Random observations and happy stuff

I know I've been doing more random posts lately, but that's pretty much how life has been going for us. Nothing is nice and neat and tidy anymore - including my brain (not that it ever really was)...

HAPPY DANCE: The Dude got his truck running again! He showed up here around 6am this morning, got the boys up and ready for school, and then took them to school and let me sleep in a little bit before he took me to work -  AND he gave me a ride back home AND we picked the boys up from school. It was so nice to not have to walk everywhere for the first time in weeks.

RANDOM COMPLAINT: Thanks to my latest allergy attack, I have totally lost my voice. It squeaks in and out occasionally, but for the most part all I can do is whisper-yell. I have come to the conclusion that trying to yell at/for the kids with no voice makes me sound like a pissed off chipmunk. Seriously. Stop laughing.

HAPPY/HOPEFUL: The Dude took some more car parts to the guy who is fixing my van (we bought him some other parts as payment for fixing it) and the guy said that he had my van about 95% taken apart and from what he could see, there was no other damage to the engine from the blown head gasket. I still refuse to believe it until he's completely done with it, but at least it's looking promising at this stage of the game. And we might even have it back by the end of the weekend.

RANDOM ACCOMPLISHMENT: I have been totally slacking on laundry lately - between my work schedule and having to take the extra time to walk everywhere, I've just been washing and drying everything and piling it up in the laundry room. But I can now say that all of that in the picture is folded and put away with the exception of a few random things that still need to be done - and I've also done and put away about 4 other loads tonight. Baby steps.

RANDOM WEEKEND PLANS: Tomorrow has been deemed Official Yardwork Day. The grass needs to be mowed and the flowerbeds need to be weeded - and it's all going to get done tomorrow since the weather is supposed to be decent. Sunday is Jared's birthday - so far he has requested cinnamon rolls for breakfast, Snickers/peanut butter ice cream with his cake, and meatloaf for supper. And a football - but it has to be a real one, not a dumb one.



On that note, one more laundry flip, and then I'm going to dump all of the stuff off of my bed, and I'm going to go to sleep. I will kick these allergies if it's the last thing that I do.

Follow-up, catch up, and staying up.

First, the follow-up:

You remember when I went for my first mammogram the other day, right? Well, I got this little gem in the mailbox today. I really didn't feel like I had to worry about anything, but getting the confirmation is always nice and crossing anything off of the "things I should potentially be worried about" list is good.

So ladies, if you're over 40 and you haven't gone yet, DO IT. It's easy. It doesn't hurt. Just do it and get it over with so that you can cross it off of your list too. Please.

As for what's been going on for the past few days (since I haven't blogged in what seems like forever)....

I have this phobia of dentists. We've talked about it a little here and there on my facebook page. Anyway, I had my wisdom teeth pulled back in 1993, and I've been to the dentist once since then. If you do the math, that's once in 19 years.

Smart thing to do, right? Wrong.....

Years ago....probably 6ish or so....I broke a tooth. It has a filling in it, and a chunk of the tooth broke off. I went to a dentist to see what could be done with it, and since he wanted something like $600 to do a root canal and a crown, I didn't get it fixed. It didn't hurt, so I just didn't bother with it. Recently, it started to feel uncomfortable, and I realized that there was a crack in the other side of the same tooth. I figured out that I was going to have to do something about it, so I called and made an appointment with the local clinic, and the earliest that they could fit me in for an extraction was January 12.

Then it started to hurt. Like, really really bad. So I called another dentist who was recommended by a friend and he got me in immediately (yesterday) - come to find out that the tooth is abscessed and needs to be pulled. Like, NOW. (I still can't afford a root canal and all of that jazz.) But, I have to go to an oral surgeon to do that because it's an upper tooth and the roots go up into (or too close to) my sinus, and the roots are curved too much for him to do it. So Tuesday morning, I get to go deal with that, and until then I am on antibiotics and miserable - but, I had totally forgotten that I would have to be on antibiotics anyway because of my prosthetic hip. I don't remember the reasoning for that though....

So that's why I haven't been around much for the past few days. Fun, huh?

Poor tree....

And now, because I haven't been able to function, and because I opted to sleep for a couple of extra hours this morning after I took the kids to school, and because I had to go to basketball games this evening for close to 4 hours, I have a ton of things to do. There is so much laundry piled up in my laundry room that I'm almost afraid to walk in there, lunches need to be packed for tomorrow, the Christmas tree needs to be righted after it took a nasty spill last night and is now just propped up in the corner of the living room......so I guess it's a good thing that I got that couple of extra hours of sleep this morning.

He's a keeper. Like we didn't know that already.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about how The Dude gets me?

He proved his wonderfulness (is that a word?) again today.

Exhibit A, posted on his facebook at 4:42am this morning:

I knew I wasn't going to hear from him all day - if he was doing Nyquil shots at 4am, then there was no point in even thinking about talking to him. Sure enough, later this afternoon, he finally got online. I asked him what he was talking about in that status, and he just said something vague about it being something that I wanted but kept not buying for myself - and that he'd bring it over later.

Fine. I hate surprises, so I tried not to think about it and I went to do the dishes - and then I figured it out.

Sure enough, he showed up a little bit later, feeling miserable and sick and cranky. Not only is he battling the intestinal bug that he's had for a few days, but now he has the flu on top of it. Anyway, he had this with him:

Big deal? Nope, not in the grand scheme of things.

But to me - HUGE. Really really HUGE. See, my griddle - that gets used constantly thanks to my kids' obsession with French toast and pancakes - only has 3 legs. I don't even remember how the 4th leg broke off, but it's only had 3 legs for a really long time. So whenever I used it, I just put a little pepper shaker under the corner that didn't have the leg.

It was annoying, but it worked - so every time we saw a display of them at the grocery store, I'd stop and look at them...and then walk away, because as long as it worked, I couldn't see the point in buying a new one. Sometimes I take that whole "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule too far. This was one of those situations where it was more like "well, it's broken, but it still works, so until it breaks more and quits working completely, I'm not going to replace it".

But here he was, at the grocery store at 4:00 in the morning, sick as a dog, and he saw it and bought it. And then brought it to me after he got up from his Nyquil-induced coma.

Again, I don't know how I got to be so lucky, but I'm not going to complain. At all. And I'm going to keep him. For a very long time.

Feel better soon, babe. I love you.

Play ball!

It's been kind of a crazy couple of days around here. The older 3 kids weren't supposed to be back from their dad's house until tomorrow, but Ex1 had a family emergency and had to go back out of town, and so they came back to me yesterday instead. He called me on his way out of town and said that they had tickets to a baseball game for tonight (the kids had gotten them from school) and since they weren't going to use them, I'd be welcome to them.

Long story short, the older 3 kids went to the game with their aunt and uncle, and I took the younger two and went separately. The Dude had planned to go along, but since we were both dealing with some mild food poisoning, he opted to stay home - it hit him worse than it did me.












This kid can not keep teeth in his head anymore. LOL




Fight! Fight! Fight!





We had a lot of fun, we won 8-2, and we left. The older 3 kids decided that they were going to spend the night with their aunt and uncle, so they came home long enough to grab pajamas and clean clothes and they took off again....I swear I need a revolving door.

In other news throughout the day....we dragged most of the pile of limbs from the backyard to the front yard yesterday so that the trash guys could pick them up today. We didn't get them all moved because I just didn't feel like it - frankly, I felt like crap and didn't even want to do that much of it. But the boys had fun watching them get picked up this morning. We'll drag the rest out front this week so that they'll be gone on the next trash day.



I also stripped the boys' beds this morning....which then turned into a project of patching some holes in the wall. Apparently, many years ago, there used to be a door in this corner of the room that went out onto what we think was a porch but is now my laundry room. Anyway, they didn't do a very good job of covering the hole where the door was, and the drywall was cracked. And little boys just can't leave something like that alone - so they picked at it, especially when the bunk beds were still in that corner. Hopefully, now that it's all filled in, they'll leave it alone. Of course, the threats of being grounded until graduation might help a bit too.









So now, tomorrow....since I wasn't supposed to have all of the kids, and then I was supposed to have all of the kids, and now I'm not going to have all of the kids....I have to catch up on the laundry that I didn't get done before the older 3 came home early (and then left again) and I really need to get the grass cut...and I know that I had some other stuff on my list too, but I forget what that was for some reason....

Yeah. I need that clone.

Happy birthday, Alex!

I can't believe he's 6 years old. It seems so surreal.

He's a unique kid - who came into the world in an extremely unique way. So sit back and enjoy the story.

Alex's father and I dated for a short period of time - it was 3, maybe 4 months. About the time that we discovered that I was pregnant, we broke up. Things were a mess, and he found out soon after we split that he was going to be a father - again. Oops. Anyway....

I went through my pregnancy with Alex pretty much alone, save for my friends. Jeff and I had met and our relationship was starting, but he was still living in Massachusetts and I was here. Alex was due on February 6, 2006 (keep that in mind).

In the fall of 2005, Jared went through a phase where he would get sick every couple of months - like, really sick - and have to get IV fluids to get back on his little feet. On January 17, 2006 he got sick again. It was a Tuesday (remember that, too). I was on the phone with the pediatrician all day, and we finally made the decision to get him admitted to the hospital that evening. I called my friend Dawn, and she offered to come and stay with me and Jared in the hospital to keep me company. He was admitted around 9pm that Tuesday, and Dawn got there shortly after that.

Since I knew that I was going to be there overnight with him, I put on comfy clothes and grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste and my deoderant - nothing else (remember that, too). I hadn't eaten supper, so I got a Diet Pepsi and a Snickers out of the vending machine since I was hungry. Jared was in the crib hooked up to IVs, I was hanging out in the hospital bed, and Dawn was hanging out in the recliner, and we were watching TV. I'd say around midnight Tuesday I started having contractions. No big deal - they didn't hurt or anything, so I didn't think much about it.

After a couple of hours, I realized that the contractions were coming every 5 minutes, almost on the dot. I hadn't said anything to Dawn yet but I finally looked at her and said "I wonder if I should start worrying yet." She started to laugh and said "I was wondering when you were going to say something!" Apparently, I was more uncomfortable than I realized, and she had picked up on it. So we called a nurse in and let her know that I was possibly going into labor. She started to panic, and I told her "Look, this is my 4th kid, I know what real labor feels like, and I'm not going to worry yet. Just let me hang out here with Jared until something happens."

Dawn and I stayed up all night long, timing contractions and keeping an eye on Jared. Around 7am I had to call Ex1 to let him know that he needed to take the day off work and come and stay with Jared, because well, I had to go down the hall and be admitted myself (I had planned to stay with Jared since I wasn't working at the time). He took the girls to school and got to the hospital around 9am, and then I waddled down to maternity with Dawn.

Sure enough, I was in labor. I was too far along for them to give me anything to stop the labor, but I wasn't far enough along for them to give me anything to speed it up. So they admitted me for 24 hours and told me that if I didn't have him by then, I'd be sent home.

Keep in mind - it is now Wednesday morning. I've been up since Tuesday morning. The last thing I had to eat was that Snickers bar Tuesday night.

At the time, there were horrible viruses and bugs going around, so once I walked into the maternity wing, I couldn't leave. It's a small hospital, so the maternity wing is small. And when you only have one short hallway to pace up and down, it gets really old really fast. But Dawn and I walked up and down that hallway for hours on Wednesday. Then I would sit on the birthing ball. And then we'd walk. And then I'd sit on the ball. This kept up all day Wednesday. And all afternoon. And all evening. And all night.

I was getting tired. And hungry. And cranky. And shaky. Around midnight Wednesday night - after I had been up for about 40+ hours straight and hadn't eaten for well over 30 - I got bitchy. I called a nurse in and basically told her that if I didn't get some food, someone was going to die and it wasn't going to be me. They called my OB/GYN (who I *love*) and he allowed me to have some broth, some jello, and some 7UP. It was the best.food.ever.

Finally, around 3am on Thursday, I couldn't take it anymore. I was exhausted. I decided to lay down and let nature take its course. I crawled into the bed, pulled the covers up, and felt sleep just overtaking me. I was so comfortable and so at peace with the world.

And then, about 2.5 seconds later, my water EXPLODED. Seriously, there was a *pop* and a *gush* that rivaled the flow over Niagara Falls. Dawn had curled up in the recliner and when she heard me gasp she went from horizontal to vertical in about a nanosecond without even touching the chair. She ran for the nurses' station to let them know, and then all hell broke loose! Nurses came flying into the room, lights came on, lab people were there - and all I wanted to do was sleep, dammit!

The epidural guy came in shortly after that and got me hooked up, and I finally took a mini-nap for an hour or so - by this time, I was going on 43 or 44 hours with no sleep. Finally, at 7:44am on Thursday, Alexander Lewis made his debut - and Dawn got to cut the umbilical cord. It was amazing to share the experience with her.

As soon as the chaos died down, I looked at a nurse and said 3 words: "Get me food." I didn't care what was going on at that point - I had that Snickers on Tuesday night, and the broth and jello in the wee hours of Thursday morning - I needed food. They brought me a tray with everything on it - eggs, bacon, fruit, yogurt, cereal, bagel - you name it, I had it. My OB/GYN walked in while I was eating, took one look at me shoveling the food into my face and just said "I'll come back in a few minutes" and turned around and walked out.

Of course, there I was, in the hospital - with nothing more than the clothes that I was wearing, my toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant. No clothes for Alex, no carseat, no clothes for me to change into - nothing. Dawn had to leave to go home and get her kids, so I got a hold of another friend of mine who came to the hospital, got my house key, and went to my house armed with a list of everything that I needed.

Of course, Jared was still in the hospital at this point - if I remember correctly, he and I got released on the same day (Saturday, I think).

So, here are some pictures from 6 years ago today - January 19, 2006.

The morning of January 18 (Wednesday) - up for over 24 hours at this point.

Beached whale??

First picture

7lbs, 15.2oz - and 19 days early.

Alex and Dawn

Heading home

Jared, Emily, and Sarah with Alex - they were all so tiny!

Alex's father did call me the night that he was born, supposedly just to check up on me (we didn't talk much throughout the pregnancy) but he had actually been tipped off that I was at least at the hospital by a family member who saw me in the hallway. He came up that evening to see Alex, along with his very pregnant girlfriend (now wife). I have to say that even though he wasn't there for me then, and even though we've had our issues, all in all he's been a decent father. When he's around, I get along better with him than I do with Ex1 and better than I did with Jeff after we split. It's not the ideal situation, but it could definitely be much much worse.

So now here we are, 6 years later - Alex is no longer that tiny little baby - he's a big boy, and he's smart and funny and active and hyper and exhausting at times - but I wouldn't trade him for the world!

I love you, Alex! I hope that you have a wonderful birthday, little man!

What really matters.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much I've accomplished or what's still on the to-do list.

It doesn't matter if I'm fully rested or if I'm running on fumes.

It doesn't matter if the house is clean or trashed, if the laundry is done or in piles, or if the kitchen is sparkling or ready to be condemned.

What really matters is that my baby is sick.

I took him to the doctor today, and it's just a bug. No pneumonia, no ear infections, no official diagnosis of anything other than a nasty bug that's making rounds. Watch the fever, give him some breathing treatments, let him rest, and it'll go away in a few days. He coughed all night long last night, so hopefully the combination of the breathing treatments and the cough syrup will give him some relief.

And hope and pray and beg and plead that the other kids don't catch it too.......

Just a day

Started off with basketball - Sarah had a game about 30 miles from here, so I got all of the kids up and dressed and fed and loaded into the van to get up there on time. We had Sarah's friend with us (she had spent the night) and I think that helped Sarah to have the best game of the season so far. I have never seen her run so hard or take so many chances during a game before. If she got frustrated, she didn't show it. At one point, she got into a little skirmish and actually ended up airborne and landed on her back - normally that would be enough to cause her to have a meltdown and storm off of the court, but she jumped back up and kept playing. She got 2 baskets, and they ended up winning the game.

Daniel didn't feel good last night, but he seemed to be better this morning. He seemed to enjoy himself at the game, and even Alex was fairly well behaved for a change. He brought some books along and so he spent the first half of the game reading books to add to his reading log, and then actually managed to sit through most of the second half without running around acting like an idiot.

Of course, we also amused ourselves by taking silly pictures.

After the game, we had to rush back to town, drop off Sarah's friend, and then get home so that the older 3 could change their clothes and grab something to eat before their father picked them up to take them to our friend's funeral. So they were gone for several hours this afternoon and I just worked on cleaning and laundry (go figure) while Alex and Daniel played games and watched a few movies.

Daniel started feeling crappy again, so he's my sleeping partner for the night so that I can keep an eye on him. He likes to spike these random fevers without any kind of warning or even a complaint, so unless I'm right there with him, I don't always notice them right away. I'm not terribly concerned yet because I know that there are a few nasty viruses going around, but if he doesn't get better tomorrow I may look at getting him into the doctor.

Other than that, just lots of the same old stuff. I think we'll be skipping church tomorrow since Daniel isn't feeling well. So once I get the older 3 up and out of here with their father, we'll be relaxing for the day and hopefully spending some time with The Dude before getting back to the grind on Monday.

I've got another semi-serious post that's been bouncing around in my head for the past few days, but I haven't been able to focus long enough to get it written - but hopefully I'll be able to do that soon. If it comes out the way that I want it to (sometimes they don't) it'll be sort of a follow up to my post on motivation from the other day. We'll see how that works out....

More basketball practice

The fun never ends! We had the normal Wednesday chaos, compounded by Daniel getting sick at school. I had to go and pick him up early, and he napped while I got supper ready and until the other kids got home from school.

In my stress of trying to figure out how to juggle basketball practice with a sick kid, The Dude came to the rescue and offered to come over and stay with Daniel while I did basketball duty.

Alex brought some books with him to add to his reading log for school, and now that he's done with those we are just watching the girls get their butts kicked by the coach. I can about guarantee that she is going to be wiped out by the end of practice!

After practice, we have to meet Ex1 to get Sarah and Jared from him, and then get them all home and into bed. Hopefully Daniel will feel better tomorrow, but I'm planning on keeping him home anyway.

And yes, I'm cheating and doing this by phone so that I can (hopefully) get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight!

Being sick sucks

Apparently last night, the stomach flu decided to slam into me like a fully loaded freight train. I was relatively fine one minute, and the next minute I wanted to die. I spent most of today sleeping, in between running kids back and forth to school.

I've been wanting to get all of the trash picked up out of the van for the past few weeks and just haven't had a chance to do it. So after I picked Alex up from school, we went to get Daniel but had about 20 minutes to kill before we could go in to get him.

I used that time (and Alex's unending energy) to my advantage - and he picked up all of the trash for me, including stuff that had found its way into the very back end.

After we got back from school, The Dude came over for a while to check on me and make sure that I was ok. I have to admit - it's nice to have someone do that. It's been a long time, and I think that I could probably get used to this pretty quickly!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

And another one from the My Children Can Sleep Anywhere files....

As I was playing around on the computer after supper, I became aware of snoring sounds.

I don't know what they do to this kid at school, but he is about worn out every day when he comes home. I plucked him up off of the floor and tossed him into bed at about 6:45, and he'll sleep through the night.

Our exciting and eventful day

What did we do today?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

OK, that's not entirely true. We did go to church. Ex1 got here to get the older 3 kids, and then Jared asked if he could go to church with me instead - so I got to take all 3 boys with me, which was fun. Alex and Daniel decided that they didn't want to go to the nursery and wanted to stay in the "grown-up church"....that lasted about halfway through for Daniel and then he went to the nursery. Luckily, there are crayons and paper in the back of the sanctuary, so the kids have something to amuse themselves with, other than torturing each other.

They're growing up. *sigh* Soon they'll all be sitting in the grown-up church.

After church, there was a Thanksgiving dinner, so we got to eat there. Great food, great people, and I didn't have to cook or clean up anything - SCORE! Then Ex1 came and got Jared and took him home.

Then we came home. And we became lumps on the couch. Seriously.

Alex, Daniel, and I spent all afternoon on the couch. They watched their silly videos from the library, and I dozed off and on for several hours. I'm not 100% sure that they didn't nap a bit too. But it was a calm, laid back, uneventful day - something that doesn't happen around here very often.

I'm actually kind of thinking that Alex might be getting sick - he's never this calm. And I don't mean that to be funny - when this kid says "I'm tired and I don't want to do anything" it seriously makes me worry. So, I'll see what happens over the next few days. Maybe today's relaxing helped to head off any cooties that he might have.

So, now that they're in bed, it's time for me to get busy. I need to balance the checkbooks to see if I can swing a Christmas gift for the kids this week (trying to get that crap done early and cheaply), get the kitchen and living room cleaned, run the dishwasher, do a few loads of laundry, go over my schedule for the week.....and I'm sure that I'll come up with a few more things to do in there as well.