I apologize in advance for what will be a very long and probably rambling update. I'm a bit scattered but what can I say, the last few weeks have been busy.
First of all Ryan traveled quite a bit during the month of January which always makes life a bit hectic. He was gone about 2 1/2 weeks total with most of that being 2 weeks out in San Diego towards the end of the month. I'm going to try to get him to post about that trip because he got some great photos and it was some very cool stuff he was doing (things involving torpedo recovery and ROVs but hopefully he will tell you all about it). As much as none of us are thrilled that he travels as much as he does; he does have a very interesting, challenging job that from what I can tell he is very good at. Especially in this economy that is something to be very thankful for. Plus without actually going out to sea and being stuck at a desk all day every day would probably drive him nuts anyway. The major downside of his being gone these days (aside from the obvious fact that I actually enjoy his company and miss him when he's gone) is that as Than has gotten older and his language comprehension has improved he now knows Daddy is leaving before he goes and gets upset. It used to take him a few days to be sure he was gone and not just working late before he would get upset. However he is getting better about grasping that "Daddy's working" so he knows that he will be back before too long. As always the best thing I can do is try to keep Than as busy as possible when Ryan is gone. The more distractions the better. Preschool & daycare on Thursdays has been a savior. Not only does Than thrive on it but it gives me a chance to get things done or rest if need be.
The weather was also a bit helpful and unhelpful when it came to Ryan's long trip. We had a huge snowstorm, over a foot of snow, on the day he was originally supposed to leave and we got snowed in. So Ryan got an unexpected quality day at home with Than before leaving and then the exact same thing happened a day after he got back so Than loved it.
The best distraction of all was having Alvin, Erin & Emali for a long weekend while Ryan was gone. Or Alvin and the girls (spoken like squirrels if you are Than). Jenn and Eric went to a B&B in New Hampshire for some long overdue alone time and I got one loud busy but very happy house for 3 days. It made for long days but I adore those kids and everybody had a really good time. It was amazingly cold over that weekend and the weather wasn't great so we were pretty much housebound but it warmed up enough one day for the kids to go out and play in the giant mountains of snow and that was fun. I loved some of the photos I got of them playing and hamming it up in the snow.
During the weeks Ryan was gone one of my infamous migraines kicked in. It was as always very unpleasant but bearable for the first few weeks. Then unfortunately I let it get out of control. I was trying to avoid taking the pain killers as I hate them and don't want to get into a rebound situation. In a classic catch 22 I am regularly told to stay away from them as much as I can, but also told to stay ahead of the pain because if I don't it can spiral out of control and take 10xs more medication to get it back under control. This time I didn't stay ahead of it and I paid for it. Ryan had to take some time off work to watch Than so I could try to get back to a functional point before he left town again. I hate that he had to do that. But after rest, dark, quiet and lots of meds including high dose steroids I am doing better. Not fantastic, not even particularly well but functional. I'm going to get Botox injections tomorrow to try to help. With our old insurance it helped but our new insurance refused to cover it and it was just too expensive for not enough gain when we had to pay for it out of pocket. A few months ago the FDA approved Botox for migraines and concluded that there was strong evidence of it's effectiveness in specific types of migraines, so I asked my doctors office to try again for approval. I got the letter last week saying it had been approved! Thank you FDA. It may be the only thing that keeps me out of the hospital, so while I'm not thrilled that I may not be able to move my eyebrows in a week I'm very excited at the prospect of some relief.
During the time Ryan took off from work we got iced in at the house. Our very long steep curving driveway was three solid inches of ice. We hoped that warmer temps would help to melt it off, but more sleet came and it took an axe, sledgehammer, shovel and some serious manual labor on Ryan's part to clear part of the driveway. I have discovered that for the moment ice melt is a more precious commodity than gold in Rhode Island at the moment. So I was ridiculously proud of managing to get out of my house to run errands a few days ago.
All of this was made far more complicated by several illnesses. Ryan ended up with a nasty (but thankfully short) bout of food poisoning before I spiraled completely out of control. Then Than has had a very nasty cold for the last week and due to the high dose steroids I knew I was next. He is finally starting to feel better which makes me very happy. The joys of winter. You want to take the kids places to play and burn off some energy but they always catch something. So between Toddler Trek at the zoo, going to a meetup at Kidz Kastle in Warwick and preschool, Than has been bringing a lot of colds home. Thankfully he has his dads strong immune system and they never last long (for him anyway).
I think that is enough rambling for now. I'll try to be better about keeping up but hiding from light and noise doesn't lend itself to blogging.
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