When I was your age, television was called books.

I found a copy of The Princess Bride on clearance over the weekend. For the record, it was the best $5 I've ever spent. I'm so bored with the kids' other movies that we've all seen dozens of times. And today, when we were all down for the day with fevers and coughs, a movie with "fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, and miracles" were just what the doctor ordered. TPB kept even Georgie glued to the couch for the full 98 minutes. Miracles? I'll say.

Parents: shave your heads!

I have had a touch of blogger's block lately. Is it because my life has become dull? No, that's definitely not the case. Could it be that I have not had any time for the computer? Actually, no. I have logged in at least twice a day and stared at the blank entry form only to find that, still, nothing will come through from my brain to my fingertips.

But today, my friends, you are in luck; I will treat you all to a tale called The Strangled Toe

Friday morning I was prepping Norah for her bath. As I was inspecting her nails for length, I came across a very swollen and red middle toe on her right foot. When I looked closer, I saw that it was sliced completely open so that when she curled her toes, this particular toe would split apart, whereas the top of the digit would appear to be totally separated from the bottom. I called Dr. Bob right away, and he told us to come in at 11 o'clock for an appointment.

After carefully examining her wound, he gave it a name: hair tourniquet syndrome. I had never heard of such a thing before and was amazed and nauseous at the same time. He spread the two sections of her toe apart, searching for whatever had cut off her circulation, but whatever it was had either worked it's way out, dissolved, or was still in there, but not visible. He said I needed to keep close watch on the color of her toe. If it turned blue or purple, she needed to be rushed to the ER immediately to prevent autoamputation. Eek!! And here's where it gets gross: if the swelling does not go down by tomorrow, I am to apply Nair® into the wound to dissolve the thread or hair that was causing the lack of blood flow. Okay, so has anyone ever used Nair®? Have you ever felt the burning sensation from the product on healthy skin? The directions on the bottle clearly read: "DO NOT USE ON IRRITATED, SUNBURNED, INFLAMED, OR BROKEN SKIN." Exactly. So keep your fingers and toes crossed that the swelling goes down, or else I will be swabbing depilatories into her perferated toe in the morning. (*shudder*) I guess it's better than amputation, which is our only other option at that point.

So please, as a public service message to all parents: shave your heads, and dispose of all hair immdeiately!!!

Spiderman-iac

I took Abby to Kyle's birthday party tonight. When the movie ended, the last of the pizza and cake had been eaten, and the games had all been played, Abby and I made our way back to the car, party bags in hand, where I noticed that I had three missed calls from home on my cell. (I had kept the phone in the car to charge, since the battery was beyond dead.) A small wave of panic washed over me since George doesn't usually ring my cell when I'm out unless it's pretty important. I returned George's call on the way home and learned that Georgie had come down with a fever and had not eaten anything all night. In fact, he had stayed curled up in my bed most of the time Abby and I had been gone, which is rare for him especially since his Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop were over for a visit. When Abby and I walked in the door, I pulled Georgie onto my lap, and sure enough, he was hot as hell from head to toe. As Abby told him all about the party, his head hung towards the floor. I figured he must have felt pretty bad, so I coaxed him into chewing a Motrin to bring the fever down quickly. After he reluctantly swallowed his medicine, I asked him about his night, but he would not speak a word to me, or anyone else, and continued to stare down at his feet. I asked George if he had been this quiet all night, but he said, "No, actually. He was crying about a Spiderman car for the first hour or so after you left. He cried so much, I wonder if that's what made him sick."

"Spiderman car?" I asked. "What Spiderman car, Georgie?"

"Tile." Georgie responded miserably, but finally with a little interest in conversing.

"Tile? What are you talking about - tile?"

"Tiii-ile! Ti-ile!" he whined, and so I continued asking him insane questions about floor tiles and game tiles until I figured out that he was not, in fact, referring to tiles after all. He was talking about Kyle (clearly pronounced "tile" in two-year old dialect) and the Spiderman car that Abby had bought for the party.

"You want the Spiderman car that Abby bought for Kyle?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. "Tile's bider-man tar. Not Tile's. Mine. My bider-man."

I should have foreseen this "spidey-envy" when we were at the toy store buying Spiderman toys. I should have realized that I could never get away with bringing a Spiderman product into our house and then back out again for any reason. Who was I kidding? I have the boy who does not waste time pretending to be Spiderman, but instead has convinced himself, and truly does believe, that he is in fact the superhero himself. I reassured Georgie that first thing in the morning, I would take him to the store to buy him his very own Spiderman car. The instant this promise was made to him, his temperature instantly plummeted back to 98.6°, his mood elevated significantly, and he has been happily coloring at the table (in his Spiderman coloring book, wearing his Spiderman pajamas) with his sister for over an hour, chattering away the entire time (about, who else, Spiderman).

I've been sitting and thinking about what new illness Georgie may be coming down with, but then I started to wonder: is Georgie really falling ill with the flu, or could it be that he is literally sick without Spiderman? And was it really the Motrin that brought down his fever so rapidly, or was it the promise of a new "bider-man tar" that healed him?

I think that we are, without a doubt, dealing with a Spidermaniac.

The Croup, Part II

I had just fallen asleep about 11:00 tonight, when I was awoken by a seal-like barking sound coming from the kids room. I then heard Georgie start to cry. I knew right away, from my experience last year with Abby and the very distinctive cough, that it was croup. When I opened the door to his room, I saw that Georgie was sitting up in bed, but not fully awake. I tried to keep the room dark, and stay quiet myself, in hopes that he would easily fall back to sleep. I sat on the side of his bed and he crawled across to me, resting his head in my lap. We sat like this for a few minutes and I sang to him. And as I stroked his face and ran my fingers through his hair, I savored this quiet moment, when he wanted nothing but to be in my arms. I cherish the dewy-eyed moments with my children when they regress just for a moment, long enough for me to cradle them and reconnect to the days when they were dawning infants. Eventually, he looked up at me and let out a contented sigh, crawled back to his pillow and closed his eyes. I waited until I was sure he was asleep, walked very quietly back to my own room, to my own bed, where I now sit knowing I will hardly sleep tonight, worrying and listening for my little boy.

The return of the migraine.

Well, I was too cocky, too confident that my migraines were a thing of the painful past, but they made an unwelcomed return last night. Possibly, there is an explanation: It started when dainty little Norah pooped so much that it escaped from her diaper. It made it's way up her back, and somehow all the way into her hair?! While cleaning disaster number one, little did I know, my remaining two children were downstairs creating a second disaster. Seventeen juice boxes were opened and squeezeed all over our very expensive area rug downstairs. Calculated correctly, that comes to over 120 ounces of various juice flavors clinging tightly to those little strands of wool. I spent over two hours trying to soak up the mess myself, but to no avail... the cleaners are on their way, and will be charging me quite a fee to "attempt" to remove the stains. One-hundred-and-eleven dollars. Should I repeat that? One-hundred-and-eleven dollars!! That's more than one-dollar per ounce to have the juice cleaned out of the carpet. If the cleaners' attempt fails to get out the stain, I can only hope their attempt to charge my credit card fails as well.

Anyway, last night, after the adrenaline from the joy of having children wore off, I wound up with the worst migraine I have had since before two-year-old Georgie was born. Thank God Norah is sleeping through the night, or she would have been introduced to her very first bottle of Similac. I can't imagine why last night was chosen for the grand reminder of what it's like to have an Acme anvil come down and crack apart my tired skull, but I can only hope, and I do pray, that any future visits (if there must be any) from the Mighty Migraine are few and very far between!

Pacemakers and fire alarms

It's been a while since I updated last! Been keeping busy! Last month we all went to the shore with Jay, Lisa and the kids for a long weekend. It was a great trip. The kids had so much fun together, and the weather held out nicely for us. On our last day there, we got a call from home saying that George's dad was in the hospital, having a pacemaker "installed." Apparently his heart stopped a few times, and they had to put the paddles on him to reboot. It's pretty much the same thing that happened to my dad a few years ago, when Abby was a baby. Everyone was very scared, as you can imagine. But everything went very well. So well that the next week, even though I worried Al was not going to be ready for such a trip, we headed down to the boat with Al and Dot for our annual cruise. Actually, not all of us went. Denise took Georgie for the weekend, since he doesn't bunk well on the boat. We dropped him off on Friday, and George and Abby and I enjoyed a couple days at home alone before we headed to the boat on Sunday night. ETA 11pm. This year Al was told not go any further than the canal with the boat. The jerking of the waves in the bay was enough to pull the wires of the pacemaker out of their stratigically placed points in his heart. Late Monday morning, maybe early afternoon, we scooted out of the marina towards the canal, but when we hit the bay, it was so calm that Al dismissed all doctor's orders and he and George kept right on going... to Chesapeake City, where we stayed for two nights.

I started back to class last week. My first day of English was the 7th. I've already had 2 quizzes, written 2 short essays, and I have a big essay due on Tuesday. Sociology just started this Monday, the 13th. So far I think I'm going to love both classes, but they're going to be alot of homework and studying. Sociology class was a bit of a waste on Monday. Someone pulled the fire alarm during the first half-hour of class, and we had to stand outside for 45 minutes until they got everything sorted out. But somehow we still managed to squeeze in 4 pages of notes and a pop quiz on the 20's by the end of the night.

Georgie has been walking everywhere!! He finally got the hang of it. We think Jayme taught him how. He does not like the whole concept of shoes yet. Everytime I put them on his feet, he either crawls, or he'll walk (actually, it's almost an exagerrated march) raising his feet as high as he can lift them, probably hoping the shoes will fall off mid-stride! I guess he'll get used to them, I don't remember if Abby had this problem or not.

A holy mess.

It's almost Saturday... Thank God, because that means George will be home all day tomorrow, and it also means today is just about over... it was a horrible day! It started out with Abby waking up with a fever, and she was so cranky (justifiably!). Georgie is still very grouchy and clingy, so he cried pretty much all day if I wasn't holding him, which made Abby upset because she wanted the extra attention today, being sick as sick as she was.

I was trying to put a load of wash in this morning, when I heard Abby calling for me and screaming the at baby at the same time. When I came out of the laundry room to see what was going on, I saw Georgie sitting in a puddle, splashing around and laughing. He was soaked. When I asked Abby why the floor was wet, she said, "Della peed." Sure enough, with just a sniff, I fully confirmed Abby's accusations: dog pee. So, I threw Georgie in the tub, scrubbed him with globs of antibacterial soap and brushed his teeth, just in case. Once he was sanitized and dressed, I put Della in the garage and mopped up her mess on the family room floor.

Within minutes of completing this task, Abby stated that she was hungry. I went upstairs, poured her a bowl of cereal, and as I was pulling the milk out, I noticed the food in the fridge was all very warm... After messing around with the temperature controls for a while, I came to the conclusion that the refrigerator was definitely broken, and everything in it was for the garbage. I just went food shopping yesterday. I rummaged through the garage until I found the contractor garbage bags, walked back into the kitchen, and I filled the bags with my rotten groceries.

The next catastrophe came about an hour later when Abby was using the potty, which she is doing very well with, I might add. Anyway, I was parked on the bathroom floor, waiting for her to do her business, and she suddenly got very quiet and turned a palish-green. Before I got the chance to ask her if she was OK, she proceeded to projectile vomit all over me and the entire bathroom. I pulled her off the toilet, stripped her down, washed her up, and got her into a change of clothes. I set her up on the couch, with blankets, pillows, a movie, a bucket, and some more Tylenol for her fever. She wound up falling asleep for about an hour, which gave me just enough time to clean the bathroom, get a shower, and wash the clothes I was wearing and the towels I used to clean up Abby and the bathroom. I thought my luck just had to turn around at this point, but the wood I knocked on must have been Formica after all. I don't know what inspired me, but I decided that while I had the mop out, I would clean all the floors downstairs. While doing this, I heard the washer start to spin and empty. As I was continuing to mop I noticed the washer sounds were much, much louder than usual, so I ran to the laundry room to find that the entire washer had emptied onto the floor. Apparently the rag I had been using to clean some of the kids toys a few minutes back had fallen into the wash tub, clogging the drain. Thus all of the water had flowed over to the floor! At this point, my third set of clothes for the day were soaked, and I was beyond the point of breaking. I sunk to the floor and began to cry.

I don't even know where to begin, or more important, when this ends.

Potty talk, baseball games, and hitting the books.

Georgie is still sick today. Only symptoms are still just a fever and very cranky! Abby is still making progress on the potty! She woke up dry again this morning, and has been using the potty all day so far. George just called, and apparently he was offered tickets to go to the baseball game today. Conveniently, he called me to tell me this five minutes before he was leaving work to go to the game and he says he won't be home until late. I don't know why he's still going to be late, if the game is an early afternoon game. He should still get home at normal time, wouldn't you think? God forbid we ever go anywhere together. He always has plans that coincidentally don't include me. Guys night out, work related "meetings" after hours... blah, blah, blah... It might also help if we could ever get a babysitter. We can never seem to get one over here to watch the kids for the night so we can go out. I'm in the process of trying to find a teenager in the neighborhood so that I always have one on hand. It would be good to have one around for the summer too, so if I need help during the day, she (or he, I shouldn't be sexist) could always pop over for a few hours and help me out. There's a girl down the street, she's about 16 or so. I think she is Bill English's granddaughter (Dot's neighbor). So, anyway, I guess it's not really G's fault that we always have to go out separately. But, anyway... I'm trying to get alot done around here today, and I'll be so happy when it's done! The hard work always pays off in the end, when you can go to bed knowing how much you've done, and then wake up to a clean house!

I tried calling the counselor today for school, and they won't give you your admissions test results over the phone. I'm going to try to go tomorrow night (I have to be there before 6:30) and then I can get my class scheduled and underway! I'm looking forward to going back to school. It's going to be a little weird to sit back in a classroom again, I think. I felt like a teenager again while I was taking the ad. test last week. The pressure to do well came flooding right back, like I had never left a desk! I changed my mind after talking to Mom about taking English over the summer. She's probably right that English is alot of homework and essays to worry about, especially if I'm going on vacations. Math would probably be a better choice. I can always get the assignments ahead and do them while I'm away.

It's a beautiful day today! It's about 74 ° and so sunny. Not a cloud in the sky. A good day for a baseball game... a shame I'm not going...

Naptime for Georgie is over before it ever started... he refuses to go to sleep! Gotta run for now. Be back tonight...

Mean girls

I am so tired! I never feel like I can catch up around here. I work my butt off all day, straightening and cleaning, feeding, bathing and changing.... and then at the end of the day, the house is just as bad, if not worse then when I started. I have so much to do, and I'm hoping tomorrow is a better day to do it. I have to call about my admissions test for college in the morning... I wonder how I did. Classes start May 17th, so I have to get a move on signing up for a class. If given much choice, I'll start with English... get that out of the way! I think I did pretty poorly on the essay part of the test, due to lack of time... or maybe there was plenty of time and I'm just not used to writing on demand... I went to the movies on Friday with Natalie... girls night out... it was great to get out for a few hours. I haven't done it enough lately, and I have no idea why... Anyway, we wanted to see "13 Going on 30" on Friday (chick flick night). We were trying to get into the 8:00 show, but it was sold out! The entire movie complex was full of teenagers wanting to see "Mean Girls!" That movie was sold out for all of that night and half of the next day! So, anyway, we got tickets for the 10 o'clock show for "13 Going on 30", and decided while we were waiting to walk across the street to Ruby Tuesday for dinner. After we ate, we headed back to the theater and got our popcorn and drinks and stuff... and on the way to our movie, we saw a line of teens, mostly girls, waiting to get their pictures taken with the cardboard cutouts of the stars from "Mean Girls.." When they would go up for their picture, they would pose exactly like the "mean girl" they were standing closest to. Anywho, the movie we saw was really good. I want to see it again... I'm probably waiting for the video, though. Tickets for the movie theater are just getting way out of hand, and I heard they are going to raise the prices yet again! Poor Georgie has a fever tonight... No other symptoms except for the fever (running at about 102 °)... I'll see how he is in the morning, and if it doesn't get any better, I guess we're off to the doctor's! :( Alrighty... I'm going to soak in the tub and read my People magazine, and then I'm off to bed!

The croup!

Tuesday night Abby woke up about 1 a.m. with a horrible cough... almost barking. I immediately self-diagnosed her with Croup, and then called the doc to confirm. He agreed with her symptoms and said there was not much I could do for her, just let it pass (about a week). She slept with a vaporizor last night (Wed). I slathered her with Vicks and fed her Tylenol and Robitutussin. She's got a very mild case so far... not much coughing and a very low fever. Her spirits are good and although she spent the day in bed (by choice) on Wednesday, she was up and running around today. I'm a little concerned because the baby is starting to bark tonight, and he seems to take to being sick much harder than Abby. She usually breezes through with minimal signs of illness, and he always gets the most severe cases. But, so far, he's OK. *knock wood*

Temperatures hit about 52 today and the sky was clear. (My ideal weather!) I took the kids for a walk in the stroller. Abby loves the double stroller. She sits up front and I recline her seat so she can reach back and hold Georgie's hand. The whole walk Abby was pointing things out to Georgie... trees, birds, squirrels, cats in people's windows, leaves on the ground... she's very observant and I hope she teaches him to be as well.

On a sad note... Natalie's mom died Tuesday night. After spending 2 months in the hospital, she finally gave up the battle she fought so well for so long with her kidneys. I'm still amazed that through it all after putting in a full week of work on her feet and having dialysis 3x a week, she still managed to push on like it was nothing... I can tell you for a fact, I could not have handled it nearly as well as she did... The last 2 months must have been hell for her. She had most of her small intestine removed due to it being full of gangarine (spell?), her lungs were always filling with fluid (at one point they pulled almost 2 liters... I didn't know anyone's lungs had the capacity). Due to this, she had a breathing tube inserted around the clock. Not long before she had he transplant, she had bypass surgery from the damage from all the dialysis. I wished I had gone to see her before she died... she was always like a second mom to me when Natalie and I were growing up. Who knew she was really going to die, or who would let themselves believe it, anyway? I guess it goes to show that you just never know what’s going to happen from one moment to the next… Now that Natalie and I are "all grown up" we seemed to have grown apart. Funny how life changes... the people you know are not the people you once knew.