Causing a Disturbance

Well, I had to know that we couldn't get through Liz's first year of preschool without a note from school to take home. Frankly, I'm amazed we made it this long.

Sure, the teachers often have passed on verbal comments to me particularly when the fall semester began. But after several warnings - - don't drink from the water table, no standing on the regular tables and don't pick the nose and eat it - there was instant improvement.

And, I didn't even post about parent teacher conferences, because it was so positive.

But on Wednesday when I picked her up, I saw the following note: Lately during nap, Liz has been causing a disturbance by getting of her cot and rolling on the ground and talking to her friends. Please let her know this behavior is inappropriate during nap time. Also, she has been taking off her shoes and socks during this time. We don't allow the children to sleep without socks or shoes, just in case of an emergency and we need to leave the building. Please just discuss this with Liz at home.

So, for those of you who know me, it should come as little surprise that my chatty behavior has worn off on Liz. Those of you who know Brian will be thinking the same thing, since he's quite talkative as well.

Those of you lucky enough to know both of us, are probably downright stunned that she didn't get a note like this on her first day of class.

In all fairness, I will point out that she isn't always at preschool during nap time. In the fall, she was there just for the afternoon session and arrived after nap-time. In this spring session, she's usually in class during nap time.

No worries. We took our "homework assignment" seriously and have talked about "proper nap behavior" in length. We'll see how that goes.

Our Little Lady

I've come to understand that Liz's perception on life as a little person will be very different than mine.

For instance, even though I'm fairly social, I enjoy my anonymity. I like going to Starbucks or another coffee house and reading my newspaper without anyone noticing me. I don't have people giving me unusual looks or coming up to me and asking me questions about myself, except on the days when in haste iced tea is dripping down my chin. But that's only once in awhile.

Liz won't get the same treatment as she gets older simply because of her height.

Luckily, Liz is much more extroverted than I was at her age. Sure, she gets shy among new people, but overall, she loves talking to people. She's not attached to my leg, the way I was attached to my mom's leg at this age.

Since there are so few people who are 4-feet-tall, she's considered unique simply by her height and will be easily recognized at places like the grocery store, the park or the local coffee shop. In some cases, people will give her an extra glance or perhaps make a comment.

In other cases, the clerks and employees at these locations will remember her more then they'd remember their average-height customers that they might see just as often.

While I had originally feared that this might be a negative experience for Liz, I saw this weekend, how it can be quite positive.

We were at the local grocery paying for our items when the person checking out our groceries mentioned how she watched Liz and I when we first came to the store.

"She's going to be a Little lady," she said. "Whenever I see her, she always makes me smile."

Obviously, she'd noticed us several times.

So, while we may worry about those negative comments, there are so many more people that are smiling at you....when you don't even know about it.

And, that's kind of cool.

Those lazy days of summer

Since we're toward March that means spring is around the corner....hopefully. Here's my favorite summer picture of Liz from last June in Michigan. My nephew Daniel snapped this one. She's pretty excited about heading to the pool.

We actually took her swimming at our local Y yesterday for the first time since last summer and she had a blast. Though, it took her a bit to warm up to the pool.

Eat your Cheerios and you'll grow faster

As I'd said in earlier posts, Liz is becoming more and more aware of her size and the comments that people make about it. In fact, it's becoming a daily conversation.

One morning, she was eating breakfast and said to me: "Mommy, you grow while you sleep, right? Did I grow? Measure me."

When Brian dropped Liz off from preschool one day, a little girl was standing there and said: "Liz just needs to eat a lot and fill her stomach up and then she'll grow."

What's interesting about these comments is that probably 80 to 90% of parents try to convince their children to go to bed on time or eat their vegetables with the promise that if they do, "they'll grow healthily and get taller."

These are pretty standard comments that many parents make and don't think much about. In fact, if Liz didn't have achondroplasia, I probably would have said the same thing probably dozens of times.

So, now we're faced with the challenge of explaining to Liz, whose only 3, that yes it's important to get a good night's sleep and yes, you want to eat healthy foods for a variety of reasons.


Those are all good things to do but you will always be a little person.

That's hard for a 3-year-old to understand. She's also under the impression that being tall is somehow better than being short.

She's really picked up on a lot concerning how our society approaches tall and short people and that's pretty surprising at this age.

Meanwhile, I'm pulling all of the tricks out my hat trying to tell her all of the best reasons for being short. She still says: "But I want to be big."

That's still hard for me to hear, but we realize that it's very important for Liz to be "comfortable in her skin" and that journey is starting now.

So, while it might be easier to just let her cry, that's not the right answer. She needs to know that her view of the world will be unique and that there are many different things she can do as a little person that those of us average-height folks could never do.

Setting records

Everyone likes to set a personal record every once in a while.

That's pretty normal, right? For some, it's beating their 5-mile-run record. For others, it might be slugging down 20 hot dogs in 2 minutes.

Sometimes, we set new records when we're not expecting it. For instance, I hadn't been in the Chicago office in awhile because I'd been out of town. So, on Wednesday I decided I'd head to the office.

Even though we only live about 45 minutes to 1 hour from the city, the commute is generally 2 hours because I take the train. On the days that Liz is in pre-school, I drive to a farther train station that's about 30 miles away.

Normally, I get to that station in about 45 minutes. On Wednesday, we got a smattering of snow. Just a bit. But it was enough to make a horrible mess on the highways. My first part of the drive to the train was fine, so I forged ahead. However, it only got worse from there.

It actually took me 2 hours and 15 minutes -- -- just to get to the train station. I was happy because I arrived at 8:12 a.m. - I thought the last rush hour train was departing at 8:15 a.m. and I was just going to catch it. However, since I normally take a 6:46 a.m. or 7:03 a.m. train, I had gotten the time of the later train mixed up. It was actually an 8:10 a.m. and was rolling out as I was driving home.

So, I headed back home rather than waiting for the next train at 9:40 a.m. Needless to say, that's my new personal record for the amount of time it took me - to get to the train station.

Last weekend, my nephew Stephen, who is a junior at University of Chicago, was in the midst of trying to set a record of wearing the same pair of jeans for the longest consecutive time. He'd reached six weeks wearing that same pair of blue jeans through rainy, snowy and sleety Chicago weather...that is until my sister-in-law insisted on taking the pants and washing them at our house.

Even though he may not have set the record he had intended, it was a good effort and it was impressive to see a pair of jeans that dirty. I think they could have walked the streets of Chicago on their own.

The Absent minded blogger

My initial fear when I first began blogging was that I'd tire of writing, since I do it for a living, and I'd fall behind in the blog.

So far, I've done all right... That is until now. I wish I could say: "Things have been so crazy." But really, I haven't had too much to post about.

Sure, I could have added another lengthy post about annoying airport delays, but really how many of them do you need. We all endure it every time we travel so it's not really funny anymore.

We're mostly trying to get through the dreary month of February and eagerly looking forward to spring. Liz keeps asking about the park, and I'm hoping by March we'll have a few nice warm days.

Brian's still working to rehabilitate his knee and that's remained a huge challenge for him. He makes tremendous progress and then seems to fall back. We're in a holding pattern now and hopefully he'll continue to do better.

Liz had a blast in Michigan though it was too cold for her to do anything except stay with her grandma "Mimi" and her Aunt Marilyn.

The rest of the Brighton Hedgers came and saw us this weekend and that too was fun.

Brian and I went and saw our nephew Stephen play at the University of Chicago with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. That was also a great time.

The traveling Hedgers

Things have been a bit hectic the last week because we've been traveling in the midst of the delightful Midwest storms.

Last Monday, I was up bright and shiny at 3:30 a.m. to head to Midway to travel to New York for the day. Amazingly, my flight was on time, and they spent just 1 hour-de-icing the plane. However, in the air, weather had worsened in New York and we couldn't land at Laguardia. So, after flying for some time in circles, we were running out of fuel and stopped in a nearby Pennsylvania airport. I made it for most of my meeting only to find that all flights in and out of Midway had been cancelled that day.

It's quite unusual for Midway to close down. It usually happens at O'Hare. Luckily, I was able to get into O'Hare and finally got home at about 1 a.m.

Not too bad for traveling in the middle of February.

Now, I'm in Miami and that plane was only delayed a few hours earlier today. I actually had time to swim some laps when I got here. I'll be here just a few days. It's nice to actually be somewhere where the weather is in the 80s, even if it's just for a short time.

We decided this would be the perfect time for Liz to spend some time with the Brighton Hedgers. So, Brian took her to Michigan today and endured horrible weather (yet again), but they made it safe and sound. At some points, he said he could only drive 5 mph. Luckily, Liz slept thru the worst of the storm, he said. Whew!

When I head back from Miami on Tuesday night, Brian and I will have a few days - child - free. What will we do with that time?

We haven't forgotten you Pumba

I realized I hadn't posted any pictures in awhile and here's a good one with Liz and Pumba. We see Pumba when we're in Michigan and my nephew Daniel took this one at Thanksgiving.