ok well 8 weeks of puppies turned into lots of visits to the vet, an emergency visit that had us weaning the puppies at 3 weeks, puppies living with me without their mama for 1 week, then puppies moving on to another foster and mama coming back to me until she is adopted! oyoyoyoyoy! meanwhile, andrew, tess and i took our first family vacation all together alone (without grandmas involved) and had a great time, tess has turned 13 months (why do moms count in months?! why am i succumbing to the trend?!), my work schedule is changing, i'm interviewing for another part-time job, we're looking into part-time daycares, there were tornadoes tearing through the state, i fell down concrete stairs and nearly broke my ankle, tess got her first cold (and passed it on to us), we went to several museums and even joined one, OH! and my house looks like laundry, dishes, trash, and baby toys EXPLODED in and around it! sheesh! mayhaps this is why i haven't blogged? on the other hand, sure would have made some fantastic material to read about... oh well.
would you like some details about our many events? here goes!
ok so the adorable puppies:
continued growing and doing well, being adorable and sweet, and growing like CRAZY! poor iris was taking such good care of her 10 little ones and trying to heal up her sad body. our friend liz was generous enough to watch the whole gang (including our two crazies) while we went out of town for a long weekend to boone!
we took tons of pictures, which you can see in my facebook album, and had a blast! we drove up late thursday night in hopes that tess would sleep through the drive. we got a later start than we'd planned, and instead of leaving at 8 or 9, we left at about 10:30, which meant we didn't get in to boone until about 2am. luckily, we'd planned to stay in a hotel room that night, so the late arrival time wasn't a big deal for our accommodations... unluckily, that was where our "planning" ceased to work anymore. tess slept for a good hour into the drive before waking up and deciding she was going to stay awake FOR THE REST OF THE DRIVE. she was so out of it and so exhausted that she just sat there staring in front of her like a zombie and occasionally whimpering pathetically but refusing to sleep. it was so sad! then, about 45 mins from boone, she decided she was no longer ok, and we had to put the elmo movie on for the rest of the ride. also, andrew - not being much of the night owl, was about to fall asleep and run us off the road, so my swollen, bruised, nearly broken ankle and i had to drive almost the entire way.
so we got in around 2 and got to sleep around 3am. here's a picture of tess from the next morning:
such a tired baby!
but the rest of the weekend was wonderful! i hobbled around, we swam in the hotel pool, we ate at great places, we hung out with old friends like the newells (who were generous enough to welcome us into their home for the rest of the weekend) and crystal, sue treated us to a birthday celebration with newer friends like andy, kelley, and lucas, we explored king st, drove around our old haunts, and on the last day, took a trip up grandfather mountain!
when we got back home, we had to settle back into real life - boo! and we hadn't been doing that for long before we went out andrew's theater picnic and returned to find iris looking literally like death. andrew called me out because i was propping my ankle up, and he'd gone to take her for the last walk of the night, and he said, "i think she had diarrhea" - so i got off the couch and went out to check on her, only to find her crashing. she had no eyes because her body had had an inflammatory response and made her 3rd eyelids turn red and puff up to cover her eyes. when i peeled those back, her eyeballs were bloodshot and she couldn't really see. her gums were white and tacky, and there was diarrhea everywhere in her whelping box. i freaked out and called the vet and took her in (in my pj's because it was 10:30 by the time we left) as fast as i could drive. we got her all set up with catheters in and bloodwork running, fluids, plasma, and antibiotics going, x-rays and ultrasounds done, and basically if we had gone to bed earlier that night, she would have been dead by the morning. her overwhelmed body had gone into septic shock possibly from her worm infestation (which we hadn't been able to get rid of due to the puppies also being infested), a mastitis we found developing that night, or possibly other things - we didn't really know what caused it, but we treated it. unfortunately, that meant the puppies had to be weaned - which caused the mastitis to get worse, and eventually lead to 3 of he breasts having to be removed. the puppies stayed with us for a week while waiting on an spca foster who is more used to taking care of orphaned puppies, and iris was returned to us.
the whole experience was a harrowing and exhausting tornado of stress. and on top of that, then raleigh and the surrounding areas were hit by... tornadoes.
i was actually working the whole time the storm was going through, and the crazy people at work kept coming in to while the storm was going on! during the minutes that the worst of the storm was passing right through, past work, and we'd gotten the call to "go to a safe place" this crazy lady came in and insisted we trim her cat's nails - WHILE THE TORNADOES WERE PASSING WORK! what is wrong with people!? i cannot understand people sometimes, but we did it. ridiculous. anyway, work was unscathed, as was our house, and everyone in our family, so we were very blessed to be spared minus a few branches and one of our walkway lights.
and speaking of work - i tried to get more hours recently and was basically told that there were enough people working and they didn't have hours for me (even though the doctors and my coworkers were all in favor of me working full time again), so i gave up for awhile and just figured it wasn't time to work more. however, i browsed the local listings and found that a nearby mobile vet was hiring a surgery tech position for tuesdays and thursdays. i got in touch with them and was set up to meet with them, when they stopped responding. i took that as a sign to pursue other things and let it go. recently, however, they contacted me again to tell me that the person they'd hired was pregnant and they needed to re-hire the position. so, while i'm a bit put off by their flakiness, they are nearby, seem nice, the job is appealing and part time, and i'm going to go in to interview with them tomorrow morning. i'm excited byt going to be very selective to ensure it's a move i want to make. i'd continue working at oberlin as i am, but i'd work there as well.
that led us to resume our search for a good, affordable daycare for tess. i still really want her to be at bright horizons, as they've impressed me like no other place has, but they are not only expensive, but also apparently impress everyone else because they ALWAYS have a waiting list. so we bit the bullet and put her on the waiting list there and have looked around at other, closer, cheaper places. the problem with places around here is that they're cheap but... you get what you pay for :-/ meaning they aren't as clean or interactive as i'd like, they know nothing about organic or even homemade food, and the idea of cloth diapers is completely alien to them. however, we may put her in one short-term while we wait for an opening (potentially september) at bright horizons.
soooooo, that's the long of the short of our april whirlwind world, and i hope to be more regular about updating during may!
2 comments:
Nice update! I feel like it covers everything but still leaves me wanting to call on the phone to catch up, which I really should do. <3
definitely. miss you.
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