May (in a) day

So let's see.  In the time I took off from blogging, lots of stuff happened.  Let's see if I can get caught up.

WAAAAAAAY back in the beginning of May, Emily's preschool hosted a mother's day tea.  It was adorable.

All the other kids thought their moms were 6, 15, one was even 25.  Me?  I'm 100 years old :-(

The kids did a super-cute presentation...

...then we shared a special dessert they had made for us.

The next day we went to the fairgrounds for the MD Beer Festival!

My husband, as he is most often observed (beer in one hand, iPhone in the other)

Will sprung for the "VIP" tickets which, among other things, allowed us to get in early which was awesome.  Emily got her face painted and the girls got balloon animals before there were lines for those activities.  Then we plunked down near the giant train obstacle course that actually looks like a worm where your kids crawl in its butt and out its mouth, and Will and I took turns making beer runs from our base camp.  It was HOT but fun, and in honor of Mother's day the next day, Will offered to drive home :-)

Fun bus!

It was aptly named

 Sunday was Mother's day, and Will let me sleep in, made me breakfast and gave me a laptop!  Then we went over to my parents' house and had a picnic in their front yard.

Will really did an awesome job of making me feel relaxed and happy all weekend :-)  Which meant he was not at all relaxed and happy, I'm sure.  Now I'm under pressure to make this upcoming weekend just as good for him, eek!

And for no other reason than the sheer hilarity, I have to share these two pictures I took that day of Charlotte eating ice cream.  I call the second one "Brain Freeze".

The following week Emily had her preschool picnic.

And the following weekend was Abigail's 2nd birthday party!

She's SO ready for it to rain!

 After that was a "Fireside Chat with Brad" in honor of HIS birthday (May is getting almost as full of birthdays as June!).

And you know that farm I posted pictures of the other day?  We went there back in mid-May too for my mom's church picnic.

Charlotte was so jealous, but so scared to go out in the boat

She forgave Emmy for going without her though

 We left the church picnic with these guys:

 They're our newest pets, Christopher and Ryan.  They did a whole lot of nothing for a couple days, until OVERNIGHT first Christopher, then a couple days later Ryan turned into frogs.  I realize that this is what tadpoles are supposed to do, but I was expecting it to be a more gradual change, especially after reading the books we got from the library that talk about it taking weeks and weeks for tadpoles to metamorphose into frogs.  Nope.  One day tail, the next day hopping around, leaving me scrambling to find food so our newly carnivorous pets wouldn't starve to death.

And while our tadpoles were turning into frogs, my friend Carolyn's baby was "evolving into a human", as Emily puts it.  I am sad to say that looking back I realized I haven't taken any pictures of the new baby Alice, but trust me, she's cute with the most adorable round baby head :-)
Let's see, what else.

Our strawberries came in like gangbusters at the end of the month.

Picking strawberries gets ones feet very dirty (so does simply being a 5 year old)

 We also FINALLY got that huge ugly TV out of our living room and had the mantle and new TV put up, so we're enjoying lots more space now.

Plus more neck aches if you sit there to watch the TV

 Then Emily went and graduated from preschool.  Remember the preschool that I was freaking out about selecting, oh, a couple days ago?  Turns out that was actually 2.5 years ago and yeah, we're DONE with it now.  Wow.

Soon-to-be-kindergartener

Emily's adoring groupies

I can just see this picture juxtaposed with her high school graduation picture (SOB!)

After-picnic

Then came the fillings.

We decided to go ahead and fill Emily's teeth.  I freaked out about it for awhile, consulted the internet, spoke to a couple different people who were dentists but not in a position to make money off of us and they all pretty much agreed that we should do it.  I honestly felt like the cavities wouldn't turn out to be a big deal if we didn't fill them, but if they DID and she ended up having to have multiple root canals because of our decision I would've felt horrible.

So we shipped Charlotte off to Gemmy's house, stuffed Emily with food and water right before bed, and set our alarms for 4:45AM.  We got up and drove to the hospital down in Shady Grove while I tried to choke down some food and keep up my "This is an adventure!" attitude.  I was at least happy to be going to Shady Grove where they have a major pediatric focus which I hoped would make things easier.  Knowing she'd have nurses who were used to starting IVs in tiny little veins and anesthesiologists who had lots of experience with little kids made me feel better.

Check-in was long, as expected, but it was the first time I've ever checked into a hospital without being in full-blown labor so I focused on how much more pleasant it was this time to not be breathing through contrations while they asked me my social security number :-)  We moved from waiting room to waiting room until we were finally called back to pre-op...too bad I had just taken Emily to the bathroom when that happened.  And too bad they didn't come back out for us until half an hour later.  Bad timing there.

They took her vital signs and gave her some baby Valium, which she kinda hated.  Soon though, she started giggling and trying to poke the characters on the TV, and when we asked her if she had any questions for her dentist she said "Um....um.....um.....I LOVE UNICORNS!"  I kinda wanted to ask for some baby Valium for myself at that point.

I got to suit up and go back to the OR with her, and stay there until she fell asleep but honestly she was so thrilled about getting to ride in a rolling bed (Am I on a TABLE????  HA!) she probably didn't even notice I was there.  Then I was escorted back out to wait.

The procedure was supposed to take 45min-1 hour, so when 1 hour came and went I started to freak out.  Again.  I couldn't concentrate on my book and I kept straining my ears to see if I could hear any alarms or people running, and every time a doctor came out to meet with a family I whipped around in my seat to see if it was our doctor.  Eventually we had our meeting with the doctor, who told us he had given her 7 (!!) fillings, then we went back to get Emily.

When we came in her eyes were going in 2 different directions like a chameleon, she was flopping all over the place and blood was pouring out of her nose :-(  The nurses told us we could hold her, but she was attached to so many monitors and tubes that it was really tough to figure out how they wanted me to do that.  At first she couldn't even speak, but once she could she kept gasping that she couldn't see, which kinda freaked me out.  The nurses kept encouraging me to get her to go back to sleep, but they don't know my daughter.  This girl has NEVER willingly gone to sleep in her whole 5 years of life, and that time was no different.  "They usually have a much easier time coming out of the anesthesia if they can sleep for half an hour or so", they kept telling me.  Then why did you guys wake her up in the first place?!?!?!

The next hour was awful, as she kept bleeding and crying and flopping and doing a whole lot of things that were NOT sleeping.  Before I felt ready to face the world again it was time to go, and the nurse pushed me out of the hospital in a wheelchair holding Emily in my lap, much as a different nurse had pushed me out of a different hospital almost exactly 5 years before.  There was a whole lot more Emily in my lap this time though, and I can't quite recall but I don't THINK she was sucking on an orange popsicle when we brought her home the first time.

She fell asleep JUST as we got home, but then, miracle of miracles, fell back asleep on her own when I laid her down on the couch.  Possibly the first time she's ever gone to sleep without an extensive bedtime routine being performed to perfection first.

Then her nose bled and she felt horrible for 3.5 days :-(

I worried and called nurses, dentists, doctors, and friends whose kids had had surgeries.  Will and I did a lot of freaking out and second (and third and fourth and fifth) guessing our decision to have this done.  We were pretty upset for quite awhile there.  We think, looking back, that she picked up some virus at the hospital, which kept her nose pouring snot for days, and since she was so snotty her nose couldn't dry out and heal up so it kept bleeding.  And she just LOOKED haggard, even though she was in good spirits the whole time, which made it all extra-heartbreaking.

Poor brave little girl

Again, I KNOW that many mothers watch their kids go through much worse, and I don't know where they get the strength.  I was an emotional wreck on the inside over this whole thing even though my kid was technically fine, just a bit sick after a run-of-the-mill procedure, but it was pretty damned scary while we were going through it and we just wanted her to get better.

We were housebound for a large portion of that week, but when things got dire I had to make a stop by a grocery store.  You get some LOOKS from the other shoppers if you stop to peruse the cheese selection while your child slumps in the cart clutching a blood-soaked tissue to her face, let me tell you. 

She finally rallied and her nose slowed the bleeding enough to take her out in public the weekend, so we went to our friends Eric and Heather's barbeque.

That's better!  And yes, she wears this outfit all the time

OM NOM NOM

We really need a golden retriever 

At the barbecue I decided to show Emily how to properly throw a frisbee and hit her smack in the face, busting her lip open :*(  Because she hadn't poured enough blood from her face yet that week.

By recital time, her nose wasn't bleeding anymore, but she still had a fat lip from the frisbee incident.  I was incredibly happy that she was still able to dance in and enjoy her first recital despite all that had happened the week before.  She's a resilient little thing.

Yes, Charlotte wears this dress all the time too

I had to put this picture in for the sole purpose of showing off the PERFECT ballerina bun I put in her hair.  I was quite proud.

Then I think I just kind of shut down for a week or so.  I didn't take a single picture!  I suspect it was PMS (which for me manifests as a day or two of depression and just being angry at everyone) combined with finally being able to breathe a sigh of relief and stop keeping up the front of "everything's fine" while I was eaten up by guilt and worry over what we had inflicted on our daughter.  All this mixed with a dose of "I think my thyroid medication is too low" to really make laying motionless on the couch while sniffling look like the most attractive option for a couple days.  Thank goodness for kids!  They don't allow you to wallow in self-pity, as much as you may want to.

I'm feeling back to my old self now, and I'm trying hard to get back to my old eating habits again too.  The healthy ones that is.  I'll need to be feeling my best to get through this month, which always seems to gallop right over me in an endless string of birthdays and recitals and swim lessons before I even fully realize it's June.