Eleven Months Old!

Yesterday Billa hit the 11 month mark. My, how time flies! She's learning new things every day and her personality is really starting to develop. She doesn't have any words in her vocaublary but she definitely has a lot to say. She babbles constantly and we love making phrases out of what she says. I asked her the other night if she wanted milk, and her response sounded a lot like "Heck yeah!" We certainly got a kick out of that!

She's also discovering things around the house which means it's time to step up to the next level of baby proofing. She opens cabinets and drawers and love to open and close doors. She wants to play with everything that isn't a toy and she is fascinated by things that make noise. She loves to dance and squeal and chase the cat. She loves snuggling with mommy and daddy in the early morning for a few minutes before we all get up and get ready. And she definitely loves playing with her friends! She's starting to pitch a fit when I pick her up from daycare and all of her friends are still there.

With her birthday being a month away, birthday season has begun! We have a party to attend this weekend for her friend Jack from daycare, next weekend is Madeleine's party, and the weekend after that is a party for another friend from daycare! Then a free weekend and then it's HER birthday! Phew!

Anyhoo, I'll post some more pictures and videos soon. Things have been chaotic since Michael got his surgery done two weeks ago, but his hand is healing much faster than they anticipated. I am very excited by this because it means things will be back to (relatively) normal sooner than we thought.

Until then,
K & Co.

What a week!

It's been a crazy past week! Michael ended up having surgery after all to repair the nerve damage in his thumb. The doc later told me that about 2 cm of his nerves were missing, so he used a vein to repair them. I had no idea you could do that. You learn something new every day! They needed to do a skin graft after all and they took the skin from the palm of Michael's hand to do it. I spent all day Thursday reading every single magazine the waiting room had (quite a selection I might add) and thinking about all of the things I should/could be doing and wishing I had a laptop computer with internet access. I could have at least kept my nerves down by working! Note to self: I should ask for a laptop for my birthday... Oh well, c'est la vie. Michael's hand is in a lot of pain still and Michael sees the surgeon today to remove the dressings and find out what the next step is.

On Saturday, Gigi Judy took Sybilla for a day of fun and shopping so that Mommy and Daddy could get some things done around the house and have some alone time. We figured she'd get tired of her by dinner time, but instead Judy told us to go see a movie and she'd bring her home when we got back! Yes! Score one for Mommy and Daddy :o) We chose to see Twilight, which turned out to be a very good adaptation of the novel, but I felt that some of the technical and directorial choices were poor. Michael disagrees with me on some of them, but personally, I think the reason the director isn't coming back to the second film is mostly due to her ridiculous use of face close-ups. There's only so much detail of one's face that you can handle in a two hour stretch and this movie exceeded my limit. I guess I also don't relate to teens anymore as some of the acting was eye-rolling for me. But despite what I think on the technical stuff, I enjoyed it overall and it was a great date!

The birthday countdown has reached T minus 40 days (or roughly 6 weeks) until Billa is One! I made her birthday invites and they are super cute. You'll just have to wait to see them, ha ha ha! I am so excited about planning her party. It's silly I know, but I LOVE planning themed parties and putting everything together. Now if only I could make a living doing it!


Billa doesn't bother to crawl much anymore and she started figuring out how to stomp this weekend. Mommy and Me tap dance classes, here we come! She's also doing this thing where she moves her jaw in time to music, like she's singing. Her vocabulary is expanding and I like to make sentences out of what she's saying. Sometimes I hear stuff like "I go!" or "Ohboyohboyohboyohboy" and other times I hear "I said dojo, Daddy!" Last night she said something that sounded like "Now I get what I want" when I finally let her have some more food. (She has a really bad tendency towards chipmunk cheeks... she stuffs everything you give her into her mouth and then proceeds to try and swallow it all. Needless to say, the choking and gagging noises freak us out horribly!) I don't know how much she really understands of what we say to her, but she understands 'no' for sure. She loves to pull the DVD's or books off the shelves and when we tell her 'no' she runs away from us screaming with laughter and then runs back to cause more havoc, a look of malicious glee on her face. Little stinker!

Well, that's our week wrapped up! Stay tuned for more!
Love,
K & Co.

The Best Gifts...

I was going to post pictures from Billa's first trip to the Zilker Tree, but like a dumbass I went and left the camera at my parent's house when we did laundry this weekend. So instead you get to imagine her laying on her back in my arms and giggling like a maniac while Mommy spins her around under the lit up tree. The best part was when I would stop and she would throw herself backwards to do it again. Classic! We had so much fun going to the Trail of Lights and the Tree with the Marino's and hopefully all of the lights will be working next year when we go back. The tunnel at the end of the Trail was burned out (it had been foggy and rainy that day and the day before) so we got partially robbed of the whole experience. All in all, it was a blast and Little S was a trooper that evening, staying awake until 10 pm! As soon as I get the camera back I'll put the pix up in Picasa so that you don't have to imagine it anymore.

On Sunday we had the famed Eagle Lake Christmas with Michael's grandparents, the home of the five hour gift exchange. Ok, I exaggerate a little, but it is long. Gramma Bobbe loves to do round robin with opening the gifts, but it can be a bit much with 18 to 20 of us opening presents (no exaggeration there). The younger kids get impatient, so they open their gifts all at once first and then go play with their new toys, which helps quite a bit. Gramma asked if Billa could open her gifts round robin since she's still so little, but everyone kept forgetting her so I just opened them all and acted excited when it was close to Billa's turn. Billa was more interested in eating the wrappings and climbing all over the boxes and bags everywhere. Little stinker! I made a peppermint cheesecake for dessert and we had lots of good wine and spent many long wonderful hours catching up with all of the relations. Billa finally got to meet her "Uncle" Stephen Travis and "Aunt" Casey and she was walking around everywhere she went!

Our Christmas Eve will be spent with Judy and Carl (Michael's mom and her SO) and Christmas Day will be at our house for the first time ever. For the past 7 years of our relationship, Michael and I have had to travel to everyone else's place on Christmas day. Last year we had five Christmases and that was just too much, so we decided to stay home this year. Besides, Michael only has Christmas Day off and we didn't want to spend it driving from house to house. So we are very excited to have Michael's dad and future stepmom, his sister Michelle, my parents and my brothers coming over for our Mexican Christmas. I wanted to do something different foodwise this year since I got tired of turkey and I don't eat ham, so I figured why the hell not do enchiladas, tamales, rice and beans? I mean, come on, who doesn't love Tex Mex? Heck yes! And to top things off I found some really awesome recipes to try at my fave food blog, The Homesick Texan. If you haven't found it yet, you need to visit. The girl's a Texas expat in NYC and she manages to duplicate all of her down home faves up there. If you remember my kolache posting, I got one of the recipes from her.

The one thing I'm not looking forward to about having Christmas at my house is that my Christmas Eve will be spent doing mostly cleaning and cooking and last minute gift putting together. And of course day care is closed. Argh. I told myself three months ago I wasn't going to do everything last minute again but we decided to move and everything kinda went to hell in a handbasket over the last few weeks. And of course, with Michael's injured thumb, I've been having to do everything around the house which leaves me little time for anything else. His thumb by the way, seems to be doing better and the swelling has gone down considerably. GROSS OUT ALERT; SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO TOSS YOUR COOKIES. The flap of skin that the ER staff sewed back appears to be gaining some color back although we won't know for sure until next Tuesday whether or not it's dead and will require some creative grafting. [Sigh/shiver]

I tried to go shopping today for a couple of last minute gift making items and I gave up after hitting tons of traffic and getting ridiculously angry over it. I've found myself really angry and tense lately and I know it's due to the stress that we're under financially and from the moving and Michael's accident among other things. I've found myself frustrated that our expectations for Billa's first Christmas haven't turned out how we had hoped. I've never much cared about receiving gifts but it's difficult when you feel like you can't give any gifts and it makes me feel bad when I receive something and am not able to reciprocate with everyone.

I've always believed that God has a reason for everything and I think that the message this Christmas is that we as a society have gotten too caught up in the everyday materialism that we live in. A gal at work sent an email out with this quote in it: "The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other." I couldn't agree more. While I'm not able to give or receive the gifts I wanted to this year, I am thankful that I am here in this place, at this time, to share the season with everyone around me. I'm thankful for my friends and my family and for the things that I've taken for granted, like a roof over my head and clothes on my back, food in my belly, a nice warm bed, and a job. One of our favorite movie quotes definitely takes on new meaning in this time of doom and gloom: "It could be worse; it could be raining!" (A tasty treat to the first person that gets the movie right!)

So to all of you this year, the gift we give is our love and well-wishes. Despite all the bad things in the press and that may be happening to you, we hope this season finds you warm and well-fed inside and out and that you make many happy memories with your family.

Happy Christmas everyone!
Love,
Kelly, Michael, Sybilla, and Gumerry the Gray Destroyer of All Things Paper, Q-Tip, Hairtie, and The Occasional Christmas Tree Skirt

PS: I'm sorry if you receive your Christmas card late. They're stamped and will be dropped in the mail tomorrow.

The Hand Chronicles

Well, this has certainly been one of the worst weeks ever! On Tuesday, Michael called me before I left work to let me know that he was at the emergency room after having sliced his finger on a table saw at work. I asked him how bad it was and he didn't think it was that bad. Oh, but it was. And while some of you may think a cut thumb is nothing to freak out over, you try taping your thumb down and going a day without it. There's a reason Mother Nature gave us opposable thumbs; it ain't brains that put us at the top of the food chain, folks.

WARNING: DETAILS IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH MAY INDUCE SQUICKY FEELINGS OF DISGUST AND NAUSEA. IF YOU DON'T HAVE A STRONG STOMACH BUT LIKE TO PUNISH YOURSELF, CARRY ON, BY ALL MEANS, DON'T LET ME STOP YOU. BUT DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU. OTHERWISE, SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH TO CONTINUE!

After the people at the ER got him cleaned and looked at the wound, they informed Michael that the tendon was sliced pretty bad and referred him to surgeon. He didn't slice the tendon from the side, but rather longitudinally, meaning it's still attached, but we don't know how much. A saw blade is not like a knife blade and the cut itself is rather shredded. Some of the skin had been hanging a bit and had lost some of it's blood supply and the ER staff decided to stitch it up too. Since then though, it has not regained any color, which means it may be dead. Fun.

So after having his hand cleaned and sewed up, Michael called his dad to tell him about the accident. They got to talking and decided that it was strange Michael was referred to a plastic surgeon and not a hand specialist. Papa Guerra called up a retired hand surgeon friend of his (I'm still amazed at all the people my father-in-law knows even after all these years!) who recommended a doctor to us that had studied under the same doctor he did.

Off we went to visit with this doctor who literally poked Michael's thumb and then declared that we were going to have to operate. We were floored. Both of us have never had surgery and this doctor, whom Michael affectionately refers to as Dr. Ass Clown now (his real name is Dr. Ira Lown), did nothing to ease our fears about the procedure or what would happen. He never even looked us in the eye and we had to ask questions that we felt we shouldn't have had to, like 1) who will perform the surgery, 2) where will it be 3) what's involved 4) will Michael be put under, etc. His attitude was cold and uncaring, his bedside manner was lacking and we felt that we were nothing but an inconvenience to this man.

We both left in tears, feeling anxious and upset. Michael called his dad to let him know what happened who then called his hand surgeon friend, who was like, "Ah, HELL no!" (Ok, maybe he didn't say that exactly, but he felt terrible about having recommended such a jerk to us) He asked to meet with us the next morning to discuss the situation and help us find another surgeon. We met with the fella the next morning in a coffee shop and immediately he did all of the things that Dr. Ass Clown should have done but didn't. He conducted some flexion tests and a pin test to see what Michael could still feel in his thumb and then explained to us the best and worst case scenarios. He also explained how the muscles and tendons in the arm and hand and thumb work together and what it looked like underneath the skin. And to top it off, he used Papa Guerra's computer to find another surgeon and then called the office to schedule an appointment as a professional courtesy!!!

Needless to say, this was much needed. We met with the other doctor, Dr. Sanjay Sharma, this morning and he was WAAAAAY better than Dr. Lown. He explained things to us, and after conducting several tests and looking at the injury in depth, decided that he wanted to see how much the wound would heal on it's own before rushing into surgery. THIS was very welcome news to us as we were looking at a 6-8 week recovery time for Michael, which is not a good thing right now. As it is, the longer Michael is out of work, the longer he goes without a paycheck which is not good for us, especially since we just moved and Christmas is next week.

Dr. Sharma also sent us to a hand therapist who made a special brace for Michael to wear to prevent him from moving his thumb back accidentally and to help keep the thumb slightly flexed. We also have stronger antibiotics since it started to look like the wound was getting infected.

Things are looking up, but it's still iffy since we have to wait until the 30th for the final verdict on surgery. In addition, with Christmas coming, things are a little tight, but we're going to see what we can do about working some Christmas miracles in the meantime. We are incredibly thankful towards "Uncle" Jim Pedicano, who has been instrumental in making this hand we've been dealt (ha ha!) much more bearable and more informed. On a side note, I am now three degrees of separation from the famous Oscar Brockett, writer of the Theatre History textbooks that every college theatre program uses, as Uncle Jim is married to the man's daughter. That bit of info is going in the vault :o)

We'll keep you all posted on the outcome as we hear it and thank you in advance for any and all prayers, well wishes, and happy thoughts sent our way!

Peace,
Kelly and Company