Mommy Does NOT Approve

Collin took a turn for the worse yesterday and felt like this. Pay no heed to the woman under the pitiful boy still in her pajamas at 4 pm, with shower-wet hair and a sickly appearance--Mommies aren't entitled to be sick at the same time as their kids, right? At least they aren't allowed to acknowledge it when their throat swells to such epic proportions that they snore so loudly that their ever-loving husband with octopus hands actually threatens to sleep on the couch. Anyway, this pitiful example of a child is the only reason Mommy didn't freak out when Daddy did what he did.

Let's just say that Collin has made it to the ripe old age of three without the knowledge that video games even exist. And my husband, bless his little, sweet heart, doesn't even have a Wii, an X-box or anything fancy. He plugged in the old, original Nintendo. No, folks, not even the Nintendo 64, the original blow-on-the cartridge-Nintendo. We are stone-agers 'round here. And that's my boy doing the "I'm jumping" move that we are all so familiar with, the one that requires the full-on arm swing. What is not pictured, the timer, clearly marking ogre-Mommy saying, "you get 30 minutes!"

See, my boy, perhaps deprived of technology by his Mommy who doesn't let him watch t.v. and, now clearly aware of video games will obviously want well more than 30 minutes. Case in point: he's been watching a heck of a lot of movies during his recovery. This morning, this was his obviously chipper, and much healthier attitude. Apparently, place mat bonnets are all the rage with the preschool set. I'm so behind on fashion. I had no idea that refusing to participate in the gaucho pants trend would put me so far behind the curve, forever.

When told that we would be playing together in the playroom in lieu of watching a movie after breakfast, he promptly did this:

Collin: No Mommy, I'm feeling much worse now. I'm too sick. I have a fever again. I'm sure of it. I need to watch a movie. (By the way, he actually talks like this. I have decided to build a Church of Speech Therapy)

Mommy: Umm. No. Put that down. Let's go play.

Collin: No! I'm sick! My tummy hurts....My head hurts....(struggling with the thermometer case) How do you open this thing?

Mommy: Only Mommies can open them because they know how to tell when little boys are faking.

Collin: Oh. Lets go play....Can we watch a movie after lunch? How about Stuart Little?

Gotta go. The timer is about to ding!

Oh and by the way, apparently, I've been nominated for a blog of the year award. If you feel so inclined, stop by and vote for me! As of writing this, my blog was the second row from the bottom, all the way to the right. I have no idea who nominated me, so out there in blog world, whoever is reading me, gosh 'o golly, thanks a bunch!

On the Mend

Yesterday afternoon....

Is he not the cutest snuggle bug you've ever seen. Ever since we got Monkey (I know, great name, right? Super creative. Don't ask me, I only produced the child, not his imagination), he has insisted on sleeping with him ON his face. This means when he's sick and tries to watch T.V. at the same time, he ends up doing it one-eyed, a-la, pirate. I'm sure this will lead to some sort of blindness or brain disorder since he only will lie on one side of the couch. Considering he's normally as healthy as a horse other than this stint, hopefully this one-eyedness (I bet that's not a word), will not pose a problem.

I recently read that all these 3-D movies though, can cause some sort of brain damage or seizures or something like that. Monkey and Collin were sufficiently shocked by the news.

They promptly informed Daddy. He was also sufficiently shocked. No, wait; he didn't care.

In other news: silliness is back. Daddy and Collin spent the better part of "dinner" having a silly face imitation contest. I say, "dinner" because it was a by definition only a meal for some of us. Collin had food placed in front of him that he did not eat. If he did not have a throat that looked like hamburger, I might have given him a hard time instead of a bowl of Jell-O afterward. Since it was pasta with red sauce, I took of his shirt before we ate in hopes of no stains. Stupid, I guess since he didn't eat any of it but I thought ruining three shirts in two days would be a bit much (he bled all over Daddy's and my shirts at the hospital the day before during his epic anesthesia meltdown).

Anyway, the best news of today is that his smiles are back. He still looks a bit pale. He still exhausts remarkably easily. His eye is still a bit swollen and gunky. He still waffles between bursts of energy and overly tired. He has begun fighting every dose of every medication, which sucks because now he's on even more than ever. And, he is still my little boy that breaks my heart every time he whimpers with a little bit of pain and that cracks me up when his Daddy asked him, as a control question today, "how are your adenoids?" and he said, "actually, those feel pretty good."

I Shall Call this Post Pink-Eye

Because calling it anything else that came up in the last eighteen hours would be too morbid. Has anyone else ever been there when they put their child under anesthesia? I know it's good for their child but it is single-handed the worst thing I've ever seen. Holding my boy as he went limp and lifeless, then became as heavy as a load of bricks as they took him from me and laid him on the table and he looked like he might as well have been as lifeless as he looked; well, it's something I hope to never see again. All I kept thinking in the little over an hour he was gone from my sight was please, please, please hurry so I can see him differently soon.

Thankfully, he was FULL of life when we saw him again. He was so full of life that three doses of Demerol did nothing to calm him from coming out of anesthesia. The two nurses he had, plus his Daddy and I were helpless in calming and restraining my child. He was hysterical for between 30 and 45 minutes before he even began to calm down. This left him like this. It also left me like this. Between keeping him up until almost eleven last night, per their request to feed him extra snacks and food so he wouldn't be starving, and the ensuing meltdown that caused because he was tired, plus the meltdown this morning, and the anesthesia meltdown, we are spent. All of us.

Oh, did I mention that we spent some time at Urgent Care last night? Why, you may ask? Oh, because when I picked C-man up from school yesterday I kept looking at his little face and wondering why he was accumulating a massive amount of goopy buggers on his face. Gross. By dinner, it was like he installed a bugger faucet without my having noticed. It was swollen too. I called the doctor and she said to have it checked and that she'd prefer him to already be on the drops if it was indeed, an active infection, before surgery. So, off to Urgent Care. Good timing, Collin. Good timing. Yep, pink eye.

So, the surgery went well. Apparently, he had monster adenoids. They were bigger than anyone had anticipated so he was in surgery for a little over an hour. He also had an active ear infection that no one knew about. He had been complaining all week about ear pain and telling me he couldn't hear. I had an inkling about that infection but the doc said that there was nothing anyone could've done because the fluid and infection was well behind the adenoid, as all his infections have apparently been anyway, so no one would've been able to see it, even if I had taken him in. He hadn't run a fever all week either. She said he had massive amounts of fluid that she drained but that she decided against the tubes and hopes that the draining and adenoid removal will be adequate. The tonsils were large and between the adenoid and tonsils she hopes this is enough. She also found a deal of evidence of acid erosion in his esophagus and upped his dose of Prevacid and between all that, we hope the coughing will finally be at bay.

Currently, little boy is resting and is doing pretty well. He opened up his get better bag and is overwhelmed with everything. He is watching his new movies and sleeping off and on and eating his junk food pretty well. We're already making our way through pudding and jell-o and yogurt and he's decided he specifically wants sponge bob squarepants push ups!

So, that's the news. Sorry, it's not exciting, interesting and amusing. Give me a break. We are going on about seven minutes of sleep and I feel like I have post traumatic stress. At least I didn't faint, like the mother of the kid in the bed next to us. I am holding it together better than that.

What Tricare Doesn't Cover

The "get better bag." Mommy told Collin that only little boys who are getting "something removed from their throats to "make them all better" get something called a "get better bag" when they get home from the hospital. It's going to be filled with all kinds of treats and surprises that will help him feel better when he's healing. Ummm, I may have gone overboard because I'm FREAKING OUT! He's excited because he thinks it will be like Christmas. (Worst. Christmas. Ever.)

Let's get some perspective on the size of the bag. My dog weighs sixty pounds. No peeking in the bag until after surgery. He doesn't get to peek. Neither do you. Needless to say, he'll be happy.

Tricare also does not pay for the junk food that the kid will be able to swallow for the next few days. Think I did good? He wanted strawberry, chocolate and vanilla ice cream. He didn't understand that was Neapolitan. He has a lot to learn about life. I also thought he might be able to branch out into cookies and cream but we don't have any tractor trips planned so maybe it's too much to ask. We'll see.

Tricare also isn't sending me a check for my coping mechanisms. See exhibit A below. The icing flower didn't make it out of the store intact. I can't speak to why. It has nothing to do with my zeal to eat it. I swear.

I did say mechanisms, right? Maybe I should photograph them together. The two don't happily coexist since the dress is an XS and the cake can prevent XS dresses from fitting properly. Thank goodness I was able to run the past two days in a row without my foot falling off. Hooray.

Cute though, right? I think if I cope at under $25 total on myself, I eat less than an entire cake and I only talk every checkout person's ear off about how scared I am, I'm doing okay. It isn't like I'm calling up the psychic help line just to chat or eating dozens of donuts. By noon tomorrow, we will be in recovery and I can stop freaking out. Right? Right? RIGHT?!!?

They Better Not Remove the Cute Too!

So, Collin is getting his tonsils and adenoids out in less than forty-eight hours. After much deliberation, what seems like countless appointments, hours and hours of deliberation and circles of conversations between the doctors and ourselves, this is the decision and a surgeon is going to knock out my boy, slice into his little body and take parts of his perfect anatomy away. I'm not keen on this idea. I think he's a picture of absolute perfection the way he is.

He's already practicing his sympathetic resting position.

He got up at 5:30 on Saturday morning and told Daddy, "I'm ready to get up!" Then, he marched to the couch where he rested until breakfast was prepared for him. Nice.

Thank goodness he's cute.

I'm feeling nostalgic for my sweet, sweet, sweet boy. I'm feeling wistful for the bygone days of how wonderful (not) it was to be pregnant with my dear little munchkin. At least when he was in my gigantic belly, he was safe from daggers and people wanting to take parts of his body away from him.

This whole surgery thing is freaking the mama bear in me out. What if he comes out of this sounding like Bette Davis? What if he comes out of this no better than he went in? What if he comes out of this really, really mad at me for taking his tonsils? No amount of ice cream puts those babies back, you know? Did you know they can grow back though? They can. Look it up. I swear, it's true. I live in fear of it every day. My super infected ones, removed in emergency surgery would be the ones to grow back and haunt me, wouldn't you know it!

Signing off, freaking out in California.

Childen of the---

CORN!!!! What? If you take kids to the farm for a field trip, someone (me) is going to make that joke.

Also, if you have a fast shutter on your camera, and you take a lot (126) pictures of your kid on the tractor ride, you are going to get some cute shots.

You are also going to get shots that look inexplicably, and randomly, like this. I call them "shots I would delete" if they were of me. If they are of my child, I still can't bear to delete them. Am I crazy? Perhaps. Shockingly, this was not post-eating or sampling any of the savory food they gave him to try. He ate EVERYTHING they gave him in entirety, including the full onion! Apparently, if I ever want to get my kid to try something new, I need to hand it to him while on a tractor.

I love Krish looking at him like he's a wack-a-doodle for eating the onion. "Dude, you know you are eating an onion right, man?" Even Wolfie seems to be a little concerned.

Speaking of Wolfie. I love Wolfie. He rocks. The boys are all best buds. He frequently comes up to me to remind me that Collin has perhaps fallen down or may be in danger of falling down (which he rarely is) but he's so darn sweet and he takes good care of the younger kids. I don't generally say anything negative about anyone else's kid unless thy choose to kick my kid's behind but Wolfie, man, you rock rat tail like no little man I've seen since, oh, my hay day. I love you. And thank you for telling Collin no less than forty to six hundred and forty times that green strawberries are in fact, not yummy. He chased him down with the tenacity of a hunting dog to remind him at every row. Collin and Krish refused to both cooperate at the same time for a cute picture simultaneously. Matt, Krish's dad, got a fantastic picture of the two of them on his phone. Darn him. Just another reason to have only one kid. It's easier to get good pictures. Is that a dumb reason?

Collin flawed my logic anyway. Does anyone else think he looks like Calvin in this picture? You know of Calvin and Hobbes? Or, maybe he just looks like maybe he's about to attack the photographer.

Did I mention the whole point of this field trip was strawberry picking? They gave the kids a basket and told them, "eat as many as you want" while you fill up your basket. You can guess what that meant to my boy.

After about ten minutes, I finally just had to take the basket and start filling it myself, otherwise we would've come home with no strawberries at all because Mr. Strawberry-Sticky-Face had neglected to put a single, solitary strawberry in his basket. He did, however, fill his entire belly.

Thankfully, this "incident" didn't ruin the whole shebang. Mommy was still depressed about it though. I was so happy his hair was getting long. Thrilled. Ecstatic, actually. He was looking a little Tom Selleck around the ears though and I thought it was time to clean it up a bit. I thought I could do it with the trimming scissors that came with the clippers and I messed it up so badly that I had no choice but to clipper his whole head to fix the mess I made. I was devastated. It was such an impromptu haircut, he was nervous. Can you tell? I am still frustrated with Bryon for telling me that the clipper size he handed me would still leave his hair long. Does it look long to you? I know how to do it pretty well, so I wish I'd known better!

Silver Spoons Anyone?

When Bryon mentioned setting up Collin's train in the playroom, since we have a two car garage now in our new house of luxury, I said, "you mean like Ricky Schroeder?!" He looked at me with that face that your kids make when you say, "what's the capital of Arkansas?" just to buy yourself a few moments to speak to your spouse at the dinner table. Apparently, I'm the only one in our relationship that caught that little gem of a show in the 80s. Anyone else with me? Regardless, Collin thinks the indoor train is a hoot. Toot! Toot! (P.S. does that Arkansas thing work for you? I find not for me...Collin just says things like, "What's Arkansas?" or "Can I have some Arkansas?")

He also can't seem to shake the headband trend. I can't stop him. Not when he looks so darn cute. What I do wish I'd stopped was the three year old so darn close to a vase of flowers. Need I say more? But, he looked so durn purty next to them. It made for a nice millisecond photo before the disaster. At least it didn't break. Maybe I should warn him though that sharing headgear is a prime way to catch lice, which does scare him as lice is at is school right now and he is fearful of catching the little buggers. Maybe that will stop this girl-trend once and for all. Oh, but wait! He wants nail polish! Gasp! In blue! Double gasp! For his toes! Triple gasp!!!

Disaster number two: forty-five photos were on my memory card when I plugged it into my computer today. twenty-nine photos uploaded. This may seem like small potatoes to everyone else out there but I happen to think no photo of my amazing child is worthless. We had a fun morning yesterday of smashing geodes open with a hammer and a sock and ALL my photos of that seem to be missing. See "X" below and use your imagination for what would be a great picture of my sweet, sweet boy weilding a hammer over an old sock. It was a great picture.

X.

The Work Almost Ends...

We picked up our keys Wednesday at 8:30. I painted all day by myself. When I say by myself, I mean that Bryon wasn't home. I had the help of amazing friends. Kari and Jen helped all morning and then I worked the rest of the day by myself. The next two days, they were here again all morning/day helping paint. Bryon took two days of leave to help too and we've been painting/packing/moving and pretty much exhausting ourselves to get it all done. His dad came down and has been invaluable. And now, our new house looks like this.I love our new kitchen! I don't have a crummy tile counter top anymore! Hooray! I do, however, have green paint on my ceiling and on my vents because someone (me) is a terrible painter when she paints fast. You try painting an entire house in under three days! But, I can see the ocean from our front bedrooms. I think that they should cut that tree down, don't you? It's in the way of something slightly lovelier. Our bedroom might, just might have some purple paint on the ceiling. I swear, I have no idea how it got there. Talk to Kari. Or, the manufacturers of the paint because I swear it was weird and goopy and did not go on the same way as all the other rooms. Did I just incriminate myself as a participant in painting that room? Despite not being able to see the ocean from the bedroom, I think it's kind of a neat view anyway. It's much better than the view of the gas station/grocery store/biker bar that we had at the other house.

Remember the torture chamber/closet? It's my "office." Neat, huh? It's not done yet though. I ordered myself a cozy little throw blanket that will tie the whole room together and for some reason, it hasn't shown up yet. I'm irritated. Of all things to be irritated about, I know, I should be more rational. But, I'm a nutcase. What can I say!

I can also say that it is a good thing my dog is afraid to be outside alone for longer than it takes to relieve himself because this is our backyard. Facing left....And a turn to the right. I do have a question for Tierra Vista: what DO you people do to grass? I've seen residents, us included, grow, nurture, and enhance yards to the point of lush, green grass and then boom, dirt yards the minute the next resident moves in? Seriously, do you go in with a backhoe and pull out grass the minute one resident moves out just so we are left with this nastiness? It's awful!

Oh yeah, and there's this....

Went to the ER yesterday, as if there wasn't enough going on, right? I have a bad ankle. Running is super good for you. It's also very hard on your body. I have an orthopedist that is helping me take care of my injury and helping me get back to tip top shape. I was listening to him, something I'm not very good at when it means that I have to cut back on running or stop entirely for any length of time. Well, he put some good fear in me the last time I saw him and I was following his orders pretty well and looks like despite his orders, here's a cast and crutches so we'll see the status of the tendon when I can get into see him this week. Thankfully the cast keeps it so still that I can't move it AT ALL and that helps.

Mostly, I just feel guilty that Bryon, on his birthday, is over at the old house right now, finishing up the last of the priming and the tail end of the cleaning by himself because I can't walk. Poor guy. I know it's Mother's Day too, but I feel terrible! We couldn't have gotten this far in everything that had to be done without the help of the Roaches, the Lanes, the Pupiches, the Spears and of course Bryon's Dad ad Mary. Thank you to everyone! We will be throwing a big ol' party pretty soon!!

The Work Begins....

Last Saturday, yes last Saturday we started working really hard on getting the old house primed back to white. Someone enjoyed helping...for a while. Let's just say he enjoyed helping until he realized that painting actually sucks a little, that it's actually a lot of work. It's not all swirling the brush around wherever you feel like swirling it around and making a mess of things. Anyway, we got a lot of the house primed since then. It's been hell I tell you to live in chaos since last week. I hate living in a half-way condition. It's annoying. Half painted, half not. Half packed, half not. Half of everything. It's been worth it though. The new house is wonderful. I love it. LOOOOOOVE IT! Wait till you see!

Collin, the Hula Lord

Want to know how to make Collin's mother cry for an hour straight? Put this costume on him and put him in a performance in which he actually sings and does his little dance moves just like all the other kids. I was a wreck watching that kid, a total wreck. I have to learn to hold it together, so don't look like a lunatic for future school plays, soccer games and the like. I was just so stinking proud of him!

Ignore his father who pointed out repeatedly, and loudly, that Hawaii is NOT international. I get it, Bryon, I GET IT! We ALL get it.

See, the school performance was "International Day." Each class had a dance and song to perform representative of a different country. Collin's class was Hawaii. Collin clearly felt that his Daddy was right and showed his displeasure with the Hawaiian theme with his tongue.

Why they didn't choose to represent the whole Polynesian culture or something like that, I do not know. Why Bryon chose to announce over and over again that Hawaii was inaccurate and why he had to be a stick in the mud, I also do not know.

What I do know is that we were super proud of our adorable little Hawaiian Hula Lord and that he looks painfully cute in his little Huki Lau (who knows how to spell that!) costume and that it was the single greatest thing I have ever seen.

No one tells you before you have kids how you will gladly sit in wet, muddy grass for an hour before a performance of runny-nosed children just to get a good spot to videotape a performance of your kid that will come out grainy and with poor sound to watch over and over again and that the camera will be all shaky because you were too excited to hold it still. Man, we love our kids, don't we?

P.S. Even though you can't see his feet, thanks to the Roaches for lending us sandals so he didn't look like a total geek wearing tennis shoes and a sarong. I'm sure his teacher thanks you too because as she said, "We've worked too hard for him to look like that" when I mentioned we didn't have sandals. I'm sure she didn't mean that and would take it back if she could, right?