Lydia Archives - Page 37 of 48 - Ramblin' with Roger

Like father, like daughter: to the E.R. again

The lesson relearned – no food where peanuts or nuts are processed.

When we last saw our intrepid little family, the father of the household was getting a ride home from his overnight hospital stay Friday afternoon by his lovely wife. Saturday, he was still exhausted; he didn’t sleep well Thursday night, and Friday night’s rest was insufficient. He muddled through Saturday, doing a minimum of vacuuming and dishwashing, and not much else.

Even Sunday morning, there was a sense of fatigue within him. But since almost everyone knew about the hospital incident, he wanted to show up to prove he was still among the living. Fortunately, all the songs the choir sang he had performed before.

At the coffee hour, somehow the Daughter had gotten permission (not from her father) to eat some coffee cake, despite being unclear about its origins. Apparently, it’s one of those items that had that warning that it may be processed in a plant that used peanuts or nuts. She is allergic to peanuts, and peanuts and nuts are often processed in the same place.

Shortly after consuming it, she got very upset. Was it a belated sense of fear? Her father took her into a quiet room and tried to calm her down. She was OK for a bit, but by the time she got home, she had a stomachache, and eventually upchucked. This was actually a good thing; the first time she had an allergic reaction, when she was three, that was how her body responded. So the family thought it was in the clear.

A couple of hours later, the Wife noticed, above the knees and below the neck hives over about 30% of The Daughter’s body. It itched greatly. After a call to the pediatrician, another trek to the E.R.

It’s much less busy Thursday at 8:40 a.m. than Sunday at 5:30 p.m. She got some Benedryl, stronger than the OTC we had given her. Then the family stopped at the McDonalds; the Wife seems to believe going inside is faster, an unproven premise, but staying in the car would have meant avoiding the rudest, vulgar-language customer; “Where’s my f@#$ing food?” , more than once, among other things.

The Daughter was asleep by the time the family got home. she got through dinner then was practically carried to bed; the Wife stayed home with her on Monday.

The lesson relearned – no food where peanuts or nuts are processed. I hadn’t heard the rule had changed…
***
That evening, there was an ambulance in front of our house. It was actually called for our next-door neighbor’s house. The father of one of the college kids had been drinking a couple bottles of beer with the guy when he was having some difficulties – I didn’t get the details. Turns out e had food poisoning; glad it wasn’t worse.

The Lydster, Part 108: Another natal day

She continues to surprise me with not just her vocabulary, but her understanding of concepts.

Last year, the Daughter was at least 4’6″; now she’s very close to 4’10” (147 cm). There are some adults she’s practically looking in the eye. I’m only 5’11.5″, but my wife is about 5’10” and her brothers are all about 6’3″, so I can only imagine how tall she’ll get to be.

After performing in the Nutcracker, she seems to have tired of formal ballet lessons, though she’s forever moving about and even choreographing for her cousins and friends.

She discovered soccer in the fall, and I suspect she’ll do that again. She liked doing field hockey in school, and that led her to get her to take her to an Albany Devils’ ice hockey game. What I know about hockey would fit on top of a puck, but she seemed to enjoy the experience.

On TV, she watches figure skating and Dancing with the Stars with her mother, and old Dick van Dyke Show episodes with me. She still likes Wild Kratts, a cartoon about nature.

At least half of the fairy books by Daisy Meadows (a pseudonym for the four writers of the Rainbow Magic books), she’s consumed; for a time, she’d read nothing else. In recent months, though, she’s expanded her reading repertoire.

She continues to be very good at math and spelling. I help her with most of her homework, but her mother practices clarinet with her.

Going to Sunday School seems to be the highlight of the week; she’s getting good at her Bible history. She likes being invited to do special things at church, such as the unveiling of a diorama of our church, or ringing the church bell (tougher than it looks).

Lessee: she continues to surprise me with not just her vocabulary, but her understanding of concepts.

She has well over a dozen dolls. She knows all their names (I don’t), including the new American Girl doll, Sophia, who kinda looks like her. There is actually a floor plan she drew up to determine who sleeps where, with a rotation of who gets to sleep with her.

I suspect that the Newtown, CT shootings have affected her deeply, though she mentions it only in passing.

She’s a good kid who gets along with a variety of people. But I think she NEEDS a number of friends; when she’s with one friend for too long, or too often, the relationship frays a bit.

I guess that’s enough for this year.

Happy birthday, my dear daughter.

The Lydster, Part 107: The Twizzle

We have the complete box set of the Dick van Dyke Show, and we’ve watched all of Season 1 and about 40% of Season 2.

Interesting to hear what others say about whether the Daughter looks more like your mother or me. It seems that if you knew my wife better, like mother, like daughter; if you knew me better, she favors me.

Personality-wise, she is likewise similar to whichever parent is most familiar to the observer.

My wife can explain in her (non-existent) blog how much they do together, besides watching Dancing with the Stars.

Conversely, I am pleased that she has taken to liking two of my favorite cultural phenomena, listening to the music of the Beatles and watching the classic television program, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Re: the latter, we have the complete box set, and we’ve watched all of Season 1 and about 40% of Season 2. Her favorite episode is What’s in a Name, the show in which Ritchie, Rob and Laura’s son, discovers that his middle name is ROSEBUD; she can recite his full middle name, Richard Oscar Sam Edward Benjamin Ulysses David. She also likes the one about the walnuts.

My least favorite show was about a dance craze called the Twizzle, a blatant ripoff of the Twist fad. The Daughter likes it a bit more than I.

In fact, she invented a drink she calls the Twizzle:
1 cup kefir (or flavored yogurt)
1 banana
1 cup milk
1 cup frozen fruit
1 ice cube
love

Blend together.

It’s GOOD!

The Lydster, Part 106: What’s in a name?

Sophia, not incidentally, is the name of the American Girl doll the Daughter got for Christmas that sort of looks like her.

Cheri at Idle Chatter was answering some quiz. One question was: “What are your favorite boy/girl baby names?” The fact is that, prior to my wife getting pregnant ten years ago this coming summer, I hadn’t given it much thought. I suppose some people fantasize about having children and make lists. For me, though, I was 50, hadn’t had a child, might not have a child, so it wasn’t anything I really considered.

As it turned out, it became more about rules, primarily my rules, negative rules, which Carol was not aware of. Heck, I wasn’t aware of my naming rules. When you’ve never had a child, naming is more a conceptual thing, as it were.

So the rules were:

*No name in the top 10 in the Social Security list of most popular names for the most recent year available, which for us was 2002.

There will be enough Emmas in her kindergarten class, though Emma IS a lovely name.
Emma
2011 3
2010 3
2009 2
2008 1
2007 3
2006 2
2005 2
2004 2
2003 2
2002 4
2001 13
2000 17
1999 17

Actually, the names we did like, besides Olivia, were not in the Top 10 in 2002, from which we would have been deciding, but are now:

Olivia
2011 4
2010 4
2009 3
2008 4
2007 7
2006 7
2005 5
2004 4
2003 5
2002 10
2001 10
2000 16
1999 20

Isabella
2011 2
2010 1
2009 1
2008 2
2007 2
2006 4
2005 6
2004 7
2003 11
2002 14
2001 28
2000 45
1999 60

Sophia
2011 1
2010 2
2009 4
2008 7
2007 6
2006 9
2005 12
2004 15
2003 20
2002 27
2001 37
2000 42
1999 53
Sophia, not incidentally, is the name of the American Girl doll the Daughter got for Christmas that sort of looks like her.

Lydia
2011 96
2010 110
2009 118
2008 120
2007 124
2006 130
2005 119
2004 126
2003 127
2002 137
2001 140
2000 148
1999 149

*No naming after any family member, living or dead. I want her to have her own identity. And I didn’t want, “Oh, you named her after Aunt Hortense!” We’ll call her Little Horty!” No, you won’t.

Actually, I would have considered Charlotte, after my great aunt Charlotte, who had died a couple of years earlier, truth to tell. And my mother was living in Charlotte, NC; we referred to her, my late father, my baby sister, and her daughter as the Charlotte Greens. But The Wife wanted to consider Ann, which is her middle name and her mother’s first name; so I nixed both names.

*No unisex names: Terry, Madison, Lynn, e.g.

This comes directly from the fact that my father AND my sister were both named Leslie. Confusion ensued, and often at my expense. Since my father had a child named Leslie, it was ASSUMED it was his ONLY son, i.e., me. “Hey, little Les,” one guy from church constantly called me. “That’s NOT my name,” I’d mutter under my breath (but never aloud, for that would have been considered rude.)

*It had to have two or more syllables, to balance off the shortness of Green.

That was my other objection to Ann.

*No names that easily went to the nickname. Elizabeth is in the top 10 anyway, and which variation (Liz, Lizzie, Beth, Betty, Betsy, or several others) would ensue? No thanks.

Elizabeth is beautiful. It’s my mother’s middle name, and also the middle name of my second niece.

Elizabeth
2011 11
2010 12
2009 11
2008 9
2007 10
2006 11
2005 11
2004 10
2003 9
2002 11
2001 9
2000 9
1999 10

*It should have a recognizable spelling. So, by definition, no really weird names.

While a few people have girls named Lidia – not in the Top 1000 names over the past decade – most have opted for the more traditional option.

Coincidentally, one of my friends adopted a daughter named Lidia; Lydia and Lidia went to preschool together for a year, and now are in the same Sunday school class.

*No names beginning and ending with A.

This is a practical consideration. I have a niece named Alexandria. Carol has nieces named Adrianna and Alexa. One of Carol’s best friends has a daughter named Ariana. And there are several others. Having but one child, I didn’t want to run through a litany before I found hers.

So, Lydia, it was, named in part after a woman in the book of Acts, in the New Testament, who was rich even to put up the apostle Paul and his cohorts. It was only later that a friend pointed out that the church I attended as a child, Trinity A.M.E. Zion, was on the corner of Lydia and Oak, and that I walked down Lydia Street every day on my way to school. Obviously, I knew this to be factually true, but never crossed my consciousness.

Now, if we had had another girl, I have no idea WHAT we would have named her. And if we had a boy, there was never a real settling on a name. My wife says I agreed to something – I’m blocking on it – that when she said it later, I said, “Really? No way.”

If Lydia had been a boy, his name would probably still be Male Child Green.
***
My church is celebrating its 250th birthday this year, and in particular, tomorrow. The Daughter participated at the unveiling of the refurbished diorama, with the directive to fix it up 50 years from now…

[This is a rewrite of something I posted my very first month of blogging, in May 2005.]

The Lydster, Part 105: Mariah and Elizabeth

The Daughter expects her parents to remember the name of her dolls. Her male parent is not as good at this as she would like.

I am interested in the Daughter’s affinity for her toys. A couple of years ago, she was really into her stuffed animals, to the virtual exclusion of her dolls.

More recently, though, the trend has switched. While she still has her stuffed toys, she is now more inclined to play with her dolls, especially Mariah (above) and Elizabeth (below).

I think there are two primary reasons for the switch. One is that, as the Daughter has become more interested in clothes, she’s been making apparel for her dolls. She’s getting rather good at it, too, thanks to her grandmother. The other is her allergies to her stuffed creatures, so she can usually have but one at a time. Usually, it’s her large unicorn named Unicorn who makes the cut.

I learned that my daughter can keep track of all of her dozen and a half dolls. Moreover, she expects her parents to remember them too. Her male parent is not as good at this as she would like.

I wonder how Mariah and Elizabeth will feel about yesterday’s newcomer?