Together Again in Heaven: November in a Nutshell

November was much like October in the fact that Will seemed to wear a hospital gown more than his own clothes, and Emma preferred to sleep upright in a rocking chair rather than in her own bed.

Will also spent a lot of time looking like this.

He just couldn't seem to stay warm. Something about having a foot long tube with a corkscrew on each end to hold it in place stuck between his kidney and bladder gave him the shakes. Actually, just describing it is giving me the shakes. Let's move on! The day before Thanksgiving he had his last surgery that successfully removed the stone and the awful tube. We had a lot to be thankful for on Thanksgiving morning and started out in great moods.

Somewhere between the start of the Thanksgiving Day parade and seeing Santa on TV, Will started having those same old pains again. We were completely disheartened, as we were told just yesterday that finally the stone was gone. I called my Dad to come over and watch the girls while I took a quick shower (think 60 seconds) and tried to mentally prepare myself for Thanksgiving away from the girls and hospital grade turkey and gravy. Several minutes after my dad got to our house, the pain miraculously subsided. A couple of minutes after that, Will peed out a giant stone. The doctor on call that day said that there are usually fragments left from the surgery. Good to know, and I'd hate to see what the actual stone looked like because that fragment was pure evil! Needless to say, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving after that, and our entire perspective for the day went to a new level of happiness and relief. Here are the girls below on Thanksgiving with their Great Grandparents, in town from Oklahoma.

Aunt Jane was also in town for the weekend from Ohio, so it was wonderful seeing her as well.

Aunt Jane even devoted the day after Thanksgiving to babysitting the girls so that Will and I could do some Christmas shopping. The girls loved it and I am assuming that Aunt Jane swore off ever having children and slept like a rock when she went home.

Since that weekend, every time we sing "The Wheels on the Bus" song we have had to add a new verse: "Aunt Jane on the bus plays pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, Aunt Jane on the bus plays pat-a-cake, all through the town!" The added bonus of this song verse is that Emma thinks pat-a-cake is referring to her Uncle Pat and Auntie Cate.

If laughter is the best medicine, Lucy doled her share of it. Some of my favorite overheard conversations included:

-Lucy: "Dad, I want an American Girl doll for Christmas."

Will: "What are American Girl dolls?"

Lucy: "Look it up on the iPad Dad."

-Lucy: "Dad, it feels like there is a bird in my bumbee."

Will: "Let it out then."

Lucy: {tooooot}

I also overheard Lucy whispering to Will, "Don't tell mom" and then giggle uncontrollably. Later when I asked Will what I wasn't supposed to know he told me that Lucy loves telling "poop" jokes to him when he tucks her in for the night. I told him to give me an example joke, and he shook his head. I told him he is on my team, not hers and to tell me the joke. Now I wish he didn't, because I am both highly disturbed and in awe of her creativity. Maybe this is an example of how children gain different things from each parent, or maybe I should put a stop to it immediately. I am also wondering if this is something that I need to let her get out of her system (quite literally) so that she can move on from this stage. Ah, parenthood.

On a lighter note, we were finishing up lunch one afternoon when Lucy became inspired with this idea: "Dad, if you let me have ice cream your kidney stone will come out faster." I thought this was hilarious so I immediately posted her comment on Facebook. Big mistake. Ever since that day, every time we laugh at something funny that Lucy said she tells us to "Post it on Facebook!"

One particularly sunny and unusually warm Sunday this past month I was feeling down and in the dumps. When was our life going to get easy I kept wondering. It felt like the house was closing in on me and I got extremely irritated when I looked out of the dining room window and could hardly see the sunshine through the dirt. I decided then and there it was time to wash the windows. Our neighbors probably saw me out there on the ladder and thought to themselves, "Wow, her life must be so together. Who has time to wash windows?" Ironic, isn't it? It ended up being a great activity though because it got me out in the beautiful weather and thinking about something other than our rotten luck these days. Will had a hard time sitting on the sidelines as you can see in the below picture. I came around the corner after putting the screens back on the front windows and caught him. He told me he was still following doctor's orders - Lucy was the one washing the windows, not him. I can see right through you Will Timmerman - like a clean window on a sunny day!

My neighbors may be fooled, but trust me, we did little to no cleaning this past month. Mostly we spent it caring for each other, trying to sleep, and dealing with the loss of Will's grandpa. Here Lucy is below arranging and rearranging a flower arrangement from Great Grandpa J's funeral. She spent over an hour in deep concentration with those flowers.

Lucy also has a long attention span with play doh. On Thanksgiving morning when Will was curled up in the fetal position, Lucy spent over two hours at the table with play doh. Here she is below, proudly displaying her artwork. A psychologist might try to tell me that the red tube with purple circles represents Lucy's subconscious mind trying to work out Will's issues with kidney stones - the red representing an inflamed ureter and the purple circles the stones. Let me be the first to tell you that what you see is simply a cake with sprinkles.