Things I've Learned in the Last Week or So

The Happy List!

1. Birthdays no longer have to be a HUGE social event involving everyone I know and their long lost cousin who is in for the weekend. An afternoon spent building an outdoor toy, laughing at my son chasing bubbles, and eating super yummy food is much more enjoyable. Plus, no hangover. HA!

My mom's brownie sheet cake...absolutely the best!

Chasing bubbles!

How many men does it take to put a toy together?? hehe

2. $100 dollars and a chance to go shopping with just my mom makes me VERY happy! (a new book and shirt just add to the happiness!) Thanks, mom and dad!

And it's a series so I can ask for more!

3. A Coach purse and a pretty container full of the yummiest peanut butter balls ever make my day! Thanks, Mike and Connie!

Never in a million years did I think I'd have an actual one of these!

Be jealous...very jealous. :)

4. The Harry Potter game for the Wii is extremely addictive. I have to have at least 2 hours to commit to it. Thanks, Justin!

5. Jason Mraz tickets are NOTHING like getting a bowling ball with my husband's name on it, even if he's getting a ticket, too. Thanks, Tim!

6. Receiving extremely fresh flowers that not only look beautiful, but smell amazing, is fabulous! Thanks, Karen and Rick!

They smell soooo good!

I love these flowers.

7. Birthday cards in the mailbox always brighten my day! Thanks, Dan and Ginny, Grace and Jim, Ralph, Pat, Elaine and the OSU Alumni Association! hehe

8. Coupons can make great gifts! Thanks, Shelly!

9. Suffering for a day after eating the food at Casa Bonita is worth it. At least it is once every 10 years or so, which is just enough time to forget how bad it was previously. It's especially worth it when I get to watch Tim try to teach Brenden how to play Ski Ball.

He really didn't get the concept of "rolling".

He doesn't look happy here, but he loved this ride!

10. Sitting in an Urgent Care waiting room for 3 hours can pay off when the doctor gives your child medicine that is guaranteed to help in 4-6 hours. It's a bonus to get Arby's on the way home. What tops it all off? Having the sick toddler sleep in until 8:30 am and then ask "please" to go down for naps.

11. Having your son tell you he loves you, without being prompted, in front of other people, brings on the happy tears like nothing else can.

The Not-So-Happy List

1. Being woken up by a toddler with a cough like a seal barking is horrible...almost worse than an ear infection. I know how to help ear infections...I had no clue on how to deal with his seal barking or talking like an old woman who has smoked for 50 years.

2. Psycho mommies can fly off the handle about something as tiny as asking their daughter if she wants to remove a band aid that was falling off anyway. Offering their money back in hopes that they will leave may not always work. For some reason they enjoy torturing dance teachers.

3. Just when you think March has decided to be warm and sunny it changes it's mind and you wake up to sleet and freezing weather. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, MARCH!

4. Trying to convince a very sick toddler that sleeping is really the best thing to do, especially at midnight, is impossible without actually holding him. However, getting to enjoy snuggling with my son, who usually can't fall sleep if I'm even in the same room, was an unexpected bonus.

5. A tongue, when bitten, can bleed so much that you think that surely a tooth must be missing. Trying to convince a toddler to let you look in their mouth so you can confirm whether or not a tooth is missing is impossible.

It looked bad right after...

...but it looked worse the next day.

These are just the few things I could remember. Notice that my Happy list is much longer than my No-So-Happy list. I am very lucky and extremely thankful!

How could I feel unhappy with this crazy monkey making me smile?!?

Daylight Saving Time is NO FUN...

...and I am going to miss the extra hour of sleep tomorrow, especially since Brenden seems to like 6:30 am. URGH I wanted to post a few pictures from this weekend, which has already been crazy busy, because tomorrow we'll have a packed house. My parents, Tim's parents and my brother and his girlfriend are coming over to eat my mom's homemade fried rice, egg rolls (not homemade, but that's OK!), sushi, brownie sheet cake and drink some Asian beer to celebrate my birthday. I'm not sure how happy I am to be one year closer to 30, especially since I don't even feel like I'm 27. OK...I'm done whining. Onto the pictures!

Our Silly Child

Crawled into the hamper, flipped it over, couldn't get out. Laughed hysterically.

Snuggled with Barney Bunny on the way home from Oklahoma City.

Just HAD to find out what the dogs found so refreshing.

Has never met a stranger. I think he has about 30 sets of grandparents now.

Acted like he owned Amber and Tucker's apartment. (I only took one picture. I know Amber doesn't care, but I didn't know how comfy Tucker would be with my obsessive photography.) :)

Followed Delayna's boys everywhere, and had to do everything they were doing.


He cornered them in the closet. Thankfully they thought it was funny.


Sniffing the flower before handing it to mommy.


Our beautiful backyard is in bloom!

And last, but not least, God sent me daffodils for my birthday. Lovely!

And finally..."Grandma"!

We've been trying to get Brenden to say "grandma" since he started babbling. All three grandmas have repeated it to him endlessly in the hopes that he might murmur something that sounded even remotely close to it. And now, success!!! I think it's actually pretty clear. So there you go, grandmas! I hope you feel special now. You came just after "Romeo", "Riley", and "I don't know." hehe!

Cora's Playground

I'm stealing this from my friend Kristi's blog. I've been following this family's story as well and it has really made me appreciate the beautiful little boy that I have been blessed with.

From Kristi-

A few weeks ago I posted about a family who tragically lost their little girl to cancer. The family's dream is to build a playground in memory of their sweet daughter Cora. Recently over 50 Etsy shops banded together and are donating 100% of their profits to help build Cora's Playground. You can read more about this incredible movement here. Clicking the link above will take you to the Etsy shop.

Long Lines and Good Deals (A Weekend of Ups and Downs)

This weekend flip flopped back and forth between fun and exasperating so many times that it made my head spin. It was super busy and full of family activities, which is exactly what weekends should be.

Saturday started with another cleaning of the garage. I'm not sure how it happens, but every few months we realize that more things have migrated out there and now we can't find anything. Part of the problem is the fact that we are still trying to figure out how to maximize the 900 square feet we live in. My best idea so far: turning the dining room we only used ONCE since October into a playroom. It's fabulous to have our living room back! Since we had done a pretty thorough job of getting rid of all the unnecessary things we were storing in November, we really just had to put things in their place, which only took about 45 minutes. Yay for a clean garage! We also set up our computer in the front room and attached it to the TV. I never realized just how tiny the monitor was until I was reading my email on our 40 inch flatscreen. While getting everything cleaned up on our external harddrive, we encountered a bit of a problem. We're still not sure how, but we somehow lost every video I had taken of Brenden since he was born. I was crushed! Thankfully I have some of them saved online and we found a program to use to backup all of our information. A good lesson, but a hard one to learn.

That evening we were headed to Buffalo Wild Wings to celebrate my brother's birthday. My mom decided to come down early so she could check out glasses at Eyemart and she decided to tote Brenden along with her. They both had a great time and my mom found some pretty stylish glasses. After a nice long nap for Brenden we headed out. Even though our little boy was in a completely foul mood that night and refused to sit still or eat anything but ice cream, we had a great time. Brenden played with Meredith's nephew Cooper and ran around like a madman, flirting with girls and trying to wash dishes in the back. Hopefully being a dishwasher will only be something he pursues as a part time job in high school, not his lifelong ambition.

On Sunday Mike and Connie invited us to go to a consignment sale with them at the Expo Center, which is right down the street from our house, and my mom and Justin decided to come as well. I had heard about this consignment sale from a few people and I was really excited to go. Apparently I was the only person who knew exactly what the consignment sale was for because Mike and Connie were shocked to not see any fishing equipment whatsoever. (FYI: it was all baby things...hehe) We still found some amazing deals and walked away with a ton of summer clothes for Brenden and some toys. Our best find was a My First Leap Pad, with 5 books and a backpack, for only $20. The one thing we didn't find was a new stroller. Why would we need a new stroller? Well, remember my mom went to Eyemart the day before? Somehow after putting Brenden in the car she managed to drive off without it. I told her it was fine and that I was glad she didn't leave the baby, but she was still upset. I was pretty confident that the stroller was still at the store, and my mom was even more confident that someone had taken it and we would never find it.

One of his new toys...it neighs and makes clip-clop noises. He loves it!

His Leap Pad...already a pro.

He REALLY loves doing dishes. He pushed his car over so he could reach the sink!

Checking out at the sale took longer than shopping. The line wound from one side of the Expo Center, all the way back to the other side. The people pushing laundry baskets, empty strollers, and trash bags full of things were not at all happy. Truthfully I was impressed with the efficiency of the checkers. Once we made it to the front, around 40 minutes later, we were checked out in no time. With that amount of people buying that insane amount of things, 40 minutes was a miracle!

We headed back to the house to put away all the toys and wash all the clothes. My mom needed to get back so she could get dinner ready for my dad and on her way out the door we heard a loud BOOM! The glass in our front door fell out, all in one piece, and somehow managed to miss everyone's toes. I'm just glad that Brenden wasn't the one who opened the door. I'm sure it would have been a disaster. Tim toted the big piece of glass outside and was about to lean it against the garage when suddenly it shattered into a million pieces. When we rushed outside to help him, thinking he was probably cut into a million pieces as well, we found him laughing. The glass must have been tempered because the little pieces it broke into weren't jagged and Tim was just fine, although shocked. The funniest part was that we could still see the outline of Tim's foot in between the pieced of broken glass on the ground.

After a quick dinner that night at Taco Cabana, we decided to brave our Neighborhood Market Walmart. This is when we encountered the 2nd set of long lines of the day. I'm not sure why but checking out took almost as long as it did at the consignment sale. Tim eventually got into a self checkout line and got us out of there, and it wasn't a moment too soon. Brenden was definitely ready for bedtime.

Monday morning I woke up feeling like I had been hit by a truck. Nauseous, headache, dizzy, weak...it wasn't a great morning. Tim came home and let me stagger back to bed and my mom came that afternoon so that Tim could get back to work. She ended up taking Brenden back to Eyemart to pick up her glasses where, low and behold, they were holding the stroller for her. Even if they hadn't had her name on it, they would have known it was hers because Brenden made a beeline for it and started squealing. She was shocked they still had it, but I reminded her again that I had not been worried.

Cheap clothes and no broken toes...I'd call that a successful weekend.

Congrats to Leslie and Roy! (UPDATED WITH PICS!)

Little Lanie Marie Amaducci.

Holding her momma's finger. So tiny!

Snuggling with her momma.

I was totally surprised this morning to read about my friend Leslie, who was my R.A. in college, and her husband Roy welcoming their little girl last month! This is the note from Facebook, written by their friend, Alexis:

So...its a bit of a surprise to all of us that instead of just finding out what gender the baby was the baby actually just showed up! Alaina Marie Amaducci - Lanie for short - was born on 2-23-09 at 8:19pm. 1.9 lbs, 12" long, breathing on her own. She & mom were doing fine. I don't know if this is correct, but I think Leslie said that Lanie is 2 months premature.

The back story: Leslie went to [insert correct hospital name] a place in OKC to get a better sonogram done to find out the sex of the baby. While there, they determined that both were suffering from Pre-eclampsia (sorry about spelling) & that baby had to be delivered then. Leslie didn't even bring a change of clothes or anything! So, Roy rounded up a few essentials & headed to OKC. When not at the hospital, they are staying at Leslie's Aunt & Uncle's house. [end of the back story that I know right now]

As tiny as Lanie is, she has been doing amazingly well. No Oxygen has been needed. One night she was having basically sleep apnea (too long of pauses between breaths while sleeping). This was because she had a distended bowel & it was putting pressure on the diaphragm & chest.

Things were going ok. Earlier this week, Mom & Dad got to hold Lanie! They were thrilled! She's smaller than most when they are allowed to be held, but since she didn't have tubes of all sort in & out of her, it wasn't such a risk.

Yesterday morning Lanie was moved to Children's Hospital in OKC to run tests on her distended bowels. Here is the quick info that Leslie text to me last night about the results: "good pic line went in today, umbilical line out, got blood transfusion, found tears in bowels, that can be treated medically - yea no surgery!!"

I was totally flabbergasted. So early and no oxygen! I cannot even imagine a baby that small, let alone one that can breathe on her own. Her guardian angel has definitely done her job! Hopefully I can steal some pictures soon. I'm sure she is gorgeous and I know she is so lucky to have such wonderful parents.

Congratulation Leslie and Roy!

**UPDATE!**

They have created a CaringBridge website for Lanie. Click here to visit and to see more pictures! And to hear just how well Lanie is doing!

On Second Thought...

Last week I explained how I had somehow torn a ligament in my left index finger. I had no clue how this had happened, but my doctor assured me that he thought I should be as good as new in a few more weeks. Then today I got a phone call from him, which is weird because usually they have the nurses call, and he informed me that he had a radiologist check out the x-ray. The radiologist suggested that I get an MRI because what he saw was not a torn ligament. It is a bone cyst, called a Unicameral (Simple) bone cyst, and after the MRI to confirm this I'll probably have to get something done to it since it's painful. He did say there is a very slight chance it could be something else, and if it was something else that there was a very slight chance it could be malignant, but for now he's not worried. I think he just had to tell me everything. It freaked me out, but I'm trying not to let it bother me until we know more. So now we sit and wait to get everything sorted out with the insurance. Tricare has surprised me with their quickness when it comes to referrals so I'm sure my appointment will be soon. Until then I'm keeping my toes crossed. Crossing my fingers is kind of painful at the moment. :)