"Up-a-daisy"

"Up-a-daisy"

That is not what you want to hear from the mouth of a 3-year old who is sitting next to your 5 month old. Charlotte apparently decided that Trystan wanted to sit up, and pulled him up to a sitting position. And then backed away. He looked around, gave me a goofy grin as I raced towards them, and promptly toppled over. And darn the child if he didn't laugh about it. I guess if he'd hit his head that hard, he would have cried, but by laughing he's re-inforced Charlotte's "helpful" attempt.

I think up and down definitely describes the last couple of weeks. Right before Labor Day weekend, I got a nice polite letter from my company's HR department saying that they were dropping Trystan from my health insurance because of "lack of documentation". I had sent his birth certificate, as they requested, several months earlier. At the time, they were doing some sort of company-wide sweep of requesting birth certificates and tax forms to prove that our medical dependents were legitimate, and I made the mistake of (silly me), sending both children's birth certificates in together. Apparently, one group (in one state) was handling dependents that were on the account as of last December. Another group (in another state) was handling dependents that were new this year. Pardon me for not realizing that all of the envelopes with my company logo and "Depended Verification" printed on the top, and PO Boxes for addresses, were actually going different places to people who were not speaking to one another.

Yikes. I called them immediately that night, and faxed them a copy of Trystan's birth certificate on that Saturday. By Tuesday, the representative said that the had not received it, or that it had not been "sorted" and "applied to my account". I then, over the next week, faxed it at least 5 more times (with and without cover letters, with my employee ID, with my social security #, and other various permutations), plus I mailed it in, calling nearly every day. I didn't get confirmation until this past Wednesday that they had received it, and could figure out what to do with it! I explained (again) that the BABY was having SURGERY on MONDAY, and that they needed to get him re-activated on the health insurance immediately if not sooner. I was told again this afternoon that they have the "work order" marked as Urgent, and that someone who deals with the insurance company is supposed to "push it through" today. In the mean time, someone from the hospital has also noticed that he's "inactive" and is trying to help get things straightened out so that we don't get a bill the size of our mortgage in the mail in a couple of weeks. Actually, its more that she's encouraging me to get thing straightened out. Same difference to her (if not to my stress level).

In between stressful phone calls, things have been relatively good around here. Charlotte is enjoying her dance classes. Trystan is getting closer and closer to crawling--he's pushing up on all 4's and trying to rock. Occaisionally he gets his butt in the air like he's doing a downward facing dog pose in Yoga. Then again, occaisionally Charlotte does too--she's seen a couple of my workout videos. Today we went to the lab at the hospital to have blood drawn, and both kids were quite good. Trystan got mad at being stuck by the needle, but really calmed down in a hurry. Charlotte was more interested in watching the needle and the blood than she was in distracting Trystan. She walked away with 6 Disney Princess stickers and a sucker for his trouble. Afterwards, I decided that the day was too nice for us to drive past the zoo and not stop. We had a rather pleasant afternoon, with only one minor meltdown on the way to the car (Charlotte was very tired and suddenly remembered that we didn't get to see the elephants). Both kids napped in the car on the way home.

Next week one of my sisters is coming out to help while Trystan's in the hospital. I'm looking forward to her visit. I don't get to see enough of any of them, and having an extra pair of hands around the house will be a life saver. We're still expecting about a 3-day stay, and I'm expecting to pretty much stay with him the whole time, and stay home from work most or all of the week. I did read a description of his surgery on another hospital's website last week, and it said that patients go home with a catheter in place, that stays until a 2-week checkup (!). No one mentioned such a thing to us that I can recall, and I'm slightly panicked. We were expecting and planning that he'd be in ok shape to go back to daycare after a week, but certainly can't with a catheter (heck, I don't know how to entertain a rolling, exploring 6-month old at home for 2 weeks with a catheter in place). We have a deadline at work, and no real backup plan at the moment for after my sister has to go home. Should make for an exciting week.

I should try to take my inspiration from Trystan--to enjoy life when I get to sit up and look around, and try laugh it off when I fall back down again. I just hope I don't bump my head to hard on the way down next time!