Grandma’s New Hip and other stuff

Yes, it’s true – Grandma has a new hip!

My mother had hip replacement surgery on Tuesday. She is relatively young for this kind of surgery – she’s only 20 years older than I am – but it was time.

She’s at home now, and hopefully will stay there. She’s not feeling too great.

We’re all praying for her quick recovery and rehab, so that she can get back to doing things she loves.

*****

Last night, I attended a parents’ support group at Tad’s preschool. They were having a speaker on “How to Potty Train Your Special-Needs Child.”

I went, and I learned… not much. I was kind of disappointed. The speaker covered basic potty training, but didn’t really get into the special needs end of it. And I was amazed at how many people came. The problem is, so many of these parents are potty training for the first time, and they have to train a special-needs child. I’ve already potty trained one kid – albeit one with the bladder control of the Grand Coulee Dam – so most of it was stuff I already knew.

I need to know how to get Tad to want to use the potty and to relax enough to try. The speaker’s advice on that was… sorry, your kid’s not interested enough yet and you probably can’t make him go.

On the up side, when I mentioned Elmo’s Potty Time had worked well for Ane, several parents wrote that down. Curse you, Elmo!!

In the meantime, Friend and Doc are going to let us borrow their toddler potty. We’ll see if Tad has any interest in it. His favorite potty book, My Big Boy Potty, features one prominently. He doesn’t have any problems with the potty seat on the toilet, but maybe this will capture his fancy a bit.

*****

After the meeting last night, I drove over to the church. The Webmaster had taken Ane and Tad with him to choir rehearsal, where Auntie was watching them and one other boy. I hung around until it was over, and then the Webmaster took the kids home while I took Auntie home.

Oh, wait. Scratch that. Auntie took ME to HER house.

Yes, I was crazy enough to let my almost 16 year old sister with a brand-new driver’s permit to drive MY car from church to our parents’ house.

Crazy, or cool? You make the call.

And it’s not like my car is special or anything – it’s a 1998 Ford Contour. But it’s not a minivan, which is what she had driven earlier in the week. Between my parents and us, we have two minivans and two compact sedans, one of which (my parents’ car) is a stick-shift. So the Contour is actually a good practice car for her to drive. After a few laps around the nearly-empty church parking lot, I told her to drive on home.

Did I mention that this was her first time driving on the road?

Given that, she did pretty well. She only drove off-road twice. Kidding! Only kidding. She was hesitant, but given time, I think she’ll do very well. For those of you who know her, you can ask her how I was as a side-seat driver.

*****

The kids are both out of school next week. Ane doesn’t have ballet class next week, either. There are no activities at church on Wednesday.

Short of Tad’s parent-teacher conference (which he’s technically not invited to), we have NOTHING going on for the first three days of next week.

Help me. I think I’m going to lose my mind.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 1:47 am and is filed under Announcements, Children, Family, School Days.
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