Up to Now

Yes, I've been a bad, bad blogger.  Here's the last few months in a nutshell:
-Soldier-Boy returns home.
-Five days later I end up in the hospital for emergency surgery on my perferated appendix.
-Three days after the surgery they take our household goods away.
-Several weeks of shipping things, cleaning, sorting, selling a car, living in an empty house, developing infections from the surgery and generally going bonkers follow. 
-Eventually we end up in Munich for a few days of a mini vacation before flying to visit Nana and Grampy.
-Several weeks visiting Nana and Grampy follow during which we:
          -Get new cell phones.  Yeah, iPhone!
          -Test drive several cars and decide on one to buy.
          - Get croup and an ear infection (LSP).
          -Run a 5K with Aunt L and Uncle M.
          -Actually go out to dinner alone.
          -Do some actual relaxing.
-Next we fly to LAX and stay in a hotel that night.
-The next day we:
          -Take a taxi to a car dealer.
          -Buy a car.
          -Eat lunch and
          -Drive to the new duty station and check into the hotel there.
-At this point LSP says, "But we stay in lots and lots and lots of hotels!"

Let me pause here to mention that we had been told we would be in the hotel anywhere from one to three MONTHS waiting on a house.  Literally 15 minutes before we walk out of Nana and Grampy's house to get the plane to Cali we get and email telling us there is a house available.  So Months has turned into just over a week and today we signed for our new house.  Comedy hi jinks to follow as we attempt to spend the weekend painting before the household goods arrive Monday.

She loves this and calls it "swing ups" - or it's a 32 pound kettlebell.

Feeling Uncle A's "scratchy face."

First haircut!

She said she was playing the piano.

She loved the arts and crafts center.

The desert sure does have a lot of rocks!

She Says the Funniest Things

Today in the commissary we saw a person with a service dog. LSP  wanted to pet it so I told her, "No you can't pet him, he's working." She watched the dog for a few moments and said, "Our dog doesn't work."

Me: What do you think of California so far?
LSP: We're not in California, we're in a hotel.

First morning in Southern California and I put a short sleeve shirt on LSP . She said, "My arms are too long!" and tugged at the sleeves trying to make them longer.

As the plane's wheels left the ground in Boston LSP looked out the window and asked, "Where's California?"

Grampy is trying to encourage LSP to eat her waffles.  She takes a look and says, "But the syrup is all absorbed!"

LSP is trying to put her socks on a teddy bear and can't do it.  She cries out in frustration, "Mommy, the teddy bear is not cooperating!"

 

 

PCSing is Not Fun, (aka The Post in Which I Complain Endlessly)

It is never fun to PCS, even when you want to go, which this time we do not.  And PCSing back and forth over the Atlantic is particularly un-fun.  But this PCS, this one will go down in history as the biggest PCS pain in the butt to date.   And we're not even half way there.  I'm not sure if it was the recent return of Soldier-Boy from Afghanistan, or my badly time appendicitis, or the addition of a lively 2.5 year old, or our overall sadness and reluctance to leave this place, but this move really stinks.  We are grumpy and short-tempered and stressed.  Almost everything than can go wrong has gone wrong.  Almost.  Every time we turn around we bump into another paperwork road block.  Nothing is cooperating, and everything is harder than it should be.  I'm sick of it, quite frankly.  I just want to yell and scream and stomp my feet and kick the floor.  But since I am trying to discourage that beahvior in my toddler, I refrain. 

Everyone tells us will we grow to love our new posting.  That seems hard to believe right now.  I hope they are right.  We are still months away from being totally settled, but it seems like years.  I remember when PCSing was like a new exciting Army adventure.  That was a long time ago.

How Hard Can it Be to Sell a Car?

Really hard as it turns out.  Not the selling.  We had people lined up wanting to buy the Volvo.  The folks who put a deposit down on it first were from a post about an hour and a half away.  Then the fun started.  I will spare you the ugly details of the paper chase that followed but it was days and days and phone calls and phone calls trying to get paperwork that their bank was happy with.  Then when that was finally ironed out we had to arrange to get the car to her and us off the registration. Again, the details are long and probably not all that interesting but we had a couple of days of total chaos trying to get everything to line up.  Between the paperwork, the train schedule, the American holiday and the randomness of USAREUR (what do you mean Vehicle Registration is close every TUESDAY??) we ended up having to drive to a totally different post 2 hours away to do the transaction in time for Bill to clear.  Between the driving and the hours and hours of paperwork it was an all day process.  But it's done.  Thank goodness.  On to the next step.

Where Have I Been??

Well it was never my intention to quit blogging totally when Soldier-Boy came home...but we've had a wild ride the last few weeks.  Four days after he came home I woke up feeling a bit "off."  Not terrible, but not 100% either.  I did four hours worth of PCS related errands that day, including mailing a very heavy box, and made dinner, and by the evening I was still not feeling right, so I went to bed early.  It was a long night, with me in increasing amounts of pain but being stubborn and refusing to go to the hospital.  By 6 am on Saturday I was suffering from on-and-off abdominal pain and had a low grade fever.  LSP was still asleep so I drove myself to the local hospital (luckily only 5 minutes away) where, after exams and blood tests and an ultrasound I was diagnosed with appendicitis.  What?!?  I have to say I did not totally believe them.  The pain was coming and going and when it was gone I felt fine.  They scheduled the surgery for a few hours away and Solider-Boy left LSP with a friend and came over.  By two hours before the surgery I was in constant pain and by an hour before I was really suffering and begging them for painkillers or to hurry up and cut me. 

I woke up to discover that I didn't just have appendicitis, I had a very, very infected, perforated appendix.  They had done the surgery laproscopically, and, before the surgery, even given German propensity towards long hospital stays, they had told me to expect to be there for 2-3 days.  Well, all bets were off when they saw the state of my appendix and I spent the next five days in the hospital on two kinds of IV antibiotics with a drain tube.  I've never had that kind of surgery before, and apparently, so they can get a good look inside, they pump you full of air.  Then after the surgery you are left with air pockets that move around your body and I am here to tell you it is incredibly, incredibly painful.  The first night the pain was so bad I was shaking all over - shaking HARD.  Thank God for whatever that was they would put in my IV.  The second night the pain was so bad I was having trouble breathing.  Mmmmm...more painkillers.  It got better after that.  Slowly.  At one point I gasped to the nurse, "I've had two c-sections and this is much WORSE!"  She nodded hard, 'Yes, yes it is," she agreed.  Great.

Did I mention that this all happened on Saturday... three days before the packers arrived to pack up our stuff for our move back to the States?  Poor Bill was left with a 2-year-old who was just getting used to him, a wife in the hospital and an entire house of stuff to get packed up.  Luckily my parents were able to fly in on Monday to help with LSP and with me.  The packing took 3 days and so when I came home I came home to a house empty expect for the government furniture.  I also came home with two more kinds of antibiotics to fight the THREE different awful bacteria in my tummy.

A week after they had come my parent had to leave and I was still hobbling around.  A trip to have my stitches removed revealed that one of the incisions was infected.  Apparently it is where they pull the appendix out of and every surgeon in the hospital was getting great joy telling me, "Well, when an appendix is as badly infected as yours was..."  Seriously, they are practically giddy over the extent of the infection.  They tell me it must have been infected for awhile.  One doctor said, "This pain did not start the day before.  The pain must have stared 5 or 6 days before."  Yum, nope.  I was running and lifting weights and in no pain at all until the day before, and even then it was not so bad until hours before the surgery.

Anyway, now I go every two days to have the infected inscision packed with antibiotic gauze.  Last visit they said it looked better.  Here's hoping.  We are supposed to leave here in a week, a fact I tell them every time I go in.  So that's been my last week.  And in all this chaos I took NO photos.  Not even one of the drain bag, you'll be so sorry to know.  I will try to update more regularly from now on, since, hopefully, I won't have anymore organs removed for awhile.

Day ???

Time to stop counting, Soldier Boy came home last night.  Hurrah!  Yes it is a few months shorter than a year, thank goodness.  The Army has decided that we need to move ASAP so he got to come home early.  He got in late and LSP was already asleep.  We played our cards wrong this morning, though and kind of rushed him on her and she was not happy.   Too eager for that "Hallmark moment" and didn't take the moods of a 2-year-old into proper account.  Took her most of the day to warm up to him, though she did enjoy sitting in his lap to watch videos on the computer and wanted to show him the welcome home sign she made for him.

Sure Enough It's - Day 254

And... waiting.

Sculptor - Day 253

I am now skilled at making all of the major, and most of the minor, Curious George characters out of Play Doh.  I make a great Jumpy Squirrel and a mean Herbert Minninger (one of the bunnies, for those of your un-schooled in George speak.)  My Compass the pigeon rocks, too.

My Herbert Minninger.  Or maybe that's Compass...

Duckie Fun - Day 252

Tonight in the tub, the following funnies:

LSP lines up 4 rubber ducks on the edge of the tub.  She kept insisting there were eleven.  When I counted four she said no, and pointed to one duck, "His name is Eleven!"   "His name is Eleven?"  I asked.  Yes, she confirmed, then told me the names of the other ducks: Nine, One and Twenty.  Reminds me of when my brother was little and he had a teddy bear named Ocho.

A few moments later she squashed one of the ducks  and it stuck that way.  She panicked and handed it to me, "Oh no!"  she said, clearly distressed, "Unflat him!"

She wraps up little things in blankets and tells me, "I'm going to bring you a surprise!"

I said, "Show me your tongue!"  and she did.

Bubbles - Day 251

Woke up without the fever or the crud, thank goodness.  Last night was ROUGH.  No room for mommies to be sick, especially when Daddy is deployed.

Today LSP was in a very contrary mood, and was not happy with any event I suggested until we went outside to blow bubbles.  The fact that it was 29 degrees or that there is 8 plus inches of snow of the ground didn't deter her.  She was in a much better mood after that.  She just needed to get out.

Yes that is lots of snow behind her.  Yes, it was 29 degrees. No, she isn't wearing gloves or a hat.  She rips them off the moment I put them on her.  Anyone have Toddler Hat Glue and I will give it a try.

Who says you can't stand outside in the winter in a tutu and blow bubbles?

OK photo friends, is that not a COOL shot?!?