Life with Kids
« Previous EntriesElizabeth’s Not-So Merry Go Round
Friday, June 25th, 2010And the health care system goes round and round. My 8-year-old daughter Elizabeth and I feel like we’re getting tossed like so much Caesar. When I was in second grade, our school yard had one of those old-fashioned merry-go-rounds, a metal circle with handle bars. You ran alongside it, and when you hit the perfect speed, you’d [...]
On Cheez Whiz and Seizures
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010I’ve always been told that the more adjectives you pile on, the further something deviates from what you thought it was. Take Cheez Whiz. It is not cheese. If it were cheese, the package would just say “cheese.” At most, “cheddar cheese.” Or “American cheese.” But no. Cheez Whiz, in addition to its aberrant spelling, [...]
Pediatric Ambulatory EEG for Epilepsy and Seizure Disorders — Elizabeth’s Story
Sunday, March 28th, 2010A lot of you know it’s been a rough year for Elizabeth, as I have posted about it before. In the past few weeks, more has happened. We did get in with the neurologist. They did take the dizzy-falling down-throwing up-migraine episodes seriously (finally!) We’ve been having one every few weeks since November. The last [...]
Grace in the face of adversity
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010My youngest daughter is Elizabeth Grace. She’s seven, likes to paint her fingernails a new color (or two) every day, refuses to eat anything that isn’t yellow, and has a still-unclassified seizure disorder due to malformations of her brain. For the past two days, we’ve been snagged in a sea of health care red tape. [...]
The Facts of Life, Part Deux: Torture the Mother
Friday, March 27th, 2009So, a month or so ago, you read my lovely initial birds and bees conversation with my six-year-old. (Yes, SIX.) Apparently Elizabeth has babies on the brain, as yesterday when we were stuck on Mopac, she suddenly asked, “How do you make a baby?” Thankfully, traffic was at a dead stop, or I might have [...]
The Facts of Life Are All About…Marriage, Apparently
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009My six-year-old flopped on the bed with no indication whatsoever she was about to drop a bombshell. “So, Mama, can I have a baby before I’m married?” I had to think for a minute. These questions are never what they seem, like the time the big horrid bad word she heard at school, that started [...]
A Picture of My Morning
Saturday, September 6th, 20088:30 a.m. I wake to a breath against my cheek. I open my eyes to filtered sunlight on a round face, still faintly babyish, soft and a bit silly. Elizabeth. She speaks. “Mama, you’re up!” She rolls on top of me, putting her small hands on either side of my jaw. “I’m hungry!” Her smile reveals [...]
Using the s-bomb
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008Over on Verla Kay’s Children’s Literature boards, we had an intriguing discussion about the use of swear words in young adult books. Published writers and author hopefuls all weighed in on when, if, and how much it was appropriate to curse in books targeted for teens. As a former teacher of both middle and high school, [...]
Memories of the ol’ Four-Eyes
Monday, August 11th, 2008I didn’t really want to take Emily to the optometrist. Maybe I was in denial, but she seemed fine to me. Her dad insisted she wasn’t seeing well, though, and so I took her last week. She wasn’t happy about it, and neither was I. She breezed through the glaucoma air-puffs much better than I [...]
Locks of Love
Monday, June 30th, 2008About this time three years ago, a three-year-old Elizabeth pushed a chair over to the craft counter, tugged her sister’s safety scissors out of the box, and lopped off the ponytail on top of her head, sheering off a serious section of hair to the scalp. We called her “Spike.” Since then, she’s mostly grown her hair [...]
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