Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all of my "mommy" readers. I hope that you have a wonderful day celebrating with your loved ones--especialy those that call you Mom or Grandma.

I believe (have the Kleenex handy)

I Believe... That just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other. And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do love each other.

I Believe... That we don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

I Believe... That no matter how good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.

I Believe... That true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.

I Believe... That you can do something in an instant that will give you heartache for life.

I Believe... That it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.

I Believe... That you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.

I Believe... That you can keep going long after you think you can't.

I Believe... That we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

I Believe... That either you control your attitude or it controls you.

I Believe... That heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences.

I Believe... That money is a lousy way of keeping score.

I Believe... That my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have the best time.

I Believe... That sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you're down, will be the ones to help you get back up.

I Believe... That sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

I Believe... That maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

I Believe... That it isn't always enough, to be forgiven by others. sometimes, you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I Believe... That no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I Believe... That our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but, we are responsible for who we become.

I Believe... That you shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life Forever.

I Believe... Two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

I Believe... That your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don't even know you.

I Believe... That even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you - you will find the strength to help.

I Believe... That credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.

I Believe... That the people you care about most in life are taken from you too soon.

Better than a crystal ball

Why bother paying a psychic when Google will predict your needs for free?! Right on!
Here's what I (and Ben) need , according to the mighty search engine---

Laura needs a home. Gee, how did they know we've been looking at houses?

Laura needs to get out more. Oh gosh, so true. Being a SAHM mom means just that, most days, staying at home. I need a life.

Laura needs a clue. Don't we all...I'm just floating around accidental like.

Laura needs $500 for new legs. Sweet deal! I'd like thin, fit ones without visible veins please!

And finally...

Laura needs a hobby. Great insight, yes I do. Is blogging a hobby though?

Here is what Google says my husband needs---

Ben needs a nap. Totally right on there! Any guy who works 80+ hours/week deserved one LONG nap!

Ben needs a laptop for college. He would love a laptop and going to college would be a good excuse for us getting him one.

Ben needs help. Uhh, duh! He needs to clone himself!

Ben needs $5K. That would be nice! We wouldn't have to worry about medical debt collections.

What do YOU need?

Eyes & Ears & Mouth & Nose...

Off to the ENT she goes! (hey, it rhymes)
Cara had her follow-up visit with her ENT doctor today. First, we had a comprehensive hearing screening down with a pediatric audiologist. She stated that Cara has really narrow ear canals, some of the narrowest that she's ever seen. She had a heck of a time getting the little ear pieces to fit in Cara's ear, she had to use a newborn size! Cara tolerated the probes, responded to her name being whispered to her and glanced right & left at bears lighting up and playing the drums. The conclusion at the end of the battery of tests was that there was significant fluid behind the eardrum on her right ear, which is the side of her head where her VP shunt was placed. This is a very common occurrence with children who have hydrocephalus as the drainage tube for her shunt runs right behind her ear. I'm not sure how the two are related, but they seem to be. This fluid explained why no active vibration could be obtained from that eardrum. Her right ear also showed a moderate deficiency in certain frequencies...again, a result, we hope of the fluid.
After the hearing test, we had a visit with Dr. Werle. He discussed the results of the screening in more depth and then talked about what he felt needed to be done to alleviate the fluid and deal with the deficiency in her right ear. He recommended ear tubes to drain the fluid, then a hearing test done under sedation called an MER. It conducts a hearing screening by measuring the brain's response to sound stimulus. It is the most comprehensive screening out there. He will conduct the test after the tubes have been put into place to see if having the tubes gets rid of the deficiency. If not, we may be looking at hearing aids, down the line. After the MER, he will remove her adenoids to help with her breathing and hopefully, get rid of the snoring and snorting that she has a tendency to do. All three procedures will take no more than an hour. Cara will be under sedation briefly but will be able to go home the same day. She will just have a mild sore throat from having her adenoids removed and should have no pain associated with the ear tubes. Her ENT showed me both diagrams of where the ear tubes go and an actual ear tube. The darn this is no bigger than a bead! The miracles of modern science!
We do not know when the surgery will be scheduled yet as I am awaiting a phone call from the scheduler as she had to check with the hospital to coordinate a time. Hopefully soon! Dr. Werle feels that if it is indeed the fluid that is causing the hearing problems, that the tubes will help and hopefully, Cara's speech will improve. He thinks that part of her reason for her lack of speech is because things sound somewhat "muffled" to her, especially on the right side.

Only time will tell. That said, please keep Cara in your thoughts as she goes through yet another surgery.

Turning the BIG 3-0!

I had a bit of a milestone birthday last Friday, I turned three decades old! Most days, I do not feel or act my age, thanks to my daughters who give me the excuse to play dress up, swing on swings, stare at the clouds and make paint out of Jello. Of course, there are those days when I feel 100, where every part of my body aches at any movement and even 9 hours of sleep isn't enough to recharge.

Anyway, I digress...I had a great birthday, or should I say birthdays. We went to Montrose the week before my birthday and celebrated with my parents, younger brother and my aunt & uncle. My mom made a kick butt dinner and of course, homemade strawberry pie which has been my birthday dessert for years. Good times, good food, good company, can't beat that.

Fast forward to Friday, my actual birthday. By some strange twist of fate, Ben got pink eye and had to call in to his day job, so he was home with us all day. As long as he washed his hands and we took sanitizer when we went out, I figured he was fit to be around (note: none of us got pink eye from him) so we spent a rare Friday together as a family. Ben started off by taking me to the mall and to the Apple store. He sent me away while he got my gift, which still shocks me. I got the latest iPod, the iPod touch. I had been wanting one for awhile for when start walking and when we travel so that I can tune out the girls (just kidding). No really, my hope was to get an adapter so that I could play all of our favorite songs over my radio without having to fumble through CDs, which is dangerous while driving.
I'm still learning how to do all of the cool things that this allows me to do, but...short of sounding like a McDonald's commercial...

After the venture to the Apple store, we piled into the car and went to the Light Rail station to catch a train to LoDo. Ben had asked me where I'd like to go for my birthday dinner and I chose one of my favorite restaurants, BD's Mongolian BBQ. I just love that I can pile on tons of fresh veggies and watch it be grilled by cute guys doing mind-blogging tricks with those bigs chopsticks. Not much tops fresh stir-fry. We had an awesome meal to top off an awesomely fun day.

One thing that would've made it a tad bit better, some girlfriends to go out with...working on that though, working on it.

**edited to add--I'm a bad momma. Caitlin reminded me of the awesome gifts that she hand-selected for me for my birthday. This is one girl who knows her momma. She picked out a coconut body butter, green tea hand lotion and then two Almond Joy bars for her momma's birthday. Seriously, the husband could learn from her.**

ENT visit

Our concern of Cara's disrupted sleep, some nights, and her "stuffiness" led us to seek out the opinion of an ENT. We got a great referral from Cara's speech therapist. Dr. Werle really knew his stuff and knew what to say and how to say it to ease parental fears. Right now, we are in the beginning stage of finding out what might be causing her to snore and snort a lot. We are going to be going to Children's this week for a lateral neck x-ray to check her tonsils and adenoids. From looking down her throat and up her nose, it was concluded that Cara has enlarged tonsils and adenoids which isn't in and of itself necessarily a concern, but something to be checked out. Sometimes, kids just grow into them or they shrink with age. They can also be enlarged because the child is fighting off an infection. In any case, we're going to have a look-see. Dr. Werle also said that Cara has extra cartilage in her nose, which could be causing her to snort and snore. He wanted her to have a sleep study, but a call to Aetna put it on the back burner for now. Our primary insurance will not cover anything as we have not met our $5K deductible. When I called the Sleep Center at the hospital, I was informed that a typical pediatric study for sleep apnea runs no less than $4K and usually more like $7K! Holy smokes! I'd like to know one average person out there who could drop that kind of money for something non-essential. Even with our CICP, we were looking at $585 per service! $585 for the therapist, $585 for this...you get the idea. Our already impressive bill with Children's would increase almost tri-fold. So, I got back on the horn and told her ENT's nurse and we agreed to postpone the sleep study and just go with a hearing test (got to rule it out), the xray and an office visit. If after all that is done, Dr. Werle still thinks a sleep study needs to be done, we may have to bite the bullet. That will be a very big one to swallow, however.

Why I <3 Apple

Apple, Apple, I adore you! Let me sing your praises!

My laptop went in for repair (due to a dead hard drive) via our local DHL driver on Monday afternoon. I received a prompt email from Apple that it arrived at their repair facility on Monday night. By Tuesday afternoon, my laptop had been repaired and was leaving the facility. How's that for speedy service? I anxiously waited for the door bell to ring all day yesterday hoping that by some miracle it would arrive in less than a day. No such luck, but this morning, at 10:30, my door bell indeed rang and there was my MacBook. I was so excited! You don't know how much you miss your laptop until you have to use an antiquated POS machine for a few days. I could barely contain myself from ripping the box to shreds to get my machine out. I opened the "proper" way and saw my beautiful, white 13" MacBook staring at me (computers stare, didn't you know?). I booted it up, heard the Apple chime and life was good. What came next, I never expected in my wildest dreams. I mean, I know they had to reinstall and operating system and all, but who would've thought that they would---

INSTALL LEOPARD (the latest and greatest OS) for FREE?> It *almost* makes up for losing my documents and a few pictures...almost. I cannot wait until Ben gets home. I am going to have to help him pick up his chin off of the floor when he hears the news.

So, ladies and gents, I'm back online, super fast, and with the latest and greatest. Next time Apple, you can throw in another gig of RAM and a 20" iMac!

She's Come Undone!

Wanted: One 30 year old, functioning brain. Must be able to multi-task and remember important and mundane details without failure. Interested parties, inquire within.

Have you seen my brain, my common sense, or my memory? I think, if you were to do a CT scan of my head right now, you'd find a big, gaping void where my brain should be.

I seem to have lost my precious digital camera. Somewhere between our park outing last Sunday after church and the consignment shop last Thursday, my Kodak camera disappeared--complete with a "roll" of pictures from the park outing. So, no pun intended, I've lost more Kodak moments. I'd back-track and try to find it, but here's what has transpired in the days since I've last seen the camera---

*Loading of my car after park outing
*Trip to grocery store
*Trip to Children's Hospital, unloading of stroller from back of car
*Trip to local children's consignment shop with a car full of boxes and bags
*Car battery died while waiting for appointment time at consignment shop which lead to digging the "emergency kit" out of the back of the car to locate the jumper cables for the unsuccessful jumping attempt by a Good Samaritan.
*Boxes/bags unloaded from car and carried into consignment shop, in the snow.
*Rejects from consignment shop loaded back up into car
*Rejects dropped off at local Goodwill
*Trip to a children's museum accompanied with first conscious thought that camera is not in car
*Thorough search of car does not locate camera

See? It's hopeless. Unless the camera miraculously turns up somewhere, I'm out a way to capture my children's precious moments. Looks like we might actually help stimulate the economy when our economic stimulus check comes in May. Now, if I only knew what kind of camera to get. Any suggestions? Anyone?

Sunk My Battleship

I am officially out of commission. My MacBook's hard drive bit the dust over the weekend with not so much as a warning. Everything was running smoothly when we stepped out for a few hours. I come home and attempt to wake up the sleeping machine only to find that the screen saver had froze. No biggie, I'm thinking, it happens. So, I restarted my laptop, thinking that it would cure whatever was ailing the poor thing. After a prolonged period of time (mind you, it usually starts up in under 20 seconds), I finally see this-- I knew, in the back of my mind, that this couldn't be a good thing. I called my 24/7 on-call tech support man (read my husband) into the room to diagnosis the problem. Turns out that my hard disk decided that it had lived a long enough life and quit on me. Ben tried and tried to get it up and running again & trying to retrieve my data. A call to AppleCare (so glad that we got that included--for free--with both of our Macs) confirmed Ben's suspicions and a box to mail my useless laptop to Apple is en route to our house.

I cried a few tears over the documents and a few pictures that I had lost. Thankfully, I download most of my pictures to Flickr, so they are stored there and we can get them back relatively easy. I just do not know if the last batch downloaded on to Flickr is indeed the last round of pictures I took. Those precious moments will never happen again, so I'm in mourning. I suppose it could've been a lot worse, if I had had some pertinent information stored on my laptop. Lucky for me, it was mostly saved relay chat conversations and a few recipes. Somehow, I know life will go on.

Apple said that I will be without my beloved for 7-10 days, so, in the meantime, I am forced to use Ben's Mac Mini. It's a great computer, don't get me wrong, but it's not as convenient as my laptop and doesn't have all of my tabs & bookmarks that I worked so hard to find and set up. I will have a lot to do when I get my laptop back, to get it back to my liking. One good thing though, Ben is going to up my RAM when it comes back! We are also going to do a back up weekly, so that I never have to lose photos, videos or documents again!

So Judy, I kind of know what you were suffering through with your computer issues. It bytes...we rely on our computer more than we'd like to admit.

My name is Laura and I'm addicted to my laptop.

Neurosurgery Update

Cara had her *gasp* 9 month surgical follow-up with her neurosurgeon on Wednesday. While incredibly brief (he was running 20 minutes late and we had another appointment to make), we learned that her shunt appeared to be functioning well, and that in the past 6 months, her head circumference has only grown about a 1/4" of an inch. While she should be "growing into" her large head, a little bit of growth is normal because, well, children grow. He was also pleased to hear of Cara's progress in therapy and wants her to keep up the good work. As long as she remains stable, we do not have to see him again until October! I hope that we, again, get to report that all is well.

I, of course, had other questions to ask of her neurosurgeon but 1) there just wasn't time and 2) I really didn't think that he would have the answers since they were not medical questions. I am waiting to hear back from his staff assistant about a shunt alert card and about the existence of hydrocephalus support groups in my area.

In other news, thanks to Gabriel's Life, I have met two other moms who have children with hydrocephalus and we are hoping to get together soon. One even lives in the same city as we do. It will be interesting to see what else we have in common. I am really looking forward to creating a network of friendship and support, for both Cara & I.

Turning back the hands of time

GMail's April Fool's Prank, "Custom Time" was just ingenous! Never again would an email be late because you can send things back in time. Kind of a Back to the Future for email.

Here's what has been said about the new option--

Beta User Testimonials


"The entire concept of 'late' no longer exists for me. That's pretty cool. Thanks Gmail!"

Miriam S., Delivery girl



"I just got two tickets to Radiohead by being the 'first' to respond to a co-worker's 'first-come, first-serve' email. Someone else had already won them, but I told everyone to check their inboxes again. Everyone sort of knows I used Custom Time on this one, but I'm denying it."

Robby S., Paralegal



"This feature allows people to manipulate and mislead people with falsified time data. Time is a sacred truth that should never be tampered with."

Michael L., Epistemology Professor



"I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."

Todd J., Investment Banker

Photobucket Meme

The youngest is asleep, the oldest is having lunch, I have a few moments of quiet to do something fun. Should I be devoting this rare quiet time to a meme? Probably not, but in the grand scheme of things, what's 15 minutes wasted? It's all Judy's fault! (just joking)

THE RULES:

you need 2 internet windows open to do it
1. Go to www. photobucket. com (don't sign in)
2. Type in your answer to the question in the "search" box
3. Use only the first page
4. Copy the html and paste for the answer.

1. What is your first name?



2. What's your favorite candy?
This was the first picture that came up, I swear!

3. What is your current relationship status?
For 7 years but just realizing how good I actually have it!

4. What is your favorite color?


5. Who is your celebrity crush?
Hail the return of Indy!

6. What is your favorite band?



7. What is your favorite movie?



8. What is your favorite pastime?


9. What is your job?


10. What do you do for fun?



11. What kind of car do you drive?


12. What is your favorite TV show?


13. One word to describe yourself.

It's a Love Affair!

What do you do when your 4 1/2 year old daughter goes absolutely nuts when she sees...
Carter Oosterhouse star of HGTV's Carter Can and formerly of TLC's Trading Spaces?

I'm serious, if we see an advertisement for Carter Can, Caitlin gets all love struck--big eyes, breathless, you name and says, dreamingly, "Carrrrter!" Could it be love? Hey, at least the guy will come in handy for fixing the garbage disposal or unclogging a drain! Oh yeah, did I mention that he models on the side? Wait, this is about Caitlin's fascination...my bad!