sara skates

My old blog seems to be unavailable, or I’d have  big link-fest of previous posts.  (Waaaahhhh…I hope the old blog re-appears … one of the few things assuaging my guilt about not keeping up with kiddo photo albums – the non-digital kind – is that I had a lovely electronic record of them).  There is this related post, from super MamaCate.  But then I ran across this today:  A stunning collection of stories from parents of medically involved children, stories about interations with health care professionals – where the interaction was a life-changing moment.  In particular – this post - copied just because it is so spectacular:

 Dr. B and the tiny dancer

I
have an 8 month old little girl. She was born with a fairly severe club
foot. I was walking the OB ward during our second evening post-delivery
pushing my little girl in her bassinet only to have several nurses ask
to "check her out," which I had quickly come to realize meant they
wanted to see her tiny little feet–one perfect and one turned so
awkward.  As we rounded a corner, I heard one nurse say, "That mom is so relaxed
about her baby’s foot." I thought, "well, what am I going to do about
it? I can’t change it–she’s perfectly made to me." I’m off topic…let
me regroup. It took three weeks to get in to see the pediatric
orthopeadist in town–there are only 3 in my state. He was amazing. He
quickly outlined her care in a concise, even-toned manner and promptly
said, "She is perfect–we’re going to fix her so that she is absolutely
complete. She will walk. She will run. She will dance until she
exhausts herself." And then he hugged me and said, "See you next week."
For the next ten weeks, he saw us each week as he carefully changed her
casts and checked her progress. He held her when they put her to sleep
for surgery when she was 8 weeks old. He was holding her when they
brought me to her after the surgery, despite the fact that he had other
patients waiting for their surgery. He helped me put her in her first
post-cast dress (no dresses while she was wearing casts because she
rubbed her little foot against the cast). We were devastated when we
found out he was moving to another state. We want only the absolute
best for him and his family. He arranged for my little girl to have the
next best care in our state. Thank you, Dr. B, if you’re out there.
When she walks, we’re sending you pictures. We’re so thankful for
everything you did to help us!!!
~~submitted by Natalie

We have had moments like that too – some from medical and service providers, some from random strangers.  They are utterly treasured.  Some people just know the right thing to say – where it acknowledges the challenges, but also the plain humanity of kids who work a little harder (or a lot harder) or who have medical challenges.

Toby’s Trets arrived, so we drove a few hours to pick it up yesterday – to the Bicycle Man.  We tried to get funding for it for close to two years but gave up and just bought the thing ourselves – the NEED to be able to get out and do something active together just moved it up on the scale of priorities.  Here’s our trial ride at the bike store:

While it’d be nicer to have Toby in front (the smaller rider shouldn’t have to eat the other person’s dirt, ha), this was a more affordable configuration.  There are tandems and recumbent tandems, but those cost a lot more than adding a trailer to our existing bike.  And what’s great about this trailer is that Toby is an active pedaler.

We also saw a really cool range of bicycle configurations – recumbants and tricycles (not for preschoolers) and a version called a "tadpole" – which sort of looks like a backwards trike with two wheels up front and one in back, and hand steering controls that make the thing wibble-wobble like tadpoles do (though not suggested on a busy street – one doesn’t have to wibble-wobble in them).  Here’s an example by Sun Bicyles, and more here from the Bicycle Man.   It gave us some ideas for the future – the Trets will fit Toby for some time (it adjusts infinitely to fit folks 46" to 60" tall – up to 5 feet), but eventually he’ll want to go solo.

For now, he has a bit to learn – pedaling backwards is apparently easier, but I’ll appreciate the "turbo" help of him pedaling fowards ROFL.  Shifting gears is still a bit above his cognitive abilities too, but then, Hannah at 9 doesn’t shift gears on her bike either so for now we’ll just get him to not even try.

Peter (the Bicycle Man himself) told us a great story though.  A woman came in with her 11 year old who walks with the help of forearm crutches – she got him a recumbant trike, with the plan of going on walks with him while he rode.  At the store’s trial ride, the kid seemed to be getting the hang of it – so Peter smiled as they left thinking that the kid would have some newfound horizons soon.  They came back for their 30-day tune-up, and he asked mom how it was working out.  She said;  "It’s NOT".  Peter’s heart fell, until she exclaimed "I can’t walk for TEN MILES – I need a bike too!" 

While it doens’t happen often, it’s great to find a regular-market thing that just works with Toby’s needs.  There are adaptive bicycle things for kids with motor disabilities – but those are even more expensive, and depending on the kid, they may or may not work well.  In this case, this works well – another recent example is Toby’s swing.  He outgrew this kind, so we got one similar to  this – perfect!

Terry was driving the kids in the minivan today, and Hannah asked Terry whether she had ever run over an animal (they had just driven by a squished squirrel, or something – oh, Terry’s here – she clarifies that they had merely driven by a squirrel – one very much alive).  The conversation continued:

T:  "Um, yeah, I think I did hit a squirrel once."  (slight pause) "And one time I ran over a chipmunk on a bicycle."
H: "How was it riding on a bicycle, Mama?"

While I’m sure Terry could have taken that one and run with it (she’s good at elaborating on such things), she merely clarified that SHE was the one on the bicycle at the time.  I’m quite surprised that she didn’t say something like:

T: "Well, it had a little, tiny bicycle.  It was peddaling like mad but I was riding faster."

The tragedy of the event was that I was on the bike in front of Terry, and slowed down to warn Terry not to run over the cute little chipmunk in the middle of the road.  Instead, Terry looked at me quizzically as she veered directly into the chipmunk’s path.  Lovely ride that day

If you’re lucky, there will be a knitting update one of these days – stay tuned.

Hi.  My name is Toby.  I want to write about bugs.  They are kind of scary because the spiders are scary.  Because they look freaky.  I don’t like spiders because they are creepy at haunted houses.  Uhhhh.  Umm, Can I write it? 

Wait, not yet.  We have this computer game that has bugs and I was scared of it when I did it the first time because there were bugs and I saw a creepy spider when I clicked on the jungle because spiders live at the jungle and I don’t like the jungle um that the bugs live at.  Only I don’t like because of the spiders in the jungle that have the bugs in it.

Som bugs r osum like ladbugs and butrflis!

love, TOBY

here’s a creepy spider:

To their last day of school this year:

Toby the soon-to-be first grader, now with two loose teeth but the same goofy ham-photo grin:

And Hannah, just about a fourth grader, with one of her bus stop buddies:

It’s really cool to watch them grow up – but damn it happens fast. 

My rink is open again!

It’s a lovely thing.

Posts that obsess about skating will resume shortly.

Meanwhile:  I just ordered a pair of very avant-gard boots – these.  Amusingly, the main complaint against them (with practically vitriolic feedback from folks – a la ‘I would NEVER wear those because…’) is in terms of aesthetics – folks think they’re abominably ugly.  Functionaly, not many use them yet.  As far as I know, folks who have commited to them for more than a single practice session love ‘em.  Folks who have tried them for an hour or two don’t like them.  Supposedly, they’ll save knees and hips on jump landings.  Since an ankle is designed to take the load on a jump landing, and since traditional skate boots are like wearing a cast on the ankle, typically the load is instead transferred to the knee and hip joints.  Given my – sensitivity, shall we say – to preventing future injury…I’ll give ‘em a try.  It’s a gamble – if it pays off, the bonus is that these boots don’t break down every year or year and a half or so – they should last 3-5 years instead.

And is it a surprise that I’m taking an academic approach to this?

On the home front, Terry will soon become a horse owner.  For YEARS she has managed to work with other people’s horses.  In an unexpected turn of events, she’s getting a really good horse for free.  One of her former students in CT has a horse that she can’t put as much time/work into as she would like – and she’s picky about who she would let work with it.  Enter Terry.  We will be reponsible for monthly upkeep bills, but that’s way better than that plus the ~10K purchase price tag, don’t you think??  Yeah, me too

So – Akasha Cat has a quarter-sized sore right on the spot where one of her front legs was removed a few months ago. Terry took her to the vet yesterday, and conveniently Akasha demonstrated the source of the problem:  That spot has been bothering her, so she has licked herself a sore.

The vet surmises that it’s probably a "phantom limb" kind of thing.

It has signs of a minor infection, so we’re treating it with oral antibiotics, and if that doesn’t help, she’ll have a collar on again until it clears up.  Hopefully, once the scab heals it will stop bothering her.

On the rainbow sock front, still no sign of it.  At least there’s also no sign of Barney sock ingestion – usually he leaves a pretty good trail of evidence.  He has been chewing a lot less lately too – he’s just over a year old so I think the worst of the chewing phase is over.  Toby-sized socks – even when knee-hi length – don’t really take that long to knit – so I may break down and make him another.  Not yet though.

A few weeks ago, Toby asked for a pair of rainbow socks.  Pronto, I cast on out of one skein of Regia Ringel (rainbow stripey goodness).  I finished the first sock within a few days, and it and it’s mate have been traveling with me since.

The last time I rembember seeing it was on the airplane from Alanta to Rochester – where not much knitting progress happened b/c I kept falling asleep.  I needed it to gauge exactly where to start the toe decreases.

Since then, the toe is about done, and I tried to find both socks last night.  Sock 1 is gone.  Sock two needs only an afterthought heel.  Both have been inside a plastic baggie inside by little shoulder/hip sack…

Terry claims she saw both when rummaging through my bag to find a checkbook the other night.  But we all know how one long sock tube can really look like two socks if you’re not (a) paying careful attention, and/or (b) really a knitted sock conoisseur.  (Terry doesn’t knit is my point.) 

Fingers crossed that it’ll come out of the woodword.  Right now, I’m betting that it’s on a really good cross country tour of Delta Airlines flights.

I returned from Mexico City late afternoon on Saturday – to our home DSL line being down (it was fixed tonight – aaaaahhhhhhhhh).  Suffice it to say – surviving the weekend without internet was a bit of a challenge for me.

The training week was phenomenal.  Deaf Ed in Mexico is sort of like where it was in the US in oh, say, 1970 or so.  There are virtually NO signing programs, except for one – which is a bilingual (Mexican SL and written Spanish) program – know that bilingual programs are progressive in the US yet.  In 1990, a woman – a speech teacher – frustrated with the poor outcomes of her students and having heard a number of stories about the success of signing bilingual programs for deaf students – traveled to Gallaudet University to learn all she could about it.  She went home and convinced the board of trustees of the school she worked at (and oral program) to set up a small pilot program for six students – a bilingual program.  Today, the whole school (Instituto Pedagogico Para Problemas del Lenguagje, IAP)is now a K-6 bilingual deaf ed program – the only one of its kind in Mexico, and one of a few on the North American continent.  One of the things they do is run an annual week-long training session for teachers from all over Mexico – on bilingual deaf education.  Their goals are not that teachers return to their communities with plans to implement their own deaf ed programs (as that’s an unrealistic hope), but that little seeds of change will be planted – and bit by bit, deaf education will improve in Mexico.  Talk about a single agent of change – the woman who started it all was running the training session – she knocks my socks off.

The week was incredibly busy.  There were six faculty, I was one of only two who was not fluent in Spanish.  Very few of the 270 teachers at the training session were fluent in English.  I was at a distinct disadvantage relying on interpreters – it worked, but I really wished that Spanish had been on my list of fluent languages.  We started the day with breakfast together (most of the six faculty were staying at the same hotel) at 7:30, and were wisked off to the training center at 8:15.  Five of us each gave a plenary talk on one of the days – that happened from about 9 til 10:30.  From 11-1pm, we broke up into 6 groups – each taking a group of 50 teachers and running a workshop with them through the whole week.  We broke from 1-2 for lunch, and then we repeated the workshop for a different group of 50 teachers.  At 4:15, we had the option of attending small hand-on workshops – I would have loved to join the "Beginning Mexican Sign Language" group but I was zonked.  Then, we were all taken to dinner, and deposited back at our hotel around 9 pm.  Lather, rinse, repeat each day during the week.

The teachers were great.  I probably learned as much as they did.  I would love to be invited back in the future.

The most entertaining moment probably happened Friday night.  I had an early plane to catch to get home, and had a 5 am wake up call to make the cab to the airport.  Since the week had been so busy, I had not seen much of the city – so I jumped at the chance to join a group of folks heading out to dance.  I figured "How late could they stay out – surely I’ll get a few hours of sleep."  Not so much.  Apparently, dancing on weekend nights in Mexico City involves dancing from approximately 11 pm til between 4 or 5 am.  I was dropped off back at the hote at 4:20…at which point I made the person who had invited me stay up til 5 am and my wake-up call.  She got to go to bed at that point.  I believe she slept til noon.

I was SO zonked that I boarded the plane (I was one of the last to board, although not the last) and never even noticed that my seat neighbor had sat down next to me until I woke up a bit half way through the flight.  I was out cold.

I got home late Saturday afternoon, and spent much of Sunday (I’m 43!  Happy Late Birthday to me!) sheparding the kids around to a series of kiddo birthday parties.  Yes, I spent a serious chunk of my birthday afternoon at Chuck E Cheese’s – one of the gates of parenting hell I’m sure.  The kids love it, but it sure is loud.  I did get to the bookstore and bought a serious start of a collection of Mexican food cook books.  Tonight was an experiment in Mole sauce – the chocolate/chili version.  It wasn’t finished in time for dinner tonight (recipes that require about 80 ingrediants and numerous cooking steps just don’t finish in time for an evening meal when one works all day), but we’ll enjoy it tomorrow.   This recipe is similar to the one I made – there are simpler versions, which I think I will be trying next time.

All in all, I’m happy to be home, and I think that the next few months will be less frenzied.  There has been much traveling in the last few months – next up is the Gay Games, but the whole family is traveling for that!

I found La Pista today - it's a nice somewhat older rink - one of those "platforms" where you step up onto the ice. I knew I was in for a bit of a cultural experience when I was putting on my skates - a teenaged kid showed up to skate with a tiara on her head - ! One thing about Mexico is that there's lots of frilly girly stuff in
evidence.

Hasta la vez proxima