The green rebar tour

Last year the unthinkable happened when a bridge collapsed in the Twin Cities.

They have started new building. I like to think it's part of the process of healing, of closing the jagged gash scarring the river and those towns.

One of my dearest people had a chance to visit the site and take some truly incredible pictures. You really must go see them. Go now. They are not only very interesting as an educational tool (I certainly had no idea what went into bridge building) but are fantastic pictures as well.

Above is one of my favorites. You can click there and it will take you to the set, or you can just click on the link here.

Photo Round-Up

Someone is smiling:


Someone grew about a foot this month:

This is the new family time (love):

another round

So, somehow my last post got picked up by a weird website search engine thingie. I have removed the phrase that was causing it to get picked up and am reposting. The things you learn :)

Things here are going well - busier than I thought I would be at this point in my mat leave. I can't believe it is about to end, I go back to work in two weeks. TWO WEEKS! I am so not prepared to hand Henry over to the SuperDaycare, even though they are super. We are really happy with the place we are sending him, it's the same place as his older brother. We were on a waiting list for 2 years to get Will in at this place (and then deferred entrance one year so he started at 3) so are feeling really lucky that we got the sibling advantage with the Wait List this time around.

Also feeling really lucky because my work has done two amazing things recently. Like, mind-boggling amazing. I work in a pretty male dominated industry and my company is not really an exception. Other than the fact that the president is a woman, there are really only like 4 other women in the entire company. Also, it has a somewhat transitory nature so it tends not to be super family friendly either (I am the only woman in the company with children that are not adults). However, when approaching how they would handle my new status as a parent of two young children they have been amazing. First, my maternity leave. Even though my office isn't technically big enough to require them to follow Family Leave regulations they did anyway, giving me the full 12 weeks off unpaid. And then, this is the part that really blows me away, they instituted a policy that allows for the donation of leave time to a fellow employee. And oh my lord my co-workers were so generous. I don't want to put on here how much, but way above and beyond generous. People donated so much time that combined with my own sick/vacation time and some savings I was able to take off the 12 weeks without freaking out about how we could afford it the entire time. They gave me time with Henry so I didn't have to go back to work much earlier. I can't even begin to explain what a gift that is.

Also, they are letting me have a stab at a trial run flexible schedule. I have 3 months to prove to them that I can get just as much work done in a week by working from home 2 days a week as I would if I was in the office full time. I'm feeling pretty confident that I can impress them in this regard, I have worked remotely before and know how to discipline myself to keeping to a schedule. If anything, I have the tendency to work too much when I work from home because I have a hard time shutting it out. But my boss has had a bad experience with this before so we will see, wish me luck.
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We had the first of the new surveillance check-ups for Dan's Cancer recently. It's weird, making the move from fighting cancer to the new living with cancer thing. Because that's sort of how I look at it. We don't really consider it gone for five years. For five years we will go in for these check-ups. Holding our breath for the days before because if it comes back now we are looking at a whole different ball game. This was the first one, and I hope it gets easier. I hope we are given an opportunity to learn how to live with this new reality over the next five years. But this one, it ended up throwing all of us out of whack for a good week. I didn't sleep, Dan slept a lot. Will was on edge because Dan and I were. I know how lucky we are to be at a point were we have the opportunity to learn how to deal with remission, but I think sometimes we were unprepared at what kinds of scars the experience has left on our family. I say scars, but that week it felt much more like still raw, open wounds.

One of the things I think it has left me with is a difficulty to properly assess the urgency of a medical situation. Everything is either 0 or 100 in terms of how worried I get. I forget that there is a large range of numbers in between there. It's just, with Dan he went in for what we thought was a little infection and walked out with a cancer diagnosis. A cancer in which the success of treatment relies almost entirely on catching it early. Within hours of that first appointment for the infection it turned out he didn't have we were scheduling surgery. And at one point during chemo we went in because Dan had a little bit of a nagging cough. Once there they rushed him over to the hospital to be admitted because his blood oxygen levels were so low they were worried about him going into respiratory distress and "taking a turn for the worse". I was on "bedrest" when that happened.

You take that and add my experiences with what happened with my own health at the end of my pregnancy. I think I'm somewhat justified in having a slight phobia when it comes to potential medical concerns. But what I hope eases up with time is the feeling that I get when faced with something like Dan's monthly check-up or Will's mysterious arm rash or Henry's lingering jaundice. I don't simply worry that one of things could be potentially very serious, I flashback to that day when Dan called me and told me that this was not an infection, it was much more serious and could I please come now. And I feel it all over again. That being said, it was a good appointment and his numbers continue to look great. I like to think of it as a start down a good path. A chance for us to learn how to live with Cancer. **********************************************

On a happier note, my children could simply not be cuter I am sure of it. Will loves being an older brother and takes his new role quite seriously. I really believe he thinks of Henry as "our" baby because he takes a great deal of concern in making sure we are paying attention to Henry's needs for blankets, pacis, etc. I am terribly behind in the picture posting. I have been taking a ton, but haven't gotten them off my camera. I will do that soon.
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And in VERY fun news, welcome to the world Baby Howie!! You have the most kissable, smooshable cheeks. I am so excited that you are here.

New look

I wanted something a little lighter so I thought I would try my hand at a redesign. You like?

seven+1

Seven weeks and 1 day ago I was in a hospital asking a nurse to take me to go see my son.

It all started seven weeks and 3 days ago. I was just about 36 weeks pregnant and had been having an interesting week. 3 weeks prior I had started having contractions and been put on bed rest for 2 weeks. So it was my first week off bed rest and I was uncomfortable. Yes, I was 36 weeks pregnant so that was to be expected, but it was more than that. I had gained about 10 lbs in two days - my hands were so swollen I couldn't make a fist. I called the Dr and they wanted me to come in and have some blood work done. On Thursday that week I went in to see if the blood work they had ordered turned anything up. My regular OB was gone that afternoon and so I was seeing someone else in the practice. She did a quick exam, asked me why I was in and looked at my chart.
Then she looked up at me and said "Huh, these numbers aren't good. We need to send you to Labor and Delivery right now. I think you'll be having a baby today."

Um, what? I asked if I could go home and you know, make arrangements for Will, get my labor bag, get my husband stuff like that. No no, I had to go over right away and I was lucky she was letting me walk and not sending me in a wheelchair. Apparently, my liver and kidney's had stopped functioning properly and I had developed HELLP syndrome. (which is a little like pre-eclampsia gone bad) I wasn't sure what that meant and didn't have access to a computer to find out. In retrospect I'm glad I didn't because it's some scary shit and I think I would have been a lot less calm if I had more details. So I called Dan, told him they were going to induce me in the morning and could he take Will to his parents and pack up my bag for me? I had a list of all the stuff that I wanted to have there but none of it was really together. He was a rock star though and brought me everything I wanted.

So there I was Thursday night. I knew something was wrong but didn't really understand what. And, I knew I was going to be having a baby in the morning.



They gave me an Ambien to help me sleep - I think that was the last time I've slept more than 4 hours.

Friday morning rolled around and they started me with Pitocin in an IV to get labor started. They also started me on and IV of Magnesium Sulfate that they told me was due to the HELLP syndrome and was supposed to prevent me from having the seizures that can sometimes be associated with this. The told me it was going to make me feel like shit (and WOW did it ever) but you know, better than seizures, right?

My contractions got pretty strong with the Pitocin right away. They gave me an IV of something for the pain that was delightfully fuzzy. But then they decided that the contractions weren't productive enough and they broke my water. That made the delightfully fuzzy go away and my contractions started coming really fast - sometimes starting before the last one had really ended.

I know it's not the choice for everyone, but I was all about the epidural. I knew I was going to want one coming into this whole process so I thought now seemed like a good time. Ahh, it was bliss. However, it made my blood pressure drop dangerously fast and there was a good hour in there that I don't really remember where they were bringing it back up. But then, blood pressure up, no more pain...time for a nap!

I woke up about an hour later and was in pain. The last time they had checked me I was only about 5 cm dilated so I still had 5 to go. And it had taken me a while to get to those 5 so everyone was thinking this was going to take a while. But when I woke up from my nap I howdy there was the pain and I felt a lot of pressure, like I had to push. Dan went and got someone because my epidural was no longer working...at all. Well, that's not totally true. The outside of my thighs were numb. We all went back and forth on this point for a while with them trying to convince me that I just needed to adjust how I was sitting. Nope, pretty sure this is not how it was supposed to feel having done this once already with Will. So I made them check me and low and behold everyone was surprised (but me at this point) that the baby was crowning and he was coming. Now. Without the epidural. Without any other assistance, he was ready to come.

Dan tells me they didn't even finish getting everything ready before he came. The doctor made it down and we didn't have to push for too long. I had totally natural childbirth and was a little unprepared for that - but honestly, felt a little bad-ass having done it. He was here, our little Henry John.



And then, things started to get interesting and the next part of our adventure began. I'll try and post part 2 soon.