Hello from an old friend (Oh, how I've missed you!)

My name is Katie. Welcome to our blog. My husband Mike and I have been married for ten spectacular years, and have three beautiful children: Annalise, 5 ½ years, Bennett, 3 ½ years, and Colin, 12 months, and a Brittany spaniel/? mix named Shug. This was a tumultuous summer for our family. This post in no means will be all inclusive, but may serve to highlight the happenings of our life over the past three months.

We sold our home in Minneapolis, and moved to Eden Prairie. We love suburban life! Our neighbors have been so welcoming, and several teens in the neighborhood have offered (certified) babysitting services. We are absolutely loving the space in our new home. All the kids have their own bedroom, and our master suite is gargantuan. The basement is unfinished, and is currently being used as a racetrack for bikes. Shug and the kids love the fenced backyard, and we all love being able to park both vehicles in an attached garage! One of the 1985 building-era decisions we are not fond of is having no overhead lighting in the rooms! Arghgh! We are in need of lamps, and storage/shelving. Oh, how I miss our lovely cherry built-ins! We have started to prioritize our list of remodeling projects, but have not arrived at a conclusion regarding which task will be our first.

As an early Christmas present, Mike and I are ordering a brand-new king size bed for our new digs. It was time for our ten year old mattress to go, and since we’ve got the space we decided to upgrade from our queen. Our queen size bed is going in A’s room, so when we have guests, they can stay in her room, and she can sleep in the bunk beds in B’s room. The kids are doing really well in their own rooms. Annalise and Bennett were sharing a room in Minneapolis, and had grown accustomed to having a nighttime companion. They made the transition without a hitch, and it’s been smooth sailing. Colin has even been doing alright during the night. He goes to sleep between 6:30 and 7:00, and cries out to nurse one time between 3:30 and 5:30. Then if we’re lucky, he goes back to sleep until 8 or so. Colin seems to be on the verge of losing his morning nap, and no longer naps in the car, as he is out of the infant carrier. Bennett and Annalise continue to sleep 7-7, with Bennett having a good afternoon nap on most days.

Annalise has been having a fairly uneventful Kindergarten year. She is such a hard worker, and Nadine tells me that she has multiple projects going at once (just like her mother), and needs to be urged to finish up a project before moving on to new work. She brings home some wonderful artworks that are also diagrams of the anatomy of a fish, or a flower (stamen, style, calyx, etc.). It is so much fun to walk by her bedroom and hear her reading books to B. Bennett is quite the leader in his casa, and is enjoying having a whole new room of friends to entertain. A and B just started a swim camp at Foss, and are in the same class (and are the only ones in class), so they're really having fun, and progressing in their skills quickly. It's great to see Annalise more comfortable putting her face in the water. Besides swimming lessons, the Big Two have been busy going to classmates' birthday parties. We're thinking of having them start Sunday school at our new church too.

Colin is crawling, and EATing, and whining, and rushing to climb the steps if the gate is not pulled across, and waving, and loving to be held always. We had a very low-key first birthday party for Colin on November 11, and since we were recovering from a week of fever/cold symptoms/possible H1N1 infection (in Annalise and Colin), we didn't want to get a group of cousins together to swap germs. He gave us quite a scare last month, and I write about it now, more as a way to reference when it happened as my memory of it will fade with time. Mike's memory of it may not fade as quickly. I was at work (I'm getting to that next!) when I received a frantic call from Mike, at about 10:30. He was with Colin, and needed to know which hospital to direct the ambulance to, as Colin had just had a seizure (not febrile). Mike was at my parents' house loading some things in the truck, and Colin was in his carseat in the foyer, displeased at being put in the carseat instead of being held by daddy. Mike was just letting him cry as he finished up packing his load, when suddenly Colin was arched in his carrier with his eyes rolled back in his head, spitting, and holding his arms locked at a ninety degree angle. I met my dad at the Little Flowers, explained briefly what was happening, and he took the kids from school for the rest of the day. I then met Mike and Colin at Childrens', where Colin was acting totally normal, and was in fact quite charming and uncharacteristically flirty with the ER doc. He had some blood work and a head CT. We were discharged with a prescription for rectal valium should he seize again, and could not be stopped after five minutes. The likely diagnosis was seizure versus breath-holding event. The next week held a plenitude of appointments for Colin and Mike. He had to see the pediatrician for a pre-op physical, then had an MRI with sedation, followed by an EEG and a consult with a pediatric neurologist. All testing came back negative, and the neurologist told us to live our lives without any restrictions on Colin- it may or may not ever happen again. That was hard to listen to when the information we read on breath-holding said it can be initiated by bouts of crying. For a few weeks we were at Colin's crib seconds after he cried out, and we got back into a nasty habit of letting him breastfeed multiple times per night. But now all is well, and we thank God for our family's health (and health insurance, which started November 1!).

Now, the job. After 5.5 years at home, I have jumped back into the world of medicine, although I've moved to the other end of the body. I am a physician assistant for a colon and rectal surgery group in the Twin Cities. I am loving it! The surgeons are all very kind, and are great teachers. The variety of procedures I get to do in the clinic is great, and the OR cases are really interesting. I love how BIG everything is (as compared to neurosurgery). The surgeon just wades through piles of intestine, 'cuts and pastes', then plops them back in the abdomen, and sews them up. Wahlah! It's so much fun! And the reason I can have so much fun at my job is that I am completely at ease about the care my children are receiving. That's because Mike is at home now, and he is a rock star! He is really enjoying his new job, and he seems really happy, and totally thrilled to not get up and go to a desk job day after day. He is an excellent cook, multitasker, laundry-folder, chauffeur, and playmate. I'm really grateful that we have transitioned to our new roles so smoothly.

I think that's about it for now. I really appreciate everyone's patience while the blog was out of commission. I also am so grateful for the wonderful support experienced from family and friends over this crazy summer. Your friendships mean the world to me. I'm so glad to be back to blogging- I have missed reading everyone's updates, and using this blog as a virtual journal, as well as a way to communicate to everyone at once.