Allergies

Poor Rebecca seems to have my seasonal allergies. I've been suffering for a week now, and now Rebecca has the snotty nose disease. She doesn't seem to feel bad, isn't running a fever, or anything that would indicate anything more severe. She keeps running her tongue over the roof of her mouth, so I think the roof of her mouth is itching, which would be another indication of allergies. Poor kid. She's really good about letting you wipe her nose. In fact, she tips her head up and stretches her lip so that you can get it all for her. She does the same if you put Vaseline on her nose so it doesn't get raw. But the snot sucker is another story. She screams bloody murder. But I am loving the electronic snot sucker - so much faster and more efficient than the bulb syringes. The fact that it plays music is not fooling her though.

Another weekend over

My husband makes fun of me because I always blog that we had nothing exciting that went on during the weekend. Which is true. But this has to top the list of boring things that can happen on a weekend!

Friday was Ramy's day off, but we went our separate ways most of the day. Friday morning, Rebecca and I got up and went to her music class. Then we went to her trial class at Gymboree, and she loved it. It took her awhile to warm up, but then she had a blast. So we signed up. It is expensive, but actually less so than her music class when you consider all the free play times she can go and the fact that if you miss a class (for sickness, vacation, whatever), you can make it up another week. So I signed her up for 22 weeks (to get a better price). Then we stopped by Trader Joes and Rebecca fell asleep on ride home, then immediately woke up when we got in the house. Ramy still wasn't home - A high school classmate of his died last week, so Ramy went to his funeral on Friday morning. So I decided to get our money's worth, I'd take Rebecca back to Gymboree for free play time in the afternoon. The poor kid was so exhausted, she was falling asleep while playing, but she was having so much fun she didn't want to leave.

Now the exciting part. What did we do Friday night? A guy from Ramy's Knights of Columbus council came over to tell us about the insurance options we have by virtue of Ramy's being a Knight. I didn't know it, but the Knights of Columbus is the largest insurance organization in the world. Anyway, we were interested in having him tell us about their long term care insurance. Essentially, he is a financial planner who uses his talents as his own ministry, which is kind of interesting. They'll basically take your financial data, tell you how you're doing, and give you advice. And they'll talk to you about their life insurance and stuff, but luckily, no hard sell. So basically we learned that I'm worth way more alive than dead and that we need to insure my life (of course, we all know that I'm actually priceless). And we got the info we wanted on long-term care insurance and have decided that it is something we should go ahead and do, since it is relatively inexpensive now and will go up in the future. So that guy was here for about two hours, and then I cooked dinner at home, and we went to bed early.

Saturday, we got up pretty early, so Ramy could pull weeds in our backyard. I cooked breakfast, and then we took a family nap until about noon. Ramy and Rebecca vacuumed (see picture), and then we hung out at Costco and got some cheap pizza. For dinner, we used coupons to go to Chilis for free bacon cheeseburgers, and then we all hung out at home. This morning, we got up early and went to mass, came home, I made breakfast, and then we took another family nap. This afternoon, Ramy took Rebecca to see his dad, while I went to the grocery store. I baked a pineapple upside down cake in a cast iron skillet and then I made barbecue chicken pizza for dinner. That's it.

Tomorrow is Caesar Chavez Day, so Ramy's court is dark, even though he has to go to work. I have a meeting at LLU tomorrow afternoon, so Rebecca will be accompanying me to that and then we'll stop by Gymboree for free play time on the way home.

Homemade vanilla pudding

In an attempt to make sure Rebecca is getting enough calcium (since she abhors cow's milk), I have taken to making vanilla pudding for her. Because the packaged mixes have so incredibly much sugar and sodium, it's all homemade for her. I've perfected the recipe, and I have to say - I'll never go back to a pudding mix!

1/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
1/8 tsp. salt
2 cups whole milk
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1 Tbsp. butter
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

In a small saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Add in milk; cook and stir over medium heat until thickened. Reduce heat and continue cooking and stirring for 2 more minutes. Temper the egg yolks (stir in a small amount of hot milk filling into egg yolk, stir and return all of egg mixture to pan), stirring constantly. Bring to a gentle boil, cook and stir one minute longer. Remove from heat. Add in butter, vanilla extract, and ground nutmeg. Cool in pan 15 minute, stirring every 5 minutes. Transfer to serving dishes, cover and refrigerate. May be served slightly warm or cold. Refrigerate leftovers.

Where, oh where, is my client?

It is so annoying when clients no-show on me. Especially when I have had to turn away other clients because I had no openings or make some clients go to every other week because I'm booked solid. If you're not going to come, then at least let someone who is actually invested in therapy have your spot and don't waste my time (and my hours for licensure) sitting around waiting for you. Arghhh. It especially annoys me when I end up waiting for someone when I could have gone home early. Anyway...

Tomorrow is Ramy's 9/80 day. Yay! Rebecca and I have music class (the last one for this session) in the morning, and then at noon, we are going to try out Gymboree. If she likes it, then we'll sign her up for that. They also have music classes, so we may end up signing her up for their music class rather than the Kids Love Music series again. We'll see. Tomorrow afternoon one of the people from Knights of Columbus is coming over to talk to Ramy about something. In between, I imagine we'll be cleaning up the house and unpacking from our trip...finally. Other than that, no real plans for the weekend. I have a really complicated neuropsych case that I'm working on and I need to do some research on it, but whether or not that will happen over the weekend is up in the air (likely not).

Spring is here!

The one nice thing about being back in California is that the weather is great! We came home to 75 degrees and sunshine! Meanwhile, my mom ran through a snow shower after taking us to the airport in Nashville yesterday.

We had a great Easter visit overall. Unfortunately, we got struck by a dreadful stomach virus that knocked us all out of commission for several days. But we seem to have all survived it, although poor Rebecca lost weight because of it. We enjoyed being with my mom, and I got a fix of my girlfriends (but can you ever have enough time with your girlfriends?), and we got to see Brian and Stephanie to celebrate Brian's birthday. We went to the Maundy Thursday Tenebrae service at my mom's church and also the Easter Egg hunt there. And of course there were the requisite trips to Cracker Barrel and shopping.

My mom made Rebecca's gorgeous Easter dress. She looked so beautiful in it! Aunt Margaret bought her a silk dupioni purse to go with it. Rebecca fell in love with the purse and immediately threw it over her arm and tried to put it on her shoulder! A girl knows by instinct how to carry a purse! Rebecca is walking and talking more and more every day. She is such a mimic. She is also very attached to her Grammy and I was afraid we were going to have a meltdown at the airport just as soon as we arrived, because Rebecca wanted no one but her Grammy to carry her. Grammy doesn't seem to mind, even though Rebecca looks like a little spider monkey that has attached herself to her.

So now we're back in California and back at work. The dogs seem to have barely noticed we were gone, and Rebecca was happy to see Nanny Rebecca this morning. I'm starting testing on a really complicated neuropsychological testing case this week, and I'm also applying for a neuropsychological assessment training position at a rehabilitation hospital for next year. So I may be interviewing for that in the next week or two, if it is the hours that I want. Still no word about Ramy's transfer, but he doesn't have any trials looming, so I think he is pretty content to sit tight until it comes through.

Happy Easter!

I haven't blogged while we've been in Tennessee, but I hope all of you had a blessed Easter! I've uploaded some of the recent pics of Rebecca we had done. We fly back to Cali tomorrow and I'll do a big update after we're home and settled in.

Houston, we have a walker!

Friday afternoon, Rebecca accidentally took a few steps without holding on and then realized what she was doing and decided it seemed like a good idea. So now she's a walker. And a darn good one too! She has great balance, although she walks kind of stiff-kneed. When she decides it is taking too long though, she drops back to the floor and crawls wherever she wants to go.

Spring Forward!

Hard to believe it is already March and that the time change is this weekend! This week went by really quickly. Nanny Rebecca wasn't allowed to come back to work, so we did the child care shuffle this week. We're praying she will be back with us next week. So I was home with Rebecca on Tuesday, Ramy took off on Wednesday. Actually, it was probably good, because she came down with a little cold and was pretty miserable on Tuesday, but by yesterday, she felt fine but just had a lot of snot. Thank goodness we have the electronic snot sucker, instead of just the bulb syringe. Although she still screams bloody murder and I'm sure the neighbors have contemplated calling CPS on me, at least it gets it all out and pretty quickly. It's still disgusting though, I have to admit. I look forward to the time when she can blow her own nose!

Rebecca got a care package from Grammy this week, with some new Easter outfits in it. My mom is also busy sewing Rebecca's Easter dress.

I got asked to take a complicated neuropsychological testing case this week to do a full battery on a 9 year old girl who was born with transposed heart valves and was oxygen deprived at birth. My job will be to determine the true nature of her deficits, the extent of those deficits, whether or not any recovery will be possible, and make recommendations for her care and education. This is going to be a heartbreaker of a case, and I can already tell that I'm probably going to have to deliver some very bad news to her family, who thinks she is just slow and has trouble concentrating.

On the up side though, I dismissed a client last night that I've seen weekly since September. WHen she came in, she was severely depressed, and now she has the world by the tail again. It is definitely cases like that that make me love what I do. I also got asked to develop a Parenting group at Chaffey, so that is going to be pretty interesting.

This morning, Rebecca and I went to her music class. She looooooovvvvvves the class. She was singing aloud, following the instructions about when to bang on the floor/clap her hands/hit the sticks together, and generally smiling and laughing and yelling, "Yay!". She enjoyed playing with a little boy named Nathan also.

This is going to be a busy weekend - we have to get ready to go to Tennessee, and I have to take two finals next week and have a paper due on Tuesday afternoon that I've done almost nothing on. Plus, I think it is going to be a nice weekend, weather-wise, so I'm sure we'll be at the park swinging and pushing Rebecca in her car a lot too. Oh yeah, I forgot that I volunteered to help my niece Jessica make tea cakes - she is doing a project for school about a state, and she chose Tennessee (it's the only state other than California she knows someone from, much less visited) and she has to bring a treat that represents the state. So we're making Tennessee tea cakes (because they freeze well, and her presentation is when I'll be gone to Tennessee).