Good Day

It's been a pathetically long time since I last posted. I don't know why but I have this mindset about blogging that it isn't worth a post if there aren't pictures. After a while it seems a little overwhelming to play catch up for a couple of weeks let alone 3 months! So I will just post about today and hopefully get back into the swing of things! Rambling post follows:

Started out with some relaxing with Rodney and reading blogs (which I am MUCH better at...) while Mark was at class. When Mark got home we started working again in the back yard. We finished raking up leaves and picking up poop for probably the last 3 tenants dogs...ick! I don't usually clean up after Marks dog let alone other peoples! But it had to be done before we can set up our garden and let Rodney run free! Between yesterday and today we have about 7 lawn and garden bags full of leaves and ... stuff. I am confident saying that we must be the first family to be in this house for a long time. So we had a productive mid-day. I attribute my feeling of a good day to getting the backyard done. Ever since moving into this house I find a serious sense of accomplishment when I organize one section of my house. My new goal has been to make my bed everyday. It doesn't look like it is straight out of BHandG, but at least it is made! One of my friends from Pueblo has been doing this FlyLady.net thing and their whole thing is to do dishes...I hate dishes. So I will start with my bed! Although I didn't do it today. Anyway, we then went to classes this afternoon. I am pretty sure I aced my Sign language test. Tues/thurs are my favorite days because ASL is my only class and I love it! Otherwise I have Physics, or an child growth and Development. ugh. After this semester I am tempted to continue on with sign language and become a translator. BTW this thought just really came to me today so don't hold me to that. (In fact, I mention it on my blog before I even mention it to Mark, hmmm) Mark came to pick me up and we went on a much needed trip for groceries. We went to Roma's for dinner which was a bust, but not too upsetting. Rodney was having a hard time. I couldn't figure out what the heck was wrong. In hindsight I think he hit his breaking point of hunger. He was inconsolable and very loud. I have found that if he doesn't eat before he gets too hungry he is too upset to eat. Which puts us all in a predicament. Anyway, this is a non-informative post that doesn't catch anybody up on anything. But, at least I posted!

To ALL Members of the Sanders Clan!!!

Here's the deal. My Mom just called me with some sad news. Aunt Anita went into the hospital last night with what we now know was a lacerated ulcer. (I think that is what it is called) Anyway, she is most likely in the clear now. Overnight she lost a lot of blood they had to give her 4 pints of transfusions. But they went in and fixed it just a few hours ago. So she is in ICU right now getting better and there is only a 5% chance of having go into surgery to finish fixing the ulcer. Most of the time they can fix it without surgery. They already did that so unless if something goes wrong....well you know. Anyway, Mom wanted to get everybody to send her a get well card to her house. Remember how we did this for Grandma and Grandpa? So I told her I would get a hold of everybody I could. And since a lot of us are bloggers, well, here you go! Your Moms will probably be letting you know too. Anyway, that's what happening in California. Keep her in your prayers!

Children's Hospital Update

Rodney is OKAY!!!! My doctor told me not to freak out, but what's a Mom to do when she is told that we are going to go to Childrens Hospital to be checked out....duh! Freak out! Anyway, they weighed him, measured him, and did all the technicals. We go into a room tell her how much Rodney eats. She said that he is NOT UNDERWEIGHT! He is just normal. They said that he was born big, so his body will naturally fall on the curve. Basically, the %-iles don't mean anything! His weight has been proportionate to his height along the 25% curve since birth. They say that he is short, so we need to figure out why he is short. We are giving him the iron supplements (300% of his daily percentage) and coming back in 2 months for a check-up. They say that the enemia most likely caused his height to be stunted so that is what we are figuring out. They say that this is pretty common in breastfed babies because iron and zinc aren't transferred as well through breast milk. Both help growth. They said that really we should be feeding babies red meat as soon as possible! Who knew! So Rodney will be happy to hear that we will be having meatloaf more often! And beef hot dogs, and hamburgers, and anything else that has red meat in it.

Good News!

They have an opening at Children's tomorrow at 10:30! Someone cancelled. So we will be heading to the great city of Denver by 8:30. Oh, and I took this picture of Rodney for his 11 month birthday. I have been far from regular with getting those pictures, but I guess he hasn't changed much either....

All About Rodney

Well, I can't believe it but he is really 11 months now! People have always said that I needed to soak in every day while Rodney is little because it goes by so fast... it does. He seems to be getting more of a personality every day. He has us laughing multiple times a day. He has learned a new trick of blowing raspberries. He will give the couch raspberries, legs, bellies, he will even pause during nursing to give me a raspberry! Then he looks at whoever is around to see the reaction....already? I didn't realize he would already be aware of what other people think about what he does! He took his first step at Grandma's house in Utah over Thanksgiving. He is really good at standing up alone and standing up without pulling up on anything. There are two doors he can hear opening from across the apartment. The fridge door and the bathroom! He never crawls so fast but to get in before they get closed again! He love, love, loves stairs. He has a great respect for them. He fell down two stairs once and ever since then, if he even gets a little unbalanced on the stairs he freaks out not wanting to fall! After watching the other nephews on the stairs at Grandmas for the wedding he mastered the stairs. He figured out how to stop climbing and sit down to see what is going on behind him. He also learned how to go down the stairs there too. Rodney loves dogs and cats. He will pet them and not yank. Maybe a little smack here and there but no pulling.... He loves the cell phone and has for a while. But just this month he started to put it up near his head like he is listening to somebody. He will listen when I give him the phone with somebody on the other end, but just the other day he started talking back. It was too cute! He has done it once again since. We are just smitten with the little guy! Good news, he gained two ounces just in the 3 days between doctor visits! And after all that at the hospital the lady didn't get all of the labs. We went back to the other guy that did it the first time so wonderfully...and he got 10 ML of blood in no time! I told him that nobody is ever going to poke Rodney except for him...and he told me he's retiring! :( And the doctor called us to tell me that they needed to cath rodney because the urine sample said he had a UTI. She said that she isn't suprised because the urine was in constant contact with his skin since we did it through a bag...but we just needed to make sure. That was fun....not! But then they checked him and he had two more ear infections. So one more round of antibiotics before our appointment on friday with the ENT specialist. Otherwise, Rodney has been sleeping like mad, and eating more too (I didn't know it was possible) but, Mark and I both think that his face is filling out more. Hopefully it isn't just in our heads!

Rough Day...

Today was kinda a rough day. I don't want to make this sound like a sob story, but it just may come out like that... Rodney was born just right as far as weight and height and everything else was concerned. Now, he has just kept dropping ever since birth in the %-iles and he is off the charts after today's appointment. It started at his 9 month appointment our Doc started to get concerned about his weight. So she sent us to get labs done to make sure that his thyroid was ok. The thyroid turned out just fine but he is anemic. So she had us taking 250% of his iron intake everyday in vitamins alone. Ouch. Lots of crying until I figured out that it wasn't bad as long as I gave some to him in the morning and some in the afternoon... duh! Anyway, So I went in today for the check in for his weight and height and more labs to check on his anemia. Well, we found out that he is off the charts for weight and his %-ile fell for height. Then she sent us to the hospital for labs. They gave us a bag to put in his diaper to catch the urine specimen. We ran a couple errands to make sure there was pee in it only to find out that it leaked once we got to the hospital and we had to wait for more. Then the lady couldn't find his vein. I guess he was dehydrated just enough. (I just think that she didn't really know what she was doing with infants....) We tryed twice to prick him (and prick him and prick him) and listen to him scream (and scream, and scream, and scream) before she just gave up on finding his vein and pricked his heel and squeezed (and squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed) while Rodney screamed ( and, well you get the idea) Finally we got to leave just in time for me to make it to class this afternoon. He is extremely exhausted, today wore him out. (and me.) I have to keep talking myself out of blaming myself for all this weight stuff. The doctor is sending us to Childrens Hospital to the nutrition department to make sure that there isn't any other reason for all of this. She said that they deal with this stuff all of the time. She said that she doesn't want to freak me out (too late), but she just doesn't want to miss something just in case. We will see I guess. The closest appointment for childrens is towards the end of Jan. Long wait here we come.

Cake Decorating

One of my classes this semester is Art Appreciation. In place of our second test she assigned an art project. I asked if a cake would count and she said "of course!" So, I decided that this would be a great time to experiment as much as I want because I wasn't giving it away as a gift and she was grading on effort alone! So I experimented every step of the way! I tried a new cake recipe, that didn't work. So I used the boxed cake that I had as backup. (I have tried the recipe again since then and it worked...yum!) Then I did three layers on the bottom, two chocolate with a vanilla layer in the middle. I also tried doing a raspberry filling. The top tier is the vanilla cake, two layers with the same raspberry in the middle. The top tier was a first for me. I made the fondant and it turned out great! It was super easy to make and work with, which was quite a surprise! What did I learn? A LOT!! Next time I will: make the original recipe for the cake (with the changes so it will work), different raspberry filling and more of it, use more buttercream under the fondant so it is more smooth, no matter how small the top tier seems it will need a support system underneath so it doesn't sink into the bottom tier, start earlier so I have time to do something cooler than polka dots, figure out a better way to do letters. I would love to do this for fun and make a little money on the side too. One of my friends in class is in the singles ward and will probably be getting married so we talked about me trying to do her wedding cake. I would totally do it for cost just for the experience. We will have to see. I would have more experiments before I really agree to that though! The best part, I got an A! So what if everybody else did too....