Over the river and through the woods....

...to Grandmother's house we go.

A tea party with Lilly:

Getting ready for bed:

Favorite bedtime story:

His stubborn face lol:

Snack time:

Watching Papa set up Thomas to ride on. Not a fan, apparently. They got him on for one time around the track and he was done:

Just love his face in this one. And I love that his favorite toys are still books:

Thanks Giving

I have so many things to give thanks for this year. My family and I are (relatively) healthy, I'm in school and able to work towards a career I'm loving more every day, I'm close with my family and have plenty of friends to rely on in good and bad times. My life is no where near perfect, or even where I would like it to be right now, but I'm working on it. I know that life is a journey, not a destination, and I've had many detours so far. It's ok, though, it makes me who I am. 

We had a good Thanksgiving this year, for the most part. We ended up with entirely too much food, but the leftovers are being put to good use. We had a big turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and homemade gravy, french onion and green bean casserole, cheesy potato bake, Hawaiian rolls, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and homemade cranberry sauce. It was a busy day to say the least. I had my mom there to help me juggle everything, so it all went pretty smoothly.

I feel like I can't focus tonight... My parents took Kaleb back with them on Thursday night. My mom was going to meet me tomorrow night to hand him back off, but they decided to bring him back today instead. My dad bought a new truck (well to him--I hardly call 237,000 miles new) on Saturday and they have to get some paperwork done on that tomorrow, so they brought him today.

Poor little munchkin bawled his eyes out when they left. He was brave and waved bye-bye when they were getting ready to leave, but once they walked out the door and left for real he lost it. I felt bad, but I love that he loves his Namma and Papa so much.

I always miss my boy when he's gone, but I know he has a good time, and this visit my parents had my niece Lilly too, and those two are the best little friends it's adorable. It was kind of nice to have a few munchkin free days too. I got up early (1:30 early) to help Martin with the paper routes, then we called and woke his mom up. He and I ran to Old Navy ($5 fleeces!!!) then back to pick his mom up, then to Kohl's. After Kohl's we decided we were in the shopping mood and checked out Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target. While I can't say we contributed much to the economy, it was fun to get out and do something spontaneous for a change :)

Later in the afternoon we took Martin's mom to see a movie. She chose The Blind Side, and if you haven't seen it, I think you should. It was a long day, and I was in bed and snoring (according to Martin, but I think he exaggerates) by 9:30 that night. A full night of sleep felt fantastic! Saturday we decided to make the trek out to IKEA and brought Martin's mom along again since she'd never been. She claims she's sick of us now.


I don't have much else to write for now--I've been fighting a headache all day and I'm afraid it's going into migraine mode. It's really hard to concentrate and focus, which is unfortunate since I still have a ton of homework to do tonight. Martin's been entertaining the munchkin and now it's dinner time, so off I go.

Baby Fever

Working L&D (labor and delivery) and post partum, even just one day, has given me a severe case of baby fever.

That is all.




P.S. I have plans to catch up (writing, that is) later this week.

Never trust sparkly candy

That's about it. That's all I have today. The Twilight Sweetarts? Not so good. New Moon? Much better than the candy, not as good as the book. Moving on...

Had a test today, didn't do so well. Probably would've done much better if I'd studied just a little bit more. Oh well.

Been getting ready for OB clinicals in the morning. I'm not looking forward to it. From what I've heard it's a lot of shadowing and standing around and not much else. And that's about that.

Kaleb? Cute as ever! He's been cracking us up all day and I love that side of him.

Martin? I'd like to kick in the...

Let's just say I'm irritated. Ok, that's putting it mildly, but there really just aren't words right now. I found something today that threw my whole day into chaos in my brain, and I just don't have the energy to deal with it right now. Not trying to be elusive, but I'm just exhausted and don't have the emotional or logical brain power to dedicate to him and his BS right now.

And that's my day. I'm crabby, angry, disappointed and exhausted. And if he gets one more text I swear to God in heaven I'm going to grab his phone and chuck it across the room...

Sorry I don't have more cheerful things to write about right now, but I'll be working on catching up this week, and maybe I can get Kaleb dressed up like a turkey.

Ok, probably not, but the thought brings a smile to my face :)

A surprise ruined?

I think I've mentioned in a previous post that when I was pregnant with Kaleb I didn't want to find out whether we were having a boy or a girl. I really wanted it to be a surprise, because I feel like there are so few truly good surprises left in our world. Martin felt the complete opposite way, however, and really wanted to know what we were expecting. I was scheduled for a scan and it ended up being right around the 16 week mark, so we were told we might be able to see if the baby was a boy or a girl.

Being the reasonable and rational person that I am (even though he so didn't deserve it at the time, but that's a whole other post I'm not sure I'm brave enough to write), I agreed that he could learn the sex of the baby as long as he swore on everything holy that he wouldn't ruin the surprise for me. So while we were in the ultrasound room I explained the situation to the US tech, and she admitted she hadn't really dealt with a situation like that--it's usually one or the other, with both parents in agreement.

The tech wasn't sure how to handle it without violating HIPPA, even though I was perfectly fine with it. As the scan progressed, I started wavering, thinking maybe I did want to know right then instead of waiting, and that would make the situation easier too, since the tech wouldn't have to figure out how to break the law without actually having to do so.

Thankfully, Martin convinced the tech that I didn't really want to know, that it was probably my people pleasing side coming out, and I would be remorseful later if I gave into my current curiosity. He was right. There I said it, Martin was right, but he'll never know because he doesn't know this blog exists ;) Anyway. We finally determined the best way to go about the process would be for the tech to write her educated guess (they can never be 100% sure) on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope, and give it to me to do with as I pleased. She gave me the envelope and Martin grabbed it from me to take with him to work so I wouldn't be tempted to peek.

Martin did amazingly well at keeping the secret from me (which as things turned out shouldn't've been such a big surprise given all the other secrets he was keeping at the time...which is also part of the post I'm not brave enough to write...), and I never had a clue what we were having.

I was a high risk pregnancy because of some past history of DVTs. Pregnancy is a high risk time for any woman to develop a DVT, and my past medical history increased that risk to a dangerous level. So since I was considered high risk I was referred to a perinatologist early in my pregnancy at a high risk clinic, and had pretty frequent appointments. At every appointment the first thing the nurse would do was perform an ultrasound to make sure everything was where it should be. I'm sure you can see where this is going...

So fast forward from that 16 week ultrasound to about seven months into my pregnancy. I was in for one of my normal biweekly appointments, hopped up on the table, let the nurse squeeze the icky gel on my tummy, all the while chatting away with her like I usually did with the nurses there. She started the scan, showed me where my cervix was and how it looked, showed me baby's heartbeat, that he was in the head down position, moved over a bit and said "and there's his little boy parts," and went about her merry way.

I didn't even know what to say. I honestly went through the rest of that appointment in a fog. I didn't know whether to be upset or happy or just plain pissed off. I never mentioned to anyone there what had happened (until a few weeks later) because I didn't want the nurse to feel bad about giving anything away.

I didn't want her to feel bad. See how I am?

When I got out of the office I sent Martin a text telling him what happened. He didn't believe me at first, and thought I was just trying to get out of him what we were having. I then reminded him that I'm the patient, and if I wanted to know all I had to do was ask at any of my appointments. Then he believed me and felt horrible for me because I was really into the idea of our baby being a surprise and for Martin to be the one to tell me in the delivery room.

But I was thrilled we were having a boy, because I've always wanted to be mommy to a little boy, and Kaleb is my dream come true :)

In the weeks following that, we still kept a secret about what we were having from most people. I told my best friend Laura, my mom wanted to know (but my dad didn't which made things really interesting around there for a while--my mom still bought girl clothes to throw my dad off if he looked in bags, we'd refer to the baby alternately as he or she, it got to be kind of a running joke), and Alyssa wanted to know but Anthony didn't, which also made things interesting around our house, and Martin told his mom.

At first I was pretty upset the surprise had been ruined, but now I feel like it just adds to the story and I have one more thing to tell Kaleb when he gets older about his birth story.

Love that boy :)

Procrastination pays off

I've always loved psychology. I think it's so very interesting how the human mind works, and the various factors that play into personality and behavior and all that fun stuff. One thing that has always stuck in my head for one reason or another is the conditioning and training methods. Things like positive reinforcement vs. punishment and those kinds of things.

I've always wondered if part of the reason I procrastinate so much is that I tend to work better under pressure. Or I guess it could be because even when I procrastinate, and put even large projects off (big huge papers, perhaps) I still tend to do well enough that I don't see the point in starting earlier or putting a ton more effort in the next time around.

Take for instance, the actual big huge paper I turned in at the end of last month. Turned out to be about 30 some pages, and I ended up staying up all night the night before it was due to finish it. The end result? An A. But not just any A.

A 100% A.

I'm so dang happy, but I also recognize that the flip side is that I just received a reward (a 100%) for putting that paper off the way I did. As has been happening most of my life.

Not really sure that there's a moral to this story, and I apologize for how disjointed my thoughts may seem today. I'm so very tired, this cold has been making sleep difficult to come by, and I think my thyroid levels might be a little off. So I guess I'll leave you with this:

New Moon opens tonight, a couple girlfriends and I have tickets to the midnight showing, and I'm as giddy as a little school girl to go see it. And to eat the Sweetarts I bought that are Twilight themed.

They even sparkle :)

The one in which I procrastinate

Because procrastination is something I never do. If by never I mean it's one of my favorite endeavors...

Anyway. MckMama posted a photoshop tutorial, so naturally, since I'm supposed to be catching up on some online ethics discussions, I thought I'd give it a try and see what happens. Here's a little monkey montage: 

Hmmmmm. What do you think? I ran into a couple snags working in photoshop. I picked three pictures I didn't think needed editing before I threw them together, but when I opened the first picture in the editor it showed the dimensions as 55 inches by 30 some inches. Huh? Then after I resized the canvas it wouldn't let me move the little side pictures, it kept popping up an error message saying they couldn't be moved because the result would be too big. I was able to fix that by decreasing the size of my canvas. I don't really understand how I did what I did, but it seemed to work out reasonably well, so we'll leave it at that :)

Ok, that's enough procrastinating for me for now. It's late and I have literally hundreds of discussion postings to sift through as well as post my own. So now I move on to answering how Pragmatism would respond to the idea of universal healthcare, as well as my take on Islamic and Hindu ethics. Blech.

Edited: Ok, so when I view my post in a new window, you know in the actual way a person would see it if they looked at my blog (that's a pretty big if too), the picture appears as if it has a little frame around it. Is that normal? How can I make it look seamless? All right, now I'll stop procratinating :)

Editing the edit: So it appears that all my pictures show up with that little framey thing around it. Still wondering if there's a way to make that disappear. And apparently still procrastinating...and making up words (framey Becky? really?).

I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine...

...and he shall be my Squishy.

I was on the BlogFrog a while back, and there was a thread asking for favorite boy names for someone who was expecting but having trouble finding names she liked. A boy name was something we picked out easily (after a few back and forths and vetoes...), but if we'd had a girl there might've been trouble. Even though the decision was easy, there was a little trickery involved in getting Martin to agree.

It's not as bad as it might sound, honestly. I would not want to deceive someone about something as important as our child's name. But there's still a story here.

A few years ago (it was fall of 2006, I believe), Martin and I went to see the movie The Covenant. It was a so-so movie, but one of the lead characters was named Caleb. I'd heard the name before and always liked it, and during the movie Martin leaned over to me and said "I like Caleb for a boy's name" (this was before we had decided to try for a baby). I said I liked it too, and that was the last we talked about it. Until I got pregnant.

Early on in the pregnancy when we were just kind of throwing name ideas around I mentioned Caleb and Martin vetoed it. I was a little disappointed because I still really liked that name. I let it go for the time being, and we moved on through hundreds (I'm sure!) of names. On a side note, I didn't want to find out the sex of the baby, but Martin did. The ultrasound tech wrote her finding on a sheet of paper and sealed it in an envelope. Martin took it with him to work, looked at it, and never told a soul what he had read on the paper.

But I digress....

SO. One night later on in the pregnancy I had gotten home from a shift at the nursing home, and was getting ready for a shift at the cleaning job I had with the Dept. of Transportation (MnDOT). I saw on TV that the movie The Covenant was on later that afternoon on one of the movie channels. I "casually" mentioned this to Martin and reminded him how much we liked that movie when we had seen it in the theater (ok, so I stretched the truth a bit...). A couple hours later I get a text while at work.

Martin: How about Caleb??
Me: I like that name!!

I called Martin and said something to the effect that Caleb is a name that keeps coming up so why don't we just stick with that since it's the only one we really agreed on. Martin agreed, and so it was to be. We shall call him Kaleb....

Oh. And the spelling? We really weren't trying for anything trendy, I like the name spelled with a "C" just fine. But since I had semi-tricked Martin into the name I wanted, I let him pick the middle name (while maintaining veto rights of course). Martin really liked the name Christian for a middle name, and we didn't want his initials to be C.C., so he became Kaleb Christian. 

And yes, I have since confessed to Martin how Kaleb really came about as the top choice for our boy's name. He thought it a little sneaky, but agreed that our boy's name suits him well and he'd have it no other way.

House Full of Sickies

It's been a rough couple of weeks around here. Kaleb's finally feeling better (thanks in large part to the Tamiflu!), but last Saturday Martin got hit by the same bug. It seems most likely that both of them had H1N1. They both had flu-like symptoms and the seasonal flu hasn't hit yet. I didn't get sick like them, and I received my H1N1 vaccine at the end of October.

Even though I didn't get the same thing that was floating around our house, I did manage to still pick up a virus somewhere. I woke up Thursday feeling kinda cruddy like I was getting a cold. Friday morning my throat hurt (not raw/sore, but achey like it was swollen inside), and the glands in my neck were so swollen you couldn't see that I had a jaw. It was a hot look, let me tell you.... I was worried I might have strep throat, so I called around and found a doctor who charges on a fee-for-service basis. He doesn't work with insurance at all. And since we don't have insurance anyway, it seemed like we had very few options: that or a minute clinic, and the independent guy's rates were cheaper.

Since Martin was still feeling really under the weather and still had a bad cough, we made an appointment for him too. Three hours, two office visits, a (negative) rapid strep test, and $81 later we were heading to Target to get Martin's antibiotic prescription for the bronchitis he's developed. It was a fun day let me tell ya. And now my cold has settled in my head and I'm hoping I don't develop a sinus infection :( 

With both Martin and I feeling so under the weather, and the munchkin finally feeling better, it was just too much. We couldn't keep up with him. Thankfully my parents agreed to take Kaleb for the weekend so we could rest. Lifesavers the two of them!! So Friday evening we loaded up the munchkin and drove little over an hour to meet my mom halfway, then drove the hour back and crashed in bed for most of the rest of the weekend.

So that's been our life the past week or so. Wish I had something interesting to write about, but I've got nothing. I'll try to come up with more interesting posts in the near future :)

For now, I'm off to bed to hopefully get a decent night's sleep to start another busy week off on the right foot.

Drunken (off of sugar) Monkey

'Nuff said.

My Little Monkey

I've been wanting to write for a while, just haven't had the time (seems to be a recurring theme around here).

So I finished my big huge paper, and the smaller one that was due the next night. I did well on my most recent test and have been having not a horrible time with school. Still so busy it makes me want to scream sometimes, but what can ya do?

The munchkin got sick again. Not quite sure what's going on with him. He had a little bit of a cough Wednesday night. Then yesterday morning I was just about ready to walk out the door to school when Martin casually mentioned that Kaleb felt really hot. Took his temp and it was 102.3 axiallary, which means about a 104 if I had taken it rectally. Not good. And boy, was he miserable! Gave him some Tylenol and lots of cuddles. Alternated Tylenol and Motrin for the day and got a new thermometer. He still never got lower than 102 or so. The cough has gotten worse, but his fever is gone. If it wasn't down significantly this morning I was going to call the Dr. Now tonight his fever is pretty much gone, but that horrible cough isn't. It was starting to sound a little wheezy, kind of like bronchitis was setting in so we'll definitely be keeping a close eye on that.

Poor baby.

In other news, Halloween this year was a little disappointing. We never got around to buying pumpkins to carve, we didn't get a single trick-or-treater, and we didn't get to take the munchkin out. We had the day all planned out: Martin's mom was going to take the munchkin for the day so I could study for Monday's test, we were going to pick him up around 4-ish and take him around Martin's mom's building and to a couple neighbor's houses for some treats, then Martin was going to go to work. Late Friday night Martin's older daughter called to say she and 6 or 7 of her friends would be coming by Saturday afternoon from out of town for dinner. So other plans got pushed to the side and it was a little disappointing. It wouldn't have been bad at all on any other day, but it was irritating to me that the munchkin didn't even get a Halloween because of it. It's doubly irritating when said daughter has decided at some point in the last year that I'm not worth the time in her world to acknowledge, let alone be less than rude to. Apparently I'm not good enough for her and her (recently found) high and mighty ways. Ok, rant over.

So even though the munchkin didn't get to go out on Halloween, I decided that his costume for the night should be recorded for posterity's sake :) So without further delay, here's my little monkey man:

Chilling with mommy at the end of the day

Enjoying his first candy. Ever. Kid can now spot a sucker from 30 yards out:

That's about all, I have a few other pictures, and one I must share, but it deserves its own post :)