Bitty: Mom, why don’t they want old people at this park?
Me: Er, I’m sure they don’t mind having older people here.
Bitty: But there’s a sign! It says No Old People.
Me: Where did you see this? How do you know it’s for old people?
Bitty: Because the guy in the picture is holding a cane…
{I’ll let you decide: No Hiking Sign or No Old People Sign ; }
We currently have our tent set up in the backyard and I’m becoming concerned that it may be there for a really long time.
The first night out, the BLT camped out together. Same thing the next night. I snuck out a few times to listen to them and could hear T Bub giving play-by-play of Doctor Who episodes. I guess those are the new ‘campfire stories’, and the girls were thoroughly engrossed, only asking questions every few minutes:
“Wait, why didn’t the Doctor just use the sonic screwdriver to open the door?”
“Because it doesn’t work on wood.”
Of course.
Now however, the kids are asking for sleep overs in the tent. They’ve been trying to work out a schedule of who can sleep in it on what nights and so forth. Which is great, but for one exception: Bitty. At six, Bitty has yet to have her first sleep over and I sure as heck am not having it in a tent. A six year old sleep over sounds like a whole lot of trouble, and a six year old sleep over IN A TENT sounds like a nightmare.
Here’s what I imagine a sleep over involving six years olds to be*:
*this may not be a realistic representation of two six year olds having a sleep over, but what do I know.
So, I came up with a solution - I would sleep out in the tent with her. She wasn’t exactly jumping up and down in excitement at this news and frankly, I wasn’t all that excited either. While I love camping, I realize the part I love the most is the part where we go somewhere; sleeping in my backyard on a blowup bed is not my idea of a jolly good time.
Side Note: My use of the words ‘jolly good time’ show I’ve been spending too much time watching the London Olympics.
Thankfully for me, a thunderstorm blew in, the siren went off, and at midnight, I dragged Bitty back in the house where we could both sleep in our own beds. All was right with the world until Lovely L invited another friend to sleep over and we started this whole process all over again.
“WHY CAN’T I HAVE A SLEEPOVER IN THE TENT?”
*sigh* I guess I’ll be sleeping in the tent again ; )
Bitty is doing pretty well with Simon* and even reminds me to put it back on her in the morning.
*the heart monitor. Yes, she named it.
{Bitty & Simon}
She does come straight home and try to take it off, but she’s supposed to wear it until bedtime; it only takes a little bit of convincing (read: candy) to get her to snap it back on. The little stickies that hold the electrodes onto her chest irritate her skin and leave little red circles. I know that’s what’s bothering her about wearing it so I let her keep it off last weekend. (Bad parent, I know…)
Funny story: I took Bitty to the birthday party of a friend from school last Saturday. When the other little girls at the party saw her, they yelled ‘Bionic Bitty!’ (Okay, they did not yell Bitty; they yelled her real name. No, Bitty is not her real name ; ) Calling her Bionic B--- is how we convinced her that wearing this monitor would be cool – I guess it worked.
Anywho, here’s the information that I currently have: so far the monitor has only caught what the lady at the U* called ‘sinus tachycardia’, which I think is just a fancy name for ‘elevated heart rate’.
*that’s local speak for the University of Minnesota. Bitty is being seen at their pediatric cardiology specialists office.
A normal ‘resting’ heart rate for a child her age is around 75-115. When Bitty is pushing the button on the monitor, it’s catching a heart rate of 150 to 160. Sometimes. Because other times, it’s only reading 102 and I think she just wants to go sit in Nurse A’s office. Because Bitty thinks Nurse A is the bomb diggity and she has a white board in there that Bitty draws pretty pictures on.
The way it was explained to me is that the cardiologist is looking for a heart rate above 200; that is what they described as SVT. I don’t think they’ve caught anything that high on the monitor, although we’ll have to address why she’s having a resting rate of 150-160 at some point in this process.
{Mom! Take my picture like this!}
That’s really all the information I have right now. We will meet with her Dr. soon to discuss the results of monitor and to see what we do next…
Bitty is dealing pretty well with the event monitor that she has to wear. She’s only required to wear it while she’s awake, although the other night it was beating so quickly that it woke her up; I groggily awoke to a high pitched gurgling/whimpering noise. I almost took out my nightstand in my frantic attempt to get to her, then scooped her up and held her until she fell back asleep. It took me a long time to work up to leaving her room, but I needed to go downstairs and tell MC what had happened.
Thankfully though, that doesn’t seem to be the norm.
{Getting the monitor}
She cried when I asked her to attach the leads (the wires that connect to the monitor) to the electrodes stuck on her chest this morning though. So far we haven’t caught an event, due to the fact that most of the time it’s almost impossible for the adults to tell when it’s happening. She definitely knows, but she’s so busy that she doesn’t take the time to tell us, or even to push the button on the monitor herself. We only find out later that day, when we’re asking the questions about ‘crazy heart’ (her words) that she realizes she forgot to tell someone.
But back to the subject at hand: How did we wind up with a six year old wearing a heart monitor?
We were packing for our spring break trip down to Arizona and I realized Bitty had been a little under the weather. Runny nose, tired and a tummy ache, but no fever or vomiting. I packed her off to school and realized that if she did have something more than a cold and we had to take her to an urgent care down south, our insurance would blast us with some ridiculous ‘out of range’ fee. So, in the interest of her health and our financial security, I made an appointment to check for what I thought could possibly be strep.
The nurse did the quick strep test and then the Dr. came in to check her over. He went to listen to her lungs and immediately sat back, looked at me and said, ‘so, how long has that been going on?’
It was when Bitty answered and said, ‘Oh that happens all the time!’, that I sheepishly had to admit that I had felt it once before. I left the pediatrician’s with a script for an antibiotic (the strep test was positive) and instructions to get an EKG.
Side note: why do I most often see the abbreviation as EKG, when the test is an electrocardiogram? Granted EKG is easier to say than ECG, which sounds like you’re sneezing if said too quickly…
So right now, we sit in a kind of holding pattern while we wait to figure out what’s going on. Is this SVT? Will it go away on its own? I don’t have any answers right now, and that is more frustrating than anything; some kind of diagnosis would as least lead to some kind of known action on our part, instead of this standing around feeling useless, and sometimes, helpless.
Philippians 4:6
Bitty is being tested for SVT, or supraventricular tachycardia. What we know is that she is experiencing an extremely rapid heart rate that seems to have no immediate (external) cause. The good news is that it really doesn’t seem to bother her, although occasionally it makes her dizzy* enough that she needs to sit down.
*When the heart is beating that quickly, it’s not pumping oxygenated blood effectively throughout the body. The dizziness is a result of that brief lack of oxygen. Think of the feeling you get when you’re blowing up a balloon; it’s like that.
She was fitted with an ‘Event Monitor’ yesterday; it will record an episode when she pushes a button. The monitor consists of two sticky pads that attach on either side of her chest and the monitor itself – a small round piece of plastic with two buttons – one to record an ‘event’ (the rapid heart rate), and one to send the information at the end of the day. I have a feeling that the company that receives this info is going to get pretty irate at us pretty fast, as Bitty seems to press the send button every time she plays.
It’s hard to look at this kid and say there’s anything wrong; she looks perfectly happy:
Well, I take that back. She is pretty much fed up with the monitor already; it is impeding her play time and that’s important when you’re six.
The plan is for her to wear the monitor for 30 days in the hopes of catching the rapid heart rate. However, there’s a chance that if she has quite a few episodes sooner than that, she won’t have to continue to wear it the full 30 days. So… if it’s going to happen, we’re hoping for sooner rather than later; she keeps begging for me to take it off of her, and I don’t know what to say to convince her to keep it on without scaring her. Right now I’m sticking with, ‘you NEED to keep it on’ and some, ‘because I said so’.
That’s all I’ve got for now – thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers.
Philippians 4:6
I am supposed to be cleaning all the junk that’s lying around our house, leftovers from our recent trip to Arizona. But nothing is done and I’m still in my pajamas at 11 am.
{I spent an hour last night picking out Bitty’s outfit for today}
As long as I was pretending to be some expert, easily spouting out medical terminology and assuring everyone that this thing is really nothing, just a little thing to get mended up… I was fine.
{It seemed incredibly important to me that she look her absolute cutest for this appointment}
But yesterday, I realized how scared I was. When she came to me, told me ‘it’s happening again’, and I picked her up and felt the frantic beating of her heart… I wanted to hold her close and squeeze her and never let go… but I set her down and told her to go rest until it stopped.
{I tore apart all her bins until I found the matching hair bow}
Because I can feel it when I’m holding her. And it feels like it’s beating out of her chest. And that… makes it very, very real. And suddenly, I am selfishly wishing this wasn’t happening to her and that I didn’t have to be so worried.
Philippians 4:6
MC and I took the BLT to see We Bought A Zoo awhile back. In one of the first scenes, Matt Damon’s character is talking to his son.
Matt Damon To Son: You got an F! An F!!!
Bitty: Why is his dad mad that he got an F?
Me: It’s not a good thing. It’s the worst grade you can get.
Bitty: OH! But mom, I wanted an F. I thought it meant Fabulous!
Me: And what about now?
Bitty: No, I think I will stick with not being fabulous then.
: D
{The tooth fairy gave her two dollars for her very first lost tooth!}
Bitty loves many things. Chief among those are Legos, the Wii, and my phone. The reason she loves my phone?
The games, of course.*
*I curse the day I downloaded Dumb-o-meter, but that’s another story.
A month or so ago, while playing Angry Birds on my phone, Bitty remarked that she would love to have an Angry Birds birthday party. Since I often forget things, I made a note to myself.
A literal note, written on a pad of paper next to my computer.
Some days later, I saw a note next to my computer that simply read, 'Angry Birds’, wondered what the heck that was all about, and threw it away.
So it was not surprising that about two weeks before Bitty’s birthday, MC asked if I had anything planned. ACK! I quickly ran downstairs to the blog cave* and using my My Memories Suite, I made this:
*my unfinished basement. It’s dark and damp, so it qualifies for cave status. Also, there are bugs down here.
{Angry Birds Birthday Invitation}
About a week later, MC asked who Bitty invited and if I had sent the invites out. I frantically ran downstairs and quickly uploaded the invite to Facebook. I tagged all the appropriate parents with a note that the invitation was for their kid and not them and then promptly forgot all about it.
Until 4 p.m. the day before the party. When M.C. asked me what my plan was.
PLAN?!? What plan???
I had been collecting ideas on Pinterest, so I looked over what I had:
Hmm, not exactly a plethora of ideas. So MC and I headed to the party store to see what they had available in the Angry Birds section.
Note: the party store does not carry Angry Birds merchandise.
Undeterred, we searched out items that we could use for the party. I figured I could draw faces onto balloons, so we picked out a red and a green Mylar balloon:
Here’s something I didn’t know about Mylar balloons: If you use a Sharpie to try and draw on them, the color comes off the balloon and the Sharpie quits working. By the time I ruined my fourth and last Sharpie, I had only drawn the pig and part of the red Angry Bird.
I used paint to color in the eyes and beak and then moved on to other things: drawing the yellow Angry Bird onto the yellow cups.
{Lovely L let me use her black Sharpie to draw the faces on}
It was at this point that I realized I should have just printed out yellow Angry Bird faces and glued them onto the cups. Same with the goodie bags.
Instead, with only an hour before the party, I quickly drew a template of the eyes and beak and had Lovely L and her friends cut and paste them onto the red bags.
{I made a simple task very difficult}
The day before the party, I had sent Lovely L and her friend E out into the neighborhood in search of pinecones. Thankfully, Minnesota is not lacking in coniferous forests, and they found plenty. We used these to make birdfeeders by having the kids slather peanut butter on the pinecone, then rolling it in birdseed.*
*It would probably be a good idea to check with parents about any peanut allergies. In all seriousness, you do not want that kind of action to go down at your kids birthday party. It would be a party to remember for all the wrong reasons. Much like the time all the guests at my little brothers’ birthday party got ringworm. But worse.
We had also bought green plates at the party store for the kids to make the green pig masks I found on Pinterest.
{The masks were a hit}
After the masks were finished, the kids were ready for cake.
Side note: MC is the creative genius and baker behind the cakes. I just decorate.
{His ideas, my artwork}
Although I did those cakes by hand (not sure if that’s the correct term…) I did learn an awesome trick from Marie at Celebration Generation that would make it easy for just about anyone to decorate a cake like that. I’m thinking I’ll write another post and share. Someday. (Not because I don’t want to share… I’m just a huge procrastinator.) ; )
Update: I did it! I wrote the cake post – so you can decorate an Angry Birds cake and it will look like a professional did it! And you won’t have to spend fifty bucks!*
*gross exaggeration of actual cake costs
Bitty loved everything about her party and I think all the kids had a great time. I’d say that next time, I’ll have everything organized and ready to go far before party time. But the truth?
Probably not. ; )
P. S. Want your own My Memories Suite? Use this code: STMMMS26948 and save ten bucks!
To the most amazing first grader I know (yes, I am biased)
You make me smile everyday (how can I not smile - you always have a smile on your face)
I can’t believe you’re going to be six (but you’ll always be my baby)
Love always,
Mom
As a blogger, there are some days I wonder if anyone out there is reading what I write. And there are some days I feel like I’m talking to myself. Without feedback (comments) I have no idea if my writing is good, bad or just okay or even if anyone cares.
But..
I know someone who thinks I’m doing a smash-up job:
Okay, maybe that was not quite the affirmation that I was looking for. But it did make me smile and totally brightened my day.
I know when I’m feeling bad, I like to mow the grass… something about the smell of fresh cut grass and the roar of the mower blocks out any bad thoughts…
What things do you do when you’re in a funk? Is there someone you talk to or maybe something you do (like baking or scrapbooking)?
