Well, at Least I Finished the Hat...

Where have I been?!

Well, let me tell you...Settle in, this could take a bit...You might already know some of this from Facebook if you follow me there.



Last Tuesday was Luna's two month check up! She's healthy and really short, basically. She's in the bottom percentile for height, but in the 10th for weight (9lbs 11oz)! Growing well though so no concerns. She had her shots, poor thing, and on the way home from the appointment I began to feel poorly myself.

See, the day before, after Mike left for work, I ended up with a really bad cramp in my left side. The heating pad I tried did nothing for it, but I took an Ibuprofen and called Mike to ask if I could go to urgent care to get it looked at. He agreed and we went over there together. They told me I had a UTI and my side pain was just probably a "pulled muscle." Well.

Okay, back to Tuesday. The horrible side pain comes back while I'm driving. By the time I get home I'm just praying how thankful I am that I got us home and I walk through the door, tell Mike he has to unload the kids, and go to our bedroom to try to lay down and cry. I couldn't get comfortable. It was excruciating. I read online something about ruptured appendixes and kind of freak out. Tell Mike and we agree that he will drop me off at the ER because it's not getting better and I'm feeling nauseous on top of it all.

Mike drops me off at the hospital to go put the kids to bed because we have no idea how long this will take. I tell the nurses I urgently have to use the rest room and they tell me to take a sample. There's not much coming out, but okay. They tell me I'm severely dehydrated and start fluids as well as two different pain killers. I'm throwing up in a bag as she's trying to get me the meds. They tell me next is to relax until I can go for a CT scan. The scan uncovers an 8mm kidney stone and they also let me know I NEVER HAD A UTI. I've never had one before in my life though so I didn't know to question that! The nurse said the urgent care just assumed that from the presence of blood in my urine...which was quite annoying for me to have wasted money being misdiagnosed. They should have sent me to the ER the previous day.

ER sends me home with painkillers and I'm still super doped up from the IV, which means Luna has to take formula for the first time ever. She's my first kid to ever have even tried it. I only had two bottles of "mama water" (what Otto calls breast milk) pumped in the freezer. This upset me quite a bit, but once I get home and Mike says she took to it no problem I relax a bit, because this is a dire situation and was my last resort. Fed babies are happy babies, I remind myself.

Bros being big helpers while I was ill. 

Wednesday I meet with the urologist. He says I might have to wait until Friday or Monday for the surgery I need because of Thanksgiving. He calls the hospital to check. They are going to be closed Friday too. He asks me when I last ate and I tell him...and thank god, they get me in that night! Our lovely friend watched the kids so Mike could be with me. I wake up with a stent and super hungry.

The next day was Thanksgiving! I did too much and it was quite tiring, but I was in a cheerful mood because that horrible (seriously, horrible. I'd rather have contraction pain) pain was gone! Mike did a great deal of the cooking, bless him (yes, we STILL hosted Thanksgiving here)! I was planning on making two types of rolls from scratch, but you can see we bought some instead. I did make the stuffing myself and the wild rice and tangerine salad. Mike took over the cranberries for me, made a pie, and spatch-cocked the turkey on the grill. The other side dishes were brought by our guests.

Luna's so cute...enjoying being passed around on her 1st Thanksgiving

After Thursday I rested a great deal. I thought about working on the hat for Otto I've been posting on the Yarn Along posts, but sleep is much more satisfying than knitting (and knitting on pain medicine would probably be a disaster for me). My routine was pain pills, read Outlander, and fall asleep until Luna needed me. It was a glorious three days of rest that I feel I've been needing for four years! Only wish I didn't have to go through what I did to get there. Happily, I was able to resume breast feeding too.

All day Sunday I was an anxious wreck because the stent had to come out and the surgeon told me to remove it myself. I'm very proud to say that I accomplished that and I did take a picture once it was out of me, but I won't post it here because I want to keep the few blog readers I do have ;)

We also put up the Christmas tree Saturday. Oops. I'm going out of chronological order here. The Ninja Turtle ornaments were my idea (Pinterest) but Mike and Orion bought the components and assembled them. All of us helped make the cranberry garland, which was actually pretty enjoyable and took less cranberries than I imagined. I'm quite thrilled the tree looks different than the past few years! And we decided the boys are old enough now that we'd try putting it back inside. The past two years we've put the tree out in the sun room until Christmas morning. So far, so good, but Otto will still try to dismantle it if he is unattended and in a feisty mood...

I also went out Black Friday for some thrifting (Orion grew into 4T pants overnight) and found this sweet little snow lady for $1 to add to my Christmas mantle. My mom had quite a collection of snowmen/snowwomen she put out every year and this one certainly reminds me of her <3

Sunday my friend Kristen and I both took our oldest kids to see Moana together. I loved it! My favorite character was the grandmother. Orion choose sour skittles and chocolate milk for his movie snack, which makes my stomach churn but he was happy. I drank a huge overpriced bottle of water because I'm too afraid to drink soda now and ate a lot of popcorn. Afterwards, they came back to our house and Kristen took some family photos for us so I could put together our Christmas card. I'm so pleased with how they turned out but I'm not posting more here because they will be on the cards!

But don't think my health woes were over after all that fun!!!

My next hurdle was my tooth. My front right tooth had been causing me a lot of pain since the vomiting-at-the-hospital incident. So I had to waste precious time going to the dentist to be told I need a root canal. Joy! This appointment was scheduled for Wednesday, but the surgeon had a death in the family and now I wait until next week.



So, can you see I've been a little too busy to post? It's funny because I've never had a reason to distrust my body before but it seems to be revolting. There are also lovely symptoms of having my good gut bacteria killed off from the antibiotics I was prescribed after surgery....*sigh*

Anyhow, I am still supposed to be taking it easy, but it is HARD. I told myself to ignore the dishes this morning and do something fun instead. So I finished Otto's hat! The pattern is Barley by Tin Can Knits and you can find my notes on the project at my Ravelry page.

He told me he liked it, but then declared that it is a "skateboard!" and not a hat at all...

Finally, here we are. The week has gone by very fast and that's one of the best things I can say. I am looking forward to maybe squeezing in a nap if we are lucky...and I'm hoping to get back to church because Advent is one of my favorite times of the year. I'll leave you with these two cute photos of a super happy Lu. She's definitely the most smiley baby out of all my kids!