Alison is learning to sign. In the week that we've had the first Signing Time video, she's learned all 18 signs. There are a couple that she doesn't do very well, but she knows what they are if you sign them to her. Before we got the video, we spent a lot of time amusing ourselves with the demo clips on the Signing Time website and learned a few other signs, too.

So tonight, after reading a couple of books and before getting her into bed, Alison and I were sitting in her rocking chair, with her on my lap facing me, talking. She let out a little burp, which was rather nasty smelling since she had just had a little milk and we had pizza for dinner, and my reaction was something between "eww" and "ugh," kind of a gagging noise, I guess. Immediately, Alison put one hand on my forehead and the other hand on my stomach, roughly the sign for sick, and said "mommy sick." Then she did the sign for real, putting a hand on her head and stomach. I was shocked. She's never done the sign before and then goes and makes the connection between the little "sick" sound I made and being sick and does the sign. It never ceases to amaze me what little minds can absorb.

Oh, I think I did something really dumb today.

Kevin didn't do such a great job snowblowing all the snow we got last Sunday, and it's snowed off and on since then, including another 2-3 inches yesterday, so there was a lot of packed snow on the driveway....two inches thick in some places. In a fit of productivity, I decided to take advantage of the sunny, 30-something degree day and try and shovel off the driveway. Lest you think this was an easy task, our driveway is over 90 feet long, and is as wide as our two car garage. It took me just over an hour, but most of it is down to bare concrete. If I am able to move tomorrow, it will be a minor miracle. The worst thing about it is, when I was about half way done and thinking I could just relax tomorrow afternoon (preferably in a hot bath), I remembered I can't do that because I have to babysit at church for a program they're having tomorrow afternoon!!! I hope there aren't too many kids. Maybe there'll be a baby there that just wants to be rocked for a couple of hours. I could handle that! Oh well, at least I made up a little for the fact that I didn't do much (any) exercising this week, due to some sort of cold or sinus problem and a few sleepless nights that made the idea of getting up at 6:00 in the morning to work out very unappealing.

Oh, and where was Kevin while I was doing all this, you might ask? He is helping chaperone our middle school youth group's ski trip today. He's going to come home and piss and moan about how sore he is from enjoying a day of skiing. At least I earned my sore muscles doing work. :)

I guess it's a good thing my husband is a procrastinator. A couple of days ago he told me he was going to go ahead and empty the gas out of the snowblower because "we aren't going to get enough snow to use it again this winter." I told him he might want to hold off because I had heard we were expecting accumulating snow sometime this weekend. He poo-pooed me, saying we never get the snow they predict, but he never got around to emptying out the gas. It's 9:20 on Sunday night and he's just finishing up snowblowing the 7+ inches of snow that we got today (and it's still snowing!).

Reader beware......this is going to be a jumble of different things.

Today was Alison's last swimming lesson for the winter session. They really didn't have much of a lesson today, it was mostly free play in the pool....practice what you have learned....unless the kids wanted to go down the big water slide. Guess what Alison wanted to do. She's been wanting to go down that slide since the very first class. There were some kids whose parents didn't even attempt to take them down. There was one who got up to the top and changed his mind and no amount of cajoling from mom and dad could get him to go down. And then there was Alison who couldn't get up the stairs fast enough and had a hard time waiting her turn when she got there. I think she (and daddy) went down a total of 5 times. As usual, she was upset when it was time to get out of the pool. Fortunately the next session of swim classes starts next week.

It's a little bit blurry, but here she is when she hit the water. Kevin is somewhere under the splash.



It never warmed up enough to go walking yesterday....I think we topped out around 18....but it was another gorgeous, sunny day today. And it was 30 degrees. And Alison woke up from her nap early. So we went for a walk. It was nice to get out and get some exercise. Hopefully, now that we're all healthy again, the weather will be agreeable enough to get back out on the sidewalks on a more regular basis. I miss my daily walks.

Our Signing Time video finally arrived today. I like it a lot and couldn't believe how fast the time seemed to go. It showed us 18 signs....eat, milk water, more, ball, want, bird, cat, dog, fish, flower, mom, dad, shoes, car, airplane, sleep and one more that I can't remember right now. Alison was able to do about 6 or 7. I thought that was pretty good for the first time. We had to watch the video several times, because even though Alison was playing rather than watching, she wouldn't let me turn it off! I figure we'll keep watching the video and Kevin and I will try to use the signs as much as we can, and hopefully she'll start signing more, too.

I wrote about this the the day we found out, but took the entry down out of respect for the family's privacy while they decided how public they wanted the news to be. One of our fetal surgery families just found out that their new baby, now 15 weeks gestation, also has SB. It was devastating news for the family and almost as upsetting for those of us who have come to know them as a result of our own SB diagnoses and decision to have fetal surgery. Most upsetting right now is the fact that, because of the ongoing clinical trial through the NIH, this family will most likely not have the opportunity to make their own decision on whether or not to do fetal surgery again. They can't even apply to be part of the trial because of their prior fetal surgery, which resulted in delivery before 37 weeks, thus making them ineligible (no one with a history of delivery before 37 weeks is eligible). Our doctor is proposing an amendment to the trial's protocol to allow them to be grandfathered in so they could pursue the surgery outside of the clinical trial, if they felt it was the way to go (and they have not automatically assumed fetal surgery would be the way to go), but it is going to be a very hard sell, and probably won't be accepted. We're planning to be part of a letter writing campaign in favor of the amendment. At any rate, any prayers or good thoughts you can spare for this family during this difficult time would be greatly appreciated.

And that's about all there is from here.

So aggrivating.....it looks like such a beautiful day today. The sun is shining, the sky is blue. It would be a great day to bundle Alison up, stuff her in her backpack and take a walk. The problem? It’s only 10 degrees out!!! I don’t mind walking in the cold, and if it were just me, I’d take the dog and go, but it’s far too cold for a little girl who’s just a passenger in a backpack. Maybe it will warm up as the clouds roll in (they say the clouds help hold the heat in at night, maybe it works in the daytime, as well) and we’ll still have a chance to go this afternoon.

My child is really getting on my last nerve lately. We're still fighting the food battle around here, and it's really starting to piss me off. She's refusing to eat foods that she's been eating since she started eating food. She'll take a bite of something and just hold it in her mouth without chewing it. That is, of course, unless it's something she absolutely loves, like cheese or ham. Today was the first day this week that we made it through 3 meals without a puking episode. Yesterday she at about 5 small bites of applesauce, puked up the sixth and then proceeded to scarf down 4 chicken nuggets, a handful (my handful, not hers) of french fries and a good bit of green Kool Aid. That was lunch. We did applesauce again at supper, and it went down with no problems. Everything else was a struggle, except for the aforementioned ham. Oh, and ketchup. She ate that, too. Today, at lunch, I had to go so far as pureeing both her peaches and her corn. She refused to chew either of them, but she ate them pureed. All of a sudden it's like we have an infant again. Oh, and as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing more disgusting than pureed corn......we never, ever have creamed corn here. I think Alison may have felt the same way, because she ate broccoli tonight without any muss or fuss....maybe she didn't want to run the risk of having to eat it pureed. She also scarfed down some roast beef and ate half of the popcorn I gave her (it's movie night tonight).

Before we could even get her to the dinner table tonight, though, we had to make a detour to her bed. She was given the option of getting in her highchair or going to bed. She thought I meant the big bed in her room and figured that would be lots of fun, but I meant her crib. In she went, everything remotely fun was removed, I told her she could either get out and eat or stay there for the rest of the night and not watch "Beauty," and then turned off the light and walked out the door, leaving her there in the dark. She was ready to eat in about 5 minutes. I don't know how many times that's going to work, though, and I really hate to use her bed for punishment.

If we can get through this phase, she just might live to see age 3. It's a good thing she's so cute. :)

I swear, in this family when it rains, it pours. Fresh on the heels of my father-in-law's death from lung cancer, my sister-in-law found out that she had cervical cancer. Fortunately, it was caught very, very early and she will be fine. Tonight, Kevin called his step-mom today to ask her about some paperwork he and his brother need to sign so she can transfer the title on my father-in-law's car, truck and motorcycle and also to see how she was doing. What he found out is that she has breast cancer. They are having a family meeting tonight to discuss her options. The worst thing is that she's known about the lump, which is very deep and is measuring 3 cms, for a while, before Kevin's dad died, but she put off getting it checked out. And she has a family history of breast cancer.....her mother and her aunt both had it. So now we'll be waiting to find out what's going to happen from here.

We did have some good news today. Alison had an appointment at Spina Bifida clinic. I wrote about it in her medical journal. It was nice to go to an appointment and not get bad news. Tomorrow we are headed back to the orthotist to get Alison's brace fixed. She's only had it a little more than a month and managed to pop the nut off one of the screws holding the interior ankle joint together and the nut is nowhere to be found (it's probably at Meijer). Kevin found something to use as a bolt and used a little duct tape, so she can still wear it until it's permanently fixed.

I've decided the time has come for Alison to learn a second language. It's probably past time, actually, but we're going to get started now. I had initially thought to start teaching Alison French once she turned 2, and I will start that eventually, hopefully before she turns 3, but for now I think we're going to work on sign language (ASL, not baby signs), and this is what we're going to use: Signing Time. Signing Time came to our attention over the summer when we were at the fetal surgery reunion. It was created by and is produced by one of our fetal surgery families. Their youngest is the one that has SB (and also CP), but their oldest was born deaf.

I was watching one of the demo clips on the website and Alison came over to check it out and was fascinated by it. Today she came to me and kept saying "eat....on the computer....kids.....on the computer....eat...." It took me quite a few minutes to figure out what the heck she was talking about. Then it finally clicked. She wanted to see the clip teaching the sign for "eat." So we watched it a few times. Already, after viewing 7 or 8 times, she'll sometimes do the sign if you ask her. There was a clip from the second volume, so we watched that a little, too, and learned the sign for "train." Because of the interest she's shown, we're going to use the money she got from one of her grandmas for Valentine's Day and buy the first DVD of the series. If she enjoys it and seems to be learning from it, we'll work on getting the rest. Sign language is something that has always fascinated me, and is something I've always wanted to learn, so even if Alison doesn't pick it up, at least I'll be able to learn some. :)

Well, this Monday is starting out according to the stereotype.

This morning, at 8:00, I went to get my daughter up. When I got into her room I smelled urine. Well, I thought, she must have leaked out of her diaper. She was just waking up and I gave her butt a little pat in an effort to move her around a little so I could see how big of a leak it had been. Well, it turned out to be much bigger than I ever would have imagined because there was no diaper there. My husband had forgotten to put a diaper on our un-potty trained daughter last night when getting her ready for bed! Her sleeper was soaked, her sheet was soaked, she even managed to soak through the "waterproof" mattress pad I had on top of her regular mattress pad, which was also wet. So everything got stripped off the bed and is now whizzing around in the washing machine.

When I realized what had happened I grabbed the phone and called my husband. When he answered, I didn't even say hello, I just told him that we really need to wait until Alison is potty trained before we let her go all night without a diaper. He swore to me that he had put one on her, and when I insisted that she had no diaper on, he came to the realization that he had, in fact, forgotten to put one on her. We had a laugh and then we hung up, he to go back to work, and me to clean up the mess and get the rest of our day started. I'm almost afraid to find out what the rest of the day has in store for us. Think I'll get lucky and this will be the worst?

I’m feeling rather out of sorts lately and I can’t quite put my finger on why.

I know I shouldn't be, because I shouldn't care what other people think of me, but I’m feeling belittled for my parenting choices because I mentioned that we only play with one color play doh at a time, in an effort to minimize the play doh mess. I don’t have tile/hardwood/vinyl floors and a granite topped table for my daughter to play at. I have a carpeted floor and an old coffee table covered with a cheap vinyl tablecloth. Excuse me for not wanting to have play doh ground into my carpeting. I was also asked if I wasn’t curtailing my daughter’s creativity by only letting her have one color at a time. I really don’t think so. Just the other day she took her one color of play doh, squished it into a blob, stuck a handful of paint brushes into it and told me it was an octopus. I thought that was pretty creative.

Speaking of my daughter, she is really pusing my buttons lately. She’s a stubborn little thing to beging with, but she’s been sick, so she’s gotten her way a little more than usual, especially when it comes to eating (or not eating, as the case may be), and now that she’s not sick anymore, she still thinks she should get her way all the time. Everyone will tell you to pick your battles and one of the battles we’ve had to pick is over food. Because she has some bowel disfunction and tends to be constipated, she needs to eat a lot of fiber and drink a lot of fluids. She was eating really well for us before she got sick, and now she’s back to holding food in her mouth and not chewing or swallowing. Breakfast this morning took nearly 45 mintues when it normally takes 20 at the most. At lunch we went round and round over a bite of corn, which is a food that she likes, for 15 minutes. We can get her to eat almost anything we want if we bribe her with something she really like, usually cheese, but I refuse to bribe her with cheese at every meal because it really defeats the purpose of eating all the fiber.

We’re kind of, sort of potty training, but trying not to force the issue because she doesn’t really seem ready for serious potty training yet. We pretty much just take her to the potty if she tells us she has to go. And she’s figured out how to use that to her advantage. When it’s time to do something she doesn’t want to do, like get in her chair or eat, she’ll tell us she needs to go potty. Even though I can count the number of times she’s actually gone potty in these instances on one finger, maybe less, we can’t really not take her because that defeats the purpose of having her tell us when she needs to go. So at almost every meal, we are interrupted by a pointless trip to the bathroom that lasts a minimum of 5 minutes and is usually more like 10. I think it might be time to start using a timer and when the timer goes of she’s done, whether she’s actually gone or not.

My husband has been on my last nerve lately, too. I’m so sick of hearing him whining about being sick. Take the damn cold medicine and shut up about it already. You have a cold, you’re not dying. The only good think to come out of it has been the fact that he’s been sleeping in the guest room. I have had the whole bed to myself for a couple of nights. I can stretch out as much as I want to, I don’t have to fight for the covers, and I don’t have the human furnace there radiating heat toward me that I don’t need. It would be even better if I didn’t have to be up at least twice a night dealing with a sick toddler who’s been stuffed up and coughing and upset because she desperately wants to sleep and can’t.

UGH!!! There is sickness in my house! Kevin has been moaning and groaning around here for a couple of days because he has a cold and he's "dying." @@ Alison has been coughing and sneezing for over a week and we thought she was getting better, but last night she (and consequently I) was up most of the night coughing. This morning she was running a fever, so I gave her a little Tylenol and she was her normal energetic self all morning. She ate well, drank well, played well. Then came lunch. She was crabby because she was getting tired. We managed to get her to eat some pears and a couple of bites of lima beans and peas. That last bite of peas was the killer. She put them in her mouth willingly and then wouldn't finish them up. Normally, when she does this, she will finish food while on her way to her room to get ready for a nap. That was not the case today. She gagged on them while Kevin was taking off her shoes and brace and promptly started puking. That upset her a lot and made her cry and that made her puke again, and again, and again, and again. Finally we got to the point where there was nothing left to puke up. So there we were, covered in vomit (because she managaed to puke on me, too) and trying to get her settled down. Not an easy task. Kevin got her undressed while I got some clean clothes and something to put the yucky clothes in. She complained about her mouth being yucky, but wouldn't take a drink and wouldn't let us brush her teeth. She also wouldn't let us giver her any cough medicine (and I can't really blame her), so she'll probably cough her way through her much needed nap.

I hope this sickness leave my house soon, and I hope it skips me on it's way out.