The Small Family     

Okay, I’m not just being a smart-aleck with the blog title this week.  I assume many of you are familiar with the word “skank,” right? As in a rather trampy, loose woman? Well, just before I wrote the blog this week, I was putting together the streuseled sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving (which I can make ahead and freeze), and Theo was eating dinner and asking me a zillion questions. He wanted to know if he was going to eat the sweet potatoes, and I said, “Yes, on Thursday--it’s Thanksgiving.”

“Skanksgiving?” he repeated.

I laughed, “Thanksgiving!”

“Skanksgiving,” he repeated seriously. And ever since, he has been discussing “Skanksgiving.” So apparently, at our house, it’s “Skanksgiving.” And I’m wondering who the skanks are. I don’t believe I could ever be referred to as a skank, after all! I’m rather modest, really…. :-)

So, before anything else, let me first say that I don’t really have many pictures this week because this weekend ended up being mostly spent in the hospital with my Mom (for me--Chris stayed home with Theo). I think Mom would shoot me if I went into great detail about her ailments on our blog, but I know some of you will be worrying about her, so let me give the short version. You all probably know she’s had diverticulosis for years--it’s a relatively common condition when people get older. But sometimes that turns into an infection--diverticulitis. For most people, this happens maybe once every couple years. And that was the case with Mom for many years, but for the past three months, she’s had pretty much one long bout of it. (It is only supposed to last a few days.) It’s why she was unable to go on our trip back East, and she really never got better after that. She’d improve a bit, then relapse.

This most recent relapse (which started Wednesday) is by far the worst she’s had, and it has become clear that oral antibiotics (the usual treatment for this infection) aren’t working. So, it’s likely time to do surgery. For now, she’s in the hospital for a couple days on IV antibiotics, and then she’ll continue on oral antibiotics at home. When she’s healed enough (probably about four weeks), they’ll start the preliminary stuff for surgery (a few tests and such), and then she’ll have surgery. It’s actually the same surgery (I believe) that my grandma (my Mom’s mom) had for colon cancer, but in my Mom’s case, it’s for diverticulosis, not cancer. Although it’s a major surgery, it’s also relatively common, and the risks are really no greater than with any other major surgery. And hopefully, once all is said and done, she’ll no longer be in miserable pain. She has rarely left the house for more than an hour in almost three months, so bad have been these flare-ups. So really, although no one ever wants to have surgery, she’s kind of glad to just have a light at the end of the tunnel.

And as long as I’m discussing colons, let’s talk about our great dairy trial with Theo. In a word: fail. Although I’m heartened by the fact that his ability to tolerate dairy seems to be getting a bit better. No obvious GI distress this time and no vomiting--but within a couple days, he suddenly was very stuffy with a runny nose. I thought it might be a cold, but then I noticed eczema starting on his legs. We stopped dairy, and within half a day the runny nose was gone. The eczema was gone by the next day. So, it looks like he still can’t quite handle it--but the results were better than last time. Back to soy yogurt and rice milk we go!

In other Theo news, we did have some fun on Saturday night, after I got Mom settled in the hospital and came home. My friend Amber had volunteered to babysit Theo so Chris and I could go see the new Harry Potter movie, so she came over after she got off work. Alas, Theo had skipped his nap (he’s on the road to giving up naps, I think--I’m hoping it’s a s-l-o-w process!), so by the time Amber got to our house, he was so tired that he just asked to go to bed. Easy babysitting job she’s ever done, I bet! She just hung out with the pugs and with my Mom’s dog, Peekaboo, and did some reading and TV watching. Meanwhile, Chris and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. And what convenience--we have a brand-new (as in just opened two days ago) movie theater walking distance from our house. In fact, we can see the sign from our bedroom window! It was pouring rain, so we actually didn’t walk over…but in the future we surely can.

In other news, we visited our first preschool option this week. It’s a Montessori preschool that is attached to a Montessori K-8 charter school. We both have mixed emotions about it. I loved the classroom environment and think Theo would really thrive in it, but neither Chris nor I liked the school director. He just sort of acted like it was a pain to answer our questions and show us around, which was really off-putting to us. So we both wonder how important it is to like the school director--will he really be a big part of Theo’s school experience if we choose that school?

We have four or five other preschools to visit (one more Montessori, one through the city of Roseville, and two or three independent preschools), and I’m really curious to see what we think of them when we have a clear picture of all of them. We’re coming at it from two different perspectives: I never went to preschool, so I have no preconceived notions about any of it. Chris went to preschool and really enjoyed his preschool experience, so he has certain expectations of what a preschool is like, based on what he experienced.

From talking to these preschools, I have a feeling some of them mostly focus on art, music, crafts, etc. And I definitely see the benefit in that--the socialization, if nothing else, will be great for Theo, because he really enjoys being around other children, and he does enjoy crafty projects. But I can’t help but wonder if he would really enjoy a slightly more challenging environment. The Montessori school we visited allows children to work at their own pace--they have certain goals to accomplish each day (perhaps a language arts lesson, a numbers activity, a science activity, etc.), but the child chooses what activity to perform in each area and what order he would like to do them in. So it’s more academic in terms of each day including some sort of work with letters, words, numbers, science, etc. But the activities they do in these areas looked like things Theo would really enjoy. For example, one little girl was matching animal cards with each letter of the alphabet--an anteater for A, a bird for B, etc. Other kids were working on counting activities with beads. Another girl was working on “life skills” by working a puzzle with a series of latches and hinges on it. These are the sorts of things Theo loves to do, so although I really don’t want to be the pushy parent who is shoving her toddler into the world of academia far earlier than necessary, I can’t help but think that he might actually enjoy this type of thing. And frankly, because he already knows all his letters and is starting to sight-read some words (he knows about six), I really like the idea of a program where, if he was so inclined, he could work on skills that are past what might normally be available for his age group. I was just horribly, horribly bored in school, and I guess I'm projecting my own experience onto him--I think I really would've enjoyed school much more if I had been allowed to work at my own pace.

Sigh…it’s a fine line between wanting to encourage his natural love of learning and not wanting to be the uber-obnoxious “I expect my child to graduate Harvard at age 12” parent…. So, we’ll see what the other preschools are like and eventually (hopefully!) find the right fit. My one big reservation with this Montessori school (other than the annoying director) is that it’s five days a week, and I wasn’t really envisioning having Theo gone five days a week at age 3 1/2. I mean, you get so little time with your kids before they’re grown up already…. But the other programs are only four or five hours a week (two days a week, for 2 or 2 1/2 hours each day), which seems really short. I wish we could find a three-day-a-week program, but those don’t seem to be available for his age group.

Anyway, enough about preschools. Since I didn’t have much chance to take fun pictures this week, you’ll see a few iPhone shots (kinda fuzzy) in this week’s album, along with a bunch of pictures of Theo and the dogs that I took on Sunday, while playing with a flash I borrowed from my friend Janeane. I don’t like the on-camera flash on my camera, but this one has some flexibility in terms of allowing you to bounce light off other surfaces so the result isn’t a direct glare on the subject’s face. I need to learn to adjust my shutter speed to compensate for it, but I did get a few neat shots this week.

So I bid you adieu for the week and wish you all a very happy "Skanksgiving!"