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.

I'd like to thank my daughter for giving me about a hundred more gray hairs today and making me sound like an idiot to our ped's nurse. Alison threw a massive temper tantrum this morning, and got so worked up and out of control that she was actually sweating! It didn't last more than a few minutes (less than 5, actually), but when I finally got her calmed down, she was lethargic and rather out of it....very un-Alison like behavior. She tried to eat breakfast and several times she almost went to sleep sitting up. I gave up on breakfast and asked her if she wanted to go lay down on my bed while I got dressed. She wanted to lay down on the bed in her room, so I put her up there and covered her up with her blanket. And she just layed there. That is very unlike my daughter. After I got dressed, I called the ped because, even though I had a gut feeling we weren't dealing with a shunt problem, I still wanted to talk to someone about it. After I called, she threw up. That made me more concerned.....lethargy and vomitting often equals shunt failure. She did perk up a little bit more after that, and was able to keep water down, but still spent the rest of the morning just laying on the floor watching tv. This was still very unlike my daughter. She doesn't ever just lay around on the floor (unless she's watching Beauty and the Beast, and we weren't). I tried to get her to drink some water, and she would drink a little here and there, so I was happy. After her last program was over, she wanted to go in her room and rock, so we did. She also drank some more water and started to perk up a bit more and agreed to try and eat a little bit of toast. Then Kevin came home. He took her to make toast. By the time the ped's office called back, she was sitting on the kitchen counter next to him chattering away and helping him put the silverware away. After I got off the phone with the nurse, being reassured that it probably was nothing and the doc would call me back if he thought it was anything to be concerned about, Alison sat and ate a whole piece of toast, several bites of my cottage cheese (which she demanded to eat) and drank several ounces of water and Kool Aide. It just took Kevin almost half an hour to get her settled down for a nap.

I'm not the kind of mom who calls the ped for every little cough and sniffle. Prior to today, I have made 2 sick calls, once when she was about 3 months old and kept throwing up (worried about hydrocephalus getting worse, since she wasn't shunted yet), and last year when we were out of town she ended up with pneumonia. And now I really feel stupid because I called for something that was really nothing and if I had just waited it out, I would have known this.

UGH!!!! Sickness has invaded my house again!! It seems to be the same thing Alison had at the beginning of February. She's been stuffy and coughing, and today she puked up the lunch it took us forever to cajole her into eating in the first place. :( She doesn't seem to have a fever this time, but she's still alternating between perky (she was fine at PT this morning) and miserable. Hopefully she'll feel a little better after her nap. Wish I could have one. Last night I was up with her 5 times....at 11:30, again at midnight and 3 times between 4 and 5 am. Kevin got up with her once after that. He's complaining of swollen glands, so I guess he feels he needs to be pitied because he's sick again. Not going to happen. For the past 4 or 5 nights he's been swearing he's going to bed early, and hasn't done it, so it's his own darn fault that he's worn down and sick again. I think I'm going to escape this evening and get a much needed haircut. It's got to be more relaxing than staying here!

I think we may be on the road to being potty trained here! Alison stayed dry all day, at least when she was awake. She was a little wet when she woke up from her nap, but we're not expecting her to be dry while sleeping immediately. We started out taking her to the potty every half hour (and that is a complete pain in the ass when she's wearing her twisters), but today she went as long as an hour in between potty visits and stayed dry. I think we'll keep up the half hour or hour trips to the potty for now, since we aren't real sure what her sensation is. Hopefully we'll get that figured out soon. Now we need to work on pooping on the potty. We need to try and get a bowel program going, getting her body "trained" to go at the same time every day. That's going to be tough because she doesn't like to pay attention to the matter at hand and do any practical pushing to get things moving. In time, hopefully we'll get things worked out. I'm just thrilled that we may be seeing an end to diapers in our future, and it looks like we're going to be able to do it without cathing!

Editing to add that this morning (Monday) Alison went 2 1/2 hours with a dry diaper. Yay!! Unfortunately, she ended up peeing in it sometime during PT. :( Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I like to bake. I'm sure it stems from all the times I made cookies and stuff with my mom as a kid. I don't bake very often, but when I do, I tend to go all out. I make dozens and dozens of cookies at Christmas. I make my husband his favorite dessert for his birthday. I make stuff to send to my niece and nephews at various times throughout the year. I even got involved in one of those deals where I get a new packet of cookie recipes every three or four weeks, kind of like Columbia House or a book club. This year, my BIL and nephew's Christmas presents got delayed in the mail (they did finally arrive, but not until after New Year's). My BIL was not in the least concerned about not receiving their gifts but he was bummed about not getting any cookies! Who knew?!?

So here it is, almost Easter, and I'm baking again. I got a whole bunch of really cute Easter cookie recipes from the cookie club, and I picked a few of the easier ones out to make and send to my niece and nephews, in lieu of making up Easter baskets this year. And now I have a helper. She's about 3 feet tall and into everything.

It's exasperating at times, especially when we're making things for other people, but in the end I think it's worth the aggrivation. I hope when she's all grown up and a mom herself, she'll remember us making cookies and think it's a good thing to do with her own kid(s).