Wordless Wednesday

4 More Weeks

I went to the doctor this morning and for the most part I think that things are looking good for my foot and no surgery should be needed even though is not completely out of the question, it is farther off the table now than it was 3 weeks ago. The doctor was pleased to see that the top portion of the bone that broke away from the foot bone is growing back nicely so now we are just watching the lower portion of the break. He said it is kind of a "rule of thumb" that any break that has a 1cm space between the break and the bone will need surgery, mine is between 5-8mm so he is not saying that forbidden word "surgery" to my ears now and hopefully he won't have to in 4 weeks when I go back for my final check. Yes, originally he said I would probably need to be in the boot and on crutches for 6 weeks and now he has extended it to 7 weeks, but you know what if extending it one more week means no surgery then I can live with that. The doctor also said that he is going to have a rep contact me about getting a bone enhancer. I will wear this once a day for 20-30 minutes and it is suppose to enhance the healing/growing of the bone by 30%. I told him that I was hoping to be boot and crutches free for Thanksgiving, however, I go back to see him the Monday before Thanksgiving so it is not completely out of the question yet. If I'm all healed by the 24th of November then I should have 4 weeks exactly to finish up my Christmas shopping good thing I have already started.
Thanks to everyone who kept me in your thoughts and prayers, hopefully I will have good news when I go back in 4 weeks!

I may have a problem......

Is it weird that in a way I am obsessed with gas prices? It is almost like a little game that I play with myself every time I leave the house, I get in the car and find myself getting more and more excited as I get closer and closer to a gas station in anticipation of what the gas has dropped to that particular day. Just yesterday we were out and about and as we approached QT I saw that gas is now $2.55 a gallon and got all excited. I can't remember the last time it was this low (and sadly $2.55 really isn't that low). I was writing in Paige's baby book last night and saw that when she was born in April of 07 the price of gas was $3.18 a gallon.
Oh the things that we get excited about when we don't get out of the house very much! Please God let me hear good news tomorrow when I go to the doctor I don't know how much more of this house arrest I can take, believe me I have learned my lesson.......

Get Well Goodies

Our neighbor Tim is such a sweet man he is kind of like the dad in the neighborhood to Cory and myself and he just found out last night about my foot. Cory was out playing with the girls and Tim came over to chat, during the chat I guess the topic of my foot got brought up so he immediately wanted to bring me something. Tim or Mr. Tim as Claire calls him starting asking Claire what kind of pie I/she liked because he was going to bring me one. Well I guess he didn't get too much helpful information out of our 3 year old so he just ended up going to the bakery and getting pastries and cookies which you can never go wrong with in a 3 year olds eyes or mine for that matter. We are so lucky to have such awesome neighbors!! Thank you to Carol and Kelli for the meals that you have brought to us as well you guys are the best.

Kudos to Me

Since I can not go anywhere these days unless I am completely by myself or have another adult with me to help with the kids I have pretty much been under what feels like house arrest. So when the girls and I (okay basically me) are going completely stir crazy and need to get out of the house I simply put them in the car and we just drive. Now through my drives I have found a beautiful pond with gorgeous oak trees all around it that we check out about once a week to see when the leaves seem to be in full peak because I think I am going to try and have our Christmas card pic taken there. But the best of my finds is a park that I can take the girls to be myself! It is a small park that only has 4 swings and three slides that are attached to one another via a platform for the kids to climb on. It works out perfectly because I can park my car right along the curb where the kids climb out directly onto the park grounds and within about 15 feet they are at the playground equipment. My biggest fear in taking them anywhere by myself is getting Paige across the parking lot safely and with this park I don't have to worry about that. We were there today for about 40 minutes and it was a beautiful day for it.
However, now I am getting ready to take Paige to the doctor because she will not go down for her nap which is totally not like her, usually I lay her down and she is out for the count. Not today she stood crying and screaming for me for an hour, when I would hold her she would be fine and fall right to sleep however as soon as I lay her down she was up screaming again. Who knows maybe it is a fluke thing but her appetite hasn't been good lately and she has had a cold for over a week now. I just want to be sure incase this whole episode happens again at bedtime when the doctors are all home for the night.

Pumpkins, Pumpkins and More Pumpkins

All of us and my parents went to the pumpkin farm this weekend and had a lot of fun. First thing we had to do was go see the horses and Claire wanted to ride them with Papa. Next on the list was riding on the "train" if you can call it that. Claire was so excited because as she told us she was old enough to ride by herself this year and she LOVED having free rein of the horn. We then checked out some of the pumpkins, played in the tunnel and made our way over to get Claire's face painted. The girls also enjoyed seeing the animals they had there and Claire's favorite part was the blow up dinosaur I think that it reminded her of Monkey Joe's which she can't get enough of. It was hard for me to get around this year due to my foot but both Cory and my parents were great as they took turns pushing me in a wheelchair which was Cory's grandma's. It was funny because the wheelchair is an older one that is harder to push and anytime we would hit uneven land or sand the wheelchair would just come to a stop and my body would keep going forward, I almost flew out 3 times but was able to catch myself and we all had a good laugh about it.

Our Little Escape Artist

Well the day has come and WAY WAY to early, Paige has learned how to climb out of her crib. Claire and I ran out to do a quick errand tonight so Cory was in charge of little Ms. Paige. While we were gone Cory wanted to check something on the computer and seeing as how when you are on the computer Paige likes to try to go through every drawer so Cory decided instead of fight her on it he would just put her in her crib for a few minutes. Well not even 2 minutes had passed from the time he put her in the crib until she was making an entrance that seemed to say "hey dad, how's it going, that little plan of yours didn't work out to well". At first Cory thought that I had come home and gotten her out without him noticing but it didn't take him long to realize it was all Paige.
When Claire and I got home Cory said "we have an escape artist on our hands", I knew from the way that he was looking at me that she had climbed out of her crib. This was not too much of a shock to me seeing as how she has been getting into everything lately and just this afternoon she had climbed up onto our table in just a matter of minutes. I look into the kitchen and there she is sitting in the middle of the table pulling all of my napkins out of my napkin holder. As I am freaking out and trying to get to her as fast as I can possible hobble she got down from the table just as easily as she got up and before I could reach her.
Guess we will be lowering the crib to the lowest setting this weekend. Man this is just an example of some of the differences between she and Claire. Claire NEVER climbed out of her crib or even tried to and here we have Paige at not quite 18 months and she has already mastered it. Claire is definitely our cautious one where Paige is our fearless one, I am already seeing many difference between a first and second child good thing we aren't having a third.

A True Fall Day

The weather that we are having today definitely confirms that fall has arrived. My mother in law and I took the girls to the park to let them run around and get some fresh air. Since I am not able to run around with the girls I sat on the "sidelines" and just watched everything that was going on around me. The first sign of fall that I saw was all the beautiful colors that the leaves are changing to, as the breeze was blowing I could smell fall in the air and seeing all the leaves that were falling from the trees got me even more excited for the holidays to arrive. Another sign of fall was over in the gazebo that was close to the playground I saw a group of older ladies carving pumpkins. I don't know what it is about a carved pumpkin that just confirms that Halloween is around the corner. At first I was looking at all the different patterns that the pumpkins were displaying and thinking that certain ones were really neat and then I began to wonder why they had already carved them seeing as how today is the 13th and they will be rotten before Halloween arrives.
I couldn't believe how many grandparents had taken their grandkids to the park today. I was fun to watch how grandma and grandpa relate and play with the little ones, especially when the parents aren't around. I had so much fun watching this one grandma in particular with her two twin grandsons that will be 2 in November. She was pushing them both in the swings side by side doing "underdog" over and over again with them and seeing the joy on all three of their faces just brought a smile to my face....
It does TOTALLY stink that I am off my foot for the next 5 weeks but I tell myself that if this hadn't happened to me then I wouldn't have been sitting on the "sidelines" and I might not have seen all these fall/fun things going on around me. Maybe this is Gods way of telling me that I need to slow down and enjoy life and all the beautiful things that it has to offer us. Don't get me wrong though I am SO ready to be done with these crutches and boot, I have learned my lesson after just one and a half weeks don't need to experience it for 5 more.

Is it an Earthquake?

No, it is just the men on my roof making my house shake like one. Wow, I guess I was never home when we had our roof replaced when I was younger, or maybe we never had our roof replaced seeing as we moved a lot.

We were woken up this morning at 6:40am to the sound of scraping and what sounded like someone who weighed 300 pounds walking across our roof. I mean seriously I know that you know there are people sleeping below you do you really have to STOMP across the roof, it was almost like them saying we are awake and at work so you need to wake up too! Well they scared the total you know what out of Claire who started screaming and crying not knowing what was going on except that she was asleep one minute and then heard strange men's voices and a scraping sound. I kept waiting to hear from Paige but I never did so I got up, got dressed, put on my sexy walking boot and headed to check on her. Both Cory and I couldn't see how she would be able to sleep through all that noise, but sure enough as I entered her room there she was asleep on her back with her blanket over her head not being bothered one bit by all the ruckus that was happening right above her precious little head. I would like to know how all that noise didn't bother her but when I came in with my crutches she heard that and woke up am I really that loud with them??
So our morning started off at 6:45am and by 9am it seemed like it should be at least 11am, here it is 10:30am now and I swear to you it should be lunch time. Anyway enough of the babbling, what is interesting is that the reason that our house is shaking more than it should is because we have to replace all the wood under the shingles. Yep, it seems whoever built our house decided to skimp on the nice thick sturdy wood and went with the thinner cheap kind. SO now we get to replace the wood which is going to cost us between another $1-$2,000 that we weren't expecting. The best part is that one of those lovely 300 lb men stepped through the ceiling in the girls bathroom because the roof/wood was so rotten, so Cory gets to replace that when this is all said and done.
I am going to stop talking about it now as it just makes my head hurt, hope you all are having a better Wednesday then we are, I tell you when it rains it pours. Why is it that money can't go out a little at a time?

One Legged Mom!

Okay for those of you that don't already know I fell and broke two bones in my foot on Friday and WOW, what an inconvenience it has been to my life. I think that there should be some way that ensures that a mother of young children can not get hurt in anyway, shape, or form that enables her to tend to her children. I am so mad at myself because as Cory so nicely pointed out it wasn't even a good way or a good story to tell on how it happened. I was at my sister's house getting ready to leave and get the girls home for naps so I was walking out of her kitchen into her garage. She has two steps that go down from her kitchen into her garage and as I was walking down them I saw out of the corner of my eye a toy that I needed to dodge. Well in doing so I ended up setting my foot down on the very edge of her doormat (who has a doormat going from your garage into your house anyway?) causing my left ankle to totally buckle away from my body out to the left all the way around. I felt this unbelievable pain shoot through my body and heard a "pop" so I immediately knew it was bad, however, I was holding Paige so I had to set her down before I could collapse to the floor myself. I starting calling for my sister who was right behind me until she remembered she needed to do something real quick before walking out with us. She came outside and said "what is going on, what happened"? I wanted to say I don't know you tell me you were behind me but, she wasn't. Then there is my adorable nephew who will be 5 in February trying to tell me what he saw and Claire who is laughing because she thinks that I am kidding around not realizing that I feel like I am going to DIE! At first I was in so much pain that I couldn't think of anything except for the pain I was feeling. For some reason I must have weak ankles because I have done this type of thing many times before, one example being about a month ago I was a the park with my neighbor and did the same thing to my right foot except the pain didn't last as long, I was able to walk on it and there was no "pop". So I thought that if I just rested it for a few minutes it would be okay, wrong within 10 minutes my food was starting to swell and turning black and blue. I ended up going to the Urgent Care and sure enough I chipped my ankle bone and fractured one of the bones that goes from my ankle down to my toes along the outside of my foot. They put me in an ankle brace and a boot for my foot, however, it is not a walking boot so I am on crutches which is near impossible to get around with. After just two days my armpits are killing me and I get tired so easily from having to get myself around. I am going to call the Orthopedist on Monday as soon as they open and hope and pray that I can get in and get a Walking Boot so I can get rid of the crutches.
I talked to my mom this morning and told her that I think I am starting to get depressed. I can't do anything, there are so many times that I want to do something as easy as get up and let the dog out or go to the bathroom and have to get myself up into the standing position and then grab my crutches without falling over and then be on my way to do my simple task. It is all such a pain and as I told my neighbor Carol, I am for the most part a pretty independent person and I DEFINITELY have my routine and ways of doing things with the girls and not being able to do them is driving me crazy, I have to sit back and let go of the reins so to speak and let Cory drive for awhile which I am SO not good at.
Prime example, the phone is ringing right now, but am I even going to try to get it, nope because I know that by the time I get my butt out of this chair and get the crutches and hobble to the phone I will be too late so why even bother. One more thing that totally stinks is that Cory actually took off work this week to spend some time with the girls and me, we were going to try and do some fun things around town but now that is out! I guess in a way I am lucky that he is home this week because there is NO way that I could take care of the girls all by myself but this is not how I envisioned this week to be as I am sure he didn't either.

Elaine Benes-Squat Dance

Our little Paige is so funny, she absolutely LOVES music anytime it comes on she will start doing her dance which Cory and I have named The Elaine Benes "Seinfeld"- Squat Dance. She especially loves Kid Rocks new song "All Summer Long". I have attached some videos of her dancing to her favorite song. The cutest thing is as you will see, she hears a song start and is kind of listening until she hears her favorite song "All Summer Long and then she jumps up and starts doing her "Elaine Benes-Squat" moves or if she is already kind of moving she kicks those moves into high gear when Kid comes on. Even if we are in the car and Kid Rock comes on she will get all excited/wide eyed and start kicking those legs. Oh the wonderful memories that we get from our children, this will definitely be one of Paige's that Cory and I will never forget. Now turn up those speakers and get ready to introduced to the newest dance move!

In this first video you will hear Paige saying "cheese" since we taped the video with our camera she is saying cheese, can't tell she is use to having her picture taken, can you??


Both the girls are at the top of the stairs yelling for Killian to come up and join the family. Paige is yelling "dog" at him, as my heart is leaping out of my chest because I am afraid she is going to fall down the stairs.