Sick house

My sweet pea was sent home from school on Monday afternoon after throwing up four times. Lovely! A little boy in her class had done the same on Thursday so I watched her all weekend but she was fine. By Monday I thought we had escaped the latest bout with the stomach bug. No suck luck. I will say that although I was horrified for her, she was not embarrassed at all and she has not gotten sick again since she has been home which means no yucky clean up for me! My apologies to the school nurse who had to handle the mess! This illness and absence from school has really thrown a wrench in my plans and I feel like I have lost an entire week. I have had to cancel coffee dates, a lunch date, blood work and numerous house projects I thought I would complete this week. To be fair, she is a wonderful patient - very low maintenance. She does not want to eat anything other than noodle soup and then only takes a few bites of it. She mostly stays in my bed and draws or plays in her playroom quietly or watches movies. Tomorrow she will be going back to school and she thinks she will be going to soccer practice tonight. I'm not so sure about that but I am considering it because it is the first practice of the season. We'll see. In other news, I woke up this morning with a humongous cold sore on my bottom lip. I started getting them a few years ago after we moved to Florida. They usually appear when I am really stressed out about a few times a year and they are HORRIBLE! They are hideous and embarrassing and they hurt. I found if I use Abreva they go away much quicker but the package says not to use without consulting a doctor. Normally I wouldn't bother the doctor I would just not use it but today I found it necessary to call and Yippee - I can use it. Of course the two tubes I have both expired in late 2009 and I don't want to drag sickky to the store to get more so I used it. We will be making a pit stop on the way to soccer practice though for sure!

Still here

So much time has passed since I've blogged. I've had lots to say but also so much to do and I haven't taken time to write. I have been reading all of my favs faithfully. It is my sanity break. I can't really pinpoint what I've been up to but I feel like I haven't slowed down in weeks and there is no end in sight. I think I may be in a nesting mode. I don't really remember that with my first daughter but if I had the instinct it was much closer to my due date. This time around I am tearing apart all of my closets and reorganizing, trying to organize the garage, cabinets, you name it. This morning I came home from dropping Madison off at school and opened the freezer to take out something for dinner and decided that I could just absolutely not take one more minute of the mess it there and just started pulling everything out until the whole thing was empty. I must say that some of these projects, especially the little ones like the freezer this morning, are giving me a great sense of accomplishment and a feeling of peace for some reason. Some of the other big projects are bringing me a lot of anxiety especially as we get down to the wire with this baby. There is so much I want to do. With Madison I pained murals on her walls - scenes from Beatrix Potter's Tales of the Flopsy Bunnies. They came out amazing I must say. I was just shocked as I didn't know I had it in me. This time around I don't think there will be any murals although I am toying with an idea for a tree with butterflies that I say in a pregnancy magazine the other day at the doctor's office. I am leaning towards painting a couple of canvases because the walls in our house are textured (YUCK! - Hate them) and I think it could be problematic for me. I am leaning towards a Teddy bear tea party theme and have some ideas in mind. Thankfully the bedding I had made for Madison's nursery is in excellent condition and so I will be able to use that again. It's pink and green and I think just lovely. I was not pleased with anything I saw when I was pregnant the first time and then we went to Charleston one weekend and I found some beautiful Laura Ashley fabric that I fell in love with. Thinking that my sewing skills were much better than they were I ordered the fabric, bought a pattern and planned to make the bedding myself. Reality set in and I came to my senses so I asked my mother to make it for me as she used to sew when we were kids. She said yes and then realized she was in over her head and hired someone to do it for her. In the end it was quite an expensive set of bedding but so very beautiful for a preppy little baby and I am happy to be able to use it again. The crib is white and will arrive today or tomorrow. I am going to have my husband paint the walls green I think. Madison's room is very pink and they are down the hall from one another with the bathroom between them so I think it will look nice from the hall too. So now I just need to find an armoire and a dresser and a rocker and I will be set. Until then, I am fretting about it. I cannot find what I want. With Madison we wanted antique white and distressed - took two years to find - now it is everywhere and of course we want pure white this time to match the crib we bought. I do not want kids furniture because the last time we used it for two years and then wanted to replace it with something she can use throughout college and then keep if she'd like. I'd like to just eliminate the baby stuff this time around but I am not finding what I want and I am running out of time. I have also been planning a Big Sister Party for Madison and her friends. We are going to invite all of her girlfriends who are big sisters (most of them) and celebrate being a big sister - no presents just a celebration. We have some games planned - diapering races, the baby food game and a game that Madison made up where the girls will go around the circle and tell the best and worst thing about being a big sister. At the end the girls will vote and the one with the most votes wins a price. We're going to have a chocolate fountain (her request after having one at the Father Daughter Dance) and some cupcakes and other goodies. For favors we will have a candy table set up with baby bottles to fill with the candy. Should be lots of fun. Our color theme is pink & green and I am looking for cute invitations and paper goods now and finalizing our date. Everyone has a different spring break so it's hard to work around that. My baby shower is in the works. One of my dear friends (and co room mom last year) is hosting it for me at the Tampa Club so that should be lots of fun. We're not going to play games or anything like that just have a nice lunch and get together. So I am looking forward to that but it is not until May 1st. We are also planning Madison's 7th birthday party and we are going to do that in May too. Her birthday is the same week as my c-section so I am glad I convinced her to move her party up a few weeks. I also convinced her to have it out again this year so that will be so much less work for me. It will probably be the least fabulous party she has ever had as I have set the bar pretty high in past years but it is the best I can do this year and the Big Sister party will be pretty fabulous so I think she'll live. Other than that just trying to keep up with day to day craziness. Madison's school auction was a few weeks ago - lots of fun but an expensive night! We did get some great things though - the best being grand stand seats at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Grandparents Day at her school was last weekend so we had the grandparents here visiting for several days which was nice. Father Daughter dance was in Feb and very cute. I'll have to upload pictures. I think my next post will just be all the pictures I have been meaning to upload. Next week they are doing the Oscars at her school and the parents are also encouraged to dress up - that should be interesting. Had lunch a couple of weeks ago with some other moms from her class and they all had presents for the baby,etc. It was a surprise sprinkle which I thought was so thoughtful. Mostly fun stuff going on although we have been having some concerns about Madison lately and have been meeting with her teacher and school counselor. We have an appt next week with a psychotherapist. I had noticed a difference in her and wanted to see if the school was seeing the same. It's a long story and definitely something to write about another day but it has been hard and I just wish I could make it better for her. Hoping it turns out to be nothing serious. So, that is a quick recap of the last couple months of my life in case you were wondering. I'll try to be more regular with my posting from now on!

It's a girl!

Our family will continue to be all sugar and spice and everything nice as I will be having a girl in June. I totally thought it was a boy. I loved the boy name I picked - Griffin James. I had all kinds of ideas for the baby's boy room. Do I have a girl name - nope! No nursery ideas either. Truth be told I kept saying that I didn't really care one way or another (and I really thought that was true) but I was a little disappointed today when we found out it was a girl. I know that is crazy. I really only care that the baby is healthy and I know that. I think I am more disappointed that I was so wrong. I really thought that the baby was a boy so I guess I can't believe how wrong I was. With my daughter I thought from the beginning that she was a girl and so I thought I would be right with this one too. Guess I better get on board with the reality and that is that I am having a baby girl. A very healthy looking baby girl so far so I am thrilled about that. Someone made a very insensitive comment to me a couple of days ago. I am usually pretty thick skinned but this really bothered me. My family came home from dinner and two of my neighbors were standing in my driveway having a conversation. The one was my neighbor from across the street who knows me and the other is a newer neighbor from down the street that I have never met. So the newer neighbor has a little three month old in a stroller and of course I commented on the baby, etc. Mom was a bit over protective so I asked if this was her first and she said yes. So my husband comes along (he had been getting stuff from the car into the house) and says well I guess we better get used to the fact that soon we'll have a little one too. I made a comment like 'There's no turning back now" Okay so this woman doesn't know me and she responds with something to the effect of "Well, it's not so easy for everyone so you should be grateful" What I wanted to say to this condescending cow was, "Okay beotch who doesn't know anything about me - how about you take your IVF condescending self right on out of my driveway and stroll yourself back down to your house. I have had three miscarriages, an ectopic twin pregnancy and cancer in the last 3 1/2 years. Not to mention a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction and the fact that I am having this baby is a huge miracle to me and my husband and everyone who knows us including my umpteen doctors. I just choose not to wear my plights on my sleeve and walk around trying to make everyone feel sorry for me and know all my business." What I said instead with a smile on my face was, "Oh I know, we are". My neighbor from across the street looked at me and I know she wanted to say something to this woman but she too has manners and refrained. Yuck!! I have several friends who have done IVF and are just very thankful that they have been able to have children through this method and then I have several others who think that the fact that they have had to go through IVF is just the worst fate in the world and they continue to boo hoo about it even after they have been blessed with beautiful and healthy babies. There was a time not that long ago that I would have loved to have done IVF but because of my cancer history I could not. It would have been just too risky for me so I thought my option was going to be adoption but that was filled with road blocks too because of the cancer history. Very hard to adopt until you are at least 5 years cancer free regardless of what type of treatment you did or what type of tumor you had. For a very long time I felt very hopeless and I never thought we would be in a position to have another child naturally. So, for future reference - please do not make assumptions about a person's experiences or their feelings on something when you know nothing about that person. Now that that's off my chest I feel much better - haha! I will go now and get down to the serious business of choosing a girl's name and coming up with fabulous nursery ideas (oh and avoiding my opinionated neighbor)!

I am losing my mind.

I really think I may be losing my mind. You need proof? Today I served lunch at my daughter's school and got to visit with her. I then went to Joanne's fabric to pick up the supplies my daughter needed to do her school project tonight and the stuff I needed for my Daisy leader meeting also tonight. I paid seperately but had the clerk put everything in the same bag. She put the bag in the cart for me and I returned the cart to the cart return spot. I then went to Bed Bath & Beyond for something I needed there and then ran to the uniform store to buy my daughter another sweater. After that I went to the Fresh Market and ran into an old friend and then I went to sit in the car line and enjoy my book while I waited to pick up my daughter. I was having a lovely afternoon. As I am driving home I'm telling my daughter about all the cool stuff I got for her to do her project and tell her to look in the bag. She tells me there is no bag in the back seat so at the next red light I look through the bags in the front but the bag is not there either. I tell her to look in the trunk. Of course, no bag. At this point I start to get a little worried and think about turning around to treck across town back to Joanne's but decide that surely I would not have done something as stupid as leave the one and only bag I had from the store in the cart so I decide to drive home and check the car myself. Clearly it is in the back of the car somewhere and she is just not looking well enough. Well, you guessed it. I get home, tear the car apart and there is no bag. At which point my husband pulls in and my daughter tells him what I am doing and he makes a smart comment and now I am pissed. I am mad at him, I am mad at me, I am mad at Joanne's for being all the way on the other side of the world. Mostly I am mad that my lovely afternoon has now turned yucky and I have to run all the way back to the store to get my bag. If I had to forget a bag why couldn't it have been one from Target which is only 5 minutes away??!!

The house

We have been trying to buy a house in Atlanta and found out over the break that it did not go through. The house was a short sale and I loved just about everything about it other than the process to buy it. This was our first experience with short sales and it was not pleasant. We made our offer on this house the first week of October and did not really know that we weren't going to get the house until the first week of January. The bank finally approved our offer the week before Christmas but the stipulation was that we had to close by Dec. 29th. Hello... that is impossible. We didn't even have approval yet from the sellers second mortgage company that they would accept the payout being offered. You can't close on a house that has liens attached to it. Seems their bank did not care too much about the lending regulations and the fact that it takes longer than that to process a mortgage. We were ahead of the game really because our lender had already began processing our loan three weeks prior so we were just about done with the process. In the end we needed about 4 more days to close and the bank said no. Supposedly! We still do not have a formal letter stating this from the bank. We were told that the house is going to foreclosure and we thought maybe we would still be able to buy the house by going that route. I am beginning to believe that is just what the realtor is telling us. We are trying to get back our earnest money and found out yesterday that they don't feel they need to return it. The whole thing is crazy. It seems they had a backup offer that they are now negotiating. According to our contract this was not allowed and to date we have never relinquished our position as primary buyer. So we are writing letters, our lender is writing letters, our realtor is negotiating on our behalf but it looks like we may have to contact our attorney. Sometimes things just can't be simple I guess.

So with no move on the horizon, I have resigned myself to the fact that we will be here when the baby comes in June and I need to get this house in order. So, I have been cleaning out closets and drawers and doing a major purge. It seems like a never ending process but little by little it is getting done. We actually have a big house but we have no storage. We're in Florida so there is no basement. Our attic is a joke. I have little attic space in the garage that I use to store holiday decorations. For over 3000 sq feet we have a teeny linen closet upstairs and a half of a coat closet because the bottom half holds an air return. It's insane. There is only one walk in closet in the house in the master bedroom but it is by no means a big walk in. At any rate, I am moving my daughter's playroom to the second floor and combining that with our bonus room. My spare room/husband's office is moving downstairs and the baby's room will be the old spare room. I think it will work. None of the bedrooms are big other than the master which is enormous so the kids rooms are a little tight. I am thinking of buying smaller furniture for this child. My daughter has beautiful bedroom furniture but it is huge. Looked great in the old house - makes this room appear even smaller than it is. On a positive note, the pregnancy is going very well. I got my integrated screen results back yesterday and my probability of having a baby with a chromosome disorder dropped from 1 in 67 to 1 in 10,000 so that was a relief. I have an ultrasound on Monday and the results of that combined with the results I've gotten so far should help me decide whether or not to do the amnio. I'm leaning towards not doing it. I'm just thrilled that we've gotten this far and I'm starting to think that this time might actually result in a baby for us.

Mother in Law

Our relationship with my mother in law has been rocky for my whole marriage. My husband didn't really have much of a relationship with her before we got married and they would go long periods of time where she wasn't speaking to him. The funny thing is that there are never any fights. That is hard for me to grasp. In my family, we have arguments - sometimes we have full on fights - not physical of course but there are times when we are just fighting with each other and not getting along. We always seem to hash it out and work it out and I always know they love me and me them. That is not the case in my husband's family. There is a lot of passive aggressive stuff that goes on. My mother in law wore a pant suit and loafers to my wedding. The woman has very nice clothes. Both of her daughters have been married - one twice - and appropriate wedding attire was worn to all of those weddings. It was her way of saying she wasn't happy about the marriage, me, whatever and it was not lost on me or anyone else. I'm not sure why she doesn't like me and over the years I have come to not really care. Most of the time she is superficially nice to me and I am always nice to her. She ridicules most of what I do - my parenting, the birthday parties I throw for my daughter, the fact that we send her to private school (all of her children went to private school and she teaches at a private school), that I allow her to take dance lessons (her daughter took dance for years), etc. I choose to ignore these things and know that many mothers in law criticize their daughters in law. When I had cancer she told the nuns at her school that she needed time off to come take care of me but instead of coming to take care of me she went to their beach house for a week. When she did come weeks later for four days she had me tearing apart my pantry and trying to organize closets because she "thought it would be good for me to do something". Okay - but I'm not supposed to really be lifting anything or raising my arms above my head yet - I just had a bilateral mastectomy. I supposed she didn't think it was a big deal because as my father in law told me at his next visit, "Cancer just sounds really scary. It's really not that big of a deal". Um, thanks for the input?! Sorry, I digress...

She is not nice to my husband and never has been really. She has done unspeakable things to him over the years. The worst of which is keeping the fact that the father who raised him is not his real father from him until she blurt it out one day when she was mad at him. He was 23 and she has never again spoken to him about it. Over the years we have chosen for the most part to ignore her antics. We don't have a particularly close relationship with her but we do go when we are invited and when they want to visit us we make them feel welcome. We basically carry on as though nothing is wrong even though everything about that is very wrong. I've given up on trying to fix it. I've realized that it is not my family to fix and if my husband is content with the relationship he has with them I am not going to waste anymore energy trying to make it into more. She really is not stable and I just keep trying to remind myself of that. Unfortunately for her and all involved really, she chose to take her nastiness out on my 6 year old - not cool and won't be tolerated. We let her back in our lives because we (me really as my husband had no interest in allowing her back in) thought that it only fair to give her another chance when Madison turned one. We invited her to the party even though we had not spoken in a year and she really has been as good of a grandmother as I think she is capable of being. She doesn't have the relationship that my mom has with her but my mom and my mil are two very different people so I would not expect their relationships with her to resemble one another and that is okay. Well, I really don't know what she is upset about this time. She fabricates things in her mind and then punishes us for them for whatever period of time she deems necessary. I know she does this with us and has done it over the years with one of my husband's other sisters. I'm not sure about his youngest sister. I think she is spared some of the craziness. Anyway, long story short we thought she might be upset with us because she had my fil tell us about a month before Christmas that they wouldn't be buying presents for us this year only for our daughter. They haven't bought us gifts in years opting instead to give us a check so we thought that was strange and probably indicated she was mad. Money is not an issue for them in the slightest so we knew that wasn't the reason. I had already done much of my shopping for them so we sent their gifts anyway. Then when we called them on Christmas we spoke to his dad, our nieces, and his sister who asked my daughter if she wanted to talk to Grammy. Of course she said yes and when my mil got on the phone, she basically was nasty to my daughter and then hung up on her. Ummm, really?! We were all sitting there listening to the conversation because my daughter likes to talk with the speaker phone on. I looked at my husband, he at me and my daughter said, "Wow, that was so rude - Grammy just hung up on me. I was just trying to tell her thank you for the gifts she sent". A few days later she told me that Grammy is pretty much the worst grandparent any child could ever have. When I asked her why she feels that way she responded that Grammy never calls to talk to me, she never writes me letters, when I call her she doesn't answer the phone and when I do talk to her she cuts me off and doesn't listen to anything I say and she hung up on me on Christmas. Plus she never comes to visit me. She's been to my house like maybe two times in my life. Wow - I was shocked. All of these things are true of course (although she has visited more than two times) but I didn't realize she realized any of that. We don't discuss his mother in front of our daughter. We try to encourage her to call her, etc. So, that put a damper on Christmas a little. I know it is not my husband's fault but I do end up getting frustrated with him when things occur with his parents. He refuses to talk to them about anything. They just won't speak for a year or so and then it will all be forgotten. That doesn't really fly with me. I think this time may be different because we have always been in agreement that it was one thing to treat him badly and to treat me badly but if it happened with our children that would be the end of our relationship with them. We'll see. I feel badly because I know as much as he pretends not to care about them, he does. I just wish they were normal or even somewhat sane.

I'm still here

I haven't left the blogging world. Not sure anyone would notice if I did but that's okay too. I wouldn't follow me either because I don't write often enough. The holidays were fun and crazy. We had a ton going on as I know everyone else did as well. My family all played nice with one another which was a bonus and a pleasant surprise. We did have a nasty episode over the phone with my mother in law on Christmas Day but with her we have come to expect that. I have another post about that coming up. I need to download those pictures of the bedding and the dinosaur and will do that this week. My daughter loved the bedding and she knew I made it because I let her know that Santa had requested my help. We got Wii from Santa too so that was a surprise for me under the tree and we have all been having a lot of fun with it.