The Puddles

Boy.  I’ve caused more problems in my little world with that title.  I blame my brother-in-law because he videotaped Ben and put it on Youtube.  But honestly . . . only Debra is the Aggie.  The blame should be shared. So. . . I blame myself. I should have trained Ben better.  I’ll work on it.  Ben will be bleed Husker Red by the end of the summer.  But honestly, I’ve got an uphill battle ahead of me.

It is official.  I am finally going to see the doctor tomorrow morning at 8:00am.  My headache is going on 3 days now.  It didn’t help that we spent the afternoon with yet again another medical crisis.  Madie choked on a taco shell this afternoon while in the car.  Totally freaked me out.  I was ready to stop in the middle of traffic (no shoulder) to help her.  I was contemplating jumping the curb when Madie finally got it out.  With tears streaming down her face we pulled into the Target parking lot to deal with poor Madie.  She handed me the towel and bag that she had thrown up all over.  She says, “What all the red stuff?” I say, “It is just taco sauce.” No. It was a good amount of blood that came up with the taco shell.  I texted Chris to see if I needed to be worried.  Of course, he calls me back. The phone was on vibrate.  I freaked Chris out by not answering (couldn’t hear it). He sets off searching for me in the car. I finally call Chris back and he tells me to take her to the ER.  I convince him to let me call the doctor first.  The pediatrician’s office tells me to go to the ER. Darn.  I do not want to go to the ER.  There is a concern that she has torn something.  I just want somebody to tell me what I want to hear. “Madie will be fine.”  That’s it.  Not so hard.

So . . . an hour later we are finally in the ER and the nurse is taking Madie’s vitals . . . when the pediatrician calls.  I finally get to hear what I want.  The doctor says that Madie will be fine as long as she doesn’t cough up any more blood or start vomiting.  So we just have to watch for 24 hours.  She can only eat soft foods for the next day.  This is fine.  We can handle it.  The nurse tells us that we can just leave.  They haven’t done anything yet. I check with the front desk and they tell me that I’m fine and they won’t charge me anything today.  That is a good.

The end result is that my head now hurts 100 times worse than it did.  So I am caving and heading to the doctor.  I just hope that  they will fix me and that this will be the last medical drama that we will have for the rest of the week.  I am ready to be done.

I am exhausted. My head is splitting.  I am ready to be home for a while and yet we have more activities tomorrow.  I am feeling swamped.  Chris and I are currently in a downward spiral of home repairs and are trying to get out of it so we can think of something else.  There always ALWAYS seems like there is something to fix around here.  I want to think about taking the kids to the movies or something fun and what I have to think about it is . . . cleaning out the closets, ironing clothes, scrubbing toilets, and what activities do we have on the calendar for tomorrow.  On Chris’ few days off, he is trying to do home repairs, mow the grass, and attempt some of the items on my honey do list.

The kids had swim lessons this morning and they are doing superb.  Ben has shown the biggest improvements.  He is swimming.  Swimming!!!  If you know my Ben, he has not always been fond of the water.  But he is “like a fish” (words according to Ben) now.  It has been wonderful.  The girls are doing well too.  This will be their last week at swim lessons.  I think two weeks is enough.  I am just tired of spending two hours a day at the pool and not getting in with them.  (Maybe I’m just tired. period.)

We came home after swim lessons, ate lunch and then the children put on a talent contest for me to judge (a remake of “America’s Got Talent”).  They worked so well together.  They picked their songs together, practiced, and performed three acts for me to judge.  So cute.  They really had a good time doing it.  They shared beautifully!  I was so tired that after three Dt. Cokes and three talent acts I could have fallen asleep while sitting in a chair.  But it time to go on to our next activity.  Movie Night at Church.

Awesome and fun.  The kids had a great time.  I drank  another gallon of caffeine, so I managed to stay awake during the movie.  We had over 30 people come to the movie.  Our activity next week is a lock-in, but I think that we will have to repeat the movie night in the fall.  It was a lot of fun.

The kids are all tucked in for the night.  I heard Madie have a coughing fit this morning so I hope that she is not catching what Ben has.  We had to go to the doctor again Monday because Ben’s cough has not gone away after three weeks and he started coughing so hard this weekend that he threw up Sunday morning.  He has repeated this every morning this week and sometimes in between.  The doctor told us to wean him off his acid reflux medicine so we can see if he still needs it.  But the doctor said Monday that the cough/vomit behavior may have nothing to do with his acid reflux.  He has micro—- something.  I just blanked when she diagnosed the cough. I just remember the three new drugs we have to put him on while we try to get rid of the cough.  So we are weaning him off two drugs and adding three more.  We always get the weird diseases.

We just have to wait and see if he vomits after his cough is fixed.  Poor guy.  He is tired of throwing up.  If he throws up after the cough is healed, then the doctor wants more testing done to figure out why he is throwing up all of the time.  Great. More tests.  We finally received our appointment for his kidney testing next month.  Of course, the only available time were while Dad is out of town at camp, but this is just a test and no visit with the doctor.  So we won’t find out anything on that day.  So my mom is going with us.  That is good.  The girls are going to hang with Aunt Debra while we go to TCH. Ben is not excited but he likes it when Grandma comes.

So we have had medical drama this week.  And we still have dentist appointments to make and yearly checkups to schedule.  Busy.  The routine stuff is hard enough let alone the unusual visits to the doctor.  I guess that is another reason why we are all so tired around here.  The only way to fix that is to get some sleep, so I better head topside.  The morning will be here before I know it.

“Can you speak Cowboy?”  asks Ben.

All of the children attempt.  “No. No. No. It’s like this . . . ‘Stick a fork in me. I’m done.’   See how I did it. You put the accent in the middle.  It’s like hot-cold. Little hot and then little cold.  That’s how you talk Cowboy,”  says Ben.

I don’t understand anything that he said, but he sure did.  He spoke with such authority.  Which is typical with Ben.  Ever the storyteller.

It’s certainly never dull at this house.

The grass is over a foot tall.  It is a good thing that the neighbors can’t see or we would probably get reported.  The cat escaped yesterday and only made it about five feet into the grass and then quickly turned around and headed back inside the house.  It was weird even for her!  Chris is outside mowing it.  It will take awhile.

Madie received her first Bible today from church.  Madie was so excited.  Her favorite part of getting the Bible was seeing all the scriptures that people from church marked.  It was like a treasure hunt.  She came home from church and asked me to mark mine too.  Then we found Daddy’s favorite.  She didn’t understand it.  She went to go ask Daddy what his meant.  He said, “Read it again in 10 years and we’ll talk.”  Geez.  In his defense, he had been at church for about 10 hours by this point so I am sure he was Bibled-out.  So  . . .  Round Two. She asked again. This time he agreed to make an appointment with her to talk about it!

It is a wonderful Bible with a cool cover.  Seeing all of the kids from church up there receiving their First Bible was a tearful experience.  What a joy!  Don’t be surprised if she walks up to you and asks you to mark a passage in her Bible for her!  God’s word is powerful!

VBS is over.  It was an awesome week and so cool.  Ben said that everything was his favorite.  He loved it all.  He and Ainsley said that they wished it was every day of the year.  The entire front of the church was turned into a ship.  Sails and all.  It was really cool.  The week ended well with a great church service today.  Chris rocked it out again.  This time he had an entire band behind him.  This was the best I ever heard VBS sound.  Even the oldies sounded great.  You can tell by the smiles on the kids faces that this was a great week.  We can’t wait until next year!

This particular tirade is sent to my beloved sister, Debra.  Debra came over tonight and watched the children so that Chris and I could have an evening without children.  I told her not to worry about any rules.  To just have fun because we didn’t have anywhere to go tomorrow and we could recover tomorrow.  So we come home to three children preparing to bed down in the living room. Cute!  A slumber party in the living room . . . that now includes me sleeping on the couch because Aunt Debra was going to. How did I get mixed up with this?  I am all for a slumber party, but how about one in my bedroom in a real bed?!  Now my poor back (no not really) is going to sleep on a lumpy (only where I started the fire in the cushion) old (10 years. 5 moves. numerous diapered children.) couch.  Ainsley informed me that she would be joining me sometime tonight.  I told her there was no room.  She proceeded to show me that she could fit.  This is going to be an interesting night.  I think that I have already earned a nap tomorrow afternoon.

But I can say one thing . . . I am sure that this will be one of those nights that we will all remember and cherish.  It will be worth the aches in the morning!!! So thank you Aunt Debra!

As a side note to my earlier posts, the revamped lesson worked like gangbusters and the night went well.  I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow.

VBS is always so much fun, but yesterday was a true test of my patience (just in my little class not the whole VBS.  That seems to be doing well).  Last night was about rolling with the punches.  We went from four kids to nine, and the average age was under 3.  So today is about revamping the lesson, so that everyone can enjoy it and walk away with a positive experience with church.  Not that it was horrible but I am not sure how much of the lesson was absorbed by the group.  So onward and upward today!!!  We are heading out in a few minutes to church to try to recalibrate the lessons to a much younger age group.  The lessons are really written for 3 and 4 year olds.  And if you know itty-bitties, a year can make a huge difference in their abilities.  You just do things different with the under 3 set.

So my team is rethinking and redesigning and hopefully we will have a much better experience for the rest of the week.