Category: General News

July 11:
8:30pm: While Michael and Joe watched Andrew and Sylvia, I headed over to the University Hospital to visit Tom.  He seemed amazingly well considering the surgery he went through just a couple days ago.  His throat is really sore, so he is whispering, but he was talking and joking and seemed really “with it” for someone on a substantial amount of morphine!  He’d been up walking several times, but he’s also prone to moments of utter exhaustion.  The doctor stopped by while I was there, and they are planning on moving him out of the ICU and to a normal hospital room tomorrow.
By the by, I’ve never been in an ICU before.  Good grief.  Just walking down the hall…there are some really hurt people there.  Uhh…I can’t imagine.  It’s a really serious place.  Sort of made me want to run far, far away to a place of peace.  Also sort of made me want to go immediately to medical school so I can help people there too.
3pm: The news from my brothers is that as of last night, Tom is sitting up in a chair, off the ventilator (while still on a heavy-duty air mask), and able to communicate.  He may be moving out of the ICU in the next day.  Still a long road to recovery, and he’s not out of the woods yet in terms of infections and surgery success, but we’re on the right track.  Way to go, Tom!

July 9:
5:00pm: Tom has been doing alright today.  Joe and Michael have been staying with him at the University Hospital’s ICU.  Joe said that while Tom is mostly unconcious, he has been able to communicate, nod, and indicate that he needs more pain meds.  He still has a breathing tube, and they expect to keep it in for another day or two.  At this point, the main concerns are the high risk of internal infection and the unknown whether the surgery was successful.  The next five to seven days will tell.  If all goes well, he’ll be getting better.  If there is an infection or a problem with the surgical site, the problem should manifest itself in that time.  That’s the update for now!
9am: We got some bad news last night.  Our family friend, Tom, is in the hospital after having emergency surgery for a bowl obstruction.  He was in surgery last evening for four or five hours.  Michael and Joe were at the hospital and saw him in the ICU.  He’s on a ventilator and under close observation.  If all goes well, he should come out of ICU in four or five days.  Really serious stuff.  Michael was going back to the hospital this morning.  I don’t think I’m going to be able to visit much until he gets out of ICU since I don’t think I can take the kids there.  Tom’s family is out of state, and Terry is in Oregon visiting his family this month.
Poor Tom.  It’s a tough time.

July 9: The last week has been a good one. We enjoyed our long weekend, and the last couple days have included lots of visiting with friends.  That always makes for some good times!  On Friday Joe, Sylvia, and I went for a walk on Picnic Point.  To our amazement, we saw three baby mink in the water and very close to us along the shore.  The next day, we went back with Michael, Becky, and Andrew.  We had a lovely time, but we didn’t get a second viewing of the mink.
Pictures from the last days are in the gallery.
Oh, and last week we had doctor’s appointments for both kids.  Andrew is 32 pounds and 3′ 1.75″ tall (that’s around the 50th percentile for both).  Sylvia is 14 pounds, 4 ounces and 25″ long (also around the 50th percentile) [not 16″ as previously noted!].  I’ve got two happy, growing kids!
This morning we’re having some friends over this morning for a toddler art group.  We have colored water, eye droppers, and coffee filters.  Should be fun!

July 5: We had a great Fourth of July at my mom’s Aunt Carol and Uncle Bill’s home on a lake in Oconomowoc.  It was a lot of fun to see cousins and aunts and uncles, and we had a really fun time splashing around in the water.  It was Sylvie’s first time in non-bathtub water, and she was happily dipping her legs in (sometimes going up to her neck) for almost an hour.
Andrew got to go for a ride on the pontoon boat, and then he had fun floating and getting thrown high into the air by his strong Uncle Bubba.
Pictures from the reunion (mostly taken by Joe) are in the gallery.

June 30: Well, yesterday was a lovely birthday.  I got to sleep in a little, my sweetie made me French toast for breakfast, and we had a slow morning at home. Around noon, we went to a farm with our neighbor Nancy.  Andrew had a great time seeing Alpacas, donkeys, a goat, horses, and many doggies.
Late afternoon, we met up with Joe and Becky, Michael and Lisa, Dad, and Terry, and we all headed up to Baraboo to eat dinner at one of our favorite restaurants – Ishnala.  We had a huge meal, including shaum torte for dessert, and we all left stuffed.  All in all, a good day.  And one where I rarely thought about the fact that one year ago was when Mom was first getting some negative health diagnoses.  Nope.  Hardly thought about it at all.
Pictures from our day are in the gallery.

June 28: It’s shaping up to be a beautiful weekend.  Yesterday Andrew, Sylvia, and I went to Bryan’s office to join him for lunch.  He’s moved from one side of the UW Research Park to the other side, and we hadn’t met a couple of his new co-workers.  It was fun to see his new diggs, and Andrew really enjoyed getting some treats from Bryan’s co-worker, Dawn.
After lunch (Hubbard Street Diner…mmm) the kids and I went over to Uncle Bubba’s to hang out with the uncles for a bit.  Joe ends his work week at noon on Friday.  He’s splitting his time between an internship at the Madison Symphony (20 hours) and work at Gathering Waters Conservancy (10 hours).  Andrew just adores his uncles.
Sylvia’s nighttime not-sleeping routine is improving.  The last few nights have gotten better and better (it’s easy to get better when she was waking up every hour!), and last night she only got up at 1am, 4am, and 6:30am.  She even then went back to sleep until 8! I’m sure that my children’s sleep patterns are not that interesting to read about, but it so affects the joyfulness of our days!
Tonight we have our third Happy Bambino kiddos birthday party.  Then tomorrow is my birthday, and Terry’s taking our gang to Ishnala for dinner.  Should be fun!
I had forgotten to link to some pictures I took earlier this week.  Such cute kids!  I couldn’t decide which picture to post with this update, so I picked two!

June 26: It’s 10pm, and I’m about to turn in to bed in an attempt to be rested again tomorrow.  We had a really lovely day today.  Spent most of the day at Jessica’s house where Andrew and Eli had a blast being silly (and remarkably imaginative) boys together.  Janelle, Vianne, and Shay came over, and we all made tissue paper window crafts.  Sylvie took some naps, Andrew was in a splendid mood, and I was rather rested for the first time in a few days.  It was great!  Sleep and time with good friends make for a great day.
Pictures from our day are in the gallery as are photos I took of Terry and the kids last night.  Enjoy!

June 26:  Happy birthday yesterday, Maretta!  We missed spending the day with you:)
Last night, Sylvia did a three-hour stretch and two two-hour stretches of sleep.  Soooo much better than waking up every hour from 2am to 6am.  So much better.  That and I went to bed at 8:30 or 9 pm last night, so I woke this morning feeling like a much perkier person.
I’ve been trying to upload photos from Andrew’s birthday and the days preceding, but it’s been my record-slowest upload ever.  I picked out the pictures.  Got interrupted.  Set the pictures to upload.  Got interrupted twice.  Uploaded one set.  Interrupt.  Upload second set.  Interrupt.  Add captions to one… you got the story.  So this morning, I was able to finish adding captions, and I’m posting this while Sylvia is in her exersaucer watching Andrew who is making matches of his memory cards.
Some good pictures in these sets.  Enjoy!
Andrew’s birthday party
The days preceding Andrew’s birthday.

June 21: I am the very lucky owner of a new camera.  A snazzy SLR with which I  can do all kinds of need photography actions.  I get a little tight in my throat just thinking about how cool it is:)  It’s a gift from Terry, and I’ve been voracioulsy reading all I can about photography and Photoshop.  My new way of keeping my brain engaged and expressing my creativity is going to be photography.  And while I tend to take a dozen or so pictures each day on my point-and-shoot camera, I think I’d like to learn how to take really nice portrait pictures of the kiddos in my life.
I don’t want to decrease the number of snap-shots that I’m taking, so I’ve decided to kind of segregate the pictures I take with the SLR onto a new Flickr site.  I plan to post my pictures that have some degree of artistic merit to the Flickr site, so feel free to check it out.

June 21:  Since I started staying home, I’ve been posting pretty frequently, so I was kind of surprised to note that I hadn’t done a post in a full week.  Part of the issue is that Sylvia hasn’t been sleeping well.  She’s back to waking up every 1-2 hours at night and hasn’t been napping during the day.  Andrew hasn’t been napping at all either, and that has left me with little time or energy for logging on to the computer!
But despite our lack of sleep, we’re also having lots of fun.  Bryan’s parents came into town on Thursday, and we’re having a good time enjoying Andrew’s last days of being two.  Tomorrow he turns three!
Pictures that I uploaded earlier in the week are in the gallery.