oops, I never actually hit “Publish” on this one!

Oh my goodness, is it not bad enough that I have to take my baby to a hospital tomorrow and put her to sleep for surgery, but they are also asking me to shoot stuff up her back end and clean her out before the surgery. AND the instructions for the enema say “keep child in position (either on their side laying down or in the kneeling-bow position) until the urge to expel is great” ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?  You’ve got to be joking, how am I supposed to keep a two year old down, and where am I supposed to do this where she’s comfortable, I can get to her and the carpet is not going to suffer for it!?!??!  Geeshhh… it’s time to do this and I want to rebel!! I’m feeding Ziva and as soon as I am done with that I have to tourcher my two year old with this enema thing… uhhhggggg… the trauma!!

Tuesday we went to the Ped Urologist for her pre-op appointment. We ran through billions of questions them to me, and me to them &  they also needed to do another UA (urine analysis) so they taped a bag on her… which come to find out, it seems she is sensitive to adhesives like I am and she’s STILL red from it today!!  She wouldn’t go in the bad, it was flipping her out to have it on, so Vienna needed to go in a “potty chair” which really was just a bed pan that she couldn’t really sit totally on, so I sat on the floor with it between my knees and tried to help her by stabilizing it. Eventually she was successful   and earned 3 candy corn for doing so!! Ha ha ha… I’m not above bribery for potty training!! (I would like this process to be over now thank you!! I do not enjoy potty training!) anyway … I thought our appointment was only with the one dr, but then they sent us up to the hospital for a pre-op appointment as well…  over there durring the billions of questions I again mentioned that she had a long QT when born, but that our follow up on that was a bit confusing as they said that the EKG’s were inaccurate… which  turned out to be great because they sent her in to get an EKG.  Many anesthesias can cause an even longer QT and that could potentially be dangerous for Vienna.  I’m so glad they checked her again.  She indeed still has a prolonged QT interval (this is basically in layman’s terms, how the heart beats and the rate at which it progresses from one stage to the other).  This can be a very serious condition, but in Vienna’s case it doesn’t seem to be too extreme or they would have rushed us in to see another kind of doctor right away, I imagine, but we will follow it up soon.  PTL on that one, I guess me being a “nervous/high  maintenance” mom paid off   Vienna did great getting the EKG.  “Mr David” the EKG technician had had screamers all day, so he was happy that the “adorable little Vienna didn’t cry for him at all” She did however,  give him the stink eye! Ha ha ha.. but she let him put “stickers” all over her chest and hook the stickers up to wires.  It went very fast, but we were there for quite some time waiting for the Pediatric Cardiologist to come talk to us.  Can I just say I LOVE being at a children’s hospital!?!?  Vienna got to sit there and watch t.v. the whole time… she was thrilled

she had been sitting up, like two inches from the screen, but I missed it.

(I was less than thrilled because I don’t really approve of the cartoon that was on! But, hey, desperate times call for a flex in the rules, and it wasn’t horrid, just not my favorite kind of cartoon).  I do need to have our hospital send her results from the first two EKS’s tothe children’s hospital, but I can do that this next week when I’m not so crazy. Thankfully the Lord gave me peace about the heart situation (or maybe I was just too exhausted to care ha ha ha.. just kidding) but we survived even though we spent 4 hours in appointments instead of one.  The instructions were to give her an enema the night before (that would be tonight) the surgery two hours before bed.

I must confess, it went MUCH easier than I had anticipated!  She was so compliant! Such a good girl.  Sam came to help, but she complied like a good girl.  We’ve been playing “surgery” much of the night tonight.  She’s been taking a plastic measuring cup and “gassing” everyone, including her stuffie Froggy!  I sure hope that playing surgery will help her not be so scared at the hospital tomorrow. Time will tell.

But so far we love our experiences with Dornbecker’s.

these are the statues at the entrance to the hospital… Vienna loved seeing them and as we left she said “see you Friday!” ha ha ha She’s so smart!
She kissed the doggy bye bye.

  

Wahoo… a moment to blog about the Zoo!

The first thing you come to in the Zoo is the white Mountain Goats!  Vienna loves goats, we go out to Bauman Farms all the time and feed the pygmy goats out there… (God’s little joke to me, as goats are one of the few animals I can’t stand… though I must say they are growing on me).  We were off to a good start.  There was this neat statue right there, but there were so many people there that we really didn’t stop to see the goats much, but on our way out of the Zoo that night we stopped and took a photo.

We chose to skip the Great Northwest section of the zoo and headed for the Pacific Shores section.  Great choice!  Steller cove was amazing!!!  You go underground and view ocean creatures behind big glass walls.  It was beautiful without the animals, you felt like you were in a sea cave walking through a magical bubble of water.  They have done a great job of making it look more like habitat and less like cage!

One of the most exciting things of the day was when we stopped to see the Sea Lions.  They were swimming about and seemed to be playing to the crowd!  They swam right up to the window and were right in front of Sam and Vienna’s face! I totally missed the best shot of the sea lion coming right down eye to eye with Vienna and the look on her face!  But I got a second one that wasn’t bad.

To see the sea life so close and personal was fabulous!  The photo’s of the otters didn’t turn out very well.  The lighting in that area wasn’t so great, but they were great fun to watch.  They were having  a frozen snack when we came by and one of them was swimming around playing in the water (and we got to watch him under water!) So cool.

We headed over to the bears, but didn’t have very good luck.  The Polar Bear (one of  the things Vienna was looking forward to seeing) was asleep in a spot that you could really only see the top of his head. Such a bummer…. but there was much more for the day to be seen.  We headed off to Africa!!!!

Vienna loves goats, but she also LOVES Giraffes! There is this beautiful long path you walk, a bamboo forest really, that you walk through on your way to see the African animals.  Again, so much more habitat than cage, even for the people     We got to see giraffes, and even though they were far away (eating their “dinners”) while we were there, we stayed there for quite some time (and Vienna asked several times to go back to see them again, maybe another day when we have more time.) 

We skipped the Bat exhibit for now… Vienna’s had enough bad dreams of late, and reptiles too, and headed off to the African goats, yes, more goats, then over to the Zebra’s and Hippo’s.  These were all fascinating. 

Early on in the day I was ready to name this blog “Back Sides” because most of what we saw of the African Animals were their back sides!!  The Zebras were also huddled in for a bite, bottoms to the viewing post, the Hippos, though close, were also bottoms to us, laying about in the sun.

Vienna was fascinated by the Zebra’s all the same!

The rhino… well he’s a back side for an entirely different reason. ***yep, I’m going to do it, I’m going to totally be me and talk about things that just aren’t “kooth” as my mother would say*** He was quite intriguing to me… it was amazing… have you ever seen a rhino pee??  WOW it is soooo forceful! It’s like the fire department turning on one of their hoses in short bursts!!!  Couldn’t believe it!! and I just can’t believe that I actually caught it “in action!” it just fascinates me.  Yes, I’m fascinated by rhino excrement, yes, I understand that is weird!!  But check it out!!

I wish you could have been there! It really doesn’t translate on film or in pixel form.  ***yes, I can see, even feel, my dear sweet Sam shaking his head in shame at me, but hey… it’s why he married me… my “charm” ha ha ha ***  There were lots of “excrement” moments that day.  We caught the goat doing both #1 & #2, the nasty little penguins and their stench (ok, cute, but oh so stinky!) and of course Ziva’s diaper   but we’ll just skip those for now

Walking through the Vollum Aviary was great, we probably blew through this place too fast.  I would have loved to sit on a bench in there for a while, and Vienna was upset when we left that we left too soon, but she had a hard time seeing the birds with her two year old eyes.  She just couldn’t find them if they weren’t moving, and when they were moving it was so hard to “track” them that she had a hard time keeping up with them too.  But the vegetation was fascinating enough. 

Then it was time to stand in line. It was time for us to wait our turn to see Samundra, Lord of the Ocean, our new baby elephant in the Oregon Zoo (don’t ask me why “Lord of the Ocean is appropriate for an elephant, but i do like the sound of the name).  It was hot, but thankfully most of the line was in the shade… but we didn’t expect it to take TWO HOURS for us to get our chance to see the little punk!  Vienna did great waiting in line.  She kept us all entertained, and behaved quite well, thank the Good Lord for that!!  and when we did get to see Samundra it was so fun.  He was the reason really we went to the zoo.  Ever since Vienna saw him on the news (5 weeks ago) she has been asking to go to the zoo to see him. 

The first hour and a half or so was spent getting to the observation platform.  Once there Samundra decided it was time to nurse, and he did this right up against the retaining wall directly in front of us, so that no one could see him!!!.  We did get some entertainment from a chipmunk that ran across Sam’s shoes and was haning about (I think he wanted Vienna’s peanut butter cracker) After twenty minutes or so we finally got a glimps of the little elephant as he and his moma moved away from the wall. We didn’t get to stay long, they were shuffling people along rather quickly, even more so, I had to shuffle off and feed Ziva.

He was sooo cute!! I’m glad we finally got to see him, and that we waited in line.  It was worth it, just to say we did it, and to see Vienna light up when he was finally in sight!

As I fed Ziva, Sam and Vienna went to see the primates.  And just as they were exiting I met them and the frog caught Vienna’s eye. 

The Frog exhibit was closed for the day by this time, but she LOVED crawling onto this statue.  There were a ton of other little kids playing on it, but Ziva decided she didn’t get enough to eat, so we let Vienna play with them while we sat there and watched.  We were the last to leave the area (it was very close to closing time) so we got a great photo of us girls

I did get to see this one monkey with Vienna, she giggled a lot.

The last thing we saw as we left the Zoo was “The” bears.  Just as fascinating and exciting to Vienna, and I dare say as real to her as the LIVE bears… were the bears outside of the gift shop… they were HUGE!!

I only took the photo of the one, but there are two that are just giant stuffed animals.  Vienna was afraid of them to a point.  She reached for my hand so I would take her up to them… she gave this one a hug (with me standing VERY close, but wouldn’t go near them without me … she quickly noticed I was too far away when I backed up to snap this photo and came running back. 

All in all it was a glorious day! Full of blessings and very little temper tantrums (for a two year old, I call that miraculous!)

Can we go again tomorrow???

The Oregon Zoo is even more fantastic than when I was growing up.  We had a wonderful time this last Sunday on our family outing there.  But it almost wasn’t!

We packed a lunch and headed to church (well, I packed us lunches!!) As the closing song started we headed downstairs and collected Vienna, then off to the zoo.  Vienna and I were quite excited.  Sam and Ziva just seemed to be along for the ride… ha ha ha…

Driving along Hwy 26, I see all these signs “Zoo parking full, use satellite parking”  Oh great, just what I was afraid of… crowds.  I prefer doing things on weekdays for this very reason, but I should have expected it… it was a gorgeous day and there is a new baby elephant to be viewed (he’s 5 weeks old).

So we go over to the satellite parking and see the line of people loading up on the buses…with kids… and strollers… and we think…85 degrees today, no a/c on bus’ Long line, or long time sitting on bus waiting to go… no thanks.  Sam and I decided that we’ll go hunt the main lot and if we can’t find something we’ll go home, Sam will work and we’ll go back on Monday.
We twirl around for a few mintues and realize its hopless and are getting ready to leave… two gals are walking back to their truck and say “next row” So we go to the next row… “oh shoot, sorry next row” she says, but we figure someone else is going to beat us too it… but we get over there and the other car passed them and we pull right in!! PTL!!  wahoo, we have a parking spot!
So we pull out the blanket and have a parkinglot picnic right there,  pack that back up, pulled out the stroller and packed that and off we went.

The gate was a SWARM of people!  This gentlman, with this crazy cool handlebar mustache got in front of us.  As we near the gate he turns to us and asks if we have a Zoo Pass.  No? Well, i think I get two adults with me for free, and your kids are free… so I’ll take you in!!!  PTL for ticket angels!! It’s ten bucks a piece to get into the zoo now a days! and on our budget, every little bit counts!! Since I packed our lunches, and brought in with me a jug of frozen water for cold drinks all day and snacks, the whole day was free for us!! such a blessing!!  

We had a GLORIOUS time.  We were there from about 1pm to closing at 5pm.   Ziva’s having a rough day… so i’ll post a part two later this evening if I get a chance.  Can’t seem to be on the computer much today, my baby needs held (and I have sooo much to get done I should probably do the laundry and such if she does quiet down!!)

apparently this was sooo long that it wouldn’t upload, so here’s Part One…OHSU
We’ve had quite the summer.  As I ranted before I’m exhausted from all the excitement, but I’m starting to recover. I don’t want to forget all the fun stuff that happened this summer! So, I thought I’d blog about the great times we’ve had since Ziva was born!
I already blogged her birth, but can I restate here how wonderful it was to have such a short “active” part of labor??  Whhheewwww…

The first 9 days are a blur, we had a ton of visitors come to see us and welcome the baby.  Then our first event and first visitors arrived.  The first event was Vienna’s trip to OHSU/Dornbecker  Children’s Hospital for tests on her kidneys to see if the infections she’s been getting had done any damage. I was a basket case all day… super emotional/hormonal and dealing with what may happen to my baby as she goes under deep sedation   Praise The Lord, not only was Sam able to be there with us, but my mom came along to mind the baby and be there for us!  She was such a great help!  Vienna, unaware of her mother, father and grandmother’s trauma… had a great time!
They numbed the backs of both hands in preparation for putting in her IV port (or what ever you call it…) They got the port in on the first try. Vienna hardly cried at all!  She was nicely distracted by the very large “Deisel” ( a great big stuffed horse they had in the room, they had two, and if you pinched  the ear they’d whinny… quite cute). 



She was very careful with her hands when they were just wrapped, and careful with her hand once the port was in, and she never complained about it once! What a champ!
Then began the waiting… we waited for the isotope to be put in, we waited for the isotope to go through her system, we had the test and we waited for her to wake up! During all the waiting before the test she ran up and down the ramp with Daddin’, she read books and colored with Mimi, she kissed mommy and baby Ziva… she had a grand time.

The test went very well, but man did it seem like she was asleep forever! The injection they gave her to put her under sedation is one that stings when it goes in. Thankfully the lady in the lobby, who’s 9 year old daughter has had this exam done MANY times, warned me it would sting.  Having also watched many medical shows and always being interested in such things, I knew what to expect as far as Vienna’s reaction to going under.  Even being prepared it was no fun holding her as they injected her and having her get rigid and arch her back and cry. 

So, test begun, all going well, almost finished.  Sam went back out to get her snacks and juice box because she could eat when she woke up and as soon as she had something we could go.  He comes back and lets me know that my mom would appreciate me heading out to the lobby to give Ziva, who apparently is inconsolable, at least a snack (thankfully I couldn’t hear her in our room!)  I ran out there and nursed her for 5 minutes (they said we had about five to ten minutes before the test was done). Ziva appeased, I ran back into the room and they finished the test and Vienna started to wake up. I can’t tell you how comforting it is to be able to hold your baby while they are going through all this.  I am also so thankful to the staff at Dornbecker’s for letting us sit in the room and watch the whole thing and let me cry like a momma tends to do   They were quite understanding.   Sam even got to just carry Vienna into the recovery room.  Seven hours after our journey began, we had our baby, good as new, in the van and headed home!!   That night my mom went to the airport with my dad and picked up our first visitors.  Uncle Dan (my dad’s twin brother) and Aunt Mary Jean.  (I think that Aunt Mary Jean and Uncle Dan got the shaft!