This morning was a little hectic around the house but Kaylee was pretty calm.  It took awhile to convince her to eat breakfast, causing some anxiety about being late but, in the end, it all worked out.  Out the door, backpack on and loaded:

Once there, we hung up the backpack and signed in. Kaylee immediately started playing and making herself at home. In a few minutes, it was clear that we were no longer needed so we left her. After class was done, Mommy, Grandpa Roger, and Grandma Mona took Kaylee out for a special lunch in honor of her big day. When I got home, she didn’t have much to say but I think she’ll be ready to go back.

She has been pretty excited all summer about today but, in the end, it proved a little anti-climatic.  Nicole, Kaylee, and I walked down to the bus stop (about a block and a half from our house) and waited with Rayna.  We got our hugs and kisses out of the way before the bus arrived so she could focus on getting on with the other kids while Nicole and I deployed the camera and camcorder.  Just before she got on the bus, she looked over and said “I love you” and blew a kiss.  That’s a memory I don’t want to lose; hopefully, recording it here will help me hold on to it.

As far as I know, the day went well.  When she got home, she didn’t have a lot to say.  We asked if she had a good day and she said “yeah”.  Asked what she did, she said “I don’t remember.  I had two snacks.”  And then she asked if she could go out to play.  I suspect that she is still processing it all.

Next week, Kaylee has a big day as she starts her first year of preschool.  The milestones just keep coming…

Good thing we didn’t have anything big planned today.  Kaylee took a tumble in her room and split her head open on her bedframe.  I was at work but Nicole and the girls handled it with grace.  After some initial crying and a lot of blood (wounds to the head bleed like you wouldn’t believe), Kaylee calmed down and was pretty cool as Nicole wiped the blood away to see how bad it was.  Meanwhile, Rayna raced off to get the Neosporin and bandaids.  That’s what you get for an owie, right?  After debating whether to call 911, Nicole decided to take Kaylee in to the doctor’s office herself.  She thanked Rayna for the Neosporin and bandaids but said that they needed to go to the doctor.  “Is it that bad?”, Rayna asked.  Told yes, she said “OK, I’ll go get my shoes on”.  In the waiting room, she danced and twirled to make Kaylee laugh and cheer her up.  Did I mention that Rayna had been playing dress-up and was still wearing her princess costume?  They must have made quite a sight at the doctor’s, Nicole carrying in Kaylee with blood still streaming out of her face and Rayna in her princess gown…

In the end, they decided to send Kaylee to St. Mary’s in Rochester, where they could use sedation to keep her still while they did the stitching.  When you see where the cut was, it makes sense.  They wanted to make the stitches as small as possible to minimize the scarring.  I met them at the hospital ER.

The staff at St. Mary’s was great.  They put on a Tinkerbell movie to keep Kaylee entertained and gave her a light sedative, similar to what you might get at the dentist.  Enough to calm things down without knocking her out completely.  14 stitches later (3 deep inside the cut and 11 on the surface) it was done.  Big thanks to Roger, Nicole’s dad, who stayed with Rayna while we all were at the hospital.

Kaylee is in pretty good spirits.  The doctors gave us lots of instructions on how to minimize the scarring and we’ll go back in 5 days to get the stitches out.  Tonight, we went out to Burger King to celebrate how brave Kaylee and Rayna both were.  And now, I’m going to bed…

We started the summer a little early with a trip in May to Missouri to see my Mom.  The girls are getting old enough to appreciate the Grandma that they don’t see as often as they do their other relatives.  I think the highlight was chasing ants and butterflies around Mom’s yard.

Rayna has been to, not one but, two vacation bible schools.  First, she spent a week at a Baptist church in Rochester at the invitation of Emily, her best friend from preschool.  And then, of course, bible school at our own church.  She returned the favor and invited Emily to come along.  Both girls had a great time.

As reported previously, both Rayna and Kaylee have been spending a lot of time in the pool at the Rochester Athletic Club.  Both took swimming lessons and are coming along nicely.  I personally had a great time in Kaylee’s parent/child lessons.

A few weeks ago, we all went to the Minnesota Zoo and had a good day.  I personally enjoyed the giant fish tanks the most.  Kaylee really seemed to get into that too, although she beat a hasty retreat when a shark suddenly swam close by.  Everyone had fun watching a brown bear who was quite a ham and put on a good show for the crowd.

So, it’s been a good summer so far.  Here’s looking forward to a great August!

I guess the most the fundamental question is why we are going through this in the first place?  Why does the President want to push this at a time when we already have two wars (three if you count the war on terror outside of Afghanistan) and a nasty recession on our plate?  I cannot speak for the President.  But I can tell you why I think we need to tackle this issue now.

1)  People are going bankrupt in the US due to the cost of health care.  And I’m not just talking about poor people without insurance or people who made bad choices with their health and/or personal finances.  I’m talking about middle and upper class people who had health insurance and did everything you’re supposed to do but got nailed by a chronic health problem and were abandoned by their insurance company:

• February 03, 2005 – The journal Health Affairs reports that Harvard researchers found that half of all personal bankruptcies declared in 2001 were caused by illness and medical bills.  “Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. More than three-quarters were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness. However, 38 percent had lost coverage at least temporarily by the time they filed for bankruptcy.  Most of the medical bankruptcy filers were middle class; 56 percent owned a home and the same number had attended college. In many cases, illness forced breadwinners to take time off from work — losing income and job-based health insurance precisely when families needed it most.”
• June 04, 2009 — BusinessWeek reports on a study in which Harvard and Univerisity of Ohio researchers found that 62% of all personal bankruptcies declared in 2007 were caused by health problems.  “Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not Medicare or Medicaid.”

2)  The cost of employee health insurance in the US is getting harder to bear, especially for small businesses:

• January 28, 2009 — CNN and Fortune report that small businesses are struggling to provide employee health plans, particularly in a weak economy when they cannot pass the cost on to consumers while staying competitive.  “Premiums on group policies have soared by as much as 30%, on top of double-digit increases in each of the past five years. Coverage is shrinking. Thanks to insurer consolidation, policy choices are more limited than ever. And in a seller’s market for insurance, small business owners have little room to negotiate prices or terms.”
• March 04, 2009 — The Council on Foreign Relations reports that health care costs in the US are undermining the competitiveness of US businesses in the world marketplace.  “Factoring in costs borne by the government, the private sector, and individuals, the United States spends over $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare expenses, more than any other industrialized country. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School estimate the United States spends 44 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the country with the second highest expenditures, and 134 percent more than the median for member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These costs prompt fears that an increasing number of U.S. businesses will outsource jobs overseas or offshore business operations completely. U.S. economic woes have heightened the burden of healthcare costs both on individuals and businesses.”
• February 11, 2005 — General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner tells the Economic Club of Chicago that “Failing to address the health care crisis would be the worst kind of procrastination, the kind that places our children and our grandchildren at risk and threatens the health and global competitiveness of our nation’s economy.”

3) The insurance company is not your friend and cannot be trusted.  If this last point seems more emotional and less impartial than the others, that’s because it is.  Right around my first birthday (1968), my dad was diagnosed (at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester) with Multiple Sclerosis.  The disease moved fast; by my eighth birthday, he was paralyzed from the waist down and had lost the use of his right hand.  That year, 1975, he left the workforce and lost his health insurance benefit.  The plan allowed him to maintain his coverage but he had to assume the full cost of the premiums.

I guess the plan’s rules didn’t allow them to kick him out because of his disease.  There was nothing, however, to keep the insurance company from increasing the premium.  Which they did.  Every six months.  After a long, expensive progression of premium hikes, my folks had to give in and “voluntarily” withdraw from the plan.  Of course, getting another policy somewhere else was out of the question due to the now pre-existing condition.  For the last 10 or 12 years of Dad’s life, he was without any health insurance at all.  I remember very clearly heart-breaking discussions of what we could do should Dad need hospital care.  I was just getting old enough to understand what was happening and the possibilities were scary.  In the end, Dad never needed to go to the hospital and he quietly passed away in 1994.  We avoided financial armageddon.

The free market is supposed to use competition to get services to the most people for the lowest cost.  Insurance works by spreading risk out amongst as many people as possible to minimize it (risk) for everyone.  Neither of these principles is working in the American health insurance industry and something needs to change.  That’s why I think we can’t afford to do nothing.  Of course, that raises the question of what, exactly, we should do.  That’s another post.

Addendum:  Although I stand by my opinion of insurance companies, I have to say that I have known individual insurance agents who were good, honorable people.  I think the evil happens higher up at the corporate office.

In June, we went down to Missouri to visit my Mom for a few days.  It was a great visit, marred only by the 100 degree, 99% humidity weather.  The girls loved seeing “Grandma Lambright”, who was a bit of a mystery to them, in the flesh.  Rayna still is talking about wanting to go see Grandma Lambright again.  Other highlights of the visit included seeing my old friends Vince and Droid, along with their families, and a trip to see my Dad’s resting place in St. Joe.  The swans and fish were out in force at the cemetery’s pool and the girls had a wonderful time tossing bits of bread into the water to be devoured.

Shortly after we returned from Missouri, Nicole and I decided it was time for Rayna to make the transition to a full-sized bed.  She did really well in the hotel bed on the trip and there didn’t seem any reason to wait.  So, we went to the furniture store and got her a new bed.  We didn’t get a headboard; the side of her toddler bed was designed to function as a headboard when the child moves to a bigger bed.  We then went to Wal-Mart and let her pick her own bedding.  It was a close race and I thought for a minute that she was going to opt for Micky Mouse; in the end, however, it was the Princess gear that got the nod.  Rayna loves her big bed; even now she occasionally thanks me for putting it together.

Kaylee got a little grumpy at all this.  When it dawned on us that she was jealous, we went ahead and converted her crib to a toddler bed, which immediately brightened her mood.  She loves getting in and out of bed on her own. She can’t open the door yet but she’s trying and it’s just a matter of time.  It’s hard to believe how she’s grown.

Speaking of Kaylee, she continues to come into her own.  All her teeth seem to be in, save the four eyeteeth which still give her fits sometimes.  Her vocabulary has exploded this summer and it seems like she’s coming up with new words every day.  She really gets a kick out of saying Rayna’s name and uses it every chance she gets.  Some of her other favorites are “juice”, “Elmo”, and “naked”, which gets used a lot at bathtime.

This year marked Nicole and my fourth wedding anniversary, which doesn’t seem possible.  The time has really flown.  We treated ourselves to a day trip to the Twin Cities while the girls stayed home with a babysitter.  Nothing fancy, just a little shopping and lunch.  It’s just nice to get away by ourselves occasionally.

Speaking of Elmo, we all went to Sesame Street Live last weekend and had a great time.  Kaylee had never been to anything like this and she really likes Elmo so she spent the whole show entranced.  It was fun watching her try to figure out cotton candy.  First she tried chewing it, which didn’t really work.  Licking like a sucker was even less successful.  Finally, she figured out how to just let it dissolve in her mouth.  We got her an Elmo pendent which is up in her room.

We have a massive backlog of photos, which I need to organize, tag, and get loaded to our page on flickr.  I posted a bunch yesterday (including Christmas 2008) and will continue to work on that in the coming days.  Our photostream isn’t in strict chronological order anymore, which offends my sense of the linear, but it’s more important to get stuff up.  I’ll post here when the particularly choice bits go up.