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Jun 7, 2012

Locals: Meet the New Nationwide Children’s Hospital

June 7, 2012 By

I’ve been lucky that my two children have been fairly healthy kids. They’ve had a few non-routine visits to the doctor, and even a couple of urgent care visits, but our visits to Nationwide Children’s Hospital have been rare. We’ve been to the emergency room twice – both times at the request of their doctor – and we’ve been to the dentistry clinic twice and the speech clinic several times.

Our children’s hospital is an older building (my mother worked there in the mid 70’s and it hasn’t changed that much), and for years it was painfully obvious that the building was too small for everything they needed. So a few years ago construction began on a new building, a hospital that would be state-of-the-art and provide them with everything needed to serve the children in our area, both in medical care and in making the hospital as non-scary as possible.

I was invited to be one of the first to tour the new hospital last weekend, and of course I jumped at the chance. As a nurse, I wanted to get behind the scenes and see what was new at this hospital, and as a parent I wanted to know what my family could expect should we ever need to visit in the future.

We’ve watched this building slowly going up for years. It’s just to the southeast of the downtown skyline, and my original thought was wow, it looks like it’s all windows! Turns out, it is mostly windows, but – as I’ll show you in a bit – it provides some gorgeous views of the city and allows all of the natural light to make the building feel as warm and bright as a hospital can.

Walking into the welcome area from the underground parking garage, I was struck by how pretty it was. Lots of little touches (designed by a group that plans designs for children’s museums) are all over the place to go with the nature theme, including several wooden animal sculptures throughout the hospital.

There are color-coded stripes on the floor to guide you to where you might need to go, along with animal footprints for little ones to look for. Touch screen directories on the walls (like giant iPads) provide additional information on the hospital and can help you find what you’re looking for.

The emergency room waiting area now has a giant fish tank in it. While the light wasn’t on when we were there, it was still fun to watch the fish swimming around. The triage area is larger, and triage rooms all have doors on them for privacy. (And in our case, security – I remember Cordy trying to escape under the curtain the one time we brought her to the hospital.) The rooms in the ER are divided into three areas, handling less serious issues (ear infections, small injuries etc.), more urgent problems (like asthma attacks, concussions, larger injuries), and then the trauma area.

All patient elevators require a keycard to access them. If a child is admitted, parents are given a keycard to activate the elevators, and their keycard is coded to only open for their child’s floor. This provides greater security for the patients, ensuring only the people who are supposed to be there have access to them.

Each floor has a playroom for the patients to use, equipped with games and toys as well as a sink and a dishwasher to sanitize toys.

The playrooms also have large windows with a spectacular view.

The patient rooms were designed to be as child-friendly and welcoming as possible. The curtains are rainbow-striped. The bathroom has child-sized equipment. Behind each patient bed is an LED artwork – the child can control which color to set it on, or have it cycle through all of the colors. We were told that at night if all of the art installations are on and the blinds are open, the building glows in color. 

Each room is also painted with magnetic paint, allowing kids to pin up photos, drawings, or cards from friends and family to make their stay a little more relaxing. For the staff, built-in monitors, a computer and med scanner in each room, and drawers stocked exactly the same way in every room ensure patient safety and reduce the risks for errors and cross-contamination.

Back down in the welcome area, there’s a siblings club where siblings of sick kids can come to play, with staff who are trained to help kids deal with the stress of having a brother or sister in the hospital while still helping them have fun. There’s also the magic forest, a gorgeous area filled with trees that kids can touch and play around. Nature sounds fill the area, making you feel like you’re outside and not in a hospital. It’s very soothing.

The lower level is where the cafeteria is located, along with an outdoor dining area if the weather is nice. I love that each item on the menu lists the nutritional breakdown as well as any allergens in the food. You also won’t find any regular soda here – the entire hospital is a sugar-free beverage zone, meaning you can’t find a drink with added sugar in the cafeteria or the vending machines. It’s a nice reminder to not drink your calories.
 
Finally, for the tech-minded, there’s even a free app you can download to help prepare for a trip to the hospital.  The myChildren’s app provides a map of the hospital, hours for each part of the hospital, a list of doctors and close-to-home clinics, tips on what to bring, and more.

Overall, the new Nationwide Children’s Hospital is beautiful, with lots of attention to detail to reduce the anxiety level of children who need to be there. While I always hope that my daughters never need to come to the hospital, the design of the new hospital makes me feel safe that, if a visit was needed, they would have as positive an experience as possible.

Nationwide Children’s Hospital will be having a Community Day on Sunday, June 10, from 11am to 4pm where the public can come out for a behind-the-scenes tour of the hospital (much like the tour I received) as well as educational stations for the kids, family activities and more. It’s a great chance to introduce your children to the hospital in a fun, friendly setting.

Full disclosure: I was part of a group of bloggers who were invited to tour the hospital. Lunch was provided for us as we spoke with doctors from the hospital after the tour. No monetary compensation was received and all opinions expressed here are my own.

Filed Under: local fun


Jun 5, 2012

Did I Mention How Much I Dislike Uncertainty?

June 5, 2012 By

So remember how I said Aaron was being laid off at the end of May? Yeah, that. Well, he’s not quite laid off yet. He didn’t work on Friday, but yesterday was back in the office. Confused? Me too.

Seems that one of the vice presidents of the company reaching his boiling point at having his ideas ignored while the owner continued to mismanage everything, so he quit. With his leaving, the owner decided he wouldn’t re-hire for that position, leaving more money in the budget from the lack of one salary. Another VP then saw an opening and begged to have his team back together in some way. So their only human relations employee – also the receptionist – was brought back from part-time to full-time again, and Aaron found himself putting his unemployment application on hold.

He’ll only be working 25 hours a week at the moment, hourly now instead of salaried. But the bonus is they are allowing us to keep our health insurance. The premiums will eat up a large chunk of his part-time pay, but we’re not looking at this stay-of-execution as a long-term plan, so we’ll keep cutting back and make due with what we have. There’s a chance they’ll bring him back to full-time if they are awarded a new contract for a job, but either way Aaron has lost any trust in the company owner and plans to continue job hunting as if he was unemployed.

There was one snag, however. Aaron was supposed to be paid on the last day of May, like everyone else in the company. An email sent out late the night before informed everyone that a few payments from vendors were late, and as a result they had to make the choice to delay the pay for a few people. Aaron was one of them, of course. Never mind that we had bills to pay, or that at the time we were expecting this to be his last paycheck and needed that money. As of today, he still hasn’t be paid for the last half of May. Good thing I didn’t schedule any bills to be paid yet. Grrr.

Thankfully I still have my job, and we’re busier than ever. Last week truly was a blur to me. I was going full-steam for so long that by Saturday night I felt lost without something to do. This week is the same, and I’m working on perfecting my ability to keep as many balls in the air as possible. I’m still dropping a few, but I’m doing my best to pick them right back up and keep going. It’s fun and works well with my ADD nature – I never have to stay focused on one thing for long.

I’ve also had some great local opportunities in the past week. On Wednesday I shared a delicious lunch and even better conversation with Chef Dan, the head chef for McDonald’s, and on Saturday I had the opportunity to be one of the first of the public to tour our new Nationwide Children’s Hospital. More on those soon.

My goal for this week is just to get through it. Summer camp doesn’t begin until next week, so Cordy is home with me each day. Yesterday she gave me a math quiz on fractions using Draw with Stars on the iPad while I worked. Today she says she has a spelling test planned for me. I hope I pass.

Filed Under: Aaron, Cordy, money, the J-O-B


Jun 4, 2012

Review: My "Grown Up" Apple Juice

June 4, 2012 By

I have a little secret that many don’t know about me: I don’t like beer. I know, I know, beer is the standard drink for many, the gateway drink when you’re in college (ahem…you were over 21, right?), and so on. But even in college I’d take a glass of wine over a beer any day, leading to my reputation as an alcohol snob.

Please. I’m far from a snob. It doesn’t even have to be expensive wine. I’d take a good cheap wine over the most prized micro-brew anytime.

It wasn’t until I spent a summer in Britain in 1996 that I was introduced to cider. Our local pub guy offered it to me one day when I confessed I didn’t like beer, and at first I thought he was making fun of me by offering me apple juice. Once I realized it was hard cider – as in, alcoholic apple juice (well, sorta) – I agreed to give it a try. At that point, I was hooked – it was sweeter than beer and didn’t have the hops taste that I didn’t like.

So what is hard cider, you ask? It’s brewed just like beer and goes through much of the same process, but uses apples instead of barley and hops and is naturally gluten-free. It’s been around nearly as long as beer, and has been popular in other parts of the world for quite some time. It’s carbonated like beer, and has roughly the same alcohol content as beer.

Hard cider has remained in my stable of go-to drinks over the years, especially in the summer when I want a crisp, cold drink. It was harder to find 10 years ago, but thankfully cider is growing in popularity and can be found in nearly any grocery store now. I must admit, holding a bottle of cider is much easier at a cookout than trying to hold a glass of wine, and no one will call you a pretentious snob as they all drink their beer. (But I still love me some wine, too…just not at cookouts or outdoor events.)

I recently was offered the chance to try the new Michelob ULTRA Light Cider, and wondered if they had been reading my mind. This cider is naturally sweetened and 1/3 less calories than the average cider. A lower calorie cider? I’m the center of the bulls-eye for that target audience.

I bought my six pack of 12-ounce bottles before Memorial Day weekend and, ummm, they’re already gone. Whoops. Guess that means I like them, eh? To be fair, Aaron had one. But that’s all I let him have.

We refer to this as Broken.

The Michelob ULTRA Light Cider performs well up against the other ciders I’ve tasted. The flavor is light and crisp – not as sweet as some other hard ciders and not as full-bodied and heavy as the winter ciders I’ve tasted. It’s more of a granny smith apple flavor: a bit of a tart bite at first with a lightly sweet aftertaste, with no hint of bitterness. Like many alcoholic drinks, it tastes best when very cold, but the flavor still holds even as it warms up.

What I like most is that each 12-ounce bottle is only 120 calories, as compared to the 180 calories (on average) of a standard hard cider. You may not think much of 60 calories, but to me that 60 calories means a small dessert in addition to my drink – I don’t have to choose one or the other. This doesn’t taste like a low-cal alcohol, either. The flavor is light, but still comparable to other hard ciders I’ve tried.

Overall? I’m a big fan. I like having a lower calorie hard cider for summer parties and I’m thrilled that a low-cal hard cider can taste just as good as my old favorites.

For more information on Michelob ULTRA Light Cider, you can visit the Sponsor’s site to see which stores are selling it in your area. It was just released in early May, so it’s slowly getting out to stores in most parts of the US. Also, don’t just take my word for it – check out the Michelob ULTRA Light Cider page on BlogHer.com for more reviews.

Now tell me: Which favorite summer meal or activity do you think would go best with Michelob ULTRA Light Cider?

Filed Under: me me me, reviews


Jun 1, 2012

End of School Emotional Boogaloo

June 1, 2012 By

Yesterday was the last day of school for our district, and OH what a day it was. I was a flood of mixed emotions: happy that my kids were moving up in grades, distressed at what to do with them until summer camp begins, sad that we’d be leaving behind some fantastic teachers, proud of how well both girls have done this year, and seriously wishing for it all to be over because the last week of school awards and assemblies and lunches and teacher gifts to buy has me giving up a lot of sleep to fit everything in.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, Cordy tried out for the talent show. I received an email from her teacher last week asking if it was OK for Cordy to participate in the talent show by reciting a poem, and I immediately responded to ask her if she maybe had the wrong child? My daughter? Up in front of people to perform, knowing there was applause at the end? No way she’d go for a sensory experience like that. But she reassured me that it was Cordy’s idea and that they’d send her up with a group so that if she backed out it wouldn’t be embarrassing for her.

So yesterday I spent two hours in a hot gym, watching all of the talents of her elementary school. Let’s just say Adele was a very popular choice for singing this year. Finally, Cordy stepped up to the microphone. I held my breath, worried she wouldn’t go through with it. But she did. And she took a bow at the end and didn’t freak out when people clapped.

(Sorry for the tiny video. Figures I’d pick the wrong side to stand on.)

I was so proud of her. Cordy has come a long way from the preschooler who wasn’t allowed in school assemblies because she would have violent meltdowns from the noise. She now sits through them with her class, claps (and covers her ears when it’s too loud), and marches up to the stage to recite poems. I have no words except…wow.

To further cap off the year, we received her first grade standardized test scores, and the results were outstanding. They fully expect her to be a part of the gifted & talented program in fourth and fifth grades.

Smarty pants

And I also couldn’t walk through her school’s hallway without staff members stopping me to tell me some funny encounter they’ve had with Cordy. A teacher saw her in the hallway one day and told her, “You’re very Cordylicious today!” to which Cordy quickly grinned and responded, “And you look fashiontastic!”

After a lunch on the lawn, we then had to leave Cordy’s school to pick up Mira from preschool. Mira has attended a special-needs preschool for the past two years to get speech therapy for her speech apraxia. (Mira really has no issues other than her speech and some clumsiness.)

Her teacher and aide are the same ones that were with Cordy for her two years of preschool – we made sure to request them when Mira qualified for services. They’ve known Mira since she was four months old, when I started bringing Cordy to preschool each day and would occasionally volunteer with Mira in tow.

Picking up Mira was terribly bittersweet. Her teacher and aide have been a part of our lives for nearly five years, and were absolutely a large part of helping both of our daughters become the girls they are now. When Cordy first came to them, we were uncertain about her future, but after two years she was a different child who demonstrated a fantastic ability to learn and a lot more patience and tolerance of things around her. They were so awesome with her, and in teaching us how to better help her.

Mira didn’t need as much support, obviously. Her teacher considers Mira to be a “typical peer” since other than speech her development has been fairly standard. Still, Mira’s speech now compared to at the beginning is, well, intelligible. She’s understood most of the time now. The greatest hurdle was getting Mira to participate in practicing words, something her teacher figured out how to do. She saw through the crocodile tears and forced Mira to put in effort to improve.

Knowing we weren’t going to see them after yesterday was sad. Mira will likely be attending Cordy’s school next year so yesterday was it. (Oh, did I forget to mention the principal was helping us with Mira getting placed at Cordy’s school and it looks likely now? Also? YAY!) We gave the teacher and aide cards and some photos of the girls to remember them. They asked if we had plans to have any more kids soon, haha. I said we had no plans at the moment, but if we did we’ll be sure to send them to her, even if just as typical peer students.

I then had to get out of there before I broke down in tears. So we took one last photo of Cordy, Mira, and the two women who had such an influence on both of them.

Mira, aide Ms. S, Cordy, and teacher Ms. W.

It’s all over now. Cordy will be going to second grade, and Mira will be entering kindergarten in the fall.

Sigh…it’s all too fast for me.

Filed Under: Cordy, growing up, memories, Mira, school


May 29, 2012

I Need A Vacation From My Weekend

May 29, 2012 By

So, how was your weekend?

Mine was…busy. You’re supposed to rest and relax on weekends, right? Especially three-day holiday weekends? Ha. Not for me.

Saturday we took Cosmo to his first public outing as a non-vicious dog. (For those who are confused: a new Ohio law recently took effect stripping the vicious dog laws of any breed specific language. Now a dog is considered dangerous based on the individual dog’s behavior and not just because he was born a pit bull. It also means dogs like Cosmo can be adopted at local shelters instead of held and then euthanized.)

Clearly a threat to all. (Photo by Condo Blues.)

We were downtown for the PetPromise Rescue Run – a 5K fundraiser for the rescue group that gave us Cosmo. So many of the volunteers recognized him, all commenting on how BIG he’s grown.

The event was very dog-friendly and dogs were encouraged to be a part of the 5K. There were baby pools full of water for dogs to splash in and plenty of open grass for play.

Cosmo made a friend.

It was also crazy hot, so we walked two miles of the 5K before calling it quits. Cosmo was not used to the long walk, and to further complicate things, he refused to drink from any of the water buckets set out for the dogs. Somehow I find myself surprised that the dog who eats weeds, cardboard, and bugs had issues with germs from other dogs.

We’re walking…we’re walking…

Sunday was Mira’s birthday. She spent the entire day reminding us she was now five years old, and we responded by reminding her that she now has more expected of her. She didn’t like that part of turning five. We were visiting my mom for our annual Memorial Day weekend cookout, and for dessert we pulled out cupcakes and a candle.

I still can’t believe my little Miranda is five now. She’ll be going to kindergarten in the fall. She’s full of attitude and energy and more attitude and goofiness and yet more attitude and OMG if it’s this bad now what will she be like at sixteen?

Despite her desire to be a comedian, I continue to think of Mira as my sweet, serious baby…who still acted like a teen.

What are you lookin’ at, goat?
Monday was – wait for it – hot again, so we spent most of inside, with one short trip to a cookout. 
This is the last week of school for Cordy, meaning it will be the busiest week imaginable, with awards ceremonies, field day, and the school talent show.
Oh, did I mention Cordy auditioned for the TALENT SHOW? My child, who can’t stand crowds and really hates having attention on her and applause and would usually prefer to hide in the corner with a book, decided she wanted to be in the talent show. And she’s in. More to come on this later in the week – assuming she goes through with it.
Filed Under: Cordy, Cosmo, family time, growing up, holidays, Mira