The Puddles

Daddy is reading books with Ben and Ainsley.  How sweet!

Madie is still sick.  She was running 102 this morning when she woke up.  Not too surprising since I didn’t wake her up last night to give her medicine.  So far Ben and Ainsley are not sick.  Let’s pray it stays that way.  Madie really wants to go back to school.  She hates staying home.  Of course, she also hates being trapped in her room.  She is only allowed out to go to the bathroom.  We have moved the computer into her room, so she can watch movies and play games during the day if she wishes too.  The doctor thinks that she may have strep throat, which is incredibly scary right now.  Not for Madie but for Ben.  He really, really, really, can’t catch that bug right now.  So if you are thinking of buying stock. . . Purell, Lysol, and Chlorox (or whoever owns those brands) would be good buys right now.  I think that I am buying enough of all of them right now to give those companies a nice profit.

Boy is doing fine.  And that is what he is . . . all boy.  It may be raining outside but I am close to sending him outside to walk up and down the block a few times.  He is so hyper right now.  He had school this morning and the teacher said that he was having trouble focusing. Oh my gosh, she is not kidding!!  Between the weather and the all day visit to the hospital yesterday (the doctor had an emergency and we waited three hours for our appointment) , even I am exhausted.  Ben is probably moving 100 miles an hour out of fear that if he stops he’ll fall asleep.  So . . . I am praying for sunshine and patience just to cover my bases.

The doctor gave Ben an excellent report.  She thinks that he is on a “boatload” of medicine.  (He is on seven meds if you don’t include his vitamins.)  So she took him off lasix yesterday and in a couple of weeks we will work on taking him off of two of his other heart meds that are keeping his blood pressure stable.  She thinks that pain on Sunday was from his coughing fit on Saturday.  It just really bruised him up.  He had all of his steri strips taken off and his stitches (from his chest tubes) removed.  He says that they didn’t hurt at all.  We are getting really good at helping Ben handle his medical procedures. We talk about it the night before and tell him everything that is going to happen.  Then when he gets there at the office, he asks the nurses to show him everything and explain exactly what is going to happen.  And then he insists on watching.  He is stellar . . . if we follow the previously outlined procedures for dealing with it.  Deviate from the norm and he is likely to have problems.

We go back after Christmas to see the doctor again.  We expect continued good news.  The doctors don’t like to look too forward into the future and make predictions so I don’t know what the future holds, but we will take it one visit at a time.  This cardiologist is different from our cardiologist in Nebraska in how she does things so we still don’t know what to expect in the visits to come.

without an illness or any pain.  Ben woke up this morning complaining he didn’t feel good.  We were all getting ready to take the girls to church, so I finished getting dressed and then went to get Ben medicine.  I found Ben curled in the corner of his room crying and complaining that it hurt “real bad.”  I gave him a dose of the stronger pain medicine, but an hour later he was still complaining.  So we called the on-call cardiologist at the hospital.  He authorized a second dose of the stronger medicine and that seemed to do the trick.  After awhile, the medicine finally kicked in and made him feel better.

So child number two came home from church not feeling very well.  I put Ben in isolation and then took Madie up to her room.  She wasn’t running a very high fever but she fell right to sleep.  She slept all afternoon.  I finally woke her up for dinner and she was hot.  Like fry an egg an her forehead hot.  I don’t really know why she doesn’t feel good, but rest and a lot of medicine seem to be doing good work.  Hopefully we can keep this illness from the other two.

I’ve already made one round with anti-viral wipes around the house.  And as soon as she falls back to sleep, I’ll make round number two. I am determined to keep this illness at bay!  Plus my fabulous neighbor brought over a meal tonight.  It is terrific! The chicken is just falling off of the bone.  So at least we all ate well tonight.  It was truly a blessing after the day that we had to not have to cook.  Thank you God for good friends and neighbors!

Ben lost his first tooth!!!!!  He is so excited.  He pulled it out all by himself.  He said that it only hurt for a minute. (Due to a coughing fit this morning that caused him a lot of chest pain this morning, I had given him some good pain meds,  so it probably didn’t hurt much at all).

We have never had the tooth fairy come visit our home before.  Madie has lost eight teeth, but is terrified of the tooth fairy. So she has kept all of her teeth. She was only four years old when she lost most of her teeth, so I can understand the fear.

Ben is still debating whether to invite the tooth fairy to his house, but the idea of money is appealing to him.

By the way . . . we call the empty tooth spots in your mouth “straw holes.” So at every meal the child gets a straw to drink out of and fits that straw inside the hole!  They love it!

We had to wait until after lunch to go on our daily walk.  Since Dad is out of town, we all went on a walk together.  We took our normal route down Holly Springs. Ainsley was complaining that she kept getting stuck.  I checked her tires, and would you know it . . . they were flat. Really flat.  The only thing holding up the rear tire was the training wheels.

Thankfully, Mr. Larry and Ms. Shirley came out to say hello and invited the children in for a moment.  Mr. Larry aired up the tires while the children desperately tried to destroy the nice Christmas village that Ms. Shirley had just finished putting up.  Luckily, everything went back together ok and nothing was unrepairable.  The children all rounded out the visited playing a round on the electronic games that the Finkes have. Did you know that Ben can win a handheld game while watching TV at the same time?  For all of those who know Ben, you are  shaking your head and saying, “Of course!”

We finished our walk on this beautiful day and headed inside.  Madie hung out with her friends in the backyard while Ben and I watched “Storm Chasers” on tv.  We had fun watching tornados rip across the state of Nebraska and know that we didn’t live there anymore. Ben turned to me at the end of the show and said, “Mom. Boy, am I glad we don’t have to worry about that anymore. Cause we don’t have a basement to hide in if they come here.” So true.

So Ainsley comes to me and says, “Mom can I go outside now?”  (See first picture.)

I say, “No go get something warmer on. It is snowing outside.”  So she comes downstairs wearing outfit number two (See second picture.) She says, “Can I go outside now?”  Again I say, “No. Go get something warmer on.” But this time I go with her.  The results were much better the last time.

Good grief. She truly has a genetic link to that land north of Kansas.  Hopefully I can train her better this winter.

It is snowing. Not much. But it is there!  The kids and I miss snow so much. It makes winter seem real.  Not this fake suedo-winter that this part of Texas has.  Madie wanted me to meet her at the school with the sled.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough snow for that adventure.  When I picked up Madie from school, there was a teacher taking pictures.  It truly was picture worthy.  For those Nebraskans out there, it was snowing pretty heavy with big flakes but was melting as soon as it landed.  Not much by Nebraskan standards, but truly amazing by Texan standards.

We pulled the snow pants, snow boots, snow gloves (there is a difference between snow gloves and wear to school gloves), hats, and scarves out ready to experience some snow.  But nothing so far except flakes in the air.  My family has all called and taunted me with tales of snow farther south but so far we only have flakes in the sky.   We still have hope.

My own adventure is about to begin because I need milk.  Chris is going out of town for a couple of days and I can’t take Ben to the store so . . . I am off to the grocery store.  I love driving in the snow and cold, but only if every person who is actually born beneath the Mason-Dixon line is OFF the roads.  They are crazy down here in the snow and ice.  But milk is a substance that we can’t live without so I am off!

Not sure which one is leading but Ben is on a walk with Lonnie.  Ben has been going on two walks a day.  So Lonnie took Ben on his walk today.  They are heading to Ms. Shirley’s house.

Lonnie doesn’t know the way, so he is counting on Ben to show him.  Hopefully they will get there.  After an hour I’ll get in the car and look for them!

Ben can’t go to school for a while. So Ms. G. the homebound teacher came today.  Ben was dressed and ready to go 30 minutes before she was due to arrive.  Daddy gave Ben the book, “All is Quiet on the Western Front” to pretend to read while he waited.  Daddy thought it would impress the teacher. Funny, Daddy.

Ben spent two hours with Ms. G.  and loved it.  He talked about it forever after she left.  He looked like he was doing a stellar job.  Hard to tell.  I was keeping my distance.  He says that he can’t wait for Ms. G. to come again.  He needed this brain stimulation.

Of course, he told the teacher that his kindergarten class drove him nuts and that is probably why he had to have heart surgery.  Funny guy!!!  I think he gets it from his daddy.

Marsha has been working her magic on the walls of our house.  The bathroom upstairs is painted.  The downstairs bathroom is getting near to being painted. And the odd wall in Ben’s room is being painted (the paint fell off like wallpaper a couple of month ago for no reason. weird.) When Madie comes home from school she changes her clothes and gets right to work.  Of course, Madie still has paint in her hair.