pictures, eardrum, flying, oh my!

apparently, another jia jia was also shopping at costco, albany

goofing around at the heritage mall

we went to the albany mall and siri was intrigued by the tornado simulator. we all were intrigued, but didn't want to spend money testing it out.

silly, silly gingerbread house decorator

showing off candy for gingerbread house

siri and zane working on gingerbread houses

impromptu caroling on the way back to nana's from the playground

siri and terran put on a concert during zane's nap

most important part of constructing a gingerbread house: lick the frosting

mollie was left alone for a couple of hours, and we came back to this (variety of gluten free flour strewn all over the kitchen)

i know we're long overdue for blog updates, and as jeff says, the blog manager has been rather busy lately. but, it seems we're slowly getting back into the swing of normalcy, so i'll hopefully be able to resume my role more diligently.

aside from usual chaos around here, i managed to suffer a freak adult ear infection that led to the rupture of one of my eardrums! from onset of infection symptoms to rupture: less than 24 hours. totally insane. the pain of the rupture was almost unbearable (and i've given birth without drugs!) i cried or rather wailed, and apparently alarmed evie so much that she expressed herself all over me. so, in the midst of dealing with drainage and pain from my ear, i had to clean myself off. it sucked.

unfortunately, my eardrum healed on its own with fluid still trapped behind it, and with two scheduled flights to the east coast...well, my ent did a controlled rupture two days before i flew. what does that mean? she punctured my eardrum so i could fly. the entire procedure took about two minutes, and didn't hurt one bit (thanks to copious quantities of numbing medication). i went back to the ent last friday, and my eardrum is all healed, but with a small scab. my hearing is fine for the most part -- it just feels like i have a small amount of cotton in one ear. i'm avoiding flying for a couple of months to allow my eardrum to heal properly, and to hopefully get my hearing back to normal.

i'll update later on about the interviews that necessitated the air travel (or you can checkout dissertatingmomma for my reflections on the first interview). now, what you've been patiently waiting for: pictures!