Pottery, faiwy pincess and a big fall

Abbey=not calm person, but I have found therapy. Expensive therapy but it's I guess cheaper than real therapy. I went with Elisa to As You Wish a few weeks ago and l o v e d it. So then I went there again on a date with Ben, Nicole & Gordon. Nicole and Gordon's marriage is strong enough that they could paint something together but ours is not so we painted separate things. They painted a super cute Christmas cookie plate that took lots of detail work. Ben did a (take a guess) football chip & dip thing and then I did mugs to coax Phx into fall weather. When I went with Elisa, she did a cutie frame (see her blog) and I did a platter. And a bowl when we went to finish... and I'm eyeing the cookie jar there... Anyway, it's so calming to sit there for several hours and focus on painting and worry about those details, it's a little break from my constant stress outs. And as an added bonus you get to sit there for several hours having good conversation which is proably the best part. Just so you know, Elisa did the SUPER cute handwriting on the platter (eat and be merry if the flash is messing with it), AND she had the idea to outline the flowers with the black which totally made all the difference. I did my own handwriting on the hot chocolate mugs and of course messed it up! It says "not chocolate" on one and a smudged letter on the other. Either way, it's my new favorite thing to do and I will fill my house with fabulously imperfect perfect pottery.

My mom bought Kyndal a little purple fairy dress up in Pagosa and I finally took some pictures. Sadly Ben wasn't home, it wasn't where I wanted to take them, and it was too dark outside. So. More of those to come. They were supposed to be 18 month pics, not 21 month, but we'll tell her they are so at least she knows we cared. Here's one that was sweet and someday I'll do the rest.

And last a little warning to those of you that have counter-height tables and chairs (barstools). Kids can suddenly, without warning, have weird little brain farts and take flying leaps off of them! Kyndal refuses to sit in a high chair, so for the past 3 months she's stood at our counter-height table with us totally fine. She stands on the chair, doesn't mess around too much, eats her food, colors, whatever. I sit with her of course, because it still concerns me even though she does fine. Monday night though she was messing around with her bowl, and she just plain fell right off the chair. She didn't even have time to catch herself which turned out to be the biggest blessing. She just went down full body on the tile floor smacking her head good and hard on the side. Had she tried to catch herself she would have either broken little bones or caught a foot and gone down head first. She was screaming obviously, but I got her calmed down sitting in her room with her. Then Ben came home, and we tried to get her to talk to us. No responding, just saying "no, no no" to everything. So we gave her some Motrin (after checking her pupils) and sat down to dinner. Then she puked up a little tiny bit, so we scooted on down to the urgent care. Urgent care doc doesn't want to get sued, so she tells me she thinks K has fractured her skull. Ok, me queen of worst case scenario, hadn't even gone there. She also tells me "she is very irritable from what I can tell, which is a big warning sign". Lady, Kyndal spazzes at the doc getting weighed and all that normally. Even though that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard a doctor say who had seen her for a total of 37 seconds, I still started getting crazed in the head. So I immediately start crying, Ben's pissed off at the urgent care doctor for not helping at all (the lady touched the side of K's head and that was the extent of her examination), and Kyndal's talking a little bit to us relatively calm. We sat in the car for a few mins trying to decide if we should go to the ER or not, if it would just be a big waste of time and money and Kyndal would be fine (still no pupil weirdness and she was talking some). Well I couldn't not know for sure if she was ok, so off we went. We're in the parking lot walking towards the door and she BARFED all the flip over. When I say barfed, I would say that was an understatement. It went all over me, in my purse, down my front, on her whole self, and made a good 2ft in diameter circle of puke on the asphalt. It was truly an unbelievable amount. So now we're both seriously for real freaked out now. Once Kyndal got her clothes off and washed off, she stopped saying yuck yuck yuck constantly and was basically back to herself. It was bedtime so she was tired, but pretty normal. I'm still not able to control myself, but Ben stepped in beautifully and was normal with her and could hold her and talk to her and he was my hero that night. I couldn't hold her without starting to cry again. Changing her little diaper was even hard. The ER doc wanted a CT scan done (he told us this while calm which was a very welcome change from the stinkin' urgent care doc), so we had to wait a bit for that. Good thing I'm preg and couldn't go with her to hold her while the CT scan was being done, that was even hard for Ben and I don't think I need to explain why. He is a really pretty tender-hearted person and it was tough to see her terrified little face and still have to hold her head still. We headed back into the little holding lobby, and Kyndal immediately started climbing on the chairs, trying to walk across and over them. She's babbling on like mad, asking for water and generally right back to her old self. Doc came in after an hour or so and told us that the CT was completely clean-he didn't think she even had a concussion at all. Well, I guess somewhere deep down I knew that she was ok, but spending what will be a huge hospital bill on piece of mind is well worth it to me. He said that she barfed only because of pain (since it was a full hour after she'd fallen-and concussions would cause that immediately I guess), but she's not quite old enough to tell us exactly what's going on with her. Ben put it best by clarifying the lack of response to our "what does this animal say" questions by asking me if I really feel like chatting when I need to puke. Good point, no I sure don't. We got home, gave her a warm bath and put her to bed (with me still freaking out that something would go wrong while she slept, but I tried to keep it to myself). She woke up the next morning completely happy, very hungry and not even a bruise where her head hit. Now I'll sit and wait for that big hospital bill to come (miraculously we haven't paid any of our ins deductible this year, so it'll be saved all for this!,,,any one know the going rate for a CT scan??) that cleared up what we already knew, but at least now we know for sure. She does have a brain! I joke, but it really was scary. This was our first real head bonk as parents and it was no dang fun. I keep replaying it over and over in my head, seeing her there on the floor and it upsets me all over again. You more experienced parents are probably reading this saying "yeah, yeah she was fine", but it's different for us being new. Kind of like the roseola incident I suppose. All apologies that this post is so long, sure hope you guys like readin'!