Wednesday, October 31, 2012

And it felt great.

This morning was the first time since October 10th I didn't have something scheduled for the time both kids are at school.  I mean sure, I can always wash dishes, run a load of laundry, catch up on work email, make boring phone calls to insurance companies, etc., but nobody was expecting me anywhere at a specific time.

So, to quote Jean Auel out of context, I did what any red-blooded American housewife would do.

I went back to bed.

Monday, October 1, 2012

A little of this, a little of that

As of today, we're on Kaiser Dental.  I've never been a Kaiser patient before, although Jon was raised as one.  We took the kids to the dentist this summer, a very nice pediatric place literally up the street.  They got x-rays and cleaning, and then we were told that their teeth are in such bad shape that they would need to be knocked out for the work that needs to be done, because otherwise there would be such a long series of coming in for novacaine shots to work on them piecemeal that they were guaranteed a dental phobia for life.  So that would be, oh, five million dollars.  Per kid.  I may be off by a factor of 10 or so, but suffice it to say, the estimate was more than I've spent on dental care in my lifetime.  With our current dental plan--the one I've been on since I started teaching in '98--you start at 70% coverage.  It goes up 10% each year you have checkups until you're at 100%.  The kids can't wait 3 years for their dental work.  Kaiser's plan starts at 100% coverage.  Ergo, we'll be calling a Kaiser dentist tomorrow to make appointments.

Several times this summer, Jon took the kids to feed the ducks at a pond near Fred Meyers.  They usually rode their bikes.  Today Jon and Inesa went there while Sasha and I were at his swim lessons, which are across the street, so we all met up afterwards to distribute cracked corn.  Inesa exclaimed, "I like this.  The whole family is here."  Incidentally, the kids called both corn on the cob and popcorn "cracked corn" for awhile, because that was the 'corn' phrase they heard the most. 

Sasha's had behavior issues in various places lately.  We were embarrassed, because he overstepped some boundaries while at a neighbor's yesterday.  I talked to the dad after all our kids got on the bus this morning, and he said, "Hey, this stuff was how he got by for the last eight years.  You can't expect to fix it in three months."  I about hugged the guy.  What an empathetic perspective. 

Jon started a harvest job today.  This isn't directly kid related, but it's a Yay.  Both for the money and for the experience. 

After dinner, Jon tried suggesting that we give hugs for dessert.  Inesa and I, knowing there was chocolate cake in the kitchen, vehemently rejected this idea.  Sasha got up and gave Jon a big hug.  It was pretty dang cute.  He also gave Jon the last bite of his slice of cake. Somebody likes Papa. 

Our therapist told us that people adopt because they think having kids will be fun.  "But raising them won't be fun," she warned us.  "The fun part comes later."  I hear her, and appreciate her bluntness, but we do get a lot of fun parts now too.  I honestly think our kids are doing really well compared to how they COULD be doing.