Friday was an emotionally charged day for me. First I had to take Charlotte to her well-child doctor's appointment in the afternoon. Everything went perfectly well, she's smack in the 50th percentile for pretty much everything except that she's way ahead for speaking and motor skills (go Charlotte!). The drama was because she needed to get a shot which is always super-sad :-( I CAN'T STAND how they make the mommies hold the kids down! I guess they feel like your presence helps calm your child, and I guess it IS better to have Mommy laying on you vs. some nurse you've never met before but I feel like such a traitor in that moment when their little bodies go completely rigid and they start to scream. She was very brave though and was really interested in the heart band-aid they put on her leg so she didn't cry for long. That's a nice change from Emily, who HATES band-aids so her anxiety about getting a shot is always compounded by her anxiety that the nurses will make her wear a band-aid afterward! Now Charlotte won't need any more shots until she's 4 (all of which Emily has already gotten) then both girls are good until they are 11! Hopefully they won't need to be held down at that point. That is unless they decide in the near future to start requiring kids to be vaccinated for something else too, which would not surprise me. They already force you when they're incredibly young to repeatedly vaccinate them with 7 diseases at once, many of which it would be practically impossible for them to be exposed to unless you travel with them internationally or make them spend time somewhere that's super-filthy. I love vaccines, don't get me wrong! I even signed up for vaccine trials in college (sounds scary, but who has two thumbs, $700 and is immune to all 4 strains of Dengue Fever? THIS girl!) But I really don't think we have to hit tiny babies with so many vaccines at once, especially when the chances are so low that they'll be exposed to some of these diseases. And I also wish I wasn't treated like a really inconvenient idiot when I ask to spread out my children's vaccines :-(
So after the shot tension, I went that evening to visit my almost 97-year-old great-grandmother who has been in and out of the hospital for the past few weeks. Luckily she has lots of family around, but I hadn't been to visit her yet. I was warned by some of my family members that she was very weak and fading. My sister decided to come along with me, and as we drove over to the hospital we were thinking we were on our way to say goodbye to her.
Well when my sister and I got there, she was actually doing really well! She was completely lucid, not having any pain anymore, and we chatted with her for about 45 minutes. She could even keep all the family members we discussed straight (which would be quite a feat for anyone considering she has great GREAT grandchildren at this point!) and the plan was to release her from the hospital back to her nursing home the next day. It was really good to see her, and hopefully I'll be able to get out there with the girls sometime soon so they can give her some hugs too.
Saturday was nuts. I spent the morning chopping fruit and veggies in preparation for my sister's bridal shower that I was helping to host later in the day (although my mom and sister did almost all of the work). Will left at one point to go on a trail run with our friends Brad and Kim, but they ended up getting lost when the trail they thought was a loop turned out to be a straight trail! Will came flying into the driveway at 11:20 and since I was supposed to be across town by 11:25 I waved at him and then immediately raced away. I ended up getting there at 11:37, which wasn't TOO late. That was good because we had A LOT to set up! My sister Kathleen had quite a vision and we had a large blank room to decorate, so even with about 10 people helping we just barely got everything ready in time.
It was a fantastic shower though! The food was outstanding and the decorations really ended up looking nice.
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| Starting to set up |
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| The dessert table, only partially filled |
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| The bride, confused as to why scarves secretly snatched from her apartment are hanging over the door |
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| Kathleen's truffles (she made 5 kinds!!!) |
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| Kathleen's baklava, which she also MADE HERSELF |
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| Nanny's dolmades |
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| Nanny's hummus |
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| My sangria and water plus some juice and tea/coffee fixin's |
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| Mom's goat cheese-stuffed dates |
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| Kathleen and I had similar shoes |
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| Roses's rice krispy treat "cakes" |
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| Aunt Diane's cupcakes |
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| My plate |
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| Shower games...identifying herbs by smell alone |
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| The Bridal Party |
Everything went really well, up until we were cleaning everything up and a group of people walked in at 10 till 5 and told us they had rented the space starting at 5! We had to RUN boxes of all the decorations and food out to the sidewalk just to get it out of their way, then we were able to sort it all into different people's cars. They were nice about it but it would've been nice to know ahead of time that we had a time limit!
After that we went over to my parents' house to have dinner and hang out with some out-of-town family who had come down for the shower and were spending the night. Emily was NUTS but Charlotte behaved herself quite well. I sent her to make the rounds and hug everyone goodbye as we prepared to leave for the night around 8, and she went to Dibby (my Dad) first. She held up her arms to him, and he put out his thumbs for her to grab. She did, then lifted her feet off the ground and hung there. But as I walked by I heard her say "Ow, my arm hurtin'!" She seemed to really be concerned about it, but we were able to get her to wiggle her fingers and lift her arm up over her head, so I figured her sad whining was just the fact that she was up past her bedtime after a long day and that maybe she just had pulled it funny while hanging from my Dad's thumbs.
As we drove home she continued to pitifully say "My arm hurtin'!" every couple minutes, but she would also remark calmly on things she saw out the window. I called Will to make sure he'd be home from the Leprechaun Luau he had been working at all evening just in case I needed to drop Emily off and take Charlotte to the doctor. It seemed to hurt the poor thing quite a bit to get her out of her carseat and out of her shirt and she was holding her arm tight against her body and clutching it with the opposite hand. I decided it was time to page the Dr. (it was after hours so you have to call the practice's answering service and they page the doctor to call you back). In the meantime we were working on getting Emily to bed and keeping Charlotte as motionless as possible. When the doctor called me back he said it sounded like Nursemaid's Elbow, and that we should take her to the ER unless I wanted to try and pop it back into place myself. He explained to me how to do it (hold the point of the elbow between the thumb and pointer finger, then with the other hand turn her palm until it's facing up while quickly bending the elbow as much as possible), then said to call back if I had any further trouble. The idea freaked me out, but I decided to give it a shot. My poor little girl was so tired and had been holding still long enough that her arm wasn't currently painful so it broke my heart to have to grab her arm and cause her pain, and my first attempt didn't work :-( For some reason I decided to try one more time, and as her elbow bent I felt a POP! I was hopeful but when I asked her if her arm was still hurting she moaned "Yeah!".
I had Will sit with her and I headed downstairs to collect up my purse, phone and shoes so that I could drive her to Urgent Care. When I came back upstairs I said "Alright Charlotte, it's time to go see the doctor", and she said "OK!" and sat up while she flung the blanket back with her bad arm! I said "Oh look! You're using your hurt arm!" and she looked at it, moved it around a bit and said "It's not hurtin' anymore!" Those were the best words I'd heard in a long time! Within a couple minutes she was asleep and now she's doing just fine :-)
I'm so glad we were able to take care of it at home...since she was at the doctor's office getting a shot the day before I didn't want to have to take her to the doctor to have something painful done again the very next day! I might never've gotten her back into a doctor's office without tears again.
After all that excitement, today has been nice and chill. I woke up early (EXTRA early because of the time change) and went to Lauren's spin class, which was seriously tough! In the spin class I usually take on Tuesdays I get to the point where I'm gasping with my heart beating like I'm sprinting about 2-3 times over the course of the class. Well in Lauren's class I felt like that practically the whole time! She definitely made good on her promise to give me the best workout of my life! I made it through (barely) and have been pretty worn out ever since. Working my legs so hard a day after running around the shower for hours wearing pretty high heels has taken a toll on my body.
Luckily, I didn't really have to do anything else today except keep up with the girls, so I convinced them we needed to snuggle in bed a bit, then I rested during Charlotte's nap and was able to be moderately useful for the rest of the day. I even power washed the back porch! That thing has been nasty and I am determined that this is the year that we get patio furniture and make the back porch somewhere that we can hang out! I planned to get patio furniture when we first moved in but at that point (Fall 2008) the stock market was so sucky it seemed wiser to wait on additional large purchases after buying a house. Acquiring patio furniture has fallen to the back burner although at least once a year I entertain the idea again, and in the meantime our back porch has filled with muddy dog prints, stinkbugs and mildew from the girls constantly dumping water from their play sink all over the porch floor in the summer. But now it's clean! All I need to do is get some nice furniture and a couple solar lanterns (and get RID of the junky table and chairs that are back there now) and it should be a pretty neat place to eat meals and hang out when it gets warm. And my only injury is a tiny hole I blasted through the skin on my left hand when it accidentally got in the way of the power washer. Ever since I visited my great-grandma in the hospital on Friday we have been narrowly avoiding ending up back there again!
You will notice that there aren't really any pictures of my food in this post...I have snapped some here and there but I always seem to lose motivation about halfway through the day. You would think my crappy weigh-in on Saturday would've been enough to motivate me to jump right back on track but sadly it wasn't. I have been eating way too much the past few days :-(
I plan to try and focus on eating healthy for my body over the next couple days, not on "dieting". I think I have been thinking too much about the dieting part recently which has been getting me depressed about my progress. And I have definitely not felt healthy and energetic the last couple days...when I eat too much I feel so gross! And yet I still do it.
I am also toying with the idea of snapping and posting pictures of everything I eat but maybe not necessarily explaining every single ingredient in the caption, especially since I eat pretty much the same thing every day. That takes a lot of time and gets pretty boring! I will try just posting the picture from here on out (unless I feel like saying what's in it to make a point or something like that) and see how that works.
So here we go again, it's time to lose some pounds over again that I already lost. And I know from experience that it's very important to get back on track right away and get rid of them quick so they don't stay over and invite their friends!
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