Birthday Fillings and Funerals

My poor husband.

  

Yesterday was his birthday!  But I fear he didn't have a very good day because he had to spend his morning getting a filling (actually, a re-re-filling) and his evening at a funeral for a man he's never met.

Luckily, we had his party already last week (you can read about it here on Lauren's blog and see more pictures here, taken by my friend Chris).  

After he went off to work and Emily went off to school, I packed Charlotte up and we went to Common Market.  We had lunch first, to ward off any potential blood sugar related meltdowns.  

Charlotte requested water and a veggie sandwich.  I had the sandwich as well, with some mint tea.

Love this sandwich!

It's a bit unwieldy for a toddler though

She figured it out

 While we were eating our lunch, I noticed my sister-in-law go by, so I called her over and she joined us for a bit.  Then, my Mother-in-law, Father-in-law, and husband all came by too, so they had their lunch with us as well.  At least everyone but Will did.  He was still too numb to eat :-(  But it was nice to get a surprise visit with him during the day!

After lunch, we went shopping.  I stocked up on supplies for the weirdo diet I'm starting today.  I'll talk more about it later, but it requires a bit of backstory.  For once this diet is not for weight loss purposes, and here, as a sneak peek, is a shot of my cart.  Any guesses?

I don't plan to eat the toothpaste

Here's another hint.

Yum.

Will was able to run home in between work and the funeral, so I did my best to make his time at home relaxing and happy.  We ate the dinner he requested, of meatloaf and roasted vegetables with apple crisp.

The same goofy smile on every face

Then he was off again for the evening.

I think he deserves a do-over!

Sick day

Well, I got my wish to spend lots of time at home today, but not in the way I was hoping.  I guess that's the thing about wishes.  And the thing about kids is that when your situation is already tough, things often become compounded by the kid's lack of reasoning until everything's just punishingly tough.

For example:

When you are a sick child, you need sleep to get better.  And when you are the parent of a sick child you need rest because you need to be extra-patient and extra-available to take care of your sick kid the next day.  But kids (at least MY kids) sleep significantly less when they are sick, ensuring that you are adding exhaustion to the equation which makes it almost impossible to balance.  And after being germed-on all night and day for several days, it's extremely likely that YOU will get sick as they get better, and you will be on a sleep deficit to start out with, and then you won't be allowed to rest when you're sick either because you'll have to keep up with healthy kids whose sleep schedules are all out-of-whack.

Kids immune systems are not as strong as adults, so if they are exposed to a virus in passing they are more likely to get it.  However they don't understand how germs are spread (or if they do, they don't yet remember to be careful) so they pick things up off the ground and put them in their mouths, lick shopping carts, and choose to sit down to eat right next to that kid who is hacking and sneezing everywhere, thus ensuring they will get sick as often as possible.  Which I guess is what leads to those aforementioned stronger adult immune systems, but I choose to ignore this fact because it allows me to whine about the unfairness of it all more effectively.

Kids are growing, and therefore nutrition and hydration are even more important for kids than they are for adults (not that they're ever NOT important).  Kids also get dehydrated more quickly than adults.  But kids are picky.  Want to know what happens when you explain to a 2 year old that they can't have any solid food because every time they do they throw up so would they PLEASE just take a sip of water or juice or the chicken broth made especially for them or Zevia or SOMETHING?  They think you're mean, and they cry, that's what happens.  Through crying they lose even more liquid, becoming even more dehydrated.

Kids can't be taken to the gym daycare when they're sick, so stay-at-home-moms can't workout when their kids are sick.  Which is often.  They will console themselves by thinking that they are getting a good workout carrying around 30 pounds of moaning toddler who refuses to be put down or to let you stop moving AT ALL EVER, but then the moms' backs will get sore from all the repetitive motion thus ensuring that they'll have to take it easy even AFTER they are able to return to working out.

Kids' immune systems also somehow know when #1 Daddy will be out of town on a business trip or #2 Daddy will have an especially difficult week and have to return to work in the evenings, thus ensuring that any currently available parent will be completely worn down at all times.

So yeah, all of this is just an especially whiny way of saying that today sucked.  The toughest part of it all was seeing my poor little girl suffering though :-(  Despite all the snarky whining I DO realize that it is not her fault that she wasn't born with the ability to reason like an adult, that I signed on for this when I decided to have kids, that other moms of kids with REAL illnesses have it WAY worse than I do, and that I do not deserve a medal for simply surviving today.  But that's not to say it wasn't tough.

It was actually pretty good for my eating though.  It is not nearly as easy to do things one-handed when the "baby" in your other hand is actually a 2+ year old toddler, and that includes preparing food.  In between catching buckets of barf and pacing, ENDLESSLY pacing the floor I had:

Mixed cereal banana breakfast

with egg

 No morning snack!  I can't believe it.

A hastily thrown-together salad

While my mom was here to drop off Emily I sneaked in a little more protein and fiber

A couple sips of the delicious chicken/veggie broth I made for Charlotte that she totally spurned

At some point I pulled out the trusty old Ergo carrier again and was SO glad to have the pressure off my back! 

Around 4:30 I allowed her to have a bit of solid food again...and it stayed down this time!

The two bright spots in my day were when Charlotte was able to start eating again, and when I realized I had to seriously tighten the Ergo because the last time I used it I was 20 pounds heavier :-)

I celebrated with a cottage cheese and juice-sweetened jelly snack

 Before dinner Will took the girls outside for me so I could get in a quick workout.  It was 20 minutes, and it definitely wasn't Elizabeth's Bodypump class, but I was exceedingly grateful for it!  He even gave me time to take a shower later...love that man.  I guess that makes 3 bright spots today!  Not bad, now that I'm looking back on it and not in the middle of it.

Dinner was a sweet potato

plus leftover taco soup from the freezer (a convenient lifesaver today) and fixin's

 Now the girls are sorted into bed, Will is back at work, and I am settled in with my evening blogging companions.  Repeat footage again here because why take another picture when they look exactly the same tonight as they did last night?  I'm all about shortcuts and conserving energy tonight.

Yum

and yummier

I can't wait until Saturday, when Will and I are going to the Green Eggs and Kegs event at the Flying Dog Brewery :-)  That is, as long as everyone is healthy (knock on every piece of wood I can find).  I feel like Will and I have been high-fiving as we pass off the kids to each other on the way in/out the door for the past week now but not ever having much time to have a real conversation.  Green Eggs and Kegs may not be the BEST place for meaningful conversation, but it's still time to ourselves!

And many people have expressed disbelief that I plan to imbibe in spirited beverages before the hour of noon at this thing.  To them I say, hells yes I will!  To give you a peek at the reasoning behind that decision, here is a handy flow chart I put together to illustrate how I decide whether or not to have beer at any given time.

As you can see, the time of day never enters into consideration.  I have too many other things to take into account and all the stars align too rarely for me to worry about little details like morning vs. evening.

And yes I DO realize that I have had a beer every evening for the past 3 days, so maybe the hexagons should have more rightly said "Don't have SOME beers".  I still met all the requirements though before drinking each of my 3 tasty Bocks (technically Charlotte didn't have a fever when she went to bed last night, although she had one earlier in the day and later in the night).  But even though having 1 beer after the girls are in bed while carefully monitoring my sobriety so that I can safely drive someone to the hospital should something unfortunate occur is still a treat I appreciate, it isn't the same as just being able to enjoy several in a party atmosphere and not having to worry about being useful to anyone else for awhile afterward.

Plus I hated beer in college.  I have some catching up to do.

High Voltage

A new restaurant called Volt opened in Frederick about a year ago. Everyone raved about it, and when Will's and my 5th anniversary came around, we decided to try it out. It was, of course, heavenly. We got the 5 and 7 course "chef's kitchen" dinner with wine pairing, and although it was an absolute ton of wine and we got quite giggly, we did NOT drop to the floor as soon as we stood up from our table like the lady next to us did, so I considered it a win. The food was fabulous too :-)

The head chef, Bryan Voltaggio grew up in Frederick, and after getting his training he came back to Frederick and opened his own restaurant. There's definitely nothing else like it in Frederick, and it's really nice that someone had enough faith in us backcountry Fredericktonians to open a gourmet restaurant here.

I have been to Volt quite a lot in the past month, but never really to eat. A couple weeks ago, after a girls night with some friends, Carolyn and I walked Wendy to her car which happened to be parked in front of Volt. As we lingered on the sidewalk saying the long goodbyes that women are famous for, the Maitre d' came outside and invited us in. When we told him we'd just finished eating, he offered to give us a tour, so we said why not. Now Bryan Voltaggio is currently on Top Chef (and kicking butt), so even though I have been to Volt before and seen him before, it was difficult not to fangirl all over the place. I mean, I KNOW I've seen him before, and heck, he even brought food to my table the last time we were there for dinner, but now he's on TV! Plus I knew after eating his food that he was talented, but now that he's competing against some of the best chefs in the nation and WINNING, I have more context for exactly HOW good he is. How can you not squeal slightly (even if it's under your breath) when in the presence of a food god? To recover a bit from the embarrassment of traipsing through the restaurant like tourists who have never eaten anywhere but Friendly's before, I promised the Maitre d' that we'd be back on Wednesday for the Top Chef party and to actually eat.

Luckily, everything kind of fell into place and we managed to get there on Wednesday. It turned out to be a Top Chef repeat that week which was disappointing, but at least I got to eat there, even if it was only off the bar menu.

Still later that same week, we ended up back at Volt during the In The Streets festival. We were picking up a gift card on behalf of my new brother-in-law's parents (who live in California, so it was a bit difficult for them to get it). Poor Will wanted to hang out in the outside lounge area they had set up and have some drinks with our friends who were there, but he had the misfortune to be accompanied by a starving pregnant wife and a daughter who decided it was the perfect location to pee her pants, so we weren't able to stay long. At least when Emily grows up and we take her to Volt for a celebratory dinner we can embarrass her back by telling the waiter about how she peed herself at this very restaurant however many years ago. Teenagers always talk about how hideously embarrassing their parents are, but what they don't consider is how WAY more hideously embarrassing it was for those parents to even leave the house when their kid was 2.5 year old. Why, these hypothetical parents might've had to apologize profusely to a salesman after their child climbed to the very top level of the tallest, most expensive playground set at a showroom and then let loose an impressive stream of urine that was heard echoing throughout the empty salesfloor as it splashed down through three levels of playground fun. They might've had to helplessly push a puddle of pee* around the floor of Toys R Us because the adolescent sales associate only brought them a couple sheets of that delightfully cardboard-like and completely non-absorbent paper product from the bathroom with which to clean up said pee. Or they might've had to stand in a crowded grocery store checkout line pretending they didn't hear (while their cheeks blazed and totally gave them away) when their 2.5 year old crawled under their skirt and loudly announced "Mommy I can see your 'gina", EVEN THOUGH I SWEAR I WAS WEARING UNDERWEAR. I mean, even though these hypothetical parents were totally wearing underwear.

What was I saying before?

Oh yeah. After all of those visits to Volt, it's about time to go there for real, and NOT in the company of my daughter. So in belated celebration of our 6 year wedding anniversary (Will was up in Chicago for a bachelor party on our actual anniversary, but he brought me a box of Vosges truffles, so we're all squared up) we are going to Volt this Friday. I don't know what makes me more excited; going to Volt and actually getting to eat dinner, the fact that they now offer a 21 course tasting menu, or the fact that my mom is taking Emily overnight. After enjoying 2 months during which Emily didn't seem to realize she could exit her room by herself, the honeymoon is over. She is up at 7ish every day (5:20 this morning) knocking softly at our door. She has even started coming to visit at night. We heard her knocking at a particularly inopportune time earlier this week, which has made all our other inopportune times since a bit more guarded. I don't want her first memory (or any memory for that matter) to be of THAT.

So yeah. Volt food, date time with Will, and luxuriating in bed until (gasp) 7:30AM (or possibly even 8 if we are feeling decadent) are very good reasons to keep dragging my ever-increasing bulk through this week where nothing seems to get done yet I am still somehow always tired. And if all that is not enticement enough, I am also getting a haircut on Friday, and a massage on Sunday. So hurry up, week. I am totally sick of you and I have way better things to be doing.

*Despite these three incidents that happened a couple weeks ago, Emily IS in fact back to being 100% daytime potty trained but I am certain she will be able to find plenty of non urine-related ways to embarrass me in public. Otherwise, what will I blog about?

Bleeeerghwhaaaa?

Our day today went a little something like this:

7:15AM - Emily wakes up, and therefore Mommy has to wake up
9:00AM - Mommy gives up and allows Emily to start watching Peter Pan, even though we just finished watching Alice in Wonderland because she's too damned tired to try to fight. Plus while Emily watches Peter Pan Mommy can just lay on the couch and not move.
10:00AM - Daddy wakes up, Mommy goes back to sleep
11:45AM - Mommy wakes up as Daddy and Emily return from errands, Emily goes back to sleep
12:00PM - 3:00PM - Emily naps, Daddy works on a class project, and Mommy shuffles around the kitchen trying desperately to wrestle it back from the brink of disaster. Actually, since we're all friends here, I'll admit that it was well over the brink and firmly entrenched in disaster territory.
3:00PM-8:29PM - Mommy and Daddy wish it were 8:30PM so that we could put Emily down for the night and then drag our sorry selves back into our sweet, sweet bed for more sleep.

So yeah, we're pretty much wrecked today, but we have several good reasons. Emily and I accompanied Will on a whirlwind business trip to Philadelphia earlier this week (it was supposed to have been longer, but Will has a very spoiled client who threw a hissy fit and demanded his presence at a meeting in Virginia while we were still supposed to be in Pennsylvania, so we had to cut our short trip even shorter). BUT, we got Emily back into a pool to refresh her swimming skills acquired this summer, and we were able to go to the Please Touch Museum, which is fantastic. It's like the biggest, best indoor playground for toddlers you could ever imagine, and I'm pretty sure Emily wants to move in and live there. She especially liked the Alice in Wonderland garden (which was awesome), and ESPECIALLY especially the Cheshire Cat, which was simply a statue of a cat sitting in a big tree, but apparently he made an impression. It was NOT so fun having to entertain Emily in our hotel lobby for 2 hours between her naptime and the time we needed to pick Will up from his conference to go home because we had to check out a day early and therefore didn't have a room to go to anymore (grrrrr spoiled client), but it is interesting to spend time in hotels these days. Back when Will and I were young, childless free spirits (and even now when we travel without kids), we almost never spent any time in our hotels. All our time was spent out doing things and hotels were only for bed-related activities. When we travel with Emily though, we always check out the hotel pool, we hang in the room for naptime, and we often opt for a room-service dinner because it's way easier than packing her up and making her sit in a restaurant. It's not a WORSE way to travel, it's still very enjoyable, it's just very different. We definitely get our money's worth out of hotels these days.


Also adding to our exhaustion today, Will's sister and our old roommate got married yesterday! Will and I were both in the wedding party, and it was hosted up at the family farm so we had a long weekend of helping out, rehearsing, picture-taking, and partying. It was quite a blast, and now I have my very first brother-in-law (or brother-out-of-law either for that matter), and Emily has her very first uncle. The wedding itself was wonderful...one guest dropped from a suspected heart attack right as the ceremony was about to start, causing the proceedings to have to be delayed 30 minutes while the paramedics carted him away, and there was some jaw-droppingly crazy family drama (which luckily was not at all bride or groom related and transpired safely out of notice of all but one of the guests) but overall the wedding was beautiful, smooth, fun, and everything a wedding should be. Emily OWNED the dance floor from even before the first official dance began to the very last dance of the night. It was hilarious and adorable, but predictably, there were consequences. She fell asleep in the car on the way home, and we had planned to gracefully transfer her from carseat to bed, but of course she woke up confused and furious as we pulled into the garage. Instead of dumping her into bed we had to spend over an hour trying to calm a hyperventilating, hysterical toddler down enough that she could get the sleep she so desperately needed. My daughter is already learning that there are consequences to partying too hard, and alcohol hasn't even entered the picture yet. At least I THINK that was sparkling white grape juice she was drinking.

And now, instead of yakking about it, here are some pictures. I'm ganking them from Mary Kate, a fellow bridesmaid who had her act together enough to bring her camera AND post the pictures the very next day. She even remembered safety pins and things like that, the girl is clearly magic.

Getting married!

Bridesmaids

Tying the knot

Will escorting me back down the aisle

First dance

Getting ready to cut the cake

Why yes I did make the groom cake (no, it's not a caterpillar, and usually I can make better-looking cakes but this was an ice cream roll cake and DAMN those are difficult)

Brad cutting his train cake...why oh why doesn't Baskin Robbins make these anymore (shakes fist at nearest Baskin Robbins)

Emmy and Mommy

Emmy dancing with Daddy

What Emily did for approximately 4 hours straight yesterday

Ummmm, I think we were all whipping it, whipping it good?

Margaret entertaining everyone with her fantastic magic show set to "Final Countdown" (a la Gob on Arrested Development)

Emily's favorite dance move...going under the bridesmaids' skirts

Brad and Will doing...something

It was late at this point...I think they're doing the "Zoidberg"

At least we'll have groceries

This past weekend was spent painting the town red for Kim's bachelorette party. By "the town", I mean Cleveland, OH, and when I say I painted it red, I mean I waddled around a wine festival for a few hours, stopping every 10 ft or so to hide in the shade, then had some pizza and went to bed. Rock on!

The actual party took place the night before Carolyn and I arrived, so when we rolled up at their inflatable penis-filled hotel room around 11:30AM on Saturday, people were just shuffling out of bed, sipping water and warily eyeing muffins from the breakfast buffet. The fact that most everyone was hungover made for a more subdued wine festival experience, but it was still lots of fun and I couldn't drink anyway so it was fine by me.

I had been anxious about spending the weekend with a group of girls who have all known each other for years, some since they were kids. Kim is excellent at staying in touch with old friends, so there were elementary school friends, high school friends, and college friends there, with Carolyn and I as the sole representatives of her after-college life phase, but it turned out that all the girls were incredibly friendly and we felt pretty comfortable right away. I guess when you're all drinking out of penis-shaped straws and wearing matching shirts there's a built-in sense of camaraderie that allows you to skip the formalities. My shirt, by the way, was a maternity shirt with an iron-on rhinestone decal that said "Girls night out" and had a picture of a martini glass on it. It actually looked like a Cosmo because it was pink, but it had olives in it, but EITHER WAY, it's always classy to wear alcohol-related apparel when you've got a baby belly poking out. Doubly classy when you put a sticker that says "Lust" (supplied to all of us by the people at the Seven Deadly Zins tent) on said belly. Seriously though, I HAD to put it there, nowhere else would've been half as funny.

I had also been a bit concerned about the fact that I was supposed to sleep in a cot or on a sleeper sofa in a room with 4 other girls, mostly because it takes me a long time and lots of thrashing to get myself comfortable before falling asleep at night. I also did not bring my snoogle (my gigantic pregnancy body pillow that I LOOOOVE and Will hates, but he was totally snuggling with it while I was gone). That worked out well though, because the girls ended up getting a third room just for Carolyn and me and it was a freakin' PALACE. I had my very own room with a big old king-sized bed and enough pillows to sufficiently stand in for my snoogle (Carolyn graciously took the fold-out couch, but I split the pillows evenly).

So the weekend was fun, and it was nice to get a chance to talk to Carolyn on the car rides up and back. Usually when we talk it's either over her lunch break or right after the gym in the evenings, so there always seems to be something pressing one of us has to get back to. Our husbands have been marveling that we just talked the whole way up and back...they can't believe it, but they also kind of can.

While I was away having fun, Will got to be solely in charge of Emily, which was a first. He did admirably well, taking her to the farmer's market, the gym, his parents house, then blueberry picking, and fireworks-viewing. A monumental feat with a toddler! Even still, when asked what she did this weekend, the only thing she mentions is that she shucked corn with Daddy.

So after his excellent performance this weekend, he has been rewarded with a week filled with a grueling battery of tests, but I am hopeful that we may be making some progress to finding out what's causing him to feel so exhausted all the time. He spent last night at the sleep lab in the hospital trying to sleep while hooked up to a million wires and while being watched by a girl in the other room. We don't have the results back yet, but the technician did tell him that while he doesn't appear to have sleep apnea, his legs did not stop moving the whole night. I haven't noticed this myself, but I HAVE noticed that instead of just rolling over like a normal person, Will tends to LAUNCH himself into the air and perform the roll before slamming back down, causing great unrest in the bed. Perhaps that is part of it. Some wild googling has resulted in my professional diagnosis of Periodic Limb Movement Disorder, which could definitely be causing his "loss of zest for life", as they put it.

So after that last night, today he had an appointment at the allergist where they stuck him with quite a few different allergens in his arm, many of which caused him to itch horribly. He appears to be allergic to cats, grass, trees, weeds, and mold. None of these are all that shocking, we kind of suspected most of them already, but the allergist says that having all these allergies could definitely be contributing to his tiredness, and she wrote him a prescription for allegra. Let's hope that helps.

On top of all of that, today is day two for him of going cold turkey off of caffeine. It came as something of a shock to us when he calculated up his caffeine intake and realized he was taking in more than double the recommended amount per day. His days of working overnight back in the spring caused a sharp increase in his espresso intake which didn't go away when he was able to go back to working only during the day, and coupled with his (Men's Health-recommended) 6 cups of green tea of the course of the day, that's quite a lot. So now he's going through withdrawal from that too :-(

But we've finally uncovered 3-ish things that MIGHT be causing his tiredness, so I feel like that's good progress. Hopefully by the end of this week we'll be on our way to fixing most of the issues, plus I am now entering the second trimester so before long we'll be a wellspring of boundless energy around these parts, I just know it.

And I am in awe of Will for keeping track of and showing up on time to so many appointments, because I failed to make mine today and I only had one to remember. It was not ENTIRELY my fault (maybe just 99%) because my endocrinologist is named Dr. Hohl (pronounced Hall) and my dentist is named Dr. Hall (pronounced....Hall) so when I got the appointment reminder call on Monday from Dr. Hall's office, well I didn't even think about it. I of course ended up on the other side of a sliding glass window from a very confused receptionist while 30 minutes away a dental hygienist was tapping her foot waiting for me to show. Oh well. I am not fond of going to the dentist anyway, and especially not while pregnant, so I can stand to wait I think.

It also turned out that the bridal shop in Frederick does not ACTUALLY carry the maternity bridesmaid dresses that the website says they carry, so other than getting an oil change and treating myself to a yummy lunch, my day has been kind of a bust. So to avoid winning "Most Useless Person Ever", I am probably going to go shopping now because those groceries are not going to buy themselves. And with my luck today I'll show up to Giant to find that it has closed down and I'll have to scavenge nuts and berries from the woods nearby, so I'd better leave myself some time.

Ok....what?

So we got Will's liver levels tested the other day, and they came back wonderfully, completely normal, along with all the other tests they did. No problems. Not even Epstein-Barr.

Whaa?

Apparently, Will has NOT had Epstien-Barr these past few months. The doctor who told him he had it said today that no, he HAS had it at some point in his life, but he does not have it now.

Welcome to the medical community, where every bit of good news is accompanied by another bit of news that makes it less good!

So all of a sudden Will started feeling like crap, his liver levels went haywire, he was tested for EVERYTHING that makes your liver levels high and came back negative for all of them, and a month later they're back to normal but he's still feeling mostly like crap. And the fatty liver that was caused by the Epstien-Barr? Was not caused by Epstein-Barr. So his levels are back to normal and that's good, but what on earth made him/is making him feel so lousy?

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Anyway.

We went to Virginia Beach this weekend for our buddy Eric Jones' engagement party, and that was fun. Even the 9 hours of driving was kind of nice because Will and I got a chance to just hang out and talk for a long time. But we were the LIFE of the party, let me tell you! Neither of us could drink, both of us were exhausted, and we had to duck back to our hotel between the engagement party and the after party to take a couple hour nap. Then we went home at 11. Woooooooooooooooo!

Virginia Beach was nice, and it was neat to have a chance to meet some people who we'll be hanging with when the wedding comes around next year. I'll be the girl who had to pee but didn't want to know where the bathroom was (I thought the guy asked me if I KNEW where the bathroom was, not if I WANTED to know where the bathroom was...who asks that?).

And as a super-special extra bonus to spending hours sitting right next to me, Will got to witness first-hand the craziness that is eating during pregnancy. On the way down to the beach on Saturday it took me over an hour to eat my lunch. I was hungry, but every bite I took made me a little queasy, so I had to take a bite, wait a couple minutes, take a bite, wait a couple minutes. I discussed how much I'd like to keep my pregnancy eating habits while I'm not pregnant, because the queasiness isn't really that bad, it's just THERE, and anything that slows down my eating and makes me stop when I'm full is good. Then on the way back home the next day we didn't stop to eat lunch until we got to Wegmans at 2, where I put away a tray of california rolls, 4 gigantic scallops and 3 gigantic shrimp before Will had even eaten half of his sushi tray, then I wandered off and bought a big box of grilled vegetables (which I ate half of) and finished it off with a fruit bar. Having eaten my weight in food I was finally feeling satisfied, but I was impatient to get home and I suggested to Will that maybe he'd like to finish his food while we shopped. He informed me that he prefers to actually CHEW his food, and he was going to sit right where he was while he was doing it.

So between completely crashing at 9:00PM for the last 4 nights, getting weird dizzy spells, and wildly oscillating between "don't make me look at anything I have decided is unappealing today or I will surely gag" and "is that a leftover cheerio on the floor! GIVE IT TO ME NOW, I'M STARVING!", I think I just might actually be pregnant.

The pregnancy brain...I has it

Yesterday I was at the grocery store, and I wanted to pick up some ice cream for Will. His favorite kind (fat free, sugar free of course) comes in 4 different flavors. He already has a couple vanillas and peanut brittles, so I wanted to get him a cherry fudge ripple. When I got home and went to put it in the garage freezer, I realized I had bought a peanut brittle.

I explained this to Will before he went out to get his ice cream after dinner, and he chuckled and said "Pregnancy brain is setting in." "No!" I insisted, "The cherry fudge ripples were in the pile all the way to the left, and the peanut brittles were in the pile all the way to the right at the store. There's no way I took one off the right pile when I meant to take one off the pile all the way on the opposite side. I'm sure they just put one in the wrong place." "Sure" said Will. I sat and pouted while he went out to the garage.

When he came back in, he handed me my sunglasses. Which I had put in the freezer.

That kind of negated any argument I could have come up with against me having pregnancy brain. So I just put on my sunglasses and told him how delightfully refreshing they felt.

Don't diss my cake or I'll sic the wasps on you

I realized today that I haven't left the house/yard in the last 51 hours, so obviously not much has been going on. I think I'll be forced to crawl out of my hole tomorrow though...I am out of thyroid medicine, Mingus is out of his various uber-expensive medicines, and I'm giving Emily skim milk with flaxseed oil in it because we're out of whole milk and she's so skinny I'm afraid she'll wither away to nothing without fat in her milk. But for the sake of posting an update, I will try to make a couple things that have happened sound interesting.

So let's see. Yesterday, after making it through the bee flower incident unscathed, Emily was half-stung by a wasp. For some reason, wasps seem to LOVE sitting on top of her swingset, and I think they're actually eating the wooden monkey bars. Incidentally, the squirrels are eating the swingset too. When we have to replace this one, I'm getting an industrial-grade steel swing set with rodent/pest poison paint.

Sounds healthy AND fun!

Anyway, back to the wasps. I know the wasps like her swingset now, but I didn't realize this yesterday, I just noticed a wasp flying by now and then while I was pushing Emily on the swing. I thought to myself "You know, Emily is probably going to end up getting her first bee sting this summer, just because she spends SO much time outside", and the thought made me sad. Not two minutes later, a freakin' wasp flew into her swing path, and as she swung forward it hit her chin and fell down into her lap. I immediately grabbed her swing to stop her, and luckily the wasp flew away (one of my greatest fears is being forced to do battle with scary insects to save my children. I'll do it of course, but if Emily ever comes inside with a honeybee stuck in her foot or something I will scrape it out, treat the sting, and then probably dissolve into a gibbering mess, the only intelligible words emitting from me being "ew" and "I touched it!!!"), but as it flew off Emily's eyes got huge, her face slowly crumpled and she started to cry very softly. It was a weird cry, there wasn't the usual amount of oomph in it, so I thought I had just scared her with my reaction and I comforted her for a minute or two. Then I looked at her chin, and I saw a little purple dot surrounded by a white circle, which was surrounded by red skin. I realized at that point that she'd been stung and I ran inside and put some baking soda paste on her chin and got her a popsicle and a Thomas show. Then I demanded that Will kill every one of those wasps. They perch on top of the swingset, and he is taller than me, so it was his job. He tried to convince me that it's all well and good to want revenge, but they're wasps and they only sting out of defense, but I believe I snapped something about them DARING to sting my innocent BABY, and he headed out to the swingset. He was a good daddy and went after them, but in doing so he found out the hard way that the monkey bars are too old and fragile to support the weight of an adult :-(

I say Emily was HALF-stung because she honestly wasn't nearly as upset by the sting as I had thought she would be, and by that evening there was no trace of a sting left. But I TOTALLY saw a sting on her chin, so I am just going to say that my daughter has super-human healing capabilities. It's really the only logical explanation. So far we have only killed two of the five wasps I have seen buzzing around the swingset (who am I kidding, there's probably an unlimited supply lying in wait in the trees) so poor Emily can't swing for longer than 2 seconds at a time because I am continually snatching her out of the swing at the first sign of waspage.

Other than that excitement, I've done a lot of vacuuming, I've changed Emily's clothes 3x a day because she gets totally soaked playing with her outdoor water table but I don't have the heart to empty it, and I've made some naturally-sweetened whole wheat carrot cupcakes as practice for Emily's party this weekend. I am still sticking with the "give her nothing but healthy food until she knows any better, then back off" approach, and so far she still loves healthy food and she still doesn't know any better. The cupcakes are very tasty, but quite crumbly, so that means I won't be able to carve cakes into a giraffe-shaped masterpiece that I was planning. I'm actually pretty relieved about that though, because now I can just make a normal cake and put a cutout from one of the paper plates on it, then fancy it up with some frosting. It'll take much less time that way, and hey, I was GOING to make an amazing giraffe cake, I totally COULD have done it, but my healthy delicious cake recipe didn't cooperate so I chose my child's HEALTH over a fancy cake and WHY are you complaining about the cake's shape anyway when I'm inviting you here and feeding you?

Oh, I see you got me Emily a Thomas roundhouse. Well then, all is forgiven.

Phew...?

So we FINALLY got Will's bloodwork back, and things are better. Still not normal, but trending in that direction. At this point the doctor just wants Will to stay off alcohol and supplements for a month, then come back to check again. It is presumed that all of this has been caused by a crazy combination of the supplements and the Epstein Barr.

It makes me a bit nervous, because it seemed like last week the "Epstein Barr and supplements" theory was considered not enough to cause levels as high as the ones we were seeing, then with the fatty liver diagnosis it really was seeming like something was wrong, but this week the "EB&S" theory seems to be our working explanation for everything.

At least things are looking up now, and maybe we can stop living with the constant nagging uneasiness that something MIGHT be very badly wrong.

And at least this should give Emily exposure to Epstein Barr when she's young enough that she won't have symptoms. Thank goodness for small favors.

That was the good, now here's the bad

We have a lot going on right now, and I chose to post about the good things first, but there's some other stuff we're dealing with that isn't so good.

I mentioned that Will has been feeling badly for months now and he went in for some bloodwork. Last Friday around 8AM we got a call from his doctor's office saying they wanted him to come in to talk about his blood test results this morning. Could he come in around 9?

Of course my stomach dropped to my feet. I helped him get ready to go, and then desperately tried to keep myself busy until he called to let me know what was up. I tried to ignore the fact that we'd gotten the call as soon as the doctor's office opened and that they wanted to see him ASAP. Probably not Mono, then. I tried not to let my mind wander to possible explanations that made me panic to the point where I felt like I just wanted to hug myself and rock.

When Will did call, it was a relative relief. First of all, he tested positive for Epstein Barr, but negative for Mono. The Epstein Barr means that he has had Mono at some point though, so I'm betting Will did just have Mono and he's gotten over it enough to test negative but the Epstein Barr still shows up. According to his bloodwork though, he was in kidney and liver failure. This sounded awful, but luckily we knew that the creatine Will takes can throw kidney function tests out of whack and show that there is a problem when there really is not. The liver thing was concerning, especially because his liver enzymes tested "very high", but we suspected that some of his other supplements might be partially to blame, and if he just got over Mono that would explain some of it too.

Either way though, it was nothing to mess around with, so Will went off his supplements and he went in for an ultrasound of his liver, kidneys, spleen and pancreas on Saturday. He got his blood drawn again yesterday to check his levels and make sure everything was trending downward after going off the supplements.

So then we got a call last night saying that Will's ultrasound revealed that he has a "fatty liver". That's all we've heard, but we're supposed to go in to talk to his doctor again once the new blood test results come in.

We're not sure if he just has a "fatty liver" or if it's considered fatty enough that he has Fatty Liver Disease. It looks like Fatty Liver is almost always caused by alcoholism (um, no) or being obese and not exercising (um, REALLY no).

So for now we're kind of dumbfounded. When we took out a life insurance policy about a year ago Will had his liver and kidney levels checked and everything was apparently fine. If he has a fatty liver, how on earth did it happen when he leads the healthiest lifestyle of anyone ever and what on earth do we do to treat it when the suggestions we've found so far are "lose weight" (he already did), "drink less than 2 alcoholic beverages per day" (he already does) and "exercise more" (I don't think that's possible)? Is it in bad taste to point out that "Fat Liver" (foie gras) is actually a French delicacy?

We're in the "something's weird and we don't know why" stage, and it's kind of scary. I hope talking to the doctor this week will answer some of our many questions. We're glad it doesn't seem to be anything completely horrible like cancer, but we'd rather it be nothing. On top of that, my parents and Will's mom (our only babysitters who don't have 9-5 jobs) are out of town this week so we might have to bring Emily to the doctor's appointment with us.

I'll update when we know more. In the meantime I console myself by thinking about the fact that my blood type can donate to Will's, so there's a good chance I could donate a kidney and part of a liver to him if it came down to it. It's nice to know I might be able to help in the future if it gets too bad, because I feel pretty helpless about how to help right now.

Happy Easter!

I didn't hold out high hopes for Easter. We were over-scheduled, Emily's nose had started running again so I didn't know if she'd be feeling very well (or behaving very well) or not, and with Will being #1 still sick and #2 an Easter grinch, I was stressed and worried that we wouldn't get everything done. It turned out much better than expected though, and I would even go so far as to say it was a good day.

We started the Easter festivities yesterday, with egg dyeing (with me still sporting my favorite gym shirt):






















And also egg eating. We sacrificed no less than four eggs to Emily's not-so-gentle handling of the eggs and her appetite:






















This morning started with the discovery of baskets (please excuse Emily's interesting pajama combo...she deemed every other pair of pants she has completely unacceptable. I guess we just dress a little strangely around here):






















A quick breakfast:






















Then we left for church, late of course. We arrived and our sizable church was already packed to the walls! We usually prefer to sit in one of the short pews along the side that goes all the way to the wall because one adult placed across the entrance to the pew can effectively corral an Emily while still providing her ample space to move around. Today we managed to get one of the last pew seats available, but it was a funky pew that was perpendicular to the other pews. This was undesirable because it offered no Emily-corraling capabilities, plus my dress was shorter than I remember it being and instead of having the back of another pew in front of me to block the up-skirt view, I was facing hundreds of people while trying to remain modest and wrangle a toddler. After loudly crunching through her Gerber Graduates cheesy corn puff whatevers and pretending to color on the ceiling, Emily was DONE so the rest of the service was spent taking her downstairs, passing her off, trying to take her back upstairs, failing, and then after all of that realizing that they DID offer daycare today, even though they had said they wouldn't. Blah.

Then it was home, for a quick egg hunt in the front yard...






















































































...and me trying to throw together the sugar-free version of my favorite Easter dessert that I try to make every year with varrying degrees of success. I decided to tweak it a little this year, and if you've ever wondered what fruit-flavored and gelled curdled milk tastes like, I now know. But attempt #2 was my best yet.

After that we headed over to my mom's house, and Emily obligingly fell asleep in the car on the way over, napped for an hour, and awoke fresh and happy, making me look like a fool for warning everyone that she was going to be a monster when she woke up because she's ALWAYS a monster when she has to take her nap in the car. Way to know your kid, mom. Much fuss was made over Emily, a second egg hunt was orchestrated (what is she going to do when she's not the only grandchild and she'll have to share eggs with other kids?) and then we headed next door and spent an enjoyable evening at my grandparents' house. Emily actually played with her (first) cousins (once removed) instead of clinging to my legs the whole time, and my grandfather solved the problem of the pirates (nuke Somalia).

So we accomplished every planned activity, there were no major meltdowns despite Emily having another cold or possibly allergies, and despite the fact that the only things she's really eaten today are eggs or things that came out of plastic eggs.

Oh, and Will is pretty convinced he has Mono now, and he's getting tested tomorrow. He has started counting the length of this weird illness in months and not weeks, and allergy meds, 2 rounds of antibiotics, sinus sprays and rest have all failed to cure him. Someone suggested back in early March that he might have Mono and might want to get tested, but someone else scoffed at the idea and dismissed it as preposterous. And what brought about this change of heart? A conversation with my mom.

At least he listens to her. We'll see what the doctor says tomorrow. If it is Mono, there's still not really anything we can do but at least we'll know one way or the other.

PS - Sorry to harsh on you Will. You know I love you!