Doing the Happy Dance!

I admit that I was rather stressed out yesterday. I felt completely overwhelmed when we were getting in the car to go to the dietician appointment. Both kids were screaming their heads off, and I was feeling the same way on the inside about NOT wanting to go to another doctor appointment. I kept reminding myself of the verse "Do everything without complaining" because I really was in a complaining type mood. When the phone rang and I saw "Beth" on the caller ID, I was thinking it was my Dean. It hit me later that I don't have her number in my phone. It was my neighbor (same first name), but when I saw "Beth"  my heart started racing as I thought I was going to get the verdict about whether I am teaching next semester or not. That reaction made me aware of the tension this time of being in suspense is creating within me. Also, Paul called me as we were walking to the car in the hospital's parking lot to tell me the IVF nurse had called him and asked me to call her back. I immediately thought there must be a problem. I thought that because they never call him first. I was so nervous when I called her back, and it turned out she just wanted to know what pharmacy to call for the IVF meds. No big deal.

The dietician appointment went fine. I was nervous she was going to say we needed to go back on EleCare or something like that. In reality she said we needed to add 1 teaspoon of oil or margarine to each of Ian's four meals so that he will get more fat in his diet, and she said I need to add 2 ounces a day of meat or beans to his diet. She suggested buying packaged deli meat and putting that in the Magic Bullet. She said he needs more protein and zinc. She said we can use up the Duocal that we have, but we probably don't need to buy more if we start adding fat to all his meals. She said we might consider a liquid vitamin from Shaklee also. The biggest revelation yesterday was that he can have soybean oil and soy lecithin! Oh how I wish someone had told me that in May. They said no soy, and I thought that meant no soy of any kind. They meant no soy protein. I thought I had been reading labels really carefully, but I didn't inspect the Gerber rice cereal label becuase it had soybean oil and soy lecithin in it! Thankfully the rice cereal is still okay for him to have. This means he can have graham crackers and many other things that I had been banning because the word "soy" in some form was on the label.

Yesterday Ian only napped for 30 minutes, but today he slept for 1 hour! He's been off to a great start this month. On Tuesday he slept 45 minutes and then played for 15, and he also played/slept for a total of an hour on Wednesday. That means that 3 of the past 4 days he spent 1 hour in the crib without crying at all! Wow! Yesterday I let him cry for 10 minutes after his 30 minute nap and then had the timer go off. On Sunday I'm going to make sure he doesn't sleep in the nursery, even if it means I stay in the nursery myself after the choir sings.

The nap was great, but that's not why I'm doing the happy dance. This morning Paul asked me to edit the $500K NSF grant proposal that he and his advisor have been writing. In one section (that his advisor wrote) I read, "In addition, a senior graduate student, Paul Kennedy, will be on the project for about another year." It's up to her when he graduates, and she thinks it will be in about a year! When he started the program in August 2008 we were hoping he'd graduate as soon as May 2012 or no later than May 2013. That seems possible! Paul thinks he can graduate in August or December 2012. Reading that sentence was the BEST thing that happened this week in my life. I had been wanting Paul to ask her when she thought he might graduate. He didn't want to ask her, but I got my answer anyhow! The end is in sight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Another reason this is so encouraging is because she has recently been unhappy with her other doctoral student (who started in August 2007), and the other student has to switch to another advisor next semester and must graduate by August 2012 (which is very unlikely because she can't use any of the papers she wrote thus far).

There aren't many things that would put a bigger smile on my face right now, but one of them would be if Ian would start chewing. You'll probably hear me scream from the rooftops when my boy takes his first bite of something and swallows it down his throat!