So Much Joy, So Little Time

To all the people who may have been infected by my daughter on the 3 hour bus ride from Madison to Chicago and again on the 3 hour plane ride from Chicago to Houston, I apologize. I promise I didn't know she was contagious.

A (thankfully) uneventful 3 hour bus ride/4 hour wait in the airport/3 hour plane ride with a 3 year old and 5 month old, I am eternally grateful that things went as smoothly as they did. I have learned some patience with motherhood, but I think the Almighty knows my patience isn't THAT tried and blesses me with calm children. So calm, in fact, that they do not tell me when they are sick. Christmas eve comes and Ally starts pulling on her ear and mentions that it hurts. This is the first she has mentioned it, and she's not cranky or running a fever, so I begin the internal debate as to whether or not to take her to the ER. I mean, it's not really an emergency but urgent care isn't open either and since our pediatrician resides in another state (oh, yeah and we are currently without a pediatrician as ours left the Dean Facility to practice closer to home). Sigh. To the ER it is.

Matt takes her in and fortunately they see her right away. The doctor tells Matt that she has very bad infections in BOTH ears and recommends a shot of antibiotics as well as a prescription for oral antibiotics. He cautions that the shot is painful, but necessary for a speedy recovery. Painful indeed, Ally comes home from the hospital limping! He also prescribes tylenol with codeine to "help her sleep." Apparently, codeine has the opposite effect on Ally as shortly thereafter she is literally running in circles in the living room. And the antibiotics are giving her diarrhea, but I guess we'll just ride that one out since I don't have a doctor to call to get a different prescription.

Otherwise, we are loving the warmer weather and mock all those who dare imply that 60 degrees is "cold."

Meet Santa

Did you know that you can chat with Santa live via webcam! (Thanks Debby!!)

http://www.thesquirrelcam.com/cam-popsanta.php

Up Up and Away

For anyone who follows my blog, I do apologize. I have been a bit on the boring side as of late. Unless you want to talk about e-prescribing implementations and the new requirement for discrete dispense. Today while at work, I got a call from Ally's school. I love conversations that begin with, "Sarah? Everything's fine, but..." Since Lily woke up this morning with a 102 degree fever, I was expecting Ally's teacher to tell me that she had perhaps gotten sick at school. Instead, I was told that another child bit her. She explained that they had taken Ally to the nurse, it didn't break skin, but she might have some bruising and they planned to call the other child's parents as well. I asked if she was doing OK and the teacher said that she was back to playing already. So I thought, no harm no foul, right? But when I got home, I saw this:


Wow! He really got her good, poor thing. I really hope this doesn't make her hate school. She is already so hard to get up in the morning, but usually has a good time once she's there. I wonder sometimes if I'm doing the right thing by making her go. I remember telling my mom how much I hated public school and begging to be home schooled. She wouldn't. But it was good for me, right?

So worrying about my 5 month old's cold and my 3 year old's emotional well-being, not to mention that I made the mistake of watching Gangland last night on the History channel and I've been a little on-edge today. I spent a good while reading cakewrecks this evening. Any other thoughts on how to reduce my anxiety?

Winter Wonderland

And Ally fell asleep with a candy cane in her mouth on the way home...

Fall

Fortunately, the weather has held out here. Matt says it's supposed to snow next week, but I guess winter was bound to rear it's ugly head eventually. For me, it's pretty much business as usual. Probably will take a little longer to get to work in the morning on days it snows, but otherwise I still just sit in an office all day. It's the girls and Matt that will sure miss the adventures outdoors:







Notice that Ally now refuses to look at me when I'm taking a picture. Will I ever get a decent photo of my girls together??

Look Who's Laughing!

Disguised!

I sure missed my girls while at work this week. I thought maybe if I gave them a disguise I could bring them into work with me and no one would notice. What do you think?

Twinkle Twinkle medley

DMV

The DMV is my personal representation of what hell will be like: long lines, incompetant staff, horrible customer service, and endless frustration.

The journey began last Thursday when I was pulled over by a cop on my way home from the hospital at 3:30 in the morning. Knowing that if you are driving through Mt. Horeb at 3:30 in the morning you will probably get pulled over because the Mt. Horeb policeman has nothing better to do at 3:30 in the morning in a small town, I made absolutely certain to observe all traffic laws including the speed limit. Sure enough, about a block away from my house I see those annoying lights behind me. I thought, "What could he POSSIBLY be pulling me over for?" Well, he ran my plates and noticed that the registered owner of the vehicle did not have a valid Wisconsin driver's license. (Since I avoid the DMV at all costs and since our Arizona licenses don't expire for about 40 years, we haven't bothered to get new ones). This is apparently a citable offense, as you are supposed to alert the DOT of an address change within 10 days of moving. He let me go, with the proviso that I get a new license within the next week. Boo.

So on my final free Friday before work starts, Matt and I and both girls headed to the DMV for a little slice of hell. We *thought* we had all the necessary paperwork to get our new licenses but we didn't even make past the front door. The staffer informed us that we didn't have the correct documents to show proof of residency. They would not accept the deed to our house, our cell phone bill, or our water treatment bill. Her arguments were:

1. We could have bought a house here, but not live in the house
2. The cell phone bill didn't count, it had to be a land-line
3. The water treatment bill didn't count, it had to be a water bill
4. They accept bank statements as well, but do not accept ANY statements printed from the internet

Here are my arguments:

1. Why on earth would we buy a house in Wisconsin, then pack all our kids and go to the DMV if we didn't absolutely have to? Of course we live here!
2. We don't have a land-line, only cell phones and a magic jack..welcome to 2009
3. How could we have a water treatment plan if we didn't also have water coming into the house, genius? And we don't have a water bill because it's all done online.
4. How can you not accept statements printed from the internet? 90% of my bills are paid online and I don't even see a paper statement anymore.

So we still don't have Wisconsin driver's licenses and I don't plan on going back to the DMV any time soon. I've had enough hell for now.

Glam Mom

You would think that with 8 weeks off of work I would have more time to blog, but NO!! I have been enjoying the rare moments with my girls. Sometimes after Lily falls asleep, I think, "I can just put her in the swing and go do the dishes or pick up" and then I remember that the dishes will still be there tomorrow, but Lily won't be so little forever. So my days have been filled with spending as much time as I can with Ally and Lily and enjoying every single minute of it.

We have tried to do some fun things, like going to the Dells, taking Ally bowling, visiting the library, going on picnic lunches. We've also spent a lot of time at the doctor's. Between the 4 of us, we have 8 separate doctor's appointments in the next 3 weeks. Many of you already know about my midnight trip to the ER. We noticed that Lily felt a little warm and took her temperature. It was about 100.5, which isn't that high but according to everything I could find online, 100.4 is the threshold for concern in babies under 3 months. I called the on-call nurse and she recommended that I bring Lily to the ER. They did some blood test and took her urine and it appears she had a UTI. They gave us antibiotics and sent us home. She is doing much better, but we have appointments for a renal ultrasound and a consult with a pediatric urologist in the next couple weeks to determine if there is anything abnormal with her kidneys.

At our follow-up appointment the day after, we also had them look at Ally and found that she had an ear infection, so both girls are on antibiotics but doing fine. While in the waiting room, I saw a woman with 2 children, a little girl near Ally's age and a little boy probably a few months old. The woman had flawless makeup and was dressed impressively. Her hair was done to perfection, and so was her daughters: the little girl even had highlights!! Then there was me: no makeup, wearing clothes that don't fit, my daughter who won't even let me brush her hair much less fix it nice, and to top it off, I'm covered in puke. Well, I guess some moms have it all together...some days I'm lucky if I even get a moment to shower! And I LOVE it! I love being a mom!!

Catching Up

Well, I've been on a blogging hiatus of sorts, but I did want to share a few pictures of Lily's Blessing and Ally's birthday. Enjoy!

4 Weeks...what??

4 weeks have gone by ridiculously fast...I can't believe we've had Lily that long! Seems like just yesterday I was fat and disgruntled. Oh wait, it was.
Today we ventured to the mall to get the kiddos pictures taken, Ally for her 3 year old shots and Lily for her 1 monthish. This is how it went down. The group in front of us went 25 minutes over, so we sat in the waiting room with our girls getting very impatient. Not good to begin a photo session with 2 kids already bored. Lily pooped (diaper #1). Finally, we got our turn to go back and we had Lily go first. She did great, although she pooped again and this time through her diaper onto the sheet they laid her in (diaper #2). Ally didn't fare so well, she was tired and hungry and wouldn't look at the camera despite promises of candy. We finally got her to cooperate by telling her there was a butterfly in the camera if she looked closely. She was really excited about that idea and kept asking for the butterfly. When said butterfly was actually produced, however, she FREAKED out...screaming and crying (who's afraid of a paper butterfly??) So needless to say we didn't get any pictures of Ally and Lily together because Ally was having an anxiety attack over a paper butterfly. Oh well.
Then while picking out the photos we wanted, Lily pooped again (diaper #3) and Ally started crying that she WANTED the butterfly. And cried all the way to the car, at which point Lily started crying. And so we left the mall with both girls screaming. A successful photo session by any standards.

We're Home

Lily Elizabeth is finally here! 8 days after her due date she finally decided to make her entrance.



I started to have contractions Friday morning around 9:30 am. When we got to the hospital they were already 3 minutes apart, but we still labored for an additional 10 hours. About then, I started to run a fever. I felt very flu-like and had a headache. But the critical part is that Lily's heartrate went up. That was the first of the complications. The way that Lily was facing (head down, but face-up) meant that labor would probably continue for another 5-8 hours and they wanted to get her out in 1-2. They could try to flip her, but she wasn't low enough. Basically we were stuck and they wanted to do another C-Section. I sobbed (not the first time that day) and for the sake of Lily, agreed.

Things went much smoother than last time I would have to say, and I am recovering nicely. Lily was born running a temperature of 103 and had to stay in the NICU for 5 days. Leaving her was the hardest thing I've ever done. Fortunately, we were able to bring her home the next day and she has been doing wonderful ever since.

Lily weighed 9 lbs 1 oz when she was born and was easily the biggest baby in the NICU. She ate so much that they put her on an "on demand" schedule and let her eat whenever she wanted, as opposed to their normally regimented schedule.

And Ally is loving her "cute baby." I do notice that she is acting more clingy, particularly to Matt. All I can say is thank-goodness for grandma!! She keeps Ally occupied when she's not making dinners and taking care of me. She is a saint, as is Matt who helps me with feedings and taking care of Ally whenever possible. I am truly, truly blessed.

Butterfly Cowgirl

Can you believe she'll be 3 tomorrow???

No News

Sadly, no new updates on the baby-front. She seems to be perfectly content where she is.

The Artist Strikes Again

While supposedly napping, the artist Ally was up to no good in her bedroom yesterday. I went to check on her and could smell poop from all the way down the stairs. Not a good sign. What we found when we opened the door was poop smeared EVERYWHERE. From her bed, to the carpet, to all the clothes she pulled out of her dresser and her toys. Oh yeah, and on her fingers, legs, and even face. Disgusting.

Matt handled cleaning up Ally while I got started on the carpet. Let me tell you, getting on your hands and knees and scrubbing poop out of the carpet is the last thing an 8-month pregnant woman wants to do. Fortunately, Matt came and helped me finish up after showering Ally down. I hope this phase ends soon!

It's finished!

Some before and after pictures for you.

Notice the small shower, the broken medicine cabinet, the weird, narrow cabinet:





Here's the old vanity that takes up most of the bathroom:



And a few coats of paint and sleepless, work-filled nights later...welcome to our new bathroom!











Kudos to Matt and all his hard work. I can take none of the credit for anything (other than picking out the vanity). He did it all: tile, plumbing, electric. What a man!!

Next project: upstairs bath

...to be continued...