Halloween, Flooring, and A Birthday

We had a fun Halloween, even though the weather was unseasonably warm and a bit rainy!  Judith went to houses on 2 blocks before she tired out, and she got a decent amount of candy.  She was so excited to trick or treat, and kept asking me if she could "go to Halloween"!  She's still in love with her Sofia the First costume, and I have a feeling she might insist on wearing it to her birthday party in December (I'm planning a Sofia theme for her).

Over the weekend, she visited her great-grandparents and did some trick or treating with them.  That worked out perfectly, because she was able to stay with my parents for a bit while John & I stayed at the house and worked on some other things while the contractor finished laying our wood floors.  I'm glad that project is done, and the flooring looks great!  Eventually we want to rip the carpeting off the steps and redo that, and I'd love to lay wood in both bedrooms.  We also want to put tile in the upstairs bathroom (to get rid of the hideous '80s linoleum).  This'll likely be an ongoing thing, but it'll help update things!

While the contractors were here, I decided to work on the laundry that was piling up.  Let's just say I learned a good lesson about not overloading the washing machine, because I managed to cause the suspension rod to disconnect, and it created the most awful thudding in the washer.  I had a pretty large load to begin with, but there must've been more stray clothes in the washer before I dumped the basket in so it was a really heavy load.  Luckily John came to the rescue on Sunday and was able to fix it, and now it's running much better!  I was sweating bullets trying to figure out how to get all of my laundry done without a functioning washer, and kept thinking that if we had to call a repair person that it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to fix.

Yesterday we celebrated another birthday!  Miss Lady is now 8 years old, and acts like she's still 4.  I noticed that she's becoming a bit arthritic, particularly when it's been so cold, so it makes playing a bit of a challenge at times.  I've also noticed that she's starting to slow down a bit, but when she has a ball, stick, or other toy to fetch she goes full throttle, and shows the lively spark that's always been there!  It's hard to believe the dogs are already 8, but we're thankful that they're healthy and doing well despite their "senior dog" status.

Lab Results and Flooring

The carpet and really ugly '80s linoleum are gone from the lower level, and the hardwood is down!  It looks absolutely fantastic, and I'm really glad that we went this route!  We have a big delay with the upstairs because we were a box of wood short, and naturally the place we purchased it from didn't have any more boxes in this specific warehouse.  Instead of finishing the whole project this weekend and restoring the house to a less chaotic state, we have to wait until next weekend to wrap this up.  It's not ideal, but at least we can move things around in the lower level and get most of that back to normal.


On a separate note, I called the clinic yesterday and got Judith's test results.  Her team was at the big CF conference last week, so I wasn't able to get the results from her chest x-ray within a couple days like I normally can.  Good news is there is no change.  X-ray looks good, and they didn't note any significant blockages in her intestines (if they could even see anything).  Her throat cultures are growing her usual MRSA, but we're still going to monitor instead of treating aggressively at this point.

Updates!

It's been quite a few days since I last updated.  Not a lot has changed, honestly.  Judith is doing well with her new glasses, although I think it's going to take a while for her to learn how to put them on herself.  She gets rather irate if she pulls them off and I try to encourage her to fix them on her own.  Ah, 2.5 year olds!

Things are kind of stagnant right now on the CF front, and I feel like we're in a small state of limbo.  Her annual appointment is getting closer and closer, and if I said I wasn't nervous to hear what her GI system looks like I'd be lying.  She's pooping, and it seems like it's where they want it to be, but I thought that the last time, too, and we still ended up having to flush her out at home.  Knock on wood, she's doing well on the respiratory side, so that's a definite plus.  I'm bracing myself for a rough cold/flu/RSV season, and have already heard reports that RSV is off to a strong and bad start.  Not exactly comforting news, but I do feel a little better about it since she's going to be 3 in a couple months.  That's probably also me expressing a false sense of security, but we'll see.

We've had some insane weather over the past week.  Unseasonable humidity, coupled with high temperatures, has helped to create a toddler monster.  The rest of us were cranky because it felt so gross outside (and we had removed our window unit air conditioners back in September), and Judith was twice as bad.  The air quality was good, and I stayed on top of her salt intake to make sure she got enough, and we made it through.  It finally feels like fall again, now that the cold front moved through (literally a couple hours ago)!

The house is also starting to move into a state of chaos, as we have boxes and totes all over the place.  We're slowly packing up as much as we can so we don't have to scramble to do it all at once.  The flooring will be arriving sometime next week, and the week after is when things will get extra chaotic.  I hope the weather is decent, because Judith and I will likely be spending a lot of time at the park while John is working on stuff at home during the install.  I'm pretty excited, though, because I'm more than ready to get rid of this old, ratty carpeting!

Miscellaneous Musings

We had a pretty good weekend!  Judith continues to do well on the health front, so that's always great news.  I've been following the story of the young girl in Philadelphia at CHOP who has CF and is awaiting a lung transplant, and have done a lot of thinking about the disease, how close we are to getting the new drugs through the study phases and hopefully into the hands of patients, and even feeling sad because her condition is deteriorating so quickly.  It's yet another reminder of how much I hate this disease, and wish no one had to go through it.

On a lighter note, Judith and I had even more time together since John had a work day at church, so we took a trip to Target in the morning.  Our closest Target does get busy, but it's usually not super cramped and is often a pleasant shopping experience.  But Saturday's experience was even more awesome because we went right as they opened and only had to "share" the store with a few other shoppers.  We were able to get everything we needed and pay quickly, and were out of the store in under a half hour (score!).  I was planning to take Judith to the park in the morning so we could avoid the heat of the day, but it was pretty cloudy and things were still fairly wet so we skipped it.

Sunday we went to our choir picnic.  Go figure Judith refused to eat most things, but did manage to eat some cake for us.  I'm just grateful she ate something that was calorie-dense!  She was being a bit of a pill, and wanted to be on the move constantly because it was a new environment with lots of things to explore.  She wasn't too bad, but I could tell when it was time to leave and get her home for a delayed nap.  Judith also had her first experience with splitting maple seeds and putting them on her nose, and I even joined in on the fun at one point (Judith declared I was a "silly mommy" because of that).

Today was definitely an indoor day.  It rained for most of the day, and while the air temperatures were decent the humidity was up.  The highlight was meeting with the contractor to get an estimate for our new flooring.  We have the install date set, so now all we need to do is go shopping for something we like!  Both John and I feel relieved that we finally have this scheduled and it will be done by the end of the year.  We're going to do the lower level like we planned, but we're also going to do the upstairs hallway since that carpeting is the same age as the carpeting downstairs.  We were thinking about doing the steps, but we decided to wait until maybe next year to do those, and we'll probably also do the upstairs bathroom and both bedrooms.  The carpeting there isn't as old, but there are already some colorful stains on them thanks to Judith and her Pediasure (at least when she vomits it on the new floor, it'll be easy to clean up...).

Flooring

I filed our taxes today, and was pleased that we're getting about the same amount in our refund as last year.  We are pretty excited, because we are going to make a small upgrade in our home, something that should benefit Judith and make our lives a little easier.

John thinks the carpeting in our living room and dining room is original to the house, so that would mean it's well over 20 years old.  I'm not so sure about that, but it's definitely possible.  Over the past 5 years, it's really started to look sad, and in the last year, year and a half it's gotten much worse.  Between general wear and tear from us, moving and rearranging furniture, and the dogs using the same trail between the living room and dining room as a drag strip, frays have developed, the carpet is bunching in places, and bald spots are starting to appear.  It's definitely time to do something.

For a few years, we've discussed what we would like to do with the flooring.  We tossed around the idea of getting new carpet, doing hardwood in the living room and ceramic tile in the kitchen and dining room, or doing wood laminate throughout the whole lower level, save for the powder room (the tile flooring in there is still in really good shape, and was only a couple years old when we moved in).  We're going to go with wood laminate, since we feel it'll be easiest for us to maintain and to keep clean.

It's going to be really, really nice to not have to try to get urine stains out of the carpet when one of the dogs misses the newspaper, and it should be easier to clean up all of the stray strands of fur that are constantly shed.  It's also going to be nice to know that we're getting rid of allergens and who knows what else that might be festering in the carpet or padding.  One of my fears is we're going to rip the carpet up and find some really gross stains from pet accidents (our own dogs and the former owners' animals), or worse, mold.  I have mold allergies, but I'm more concerned about the impact that any crud could have on Judith down the road.  Granted we don't keep her in a super sterile bubble all the time, but it will be nice knowing that our highest traffic areas won't be harboring an insane amount of dust, dander, and other miscellaneous things.  Also, it's going to spruce up our living space and make it look a little fresher and newer.

We're in the early stages of the process, and are only starting to look at styles we like, but I hope that we can move quickly with this and get everything installed soon.  Once we do that, we're going to start a bit of a clean out and reorganization of the spaces, and Judith will get her very own table and chair set so she has a comfortable space to color and do some crafts.