Christmas in Review

In short, I was pleasantly surprised :)

WHEW!

I cooked a ton of good food, and most importantly my dairy-allergic brother in law didn't get sick once!!!!, everyone stayed over several nights, we had a family Twister tournament (seriously, my mom was beating my brother!!!), we played cards till 1am accompanied by lots of good things to drink, we broke out my Office Clue game, and we had our annual knock down drag out Monopoly shootout. We had family prayer time and enjoyed a beautiful Christmas Eve service together. And everyone loved Banana and Bert.

I think everyone was comfortable and happy here, and that makes us very happy. YAY!!

I did test BFN on Christmas Eve, and maybe it's not a healthy coping mechanism, but I didn't think twice about it (what else did I expect?) and allowed myself to have nary an empty glass for most of the time my family was here. In that same vein, I allowed myself a break from my Infertility Cure ban on coffee and alcohol and chocolate and white flour.... I trusted the validity of that BFN, but it was a little unsettling that I didn't start a new cycle till yesterday. Maybe it was the excitement/good "stress" of having everyone here.

The only major snafoo is that we went about a half hour away from here for dinner on Monday night, and when we returned we found that Bert and Banana had eaten 1 lb of peppermint bark (yes, including milk/dark chocolate), two tins of my mom's cookies, and one of the two gingerbread houses we had decorated. Gulp. Banana had already thrown up twice, but we had to give Bert hydrogen peroxide to make him throw up (on the advice of the emergency vet over the phone). We were pretty freaked out, since chocolate can be deadly to dogs. Banana was still looking awful yesterday morning (she threw up twice more), and her abdomen and chest area were so bloated that they were pretty hard to the touch. You know, like the symptoms for deadly dog bloat. Double gulp. We took her to the vet first thing yesterday morning, and the vet didn't expect dog bloat (the twisting of the stomach kind), but Banana has pretty dehydrated. So the vet kept her at her office yesterday and gave her a shot of antivomit meds and a liter of fluids. Luckily for us, Banana was well enough to come home at 7:30pm last night!!

Except that Banana pulled out the catheter port that the vet had bandaged up in case she needed more fluids this morning. So we look over at one point last night and see that there is blood all over the pillow and blanket she was sitting on. Me and Mr. A had to unbandage her arm and pull out the catheter/needle, and rebandage it. I have never been queasy (and I suspect that maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was bleeding by that point, too- thank you CD1), but I had to go out on the deck for a few minutes. Luckily, the vet said this morning that her arm should heal fine and that she should be back to normal digestive-wise in a few days. Crisis averted!!!

So all in all, it was a great Christmas. I have other reflections on the continued failure to achieve pregnancy, but that will be for another post. Today should be a relaxing day- have to keep an eye on Banana, but I can get some cleaning up done from the blessed din of having 8 adults over for several days!!!