I know, I said I was not going to post until we came back to are desert oasis, but I wanted to say “Have a great week!”

Today we’ve already been up since daybreak (all right, it was 6:30, because our little Chihuahua had to potty) and have had the weeds killed, breakfast out (our usual Hot Bagels hangout), Steve is out getting new tires, I’m getting the animals ready for their “vacation” and in a bit-our daughter and I are heading out for a very much needed (read that desperate) manicure.

This will be my first since my first hand surgery a year ago.  Obviously, despite two sets of tender scars-I’m well overdue.

I’ve got my clothes ready to go into the suitcases, there’s a full bag of cat food and treats to go to Adam and Sam’s home for Pepper and I’ve already bagged and tagged Lucky’s food for the Pet Hotel.  Pepper pretty much hides for at least 1/2 the vacation under the bed with Toby (the Maine Coon that Pepper helped raise).  He’ll come out and pal around with Lily, Billy and Brianna.  Now that he’s back to having his own dog-he’ll probably be hunting around for her.  It was decided that Sam and Adam (and the soon to be Jackson Dale) have enough on their plate without having a 3/4-house trained pup on hand.

Tonight we’ll spend at Sarah’s-as the shuttle is coming to pick all 6 of us up at some God awful hour of 5 a.m..  Ugh!

Last night was our 32nd anniversary-we spent the day trying both a new breakfast and dinner place.  Breakfast was okay and dinner was pretty good.  Then we went downtown and saw Spamalot.  It was funny and quite entertaining.  The couple next to us were slightly appalled-didn’t matter that this was  a spoof on a spoof-they were gasping at the sacrilegious humor.

Oh well-we had a great time.

And now-I’m stalling to finish up some tasks that really must get done.  As I’ve been writing, I realized that I didn’t count out some fairly important unmentionables!  So I bid you adieu until the middle of the month.

Woo Hoo, Celebrity Silhouette-here come the Nadels (and the Krises!)

As Junie B Jones would say....
My grandsons love Junie B. Jones-a mischievous girl, who when the books began was 5 and entering kindergarten.  Her favorite comeback to fun and exciting events in her life is:  Wowie, wowie, wow!

That fits perfectly for me this week.

First off-a warning of TMI!

Our little baby Lucky has officially become "a woman".  Sigh, they just grow so fast.  

This is a good thing because we set her up to get spayed after we came back from vacation.  This brings me to the next items on my list:

Just had another epidural.  Here's hoping it does something good.  Not particularly impressed with the first two.  Of course, that could be because 3 days after the last one Lucky decided to play with the boys on the "dead grass" patch and turned into a totally stinky 5 pounds of dog.  I gave her a bath.  During that few minutes I happened to hear a familiar (and awful) snap.  The opposite shoulder tore.

Only I could tear part of my rotator cuff bathing a sedate and tiny dog.  Whatever.

After I finally got to the point where I could breathe in again, I realized that I was now due for the last of this series of fun procedures.  My next question?  Hey doc, are you ever going to address my lower back and my knee???  Sure, the later no longer looks like a bat hit it, but it is still bruised, swollen and giving me grief.

Now for the good parts of the Wowies!  Sam and I are taking a quick trip to Orange County for Easter weekend.  It's a road trip.  No laughter please, just prayers.  We have a very capable pregnant woman and a woman with no spine driving across the desert.  We're leaving after breakfast.  Our goal is to make it to our destination in time for dinner.
Sam has a triple celebration (our main reason for the trip): a friend's baby shower and 2 family birthdays. My main reasons are to see my parents and sister (family too) and to get a VERY needed haircut. Seems the people I've been to here in my new hometown do not understand that SAYING you love to cut short hair is NOT the same as being ABLE to cut short hair.
I know this because despite my warnings of having more cowlicks than any other person on earth-the two "stylists" who put their scissors to my hair have made every single one of them show themselves to the world.  Wowie, wowie, wow.

When we return to eat dinner with our hubbies on Easter Sunday-we'll have had a lot of fun and be totally exhausted.

Then a few days later-Steve and I will celebrate, big time, our 32nd anniversary.  He found a 2fer on Groupon to see Spamalot.  We love the theatre and haven't been in years!  

And if that isn't wonderful enough-we'll carry our celebrating right through until Mid-April by taking off with our daughter, son-in-law and grandsons for a long awaited Caribbean Cruise!!

So after this post-I'm taking a "refresher vacation" break-I'll surely come back with lots of new stories and anecdotes.

Until then-Happy Passover to those who celebrate, Happy Easter who celebrate!
Carine

Questions

Lately I've had a lot of questions come up-can't remember them all, but I thought I'd share and hope that anyone who takes a peek here, gives their own 2 cents of how they'd answer them:
1)My baby has either colic or GERD, possibly both-what should I do?
I was asked to chime in on this post by a cousin by our daughter-in-law Sam on FaceBook.  Adam was severely colicky for his first 6 months.  Besides, after running a day care for 10 years-I know gas and colic.

My answer was: raise the top of the crib, get a hot water bottle, use whatever the latest and greatest bottle is that doesn't allow air into the chamber.  Put the baby into its car seat and place them on the dryer and turn it on.  Go for a car ride.  Get a swing.  If nursing-review what may cause gas and STOP eating it.  If on formula-it's not the right one.  I also said that no matter what, Adam screamed so loud and long that he herniated his navel.  We put him on Phenergan and then-we got ear plugs and kept on rocking him until he stopped.  He sat up the same week.

2)What's more important-making your parents happy or yourself?

This won't be popular with many.  Everyone has their own reasons for whatever answer you would say, but I think you need to be happy.  Let's face it, if mom/dad say you have to become a doctor and you have an aversion for sick people-they may be happy but you'll not do what's best for those people looking for relief from what ails them and you'll be miserable-making you a rotten doctor who no one wants.  Same goes for any other topic that any parent thinks they have a right to tell you how you should respond.  That goes for what exercise you enjoy, books to read, movies to watch, etc...

3)When you're writing, what do you feel is the most important thing to get across-the facts or the feel of what it is you're trying to write about?

This may seem like the same thing-it's not.  For me, the facts have to be correct.  No one wants to read an article that may sound great, but has so many inaccuracies that it's hard to know whether or not you should trust what you're reading.  I always want to put my interviewee in the best light, but you shouldn't put made up items in there either.

4)If you couldn't write, what would you want to do instead?

There's a scary thought.  For those who aren't writers-exchange it for what you do love to do for your career.  I did put my writing aside for 25 years.  Then I didn't mind one bit, because I had done so voluntarily to raise our kids.  Now though, while I'm certainly not ever going to even be able to keep my own head level with the water line-I need my writing to be me.  It's part of who and what I am.  I'll end here because honestly-that question threw me for a complete loop-de-loop and I still don't know what I'd replace this part of my life with.

Have any of you had a poser put to you this week?  If so, share it and maybe an answer will come through the post that will help!

New Experiences
Not exactly new, but new because they're in a different state/time/life stage.

I'm talking baby shopping.  Adam and Sam asked if I'd like to tag along on their adventure to register at Babys-R-Us.

Now, I didn't get to do this with Sarah.  I was working full-time and they lived almost 30 miles away.  Plus, Sarah was on "high risk" bed rest.  This time, I'm only working when my body allows and I'm basically about 3 miles away.  

Off we went on what appears to be the usual 25 minute jaunt to one of the "local" malls.  Remember, we live in 'the country', so we now think Super Wal-Mart is the lay of the land.  (Alright, we do have a Safeway and a Fry's that aren't too bad to get to)  Arrowhead Mall in Glendale.  

The place is huge!  There's the "indoor" mall that the three of us agreed is larger than South Coast Plaza and then there's the perimeter which has quite a few venues as well.  

I digress.  We went into the store, Sam got her preliminary list and one of those "guns" that you flash onto the UPC code and it adds it to you registry.  First stop-bedroom furniture.  Wow!  Most of today's cribs are dual or even triple purposed.  Dylan and Aidan's were like this, but that really didn't do much good.  After they were through with the "crib" and then went into needing the junior bed-there were two of them and nowhere to put anything.

We won't know about the sex of the baby for another 3 weeks, so the parents-to-be picked out both a light and dark wood version of the same set.   Really nice.  The crib and the dresser will work beautifully for hopefully years to come.  Then came the bed sets, extra crib sheets, receiving blankets, the questions about if the latest trends and findings mean you should lay the baby on its side (therefore needing a special apparatus to make it possible) or back.  There are now special items to put a colicky baby into to help with the acid reflux.  We saw special bottle holders to keep in the nursery that both keep the bottles chilled and warm them up.  

There were various nursing pillows, humidifiers, bouncy seats, swings and strollers that all seem to become other items.    I like products that stretch a buck.  

Sam didn't bother adding any clothes, no matter how cute the infant snow white dress was or how cute the baby booties in the shape of lions would look.  Thank goodness for practicality!

There are now "swaddlers" for parents who would rather spend $25 to Velcro their baby in for the first few weeks-rather than do what those of us who are baby boomers did-use the receiving blankets and do it ourselves.

I did like the Playtex diaper pail that did all the work on that subject for you to keep things neat, clean and odor free.  I would have adored one (or 2) of those when I ran that day care, I tell you!

Not wanting to add any suggestions that weren't being asked for, I did say burp cloths were great, but what really were necessary were nice big cloth diapers which would be oh-so-useful and would cover a much larger area.

We left the store with a lot of ideas and then found the Motherhood Maternity store.  That's when we found the inside of the mall.  We didn't really wander around.  But we're here for life, so we have time.

Finishing off with some lunch in the food court we headed back to Anthem.  

It's nice to be included on this wonderful time.  Thank you Adam and Sam!

The Week That Was

It's been a week.  The cold and wind continued with only a bit of wandering hinting at 70.  The potty training took a nose dive.  I had a 3-day conference to cover.  Stitches had to come out and, by the time this is posted, I will have gone through another epidural.

I had the boys' part of the week.  

As for the potty training, I suppose this is karma coming back to bite us in the backside.  With 3 dogs in my life before her and over 40 years of canine/human years, Lucky, for whatever reason, continues to backslide to the point where I've attached a leash to her and won't let her out of my sight.  If I'm not hold her on my lap, then I'm walking her around the house with Pepper chasing next to us trying to get in on this house-training fiasco.

He did grab it from me a couple of times and started taking her around the old homestead.  As I'm writing this, he's kissing her head and trying to wrestle the pink nylon umbilical cord away from me.

Whatever.  My husband ate a lot of ice cream last night and kept the 3 of us up with his incessant snoring-so I'm tired, I'm sore and now I'm thinking (to myself), "How am I going to cover this event when my only thought is when will I get some sleep?"

Finally got my lone stitch out of my biopsy.  At least I don't have to meet new people with a bandage on my chin and the results were typically benign. Thank goodness for that bit of news.

As for the epidural-honestly, I was not impressed by the outcome this new doctor and I had hoped would be the result of his fine needle control.  It was supposed to start relieving the ever-present pain in my neck and right shoulder.  Hah and double Hah, I say!

My weekend will be spent writing up a 2,000 word article on what private amusement park owners can do to not only make their areas more fun for guests but how to boost business in this economy.   And of course, I'll have the help of a gray tabby and a brown Chihuahua to help get my creative juices flowing.  

Besides all of the above, I decided I was getting so many telemarketers calling me that I'd count them all-over 15!  And the kicker is-all of them were from Orange County CA!  I knew there'd be some bad parts about keeping our old landline number.  There was one marketing firm that was universal-DragonSpeak.

I was a tad bit gruff with the man.  The last 3 calls from them I said to put me on the DO NOT CALL list.  I've also made no secret that I felt their product was the worst $50 I've ever spent on something for my computer.

Right now, I'm not all that impressed with "the week that was", sorry I shared it with you all.  But Spring is around the corner, warmer weather will be a relief to us all and I'm looking forward to getting my lap and arms back.

When Wishes Come True

When our son Adam was a toddler, he announced that I needed to go to the toy store and buy him a baby doll.  I certainly had no objections.  With his older sister in tow, we went to the local chain and while Sarah picked out a model with a pink onesie-he chose one of the same kind, but dressed in blue.

Before leaving, he also asked for a bottle and some diapers.  Sarah didn't care-actually, she wasn't really into dolls.  So I added a tiny bottle-in those days though, there were no packages of "doll diapers", so I created some out of old dish towels and Velcro dots.  Luckily, we had lots of blankets.

You may be asking why.  Simple, Adam said he wanted to be a daddy and had to start practicing.

On Adam's 10th birthday, I opened my day care business.  He loved helping.  He'd read stories to the kids, he helped with art projects, he'd create obstacle courses to help them learn how to skip and gallop.

He loved teaching.  As Adam grew, so did his desire to "one day become a dad".

Then he met Sam.  One of the things he told her was that he could hardly wait to have kids.

Why am I telling you this?  Just background for some very, very happy news!

Adam's dream is coming true.  We've known several weeks and I, for one, have been having a very hard time keeping the news "in", but I've finally been given the go-ahead to make the announcement!

Adam and Samantha are pregnant!  Our third grand-child is about one third on the way!  A few weeks ago, they asked me to go along to an appointment.  The doctor warned it could be a while before she found the heartbeat, but before she finished the sentence we could all hear that this little one had the strongest (and most active) heartbeats  I've heard in a very long while!

Sometime this August, the newest family member will arrive.  Since telling all of us, the younger Nadels haven't stopped grinning from ear-to-ear.  Safe to say, neither have we.

Dylan and Aidan are quite excited-they keep saying that they can hardly wait to be "big brothers".  And that's okay.  If you're close in both proximity and have the love to share-is there that much of a difference?  Our daughter, Sarah, is so excited about becoming an aunt that she's already been giving gifts for her future niece/nephew.

I haven't been asked and I am making myself a promise to not offer advice unless requested, help as much as I'm able and support whenever and wherever it may be needed.

Life has been one roller coaster lately, here's hoping that we're not at the peak yet and that we all never come down.

Congratulations to our Adam and Sam-may parenthood be  filled with as much joy as we've had and know that we love you both and couldn't be happier that we can be close by and be a part of things to come.