Easter 2008

I had to be out of town all last week on business, which meant that Andrea had to throw Easter together almost entirely on her own this year -- which she did with great success. We had eight for dinner, including the champion Easter Egg hunter herself, at least when she deigned to speak to her public.

This year was all the more rushed, since after I got back late on Saturday, Andrea and I wound up spending the afternoon at BAM to catch Macbeth (first really good production of that play I've ever seen, but this blog isn't about my theatrical tastes, at least not usually). Which meant that Fiona got to see me for the first time in a week on Saturday morning (great excitement), then had to make do with a babysitter in the afternoon (Fiona broke her in quickly), and then saw me for another hour or so before bed on Saturday night (crazy excitement--I think she actually bounced off a wall at one point).

I spent most of the day on Saturday laughing at being returned to the insanity of life with a child. As busy as I was while traveling for work, I don't remember anybody thinking that a fun thing to do would be for each of us to take the opposite ends of a bedtime sleeper, tie those ends around our necks, and then put a stuffed animal in the middle and try to bounce it up and down just by using our shoulders. Some things people just stop even considering once they turn... six? Eight? When do you stop having those ideas for fun that are so odd they would never even occur to an adult?

Anyway, by the time Easter morning itself rolled around, Fiona was exhausted and ready to relax with a spot of tea with her Aunt Carmen (at right).

OK, perhaps not so much. What with all the excitement of having family over and enjoying her presents from the Easter Bunny (including the DVD of Enchanted, a movie that's eerie in the precision with which it's targeted at four-year old girls, and which Fiona saw in the theater when it was released), Fiona barely stopped on Sunday either.

Which made Monday an extreme day to crash. At one point in the early evening Monday I was sitting on the couch with Fiona when I realized I'd been asleep for the past 15 minutes; when I looked over, Fiona was asleep as well.

I've thrown a new album together of photos from March 2008, which you can find by clicking on the link at the top of the bar to the right. More stuff there like this photo of the family band Fiona threw together right before Easter dinner.

Mysteries of the Universe

My child has three clocks in her room, but they're all analog and of interest primarily because they have pictures of princesses or Pooh bear. She can't tell time yet.

Even if she could tell time on an analog clock, the clocks don't light up in the dark.

Even if we had a digital clock in her room, she still doesn't understand what time means, and while she can read numbers she's apt to be a little dyslexic in the translation. That is, if she sees the number 23, sometimes she says it's twenty-three and sometimes she says it's thirty-two. She hasn't figured out yet about how to read base 10 numbers left to right in other words.

By rights, Fiona shouldn't have any idea what specific time it is at any given point in the day or night.

So how is it she's managed to climb into our bed at exactly 5:24 am on three successive mornings?

State of the Writing Skills

We've boasted about her writing skills before; here's an example of how legible Fiona's writing is. She can write her name and Mommy's without any help. She also likes to write her friend Kayla's name on everything (we have lots of "Fiona heart Kayla" papers floating around the apartment) and is excited because Kayla has 5 letters in her name just like Fiona.

I think she knows how to spell Daddy without help, too, but since I don't have that all-important second X chromosome it's just not as interesting to write my name.

And I must say, that's a pretty solid heart drawing for a four-year old. Hearts and butterflies are big recurring motifs in Fiona's work.

Peace of Mind

After various problems last month, including a relapse, we setup an appointment to go see a pediatric pulmonary specialist. We'd gone to see Dr. Koumbourlis back when Fiona was 18 months old and had her first flareups. When we got through with that appointment we wanted to hug him just for giving us permission to let Fiona cough at night without having to rush in and get her every time.

And that wasn't even the best part. I like our pediatricians fine, but they occasionally have a habit of assuming everybody in our neighborhood has an extended family living within a two house walk. If Fiona has a cold, they're apt to tell us we have to keep her home for a week (or longer!), which just isn't practical to do every time your child has even a passing cold, at least if you want to keep a job and earn money to keep your child healthy. When Dr. Koumbourlis looked at Fiona in June 2005, the first thing he told us was that we shouldn't be keeping her home from day care, and that in fact it was better to put her in day care so she could get exposed to all the kid germs she was going to have to get exposed to sooner or later anyway.

It was at that point he revealed himself as the greatest doctor in the history of the universe.

Anyway, we hadn't seen him in nearly three years, since Fiona had been basically fine since that visit; we'd followed his treatment plan for 18 months, and then after consultation with our pediatrician after Fiona turned three we moved to a less drug-dependent plan for responding to her nighttime coughs. That plan worked well for about a year, until she hit January 2008 and got a cold she couldn't shake, culminating in her February problems.

So it was back to Dr. Koumbourlis. Fiona got a breathing test, the doctor listened to her, and then explained to us in very forthright terms what was probably going on with her (nasal congestion drips down into the chest, which we'd figured), what the most practical way to respond was (i.e. according to textbook medicine she's supposed to stay on the management meds for 4 weeks after symptoms subside, but in the real world it's hard to remember to take medicine for more than a week or so when you're not showing any symptoms, and that's going to be fine most of the time), and why Flovent is fine for her at her age and symptoms despite what scare stories you might have heard (i.e. severely ill children who take a much higher dosage every day for years wind up 1/2 inch shorter than counterparts who don't take Flovent).

He wrote up our treatment plan and sent us on our way. I understand why our pediatricians usually try to come up with treatment that doesn't depend on medicine; nobody wants to wind up needing prescription drugs every time a sniffle starts, and they're generalists who can't be expected to have the same level of expertise in dealing with asthma-like symptoms in a four-year old (none of us think she has "real" asthma). But as I told Andrea as we left the pulmonary center: just for making me feel better about the way we're raising our daughter and recognizing that we all need a plan that's going to keep the household sane, I'm not too proud to say that I have a man crush on Dr. Koumbourlis.

OK, maybe that's a little much, just in case he's self-Googling and finds this post. But we're definitely grateful.

New Photos

I don't maintain a photo website any more, despite what the blogroll to your right might imply, but we do still take photos. Here are some recent albums which I'll add to the blogroll as well:

Holidays 2007 (Thanksgiving in the Berkshires & Christmas at home)	Tampa Trip (New Years)
4th Birthday (and the various celebrations therein)	January-February 2008 (i.e. what Fiona's been up to lately)