This and That from the Week

It's been a pretty nice week. Lots of adventures...

First, I attempted to teach one 30-minute lesson this week. Raizel was NOT happy that I was in a room with the door closed, and after 20 minutes I just let her in the room with me and she glued herself to my lap and didn't make a peep. Not the best for teaching, but at least it was a good friend who didn't mind being a guinea pig to see how it went. So... we're re-evaluating how we'll handle this in the fall (when I would normally teach a total of 3.75 hours per week). For the summer, I won't be teaching much. Probably just this one student here and there.

After dinner that night I went grocery shopping with Eli. Had a *great* time talking to him and he was a super helper. Dean said Raizel was a little fussier than usual, but not too bad. Then later that night we tried having Dean put her to bed as we'd done successfully the night before (freeing me to get a jump on the kitchen, etc. cleanup). I think this was just too much for her all in one day. She melted down until I went upstairs and lay down with her until she fell asleep. Actually, we didn't exactly lie down. She sat on top of me at first and did not want to lie down. :) But after a while she settled in and all was fine. So, I'm just going to be very available to her so as not to cause her any anxiety. At least it's more like two steps forward, one step back. A careful dance.

And now Avi. Last week we were still saying he just must not ready to eat food yet. He kept spitting his rice cereal, applesauce, and pumpkin out like his tongue still didn't know what to do with it. What I didn't know was that really he was secretly longing to eat salmon, cous cous, hummus, bagels, bananas, graham crackers and anything else that was on the table. It's hilarious! Forget all that mushy stuff; he wants a 3-course meal. :) So we're just serving him real food now and he's grinning away happy as can be. He's also sitting really well all by himself now and is a fast little scooter. It seems so funny to have a baby scooting, eating, and all that when he's only been here for two months. Shouldn't he still be curled up in a ball and sleeping 20 hours a day? I always called that stage the fourth trimester.

Today we had a great time at Summerlake Park in Tigard (a first for us). We went letterboxing with our friend NQ and her son and his friend. She packed up a wonderful kosher picnic for all of us (and she's not even Jewish! :) ), and we headed out. We never did find any of the letterboxes, but we had a great time exploring this park with all kinds of playgrounds, secret paths, woods, lake, ducks, creek, flowers, and plants. It was a really terrific place and not that far from us.

One thing that happened - Raizel has tinnea capitis on her scalp (it's like athlete's foot on her head) that was misdiagnosed as cradle cap at the doctor. The same friend we were with, NQ, is a pediatrician and told us what it actually was. Not common in northern climes and in pale-faced people, so she wasn't surprised that the doctor missed it. (Just so you know - tinnea capitis causes bald patches and cradle cap does not.) The fungus is deep under the scalp, so it actually takes a month of oral anti-fungals, not topical (meaning it's also not terribly contagious). We're on that now. Wahoo. So, she has a good-sized scaly, bald patch on her head. Well, during a microsecond of inattention, Raizel ran under Eli's swing and his feet hit her squarely on that patch.

WARNING: Don't read further if you don't like ooey descriptions of things...

I was horrified to see that the patch had gotten completely squished and was sticking up in places and bleeding, kind of like a giant scab had been knocked loose with pieces of it sticking up, coming off, bleeding, and looking kind of spongy (I warned you it was gross...). I quickly showed NQ and said, "Do you think we should take her to a doctor right away??" She looked at me and said, "You ARE with a doctor." Um, oh, yeah. I keep forgetting. She's my good friend, the parent of a piano student, and a pediatrician. I forgot. :) So, bless her heart, she took charge. We got Raizel home, got her into the bath, and I soaked her head while NQ ran out to buy special shampoo and antibacterial stuff. All this time, Raizel is basically oblivious and obviously not in pain or anything, B"H. It just looked awful. We got her hair washed as Raizel gleefully dumped bucket after bucket of water on her own head. Afterwards, we sat outside in the sunshine and NQ carefully combed up all the gunk she could find in the large patch and a couple of other places on her head. Well... after all that she looks 10x better than she did yesterday!!! Hashem takes care of these things one way or another. NQ said that now that a bunch of it had been removed from her head she was going to heal much faster. That plus the antifungals should have it knocked out in a jiffy. Hooray! So baruch hashem we were with a pediatrician, baruch hashem her scalp got all cleaned up due to an "accident" and baruch hashem Raizel never felt much pain (except for the initial kick in the head, I'm sure!).

After all that, I took Amirah and Eli to papa's work where they took a tram down the hill, then a street car, then a bus, then got a ride home with a friend for that last mile (by happenstance). They had a great adventure with papa.

I'm sure there's more that happened this week... I know we had a great time at a wading pool yesterday, and visiting another friend who pretty much has a complete park in her own back yard AND is considering adopting from Ethiopia too.

OH! One great thing... Amirah and I have managed to get to her studies every day this week (one hour of secular, 30 minutes of kodesh (religious), + 1 or 2 major art projects). It's not too different from our pre-summer routine except we're not studying Hebrew as a separate subject right now. We'll start that in earnest in mid-August. It's been really great. We're also back in the routine of reading from a big readaloud book every night for 30 minutes before sleep. Right now we're in the middle of The Boxcar Children and are really enjoying it. There are so many fantastic children's books written between 1900 and 1940. Almost invariably, those have been Amirah's favorites. It just feels really nice that our routine is starting to normalize. I think I've only done one mommy dance this week!

One last thing... the menu. It's shabbat after all...

Challah, chicken with barbecue sauce, roasted potatoes, green salad, sauteed bok choi, coleslaw w/apples and honey mustard dressing, and chocolate cherry cake (requested by Eli). Alas, unlike last week, none of this is waiting in the freezer to be defrosted. I was also going to make black bean soup, but nixed it since it's going to be 95 degrees. Black bean soup just didn't seem to cut it. Maybe there's a vichyssoise version of black bean soup somewhere. :)

Shabbat shalom!