welcome 31st year....

turning 31 is definately much more exciting when 2 little girls are just jumping with excitement to sing "Happy Birthday", help blow out candles, and help open presents.
Work was busy, as anticipated. It started out fairly reasonably. Oddly enough the cesarean section was not complicated by scar tissue, it was complicated by the fact that the patient's rings were stuck on and WOULD NOT come off. We stood in the O.R., all scrubbed and ready to go, for over 30 minutes with the ring ordeal. We borrowed the E.R.'s ring cutter, which was really just a Dremmel tool, and it was like trying to knaw through 14K gold with plastic cutlery. it would have been entertaining if i was unaware that there were 15 patients who had checked into the walk in clinic to be seen. Ahhhhh, the walkin clinic. It is supposed to be an emergency clinic for pregnant and postop patients. and yet, my first patient was a lady who wanted her IUD out because she was ready to get pregnant. i was like, ummmmm.....did you realize this is our Acute Care Clinic? we handle emergencies, pregnancies, and postoperative patients. Yes, she did know it was an emergency clinic, but our next available appt is 3 weeks away, and she has had this IUD for 5 years and needs to get rollling with this pregnancy thing. stat. i have found it is faster to just do it, rather than try to figure out a way not to do it. so i did the emergency IUD removal and moved on with my life.

I finally made it home, and was greeted by two smiling, excited little faces. we had a lovely dinner, and then busted out the strawberry shortcake. i was so excited to see strawberries have arrived at Costco this weekend, and we have been enjoying getting back into our berry addiction this week. I layered this vanilla cake with some cream cheese/strawberry frosting, then topped it with fresh strawberries and fresh whipped cream, and it was delicious! :) Of course Jbug and NovaJo had gotten a little present to open in the mail along with Mommy's presents.
Cris definately approved of the Ohio State gear i'll be sporting around the house.

We finished off the evening by watching some cartoons in our little bed on the floor. the girls think this is just about the most fun you can have.

finally, some bad news in the sleep department. Nova has always been an amazing sleeper. she loves sleep, just like her mama. when we say bedtime, she takes off for the stairs and heads straight up to her crib. The first 2 nights after we got back from Hawaii Nova did her usual superstar sleep marathons. On the 3rd night, something changed, and she FREAKED OUT! she started crying and screaming and arching her back. We thought "this kid must be sick or something!" so we let her sleep in bed with us. repeat experience the next day at nap, so we rocked her to sleep, still thinking she was sick. But then it just continued. If we even said "sleep" she had a spaz attack. A couple of nights ago we left her in her crib to throw a fit for awhile, and when we peeked in to check on her she had thrown every blanklet, pillow, toy, and even her diaper and pants out of the crib.

We came up with what we believe to be the "master solution". A variation of the "Sissy Bed" from our Hotel Room. Cris has created a "Sissy Crib". It has not solved the problem, but it has made it a little better. there is still crying at bedtime, but it is less, so hopefully over the next week or so things will start to go back to normal.