Four

Four years of matrimony! Four years ago, I woke up to a rainy, cold day, hoping that all was going to be well. I went to bed the night before a little worried, as my soon-to-be-hubby had been throwing up all day and I had convinced myself that it was because he was getting cold feet. I was less than thrilled with him at the rehearsal dinner, I was a nervous wreck and cranky all day while setting things up, and basically, I didn't enjoy the day before the wedding. However, the day of the wedding, albeit disgusting weather, was wonderful and perfect and the start of four fantastic years together.

Today we are heading for a 2 day getaway at Cove Point Lodge, this fantastic Scandinavian place in Beaver Bay, right on Lake Superior. Think log beds, windows that look out over the lake, 4 state parks within a few miles, fireplace in our room, great food at this place. And while I love my daughter dearly, I am excited to sleep in for 2 days while she happily plays with her doting grandparents.

This morning has been one of the more chaotic anniversaries, not only because of packing, but Peanut threw up again last evening, so I am on pins and needles hoping that she doesn't do a repeat this morning, she fell off a chair after breakfast and hit her head and scratched her face, and I have a plugged milk duct for what feels like the millionth time. (Of note, I am SO over this pumping thing!) I need a vacation. 2 more hours and we're on our way!

Take That!

We continue in our war with the turd of a dog next door. How I hate that thing! Don't get me wrong. I like dogs, in general. In fact, we'd like to get one. But I can't stand the idiot of a dog next door who barks at nothing while he sits on the stoop that is 5 feet from our house- and of course, it's on the north side of our house and every bedroom in our house has a north facing window. Oh, the things I have dreamed of doing to that dog! The worst, though, is when the owners leave and he sits up next to the open living room windows and barks until they get home. We are talking about incessant high-pitched barking that can be heard blocks away (I know this for a fact, as I have been out walking or running and heard him 2 blocks away). I can hear it through my closed windows, even if the a/c is running. I can't stand it! We've tried talking to the owners about it, but they are just slow enough to not care. So, in a passive-aggressive move, we found this device that emits a high-pitched frequency (that only the dog can hear) when he barks. We put it in a window that faces the stoop where he sits and I hope it blasts him with enough sound to make his ears bleed and make him whimper in pain. Well, maybe not so extreme as that, but at least make him hear enough high-pitched-ness to make him stop! Here's to hoping that it helps!! If not, there's a 30 day money-back guarantee.

http://www.ultimatebarkcontrol.com/

Reform, please.

OK, this is not to spark a political debate. This is simply a musing from someone using the health care system.
Got a bill from taking Peanut to see an Orthopedic Surgeon at Gillette as a follow-up at 6 months for her hip dysplasia. $299 for x-rays. $395 for the clinic visit. $140 to see the doctor. Some other amount to have a radiologist read the x-rays. I understand that this doctor is fantastic. I'll pay him the $140. But when I called about the $395, I was told that was the amount just for visiting the clinic. $395 just to walk in the door of the clinic and be weighed, sit on the table, have a health history taken by the nurses. UNBELIEVABLE!!! The lady on the phone told me that because it's registered as a hospital, they can charge hospital rates to come in the door of the clinic. HOW IS THAT RIGHT????????????? Where is the regulation on that???? What a waste of my hard earned money and a waste of health care dollars. This is where I'd like to see reform. It makes me want to scream out of sheer frustration- people say they don't want the feds controlling our healthcare, but really, do we just let stuff like this go on unregulated???
Ok, I'm done. Got it out of my system. May need to call the Senator, as I am that annoyed.

Purple People-Eater

In the midst of my spring cleaning, I cleaned out the freezer. I found a ziplock of ham in there from Dec '06. Embarrassing. But I also came across some treasures from last summer- blueberries that my mom stuck in the freezer after the babe was born, as I had no time for baking them into anything. So I decided to thaw them out yesterday, in hopes of baking. Well, they still aren't made into anything, but I did try giving some to Peanut. She was shoveling them in faster than I could cut them in half. I wasn't even sure she'd like them, given the leathery skins that they get when thawed. But you'd think I had given her candy, the way she kept eating and eating and eating. By the time she was done, I had to take photos, as she was covered in purpley-blue. The phrase that kept coming to mind was "Violet, you're turing violet, Violet!" Thank-you, Willy Wonka.

Like Clockwork

7:20 am, like clockwork, I wake up to the sounds of "ya-ya-ya-ya-ya" over the baby monitor. It makes me laugh every morning and I continue to be amazed that it's at the same time day after day.

And yes, I know, I missed two days of posting. Busy weekend. That's all I'm saying.

Day 1

Ok, so I should be cleaning, but instead of the "should" that I live my life by these days (as noted by my hubby), I am going with what I "want" to be doing.

Last night at work, I took care of a baby who isn't going to live. Coming onto a shift and getting hit with this news right away is a rough way to start off an introduction to a family I have never met before. The thoughts that kept crossing my mind were whether or not I could handle being in their position. Now that I have a child, I can't imagine having to make end of life decisions regarding her care. Wretchedly awful. I could barely keep the tears back as I worked with this over-wrought family. At one point, he was having one of his near-death spells, turning nearly black from holding his breath (a color that no parent should ever have to see in their baby's face), the family is crying, I'm trying not to freak out about whether I was going to call a "code blue" on him (no DNR in place yet), and I realized how good I can be at stuffing the emotions of my job and putting on the clinical task-driven face. I think that I have seen too many things on my job that would cause me to be angry, heart-broken, sad, or a questioner of how God allows things to happen in a certain way and therefore, it's easy to just add this to the tally of sad cases. I'm pretty sure I'm becoming somewhat cynical or just too scientific about this line of work and that I need to be ok with the pain of it and allow that to come out in a healthier way. I mean, even the doctor, who was writing the DNR order and discussing each of the options of what they were or weren't going to do to prolong his life, was weeping along with the mom. That was amazing to see, as physicians are usually so professional and not emotional about their jobs.

Anyway, none of this makes much sense as a paragraph, but I just needed to get some of this stuff out. Blech. And as for the baby- I hope he went home with his family today with Palliative Care. I gotta say, for a baby with Trisomy 13, he looked perfect (they usually don't). And I would say he out-performed most kids who have that diagnosis and he's lived longer, too (3 weeks). Amazing and yet so crappy all at the same time.

Give it a try...

I don't know about others who do blogs, but I have great intentions at least 15 times a day of posting. And it rarely happens. As I go about the (often) menial tasks of the day, I think of things to blog about: motherhood, stages of the babe, life, spirituality, cooking (well, mostly my love/hate relationship with it!), what we eat, the fun things that we do as a family, etc. But getting it from my head onto the screen is where the roadblock enters. For example, just getting this paragraph onto the screen has taken 10 minutes. Ten minutes of the babe falling over and getting stuck between the chair and table (to which I couldn't stop laughing), the oven timer going off, getting the next round of cookies in the oven, giving the remainder of the bottle to the babe, and then offering up multiple things from the table to keep her distracted whilst I type (at the moment, she's eating a wallet). And thus is my problem. I may have the thoughts to put on here, but by the time I get to sit down and type them out in peace, I can no longer remember having a brilliant thought in my day. (Side note: people weren't kidding when they talked about "mom brain". I have never felt so stupid in all of my life as I have in the last 9 months. I really and truly believe that when I pushed out a babe and then lost countless hours of sleep, I also pushed out and lost a chunk of my brain. It's unbelievable!).

So, all of this to say, I am going to make a pact with myself to blog each day for the next month. Even if it's one sentence at 11:59 pm, I want to say that I did it.