TTT: Season 2, Episode 28

1. Last week I was on the mend from a case of mastitis. In fact, I had just one day left of my ten day course of antibiotics and I was feeling just fine. That afternoon, though, I noticed a red, swollen area on my C-section incision. Hoping it was just an ingrown hair or something, I headed to my doctor on Friday morning for a check-up of the mastitis. She seemed to think that was better but wasn't too happy about the way the incision looked. In fact, she pressed on it with the blunt end of a sterile cotton swab and it sure enough...well, I won't go into the gory details. Let's just say, it provided her with plenty of substance to take a culture and send it off to their lab. She put me on another seven days of a different antibiotic, since obviously the one I was taking for the mastitis didn't manage to keep the incision from getting infected. I headed home and started taking those antibiotics on Friday night. By Sunday afternoon, guess what was back? The mastitis. Full on--fever, chills, aching, redness, misery. I immediately called my doctor and she was shocked that it would be able to come back with the new antibiotic I was on for the incision. After a little bit of investigating, we discovered that my pharmacy gave me the wrong prescription. Seriously! You hear horror stories about that happening to people, but I certainly didn't ever think it would happen to me. They had given me a very light dose of the antibiotic I had previously taken for the mastitis. Like a child's dosage. Thank God it wasn't some other medicine that could have caused me a lot of harm. So, we switched to a different pharmacy and she called in the strongest dose of Augmentin that you can take in pill form. Good thing, because her nurse called me back on Tuesday and told me that the culture they took from the incision was positive for a staph infection. Of course it was! I'm on day four of this new antibiotic and considering all of the not-so-fun side effects of taking antibiotics for more than two weeks, I'm ready to be done. And really, really, really praying that all of this will clear up. It's terribly frustrating but I keep trying to remind myself that these are common things that happen to women post pregnancy. And find a little solace in the fact that hey, maybe it's been really not cool here at the end, but hey, I've never had morning sickness, don't have a single stretch mark on my body, hardly even look or feel pregnant until the last few months, and lose any weight I gain in less than two weeks. I'll call it a major trade off! Though I'm not lying...it would be nice to add "never had mastitis" and "never got an infection" to that list too! Oh well, let's not get greedy.

2. On the parenting side of things, I have a major horn to toot for my middle child this week. We've known that Reagan was ready to potty train for a few months now. In fact, just before we left Lubbock, he was starting to get the hang of going #2 on the potty. When we moved down to The Woodlands, things took a major back seat to finding a new house, moving in, getting things set up, and of course, getting through the pregnancy. This week, however, I guess he decided that he was tired of waiting for mom and dad to help him train and just decided to do it on his own. For real. As in he's worn undies for the past three days and hasn't had a single accident. Over the weekend he started telling us when he needed to go to the bathroom, but Mark's dad was in town, we were out and about a whole bunch, and none of us were willing to let him go without a diaper just because he said he wanted undies. We've gone 100% undies during the day since Monday and like I said, he's done perfect! I guess when you figure it out in your mind, it just all makes sense. And actually, from my parents' stories, I potty trained in much of the same way. Just up and decided one day that I wasn't wearing undies anymore and that was that. It was also right at the end of my mom's pregnancy with my brother, Andy. Maybe there's something to that. Who knows? He sure has loved the whole "big brother" thing and maybe this is just an extension of feeling grown up. And growing up, he definitely is. Not a day goes by that I don't look over at him and think Where did my little baby Rudy go!?! I sure am proud of that little bruiser.

3. One of  the unique aspects of The Woodlands is that it's a community built within nature. Not a massive, bulldozed plot of land, cleared out to build a community. Really, everywhere you go, you're amongst the trees. For example, driving down one of the main drags, the only way you know that there's a gas station or McDonald's or oil change place is by the carved and painted wooden signs poking out from the trees, telling you to turn into the next entrance. And no visible  power lines. They're all buried underground. It really is a beautiful community, but when you keep that much of nature preserved, it's a guarantee that all the woodland-type creatures are going to be completely comfortable hanging around. Squirrels, deer, possums, rabbits...we see all of these things with regularity around here. But we certainly weren't expecting to see this fella' in our backyard!

I'm pretty sure I've never seen a live armadillo before. Sure, living in West Texas for so long, I saw plenty of dead ones on the side of the road, but never any just walking around, taking in the day. My parents had stopped by to check on me (this was Monday morning, right after the mastitis had kicked back in) and we were all sitting around the kitchen table. My dad spied this guy outside the kitchen window and we all snuck out onto the back deck to watch him snoop around. Very cool for the boys to see. And me too! It's a perfect ending to a "You know you live in Texas when..." statement!