life as we know it

I will survive...

2010-06-18T21:59:00.003-06:00

So life has been different. I have been through such a roller coaster of emotions lately. It was so hard to leave my job. What I did love I really did love. I feel like that part of me has died a little. What sucked, I don't miss at all. But I miss the people, at least most of them, a whole lot. I miss my coworkers. I miss the doctors. I am used to working with a large number of people. Now I work with a very small number of people in a small tight space. They are all nice though. I am just used to something different. The first two weeks I was worried if this was a do-able job for me. I mean, I know I can learn what I need to learn, but what I was dealing with was not a one person job. And it wasn't, I had someone there with me. But it was such a disastrous mess. My first week on my own was okay. This week was okay, but I think last week was better. It is a different pace. There are still lots of issues to work out, but I think it will happen. It is not perfect. The patients tend to be... challenging. They love the doctor, but don't necessarily like what he has to offer them and much of that time I am the one with that news. We definitely have some challenging patients. That is fine, but they are very time consuming. I have some frustrations but it will get better. One of my biggest frustrations is the amount of time it takes to get things done. There are so many things that you rely on other people and if it takes them time, it holds you up. I can understand people's frustrations with health care. I have discovered that work comp is a nightmare to deal with. Many many of our patients are there with work comp. Hopefully, as I learn more, and as we figure more out, it will get faster. It seems like there has to be an easier way to do a lot of things and maybe there is and hopefully I will find it.

Our life is much different. We get up in the morning and have some time before we have to be out. It hasn't taken us much time to learn to sleep a little later which is FANTASTIC! Jake fights with me everyday worse than he ever has though about going to school in the morning. I have a lot more freedom now and it is strange to me. I can take a longer lunch and leave if I want. Maybe someday I will. I don't much. I tend to try to catch up on calls and paperwork at lunch but I have been forcing myself to try to take 30 minutes for lunch. On Mondays and Fridays I might leave though and then I will take longer. We have a lot of things that we have to get going still and I think it will take more than just me to do the job. They are looking at that though. There were a few surprises that I am not all that happy about, but there still things not set in stone yet so we will see.

It is wonderful to have close to the same hours everyday. I do have to push to get out by 5:30-5:40 sometimes. I have to though to get Jake. It is interesting to see a whole different world of people by having a different schedule or even a schedule. I have yet to get a "normal" paycheck so I am a little worried about that. We will see I guess. Mike has been gone a lot but it doesn't seem like he is working enough. Things are getting bad with the railroad and I think Mike is the closet he has ever been to being without a job. That does not make the pregnant wife feel good. Not at all. I didn't realize things were that bad again and now I am a bit more freaked out.

Jake is so freaking busy. Man, I wish I had his energy! He just goes and goes and goes! He is having a good summer though. Daycare has a ton of stuff planned for them to keep them busy. He starts swimming lessons on Monday for two weeks. I wish I could go with him. I would love to see that. Actually, it has me a little anxious since I'm not there and my baby will be in water! Jake is working on potty training. He is getting it. We still have awhile before he will be wearing underwear but we hare closer. He totally uses the potty against me though. When ever he wants to manipulate a situation he tells me he needs to go potty. You know, like when he is in time out, time to leave for school or when he doesn't want to do something. He is doing pretty well in his big bed. He won't get into the covers but that is not a big deal. He still wakes me up a lot. I have a lot of bad nights actually. This whole situation has had me pretty depressed, the weather and then pregnancy have had me just wanting to sleep tons.

I had an OB appointment today. I was down two more pounds this month. I thought it would be up this time but I was wrong. I guess I didn't remember what I weighed last time. I took my glucose tolerance test this week and passed just fine. I saw the midwife and I think that I am going to keep seeing her now. I have always liked her but I have felt obligated to see the doctors since I worked with them. She talked to me for a long time and everything she said made sense. Everything she said was on track with what I feel and what I want. I felt like I was finally being listened to. She has been delivering longer than any of the doctors we have now that deliver. I also think she will come in for me even if she isn't on call. When they made my next appointment they just automatically made it with her so I think I will just see her. Many, many years ago I wanted to become a midwife. I really did. But that was before I decided I hated school and when I thought I would be going into L&D when I got out of school. Anyway, I think that is what I am going to do. I have an appointment with an ultrasound in three weeks. She chuckled at all the notes on ultrasounds to be done on my chart. She was very professional, however, about talking about the difference between the newer doctors and the doctors that started the practice that she knows I am familiar with. The older doctors worked very hard to always be current with best science and best practice. They were never behind, which would surprise many people about our rural setting. Anyway, I just felt so comfortable with her so I will keep seeing her.

Final Friday

2010-05-20T20:03:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow is my last regular day. I'm on call, of course. I still have to work Saturday and Sunday call too. But this is sooooo hard! I cried I don't know how many times today. I am trying to get all these ends tied up and it is hard. I'm not being given time to do it, of course. At least today a coworker agreed to take my coordinator duties. That makes me feel better. She has never done it before but there was once a day that I hadn't done it as well. She has a lot to learn but there are other people there to help her which wasn't the case for me. Plus, things are in pretty good shape for her as I leave. I feel much better about leaving. She will do a good job. Plus, it isn't like I am leaving the planet and I can always help her from a distance. I just wish I had a bit more time to try to teach her a few things. There are lot. I need to get some stuff signed off on the person I am, well, I guess I was orienting. As much as I have complained, I am very sad. I will miss this place, it feels like home. My current boss is already setting up meetings for me at my new job. I almost had to walk away from her today and tell her that I still needed to do my job at hand before I could move on.

I am feeling tons of anxiety about my new job. My clothes haven't come yet. I ordered them on the eleventh from a store and I was told NO PROBLEM!! I keep hearing about all the problems they are having getting things done between the office and the areas he works. The nurse that is there right now is ready to jump ship I am told and isn't sure she can wait for me to get there. Sweet!!! It sounds like the major problem is a scheduling issue with associated communication issues. Good news is that scheduling is something I DO understand. I understand this process well. Or at least I have a much better understanding than she has and I know all the people involved in the process. I know all the steps it takes to get something done that people don't realize happen. What I don't know is the office stuff. So, hopefully, she will be there to teach me that and then the other part I can work out. I believe this person is supposed to cover for me while I am on maternity leave so she can't leave now!! I am not feeling confident. People keep telling me that I am a person that gets things done. It doesn't seem like that to me but I hope I can get this done. I hope I can learn what I need. I hope I haven't made a mistake.

Oh boy

2010-05-16T11:40:00.001-06:00

Wow, has there been a lot going on. Well by boss came up with another job for me. A unit manager position opened up for one of our other units. That would be the equal of my charge nurse (unit manager) that has been, well, we've gone there in the past. There are a couple of issues with this. I have never worked in that department. I haven't done that job. How am I supposed to be the manager??? The other women in the department have been there for years. They would have to teach me how to do the job. Does that make sense? Only one of them wants to work full time. I think she should have the job. I wouldn't be opposed to going and working there as one of the nurses, but if that job was posted (as it would have to be) there would be much more qualified applicants than me. The second thing there would be a pay raise involved, but that would be because of the increased duties! Ok, if someone wants to pay me more that would be great, but it isn't because I want to have to do any more responsibilities. I don't need MORE responsibilities and I mean a lot more.

Last Monday I told my coworkers I was leaving at meeting where my boss could be there to say she tried to keep me. No one said anything at the meeting. It took a bit for people to start saying anything to me about it. There were only two people that made bitchy comments to my face and they weren't even that bad it was just the presentation. They wanted to know how I found out about that job. I was honest and told them I was told there would be a job and applied when it became an opening and told them it was open for at least four weeks. That hushed them up. One of them even asked me later if I needed an assistant because she would go with me. Really, people have been very understanding. I have cried a freaking ton this week. People keep taking me aside and telling me how much they will miss me and how no one will ever do my job as well as I can. I had to tell each of the doctors that I specialize with and that was hard. I couldn't talk to them much because of the tears. They all understood. Who better knows how hard it is to be on call with a family than an OB doctor? The doctor who was supposed to have delivered Jake was so nice. He gave me a hug and told me not to worry. Maybe we wouldn't get to work together in surgery anymore but I wouldn't be leaving him behind. He would be my boss now. He was teasing me but actually he was telling the truth. He is the president over combined group of offices. So it is true.

Anyway, I have had many people say many nice things. It is hard. I feel like I am leaving a great big family. There are some nasty uncles and CRAZY cousins, but overall it is a good family. So this week begins my last and that will be hard. My last full week. My last weekend. I have already worked my last late shift (not sad). Of course my last call - the whole two days of it next weekend. I won't miss that either. But I am sad. It is making it very hard to try and get excited about a new job and a new opportunity. I really wish I had a few days off before starting. Some time to reset. But that isn't how it works, of course, so I will jump in and not dwell.

I have been working hard to tie up loose ends. I have been writing many many many emails telling people that I am leaving. I got a very nice message from one of my reps. He told me what a good job I did as a service coordinator and that I could easily step into that role at a larger hospital and that he hopes that I am able to go back to it someday. That is always a possibility sometime in the future. I have had many people tell me that I am welcome to come back (except my boss). I still have a lot to do and I hope I can get it all done. My charge nurse isn't being too terrible, but she is giving me some big assignments and that makes it hard to try and get the other things I need to get done. Our department has a meeting tomorrow and I am hoping to find there is someone else willing to take on my service because I have things I need to pass on. I have been doing what I can with the offices and reps and stuff, but they want another name. I don't blame them. Someone has to do the job.

So this week is going to be harder than last. But, I will make it. Oh, plus last week was my birthday and that is always hard for me. Mike did a pretty good job with that. He didn't get me my shoes I really wanted but I will get them eventually.

tough week

2010-05-02T16:25:00.002-06:00

So I handed my resignation to my boss last week and she folded it up and gave it back to me. We talked for over an hour and she tried to come up with a way for me to stay. She brought my charge nurse in and well, it seemed like it went okay. I don't really want to leave is my problem. I have been so sick all stinking week. What do I do? I have worried and fretted. I mean I know I am really not looking forward to the change in the work situation. I mean I know I can learn the job but I don't want to have to learn everything new. Especially right now with a new life joining us.

So I have been thinking, trying to decide. I didn't exactly like what my boss had to offer. She wanted me to immediately come out of a room and work with our aides. Last summer a nurse was put in charge over the aides to help that horrible situation. I don't have a stinking clue what she does. She had surgery several weeks ago and is still to be out for several more weeks and then comes back with lots of restrictions because she hasn't been able to put any weight on her leg at all. She has extensive rehab to go. Whatever. I don't want to do her job. I have been helping the aides as much as I can and I recognize that they really do need someone there giving them guidance. I'm not it. Anyway, her offer was to do this until I need to go out for the baby. It is a complete change from the last time I was pregnant. I mean she wants me to be able to take it easy and if I need to cut back I can. Well, I would come back from maternity leave as a casual employee but I could work as much as I want. However, if there isn't a need then I don't work. That is a problem. That is a huge problem. Right at this moment I could truly work everyday but that could change. As a casual employee, you don't work late shifts, you don't have to work weekends, and you don't take any call and you don't work any holidays. You can say that you don't want to work and they can't schedule you. You don't get benefits but you make a higher wage. I don't need the benefits (I can still contribute to my retirement account). But if they don't need you you don't work. Of course they are far from being in that position but I would need to work at least seven out of ten days to keep paying the bills. That is a lot. That would mean that I would have to cross train to most of my sister units and hope and pray they use me too. Mike says we could make this work because I wouldn't have to go through as much change. However, I know my coworkers. This would not go over well. It didn't go over well when the nurse was put in this position last summer and now to add me? Right! I offered to continue in my current position until I went out and then come back casual after the baby is born. Nope, that isn't what she wants. (there is a little benefit to me to come back casual. You don't get to keep your PTO's because you can't use them as a casual employee so I get to use them all up before I come back. That would mean I could take more than twelve weeks off!!!)

Okay, so I have talked to my boss many times this week. She has a position she is trying to create next year and she wants me to do it. It would be full time and so forth, but she doesn't know when it will be open. So I would have to hold on with the casual until that job is open. I'm sure the hospital is going to try to push it off as long as possible. It is a needed/required job but they can put it off until June, July, October, whatever. So that means holding on with an unknown income until then.

I appreciate that she is willing to try to keep me. She really wants someone around that can step into the charge position if my manager gets sick (that happens fairly often, right). I don't want to. It used to be the nurse that is over the aides now that did that and boss won't let that happen anymore. I don't want it to be me. I don't like running the show. The show is a mess!

So, as much as I really don't want to leave, I am going to give my resignation back to her tomorrow. Maybe she will consider me for the other position if my new job doesn't work out. I am concerned that the doctor won't be here for long. I think that is a reasonable concern having watched what happens over the years. He is a hospital employee so there is some obligation there. He does have a contract, but I'm sure he has a lawyer too. I have heard how excited they are to have me starting soon. I ran into one of the three office managers (that is a problem) today and she was thrilled. They can't wait to see me the 24th, I was told.

So now it really happens. Now my coworkers will know that I am leaving and the nastiness can begin. It is now only three weeks that I will have to put up with it. The boss did hire a traveling nurse but my coworkers thought it was to help with the problem we already have, not to help cover my shifts. At least the traveler will allow the person I am orienting to be able to finish her time to be ready to be out on her own. I just have so much stuff to do before I go. I feel bad about that. I didn't get much done this past week because I was too stressed out trying to figure out what I was going to do. That and I worked a shit load. I had a 20 hour day. That alone should help me decide to leave right??

the day has come

2010-04-25T18:44:00.002-06:00

Tomorrow is the the day I turn in my resignation. My boss was gone all of last week so that wasn't even an option. I am a freaking wreck. I really don't want to leave, but I don't want my job as it stands. I am very anxious to step out of my comfort zone, but this is my family we are talking about so I will do whatever I need to do. I've just been a mess today. Crying, at total crab, sick to my stomach, unable to complete just about everything I start. Mike is going to work sometime tonight so he wont even be home tomorrow night at all. I just feel like a deserter. I am afraid people won't ever talk to me again. I don't have that many good friends outside of work so that makes it kind of lonely. I know most of them will understand. I'm just not going to be able to see them that much. I mean, I know what it is like, they are always WORKING. On the rare occasion that we go out for a drink after work when we get out in a timely fashion, I won't be able to go because I will still be working. It just feels lonely already and I haven't told them yet.

Well, hopefully my nightmares that Jake is left trapped at daycare and I am trapped in surgery will stop. It is so horrible trying to figure out who is going to pick him up this day and that and who will be with us when I'm on call so we aren't alone. I've narrowly escaped having my name drawn to cover the day's call when the person that was supposed to be on call was home sick. I just can't do that. The day I got it Mike happened to be home and it worked out. It takes lots of planning for me to be on call.

I just wish I could bake up a storm right now or purge tons and tons of crap from my house. I do need to do that, but today isn't the day for either. Jake has been sick. Viral tonsillitis. He has been sick for several days. He has been so naughty when he feels okay and then he gets a high fever and just wants Mommy. He seems to be doing better today. His fever has been down. I hope the same is true for tomorrow because I have to go to work. I don't go to work until 11 anyway. Maybe if he has a fever in the morning I can give him Motrin and it will be down long enough to be in daycare before Grandma picks him up. I do have to go to a meeting at 6:30 and Jake has to go with me.

I can't even get my thoughts together! Thank goodness I wrote my resignation letter yesterday!!!!

We made it

2010-04-21T17:38:00.002-06:00

I only have a minute but everything was fine. Everything looked just like it was supposed to. They had no concern that there was anything at all abnormal looking with the baby. We are having another boy too! We only got a glimpse but we could see what we needed to see. I am off for a truly rare thing - a date with my husband to celebrate!

The offer is in

2010-04-20T20:19:00.002-06:00

I finally was able to talk to this lady today. I was SHOCKED with what I heard. I never dreamed they could do so well. I didn't know what they could do, but I was expecting about $5 less an hour to be the offer. It wasn't. They offered me 12 cents less an hour than I currently make. TWELVE pennies. I'm glad she couldn't see my face and that I was sitting down. She told me that I wouldn't be eligible for any raises because they are offering the absolute max. I think that means I will get screwed out of the cost of living raise this year. When people get maxed they give it in a lump but since I will be "new" to the Physician's Clinic pay scale I won't get it. Oh well, next year if there are raises I will get it. I don't see them changing cap any time soon, but that's still okay. Raises have become very few and far between so I'm not really expecting the one they are promising us now anyway. Actually, it is technically more than my base salary because I have a 6% adjustment because of all the things I have done for our ladder. Of course there is call pay and the additional pay I get for overtime and for being a service coordinator. Anyway, there will still be a noticeable pay cut, but there won't be any call. There won't be any weekends. Mike won't have to stay home so I can work so that means he should be able to make a little more money (that means I will have to make him go to work when he doesn't want to). No holidays! (I can't complain much because I did only have one a year. Mine for 2010 is Christmas so I wouldn't have to work a single one this year). I never dreamed they could do so well. That makes me feel valued at least. They didn't like my lack of clinic experience but I do have experience that they are only going to find with a very few people in our area.

So it comes down to our appointment tomorrow. Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine and then I will change jobs. The hours will be better on our family in the long run. It will be a change in the beginning but in the long run it will be better. I will be able to get kids off to school in the mornings most of the days and there are many after school options. Mike has pretty much told me I have to take it. He couldn't believe that I am waiting for the appointment. We have talked about this many times. I'm thinking he doesn't listen. Wait, that isn't anything new... I will have to buy all new clothes. I haven't had to buy scrubs since I was a student! I have never owned scrubs with any color. I have to find a stethoscope and I have to remember how to do blood pressures (okay, it isn't hard but I haven't done it for YEARS). I have to get a pocket drug book because I'm a little out of date on some of those things and lots of the drugs I will be encountering are relatively new. These are all things I can learn. This is do-able. But man, I will miss the people I love to work with. The problem is that I don't get to work with them anywhere near enough. I think I am going to get in touch with my friend that works there already. I have some questions about how somethings work. Like how do YOU make an appointment for yourself. I do have a few appointments coming up right? I just wonder how things work. I did find out that I may have to float some but my chances of that are supposedly rare because I will be a personal nurse and not on a "nursing team". Let me learn one job first please!

Torn

2010-04-17T12:00:00.003-06:00

I applied for the different job right? It took a bit to hear back and the HR lady wanted to talk to me. She left a message to set up 'a time to talk.' I thought that meant an interview but apparently I was wrong. I talked to her. She talked to the doctor and called me back and told me they weren't interested in me at that moment. The doctor really wanted someone with experience with patients with chronic pain. I was a bit surprised but was totally fine with it. I figured that meant I was supposed to stay at my job. I don't have any experience working in a clinic and that only worries me a little. I am certain that is something I can learn. I do have lots of experience doing procedures (duh) which this doctor is supposed to do by the dozens. Whatever. I mean I was asked by the people that brought this doctor here to apply, but whatever. My friend that was the one that asked me of course asked me if I had had an interview yet. I told her, funny story, they told me they aren't interested in me and what this lady said. Her face turned beet red and she stormed off muttering under her breath. So I thought I might be getting another call. Several days went by and I thought okay whatever. Then a week, then two and I pretty much forgot and moved on.

So last Thursday I was on call and I thought nothing of it when my phone rang and it was the hospital number. I was attempting to unload Jake from the car as I answered the call. I was surprised when I was getting a call to see if I was still interested in the job and to set up an interview. They wanted to interview me the next day. I had an OB appointment the next day so that was not even close to a possibility. I'm trying to juggle Jake and dig around to find my next schedule for the next week. It felt so professional and all but I was exactly expecting the call so I wasn't prepared. We set up an interview for this past Monday. It was at 3:30 and I told her that there was a chance I wouldn't be able to get out of work in time. Thankfully I was able to. I was a nervous wreck. I had a bit of time after I got to building where the interview was held so I stopped and went to the bathroom. Of course I splashed water all over my shirt when I washed my hands! I got there and I waited and I waited. She had told me there would be a panel of four interviewing me so I made five resumes just in case (let me tell you that was a horrible feat in and of itself!). Of course there ended up being five women. I only knew one of them and thank goodness she at least was friendly. Our hospital, which apparently includes the clinic uses this interviewing method. I know it has a name but I couldn't tell you what it is. I have seen many many many of the questions myself. I have reviewed them on a committee and I took part in lots and lots of interviews when I was on the staffing committee. We however, rarely used them because my director didn't like them. The questions are kind of strange and sort of apply. I mean they are supposed to tell you how a person thinks but they aren't telling you about a person's skills related to the job. Whatever. I came up with an answer for everything. I didn't know how it went. Not as great as I might have liked. Each person got to ask me a series of questions so it was long. Then they ushered me out and made me sit while they talked about for a good twenty minutes. Talk about nerve wracking! Then a couple of them (the one that would be my boss who has to be close to 10 years younger than me and the HR person) took me to meet the doctor and to see the office. I actually hadn't ever been to the office because they moved not too long ago to have space for this doctor.

The doctor seemed very nice. The office surprised me a little. For some reason I assumed it had been remodeled before they moved in so I surprised to see how dated it is. This office has the two doctors that make the most money for the hospital in it. I just thought it would be a bit more. However, both of those doctors are hardly ever there because they are in the hospital doing procedures. They both have nurse practitioners that are crazy busy seeing the patients. I know both them pretty well. I have worked with one since I started in surgery. She was a scrub there going to school. I helped orient her for the brief time she had the same job I have. Then I continued to work with her until she took the job she has now. The other one I know pretty well and her nurse worked down with us too before she went to be her nurse. Of course, my friend is the neurosurgeon's nurse. So there would be lots of people that know me and I them so that would make things easier right?

I had a message last evening that they would like to talk to me about the job. I am really sad I missed the call. I have a lot to think about. I don't want to leave but my job is so stressful. Not that the new one wouldn't be. It presents its own problems or bag of worms. I have more questions for them now that I have had more time to think. I feel like I would be abandoning those I DO love and letting down the doctors I specialize with. Actually, I had a huge meltdown at my OB appointment that Friday and I talked about it with the doctor. He kept telling me that I need to what is best for me and my family, but then he brought up what about him a few times. Who would help him? I really and truly don't know. If it was their office the job was with I would be sprinting out, without looking back. Okay, maybe that isn't quite true, but close. My ideal job is to work for them. But anyway, I would miss them so much. Women's health is really what I want to do, not pain management. I'm sure I can do it but there will be a lot of learning for me. A lot. I have to answer patient calls right and I don't know what the answers are. That is probably the thing that concerns me the most.

Anyway, I wish I had gotten call because I don't know what they can offer me for income. Of course, that is big deal. The biggest deal and could in fact end this difficult decision for me right on the spot. If the job is a possibility, I can't make a decision until after my appointment Wednesday. Wednesday is our anatomy scan. If there is a problem, I won't go. I can't start a new job when I may need to take a leave of absence. We are living right now assuming the odds are not us, that our baby is fine. But, if it isn't... If the baby dies before delivery or at birth I am taking as much f***ing time off as I need. They can freaking fire me if they don't like it. If the baby has problems but they aren't severe enough to be fatal at birth I will probably have to take an extended leave to care for the baby until it does die. Or if the baby does have problems but is one of the rare few that live past one year, I will have to quit my job to care for my child. So more waiting, more thinking (things are worse at work than they have ever, ever been), and not a lot of sleeping.

Happy Easter

2010-04-04T21:14:00.002-06:00

I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. Ours wasn't too bad. Mike was home still on his vacation. It ends at midnight tonight and I am actually going to be sad. For the first time I am really sad that his vacation is coming to an end. It has been so nice having him home. I had part of a couple of days off to spend with him sort of. Mike got a lot done around here so that was nice.

We spent kind of a quiet weekend as a family. We didn't do a whole lot. Our Saturday got off to a rough start. I got up early so I could get Jake and myself ready to go to the dreaded store before the crowd got bad. Well after I finished emptying my stomach, I looked down at my leg and saw this huge lump. It wasn't there the day before. It's on my medial calf, just below my knee. It definitely was not there when I went to bed. It was the size of egg and firm. Well, crap. I went and woke Mike up and showed him. He FREAKED! I was pretty sure where I would end up but I didn't know where I should go first. So as experience has taught me, call the OB's office first. So I did. But I waited, and I waited. The first responder for the weekend was our midwife so I guessed it would be awhile because she was probably delivering a baby. That turned out to be true. She told me to go to the urgent care. I thought they opened at nine so I waited around forever before I went. That is when they open on weekdays. Turns out they were open at eight so I could have gone sooner. Oh well. So the doctor there takes one look at it and says I need to have an ultrasound of my leg right away. That was what I was expecting. I knew it wasn't a blood clot. I had figured out while I was waiting for the midwife to call that when I put my leg up the lump completely went away.

Thankfully, the vascular tech let me go to the surgeons' office and not the ED. That is what I was so not wanting to do. Everything in the Emergency Department takes so damn long. I didn't want to spend my whole day there. I called a friend to meet me at the office because I couldn't do it alone. The doctor was afraid it might be an aneurysm and I couldn't hear that by myself. So it took about an hour but within seconds we knew the problem. A vein in my leg gave out. The wall exploded, not ruptured, just ballooned to a ridiculous size. It measured a crazy amount when I was reclined so when I stand up and it bulges it is insanely huge. She mapped both my legs while we were there because I have to get this fixed as soon as I have the baby. She said I won't have to have the mapping done again so she might as well do the whole thing because I get charged for it. I have to wear crazy compression hose that I can get ordered on Monday. I may end up on bed rest because of this. AWESOME. Just what I need. I'm sixteen weeks tomorrow. Okay, this is more of the kind of thing I was expecting not getting crappy lab results. This sounds like how things go for me. I don't know if I have problems because I just waited too long or I was going to have problems no matter what and if I had been 8-10 years younger I simply couldn't have handled this. I don't know. It doesn't much matter now does it?

Well, once I got that all straightened away I was able to go shopping by myself. Thank goodness, because it took FOREVER. It was nuts there. Absolutely nuts! I thought I would never get out of there. I made it home in time to throw the groceries in the house and grab Jake to head out the door to make it to an egg hunt. I didn't think we would, but we made it with a few minutes to spare. It was hosted by a friend and there were about 30 kids so it was much safer than the crazy public ones or the one hosted by the hospital. Jake loved it. He got to see the Easter Bunny and he followed him around. He filled his little basket up and then he started filling a little girl from daycare's basket. It was fun. He was all about the candy and shoved it in his mouth as fast as he could. There were 1000 eggs so each kid did pretty well! It was great. The weather wasn't too bad. It was cool and the wind was horrible but Friday it snowed then rained so we weren't sure how it would be.

Today was pretty good. I managed to sleep too late to make it to church. Jake didn't see his basket until about nine so things were pretty quiet until then. He didn't even go after the candy for a long time. He got a new Toy.Story and Toy.Story.2 and that held his attention. Our Buzz was worn out from watching and skipped every time we played it. We never even owned the second one so that was completely new to him. He was so excited. Too soon he did have some candy and was bouncing off the walls! I couldn't get him to eat much food at all today. He did crash and nap. Then late grandma and grandpa stopped by and gave him more presents which included some chocolate. He was literally bouncing off the walls again. Thank you so much. They left us with a mess of a child but we recovered. We had dinner just the three of us. It was nice. I forgot we, we finally got to dye our eggs too. It was decent enough to do it outside today. We had planned to do it yesterday, but since our day got rearranged it didn't happen. It was so windy we might not have done it anyway. So there we go.

Struggling

2010-03-30T20:53:00.002-06:00

Last week was very difficult and it doesn't feel like it has ended. I had to work the weekend and I need a break. I need a reset. I am getting really tired and emotional and I don't know how I am going to get through the rest of this darn week. We got our news from the doctor. We have all been really sick. We got blindsided from our accountant on our taxes. We were expecting a check but instead we have to write a huge one and a big one. We don't have that money in our pockets right now. I had to work very late Friday. Saturday wasn't too bad at work but we discovered that there was a long list of debits from our checking account that were nothing we had seen before. We tried calling the numbers that were available to us but we couldn't get anyone. We haven't slept well all week but I tell you Saturday was probably the worst. I got up early Sunday because I was on call and needed to be showered and ready for a trip to work. I started calling the numbers again. On the second call I was able to figure out that it was Mike's number that was stolen. Sorry honey, but that was good new to me. We still don't know how this will end but my credit score is much, much better than Mike's and so if any one's score gets worse it should be his. So we discovered that people were very amazingly helpful. The day was beautiful and I got to stay home so long.

I got to take Jake to a birthday party. It was only his second one, but it was the first time he got to have cake and ice cream. I was excited. I didn't even tell him about it until that morning. He actually took his nap and was ready to go. It went pretty well. He was the youngest one there. All the kids are from his daycare. He was the youngest though and it was obvious. He was also the only boy besides the birthday boy. It was challenging. They still struggled with the presents being Collin's and not theirs. It was hardest with the two boys. I was embarrassed but the parents kept saying it was fine. Jake cried and got upset about a car that was like one of his. I almost took him home but we recovered. He ate his first real birthday cake just as he should. He ate all the frosting and didn't touch the cake. It was red frosting too. It enjoyed watching it tremendously.

We got home and were just settling in when the call came. 1712 the call came to go in for a laceration. That isn't bad at all. But when we were finishing the laceration we hear about the appy. When we are getting that patient from the ED we hear the helicopter went out to pick someone up. So by the time we have taken the appy to the recovery room we are hearing there is a trauma patient arriving by air in 6 minutes. We haven't eaten and there is nothing available to us in the hospital and we can't go anywhere because of the trauma. We don't have time to order delivery. Mike used to bring us stuff in the days before there was a little person to have worry about. Well, my scrub snuck out and was gone less than fifteen minutes to get us food. We were able to eat and recover before the initial trauma assessment was done and then had to wait for the next line of doctors. Then we had to do the surgery. Oh and then you have to clean up. So it was two in the morning before we are getting to leave. We both had to be back to work at 6:30 and we didn't get to leave until 2. I am still tired.

Today was hard because I am crabby from still being tired. I also am having a hard time not thinking and worrying today. I know there is nothing I can do. We have what we have. I've decided that I'm not ready to know because I'm not ready to deal with anything but normal. I'm not. I don't know what we will do. How we can handle it. Mike mentioned another baby if things don't go well and I just can't comprehend doing this again. Then I think about how sad it makes to think of not getting to go through the joy and exhaustion of a baby again. I just don't know. Everything has to be fine because I don't think I'm strong enough to get through this if it isn't - not just the next 6 months but the next 6 years. I'm ready for a giant margarita and a whole bottle of antidepressants. (I know they don't mix, but come on).

Okay, I'm just ready for the week that hasn't ended to be over.

The Plan

2010-03-24T21:50:00.002-06:00

There has been a lot of thinking, a lot of talking and some crying at our house. Yesterday I tried to talk to my friend but she wasn't working so she didn't have my results and I didn't want to bother her on her day off. She was really nice though. Anyway, today the doctor that called Monday had the only late case and he sat down with me afterward. I had already decided that I am not going to do the amnio. At least not right now. He has told me the time to do the amnio was 16-17 weeks and that was one of my questions. Because I don't want to. I don't. I know it is the only way to know but I don't want to do. I knew this but we talked about it anyway and I asked the risks. Of course there some. I'm just not willing to accept those risks right now. Neither is Mike. So we came up with the plan that I will have my afp drawn at sixteen weeks as planned. Then we will do an anatomy scan at 18 weeks and we will see what we see. If we see problems there then we will do the amnio. He said 18 weeks should be sufficient but 16 would be too soon. I figured I would be able to keep my sanity long enough to survive to 20 weeks. But he said we will be able to see everything then. So there we are. We have a plan. I don't have to travel and stuck with a big needle. I had more questions about the trisomies and defects and survival rates and he had answers. They weren't good but he was able to tell me.

On a different note, I had a message to call to set up an interview for the job I applied for. I'm scared. I left her a message and I will call back tomorrow to set up an interview. Now I need get a real resume put together. I have really been struggling with that!

Oh

2010-03-22T17:36:00.003-06:00

I got a call today that said private so I didn't answer. I applied for that job and I am all nervous about it. I want it but I don't want to leave my job. I want change but I don't. I don't usually answer private calls anyway. If they leave a message I will know. There was a message. It wasn't anything in the world to do with a job. It was the OB I saw at my last visit. He was calling with the results from my blood work that I completely forgot about. Completely. Why was he calling? My heart was pounding in my ears. I called the office back. They asked me if I was sure he was the one that called. YES! He is on his line, do you want to hold? Duh? I wait. I am just sick. Mike is sitting in a chair in the same room watching me. He comes on the line. Blah, blah, remember the test gives you odds not a diagnosis. Blah, blah. THE FUCKING DR CALLED. My odds compared to other women my age of having a baby were very low. Number is gone from my mind. Blah, blah. My odds compared to other women my age, based on my blood work, of having a baby with a trisomy were high. Huh? Blood pulsing in ears. Words still coming out of doctor's mouth. Tears coming. Any questions? I don't know what to ask yet I say. He tells me we can get an amnio but we can't do it here we have go out of town where they do the genetics. That is the only way we can know if we want to know and not wait and see. He said by our 20 week ultrasound we will be able to see if the baby has physical defects if we don't want to do the amnio. Are we going to do anything different? No. But I have to sleep at night. I looked up trisomy 13 & 18 after I got off the phone of course. Mike doesn't get any of this. They are horrible. I have cried a lot. Then some more. I had to go get Jake and took him to the doctor since he is sick again. We left and drove and I realized after more than ten minutes of driving I hadn't said anything to him while were in the car. I just drove deep in thought. That made me feel terrible. There is not much I can do about the baby but I still have a little boy that needs all I have to give and plus a whole lot more.

Appt #2

2010-03-10T22:25:00.002-07:00

I must say that I didn't have high expectations for my appointment today. I was very fearful that I would not see a live baby today. I was extremely relieved to be wrong. I have continued to spot or bleed until this week actually. It wasn't all old blood either. Mike came today but he was late of course. Actually I went straight up from work and they called me in early for my ultrasound. Thankfully Mike was a little early or he would have missed it all. I wish he had been there for the first image to know things were fine the same time I did, but he was there shortly. We have just known that what is to be is to be so we have been just trying to not think about it a lot.

But the news was all good! The baby measures exactly on. The baby gave us quite a show when it woke up. It was jumping like a frog with its legs. The nuchal measurement was good. The nasal bone was there and my finger bleed like a stuck pig. I lost four pounds. Mike got to meet the new OB I have been working with as he was the one we saw. He told me I can take Motr.in for my headaches!!! I can take it for three days at a time for awhile. I have been having horrible, horrible headaches. He thinks they are atypical migraines and they are lasting for days. I get to take the Motr.in, a phenergan, and drink a regular pop and then I am supposed to try to do nothing but kick back and sleep. That sounds awesome right? In a perfect world. Yesterday was the third day of my horrible headache and I was on call. I couldn't take anything that would make me sleep. But by God, I am taking some tonight. My head feels stinking bruised.

He brought up two things that were not something I was expecting. Of course my being fat was brought into it. Because of my "size" he wants me to have monthly growth scans starting at 24!!!! weeks so I will have lots and lots of scans he said. He was pleased to see that I showed no signs of diabetes last time. As an American, I am fully aware of the epidemic of obesity and associated type II diabetes, but that doesn't mean it applies to me. It doesn't mean it doesn't and I realize things can change. However, it doesn't mean all chubbies are or will be diabetic. Anyway, I was shocked. He asked how big Jake was and I told him he was huge but I was in no way shape or form diabetic. My family (no diabetics) grow them big and cook them long! Anyway, I will be happy to get to see my baby. Getting the appointments will be torture, but what can I do? The other thing he asked about was if anyone had talked to me about a "vaginal bypass delivery." Huh?? Since I had such a physically traumatic delivery last time maybe we just "elect" to have a c-section. That had never, never crossed my mind -to say it was just too hard and I don't want to. I told him I just wanted to have a baby about two -three weeks earlier this time so it wasn't so big and it wouldn't be as much of a problem. He told me to think about it and we would talk about it again in the last month. I must say, I am not very open to the idea at the moment. I know if the baby is breech then I don't have a choice in the matter. I'm just having a hard time wrapping my mind around it right now.

I forgot to mention that I got rid of the entire collection of blood. There was nothing to worry about. The placenta looked firmly in place and really large actually, but there was no large blood collection under it. So hopefully there will be no more bleeding.

We were both able to have a huge sigh of relief and now the pregnancy is much more real to us both. We even got Jake to look at the pictures after a couple of tries. He said "it's a baby." Of course we had been talking about it and we talked about it again. He doesn't get it and he doesn't want to either.

This and that

2010-02-24T13:58:00.002-07:00

We are still hanging in there. I am not feeling great but not nearly as sick as I was with Jake. I still take meds most days because the days I don't are miserable. I may not get sick but at think I might at any given moment. Of course, that can still happen when I do take the zof.ran but that seems to be more situational. I know my husband couldn't have changed the poopy diaper I changed today without getting sick. Most of what makes me sick is an occupational hazard. I see and smell and hear things that the average population does not. I have had very little cramping and spotting too so that makes me feel better. Two more weeks and we get to see the baby. I can't wait to see a real looking baby this time.

Things at work have been... interesting. We are the shortest staffed I remember being and we have had heavy schedules. Normally this is our "slow" time. If this is slow, we are freaking screwed! We do have three people currently in orientation so that is great, but. BUT the first one to be out of orientation is ready to have a baby any second. She is going to take 8 weeks and then she will have to have some reorientation when she comes back. Hopefully it won't take long. She is pretty much ready to be on her own now, but we count on her being here for the entire day today much less relying on her being here tomorrow or the next day. But at least there is an end in site. We have two other people that not going to be out of orientation until June and July. The girl I'm orienting may actually be ready early. She is doing so well. I feel bad for her because I am really crabby and seem to get irritated easily. I'm glad she got to know me this past summer during her internship and not just now. I'm not sure about the other person. She isn't as willing to seek out learning experiences. So, basically, we are down three RN's from where we used to be and we are replacing only two of them. That means life is hell for the rest of us. We have fewer people to take late shifts so each person has to work more. It also means we have to call off some of those shifts because we don't have enough people to start the day so you are more likely to have to stay late. It also means fewer people to share the weekend load and to take share the call load. It is awful and not good timing for me, who is so freaking tired right now. It is also putting me in more situations where I am required to do physical things I shouldn't be doing while pregnant.

So this is also creating an added stress to my marriage. Mike is still having to stay home when I am and call. It has increased from 5 times in eight weeks to once a week and that is a BIG problem for him. It also means lost income. We have a potential lead on a high school age babysitter that may be able to stay with us overnight. My mom will also be transferring prisons soon and will be living and working in the same town. And that is only 30 miles away. She has said she can come stay with us during the week and on Sundays now when I am on call. Yes, she drives me nuts but that would be such a huge help. There just always ends up being a problem because eventually her personality gets in the way.

That brings to something else interesting. A month ago I was asked if I would be interested in a job in a doctor's office. The doctor is supposed to come the middle of March so it isn't anyone I have meet or know at all. Monday through Friday job. Eight thirty to five thirty job. HELLO!! This is exactly what I want, right? Yes, and no. The doctor is a physiatrist which is a kind of doctor I have seen not worked with. He is planning on being very busy and doing lots of procedures and actually, even some surgeries. Plus then there is the actual office work. I don't know anything about office work. Doesn't mean I can't learn it all. I may not know the specifics about the procedures yet, but I know that I can do. That is actually why they want an RN. There aren't very many office jobs for RNs which brings us to the primary problem. Pay. I have no idea what the pay cut will be. It doesn't mean I won't apply, once the job is actually posted. It is a friend that works in the same office that told me about this. This doctor is being brought in to better meet the needs of patients her surgeon sees. That surgeon is insanely busy and the new doctor will do some of the studies he currently has to try to fit in because no one else does them. I can see how great it will be for their office. I would actually get to share an office with her even. She knows all about the job and she has influence over who gets hired (her doctor does and he will say whatever she tells him to say). But she is not privy to anything about salary and is concerned that it will be a significant pay cut. There is the biggest problem. The one thing that might really stand in the way. If Mike doesn't have to stay home that will mean less income lost but I am thinking it is probably more like twenty plus thousand dollar pay cut. I hope I am wrong. I just currently make a lot more than just straight pay with overtime, call pay, clinical ladder (added income for all the things you do have done above and beyond), and as a service coordinator. I don't think Mike understands that. I have run numbers with him and he doesn't get it. And of course, we are adding another member to our household so that isn't the best time have a dramatic income decrease.

I have some other concerns that are benefit related that human resources should be able to answer for me but I don't want to put the cart before the horse. This office is part of the hospital system so I will still be under the same highest management but not a hospital employee. So naturally, as someone who is looking to have time off in the not so distant future, I want to make sure my EIBs and PTOs transfer across. I was planning on taking every last second I could off at my current job. I think I would be able to have enough time for 12 weeks. But if I change jobs now? I can't afford to be off without pay. I also have some concerns about how hard it would be for the office for me to be off for 12 weeks. I know that is what the law allows, but I'm sure that would be a problem. Obviously my friend knows and so does the doctor she works for that I am pregnant and don't have a problem with that and me being in the job.

I am also having huge mixed emotions about my job. I do like what I do. It certainly has its problems. But I really like MOST of the doctors I work with. I have put an enormous amount of time, work, and energy into what I do. I do like most of the people I work with. My unit manager has really made efforts to change and we can all tell. Those of us that know how things can be are waiting for the other shoe to drop, but she is doing so much better. I would feel so bad for leaving my coworkers even shorter than they already are. If I get hired for this other job I would have to give four weeks notice. Those would be the most miserable four weeks in my life I'm sure. I could take it, I know. But it really leaves everyone else in a pickle. But it is the late shifts and the call that are really driving me to need to leave for my family. This is huge with my husband. I just don't know. I guess I can't worry about it until I can actually apply for the job and interview and hear the numbers. I'm also afraid that we would have to change daycares if I change jobs, but I'm not even going there right now.

So, on a completely different note! Mike and Jake had a little man to man talk last night. It kills me that Daddy is able to have these talks with Jake and he listens to him!!! I might have to be the enforcer but Daddy can set down the law and he listens. Anyway, the discussion was that Jacob would sleep in his bed the whole night or if he got up like he always does, he would sleep in a sleeping bag on our bedroom floor and not in bed with us. I tried this the night before and it went over in a huge fit, but last night after their talk it worked. He whined a little but he climbed in the sleeping bag and slept there the rest of the night! I couldn't believe it. One step closer to sleeping in his own bed the whole night. It was awesome. Of course, Mike slept through the whole thing. It I wasn't so tired right now, I probably wouldn't have been ably to go back to sleep because I was so excited.

First real appointment

2010-02-10T17:56:00.002-07:00

So the appointment went okay. Good news but not super good news. I forgot how much fun OB visit are! Wait. Wait. Wait. Get on a scale. Pee. Wait. Then the good stuff - paper work followed by a pap and std swabs! Of course this process was so much more painful because of the migraine I have today. I haven't had a really bad migraine in awhile. I get them once in awhile but they are thankfully dulled by medicine. Today, there was nothing. At least not until after the visit was finally over because she did give me a prescription for a little something that has helped some. Anyway, my doctor down played the spotting and cramping. She said it is common but I feel so crappy so that is good. She also said that the outside of my cervix was very fragile it started bleeding when she touched it. She said my uterus was nice and big but did want me to have an ultrasound today for my piece of mind. I heard how busy the sonographers were while I was waiting the first time so I knew I was in for a wait. That's fine. So she had them squeeze me between appointments and I only had to wait like another fifteen minutes or so in the waiting room. The waiting room was at least a little quieter by then since my head was throbbing.

So there was one little baby blob and I could see the little heart flutter right away. Very comforting. But there was was this big area that she kept looking at. Unless I am looking at a baby, I don't know what the hell I am seeing. I thought it was my bladder but it wasn't. It was a big collection of blood behind the placenta. So then I had to wait longer to see the doctor again because the sonographer said I really needed to see her again. That is what made me freak. So another wait, but at least this time I got to go into a quite and dark room. It was a procedure room filled with devices of torture but I recognized all of them so I wasn't too worried. Anyway, she came in an told me that this blood happens a lot and isn't usually a problem. She said the baby looks good. She said we will continue to monitor it and that I will probably bleed more. Can't wait. So we just keep going one day at a time like always!

Anyway, the baby had a nice heartbeat of 167 and measured right on. We have our next ultrasound in four weeks. I have bad nausea but don't vomit much. Zo.fran helps a ton. I have no energy but don't nap a lot.

On another subject, I have been thinking of figuring out how to have my blog password protected. It hasn't been an issue until just recently. It is a quiet little blog where I can express myself. I am used to having the occasional stray visitor but something has changed. I have had more hit this year so far than I did all of last year. That wouldn't be such a big deal if I didn't keep getting really strange emails and comments that don't mean anything at all. I like to drop in on blogs that are new to me every now and again so it is nice to have access. But getting harassing emails and weird comments gives me the creeps. I realize I have been sharing my private thoughts and feelings with the whole world, but the whole world hasn't noticed so it hasn't been a problem.

scared

2010-02-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

cramping and spotting today. appointment tomorrow. wait

What the hell do I know?

2010-01-31T09:22:00.002-07:00

So instead of going in and having an ultrasound and biopsy and walking out with a prescription for clom.id I went in peed in a cup and walked out with a prescription for prenatal vitamins and giant folder filled with pregnancy information. So it wasn't a surprise. We had figured it out the weekend before but it was still a shock. We also chucked out the fancy ovulation predictor thing too. We are a bit surprised. I was hoping to keep it to myself for a bit longer but I started throwing up last week. I am reluctant, so I was hoping to wait until my first ultrasound to share the news with everyone. I don't have to be reminded how old I am and how my eggs aren't the greatest any more. I am tired and just feel like barfing all the time even if I'm not throwing up anywhere near as much as I did last time. I have my first OB appointment on the tenth or eleventh. I tried to schedule my next appointment and ultrasound when I scheduled that appointment but the wouldn't let me. I forgot what a nightmare it was scheduling OB appointments around my work schedule.

I am so tired. I had work for only four hours yesterday and I came home and Mike let me sleep for four hours. I've had a really bad cold and that hasn't helped. I've just been pretty miserable for about ten days and it is hard for me to tell what symptoms belong to what. One thing is weird, my nose is plugged but my sense of smell has still gone crazy. Another thing is that my uterus has been so noticeable already. I don't remember that from Jake. I mean it feels like there is a big hard grapefruit in my pelvis. It is especially noticeable when I lay down or if my bladder gets full it is painful. I don't know. I am just not ready to get too excited yet. I'm just waiting for an ultrasound.

What do you think?

2010-01-13T17:59:00.002-07:00

We had a subscription to this allergy magazine and I didn't renew it several issues ago. It is a good magazine, but it seems to me they devote more than half of it to Celiac disease. They have really good articles but the recipes make me scratch my head sometimes. I mean they contain so many of the top allergens. Anyway, there was an article about service dogs. There are a couple of places that train dogs to sniff for peanuts. So how crazy is it for me to be seriously considering this? These dogs are so good at this that they can identify books in the library that have been handled by someone that touched peanuts. This would make me feel so much better about sending my child to school. This would totally get my son's ass kicked. Not even mentioning that he is currently allergic to dogs. The waiting list is very long and the dogs are very expensive. One of the two places that happens to train the dogs is actually in Colorado so it isn't even very far away. My husband rolls his eyes, but I don't want my son to die. Am I going overboard? The wait is years. The current cost to train a dog is ten thousand. I know there are children that successfully live with this allergy everyday. I also have seen numbers on how many die and how people don't understand the seriousness of allergies. I don't know how we will be able to send him to play at some one's house. With a dog, you can just do a little once over and know if he can't be there. Peace of mind. An easy to my anxiety. But is it nuts?

Struggling

2010-01-09T13:42:00.002-07:00

So this week I did finally fall apart on someone when I was asked when I was going to have another baby. I was already having a difficult day but it was more than I could handle. I burst into tears. I don't remember ever asking anyone that. Do people not realize that in the first place it is none of their damn business??? Let alone that that is kind of very personal? I've had a really hard time coping this week. I just don't know how to handle people. I recently got mad at a friend for bringing up my issues. I don't discuss what is happening with my body its issues with anyone. Not friends or family. People know that I want another child but I don't want to share my issues with them. I have a friend that I know has problems and I listen whenever she needs to talk but I never pester her for "updates." It isn't my business unless she wants to tell me. I think that makes it easier to talk to me when she feels she needs to.

I'm really down and it makes me sad for Jake. I'm trying really hard to give him everything he needs but I'm having a hard time not just laying in a lump in bed or on the couch. I don't want to function the past few days. A lot of crying. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, just depressed and truly having trouble doing what needs to be done. I truly came to the realization this week that having one child doesn't make it easier when you want a baby. "At least you have one..." doesn't help. Sure, that child may help keep you busy, but it might almost make the pain worse because you know the love. I feel like I'm doing Jake a disservice. I know I'm being a baby. I know that we were hoping the fertility Gods would look down on us and that January would be the month. I know January isn't over and all, but if I have yet to ovulate since I went off the pill that things aren't looking good. I know I have an appointment not this coming week but the following week for an ultrasound and biopsy of my uterus (not looking forward to that). I know that we will figure out a plan with that. It just sucks. I truly have no energy. I don't sleep well. I am so tired but can't get to sleep and it is so hard to force myself out of bed in the morning. I just don't think my thyroid is off enough to be making me feel this crummy. I don't think it is depression either. I don't know. I will just keep working to make it through each day at a time. I just feel like I have been doing that for so long.

I do get to meet the area's closet RE next week. He happens to be giving a presentation to health care professionals on infertility testing and treatment. He is from about 150 miles away. But he isn't who the OBs refer to. They refer people to a much larger group farther away. That would be a problem for us. Having to go see this doctor would be a problem for us with both our jobs. Mike has no sort of schedule at all and going out of town at all is problem. I know what a struggle it has been to get to the stinking allergist! I just hope the doctor here can help me. I know I am going to have to be using my connections already. Thank goodness I have them I guess. I just don't want to abuse it.

It is occurring to me that it is 2:32 now and I have been up since before 6:30. I have not eaten today. I had some coffee this morning when Jake had breakfast. I suppose I should eat something. It doesn't occur to me to eat when Jake eats because he eats so often.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T12:04:00.002-07:00

2010 Wow! 2010 already? Time is going so fast! I guess I'm glad to have the holidays done again for another year. We had a good season except that we couldn't make it to be with my family when I actually had the time off work. I guess it wasn't meant to be. We got to be with Mike at least. He came home in the wee hours of Christmas Eve morning and didn't end up going back to work until the 27th I think. It was nice. It was relaxed. The weather was so horrible that no one did anything or went anywhere out in the world. It made it easier to not be off with my family.

Jake was so much fun. We had already opened our presents (and mine had been returned because my husband never listens to me) since Jake and I were supposed to be gone. So Jake got to be the only one and he just had so much fun. He still doesn't get Santa. I mean he saw Santa a few times and can tell us what he got from Santa, but he is too young to wake up super early to see what Santa brought. Actually, he slept until 7 and we were able to let Daddy sleep until 8. He was very excited about his gifts. Santa brought him Handy Manny and his tools and then Manny's tool set also. Oh my goodness. Manny goes with us everywhere. He sleeps with hard plastic Manny. Of course Manny talks so we hear him in the middle of the night. He even calls all the tools by there names. Manny gets his own chair at the table for dinner time even. Thankfully, he hasn't thought of bath time - at least not yet! We've had trains, tools and cars all over our house since Christmas and we don't even mind. He cleans up every night, but he still wants to play with each of his new toys every day.

The best is bedtime though. We rearranged Jake's room to accommodate a new train table and we made a huge deal about his bed. It is still his crib converted to a toddler bed. We haven't manage a twin bed yet. But we have finally been able to get him to walk to his bed and get in it and go to sleep every night since last weekend. That is HUGE. He made it until 6 one morning even. The other nights he comes to our door crying and I let him get in bed then. The earliest that happened was 2, it is usually more like 4 and since my alarm goes off a few minutes before 5 I don't want to fight with making him go back to sleep in his own bed for that short time. Well, not yet anyway. We are very excited about this. He did really well with the potty while we were off too. He doesn't do very well with daycare yet. I think he is just still too busy playing to want to spend the time sitting on the potty. But since it is going fairly well at home they started stepping it up this week. I mean we aren't there at all but he usually doesn't fight with me when I want him to sit on the potty, but he only occasionally tells us when he needs the potty. We will get there. I know he isn't two and half yet, but I am kind of ready to be done with all the darn diapers. I'd much rather be starting a supply of the smaller sizes!

I finally went and got my lab work done yesterday. It looks kind of like what the doctor was guessing. I mean we still have to do the ultrasound and biopsy but it looks like it might not be to terrible. I don't know that for sure yet. I didn't get to talk to her, but I got the numbers. Nothing was truly abnormal but there were some key fringes. My thyroid is still working but it is only a tenth off the cut off. My prolactin was still normal but it was a point below the top. My hemoglobin and hematacrit are hovering at the bottom from Aunt Flo's terrible visits. So we wills see what we get from the rest of the tests later this month but it looks like a little work with the thyroid might help the prolactin come down a little. A bump with the thyroid would help get some energy and get a few pounds off and drop the estrogen levels a little and then I might just ovulate, since I'm not. Clomid or no Clomid? She was leaning towards it the last time we talked. The best things was that I passed the glucose tolerance test with flying colors. There isn't any diabetes in my family, which is surprising since I come from fatties but there isn't (yet). She was concerned about PCOS with my problems but the glucose test going so well makes that seem less likely. I was just really afraid about that. I am not ready to deal with a diagnosis of type II diabetes! But I guess it is better to deal with it than have it and not! I worry about that with Mike. He doesn't really have any strong symptoms, but he is more than a couple pounds overweight and so many people in his family have it. I think his sister was diagnosed in her early to mid twenties. So anyway, I was really worried what the labs would (or wouldn't) show and it turned out pretty well.

Thoughts

2009-12-25T20:44:00.003-07:00

I hope everyone has had a good Christmas. Ours wasn't as planned but worked out well. I will hopefully post on that soon. I have been pushing some thoughts to the back of mine mind to deal with next month. Of course that is only next week. Last week I finally saw a doctor, sort of. The doctor, a friend of mine, was finished early and I was in her room. So I asked her if I could talk to her because I am having some problems and I don't know where I should start. We talked for a good long while and we developed a plan. First a bunch of blood work and an ultrasound and biopsy in a few weeks. I am having very mixed feelings. I feel better knowing that I finally have someone to help me with whatever the hell is going on with my body. I also would like to continue to believe nothing is really wrong and everything will be fine in a minute or it is just stress. I realize I need to get my body in order and that will help me cope with everything else.

I am a little mixed about my choice of doctors. I didn't know who to talk to so I talked to someone I know pretty well. I don't know if I want her to know how crazy I really. She wouldn't be my first choice for some things but I think she is an excellent diagnostician. She really delves into things and goes to whomever she needs to get help if she needs it. She is also my age and her sons play with my son every day. That is her job though right. I'm just nervous. I want to get it all over and figure out what we can do to get Jake a sibling that he says he doesn't want!

Not so merry at the moment

2009-12-12T08:42:00.004-07:00

So I've complained about my mom before, a lot actually. She has issues. She is very lonely but has done many things to isolate herself and push away the people around her. But she also really likes to draw attention to herself, particularly if someone else is getting attention. There is a long history of her having... fits at important events or such. She is always late for family events so as to make everyone wait and to draw attention when she finally makes a big entrance. She always wants to help, say, sew something that is important but not have it done when it needs to be. Critical items, like the dress I wore in my sister's wedding. We were all waiting for her and my dress. She showed up almost an hour late. The dress still wasn't finished and she wasn't dressed and ready. My sister's SIL had to sew me into the dress, literally. There were several, SEVERAL tantrums during my wedding. She refuses to participate. She ironed through the rehearsal. She was late and we had to wait on pictures even after the photographer rearranged his detailed schedule. He was not happy and I think it showed in our pictures. We almost had to delay the damn wedding. She gets sick and wallows in her illness. She misses tons of work.

So the actual issue at hand? We are all (my mom, my aunt, Jake and I) supposed to go to my sister's house for Christmas. Mike has to work and doesn't want me to go. Still having issues there. But my mom threw a fit! A hissy of monster proportions because my sister wants my aunt and my mom to stay in a hotel. My sister has one guest bedroom. I know her house is huge and has a lot of rooms, but there really isn't a place to put people. My mom and my aunt are extremely loud. My aunt never had children and my mom is obviously many years removed from having young children. She doesn't get how hard it is to try to keep a little order in their lives while there is company. It was a little hard when we were down there this fall. When my sister visits anywhere she usually stays in a hotel. There are five of them. They need to be able to put the boys behind closed doors to sleep, not in the middle of a main room floor. (one would be fine. the second is pushing it, but the third is too little still). Besides is my mom going to sleep on the top bunk or my aunt? Anyway, my mom has gotten ugly. She was supposed to take my aunt. Now my aunt wants me to take her but I'm still on the line to go. I still have to work on Mike. I don't want to be away from him. I don't want him to be away from Jake. I don't want to miss my family and I'm sick of holidays with his family. They just don't feel right.

Anyway, my mom won't talk to anyone, but she will send horrible emails. Mean, mean. She tried to raise her children right, but she doesn't know where she went so wrong to end up with children like this. What did she ever do to deserve such horrible daughters? She has yet to actually come at me, but it is coming. It has been directed toward my aunt and my sister so far. Ugly, ugly, ugly to my sister. My sister doesn't come up to the area we live often. She never lived here so it isn't home. There are five of them to try and coordinate. There is one of my mom to travel. My sister has paid several times for my mom to fly down to visit her. My mom complains about it. I paid to fly my mom down once, she just bitched about it. She hasn't seen my nephews since July 2007. She was mean to them. She made them cry! I do go visit my sister without including my mom. I can't drive down there with her. I would kill her. I would be mad the whole damn time. It is my vacation, right?

I don't know what to do. I mean this is totally my mom. She has done what she can to ruin the holiday for everyone. She got the attention she felt like she wasn't getting. It has gotten bad a few times before but this is truly ugly. My mom can be down right mean and that is what she is doing. She is a therapist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know what to do. I may whine a lot and complain, a lot, but this is actually scary to me. I don't know how this can be worked through or past.

I forgot to mention that my sister is having surgery the Monday before Christmas but was still having everyone come. It isn't outpatient either. She will hopefully only spend one night, but still. That should be reason enough for people to give her some damn space! I am reluctant to go myself just for the added stress of company because I know it is hard. She is hoping to be feeling great two days after the surgery when people are supposed to be getting there but I am doubtful.

My happiness

2009-12-07T22:00:00.002-07:00

I bitch and whine a lot but that is because I need to vent about the stresses in life. But there is so much good too. There are a lot of temper tantrums at the moment and frustration all around right now, but there is so much happiness. I am really enjoying Jake right now. He is so much fun. He is just so much more interactive now. We can really do things together. He is so smart too. I am shocked at his ability to problem solve! (I swear he is better many men I am around and thinking through things). He is so darn cute and he flashes a big smile to get his way. He is a total cheese when he sees a camera. It is terrible to try to take a picture of him right now. He talks my leg off! I can't believe how much he says and how long he goes. He still says a lot of things that I can't understand and he most definitely gets frustrated with me because I'm not on the same page. He tries to show me what he is saying that I can get which is helpful. I do get a lot of "dis, Mama" or "dat, Mama" when he is showing me around. But I swear there are some Duh Mama's in there.

He is a terrible flirt. Terrible. He is also very loving and asks for hugs and kisses all the time. He is not particularly gentle though. He's a bit of a brute actually and bossy too.

He is so good at helping his Mama. He wants to do it himself though. He was trying to reach something in the kitchen one day and I told him to go get his step. He always uses his step to get into the monster toy box but now he has figured out that it is his key to the world "up there"

He had his first Christmas program tonight and it went okay. The two's were a little too young to really get into it. But they tried. He made it about half way before he got bored and then ended up bonking his head on the microphone and sitting down on the floor with one of his teachers. He was literally the smallest of the children and he was just so cute.

We have made some progress in sleeping. Although he is passed out in the middle of the living room here, he almost always walks to bed now. However, this is where he sleeps. He won't sleep in his bed (his converted crib). He will play in it and lay down while he is playing but her won't sleep there. He will sleep in his chair in my room. At some point most nights he gets in bed with me but it isn't all night anymore and he goes to bed awake! I don't think he likes being alone to sleep, plus I think his room is noisy at night. The wind is pretty noisy. We are going to get him a big bed after we recover from Christmas. He is eating some food too. Food that little kids eat! He at two, TWO, hot dogs last night. Now, I don't think that is the greatest food (being so healthy and all) but it is a normal thing to eat and he is eating it! I'm proud of him though.

I adore my little guy and I'm sad I can't spend more good times with him. We have our moments when I am willing to pay someone to take him, but I just look forward to our time so much.

Well...

2009-12-06T13:34:00.002-07:00

Okay, I need to back off a little. I am extremely thankful to say that Jake is over his milk allergy and they "think" he is over his egg allergy. However, it is going to take some time before he can just eat both if everything goes well. His back is still a mess from his skin testing Wednesday. His got additional drugs and increased his existing meds. We are supposed to wait until all is calm and then start the dairy. Bad parents we are, we have given him some already (he is on the new doses though). I have added 2%milk to his rice milk once a yesterday and once today. I have given him one of his favorite things in addition to that. It sounds like he is saying "wickert" but what he is jumping up and down and hollering for is yogurt. He LOVES yogurt. I got him some of the little bitty kid cups but I know he wants a whole carton. I thought we should go small for awhile. We tried giving him yogurt awhile back and we thought it was making his cheeks break out. Supposedly, that isn't it. They told us now it happens if he gets a lot of soy. That presents some significant issues. But if we can have eggs and dairy it should be a bit easier to cut the soy back. Soy is in practically everything packaged or ready-made of course! But now I should have an easier time trying to make things he can eat. I do most of my cooking from scratch so it is easier to control the ingredients.

So I feel a little bit bad for being so mad at the grandparents. I did make sure that they understood that they still can't just feed him whatever they want. This is going to take awhile to make sure he won't react to these things and to get his body used to dairy. His poor digestive system doesn't know how to handle it yet. Okay, but there is still the peanut portion of my irritation with Grandma. Mike talked to his dad and it didn't really go that well. Jake had such a bad skin reaction to the dilute peanut serum. They nurse and the PA doing the testing brought several other nurses in to look at his back because his reactions were so severe. Just a little education. That is fine. I just felt so miserable for him. The process hurt him and then the allergic response made his whole back go nuts. Now his back is covered in eczema and little scratch marks.

So, as I was saying, Mike talked to his dad about the peanuts. He was sorry they left the cup out. They never leave Jake alone so it isn't a problem. Mike told him that obviously it is a problem because even if they are in the same room with him, if he finds a cup of peanuts it is too late to prevent it. He is a little speed demon. Mike pointed out that he will have picked them up and have one or more in his mouth before they even realize what he has. We all know how they get something you don't see and put it in their mouths. We have all fished something out of baby mouths. Mike told his dad that they can no longer have peanuts in their house. That went over with Mike's mom like a ton of bricks. My suggestion had been that the peanuts/peanut butter need to be up on the top shelf in the cupboard not down at Jake's eye level like they are now. They still can't eat them when he is there and they have to make sure and clean everything up right then and there. Mike said absolutely not. No peanuts at all. He acknowledges that it is just too much for his mother to have to do to get it right. (okay, he said "you know she isn't smart enough to handle it" but I feel bad writing it even if it is true). Poor Mike got yelled at enough that he has given up trying to bring peanut butter M&Ms in the house in his lunch box from work. I admit that both Mike and I will indulge in our love of peanut butter when we are not at home and it will be a long time before we will be around Jake. It just isn't worth the risk to have the allergen around Jake. But grandma eats a lot of peanuts. A lot. A lot of candy containing peanut butter too (goes well with her diabetes and all). I'm not sure how this is going to work out. Mike may not let Jake go over there at all, ever. That helps our problem.

I had such a bad day at work Friday that had my boss been there I would have quit. I suppose it was in my favor she wasn't though, huh. I am a service coordinator for plastics and gynecology right? Well, my favorite charge nurse is the one that makes our room assignments every day. I don't ever get to be in my services. We have one plastic surgeon and she has one scheduled day a week in the OR. I get to work with her maybe every three weeks. But there is gynecologic surgery four days a week at least. I have not done a case in more than a month. I think it is very hard to do your job if you never get to work in the specialties. You are completely reliant on what others tell you/ask of you. If your coworkers don't tell you something needs to be changed on a card it can't happen. So then if the doctor decides to change something and tells the people they are working with and they don't pass it along, then next week when they want to do it exactly like they did it last week no ones. Then the doctor is pissed. Another issue we have is making sure a surgery gets scheduled in the computer for the right actual procedure. When the person puts it in the computer they have to match it up to a card. That card tells the people who pull the case what to pull and the people who do the case what they need and what to do. Well, if you don't match up a surgery to the right card it is a huge problem. It wastes a lot of people's time and it causes a lot of frustration. It also costs money. Supplies always end up getting wasted then. Well, Friday I got my ass chewed the entire time I gave a lunch to a coworker in the room where the plastic surgeon was working. She barely took a breath. There was nothing I could say or do, she just wanted to be mad at someone. Making sure what is on her cards is right is my job. I don't know how to get the people that schedule to get the right cards. I have tried and tried. I have told them to ask me. I have explained and explained. I finally have the ability to go in and change it in the computer but that is something that is very hard for me to do when I am in cases all day. We finally got permission to get slight overtime to work on some of our service coordinator duties. We can have one hour a week. That is something, but really need one day a week (not overtime, just a regular day) but we don't have the staff. Anyway, I was ready to quit after my ass chewing because I have been so frustrated about never getting to be in my own services. I'm so glad I got a warm welcome when I got there. Can't wait to work with her tomorrow because it is my once every three weeks!

Last but not least, Jake is allergic to the dogs and the cat. For this moment we aren't going to do anything. The dogs don't come in the house. The cat is almost fifteen. She isn't allowed in the bedroom and that is the biggest recommendation besides getting rid of her. My hormones are all over the place and that doesn't help with any of this. I am finally doing better. The pneumonia is gone. Still coughing, but a lot less. My energy is a lot better. I just feel like I am on the verge of tears a lot. I suppose that is why my ass is so big.

Frustration

2009-11-27T15:42:00.002-07:00

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Ours was there. I was sick. I am sicker than I was last week when I went to the dr. I felt better for a few days because of the big old shot of steroids and then the dose pack, but now not so good. I had a fever most of the day yesterday and again today. I went back to the doctor, you know, after I got out of work early today and got stronger antibiotics and better cough medicine. I have coughed my self into some strained muscles along my ribs and into back spasms. What freaking fun! That isn't my actual issue however.

We went to my in laws yesterday to eat. Mike was actually home and went and then it was just them and Jake and me. We ate during nap time. Oh wait, we had to keep the boy up. Thank goodness I feed him lunch because there was nothing for him to eat. He is FINALLY interested in real food, some. He wouldn't touch the turkey. He wanted green bean casserole. Luckily she had some beans in the cupboard still. The chewed on a radish for awhile. He basically ate a few green beans and some crackers. We have known Jake's allergies since he was 8 months or a little less right? Grandpa wanted to give him the casserole. No, I said. He wanted to give him the mashed potatoes Jake wanted. No, Grandpa I said. Grandma wanted to give him the stuffing. Where is package I asked. Did you use butter in it like the directions say? Oh, says Grandma. Grandpa hands him a roll. Where is the bag, I ask. Nope, not that either. Well can he have the green salad, Gpa asks. I turn and look at him and say No! (it gag worthy anyway but it is made with cottage cheese). Hello??? When I went to take the roll away I looked at their bread, nope, it has milk. I know I am not handling this as well as I might because I really don't feel good, but come on people! They pick him up from daycare and FEED him. Now, to my knowledge, they give him crackers, baby food that I buy, and fruit. I have actually been grateful he won't eat food there. Apparently I am going to have to pack him a dinner on the days they have to pick him up. They just don't get it.

However, the icing on the cake, the thing that sent me home crying, the reason that I believe these people are idiots... sitting on an end table in the living room where Jake plays was a cup of m&m's and PEANUTS. I know it isn't the end of the world if Jake gets a little dairy. Milk still gives him eczema. But peanuts could KILL him. Obviously they don't understand that I am absolutely terrified of the world out there and my child's peanut allergy. I have to work hard not to think about it and just do everything I can to control his environment. I am working very hard to not let the anxiety in the back of my mind over this allergy to freak me out. I have thought about changing my job to something I can do from home. I have given it thought to actually home school my son when the time comes. I think that is a great thing for some people. I mean I really give those parents (okay we know it is mostly mothers) credit. I couldn't do it. We would be butting heads and I would be going insane. I get frustrated to easily. I am not a teacher and I think there is a special place in heaven for teachers and those who care work in daycare. I can't imagine being in a room full of two year olds, three year olds, four year olds, whatever. I know I couldn't handle that, but I am terrified of the world out there when my son has a life-threatening allergy. I can not control the whole world, but I should be able to count on his damn grandparents! The f***ing peanuts are right next to his crackers in the cupboard. The f***ing peanut butter is next to his baby food. He goes to the cupboard for his stuff! I should be able to count on his grandparents to not be idiots. I have tried education. I have expressed to them the severity of the allergy. They have and epipen and had to learn how to use it.

I didn't even bring it up with Mike after we got home. We went in separate cars and he went to work as soon as we came home so he didn't notice I had been crying. I don't know how to solve this. They are always going to be his grandparents and apparently they are going to be idiots. I have looked into different daycare options. I can't find anything that fits our need. We can't afford to pay someone $10 an hour to watch him in addition to his regular daycare. There is not one actual daycare that is open late enough. Plus, sometimes I have to stay late. Overtime is mandatory and not scheduled. Mike is gone there is nothing he can do. I have considered giving room and board and paying a college student to watch him but I can't find one. I almost had one. Almost, but that is only temporary anyway. I have asked at daycare if there is anyone interested but there isn't. Duh, they want to leave work too. It comes back to me. To my job. Or Mike's job. If I could find an office/case management/ education kind of job, I would have to take a huge pay cut. That would be hard but we could figure something out. But there hasn't been anything. I can't really afford a 20 thousand dollar pay cut either. Especially since there is still instability with Mike's job. If he loses his job than maybe he could find something with normal hours but the job market is so terrible here and he won't move. I don't know what to pray for! I wish a nanny that refuses pay would drop out of the sky for us. I think I need to talk to my minister again. I keep hoping that someone will present them self to her that will fit our needs. I have put it out there to many people. I mean we obviously will have to cough up the cash if we could just find someone because we just can't count on his grandparents. They won't watch him overnight when I am on call either so that is a problem as well. But I can't really trust them anyway! Mike doesn't get it either because when we have problems with our actual daycare he is quick to say that we could pay his mom to watch Jake.

BTW, the dumbass coworker was finished yesterday and so far the charge hasn't freaked out and retaliated. I know the boss talked to her after so many people talked. I know I have had some bad assignments lately but I think work just sucks right now. I think some people have worse assignments than I do.

Really?

2009-11-22T16:09:00.003-07:00

I know that I am in a funk, okay, a depression right now. I am working to pick my self up and enjoy this time of year. I know I need to do a better job of enjoying all my time with Jake. I know once the time is past it is past so I need to do better about taking in the moment. Anyway, that isn't my beef. Right now my personal issue with everyone is to think or just shut their freaking mouths. I will probably explode on the next person who says "don't you think you should be thinking about a second one now?" I have been sick, really sick. I have had a cough for more than four weeks that turned into pneumonia last week. I just had a cough, a dry annoying cough so I didn't go to the Dr until I got sick. Well, this week I had a couple of really rough days at work. I mean I was light headed, diaphoretic, just not looking so good - a combination of being sick and being anemic from AF. I believe I was asked about 100 times, seriously, if I was pregnant. I just can't take it.

Can't people mind their own f'ing business. I mean, I don't know if I am going to yell or burst into tears. I mean you just can't sit down and discuss your reproductive issues with everyone. Maybe I should and they would get the point to back off. People just don't get it. I know my issues are much less significant than others but I'm certainly not one of those people that gets pregnant without trying. I'm scared, I guess. What if it takes a year again? What if we have to do more? How am I going to be able to deal with these people??? For crapsake, yesterday the people giving me a hard time were friends - an OB and a nurse for the GYN that specializes in infertility. What if? What if? What if? My little mind is so fragile right now, but time is not my friend (as I was reminded) and I can't take anymore time to try to straighten myself out. I'm scared. I don't know what to do, but I do know that the next person that says something to me might really regret it!!!

Hell to pay????

2009-11-10T07:22:00.002-07:00

I think we all might be in trouble at work. Friday and Monday our Unit Manager (charge nurse+) and another nurse that we don't actually know what she does (her title is supervisor of the aides or something) were gone. Oh and the director was gone Friday too. Crap to me that I was on call and the charge for the day. It was a bad day. The nurse in charge of the aides made a very poor decision to leave someone who has been here for like a month on her own to take the only aide with experience to a meeting. Not good. Not good at all. We didn't even have any extra nurses to help her until afternoon. We are lucky she came back!

Anyway, that just has me pissed what I am worried about is the boss. We have meetings every Monday morning to help educate us staff. That is good, most of the time. Our presentation was very short this week so we sat and talked because we could. All the people you have to worry about what you say were gone. People could speak freely about how stressful our charge makes everything and how in her attempts to make things go well, we are actually getting screwed. We also all realized that we don't know what this other nurse actually does all day everyday and she stays for hours and hours of overtime when we are in a time of very tight money. We all talked about talking to our new boss and our fear for retaliation from our charge. It is horrible to live in fear of what awful things the person in power over you will do to you. It is awful. There are some newer people that don't know the hell you pay and don't understand why us old timers don't demand change. They know how she is, they just have never experienced months or years of torture.

I was in a room all day until I left early because of a call from daycare that Jake had a temp of 103. He did still when I got home too (Mike went to get him). Poor boy. Anyway, I understand that after our morning meeting that many people went to the boss's office and were in there for hours. Some went as individuals and some went as groups. I know the boss was aware of our fears of the charge nurse, but I don't think any of us ever talked to her before. I don't know what we would. I don't know what we can do. Someone has to be in charge. She also is doing a ton of stuff that she didn't do before we got this boss. When someone else is in charge we just run the desk. We don't do all her "other" stuff. Well, when she is gone for any length of time, it has always been the nurse that we now don't know what she does that would be in charge day after day. Well, in the past, she might have been a good candidate for the job, but now she does not have the respect of the staff. Not at all.

I am very afraid the can of worms we thought we were opening was a actually a bottomless snake pit! I didn't say anything, but I will stand behind my coworkers that did because whatever they said is true. And as bad as moral was for awhile, we have all realized it is worse now. We are looking at the holiday schedule and there is no one to work. It is bad. We won't have many late shifts so people can go home at a decent time. The end of the year is always when we do the most surgeries. People have met their deductibles and want to get it done and don't care what time or day of the week. Doctors are grateful for the business and will work us to death. Each doctor only sees their own needs or how some other doctor is standing in the way of their needs. They don't see or care if they are burning out all the staff by keeping four or five rooms going until seven, eight, nine at night. We just aren't staffed for that. I am scared. We have already had some huge fights at my house over our work schedule. With impending cuts with the railroad, I really have to keep my job! It is just a big problem right now. I'm scared, but my family is more important than my job. However, we do have to eat and have a place to live.

Some pictures finally

2009-11-09T21:51:00.006-07:00

Finally some pictures from our trip to my sister's house. I decided I needed to get them onto the computer at last! I am terrible about erasing pictures from my camera and it was sad! I got this camera for Christmas last year. Poor my Jake has changed. The baby has sure come out off his face. Makes me sad to see how fast he is growing up!

Here is Jake with his cousins at Balloon Fiesta. He loved it. LOVED it. Only Ethan and Sam went with us. Ben is still afraid of the burners so he stayed home with his dad.
We got to have a lot of fun with Aunt Suzi while the boys were at school. Here we were at the aquarium. Kind of hard to take pictures though
We also got to go to Explora a kids science museum and it was great fun for Jake and us. He is controlling one of the water sprays on a two story interactive fountain here.
Here is an air table where you put nails in the holes and it increases the force of the air in the other holes. I think we all could have played with it all day.

I thought the bubbles would be his favorite part but I was surprised. He was done pretty early and my sister and I wanted to keep playing
He loved helping Aunt Suzi vacuum!
I tried and tried to get a picture with all the boys and mine wouldn't cooperate. He was having none of it but his cousins were really good!
He had a lot of fun playing with the boys. He loved all their toys and all the space they have to play.

He stacked these cans in my sister's window forever. Unfortunately, I did have to listen to some sisterly advise on parenting. She didn't tell me anything I didn't already know was a problem. Jake's sleep is still a nightmare. It is almost impossible to get him to go to his bed, lay down and go to sleep. He will go lay down in his chair in my room and go to sleep and then get in bed with us at some point. He will lay down in the living room and go to sleep so you have to carry him to bed. He still screams and throws up for hours. We need to have a better schedule. I know this but it is damn near impossible with our jobs. Daddy goes to work at all hours of the night and day. I have three different shifts I work plus call and I literally don't know from day to day when I will be picking him up. In addition, he gets picked up by Grandma or Grandpa when I have to work late so he is at their house too which always throws a wrench in his schedule. I'm sorry I'm not a SAHM or have a job with normal hours too or have Mike's job have any schedule what so ever at all. It would make a schedule for Jake a heck of a lot easier! It makes me not want to see my sister again until Jake's sleep is better and I have no idea how long that will take. I mean it is a little better because he doesn't have to be rocked to sleep anymore.
Jacob has a new uncle! Mike's parents had to put their dog to sleep because he had lung cancer. His dad's way of dealing with that is to immediately get a new dog. Well, he had to wait about two weeks to pick up his puppy and those two weeks were hell. He was so depressed he had trouble getting out of bed. Now that MJ is here he is a different man. I don't understand the name MJ nor do I like it. I've just been calling him puppy like Jake. Jake wants to play with him so bad and the puppy wants to play with Jake but is smart enough to know better. He will run out and take a swipe at Jake and then run back to the safety of an adult. It won't be long and Jake will be experiencing those razor sharp teeth.

Jake did not so much like Halloween. He wore his costume just fine but not the going to the houses business. We didn't even go door-to-door. I am going to have to have another person with me that can go ahead and plant Jake-safe treats or stay with him so I can scope it out. We just went to friends and he cried at almost every stop. He did not like having a bag and he wanted to eat everything right then and there. I couldn't even get a picture of him until we got to the grandparent's because was so grouchy.

October

2009-10-27T21:03:00.002-06:00

This has been a busy month. Jake and I went to my sister's house for balloon fiesta. It was his first long trip and we were alone. Thank goodness for the dvd player!!! I was very grateful to have a new vehicle to drive too. It was great. I had a terrible time holding down the speed though.

We still have a ton going on at work. The one doctor that does the single most surgeries is off two weeks because his wife had a baby. It has been a nice break but we know we will be paying for it starting next week. That is good, sort of. I mean it keeps us working but we are short of course. One person is off for having had surgery and that makes a big impact for the rest. We have also had trouble with the H1N1 starting. It is hard to be down two nurses at once. Our fear is that it will be more than that. Mandatory 7 days off is very painful to a unit. But they are sick and the rest of us don't want it. We also got good news??? The charge nurse's pet is quiting!!!! She is returning to another department. It surprises us that they will let her back. We are all excited. This is the review I was dreading so much for retaliation from the charge. It has been surprisingly okay. The charge is upset because she is leaving but no one else is, literally. We all have to pick up her slack and it is easier to do it if she is just gone. She has been with us for three and a half years but has managed to have three extended leaves (a month or more) and was being "allowed" to have surgery and be off for the holidays. I think that is was finally got her to leave. Everyone was so pissed. Yesterday though, another person announced she was moving far away. It wasn't a surprise. We knew her husband has been looking for a different job for a long time. But, he is one of those people that is always looking for the greener grass. It just puts a lot on the rest of us. That puts us down three full time RNs. That is not something we can all cover. It takes at least 6 months to train a new nurse to the job. If someone has a lot of OR experience it might be more like three months, but those people aren't just laying around. We will figure it out.

This month was to be the month. This month we had decided to start trying for another baby. That didn't work out. I have finally gotten off the meds for my face. It isn't going that well, but I will do what it takes. I had a skin lesion taken off my nose and it was benign so that was good. However, I have been having this horrible pain in my ankle. I have been trying to exercise because I need to so badly and now I am in pain. I mean I can't always put my weight on it. So I talked it over with our only longstanding ortho. (we have new ones, but I'm not comfortable with them yet). Anyway, I had a stress fracture in my ankle five and a half years ago and this is how it hurt. I figured out this pain isn't going away and he told me I had to come in. So I did. I saw his PA last week and got an xray. A calcification showed up on that picture that wasn't there in the picture I had taken years ago. If that is the problem, I need to have it surgically removed. THAT ISN'T AN option. I am closely protecting my time off so I can take twelve weeks off with a baby. Tomorrow I have a bone scan. That means I get radioactive dye injected and then they scan and see where it concentrates. That is the only way to know if it is another stress fracture or if it is this calcification. A stress fracture hopefully means just immobilization. If it means crutches this time, I can't work. I have a walking immobilizer boot right now and it is helping. Last time it was a different boot and there was too much wiggle room. That meant too much pain and I ended up in a cast. If the calcification is the issue than hopefully a steroid pack will calm the inflammation and then we will be done - for awhile. Any which way, it meant the egg I just popped out went to waste and that has us both sad.

Another note. Mike keeps hearing there are going to be cuts again at work. That means him. He has heard November, December, or February. He says it can't last long because they really won't be able to run the trains. It will be kind of like my department, the rest just can't make up that much. Plus there are a ton of federal regulations limiting their work so that helps them need more people. Who knows. Next month I'll get pregnant, be off work on crutches, and my husband will be without a job. Now that would be an opener for the holiday season!

2009-10-02T21:20:00.002-06:00

I skipped a whole month again. I think sitting here and writing means facing myself and that is hard. Work is getting worse again. Hours suck. Increased workload, decreased staff, too much management. FUN. Had to get a new car. I hate spending money but I must say I love it. Jake and I got to say to hell with it all and are at my sister's house. One of the worst things about going on vacation is knowing that when it is over there is nothing to look forward to. Hopefully I can get some pictures up here in the next few days as we should be having some fun.

I survived

2009-08-31T19:01:00.003-06:00

She is gone. I wasn't sure if I was going to make it through last week. I still have my doubts about the future as far as pissing the charge nurse off. The charge nurse was back today after being off most of the summer. I wish there had been a little more space between her pet's eval and her coming back. But I've made it this far. I even got my reimbursement check today for my certification test I took in December.

I also survived the birthdays. My baby is two. My baby! Jake is so funny. He is such a charmer. He has so many people wrapped around his little finger. I just can't believe he is two! I didn't even get to take pictures during the birthday. We gave Jake another cupcake yesterday just so we could take a picture and to see if he would eat it. He didn't. He loves candles. He tried and tried to blow them out with Mike on the big cake and we let him blow them out several times on his cupcake. Of course someone was standing beside him helping him. He didn't notice.

He has been a stinker when he knows you are trying to take his picture. He won't give you a nice smile like this one. I don't remember why there is a tear. We have pictures coming up in a couple of weeks and I hope he cooperates!

I made a cake to practice for his birthday. I should have made practice cupcakes because that didn't work so well with his allergy modifications. The cake tastes good and Jake got his first beater.

A good friend's sister has a little boy that is a few weeks younger than Jake. Jake loves to play with him. We went to the splash pad at the zoo and the boys sat to have a snack. It was so cute. Jake started handing K some of his puffs with out being told. He would only hand them out one at a time however and sometimes he gave them a lick first. They were so cute.!

This is the little boy who sees the camera! Our baby sitter came over to say goodbye before heading off to college. He wouldn't cooperate for a picture at all. He still asks about her.

2009-08-27T00:22:00.002-06:00

My struggles are a bit different right now. I have been so busy I haven't been able to dwell on how crappy I feel. A friend of mine saw a different doctor today about her thyroid and got a different medication. I am very interested to see how it works for her. My thyroid levels aren't real low but they sit on the line. I may make an appointment with the doctor she saw if it really helps her.

Anyway, that isn't the problem. One day years ago, like seven or eight, I agreed to work with the plastic surgeon that was coming to our hospital. I agreed to be the person primarily in his room so he could have some consistency when he started. I believe my boss said that way he didn't have reinvent the wheel each week. I was still pretty new. It had to be at least eight years ago. Anyway, I quickly discovered I didn't really care for it that much. I didn't like the doctor much and plastic surgery ranges from gross to really horrible. One day in a staff meeting, my boss announced that we had a new position and she was looking for people to apply. She said that she wanted to have coordinators for each specialty and they would be doing things similarly as to what I was doing. She announced to everyone that I was the service coordinator for Plastics. What the hell? This was the first I had heard about this title. I was not very happy. If given the opportunity I would have picked a different specialty. Ortho was my favorite and I wanted to do that. I told her. She told me I couldn't do both. I said that was fine, I just wanted to do ortho. Nope, not going to happen. It all worked out. I would have really gone crazy in that position when a particular doctor started. I would of quit.

So, there have been changes over the years. That surgeon left and I have completely set up two following plastic surgeons. I also was a coordinator for a retinal surgeon for the brief time he was here (I put so much work into that). After someone else quit, I was actually asked to take on gynecology also. The surgeon in that practice that I didn't like had just left so I said that would be just fine. I liked it a lot more. I still do. Anyway, back to the present. Some how this position means I can do my coworkers evaluations. I don't know why it does but that is what has happened. I want to blame on the temp director but I can't because my old boss made me do three last year. This year is different, however. I was initially assigned four. Two of the other service coordinators were also assigned four. One of them did the evals like I did last year and the other didn't. We didn't get any sort of training, just some papers and a shove last year. However, the people assigned to us were very carefully picked. The director did the problem ones, as well as ours and the charge nurse did a lot of the rest of the staff. Well, the charge nurse has been off for about two months now sick. She has been really sick. In and out of the hospital. Two hospitals actually. Tomorrow is the temps last day. She wanted all of the evals done by then. So that meant we had to split up the people assigned to the charge nurse and do those also. I took four initially and accepted a fifth one today.

Of the first four I got, the director told me she was sorry because she gave me two of the three hardest ones in the department. I was upset about one. I'm not sure who she thought the second one would was because the others weren't bad at all. She did give me my best friend, but we are good enough friends that we can tell each other what we need to do and it isn't a big deal. She did have a few issues but one of the other evals on my list is the most strong-willed nurse in the department. But the one I was dreading was the worst nurse in the department. The laziest person we have who is the charge nurse's pet. Wahoo!!! I have been sick about it. I worked on it for hours last night and then went to the director and went over it again today. I went to her to help me find some positive and she just kept adding more negative. I very frankly discussed my concerns about giving an honest evaluation to the charge nurse's pet. Our new director doesn't even know the charge nurse because she has been gone. (she was back for partial days for about a week about a month ago. She was still too sick). The inter um voiced my concerns to our new director or so she told me. She never saw it so she doesn't know what I am talking about. She didn't see the favoritism and hasn't seen the retaliation.

The inter um did the eval with me today. I'm glad but she was a lot harsher than I was. The coworker did okay, but I could see that by the end she was starting to think, to devise. You can see it in her eyes. She is a plotter. I am scared. There is nothing wrong with her appealing the eval. The director did it with me. I had specific supporting information that had been presented by peers. Peers too afraid to give their own names, but some obvious to her (that one would be my best friend that the charge calls a tattle tail all the time). But the nurse was still doing things she shouldn't. She actually has some firable infractions. I am still worried. I was sick all morning. However, I the last eval I picked up has me more concerned. It is someone that oriented me. She has been a nurse forever. She is a friend. But she is having some significant problems. I have done six evals so far and three of the people have voiced concerns about her. The same concerns I have. Something is wrong with her and I don't know what it is. I wonder if she is sick and not telling us. Her job performance has gone to crap. She used to be a bit dingy but a good nurse, now she is just bad. You pretty much have to tell her exactly what to do or she doesn't. She can't identify what needs to happen on her own. She will just stand there until you tell her to go do this or do that. We have been worried but we didn't know what to do. She has to have hand surgery but that isn't root of the problem. This one I think will be harder. I went over her self evaluation and I was just shocked. She could not have rated herself any higher. Not at all. She gave examples but they aren't enough. She obviously doesn't see how bad she is doing. It is going to hard. There will be crying. I believe this was the third evaluation of the top three. So I get to do them all. I am not worried about what she will do to me. She might be mad, but it is out of concern for her welfare, not to mention everyone she takes care of, that I have to be honest. This one might have to be brutally honest for her to see.

Why do I have to do these? What gives me the authority to do annual evaluations?? Peer evaluations yes, but the actual big one? I am so ready to be done with it!!!

Whew!!!

2009-08-19T20:47:00.002-06:00

I was brave and got my evaluation over with today. It took more than two HOURS to do. Almost two and a half hours actually. She is a story teller. She has literally seen me at the desk as charge nurse and said "oh dear, where is Mary?" Now how does that make you feel? Today she said I do a very good job of running the desk. Huh??? My charge nurse - really called a unit manager but she seems to want to do mostly the charge nurse stuff. Anyway, she has been really sick. Really, really sick. She was in ICU for more than a week. She has been off for 6 weeks? maybe a little more. She hasn't had a lot of opportunity to do more of the unit manager tasks. Anyway, there is a second in charge running the board most of the time, but occasionally I have been too. This director seems to think the sun rises and sets with Mary so I was surprised when she said that. The whole thing was a pleasant surprise actually.

We did talk quite a bit about one of the evaluations that I have to do. It has me in a difficult position and she helped me. She didn't tell me anything I didn't know but she offered to sit in on the evaluation and that was a relief. I want a witness. If she doesn't I am going to ask the acting charge to sit with me. It isn't going to be pretty. I think one of the reasons she assigned me this nurse was because she know that I have to be honest. I call her on her crap all the time right? The issue is that this is a bad nurse and a bad employee. She is incredibly lazy. She thinks she is so much better than the rest of us and that she doesn't have to pull her own weight. But she can tell everyone else what to do. She happens to be the unit manager's pet. I don't get it. I kind of do, but I don't. I mean she is really bad. It took her a lot of work to find someone to fill out her peer evaluation, because everyone can't stand her. She wanders around with this sense of entitlement. She is also afternoon charge sometimes and she is terrible. She is so freaking lazy. I can not express this enough. Well, if I am honest her eval is going to suck. I can be honest without letting my personal dislike get in the way. If her eval sucks the unit manager is going to be nasty to me. So I at least want a witness so she can't say I was just mean. I have bitched and moaned plenty on the past about how nasty the charge can be when you piss her off. GREAT!! The director told me that she doesn't see how this person is still here. She obviously doesn't care about being and OR nurse. Well, I finally agree with something this woman says.

I can tell the director thinks I remind her of herself. I was surprised. She really wants me to get a master's degree. She said that like 20 times and she had many many suggestions for different jobs and experiences for me. I was surprised. But she also told me that she wants ME to become the unit manager when our current unit manager isn't any more. That was a surprise. It is always best to promote from with in and it would be the worst first year of my life but that I was the stand out in the department for that position. What about Mary??? Mary is working on her BSN but doesn't have it yet. It was very surprising to me. She said I was a wealth of untapped knowledge. Weird! It was weird. I literally could not have had a better evaluation. I could not have scored any higher. There wasn't anything I needed to work on just goals for the up coming year. Weird!!!

The crappy thing is those of us doing evals are going to have to do more because we don't know when the unit manager will be back. I did some last year right, but this director has really made a big deal out of the service coordinators. She has elevated our positions without more pay and kind of ticked off the "others." That makes it more fun right? At least one thing I have been dreading is done.

2009-08-18T08:56:00.002-06:00

This summer has been bad. With me at least. I am struggling. It makes me very sad that I am not enjoying my son as I should be, as he deserves me to be. Work is soooo stressful. Our interim director should only be here nine more days. Thank GOD. Only we have to have all our evaluations done in that time. She personally has to do mine. Not good. We don't get along. She tells us all these things we do wrong and I argue with her. She doesn't see how we do anything. She is locked (literally) in an office half way across the hospital. Even when her office was in our department she still didn't see. She was off at even more meetings than our old director.

Good news is that we have a permanent new director. She seems much more on page with us. Hopefully it will work well. We have just had two directors for more than a month now and it sucks. It also means we are getting assignments from both of them. Assignments that have to be done out side of our actual duties of taking care of patients. Managers some how seem to forget that we still do that. Hello! Someone still has to take care of the people. They get so far removed. I have pointed that out to the interim director that her assignment will have to wait because I have a job more important to do first. She didn't like that.

Mike's job has been insane. He still has one, thank God, but he is hardly ever home. He is only about twelve hours between trips. Then he is gone for at least 36 hours. He is awfully tired too. Not much that needs to get done around here can get done.

I have an appointment this week with the doctor about the medication for my face. I have been taking medication now since what, Jake was 5 or 6 months old. I have very little never pain now which is obviously great. I still have a lot of twitching and tugging and spasming that is muscular and they can't fix. Some of it could be helped with botox injections but the worst of it is around my mouth so that isn't really an option. Of course, what I am being told is that I just need to reduce my stress levels and that will get better. Anyway, the point of the appointment is to stop taking the medication. It is not something that I can take while pregnant. It effects my nerve transmissions and could prevent a baby's from forming properly. I believe it is a category X medication so we want off that. But that leaves me afraid. Will I have that horrible pain again? I have visited with a couple of the providers at my OB office and they have researched the recurrence of Bell's Palsy during pregnancy. There isn't much out there. My odds are higher but they don't know if there is anything I can do to try and prevent it. They give pregnant women with herpes antivirals during pregnancy and I wanted to know if that would help me. They just don't know.

I have officially gone off the pill as of like a couple of days. However, I feel like something is wrong with me physically. I went to the doctor and they told me it was just stress. My symptoms cover many things including stress. Fatigue. I am so tired I can't do anything. I could take a nap every day when I actually get home. I have been stuck late at work almost every day. Loss of appetite but weight gain. I completely forget to eat because I am not hungry. But I have gained weight which makes me feel like crap. Headaches, nausea, difficulty sleeping even though I feel like I could always take a nap. Depression? Thyroid? Tell me I am fine. Something is out of balance but I don't know what it is. I am hoping maybe this doctor will draw more blood this week and maybe they can tell me. He wouldn't treat anything because he is just a pain specialist and he is only here for less than a month because he is moving. That has me a little worried. What happens if I have problems again? Who do I go to? Hopefully he can tell me. He has a very busy practice so there are a lot of people that are going to need a different doctor.

I just feel like I need to be doing more for my sweet little demon child than I am. I feel like I'm not being a good enough mommy right now and oh, we need to hurry up and try to have another child because the clock is ticking. That doesn't help. I need to figure out what it up with me before I get pregnant. But now my husband that is never home is really pressuring me to have the second baby I do want. He just wants it now. I can't figure that one out.

Anyway, I'm just struggling a bit right now...

hangning in

2009-07-06T22:08:00.002-06:00

Life is still stressful. I sat in a meeting this afternoon for an additional hour after my shift ended. All I could think about was getting and walking out, forever. What the hell am I doing?? I am ready to strangle my "temporary" boss. We have a new one starting soon and I hope, I pray that they kick this lady to the curb. Is that going to happen? No, she has a contract for some crazy amount of money until the end of August and then will be a consultant until 6 major projects are completed. Or so she says. I don't know if the hospital will go for that. I'm sure it is a TON of money. Besides, we are hoping the new boss disagrees with some of things she is pushing. Anyway, she has made my life very difficult. Much more so than before. She keeps piling on the work. Every Monday she gives us more and more. The charge nurse doesn't give us any time to work on these minor projects. ha! I am sorely irritated that I am doing all this extra work for $80 a pay period. I would love to say I am done, but that won't happen. They won't let me quit this extra work without leaving the whole job. I am so tempted. Oh wait, I have to have a different job to do that! Anyway, she chewed me out for not questioning whether a doctor was credentialed to do a surgery or not. I never in a million years would have questioned this. It was just a small portion of the surgery she is yelling at me about. It is all about paperwork and not the doctor's abilities. I was just livid. LIVID. I checked into it and the person that can help is injured. Great. So I went to the medical director over surgical services and told him. He was shocked. Nurses being told to question doctors? So I hope I won't be getting my head chopped off tomorrow.

Speaking of chopping off - Jake took off the end of his thumb Saturday. He was playing in the storage container cupboard. We have a safety catch on the outside of the doors and then on the inside as well. He can get them open in less than 1o seconds. The main reason those doors are latched is because he makes such a big mess. Well, in the midst of his mess he cut his little thumb on the edge of a zi.p.loc storage container. Are they sharp? They aren't supposed to be. I was cooking dinner just feet away from him and he screamed for me and there was blood all over. OMG was there blood. I thought he cut his hand off. I was shocked. I had to struggle to see where the blood was actually coming from because it was all over him. I still don't know how he did it but the container is obviously gone. I held pressure on his little thumb for fifteen minutes and it didn't help. I didn't want to take him to the ER and have them tell me I was an idiot for bringing him there so I took him across the street to the neighbors. My neighbor and his dad were outside. They are both paramedics and flight nurses. My neighbor is actual now a nurse practitioner and been a nurse in two wars now being deployed multiple times. So anyway, I thought he could at least tell me if I was being silly or I really should go to the hospital. He looked at it and said it was pretty serious since there was no way to actually close the wound. This I know. But I don't know how they treat it when it is like this. I know what to do when it is worse, but this is in a grey area for me. He put a huge band aid on it and wrapped it with something I wasn't familiar with and then put a bunch of tape over it to try to keep it on. I know little kids. Half of them have their dressings off by the time we get them to the recovery room. Thank God Jake left it on. The goal was for it to fall off in the bath Sunday night, but I was presented the dressing and the thumb when I was trying to sleep Sunday morning. It looked like hell! It looked so painful. But thank you, Jesus, it wasn't bleeding. I got a couple of band aids on it and I wrapped it with some coban. That stayed on until after his bath and we put on another that is still on now. I was just sure it would fall off at daycare and start bleeding again. Hopefully we are past the bleeding now. If we had gone to the ER they would have had to cauterized it. That is so painful. I would have been crying too. So we are still good and he still wants to play in that cupboard.

Now on a daily basis we are talking about baby number two. Mike wants to start trying now. Mike is the one that gets to sleep. Although Jake is doing much better, but he still doesn't sleep all night in his bed every night. But it is better. He gets up very early and stays up way too late for me. I think it was about 845 when he fell asleep in the chair. He still screams until he barfs if you put him in his crib to go to sleep. I just don't know what to do about that. I am just tired of cleaning up vomit. Anyway, it is still a little earlier than I want to have a second baby. Mike keeps reminding me that I am thinking in the world where I get pregnant the first time we try and I need to wake up. Nice huh? He is right, but what if? Maybe... Then he reminds me that maybe Jake was our one on a million and it will take more than just a year of trying on our own this time and some hormones. Nothing like another slap in the face! But he is right, but what if... I want them to be two years apart in school so that would mean Jake needs to be three since his birthday is at the end of August. I guess there is still a chance we won't hold him back but I doubt. He is doing really well, but he is a boy and I am already sick thinking about how we are going to handle daycare then. I have been planning on stay on bcp's until the end of October. That has been my mindset and then we will have to figure it out.

The good news is that Mike's work situation has kind of leveled out a little. The railroad has hired back a few people. That puts him higher up the list. I am no longer worried on a daily basis if he will have a job and where it will be. But, we never dreamed they would cut so many people to begin with. It is still touchy. Mike says we will figure it out and we won't let it stop us having another baby. We have to feed it and diaper it. But we will work it out.

I went in to work today in a good mood because today is my tenth anniversary at my job. Too bad my boss had to poop on it.

Wait, we are still here!

2009-06-04T20:13:00.002-06:00

Wow, not even one little post in May, not even a whine about my birthday. I survived. It feels like that is what we do - survive. We both still have jobs. Our hours haven't been affected too much lately. We have had a lot of surgeries. My temporary boss has greatly expanded my job duties as a service coordinator. I don't mind, but it is hard to get done what I need to do while I am still doing the rest of my job. I am slightly irritated that I only have the potential to make $80 more a pay period for doing this than coworkers that do as little as possible. I have a lot of responsibilities. However, I know that I would be laughed at if I asked for more compensation since we are still being told to be thankful for the hours we have.

Mike is still home!!!! We really didn't think he would make it past the middle of May, but he is still here. The railroad did a whole bunch of track work near us and that meant more jobs temporarily in the area. Mike heard this week that they set up 25 more trains. That is great news, sort of. Last I knew, he didn't know how many people were getting their jobs back. Rumor was that it was only going to be about six people. That just means the people that still have jobs just have to work more. I suppose that is okay. It keeps us with a paycheck, right? I was hoping it would be more people would get their jobs back and that would put just a little more space between Mike and the bottom of the list. The most important thing about 25 more trains is that it means they need more coal. That means things are maybe, just maybe, starting to turn around. It gives us hope that there just might be another 10, 15, 25 or more trains in the future. We are not relaxing with this by any means but we have a glimmer of hope.

Of course the most important thing in our lives is our sweet little monster. Is he that bad? No, but it sure feels like the terrible twos are hovering near. There are frequent fits and lots of NO mama's and even worse are the no daddy's. Daddy has a harder time understanding that this is just part of the age. There are time-outs for that and hitting fairly often. I definitely feel a battle of the wills coming in our near future. I mean big battles. We get frustrated at such a willful little boy, but I keep asking Mike what he thought we were going to get! I think it has helped Mike see that he isn't our little baby anymore. That has been something Mike has been refusing to see.

Jake talks about none stop. Again, I'm not sure where he got that. He says lots of sentences now. I mean real sentences with verbs and everything. We (he and I) still get frustrated trying to communicate what he wants sometimes. I just don't know what "this" is sometimes. He signs "more" and says "this" and gets very frustrated that I don't what he wants.

Jake is still a terrible, terrible eater. I am so frustrated. He will not give up baby food. There are days that is the only thing he will eat. The most difficult thing is that there is only one kind of food that he wants now. Over time he has stopped eating the other flavors and will only eat this one. He will literally eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. It could be worse right? I mean it is a dinner so it has veggies and meat. He could only be eating applesauce or something. I hate it. I am so ready to be done with this crap. I keep exhausting the town's supply of this variety. I have asked stores to order it for me and they won't. That really surprised me. I am willing to pay up front. We haven't been able to find it online either. Last weekend I went to six stores and only came up with 11 jars. That is a big problem. I went to one today and they had nothing again. He will just not eat and have milk or juice if you don't have his "ninner." Just recently he has started asking for beans. I can't figure out what he means for beans. I have given him everything I can think of and I asked at daycare and they don't know either what beans mean.

I wish I could say Jake's sleeping has improved but I can't. It has from eight months ago I suppose. He generally sleeps through the night 2 maybe 3 nights a week. He let me sleep in just a little one day this week. He still throws up if you leave him in his crib to cry. Actually, Mike needs to clean the carpet right now from two nights ago. This is something that causes a lot of stress for us. Mike puts him in bed and says I can't get him. He finally caves and then I have to clean up the whole damn mess. I have had to give Jake a bath after 10 because he has gotten so sick. This makes me very angry with Mike.

Potty training? Not exactly. I still try to put Jake on the potty chair before his bath if he is willing. He asks to sit on it several times a day but he rarely actually goes in the chair. He seems to understand though. He asks when you go to change his diaper. (I just love to hear him say diaper. It seems to have syllables).

Here is my beautiful iris. I planted a ton of them last year and a few did bloom this year. This is the first. It has had a total of seven blossoms on that stalk. I didn't realize they could have that many. I do so love iris.
I am going to have to try harder. It is therapeutic to write so I should do it more right? Sometimes you just don't want to actually but the words down because that makes them real. You don't want to admit to yourself the situation.

And so it goes

2009-04-30T08:27:00.002-06:00

I keep trying to sit down and write a post but I just can't seem to do it. I would love to just carry on about Jake because he is doing so well, but that isn't what is consuming my mind these days. I am horribly stressed with work, both mine and Mike's. It seems as though we are circling the the drain and there isn't much we can do.

Mike is now five people from having to go to Wyoming to work. That would be horrible, scratch that, that WILL be horrible. What it means is that he will have to go to the next leg of their trip instead of his normal one. It is the final or initial step for the trains. It is taking the trains to and from the mine. He actually does that a lot now but then he brings the train home. He would have to live up there. His plan is to get a topper for his truck and when he can't drive home he will sleep in his truck. He can't find a reasonable topper anywhere near us. It isn't like he has set hours or days so we can plan on him being gone so long and home so long. It is going to be awful. Five more people get laid off and he goes. What is worse is that once he leaves, it is only the ticking of the clock before he gets laid off. He has been there more than five years! When the layoffs started he kept telling me not to worry because there were so many people behind him on his local board. Well they have laid off about 200 people that were behind him on the board. There are less than fifty left behind him... Companies are needing the coal. They are using their reserves. It can't go on forever, but will we survive the cut? Probably not. He has our health insurance. He has an outstanding retirement that will be gone. Gone.

My job is sucking ass. The environment is hell. Everyone is miserable. Our new boss doesn't give a shit about people. That isn't her job. Her job is to shape things up and trim the fat. I was off yesterday (without pay) because we didn't have enough work. I needed a mental health day though. It is scary. Everyone has the claws out. My charge nurse was gone for about the first two and a half weeks the new director was here. I had to be the charge nurse for three of the days she was gone. I hated it. HATED IT. Someone almost got fired for an error while I was on duty and I had to defend the person. It was the charge nurse's pet. I don't like her personally, but more importantly I am not comfortable with her work. But there was no way in hell I was going to be the one in charge when she got the boot. My life would have been HELL!!!! For the current volumes we are doing, we probably four too many nurses. So... Right now we are all having to go home early or stay home. Summers are always worse because doctors take vacations and will be gone a week here and a week there. Thankfully, nurses take vacations too so that will help a little.

Anyway, I'm not sleeping well. I'm worrying constantly. I have to watch my back every single move I make. Our jobs won't be based on seniority like Mike's. Ours will be the first, the second, etc to screw up. So all the worrying doesn't help one's performance. I mean you get paranoid and shaky. You question yourself and that isn't good. We need to just be able to do. But no, now it is "did I dot that i, did I cross that t?" I mean everything is important but you should have to triple guess yourself.

The worst part of this personally is that we have been talking about starting to try for another baby sooner rather than later. At the moment, we aren't sure it about holding Jake back a year to start school. That is a long way off but he is doing better developmentally than lots of the kids in his room that are six months older. He is doing well socially as well. But we still don't know how he will be when it actually comes to the time to make that decision. We can't have another baby now. We won't be able to get the hospital insurance until November. But that aside, we won't be able to afford another child on just my income. We may have to move. Who knows what we will find for work. I have been glancing around and everyone is tightened down right now. The job market is horrendous around here for Mike. I mean, 200 people have been laid off a head of him. They are all looking for jobs! Nothing will pay as well of have the benefits. Hopefully something else would have better hours, but... Anyway, we may have to put off another baby. We may not be able to have another baby. This is upsetting me very much right now. I mean, if I can't get pregnant that is one thing, but if it is because of the damn economy I am going to be mad my entire life.

Hopefully I can get a happier post with pictures of Jake out in a few days.

2009-04-20T20:13:00.001-06:00

Things aren't going all that well right now, but it makes world feel a lot less crappy when your baby looks up at you and says "Mama, I love you."

Fun in the sun

2009-04-08T17:08:00.003-06:00

A good friend and coworker of mine brought over an Easter basket for Jake today. He loved it. It had some jello eggs, a huge bubble wand, chalk, a turtle shaped water gun, and more good stuff. We took him outside to play and he just loved it. He just adores this friend of mine. He asks for her every day. This morning when he woke me up by jumping on my head at 3:40 he was asking for her. I thought about taking him to her at that moment! He just loves to play with her. Her only daughter graduates from high school this year and babysits for us from time to time. My friend is really looking forward to having Jacob to play with once her baby is gone.

Anyway, we played and played and played. He was so cute. I didn't grab a single picture either. Every time he puts something in your hand or takes something from you he says thank you. That is great right? Well when you are holding the bubble bottle and he dips the wand in he says it. We had to have heard thank at least 150 times while we were there. It was fun. I got sunburned though and I'm afraid his cheeks might be pink. I need to get some new sun screen I guess. I was looking at Jake's little legs the other day and thank goodness I think he is going to get a bit of his daddy's coloring. His legs were not anywhere near as pale as mine. I have the skin so white it is lavender on my legs. I still feel bad if I burned my baby

So the new boss was there today. First thing she had maintenance come put a big deadbolt on her office door. The bosses door has never been locked before. There were tons of things in there we needed - instrument books, reference materials, orientation videos that cost a fortune, pay stubs for people who weren't there on payday, emergency OR light bulbs and fuses, back laser keys for when someone misplaces the regular set, emergency chocolate and antacids. I didn't see her much. But almost everyone who was working around her said that she didn't speak to them. She didn't start conversations, she didn't introduce herself or anything. We have a very short meeting every morning and she didn't come to that either. I sure hope she does in tomorrow. I walked up to introduce myself and she turned around and walked away. I didn't mention that the charge nurse is still MIA either did I? Great. Well, let's see how it goes for the rest of the week. I have some major things I need to get handled but I'm not sure how to go about it.

The beginning? The end?

2009-04-07T18:08:00.002-06:00

I hardly slept last night. I had a ticket to a high school musical that had been rescheduled from Saturday night. We had a blizzard so they changed it. That made it hard because it didn't get over until a little after 10 and I had to be up at 5. I'm old and don't cope with that very well. The musical was great and a much needed distraction. I had very fitful sleep filled with bad dreams. You see, today our interim director started and my boss told us she thought it was her last day. It is nice to start the day with us all crying.

I can't even tell you the new person's name. I know her resume is longer than my arm. What does that mean to me? She doesn't do one thing for very long, and I'm not talking about interim positions. My charge nurse didn't work today at least in our unit. She had to spend some time some where with administration going over things with this new person. She did tell one of my coworkers that she told this person that "we" weren't going to be very receptive because we are going to be very loyal to our old boss and that "we" don't trust the two doctors that are now in charge of everything. Well, that is kind of true. We are not happy with the two doctors. I don't trust a word that comes out of either of their mouths - one I never have and the other I stop trusting more recently. They flat out lie to us. Nice huh? We are loyal to the boss that has been with the hospital for forty years and she is still in her fifties. But I think we are afraid. We don't know what is happening again. Again, our future is uncertain. Again there are doctors behaving badly and getting their way. We have been told we can't progress because of the leadership we had, but what the hell do we have now???

Wait and see. Go to work and do my job. That is all I can do. I have to keep my mouth shut. I have to just do it. I am scared. There are things that need to be done. There are things that I need done to help the doctors I work with that I haven't been able to get done. Maybe there will be changes now. I don't know. Every doctor thinks their needs are more important than any other doctor and they should have the newest most expensive equipment. I just don't know. I just have to keep going I guess. I just want to cry. A lot. I only hope maybe there are some things we can do better.

Wait and see

Road trip for photos

2009-03-24T22:30:00.005-06:00

Friday we took off after I got off work. I had to pick up Jake, feed him a snack and clean myself up before we could leave. I had been hoping to get out a little early from work but it didn't happen. Jake was about as uncooperative as he could be. Every thing seemed to be moving in slow motion except the clock. I got ready and I stood in the living room and had to decided if we were going to try to make it out or not. I decided that I just really really needed to get the heck out of Dodge even if for just a few hours.

So we hopped in the car and drove to our favorite photographer. She was having a fundraiser. It was "Free Fb Friday." You got your picture taken for a donation to the American Cancer Society. Now that is a cause I support. So we drove 75 miles for a few pictures. She is the best. She always takes more and does more than she says she is going to. She is just such a sweetheart. It was cute because Jake was bashful this trip. He has suddenly taken on this role. He now hugs Mommy's legs and hides. I did that forever when I was a kid. I just think it is funny because Jake has been so outgoing thus far. He knows and loves these women so it was pretty funny.

So a drive gives you time to think. So do pictures that are very nice but not really. I mean the photographer did a really good job it was her subject that was the issue. Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about cancer. Biology taught us that normal cells mutate and have abnormal growth and replication. It all starts with one tiny cell. One little cell can suddenly (maybe not suddenly) turn our world upside down. I would say that I see cancer at least three times a week. I mean I literally see this horrible disease at least three days a week. I might even see it three times in the same day, depending on what surgeon I am working with. A surgeon will remove a cancerous tumor and hand it to me to pass along to the pathologist. I will hold in my hand the nasty disease that is taking over some one's body. That can be a little depressing. I mean you can also say that we have cut that nasty cancer out, but it isn't that simple. Removing a cancer is usually just the very beginning of a long battle. It is a battle. Some people we are able to help as in cure. Some people we can only help make their remaining days less painful. This is something that some how weighs on me. I mean, it is like everyday routine work for us. I look around and I wonder if some of these people right here and there think about what this actually means to this person.

Surgery is a bit de-humanizing. Is that a word? I mean, most of the people actually in the OR don't get to meet the patient until they have sedation. Even if you meet them in pre-op before the sedation is given you are not meeting them in normal circumstances. They aren't themselves. They are nervous, scared, worried. They may be in a great deal of pain. We are meeting people at their most vulnerable. Within ten minutes of being taken into the OR the person is asleep or much more heavily sedated. We get them positioned. We expose the area that is that is having surgery and the rest of the person is covered up for warmth. OR's are very cold and thermoregulation is impaired. The surgical site is prepped and then everything but that one area is covered up. You kind of lose the person then. In some ways that is okay. I mean we have to be able to do one thing and then move on and do the next all day. If we let one patient impact us too much it makes it hard to take care of the next. It just feels a bit callus some times. Particularly when you are finding horrible new diagnosis such as cancer. I don't know how oncologists and oncology nurses do it day in and day out.

So anyway, I got my picture taken for a donation and permission to put it where ever you want. Obviously she has her name on it but that is fine. She deserves credit. But seeing my face makes me realize I need to get back to the lifestyle changes I kind of fell out of practice with. I did manage to lose 15 pounds but I have had the worst hormone issues. That isn't a good excuse, but I seem to have significant troubles at certain times of the month. Like the whole months work is undone in that time. I need to find a way to deal with that. I'm not sure what that is yet, but I have to work on it. Some time or another I seem to have lost the sides of my face. It bothers me to have my picture taken because I can see that my face isn't normal. Smiling always makes it more noticeable to me. I can feel that my left eye doesn't open as much as it should and I worry that my smile will be crooked. I know it could be a lot worse but it just reminds me that my face didn't recover as well as most people's do. I guess I don't have the nerve pain so I am thankful for that. I am just worried that it will come back. There is a high likelihood of that.

So then when we were done (I wasn't expecting to get pictures with Jake) I took a picture of Jake with Kelly. Jake has been visiting her since he was brand new and I just wanted a picture from the other side of the camera. Jake was being silly. He was more interested, for the first time, with the equipment than the pretty girls. But I did get a few of the photographer, her assistant, and Jake.

Craziness

2009-03-22T15:52:00.010-06:00

Life has been crazy around here. Jake is growing up way too fast. I am struggling to keep myself going. I am definitely back to trying to keep my head above water all week just to make it to the weekends. I hate living like that. I want to be able to find something better about the weekdays to go upon.

Jake is a crazy man. He just goes and goes and goes. He is not a sleeper. Everyday I pray for strength and sleep - mostly for Jake, but if he sleeps... My peanut, well, he has gotten to be just a bit of a thing. I think that is a common thing for "sickly" little kids. What he doesn't have in size he makes up for with will, plus noise. At his 18 month check up he was 24.2lbs coming in at 25th percentile. He was 31.75 inches tall - 50th % and his head is but a mere 18.5 inches - 25th %. The head surprised me. It still looks large compared to the other kids and it takes a lot of work to get shirts over that melon. He has been sick forever. We just finished an antibiotic and there is still green stuff. It is the cough that is so bad. Never ending breathing treatments. Fun!

Jake is into everything. He is still pretty laid back about climbing though. He gets up on the furniture by himself now. He likes to stand on one of his step stools to reach higher. He is super helpful. He wants to help with just about everything. I'm not one to pass that up even if it means a task takes me three or more times longer to complete. I am glad he wants to help. It won't last long. He wants to be outside all the time. He loves it. Snot running down his face and just a going and going outside. It used to be when we pulled into the garage he would ask for a snack, but now the first thing he says is "outside" about two dozen times in a panic. If nothing else we walk down the driveway and across the street to the mailbox and back. We might go for a walk or ride around on his little big wheel thing. I have been trying to work on some of the landscaping since the weather has been better and he has been helping me with that too.

Jake just talks up a storm. "No" is still his favorite word and sure likes "mine" more than I like. But he loves to toss out the "peedis." Yes, that would be how he says pen.is. He will be running along and stop and point and identify. As soon as the diaper comes off, he tells you. When you try to wipe him he grabs it and says MY peedis. That worries me a little bit. Why does he do that? Has anyone else encountered this? It just worries me a little bit.

He is still a horrible eater. He will hardly eat anything besides baby food and he has stopped eating the chicken and veggies. I get so frustrated. He even wants it for breakfast and snack. I always offer him something else. He plays with the food - pushes it around, picks it up and puts it down. When it starts going over the edge I take it away and he tells me he is hungry and I give him baby food. I don't know what else to do. He ate two full jars and a couple of bites out of a third for lunch today! He is hungry. I don't know. I have been making bread and he loves that. I just don't know what to do. I've been told he will eat food when he is ready. Great.

I went to my physiatrist about a month ago. I've been seeing him for my face pain. He had me ween off one of the medications I was taking because I was on a very small dose. (I had trouble taking it in the morning and I seemed to be fine so I just once a day instead of twice). I was still on another medication he put me on and the pain seemed to be controlled. So anyway, he had me stop this medicine. I had two weeks of hell! I had the worst headaches I have ever had in my entire life. I was absolutely miserable. Migraines and horrible horrible headaches. I called the doctor's office and his bitch of a nurse left me a message suggesting I try some ibuprofen. I was so mad. I wanted to know it this was normal and how long to expect it to last. I was to the point were I can understand accidental overdoses because you are in such horrible pain you literally can't see straight and you take something. Then you take more, then you take something else and more. But then one day they stopped. THANK GOD.

I am having a lot of trouble though. I am so tired all the time. Jake won't let me sleep. I have had the crud and am afraid I am getting it back. I know I am depressed. Things are still not going well at work. My boss isn't finished until April 15th but she has been gone more and more. Well, she had at least six weeks of vacation to use up. But I know she is also trying to leave us alone more and more since we will have to stand on our own two feet soon. The charge nurse is getting more and more stressed and has acted very inappropriately. I mean the things she has always done that weren't appropriate are way worse. I am not looking forward to this never ending transition. I mean we have been transitioning, literally, for the last three years. It just keeps getting worse instead of better. Yippee

Mike is a bit stressed as well. The railroad is laying people off every week. My friend that just recently got the PCOS diagnosis, her husband got laid off on Friday. This doesn't not help them on their IF journey. He is still pretty far from losing his job but as they lay people off it means more work for the people still there. They aren't decreasing the number of trains they are running just the number of people running them. It also means he went from holding a pretty good position to have a much crappier one. We are all stressed by that.

Yesterday I hurt my back. Jake and I were outside. I was cleaning out some rock and Jake went running toward the street. There were neighbors out across the street saying how cute he was and he went toward them. He didn't even make it to the sidewalk before I caught up to him but I scooped him up and was swinging him and tickling and I felt an explosion of pain in my back. I don't think that is good. The pain was horrible. I am wondering how people live with this all the time. I haven't been having any muscle spasms. I'm pretty sure that actually isn't a good thing. I think that means disk then. I am much better than I was yesterday, but it isn't good. I have trouble with certain movements. Right now it doesn't hurt at all but if I go to stand up I can hardly do it. Not good. I am going to talk to a doctor tomorrow. I don't know if there is anything I should do like a course of steroids or something. I am do not want to get an MRI and have any further evaluation at this time. I can not have back surgery! Hopefully I don't need it though.

I know I have more to say but I think that is enough for now. I know I don't come here very often any more and I don't think many other people do either. I do still like it because I can speak openly and freely about whatever and whomever I want. I don't have to have a polite filter than I might on FB or whatever.

Pix

2009-03-12T22:59:00.002-06:00

Some day I will post. I'm behind. I'm just having a hard time but here are a few pictures. I thought I had uploaded more but I guess they are still on the camera. Another time...

Well...

2009-02-23T22:16:00.004-07:00

I had a meeting tonight. A big work meeting where lots of bs got shoveled. We have had so much going on or not going on at work. Everything has been so uncertain. THEY ONLY MADE IT WORSE!!!!!!!!! My boss has stepped down from her position and it will be effective April 15. We all could read between the lines. They pushed her out. I know I have my issues with her but over all she is a good boss. She knows everything. She can do things that no one else in the whole damn hospital can do. Crap. They are going to hire an MBA to now be our boss and the boss over the surgery center across the street. That damn place broke everything! I don't want an MBA telling me how to be a nurse!

The crappier part. I have spoken of my charge nurse before. She is going to be our actual boss. She is going to be the one that tells us what to do and when to do it. She is going to be the one with even more power. She is more than just a charge nurse she was given the title of unit manager five or more years ago. She does go to tons of meetings and stuff. But this is going to be horrible. This is the woman that you can't piss off or you pay for a very long time. When she stopped being mad at me after nine months I got off easy. She is still holding things against people from at least 20 years ago! This is not good ! At least we had a boss above her to go to. Who knows how many years it will take to get that MBA in and they aren't going to be here to deal with personnel issues! We are going to have to go to the vice president that is over us!!!! This sucks mega super huge time! I can't even begin to express the world of hurt we are going to be in for! There are a few things that I hope to see get better quickly but overall things are going to get worse before they get better...

Luck ran out

2009-02-21T22:09:00.002-07:00

Well, I have been fighting it, but I am sick. I am miserable with the usual crap. Sore throat, congested, swollen nodes in my neck, cough, aches, lethargy. Ya know, same as everyone else. It took a lot longer than it usually does for me to get sick so I can't whine too much. Poor Jakey is still sick. It was two weeks ago yesterday that I took him in. He is better, sort of. His cough is still bad. He is still coughing, getting junk up and gagging and then the vomiting. So much fun!!! One night I had to clean up his bed twice! Poor guy. We go to the doctor again Wednesday. It is supposed to be for his 18 month check up. Wow, where his the time gone???

Aside from us both feeling a bit crummy today, we had a good day. I really love spending time with him, even if it is trudging through the super center early in the morning to beat the crowds. Jake slept all night last for the first time in awhile. We had a bad week for sleep, which is why I think I finally got sick. We had three nights in a row where mommy got about four hours of interrupted sleep. Not good for trying to work. But anyway, we had a good day. We played and cuddled and took a snooze in the chair. I just love being his mommy. Too bad it didn't pay better, then it would be perfect. I know I would still be pulling my hair out but it would be different.

Jake loves his new room in daycare. I go to get him and he doesn't want to leave. If I get there a little later than normal I catch them playing. They run and run and run around the basement chapel. It is basically a small gym. The room is empty except for a few things for the kids to play on. What I mean is that there aren't any pews or chairs or anything. He just loves to chase around with the kids. I see him and he is the littlest but he doesn't know that. They do a lot more structured activities than his last room of course. The teacher told me she can't believe how well he is doing. They do flash cards and he will repeat every word she says and pays attention to the cards. I have really noticed how much better his attention span and concentration are. I told her he repeats almost any word he hears or at least he tries. She said he does better than several of the kids that have been in there all year and are six months older. Well, maybe they are bored and it is new to him, I don't know. But I do know that his communication is getting better. He still gets frustrated trying to tell you something, bit it is a lot better.

I suppose I need to go to bed. I don't know what the night will bring!!!

Daycare Drama

2009-02-11T20:27:00.003-07:00

Last Friday I got a call at work from Jake's daycare. The assistant director asked if Jake could be moved up to the toddler room from the waddler room. (Waddlers are not the little babies but too young to move to the toddler room at the time they change). That is fine by me. Jake plays with the toddlers all the time. He likes to go to their room. They have chapel (which is like gym time) together. He doesn't notice that he is the smallest of all these children. He is every bit as rough and tumble as the bigger, older boys. No big deal. They are "restructuring" some of the rooms. When I went to pick up Jake on Friday I spent about half an hour talking to the head "teacher" of that room. We talked about Jake's eating and allergies. I left feeling good.

He was to start Monday but I was off so he went yesterday for the first time. I didn't get home from work until close to ten last night and he was asleep. Grandma picked him up and no big deal. I dropped him off this morning and the person there that is over the baby room told me there had been some problems yesterday. Really, problems? The people in the toddler room didn't want to feed Jake. They didn't want to mess with baby food. I don't either but he isn't ready to move on yet as hard as I might try. I was told they said they didn't have anything thing to feed him, but all of his food went to that room when he was moved. What? I was told that Jake got brought back to the baby room to be fed because they were too busy. I was not happy. I didn't ask for him to be moved. WTF! They want to feed him the "provided" lunch. We went over the menu. There were three days this month that there was a possibility he MIGHT be able to eat their lunch, IF he was willing to eat that food. No, not going to work.

I went out to my car and cried. What am I supposed to do? This is my baby. I texted Mike a little later and said I was really upset and told him what happened. Daddy was pissed. I told him that I would have to take care of it after work and maybe we need to see what else we can do for daycare. Mike said he was going to take care of it. Oh shit! Great, am I going to have enough money to bail him out of jail? It took some time but he did take care of it. He called and talked to the assistant director. We don't even know the "new" director. She has not made a point of getting out and meeting parents. However, I have not gone and presented myself at her office either. I try to get in and out as fast as possible. So he told her what I had been told this morning. She was not very happy either. He told her that we had provided them with a big list of allergies, as that was also part of their not wanting to feed him anything. She didn't know anything about his allergies. She knew there was a child there with a lot of allergies but she didn't know how bad they are and that his diet is so restricted. She said they didn't have anything in his record about it. Hello??? When he had his testing I went in and spent a lot of time with the director then and the people taking care of him. We provided them with a video about using an epipen and an actual practice pen. No one knows anything about this now.

Thank goodness today is one of the days the allergist comes to town. Mike was able to go get another DVD and another practice pen. He ordered a special bag that hangs on the wall for the his pen and it will have all his allergy information. Mike went to take the DVD and pen up and the assistant director was looking for Jake's epipen. No where to be found. It was there last week. No where at all. She asks each person. What's an epipen? I don't know what you are talking about. EVERY time he has a "new" person we go over his allergies and his potential need for an epipen. Mommy describes what signs might be that he would be in need of such shot. Mike was mad before, but now he is livid. He and the director had a disagreement. Mike offered that he could call the state. Oh no, that isn't necessary aren't making more of this than it is. Never tell Mike to calm down. It has the opposite effect.

Mike went and talked to his dad about this. Mike's dad went and got his boss. His boss is on the board of the church. He called our minister who is the acting director of the board over the daycare. The minister had already had a call from someone that the director of the daycare was rude to a parent and that a "discussion" had occurred. The minister just didn't know which parent. The director had to come introduce herself to me and every parent. She had to apologize to me and to Mike. She had to credit us with the cost of an epipen. She had to make sure every care provider in the daycare sees the video. She has to make sure every room in the daycare had allergy information posted on Jacob. (it was in his old room!) She has to take an interpersonal skills-like class that the church offers. The minister helped search for the missing epipen. She also called Mike and apologized repeatedly. She called me at work and apologized and explained to me what was going to happen. She started to cry, I started to cry. She married us, she sat with us in the hospital when Jake had pneumonia, she held him for over an hour when we had to wait to get Jake's tubes in his ears. She goes and reads to him three times a week. She also has severe allergies herself.

What a crappy day! I trust my son with these people everyday. I trust that when I tell them something they listen. I put his life in their hands. I feel awful. I am assured that everything is in order now. I like the people there. Jake loves them. He gets so excited. He was saying the names of the people working there before he said "mama". I don't know what to do. It is my church. They have one of the best preschools in town. We don't have many options but in addition to that this was supposed to be one of the two places to get into. I still feel sick. I feel better but still.

The best ever!

2009-02-09T12:48:00.005-07:00

For the most part our weekend sucked. Jake has been sick still and even worse than when we went to the doctor. He has had BAD diarrhea and been vomiting. He has has no appetite but has been very good about drinking his rice milk. I took him in to the doctor yesterday because he was grabbing his throat and yanking at his ears so much. She said they looked fine. I thought maybe the ear was some eczema. I was afraid the throat was his tonsils but I guess not.

The good news about this weekend is that Jake started saying "love you". It is so great!! I can't wait until it is "I love you, Mommy" but I am happy to take this! He also had his first real bubble bath this weekend. That and will come to you to give you a closed mouth kiss. I just love it. I kept thinking he was sick and I didn't care because I loved the kisses SO much!

I have today off because we only had two ORs running and I didn't want to be in either one. I'm on call tomorrow so that helped me qualify. My big boss let most of the people still come to work even though we are in a budget crisis. (we usually run five rooms and that is two nurses a room). So I went into work this morning because we had our monthly meeting and I took Jake with me. My big boss doesn't have or like kids but she wasn't too bad. Someone usually has a child or two there since we may not be scheduled to work at all or until much later that day. So anyway, the big boss left to go to a more important meeting. Jake decided to be a ham at this time and just stole the meeting. It is actually nice when the big boss leaves because we can discuss whatever bad news she just gave us and come up with a plan. Today she asked nurses to be in charge of the aides. That would be a different nurse every day. The aide that was the "charge aide" resigned and her last day is today. Okay, a nurse to do her job. Alright, so her wage was $10 an hour. Our nurses make anywhere from about $23-$34 an hour. Her reasoning is that we get our hours. That is great that the nurses get their hours but when it is busy and a nurse needs to do a nurse job than who is going to be helping with the aides because that is when they need help the most too? I don't know, I just know I don't want to do it because the aides can be very nasty when ever there is a problem. No one is ever accountable for anything! Of course I think that happens everywhere you turn... Big surprise but we also learned we know nothing about anything regarding the changes to come.

Oh and Jake slept through the night two nights in a row in his crib! He came really close last night too.

Poor me

2009-02-04T21:14:00.002-07:00

I have a case of the weepies! AF is back and I seem to be a freaking mess. That and I am still tired from the weekend. I am worried about my job. Everyone at work is stressed out and it is causing deeper cracks in an already crumbling foundation. We keep hearing (reading) statements form "officials" that tell us how nothing is wrong and people aren't going to lose jobs but we aren't idiots. We have different volumes. We have lost doctors. It just sucks. The future is very murky.

One of my friends is having her second baby in the morning. She has been very blessed. She has bad endometriosis and she was told that she it would be very difficult for her to get pregnant, probably not possible on her own. She got pregnant without trying. She didn't even realize she was pregnant the first time until she was in the second trimester. He will be 2 in April. She got pregnant right away with number two when she thought about a second. Go figure! I am very happy for them but it stirs up my weepies. I sat and held Jake and we ate teddy.grahams together tonight and it was wonderful. I loved that moment and I thought how much it made me want another one. In the same second I was back to thinking how could I make Jake share what little time we have? I know it is silly but I just want to eat up all those minutes. I know my husband is a bit irritated with my housekeeping at the moment and it just doesn't seem important. Play with Jake or tidy over there? Read to Jake or scrub all the counter tops? My answer has been, what is wrong with your hand? Okay, those haven't been the exact words but I work as much as he does. He has more "down" time when he is home. He is home alone when he is home in the day. Don't get on my butt about it if you aren't helping. Am I wrong? I do the laundry. I do the dishes. I clean the floors once a week and I try to clean up after myself as I do whatever it is I am doing. My priority is Jake. Gee, I guess I could be cleaning right now couldn't I? But instead I will take my sorry ass to bed since Molly is ready to come in. Oh, I think Jake is allergic to Molly. His forehead was welted this morning and I don't know why. His hair was messed up and I think it was because Molly licked him. I don't know. I don't want to think about it.

Poor boy!

2009-02-03T22:15:00.003-07:00

Jake is sick again. He has a sinus infection and bronchitis. I took him to the doctor on Friday and his symptoms got a lot worse after! He hardly ate all weekend. He drank tons, but literally only had a few bites on Saturday and Sunday. I worked 21 hours on Saturday so Jake and Mike were home together. At least for Mike's sake, Jake slept a lot and didn't do much since he was so sick. He also has had a fever since about two hours after we left the doctors office. It sadly worked in my favor Sunday too. I needed sleep and Jake and I laid around and napped together a good part of the day.

Yesterday I was off and Jake was doing a bit better. I was really glad to be off though because he still had a fever and they won't take him with a temp over 100. This morning his temp was down to 100.1 before any fever reducers. They told me he would be okay to go to daycare and when he gets tylenol he is back to himself. It was good to seem him play yesterday after he has really not been doing much. He has been very smugly which is nice.

But since he doesn't feel good, he needs comfort. And to him that means he wants to nurse. He has been almost assaulting his poor old mom! I feel bad for him, but I don't have anything to offer. I just snuggle him and rock him.

I kept thinking they would call today and tell me I needed to come get Jake. They never did. I hope the same goes for tomorrow, because I have no back up! Today I had two. He threw up on me tonight but I think that is because he gagged when he choked on a piece of food. He was eating off my plate and so he threw up ALL OVER ME!!! I didn't get sick and I am so proud of that.

snow and stuff

2009-01-28T22:19:00.005-07:00

This has been the driest winter ever. We have hardly had any snow at all, until this past weekend. It started snowing on Friday. By the time I woke up Monday morning there was twelve inches on the ground. That and severe cold. Mike went to work on Sunday so he could only clear the snow until he left. He cleared it twice with the "tractor" and then of course it kept snowing. I tried to start the tractor and I couldn't do it, not that I could work the snow blade right anyway. I went out and started shoveling about 4:30. Jake was in the garage carrying around his snow removal equipment - a plunger and a broom. When I got about half way down the drive way he freaked! I stopped and we came inside. A friend came over about 5 and I went back out to finish the drive and the sidewalks. Where I had originally started already had another inch on it when I had finished the sidewalks. I wanted to cry.

Daycare was closed of course because the schools were closed. Hello? Not everything in the world stops because of snow. We didn't have one single patient cancel because of the weather. A friend's daughter watched Jake since she didn't have school. It went fine but the only problem is that she is a senior and what am I going to do next year? Crap. I opened the garage door Monday morning and cursed. We were up early because we knew it would be bad. I put my car in 4 high and went for it. Scrape. We were plowing the snow as we went. I drive a Trail.blazer. I don't have to drop at all to get in, nor do I have to step up to get in my seat either but the point is my vehicle isn't low to the ground. There had been no snow removal on our street, but as soon as I got onto the highway it wasn't bad until I get to the turn to my friend's street. There had been one swipe down the roads to her house but it still wasn't great. The rest of the way to work was fine until the street the hospital is on and then, of course, the parking lot hadn't been touched at all.

I was all worried about the driveway and how deep it was, but when I got home it was clear!!! My neighbor blew it out for me! Thank God! Well, we think we know which neighbor did it but honestly we haven't been told. I took cookies over tonight to be neighborly and he said that wasn't necessary so I think it was him. It appeared as though the trail of the snow blower lead to his house. They have a very wide three car garage out front so they have a wide expanse of concrete, but it is only one car deep. We however have a double car drive that is three cars deep so we have a lot more to clear. I am so thankful!!

My SIL is applying for a job about ten miles from us. I think that would be good. She lives about 2.5 hours away now. Her husband is a truck driver and gone all the time like up to six weeks at a time. She has lots of friends but all her teacher friends are married and have families so that means they are pretty busy. She has a very young friend that she spends a lot of time with. She really shouldn't. Her friend is 23 and is very immature. They seem to get in trouble together. My SIL is 35 and an elementary school teacher. It wouldn't be good for her to get arrested for some of the "little" things her friend likes to do. Her friend is also bipolar. I know there are lots of people out there that have this very serious illness that take care of themselves and could be living next door or the person working next to you. Well, her friend isn't that person. Her friend likes to drink, a lot. She really likes to drink and she drinks often and large amounts. She also likes to stop taking her medications and then take a bunch of her medication. This girl needs some help. My SIL talked about her friend's stalking problem as if it was nothing. She was arrested! She had to stay in jail! You don't want to know your child's teacher hangs around with people like this. We, her family, would like her to not see this girl so much. Not hang out every weekend and many weekdays. We think some distance might be good for this friendship. It would be nice to have my SIL here for my MIL too. She might drive me less batty then. It would be great for Jake to spend more time with his aunt. That might be a great place for him to go if school is closed right? We will see what happens. She hasn't even interviewed yet

One of my good friends got diagnosed with PCOS today. I have been pestering her and pestering her to go see an endocrinologist because she has this cyst on her pituitary gland. She has been bounced around by several different local doctors but is really only being treated by a family practice. She wants a baby so bad and has been trying for a little over a year now. I keep nudging her to get more help. She has gained more than 40 pounds in the last year. Now she is terribly depressed. Duh! The cyst causes her to lactate and so she has to take a medication to stop that. Her doctor tried several different things to figure this out. She (the doctor) has at least been consulting with some specialists but she needs to say - you should go to a specialist. You don't go to a barber for your wedding updo right? Just because hair is his business doesn't mean he can do everything! Hopefully she will got to an RE now. I talked to her for the hours she was waiting for a glucose tolerance test, which she failed. She got glucophage today.

She has a twin sister. Her twin got pregnant just after I did. Her sister and her lovely fiance smoked dope together and were just your average low lives. Her sister has pulled it together. The fiance is doing much better but still. Your twin gets knocked up accidentally and isn't sure what she wants to do and you are aching for a baby even long before you actually started trying. My friend's BIL was a piece of crap. A lying, stealing, cheating piece of crap. He had four children with three different moms. He never married a one of them. He hung himself. He was going to have to go to jail and he wasn't about to do that. He didn't die, but was brain dead. It was awful. His funeral was April 14, 2006. That was horrible. That was the day I woke up and my face was paralysed and drooping. He had a baby that was nine days old when he failed to kill himself. The baby's mother was only sixteen and I think he was 26. The mother kept dropping that baby off with my friend. She had him most of the first month of his life. They tried to get legal custody of him but couldn't. His mommy is bipolar. She would hand him over, take him back, hand him over, take him back. I think this happened for three months and then my friend and her husband said we can't do this anymore. That poor baby. It was just ripping my friend up. And now, it appears, she is really just at the beginning. I hope if they can deal with her insulin resistance that that will be enough. I hope she will get to a doctor that is giving her the best care and not just doing the best they can. I pray for her. But I will be there doing whatever I can to help her in anyway she needs. I just don't want her to feel like I am rubbing Jake under her nose. I am just grateful that at this moment time is on her side. She is just about to turn 26 even though she seems so much more mature than I am! She seems like a grown up and I frequently feel like I am faking it.

OMG

2009-01-25T20:11:00.002-07:00

I think I broke my baby! Jake's bottom was a little red so I put some cream on it. I forgot to buy more of the cream I like yesterday so I put some we were given as a shower present. I think we have put it on him a time or two but it is a funky color and I don't like that so I don't use it. Besides, we have a cream that works well for us. Anyway, I put Jake in his chair to eat and I was cleaning the kitchen and getting my own plate. For once we were eating the same thing! Jake is just pushing the food around. I don't think he tried it at all. He threw his fork and spoon on the floor and was whining. I brought him applesauce (he loves that word!). He repeated applesauce a few times but wouldn't eat it. He asked for his milk so I got that for him and he drank some milk. Then he drank some of his juice. He was whining more. He wanted to be picked up. I picked him up and sat him on my knee and he wiggled away but immediately wanted to be picked up again. I picked him up and he had his fork from the floor in his hand. I tried to give him food off my plate which he refused. He told me he was hungry so I got him some baby food instead. He ate about half of what I gave him and cried. He kept saying owie and holding his arms out but wouldn't point to where it hurt when I asked. I wasn't exactly expecting him to but it would help.

So I took him and gave him a bath. His bottom was red and he wouldn't sit. He kept one leg under him and leaned forward. I gave him his allergy medicine and washed him up like usual but he wouldn't play. He just whined. He wouldn't take a nap today so I knew it was going to be a difficult evening. I took him to his room and put him on his changing table. OMG! I wish I could take a picture and post it without it being considered child.porn. It was horrible. I have never seen anything this bad. He apparently reacted to the cream I put on him. His everything was red or red and blistering. He has little cracks in his groins now and his pen.is and scrot.um look horrible. I feel just horrible. My poor baby. I thought about scooping him up and dashing to the emergency room but I doubt they will do much for him. I cut open the tube to our regular cream and scraped out the inside. That was the first tube we went through. We don't need it often but still I forgot and I feel so bad. He just cried and hiccuped. He just couldn't get comfortable. It took forever to get his jammies on him and then I gave him some tylenol and I no more than sat in the rocker to try to comfort him and he was out. I hope a miracle happens while he is sleeping. I feel so bad for him. I feel like a terrible mom

I did it!

2009-01-18T09:15:00.002-07:00

With a lot of help, but I finally joined the rest of the world and got my layout changed! I am so excited. Why this excites me so, I'm not sure but it does.

How is everyone doing? We are hanging in there. I am doing pretty well with making a "life style change" and not just going on a diet. Weekends are the hardest for me and yesterday I don't do so well, what with that take out Mexican and about a gallon (not really) of margarita just for me. I know it is going to take a long time but this is my life we are talking about right? And since I started the family a little later than some I sure want to be around to enjoy it. My mom "stopped by" yesterday and Jake and I stood at the door and waved as she walked out to her car. It took FOREVER! She needs to have both of her knees replaced. The arthritis was made worse by all the years of being so over weight. She has lost a few pounds in the past couple of years but it was too little too late. I may have damage already but I can certainly do my body a favor now.

So I waited and waited to change Jake's diaper after breakfast this morning. He usual poops right. He hadn't. I needed to get him cleaned up because he had been doing his own hair for long enough with his banana and oatmeal. I tried to clean him up. There was much screaming and kicking at mommy. I didn't give him a bath because we do that before bed. What I did came close to rinsing his head under the sink to get the glumps of food out. He got a half shower at least. Anyway, I no more than set him down on the floor from dressing him and he FILLED his diaper. Why does he do this? He does it all the time. Just like he poops and you change him and he immediately pees. I think he thinks it is a game! Oh well. He is just helping me get some exercise by running away so I have to chase him to change him again.

We were up early this morning. Jake is frequently waking up twice a night! Dear God, help me. He is hungry or at least wants some milk. He doesn't just want a drink either, we are talking 6, 8, 10 oz of rice milk. I'm not sure what to do. It isn't like I can ignore the screaming. It isn't just crying but screaming for milk or juice. I don't give him juice that is just what he says. So anyway he was ready for a diaper change at six this morning and so we were up for the day. He climbed over me and gets down off my bed. My bed is very tall and he can very confidently slide his way down. He says "no no" and hands me my glasses off my night stand. That means "get your butt out of bed Mommy!" So I did. We got up and changed him and he didn't want to eat but to sit and cuddle. I can handle that! So we sat and watched infomercials because that was all that was on. I don't know what they do but they are like crack. I would never order anything I saw on tv any other time of the day except early in the morning. They truly seem to suck my brain out. I don't get it. I want to know if they have the subliminal messages every however many frames or what. Anyway, we got to watching this Your.Baby.Can.Read. Has anyone seen it? Has anyone tried it or knows anyone that has? I was glued to the screen. They never said how much it actually cost - for a reason! I went to the website and it is $200! The awful thing is that I am still thinking about it, wondering if I should get this. If it really works than it would be totally worth it. Then the rational part of me is going, hello? how many times have you gotten sucked into one of these early morning wonders and bought something? The answer is twice and neither product was all that!

So there was our morning do that Jake worked so hard on. Let me tell you about my Jake. He has gotten to be a bit of a pipsqueak. I am a terrible mother and I didn't take him in for his fifteen month well baby visit. Why? He had two other check ups that same month and it didn't seem necessary. They each weighed him and said he is now small but he is continuing to gain weight and is healthy so they agreed he didn't really need another appointment that I would have had to pay for out of pocket. I think our well baby check ups are insanely expensive too. The office charge for the ENT and the allergist added together didn't cost as much as a well baby visit. There is something seriously wrong with that. He will go for his 18 month though because he needs more shots. We got a little off with our shots since we went in too early for his year shots and made them up a little later. They told me that was fine. Good thing because most of them are out of pocket too. Does anyone else have that problem with their insurance? They will pay for the administration of the injection ($41 per injection - I should be giving shots all day) but not the drug. That doesn't seem right to me.

Anyway, my "little" ball of energy is something. He talks up a storm. He repeat almost any word he hears, but his vocabulary seems to be multiplying everyday and he is becoming more and more understandable. He doesn't say pants or jammies but he says socks, shoes, shirt, coat. He likes "sh" a lot. He says all done, more, thank you, cup, Mommy now not just "mama", grandma, grandpa Bob, Jojo (name of my friend) kitty, puppy, doggie, baby, bath, that, this, trash, phone, danger, hhhottt and of course no no, owie, and uh oh. He tells you nite nite when he is ready to go to sleep. He still asks for booboos (meaning he wants to nurse) and says more I cant remember. He brings me his coat and tells me bye bye when he wants to go outside. He is just a ham. He is still terribly bow legged. He doesn't climb up much (other than stairs) but he does like to get down independently. He wants to walk to the car everyday now when we leave daycare. It is so much fun. I just can't believe how fast it is all going. I have put away his 12 month pants because they were getting tight in the tummy and a little short but 18 month are huge! He has been wearing 18 shirts and onies for quite awhile. He is still wearing his 12-16 month shoes but they will be too narrow soon. The 16-20 month are just still clown shoes when he is trying to walk or run. He eats most of his food with a spoon and not his fingers now. He almost always uses his right hand. He doesn't seem to have a firm attachment to any toy or blanket or anything. I gave him a bottle to give up the boob and we are trying and failing to give up the bottle. He only gets it at home and from grandma but I'm taking hers away this week. I think she would give it to him forever just because she likes it.

Good morning

2009-01-12T08:07:00.002-07:00

I am exhausted. I had a very nice three day weekend. I did try to do a lot, but not enough of course. Mostly I am exhausted from Aunt Flo's last visit. She didn't come for a week. She moved in and stayed for 29 days. No one wants any kind of visitor for 29 days. I talked to nurse midwife last week and she said not to worry. I told her I thought I was going to die and she said this wasn't uncommon. Holy crap!

I sit typing from my "new" laptop. My SIL and BIL felt the need to upgrade their laptop. They are only three years old and Mike volunteered to buy them. It is kind of handy to sit in the living room or at the table and be on the computer and Jake can just play away. We already had wireless so we didn't even have to upgrade that. Jake caused a lot of trouble in the office. It also makes it easier once (if) we need to move the office down to the basement to use the bedroom for say a crib. I haven't put any pictures on here yet though so I don't have any to post.

I am working on cleaning up my life. That means myself and my surroundings. I have been trying to purge some of the crap from our house. It is hard for my husband but there are so many things we don't need and I feel like they physically weigh me down. There is the other issue. I am going to work on lightening myself and shaping myself up. How much weight do I have to lose? A lot. I decided that I am going to tackle it in 12 pound increments. Why? Twelve is my lucky number so that is where we will start. So here is to twelve fewer pounds on my rear (or pretty much anywhere else)!

I have also been working on trying to find food for Jake to eat. I must say this is horribly frustrating. Of course we have our allergy restrictions so that is extremely limiting. I am working hard to try to get meat into him. I have recently been able to get small amounts of hamburger and ground turkey into him. He seems to like it a bit spicy so I can handle that. But I am still frustrated. I am going to have to pack lunches for him to take to daycare everyday once he stops eating baby food once and for all. I am tired of baby food. He doesn't eat it much for us but that is still what he takes at daycare. That helps me because I know I am not giving him the same thing he ate there. Plus it means it takes longer for him to get bored with what I am giving him!

Apparently I have to go to work today so I have to go. I have been trying to find out about a huge layoff by the railroad in Nebraska and I haven't found out yet. Mike thinks he will be safe but it will be very close for one of our friends and every cut puts Mike closer and closer to the bottom.

Long and boring

2009-01-09T08:36:00.003-07:00

God, I wish I had Jake's energy! I also wish I still had his innocent curiosity. I'm just old, tired and crusty or something like that. At least that is how I feel at this moment. Yesterday I was charge nurse, which I find to be very stressful, and I was also on call. It could have been worse but I did have to work in the night and now I am very tired because my sweet little boy insisted that Mommy not sleep the day away. Actually, he did let me sleep until almost 8 so I can't complain too much. It is nice to wake up to him in his crib and to the sound of his sweet jabbering.

Thankfully, I am off today so I can recover. I was hoping to make a trip out of town to do some shopping but I don't think I am up to it today. However, my being off is a mixed blessing. I am off due to down staffing. That isn't really a good thing is it? We are really having some issue with the hospital and my memory isn't firing right now as to if I have shared those issues and concerns here. The economy does not help the current health care state. People can't afford to have necessary but not urgent surgeries. Like maybe a hernia that needs to be fixed but they have lived with it for x amount of time already so they can live with it longer or a back that is bothering them but it will just have to wait or a bladder that is drooping but well, they have been able to tolerate it this long so it can wait awhile longer. Do I blame people? No. It is expensive to have anything done regardless of how wonderful your insurance may be. There are also people who no longer have insurance so they can't get that gallbladder out until they are deathly ill.

So the highest of the high at the hospital had this wonderful plan that they had been working on for several years I'm sure. We need to be like some of the great big wonderful hospitals. The hospital and the doctors' offices need to all join together and become a super power. The hospital will acquire the offices, and all their staff, and patients will be able to get better care. If you go to doctor A for a headache and Dr A does some tests and then you go to Dr B for your sore knee, Dr B can just look in the new magic computer and instantly all the information that Dr A has is there! So Dr B doesn't have to do some of the same labs or something or if Dr B does, he can compare and see the difference. Then if you go to the hospital because you broke your hip (god forbid!) all the information from Drs A and B is instantly available. Do I think this is wonderful for you that they can see that you take 50mg of medication X not 100mg when they are asking you and you can't remember because of the pain? Yes, this is a good thing for the patient IN THEORY.

Why am I not over joyed with our ability to provide better, safer patient care? Sure it is great, BUT there are some huge downfalls that impact me. So for the hospital the the doctors' office to merge the hospital had to BUY the practices from the doctors. The hospital now has a tremendous number of additional employees that all want to be paid and want to have benefits and stuff. Now the doctors earn salaries based on their work. Okay, but every time you go to the doctor you have to hand over a wad of cash, right? So now the hospital takes that money in and it pays the overhead and salaries and crap right? Sort of. This whole process seemed to be planned by idiots. We now have all these boards that over see all sorts of crap. That is expensive. Part of the problem is that they didn't figure out some of the critical things before the actual merger occurred. Oh, say, like billing. They sort of did. I mean someday you will only get one bill no matter where you go. All the visits will show up together in one HUGE bill. You only have to pay one time right? Well, they didn't get all of the billing figured out before hand. Everything in the world has a code for billing, but they only got it started. So if what you had done was way down the number line, they didn't have the ability to charge you or your insurance for it for a couple of MONTHS at least. So that means the employees are still getting paid. The doctors are still getting paid. The lights and water are still on in the office, but money isn't coming in. Hello? And we are talking about dozens of doctors. We are talking about big and little bills. We are talking about MILLIONS of dollars not coming in. So eventually it will all get caught up, right? Yes, eventually it will, but it isn't still. Besides, how much money did it take to BUY all of the practices? Where did all that money come from? Hmmm

Now not all the doctors liked this idea. Suddenly they have a giant boss that can tell them what to do. Okay, so they don't have to join. But what does that mean? Dr A and Dr B both practice the same kind of medicine. Dr A is part of the megapower. Dr B isn't. When you see a Dr that is part of the megapower and they need to refer you, who are they going to refer you to? Another doctor in the megapower. So this means that Dr B's practice is going in the crapper so Dr B decides to move away. Now we don't have Dr B coming to surgery anymore. Okay so the patients have to see Dr A and he/she will do the surgery instead. Well, it is going to take you twice as long to get into see that doctor it also means that doctor has more cases to do when they do operate so now they are operating longer and later in the day. Where has this affected us the most? Orthopedics. We used to have two practice with 6 surgeons and they were trying to recruit more. In a very short time we will have 1, yes, I said 1 orthopedic surgeon. We used to run 2.5 rooms a day in just orthopedics. Today there were just two cases from traveling surgeon squeezed in. So not even a whole room.

Okay, so this megapower is supposed to be a recruiting benefit for new doctors. They can come here and they don't have to worry about buying into a practice. They don't have to worry about setting up an office. They just come and it is there. They come to work and get a paycheck. But it takes a lot of time to get new doctors. We don't exactly have a big draw here. At the moment, who are the doctors that we can get to come and look? Mostly brand new doctors and foreign doctors. Okay, a new doctor, that isn't so bad right? They have a lot of years still to practice right. Well, we are just a stepping stone to gain experience. And they don't have the experience that we need. Foreign doctors might have more experience but they don't go over all that well in this older farming community. You are going to have people that travel to other communities rather than to have that foreign doctor touch them.

So where does that leave me? We have less work. That means we make less money. We have staff standing around. We have to cut huge amounts of money because they SPENT SO MUCH money and it isn't coming in. We aren't getting raises and all of our expenses went up. We are getting sent home and told you still have a job but... And we are running rooms late in the night because fewer doctors are now doing the work. There is less work but there is still work. This bites. I got paid yesterday and Mike saw the amount in the checking account and called me and wanted to know what happened. Where the rest of my paycheck went. No honey that is it. I did increase the amount held out for my flex account but that is a $50 pretax amount so it shouldn't make a huge difference, but the cut hours were there. But, the silver lining to this very black cloud is that I have had more time with my son. That doesn't keep food on the table or pay for his doctor bills but at least we were together. It has also helped with my stress levels and guilt levels.

So, I should wake up. Get myself cleaned up. Make my shopping list and go buy some food with my meager check because the pantry, the cupboard and the fridge are bare.

Precious moments together

2009-01-05T22:05:00.002-07:00

I just can't believe how fast time passes! I was watching Jake run around the living room tonight and it just made me all teary. My little baby was running and giggling. He does things that just crack me up. He says cracker whenever he is hungry and we will go to the cupboard that contains food that is safe for him. I will let him stand on the counter and he will pick out what he wants and he will take three fourths of contents out and then start putting them back. He just loves this. I hold something up and ask if this is what he wants and he tells me no. He is so good at that no as toddlers are! Gee I wonder why! I just love how he runs up and hugs my leg. I LOVE the hugs. He gives the best hugs and still the big open mouth kisses. And he is so generous with them!

But what really amazes me is how fast he seems to learn and what he knows. He loves to rearrange the chairs in the dinning room and you tell him to put them back and he puts them exactly where they go. He is meticulous in how he places things. He loves to stack things. He was stacking boxes of oatmeal and a box of darn tampons (I just couldn't take pictures because of that) He was stacking them taller than himself. Of course he took great pleasure in knocking them down. I say something to him and it surprises me that he understands and follows the directions I gave him. I just love it. I just love him so much it hurts sometimes. It is terrible that sometimes when I am going to bed I hope that Jake will wake screaming so I can bring him to bed to cuddle with me. I am so thankful I have this little man in my life.

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T15:46:00.002-07:00

Okay, I have been a delinquent blogger and I felt like I needed to get my total up to 75 for the year so just a few words. Happy New Year to everyone. I hope this next year brings you at least as much love and joy as this past year.

I have been trying to update the look of my blog, but darn it all if I'm not an idiot! I have tried a few times and I can't get it to all work right. I can't even pretend to be good at that stuff. I can barely muster to add the littlest extra thing. I may give up and PAY for help. I know that is bad because I am cheap!

Everyone keep blogging because I miss you all! I love to see your little ones faces and hear about the latest things in your/their life. I understand it is hard to find time. I haven't been good myself. I have managed to have a tremendous amount of time off this month and I LOVE it. Next week is going to be hard because it is the first week, I think, that I will have to work 5 days since the week after Thanksgiving! We will be experiencing significant cutbacks at work and I am actually hoping that I will get some of my hours cut. I can't believe it and I really can't afford it but I would absolutely love it. I feel so much better when I get to spend more time with Jake (even though he is really being a pill today!). I know that isn't a good thing - the economy taking a dump and all, but I am a happier Mommy! It will work out, I know it.

My poor boy or not

2008-12-29T20:57:00.003-07:00

I felt horribly guilty leaving my baby at daycare today to go to work. He sounded horrible. I brought him into our bed about midnight and he propped himself up on my pillow to sleep. Right in the middle of my pillow pushing me completely off. But he sounded terrible to listen to him. I kept thinking I should take him to the hospital or at least blow the nebulizer by him as he slept. But I didn't. Instead I tried to contort myself into an impossibly small space and crazy angles. There would have been more room if I had moved over to the middle of the bed but I didn't want him on the outside. I kept moving him over but he moved himself right back. I wanted him to sleep so I suffered.

So mommy started the day tired. Mike actually got up and helped me get Jake ready this morning which was awesome. I appreciated his help so much. I got a shower and Mike got him a breathing treatment. He sounded terrible. I kept expecting to get a call at work today telling me I needed to come get him. He never had a fever. His cough is unproductive. Most of his coughing is right after he wakes up. But he sounds bad just to hear him breathe and he is so raspy and hoarse. He was also a bit on the lethargic side this morning.

Some point in the day that seemed to change however and he turned into a little spit fire! He was just into everything once we got home would not cooperate (ha! he is a toddler!) at all. I was getting very frustrated. He wanted a snack but he didn't want whatever I gave him. He was thirsty and asked for juice but didn't want it. He wanted up; he wanted down. I just didn't know what to do for him. He hadn't pooped all day so he of course saved up for me. I took him in and changed him and made a mess of myself. I set him on his bedroom floor and went into my bathroom to wash myself up. When I came out I found him in the kitchen.

He had pulled a brand new box of garbage bags Mike bought today off the kitchen counter and onto the floor. (now why they are on the counter is another story since that isn't where they go and if Mike had looked there he would have found a box more than half full). He was quite proud of himself as noted by the smile in this picture.Behind him was this pile of bags on the floor. As I started cleaning them up, he was shaking and shaking a bag and he walked over to the garbage and threw it away. So I went over to the garbage and found at least half a dozen more brand new bags he threw away!

So I tried to feed him dinner when he kept telling me he was hungry. He wouldn't eat anything I tried to give him. So I took him out of his chair. He came into the living room and played. He kept walking over by the Christmas tree and he started moving around the few packages we have left under the tree. He balanced them up on end. I was impressed. We have been playing with blocks a lot and he was carrying the concept across. I have a genius, I am thinking. So I got up to get the camera. When I get back he is finally ripping into packages the way I wanted him to on Christmas. But these aren't his and now I have to re wrap. Oh well, it could be worse. I let him finish once he started because I have to wrap them again anyway, right?

So it is getting late enough that I am hungry and I make myself a quesadilla with smoked turkey and raspberry jalapeno jam. I thought it sounded good and it was, but Jake now wanted some. Well, he couldn't have any. Aside from the jalapenos I have all that cheese. He doesn't understand that. He just know you won't give him any food. So I put him in his chair and got him more food. He played with it and asked for food. He threw it on the floor and asked for food. He ended up eating baby food prunes and a few pretzels and I think that is it. He really didn't need the prunes, but he likes them. So he went straight from the high chair to the tub.

I was so frustrated. I got him ready for bed and we sat in the recliner and he longingly rub his "booboos" and kept trying to get his hand into my bra and eventually passed out. Then I remember I didn't give him a breathing treatment so I now feel guilty!

Mike took this picture yesterday. You can still see where he fell and split his chin open 3?weeks ago. You can still see traces of where he tripped over a toy and gave himself a shiner.

Here was fun with applesauce on Saturday. Below you can see I actually captured when the little devil sneaks out and I understand why he does the things he does!!

What? Not again already!

2008-12-28T20:47:00.002-07:00

Jake is teething again. I didn't think it was possible but I guess I was wrong. He has been drooling a lot and cranky (he's cranky a lot) and sticking his fingers in his mouth all the time. Well, Mike kept saying it had to be more teeth. I stuck my finger in his mouth today and I was shocked to feel another molar. The other three are rearing their ugly heads too. That brings us to Jake age, gulp, 16 months (already?) and having 17 teeth!!! I have asked a couple of dentists and they both said that even though he got baby teeth early his permanent teeth shouldn't come early. I hope that is true. I don't want a great big man with itty bitty teeth! Jake has a bad cough and I think his throat is sore. He sure sounds like his adenoids are swollen right now. Poor baby! I have been giving him frequent breathing treatments because the cough is bad. He doesn't have a fever or a runny nose though.

Well, we flunked our first week of weaning. I got really sick on Tuesday and Mike convinced me I should nurse so I could get some sleep that night. I did and then the rest of the week was shot. However, he hasn't nursed since last Sunday. It is harder now that he doesn't feel good. He is really whining but he stops and will take a bottle. Okay, so we did give him a bottle back. He has been off a bottle for several months and that wasn't a big deal at all. So I gave that back in order to save myself. He only gets it when he would have nursed so it is just pretty much at night or before his nap when we are home for nap time. He seems to be doing pretty well. I'm pretty uncomfortable however. This bcp doesn't seem to be helping like I was told it would. Hopefully it will hope get my body straightened out though. I have really been hearing a voice in the back of my head saying "when will we try for #2?" I know it is getting closer. I still wish I could spend more time just soaking Jake up. He is just changing so fast. He isn't a baby anymore and, God help me, I do want to go through that again. But I have to get my body straightened around some so I can even try. I talked to an OB this week and was told we may have to start off with clom.id this time. We'll see. We aren't there quite yet. I'm still going to be excited about the weaning at the moment and wait and see if my body starts cooperating.

Happy New Year's to everyone!

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-26T21:24:00.005-07:00

I have to say "happy holidays" since Christmas has already past. That is something I don't say often because I much prefer to say to recognize Christmas. Anyway, I hope everyone had a good Christmas. Ours went pretty well. We had a few glitches and I had a few near murder experiences but all in all it was great. Mike made it home in the early hours which we didn't think would happen so we were just so happy he could be with us. Jake had a bad night Christmas Eve and was pretty tired most of Christmas day. I was a little disappointed that he wasn't more excited. I was really hoping he would rip into his presents this year, but he didn't. I'm sure he will next year though. He was funny. I would open something and he would carry it away so that a grandparent could remove the item from the packaging. Then he would look at it and move on. He likes flashlights and both grandpa and daddy gave him one of his very own!

My mother decided that she would start feeding Jake marshmallows (she asked me after he was hooked). He knew they were up there and was asking for "cracker". He says "cracker" when he is hungry. He will identify some foods when he sees them but "cracker" means FEED ME!

He thought this pan liner was another of his instruments. He walked around blowing and blowing on it!

He got a recorder from Santa and he loved it. He figured it out right away. He also decided this big box was one of his toys and a place to take a rest. He wouldn't take a nap but he kept crawling up on this box and putting he cheek down and tucking his arms and legs under him with his butt sticking up in the air. It was cute, but when you tried to take him to bed... Well it didn't work.

Look at this smug face! This is Mike's first self portrait with my new Christmas present. He acted like it was a surprise that I was getting a camera. I seem to remember it more like a threat. You will get me a new camera or I will...

Jake got a guitar from Santa and he loved it. He is totally into everything musical. It amazes us to see him dance every time he hears music. I mean because he just does it. It isn't something he was taught. As if we didn't know, our little boy has a mind of his own!

Our new Christmas tree with ornaments hung just above little hand level. He did well with the tree for the most part. I had one ornament broken because it was too low and he pulled the tinsel off just once before any ornaments were put on the tree.

Grandma and Grandpa got him a chair with his name on it. He wants to climb up into it himself only he can't quite do it. I see this as a problem for awhile. He is going to pull this over onto himself trying to get into it or out of it until he gets a little bigger. He already has a shiner from whacking his eye with a toy last week and he keeps splitting his lip open. We can't get one thing healed up before he injures himself again. He sure is a toddler taking on the world!

He was staking his crackers on the top of his juice cup. It was funny and yippee!! he is finally drinking apple juice!

He is really into putting things on his head and walking around right now. Hmm, did I mention black eye and many split lips? But for Pete's sake don't tell him no and take it away!

We went to a Christmas parade back at Thanksgiving time. He can barely move in his winter coat. I think it might fit next year!

Whew

2008-12-15T22:30:00.002-07:00

Things have been... well, I don't know. The end of the year is the busiest time of year for surgery. People want to get things taken care of they have put off. They have met their deductibles and so they need to have their surgeries. They may need to use their time off before the end of the year or they will lose it. One thing we see is that it is farmer or rancher and it is the off season so they get their backs fixed or their hernias fixed or their Lap.Bands placed. Whatever, it is nuts. We are each supposed to be cutting our hours and watching the clock but then we are expected to stay late all the time. Whatever. We got an email that told us in this time of recession the costs to provide health care are up and the revenues are down so as of the first of the year there will be a significant increase in the cost of health insurance. In the next paragraph it said they didn't know when they could consider giving us cost of living, let alone market raises. This wouldn't be so bad if the hospital hadn't just bought the majority of the doctors' practices and the free standing surgery center that has already put so much turmoil in our lives. Great. When they did this they decided to redo all the marketing for the hospital. Every sign, every single paper, all the pamphlets, EVERYTHING had to be changed. They changed EVERY clock in the hospital so that they have the new logo. There are more than twenty clocks in just my department. I can come up with 25 without thinking hard. But there is no money for raises and they don't know when there will be. Really.

Anyway so that has been a bit stressful. Mike has been working insane hours. He has been averaging 23 hours or less home and 24 hours gone. He used to be home 36 hours or so. He is a person that needs his sleep too. It is nothing for him to sleep twelve hours or more at a time. I can't tell you what I would do to get eight or even six! It has been hard with daddy being gone so much. Jake sure does love his daddy!

However, last week I finished all my tests. I took my specialty certification test. I had been trying to study everyday some for a long time and I have been trying to take care of the house. It was the hardest test I have ever taken in my life. It was much harder than the test I took to get my nursing licence. In some ways that makes sense since it is supposed to mean that you are highly proficient at a particular specialty so the focus is much more narrow than all of nursing. I knew it would be difficult but I wasn't expecting it to be quite that difficult. The good thing was that I got to take it here in town. That is a very recent change. I thought I was going to have to go about 3.5 hours away which makes it a lot more challenging. I was worried about the weather and it was bad the day of test. I was able to take Jake to daycare and then I tried to relax for a bit and I drove about five miles across town and that was it. Thankfully it even told me right then and their that I passed. THANK GOD!!! I don't want to go through that again. It was very expensive and time consuming. But I did learn a lot. I learned a lot of things that I wish I had learned years ago. I will say that I believe my years of experiences really helped on the test at least as much as the studying. But I did learn a lot. I got a lot of validation. Too bad I don't also get a raise!! It does look good for the hospital to have a good percentage of certified registered nurses.

On to the important things. Jake is just growing by leaps and bounds. He is a nut. He is so chatty. I don't know what he says most of the time but he talks nonstop. He is into saying "hot" right now but it is how he says it that is so funny. I know he is saying it like I say it to him when I don't want him to touch something hot. It is just so funny. He has slept through the night three out of the last six nights. He hasn't slept through the night in FOREVER!!! Tonight is our biggest challenge. Jake got to nurse this morning, but no more. It is apparent that he has no intention of giving up nursing anytime soon and I just can't do it anymore. Fifteen and a half months is a long time right??? I need to be done. I also need the regular bcp that I started on Saturday or might need to start blood transfusions soon. I hear crying. I guess tonight isn't going to be one of the nights he makes it!

What does this mean

2008-11-17T20:55:00.002-07:00

I had an annual appointment a few weeks ago and I tried to get the new prescription I got filled. She told me when she gave it to me that it I could get it filled for super cheap and then I wouldn't have to mess with my insurance (she knows how difficult my insurance is). I took it in to Wal*greens and I explained it to the girl and she said no problem. I waited and waited. The lady behind the register calls me up and says it will be sixty something dollars. Are you kidding me?!? So I said wait a minute. This is a generic drug and blah blah blah. She said my insurance won't pay and nasty nasty something. I said it wasn't supposed to go through my insurance and what about these supper inexpensive prescriptions you are supposed to be able to get here. Well, you have to get a card for that and this and that and blah. Okay so it isn't like what they say on the commercials. That and I came home and called this women a "c" word that I NEVER say. She was so nasty. I didn't take the pills and I made her give me the prescription back so I could send it in to my insurance. I was so mad. Then a few days later I went to get the paper and I had lost it. I looked every where. So the next time I saw her at work I explained what happened and she wrote me another script. Then I buried that one under a stack of papers. I have never lost a prescription in my life and I lost this one twice. Well, I found both of them and I finally got the paper work filled out and sent in today.

So anyway. Am I purposefully trying to not get the birth control pills that I specifically went in to get? Is this something subconscious? That didn't dawn on me until yesterday. Am I trying to not take them? Hmmm... I have been thinking about another baby a lot but I think we need to wait awhile still. Am I unintentionally trying to foil my own plan? Or is it that I have had such a severe blood loss that I just simply can't function properly. I'm not able to carry enough oxygen in my blood to get my brain working properly. We will see now how many weeks it takes for them to get here and what troubles I have with my prescription company. I do need to get my body straightened out though because I feel terrible.

I saw something that troubled me today. I saw this absolutely beautiful couple biking down the side of a busy road. He was gorgeous. Then I saw how pretty she was. Wow. Then I saw the baby strapped to her chest???? Does this seem wrong to anyone else???? She was maybe three months old. Am I wrong? Is this a normal thing to do? I couldn't believe it. I couldn't imagine getting on a bike with a baby strapped to ME. I don't know maybe it is the anemia again.

Whew...

2008-11-14T15:34:00.002-07:00

Another test down! This week has been brutal at work! We have had huge schedules and we have two RN's out with back injuries. Yesterday and today I have been out at a class. I know it is a class that many people take all the time and it isn't a big deal, but it was to me! It was Advanced Cardiac Life Support and it is not an easy class. The teachers were great however and treated it differently than the last class I took. We had to take a written test on our own put the practical part we did in groups and that was great. We each had to answer individual questions but each one of us didn't have to run through an entire code all on our own. So I passed. That means two classes with two certifications down. Now all I have to do is take a big nasty test next month that is my specialty certification. It will be hard, however, it all pertains directly to the job I do (or how we should be doing it) each and every day. It is very detailed and long, but hopefully it will go well. I am glad to be back to studying something that is more in my comfort zone.

.

Interesting...

2008-11-07T16:07:00.002-07:00

I didn't have a fit this morning at the meeting. (my boss is insane by the way). We all left feeling frustrated and mad. So that is just like normal. Little got resolved and many got mad! The person that bothers me the most (actually two of the items on the agenda were because of her) didn't show up. Her shift started later so she didn't come. Of course, if she has half a brain (that may be the whole problem) she should have figured out that SHE was the problem. So we still all started the day in a bad mood because again nothing got fixed.

On an even worse note, we are supposed to be getting our pictures taken in the morning for Christmas but our photographer is really sick! Her assistant warned us this morning that they may have to cancel and she would let us know for sure this afternoon. We are waiting on pins and needles. Our only hope is that she might give herself one more day to get better and reschedule for Sunday otherwise it is a no go for us. We only had a week to get our orders back because otherwise she wouldn't be able to get them out in time. This was part of our Christmas presents to family! We can't get in anywhere else and get the same thing we are getting from her. I am hoping for a miraculous recovery. I know she loads these days and it would be hard if she were sick. I also know she won't cancel unless she really really needs to. I guess it will be what it will be! We were hoping to put off pictures again until Jake is two after this session.

2008-11-06T16:10:00.002-07:00

I know I have whined a lot about my job but I am so close to quitting. I keep having days that I am having to really work hard to not just walk out. That obviously isn't a good way to handle things! I still like the work and most of the people I work with. It is just a few nasty ones that have just about pushed me over the edge. I don't understand how there can be such different expectations on behavior from one person to the next and why one person can be so incredibly lazy and her opinion seems to matter more than anyone else's. Anyway, I am just frustrated. We have a meeting first thing in the morning and we are going to talk about some of the things we are frustrated about. I don't think it will go well. I hope I can in fact make it through the meeting.

On another note, we are having our first snow of the season. The wind is horrendous and it is so cold. I didn't break out Jake's winter coat this morning because I need to rework his car seat straps to fit him in there. Is that a bad mom? He had a long sleeve shirt, a sweater and a sweatshirt on. He was only outside from the time to get to the car into daycare which wasn't even a minute. But on the way home we had to stop at the store and that was a bit longer.

I am having a lot of problems making Jake angry right now. You see, what ever I have he wants. Like the hot chocolate I have at the moment. He, of course, can't have it. Or pizza, or pretty much anything that crosses my husband's lips. I guess it means we need to be eating a better diet but it is hard.

Busy times

2008-11-02T10:55:00.003-07:00

We have been so busy the past few weeks. I worked late shifts one week so we could do swimming lessons the next two weeks. It is amazing how a 30 minute class can manage to take up the whole evening, or so it seems. Jake would have to eat early. Then hurry up and get everything packed and loaded (I started that while he was eating). Then get us into the car and drive there during what is busy traffic for us. We would have to park way far away and walk. Then get it and get changed and hurry out to the pool. He loved it though even if the whine factor was horrendous during the changing before and the showering and getting dressed after. He loved his teacher too. She was pretty! I also took a two day trauma nursing course. In some ways it was challenging for me because it uses skill I don't use very often and then in other ways I had more hands on experience than some of the nurses. It was not easy. It was extremely hard to sit in a chair for two days. I haven't had to take too many tests lately and I had some significant test anxiety. I almost had to slap myself!

Jake was a stinker come Halloween. Actually, I don't think he was feeling all that well. I really think the change in schedule with swimming was catching up to him. He has had a bit of a fever yesterday and today. He has also been drooling like crazy and had diarrhea. What does that sound like to you? To me it sounds like teething, but he can't get anymore teeth. Well, he can but he only has four baby teeth left to get and he really shouldn't get those molars for at least a year.

We did go visit a few houses and grab a few treats. They were treats that were specially planned for Jake. We didn't make it very many places and he was getting awfully worn out. Maybe next year we will make it around the neighborhood to show off, not that he will be able to eat the candy, but still.

Last weekend we did make it to a corn maze and we had a good time. It took longer to drive there and back than it did to go through the maze but it was fun. It was really nice to get to do something as a family.

Yesterday was the first day we really had to hire a babysitter, actually two. I had to work and was on call. Mike had to work and my mom was moving. So it had some glitches but it worked. I hardly worked at all. I literally paid the two sitters more than I made for the day. Oh well. I have so much to say but a little whiner needs to be taken care of so it will have to be another time.

The life and times

2008-10-22T22:32:00.002-06:00

Well, we have been busy 'round these here parts. I worked all late shifts but one last week and it sucked big time!!!! For weeks people on late shifts have been leaving early day after day. Not my week. I did leave early one day, but the other three I ended up staying past my shift end. It was hard on me and it was hard on Jake. Mike didn't so much care on way or the other.

Then my mom and aunt came Saturday. That was... interesting. I forget how that goes. I love my aunt dearly but I just don't know. My mom and aunt were on the computer for hours. My aunt would sit there chatting for 6 plus hours with this man or that man. My mom and my aunt would compare men on countless different singles sites. I was shocked how many different sites they go to and the guys the contact. They were also incredibly loud. I was expecting them Saturday morning and it was almost four before they got to my house. They just acted like it was no big deal. We immediately had to go shopping, which was not on my plan. Poor Jake was a bit overwhelmed as well. My aunt is very loud and she brought tons of stuff that just kind of exploded everywhere. She also brought her hyper little dog. Jake and the dog actually got along quite well, but still our house was turned upside down. I got one of the worst migraines I have had in I don't know how long on Saturday. I had to go to bed early. It was miserable. I couldn't even get my migraine pill out of the foil and my aunt is telling me I ought to take some thing for that. Duh!!! Can't you see I can't even get it out of the wrapper??? Mike had to help me and help me to bed. I still had a throbbing headache on Sunday, but it was better at least. We had to go shopping for more than 4 hours Sunday afternoon. I am just not a big shopper, especially now that we have to worry about nap times. It is all about getting in and getting out for me, not about entertainment like it is for my mother. Like usual my aunt spend a fortune. She did buy a couple of really cute outfits for Jake.

So my aunt had to force my mom to leave Sunday evening. That was great. Then Monday my aunt shopped again all day. She came home in time to get to Jake's first swimming lesson with us and then spent the whole night on the computer. She was clacking away and gestured with her arm and knocked her beer off the wooden arm of the couch. It almost went into the computer. Instead it went all over the couch and the carpet my had just spent hours cleaning. Tuesday morning she got up and talked to me and was going to stay another night. When I got home Tuesday she was gone. All order had returned to our house She left tons of stuff behind. I don't know what Mike said or did, but she was gone. He doesn't seem to think he did anything but I don't know why else she would have just left. I can't get a hold of her either. Mike said she said she would call me later, but she hasn't. She went to my Mom's house but my aunt is answering her phone when I call. I don't know what happened. She was planning on coming for Thanksgiving but I don't if those plans have changed or not.

So... swimming lessons are going. We go everyday this week and Monday through Thursday next week. Monday he was super swimmer and happy as can be. Tuesday he threw fits and bit me on my shoulder. We had to leave a few minutes early. Tonight was somewhere in between. It is going okay. He was wired afterwards Monday. It was so hard to tell if he was being naughty because our schedule has been so messed up. because we had company, because he isn't feeling well, or something else. He has taken to throwing large, very loud fits. I don't know what to do with these.

I've got to get to bed. I can only keep one eye open to keep what I'm typing in focus. We did not win the picture contest. We got second by one vote. I was very depressed about that at first but now I can talk about it. The crappy part is not that we didn't win but that we didn't win by one, ONE vote. One vote off.

2008-10-16T07:45:00.002-06:00

I feel like I am going nuts!! I am so stressed. I am totally hormonal. I believe I am going to need a blood transfusion soon from my massive blood loss. My work week has totally sucked been from hell. Oh wait, I still have two more shifts and they are promising to be just as crappy. My house is a TOTAL disaster and my aunt and mom are coming Saturday morning to stay for awhile. Not to mention Jake is a whinny, constipated grouch. He won't eat. Sleep isn't going so well and it just goes down hill from there... I need a vacation or a margarita or something.

Time flies

2008-10-09T21:40:00.002-06:00

I can't believe how fast time is passing. I just can't seem to get anything accomplished. Well, at least not what I think I should. I have two difficult classes coming up I have never taken before. I know they aren't a big deal. They are just two days and a test, but they are hard to me. Plus I am trying to study for my certification test. At least now I can take it here. Our community college got certified as a testing center so I don't have to drive all the way to a suburb of Denver like I was planning. That takes some of the pressure off.

I can't believe how fast Jake is growing. He is a little stinker and a little ham. You can really tell he works it too. He is a lot whinier for mommy than anyone else. He sticks his lower lip out and makes these pathetic yet hilarious noises. He hasn't been doing quite as well with his sleep, but it is still better than it was. He has ended up in bed with us the past several nights but it has been 2 or so in the morning. He is coughing again when he sleeps and I think that is part of it. It is still a bugger about eating. He actually ate some spaghetti sauce with ground beef two nights ago with some rice pasta. He hasn't been willing to eat that before so I was excited. Meet is so hard to get into him unless it is a baby food meal in a jar. I can't wait to be rid of those!!! I think we should be by now but I guess we are getting closer.

Jake doesn't care for weening and I guess I am not as strong with it as I should be. I have tried to drop a feeding and drop another and he will do okay but then he freaks out and wants to nurse all the time. He was getting tired and we were in the checkout line at the store and he was whining and trying to pull my shirt up! That is when I wish I could be one of those people that says we are done and it is final. I just need to toughen up and ignore the whining and crying, right?

Fall seems to be too short. We were still having 80 degree temps last week or the week before and now they are talking about snow on Saturday. I want more of the in between!!! I really enjoyed the drive to the photographer's because it was such a beautiful day. It made the trip worth it. I can't wait to get our pictures. I am a picture junky now. Our walls are just plastered with this little boy's face.

My aunt is coming in about a week. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It will be nice to see her but I think she will be here for too long. I'm hoping she will go visit my mom. My mom is working on moving back closer to me. She is moving I just don't know when. She is renting a three story, three bedroom townhome. That makes sense for the single woman with two knees that need to be replaced. My mom really thinks she needs a four bedroom. She has a different job now, still in the same walls, but employed by a different company. It pays better with much crappier benefits. All she can talk about is shopping. It is crazy. We have heard her tell Jake that he is going to get to come home with her now. Umm, have I mentioned my mom is nuts before????

We need your help!!!!!

2008-10-06T16:45:00.002-06:00

Okay we do need help. We need votes. We went and got Jacob's picture taken in his Halloween costume and we would really like to win the contest and get the $100 for our family Christmas picture next month. I have been wavering on if we should do the Christmas pictures or not because of cost and the prize would really help. So please, we need all the votes we can get for Jacob! Thank you, we really appreciate it. http://kellyhighby.typepad.com/kelly_highby_photography_/

I don't want to say it outloud

2008-09-29T19:58:00.004-06:00

...but things are going a lot better. Sleeping, much better. We have had a rough go but he is being able to go to sleep after you put him in bed. He is still waking up in the night but mostly now it is in the early morning and I just leave him. He is down to crying or fussing for 5-10 minutes and then he will go back to sleep! This means mommy can sleep. This is also helping us with the hurdle of weening. That had not been going so well. When he is in bed with me he wants to suck the entire time practically. When he is upset that is what he wants. It immediately calms him down. But it is better. I'm not sure how I will feel by morning but he only nursed once today. I don't have a lot of milk but I still do have some. I am already feeling a bit uncomfortable, but I know that is just going to be.

(Here is an example of seeing Mommy do something and then Jake does it.)
(Jake loves to get under my sink. There isn't really anything bad in there. He just carries embarrasses his dad by carrying feminine products around the house. I think that is good for dad, especially since he hasn't put a latch on the doors. He hasn't done that because we are going to replace the nasty sink with a pedestal. But we have to be ready to do the floors when we do that. That is a lot of work for Mike. You would think he would just put the latches on instead!)

Mister independent. I said something to Mike about toddlers and Mike got mad at me. Jake isn't a toddler yet. But honey, he is. No, he is still a baby! No honey, our baby is now a toddler. That hit daddy pretty hard. The only problem with Jake's eating is the actual consuming of food. He is a terrible eater! I'm not really sure what he managed to actually eat tonight. Maybe a teaspoon of corn kernels and maybe a bite of bread and a 1" section of banana. The only thing he still eats well is baby food. I am trying hard to get him to eat food. He does great about putting food in his mouth and chewing it. Then he puts more. Pretty soon he spits out a huge mouthful of chewed but not swallowed food. I don't know what to do. This is especially true with meat.
Here we throw toys into the laundry room! This is the best game. Now if only it also involved hide and seek.
Poor Molly is such a good sport. What else can she do?
He just loves her and she is so good to him. She gives me the most pathetic looks though.
I forgot to say, that teeth 15 and 16 FINALLY burst through this weekend. They are so long it is hard to believe they weren't there Friday. You could feel that though.

2008-09-26T20:33:00.002-06:00

Life has been a bit crazy. Jake and I have been sick for two weeks and that doesn't help at all. Bronchitis, sinusitis, aches, fevers, tiredness, crankiness, breathing treatments, coughing, coughing, coughing, and that is mostly me. Jake has a cough too but he is mostly better. We just can't get his little sinuses to clear up. We finally went to the doctor yesterday and I got steroids, my own nebulizer suppliers, and antibiotics. I thought I was getting better but the coughing at night got a ton worse. It was taking two hours to get the coughing settled down. So that meant I kept waking myself and Mike up. Jake has been doing a little better with his sleeping. He is staying in bed longer before needing to come in our room. I just don't know if it is because he is sick or because he is doing better.

Jake is just changing by leaps and bounds. He is so busy and he is so much fun. Most of the time. I love how I will see him do something for the first time but it is totally his mimicking what we do. He stole my comb and was combing his hair. He likes to play with all our phones, but yesterday he picked up the phone on the fax and just jabbered away. He made different sounds than you usually hear and it was just so cute! He likes to eat rice crispies because he likes to pick up each individual piece and eat it. At least that keeps him occupied for awhile. He is so independent on his eating now! He really likes to feed himself. With his right hand he uses the spoon. With his left hand he shovels it in with his fingers. He loves to throw his hands up and say "all done" when he is done eating. He just walks and walks and walks. He still likes to crawl or bend over with his FP train car. It is the one that has the bar for the monkey to hang. He has used that bar as his walker for ever. It is sooo cute and funny to see him. Last weekend he was pushing it around the house and filling it up with what ever - little people, pens (his favorite thing ever) cars, animals - and he would take it into the kitchen and go to his baby gate and chuck everything out across the landing and down into the laundry room. You come in from the garage into the laundry room and there are two steps up into the house. There is a landing there that has a pantry for the kitchen and then the steps that go to the basement. Then there is another doorway into the kitchen and that is where the baby gate is. So he tosses the stuff pretty far. He just loves it. If you leave the door open to the laundry room you better watch your step because there is no telling what he has thrown in there. He pushed a laundry basket across the kitchen floor about fifteen feet and took it to the doorway/top of the steps into the laundry room. I took the first clothes out and put them into the washer. As soon as he saw me taking things out he started throwing them down for me. It was so funny.

He still hates riding around town. I haven't turned his seat around in my car yet. I went to and discovered that it says 22 pounds and 34 inches before front facing. I thought it was 20 pounds and I didn't remember there was a length minimum. Our other two seats don't have length minimums on them and they both say 20 pounds. He was 22lbs 4oz at our appointment yesterday with his clothes and shoes on. I'm not sure if he is 30 inches long yet. I don't know if I can wait until he is 34 inches. He is just so miserable in my car and perfectly content in Daddy's. That seat is only a front facing. He has no problems at all with it. Of course he hardly ever rides in the pickup with Daddy.

We got his Halloween costume and it is so cute. I can't believe I spent so much on a baby's costume but it is so cute. It is a monkey and he is adorable. We are going to have to practice wearing it some because he doesn't like the hat. It has just been too hot to wear it much yet. I have to get him used to it quick though because he is getting his picture taken in it next Sunday. I am driving all the way to our photographer because is having a Halloween special. He will get like 10 minutes and we pay fifteen dollars for one 5x7 and she is donating it all to the park where she takes her outdoor pictures. If we order anything additional she donates her profits to the park too. Jake's pictures didn't do the park justice. It is really a beautiful park. It has lots of different planting areas, separate gardens. Jake wouldn't cooperate so you could see all the beautiful flowers. He would only sit on the ground under them and pick at dirt. I am hoping there are some beautiful fall colors to go along with the costumes.

I love fall. I wish we weren't having a heat wave right now because this is my favorite time of year. I love the crisp air. I love changing leaves. I love the break from the heat. Fall always seems to have a different energy. Kids are back in school and life seems like it is underway. Football is back. I love going to football games. I sure hope Jake likes football. There is only one thing that is a little hard for me. This is the time for Homecomings. Last week was one town five miles away. This weekend is the town where we now live and next weekend is the town where we used to live. It just makes me sad because I don't feel like I have a place that I am from or home base. I know I need to stop whining about it and I just need to set down my own roots. I don't know. I just wish I had a "home town."

Work has been crappy. Things have really been changing. "They" are telling us it is for the better, but I'm just not so sure. We have been really busy again for awhile and now we are not. We are having to cut hours because our department needs to cut costs and yet we are seeing how the hospital is spending a huge amount of money on marketing. They have put up a new giant sign. It cost more than I make in a year. And then they have replaced all the smaller signs, like the one that says "pharmacy" and "emergency." I mean these are still large individual letters that light up on the out sides of the hospital and there are probably ten of them. I would say the letters are at least 2 feet tall. They have completely changed the letterhead and all the marketing literature. We are talking a lot of money. And I am having to go home early. We have a lot of other big problems and very few answers right now. I am afraid for some of our jobs. I think I will be okay, but I don't know what will happen. How will they decided if they do need to cut?? Not the best feeling. Especially when I have a, gulp, toddler I keeping wanting to get photographed.

I have started thinking about the when and the if and the what if we can't of another baby. All the people pestering me finally has me starting to think. I'm not ready to start trying yet but it does have me thinking. I just found out another coworker is pregnant and I most certainly got the pang of envy. I know I really do want another child. I am still having hard time thinking of having to make Jake share the limited time I have. I also am thinking about how little help my husband is in taking care of Jake. I am still a little gun shy of being pregnant, but I am starting to think of it as something sooner than later. I still don't know when we should start trying. I wish I had a crystal ball. I don't know what made things finally work last time. I suspect it was the progesterone, but I don't know for sure. I just know daycare for two at our current daycare would be a problem, but not quite enough of a problem for me to quit. Daycare for two, at our current daycare, would take 85% of one of my two week checks. That is more than we can afford for sure. Our next step would definitely be private daycare, but that has its problems. Mike thinks we ought to consider paying his mom, but I don't want to do that. First she would have to come to our house not hers and she won't do that. I'm not going to pay to completely furnish her house with everything Jake needs and then have his stuff at home. But I don't think there is anyway she could take care of two kids full time. I don't think she could handle it. Mike and his dad have talked about it, but I just don't think she can do it. Besides, Jake really likes being around people, even he got sent home with a "very mean" description of his behavior this week.

They are here!

2008-09-10T17:14:00.003-06:00

I saw Jake on our photographer's blog this morning so I knew that meant today we should get the password to see the pictures. I have been trying to study but it has been hard because I want to see my boy and the magic Kelly works. Well no email. I just got a text from one of my coworkers telling me how good our pictures are and it didn't sound like she was talking about the blog. She guessed the password and let me know a few minutes ago. She has had her pictures done like six, seven, eight times there so she is more familiar with the complex password system. ha ha So anyway if anyone is interested my beautiful boy (not biased) can be seen at http://www.kellyhighbyphotography.com/slideshows/ The highly complex password is "jacobc" Please enjoy if you like.

More words, more whining

2008-09-10T07:47:00.002-06:00

I feel like I should have something profound to say for my 250th post but I don't. I am having a bit of a rough time right now. I have a lot of stress right now. I am trying to study for a certification test. I am having to act as the afternoon charge fairly frequently and that puts me right next to my boss. I have to have my annual evaluation in the next couple of weeks. I have been asked to DO some of my coworkers annual evaluations. A form got passed around rating me and the unique job I do. (it would be nice to have warning that was going to happen). I have two difficult classes coming up. Some lady is hounding me from church to do home visits on new moms. There are several people on this group, none of whom are doing anything yet I am the only being hounded. Oh yeah, and I am trying to be a good mom to my little boy and something about being a wife too.

I am feeling overwhelmed. I am really tired too. I don't know what to do to get Jake sleeping better. I keep trying different things. I guess he is as stubborn as Mike and I and I just need to stick with it better. I just need to sleep and struggling with him at 11, 12, or 1 in the morning is just killing me. Man, can that boy scream!

The thing that is bothering me the most is that I am feeling really lonely. I keep making efforts to reach out to some people and I am get shot down. It is hard not to take it personally so I do. I wonder what I did to make them not want to be my friend or wonder what is wrong with me that they don't want to spend time with me. Someone convinced me I need to be using Face.book. So I signed up. I don't know what the hell I am doing. I haven't spent much time with it. But I did realize there isn't much point because you have to friends using it too.

I don't know what my problem is. I do know I need to quit feeling sorry for myself though. I'd like to run away for awhile.

On this date...

2008-09-07T21:25:00.003-06:00

One year ago today we brought our little peanut home. I have been all weepy the past few days and I haven't been sure if it was hormones or memories or what. My how our world has changed. I wouldn't want it any other way. Well, I might change the sleep thing a bit...

Tagged

2008-09-06T21:04:00.003-06:00

I was tagged by Nurse Lochia a long time ago but because I am technologically retarded it takes me a long time to remember or figure out how to do something. Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules to your blog
3. Write 6 random things about myself
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

Gosh, random things. I'm not that deep and that is how I post anyway but here's a try.

1. I am a total freak at work about having everything in its right place. I want everything neat and tidy. As soon as I walk out the hospital door I am a total slob. I don't care if everything gets picked up until I know that company is coming to my house and then I dash around the house like a chicken with my head cut off trying to pick everything up. My house isn't dirty for the most part, just not picked up. We have gotten much better since having Jake.

2. To this day I would have hot dogs and mac & cheese for dinner almost every night if I could. My husband isn't a fan and Jake can't eat it. I pray that someday this is something I can share with my son. I also believe that spaghetti-o's are comfort food. My mom wasn't much of a cook!

3. I only wear pants at home because I have to. Before Jake and when we lived out in the country I would take my pants off as soon as I got dogs out. I should just invest in some scrubs to wear at home and then it would be easier. Or I wear jammies like right now. As soon as I was done shopping today I put on a pair of flannel pj bottoms. They match my shirt! It did slow me down to have to change back into my jeans when I was dashing about the house trying to pick up when a friend called and said they were stopping by. (she knows to call a head).

4. I have an irrational fear of misplacing my tweezers. My husband now understands he will be killed if he touches my tweezers. God forbid he use them to do something. I was born with a uni brow. My husband kind of has one. He actually has three separate areas of hair growth - just an extra but separate brow in the middle. Poor Jake was doomed. My husband finally admitted today that Jake has one. My mother would not let me do anything with my eyebrows until I was in 7th grade or maybe even 8th. She just didn't understand how traumatizing this was for me. I remember being so excited when my grandma offered to take me to get my eyebrows waxed when I was about 9 or 10. My mother wouldn't allow it. She didn't get it. Nor did she get the social need to wear a bra, shave my legs, or wear makeup. I don't know when most girls started wearing bras. I moved to a small town and all the other girls were wearing training bras in fourth grade so I wanted to also. To be honest, I did actually have some breast development so it wasn't unreasonable.

Wow two more...
5. I have been afflicted with insomnia since puberty. For a number of years, during most of high school and college, I was prescribed an antidepressant to help me sleep. Now I am so freaking exhausted I can sleep most nights if Jake would let me. He sleeps worse now than he did when I started back to work. He is waking up around eleven almost every night and then wakes up again in the 1-2 range and then again most mornings before my alarm goes off. I can't take the crying so he ends up in bed with us. I have to get some sleep. My back is killing me though because I sleep on my side so he can nurse when he wants. (we are making a little bit of ground on the weening, but this will be the hardest). Believe me I want more than anything to leave him in his room, but he doesn't stop crying. I have to get some sleep and since Mike either is gone to work or is sleeping like the dead it is all up to me.

6. I am an excellent teacher for things you have to do standing across a patient or table for most people. A) I am just that good and B) since I am left handed it works really well to be able to mirror things. One thing that stands out in my mind is putting in a foley catheter. I know it isn't a lot to be proud of but believe me it is helpful to the person learning because I am comfortable across the table. What will happen when the day comes that they give me a left handed person to teach? I don't know. It hasn't happened yet, but I will figure it out. I'm not ambidextrous

Pathetic confessions, I know. Now for the poor people I have to tag
1 Becca
2 Linlee
3 Faith
4 Kirsten
5 Stephanie
6 Hopeful Mother

Celebration!

2008-09-01T09:38:00.009-06:00

Look Mom, it's cheese. Okay, it is rice cheese, but it actually tastes like American cheese. He loves it. I was happy that our store had it! Now I will try taking fake cheese and substitute noodles and making fake macaroni and cheese!

Here is the pooped out boy after our trip to the zoo!

So we had a pretty good birthday party. It was hot but the shade of our patio was nice. The food was good and Jake loved to entertain his guests. He wasn't so sure about the cake at first. I should have taken it out of the fridge sooner so the frosting could soften up some and be easier for him. It wasn't too bad of a cake. We will have to buy the cake mix again. I didn't like the frosting very much. I'm not sure if it was the fake butter or the frosting mix, but one of them had a very strong butter taste. I love butter, but I love real butter and this was too much. We will have to try something else or the cake was good enough for no frosting. Jake ended up with a terrible belly ache about 10:30 and I am attributing it to the cake. I was within 5 minutes of taking him to the hospital, but he started calming down.

One of my friends took such good pictures for me that it is almost like watching a movie. It was nice to have someone else taking pictures for once. Jake really got into the cake. There was cake a good ten feet away from his highchair. Once he figured out how the more he got into the cake the more all the girls cheered he had a ball! It was great. The one bad thing was that the fake butter is made from vegetable oils and he was slicker than snot even after the bath. His skin was sure soft the next day though!

So after his bath we opened presents. He could have cared less. I thought he would get into the paper and the bags but he didn't care at all. In the very first bag we opened there was a phone and that held his interest for quite some time.
Look a rare picture of mom! Mike's mom (in the background) was all in a tither before she came over. She gets all freaked out when there is an event. She likes events to be at her house and she gets all uptight before they happen. I called and asked Mike's sister to come over and watch Jake while I went to pick up food because my mom was late. When she got here she said she was so relieved to get out of her mother's house because she was having "the big one." I was exhausted because I literally had no sleep the night before between my two boys and I just didn't want to deal with her and how she gets. However, I was pleasantly surprised. After the initial "she's here" moments, she really settled down and actually had a good time. She had a couple of little mini fits, but they were easily ignored. It didn't help that my mom ended up being five hours late from the original time she was to be here. She was actually about an hour late for the party. That is her way of drawing attention to herself. Oh well. No one really cared so she wasn't a big deal either. So neither grandma ruined the day! Grandpa and dad both consumed a bit of beer but they were okay too. Mike just isn't a big gathering kind of guy. He doesn't do well with company. He and my best friend's husband do pretty well together so Doug helped keep him calm. Plus Mike's sister helps keep him relaxed. So all was well.

Yesterday I even got Mike to church. I thought he was going to die, but he did it. We FINALLY got Jake baptized. If we ever have another baby we will make sure we do it sooner. Jake was a bit of a stinker but church is during his nap time. He was asleep not ten minutes after his baptism was finished. I couldn't believe Jake sniffed his daddy's feet after we got home from church. Mike has major, MAJOR foot odor issues.

So our little Jake is really becoming a boy. He starting walking on Wednesday and is doing pretty well with it. He will take about a dozen steps at a time. He also has discovered that there is a world above what is at his chest level and we are in trouble! He is a little fella now. He weighed in at 21lbs 4 oz, and is 29 inches long at his appointment. Both were 50th percentile. His head however is 19 inches which is 95th percentile. Our doctor said he is going to be very smart with such a big head. I said, well, at least he will wear a big hat and she laughed. He is very chatty and you can understand most of what he says. He is finally saying "mama" regularly. He will say back just about anything you say. He says thank you every time he gives you something or takes something from you. He calls a lot of things "kitty."

I have loved being off for almost a week. I don't want to go back. We have had some really bad nights and I don't know if it is because we are out of our routine or because they were just going to be bad nights. I have really enjoyed my time with Jake and with Mike. I wish I could get used to this. I think Jake is starting to like it too. The only thing is that he is a very social little guy and I know he likes all the people at daycare. He will be in his new room tomorrow and we will see how that goes. They changed the teachers around last week so one of the girls that he really, really likes isn't with him anymore. She is the only person that has remained a constant since his very first day there. Can you blame him? She now stops in and sees him before she starts work.

Jake is taking bottles from me at home in the middle of the day. It is just hard when he gets tired and or doesn't feel good. Then he wants to nurse. He let Mike give him a bottle before bed last night even. I think I am going to stop pumping at work completely. I hoping that if I can make it the rest of this week at work we will be good. I will have supplies there of course, just in case I get too sore, but I think with this time off it will be okay. Last week was the first time he didn't get at least some breast milk at daycare. I don't think they can have much formula left and then we will switch to rice milk. That will be nice!

Today is the day!!!

2008-08-29T15:18:00.004-06:00

My baby is one today! I have been all misty about that. I can't believe he has been with us for a year. I is as naughty as ever. I only worked Monday and Tuesday this week. Wednesday we went and got his pictures taken. He was a little pill. The photographer kept telling me he was doing better than most one year olds. I find that hard to believe.

Yesterday we hung out and I had to go to a meeting at work. Then I took Jake to an eye appointment with me. I wasn't sure how that was going to go. It was supposed to be a quick in quick out thing and it wasn't. I wasn't sure how they were going to react to my bring him. You know how some people are really snotty because you are making things more difficult for them and noisy for everyone else. Everyone was really nice and gave him the proper attention he was after. Man is he a charmer!

We went shopping this morning and got a few things we needed and we got Jake a wagon for his birthday. Then we went to the zoo. We actually have a pretty good zoo, surprising as that is for a community of our size. Communities of our size rarely ever have a zoo so it says something that we do. We haven't taken Jake before and we haven't gone since we got married. It was nice. Jake didn't last too long but I think he could see the animals better than the zoo in Denver.

Tomorrow we have an actual party for both the boys. It will be nice since pretty much everyone forgot Mike's birthday last year. They did actually forget, but he was just an after thought some time later. He wasn't upset or anything. All our focus was our baby in NICU.

Off to clean and get a few last minute supplies. I have to get Jake's special cake made too.

How embarrassing!

2008-08-21T16:14:00.005-06:00

I picked up Jake from daycare today and I was afraid to hear what they had to say. Yesterday we got a bad report. He was hitting, biting, pulling hair and throwing toys. They wanted to know how they were supposed to handle it. I don't know. Make him stop! I don't want the naughty child! Today they told me he was good. Then the one lady I think doesn't like Jake asked me who taught him to say "tickle tickle" when you change his diaper and he plays with his "thingie." I was horrified! He said what? And this grown woman can't say pe.nis? Anyway, I was so embarrassed. Jake screams almost every time you change his diaper. I try to distract him with a toy or by tickling his tummy. When I tickle him I always say "tickle, tickle." As soon as you get the tab undone on his diaper he has his hand down his diaper and is yanking on his pe.nis. So he associates my saying tickle with his playing with himself!!! Great! He isn't even a quite a year and he is getting me in trouble with the things he says! It only goes down hill from here...

Movin', movin', movin'

2008-08-17T14:50:00.002-06:00

I can't believe how fast time has gone. Jake now stands for long periods of time. He can stand from a sitting position without pulling up on anything. He also will push his little truck for ever 3o - 45 minutes of back and forth is nothing. He thinks about walking and is so close it scares me. I just can't believe how fast my little baby boy has grown. His thirteenth tooth is through as of today.
He has been a little crab though. I know the teeth are just killing him. I am worried that he is getting sick though because he slept a ton yesterday while I had to work. My mom came to watch him and thank goodness because I had to work more than eighteen hours straight yesterday. Of course Jake was up by five this morning. I managed to nurse and snuggle him until six. I just hate having to leave him. Mike and my mom both said that by afternoon, when I should be picking him up from daycare, they could tell he was really missing his Mommy. I don't know how would stay sane being a full time SAHM but I want so much more time with my little Peanut. I just love to be able to sit down and play ball with him. He loves to throw the ball and everything else for that matter. I just don't feel like I have enough time to spend with Jake and take care of our household. That is why we still have so many packed boxes around. There has to be an answer out there. I am still looking.

My in laws are really pissing me off. They get Jake when I have to work late and they love it, but it is such a burden for them as we keep being told. I just wish I had a regular schedule and so did Mike. It would be a lot easier to plan. Even if I were at my same job if Mike just had a normal job it would be so much easier to work out. Unfortunately people at work don't understand that. If I just had the same schedule every week we could find someone to watch Jake, but since I don't have the same shifts from week to week or month to month it really is challenging. We didn't even get the schedule we started today until last Thursday! That is terrible. I need to stop whining and just live with it I guess. I just want more time with Jake.

And the ween is on...

2008-08-13T21:19:00.002-06:00

We got the nod to switch Jake to rice milk today. We had an appointment with the allergist and he is an odd, but nice, duck. We waited and waited and waited, in a patient room thank goodness, for him to see us. He walked in the door and Jake crawled right over to him and grabbed his shoe and pulled himself up his pant leg. He held his arms up and the doctor tossed him up and had him smiling ear to ear and giggling away. I couldn't believe it! Jake is full swing with his stranger anxiety and doesn't usually want to go to most people he knows. This doctor is nice, except he says we have to wait until Jake is TWO before we test him again, but he is a bit goofy. He is about sixty, he is Indian and has a very thick accent, he has huge glasses that I thought Jake would pull off, and he has odd tufts of hair about and he was wearing a lab jacket. But Jake seemed to love him.

So my dear boy is going to have to learn to give up the boob. I have already cut my pumping back to just at lunch time at work. I officially put away my breast pump at home today. Now we just need to get Jake to decided he doesn't need to nurse to solve all the world's problems. That is what I am worried about. When he gets really upset, all he wants is to nurse to calm down. I guess he will have to be upset. I will work on getting the mornings cut out first. I am worried about the nights though. We only go about one night a week where Jake isn't ending up in our bed so he can nurse. We took a nap this weekend and he just sucked for two hours. Boy was I sore when I woke up!

So, now we can use up all that expensive formula we have first and then switch to rice milk. He seems to like it, but I don't think he understands that is all he will get soon. He will get a tums everyday for calcium too. I can't wait to start giving him that! We are just so that it isn't so traumatic for me when I give him the zyrtec!!! I think I am not looking forward to this... adventure!

Our first real haircut

2008-08-12T21:34:00.002-06:00

Jake got his first real, big boy haircut today! It was hard. I didn't cry because I was trying to hold him still. That and I had a migraine and was less sentimental. My stylist was surprised by home much hair she had to cut. He wasn't too bad. She had to take the back up a little because of a scissor mark from where he moved suddenly. I don't know how she did it with him moving around so much.

Jake has been a stinker about his sleeping. We will do well one night and then we will have three bad ones. Last night he would not settle down. He just played and played until he finally just plopped down. He has a marker in his left hand that he wouldn't give up until his little hand relaxed and let go. I am going to have to get some of the markers that only wright on the special paper and soon because he loves to carry one around. When he figures out how to get the cap off I am trouble!I bought a watermelon this weekend and he loved it! I chopped it up into tiny pieces for him so I could get the seeds out and he just gobbled it up! I gave him more tonight and I was shocked how much he ate. It is probably all the sugar in the watermelon keeping him up!

Rough morning

2008-08-10T10:57:00.002-06:00

Jake woke up a little before five this morning which is normal. Mommy wanted to sleep in. I brought him into bed with me and he nursed and climbed on me for a bit and then went to sleep. He let me sleep about an hour and then we repeated the nursing, climbing and falling back asleep. I got to sleep until seven which I think is wonderful.

We got up and I went to bring in the paper. It wasn't there. This is the second time this week! The Sunday paper is, of course, my favorite of the whole week. Sip some coffee, read the paper, let the baby destroy the house. Normal routine. Not this week! So that has me irked. Jake is just a grouch. He is whining and whimpering a lot. His teeth are really bothering him again/still.

I worked on folding laundry, which I hate. I work on cleaning up all our messes. Jake gets hungry. Okay, what will we feed him? He is really being picky right now and we have our limits of course. I try giving him some applesauce that has extra berries in it. He usually loves it. Nope not today. I get him to take a cracker to munch while I search. Good thing because he is yelling at me. I offer him this super healthy - allergen free bar. One bite in, the rest on the floor. Crap. There are some left over sweet potato chunks that he likes pretty well. So I heat them up and then cool them down. He squishes them with his fingers and spits the one I put in his mouth out. Great, sweet potatoes are usually our saving food. So I look around the kitchen and am reading labels, searching for something, anything to feed the grouchy boy. I suddenly smell something. I look up from the label I am reading and OH GOD NO! He has pooped and since he is sitting the poop has pushed out the top of his diaper. He is smearing it all over his highchair tray. Dear God NO!!!!! He just put a piece of yesterday's corn in his mouth. Gag, gag. Run to get the tray off. Gag, gag. Put the tray in the sink that has fresh green beans for today. Gag, gag. Pull the baby out of the chair and run him to the bath tub, holding him as far out as my arms can reach. It is everywhere. He is having loose stools because of the teething, of course. He is covered. I am covered. Gag, gag. Fight with the diaper and the now crying child. Get the diaper off and in the trash, but oops some of it smears on the wall as the diaper flips open. The baby is now screaming because he wants the water on. I turned the shower on to wash the stool off. Gag, gag. He has smeared it all over the sides and top of the tub. I am pulling toys out as fast as I can so they don't get dirty. He thinks the shower is interesting, but he can't really splash so that makes him mad. I got the most of it rinsed off so I turned off the shower and started the tub. I scrubbed him. Got him out and dried off. Thank God that is over. Oh wait, I still have to scrub the poop off the wall, out of the tub, out of the kitchen sink, off the highchair tray, out of the highchair. And the baby is still hungry.

I want my freaking newspaper...

Yuck!

2008-08-05T21:45:00.003-06:00

Last night Jake and I crashed in the chair early, probably by 730. I woke up at 830 and put him to bed and I had to let the dogs out and get ready for bed myself. I forgot to take the trash out that I set on top of a big trash can with a lid on it. This morning I let Sparky out first. I went back to let him in and he had jumped on top of the trash can, ripped a hole in the garbage bag, and was eating poop out of a diaper. I just about hurled. I screamed at him - mind you it was before seven - and he ran away of course. I couldn't catch the little shit! Thank goodness it had rained last night and at least the grass wiped the pooh off him!

I let Molly out and came back in to find Jacob crawling out from my room at a rapid pace. He had something in each hand. As he came up to me I laughed so hard. I tried to get a picture of the crawl but he was too fast. He has a tampon in one hand and an ovulation predictor in the other hand. I did snap a picture of him stopping and banging the two together. I just thought of how many of each of those two items I had gone through before getting the little fellow holding them.

I'm trying to decided what to do for the birthdays coming up. Jake's birthday is on a Friday and Mike's in on Saturday. We will have a party for both on Saturday. (we never have a party for Mike, or me for that matter, so this is new ground). So we can't decide how big to make it. I have asked a number of my coworkers and they would go big for the first birthday. How big? I mean how many people do I invite? Where do I draw the line? I am thinking if I invite very many of my friends I need to just put up a stinking invite at work because I will get into that damn trouble I always do about someone being left out. I don't think anyone other than my friends would come anyway, but than at least I don't leave anyone out. I think it is silly however because it is my son's party. However, I don't recall every having seen a baby's party up there. I don't know. When we look at just inviting a few people, just family(parents, Mike's sister and grandmas) and a few friends it seems hard to draw the line. I don't know and it seems silly. But there is a big difference between 10 people and 40 people. And words of advice? What have/are you going to do???

Eleven months!

2008-07-28T20:01:00.003-06:00

We had a busy weekend. I feel like I got a fair amount accomplished. I still don't feel very settled here and it bothers me. There are still a lot of boxes that need to be unpacked. The thing that bothers me the most is not having pictures up on the walls. We kept waiting to decide where to put what and I gave up and just started putting things up. There are some pictures in the hall that need to be rehung but they are up for now. The people who lived here before left a lot of nails up. I can't believe how high all their stuff was hung. The tallest person in the family was no taller than me at 5'5".

That makes it feel a bit more like home but I don't know. I just don't know where to put everything and Mike isn't being much help. I don't know why I thought it would be any different unpacking than it was packing, but somehow I thought he would help me more. I'm just having a really hard time with stuff not have a permanent place and needing to still do so many things. I really want to jump in and start doing work to the house and yard, but I just don't think I can do that yet until stuff has a home.

I did take care of one thing outside. We have a narrow flower bed that runs along the front walk. It is pretty long and it wraps around the front step and continues along the front of the house. I pulled all of the volunteer stuff and mulch up out of the area to the door and I planted irises. I have always loved irises and I have wanted my own. I bought a ton of them and got about half planted. The next area I need to work on has nasty white rock and the black weed barrier that didn't seem to work. It looked stupid because these two areas meet. So I will pick up all the rock, pull up the black stuff, and continue the irises along the front of the house. I spaced them out like you are supposed to, but some day it will be like a fence between our front walk (which is really wide enough to be called a patio) and the yard.

I still can't help but be in a funk. I am feeling very lonely for some reason. Mike has been working a ton and it feels like I have been too. I never seem to get to spend the time I would like with Jake and he can be so much fun right now. He will just giggle and giggle when we play. We went swimming in a kiddie pool I got him and he loved it. I don't know if I could handle being home all the time with Jake, but I sure feel like I miss so much. That makes me sad. He will be eleven months tomorrow. Eleven months! Crap, where has the last year gone??? I'm trying to figure out what we will do for a birthday party and I can't decided how many people to invite and which people. I can't decide what I want to get him as a present.

(I try and try to get this little boy to wear a hat outside and he rips it off in a split second. But he will wear it for half and hour while he is playing in the house!)

a trip to grandma's house

2008-07-25T20:05:00.002-06:00

Yesterday was my mother's sixtieth birthday. I called her while I was waiting for someone to show up at daycare to drop Jake off. She sounded pretty good. I know it was a hard one for her though. After I finally got to work and I looked at our light schedule, I asked my charge nurse if I could leave early so I could drive up and surprise my mom on her birthday. I got out of work after a meeting I had that was interesting. I went and picked up a pizza, got gas, got Jake, ran home and packed him some stuff, and then we went and picked up a birthday cake. We headed on out. I waited a bit and then i started trying to call my mother. I couldn't get her over and over again. I kept thinking she was in a meeting. I decided to try her house. It would be like my mom to call in sick on her birthday. She calls in sick every week anyway so why not then. I couldn't get her at home. Then I think she is playing hooky and went shopping somewhere. It involves traveling a couple of hours for her to shop any where so I am cursing about that. Then there is about an hour stretch of road where you have no signal at all. I am sure hoping I didn't waste gas and time on this trip at this point.

So we get to her town. I have to call Mike to tell me how to get to the prison because it is right by the train track. He tells me and I eventually find it. It is four my mom is supposed to work until four thirty. Her car is not in the parking lot. Now I am really mad. So I drive by her house. Not a soul. Crap!!! By this time I really need to pee so that didn't help my temper. I called Mike and started venting. I started heading toward a gas station so I can go to the bathroom and my mom turns around the corner next to me. She doesn't realize for a minute that it is me waving at her.

It was worth the trip. My mom was tickled to death. She was so excited to see us. She liked the camera we bought her. I think she might be able to use it. She tried to stall our being there as long as possible. We ate dinner and Jake was a little stinker. We had cake and I told her we needed to go. Jake was not behaving at all well at this point. He is tired even though he slept the whole way up, THANK GOD!! So I pack up his stuff and she is trying to keep us. She made me take her picture with Jake out front. He wouldn't cooperate very well, but hopefully there was one decent one out of the fifteen I took.

Then we made it out. The interesting thing to me was that it was a pleasant visit. She did not make one of "her comments." I was quite shocked actually. I thought maybe she would have a comment about the camera, but she didn't. She loved it. I was really surprised. She said it was the best present of all for us to surprise her with our visit. It almost made me forget how visits with my mom go. I wish they could all be like this visit.

The drive home kind of sucked though. I drove a tad fast trying to get home. I wanted to get to the road I was familiar with before it got too dark. There are so many deer and antelope along this trip. I really hate dusk when they seem to be out. I did have to come to a hard break. I thought it was a baby antelope or deer up a head in the middle of my lane but it turned out to be a coyote. Not that I really wanted to hit that, but at least there wouldn't be more to run out in front of you like if it were deer or antelope.

So I will have to mark it on the calendar that I had a good visit with my mom. Sadly, there probably won't be another mark like that for a long long time.

Sunday

2008-07-20T21:36:00.004-06:00

Jake and I went to church today. I haven't been going much because church is at 9:30. Nap time is basically the same time. I know there is a nursery but I don't want to leave him there. He spends at least nine hours a day in that area of our church and on one of my two days a week that I get him to myself (meaning no daycare) I don't want to leave him there. There was a special service today celebrating the organ player. He has been playing at the church for twenty years and he is wonderful. So we went. Jake loves music. He bounced around to that organ while I was pregnant and he likes it still.

Today these twin girls came and sat in the row behind us with their great grandparents, grandma and mom (who is four or five months pregnant). The twins are one week older than Jake. They came about six weeks early and were born on my due date. So there were lots of baby noises in our area. The girls were noisy at a low level constantly. Jake made some noise but a couple of times he was very noisy. I got up and took him out. We went out in the fellowship hall and I let him crawl around for awhile and then things were better. When the service was over I had two people very rudely tell me that the church has a crying room and they provide a nursery for a reason. I was shocked. We also had countless people tell us how glad they are to hear the youth of the church. Our congregation is pretty old. I would say the average age is probably about 65 - of those at the service it might even be older. They keep having meetings and trying all sorts of things to bring in younger people and families. Anyway I didn't hear anyone say a thing to the family of the twins. I am pretty upset about this. I try to be considerate of others. I know there is nothing more annoying than trying to listen and someone is letting their kid scream. That is why I take mine out. How are kids supposed to learn if they don't practice? I obviously don't mean children as young as Jake.

This really upset me. I don't know if these people thought all of the noise was coming from my child or not. One of my coworkers keeps inviting me to come to services at her church. They have a new minister. It is the Methodist church in the town that I now live in as opposed to the Methodist church that I go to in the town we used to live in. The two towns are connected and I actually probably live farther from the church in this town than the other church. But now I am really tempted to go. The one problem is that service is still at 9:30. She did say that when school starts the time changes and I'm pretty sure she said at 10:30 or 11 so that would be better. I don't know. My best friend's daughter was there with me for one of the people and she was also horrified. The next thing you know her grandpa was told and grandpa is one of the pillars of the church. He wanted to know exactly who those people were and he wanted to have words with them. I didn't tell him. I actually didn't know who the one fellow was. But anyway...

So that has had me down all day. We went shopping after church, like everyone else in town, and that was a horrible experience. I ended up spending over three hundred dollars and it didn't seem like I got that much stuff. I did buy formula though and thank goodness I have been able to breast feed this long!!! The nurse at the allergist's office said Jake would need to drink rice milk and I assumed we could start that at age one. I have been drinking it and using it on cereal since that appointment but it very plainly says not to give to children under the age of 5 without consulting a doctor. So I need to double check at our next appointment which is just before Jake's first birthday. It seems as though I might have typed this before... Anyway, I sure hope we can give him the rice milk because it is a lot cheaper and a whole lot less stinky than Nutramigen! I haven't blamed Jake for not wanting to drink that stuff.

I mentioned in my last post we have had a rough week. I kept telling them at daycare he was teething. They kept telling me they thought he had another ear infection. He does have a nasty nose and he is pulling his ears but both of those can go with teething. I keep telling them that the doctor said he will pull his ears for a long time and that it is now a habit not just a sign of an ear issue. Well his eye teeth broke through. He now has twelve!!! teeth through the gums. He still has a big blood blister over one of his molars that he is working on. Now I'm just wondering if it will make it through before he turns one or not. This child will be able to have steak at his own first birthday party!!!

Big weekend

2008-07-19T21:05:00.010-06:00

Getting out of town was a good thing to do. I don't go do it enough. It was really nice that my sister and nephews could come up. I don't get to see my nephews enough and I certainly want the cousins to get to know on another. My nephews really enjoyed trying to teach Jake things to say or noises to make and he thought they were great.

Jake is not the best traveler. He slept most of the way down, but not all of it. He woke up as I was getting into heavier traffic and cried the last forty five miles or so. It was great. Traffic, screaming baby. Two of my favorite things. Actually traffic wasn't that bad and I took the back way down on a toll road so traffic was actually pretty light. It was worth the 34 miles of tolls! I went home on the interstate and it was horrible. I had more than fifty miles of construction and at one point the traffic completely stopped. That was about twenty five miles north of Denver so it wasn't even in the city. I'm not even sure why we were stopped. I watched vehicle after vehicle take the ditch and go over to the frontage road. After about 20 minutes I did the same thing. I probably would have been there between a half hour and hour if I hadn't so I was glad I did. So in the midst of this standing still on the way home Jake woke up so that made it even worse. He eventually settled down and played some.

We stayed in a pretty nice place. We had a full kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and then a living room with fire place and of course a sofa bed so it worked well for all of us. We were able to easily get carry out and have all the boys sitting at a table to eat. It was great and we didn't have to spend so much time waiting and it was less expensive since we didn't have drinks and tip. Plus there wasn't any whining in a restaurant to put up with.

Jake got to go on his first train ride followed by his first bus ride all to get us to the zoo. We spent six hours at the zoo and it was great. I haven't been to the Denver Zoo since I was in high school. I don't think it was the most exciting thing for Jake though because he could hardly see anything. We did get some nice up close and personal views of the lions and he liked that. He says "kitty" pretty well and now he can roar like a lion. That and make monkey noises. My youngest nephew has the tendency to wander off and that kept being a problem because there were a ton of people there. The hard part was taking the bus and train back, especially because we missed catching a bus by about two minutes and then we had to wait for 20 minutes and everyone was so tired.

We went to the Children's Museum the next day and I wasn't sure what to expect but I think everyone really had a good time. I don't think my sister was thinking her boys were going to enjoy it as much as they did, but they sure did. It had more stuff to do than we expected. There was even a nice area for the littlest guys and that was great. Jake loved it. He had a huge fit when I took him out of the baby area to go find his cousins. We even went back later while they were doing some other stuff and he was just happy as can be.

I got a little bit of shopping in and got some things we needed. I was able to go to a grocery store where I could get some things for Jake that I found on a few allergy websites. It was nice to not have to pay the higher prices and shipping! Now we will just have to try some of these things and see if he will eat them.

My sister brought me tons of stuff. I could barely get Jake and I into the SUV. She brought us a picnic table for Jake, another car seat, a little bike for him, a little grocery cart, books, toys, and bags and bags of clothes. I bought four big tubs to put the clothes in and they just fit. They are a bit big for now but it is going to be great to have so many really nice clothes when we get to 3T and up. We are practically set which is nice.

Jakey got to go swimming for the first time and LOVED it. He was kicking around and just having a ball. We were in the pool for a bit and his lips starting getting blue so I took him out. I wrapped him up and less than five minutes later he was trying to get away from me to get himself back into the water.

The week has been hard though. It has been really busy and we have had a couple of really bad nights. One big thing has changed and I'm not sure how I am dealing with it. Jake has started taking formula. They kept offering it to him at daycare and all the sudden this week he stopped throwing the bottle back at them. This is good since my milk supply (both my personal one and the one it the freezer) is diminishing. It is really hard though. In some respects I am excited. I am tired of being a slave to the breast pump. But this is also something I could do for him that no one else could. So it is making me sad. Part of me wants to keep going for a long time and another part of me is wanting to skip the weening and just be done with it all. I am looking forward to being able to have some peanut butter or peanuts and when I am not at home. To add to my week I have been a touch hormonal. AF stopped by for the first time since having Jake. I feel like all my moodiness from all the missed months has been saving up for this visit. Mike says I'm not that bad, but he values his life and body parts so he might lie.

I just keep wonder what happened to my baby because I suddenly have a little boy. I wonder when he will be

walking. He will walk holding only one of my hands. He has been pushin

g around the cart my sister brought as well as another toy he has and it is killing me. I know he is still using assistance but to see him moving upright without a person is really something. It scares me too. I keep looking around and wondering what he will get into, trip over, bonk, grap, or even worse, climb, next.

We are outta here - almost

2008-07-10T21:45:00.003-06:00

We never go anywhere. Our jobs don't allow us much freedom to escape. This weekend Jake and I are making a break for it though. We are driving down to Denver tomorrow and my sister and her boys are driving up. Jake hasn't gone on an overnight stay away before. (we stayed over at my inlaws once but it was because I was on call). I am so glad to get out of town. I have been looking forward to this for quite awhile.

I don't know how much stuff to take with us though. I hope I get it right (I always pack too much). My sister is loading her SUV with stuff to pass on to us so we have to have plenty of room in the back. I love free stuff. I am a bit worried about the trip, however. Jake has been screaming a lot riding in the car and that is just around town. At first I thought he didn't like his new car seat and then it seemed to be fine. I am wondering again if there is something uncomfortable about this not inexpensive car seat.

I wish Mike was able to get out of town with us but it is no husbands. Not that he could get away anyway. He has made all these promises about what he is going to accomplish while we are gone. I am hopeful that he will get half of what he has said done. The garage is still completely packed with stuff - some that we actively need, but I can't physically get to it. There are cabinets up in the garage that he is going to take down to make room for his work bench and he has promised he will put them in the laundry room. I want that more than anything. There is no storage in our laundry room and I want to be able to put the soap and the rest of the household cleaners there, up out of a little boy's reach. I was able to type "little boy" without crying. He is growing up so fast! You can even see one of his molars in this picture.

I haven't seen my sister or nephews since Christmas so I am excited to see them. We are all going to stay in the same suite so we are going to get our share of each other really fast. Jake is such a terrible sleeper. I hope the boys don't keep him up and then in turn he keeps them up. I am excited and my car is even fixed. It had to have some work done that Mike couldn't get the parts to fix without going through the dealer and they flat out told us they would charge us this horrendous amount for the part to buy, but if they fixed it wouldn't cost anywhere as much. Does that make any sense at all??? It cost half what they quoted us for the part to have them fix it and put in the exact same part. I don't get it.

2 years

2008-07-08T19:46:00.002-06:00

Today is our second wedding anniversary. Our lives have changed so much. Mine more than Mike's. I'm a little worried that Mike is afraid to take care of Jake on his own. I had to work last night and Mike took Jake over to his parents' house as soon as I left. He stayed there with Jake most of the time but Grandma fed him and changed his diaper. Mike said he played with him most of the time, but I worry about that.

But anyway, two years and we have been together just shy of ten years. There were lots of times I never thought we wouldn't make to this point. Wow! I wonder if this is what Mike saw for himself ten years ago. I will have to ask him.