Sick and Tired

It's Saturday morning and it's chilly and raining.  It feels like Fall and I love it.  Tom is golfing in the rain (???) and the girls and I are hanging out in jeans and t-shirts like we weren't just wearing shorts and tanks just yesterday.  Tom just sent me a text from the golf course instructing me to e-mail him a grocery list so he can stop by Kroger on the way home.  Good boy.  Especially since his text started off with "we teed off an hour late".  Good recovery, Tom.  Some days he knows the key to my heart is offering to go to the grocery for me.  I despise the grocery.  So his offer has opened up my whole morning to sip on my DD coffee and cuddle a sick Emily.  College Gameday will be on TV a little later this morning, so Emily is going to get her first lessons in college football if she wants to sit on my lap.  I'm just kidding.  She's sick; I wouldn't force her to sit and watch it if she didn't want to -  I'd give her the iPad or something to do so I could watch it  ;)

She's had 3 days of pre-school and she's already sick.  I have 2 kids with 2 very different immune systems.  Emily has been admitted to the hospital 2 or 3 times with bronchiolitis, has had pneumonia once or twice and gets a new cold about every 4 weeks while school's in session.  Casey has never missed a day of school due to illness. (knock on wood!!!)  When Emily is sick, she doesn't sleep.  And that means I don't sleep either. 

Emily 9 months old at Cincinnat Children's with bronchiolitis

 ......

Yawn.  It's now Sunday morning.  Yesterday just got away from me, but Emily rallied (after a couple doses of Motrin and Popsicles) enough to want to get off the couch and play outside.  It turned out to be a gorgeous day yesterday!!  Despite the lack of sleep, she and Casey played and I tended to some flower beds that needed some attention.  Every once in a while Emily would come up to me and say, "I need you, mommy."  It's her own way of asking me to cuddle to make her feel better.  I'm needed a lot this morning again.  Poor thing.  Last night Tom offered to be on duty with Emily which should have allowed me to rest peacefully, but instead insomnia set in.  The entire night.  Ugh.  At least Emily slept a little better.  But I was restless and awake.  And I found myself thinking back to when she had her spine surgery and the 4 months of sleepless nights we endured and I know this is nothing in comparison. I have started a post recalling that time in our lives, but I know it will be lengthy so it might take me some time to finish it.  For now I'm going to sit and close my eyes while both girls are entertained with construction paper and a roll of tape.  Seriously, their imaginations are going wild with tape and paper.  I love tape and paper.

.......

Oh, I remembered I started writing several days ago...  It's now Tuesday morning and Emily is still sick :(    A trip to the pediatrician yesterday gave us the diagnosis - Hand, Foot and Mouth Virus.  The inside of her mouth is covered with blisters and she cries if she tries to eat or drink anything and has taken to constant mumbling because it hurts to talk.  I've been to the grocery to get jello, pudding, applesauce, popsicles, mashed potatoes, and anything else that might get something other than juice in her stomach.  It's a virus so it just needs to run it's course, along with doses of Tylenol and Advil.  When Casey went to daycare years ago I caught this virus there and it was the worst sore throat and fever of my life.  Little sister has all my sympathy right now.  She'll be home from school at least another day or 2, so we've been chugging juice and watching The Wiggles and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse like it's no body's business in between naps.  She's still not sleeping great and we're both exhausted.

A picture that didn't get deleted - Emily watching a Mickey Mouse marathon this morning.

Today is also September 11.  As I put out the flag on our front porch this morning, I knew Casey would ask me why ours and the ones that are staked in the yards along the main road of our neighborhood are out today.  I will tell her that we hang our flags as a way of remembering those people who were in New York City that day when the buildings fell.  We discussed this day briefly last year and we touched on that bad people did a bad thing that day that made the buildings fall down.  If she asks for more information, I'll tiptoe around it, offering only minimal information to appease the curiosity of a 7 year old.  She doesn't need to look at every airplane and wonder if it will kamikaze into a building or worry her heart knowing that those buildings were filled with the moms and dads of other kids just like her.  I've heard my parents speak of where they were when John F. Kennedy was shot and I know one day I will share with my daughters where I was on September 11, 2001.  I was in a downtown office building in Cincinnati annoyed at the sudden slowness of the which the Internet was working.  My boss' wife called him to tell him she was seeing on TV at home that a plan flew into the World Trade Center and because I speak sarcasm as a second language and couldn't even imagine that someone would do such a thing on purpose, I said something to the effect of "How does that happen?  How do you miss World Trade Center in the window of a cockpit??"  Of course we all know how that day unfolded in all of its tragedy.  And my daughters will never know that once upon a time you didn't have to take your shoes off in an airport and no one considered that a plane full of jet fuel could take down a 100 story building. 

It's now Tuesday afternoon and I'm wondering if I'll ever just get this post over with.  I've just realized that almost every picture I've taken in the last week or so has been deleted from the camera and Casey has just come home from school and says her nose is all stuffed up and her class watched a video about 9/11.  I better get on with the business of my now 2 sick kids, what this school video touched on and if she has any questions.  AND as I'm typing this I've just heard,  "Mommy!! Somehow there is a hole in the wall in the toy room!!"   I'm afraid if this post goes on another day, we will all fall ill and the house might fall apart.   

Here's a picture taken last weekend before the sickness and sleeplessness began.  My sweet little princesses.
(Don't judge us on the Cheetos, Spaghetti O's, beer and Easy Bake oven on the kitchen counter- we must have known a tough week was around the corner :)

 

Taking back my house

 

Now that Emily is at school 4 mornings a week (it's actually just 2-1/2 hours each day so it's sounds like much more time than what it is), I am going to take back my house.  From whom you ask?  My kids.  Or maybe myself.  The answer might be both.  I saw this a while back on Pinterest and it might explain it best:


 I'd like to think we were just too busy doing fun stuff this summer to find the time to clean the house, but that's probably wrong.  It just didn't seem like it was worth the effort.  The only time the house was actually all clean and picked up was when we were all in bed.  I am the kind of person that likes organization and tidiness -  Did you hear that?  that was Tom coughing in the Ah-Hem! way that really means That's A Bunch ofCrap.  Let me finish, Tom.  What I was going to say is I am the kind of person that likes organization and tidiness most of the time.  I just take time off from that in the summer when the girls are home and I cry uncle to the chaos.  But now that they are busy making their teachers' lives miserable (I'm kidding!), I've got a little time to reacquaint my lazy self with my tidy self. 

 

I started today with mopping the floors.  Our carpets look almost new thanks to Tom's hard work this past weekend, so that just made the hard floors look even filthier.  After I mopped the kitchen, I looked at the water I was using for mopping and debated whether to change it already after one room.  Unfortunately I was using a blue bucket and not a grey one so there was no excuse for the water to be that grey and so I had to change it.  Yuck!  Next up was the laundry room/mud room.  I can always gauge when this room needs to be mopped by when I begin to ask myself if the 5 second rule applies to clean socks that are dropped on the floor when I get them out of the dryer. 

 

While I was in that room I finally turned my attention to the lockers I've been ignoring all summer.  Yes, we are fortunate enough to have wood lockers custom built for all 4 of us by my dad.  And while all of you are pinning these fantastic ideas for your mud rooms that look like this:

 

 

 

 

The reality looks more like this (in our house anyway):

 

See the vintage sign near the ceiling in the Pinterest mud room?  We have one, too :)

 

 

The girls use their lockers more as a target of which direction to throw their stuff when they run in from outside instead of actually placing the shoes in the cubbies or hanging their stuff up on the little hooks.  They need to be re-painted, but vacuuming out all the grass and dirt from the back corners helped achieve my goal for today.

 

I've always have a big to-do list when school starts and usually I'm scrambling to finish it days before school ends in May.  But not this year. (I say this every year)   I'm doing some more consulting work which will keep me busy, too, but I will find time to get my projects around here done.  I love the feeling of checking things off lists. 

Oh, and checking things off lists?  Here's one:

 

 

We've taken the gate off the bottom of the stairs.  Emily is getting better at keeping her balance on the steps so we're crossing our fingers on this one.  Keep yours crossed, too - I'd hate to be posting about a broken body party as a result of falling down the stairs!  



 





First day of pre-school

 

And she's off.  I'll make this short and sweet.  Sister was sooo ready to go to school.  When I went into her room this morning she was sitting on her bedroom floor reading a book and she looked up at me and said: "Good morning, mommy.  I had good sleep.  I go to school today!" 

 

We took our first day photos on the front porch like we always do and when I look at those pictures I am always so glad we got a new front door and the ugly steel one with the peeling paint is gone. :) Unfortunately, my camera's quality of photos completely stinks, so our memories of this day will always be a little too bright and off color.  Oh well, the subject is still cute.

 

And she wasn't a bit nervous.  She got out of the car and put on her backpack and headed into school ready to go.  She never even looked back to hold my hand.  Her body language was all like 'I got this, mom.'

When she saw her teacher, Miss Molly, she ran up and hugged her.  Just what I needed - to see a little dose of  hugs for my girl before I surrendered her to school. 

She found a seat right away and said, "Good-bye, mom.  Have a good day."  There were no tears like some of the other kids clinging to their mom's pant legs.  And I was so proud of  my girl and her independence and excitement for school, I didn't even cry.  I was all like 'You so got this, girl.'

Parkfest and Batting Practice

Summer is over.  It's Labor Day today and with it brings flags waving, a day off from work and school, the start of college football season, the anticipation of Fall and the fear of my kids flipping through TV channels today and accidentally stopping on TLC's Labor Day marathon of their show A Baby Story and being traumatized by the video diary of some strange lady giving birth on our 46" high definition TV.  I'm not even sure if TLC still runs it's marathon of this show but I know they used to and I've never seen an episode without thinking of some poor 7 year old on their day off from school with the remote in search of SpongeBob or ScoobyDoo, accidentally coming across this channel and witnessing some grown lady all spread out in a hospital screaming at Jesus for an epidural.  I get it - it's Labor Day, but I'm pretty sure that's not what this holiday is all about.  Anyhow, this nightmare didn't happen at our house today. (whew!)  The girls and I arrived home from a weekend in Ottawa and we all took naps this afternoon, so there wasn't even any pleading for Tom to turn off the Golf Channel today.  Happy Labor Day/Start of Fall/Football Season ect. to you - however you celebrated.

Tom opted out of coming with us this weekend in hopes of spending several more hours on the phone with Dell getting his new laptop back up and running.  A virus wiped it clean and apparently 14 hours on the phone with Dell last week wasn't enough to resolve the problems.  Here's a public service announcement:  Back your s**t up on your computers!!  After he resolved that, he cleaned the carpets in our house while we were gone.  I know, I know - he's awesome :)

The girls and I started out Saturday morning set up for our 2+ hour road trip to Ottawa with coffee and DVD players.  They were both so quiet and entertained the whole way that I started calling friends to catch up on my drive there (I had my blue tooth in my ear so no new Ohio laws were broken) to take advantage of the rare silence I had to chat.  I wanted to find out how Claudia and Drew, our niece and nephew, were doing in school so when I got a hold of Amy and she said they were at Drew's soccer game, I noticed we were only 15 minutes from Sidney - where they were.  I am not a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal, so I actually contemplated for a minute whether we should stop by and deviate from my travel plan.  I'm going to be a terrible 80 year old lady when it comes to routine.  If corn is served on Tuesdays instead of Fridays, it will probably do me in.  I really rely on my friends Mandy and Shannon to call me with a last minute invite to do things with me and my girls.  By nature, I am a planner and like things a little predictable so I need these friends in my life to keep pushing me towards spontaneity.  My girls are better off for it.  Back to Saturday- I knew I would seriously regret skipping this opportunity to catch Drew's soccer game just because it wasn't what I had planned that day.  So we got off the exit and were able to see just over half of the game and were able to catch up with Amy and Andy a bit before we were on our way again.  And, of course, I was so glad we did get to see him play some!!  And Casey who is a younger soccer player, was really focused on the game and watching him.  It was a pleasant addition to our day!!

Drew getting into position

Aunt Amy with the girls

 

Every year on Labor Day weekend my hometown of Glandorf holds it's church/town festival known as Parkfest.  I have many, many memories from the Parkfests of my teenage years that I will not share with my daughters until they are 33 and are too old to throw something back at me like, "But you did it as a kid."  Mom and dad and I took the girls to ride the rides, play the games, and eat the infamous 'Social Burgers' that are no longer square.  Unless you are from Putnam County, you don't know what that means, but you can get out your Tums and imagine a lot of grease and some very large pumps nearby which dispense ketchup. 

Casey begged me not to put Emily on this ride because she didn't think it was safe for her :)

 

 

And after it started, I wondered if Casey was right.  Casey held tight to Emily the entire ride. 
I looked at it as a good sister-trust opportunity

It started to rain, so we took the girls back to my parents' house and I returned later in the evening with my sister and my dear friend, Marna, and her husband, Jay.  It's not often enough that I get to socialize with the friends I've kept in contact with from there, so when I do, I get kind of a little nostalgic and make them get their picture taken and tell them how much I love the turtle races and how I am now afraid to drive on a 2 lane road with no yellow lines much less a concrete barrier in the middle.

Thanks for posing, Marna and Stacy

 

When one from PC thinks of Parkfest they probably think of several things:  The Village Idiots playing polka music under a tent, (no-longer) square social burgers, beer (now served in a can and not in a milk jug), and turtle races.  It's a tale as old as time - or as old as I can remember anyhow.  And for that long, the same guy has been the announcer of the turtle races.  If I were anywhere in the world and I heard that voice, I would instantly think he was telling me that Neinberg Supply's  #5 turtle would need my $2 bet.  And I would oblige.

Self explanatory

 

I drank a little too much beer (which has also been kind of a theme at Parkfest for too many years) and had a good time seeing some familiar faces.  I'm glad I got to take my girls and they are even are still talking about it. 

I'm almost done with this post, but I have to tell a brief story from yesterday evening.  My sisters and other niece and nephew came down to mom and dad's to hang out with us for a while.  Braeden loves baseball as much as Casey loves Barbie, so we got out the bat and ball for a little game of front yard baseball.  I was pitching and each kid wanted a turn at bat, including Emily.  To my knowledge, this was Emily's first attempt at bat ever.  I got her grip all set up and stood maybe 3 or 4 feet away and gave the ball a little pitch.  And sister knocked it out of the park!!!!  Okay, maybe it was more like 8 feet or so, but it was solid contact and that ball was airborne!!  Dear Lord, you'd thought she just hit a grand slam in the bottom of the 9th in the 7th game of the World Series, I was so excited.  But this  was a fluke, right?  Wrong.   I get myself all settled down and her back in her stance and gave the little ball a pitch her way again.  2 for 2 she hits the ball 6 or 8 feet!!  I so wish Tom would have been there!  It was awesome.  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures - I was pitching.

Having a child with special needs can give you some of the lowest of lows in parenting, but, in turn, it can also give you the highest of highs.  And this had me soaring pretty high.   I can tell you I could play almost any sport really well growing up with the exception of softball because I could never get the hand-eye coordination of hitting (I was always put in right field or as pinch runner).  And to see my special 4 year old hit it...yeah, I'm out of words.  As I pitched those balls, I truly and honestly did not believe she would even come close to hitting it.  I was going to let her give it her best shot, because I always will, but she couldn't hit it, right?  Thanks, Emily, for righting my perspective again.   Do I think her future is in baseball?   Of course not.  And I might be over-thinking the significance of this little event, but it kind of renews my heart to believe that my little girl is going to be great at what ever she decides she's going to be great.  And as she starts pre-school tomorrow I have confidence in her that if she has trouble with all those boys in her class, I only have to send her favorite bat with her to school to take care of herself.   :)

I found myself wanting to take a picture of the set of Encyclopedia Britannica's my parents have.   I can't wait to blow Casey's mind one day when I explain this was life before Google - everything you needed to know was in these bound books.  (And the bible, of course.)   I still think they are awesome and hope to inherit them one day.