The chocolate

This is the chocolate that my parents are nuts about. All the chocolate beans that made up this chocolate bar came from Venezuela. It is kind of like a wine and the flavors are supposedly different from diffrent chocolate beans from different areas. It is a nice intense dark chocolate and is very rich. You don't want to eat more than a few squares at a time. My mom says you even get a nice buzz from it but I did not notice that effect.

Bummer

Well poor C.J. had a bad cold so Evan did not get to have him over to play. I feel so bad for his mom. C.J. Was born a micro preemie and has been struggling ever since. He has lung damage from being on a ventilator when he was first born. Since then he had been in and out of the hospital with issues with his lungs. I have the feeling that he may be heading that way yet again but I hope I am wrong.

It really makes me realize that we have had it so lucky. Evan has been very good about not getting sick and needing hospitalizations. The worst thing that he has been sick with was a nasty tummy bug that he showed symptoms of mere days after getting out of the hospital from his stroke. I know that he picked it up from there. He was very nice and shared with mommy and daddy. Nothing is funner than going to Target to pick up a few things for a puking husband only to have to run to the bathroom yourself. A nice lady held Evan for me while I puked my guts out. It really freaked me out though because the last thing that the Cardiologist told me before we left the hospital was to not let him get dehydrated and here he was a few days later puking up a storm.

We did make a trip to Trader Joes today and some ginger snaps made everyone feel much happier. They make the best cookies there which is why I do not go there that often. I actually only went because my parents are addicted to a type of chocolate that they sell there and only there. How do I know this? My obsessed parents looked around for it. They do not have a Trader Joes anywhere near by. They live in Utah which is a very uncool state. They have to go to Las Vegas to find the nearest store (and they have actually done this).

Whenever a birthday pops up or some gift giving holiday I hook them up with a pile of chocolate. I feel like a drug dealer sometimes. Although thinking about it I am pretty poor for a drug dealer. I should jack up the price or something. hmmm off to think..................

Fun at the Doctor's office

Because Evan has a heart defect he gets a shot that is supposed to prevent RSV. It is annoying to me because it means that we are in the Peditrician's office once a month during cold and flu season. The good thing is that we have only visited him for this reason and not because he is actually sick or anything. This cold and flu season we lucked out because I have been able to schedule Harry's well baby visits at the same time saving me the hassle and travel time to multiple appointments. I would be taking the both of them any way.

Evan weighed 27 pounds and some change. He is getting to be such a big boy and is gaining weight so well now. He struggled so much to put weight on his first year and now in his second he is packing on the pounds. He was not too happy about the shot but after he had finished crying he was trying to get up onto the peditrician's lap and poke through his pockets. Evan is such a forgiving child. It amazes me that he recovers so quickly from things like that and does not hold it against the person that had to do the painful procedure.

Harry got weighed even though he was not officially in for anything. He is now 15 pounds 8 ounces. He is such a chunk!! I knew he had put on a bit of weight recently because my back hurts after a long day of holding him. Soon my back muscles will strengthen and then he will get even bigger setting the whole cycle over again.

We stopped at one of my favorite places to shop, the Carter's store at the outlet mall. There is a lady working there that worked there when I was pregnant with Evan and going nuts buying baby clothing. She had to ooh and ahh over Harry. I hadn't been in there since he was born. I was good and only got a few short sleeved shirts for Evan since the weather is starting to warm up. I could probably spend a fortune there if I had the money to do it.

That was pretty much the big event of the day. Tomorrow we are having a friend over to play (Evan will ignore him and play on his own while the other boy does the same. They may interact when the other boy plays with a toy that Evan really likes and then Evan will snatch it.) so I have to do a bit of picking up in the living room.

Something odd

I was just looking at the box that my birth control patches came in and I noticed that my husband's name was on it not mine. Does that mean that HE is the one that should be taking it? I have a feeling that it would not really work very well for him.

My new love

Harry's personality has really started to shine through. He is smiling and cooing a lot. It is so much fun to just hold him, smile at him and watch him smile and coo back at me. I have truly fallen in love with him.

The lesson was not learned

Evan's little pointer finger got nipped again so apparently my hopes were vain. For some reason known only to the tiny pea brained Larry, he decided to awaken while I was feeding Harry. Evan did his usual supersonic shrieking at the rodent's appearance and immediately made his way to the cage. I had to tell him several times to stay away but was helpless to actually do much about it because of the hungry baby in my arms. I look away to burp Harry and hear a shriek of pain. Evan is holding up his finger and it is dripping in blood.

If we were ever to have forensic investigators in our home looking for evidence of some sort they would probably end up very confused by what they found. Thanks to my darling child being on blood thinners and being a typical accident prone toddler we have blood droplets all over the place.

This time was no exception as Evan left a trail as I carried him upstairs to the first aid kit. The first bandage I put on ended up later being chewed off far too soon so there are also blood stains on Harry's bouncy seat. Of course I did not notice the stains until much later. The second bandage stayed on much longer because I taped the heck out of it.

I fixed the problem of tiny fingers and nippy rodents. I put some cardboard all around the cage to protect the animal and my son.

Phone frustration

We have been having the worst time with our phone/DSL this week. The DSL has been in and out, the phone line had been filled with static and we have been getting some horribly rude guy's line crossed with ours. He was yelling at my husband while my husband was on the phone with the phone company trying to get the phone fixed. It has been like pulling teeth to get an actual person to come out and fix our phone line. Their idea of a repair timeline is anytime on a specific day between eight in the morning and six in the evening.

The biggest irony of this whole situation is this is what my husband does at work, fixing phone lines and stuff like that. The only problem is that he does it for the military so that he can't fix our civilian phones. The boxes are locked up to keep people from messing with them. I find it very annoying that if we lived on base this situation would have been taken care of in a snap and probably would not have even happened in the first place.

A fun thing did happen yesterday. We finally got a printer after going without for about two years. We got a pretty basic printer/scanner/copier. It does not print pictures very well but it is cheaper to get them done at places like Costco any way. The printer did not come with a USB cable that we needed to have it connected to the printer and the crooks at the store we got it from were trying to charge us $30 for it. My husband goes to Wal-mart and they are there (on clearance no less) for $9. HA! Ya gotta love a good deal even if the store has appalling labor practices.

Well I managed to avoid the whole horrible chocolate ordeal that I usually face every Valentine's Day. I suggested to my husband that we should use one of the one pound gift certificates that he got for Christmas. His inner cheapness decided that not having to spend actual money was the way to go. While we were at the store there was this nice grandmotherly woman handing out samples. She was very taken by Evan who reminded her of her own granddaughter.

Evan's cuteness really seems to attract all sorts of people to him. One time when I was in the grocery store a mentally challenged person came up to us and told me that he was a very special little boy. That was something that I already knew in my heart but it was nice to have someone else say it. I think that his spirit really seems to shine through because we get people coming up to us all the time. I don't mean to sound conceited or anything but I do think that his broken little body has an especially bright spirit in it.

Feeling Good!

I am in such a good mood right now. I have my launch cast radio station rocking in the background, the kids are asleep and I have the computer all to myself. Life is good!

Oh I am also wondering if feeling not so bad that Evan got nipped by the hampster makes me a horrible mom. He hears us all the time telling him to keep away from the cage and yet he stuck his little finger in there and got a nip. I know that Evan understands that certain things are off limits because he will rarely go into the kitchen unless one of us is in there. He will try and sneak in but that only happens when one of us is cooking dinner and the other (usually my husband) is off in another room.

I can hardly blame to poor hampster for the nipping. Earlier in the evening we had him out in his exercise ball and Evan was treating it like a toy and batting the hampster around despite our best efforts to get him to stop. We put the poor animal away before Evan threw him across the room. I guess this is why I usually wait until Evan is asleep before I let the little bugger roam.

The only thing I really feel a bad about is that the nip made Evan bleed, which because he is on blood thinners really is not all that hard. I always feel bad every time he bleeds because even the smallest prick will make him bleed as if the actual injury was much worse. I hope that this will teach him to keep his fingers out of the cage but I am not holding my breath on that one.

Valentine's Day Chocolate

I am working on a way to get my own chocolate this year. My husband is a bit upset but I have not been able to tell him the real reason I don't want him getting my chocolate this year. The reason: he gets the cheap crap. Every stinking time he gets me chocolate he gets me the waxy, tasteless cheapest chocolate candy he can find. It is torture to eat it, but eat it I must or I will offend him.

I managed to dodge the horrible chocolate ordeal at Christmas time by convincing him that I had plenty of time to pick some up. I didn't really but I made time to drag both kids to the store and pick up some of the good stuff.

Now it is Valentines time and I am tired still of the bad chocolate. He is already mad that I figured out his gift to me which I could really not help since he was making it in the garage and I have to go in there now and then too. I get so very little chocolate now I just want to make sure that at the very least it is edible. Maybe I could strongly encourage him to get it at See's Candy.

Generally I would just grin and bear it. That is just how I am. But lately I have decided to cut back on some of the more fattening things of life so when I do splurge I wish to actually enjoy it. Hopefully a great plan will come to my mind before the big V day. I will keep you updated.

Eerily accurate

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have low extroversion. You are quiet and reserved in most social situations.A low key, laid back lifestyle is important to you.You tend to bond slowly, over time, with one or two people. Conscientiousness: You have high conscientiousness.Intelligent and reliable, you tend to succeed in life.Most things in your life are organized and planned well.But you borderline on being a total perfectionist. Agreeableness: You have high agreeableness.You are easy to get along with, and you value harmony highly.Helpful and generous, you are willing to compromise with almost anyone.You give people the benefit of the doubt and don't mind giving someone a second chance. Neuroticism: You have low neuroticism.You are very emotionally stable and mentally together.Only the greatest setbacks upset you, and you bounce back quickly.Overall, you are typically calm and relaxed - making others feel secure. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is low.You're a pretty conservative person, and you favor what's socially acceptable.You think that change for novelty's sake is a very bad idea.While some may see this as boring, many see you as dependable and wise.

The Five Factor Personality Test

The fun of hospitals

Well Evan's GI doctor got back to us around four in the afternoon. She had us do the one hour drive to the Hospital's emergancy room where theoretically she would be waiting to put the tube back in hopefully with out anethesia. Didn't happen. We got there and waited for several hours before she even answered the pages that the ER people were sending her. She took one look at the hole and decided that it was far to tightly closed so that he would have to go under to have it put back in so we were admitted. All tond I had to entertain a cranky shild five hours before we got a "room". The "room" was not much of a room. It was actually a curtianed area so you could hear pretty much everything. Evan was super cranky by now because he has been with out any food all afternoon in preperation of the possibility of anethesia plus he had been poked a number of times to get blood tests done and an IV in to keep him hydrated. He was allowed a bottle which helped calm him down and put him on the road to sleep. He woke up super early this morning so I didn't get much sleep. It sure is a challenge entertaining him in such a confined space.

To top all of this off my husband is acting like a bit of a jerk. Complaining that he has to take care of Harry all by his lonesome. Waaa cry me a river. I would trade places with him in a second if I could. I am sure that he would quickly decide that a slightly cranky baby at home is way better than a really cranky toddler in a hospital. At least he gets to eat his own food and relax in his own bed. I am here typing away while Evan is finally napping in a room for the families of patients wearing the same clothing that I wore all yesterday. I would love to have a nap too but it is just too noisy for me to sleep.

I wish we were at the hospital where Evan gets his heart surgeries. I know all of the staff there and you get your own real room with a real bed in it. I guess I have been spoiled and now I really know it. It is not a children's hospital so it does not have the same amenities that are here but then I think you get treated better because they don't have as many kids. It feels so impersonal here. Sigh. I hope that they get on things and get the tube back in soon. I really don't want to have to spend another day here.

Somebody take me to the loony bin!!

After an afternoon of caring for a cranky baby I pull up Evan's shirt to blow on his belly. What does my little eye spy? A belly that is free of a g-tube, all that is remaining is the hole where it should be. Horrified I hand him to my husband and rush upstairs to get the replacement tube out all the while trying to figure out when it came out. As I try and jam the tube in I realize that my worst fears are confirmed. The hole was closed! [insert your favorite swear word here]!!!!!!!! The only way to get the tube in again is to have another surgery. That means a week of the injected blood thinner (instead of the oral one he is currently on) and three days in the hospital along with several follow up visits with various people. In other words a huge hassle. An enormous hassle in a year of enormous hassles.

I am going to call his GI doctor tomorrow and pray that she will say that we should give him time without the tube so we can see if he looses weight or not. He is already doing pretty good with eating orally so he could pull this off (fingers and toes crossed). I just had not envisioned the tube coming out permanently this way. I had thought that my safety net would be there for at least a year after he stopped using it. It would be there just in case.

I am feeling a bit paranoid since pretty much for his whole life he has been tube fed. I never had to worry about making him balanced meals because I had the tube feeds as a kind of back up. Now I have to try and trick him into eating his veggies and all that fun stuff that parents of normal toddlers have to worry about.

We did eventually find the missing tube. It was nestled under Evan's blanket in his crib. It had to have come out at nap time since I had used it for his morning bolus. Every other time it has been pulled one of Evan's caretakers has been to blame and the extension tubing has been hooked up to the button. A long tube with things that will catch is asking for disaster so we try and not have the extension tubing in more than necessary. It was not in for this nap so there is a mystery here that may never be solved.

It is confirmed

We have a tooth coming in *sigh*. I just got through the whole teething thing with Evan only a few short months ago and now we are starting all over again. I also think that it is sad that Harry will have teeth before he can even eat real food. I guess that means we will not have to mess with baby food. He will be ready to chomp down on a steak before long. Both of my babies got shots today. I put Evan down for an early nap because he was looking tired. I hope he sleeps because I want a nap too.

Argh!

This has been one crazy busy week for me. To top it off I think that Harry is teething. He has this white line in his gums and when I feel it I think I feel something tooth like. Should a two month old be teething? I don't think so! I though Evan was super early by popping one out at four and a half months. I go to the pediatrician tomorrow so I will have him look at it. It could explain why Harry had not been going to bed like a good baby. I had to actually let him cry himself to sleep tonight. I felt like such a bad mommy but nothing I was doing was helping so I did nothing and now he is asleep.

I am hesitating to give him tylenol until I talk to the doctor because giving drugs to kids under three months can be tricky. They tend to hold on to them since their bodies are still maturing and some of the systems that clean the blood tend to not quite work as efficiently. This was brought home to me when Evan was a baby and in the hospital. The nurse gave him some morphine for pain control and he stopped breathing. Talk about freaky. Luckily there was an RT right there and she started bagging him while the nurse called the doctor down to give Evan a drug that would reverse the effect of the morphine. It was pretty intense for me since I was not used to seeing that sort of thing.

Topic change: I swear I am going to squish Evan's hampster like a bug. The little turd is incessantly chewing on his cage. He actually broke one of the bars by pulling it off of one of the the cross bars. Luckily he was not strong enough to pull it back enough that he could escape because if he had I would have just had my husband set a rat trap to get the bugger. I am so not having a rodent running free in my house. He is not a very friendly creature, probably because we don't handle him enough but we have very busy lives and he is mostly Evan eye candy any way. Evan loves to watch him move around in his cage. His shrieks are incredibly piercing.

Pretend Friends

I should be in bed but I need to write. I have been pondering lately about the nature of my online friendships and if the fact that the friends that I spend the most time with them makes me pathetic or not. I am a recluse by nature and love my alone time (this has been a bit tricky for me since I got married and had kids) so it is hard for me to keep up on real live friendships. Growing up my friends were friends of convience. I never really keep friends more than a year at a time. I would pick one or two out from my class and hang with them during the school year but once summer came I was a homebody and spent a lot of time reading alone in my room.

Now that I am an adult and summers of reading alone in my room are no more (sigh) my real life friendships are even more spotty and sparse. My online friends however have stuck with me. I have one that I have known for over five years. That boggels my mind. I have never before had a person that I talked to on a regular basis for that long. She has stuck with me through my marriage, several moves and me having kids. Her wisdom has kept me from killing my husband and she has given me many tips on raising kids. She is a great older mentor to a young crazy mother.

I have other women on my buddy lists that also have helped me through tough times. Often these conversations happen late at night when the kids are in bed and we should be also. But it is soo nice to be talking with another adult that you keep typing away. I could never do that with a real live friend because the people I hang with go to bed early like sane people. In fact as I started typing this paragraph one of my good friends came on and it is 1 am where she is. I think that I will not let myself feel silly for having friends that I have not met. They are real people and hopefully some day I will get a chance to meet these great people face to face.

A loong day

I am exhausted. Trips to the city always do that to me because they are never for fun, always for doctor stuff. My husband got the day off to come and help and ask his questions of the cardiologist. Nevermind that I have already told him the answer, he must ask someone else and get the same answer that he got from me in the first place. He was a help though and was useful for holding and hauling Harry around so I will forgive his annoyingness.

We started out by leaving early to visit some friends that we have in the city. I actually met the wife and baby son while Evan was in the hospital for his stroke. Her son was in for pH probe to test for reflux and an eating evaluation. We both were able to commiserate over the eating issues of our kids. Evan has progressed much better than her son I think partly because I am more willing to let him eat or not. She still feeds her son baby food and he is over a year old with a good mouth of teeth. I tried the whole baby food thing but because Evan was not into eating he would puke it up at me. Once I let him try his own finger food at his own pace he really started taking off. She is not as willing to let him try it himself but then she also has a more intense personality than me.

After a nice visit in which Evan showed off his mad eating skills to his friend we made our way to the hospital for the appointment with the cardiologist. Despite leaving 20 min early and only having to go a few blocks to get to the hospital from my friend's house we got there right at the appointment time. Parking and one way streets threw a wrench in my well timed plans.

Evan freaked out while being weighed (25 and a half pounds!!!) for some odd reason. He always hates being placed on a scale. His sats were in the low 80s which is ok but not great. The pacemaker interrogation went fine. The guy that did it was obviously not used to working at the hospital because he asked if we had had the pacemaker surgery at another near by hospital. I was like umm why since they have a perfectly good pediactric heart surgeon here. Evan was kind enough to show off his walking ability for the cardiologist and her nurse practicioner who were both very impressed. I really like that the doctor is not distant with her patients like many can be. She is always very willing to pick up Evan and interact with him. She never minds when he acts like a toddler which often means that she might not get to listen to his heart as much as he would like because he wants to see the sethescope.

The echo was the thing I was really worried about going well. Evan can be very squirmy and hates to be restrained in any way if it stops him from getting something he wants. I brought some Baby Einstein which he is addicted to and chocolate which he is also a huge fan of. Both of those along with a light thingy kept him suitably entertained long enough for them to get the images they needed.

His surgery is going to be in the spring sometime after his birthday. The cardiologist then dropped a bit of a bomb on us by saying that they would probably be doing the fontan in the fall after he had some recovery time from this upcoming surgery. This is because he is growing so well. I am happy at the thought that his major surgeries would be over before the end of the year. It also makes me even more glad that Harry is on formula since I will be spending so much time in the hospital with Evan this year. Of course there is pacemaker maintanace and other things that could be thrown at us so I will never think that he is totally done with surgery but this is a nice step.

Harry decided to be a stinker this evening. He puked up his late evening bottle and after the bath and other fun decided that he was not going to sleep unless it was in my arms. I was just too tired after the busy day to deal with that so I let him fuss a bit after jumping through all the usual hoops to get him to sleep. He settled down without too much crying thank goodness (I would have caved if it had gone on much longer).

A sad, sad thing

Yesterday my excitement was going to my friend's apartment and helping her clean it because she was moving out. It is kind of sad that I jump at the chance to help someone clean just so I can get some conversation with another adult that is not my husband. That is part of the fun of being a stay at home mother. I love it!

A wanna be crafter.

My mother is great but she is no Martha Stewart. There is a reason that it is a cruel irony that she gave birth to four girls. She is craft impaired, which is a name she calls her self. As kids we never had our hair neatly arranged and were never dressed in matching dresses for church. So imagine my surprise when I opened my Christmas present and potpourri came scattering out all over the carpet. My mother had tried to make her own gift basket filled with nice smelling bath things and with the potpourri as a filling. The funny thing is that it never occurred to her that the filling would come out because it would be tossed around in the mail.

It is a good thing that her daughters did not inherit her lack of craftiness. Each of us has our specialty with me, as the eldest, being more of a generalist. My youngest sister is a great sewer and loves to make costumes for things like Halloween and the premiers of Harry Potter movies. The next one up is a great crocheter, she loves to make afghans and things like that. The one up from that is a bit of a crocheter too but she really excels at knitting. She loves to make hats for my kids and makes sure that they match the coats that they are wearing for the winter.

I am a scrapbooker, cross stitcher, knitter, and like to do the general crafts. I actually took an art class in Jr High called arts and crafts where we made things with random things. It was fun and challenging which is where I think I get my general love of crafts from. I like being able to take something and make something decrotative from it. Scrapbooking speaks to me because it is a fun way to organize my pictures. I make them tell a story instead of them being a random collection of pictures.

Where did the day go?

How is it that I only managed to do a few things today and yet I was crazy busy all day? This seems to be how my life is now that I have kids. I wake up manage to get breakfast done and a little play time for Evan. Then it is time for snack and errands. Once we get back from the errands it is lunch and nap time. After nap time it is time for a snack and more play time. Daddy comes home and then it is time to start dinner. After dinner is bath time and and a little more play time if Evan is not too cranky then it is time for bed. This is a quiet day for us.

Today I had an appointment for a weight check for Harry. The pediatrician was worried that he was not gaining fast enough. I think Harry heard that and decided to get on it because he had gained eight ounces five days where before he was gaining about an ounce a day. My husband had the day off so I did not have to drag Evan with me thank heavens.

It was pouring down rain all day. I have a feeling that I should start building an ark or something. This is supposed to be going on all week too so the flooding is going to be getting worse.