But before I do that, hats off to Amy/Amanda (I crack myself up with her double name) and Debbie who are the ONLY ones to finish the meme so far.  The rest of you are slackers.  And, Shawn, consider yourself tagged, I know you'll do it! 

 

Austin was a BLAST.  Nate and I are friends again, and saving my teeny tiny tantrum tonight when one little blue-eyed, blonde-haired cutie whose name starts with a J was pushing me over the edge, I'm a saner mommy this week so far. 

 

Finally, drum roll please.....................................Despite a handful of errors (I wasn't given an opportunity to proof it) and not using the AMAZING Sugar pictures they were offered, here is an amazing article about our girl and our journey.  Let me know what you think.  The print article is supossed to be different, but I haven't seen that yet; surely they will hit Frisco this week though and I'll let you know!

I have been here several times, even wrote an entry once that the laptop ate, but just can't bypass the other things on my to do list to committ to an entry.  I really want to, I just have had a gazillion other things which of course means I have that much more to blog about, I can't pick which and then do none!  Genius logic, right?  RIGHT?

 

So, it's a stream of consciousness tonight...if you want to come along for the ride, welcome! 

What is weighing greatly on me but is finally starting to settle is how I am dealing with my new found single parenthood lifestyle.  We haven't set parameters for how this is going to work (Nate being gone Mon - Thurs) and so for the last 6 weeks I've been floundering, the kids are a mess, and Nate and I are having a big disconnect.  We're going to Austin for the weekend and hopefully some fun and time to chat without household chores will net us a plan and some direction. 

 

The March for Babies was this weekend here in Dallas.  I know several CDH families who participate and while I considered doing this years event, I just let it get away from me.  Man, am I an ass.  Look at this

 

                                       

 

The hospital didn't tell us they were doing this, they assumed I'd be there, we should have been.  Someone else told me her picture was up too in another place.  I"m hoping someone will have a shot of that.  Apparently Audrey's was the only huge banner that wasn't for a preemie.  I'm so sad we missed it.  The pictures are courtesy of Sheri Smith, a 3x CDH mom.  I've spoken of her son Jax lots on here.  He'll be three on Nathan's birthday, June 15th.  We'll be at the walk next year, perhaps we'll team up with my favorite micro preemie, Braden to make a big ol team!  Kimberly even called me Friday night to see if we could hook up there, she didn't end up doing it either so we'll all be there together next year.

 

We received a great package today from Aunt Nicole that led to some good talks about Phoebe and Granny and Heaven.  I'm going to miss that dog forever but it's getting a bit easier everyday.  Thanks Nicole for your thoughtfulness, we appreciate it. 

 

Ethan's birthday party was a smashing success, the kids had so much fun.  Mary's super fun party was the day before so we had quite the party weekend here, which of course meant fabulous yummy cakes too!  Check these out (we have the MOST fantabulous cake friend and no, you can't have her number, she ours!)

 

Ethan's           Mary's

 

 

 

Finally, drum roll please.........................

 

I am going to actually complete a meme.  I've been tagged twice, Cristin whose sister knocked this out of the ballpark and made me cry laughing, and Stacy who has actually tagged me before and I never got to it, she is clearly an optimist--you silly girls!  So here goes (Kristyn, are you happy?!)...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm tryin.  Really, I'm effing trying.  This funk though, it's a deep one.  I freakin' cried while watching Air Bud for cripes sake.  Seriously, all out cried in front of the kids over a Disney movie that isn't even sad.  Poor Jason is thinking his mom has lost it.  Last week (granted it was the day after she died) he says, "mommy, why are you crying?"  me, "I just miss Phoebe honey" him after looking at everyone in the room, "mommy, we all miss her but we're not crying about it" 

Thanks kid, I'm working on it.  I am sure though that my tears are a mixture of hormones, exhaustion and grief.  I am a single parent lately more than not (Nate is working in Oklahoma at least 3 days/week) and for whatever reason I do not know, my hormones are whackadoodle lately.  The three prong punch has put me totally off my game. 

 

Cristin tagged me today to give me a little kickstart.  I promise to get to that meme out as soon as I get another homework assignment out--Jessica has a little something up her sleeve and is featuring a blurb about Audrey, only I haven't written it yet, details.  And, oh yeah, Ethan's birthday was today!  (It really isn't an afterthought--it's all that's been going on here and the party isn't even until Sunday!)  Anyway, SEVEN.  He's seven years old.  CRAZINESS is all I can muster.  I can't really remember life before him yet these seven years have been a sort of blur too, it just goes too fast.  Happy Birthday to Aunt Nicole too, Caroline last week, and Mary, Kaitlyn and Landon next week--we're an April family apparently!  Penny's birthday was last week too.  The talk of Granny and Phoebe and Heaven has been bountiful to say the least. 

 

 

 

P.S.  45 books for comments!  Not bad my friends, not bad!  Kristyn got 30 so that's 75 total (yes I am a math genius, thank you)!  Yay us!  Hopefully Audrey's birthday will generate more and we will have us a biggest year yet for Connor's Books, what fun!

 

 

 

Phoebe is gone.  I'm a little overwhelmed by the profound sadness that fills my heart, I just never expected losing a dog to be this hard.  I hope to write a fitting tribute the greatness of her spirit, but right now I just want to cry and get used to our quieted house.  How I will sleep without her snoring is beyond me right now.  Thanks to all of you who wrote/called/texted about our sweet Phoebe girl, I appreciate it more than you know.

 

 

Not really box wine (although I'm not above such things--we found a yummy one last summer).  Nope!  Fancy, delicious, free wine from Nate's dear friend Jim who gave us a Wine of the Month type gift that comes in a fabulous UPS box.  They couldn't of come on a better day!  Thanks Jim, we SO appreciate it!  The white was terrific and I'm sure the red will be gone by Saturday!

 

Audrey's surgeries went well, recovery and after, not so well.  The ENT said he removed gobs of goo from both ears and replaced her tubes with functioning ones (hers hadn't fell out but were horribly displaced).  He said her adnoids were pretty large and being gone should help with her constant infections.  The GI's info, however, shed some light on both her constant congestion and eating issues.  While we knew her reflux was bad, he said she basically refluxes constantly as the muscle flap closing the esophogus never shuts and fluid is free to "slosh up and down all the time".  I'm going to go back and read her first endoscopy report from 06 to see if this was seen then (different doc and he didn't tell us that post op).  Everything else looked good though so her daily Prevacid seems to be doing it's job.  He took a few biopsies to verify that there is no underlying damage and will get back to us with that. 

Recovery?  My girl has the strength of 10 large men!  Pissed doesn' t even touch how she came out of anesthesia, it was UGLY! Both of us together couldn't hold her, it took 2 doses of Fentanyl to calm her enough to finally move to the other part of recovery.  Once there she had another melt down when the nurse told her she couldn't take her IV out yet.  I when I say melt down, I mean Chernolbyl-like, turn-into-the-devil and pull copious amounts of mommy's hair out type of melt down.  I really thought her eyes would be glowing red when I finally got a look at her face!  We got slapped with another hour of IV fluid after that; I can't decide if we were being punished or if they were too scared to deal with the Spawn of the Devil!  We were home by noon though (left home at 5:45) and by 5ish she was pretty much back to normal.  I let her Tylenol go to a little over 4 hours though and won't be doing that again!  She's snug in bed now and I'm headed there too!  I have a great story of a family I met in the waiting room, it touched my heart and I'm praying for their sweet baby's recovery tonight, I'll share next time.

 

Please remember, I'm still counting comments!!  To those who asked, sure you can count more than once if you comment on another topic!