Change is in the air for Alison these days. A couple of weeks ago, we took the rail off of her crib and converted it to a toddler bed. I was a little nervous because I liked the fact that, in the crib, she was contained. I was afraid that she wouldn't stay in bed and that she wouldn't be the good sleeper that she has (almost) always been. It appears that I worried for nothing. She's done great. We go over the "rules" before nap and bedtime (don't get out of bed until mommy or daddy come to get you, and if you wake up early you can play with your little bear, big bear, baby, books or turn on your aquarium), and she still sleeps the same as she did before. In a month or so, I think we'll move her to the regular day bed that's in her room so she gets used to sleeping in a bigger bed before she gets moved to her new room, where she'll be sleeping in a twin bed. We'll be moving her to her new room this fall so she can get used to that before the new baby comes and so she doesn't feel like the new baby is booting her out of her room. I hope that plan works!

Tonight was the last night for the high chair. We've been using it without the tray, just as a regular chair, for a long time, but just now finally got around to finally switching over to a regular booster seat. We've had the booster since she was 8 or 9 months old....we used it when traveling to places where there might not be a high chair (basically any place other than my parents')....but we just never used it at home. Probably because Alison can climb into the high chair by herself, but can't climb up into the booster by herself. I guess we're going to have to work on that. :)

I am doing well. I had my OB physical last week and passed with flying colors. :) I was able to hear the baby's heartbeat with the doppler, so that was exciting and reassuring, even though I had just had an u/s earlier in the week at the infertility doc's office. That was our last appointment with him....we have officially graduated to regular OB patient status. I just hope it stays that way. The midwife I saw (not my regular doc) wanted to keep a closer eye on me early on because of the blood thinner I am on, so instead of going back at 16 weeks, I get to go back at 14 weeks, which is next Friday. And, crazy as it sounds, especially since it's so very early, I think I may have acutally felt the baby move a couple of times. I'm not quite ready for maternity clothes yet...my time is coming soon though, I think....but I did dig out one of my maternity bras from last time and am so much more comfortable now! I no longer feel like the girls are being cinched up to my chin. According to my scale at home, I've gained about 4 pounds. Not too bad, I don't think, especially since one of the things I've been craving is Chips Deluxe cookies! That seems to be passing now though.

I think that's about all from here right now.

Today I had my first official OB appointment. It was just supposed to be the "in take" appointment where we meet with the OB coordinator and go over medical history and all that jazz, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they were going to squeeze me in for and ultrasound as well. This practice is pretty busy, so it was kind of difficult to get this appt and my physical scheduled and the last I knew they were still working on an ultrasound appointment. Everything looked real good. I'm 11 weeks 1 day and baby was measuring 11 weeks 4 days, so that was good. We were able to get a look at the spine, and it appears that it is fine. But it is still really early and didn't get the best look, so we'll have to wait until we see the perinatologist before we can say for sure that everything is ok. The rest of the appointment went well. We covered some of the specifics of Alison's surgery, went over my medical history, etc. Then I had to run over to the lab, which was conveniently right next door, to have blood drawn.

Overall, I've been feeling pretty crummy for the last few weeks. I think things are starting to get a little better. I felt pretty awful yesterday. I thought I was in for it this morning because I didn't sleep very well last night....tossed and turned for a couple of hours after I went to bed, then a thunderstorm woke Alison up so she was in bed with me, and not sleeping, for a couple of hours.....but I acutally felt ok this morning. We are going to Cedar Point tomorrow, and have to leave really early, so I'm going to bed early and praying we don't have another thunderstorm tonight!

Well, our first attempt at naked potty training isn't going so well. It's partly my fault....she was walking around putzing like crazy and I should have made her go sit on the potty. Instead, she ran around until it was too late and then pooped her way down the hall (which -- fortunately or unfortunately, I'm not sure which -- is carpeted). I guess she was trying to make it to the bathroom. The good news? She's not constipated anymore. Unfortunately it made for one disgusting mess to clean up. Thank goodness for my Spotlifter. Hopefully I did a good enough job that there won't be any tell-tale spots when the carpet dries.

Here's Alison making our official announcement

My daughter is so sweet. Yesterday, I was sick as a dog.....not morning sickness but some gastrointestinal bug. Kevin took the day off to take care of Alison since the only thing that I could get out of bed for was a run to the bathroom. He kept her away from our bedroom most of the day, because we didn't want to risk her getting sick, too, but he did let her come and stand in the doorway a few times so she could say hi. At one of those visits he told her, again, that mommy was sick and she said she was going to go get some medicine so mommy would feel better. I almost cried. Later in the day, while Kevin was making the two of them some supper, she got ahold of some sticky tabs that I had been using for marking pages and brought one to me. She said she had a band-aid for me and it would make me feel better. So she came in and stuck it on my hand and told me that now I would feel better.

Fortunately, whatever it was was only a 24 hour thing because I'm feeling much better today.

So what's been going on in my life this last week?

Well, the three of us headed down to Cincinnati to get together with my two best friends from college and their husbands. Kevin and Alison had a good time. I, on the other hand, spent most of the weekend about thisclose to praying to the porcelain goddess. Whether it was something I ate or whether it was pregnancy related, I don't know, but I'm feeling much better today. In addition to that, I nearly had a heart attack Saturday morning because I was spotting a little bit. It wasn't a lot, and happened a couple more times that day and once Sunday morning and has stopped. I had another ultrasound today anyway, so I figured there wasn't too much point in worrying about it, since there was nothing I could do about it besides rest, which I was doing anyway since I was sick.

So we had the ultrasound was this morning and I was relieved to see that everything is fine. We have a nice strong heartbeat and everything looks good. According to the measurements, I have a due date of December 29, which is only 2 days off from what I came up with when I used one of the online due date predictors. However, because of Alison's fetal surgery, we'll be delivering at 37 weeks, which will be in the first (full) week of December.

We had a big question about Alison's ability to potty trained answered this morning. Because of the doctor's appointment, I had to get her up a little early. Due to the excitement of the weekend and the messed up schedule it caused, she was still sound asleep. Once she was finally awake, I took her to the bathroom and discovered that her diaper was still completely dry! So she has the ability to go 10 1/2 hours without peeing (actually more than that, since the last time she went was before her bath). That's something we've never been sure about, since she's always wet when we get her up. But a lot of the time she's been awake and playing in her crib for a while before we get her up, which I'm sure is the reason why she's wet. So now we won't have to wait until her next round of urodynamics tests to see if we've been potty training in vain.

Just wanted to give a little bit of an update. We had our first ultrasound today. Everything looks good so far....we confirmed that we are having a singleton, which I suspected based on what my hcg levels were doing, that it is in the right place, and there is a nice yolk sac. :) Since I am not quite 6 weeks yet, it was too early for a heartbeat, but if all continues to go well, it should be there next week. I'm feeling pretty good, so far. One of my meds makes me a little queasy at times, but other than that, I'm mostly just tired. It seems that, most days, I'm passed out on the couch by 3:00 or so. It's a good thing that Alison naps until 4:00!

I talked to my mom today and she told me she almost blew my Father's Day surprise for my dad. My brother's birthday is Friday and for his birthday present, I scanned some slides of him as a fairly newborn that my dad found last year with the intention of printing them out and putting them in a small baby album. His real baby album has been misplaced, leading to a family joke that he is adopted. Anyway, my mom said something to my dad about what I had done and he zeroed right in on the "scanned slides" part of the story. "They can scan slides?" He said. My mom quickly covered by saying that Kevin had done it at work and it was a real PITA to do, because she knew that otherwise he would be headed downstairs to look for his slides. And the problem with that is that his slides are in my office, being scanned and eventually made into a slideshow for him for Father's Day. She thinks she threw him off the trail, but just in case will move stuff around in the storage room so it won't be quite so obvious they're gone.

We've kind of slacked off on the potty training around here. There are a couple of reasons for it. Alison was pretty sick for the better part of a week, and we got out of the routine and I've been too tired to fight with her about it. We had her in underwear last Thursday and she was doing great. We thought we were home free regarding poop since she had pooped (in the potty I might add) at lunchtime. Hah! As per our Thursday night ritual, we were watching Beauty and the Beast. She got real squirmy towards the end of the movie, so that must have been when she pooped because otherwise she will lay on her pillow and not move until the movie is over. Kevin got her cleaned up and was dealing with the poopy underwear and I was filling up the bathtub. She was running around the living room naked. The next thing we know she came flying into the bathroom and grabbed the potty seat, shoving it at Kevin to put it back on the toilet. She had to go, and she had to go bad! Unfortunately, Kevin wasn't fast enough and she tinkled on the floor a little bit before he ended up just holding her over the toilet. If it ever gets warmer here (a week ago we had 4 inches of snow again) I think I'm going to try ditching the twisters for a week or so and seeing if going naked while we're at home will finally help everything to click.

I think that's about it from here.

I've been keeping this in a word program for the last few weeks, but now it's time to post it.

April 7

There are only a few people who know what we’ve been going through for the past couple of weeks....my parents, because they’re helping pay for it, and one of my friends, because I had to explain why we couldn’t get together for a weekend that we were planning to do, our next door neighbors, because we needed a babysitter and Alison’s physical therapist, because it came up in converstaion about PT appointments today. I’m not even going to post this to my blog until all is said and done. We’re doing in vitro again.

After the embryo transfer failed, my doctor said there was no medical reason not to try one more time, a full cycle and an embryo transfer, if necessary. Beyond that, he felt it would be best to call it quits. He was concerned about my ovarian reserve and felt if we were going to try again, we should do it soon, not immediately, but in the next few months. We had already come to grips with the fact that, after the full cycle and embryo transfer we had already done, we couldn’t afford to do it again. My parents offered to help us out if we really wanted to try it again. Kevin wasn’t real thrilled with the idea of borrowing money from my parents, but he wanted to try again. I was kind of on the fence, having resigned myself to being done, but agreed.

We’ve got some really whacked out insurance right now. The health insurance has a $2500 lifetime infertility coverage. While it’s really peanuts when it comes to something like in vitro, it’s better than the zero coverage they provided before. The presciption plan, a contract that is negotiated seperately, no longer covers any meds for infertility treatment....not even cheap stuff like clomid. So we were looking at an easy $5000 just for meds. After explaining this, the doc didn’t even miss a beat when advising us to get our meds from Europe. Which is what we did. Fortunately, on our last full cycle, I needed a couple of more days of drugs so had refilled my scripts and had almost a half cycle worth of meds left over. While the doctor’s office couldn’t tell us who to go to to get the scripts filled, they could write them for us. We found a reputable company, based out of England, and were able to get the rest of the meds we needed for a 10 day stim cycle for less than $700. They really were great. They guaranteed delivery in 6-10 days and the stuff arrived on the 10th day. As it turned out, I needed to stim for an extra day and a half, so I was 18 amps short. Doc said I could get by with 12 amps, and we were able to figure out a way to pay for it. They were more expensive than the 52 amps we ordered from London!!!

Tuesday was our retrieval. True to form, they had a very hard time starting my IV. The nurse tried twice on my hand, and had it started, but it wasn’t dripping very well, so the anesthesiologist came in to give it another try. He started a good line up in my bicep area. Needless to say, I’ve got two huge bruises, but at least they didn’t mess up my reliable blood drawing spot. Anyway, they were able to get 20 eggs!!! I only had 20 eggs one other time, the cycle that produced the batch of embryos that Alison came from. No wonder I gained 8 pounds in a week! I know some of that was poor eating over the Easter holiday weekend, but I knew I hadn’t eaten enough to gain 8 pounds, especially since I had made use of my dad’s new treadmill while we were there. I guess having 20 20+ mm follicles on my ovaries is going to add some weight. :) We got our fertilization report Wednesday. Out of the 20 eggs, 2 degenerated. They did ICSI on 18 and 16 fertlized. Doctor wants to do a 5 day (blastocyst) transfer instead of a 3 day transfer. Well, that’s great, but it’s also an additional $1155 that we don’t exactly have lying around. It also messed up our childcare plans. My mom had come up Sunday to stay with us and watch Alison for the week, including some of the time that I would have to be off my feet after the transfer, which we thought was going to be on Friday, so Kevin wouldn’t have to take any more time off than what was necessary to go to the appointments. After we got the results and the word that we’re doing a blast transfer, my mom called her boss to see if she could get on the schedule for Thursday and take Monday off instead (Friday and Tuesday are her days off when she works the weekend, which she has to do this weekend). She left last night after dinner, getting home around 11, I think, and went to work this morning. She’ll be back on Sunday night. That left us without a sitter for Sunday in the day time. We could take Alison with us, and have done it before, but it’s a hassle. Thank goodness for neighbors that adore Alison and love to watch her if we need them and they are available (Melissa won’t even let us pay her, but we do pay her neice). That just left finding a sub for our Sunday school class. It took 2 calls, the couple we split with is working in the nursery this week, but we got somebody. Whew!! As for the money, The Bank of Mom&Dad was open and my mom left us with a check before she went home Wednesday, so we’re all set there. It’s a good thing, too, because today we got a call that we need to pay the extra by tomorrow, since there won’t be anyone at the office on Sunday who can handle the money. So that means my free morning will now be taken up with a trip to the doctor’s office. Oh well.

April 8

Well, we’re all paid up now. And luckily, they were able to give us our transfer time while we were there, so now waiting around for a phone call all afternoon. Sunday morning at 10:00 is T-time. :) We have to be there at 9:30 so they can turn me into a human pincushioin again (translated -- start and IV). I plan to load up on the fluids before midnight tomorrow, so hopefully I won’t be quite so dehydrated and it won’t be so difficult. All that’s left to do right now is let the neighbors know we need someone here by 7:30 and make sure we have a schedule and eveyrthing they need for Alison ready before we leave.

April 10

Today was our transfer. As with the retrieval, it took two tries to start the stupid IV, and this time I ended up with it on the palm side of my left wrist. Things went well. We transfered 2 blastocyst embryos. We have more that are still growing, so we’ll see what happens with them. My mom will be back this evening to help with Alison.


April 11

Got the results of the blood they drew yesterday. My levels are holding well. That’s encouraging. I go in for more blood test on Friday. It feels really weird to be banished to the couch while my mom is here doing everything for Alison. She’s cracking me up, though, because I left a very explicit schedule for our babysitter yesterday and she’s making a big production out of following the schedule. Moms.....what are you going to do with them. :)

April 13

We got information regarding the rest of our embryos today. We have 7 that are now frozen. That's kind of a relief. If this doesn't work, in theory we still have at least one more try, maybe 2 or possibly even 3, depending on how many the doctor would recommend thawing for each attempt.

April 15

Got blood drawn this morning. So far, so good. My progesterone was down by half, but Estrodiol is still up over 1000. That’s good news for me. I go back on Monday for more bloodwork. That’s when I expect the Estrodiol to drop (as has been the pattern in the past). I’m so glad to be off sofa arrest. The weather has been nice, so we’ve been out walking again.

April 18

Well, I made it in for bloodwork this morning, despite the weekend from hell. Alison was in the hospital for dehydration due to vomiting, which was most likely casused by Rotavirus, and therefore, so was I. She was discharged late this afternoon. I had to call in for my test results today, since we didn’t know where I’d be this afternoon. They were good. My progesterone was back up a little bit and my Estrodiol, while down, was still over 800. That’s huge for me. Generally, by this point, it has dropped down to 400 or less. I’m trying not to read anything into it, but I can’t help but be a little optimistic. Back for more bloodwork on Friday

April 22

We had to do some schedule juggling so Kevin could be home to watch Alison, because her virus landed on me yesterday and I don’t think I could get both of us to the doctor’s office in time for bloodwork this morning. She needs the sleep anyway. I got the results this afternoon. I AM PREGNANT!!!!!!!

I’m still shaking as I type this. My hcg level is 264, Estrodiol is over 1000 again and progesterone is back over 100. I go back in Monday for more bloodwork. I guess this would explain why I’ve been feeling queasy in the evenings for the past week. I was chalking it up to sleep deprivation because Alison was sick.....guess not!

Aarrrrrgggg!!

We've been making a little potty training progress. (Yes, we're back to potty training entries.....sorry). Alison has been wearing underwear again. Yesterday she was dry the whole evening and today she was dry the whole day (except for nap, when she wore a diaper). Unfortunately, she pooped in her underwear once last night and twice today. And now I'm not quite sure what to do. I yelled at her after the second time tonight, which was probably not the right thing to do, but she pooped not 10 minutes after having been in the bathroom to tinkle and she lied to me about it when I asked her if she had done it, so I was a bit exasperated. Before she went to bed tonight, we had a little chat about it. She has agreed that she won't poop in her underwear anymore and that she will tell us if she needs to go. I guess we'll see how that goes tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath. She just doesn't care if she is sitting in a poopy diaper or poopy underwear. She doesn't want to interrupt what she is doing to go to the bathroom. And when she does go she doesn't want to sit there any longer than it takes to tinkle. Once she's done that, she's done. We're going to need a lot more underwear before this battle is over. And I see a lot of extra loads of laundry in my future, too. :(

So were riding in the car tonight, on our way to church for a game night with our fellowship group, and we passed the grocery store. Alison says, "there's an A." Ok, there's an "A." So I ask her if she can spell her name -- we'd been kind of working on that a little while ago, not seriously, just for the heck of it. She says "A-L-S-O, what's that spell?" And I said, "well, that spells also. Can you spell Alison?" And she starts again "A-L-I-S-O-N, Alison." I was impressed.

Poor Alison.

Thursday after PT, we went to the mall to bum around for a while. No big deal. We had fun. We were heading back from Penney's towards the little motorized rides, because I had promised she could ride a couple, when I realized it had been a while since we'd been to the bathroom and it would probably be a good idea to at least try. So we stopped. We used the handicapped stall (sorry to those of you who think able bodied people shouldn't use them, but the regular ones don't accomodate strollers, and technically, one of us was handicapped). I pulled out the little fold up potty seat we have and put it on the toilet. Then I got Alison out of all of her gear, since she was wearing her twisters, and ready to get on the potty. As I attempted to place her on the seat, she bumped it, pushing it back, and it fell, and then she almost fell, right into the toilet. I stood her back on the floor, grabbed the potty seat out of the toilet and started drying it off with toilet paper, all the while praying that she wouldn't just decide to pee while standing there (since she had still been dry when this adventure started) because I didn't have any other clothes to put on her. Memo to self -- it might be time to start thinking about packing an extra set of clothes, just in case. It took two more tries to finally get her on the seat, one of those tries nearly resulting in another dip in the toilet for the potty seat, but we did it, and so did she. Thank goodness. At least it didn't traumatize her too badly. She's still willing to sit on the potty, though she is a little afraid she's going to lose her seat, even at home.

I may have been mean mom last night when I kept taking Alison inside because she wouldn’t ride her tricycle, but I think I redeemed myself this morning. Yesterday, it got real cloudy and looked like it might rain while we were having lunch and I told Alison that if it did rain I would let her wear her “Suzy Season” coat and take her out to splash in the puddles after her nap. Well, it didn’t rain and we went for a walk instead.

That brings us to this morning. It was a cool and cloudy morning. While looking out the window, Alison noticed that it was raining but said nothing more about it. But I decided that we would go out and splash in the puddles. After her snack and her favorite tv program, and while she was sitting on the potty, I told her we were going to do something special. She started trying to guess what it might be.....crayons, painting with a paintbrush, finger painting, playing downstairs, anything she could come up with, I think. She was very excited when I grabbed her raincoat and told her we were going outside.

Because it was still raining, and I didn’t have a raincoat, I grabbed my umbrella and we headed for the biggest puddle in the driveway. She splashed around a little bit and then decided she wanted to hold the umbrella. So I gave it to her and grabbed Kevin’s golf umbrella and we went back to splashing in the puddles. Then we took a walk to our neighbors’ (two houses down) in search of more puddles. I was kicking myself for not having a camera handy --or a husband with a camera handy-- because Alison looked so cute when she periodically peeked out from under an umbrella that was really too big for her, and when she wasn’t peeking she reminded me of the dancing mushrooms from Fantasia. Even though she did okay with a big umbrella, now on my list of things to pick up for her, in addition to some “slop around in the mud and puddles” boots, is a little umbrella of her very own, one that will be a little easier for her to manage, so that we can do this again sometime.

Boy, we had a pretty good morning, a half way decent afternoon, but we really had a crappy evening around here today. The weather was wonderful.....sunny and low 60s, so Alison and I went for a walk. That was nice. Since the snow is mostly melted now, I noticed quite a bit of dog poop in the backyard that needed to be picked up. That was Kevin’s job after supper. I knew that Alison was going to want to go out, too, so I told her I would take her out to practice riding her tricycle on the driveway. Riding a tricycle is one thing she does at PT, and since we havne’t had PT because of spring break this week, I figured it would do her some good. So we had a compromise....she got to go outside, which she wanted to do, and she did some PT, which I wanted her to do. The deal was that she would ride to the end of the driveway and back. Unfortunately, about 2/3 of the way down the driveway she was more interested in watching what the kids across the street were doing. I turned her around and headed her back towards the garage. She was more interested in what the little dog down the block was doing. I finally told her she could either peddle her tricycle or go back inside. She wouldn’t peddle anymore, so I picked her up and took her back inside. Was she ever mad! She threw a rip roaring temper tantrum, so I sent her to her room until she was done. She came back out and said that she was ready to go back outside. I told her we could only go outside if she would practice peddling her tricycle. She said ok, so we went out to try it again. Again, she peddled a short way down the driveway and decided she was done. Again I told her she could peddle the tricycle or go back inside. Again she refused to peddle anymore, so again I picked her up and took her back inside. Again with the tantrum and again she was sent to her room until she could get herself under control.

I can imagine some people --including the couple out for a walk who passed our house while I was trying to get Alison to peddle-- are thinking I’m some kind of hard ass or something, but we’re having a real problem around here with if you do this then you can do this, but if you don’t, you can’t. Miss Alison is very stubborn, and while it’s good in some respects, it’s time really time for her to realize that she can’t have her way all the time. So we’re having a lot of tantrums around here.

We tried something new at our house today. Well, it was new for us, anyway. I've been meaning to do it for a while, but today I finally pulled out the paints and Alison did some finger painting. She didn't paint for very long, but I think she enjoyed it. She's such a prissy little girl when it comes to having messy stuff on her hands, but she didn't even hesitate to stick her fingers into the paint. If it got anywhere other than her fingertips, like further down her fingers or on the palm of her hand, she got a little upset, but I was able to convince her to just smear it onto the paper. I made one small contribution to the picture, a little blob of yellow that we're calling the sun. :)

We're definitely going to do this again soon, but first I think I need to buy some new paints. The ones we used today I bought when my oldest nephew was 2. He's now 6 1/2! And it would be helpful if we could fix the sink in our rec room so that we can wash hands there instead of hanging over the utility sink in the laundry room. I'll have to get Kevin working on that. :)

At the risk of this seeming like it's becoming Alison's potty training page, I'm once again going to write about our progress. I'm sure the few readers I have are really going to get tired of entries about potty training, but what can I say? She's our first child, and she's a child that is not supposed to be able to do this on her own. When she was born we were still envisioning a complicated system of catheterization and enemas or even surgeries to get her socially continent. So this is proving to be a pretty big deal for us.

Anyway, she had a pretty good day. Once we got home from our appointment this morning, which resulted in an accident, she was dry the whole rest of the day. She was even in underwear for over three hours tonight with no accidents....until just before it was time for bath. Then she pooped in her underwear. To her credit, she did tell us. Unfortunately she told us as she walked across the room in that stance that indicates someone has a load in their pants. She seems like she's starting to realize what's going on, and that's good. I would like to try and get a more routine bowel program established, and I know what we need to try and do, but she is not willing to cooperate. Hopefully over the next few months she'll get to a point where we can explain, and she will understand, what we need to do and why we need to do it.

It's got to be some sort of progress, right?

Alison has been doing pretty well at staying dry in her diapers. She's had some accidents here and there, but overall, I think she's doing pretty well. I finally found some training pants small enough to fit her, and decided to give them a try Monday since we were going to be home all night and if there were any accidents it wouldn't be a big deal. Things were going great.....she was keeping them dry....until she pooped in them. So we got her all cleaned up, put her back in a diaper and talked about how she has to keep her underwear dry and clean if she's going to wear them. Tuesday night, we tried it again. She peed so much that she was soaked clear down to her shoes and socks. Yesterday I wasn't even going to attempt underwear again, but she insisted...actually refused to wear a diaper and screamed at me to put underwear on her. So I gave it another go. She lasted about two hours before she went running to her dad saying she had pooped. It turned out that she had not pooped, had actually wet her pants again. This was good news and bad news. The bad news was that she had the accident. The good news? That she realized she had done it. And that she stopped herself before she soaked herself like she did on Tuesday and was able to finish up on the potty. She's been demanding underwear again today. I put her off because we had a busy morning today, and more importantly, because I didn't have any more underwear for her! So I did the laundry today, the underwear is clean, and we'll give it a try again tonight.

Here's my funny for the day.

Alison is potty training and when she actually does something on the potty, we clap and cheer for her. This morning, I had an appointment and had to use the bathroom before hand. So Alison and I were in there together, she sitting in her stroller and me taking care of business. Just as I finished, Alison starts clapping and cheering saying "you went tinkle on the potty!" Fortunately, it was an individual restroom and not one with a bunch of stalls!

I'm working on a project I started over a year ago. I "stole" (my mom knows I have them, and so does my uncle) all the slides that my dad had from my grandparents with the intention of scanning them and putting them on DVD and giving them to my dad as a gift -- Father's Day, his birthday, Christmas, whichever was closest when I got them done. A lot of the slides are of run-of-the-mill stuff....weddings, short vacations, visits to my dad in college, stuff like that.... but there are also slides of the family's trip to Alaska, which is something my dad wants to do again, and also their cross-country trip to California. Last night I got the slides of these two trips together and organized (to the best of my ability) and am going to work my way through them first. I hope to get them done by Father's Day. Then my dad will know I have the slides and can help me organize the rest of them. :)

The scanning is a slow process. It's taken me about and hour and a half, over the course of two nights, to scan just 32 slides. That's almost one cartridge. I've got 4 more cartridges of Alaska to do and 8 of California to do. It's going to take a long time! But, it's been fun to look at the slides I have finished. They are almost 50 years old. It's not the first time I have seen them, but it's been about 20 years since I last saw them. I remember it vividly. My mom and dad, my brother and I, my aunt and uncle, and my cousins were all at my grandmother's and she insisted that we look at the slides. She also insisted on watching a tv program with Tennessee Ernie Ford. Some of the slides were quite funny to us kids, and my grandmother got upset with us for laughing and being louder than the tv.

Tonight, one of the slides I scanned was of my grandfather, my uncle and my dad and two people I don't know. What struck me was how much my brother looked like my dad at that age. If I hadn't known better, I would have sworn that someone messed around with the picture and put my brother's head on my dad's body. I was also struck by how much my dad now looks like my grandfather did then. I think it's going to be fun to go through the rest of these slides. I'm glad I have the opportunity to do it, because I would hate for these images to be lost, which could certainly have happened if they just stayed in my parents' basement until it was time for my brother and I to clear out the house after my parents are gone.

I started this yesterday, but didn't get it finished until this afternoon.

Wow, time sure does fly. Two years ago, at this time, I was in my fourth hour of sitting in the recovery room with Alison after her surgery to place a VP shunt. I was exhausted, having been up since 3 in the morning, but to wired to rest. That was a scary time for us. We had been really hoping that Alison wouldn’t need the shunt. We knew it was a long shot, as the ventricles in her brain never stabilized in utero even after fetal surgery, they continued to gow. A long talk with Alison’s SB doctor eased a lot of our fears. He even showed us a shunt that he “just happened to have” in his pocket. It also helped that our neurosurgeon felt she was in the “most successful outcome” category of shunt patients, the ones who get their shunt and never have a problem with it.

So my little girl, 7 months and 2 days old, whose hair was just starting to grow back in, went off to surgery and came out with just about half her head shaved, an inch and a half long incisions behind her right ear held closed with staples that made it look like a zipper, an IV on the left side of her head held in with enough tape to secure Texas (according to her nurse), and a smaller incision on her stomach. To keep her from pulling on either the IV or the dressing over the shunt, she had a bunch of gauze wrapped around her head, like a little headband of sorts. She was not very happy, and wanted to be held most of the time (and who could blame her), but we were able to control her pain with Tylenol and Motrin. She, and I, spent the night in the hospital and were given the ok to go home the next afternoon, about 2 days earlier than I was expecting.

Here's a couple of pictures taken a few weeks after the surgery. You can sort of see a tiny bit of stubble starting to come in where her head was shaved.

And now, here we are two years later. Alison has not had any problems with her shunt, despite scaring me a little bit earlier this week. We are hopeful that she will continue to be problem free.

I like to read, and I read a lot. But I wouldn’t exactly say that I am well read (well-read?). Mysteries are my favorites to read and I’ve pretty much stuck with that genre. I have stepped outside the it to read the Harry Potter books, though. :) A discussion of books on a message board I post on spurred me to try and broaden my literary horizons. On one of my trips to the library with Alison (for Story Time), I decided to check out the “reading lists” they have available in the grown-up section and see if they still had the list of classic literature. It took a little searching, not easy with a toddler in tow, but they still had it. I had tried to read off this list several years ago, but got bogged down in the trying to get through the works of Homer, Dante, Machiavelli, Plato and Sophocles. This time I decided to skip them and start with the more “modern” books. I will try and get back to the others at a later time, because I think I really should read them at some point.

There are 80 books on the part of the list I am working from. Sadly, the only ones I had already read before tackling the list were Gone With the Wind and The Grapes of Wrath. To that I can now add Pride and Prejudice, Pere Goriot, Jane Eyre, and part of Wuthering Heights (I didn’t have time to finish it and forgot about renewing it....it wasn’t there the last time I went to the library, so I’m still waiting to finish it). I’m reading Looking Backward right now and Way of All Flesh is next in the stack. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed the books I’ve read. Pere Goriot was a little awkward to read, due to it being translated from French, I think, but I enjoyed the overall story. I’ve been having a little trouble getting in to Looking Backward, but it’s getting better. My reading time is the 45 minutes between when I finish putting Alison to bed and when I go to bed myself, and I’ve been pooping out earlier than usual this last week, which is affecting my concentration when I read. I think that’s why I’m having trouble getting in to the book, because I really am finding the story interesting.

I can see some books further on down the list that I probably wouldn’t choose to read on my own, but I’m going to read them anyway, and there are some that I’m looking forward reading. I think this is going to be a good challenge for me.