Time rolls on

I feel like it has been forever since I have posted anything, although it has actually been less than a week. But then, the last two weeks have seemed like they happened in another continuum where what would be an hour here takes three hours to pass. 24 hours in a hospital seems to take much, much longer than 24 hours on vacation somewhere, I can tell you that much! With all the worrying about Pattie and trying to make some sense of what happened to our neighbor's daughter, my blogging ideas have been pretty dark of late and that isn't really how I roll, so I have not posted any of that stuff. The cobwebs are clearing out of my addled brain and while I don't think today's post will be spectacular, it will serve as an exercise against atrophy at the very least.
Dare I say that 2010 is finally looking up? Pattie is seemingly back to full strength, the boys are back to school, Grannie is back at her house and today marks the first morning I have been in charge of getting the boys off on the bus since before Christmas Break. And we made it too! I even fixed their lunches, so there!
After such a rocky start I had my doubts at how long it would take this year to turn around.
Pattie has started to do some very cute things like come up and say, "Mommy, know what?" or "Pattie tell sump" which of course translates to "I need to tell you something." We are working very hard at getting her to eat more iron-rich foods, even to the point of buying the hotdogs with the highest iron content in them and cooking in a cast iron skillet to gain a milligram or two. She is drinking the soy milk at about a 2/3 soy : 1/3 milk ratio now and doesn't seem bothered by it. She did not like the vanilla or the chocolate so we have started buying the plain and it is working out much better. I am EXTREMELY hopeful that when she gets more bloodwork done in 2 weeks she has built up enough that we can revert to plain milk in lesser quantities but I have a bad feeling that is not what they will want us to do. So we will continue to shell out $3 per half gallon of soy and hope for the best.
The hospital bill will undoubtedly set us back on our financial goals for the year, but I am sure we can recover. It's just a good thing that what we like to do as a family is often free or cheap.
The prospects look good for us to FINALLY make our twice-delayed Christmas trip to Houston this weekend. We were planning a trip this weekend anyway as it will be the birthday party for my niece and nephew. The downside is that instead of being able to stay with them the whole time we are going to have to split it up between all the sides of the family triangle. Don't get me wrong though, we are so looking forward to seeing everyone at last. I just hate that Zak and Leilani won't get all the time with their cousins that they were looking forward to. There will be other weekends though and since we are all big campers, I am sure their family will be joining us at the land very soon.
Now it's on to the weekly chores of life in Chaosville...laundry to be done and cleaning and the baking for the Houston family we will see this weekend. Have a great week!