http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=1755139666841541603 about a dream: January 2009

Saturday, January 31, 2009

the most adorable video ever

it's too big to host here on blogger, so here's a link to it on you tube. note how cute it is when maggie wiggles her feet with happiness.

THE LOLLIPOP (click on that)

Friday, January 30, 2009

a very short video



nina: jack, where are you?
jack: i'm right here!!
nina: super why, where are you?
jack: i'm right here!!

...


this is a VERY short video because i ran out of space on the camera. it's important, though, because it shows you how nina torments her little boyfriends. it's like this constantly with her and them. this went on for quite a few minutes tonight. you'll also note that both children are wearing superhero capes. because, they're 3. i think nina was princess presto and jack was super why. (whenever she's in a cape, nina is princess presto. if there's no cape, just princess pea. i keep getting corrected...)

costco has funny milk cartons

i guess the funny shape makes for more space efficiency. i'm all for that, from an environmental perspective.



it does feel like i'm buying milk in a foreign country still, though.



and they're very difficult to pour milk from. it took like, 6 or 8 gallons before nick and i could pour milk from a full gallon with spilling. the first time, we both poured milk all over the counter. oh costco, why must you spring these changes on us?!

Thursday, January 29, 2009

maggie went peepee on the potty!!

i started potty-training nina by putting her on the potty after naps (at mom's suggestion, thanks mom!). i figured i'll do the same thing with maggie, so i've tried a few times over the last couple of weeks. this morning, after a short nap, maggie peed on the potty! yay maggie! my plan is to pretty much do exactly what i did with nina: 1)put her on when i think she might have to go to let her learn to associate the feeling of sitting on the potty with going potty 2) then something magic happens and she does the rest herself. we'll see if it works twice!!

nina saw the cardiologist

and all is well! just an ordinary, innocent murmur. she was such a big girl for the doctor! first, a nurse did an EKG. she put little electrode stickers on nina's chest, wrists, and ankles. then she attached the wires, recorded a few seconds of her heart, and that was it. next, 2 medical students and the cardiologist listened to her heart. they heard a bit of a funny sound on the mitral valve, so she did the echocardiogram (sonogram of her heart). she wasn't nervous because she had seen me get a bunch of sonograms with maggie. she called them jelly belly. we told the echocardiogram woman that nina had seen this before when maggie was in my belly, so before she did the echocardiogram, she checked nina's belly to see if there was a baby. there wasn't, just breakfast! it was cute.

the mitral valve works just fine, so that's that. no follow-up or anything necessary.

maggie's up! more later!

Monday, January 26, 2009

maggie is THIS CLOSE to crawling

but she refuses to. she can do one or two little crawls towards something, and was really getting into it last week, but now all she wants to do is walk. she's constantly standing while she plays, and can even stand up without holding on to things (just rests her little belly a bit against whatever she's leaning on), and can even stand by herself for a few seconds. wow! she also is big into making us hold her hands and walk with her wherever she wants to go. and i thought we were going to escape that this time around... ah well, she's happy.

she really is SOO good natured. the other day i was pushing her in the stroller, going to pick up nina from preschool. when we got to the hallway outside of the classroom door, i noticed one of the moms looking at her with a smile. i looked down at maggie, and her hat was over her eyes. but she wasn't complaining, just smiling broadly, happy as a clam. i took her hat off and she was cooing and smiling. the other mom couldn't believe it and asked if she was always this happy. i felt bad about the hat over her eyes (who knows how long it had been there), but it was too cute. she's so easy-going!

except poor kid still has a cough, it really comes out after she falls asleep. she was coughing from about 4:30 to 5:30 am yesterday morning and only stopped when i propped pillows around me and held her for the rest of the night. i mean, morning... but it was ok, i slept just fine like that. i am sleep gifted. gifted! she also started coughing after she fell asleep tonight and then threw up. :-( little bits of carrot and everything... poor mags.

that's all i can think of! g'night!

Sunday, January 25, 2009

saw the family today...

everyone is fine and dandy (everyone is grandma and grandpa scorcia, henry, marilyn, yvonne and renee and charlie, maria, robert and daniel). they all loved seeing how big maggie has gotten; she was all smiles for everyone, and they all talked about what a wonderful disposition she has. both girls loved watching maria and charlie's fish tank. good thing mom and dad have one, so we don't have to get one!

all of a sudden maggie wants to just walk--NOT CRAWL! if she's not standing up, preferably with a toy in one hand, she's just not happy. nick says she's a multi-tasker. play, stand, walk, talk, all at once! oh, and eat too of course. it's impossible to eat in front of her... we can only serve food that she can eat too, otherwise she'll scream. mashed potatoes or scrambled eggs, anyone? heheh.

craig was here on saturday. he arrived friday night after the girls had gone to bed, and nina was a little wary of him for the first few minutes on saturday morning. then she warmed up. he left us to go visit some other friends at 2, and after nick and nina dropped him off, nina said she wanted him to stay because she was used to him. awww.

oh, and maggie started saying a new word about a week ago. try to guess. here's a hint, she hears it like, 10 times a day from big sister. give up? it's "MINE!!"

the poor little dear is asleep but coughing right now. keep your fingers crossed that the coughing subsides by midnight...

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

dinner conversation

we have been trying to keep nina's dinner-time whining in check ("i want to watch super why, riding hood* said it's on!" "i'm done!" "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA") with some good, old fashioned dinner conversation. this evening, we were talking about our days (big mystery to eachother our days are... seeing as we all spend about 10 minutes apart. but whatever, it's the idea).

so nick said "wyatt*, how was your day?" and i said, "not bad. i made some important phone calls" (i keep telling nina that school is her job, and cooking, cleaning, and making phone calls is my job, and that while she does her job, i'm doing mine. i save all of the insurance company or what have you calling for when she's at school).

then i said, "papa**, how was your day?" and he said "not bad. nina, how was your day?" and she said "good." and then nick said, "maggie, how was your day?" and she said, "not bad."

it was amazing! i SO wish we had that on video of course, but we don't. she made a very deliberate effort to get the words just right--she said it kind of slowly, not fluently at all. nick and i were like, oh my god!! nina thought it was great too. we tried to get her to say it again but she ignored us and was laughing with nina. amazing!!!!!


________________________________________________________
* see post below
** i am allowed to call him papa without being rebuked

nina is obsessed with the cartoon "super why"

it's new on PBS. there are 4 characters: wyatt, princess pea, pig, and red riding hood. when there's a problem, they morph into super why, princess pea (i don't know why she doesn't get a superhero name), alpha pig, and wonder red. anyway, nina LOVES it. she watches it every day at 9 am and 4:30 pm, even though there are only like, 5 different episodes that they keep showing over and over again.

for about a week, she has insisted that we call her princess pea. she won't answer to nina and keeps correcting us if we use her real name. i'm wyatt, nick is riding hood, and maggie is p is for pig (don't dare abbreviate to just pig! and i can't call her princess or pea either. only princess pea).

last night, she woke up from her sleep at around 10:30, and called out for me in a sleepy, not quite awake voice, "wyatt!"

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

houston we have a tooth!!!!!

this deserves its own post. maggie has a little tooth poking through her lower right gum. yay maggie!!!

now, when she drinks from a cup, it goes "clink clink clink." cute!!!!

nina's thursday doctor's visit

nina saw dr. russo on thursday as a follow-up for her reflux and for her 3 1/2 year well child check. she's super healthy, of course. she's such a good patient for dr. russo--sitting quietly while she listened to her heart (for a looooong time. the murmur is back, more on that in a minute). i am tired from being up until 1 am last night (nina had an earache), so this will be fairly disjointed. here are the major points:

* reflux medication is doing a good job! nina does not choke any more when she drinks liquids. i have to admit that i was pretty skeptical that it was reflux, but whaddaya know! she has still choked and gagged and then thrown up at night because she was sick this weekend, and that WHOOP WHOOP breathing while she is choking was still there. but still, no day in and day out choking is quite the victory. yay for ranitidine!

* heart murmur was back. dr. russo listened to her heart for a long time, so i figured she heard it. she was puzzled that dr. ho hadn't last month, so she called her in to make sure she wasn't the only one who heard it. dr. ho listened, and heard it, so we're back to seeing the cardiologist. basically, it's more than likely an innocent childhood murmur, but since it's louder than most childhood murmurs, it should be checked out. even though they're 99% sure it's just loud because it's loud. still, since we're never going to have health coverage like this again, i'll get it checked out. no copay even!

* i told dr. russo that the PT said maggie has "low tone," and dr. russo was like, what??! no way. she said the PT might have meant low tone in just one area, like her neck or something, but that she definitely doesn't have low tone overall. so that solves that.

that's it from the visit. both kids were asleep by 7 tonight, so hopefully after the biggest loser nick and i can catch up on some of the sleep we lost last night.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

embarrassing or not, it all goes in the blog

erik has warned nick again and again to clean up his language in front of the kids. too little too late perhaps... (hey, she who writes the entries gets to cast blame where she sees fit). here's what happened.

the scene: all 4 of us on our bed, watching seinfeld. nina has a bowl with pears and blueberries. maggie grabs for the bowl and a few blueberries spill.

nina: oh, shit. some blueberries got on my pajamas. shit.
nick: nina, that word is a swear word. it's not nice to say.
me: that's right. i know we say it sometimes, but we shouldn't. it's a bad word.

oops! it's my fault too, i can't just blame nick. i said it twice on thursday: once when i was pouring rice into the boiling water and a coupon in the bag fell in the water with it (since when are there coupons in the bags of rice), and i quickly pulled it out but scalded my fingers a bit, and once when i accidentially dropped the phone into the bathtub while i was filling it for the girls.

it's a few weeks into january, but nick and i have now settled on a new year's resolution. no more profanity!!

another video of mags...

the PT attempt turned out to be too long to upload too. 105 MB and the max is 100. i give up, but here's a cute one of maggie.

poor little nina is sick today. she was sick yesterday too. she only had a slight cough on friday morning so we were going to take her to school, but when we hit the elevator call button she flipped out and said she didn't want to go to school. she said she was tired and wanted to stay home. one has to make the decision to either drag her screaming and crying or let her stay home pretty quickly in these situations, so we decided to let her stay home in case she really was sicker than we thought. and she was, she fell right asleep and woke up with a much worse cough and slight temperature. last night she was up coughing a lot and had a sore throat and slight fever. she still occasionally reminds us that she doesn't want to go to school any more, so i'm thinking we'll have a battle next week. keep your fingers crossed that we don't!

maggie is doing fine. she has a tiny cough. yesterday she tried to go onto all 4s from a sitting (nina had run from the bedroom to the bathroom and maggie tried to follow, it was cute), but she did a face plant onto the not plush carpet and got a tiny little bloody nose. i felt terrible! vanessa said maybe all this dry air made her nose more susceptible to bleeding, which made me feel better. still, she cried. :-(

Thursday, January 15, 2009

an attempt at taping some physical therapy. this video doesn't show it too well, but it is far easier for maggie to look over her right shoulder when she's on her tummy than it is for her to turn to the left. you can sort of see that when she's looking over her left, she quickly tries to put her head down on the ground. so, one thing we're working on is getting her to turn her head in the directions that she's trying to avoid, in order to stretch the muscles.


ok it's not working again. i'll try later.

a video of maggie



being so very cute!


i'm finally figuring out the video problem i've been having with blogger. i've been trying to upload videos that were too big. so, here are some small ones. this is a video of the girls helping me make the bed, their favorite game.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

a look back...

i was trying to upload a video but it was too big, so instead i'm putting up some photos. i'm inspired to look back on how much the girls have grown in the past 7.5 months because maggie is on the verge of sprouting her first tooth! aww!





Monday, January 12, 2009

maggie is getting really close to crawling

she can scoot around on her tummy in any direction except forward. she's very very close to getting herself into a sit, too. she's excited to work on her skills, so every time i pick her up she tries to dive back to the floor. she can be awfully hard to hang on to!

on thursday maggie had another physical therapy appointment, and it was not as good as i had hoped. apparently, when the craniofacial specialist told me to "keep up the PT for a year, and keep doing what you're doing with positioning" what he meant was, "i'm sending a letter to your PT, i want this girl in physical therapy for at least a year." aida told me on thursday that the craniofacial guy sent a letter saying he still felt tightness in maggie, and that she needed to be in physical therapy more often again.

well, so it goes. we'd gotten a 2 month break, so that was good. but aida says babies with torticollis need PT to crawl regularly, because their tight back muscles make them reluctant to put both knees on the ground. she said that since maggie's back is tight on one side, it'll pull to much to put both knees on the ground, so she would crawl with one foot on the ground and one knee, if you can envision that. over christmas she was starting to go into a crawl but leaving one leg in front of her, so it looked like all she had to do was figure out how to move that leg out of her way, and then crawl. but according to aida, it's not that she hasn't figured out how to get her leg out of the way, it's that it pulls too much on her tight muscles so she doesn't want to do that. aida's always commenting on what a smart baby maggie is, and how she avoids stretching her tight muscles when she does things. which in the long run works against her, since she needs to loosen the muscles.

i'll try to take a video of maggie doing some stretching, in case anyone is interested in seeing what we do, and how the torticollis has affected maggie's range of motion. i noticed the other day that it's really noticable when she's on her stomach and tries to look to her right.

oh oops, i hit publish and forgot to write about the other thing that aida said. she said that maggie has some low tone in her muscles, and has since she first saw her. i didn't think maggie had low tone, and the pediatrician never said anything, so i don't think it's anything serious enough that anyone but a PT would notice it. i asked her why she thinks she has low tone, and aida looked at me and said she thinks it's probably genetic. hm! in my day we just called it delicate.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

it's a quarter past eight...

and they're both still up. maggie has been shrieking (joyfully) for 2 hours. at least it's not one of those 2-3 am family pow-wows that maggie used to get going a few months back.

oh, i just remembered something. nina has really laid off the penis thing for the last few months. i mean, mostly. i did catch her trying to peek under the door while nick was peeing in maine, something she hasn't done in a while. but for the most part, nick's been able to take a shower without being harassed. it's because there are two potties in the bathroom at preschool, and the kids don't gender segregate. if a boy and a girl have to use the bathroom at the same time, no one has to wait. today she told me that marcus squeezes his penis to get the last few drips of pee out. so, i guess the mystery is gone.

well, maggie's pooping, i guess that's why she's still awake. i've had to start and stop this post so it's now 8:30. maybe they'll be asleep by 9.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

health insurance

i've kept you all at least somewhat updated on my (often unsuccessful) quest to get the family health insurance for $1,000 a month or less. i was really excited to learn in august that the girls could get child health plus for $40 per month each. full coverage, no copays or coinsurance. hooray!

i submitted all of the paperwork in august. it was rejected 5 weeks later because the girls already had insurance. ok, apparently i needed to send a letter to the current insurance telling them to cancel the policy as of the day the new plan (child health plus) would hopefully become effective. then hope and pray all went according to plan and the girls didn't go a month or 2 with no insurance at all.

well, a few more bumps and phone calls on my part (and a lot of pushing. i can be pushy with these insurance people, it's a fine art), and the girls get coverage. we didn't actually get cards in the mail or notification that the girls were actually approved until mid-december, but the policy was active as of november 1.

ok, so the cards come, and the girls' primary care physicians are NOT dr. russo. i know this is a problem, because the new plan is an HMO, and seeing a dr who is not their PCP won't be covered. we had 3 or so visits to dr. russo between nov.1 and when i got the cards, so i wanted these covered (3 visits would run $500-$600). i call on thursday, december 18, and first they tell me that they can't make the PCP change retroactive to the 1st of nov. the lady tells me i didn't specify a PCP on the application. i tell her i'm pretty sure i did, and so she pulls up my application. sure enough, i did specify dr. russo. she tells me that they couldn't find her PCP #, and that they should have called or mailed me a letter telling me they were assigning a dr. since it was their mistake to not contact me, the change became retroactive.

well, when we got home from maine, there was a letter in the mail from BC/BS, informing me that they were going to assign the girls a PCP. the letter was dated nov. 19, but the postmark was december 18. that's right, they mailed a back-dated letter on the day i called them!

ultimately, this is meaningless, because all of the changes were made and bills paid in full. but the proof that they would lie like this makes me very unhappy. i'm tempted to write and let them know i'm on to their little scam, but as that would take time and not accomplish anything, i wont. however, i must say that i'm rather an expert at dealing with health insurance companies, and if anyone ever needs help getting bills paid (or rules bent), let me know.

hopefully this is the end of health insurance drama, but i highly doubt it.

Friday, January 2, 2009

since uploading to blogger isn't working...

for now you'll just have to click this link to see it on you tube.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

maggie loves pears!

i gave up trying to upload a video tonight and instead will share this hysterical photo taken at the ebb tide.



oh i can do more than one! sweeet!!!!!!


so here's one of maggie with anna.

happy new year!



here is some music to celebrate 09!

(maggie really has a thing for spoons, so the girls were playing with a whole bunch of them)

today is our open house, new years day brunch party. nina keeps reminding me that she does not want to leave the doors open. ha!