And so it begins

I have started my countdown. 32 days...

32 days that I will try NOT to stress out about what I need to get done.

32 days that I will hopefully keep my focus

32 days to think about what is going to happen

32 days is so far yet so close

On October 17th I will be having surgery. Nothing overly major... I hope. Okay let me back track and try to make this a little clearer.

As everyone should know just over a year ago I gave birth to my wonderful baby girl. What you may not have heard or remember is that the actually birthing part was very tough on my body. I was in no serious danger but I can clearly remember the doctor telling the nurse, "I stopped counting after 50 (stitches)". Later when the doctor came to check on me she described my birth as a vaginal c-section. There was a lot of tearing, bleeding and damage.

Due to several things I did not heal very well. And now I need some repair work. Surgical repair work. We won't know exactly how extensive it will be until the day of. But what we do know it that I will be flat in bed for a good week and on restriction for at least a week after that. If not longer. Joy, oh joy.

Thankfully we have some wonderful mothers that are coming to help. The first week Fred's mom will be here and Fred will be off work. The second week my mom will be here, but Fred will be back at work. So hopefully I'll be a little more mobile so I can help watch Rayne. Maybe go do a couple of fun things too.

Overall recovery is going to be key. If I try to do too much I could pop stitches again, cause more damage and we might have to do this all over again. But if all goes well then I may fulfill my dream of a natural child birth. But will just have to see.

Well I hope that was the right balance of details for everyone. If you want more you can contact me directly. Then if I'm in a good mood I'll give you some ;)

All and all that is the news.... 32 days.

3 Big Ones

So Rayne had quite the adventure this week. As toddlers we should all know toddlers mange to get bumped, bruised, and just into all sorts of things. Well our dear little Rayne had three 'incidents' this week.

1) 12 Fire Ant Bites

2) Dropped a 12oz soup can on her big tow

3) A face plant into the edge of the dishwasher

Now think about these three injuries. If you had to choose which do you think caused a larger reaction at the time of injury? Which would make you scream the loudest and longest?? Do you have your answers good. Because now I'm going to tell you how you Rayne reacted.

In last place, as in the least reaction is 12 Fire Ant Bites. No joke. I was out grilling Burgers for lunch. Fred and Rayne were just out walking around. Rayne stepped off our patio onto the grass and fell. I knew that there were some ants around there so I went and stood Rayne up and dusted her off. She went on her merry way. It wasn't until about an hour later after lunch we were inside and Rayne began to fuss a little. She was taking the bottom of her foot to scratch her leg. I looked at her leg and saw a bunch of bites. A quick bath and some anti-itch cream later and everything was fine. The next day Rayne's bites had turned into little pustules. I scoured the web and looked at where Rayne fell down and it was concluded that it was Fire Ant bites. Then on Friday Rayne had a Doctor's appointment and although they were already starting to heal the doctor could deal they were Fire Ant bites. What a though little girl we have.

Did you guess a face plant into the side of the dishwasher?? Well you would be wrong. Sunday night Fred and I were cleaning up and Rayne was playing. She was getting a little excited, lost her balance and WHAM. Face met dishwasher. I picked Rayne up gave her a cuddle then looked her over. There was blood in her mouth. She had split her lip. I told Fred, he took Rayne out of my arms and I grabbed a cold bottle for Rayne. She happily took it and then stopped crying. We gave her a frozen teething ring after that. The rest of the night went just fine. No more blood, no swollen lip, no bruise. You would never know.

Anyone guess the soup can?? Wouldn't have been my guess either. But after dropping that soup can on her foot Rayne cried for a whole two minutes. Of course it was right at the base of the nail on her big toe. Been there done that and it hurts. It even bled a little, it was her first bleeding wound. That took place Sunday morning. Her foot hurt for most of the morning but by afternoon she didn't seem to notice the injury.

So our daughter may be little but she can sure take a hit. And it's natural. It's not like she has had to build defense against siblings. I have a feeling she just might be a handful.... ohhhh payback

Cleaning House

Recently Fred and I have decided to get back to our scheduled chore routine. It's not that we don't keep the house clean. But this schedule helps us make sure things are with the frequency we want. Making it so that we only have to do a little cleaning each day so the big cleaning days don't take as long.

Today was the upstairs bathroom which is the one with our shower tub in it. And we decided to scrub it down hard to get all the gunk out of it and start with a clean slate. So I get in there with this awesome cleaner I found called Doktor Clean. I found it at Kroger and it is an awesome paste that takes a lot of muscle out of cleaning. Anyway I get in there and start cleaning our tub floor. Before we had scrubbed this with everything else we had and could only get off the basic layer of grime. So we threw a mat down and just didn't deal with it. Today I paint a very annoy discovery. Paint. That is right someone painted our tub floor. Well the whole tub but most of the rest of it had come off. And we aren't talking nice enamel paint to cover up the scratches, no we are talking about wall pant. The didn't even have the decency to use a satin, semi gloss or glossy finish. They used a FLAT finish!!! Oh I was fit to be tied. But there was nothing to do but scrub.

I got out a plastic spatula to help scrap up the paint. I was preparing to find a tub floor just covered in scratches that would make me want to put the right paint on it. Do you know what I found?? An almost perfect tub. Sure there were some scratches but nothing terrible, no need to paint at all. After getting up most of the stuff off the bottom I moved on to the walls. The soap scum came off pretty easy sadly it brought along more paint. Instead of re-caulking they painted. I this point I was just praying to slip in the water and crack my head open and bleed out right there. Thankfully that wasn't the case for all the caulking around the tiles but the wall joint and fixtures. They also painted the soap holder. Oh what sad sad people.

Lastly I found paint in the sink as I was cleaning up. What were the previous renters thinking?? I'm pretty sure it wasn't the complex because as nuts as they are to put flat paint up, in any wall in an apartment, they were smart enough to use a semi-gloss finish in the bathrooms and kitchen. So I wonder if the last renters felt they wouldn't get their deposit back or when they were painting (I know they had to because management had to paint over their work before we could move in) they thought it would be a good idea. Either way it stinks to be the one to clean it up!

A Sweet Thought

In my process of trying to figure out how to help Rayne I called my big brother Benjamin. Because of his work in statistics he can tell me whether my thought processes are absolutely nuts or not. In talking back and forth Benjamin said "I know you are just going to let this roll off but you don't deserve this. You have had enough trials in your life you don't need this." He was right I just laughed and let it roll off. We talked a little more but eventually it was time to put Rayne to sleep so I got off the phone.

As I was giving Rayne her treatment I really started to think about what Benjamin said. And although I still didn't care the I "didn't deserve it" I realized that there was a slightly deeper implied meaning. That Benjamin my big brother truly cared about what I was going through. Even though he had his own family and hundreds of miles between us I was still important to him. And he felt sorry for my plight. And oddly enough that made me feel better. Especially since Benjamin and I haven't always had the best of a relationship.

Overall things seem to be looking up but time will tell. But no matter what its nice to know my big brother, who at three years old was ready to take down a doctor because the doctor was going to give me a shot, is still out there looking out for me.