Bragging

I am going to say it right up front this is a total brag post so if you feel weird about that I warned you. You know its something we generally do not get to do in life, its just not acceptable to toot your own horn all the time.


I am home today its another snow day in NJ, Ryan is here with me. As I type this he is on the internet on the laptop Peter set up for him.


I was just sort of daydreaming thinking about the fact that he was on the computer running the mouse and navigating though the Playhouse Disney page and realizing his smarts, it really blows me away


Now maybe this is totally normal knowledge for a child who will turn 4 in a month but I have been told he is way ahead of his peers.


This child knows all his colors and shapes including things like octagon, trapezoid and pentagon, he knew all of these by 18 months. I actually have a video of him at 18 months doing the shape sorter saying all the shapes and placing them in the sorter like nothing. At one point you see him say "It's on the red side" and he looks and turns it right to the red side.


He currently can count to 100, he knows all his letters capital and lowercase and can identify them. He knows the sounds each letter makes and can give you an accurate list of words that start with that letter. He has been doing this for minimally a year already if not more.


He recently, I would say in the last 4 months starting to be able to write. He can write his name and all the capital letters. He understand opposites and rhyming for years, he can spell many words and can even read, maybe 10 words


His vocabulary is insanely large, he was a very early talker and always ahead in this area. I took him for a speech evaluation about a year ago because he was stuttering (which he still does off and on) and the speech therapist was so impressed with his language and the length of his sentences, she said his speech was way ahead



Peter is very smart, like one of the smartest people I ever met, he has that weird knowledge about a lot of different things he also started to read at 3. I consider myself smart but normal people smart, I think he got Peter genes,thankfully.


I think forward to the days when he will go to school, I feel like he will going to kindergarten and be like "Huh, I know this stuff already" and wonder if that is a disservice to him? We have a local private Academy school that is for students that excel you need to test to get in and be ahead of your peers. I sometimes wonder is a school like this the right road for him?


I always felt that children should be challenged and not left to conform with peers who maybe are not at an advanced level but then I wonder about placing undue stress on him too. Or is it stress at all if he is at an advanced level? OR is he advanced at all? Maybe I am just a crazy parent who thinks their child is awesome


Actually maybe I think to much about this and I just should let him be and see what happens but as his parent I want him to excel in the right place.

Ugh I think to much....LOL!

The Battle Of The Bulge

Why are some people predisposed to be thin and some overweight? Is it that we are predisposed at all? I am not sure

If we are not predisposed to be thin or overweight how is it then that children in the same house could have such different weighs?

My brother and I grew up in the same home with the same parents who required us to sit down to family dinner nightly. Sitting down to dinner (as many of my friends would tell you) was not an option it was what we did. So we ate the same foods and had the same set of rules for eating. The rules where we only drank milk at dinner and we always had to eat our vegetables, as far as the rest of the meal we never were made to finish it. My brother never had a weigh issue, I did. Hmmm?

How did we each learn such different views on food?
Why did I think it was OK to overindulge and he did not?
Why would I eat till it hurts and he did not?

I remember one time at Thanksgiving saying "Oh I am so full it hurts" and he said to me "Why do you do that?" Why does he not do that? Because it tastes good, hello? What is it in our head that makes us eat to much when we know we will feel like crap later.

I have been on Weight Watchers now since August 14, 2010 and to date have lost 43.6 lbs and I feel great. My health is better, I feel better and I fit better in my clothes (my new 2 size smaller clothes) but can I really change forever? I pray to God daily that I can

I fight everyday for thin, I count every point and have been eating super healthy but is there something somewhere that has to click to make a permanent change?

I was just talking to a co-worker (my size 2 co-worker) about exercise and how there are people in the world who love it and crave it and people who loath it. Are people "made" to love exercise or born? I compared my feeling for exercise by using a food analogy (of course)...I always hated tomatoes (which I love now...weird!) but I always though they looked delicious. It's the same way with exercise, I don't like it but it looks delicious. I need to change my feeling of exercise like I did tomatoes. Wonder how I do that?

Are we born to be a certain way or can we change it?

Winter

You know something I hate winter. Actually that is not being said with quite enough emotion...I HATE winter more than just about anything!

Seriously why do I live in NJ? OK wait I know that answer, my family is here. Can my whole family move somewhere warm please? I will follow all of you, I promise!

I wish I could go to sleep on December 26th and wake up April 1st. Lets weigh the pros and cons about winter, shall we?

Cons:
Its friggin cold
Its friggin dark
It friggin snows
There is friggin ice
My heat bill goes up
Did I say its friggin cold

Pros:
Christmas is in Winter
I go to Florida yearly in the winter
Ryan's birthday is in the winter
And sometimes I get a paid day off because school is closed


This morning we has a snow/ice/rain storm. The roads were glare ice, I joked on my Facebook page that I had to ice skate just to get to my car today. Schools called a 2 hour delay but after the 2 hours were up driving on local streets was still hell.

Why is this necessary? Think about mornings going to work in July.... No jacket needed, bright and sunny out with the occasional rainy day, no big bulky clothes needed and daylight till 8:30pm. I mean I see no issue here, summer is where its at with a bit of spring and fall mixed in

The moral to the story is the cons of winter outweigh the pros and there is nothing bad to say about the summer.

I think I am going to start a petition to ban winter and do 4 months each of Spring, Summer and Fall.

Who's with me?

I Can't Believe Its Been Almost 4 Years!

Ryan's birthday is next month and he will be 4. How is that possible? Time does fly by and wow it depresses me sometimes.

I had many infertility issues, I went to my doctor took all the drugs and nope that failed. I went to another doctor, took all the drugs and that failed. I went to a 3rd doctor and he basically told me "You need IVF" I went to get IVF and they found a huge cyst in my ovary and next thing I knew I was again in the hospital having surgery and I lost 1 ovary and tube. I had to go to Mt Sinai because no one even wanted to touch me, so I guess I was lucky? That was January 2006.

I gave up....I needed a break....I was a depressed mess...but I was done trying for a while

Somewhere in July 2006 I sat in a Weight Watchers meeting with my mother and told her how I was feeling so sick, that my Crohn's was acting up and I could not take it, I swear I could barely eat. On my ride home that night I thought (why no sure?) "OMG am I pregnant?" and my next thought was "When was my last period?" I looked through my calender and realized it was Memorial Day 2006 and there was no recording of a period in June at all. I went right to CVS and bought two different pregnancy tests, the multi packs so I had now 5 tests,and as anyone who has ever been pregnant knows you cannot wrap your head around being pregnant until you have at least a few positive tests of different brands. LOL!! So, I took the test and literally instantly there was a + sign. I thought I would die or hyperventilate at the very least. I called Peter on the phone and asked when he would be home and he said soon. He walked in the door and I lost it, I was crying so hysterically I could barely tell him. I was PETRIFIED! What the hell did we do? Almost 4 years...meds....surgery and all the doctors telling me no... I was pregnant! All I could think was HOLY SHIT!

I did everything right, I ate right and gained little weight (only 8lbs total to be exact). 16 weeks I had an amnio (due to my "Advanced Maternal Age") and he was perfect and a BOY!! Although I originally only wanted a girl I was thrilled. OMG a baby boy, I called everyone and anyone on my way home and for the next 2 hours.

19 weeks down... I went for the Level 2 ultrasound and everything again was wonderful but the director said "We really should have you back every 2 weeks because you had previous cervical surgery (for dysplasia) , just in case" Little did I know this was the best medical advice ever, I owe Ryan to her.

I came back every 2 weeks and even more since I now had gestational diabetes and all was good in the world, my OB (who has been my gynecologist for 15 years) even commented that I was making this look easy. I remember saying to him "Don't say that you know I do nothing easy" WOW...how true that was!

Then came my appointment the day before Thanksgiving I was 25 weeks and 2 days. I had 2 appointments that day, one with my OB, one with the specialist. I got caught in my OB's office because he had an emergency and almost cancelled my ultrasound but didn't and left my OB's office to reschedule that for later. Another very smart move but who knew at the time.

I went to the ultrasound and met my mother (she wanted to come and see the baby) and the first thing they did was measure my cervix. Now from having these done I knew it needed to be over 2.5 cm, under was 2.5 cm was"critical" and 2 weeks before I was at like 4. She measured at minimum 10 times and the screen kept reading 2.0 or 1.9 or 1.8. I was panicking to put it lightly. She asked me if I was having contractions and literally ran out of the room for the director. I thought...contractions? Of course not. In came the Director and told me I needed to go to the labor and delivery at the hospital, OK now I am freaking.

So thank god my mother was there and took me, they wisked me in an hooked me up to the baby monitor and I was having contractions that I could not feel but were changing my cervix. I learned that night that if I did not have the ultrasound that day the contractions would have continued probably until he was born at 25 weeks gestation. ACK....to say I was freaking at this point was an understatement. The miracle baby I was never to concieve could not be born at 25 weeks, please God this cannot happen.

From that moment until Ryan was born at 39 weeks exactly by C-section after a failed induction my pregnancy was a whirl win. I was on bed rest now for the next 14 weeks. I had to have my legs up at all times, I could only go down/up the stairs once a day, I could only shower every other day for 5 minutes. Lets just say I spend way more time on the internet than any 1 person really should.

I counted the days of pregnancy just to get him more developed, we celebrated the weeks. I remember my mom would call all excited each week "We are at week 27..." As the weeks went on and he was still inside, I relaxed slightly and then came my elevated blood pressure (pre-eclampsia). I would go to the specialist and my blood pressure would be 200/107 and she would send me back to L&D, this happened week after week. I learned to leave a packed hospital bag in the car.

The nurses at Valley all got to know me and when they saw me weekly they knew right what to do, it's sad really. I once knew all the nurses from the surgical ward and now I was making myself through the L&D ward too. Honestly they were wonderful and just love Valley hospital.

My doctor induced me at 39 weeks he wanted control of my delivery and of course 13 hours later at 7cm after a manual dilation I again failed. C-section here we come! At least that went fairly easy, my perfect baby was OK and full term.

Someone said to me when I was pregnant, bad pregnancy...good child and man they were so right. Ryan was a super good baby he almost never cried and when he did it was he was hungry 99% of the time. He has been this easy to this day too, I am so lucky. Now please do not get me wrong there are days I want to run down the street screaming at the top of my lungs or maybe throw something at the wall but he is really a model child.

I cannot believe it has been almost 4 years. I remember my baby boy coming home like it was yesterday, he was so small (6lbs 11 oz) his coming home outfit was out and we had nothing small enough to fit him. We walked in the house and I took him from his car seat and looked at Peter and said "Now what?"

You know what though, we figured it out and honestly I rock at this parenting thing if I do say so myself.

I prayed for him and someone knew I needed him, I am forever grateful for every bit of these past 4 years.

He is my one and only miracle and he is perfect

The Road Back

I have been of a slacker lately but I am back today

The road back to recovery and health has been a tough one but I am happy to say I am close to the finish line

I had surgery on December 2nd finally, after the surgery which was scheduled for November was stopped due to the discovery of a mass in my throat (I will touch on this later). I guess I had forgotten when you wake up from major abdominal surgery what it really felt like, holy shit the pain was intensely horrible! I remember the nurse in the recovery room saying "we are getting them to bring up the PCA (Patient controlled analgesics) machine now for your pain meds" and thinking...Maybe you should of had that here waiting for me, no? Of course before you know it, the machine was there and hooked up but then they start the task of getting you ready for the move to your hospital room. Well this included flipping you around to get your gown back on and covered with blankets and all the machines hooked up and making sure nothing important like the catheter in your bladder gets pulled. Normally this would not sound all that bad but with 2 large cuts in your abdomen with a total of 40 staples this is something morphine can not even help you with.

For those of you who do not know what I had done I had a Parastomal hernia which is a hernia at the site of the ileostomy, the #1 complication with ostomy surgery. Now normal people get a hernia and they do laproscopic surgery and put in a mesh and all is done and you arehome the same day. But due to having Crohn's disease this was not so easy. Crohn's disease does not like the mesh patch, whatever the material is, almost 100% of the time it is the source of attack for Crohn's disease. Since the patch would be located immediately under my ileostomy, if Crohn's attacked there we would have a major problem or as the surgeon called it "catastrophic problem." So my surgeon told me we needed to move the ileostomy. All I could think was UGH! its so good where it is now...no, I don't want to!! Now I know none of you really get this, but when you get ileostomy it is a challenge in the beginning, it works all weird, the size of it changes for a good 6 months-1 year. It's a challenge to find the right bag to use all while facing leaks and skin burns from the intestinal contents....let's just say this it sucks ass in the beginning. I was not looking forward to do it again but that was the plan.

So they take me to my room and get me into bed (holy crap that hurt!) and the recovery begins. Wow it was hard this time, its been almost 11 years since my last intestinal surgery and age must be a factor because this was a tough one. I had a mid line cut for the general abdomen access and a cut at the old ileostomy site (so they can close it) and of course the spanking new ileostomy now on my left side. I am also am so lucky to have this big ass drain at the site of my old ileostomy that was less that comfortable but would hopefully help keep an infection away. I was in the hospital 4 days. Day 1 was the surgery day and you already know how that went, day 2 was not that bad,actually as good as the day after surgery could be. Then came day 3...OMG this was the day I wanted to die or OD on morphine or anything that would make this less painful! When you have intestinal surgery your intestines completely shut down and stop working a sort of paralysis. So you get an incredible build up of gas in your intestines that hurts more than any surgical cut, staples or labor with Ryan and clearly I forgot about this. The only real help is to get rid of the gas, which of course is a challenge with your intestines not working so it gets worse and worse. And then they inform you the pain medication makes it even worse by keeping your intestines paralyzed so they make you walk the halls to get it moving. Sounds easy, right? Well its pure hell, the pain is horrible but I was determined to get rid of the pain that had me moaning in pain so I walked and walked and walked till I was going to fall down, the nurses thought I was their star patient but I was just desperate for relief. Then came day 4 and the pain was still there and it was really bad so I walked and walked and walked and my intestines starting working a little so I walked and walked and walked. This went on for a week- 10 days.... The pain was hell and finally the gas pains were gone. Those are 7-10 days I hope to wipe from my memory at some point.

From that point I had vomiting for 4 days, a low grade fever for 2 weeks and, I got myself a kick ass case of thrush (a yeast infection in your mouth) from all of the antibiotics and general yuck. Food was not good and just made me feel bad and I was tired constantly. I slept in a recliner for days because I could not lay in bed and took Percoset just to be able to sleep at all.

And the road back moves on....Here I am about 6 weeks later and my everyday is totally pain free, I am not allowed to pick up or carry anything for "a long long time" according to my surgeon. This was right after he told me that he was impressed the mesh patch held because the defect in my abdominal wall was huge and he had to cut out a ton of destroyed muscle and tissue. Good to know doc! One day last week I bought one of the LeCrueset enamel coated cast iron pots from William Sonoma that weighs more that Ryan and realized after I purchased it that I should not be carrying it but what was I to do then I was standing there in the mall with it all paid for? So I went right to my car, carrying it all the way, thinking this is not good and paid for it with pain for the next 3 days. OK note to self no carrying things...nothing for along long time! But trust me its a kick ass pot!!

So its not totally over as I need to have a biopsy of the mass in my throat or actually the back of my tongue. Good news is my doctor does not think it is lymphoma but rather an overgrowth of lymph node type tissue for no known reason. I am probably going to have it done in April when I have a week off of work because it is done under general anesthesia in the hospital and I must stay in the hospital at least overnight to make sure my throat does not swell so bad that it effects my breathing. I really do not want to go back to the hospital, I still feel like I need to get past this last surgery. I am not sure if that makes sense of not but for the moment its all still fresh and the pain is still right there in the front of my brain. To do it again right now...ugh!