One Year Later...Literally!

So, after what seems like eons I have decided to try this "blogging thing" again :p I am seriously the most scatterbrained person I know right now! Not that it hasn't been running through my head that I need to get the thoughts out and into some forum...it was the actual getting here that was the issue.

I am the mother of 4, yes I'm serious...4 rambunctious munchkins that are seriously driving me up the wall by Friday evenings! Where do I even start? My last post was the chaos surrounding Natasha's new diagnosis of the Laryngeal Cleft and how we were adjusting to that little surprise, and now here we are a year later! Time flies when you are surrounded by the daily art of wrangling children. I can honestly say tho I think I have it down to a science!!

I'm just going to post these...I figured they'd say everything until I actually get a chance to think about a logical post update ;)



Taken 2 days after my 31st birthday...my favorite photo of Neil and I

                                                

Nathaniel age 7 :o He is 5' tall already and only in grade 2.. Oh My!!

                                


Ryan age 5...he is simply put a poop disturber!

                                                
                           

Leigha age 3.5...the little drama Queen

Natasha age 1 ...my baby is all grown up and running the house!

 

All my babies!! I'll never lose them in a crowd that's for sure ;)

 I made it my New Years "resolution" I suppose to dedicate more time to myself....I'm hoping to add blogging back to my list of things....

Here's the Scoop...Or Some Of It....

Well another long hiatus from blogger land and I'm truly sorry. It's not that I haven't been checking in, I have, I just am up to my eyeballs in crap again and haven't had time to sit and do anything. Not that having 4 kids under the age of 6 helps with this either :p.

The crap is kids! I know they cause all types of problems but really I'm tired of the sick kid thing now.

So we were back in the hospital with Natasha in March for yet another 10 days. Our surgeon panicked and had us admitted for"observation". Now I'm not too worried about the whole "observation" thing as long as they actually do something while we are there. So we had a chest xray and waited 2 entire days for a consult with GI for, of all things, a g-tube insertion!!! I am so not happy about that prospect and have vetoed it until they can come to us with concrete evidence that it is in her best intrest to have one done. Of course that means that she needs to have the fundo as well. It defeats the purpose of having her tube fed if the reflux issue isn't dealt with as well.  We had a swallowing study done with mixed results.  Turns out she has a crappy suck reflex, which I knew about, and wasn't taking in large bolus' of formula at a time. It made it incredibly tough to watch the very small amounts go down and see where it went. We managed to piss her off royally when they changed the thickness of the formula and then the nipple on the bottle. She managed to get a bit in but easily got frustrated with it. They called it off when she got to the nectar thickened and sent us back up. Results in, she is micro aspirating the formula at thin and 1/2 nectar so we are to continue with nectar thick feeds and follow up with her tube feeds if she shows signs of distress. Nothing I wasn't already doing but it means that we can feed her by bottle while in the hosp. They put her NPO or nothing by mouth Thursday morning and by 8pm she was cranky not being able to calm and feed that way. She doesn't mind the soother but isn't too fascinated with it.

I was asked by the GI fellow that came up to assess Natasha what it is we want out of all of this. It struck me a very complicated question. What do we want? healthy kids obviously, but more to the point what is it that we are actually willing to do to get there? We have already done so much of this with Leigha that it seems very deja vu ish. I'm trying to keep them separate in my head since they have the same types of symptoms but they are two different kids. The cyanosis, reflux and feeding issues are the same in both but they both have different reactions to it. I don't think having Natasha get a g-tube is going to solve the issues at hand and from previous experience with Leigha we noted that once that tube went in everyone backed off and we are still fighting to have anything further done. They are both still refluxing up and that is therefore bypassing the cleft and into their lungs, so how is it helping? I talked to the original Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) I saw on the very first visit to the Stollery we had with Leigha all those years ago, she recommended a genetic consult and another opinion in regards to the repair of the cleft. So I managed to get the consult with genetics set up and plan on asking our pediatrician if she thinks our ENT is actually serious about fixing this or if we should look to someone else for the repair. I'm trying to be practical and I know that he may say no but I'd at least like to offer him the option to fix it before we go to someone else. He knows the girls, knows show they react to the surgeries.

Talking to everyone yesterday I discovered that they really have no grasp on where to start. Our ENT and pediatrician are following a possible allergy issue called Eosinophillic Esophagitis but the GI guy came in and said that she's too young to be considered for it. The GI guy is looking at the reflux as the only cause of the grey spells but my gut says, and has been saying, that they are missing something.

I feel like standing in the hallways and just yelling at the top of my voice for them to "JUST DO SOMETHING ALREADY!!" .

So they sent us home and we have been going about our lives here at home pretty much as we were before. I'm not tube feeding Natasha, for the most part I use the Ng tube for her meds (it keeps her from refluxing all day, very odd but it works) and we have finally found a bottle with a nipple shape she likes ( thank you Platex ortodontic!) and we have to swaddle her at bedtime :o Back and forth it seems every second day for appointments, almost like I live there some days, maybe they'll give me a parking pass!!

Got to Heck in a Handbasket

Well after MONTHS of showing up with a tease I am actually making a true effort to keep up with this. Make it my post New Years resolution, or some such.

So it's February now and Miss Natasha is now 3 1/2 months old and growing like a weed.She's weighing in at 15lbs 1oz and is 32ins long!! It's not been without hiccups tho and these past few weeks have tested her patience as well as mine. With all the stress I put on myself on trying the breast feeding thing, that didn't fly (the reason why will come) so I have been pumping daily and taking Motillium and slowly losing what little amounts I was producing as the days go by. I'm not terribly upset about it as she will latch and comfort nurse at night, which is nice in of itself, but very difficult to explain to Leigha who has never seen a baby nurse before :)

Last Monday Natasha was diagnosed with a Type 1 Laryngeal Cleft ( this is an actual surgical photo of the cleft with repair photos too FYI!!) . Yes!!! We have managed to do it again and  produced a baby with the same genetic hiccup as her older sister, odds of that are less than 1 in 20 000. Amazing!!! I seriouslyy thought I was making things up in the past few months, seeing things that weren't there.  But when others began noticing my "Blue baby" I finally said something along the lines of...."well yes I noticed it, she's been doing it all along". We saw our pediatrician in December for Nathaniel and I commented on it, before I knew it we had an appointment to see our lovely ENT January 25 and that same day we landed in the Stollery for 2  for 9 days having tests done. It blew my mind how on top of it they were this time round. I guess they learned from Leigha :p

So Natasha had an MRI done of her head and neck to look for any abnormalities there, EEG, ECG for her heart, chest xray and the visit culminated with the bronchoscopy and laryngoscope last Monday where they diagnosed the cleft. So while she was under the second time for the bronchosocpy and Laryngoscope they did the restalyn injection ( a form of collagen to bulk up the muscle) and brought her back to me, took them about an hour all said and done. Part of me was very relieved and the other was dumb struck.  I was very relieved that I wasn't becoming a manchausen and looking for a problem that didn't exist, and the second, that I was being practical and doing something quickly. We still ended up going home with a feeding pump and Ng tube in her nose :( She pulled it out today which means I get to re-insert it later on, sucks to be us!

I've already asked my MIL to scope out surgeons in Toronto and she has found one who actually does the repair should I need to contact him about the girls. I even have his email :o Neil and I are also considering a genetic consult as well to see who the carrier of this odd little gene is.


The only scary part of this whole thing has been the post surgical reaction Natasha had the next morning. Swelling from the injection or a possible allergic reaction almost saw her intubated and in PICU for observation. She narrowly escaped it when they gave her a bunch of steroids to bring down the swelling and help her to breathe. She sounded like she came down with a horrid case of croup in about 2 hours and turned this nasty shade of grey. It was terrifying since I only had my sister with me for sanity support. She's sounding better now a full week and a bit later but will still sound croupy when she cries and gasps alot especially at night. So I'm back to up very little bit checking on babies :p

So that's the new roller coaster we get to be on for a while. I'm not as upset about it all in a way. I've done all this before and know how it works. Except for the unusual reaction she had she is acting very similar to Leigha post injection and showing the signs of it not taking. I hope that once the swelling goes down we will see more of an improvement and if not then step 2.

The breast feeding thing, well I tried, we sucked, moving on :p I guess it wasn't in the cards breast reduction or not. She will at least get the benefit of EBM, which the others did not, until I dry up. It would be really nice to get rid of the ginormous breasts again :o I mean once you've decided to downsize them once the appearance of them again after almost 10 years is a bit disconcerting. I cannot believe they were ever this big before :o I'm so sorry those of you who saw me pre boob job! (tho Neil is NOT complaining in the least).

I'll be back this weekend with pictures for everyone of my growing brood. They are all so much alike its disgusting!

The Long and Short of it All

So I thought I'd try and summarize the last 3 months without boring everyone to death with long babbles...There's really only one big thing....

I am no longer pregnant!! I know, about time to say something ( honestly with 4 kids it is very difficult to get anywhere near an actual computer for any length of time without chaos ensuing) As I type they are currently trapping each other in the toy box and knocking on it making the dog go retarded thinking someone is at the door. So I had said baby on Oct 27th....a GIRL!!

Meet Natasha Lynn born at 804 am :) 7lb 7oz and 19inches long. She is now 8 weeks old, man how the time flies, and changing every day. The best part is that she is finally chunking up a bit, she has little rolls on her thighs :o

The transition of going from 3 to 4 kids was surprisingly easy other than the fact that Neil has been working out of town for the last 7 weeks ( do the math...means he left a week after smurf arrived :o ). Trying to get everyone where they need to be on a weekly basis has proven to be very trying at times with only the in laws around to help out. The smartest thing I did was have my girlfriend clean my house every 2 weeks for me...one less thing to worry about :)

With Christmas charging up on me on Saturday I find myself completely unprepared and honestly not to worried about it :p Things will get done no matter what and we will have a wonderful day despite being dis-organised.

I am sleep deprived and haven't done anything useful this week....and I don't care :) I am looking so forward to Neil being home tonight for a few weeks (he goes back out Jan 3rd ) and the help he can provide. Today it seems I have done nothing but yell at them to smarten up since about noon. But after tonight I will have a partner to help out, and I can have a nap!

I'm going to make a true effort to get back into blogging. It's good for me. Putting it out into cyber world means I don't have to blackberry it to Neil all the time when I have some random thought :p

I'm going to be Pregnant FOREVER!!

Or at least that's how I feel this week. 38 weeks as of yesterday and I'm huge, waddling when I walk and feel very grouchy. I haven't gone this far in a pregnancy since Nathaniel in 2004 and I'm feeling the discomfort.

I saw my OBG yesterday and him being no such help had nothing useful other than "you'll be having this baby by your due date" ...really! like I never figured but since I have been induced all 3 times due to my headaches and that awful thing that has been inside my brain ( I refer here to the posterior brain cyst that I have had for about 5 years now that seems to be of no concern to anyone but me..it is my head you know) for so many years. That and the headaches are getting out of control, I am popping Tylenol #3's like chicklets and no one seems concerned by this?  It seems I'm on this frigging roller coaster heading for a c-section and he is all "La La La" about it. I'm not a happy momma right now to say the least.

Contractions since Thursday last week about every 10-15 mins consistantly and I'm not progressing and haven't in over a month...still the same measurements. But the smurf is growing like a frigging weed and I measure 40+ weeks already. This is not going to end well I fear.

Send me some labor vibes people!!

Welcome back???

All right I suck. I admit it. I have neglected to inform the bloggy world of anything in our house. And not because there is nothing happening, mainly because I am just too lazy to do it. All I want to do is sleep, 22 hours a day to leave room for the requisite food requirement and peeing of course.

But alas with 3 kids there is no way on God's green earth I can do that. They'd burn my house down around my ears or kill each other. But they are surprisingly resourceful if need be. Ryan is now capable, at the age of 4, to get cereal for himself and turn on the tv, which means I can lie in bed pretending that they aren't all awake and that I have to get up sooner rather than later. The added bonus to that is with Leigha and her feeding tube...she is confined to her bed until I go get her!!! So minimal fighting in the mornings!!!

I have made it to 32 weeks pregnant!! and haven't been up to much really. I went on a scrap retreat the last weekend of August and..( insert yelling from the girls) had contractions all weekend and cankles (made driving home fun :p). They haven't really let up much on both aspects so I have been "confined" to "resting". K so I have 3 other kids, one with medical issues, my doc knows this so the words "try" were very strongly put at my appointment on Tuesday. I just have to make it another 3 weeks and I've made it to the "safer" zone. I am feeling the desire to clean, cook and generally stock up so have had to plan my days so I am not on my feet a lot and have to pay for it, Neil is not good at the foot rub.

I still feel "good" in the happy sense that I can move freely without crying and am not getting embarrased trying to dress myself around the large lump in front. I am at the point where I can't even put on underwear without assistance. And Thank GOD this is "summer" (hahahaha, well not here but..) so I don't really need socks. With Leigha I actually stopped wearing them due to the fact that I could no longer reach my feet without falling over and Neil wouldn't help me without laughing...so not worth it. Considering it was winter for the bulk of the largeness portion of my pregnancy with her, no socks was not a brilliant idea but I worked with what I had.

Nathaniel is growing like a weed, 70Lbs now :o He is huge and eats more than Neil at meals. But again we are entering a growth spurt and have the wussy, cry at the drop of a hat kid on our hands. Karate/Jui Jitsu ( I have no clue what it's called) has helped with the self esteem issues and he asks daily when he's going again or when the next time is. Currently he is down 2 teeth over less than 3 days, courtesy of self managed care :) He wiggled those little things until he swallowed one ( too funny when Neil went to look for it and found not a trace, we think he was so excited that he forgot to spit it out and swallowed it instead). The second tooth almost followed the first but he caught it in time just to show Neil in the kitchen and drop it coming down the stairs to show me. We found that one but he was none the less very excited when the tooth fairy visited the next morning and left him 4 shiny new quarters for each tooth lost. I have a great picture of him smiling with no lower teeth :) He now has 4 more teeth in the pre stages of falling out, looks like wonderful Christmas photos are in store for us :)

We started Grade 1 this week and have had many new stories at the supper table. And on top of it, he's too pooped to fight with anyone!!! It has made bedtime all that much quieter.

Ryan is still hitting and temper tantrums but since starting him on Melatonin every night we have yet to see a drop in them and are starting to wonder if they are sleep related at all. Considering I am shorter on patience lately I don't think having 2 kids with big tempers is a really good idea right now.

On the "new" aspect of thing. I have managed to secure a contract for Leigha's Pediasure and thickener through downright obnoxiousness and being quite firm when dealing with our "worker". She has agreed to fund us through the government agency until December 31st where upon we must at that time provide our own private insurance and proof that Leigha has medical requirements for the products requested and that they are "medically neccessary". Now considering the kids doesn't eat much of anything by mouth that doesn't go down in liquid form I'm not sure how we can not prove that this is a neccessary thing. It is getting so bad at meals now that she actually chews the food up and then spits it out again without actually swallowing much of anything " me no like" is the usual comment associated with that...oh so lovely. And it really doesn't matter what I cook, it's always the same with re-constituted food being served back to me by some pigtailed kidlet. Very annoying.


Leigha has also recently begun with the terrible 2's temper tantrums. Very aggravating most days since she seems to think she doesn't need to nap anymore. So not a good thing for someone who would LOVE to nap daily :( I am finding the serenity somewhere and haven't sold her yet to anyone...GOD give me strength.

But we are now almost 1 week with no bottles!! none at nap time (well , when I'd want her to nap) and nothing for bed. So I've only been waking up with her about twice a night this week so far to un-tangle her tube and settle her again. She asks for one everytime but is being told that the bottles are for baby now. I actually had to throw them all out because of the Pediasure smell they all had. I give whole credit to my sister who had the kids over the weekend while I was scrappin, she's the one who actually did it. No battles really this far. One bad start of night (Monday) but with a door cracked open she has settled fine all by herself!

Crap! I'll be back later they threw popcorn all over the toy room!!!

Yo-Yo "ing"

That's how it's been around here of late. I feel like I am dangling above the ground on a string waiting to be pulled up at any second just to be thrown down again.

What's new round here you may ask...everything. I am 19weeks pregnant and still so tired I can barely function at times. I seriously don't remember being this tired before. When I was expecting Leigha we had just put our house on the market so maybe because I had so much to do it kept me from being tired. This time I have my kids out of my hair all day and over the last 2 weeks even have afternoons to myself. But I'm still dragging my butt. I'm seriously thinking this is going to be an exhausting next 4 and a 1/2 months.

I quit one of the 2 jobs I was currently juggling as of 20 mins ago. I decided that the stress from having to babysit someone elses kid ( yes she is sick, terminal genetic disease with no cure) wasn't worth it. I went to school for 2 years to practice nursing, not sit and watch a 2 year old for 8 hours a day, not matter the money. So now I am awaiting orientation for job #2 on Wednesday so I can see what new things I can accomplish in life. I've said to many a person over the past 6 years or so, I hate what I do for a living and if I could figure out what it is I'm supposed to do it will make my life so much easier. I don't do stress and as I sit here I begin to wonder if that isn't a large source of my tiredness of late.

On the plus side of things, having the kids back with our old dayhome person is "THE BEST". Our gal has bent over backwards for me even denying some old clients of hers to take my nerds. Now I just need to work enough to pay her and bring home some extra so I'm not doing it for the heck of it and throwing money away to someone else. 

I have buckets of baby stuff to go through still so I can see what I have or don't as the case may be and I'm sorely tempted to find out what we are having next week at my ultrasound if only to prepare a little better. I have loads of girls stuff as I've said and boys SOL until the little thing is at least 18months old and not built like Ryan.

Well I'm going to go make the boys help tidy the house instead of beating each other up as they are currently doing. It's only a matter of time before the wailing starts with the fights. I'd like to avoid that if possible to day I'm sick of yelling at them and it will make for a very long weekend until Neil gets home if I have to keep it up for longer than 30 seconds.

I'll be back with pictures ofour spring fun so far. I wish it wasn't raining and cold so we could get out of the house for a bit :p but welcome to Alberta!!!

Pfft!!

About 6 weeks beforeNeil   and I were married in 2003 I was seeing a gyne for follow-up after some problems I had been having for years. It was on that day he told me in very quiet words that it would most likely be impossible to have children naturally on my own. I didn't have female hormones in my body and when I did create them suddenly my lovely body went haywire causing a multitude of issues to lengthy to get into here.

So I left that appoinment heart broken. i ploughed on not too concerned at the time about starting a family. I mean we had just bought our first home, were geting married in a little less than 2 months. I had lots to keep me occupied.

Our wedding day came and passed in a flurry of activity and it wasn't until about a month later I began to wonder about the doctor's "talk". I talked with Neil and we decided that in December of that year I would go back and see him and discuss where to "go from here".
I found t sort of odd about October when I began to feel VERY ill. I took a plunge and did a home test( well 3 actually Neil didn't trust the first 2) and nearly fell over on my face when it was positive in about 6 seconds. VERY positive. We spent about a week me in shock and Neil asking " are you sure" every 30 seconds.

It seems that when it came to science and my body someone else was clearly in charge and it wasn't me.

So in August 2004 we welcomed Nathaniel into our home. Two years later following about the same pattern Ryan arrived June 2006 and after a heartbreaking misscarry in February 2007 we discovered I was pregnant with Leigha August 2007, the week of my brother and sister in laws wedding in Canmore.

And so here I am again expecting another shrimp (tho this one currently has no nickname. Nathaniel was Bubba, Ryan is Magoo and Leigha has always been Smidget). It was a totally unexpected thing and very much the surprise of a lifetime when that stick turned again. I mean after a bit I should be expecting it....right??

So...I am currently 16 weeks pregnant Due October 26th (move it up 3 weeks, I have never had a full term baby) and feel like dirt. I remember being tired but honestly this is insane. I actually fell asleep in the car driving (passenger before you all panic) and since I have terrible motion sickness it wasn't the best thing to do.

And so we are scrambling to gather all the baby type things that I have gotten rid of over the years. If this is a boy I'm screwed totally as I have nothing until 18months. Buying new car seats and doing the kid shuffle to fit everyone into the van (the dogs soooo don't fit anymore). Looking for bigger strollers and making sure I have a infant carrier that isn't expired, the diapers have started to be bought and I am looking into new bottles so we don't have issues with Leigha. Just stocking up on formula (I'm being organised unlike last time where we were moving int he midst of me 8 months pregnant) and the little stuff and I sould be able to calm down sometime in September or so.

But I have the chance to do a VBAC and I'm going to try and breast feed this time with hopefully more success than the last few times ( I actually bought a breast pump :p). who knows it may turn out all right. I mean if it is a boy it wouldn't be the first one to wear pink....at least not in my family :p

Is It Just Bad Luck?

I don't know quite how we manage it but again we have plunked our kids into a...dare I say SHITTY!! dayhome. It has been months of searching, tirals and again heartache and added stress that I really don't need right now.

We thought that when we hired our nanny in January that we had succeeded in finding someone long term that had the same ideals Neil and I have. Nope, she quit by text message 2 weeks after staring and timed it so we had to fork over the full amount. Then we scrambled (I say we but it was Neil) and found the one we are in now and she is terrible. She has 8 kids in her care including mine and is swamped. She has thus far put all 8 kids into a mini van and drove them over town without car seats, and most of them are under the age of 4. And this has happened at least 5 times in a month and a bit. Then the other day Natahneil bit one of the smaller boys through his pants in his genitals. Now if it had been Ryan we owuldn't have been too surprised at the reaction (biting that is), Nathaniel not so much. It raised red flags for me ( I was there when he did it). It took me 4 hours to get the full reason out of him and it was really me having Neil do it.

Turns out he hates the day home, has no one to play with and the kids are "mean" to him. I'm not sure about the mean part, from a 5 year old "mean" can mean anything.  So the story went that he was playing in one of those pop tents and was told to get out. My sissy boy didn't take that well and frumped a bit. that's fine. Then he asked one of the little boys to play with him and they said no, he bit him. Not normal.

So now I have this huge issue of finding someone that we can trust with our kids. This gal is already non compliant with Leigha, doesn't feed her meals at all. Isn't giving Leigha and Ryan breakfast which is part of the agreement, is going through diapers let and right, and way over using the Pediasure and thickener, I really don't think she gets how freeking expensive it is. We aren't covered for it. 

So what do I do? continue to interview people and have the same thing happen? We were offered a spot (three really) back at the place we had the boys in a few years ago, I really like her but don't know if she's changed in the past few years. and the other one we have is very inflexible.

I now get why mom's stay home for the first 5 years.

A Multitude of Blessings

I'm back!! I know it's been forever but sinc egoing back to work full time last month I admit I am having a horrid time balancing the mom/worker "thing". Having 3 very active kids is trying at times and I am finding the balance harder to maintain of late. It seemed unfortunatly that my haven online fell victim to this chaos that was my focus.

So now I cna fill everyone in on the last 3...4 months or so in a nutshell. I'm keeping it brief (I hope)

1.February saw us in Disney World for 2 weeks. They were fun filled but exhausting. Leigha (as I said previously) astounded us with her excitement over the Princesses it was truly precious. Nathaniel was so in love with the role playing attreactions that we had a hard time pulling him away to do anything else. It was funny to see him trying so hard to be "one of the team" in many of them. I will cherish that memory. Ryan's face when he saw certain characters was one for the photo album. I am so happy that I had 2 cameras shooting photos or I would have missed alot of the real time reactions from being nehind a lens.

2. February/March saw me return to work full time and our first foray into home nanny "ing". Suffice to say it went horrid and we ended up looking for a new child care provider the second week of March after being left in the lurch. We are currently looking for someone towatch the kids out of the house until December and have thus far interviewed many lovely people who take one look at Leigha and run for the hills.

3. March saw me attend my first scrapbooking retreat at Bittern Lake Lodge north of Camrose. I had a wonderful time and relished in the sleeping in, no cooking/cleaning, and great friends. It left me anxious for my next weekend in April :p

4. March/April was also the time we found out we "discovered" ( and I say it in quotes because it was truly not a decision we made), that we are expecting. It seems Disney World is truly the "Happiest Place on Earth" :p . So much to our surprise and eventaul excitement we are going to be welcoming baby #4 into our home this fall sometime. Dates to be announced next week :p

5. April has brought us many new things as well. Leigha had her 2 year check done with our pediatrician and we have been green Lighted to move onto the "next step". We have been referred to the Cleft Lip and Palette clinic int he Stollery hopsital to see a feeding specialist to see if we can't get this little girl to eat more than 2 teaspoons a day. We also have been referred back to our ENT to see "where we go from here". We are truly hoping that this next phase is talking surgery!!!

6. I have spent this last week recovering from illness (not associated with said addition) and have found that despite the feeling like I've been hit by a bus I cna still accomplish an awful lot in a few days. I had the opprotunity to interview a lovely gal for our "caregiver" position and we have about 6 more to go this week. It's amazing what happens when you put "urgent" on an ad :p

7. We are looking into the summer holidays and already like many others I am finding my weekends booking up already. Neil is scheduled for a Basketball camp in Saskatoon this July, Nathaneil is heading east to torornto to see family with my Mother-In-Law leaving me 2 weeks of realitive quiet from the fighting that the boys are doing right now (sometimes there is a draw back to having them so close together in age). 3 reunions, one each month which makes me realise I need to arrange accomodations for 2 of them :p, plus themany weekends booked with friends for visiting since we rarely see each other over the busier months.

8. I have booked another scrapbooking retreat with Giggles & Girlfriends for June 4-6th hoping to accomplish my family herritage album. I have only just realised how much I still have to get done before the reunions in June and July :o I think that will be my only project that weekend, motivation to finnish it ( guess I better get started scanning the rest of the photos :o)

9. I still have to make the phone calls to get price quotes on the backyard re-do. We ar ere-landscaping the yard and since we decided to do it ourselves it seems I'd best find out cost :)

Ina nutshell that is the chaos of the past few months. I am scrambling to find out what I have (or don't) for this new baby. Being a mom of 3 kids doesn't make you anymore prepared for more kids :p Luckily I have all of Leigha's stuff still so if it's a girl I'm set (PLEASE be a GIRL!!!).

I'll be back with baby pics on Monday and hopefully more info on #4 :p

I Do Exist

Yes I do, just not in the exciting sense of having something worthwhile to write about. Well I do have things whriling about in my head I just haen`t got them in any semblance of an order to get them out here that they won`t be just rambling words on the page. It may make me sound more insane than I am :p

Like I need that hey. Things are wierd and I am at an impasse  as to where I want life to go with it all. I`m hoping that by the end of the weekend I may have something more concrete to be able to put it into words what I am feeling so that it`s not just a bunch of random things that are whirling around so fast I can`t take the tiem to think about it without losing my mind.

Does any of that make sense.....I didn`t think so either...see what I`m dealing with here. I`ll be back with a brain hopefully sooner rather than later. Know that I`ve been checking in and reading even if I`m not commenting. I`m here, in body if not in mind :p

Back Next Week

Hello from Florida!!!!

I'm sitting in the sunshine after a week of semi frozen temperatures and clouds in what is supposed to be a "balmy" climate. I am totally disapointed, but alas cannot change the weather. At least I am not at home nor near Vancouver and melting the little snow they have there :o .

I am very tired and I think I left my feet saomewhere near Universal Studios today after getting of a ride where I also left behind my stomach and any thoughts I may have had about a lovely day from then on. I have terriblemotion sickness and an amusment park in the worst place that I can call fun.

I will be back next week to update you on my travels, have a new post on Rambling Traveller where we get to go to yet another small town yet to be decided :p and some photos of our vacation.

Until then...I'm going to bed until I feel better...blech

Roadside Traveller #2

So MWA and I had been bantering back and forth about the fact that I live in Canada with snow and ice and blah, and we happen to have a Ukrainian for a Premier right now. So she made the comment "Ukrainians in Alberta" as a joke once and I said "why yes let me share with you just how crazy they are" and that's as far as I got because then I had an idea...but I'll get to that.

First I'll share with you this.... I am Ukrainian on one side of my family. My Dad's grandmother (Baba) was from the Ukraine. She emigrated in 1938ish?? right before they stopped emigration from ??Warsaw. If I pull her eulogy I can be more specific if you want more info about that but I have many stories from my dad about my Baba and I do remember her even tho she passed away when I was about 11 or so. On the other side of things I am 3/4 Scottish. Either way I like to eat and am stubborn.

Going back to the crazy Ukrainians in Alberta. We have about 20 little towns within about 2 hours driving distance surrounding us and for some odd reason they all seemed to think it was a wonderful idea to put up tourist attractions in the form of food. Now it's not just any food, it's Ukrainian food. Or food related or taken after food, or made into food....get the gist? ( now that I have researched there is a fair amount of food, then we get the UFO which messes things up a bit).

Then I had this thought...wouldn't it be fun and a bit entertaining, perhaps a way to pass the time for me and to make a day pass by for you too of course if I were to do this once a week? ( at the rate I'm going every weekish) Share with you the interesting attractions in and around Alberta? Now I can't grantee that they will all be food related because I know that once we head south of us you get into dinosaurs and lizards and such...but it makes for something new to look at!!! And it gives me something new to share...other than the monotony of snow in Alberta, or my kids..and general life and monotony :p

Okay here we go. I chose the first town because of it's proximity to us and because in this house it's presence on our table at many a meal. Our boys love the sausage and my mother-in-law orders it by the case and ships it to London Ont to my brother-in-law so he doesn't feel lonely out there without his Kielbasa :(

45mins east of us Mundare where they have a giant sausage (looks like a giant turd from the side but who's looking?)

So this was made to honor one of the families in town renowned for their sausage making...specifically Kielbasa a Ukrainian garlic sausage. I personally think their peperoni is way better but who asked my opinion anyway? So this 12.8 m (42 feet) tall statue is a tribute to Stawnichy's Meat Processing, a sausage factory famous for its kobasa (or Kielbasa as some may recognize). Started in 1959, the Stawnichy family, father and son, started smoking meat. Edward took over from his father in 1971, and his daughter, Cheryl Zeleny, now mixes all the spices. Unfortunately Mr Stawnichy passed away this past year.

I do believe they still do the entire processing in the original store that was purchased all those many years ago by Mr Stawnichy. It always smells like curing meat and the door is always wide open no matter the weather. I love to go in the morning when they have just brought the meat out of the processor and it's still warm. Even though I hate cooked Kielbasa I like it warm out of the "oven" as it is.

There has been many a time that we have gone to somewhere with a cooler of sausage and by the time we get there we smell so strongly of garlic it is almost an insult to anyone to get within 5 feet of them let alone talk to them. I love it!!

So that's this weeks travel into the attractions. It's a very sad thing if you have been to Alberta and to stopped in to see this don't you think? I mean who wouldn't want to stop in to see a giant tube of sausage??

Rambling Traveller

So I spent most of today phutsing around and not accomplishing much of anything that wasn't already in progress from before. I finally managed to "clean" out the storage room in the basement if you count that it all got moved into the garage to be moved into another location. Be that garbage, charity or another home altogether. My garage remains unihabitable for a vehicle as of yet, but I remain optomistic that by summer I may yet have a van in it :0 Our neighbours think it's very funny how it has become an extra storage area considering we rent a storage unit. I tend to agree with them since we are continuously cleaning and organising it and getting nowhere.

The laundry is all caught up finally after the three weeks of being without a washer and dryer. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to be without a washing machine. I can do without a dryer, line drying is easy enough if you don't mind waiting forever to have dry underwear, especially here in Alberta where it's so darn cold and nothing is drying quickly, and the slight chafing feeling from your jeans when you wear them doesn't bother you either. I can finally appreciate how lovely it is to have front load washer and dryer. I heard that they were lovely but to finally have quiet at my back door, it is sublime. It no longer sounds like a 747 taking off in my porch.  Now to get the huge boxes off of the deck and I'll be a very happy woman.

I'm trying to finally get my house in some semblance of order. It's been a trial with three little munchkins and a hubby who is a drop and leave type. Neil is notorious for leaving hats, gloves, wallet, cell phone, keys... randomly all over the place. He gets it from his dad. I've watched them both hunt high and low for any one of them as we are trying to go somewhere and they are mad as hatters when they have no clue where they are.

I am slowly setting up little "spots" I call them for collecting of such things. Hooks at the back door for keys, a box that is for the washer/dryer for wallets/cells and other such "stuff" and hopefully this will "help" with the chaos surrounding it. I am also hopeing that by the end of February to be able to finally build the bench that I bought when we moved in for the porch. I had this epiphany last year that I needed a place for the kids to sit and put on boots and such instead of the floor, especially in the winter and on rainy days. I bought this lovely bench from HBC with all the points I had squirrled since our wedding. It didn't fit with our old laundry pair, they were too short and the dryer hit what would have been the top of the bench, making the end of it jut out into the doorway just asking me to run into it on a regular basis.

With the new laundry pair I can have Neil make me a platform to build it up, removing buttons from small  fingers and allowing me to use my bench finally :) I'm very excited !! So much so that I bought the matching top part with the hooks and cubbies for baskets and stuffing things in. I'm in my organisational prime here.

I've been hanging pictures on the walls and all the thingies that have been in boxes since we moved in last year. I'm trying to "decorate" as I can with what I had from the other house. Seeing as we went form such a cute little one to this big ol thing I have to figure out how to space things out. I have found a few pictures for the walls that are new and am hanging alot of my own photos up in frames around the house to brighten things up. Now to pick paint colors and convince Neil to let me have at it  :)

Back to my Alberta Roadside Attraction "series" as I'm calling it....

I thought I would feature the Village of Glendon, population 482 residents .

Glendon is located about 2 hours NE of Edmonton in northern Alberta. The idea for the perogy was concocted back in 1989, when the village council decided to create something unusual to boost tourism in the area. The monument received worldwide media attention when it was unveiled Aug. 31 1993 as tribute to the Ukranian culture present in the community. The giant fiberglass and steel perogy, standing 25 feet tall, 12 feet wide and weighing 6,000 pounds, greets visitors in the village square. The villagers also serve the tasty treats in a resturant located next to the attraction called the Perogy Cafe (very tasty perogies there, I've had them). This cafe also happens to be the only resturant in town. Glendon is home to NHLer Sam Smyl, a leg of The Iron Horse Trail, is the Perogy Capital of The World and Home of The World's Largest Perogy. Perogy Park is also located next to the Attraction with campsites ( :p) actually...right next to it so you can sleep looking up at the giant forked meal should you wish :p Glendon is also host to the Largets Demolition Derby in Alberta each August.

                                                         Doesn't it look appealing?



Well now aren't you all just flocking to come and see this wonder? Just wait until I head a bit south of Glendon to another and fill you in on what they have there. Totally wierd , but we have long winters and have to have something to do when it snows and blows around here.

Hibernating and Other Random Bits

So I had to go and pick up the passpsorts today from Canada place. Now usually I can manage to get into the city without incident. For some odd reason it seemed that all the morons were on the highway the exact same time I was...can you imagine?? Anyway, I was driving down the highway minding my own when I happened to notice that in the outer right lane there seemed to be alot of people moving out of that lane, it was explained when I got closer, a grader driving 50km/h , well not my probelm I'm in the outer left of a three lane highway...not an issue. Unless you happen to be the poor sod (me) who has some guy driving a tractor trailer try to run you off the highway by crossing 2 lanes of traffic, on a major highway without shoulder checking, signaling or slowing down, and thinking he owns the highway.

Now I'm not sure if you remember my last mishap with a tractor tailer, when I had the huge ginormous tear taken out of my new van and the front passenger tire ripped off last spring? I'm not too fond of big rigs. I live in a city where you can't avoid them but I tend to be a bit cautious around them for obvious reasons. Three of them being present in my vehicle with me at that time, and this time as well (I'm sensing a theme here, maybe I should avoid the highway all together?). So here we are happily driving along, me listening to Ninja Turtles part 2 in the back ground when I happen to see said turd bag veering into me. Now I was about 3/4 of the way up his side just behind his cab, he could have seen me if he had looked into his mirror he was in the outer lane!!! I saw the look on his face in his mirror when I leaned on my horn and veered into the shoulder as he missed my van with the side of the trailer by inches. I was too busy watching him, the row of cars behind me and the ditch all at once.

In essence he tried to run me off the road because he didn't want to slow down behind the grader. Jack Ass!!! So I had to slam on my brakes veer into the snow on the shoulder and fight to keep my van, with my kids in it, on the highway and manage to not cause a huge accident behind me at about 100km/h. Which is how fast we were all still going when he tried to do this. He jumped 2 lanes! I mean they don't own the highways...whatever. I swore and heard Leigha repeat it verbatim, not good since lately when you say the word "fart" to her she comes out with "fuck" and now she has moved forward in her language skills to using the same foul word as fork. Lovely if we go out in public don't you think? I'm not noticing too much she will get over it. Neil on the other hand thinks it's a barrel of laughs and gets her to say it over and over for fun. So it is his fault if she has a foul mouth when she is older not mine.

It threw me for a loop tho. I ended up unable to figure out how to get to Canada Place and driving around ultimatly backtracking in order to get to where I should have exited in the first place to spend 10 mintues in the building to check names, birthdates and places, faces and such, sign my name and gone. It cost me a whole $2.50 to park in the parkade, less time than it took to get out of the van, haul the kids in, get passports, and get out. But that's one chore off the books.

So we picked up the passports for Disney (9 days and counting!!!) and I took the kids to rotten ronnies for lunch for being so good at Canada Place. I fibbed a bit and told them that if they weren't good they would be arrested for misbehaving and couldn't come with us next week. They were angels up until the last few minutes when I had to read them the riot act about manners and not running up and down the wheelchair ramp as they weren't in wheelcahirs and it was rude.

As we were driving back into the Sherwood Park to go to the McDonald's with the play thingy we passed a farm with horses in it and I pointed them out to the kids. Leigha got all excited "cows!!". (I'm so proud of her :p) and  Nathaniel asked me the funniest thing..."mommy why aren't the horses hibernating?" I honestly had to stop and laugh a bit. I said the first thing that came into my mouth "they don't have holes big enough for them". I corrected myself and explained to him that they don't hibernate but are out and about all winter like dogs and cats, etc. I gave the example of a family friend that has 2 horses and asked him if they were hibernating. I think he got the idea after that. It was comical.

Back in The Game

Well I'm back.. In the sense that I have finally found a topic to write about that is not a dithering tale of boredom and doom...I have found that that past year I tended to babble about the inconequential s of my life and really...do you care to read that every.... single..... day??? I don't, so I figure either do you.

Anyway, moving on. In trying to find a new topic I had to spend these past 5 weeks ( I KNOW!! it's been that long :o) searching for said topic and honestly that's when I became so overtly aware of just how boring I really am. Or at least on paper...computer screen. In the beginning I was writing verbatim so about my days and anything really that popped into my head. I'm going to try and do it again...I think. We'll see how it goes. I've become scatter brained lately so I may become sidetracked and lose the theme and get lost somewhere, I may require help and a kick in the ass too.

Moving on.....So I made a tiny New Years Resolution to myself this year without advertising to Neil or well anyone for that matter. I have struggled with my weight since I was in my early teens and being so overtly blessed with the breasts when I hit puberty ( I became a 48GG if you really want to know) being overweight was just fine by me. It helped cover the fact that I carried around these ginormous watermellons on my chest everyday. I was teased by the boys for the obvious reasons and I'm sure alot of the girls were envious of me (though really if they would have had asked I would have happily traded them for their Itty Bitty Titties). The joke in our house was that alot of the girls in school belonged to the IBTC or Itty Bitty Titty Club, as a way to make the teasing alot easier to handle, and I think a way to make bra shopping easier as well.

 Ah, bra shopping the single most horrid experience in my teenage years. Every time my mom noticed my bra straps or asked how they were fitting I dreaded it. It usually meant hours in the granny section of the Sears store trying on bras that usually didn't fit. At that time there wasn't as many options for pretty bras for me. So I had the granny bra with the ugly straps. They fit but hey they sucked. Oh it's not to say I didn't have pretty ones, they just didn't fit right and hurt like a bitch to wear.

Fast forward through junior and high school to 2000 or so. I finally got up the nerve to ask my family GP to send me for a referral to a plastic surgeon for a consult on a reduction. I think it was one of the most nerve wracking experiencs to walk in and have some wierdo doc stare so openly at my breasts ( and they took before and after shots too!!!) with my mom standing behind him looking very concerned and uncomfortable. It took me almost a year to decide to have it done and on May 2001 I finally went in. I came out as a C...a "C" I couldn't believe it. but then it seemed everything else seemed out of proportion.

So I worked on it and lost the 45lbs hanging around before my wedding in 2003. The years passed and 3 kids later here we are, talking about my missing breasts and the extra weight that came with the 3 kids. So on New Years this year I quietly in my head made the promise to myself to try and lose the weight I have lovingly gained to "nourish" my children.

Now I have no plan really other than the fact that I meal plan and we follow a low sodium diet when Neil is reffing. Other than that I have cut out alcohol and refined sugars...to a point I have my limits!!! Chocolate is a must at times :p I'm hoping that by sheer will power and exercise I can shed the extra 50ish or so that has snuk up on me over the past 6 years. I'm not one to badger myself but I have alot of clothing that really is being wasted underneath my bed that won't fit until I lose at least 10 pounds by this summer. So step one is admitting to the problem, step 2 is taking action to fixing it...onto step 3 which is putting said plan into action.

Tomorrows meal is in the works. Chicken Primavera and a salad. It's at times like this I really wish I could eat fruit!! I hope this is my new start in many ways this year. A little late but it's one step in the right direction....at least it seems like it :p

Raining on His Parade

So you know the rough story of my mom and I. How I don't understand her and probably vice versa. We don't talk often and that leaves me in the very awkward position of when I usually need her I am the one calling her. Usually it is for her to watch the kids for me.

I hate doing this. It makes me feel like the only realationship I have with my mother is as a middle man with my kids. I see her by having her watch my kids so I can have some "me" time or get some errands done, if I'm lucky, most times it's due to an appointment or surgeries for Leigha. I very rarely get time for me or errands without dragging them with me. Tho I have to admit as far as kids go mine are very well behaved in public...threats work wonders :p

So my issue is this...tomorrow I have volunteered for Nathaniel's field trip to Greenland Nursery, they are doing a sleigh ride, hot chocolate and planting a winter white bulb. I would really love to go with him and spend time with him, meet his friends, watch him interact with his peers, but I don't have anyone to watch Ryan and Leigha and there are no siblings allowed as it is an outdoor trip.

Over the weekend Neil has his basketball Christmas party and we asked a family friend of ours to watch the kids...apparently my dad called their house while we were away and wondered why we had them watch the kids and not my parents?? I almost don't know how to answer that?

It has been almost 4 months since I physically saw my father let alone spoke to him on a phone. The same goes for my youngest sister, I saw them both on September long when they both pretty much ignored us and acted pretty rude. My mom I saw a few weeks ago when she dropped off some Christmas lights and Advent calendars for the kids before her doctors appointment. Other than that nothing.

Christmas is next week and we currently have nothing planned as of yet. We are waiting to see what happens...What do you think will happen?

We can throw something together but honestly this just isn't right. I just don't know what to do or how to feel let alone how to express to anyone how hurt I am about it all.

And worst of all tomorrow I have to tell my 5 year old son that I can't go on his field trip with him because I was too chicken to call my mother and see if she could watch my kids for me.

Sad...very sad indeed.

A Small Success...or Big I Guess :p

I have finally had some small successes after such dirt under our feet. Leigha is finally on the mend in terms of feeling better. She is gaining weight now instead of losing it 12.83 kilos as of Monday, a whopping 28ish pounds!!! Hooray. I now get to focus less on her weight and more on her. Not that she'll let me forget about her anyway my velcro ;) The tube changeout when great today. We had to wait an hour to see him which was the toughest part since I had to wake Leigha up from her sleep this morning. We were expected at the Stollery at 9am which meant leaving town at 830 at the latest. I had to hit the bank and drop Nathaniel off at school before heading into the city. We were only 15 minutes late but since we ended up waiting for him it wasn't such a big thing. The whole thing took about 10 mintutes total to accomplish the hardest thing being holding her legs still while he deflated the balloon holding the tube in and cut the suture. Yes the suture was still attatched funny enough but amazingly enough the balloon that was holding the tube in....was popped. I guess that explains the incredible amount of pain she has had the past week and a bit and the lack of bubble movement these past few days. The tube was nasty too, very gunky at the tip so I am glad we get to start with a new one. We had a quick coffee with Laura and caught up a bit with her about how her day was going...chaotic as usual but when isn't a CCICU crazy I ask of you? ( that's cardiac care ICU in case you care :p) Then off to Spruce Grove and Peggy's place to get my photo's...amazing :o They turned out WAY, WAY better than I thought they would. I can't wait to show them off....to a select few of course :p Then I get home and one of the nasty credit card companies calls and I finally, after about 2 months of talking, get them to lower my intrest rate to a managable one so maybe we can finally get this thing paid down and gone. I think that this has been an awsome day by far. Tonight is a pizza night. I don't feel like cooking, it's 4 o'clock already and I have no milk. I don't want to go back out with 3 kids and Leigha hasn't napped so that would be asking for problems. Crossing my fingers now that I can make some headway on Graham's Christmas gift...or part of it tonight. But I ma hearing Nathaniel complaining upstaris, most likely "Ryan hit me", or "Leigha is being mean to me", early bed tonight for all of them considering I woke them all up early tonight. Another good thing for today!! What's your good thing to happen today?

Countdown...Are You Ready?

Christmas is less than a week away and I am so not ready. I have some baking done which for the first time in about 6 years that I have been "all grown up" is a miracle in itself. The Christmas letter is written and tonight I am addresing the envelopes to be ready to mail out, alas they will arrive late again this year. But my family is used to that so receiving them on time would be unusual for me :p

But my Christmas Tree has yet to be decorated (again!) as the lights (again!) have burnt out despite the fact that we bought them only last year. We are buying new ones tonight. As well as going out to at least finish the kids shopping and have that sruck off the list, leaving only the grandparents and a few others ( well 5 others but I am working on it).  But for the first time half of the decorating is done. Laura helped me decorate my fireplace matel and it looks wonderful. I am quite pleased with how it tured out.

And about 5 minutes ago I found out that Neil's big gift has arrived, after being shipped to Winnipeg by mistake...Edmonton...Winnipeg??? not sure how the mistake occured but they are here and I am so excited. Now I just have to devise a way to wrap them so I can really surprise him. He reall has no idea about them and I am looking forward to seeing his reponse when he opens them up. It's a bit "risque" compare to what I wold normally give him so I am really looking forward to it. I am almost happy that they took this long to come in, otherwise I would have had to sit on them for a few weeks, or months trying to hide my excitemet about it.

Th biggest thing will then be trying to explain to eveyone outsde of my little crew (who I don't really want seeing me in such a way), what I actually got him for the holidays.

We are going to Disney World in February so I guess I can always use that as an excuse :p   

Lemonade :p

Update.....

So it wasn't so bad in the long run,  infection is a no. Thank goodness. The tube is ?sutured we think? not so sure about that but since we have it secured every which way to the moon it should be good enough to last until next week. 7 days tomorrow and counting officially. I will be so happy to be rid of this cumbersome thing. And I know for sure Leigha will too.

But even tho I had to make the rush into the doctors this afternoon the day wasn't a whole write off. We managed to get the dogs groomed for the holidays with Tasha being bathed and brushed and Abby her usual shave down so she isn't bald by the New Year from biting herself raw as is her norm this time of year...well any time of year really. I got the boys into the barber for a hair cut as well and Ryan actually sat in the Barber chair and had an actual conversation with Tony this time with his head up and eye contact. It was amazing. We left a bit sticky from the whole situation as we had to bribe him with candy to even get him into the chair to start and of course Leigha managed to get her hands onto the candies too, can't blame her for wanting them and I wasn't about to try and take them away either :p

I picked up the very expensive dryer motor so that we can see if replacing it will help with our problem of ours needing to be run over and over just to dry one load. It was so bad when we got home from the Stollery with Leigha that I had to run one load 5 times to dry it. Had I not needed the sheets very badly I would have hung them out. I went out the next day and purchased a new clothes line and more hangers and now hang over 90% of our clothes. My dining room looks like what a laundry room should look like if I had a laundry room that is :p I will most likely keep doing this but since the sheets, towles and socks get crunchy when I line dry them I will most likely dry them in the tumble dryer. We are hoping that by changing the motor we can get another 6-12 months out of it before having to replace it.

Either that or I am going to have to move to a warmer climate no matter what :p We were even home long enough tonight for a quick bathroom break, drop off the dogs, Nathaniel to change clothes for his Jui Jitsu class and then back out the door for another jaunt downtown for his class for a half hour. It has been a busy day and somehow in amongst it all they are fed, watered and in bed all snug. And not one meltdown by anyone today. That in itself is a miracle considering the boys usually lay into one another the instant they are in a room together for longer than 5 minutes.

IAnd considering funny occurances remember I was saying earlier about the fact that I was more than likely going to have to quit my job because I was unable to find someone to help out with the kids and the hours etc...well I got home this evening and low and behold there was a message on my machine from my boss asking if I was able to do some evening work with my little gal. Seems mom and dad want me back working with her and are open to the idea of evenings. I hope that this is a point in the right direction of some sort.

Onward and upward, a positive outlook and perhaps a glass of wine after such a long day :p I mean who wants lemonade at 10 o'clock at night?

What to do When It's Too Cold to Play Outside

I live in Alberta, I have lived here all my life. I have never travelled very far from here and don't plan on moving away any time soon. So when you have lived here for your entire 29 years you learn to never underestimate the weather in Alberta. Take today for example it's -29 outside Celcius without the windchill. And since I live outside of Edmonton they don't typically tell you the windchill factor everytime they put the weather up on the news in the morning, that and I'm usually not awakle enought to notice. So if I were to guess I would say that with windchill it's probably about -33ish outside and I had to drive Nathaniel to school today. I wussed out yeaterday and called in saying "he won't be in" leaving out the whole "I don't want to drag my sad ass out of bed to drive him down the street when it is -35 outside and I don't have my car starter installed yet" yada,yada,yada.

So if you follow my cousin Carmen's blog you will have heard that Calgary (our neighbours to the south) got hit with a nasty blizzard on Friday (HAHAHA!!!!, sorry had to do it :p). And while it snowed a couple feet ( some areas have snow up to the roof of their cars and it's now hard packed) down there, we got hit with alot less up here. 8-10 inches depending on where you lived. It was a nasty storm and when it finally abated I was surprised that there weren't more cars abandoned in ditches and accidents reported. Especially since we didn't have any snow at all on the ground until Friday of last week. They were beginning to see the buds on the trees in some of the southern regions of the province, not good.

So I am now presented with the problem again of how to keep the boys from killing each other. I have been very unsuccessful at finding someone to watch the kids for me leaving me with the  only choice to quit my job and move to a casul position and only work evenings and weekends. Neil and I discussed it last night and as long as I can cover one mortgage payment a month then we should be able to make it work. It's hard to find someone willing to work with Leigha and her problems and then we throw Ryan and his temper tantrums in just for fun and I have them running away screaming.

Sometimes I hate the fact that I am a healthcare worker. I seem to be so restricted to whereI can work and the type of work I can do. It's that or I have no imagination at all and have no clue what to do with my life other than to have kids and try and raise them up as best as I can. That is hard enough as it is. Add to that Leigha and all her problems and I am tapped out of ideas of what to do. I can work full time and hand over my paycheck to someone else for watching my kids, or I can stay at home with them and try to make it work somehow.

I know that God will present an option somewhere I just have to wait, but honestly we could really use a break right about now.

Moving on with an update about Smidget. We are almost a month post-op and things were going really good. She is still puking and cannot hold anything solid down and i s still having problems keeping down all the fluids be it juice or Pediasure. Friday night she was playing and happened to pinch her tube somehow and I noticed she had blood around her tube. I instantly thought she had pulled it out and broke the suture. It seemed okay and I had Neil help me secure it really well to her stomach when he got home from reffing. We spent all weekend monitoring it and she has become increasingly more aggitated about it and actually crying now when it gets bumped or moved. It is still bleeding and even tho we have a cream that protects the skin from breaking down from the acids in her stomach (it's an open port to her stomach, think of it as your mouth, only it's her tummy), it's still not looking good. So we have a dressing called Biotin that we have put around the tube to secure it and support it and absorb any secretions and then have tape over top of it to secure it again. The poor kid looks like a mummy.

So yesterday was when I began noticing that she smelled wierder than normal. She is on a liquid diet so she smells off anyway. People that eat a variety of foods generally smell "clean". Leigha smells sweet all of the time a bit like vanilla from the pediasure, but yesterday I began noticing that she was sour and then the runs. So we have the runs, a funny smell and then we noticed drainage at her tube that was not normal looking for what we were told to look for, it looked like a possible infection. So I cleaned it really well, dried the area from moisture and re-secured it. About 430 this morning she awoke crying, and she had a fever of 38.7 and fire butt. So she is still sleeping in no diaper (I will have a very wet bed to change when she gets up, but it's better than having her cry from having a very sore bum), and I have tried to give her Motrin every 6 hours to keep her fever down and we are seeing our Pediatrician's co-partner this afternoon. I am thinking the suture is broken and she has a site infection. We drew a line around where we secured it last night so we can tell where it moves, of it moves at all.

I'm crossing my fingers that it is an easy fix. She is scheduled for her Mickey insertion next week, but if she has an infection they can't do it without risk of creating a bigger problem.

I wish something would go right and easy for us for once. But we are only presented with the obstacles that God thinks we can handle. But I would really like an ant hill this time round. But as my girlfriend Casey says "just keep swimming". Neil and I are a team and we have good support and I know that it's one day at a time and one step.

I find myself as I go through this journey with Leigha and with our family that I am beginning to rely more on faith and trust that I am not in control of this. I canot fix Leigha and have to trust that there is an ultimate plan about how this is going to work out in the end. I cannot believe that Leigha was given into ours arms just to struggle. There is an end to all of this we just have to have the patience to wait it out.

I did not come from a faith driven family and did not become so until I met Neil. I do believe in God and have full trust in him that he will help us through this in some way. But if I can somehow help speed it up in some way I am sure going to try ;)

I have always loved this poem and even tho it is a combination of many verses of the bible but it does make me smile and I really need it right now and I know many others that do as well.



Please keep in your hearts and prayers our dear friend Cindy who is struggling with illness and trying to find the cause, she needs all the love and support we can give her. She is a very dear friend and I only wish I could do more to help her through this.

I'm hoping to be back later to update on leigha and hopefully to post about my sewing acheivements :o I have been very successful in them of late and am quite impressed with myself!!!

Is It Legal To Drug Your Kids Like This

Not that I did it but I did get a good chuckle out of seeing Leigha stoned out of her tree. I was truly thankful that she was not in any amount of pain once they wheeled her out of surgery last week. My biggest fear was that she would be incredibly uncomfortable and that we would end up being sent home and have to deal with pain management somehow here at home.  I am sure that no amount of Motrin or Tylenol could give any comforting effect after having your abdomen ripped open and then stapled back together again.

These were taken just after she had arrived onto the unit. She was settled in to the ISO unit, basically a ward style unit of 4 beds with kids all needing higher nursing care. We lucked out on day one having 2 older kids and one little guy with a trach. It was very quiet and we all managed to get a bit of sleep despite the whole crappy rocking chair for a bed thing.

I could not resist, the terrible mother that I am, and not take pictures of her in her stoned state of affairs. Once the nurses got her settled and I was no longer able to stay away I was at her side in about a blink and duck taped to her side for the remainder of the six days she was there, well not quite Neil came and stayed one night so I could go home and sleep apparently I began to talk nonsense so they sent me home where I crashed and slept 14 hours straight. I remember having a conversation with the secretary at Nathaniels school. she called at some horrid time because Nathaniel had not shown up for class like I had said he would (my MIL did not want to get up early to drive him over, she was tired and figured it was only Kindergarten and he was not going to miss much), I reached for the phone in reflex and only when it dawned on my who I was talking to did I clue in...our conversation went alot like this:

M: Hello,

S (being secretary :p): Hi, this is J calling ffrom Pope John Paul the 23rd calling in regards to your son Nathaniel...

M: Yes......what about him..

S: he is not in class today we are wondering if you are running late or if he is not coming today.

M: (now here is where I get really brilliant in the mornimg): but its only Thursday and I said he was not going to be back until Friday..

S: it is Friday..

M: No it isn t

S: Yes its Friday Novemebr 20th

M: No!! its only the 17th (see how smart I am after 3 days of no sleep I cant even remember what day of the week it is let alone what the date is).

S: ( with questioning voice) Ummm, no its the 20th today, so does that mean that Nathaniel wont be in class today

M: Well... if he isnt there by now I wouldn t expect him. I dont have him here with me, he is over at his grandparents, and if they haven t shown up with him by now then they aren t planning on it. He will be back on Monday for sure.

S: (now very confused) oh kay...

M: Nathaniels sister had surgery on Tuesday and that has kind of turned our house upside down, things should be back to normal by Monday.. thanks for calling

And then I very nicely hung up the phone and fell back asleep for another 3 hours :p

So after spending the requisite 5 days in hospital that we had been told about in our consult I was a bit perterbed when our surgeon came in on Sunday morning and annouced that we had to stay in one more day. And that would be the whole Morphine and feeding tube schedule debacle.

So that brings us to our discharge on Monday. Once I finally managed to get the pump for the tube feed, which only took 4 hours unlike last time that took 6, we were out like a shot. We arrived home by 1, I had Leigha in her crib attatched to the pump by 130 and I was in bed tucked in like a burrito by 145. It was so nice to be in my own bed again. We slept very nicely until about 6 when Neil got home where upon he very kindly got Leigha up and took her over to his parents for a bit while I slept off the massive headache that arrived somewhere between my arrival home and waking up at 6.

I was up by 730 and back to bed by 9. It was wonderful and the next day I was coniving ways to bribe the boys into letting me take a nap without them killing each other while I did it. I figure I could sleep a week and still not be caught up.

Im thankful that kids are fast healers, by Thursday she was up in bed smiling and laughing and kicking the tv over the bed with her feet. It takes alot more than surgery apparently to keep this one down.

So once I finally got Leigha to let me look at her stomach with out yelling OWIE!!! everytime anyone even touched her (not that I blame her AT ALL), I was able to get a shot of the actual thing. It doensèt look  to bad all things considering. We expected alot worse. The only clinch is that the tube from where it inserts her stomach, it has to remain upright for about half inch or else it will elongate the hole that the button will be inserted into, and thus mess the whole thing up. Right now we have noticed that the way the tube naturally wants to go is to the left and we can already see the tube beginning to make a ovlal shape on that side. I have booked an appointment with our pediatrician on Tuesday so will ask about it then. Neil and I vividly remember them saying to keep the hole round so that it doesnèt leak, I èm not sure how to do that with a kid who can move and pull on it.

The day before our discharge Neil got a picture of the two of us together in the room. With her being on continuous feeds it was difficult to go anywhere with her at all and more so to keep her entertained in the room. She wanted to move and how do you keep a 17 month old busy when they dont exactly watch tv.

Last night she started vommiting. I was told that once she had the fundoplication she wasnt supposed to be able to do that anymore due to the banding around her stomach. So when she woke up this morning and was still doing it I did what any mother would do and called the doctors. Of course it was luch and I had to wait.

Once I finally got in I was put right in to see the doc covering for our pediatrician (Dr Teoh, he is asian and usually dyes his mohawk funny colors to impress the kids) while she is away this week. He is great and reassured me that she probably has the stomach flu but it isnt worth worrying over. Im not worried as long as it isnt a complication from the fundo, I can deal with the flu. Heck the flu is nothing in comparison to the multiple pneumonias, cold and other bugs she has had over the last 17 months of her life.

As long as she isnt running a fever higher than 38.5 then we can keep her at home on clear fluids and half strength formula. If it gets any worse we have to go directly to the Stollery ( my very favorite place :p)

and take it from there. I think they will decide what to do if it comes to that. Probably Xrays and bloodwork Not sure how they do xrays on kids with g-tubes as they cant put her in a clam shell.....not my problem or worry right now. But I did wonder how they did it as we sat and waited  afternoon.   For now we have started her on Peidalyte and part of her Pediasure to fill her stomach a bit and Ièm hoping that by the weekend she will be on the mend. Then the last hurdle will be to find a sitter and I can look at going back to work.                                                                                                                                                

I will appologise for the paragraphing down the page, not sure what happened but when I uploaded the pictures my typing went all wonky and I really don/t feel like spending 2 hours trying to figure it out. That and Leigha pushed some button on the computer that has turned off the question mark and the appostrophy and made them into french accent markers, have no clue how to fix that either, you will have imagine that all the words that should have an appostrophy have them and well the questions...same thing. :p

As Im re-reading this I noticed that it is all over the place and not in order. Forgive me for babbling. I know you are all brilliant people who will have absolutly no trouble at all figuring it all out. I know you all only came here for the pictures anyway;) I did go bakc and check most of the spelling and grammer, thats not to say I didnt miss about a million of them, but just turn your head sideyways then it will all look normal and make more sense to you. It works for me anyway.