I don't have much on the tip of my "pen" today. Here is a list of mildly interesting occurences from the past 24 hours:

1) Dan's car did NOT need a new wheel bearing, which is a good thing. Wheel bearings are expensive. It DID, though, need some new lug nuts. I thoroughly approve of the phrase "lug nuts." It's quite nice to say. Lug. Nuts. Go ahead, try it.

2) Vi slept fairly well last night, only getting up once. I have no idea why.

3) I slept fairly well last night, although Riley was hogging the blankets.

4) I saw two foxes! Last night, I went to Friendly's for what is becoming a regular ice cream date with my friend Adrianne. After gabbing longer than the allowable booth-rental period, she drove me home and we continued to gab in the car, parked in front of my house. (Very good gab session.) I saw what I thought were two cats trotting down the street, so I excitedly said, "Ooh! Cats!" (I state the obvious with exuberance.) One walked by the car, and Adrianne turned on her headlights to see the second one. It was then that we thought - huh. That's either a tall cat or a short dog, and soon realized that it was a fox. The headlights stunned the poor critter, and after a moment's pause, he walked up my driveway, across my doorstep, through my yard, down my neighbors' driveway, then ran down the street to the Pekinese-owning Republicans' house. (They are new renters who are never home, so we don't know them...but I've seen their dog and their McCain sign, so we just refer to them as The Republicans.) People tell me that seeing a fox - or maybe having one cross your path? - is good luck. I'm happily anticipating my good fortune.

5) Vi had OMM this morning at the University of New England; she's participating in their free clinic, which allows students to practice and learn and allows patients free treatment. She did really well, and the teaching doctor explained that there is some compression in her skull and around her sacrum. They're going to hang her upside-down next week to help relieve it. Sounds fun to me! I know hanging upside-down in yoga always helps with my musculo-skeletal issues.

This is the final week of corporate-crunch, race to the finish, hurry up and finish up 2008 books for my clients. It's pretty crazy in my office - lots to do. Therefore, I am now signing off.

Have a great Tuesday!

P.S. My mother is back from Ohio. I'll post some of her funny stories from when my poor grandmother was on pain killers... I think we're all laughing about it, now.

Christmas and December 2008 in review...

It's hard to believe the year is almost over. I do believe 2008 has been one of the most challenging and rewarding years of my life (so far.) I'm sure I'll have to take some "time to reflect" before New Year's Eve. For now, though, here's what we did in the past couple of weeks.



Many of you know that Maine was hit hard with an ice storm recently. We were without electricity for just over 24 hours at our house, but family members were without power for 3 and 4 days. Others in the state suffered for almost a week!



We heat our home with oil...our, I should say heatED. This summer Dan refurbished the boat and sold it, making enough money to install a chimney, hearth and wood-burning stove, plus buy enough wood for this winter and possibly next. The installation has been a struggle to say the least. We had a contractor lined up to do the whole project - he had great references, a good price, and Dan really liked him. He showed up with rusty, used parts that were not even the right size to meet code. There was no negotiating to happen with this guy, so he left and wouldn't return our calls. Thank goodness we hadn't given him any money. It was another month before we had someone else lined up, and he was a total administrative nightmare...he wrote down our information as Stan Welch, and kept getting our street name and family names mixed up...I actually told him that I was Stan's wife at one point...ha! When it was all said and done, he did a great job in little time for a great price.



Dan decided to build the hearth himself, which was a big leap of faith for me. Half-way through that piece of the project, our neighbor offered some advice, training, and help. In the end, he built the entire hearth in exchange for driveway snow-blowing for the winter! What a deal. The hearth was useable but not beautiful JUST in time for our power outtage, so we were toasty warm. We cooked on the stove, heated up water for baths, and dried hand-washed clothes on racks in the living room. We felt like frontier-folk. We were *almost* sad when the power returned.

Popps decided to do his physical rehab here in Maine, so he arrived shortly after Thanksgiving to a nursing home about 20 minutes North of us. We've been visiting him a lot, and he's been making great progress. He's using a walker and a wheelchair, doing his exercises, and seems to have made peace with his PT after a rocky start. He's hoping to return to NY soon.

Vi has had an action-packed month. Between OMT for last month's ear infection, eczema, and a tummy bug, she's been in and out of the doctors' offices too many times to count. Her ears are all cleared up, and she started a growth spurt just after a four-day BRAT diet. The eczema still hasn't cleared up, so we visited the homeopathic doctor last week. She thinks that it's not an allergy, but a wrecked gut...from the antibiotics last month for her ear infection and the tummy bug. She is helping us cure this from the inside out with Cod Liver Oil, ProBiotics, and a homepathic remedy for her general constitution to help her immune system get balanced. Plus, she's having us eliminate dairy and soy for a bit, just to help along the process. (Goat and Buffalo are fine...we're sticking with Goat's milk, since Buffalo milk sounds revolting and wrong.)

New words that she's trying out: help, hot, down, cup, sit, ball, eyeball and all gone. All gone is a good one - it comes out sounding like the Law & Order chime - Ga-gong!

Her "receptive" language is still thriving - she seems to understand more than we realize. She is also using her signs as much as ever. New signs include train and rabbit. She can point to her body parts, too, so we're singing a lot of "head, shoulders, knees and toes" lately. We've been asking her lots of questions and trying to improve her ability to constructively use all of these tools. So, lots of fun stories are to come, including:

My brother's family was in town for the holiday, and poor baby Addie has started teething. There was a lot of crying in the past couple of days. (Which made Dan and me realize that a baby's cry is loudest to the baby's parents. Funny what perspective does.) Recently, Addie gave up the pacifier/Nuk/binky/bubba. I asked Vi if Addie had told her what she needed. (I sort of think the little ones actually understand each other...any research to prove that? I'd love to read it.) Vi nodded her head and said, "Yeh." I asked her, "What does baby Addie need?" Vi responded, enthusiastically and unprompted, "Bubba!"

This is one of those stories that's hard to tell without sounding judgemental, so I want to be clear that Addie's doing great without the bubba, does not need one, and I'm not suggesting they try to give her one! The Bub is one of those areas each parent has to make their own choices about, and I know how much I dislike uninvited advice. JD and I were comiserating about strangers giving us advice in public...so strange. That's the easy advice to shirk. Intra-family advice is harder because the advisors are witnesses to your choices. It can be hard to not take it personally, when parenting methods are not the same. I know we have different rules about bubbas and TV than my sister's family, and that sleep and slings are big differences between me and my brother's family...but you know what? It doesn't matter. I mean, of course it matters that one parents mindfully and makes these decisions with the overall health of all the family members being a priority, but it doesn't matter that we do it differently. These kids are all growing up loved and taken care of, with a great big family that loves them. That's all that matters.

Another word that Vi definitely understands is "scream." If you say the word, she willingly demonstrates. How can such little lungs make so much noise?

Christmas was great. We did our usual multi-family run-around - three families in one day. Vi got lots of new books, a table & chairs set, an emperor penguin, clothes, shoes, and money for college. I got clothes, a Kitchenaid mixer, slippers, and lots of sleep. Dan got a leather jacket, books, iTunes gift cards, and gift certificates for shoes and a wood-carrier. We got money for our oil bill, too, which is great...we'll have hardly spent any of our own money on oil this year! With a bunch of gift certificates combined, we also got a new camera. (RIP our Sony.)

My sister was here with her kids, and we got to go sledding, watch Prince Caspian, play with the electric train, draw and decorate cookies. The kids all did some disco-diva dancing at my dad's house that evening. I am hoping we have some video to post, because it was pretty hilarious. There will definitely be lots of great pictures coming from Noelle.

And, today, it's back to work. Just a 3-day work week for me, so I should really be plowing through my to-dos rather than writing in my diary...

Happy New Year to all of you!

P.S. 8 days until Birthday.

What a day! (And not in a good way)

Poor Baby Vi has been sick all week. We thought she was getting a little fever on Sunday night due to teething, but it kept going up and up. She hasn't wanted to eat, she's had weird diapers (and we'll just leave it at that), and she's been pale, shy and anti-social. Even people who rarely see her said she must not be feeling well, just by the looks of her.

(By the way - I'm feeling a bit exhausted, which you'll understand by the end of this post, so I'm not going to worry about grammar so much. There will be paragraphs that just run on and on...oh, well. Read another blog if it bothers you.)

I decided today, when she wouldn't really let me take her temperature in her ear, to get her in to see the doctor. Her usual doctor is on vacation, so I accepted an appointment with the NP on staff. I tend to like Nurse Practicioners quite a bit, and this one turned out to be great. (Karen Weiss, UHC for Kids. Hurray, Karen!) What I didn't expect was a student to be shadowing her, which meant that Vi had to have everything done twice. I('m usually open to meeting with a student, but by the end of round two, I'm a little frustrated that I've had to repeat myself. Sometimes I get a bit paranoid, like the student DID tell the teacher everything, but the teacher is trying to catch me with an inconsistency. "Psycho-somatic! I'm giving you some Prozac!" I imagine them yelling at me. But that's just crazy old me...) In any case, the student was great, just a little hesitant with Vi, but very nice. They ruled out everything but a urinary tract infection, so we decided to get a urine sample! No, I didn't have to chase her around with a cup trying to catch pee. They have these little plastic bags that look just like vacuum bags - you know how vacuum bags have the hose-attachment hole, with the cardboard around it? It looked just like that, but with a u-shaped sponge around the hole, and weak, band-aid-like adhesive on the outside to stick onto her Va-jay-jay, as my Aunt Raylene would say. So, we stuck it on and waited for her to fill it. And waited. And waited.

She didn't "void" while at the doctor's office, so we came home, hoping she'd sleep a bit, as she'd been refusing a nap all day. She fell asleep on the way home, then woke up the second we walked through the door. Grammy was there, so Vi wanted to get up and be cute and giggle and act like she was well for a few moments, before collapsing into a sweaty, fussy mess. She finally peed around 12:30, then fell asleep for an hour or so. Grammy hung out with her while I took the sample to the lab, and ran an errand for work.

(Oh, yeah. Work! Right. I work for a living. I had, oh, seven or eight very important things to do today, some of which involve a marketing event I'm coordinating for Friday. Day-after-tomorrow Friday. Picking up collateral from two different printers. Dropping of freebie-logo items at the event site, introducing myself to the host and surveying the site, etc. Plus it's payroll tax week - quarterlies and monthlies due at the same time. Sales tax week - all due Tuesday. Year-end for two clients. And those are only the out-of-the-ordinary tasks for this week!)

I got to the lab with the sample, and no paperwork. I had to wait at the lab for the pediatrician to fax the labwork request, then rush to the event site to meet with the host.

Did you notice that I used the word rush? What do you think happened next? What could make this day even more awesome?

That's right. I got pulled over for speeding. I haven't been pulled over in 11 years!! Between my squeaky-clean driving record and the fact that noone dares screw with a Mama whose baby is sick, I got off with just a warning.

After all was done, errands and tasks delegated to my WONDERFUL CO-WORKERS Mark and Diana, Vi and I came home and I tried to get her down for a nap. Just as she was drifting off to sleep, Dan came through the front door and said "I got tired of so I came home." Sick baby. Sick husband.

I skipped a part about both print jobs getting screwed up, and the host of the event not even being available to meet with me.

It's 82 degrees Farenheit inside my house, my brain is melting, and needless to say it doesn't smell good in here.

So, how was YOUR day? If you thought it was a bad one, just think of me and feel a bit better. There's always someone who had a worse day, isn't there?

Should have knocked on wood

On Monday Vi had a vaccination called PREVNAR. It's supposed to help prevent strep-pneumonia and ear infections. Apparently, one of the possible side effects is diarrhea. So many wonderful stories there...but don't worry, I won't bother you with such colorful tales.

We've discovered that Vi is extremely sensitive to vaccinations. Not necessarily to the shot, the needle, but to the actual junk that's injected into her tiny little body. (Which is, by the way, not so tiny anymore. She can hardly stand up beneath the dining room table, her thighs finally have a little pudge, and her belly is getting a bit round.) Knowing that I'm quite sensitive to all medicines (and life in general), that there are allergies and Aspergers and other risk factors on both sides of her family tree, we decided when she was born to consult with a homeopathic doctor in our area whose specialties are pediatrics and immunizations. She helped us create a customized immunization schedule based on Vi's family medical history.

She prescribed a homeopathic remedy which, I'm convinced, got Vi to stop crying in the car.

Vi had a horrible reaction to her first shot. She didn't really notice the needle, and was in good spirits for a few hours. Towards the end of the day, she completely melted down and was inconsolable. Completely inconsolable. Dan called the homeopathic doctor, she told him what remedy to try, and within twenty minutes Vi had fallen into a deep, contented slumber.

So, we like her. She GETS it. She GETS our parenting style. She GETS Vi. Her homeopathic remedies work for Vi. And, she is very, very cool.

The "should have knocked on wood" part is that since Monday's shot, Vi hasn't slept through the night. I had a sick, superstitious feeling when I created my last post that just by thinking it out loud, the spell would be broken, and we would be back to 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 4 o'clock wakings.

We are.

We made the mistake of breaking with some of our patterns that first night. And we broke the patterns every other night, too. So, we're back to square one, because I think she's pretty much un-learned everything she had figured out about how to sleep. The good news is that - according to this doctor - she'll probably be able to get back to where she was last week quickly. Maybe just a few nights.

And if not, she's got a remedy for that, too.

1-month checkup

Vi had a check-up with her pediatrician today, and it went really well. The trip there in the car was uneventful (which is rare), and the appointment fell right between meals & naps (good job, Mommy). She weight 9 pounds, 9 ounces, and is 22 1/4 inches long! The nurse said she's in the 75th percentile for both weight and height, but the doctor said 60th...not sure which is right, and I don't REALLY care about the percentiles. Her head, however, is in the 25th percentile! It's such a cute little noggin.

16 Weeks and counting!

My appointment with the new practice is tomorrow - weather permitting. The snow has been falling all day, and will probably continue through the night. Some of us are enjoying a snow day at home!

Here is the update on Critter from Babycenter:
At 4 1/2 inches long (head to bottom) and 3 1/2 ounces, your baby is about the size of an avocado. In the next three weeks, she'll go through a tremendous growth spurt, doubling her weight and adding inches to her length. Her lower limbs are much more developed now. Her head is more erect than it has been, and her eyes have moved toward the front of her head. Your baby's ears are close to their final position, too. Some of her more advanced body systems are working, including her circulatory system and urinary tract. The patterning of her scalp has begun, though her hair isn't recognizable yet. Although closed, her eyes are moving (slowly), and she's even started growing toenails. Her finger - and toenails will continue to grow throughout pregnancy, so don't be surprised if she needs them trimmed soon after birth.