Last Week of the Quarter

This week begins the last week of my winter quarter. While I realize this brings me to the point of being ONE QUARTER away from graduation on June 9th, it also carries with it a boat load of stress, papers, exams, lab tests, discussion board postings, and studying. My planner is packed from beginning to end with nowhere to even squeeze eating in....hopefully I'll get at least four showers this week (I truly hope this is sarcasm).

The boys are doing well. Eli went through a lovely respiratory virus last week and ended up on steroids once again. I don't know exactly how many round of Orapred this makes for him this winter but it is a ton. He is still on Albuterol in addition to his normal BID Flovent but his wheezing is getting better and he's only coughing a lot at night now. We also had a great visit to his surgeon last week. His stats were 25lbs 1oz and 33.75" long. They decided to switch him to a shorter stem length on his MIC-key button b/c his old length was too long and he was continuously getting acid burns from leaking stomach acid out of his stoma. His new size is a 14 french, 1.5cm length. It had completely fixed his leakage probably and his stoma is healing with the help of some stoma barrier cream.

Carson is also having a good week. He has found a couple new loves. The first is crafts. Aside from the normal obsession of trains and trucks, Carson now wants to make crafts with scissors, tape, construction paper, markers, crayons, staples, punch-out shapes, pipe cleaners, etc at school and at home. It is adorable. He comes home from school everyday and pulls out piles of "pictures" that he made for me. His teacher, Ms. Linn, told us at his parent/teacher conference on Friday that he gets all excited to "make Mommy beautiful pictures b/c he knows his Mommy will love them". Gosh this age is wonderful. His second love is a bit harder to swallow but typical for a soon to be four year old. Carson has become infatuated with calling people names. Now these aren't mean names or rude names.....they are food item names. If you are in his presence you may be called any one of the following items: Coconut tree, pineapple, chicken, pear tree, grape, chicken pop, turkey, chicken livers, apple head, coconut lovers, pineapple bush with grapes, etc. It is becoming quite the annoying habit that is one of that hardest we've tried to break. Just imagine walking down the grocery isle to get your bread and an almost 4 year old shouts, "Hey you Pineapple bush!" in your direction. This is what my day consists of. Somebody please tell me this phase passes as well...



I am going to wrap up this post and finish procrastinating. My books are calling my name with their incessant nagging, "study me, learn me, know me". If I can only make it through the next 9 days, I will be ONE QUARTER (that is 10 short weeks of class!) away from graduating with my Bachelor's in Nursing! Oh what a day that will be.