Happy New Year!

First post of the year and we're only three days in!  The lights are down, the boxes stowed away under the stairs, the faux pine needles are vacuumed and the house looks empty.

We want to remodel our kitchen.  That's such an overwhelming project.  So many things you need to figure out before you can figure out who to contact to help you figure out how much it'll cost and when it can get done.  It's not easy.  

It's hard going back to work again after the last two weeks basically off.  Today was more or less a wasted day.  Time to get back into the habit of going to work.  

Did I tell you that timeouts don't work on Elliott?  They don't.  We stuck with them for a while before we had to fall back on something else...mostly redirection to keep him out of trouble.  Not that he's ever in that much trouble to begin with, but he's verrrrry inquisitive, so he keeps ping-ponging from one thing to the next.  Knife on the counter from cutting strawberries?  He's reaching for it.  Hot coffee?  His fingers are on the handle.  Unguarded electronics?  He's swiping.

No resolutions this year.  Just a sense that I need to stop eating trash.  I'm on the treadmill almost nightly, so working out isn't the issue, but it's a bit counterproductive to eat a bag of chips between workouts.  That's my struggle.  

Lily goes back to school tomorrow.  She had one extra day.  She won't be happy.  Looking for a dentist for her.  Apparently Children's Hospital no longer accepts kids over 12.  This policy change was apparently made last year.  Lily hasn't seen a dentist since the pandemic.  She's due.  I feel like I overused apparently in that paragraph.

Looking for a dentist for me too.  Mine retired three years ago.  So...yeah, probably about due for a cleaning.

Last year I did a Goodreads book reading challenge.  First time I've done one of those in years.  Most of what I read now is Audiobooks.  I can't do a hardcopy book...or at least I can't do them as my primary means of reading.  For the longest time I've put quotes around "reading" when I refer to an audiobook.  It seemed like cheating.  It's not.  I "read" ...no...I READ 62 books last year.  I overshot my goal of 24 (two a month...I thought that was doable) by almost triple.  I just didn't really have a handle on how many books I was reading because I wasn't really tracking it.  

I have recommendations.  I'll do a post about them.  Too much to go into just off the cuff, but definitely read some really good stuff.  Some very interesting, well-written, imaginative stuff...sometimes all in one book!

Tik tok has sort of revitalized my reading.  I follow a bunch of book readers there and watch their reviews and I've picked up TONS of good books as a result.  I realized that one of the reasons I wasn't really reading as much is because Libby (the library app I use to download books) wasn't really showing me new books that I wanted to read.  I needed to get names and search for them, and there they were!  So great way to get reading inspo.  

This year's goal is set at 52.  A book a week.  Doable - since I did more last year - but not sandbagging it.

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9106086-jim

On the Road

While I'm away on business (ie, alone in a hotel room with free wifi and my laptop), I figured I'd catch up on a few bloggable family items.


Lily and I went to her first "real" dentist appointment last week.  It wasn't her first real appointment, that was almost a year ago, but it was her first "real" appointment.  Allow me to explain.  The FIRST appointment Lily had the lady put her fingers in Lily's mouth and then she extracted the pieces of the fingers that were left and the examination was essentially over.  Lily was a mess.  She was being restrained by Leslie and I, she was crying and gagging and sad and afraid, and . . . it sucked.  And I really didn't leave the appointment with any sort of warm-fuzzy feeling regarding what they could possibly have observed in the ten seconds it took for Lily to bite the fingers off the hands of the hygienist.


So we got a referral.  The new dentist was officially a pediatric dentist who was very experienced with special needs patients.  And you know what?  I think he really was.  Lily was no less upset.  Well. . . maybe a little less upset, but he handled it like a pro.  He probably OVER explained the things he was doing, talking calmly and soothingly to her, showing her the tools he was using and explaining their purposes.  The assistant held Lily's hands away from her mouth and from the dentist, but didn't straight-jacket her or anything, just kept the dentist out of harm's way.  And Lily tried to bite off his fingers too. . . he just had a knack for keeping his fingers in places where Lily's teeth weren't.


So Lily has no cavities.  As we left the appointment I asked the doctor about loose teeth.


"Did you notice if she had any loose teeth?" I asked.


"You know, I didn't," he replied frankly.


"Oh.  Well she just lost her first tooth a couple months ago," I told him.


"Well, first teeth usually come out within six months of each other."


And I we bid him farewell.


A week later Lily lost her second tooth.  THIS time we got it.  She lost it at school and they packed the little chicklet up and sent it home to us where we. . . er. . .the toothfairy can store it with all the other collected teeth.


She got a $5 bill under her pillow as payment.  Must have been some SWEET ivory in that bad boy.


Meanwhile, Emma, who had been pining for a chance to pitch her first game of the softball season, finally got her chance last Friday.


In order to understand how well she did you must first understand math.  There are six innings in a 10U (age 10 and under) softball game.  Each inning has three outs.  That's 18 total outs for an entire game.


Caught up?  Okay.  Emma struck out 15 kids.  That's three total outs that the infielders had to make in order to end the game.  Except that one of the three Emma fielded and threw to third, to get another out.  16 out of the 18 outs for an entire game were from Emma.  Does it sound like I'm bragging her up?  I totally am, so I hope it sounds that way, otherwise it's just bad writing.


To be fair the team she played just could not hit.  But. . . also to be fair, she was throwing right where she needed to be throwing.  Almost every pitch.  It was great for her.  She got the game ball.  It would have been tough to give it to anyone else.  They won 13 - 1.


I still owe you a potty training blog.  To be honest, I sorta don't want to jinx things.  Meh. . . screw it.  The potty training was more or less a failure.  But SINCE the potty training her accidents have gone WAY down.


She used to average anywhere from 3 - 5 accidents a day.  Now we're closer to 1 or 2.  This past weekend she was dry the whole time.  Not one accident.  A couple days before that she went two days without an accident.  So potty accidents have been WAY down.  And for no real reason, since it was VERY apparent that the potty training itself, at least in the heat of the moment, was a bust.

Lily and Emma relaxing. . . 

I'll still be updating everyone on fund raising.  I'm just SO amazed at the response, it would be hard for me to stop gushing about it.  We've had a couple hundred more dollars pledged since the last update a couple days ago. . .


I'm in Orlando tonight and I miss my family, but at least it's an excuse to catch up on the blog a little.