Gavin in the car

I know I talked about how Gavin did in the car with our road trip but I was finally able to get the little video thing off my camera to show you! :) This was taken on the way back home (a taste of what we listened to for many, many hours):

Healthy yet not

So Gavin and I had checkups last week. He's fabulous; a healthy 23 lbs of lean, mean eating machine. ;) I'm overall healthy but had some bloodwork done to checkup on my thyroid and some other things showed up (thyroid is normal, btw however I finally understand that I'll most likely be on thyroid meds the rest of my life).

Bloodwork showed 2 additional things that just make me want to sigh, beat my head against a wall and/or cry. I'm very Vitamin D deficient (in the range they give, which is pretty expansive, I'm about as low as a person can be without setting off alarm bells) AND my cholesteral is borderline high. In a few minutes I will be calling the doctor's office to tell them where to fax the prescriptions so I can go take more pills in order to be considered normal.

I think that's really what gets me in all this. Not that I went to a doctor regularly or anything until the post college years but I had checkups and got the vaccines and was always considered healthy and normal. That's not the case anymore and I'm really struggling with that. My tendency is to obsess and stew about it and try and figure out what I've done "wrong" or what has so drastically changed about me that would cause all this (um, let's think about that one although I don't think having a baby can be the blame for everything).

Something that occurred to me too in all this is that I'm on the down-slope of my 20's. Not that 30 is right around the corner or anything (so any 30+-ers out there don't get all sassy with me!). ;) But when I think about family medical history and combine that with the fact that I WILL be 30 in 3 years then some of this is a little easier to accept. I'm getting older. I have gray hair (noticeable too as people in my life have been pointing out to me in the last month: "hey! you have gray hair!"). My lifestyle is not what is was 5, 10 years ago. Things are different. Of course my body and my health are going to be affected in all that. It's still a sort of bitter pill to swallow though that I now have to take pills to be truly healthy and happy. :(

I'm having one of these kinds of days

Make it stop

Is there a full moon and no one told me?

We run a sort of high school summer camps for potential geeks every year. It's a one-week thing and the kids learn about all different kinds of engineering. They also get a true college experience because they stay in our un-air conditioned dorms and eat dorm food.

So, this is the last week of this camp (yaaay!) and as I walk through the Admissions office the assistant waves me over to show me a package that had just arrived. It's for one of the high school students attending the camp. Apparently this poor child did not pack a complete change of clothes for every day he'd be gone so Mommy overnighted him some *ahem* things he would of course need (the assistant knew the contents without opening it because the mom called on Monday).

I'm not quite sure how to respond to this one.... Laugh? Cry? Not so sure...

OMG

Do people not listen at all to opening greetings???

"Thank you for calling [name of the university]. How may I help you?"

I'm looking for Dr. [so and so]. He's a pediatrician."

Ummmmmmmmmm...we are so very much a geek school and the only medical personnel we have on staff is a part-time nurse practitioner.

Either people really are this bad or it's a giant conspiracy and everyone's out to drive me insane. Yeah..that must be it, a conspiracy.

More phone craziness

I have additions to the crazy things I hear when I'm on the switchboard:

1) Apparently "constructural" is a word. Who knew? We must be offering a new degree program that combines all the best on construction and architectural engineering.

2) "I need to speak with the computer technologists." Translation: please transfer me to your IT department.

JUST SPEAK ENGLISH!!!

Vacation Results

I am so blessed.... my kid can travel like a champ. :)

We left for Mr. S' family reunion on the 4th of July with a plan really of just being able to drive as far as Gavin would possibly allow us. From our house to the reunion resort, total estimated drive time was about 16 hours. Well, Gavin was doing so well in the car that we decided after dinner that we'd meet up with Mr. S' parents at the motel they were staying at for the night, which was only about 40 minutes from the resort (we couldn't check into the resort until after 4:00 p.m. on July 5th). So, he woke up periodically and fussed some about still being in his car seat but ultimately Gavin was good enough that we could almost do a straight shot of driving. There were a few bumps with getting him to nap the next day but once we were checked into the resort and ready to go, there were no problems at all with him. :) YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

The reunion was really nice. I LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE being so close to the mountains. We stayed from Saturday through to the following Thursday. We had planned to do a little more traveling in the area while we were there but most of those plans unfortunately fell through. We spent most days either hanging out at the resort with family, eating or visiting local wineries. Actually, we usually combined those three. ;)

Here are a few pics from last week:

"Let's go!"
(Mr. S thought it'd be funny to give Gavin a taste of the driver's seat...he loved it!)

The family
(this is most of his side...there were a few members who unfortunately couldn't make it)

The Manor House
(built in 1792, we stayed here plus had a couple other cabins reserved for families)

Lake View
(view of lake from the balcony outside our room)

Resort View

(also from our balcony, you can see the main resort building... remind you of Dirty Dancing?)

No Fair!

Last year I planted 2 raspberry plants. Even though I hadn't anticipated getting any fruit last year, I did. So this year I knew I was going to get a bunch more. I've been watching my lovely plants grow and thrive. I've pruned back the insolent extensions that keep popping up, wanting to suck nutrition away from the 2 I want to focus on.

The berries developed early on, taunting me in their unripe state. Now, as we prepare to leave for a week I've noticed the green turning to pink/red. My berries will be pick-able next week. I won't be here to revel in the glory of it.

So not fair.