One A Month

Let's get some pictures yes?

Born! (December 11)

1 Month (January 12)

 2 Months (February 12)

 3 Months (March 12)

 4 Months (April 12)

 5 Months (May 12)

6 Months (June 12)

 7 Months (July 12)

 8 Months (August 12)

9 Months (September 12)

10 Months (October 12)

 11 Months (November 12)

 12 Months (December 12)

13 Months (January 13)

14 Months (February 13)

15 Months (March 13)

16 Months (April 13)

17 Months (May 13)

18 Months (June 13)

19 Months (July 13)

20 Months (August 13)

21 Months (September 13)

What a difference nearly two years can make!

- FFR

Pluviophile

I can hardly believe it's the middle of September already. Where does the time go?! I am beginning to look for Christmas and birthday gifts for Daisy and am finding it difficult. What do you get the girl who has so much? It's time to clean out her toy buckets again. She accumulates toys at a faster rate than we can remove them. It's getting out of control. She wants for nothing that's for sure.

This year I want to start a new tradition. Working Man and his family always have appetizers for Christmas Eve dinner, opened all their present that night, and had prime rib for Christmas dinner. After Daisy was born I called for a change in tradition. I love the appetizers for dinner but wanted her to open only one present on Christmas Eve. This year I want to add something else. On Pinterest I had seen a pin of someone who did Christmas Eve baskets and in each were Christmas morning pajamas, a Christmas movie, and a move snack. The pinner stated everyone would change into their Christmas pjs, watch the movie and eat their snack. This just sounds like a great way to spend Christmas Eve.

I so look forward to Christmas because it means that it's cold and cloudy, my favorite. I found a word for this on Facebook, pluviophile. A person who loves rainy dreary days. Bring on the rain!

Gone Too Soon

Yesterday we laid a wonderful man to rest. I hardly knew Harold by comparison but I knew he was a good and dear friend to my husband. That's all I needed to know. When I heard he passed last Saturday I was sad for my husband but, otherwise, at peace. Walking into the church on Friday and seeing him there was my undoing. It only got harder as friends, family, co-workers and his church family spoke of the great man the world lost. Harold, we will see you on the other side. No doubt there. You're probably lighting up heaven with your wonderful humor.

Long Overdue

I can't believe the last time I wrote it was December. Time sure does fly. January improved over December but my husband still spent time in and out of the hospital and in the infusion clinics receiving steroids to help with his symptoms. Two different medications later, we've found one that works. Unfortunately, he still suffers from some symptoms that are not likely to go away.

Since Daisy's one year she has changed so much! She runs and talks in sentences. She makes herself very clear. She loves to be helpful and goes out to feed the animals every day, cleans up her toys, and tries to clean her tray after eating. She's not always the most successful but she tries.

This week, she's learned to use possessive terms. She identifies what is "Mama's", "Dada's", and the like. We also caught her singing. The first song she "sang" with was Shakira's "Loba". She has also become a fan of attempting to dress herself. She's good with shirts but not as good with pants. 

Daisy still swims every week in her swim class and she's getting really good at it. We've added gymnastics to the mix and she's getting very good at that too. It's teaching her to be flexible, coordinated, and, most importantly, to be patient. Like Mama, not one of her strong suits. She's an ace at the trampoline (we got one for her a couple months ago at home$ much better than kids older than her. She's good at the bars and has a strong grip and each week she improves her balance on the beam. Her favorite, though, is the floor where she gets to climb and tumble. She will climb on anything!

As for me, I took Microbiology in spring and got an A by the skin of my teeth. I had the summer off and am just starting physiology now. Cross your fingers, my first quiz is this week. Work is great, very busy but fulfilling. I've had to fill in some Saturdays for lack of a manager but we'll have a new one soon. That's all I can think to update for now. I'll try to write again soon but no guarantees of course.

But can't we wait until midnight?!

I'm about to write everything that happened in December. None of this is made up but it would be tempting to think that it is. There's a saying that "God never gives you more than you can handle" and while I hold to this truth, I also wondered, many times, if I hadn't reached my limit.

It started early in December. I got a cold. At finals time. The worst possible time to be foggy-minded and I was. Through coughing and blowing my nose, I made it through my finals. I even pulled off an A in my hardest class, anatomy. However, I got a B in one of my other classes (Point one for December). While I survived the cold and moved on, we began working on baby number 2. 7 days later, I picked up a stomach bug. Vomiting all night long (along with my father-in-law), I worried about dehydration. So my husband and I packed up and went to the ER. They pumped me full of fluids and gave me magical anti-nausea pills. They also said initial results showed we weren't pregnant (we held out hope because it was very early yet). Later that day, my husband got a positive diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. (Points 2 & 3 for December) We scheduled a time to meet with a nurse on the following Wednesday to show him how to administer his medications.

On Thursday, I received a phone call from my grandfather. He was not well. So I contacted my family closer to him and they took things from there. Either way, he wasn't going to be coming up to visit for Daisy's birthday or Christmas as we had discussed two days earlier. (Point 4) On Friday, I got information that my grandfather's MRI was clean but we weren't sure what was causing the issues he was having. Saturday, he calls us from a few hours away (around halfway through his trip to come see us) to tell us he is coming. We rush to get things together to find that our RV doesn't want to run or charge (Point 5).

We cleaned our camping trailer and prepared it for their stay. Things weren't right from the start with them and Christmas night, December won point 6. The day after Christmas, December won point 7 as we rushed my grandfather to the hospital and point 8 when, surprise, I was definitely not pregnant.

December won point 9 when I went in for a baseline ultrasound for the next cycle and found I had a cyst, I would not be able to do anything this cycle.

We got my grandfather out of the hospital and on his way home on the 30th. That day, December won point 10 when we had to take Matt to the hospital. There he was diagnosed with pneumonia.

I went to work the next day but December scored point 11 later that afternoon. While I was getting a nice New Year's Eve dinner for us in the hospital, my husband became incapable of breathing. They rushed in a code team and got him breathing. I came to the hospital just an hour after that episode (I don't know why I wasn't called...) I have to mention here that at this time, the Lord's Prospects were there keeping Matt company. This is important later.

A CT scan showed two pulmonary emboli, one in each lung (blood clots) and completely unrelated from the pneumonia. He was asked to move to his chair from the gurney because they wanted him sitting up. While he sat there, he had trouble breathing again. They got him on high flow oxygen and put him back in bed. They got a respiratory specialist and put him on a Bipap machine.

They contemplated moving him to ICU and decided it would be for the best so he could be more closely monitored. We got him moved and they asked me to wait in the waiting room while they got his information passed from one team to the next. Points 12 & 13 were given to December when the doctor came in and said they needed to intubate him and give him a drug that *could* kill him, but shouldn't. He asked to see me. I got to see him for just a minute while they prepped then they asked me to leave.

At this time, the Lord's Prospects returned. They had only been gone maybe 45 minutes from their last visit but they had gotten the news that the CT scan wasn't good and dropped their plans to come sit with me. This is where I lost it. All of December had been so rotten, so awful. Everything had gone so horribly wrong. My simple thought was, "What if he dies?" And I burst into tears. I have never been so afraid in all my life. The Lord's Prospects were so good, so reassuring, so comforting. They didn't know what would happen but they kept telling me that Matt was a fighter. Still, I was terrified. It was still December, several hours away from the promise of relief of January. I had a very real fear that December would kill my husband.

It didn't. But it was a long wait. December finally finished and my husband, still in the hospital, is slowly on the mend. December won, it kicked my ass, but I'm still standing. By the strength of God, I am still standing.

I hope to never have such a terrible month again. But if I do, maybe just maybe I'll remember this month and remember that we made it. In one piece.