Sick and Tired

You know that saying that our mothers used to say to us... "I'm sick and tired of...." and just fill in the blank with the quote of the day. Well, that's kinda how it is around the Langham house right now.

Porter was sick last week and has been doing much better. However... that little bugger decided to empty the contents of his stomach at about 1am this morning.... all over his bed. I heard him crying and I said a quick prayer that he would go back to sleep. No such luck. The cry turned in to one of those that a mother can tell means more than just "I lost my passy." So I got up, went into his room, and was immediately assaulted with the foul scent of what my son had been doing. I all but yelled in to my snoozing hubby and apparently, it just took one "HONEY!!" to wake the man from the dead because he came running in Porter's room and we were then both immediately on the clean up crew. I took Porter to the bath tub and Mike took care of cleaning up the bed. What a mess that all was. Even after washing Porter's hair, the smell was still there. He threw up a few more times and after about 3 hours and a conversation with the on-call nurse at the hospital, my little munchkin fell asleep and slept until nearly 9am! Which is more than I can say for Mommy and Daddy. We got a 3 hour chunk taken out of our night, but thankfully got to sleep until about 8am. He's done much better today. He had a bit of "spit up" this afternoon, but nothing like last night and he's kept down everything he's eaten and drank today... can I get an AMEN?!

Rachel has been fighting a cold for a few days. We figured she was getting the leftovers of the croup that baby brother had. She hasn't felt super great the last couple of days and this morning, she was acting very tired. She had a smidge of a fever this morning, but ibuprofen kicked that in a hurry. She had a great visit with Grandpa and Nana, who were down today, but wasn't her bouncy lively self. Then tonight, she felt a bit warm again and when we checked her temp, it was back up to 100.2. So low grade, but still enough to keep her home from church tomorrow. She's been taking some "grape" medicine (Dimetap) and some "yucky" medicine (Mucinex) to try and ward off her cold symptoms. And now we have Tylenol and ibuprofen in the mix. God help me if that child wakes up and starts throwing up. I might have to scream.

So, needless to say, I'm a bit tired. I feel like I've gone non-stop this week. It's been a drain for me. And my nerves are fairing better than they were at the end of last week, but I'm still not "normal", whatever that is. Tomorrow is going to be busy and it doesn't look like next week is going to give me a break. I would just about pay someone to take care of my children so I could get a good night's sleep and wake up at my leisure... no electronic alarms.... no human alarms.... no K-9 alarms.... just to be able to go to bed without having to get up at any certain time the next morning. Without having to be somewhere. Just to be. Gosh. I love my kids and by no means am I wishing the time away, but man am I ever looking forward to the days when they can all fend for themselves and can take care of things so Mommy can rest.

I feel like I have so much more to blog about, lots more pictures to post, but like I said... I'm tired. I will try to be more diligent about posting and getting all my stories and pics up here. For now, I think I'm going to bed.

A topic for another day - Redbox. I love it!!

So the doctor says....

Double ear infection and croup. That's what Porter has. Which is what we found out after waiting over an hour in the waiting room of the doctor's office and then another 20 minutes in the room before the doctor actually came in.

He took 14 teaspoons of steriods (yes, you read that right) for the croup and some antibiotics for the ear infection.

I think it might be because he drank all that toilet water.

So, in the time it took me to fix dinner tonight, several things happened:

* My son spit up on himself. At least that's what we're going to say. He drank his juice too fast. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

* My son spilled an entire sippy cup of juice on my kitchen floor because the lid came off.

* In trying to keep my son contained for a few minutes, I let a pot of water and milk boil over on my stove. And you know that makes a lovely spot on the burners...

* While I was getting meatloaf in the oven, my son found the cup we use in the bathtub to rinse hair and came out of the bathroom, coughing, spewing water from his mouth from the FULL CUP OF WATER..... It took me all of about 1.2 seconds to realize that water came OUT OF THE TOILET!!!!!!!!!! AND MY SON WAS DRINKING IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I told that to Mike and of course, he was laughing his head off and was talking about how impressed he was that Porter was able to figure out how to dip water out of the toilet. Yeah, impressed isn't exaclty how I was feeling about the situation.

* My son is now contained in his high chair and both the girls and my husband have been told that they MUST put the lid down on the toilet after they've used the bathroom or they will be grounded!!! All of them!!!

Rachel was never like this. EVER. She just didn't get in to stuff. We tried to put latches on our cabinets (that didn't end up working) because we thought that's what you were supposed to do with a baby, not because she was in to everything. Now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up needing to cage my son if I want to do anything that causes me not to have at least one eye on him at all times.

My gosh, Porter is precious, but heaven's to betsy, that kid's wearing me OUT!!!

The Power Has Returned...

...and Rachel is NOT happy about it!!

The Thompsons have been staying with us the past 6 nights because of their lasting power outage. I've really enjoyed having them here (contrary to what Jeremy would tell you that I supposedly said...) and Rachel has really loved having a slumber party with Katie every night. It's been like a vacation for those girls. They've been best buddies since they were babies. So, although I KNOW Michelle is very glad to be back in her own home, my baby girl was absolutely weeping tonight when I put her to bed because she missed Katie so much. She was trying to say her prayers and when she asked God to bless Katie, she just broke into tears. I almost couldn't pray then because that choked me up.

I'm sure the Thompsons will be sleeping MUCH better tonight in their own beds, but Rachel sure does miss sharing her room with Katie.

Before and After at Mom's and Granny's

As most everyone knows, a big ol' bunch of ice came through these parts... and it didn't stop in Springdale. It kept going right on over to Harrison (where my mom and granny live). This was the view from my mom's porch down in my granny's yard before we got started. I imagined it was bad, but I didn't realize they had limbs as big as trees that were downed.

This was after we finished our work for the day. Needless to say we didn't get nearly all of it done, but I think we made a pretty good dent. My granny couldn't even get to her mailbox without going through the maze of limbs and sticks, but now she can get out to her newspaper and mail and up to Mom's without climbing over trees in the yard.

There's lots more to be done, but Mike and I wore ourselves out doing just this much. Man, this stuff is such a huge mess. It's going to be months before it's all back to normal. And then, I'm afraid, it still won't be quite normal.