Big Day

So some of you already got the news...

The Genetics department, after 2 months, finally called me with the results of Madi's test. She has a minor deletion on Chromosome 5. It's an area associated with Cris du Chat, or cry of the cat because of the noise they make as babies.

Now.

She has a very small piece missing so she does not have CdC but it explains her learning delays. And her small head. And her low muscle tone. But CdC can be quite severe, and a major chunk of Chromosome 5 needs to be missing. So phew.

She will not have any physical problems due to abnormalities, no heart defects, etc. So phew.

It kind of caught me off guard because all of the specialists were pretty sure there was no genetic anomaly.

hmpf

Anyway, she's already started school. ECSE Early childhood special education? She works with an OT, PT and a speech therapist. Pedro and I have noticed her making more vocalizations already.

I spoke with Madi's doc, who is wonderful, and she said I'm already doing all I can. She's in a great program and time will tell where her delays lie. or lay. I never get that right.

Yay!

Wow I'm tired so please excuse any really bad typos. Funny ones are okay.

So we finally met with Madi's teacher yesterday. The meeting was changed two times and I was wondering if we were ever going to get in there. She's still eligible for school and she starts on Monday. I have a lot of stuff to get her. Due to their ages, the school is very fluid on how much of the day they're there. I think most kids are gone by lunch time. But we'll see what happens. It's fine for this month, but next month I'll have to coordinate with when I pick up Lily!

Gah!

Speaking of Lily, she was the best yesterday. I told her what we were doing and that I needed her to be on her best behavior. I also brought my iPod so she could play games but still. :) She was great. She helped me, sat quietly and was just a really good girl for an hour and a half! I was so proud of her. :)

I'm trying to think of what else is going on... Lily seems like she's over her virus although her throat still looks all lumpy. I really hope Madi doesn't get it but I caught her drinking out of Lily's sippy cup last night so... We'll see what happens. The doc did say that Lily's extremely contagious. I guess that's what you get with viral strep throat thingies. :(

I guess that's it. I'll need to buy back to school stuff for Madi this weekend. Wheeeee!

Excited

I know that I need to start gearing up for the pre-school year. It's almost a school year! :) Next month, hopefully, Madi will be starting school. I'll need to keep track of all the things that I need for Lily's pre-school. Or is it preschool? That always looks wrong to me. Oh well.

There are meet and greet nights, parents' nights. squeel! I have found that taking care of two little kids is very hard work. Babies are like the easy peasy part. It's when they start walking and getting into your makeup or cleaning supplies (looking at Lily who had to scrub the shower clean last night) that things get really interesting.

Lily and I slept together last night and I hugged her and thought of how soon it will be that she'll be a woman grown and probably no longer have the time for me.

So I whispered, "I love you." And I heard a little, "I love you too."

:)

But I think my point was, yay school! LOL

Better

So I'm starting to feel more like myself. I didn't know how long it would take to get over surgery. A week? A day? I mean, some people make such a big deal out of it. Most days I have at least one moment where I HAVE to sit down. I don't think I had that yesterday. But I've been trying to nap every day. This involves me waiting for Madi to sleep, then grabbing her and going over the rules with Lily:

#1 No leaving the house.
#2 Don't let anyone in.

New rule:

#3 Don't start any fires.

I always feel nervous leaving Lily unattended but when momma needs a nap, she needs a nap! Usually Lily joins us about halfway through. :)

And this just about killed me:

Lily, to the Pest Control Guy: "Will the ants eat me?"

PCG: "Would you eat an elephant? To the ants, you're like an elephant." He goes outside.

Lily, laughing: "That guy's crazy! He thinks I'm an elephant! hahahahahaha"

Oh boy.

Wow

I'm still tuckered out. I guess I thought I'd be doing a lot better by now. I still need to take painkillers, though way less than when I first got home. And everyday, I find that I have a period where I just need to sit.

I'm not good at sitting. I mean, I'm good at sitting, but not the kind of sitting where you can't get up. I'm trying to figure out if that makes sense.

Blame the vicodin.

Anyhoo, life goes on. I'm still glad that everything worked out with the surgery: that whole day was one fluke to another. :) I'm so glad that my doctor sent me straight to the hospital. I mean, he looked really thoughtful about it, like maybe he wasn't sure and being cautious was the better way to go.

When I got there they said I was the third appendix person to show up in an hour. wheee doggies! It still cracks me up that I was in high heel wedge shoes. I didn't know I'd be going to the hospital. So that's what I had to prance around in, in the emergency room. lol

Ah well.

In other news, I'm really looking forward to the next time we go to Yorktown. G-ma has said she'll make soap with me! Pedro has some skin issues and can't use regular soap, like Dial, etc. He can only use the $5 a bar french-milled soaps. Needless to say, we can't afford his soap requirements. Sarah's soaps are free of all the yucky additives and Pedro doesn't have any reactions to them. So... we'll have some soap and I'll get an idea if it's something I want to do on my own. I know it's not super expensive to make soap but I want to get an idea of the equipment that I'll need.

Anyway, it's almost noon and the big dawg needs to get up. Wish me luck....

So....

Where to begin? So I got my appendix out. It was kind of all a fluke and went very smoothly.

Let's see... Monday night, I ate my dinner (grilled steak, mashed potatoes, peas) and I felt fine. Then I had some grilled turkey tenderloin and I hurt. I thought, well that serves me right for overeating. I had stuff to do and I kept on doing it, the pain wasn't THAT bad. Cleaned the sofas and the bathrooms, etc.

It was hard to fall asleep that night, I was uncomfortable. But it wasn't until 2:30am that I really started to hurt. I took some Advil and waited for that to kick in. Then I took one old Tylenol 3. Waited for THAT to work. Then I took another T3 and that finally worked, phew.

I've had a few gastrointestinal issues before so I was pretty sure it wasn't gastritis or gas pains. Those are sharp, stabbing pains that come and go. This was a chronic constant barrage of pain. I thought it might be my gallbladder since the pain was in the middle of my abdomen.

Sigh.

So we have an appointment with an OT for Madi who immediately tells me how awful I look. I know, I know.

I make an noon appointment with my doc. We talk a little and he starts pushing on my belly. The pushing was painful but it was the sudden release that made me want to scream. He steps back and looks really thoughtful and says "You need to go straight to the hospital". Now I've known Dr Peter for a few years and he's not the melodramatic type. So that shook me.

So we do go straight there. Not knowing I had a hospital visit in my future I was wearing a short skirt and hoochie mama heels. What? I couldn't get a hold of Pedro so I had to call a coworker and she was kind enough to find him for me.

We met at the hospital and Lily was crying and complaining about her appendix. Good grief.

I go in the emergency department and everyone's very nice but kind of not really believing my appendix story. Hey, I didn't want it to be my appendix either. But I drink that juice thing that makes your belly light up for the CAT scan as fast as I could and that was pretty fast because I'd only had a teeny fiber brownie for breakfast. I pretended it was a smoothie.

My blood work looked good, my white blood cells were only slightly above normal. They offered me morphine, which I declined. You know, I just wasn't looking like someone who was going to need surgery.

Then I get my CAT scan and that goes well. I think someone told me that it could take an hour to get results. Well, I barely had my butt in bed (ha, no pun intended) and the emergency doc comes over and says the radiology department had just called and I was going to be having surgery. I definitely had appendicitis.

C.R.A.P.

The surgeon showed up soon afterwards (amazing, I know) and she told me what she was going to do and that an OR had opened up and because I was an emergency, she bumped me into the slot. So everything was like, bam bam bam. Just all going so quickly and smoothly. I think it was 30 minutes after that conversation that I was out and undergoing surgery.

I mean, really. It was amazing.

I think the worst part was the antithetic. My throat still hurts today from the breathing tube even though my cuts look better. I had laproscopic? surgery. And the cuts were exactly where Dr Trahan said they'd be. I really liked her.

I also feel lucky because I liked just about everyone that looked after me.

Anyway, because I had that small breakfast, I was able to go into surgery immediately, you know? It was all such a fluke.

I also bitched and moaned about being hungry. I didn't beg for food or anything, it was just a constant complaint. I knew I couldn't eat until after surgery and man, did I feel like a hoagie. I never crave them but I did on Tuesday.

So I'm in hell. I mean the recovery room and I'm getting hungry again. It took forever to get my head together but I think I started asking when I was getting food. LOL! I was going to make a trip down to the cafeteria on my own if dinner was over. Really.

Waiting for me in my room was a cup of hot chicken soup. OMG Nothing had every looked or smelled so good. My nurse observed, slightly intimidated, the way I annihilated my soup and came back with....

A HOAGIE!!!!!!!

omg I must've had some seriously good karma saved up! Pedro and the girls showed up at this point and I warned them that I was not sharing. I was still slightly nauseous and it took me an hour to eat the whole sandwhich but my belly felt SO good for it. :)

And that's it, I guess. G-ma was able to come up yesterday to watch the girls so I could get some sleep and sleep I did. whew At the hospital, I had compression thingies on my legs and they checked my vitals every so often and if I bent my left elbow then the IV stopped and an alarm went off. So I didn't get to sleep all that much...

But I feel better today and wow, for an emergency, things went better than could be expected. Thanks everyone for your well wishes. I just need to have a goodbye party for my appendix and I can wrap it up. :)

Epilogue:

The surgeon told me that one end of my appendix was fine and the other was funky.

The cuts she made were just below the bikini line where she said she was going to make them.

Yay!

Yay!

I logged in and it actually worked. So, not a lot to report this week, which I guess is good. I got Lily's preschool application off and they just called to let me know that they got it. I'll be meeting with the school in a few weeks to make sure that Madi is still eligible for their program. Still haven't seen the genetics testing results. phew But still things are sort of evening out again.




Pedro's been sleeping more with Madi. Too bad I haven't been sleeping well. argh Lily either wakes me up in the middle of the night or it takes me hours to fall asleep. Sigh. I do worry about Madi. I found the results from her last doctor's visit and she's fallen from the 40% for height down to 11%. Now, I know trying to measure a wiggly baby isn't an exact science but that's still worrying. We go back next month for another height/weight check.

I did bring up a growth hormone deficiency. Just throwing around ideas. I mean, 3 out of the 4 of us in this house are above average height and weight. Lily just because she's such a big kid.

I am still so glad to see her walking. She can bend over and pick things up and not fall down. Usually. :) And yes, she's my snuggle bear. Be careful what you wish for: I wanted a snuggly baby. :)

Good Times (mostly)

We went down to Busch Gardens over the weekend. I won't advertise that stuff until after the fact. I know it might be... I can't think of the word but just in case someone sees something on here or on Facebook. I don't need to let everyone know that we're not going to be here. You know? I did tell one neighbour but she's a good egg.

Anyway, so I dumped all the photos off of my phone and this included pics from my old phone. The one of Madi in the pink hat just cracks me up. She reminds me of that sidekick guy in the old western movies. Can't think of his name...

So I think we did pretty well at Busch Gardens. Pedro had issues with waiting for everyone and it looked like he was about to pass out from heat stroke but we made it. We didn't go on a lot of rides on Saturday. I got to go on more rides on Sunday. Also, this was pretty much Madilyn's level of happiness all weekend. I tried to get her out of the stroller a little bit to cool off.



This was Lily's first ride ever. :) And she chose the super sparkly hat. Which you might not be able to tell is sparkly from the picture. Sigh. So anyway, I have a year's pass so we'll likely be going back a few more times this year.

This was the best pic of Lily and Pedro. I'd get to one end of the ride just as they went to the other end. argh But it looks like they had fun. Madi was obviously too small for most of the rides. I think next time, I'll make sure that I have their bathing suits and Madi can crawl and play around the water park. I'll need to bring something for me to wear as well. :/







I think you can tell by all the water around the pool that they weren't just sitting there nicely. :p It was nice to sit there with g-ma and Aunt Maria just watching the girls. (while all the guys napped) Oh and just one more thing....










FUNNEL CAKE!!!

Okay

so today was better. Madi didn't keep me up for 3 hours. I'm starting to think the sleep doc was right in that Madi only had one short nap yesterday and she only had 6.5 hours of sleep the night before. She's not grumpy and doesn't laze around all day.

Which is kind of awful news for me. A 2 year old that only needs 6 hours of sleep?

C.R.A.P.

If I can't get her to sleep all night, I know that when she's old enough I'll have to provide a safe place for her to play quietly until the rest of us get up.

But she did sleep a little more last night. I mean, she woke up every hour or so but it's just so much better than crying and fussing for 3 hours straight.

Sigh.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I had a point and after a glass of Moscato... my point disappeared.

gosh and it's our 12th anniversary tomorrow. How did THAT happen?

Oh AND I ran 2 miles today!!!!!! I'm extremely proud of myself. I didn't run one mile and take a break, I actually ran two miles non-stop. :) I wonder if I'll be able to repeat that. Or improve it. Gah

Madilyn is destroying our lives...

No, seriously. She kept me up from 3:30 til 6:30. After initially waking me up at 2:30.

Yes, we went to see the sleep specialist on Monday pm. We talked for quite a while and he's a.... intelligent, willing to listen, but I don't know if he really got what I was trying to say about madi.

He said she really really really needs a routine. I said that I couldn't believe that a routine was the only thing keeping madilyn from sleeping. A child doesn't throw themselves across a bed because they don't have a set bedtime.

Oh yes, I did.

So the funny thing is that I swear Madi was listening to him. The doctor guy. The last two days we've gotten up at 7:30. She has set nap times and if she misses them, oh well. She tried to sneak a nap in at 6 last night and I got her up and moving. Man was she pissed. But she crashed at 9:30 which was just about when the doc said she should.

So what went wrong???

See the doc thinks she's getting too much sleep. He may be right, she may not need as much but she's developmentally delayed so there's no way that I wasn't going to let her sleep. You know? Anyhoo, he did warn me that it was going to be tough. and I mean, I knew that too.

Also? my keyboard sucks. I hit the shift key every time that I need to and it doesn't always work. *eyes*

Anyway, so last night I couldn't sleep. I was even in bed, lights out by 10:05. that's amazing for me. I think I finally fell asleep around 11:30. So when Madi woke up at 2:30, it was kind of a rude awakening. She did sleep 5 hours. Which is good for her. Isn't that sad?

I keep on telling myself, just make it through til she's older and can entertain herself. I think I'm just at a spot where I think, there's no guarantee THAT will even happen. Poor Lily has been taking the brunt of my temper. Mostly because she shows up at the worst possible time. It's not her fault that her sister keeps me up half the night. Lily wants attention too and just happens to want it when I need my sleep the most.

And Pedro's staying at home today to let me get some rest. Except that I'm awake while the AC guy is here (nothing is wrong, just maintenance) and he's asleep.

Madi's not sleeping affects everyone, whether it's directly (me not sleeping) or indirectly (me yelling at Lily). I'm going to keep up the routine because we need it for when she starts school in 6 or 7 weeks. But most days I feel like running away. In my mind, I'm turning a corner from Sleep Deprivation Lane into Psychotic Alley. :/

*scream*

Every. Freaking. Time.

I cannot get into blogger without resetting my password every time. As you can imagine, this makes me not want to have anything to do with it. argh

Anyway, June has been a colossal pain in my butt. Looking forward to July. There's a book, movie and video game add-on coming out. SOMETHING to look forward to.

We see the sleep expert tomorrow. I think my expectations have been sunk pretty low. Maybe there are some things I could try to do better (keep her on a schedule) but I've tried everything and I kind of have an existence that I can deal with. I guess I get frustrated easily, I don't know. But all the times I spent trying to get her to nap when I could tell she was tired and after an hour, angry and frustrated, I'd put her in her highchair and she'd fall asleep in 30 seconds. ARGH Yes, Madilyn.

Sigh. Anyway, now she's yelling because she's not sitting on my lap. Why? Because she likes slamming her head back into my collarbone and that really really hurts. *face* I just wonder when Madi's going to snap out of it. A lot of people have told me to accept her and love her for the special baby that she is but, you know, they don't have to put up with sleep deprivation or bruises on their collarbones. I try to give her the love she needs but momma needs some space too. S.I.G.H.

Anyway, some pics of Lily playing yesterday. At least one of us is having fun.

OMGOSH

So I've been having problems with blogger in that I guess it saved the password so I wouldn't have to remember it and the password changed but not in the saved section. I type in the new password and it reverts to the old one, which, of course, doesn't work. I finally got it sorted out. *face*

So things have been kind of rough around here. So far this week, both girls are healthy. I wasn't sure that was ever going to happen! I'm glad that Madi survived her illness okay. And fever that gets close to 104 is scary, especially in someone so young and little. Sigh.

I'm kind of getting frustrated with Madilyn. It's funny that the people I talk to lately, point out that she's a special kid. I see a kid who's two and kind of walking, not talking and still not sleeping. Pedro says she sleeps through the night but that's because if she crawls out of his embrace he pulls her back in. to me, that's not sleeping through the night and I think it's bad that he's using himself as a prop. I mean, I have to do that to get her to sleep. Then I shove her across the bed so I can roll over and get some sleep. Sigh.

I have to vent

We all know that I'm pretty tired and stressed out most of the time, right? And that reflects on how I live my life and the life my kids and husband has. If one member of the team is constantly burned out, well...

So I'm having problems with Madi's physical therapist. She's great but uhhh not so good with the scheduling part of things. Initially, our appointment was for yesterday (Wednesday). She emailed me last Friday and asked if I could maybe do it this Friday. We go to UVA on Friday and if you've ever been there you know it's the worst place to go ever, and I'd like to have a peaceful morning, but okay, sure if we have to do PT on Friday am, we'll do it.

So I don't hear from her all weekend and finally I email her back Tuesday night to see if she's coming over Wednesday.

Now bear in mind, poor Lily is going house crazy and I'm trying to make playdates for her. I've made one for Monday, but we're all sick so I call and change it to Thursday.

The PT gets back to me late Tuesday night and says she can now make it Thursday. Frack.

So I msg the mom and say, hey we can't make it Thursday now.

I'm kind of flaky enough in real life I don't need someone else messing things up for me. I'm about to just say look, we can do PT at this time and date, if you can't do that, then we'll find someone else.

Update

So after the meltdown yesterday, Lily tried her very best to be a good girl. And she did a really good job. :) I tried to lay down the rules with her (no hitting, etc) and we had a good talk. whew

It's just funny that all it took was a garbage bag to get her attention. :/

Oh boy

I will admit to having trouble with parenting. My own parents weren't really absent parents, I mean they were in the house, but they didn't spend a lot of time with me. Really. Once I learned how to cook, I hardly saw them. So I thought being a parent was a breeze. A few minutes here or there.

Reality is much harder. For one, Madilyn is an extremely clingy and needy kid. Then there's the fact that I don't want to raise the girls like my parents raised me. So that means a lot of hitting is out. My dad was very strict and I got a lot of spankings, sometimes with a belt. Sometimes he slapped my face. It was pretty rough.

So, that's what I know.

I know about counting and time out but holy crap, Lily is not down with it. She was acting up and started spitting at me. So I told her to go to time out and I held her there for a bit. When she wouldn't stop fighting me, I let go of her and went to her room to get her laptop. I took her laptop after she was warned to stop yelling/stomping/hitting. If anything that made her angrier. I thought maybe ignoring her would help. Since that worked for Madilyn and her hitting her head on the floor. I did the dishes. Lily kicked over the baby gate. Stomped on it, threw her step stools, etc. By this point I was ready to put her head through a wall.

What I did instead was, hopefully, calmly take a garbage bag and head for her room. She knew exactly what this meant and stopped everything. I started putting toys in the bag while she began crying and pleading for me to stop. So we had a talk.

Apparently, she hates her sister and wants her to go back in my belly. I tried to explain that's not going to happen.

I really don't know what else to do. It's my opinion that when Pedro yells at her, it teaches her that it's okay to yell. I think she pitches fits to get attention. I don't want to reward the behavior and I've noticed that spankings don't seem to work.

Taking her toys away sure gets her attention. I've read my share of books but I know that each kid is different. One mom I know has found that money really motivates her son. I don't think that Lily is a bad kid but she had a lot of spunk and really seems to enjoy fighting.

I'm trying to listen to her more and treat her more kindly (hoping she'll follow my lead). Sigh.

At least I have lots of garbage bags.