Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Tale of One Weekend

Last weekend R and I packed up the kids and took them back to our home town for the annual alumni basketball tournament. Yes, R and I are that couple who dated all through high school and then got married. The fact that we both grew up in the same town, graduated from the same high school (there's only one, the town isn't that big), and our parents still both live in that town generally make for a pretty fun alumni weekend. We get to catch up with friends from high school, see who is getting married, pregnant or divorced (sometimes it is all three, a trifecta!), R plays basketball and I pretend to watch, the bars have free beer on Saturday and we have free babysitters. Yay, good time had by all! Not so much this year.

The Thursday before the festivities I woke up with a sore throat. Being the mom that I am sore throats can't get me down, I played through the pain. Friday wasn't much better but still I pushed through. We made it to dinner at my parents house on Friday night, by this time I was shivering and could not get warm for the life of me, J, complaining about a sore throat, spent the evening on the couch, and A seemed to have a strange pussy growth on her face. If this was a movie the "dun, dun duuun" music would be playing.

On Saturday I woke up and felt as if I had been hit by a truck. My dad made me some tea and I promptly went back to bed. J wasn't fairing much better. A's weird pussy thing had now scabbed. Sean, being the only healthy child, decided this would be a great time to try some Mucinex. We now have a file at poison control, and just in case you were wondering five pills is a fatal dose of Mucinex. Great morning.

We all rallied and went to R's first game. They won, I saw friends and gossiped (one pregnancy, no marriages or divorces). After the excitement of the game, the girls talked their papa into getting them movies and I went back to bed.

I woke up for the afternoon game but the girls were having none of it. J informed me, "Mom, we went to one game that is enough." She's a big supporter of the athletics.

At the game, which they lost by three points, I made some optimistic plans to meet my friends for dinner. I laugh at this now, what a fool I was! I never made it anywhere besides bed that night. I got back to my in-laws, J fell asleep on my lap around five. R put her to bed and I didn't move until 7:15 when I went to bed and promptly fell asleep at 7:16. Sorry friends! Apparently at some point in the night S started screaming for me. I, in my sick induced slumber, didn't hear him at all. My mother in-law took over my duties and calmed him down. Thank goodness for in-laws!

Sunday morning came and everyone still felt like junk and now R was joining in on the sick fun. By this point A's sore had become scabbed, pussy and very angry. R and I made the executive decision that an urgent care visit was needed. You would think an urgent care visit to a small town hospital would be a relatively uneventful outing. Not so in our town. A and I walked into the clinic to find a woman in the middle of a full blown melt down, she was crying and screaming about how her husband/boyfriend/significant other was going to use this to "kick her out of her home". Believe me, she made me happy to be the one sick with my pussy faced daughter. We checked in and were basically told by the triage nurse it would be best if we went to the cafeteria, maybe I didn't want A exposed to this certain brand of craziness. I gladly took that advice. One nice calm visit with a doctor later (the poor lady was nowhere in sight) we found out A had impetigo and needed to be treated with antibiotics. Just to keep you updated the count is now three down with some mysterious horrible illness and one down with impetigo. S is the only resistant and healthy member of the family.

It was decided that after the trip to the urgent care the time had come to take our poor limping little family home. Monday morning dawned with everyone was basically the same R stayed home and I went to the doctor. My diagnosis? Influenza A. I could bang my head against a wall! I had been too lazy to bring everyone in to get a flu shot, S was the only child who got one because he had to go in for a 18 month appointment. Interesting that he is the only healthy resident of our house, hmmm. Can you feel my guilt?! Almost every member of my family is sick because I'm a lazy, crap mom!

Tuesday comes and goes with more of the same. The only positive note is that the antibiotics seem to be working on the angry mess on A's face. Wednesday R finally makes it back to work. The kids and I are not quite so lucky, we still really like the couch. On Thursday J is still not up to par, I finally take her in only to find out that she doesn't have influenza A but strep throat. A quick call to my doctor confirms that I also have strep. Perhaps I'm not such a crap mom after all, if you don't consider that fact that I let my daughter go almost a week with strep.

It is now Sunday, one week after the screaming urgent care lady. Everyone seems to be doing better, the skull and cross bones have officially been removed from our front door, we are back in business and ready for the public!

Here is what I learned from my family's week long quarantine:
1. Flu shots are a good thing.
2. 4 out of 5 members of a family being sick is not a good thing.
3. The nurse at poison control named Anna is very nice, she doesn't make you fell guilty at all when your child eats potentially fatal medicine.
4. I have wonderful parents and in-laws, I don't know what I would do with out them. R and I are very lucky!
5. If our little family can get through a week where the majority of us are sick and cranky we can get through anything.
6. Antibiotics are wonderful!
7. I need a vacation!

Monday, February 16, 2009

Family Vacation

As I am sitting gazing out at the frozen landscape that is my backyard, I'm dreaming about a day when the weather is hot, the grass is green, and my children can play outside without five layers on. Thinking about the summer automatically takes my mind to summer vacations. Growing up summer vacations were a mainstay in my family. Every year we would pack up the car, Griswald style, and go somewhere. It really didn't matter what the destination was, just as long as we were going there as a family.

Our vacations are some of my favorite memories. The smell of camp fire and pine trees still makes me nostalgic for my family sitting around a campfire, listening to loons in the Boundary Waters and licorice always will make me think of long car trips with family size bags of Twizzlers. Not to say that all of the trip were beautiful and serene Norman Rockwell style vacations. Oh believe me there were some doozies. One year my family went camping in, I swear, 150 degree heat with 100% humidity. During that vacation, while we were basically melting in the heat, we were also lucky enough to experience a black fly hatch. I truly believe black flies were spawned from the devil! That specific trip is fondly called the "camping trip from hell". Even though living through the trip was painful, whenever I conger up the image of my brother running down the shores of Lake Superior with a cloud of black flies following him cartoon style I can't help but laugh and I bet every member of my family would be laughing beside me. (Even my brother would laugh, although it did take him a little bit to get over all of the fly bites!)

The point of my walk down memory lane is that I want the same thing for my children. R and I decided this is the year to start the infamous family vacation, so this morning the kids and I surfed the web looking for the perfect cabin in northern Wisconsin. Yes, the trip from hell has made me a cabin girl, no more tents for me!

Ideally, this trip will be the first of many for my family. I'm predicting some good trips and some bad. I'm crossing my fingers that the good will out weigh the bad and that lots of memories will be made. Hopefully when my kiddos are grown and are looking back at all of our family vacations they will think to themselves, "I want that for my kids." I don't know if my parents had any intentions of inspiring family vacations in me as an adult, but I definitely want what I was lucky enough to have for my three.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Just So You Know...

This is what happens when you bang your head into a door hinge...
How do you bang your head into a hinge you ask? Well, by bending down to pick up a toy of course. Doesn't that happen to everyone?

For the Love of Mater

S's newest obsession is the movie Cars, specifically Lightning (or 'nighning' if you are 22 months) and Mater (we haven't perfected how to say Mater yet). A while ago S received a Mater sticker from the doctor. I really didn't think much about it except for the fact that: A- it stopped him from crying after his shot and B- it was most likely going to end up on the floor of my car where I would find it in April or May when it is finally warm enough for me to endure being outside for the extended period of time it takes for me to vacuum out my huge beast of a vehicle.

One Sunday the sticker made an appearance on S's shirt. Apparently R had found it and S had garbled convincingly enough to let R know he needed to wear it. Little did I know how long the sticker would be in my life.

For three, count them 1, 2, 3, days the sticker was on S's shirt. It didn't matter if it was a pj, play, or sweat shirt the sticker had to be on. If S noticed Mater was missing we had a very sad boy. If anyone has ever seen a depressed 22 month little boy, you know what it is a pathetic sight. The sticker went though everything, meals, play dates, baking, sleeping, baths, it became one very mangled and sad excuse for a cartoon drawing.

Finally I was able to take the sticker off a shirt while his sisters were distracting him. So far he hasn't noticed it is gone. I'm crossing my fingers Mater has been forgotten otherwise an emergency sticker run to Target will be in my future!

Notice the pride the chubby little finger has as it's pointing out Mater and the grip he has on the car. I tried to have him put down the car, but it was not happening. We definitely are obsessed with anything with wheels!

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Double Meanings

One of the things I laugh the hardest at is when my kids don't understand the double meaning of phrases. I know it might be mean to laugh, but seriously it is funny.

Here was a conversation at our house last night:

J had somehow gotten it into her head that I was overworked and needed help (Bless her little heart for noticing!) and said all of these statements in a matter of five minutes.
"Mom, you are the best mom in the world. I'm going to help you do the dishes."
"You made a great dinner, I'm going to help clean up."
"I love you so much, you're such a great mom, I'm going to help you."
"Mom, you deserve to sit down and watch a mom-show. (what we call any show that isn't a cartoon or has the a target audience of five and under) Just sit down and put your feet up!"
"Doing the dishes is fun, I love helping you because you are so great!"

Believe me I was lapping up all of this impromptu adoration! R on the other hand thought it was all a little over the top and while rubbing his nose jokingly said, "J, you've got a little something brown on your nose."
J looked at him, soapy scrub brush in hand, the picture of innocence and said, "No worries, I'll just wipe it off!"

I find these little moments hilarious!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Groundhog Day...Can You Feel the Excitement!

J loves groundhog day. When I say love, I don't mean I don't mean a "yay, this is a fun day" kind of love, I mean love with a passion love. We start discussing Feb. 2nd weeks before the actual date. We talk about whether or not spring will come early, what Phil does to prepare for the day, what he will eat, we read books about it, basically the excitement builds for quite a while until finally......GROUNDHOG DAY IS HERE!

J has a groundhog hat, thanks to her aunt who actually went to Pennsylvania and saw Phil in action last year (very impressive to my daughter). Last night before J curled up for bed she put on her hat, yes, she slept in a groundhog stocking cap, in preparation for today. (I told you this was a passionate love) I also had strict instructions to wake her up so she could see Phil predicting spring first hand.

J woke up bright and early and crawled into bed with me hat and all. The two of us turned on the Today Show thinking we would see some good groundhog features there. Now, I have to admit, the choice of the Today Show was slightly selfish on my part. I love watching it, for some reason the mix of news and trash just gets me. Normally my TV choice is overruled by three loud, little individuals who would rather watch Super Why and Clifford. Darn kids! Today I thought we all would win, I was mistaken. The Today Show didn't have anything on Groundhog Day. After watching it for an hour J was at her wits end, where was Phil? How would we ever know when spring was coming? Being the mom that I am I went online and found the Groundhog Day ceremony. We watched all twelve minutes of it (that's right the ceremony takes twelve minutes). Finally all of our questions were answered, Phil saw his shadow, spring is coming in six weeks. I don't know what we would have done with out this information!

All kidding aside two funny things happened today while we were watching.
1. J saw someone in the crowd in Pennsylvania wearing the same hat she has (and was also wearing). This was very, very exciting for her.
2. J looked at me very earnestly and said,"I just don't understand the Today Show. Why would they want to talk about the Superbowl and President Obama when it is Groundhog Day. Don't they know what is happening!" I can't imagine what they were thinking....