As I eluted to before, I have a week long business trip this week that although is only in Virgina, it's far away enough, and has a busy enough schedule to not allow me to head home at all this week. So, I am writing this from my very dark, hot and boring conference center room and find myself questions whether or not signing up for something that could potentially help my career/performance review is really worth being away from Emma and Wes for a full week?

The day started out just as pretty much every other day starts. Although I was a little quicker to get out of bed when I heard Emma wake up this morning because I knew I wouldn't be able to see that stunning morning smile for a week. The day was kind of crazy with teething, laundry, packing, etc and I quickly found myself in a terrible mood which was really sad because I really wanted to spend my remaining few hours with Wes and Emma and when we weren't chasing around and trying to calm a teething baby, one of us was upstairs and the other was downstairs. I don't think more than 20 words were said on the drive to the rental car facility. A lot of what put me into such a funk was just thinking about Emma changes on a daily basis now and all I could think about was what I was going to miss this week. Was she going to start walking? What if she says a new word? What if she forgets me or is mad at me when I get back? It took all of my might to hold back my tears when saying goodbye and I did pretty good, until I got into my rental car.

After waiting almost 30 minutes in line when there were only 2 people in front of me, getting lost on the way to the conference center, arriving 30 seconds before a huge summer storm (I was literally running with my 3,393 pound suitcase into the building, having the power go out as I was checking in, trying to get to my room on the 6th floor with no elevators and not having any power I REALLY started to question, was this worth it?

I am sure that a lot of what I am feeling is just because this is my first time leaving Emma for more than one night, but I can't help but think about whether this is something that I really want to do or not, now or in the future. Thank goodness I have the Internet and I can keep my spirits up by continuing to plan her 1st Birthday party which is right around the corner!

7th Tooth & 1st Boyfriend

Emma's seventh tooth popped through yesterday (which explains the overwhelming amount of drool that started to appear) and despite the soaked clothes, she still managed to start her first boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. :) Emma now has four top teeth and three bottom teeth.

There is a little boy named Landon, that is in the toddler room right next to Emma's Todfant room. From the minute Landon walked into Emma's room (sometimes they start together until most of the kids get there) he was stuck by her side. Apparently, from what Landon's teachers say, he isn't usually one to share any of his food or let anyone touch his face. Well, Emma crawled right over to him when he was eating his blueberry waffle and he handed it right over! Then, Emma decided to show everyone where Landon's nose was and he thought it was hilarious. She proceed to stand next to him while he was eating his breakfast and he took his little right arm, put it around Emma and started rubbing her back.

:::the room then went crazy:::

Emma then decided to play a little hard to get so she headed over to the books but couldn't reach them herself. Landon to the rescue!! He ran right over there, got a book, handed it to Emma and sat down right next to her. Normally, the two classes separate in a little later in the morning, and apparently Emma and Landon spend a lot of time standing at the door between the two classes talking through it and laughing. It's so tragic that a love like that has to be separated all day long!! Haha!! Emma loves Landon and he clearly loves her in return!!

Perfection & Poop Tracker 2010!!

We just got a call from Nurse "B", who is the study coordinator and basically our first stop for anything related to Emma's VUR, and she was calling about the final results of her DMSA scan. Perfection!

There are basically two different things that this scan looks for. One being if there is any kidney scarring/damage and the other being how hard both the kidneys are working. Sometimes in cases where children have reflux only on one side (like Emma), you would expect that one kidney may be working a little harder than the one on the side with the reflux. The second part of the test (how hard the kidneys are working) is measured on a scale of 0 - 100 where you actually want the results to be 50 - 50, meaning each kidney is doing exactly 50% of the work. Any numbers between 40 - 60 are still good, but Nurse "B" said that in her 15 years of working in pediatric urology, she has only ever seen one child with an actual 50 -50 rating and guess who that little peanut was...

Emma also showed absolutely no kidney scarring or damage, which was another relief to hear!! So we are finally back to normal and our next appointment (unless another UTI comes up :::knock on wood:::) isn't for 6 months when its just a small prick for a quick blood test. This should however make Emma nice and angry during her 12-month appointment with her regular pediatrician! Yikes! Maybe Daddy should take her to that appointment! To show you also how big of a nerd couple that we are, Wes and I have turned this VUR/study/antibiotics vs. placebo thing into a competition against all other parents ever involved! :) I mean come on...given Emma's results from her DMSA scan and her 50 - 50 score, I think we have a good chance too haha! Basically the doctors know that LIFE will often make it somewhat difficult to give the medicine every.single.day, so if we give Emma the medicine, 80% of the time, and get 80% of the medicine in her each time, we would be in the upper 95% percentile of parents in this study. Well that's simply not good enough for my perfectly functioning (at least kidney wise) baby peanut!! So our goal is to basically be the best parents ever known to this study!! :) I know...ridiculous. But as soon as we heard those statistics our competitive nature just came right out! So here is our system to make sure we hit 100% over the next two years (yeah right haha).

Another part of being involved in the study is that we will get a call every 2 months to let Johns Hopkins know about how Emma is doing. We will get asked a lot of questions about how often we gave her the medicine, how many times a week she poops (because constipation is such a big deal now) and many more. Ergo, the Poop & Medicine Tracker 2010!

I made a monthly calendar that hangs on our refrigerator (right next to Emma's art from daycare) that is a daily reminder of her medicine. It has a check box everyday so we can keep track of the days that we give her the medicine and a line for the ____ # of BMs. That's right. Poop tracker. I am all about data so when we get those phone calls every 2 months, they aren't going to know what to do with all the data they are going to get!! Once a week, we fill up the little syringes full of the medicine which makes it MUCH easier to just bring upstairs with her bottle of water (for her formula) for the next morning. Cuts down on a lot of the time!

For now, I think that is about it. There is hopefully more to come later on how I am trying to prepare Daddy for a week on his own with Weans (just finished typing up Emma's week long eating schedule). I am also sure that my first week-long business trip will do wonders for my back and forth feelings about being a working mom, so I am sure I will have a mother-related-meltdown shortly! Stay tuned!

Carrot Top

In Emma's "drunken" stooper tonight at dinner, Emma decided that throwing her food was a really good and funny thing to do. Check out where she managed to throw one of her carrots...

I promise this wasn't staged. :)