A Guy, Two Girls and a Pup

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a joyous New Year!

It’s been a long time since we had any videos! Here’s one of Kevin and Meredith sledding today!

And here’s a Kevin’s-eye-view of that same hill (sans Meredith, thankyouverymuch):

How about a bunch of pictures of Meredith in the snow on Flickr?

Fun times — I should get my car stuck in 8 inches of snow more often.

As Kevin said this morning, “This would be a respectable snow for WISCONSIN.” An incredible amount this weekend, upwards of 8 inches. I stayed home today — I don’t even know if the office is open, but I wasn’t about to take the time to dig my entire car out. So a snowday for the Binghams — and hopefully one more day to chill and recover from my cold…

No pics, since I didn’t think to take the camera, but I went a few mile hike with the snowshoes today.  Momma and little M stayed home with their colds, while Dad strapped on the snowshoes they brought from Wisconsin and clomped up the hill to the ridge.

We probably got about 6 inches in the neighborbood last night.  There are no cars attempting to make the drive up to the ridge, so the street in front of our house is a sledding hill.  I stopped two blocks up to chat with some of the families in the area.  Kids and Moms alike on saucers, Dads and tots on plastic toboggans, and one or two obvious 30-year old imports to the area with the old-fashioned, wood slats on metal frame and runners, steerable.  Man, those things were cooking down the street - perfect conditions, with new snow on top of packed down iciness.  I watched one guy scream down from Phinney to the traffic circle at Dayton, steer around it without stopping, and continue on down to Fremont.

I really want to take little M sledding now.  We have no sled, and most of the families have gone back inside now that the snow is coming down again, so that’s not an option at the moment.  The hardware store has been out of plastic sleds, sand and deicer since Thursday.  Possibly shovels as well.

I continued on up to Greenwood and hiked down to 85th.  there were a surprising number of people out, walking around.  I’d say half had kids, cameras or both.  It’s quite an event and people want to get out nd experience it.  Seattle hasn’t seen snow lite this since 1995 or so, from what I hear.  I had a few people comment, positively, on my snowshoes, which I didn’t see anyone else with.  That might seem a little odd to say (who wears snowshoes in the city, you say?), but there were plenty of skiers, and very few walks were cleared - conditions were great for it.

I did my shopping (a bit of Christmas and a card for Aunt Shirley, whose husand passed unexpectedly last night) and hiked back as the snow started coming down again, in big flakes.  Walking back down the hill, there were only a couple kids still out, who set up a speed bump to catch air on the sleds on the way down - it worked pretty well, too.

All day has been gray and snowy, but I understand a bit more about Seattle now.  The gray rain and snow doesn’t bother them much here, and I think it’s partly to do with the fact that this is a walking city.  Even if you’re driving from point B to C, you’re usually walking from A to B and C to D.  And they all do it, so there’s a sense of shared community and, well, not burden… mayeb responsibility.  There’s something about that movement and comradarie with others doing the same thing that perks the spirits, even when it’s uphill both ways in a foot of snow.

-K

It’s that time of year… time to stock up on sugars and carbs and go hibernate.

That’s this year’s cookie plate for some friends and neighbors… it’s been a busy baking week here. Of course, since I’m job hunting in a down economy at the end of a fiscal year, it’s not like I have tons of other commitments filling my days at the moment.

Meredith seems to be getting better with her shoulder, but both the girls seem to have colds right now.  Guess what we’re bringing home for Christmas?!

We have an almost unheard of stretch of freezing days, and snow, here in Seattle.  Nothing’s melting, all the schools shut down a couple days early for winter break, and they’re predicting a possible 8 inches tonight… which just doesn’t happen here.  We’re hoping things look good next week when it’s time to travel…

But hey, isn’t that snowman krispie just adorable?

-K

First, Meredith is very slowly improving, as mommanoted yesterday.  So, we had an appointment today to get her checked out again.  Doc says the elbow is definitely fine now and agrees with our assessment of her shoulder.  But, since no one is quite sure what the injury was, it could be one of several different muscle or nerve injuries (bone was ruled out by xrays over the weekend.)  The (sort of) positive part is that all possibilities have the same treatment: wait.  So, little M may or may not be in top fighting shape come Christmas visiting time… :p

Second, little M had her appetite back last night… with a vengence!  We went out for chinese at a place we hadn’t been to yet.  April had a combo meal of stuff; I ordered Sichuan (or Szechwan or Szechuan… it’s all the same thing) chicken of which April declared after trying it, “I couldn’t eat more that that one bite.” Pow!  Zing!  Little M, on the other hand, was more than happy to eat off my chopsticks, chowing on chicken, green pepper, bamboo and watercress.  Sure, she had more water to drink that usual, but she ate greedily and with gusto, snapping her head forward to chomp spicy bits eagerly.

We got an eater here.

-K

Meredith’s arm seems to be getting better little by little — she’s still moving the lower half more than the upper half, so the shoulder seems to be a bit sore yet, but we’re encouraging her to reach for things with her hurt arm, and I do an arm lift and rotation while I’m changing her. So far, so good — she’s a little tender and shies away from me doing that, but no huge screaming in pain. So we’re keeping an eye on her, but I think she’ll be doing just fine in another week or so.

Besides, we’re on to the next issue: suddenly, she doesn’t want to eat anything… will it never end?!

If we had been feeling pretty good about our parenting track record thus far, the last couple of days took care of that. Our sweet little girl has been put through the wringer! Wednesday, she had a HUGE fall at Michelle’s house — apparently she was climbing on a rocking horse that was way too tall for her and took a tumble: lots of bruises and scratches. Then, that evening, while I was holding her hand and (unsuccessfully) urging her to walk with me to the bathroom, she decided to turn into The Amazing Rubber Baby and collapse on the floor, twisting her arm awkwardly on the way down.

We didn’t really think much of either of these things at the time (they’re pretty much par for the course for Meredith!) and we sent her packing off to Michelle’s on Thursday. Thursday night, though, I noticed that she really wasn’t using her right hand and was just letting her arm hang limp at her side. She’d been cuddling with Daddy before I got home and generally acting like something wasn’t right. After some examination, I realized that her arm (I thought shoulder) was really bothering her! Poor thing. We put her to bed, hoping it was just hurting from the fall (either one) and that the next day she would be fine. No dice: the next day she was even worse, so off to the doctor with Daddy she went.

It turns out that our poor little girl had Nursmaid’s Elbow (what a horrible name!) Basically, her elbow was out of joint. The doctor popped it back in and she was in much better spirits.

BUT, we noticed that she till wasn’t using her arm as much as we thought she should be. She was holding things in her hand but not moving her arm above waist level or so. Back to the doctor today, who thought maybe something was hurting in her shoulder! So we went over to the hospital in Ballard for xrays. The results came back negative, thankfully — no dislocation, no visible fractures or anything. And, even better, she’s been raising/using her arm more and more over the afternoon and evening. So hopefully her shoulder was just banged up a little more than we had thought.

So, luckily, she came out of it with only the easily-remedied elbow dislocation. (Which, based on our extensive Googling, happens a LOT to little ones.) All of which makes us feel exactly zero percent better about the fact that we let little Meredith walk around with her elbow out of joint for a day-and-a-half. :{ Poor little girl; she is such a trouper, just walking around adapting to the fact that she had a busted wing. She is awesome — and a keeper!

It’s been a few days since a picture, so there’s one of my top 2 favorite people in the house.

We are counting down the days to Christmas — it’s coming quickly, yet slowly, as tends to happen… I’m finishing up Christmas cards (if you haven’t gotten yours yet, it’s either in the mail, or I’m almost to it! Honest!) We are writing up our Christmas cookie list — as always, much too ambitious. But with Kevin between jobs, I’m sure he’s looking forward to spending his time in his 2nd favorite way — in the kitchen. (Well, maybe 3rd favorite…)

I am spending my evenings torturing myself, having begun a running program! I am doing the Couch-to-5k running program, which takes you from couch potato to full-fledged runner in only 9 agonizing weeks. AND I’ve been peer-pressured by my friend Chris into doing a 5k (to make sure I don’t back out on this) — I’ll be doing the St. Pat’s Dash here in Seattle the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day. (Duh.) Wish me luck!

Meredith is officially sprouting THREE NEW TEETH. 2 molars and one on the bottom in front. She is doing really well with them, considering they must hurt like heck. She’s distracting herself from the pain by giving herself new bruises and bumps daily. (Walking is HARD.)

Devi will be staying here at the house for the holidays, rather than going to a kennel, which we are all thankful for. We have a friend-of-a-friend who will be watching the house and her while we’re gone. So that’s our Christmas gift to Devi — the ability to stay at home on her throne for the holidays.

We are managing to work our way through the vegetable delivery that Kevin talked about earlier. My contribution tonight was Curried Vegetable and Chickpea Stew — yum! It turned out really well — paired with naan bread and jasmine rice, it made a delicious dinner.

It’s nice coming home to dinner already cooking, especially after the full day we had. We were getting ready to go to the Urban Craft Uprising craft show at Seattle Center (where the Space Needle is). BUT, as Kevin was getting Meredith changed and ready to go, she gave him a killer poke in the eye. OW. Major boo-boo. We ended up going into an optometrist in Wallingford for an emergency visit. Now Kevin has steroid drops to put in his eye to treat the eye irritation and he has a follow-up appointment on Monday. The day wasn’t a total loss, though: we walked up to the Phinney Neighborhood Association building (just up the ridge) to go to THEIR craft show (the Winter Festival). Lots of fun stuff! I bought some home-made caramels that may well rival Vande Walles in Appleton. I’ll have to let Kevin’s mom be the judge — she’s the expert in their candy!

So Meredith was blissfully unaware that she had poked Daddy’s eye out. But she has more pressing problems. Major crabbiness this afternoon points to cutting ANOTHER molar (confirmed by Daddy while we were at the craft show.) Poor girl — she hasn’t been sleeping very well the last couple of nights, and that’s as good a reason as any. I dosed up her bottle tonight with baby Tylenol: hopefully she’ll get some sleep.