Brain tumors and more...

(I"m posting this on the blog and emailing to everyone as well)

Okay, I don't have the energy right now to respond to everyone's emails or calls. Please don't think I'm ignoring you, I'm just exhausted. This has been a lot to process, and the medication they've given me has finally knocked me out after several days of headaches.

Here are the basics of what we know:

I have 2 brain tumors. One is about a centimeter in diameter behind my eyes. The other is about 3 centimeters on top of my head. Both are meningiomas. They're not expected to be cancer, they're slow growing, and so far, neither is causing any problem. They found these through a routine MRI when I was being evaluated for a new migraine medication. Total fluke, they weren't expecting anything like this either.

I also have apparently suffered a small stroke. There is a small area of dead brain tissue which is not causing any neurological effects, but it's there. I don't have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etc... so they're running a battery of tests to determine why I had a stroke or if in fact this dead brain tissue is just from migraines. We'll schedule those tests next week.

I'm feeling fine, just very tired from the 2 shots they gave me yesterday to help me get some much needed sleep. They haven't asked me to change my lifestyle except to stop taking birth control pills, because they increase your risk of stroke and not do anything strenuous, until they figure out what's going on.

In the meantime, we're researching a lot. We plan to meet with the local neurosurgeon on March 3rd and go from there. The size of this tumor is borderline, so we'll wait to see if he wants it removed. If so, we'll ask to be referred to the Mayo Clinic outside of Minneapolis. They do thousands of gamma knife surgeries there each year, rather than having to slice into my skull.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers during this crazy time. We'll let you know when we learn more.

Being a baby brother... lost in the shuffle

Sometimes, amid all the potty training and preschool preps, and demanding 2 year-old behavior, Alex seems to get lost in the shuffle. He's much less dramatic than his big sister. Honestly, he's a great baby and you don't hear a lot out of him, unless he's hungry. He smiles and giggles A LOT! So we tend to let him enjoy life and not shower him with as much attention as we did our first born, when she was the same age.

Are we cheating Alex? Gosh I hope not! That's certainly not the intention!

Troy brings it up from time to time and of course, I feel guilty. "Why aren't we doing this with him?" "We did that with Ella." The latest note is that we don't read to Alex at bedtime.

He normally goes down around 7:30. It's a pretty simple process. We carry him upstairs and Ella follows. That's her cue to begin the "wind-down" as well. Alex gets his pj's on, gets any medicine he needs, and gets some last minute snuggles. Big sister usually wants to climb into his crib to say goodnight. She snuggles up to his tummy, sometimes pulls out his binky for a kiss, and then she's ready to be lifted out. All we really have to do is turn on his continuous lullaby CD. (yes, it's Metallica, because Troy thought that would be "cool" for his son) and turn on the night light. By the time we get Ella settled in (:45 minutes later) Alex has drifted off to dreamland.

But I guess Troy's right. We have always read to Ella at bedtime. Now we read at least 2 or 3 books with her each night. Alex does deserve the same attention, and reading is important, for both of them.

So tonight, we switched up the routine just a bit. We read Alex a "feel the farm animals" book and let him touch and turn the pages. It was quick and the rest of the routine was the same. It felt a bit like we were going through the motions. But it was that way with Ella in those early days too. Not like he's going to beg us to read another before we turn out the lights.

I don't want him to have to be the "squeaky wheel" to get our attention. Yet, he does have to compete with a big sister. When Ella was this age, she was the center of our world. There were no other little distractions. We focused constantly on her development and her every need.

I hope and think that Alex is also benefitting from being a second child. He's seeing and hearing things that Ella was never exposed to this early on. Hopefully, he'll learn more quickly about how to do things, because he's watching his sister do it all first. In the meantime, I'm going to make a more concerted effort to keep him on track with "Baby Einstein" videos, a variety of solid foods, stories, peek-a-boo, etc... All the things we tried to do with Ella to help her along the way.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but Troy will remind me.

"Stuck in her butt" no more

More potty talk, so if you're not up for that just skip to the next post. For those of you following along, you're aware that we've given up potty training. COMPLETELY for now. We're all taking a break. But just when we give up, she doesn't.

Tonight at bedtime Ella asked to go potty. At first, I thought this was just the "I don't want to go to sleep" ploy. But I tried the usual offers of a drink of water or another story, and she still wanted to potty. She insisted she had a stomach ache so I figured we'd give it a whirl.

We got there and VOILA! Pee! on the potty, not in the diaper. Then she called for Daddy and had to tell him "I need to make poopy nuggets, and they're stuck in my butt!" (Troy had to leave the room, he cracked up and nearly peed in his pants.) Then she needed "puffacy." (that's privacy in Ellanese)

We left her alone. (waiting outside the door) until she came running out to announce to poop. Yes we had to look and she did it! YEEEAAAH! Big celebration, special treats (mini-marshmallows) the whole deal and bedtime with a clean, dry diaper.

So what gives? Is she ready or not? Do we wait for her to ask again or try to wear big girl panties? This just gets more confusing every day. Oh well. At least that was one diaper I didn't have to change.

Back to diapers...

We're scrapping potty training. At least for awhile. We've been at it for months now, and Ella just isn't getting it. She doesn't care if she pees or poops and wears it. It doesn't matter if she's in a diaper, pull-up, big girl panties, whatever!

I've tried taking her every 30 minutes and it came to dragging her kicking and screaming into the bathroom because she didn't want to stop what she was doing and go. So I cut it back to every hour, then we had some accidents, and still she didn't want to go. At scheduled times like bedtime and just before nap, no problem. She'll sit down and tinkle and maybe, if you read to her 14 different magazines, she'll poop while she's there. But other than that, she doesn't care if she's wearing around pair of pee soaked panties with poop caked on her butt. (sorry I know this is gross and disgusting, but seriously! Who wants to wear poop!?)

We just don't know what to do and after talking to a few other parents, we've decided maybe she's just not ready. Everyone told us she was. She would tell us when she had wet or poopy pants and needed to be changed at 18 months. Not now! She lies and tries to hide and screams everytime we need to change her. When did this become torture???!!! For all of us!

She's crying and hates it!!! Finally Friday night, I just broke down and cried too. This is overwhelming and I have no idea why it's not working. I told Troy I can't understand what we're doing wrong. We've tried it all. We've been patient, offered rewards from marshmallows, to stickers to band-aids to a "special prize" if you can go all day long with clean panties. It ain't gonna happen. I honestly don't know what else we're supposed to do.

So, we're going to give this a break for a few weeks and then come back to it and try again. We put away the big girl panties and the pullups, took away the potty seat and the step stool for the toilet. I even moved all of her books and magazines out of the bathrooms. We're completely shutting this off for awhile. Which is tough. She wants her big girl panties back, she asks to potty when we're out in public (loves hearing that pee-pee echo), and she still hides and lies and doesn't like having her diaper changed.

My biggest concern is pre-school in the fall. She can't go if she's not potty trained. But that's several months away, and a lot can change in that amount of time. I know she will stop peeing in her pants eventually. It's not like she'll be 35 and still wearing a diaper. We'll just have to wait, patiently, and hope she'll be ready. If not, it's her timing and not ours.

In the meantime, we're open to suggestions. We've exhausted everything that's been thrown at us on this one, so if you've got something better to offer, lay it on us!

Preschool here we come!

It felt a bit like opening the letter to see if my child had been accepted to an Ivy League University. How stupid is that?! She's two and we were battling to get her into a pre-school. As it is, we had to settle for an afternoon class, 3 days a week. We probably shouldn't mess with her AMAZING nap schedule, but she will be 3 by that time, and we're hoping to cut back a bit on the daytime sleep.

Ella will start preschool this September. Best of all, she'll be in the same class with Sophie! (my friend Kimmie's youngest daughter who's just 6 months older than Ella)

We both researched several preschools and decided this would be our first choice. They have a great program with lots of schedule options, music, fitness, SPANISH, etc... We're not members of this church, and we aren't alumni with older kids, so we had to wait until this week to register. We braved a MONSOON Tuesday morning and drug the girls in there. Before we even started paperwork, they let us know morning classes, would be out of the question. Those are comptelely full.

I debated whether and afternoon class was even possible for Ella. She's such a great sleeper and really wants her "happy nappy" every day. But we've talked to several other moms, prayed about it, and just asked God to help us make it work, if this is the right place for Ella.

We got the letter today that helped us make the decision. We're all going to the church service there tomorrow morning so Troy can check it out as well. I like the fact that this preschool is faith based. They have chapel, learn verses, and virtues like "God wants me to share," or "God wants me to be kind." I feel like those are such important messages for kids and I want Ella to have those values and share them with other kids.

Now if we can just get her potty trained! (more to come on that in another post) At least we know where we're going and when. I can check that item off my list.

Big Boy Shoes

A couple of firsts today for Alex, he rode in his new big boy carseat. No more infant carrier!

This gets sentimental for me. I got kinda weepy when I took off the toy bar to send to a friend with a 2 month old. Alex loves that toy! It's hard to believe he's too big to play with the little froggies and bumble bees already!

But he put on his shoes for the first time today! Daddy says if he's no longer bundled up in the sleeping bag seat cover, he's gotta wear some shoes. They're too big, but OH SO CUTE! Love that baby boy of mine!

(He only wore the Elmo t-shirt because we went to see Elmo Live at Sprint Center. Otherwise, I don't think Daddy would have let him out of the house looking to sweet!)