On Christmas Day we had church service, which was a fairly typical service aside from being extremely crowded. Then we went home to open the presents from Denine's grandparents (we had to save something for Christmas Day) before heading back to my parents' house to open the rest of the kids' presents from them and to observe Christmas Day. It's becoming traditional - on the years that my brothers' family is here - to gather at my parents house to graze all day on soup, and the leftovers from Chirstmas Eve, and to discuss strategies for not being out so late opening presents on Christmas Eve. Which will, of course, be forgotten long before we do it all over again in two years.
For News Year's Eve we all got together at my brother's house to play games, watch movies in his newly furnished media room, and wait for the ball to drop, or rather for the ball dropping to be re-aired an hour later for us Central Time Zoners. And to drink effervescent wine, which was apparently our thing this year. The red was pretty good; one moscato was really good, the other notsomuch. Go figure.
Some ancillary excitment that was thrown in on Christmas Day was an email from our tenant saying that she had gotten home from her parents' house to find the ceiling in her master vanity largely caved in and water trickling out. It had rained and drizzled all Christmas Eve and most of Christams Day, so we were afraid that there was a leak in the roof we would have to fix. Keeping in mind that we just largely drained the account we use for those kinds of things fixing up our van (sort of), this did not bode well. It turned out to just be a leaky pipe, though, which was extremely good news as it turned what we expected to be a several-hundred-to-couple-thousand dollar roof repair into a $2.50 patch clamp from Lowe's. That plus some sheetrock repair, which is pretty cheap, and the ceiling is good as new. The whole ordeal ended up not being nearly the crisis we thought it was at first, but it did remind me how much I dislike being a landlord.
Oh, and our thirteenth wedding anniversary was Monday. Yet again, we didn't do anything; we're still boring that way. Denine asked the other day, "So, am I getting anything for our anniversary or Valentine's Day this year?" My reply was "Are we out of debt or don't have a baby to pay for or don't have a giant hole where our shower should be this year?" I suppose I could have added "or don't need to pay for braces" and "or don't possibly need (another) new vehicle." Yeah, being a grown-up rocks... >>"^..^"<<
Yesterday was our day for doctor's appointments. We had Jamie's checkup with his neurologist. Everything looks relatively good, but he's been having seizures every couple of weeks lately. They aren't as severe as they were when they started back up, so his medication is still blunting them some, but it's not blocking them entirely like it should be. Dr. Rivera confirmed that he is pretty much maxed out on the dosage for his current medication, so he needs to be switched to something else. He wants to do an EEG before deciding what to put him on next, which Jamie was happy about because that means he gets to stay up late the night before so he'll sleep during the EEG. I'm not nearly as enthusiastic, as I'm the one that has to stay up with him and then get up to take him in. Thankfully the new Texas Children's West Campus is set up to do EEGs now, so we can go there this time (a 15-30 minute drive) rather than having to drive all the way to the med center (a 45-90 minute drive, and no free parking). Once we have the results from the EEG, Dr. Rivera will be able to prescribe Jamie a new medication, and he said we'll be able to decrease the old medication and introduce the new one at the same time, which is a relief. So hopefully Jamie's epillepsy will be back under control soon. It's really only a stop-gap solution, and we keep praying that he'll "grow out of it" in the next few years, but in the meantime it's all we can do.
Denine also had her latest prenatal checkup yesterday, along with her diagnostic ultrasound where they check all the organs and let you know "for sure" the sex if you want them to. The doctor said everything looked great, with the baby and with Denine, and the ultrasound technician concurs that we are having another girl. So she is now officially Grace Georgianna Denine (which I think about three people didn't already know) - Grace because Denine thought it sounded pretty, and then we found a connection to her mom's name (grace in hebrew is Channah > Hannah > Anna > Anne > Nancy); Georgianna after Denine's grandmother (which we need to confirm the spelling of); and Denine because I thought Denine should finally have a namesake. Ren has already declared that she shall be called "Gracey"; I'm calling her "G.G.", which I particularly like because my Papa went by G.A. most of the time.
Finally starting to look like a baby...
One of my coworkers was commenting on how much clearer the ultrasounds are now (although his youngest is only three); I told him it was particularly cool watching the baby sucking and moving around.
Denine was observing the fact that she can't really remember what it's like to not be pregnant anymore. Fankly, I can't really remember what's it's like for her to not be pregnant or breast feeding, either.
LTC practice starts up this Sunday, so any thoughts we had of having a chance to catch our breath are pretty much shot. Maybe April will be slow, right before everything blows up in May. We keep telling ourselves "look on the bright side: next year we'll be doing all of this with TWO babies".....
No comments:
Post a Comment