Well, we are back from our Thanksgiving weekend at my parents'. Actually, we were back yesterday, but yesterday was catch-up day, not writing day. The visiting part of the weekend was great. Getting there and getting back home was a nightmare.

To start with, we had snow here in Michigan last Wednesday. It started around 2:00 at my house, and by the time we were ready to leave, at 4:45, we had at least two inches on the ground. That didn't look good. The good news was that it was supposed to be increasingly warmer the further south we went. The bad news was we had about 90 miles of snow to get through first. Normally it takes us about 15 minutes to get from our house to I-75. This day it took us more than half an hour. Once we got to 75, the road was better, but not great. We went through pockets of light snow and pockets of really heavy snow. By 6:30 (now 45 minutes behind schedule) we were just a few miles north of the I-75/US23 split and we stopped to grab something to eat. The snow was starting to get lighter and the roads were not as snow covered, but it was still slow going. We were finally pretty much in the clear by about the time we got to the Ann Arbor area. From there on, the trip was pretty smooth. We still didn't arrive at my parents' until nearly 11:00, way past one little girl's bedtime. It was 11:30 by the time she finally got to bed, and amazingly enough, she was up before 8:00 the next morning.

Thanksgiving Day was nice. One of my friends from college and her new husband, who lives in Cincinnati and whose mom lives in Brecksville, stopped by to visit for a little bit on their way to her mom's. It was good to see them. The last time we saw them was at their wedding, and we (obviously) didn't get to spend much time with them. Shortly before they left, my dad arrived home with my grandma. While I was glad that we were actually able to pry her out of her house for something other than a doctor's appointment or her hair appointment, it was not entirely pleasant to have her there. I feel bad for my mom and all that she has to deal with on a daily basis with my grandma. That in itself could fill an entire entry.

Friday was a pretty laid back day. My mom and brother had to work, so we basically just hung out with my dad for most of the day. When my brother got home from work he headed out for his property to go hunting. To my mom's dismay, he actually came home with a deer. He was pretty excited because, in addition to being an 8 point buck, it was his first deer that he got with a bow (and arrow). He was even more tickled about it because he had only been sitting out there for 5 minutes and had been sitting in the seat of his buddy's dad, who wasn't able to be there, and he knew that buddy's dad was going to be mad.

On Saturday, Kevin and Paul went out to take some pictures of the deer before Paul got it ready to be processed. Alison went out to see the deer to and was thrilled with it. She even petted it, which is kind of gross to me, but what does she know, she's only 2. :) Every now and then during the rest of our visit she would go over to the door to the deck or get up on the chair by the window and look out to try and see Uncle Paul's "reindeer." Luckily it was gone by the time she started doing that, because I think it might have freaked her out to see a skinless deer hanging from the bucket of the tractor.

On Sunday we went to church. Alison had a blast playing in the nursery. She even got to walk around the church a little bit because she was the only child there at the first service. I met her (and Carol) walking down the hall with a donut in her hand when I came down to pick her up. While we were having juice and donuts after church, in walked a friend of mine from high school and her family. It's only the second time in the last 6 years of so that I've seen her. The last time was at her baby shower last year. It was really nice to see her and see the baby. I also got to meet her husband for the first time, too. We chatted a little before they headed up to church. We had a chance to hang out again later because we joined the Lunch Bunch for lunch, which we don't usually do. It was really nice. After lunch Alison took a nap and I snoozed through most of the Browns game before finally getting around to pack.

We finally hit the road at about 4:30. The trip home went great until 5:56. At that point we were on the Ohio Turnpike and were about 4 miles away from the last open rest area on our route (the actual last rest area on our route is closed for reconstruction). We decided to stop there and eat since it would be pushing 7:00 by the time we were off the turnpike and had the chance to stop somewhere else. Unfortunately, at mile marker 104, traffic stopped....completely. An hour and a half later (7:30) we finally made it to the rest area. By that time, Alison had polished of her applesauce, all the Cherrios I had left, and a handful of Teddy Grahms, and was no longer a happy camper. Taking the straw out of her cup and dumping half of it down the front of her probably contributed to the crabbiness, too.

When we finally made it to the rest area, there were cars everywhere. Being trapped on the highway with the next rest area 50 miles away will cause that to happen, I guess. We found "additional parking" areas that we never knew existed. When we got inside, we split up.....Kevin got in line for food and Alison and I headed for the restroom to change a diaper. Of course Alison wanted to walk. Luckily she held my hand the whole time without much fuss. The line for the "family"restroom was way too long, so we headed for the ladies room. That line was even longer. I found an empty bench and figure that was good enough. With the diaper change taken care of, we went back to try and find Kevin. To my surprise, he had already gotten our order in was waiting to pick up the food. Alison and I went off in search of a table. We found one more easily that I thought we would. I didn't even attempt to find a high chair....figured Kevin could do that when he brought the food. The people at the table across from us had one, and they weren't using it, but I didn't want to ask them, since you never know how people are going to be in situations like we were all in. They're either going to be really, really nice or really, really not. Turns out that they were in the nice category because when Kevin went off in search of a highchair they grabbed him and told him to take theirs.

8:15 and we're back on the road. From what we could see out the window, traffic was moving pretty well. That proved to be true when we were back out on the road, at least for about 10 miles. The words "wow, we've actually gone 10 miles in 10 minutes" were no sooner out of my mouth then we were stopped again. Arrggghh!!! The next 10 miles took us about half an hour. Beyond that, it was smooth sailing. Unfortunately we still had about 2 1/2 hours of travel to go.

I had talked to my mom just before we left the rest area and we figured we had about 3 hours before we would be home, so that would be 11:00. At 11:05 my mom called to check on us (probably because she was ready to go to bed). She was very sorry to hear that we were still an hour away from home. I told her about the additional traffic tie-up and told her I would call and let the phone ring twice and hang up when we got home. That way they'd know we were home safely, but they wouldn't have to get up and answer the phone to find out. At 12:05 we pulled into the garage.

Alison, mercifully, slept for about the last 2 1/2 hours of the trip. When it was about her usual bedtime, she started getting cranky so I covered her up with the little receiving blanket we leave in the car and gave her the little pillow she got for being cooperative for the x-ray techs and told her to go to sleep. To my amazement, she did! It was kind of a fitful sleep, probably because, in addition to having a wet shirt she now had wet pants as well. She took the cup, which we filled up for her again at supper, and put it under her leg, which squirted water out of the straw and all over the car seat until I noticed it....when I covered her up again because she got all squirmy and upset. She woke up the second the car pulled into the garage, which I thought was a bad sign, but after I got her diaper changed and got her into her pajamas she wanted to go directly to bed. I obliged and her eyes were closed as soon as I put her down.

All in all, our 4 1/2 hour trip took us 7 1/2 hours. Including our dinner stop, we spent 5 hours on the turnpike instead of 2. I really hope that things are better when we make the same trip at Christmas. I'd hate to think they could be much worse.

Alison was FS4SB surgery #154 at Vanderbilt. She was 22 weeks gestation at the time. Hers was the first of two surgeries scheduled that day. Surgery #155 was Isaiah. He was 24 weeks at the time. We had run in to his parents a few times during the course of our consultations and we had our meeting with the head of Vanderbilt's NICU and our NICU tour together. The doctor basically told us that having FS was going to do nothing for Alison and he wouldn't take the risk. Isaiah's parents were told that the surgery would be of benefit for him. We both made the decision to have the surgery. We didn't see Isaiah's parents again after that tour. I did walk past his mom's hospital room a couple of times when I was doing laps around the floor, but her door was always closed. One of the residents did mention that she was not doing as well in her recovery as I was. That was the last I heard about her or them until earlier this year.

Isaiah's mom came across an entry I had made in another FS baby's guestbook and she e-mailed me. I was thrilled to hear from her because my whole family had often wondered how they were doing. I told her Alison was doing great, much better than we ever thought she would, and directed her to Alison's webpage. She wrote back and said Isaiah was doing good, too, and she would send pictures of him. She never did. I never heard anything more from her. It wasn't until we got back from the FS4SB reunion and joined the mail list that I found out that Isaiah wasn't doing nearly as well as we thought he was. (It was at this time that I finally did see a picture of him in our reunion scrapbook. He's adorable.) As is turns out, he was born just a month after the surgery. He has had many problems with his hydrocephalus requiring lots of shunt revisions and he now actually has two shunts in place. At nearly 2 1/2 years old, he does not sit on his own or crawl. He is unable to say any words or close his mouth. Monday afternoon he underwent Chiari decompression surgery. Because his hindbrain has slid down into the top of the spinal column, his scull is putting pressure on his hindbrain. By removing part of the scull, the hope is that it will relieve the pressure and improve his ability to function "normally."

It's times like these that I really feel schmucky. I've been upset for over a week that Alison, who's only outward signs that there is anything wrong with her is her intoeing right foot, the bump on the back of her head from her shunt, and the scars from her surgery, is going to have to wear a brace on her right leg for a few hours each day. Alison, for whom FS was supposed to do nothing, is as close to a "normal" child as you can get without actually being one. And Isaiah, who had such a great prognosis at the time of surgery, has gone through so much in his short lifetime. It really puts things in perspective.

Two weeks ago I started a big update entry on how things had been going in our in vitro cycle. I never finished it, and I think I'll probably just delete it. The in vitro didn't work. As usual, my doctor is at a complete loss as to why. As he said, we know that my system works (at least to some extent) because we have Alison. The only "good" news to come out of the whole thing is that we have 2 embryos frozen. Today we learned that they are blastocysts, the highest quality you can have. So we have decided to go ahead and try another frozen embryo transfer. The funny thing about it is that it will be almost exactly 3 years since the last one. Will we possibly have the same luck as the last time? Kevin says he feels more optimistic about this cycle than he did the full cycle. I'm not so sure. Of course, I wasn't so sure about the full cycle either, apparently with good reason.

We'll be following almost the exact same protocol as our last FET. I'm starting BCP tonight, to help quiet down my ovaries after having them hyperstimulated. On Dec. 2, I will get an injection of DepoLupron. Then I'll start estrogen and progesterone. We're also going to throw a 5 day course of steroids into the mix and wrap it all up with Lovenox (2x per day, instead of just once) and baby aspirin after the transfer. I think about the only thing that will be different is that we're going to transfer blast embryos and we have to pay for it this time. Last time we got a freebie due to a mix up with our 3rd full cycle. We had paid for assisted hatching of the embryos and, for whatever reason, they did not do it. The only question, aside from will it work or not, is will the embryos survive the thaw. Dr. Shamma feels it's highly unlikely that we won't have at least one to transfer. So here we go.

In other news, we have finally talked to both of Alison's doctors about her foot. Once we get the order from Dr. Craig, the orthopedic surgeon, she will be casted and fit for an AFO. The funny thing about this is that Kevin initially talked to Dr. Hurvitz on Monday to find out what had been decided. He told him he had gone back and forth with Dr. Craig about whether or not she needed it and finally agreed to it. After Kevin and I talked about it, we decided we wanted to know what made him change his mind, since he had been inclined to leave her alone. Kevin called him back and we were waiting to hear back from him. On Friday, we got a call from Dr. Craig saying that Dr. Hurvitz wanted to brace Alison. Ok, whatever. The strange thing about it all is that Dr. Craig said she only needs to wear it for an hour a day. Which leaves me wondering what is the point of having her wear it all. I suppose he might up the amount of time in it after she's worn it for a while, who knows. But, at least he answered some of the other questions we had for Dr. Hurvitz. We were concerned about how putting her in a rigid brace and immobilizing her foot was going to help correct what we've all agreed is a muscle problem. The answer is that it will be an articulating AFO, meaning it will keep her foot straight, but she will still be able to point and flex it. So, in about a month or so, Alison will be in a brace.

I'm trying to get a jump on my holiday preparations, and am not doing a very good job. We need to have all the presents we're sending to our family in Maryland ready by Thanksgiving so we can give them to my brother to take with him when he goes to my aunt and uncle's to go hunting the following weekend (thus saving us some money on shipping). Unfortunately, we have nothing bought/made. I do have ideas, though. I've also managed to get a very small start on my holiday baking. Alison and I made a batch of cookie dough this morning. Unfortunately, I didn't check out how well stocked my baking supplies are before we went to the store yesterday. So instead of whipping up a double batch of dough, we just made a single batch, because I'm just about out of flour. :( Looks like I'm headed to the store tonight.

So that's my life....or something like it, right now.

This racing around in the morning is going to get really old really fast. I had to be at the doctor's office between 8 and 8:45 again this morning for bloodwork and ultrasound. I got a little smarter today, though. I gave Alison her milk to drink in the car (which I had done on Wednesday) and brought half of her breakfast with me so she could eat it while we waited. That way, all she still needed to eat when we got home was her oatmeal. That worked out well. There weren't all that many ladies there this morning, but it still seemed we had to wait forever. We didn't get home until almost 9:30 again. After Alison finisher her breakfast, I vacuumed the house (including the basement) and ran around with a Swiffer duster finishing up the cleaning I didn't get to yesterday.

The ultrasound went well. I've got a couple of more follicles, and the big one is measuring at almost 20 mm. Laurie said she thought I'd probably stim through the weekend, have bloodwork and ultrasound again on Monday and time for prodecure on Wednesday. That would have been fine with me. When she called with my test results in the afternoon, she told us we'd be timing for procedure on Monday. Ack!! All righty then!

Traci and Kevin got her at about 12:45 this afternoon. They had a much better drive today than they did yesterday. I gave them the 50 cent tour and they really liked the house. (Phew! As I said before, I don't know why that was such a big deal to me, but it was.) Traci liked what I did with the bathroom. Our shower curtain has a seashell/underwater jaquard print to it, so I got some seashell stamps and stamped the bathroom walls.

We've pretty much spent the day/evening just hanging out and watching Alison bounce off the walls. It was nice to have someone to keep Alison occupied while Kevin gave me my shot. She does pretty well staying in the living room while he's doing it, but every now and then she'll sneak down the hall and poke her head in the bedroom. While he's not doing anything bad, I just don't think she needs to watch her father jamming a needle in her mother's rear end. After tomorrow night, we get a slight break on the injections. That will be nice.

Oh my gosh, what a long day. We had to be in Ann Arbor for Alison's appointment at 9:30. We left in plenty of time to be there, or so we thought. At 9:00 we were about 10 miles away from our exit off US23 when we suddenly came to a stand-still. The right lane was closed three miles ahead. It took us 25 minutes to go those 3 miles. I called the doctors office at about five after nine to let them know we were stuck in traffic and would get there as soon as we could. We ended up being about 15 minutes late. The appointment itself took most of the morning, running from here to there and lots of waiting. You can read more about it here.

We put Alison down for her nap when we got home and I started my cleaning frenzy. I took about half an hour off to talk to my mom about how things had gone. Traci and Kevin were supposed to have been leaving Nashville at about 8:30 their time (9:30 our time) and arriving at our house around 7:30. I had precious little time to finish up all the picking up and dusting and stuff. Traci called around 5:00 to tell us they were at her parents' (near Dayton) and would be staying there for the night and coming the rest of the way in the morning. Geez!! I could have taken a nap this afternoon instead of killing myself cleaning. Well, at least I'll be able to go to bed early tonight.

Well, all those shots really are doing something. I had bloodwork and ultrasound today. The bloodwork came back fine. The ultrasound showed 10 follicles, one of which is already at 15mm. Wow! Because that follicle is big, it's time to start the Antagon injections. They will keep me from accidentally ovulating on my own, which would really suck. It also means we have to up my Repronex from 5 amps to 6.

I commented to the nurses today that I don't remember being this tired the last time we did this. It's been like early pregnancy without actually being pregnant. We all came to the conclusion that it's because there's a toddler in the mix that wasn't there the last time. I can't just take a nap whenever I feel tired and I can't just sleep till 9 or 10 if I'm still tired when the alarm goes at 7. If we're successful, the fatigue passes quickly because this is a real drag!

I've been finishing up odds and ends of projects this week. I'm thisclose to finally finishing the slipcover for one of our living room chairs (which I started more than 2 years ago). I've got most of the laundry done and the sheets on the guest bed and the guest towels have been washed. All I have left to do tomorrow is dust and run the sweeper. Oh, and take Alison to Ann Arbor for her appointment with the orthopedic surgeon.

My MIL is finally gone. I am so glad. It was not a pleasant visit. For the last week I've been made to feel unwelcome in my own home. And I've also been made to feel that I could not interact with my own child. All this because my MIL lives far away, doesn't get to see Alison very often and wanted to be able to "bond" with her. As a result, my fairly well behaved child is gone and I have a spoiled brat on my hands right now. How on earth did that happen in only a week?

Now the work of getting my house back in order and my daughter back under control begins. We are having company in again on Thursday. My best friend from college and her husband are coming. This is a visit I'm really looking forward to, but am also slightly dreading. They've been to visit us once before, but they've never been to our house. That's where the slight sense of dread is coming in. What are they going to think of our house? I'm not sure why it really matters, but it does. It probably stems from the fact that they built a brand new house a few months after they got married. I've been there twice now, and in reality it's not that much bigger than our house, and they haven't really taken such great care of it. We been working like crazy trying to get odds and ends projects finished up around here before they come. There's still a lot of things I'd like to do, but I think the house is looking pretty good.

Oh well, whether they like the house or not, it's going to be fun having them here. I just hope Alison cooperates. :)

What a busy day. I got myself, Kevin, and Alison up this morning and we all raced around getting ready to head off to the doctor's office. Kevin had the day off because his mom is still here, so he wanted to come with me, since it's probably the only appointment he'll be able to make it to during the stim phase, since he's going to be taking most of next Thursday off when we take Alison to U of M for her appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. I suppose we could have left Alison home with grandma except that 1) she wasn't up yet and 2) Laurie had been disappointed that she hadn't gotten to see Alison when we were there the last time, so I thought we'd take a chance that she'd be there this morning and bring Alison in to see her. Besides, I'll have to bring her by myself a couple of times next week, so having help keeping her occupied this time was nice.

I had to be at the office between 8 and 8:45. There are no set appointments for this, since the nurses are the ones doing everything. It's first come, first served. I was trying to get us there as close to 8 as I could, in the hopes that we wouldn't have to wait too long. We got there at 8:15. Not too bad, but we still had to wait half an hour. They can zip right through the list when it comes to drawing blood, but they get a little backed up when it comes to the ultrasounds. We got home at about 9:30. Since we didn't feed her before we left, Alison wolfed down her breakfast! I'm happy to report that, with a history of being hard to draw, Julie got my blood on the first try without even having to dig around. Hooray! My ultrasound was good, too. My uterine lining was .5 and I had about 6 follicles already. Laurie was tickled to see Alison. She had seen her once before, when she was about 11 weeks old, when I stopped by to donate the unexpired leftover meds that I wanted to clear our of my cabinet. She's still just about the only person who thinks Alison looks like me.

Before we left, I talked to Laurie about the problems we were having getting in the Repronex and she told me that she knew they had it in stock at the Walgreens in Saginaw and at Meijer in Saginaw, so if my Walgreens couldn't get it, they could either get it from the other Walgreens or call the script in to Meijer. Problem solved. She also gave me a refresher course on how to take the meds and explained the new ways Gonal-F is packaged and how to administer them. I went in to pick up the meds they had for me today after Alison went down for her nap, and got home just a few minutes before Laurie called with my test results. Everything looked good, but my E2 was a little high, so instead of 4 amps of Gonal-F and 4 of Repronex, I'm to used 5 and 5. Since I now knew that I had the Gonal-F pen, she talked me through how to use it, and I did my first injection after I got off the phone. The Gonal-F pens are subq injections. Since I did all of my injections intramuscularly last time, I'm to go ahead and try them subq until my next bloodwork and ultrasound (which will be on Wednesday), and if necessary, we can switch to IM. I'm going to like doing them subq for the time being at least. It's one less shot in the rear, and one less shot that Kevin has to give me. He still has to do the Repronex, though. He did his first injection tonight and did just find, despite being very nervous.....it's been 3 years since he's had to do this, you know.

I know it sounds strange, but I swear I can feel the meds working almost as soon as we're done giving the injection. I guess we'll see how they're doing on Wednesday.

I really hate dealing with insurance companies. Dealing with infertility and the treatments that go along with it is stressful enough, but having the insurance company in there mucking things up makes it that much worse. Stimming for in vitro is rather time sensitive. You have to start them by cd 3. My doctor's office called in my prescriptions yesterday, cd 1, and, after Kevin received an e-mail stating that everything was in and approved and he called and checked for sure with the pharmacy, I went in to pick everything up after he got home from work. When I got there, the only thing they had for me was my syringes and my antibiotic. I was told that they had to call for approval on just about everything else and it was going to take a few days to get it straightened out. "A few days!!!!" I said, "I don't have a few days. I need to start these meds tomorrow!" Well, I was told, you'll have to talk to the doctor's office. How am I supposed to do that, I said. It's 5:30 and no one is there. One less than helpful pharmacy tech said that perhaps the doctor could just reschedule my cycle. Um, I don't think so. I left everything there and got out of the store before I completely lost it. I came home in tears and told Kevin what happened. He whipped out his insurance card and called the insurance company to find out what the problem was. When our insurance was switched to this company, we consulted the prescription drug pamphlet to make sure that the meds we use for in vitro would be covered and they were all on the list. Since Kevin didn't know for sure what I was supposed to be getting, I had to talk to the insurance lady. She was very nice and was able to manually override what ever it was that was preventing the request from going through and then called the pharmacy to make sure they were able to submit it and get approval. She then proceded to tell me that I should try to give them more notice in the future. Well, gee....why did your comapny send my husband and e-mail stating everything was approved when it wasn't? We could have been working on this all day if it had sent him one saying there was a problem.

So, after Alison was in bed for the night, I went back to the pharmacy (lucky for me it's open 24 hours). Well, here's what we have for you.....we've only got 10 of the Repronex, and we're having a hard time getting it in....hopefully we'll be able to get a drop shipment from the manufacturer on Saturday. Great. I'm supposed to take 4 amps a day, so those 10 amps you have will last me 2 1/2 days. We've only got 3 of the Antagon, the rest will be in by tomorrow. Ok, no problem. I won't need those right away anyway. We don't have any Gonal-F. It will be here tomorrow morning. Ok, as long as it's here tomorrow morning, that's fine. I won't have to start it until after I hear from the doctor's office, so I can pick it up tomorrow afternoon. Everything else was ready.

I would like to say that I am very grateful that we have prescription drug coverage, because I was able to walk out of Walgreens tonight with several thousand dollars worth of drugs that I only had to pay about $135 for. I just wish we didn't have to go through the hassle that we so often do when trying to get prescriptions filled.

For the last 3 1/2 weeks, we've been in the inactive phase of our in vitro process. All I had to do was remember to take my pill every day, stop them on the appointed day and wait for my period to start. Today begins the active phase of our in vitro cycle. In other words, AF is in the house. I called in to the doctor's office today and got things going. They are going to be ordering my meds today, and I'll be starting them on Friday. I'm to go in on Friday morning (cycle day 3) for bloodwork and baseline u/s. That is one of the things I hate the most....having to have a transvaginal ultrasound when I still have my period. But I have learned that it is virtually impossible to go through infertlity treatment and come out with a shred of modesty left. When we went through this three years ago, I'd swear my doctor was more familiar with my intimate parts than my husband was.

My MIL is visiting right now, and I'm really not thrilled with having to be doing this stuff while she's here, but there's nothing I can really do about that at this point. I had really hoped to keep this kind of quiet (meaning I didn't really want her to know we were doing it), but the timing didn't work out that way. She doesn't retain information all that long, so maybe it will just slip her mind and she won't be constantly asking about it.

Vacation begins

We left for vacation at about 8:30 this morning. I had hoped to leave the house by 8, since we had to drop the dog off at the kennel, but that didn't happen. Oh well, half an hour off schedule isn't that big a deal, right? We would still get to where we were going by around 6:30. We were on our way to Frederick, Maryland, where my cousin is being married tomorrow. The morning was cool, but fairly bright and relatively sunny. We planned to picnic for lunch (and maybe for supper, too) but when we were finally ready to stop, it was still pretty chilly out and was getting pretty cloudy. Since we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, we had an indoor picnic instead. Back on the road, 20 miles outside of Cleveland, I jokingly say to Kevin that I bet it will be raining by the time we get to Pittsburgh. He has commented before that it always seems to rain when we drive through Pittsburgh. The words were just barely out of my mouth when the rain began. I didn't think it was raining all that hard in Ohio, but apparently everyone else on the road did, because the times I was able to come even close to hitting the speed limit were few and far between. I had planned to turn over driving duties to Kevin before we left the Ohio Turnpike, but Alison fell asleep and I didn't want to wake her up by stopping, so I kept on driving.

The rain got worse the further east we went. When we got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the signs said that there was ponding water in some places. Great! Just what I want to hear. Alison woke up when we stopped to pay the toll to get on, so I decided we'd switch drivers at the first rest area. The road was getting pretty bad.....I felt the car start to hydroplane a few times....and I couldn't wait to get out of the driver's seat. Two miles before the rest area we came to a complete stop. It looked like a car had hydroplaned and gone right into the median wall. Ten minutes later we made it to the rest stop and switched places. When we got back on the road, we had a decision to make....stay on the turnpike, with all the truck traffic and construction, or head down towards Morgantown, W Va and go across I-68. We decided to head towards Morgantown. We no sooner got off the Turnpike and the traffic backed up again. We crawled along for a long time without making a whole lot of progress. Finally we got to the source of the problem. We were being routed up the off-ramp and back down the on-ramp and the going was slow because the police had to periodically let the traffic on the road we had to cross clear out a little bit. The reason for this detour? The highway was flooded! This was not the only place where water was covering the road, but I think it was some of the deepest. During this time I was in contact with my parents, who, along with my brother and his girlfriend, were getting ready to leave to meet us in Frederick for the wedding. I let them know what was going on and told them I couldn't recommend one route over the other.

At 6:30, we stopped for dinner at a Burger King. Did I mention that we were supposed to already be in Frederick by 6:30? Well were actually in Morgantown, a whopping 83 miles from the rest area where we had stopped at to change drivers. It had only taken us 3 hours to get there. We opted to actually eat inside the restaurant. We all needed some time to be out of the car, especially in light of the fact that we still had a looonnggg way to go before we were off the road for the night. We ate, Alison ran around a little bit and then we got back on the road. After another bout of torrential rain while we were eating, the rain seemed to let up a little bit.

Now we were driving through the mountains. It was really strange, but it seemed every time we went up a steep grade, the rain would be almost stopped by the time we got to the top. Then, when we went down on the other side, the rain was horrible again by the time we got to the bottom. Oh, and we also had to deal with fog as we approached the top of the steep grades, and there was a lot of wind. Throughout all this, Alison was quite the trooper. She sat back in her car seat and just read books....until it got dark, then she started to get cranky. About the time it got dark, the thunder and lightening started. To keep Alison from associating it with fireworks, we pretended to be Ernie pretending to be the Count on Sesame Street. When Ernie was "Count for the day," he would shout "Thunder!" "Lightening!" when he reached the point in his counting where the thunder and lightening would just happen for the real Count. So when the lightening flashed, we would say "Thunder!" "Lightening!" just like Ernie. It worked pretty well.

We finally made it back to I-70 and by the time we got to Clear Spring (where my aunt and uncle live) we decided to stop for gas and a diaper change. Good thing we did, because Alison would have leaked out her diaper if we hadn't. I checked in with my parents after we got back on the road and they were about 140 miles behind us....they had opted to take the Turnpike. Alison fell asleep shortly after I got off the phone, and slept for the last 45 minutes of the trip. At 9:20, nearly 13 hours after we left home for our 10 hour car trip, we pulled into the parking lot of our motel.

I could have sworn it was Tuesday.....

....but it sure seems like a Monday kind of day. Today started out just fine. I had a dentist appointment this morning to get my permanent crown and get my spring aligner adjusted. I got to the office, got settled in the chair, got the temporary crown popped off and the area around what's left of the tooth cleaned up and then the assistant tried to seat the crown....and it didn't fit. The reason? It wasn't my crown. My crown was in Sault Ste. Marie. So I got my temporary put back on and scheduled an appointment for the Monday after we get back from vacation to get the permanent crown on, since it will be in the office by Thursday, but they couldn't guarantee exactly when and we're leaving early Friday, so I couldn't do it then.

The afternoon passed quite normally. I played around on the computer for a little bit, did some knitting and then went downstairs and attacked the baskets of ironing that were waiting for me. With that done, I came back upstairs, played around on the computer a little bit more and got ready to take Alison and Bo for a walk. I could see there were some pretty dark clouds over my house, but could also see blue sky surrounding the dark clouds so I thought everything would be fine, especially since it wasn't supposed to rain here until tomorrow night. Well, we didn't even make it to the end of our street before it started pouring down rain. It didn't last long. It had stopped by the time I got Alison off my back and got her "umbrella" snapped on and got her back up on my back. We continued on our walk and I thought we were set. But alas, about 10 minutes later I was walking in another downpour. Fortunately it was in the low 80's today, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but I still could have done without a second shower today. Once we got throught that, the rest of the walk was pretty nice.

We have to go out and do a little pre-vacation shopping tonight. I hope we get it all done without some kind of disaster.

I never thought I'd be so thrilled when my daughter started telling us when she has pooped. But I am. It sounds like such a silly thing, but I was practically jumping for joy yesterday when Kevin told me that Alison told him she pooped and there was really something there when he changed her diaper. It gives me hope that she will, eventually, be successful in potty training and we might escape some of the interventions that other SB kids require to make them bowel continent. And since the same nerves control the bladder, I'm encouraged that she will be bladder continent without intervention as well. Of course, only time will tell.

In other news, Kevin's company picnic was a lot of fun. There were lots of kids there and they had fun stuff for them to do. There were some clowns there making balloon animals and painting kids faces. It was a long wait, but Alison got a cat face painted on her. She looked really cute! I was kicking myself for forgetting the camera, but we did take a picture when we got home There were two moonwalks set up. One looked sort of like a carousel and was geared more towards the little kids and one was a crouching dragon that you went in throught the open mouth, climbed up the "tongue" and slid down into it's "stomach." It was geared more towards the bigger kids, though Alison did get to go in it just before they took it down. Instead of going in through the mouth, they sent her in through the other end. It was like crawling through a wind tunnel! She had been in the other moonwalk, but some bigger kids got in, too, and a couple of them fell on her and one ended up kicking her in the face. :( She was upset by it, but was even more upset when we got her out because she really wasn't hurt and really didn't want to get out! Jumping is her new favorite thing to do, so a moonwalk was the greatest thing since sliced bread for her. At dinner, we tried to get as far away from the dj's speakers as we could, but it was still way too loud and Alison got freaked out a couple of times, until we put some earplugs in. Then she was fine and happily ate chicken, mashed potatoes corn and a roll.

After dinner were the awards and after the awards were all handed out, it was time for the fireworks. Alison did not like the fireworks on the 4th of July, but we were hoping that by using earplugs it would be better. It was not. The first three that were shot off were the really loud booming ones and Alison completely freaked out. We hadn't even had a chance to sit down yet. :( I put her in Kevin's car and he got in there with her, hoping she would be all right, but before long she was hiding on the floor of the front seat. During a lull in the explosions, I grabbed her and headed for my car (and her carseat), but didn't get there fast enough. I nearly dropped Alison as she wriggled around trying to get away from the noise while I was trying to unlock the car (no keyless here). We both jumped in the front seat and I turned on her favorite CD. That helped long enough for me to hop out of the car and run to the other side and get in the back seat, pull her between the seats and plop her in her car seat so I could strap her in and we could leave. Since we don't live that far away from the plant, you could still hear the fireworks quite well at our house. Alison was not happy about that. She wanted to go see our neighbors, who were sitting outside with some friends, until she heard the boom, boom, boom. Even inside she tried to hide. Finally it was all over and she was pretty much all right, though I think she had some bad dreams involving fireworks that night because she woke up screaming a couple times. :( I think we'll probably skip the fireworks next year.

On Sunday, Alison started in the 2 year old Sunday school class. We were also there because we're "teaching" on the second Sunday of the month. She had a lot of fun and loved all the new and different toys that they have in that room. We had a good class. There were two kids who cried a little bit at first, but it didn't take long for them to settle down and get interested in playing. Sunday night was our first UMYF meeting. We're counselors again this year. We have paid babysitters for programs like that (and I am the new babysitter scheduler), so I took Alison to the nursery while Kevin headed down to the meeting. Either she had so much fun at Sunday school that morning or she knew Lillian was going to be one of the babysitters, because as soon as I put her down she ran down to the end of the hall and couldn't get the door open fast enough. She was ready to play!

The rest of this week will be spent getting ready for our big trip next week. I think we're going to have a lot of fun, and I will definitely be ready for it.

The week in review

Tuesday I had my ultrasound and mock trial. Everything looked fine on the ultrasound. The mock trial was okay, I guess. I just think that male doctors should never be allowed to say "you're going to feel a little bit of pressure" when shoving things through delicate female parts. Trust me, pressure was not what I was feeling. Because I have really retroverted uterus and Alison was born by c-section, in order to make getting the cathetar into my uterus easier at my real transfer I will be getting a stitch put in to straighten things out. Fortunately that will be done during retrieval and I will be unconcious.

On Wednesday we found out that Kevin's dad is not going to win his cancer battle. The tumor in his lung has double in size over the summer. He'll be getting chemo once a week to stretch the time he has left to 10 months, give or take, as opposed to the 4 months they gave him without it. When we visit next weekend it will probably be the last time we see him. We're wondering why they didn't keep up with treatments over the summer because someone had to have know that this would happen. Or maybe that's why they didn't keep up the treatments.

Yesterday was Alison's appointment with her new SB doctor. You can read more about it here. It really wasn't a bad appointment. It would have been even better if it had been in the morning. Let's just say we had one cranky little girl on our hands last because the 45 minutes to hour nap that she took in the car was not enough but she would not agree to going to sleep again until bedtime.

Tonight is Kevin's company picnic and awards presentation. I think it will be fun. Kevin is scheduled to give plant tours this afternoon, so we're meeting him there. There will be food and cotton candy and popcorn. And clowns making balloon animals. I'm going to have my work cut out for me keeping Alison away from that. She love balloons, but she can't have the latex ones. :( After the awards, when if gets dark, they're going to have fireworks. Alison was not to thrilled with the ones we saw on Fourth of July, terrified is the word that comes to mind, so I bought some earplugs for her in the hopes that maybe that will help. If not, we'll just come home.

We're on our way

We had our appointment with Dr. Shamma on Monday. Let me just say, nothing ever changes at that place. It's been nearly 3 years since the last time we were there and, just as before, our 1:45 appointment didn't start until well after 2:15. We didn't get finished until 3:30. Why I actually thought we might get in on time and be out in half an hour is beyond me. The longer we sat, the more frustrated Kevin, who was taking time off work, got....like there was anything I could do about it. It is not easy keeping a 2 year old occupied at the doctor's office for that long, either. We did end up letting her trot up and down the hall a few times. She went and talked to the office manager for a little bit, too....she had a radio in her office so Alison went in to "dance."

So we have our protocol. It's the same as last time, really. I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't need quite so many drugs to stim with since I've lost about 60 pounds since our last full in vitro cycle, but since I was 29 then, and I've already celebrated the 3rd anniversary of my 29th birthday now, I'm still doing 4 and 4. That's four amps in the morning (Gonal-F most likely) and 4 amps in the evening (Pergonal or Repronex). All 4 amps get mixed into one injection, but my butt still hurts just thinking about it. :( After procedure, in addition to progesterone-in-oil injections, I'll do Lovenox injections and baby aspirin again. If I get pregnant, I'll be one giant bruise by the time I'm able to stop all the meds. But before we get that far, I have to get through an ultrasound and mock transfer and a month of birth control pills. Oh, and Kevin has to get another semen analysis done. As they said, we really don't want to get to the day of retrieval and find out there's nothing there.

At least the financial load won't be quite as heavy this time. As I mentioned before, our insurance will cover about a third of the cost. Prices have increased about $1000 since we did this before, so the doctor knocked $1000 off our price. I don't know if he did it because we're repeat customers or because of everything we went through last time, but I'm not going to complain.

The doctor told us we could be ready to do the procedure in October, but since we are going to be on vacation for the last week of September, that won't work because I wouldn't be able to come in for blood work and ultrasounds to monitor the stimulation process. So we are going to do it in November. When I get my period next month (because let's face it, I'm not going to miraculously get pregnant on my own this month) I'll start birth control pills. And then we're off.....

Well, I did it

Actually, I did two things. The first thing I did was get my hopes up, the worst thing I think a woman dealing with infertility can do. After dealing with infertility for four years before finally getting pregnant with Alison, you'd think I'd know better. But some odd things happened during the "two week wait" this time, and I stupidly allowed myself to dare to hope and from there went right on in to thinking this really could be it. But AF showed herself right on time and now I have to assume that PMS will now include bouts of nausea, hot flashes, night sweats, being hungry all the time and extreme fatigue, rather than just the usual irritability, one day where I can't keep my eyes open in the afternoon and end up taking a nap on the couch and fanatical housekeeping that I normally have. Why I would even think that our circumstances would have changed enough to enable us to get pregnant the old fashioned way, I'll never know.

And this all brings me to the second thing I did. I called and made an appointment to talk to our infertility doctor about doing in vitro again. The appointment is next Monday. I'm a little bit worried that, because of everything we went through with Alison (the fact that she has SB and I/we had fetal surgery), he'll tell us we can't do in vitro again. While I can't say that I'm looking forward to going through the process (I think I'll speak to that in another entry) it would be very upsetting not to be able to at least try again. In actuality, I can't really see why we wouldn't be able to do it. Many of the FS4SB moms have gone on to have more children. One has even had twins since the surgery. At any rate, if we get the go ahead, at least this time it won't be quite so expensive. Our insurance has changed since the last time and we now have coverage for infertility. Granted it's only $2500 lifetime, which (probably) won't even cover a third of the cost, but it's better than nothing, right? So, the appointment's made and now we wait.

Just my luck :(

I went to the dentist yesterday. It was bad news/good news kind of visit. The bad news.... the reason my recently filled tooth hurts excruciatingly every time I chew something hard (which I don't do on purpose) is because I happened to bite something in just such a way that I cracked the whole darn tooth from front to back. So, guess who's getting a crown. I have one on one of my front teeth (the end result of breaking it when I was in third grade). That was pretty easy because it's right in the front of my mouth. This one will be on the second tooth from the back. Complicating matters is the fact that I have a small mouth. Oh yeah, there's also a possibility that I could end up needing a root canal on that tooth, too. I've had one of those before, too, and I really hope I won't need one again.

The good news was that my spring aligner was ready. I first got it about 8 years ago, or so, and it really did a great job closing up the gap in my front teeth (which opened up after I stopped wearing the retainer I had after braces). Then several things happened and I quit wearing it. By the time I felt like wearing it again, I couldn't get it in my mouth because it didn't fit anymore. I avoided the dentist for several years because I didn't want him yelling at me for letting all that work go down the drain. I finally went in for a check-up a few months ago and he had me bring the retainer in and sure enough, it didn't fit. He nicely agreed to take a new mold and try and refit it. Which he did. I got it back yesterday and it's already working. My teeth really hurt!! I have to wear it pretty much 24/7, except when eating and things like that. I'm still in that "Cindy Brady" phase where I lisp pretty badly, but I'm hoping I adjust to it quickly. Hopefully the gap in my teeth will be (pretty much) closed up by the time we get around to getting Christmas pictures taken this year.

Looking for a place to belong

I'm searching for a place to really belong and I don't think such a place exists.

I recently joined a mail list for families that have had fetal surgery for Spina Bifida (henceforth known as FS4SB). They are a great group of people, several of whom we met at the Fetal Surgery reunion two weekends ago, but it seems they are all dealing with things that we don't have to worry about (at least not right now, maybe not ever). There is a lot of discussion about bracing, wheelchairs, walkers and crutches, physical therapy, meds for dealing with bladder issues, and stuff like that. Today a discussion popped up about late talkers, and how many of the kids have been delayed in that area. Alison doesn't wear (and has never worn) braces and she doesn't need a wheelchair, walker or crutches. She started walking at 15 months. At this point, she hasn't needed physical therapy either, and though she may get a referral for it soon, it's to deal with her in-toeing right foot, not to strenghthen her body so she might one day be able to walk. At this point, there are no real bladder issues. Her urologist saw her last year, at 16 months, and isn't expecting to see us again until she's 3. As for talking, by 18 months she had a 60 word vocabulary and could even string together a couple of 2 and 3 word sentences. I feel that I have nothing in common with these people except that Alison has SB and we had FS4SB.

I also post on an AOL board for moms of kids born in Sept. 2002 (ok, so Alison was born in August, but she was due in September and I've been posting there since I was pregnant, before FS4SB). Again, a great group of women. It gives me an idea of what the average 2 year old should be doing. Alison just had an evaluation with Early On yesterday and, without even adjusting for prematurity, she is at a 2 year old level in all developmental areas tested, including gross motor skills. I have everything in common with these women except that Alison has SB we had FS4SB.

So I feel like I'm caught between two worlds. For the most part, we treat Alison like a regular kid because for the most part she is a regular kid. Most people who see her have no idea that she has SB. And I've actually, recently, forgotten to tell people who probably need to know (like people working in the church nursery when our nursery supervisor isn't there) because I don't think about that much anymore. But that doesn't change the fact that she does have SB. And I feel we should probably become more involved in the SB community. But at the same time, I feel guilty because we don't have to deal with what everyone else does. So I'm back to looking for a place to really belong....

Doesn't Know Her Own Strength

Alison broke her rocking chair this morning. That would be her antique, family heirloom, pass it from family member to family member when they have a baby rocking chair. I was running the sweeper in the living room and she had gone down to her bedroom. The next thing I know, she's back in the living room holding a piece of wood. It slowly dawned on me that it was a spindle of some sort. Then I realized, with a sick feeling, that it was from her rocking chair. I grabbed it and ran to her room. Yep, it was a spindle from the arm of the chair. And I have no idea how we're going to fix it because it's broken off flush with both the seat and the underside of the arm. I suspect that it may have been broken before at some point because she's only two. She's not so strong that she can just cleanly rip a spindle out of the arm of a chair, but then again she was probably pulling on it to get herself up into the chair. So now I have to see if we can somehow fix it ourselves or find someplace to take it to get it fixed. At least we aren't in any hurry to get it fixed. My older cousin is done having kids and her brother and my brother aren't married yet. It should stay in our possession for at least another year. But still......I can't believe she broke the chair!!!

Boo Boos and Band Aids

Who would have ever thought that band aids could be such a hassle. Because Alison is in the high risk category for developing a latex allergy, we limit her contact with items that contain latex (meaning we try not to let her be in contact with them at all). That means we use Curad band aids in our house, because they are latex free. Unfortunately, the last time we bought band aids the box only had one size, rather than the variety of sizes that BandAid brand comes in. Not a real big problem for big people boo boos, but for little people boo boos it's a pain in the rear.

I went in to get Alison up from her nap. I noticed there were little blood smears all over her crib sheet. After freaking out for a second, I realized they were all down where her feet had been, and that I had noticed what looked like a little blister on one of her toes the other day. Sure enough, the spot that had the blister had been bleeding. Great. Now we needed to somehow put a band aid on a very tiny toe. So with scissors in hand, I began to "size" my band aid, feeling grateful that I was working on her right foot. This is one of the only advantages to her not having any feeling in that foot. While she was sqirming around a little -- because you must squirm around when mommy needs you to sit still -- it was nothing like it would have been if she could have felt what I was doing to her toes! Of course this same lack of feeling is what let things get to the point where she needed the band aid in the first place. :( In the end, I got the stupid band aid on. Hopefully this won't happen again until someone's little piggies are a whole lot bigger.

Yesterday

Yesterday was a terrific day, weatherwise. We had blue skies, lots of sun, and it was warm. Actually, it was kind of on the hot side. I managed to get us together early and we headed off to Dow Gardens. (We bought season passes, so I'm determined to get my money's worth....yesterday's trip was break even day.) Since I didn't want to take the stroller, I figured the easiest way to get us back to the childrens' garden without losing my mind was to put Alison in her harness. That way, she could run "free" as much as she wanted and I didn't have to worry about her going off the path and falling into the pond. Then when we got to the childrens' garden all I had to do was take off the "leash" part. Along the way we stomped through a few puddles, trip-trapped over a wooden bridge, and checked out the large flower garden, or, more specifically, the huge sprinkler in the flower garden.

Once we got to the childrens' garden, Alison had a ball. We discovered the pig trough and all the watering cans they had there. Alison decided she must water stuff, so we grabbed a watering can and I filled it up for her (the water in the trough was to low for her to reach it at that point). She watered some dirt next to one of the vegetable plants, she watered the sidewalk (a lot) and she watered her feet. We even gave the big bronze pig statue a drink from the watering can, too, since he was hot an looked like he could use a drink. :) We eventually made our way over to the other side of the garden where there are three small holes in the ground that water shoots out of. Alison wasn't to interested in getting near the shots of water, but she screamed with laughter at all the other kids who were running around getting wet. We spent a long time there, and finally it was time to head back to the car so we could come home and meet daddy for lunch. The walk back took a long time, becasue someone was starting to get tired, but at least she consented to letting me carry her a little bit here and there. The puddles were still there, so we stomped through them again. It was a very fun morning. I'm really mad at myself, though, because I forgot to bring the camera with me!

Last night, Kevin's softball team played in the district tournament. They had the potential of playing in three games. We ate dinner early so he could eat before the first game. I stayed home with Alison and told him that if it looked like they were going to win the first game to let me know and we'd come for the second game, as long as it didn't rain (the clouds had rolled in shortly after 4:00 and we were expecting bad storms). They won the first game, so I packed us up and headed to the ball field. After wandering around and checking things out for a little bit, Alison finally settled down to play in the dirt and pebbles at the end of the pad of concrete that held the team bench. She was in heaven! My little girl who doesn't like to get dirty was soon covered in dirt....hands, legs, shirt, shorts, dirt everywhere. I think she played there for at least half an hour. At the bottom of the fifth inning, we headed over to the little concession stand to see what they had to offer and came back with a pretzel to share and a bottle of pop for me. Alison climbed up into her parked stroller and attempted to put the snack tray back in place by herself. Then she started asking for bites of the pretzel. Again I was kicking myself for not bringing the camera with me, because I looked over at her to see her kicked back with her foot up on the tray, knawing on a pretzel, watching what was going on in the game.

Kevin's team lost the game, and I don't think anyone was too upset about it. They had a good chance of winning the first game. They had a so-so chance of winning the second game, but there is no way they would have won the third game. I was kind of glad they lost, becasue we have things to do today that couldn't be done if he was playing double elimination softball games all day.

Yesterday was a great day.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Today has been absolutely gorgeous so far. It's warmer than it's been in weeks. We were able to go out and play in t-shirts and shorts this morning. I haven't let Alison out in shorts in the morning since the end of May, I think. Since we've been having to wear long pants and jackets or sweatshirts, I didn't really realize how sunny it is in our backyard in the mornings. We had to come back in and put some sunscreen on because I had forgotten all about it.

Our neighbor was off today, and with it being such a nice morning, he was getting ready to take off on his Harley while we were out playing. As soon as Alison heard the engine start, she was off in search of the "cycle." She would have loved to have gone over and climbed on, but she doesn't understand, yet, that motorcycles have hot exhaust pipes, and they don't mix well with little girls' hands. So she had to be content to walk down the driveway and the sidewalk in front of our house until "Mr. Mike" took off.

I wanted to sweep off the patio because it kind of needed it and it was bugging me. I had barely walked out of the garage with the broom when Alison came running over to "help." I think I need to seek out a toddler sized push broom. (I'm not sure it will help, though. She has her own little rake, yet when I got my big rake out to clean up the stick debris Bo left after a couple of days of chewing on sticks, she wanted to use mine instead of hers.) I was finally able to get her more interested in mowing the grass with the bubble(less) mower and the patio looks much better now.

Why does Alison keep asking for her colors (crayons or, in this case, sidewalk chalk) and then not color with them when she gets them? I'm starting to think I have the only toddler that doesn't like to color. I drew a sunshine with a smiley face in it. Then we picked up all the chalk. We sang the sunshine song a few times (You are my sunshine, that is) and then Alison gave the sunshine a kiss. She had yellow chalk on her nose when she got back up. I've got to remember to always bring the camera out with me, because that would have been such a good picture.


This afternoon we're going to go for our usual walk. We'll definitely be going back outside to play after supper, although if she plays her cards right, Alison may be able to get daddy to take her out again before supper, too. I heard the weatherman say this morning that we should be in the 80's by the end of the week. If this keeps up, we might even be able to get the pool out and get some use out of the new bathing suits that are hanging in Alison's closet waiting to be be worn.

Alison's Potty Mis-adventure

Alison hasn't really wanted to sit on the potty much lately. For that I blame her father. At bath time on the day she tinkled on the potty, we had her sitting there again while Kevin was making sure the water wasn't too hot or too cold. She stood up just as she started tinkling. Kevin does not handle these things very well, so instead of gently trying to get her to sit back down, he freaked out and shoved her down on the potty. In the process the lid kind of fell shut on her. She got a little in the potty, but the majority of it went all over her and the floor. She became hysterical (she also became hysterical early last week when she happened to tinkle on herself while getting her temperature taken). Next morning we couldn't get her near the potty.

That was two weeks ago. Until earlier this week she would not go near the potty. Then I needed someplace for her to sit while I took her cruddy outside shoes off after we had washed our hands. So I sat her on the potty and she was ok with it. Ok, she would occasionally sit on the potty, as long as the lid was down and she was fully clothed.

Today I brought the potty into the living room and she played around with it and sat on it a little, even with the lid up at one point, but still fully clothed. Tonight she kept pestering me for goldfish crackers, so I figured a little bribe was in order. I told her she could have one if she sat on the potty. Then I told her she could have one if she sat on the potty with the lid up. Then she could have one if she sat on the potty with the lid up and just a diaper. Then she got to have one if we could take the diaper off. By the time we got the diaper off, I knew she wasn't going to actually go because it was soaked, and recently so. The funny thing is that one of the times she sat down with her clothes still on she said she was tinkling. Apparently she really was. :) I think she's starting to figure out what "tinkle" means because if she hears Kevin or I going, she'll tell us that's what we're doing.

She sat on the potty again before her bath, again with the goldfish bribe. I don't even care if she goes while she's sitting on it. I just don't want her to be afraid of it anymore. Hopefully we'll soon get to the point where the goldfish bribes won't be necessary.

Alison's nose...

...is all better now. Kevin remarked the other day that it looks like her face is elongating in the nose area. I told him it isn't really, it's just that the bump and scratch aren't there anymore. He took another look and agreed that that's what it was. :)

A trip to the mall

Since we've been going through this bout of "if it's Monday, it must be raining," and because Alison loves to go outside and run around, I was looking for something to do this morning where she could run around but not be out in the wet, muddy grass and the cold temps that come after that Monday rain. So we headed to the mall.

Since my goal was to let her burn off some energy (and hopefull take a good nap this afternoon), I did not even get the stroller out of the trunk. I carried her into the mall and put her down as soon as we got through the doors. She very nicely held my hand and off we went. The only problem is that she walks really weird whenever she's holding someone's hand, almost like she's trying to take steps as big as ours or something. So we switch to plan B. She climbs up on a bench and I whip out her harness. Now we're really good to go.

I followed her lead, for the most part. We checked out some of the murals they have on display in an old jewelery store. Then we went into the video store. About halfway back they have a bunch of stuffed toys. Of course we had to check them out. The ones that captured her interest were Donkey from Shrek. Before we could head back out of the store she had to "be nice" to both of them. In Alison-speak, that means she had to pet them.

Our next stop was the Hallmark store. I didn't let us get too far in there because there's way too much breakable stuff at toddler level in Hallmark stores. She did have to "be nice" to the ceramic dog in the doorway. A graduation display in the window caught her attention so we had to check out the owl and the little bear. Before we were able to move on she kissed the window, her attempt as kissing the owl.

From Hallmark we went in and out and in and out and in and out of the shoe store. Then we ended up in a jewelry store. She tried her hardest to get behind the counter there, but I grabbed her just in time. When she started trying to climb into the chairs in front of the displays, I gently guided her out of the store.

I figured that, as long as we were there and had the time, we could go to the bookstore. Getting there was easier said than done. It took me two tries to get her out of a store that had a mannequin sitting in the window. We had to check out another mannequin and some t-shirts at Steve and Barry's. Getting her out of the instant picture machine was quite the challenge, too. We finally get to Barnes and Noble and she gets in two feet and turns around to head back out. Figures....the store I want to go in, she doesn't. Oh well, I persisted. I ended up carrying her back to the kids books because it was easier that way. We picked up 3 books (Madeline, Curious George, and Are You My Mother?) and then headed up to the check-out. To get her going in the right direction, I had Alison carry one of her books. Things were good until we got the the check-out and had to wait. Alison was all over the place. She'd manage to stand and hold my hand for about two seconds and then she was ready to go again. Were it not for her harness/leash, she'd have been out the door and on her way down the mall with heaven know how much unpaid merchadise. She is so much like her father was at that age.

From Barnes and Noble we had 10 minutes to get back to Target, pick up the cereal that was our real reason for being at the mall in the first place, and head for home. Of course Alison didn't want to cooperate at this point. She had to look at everything in every window. I finally had to pick her up and carry her. That didn't go over so well. So she got another chance to walk. That lasted about 2 seconds. I picked her up and hauled her into Target and plopped her into a cart, kicking myself for not having gone to Target when we first got there.

We were in and out of Target in 5 minutes, then on our way home to meet daddy for lunch. Alison is now sleeping peacefully (I hope). The sun is shining, the temperature is climbing and the backyard should be fit for play by the time we get done with supper tonight. And I think it will be a while before we try another one of these mall excursions. :)

Oh! My Nose!!

For the past couple of days Alison has been sporting a Marcia Brady look, the look she had in the episode where she got hit in the face with the football right before her big date with school football star (who happened to be played by the same guy who was Fredrick in "The Sound of Music"). Alison got her smashed up nose from falling face first into the coffee table. She managed to do this while trying to get down off her father's lap. Unfortunately for her, daddy had his eyes glued to the television and had no idea what she was trying to do. She wiggled down, lost her balance and went right into the edge of the table.

It's times like these when I want to throttle Kevin. I happened to be on the phone with my mom at the time. I had already dragged his attention away from the tv once so that he could keep her from falling over in a laundry basket and smashing into the table. I could see that that she was about to fall from his lap into the table, but figured that the wriggling around would catch his attention, but no. Yet if I had said anything to him about it I would have gotten the sarcastic "I know, I know."

At least the huge bump went down a little overnight. It's now about the size of a small mosquito bite. It should be completely gone in a day or so and all we'll have to do then is wait for the bruise and the scratch to go away. Between that and all the scratches and bruises on her legs, I'm almost afraid someone will think she's being beaten! I hope we get through the clumsies soon!!

She Did It!!

Last night we finally went and bought Alison a little potty. I don't know why we hadn't done it before now, but we just hadn't. I did a little rearranging in the bathroom and found a (temporary?) place for it. Last night when she came in for her bath, we had her sit on the potty for a minute while we made sure the water was ok and got out the rest of her bath stuff. Since she had had a thouroughly soaked diaper less than 20 minutes earlier, we didn't expect her to go, and she lived up to that expectation. :)

This morning I figured I'd put her on it again for a few minutes and see what happened. So we got her pants down and diaper off and onto the potty she went. I grabbed the camera to take some pictures of her "first time on the potty" (even thought it was really her second time). Apparently I timed it just right because as I was telling her to sit down (again) and trying to get her to smile I heard it! That little piddle sound. Who would have thought that she'd go in the potty on the first real try at it!

I know it's going to take some time before she really gets it. I have no idea if she even made a little connection between what she did and where she did it. I don't know if she could even feel what she was doing. We tried again before lunch and she didn't go. But that's ok. I'm just thrilled she's gone once.

Kirsten

Kirsten is a little girl who is 3 months younger than Alison. She has Spina Bifida, too, and also had fetal surgery. We stumbled across her webpage when we were looking for information about shunts/kids with shunts. Since then we've been keeping track of how she's been doing via her webpage.

When we first "met" her last February, Kirsten was 4 months old and in the hospital having her second shunt revision (that would be her third sugery). Before she was finally discharged from the hospital in April, she had two more revisions. Since then, she hasn't had any problems with her shunt.

Today there was an update to her webpage letting everyone know that she had been admitted to the hosptial again last night after two weeks of extreme fussiness and becoming increasingly lethargic throughout the day yesterday. As her mother was taking her to the clinic, she experienced her first seizure. Later last night she was vomiting and had spiked a fever.

These symptoms scream shunt infection or shunt failure. However, our SB doctor told us that sometimes kids with shunts will become symptomatic when they are sick because the illness causes excess production of cerebral spinal fluid and the shunt can't handle it. When the illness clears up, fluid levels return to normal, and the kids are no longer symptomatic. We're praying this is the case for Kirsten.

Usually it's not a problem to almost forget that there's anything wrong with Alison. When things like this happen it brings it all front and center again. We've been given every reason to expect that Alison's shunt will be problem free, but there's always that chance that something will go wrong and maybe we won't be so lucky the next time.

For now though, we'll just count our blessings that Alison is fine, keep checking for updates on how Kirsten is doing and pray that everything will be all right for her.

The "Stuff"

While we were at my parents' for Memorial Day weekend, we went to church Sunday morning. The minister was preaching about the book of Acts. One of his illustations was about a man who had been reintroduced to Christianity through reading the bible and who went to a Sunday service at a church and, because he had been reading the book of Acts at the time, was expecting to see miracles happening. When what he witnessed was a regular run-of-the-mill church service he asked the congregation "where's the stuff?!?"

After the service at my parents' church, my mom happened to be heading down to the fellowship hall behind the minister and a visiting District Superintendent and she said to the minister "'the stuff' is downstairs." Assuming she was referring to the coffee, juice, bagels and doughnuts, he nodded and agreed that, yes, it was. My mom again said "'the stuff' is downstairs." Again, he thought she was referring to the coffee and doughnuts. Finally she said to him "no, I mean 'the stuff' is downstairs. My granddaughter is downstairs." Oh. He clearly still had no real idea what my mom was talking about. He doesn't know that Alison shouldn't be able to walk. He hasn't spoken to either of my parents about Alison since before they were leaving for Nashville to be with us when we had the fetal surgery.

I don't know why I was surprised at this. Afterall, I haven't been a member of this church for nearly 10 years. But, my parents have been members for more than 25 years. I wonder if this lack of communication on the minister's part has to do with his having a certain agenda and my parents being part of the contigent who are against this agenda. I would hope not. My parents approach Alison's condition the same way we do. They are more than happy to tell anyone who wants to know anything they want to know about the surgery and how she's doing now. And a lot of the church members have asked. One lady was nearly in tears the first time she saw Alison walking. I guess I just find it strange that in more than two years, this man has never even bothered to ask. If he had, he would have known he had a great example of "the stuff" running around in the cribroom that very morning.

A Picnic

Yesterday was our annual all-church family Pig-nic. It was held at a local park. Now, I think in the 10 years that we've lived here and attended this church we've gone to this picnic once before. We always talk about going, but when the time comes, for whatever reason, we haven't gone. Last year we didn't go because it was during naptime and we didn't want Alison to skip her nap.

This year we decided to throw caution to the wind, let Alison skip her nap and go. The church provides the meat (plain or bbq pork), beverages, and table service. We were to bring a dish to share, for a couple, or two dishes for a family (we only brought one dish, since we only have a small child who shares what we eat), and a few dollars to help cover the cost of the meat. So we picked up the fixings for an easy, and rather large, taco salad when we went shopping after church, threw it together quickly when we got home and headed off to the park.

It looked like a pretty good turn out. We had two pavilions reserved and they were both pretty full. There were lots families with smaller children (pre-school and younger), and quite a few from the senior set. There were not a whole lot of families with middle and high school aged kids, much to the chagrin of one of our youth group girls. She was disappointed that there were not more kids there her age.

There was quite a variety of food, too. I let Kevin go through the line first, and he came back with a lot of several different kinds of things. I employed a different tactic. I took small spoonfuls of just about everything. Everything was really good. We both shared with Alison. There was one particular pasta salad that she loved. Neither of us got to eat much of it. :) There was a pretty large assortments of desserts, too, most of it chocolate. That's where I really ended up looking like a pig because I took two different kinds of cake and a brownie. It was my intention to share with Alison. It's not my fault she didn't want more than one bite of cake!

After we finished eating, we had singing, accompanied by a couple of the highschool boys and their guitars. And there was Alison, when she wasn't running around, front and center dancing and "directing" the music. She was also very interested in the bounce house. We actually let her get into it a couple of times, after kicking the bigger kids out so she (and the reas of the smaller kids) wouldn't get squashed. She had a ball. She was fascinated by the flower that she had painted on her arm. We wrapped things up around 3:00.

Before we headed for home, we ran out to Home Depot to pick up some new hoses and some mulch. Once back in the car, Alison was singing along with her Oscar the Grouch CD one minute and the next minute she was sound asleep. Instead of going home, and having her wake up as soon as we pulled into the garage, we drove around for another 15 or 20 minutes so she could get a little nap. Once we did finally come home, we tried to get her out of the car without waking her up, but it didn't happen. She was wide awake and ready to go for the rest of the night.

All in all, I think we had a very nice afternoon.

This Just In...

I discovered today that my husband's jeans fit me now! Granted, he wears Levi 560's, which my mom affectionately calls "big butt jeans," but that is beside the point. I don't know if you can tell from the pictures I've shared, but he's not a real big guy... only a couple of inches taller than me.

I originally started this weight loss project with the intention of getting down to the same weight as Kevin, and I'm pretty much there now. Now it's time to get to work on the final goal....being able to fit into my wedding dress by our anniversary. (Well, it will actually be by Labor Day because my dress resides at my parents' house and we won't be there for our anniversary.) I want to be able to say that after 10 years I can still fit into my dress.

Bottle Free

I forgot to put this in the update entry, but Alison is now bottle free. She's been down to just one bottle before bed for several months. In the last couple of weeks she's been drinking milk from a cup a whole lot better, so I decided Monday was it. We were going to ditch the bottle and switch to a cup. She didn't even bat an eye. She's also drinking almost the whole 5 oz. that I put in it (same amount as she used to get in the bottle) without a fight, and I did not think she would. I thought she might drink half of it and planned to adjust accordingly, in anticipation of ditching the bedtime milk altogether. Guess I'll have to rethink that plan. :)

At any rate, on one hand I'm happy that we've finally gotten rid of the bottle. It means she's growing up. On the other hand I'm sad that we've finally gotten rid of the bottle, because it means she's growing up.

A Couple of Quick Updates

Since I can't remember any of the other things I thought I might want to write about, I'll just give a couple of updates.

Alison had her follow-up with the ped on Monday. He told us her posture has improved dramatically. Imagine that. I guess when you're not constantly fighting to maintain your balance, you can stand up straighter when you walk. Alison did things kind of backwards. Instead of learning to stand before she walked, she walked before she could stand (without support). At any rate, she was prounounced "doing wonderfully" and we were sent on our way.

I know the reason we take Alison to clinic is so that she can see a specialist because we don't expect her regular ped to have as much experience in dealing with SB, but gees, you'd think maybe he might brush up on some of the particulars when he knows he has a patient with SB. I know they told us at Vanderbilt that we would come away with more knowledge of SB than 99% of doctors in the country, but it's still kind of a weird experience. I was about a half step ahead of our RE throughout our treatment for infertility, due to the research I did beforehand, but that was more a case of he'd say we were going to try something different and I'd be able to tell him what it was going to be (and then he'd ask me how I knew that). This is a whole different ball game though. At least he'll be a little smarter about treating SB kids when/if the next one comes along.

And now a quick update on me. My original goal was to lose 30 pounds by my friend's wedding. I didn't quite make it. I only got down 25. Now, almost 2 weeks later, I'm down 27. Hopefully I'll get the last 3 off by the end of the month. I should have had no problem making it by my "deadline," but I know I slacked off quite a bit here and there. Actually, I didn't do any exercise other than walking with Alison last week, and even that was hit or miss. But I'm back on track now (I hope). I want to lose 50 pounds altogether and I'm hoping to have it all off by Alison's birthday, or Labor Day at the absolute latest.

Thunderstorms

We had some huge thunderstorms go through this afternoon. Unfortunately we really didn't need any more rain. Kevin had a double header in his softball league tonight and the games were flooded out for the second week in a row.

The storm held off until just before 4:00. That was nice because I didn't have to worry about it waking Alison up since normally gets up around then anyway. I was talking to my mom on the phone and she asked me if Alison was afraid of the thunder and I told her it didn't seem to bother her (especially now that she's off her meds). As if to prove that point, when I went in to get her up, we heard a big rumble of thunder and she thought it was a motorcycle. I guess there are advantages to living next to Harley afficionados.

It rained pretty hard for about another half an hour. Luckily we were not in the area with the 1 1/2 to 2 inch hail. Luckier still, we were not in the area where they suspect there was a tornado. I hope everyone there is ok.

As far as I'm concerned, the rain can take a break for a few days. My back yard needs some time to dry out!

Sunday Rumblings

I think my daughter is a budding bully. Today at church, I observed her snatching toys/books out of other kids hands and I also observed her trying to push a child down the slide because he wasn't getting out of her way fast enough. Is this normal toddler behavior? I hope so. If not, we've got some work to do.

Today after church, Alison walked up the stairs. Not by herself, mind you, but the whole way up comepletely on her feet. We've tried working on stairs here at home, but the only stairs we have are very tall. When standing on one step, the next one is at knee height on her. The steps at church are not so tall. She shocked the heck out of me, that's for sure.

After we got home from church, while Kevin was putting away the groceries and I was putting my shoes and Alison's diaper bag away, I noticed things were awfully quiet in the living room. I walked in to find Alison sitting on the couch, holding one of the remotes up to her ear as if it was a telephone. She was talking to Grandma. I suppose this means we don't need to worry about whether or not she's exhibiting imaginitive play -- not that we were worried about it in the first place, but if anyone asks we can tell them yes, she does.

My next door neighbor told Kevin that one of these Saturdays she's going to come over and basically kick us out of the house and take care of Alison for us so that we can do whatever we want. And she won't let us pay her. She says that getting to come over and play with Alison is payment enough. Alison will be thrilled....she loves Miss Melissa. The sad thing is I have no idea what I want to do with a whole day to ourselves.

Tomorrow we have to go to the ped's. It's a follow-up to her 18 month check-up. The doctor had some concerns then that we were to check out with Alison's SB doctor so he wants an update. He also wants to see how she's doing off her asthma medicine. Well, she's doing just fine, no wheezing, no coughing, and best of all, no freaking out at loud noises. He'll tell me she was just going through a phase, but I find it pretty coincidental that the phase started when she started the meds and ended when she got off them. She actually layed on the floor while I vacuumed around her the other day. She used to freak out if I even mentioned that I was going to vacuum. Her SB doctor told us she was fine. She doesn't walk "pretty," but a lot of kids don't walk pretty at this age. Her spine is fine. She wasn't standing without holding on to something yet because she has she has very mild Chiari malformation causing some immaturity in her brainstem. Tomorrow the ped will see that she's not so crooked when she walks anymore and she's getting pretty good at standing. I know he's just trying to do his best by her and that he's not an expert in spina bifida, but geesh, overreacting to everything that's outside the norm is not going to help things (and it's going to make the specialist think you're nuts).

Oh, I almost forgot. Alison can say her name now. I'm not sure she's really made the connection that it's her name, because if I ask her her name she says no. She doesn't say it perfectly....it sounds more like Ah-son...but it's a start.

A Story From Mother's Day

As I said in my previous entry, Kevin took us and my parents out to brunch Sunday morning. While we were eating, I commented that I thought Alison was doing a pretty good job behaving and my mom agreed with me. She said that she was behaving a lot better than the little boy behind the divider, who had a good three years on her. As I was sitting there thinking that was an interesting thing for my mom to say, my dad leaned over to her and said exactly what it was that I was thinking "That used to be your little boy."

My brother was, at times, a holy terror when he was little. I feel quite certain that if/when we have another baby, if it's a boy, we are really in for it. Heck, I think we're in for it even if we were to have a girl. Alison really has us spoiled because she's pretty good most of the time. I have no qualms about taking her almost anywhere. Despite everything, she's an overall happy kid and takes things in stride.

Nancy's Wedding

One of my very best friends from college got married on Saturday. I am so happy for her. She spent 6 years dating/living with a guy who, while he was very nice, had no intention of making a formal commitment to her. She finally gave him an ultimatum: if they were not engaged when he moved back to northern Ohio, she was staying in Cincinnati. They didn't get engaged, and she stayed where she was. Enter Arn. I don't know him that well, having only met him on a couple of occasions, but he seems to be a really great guy (anyone who would willingly go to the first birthday party of his fiancee's friend's baby must be a decent guy, right?) and has really been a good influence on Nancy. A wind beneath her wings type of guy.

So the wedding was Saturday. It was an adults only affair, except for a select few children, mine being one of them. I was a little nervous because it was a Catholic ceremony, expected to last an hour, and I had no idea if we could keep Alison quiet for that long. We let her "run" around outside the Sanctuary until the last possible minute and then we went in. She was a little antsy at first, and a little loud, but we just stuffed goldfish crackers in her mouth every time she opened it and that took care of one problem. We got out crayons and paper and she spent most of the rest of the ceremomny, which mercifully only ended up being half an hour long, trying to get the crayons out of the crayon box. When is was all over and we were applauding the bride and groom, she clapped right along with us and cheered her little heart out. We got several compliments about how well behaved she was in church.

The ceremony was very nice. Nancy was beautiful, and so excited. And happy. Her dreams are finally coming true. She has always wanted marriage and a family.

Since the wedding ceremony wasn't until after evening mass, the reception didn't start unitl 8:00. We had fed Alison before the ceremony, so she was good to go. We were the ones who were starving by that point! Dinner was served at 8:30, and wouldn't you know, even though we were at table 6, we were the last table released to the buffet. Oh well. After dinner the traditional reception activities began. Except they weren't quite so traditional.

Nancy and Arn swing dance. Their first dance was actually a choreographed swing dance routine! It was so great. They really did a wonderful job. And the entertainment didn't stop there. Arn is a juggler. In addition to teaching Nancy to swing dance, he has also taught her how to juggle. They did one of the most incredible juggling routine I have ever seen. It was set to music and everything. They dimmed the lights and used lighted balls, three each to start with then Arn got up to 5, I think, then they stood together and juggled three between them, Arn using his left hand and Nancy her right. Then they switched to lighted clubs and did the typical things, includig tossing them to each other. They finished up by "twirling" some weighted flags on long strings. Nancy was really in her element here because she had been in the flag corp for both her high school and our college marching bands. All I can say is all wedding receptions we go to in the future will pale in comparison.

Throughout it all, Alison was really well behaved. I was really worried about that because she hadn't taken a nap at all. She spent a lot of time at the reception running around in the lobby with daddy. She loved the juggling. She had wanted so badly to get at those lighted balls when Nancy was trying to get everything set up.

One of my other friends, who I hadn't seen since Alison's surgery two years ago, her husband and her parents were there as well and marveled at how well Alison was doing. After my parents took Alison back to the hotel so she could go to bed, I realized I had not had a chance to get her over to see Nancy's mom. I was very upset with myself about that. She has been praying for her and keeping up with how she's doing through her website. She was supposed to come and see her at her birthday party last year, but she fell and, although she didn't know it at the time, broke her arm the day before. Fortunately, even though she didn't realize who she was at the time, she did see her while she was running around in the lobby.

I think we all had a nice time. I really am so happy for Nancy and Arn. I hope they have a wonderful life together.

Bikinis

On Tuesday Alison and I were shopping at Walmart. We were browsing through the baby/toddler section when we came across the swimsuits. They had some really cute ones. Even though the one I really liked was the bikini with the grass skirt, I searched the racks for a one piece instead. Why? I have no issues with bikinis for toddlers, in fact I think they're kind of cute. But I thought to myself that there was no way I could put Alison in a bikini. Someone might see her back. And her back is pretty ugly looking. She's got a nasty looking scar from where they did the closure, and she's got another one, which doesn't look quite as bad, from a skin graft to cover the flank incision that was necessary to give the surgeon enough skin to do the closure.

Kevin and I have talked about her back periodically. He will occasionally ask me what she's going to think about her scars when she gets older. There will probably be a time when she'll be very self-conscious about it. If that's the case, plastic surgery is an option we can explore. I'm hoping, though, that she'll just accept that's the way she is and not give it a second thought. That's why we want to try and treat her just like a regular kid as much as possible. And regular kids sometimes wear bikinis when they're little. So I bought it.

Shopping for Shoes

We're going to a wedding this weekend and while I don't have a problem wearing a dress that's a good 5 years old (see our Easter pictures below), I figured it would be a good idea to get a new pair of shoes to go with it, since the pair I used to wear with it are at least 11 years old, probably older. I have a nice pair of white shoes that could have been a possibility, but they just don't look quite right. How hard is it to run out and find a pair of pumps that would look halfway decent with this dress? Well, let's just say it probably would have been easier to find a new dress to wear with my white shoes.

Now, I know that in current fashion, pantyhose are out. I also know that the current trend in dressy footwear is a strappy, opened toed, sandal-type shoe. However, this body needs control top pantyhose and pantyhose with open toed shoes is quite possibly the mother of all fashion faux pas. That's how I found myself at our mall, wandering from store to store to store trying to find a shoe that was not only the right color, but that didn't look like something a senior citizen would be wearing. At 32 years old, I don't think I'm ready for the Hush Puppies and Naturalizers.

At the 5th store I went to, I found something that might work, but it was still a little on the frumpy side. I headed off to the only store I hadn't been to yet with little hope of finding anything. But there it was. A nice, ivory sling back....in my size....on sale! After walking around in them for a little while, checking them out in the mirror, looking at my watch and seeing that I had to be home in less than 25 minutes, I decided to take them.

I tried them on with my dress after I put Alison to bed. I think they're going to be all right. I was a little concerned about them being too tight Saturday night, but I figured my feet aren't going to be anymore swollen then than they were last night, so I'm not going to worry about it. Here's the funny thing....not only have I decreased my clothing size in my weightloss journey, I've also decreased my shoe size! Well, for these particular shoes anyway.

So that was my shoe shopping expedition. Next up, sandals for Alison. That's probably the only thing that will be more difficult than finding shoes for this wedding!

Bath Time

Bath time at our house is daddy's job. I don't like to do bath. I'm not sure exactly why, but I don't. It's not like it's all that hard....put Alison in the tub with some toys, let her play around a little, brush her teeth, soap her up and rinse her off, and wash her hair.

I guess hair washing is why I don't like doing bath. It shouldn't be such a big deal, but for some reason --my left-handedness maybe?-- I'm not coordinated enough to rinse the shampoo out without traumatizing my child. I have come up with an idea --ok, I stole someone else's idea-- on how to make it a little better. We went to Target last night, bought a little toy watering can and voila! Instant mini shower. :) I still have to be really careful about shampoo in the eyes because Alison puts her head down instead of tilting it back, but it's a definite improvement. Alison likes to use it to water the bath water.

Saturday Night

It's the second night of "girls' weekend in." It's been pretty good so far, although Alison had me ready to pull my hair out earlier.

We did end up going to the Center for the Arts. We didn't go to the "Pearls" exhibit --I decided to wait until Kevin can go with us because I think he'd like it-- but we did go through the Hall of Ideas. They have a Foucault (is that even close to the right spelling?) pendulum between the gift shop and the entrance to the hall, and Alison was absolutely fascinated with it. She kept wanting to go back and see the "clock."

It's hard to describe just exactly what kind of exhibits they have here, but they are mostly science related. We didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at them, since they really aren't geared for a toddler, but Alison had a good time walking around. There are a couple of not-exactly-soundproofed rooms that deal with music. One talked about different types of music and played short clips of songs. We stayed in there for a few minutes and Alison really like some of what we heard. She couldn't have cared less for the commentary. The other room had a couple of different intruments in it....violin, recorder, trombone, some pipes from a pipe organ, and a xylophone. The xylophone was by far Alison's favorite. What's not to love about something that plays music when you beat on it with a stick? The pipes from the organ scared her. Actually, I think it was just whatever was providing the air for the pipes, because the trombone and the recorder didn't bother her and they worked on the same principle.....push a button and air starts blowing, then cover the holes, move the slide or move the air source around to make music.

I also discovered that Alison really did learn how to climb down stairs last weekend. Her grandma taught her how to get down the porch steps so we weren't constantly having to catch her before she walked off into thin air and fell down the steps. I don't know why, but I wasn't sure she would equate the porch steps with other kinds of steps. This morning, without me even saying a word, she stopped about two feet away from the stairs, got down on her hands and knees, turned around, crawled back to the edge and went down.

Tonight, after nap and our regular walk (here's where I want to whine about it being nearly 30 degrees colder than it was 2 days ago) we hit the mall for dinner at Ruby Tuesday. It's the first time I've taken her to a real sit-down restaurant by myself. Everything went fine. Alison colored on her menu a little, ate some peaches without a fight, was satisfied with a few fries while I de-breaded her chicken nuggets, and had finished most of her dinner before I even had a chance to start mine.

About a year ago, while we were out to dinner with my mom and my brother, my brother decided to give Alison a fry with ketchup to see if she would like it. She did not. The face she made was priceless. Tonight she kept grabbing for the ketchup bottle, so I put a little splotch on her plate and dipped a fry in it for her. Instead of taking a bite of the fry, she sucked the ketchup off and stuck the fry back in it. She ate most of the ketchup with the same fry.

After dinner we went out and walked around the mall a little bit. I was brave and did not bring the stroller in with me. Although there are a lot of people who don't approve of them, and think it makes children look like dogs, I have a harness for Alison. She's getting to the point where she wants to be down exploring and she doesn't like to hold my hand or have her hand held for very long. We went to Hallmark because I needed to get a couple of cards. Not exactly the best idea I've ever had. There's a lot of stuff to get into at Hallmark. I was able to buy my cards and get us out of the store without little fingers breaking anything.

The second bad idea of th evening was to make our way down to the rides. Alison's been to the mall enough --it's where we walk when the weather's bad-- to know that there's a choo choo there somewhere. So we went to see the choo choo. She didn't want to get in it, or any of the other rides, but, once there, she didn't want to leave it either!! We'd get going in the right direction for five or ten feet and the next thing I knew she was headed back to the choo choo. We finally got far enough away that she kept going in the right direction. The only challenge then was to keep from going into every store we passed.

We finally made it out of the mall and back home only to discover that Kevin called less than 10 minutes before we got here and we missed him. He's having a good time, I guess, and he'll be home around noon tomorrow. I think we'll survive until then. :)