Sick Day

I figure I might as well use this early morning to post a bit. My kids are trying to keep me from sleeping. Maybe remind me what a newborn is like. I heard Maddie crying around 2:30, I figured it must be her teeth (finally getting the two year molars). But she told me she "spit" in her bed. Sure enough puke everywhere! So got her cleaned up, and the bed. The one big casualty was her "kitty" also known as the only thing helps maintain sanity around here. We have two, which alternate based on filth factor. Puke trumps the filth on the other kitty which hadn't been washed yet. Then back to bed for the girls.

Well, you guessed it, a half-hour later more puking, more bed changing, more puke on the now more filthy kitty. Crisis! Bud was up for this one, so once she was settled we started listing what was going on in our day, to decide who stays home. My calculus kids have a test on Thursday so I won.

Bud is at school at 4:30 to put stuff out for a sub. This is when I envy people who can just call in sick without having to drag themselves in to work first. Usually we can just write stuff up at home and have the other take it to school, that is a major advantage of being at the same school. There was no way for me to fall back to sleep, especially since Maddie has thrown up a few times since then, so she and I are watching Frosty (thanks TiVo love ya). She is in a great mood, if it wasn't for the vomiting she would be a joy to spend the day with.

I know I am super lucky to have a husband who feels it is his equal responsibility to clean up poop, puke, pee and stay home with a sick child. But I always feel guilty, it seems like when you are sick you need your mom. Maybe because my dad wasn't the most nurturing person when you were sick. He woke up with us in the middle of the night because my mom goes into a coma as soon as she hits the pillow, but he was more business like. "Your stomach hurts? do you need to poop? maybe try farting." (Which I now do to Owen when his stomach hurts, sorry).

Well, I think I am going to try to shower!

Ultrasound day

Wow, this pregnancy is getting stressful. I got a phone call from the doctors office this morning, they got the results of my quad screen this morning and the results came back postive for Down Syndrome. But when I got to the office it was actually negative for Downs, postive for spina bifida. The counselor there is awesome, and said it was probably because of the twin.

On the ultrasound everything looked great. The baby looked great, the spine looked fine, there don't seem to be any problems from the loss of the other baby. All in all the doc said it was a great ultrasound. We still went with the amnio just because all the uncertainty has been freaking me out. It was the first on I have had, and it was a yucky feeling. I need to stay of my feet for the next day, so more time for the internet.

Well now for the good part. It is a GIRL. I have had that feeling all along so I am pretty excited. Plus now whenver I buy stuff for Maddie I can plan on using it for the next baby.

A Teacher on Teacher Gifts

I know the Internet is holding millions of posts about teacher gifts, but here is mine. Some of these are geared toward older students because I teach high school. It seems there is less gift giving for secondary teachers, I think because parents are intimidated by the sheer number of teachers their kids have.

• First it is usually best to give something consumable. In general anything that gets used up and doesn't use space is great. I will give some exceptions,


• I love when my seniors give me a pennant from the college they plan to attend. Christmas may be to soon for that, but it works great at the end of the year.


• If your child is part of a sport, club or activity they can give the teacher a t-shirt. I wear these on game days to show my support and they can usually be purchased for cheap. For a favorite teacher cafepress.com has some awesome shirts, you can search by subject. They are pretty pricey, so these would be just for a special teacher. The math and history are really funny.


• One of the best gifts I ever received was from a student who worked at Ben & Jerry's and she brought each teacher a pint of their favorite ice cream. If you child has a job, have them be a little creative.


• Food is always a winner. If you want to see a full sheet cake disappear put it in a teacher lounge. I don't know why, we can't resist.


• Gift cards are always great.

For our own children these are the offerings we have this year:

• Owen and I made soap this summer, we plan to give them to his teachers this year. We we wrapped them in cute paper, and tied them with raffia. ( No the caramels we made that day were for me, thanks to Swistle I have a serious caramel addiction)


• We will do the same thing we did last year and do a soup in a jar. Bud made cute labels for the jars and everyone seemed to enjoy the soup. I tested it out first and it was really good.


• Plates of cookies. My mom and I usually spend one day from 7:ooam to 9:00pm baking cookies. I have given a plate of these to our daycare lady every year since we met her. We moved into our current house three years ago on December 18th needless to say the cookies didn't get made, so we gave her a $50 gift certificate to her favorite restaurant. She was disapointed. Yeah, the cookie plate rules. Every year she tells me which family member loves which cookies, they apparently wait for it every year.


• We may try a drink mix this year, instead of the soup. Owen is big enough he can do a lot of it himself. Score!
• There are a lot of great food gift ideas on Allrecipes. (I spend countless hours here)

And most of all let's not forget the sincere card or letter. This is my personal favorite, I still have cards from my first students eleven years ago. I pin them all up on my wall, and read them when I am having a bad day. They are truly the best gift a teacher can get. And they are cheap.

Pregnancy Update

It is amazing how a person can forget the difficulties of being pregnant. What sort of crazy hormone can wipe your memory that way? You would think vomiting for 3 months would stick with a person. I finally got some relief, the nurse practitioner prescribed me Reglan for the all day barfathon. I has been working pretty well. I forgot to take it Sunday night before bed, then made the mistake Monday morning of talking about making a turkey sandwich for my lunch. The dry heaving began mid-sentence. So I took a bagel, and remember to take the meds.

I am amazed how much more I can get done in a day when I am not clutching the toilet. I have managed to get my grading caught up! That in itself is a miracle. I no longer choose my meals based on what is easiest to throw up. It's like a whole new world.

We have another ultrasound on Friday, so we should get some more news on how this baby is doing. I am totally freaked out. I keep telling the baby I would like to feel a few little kicks, just to reassure me that we will not hear on Friday that we have lost this one as well. My MIL is a labor and delivery nurse, and all her OB friends said it would be unusual for their to be a problem with this baby, but I can't help it. Bud is always the voice of reason and pointed out we aren't praying for a miracle, but just average. We can totally do average, it is where we excel.

We should also be able to find out if we are having a boy or girl since I will be 17 week. It doesn't matter to me either way, but I do still have all of Maddie's clothes. Although I am sure my mom is more than willing to buy more stuff. I keep seeing cute summer baby stuff on clearance, once I know what the baby is the buying can begin. My sister in law is due in March and they chose to not find out the sex of the baby. I can't comprehend that. But they went through IVF so they felt like they wanted some sort of surprise, since the pregnancy was pretty well planned out.

And here is a picture of girl who will imitate anything her brother does:

Thanksgiving

So what was left off your Thanksgiving feast? I forgot to make the Creamed Cabbage (sounds gross tastes yummy) and the Green Bean Casserole. I don't think we have ever made it through a holiday without forgetting something. So what did you forget?

Surprise! Heartbreak...Fear

With this pregnancy I will be 38 when the baby is due, so that entitles me to all sorts of extra doctor appointments. We went on Friday to do the Nuchal Fold measurement. At the beginning of the ultrasound the tech kept asking if we had any sort of ultrasound yet. Then she said "well I am seeing twins" at which point I had a stroke because holy cow.

Just as we are trying to get use to this idea, she told us she could find a heartbeat on one of the babies. We quickly went from freaking out about twins to praying for a heartbeat to appear. Which didn't happen. We really didn't take much of an opportunity to enjoy the twin who is ok.

Then the doctor came in to explain and answer questions. The twins appeared to be identical, so he is concerned about them sharing a placenta and the surviving baby having a decrease in blood pressure. This could lead to brain damage. At this point I just wanted them to shoot me. Of course we won't know anything until our next ultrasound in about 4 weeks. I know he is just giving us worst case scenarios, and he did say that this happens all the time and the other baby is born just fine. Now every time I feel a twinge I freak out.

Bud and I are just stunned. I feel so guilty for not immediately being happy about twins, I know intellectually that had no bearing on the whole thing but there it is. I know we should be happy that right now "baby A" looks good. We were only expecting one baby so why does it hurt so much to lose this baby we didn't know about? When I wrote about wanting another baby, I said that it feels like someone is missing. Now, I know there always will be a child missing.

And to top it off I have a wretched cold and I am still throwing up, so this has been an awesome weekend. Now I need to blow my nose again.

Fog

Pregnancy is killing me. WTF was I thinking? I can't stay up past 8:30, so my TV viewage is way down. I am a few weeks behind on Heroes. Thank goodness for Tivo. The endless gagging is starting to piss me off. I am questioning my wisdom in trying to get 32 credits in this school year. My online class is crushingly boring, truly I think it will kill me.

But, the baby does have a heartbeat! Which from what I understand is a good start. Poor Bud ended up getting there a little to late to hear it. I have to go for the one-hour glucose test this week, blreagh. And on the seventh we go to the perinatalogist for some early screening. Hopefully this week I can get a bit more energy.