The Rankin Zoo 

Another day, another update. Who knows, maybe I’ll even post some pictures sometime soon.

Ever since Coral was born we have talked about where she might go to school when she’s older. B grew up in DC and went to private schools. I grew up in Reston (more or less) and went to public schools. I think we both have open minds about the options but we also have no first hand experience with the other way. Well, as Coral gets older we’ve been thinking more and more about our options. Even though we’re still a year away from kindergarten, if we wanted to go private school we’d have to start looking into the silly admission tests soon.

Anyway, we lived in Fairfax County, which generally has really good public schools. Our neighborhood elementary school was apparently pretty good but we had heard bad stories about the middle school. We lived very close to the City of Falls Church, which has a national reputation for it’s very small, independent school system. It seemed like it might be a good mix of the benefits of public and private schools.

We had been casually looking at houses in the City for a while and over time realized that unlike Fairfax County there wasn’t a lot of turn over in the City. We figured that there wouldn’t be many houses up for sale that fit what we were looking for so we got mentally prepared to move quickly if something popped up. We weren’t in a position to buy a new house before selling out old house, especially in this market.

As it turned out, a couple of months ago we saw a house that we liked. We made a mad scramble to get our house on the market and got very lucky with the timing - someone happened to be looking for a house just like ours right as we listed it. The house sold in 24 hours. We turned around and put an offer in on the house we wanted in Falls Church. Now, I’m writing this blog post from our new house! Wow.

To make a long story longer (just like yesterday), this house isn’t exactly new. It’s actually two houses stuck together. The first house was built in 1871 and the rest was added about 10 years later. In 1983 the house was moved a few blocks from its original location to its current location. Speaking of location, we really like it here. We can walk to the community center, park, library, shops, restaurants, and the metro. I can walk to work. The neighbors seem really nice.

We’re still getting settled in and we do miss our old house. We bought that house in 2000 and I lived in that house longer than I lived in any other house in my life. We did a lot of work on it over the years getting it just the way we wanted it - and now we’re gone. We have tons of memories in that house and I think we’ll always remember it fondly. But, with two rug rats running around (okay, one running and the other just lying there for now) it was getting a bit cramped.

The new (old) house is still a disaster as we try to get all our junk stuff moved in. Once we’re a little more settled in we’ll start having people over. Of course, if you’re up for carrying boxes around you could probably come visit sooner!

Hey, maybe now that a couple of hurdles have been hurdled I’ll start updating the blog more often. I guess only time will tell.

If you’re reading this you probably know that Pearl was born with strabismus. This is a condition which causes her eyes to not work together properly. In Pearl’s case, her eyes tend to angle out - which is called exotropia (or, if you’re not a doctor, wall-eyed). Congenital (from birth) exotropia is apparently fairly uncommon and is usually associated with other scary problems. However, Pearl has undergone a battery of tests (okay, mostly just an MRI of the brain) which seem to indicate that there isn’t any obvious cause of her condition.

What does this mean? Well, practically speaking it means that when Pearl looks at something only one eye is pointing at that something and the other eye is pointing at something else. This is kind of confusing when you’re interacting with her because it’s hard to tell what she’s looking at. The eye doctor is fairly confident that she sees well with each eye individually and that she basically just uses whichever eye she feels like to look at things. Apparently, her brain is able to selectively ignore what the other eye is seeing, preventing her from having double vision.

The deviation is pretty dramatic with Pearl’s eyes. As she’s gotten older she has actually been able to pull her eyes together to focus on things from time to time but it usually doesn’t last long and one of her eyes drifts off. To prevent her brain from permanently giving up on one eye and just use the other for seeing things we have had to patch one of her eyes each day for about 90 minutes. We alternate the eye that we patch, forcing her to keep using both eyes.

The doctor said that technically we didn’t have to do anything to fix Pearl’s condition. She would likely have gone through life without much trouble seeing things. Her depth perception would have been impacted, but even there it’s not like she would have had no ability to perceive depth. However, if nothing else, it’s a bit of a cosmetic issue having one of her eyes all over the place.

So, to continue a long story and make it longer, last week Pearl had surgery on her eyes to hopefully correct her strabismus. Believe it or not, this procedure involves moving the muscles on the side of the eyeballs in order to realign them. It seems scary but it is apparently a fairly routine and risk free thing (hey, even her eye doctor has had the procedure done on him… I’m not sure if that’s good or bad).

She came out of it great. The anesthesia took a while to wear off but her eyes look pretty good - not too swollen and just a little red. It’s to early to tell if the procedure was successful but we can already see that her eyes are aligned much better. Se may need an additional adjustment down the road but it’s too soon to know about that.

We’re very happy to be past the surgery - it had been looming for quite a while. Big sister Coral was very concerned about Pearl but is happy to see that she is doing well.

I have been terrible with the blog. Sorry about that. Here are some updates.

Coral
Coral finished up her first year of preschool. She had a week (or was it two?) and has started a two week summer session. There are a handful of kids in her new class that were in her old one but it’s mostly new kids. I asked her the other day how her new friends were and she said, “they’re not my friends yet - I’m not used to them.”

The outdoor pool opened and she’s really enjoying that. At Aunt Carole’s house she cruises around the entire pool on her noodle. At the pool by our house she has discovered that she can touch the bottom in the shallow end (she must be a foot taller than she was last summer!). She tried on her snorkel gear the other day and like it - but she has to get more used to it before I think she could really snorkel. Her swimming is coming along. I suspect that by the end of summer she’ll be swimming like a fish.

Recently (today) Coral joined the world of Twitter. She has noticed me tweeting before so I asked her if she wanted to try it. I told her how you could use Twitter to tell people what you’re doing during the day. When I asked her if she wanted to try it her response (I didn’t make this up) was, “No. I don’t understand it.” I think that’s what I said the first time someone told me about Twitter! I’m not sure I get it now either.

Coral still really loves her sister. She’s not too rough with her. If we take Pearl away Coral usually responds, “don’t take her, she’s MINE!”

Pearl
Pearl is 7 months old now! A couple of weeks ago she got her first tooth and now has two cute little bottom teeth. She’s still a smiling machine. She loves to spit and blow raspberries a lot. Her hair is getting longer and it’s still red. She is super chubby. She can’t sit up or roll over yet but she holds herself up well on her tummy and she really likes to stand if you hold her hands. She sits/stands in the exersaucer and really seems to enjoy it. She’s still sleeping in our bed but is a good sleeper and hardly ever cries.

She’s scheduled to have surgery in a couple of weeks to correct her strabismus. It’s supposed to be a pretty routine procedure so we’re trying to not worry about it too much - but of course we’re a little worried. If it’s successful it will be nice to have her eyes lined up.

I’m sure there are many details I’m forgetting - but that’s all I have right now.