The Continuing Adventures of SuperPreemie

Holidays Part 2 with bonus WORDS!

Sarah — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:07:18 +0000

From New York we took Amtrak to Delaware where we met up with M’s family. We all stayed at Josh & Jacy’s for one night and then early the next morning piled into cars to go to the airport to fly to Nashville. We were staying a couple of nights at the Gaylord Opryland hotel, where they were doing Dreamworks-themed holiday festivities. This included a Puss In Boots scavenger hunt, getting to meet a bunch of different characters, front-row seats to the “Holiday Shrektacular”, and a character breakfast with Shrek, Fiona, and Puss. Shoshanna, needless to say, was in her element. We had even primed her for this by re-watching Shrek and Madagascar in the weeks leading up to the trip.

So Shoshanna met Shrek, and the girls met Alex the King of New York, and Puss in Boots.

But all of that paled in comparison to what might have been the single greatest moment of Shoshanna’s life. The moment when …

… she got to meet King Julien.

She simply couldn’t keep her hands off of him. She tried to sit in his lap when he knelt down to And she squealed SO LOUD for SO LONG.

Filed under: Adventures Tagged: kid, travel, trex

Holidays Part 1 In Pictures

Sarah — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:11:47 +0000

Goodness knows when I’m going to get time to post actual text about the holidays, so I’ll give you pictures.

Pirates Like Latkes

Someone felt cooped up in Aunt Martha's apartment and needed to jump off the steps a couple dozen times

We braved Rockefeller Center on Christmas Afternoon

Dylan took Shoshanna shopping at FAO Schwartz (we had to stand in line to even get in the store)

And we had an playground playdate with Eliza Grace in Central Park

Filed under: Uncategorized

Coming up on seven-and-one-quarter…

Sarah — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:35:35 +0000

Being in second grade, Shoshanna will tell you, is HARD. You are expected to sit in your chair and listen to the teacher. You are not allowed to do whatever you want, whenever you want, EVEN if what you want to do is sit in the corner and read a book. On top of that, your teacher asks you to keep your desk tidy and not to leave piles of crayon-paper-peelings on the floor.

And so she vacillates between adoring Mrs. R (“I love Mrs. R. She’s tough but she’s very nice.”) and really disliking her (“Mrs. R is SO MEAN! She made me pick up the crayon papers and tidy my desk!) On top of that, she has taken to howling as if we were torturing her whenever she’s asked to do something she doesn’t want to do, sometimes with bonus flinging-oneself-on-the-floor.

We remind her every time to take deep breaths to calm herself down, and that we don’t really understand what’s wrong if all she does is scream incoherently at us. Sometimes it even works.

Filed under: Daily Life, The Elementary School Adventures

Third One Down

Sarah — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:35:20 +0000

This afternoon after we saw The Nutcracker with friends, she had worked her tooth loose enough that it was “driving her crazy”. So I summarily yanked it out of her head.

It had been a long time since I’d pulled a tooth.

Filed under: The Elementary School Adventures

Sunday Afternoon

Sarah — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:39:03 +0000

Filed under: Family&Friends, The Multimedia Experience

World Prematurity Day!

Sarah — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:44:13 +0000

November is Prematurity Awareness Month and today is World Prematurity Day! Not that those of you who are reading this probably aren’t on some level aware of prematurity. And I think there are even days that pass when I am on some level unaware of prematurity. But even now, 2579 days after Shoshanna’s birth, prematurity is a part of our daily life. Really, there’s not that much more to add from what I wrote for a Prematurity Awareness Month blogging event two years ago. Shoshanna still wears SureSteps, though Mr. Don thinks that this pair, her third, will probably be her last. She still gets PT twice a week at school; we got a progress report yesterday and she’s progressing satisfactorily towards her goal of being able to hopscotch on her left foot. She does well on stairs but needs to be reminded to pay attention to what she’s doing – my rueful rejoinder to that was, “If that’s the goal, Shoshanna will be getting PT FOREVER!” We managed to get rid of the reflux meds for a while but she’s been back on them since August. Since two years ago we’ve also gained an asthma diagnosis – at the time of that post we were at the beginning of a six-month-long low-level respiratory crud. We’ve since established that her only asthma trigger is illness – which is actually good, because what it really means is that the cause is crappy preemie lungs, which makes it more likely that she’ll grow out of it.

This morning NPR ran a story entitled Why Brain Injuries are More Common in Preemies, talking about white matter injury in premature infants. Could Shoshanna have white matter injury? We actually don’t know; we haven’t felt it necessary to get imaging on her brain. But what are some of the effects of white matter injury? Gross motor and attentional issues.

So yes. We are aware of prematurity. How could we not be? Fortunately for us, our awareness of prematurity ends like this.

But just in case you needed a reminder of where our awareness of prematurity started, it looked like this.

Filed under: March of Dimes, prematurity, The Multimedia Experience, Things Medical

Dear Universe,

Sarah — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:13:13 +0000

Thank you for giving me a child who ASKED to work on her book report, voluntarily giving up some of her bedtime reading time.

I lifted that straight from my Facebook status this evening. And it’s ALL TRUE. Shoshanna got a book report assignment today, due Friday. After dinner she sat down and read the book she’d picked (Mrs. Dole is Out of Control) which I think she’d read once already since she checked it out from the library on Saturday and then she wanted to go upstairs and do the written portion of the assignment (they have a worksheet to fill out and then they are supposed to make a puppet of their favorite character). We pointed out to her that it was already 7 o’clock and so if she did that she would miss out on some of her reading time later. She was fine with that, and was even willing to accept corrections to her spelling and grammar without screaming at me.

Filed under: The Elementary School Adventures

Grammy yelled at me…

Sarah — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:54:58 +0000

… because I hadn’t posted anything about Halloween. Here is Mister Teeth, designed by Shoshanna. He was the easiest-scooping and easiest-carving pumpkin that I have ever encountered. And he had lots of seeds, which made pretty much all of us very happy.

So anyway. Halloween festivities. Costumes at ballet on the 24th… last year’s Cindy Lou Who costume. Costumes at tap on the 29th. A Scary Witch.

Yes, it’s Evil Auntie Eilis work again. And it’s SPECTACULAR. What you can’t see in that shot is the GIANT SPARKLY GREEN SPIDER that adorns the hat.

On Monday night, we went out trick or treating with Jordan, Ben, and Grace in J&B’s neighborhood, which has many more kids than ours does. And we were home and Shoshanna was in bed by 8:15. Halloween win.

Filed under: The Elementary School Adventures, The Multimedia Experience Tagged: costume, halloween

Not as persuasive as I think she planned to be…

Sarah — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:53:55 +0000

Shoshanna was having a little fit this evening when I asked her to put away the giant pile of books that was accumulating around her. During her tantrum, she told me the following:

YOU’RE THE MEANEST MOM EVER!
(normal tone) Even if you do cook me dinner.
(sotto voce) And you’re a great cook.

Of course, two seconds later she bellowed “I HATE YOU!” and landed in time out.

Filed under: The Elementary School Adventures

We must remember these afternoons/evenings…

Sarah — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:03:09 +0000

… and store them up against the ones that involve nothing but fights over homework, screaming about household responsibilities, and general bad attitudes.

I picked Shoshanna up at her afterschool program around 3:30 and we headed to ballet. She changed into her Cindy Lou Who costume (it was Halloween Dress Up Day) without any fuss and was pretty well-behaved during class. Her friend was dressed as Dorothy and her hair ribbons were a little distracting to Shoshanna but I didn’t hear any of the patented “Shoshanna objects to this” noise coming from the studio.

On the way home she munched on her apple that Miss Candace (the studio owner) had given all the kids. Once home, she and Matthew went upstairs to her desk to work on her Puerto Rico project while I checked her homework and started dinner. The homework was not only perfect, but showed no evidence of having been rushed through (a rare occurrence). She had one tantrum during the process of copying down her last recipe (the project was to write out and decorate a Puerto Rican recipe – she decided it would be fun to do an entire meal and make a poster of it) but that was it.

When dinner was ready she came downstairs and set the table with only one reminder. She ate her whole dinner without once asking “Do I have to eat all of this to get dessert?” After dessert she wanted to go back upstairs and keep working on her poster, so we did that, with no tantrums even when I made suggestions about how to do things.

When it was time to get ready for bed, she did that cheerfully too. And in just a second I’m going to go turn off her light. And remember this evening because tomorrow might be the polar opposite.

Filed under: The Elementary School Adventures