My Crazy Life

This post is basically going to be a rant about how stressful things have been around here for the last few months so if you want to skip it, I won’t be offended. On the other hand, if you want to get an idea of why I’ve been enormously absentee from social gatherings, blogging, and life in general, stick around. Ready or not, here we go:

In mid-June Kevin applied for a new job. He was in no danger of losing his current job, but he saw an opportunity to take a step up professionally and decided to throw his hat into the ring. Twelve hours after he submitted the online application, he got the first phone call. Within a week and a half he had six interviews and at the final interview he learned that things had been narrowed down to only two candidates, Kevin being one of them. The job was for Adobe and the whole company pretty much shuts down for the entire week surrounding the 4^th of July which is great for them but not so much for the guy who just completed a bunch of interviews and is waiting to hear back about whether or not he got the job. Needless to say, the waiting was stressful.

Good news is that once the waiting was over he got the job. He gave notice at his current job, giving them three weeks so that the health insurance on both ends would give us the coverage we needed. He had planned to complete a big project during those three weeks, but once he told them he was quitting they decided they didn’t want him to do it. So instead he spent three weeks twiddling his thumbs waiting for the new job to start. It made him crazy and made those three weeks seem loooooong for him.

Once he actually started at Adobe, it took a few weeks for him to feel like he had any idea of what he was doing and to have enough work to fill his days. Now he is getting into the swing of things and is feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

Matthew has been a huge stress bomb as well. During all this job stuff, he was getting ready to start first grade. First grade is a big deal, especially for a food allergy kid who will be eating lunch at school. He was really stressed about his teacher knowing about all his needs and it took us a good week of trying before I was actually able to talk with her and help dial back some of his concerns. He was also worried about whether or not he would know anyone in his class. And he didn’t know his teacher so he was worried about what she would be like. He was in tears nearly every day about all this.

And then we dumped the “Dad is quitting his job and going to work for Adobe” bomb on him. It really shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it totally freaked Matthew out. It was so bad that he started having nightmares. Things like Kev and I were on a vacation and Nathan and Matthew were left home alone and they didn’t have a phone number to call us. Another one was about going to eat lunch with Kev at his new job and when we arrived the entire building was gone. They pretty much reeked of abandonment issues and as much as we reassured him that nothing would be different at home, he just couldn’t stop panicking. He freaked out when Kev was in Washington D.C. for an entire week earlier this year and I think part of his panic was that Kev would be gone like that again.

Nathan was stressed out because he was in limbo land about who his fifth grade teacher would be. Because we are in year round school, they only had three weeks between one school year and the next which you would think would not be enough time to work up a real stress attack, but you would be wrong. Our school definitely doesn’t help that. The new school year started on July 25^th. July 24^th was a holiday and our school didn’t post teacher assignments until 4:00 p.m. on July 23^rd. I know they do it because they don’t want to deal with all the parents who are unhappy about the teacher their kid was assigned, but honestly it is ridiculous. They are either going to deal with it the week before school starts or on the first day of school. Just postponing letting everyone know which teacher they have doesn’t make that go away. But it made Nathan super stressed out for three weeks. At least once he know which teacher he had and knew that he would have a few friends in his class he was able to calm down.

Daniel just started 7^th grade and although he didn’t actually admit it until a couple of days before school started, he was stressed out to. Seventh grade is a big change and although he was excited as well, there was a lot of uncertainty about how things would be. And he had a whole extra month to stew about it once the other boys went back to school. He was also headed to the weeklong scout camp for the first time so we had to get him all ready to go. He only had some dehydration once at scout camp and luckily for him (and us), his leaders knew what they were dealing with early enough that they were able to get him rehydrating without needing medical care.

Malia did pretty well, being too young to comprehend the stress of her whole family. She did however, get sick twice and have that instacare visit when she whacked her head on the counter.

As for me, when all this started in June I was at the point where I was having headaches every single day. So in addition to trying to keep my entire family from going bat crap crazy because of stress, I was trying out a variety of new treatment methods and changing some routines in an attempt to get the headaches under control. I was also neck deep in paperwork trying to get all the forms Matthew needs to get the care he needs at school, for Matthew and Daniel to be able to have their meds at school, to update insurance info everywhere, to allow Daniel to go to scout camp, etc.

Now overlay on top of all that the pox we’ve all had (the week we all had a cold was Kev’s first week at Adobe, Nathan and Matthew’s second full week of school, and Daniel’s week at scout camp and the second round of sick was the week just before Daniel started school with Malia’s sick lingering into his first week), a new mortgage (we had an opportunity to refinance at a lower interest rate which meant a lower monthly payment) and the fact that Daniel is now on a traditional school calendar while Nathan and Matthew are still on a year round school calendar which leads to scheduling chaos and you’ve got a pretty good picture of how we spent our summer.

We are finally at the point where I feel like we are getting back into a routine and I cannot tell you how good and ready we all are to have hit a new normal. My daily life, as crazy as it can be, is a welcome relief compared to what we have just survived.

Musical Role Model

Daniel has been learning to play the saxophone. Although he’s only had a couple of weeks of practice, he’s actually doing really well. He hardly ever squeaks, he can play enough notes to play simple songs, and he is not afraid to play for other people. The other kids think it is super cool and there has been much talk of what instruments they all want to play.

I’m glad that my kids are finding their own ways to bring music into their lives. In addition to Daniel’s saxophone, Nathan is learning to play the piano, Matthew wants to play a trumpet and is completely intrigued by the organ at church and Malia loves to play whatever she can get her hands on.

Our house is becoming a house full of music…which is great considering there have been many times when it has just been full of noise. :-)

I Know This Shouldn't Be Funny, But...

We live very close to a family farm that runs their own little farm market each summer. One of their biggest sellers is fresh corn on the cob. They pick it every morning and never sell day old corn. It is absolutely delicious and it has spoiled us for grocery store corn. At the end of July, I got the e-mail announcing that the corn was ready. We’d been waiting all summer so having corn for dinner that night was pretty much a no brainer.

Malia did not have enough teeth to eat corn on the cob last summer, so this summer we initiated her in corn on the cob eating.  She was pretty darn pleased about the whole thing. See for yourself:

Did you giggle about the way she says corn? We did. :-)

(Again, this shouldn’t be funny, but I just posted a porn video on the internet. ;-} )

Belated Birthday

Today we finally had a chance to celebrate Malia’s birthday with my family. She had a cold and then she had some other kind of sick (11 days worth…not fun) and still wasn’t feeling well on her real birthday. But this morning she was happy as a clam (Just how happy is a clam anyway? I mean, they pretty much just sit around waiting to be eaten.) as we made her cupcakes. She knew it was her day to celebrate and she was singing about it all morning.

She loves marshmallows so using them to make cute flowers was perfect.

Once the cupcakes were done, it was time for church. Malia hasn’t been to church in a month due to sickness so she was thrilled to be headed there this afternoon. She stopped everyone she saw and told them, “Church! Nursery time!” All the adults who happened to be privy to her conversations couldn’t help but smile.

She still didn’t want to blow out the candles (I think the flames made her nervous) but she was pleased when she finally got to eat the cake.

 

Pearly Whites Minus One

Yesterday Matthew came home from school with a very worried look on his face. When I asked him what was wrong, his eyebrows furrowed even a little more and he said, “I just have a really loose tooth.” I actually chuckled. And then we talked about how teeth get loose and then fall out so that bigger teeth can grow. I also told him that teeth usually start to get loose in first grade so he is right on schedule. He still looked really concerned, so I asked him what else was bothering him. He said he was worried about how it would feel when it came out. I reassured him again, telling him that it would fall out all by itself and it wouldn’t even hurt. That seemed to help a little bit.

Five minutes later, I looked up and the previously mentioned tooth was gone. So how long has my crazy kid been sitting around worrying about this? Apparently it has been awhile. :-)

Malia 2.0

Today is Malia’s second birthday. To commemorate this grand occasion, here are a few tidbits about Malia:

Her favorite book is “The Foot Book.” We have read it about fifty-billion times. But it is one of those books that I don’t mind reading fifty-billion times. It is Dr. Seuss after all.

Her favorite movie is “Tangowed” because it has a “pincess” named “Punzeled.” I’ve shown her Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and she was…underwhelmed. In fact, she told me, “Tangowed better.”

She talks, and talks, and talks. She is using three and four words in sentences and the sentences are plentiful. She is getting pretty good and telling us what she wants, which is helpful because…

…she can throw a mighty temper tantrum when she wants to. She will lay down on the floor and cry and cry and scream and cry some more. We just ignore her and after a while she decides she is done, gets up, and moves on.

She loves to be outside.

She has discovered that the library has lots of books that she can bring home with her. And she’s happy about it.

She has a thing for shoes. A couple of months ago I took her to Payless to get some new Sunday shoes. She got really excited and walked down the aisles pointing at all the shoes and saying, “Cute! Cute! Cute!” She is definitely my child.

She really likes bows. Whether in her hair or on her clothes, she really, really likes bows. She’s very girly.

She is a pretty picky eater. She is mostly picky where vegetables and meat is concerned. She’ll eat hot dogs, chicken nuggets and the occasion slice of lunch meat, but any other meat is a challenge. As far as veggies are concerned, she loves cucumbers, fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob. Other than that, veggie eating is pretty sparse. But she eats fruit of all kinds and she eats cheese and yogurt in plentiful amounts so I figure she is probably getting most of what she needs anyway. She is also picky about random things like macaroni. She won’t eat mac and cheese and she won’t eat the orange and green pasta in the tricolored rotini but she loves plain macaroni and spaghetti. In the junk food arena she is a fan of pizza, fries, mellows (marshmallows) and chocolate. And, like me, she just can’t resist a good cookie.

She sings during sacrament meeting, loudly. She has to have a hymn book and she only sings when everyone else does.At home she sings whenever she wants. Favorite songs include Old MacDonald, Popcorn Popping, I Love to See the Temple, I Am a Child of God, and the Itsy-bitsy Spider. And lately she has been singing, “Birthday to me, birthday to me…”

She can count to five or six although she doesn’t know what it means yet. Her favorite number is 13. When I try to get her to count lately, she’ll fill in whatever blank with “tirteen.”

She loves nursery. It took her a couple of months to decide it was okay, but now she is all about the toys and the snacks and the friends. During sacrament meeting when she starts to feel like she has been there long enough (usually right after the sacrament), she will look up at us and say, “Nursery time!” She feels it keenly when she misses nursery. When she had a cold a couple of weeks ago and had to stay home, she cried and cried because she wanted to go to nursery. When Kevin and Daniel came home after church, she ran and got her church shoes because she thought that meant it was time to go. Then she cried some more: “Nursery! (sob, sob) Nursery!”

She has been sleeping in her big girl bed at night for a week now which is really great considering she has been sick for about half that time. She still wants to sleep in the crib for her naps, but we’re making progress.

For some reason she thinks it is super fun to hang out in my shower. This morning she made herself comfy and read a book while I was getting dressed.

This evening we had a quiet celebration at home. Malia was having a grumpy evening and when it was time to blow out the candles she said, “Matthew do it.” She ate the marshmallow flower and the gum drop off the cupcake and left the rest. While she was eating, her nursery teacher came by and brought her some cookies so she had one of those as well.

She was reluctant to open presents until she got the first one open and discovered a tiny princess doll from Daniel. Then she was all smiles.

Matthew got her a princess iPhone. Nathan gave her crayons and a pencil. Kevin and I gave her some puzzles, her long awaited “Tangled” sheets for her big girl bed, and a cradle and quilt for her baby doll. The cradle was mine when I was little. My dad was in the navy when I was very young and he was stationed in the Philippines for two years. During the time that we lived there, we had a Filipino maid named Gloria and a Filipino yard boy named Zaldi (I have no idea how to spell that name so I’m taking a guess). Zaldi was an amateur carpenter as well. He made a number of things that I remember including this baby doll cradle for me and a big doll house for my sister Patti. The cradle was originally bright green. Kev repaired it, sanded it down and repainted it. I had planned to stencil some designs on it, but with the craziness that has been the past week, it did not happen. I’ll get it done later.

(Random comment on this picture: While we were living in the Philippines there was a fire in the jungle behind our house. My mom took pictures of everything we had in the house just in case they were needed for insurance purposes. So that is why I have a picture of the cradle-full of junk it would seem-with no people in sight.)

So overall Malia had a pretty quiet birthday. A pretty quiet anything is a change from how things have been of late, so it was nice.

What Is It About My Kids and Head Wounds?

Are they genetically predisposed to cracking their noggins against hard things and ending up with gory gashes in the middle of their foreheads? I'm thinking they must be because as of last night, three of my four children have the mark...the one that indicates a head injury and a trip to the instacare/E.R.

Daniel's head cracking experience was in my preblogging days. He was in first grade. He slipped on some black ice on the playground at school and whacked his head on the blacktop. The school called me and when I arrived I discovered that his skin had just popped right open. The wound looked almost round it was yawning so widely. So off to the urgent care we went and he ended up with a hand full of stitches. I don't remember how many, but he's got a scar. Since I wasn't blogging then, I was not as macabre about taking pictures of injured children so the most famous head shot we have is the one taken in primary a couple of weeks after the incident. It is the one they used all year on bookmarks, handouts, the bulletin board, etc. Don't you just dig the Spider-Man bandaid?

Daniel-Jan. 7, 2008

Matthew's Humpty Dumpty moment happened when he was 2 1/2. I was a dedicated blogger by then so the whole nerve wracking incident was well documented.

 Matthew-Oct. 16, 2009

So who is the third head wound recipient, you may ask? Take a guess. You have a 50% chance of being right. You might guess that Nathan has joined his brothers in the mushed head club...but you would be wrong.

Yup. My not quite but so so close to 2 year old is the winner, although I can't say this is a prize that one should aspire to earn. Last night Kevin and I were downstairs chatting when we heard a thump from upstairs. Immediately following that, Nathan starting shrieking, "Dad! Dad!" It was the sound of sheer panic which meant, of course, that I immediately began to go into panic mode. Kevin ran up the stairs with me close behind, scenarios of horror already running through my mind. We found Nathan and Malia on the floor in the kitchen, both crying pretty hysterically. Malia had a gash and a huge dent that looked suspiciously like the sharp edge of the counter on her forehead. Kev headed off to the instacare with Malia since I was in no shape to drive safely just then.

Just because I know I haven't mentioned it yet, Kevin started a new job two weeks ago which means we have had a change in insurance. The new insurance cards have not arrived yet so I got on the Internet, found the necessary info and texted it to Kev. At that point I was awfully glad that I had spent three hours earlier in the day making phone calls and making sure we has access to the website and the temporary cards.

Once that task was done, my attention turned to Nathan. He was a wreck. We have to remind him frequently that he is Malia's brother and not her parent so that might give you an idea of how much he dotes on her. He was absolutely devastated that he had hurt her, so that was when I started trying to figure out what had happened. It seems that Nathan had been helping Malia wash her hands. When he was getting her down off the stool (and then flying her around because it is fun) he tripped, on his shoelaces he thinks, and fell. However, he was so panicky about Malia that he didn't realize that he had a big goose egg on his forehead and his knee was swollen. In fact, he doesn't even remember hitting his head because he was so focused on Malia. It wasn't until ten or fifteen minutes after Kev had rushed out the door that Nathan realized his head hurt. So there was need of some reassurance that it had been an accident and that everything would be okay. And we applied some ice to his head since by then he realized he had quite a headache.

Kev kept me updated regularly and the outcome was that her brain didn't actually get mushed at all and her gash was shallow enough that they were able to just clean it and glue it closed. As per instructions we watched her closely for about four hours after the incident and all seemed just as it should be. She was actually pretty pleased because she got to stay up late and watch "Tangled."

This morning Malia woke up acting as if nothing had changed and all was well until she decided to pick at the dermabond on her head. She said, "Owie." I looked over and realized that she had picked half the glue off her head and it was bleeding again. After a couple of phone calls to our friendly neighborhood healthcare providers, I was headed back to the instacare so they could clean and reseal the wound. Luckily for us, everything looked good enough that they decided to just clip off the section of dermabond that she had picked off and put steri-strips on it. They used lots of adhesive and lots of steri-strips so hopefully she won't be able to pick those off as well.

Malia did great with all the medical care. She didn't cry or fight and they didn't have to strap her down or anything. And she clearly has no lingering negative affects other than the cut. I think I'm more traumatized by the whole thing than she is...

A Pox Upon Our House

We've been sick...all of us. Three weeks ago Nathan came down with a cold, a pretty nasty one. Within a week, we all had it. Just as we were finishing up with the cold, Malia got sick with something else icky. I won't give details because it is all pretty disgusting, but it was not pleasant. That was Friday. I got sick on Saturday and Sunday morning Kevin, Daniel and Nathan jumped on the bandwagon. Matthew held out until Sunday evening.

This is the first time in my memory that all of us have been sick all at the same time. We've had all the boys sick at once before and we've had times where we took turns, but this is the first time we've all been down and out on the same day. Not fun. I think we're in recovery mode now, but we're planning to hunker down for a bit longer and try not to share the misery.

The germfest is definitely my very least favorite part of sending my kids back to school.