October 29, 2008

You probably thought I was napping and eating bon bons on my day off yesterday. Not so. Alex finally got an appointment to Children's hospital with endocrinology at 8:00. I miss judged the traffic and we arrived 15 minutes late, but the free valet parking helped a lot. We only met with a nurse practioner. She agreed that he should be evaluated for his small size (he weighed 37 lbs still, with clothes) and ordered a blood work panel and a bone age scan. We did those tests and got a referral to the Failure to Thrive clinic, where endo wants him evaluated and then they'll see him again next summer. I guess it's not an emergency, we couldn't get into Failure to Thrive until end of January. The blood work was a bit of an adventure as they also wanted a urine sample. The first time around Alex had nothing so we went to the cafeteria and I had him slam a 21oz lemonade. We sat and read a chapter of Winne-the-Pooh and went back. And Alex had about an inch of pee, which was luckily enough. He was fine through the blood draw, and they needed 3 vials.

We got back to Boulder in time to pick up Adam. We ate lunch, then all headed over to Alex's school for Pumpkin Math. His class had divided into 4 tables, each with a pumpkin and a parent. The kids did lots of predictions, like how much the pumpkin weighed (19 lbs) and how many seeds it had (646 with some margin of error due to 5 1st graders counting by 10s). Adam sat at the table and did better than 4/5 of the 1st graders with behaving. And at the end I had the honor of carving a jack-o-lantern with a very cheap and dull carving knife.

I had a big Alex bragging moment- we walked into the class a little late and the teacher said, "Maybe Alex can answer this question that no one else could - why do pumpkins float?" And Alex thought for a second and answered, "Because they are hollow." I was amazed that he remember they were hollow, we haven't cut one in a year. And also amazed that the talk with daddy on why big ships can float was transferred to pumpkins.

After Pumpkin Math, we went home and I cooked dinner. I finished just in time to take the kids to swim team. While they were swimming, I dropped half of dinner off with Rachel, who had baby Aidan last week. And after swimming, we dashed up to Gunbarrel so I could do my run, but I miss read the meeting spot and gave up and came home without running.

And one more Alex story - this week's library book pick is Animial Scavengers - Vultures, and it leaves NOTHING up to the imagination. Here's a little excerpt for you:

Still not full, the king vulture flies off in search of more food. This time, he finds a dead horse. Because the horse's skin is tough, the vulture eats the eyes and other soft bits first. When other vultures arrive to help nip open the belly, he fights for his share of the soft parts inside.

Good gawd, that would have given my 6 year old self nightmares for YEARS. Did I mention there are also full color pictures too?

And onto today. Grandpa took Ariel to school this morning as I had a physical therapy session at 8:15. I felt pretty good going in, as I hadn't done anything since Sunday. Maybe there is something to not running. After the appointment, I did finally run and it didn't hurt much but I was slow. It was such a nice day that I talked myself into doing a full hour. I should reward myself with ice cream.

Then yada yada, came home, did PT exercises, made more phone calls and appointments to complicate my life (including, Ellen, making an appointment for Alex with Dr. Steinbock, he can see him in November instead of January). Picked up Adam, took a shower and picked up Ariel.

Ariel was eating snack when we got there and insisted on carrying out fist fulls of grapes and graham crackers. We got home and she had quite a conniption about taking a nap but fell right asleep once she got in there. Adam and I played Memory and he says that even though we tied, he won.

And, pick up on time.