Good Vibrations

Here's the story. I delivered Keegen very early on a Saturday morning. We left the hospital Sunday evening. That next Wednesday morning i woke up feeling pretty crummy. My back hurt. I thought i must have a kidney infection? A UTI? Something was up. But i got through the morning. Keegen and I had an appointment with the lactation consultant at our ped's office. I think Doug must have stayed home with Bode.

The pain was sort of off then on. I made it through the appt when, at the end, i described my symptoms to Golda (the Lac Consultant and a physician's assistant) and asked what might be going on with me. She said it did sound like a kidney infection. She told me to call my OB and get seen right away. She brought me juice and water and snacks (from her own lunch!). Love that woman.

I went to my OB. He checked me out. Dipped my pee. Seemed to think it was nothing. I wasn't feeling much pain then so off i went to drive home.

The drive was awful. I remember about 7 minutes from home i was bawling. I was in such excruciating pain. I wasn't sure how i was going to continue driving. But i made it home and told Doug i really felt lousy. I went to lay down and the pain was worse than ever. We decided we should go to the ER. But. My mom was flying into the Colorado Springs airport pretty much right then and needed to be picked up (thank goodness she wasn't flying into Denver!). So i sent Doug to pick her up and as soon as they got home (took about an hour) we left the boys with her and off we went to the ER.

They saw me fairly quickly at the ER (considering we had to go to the yucky, long-wait downtown location since the new hospitals were still being built and considering i didn't have symptoms that were life-threatening (no heart problems or shortness of breath). Got into a bay (ZERO privacy. Sharing a filthy bathroom with drunks). Got all checked out and poked and prodded (not what i wanted after just having had a baby). Got a CT scan where they saw kidney stones moving right along in my ureter. At first i declined the morphine they offered. I was breastfeeding, right? I finally gave in and accepted as much as they wanted to give me and was able to tolerate things a little bit better. I was sent home with oral pain meds and waited.

And waited and waited. And finally Saturday i passed to jaggedy, good-sized stones. Ah, sweet relief.

I followed up with a urologist who suggested lithotripsy for the remainder of my stones. I had a bunch on both kidneys. But when i had an xray to pinpoint where the stones were, they couldn't see them and the doctor said i could wait and see instead. That it wasn't very likely the stones would move out of the kidneys and cause problems. So i went with that.

Well, here we are a little over two years later and i had my yearly physical. My primary doc heard something in my abdomen (a bruit) that shouldn't be there. So an abd sonogram was ordered and on the sono they saw something suspicious in my kidney (a growth? a mass? can't remember). So i had a CT scan where nothing suspect was seen except for stones. Anyway. This is a boring story, non? I saw my urologist and he said it was an 8mm stone (helloooo! the two i passed were 5mm and super-painful). He said if this one got out i probably wouldn't be able to pass it and would need more invasive surgery.

So i signed up for ESWL--extracorporal (outside the body) shockwave lithotripsy. Very spaceshippy sounding. I've been dreading it a little because it is done under a general anesthesia and i don't do well with just the simple IV sedation i've had for other things in the past (read: barfing). The description of the procedure itself didn't bother me (basically lay on a bag of fluid and the focus thousands of ultrasonic shockwaves at the big stone and any other stone nearby gets zapped too.

Yesterday was the big day. I had to be there at 6am so i took a cab to the hospital (didn't want to wake up my family or bother anyone else that early). Got all checked in and had another xray. And off i went to the OR. The anesthesiologist started my IV and said, "Here comes the sleepy medicine." The last thing i remember saying was, "Wow. Is it supposed to feel so achy?" and i was out.

I woke up in the PACU feeling so calm and really good but a little weird. I felt really heavy and couldn't focus my eyes but, well, GOOD. Poor lady next to me was waking up anxious and agitated and then there's me waking up like a Disney princess, all flowers and birds chirping! I said to my nurse, "Wow. That was the BEST NAP EVER!"

I was soon taken back to the outpatient post-op unit where Doug met me and i feasted on Ritz crackers and water and cheese. And i was ready to go. I wasn't even intubated with the general so that was nice.

Now i get to drink a gallon of water a day (for real) and lay on my head 3 times a day to coax the stone fragments out. Can you hear me telling my kids, "Play nice. Now Mom has to go stick her bum up in the air!" Ya. You know if you can't get a hold of me this week, that's what i'm doing...

A Quick Trip to Utah

Doug had his annual bird hunt last week in Emery, UT (kinda near Moab-ish). So we decided we'd ALL go. The boys and I would drop him off and continue on to Salt Lake. It was two days of driving for two days in Utah, but it really was worth it. We got to see the ranch where the hunt is, which is awesome. No wonder Doug gets so excited for this event every year. Beautiful place, great people running it. We got to see my dad, brother Drew and bro-in-law Mark. Briefly but it was really nice. We stayed with Doug's aunt in SLC and got to see my mom (who happened to be in town) and my grandma. We spent a morning at the children's museum, our favorite place to go. We ate at Cafe Rio (our trip wouldn't have been complete without it!). We also got to see our friends the Parks (ZEKE) who moved from CO to Ogden. We spent the entire day with them on Friday. Bode was in heaven. He wants nothing more than to move to Utah. Which i've informed him will never happen. But hey, let the kid dream, eh?

Here are some pics.

Snapshots of My New 'Do

My sister asked for pics of my new haircut. So here ya go...

That would be Kitty from "That 70's Show." Except her hair isn't in her left eye.

I was trying to find a shot of the mean girl with her hair covering one of her eyes all the time on the cartoon "Arthur" (which i, by the way, abhor). And a shot of Sid's teacher on Sid the Science Kid (also on PBS) but i couldn't find them. This one is close, too...That's me with the silly girly clips trying to keep my hair out off my face.

Lovin' it. So much for appealing to my hairstylist with, "I feel old and frumpy and want a fun look." I'll stick with the old from now on!

From the 4-Year Old

I got my haircut tonight. I was hoping for something fun and new and different (but not too different!). It's cute. I'm happy with it. Much shorter. I love when she just takes the scissors to it at the very end and thins it out (since i have SO much hair. A shame i can't share with my hubby). But it's a cut i've had before. It gets in my eyes a lot. You'll see me wearing silly little girl clips in it. But it's a nice change.

Anywho. Got home from my haircut. I was standing in the kitchen making dinner and looked over at Bode who was looking at me as he said, "Mom. Why do you look like someone else's mom?"

And later he said the prayer. Child can't get enough of saying the prayer. Meals. Bedtime. You name it. It's great. It's a new thing. We used to not be able to get him to have anything to do with saying a prayer. So he was blessing the food for dinner and just rattled off a really lengthy prayer. I wish i could remember all of it. The usual "thank you for our blessings." Then, "Thank you for the new GeoTrax DVD. Thank you to bless the food. Thank you for the hot dogs. Thank you for the applesauce (i really overextended myself). Thank you that Dad gets home safely. Thank you that Dad can go to work and make lots of money. Thank you for the stars. Thank you for the moon. Thank you for the sea. Thank you for the whales. Thank you for the fish. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." i think there was one more sea creature in there. SO GREAT! These are not prompts i've given him. I loved it. Fun fun fun.

Bode Does Dallas

We've--that is--Bode and i have just returned from a weekend away in Dallas. A fun weekend, just the two of us. An exhausting weekend. A very successful, good-newsy weekend.

The point of the trip was to take him to be reevaluated by Donna Bateman, the child/neurodevelopmental specialist who prescribed all of the OT programs we've been working on. Bode has made so much progress in the past 5 months that i needed some guidance and his programs needed tweaking, so the only way to really accomplish that was for her to see him again.

And i have to say this. We were told by her in the beginning that oftentimes, people don't see improvements until 6 months and certainly not marked improvements. So i knew we were doing well. But i needed her to see him.

B and i flew in Thursday night and stayed with Kristen's mom, L. This was a fantastic place for my sweet child. Their backyard is a paradise of live oaks and water. Ducks to feed. Acorns to throw. Flowers to pick. So very lovely. We slept well.

Friday morning Donna came to us for the eval. I managed to not get two very important pictures--one of her with Bode and one of Kristen's mom with Bode. She took Bode under her wing as his surrogate grandma for the weekend. Everyone needs a surrogate grandma so he was very lucky...In the mornings i'd find him out back with L feeding the ducks. He'd tell her about the dreams he'd had. He was instantly comfortable and easy around her.

The eval went well. Bode was pretty burned out by the time it was done. Meaning he was getting ornery and cranky. Can't really blame him. All in all he participated and played along well. We're talking a 2+ hour eval needing his full cooperation. Was wanting to feed the ducks really too much to ask on his part?

After the eval we had a celebratory lunch at, of all places, McDonalds. I don't know that he'd ever eaten there before (oh yes. He's that pure. HA! Actually we are snobs and stick to more upscale places like KFC and Sonic). He was pretty psyched by the happy meal toy and the apple slices with caramel option.

We headed back to L's to meet back up with Donna. While we ate lunch, she'd gone home and written out his eval and programs. When she walked in the house she looked at me and said, "Nobody should get to have as much fun as i'm about to have!" We sat down and she pulled out his "Integrative and Developmental Chart" that she uses to map out his neurological functioning. (You can see the charts here. Scroll down to the PDFs). Ours is a tri-fold paper that goes from birth to chronological age). This chart maps out the brain levels, developmental periods and brain functions that should be on-board by certain ages. She goes through and evaluates a child taking note of whether or not he's achieved each brain function in each brain level and takes points off if it's not at all achieved, partially achieved or nearly achieved. She compares the child's chronological age with what she comes up with as their neurological age and there's this whole formula that gives his degree of injury (or brain disorganization) and more. Anyway. I didn't document well B's first eval. I was so busy getting-going on the programs! But his chronological age at the time was 51.5 months. He mapped out neurologically to just 31.5 months, giving him a degree of injury/disorganization of 61% which is considered moderate (0-20% is profound, 21-60% is severe, 61-85% is moderate and 86-99% mild). His main issues were in the midbrain, especially things like recognizing and appreciating voice inflection, locating the source of sounds, feeling meaningful sensations, showing interest in his environment and exploring it; etc. These things should be "on-board" by 8 months (per lots of accepted and recognized brain research). And maybe these things sound inconsequential, but if they don't function well, then as time goes on it just compounds into more problems all pointing back to the midbrain (i.e. recognizing link between behaviors and consequences, feel remorse and pride, make good eye contact, express wide range of emotions appropriately, voluntarily tell a meaningful, organized story, follow a basic three-step command). Anyway.

So we sat and she spread open the chart and i saw on the bottom something really beautiful. Chronological age: 56.5 months. Neurological age: 54.2 months! His degree of injury/disorganization? 96% or mild! (Donna said she was really tempted to put a "very" in front of the mild!). She calculated a rate of growth of 454%! In just 5 months! She said in all of her years personally evaluating children and in all of the data input of the children at the Family Hope Center that she's done (thousands), she's never seen a rate of growth like that.

He's worked so hard and we've all worked so hard as a family that seeing those numbers was incredibly gratifying. I knew he was on his way to "well." I knew he'd made huge strides. But seeing it on paper and hearing it from Donna was a wonderful feeling.

She gave us a game plan to continue. She made some changes to his current programs. She guesstimates another six months on the programs. They should give continued improvement and they should really "stick." I'm so ready to be done with them. Especially the creeping and crawling which can create some serious contention in our house. But talking to her about our issues and seeing this improvement in black-and-white strengthens my resolve to continue (at least today. We haven't restarted it yet!). It needs to stick. I would hate to go this far and have him backslide as he did with OT. I can do another 6 months. He can do another six months. And then to be 5 and well? And avoid lots of other problems he probably would have had had we continued with the downslides? Beautiful. So Very Worth it. I can't believe i didn't snap a picture of her with him.

Friday night we met my brother Drew for dinner. He lives in downtown Dallas and it's always so good to see him. Bode loves him. Then we spent most of the day Saturday with him at the Texas State Fair. Talk about sensory overload, that place! We went on a couple rides. Ate some junk food. Watched a dog show (the Frisbee-catching type). Saw some livestock. Checked out some John Deere tractors. Checked out Big Tex himself. Took the bus (an attraction in and of itself) back to downtown where we could walk back to Drew's. And we hightailed it out of there because Texas was playing OU at the Cotton Bowl (on the very fairgrounds we were at) and i didn't want to get caught in the post-game traffic. Bode lamented the fact that Uncle Drew doesn't live with us. He now wants to live in Texas, too. He's not too picky. Utah or Texas. Two places we will never live. I keep telling him to be happy living in Colorado. I think it's been hard for him to have so many friends continually move. And two more are moving before the year's end. Seriously.
After playing on a little play area at the local mall and some dinner, we went back to L's to settle in and feed some ducks. I got him to bed by 7 and he was OUT.

We flew home this morning and were happily reunited with Doug and Keegen (oh how i will always remember Keegen's face as he ran and jumped into my arms yelling "MOMMY!" at the airport!).

It was a great weekend. For obvious reasons and for the opportunity to spend significant time with Bode one-on-one. We haven't done that for a long time.

Last Child in the Woods

So when it comes right down to it, i'm essentially a lazy person. If i can sleep in in the morning, i will (i totally take advantage of Doug's good nature). If i can stay in a recumbent position whilst someone fetches me a glass of water, i'll take it. If i can sit and watch a show while cross stitching, i'm pretty psyched. Right now, my house is a disaster and i don't have any plans to tidy up anytime soon (i'd rather sit on my duff and blog).

I've realized since we've moved to Colorado that when it comes to doing things outdoors, it's got to be uber-easy, or it ain't gonna happen. When we decided to move to CO, we were excited about all of the great outdoors that awaited us. Oh, the hikes we'd go on! Oh, the sights we'd see! So close to so many national parks. Lots of state parks. Just oodles and oodles to do.

Well, in reality, if it's not right outside my back door, i'm going to find it difficult to motivate myself to get out there and do it. I remember talking to my mother-in-law about our impending move and what we were excited about as we were walking around the lake behind my house. I remember she looked at me and said something to the effect of, "This place seems pretty ideal." And, yes, i appreciated the nature we had in Maryland but i was excited about what CO had to offer even more. (She also told me the cheapest and easiest way to keep your storage under control is to simply get a big garage. Wise woman. Did i listen?). What can i say? I'm an Army brat and i get some serious wanderlust. i have a hard time wanting to stay in one place for more than a few years. Antsy. What's next? What's next?

But none of this is really the point of this post.

Have any of you read Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv? Well, truth be told, me neither. But i did attend a lecture he gave at the Pikes Peak Center last weekend. Kristen invited me and it sounded really interesting (and a night out and Vietnamese for dinner was really appealing, too).

In a nutshell, his book is about how being amongst nature positively effects people. How too many children today suffer from what he dubs "Nature-Deficit Disorder." We are indoors. Where it's safe. With our technology. How so many of the problems so many people and children have today could be lessened by spending some good old-fashioned time outdoors. Spending time in the dirt. Working the soil. Picking up rocks and finding the bugs under them. Feeling a connection to the Earth that you can only get by being a participant with it. How it can decrease depression. How it can help lessen the symptoms of ADHD and other behavioral problems (and no, he doesn't claim that should be the only therapy. Just in addition to whatever else the kid may need).

And so much more.

This presentation was "brought to us" by the National Park Service. And it really did inspire me and motivate me.

Here's the deal--I've found myself not going outside at all on some days. THIS IS NOT ME! I still make plans for weekend outdoor activities on occasion. But i'm talking small, daily-basis doses. i was always outside with Bode. It was good for me--for my mental, physical and spiritual health. It was good for my child--he was so happy to be outside. He demanded it. Absolutely demanded it. He'd stand at the front door and bang on it until i would release him to the wild. I watched this. I knew this. It was an obvious and simple fact. Oh, the hours we spent walking around that lake, stopping to watch turtles, ducks, herons, beavers. Picking up sticks. Throwing rocks in the stream. Finding black walnuts still in their green outer shell. Greeting friends and strangers alike. Looking at flowers and blossoming trees. Watching and living the changing of the seasons. We took our time. I don't remember ever feeling hurried. These are my fondest memories from those first two years with Bode.

But IT WAS EASY. We got up in the morning. Had some breakfast. Opened our front door. Loaded Bode in the jogger (often still in his jammies). Went down the driveway. Jumped the curb to the path that was right there. And we escaped to the woods. Completely enveloped in the trees. Then to the lake. To the sounds of birds and cicadas. We explored and absorbed.

Yes, i romanticize it.

But i now live in the prairie. The plains. We have no trees. We have no green. We have majestic mountains in the distance that are nothing to dismiss. I back to a golf course. It's nice not backing right up into a neighbor's kitchen. It's lush and pretty. But it's off-limits. It doesn't belong to us. Trespassers will be prosecuted. I feel really disconnected from nature. I miss the trees. I miss the green. I miss the water. (i was aware of these feelings prior to this lecture). I didn't realize how much a part of me all of those things were. I had always been in the middle of it.

I used to think it was just the long winters that was keeping me indoors. But it's become somewhat more of a habit than i realized until this summer of not-going-outside-like-we-should. I need to get past these feelings i have with our present location. I need to just get up and go. Surely we can find suitable nature close-by? I may not be able to point out orioles and herons, beavers and squirrels. But i can find grasshoppers and bunnies (galore). There are no trees to climb and no streams to wade in, but we can find wildflowers and native grasses aplenty. (And i certainly don't miss the mosquitoes and gnats!). I may not be able to walk out my front door and have a hike at the ready without getting in my car and driving for 30 minutes. But i can create a hike of sorts. I need to lower my expectations. We can create our own adventures. I used to be fun and have energy for this sort of thing. What's happened? Oh ya. I stopped going outdoors and it's SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF ME!

Well. Now. That was dramatic.

Today i took a step towards getting myself and the boys back outside more often (as winter is on our doorstep!). We drove out to Black Forest (about 15 minutes away) and went on a little hike with a couple little friends. I got slightly lost on the way back down so it ended up being longer than planned (and i was never truly lost. i knew where we were. Just couldn't figure out quite how we'd gotten there and quite how to get back. I was very reassuring and confident to the boys and even said, "for pete's sake! TRUST ME! I know where we are!" even though for a brief moment i said both a silent AH CRAP! and a silent prayer). The boys were awesome. Super hikers. We found sticks (which quickly became, alas, guns, but boys will be boys). We sought out the best pinecones. We checked out the native wildflowers (is that a redundant statement?). We found a grasshopper. We pointed out the birds in the, yes, trees. Not the lush deciduous trees i pine for (HA!), but i'll take these conifers in a heartbeat. Back at the trailhead the boys had time to run and play on the playground. It was a really good day. A really good start.

That's the thing, too, that i know for a fact. We always have better days when we've spent a large portion of it outside in it.

My Monkeys

We picked up a swing at IKEA last April when we were in Utah. And it has sat in the packaging in the basement ever since. Doug decided to hang it up last night and oh what fun they are having!

I don't think we'll ever want to finish the basement at this rate. Where would we put the bounce castle? The tents? Tunnels? Punching bag? And now the swing? (and for that matter, where would i put all of our miscellaneous crap? Where would i throw the stuff i don't know what to do with blindly down the stairs?). Not to mention they can ride their bikes and scooters down there in the winter (which is fast approaching!).

I found myself singing "Superman" by REM while the boys were belly-swinging (which we refer to as "Superman-ing it" [go figure]) but i had to stop singing it after the second line which is, "I am, I am, I am Superman, and i can do anything." The next verse just isn't age-appropriate!

Our old king-sized mattress has come in handy (and the nicely padded walls!). Now if Keegen could just remember to NOT stand up right after he falls off since the swing is still swinging...

What I'm Grateful for RIGHT NOW...

...WASHABLE MARKERS!! I left Keegen with a pile of paper and a marker in the kitchen. We tend to just do painting and coloring on the hardwood floor of our kitchen. We've had one time when i let them use what claimed to be "washable" Rose Art brand markers. Well, they ain't washable. We have green marker stains on the floors here and there. So i left Keegs to be creative for, oh, 20 seconds at best? And came back to find deep, dark red all over the floor. And, PHEW! it came off with the swipe of a wet rag.

I walked back in the kitchen a moment later and realized i hadn't gotten it all. Not at all. He'd also colored all over the lower kitchen cabinets. Virgin territory. I didn't know if it would wipe off. And again, relief when it did.

SO, thank you to the Crayola people. Thank you thank you thank you. I will never stray to the (Rose Art) dark-side again. Even if they were only 12 cents on clearance at Target last year.

And honestly. I NEVER had to worry about Bode coloring on anything BUT the paper. Such the rules-follower is he. His baby brother, however...