Day 1 on Adderall for ADHD

I was in a professional development session today, and as people shared their thoughts and answers, I stayed focused on what they were saying. I heard and understood every word. Once or twice I got distracted with my own reactions, but was able to tell myself to finish understanding them first. 

I read a ridiculously complex sentence, multiple lines long, and was able to slowly read it and understand what it meant, and then read to verify that. 

I thought multiple times during today's PD session (of which I was the organizer) of little off-topic comments I wanted to make to the people  sitting near me. Each time I checked myself and returned to whatever task the presenter had told us to do. Not one side comment escaped my lips. 

I passed out the sign-in sheets without anyone reminding me AND checked at the end of the session to make sure everyone had signed. 

I went 45 minutes without checking to see if Ryan had texted me back. 

I had a conversation with a teacher that had the potential to be uncomfortable. I didn't forget or procrastinate doing it. (and it ended up being quite productive)

None of this felt possible yesterday.

I felt today like a professional who is capable of controlling what I say and how I present myself, and of listening to understand without being concerned with my responses. I read something that I found boring and I understood it without staring at it for several minutes. 

It's hard to overstate how exciting this is. I've compensated and accommodated and scaffolded myself for 36 years without realizing it. And I've done pretty well (sometimes really well), in school, at home and at work. But there are so many things that have fallen through the cracks, that have felt overwhelming, that I didn't even realize I were missing until they were pointed out. The times I've been overcome by distraction and not known what was happening or how to fight against it. The times I can't block out the noise from light and sound and emotion and have to hide away in a corner of the house to escape.

It's a long road still, but I'm so excited to have taken the first steps. It was a good day. 

My journey through psoriatic arthritis

I wasn’t planning on saying any of this, but I just can’t get it off my mind.  I’ve had an internal monologue going, telling this story over and over, for about a week now. Maybe writing it down and sharing will finally silence it.

Elizabeth’s birthday will always be inextricably linked with my diagnosis. It started around her second birthday, three years ago. We had a party at our house, with about 20 people over. I was finishing out the school year and was posting regular Facebook updates about the cute train that I was building out of boxes to decorate the living room. What I didn’t mention was that I had severe pain in the left side of my pelvis that was giving me difficulty with walking. At her party, I tried hard not to limp and draw attention to myself as I played with all the kids, went up and down the stairs, to and from the kitchen. After everyone left, I gamely cleaned up, but I didn’t try to hide the limp any more. 

Over the next couple weeks, my walking deteriorated to the point that I was dragging my left leg behind me. I couldn’t hide it anymore, so I stayed home as much as possible.

Finally, my OB and chiropractor diagnosed me with a subloxated pubic bone. The left side had slipped up over the right and gotten stuck. After a few chiropractor visits, my walking improved. I remember posting that on Facebook, actually – I was so relieved to have a diagnosis. By September, I felt relatively normal, though I would still get a twinge from time to time. In November though, it started again. I was out jogging when pain in my left sacroiliac joint pulled me up short. I slowed to a walk for a minute, stretched, then tried to jog again – I literally couldn’t make my legs move in that motion.

This continued – Yoga would make it better, then it would get worse again; walking made it better, jogging made it worse; sitting in the driver’s seat of the car felt great, but getting my legs in was a nightmare. I literally had to sit down, put my right leg in, then lift my left leg in with my hands.

Through all this, I tried very hard to keep the fear and the pain out of sight. I spent days at school sitting at my desk. I sat on the couch in the evenings until Ryan would leave the room – then I would drag my leg into the kitchen to do the dishes. When Elizabeth woke up in the middle of the night, I would pull myself up the stairwell to her room and hobble back down without waking Ryan. He had no idea how bad things had gotten. He knew that I limped sometimes, and that my back and leg hurt, but not the extent of it. In fact, we had several arguments about my not pulling my weight in the family, and I just resolved to do a better job getting things done.

In February, I visited a family doctor for the first time, hoping for answers. He diagnosed me with mono, Vitamin D deficiency, and hypothyroidism, any of which could cause joint issues. Through bloodwork, he ruled out rheumatoid arthritis, and did an MRI to look for inflammation. He also diagnosed me with sacroiliitis and gave me a belt to wear around my hips to hold my sacroiliac joint in place when I walked. It helped for a while. In fact, I was able to go to Mexico later that month for a friend’s wedding, and we walked all over San Luis Potosi – which was where I discovered that cobblestones make my back hurt very badly. I had to stop several times to sit down because I was hurting so badly, but I tried to play it off as if no big deal and started walking again as soon as I could. In fact, I danced all Saturday night – in heels – at the wedding reception. I felt like the belt might be working.

And then March came. I had been visiting a new chiropractor regularly, and when he would adjust my pelvis I would be unable to walk for a few minutes (literally couldn’t stand up) but then the pain would subside and I would feel better than when I had come in. Even with those visits though, I couldn’t run at all. I was terrified every time that I took Elizabeth out with me, because if she decided to bolt in a parking lot, there was nothing I could do about it. She did actually run one day, down the walkway at a strip mall, despite my yelling after her to stop. Fortunately, another mom out shopping stopped her and held her hand until I could get to her.

I decided this wasn’t working for me anymore and I went to see an orthopedic surgeon who put me on twelve days of steroids and sent me to a physical therapist. My first concern that we worked on was my inability to bend over and lift a leg – to put my pants on, specifically. If I bent slightly at the waist, I couldn’t lift my right leg even a centimeter off the ground. (Aside – my students found this fascinating, and I demonstrated it for them from time to time). He gave me some exercises and got my leg moving again. He even got me walking, and after three visits, running on the treadmill.

I was hopeful at that point. Ryan knew that I hadn’t been doing well (doctors’ visits and physical therapy are hard to hide) but thought we were through the worst of it. So a few days later when I relapsed, I tried again to hide it. I started having to get creative with my mobility – calling Elizabeth’s daycare from the parking lot to come get her in and out of the car so I wouldn’t have to walk inside, having students push me down the hall in my rolling chair, having students pull me up after I would crouch down to consult with them about their work, leaning on walls for support as I walked through the hallways.

I went back to the ortho, and he scheduled me for SI joint pain injections. The $800 procedure worked for about 24 hours and I was back to square one. So I found a new orthopedic surgeon who sent me for my second MRI and had me follow up in two weeks.

So now it was May. I had started sleeping upstairs in the guest bedroom so that I wouldn’t have to climb stairs at night to get Elizabeth (Ryan said he would do it, but I insisted I was fine as long as I didn’t have to climb stairs repeatedly). She had moved into a big girl bed, so she would come and climb in with me in the night if she woke up, saving me the pain of getting up. One evening, I was meeting a group of students and parents at Panera for Writing Club, and on the way out to the car had to get help walking the parking lot. The father who assisted me, his daughter told me later, said that he doubted I’d make it to school the next day – but I made it, and relished being stronger than he’d given me credit for.

That day, Ryan signed a job offer from a company in Delaware, and I let my principal know that I wouldn’t be back the next year. The next day, I got stuck in the hallway outside my room. I was on steroids again from the new orthopedic surgeon, and every day I would feel fine until the effects would wear off (usually around four o’clock). I’d stayed too late, and as I was walking down the hallway, I had to fall against the wall because my right leg wouldn’t move. I eventually managed to pull myself to the parking lot, then over about 20 minutes dragged myself to the car before collapsing into the seat in tears. That was a Friday – I never went back into that school building.

Sunday morning, I got out of bed to let the cat out, and on my way back to bed, fell onto the stairs. Over 45 minutes, I worked my way back to bed and lay there. I still don’t know why I didn’t call Ryan, who was asleep right on the other side of the bed. When he woke up, I told him that I couldn’t get up. In fact, when I tried to move, it caused such intense pain that I would gasp for breath and fall back. I called in sick for the next day, and called my brother and his fiancée to come up from Waco to help out. The next day, they took Elizabeth to school while Ryan took me to the orthopedic surgeon – who diagnosed me with a fracture of the sacral ala. He put me on immediate six week bedrest to heal and gave me more steroids and my first NSAID, Meloxicam. He also scheduled a bone scan to verify the diagnosis.

That day, I had to tell James and Jessica that I wouldn’t be at their wedding that was a few weeks away, and that Elizabeth couldn’t be there to be their flower girl. Of course they were understanding, but I felt terrible. On Tuesday, Ryan went to work and James would come and help me out of bed and into a rolling office chair any time I needed to use the bathroom. Fortunately, if he pushed me right up to the door, I could work my way inside and then back out onto the chair on my own. Then he would pick me up, usually crying or wincing from pain, and put me back into bed. I was able to get a walker by Wednesday, which helped with moving around when I needed to. If I kept most of my weight on my arms I could walk a little.

That was the low point. We’d been planning for Elizabeth’s third birthday party, and I realized there was no way I’d be able to host it. We had decided that Elizabeth and I would move down to Houston to stay with Ryan’s parents for a few weeks while he staged the house to sell and then moved to Delaware to start his new job, and that once my bed rest was over we would join him. I was going to cancel the party when some friends instead came over with decorations, food, and presents that Elizabeth could play with beside me in bed and had a whole birthday party while I lay on the couch in the middle of it. Three days later, we had moved to Houston.

Based on my consultation with Dr. Google, I wasn’t sure of the doctor’s diagnosis, so I had scheduled a follow-up with yet another orthopedic surgeon in Houston. He took one look at my MRIs and said that I definitely did NOT have a fracture or any other orthopedic issue. He ordered a CT scan to decide whether to send me to oncology or to rheumatology.

Once that scan came back with no sign of bone lesions, everything went very quickly. I got into a rheumatologist within a week, where I was diagnosed on my first visit with psoriatic arthritis – a seronegative autoimmune arthritis that usually accompanies skin psoriasis (which, as it turns out, I have, though I’d never been diagnosed before last month). He put me on a biologic drug, Humira, along with one more round of steroids and an increased dose of Meloxicam to tide me over until it started working, and the world changed. At my follow-up appointment a couple days later, I was able to put a little weight on my legs as I used the walker. Literally three weeks to the day since my bone scan, I was able to fly on my own the next week to Virginia to be at my brother’s wedding – without the walker (though I was pretty slow getting through the airport and nearly missed a connection 

because of it). And a few weeks later, Elizabeth and I were able to move to Delaware to join Ryan.

Three weeks after the bone scanLater that summer

Life isn’t perfect, by a long shot. There are days that the fatigue is so overwhelming that I’ve either taken a nap in the parking lot at work or at Elizabeth’s school, or gone straight to bed once I get home. I’ve had two major flare-ups that have laid me on my back again for a few days. The arthritis has moved from just my SI joint to my all my pelvic joints and lower back, ankles, knees, feet, and thumb. I’m terrified some days that my medication will stop working and I’ll live the rest of my life in that pain or be confined to a wheelchair or lose the ability to use my hands. But I’m also out taking sailing lessons on the Delaware River, singing with an amazing organization, volunteering at church, playing tag and Sly Fox in the back yard. And I’m currently putting the finishing touches on Elizabeth’s fifth birthday party, which is going to be the kick-off to an epic fifth birthday weekend – party, two-day trip to New York, then a piñata at school and the trampoline park on her actual birthday. So my life isn’t perfect – no one’s is – but I’m hopeful, and I’m happy.

Elizabeth's Firsts this month

1st time making chores go by faster: she emptied the dishwasher of everything plastic and got it all on the right shelves in the pantry, then passed me silverware to put away. She also climbed head first into the laundry basket and tossed out clothes faster than I could sort them into piles - and didn't scatter the existing piles once. Then she turned on the washing machine for me. She didn't get the temperature settings right though - maybe next time. 

1st total meltdown in the grocery store: The day before Valentine's Day, I had to run in to get snacks for her class party and thought it would be nice to let her help me pick things out. Upon being told that we didn't need a grocery cart, she fling herself down on her face in front of the florist stand and started screaming. She didn't stop until a nice clerk gave her a free chocolate covered strawberry. Then she did it AGAIN in the goldfish aisle. I'm pretty sure she ate half a bag of goldfish before we got out of the store. But her valentines were cute :)

Conflict on the playground

I thought my biggest worry with Elizabeth, for the moment, was going to be teaching her not to hit, pinch, and pull hair. She does all three of these - a lot. She actually came home from school on Thursday  this week with a nasty bruise from a bite - her teacher obviously didn't tell me who did it, but did let me know that Elizabeth had been pulling hair and pinching faces all day, so it may have been provoked. So I thought we just needed to teach her to stop hurting her friends (and us) and that would be that. If only ...

Today, while Elizabeth was playing on the playground equipment at Central Market, I discovered a new problem. A little 2-year-old girl took a liking to Elizabeth and followed her around trying to hug her and pet her arm and play with her hair. All perfectly innocent, except that Elizabeth doesn't like being touched (or talked to, really) by strangers, of any age. She'll say hi from the safety of my arms (if she's approached carefully and without too much fanfare), but otherwise she usually just stares people down who want to talk to her or touch her. 

That's what she did today. This girl kept following her, and Elizabeth kept edging away until, not wanting to look like a jerk of a mom since the other girl's mom was right there, I said, "Elizabeth can you give her a hug?" She very nicely complied, then tried to get back to playing - but the other little girl wouldn't leave her alone. Finally, when the other girl tried to play with her hair, Elizabeth had enough and slapped her in the arm. I had to say "no, we don't hit," and apologize to the other mom, but really, I was cheering that Elizabeth had stood up for herself and knocked the other girl away. 

So here's the worry. I don't want to raise Elizabeth to be anti-social, anti-touch - but at the same time, I want to teach her about personal space and respecting her own and others' boundaries - which is obviously hard when parents encourage their kids to keep chasing mine down for that hug. So what's the solution? How do you raise a toddler with limited reasoning ability to be able to reject interaction with others when they want, without just being rude? 

Being a working mom ...

I've recently been thinking about my choice to continue pursuing my career. Several people have asked me if I wouldn't rather stay home, or whether I feel selfish working when I don't have to, or imply that I must live for the summer when I get to keep Elizabeth with me at home. One, when I told her I'd be traveling for work this summer, looked knowingly at another woman and said, "I guess that's the new mother," as if I couldn't be expected to know any better.

In answer to those questions, no. No, I wouldn't rather stay home. No, I don't feel selfish for pursuing a career that I love, while my daughter is having a great time playing under the care of her amazing teachers. No, I don't live for the summer - in fact, I hate to admit it, but as much as I do look forward to taking Elizabeth to the zoo and playing in the pool with her this summer, I also am quite anxious about having to entertain her for twelve hours a day (ten if you don't count her nap time). I may take advantage of her daycare's summer drop-in program that allows me to buy 5 days that I can spread out over the summer and leave her with them every now and then and do something by myself.

I have an amazing husband who not only supports my desire to work, but actively encourages it and makes it easier. He either makes dinner or does the dishes every night, entertains Elizabeth after dinner and before bed in the evenings, doesn't complain when the house isn't perfectly clean all the day (or anywhere close), takes days off when she's sick and I really can't miss work, and NEVER makes me feel guilty for the decision that we made together to put Elizabeth in daycare and allow me work. This week and next, he's actually playing the single dad so that I can pursue my passion, training teachers for NMSI, and helping them to develop strategies to teach students to think, read and write critically and independently. I'm in Tennessee this week, and headed to Colorado next week.

Do I miss Elizabeth? Absolutely. Do I wish that I could have a career and spend at least a little more time with her? Sure. I check in on her several times a day via online closed circuit camera, FaceTime with her at night while I'm out of town (she's really good at responding on FaceTime - she waves and says hi, then smiles and tries to reach me through the phone), and really miss her when I get up in the morning and don't see her. But that's my problem. She won't remember ten years from now that I was out of town a few days when she was one. She gets excited about going to school in the mornings, and is actually less grouchy mid-morning when she's there, surrounded by friends and things to do, than she is at home playing with me.

I have an amazing, well-adjusted daughter who loves to play both with me and her dad and by herself, who learned to sing "Row, Row, Row" months ago, and who can currently insert the "E-I-E-I-O" in the appropriate spots in Old MacDonald (mostly). She walks, and eats well, and sleeps all night, and finger-paints, and colors, and plays well with others (except her cousin, who she likes to push over after stealing his toys) ... the list could go on and on. She's awesome, and I'm a working mom. I think the arrangement is just fine.

Praying for Parents in Oklahoma

As I was putting Elizabeth to bed tonight, I began to say her prayers with her just like we do every night. We started by thanking God for the rain, and that Elizabeth had had a good day today. Then we thanked God for Mom and Dad's good days, and asked God to help Elizabeth sleep well tonight - to keep her teeth from bothering her, and to help her ears be healthy.

And then we added an extra line that doesn't usually go in our bedtime prayer (yes, the ears make it in every night) - we asked God to be with the parents in Moore who had lost their children yesterday - and that's as far as I got. As hard as I tried, I couldn't think of how specifically to pray for them. I don't know what they need right now, other than God's presence. I can't imagine going through what they are going through today. I don't know what I'd do if it were Elizabeth who had been killed in the tornado yesterday, or what I would expect God to do.

So we left it at that - "God, be with the parents in Moore tonight, and ... I don't know what else to say, but just be with them." And I felt tears come into my eyes as I said that, and gave Elizabeth an extra kiss on the forehead before I laid her down in her crib.

How hard can it be to feed a baby?

I never realized how difficult it can be to figure out what to feed a baby every day, especially one who is lactose intolerant and allergic to cinnamon. It was easier when she did purees - her favorite was Moroccan-spiced lentils with roasted eggplant - and I could just food process a big batch, freeze it, and pull out a couple cubes for dinner, along with some yogurt, cereal and fruit. We noticed a couple weeks ago though, that she was refusing to eat most of her meals, and then having a HUGE bottle of formula before bed (she did 14 ounces one night), so we decided to switch her over to finger foods. She immediately got excited about eating again, but her tastes are more discriminating now.

Yesterday she would only eat her lactose-free cheese and soy yogurt. Nothing else. We even bought a box of Cheerios to give her, since she loves eating them at school. She threw them at us, one at a time, cackling maniacally.

The meal planning gets a little crazy sometimes. I have to get the menus from school, then figure out what she can and can't eat (the lactose intolerance makes it tricky) and then decide what to send her to make sure she has at least 2 fruits and 2 vegetables during the day, along with her cheese snack. And that's not even considering dinner. Since I don't get her home until about 5:00 most days, I don't make dinner before it's time for her to eat at 5:30 (hah, I don't really make dinner at all - Ryan's a much better cook than I am). So I have to find something healthy that she's willing to eat, and then remember when we eat dinner to save a few bites of anything baby-friendly that we have.

So, I've decided to start menu planning for her, just like we do for ourselves. Here's the menu for tomorrow:

Breakfast - fresh orange slices, cheerios
Lunch - chicken nuggets, green beans, pineapple, peas & carrots
Snack - oatmeal cookie, cheese
Dinner - soy yogurt, roasted zucchini, pancake

Now if only I could figure out how to get her to actually get the food into her mouth instead of dropping it into the high chair, onto the floor, or into her hair. Oh well - one step at a time.

Sweet smile

Tonight Ryan came to get Elizabeth after her bath, all wrapped up in her towel and sweet-smelling, just like every night. As I handed her to him, my squirming, kicking daughter became very still and just laid back in his arms, looked up at her dad, and smiled.

The stillness only lasted about fifteen seconds, but the love that I was able to see the two of them share will last much, much longer.

Getting tubes

You may or may not know that Elizabeth has basically been sick since I started back to work. She got a cold the weekend before I started (November 9, to be exact) and has not had more than about 10 days of feeling well since. She's had two stomach bugs, a couple sinus infections, croup, bronchiolitis, and 4-5 ear infections. The worst of it has been the ear infections. Every time she gets a cold it turns into an ear infection, which leads to antibiotics, which leads to diarrhea, which leads to a terrible diaper rash - and this all comes with a serious sleeping problem. I say four or five ear infections because we're never quite sure if they go away and she gets new ones, or if it's just the same infection continuing on. With the most recent ear infection, she took a basic antibiotic followed by a stronger antibiotic followed by antibiotic shots followed by another strong antibiotic - and then 5 days later started the strong antibiotic again.

Fortunately, in the midst of this last ear infection cycle, we took her to the ENT and got her scheduled to get tubes. It was honestly one of the easiest parenting decisions we've made. Life was miserable with her being constantly sick, I was almost out of sick days at work (I have one left) and she was using way more than her fair share of antibiotics and contributing the drug-resistant strains of bacteria causing so much concern in the medical world.

So on the Thursday of Spring Break, I took her in for tubes. Ryan was still at his conference in San Antonio, so I got to take her alone and text him every half hour or so with updates. Our day started off at 6 am. Elizabeth had been wheezing for a few weeks, the residual effects of her bronchiolitis, so she was taking an inhaled steroid twice a day, along with Albuterol as needed. They wouldn't do the surgery if she was wheezing that morning, because of concerns about the general anesthesia, so I had to do her breathing treatments before we headed to the hospital. Elizabeth was a little confused about why she was up so early. Here she is on the way to the hospital, still dark outside.

When we got there, she enjoyed watching the fish in the aquarium. I love that almost all pediatric offices have aquariums.

Once we got back to the pre-op area, we had almost an hour to wait, so Elizabeth passed the time by first chewing the cover off one of her books, then wandering around to the other families waiting to be taken back. She especially liked one family with a three-year-old red-headed girl. Elizabeth kept walking me over to them and babbling at them. She ended up walking right up the dad and putting her arms up to be picked up. He held her in his lap for a few minutes and she loved it, babbling at him, his wife, and both the kids with them. Once they left, she took me over to another family with a boy about her age. He had thick curly black hair, her favorite kind to pull, so our visit with them didn't last very long :-/ Here she is with her book, and her hospital bracelet.

Once she got taken back, it was over very quickly. From the time they started, to when they came to get me, only about 7 minutes passed. I got to see her earlier than they'd said I would because when they gave her ibuprofen when they finished, she thought it was food and remembered that she hadn't eaten breakfast yet. She was half-awake and crying when I got to her, and didn't settle down until she was eating.

Her ENT told me that they had found some VERY thick fluid behind her ear drums, more of a paste than a fluid, which was what had been causing the persistent infections. Without tubes, she wouldn't have gotten better - nice to know we made the right call.

We were able to go home about 30 minutes after her surgery. Aside from some marks on her face from the mask they'd used to put her under, she was just fine. Here she is on the way home, just looking a little worn out:

For the rest of the day, you wouldn't even know she'd been through surgery. She played with her toys, napped and ate normally, and at bedtime, went right to sleep.

She'd definitely acquired some bad habits from the months of being sick. She'd been waking up for an hour or two at a time every night, and eating once and sometimes twice in the middle of the night. It took almost two weeks to get her sleeping through the night again, after she started feeling better.

Now though, she's sleeping better than ever - from 7 pm to 7 am - and hasn't been sick in 3 weeks, except for some allergy sniffles. I've stopped worrying every time she sneezes that she's getting a cold that will lead to an ear infection.

It seems like every phase is SO long with babies. When she was sick, it felt like she'd always been sick, even though it was only for about 3 and a half months. And now that she's healthy, I hardly remember the sleepless nights worrying about her. It feels like the sleeping and relaxing at night is the most normal thing in the world. I know it probably won't last, but it sure is nice for now.

Spring Break

Over spring break this year, Ryan and I had a chance to get away for the weekend. My parents came up to watch Elizabeth (thank you!) and we headed to San Antonio. I always thought it would be easy to leave Elizabeth for a few days - I mean, who wouldn't want to reclaim some semblance of their life before having a baby? - but it ended up being pretty tough for me to leave her. I was watching her in my mom's arms, smiling and waving bye to me, and I felt like such a jerk, knowing she wouldn't see me again for two days. But those feelings evaporated quickly. We stopped for breakfast (coffee and pastries) at the Black Rooster Bakery, then got on the road.

It was seriously one of the best weekends away I've ever had. Probably because it had been over a year since we'd gotten away together, and over a year and a half since we'd had a vacation without a baby and without me being pregnant - but we had an amazing time. We started with lunch on the River Walk, live music at an Irish pub, drinks every couple hours all afternoon and evening, visiting the Alamo (the Mexicans were besieging it when we arrived), and dinner at "The Original" Mexican restaurant on the River Walk.

On Sunday, we had a really nice brunch at the Carriage House restaurant at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens (crepes filled with ham, brie, and asparagus and topped with hollondaise sauce), then went to the San Antonio Museum of Art. From there, we saw the Pearl brewery in the distance and decided to see if we could take a tour. When we arrived, they were having a paella cook-off on the grounds, and the woman guarding the entrance let us know that the tickets were $65 - and they were sold out - so we decided to walk around a little instead. As we wandered down an alley between two buildings, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of the festival - so we pulled our sleeves down a little to hide the fact that we didn't have wristbands, and had a good time sitting on a restaurant patio having a beer and watching all the people sampling food. It looked amazing, but we were content with just hanging out and not trying to sneak food on top of sneaking in in the first place.

Later that afternoon, we wandered down to the Mexican Market and bought Elizabeth an adorable white dress, then headed to Zinc Bistro and Wine Bar for a pre-dinner drink. We had a great time sitting at the bar, trying a couple new wines - and the bartender offered us a taste of a silver tequila infused with serrano chilis and pineapple, that was really interesting. From there, we did dinner at Esquire Tavern, and had a couple craft beers, and I had an amazing burger - organic beef topped with white cheddar, ancho chili refried beans, jalapeno aioli, and roasted jalapenos.

Even though it was fun, I was definitely ready to get home on Monday morning. While I was waiting for my flight at the airport, I sat at a restaurant bar to eat some breakfast and passed 30 minutes showing pictures of Elizabeth to the man sitting next to me. He showed me pictures of his 6 year old who'd recently broken her arm during a gymnastics class. It's amazing how just the shared experience of having kids gives you an instant connection to people.

So I headed home, and Ryan stayed in San Antonio for a conference for a few more days. Elizabeth had enjoyed the weekend with her grandparents, but was very happy to see me. She dove into my arms as soon as she saw me and let me hold her for about 10 minutes instead of her customary 30 seconds then demanding to get down and play. It's good to be appreciated.And it went so well, we're already planning our next vacation  :)

At the Park

I took Elizabeth to the park this afternoon. She was a little irritable from only taking a 20 minute nap, so I decided she needed an outing. This is what she looked like before the park:

On the walk to the park, I sang her favorite song - I don't even know what it's called, but it's the one from Fantasia that accompanies the broomsticks marching. There's one part of it that I sing in an obnoxiously loud, throaty voice, and it makes her laugh every time. It can even make her stop crying when we're driving in the car. So I tried that. No laugh, but at least it got a smile. And it got me a sore throat. There were several other kids at the park when we got there, and she had a great time walking around holding onto my hands, following them wherever they went. Here are some pictures of her playing:

I couldn't get any of her smiling while she played, but trust me - she had a great time. I spent at least half my time brushing mulch and leaves out of her hands so that she couldn't eat them. She did get one handful in her mouth though, and that led to quite a coughing fit and me trying to finger-sweep the debris out of her mouth. It wasn't pretty.

While she was walking me around the playground, I heard a couple little girls talking to each other - they introduced themselves, asked how old the other was, and then started playing together. It was so sweet and innocent. I'm looking forward to Elizabeth being able to make friends on the playground. She's already standing, cruising, waving, and babbling at people - it won't be too long now :)

We finally had to head home after 45 minutes for dinner. Elizabeth was all smiles when I got her into the stroller, and even waved bye to her new friends. I really enjoyed being a mom today.

Why am I doing this?

I've thought about creating a blog for a while. Actually, Ryan suggested it about a year ago and I dismissed it. But more and more, I've found myself composing really long FaceBook posts (and then not posting them, because who really wants to read that much on FaceBook) and I figured I might as well go for it.

I'm not sure yet how much I'll be sharing with the world - will this be about just our family, about my work, about all the conflicting emotions that go along with being a working mom - I don't know yet. But I thought I'd give it a shot. So here's my blog, and I thought the title summed up my life right now: Crazy, Busy, Awesome Life.