Randoms

• Neck surgery- I am not as self conscious about neck as I thought I would be, partially because I think that the doctor did a great job stitching me up. The swelling seems to be mostly gone, but I'm still having some odd gagging moments on food which I never had before. I am putting Mederma on it at least twice a day and trying to keep it out of the sun as much as possible.

In the car after getting the stitches out 6 days after surgery

My neck today 17 days after surgery (plus a heat wrap because I did something funny to my back/neck/shoulder this morning)

• I went for my first run since November last Wednesday, and then again on Friday and again on Sunday. So far feeling pretty good and taking it fairly easy by only running 2 miles or so. I walk every .5 miles and I'm staying just under 12 minute miles. I'm pleasantly surprised that I have that level of fitness for running since it has been 8 months, but losing 25 pounds and doing Beachbody workouts instead probably play a big part! I am using this calf stretcher every day and still using the night splint because I don't want the plantar fasciitis to come back. So far so good (fingers crossed).

Worth every penny

• This past week we moved Wes to a forward-facing seat that we call the "big boy seat." He LOVES the fact that he is now facing the same way as Izzy, I love that I have more room for my knees in CP's car as it was getting very tight with his backward-facing seat, and it will be easier to people to get to the third row of seats on both sides of the car. I would have loved to have kept him backward facing for longer, but it wasn't really safe for me being scrunched in the front if we were to have an accident.

Happy Wes in his big boy car seat

• Last weekend we took the kids to the butterfly exhibit at the Chicago Botanic Gardens and they loved it. Poor Izzy wanted a butterfly to land on her, but no dice again this year.

Huge South American yellow moth

Wes was amazed that a butterfly landed on CP's hat

•  Last week we have been keeping the cats entertained (or annoyed) by a fidget spinner. Cocoa in particular will hit it with his paws and/or his face to try to stop it. It's pretty funny

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  Marshmallow hasn't freaked out since this post so maybe she is feeling more comfortable these days?

  
  
  

• It was in the 90s and super hot this weekend so Saturday night before dinner we had a dance party to burn off some energy. The kids really enjoying bouncing to "Bouncing Around the Room."

• I'm getting frustrated with my job search. I have had three meetings with three different career coaches, the last one telling me that I should start to do a lot of informational interviews to see what I would be interested in doing since it will be a major career change after 10 years in my job. I have so far had three informational interviews with people from three very different industries and am looking to have more to try to expand my network. I have applied to three jobs, all of them were still open as of last week so who knows if I will get called in for an interview for any of them right now. I don't want to move just to move, but I am really ready to change jobs. Hopefully soon.....

Marshmallow

This will be a short one while I sit at work waiting for CP and the kids to pick me up to head to MI for the weekend. Last night I get back from four days away at a work meeting in St. Louis. I happened to get home before CP and the kids get home from daycare, so when I hear Izzy start to open the door I hide and jump out saying "boo!" to scare her. She thought that it was funny and started laughing, Marshmallow on the other hand, did not. I think that maybe she thought that either she was in danger or we were disciplining Cocoa because she lashed out at both me and Izzy with her claws, trying to scratch and bite our ankles. Afterwards she was making a gutteral growling noise and hissing at us. We moved the kids out of the way and ushered the cats behind a door so that she could calm down.

Later I was in the process of trying to get Izzy to put on her pajamas and Marshmallow decided to sneak into her room and hide under Izzy's bed. I told Izzy that we would leave Marshmallow alone so Izzy was loud as she got dressed, but we let Marshmallow have her space. Despite that, as we were leaving the room to go brush teeth in the bathroom, Marshmallow ran out of the room at the same time we did, scratching me yet again on my ankle before running down the stairs.

Unfortunately, she has done this a few other times...mainly right after we have had to spray Cocoa with a water bottle for being up on a kitchen counter. It doesn't happen very often, but twice in one night is unusual and worrisome. She certainly is much more skittish than Cocoa and doesn't love it when the kids are jumping around near her. I don't want to have to worry about what she might do to one of the kids though. CP has never had an aggressive cat so he is also unsure of what to do. Later than evening after the kids went to bed she jumped up on my lap like nothing ever happened.

Any tips or insight? I would feel terrible to split up a mother/son cat duo and other than this, Marshmallow is a great cat. I'm planning on reaching out to our vet to see if he has any ideas as well.

New family members

Two weekends ago CP went out with some guy friends and I stayed home to watch tv on the couch and browse the internet while the kids slept. I didn't PLAN on making my way to petfinder.com, but it just so happened to pop up on my browser and I figured that it couldn't hurt to look at nearby pets. Before heading to bed that night I sent CP a text message that said "Side door is unlocked. Spent the night on petfinder looking for a dog so that may need to happen soon..."

The next day while the kids were napping I brought up my search again, but CP said that he wasn't ready to bring a dog home. I mostly agree with him on the reasons that he thinks that we should wait at least a year (expenses, time involved, etc), but I really miss having a pet in our home. I am a dog person first and foremost and have never loved cats...but when faced with the decision of having no pet in our house vs. having a cat, I would rather have a cat. CP has had cats in the past so he was on board with that, but thought that we should get two of them so that they could keep themselves busy together while we were at work.

So the Saturday before the Superbowl we finished watching "The Princess and the Frog" with the kids (to see Tiana's story after Izzy met her at Disneyland) and were trying to figure out how to get them out of the house. I checked the shelter and they happened to be open for another hour and only a few minutes away from our house. As we walked out the door, CP said "okay, we are just going to look" which was fine with me.

As we walked in the shelter, they had eight 8-week old puppies right near the front door. They were SO ADORABLE, but not what we were here for (and not really the right breed as they likely would have been very high-energy). The shelter had about 30 cats in two different rooms which was a bit overwhelming. Wes loved seeing all of the cats, but kept trying to pet the ones that were not great with kids. :-/ Izzy was excited to pet the different cats, but after a while wanted to see the dogs that were up for adoption, so CP took her back there commenting "well, I guess she is a dog person." I decided not to see the dogs because I didn't think that I could handle it. 

I was drawn to a gray and white cat who was super sweet. She was part of a bonded pair with her son, a black cat who was also super sweet. They were living in a home where the husband fell ill and the cats were moved out to the garage. Someone realized that a garage was not the right place for them so they were brought to the shelter and had been there since July. As we were getting the kids ready to leave, CP asked if I wanted to put adoption papers in for the cats since there were people coming to see the mom and son the next day. I was shocked because CP was the one that explicitly said that we were just looking! (He explained later that if we found two great cats then why wait two weeks?) We put in our adoption application and the next day stopped by the pet store to buy a whole lot of cat supplies, figuring that our application would get approved.

Thursday afternoon I got the good news that we were approved and I was able to get over to the shelter after work before a big snowstorm hit Chicago. We didn’t tell the kids that we were picking up the cats a day earlier than expected so when I got home the kids were finishing dinner and they both got excited when they saw the cats. We tried to keep the kids calm and sitting down so that the cats could roam a bit around the house and get comfortable. The timing worked out well because CP's work and the kids' daycare were both closed so the cats had three full days with us in the house before we came to work today. 

Marshmallow is the mom and is about 3 years old. She hid behind the couch for the first day, only really coming out when the kids were upstairs sleeping...but since then has been more interested in hanging out with everyone. So far she really likes having her ears rubbed. When Cocoa starts to meow, she goes on high alert to make sure that he is okay. At 13 pounds, she needs to lose some weight. 

Marshmallow

Cocoa is her son and is about 2 years old. He was scared to come out of his crate when I first brought the cats home, but soon came out of his shell and is REALLY curious. He is super gentle with the kids and will lay down on the floor to have his belly rubbed- even with the kids! He also really likes to play so Izzy is having fun using the laser pointer with both cats.

Cocoa

So far the kids have been very nice and gentle with the cats and very excited to pet them/play with them/see them/etc. The cats are still wary of coming upstairs but will follow us when we go up there....but so far haven't tried to sleep with us. I'm actually okay with that because I don't need a cat walking all over my head while I am trying to sleep. Cocoa has been walking on the counters so we have a water spray bottle that we are using- hopefully he figures out that is not allowed soon.

Izzy's drawing of the cat on the picture frame given to us by the shelter

Welcome to the family Marshmallow and Cocoa!