Happy Birthday!!

Can you believe my BABY is two years old today? I'll admit in some ways I can totally believe it. Most ways though it seems utterly impossible. Crazy even. The baby that started off two years ago looking like this:

Now looks like this:

Or this, depending on his mood:

We spent a lot of time celebrating with Grandma and Grandpa over the weekend so tonight was pretty low key. We went out for pizza at a kids place and played some arcade games. After games, we came home for cake.

Mama and her big boy
William wearing the shirt mama made him: Warning: I'm TWO!
Riding in the spaceship

Jumping in the bouncy house
Sitting in the race car (it was out of order)
Riding the Merry-go-Round
Riding the horse
Playing a NASCAR game with Daddy (PS William and Daddy were a team and Mama drove her own car in the same race. The birthday boy's team won! Nice driving!)

Dr Appointment

I'm starting to feel like I live at my doctor office. It is only going to get worse. Uneventful appointment today. Heart rate was good, pressure good, weight gain was overly good (I am an overachiever). No concerns with the exception that my DOCTOR IS SCHEDULED TO BE ON SPRING BREAK WITH HER KIDS THE WEEK I AM DUE*. Not a problem, right? Isn't this something we should have talked about sooner? My OB is totally not concerned because she is certain that I won't go to my due date with this baby (remember, she said that with William too...). So, we discussed our options and I think we have a plan that will work. Not a plan that I love, but a plan that will work.


*To be clear, my doctor deserves a vacation just like anyone else - more, in fact that some people I know. I'm just peeved because I just found out NOW about this scheduling problem. And it was after I asked her, not because she discovered the issue herself.


In other news, Grandma and Grandpa are arriving tonight for a birthday weekend celebration for the big boy. The big boy that is sleeping right now in his crib. Oh well.

Another reason to be thankful....

this would be post #3 for the day....make sure you scroll down. Although this is the only post with pictures and un crabbiness in it.

PS Yesterday was a disaster! I was in tears and decided we would go ahead and send him to college in his crib. John and talked it through and made some changes. Both the nap and BEDTIME went very well! I am so PROUD of our big boy!

PPS More details about what worked for us forthcoming. I'm not stupid enough to think we have it nailed after one good day/night. I'll talk to you about it sometime next week if we continue to do so well...

Thankful

I'm working on reminding myself to be thankful and not crabby. Here is a post I've been meaning to write, but haven't because I just haven't been feelin' all that thankful recently. Here is my try:


All of the thank you notes for our Christmas gifts have been written and sent out. We've published a letter in the Iowa City Citizen thanking people for their help on the day of our accident. We've written to thank the volunteer fire department and the family who came to the emergency room with shoes for William, a shirt for John and a bag of M& M's for me. However, there is another group of people out there who deserve a HUGELY public display of gratefulness from our family. In no particular order:

*To my mom who calmly handled the first (and subsequent) phone call from the ambulance

*To my family who dropped everything they were doing to come and get us after the accident

*To my mom who made some calls to some friends to find out about treating John's injury and then taking John all over town in order to satisfy our insurance requirements.

*To my mom who was SO calm for John during all those hours with the doctors and asking all the questions that needed to be asked.

*To my family for all the HOURS of William sitting you provided. Megan, Mike, Grandpa, & Grandma. You were huge lifesaver for us at a moment's notice. You allowed John and I to be together when we needed it most. You protected William from having to see John (and us) go through some very hard times. You changed work schedules and moved around commitments so William was always taken care of. And then? When the emergency was over? You STILL offered to watch William so we could go out to celebrate our anniversary, ring in the New Year and shop for a new car. AWESOME.

*To our extended families. We weren't exactly in holiday spirits this year. We weren't exactly in any spirits at all with the exception of the Stressed Out Spirit and Crabby Spirit. Yet, you helped us celebrate Christmas and for this we are glad. We will be able to look back at the pictures and see happiness was present this year at Christmas. I'm so glad William didn't have to celebrate with Stressed Out and Crabby by himself. That would have been a poopy Christmas all around.

*To my dad who went car shopping with us and "held our hands" along the way. We made some mistakes the first time around and you didn't let us (read:me) do it again this time.

*To Grandpa Heidt who allowed us to borrow the red wagon. When there are two cars and five people in a house needing to get to different places, it is very challenging.

*To all of you! You keep checking back on us even though I am crabby and ungrateful. I am thankful for you! AND

*For all of the prayers and thoughts that have been with our family over the last month. I know that John's healing and recovery are not entirely a result of his hard work alone. Your hard work has been paying off. Thank you.



Thank you....I'm getting there...instead of demanding SERENITY NOW! I'm more along the lines of Serenity soon, please.

You're Invited

to my pity party. I haven't been posting much this week because I've been busy. But, I've also been at a pretty sad pity party for one. I'm working on being thankful and recognizing the blessings we have not to mention how incredibly lucky we are. However, it is a struggle. Although John's recovery is going VERY well and he is working VERY hard there are still a lot of adjustments that we (I) are having to make about our routines*.

Because the doctors don't want John's hand to get wet or bumped in the area where the pins are located, a lot of the daily work has fallen to me. Which is okay, because I like to work hard. Just not all the time. It has been almost a month since our accident or roughly four weeks. It has been exactly that long since John has changed a diaper. Or washed dishes. Or given William a bath. Or been able to pick William up and hold him when he is crying. Or carry him to the car from a store. Or carry anything with two hands. What might be hardest of all is knowing I can't leave the house at by myself while William is awake for any length of time because John is simply not able to handle a diaper change on his own.

This has been difficult for me because John and I have been a team for a long time (we started dating in 1996 for those of you who keep track of these things which would equal almost 13 years). There are just some things that are unspoken: John takes care of dishes after dinner and empties all the garbage along with many, many other tasks. Always. Now things are different and I hate to admit that I'm not taking it well.

To add to the workload, I'm also trying to fight off the intense nesting bug. Before Christmas I had a mantra "We'll get the house together after Christmas. We'll focus on the house after Christmas..."

Only, now the major projects I had outlined for 2009 are either unable to be completed because of John's injury, because we spent a lot of our money we had set aside for house projects on a new car or because I'm now too crabby to tackle some of the projects by myself.

So, I'm frustrated. And crabby. And pregnant. And craving chocolate. A huge amount of chocolate. A vat of chocolate with a Diet Coke might just bring me out of the funk. But, I know that isn't the problem, so I'm trying not to overdo the sweets/caffeine thing (I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had ANY). All of my plans for moving/decorating/finishing/carpeting/etc are now on hold and I'm not handling it very gracefully. But, I'm working on it.


*To be clear, John is working very hard at his recovery. I am so proud and thankful that he is working so hard and doing so well with the healing. I am frustrated with the changes in our daily lives NOT with him (although he has taken the brunt of my frustration recently). He is now able to complete most tasks by himself without assistance. Early on, he needed help with everything (YES, EVERYTHING...how many hands does it take for you to take off your pants?).

**End is in sight. Pins will come out next week on Tuesday. I can't wait=understatement of the year.

Day 2 & 3 are...

a bust. He ended up in his crib for both nap times. Two and a half hours today was just too long and I lost my patience. He fell asleep right away once he got into the crib. Gah! We'll be trying it again tomorrow.




PS Even though I don't like doing this, I put one of those child proof door handle protectors on the inside of the door so he couldn't get out. I still found him in the living room trying to open the baby proof gate at the top of the stairs. He definitely isn't supposed to be able to figure out that one! I keep telling myself: He will do it eventually. He will do it eventually. He WILL do it eventually.


PPS Pictures of him waking up in his big boy bed are now posted here.

PPPS Pictures of John's hand and Xrays from two weeks ago are now posted here

Shh....

because my baby is napping in his Big Boy Bed! Can you believe it? Neither can we!

The big boy wakes up in his bed (I was WAY to nervous to take a picture of his actually sleeping).

** It was both harder and easier than I thought it would be. He took a long time to settle down and required me to be in there for a period of time (laying next to the bed, eyes shut, no interaction). However, he never got out of the bed and managed a 2 hour, 15 minute nap.

Updates

It has been a busy few weeks with all of our appointments. I meant to post about my 28 week OB appointment and John's appointment with the doctor, but time got away from me. Luckily, we have enough appointments in the next 6 weeks to fuel this blog on medical information alone. In order: John's stitch removal, Kelly's OB, John's 1st appointment with a hand dr in St Louis

1. As I mentioned before, I had to work really hard to find somewhere in the St Louis area to find ANYONE willing to take out the 6-7 stitches on John's fingers after surgery. Our surgeon assured us any general practitioner would be more than qualified to remove the stitches. However, no one we see regularly was willing to take out the stitches. A conservative guess would put the amount of time I spent on the phone booking this appointment right around 3 hours. Amazing when the actual stitch removal took about 4 minutes from beginning to end.

However, we were finally able to locate a place relatively close to us that was willing to take the stitches out in the time frame we needed. The bad news was that the doctor John would need to see was not a hand surgeon and wasn't going to be someone we would continue to see for follow up care.

The end result: stitches were removed last week on Monday and more X rays were taken. I'll post those pictures tomorrow at the bottom of this post for those of you who do not care to see the pins. The doctor we saw made a bunch of recommendations that were not in line with the surgeon's recommendations - and made some calls to find out what actually needed to happen.

The left hand with pins in
A hand comparison
An X Ray showing the pins in his finger. Yes, the pins go all the way through to the knuckle...

2. We went directly from the stitch removal appointment to my OB appointment. We had William with us as our child care had fallen through the night before. We were in and out of waiting rooms from 8am until about 11am that morning. All things considered, William was AMAZING and wonderful (note: not perfect, but pretty darn good).

This was my first visit with my OB after the accident and I had some concerns that needed to be addressed. In the end, there is lots of good news and no bad news. If something was going to happen with this pregnancy as a result of the accident, it would have happened in the first 24-48 hours after the accident occurred. All the tests they ran on me the evening of the accident didn't come up with anything at all (including not one, but two pelvic exams: FUN!, two ultrasounds, 6 hours of fetal monitoring, 6 vials of blood taken and tested, urine samples, cord blood pressure taken, amniotic fluid measurement, and old fashioned blood pressure readings).

The short version: I am not any more high risk now than I was at my appointment 4 weeks ago. Nothing has changed to make my doctor concerned about this pregancy or my health in general. Her biggest worry currently is the strain carrying/lifting William is causing my back/other parts. Unfortunatetly, it is looking like it will be two more weeks before John will be able to lift William and help me out with some of the heavy work that needs to be done. Other than that, the appointment was boring and normal without anything interesting to note.

3. John had his consultation with a hand specialist here in St Louis the morning. We were glad to be referred to someone our doctor knew personally and had worked with in the past. The appointment went well and this doctor felt John was making great progress. The doctor felt the pins needed another 2 weeks to fully allow the fractured finger to heal and so we made an appointment to return the day after William's birthday. The pin removal is supposed to be very easy (which I cannot understand). John won't be given any kind of pain medication - the pins will just be pulled out. The doctor assures us this is super simple/easy and John will be able to work for the rest of the day without problem. John is most excited because the doctor told him when the pins come out, he can keep them (ummm...yuck). We were sent on to physical therapy for a quick review of John's condition and exercises he should be working on.



PS For those of you who are interested, it is actually cheaper to delivery a baby the natural way with an epidural and stay overnight in the hospital than it is to have a finger reattached and stay 1 night in the hospital. Hospital bills for the surgery arrived yesterday. Now we wait to see what kind of fight lays ahead of us as the insurance companies start their work.

Crazy Jeff

Our friend Jeff is crazy enough to jump into Lake St Louis again this year for the Polar Bear Plunge. I've put up a fundraising button on the side of the blog if you would like to donate in support of Special Olympics. Last year his team of jumpers won the "Schools" category and he is hoping to take it again this year. Go Jeff!

Big Boy Bed, Phone

Quick update, I'll be back tomorrow with pictures because it is LATE. We bought the big boy mattress today and put it in his new room. He is so SO excited about it! And so are we!

The whole way home, we talked about how this was a new big boy bed for William to have. He was SO excited about it when we got home! When we walked in the door he said "My bed! Sleep! Blankets, pillows, big boy bed!" and he ran off to get some blankets to put on his bed Right Away so he could go to sleep. Very funny, only it was time to eat dinner and he wasn't happy about having to wait.
After we ate, we finished cleaning out his new room, put up the curtains and put the sheets on his new bed. Then we practiced using it. Here I am in bed with my babies reading books! We're going to take a few days this week to just talk about it and lay in the bed before we start actually using it. I am looking forward to having him out of the crib, but totally dreading the fact that he will be able to get out of the bed all by himself from now on. His room is going to be empty for a while until I can trust him not to injury himself on other pieces of furniture.

In other news, the phone problems have been worked out. We both have the same phone numbers and both of us have phones. However, if you call one of us for the next week or so, you'll be talking to me. After my phone was lost, we gave everyone John's phone number. John doesn't have access to his phone at work, so I'll be keeping his here for the time being to field insurance company calls.

And, just for fun, a few other pictures from this week!

William got Mr Potato Head for Christmas this year (which he LOVES). His favorite part about Mr Potato Head? The glasses. He loves to wear the glasses.
More glasses
Pushing the glasses up - maybe they need to be adjusted?
How funny (and true!) is this shirt? Thank you to Aunt Sheila and Uncle Bobby who picked this one up for William at the Grand Forks airport.
The belly button is starting to pop out...and the light was good the other day in our living room. William was not cooperating with my photo shoot ideas, so I had to turn the camera to NewBaby.
William saw the cat in the basket and decided he wanted to try to get in....
Turns out it was hard work to fit such a big boy into a little basket! Funny thing about those red socks: we're working on William making some of his own choices. We present (when time allows) two clothing options and he gets to choose one. Any time the red socks are an option, he picks them. Guaranteed. Every single time.
William's nest. I'm not sure how this one started (Daddy maybe?), but now we have to take all the available pillows and put them into a circle around William to make a "nest". After the nest is constructed you need to carefully sit in it and crow about your beautiful nest.

Craft Area/Big Boy Room Progress

These pictures are old. Probably at least a month old, but we got busy with other stuff. We haven't really be able to do anything in the last few weeks with everything else we've been having going on.

The start of William's big boy room. The room is emptied, painted, curtains are purchased as is the sheets and comforters. I have some fun stuff in mind to hang on the walls, but I don't have it figured out right now. And I'm not telling you what it is in case I change my mind (sometimes I do that) All that is missing is some furniture and...the big boy.

More big boy room. Please note, we do believe in outlet covers. Just not while painting. The covers are now back on.

The desk is moved in and now....we've made the other side a crafty area! John hung up these shelves for me to organize my craftiness and supplies.
The crafty corner. I have a cutting/ironing table, a sewing table and beautiful shelves on the wall. I've already spent many hours happily crafting away my Christmas projects this year.

2008, A year in Review

What a [mostly] great year! Here it is in order.....

23 months old: December 25th
22 Months Old: November 26
21 Months Old: October 26
20 Months Old: September 26

19 Months Old: August 26
18 Months Old: July 26th
17 Months Old: June 29th

16 Months Old: May 31st
15 Months Old: April 27th
14 Months Old: March 26th

13 Months Old: February 27th

12 Months Old! January 26

12th Night Party

We were invited to a 12th Night party ages ago and responded we would be there. Although it has been kind of a crazy few weeks, there didn't seem to be any reason why hanging out with some friends and acquaintances wouldn't be a good time this last weekend. We attended this same party and were a little overwhelmed when the hosts two teen aged sons greeted us at the door with full out black tuxedos. So this year we stepped it up a little and made more of an effort towards "formal". And then we booked a babysitter. Yay us!

What 28 weeks pregnant looks like on me. Rocking the almost double chin. Note to self: Lay off the brownies starting next week. Several people at the party did a very noticeable double take when I mentioned my due date is at the end of March. Although they did restrain themselves and not ask about the possibility of twins in there. I promise, there aren't two in there. Just Newbaby and my best friends brownies, cookies and ice cream.

Kelly and John sort of dressed up. This is John's current hand splint situation. Makes shirts tricky - otherwise I'm sure he would have been in tails. Or not. With the picture enlarged, you can see the beginnings of my outy belly button. Sure does make getting the lint out easier.

Organizer

The posts are all out of order. When we got home last week, I made a list of close to 14 blog entries that were missing. That makes me crabby. So, I've made a helpful little table of contents to help you sort it all out and read it in order. Makes me happy, how 'bout you?

* You could just start reading, but the posts are really mixed up

December 19th: The long missing post regarding my short lived hatred of dogs

December 20th: The accident in brief

December 20th: The [very much] expanded version of the aftermath of the accident.

**WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS PICTURES OF BOTH OUR CAR AND OUR INJURIES. THIS MAY BE UPSETTING/GRAPHIC TO YOUR DAY.**

December 23rd: A Hospital Update An update from the hospital after John's surgery

December 23rd: A Rochester McGarry Christmas Celebrating Christmas with my family the day of John's discharge

December 24th: A Grand Forks Wennersten Christmas

December 25th: A Grand Forks McGarry Christmas

December 26th: A Rochester Heidt Christmas Celebrating Christmas with John's family

December 27th: Things I have Cried About this Week: A hormonal trip through my emotional week

December 27th: Car Shopping What cars we looked at, how I felt about the cars and dealerships, hormonal/emotional breakdowns guaranteed.

December 28th: Holding Cana Christine Holding my best friend's new baby girl!

December 29ths: Happy 7 Year Anniversary! We celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary quietly in Rochester.

December 30th: Our New Van Pictures of our New van

December 31st: More Family Updates

December 31st: Happy New Year! We celebrate New Year's Eve quietly with our Rochester friends.

January 1st: We're Home! We're finally home!

January 2nd: Crafting Revealed I got my craft on this holiday season. See what I made for my family.

January 3rd: Continued Updates A current update about how our family is doing

Lasting Effects, Updates

First, a rant: with everything our family has been through in the last few weeks, I thought by now things would be getting easier. How long would you guess it would take to make an appointment to have 7-10 stitches removed? Answer: four days and over 3 hours on the phone arguing with different doctor's offices.

John: His recovery is going well. He had the staples removed from his head almost a week ago and it is looking much better. He is working very hard at becoming independent again. He is able to do almost everything for himself that is needed with a few small exceptions (driving, putting some types of shirts on, cutting up meat while eating). His physical therapy program (done at home) is going very well and he is working hard at keeping his fingers moving as directed by the physical therapist. We do have an appointment this next week to get the stitches removed from his fingers.

Kelly: Completely boring and uneventful. Neck and upper back are still sore. Baby inside is kicking and active as normal. Has regular boring OB appointment this next week. Bruises and bumps are all gone.

William: Totally spoiled by time at Grandma's house. Bumps and bruises are all healed. Has started asking questions about owies. Daddy owie? Daddy hurt? Mama hurt? Mama okay? Is it as a result from the accident? Hard to say. We haven't had any trouble getting him to ride in his carseat at all although he had kind of an odd freak out at the car wash yesterday. Again hard to say if it would have happened anyways.

The New Van

So, here is the newest [as of yet unnamed] member of the family:

Parked in the driveway at my parent's house
A picture of the odometer: 82 miles! Kind of exciting for us because this is our first new car!


PS Car purchasing details are now all worked out. However, the work is not done because we still have to pay state sales tax and work out the license plate stuff because the dealership was being...well, poopy.

Crafting Revealed

This holiday season, I was feeling especially crafty! Almost every night in December I got my craft on in my new craft area in our basement (pictures of craft area coming soon). Here are just a few of the things that I made for family members (with some help from John in one case).

This is kind of an odd picture, but the gift is actually behind grandma on the fireplace. John and I made my parents a fireplace guard similar to the one at our house. It fits tightly over the fireplace to prevent the bumping of noggins on the stone. I had some leftover material and ended up making 3 matching throw pillows for the couch (not pictured at all for some reason). A little bit amazing is that this gift was so large it was hanging over the top of the backseat on the passenger side during our trip to MN. Although it was right next to me, it didn't touch me at ALL during the rolling action we experience in the car. Which is good because underneath the soft batting is very hard 2x4' s and plywood. A little bit sad is that we had wrapped this in big lawn garbage bags because of the size. During the confusion after the accident, this gift was temporarily misplaced (and I thought thrown away). With a little work, we were able to get it back from some very nice people. However, it was damaged on one side at some point.
I made a baby quilt for Cana! Wooohoooo! I was actually sewing the binding on this quilt when the accident happened. Still not sure how I didn't end up with a needle/pin in my eye, but I didn't!

This is a quilt I actually started in 2002 as a gift for my friend Jessica, who was getting married. The pattern of the quilt is called "Greek Cross", which is where she went on her honeymoon. Time got away from me and I didn't ever get the quilt done. But, I didn't feel right giving her the baby quilt and not her wedding quilt. So, I hurried up and finished this quilt also.

The backside (shows the stitching) of the wedding quilt


In addition, I created 3 different photo calendars for our families which I didn't take pictures of....