Quirks

Hi Shira,

You have some recent behaviors that I should report.  They are things that are interesting and you might not remember them unless I tell you.  And one of them makes me recall something I did when I was growing up.

A couple of weeks ago you had trip to the emergency room because we wanted to make sure you didn't have an inflamed appendix.  We should have learned from your sisters similar visit from a couple of years ago, but we didn't. In any case, you were writhing in pain and couldn't go to sleep.  At first we thought you were just at your witching hour and an early bedtime might be the antidote. You did fall asleep from about 7:15 to 8:15. 

After you awoke, you began to writhe again and we didn't see that you would be sleeping again anytime soon.  You had no fever, hadn't thrown up, nor had diarrhea.  Yet you named your tummy as the pain center.  (what we didn't remember from your sisters experience was the jump test-if you can jump up and down without keeling over, you don't have an inflamed appendix).  So, off we went to hosthe emergency room.

As soon as we arrived there you became a perfect little lady and charmed the pants off of everyone in the place. Because we had a potential serious issue, we had to wait longer to see the doctor than the patients who only had sniffles.  Finally, after a couple of hours wait, we got into see a doctor. Throughout, you stoically stated that nothing hurt.  After about an hour of waiting and talking with the doctor, you were given a dose of medicine to calm nausea.  After a prescribed wait time for the medicine to work, you were offered a Popsicle.  You wolfed it down in just a couple of minutes.  I couldn't help wondering that we might have saved 3 hours and some money if they had offered you the popsicle when we arrived instead of later.

We left the hospital about 2:30am and as soon as we got in the car you said you weren't feeling well.  But I knew that your appendix wasn't inflamed and you were much better than when we left home.

But the experience made an impression on you.  For several days afterward, you kept saying that you weren't feeling well and that you needed to see the doctor.  We deciphered this to mean you were willing to go through the same ordeal again order to get another popsicle. 

This reminded me of something I did when I was growing up.  I was a little older than you, but the incident is similar.  My brother Terry had a flat tire on his bike.  My dad took us to the service station to get it fixed (this was back when gas/service stations existed, and they would fix cars).  They took the tube out an held it under the water to find out where the leak was and then repaired the tube and put the wheel back on the bike.

I thought that was a fun trip and wanted to do it again.  So I spent most of the next day using a dull piece of glass to try to cut a hole in my bike tire.  Luckily for me the glass was so dull that it wouldn't have cut my finger or the bike tire.

One of your other quirky habits has to do with books and movies..  Whenever we read you a book you must identify which character of the story you want to be.  "Dad, Dad, Dad, I'm that one."  Sometimes your allegiance changes in the middle of the story and you may choose an animal character if the story doesn't have people. While watching "Princess and the Pop Star" you and your sister often argue about who is Kira and who is Tory.

I actually wrote most of this while we were in Sunriver over winter break but just got around to finishing it this morning.  

Love, Aba