Recently...

Sometimes, all I can manage are fleeting thoughts and updates.  To sit and write a whole focussed post seems too overwhelming for me, so for now, "what you see is what you get".

Emotions
Today was a hard day.  I am in a "pregnancy fog" many mornings, which usually lifts after 2 or 3 hours of being awake.  I finally feel human around 10 or so in the morning.  Yesterday, I had an awesome day - felt like the fog was lifting earlier, and I accomplished a lot.  Today, the fog stayed all day long.  It was hard to focus, tough to stay motivated, impossible to stay on task.  By the end of the day I was discouraged and beaten down.  Tears flowed freely when my dear hubby came home and asked a simple "how are you?"

Update on Joshua
Joshua is doing much better.  We are SO thankful that it ended up being something so simple.  What was it, you ask?  Strep A.  That's it.  The throat swab took forever to come back, but there it was.  The crazy thing is how it presented - never once did he have any trouble swallowing (I kept asking!), no inflammation in his throat, no white spots, no swelling in his throat itself.  The swelling in his neck stayed for days, as did the pain.  The fever abated about a week ago, within about 24 hours of starting antibiotics.

Because of the really high white blood count, the doctor finally admitted to us last Friday that he thought at one point that we were dealing with leukemia.  Yeh, it had crossed a few minds in the previous days.  Joshua is still not completely out of the woods with his infection, but he is doing much better.  He still has swollen glands, but not a football-player neck.

We know it could have been so much worse.  The single week of waiting for test results, dealing with pain and other inexplicable symptoms, seemed to be a lot to bear at one point.  I allowed myself a few tears of release - not of self-pity or anything, just *release* - and reminded myself that some people wait for months and months and months in a state of uncertainty.  We were blessed to find out within a week. I pray it could be so simple for others.

Our newest addition
Graeme got up at some insane hour of the night last night to try and buy the new iPad 2 online.  He was successful.  However, it was going to take 3-5 weeks for shipping.  He had banked some time at work, so he got off early today and opted to stand in line at Future Shop in the city.  He was 20th in line.  Not bad.  The guy in front of him had a buddy in the store management who'd told him that the store had 75 units in stock.  Once they started handing out "tickets" to the people in line, Graeme ended up getting the very last ticket for the black 32 gig wi-fi unit.  Then, this guy's store buddy scored them some accessories without Graeme and the other guy having to get out of line.  Funny.  Graeme had a lot of fun, but he is now the proud owner of Paddy, a little friend he didn't have to pay for (he had a gift card from Christmas as a staff bonus, combined with a technology fund from work).  I'm most thankful for that last part about us not having to shell out for it!

Beautiful moments
Meaghan likes to snuggle me after her night-time milk.  Then she likes to sit on my lap, straddled, facing me, and lay her head on the top of my ever-expanding belly.  Tonight, she then sat up and put her hands gently on my tummy.  I put my hands over top of hers and pressed them in a bit so that she'd actually feel something should the baby actually reward her with a kick, as s/he had been sleeping for a while.  Within mere moments, Meaghan was booted with the most massive kick of the day!  Her face absolutely LIT up - she was so excited, and then kept insisting on feeling more.  However, several minutes had passed and Wooton had gone back to sleep.  (I'm thinking Wooton had more of a "sleep-jerk" than anything.)  I told Meaghan we'd try again tomorrow.  She was beside herself with joy at having felt the baby kick... so sweet...  moments to treasure forever.

Stinky moments
Meaghan is very aware of her bodily functions.  She has been finally somewhat successful at knowing when she's about to do a stinky duty - giving me all of about 2 seconds to respond and "RUN!" her to the toilet.  By tonight, she still hadn't done the deed for the day (but the smell of the air coming out of her back end told me enough), so I put her on the potty and had Joshua read to her as she sat half-naked, and a few minutes later she was "all done", having produced nothing.  She toddled naked into the boys' room to find me, and just as she found me, we all heard her say, "Poop!"... and Joshua almost threw up - he was gagging and saying, "Oh!  She's POOPING!!!"  - yup, right there, right in the middle of their floor, not 20 seconds after getting up off the potty.  At least it was a quick "firm" pick-up.  We had to deodorize their room to make them happy.  No kidding!  Poor girlie.  At least I can say I haven't had to change any poopy diapers today...?

That's all I've got for today.  It's late, Graeme is still out showing off his new addition to one of our friends, and I'm all done in... so I'm going to turn in.  The kitchen can wait till tomorrow.  Maybe I'll at least load and run the dishwasher...