A Year in Review

I’ve read that there is this blogging tradition of going back over your year at New Years’ time and linking to all the big stories of the year. Since I didn’t blog most of this year, I guess you will be saved a bunch of links to stories you probably skimmed the first time while I catch up on my need to share life.

So here it is: Mama’s 2008

January: Mama adjusted to life with a new baby and toddler. Breastfeeding did not go as well this time around and Mama turned into a one-woman dairy farm, and my firstborn got glasses.

Mama reluctantly decided in favor of an IUD. Let me just say this: If taking The Pill makes you an insane, raging lunatic to the point that your husband would rather face the prospect of never having sex again than share the unstable air that surrounds your hormone-ravaged self, ignore your doctor when he tells you that the level of hormones in an IUD is so much lower that “You’ll be fine.” You won’t be fine. You will find yourself locked in your bathroom to avoid screaming at your already terrified children while you beg the nurse on the phone to GET THIS THING OUT OF MY BODY. NOW. I can has Prozac?

February: After removal of the Foreign Offender, and some chemical assistance from a very remorseful obstetrician, the clouds began to part and I finally began the process of bonding with my precious baby. I can has The Love!

March: Mama went back to work. Mama also grew giant asparagus. I can has giant bowl of hollandaise?

April: Mama began a long, slow march back into the depths of depression. I still don’t know if this is about hormones, loss, or something else, but yeah, I’m going to go ahead and use the D word. I can has no jokes about this one, people.

May: Mama started a new blog, but it turns out that I wasn’t any more consistent over there than I am here.

June-July-August: We learned that Isaac had had what the doctor later called a “neurological reaction” to the DtAP vaccine, or at least to the “P” part. Mama and family made the tough decision to discontinue the Pertussis series, and we continue to learn what that means for us and for him. Hubby had a birthday, which will be recorded in history as The Birthday in Which the Wii Changed Our Lives. Mostly, we enjoyed the Galveston beaches and the summer.

September: Hurricane Ike left both our home and my parents cabin on the beach (The West End, for locals and compulsive news-watchers) miraculously untouched. We even had our power back on in a matter of hours, most likely because we live on the same grid as a major hospital. Unfortunately, the cold front that blew in the next night proved to be the straw that broke our municipal sewer system's back, and we woke up to several inches of water in our house. I can has a new wet-vac?

October: God is just good, people. Despite having 18” of drywall cut from the bottom of every wall in our house and losing all our downstairs flooring, the whole flood thing really brought mostly blessings into our home. We got a new front door out of deal, and we realized that we can count on our friends and family more that we could have imagined.

November: Did I leave out the part where Isaac stopped sleeping at night and stopped gaining weight around six months ago? As it turns out, my 75th Percentile Preemie hit twenty pounds at six months old and didn’t gain more than a couple of ounces by his first birthday. Between not wanting to eat anything that wasn’t served a-la-boob and raging ear infections that kept him on diarrhea-inducing antibiotics for most of the second half of his life thus far, no one was totally shocked. But we were concerned all the same. We decided to get tubes put in his ears, but the we missed the first scheduled surgery because he had The Croup. I can has Amoxicillin?

December: Isaac got the tubes in. The doctor told us he was in the Top Ten of all the babies he’s ever “tubed,” meaning there was more gunk in there than anyone had realized…and within 2 weeks he has another ear infection and has actually started sleeping less. So we’ve come full-circle and here I am back at the blog. I can has naptime? PLEEEZ?

New Year’s Resolution: Sleep more, feel better, enjoy my kids – I think it has to be in that order, but I’ll take it how I can get it.