In Which I'm Home And Chocolate Mustaches Abound

I'm back home!

After a leisurely breakfast, I spent the first half of the day driving back up to Puyallup.  It was a pleasant trip; the company was lovely, traffic was light and the weather cooperated, making for a pretty easy ride.  Connor gave me a huge smile and one of his rare hugs when I got home; he seemed excited to see me back, which doesn't happen very often!  Usually the little guy is so excited about his Daddy Time that he doesn't seem to even notice my absence.  At any rate, he apparently had a quiet (and thankfully seizure-free) weekend, which was probably just what he needed after last week's seizure excitement.

I did find out late last night that one of my teammates who took a bad fall at yesterday's bout broke her ankle and will need surgery, which was some rough news.  Hopefully she'll have a quick recovery and be back on her skates soon; it's so hard to see one of my ladies hurt and in roller derby it happens more often than I'd like.

My sister posted up her lovely pictures from her trip to Seattle on her photography website.  You can check them out here.  Connor looks extremely dapper sporting a chocolate mustache.  I look rather disturbingly like my father.

I miss Mary already.  Sister, come back soon!

~Jess

In Which It Is Halloween And Connor Gets Sick

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Well, I spoke too soon yesterday on the seizure front, I'm afraid.  Connor had a pretty good morning, and then late in the afternoon he had his first seizure in two weeks, which is when I discovered he was running a 101 degree temperature.  He had two more seizures before the Tylenol brought his fever down enough to get them stopped.  Other than the temperature and saying that he was tired he didn't seem out of sorts, though.  He spent a good portion of the afternoon sleeping, so maybe his body is coping with the fever that way.  I'll keep an eye on him tomorrow and make sure his temperature doesn't get any higher.  Since he doesn't have any other symptoms right now, I'm wondering if maybe he's got a bit of an infection going-- maybe a UTI.  We'll just have to see.

Once the Tylenol kicked in he seemed to perk up, and by the time Jeremy got home he was feeling pretty good, so Jer took the little guy out for just a bit of trick-or-treating.  Connor was a yeti again this year; he got so excited about that costume when I took it out that I figured he could just wear it again this year.  So while the boys were out I stayed home and passed out candy.  We had a slim crop of trick-or-treaters this year, possibly because it was pretty cold outside.  There were quite a few teenagers who came to the door; I'm hoping that next year Ellen will be home and able to try out trick-or-treating for the first time! 

My sister left today and I miss her already.  It was lovely having her here; I wish we had the chance to get together more often.  While I absolutely love living up here in the Pacific Northwest, it is difficult having most of our family 2100 miles away in Texas.  I guess I just have to convince them all to move up this way!

Anyway, hopefully the little guy will be feeling better tomorrow.  I'll be spending that day helping him out with the vast majority of his Halloween candy, which he can't eat.  It's a horrible job, but somebody's got to do it. 

Yum!

~Jess

In Which Connor Looks Great And My Sister And I Grow Facial Hair

It was yet another fun-filled day of sisterly shenanigans over here, as Mary and I decided to go check out The Sock Monster (thank you, astute reader "rbn" for that lovely suggestion) up in Seattle.  But first we had to stop by Adamos and pose with chocolate mustaches.  For Science!

Anyway, so we took the lovely scenic drive up to Seattle to go buy many, many socks, which The Sock Monster luckily had in abundance.  Mary and I both found several pair, and I also got a couple pair for Connor.  Since he wears his braces for most of the day his socks are on display a lot of the time, and so I like for him to have stylish tootsies.  I have a feeling I'll be visiting that store on a fairly regular basis.

After that we ate some gelato, because it is physically impossible for me to pass a gelato shop without going in and eating some.  Then we drove over to the shopping center Jer and I frequent when the little guy is staying up at the hospital in Seattle (something that thankfully hasn't happened for a while) and did some browsing around the various shops there. 

We mostly window shopped, and found a whole lot of cute things in various stores that we decided we could make fairly easily ourselves in all of the spare time (ha!) we have.  We also had to look at, touch and comment on every single thing in every single store we went into, because we are the most annoying customers in the world.  Oh well.  All in all it was a pretty great day!   

Oh, and Connor had yet another fantastic day too.  Tomorrow marks two whole weeks without a single seizure!  I believe the last time that happened was somewhere around July, which is kind of crazy.  Here are a couple of pictures from yesterday that Joanna took.  In one he's decked out in all of his Yeti glory with his best friend baby C, who as usual is annoying the bejeezus out of him.  I'm pretty sure he secretly likes it though, because he gets pretty excited when I tell him that she's coming over.  In the second one he's painting his pumpkin.  Doesn't he just look great? 

That's my big boy!

~Jess

In Which My Sister Arrives, And Loki Makes A Pest of Himself

My sister's plane arrived a ridiculous 40 minutes early, so there was a mad scramble to the airport this afternoon. She arrived intact however, and thus far has not opened any of my closets, so she has remained that way. We picked up Jer, had a quick snack, and then left him and the little guy at the house while we tootled down to Olympia for some window shopping and to pick up a strawberry-rhubarb pie from Boston Harbor Pies, which has expensive but ridiculously tasty fare. Than we stopped off at the Food Co-op and Top grocery for some supplies. Finally we headed back home and I began making one of my specialty dishes: Buffaloaf.

It was that or Buffalacos, but my sister wanted Buffaloaf, so Buffaloaf it was. Tomorrow we will be having Leftaffaloaf, as we didn't finish all of it tonight. Here's the super top-secret recipe, which I am only sharing with several million of my closest Internet friends:

1) Take one recipe for meatloaf.

2) Substitute buffalo.

3) Use "buffaloaf" in as many sentences during the course of the evening as is humanly possible. This adds to the flavor.

Connor was okay with seeing his aunt-- not Super Happy Excited as she is not made out of chocolate pudding and is not a pony or the letter "W," but he wasn't sad about it either. Loki, however, was ecstatic. A new person to pet him and love him! She must be here just to see him! He spent most of the evening shoving himself under all the available hands in some sort of kitty frenzy. Then he retreated to the cat tower, which had somehow turned into a giant mouse and had to be gnawed upon and kicked. I'm pretty sure he'll be winding down soon and saving up his energy so he can start another round about three in the morning, preferably by chasing Cricket back and forth across my sister's bed.

Tomorrow we're off to Seattle for Pike Place Market and to schedule Connor's surgery date. Wish us luck!

~Jess

Closet Trauma

My sister is coming into town today!

This means that I have officially declared my house to be in a State of Emergency, because I have company coming and nothing is clean. I will now spend the next three hours frantically running around and shoving things into closets so that it at least LOOKS clean. My sister will be fine as long as she doesn't attempt to actually open any closets, which would be very dangerous. I love her dearly and would hate for anything to happen to her. Also I think that "Closet-Related Trauma" would look really, really stupid on a death certificate, so we're going to try to avoid that.

I have friends with spotlessly clean houses. I'll walk in and they'll say something like-- "Oh, I'm so sorry the house is such a mess!" I'll look around at the spotless carpets, dusted picture frames, and counters that do not have 6 inch piles of papers from the insurance company on them, and then try to resist the urge to strangle them over their spotless glass coffee tables.

The truth is that I keep the house cleaner when Jer's gone than I do when he's home. I think that this is because when he's gone I spend the evenings cleaning for lack of better things to do, but when he's home I'd rather spend the time cooking dinner and hanging out. I know if I start cleaning than he'll feel guilty and feel obligated to clean too, which is not what he wants to do after spending the last eight hours at work. So I stick to the bare minimum and the papers pile up.

I can't even blame the mess on Connor, as he isn't mobile. Well, I can indirectly blame it on him. 90% of the mess is related to him somehow. It's just not him MAKING the mess. Oh well.

Break's over. Back to cleaning.

~Jess