Wallpaper and Wish lists

Well yesterday I put up 90% of the wallpaper border in Nadia's room, and this morning I finished that project. The photo on BRU showed it being placed in the middle of the wall (like where a chair rail would go), and although I thought that would like a little better than at the top, I didn't trust myself to be able to keep a straight line. It's easy when you have the edge of the wall/ceiling to use as a guide! After I was done I inspected my work and found only 3 places where you can tell that one piece stops and another starts. Not bad considering I was putting up small pieces at a time. I hadn't put up any wall border in the last house, but in the first house I bought (2001) I did put up wallpaper border in the nursery (that was never used), our bedroom, and the kitchen. There was no wallpaper or border in this house so it's not like there's an excess of it now. Actually I found some of the kind I used on that first house in the kitchen, and it would match here so I am trying to decide if I'll use it or not. I need to see if I have enough first of all.

Yesterday I also worked on our Christmas wish list. 99% of it relates to Nadia, LOL. My family exchanges wish lists which I greatly appreciate. It's always special when you think of a good idea on your own, but sometimes that's really hard and it's nice to know what books Drayton wants or what computer games Maurice wants or whatever. So I will throw it out there for suggestions before I send off our list to my family, what toys do you recommend for a child ages 6-12 months? It is nice that Nadia's birthday is 6 months away from Christmas so we can just ask for clothing that will fit in the next several months and toys for now and then for her bday we can ask for the next 6 months. Of course when she gets bigger it won't be as big of a deal, but kids change SO quickly at this stage of life! Paul assembled the johnny jump up today, and she seemed to like it although she wasn't jumping in it yet.

This morning I planned to mow the lawn while she napped. Well unfortunately she only slept in her crib 15 minutes, and I didn't know it. So I kept mowing while Paul was caring for her, and I assumed she was sleeping. The lawn hadn't been mowed in 2 weeks, and we had a lot of rain so it needed mowed. We are supposed to start getting a frost at night so I think the grass shouldn't grow as quickly. It took me 55 minutes to mow 95% of the lawn. I wasn't quite done when it ran out of gas. It would be faster if we had kept our riding mower, but this is much better exercise! I prefer productive exercise rather than just doing exercise for the sake of exercise although I do need to start doing that as well since I don't get enough in my daily routine. I hadn't asked Paul to do anything around the house over the last week in light of his midterm exams, so it's been nice to have him doing a few projects around the house today like installing a towel ring in our bathroom for a hand towel and doing some spackling.

We were supposed to have 3 guests for dinner tonight (two profs from my university plus one was bringing her dh) however on Thursday night one called to cancel so then I asked the other one if we could postpone. Unfortunately I had purchased a whole bunch of salad stuff that morning at the grocery store and some garlic bread for our dinner. One was going to bring lasagna and the other dessert. The garlic bread is no big deal as it will keep in the freezer, but it will be a challenge for Paul & I to eat all the salad stuff before it spoils. Oh well. Ironically the same thing happened to me in June only that time my dinner guests were 3 adults and 4 kids and they cancelled the morning of so I had a lot more purchased/cooked. I am not doing well in terms of my dinner guests actually coming over. Our social life is 99% of the time just we three so I am trying to invite people over more often but it's not working out so far. The ones who were going to come in June have been rescheduled for November (but only 2 adults and 2 kids this time) so hopefully it will actually happen this time! I enjoy having people over for dinner and playing games together, but it happens only a very few times a year in part because we didn't know many people where we used to live and of course that's even more true now that we have moved. That's another factor of Nadia not being able to go to work with me. In Sept I had lunch at Applebee's with a colleague one day (with Nadia), but lunch with a friend is no longer possible. Well Nadia is a most wonderful companion even though our conversations are not very intellectually stimulating, LOL.

Getting the mail was not a very pleasant experience today as there was a bill in there for $558 for Nadia's time in the intensive care. I will be calling the insurance company about this next week that is for sure! I hope we don't really end up having to pay this. We have an HMO (by choice- we could have Blue Shield if we wanted) so I don't understand why we're getting this bill as we were in the hospital that is owned by the same company as the HMO. Of course Nadia is worth every penny, but I really felt they kept her there MANY days more than necessary. The reason she was put in there was because of her breathing issues that they thought were due to an infection. She only received treatment (CPAP) for those breathing issues for a few HOURS that is it, and she didn't have an infection. Many babies are born smaller than her and many have jaundice and aren't in NICU. I really was very seriously wanting to pull her out against the doctor's wishes while we were there, and of course getting a bill like this is just stirring all that up again within me. Well hopefully we won't have to pay, but if we do, she is of course worth it. I just will give serious consideration to switching our insurance next summer as then we can also go to a different hospital - one that is closer to where we live now. I guess it will depend on if we decide to do IVF again as this insurance does pay some of the costs of that whereas Blue Shield doesn't. I know the charges were astronomical, but we pay $1,400 a year for health insurance which is 10% of the premium so that means our premium is $14,000 a year and over the past few years aside from fertility stuff I haven't been to the doctor hardly at all, and it's not like they paid most of the fertility stuff. We paid for most of it. It's just they paid a little bit of it compared to Blue Shield wouldn't even pay for blood work. I know it's only one "problem" in our economy which seems to have bigger issues right now, but healthcare is a mess - the bills that are charged are just out of control, health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, and so many are without any health insurance at all. I think limiting the amount a doctor can be sued for would be one small way to help so that medical malpractice premiums would be lower and hopefully this would translate to lower doctor bills. I am not sure what else needs to be done, but it's a mess!

Last night is the first night since Nadia has been home from the hospital that I can't tell you how much she slept. I know the first stretch was 5 hours and the second was 3 1/4 hours, but after that I have no idea. She woke up at 4:00 and didn't want to go back to sleep after I nursed her. She was ready to get up for the day. Well that was just TOO early. So at 4:50 I threw in the towel and shut her door and shut my door so I wouldn't hear her cry. I panicked when I woke up at 6:50 as I could hear sounds from her room and I felt awful at the thought maybe she had cried for 2 hours??? I rushed in only to see she was smiling and cooing at her butterflies (mobile). Whew... so I have no idea what happened during those two hours - how long she cried or how long she slept, but I do know she didn't cry the whole time as she was happy when I went in to get her. If my door is open I hear her if she coughs or coos or cries, but if my door is shut it's very muffled. It's good to know that if I am really tired and she refuses to go back to sleep that I can just leave her be and she'll be okay. :-) Of course first I made sure she had a full belly and dry diaper, but I was not getting up for the day at 4:00am on a Saturday morning. No way, Jose! I need more sleep that that.