Many of you know that Maine was hit hard with an ice storm recently. We were without electricity for just over 24 hours at our house, but family members were without power for 3 and 4 days. Others in the state suffered for almost a week!
We heat our home with oil...our, I should say heatED. This summer Dan refurbished the boat and sold it, making enough money to install a chimney, hearth and wood-burning stove, plus buy enough wood for this winter and possibly next. The installation has been a struggle to say the least. We had a contractor lined up to do the whole project - he had great references, a good price, and Dan really liked him. He showed up with rusty, used parts that were not even the right size to meet code. There was no negotiating to happen with this guy, so he left and wouldn't return our calls. Thank goodness we hadn't given him any money. It was another month before we had someone else lined up, and he was a total administrative nightmare...he wrote down our information as Stan Welch, and kept getting our street name and family names mixed up...I actually told him that I was Stan's wife at one point...ha! When it was all said and done, he did a great job in little time for a great price.
Dan decided to build the hearth himself, which was a big leap of faith for me. Half-way through that piece of the project, our neighbor offered some advice, training, and help. In the end, he built the entire hearth in exchange for driveway snow-blowing for the winter! What a deal. The hearth was useable but not beautiful JUST in time for our power outtage, so we were toasty warm. We cooked on the stove, heated up water for baths, and dried hand-washed clothes on racks in the living room. We felt like frontier-folk. We were *almost* sad when the power returned.
Popps decided to do his physical rehab here in Maine, so he arrived shortly after Thanksgiving to a nursing home about 20 minutes North of us. We've been visiting him a lot, and he's been making great progress. He's using a walker and a wheelchair, doing his exercises, and seems to have made peace with his PT after a rocky start. He's hoping to return to NY soon.
Vi has had an action-packed month. Between OMT for last month's ear infection, eczema, and a tummy bug, she's been in and out of the doctors' offices too many times to count. Her ears are all cleared up, and she started a growth spurt just after a four-day BRAT diet. The eczema still hasn't cleared up, so we visited the homeopathic doctor last week. She thinks that it's not an allergy, but a wrecked gut...from the antibiotics last month for her ear infection and the tummy bug. She is helping us cure this from the inside out with Cod Liver Oil, ProBiotics, and a homepathic remedy for her general constitution to help her immune system get balanced. Plus, she's having us eliminate dairy and soy for a bit, just to help along the process. (Goat and Buffalo are fine...we're sticking with Goat's milk, since Buffalo milk sounds revolting and wrong.)
New words that she's trying out: help, hot, down, cup, sit, ball, eyeball and all gone. All gone is a good one - it comes out sounding like the Law & Order chime - Ga-gong!
Her "receptive" language is still thriving - she seems to understand more than we realize. She is also using her signs as much as ever. New signs include train and rabbit. She can point to her body parts, too, so we're singing a lot of "head, shoulders, knees and toes" lately. We've been asking her lots of questions and trying to improve her ability to constructively use all of these tools. So, lots of fun stories are to come, including:
My brother's family was in town for the holiday, and poor baby Addie has started teething. There was a lot of crying in the past couple of days. (Which made Dan and me realize that a baby's cry is loudest to the baby's parents. Funny what perspective does.) Recently, Addie gave up the pacifier/Nuk/binky/bubba. I asked Vi if Addie had told her what she needed. (I sort of think the little ones actually understand each other...any research to prove that? I'd love to read it.) Vi nodded her head and said, "Yeh." I asked her, "What does baby Addie need?" Vi responded, enthusiastically and unprompted, "Bubba!"
This is one of those stories that's hard to tell without sounding judgemental, so I want to be clear that Addie's doing great without the bubba, does not need one, and I'm not suggesting they try to give her one! The Bub is one of those areas each parent has to make their own choices about, and I know how much I dislike uninvited advice. JD and I were comiserating about strangers giving us advice in public...so strange. That's the easy advice to shirk. Intra-family advice is harder because the advisors are witnesses to your choices. It can be hard to not take it personally, when parenting methods are not the same. I know we have different rules about bubbas and TV than my sister's family, and that sleep and slings are big differences between me and my brother's family...but you know what? It doesn't matter. I mean, of course it matters that one parents mindfully and makes these decisions with the overall health of all the family members being a priority, but it doesn't matter that we do it differently. These kids are all growing up loved and taken care of, with a great big family that loves them. That's all that matters.
Another word that Vi definitely understands is "scream." If you say the word, she willingly demonstrates. How can such little lungs make so much noise?
Christmas was great. We did our usual multi-family run-around - three families in one day. Vi got lots of new books, a table & chairs set, an emperor penguin, clothes, shoes, and money for college. I got clothes, a Kitchenaid mixer, slippers, and lots of sleep. Dan got a leather jacket, books, iTunes gift cards, and gift certificates for shoes and a wood-carrier. We got money for our oil bill, too, which is great...we'll have hardly spent any of our own money on oil this year! With a bunch of gift certificates combined, we also got a new camera. (RIP our Sony.)
My sister was here with her kids, and we got to go sledding, watch Prince Caspian, play with the electric train, draw and decorate cookies. The kids all did some disco-diva dancing at my dad's house that evening. I am hoping we have some video to post, because it was pretty hilarious. There will definitely be lots of great pictures coming from Noelle.
And, today, it's back to work. Just a 3-day work week for me, so I should really be plowing through my to-dos rather than writing in my diary...
Happy New Year to all of you!
P.S. 8 days until Birthday.
