Our Month of Fun Things

I have a beautiful and blessed life. I love my life. I just have to share what our month has been like, because it amazes me what we've had come up the past few weeks. 

First of all, in April I broke my ankle when a line drive hit me at a softball game. But didn't know it was broken, so limped around on it for three weeks in pain before finding out: The x-ray didn't show the break, but the MRI did.

Calvin has had the most remarkable month of all, though: He...

• Fell out of a tree, ripping up his chin, and cutting up his eyebrow and mouth and knocking out his tooth: needed a stitch and antibiotics for the tooth.

• Got a horrible case of poison ivy all over his face-- swollen almost beyond recognition, the day before      his field trip. That lasted about a week and a half.
• Got lice and consequently a shaved head-- thankfully this seems to have been taken care of quickly (fingers crossed).
• Has a very sore throat that might be strep
• Has had almost all of his baseball games cancelled due to rain.
  
  The kid is holding up remarkably well, even though he made several questionable decisions in the baseball game he played the day after his stitched up eyebrow and skinned up chin: slid headfirst twice. He rationalized it by the fact that he was safe. I'm not sure why sliding headfirst was necessary, but that is a debate I don't want to get into again.

Meanwhile, Teddy's eczema flared up and resulted in a staph infection, and then steroid cream, antibiotics and lots of baths. He also got lice. I could not bring myself to shave his head, so I'm guessing it might take a little longer to cure, though it's looking good so far.

I found out that my ankle was broken and cannot put weight on it-- this has been for the last week and a half. I have at least two more weeks to go without weight-bearing. Then I got lice. Thank you, first grade.
Clark joined in on the party by also getting lice. Though aside from that and a few baseball rainouts and a particularly bad flip into the boards in a hockey game, he's had a relatively smooth month.

Brian hurt his back and neck somehow, so he's had a hard time doing normal things as well. Since we've had record amount of rain this spring, we've barely gotten any baseball games or practices in, which has been frustrating for him as a coach especially. But he has risen to the many challenges and been great about picking up the slack around the house, and scheduling make-up scrimmages so the kids can have a bit more baseball this spring.

I started this blog as an outlet for myself to write, and especially to record parenting things that might seem frustrating at the time, but in which I could see the humor by writing about them and sharing them with readers. This month seems to fit the bill. I'm still in the midst of hobbling around doing 47 loads of laundry and combing hair with lice combs and trying to do normal household things with one leg, but writing this has made it seem less exasperating and a little more comical. I'm also buried in a super messy house while ironically maintaining a blog about a clean and less cluttered house. I know it will pass, but I still feel a little fake about it. 

I've been shown once again how amazing our friends and family are with all the help that they've generously given us. I couldn't have survived without them.

Booger Bummer

I was sad that we didn't make it to the Air and Space Super Science Saturday this past weekend. I wrote about it today on DC Metro Mom. Get your Purell on and go read it. 

How Boogers Made Me Angry

Thursday Thesicle

It's good to have a brother when you're sick.

Thesicle (n) a little or subordinate thesis; a proposition

Fevers > Hurricane & Earthquake

Though last week we had an earthquake and a hurricane, both boys had bad fevers for several days, which proved more disastrous for our household.

Not that the earthquake wasn’t unnerving. I was putting the boys down for a nap when the house started shaking. My first thought was that it was an earthquake, followed quickly by, “But we don’t have earthquakes here.” I had no idea what do to. Take the boys both in my arms down three flights of stairs? Corral all three of us in a doorframe? Instead I think I shrieked like a lunatic because then Clark ran around like a little a parrot shouting, “What in the world?!” Their toy barnyard started mooing up on the shelf, some books fell down, and the icemaker was kicked on in the freezer. I turned on the TV but all that I saw was soaps, Sesame Street, and the local “live” weather channel that seemed creepily prerecorded. I thought maybe the shaking had been an extremely low-flying aircraft of the super-spy type until Brian called and said it was an earthquake. Scary. It took awhile for my heart to stop racing and my hands and the flowers in my window boxes to stop shaking.

Then Saturday we were excited, in a way that only a natural disaster can make you excited, about the imminent hurricane. Probably no one but hardcore surfers would admit to being excited about such a thing. Perhaps nervous or wary, but not excited. So we hunkered down for Hurricane Irene. (great word, hunkered) We had water, we had ice, we had lights, we had batteries, and we had a really long and boring day inside with two fussy, feverish boys. Later at night the wind and rain picked up but it wasn’t even strong enough to knock over the dying pine tree in the front of our building that I really wanted to fall down, or wake up the boys.  Our lights didn’t even flicker. Overall a real letdown for us and our preparations, though I know I should be glad. Tons of people had damage and power outages; there were even sad situations where people lost their lives. I should count our blessings…and I do. I was just hoping for a bit more spectacle.

Cal gets even better bed-head when he's feverish.

Sandwiched between the earthquake and hurricane was the onset of two fevers. Clark fell asleep on the floor one night early and soon after was burning up with a fever. The next day I had sick little Clarky who only wanted to rock on the rocking horse and listen to Jimmy Buffet, (That seriously was the only thing that would make him stop crying a few times.) and active, happy Cal who wanted to run and jump and play… on top of Clark. So we were stuck inside and away from friends and then inevitably Cal caught the fever, probably from all the open-mouth kissing he likes to do. A lot of inside hours of Tylenol and Ibuprofen-administration and mom-worrying like I shouldn’t do, but always do anyway. Overall the fevers were much more off-putting and long-lasting for us than the natural disasters…but I guess fevers are disasters of nature as well.

MMD

I don’t know what I was just sick with over the past few days so I’m going to henceforth refer to it as Mad Mom Disease or MMD. (After Mad Cow Disease. See what I’ve done there? My wit astounds me.)

I first believed my MMD was an allergy attack late Sunday afternoon, but it stayed with me and today is the first time that I feel…real again. 

Basically over the past few days I have had a mild headache, mildly sore throat, sometimes runny nose, and no energy. Add to that a scorching heat index of something like 118 today, whatever that means, and similarly hot weather the previous days. Fortunately Brian stayed home yesterday, allowing me to remain in a puddle state most of the day. I don’t know how I normally do everything I do. The thought of making dinner or taking the boys outside just made me want to curl up in a corner and moan in a barely audible but continuous Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Everything looked different and dark with MMD.

I think those days are behind me and I think what cured me was time and a seriously potent cough drop. That is all.

Artistic rendering of my life the past 3 days, in Sharpie, blueberry, and half-eaten cracker