Back from the dead

Oh man, these posts are getting farther apart and that is NOT GOOD. The past few weeks have been not so great.

About two weeks ago Caelynn came down with a virus/cold. She had congestion and a runny nose, but the worst part was the 5 day fever she ran. When the fever was below about 99.5, she was happy. But as soon as it would start to climb, she'd get hysterical and extremely clingy. NOT the best circumstances when you have a non-walking one year old to deal with too and house work. Matty was also dealing with the virus, but thankfully he was as happy as a lark. He had nasty junk coming out of his eyes AND his nose but no fever. Cae started with her fever on Tuesday and it ran through Saturday. Friday night Matty started with a fever and I got really sick with the virus as well. Thankfully, Cae was on the upward swing, Matty's went by within about 48 hours, and I thought mine was over pretty quickly too. Wrong.

That week, right near the beginning, I also noticed that the cabinet under my kitchen sink was leaking. All over. And growing mold. It was AWESOME. So, I had everything from under the sink loaded into a wash basket on my counter and my "job" was to figure out HOW the sink was leaking. In between dealing with "fever girl", I tried to keep inspecting with the flashlight. Ran the dishwasher - no leak. Ran the garbage disposal - no leak. Ran the water in the sink - no leak. Put water in the sink to wash dishes...LEAK! The sink is pretty old. Our house was built between 1980-81 and I'm pretty sure this is still the same nasty white porcelain sink put in the original house. So, I put a tupperware container where the water was dripping, called Rich and TRIUMPHANTLY announced, "I KNOW where the leak is coming from and I THINK I know WHY it is leaking!" Brilliant work, Melissa! Now...live like that for another two weeks. :-) 

So, that disaster averted and waiting for attention from my busy hubby, I focused on "fever girl" and "I don't want to learn to walk boy". I have been TRYING to encourage the boy to walk. Some will say, "Wow - that is REALLY delayed for an almost 19 month old to NOT be walking!" Let me tell you - it is not from lack of working with him, TRYING to get him to walk, or his own physically inability to. He will take steps here and there, he will walk behind a push toy when I MAKE him, and he will walk holding on to a finger. He CAN do it - the child is as stubborn as a mule and only wants Mommy to hold him and carry him. Sometimes I think the umbilical cord is still attached. I adore him to pieces but he just DOES NOT CARE and won't do anything he doesn't want to do. So, in between fevers, I was trying to get him to walk more. Then the virus hit. Friday night, around 5 p.m. I told Rich, "Man, I feel like I"m coming down with something." No lie - by 8 p.m. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I went straight to bed. BLECH! By Sunday I thought I was on the mend but we all stayed home from church b/c Cae hadn't even been fever free for 24 hours yet and Matty had issues and I was still sick. 

Monday morning comes - and my throat feels like I swallowed a razor blade. By Tuesday it is BAD, and I'm hardly sleeping at night. I have Rich check my throat for white spots (Strep), and he sees nothing. By midnight of Tuesday I just want to bawl my eyes out. I was up every night with Cae while she had a fever so I've now not slept through the night in over a week. I am up, at midnight, with my hubby's HUGE Makita flashlight (meant to be like a work light) and trying to simultaneously stick out my tongue, say "ahhh!", and shine the flashlight at the right spot in my throat while also trying to see any white spots. I must have looked like a moron. By the time I'd get my tongue flat, I'd shine the light in the wrong spot b/c I was looking in a mirror and it was throwing me off. BAD WEEK. That was an entire week. I'd sleep for about 2 hours, wake up in excruciating pain, gargle with salt water, make some hot tea with honey, pop some Tylenol, sip the tea, suck on cough drops, watch tv, and then eventually have dulled the pain enough to catch a few more hours of sleep. I think this past Monday was the first day my throat didn't actually kill me and one of the first nights I slept totally through the night. 

But, during that week of "sore throat killer pain", I went to do my laundry b/c...as you mom readers know, "Moms do NOT have time to get sick." Life goes on, meals need to be prepared, diapers changed, bills paid, laundry done... It was supposed to be GORGEOUS and SUPER warm on Thursday so I thought, "By hook or by crook, I'm getting three big loads done and on the wash line!" Went down after load #1 finished to find...water all over my basement floor. Super fantastic. Our water/sewer line had a clog in it again. I dragged the wet/dry vac down to the basement and tried to get up most of the water b/c I HAD to do another load of wash. I did the next load - even MORE water plus I completely clogged the wet/dry vac. At this point I thought, "Are you KIDDING me????" Called Rich and told him that now he had TWO projects to work on - kitchen sink leak and clogged pipes. And now my basement smells like poop and death. (And for the record, no, the sewer didn't back up into the basement. But it is an OLD basement and when it gets water, it STINKS!) Saturday Rich decides to do the fixes. It takes him ALL DAY with the kitchen sink (read: water turned off, kitchen sink completely unusable) b/c he decided to reroute the pipes a bit - which required THREE trips to Home Depot to pick up the plumbing tubes he'd need. Just as he was putting it all back together the main old part broke. Back to Home Depot. Washer pipes still not unclogged. As Rich went upstairs, during the kids nap times OF COURSE, he notices in our bedroom that the bookcase we have in there was starting to come apart - it was a "put it together yourself" bookcase given to us. Instead of trying to push it back together, he wants to "see" how much weight it could take or if it would come apart. And, as luck would have it, the ENTIRE THING came crashing to the ground. Like 8 big shelves of books ALL OVER the floor. At this point, I'm looking for a camera crew to jump out and say, "You've been punked!" Didn't happen. Just life.

End of the story - he got the sink all fixed up by 9:30 Saturday night. I was staying home from church with Matty b/c I was still really struggling with sore throat/talking (I'm sure my hubby probably secretly liked that it hurt me to talk - I'm not the quietest person in the world) and Matty was/still is getting some molars in. Sunday, after church, Rich went down to unclog the pipes - that took until about 6 p.m. 

I"m really thankful for a handy hubby. With buying an older house, there are A LOT more things to fix than a newer home, so I'm really blessed to have a husband to can basically fix anything/redo anything. Sometimes things pile on all at once - sickness, house disasters, falling behind on house hold chores, etc... Looking back now, it is pretty funny. At the time, not so much. Last night we lost power for 5 hours. The kids took a bath by candlelight and Matty pooped in the tub. :-) These are the things that make memories. I realize, as I see myself spazzing out when my routine gets out of whack, that I really pray my kids inherit Rich's laid back attitude. Nothing really phases him. He has the patience of a saint and just goes with the flow. I, on the other hand, start the huffing, puffing, eye rolling, muttering under my breath, and thinking, "Great, so this destroys my entire 'Thursday' schedule so therefore I need to readjust and that means I have to move this to..." In the grand scheme of things, NOT a big deal! I hope next time I handle things better than how I did this time. Just hoping it doesn't all come at once, ya know? Cause then someone's liable to get HURT!

"Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool

I apologize for yet ANOTHER delay in posting. Last week and this week has been ROUGH. Caelynn started getting sick last Monday and by Tuesday was running a fever pretty consistently. If it went over 99.5, we had a VERY cranky patient on our hands. And by "we" I mean "me". She would get inconsolable and I'd have to sit with her and calm her down and get her to rest and try to get her fever down. When she was better, I tried to pack in all of the normal housework, plus take care of Matty. By the end of the week, she was FINALLY getting better but Matty started with the fever and Friday night I came down with it. This week has been better - Caelynn is feeling much better, Matty's little case of the cold/fever was over in about two days, but I've been struggling with congestion, coughing...and the worst part is the sore throat. During the day I was fine but I'd wake up in the middle of the night with such horrid pain that it would keep me up. 

Anyway, such is life...but that is why I haven't been blogging much lately. When I feel okay, I'm trying to get the daily chores done, as well as trying to get Matthew to just WALK already. More on that later.

Anyhow, my first "read" of the month is an awesome book I stumbled upon called Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. Once again, I went with an adolescent book but it truly is marvelous. One of my little nerdy obsessions is the dream of collecting and owning every single Caldecott and Newbery Award winner/Honor winner since both awards originated back in the early 1900s. I have a running list of award winners and highlight which ones I own. This book won the award for 2011. :-) So, when I received a Barnes & Noble gift card from my hubby for my birthday, I knew what I wanted to get. :-) This book DOES NOT disappoint.

It is a historical fiction book, set back in the time period of 1936 in a small town of Manifest, Kansas. The main character is a young girl named Abilene who is shipped to this town, knowing NO ONE, by her father who works for the railroad and can no longer keep her with him while he works. As Abilene tries to piece together why her father sent her to this town...and piece together who her dad really was before she came along, she falls in love with the diverse people that make up Manifest. The story jumps between the activities of 1936 and 1917-18. When Abilene meets the "local diviner" and has to work for her to pay off a debt, Abilene begins to learn a history of a people she thought she'd never care about. 

This book is AWESOME. Very clean, very easy to read, but also keeps you on your toes as you try to remember who everyone is and keep in context what they were back in 1917 and who they are now in 1936. Fantastic story with some great morals. Also ingeniously weaves historical facts into the story so that it educates at the same time. Definitely deserving of the Newbery Award, in my book! 342 pages

"Homeless Bird" by Gloria Whelan

So, after brainstorming for a while and searching the internet, I found a device that will help me keep track of my book reading this year. You will see it to the right of my most recent post. As I read each book, I can go in and add the title to my shelf. My goal is to read 30 books by December 8, 2012, so that means I need to read about 3 books per month. This past month - the FIRST month of my journey towards this goal, I was scrambling. I didn't think I'd make my "3 books" deadline, and I was worried. Let's face it, we set goals for ourselves and then if we fail in the first week, two weeks, month, we want to give up. Or at least I do. So I felt it was really important to start off this first month and meet my goals. I pulled a hamstring in my right leg on January 2nd and by the 4th, I could hardly move without a ton of pain. I went to bed as soon as the kids went to bed and tried to lie still and elevate my leg. Instead of watching t.v. for three hours, I read a book. An entire book. :-) I've had this book, "Homeless Bird" for many years now. When I was teaching 7th and 8th grade reading, I bought lots of books that were on their level so that I could offer my students a variety of books, since our small Christian school had very limited resources. And honestly - I like that adolescent genre for the MOST part. So, knowing I was pressed against a deadline, I tried to pick a fairly decent sized book that was still an easier read. It's about 212 pages long and by the image on the front cover, I was thinking it was about a girl in Russia. WRONG. This story takes place in India and the first page of the book says something along the lines of, "You are thirteen years old now, my daughter. It is time for you to marry." This book made me uncomfortable in a good way...simply because I not only TAUGHT that age but I now have a daughter of my own. I can't imagine marrying my child off at the age of thirteen to a boy she has never met. This book is well written and really portrays the good and bad of life in India for a young girl. I think the author's intent was to take the reader out of his/her comfort zone and interestingly weave fact with fiction so the readers can understand what life is like for others their own age thousands of miles away. Whelan hit the nail on the head. Good book!

Caelynn Strikes Again...

As parents, sometimes we find ourselves "wishing away" our children's younger years. For example, "I can't wait until he/she is old enough to... b/c my life will be easier." or "I can't wait until my kid is in later elementary school and starts to really sleep in so I can FINALLY wake up whenever I want on a Saturday instead of considering 7 a.m. as a 'sleeping in miracle'." I've been guilty of doing this over and over. So recently, as Caelynn has grown taller and figured out how to open the fridge door (we have a newer fridge where the freezer is on the bottom and the fridge is on the top), we have loved that she will come down in the morning, grab her sippy cup of milk AND Matty's, give him his in his crib, and then go back to bed and lounge around. NICE. During the week, it doesn't matter b/c I'm up at 6 but on the weekends... it's AWESOME. Until one morning...

As it WOULD happen, it was New Year's Eve. Rich and I have rarely ever stayed up late to watch the ball drop. I mean, seriously. It's a ball that isn't even all that attractive that "falls" at the slowest rate known to man, and then confetti falls on people I DO NOT KNOW and we stay up for that? Seriously? I've BEEN in Times Square on New Year's Eve. We wisely followed the policeman's advice to "get out of the city before the ball drops or you could wait 3 hours just for the subway out of the city." The ball wasn't even that impressive. I digress.

I stayed up until a little after 11 and then hit the hay. I was awakened at 1 a.m. by my son SCREAMING in his crib. I run over there groggy and completely disoriented. I could tell by his cry that he was hurt but after doing the initial feel/sniff check (feel for any body part stuck in the crib slats and also check for a fever, sniff for a poopy diaper), I couldn't figure out what was wrong. He was literally SCREAMING, though, so I figured I'd run downstairs and grab his cup, which usually quiets him down. I was worried he would wake his sister. Oh THAT is rich! I run down the steps, fling open the door, reach for his cup (I knew EXACTLY where I had put it the night before after he fell asleep)...not there. I'm searching the bottom shelf, the door, behind the milk containers, and I'm quickly getting mad at my hubby. Now let me just say for the record...I adore him. But he has been known to move the kids stuff out of the way for that late night oreo attack while he chugs milk from the jug. I don't care...just DO NOT TOUCH THE KIDS STUFF!  I was getting more and more mad and frustrated as Rich is snoring in bed, Matty is SCREAMING, and I'm not finding the cup I KNEW I put in there just 4 hours before.

I come up, in a huff I might add, and say, "RICHARD...WHERE IS HIS CUP?" He says, "I don't know - Caelynn has hers, I think." What? It's 1 a.m. Why in the world would that child have her cup? And suddenly it dawns on me - the little stinker woke up at 1 a.m., felt parched, went down, grabbed her cup AND Matty's, dropped his into his crib and most likely BEANED him with it! No wonder he was screaming! I go in - sure enough, there is his cup, still cold, still full, and Matty is wailing. I'd scream too if a several pounds, cold cup came careening on top of me while I was in a dead sleep. Took me until  2 a.m. to get him calmed down and asleep. Went down to the couch (my hubby snores - if I have to get up during the night with one of the kids, I have to go sleep on the couch b/c I'll never get back to sleep with him snoring. One of my pet peeves - cannot STAND the sound of snoring!)...was awakened by a crying Caelynn at 5 a.m. who was constipated.

Happy stupid New Year.

"The Quiet Little Woman: A Christmas Story"

As I panic that my first month's goal of "read 3 books per month" looms just 8 days away, I tick book #2 off of my reading list. I'll admit - I picked a shorter book this time so I can meet my goal. However, I chose one that was A.) a Christmas themed story   B.) a book I've owned for years and never read    C.) a book by one of my most beloved authors, Louisa May Alcott. 

This book consists of several short stories all involving a young girl as the main character and each with such wholesome morals in it that it makes me walk away wanting to be a better person. Alcott has been one of my favorite authors b/c reading her books is like basking in the sun during the first warm day of spring. It's SO REFRESHING to the soul and almost always convicts me about some area of my life. It's a super easy read and I finished it in about 3 nights of reading. :-) If you love Alcott, get this book! Also perfect for a junior high aged girl that loves to read! Very clean, no language, and morally virtuous!