welcome to spiceland.

Pictures up from Tru’s kindergarten graduation!

I had the worst day ever today. I got a call from a real estate agent wanting to show the house first thing this morning. I cleaned like the wind and called her back to tell her it was ready. She said they’d already gone way out in the country and they’d be back in Madison after lunch. Finally, while I’m at the park with the kids, she calls me at 2 saying she’s on her way to my house. I RACE home to get Seiko, and hurt my back trying to get her in the car. The kids, Seiko, and I hang out at the park for 30 more minutes. We’d already been there for an hour, so we were hot, sun-kissed, and over an hour late for Heidi’s nap. Nevertheless, we stay away so she can show the house. She calls me 30 minutes later and apologizes, saying “We’re still here…” She tells me she’ll call when they leave. I give her 15 more minutes, and fed up with the park, we head home. Nobody’s at the house, so we go in and make ourselves comfortable. I figure she jut forgot to call when they left. I put Heidi down for her nap, and let Seiko inside. I plop Tru and Heidi’s school bags, my purse, and a bag of groceries on the counter and turn the TV on for Tru.

About 5 minutes later, the doorbell rings. It’s the real estate agent. They hadn’t even seen the house yet! Apparently, they spent all that time while I was waiting on them at some other house. Grr. I race to clean up the house, shuffle Seiko outside, wake Heidi up from her nap, and go on a walk. Seiko poops in the yard of the nicest house on our block, which happens to be having its roof replaced at that very instant; thus, the yard is full of witnesses to Seiko’s offense. I have to scrounge up a scrap of shingle packaging to pick it up and go all the way back to our house to throw it away. I get poop on my finger in the process. I can’t go inside to wash my hands, though, so I just have to wipe it on my jeans! BARF. I drag the kids and the arthritic dog kicking, screaming, and whining around the block, stopping at Susan Sibley Beams’s house to wash my hands. (I LOVE YOU, Susan.) The last block of our walk, Heidi is so sleepy that she kneels to rest every 15 feet. We finally got back a few minutes ago. Now I’m off to wash my poopy jeans.

ETA: Just got a request for another showing today! I’m glad for the interest, but I am sooo tired!

Mike and I are leaving in five minutes for the hospital for my laparoscopic cystectomy. Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers. It shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ll update everyone when we get back.

Update #1 5:00 PM: I’m home! I’m sore, but otherwise, I’m fine. I’m in pain when I’m not medicated, but I have lots of fun drugs to help me with that. Thanks for all the prayers and thoughts!

Update #2 Nov. 18th: Got confirmation last week that the tumor was benign. Yay.

We had lots of fun last weekend in Hot Springs, AR with Papa and Nana! It was Heidi’s first time on the lake and Tru’s second. Tru caught three fish with Papa and went tubing with Nana. Mike and I water skiied for the first time ever. Mike was much better at it than me. He stood up 2 out of 3 times. I tried 10+ times and only got up 3 or 4 times. Nana was a pro. Heidi was thrilled with the ducks and still keeps asking to feed them. She says, “Dut? Dut?” Mike has video that may go up here later, but for now, you will have to make do with the pictures.

Time for another update. Heidi is officially walking! She started about 2 weeks ago, and now she can take 20-30 steps by herself. She can say lots of words, too, even if few of them are discernible to people outside our family. People outside our family would be able to understand night-night, bye-bye, cheese, baba (bottle), Dada, and Mama. We can also understand more, Tru, dog, bird, Cheerios, car, down, up, and diaper. However, mostly when she says these words, she’s repeating after us.

I have had irritational (industrial or environmental) bronchitis since July 4th — that’s 10 days now! We shot off fireworks of our own after the city-sponsored fireworks, and the smoke got to me. I’ve had a sore throat and have been coughing and hacking. I bought a bottle of chloraseptic spray about 4 days ago, and half the bottle is gone already. I can’t wait until my throat heals. Fireworks are SO not worth this. Next year, I’m staying inside or wearing a face mask.

Tru starts Pre-K/K4 in 27 days! She has a bookbag and a lunchbox with matching thermos, and she is so excited. Her teacher is young and excited about teaching, and we already know that one boy in her class is the son of the 3rd grade teacher at the Christian private school she’s going to. I can’t wait, either!

We are in the process of performing some much-needed home repairs and upgrades. I began tiling both bathrooms today and hope to be finished within the next 4-6 days. After that, we’ll be getting new countertops, getting a new backsplash, and repairing the deck that I almost burned down last year.

Happy birthday to my twin sisters Allison (Ally) and Kerri! 26 — WOW! Happy birthday to my stepmom, Melissa!

I’m a redhead, and I love it! Before and after pictures:

We had a great Easter. We’ve been avoiding church this winter and watching sermons at home from Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church to avoid putting Heidi in the nursery during flu season. We did go to church this Sunday, though. We took Heidi to the service with us, which she previously had not tolerated well at all. She was great! She behaved while awake and slept through the sermon. She thoroughly enjoyed the choir’s rendition of Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at the end of the service, proof she is a Pinder after all! Pictures here.

We also dyed and hid eggs and made Easter baskets for the kids. We read the resurrection story out of John and explained to Tru that Easter eggs represent life. Baby chickens come out of their eggs alive just like Jesus came out of his grave alive. We also gave Tru a LeapFrog Leapster game system for Easter. We weren’t planning on getting her such a big gift, but we got it on sale at Target. She loves it.

My birthday is today. I’m 27 years old. We celebrated with some friends last Saturday at Surin of Thailand in Huntsville. It was a wonderful evening full of food and friendship! Mike got me a brand new laptop battery for my laptop, which seriously needed replacing! My laptop is actually portable now. Previously, my battery life was only about 30 minutes. I should get at least an hour and a half off of this new one. Tru got me some very pretty jewelry. We had a crockpot roast for dinner and a delectable chocolate Snickers birthday cake. YUM.

There are also more pictures here of Tru at her friend Fisher’s house on Easter.

We had Tru’s EEG to measure brain activity this morning. An EEG (Electroencephalography) records the electrical activity of neurons firing in the brain. EEGs are especially effective at diagnosing epilepsy and other seizure disorders. In preparation for the test, we had to keep Tru awake until 1 AM last night. Wonderful, sweet Mike let me sleep from 8 PM to 11 PM. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so the four of us (after Heidi woke up from a very late nap) watched Star Trek: The Next Generation until 1 AM. Tru conked out quite easily. This morning, I had to wake her at 5 AM and keep her awake until her 9 AM appointment, so we were quite tired by the end of the test.

Tru films Heidi before the test.

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Tru preparing for the test. The nurse took her to the test room and explained the procedure while I was in the bathroom. The chair Tru is sitting in is for the mother to hold the child if the child is too distraught to lay in bed. We did not have to use it.

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During the test.

The nurse scrubbed Tru’s scalp with a q-tip and put leads all over it with a gunky, conductive substance. Tru did not like being dirty one bit. The nurse then wrapped her head so that the leads would stay put, and Tru didn’t like this either. I thought she would have fun laughing at how silly the test was, but she was just too tired and cranky to enjoy it.

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First, the nurse measured her brain activity with Tru lying quietly on the bed. Then she asked Tru to close her eyes for a minute. Next, Tru had to blow a pinwheel for 4 minutes. I demonstrated to get her started and intermittently to keep her going, and I was totally out of breathe. I don’t know how Tru managed to do it for so long! The nurse said that 4 minutes is usually a pipe dream in a child as young as Tru, but she did blow most of that time. Next, she measured Tru’s brain activity while flashing her open and closed eyes with a strobe light with the light strobing at different intervals. Finally, Tru rested with the lights off for about 30 minutes. The hope was that she would fall asleep, but she never did go completely to sleep.

When we were finished, Tru’s hair was very dirty and gunky! She was not a happy camper, but Chicken McNuggets and Sprite cures anything. We immediately went to McDonald’s for lunch and home for a nap. Now that we’re awake, all of us are feeling much better! We should get the results of the EEG in about a week and a half. Cross your fingers!

Tru got her EKG today. It went well, but we don’t have any results yet.  Here are pictures of her at the doctor’s office yesterday and getting her EKG today.

Strange thing happened at the doctor’s office. Dr. Zbell, Tru’s regular doctor who could not see us today, said, upon hearing that we’d left the ER early last night, “I know Dr. Bryant really wanted you to stay last night.”  Funny, Dr. Bryant told me on the phone last night that it would be fine if I left and I could just come into the office in the morning.  She never told me that we should stay, even when I told her I was calling to make sure I wasn’t making a dumb decision by considering leaving early.  Apparently after that, she talked to the other doctors and lamented that we left.  Oh, well. So nice of her to give me bad advice and then condemn the choice I made based on her advice. </sarcasm> The doctors are going to run some tests assuming that it could have been either a fainting spell or a seizure. She’s going to have an EKG tomorrow to look for heart arrhythmias, and later this week she’ll have a CT scan and an EEG to measure brain activity. They took blood today to look for an infection and possible anemia, but all her blood tests came back normal. We’ll keep updating as we find things out.