red coated Marine

yelling, "About face!"

The black of the cannon ball

was as black as the earth.

To which they would go,

not long after their birth.

Sneakers, Swords, and Taillights

Fall is shoe buying time. With 7 kids obviously we try to squeak by with the cheapest footwear we can. When I happen along on a sneaker sale it's a happy day. All my boys are fast now. They'll tell you that repeatedly, if you can catch up with them. The 7 year old wanted a non-sale sneaker, until my husband remarked that if he got the same kind as his brothers they would look like a kind of team, or even a group of super heros. Spin-it Baby. Parenting at it's best.

We have a family friend who is a sword maker. Yes, I said swords. Noble Armory has a faithful following of Tipton children who are always willing to try out the new models. The normality of it for our children has led to some unusual angst. Ben, when he was 4, announced that when he grew up he was going to stay at home and "make" his wife go to work. When I asked why, with tears of anxiety sparkling in his eyes he said, "Because I don't know how to go on airplanes (his own Dad travels a lot for work), and I don't know how to make swords."

Fast forward to yesterday. The three youngest boys in their new sneakers battling with neighbors. Evidently the level of testosterone in the body is directly linked to the newness of footwear. An epic sword battle in the driveway led to the death of my van's left taillight cover. Mayhaps it was a burning one-eyed dragon?

Cost of sale sneakers + cost of new tail light cover is still cheaper than cost of regular priced sneakers. If you figure in the amount of energy expended outside (and by definition Not inside), the character developed upon coming inside to confess the injury of said van, the level of hand eye coordination developed with the self correcting feed-back of physical reality... I'm way into black ink.