...From The Bottom of my HEAAART

We want to wish you a Merry Christmas. We hope you enjoyed yourselves. We certainly did.

Max was disappointed that there wasn't food in any of his gifts. He wasn't interested after he found that out.

Santa brought Collin a very unwelcome gift in the form of a nasty eye infection. By Christmas night it had spread to both eyes and his face was all swollen. He told me it was the worst Christmas. Sorry buddy!

Cute kids on Christmas Eve.

Collin: "mommy, I can't sleep. I had a bad thought."
Me: "I'm sorry, what was your bad thought?"
Collin: "A bulldozer ran me over."
Me: "Wow. That is a bad thought. I wouldn't let that happen. I would save you."
Collin: "What if you weren't there?"
Me: "Daddy would save you."
Collin: "What if daddy wasn't there?"
Me: "Somebody would save you."
Collin: "The construction worker?"
Me: "Yes, the construction worker would save you."
Collin: "What if the construction worker was mean. He would take me away."
Me: "He isn't mean, he is nice."
Collin: "No, he's mean and he will put me in his car and take me away. Is he going to?"
Me: (Sympathy waning) "Collin, he isn't mean."
Collin: "But how will he find you? Does he know where we live? Does he know you are my mommy? Will he make sure to put my seatbelt on? What if he takes me to the wrong house? Will you look for me? Will he make me ride in the scoop? I will fall out."

My head hurts.

Gone But Not Forgotten

In her own special way Sally has made her way back into our lives. You remember Sally, right? Well she burned her parent's house down...with them in it. Ever since then Maura has had an intense fear of fire. It calmed down for awhile but the past few weeks she wakes up (or never goes to sleep) crying that she keeps thinking we will die in a fire. I thought it would make it better to make an "escape plan" and talk about how we would stay safe if we did have a fire. That just made it worse. Any advice on how to handle nightmares? Preferably advice that doesn't involve me sleeping in a twin bed with a 6 year old all night.

Darn you Sally!

So, I have this problem. My baby won't stop being cute and fat. I will never be able to say no to those blue eyes! On a side note, Rand knitted this hat for him...while watching football. I knew I like him! It was kinda hard work getting it to stretch over his huge head.



He is now sitting, crawling and generally just being the cutest baby ever.


I felt like Max was getting all the love and I don't want to forget my other crazy kids.

Seriously...you didn't know?

Wow...nothin' like having a doctor accidentally saw your intestines in half to slow your life down to a screeching halt. I have had a lot of time to catch up on movies and books. Oh, who am I kidding, I watched TV for 2 weeks straight. Some highlights: Watched "The Jerk" and laughed so hard it hurt. Reruns of "Arrested Development" on IFC and everything on the Discovery Channel. But I did have time to watch a bunch of crap. There is actually a show called "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant." Have you seen it? It is real, like real people with real stories. THEY AREN'T MAKING THIS UP and that is what scares me. People who go 9 months not knowing they are pregnant (there are prerequisites for being pregnant people!) and then think they are just constipated when they go into labor. I have some experience in this area, so I feel I am justified in asking these women to please consider getting their tubes tied. Or at least lets not make a show about it, because it makes me sad for the human race. But alas, I did watch every darn episode of it so I suppose I am to blame.

I tend to over-anaylize everything and tell really long, rambling stories. I'm going to resist the urge to make a list today and leave it at this: I AM THANKFUL. The end.

Home Sweet Home.

In case any of you are wondering what the hell happened to me (and even if you aren't) here's the lowdown:

I went in on Wednesday for some MINOR surgery. I have had endometriosis for a long time and it is really painful and it was a final surgery to remove the source of the pain. It was intended to be a same day surgery or at the most one night in the hospital. Well, when I woke up in recovery I knew it was bad. I had six doctors standing over me and one of them saying to the other "has anyone told her husband yet?" Not a good sign. It also felt like my innards were on fire, so that was another sign. Then some machines beeped, I was in and out of it and they took me to ICU. Yipee, my first stay in the hospital other than having babies and I get the ICU. Nice. I sorta got the story of what happened and it goes like this...surgery was done and they were ready to sew me up but saw some internal bleeding. They didn't think much of it and were going to close me anyway but one surgeon said to the other "hey, isn't that a piece of her bowel hanging there, maybe we should check that out." So it seems that they "lacerated" or in other words, sliced two inches through the lower part of my intestines. Sound nice doesn't it? So they had to sedate me a whole bunch more and call in a surgeon to open my abdomen up all the way and fix me. I know it isn't pleasant to talk about, but man oh man bowel surgery hurts. I had five lovely days in the hospital where I wasn't allowed to see my kids. Then they took away all food. And then. Then they took away my pain medication. They gave me about the equivalent of tylenol for abdominal surgey. And I am not one of those people that "doesn't like pain pills." Bring me the pills, injections, whatever you've got and bring it fast or four letter words start flying. There were other complications with my heart and lungs and then finally today I was well enough to come home. With some pain pills. So nobody had to die.

So that is my story, I'm so glad to have made it out of it, I know it shouldn't have happened, but it could have been so much worse. And while I'm in pain (if someone asks me to rate it on a scale of one to ten, I will murder you) home is such a better place to heal. My nurses were nice, but here I get my own bed, get-well notes pushed under the door, stuffed animals tucked under my chin while I'm sleeping, and Lars' potato soup brought to me. I still have a ways to go to get better...but I will get there.

Thanks for all of your calls, emails, texts, flowers, and food and for everyone who watched our little monkeys for so long. It is all very much appreciated. And thanks to Rand for sitting by me night and day. I know I am not pleasant when I am in pain. I don't mind if you slip yourself a few pills and take a break from this craziness. You deserve it.

Heavy.

I can't remember who suggested I read "The Book Thief." Whoever you are, thank you. It was amazing. It was also a very, very heavy book to take in. I bawled my eyes out during a few parts of it, I was stressed out, I didn't sleep very well (nothing new) and when I did sleep I had dreams of Nazi's chasing me. So I'm glad it is over, but I also wish that I had another book that would even come close to being as good. It might be awhile. Please read it. I would tell you what it is about, but I wouldn't do it justice.

"I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.
None of these things came out of my mouth. All I was able to do was turn to Leisel Meminger and tell her the only truth I know."