I’ve decided to start doing my parenting-related blogging offsite at my new Wordpress blog: The Groovy Mommy. Unfortunately, it’s really ugly right now because while I was still in the process of setting it up, Wordpress.com seems to have died. I haven’t been able to get through to any pages for about 20 minutes now.
So check it out…just not, you know, right now or anything. 
I hate it when something sneaks up on me and makes me cry at work. It never has anything to do with work itself, but it’s still kind of embarrassing and awkward. Something like that happened today, so just a warning - this post might end up making you cry.
Anyone who knows me very well knows about my daughter The Bean, and how she has a rare congenital heart condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. We are so fortunate that it’s been under control for over a year now, without any medication. But when The Bean was born, we didn’t know she had WPW. When she was all of about three weeks old, she suddenly stopped eating. I consulted with our wonderful Kaiser nurse on the phone and we decided to wait a day and see if she was maybe just a little under the weather. A day went by, and then another, and she still only consumed tiny amounts of formula (she had previously been a very enthusiastic nurser). She grew pale and slept even more than usual. On the third day I took her to the pediatrician’s office.
Bean was in SVT (a type of tachycardia, or fast heartbeat). She was very, very ill. We were immediately transferred to the emergency room where I watched a team of at least eight people stand around my tiny little daughter, in the middle of a gigantic ER bed, and fight to save her life. First they struggled to get a line into her tiny veins to administer medication, then the meds they gave her to slow her heart worked too well and her heart stopped. They brought in the crash cart and then my husband and I watched every parent’s worst nightmare unfold before our eyes, just a few feet in front of us. I’ll never forget the sight of someone doing compressions on her tiny little chest, just to keep her heart beating. In those moments I thought it was all over, and we were going to lose her. I felt most sorry for her father - I’d carried her for nine months and felt like I knew her so well after being kicked in the ribs so many times by her. But he’d only known her a few weeks.
We were very, very lucky that day, and for many days after. Bean recovered. She was in the PICU for two weeks but with medication her WPW was controlled. Complications like a large blood clot, for which we had to inject her with blood thinner twice a day, eventually cleared up. After a year, she went off the heart medicine and has been fine since then, though she’ll probably need to have surgery the summer before she starts kindergarten. Every parent feels grateful for a healthy child, but I think I feel easily twice as grateful. Especially when I read something like the post that made me cry at work this morning.
Through Kristin at Better Now, I learned that Jen, another blogger, has lost her daughter, at just six weeks old. I can’t imagine anything more heartbreaking. It makes me realize just how lucky we are, but that somehow makes me feel even worse right now. I will certainly hug The Bean a little harder tonight.
I can’t believe it’s December 24th. I remember back in July or August, sitting on the couch feeling exhausted as Veronica found her legs and really started giving us a workout, “Wow…Christmas seems so far away.” And here it is upon us. Most shocking: the day after Christmas, Veronica will officially be 18 months old.
She blows my mind regularly. First, it was with the little independent actions that she is getting so good at: wanting to put her books away herself, putting her teddy bear down to “seep” and covering him up with a blanket, patting him gently and saying “nigh nigh.” Then it was with all the words, seems like at least one new word a day that she’s mastered. And now, sentences. Sometimes I only understand 20 or 30 percent of each, but still: sentences. SENTENCES!
A friend asked me yesterday what I’m doing for Christmas. I said my plan was to sit around and do nothing but play video games as much as possible, but that wasn’t really true. Well, OK, that’s part of the plan. But mostly I want it to be a really special day for our little Bean. I’m so excited to watch her unwrap her presents tomorrow! Not just because I know she loves to tear up pieces of paper, either. She has packages under the tree from one of her teachers and from her cousins. Tonight “Santa” will visit and bring the rest. Since I know she’s not reading this blog (yet), here’s a partial list of all the other goodies she’s getting:
Her father and I mutually agreed not to get each other anything this year. We don’t need presents, we already have the best present of all, and she will be tearing paper and throwing ribbons around bright and early tomorrow morning.
So what’s the deal, Groovymarlin? How come no blogging for…oh…over a month!? I wish I could say that I’ve just been lazy, that I’ve been enjoying myself and relaxing and didn’t have the willpower to blog. Unfortunately, I’ve actually been really busy. I recently got busy again at my day job, plus I’ve been working my freelance hours in the evenings and on weekends. Busy at home as well, even when I’m not working. Veronica at almost one and a half is quite…energetic. Last weekend she figured out how to open the pantry door, get out a box of cookies (at least they’re organic arrowroot cookies for babies, but still), and start stuffing her face with them. I walked into the kitchen to find her on the floor with her hand in the box, up to her elbow, and a mouth full of cookie. She was pretty pleased with herself. Secretly, I was too, though I had to pretend to be stern. Sometimes it’s so hard just being the Mom.
Anyway, in my spare time, I still raid with my guild in WoW just about once a week. We have Karazhan practically on farm status now, and my holy priest is really well-geared (at least until the next expansion comes out, and random greens make her epics all useless, but I refuse to consider that just yet). We got the first boss in Zul’Aman down, and made it up to the eagle boss, but man he’s a pain in the ass. We couldn’t even get to the dragonhawk boss yet. We made one attempt on the lynx boss but it was late and everyone was getting tired.
A better choice for stress relief lately has been Hellgate: London. A weird hybrid of shooter and MMO, it reminds me a little bit of Guild Wars in its simplicity. It’s really fun though - basically I can log in, go into a level and literally go on a killing rampage with a machine gun and grenades (and you never run out of ammo!), finish a quest or two, pick up some phat lewts, and be done with it. All in under an hour. This is economical gaming at its finest. The character I’m playing most of the time is an Engineer (proficient with rifles and other big guns, plus always has four or five drones/bots to keep her company). I think the class is ridiculously overpowered, and I like it that way. It’s nice to feel powerful for a change, and I mean that on many levels.
To attone for my sins (not blogging), another post coming up later today. Something more philosophical. With less violence. 
