Month: July 2011

Sometimes I think my life is just one long conversation about poo. Jeremy actually had to establish a rule – no talk about poop at the dinner table (this includes any talk about farts as well). In this house, this is actually a difficult rule to follow. Anyways, Edda is having poo problems. Mainly getting the poo out. Poor girl, makes her not comfy. Jeremy thinks it triggers seizures. We will now track both poo and seizures on the calendar. Other people track birthdays, swim meets and dr appts – we have all those plus a few extra!

Summer in the pool!

As the kiddos are going to a Jewish summer camp – they’ve been learning about Shabbat. So we decided to celebrate with the traditional Friday evening meal – we got the candles, the grape juice and the challah bread and said all the prayers which we printed out from the internets. I know, I know that it’s not the kosher grape juice, but I tried looking for it and I couldn’t find it. I hope that with along with all my other transgressions, this one will be forgiven.

I got some hand-me-down wooden benches with iron sides which were in pretty bad shape. I tore all the wood slats off and then spent an afternoon sawing through the rusted bolts that held the slats to the iron frame. Then I got my hands on some spray paint (which is really lovely stuff) and then went to town on refurbishing the iron sides.

Jeremy took me to a local lumber yard to get some cedar slats and they are sitting in the garage waiting for another block of free time to put it all together. Hopefully, it will be done before I turn 40.

Jeremy is on a local traffic commission and got quoted in this week’s Gazette about pedestrian safety along the Rockville Pike.

I’m growing tomato plants. Yesterday, I found this monstrosity in the midst of the tomato leaves.

I huge green caterpillar with white maggots hanging off it’s back. I screamed and fell backwards a little bit.

Apparently, it is the infamous tomato hornworm with parasitic wasp cocoons attached to it’s back. The wasp larvae will suck the innards out of the the hornworm and save my tomato plants. Thank goodness, because I don’t want to touch that thing.

On Thursday – I was so excited becuase I had a $3 coupon off for children’s Motrin at CVS. So I bought my 240 mL bottle of berry flavored ibuprofen and left the new box in the CVS bag on my bed on Thursday afternoon. At 8 pm that evening, we discovered the Maxi had eaten through the box, through the tamper resistant/childproof cap and indulged herself with almost 5 grams of pain reliever. So off she went to the emergency vet for 2 days of detox and rehab. She is fine. So I really didn’t save that much money on the bottle of Motrin. That dog cannot be left alone. Anyways, that it why I did not go to the beach/memorial service this weekend because Maxi needed to be picked up late Sat night.

Here she is with the cone of shame so she doesn’t mess with the IV port.

This weekend, Jeremy, Vince and Edda headed to NJ to attend Marty’s memorial service. He passed away a few weeks ago at 95. Marty is Jeremy’s paternal grandmother’s (Sylvia) sister’s husband – so Jeremy is actually not a blood relation to Marty, but we usually see him every year at the Martin Thanksgiving until two years ago when he was too frail to travel. Everyone flew/drove into a NJ beach town and the kids played on the beach. The service was more of a reminiscence, looking at old photos and telling stories.

For various reasons, I stayed home and I was a little worried about sending Jeremy with both Vince and Edda alone to the beach, but I shouldn’t have worried – Jeremy said that everyone helped out, carried Edda’s wheelchair and took naps with her, looked after both Vince (at the beach) and Edda (in the air conditioning) and Jeremy managed to have a lovely (and emotional) time.

I have some beach photos from Jeremy!

Our biggest expense due to Edda’s disability is her childcare. I don’t think about it too much because for the most part, it is what it is – although sometimes I sigh thinking about how low our childcare costs could be if Edda was a typical 7-year-old. We are so lucky to have great people to look after Edda and enjoy spending time with her. Here’s Edda with Denise sharing a moment together: