Six halloweens!

It's crazy to me that this is Penny's sixth Halloween. She loves listing out all her past halloween costumes so I decided I'd do a recap for everyone:

Penny the penguin with her cousin Dylan the duck


Princess Leia


Penny the gnome (my favorite hands down)


Minnie Mouse


Rapunzel

And this year...Cinderella (worst wig ever!)


It's so fun to see her have fun with her friends on Halloween


it was hard to take pictures at night to show her light up dress

I dressed as an Eskimo. I'm so not ready for the cold to be back!

Epilepsy

I really hoped I wouldn't have to do another post like this, but here it is. Last weekend at 4 am I heard Penelope moving around in bed and then start throwing up. I ran to her room and she was having a seizure. It wasn't violent, but scary to see...lots of twitching of her arms and legs, vomiting and staring off into space. We immediately went to the hospital. It was very much like the experience in January, except she came out of the daze a lot faster. She demanded to know why I would bring her to the doctor without shoes. By the end of the day we were at the park playing basketball.

Since 40% of kids never have a second seizure, the doctors don't do any testing after the first one. Now that she had a second seizure, they needed to see if there was a cause. Thank goodness that I have a friend who is a neurologist. On Monday night she talked me through all of what they'd be looking for and what would require more testing. We had the EEG on Tuesday. The EEG required that Penny only get 5 hours of sleep and be very tired by our noon appointment. oh my goodness that was rough. We kept her up until midnight and then the alarm went off at 4:45. I took her to the indoor playground in the morning. She was falling asleep in the 10 minute drive to the doctor's office. She did great with the EEG. They had her awake for 20 mins asking her questions and putting a strobe light in her eyes. Then the tech let her take a nap for 20 mins. (chris and I also fell asleep in the chairs).

At our appointment with the pediatric neurologist, we learned that all of her blood work was fine, but she had a lot of epileptic activity happening on the EEG. Without medication she has a good chance of  a seizure happening again. Also, they saw a lot of activity happening in one area of her brain while she was napping. Due to this he wanted to do an MRI to rule out any adhesions, tumors, scarring. Since she had no other symptoms, (developmental delays, problem with balance, sight, concentration, etc) he doubted we would find anything, but needed to make sure. We were able to get an MRI appointment for the next morning...that was the longest 15 hours to wait!

The MRI is a 45 minute test where the patient has to be absolutely still so understandably kids are sedated for it. That was so tough. The anesthesiologist was amazing. Think Patch Adams but no clown suit. Penny loved him. I went to the back with her and she sat on my lap while they gave her the anesthetic. Any surprise that I cried? Then we had to wait for an hour. She woke up in no time, had an ice pop and wanted to get real food right away.

The best news was that the MRI was completely normal  so she was given a diagnosis of epilepsy. That sounds very scary, but the definition of epilepsy is 2 or more unexplained seizures. That's the only diagnostic criteria. 1% of all children have epilepsy and the majority grow out of them. The doctor is confident that Penny will most likely grow out of it. He put her on a very low dose of medicine that she takes twice a day. If she has another seizure they will increase the dose. The goal is for her to be seizure-free for 2 years and then do another EEG.

So that was our week...it's weird to say that we are relieved by an epilepsy diagnosis but after everything we learned, this was the best answer we could get. I know it can be a life changing disorder for some kids, but so far with Penny we think it will be very manageable and not long-term.

Penny interview age 5 (+playlist)

Hi everyone! I've decided to do a yearly video interview with Penny. We'll see how many years she'll entertain this idea. This one is pretty cute. She takes after her mommy for favorite food and daddy for favorite animal.

2012 book done

If you've followed the blog from the beginning, you know that around August I get obsessed with finishing the previous year's photo album. Every year I methodically do about an hour a week and get halfway through my photos by March. Then I get frustrated or lose interest and don't sign into Shutterfly for months. There's actually some reasoning behind the August deadline:

1. My cousin Amy usually finishes her book around this time and then sends an email so we can all see it. Shutterfly notices my activity and voila...I have a 50% off coupon that expires in 6 days. Nothing like that to get me moving!.
2. We go on vacation which makes me panic about the hundreds of photos I've taken and feel really far behind in getting my photo books done. Two weeks ago I may have looked relaxed on the beach, but the moment I glimpsed my camera I thought "What if all these photos on my flash drive get lost? Or I just pile them into my computer and they become virtual shoe boxes of photos that sit for years and Penny only vaguely knows of photos from her childhood?"

So I've crammed about 7 hours in the past 4 days to get this done. I've edited multiple times so hopefully I don't find glaring errors when it arrives next week. Note: any new mom out there who wants a photo book right away...wait until you get enough sleep. I ordered Penny's first photo book with the wrong birth date!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shutterfly offers exclusive photobook layouts so you can make your book just the way you want.

Some interesting numbers about this photo book:

•  1000+ photos taken in 2012 
• 650 photos uploaded to Shutterfly
•  336 photos used in the album 
•  81 pages (only 100 are allowed. 2010 I had to keep editing to fit everything, 2011 fit into 90 something, and now I'm at 81. Not sure what that says...)
• Total Cost: $171. You know I'm too frugal for that: I paid $73!  Never pay the actual price. Once you start working on a book and have more than 20 pages completed, you will get a 50% off coupon with an expiration date in a week. You will also get the same email coupon if you view my book while logged into your shutterfly account. I think I've figured this out from a marketing perspective. Tons of people out there are like me and will start books, but lag on finishing. Who knows how many unfinished albums are sitting on Shutterfly's servers? So they give you a big incentive to finish. They then send the same coupon to people who view it in the hopes that grandparents, family, friends will decide to order it. On top of that I always enter in the code Ship30 for free shipping on any order over $30. I also got a $10 off code yesterday. And that's how I got a discount of $98!

And as I say every year...I should start 2013 tomorrow. Then I can actually order it right when we wrap up Christmas. We'll see...now that Shutterfly links to Instagram I'm going to have a lot more photos to comb through. Will the overwhelming feeling convince me to start now or procrastinate until 2014...To Be Continued...

Things Penny says...

Penny and I bike to work/school most mornings and afternoons. We mainly sing songs, but sometimes she just talks a mile a minute. Here are some of the things she has told me:

Every morning we pass a few dozen geese on our bike path. "Mommy, the geese sure do poop A LOT. I think they want to sell their poop. Why would they poop so much? Because they want to make money, but no one wants to buy gooses poop....ha ha ha ha" This observation happens every morning.

Discussing the school 4th of July celebration: "We need to go to the store and buy lots of red white and blue stuff. I need to look fabulous!"

On the birds we see "Mommy, when do the baby chickadees become chickens?"

On my speed or lack of: "You're doing a great job. You can beat the guy up there. You need to go fast....mommmmm...why aren't you going fast?  you have to pedal"
Never mind that she is riding a ride-along bike and only pedals about once every 5 minutes.

A movie discussion: "mommy, did you watch Wizard of Oz when you were a kid? Wow! You did? That's an old movie! Did Toto jump out of the basket and run home when you watched it when you were a kid?"

I know there are some others that I'm forgetting. I have to write them down more often.

A redo 12 years later

For all of you who knew the Henry kids back in Sierra Vista, let me ask this question: If 16 years ago someone asked you to place a bet on which kid was a NCAA Division I college athlete, who would you have picked?

A. Laura

B. Jennifer

C. Christopher

I’m sure it would have been a pretty even split between B & C. All of you would have been WRONG! Yup, this musical theater girl was the one who went on to college sports. Now that might be a little exaggeration since it was only a semester, but I still competed!

Twelve years ago on my first day at George Mason University, a girl in my history class asked if I would like to go to the activity fair with her. She wanted to check out the rowing team, mainly for the hot guys. As she was talking to some of the team members, the large Russian coach pointed at me and said “You! Can you come to practice tomorrow?” I was shocked! I knew nothing about rowing, but obviously I had some unknown talent to make the coach pick me out of the crowd. I was now a walk-on to the novice rowing (crew) team. Here was my chance to prove my athletic prowess!

It turns out that the ideal body for crew is tall and muscular, except for one member of the team. Now for my AZ friends who are used to bridges spanning dry river beds, you probably don’t know much about rowing. In a boat of 8 rowers, there’s 1 person who sits in the front called the coxswain. The coxswain guides the boat with a contraption that is a little like reins for a horse. She also needs to direct and coach the rowers. The other important part is that the coxswain is lightweight since the rowers have to carry her weight.

Now that I look back, I've decided I was predestined to be a coxswain. When I was about 8 or 9, my brother and sister were talking to my aunt and uncle about all their sports activities. I piped up and said “Well, I like bike riding because I can sit down and still exercise.” Everyone found this hilarious. It was very fitting that in college I stumbled into a sport where not only did I sit down, but the less I moved the better it was for the team!

At the time I was less than 120 lbs, so I met the weight requirement. As for the other requirements, I pretty much failed. I was terrible at steering the boat and learning all the terminology. But the worst part was the coaching and directing. I needed to be assertive and command respect:

“Hey, seat 4, get your oar out of the water,”

“Seat 2, you are moving too fast. Follow stroke,”

“Where’s the power? We’re barely moving!”

I just couldn’t do it. I sounded more like a 9^th grade cheerleader squeaking into the cox box (microphone),

“C’mon girls. Good job kind of, oops, boat’s tipping a little, straighten up…OH! going into the weeds, someone row harder”

A weak coxswain is one of the most annoying things for a rower. The girls tried to give me pointers, but it just wasn't in me. I did one regatta. I think we came in 6^th or 8^th place. I don’t even have pictures of it. It was a fun experience, but by early November I was pretty much done with being at the river at 5 am, sitting in a boat shivering, and failing miserably at being assertive. I handed back all my great workout gear. (I will say it was so much fun to wear a GMU Gortex windsuit at practice. Since I never went beyond 6^th grade ponytail softball, I never got all those team uniforms in high school.)

So why am I talking about this today? This week I attempted to redeem my rowing career. The Rochester Rowing Club offered an adult Learn-to-Row camp: M-F 6-8:30 pm. I was very excited. I checked with Chris since it meant he was pretty much pulling a single dad week for me to do it. He looked at me skeptically and I promised him I'd last the whole week...from past experiences with me trying new things he has reason to be skeptical.

To my surprise, there aren’t that many people who will give up 12 hours in one week to learn how to row. I was sure it would sell out. As of 2 weeks ago, only 3 people had signed up. By Monday they got 7 rowers, all women, mainly in their 40s. I was the youngest. We had one main coach and some great high school rowers to help out. In the first 10 minutes one of the high schoolers said my form was really good. I, of course, blurted out “oh, I was a coxswain in college so I've done a little bit of rowing.” What a mistake! They thought I'd know all the lingo and technique.  I never learned all the terminology 10 years ago, so I definitely wasn't going to remember it now!

But overall the experience has been great. We did 3 days on the water and 2 days in the gym doing drills. The workouts were tough (my hamstrings and back could use a massage). Besides one downpour tonight, the weather was perfect. I met a really nice group of ladies…once they realized I was over 21 they invited me to happy hour.

Since I've completed the Learn-to-Row class, I can now join the rowing club and row with other beginner adults. I think I'll join. You know, I do tend to like the sports where I can sit down and exercise. 

I'm bow (last person in the boat which is the exact opposite of where I sat in college). 

Part of Your World

Penny has a DVD of a bunch of the Disney princess songs. She'd watch it on a 24 hour continuous loop if we'd let her. The other day on the bike she belted Part of Your World from Little Mermaid. I was amazed that she knew the whole thing...the day before she had sang the same 7 words from "A Whole New World" over and over again...longest 2 mile bike ride ever!

So tonight I told her if she sang Part of Your World for the video I would let her watch the Disney princess song DVD. Unfortunatley bribes don't require the best showmanship so she has a pained look for most of it. The ear picking really tops it off. Oh, and it was sprinkler day at preschool so that's why her hair looks like that. It usually doesn't look THAT unbrushed. Without further ado...

Chocolate milk perspective

I don't know if anyone reads this thing anymore, but I had to write this story. I'm finding out that so many of my quirky tendencies seem to be genetic. I don't know that Penny could have picked up on them at such a young age to put them in the "nurture" category.

Like her mommy anticipation is a trademark of Penny's. She's been planning her next birthday party since the day after her last one, she has discussed Halloween costumes ad nauseum for months, at Christmas we opened all our presents and instead of wanting to play with her new toys she looked around and said "Can we wrap them up and do it again?"

Now as I've learned this anticipation can be fun IF things go in the perfect way you imagine in your head. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen. For instance a few weeks ago it got up to a balmy 39 and we decided to go have a picnic. Yeah, it's been the longest winter ever....39 felt good. The park was packed with kids. I made the mistake of using the word picnic. Penny flipped out when we weren't putting our chipotle in a basket or sitting on a blanket. This seemed to be worth tears. 

The worst part about anticipation is when it is something you are dreading. Of course, this is called worry. I've learned over the past couple years that my worrying is almost always much worse than the actual project/conversation/email turns out to be.. There's this great quote by Mark Twain that I have on my bulletin board at work: "Eat a live frog first think in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.  But sometimes it isn't something you can take care of right away and be done with it. This is the story of the chocolate milk. 

Penny hates chocolate milk. She's ordered it multiple times when we've been on playdates with friends, but she takes one sip and makes a face. Well, the last 2 birthday parties she has been to only had chocolate milk to drink. In fact the last birthday party was at 9:30 am and they served chocolate milk, chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream. (what?!) It was Penny's worst nightmare. I wasn't there, but I guess she didn't say she was thirsty till after the party. So we got invited to a party at Chucky Cheese. All Penny talked about for days was how much Andrew loves chocolate milk and that's all they were going to have to drink and she was going to be soooo thirsty. She also didn't want the other kids to know she doesn't like chocolate milk (Man, this peer pressure at 4 is tough stuff). We couldn't get through storytime without her asking how she would get a cup of water at Andrew's party. I made a deal that we could put her water bottle in my bag, which seemed to calm her down a little. 

Well, of course they didn't have chocolate milk with pizza. They had water and fruit juice. Penny got her water, had a bite of pizza and was off playing games the rest of the time. I pointed out to her later that they didn't have chocolate milk and she said "Oh, yeah. there wasn't any chocolate milk. That's funny." 

I guess that's a long story to make me realize how much of my worries are really days of negative anticipation over chocolate milk. Kids can put things into perspective. It actually made me sad to see how worked up she was about it. I know that feeling. I just wonder how we can help her see...it's just chocolate milk.

Cabin fever

We've hit the third week of January. This is the week where we expect temps to barely get above 0. On Monday I was walking Cece in -12 (windchill close to -30). My breath froze on my scarf so I had to keep moving it to keep the ice off my lips. Once you feel your nose hairs freeze, you know it is 0 or below.

So we are stuck inside. I feel like giving Penny's daycare teachers some kind of treat. Can you imagine not being able to go outside with 20 4-year-olds? I wonder if they get as crazy as us to stay entertained. On Tuesday all of us practiced headstands.

And we really did practice. Penelope thought it was so much fun to take our picture, but every time she'd move her thumb to hit the camera button she'd move the camera and take a picture of the floor. So this is really handstand #4 for me and Chris.

My sister-in-law had hoped that she'd see a picture of Cece doing a headstand, but alas, our dog does not cooperate in our crazy antics.

Also, since I got a smart phone I've become an Instagram addict. If you want to follow me my name is lastrand411. I post most of them to Facebook, but there's a few I haven't. If you are on Instagram, I want to follow you, so drop me a note.

Playing with my Christmas present

I finally took the time to play my beautiful new Christmas present from my mom. It is so much easier to just sit and watch a movie or climb into bed at 8:30 from exhaustion, but I was determined to tune my new violin and play it tonight. I read 2 book on happiness recently. They are both by Gretchen Rubin if you want to check them out. She has a pretty nice life, but wanted to work on being happy and most importantly realize in her day-to-day life what she has right in front of her. So for a year she read up on happiness and tried all sorts of tactics. This is as close as I get to reading a self-help book. I like it because she's a huge reader and quotes tons of authors I love.One thing she talks about is the different levels of happiness. Sitting to watch a movie can bring you a level of happiness, going on a long-awaited trip can bring another level and then an even higher level are the ones you have to put more work into like mastering an instrument you've always wanted to play, or finally getting the guts to take a fiction writing class, training for a triathlon etc. In her first book she finds her splendid truth to happiness while riding the subway. It is hard to understand if you haven't read her book, but she explains it like this: So my new-and-improved formula for happiness is this: being happier requires you to thinking about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth

 I'll come back to that splendid truth. The violin took me a while to tune, but it stayed nicely in tune for close to an hour. I've been playing a 3/4 violin for years so playing a full size violin makes such a difference to the tone and well, fullness of the sound. I pretty much raced through Suzuki Book 1. Mom--You would not have approved of my practice tonight. There were more bad notes than good, and I did NOT go back to the beginning to start over.

As a kid I played the violin for 13. Once I hit 12 my amount of practice was minimal, but I kept going 3 more years despite my violin teacher saying "I can tell you didn't practice" every week. Then after a 10 year break I started lessons again when we moved to Minneapolis. It only lasted a year. I think I've only played once or twice since Penelope was born. The amazing thing is in a way the violin fits the "riding the bike" cliche. The brain can sure be a tricky thing. Sure, I'm wobbly and would not play in front of anyone right now, but it is amazing how all that music seems to sitting somewhere in my mind ready to be dusted off and played.  Even after all these years I can look at the first 3 notes of a piece I played over and over as a kid and play the whole thing from memory.At one point tonight I had hit a few wrong notes and was all of a sudden playing a different piece. I couldn't tell you the name of it. I think it is from Book 2.

On a fun note after playing Minuet I and Minuet II by Bach, Penny said "Mommy, you know how to play songs from Little Einsteins? That's so cool!" Thank you Disney Channel for making classical music cool.

I'm not sure where I'm going with the violin. I've thought of trying fiddle music again, or finally becoming good enough at reading sheet music to join an ensemble. (Suzuki teaches little kids to play by ear and then by 5th grade I was too stubborn to learn how to read music since I could hear a song a few times and start playing) Right now I'm not planning anything but to practice what I know. Playing the violin clears my mind in the same way knitting does. I don't think about anything and that's such a nice feeling -- one I've never achieved in yoga or meditation. When I was a kid my mom would always be frustrated how I seemed to be in la-la land when I was playing and how I needed to focus. I'm glad she made me focus then. It was all that practice and focus that allows my mind to disappear into the finger patterns as an adult.

When I think back to Rubin's formula for happiness, playing the violin makes me...
 feel good--it reminds me of childhood
feel bad--this part of the formula gets a little odd because she uses it in multiple ways. You can think of things that make you feel bad, but in the end will be good and help your happiness. Her examples are talking to her parents about their will or taking the time to do a chore you hate. The other context is to find things that help you feel less bad. In this way the violin helps relieve my anxiety that has been pent up for weeks
it feels right  Since I started playing when I was 2, the music feels like a part of me. Cheesy, but my life feels more fulfilling when I play.
in an atmosphere of growth Once I asked my mom if she was disappointed that none of us turned all those activities into a profession. We didn't become professional athletes, end up on Broadway, or Carnegie Hall. She was sad that I felt that way. She wanted to expose us to a ton of experiences...something she never had as a kid. Because she gave me music years ago, I can grow and develop my skill in a way that would be very hard to do if I hadn't been given the groundwork as a kid. And it turns out I really do enjoy practicing.

well, that's all from self-realization Laura for today.

Clarification

When I reread my last post it makes me seem like some paranoid person about the medical profession. I've had great doctors all through my life. I know they go into the profession to help people and solve problems. In my own experience, I had a doc in NY who always ordered a battery of tests. Then I moved to MN and my new doctor who I really liked said many of the tests were unnecessary, and she found his treatments to be over-the-top for my case. Although, she ended up being right, it was tough to give up some of those tests that gave me a sense of control over my condition. I think the over-testing/over-treatment issues are a 2-way street. There are parts of the Affordable Care Act that reward hospitals based on their patients customer service surveys. I think this can put a lot of care staff in a pickle. They can do everything right, but if a doctor refuses an unnecessary test that the patient wants, they aren't going to get a good customer survey. It can be a tough profession.

On another note, we took Penelope to the indoor playground today. She saw friends from preschool and played for over 2 hours. I got to talk to a mom I had seen a couple of times at drop-off. Lo and behold, she is a neurologist at Mayo! She specializes in headaches, but obviously knows about seizures and has worked with the pediatric neurologists. So we talked about our Thursday experience with her. It was like a 10 minute  counseling session. She was great and reassured me that the chances are very high that this was a 1 time incident. Also, she's really down-to-earth. Like me she does not do well entertaining her 4-year-old at home in the winter and her husband works on the weekends so we planned Saturday play dates at the indoor playground for the rest of the winter.

Penelope has been completely her normal self for a few days now. She has no recollection of the hospital until that moment where she snapped out of the zombie like state. The neurologist I talked to today said that is normal and she'll probably never remember those 4 hours. Chris and I agreed it seems like Thursday was a really bad dream. I hope it stays that way.

One free seizure

Penny woke up at 5:30 this morning and said "I'm hungry. I'll make you a bowl of cereal all by myself, kay Mommy?" Never was I so happy to hear that little voice so early in the morning.

We went to primary care for Penny to be evaluted again. We didn't see our family doctor since she was booked, but the one we saw was excellent. She did all sorts of exercises with Penny: hop on one foot, follow my finger with your eyes, puff your cheeks, wink, squeeze my fingers, etc. Penny thought she was hilarious. There was no need to ask Penny questions like how old are you or what's your favorite book. Being her usual chatterbox she offered all that up and more: "This is my Dora skirt. I got it for Christmas. It says Dora, see? that's a D"

The doctor was still leaning towards sending us to neurology based on the notes from the ER, but due to Penny's excellent evaluation today she decided to consult with pediatric neurology. I'm not quite sure how Mayo does this, but it seems there is always someone on call from the specialty areas to answer questions from other physicians. I'm sure in the long run it is much more efficient then rescheduling appointments in those areas for decisions that can be made collaboratively over the phone. So the family doctor spoke with the pediatric neurologist, they reviewed all the lab work and EKG from yesterday and discussed Penny's very normal behavior today. The pediatric neurologist said that so many kids have seizures, the vast majority of them happen once and never again and the tests don't show any reason for them, so they have a rule that kids get one free seizure. If anything abnormal happens in the next week, or if she ever has another seizure, they will do all the brain testing.

So I guess yesterday was similar to the "get out of jail free" card. From my logical side I know that the US does excessive testing that doesn't improve our outcomes any more than other developed countries that do much less testing. One of the major differences of Mayo vs other health systems is their doctors are on salary and have been since the early 1900s. This is one of the reasons when looking at Medicare data, Mayo acheives some of the best results in the country at a much lower cost than other medical facilities. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most neurologists would have said the same thing, but I think there's little chance our family doctor would have been able to call through to a pediatric neuroglogist who could pull up Penelope's record in seconds and within minutes have his opinion. In most places in the US, we would have been sent to a neurologist specialist probably not in the same system as our family doctor. Once we got the appoinment and insurance worked out, there's a good chance that specialist  would order tons of tests to rule everything out "just to be sure". Those tests are also how they get paid. Cynical way to look at it, but that's one of the main criticisms of the US system. Fee for service, not results. Since I've worked for health non-profits, I've been reading articles for years and more recently some books by Atul Gawande about our current broken system. Many say if the new system that bases payment on results is going to work, then doctors should be on salary. In our case the Mayo pediatric neurologist is making his decision based on the statistics of kids seizures and the rare chance of actually finding a reason for it in a test. Logically I trust him that Penny doesn't need all these tests...

...but emotionally? I feel like having them scan every part of her "just to make sure."  Once again I think this is due to our over test and over treat US mentality. We like answers. We don't like flukes or things that happen for no reason. This seems like the oddest comparison but I HATE the movie Birds. Not because it is scary but because they never explain why the birds show up. If there was a reason given, I could settle in and watch everyone run around like crazy. In my life I want challenges to have a specific order: problem, reason for problem, solution. Unfortunately the human body, especially a growing one, rarely works that way.

So we watch and wait now.

Let this be the worst day

Today I didn't turn my phone off in a meeting and today I got the phone call from daycare that every working parent fears: "we are going to call 911. We think Penny had a seizure"

I will start with saying that Penny is asleep in our bed right now surrounded with her doll and teddy bear so she is home now.

I met Chris at the emergency room as she was being wheeled out of the ambulance. As I ran towards her my little Penelope looked at me and looked away. She didn't know who I was. She was wheeled into a room right away. I tried to put my arm around her but just looked at me with a blank stare. The fingers on her left hand moved constantly like she was trying to play the piano and she rolled her tongue in her mouth over and over again. We had to take off her vomit soaked uniform and put her in a set of pediatric pajamas 2 sizes too big.  It took about an hour before she seemed to recognize us and say a few words. When the doctor examined her she became extremely irritable and started violently vomiting. Within minutes of that she was lethargic and only wanted to sleep. They had us go to ultrasound to see if they could find an answer for the stomach pain and vomiting. She had fitful sleep through most of the process and cried when she was woken up. The doctor who saw her was very concerned by her fitful sleep and tiredness that he was getting ready to order a CT scan and admit us for the night. They don't like to do a CT scan and put that much radiation in a little one unless they absolutely feel it is necessary. But a half hour later the woman doing the EKG woke Penny up and it was like the whole episode didn't happen. She was our fun little chatterbox, full of smiles and more than willing to teach all the nurses and doctors the names of the Disney Princesses. So we did a waiting game for 2 hours while we waited for the lab results. She kept food down, watched movies, colored, wrote her name. The paperwork we were given says she had a seizure-like episode and intense vomiting. They can't say seizure since the paramedics or ER docs didn't witness it. So now we are at home, Chris and I still shaking.

I learned that seizures are not that uncommon in young kids. They will happen when a child has a head injury or is sick with a high fever. Penny had none of these which makes it more complicated. The other concerning part was the amount of time it took her to get out of the "post-seizure fog." That was the almost 4 hours where she didn't talk, became irritable, fell asleep and woke up in 30 second increments. This could likely be a one time thing that will never happen again...or it could be a list of things which one doctor listed. The list included the words infection or tumor. The labs were negative for infection.  She was referred to neurology for tests to rule other things out. I'm trying not to be the catastrophist that is my nature. I know enough information about rare childhood disease to scare the bejeezus out of me. For instance, when she was getting the ultrasound I thought to myself "well, if it is Wilm's tumor the survival rates are 97%" I was racking my brain for all the genetic disease I know. "adrenoleukodystrophy? Nope, too young and she's a girl, even for boys that's a 1 in 30,000 chance, okay, what's that other one that affects girls...I'm pretty sure she is too old for that one"

I'm trying to get my head around the idea of this being a one time fluke with no known cause. It makes me feel like I have no control (are you thinking, guess what, you don't have control, Laura?). But a one-time fluke is better many of the other problems where you really have very little control. I guess it will be trusting our instincts when we meet with neurology regarding the testing and how much we do. It sure helps to know that people from around the world come here for pediatric neurology.

The doc told me if I notice any abnormal behavior or if the vomiting starts again to bring her back to the ER. I have to admit, if she sneezes in her sleep, we may be back in the hospital. Chris and I discussed that we may be co-sleeping for the next 14 years.

Speaking of Chris it is interesting how we deal with things and what we find cathartic. He does not want to talk about how he saw her at daycare with the paramedics. I guess she was completely unresponsive and couldn't move her right side. Very scary. Here I am blogging about the whole experience to anyone who wants to read it. But in the moment of it, we helped each other stay calm, listen to the doctors and ask questions. This moment made me realize the strength of our little family.

I'm headed to bed to snuggle with my little one.

2012 in numbers

After 4 years of blogging, it fell off my priority list.  I'm not sure how much I'll blog in 2013. My friend Christen did a great post last week where she measured her year in minutes. I've always tracked things from states visited, to books read, to miles on my bike so I thought I'd do something similar.

1 month spent commuting from Minneapolis to Rochester by bus. 4 hours a day! I've since met people who have done this commute for 10 years. Despite the amount of knitting and reading time I got in, I could never have done it long term. I was exhausted. The worst part was I only saw Penny for 45 mins a day.

37 books read in 2012. Chris mentioned this year how people reading my blog wouldn't know how I spend a great amount of free time. For people who know me well, they know reading has been my one constant past time. I've been keeping a book journal since 2001. You can see my whole list here http://www.librarything.com/profile/strandbooks. Here's the list of books I rated with 4-5 stars in 2012:

• Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
• The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do by Judith Harris
• The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
• Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherford
• The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
• Drop City by Tom Coraghessan Boyle
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
• Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
• The Tortilla Curtain by Tom Coraghessan Boyle
• Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
• Room by Emma Donoghue
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
• The Paris Wife Paula McLain
• Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Home by Toni Morrison

I've found there are some years I can be more generous with my stars. I think this year was one of those. There are a few that I might go back to and bump down to a 3. I'm always willing to talk books. Not sure if book talk would bore everyone to death on the blog, but it might get me back in the swing of it.

The knitting craze continued this year: 13 knit hats, 4 washcloths, 1 cardigan, 1 scarf, 3 cowls, 2 booties, 1 pair of legwarmers, and 1 pair of boot cuffs. Almost all the pictures are on my Ravelry page http://www.ravelry.com/projects/lasmpls

4  trips: a long weekend to Kansas City for Easter, a week to Itasca/Crosslake, a long weekend to Omaha NE, and 5 days to VA for Christmas

2 new vegetables Through our CSA we tried garlic snapes and kohlrabi for the first time.

2 weeks to catch up on 2 seasons of Parenthood. I stayed up till 11:00 many nights in a row to do that. Unheard of for me. Then I missed the start of the current season so I'm going to do a marathon on that one when it comes out.

4 Disney Princess dresses in our house. Although Penny also loves her 9 Hot Wheels and deluxe Pirate ship toy

55 blog posts in 2012 Considering I stopped at the beginning of October that is a lot! Maybe that's why I burned out.

2015 emails in my work inbox  In 2009 I made a New Year's Resolution to have "Inbox Zero" at the end of each day. I did it through all of 2009 and part of 2010 and haven't done it since. It takes a lot of time and I'm skeptical that it made me that much more organized/efficient. But the inbox is getting out of control so I'm going to move all of the emails to a folder tomorrow and attempt Inbox Zero again.

Some more estimate numbers:

250 miles rode on my bike commute to work I want to do more in 2013. It does add up quickly at 8 miles a day, but there were many weeks where I only rode once a week. It's tough to pack business attire in a backpack. Plus, I only ride when it is 50 degrees to 80 degrees in the morning otherwise I'm too sweaty or Penny is too cold in the burley.

$500 the amount of money we'd have if Chris had a new quarter for every time Penny asked him to pull one out of her ear. He says he needs to learn new magic tricks pronto!

50 cans of black beans Penny loves these. She usually eats 1 can a week.

25 Halloween costumes the amount of costumes Penny would have for next Halloween if she could be everything she's come up with so far.

Hmmm...so that's all I can think of now. I could do some depressing ones like pounds gained, or how much we could list our Minneapolis house for if we wanted to sell, but I don't feel like adding those.

Looking at the list and how I spend my time makes the constant backup of 8 loads of laundry less mysterious!

2013 here we come.