Just for Fun

Okay. I met this guy tonight. Comic book guy. He was working the register at the grocery store, only, instead of comic books, he finds himself to be an expert on music. And music that sounds like every 3rd song on the radio, with the guy who is singing/whining/groaning/frying his vocal cords all at once. Yeah. I didn't have the patience for it. "This is like the best song ever. It's really sad actually, if you listen to it." Proceeds to explain some love triangle story line in the song. "Yeah. They have this other song on NOW. You know, NOW That's What I Call Music. It's the only good NOW CD there is." I'm telling you, I was livid listening to this crap when all I wanted to do was get my stupid groceries and move on with my night. No, this guy has to share his expert opinions with the person in front of me, paying not a great amount of attention on what he's actually doing.

I cannot believe The Comic Guy of music is actually a member of society. I was laughing as the image of the Simpsons character popped in my mind on the drive home.

The Potty Chronicles

I'm starting a weekly update called The Potty Chronicles, until my wonderful 3-year old is fully trained.

This morning, Matthew peed standing up again. Hooray! That's right, until last week, he had not worked on this feat in ages. There was an incident early on where he tried it, leaned over like a real man would, only he leaned too far, and fell against the toilet. Once, he almost fell all the way in, except that I was there to catch him so that only his arm went in. It was pretty comical, though he didn't seem to think so. Now that another boy at daycare - a younger one - has gotten near or fully potty trained, Matthew slowly has gotten braver the last couple weeks. He kept saying he wanted to and he'd stand up, almost do it, and then chicken out and sit down on the potty. I didn't push the issue, and finally last week he actually did it. He must have decided he likes it, because he hasn't stopped, and made it almost the whole day dry yesterday. This morning, while he was going potty, he actually asked if he could wear underwear today. HELLO!!! Yes, of course you can!!! I didn't hesitate. Daycare maybe felt differently, but honestly I didn't care. He's never asked me before!! (sorry, Kelly, hopefully you were free from incident today... :)

Woo hoo! I hope to have a really good update next week!

Ahhhhhhhh....I'm sitting.....ahhhhh

I have been waiting for this moment all night - to sit down with my laptop, put my feet up and say ahhhhhh. I have a tendency to think I need to get it all done all the time, and I work myself to the point of exhaustion. Well, this weekend I had yet to clean our master bedroom. Why I'm calling it a master bedroom, I don't know, since it's the size of a normal bedroom and doesn't have a bathroom or even a walk-thru... Not the point. Not the point. For some reason I decided 6pm on Sunday night was a good time to take on this task. Besides that, I was already working on laundry, cleaning the kitchen, etc. And the room cleaning involved other things. You know how doing one thing means you have to do this other thing first and that thing means you should probably do this other thing too. So the MOUNTAIN of maternity clothes piled on the floor (please don't think about my baby's 9 month age) required me to rid myself of bags of a friend's maternity clothes she lent me. The result, however, is that I no longer have a mountain of these clothes in my bedroom. YAY! Then I got it in my head I should rearrange a couple large pieces of furniture. Yeah. That meant hauling out the file cabinet that was erroneously placed in our bedroom when we moved in. When you're moving, never say "oh let's just put it there and figure it out later." That's what happened with our bedroom. And it was over 2 years ago, and we had not touched the large pieces of furniture or file cabinet. Man, we're pathetic.

I feel like I've finally begun to sort out my life. It's been a long time coming. When do people find the balance? For a long time, I had been overworking myself each night, then I had kids and decided to heck with all the household responsibilities. Well, I gave up those responsibilities in a small townhouse. Now in a normal size house, your junk accumulates and spreads out. I'm not complaining about being able to spread it out, mind you. I love my house, but I never took the time to really organize all the storage areas. They are kind of odd areas. Anyways, this period of deciding time with each other was more important than having a clean environment has gotten out of hand. We live in a cluttered mess all the time, and the last few days I have been attempting to work like crazy. A lot of nights I fail because of exhaustion, and I collapse on the couch when the kids are finally successfully down for the night. My mom tells me she still hasn't found the balance between getting things done and enjoying life. Is there any hope for any of us? I should just shut up and be thankful, right? So okay fine, here I go, attempting to do just that. Shut up and be thankful I have a house to maintain.

Since I have been so absent to my blog lately, here are some bullet points of life lately

• Ellie's cast is off. It's been almost 2 weeks, and her hand is looking great


• Ellie started physical therapy


• I've been off to a great start making the last 3 months of the year our medical quarter, and have been in for Matthew's checkup, a bunch of Ellie appointments, another one coming in a couple weeks, I need dental checkups, and Ellie is going to have probably 12 weeks in a row of occupational therapy


• Ellie went and got an ear infection to top off her terrible cold


• I have no vacation time left at work (let's not exaggerate, people - I have -27 hrs of vacation time, I'm not kidding), and so I have been working A LOT, trying to cram in all my hours to end the year with a slightly positive balance


• I've become 2 employees in 1 recently at work, and while it's crazy at times, I am happy to be busy and needed


• My son has finally started going #1 regularly in the toilet, even standing up now!! This is the hugest news ever! He has even gone on his own without us telling him to a few times. We're getting somewhere. Last week he did a #2 in the toilet, but hasn't since. That's okay, I can handle it. Barely. :)


• We went to a b-day party for a 3-year old today, and Matthew had a blast. It was so fun to see. They had a DJ, which might seem bizarre, but it was great for every age of kid there. Matthew just stood watching for the longest time, warming up to the situation. And I mean THE LONGEST TIME. You could tell he wanted to join in, but just couldn't make himself do it. All it took was the right music. I have no idea what song it was, but all of a sudden he couldn't hold back and started shaking it up!! It was hysterical. The next song after coming out of his shell was who let the dogs out. He tore up the dance floor. It was just so funny. There aren't words for it, and we just sat back and enjoyed watching it. He had such a good time. Though he says his favorite part of the party was eating cake.

Here he is at the party, for now, until I get the dancing shots uploaded


• Some of you may have been following enough to know we've been having some serious tantrum issues with Matthew, but I am happy to report he has been very good the past couple weeks, with a few exceptions here and there.

So I have a couple posts in the works to look forward to soon, including another confessions of a working mom, and something to do with Matthew quotes. He has a lot lately. I can't wait to write more. Hopefully I'll get back into a good routine. I really enjoy writing, but it gets hard to find the motivation. Soon, people, soon! Till then, ahhhhhhhhh, I'm still sitting. Ahhhhhhh

Did you know....

Did you know babies cry because they are mad that they are crying? Mull that one over for a minute. Yes, I learned this lesson from 3:49am-5:19am this morning... 'nuff said.

I wanted to quickly update because a major development occurred yesterday. My 3-year old went #2 in the toilet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was only EIGHT months ago when he last did it. I should probably say it was kind of an accident, since he had been holding back his big jobs most of the day. Where is my brother now, to give his advice to not hold back big jobs? How does that work? He can tell everybody that pearl of wisdom until it actually needs to be said? Hmmmm, must correct this problem... I digress. Share in my joy for a moment, would you please? This might be a major breakthrough, since he was actually excited to tell his daycare this morning, instead of dying of embarassment like what happened 8 months ago.

The other update is that Ellie's hand is starting to look much better, and she even opened it up all the way on her own this morning! Hurrah! (pictures to come, I promise) Only one of the stitches remain now, and the puffiness is much better except in her index finger. She has also figured out how to sit up from a laying down or crawling position. She looks very proud of herself whenever she does it. The 1st time she did it we didn't even realize and all of a sudden thought, wait a minute, she's sitting up and wasn't a second ago! And as soon as she knew we realized it, you should have seen the grin!

Pictures

BEFORE

AFTER (warning: slightly frankenstein-ish)
She's been keeping her thumb and index finger in a pinching position ever since the cast came off. And notice the puffy factor.
As you can see, head on, her left hand looks pretty normal. You wouldn't even notice anything from a distance.
By the way, she's now happy and bathed. Bath time was good. She splashed away like she'd never been in the tub before! She kept her left hand out though, like she still has a cast on, but whenever I put her hand in the water, it didn't bother her.
We set up a follow up appointment with the surgeon to see how things have progressed in early January. We also set up an appointment to meet with an occupational therapist next week, and thankfully that will be at a nearby clinic instead of the hospital. That should be interesting. She still isn't using her hand much, and whimpers if she puts any weight on it. She was a little mad about that while she was crawling. She's got a 3-appendage scoot going to make up for it.

One last tidbit: They don't worry too much at this point about straightness of the fingers. They like to get all the fingers separated early and then let them grow on their own and generally see how things are doing when they're about 5 years old. Until then, we'll be seeing the doctor periodically to check on the progress.

An interesting morning

I just wanted to quick post and let everyone know the cast is GONE!!! I will post pictures of the new hand later, after some substantial cleanup and nail trimming is done.

The morning was nothing like we expected. First of all, she had her cast taken off, or rather, sawed off, while being held in Daddy's arms and producing a large amount of pink cast dust, and screaming her head off. They didn't take the bandage off the hand until we were in to see the doctor. When they started peeling off the bandages, I was amazed by the amount of crud inside. As they were unraveling, I was just sure they would come off to reveal a black hand. And then the moment of truth came. And, to tell you the truth, I'm sure our faces dropped a little. I don't know what I was expecting. Well I do know, and I had a picture in my head of a normal hand with 2 fingers shorter than the rest. Instead what we saw was a puffy, crusty, long-jagged fingernailed thing resembling a hand. The good news, though? There are now 5 distinct fingers!!! The surgeon is very happy with the results and especially with the skin grafts. I have quite a bit of cleaning to do, and her first real bath in 2.5 months. That I am planning to do very soon, probably right after posting this. So, all in all we are happy, but the initial impact was a little shocking, I'll admit. Moral of the story: don't set your expectations too high. The puffiness is supposed to go down once her hand has been in use a little bit, and the stitches remaining and the crusty stuff will dissolve in the bath. I PROMISE I'll post pictures later, after we're cleaned up and have had a chance to let Ellie discover her hand again. She is not moving it very much, and it is a little tender to the touch. She is not liking that very much. Okay, until later, wish me luck. This part is a little tougher than I expected... But thank God for 5 fingers!

Top 10 List of Reasons Not to Miss Ellie's Cast

2 days left!! This puppy comes off on Tuesday!!! Hoorah!

10. Wondering what that banging sound is coming from the crib
9. Cringing every time that arm bangs the high chair
8. Sponge baths
7. Tying plastic bags around Ellie's arm to keep the cast dry
6. The fuzzy socks over her cast to keep her from scratching her face off.
5. Watching her topple over her jumbo club of an arm
4. Holding her arm over her head while she throws up to keep the cast free from debris.
3. Wondering if she'll club her brother to get him to leave her alone
2. Sleeveless shirts
1. Getting knocked in the chin, cheek, or mouth, wincing in pain each time.