Winter break

Behold Caleb’s science project: a homemade wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of various aircraft. The fog machine feeds in on the left, flows over the aircraft in the observation chamber (covered by a camera), and is sucked out by the fan on the right.

Partially to help fend off the February blues, but mostly because our online academy does it, we took a week off from school last week. They kind of do two spring breaks, which don’t in any way line up with any real school around here, which is probably why they call Christmas “holiday break” and February “winter break,” and only the one in April (right before school is done for the year) “spring break.”

The interior view.

Buck and his best friend, the chenille pillow in the foreground. If we leave it on the ground, Buck grooms it incessantly.

Anyhow, we had winter break.

Liz taking advantage of Ada’s professional services for free. She (Ada) now works as a math tutor for college students at the community college.

My expectations of blissful leisure were modest since I knew we had a slew of appointments—one for each of the five of us in the first two days of break.

The good news for Lizzy was that the orthodontist finally declared her done with Invisalign; she’ll get the nubbies off and scan for her retainer in a couple weeks. Caleb’s just starting with Invisalign; he got a new rubber band that hooks to three different teeth, which he was pleased to discover makes a noise “like a musical instrument” when he pings it. 

His sisters love that.

After that I took Caleb to buy new soccer cleats since his feet are growing like an inch a day. He’s supposed to start that season in the next couple of weeks. 

And I had a second chiropractor appointment in as many weeks, in my epic quest to fix my complaining body. At the first appointment, he touched my shoulder and months of pain completely vanished. So that was definitely worthwhile. But after a second appointment, and all the other stuff I’m trying, my hip feels better enough. Better enough, I tell you! So when he had me make three (!) more appointments with the home assignment of doing the given stretches 70 (!!) times a day in the meantime, I went home and put my metaphorical foot down.

I cancelled it all: all the remaining counterstrain appointments, and all the remaining chiro appointments. 

And I did it online so I won’t lose face when I suddenly seize up in pain next week and reschedule.

#tbt - that time we had to fix Caleb’s head

 

Looking back through old February photos and found an appropriately cynical meme of Caleb for this dreary time of year.

rly?

At the tender age of three months, Caleb’s misshapen head, which I had hoped was only apparent to me, garnered the attention of the pediatrician such that he ordered a CT scan to check for a rare but serious condition wherein the baby’s skull plates don’t fuse together and their brain grows through the cracks, leading to asymmetrical bulging of the head.

If he had had that, it would require surgery on my baby to put his brain back inside [a technical explanation].

I hadn’t been so scared since Ada spent a day at the specialist hospital as a toddler getting tested for horrible things, following a series of struggling-to-breathe-induced hospitalizations.

earhole!

Caleb did not have that.

Instead, he had the much more common plagiocephaly, aka flat head syndrome. Babies get it from lying on their head in one position too long (because their skulls haven’t hardened yet). The flat spot is often smack in the back of the head, but Caleb’s was on one side, resulting in a really weird asymmetrical shape, even causing one eye to bulge more than the other. 

Come to find out, poor little guy had torticollis—not tortellini, which is delicious, but a stiff neck so that he could only turn his head one way, likely caused by being half strangled by an excessively tangled umbilical cord pre-birth. Therefore he could only lay his head on one side.

Treatment involved infant physical therapy: essentially a series of stretching exercises that made him cry pitifully and caused all three of his siblings to also cry and flee the room, wailing, “Stop hurting him, Mommy!”

So that was a real picnic.

It also required him to get electronically fitted for a corrective helmet, to be worn 23 hours a day.

We only removed it at bathtime, when Jason would wash the baby and I would scrub the sweaty inside of the helmet. Every time we removed it his short little baby arms flew to his head and he would scratch, scratch, scratch. And every time we went to put it back on, he would do ‘evasive maneuvers,’ wagging his little head side to side so we had to catch him and cram the thing back on. It didn’t hurt him—it wasn’t squeezing him; I think it was just hot and sweaty and itchy.

We also had to make the hour-plus drive to the orthotist every week to have the inside of the helmet gradually hollowed out more and more to allow his growing head to fill in evenly. And he also got measured, so we could see his stats improve each time. 

If you draw an imaginary X on the top of the head, from the sides of the forehead to each side of the back of the crown, and then measure each line of the X, he started with almost two centimeters of difference between the two lines. And now, he’s more symmetrical than you or I or any average-headed person on the street.

Besides making his head grow right, the helmet did have the one other benefit of protecting his little baby head from any bumps and bruises as he learned to crawl—although he had to relearn some habits once he got the helmet off around eleven months old, like you can’t just conk your head into things without consequence. But more importantly, it protected him from dear big sister Lizzy, who at the age of two and a half enjoyed playing with him by dragging him around the house by his ankles. The plastic coating on the helmet really made him glide along nicely. After a while she’d get bored and wander off, and leave him in a corner somewhere and I’d have to search to find my non-locomoting baby, because by then she’d forgotten where she dragged him.

So this February is way better than February 2013. Caleb and Lizzy are both putting their heads to better use, and my kids are only accusing me of child abuse when I make them do their Latin and grammar. And hardly anybody gets dragged around by their ankles anymore.

What’s saving my life

Today’s post is inspired by Modern Mrs. Darcy’s practice of posting every midpoint of winter a contemplation of not What’s killing me right now, but What’s saving my life right now?

What’s killing me is easy, right? Even if life circumstances are smooth sailing, it’s still the season. The cold is killing me. The dreary days, the early sundowns. Etc, etc.

Photo by Michael Niessl on Unsplash

So what is saving my life this Groundhog Day?

Is it hot, comforting cups of coffee I look forward to every midday to perk me up?

Photo by Fahmi Fakhrudin on Unsplash

Is it a weekend getaway with just me and Jason I’m looking forward to in a few weeks?

Is it the fact that we traveled to Costa Rica over New Year’s, thereby psychologically extending Christmastime by several weeks into January?

Is it that all of my children are walking with the Lord? This certainly gives me deep, deep measures of peace, relief, joy, and gratefulness.

Is it having friends that I enjoy going out for a meal with, or just texting all day about ridiculous things that make me laugh?

Yes, of course, all those things are kind of saving my life.

But the thing that springs to the top of my mind as saving my life is an absence of much reduced pain.

I haven’t been taking the prescription painkiller since we got back from Costa Rica, but I’m not in constant pain anymore.

Why, you ask?

Is it the fascial counterstrain sessions I’ve been having that have yet to produce a dramatic miracle moment? Is it the five pounds I’ve dropped this month? Is it cutting out sugar? Is it the collagen smoothies I’m drinking? The magnesium supplements? Yoga? Some enigmatic combination thereof? Or is it just that I haven’t gone running for a couple of months?

photo from Unsplash

It’d be nice to know, so I can keep reproducing the favorable conditions. But in the meantime, life is much better without pain…in fact, the relief feels like it’s just saving my life.