Saturday Morning Tradition

At this point, I would say with certainty that if we are in town on Saturday morning, I don't have a photo shoot, and the weather is half way decent we will most definitely be at the Farmer's Market.  We headed down this time with Jesse and Cheryl who were visiting for the State Fair. 

There was a steel drum band there with a ton of hula hoops for the kids to jam while they played.  Charlotte got in on the action.

One of the booths had this and I loved it.  Mostly because it said be obnoxious.

The Many Faces...

Indecent Exposure

I was driving home and caught Jim and Charlotte walking Petey down the block.  Charlotte had no pants on.  Way to go Dad.

No Bath...

Man oh man....Charlotte has not been able to take a bath since the day before her surgery.  We can give her wipe downs, but nothing else.  Let me tell you, this girl has some of the STINKIEST feet EVER!!!  When her hair get greasy it is especially boingy.  At least when the visiting nurse comes I can bum some wipes to clean off the goo from the tape and bandages she has to wear.  Even stinky...no one can resist those brown eyes.

Iowa State Fair 2010

This year we knew we would head to the fair but not sure when.  We got a call from friends of ours on Saturday (08/14) asking if we would like to go.  We practically hadn't been out of the house since getting home from the hospital so we took them up on it.  Like usual, it was a scorcher out there.  Charlotte was dozing when we got there and eventually woke up.  She enjoyed seeing everything and hanging out with her friend Kinsley.

At one point Char and Kins were in front of a giant fan.  They thought it was pretty hilarious.

By the end of the night it was actually very nice out.  We were glad we ended up going and getting out of the house.  Thanks Kelli and justin for inviting us!

Visiting Nurse

The visiting nurse comes once a day to re-pack Charlotte's wound.  One of the things that gets her distracted is blowing bubbles.  She now wants to blow bubbles ALL THE TIME!  Every time she sees the bottle she starts chiming bub-ble over and over.  Her favorite?  Popping them with her nose.

The Most Stressful Week EVER

So, I mentioned the cyst in the last post but a lot has happened.  Here goes...

She has always had a little pin hole on her chest, from the time she was born, and the doctors told us it was an enlarged pore.  We noticed at her 15 month appointment last month that it looked like a little pimple.  Our doctor squeezed it, some stuff came out, and he told us it was a little cystic mass that may fill up and need to be squeezed every now and again.  No big deal. 

Last week on Tuesday (08/03) we took Charlotte to the doctor to look at her chest again.  The pimple had gotten larger but I was concerned because it was red and sometimes warm to the touch.  Our regular doctor was out so we had to see someone different.  Needless to say Charlotte didn't care for him and so he didn't spend as much time looking at it as we would have liked.  He claimed it was only enflamed, not infected, but that we would need to have it removed at some point or it would just keep flaring up so they set up a consultation with a pediatric surgeon.

Over the course of the week it was slowly but surely getting worse.  It was larger, more red, and still hot to the touch.  I called the doctor on Friday (ours was still out) and the nurse was pretty rude.  She said that the doctor already told me it wasn't infected.  She kept saying that unless is changed drastically to just keep the appointment for Tuesday with the surgeon and he would let us know what to do next. 

When my Mom was here over the weekend we all noticed it getting worse.  We woke up on Monday to water in the basement...that we are currently living in due to construction, so I called to let work know I needed to get stuff cleaned up and off the floor.  We let Charlotte sleep and when she woke it was very large.  We gave our regular doctor a call and he had us come straight over.

When we arrived he confirmed very quickly that the cyst was indeed infected.  He had us go straight down to the hospital to meet with the surgeon.

The surgeon was very concerned when he saw the cyst.  In fact, had she not already eaten that day he would have taken her directly into surgery to get it drained.   Instead, he sent us home with a super heavy duty antibiotic and an appointment for surgery the next day. 

We went to fill the prescription and headed home.  Ahhh...home....where we still had water in the basement, wet carpet, and stuff to clean and pick up.  Not to mention that up on arriving at our very own construciton zone we realized that the air conditioner was not working.  That was awesome given it was 90+ degrees outside.  Pretty soon the wood floor guy was here, letting us know we needed to be moved out by Thursday so that they could refinish the floors.  No walking on them for 4 days.  Could the day get any worse? 

We decided to go out for pizza for dinner.  Partly because it is Char's favorite and partly because it would be air conditioned. 

Monday evening was spent cleaning up the basement and preparing for surgery the next day.  We got up at 4 am to get Charlotte the last she could have to drink.  It had been POURING rain all night. We had a whole lot more water.  Great.  We spent from 4am to after 8am cleaning and sucking up water.  At that point it didn't matter anymore as we had to get ready to head to the hospital.  Oh, here is a picture of the cyst after eating pizza.  It was worse by morning.

Charlotte's surgery was scheduled for noon but they were running ahead of schedule so they took her back at 11:30.   It was pretty hard to see her go.  You do all the prep work with her, walk to the end of the hallway, and at the stop sign we had to pass her off to a nurse.  When you check in they give you a buzzer like they give you in restaurants.  Next all we had to do was wait for it to go off. 

Less than a half hour later it buzzed the first time and we were able to meet with the Doctor.  We were told she was out of surgery, everything went well, and that they would buzz again when she awoke and was ready for us.  Another half hour later and we were being buzzed.  She was awake and ready for Mom and Dad!

From there we were escorted to our hospital room.  We needed to keep her on IV antibiotics for a minimum of 24 hours.  There was a possibility we would stay 2 days but it depended on how things went.  Charlotte actually had a pretty good time in the hospital.  She got to play and jam to music and hang with Mom and Dad.  She also got to go for rides in the little tikes car, probably her favorite thing.  We are very thankful that she took it so well. 

After a long day Charlotte finally hit the hay, all be it in a creepy cage hospital bed.  Jim went home after she was out to take care of the dogs and to tackle the soppy basement.  Not to mention that EVEN MORE RAIN was on it's way.  Yep...it poured some more.  A lot more.  Jim was up until after 2 am.  This was not just our problem, the whole city/area was flooding.  A few people were even killed in some flash flooding that happened.  It was just crazy!

Jim came back to the hospital the next morning and after the plethora of doctors/surgeons/resident/nurses all cleared us we were able to GO HOME! and in her honorably discharged shirt none-the-less.

Luckily enough we were able to get the floors postponed so that we didn't have to move out right when we got home from the hospital.  We still didn't have the air conditioner working so we called a repairman.  We told him what was going on and believe it or not he said he didn't think we needed him.  He told us to go and get a new filter.  Even though we had replaced it no more than a month before with all of the dust form the construction it was not allowing air to pass through our vents and therefore it was freezing all of our ducts.

Charlotte and I headed to walmart, picked up a filter, and headed back home.  We got it switched, the cold air started flowing, and we were finally able to relax.  I just realized I said long week in the title...this was only monday through Wedneday.  3 long days over and we made it.  The visiting nurse starts coming today to pack her wound.  Hopefully it goes well!

Summer Visit From Gramma

My Mom decided to brave our construction zone of a house and came to visit this last weekend (Aug. 7th/8th).  My Mom got here friday evening just in time to watch Charlotte because I won tickets to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Des Moines Community Playhouse.  It may not have been the best performance I have ever seen (it was actually pretty bad) but it was nice to get to go out with the hubs.

Saturday morning we did the usual and headed to the Farmer Market.  I so love that place!  Here is Charlotte, Gramma and Jim hanging out at the market.

I thought I would share just a couple pictures of some of the things you can see down there. 

Fresh honey...

Beautiful, fresh veggies...

A juggling man...

Our adorable daughter!

We really do love heading down there on Saturday mornings.  After sweating and getting awfully stinky we headed home to relax before the rest of the days activities.  We had planned on going to the Hot Air Balloon Festival in Indianola but on the way there my Mom started to not feel well at all.  We ended up turning around and heading home.  It was over 100 degrees and if you're not feeling well who wants to sit outside?

After getting home we let my Mom relax and took Charlotte to the park.  She had a great time playing with her Dad.  Especially on the slides!

Sunday I had some photoshoots and other than that we didn't do too much.  We did run and look for some new light fixtures but didn't find anything we loved.  You can sort of see in the picture below that Charlotte has a cyst on her chest.  We visited the doctor this last week and are supposed to consult with a surgeon this week to see if it needs to come out.  We'll keep you posted.

Basement Living

Because of this...

and this...

and this!!!

We are living in the basement.  It is crazy to leave your home with walls and come home to this!  Demo started today and this is what we came home to.  Pretty darn crazy if you ask me!  There is a lot to do and we will probably be down here for a few weeks but it will all be worth it in the end!

Wheel of Beer Party

This past weekend we headed back to the Dubuque area (Farley to be exact) to attend a party that Jim's friend, Marty, was throwing.  He was having a "Wheel of Beer" party.  All of the guys brought different beers (good, bad, indifferent) and each beer got a spot on the wheel.  Spin the wheel...thats your beer.  There were also whammy spaces-for the most disgusting beer brought, and Beer B**ch spaces-for the guy who would have to get everyone else their beer.

The guys had a great time once they got it going.  The other wives, kids, myself and Charlotte hung out and chatted, played, and ate of course.  They had a ton of delicious food.  Here are some pictures of Charlotte playing.

Charlotte got to spin for Jim once too!

And later in the evening she indulged herself...JUST KIDDING.  She is a kid and thinks closed, cold cans are great to bite.  What can I say...it was a funny picture.

After the night wound down we finally made it back to Jim's Mom's place at about 2:00 am maybe?  I can't remember exactly, Charlotte and I had both slept.  Needless to say our latest night since Charlotte was born out of choice at least! 

We were able to visit with Joy on Sunday and had lunch before heading out for the day.  We stopped back by Marty and Wendi's because I was doing a photoshoot with their boys.  Let's just say the guys were definitely hurting, but they certainly had fun!