This is my 773rd post here

I often contemplate metaphorically trashing this site but then realize I’m not sure what to do with all the content that “lives” here. Sometimes, I’m not even sure how to access the various sites I need to maintain this site.

The irritation of paying monthly hosting fees builds every month

I’m easily paid off with a PayPal transfer for $2 more than my hosting fees from the ad provider

The ads sometimes make me cringe

The ads and ad network sometimes make me smile

I think of privacy concerns, hiding my family’s faces, stories to share and irritation with my laptop on a daily basis

I hate the word blog

C. helped me deal with some of my hosting, WordPress and own ineptitude and I am eternally grateful and shall remain here for the time being for those that are concerned. I don’t know who is concerned or who even keeps up over here. Sometimes, I’m more interested in who isn’t concerned. I don’t know why I really care what I say except for general stranger danger and paranoia because it’s not like I’m saying anything controversial. Is it some odd shyness?

Whatever.

Irregularly Scheduled Musings:

Summer is almost over or rather, the vacation from my children’s daily trips to school is almost over, because summer isn’t over until September 22nd (Fun note: eldest son’s birthday is one week after mine but our birthdays are in different seasons and under different astrological signs). Back to school is upon on us as next week brings all four kids going back to school/preschool and it is the triplet’s fifth (5!) birthday.

Ethan added the top part after I started the official Back to School countdown and I’ve been changing the number of days as we get closer. We’re all very excited. This is the triplet’s last year of pre-school and the oldest’s last year of elementary school which frankly, freaks me out but I’m glad they all like school.

I hope we have as wonderful a school year as we did during this summer. True, there were a few days earlier this month when I was convinced the kids were conspiring against me and I couldn’t wait for them to go back but we had a lot of good times over the past three months. We went swimming so often that I began to wonder if my hair would turn greenish and spent a few too many days basking in the air conditioning while watching Toy Story 1 & 2. Last weekend, we went to the Trout Lodge which deserves a post of its own due to its excellence (spoiler alert: I went zip lining and survived).

Summer is mostly my favorite season and it is fading fast. Today, I noticed my yellow sunflowers popping up on the side of the road and the green ears of corn I drive past almost every day (say what you want about the suburbs but part of me is in love with seeing those fields and watching them change throughout the seasons) is fading into yellow which means harvest is almost here. One afternoon, I’ll drive by to find the stalks were felled that morning and emptiness has taken their place. That’s okay though because that means Halloween is just around the corner. I will miss summer but I welcome fall and new adventures. Maybe I’ll even tell you about them.

*Speaking of emergency room trips, my sprained ankles have healed rather nicely and only swell/throb at the end of the day. I would rather not ever sprain both ankles at the same time again and don’t recommend it.

It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to brace myself or protectively stick my arms out so I slammed down into the ground ankles first. I wish I could see a video of myself falling so I could pinpoint how I managed to fall the way I did. As I lay there screaming “OWWWW” (do non-English speakers say OW or OUCH when they get hurt or are there linguistic variations of OWIE?), I couldn’t decide what hurt the most and had the dreaded feeling something was not right as I untangled my limbs. I wasn’t bleeding very much, my arms were okay but when I tried to stand, my feet did not want to obey. Great. My feet are my weakest, most painful part of my body and are the right one is extra sensitive since its previous surgeries. Of all the parts to hurt, I really did not want to hurt my feet, or rather, my ankles. The triplets rallied around me in utter confusion and Jack shouted to no one “My mom fell!” as I echoed “OWWW!”. Of all the times for my neighbors to not be milling around, this was the most inconvenient. I wanted to stay there on the sidewalk but I still had to leave to pick the oldest up from camp fifteen minutes later. I had no one else close enough to pick him up so I had to limp off to the van and drive even though my ankles were screaming. I drove to camp with wussy tears in my eyes while telling myself to buck up. A few months ago, Mike and I watched all of the “Band of Brothers” mini-series in a nightmare-inducing week and now I find myself comparing my minor pains to the soldiers suffering in the freezing cold while being bombed in the trenches. As I drove to camp, I kept thinking “At least I don’t have trench foot.” I’m nothing if not over-dramatic but damn, my ankles hurt.

So, I sprained both of my ankles but survey said no broken bones. I’ve spent the last two days with my feet propped on the back of the couch and ordering family members to bring me ice packs. I have crutches but struggle to use them because I can’t put much weight on either foot. Sometimes I use one crutch Tiny Tim fashion then muse to myself how I belong in a Dickens’ novel. I haven’t left the house since Monday but since the temperature has been hovering around 100 degrees, I’m probably not missing much. The kids and I have been having movie marathons and Mike has been taking over my cleaning duties. All in all, it isn’t so bad but I hope my ankles feel soon because I have a date with the pool. Next time I exit the house though, I will keep my eyes forward!

*Literally is an over-used phrase I’ve tried to limit in my vocabulary but my 10 year old son has embraced. He over-uses literally the way some people overuse “like” and it makes me cringe. I’ve been known to snap at people for grammatical mistakes and I’m only a few “literally’s” away from giving him a language smackdown. Like, literally.

A Very Soapy Survey
1.  Dish soap preference: Joy or Dawn? I have to say Dawn although I just checked and I am currently featuring one almost empty bottle of Dawn and one mostly full bottle of Tarjay brand, green apple scented dish soap.

2.  You’re stranded on a desert island.  You can choose one song to listen to whenever you want.  What would it be? PARALYZED BY PRESSURE. I have been pondering this question for days. I have narrowed my choices to: Graceland by Paul Simon, Blackbird by The Beatles, Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan, Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen or some great version of Amazing Grace. Don’t make me decide.

3.  What was your 4th Grade teacher’s name? I do not recall. If I was being thorough, I would go out to a large box that lives in my garage and contains my pre-printed, Scholastic book order, grade school “scrap book” where I wrote down all of my teachers and declared my biggest desire to get a “new boombox”. I used to remember all of my teachers but that minutiae flew out of my head when I had kids. I can still recall  every slight or insult ever hurled at me but cannot remember my 4th grade teacher. Things I do remember about fourth grade: switching schools, catching chicken pox and being accused of cheating on the math portion of a standardized test. There is a good chance a certain reader of mine may remember because he seems to have a much better grade school memory than I do.

I tried to find a picture of it because I know there is one somewhere in my infinite flickr stream but couldn’t so here’s a different picture of my Elvis coloring book.

4.  Do you tan, burn or freckle? Tan within reason. I am currently in my introductory period of slight sunburn because it is the beginning of summer and have been swimming three days in a row.

5.  Name of the person (non-relative) with whom you’ve been friends the longest. I’m not sure how to answer this because I have “friends” on Facebook that I was friends with when I was really young but are they really friends? I am lucky enough to still be close friends with some people I’ve been friends with since high school. I will go with my friend D who I still see on a regular basis and have been friends with since I was terrified during Freshmen year home room even though she mistook my terror for snobbery.

6.  If you could afford it (financially, time-wise, etc.), would you undergo cosmetic surgery? If so, what kind? Yes, I believe I would have a tummy tuck to lessen the damage the triplets did to my belly. The first kid didn’t do much long term damage but the triplets? Well, it isn’t pre-surgery Kate Gosselin bad but I wouldn’t mind a flatter belleh.

7.  What was your most recent purchase over $1000? I guess our flat screen T.V. even though I stayed home while Mike actually purchased it. I wasn’t totally happy about the too expensive television at the time but have grown to appreciate it. It lives in our room and I’ve named it Fred (just now).

8.  Do you play the lottery? No, not really. Sometimes I’ll buy a scratch off if I’m feeling lucky.

9.  List your top three phobias and/or a phobia (or phobias) that you’ve overcome: I’m not very phobic but also not overly fond of high places with floors or steps I can see through. It hasn’t stopped me from climbing lighthouses or other places with scary steps so I don’t know if that counts. In my dreams, I’m afraid I’ll never graduate from college because I forgot to take one necessary class but I did graduate. A real fear that isn’t really a phobia is that Ethan will unlock the doors and wander away because that’s the kind of thing he does. I worry my kids will die or get kidnapped and my family members will die but I don’t obsess too much about it.

10.  Have you ever had your fortune read? No, I don’t think I have. Maybe I should.

11.  Salty or sweet? Both. I like chocolate with chips or Jr. Mints with popcorn.

12.  Do you have to pee right now? Nope.

13.  What is your “guilty pleasure” movie (a movie you’d watch over and over again even though it really kinda sucks)? The Notebook? Steel Magnolias? No, neither of them kinda suck. I guess I don’t watch a movie over and over again that sucks unless you think The Goonies sucks because I watch that whenever it is on.

14.  What one piece of famous artwork would you have in your home? I’m thinking the only thing that would survive our house is some type of metal sculpture or a statue. Maybe I would have the Arch relocated over our house.

15.  What should Barack Obama‘s presidential nickname be? Toots.

16.  Angelina Jolie: thought-provoking humanitarian or crazy-ass bitch? Both but I love her.

17.  Have you ever audibly farted in public, on purpose? I don’t think so but some years are a little hazy.

18.  Did you ever make your Barbie’s (and/or male action figures) pantomime sexual intercourse? It seems like one of those things every kid did but I can’t remember exactly making the action figures hump each other. It seems more likely that I did it to my younger siblings’ dolls to antagonize them. I was never that into Barbie’s but I remember my brother having a lot of He-Man figurines that were probably violated.

19.  Most you’ve ever spent on a pair of shoes? $200 on special shoes for my stupid feet. I have/had flat feet & bunions so my feet like to make my life hell. One foot has been “repaired” so it is no longer flat but the other one has not and I don’t want to go through that again any time soon.

20.  Can you believe it’s not butter? IT ISN’T?

21.  Favorite snack item at the movie theater? Popcorn with Junior Mints (see above re: salty/sweeet) or sno-caps.

22.  What word do you consistently misspell, no matter how many times you look it up? I used to misspell restaurant until I forced myself to remember it as “Rest-au-rant”. Now I can’t remember any other words that I misspell though I assure you there are some.

23.  What smell most reminds you of home?
Dirty laundry? There is a character in a Tom Robbins’ book that he describes as smelling like a mildewed wash cloth (or something to that effect). You know the smell when you leave the laundy in the washer for a day too long and you don’t notice the slightly mildewy scent until the clothes are dry? That smell. I grew up in a house with four kids and I have four kids now. Sometimes, laundry doesn’t quite make the schedule. I could say coffee or dinner cooking but nothing quite makes the nasal connection like laundry that missed its deadline with the dryer.

24.  What was your least favorite required reading novel? I was bored by Moby Dick when I had to read it but maybe I’d be more into it now. It has been a long time since I was required to read anything but I did plow my way through a ton of required reading in school while persuing my English degree. I was a rabid reader and hope to be again some time. Recently, I finished “American Gods”by Neil Gaiman as part of the 1 book 1 twitter “book club” that is going on right now and it was fantastic. This week, I started “The God of Little Things”by Arundhati Roy and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson. I often read more than one book at a time and am beginning to read more once again (I went through this after my eldest son too. It takes a while to get the reading novels mojo back after babies).

25.  If you could make pancakes in any shape, what shape would you choose? Round since mine are usually misshaped.

26.  Who was the first person to get to first base? Mark McGwire.

27.  If Luck be a lady, what be a man? Adament.

28.  What was your favorite art project in grade school (or girl/boy scouts, etc.)? I liked working with clay. I’d love to be able to throw pots but I’ve never tried.

29.  If you had to live with only four senses, which one would you give up? Another hard one. I think taste because living without sight seems really difficult (Though I’d love to see if my other senses compensated. A favorite book of mine, Slackjaw, describes the author’s journey through losing his sight in a funny, sarcastic and smart way). I would really struggle if I could never hear music or my kids again so let’s keep hearing (although, my kids are so damned loud sometimes I wish I could mute them) and not being able to touch/feel anything sounds detrimental to my well being since I’m already clumsy.

30.  If you could have named yourself, what name would you have chosen? Zanzabar Buck Buck McFate.

31.  Where’s the beef? Wendy’s, right?

32.  Are we there yet? No but the journey is what is important.

33. This is Kim adding a 33rd question. What do you think Déjà vu is? Random synaptic misfire? Flash of an earlier life? Sideways reality?

 SO. There ya go. If you would like to fill out this handy dandy survey, link to it in comments or email me at ohdarlin at google mail (In case you’re wondering, my email is from The Beatles song. Yes, I’m a bit of a Beatles fan.)

Jack and Ethan look identical to each other and nearly identical to their Dad when he was a kid (but they have my family’s eyes). Their personalities are different though which is how Mike & I can tell them apart from a distance. Jack’s social skills and desire to make friends with everyone he meets is very different from Ethan’s lone wolf strategy that leads him to study and dissect situations and objects by himself. E also inherited the fiery parts of both of our tempers where Jack dissolves into a whiny pile of crying instead of screaming or pushing. One way to tell the twins apart is to watch for their smiles or inevitable emotional melt downs because it is what differentiates them from each other more than their similar blond hair, blue eyes and long limbs.

Parenting twins is strange.In some ways, it is more strange to have identical kids than it is to have triplets. Lily doesn’t act like a triplet in most ways. She acts like an only child which may come from being the only girl. It also may be because she’s had more adults dedicated to her care because of her medical history so she’s grown used to more attention. She’s independent but snuggly and still sleeps with her baby while sucking her thumb. She wants to go shopping twenty four hours a day (she inherited those genes from my mom) and loves to go new places. She loves her brothers but in many ways has more of a brother/sister relationship with them than a twin bond. The boys are so close, they can seem like one person but Lily is a beaming, girly beacon of herself.

Raising four kids is tough. Their personality intricacies butt up against each other and it seems like someone’s feelings are always disturbed.  My oldest son is remarkably patient at school but seems like a dog pulling at its chain ready to attack the triplets through annoyance. He loves them, protects them and plays with them but he is always ready to get back at them for bugging him and dropping a bomb on his three person family. At ten years old, he likes to tease them and knows just how to push their buttons without crossing the line into getting in trouble. He is almost done with the school year and I’m bursting with pride over how well he’s done this year. That kid loves his school, excels in his work, gets better grades than I did and is firmly entrenched with a group of neighborhood boys that also go to his school. He makes me feel like I’m doing something right in parenting these kids, even when he teases his little brothers and pretends he wasn’t in the room.

The triplets’ last day of preschool was yesterday and next year will be their last year of preschool before kindergarten. The oldest is going into his last year as an elementary student and already looks like a teenager. I’m looking at what will probably be my last year at home with the kids before everyone is in full-day school. It is bittersweet because I will miss being home and so involved in my kids’ daily life but I am wistful for adult interaction and the sense of accomplishment that comes with employment and a steady paycheck. I don’t know where I’m going to work or even what direction I’m heading in so now I will try to concentrate on this summer and this next year. The kids are growing at an exponential rate so I need to pay attention before it is gone. We have a whole summer of sweating, swimming and exploring ahead of us and I can’t wait.

(Um, I have no idea why but I can’t get this post to space correctly so I apologize for the lack of paragraphs if you don’t see the spacing. I think something is broken because I went so far as to manually insert the html and it is disappearing. Grrrr. Oh wait, now it is fixed which means this is an unnecessary statement that I’m leaving in so as not to jinx myself. Also, remind me to tell you the hot water heater story.)

So, last time we discussed my technological de-evolution, my laptop was missing keys and running woefully slow. I found out my hard drive was partially broken (bad sectors, blah x 3) which was causing most of my problems. The hard drive issue was even responsible for my printer pretending to print but not laying ink on paper which I wish I would have known before getting a new one. When I dropped my laptop off at the local computer repair place, the tech tried to convince me to abandon this machine and buy a new, “refurbed” one because he said this HP is notorious for hard drive problems. I took what he said with a grain of salt since he seemed to be working on commission and google didn’t notably agree with him.

In the end, I have a new hard drive, keyboard, an upgraded OS (to Windows 7 which I like much better than Vista) and more RAM. My laptop is now running better than it ever has before and I can print. I forgot how useful it was to have a fully functioning computer. Oh no, I just jinxed it all by saying it was working well. I take it back. It all sucks- now go away, karmic boomerang.

Around the same time my laptop was expensively repaired, my stupid Blackberry stopped working again. The charging port where it plugged in to be charged became loose and pushed into the phone. When I took it to the store, they told me it was physical abuse and I would have to pay another $100 deductible to make an insurance claim. Oh. Hell. No. I just paid $100 for this refurbed Blackberry 45 days ago and had it back in the store three times with other issues.  The technician told me I had to have shoved the charger in too hard to break the port from the sodered board which I did not. I went back to the store another time, sent Mike in once and called customer service and the insurance provider but no one would listen when I said the phone was defective from the start. I may have thrown a fit. To their credit, I have had EIGHT Blackberries in 15 months. They have died in various ways including being dropped in the washing machine, a toddler toilet full of pee and various other non-violent ways. Of the eight, half of their demises were my fault but half just stopped working.

The result of the latest Blackberry outage is that I haven’t had a cell phone in over a week for the first time since 1996. I started working for “the phone company” right after college and was given a mostly free cell phone as a job perk. I’ve had one ever since even though I stopped working for the company in 2001. I switched my cell phone service after I stopped working for there because the coverage wasn’t acceptable in my house. Now it is and I will be switching back to my original provider and ex-employer.

The point of this diatribe is that I’ve been forced to change my ways. I was addicted to my Blackberry and the instant access to data. As Mike says, I am a media addict. I spent more time on the internet through my phone than I did on my computer and was constantly checking for updates. I favorited twitter, facebook, two email accounts and flickr. No matter what I was doing, I was two clicks away from finding out if I had any new information. Often, clicking one link led to another and checking “just one thing” became a cycle of staring at my phone. If I had the kids at the playground, I had my Blackberry. I checked and clicked away at the store, in the bathroom (Blush. But to my credit, if I am actually talking on the phone, the bathroom is the only safe harbor away from the extra loud kids), and even at traffic lights (sorry Oprah).  The phone allowed me to constantly multi-task and pull away from being fully engaged in anything.

I knew it was an issue but chose to ignore the nagging voice in my head that told me to step away from the Blackberry. It wasn’t until the forced separation from my handy dandy device that I realized how much the internet capable phone was affecting my life. The first week when I didn’t have my phone, I swear I was going through withdrawls. I felt sort of lost (and got physically lost at least once because I no longer had GPS or electronic maps at my fingertips). I felt like I had lost an entire network of friends and feedback which made me lonely and crabby. I had grown used to entertaining myself by reading on my phone in bed before I fell asleep which really did not work. Reading the news is not a relaxing way to prep for sleep. I laid in bed by the glow of my phone way too late on more nights than I want to admit. I used it as my alarm clock so I felt justified in sleeping with my phone next to my pillow. I was always concerned that I was going to run out of battery strength so I had chargers in two rooms and in my car. I was a Blackberry fiend. As often happens, my Dad correctly summed up the situation with this analogy.

“You know how you turn the T.V. off when the kids are being too loud because it is too much at once and it turns into sensory overload? Taking away the noise makes things less stressful”, Dad consoled me as I whined about not having my Blackberry. My Dad recently got an iPhone, his first data phone, so he was beginning to understand the situation. These phones are great tools but they increase the noise and can increase stress. When your phone becomes another responsibility on an already full agenda and is negatively impacting your life, it is time to make changes.

He really likes the iPhone but isn’t keeping it but for varied reasons. Honestly, he would keep it if the phone company wasn’t charging him for internet access at home and on his mobile device. He feels like he’s being charged excessively to access their network and that wireless data access should be covered if he pays for DSL/Uverse at home. He says the phone company is charging his six different ways to access data (DSL, Landline Voice, Wireless Voice, Text, Wireless Data, Television because it is all combined in one package) in an ala cart fashion even though they claim to make it cheaper by bundling it together. If you compare it to a radio, they are charging for what they are already broadcasting and consumers are paying to access each channel.

Besides the money factor, I do miss my Blackberry but I appreciate being more actively engaged in my life. I can only access the internet when I’m on my laptop which means no more browsing when I’m outside with the kids. I’ve been looking up more instead of staring into the palm of my hand which I appreciate on beautiful spring days. The lack of distraction has reduced my stress level a bit which makes me calmer. I cannot argue that I’m feeling better without my phone.

I will get another phone through a different company but it will not be equipped with a web browser. I’m going against the trend and reverting back to talking and texting. I’ve been using our landline phone which isn’t even cordless which has led to my children discovering the lost art of bugging the hell out of Mom by twirling in the phone cord while she tries to talk. I’ve taught the triplets how to dial their grandparents’ house without hitting send (which is a lot like them looking for the display button on the back of digital cameras, they didn’t get whey there was no “send” button on the home phone). I fell asleep last night without any problem and I’ve managed to write more. Was the problem the phone? No, the problem was me but the phone was my gateway. Maybe I’m just too obsessive to have the internet at my finger tips. Oh well, the first step is admitting it.

Do other people have these issues with phones and the internet or am I just special?

She recovered quickly and I began wondering if perhaps this surgery wasn’t meant to be. I decided to consult with her original Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) doctor about the situation because we had an appointment for Jack and had brought all three triplets (doctors love that). Long story shorter, he doesn’t think Lily should have the surgery at this time. He told us it often takes over a year for a trach stoma to close on its own and it may cause more problems if we close it before her body is ready because she is still using it to clear the crap out of her system when she is sick. Basically, she’s still using both airways and may struggle if we take one away before her body is ready. Mike and I have discussed this situation ad nauseum and we agree with the decision to wait. We were worried about the obvious scarring on her neck if the stoma was sewn shut and letting it heal will create a more natural looking identation scar. It feels right not to do the surgery at the moment and as if the three cancellations were the universe pointing out the right way with a giant neon sign.

I am disappointed that I can’t enroll Lil in swimming lessons and have to delay letting her lay down in the bathtub to pretend she is The Little Mermaid. To console the disappointment, I may enroll her in dance lessons so she can wear a little tutu and dance in a studio since now she is stuck in “dance, twirl and jump in every situation” mode. She may not get to swim yet but we’ll find a compromise.

Sometimes I forget how far we’ve come since she was a one and a half pound baby on a ventilator in the NICU. She looks big and healthy, especially when she’s dancing down the grocery store aisle, but her lungs are still filled with scars from being born too early. When she gets a cold, we have to push nebulizers and crank up our home oxygen concentrator. We struggle to keep her out of the hospital at least once a month in the winter and use her g-button every day to supplement her feedings. She is still fighting against her prematurity and we all have to be both patient and thankful she is still here to fight. I recently read this post from Billie, mother of twin former micro-preemies who also continue struggle against the effects of severe prematurity. I’ve followed her twins’ stories since I found her during the the months when Lily was still in the NICU and spent too many nights googling “micro preemies”.  In her words, “Our lives have been forever impacted by the long-term effects of prematurity, and this recent sickness serves to once again remind us why we support the March of Dimes.”  I couldn’t agree with her more. One day, we’ll be fabulously wealthy and donate a huge amount of money to the March of Dimes (and The Ronald McDonald House).

In other news, we learned that Jack has to have his tonsils removed in April so we’ll still have some super fun surgery time. He has sleep apnea due to the world’s largest tonsils and they swell when he is sick. The day after the ENT appointment, the preschool nurse called to tell me his tonsils were so big they were making him talk funny. I took him into the pediatrician and we found out he had severe strep throat. All three triplets were treated for strep and then I got sick and also put on antibiotics. It was not a fun week but thankfully, the oldest and Mike did not get sick. I swear the oldest has an immune system made of kryptonite. Mike also stayed home when I was the sickest and took care of all the kids while force feeding me popsicles. He’s a very useful engine*.

This week seems to be calmer- knocking furiously on wood- and we’re looking forward to more Easter Egg Hunting this weekend. We happend to run into a giant, gift-bearing bunny last weekend.

*”Very Useful Engine” comes from Thomas the Tank Engine. If you didn’t know the reference, you’ve never been forced to watch Thomas DVD’s until your ears start bleeding from the syrupy sweet songs belted out by a Pink Floyd-esque choir of British children.

The g-button is still necessary because when she is sick, she won’t eat and she gets supplementary feedings. She is in the third percentile on the weight growth chart and slowly gains weight but quickly loses it (I wish I had this problem). We also use it to give her medicine which is hella useful. There have been times, while wrestling one of the boys in an attempt to give him antibiotics, that I wished all kids had an extra stomach route.

The last time we were in the hospital, I asked about removing the g-tube but her doc pointed out we’re still using it. He said it will become apparent when we don’t need it anymore like it did with the trach. I really like her doctor and walk away from our conversations feeling like I just met with an extra great professor after class. He has been with us through many hospitalizations and I trust him. The g-button stays for now but we would like to close the hole in her neck hence next week’s surgery.

One of Lily’s nurses has become like family. She’s an integral part of our lives and keeping Lil out of the hospital. At night, she gives her feedings, neb treatments and watches the pulse-ox machine. Last night, she brought Lil a picture frame with a music box on the back. I just realized it plays, “I Love You Baby” which is just about the best thing ever (except Mike just pointed out music boxes sound increasingly sad/creepy sounding as they wind down. He’s right).

If Lil’s surgery goes well, she will probably lose most of her nursing hours which will be an adjustment. We’ve had nurses here for four years. The winter olympics actually marked Lily’s four year anniversary of coming home from the NICU. We’ve had nurses here for the same length of time I was in high school -fighting urge to insert graduation metaphor- so her loss is going to take getting used to for all of us.
Regardless of what happens with her nursing hours, we are looking forward to Lily’s neck being hole free. She wants to lay down in the bathtub and take swimming lessons but she can’t do either until her neck has healed. Hopefully we will be on track to be ready for swimming when summer begins. I can’t wait.