Simple Life

In January we saw our local endocrinologist for the first time.  He was lacking in eloquence and was quick to condemn the process that we had taken to get to him, however, he assured us that he was going to get Lily to a good place.  Since seeing him she has been on a consistent does of thyroid meds in hopes of regulating her body and beginning to feel better.  Unfortunately, she's not feeling better.  Her symptoms are exactly the same.  Dr. W ran two sets of tests.  The first included and ANA test which measures whether or not autoantibodies are present. This is the 2nd time this test has been run and for the second time, it is positive.  By itself this does not diagnose anything, but it indicates that further testing is needed.  You can read more about it here .  In any case, his suggestion is that we go back to Seattle Children's.  We have an appointment for a full rheumatology and endocrinology workup on April 25. The second set of...

Weeks ago, I took Lily to an endocrinologist here in the Tri Cities.  The man left a lot to be desired in regards to bedside manor, however, he promised answers.  He essentially told me that all the steps we had taken in regards to helping Lily thus far were a waste.  He didn't blame us, but rather the other doctor who started us on this journey.  He was frustrated at the multiple changes in meds Lily had undergone in just two months.  Under his care, Lily is starting over.  He took her off all her meds for a week, then started her back on them at a small dose, to be increased over time.  Monday will mark two weeks at the low dose and the start of the higher dosage. In six weeks we will return for all new testing. The only upside of the lower dosage is that Lily has had less nausea.  She is able to get through her morning without hovering near the bathroom or lying on the couch in a ball.  The downside? She's a mess.  On a daily basis ...

I realize I have not updated anyone; I apologize. I keep waiting for news, something definite that I can share.  I don't have that yet.  I'll give you what I have, which is I essentially more waiting. The hematologist that we saw at Children's in Seattle called one day between Christmas and the New Year to let us know that Lily's ANA Panel came back positive.  As I understand it, this means that she has antibodies in her blood.  The doctor said a post or ANA panel is indicative of an autoimmune disorder, but more testing would be needed to have any definitive results. There was still some of Lily's blood in the lab, so they used that for the additional tests. I have not heard from her again.  I tried to call today, but the office was closed due to the holiday.  Will call tomorrow.  Also, her prolactin levels have returned to normal and she is not longer lactating. We are all glad for that!   We had a big family vacation scheduled over wint...

Short version: Today's Children's Hospital visit didn't give us answers. We are waiting on labs and a new specialist.  The MRI was clear, and Lily is still lactating (for more on that fun fact, read on...) About 10 days ago, Lily emerged from her therapists office, shyly.  We are close.  She tells me everything. For her to be shy was unusual.  Turns out, she's been lactating - for about 3 weeks. She didn't know it wasn't normal and was really embarrassed about the whole thing.  During school she'd feel the leakage begin and just hope that it wouldn't show through her shirt.  She talked with her therapist about it - only to discover that, it is not normal for a 15 year old to lactate, unless pregnant or having just given birth. Lily has never even seriously held a boys hand, let alone being pregnant.  Barring divine intervention, this was a new problem.  I called her doctor (and bought the poor girl nursing pads).  A blood test revealed high...

It has been nearly three years since I last had the courage to post.  The original purpose of this blog, to detail our lives as we lived overseas, faded when we returned to the US.  Once home, I couldn't bring myself to post, not with any integrity.  Everything I wrote once home went through a filter of self protection before I published. I worried more about offending or upsetting someone by my post than being honest and sharing, so, I quit.  I focused instead on my schooling, work, etc.  I've missed this blog.  Writing it became therapeutic to me. I've never been to confessional in a church, but I imagine that the way I feel after writing and sharing is much the same as one feels after confessional.  There is an unburdening, a lightness.  I still feel the weight of my words and thoughts, but much less so knowing that they are being carried by many and no longer mine alone.  I can't honestly say that this post will be the first of many....

Parenting brings obstacles and challenges like none that we've ever dealt with before.  My first was when my son was born.  He was the most difficult baby I'd ever come across, and I got to be with him all the time .  I remember how defeated and discouraged I was, and how I thought to myself, "I can't do this.  I can't parent this child, make him happy, stay sane.  I don't even want to".  I didn't know how I was going to get through his infancy and this obstacle felt like the greatest obstacle of my life. We got through it, I got through it.  Time passed and allowed me to forget the depth of the struggle so that when the next challenge arose, that one felt like a new biggest and worst.  The new challenge was now the thing that was going to end all civilized thought in my head.  Again, we got through.  Time and again, challenges, the biggest and worst, have arisen.  Each time I have thought, "How? What am I supposed to do with this...

Many of you already know that Jason and I decided to buy a house in the Tri Cities.  This goes against everything we've been saying since we got here.  Our plan was 2 years, 3 at the most.  The desire to leave the Tri Cities is still very strong, but, it won't be happening.  We had a couple life events that told us that we needed to stay put for a while.  We may still leave, but it won't be for the next few years - probably not until the kids graduate high school. The home we bought is great for several reasons.  It gives us just enough space to live and not be on top of each other all the time, it is located 3 minutes from the middle school so the Lily can just walk to school and home, and, it was cheap!  Another benefit of this house is that it has 1,000 little projects and fixes I'd like to do, so I'll stay busy (and drive Jason crazy).  It is not our dream home, but it is a good "for now" home.  Can you believe this is the 6th house we'...

I think I'm starting to like my kids... It is Friday night and I've just attended a 3 day writing workshop intended to help some of us teacher types wade through the scary, wordy, commandments known as Common Core.  (Fearless leader, if you are reading this, fabulous job!  I am only a fraction as scared as I was before the workshop!  Only problem I'm seeing is that before the learning, I didn't know how little I knew.  Now I am fully aware of my ignorance and potential incapabilities…) One of the activities that we did in the room paired us up in groups of two and had us introduce our partner, answering these three questions: best job you've ever had, best place you've ever lived, and riskiest thing you've ever done.  I fretted over that first question.  Best job I've ever had?  Two jobs came to mind before I started to answer.  The first thought was…which one?  Then, it dawned on me, neither job was my current one, or being a teacher at al...

It's been a while; a little more than 6 months to be inexact.  I was looking for a word to describe why I haven't written - a single word that could sum up my state of being in a succinct way that would leave you to say, "Oh, I get it.  No further explanation needed."  That word may be out there, but it is beyond  my reach at the moment.  Here is what I came up with: NEUTRAL.  Weird, until I really started thinking about it.  Neutral means  having no strongly marked or positive characteristics or features .  The synonyms for neutral are:   inoffensive ,  bland ,  unobjectionable ,  unexceptionable ,  anodyne , unremarkable ,  ordinary ,  commonplace .   In other words, my attitude for the last 6 months.  I have a couple really good excuses that totally make sense, but really?  Who cares.   I am back, possibly in limited release, we'll see.  (I have missed this blog dearly.)  ...

I was really fortunate to face the school year with two job offers.  Living in the area that I live where there seems to be more teachers than jobs and everyone knows everyone, I was concerned that I would not find a position for myself.  The first job I was offered was to teach Math and Science with what I could tell was a great team of women at a really low income school.  The job was only .6, so not full time, but it was supposed to go full time before the year started.  I accepted.  I love science.  Not so much math.  I can do it but it bores me...I didn't care.  I was excited.  Then I got the offer to teach full time, language arts.  The team was less inviting but the day in, day out seemed better.  English over math? Yes please!  So I switched.  I have wondered since then if I made the right choice and I am often left in the corner thinking...no. Here are the blessings: first, two job offers in a pretty competitive...

I started my period when I was 11 years old.  I remember going to the nurses office at school that day because my lower back hurt so badly.  It felt like nothing I had ever felt before, but was a feeling I would become quite familiar with.  Imagine there being a bowling ball inside your body, resting on your tail bone.  It causes pressure just sitting there.  That was a good day.  The bad days were when that bowling ball was being ground into my back - from the inside trying to find a way out.  Later, when laboring with Lily, that same feeling was there.  Lily was upside down and her head was resting on my tailbone.  The contractions that drove it deeper into the bone were killers.  So all those years of imagining my inner bowling ball were not that far off! In those first few years of cycling I would often seek out the hardest surface I could find and just lay on it, trying to flatten my back into it.  Our living room floor usual...

Now that summer is (almost) over for us I asked the kids what their favorite memories were.  We really didn't do much this year, but here are the highlights: 1) Camp Sealth Jason grew up going to Camp Sealth on Vashon Island every summer, first as a camper and later as a staff member.  This summer our two kids were able to go for their first time.  They loved it!  The camp was about a week long and they got to swim, tie dye, hike, sleep outside, ride a ferry, do archery, etc.  Both were nervous to go and be away from us for so long, but neither one was really ready to come home when it was over.  Both were already talking abut going next year before I had their suitcases in the trunk.  A good sign! The man with the kids is Paul Dudley, a Seattle area photographer that drove the ferry when Jason went to camp and is still doing it now.  Jason asked him to look out for the kids on drop off morning.  When Paul saw Lily he called out ...

School got out on June 8.  Tomorrow will mark 20 days of summer vacation.  I gotta say, I'm kind of over it already.  I know that some of you out there look forward to this time of year because it means less responsibility, more time with the kids, etc, etc.  But for me, it means less responsibility and more time with the kids.  Same sentence, different points of view I guess.  I have been a stay at home mom for 10, almost 11 years.  Yeah, I've had a job outside the home for a lot of that time - Starbucks, teaching childbirth classes and being a doula, and substitute teaching (we are not got to count the full time gigs in Japan, since I miss it like crazy.  Would go back in a minute.  Not even going to talk about it...) but they were all tiny, little things meant to give us a few extra bucks, nothing that powered my mind or drove me to greater things.  My main thing was momming.  All day, night too.  But now, 10+ years in, I'm ...

This blog - it has morphed into something much more meaningful than I intended it to be.  Originally it was simply a way to keep people in the US in the loop as to what was going on in our lives when we were gone.  Over time I became close with this blog, developed an open and honest relationship with it, and now have come to depend on it.  It's like a diary I guess, or a journal, but in a more open and powerful way.  I can say what I want here and not worry about being interrupted.  I can be (and have always been) completely honest.  I can share things that I wouldn't otherwise share because my currency is the written word not all folks accept that tender. I guess what I am saying is that for those of you that signed on to read about adventures and excitement and are now feeling let down by what may seem lackluster - feelings, struggles, growth, and victories...I apologize, and I don't.  I've been wanting to write here for a while but haven't  as...

Jaxon is allergic to everything that grows from the ground.  He started showing symptoms around age 3 or 4 I think, although I cannot be sure as I am terrible and remembering the whens of life.  He had all the classics - runny nose, stuffy nose, itchy/red/watery eyes, sore throat, coughing fits, and headaches.  He also had some other stuff - skin rashes, eczema, stomach aches and (I'm sorry buddy) poop issues - mostly very soft stuff. I wanted him to feel better - several doctors and many tests later I had a variety of answers to play with.  It took about 3 years of looking into it all but we found out the following: Jaxon is highly allergic to many trees, grasses, and weeds.  March through October is basically hell for him. Jaxon is allergic to peanuts. Jaxon has two alleles that predispose him to Celiac disease.  He was not diagnosed with Celiac as that is tough disease to diagnose.  It requires a stomach biopsy.  No thanks.  It ...

When a rule is broken, does the reason or intent behind the infraction matter? Or is the only considerable measure the fact that the rule itself was not followed?  I cannot answer this with a solid answer - my reasoning here is all wavy like a big bowl of melting Jello.  How serious was the rule? How badly was it broken? Was is broken-broken or just kind of bent or chipped broken?Who broke it? Why? It is not black and white to me at all. Scenario: Lillian and Jaxon have each broken the same rule at school and only Jaxon is being punished. This is the story of Jaxon's life.  All the other kids can be running around with scissors, wearing shirts with guns, and calling each other names and he will get caught skipping down the hall and be punished.  I'm not saying he does not deserve it - he does, as he is often breaking the rules, but he is always the one caught.  I think he just does everything so much louder, it's hard not to notice. This is a clear case of i...

About 10 days ago Jaxon and I were leaving our apartment to go to the store.  Jaxon was walking behind me toward the car and I was finishing up a text as we went.  Jaxon says, "Mom, why are you so mad at us all the time?  Did we do something?"  I cannot tell you how awful I felt in that moment, or how much shame and sadness it has caused me since. I'm sharing this tonight because I have to - I have to get all this self poison out so that tomorrow I can wake up lighter.  I have been pretty miserable since we got back - miserable inside and out.  I know this as I write this, with a painful clarity - and I knew it then too.  But then, just days ago, I was wallowing. I was so immersed in myself and my crap that I didn't really care what it was doing to those around me.  Even if I did care, I don't think I was in any place to do anything about it.  Now, I have not had any glorious epiphanies or self-revelations, no onslaught of good fortune to t...

I just spent part of the evening looking through old photo albums with the kids - we're talking non-digital photos, the kind that you had to take and wait for developing to see what you got. There were some pretty awful ones in there!  But I remember that I only took one photo, not wanting to waste expensive film.  Fingers would always be crossed that the one I took was great.  I couldn't wait to see them, pick them up from the photo counter.  Now it is so easy.  Take two or three, keep the best one.  Images live forever on our memory cards and hard drives now, as we just don't take the time to print them out. Anyway, as we were looking at the old photos of Lil and Jax as babies and very small people, they would ask a million questions, expecting me to remember every detail of every event on every page.  I couldn't, but I did my best.  It made me a little sad to look at photos and not remember the moment that they were taken.  I took some n...

Parts of this blog will be hard for me - because I am hard on me - so forgive me if I stumble.  It is no secret that we were kind of broke over in Japan.  We had almost enough money to live on without dipping into credit cards, but not enough if we actually wanted to experience Japan while we were there.  A major factor in deciding to come home was to start making a decent wage again that would allow us to save money, pay off debt, etc. Here's the part I haven't really talked about - due to a weird sense of shame or something like it.  You might think me foolish for feeling badly, but I do even though I can logically explain why I shouldn't.  Here goes - in Japan every person that is legally living in the country gets medical insurance and is able to see a doctor and get meds if needed.  The cost of the insurance is based on your family size and income.  Since we had no income the previous year our insurance cost us about $50 a month.  Had we st...

Alright, so there are some nice things about being back - I'm loving having a clothes dryer and a dishwasher - so, so nice. TV - in English!  Superb! Calling friends and family without worrying about the time difference (although I still stop, try to figure out the time difference, then realize there isn't one) - very nice!  Being able to read labels again is nice to, except for the part that if you can read the label, you know what you are eating - good or bad - so there are no excuses.  It is great to be back in the land of the drink - meaning that I now have a choice of more than one brand of Vodka or wine.  But, buying the spirits in the store while I am picking up a loaf of bread - that's a little weird. Speaking of weird - I am catching myself screwing up daily on the road.  Either I am trying to drive on the wrong side or turning my blinker on when I am looking for my wipers.  Fortunately I have caused no accidents yet!  *Knock-knock.  An...