Nathan's first dental visit and my unique inner ear...or is it?

Most dental hygienist bring their own kids to where they work and clean their teeth. Because I work for a low income clinic (where we are unable to see people with insurance) I was legally not able to do this.

It made me a little sad I couldn't be the first one to polish Nathan's pearly whites but I figured it's probably for the best for him to get used to another hygienist and get the full experience of going in for a dental checkup.

This past Friday Luke, Nathan and I all headed to the pediatric dentist for the first time. Nathan was thrilled to see they had a huge play area.

After mastering the art of balancing a 11 month old on one leg and paperwork on the other- filling out said paperwork while trying to keep the baby grabbing the pen and permanently damaging any of his (or my) body parts---the hygienist finally came into the waiting area and called out "Nathan"

He looked at me with his excited but slightly anxious eyes and I said "that's you buddy!"

So we walked back into the operatory and chatted with the hygienist, Nicole, and Nathan got up in the chair and opened wide.

He did great. I was proud of him!

His teeth look perfect (besides an overbite) and no problems were found.

This is what he did when I said "show me your clean teeth!"

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Also on Friday Luke had a helmet appointment. I fully expected the specialist to say that we had another few months but after examining Luke and taking his age into account he said to schedule a 3 week follow up and then we'll schedule a final scan and then he'll be done!!

So maybe the helmet will be a thing of the past before his first birthday!

I'm so ready to have a baby who's head doesn't stink like dirty feet :)

And once his helmet is off his hair can start growing on the sides because he has a nice curly red mohawk going on.

I had the idea to have everyone who comes to his first bday party sign the helmet with a permanent marker and then it will be something I can keep.

So I can pull it out and show his prom date and use my squeaky mom voice to say "oooohhhh look how widdle his widdle head used to be!!!!!"

Heh.

And I'm totally not kidding.

My poor children.

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After the morning doctor appts we met my friend Dana at Chick fil A for some lunch and so she could watch Nathan for me while I took Luke to his next appt. If that wasn't enough- the other reason she came was to GIVE us a ton of little people toys and a fisher price picnic table. Yanno- cuz she's awesome n stuff.

After we ate I left Dana in the play area full of screaming kids. On the way out I gave her the "thanks so much for doing this and omg it's so loud in here-goodluck!" look and Luke and I left for the final doctor appt of the day. The ENT.

The medical assistant asked me how many ear infections Luke had had and honestly I had lost count. I'm thinking 5? The hearing test was first and surprisingly he scored within his age group!

The ENT came in the examine room and we talked a short bit. I already knew we were ready for tubes and since we had been through the process with Nathan there wasn't too much he needed to discuss.

And then when the visit was almost over- I give in to an internal "should I or shouldn't I?" mental conflict and say while turning red "Doctor, can I ask you a weird question?"

Of course he says "yes" because I think curiousity would keep anyone from saying "no" to that.

And before I know it I'm practically word "vomitting" this following paragraph. Oh dear. I.am.a.dork.

"Well...I had been debating if I should ask you this or not and I'm just gonna ask and I know you are going to think I'm crazy or something. I can...uhhh... voluntarily make this thunder noise in my ears. I've been able to do it since I was a kid and I used to do it during a nightmare and it would wake me up (why in the world did I have to include that much detail) It sounds like rolling thunder. It's completely voluntary. It only does it when I make it happen."

...pause...blink...blink...

And he says "Hmph"

I say "um... Do you want to look in my ear and see what happens when I make the sound?" and now that I have his curiousity he says he does.

He looks and I do it. He steps back and says "Yeah you can make your ear drum vibrate. I wonder if you have somehow found a way to voluntarily control the stapedius muscle (which he then explains) Maybe you did it once as a child and then over time figured out how to do it more and more."

I ask if it's common and he says somewhat impressed "No, actually I've never seen that before" Not knowing what to say I look at Luke and say "see, told ya your mommy is weird."

I felt validated for all the times my childhood friends said I had to be making it up when I told them I could make a thunder noise in my head (which sounds crazy enough that it's surprising I did have friends!)

After we talked a bit more about scheduling Luke's tube surgery and his thoughts on water exposure afterwards he leaves the room and the medical assistant looks at me obviously amused. She says "that's neat- you have a party trick!" and I said "yeah a party trick only I can hear" heh.

When I told Marcus about the whole thing he says "I can do that too."

Well...

Hmph.

Then we teasingly wonder if maybe we're the only two people in the world who can voluntarily make their ear drum vibrate. We joke that maybe that's how we found each other in the first place. Our inner ears vibrate at the same frequency. We honed in on eachother!

But then I mention this at work and one of the dentist I work with says she can do it too!

So maybe this is common?

So tell me---can you make a rolling thunder noise in your ears? Have you ever heard of this before? If you can- did you ever use it for anything? Like me- I used it to tune people out when I was a kid (bad, I know) and used it to wake up from nightmares if I realized it was a dream.

C'mon- join my weirdness!

Anyone...?

Anybody at all....?

7 things I wish I never learned...

As I was walking back to work after lunch I was staring at the beautiful puffy white clouds. They were the type of clouds that were so perfect they didn't even look real.

It made me think about my childhood and how I used to think they were solid. As in- if you somehow got up there you could lay on them and bounce from one cloud to another.

And then I thought how much of a bummer it was when I learned that they are made of water vapor and if I did get up there I would just fall to the earth.

When I got back to work and began scraping tartar off of my patient's teeth (which is when I do my best "thinking" if I'm not talking to my patient) I started to recall other things that I learned growing up that somewhat dampened the childlike magic in how I perceived the world as a girl.

So here's the list that I came up with.

Here are 7 things I wished I never learned

(but for the sake of being a normal functioning adult in our society it's good that I did learn them)


1. Character Costumes

It was much more fun thinking the shockingly huge Mickey Mouse was indeed the infamous rodent himself instead of a sweaty guy in a costume that probably smells like a middle school locker room on the inside.


2. Honeymoon

A newly married couple literally flew to the moon following the ceremony. You didn't know that? Well- that's what I thought anyways. I remember pondering how the "honey" part was involved. Did they eat it? Did they swim in it? Did the make a honey slip n slide? I wasn't sure about that part but I truly believed in the outterspace postnuptial trip.


3. Santa Claus

Christmas was just much more exciting as a kid when I thought he was real. I believed for a long time because my dad once went as far as throwing pebbles on the roof in the middle of the night one Christmas Eve. Of course- Christmas is a time we celebrate the Savior's birth. However the world did seem a little dimmer after I figured out the truth about the jolly big guy.


4. The world is REALLY big. I mean- reeeallly big.

You mean you can't see Disney World from high up here on a fair ride in North Carolina?

My 3 year old self was SO convinced the factory I could see from a distance when I was on a swing ride at a fair was truly Disney World that my parents literally had to go drive by the factory to show me otherwise.

I guess I wouldn't stop talking about it and my stubborn self KNEW I was right.

I thought that from the whopping height of 30 feet I could see everything in the whole world.

When I saw that it was smoke columns and not Cinderella's castle I was crushed.


5. Summer

I thought summer lasted a whole year.

Like- we went to school for a year. And then had a year off.

My whole concept of time was completely altered when I understood that summer was just a few months.


6. Velcro

Or Bear-crow?

When I was in middle school a friend said "wait a minute Amanda- did you just say bear crow? It's Velcro!"

Up until then I thought it was pronounced bear-crow. Which made much more sense to me. The soft part stood for the bear and the scratchy part stood for the crow.

Pssh. Velcro. Who comes up with this stuff?

Bear crow makes much more sense.


(and the truth that devastated me the most and truly rocked my childhood world of make-believe)
7. Mr. Rogers

What?

Those are PUPPETS????

NNNOOOOO!!!!

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What truth crushed one of your childhood perceptions that you sorta wish you never learned?

pieces of my brain

Here's some randomness I need to get out of my head....some boring ramblings but I figured I better post something on this thing.

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Soooooo um yeah. I have like ten awesome (haha) blog posts half written. Anyone else like that? I really need to finish some of them.

I'm excited about a series on bfing I'll be blogging about. I think it will break down into maybe five separate posts.

I know. I know. That's a lot. But after nursing two babies and having dramatically different experiences- there is a lot to share! And I have a few preg friends who have asked which is why I wanted to do the posts. Plus I'm also a working momma so there is a lot about pumping at work that I've learned. There is SO MUCH that I wish I knew before my first nursing experience and if I can help someone else be more prepared than I definitely want to!

I'm wordy- obviously. And I know people don't have an hour to just sit and read a blog post (because even with my lack of comments- people do read this. promise. Er at least I think- anyone?). So I'm trying to figure out how to break down the bfing posts so it's not so long and yet keep the "meat" of the post intact. Or "milk" if you will. Ha. Haha.

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You mothers about to have two kids? Things are so different with the second one. You will love them a ton- but they will never get the life that your first had when they were an only child.

For instance. Reading before bedtime. I always used to read to Nathan before bed- sometimes even after he fell asleep on me.

Luke? I've read to him three times. EVER! And he's going on one! And one of those times included last night.

With Nathan we had this whole bedtime routine (bath, book, song, prayer, bed) With Luke? Bath, nurse, bed. I walk in his room, lay him in the crib and walk out. That's it. That's all I have time for in the chaos of preparing for the next day and getting food and bottles ready for daycare.

And usually one of the reasons I never read to him is because I'm usually like "oh no- it's 9:00- you need to be in bed!!!" and off to bed he goes while I feel bad that my baby isn't getting more sleep.

But last night I did sit and read to him. And it was one of the sweetest moments I've shared with him. He giggled. He looked at every page of that book and giggled. The sweetest sleepy giggle I have ever heard. It brought tears to my eyes and I told myself I HAVE to read to him more.

Plus I've heard stuff like that is good for their brains or something.

;)

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There are days I enjoy doing cloth diapering and days I sometimes wish we weren't. But for the most part I enjoy it and love all the money we are saving. Plus I had no idea that there are so many chemicals in disposable diapers. But then again there are chemicals in everything these days!

I thank my friend Amy for talking me into cloth diapering. And she did have to talk me into it because at first it wasn't even something I would consider- but now I'm glad we chose to. And if God chooses to bless us with another child someday they'll have free diapering too!

This all leads to a very important package that was delivered in the mail the other day.

A diaper sprayer.

"What the what?" you say?

It's basically like the sprayer you have attached to your kitchen sink. Except this is attached to the back of your toilet and clean water can be sprayed out.

It's for "cleaning off" the cloth diapers before you throw them in the container to later be washed. I don't know how I survived 10 months of cloth diapering without this thing. I kept holding out because they are expensive but now that I have one it was definitely worth it.

And an added bonus is the sprayer reaches the shower. So the day Marcus hooked it up I also cleaned my shower which took half the time with the sprayer's help. I think that was the first time I enjoyed cleaning the shower.

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Speaking of cleaning. I'm attempting a new cleaning method. A way of keeping track of what needs cleaned when- especially the things that need to be done once a month or every few months. It's a system of notecards and dividers. My goal is to spread out the chores in a way that nothing gets too terribly behind (it's been 3 yrs since I've cleaned the curtains in the kitchen- 3 years! I fear what I will find when I take them down!) Also- things are easier to clean the more you do it.

So far- so good. Although I'm known for getting super excited about organizing something or a new system to implement and sometimes they don't stick. So we'll see!

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Speaking of super excited. The other night I sat down to watch tv and pair all of the unpaired socks for every member in this family. I seriously was so excited. Not kidding. I ended up with maybe 30 pairs of socks for everyone and a bag of about 15 socks that never ever get paired but yet I can't bring myself to get rid of them because what if...?

How weird does this make me? A lot?

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For 3 years we have lived in our house. I think I'm slowly getting the anterior the way I want it. There are still things like light fixtures that I would like to trade out. And a new couch since our dog's claws have destroyed some of the sewed in cushions leaving me to have a blanket constantly on one side of the couch. But for the most part I hope I've made it quite homey.

But the outside of the house? We have a long way to go.

As of right now there is no landscaping. We ripped up the horrible landscaping that came with the house and killed the weeds that had over taken it. However my cousin is helping us with it and he has been understandably busy so for months we've had what I like to call a "dead rustic" theme in the front yard.

In the back yard we have an itty bitty concrete patio that we never use and have never got patio furniture for it. But the other night I took the dog out and thought how nice it would feel to sit out there in the cooler evening.

The next day at Meijer I saw a cute little patio table for $25! It's 40inches across with a steal frame and tempered glass. Marcus agreed it was a good deal so the following day we went back and got it. We didn't get chairs yet because we're looking for a good deal but I can't wait to set up a little sitting area and use our outdoor space more. Hopefully in a year or so we can get a fence so I don't have to worry about the boys running too far off or into the ditch at the back of our property.

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I hope everyone has a great fourth of July. Please be safe if you choose to do personal fireworks if you are not in an area banned from it. We lost our house to a fire when I was a little girl and I don't wish it on anyone. My heart goes out to those affected in Colorado. God is bigger than any force of nature but I know at the time losing all you own can be so devastating that it's hard to see past it. So please be safe and either choose not to do fireworks or go see them somewhere publicly where they have firemen present.

Happy 4th!