Farewell, 2007...

2007 has been a weird year. It started with Max tearing her ACL (or the canine equivalent thereof) and needing really expensive surgery with a 12 week recovery during which she was confined to the area under the dining room table, and we had to take her out on a leash with a sling around her waist, and she couldn't go up and down stairs or get on the furniture. Some dogs are crate trained. Ours is couch trained, which made the furniture thing especially hard on everyone. And I was in my last trimester of pregnancy at this point, which made the whole taking-the-dog-out-on-the-ice-with-the-crazy-sling-thing even more treacherous.

Then in February, our furnace died. If I'm going to spend that much money on something, I want to at least be able to show it off when people come over. But no one wants to see your new furnace when they come over. *sigh* While it was being repaired, MG and I hung out in the kitchen for a couple of days, quilts over the door between the kitchen and the living room to keep in the heat, fireplace burning, coats on... It was interesting. She was 18 months old at the time.

Oh, and meanwhile I was itching. A lot. So much so that it was interfering with my ability to sleep. I still have scars on my feet. Turns out I had Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy. Trust me, when you're 7 or 8 months pregnant, and you Google your pregnancy complication du jour, and you find an "In Memory Of..." page on the page that talks about babies who have died from what you've got? That's a Very Bad Day. Of course, I can't get something normal, something known. I have to get some random rare complication. The specialist basically said, "Beats me, we don't know a thing about it." Nice.

So, February and March were a bit tense. BJ and I had to decide, with the help of our OB and the profound lack of help from the specialist, how long to let the pregnancy go on before we induced labor (because ICP can cause stillbirth, if the pregnancy is allowed to continue to its natural end, or so they think, even though they don't know anything about it...). Induce too early, and the baby can have the problems associated with prematurity. Induce too late, and, well, there may not be a baby.

It's not nearly as scary, sitting here watching Claire wave and smile as it was at the time, hormonal and sleep deprived and not knowing that everything would be okay. We decided to induce at 37 weeks - the lower limit of "full term," which would've been March 21. But then I got this headache on the 13th, and it wouldn't go away. I remembered that symptom from my pregnancy with MG, so I went to the doctor's office and my blood pressure was ridiculous, and he said, "Meet you at the hospital..."

I spazzed. I have birth-o-phobia I think, which is ironic, considering that I've only been in labor for 5 hours of my life, and I have two kids. I mean, I'm good at birth. My labor with MG was 3 hours, 45 minutes. My labor with Claire? 1 hour and 9 minutes. But every time, I'm pretty sure that I'm going to die. So, I actually spent more time crying over being induced than I spent in labor. Some of my friends who have spent entire weekends in labor don't like me anymore. I was just glad that the doctor didn't spike her and yell, "Touchdown!"

One of my favorite teachers from high school died in April. My sister Jill got married. We adjusted to having two kids. The rest of March and most of April are kind of a blur. There went my plan to have MG potty trained before the new baby came. MG was not potty trained in March or April.

In May I started this blog. A lot of family stuff started happening, and my dad and my bonus mom ended up getting divorced. That has been really hard. Harder, in many ways, than when my parents originally got divorced. MG was not potty trained in May.

In June, I got thrown out of a liquor store. I found a drunk guy in a shopping cart. BJ had a birthday. These incidents are not related. MG was not potty trained in June.

In July, we lost our minds and drove to Washington DC. No one told us that it's 400 degrees and humid in DC in July. Claire chose that week to stop sleeping 23 hours a day. We lived. MG was not potty trained in July.

In August, MG turned two. I freaked out over lead paint in toys, precipitated by the Doomsday Duck. MG was not potty trained in August.

September was filled with rage, at vacuum salesmen and Bill Maher, mostly. I tried to steal Dear Abby's job, but failed. We went to the circus. MG was not potty trained in September.

October came and went. Mary Grace was Little Orphan Annie, Claire was Yoda. Little Orphan Annie was not potty trained in October.

November. I tried to steal Bobby McFarin's job and failed. We changed the light bulb which became a kitchen remodel. No, of course it's not done. We got the flu. MG may be the first kid in history who is trained to puke in the potty before she's trained to use the potty in the regular fashion.

December went by in a whizz of lights and sugar and music and rum punch. Claire and I went to St. Thomas. MG started singing songs, and learning them faster than I can keep up. Claire started crawling and using sign. We saw Wicked. We got yelled at at FAO Schwartz. Unless she's planning to take care of it in the next couple hours, MG was not potty trained in December either. Oh well.

It's been an eventful year. I guess you can cram a lot in when you're not sleeping much, huh? I wonder what 2008 will bring. Maybe MG will be potty trained by this time next year! Claire will be walking and talking by then, I'm sure. Mimi will be married. I just scanned through my calendar for '08, and other than the birthdays and anniversaries that repeat every year, we don't have anything scheduled yet. It's an open book, and that's kind of exciting.

I hope that it's a wonderful year for all of us, and for all of you. Happy new year, and thanks for being part of our family!