All done and recovering at home

We finally made it home around 2:30 this afternoon after we stopped to pick up some lunch for Julie and I to eat at home. Grace slept the whole way home. When we got home Julie put her to bed and she slept for most of the afternoon. The doctor called us this afternoon at home to check on Grace.

She's doing really well. Her eyes definitely hurt and she is letting us know they hurt but she isn't letting it hold her back. She's watching TV and now she's coloring and cutting things out. Her left eye is feeling much better than her right eye. She's basically leaving her right eye closed and just using her left eye; which is odd because her left eye was the one that was turned in and the whole reason we did all of this. She hasn't had any pain medicine since she was in her hospital room. She's definitely ready for some now but it's a real struggle as she's getting really tired now and her eyes hurt and she doesn't like the taste of the prescription pain medicine. So Julie gave her just a little of that pain medicine and then a little more of the same kind that you buy at the store without that special ingredient Codeine.

She's definitely hungry and is wanting to eat a lot of things and drinking lots of water so that's a good sign too. I'm hoping this will all be better in a couple of days because if she doesn't like the pain medicine it might be a long couple of days while we get through all of the pain of her eyes healing and the stitches dissolving basically without any medication to make it feel better. As I already mentioned they gave her some regular pain medicine in the hospital and it didn't help for very long - maybe an hour I'd say and then she was saying her eyes were hurting again. I'm guessing the prescription pain medication would not only work better but would also last longer.

So I guess as with all surgeries only time will tell how fast she'll recover; but overall I'm really happy about how well she's recovering and how she's feeling. I just wish she'd take the medicine she has available so that she'd feel better. Speaking of not doing things you can, those of you that know Grace would know that she loves band-aids. She'll put them on for really no reason and wear them around the house and basically just play with them. When the nurse took the I.V. out today and was asking her what band-aid she wanted she said she didn't want one at all. So here's a real reason to wear a band-aid and quite honestly I'd want one but she didn't so the nurse just held some pressure on it a bit longer and she didn't get a band-aid. She's a pretty silly girl!

Out of recovery room

We're back in the regular room now. When she feels good enough we'll go home.

Surgery's all done

She's done - everything went fine. They are starting to wake her up now. Julie will be able to go into the recovery room in about 20 minutes.

Anna and Angel

Dr's assistant just brought out Grace's animals all prepped for surgery too. It was too cute to not share.

She's in the O.R.

Now in the waiting room. Dr's assistant (Maggie) said Grace went to the O.R. just fine all by herself and took the anesthetic with no problems. Now just waiting for the doctor to perform the surgery - s/b about another hour (an hour and a half total.)

We've been admitted

Now it's 6:30 am and we have our room (3320) - just waiting for the surgical team to call for her. Should be about a half hour; around 7 am.

We're at the Hospital

We're a little early (5:30 am); supposed to be here between 6 and 6:15 am. So we waited until 6 am to go in. Grace slept most of the way down to the hospital anyway.

Day before surgery

Grace had school this morning although it was basically just a Halloween party. I came back a little early as they were all putting on a little Halloween show. They sang some pretty cute songs! I did videotape it and will get it up here soon. I don't really have time right now.

We ran into the grocery store on the way home as we were out of bread. At home Grace was pretty laid back as she basically just wanted to play on the computer. After I finally convinced her to eat lunch we went down to Vernon Hills and picked up my Grandpa who is visiting from Michigan right now. We took him with us up to gymnastics so that he could watch Grace doing her gymnastics. The last time he was here he didn't get to see her doing Gymnastics.

After gymnastics we all went out to dinner as Julie had joined us there after work and then I ran Grandpa "home." On the way back home I checked out the neighborhood for any sings of our pumpkin smashers. There were two streets that had a few smashed but overall the coast was still clear. Maybe they'll come out later. I'm sure hoping they get caught.

And so that was our super fun day today. Not very exciting and not all that much to talk about. I didn't want to do too much as Grace will need her rest for tomorrow and she won't be able to eat or drink anything after midnight tonight.

So really nothing much to update you on. The hospital did call and we have to be there between 6 and 6:15 so we'll be leaving pretty early in the morning. I'd better go get some sleep.

Pre-operative Evaluation

Grace had her H&P today which stands for History and Physical. It's her pre-operative checkup to ensure she doesn't have anything wrong that would affect her during surgery like pneumonia. Because of her age she didn't need any blood work. Her pediatric ophthalmologist recommended she have an EKG prior to the surgery, but her pediatrician said he doesn't see why she would need it considering she hasn't had any heart problems and she's only 5.

Speaking of recommendations, we were at the pediatricians today for her 5 year checkup and were needing the H&P for her surgery on Wednesday and they informed me that our insurance company would never pay for doing both things on the same visit. So since we needed the pre-op approval for this Wednesday we had to bypass the 5 year checkup until a later date. I'll need to reschedule that and we'll have to pay our deductible again to go back to the pediatrician again. And they are just going to check all the same things they checked today for her pre-op approval. Thanks insurance companies for making our life easier; sure makes our life less hectic...not.

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Sorry, I had to take a time out because our Hainesville hoodlums were smashing everyone's pumpkins in the street. I really wish these kids would look at it with at least a little empathy as Grace is going to wake up tomorrow all sad that her pumpkins are gone. And I'm mad because I paid a lot of money for those things at the pumpkin farm. I realize that kids will do things that they deem as "fun" but this happens each year in our neighborhood and they never seem to get caught. I was in my kitchen and heard the popping sounds outside and went running out there. They were just down the street so I grabbed my camera and went after them. I was only about 6 houses away from them and I could see them, but then a car came (actually it was the police) and they hid or went home because I haven't seen them since. I was hoping to get their picture and end this thing.
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So anyway, the 5 year checkup is more involved than we thought previously. She'll need to do a urine test and a blood test (just a prick test) for hemoglobin and cholesterol and then she'll get two or three immunizations for chicken pox and something else (can't remember what they all were.) Julie had just asked when making the appointment if Grace would be getting any immunizations and they said not if she'd gotten them at 4, but clearly these are 5 year old immunizations that every 5 year old gets at their 5 year checkup. I guess the nurse didn't want to answer the question. I think a better answer would have been "I'm not sure."

So I called Julie to update her on everything about Grace's doctors appointment. She called the pediatric ophthalmologist's office and asked again about the EKG and they said that if her pediatrician didn't feel she needed it then they were fine with her not having one. That almost brought up another insurance issue. Her pediatrician is associated with a hospital our insurance company won't allow us to go to (where Grace was born) and they had given me an order for the EKG through that hospital. We got the order changed so we could take it to a hospital that our insurance will allow us to go to, but as I just said, it is a moot point since we don't need to have the test done.

I called the insurance company today too because Grace's pediatrician suggested that not only did he not recommend she have an EKG but that the insurance company might not cover it. Turns out they would cover it, but like I just said we don't need to do the test anyway. So we're all set now for the surgery as far as I can tell.

Halloween 2007

Here is Grace with her costume on. Preview of when she's in college????

Preparation Week

Well, me Mum went home on Sunday and so now we begin preparation for many visitors this coming weekend. Julie's Aunts from Nebraska are flying in and her Brother and his family are driving in from Michigan. So we will have a full house this weekend. The reason is for Julie's parents joint 75th birthday party. Her Father turned 75 back in July, but Saturday is her Mom's actual 75th birthday.

So we've planned this whole celebration as an open-house format where people can come and go since the number of invites we've sent out are too many people for the size of our house. Hopefully all of the guests won't show up at the same time as it may prove to be a bit crowded in here.

So the preparation comes with making the house presentable. It's far from it. I have been working on my to-do list this week and crossing a few things off each day, but there are some things that I really need to get done to ensure the house at least "looks" presentable. I got the grass mowed yesterday and our neighbor said "thanks for mowing your grass." I was thinking it must have looked horrible but they were like no, that just means that we'll have to mow ours now. So maybe all that extra care I've given the grass this year is paying off. I think it looks pretty nice, but I'm not a bragging sort of person. I always see room for improvement; like the two weeds in the front yard and the bare spot where the momma bunny rabbit decided to put her nest.

The problems lie in the flower beds that we've still not had the money nor the time to purchase the rest of the plants for to fill it up properly. If we would do this then the flower beds would actually be full of flowers and not the weeds it currently is. The places we have flowers or plants the weeds aren't so bad as you might imagine. We need to spend the time and yes the money obviously because plants aren't as cheap as you might think and buy the rest of the plants we need and fill up those flower beds. But this is just one of the issues I just have to deal with before our guests arrive.

Grace today was for some reason quite tired and a bit cranky. She slept for 12 hours which is fairly normal and we didn't have much time in the morning before school. She did her "homework" in the car on the way to pre-school. While she was in school I went grocery shopping at a couple of different stores. We're buying the food that needs to be prepared before the party Saturday. I bought 8 lbs. of ground beef and 8 lbs. of ground turkey for two different types of chili. Obviously regular and turkey chili; plus all the beans and chopped tomatoes that go with all of that meat. Now the challenge is going to be getting all of that food cooked ahead of time. The biggest problem will be storage space in the refrigerator.

After that it was time to pick Grace up and then we came right home to get the food into the refrigerator. Then it was pretty much just hang out and do nothing for the rest of the day. Neither of us had much motivation to do anything today; so we didn't. We watched Dancing with the Stars from yesterday and just hung out.

Tonight I tried to make frozen lasagna that I bought today. The directions say to cook it for 105 minutes but it actually took almost three hours before it was done. It was good, but that's a really long time. I'm wondering if our oven needs to have the temperature checked to see if it's right or not because that's just crazy! We didn't eat dinner until just after 7:30! That's just entirely too late.

Anyway, we received a book we ordered from amazon.com called Blueberry Eyes in the mail yesterday and it's really for Grace as it's about having eye surgery. Julie started reading it to her tonight. We're trying to get her ready for the surgery she'll have on the 31st. So this is our first step. Surprisingly the doctors office hasn't informed us how to prepare her at all for this. I guess as far as they are concerned, we just show up on the day of the surgery and she'll just have it. But any 5 year old is just too scared of the unknown and too curious to just go into something blindly.

So this is the surgery to fix her crossed eye which is the left eye, but apparently they don't just repair the crossed eye, they actually adjust both eyes and let them fall into place on their own. So that's what we're trying to do and this book is a great first step as the girl in the story has done most of what Grace has had to do for her eyes. Actually she did more as she had to wear bi-focals at 11 months. I can't imagine! We've been pretty lucky to not have her eyes be that bad. I'm not sure how Grace accepted the book when they read it tonight, but I did hear in the beginning where they were talking about getting glasses and using a patch. And Grace kept saying "just like me." So she was seeing the parallel in the beginning of the book, I just hope she isn't going to worry about it and be scared about it right up until the day of the surgery.

I'd better get to sleep as Grace has a full day tomorrow with dance and gymnastics; and I obviously have a lot of work to do too!

Busy Birthday Week

We celebrated Grace's birthday last weekend with the family and this weekend with her friends. She really enjoyed her birthday this year. She was counting down the days until her birthday and excited about her two parties.

We went to the pumpkin farm on Sunday morning with Julie's sister and our nephew. Grace was pretty happy to have them come with us too. We got there a little bit earlier this year and we timed everything perfectly. We got there around 9:45 and looked at the pig and her babies (piglets) and then over to the barn to see the baby chicks. Then we went straight out to the hay ride out to the field to pick out our pumpkins. There was no wait and the wagon wasn't crowded. When we came back from the field we washed the pumpkins and headed over to the pony rides and then the jumpy thing. Then we went inside to buy other stuff and pay and leave. That took us almost exactly two hours.

Then we were able to get home in time to get ready for the family party later in the day. We got all the cooking done but hardly any cleaning. So everyone had food to eat but the house wasn't all that. What else is new; we've never been great housekeepers and it showed. But everyone had a good time and the food was pretty good as usual.

After the party the Bears played the Packers and actually won! Unfortunately I was a little sleepy and missed the part where the actually won. I had to watch it on NFL Replay on NFL Network. Griese looked like a veteran (I realize he is) which is what we've needed for a long time.

Most of the week with my Mom here was pretty much a normal week. We didn't have much time to do anything other than our usual busy schedule. Neither Julie or I had much time to run to the grocery store either so we ate out a lot this week. We did go over to the in-laws on Thursday and had a home cooked meal and then on Friday I made dinner, but mostly we ate out which gets tiring after a while.

Julie took the day off on Friday and her and my Mom went shopping up in Kenosha at the outlet mall. I think they had a really good time. Then we all met at the movie theater to see The Game Plan. This movie is great! It's family friendly, hilarious and heartwarming all together in one movie. All of us liked it. I think everyone would like this movie - it is very good!

Today was the kids party and we went to Build-a-Bear down in Vernon Hills. We kept the invite list short because it's not free to go there, but overall it's much better than renting out a place to hold your party. You get a place to have your party - although you can't have the traditional party including a room to have food, cake and open presents. But we accomplished basically the same thing by having the beginning of our party in the food court at the mall. This way we had our food - but we didn't quite have enough time to open presents. So we had our lunch and then headed over to the store. They have this thing down to a science I'll tell you that. We were in and out of there in under an hour with ten 5 year olds (alright, eight 5 year olds and two 6 year olds I think.) But everyone had a great time and we opened the presents as soon as we got home. A couple of her friends got to stay at our house after the party and helped open presents too.

So we would definitely go to Build-a-Bear again. The cost is good and they all had a fun time. But probably from now on we'll keep her parties low key to save even more money - like almost free. Especially since we want to have a second child at some point.

I forgot to mention that Tuesday was the village board meeting. I have some notes to post but I will do that tomorrow as it's late now. There wasn't any yelling and it seemed to go quite smoothly.

Hot again

Well apparently fall is out the window now and summer is back as it has hit the 80's again today. This will be great for my Mom when she gets here tomorrow as she is used to the warm weather. It is supposed to cool down again around Tuesday so she'll be fairly comfortable until then. And until then I'll be hot.

I haven't been blogging this week because we've been busy getting things done around the house here for this weekend. Unfortunately we haven't done everything we need to, but when does that ever happen, right? My to-do list is still long but I have gotten a few things done. The trim for the entryway is completely installed except for a few final touches. All the new trim is in and the nail holes have been filled and today I caulked the seams so all I have left to do is touch-up the trim so it all looks white - Yea! I worked on the trim strip between the tile and the wood floor and I think the filler I bought for that will work fine so I just need to get going on that.

Grace and I went and got a haircut today. I needed to mow the grass and/or power-wash the siding, but I didn't end up having time for either of those things. I'll try to sneak it in between line-item events tomorrow; we have a very busy weekend! We have our last soccer game in the morning, then picking up my Mom from the airport followed by dinner at my Dad's house for his birthday. Then Sunday we're going to the pumpkin farm and having Grace's birthday party here at our house for the family. I want the house to look nice for them, so we'll see how successful Julie and I are at getting things done around the house in preparation for "the party."

Speaking of birthday parties, Grace is very excited about her birthday this year. Several times throughout the day she'll say "What day is tomorrow?" which today would have been Saturday. Then she'll say "and the next day? It's my birthday! Just two more days!" So I think she's looking forward to it! She keeps talking about the pumpkin farm too. She really enjoys going there as well. It is really fun with the hay ride and the pony rides and picking out a pumpkin it is a fun day.

Gotta go get some sleep...

Rainy Day - Fall Version

Grace slept in today, I'm not sure if she's feeling much better yet. She didn't cough as much today though. Her friend from down the street came over for a couple of hours to play and we didn't do much else. It was raining on and off for most of the day and it was fairly cool out.

I was trying to organize our bills and my desk a little today. I started listening to my Genesis playlist today when I went to the post office. Still excited about going to the concert on Thursday. But we have a dilemma about Grace and driving downtown. They just started a new 2 year construction project on the Edens today and it's only two lanes for most of the way downtown. And we can't drop Grace off at the babysitter before 5:30 and the concert starts at 8 pm. I just don't see us making it down there in 2-2 1/2 hours. So we either need an interim babysitter or a different babysitter I guess. We'll have to decide something pretty quickly as it's only a few days away.


Monday Night Football wasn't so exciting tonight. New England was just too much for Cincinnati. Ocho Cinco needs more action to be fun to watch I guess. I'm watching the National League tiebreaker game between San Diego and Colorado. Right now it's in the bottom of the 12th inning. I think it's amazing that these teams play 162 games in the regular season and these two teams ended up being tied at the end of the season. So now they're playing a tiebreaker game to determine who wins the wildcard and plays the Phillies. And they're tied! It's tied at 6 in the 12th inning. I'm rooting for Colorado because San Diego has been a stronger team throughout the season and I wouldn't want to face them down the line. I remember when we were in Colorado over the summer and I was wearing my Cubs shirt and everyone made jokes about how Colorado was who I should be rooting for. They were wallowing in the cellar at the time. Maybe my logic is flawed and I should root for San Diego since Colorado seems to be playing well heading into the playoffs so San Diego might be the better team to root for.

My Cubs actually made the playoffs this year! Can you believe it? That's really exciting. They had the rally downtown today but I knew it was going to rain and I wasn't really interested in going if I was going to be standing in the rain the whole time. Plus Grace didn't need that since she isn't feeling all that great. (SD vs. CO is in the 13th inning now.) So they are headed (actually already there) to Phoenix to play the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday and Thursday. Then they're here on Saturday and maybe Sunday depending if they need to play a fourth game. And the fifth game would be on Tuesday. Hopefully the Cubs can play a good complete game and come home with at least one win when we play in Wrigley Field on Saturday.

San Diego just scored on a two-run homer. So unless Colorado can answer in the bottom of the 13th, San Diego will be playing Philadelphia on Wednesday. Like I said, maybe that's a good thing.

Speaking of sports, my fantasy football teams are a mixed bag. In the league where I actually have to pay to play and I could actually win some money back I'm 0-4 and I have an incredible team on paper. I've just had some really tough games and haven't come out on top. The season isn't over yet I realize, but it's not very promising. In the league where it's free and I wasn't all that happy with the team I drafted, I'm 3-1 and very happy with it now. And not just because I'm 3-1 :-) - although it helps!

Tomorrow Grace has preschool and I've got to work on this house while she's learning. I've got painting and cleaning and organizing and cleaning and trim work and did I mention cleaning? This place is a disaster and my Mom is flying in over the weekend and we're having everyone over on Saturday and then again in a couple weeks. I need to do work to the outside of the house too before it gets too cold to do anything outside.

WOW - Colorado just tied the game! It's 8-8 in the bottom of the 13th. I'm thinking they could win this. Yes, they just did. But the guy Holliday never actually touched the plate to score the go-ahead run. But the umpire called him safe. And what do you know it was Michael Barrett that was at home plate. He blocked the plate with his shoe and actually Holliday got injured on the play. That was a really good game. I'm glad I was watching. It was certainly more exciting than the football game tonight.

Alright, enough sports talk. I'd better get going.