We're Home!

We're all home, I'm exhausted, going to bed, talk to you later.

At the Hospital

Well, turns out, poor Moose has pneumonia. We're in the hospital right now. Earlier yesterday I guess you could say, or 3 pm Sunday afternoon, Mark noticed that Moose was breathing weird. I checked his temperature and it was 105.4 under the arm!!!!! I'm cool with anything 104 or less, but well into the 105's I loose what little bit is left of my mind. We came to the Mary Wash ER which I was totally dreading after past experiences. I do have to say that they redeemed themselves this time. We didn't even wait 45 seconds in the waiting room and within 15 minutes we had two nurses, a respiratory therapist, and the doctor in our room. Wow!!! They started Moose on IV antibiotics to which he had a lovely allergic reaction, which happened to start while I was talking on the phone with our assistant pastor! He probably thinks I have a stuttering problem now. So here it is, almost 1 am, and we are on the pediatric unit. IV fluids, oxygen, and a quite listless 3 year old. The sad part is how easy it is to keep him still. I was thinking it would be a challenge having him in the hospital, but he feels so bad, he's not tried to run from me once. He did get a little antsy around 11 pm when I was trying to convince him to take more motrin, so I promised him a walk in the hall for a few minutes, he took his medicine, took his walk in the hall, and is now tuckered out. Poor baby. Hopefully his labs will look better in the morning and we can go home tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

Elf Yourself!

I should probably explain the "elf yourself" video. Mark's mom was trying to be funny and sent me on with Mark, me, the kids, and Harry our kitten. So I made this one and sent it back to her - the older fella in the middle is Mark's grandpa! Then I got really punchy and made one for her with Mark's grandpa and his wife, and his other grandma. That was about 1 am, and I was about to pee my pants laughing!

ElfYourself!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Christmas Portraits

I'm so proud of my kids! They did fabulous enduring the one hour wait at Portrait Innovations today! They did better than some of the adults there! Enjoy the pics!

The Flu

I'm pretty sure I had the flu last week. In fact, I'm pretty sure I still have the flu this week. Now I am so exhausted - every muscle and bone in my body is exhausted. I get out of bed for an hour and have to sleep for 5 more to recover. I can't believe I have not missed any time from work yet because of this. Gotta love prednisone! I thought I was on top of the world - got the house clean, kept seeing patients, etc. until the prednisone wore off and now I still feel like poop. I will probably end up taking tomorrow off just to rest.
Thankfully, my three children have not caught this yet and I hope they don't. I have managed to get the laundry almost caught up. Last weekend the washing machine was broken so I had to wait until Wednesday to get it fixed. I've been slowly catching it up during my "awake" times. I think I'm down to 5 loads left - 3 kids, one whites, and one towels. I'm amazed at how fast we go through laundry around here! You'd think we have 3 year old twins or something!

Exhausted

There is a reason God did not allow me the time over the weekend to change the sheets on my bed. I washed a set of sheets over the weekend and they were tossed on the floor beside my bed with the intention of eventually changing the bed. About 1:30 this morning, Moose woke up fussing and wouldn't stop, so Mark picked him up and put him in the middle of our bed. About 5 minutes later he threw up everywhere, his pillow, my pillow, our sheets, down thru the mattress pad. Ugh! So, the sheets got changed. Then Squeaky woke up and was upset that she was not included on the excitement, so Moose and Mark ended up sleeping in Moose's room and Squeaky and I went back to bed on my clean sheets.

All I want is a pumpkin...

All I want is a pumpkin on my blog. Is it too much to ask?
Anywho... Potty training for Moose has gone to the Moose-turds. Last Monday (just over a week ago), his teacher and I decided that since he was doing so well staying dry in pullups, that he could wear his big boy underwear to school. I guess that stressed him out! When we got home, I asked him if he needed to potty, and he said "no." I waited about 15 minutes and asked again and got the same answer. I waited 15 more and said "Moose, its been a while, its time to go potty. Come with me." To which he replied, "No, don't like it no more. Don't like it." And that was the end of that. About ten minutes later he came to me in the kitchen and said "I poop." He did. Ever since that day he has refused to sit on the potty, let alone pee on it!
In other good news, I broke out the recipe for pumpkin fluffy dip - I love it this time of year. So easy to make too! one tub cool whip, one can pumpkin, one box vanilla pudding mix, and one teaspoon pumpkin pie spice. Mix it all together and consume joyfully with graham crackers! Deee-lish!

blog

i hate this effing blog. it is pissing me off. all i want is an effing pumpkin on my effing blog and i can't have it. i've spent an hour and a half trying to get rid of the beach and get an effing pumpkin and its not happening. where's the effing ativan - i'll never get to sleep tonight.

I love words

Ever since being forced into taking Latin for a year in high school, I have always found a fascination by figuring out the meaning of word by looking at what a word is spelled like. This is also how I successfully completed two pharmacology classes for nursing school. What I'm talking about is, if you have an antibiotic in the penicillin family, they have similar spelling (amoxicillin, penicillin, ampicillin, etc etc). So my newest place that I've heard of is near Munich, a place called Nymphenburg. Wonder what they do there? Ha ha ha ha!

I found it!

Well, I found it. Its a crazy one though. I've been crying at commercials, crying just because the kids are crying, crying with my patients and their families because the sky is blue. Hot flashes like crazy too. Ugh. Gotta love being a girl. Only 30 more years to menopause!
Moose has started preschool in the afternoons. He's loving it. Squeaky's jealous, maybe this will motivate her to potty train! We went to pick the kids up on Monday and Moose was in the preschool room playing a game on the computer. He is getting so big!

Feelin' sorry for some people

I feel really sorry for some people that are so caught up in organized religion that when "something goes bad" they are blaming themselves for not being in church "every time the doors are open" even though their work schedules prohibit it. I know I struggle with asking "why" when going through a trial, but I also know that God is testing my faith, teaching me to rely wholly on Him, making me pray more. And at the end of it all, I can see where God has worked and how great He really is. People that keep analyzing their church attendance for trials they are going through are missing the whole big picture. Yes, God wants us to go to church. But church isn't the "be all end all" of Christianity. God also commands us to provide for our families - and if the only job you can get in town requires you to work every other Sunday, well, you see where I'm going with this. There's so much more to a relationship with God beyond being in church. So, I still feel really sorry for people that totally miss the opportunity to grow and sit back to watch God work! He is AWESOME!!!

Potty Training Day 1

Potty Training Report, Day 1, 1:38 pm: History of Subject: Almost three year old male that has peed in porcelain bathfixture multiple times at school every day for previous week. Subjects mother has decided today is the day. In the last hour, he has peed three times in the potty, each time rewarded with a small brownie. This seems to be quite effective. Subject's female counterpart still hasn't caught onto it yet. Placed said male potty training subject in "Cars" underwear, and he is psyched. Will provide further updates as day goes on.

This is SOOOOO Weird!!!!

So, here I sit in the OBGYN's office with like nine million billion huge pregnant women, just wondering where on earth my period went to and typing away on my blog. Loving Mary Wash again (BTW, thanks for the laptop and blackberry so I can do this). Yes, this is for my patients' benefit, blogging for me is therapeutic and I will not ben an effective hospice nurse if I do not blog.
My children are crazy as usual. I'm not sure what was wrong with Princess Squeaky last night. She would not go to sleep. She kept whining all night long. About four am, Mark and I both rolled over and said "SHUT-UP, ALEXIS!" (Sorry, Miss Becky). Bedtime for her tonight at 8 pm. We've had late nights every night this week, I think she is just plain exhausted. We'll fix that tonight.
I have a new journey I am going to begin. I have permission to begin it. I just have to decide which paths to take. It will be an exciting and transforming one for sure. I will keep everyone posted as I learn more details myself.

Gettin' Better

I think on the job front, things are finally getting alot better. The people at my new job are just great. I didn't realize it at the time, but on-call pay at VITAS sucks!!!! At Mary Wash, we get double-triple the amount of pay I used to get for on-call. Sign me up! I got some bills to pay off.
I have also noticed my memory improving - remembering to return library books, blow out candles, not needing a grocery list for two items. I knew I was stressed, but I didn't realize how bad.
Twinadoland is still crazy. At school Thursday, Squeaky's teacher said she was trying so hard to pee-pee in the potty that she was grunting and her face turned red, but still nothing would come out! Too cute. Her other "quirk" of many is when its naptime at school she goes around and tucks in all the other kids before she will lay down for her nap. I was wondering why Moose was going to sleep 20-25 minutes before her. Moose is doing well too. He insisteth on having his hair done just like Squeaky. So for choir practice the other night, I gave him a ponytail just like Squeaky. Our assistant past said "Brother, you've got to stop letting your momma do your hair. Boys just ain't supposed to have ponytails!"

I'm a Retard

I had a most brilliant idea when I got home from work today. I told Mark, "Hey, its been raining all day, and its okay now, let's take the kids to Kings Dominion." So we did! All the way down there I kept talking about what a great idea it was and that there wouldn't be lines because it had been raining earlier and how much fun the kids would have. When we pulled into the parking lot, there were hardly any cars. I said "Wow, this is such a good idea. There won't be hardly anyone in the park and we can have so much fun!" I kept patting myself on the back for my brilliant idea. Then we walked up to the gates and the sign said "The Park Closes Today at 8 pm." Did I mention it was 7:35 when we got there? So much for my great idea. We went ahead and went in because the kids couldn't understand why we just got here and had to leave. We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower and walked around and then bribed the kids out of the park with a funnel cake. They seemed content and I don't think they caught on to my "brilliant idea."

Want to Learn Something New

Two things I would like to become educated on - first is starting graduate school for an MA in Professional Counselling. (PS, for my gramatically incorrect friends, the term is technically "an MA" because "M" has a vowel sound that it starts with "em").
I have also been thinking that a Wii Fit would be alot of fun - and I would start using it by learning yoga. This thought makes Mark laugh very very hard. He says he has seen corpses more limber than me. I told him that becoming proficient at yoga would mean we could do all the kamasutra positions. He thinks it will be "somewhat cheap entertainment," considering the game for Wii and its accessories start at $149. Mark continues to laugh as I persist asking about a Wii Fit. Maybe I'll just renew my membership to the Y, or I could dig out those old Richard Simmons "Sweatin' to the Oldies" tapes.
Tomorrow is Monday - my second first day working for Medicrap, I mean Medicorp. Hopefully my new job will be better than the previous two in the past year.

Oops, made a mistake

Oops, made a mistake. At least its not as big as my recent thorough overdrafting of my checking account. Ya'll remember the ticket I got back in May (HOV-3 violation - me, myself, and I in the car)? Well, my tickets says the court date is August 14. So, being my usual self and waiting until the very last minute, I tried to go online this afternoon to pay it. I looked, and looked, and couldn't find it. Somehow I ended up searching my name in general (instead of "payable") and found that supposedly my court date was August 8th, and I had been "found guilty in absentia." HUH?! So, I guess I'll be heading over to the Fairfax courthouse tomorrow to get this goofy thing taken care of. Yeh, that's all I need. Let mama do some jail time. Right.
The good news is, nine more work days until I come home! I was driving out to the mall Friday night (where I haven't been in over four months!) and thinking to myself, wow, my patients will be right here, or near here. I am getting so excited. I feel like I'll have my life back again!
I have tomorrow off from work - MD appointments x2, appointment with Mary Wash Associate Wellness, and time to take care of my ticket. I was hoping to get a pedicure or a massage instead.

Congratulations, to me!

For those of you that haven't heard... I'm moving back home! Starting August 25th I'm going back to work for Medicorp. Ugh, don't wanna, but I'm gonna. I'll be doing hospice there as well, seeing patients in their homes, same pay, same mileage reimbursement, just minimal call, no admissions, and no 55 mile commute to the office. I went into the office on Tuesday and told the other case managers that I had really good news for them. They said "what's that?" I said "I'm pregnant... with triplets!" They said "what?!" I said "just kidding, but I quit!" They weren't sure what to think of me. August 22nd is my last day with VITAS. I love the people I work with, and I don't even mind the commute, but I can't do a job that could be split among three people. I discovered 15 months ago that I'm no superwoman and learned a valuable lesson to not attempt to be superwoman. So, Mary Wash, HERE I COME!!!!!

Happy 5th Anniversary!

Friday was our fifth anniversary! I can't believe we've made it this long! We went out to dinner at Lonestar Steakhouse (where I had a most delicious steak and a Pecos Peach drink - fabulous), we went to see the third Mummy movie, and got a hotel room for the night - no folks, get your minds out of the gutter - all I wanted was a full nights sleep. And I got it! 10 pm to 8 am, no cats to bug us, no children to wake us up at o'dark thirty!
Church this morning was great. I really love our church. I wish everyone could be as in love with their church as we are. On the way home, I noticed Moose's eyes were red and watery like he was really sleepy, but when he refused to eat lunch, I picked him up and he was roasting! His fever was over 102! We snuggled on the sofa for a few hours, then he threw up his breakfast all over me and him (blueberries, I think I'll just trash our clothes). I put him to bed about half and hour ago and his temp then was 102.8. We'll see about me going to work tomorrow. Mark does the sick kid thing usually, but he won't do the barfs. That's where he draws the line.

Fun Day with Grandma

Moose and Squeaky played hookie from school today to hang out with grandma at our house. Squeaky is little miss three going on thirteen. She told me Monday morning when I was getting her juice... "don't want the purple cup, want the pink one." What happened to my baby? Moose is just as much of a mess. We've taken to playing ball in the living room the last couple of nights before bed. If I accidentally bounce the ball off his head, mind you its one of those giant bouncy balls from Wal-Mart, he'll walk over to me and smack me once on the thigh.
I like the idea of having my own independent of myspace blog, but I feel that it is dreadfully boring and very much not me at this time. In other words, Manda and Jen, Help my page!
Mark made an interesting comment last night - "when did you start blogging?" Um, like a year and a half ago or so!

Dedication

I would like to dedicate "twinadoland" to Manda, Jen, Janelle, and all my other friends whom I have inconvenienced for a year and a half by blogging on myspace. This one is for you!