Sicko

It’s been a sad story around our house the past 2 weeks. We’ve honestly been to the doctor’s office no less than 6 times amongst the 4 of us. Lukie started us off with a trip to the doctor’s on the 7th and he got started on some antibiotics for his 2 ear infections. That weekend we went to Longview to help Jason’s parents with some things. Upon returning Sunday night Jason got hit hard by “the bug.” Nevertheless, Monday and Tuesday were payroll days at work so he had to go no matter how awful he was feeling. That same Monday I started feeling not so well. Jason ended up staying home Wednesday and Thursday last week. That Wednesday we both went to the doctor’s and tested negative for Flu A and Flu B, however, doc said there’s talk of a Flu C out there and he thinks that’s what we have. Nothing to do though really, so no drugs for us.

That morning Austin woke up with a very “goobery” eye so after our appointment, it was off to his ear doctor. They were booked for 2 weeks so off to the Pediatrician’s to see if they could squeeze us in. As it turns out they could, but probably would’ve been better if they hadn’t. We saw some old geezer doctor who diagnosed Austin with Pink Eye before he ever looked at him. Mind you, this is the same doctor who 2 ½ years ago wouldn’t acknowledge that Austin’s eye drainage was due to ear infections and back then also incorrectly diagnosed him with Pink Eye. Once we saw a real doctor who sent us to a specialist and both confirmed he needed ear tubes, he’s been great ever since. At any rate, one of Austin’s ear tubes recently came out and guess which eye was now draining? The same side as the missing ear tube, go figure. Nevertheless, more eye drops is what we got to treat the Pink Eye. Ever given eye drops to a 3 year-old who doesn’t want them? Impossible for one person to do! I literally have to sit on him pinning his arms to his side while Jason holds his head straight so he doesn’t shake the drops out of his eyes before they go in. What a nightmare.

Next day, we’re up to last Friday, the 14th now, Luke wasn’t getting any better after a week of antibiotics so Jason took a half day at work, still not feeling well himself, and that afternoon we were off for another appointment for Luke. He got some stronger antibiotics for the ear infections and we were told with Austin’s “Pink Eye” to start giving the drops to Luke too. We didn’t have enough drops for the both of them, so we got another prescription of those. Luke’s not too bad for those. I give it to him when he’s asleep and he doesn’t even stir. Austin on the other hand wakes up and starts throwing a fit. Luke loves taking his medicine and cries when it’s not for him. Austin hates it and cries when it is for him. We’ve taken to mixing it in a milkshake for him so now every night he gets milkshakes and couldn’t be happier. And you better not rat me out on this either because if he knew there was medicine in there he absolutely would not eat it, even if it is ice cream.

No church for me and the boys last Sunday because of the “Pink Eye” but Jason got up to go so he could accept his new calling of 1st counselor in YM’s. He’s primarily responsible for teaching the Sunday lessons to the Teachers, strike that, to the TEACHER aged boy in our ward. He’ll assist on Wednesday night activities insofar as his work schedule permits.

So we’re cruising along, feeling crummy all of this week, until Wednesday night. That’s when Austin woke up from his nap, came to the dinner table, and I noticed that half his face was swollen like a tennis ball. So I called the 24 hour nurse hotline. They say if it gets worse he needs to be seen immediately (i.e. Emergency Room), but if nothing happens then he needs to be seen the next day. Thursday morning I call and get him an appointment. Doctor comes in, not his doctor but at least not the geezer doctor either, examines him, looks very concerned and says he’s going to go consult with another doctor to get a second opinion. Another doctor comes in, examines Austin, they confer, and deliver the news that Austin may in fact have Mumps. Uh, hello, that’s what the MMR is for so they don’t get it. I don’t even know how serious mumps is at that point. At any rate, they tell me to watch it for 48 hours. If the swelling remains or worsens then he needs to come back on Friday the 21st for bloodwork to confirm mumps. But we’re supposed to go down to Longview this weekend for my cousin’s wedding and Easter weekend with Jason’s parents, and we’re taking the wedding cake! Doc’s advised that we may want to make alternate plans. OUCH! And, by the way, Luke was doing terrific, well ahead of the curve at his 9 month appointment, so they said to skip his 12 month and just come in at 15 months, at which time he’d be given his MMR. Not anymore! With Austin potentially having it, Luke got the shots that day, for which Austin later felt terrible. “Mom, I’m sorry I had to go to the doctor’s and Lukie had to get shots.”

I figure it can’t be all that bad if they’re sending me home to monitor for 2 days. So I call Jason at work and he does some research. He discovers that it really isn’t all that bad for children to get it, although it’s highly contagious, but mostly just involves swelling in the neck/cheek making them look like chipmunks. It actually has much more severe results in adult males who may contract it, but I’ll leave that research up to you.

At any rate, here we are now, on the 21st. Austin’s swelling has significantly decreased so the Doc’s are certain it’s not the mumps. They’ve given us clearance to go out in public once again. We can indeed go to Longview this weekend and enjoy a nice Easter weekend with the grandparents. My cousin’s wedding won’t be ruined by lack of a cake. Everything turned out beautiful, right? Well, except for the fact that Jason and I still feel only slightly better than the crummy we felt last week. I need my Mom!

Potty Humor

Humor me for a moment as I share some potty humor with you. Angie has bee working diligently with Austin for quite some time to get him potty trained. She’s started and stopped numerous times due to several outstanding factors: holidays away from home, selling our home, not living at home, you name it, and it has probably distracted our potty training schedule. At any rate, I would say that since we’ve been in our own home once again, all of 2 or 3 weeks now, Austin has finally started getting the hang of it. Many fewer accidents of late, at least that I know about anyway. And lest any of you out there think I’m missing out on this whole experience, I get my share of “wiping” in the evenings and weekends. Notice I didn’t say fair share, as I’ll be the first to admit this usually falls to Angie, but I get a share, which is more than enough for me.

At any rate, this past weekend I was receiving my share of duties and accompanied Austin down the hall into the bathroom where I anticipated needing to help him get situated. I asked him if he needed help and he threw his hand up (as if to say STOP) and yelled “NO, I can do it myself!” So he proceeded to situate himself and when he was sitting there he looked up at me and said, “Well maybe you could go get me a stack of books.”

I couldn’t respond for quite some time because I was laughing so hard. Finally I got out, “A stack of books, huh? Are you going to be in here a while?”

To which he curtly replied, “Only until I’m done reading my books.”

“How bout I bring you one book then?” I responded.

“Well, maybe 3 books would be okay Dad.”

So off I went to get his 3 books. And when he was done with his books, well you know the rest from here…

Happy Leap Day

That's it. Happy Leap Day everyone. And a very Happy Leap Birthday to my Uncle Paul. I think he's officially 13 today? Have a great day Paul!

CRAZY STRIPPER!

Once upon a time, not all that long ago, a wonderful and devoted mother, me, woke up one morning and decided to make her 3 year-old son, Austin, a wonderful pancake breakfast. Austin can be quite picky about how he eats his food and/or has it served to him, and his desires can change on a whim. So whenever we have pancakes I always ask him if he wants butter on the pancakes or on the side. Syrup on the pancakes or on the side? Pancakes whole or cut up?

One day Austin decided he’d rather have his syrup on the side. Therefore I asked him if he wanted his pancakes cut into strips so he could more easily dunk the strips into the syrup, rather than trying to dip the whole pancake. He was very excited by this new proposition, so I proceeded to cut his pancakes into strips. Breakfast went very smoothly, cleanup proceeded just fine, and we were off on our day.

Much, much later that day, Austin became frustrated with me, about what I’ve long since forgotten. And because he doesn’t yet really know what real name-calling is, he often makes things up to call you when he gets mad. One of his favorite is “ipper.” I have no idea what an “ipper” is, but I’ve been accused of it more than once, as has Jason. Well on this particular day, Austin came up with what he considered a wonderfully new and derogatory insult. He was so frustrated with me he stomped his foot, looked me straight in the eye, and said,

“You crazy stripper!”

I was certain I had misunderstood him.

“What did you say?”

“I called you are a crazy stripper!”

“Where did you hear that?”

“From when you made my pancakes into strips this morning.”

Next came the gentle and calm explanation that we do not call people strippers or any other names for that matter, which, I might add, is a somewhat difficult conversation to have when you’re trying not to start laughing about the whole scene.

So there it is. My son thinks I’m a stripper, and as it turns out, I guess I am!

Curved Shower Rod

So here’s the story of our Curved Shower Rod. I fear it may be somewhat of a let-down because it’s not all that great a story, but here goes anyway. By the way, the above picture is not actually of our bathroom, but does show the tremendous benefits afforded by having a curved shower rod.

Our condo was sold and we had long since moved out of it. Angie and the boys were living in Longview with my parents while I was staying at Angie’s Uncle’s house in Renton. On weekends I’d go down and visit, then drive back up on Sunday night. When at last we heard from escrow that they had the papers on our house and were ready for us to come sign, we arranged to get a hotel in Federal Way (close to escrow) and have Angie and the boys come up the night before our early AM signing appointment. We found a hotel with an indoor swimming pool so we could take the boys swimming, and fun was had by all.

Well, our hotel room happened to have a curved shower rod in it, and Angie and I both commented on how wonderful it was to take a shower and not have the curtain hanging on you the whole time. Those extra few inches really make a huge difference!

So the other day we were at Lowes buying supplies for the many projects going on in our new house and we sought out the shower rods to see how much a curved rod would be. It ended up being about $40 but neither one of us flinched at that price. We both just knew it had to be part of our new bathroom. We got it, my Dad helped us install it, which was really quite simple, and we’ve been enjoying it for a couple weeks now.

Seriously, if you’ve not experienced the luxuries of the curved shower rod I would highly recommend booking a night at your local hotel. Be sure to call around and make sure they’ve got a room with one installed. After you try it, you’ll be headed out to get your own!

P.S. I have not been paid for endorsements by either the curved shower rod people or the hotel industry.

A Home of Our Very Own

After what turned out to be 2 months of waiting to get into our house, we’re finally in. And by in I mean we have absolutely nothing stored in any storage units that we have to pay monthly rent on. After all, don’t we all have stuff stored at Mom and Dad’s house no matter how old we are? I know I do, and I know Angie does. But finally even that could be remedied soon. We actually have a real house with enough room to store everything we have in what would typically be considered storage areas, not stacked under the bed, not piled in the closets. A place for everything and everything in it’s place.

Okay, so we don’t yet have everything in it’s place, but it’s comforting knowing there is a place for it to eventually go. We are actually still living in some state of disarray. After we took possession of the house, but before we emptied the storage units, we undertook several projects upstairs. First of all, paint for every wall. Living room, dining room, kitchen, entryway (took some daredevil painting to complete that), hallway, both bathrooms and 3 bedrooms, all got painted. The main bathroom was subject to a much bigger makeover. Toilet taken up, vanity and mirror ripped out, new floor put down, toilet back in, new vanity in, new mirror up, electrical outlet put it (can you believe there was no outlet in the bathroom?), and new curtain rod put in. Actually, the curtain rod may be my favorite part, and there’s a little story about that too. Maybe I’ll save that for another day. We then commenced to rip out the carpet throughout the entire upstairs and haul it down to our newly designated garbage pile in the unfinished portion of the basement (everywhere except the dining room as we still have some work to complete in there). Underneath this nasty “who knows how many decades old” carpet was absolutely beautiful looking wood floors. We’re talking real wood floors here! The carpet was actually just taped down so removal was easy, but the best part is there’s no holes from nailing the carpet in and no messy glue from gluing it in. These floors literally need nothing more than sweeping and mopping and they look fantastic! We’re so excited about the floors.

We’ve since purchased new blinds that have been installed in the 3 bedrooms (way to go Angie)! Curtains have been put up in our room and the boys room. Fireplace insert has been removed and the entire outside chimney has been weatherized and sealed. Plans are still to redo all the baseboards throughout the upstairs, wainscot above the baseboards in the dining room (hence the carpet is still there), replace all the outlets (we have the really old style that have just two prongs instead of 3), and who knows what else. I’m sure Angie’s got a lot more plans. And don’t get me started on the half finished downstairs which currently has no heating. We’ll get to all that someday. Not to mention that as the weather heats up we’ve got some serious work to do in the yard to restore it to some semblance of life. That too, will come some day, probably sooner rather than later.

We’re just excited to finally be in our place and be doing some work on it. Things look great so far, and hopefully will keep getting better. HUGE THANKS to my Mom and Dad for coming up 2 weekends in a row to help do all that work. Couldn’t have done it without them. Not to mention the fact that Angie and boys lived with them for 2 months waiting to get into the house. We’ll have to do something big for them.

Good news, the digital camera is out of storage, so pics should be coming soon!

50 Cent In Our House?

Last night we were sitting in the boy’s room watching TV, because we haven’t hooked up cable yet and so far we get the best reception in their room. So we’re all sitting on the floor, no furniture yet mind you, watching TV and Luke decides he wants to listen to the radio. He long ago figured out that on our little TV there’s a button you can push that will change it from TV to Radio and he loves hearing the music. So he goes over, pushes the button, what do we care it’s on commercial anyway, the music comes on and he starts dancing up a storm. So Angie and I start encouraging him by bobbing our heads and otherwise doing our best to “dance” from a seated position.

Next thing we know, here’s Austin putting words to the music:

“Go Lukie, it’s your Birthday!”
“Go Lukie, it’s your Birthday!”
“Go Lukie, it’s your Birthday!”

That’s when we lost it. We were literally rolling on the floor laughing, aided of course by the fact that we were already on the floor, but nevertheless, we were rolling. Don’t know where he heard it or where he picked it up from, but 50 Cent was definitely “in da house” last night!