Unforeseen Circumstances

I like it when I leave for a speech therapy appointment at 2:30pm and expect to be home just in time for dinner (5ish), but end up not being home until 8pm due to unforeseen circumstances.

Especially when I'm trapped in the car/doctor's office with a 3 year old the whole time. (Well, most of the time). 

Calen and I went to speech and we were going home until he started screaming that his ears hurt really bad. He had gotten up no less than 2,532 times in the middle of the night last night to tell me the same thing, and since we have a wicked cold that came on fast and furious, I figured it was another ear infection.

I say "another" because Camden seems to get an ear infection at the slightest change of the Earth's alignment of the Milky Way so we seem to always be battling one in this house. Calen has only had an ear infection once in his life. 

I called the doc on the road and they got him in at 5. Which meant driving straight from speech to the doctor, at dinner time with a crabby hungry 3 year old. We had time for a very fast sprint through McDonald's drive through so Calen could inhale a cheeseburger and off to the doc we go. 

The first thing the doctor did was check his lungs and was floored at how wheezy and phlemy he was. 

Well duh, he has a cold. But apparently this was grade 'A' phlem. 

So a 20 minute nebulizer treatment was in order, then some waiting and waiting and more waiting for the doc to come back. Shockingly, Calen was the patient one in this whole ordeal, I on the other hand was ready to strangle someone with the power cord. Then he finally checked his ears and said that they were too full of wax to be able to see if there was an ear infection or not. And thankfully the doc wasn't mean enough to pin Calen down and painfully scrape all the wax out (like a previous doctor there did once with both my boys and traumatized them) so he decided to just treat him as if he did have an ear infection and have me buy some wax softener liquid stuff for at home treatment. 

They really couldn't soften it there? Hmmm. 

So after driving a now exhausted Calen home and dumping him off at home with Daddy with his half finished Happy Meal, shoveling a quick dinner in my mouth, rushing back to the pharmacy and then waiting forevahhhhh for prescriptions, I finally got home and sat down at 8pm. 

Oh and the BEST PART is when the doctor told me the side effects of the prescriptions AND I QUOTE:

"Extreme hyperness and ummm...Devil Child".

Oh good!    

I think it's time for a glass (or bottle) of wine. 

How Calen and I did NOT expect to spend our evening

     

 

Split Personality Disorder

Today is day #2 of Camden having a fever. In other words it's the second day of him walking around with his cheeks red, nose curled, frowning and looking for something (or someone) to scream at. 

Fevers give him a strong case of Rage, apparently. Kind of like rabies for babies. 

Hey, that rhymes.  

And that was the day. Except for this morning when he woke up without a fever and was all happy and shit. So I assumed he was better and happy and thus he tricked me into going to the store to get birthday presents for some friends (and his long lost lady love). I had decided that it was a bad idea when he started screaming at me and all the passing cars on the drive there. But we were halfway there and committed. This was going to be ugly, I figured.

And wouldn't you know it, the moment I threw the door open in the parking lot, there was Cam, with a shit eating grin on his face, excited to get out and go shopping. And there he sat in the shopping cart for 45 minutes, waving and exclaiming "Hiiiiiieeeeee!!! Hiiiii baaaby!" (everyone is a baby) to every man woman and child that passed by.

And then, I plopped him back in the car, gave him a Lunchable (which he actually said "Thank you" for), and he ate and drank and was merry UNTIL the drink was empty and he ate all the Lunchable. Then it was screaming until the moment we got home and the sippy cup was refilled. 

High highs and low lows. Oh the tragic stressful life of a 20 month old. 

Cam waving to some random person. Oh and that hand sanitizer bottle was the "essential item of the day" that he carried around and went to bed with.

  

Quarantine

Calen has been feverish since Sunday morning and I assumed he'd be better by now. But instead of waking up this morning to a happy healthy kid readying for school, I woke up to TWO feverish, miserable coughing crud victims. 

Yay. 

Thus our living room turned into a small-scale triage center. The kids were quarantined to their little fold out couches and were restricted to watching cartoon and movies all day while I took temperatures, applied Spiderman cold compresses and force fed them Tylenol, and disinfecting everything that they may have touched, breathed on or thought about. 

Don't you love it when your entire day revolves around this:

The dining room table turned triage center.

Disclaimer: the adult Tylenol and Airborne is for me, not for the kids. Obviously. Stop dialing CPS and put your phones down. 

Also, that bear (known in our house as "Sickie Bear") is pretty much the coolest thing ever. It's got oatmeal or magic beans or something in it and you can microwave or freeze him and the kids snuggle it and the heat/cold plus the aroma therapy truly makes them feel better/break fevers. And it's machine washable. I got mine at Costco for $20 in the pharmacy section. 

(Sigh. Yet another endorsement I won't receive.)

    

 

The Snow Box

Today seemed to be the "Nothing Is Working Out Day". Brad had the day off so we had tried to plan something fun for the family to do. First we thought we would take a day trip up to Philadelphia, eat the food, do the tourist thing you know. But, Calen's sickies persisted into today and the weather called for snow in the morning and cold rain in the afternoon, so we skipped that. Then we thought hey, let's go to the aquarium up there. And it's under construction today and some cool exhibits are closed. Then we said let's go to this cool indoor water park. And it happens that the only day this entire month that it's closed is today. 

Hmmm. Fine world, be that way.

So, we stayed home. We woke up to a dusting of snow (not enough to play in) so we made it an indoor "snow day", starting with snowman pancakes with powdered sugar, white chocolate chips for snowballs, raisins for the face and buttons and a bacon scarf. 

Then later this afternoon we made a "snow box" in the bathtub. I saw the idea to make homemade fake snow on Pinterest and decided to try it out, except I supersized the recipe so that I could create an entire pile of it and throw it in the bathtub to create a "Snow Box" (you know, instead of a sand box. Get it? I'm so clever.). 

So here's the recipe: 

5 boxes of baking soda (cost me like $5.50 total)
1 large bottle of white conditioner (it has to be conditioner)

Mix! It creates a soft, moldable, white snow like substance. (if too powdery, add more conditioner. If too sticky or wet, add more baking soda)

It didn't make as much as I expected, but it did make a big enough pile for both boys to play with for a good half hour before dinner. We put Calen's Toy Story guys into it so that they could have their own little "snow day", drove monster trucks through it, built mini snowmen and snow castles. It's super fun and not as messy as you'd think (do expect to change their clothes afterwards though). 

Buzz, Woody and Slinky were building a snowman

And the best part? It's saveable. I threw a good amount of it into a gallon Ziplock for later use. If it dries out, I'll just add more conditioner. Might be a fun thing to do in the middle of summer, just to shake things up. 

Snow to Go! This will be a fun bag to explain to the CG next military housing inspection...

          

Sick Cowboy

Well it's definitely been too long since we had some sort of sickies in this house so we had o pay our dues today. Calen came down with a cough, low fever and fatigue/no appetite. It didn't really ruin the day or anything but we definitely laid low and watched a lot of tv. 

I did allow him to go two doors down to a birthday party today briefly. But after only maybe an hour I found my little Cowboy (it was Cowboy/Cowgirl/Texan themed) slumped on the couch watching everyone play and dance, and asked if he wanted to go home and lay on the couch and watch tv with daddy, and shockingly, he agreed to leave the party without a single tear. 

Poor sick cowboy.  

Cowboy Calen and the birthday girl Sydney

 

Fresh Powder

And today, THIS HAPPENED:

Yep, it finally snowed and we finally got to play in it. 

And now that we've had our one snow day, I am now satisfied and ready for spring. 

For Once, A GOOD Weather Report

It finally happened today and it is currently snowing.like.crazy. Thank the Lord! If it's going to be 20 degrees, at least have something to show for it. Of course, it didn't really start accumulating until after dark, so the real play will start tomorrow morning. But that didn't stop us from running out when it first started to catch a few flakes. 

And thank God too, because Calen has probably asked me "is it snowing yet?" every day for the past ten days or so. When I finally said "YES" today, he did a double take. "It is?????"

I took a picture of the snow (and grass poking through) about 45 minutes ago (you can't see the grass anymore). I love that it is so cold you can see the single flakes shimmering in the street light. Click on the picture to enlarge it. Neato stuff.

Family Game Night

Because nothing says "family time" like putting a silly Mickey Mouse headband on your head and attempting to guess what the card on your head while the rest of the family giggles at you. 

Actually, we chose this game (Disney Headbanz) to help Calen with his abstract thinking (since he seems to struggle with that a little). And for the most part he did a pretty good job. 

Do I get like some sort of endorsement or something for this? 

Puppeteers

Another day in what might as well be sub-zero temperatures. Which means another day stuck inside with stir-crazy monsters. (luckily Calen was at school for three of those hours). 

So, we made monster puppets for our little monsters.

Here's the dealio:

- brown paper lunch bags
- construction paper
- googly eyes
- pipe cleaners
- markers, crayons, glue, tape, scissors 
 
We glued on the googly eyes, taped on the pipe cleaner ears, glued on the teeth (that mom pre-cut for them) and then cut and glued random spots, stripes, or whatever to the body. 

Done.  

It actually held their attention longer to actually make them then play with them, but maybe that's because it was closing in on dinner time, the kids were crabby, and Daddy was working late so Mom was on her own and threw a movie in to distract them when they started whining (and thus forgot about their monsters). 
 
P.S. Calen made his all by himself AND wrote his name on the bottom. Mom made Camden's for him and he contributed by eating one of the googly eyes. 

Calen and Camden's monster puppets

   

Anti-Freeze

Today is pretty much the coldest day in the history over ever. The high today was a balmy 21, but the sustained winter winds brought down the temp to around 7 degrees. It. Was. Cold. So cold in fact, that when running from the front door to the car (a whopping 40 feet) this morning, both kids started crying because their hands and face hurt (and they were bundled up in winter coats and hats!). 

So we avoided the outdoors. We even avoided the windows and the doors because they are drafty. And we cranked the heat and the electric fireplace. Bring it on winter, you bitch!

Calen never had a chance to build his Lego set that he got yesterday so after school we sat down and built it together. (Building as in, he found the pieces I asked for and I built it. He's still at the Duplo level when it comes to actually building Legos). 

I won't lie it's a pretty awesome Lego set. I grew up watching Ninja Turtles and building Shredder's badass motorcycle caused me to geek out a little bit. Or a lot a bit. Don't judge me. 

P.S. tomorrow it's supposed to be COLDER. And tomorrow night it's supposed to snow a little. And Friday it's supposed to REALLY snow. Here's to hoping. 

Lego maniac. And yes, Fireman suits are standard Lego building attire.