In Which Connor Feels Much Better And I Sew Some More

Well, Connor is feeling much better today!

Other than the insomnia, that is.  Currently it's past eleven at night and he's still lying in there happily shrieking away to himself at top volume.  Good thing I'm not storing my crystal glasses anywhere near his room, because I'm pretty sure they'd have shattered by now given some of the truly impressive notes he's been hitting.  At least he's in a good mood! 

What's pretty awesome news is that I didn't see any seizures from him today.  He may or may not have had one at school-- it was up for debate-- but I didn't see any, which made the day a definite improvement over the previous three in my book.  Also by the afternoon I started to see hints of his usual sunny personality rather than the sad, exhausted kid who's been living in my house lately.  There he is wearing my sunglasses and attempting to kick the camera.  Evidently he's not a fan of Paparazzi Mom.

Ellen's stocking is coming along slowly but steadily. I've finally sort of figured out how to make the gold metallic thread do what I want it to, so now I'm not actively wanting to kill people and blow things up, which is an improvement.  Here's a picture for you of how things are coming along; please disregard the random green sequin lying on top of one of the gold swirls on the stocking, as it's not sewn down.  I have no idea where it came from, as I'm not using green sequins on this stocking.  Weird.  Perhaps the blue and gold sequins are mating.

You can see how I'm starting to build up the tail.  Eight or nine layers of sequins are laid down in short strips like shingles, and then the ninth layer is sewn down over the whole tail. This means that by the time I get to the top of the tail I'll be working with a much thicker layer of felt.  This will then tie into the body of the bird, and the seam will be then covered by a couple of long wing segments. 

Okay, that explanation doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense, but the technique will work, I swear!  At least, I think it will.  It works in my head, anyway.  Guess we'll find out soon!

~Jess

In Which My Child Needs To Stop Having Seizures

Connor only had three more seizures today, which was a marked improvement over the previous two days.  Fourteen seizures in three days is still not a particularly stunning track record, though.  I'm going to have to give that boy a stern talking to, because really this sort of behavior is totally unacceptable.  Something along the lines of this should do it:

"Tomorrow let's shoot for zero seizures, okay little guy?  Not only do I not care for the frequency of these shenanigans, but the timing isn't exactly wonderful either.  Mommy is in the middle of roller derby drafts, and giving her five or six mini-heart attacks in a 24 hour period does not do wonders for her skating. 

You want me to get onto a team so you can watch me skate around and kick other girls' butts, right?  I thought so.  So quit activating my fight-or-flight response multiple times a day.  There's only so much adrenaline I can produce in a given time period, and I need it all for derby right now.  If you can't manage to tone it down at the very least quit having these things when I'm driving on the highway, sweetie.  That would help considerably in the Not-Giving-Mommy-A-Heart-Attack department, and I'm sure all of the other drivers on the road would appreciate it too.

Not to mention that these little incidents aren't exactly good for your health either. 

So cut it out, okay cutie?  I'm glad we had this little talk."

If my brilliant inspirational speech fails, I'm going to fall back on hoping that the medication increase is just taking a couple of days to kick in and that by the time the weekend is over we won't be seeing any more of these.  Otherwise I'll be putting in another call to the neurologist and we'll go from there.  We haven't picked out any underlying cause as of yet; he doesn't seem sick at all, just tired.  And after having fourteen seizures in three days, who can blame him for that?  Heck, I'm tired too and all I'm doing for the most part is watching them. 

Really, kiddo.  Enough is enough!

~Jess

In Which Connor Does Not Have A Particularly Wonderful Day

So Connor had six seizures today.  You will note that this is not exactly an improvement over yesterday, when he had five.  He's not running a fever and seemed otherwise to be fine, so I think we've simply gotten to the point where his medication is going to stop working again.  And when his meds stop working, they just stop working.  There's no gradual tapering going on here-- either they work sorta well or they don't work at all.

When he'd had two seizures already and it wasn't past seven in the morning yet, I went ahead and called the neurologist's office and left a message.  The nurse called back barely a couple of hours later, and Connor was up to three.  When I talked to the neurologist personally around noon we'd just hit four.  Connor's neuro went ahead and upped the little guy's Lamictal pretty substantially, but the little guy still had two more seizures today, even after the upped dose.  We'll give it a couple of days and see how things go, but the fact that the seizures continued even after the upped dose is not encouraging.

I'm kind of torn about taking Connor to school tomorrow.  On the one hand, so far as I can tell he's not sick and he's interacting well when he's not seizing.  On the other hand, eleven seizures in two days really takes it out of the kid, and while I'd love to think that he's not going to have any at all tomorrow quite frankly I'm not overly optimistic.  Also his Lamictal causes insomnia, so he didn't go to bed until almost eleven at night.  We'll just have to see how he feels in the morning and sort of go from there.

I sure hope the little guy gets better soon.

~Jess

In Which Connor Does Not Have Such A Hot Day, And I Meet The Bimbo of Thread

Connor didn't have such a hot day today, unfortunately.

After a relatively quiet week on the seizure front, he had five today-- two of them after I gave him Ativan, which is not particularly comforting.  I have absolutely no idea what brought them on; the only thing I can think of is that maybe he's getting sick.  No doubt I'll know for sure one way or the other tomorrow, depending on the kind of day he has. 

So that was not so wonderful.

The good news was that not a single one of them was the stop-breathing-and-look-really-dead kind.  They were all the I'm-obviously-in-distress-but-my-lungs-still-function-kind.  No oxygen and/or mouth-to-mouth was needed.  So that was a definite improvement in the state of matters.  If the kid's going to have five seizures in a day, I'd much rather them be of this variety.  But that doesn't make the whole five seizures thing less worrisome; it just keeps us out of the hospital. 

Oh well.

Since Connor spent about five hours napping today due to all of his shenanigans, I kept myself occupied by sewing.  Really what I should have been doing was cleaning the house-- especially since the entire contents of our luggage is still strewn around our kitchen and living room from when we got home six days ago-- but sewing keeps my mind occupied better because it's a challenge.  Also I could sit right next to the apnea monitor, which was a good thing because the kid had a seizure and the alarm didn't go off due to the whole still-breathing thing.  I recognized it because the pattern in the breathing changed, and if I'd been off in the bedroom putting away everything I wouldn't have recognized it.  That's my excuse, anyway.  Oh, and also I didn't feel like cleaning. 

So I worked on Ellen's stocking, which is coming along nicely-- or it was anyway until about halfway through the day, which is when I started work on the tail.  I've gotten to the part which involves metallic gold thread, and I have come to the conclusion that metallic gold thread was invented by someone who is secretly plotting to turn all needlepointers (is there a technical term for us?) into crazy anarchists hellbent on destruction.  Seriously this stuff makes you want to kill people and blow things up.  It is not fun, and I have only myself to blame.  The only excuse I can give is that prior to this point I was innocent in the ways of the gold thread and now that I've started using it it's too late to stop.  Well, I'll know better next time.

Metallic gold thread is the bleach blond bimbo of the sewing world.  It looks really pretty from a distance, but no one in their right minds actually wants to work with it personally. 

The thread I've picked out seems to be especially ornry.  First of all the label on the spool says "Sultry Silver Silk Metallic Thread."  This is very obviously not silver thread.  I believe the manufacturer/anarchist producer designed it this way so that when I run out I have no idea which color of thread to pick up (and yes, metallic gold thread comes in multiple shades) so I have to wander the aisle with my stocking, holding spools up to compare to the work I've already done and looking generally incompetent. 

Secondly, the shiny, fiddly bane of my existence is convinced that it needs to be curly thread, and it sprongs up into glorious tangled ringlets every time I stop pulling it taut.  I'm trying to work with three strands at a time, so you can imagine how wonderful this is.  Also it doesn't hold a knot worth a darn.  Seriously, they should put a warning label on this stuff.  It's not good for my blood pressure.

And of course the way I designed this thing, I'm using it on all of the tail feathers.  All of them.  I haven't counted how many that is because I don't want to know. 

The only good thing the metallic gold thread did today was it kept me from obsessing over how Connor was doing because I was so busy cursing at my sewing and pricking my fingers full of holes after that one recalcitrant strand insisted on wriggling its way off my needle yet again.  Also once I actually get it on the stocking it looks quite nice.

But I've learned my lesson.  The next project I do will not involve Sultry Silver or whatever color this is.  Even if it is really pretty.

~Jess

In Which I Stay Up Far Too Late And Don't Write A Real Blog Post

So I was supposed to be sitting out here writing a blog and then going to sleep early, but instead I picked up one of the books I got at the library today-- just to glance at the inside cover, mind you-- and now it is three hours and 436 pages later, and far to late at night to write a proper blog post.

So call this a placeholder, if you will, until tomorrow morning when I'm more properly awake and can actually use grammar and spell words correctly again! 

Sorry about that.

~Jess

In Which I Have Probably Gone Insane

So this is what I did with my day today.

Yes, I'm immediately plunging into another crazy sewing project.  This time it's a stocking for our future daughter.  I wasn't happy with any of the design kits I'd found online, and the only kit I already had was a blue-eyed, blond-haired Snow Queen, which I didn't really want to make for my raven-haired, black-eyed daughter. 

So I designed my own. 

I was looking through some sewing books and magazines I've collected from various places and found a lovely cross stitched peacock pattern in one of them.  I based my freehand drawing loosely off of that.  Then I picked up some tracing paper and a chalk pencil to make my own patterns, along with all of the sewing supplies I needed, and got to work!  The finished stocking (if it turns out like I picture it in my head) will be pretty elaborate.  By far the most work will be in the tail; it will involve a ton of layers, embroidery and sequins.  Lots and lots of sequins.  You can remind me that I brought this on myself when I start complaining about it in a few weeks.

In the meantime working on the stocking is still exciting and fun, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something to be closer to Ellen.  Hopefully we'll be sharing Christmas with her for the first time next year, and I think it's really important that she have a handmade stocking to match the rest of the family.  If it works out well I'll stop using the kits entirely and just design my own stockings from now on.  I think it'll probably be a lot more fun if I'm working on something I'm doing completely from scratch!

I'm well aware of the fact that I just spent a solid two months whining about how much I hated the last sewing project I was doing.  Despite that I am now embarking on an even more elaborate and time consuming project.  What can I say?  I have a selective memory, or maybe I'm just insane.  Oh well; right now I'm excited about the project.  Let's hope it stays that way.

I'll take more pictures when it's finished!

~Jess

In Which I Am Not Ready For 2011

 

Christmas 2008

Is 2011 seriously here?  Someone needs to slow the clock down, because I am so not ready. 

I mean, Connor turns five in 2011.  Five.  That's halfway through a decade, for Pete's sake.  My little guy is not ever allowed to turn five, so 2011 will just have to turn back into 2010.  That kid is getting entirely too big.  And what about me?  I'll be a scant year away from thirty years old, which is completely unacceptable.  Of course I already have grey hair, but seriously I'm not finished with my twenties yet.

Besides, I haven't fully recovered from 2010 yet.  I mean, look at all of the stuff that happened!  Jeremy got back on his feet, we moved into our amazing house, experienced gerbil cannibalism, started the adoption process, Connor had about eight billion seizures but also began standing with support, and I joined roller derby-- among many other crazy things!  Not exactly the boring year I was hoping for, but overall we had a pretty good time anyway.  So I figure we should throw at least a couple more days of 2010 in there just to give Jer and I a chance to kind of wrap everything up. 


Christmas 2009



 Oh, and did I mention that this is my 753rd blog post?  There's nothing particularly special about that number except that seriously how the heck have I written 753 blog posts?  That is a staggering amount of writing about things like poop explosions.  And since I don't exactly put a ton of effort into these things (because then blogging would be work and I wouldn't want to do it anymore) goodness knows how many times I've used the words 'really,''very,' and 'anyway' in that ridiculous number of posts.  I haven't exactly been writing the Great American Novel here, and it's still a wonder to me that people not only want to read about Connor's poop explosions, but then they want to comment and write me long e-mails giving advice on proper poop containment and sharing their own poignant or hilarious poop explosion stories with me. 

Really, you are all amazing!

But as wonderful as all of your commiserating and moral support is, it still doesn't make me any more ready for 2011.  Since Father Time doesn't seem to be taking suggestions from me at the moment however, I guess I'll just have to get used to it, even if it will take me three or four months at the earliest before I quit writing 2010 on all of my checks.  Force of habit is a powerful thing.

 So since I'm stuck with 2011, I hope the year will be a good one.  I'm not going to ask for a boring year, because our family doesn't do boring.  But I hope that it's exciting in a good way, and I wish you all the same! 
~Jess



Christmas 2010