Another Crazy Year

Here we go again! Another year, and boy have we started off crazy busy! I've been working quite a bit of overtime at the hospital because of an early, incredibly rampant respiratory season that has been flooding the unit with patients. We usually get very busy around the end of January/beginning of February through April but this year it started in the middle of December and it's only been getting worse. I have to say though, doing 2 consecutive weeks of almost 50 hours each week has made for a nice paycheck - if only it meant I was at home to enjoy it!

The weather certainly hasn't been helping either. A couple weeks ago we got a massive snowstorm that dumped close to a foot and a half of snow, and it's been so cold it hasn't melted off yet. And by "cold" I mean highs in the teens! Now I know for sure why I'd never want to live in the Midwest - it's terrible! Plus we get the lovely Utah inversion that traps smog in the valley so it's been dark gray and gloomy every single day this month. No wonder I've been feeling so lethargic lately. But on the plus side the snowstorm made for some good pictures!

Our front yard

The walkway to the front porch

Mira had such a fun time doing faceplants in the snow.

I think this next picture gives a bit of perspective into how deep the snow was: notice it comes right up to the windowsills on the basement level and is pretty much level with the front doorstep. Crazy!!

Mira is definitely acting like she's in the "terrible twos" now - it's a good thing she's so dang cute! Many of our days are spent with Mira trying to assert her "authority" and the adults trying to rein her in. I have to keep reminding myself that the fact that she's trying to assert her independence and test boundaries is a good thing. But man, can it get frustrating!

Luckily her cute moments make up for the aggravating ones. She loves jumping all across the room, "singing" at the top of her lungs, dancing around when any sort of music comes on, and practicing yoga on my yoga mats. She also wants to be a helper, so if you ask her to be a "big helper" and do something like put her toys away or put something in the trash or a dirty (plastic) dish in the sink, she'll do it enthusiastically and then applaud herself when she's done. In fact, the other night she put all her toys and books away all by herself without being asked! I'm going to celebrate that one now because I have a feeling that before too long that won't happen anymore. When she takes a bath she puts all her bath toys away by herself when bathtime is over, then she looks at the drain, realizes the water is going to go down the drain and she might go with it, and then she gets terrified and whimpers until she escapes the tub. I remember when my sister Sara would be scared of getting sucked down the drain when she was little too so this one really makes me smile.

Mira also considers herself a bit of an artist, as you can see by her handiwork on the dishwasher.

She is unbelievably fast at getting into something. A few days ago I put a bag from the grocery store on the couch - which was my mistake because I should have known better than to leave anything in her reach that could have been destroyed. I turned my back for a minute and when I looked back, Mira had found a bottle of hair serum (to help with my dry split ends, thank you very much winter), unscrewed the top, pulled off the safety lid, and dumped the entire contents of the bottle all over herself and the couch. That was $7 well spent.

Sometimes her desire to be independent is frustrating but other times it's just awesome. Like when she insisted on trying to use chopsticks - I have to say, I'm very impressed with her efforts! My Japanese grandmother will be proud to see this:

She ended up eating her dinner with her hands and her fork - but at least she gave it a try! Also notice that she's graduated from the high chair to a booster chair.

And here's yet another example of Mira trying to help - child labor isn't a problem, right? :)

 

I just can't believe she's going to be 2 years old in less than a month!! Mark and I can't believe how fast she's grown. It really does go way too fast - so not fair. :(

I haven't done very well taking pictures and videos lately because I've been studying for the Advanced CV Module at work, which starts next month. I figure this month will be spent studying and researching but after this it won't be as time consuming. I'll have three classes in February but they count towards my regular work hours so it's not going to be bad that way. Maybe once I get into it I'll get excited about it - now I'm just overwhelmed and not looking forward to spending all this time learning about a patient population that is not my favorite... But it'll make me versatile and that's what matters.

So apologies for the scant posting this month - next month should definitely be better. Bear with me!

Christmas 2012

Wow, I just can't believe how fast this year has gone already! Christmas has already come and gone and it's almost the new year. It seems like the older I get the faster life goes.

I had to work Christmas Eve all night and Mark had to work all day on Christmas, which kind of sucks but I remind myself that the most important jobs are the ones that can't go away on nights, weekends or holidays. Really, in a perfect world neither of our jobs would be required - but people screw up and people get sick so off to work we go. Luckily Mira is too young to really know the difference, or get the idea of Christmas yet anyway, so for now it's okay. As soon as I got home from work Christmas morning we brought out presents for Mira to open. She actually did a really good job opening everything! Her favorite present was her pink trike - she kept trying to sit on it before Mark was done putting it together.

Feeding her baby doll.

She wanted to wear part of the trike as a necklace.

Showing off her new winter coat

So Mira had fun Christmas morning playing with her new toys and later she got to show off some new dresses she got (she is so into frilly girlie things - love it!)

She loved her new Disney Princess hooded towel

Mmmm, rolls...

Mark and I didn't really exchange gifts this year. My present to Mark had been the ski passes. It felt a bit strange to not have anything to give him on Christmas but it's not like I was going to wait to give Mark ski passes. Mark's present to me was tickets to see 3 performances by Ballet West: The Nutcracker, Cinderella in February, and Aladdin in the spring. That's one of the most thoughtful presents I've ever gotten - I absolutely love the ballet! I've been dropping hints for years that I'd love to go with Mark to the ballet and even though it took 10 1/2 years for him to follow through, at least he did! And as many of my girlfriends have noted, this man is a keeper if he'll buy me tickets for not one, not two, but three ballets. Sorry ladies, he's mine - don't get too jealous. :)

I've mentioned that Mira is starting to throw fake temper tantrums and I finally managed to get one on video. I dare you to watch this and not laugh.

She sure is a drama queen!

I said in my last post Mark was going to try to get me on a black diamond mogul run the next time we went skiing - which I did yesterday. It was definitely a challenge and I biffed it several times on the way down but Mark was probably prouder of me than I've ever seen him and he was so excited that I'm more and more able to keep up with him. He told me afterwards that the run he took me on was probably more of a double black diamond because of how narrow, steep and tree-filled it was with moguls about hip-deep but he knew I could handle it and he knew it would be great for my confidence level. We're going to try to do at least one black diamond run every time we go skiing now. Yay me!

Here's a couple more videos and then I'm done showing off. Here's Mark doing an intermediate mogul run - this is how it should be done.

And then there's me.

Ah well, the technique will be there eventually.

Here's to a great new year for everyone!

Holidays

Wow have I slacked off with the blog lately. Whoops. I'm blaming the busy holiday season and my work schedule and Mark's and Mira's illnesses requiring medical intervention and our ski passes.

So first things first, Mark and Mira are both healthy (now). Mira came down with a bit of a cough and runny nose which turned into an ear infection which turned into a double eye infection, so she was on oral antibiotics and eye drops. Luckily she bounced back quickly, as kids tend to do. I ended up having to be on antibiotics as well for a sinus infection after my respiratory illness. I always get a sinus infection after any sort of cold but typically after a few days the symptoms go away on their own and at least the pain is controllable with over-the-counter meds. For whatever reason this time I was in migraine-level pain for over a week with no relief no matter what I took, but a few hours after taking my first dose of Zithromax I was starting to feel better. Whew!

Mark of course is another story. The back story is that when he was an infant he got pneumonia, which made him more prone to recurrent pneumonias as he got older so now he has scarring in his lungs from all the infections he's had which, of course, makes him even more prone to getting pneumonia. So he got sick with that nasty cold the same time I did but he just did not recover the way he should have (I think part of the problem is he didn't take any time off of work). Finally after he had a wheezing/coughing attack one night when he needed several puffs of my albuterol just to breathe we took him to the Instacare. They gave him a breathing treatment and did a chest X-ray that showed he didn't have evidence of pneumonia yet so they called it bronchitis and sent him home with a course of antibiotics and his own inhaler. A few days after starting his ABX he still didn't seem much better and after he finished his course he got much worse again. What that meant is I was at work and got texts from him like, "I can't breathe" and "Help me." And of course I couldn't just leave work so we had to call Mark's parents to come to the house and sit with Mira (it was late at night so we definitely didn't want to wake her up) and get a friend to drive Mark to the ER and when I was finally able to give report on my patient and leave I went to the ER and traded off with our friend so she could go home and I sat with Mark. That was another really long night. The doctor was worried that Mark might have a pulmonary embolism so he got a bunch of labs drawn, 2 liters of IV fluid, a pulmonary CT scan and more breathing treatments. And luckily everything ended up looking okay so the best the doctor could think was that the ABX he'd been on weren't attacking whatever bug he had. He still didn't have pneumonia based on the CT but he was right on the edge. So they sent him home on 2 more antibiotics and steroids - and 24 hours later he was looking and acting normal again. Big sigh of relief there! It's been a rough few months for health care in our family. If there's a bright side to this, we hit our deductible a few months ago with Mark's hospitalization for chest pain and so at least this has all been covered by insurance. I guess that's a good thing, right? :)

We also had some family from out of town this last week. Mark has an adult daughter from his previous marriage (he got married when he was quite young, 19 years old, and needless to say that didn't work out so well) who moved to Kentucky with her boyfriend earlier this year, so our present to her was to fly her out for a week to visit. It was such a fun week with Jintelle and just like old times. Plus my little sister Penny is in town for a few weeks so we got to see her for Hanukkah earlier in the month. I think taking the commercialism out of the holidays and focusing on spending time with family is the best thing to do this time of year, and at least in my case much less stressful.

Sara and Penny

Me and Penny

Sara, Penny and me

Mark and I have gone to several more counseling sessions and I feel like it's been helpful. For the most part I've been feeling much better. One thing that was suggested we do was to find something we both enjoy doing so we can spend more time together as a couple. One thing we definitely enjoy but we don't do very much due to price is go skiing. We looked into buying season passes to one of the many ski resorts nearby. The prices that seemed reasonable for our budget were only mid-week passes, which would really limit our ski days. Then we looked at The Canyons, which is in Park City and therefore the most expensive resort. We went there once last season and really loved it - but $1500 a person for a season pass just didn't seem affordable. Then we noticed that they give a massive discount to law enforcement and a spouse. And when I say massive I mean half price. Now that was certainly doable! So we have season passes to our favorite resort - and one of the reasons we love it so much is how big it is, about 180 trails! Now we have all season to explore the resort, I can perfect my skiing skills, and we get to spend time together doing something we love! This was the best gift we could have gotten each other.

One of the perks of having a season pass is we get a free buddy pass so when Jintelle was visiting we took her up skiing with us. Mark got a helmet cam and got some footage of us bumbling our way down the mountain and of him doing some black diamond trails. I had to edit these videos and they may not have come out great but you get the gist of it. :)

Mark is a much better skier than I am - he was on the ski team in college and doesn't even think twice about skiing off a cliff through a forest at breakneck speeds. My goal, on the other hand, is to not be snowplowing down the mountain by the end of the season. However, we figured out that even though I'll psych myself out and fall down on a not-very-steep, well-groomed slope with no trees in sight, if you give me a steep narrow hill with moguls and trees I'm not scared at all. Go figure because moguls are harder than a groomed slope! When Mark and I went skiing yesterday he got a video of me going down some moguls and doing fairly decent!

Mark thinks I can handle a black diamond mogul run the next time we go up so we'll see how I do at it. The nice thing about having a season pass is we can go up for a few hours in the morning and come home and not feel like we wasted our money. It's pretty awesome so I think we're going to have to get passes every year now because we're enjoying it so much. Plus next year Mira will be old enough we can start taking her up and teaching her to ski - now that will be cute!

Of course if you ask her she's old enough to start skiing already.

She's enough of a daredevil I think she would have a blast going skiing. Mark and I keep joking that we're going to have an Olympic skier on our hands (her middle name does mean "snow," after all!).

Mira is growing up so fast! It just blows my mind that she's going to be 2 in a couple of months. She's working on talking more and tries to sing along to any piece of music she hears. She loves to twirl around in frilly skirts and dance, and she's learning the art of the temper tantrum. Most of the time the tantrum consists of fake crying, dropping her face into her hands dramatically and sometimes some kicking for good measure. Usually they don't last very long and I have to try not to laugh because she's obviously just doing it for show but every once in awhile she has days when she's a little monster. She's constantly crying, screaming, throwing tantrums for real, hitting and in general cannot be pleased with anything. Mostly she's still a good natured, happy little girl. Here she is trying to play with Wally but really only succeeding in harassing the poor cat.

Here's a funny video we got at my sister Sara's house a couple months ago. Let's just say that cat toys should be marketed towards toddlers as well.

And finally some random pictures that Mira took with my phone. This girl makes me laugh.

I'm supposed to work Christmas Eve but I'm sure I'll have plenty of pics and videos of Mira having fun getting some presents in a few days. Hope everyone has a low-key, enjoyable holiday season!