Fun, busy weeks

Becky's Grandpa Chadderdon turned 90 this year and his family used the occassion to throw a party.  For him, of course, but everyone had fun.  The party was March 31st in St. Joseph, MI (where he lives).  We left a day early so we could swing by Coal City, IL to visit Judy, Patrick and their family.  It was great to see them. 

Becky's sister, Sherry, came out from Laramie, WY for the party.  She spent the week after the party visiting family and friends in Wisconsin, including spending a few days at our place.

This past Friday, Tabby had some minor surgery again.  She had some "tabs" on her face near her ears.  The way the doctors explained it, they were similar to the lump of cartilage in front of your ear.  Everyone has tabs like Tabby while in the womb, but they're generally absorbed into the skin or something before birth.  Except that Tabby's weren't.  Leaving the tabs would have been a slight risk for them catching and tearing at some point.  The doctors told us the main issue with them was cosmetic.  Personally, I thought the main issue was what if she decides to pierce them as a teenager?  In any case, removing them was a simple procedure that was suggested we do.

More seriously, though still relatively minor, Tabby had some sort of sebaceous on her eyebrow that would become a considerable infection risk when she hits puberty.  The doctors suggested we have that removed for more than simply cosmetic reasons.

We had the surgery done at Children's Medical Hospital in Milwaukee and it went really well.  I have to admit that after her issues coming off the anesthetic when she had her oral surgery done, I was a little nervous.  Needlessly, it appears.  Maybe waking up in a strange place with an IV was kind of frightening last time and that adversely affected her after the oral surgery.  That's my unprofessional guess, anyway.  In any case, now that she's an old pro with surgery, she woke up fine this time.

Jackson also had minor surgery.  He had all four wisdom teeth removed on Monday.  I guess they were growing in horizontally and removing them was an ordeal.  He was put completely out for the procedure and doesn't remember much at all between getting his first shot and waking up at home.  But his mouth is sore enough that he trusts us that something was done.

And oh yeah, that first week was spring break for the kids,  this weekend was Easter, and last week was my birthday!

Most importantly, Becky took pictures!  So here some are.

Visiting Judy was tons of fun.  Check out Jack's new hair color!

We had a fun time at the hotel pool in St. Joseph.

Becky caught some nice pictures of her cousins and their families.  I don't think she actually had any "picture sessions", so to speak.  Just, as she caught them in the lobby, or wherever, she told them to sit up straight and say cheese.

Of course, there were the requisite pictures of Becky's Grandma and Grandpa Chadderdon along with his siblings, then his children, then his grandchildren and finally his great grandchildren.  Somehow, we didn't get a picture of him with his children on our camera.

Sometimes people just hung out.

At one point Becky caught the sunlight coming through a window just perfect for photos and snapped some good ones.

Good times.

Becky's uncle isn't really a cowboy.  He was just dressing in his dad's duds to MC the event.  The hat fits, though, doesn't it?

Tabby had declared that she likes girls and doesn't like boys.  Except she likes two boys.  Me and her cousin Ryan.

The day after the party we hung out for a bit at Becky's grandparents' place before heading home.

One morning while Sherry was here, Becky took her to the Bay Beach Wildlife sanctuary.

Tabby was as cute as usual.



Another morning Becky and Sherry took Tabby and her friend Ella to Baird Creek.

Pictures

So much has been going on I don't even know how to catch up well.  Fortunately, Becky has taken pictures, which will save me many thousands of words.

Back in January, Ben turned 13.

In Feburary, Sam turned 15.

Most days were a series of normal events, though.  I go to work all day at UHC.  The boys go off to Edison or Preble all day.  Some evenings, Jack goes to work at the Y.  Tabby goes to Peace Nursery in the morning.  Becky spends the morning running errands or taking care of the house.  When Tabby gets home, she almost always asks to play with her best friend Ella. 

And Becky, being the awesome Mom she is, makes it happen.  And brings a camera.

They went to the new "purple park" with Ella's dog, Chewie.

The went to the Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary and were beseiged by ducks.

They always have a great time.

Sometimes she's gotten to play with her best friend from school, Emma.

Or with her other best friend, Brindley.

Once the weather warmed up some, Becky decided it was time to grab the camera and head down to her favorite picture taking spot.  Baird Creek.

And by "warmed up some", I mean, the ice started to melt and she thought it would be cool to get some ice/water/snow pictures.

Eventually, it warmed up enough that she started taking people with her as subjects.  The boys usually aren't too thrilled about it.

Tabby loves it.

And once they're down there, even the boys seem to end up having a good time.

Though Becky still has to bribe them with ice cream to get them to show it in a picture.

The other day Becky said to me, "I'm actually starting to feel kind of guilty that I have so many more pictures of Tabby than anyone else.  Our boys are going to think I don't love them."

I guess she may have a point that most of the time when she picks up the camera, it's like the Tabby show.

But at the same time, Tabby is the only one who really cooperates with getting her picture taken.  She'll do what Mom tells her to.

Stand where Mom tells her to.  And smile!

Not to mention, she is the cutest.

Of course, more has happened than we've caught on picture.  Just the past few weeks, Becky had a birthday, Tabby and I went to a Disney on Ice show, and I went to the Fire & Ice game convention.  But this will do for now.

Goats

I like Suburgatory. I don't watch it every week, and I've only actually seen a handful of full episodes (it's on about the time I'm getting Tabby ready for bed), but when convenient, I'll turn it on. So this past Wednesday I popped in and out of the living room to catch the show between getting Tabby a snack and in pajamas and teeth brushed.


I was in just in time to see the main character, Tessa, go visit her boyfriend to break up with him. He, apparently, didn't see it coming and had acquired a goat for her Tessa's father ("Do you know how hard it is to find a goat here?"). You see, he had spent some time doing humanitarian work in Africa and the goat-gift was a tribal courtship ritual among the people where he served. Tessa, wisely IMO, decided that at 16 she wasn't interested in courtship rituals and broke up with the dude anyway.

Tabby walked in just in time to see Scott offer Tessa the goat to give her father.

Tabby: "Ohhhhhh. How adorable. I want a goat!"

Me (laughing): "So if some boy offers me a goat for you, you'll kiss him?"

Tabby: "And the goat."

Tabitha's Teeth

That's our little monster. Let me tell you what a trooper she is.

See those teeth?  More specifically, those spots on her teeth?  That's some pretty advanced decay.  The top teeth were even worse.  We realized how badly she needed dental care while I was unemployed and we were on Wisconsin's Badger Care.  Which seems really cool.  We couldn't afford to get our child the health care she needed, so the state would pick it up for us.  Except that we couldn't find a dentist that would take patients on Badger Care.

Mostly her teeth didn't bother her.  Sometimes while eating she favored one side.  Mostly it seemed like something that could wait until I found a job and got insurance.  Which I did.  Then found out that most dentists wouldn't accept you as a patient if you had been on Badger Care in the last year.  Some would accept a quota of patients per month, though, so we got on a waiting list with a clinic that had filled its quota for that month and the next, but would eventually have openings.

Sometime around September her teeth really started hurting.  Like whimper herself to sleep at night they hurt so bad.  That was pretty distressing to have your sweet little girl in such pain, nothing you could do about it and the people who could do something about it telling you they wouldn't because you were too poor too recently to be worth their time.

Well, we were able to convince the clinic where we were on a waiting list that this seemed like an emergency to us, so they let us bring her in.  A dentist looked at Tabby's teeth and told us, "Sure enough, that looks pretty bad. You need to take her to a pediatric dentist."

Fortunately, the pain Tabby had been experiencing was just a flare up of some sort.  Within a couple of days she was back to just sometimes favoring one side when she chewed, wincing when we brushed, but mostly okay.  We got an appointment for nearly a month later with a pediatric dentist.  She got a list of work that needed doing, told us that because Tabby was only four, it would have to be done under sedation, in a hospital and there were no openings any time in the near future.  She'd let us know.

Back to mostly only occasional pain while we waited.  Mid December we were finally told that an appointment had been made for Tabby on January 13th to have the work done.  Only a month to go.  We began preparing Tabby right away for the day of her hospital stay.  No food that morning.  Just apple juice for breakfast, go play at a friends for a little bit then to the hospital.  By the time the day arrived, she knew exactly how the routine would go.

She went in at 11:00 am.  It was supposed to be pretty quick.  We didn't think I'd need to take any time off work.  Becky would probably be home with Tabby about the time the boys got back from school then I'd be home soon after that.  But I wanted to be home when they arrived, so I took the afternoon off anyway.

Turns out to be a good thing I did.  Tabby had some difficulty coming off the anesthetic. Every time they took her off oxygen some number they monitor dropped really low and she turned blue.  Didn't want to wake up.  Becky let me know what was up.  I went to the store got a bunch of soft foods for Tabby.  Applesauce, yogurt, popsicles, sherbet.  Got my poor little girl some flowers.  Took Sam to a friends house.  About 5ish, Becky said Tabby was still fine as long as she had oxygen, and she seemed to remember that someone in my family reacted similarly, could I call my Mom to find out what it was?  Could I order some pizza for the boys and come to the hospital so she could go get some food?

It was my Mom who reacted like Tabby.  Almost exactly the same, I guess.  I don't know if it helped them to know that at the hospital, but by the time I got there Tabby was off oxygen, but not quite awake.  It was nice to see she didn't need the mask, but still tough to have my little girl there with her mouth all swollen, an IV in her hand, hooked up to a monitor.  It wasn't too long ago that I had my root canal.  My mouth had been pretty sore, and here was my poor Tabby who just went through so much more work than I'd had done.

I talked to her a little bit, she woke up.  Maybe it was because they were taking her blood pressure and she felt the armband, or maybe it was just time.  I like to think she heard her Daddy there and woke up for me.  She rested a little more while Becky went to the cafeteria and got some hamburgers for herself and me.  Tabby got a whole tray full of soft foods to choose from, yogurt, mashed potatos, jello.  She took a couple bites of yogurt and potato, looked at my hamburger and said, "That looks really good."

"Would you like a bite of my hamburger, Tabby?"

"Yeah."

The first bite was voraciously huge.  The next couple, a little smaller, a little gentler.  She decided to try the chocolate pudding.  She ate a lot of chocolate pudding.

The doctors wanted to keep Tabby around a bit to make sure her oxygen level stayed steady.  No one argued.  Becky went home about 7ish.  At nearly 8:00 pm Tabby said, "I'm really tired.  I think it's bed time."  It had been a long day.  About an hour later they finally let us go.

Tabby was so glad to get home.  She loved her flowers.  That's about all she noticed.  We let her sleep with us.

The next morning I asked her which of all the soft foods she wanted.  Yogurt?  A boiled egg?  Some toast?  She looked at the Pizza Hut box in our fridge, "Some pizza would be good."  Turns out Tabby wasn't interested in a gentle recovery.  Her mouth was a little sore, but she was up and happy and glad to have it done with.

Sunday morning I asked how her mouth felt.  "Oh so very good," she sighed.  I almost started crying I was so happy.

Sunday morning we also got a visit from the tooth fairy who left Tabby some blueberries for the tooth the doctors took out.  Why blueberries?  Tabby got a book for Christmas.

I guess if blueberries are good enough for a bear, then that's what Tabby wanted too.  We tried telling her that kids usually got money from the tooth fairy, but Tabby insisted the tooth fairy would bring her blueberries.  I guess Tabby was right.

 

Christmas Pictures!

For some reason, Tabby decided that what she really wanted for Christmas was a shark.  Every time we saw Santa that's what she asked him for.  And guess what?  He listened!

Of course, she got plenty of other loot, too.

Tabby and Sam both got My Little Pony shirts.  I think Sam was even more excited about that than Tabby.

Honestly, Jackson and I were there Christmas morning, too.  As usual, though, the best pictures include Tabby and none of ours did.