A Few Words About WiggleMonsters

Planning, and giving, a “friend” birthday party for Jenny this summer was rather stressful, and not really an experience I enjoyed.  But I have recently discovered that I don’t even enjoy it when Jenny attends a friend party someone else is hosting.

I hate having to convince Jenny she will enjoy a party at a gymnastics center even though she can’t “do gymnastics”.  (Come on, Jenny!  It say’s you’ll get to jump on a trampoline and play in a foam pit.  It’ll probably be a big trampoline.  I’ll bet you can jump really high!) 

I hate arguing with Jenny over what present we should buy for her friend, and what we are NOT going to buy for Jenny while we are out.  (No, Lauren does not need a mommy doll AND a stuffed animal, AND every game that you see.  And when I say No that we are not buying it for Lauren that does NOT mean that we are going to buy it for you.  This is not a trip to buy presents for YOU!)

I hate arguing with Jenny over who should wrap the present, and how it should be wrapped, and how much Jenny can color the card, and who is going to write the name on the card. (Please, Jenny, can I help you cut the paper?  It’s ripping.  No, Jenny, we don’t need quite that much tape.  Jenny, you do NOT need to burst into tears because I wanted you to write your friend’s name on the card — I was going to spell it for you!)

I hate having to fight with Jenny over what clothes she is going to wear to the party. (No, Jenny, you may NOT wear one orange Halloween sock and one magenta sock with hearts on it, to match peach-colored leggings and stripped shirt.  Yes, Jenny you HAVE to wear your coat!  It’s snowing!)

I hate having to try and figure out how much insulin to give when her blood sugar is high, but I know she’s going to be playing hard at the party, but I was planning to take the pump off (so no background insulin) while she’s playing….(What do you think, Eric?  She’s at 350, and ate 15 carbs for lunch.  The pump recommends 1.2, but she’s going to be playing in an hour.  No, I don’t know why she’s at 350 — I did set her pump to the weekend basal pattern this morning.  Yeah, she was 50 this morning before breakfast, so I did back off on the breakfast bolus.  I don’t know, how about giving her .3 for now?)

I hate having to rush home and back to the party to grab the gluten-free cupcake that Jenny insisted on carrying herself, and then left on the steps.  (Yes, Jenny, I’ll go get it.  No, you don’t have to cry.  Lauren’s mom, here’s her testing kit — if she thinks she’s going low, give her some sugar.  No, not cake, but just icing is fine.  Or one of these glucose tablets.  Here’s my cell number, I’ll be back as fast as I can — probably about 40 minutes.  Shoot, I forgot to take her pump off — I hope the tubing doesn’t catch on anything.  mutter, mutter, mutter)

Yes, Jenny and I both survived the party, and Jenny even had fun.  Jenny actually ate half her hot-dog and wasn’t the only girl being a picky eater.  We narrowly avoided a balloon crisis (the balloon at her spot at the table was green, but she wanted purple), and she wasn’t the girl who accidently popped her balloon and burst into tears.  (Moral of the story - don’t use a fork to play with your balloon.)

I probably need to lighten up, and Jenny probably needs to grow up a bit.  But I still don’t really like birthday parties.

It all started as we were planning our vacation.   The biggest concern wasn’t whether or not we all had the right swimwear, or how to set up someplace for James to sleep.  No, the biggest concern was, what was Eric going to do about his computer game while we were in the Dells? 

The solution resulted in us purchasing additional RAM for my laptop, and Eric doing a lot of grumbling about the speed (or lack thereof) in the resort’s wireless network.   At least it meant that Eric didn’t mind staying in the rooms while James napped and the rest of us stayed at the water park all afternoon.

Eric was really looking forward to using his computer again.  Once we were home, one of the first things he did was go and push the power button on his system.  And then he waited.  And waited.  And did a lot of internet surfing on his secondary system.  And finally ended up opening up my (desktop) computer to swap parts in and out to determine that yes, his motherboard had died after being powered off for a week.  So it’s off to UPS to ship the year-old motherboard to the manufacturer and ask for a repair. 

Now, the big dilemma is, does he wait for the repaired board to come back, or does he get a new board?  If he gets a new board, he can use the repaired board as a spare and eventually build up a better system for the kids.  But with a new board, he’d need a new video card as well, since his current card isn’t compatible with the new board he wants… Decisions, decisions…

Of course, it only took the memory of the previous night’s gaming session, played on my laptop, for him to decide to spend the money on a new board right away.   The laptop IS older, and it isn’t fair to your online friends, who count on your contribution to killing monsters every night, when your computer causes your character to be too slow.  So, the new motherboard and the new memory gets ordered.

The new parts arrived on Halloween, and in spite of the holiday, Eric manages to get everything installed.  Only to discover that the sound (or maybe just the driver for it) built in to the new motherboard didn’t play nice with the sound (or the driver) built in to the new video card.  So Eric has a nice fast computer that displays really pretty graphics, but no sound.  **sigh**

Luckily he had an old (stand-alone) sound card lying around that he was able to install in his system, so we didn’t have to spend more money.  But even if we get the original motherboard back soon, I think it’s going to be a while before we spend the money on more parts to build up another system.  

We haven’t had a real “away from home” vacation, that wasn’t just visiting family for a holiday, for quite a while.  I’m not even going to try and remember when our last one was — I think we’ve been since Jen was born, but I couldn’t tell you any closer than that.

Part of the problem is that with 2 kids, especially since one of them needs extra supplies (gluten-free food, plenty of blood glucose test strips, insulin, etc.), it’s really just easier to stay home.  But the other part of the problem is that we are just not very good at planning vacations.  In fact, I’m not sure we’ve ever planned our own vacation — we’ve visited the Mediterranean, Hawaii and the Gunflint Trail by insinuating ourselves into others’ vacation plans, but I don’t believe we’ve ever made our own plans. 

The record of non-planning continued this fall, but we have managed to add a trip to the Wisconsin Dells to our list of shared vacations.  Our friends Dave & Marie, who have 2 girls slightly older than our kids, invited us to share their return trip to Great Wolf Lodge in the Dells.  They’d had fun at the water park last year during MEA week (in their school district they lump together several teacher workdays/conferences into one full week) and thought that we would enjoy going with them.  We agreed, and unfortunately discovered later that in our school district, the kids only had Wed-Fri off.  But we took Jen out of school at noon on Monday and joined our friends in a shared “condo”.

Parts of the vacation were just like being at home….

But there were a few differences.  Like long hallways to run down …

water slides…     and the wave pool where Jenny spent most of her time.    

James wasn’t quite as enamoured of the water, but he and Jenny both enjoyed participating in the Halloween activities the resort had planned. 

At the beginning of the week, the kids practically had the place to themselves, as you can see by the number of children at story time in the lobby.  We were even personally escorted to all the Trick-or-Treat stations the first day.  But by the end of the week they were standing in line to get their treats, and Batman even ran out of glowy necklaces before they got to the front!

But also by the end of the week, we had some other activities to participate in.  Jenny and I joined Dave & Marie in some horseback riding (and a petting zoo), and later we all went on the resort’s horse-drawn carriage ride to a pumpkin patch.  Jenny had fun decorating her pumpkin, but it was a struggle to keep James distracted enough he wouldn’t get paint everywhere.

I think Jenny would have preferred to stay, but on Saturday we managed to pack everything pack into the van and hop on the highway.  It was fun to be away, but it’s also nice to be home.

Ever year in the Community Education flyer I see a notice for a tour of the fire station near our house.  I keep thinking I should sign us up, but I never do.  This year, however, Jenny told me that we were going to the party at the fire station — apparently the firemen (or whatever the politically correct term is these days) who came to Jenny’s class this last week made a point to mention the Open House.  So we went.

I think Jenny enjoyed it more than James — she went up and down that slide several times, and crawled all over the fire engines.  James didn’t like to be inside any of them, even in the driver’s seat, but he was willing to stand on the front bumper.

I finally remembered to bring my camera…

I thought our summer was fairly busy — I know I didn’t get done all the things that I wanted to get done.  But now that fall has arrived, there seem to be even more things to do.

Every evening I now need to:

• look through Jenny’s backpack to remove her completed papers, look through what the school sent us, and check for homework.  Sometimes this means I also need to sit down and fill out forms, or make Jenny sit down to do some homework.
• empty out her lunch box, wash thermos, tupperware, etc. and get it ready to be packed with the next days lunch.  This task has gotten much easier once we found a thermos that wouldn’t leak all over the lunch box.  It’s also easier now that Jenny has been remembering to not leave the lunchbox on the afternoon bus.
• Pack the next day’s lunch, writing out the carb counts.  For the most part we’ve settled into a pattern with lunches, but it means I have to make sure we don’t run out of yoghurt or nut bars.
• have Jenny pick out her clothes to wear the next day.  This is usually a quick process, but since it’s still warm weather, and she loves dresses, it means I have to make sure there are clean shorts to go under the dresses.  And she only has 3 pair of the simple cotton shorts that go under dresses.  And there are 5 school days in the week.  ‘Nuf said.

We have also, this fall, started attending a church small group.  We’ve thought about it ever since we started attending our current church 2 years ago, but we’ve had all kinds of excuses.  This fall we decided Jenny and James are old enough, we’ve found a group that provides on-site babysitting, and we decided to take the plunge.  So we are now committed every other Friday from 6:30 to past the kids’ bedtimes.  Oh, and there’s homework for that, too, for Eric and I.  We need to remember to get that done before Friday….

At least the weeknight kids program at church doesn’t start until Oct 22nd.  But once that starts our Wednesday’s will be committed. 

Then there’s the weekends.  It’s not like we’ve got a regular committment every weekend (although one of my co-workers thinks Jenny would enjoy joining her daughter for tennis lessons every Saturday), but somehow the weekends have been filling up.  If it’s not a family member’s birthday party, it’s a friend’s party, or apple picking. 

Even with all the busy-ness, I was feeling a bit guilty that Jenny wasn’t taking any dance lessons, or Brownies, or gymnastics or something.  Everyone I know with young girls has them in SOMETHING.  But all Jenny was interested in was ice skating.   So last Saturday, during the only Open Skate time that was offered during the week, Jenny and I went to the ice rink.  We almost didn’t make it — it’d been a busy day (apple picking) and Jenny wasn’t sure she wanted to go any more.  But we went, and Jenny had a blast.  She fell down a lot, but was able to get back up all by herself, and now she can’t wait to go again.  I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that we missed the start of beginner lessons, and they won’t be offered again until January. 

Luckily, we still do seem to have time to do spur-of-the-moment things.  I’d hate to be so busy that we couldn’t decide it was a beutiful day to walk to a neighborhood restaurant for dinner (like we did earlier this week) because we didn’t have time.  Of course, that wouldn’t have worked today, since Jenny and I had a dentist appointment.  And Thursday’s we usually go to the Y.  And Jenny’s got an endo appointment in a couple weeks….

But we’re not completely booked solid, so one of these days I’ll manage to go through the pictures again and post some.  Which reminds me, I need to go look at those school pictures packages and figure out what to order…. 

Well, now that we have joined the ranks of families with school-age children, we have apparently joined the ranks of those selling cookie dough, wrapping paper and other assorted items.  

Every day Jenny brings home a binder with projects completed in class (lots of them, and we’re already out of room on the bulletin board), assignments to be completed at home (so far not too onerous, but it’s still hard to find time to make her do them), and (causing the most consternation) papers from the school. 

So far we’ve ignored the invitation to join the PTA (I don’t mind giving them some money, but there’s no way I have time to go to all the meetings), thrown out the flyers for most of the afterschool activies, and been relieved when Jenny was not interested in joining Girl Scouts.  But I probably ought to at least make an attempt to participate in the school’s fundraiser.

To quote from the packet that came home today: “We are conducting our fall fundraiser and we need your support!  The money raised from this fundraiser will be used for TPA sponsored activites and events.  We are excited to be using The Chip Shoppe for our find-raising partner.  They are a LOCAL Midwest company.  We think you will like the selection, value, and taste of their product.”

I’m not sure if they talked about it at school with Jenny, but so far she hasn’t been pushing to sell anything, so please do NOT feel that you need to buy anything for Jenny’s sake.  Yes, they get prizes depending on how much they sell, but Jenny does NOT need them.  If you DO want to peruse the items for sale, I will be bringing the catalog to work, or you can look online at www.thechipshoppe.com .

Oh, and as far as school goes, Jenny has been enjoying herself.  It’s hard to get details from her about what they do at school, but we know they do something besides eat and rest (which is all she really talks about), since she brings home the projects.  Jenny now walks home from the bus stop after school all by herself, and talks a lot about the new friends that she’s been making.  She is also trying to plan a school party, where all of her friends from school will come over (she’s in a class of 25 kids), but she is encountering some parental resistance to that idea….

Well, today is the day after Labor Day, and Jenny is 5 years old, so that means she’s off to kindergarten.  This last month has been a bit of a scramble to get information from the school, start talking to Jenny about school (to get her mentally prepared for it), get all her supplies, figure out her diabetes management plan, and basically get ready.  But this morning, we all walked together to the end of the block, she happily climbed on the bus all by herself, and was off..

I knew our school district didn’t like to send out any information prematurely, based on past experience.  But we didn’t learn who Jenny’s teacher was going to be, or where the bus would pick her up, until Aug 22nd.  And Kindergarten orientation wasn’t until Aug 27th.  Luckily, we hadn’t turned in Jenny’s immunization papers last fall, so we received a letter from the nurse earlier in August, mentioning that she would be in school starting Aug 26th.  And I’d been haunting the school district web site, so I saw the supply lists listed there earlier in the month, as well.  It’s probably just as well that we’ve gone to the school (bringing Jenny) 3 or 4 times in the last 2 weeks, trying to get everything set up with the nurse, and all of Jenny’s supplies to her locker.

It’s not only parents that are a bit frustrated with the timeliness of information from the school.  At orientation we were asking about the class schedule — when’s lunch, gym class, snack, etc. — so we could plan when Jenny should see the nurse for testing blood sugar and getting her insulin — and the teacher said she still didn’t have it.  The next day she emailed us (yes, we seem to have gotten a great teacher!) that she’d gotten the schedule, but at one point it had her in 2 places at the same time, so it needed a little work.   But 5 emails to the teacher and nurse later, I think  we are all set. 

I certainly hope we’re all set.  Probably the hardest part has been playing it excited and happy for Jen, and trying not to stress….I hope she has a good day!

Jenny turned 5 this year, and somehow we ended up having 3 separate celebrations of the event.

Party #1 was the family party, luckily combined with the family party for Jen’s younger cousin (whose birthday is 3 days away from Jen’s).  This took place in neutral territory, so no housecleaning or decorating was required.  This was a good thing.   The nice weather and playground equipment were also a good thing.  I think everyone enjoyed themselves.

The next event, a few days later, wasn’t really a birthday party.  But it did take place on Jen’s actual birthday, and any time Jen & James get to see their cousins and grandparents, it must be a celebration, right?

The day was a little warm, but we got there early enough to see the new Grizzly Bear exhibit before heading indoors. 

Party #3 was Jenny’s first ever friend birthday party. 

We limited her to 4 friends, but they all came and seemed to have fun.  I’m not sure that I had fun — my mom came to help, but somehow those girls raced through all the projects that I’d had for them,  

and opening presents was much faster than I recall it taking when I was little.   

Even adding in the Wii Fit and the sandbox didn’t really fill in the whole time.     

But everyone survived…. 

Well, not all the time, but now that James is getting older, he and Jenny are actually able to play together.  And, especially if you don’t count the yells of protest every 5 minutes from one or the other of them, they play together fairly nicely.

For games involving piling up blankets and pillows, Jen is usually the instigator, but James has caught on quickly. 

For games involving the computer, it’s usually more of a competition over who gets to to use the mouse.  Jenny used to have to get everything set up for James (get him to pbskids.org, set up the game, etc.) but he can pretty much do everything himself these days.

Luckily James is usually happy to just watch (as long as he has a remote in his hand) when Jenny plays on the Wii.   Sometimes Jen will let him participate in Wii Fit’s 2 person run.  Somehow Jenny always gets to the finish line first, though.

Or he goes off to draw on one of the various doodle pads scattered throughout the house.