Goodbye Oprah

So I had a few friends over to watch the final episode of Oprah yesterday. After watching Oprah for so many years, I was excited to see how she'd end the era of "OPRAH". I even made her famous lemon drop martinis and made cookie dough cupcakes! I must admit that she let me down - I felt like her final episode was boring, "preachy", and just disappointing overall. I expected her to show flashbacks of her favorite episodes and to invite guests back or tell us what REALLY happened after the taping stopped. I had hoped she would show us her house or more of her personal life or maybe even invite Stedman to talk about her on stage. Nope. Nadah. Oprah told us to "listen to our inner voice" and to "validate people". Not really the entertaining hour that I had been looking forward too. I should have stopped while I was ahead after Monday and Tuesday's episodes (even though I thought they were a bit over the top) - she's a talk show host, not God!
Anyway, that's my two cents on Miss O's final show. Major letdown. But hey, at least we had martinis and cupcakes!

Stitches

Poor Jackson. On Saturday morning, I was rearranging my picturs on one of the built-in book cases in our basement. Jackson came over to see what I was doing (curious little man that he is) and tripped over my foot, fell, and hit his eyebrow on the brick fireplace. His immediate scream told me that this wasn't just a typical boo boo, but that it REALLY hurt. I picked him up and blood was streaming down his face. I ran with him upstairs to get something to put pressure on his cut and to try to stop the bleeding(shaky legs and all). I tried to put a butterfly bandaid on his cut, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Because it was bleeding so much and I couldn't stop the bleeding, we headed off to MedPoint. After waiting for about 45 minutes, we saw the nurse and she thought he'd need stitches. The physiciain confirmed that he'd need three. Oh boy. I asked if there was any way that we could avoid them, but he said it would heal much better with stitches. I asked for a numbing cream so that they injection wouldn't hurt so much and the nurse said (they only do that in dentists' offices). I wanted to say "NOT TRUE!" I know for a fact that pediatric emergency departments use a numbing cream before giving young patients injections. Just because it was MedPoint I think we were out of luck.

So then the real trauma began. The nurse had me hold Jack's arms, body and legs down while she held his head. They wrapped a sterile drape around his face, leaving only an opening where the doctor would be stitching. Man - I have never heard Jackson scream like that - and for so long! The doctor kept telling me "KEEP his ARMS down". I was trying, but really what I wanted to do was pick him up and keep him from having any MORE pain. Poor little guy - by the time it was over he grabbed on to me for dear life, beat red face and all sweaty and looked up at me like "WHY did you DO THAT to ME?!?!?". It was heartbreaking.

I hope we never have to go through that again, but other mom's (especially moms of boys) keep telling me that this is the first trip of many to the ER/urgent care. Ugh. I guess it's just a mom's job to want to spare our kids of pain. Jackson got a little ... okay a LOT...of extra TLC and spoiling this weekend. I'm talking constant kisses, games, and sugar.

23 months old

The nice people that we bought Jack's swingset from GAVE him this battery powered truck. He loves driving it, but loves dumping sand in it just as much.

Jack and his dad watching the "Moo Show" before bed. It's this really weird BBC show that we found on On Demand with talking farm animals. Jack's favorite. :)

This was taken to try to express how full of flowers DJ's truck was when we left Varner's on saturday. The photo didn't quite do it justice.

Dawn, Jack and Grandma "GiGi" at Varner's.

Dawn and Jack :)

Summertime

I'm excited. We have a LOT of fun things coming up this summer.

• On May 23rd, DJ and I will celebrate the 12th anniversary of our first date.


• Memorial Day weekend we are planning to visit our cousins who will be boating and camping for the weekend AND we're planning to go to Brookfield Zoo.


• On June 2nd my parents arrive for the wedding.


• On June 3rd, my brother Nathan is getting married!


• On June 3rd, DJ turns 32. (He will tell you he's turning 29, but you heard it here - it's 32.)


• On June 11, my baby will be turning 2! Cannot even believe that it's been almost two years since he was born.


• On June 11, I'm helping my aunt Dawn to throw a graduation party for my cousin Cole.


• On June 12, we'll be having a birthday party for Jack.


• On June 16 and 17 my cousins Trace and Kendall will be spending the weekend with us while Bill and Marnie take Carlee to a volleyball tournament in Orlando.


• On June 25 and 26 DJ and I will be headed to Chicago to celebrate our anniversary! That weekend is the Taste of Chicago festival so it should be a lot of fun.


• On July 3rd, fair week begins!


• On July 4th, I turn the big 3.0.!!!!!!!!!!!!


• In August - start classes for my Masters? (We'll see if I get accepted to the program.)

It's going to be a great summer. This nice weather is just getting me really excited. Happy summer everyone!

Ouch

I had my wisdom teeth removed last Friday, April 30th, and snapped this pic of my swollen left cheek while in the drive thru at Starbucks on Sunday (Yep, I still like my carmel machiattos even when I can't eat or sleep). I sent this to my mom so that she'd know what I looked like. Isn't it weird that as old as we get, we still want our mom's to be around when we're sick? At least I do. I asked her if she wanted to extend her Easter trip to stay home and take care of me, but it was too expensive. :) DJ was a great nurse on Friday, taking the day off to take me to the oral surgeon and to nurse me back to health with bags of frozen stirfry and chocolate pudding, meanwhile taking care of that little guy you see sitting in the back seat. Saturday my amazing Aunt Dawn (Jack's Godmother) took him for the WHOLE day so that I could rest. SOOO nice of her! I have never watched so much Oprah or took so many mini-naps in one sitting as I did on Saturday. It was awesome. I have also never taken painkillers like Vicodin before this surgery and those mini-naps were the result. Not too shabby!
The hilarious part is that I got this pounding headache at the end of the day on Saturday. I figured I should get some fresh air and leave my bat-cave-of-a-basement to see if I could get rid of it. So, I sat on my front porch and drank a diet coke (aha! lack of caffeine ended up being the culprit) until Dawn came home with Jackson. After she dropped him off and we chatted for quite a while, Jack and I went back inside. I peaked in the mirror for the first time that day and OH MY GOODNESS - what a scary sight. I had white stuff on my chin - not sure where that came from), I was pale, and my left cheek was crazy swollen. And the best part? Aunt Dawn never said a word. Love that girl.
My dentist was right to tell me to get all four taken out at once because I never want to do this again. Today is Monday and I'd say I'm about 80%. I'm looking forward to eating something crunchy.