Lucky Number Seven

Today is my Anniversary!  Seven wonderful years ago we were married.  We have moved three times, bought our first home, and have a beautiful daughter to enjoy every day.  Anny is my best friend and I can not imagine life without her. 

Happy Anniversary Anny!  I love you!

Operation Dinner Out

Finally finding time to blog this week. I'm working on several posts in my head, but have not had any extra time to sit and write. I'm going to start with a story about our first dinner out in a long, long time without Abby!

Last Friday night the Maryland State Teachers Association honored the 302 teachers from across the state that achieved Certification through the National Board for Teaching Standards.  Yes, there are lots of acrynoms that could be used, and they will be from here on out!  The dinner was at the Marriott Waterfront in Annapolis, Maryland.  I don't think I've ever been to that part of town, which is humorous just a bit since I've lived here for like 20 years and it's the state capital!

The dinner out process started about two months ago when Anny received an invitation to the dinner.  It was explicitly clear that I was not invited, and honestly that rubbed us both wrong.  I wrote, on Anny's behalf, and email to the contact and said that she respectfully declined the invitation if her significant other was not able to attend.  They said that they were dealing with space issues and had to wait to see how many teachers would be there before they could release seats to guests.  Obviously, they let me go or there would be no more story at this point!


Let me tell you, it's a ton of work for a teacher to achieve this certification and about 50% fail on their first attemps.  Anny went through the process twice, once she was pregnant and the second time we had an infant/early-toddler on our hands.  Every time that she need to work on her projects, I got the extra house and child rearing stuff.  I earned a spot at that table, as did every other significant other in the room.

My aunt Pam came over to watch Abby.  This was a big thing for us.  We have done two lunches out, and one evening when Anny and I each had meetings at different locations.  The evening babysitting was not pleasant for anyone involved, but it was more than a year ago so we were a bit more confident.  We left an extremely thorough "Abby's Normal Evening" list for Pam to use.  I'll probably post that later today or tomorrow on Abby's blog.

We got to the hotel almost exactly on time and got our nametags and drink tickets.  The thing is that we don't go out, obviously, so we had absolutely no idea what the tickets were for and ended up paying cash for Anny's first glass of wine.  No big deal, but felt pretty dumb about it later when someone pointed it out.  We were the first people from Howard County and found the table with the county name on it, along with Wicomico County's two teachers.  We found out, after setting ourselves up, that there was another full table of HoCo teachers.  It was not a big deal since Anny knew only one of them very well, and he ended up at our table with his wife.

They kicked off with speeches that included the MSTA president as well as the Lt Governor of Maryland.  It hit me at that point that these are people with their hands on the stimulus money that we hear about on the TV every day.  It's just so intangible in my head, but these people know it to be real, honest-to-goodness money.  It was the first time that we had heard that Maryland is the Number 1 state as far as education goes in the country according to Education Week.  That's pretty cool.  (See how your state stacks up HERE.)

Dinner was nice, especially considering it was buffet style!  They had four tables of meat, two (very rare) roast beef and two of turkey.  They had two tables of pasta with veggies, and bread.  It was surprising how quickly the lines seemed to move, but I realized that these are teachers, and they spend part of their day herding children through cafeteria lines.  They are pro's, so to speak!

After dinner they had each county line up to receive a certificate from the MSTA and a very cool plaque for their desk.  One county had only one recipient, and two counties had well over 25.  Anny's county had 13 total, and I think that about 9 of them were there.  This was a very, very long process and so we got to talking with our table mates and had a great time chatting.

We got home much earlier than we thought, which was kind of nice.  Pam offered to watch Abby again any time, of course, and that she was an angel.  She only asked about us twice, which is no more than when only one of us is home and the other is out.

Anny's certification lasts for ten years, so I don't think I can pull off a nice, fancy dinner again for a while.  Maybe she can work with next years participants and get an invite that way...  I should get to work on that right now!

Play Kitchen Build

It's finally here - the blog post about Abby's new play kitchen!

I was inspired by a blog post I found HERE that did something similar, but I kept parts of their idea and added some of my own.  As an added bonus, my brothers' scroll saw is in storage, so I got to buy myself a new one!

I started with the Ikea RAST end table.  At $15 it was probably cheaper than if I went out and got nicely finished wood and cut it myself, plus it was a great, square starting point.  (Cost so far: $15)

Then I cut a hole out to put in a metal bowl from our kitchen.  We have too many bowls as it is, so giving this one to the project made sense to us.  I added a piece across the middle to support any weight Abby might apply, as well as to divide the box in half - one is the "oven" and the other side is currently non-purposed.  This is also the point that I had to buy a new scroll saw, which was both fun and awesome at the same time!  (Cost so far: $15 for project, $29.99 for saw)



The tricky part, and the part that required the most thinking, was the faucet.  I scoured Ebay and Craigslist for a real kitchen or bathroom faucet, new or used, for several days before giving up.  I looked at prices in stores, but the cheapest was about $30.  I could not justify that in my head.  I decided to make something out of PVC pipe, and I think it turned out well.  It's two pieces, a p-trap and a part that fits into the p-trap.  I had to cut the bottom piece to get it into the tight space, but that was easy.  The two pieces cost me a total of $3.  (Cost so far: $18)



I had a random piece of nice, finished wood laying around the house that is only about 1/4 of an inch off of fitting perfectly with the table, so I used it.  I'm not much on perfection - it gives me nothing to complain about later if there are no flaws!  We think the wood was a shelf to an old entertainment center.  Cost: free.  (Cost so far: $18)



Since I have about a dozen mouse pads at my office that do not get used (they come with new computers, and we've gotten ten new ones in the last four years) I decided to put them to use in my project.  I cut circles out of the mouse pads to make burners.  They are not attached for two reasons - we might paint it so they would be in the way, and I don't know how we would attach them properly.  Oh well.
I added stove top knobs that are actually casters from tables at my office that were on their way to the trash.  They were screwed into a 1x2 across the top at the same time that I put a kickplate (1x4) on the bottom to keep toys from sliding under the kitchen.  (Cost so far: $18)



I added an oven door and Abby immediately knew what the whole project was!  You will notice that the knobs here are pink - it's because the casters from the previous picture were too large with the door on the oven - it would not open!  I ran out to Target and picked up some dresser knobs for $5.  Ended up at Ikea the next day and could have gotten better looking knobs for less money, but what's done is done.  (Cost so far: $23)



And that's the whole thing!  If we had bought a wooden play kitchen in a store we would have spent at least $125, and the cost for one can go up to numbers that I'm too embarassed to type!  I spent $23 and about four total hours on this project by using mostly scrap wood from around the house.  You can also check with your local hardware store (or Ikea!) for scrap wood to save on the cost.

Here's Abby enjoying her newest toy!

Wordless Wednesday

Finally!
Originally uploaded by armonroe
Tomorrow I will be posting the steps to build this play kitchen - stay tuned!

You can see more Wordless Wednesday entries here: www.wordlesswednesday.com.

A Practice Weekend

My sister Michelle came to visit this weekend.  She is in her third year of college and is looking for work and an internship up here for the summer, and will be living with us for a few months!  We're really looking forward to having company in our massive house, to be completely honest!  It is going to give me an excuse to rearrange the clutter that is our basement, and means I will probably get some good air hockey time in!

While on one hand we are excited, there is going to be one big issue to work through - dieting.

Anny's medically suggested diet is low sugar, low carb and high protein.
My medically required diet is low potassium, medium protein.  (Sugar is fine, thankyouverymuch!)
Michelle's medically required diet is, newly, gluten-free.  And she eats only four vegetables, but we've agreed to work on that.  :o)

Jack Sprat only had his wife to deal with!

Anny's first intentionally-gluten-free try was rice flour pancakes on Sunday.  I have heard they were exactly like regular pancakes, but didn't have any because I had eaten already when she announced her venture.  Oh well, I'll get some next time.

Michelle did get one interview request already, but it was for late on Sunday and she had to be on the road at lunch time in order to get everything settled for going back to classes Monday. 

Two questions:
1 - What's the biggest meal challenge you've faced?
2 - Know of any good, gluten-free, low sugar and low potassium recipes...?!

World Kidney Day is March 12

Got an email from the National Kidney Foundation today that I am posting here for all to see.

Support the World Kidney Day's Message to Congress
Join our Virtual Fly-In to Support Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage

Take Action!

On March 12, over 100 kidney advocates will be meeting with congressional offices on World Kidney Day, asking for support of legislation to extend Medicare coverage for life-saving immunosuppressive drugs for the life of the kidney transplant. If passed, patients could continue to receive these drugs under Medicare Part B. This is a big step forward to preserve the life of kidney transplants.

Organ transplant recipients must take immunosuppressive drugs for the life of the transplant to help prevent the body from rejecting the organ. Currently, Medicare pays for most kidney transplants but covers drugs for only 36 months post-transplant as part of the Medicare ESRD benefit. After that, kidney recipients must pay for immunosuppressive drugs through private insurance, public or pharmaceutical programs or pay out-of-pocket (Medicare covers drugs without a time limit if the patient qualifies because of age or disability status).

Immunosuppressive drugs are expensive, but the alternative is even more costly. Medicare spends $17,000 per patient to maintain a transplant, but if the kidney transplant fails, the person returns to dialysis at a cost of over $71,000 per year to Medicare. And quality of life often suffers too.

Similar legislation will be introduced in the House of Representatives on March 12. Click here for more information about the legislation. Click here to view the NKF's Immunosuppressive Drug Fact Sheet.

Please take a moment to write your Senators today and ask them to co-sponsor S. 565. Share your story, or the story of a loved one, about the experience with immunosuppressive drug coverage.

Links:
Nephcure - More focused on FSGS, my kind of kidney diseas
National Kidney Foundation

What's with the Weather?!

On Monday of this week we had a snow day at our house! Everything but the Federal government closed (they were delayed) thanks to the 4-9 inches of snow that blanketed our area. We decided to get some things done around the house, like mopping the bathrooms (fun, right?) and finishing Abby's play kitchen (posting this weekend, probably) with our extra free time.

Since we only get a really good storm like this every other year it seems, we wanted to be sure that Abby got out into the snow. It was clear almost immediately that she was not going to have anything to do with it. I cleared out an 18 in hole in the snow to put her in, and she cried the moment her feet hit the floor. As you can see below, we ended up putting her in her red wagon and dragging her through the snow, sled-style, and up the street once. In her defense, the wind was quite harsh...



With all of the snow and wind that we dealt with on Monday, with a bonus two hour delay on Tuesday, it's pretty amazing that we are currently planning on a trip to the National Zoo on Saturday! The weather at the end of the week is slated to be 60 degrees warmer than at the beginning! It's a swing from 8 degrees on Monday to a predicted 68 on Saturday!

How is your weather?

Don't Lick That!

Suggestions welcome/encouraged!

At about six months (maybe before) Abby had an obsession with putting things in her mouth - toys, coins, food, fingers... everything.  It is an age-apropriate method of learning for an infant.  They do a better job of using their five senses to learn about things around them than we do - I assume my desk tastes like dust and plastic, so I don't try to taste or smell it - I rely on touch and sight. 

Abby has seemingly reverted to some sort of tasting/licking stage.  Some things are adorable, like when she licks a blueberry before eating it.  Licking her clean feet after bath time was cute, too.

Some things are a little weird, like the freezer in our basement and our fridge upstairs - maybe she was licking each to see if they were the same or different.  (She didn't report her findings to me, but probably has a journal somewhere!)

Some things that she has licked are just disgusting - including our dog and, even worse, a piece of wood at Wendy's on Sunday afternoon.  Just.Disgusting.  I had to run through her high chair and over another chair to get her off of it.  If you've never been to a Wendy's - it was the wooden fram between the old smoking section and the old non-smoking section.  It's about a foot wide and she loves to run a circle and climb over it.  Fun game - gross twist to it.

Our particular Wendy's is not the cleanest thing around, so there were jokes about spots and blisters that would show up in the afternoon, and we were relieved that they did not!

Help!  How do I break her of this new game?  I don't want to create a punishment necessarily, but this is one situation that I would like to stop before it goes too far...