A Letter to the Insurance Company

Dear Aetna,

Delightful as it is to have to call you every five days for something, I have been disappointed with the care I receive. It's not that your warbling frog-and-cricket-sounding wait music is annoying nor is it that your customer service rep's abilities to correctly dial transfer extensions borders on that of orangutans...I actually find the process of playing phone transfer hot potato a delightful use of my otherwise would-be wasted time. No, my main complaint is that your highest-up customer service reps seem to be both blissfully inept at understanding my most simple requests while they are staggeringly brilliant at the ins and outs of state laws, insurance workings and anything involving one of your dollar signs. I have been most recently amused by your notice that the claim for our son's behavioral therapy has been denied while you also provided us a suggestion to appeal since, as you already know, it is 100% illegal to refuse coverage to a Texas child between the ages of 3 and 6 who has a need for such therapy. I also find it hilariously disappointing that you assumed so many times I could be run off with such simple statements as "your doctor is out of network" when indeed there are NO such "doctors" for behavioral therapy in network because they are called THERAPISTS. (My next favorite line being "Yes, you are correct about the state laws covering any child under any plan but they do not apply to your plan.") I have read more intelligent answers on Laffy Taffy wrappers and you should be ashamed of the circle-talk your reps have tried to pass off as "official" information.

I was grateful to talk to a head clinician in your billing department who gave me truly useful info about how to get around some of your sticky red tape (may the Lord bless his family while he is currently employed by Satan). He delivered the unfortunate news that you deem most of my son's suspected issues as "theoretical" and "experimental" and such make-believe, intangible things not worthy of your coverage. Enclosed you will find example images of such "theoretical" behaviors and my assurances that PLENTY of "experimental" things go on all day long at my house while I am otherwise diverted as I am passed through endless phone trees to get to someone I have yet to talk to that you believe is inept enough to answer and play a convincing idiot. I find it a shame I cannot bill you for the minutes of my life you have wasted nor the inconveniences you have caused but they are rapidly building towards my own nervous breakdown and I'm eyeing a delightful place in Maui which, what do you know, happens to be IN NETWORK! Until then I will be keeping my child with "unfounded and medically unproven" behaviors away from all tubes of toothpaste and after ensuring his behavioral therapy is covered by you, I will be submitting my invoices alongside his from the tropics. Aloha!

Gear Head

Recently Aiden has become interested in gears. (Absolutely anything mechanical fascinates him!) He had pointed out pricy boxes of Gears! Gears! Gears! in the Children's Museum gift shop and I had the thought to check eBay, figuring I could run anything used through a dishwasher cycle and save a ton of money. I found an auction for a "large box of gears" starting at $5. I was the only bidder and won the box, excited that Aiden would have some gears to play with for a fraction of the price of a single set. The seller said "watch for a really big box to arrive soon!" Yeah, sure, that's fine.

The next day a FedEx truck backed up the drive and unloaded what looked like a small dishwasher. I wondered what on EARTH I had ordered that could possibly be that huge. When the delivery man heaved it off the dolly into our entryway, I recognized the familiar tinkling of plastic toys hitting one another and thought "What have I done?"

Aiden and I spent the next TWO HOURS creating an assembly line to wash & rinse the plastic pieces by the collander full and dry them on my biggest family-size beach towels. An excessive amount of gears are now at Aiden's creative disposal. Here is a picture of the lot after washing them, which barely shows the wild enormity of what was in that box: (photos taken 7/9/10)

These pictures really make the mess look tame, just like the auction picture did. The whole time I was washing nearly 1000-something pieces I was wondering WHO in their right mind buys this many toys for their child. (Besides me, who was hoodwinked by deceiving eBay images showing a box that looked no bigger than two shoe boxes put together.) I'm letting Aiden enjoy them for a while to see what he plays with before donating a chunk to the church nursery & giving some to Sheena for Kyler to play with, too.

The seller was super sweet - and obviously in clean out mode - because a Thomas the Train crane car, a set of magnetic Lincolin Logs and some oddly unrelated plastic building pieces that resemble tinker toys were also found in the box among all the gears with a sweet note from the seller to enjoy everything and she was thrilled to be rid of all of it. Imagine that... :)

Accidents, Ant Bites and Staph, Oh My!

It's been a very full week of exciting oddities at our house this week. It started off on Monday night. We were at a friend's house for a group FHE, enjoying some chit chat in the kitchen while the children played in the back yard. Aiden came in wailing with three fire ant bites and moments later was fine after a hug, a little sympathy and a big ordeal about the Benadryl stick not touching him in the slightest. Ant bites - no big deal right?

Tuesday Aiden's Behaviorist came to go over her behavioral plan for him. (She had awesome ideas!) Immediately after Mindy left we went with our next door neighbors, including their 10 year-old daughter Madison who Aiden loves & 8 year-old Parker to the Downtown Aquarium. We had a BLAST! Aiden got to pet a shark, a stingray, a prickly sea urchin & a starfish. So cool! A downpour outside trapped us inside the gift shop where I noticed Aiden itch his ant bites, still refusing to let me put anything on them. I had doused his hands in hand sanitizer immediately after petting the sea life so I figured he would be okay until we got across the street to Hard Rock where I could scrub his hands down before lunch. The day ended with a train ride, a couple rounds on the carousel and a Ferris Wheel ride. Aiden had a BLAST and fell asleep in the stroller during the 4 minute walk to the car. :)

Wednesday morning just before 6 am Aiden wakes up crying, sporting a foot and ankle that are pinky-purple and swollen to twice their normal size. His ant bites had been itched open in his sleep and the whole foot looks painful. I have to cuddle with him and soothe him, explaining that the doctor is still asleep until I can call in at 7:30 to get him an appointment. He saw his pediatrician first thing and she is certain of a staph infection, especially after I tell her about our aquarium trip. He is to start heavy antibiotics immediately since the infection is now spreading up his ankle & leg. He's JUST come off a 10 day round of antibiotics for a sinus infection he got before July 4th so the kid has been sick nearly all month. This is not what we need, especially since this is supposed to be my first day implementing Aiden's behavior techniques and the kid can't even walk, let alone stop whining long enough to hear what I am saying. Not fun.

Thursday is a bit better. He's crabby & cranky on his medicine all day but I survive, knowing one of my girlfriends is coming over to do crafts that night while Bri goes with the guys to see a movie. Just before I leave Bri & Aiden to run to Wal-Mart to pick up craft paint, Aiden falls off his bed, catching the corner of his mouth on the beveled wood edge of the footboard. I hear his scream-cry and find him spitting blood all over Brian's dress shirt. It's deeper than it is wide and Bri and I wonder if he needs glue or stitches. It's stopped bleeding so we let him go to sleep, agreeing we'll see how it looks in the morning:



Poor kid! It scabbed and seems like it will close nicely but I'm still going to be doctoring it so he doesn't end up with a scar. Luckily he's on a mega-dose of antibiotics at the moment so he's got a great chance of it healing properly with no infection. All my friends keep calling, wondering why I'm not at the pool (see: already infected & antibiotics have caused diarrhea) and I don't know if I can take much more of this accident-prone craziness!

Mushroom House Playset

Tay: This is a quick pic of the mushroom stacker house & play set I painted up for Aiden. I bought the wood cutouts from seller ClickityClack on Etsy.com and am sending them several pictures of the finished set as a thank you. I wanted to post it here so others know where it came from - they're a really neat shop for do-it-yourself pretend play things!

Potty Training Mishaps

Tay: I really can't complain - Aiden practically potty trained himself but since he's working with equipment I don't have there were a few things I didn't know to warn him about. First of all, there were a couple days early on in June where Aiden thought it was HILARIOUS to "miss" the toilet as he was sitting on it and pee out over the edge of it. Bonus if he could get the stream to squirt through the tiny gap between the toilet seat & the porcelain bowl from where he was perched. (Seriously, where do boys learn these games? His dad works around the clock so at least I know Brian isn't teaching him this...)

Any ways, this hoopla lasted about three frustrating days until one afternoon on June 16 when I heard Aiden whimper "MOMMY!" from our bathroom in a surprised, almost frightened sounding voice. I dashed in to find him looking like this:



You can't see it but the wall, part of the side of his hair and his ear are all sprayed with pee! Apparently Aiden had sat down "wrong", with legs together, squishing everything so he was pointed straight upward when he relieved himself, soaking his shirt and spraying himself in the face! From this point on Aiden was flawlessly careful about pointing himself down into the toilet - as if any direction but down would spray him in the face - and I haven't had to clean up any liquid olympics messes in the bathroom ever since. Yay for good lessons learned through experience!

Helpful Hollie

Tay: Help sometimes comes in the strangest ways but it does come! Boy do we have a story to tell...

About a month ago I set Aiden down with a bucket of moon sand in a disposable foil tray at the kitchen table to keep him occupied while I rounded up all the laundry. (Big mistake - moon sand has now been banned until I forget about this incident or he's 14, whichever comes first.) As soon as I left the room, Aiden began one of his compulsive throwing fits (hence the need for a therapist). He was actually trying to pelt Hollie where she was perched in her hanging cage, he later told me, but that didn't explain how orange sand dusted every inch of the kitchen & living room from the stovetop to the couch and beyond. Hollie did, however, have chunks of orange moon sand that had made it through the bars of her cage and she herself was dusted in quite a bit of it. All of this in a mere 30 seconds. (Let me interject I have been reading the Harry Potter books and I feel a kinship and deep understanding towards Mrs. Weasley...I have my own real life Fred & George rolled into one!) I was so beyond frustrated that I actually left the moon sand mess and loaded up Aiden as fast as I could into the car and kept him out of the house for the entire rest of the day. Brian was a total sweetheart and vacuumed it all up for me that night seeing how I was frustrated beyond words. Poor Hollie had to clean herself.

The next day I am again doing something necessary to the running of the household when I hear Hollie begin shrieking at the top of her little lungs. I bolt into the kitchen to find Aiden with the refrigerator door open, ketchup bottle in his hand, pouring a mountain on his plate for who knows what mess-making reason. He's looking at me and glancing at her as if he just had someone tattle on him. Hollie is quiet again as I clean up the mess and send Aiden off to play.

Later that same afternoon I hear Hollie again. Aiden has walked into the living room carrying a toy golf club (which he often would hit her cage with) and seems to be eyeing the place for something to whack around and destroy. Club is confiscated and put away. High, high away.

That evening Aiden has gotten a hold of something else (the details escape me - crackers maybe) but was making a smashed & scattered mess of it on the table while my back is turned cooking dinner. Hollie is squaking & flapping like it's a 4-alarm fire. She stops instantly the moment I intervene to clean up the mess. Then it hits me - something I had read a while ago comes to mind: Parakeets are extremely intelligent little birds with enormous capacity to learn.

Hollie had so severely disliked being pelted with sand in her cage and, I assume, was so thoroughly unhappy with having to preen the stuff out of her own feathers that she had learned when Aiden was making a mess she had better start calling for me or she was going to get pelted until she was dirty all over again. She had put herself to work as my own little Aiden alarm, acting as a second set of spying eyes over everything he was doing and alerting me at the first sign of trouble! Since then she's proven accurate, sounding a specific squak when Aiden is getting in to something that brings me running. (See, I can be trained, too!) That little bird has been a great addition to the family, if for no other reason than I needed exactly that kind of help. :)