Wonderful Weekend!

This truly was a lovely weekend. No emergencies, no stress, no fussing about over anything!

Hubby and I like to play World of Warcraft (we're a nerdy family over here), so we spent a few hours leveling up some low-level toons together, which is always fun. I don't enjoy the game much if I'm playing alone or just with guildies, but when I can play alongside my husband, we get to make jokes, mess with each other, and battle over who gets what gear. It's all in good fun, and I enjoy playing my alt more than my main character, so I'm glad we did some leveling this weekend.

Hubby found all of the most recent season of Dexter online, so we enjoyed a little mini-marathon of Dexter last night from the comfort of our sleeper sofa, which we pulled out and covered in thick, fluffy comforters for the event. Some might argue that watching people get slashed and stabbed isn't romantic, but we both LOVE the show, and cuddling up under the blankets while watching it was wonderful.

I also paid a visit to my salon yesterday. My roots needed touching up, and I got my eyebrows tinted and waxed while I was there. It was nice to have a few hours of pampering, and I left feeling much prettier than when I went in, so it was money well spent! ;)

Today, we spent most of the day with some friends of ours in Reno. We went to lunch at a fabulous little sushi joint, where we had All-You-Can-Eat-And-Then-Some sushi! I noticed midway through lunch that one of my two nose studs had fallen out at some point, and I was afraid that the piercing was going to close before I could get home and find another piece of jewelry to hold its spot until I could purchase a replacement stud (I've been wearing matching turquoise nose bones side-by-side, and I don't have any extras, so I'll have to order a new one for the second piercing). So what does Heather do? When we get back to her house after eating, she pops into her studio and, in less than five minutes, has a handmade sterling silver nose screw for me! (To see her handmade sterling silver jewelry, which I highly recommend as a gift or for yourself!, visit http://www.zibbet.com/Polkadotbandit) Fortunately, it slipped right in, so my piercing is secure until I get a replacement nose bone. Hooray!

We bought Heather's old bed frame today for our guest room. They were looking to sell it to make room for a different style of bed that's more pet-friendly, and we were looking for a queen for our guest room, so it worked out perfectly. The only catch is that we got the bed home, and it won't fit where I had initially intended it to go (unless we never want to turn on the ceiling fan), so I'm going to have to do some furniture rearranging tomorrow while Hubby's at work so we can assemble the bed in a different spot tomorrow evening. Now I just have to talk him into buying a really nice mattress for it, and it could be better than the bed in the master bedroom! We used to have a rickety old daybed with a twin mattress in there and an air mattress for the floor if a couple came to visit. It'll be great having a more comfortable sleeping option for our guests in the future. :)

C has been a little angel all weekend. Even at lunch today, the waitress brought her a bowl of sushi vinegar-pickled cucumber pieces, and C kept herself occupied by munching on the pickles without any outbursts or spills. It was fantastic! She's been toddling around without her AFOs since Tuesday because they weren't seated right Monday and irritated the scar on her foot, and, I have to say, I'm very impressed with how much more coordinated my little girl has become. She still is less stable and falls a bit more without her AFOs than she does when she's wearing them, and she'll be wearing them again tomorrow, but it was reassuring to see how well she could do without them, now that she's mastered the skill of walking a little more. They tell me she's stacking things and climbing them at school now, too, which isn't exactly what you want your child to be doing but is GREAT news from a developmental standpoint!

Have I mentioned yet that we ordered her new custom wheelchair on Wednesday? Randy, a representative from MedTech (a company in Reno), drove down to C's preschool to meet with us. There was a chair there that he was able to use to demonstrate some possible features we could get and to show me how the chair would fold, how to take off the wheels, etc. He said he'd be doing a follow-up call to ask me about color preferences, but I told him right off the bat that if yellow was an option, we wanted yellow! Yellow is C's favorite color, and I want a chair that represents her personality. While getting a pink or purple chair would be adorable, it would be forcing a stereotype on C instead of representing her as the person she is, so yellow is really the only option! The estimated turnaround on her new chair is about two months, so it will be a little while before we see her new yellow wheels, but I'm excited and can hardly wait!

Thus Ends the Penny Drama/Growing Up

Well, after several x-rays, a less-than-successful operation, and several enemas, the penny that has haunted me for the past couple of weeks is now out of my life forever! C's x-ray this morning was completely clear of foreign bodies, meaning the penny snuck out in yesterday's diaper (despite my valiant search efforts), and I can finally breathe easily again... Until the next time my darling daughter decides to put something in her mouth!

I took the weekend off... from life. Sure, I did my motherly duties, fed and played with C, but I spent the vast majority of the weekend in my pajamas on the couch watching Criminal Minds and Law & Order: SVU marathons. I love the crime dramas because the bad guys always get caught in the end, and that gives me a warm sense of satisfaction and peace. If only real life worked out that smoothly!

Hubby and I are super excited because C's preschool is hosting a Parents' Night Out tomorrow night. Free babysitting at the school for two hours, long enough for hubby and I to go out to a nice dinner together without worrying about whether C will be quiet and cooperative. Also, I'll get to eat my food without stopping after every bite to give her a bite or to quiet her with a toy. It'll almost be like being a young, childless couple again!

We weren't prepared for parenthood when C came around. She was a happy fluke, and we were incredibly excited when we learned she was on the way, but it wasn't what we had planned. Just a couple of months prior, we had gotten pregnant and miscarried, and we decided at that time that it was for the best, that we needed a couple more years of just being the two of us before we brought in a third party. Well, I blinked twice and was pregnant again. I had planned to have a Master's degree before having a child (as opposed to now, where I'm earning my Master's while parenting full-time), to have a steady job and income, and to have traveled and seen a little bit of the world before settling down. I was a party girl, still into the club scene and bar-hopping with my girlfriends. I was still a kid. Then I was pregnant.

I thought I would be able to hold onto my youth after she was born, but then the diagnoses started rolling in, and I spent the first year and half of her life in hospitals and doctors' offices, getting bad news and then worse, facing crisis after crisis, surgery after surgery... And that ages you pretty quickly. By the time C was medically stable and I had enough time to do anything other than see another doctor, I had grown up. Too quickly, of course (isn't that always the case?).

I don't regret one moment of it. The beginning was tough, but I always got through by holding my baby in my arms and looking into her beautiful face. I miss being young, feeling young... I mean, it's not like I'm old and wrinkled now (although I do have some worry lines on my forehead, brought about by tough years of medical uncertainty), but I don't feel as vibrant and energetic as I did when I got married. I used to go out every night, and now I'm happy to curl up in pajamas under my electric blanket and watch tv in the evenings. I regained a little bit of that youthful energy while I was singing with the band, but at the cost of time with my family and an education that I earnestly wanted... Not the best trade-off.

I don't know if I've completely resigned myself to growing up yet. I still cling to certain things that make me feel young and carefree, such as dying my hair drastic colors or getting pierced or tattooed... I still want to go skydiving again, and I'm determined to go skiing one of these seasons, when I can find someone to watch C. Someday, I'll get to visit London and Germany and Ireland. Someday, I'll star in another musical or sing on a stage in front of a packed house again. I still have plenty of time to be young, to have fun, to be a little bit crazy, even. I just have to find myself a babysitter first. ;)