Hallelujah! Holy crap! Where's the Tylenol?

This week has not been great. Grab some popcorn and get comfortable: I'm about to tell you why I almost killed Eden yesterday.

Monday was the last day of CCF and even though Eden wasn't technically cleared by her doctor, we wrote up a release and sent her to MDO so I could get a little break before the holidays. I spent part of it with a friend taking blankets to the hospital for NICU and lost babies in Colt's honor. He would have been 4 months old on Sunday.

Eden's first post-op check up was Monday at 230. Our local doctor didn't get the surgeon's records so he couldn't tell us anything or answer any questions we had. He couldn't tell what her sutures are made of so we don't know if they need to come out or will dissolve. He recommended we take her to the second post-op in Dallas, instead of doing it here in town. When I called Children's, the chart had no details and the soonest they can get us in is February 11. At 730am. So there's another overnight stay in Dallas. I left a message with the surgical people to ask about the sutures and still haven't heard back, so that's on my to-do list for today.

Tuesday was the boys' Christmas program at school. Asher was to "make" and bring a dish from his country. He chose Israel, so we made challah. It's not super difficult, the braiding is the tricky part. I did a trial run last week and it turned out well, so we made a second batch, starting Monday and finishing after school so that Asher could actually participate in creating his dish. I forgot how long it takes to rise so we were looking at being about 45 minutes late. Then I noticed I have a bread proof setting on my oven and used that. It cut the rising time in half. So we had three beautiful braided challah loaves and were on time.

Rebekah didn't nap at all on Tuesday so she passed out about 3 minutes before we got to the church and then was a crabby pants the rest of the evening. We got home around 730 and she was passed out by 745.

During the day, Eden had an accident in her underwear that resulted in a bath. She filled the tub almost to the brim, the put about four times as much shampoo in her hair as was necessary, meaning she couldn't rinse it out. I was helping her climb out of the tub but she still managed to do a flip and land on her back on the floor. She immediately sat up and said "I'm ok!"

Claw foot tubs definitely have their draw backs.

She landed in the spot where she'd managed to pee on the floor earlier. I'd tossed a towel down to soak it up, so she wasn't in a puddle of pee, but still. I decided "eh, clean enough" and got her up. As I was getting her dressed, I realized she still had a ton of shampoo in her hair, so I had to hold her screaming under the shower to get it out.

Kids are great.

We bought a bidet add-on to help kids with bottom wiping issues but our toilets are so weird we can't attach it. But in the process of discovering this, Austin didn't get everything hooked back together the right way the first time so there was leaking all over the floor. For a couple days. I'm pretty sure that's (mostly) fixed now.

Wednesday the house got cleaned, which always makes me feel better, especially since some of my favorite people are the people who clean my house (not because they clean my house, but that definitely helps). The day had several mild annoyances, including a migraine, but nothing too major.

Then it was Thursday. I woke up and it was already not a great day. Feminine things happened resulting in soaking things in the sink and stripping the bed to the mattress to do laundry. Things were going ok and the grocery delivery arrived and I headed downstairs to get it, scan it in, and put it away. Part way through that process, Eden wandered in to talk to me. After a couple minutes I heard trickling.

My first thought was the toilet in the bathroom and that the leaking had gotten worse. I walked into the hallway and looked and saw water dripping from the door frame. I thought "Oh man, the toilet is spraying out the top!"

Nope.

Eden had decided to wash her hands upstairs, so had turned the tap on full blast and walked away. The sink was stopped up to soak, and it doesn't drain fantastically to begin with, so it just....overflowed. All over the floor. And into the hallway. Halfway to the playroom. And down through the crack in the floor where the tile meets the wood.

There may or may not have been shouting and swearing. Because I still had a dining table full of food to put away and now I had a small swimming pool to clean up.

Other moms probably would not have sworn. I'm not those moms. Jesus...well, he never had an almost four year old flood an upstairs sink to the point that water was dripping into a large puddle in the downstairs bathroom, so we can't REALLY say what he would have done. Probably not sworn, though. Cause, you know. Jesus.

To my credit, I did not knock her back down the stairs or spank her or any of the other ten thousand things that sprang to mind. I sent her to her room and told her to stay there until I told her she could come out. I threw all the towels on the water (that I JUST WASHED THE DAY BEFORE) and headed downstairs to do what I could there.

After all the towels were down, all I could do was wait for the dripping to stop so I went back to my groceries. And texted my friends and husband because they could at the very least commiserate, if not get a chuckle out of the schadenfreude.

School got out at 1 yesterday and after I got the boys I called the insurance company to see what their advice was. He said call a water restoration company and see if they could come look and give me an idea of what to do.

The place I called was crazy busy. The guy couldn't get out for a couple of hours and when he finally did, he kept getting calls. He said they're working on the Abilene Reporter News building and another office building that had a flood, so it's just him right now to do pretty much all other calls.

He checked the floors and door frames and the meter lit up yellow around the top of the downstairs door frame. It was red at the crack upstairs and green or yellow everywhere else, so he decided we don't actually need to have full power machines doing water extraction or drying. He suggested a fan left to blow on the area for a couple of days, shook my hand, and headed out. No charge.

I recommend A-Town Hi-Tech. When they're not busy saving professional buildings.

Luckily, we have two box fans that didn't make the move, so Austin grabbed one after dinner and used his engineering skills to set it up with a book and a foot stool so that it is blowing directly on the crack. Luckily we have no expected company until either late Saturday or early Sunday, so we'll just leave it be. About dinner time I realized with all the insanity I hadn't eaten or drunk anything all day so I had a major migraine and low blood sugar that made me feel awful. So I drank some juice, ate some dinner, and went to rest. I'd taken some migraine meds with caffeine in them, so I couldn't sleep, but it wore off and the migraine returned, so I was asleep around 1130.

I have no idea when the boys went to bed, I told them to keep their activities quiet and not to raid the kitchen. They're still asleep at 945, so they were probably up until like, 2.

I still have a headache, and I'm still not feeling fantastic, but I did get up and go to Bogie's to try out the new breakfast sandwiches. I'm a fan. But then, it's hard to go wrong with a bagel, bacon, eggs, and cheese in my book.

Here's hoping Christmas is a good one. Excuse me while I go back to bed.

Adventures with Eden part 3

I think I've mostly recovered from the trip now, though there's still stuff we're dealing with. I'll just start at the beginning.

Thursday, I got a phone call with pre-op instructions. Basically, your child is a gremlin: no food or liquids (beyond clear liquids) after midnight. We were instructed to give her a bath and wash her hair and dress her in clean pajamas. The woman also mentioned that we were scheduled to stay Monday night, which really threw me for a loop. After calling the doctor's office, we were told we weren't supposed to stay, but we went ahead and made some back up plans just in case.

We'd made arrangements with Mom and Bob to come stay with the boys and Rebekah while we were gone. They got here about 3 on Sunday afternoon and we passed on some information, kissed the kids goodbye, and were on the road by about 345 or so. It was an uneventful drive, with Eden sleeping most of it, and we got to the hotel about 630. Beth and Allen met us there and we had dinner at the hotel, then around 730, I took Eden upstairs for her bath. She splashed around happily, then let me wash her hair and wash her body with Hibicleanse. Afterwards, she sat with me on the bed so I could comb out her hair and braid it. She was extremely pleased with her braids and kept checking herself out in the mirror.

We tried to go to bed early, but after such a long nap in the car, Eden wasn't tired. She finally dropped off sometime around 10 and Austin wasn't too far behind her (he may have been ahead of her. She insisted he sleep in her bed so I don't know). I couldn't sleep, so I was awake until nearly midnight reading, then woke up at 120am when Eden loudly slurped down the milk in her cup we'd forgotten to take away. I know the time because I looked so I could tell the staff at the hospital.

She woke up thirsty again about 345. I couldn't get back to sleep, especially since it wouldn't have been for very long, so I just got up and got dressed. We were checked out of the hotel, parked, checked in at the hospital, and at the admitting area of the hospital by 5am, 30 minutes earlier than necessary. So we sat and watched the early morning news anchors banter about coffee and music.

We got up to the surgery area about 545 and about 6 they took us back to the pre-op area. Eden was distracted by tv while nurses, anesthesiologists, doctors, and surgeons all came in to talk to us and ask questions. They tried to give her some pre-op medications to preemptively help with pain and to help her relax but it didn't taste good so she spit it out all over the bed.

Just after 7, they wheeled her out and we went looking for breakfast. We found that the cafeteria didn't have much, but they did have a guy making omelets. Which we both enjoyed.

We ate our breakfast in the family room area of the surgical waiting area and kept tabs on Eden by the monitors on the walls. We had a little buzzer like a restaurant gives you, but we kept getting ones that didn't work so they'd have to call me on my phone. It seemed to take forever to update from Pre-Op to OR, but then only read OR for about 5 minutes before we got a call she was out. We waited a couple more minutes then went to a small consultation room where the surgeon came in and told us everything went great and she was already waking up.

By 845, we were waiting for her in the PACU. It took a little while for her to show up, so the nurse gave us the post-op instructions. She also warned us that Eden would be grumpy (and boy was she right...lol) and some sore but that she'd be back to normal in about 24 hours.

I could hear Eden's angry screaming from wherever she was for several minutes before she actually showed up. Her eyelid was swollen and wouldn't close at all, so she was literally sleeping with one eye open. She was in and out of sleep for a while and when she was first brought in, she cried that she wanted Mommy and calmed down significantly when I put my hands on her and told her I was there. She had her good eye closed so I don't think she saw me, but she heard me. They kept trying to get her to drink apple juice but that made her mad, so they got her some milk, but Austin had taken all our stuff to the car while we waited so we didn't have HER cup, which resulted in more crying. So he went all the way back to get it. She fell asleep after drinking a couple ounces.

She was really drowsy and groggy but about 1015, they gave us the go ahead to go home, if we felt comfortable with it. We did.

So, Austin carried this nearly 40 pound little girl who was basically limp all the way back to the car and got her buckled in and we headed home.

She slept most of the way home, wearing her sunglasses to protect her eyes since the one still doesn't close great. She cried a lot yesterday because she didn't know what she wanted but we weren't offering it to her. She ate a plate and a half of mac and cheese before curling up in our bed and alternately napping and watching tv the rest of the afternoon. She ate some Chik-fil-A (yeah, no way was I cooking yesterday) for dinner and after that, seemed back to her normal self, demanding that Austin read her stories and play with her.

We have to put ointment on her eyelid 4 times a day (and she hates it) and she can take Tylenol and Motrin as needed for pain. She doesn't like those either and usually spits them out, so we quit on that. She doesn't seem to be in much pain this morning, though she is more subdued than usual. She's a little clingy but not too bad. Rebekah, though, is as much in my business as she can be. You would think I'd left her for several days, not 22 hours.

Eden has a follow up on Monday, the 17th, and again in January for wound care. Luckily, we can see the local ophthalmologist for those and save me driving to Dallas and back two more times.

A fun fact that blindsided us at the hospital yesterday was the casual mention that she'll have to have this redone ANNUALLY for a while. And then periodically after that. It makes sense, they put in a small cable in a triangle pattern to help her eyelid lift and lower and it's not going to grow with her, but we just hadn't thought about that and no one had actually told us. So we get to go through all this mess every year for a while. I'm super excited about the next time. (meaning...not at all excited) At least I'll know what to expect and that'll make it easier to prepare for, but she'll also know what's coming. We had talked about getting her eye fixed but were careful not to say "cut" and accidentally said it yesterday morning at the hospital and she got a little freaked out.

She still needs to wear an eye patch on her good eye to help the bad one strengthen, but that won't be a life long thing. I'm going to give her a few days to recover then we'll work on patching a couple hours a day. It seems a little silly since her last exam indicated they were almost the same, but whatever. Doctor's orders.

I am worn out from all this. I spent last week running around getting Christmas as done as I could so that this week can be quiet and low key and all about Eden. I'm doing some trial baking today for Asher's contribution to his school's international potluck and bottling up the homemade vanilla I periodically give as gifts, along with a few other regular chores. I need to go put the ointment on her but it's so quiet and relaxed I hate to ruin that.

Ready to go to the hospital

In the elevator. Sometimes she looks so grown up to me. 

Walking in carrying her Wonder Woman shield blanket

Showing me her hospital bracelet, which she later removed. 

Curled up in admitting waiting to go upstairs

Our first buzzer that didn't work

Getting her stats checked.

Watching tv while we waited for more medical people

She got bored so was climbing all over her crib

Grinning at me between the bars

She insisted this was how she take the picture

Being wheeled out

Sign in the bathroom in the cafeteria. I have some questions. I feel like there's a story here.

She was 120, this shows still pre-op

In OR

In PACU

No 13th bed. We were bed 22

After surgery. She's asleep and her mouth is red from some medicine they gave her that she spit out.

Austin carrying her to the car

Trying to sleep in the car but the sun was bright

Sunglasses helped her sleep better. The hospital gave her that little teddy bear. We kept telling her not to touch her eye so at one point she pressed his foot against her eye. I chided her again and she said "I didn't touch my eye, my bear touched my eye." I couldn't argue too much. 

She spent from about 1pm until around 8ish on our bed with us. Then got up, ate some dinner, and got back to bossing everyone around.