our day

We went up to the camp ground today and hung out with a bunch of friends. We had a really good time. It was fun to see E play with (or next to) her friends. It was less fun to run after her every time she saw a dog. There were a lot of dogs!

I got a call from A. He and D went to see my mom today. They said that she was responding better today. That's good news. Her condition is still the same, but hopefully they will find out everything they need when they run the tests again in a few days.
I wonder what kind of strong meds they have her on though, b/c yesterday, when JA visited her, she told him she was to tired to cook him dinner. (She's not even allowed to sit up!)

When we came home tonight I gave E a sponge bath since it was to late to give her a real bath. She will definitely need one tomorrow though. The water in the bowl got very dirty. She's sound asleep now and we finished the movie we started yesterday... National Treasure II. We've seen it before, and even though it's not as good as the first one, it's still OK to watch again.

I guess it's time for us to go to bed too b/c C fell asleep on the couch (again) and I'm yawning. (Did that information make you yawn? It made me yawn, every time I wrote the word actually - haha.)

Well, good night!

my mom

My mom had kidney surgery 2 days ago. She seemed to be recovering fine. Maybe the drugs she got was the reason she was acting a little strange? Or maybe not... She started to feel sick, she felt a pressure under her forehead, she was clammy, she couldn't really hear the TV or her boyfriends voice, so he called the ambulance. My mom is now admitted to a hospital where they have specialists watching over her. There is a bleeding in her head, but they can't quite locate it yet. So they're keeping her for another week, checking in on her about every 30 minutes. That's about all I know right now. Please pray for her, her boyfriend, my brothers and the doctors.

Jag älskar dig, mamma!

how rude

I got my allergy shots today again. E likes to play in their play area. But when we got there today there were two other girls already playing so at first she was a little shy. That didn't last very long though and she went over to play. That's when the youngest girl started to yell NO to E every time she tried to touch anything. She was rude the entire time. E tried to share things with her and she would slap the things out of E's hand. And what did her mother do? She just continued to read her magazine. How rude! It breaks my heart when other kids are mean to her. I did give the little girl some killer looks (a little childish of me perhaps, but it felt pretty good to be a little mean back to the one who hurt my little girl).

back to us

We're back to being just us again, just me, C and E. My husband's family left early this morning. We had a great time with them and will miss them a lot. But it has been a busy summer. There has been some serious renovating, still not done, my family visited for 3 weeks, I had one week to pack, we moved into our construction site, I tried to unpack a little before my husband's family arrived, they stayed for two weeks. And during all this family time there has been a lot of activities going on. As you can see on FB or MS, if you check out the pics. And there is more to come. But now it's just us. And although we love our families and miss them tremendously it is nice to know that things will calm down a little. I say a little b/c we still have a lot to do around the house, but at least we can focus on that now. And each other.

E had her 20 month well visit today. She's still afraid of her Dr, so she was crying pretty much the whole time. The shots didn't make it any better. At least there are no more of those until she's 4. Then, b/c of her shots, she didn't have a good nap and so she was cranky the whole evening. Until she got in the tub. I need to set up her water table soon so she can play with water during the day too. Oh, how she loves water!

I need to buy a new vacuum. But I don't know which one to buy. It needs to have a HEPA filter. That is a must with all of our allergies. I would like a bagless one. And it would be nice if it didn't weigh a ton. If you know of a good (great) one, please let me know. (also let me know if you know of one I should avoid.)

precious moments (and some others too)

Today I have watched my daughter...
*go on rides
*dance to the Wiggles
*fall backwards b/c she was sitting on a stool (I caught her just in time)
*smile
*have fun in the pool
*hold hands with her cousin
*have some (but not many) temper tantrums (mostly when she didn't want to get back into her stroller)
*being kicked in the head by some big girls (but she didn't cry)
*being very excited
*laugh
*fall asleep in her stroller
*explore
*fall in the water without being scared
*have tons of fun
*being the cutest little girl ever
*being totally happy by the end of the day when we got home and she got to see her daddy

namntjuvar

Så jag skriver på svenska eftersom jag behöver skriva av mig, men inte vill att alla ska kunna läsa. En av mina kompisar här (eller bekanta stämmer nog in bättre) har precis fått en liten pojke. Hon har, som de flesta amerikanare, vetat om att det skulle bli en pojke sen hon var ca 18 veckor gravid. Men hon och hennes man har inte velat tala om vad han ska heta, utan det skulle de vänta med att tala om tills han var född. Idag när jag kollade mina email så såg jag att där var ett från hennes man och jag förstod genast vad det handlade om. Mycket riktigt. Han emailade för att tala om att deras lille (eller faktiskt ganka stora) pojke hade anlänt och att hans namn var... Neeeeej! skrek jag när jag läste det. De hade valt samma namn som jag har velat använda om vi någonsin får en liten pojke. Jag var fjorton år när jag valde det och har fortfarande inte ändrat mig. Fy, vad besviken jag blev. Hmmm, jag hoppas att de inte har något emot att deras son kanske inte blir den enda med det namnet för jag vet inte om jag kan ändra mig. Det är faktiskt ganska svårt att hitta namn som passar på både engelska och svenska. Jag hade ett annat pojknamn, men det kan jag inte använda här i USA för då kommer de andra barnen garanterat att reta honom. C förstod min besvikelse och försökte trösta mig med att vi kanske inte behövde komma på några pojknamn. Hmm. Inte mycket till tröst, men det var ett sött försök. Jag har nog redan valt ett annat flicknamn om det skulle behövas, men jag är fortfarande lite besviken över att de "stal" "mitt" namn.

Forget it

It's 1:23 PM and I still haven't heard from him. I'll just tell him NO if he shows up.

Frustrating

Being a landlord sometimes means that you have to deal with some oh, not so smart tenants. Like this morning when I'm waiting for one of them to come down and knock on my door to get into our basement where we so nicely will let him store his junk. I don't want to start anything that I can't just walk away from so I'm just waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Finally I had enough. It's now 10:40am. I walk upstairs and knock on the door. The guy opens up and I ask him if I can let him into the basement now. He looks at me like I'm nuts and informs me that he will be down at 12:30. I've got some news for you, buddy... anything that ends with pm is not in the morning and I'm doing you a favor, not the other way around.

Kidneys and Jeremiah blogging

So the kidneys have made me a little confused for awhile. The ones in the Bible that is. The Lord sees to the heart and the kidneys. The heart part I got, but what is the deal with the kidneys? So I was thinking that it probably had something to do with cleaning us out, what we keep in our lives and what we get rid off. In us I mean. Yeah, I probably don't make much sense right now to anyone but myself. Anyways... I checked some other Bibles and instead of using the word kidneys (which is the original word) they used mind (and feelings once) so I think my theory was pretty correct. Well that was my little kidney story.

So who is this Jeremiah that's blogging? Well, I'm still talking about the Bible. First of all, you should know that I am a blog and FB stalker. I love to read other peoples blogs. And as I was reading Jeremiah 20:7 and a little further I felt like I was reading his blog. It was pretty cool. He was kind of complaining about being a prophet. It wasn't very easy, I bet. While reading I could really feel his frustration and it was so personal. He didn't put up the "I believe in God and things are so great"-face. It is great. But life is still hard a lot of times. And Jeremiah was definitely not fake. He was so tired of doing what God wanted him to do sometimes that he started to ignore Him for awhile. Which didn't work of course. So where am I going with all this babbling? Nowhere! I'm just sorting through my thoughts as usual. Get used to it. It may not make any sense to anyone else, but things are a lot clearer up in my blond brain right now. And with that I will end.

Nja...

I'm partly excited. The other part... Not so much!

IKEA

I love IKEA. In Sweden. On a weekday. Not in NJ on a Saturday. I was so excited about this trip. Finally a little bit of home in this new country. (Can I still call it new after 6 years? Probably not. But anyways...) We get there and the play area where you can drop your kids off is called Småland. Home sweet home. We start by eating lunch. A boatload of Swedish meatballs. Mmmmm. We accidentally left E's bib in the car, but it's IKEA. They have bib's for you. (They even have diapers for you in the changing area.) After lunch we let E play in the play corner at the restaurant. She loved it! Then the shopping began... And that's when I realized how different it was from home. The layout of the store here was dumb. We started on the first floor. (Very messy btw.) Filled up our shopping cart and to get to the 2nd floor you had to take the elevator. No ramps here. No. And you can't bring shopping carts to the 2nd floor. It's just a showroom for you to look at and pick out what you want. I guess you're suppose to start on the 2nd floor and work your way down. We brought our cart to the 2nd floor anyway. E wasn't very happy in the cart. She wanted to play in all the beds. And not stay close to us. And we could not find a wardrobe that we liked. So we decided to go with a PAX system. It's one of those things you can totally customize to your needs. If you ever go to get one of those, figure out ahead of time exactly what you want. Do not try to do it with a hyper toddler running away from you. We had no idea what to do. So we took E back to the restaurant where she could play. C went to get a catalog and from that we were able to figure out what we wanted. Then we walked back to some guy by a desk by the PAX department and told him what we wanted. And he knew exactly what he was doing! He printed out a list for us so we knew where everything was that we had to pick up. We got our stuff. Payed (a little bit more than we had planned to do - oops!) packed everything into the minivan we had rented for this occasion and went back in to shop some more. That's right. We had to pick up a few thing in the Swedish food market too. Lingondricka, gräddbullar, leksand knäckebröd, flädersaft, ballerinakex... And then we went home. And my wonderful husband spent all day yesterday putting it all together. So my plans for today are to unpack our clothes. And to get our guestroom ready for my mother-in-law. C asked me yesterday if she knew that we live in a total mess. I told him that if not she would soon find out.

I still love IKEA. In Sweden. On a weekday. And I wish they would open one up in this area so I can give the American version a chance on a weekday too.

Lost and found

We just got back from an unnecessary appointment at the allergist. They couldn't test E today b/c she had Benadryl yesterday morning. Which I told them yesterday when we set up the appointment. So I had to schedule another one and still pay for my little chat with the doctor today of course. Grrr! (No, I'm not a tiger or any other wild cat. I'm still trying to figure out what letters to write when I'm frustrated.)

On our way home from the doctor's I realized that Teddy was missing. I call the office and they look for it and tell me it's not there. So I stop the car to search for this pink, little blanket with a teddy head on top. I can't find it. E likes to snuggle with her Teddy before she falls asleep and this particular Teddy isn't made anymore. Of course I can by a new one... on ebay for $40. I head back to the doctor's office and walk over to the play area, open up a cabinet in the little kitchen and there is Teddy, packed away so nicely by my 19 month old. Yay!!!

It's now passed E's naptime by an hour and we head back home. She falls asleep in her car seat and I can't wake her up. She's out. 2 minutes later I pull into our car port and she wakes up. Ok, I think. She only slept for 2 minutes. She'll go back down again. Yeah, right. I can hear her talking in her crib. Or whining. Hrmm! (No, that's not the letters I'm looking for either.)


Ok, I just got to say this... My life isn't half as bad as it might sound here. It's just that it's the frustrating things in life that I try to get rid of by blogging. That way I don't have to bother anyone with my negative thoughts. I get it off my chest anyways. Besides... we found Teddy. That's a happy thing!

Dish soap update

E seemed fine after her nap. She had a snack and then we played a little. She was wheezing a bit so I gave her a dose of Xopenex and then we met C at Panera Bread. Mmmmm!!! On the way home we stopped at Walmart and that's when C noticed a rash on E's arms and back. We took her to urgent care right away. The rash was getting worse right before our eyes. The doctor gave her a big dose of Benadryl, which we should give her every 6-8 hours. The Zantac we give her 3 times a day should help too. Her heart rate was way up and we didn't even see her calm down from the medicine. The rash didn't go away, but it stopped spreading.

I don't know if the rash had anything to do with the dish soap from earlier today. It seems weird that the reaction would be so delayed. But she didn't eat anything she hasn't had before. Maybe the soap reacted with the food? I don't know. We just pray that the rash will be gone by tomorrow and that she will be ok.

I have to contact her allergist to set up an appointment to get her tested for food allergies. Hopefully they can do that on her next follow-up so I don't have to take her there twice.

It's time for bed, but first I'm going to check on E to make sure she's breathing. Paranoid, yes. But it's just been one of those days...

BIG OOPS!!!

Unpacking, unpacking, unpacking...

This place is a mess and I have to keep a close eye on E. It's definitely not baby proof and we experienced that in a somewhat bad way a few minutes ago. We have a big box of cleaning products just sitting in our mudroom. I've been watching E carefully so she wouldn't get into it, but I turned my back to her for 2 seconds to wipe down the counter top and that's when I heard the coughing... I turned around and there was E with a bottle of Palmolive in her hands and this weird expression on her face. I lifted her up and put her on the counter top and she puked right away. I called Poison Control Center (yes, I have their number programmed (sp?) in my cell phone after she ate diaper rash creme, which is not dangerous by the way) and they said she might puke, which she already did, and that I just had to dilute the detergent by giving her lots of water. Which she didn't want, of course, so I had to force feed it to her.

She's sleeping peacefully now, but I'm sure I will check on her a few more times than I normally would, just to be on the safe side. I'm just so thankful that she decided to try the Palmolive and not the scrubbing bubbles or the bleach. Well, now I'm going to move that box to a safer place.