I swear I've become more of an idiot since the boys were born! I spend my days quoting Dora The Explorer and Blues Clues. There's no room left in my brain to hold onto an adult-like or intelligent thought. Just no room.

I'm actually beginning to fear going out in public. My biggest fear is being at one of hubby's work functions and thoughtlessly signing "Backpack-Backpack." I've noticed many of my jokes have become centered around these children's shows as well. Luckily my husband 'gets it' but I fear many normal adults out in the world would find me out to be a lunatic.

It's just amazing how much of your world gets wrapped up in your children, on every conceivable level. I wouldn't change it for the world, but I've come to realize that because of my pre-occupation I can only hang out with people that have children the exact same age as L & E and preferably have twins. This really narrows down that friendship list!

I've been watching this show and Nanny 911 in utter amazement. Can it be true? Can these nannies come to my home and help me get control of my monkey boys? I find it hard to believe, but they make it look so real. It appears that within 1-2 weeks, a magic transformation happens within the household.

Children well behaved saying "please" and "thank you"

Fewer, if any temper tantrums

Mommy looks like she's had 2-3 glasses of wine, without opening a bottle!

Marriage intact and real communication

I'm a disbeliever, only because if it's true, I'm doing something horribly wrong with L & E. I'm going to go out this weekend and buy some "naughty mats" although to be P.C. we'll have to refer to them as "time-out" mats. This should be interesting. This is where I'll start with my little experiment, if it works out I may even incorporate a routine (gasp!)

It's been a frantic morning, woke up late, couldn't find my wallet, but managed to get the boys fed, changed, dressed, packed, me dressed and out the door in 30 minutes. Truly a new record was established today!

E stayed with a girlfriend and L and I drove up to Stockton for the assessment. They did a lot of play activities with him and he really turned on the charm and said a new sentence and everything! His case worker was just amazed at the change in the last 3 months. He's gone from saying under 10 words to close to 50 with a few 2-3 word sentences. Socially he is engaged and not avoiding eye contact and is interacting with others, a far cry from when he would just zone out and even avoid me while running circles around the sofa.

They said based on the eval and all the changes they believe his challange is only language related and he and E will continue to get help with that. I was prepared for anything, but still found myself at a loss for words when she said he wasn't autistic. It's still sort of sinking in I think. As a matter of fact I think the woman expected more of a reaction from me because she made a point of telling me they don't often get to give good news like that to parents.

It's almost as if a little light bulb just suddenly turned itself on inside L, there's really no other way to describe it. He's so excited to try and communicate and interact with me, I just love it. I really think the sign language has really helped in that area. It opened a door for him that just didn't exist before and now he uses words all the time.

My brain is still wrapping itself around all this new info. Soooo many tests and evals have been done on L over the last few months that I've barely had time to breath and think. I feel like now I've been given permission to just accept this quirky, little aloof boy for who he is and let him be and grow at his own pace. What a gift! Now if I could only find my wallet all will be perfect in my world.

Today I when I arrive to pick up L&E, one of the teachers asked me if the boys where picky eaters. I really didn't have a response to it but managed to ask : "Why?"

teacher: Well they didn't eat a thing at snack time.

me: What did you have for snack?

teacher: Rice with gravy and green beans.

I had to pause before responding because I threw up a little in my mouth. I choked it down and said: "yeah, I don't think they'd be interested in that, they are more into finger foods."

In my head I'm thinking: what the fuck kind of snack is that? Picky eaters? No, they just actually have a more refined sense of what a snack menu should be!

We all survived. I don't think the boys cried at all. I cried just a little bit. Once I got over the crying, I was amazed at how quickly 4 hours flew by!

I picked them up at around noon. One of the teachers gave me a run down of their day. She said: "they didn't really participate in 'circle time' and just sort of ran around the room." This of course didn't surprise me too much, as we usually don't have 'circle time' at home. Hell that's what you're supposed to teach them at $168 a week for 8 hours! Hopefully they start to enjoy all the activities soon and aren't too disruptive to the class structure.

The conference was fascinating, just the right mix of people. There were the hard core, vegan, dread-lock wearing, deodorant hating, yoga fanatics. On the opposite side of the chakra rainbow was the made up, Ugg wearing, big jewelry (toe ring and anklets included) more money than god yoginis.

I of course fell right in the middle, boring old "average" me. Didn't wear make-up or flashy jewelry, but I do love my Uggs and worship deodorant. My limited budget did have me balking at the high priced concession stands.

I missed my first class with Rodney Yee due to being very sick. I really thought I'd kicked this f-ing cold but I was sadly mistaken.

I dragged my ass out of the hotel bed for my class with Baron Baptiste, in hind site I should have stayed in bed. I knew I was in trouble when I started to sweat profusely before any asanas even began. I kept up, but at a terrible price to my body which is still recovering 2 days later.

My favorite teachers turned out to be Sean Corn and Sarah Powers. They are amazing women and very inspiring all around. For that alone I'm glad I went and struggled through feeling like crap to attend their classes.

All in all it was kind of a weird experience for me. I had been so looking forward to the "escape" and when I got to the hotel I had a huge meltdown with lots of crying. I'm still sorting it out, but I know it was from missing the boys, worrying about them and all we have been going through at home in terms of their development/language. All the fears of Logan possibly having Autism, them starting pre-school this week and some hard choices I need to make in the future. It all sort of came crashing down around me that first night. It was so bad I almost got and my car and drove home. I'm glad I stayed, I learned a lot about myself and about the way I internalize things. I have a lot to work on and this past weekend was just the platform I
needed to jump off of and back into my life.

The really good news is that I had 3 days where I got 8 hour blocks of sleep, un-interrupted I might add. The bad news, now I know what I've been missing out on the past couple of years!

I had been looking forward to this escape in the city for many months. Suddenly not so excited. Feeling crappy. Boys start pre-school next week. Things are a mess at home.

I'm definately going to pace myself in terms of the classes I signed up for but I now believe my main focus to be: room service a good book and giving myself a pedicure.

This will the most expensive pedicure in all of history.

So the surgeon removed my mom's appendix and some of her intestines due to a really bad infection. No one knows much in terms of details as to what/why, etc... Lots of questions at the moment and we probably wont get many answers till next week. Hopefully when all is said and done she recovers quickly and can get on with her life.

Right now I'm just feeling kind of trapped and useless up here. Not a lot you can accomplish by telephone/long distance and that is really frustrating.

So my mom's been in the hospital for 5 days with intense pain and an elevated white blood cell count. They ran many tests and couldn't find an answer as to what was going on with her and told her they were going to do "exploritory" surgery and go ahead and re-attach her colon while they were in there. They told her this a few days ago.

The jackass surgeon would basically come in at around 6:30am occasionally and tell my mom she was doing great and didn't understand why she was so upset. Gee asshole maybe it's because she's in horrible pain, so horrible she couldn't keep food down and spent the better part of the last two weeks doubled over in pain in her bed! Wouldn't that upset you asshole? I love the way he came to see her so early in the morning when nobody else in the family was around to ask him questions. But maybe I can't really bitch about him, he at least made an appearance, while her primary care physician didn't even bother the whole week, not once.

The nurses at this point are questioning why they/he decides to wait until Friday to do this surgery. My mom jokes that they are just waiting for her to die so they don't have to bother. We are also joking on the phone that the cause for her pain is probably due to something they left behind inside her from her last surgery. We visualize scapels, sponges, the surgeon's lucky golf tee. Although if it were the surgeon's lucky golf tee, he would have gone in to recover it much sooner, so that can't be it. I'm not laughing so much at these past thoughts anymore. I think someone has been fucking up when it comes to caring for my mom at that hospital.

Surgery was scheduled for this morning. My grandma and aunt Judie made sure they were there. They postponed the surgery till 11am, no reason. They postponed it again till 2pm and again. My aunt left to pick up my cousin Eric from School. My grandma must have eventually went to grab a bite to eat. Somewhere around 3 or 4pm they took my mom into surgery without anyone even knowing about it. When my grandma did finally find out she was in surgery she waited around for another 3 hours. The surgeon then decided to just leave without even talking to her. But in passing to the nurse mentioned that the surgery didn't go well. What the fuck? What does that mean? What exactly didn't go well? Sure would have been nice if he stopped for 5 minutes and explained things to my grandma. I'm sure he had a pressing engagement like dinner or something to go to.

So my grandma is left there feeling all confused, doesn't even know exactly what they "did" or "didn't" do to my mom and nobody can give her any answers. I called the ICU nurse, she forwarded me to the Recovery nurse, who then directed me back to the ICU nurse. I'm freaking out up here for hours not knowing anything. My 80 year old grandma of course doesn't have a cell phone, and even if she did, she didn't have any answers for me either. Can't talk to the doctor tomorrow as the nurse suggested because it's the fucking weekend! How convenient eh?

Well the good news is I lost 4 pounds in 24 hours!!! Yeah me!

You might be asking yourself: "Hey what's her secret?" "What is this miracle diet??!" It's called the fucking flu!! And oh my goddess did it suck big time!

Hubby got it first on New Years Eve. Poor guy was up all night and I felt really bad for him. Unfortunately I was up all night too, trying to block out the sound! At around 4am I rolled into the spare bedroom to try and get a little shut eye before the boys got up at 7am. Well I got maybe an hour or so of sleep in when E woke up puking. Poor guy, brought him into the spare bedroom with me and tried in vain to collect the projectile vomit that was spewing out of him. Of course this was followed a couple hours later by L puking in his crib!

We ran out of puke-free places to hang out in upstairs, so i moved the twins downstairs. Pulled out the sickbed, (sofa-sleeper) in the family room, grabbed about a hundred towels and tried to do as much damage control as possible. Hubby still passed out upstairs. I was doing ok for a few hours, but then it started to hit me too. Got the queezies, mouth started watering all weird like, got clammy, you know the feeling.

I realized I was in big trouble when I got a whiff of two diapers that needed to be changing! This was no ordinary diaper, mind you, it was the sick shits, the really foul- smelling stuff that will melt your eyebrows. My gag reflex started to kick in. Thank god dh came down and was able to help me change them. My eyes where watering the whole time, but I managed to keep from throwing up.

When it did hit me, it was like no flu I've ever had. So violent! I was like a volcano exploding out of both ends. I would break out in an intense, slick sweat just before and have to take off half my clothes from the heat. Immediately afterwards I would break out in chills and could not get warm, no matter how many layers I put on. It was beyond miserable. I don't cry often from pain, but this had me in tears. Even after the nausea/exploding diarrhea wore off, the aches in my joints remained. My hair follicles hurt, I swear to you and I really thought I was dying. Gads the flu is nasty business! As far as flu's go it was fairly fast, but the really bad ones usually are.

Nothing like shitting water and throwing up bile to ring in the New Year, dontcha think?

I just found out that Elvis Jr. is back at Heartbreak Hotel (hospital) and is back to her old ways. I will have to write about this tomorrow when I can give it the time it needs.