Two strikes against breastfeeding

Some of you may not yet know about my botched attempt at eye surgery. In December, just after Erik got hired on at Adobe, I decided to look into getting Lasik done. I figure if I'm ever going to do it, I might as well get to enjoy a decade without glasses. So I did my research online and chose Scott Hyver Visioncare. He is the 49ers eye doctor and has several offices in the area. So I went to see him and got the sad news that I would only qualify for PRK, which is like Lasik, but instead of cutting a flap and molding your eye, they mold the top layer, which means you have to regrow the top layer. This takes several days - at least one very painful one. Because I have a thinner than average cornea, I risked having my prescription slip after a year or 18 months with Lasik. The only option if that happens is to wear rigid contact lenses. The reason I don't wear contacts much right now is because my eyes are so dry so this would be horrible for me and wasn't worth the risk. But I was definitely bummed that I wasn't a Lasik candidate. I went ahead and scheduled the surgery for Memorial Day weekend, thinking that would be far enough away to handle things with Henry better, and I arranged for my Mom to come out and help since I wouldn't be able to drive for a few days. I asked about breastfeeding and they told me that wasn't a problem. We put aside the $4,000 in the flex spending account and I was locked in. So the date finally arrived, my mom was out here and I psyched myself up (which was actually really hard) and Erik drove me to the office. I paid my money and had my eye tests and asked the eye doctor if they could prescribe a different medication for after since the one I had didn't look like I should breastfeed with it. She said she would go check with Dr. Hyver and when she came back, she said I would have to reschedule because they had just changed procedures during the surgery a couple weeks ago and several of the drops they used would not be conducive to breastfeeding and they couldn't change back right then, so that was that. They refunded my money and I went home and actually had a fun Memorial Day weekend with my parents in San Francisco. Strike One.

Our latest saga is that Henry has eight teeth and half of them have cavities. The tops are just a rotting away every time I breastfeed him apparently. I took him in because he has a very obvious cavity in the front of one of his top teeth and they told me there are cavities all behind the front top teeth. I am supposed to brush his teeth in the middle of the night or whenever I feed him, which is pretty impossible to do, since one of the reasons we are in this predicament in the first place is because he resists the toothbrush. According to the dentist, since he is under 3 years old, he is "precooperative," a term which Erik apparently finds hilarious and has now used at least a dozen times since he heard it. So they are going to have to sedate him and are recommending four caps on his top four teeth. It is very sad. I am not sure whether to fight to have the cavities filled or not because at his age the chances are they will have to be capped anyway before they fall out. Poor kid has Oliver's teeth, I guess (Oliver got 5 caps at age 3) but in our defense, Lael has yet to have a cavitiy. At any rate, that is Strike Two.

Sadly, the root canal I got last year is failing and I am pretty sure I am going to have to have work done on it again. Between paying for Henry's dental bills, which will be extensive, getting me new glasses (since mine are four years old and I can hardly wait another minute), and another root canal, I'm thinking maybe we'll just put $2,000 into braces for Oliver (since he has an overbite and they are recommending early orthodontic care) and that will pretty much take care of the $4,000. If we do that I'm not sure I'm up for getting my eyes done next year. It was a lot harder to psych myself up for than I thought it would be and I don't know if I want to go through it again and I would have to have help come out again. It's only June and what a year we've already had!

Summer update

So summer has finally begun. The end of the school year was a doozy. Last Thursday night I got myself voted Booster Club (PTA) president but I am essentially the queen of nothing unless I get it organized because we don't even have anybody to be treasurer. So that should be fun. On Friday I put on a movie matinee of Ratatouille, which the whole school was invited to and I was sweating bullets because I didn't know if we would have 40 kids or 400 and I had to arrange popcorn and do everything for it and I was afraid it would be just me and the principal with a bazillion kids, but it turned out OK. We had 60 kids and some parents stayed to help. I really have to get this school web site done so we can communicate! I learned to not give the kids too much water because the spills and potty breaks got crazy! Anyway, on Saturday we had Henry's 1st birthday party and the kids spent all day fighting like banshees so it was hard to get anything done. We just joined a swim club and had the party up at the pool. It was a cowboy pool party so we had a BBQ. But I wasn't as organized as I would have liked because of the aforementioned fighting and we forgot the meat, so Erik had to run home. Then I realized I had forgotten the Henry Trivia game that I had spent all morning on, but I didn't realize it until almost the end of the party. I spent another 20 minutes retrieving that from home and when I got back we were out of time, so we grabbed everything and headed to the parking lot where we served cupcakes and I posted the Henry Trivia game to the car. It was crazy but fun. Sunday was Father's Day so we went to Erik's parents. Monday we had a visit from a friend from Oregon, Mike Christenson. It was fun to see him and catch up, although my house was in quite a state by this time and I as mortified, but he was kind about it. This left me with one night to get Oliver's yearbook done that I had committed to do for his class because the next day was the last day of school, so it meant an all-nighter for me. I finally gave up wrestling with the printer and went to bed from 4:30 - 6:00 am and then got up to get them done and showed up at his classroom with one hour to spare and had the moms finish assembling them. It wasn't my finest work, but they got done. I actually felt OK that day and started getting the house back under control, but I paid the rest of the week and didn't feel good. I tried to nap this afternoon but just ended up getting mauled by Henry. We told Oliver and Lael we would pay them if they played with Henry while we took a nap but it didn't work. He kept coming in and bugging us and then he bit me and dropped a remote on my head so I am going to go to bed now instead of taking the time to make this blog grammatically perfect. Anyway, this week we're onto swim lessons, trips to the library, etc. My kids are both so manic. Within half an hour of getting up Thursday, Oliver declared "summer stinks!" because I informed him he could not turn on the TV until he had done a job, gotten dressed and eaten breakfast. But Friday afternoon after we went swimming, he declared this was "the second day of the best summer ever!" Anyway, here's hoping!

Which child will be the last straw poll

If you chose Oliver, this week you are correct! It started on Thursday when I got the call from Blacow Elementary saying he was out of lunch money and couldn't borrow any more this close to the end of the school year so I either had to bring money now or he would have to eat a cheese sandwich they would give him. This would have been fine with him - he hates that the principal makes them eat their veggies in the school lunch so he usually chooses to bring a sandwich, so I ran the money over.

That afternoon I took my parents to the airport. On Friday morning, he announced his final project, a report on snakes which he hadn't started, was due the day before. I recall seeing a paper about this about the time of my botched surgery (more on that in another blog) but there was so much going on I had forgotten about it. So we knew what we would be doing last weekend.

Sunday night we were at Erik's parents for dinner and he did his report. When we got home, we worked on the diorama that had to accompany the report and presentation. We painted on some trees but I didn't take the time to plastitak the plants and snakes in like we usually do. I got him up early Monday morning to finish the diorama so of course he was running late for school.

Around noon, I got a call from Blacow asking to come pick him up for personal reasons. (I dread getting calls from the school in the middle of the day.) As I was taking him home to get a change of pants, he says to me, "The stuff disappeared out of my diorama." I asked what he was talking about and he said it must have fallen out of the box when he ran into the school. There had been lots of recesses by this time and I thought the chances of him getting his stuff back were slim. The only option I could think of was to make an announcement over the PA system telling any kids who picked up plastic snakes or plants off the ground today to turn them into their teacher. But I said a prayer and took him back for the last hour of school and parked about where Erik usually drops him off. Sure enough, on the grass near a driveway outside the school was where everything dumped out. Then we had to get someone to let him into his classroom because he didn't want to get in trouble for having a handful of toys at recess. Anyway, the kid is going to do me in. Seriously. The only real question up for debate is whether Lael or Henry will beat him to it.

Sam Duzett sighting!

Our very talented and busy nephew Sam Duzett came to San Francisco on choir tour, so we popped up in San Francisco to see him. The choir was very good and I think our kids enjoyed the concert (thank goodness it wasn't too long for them!). I wish we could expose them to more cultural events like this. It was my first time in St. Anthony's church, and I really like going to old churches. It makes me wish we valued architecture more in the LDS church. I sure do miss the Berkeley Ward chapel. Anyway, afterward, we took him next door to Beard Papa's Cream Puffs. It's my new favorite place to visit when going to Yerba Buena Gardens. Then we raced back to Oliver's baseball game so it was a crazy day but worth going!