Quin, Birthday planning and more...

Yep, our day is ending well, thanks to Miss Lauren's silliness tonight, as evidenced in the picture above :) And I am so thankful for such a good day because it didn't start out nearly as well...

After a pretty scary evening last night, we decided to take Quin to the vet this morning. He began acting very strange yesterday, which worsened into periods where he would act paralyzed and refuse to move. Eventually he began hunching his back and getting into the "praying mantis" position, which indicated to me that either his neck or belly hurt. After checking to make sure everything seemed normal (heart rate, respiration, mucous membrane color, etc...), I began putting slight pressure on his neck, back, and belly to see if he reacted to anything I did. But being the sweet, gentle soul that he is, he simply trembled in pain when anything was touched.

I figured that he probably either tweaked his back/neck somehow or he had a belly ache, but I was terrified that I was missing saomething and that he would end up getting fatally sick like Ellie. So after worrying about him all night and waking up several times to make sure he was still breathing (yes, I'm paranoid like that!), we took him to my old work this morning to be checked. Of course, as happened all the time when I was a vet tech, the dog magically got better at the sight of new people! His nub was wagging, he was jumping up on my old coworkers (!!!), and trying to get attention from anyone who would lavish love on him in the waiting room. After examining him thoroughly, Dr. H recommended some lab work to make sure everything internally was plugging away as it should. Sure enough, the lab results came back and it indeed had to do with his belly. The cause?????


Pancreatitis, most likely due to the entire cake he ate a week ago. Apparently, a whole stinkin cake didn't sit well with his belly and his pancreas rebelled with a vengeance. So poor Quin has to fast this weekend to let his belly recoup and he's on some pain reliever and an antibiotic. This is what the poor pathetic fella looked like today:

:(


Once our Quin was home and resting as comfortable as to be expected, the Hubster, Miss Piddle Diddle and I went to Party America to start preparing for Lauren's FIRST Birthday party. I've somewhat been dreading planning this day for quite some time. I mean, I'm thrilled Lauren is thriving and doing so well but how is it that my baby will soon be turning one?? But instead of wallowing in my sorrow for another month, I bit the bullet today and bought lots of supplies and party favors, which actually got me excited about her big day (okay, perhaps her parents day since she'll be clueless about the reason for the big shabang). We have decided that because she's our Princess and she fits that description to a "T", we went with a "Princess turns 1!" theme. There is definitely going to be a pink overload at her party and here's proof to prove it:


And yes, no Princess is complete without a Tiara. Whether she manages to keep it on for longer than a second remains to be seen :)

We finally arrive home from the party place and all three of us (oh wait, 4 I guess!) were starving. So Miss Princess Piddle Pot and her daddy shared a bite to eat:


As you can see from the pics (and the many blogs I've posted about this), this girl LOVES to eat. Fruits, veggies, dairy, pasta, you-name-it, she's in favor of and I have a sneaking suspicion that she'll favor her Birthday cake just as well :)

Miscellaneous stuff...

I am preparing you all for a very random post...one that includes pictures with no connection to any of the others. But they are all pics that I have saved on my camera and being the Anal Abby that I am, I feel the need to delete them, so on this post they go :)

This is a picture I took last Tuesday at Piddle Pot's Tiny Turtles' class. All of the babies sat next to this pretty Christmas Tree, and most babies smiled...but you guessed it, not mine! Nope, there were too many things going on and she was beyond distracted by the twinkly tree bulbs, shiny presents in front on her and her mommy singing silly songs trying to get a smile. After about 3 minutes of singing, pleading, cooing and begging, I gave in and took the darn picture, minus a smile. But then again, that's how Lauren is; if she sees a camera, forget it!


And this is Miss Lauren with Tom, one of Justin's friends. Why in the world would I take a picture of her with a random friend you ask? Because she never, I repeat never, has allowed anyone to hold her without bursting into tears. I could count of my right hand the number of people she allows to hold her willingly; Justin, myself, my mom, Judith and Uncle Brad and now Tom! Actually, Tom came over and Lauren crawled over to him and then proceeded to pull himself up on his pants. So Tom, having a ton of nieces and nephews of his own, reached down and picked her up. Justin and I both figured that she would have a meltdown at any moment but imagine our surprise when she began smiling and talking to him! And he even shared his Pumpkin Pie with her and she was in Whipped Cream Heaven!!


And this last picture is to show that this Hubster of mine is part farm animal; he grazes alllll day long! We just got back from Olive Garden this evening, where he ate his entire plate of Ravioli (with the sauce scraped off because he's a weirdo like that!). Anyways, after eating his entire meal and a few bread sticks to boot, I catch him on the kitchen eating this:

A PB & J sandwich!

And minutes later, I saw that the box of Captain Crunch was out...another sign that my Grazing Gary was at it again!