Nostalgic

Since Alex has started riding the bus, I have been reminded of the little traditions of bus riding...

Every time we come upon a railroad track, he gasps and yells to cross your fingers against the window.  We used to just have to lift our feet up, but whatever floats your good luck boat.

And then the other day, we passed a couple of cemetaries in a row.  He took in such a huge breath while simultaneously shouting "CEMETARY!" I had no way of understanding what was happening until we got to the second one and the process was repeated.  Luckily, they were both pretty small, or I think that kid would've passed out cold making sure no evil spirits took over his body.

Not Fair

I received this picture from daycare a whopping 4 minutes after I dropped off Sam:

Given the staggering number of times he woke up last night, there was no doubt in my mind he was going to fall sleep nearly immediately upon arrival.  And I'm very happy he's so content at daycare.  But when does the lady that got up with him every time he woke up last night get to take a nap?

P.S.-That lady is me and I'm tired.

Brain Freeze

I realize it's been almost a week since my last post.  I just haven't felt a whole ton like writing, which is odd, but I'm quite sure will go away.  Now that I wrote it down, I'll probably come up with four different things to write about.  We shall see.  Until then...

We're experiencing technical difficulties!  We'll be right back!

Mini-Gangster

This morning Alex asked me to pack up his dollars and most of his change in his backpack.  Why?  Because he wanted to give money to any kids that were getting picked on to cheer them up.

My very first thought was, "Holy shit.  He's gonna punch a kid, and then pay him off...he wants to take hush money to school."

Yes, I felt bad that I immediatly thought that instead of thinking my sweet boy is looking out for other kids.  But I mean....I think I'm just a little justified in that thought.

The Race Is On

I don't want to pick a favorite between my children, but I will tell you; the one that sleeps until 8:45 on a Saturday is definitely edging out a lead.

Stylin'

I was on Predisone for this ridiculous back issue.  When I got the prescription, the pharamcist told me it might make me feel a little absent minded.  He was not kidding.  I kept finding myself doing strange things like putting the peanut butter in the fridge even though I have never kept it in there ever in my life.  Or putting Alex's umbrella behind the dog food instead of hanging it on its hook, because of course why wouldn't I do that.  And then the other day, around 10:30am, I realized I left the house, dropped off Sam, and came to work donning not a single spec of make-up.  Now, I don't really wear much make-up anyway so I wasn't all that upset about being out and about all sans fards and whatnot....but the fact that it wasn't a conscious decision whatsoever bugged me a little bit.

This morning I arrived at work only to realize I remembered the cloth sleeve for my ice pack, but no ice pack.  That is infinitely more infuriating than just forgetting the whole shebang.  But, ice pack or not, my shoulder/arm/neck still hurts.  So, I grabbed one of those cooler ice pack thingys out of the freezer in our office and leaned up against that.  One problem...those things sweat as they get warmer.

Lookin' good Julius, lookin' good.

Blerg

Feelin' kinda grumpy today.  My face looks like someone sewed a worm to it, so that's exciting.  According to the doc, it will calm down and be much less noticeable at some point in the next year.  I guess we'll just keep our sights on the future and pick out a pirate/villian costume to wear.  Constantly.  For the next year.

I'm trying really hard to keep this in perspective.  It was a very small spot of angry skin cells.  The angry skin cells are gone and can cause no more damage.  There aren't any other angry skin cells to evict from the premises.  This could have been much worse.  Like really really much worse.  This is not a big deal.

But the one thing I'll give myself?  It's on my face.  There is a worm on my face.  Right next to my eye.  One of the two eyes people look at when they interact with me.  Although the pirate/villian attire just may lessen any interpersonal activity.

Gimme 15 Minutes

"So you need a home policy and a car policy?  How about we bundle in some life insurance too for some great savings!"

Sunday Treat

Any guesses as to what kind of treat we stopped for on the way home from getting the dog from the kennel?

I'll give you a hint.  It rhymes with "shmacolate shmice shmeam."

Bus Success!

So, there was no TV this morning and I implemented "bus toys."  What is a bus toy?  So happy you asked.  It is a small surprise toy that Alex is allowed to have if and only if he gets on the bus.  I pack it and if he gets on the bus, he gets to open his backpack and see what I packed for him.

Today's surprise toys were two of his HotWheels with googly eyes stuck to them.  I wrapped them up in alien wrapping paper and stuck them in his bag.

When I woke him up this morning, he began his list of reasons why he couldn't go to school today, so I quickly reminded him of the bus toys.  He paused and asked if he still got the toys if we took the car.  Ummmm...yeah, no.  They are called "bus toys" for a reason ya spaz.  And when I told him that the only way he was going to get to find out what the toys were was if he got his butt on that bus, he was suddenly wide awake and chomping at the bit for the bus to get there.

I may have just set myself up for a very expensive and high expectation school bus riding year, but hopefully we will just need this crutch to get us over this reality check hump.

True Love

Last night, I noticed a rivet had fallen out of one of our knives and mentioned it to Travis.  That is when he pointed out we got our knife set for our wedding and we came to the realization that we have been married for 9&1/2 years.

And that is when I said (engage sarcasm font), "Wow, honey.  Our years of marriage have gone by in the blink of an eye....but one of those long, slow, painful blinks...like when you have sand in your eye."

He's such a lucky guy!

I DO love him!

So here's the thing.  I like babies.  They're cute and all.  But I don't particularly like infants.  I'm talking less than about 3 months old.  I mean, I loved Sam right away and all, but holy man once he started actually responding to me and for real smiling at me, I totally found mysefl saying, "Oh man, I really do love you!"

I honestly don't know that I told him I loved until about a couple weeks ago.  I realize it doesn't really matter since I could be telling him he's a boob-faced monkey and as long as I had a smile on my face while I said it, he would smile back at me like an idiot, but still.

I also realize that he is still technically an infant, but I feel like there should be subsets that categorize infants when they are just blobs that don't do anything other than eat, sleep, poop, and cry, to when they can walk and talk and stuff.

Like there should be infant-infants, baby-infants, baby, toddler, monster that has taken over my life.  Although that last one could pretty much be applied to all ages from conception on.

 I guess my point in this is that infant-infants, quite frankly, kinda suck.  But babies sure are cute.

Change is hard.

Now that Alex is on his second week of Kindergarten and the reality of this change sticking around has set in, he is decidedly not excited about going to school.  He is not ready for school.  He is getting a cold.  The bus won't get him there in time because it drops off the big kids at the middle school first.  His arms feel funny.  He doesn't get any food at school.  Some mysterious boys yelled at him but he doesn't remember why or what their names were.  He doesn't waaaaaaaaaaaaant to.

Yesterday morning was a complete shit show.  We woke up on time and all was great until the bus was early.  Now, I know the little handy handbook for Kindergarten tells us to be at the bus stop five minutes early.  And I realize the bus was only four minutes early.  But shit.  Yeah, we missed the bus.  But not before I ran out the door with Alex's backpack, waving my arms like a lunatic trying to catch the driver's attention.  He didn't see me.  Ya know who did see me?  My super tall, skinny, pretty neighbor who managed to get her two kids to the bus stop in time.  Awesome.

So I had to drive Alex to school.  Drop off at school is a big turnaround driveway and when you get there you pull all the way to the front, and a teacher comes and escorts your child to the sidewalk.  Or, like in our case yesterday, said teacher has to have a different teacher hold her coffee so she can physically pry your child from your car while he is bawling and screaming that he wants you.  Super duper.

And then today.  Today.  We were ALL at the bus stop.  Alex, Travis, Sam, Aiden, and me.  Because that is how King Alex requested his departure.  But as soon as we got to the bus stop, he wasn't ready to go.  And the crying started.  The bus driver assured me he would be fine.  Yes, super nice (and once again early I would like to add) bus driver, I  know he will be fine.  The problem is that he doesn't know he will be fine.  And then Travis put the nail in the bus riding coffin when he said out loud, "I'll just drop him off."  Well then there was no way that kid was getting on the bus.  And shockingly, it ended up being me that had to drop him off.

Any guesses as to how today's drop off went?  Well, if you said the same as yesterday, you would be 99% correct.  Only difference was that there was no second teacher to hold the coffee, so I had to wait for the teacher to grab her coffee off my hood while trying to stop my screaming child from clamoring back into my car.

Yeah, I cried a lot too.  Kindergarten is fun!

Sure, why not?

Since this arm/back/shoulder thing has emerged, I am pretty close to useless at home.  I'm not allowed to lift anything other than Sam and I'm only allowed to do that at the bare minimum.  Mostly because that child is huge.  The doctor asked how old he was, and when I said 3&1/2 months, he replied, "Oh, ok.  So he's still pretty light."  And that's when I had to admit my child is a beast.  He is close to 15lbs.  At 3&1/2 months.  Doctor's response?  "Oh!  So....he's not that light."

In light of all of this, Travis has been getting up with Sam at night.  The sweet baby is down to only waking up once at night, which is super awesome, but is still tiring.  And we found out that maybe just maybe Travis wasn't fully recognizing how exhausing it is to not be able to sleep all night because you are getting up every four hours to feed a baby like I have been doing for the past three and a half months.  On Friday, after getting up once a night for three nights in a row, he called me to let me know he was putting off two of his stops until Saturday when I was going to be at my parents' with the boys, because he was so tired and he needed to go home and take a nap.  Now I really appreciate him stepping up to help since I am hurt.  And he really really has.  But maybe don't be such a baby about getting up at night.  Or at least phrase it in some way that acknowledges the fact that he hasn't had to do a single night feeding since this kid was born.  Moving on.

On Saturday my arm felt really good, so I got up to feed Sam.  Now, I was told one of the medications I'm on sometimes makes people feel a little goofy so I should be aware and careful.  Good good.  So, I get up to feed Sam.  I grab a bottle, open the formula container dohickey that has the formula premeasured, dump it in the bottle, and shake it like crazy.  I sit down with Sam and start feeding him.  And he's acting kinda funny, so I look down and think, "Huh...I wonder why it looks so dark in the bottle.  Am I crazy or does it normally look...whiter?"  It takes me a couple minutes, but I finally unsuction the bottle from my baby velociraptor and look at it.  Yeah.  It's just water.  Apparently the section of the formula dispenser I chose was empty.  But in my sleep/medicated state, I "dumped" it into the bottle and shook it like a polaroid picture like normal.  And then fed my 3&1/2 month old straight water.  'Cause if they tell ya anything, it's that infants really really like straight water.  They're super good at digesting it.

Falling apart

I am physically falling apart.  On Labor Day, I ended up in urgent care because of crazy intense pain in the back of my left arm and half of my left hand being numb.  A while back, I fell asleep in a chair with Sam and when I woke up, I was all, "Huh...I guess I have a pinched nerve or somthing."  It didn't hurt, but my pinky and ring finger on my left hand were tingly.  And they stayed that way off and on the past two months.  Now we're back to Labor Day.  Yeah...not just the tinglies anymore.  So. Much. Pain.  The urgent care doc feels around in my back/shoulder and determines I have a big ol' knot in my back that is pushing on a nerve.  I know of said knot, so this makes sense.  She prescribes pain patches to put on my back and some muscle relaxers.  Sounds 'bout right.  Until none of that is doing anything and I am spending more time moaning in pain while holding my arm than any other activity.

So back to the doc I go on Thursday, and after he pushes on my head a couple times while I summon every bit of strength I have not to punch him in the face, he determines we might be dealing with a bulging disc that is pushing on a nerve.  Lamesauce.  So he prescribes a myriad of other medication, takes me off the pain patches and muscle relaxers, and sends me to physical therapy.  Physical therapist pokes and prods around and sends me home with directions on how to sleep with, no joke, an arrangement of 6 different pillows, and an at home, over the door, neck traction kit.  What does that look like you ask?  I'm so glad you asked.  I cannot not share the hotness of this thing I have to load myself into.


What's that behind the lovely model in a "head halter?"  Why that's the water bag you fill up with different amounts of water to attain the proper poundage to pull your head off your body.  Do you think the bangs and perm will help with a speedy recovery?

I do have to admit that when the physical therapist pulled my head up to simulate what the traction kit will do, it felt amazing and I asked him to do that forever.  Alas, as soon as he let go, the pain came back and, FUN STUFF, was worse.  And that's when he reminded me that the pain is most likely going to get worse again before it gets better.  That we have to focus on the furthest symptom, the numbness, first and we will "accept some complaining of the muscles closer to the source."  Ummmm...I don't remember signing on to accept any complaining.  That complaining had stopped before you went all Dr. Frankenstein on me.  Can you tell the pain is back today?  Back with a vengeance.  Like I swear this pain took some lessons from Bruce Willis or some shit.

Aaaaanyway, so I gots this shoulder/back/arm thing goin' on and I have to have some stupid yucky Basal Cell skin cells scraped off of my face on Friday.  So when the physical therapist told me he wants to see me again either Thursday or Friday, I had to tell him that it had to be Thursday because I am having a MOHS surgery on Friday.  He just kinda looked at me funny, so I said, "Yeah, I'm a hot mess right now and have a lot goin' on.  I'll see ya on Thursday!"  And I didn't even bring up that I wouldn't be able to see him next Tuesday if needed, because I have an ultrasound to keep an eye on some cyst we found when I was knocked up.  I'll say it again.  Hot. Mess.

And all of this was truly driven home when I had to call the dermatologist to make sure I can stay on the three different medications I'm on for my back and still have the MOHS dealimabobber on Friday.

I take 7 pills every morning.  I am 36 years old.  This is ridiculous.

Shit...literally

Even if you have a pinched nerve in your back that is forcing you to lay still on the couch or in bed with an ice pack on one specific spot on your back while taking enough ibuprofen to knock out an elephant...even if you are dealing with that?  You should let your dog out when she scratches at the door.  You shouldn't say to the dog, "You were just out 20 minutes ago.  There is no possible way you need to go out again."  That is not advised.  Why?  Because when you don't get up and risk substantial nauseating pain, the dog delicately places 8 different piles of diarrhea on the carpet in your son's playroom.

Aaaand he's off!

Today was the day.  The first day of Kindergarten.  Ya think Alex was excited?

Little jerk didn't even look back to wave good-bye!

I only cried a little bit.