"Tracheomalacia"

Definition: Tracheomalacia in a newborn occurs when the cartilage in the windpipe (trachea) has not developed properly. Instead of being rigid, the walls of the trachea are floppy. Because the windpipe is the main airway, breathing difficulties begin soon after birth.  Congenital tracheomalacia is very uncommon.  

Symptoms    

• Breathing noises that may change with position and improve during sleep
• Breathing problems that get worse with coughing, crying, feeding, or upper respiratory infections
• High-pitched breathing
• Rattling, noisy breaths

Outlook (Prognosis)    

Congenital tracheomalacia generally goes away on its own by the age of 18-24 months. As the tracheal cartilage gets stronger and the trachea grows, the noisy respirations and breathing difficulties gradually stop.

So...Grace has this.  Luckily, her doctor didn't seem too worried about it at all.  We are scheduled to see an otolaryngologist (that means an ear, nose, and throat doctor--hooray for a new vocabulary word, though I wish I could have learned about it under different circumstances) on December 2nd to make sure that there aren't any complications.  I wasn't worried about it at all until I stupidly decided to look up "tracheomalacia" on the internet and found all of the possible serious complications.  Silly me.  Now I'm a little worried.  

But...I've decided to continue having Grace's care in the hands of professionals instead of turning it over to the internet.  I read that in the Reader's Digest once--doctors hate it when you trust the internet more than them. :0)  So...we're hoping for the best.  I think everything should be just fine.  It's just kind of scary to have a doctor tell you that your cute little baby has any kind of problem that is hard to pronounce and has more than ten letters.  Scary mommy moment number one.  Our doctor said that her having this explains why she has not been gaining a whole lot of weight.  Everyone who sees her says she is so small and many have asked if she was a preemie with a low birthweight.  And, uh, we all know she was exactly the opposite.  Yeah.  

Grace is still just as cute as ever and is laughing a lot these days.  She also makes these really sweet little gurgling noises when she's happy.  We love those.  And...she rolled over for the third official time tonight. Hooray!  She's great and we love her.  More to come... 

      

It's a good thing I've never been interested in drugs...

I am a candy addict.  There's no use in tip-toeing around the cold hard truth.  :0)  I have been this way as long as I can remember.  I would like to present the following facts as proof of this assertion.  When I was a kid, my Halloween candy never lasted more than 2 days, tops.  I was always so envious of friends of mine that made it to Easter still having Halloween candy to munch on.  How they did it was beyond me.  I couldn't resist the stuff!  I couldn't understand (and still can't, really) how they could know that a delicious package of Starbursts was sitting next to some wonderfully colorful and tasty Skittles in their drawer and not pounce on the both of them.  A mystery!

And then, there were the friends of mine whose parents actually kept candy in plain sight in their house! (instead of in various hiding places throughout the house--all of which I was very good at finding)  These friends could walk past the jar of candy canes or bowl of Tootsie Rolls and do nothing!  They didn't take one or two and then stash three into their pockets for later!  Once again, pure mystery to me.  I've theorized that because I grew up in a candy-deprived household (meaning there wasn't constant easy access), it has made me all the more obsessed with it.  So, had there been candy strewn all around my house, maybe I would be a very different woman today.  Or...I would have just been a very fat, cavity prone child.  :0)   

Also, I remember my parents trying to teach us how to save our chore money.  We were instructed to not spend our money until we had at least five dollars.  I guess the idea was that the waiting would make us spend our money all the wiser.  Oh, you can just bet that as soon as I had five dollars, I was riding my bike to the local candy store (King's, at the time) and buying five bucks worth of Necco's, pink mints, Sugar Daddies, and Sweetarts.

And don't even get me started on the joys of holiday-specific candy!  Those are my hardest times!  Easter jelly beans, candy canes, conversation hearts, candy corn....ah!  I'm in heaven.

To this day, I have a hard time going into the grocery store and not exiting with a package of Starbursts, Mentos, or caramels.  I remember as a kid thinking (honestly, I really did think this) how wonderful it would be to be an adult and be able to have an unlimited supply of money to buy as much candy as I wanted.  That seemed to me to be the most appealing part of adulthood.  Forget independence, car driving, marriage, child raising....It was all second to absolute candy buying power!

Luckily for me, Spencer is not a crazed candy addict (though he too had a sugar deprived childhood--I guess that blows my theory).  This helps me to find some sort of balance in my crazy candy world.  However, much to my enjoyment, I have recently found something that Spencer "binge" eats.  Swiss Rolls!!  Never having been a big pastry eater myself, I am happy to let Spencer eat the majority of the box whenever one ends up in our home.  I grin as I watch him down 2 or 3 packages in 15 minutes or so.  I guess misery (or candy bingers...) love company.  I'm afraid my sweets obsession has begun to rub off on him after 2 years of marriage...he's been coming home with Swiss Rolls much more often than before.  :0)

  At any rate, I think I have a propensity to addiction.  Hence the title.  There have been many times in my life when I have decided to give up candy for a month or two.  And, I am proud to admit that I have been successful.  But...as soon as I'm done with my candy fast, I jump right back into eating as much of it as possible.  I sincerely believe that I took up marathon running simply for the benefit of being able to eat as much candy as I wanted without seeing the effects of it in my hips.  :0)  To bad my metabolism has decided to change...

Just recently I have begun a new candy fast.  Three nights ago I told Spencer that I wanted to avoid eating candy of any kind until Thanksgiving.  We even shook hands on it.  And then he sneakily tried to include ice cream, popsicles and any other kind of sweets in the deal.  Ha!  Yeah right!  There's no need to get ahead of myself here.  :0)  

I just wanted to report that since that day, I have been stone-cold candy sober.  Thank you.     

Happy Halloween!

We dressed Grace up as a bunny rabbit for Halloween.  She wore the costume three different times: at Spencer's work Halloween party, at a Halloween party thrown by a sister from my mission, and almost to the friends' home where we spent Halloween evening (we took it off before we got there so she would stop crying).  She hated it every time.  It was as if she was saying "bah humbug" to all fun Halloween activities.  Little grump.  Someday she'll dress up and like it!  Following is a rare picture of her wearing the costume and not crying.  I'm pretty sure this was accidental and that she would be angry if she knew we caught her looking content while in the bunny costume.

She was, however, okay with wearing a "trick or treat" onesie during the day.  Victory!

  Happy Halloween!

Why can't trees learn to clean up after themselves?

Last weekend I spent a good 2 hours raking the yard.  And yet...

It still ended up looking like this by the next Saturday.  Argh.  I refer you now to the title of my entry.  So, I raked again.

And then we decided to have some fun.

This was working quite well until Grace decided to start grabbing the leaves and trying to eat them.  That ended her individual photo shoot--she then had to model with props.  

 

To the one

One who loves and gives so freely,  kind and true with warmth inside.

Beaming brightly through cold mis-caring, hoping, serving, till they collide.

Up and down the forces waver, standing tall the one will gaze.  

Often never, but receiving little more than others praise.

Without forgetting, always longing, faithful them the one desires 

Knowing what, and feel you ever, your faithful one sees whats inside.

To the one, so clear and focused, living the unwavering hand

full of love, from the sire, thy day is yet, and yets so grand.

A disconnected post...

Okay, so this post actually is the "To be continued" part of the "Home sweet home" post which you find further down the blog.  Even though I wrote that post today (Saturday the 25th), because I started it earlier in the week and saved it as a draft, it is posted as if I had written it last Tuesday.  Whatever.  So, go read that post first.  It's new and this one will only make sense if you do so.  Plus, it took me a really long time to do.  :0)

So, where were we?  Ah yes, Spencer and I were living in a Taco Bell.  So, after we discovered the horrible mistake we had made, we ran to WalMart and bought a much more pleasing paint color for the living room.  It is now a shade of light green which we find very harmonious with the dining room color.  At least we hope it is.  We like it.  However, my confidence in my ability to choose paint color is not that high anymore.  

Today I spent my day working on our yard.  I love working on the yard.  I had no idea it would be so fun.  When I was younger, working in the yard was a chore.  Now that this yard is mine and it's up to me (and Spencer...) to make it look good, I am surprisingly motivated.  I happily mow the lawn, rake,  and weed the flowers.  Ownership has really changed me, I think.  So, here are some snippets of our yard.  Here is our very yellow backyard walnut tree.

    Hooray for fall!  This next picture is of my chrysanthemums.  Wow, I hope that's spelled right.  Where's Anne of Green Gables when I need it?  They are the pride and joy of our yard, I think.  When we moved in, they were mostly dead.  However, due to my green thumb and consistent watering habits, they are now the lovely specimens you see today.  Okay, okay, really it was just the watering.   

Our house came with a lovely perk that we had not planned on---a hot tub in the backyard!  That hot tub came with an additional perk we had not expected---inclusion in our home warranty plan.  The sellers paid extra money towards the plan so that the hot tub would be a part of it.  We love them.  Having the hot tub under the home warranty plan means that whatever breaks on it (no matter how serious) will be fixed after we pay a mere $55 service fee.  Happily for us, the hot tub was leaking lots of water when we moved in.  So, the service guy came by and declared it quite broken.   Broken enough to need all of its "guts" replaced.  Meaning, we essentially got a brand new hot tub for $55.  Hooray!  We are now hoping that all of the appliances in our house break down beyond repair.  If anyone wants to help us with that, they would be quite welcome.  

   

Giving the base a new paint job is one of our many forthcoming projects.  Hooray for projects!  I suppose they keep life interesting.  

Well, today was Spencer's last outdoor soccer game of the season (don't worry, I'm sure indoor starts up next week...the never ending soccer game...), so in honor of that, I will post a picture.  Enjoy!

Anna Now Wastes All of Her Time Blogging

That's all I have to say.