Twelve days of Nicolette
The 12 days of Nicolette (sung to the Twelve Days of Christmas)
On the first day of Christmas my ex-true love gave to me, One Nappy head
On the second day of Christmas my ex-true love gave to me, Two unshaven legs, and One Nappy head.
On the third day of Christmas my ex-true love gave to me, Three nasty meals, Two unshaven legs, and one Nappy head.
On the fourth day of Christmas my ex-true love gave to me, Four loads of dishes, Three nasty meals, Two unshaven legs, and one Nappy head.
On the fifth day of Christmas my ex-true love gave to me, Five loads of laundry, Four loads of dishes, Three nasty meals, Two Unshaven legs, and one Nappy head.
…………..
Day 12 Twelve Unpaid Bills
Ickies!!!
Friday we had to go grocery shopping with all three kids like we normally do. It is such an unpleasant and slow task now that Becca likes to “walk”. About half way through I started to feel icky and I wanted to go home, when we finally got done it was about 8:30. On the way home I told Tim “I don’t feel good at all!”. By the time we got home I had the big “D”. I checked my email, put Kayden to bed, and went to bed myself knowing the worse was yet to come. Sure enough it did, about 11 something. I’ll spare you the details but lets just say it involved a bucket, the toilet, and trips into the bathroom every hour all night. I couldn’t even keep water down. 
Finally at 4am I asked Tim if he could go to Walgreens (thankfully only two blocks away) and get some Gatorade for me before he went to work. I have a tendency to get dehydrated quickly and then need I.V. fluids (which aren’t an option when you are one of the however many million American’s w/o health insurance). At 6am when I was sure he wasn’t going to go and get me any, he did. 
I drank a little and after that I only had to barf once.
As the day progressed I gradually felt better. I made it to my hair appointment (the one of two a year I get) and had my hair highlighted for the first time ever.
I’m only away now because I was awakened by Kayden yelling “MOMMY!!!! MOMMY!!! I barf!!!” from across the hall. After I gave her a shower and was rinsing her sheets off in the tub she said, “Smells like Daddy’s” (LMAO remember my post from a few days ago about Tim, the new van, and the 12 hr flu bug?), to which I replied, “Yes, that is what barf smells like”. After half hour plus of that funness I was wide awake and for some reason started thinking up new words to the Twelve Days of Christmas about a friend’s ex-girlfriend. That is how I got here… they were too funny not to write down so I decided to do it before I forgot.
My knitting projects. :)
My first attempt at a Calorimetry
The sundress I am making for Rebecca!
It isn’t going to be the ugly green blue of the pattern. The yarn I am using is Sugar n Cream colorway Cream but it looks like a light yellow.
Too funny not to share
This is an email to my friend about my day. The day was March 10th. Mondays are usually busy but this one was exceptionally interesting. I thought I should blog it and both she and another friend thought it was too good not to post in my blog. So here it goes…..
**(Author will not be liable for the reader barfing on their keyboards if they read the maroon text)** If you are a chicken and have a weak stomach, skip to the black text and photos of the new van after the maroon text.
“It was the usual Monday madness… this was my day today…
Up at 5:50, woke Ari up and dressed KK and Becca, then got myself dressed, took Tim to work. Came back home and started the dishwasher, got my book bag packed, gulped a slim fast *ugh* looked for lost items (because something or several somethings that you need seem to just disappear right before you leave the house). Took Ari to school, went to Carolynn’s, dashed to school, sat through 2 hrs of class. Went back to Carolynn’s and Becca was sleeping and as I’m sure you know we DO NOT wake our daughters unless it is an emergency, so I knit and visited for a bit. Then had to dash to KK’s eye appointment and sit there for 1 hr 15 minutes, while I was there Tim called me (I freaked out walking to the phone thinking he got fired..lol) turns out he was sick so I went and picked him up and at the stoplight on Saginaw and Eastman he barfed all over the dashboard, it splashed up onto the windshield, and was on the rug and the seat. I told him to barf into his Columbia fleece coat liner and it was a good thing I did because it was a LOTTTTTTTTTT of barf. OMG it smelled so bad and of course KK and Becca thought it was the most interesting thing in history and talked about it and asked questions for like a half hour. lmao I dropped him off at the house and he got some soapy rags and cleaned the mess up so I could go get Ari from school. From picking her up I went to Kelly’s to pick up the produce and the truck hadn’t come yet. It was supposed to be there at 11:30am and this was 4pm now. Five minutes later the truck shows up (the guy had got lost in Bay City because it was his first run over here). So we get the truck unloaded and Becca wakes up and proceeds to freak out for a half hour or more, screaming at me. Finally I let her sit in the car because she wanted to and she played with seat belt buckles while we tried to count out, sort, and weigh everything. Finally at 5:30 I took what I could and left. I had to be to college at 6 and we hadn’t even had dinner. I got home, ran in the house grabbed my books, another slim fast *ugh* , changed Becca’s diaper and left instructions to Ari to feed herself and her sisters cereal for dinner since I new Tim wouldn’t suck it up and make them anything, and I ran out the door to class. Sat there for 3 hours, got home and had to unload all the produce. Move and plug in the old fridge in the basement to keep Autumn’s stuff in overnight, then had to put all of it away. Take out bags and bags of garbage and recycle because I couldn’t function around it anymore (Tim’s in charge of that and of course never does it, imagine that!). I the threw meat in the crock pot to cook because it was going to spoil. We were supposed to make Skiyaki tonight but obviously that didn’t happen. I’m just now getting a chance to eat something, a salad made from all the stuff that came in the co-op and with alfalfa and mung bean sprouts I sprouted myself. There is more but those are the main highlights… lol
This is so absurd I should put it on my blog… lol
So, how was your day? LOL
Ali”
What makes this so funnny is that we had only had this car for one week exactly that day. If any of you know my husband he is wound tighter than a drum. Everything is a crisis, especially if it involves body fluids. If it was one of the kids who’d barfed in the car he’d have been totally freaking out. So for all the people to ever barf in a car, and of all the cars to barf in, it would be the new car and it would be him doing the barfing. It truly was a Mastercard moment…..
Here are a few pictures of the new van. Even one of the dash that Tim christened….. LOL
This is a 2005 Chrysler Town & Country Stow N Go with just 36,000 miles (rolled to 36 when they were driving it down to us). Still has 34,000 miles left on the Powertrain Warranty. Tom Harthausen from Feeny Chrysler in Midland, you ARE the bomb.
Becca’s Birthday
Poor Becca didn’t get much of a party for her birthday. Thankfully she is too little to know any better. We had her cake on Sunday because Mondays are insanely busy days for us. (That Monday turned out to be a REALLY interesting day but that is a whole other post…lol).
Here are a few pics of her and her cake and then a couple pics taken on her birthday when she zonked out on the couch before bed.
Dad, WHAT are you doing with that thing??
Take a deep breath and BLOW!!!
Too cute!!!
These were too cute not to blog about. I got a bushel of green beans from the produce co-op and I had to blanch and freeze them (hopefully they will last until we get our own going this summer). Anyway A bushel is a lot for one person to tip so when Kayden and Becca asked if they could help I reluctantly said, “yes”. I was thinking, “Oh, geeze this isn’t going to go well, KK will probably cut herself or they’ll dump them or start fighting over them”. LOL Well as it turns out they were a HUGE help. I let KK have a small paring knife and I demonstrated how to tip the tops and bottoms off. Becca decided she HAD to help to so I told her she could sit in her chair and watch. That was fine except she really wanted to help so she decided to start snapping them in half. lol They were really long so it was okay.
I was so impressed with them that they would want to help and that they would do it so well and for so long, they helped for over an hour until their older sister got hom from school and wanted to help too.
Here they are studiously helping me at the dinning room table. Kayden dubbed herself “the Bean Cutter”, and dubbed Becca ” the Bean Breaker”. Too funny!
Becca breaking beans, check out that look of sheer glee on her face. :)
Up North !
We had to go to Higgins Lake on Sat (the 8th) and since we were only a little under an hour from my mom in Harbor Springs, we decided to surprise her and visit. I snapped a few pics on the way. There are a couple of Kayden snoozing in her carseat, one of a Nissan Quest in front of is (dumb pic I know but hey I was BORED), one of the road going up 31 between Boyne Falls and Petoskey, one of the New Holiday Inn Express (it is HUGE and blocks the view of the lovely valley but at least it is nice to look at), one of the crest of the hill going down towards the bay (that long white gap in between the land masses is Little Traverse Bay for those of you haven’t ever been there), the fuzzy white pic with blackdots is the Bay frozen over and the black dots are fish shantys), the one near sunset is the “breakwall” and the light at the end is totally encased in snow and ice as is th e whole concrete walk out to it, and the last one is the ice dams along the shore (see all the footprints on the ice?).
KK snoozing
KK still snoozing
Ari really bored and KK still snoozing
Nissan Quest (we drove an enterprise rental EXACTLY like this a couple months ago) they are pretty sweet cars!
North on US31
Holiday Inn Express (so pretty)
The first house we lived in (well it was split into two apartments, we lived on the lower level), it used to be blue with white trim and didn’t look as nice as it does now. The shades in the windows are the ones we left behind! We lived there from May of ‘99 ti April 1st ‘01.
Frozen Bay with Ice Shantys
Frozen over Breakwall
Ice dams and footprints
Two years ago today…
I was lying in my hospital room with empty arms fervently praying for my daughter Rebecca. She had been born at 7:15 am that morning. My uterus had ruptured and she was in my abdomen when they got to her. She was blue and unresponsive and the relentless NICU team finally brought her back after 7 tries. Her condition was too grave for them and they could not stabilize her, they needed to send her to Holden NICU at University of Michigan. She was seizing, having severe Superventricular Tachycardia, and swelling over her entire body among other things. They didn’t think she would make it. The weather was so bad with fog and rain that U of M couldn’t fly their helicopter in, they had to send an ambulance and they are 2 hours south of us. They had 6 hours to get her on what is called a cooling cap. It is an experimental procedure where they cool the head way below normal temperature and the goal is to slow or stop the swelling of the brain. The crew made it to Holden with 30 minutes to spare. It was touch and go for a while. Everyone was very grim, the outcomes of cases with deliveries like Rebecca’s usually isn’t very good. She had no gag or sucking reflex and she was on a ventilator to breathe, the only bright spot at that point was that she could breathe above the vent which is a good thing, it shows that the deep portions at the base of the brain were not totally destroyed.
I remember my husband showing me pictures of her that someone snapped shortly after she was born (they took them so we could have something to remember her by because they didn’t think she would live). She looked so lifeless, there was color in her skin, but her eyes were empty and glassed over. I was shocked, I didn’t say how shocked I was but my husband later told me he could see it in my face. I had been put out under general anesthesia and she had been born for a while by the time I was repaired and woken up so I never got to see her face to face. All I had was these terrible scary pictures.
I can not describe the pain and heartache of having a baby and not being able to see it. It was torture……I wanted to climb the walls, but of course I could barely move. I was given units of blood, and more stuff than I care to remember. It seemed like everytime I would JUST fall asleep from exhaustion someone would come in and poke me and check me, they watched me like a hawk. I was terrified to be alone because I thought I would totally freak out, my guilt and pain was more than I could cope with. The morphine was making me hallucinate and they were frightening hallucinations involving Rebecca.
A lot more crap happened while I was in the hospital, I had an intestinal blockage and they had to insert a Nasogastric tube. That was the most painful thing I’ve ever had done…it was a worse/different kind of pain than my uterus rupturing. When my uterus ruptured I was already delerious from pain and stress and fear, but when that NG went down and it took three tries, I was FULLY conscious. The nurses that were doing it didn’t want to go and make a numbing cocktail for the end of the tube before they inserted it. Forget waterboarding, just jam NG tubes up supsects noses, they’ll talk faster than you can blink your eye!
Finally after 5 days my amazing OB released me into the care of my husband and let me go home. I CRIED I was so happy to get out of that place. All I wanted was to go see my baby!!! I really needed to be on an IV, my electrolytes were so totally whacked out from the blockage and the stomach pumping on top of everything else that it could affect my heart. My Dr. knew that I would get better quicker if he let me go so he gave me strict instructions to drink as much gatorade as I could, and come back and have bloodwork done in 2 days, and I was to IMMEDIATELY go to the ER if I felt the least bit strange.
I got out of the hospital on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday we drove down to visit Rebecca. It was my first time seeing her. It was soooo hard looking at her in the isolette and only being able to touch her through the holes in the sides. WOW We should have been at home, not in that place 2 hours from home, her lying all alone in that plastic box with wires and tubes coming out and going into her everywhere. *********** They were saying she wouldn’t walk, talk, eat, hear, or see on her own, that she probably would be a vegetable. She had brain damage to the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes of her brian confirmed on both MRI and CT. They could see that it wasn’t SEVERE global damage (the worst) but that it was definitely there and that they thought it would affect her.
I finally got to hold her when she was 9 days old. She was doing so much better by then. They still were saying the prognosis wasn’t that good, that we’d just have to take it one day at a time.
Today she turned TWO… When she finally came home at 18 days old and I put her to my breast she nursed like she’d done it all along. It took many long months of physical, occupational, and now speech therapy, but she walked at 10 1/2 months, and now talks in 3 word sentences. She truly is a MIRACLE BABY.
Catching up finally! (on blogging at least…lol)
YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m on WordPress now and I’m so excited that I got to bring my previous posts over and that it actually WORKED!!! I tried it once and it didn’t, then I tried it again and it worked!
Anyway… a lot has happened since my last post a few weeks ago. Two weeks ago tomorrow we got our first brand new stove and refrigerator!!!! The stove went in like a breeze but the fridge was a monster. We had to cut some cabinet and counter out, thankfully they can be easily fixed and we didn’t lose but a few inches of storage space. I’m so glad we started the remodeling of our kitchen with appliances instead of lets say granite countertop, because that would have really stunk to have our fridge not fit and have to find one with just the right dementions. The stove has a center burner and grate that can be exchanged out for a cast iron griddle that comes with the stove. The oven is a convection oven so we can bake much faster and more efficiently. The fridge has ice and filtered water in the door and we won’t lose any more food to being frostbit by our old apartment size model. This fridge is also Energy Star!
Last Friday I bought my first laptop!!! The only other thing I’ve bought myself that cost more than 100.00 was a Serger several years ago. I had a little over 500 dollars from my financial aide left and I decided to use it on something not only for college but for myself to enjoy. It is a Gateway M-Series and it was on sale at Best Buy for 499. *gulp* It is sleek and shiny and I will enjoy it for years to come.
On Monday we finally bought our Stow N Go van!!!! OMGosh it is so nice. It is a 2005 which is 3 yrs old but still 3 yrs newer than our old van that was not SNG and was at 99,000 miles. This one is white (a color we could agree on) and only has 36,000 miles on it. Tom Harthausen at Feeny Chrysler in Midland is a fantastic guy. We looked at a lot of vans and he did a lot of number crunching for us and finally made this one happen. Valerie at Members First Credit Union is a rocking loan officer, she put up with so many phone calls from us to make this deal happen.
Carolynn finally finished my knitting bag, I’m so excited!!! It is sew very pretty. *blush* I can’t wait to settle on a project to fill it. I determined to make something other than a scarf or baby hat. I’ve started a sweater and an afghan and not finished either of them before. I’m a little more realistic now, I try to not start something I don’t have enough yarn for or will be too difficult or time consuming, otherwise I’ll just have even more unfinished things sitting around. YIKES!
I can’t wait for it to get warmer outside. The kids are tired of being cooped up, and I’m sick of looking at WHITE everywhere….and the ICE OMgosh the ICE. I can’t count how many people are limping around with broken bones from falling on ICE. ICE should be a four letter word like SNOW is. YUCK!
Miss Rebecca is almost TWO! WOW! Two years ago I was waddling around at 41 weeks wondering if I was EVER going to go into labor. I sure don’t miss that part. Thankfully I won’t have to experience those last 5 weeks of torture if I have another pregnancy. That is about the only positive thing about it though, well that and I know I won’t have another uterine rupture.
Well Becca’s speech therapist is going to be here at 2pm so I better start getting ready.
I have so much
to post but I don’t have time to do it right now…maybe tomorrow!
