Happy Mother's Day

To all of you wonderful ladies out there who go by the name of Mom, Mommy, Mama, or Maaaahmaaaaay--I want to wish you the happiest and best of days. May you be surrounded by your children and those you love. Or at least not be bothered by those who annoy you.

We are in Idaho, happy to be home. All is not unpacked or organized yet, which stresses me to no end. But it feels right to be here. I missed Idaho in more ways than I even thought.

Monday I leave for two days in Chicago followed by three days in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I don't want to leave again so soon after just coming back from one trip and then moving, but what can ya do? I am looking forward to getting some good uninterrupted sleep at some point during next week. That alone is almost worth the hassle of going. We will be meeting with many of our clients face to face, so therefore I must be dressed in "business formal" attire (my boss' emphasis). Dang. I thought I could just show up in my bikini and hot pink feather boa and call it good. We are heading directly from the airport to a client's office, which means one thing...that when I leave my house at approximately 5 freaking AM on Monday, I will have to be in HEELS! HOSE! A SKIRT! WITH HAIR DONE! Can we say, No comfy traveling? That part stinks. I no likey.

I promise to post a more informative entry when I return. (quit laughing. seriously. you are hurting my feelings.) Have a great weekend!

Tom Cruise Didn't Kidnap Me

Hey, gang! Sorry for not updating sooner, but blahblahcrazyhecticlifeblahblah you have heard it all before. Here's a brief update:

My inlaws, the wonderful glorious helpful great people that they are, flew in a week ago Monday to help us pack up our house. They will then be driving our moving truck back to Idaho with us while we drive our car. These people, in addition to producing the most handsome man ever to be borned on the planet, are expert packers and organizers. They should seriously have their own show on HGTV called How To Move Properly. They are the bomb. (And they are all mine and no, I won't share. Until you put up with their son for sixteen years and give them grandchildren, they are not yours, so there.)

Anyway, my mom in law was packing up my kitchen the other day and said to me, "I need some more stuff for this box. Do you care if I get some living room stuff and put it in here with the kitchen stuff?" Now, ponder that for a moment....I replied, "I have someone willing to pack my house up, for free, who is also very nice and cares that my stuff doesn't get broken. And you are asking if I care what goes in what box? You could put my underwear in with the spices or my shoes in with my collander, and I WOULD.NOT.CARE." Isn't that like the Best Christmas/Birthday/GroundHog's Day Present Ever? Yes, am spoiled. Nyah,nyah,nyah.

They are also helping watch the kidlets while I am in California. I flew out on Sunday to come work in our company's head office and to attend a convention. IN.DISNEYLAND. Again, how cool is that? I don't return to MO until Saturday night late, which will make this one looooong week. I am having some fun, but work is pretty intense too. I took a beginning accounting class for about twelve hours over a two day period, and my brain has now officially become tapioca. Then on Saturday, I get to take a 200 question, four hour exam in order to get certified by the Grand Poobahs of Certification for People Who Do What I Do. There you go again with the envying me. Please stop. I'll try not to enjoy the test too much. (help me. please. come bust me out of here?)

We sign on our house on Monday and will be heading out to God's Country immediately following. We are very excited and happy and wanting to shake the dust of Missouri off our feet when we hit the border. ;)

Becki over at Nervous Girl was getting nervous that I hadn't posted in awhile and also hadn't emailed her to assure her that we didn't move to a commune that eschewed all outside contact. I guess I hadn't realized that many of you were still so concerned about Alison's well-being. Thanks for that, and she is great. She is doing all the things an almost three year old does, except in hyper-speed. Kinda like a lemur on crack drinking a Starbucks. She is fully recovered except for her scar.

But the child is so obviously traumatized by my absence, since she only has her father, brother, and doting grandparents to grant her every wish and wait on her hand and foot.

Example...my typical phone conversation with her since arriving in CA:

Ali: Hi, Mommy! You wokeing?

Me: Yes, baby, I am working. How are you?

Ali: I do fine. I pway blocks Daddy Zacky Grammi Papa! Uno Dos Tres Quatro Cinco Sayce! I count!

Me: Wow! That's so cool! You are so smart, honey! I love you.

Ali: I fuddy! I so siddy! You siddy too Mommy!

Me: Yes, I am silly too. I love you, punkin.

Ali: I eat cookies! Grammi cookies! I pway! I see Diego Dora show on tee-bees! I go now! Bye!

Me: (calling into an empty phone) I love you, baby girl!

Zack: It's me now, Mom. And I resent being called Baby Girl.

So clearly, the child will need serious therapy if I stay gone much longer...

Be good, you guys, and don't let anything too exciting happen in the next little bit, because I will be severely behind on reading all your blogs.

(insert really cool picture of me all tanned and toned dressed in island wear holding a virgin pina colada standing in front of a Disney statue. Because my days have been just like that. Well, except for the tanned and toned part. Oh, and the island wear part. And the virgin pina colada part. But I have drank plenty of Diet Coke. And I walked by some Disney statues. Okay, never mind. Go on back to your business, people. There's nothing to see here.)

I Hope You're Not Eating Anything...

The three sites with sutures sticking out are where the various chest tubes were...

The long scar above them is where the surgeon had to cut in between my baby's ribs in order to get to her lungs.

Keep in mind this picture is two weeks after surgery.

You can't see it here very well, but she had an IV line in her right arm in which she received antibiotics once a day. For a week. This is her AFTER the initial screaming and thrashing that occured every time we had to hook her up to the handy-dandy little machine there.

And the picture I didn't post was the one of me collapsed on the master bathroom floor in tears the day we brought her home from the hospital, after we tucked her into her nice warm bed with her favorite blanket and stuffed animals, and our house was all quiet and peaceful. And it fully hit me how very very close we came to losing our baby girl.

Alright, Already!

My friend Becki from over at Nervous Girl chastised me via email the other day for not posting the results of Alison's doctors appointment on Thursday, and rightfully so. I am sorry about the delay on getting the info out there, but this pesky little thing called life keeps standing in the way of my blogging. Sheesh, if these children would quit clamoring to be fed, maybe I could get some stuff done around here!

Seriously though, the appointment went very well. First we had to take her to the hospital to get a chest x-ray. This part did not go so smoothly. She was ushered back into the same room where she had previous x-rays during her hospital stay, and this did not set well. Poor thing was so nervous and upset that someone somewhere was going to poke at her or give her nasty medicine that she just plain freaked out. Not that I blamed her in the tiniest bit, because I was not all that jazzed to be back at the hospital either.

The xray showed that there is still some inflammation in the pleural lining around her lung, but that is very normal based on what she had. There is still a bit of pneumonia in her lung itself, but the doctor seems to think that this will be reabsorbed (um, yuck) back into her body. She did get her PICC line taken out, which means no more IV antibiotics. (and all God's children said AMEN for that bit of news!) She is still on her very nasty tasting Clindamycin for the next week, but that is such a small price to pay for her getting better.

The doctor who saw her while in the hospital, Dr M, is such a nice man. He is very gentle with kids and has a great bedside manner. But because he was one of the people in scrubs who kept coming in to poke, prod, look at, or otherwise bother Alison? She has major things against him. When he came into the exam room, she just closed her eyes and turned her head away from him with this whole, "You are dead to me" vibe. She would not answer or respond to him in any way. I guess she figured that if she ignored him, he would go away. It was quite hilarious to watch, and yet sad at the same time. My girl, who would normally be Miss BlahBlahStranger LetMeTalkYourEarOff Girl, now has Scrub Anxiety.

Last night, when she was being a little stinker and trying to lick her daddy's face, we realized that she is fully back to Pre-Hospitalized Ali Form. Her personality has come back full force, as has her energy level. I believe at one point my husband's comment was, "Did you give her crack?" (and in case you are wondering, No, I did not. I only give my children pot.) (I so fuddy.)

She has an appointment this Thursday with her surgeon. I may or may not at some point post pictures of what her little back looks like with the stitches and the scar and all that, you know, just to freak you out. I figure if we have to look at it and cringe, you should too. Because I said so.

And I am working on the hospital story for a later posting. And by later posting, well, you know what I mean. And by working on it, I mean I am thinking about writing it in between doing laundry and eating all the food in my house. Because I have priorities, people.

Thank God for Stupid Criminals

...and observant people.

On March 12 when our car was stolen out of our garage, another couple in our neighborhood had their car stolen the same night. They too left the garage door open by mistake and left a spare set of keys in their car. This young couple in their twenties came to see us the afternoon after our cars were stolen to compare notes and find out if we knew anything they didn't about the situations. I think their names are Tiffany and J-something, so I will call him Jeff for sake of this story.

Tiffany and Jeff live around the corner from us. In fact you can see their house when you stand in our back yard. They were very sweet and we really enjoyed talking to them. We have seen them a few times around the neighborhood since the theft, and always stop to say hi and find out if the sheriff has ever contacted them again. We were both told that once your car gets stolen in this county, you probably won't see it again. The only way they usually find stolen cars around here is to get a tip, or to stumble upon it abandoned on one of the over 500 miles of country road that make up the county. So yeah, neither one of us were expecting to ever see our vehicles again.

Today, Tiffany and Jeff were out in their yard when they looked up to see a lady drive by in a Lincoln that looked surprisingly like theirs. Jeff remarked to his wife, 'Honey, that looks like our car.' The lady had a few kids in the back seat and was driving very slowly through the neighborhood, looking carefully at houses. It was only about a minute later that Jeff realized that it was in fact their car the lady was driving! T and J hopped in their car and followed the lady while contacting the police. The lady realized she was being followed and floored it, losing our amateur crimefighters. Due to their quick thinking, the lady was soon surrounded by about five sheriffs vehicles and was soon made a guest of the county.

After recovering their car, T and J made their way to our house to notify us that we could probably expect to hear about our car too. At the same time that was happening, I was driving and received a call from a captain with the sheriff's office that went something like this:

Captian: Did you folks recently report your car stolen?

Me: Yes, sir, we did.

Captain: Well, I am standing right here looking at it!

Me: YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!!! YAY!!!!

Captain: I now need hearing aids....

Okay, just kidding on that last sentence. But seriously, how cool is that? Our car was abandoned in a apartment complex parking lot in the north side of town far far from where we live. Apparently, the "lady" who was driving the Lincoln? She first proclaimed that she had no idea the car she was driving was stolen, it must have been the work of her son! (nice way to throw your kid under the bus, sister.) But after further questioning, she admitted that she knew where our car was, that the battery had been taken out of it so that another car could be stolen, and oh by the way, here's the keys that go to that car. The woman was driving around with my keys in her purse! What a moron! And who cruises the neighborhood you stole a car from...in the stolen car?! In broad daylight?! I would so make a better criminal than that.

So we loaded the kids into our new used car and warp-speeded it over to the apt complex to pick up our old used car. It has some scratches in the paint that look like they drove it through a field and there is slight dent in the door. Alison's carseat is missing, as are our CDs. But you know what? I don't really care. We have our car back. We did not lose $5700 like we thought we did. A stolen car ring has been busted, thanks to the quick actions of our neighbors. Who sooo will be getting a nice gift certificate from us soon.

So at last, a happy ending to one chapter in the drama of our lives since moving to Missouri. How wonderful. Thank you, Lord for answering prayers and watching out for your children, even when we whine.

Now we don't have to depend upon Buzz to give us a lift in his spaceship.

Ali Update Part Deux

Alison is home! She was discharged on Saturday, for which we are so thankful. She loves being at home, but hasn't reverted back to her normal self yet. She is still very cautious, not as talkative, and uses only her left hand as her right arm has an IV port, or PICC line, in it. She's not eating much, but more than she did in the hospital. She is drinking alot and staying hydrated, so that's a good sign.

We have a doctor's appt on Thursday. They will do another chest xray (about her tenth) to determine if the pneumonia is completely gone or not. If so, then we can stop the IV antibiotics that we have to administer every day. She will still be on oral antibiotics (that taste like absolute crapola) for at least another week.

Then, on April 10th, she has an appt with the surgeon who did her thoracotomy. He will take out the stitches and determine if everything is going okay. Hopefully, after all this, we will have no more encounters with doctors for awhile.

Some of you have emailed me questions about how Alison's sickness came to be, and what the complications were. I will do a post later in the week detailing what happened and our experience in the hospital. (And by "later in the week", I really mean whenever I get a chance. You knew that, right?)

Our girl is doing so much better and we are happy to have her home with us where she belongs. On Saturday while driving home, I looked at my husband and said, "Do you realize this is the first time in seven days that all four of us have been in the car at the same time?" and I almost started crying. This experience has been even worse than pregnancy in terms of getting my emotions all crazyfied.

Have a good week, everybody. I know I will because my Sweet Girl is home. Everything else will just be gravy.

Ali Update

Alison is off the ventilator...good.

Alison still has two chest tubes...bad.

Alison realizes she has chest tubes and wants to pull them out...bad.

Alison's surgeon thinks everything looks great and wants to discharge her on Saturday...good.

Alison will have to have IV antibiotics for 10 days to 2 weeks after discharge...bad.

Alison's mommy and daddy will have to give them to her twice a day....really bad.

Alison is on pain medication....very very good.

Alison became combatative and loopy last night because of a medication she was overly sensitive to...bad.

Alison's doctor changed the medication and she received a dose of happy juice that ended her three and a half hour tirade....very very unbelievably good.

Alison soon gets to come home and be with her mommy, daddy, and big brother..........out of this world good.

Alison's mommy has the best friends in the world who pray for a little girl they may have never seen in person......also out of this world good.