Hello 2013

Life has been hectic.

Luke continues to bring home illness every week from MyGym. Last week was a particularly brutal cold that wiped everyone out and resulted in a visit to the doctor on Friday when both boys had bad colds. Turns out Luke had his first ever ear infection (and absolutely no signs of an ear infection, never pulled on his ear, no fever, etc., so I guess it's good I brought him in.) That visit was a particularly hellish experience. Luke managed to run out the door of the exam room while I was undressing Matthew to be weighed. He spent the entire time screaming, along with Matthew, and took 2 nurses to weigh him because he kept throwing his body off. Finally at the end he calmed down enough to eat animal crackers OFF THE FLOOR. It was awesome. Our new-old pediatrician has daughters the same age and he tells me that it gets better after the next four months. And pretty much said that yep, the first 6 months are hell. Good to know that we aren't even halfway through yet. Matthew's the only one still sick and I am really not liking how his cough sounds so we will probably be doing it all over again tomorrow although this time I'll be smart and keep Luke contained in the stroller with cookies or something.

I switched back to the pediatrician we had been using with Luke until Matthew was born. I just never got comfortable with the one we had switched to. She gave Matthew two different kinds of eye drops for "pink eye" that wasn't pink eye. It was a blocked tear duct. And then even when she finally figured out it was blocked tear ducts, she never gave us the suggestion to massage the inside corner of his eye with a warm wash cloth...which is what we were told to do with Luke. I finally did it on my own and his eyes have been a lot better. Then she said he had a yeast infection-diaper rash, but it wasn't and in fact it got a lot worse when I used the stuff. And last but not least, said he had reflux when I tried to tell her I thought his problem was really my oversupply/gas, when the reflux medicine she prescribed didn't help or work, she prescribed something new instead of reconsidering the problem. There were some other things I didn't like, too, but the biggest thing was I lost trust that she had any freaking clue what she was doing. Pink eye is fairly obvious! Anyway, I feel much better now that we are back to our first pediatrician. I was really stressed out about how awkward it would be to go back, with a 2 month old he's never seen, but both boys screaming at the top of their lungs the whole time helped.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I passed the math test or not, I did! In fact, I placed in college level trig as my "starting math class". Yuck! It took two trips and a long trip walking across campus with Matthew in his carseat (OMG HEAVY...why the hell am I not using my fricking expensive new stroller? Because his car seat doesn't fit in it and it's freaking heavy too.) Anyway, I am FINALLY, officially on the waiting list for the sonography program. Yay. The bad news is that the wait is 2 years. And I'm not exactly sure what that 2 years even means...two years from now...like fall 2014? Hopefully not anything later than that. This put me in a bit of a funk for a few days because I really hoped to start this fall, but I think I'm just going to hang in there. I still need to email and find out for sure. And I need to consider if I'd rather do cardiac ultrasound instead, which might have a shorter waiting list, but it would mean no babies. I did a quick search and there were many more jobs online posted for cardiac ultrasound vs. medical, at least right now. I really want to do OB, but there is no guarantee I'll get to even if I go into "medical" sonography, and there is a good chance I could end up having to do a lot of everything (uh, like testicles, to be blunt).  So maybe switching to cardiac would be a better idea..? Sigh. I am still mulling over this. I briefly considered getting more information about a radiology tech program...like the people who do x-rays and stuff...but they make significantly less money than sonographers, don't have as strong of job outlook, and the program is like 6 semesters so I wouldn't really finish any sooner than I would even if I have to wait for ultrasound. And I'd rather do even cardiac sonography over x-rays, anyway. Complicated.

Besides being sick, the boys have been good. Matthew started smiling on Christmas eve and will now "coo" and talk a bit. Luke said his first sentence yesterday, when he tried to pull his chair out from under the coffee table and he was tilting it upright as he tried to pull it out so it wasn't budging. He looked up at me and said "Uh oh. It stuck." Today he threw me for a loop when he was sitting on thed diaper table and pointed at both of my breasts and said "boods". I was a little horrified, thinking he was saying boobs, then he repeated it again and touched where he was pointing and I realized he was pointing at the Cardinals, on my Cardinals tshirt, and saying BIRDS. Phew. Then today after he finished taking his antibiotic from the oral syringe, he lifted up his shirt and pressed it against his belly. I'm not really sure if he was just goofing around with that or what, but it struck me that he might have been imitating me giving myself lovenox shots in the stomach a long time ago. He was in the room when I did them once or twice but usually I did them after he was in bed, so it wasn't like a regular thing he witnessed. And I can hardly remember that (I stopped them at 26 weeks or something, so a long long time ago). Weird, but the kid is picking up a lot more than I tend to give him credit for. He is also climbing and getting into trouble nonstop and I cannot wait for it to be nice outside on a regular basis because he NEEDS to get out of the house for a bit every day.

Christmas was hectic. Matthew cried all night Christmas Eve (the fake reflux that was a combination of my oversupply and him wanting to nurse nonstop and not take a bottle, I think.) Luke was a hot mess all day Christmas day because of being sleep deprived. So they were both just crazy. He does like all his toys and it's been nice to have some new stuff to play with. It took 3 days for him to open everything (from us/"santa") because he would open something and want to play with it and have a huge fit if we tried to get him to open something else. I turned 29 and had a pretty nice birthday.

My baby brother is turning 16 and will probably be driving in 2 days. I can't believe it. I was holding Matthew tonight and saying it doesn't seem that long ago when Nick was that little. (And Luke!) And Matthew himself isn't even all that little anymore, he's up to 12 lbs 9 ounces as of last Friday, more than double his birth weight. It does go so so fast.

I think my quote for this year will be something I saw from another blogger:
"The days are long but the years are short."

 Because holy cow...the days do seem really really long right now, and I have never been so happy to see Joe home from work as I have the last couple of months. But I know a few months from now I will be looking back on this time in amazement. I can't believe Luke will be 2 in just a few months. Or that it's already time to do Matthew's 3 month pictures at the end of this month.