Heidi in Review, 2009.

I'm home alone with the toddler for the New Year. Not that I mind, I have NO interest in the bar scene, and since Clay is out working somewhere in Iowa tonight, I'll happily drink wine out of my favorite coffee mug in my comfy pj's. I heard that my brother was doing a "year in review" for his wife and son and thought it was a good idea.

2009 Highlights:
January - I was fresh off the buzz of a fantastic December. It was the trip to Vegas for my 40th with my 3 best friends, the boys. While on this trip I got the call I was looking for, a job offer! I was out on the casino floor when my cell phone caller ID popped up with the college's number. I ran into an elevator to get some quiet to take the call. So in January I was fresh on the job, trying to figure out who the hell I was working for and what the hell an Administrative Assistant to the Dean of Special Project does. I had to scramble to find daycare. The baby was a baby back then, still on the bottle and still not walking.

February - Fired that daycare. I just didn't like them, it was too big and busy a setting for Q. They had too many billing rules, including a rule that I paid for daycare on days the school closed for bad weather, which they did whenever the school districts did, which was too often for my taste. The last straw was the sign on the baby room that said, "Your infant may have been exposed to head lice." Don't lecture me, I know head lice is a part of life, but hell if I was going to let it get near my 1 year old. He didn't struggle in the NICU and have 2 brain surgeries and come out unscathed to be taken care of by those people. My big first work project was in Feb. as well. A 5 day event I coordinated in Minneapolis for 22 people. The hotel was awesome, I am kind of looking forward to that trip this year. I've learned some lessons that will make this year better, and they have the best hotel breakfast, you couldn't even dream of a nicer breakfast. My own room on the executive floor, it's almost a vacation, except for the work part.

March - We realized that the roof had a terrible leak. I was sitting on the couch, downstairs, one day and heard this dripping noise, in the downstairs pantry. I followed it upstairs and found that in one of the closets rain was streaming in somehow, down the vaulted ceiling part, wrecking the whole wall and finding it's way downstairs. Thankfully Dad pushed me into calling our home insurance people. They sent out this quiet weird guy to assess if they could cover any of the damage. There were 3 shingles blown off the house (granted the other end of the house than the leak) that qualified for storm damage and he said they'd buy us a new roof, but only for that side of the house. But it was the side with the leak so we rejoiced. What I know now, when you have someone look at your roof for storm damage, make sure shingles from both sides of your roof are missing! Paperwork, paperwork and waiting for a check.

April / May / June - I don't remember these months...I'll skip them. I will say we had a nice summer, not too much heat at all. Q happily played in his baby pool out on the porch and we spent a lot of time at our favorite park on Hammond & 28th that has the skater park next to it. But then we saw a bear come out of the woods next to the basketball court and we stuck closer to home for awhile. Q eventually got better at walking and then started to run faster than I felt I was ready for.

July - The only month of the year I get full time hours at work. February's trip really did feel like a dream compared to this 11 day event for 20+ people. I suddenly had 3 employees (student employees that would only respond promptly if I texted them, go figure). The paychecks were nice with the overtime and I bought a laptop for Clay. How great of a wife am I? He needed one for the road, and it was under the presumption that if my home computer died, the laptop would come back to me.

August - Quincy had this last follow up appointment with the NICU doctors, a cognitive development specialist, speech therapist and dietitian. Obviously he is growing quite well and is far and above the 100 percentile mark for head size, weight, and height. So I married an ogre, what of it? But, now that Q was kind of on the late side of walking, I think he was a good 16 months (adjusted age) and now that she thought he was kind of behind in speech and other forms of communication, the NICU doctor filling in that day, who we'd never met, sent us to a neurologist worried that Q could have traces of hydrocephalus or need following up if his previous history had lead to any problems in his noggin. Now, after dealing with what we dealt with, when a doctor tells you your child might have brain damage, but they can't really tell, I'll tell you, I don't know where I went, it was like you turned off gravity and crushed my lungs. So we went, back to the neurology department even though we know Q best, regardless of how much we are certain that he's perfectly normal, we wanted that specialist to tell us for sure. And he did. Thank god. Q may be a little large for his age and look more like a preschooler instead of a toddler and he might be a little on the quiet side, he's perfectly smart. Fantastic body mechanics and problem solving skills.

September - Since we were offered speech therapy for Q, we took it. We qualified for free help and the therapist comes to the house every week and Q loves him. He's my Dad's age, maybe a bit younger. He comes over with a bag full of new and exciting toys and sits on the living room carpet and we play games for an hour a week. The therapist explained to me that he can teach Q how to talk, but he can't teach him to understand that communicating through speech is the best way to communicate his needs, that'll come whenever it does. We started with some simple sign language. "More" is still the most popular sign. Clay and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. I don't remember if we did anything spectacular, I think we dumped the baby off with a friend and went out to dinner.

October - Zombie Pub Crawl...That's how I sum up October. Certainly the best evening of partying I've seen in a LONG time. I wished there was a Zombie Pub Crawl 4 times a year, it was that great. Next year we'll be better prepared. What we didn't know this year is that most people arrive as some sort of a themed zombie. Think of a character, and someone was dressed up as it, but as a zombie. Whole Simpsons families of zombies. Blue Brothers zombies. We saw more than one Where's Waldo zombie. A group of flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz zombies. School girl zombies (Bob's personal favorite). In addition to the zombie awesomeness, I met a Minneapolis roller derby girl. We were instant friends and she sold me hard on the derby idea. My response? "It'd be awesome, but I live up in boring Superior, I could never be a derby girl." Her response, "Oh how wrong you are!" She wrote down 4 words on the back of her derby season schedule, "Harbor City Roller Dames". I was at practice a week later. Q was a dinosaur for Halloween.

November - Remember the roof problem in spring? I know you shouldn't let problems like that go on and on, and we didn't mean for it to, but trust me. Arguing with your home insurance people, meeting creepy roofers with liquor breathe and actually getting your mortgage company to sign off on the insurance check that is also written out to them (to protect their investment, bullshit) took a really long time. We found wonderful roofers, a guy who was a couple years ahead of my in highschool, and the fact that he is my insurance agent's brother really didn't bug me at all. Roof done, and my general anxiety level has been down at least 2 notches ever since. November was also birthdays for Clay and I. I hit 31, and he's 35. For my birthday I took a weekend off of Mommy duties and headed for 'the boys' house. Hung out, ate great food, drank too much wine, shopped a bit and laughed and laughed and laughed. I have the best friends.

December - The family Thanks-Christmas-Vaca in Wi Dells. Great time, too short though. The hotel we stayed at was cheap and very decent. It was like a ghost town, we barely saw anyone else. Tyler and Michele even brought a tiny tree with them and our suite had a fireplace, it was perfect. Quincy got some great Christmas gifts. Beautiful cedar blocks and more Mega Blocks from Mom, he's a Mega Blocks monster now. Dad bought him the loudest monster truck toy he could find, but I haven't told him yet that it conveniently has a mute button on the bottom. And the best toy was the Millennium Falcon Clay sacrificed from his collection, still in the box. It's the chunky character little kid version that came out like 8 years ago and Q loves it, it's got different doors that open, cool shooting and engine sounds, you can repair the hyper drive with this hose thingie and robots!

This bottle of Sauvignon Blanc might not make it to the new year, lol. I'm going to sneak into Q's room at midnight to get my New Year's kiss, and we're onto 2010!