Marlee Update

We heard from the vet yesterday and he started off by saying their was good news and bad news.  The good news is that they didn't find anything.  The bad news is that they didn't find anything.  If they found something, anything, at least there could be a possible remedy.  But without a diagnosis, you're stuck.  The vet said he talked to the lab personally and they said they found no evidence of cancer, hepatitis or anything else.  So obviously it's strange that the blood work showed that something was up with the liver but yet the biopsy doesn't show anything.  He said it was possible that it was something temporary (like eating berries or rat poison or something) and that it passed through.  I think we'll end up doing some other testing of the liver in the next few weeks to see if the levels are still elevated.  If they aren't, then we could assume all is well.  What a break that would be!  As long as I still see her eating and begging for food (which she is), I know things aren't completely dire.

We had quite a busy weekend.  Of course, the day started out with Church as usual, lunch, and naps.  But the early evening found Grandma and Grandpa arriving at our house so watch the girls while Duncan and I headed off to the annual Pumpkin Fest festivities at the Isidro's.  How nice to be kidless this year.  Last year, Aubree tagged along since she was young and nursing so frequently.  Everything was awesome as usual.  I made the Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread.  But I knew it wouldn't hold up against some very fancy cupcakes that my friend, Jennifer, made so I had no expectations for winning the food contest this year.  And I didn't.  Jennifer did win the dessert category and rightly so.  The cupcakes were delicious!  We brought some home for the girls and they were quite enthralled.  Anyway, the games were lots of fun as usual and I and my teammates won a couple.  We got to choose partners for tank this year and I'm sure Duncan was honored to play with the two time returning champion.  Alas, a three-peat was not in the cards.  I joked that my last two partners were women and they listened to me better!

The winning cupcakes.  How was my poor little chocolate chip pumpkin bread (to the left) supposed to compete with this presentation?

Jennifer, who made them.  She's also my coupon mentor.

I let Richard Ottati and Karis Zbarschuk win Tank this year.

The Putts won the contest for best entrée with their black bean pumpkin soup.  It was fantastic!  I need to get that recipe actually.

Us, just having a good time.

 Sunday morning we were off to Babies R Us to look for some new bedding for Calleigh.  She's still sleeping on the futon.  We just didn't see anything we liked there so now it's on to searching on Amazon.  Afterwards, it was off to the hospital for Founder's Day activities.  There was tons of free food, bounce houses, face (or body) painting, cotton candy, etc.  Calleigh had great fun, as expected in the bounce houses and really put up a fuss when we had to leave.  But not before she enjoyed her first taste of cotton candy.  For some reason, Aubree seemed afraid of it so she wouldn't take a bite.  She has the same problem with body painting.  Calleigh got a rainbow painted on her arm and Aubree watched it all very intently.  Because of her copy catting, I figured she want something to.  But when I put her arm out, she started bawling.  I guess she doesn't realize it's harmless.

Snacking on some kettle corn.

It's hard to see the face in this picture but I can assure you, it wasn't a happy one.

After naps, we went to another festival at a Methodist church nearby.  We went to the same one last year and unfortunately, it was much more crowded this year.  But we still had some free corn on the cob, hay ride, bounce house, and other activities.  While we were there, the Patriots game was going on which we were taping.  If that game is at 1 pm, we'll tape it and watch it during nap time.  But if it's on while the girls are up, I don't want to have them sit through that.  I was greatly anticipating just sitting down and enjoying the game after they hit the sack.  The time finally came and it was a very close, intense game.  We get down to the 2-minute warning, the Patriots are ahead by three, have the ball on the 50 yard line, it's 4th and 1 and the they're going for it.  And our DVR runs out!  I had set it all the way to 10 pm but for whatever reason it just randomly stopped at 7:04 pm.  It recorded some more a few minutes later but when we started it up, it was all blank.  I was SO mad.  What a time to have that happen.  So Duncan says, let's not look at the score, let's just turn it to one of the sports stations and watch the highlights.  That's what we do but like 30 minutes go by and they still haven't shown anything with the Patriots.  I finally saw the score on the ticker on the bottom, accidentally, so at least I was put out of my misery (as I notice they held on to win).  With that, I was off to bed and never did see the highlights until the next morning.  In hindsight, maybe it was good we didn't watch it since it looked like it was a super stressful end to the game.

While Calleigh was in the bounce house, Duncan took Aubree to roam in the pumpkin patch.

Monday things got back to normal.  Despite Calleigh's prayer to once again go to the Science Center, we went to the playground at the mall.  It turned out for the best because she found two little twin girls and they had the best time running around there pretending to be alligators and all that.  If you could have heard the giggles...honestly, it was so cute.  I was very glad because she was obviously getting plenty of exercise and there were no nap issues.  Aubree enjoyed herself too.  She was happy to just climb up the stairs and go down the slide all by herself.  Indeed, I was sitting quite far away and every time she would get to the bottom of the slide, she would peek at me and beam when she saw me looking at her.

Today we hit up a consignment store (found some much needed shoes for Aubree), then on to story time where we saw Yolanda and Emma, and then to Publix for a few things.  After lunch, I took Calleigh through an exercise drill just to make sure there wouldn't be any nap issues.  I was worried because it took her a little while to fall asleep.  And that was after I caught her red handed in Aubree's room.  Aubree fell asleep in like two seconds, as she usually does, and after about 20 minutes, I thought I heard Calleigh moving around upstairs.  That's very odd because she usually never comes out of her room.  I turn on the monitor, which is on Aubree, and I see Aubree lying there sounds asleep and then I see this little arm reaching between the bars of her crib to touch her binky of something or other.  I yell "Calleigh" and I take off like a bullet up the stairs.  There comes Calleigh out of Aubree's room and she starts crying her eyes out.  I don't know if I scared her or what but I don't think she realized I could see her through the monitor.  After I hug her for a minute and she calms down, I asked her what she was doing in there and she says "I was just trying to give Aubree something soft to have in her crib so I put the giraffe in there."  Sure enough, I did find the giraffe and it turns out it was very sweet but I told her she couldn't go into Aubree's room while she was sleeping.

Aubree continues to amaze us from time to time with her bathroom habits.  I was upstairs doing something on Sunday evening and Duncan was downstairs with the girls.  Aubree went over to him and said "Potty."  So Duncan took her in and she promptly did both.  The next morning, she did the same for me and then did it again after lunch.  I'm sure that if I prompted her about doing it and wanted to put the effort into it, I could have her doing all her number two's on there.

For some reason, she's started to put the kitchen towel on the floor, says "Tired," and then lies down on it.

Calleigh has started spitting back my own statements to me which cracks me up.  Yesterday I was talking to her about vegetables and made some comment about how maybe the next time she eats asparagus, maybe she'll like it.  She said, "No, I don't like it."  I said, "Why not?"  And she says "Some people like some things, and some people don't."  This sounded awfully similar to my statement to her some weeks ago about why I don't like mangoes.  At least she's paying attention!

That's a wrap.  Have a great rest of the week everyone.

Oh, and congratulations to my cousin's cousin, Tiffany Krenz, who got engaged over the weekend to her boyfriend Anthony.  We're so happy for them!