Be any more tired than you already are -

Your kids get the flu.

or in our case – some nasty case of pneumonia with vomiting as a free bonus and a touch of RSV for the 10 week old.

Actually Monty, I’d like to change my mind and take whatever’s behind door number 3 because i am DONE with this.

I rarely get to the point of breakdown, crying. I pride myself on being a strong person, a strong woman, capable of doing it on my own and not having to call my husband home every time I can’t deal with life. But today I hit the limit. Kaylen has been puking nonstop since late tuesday afternoon. Luckily Ben was still home for the first wave of pukeness – including catching it in his hands in the middle of the Kohls shopping excursion we attempted to take. The second something hits her stomach – back up it comes. This is only complicating the fact that she has spent the past 4 weeks basically hacking up a lung coughing and unable to breathe. She has been doing ok as long as we keep her steroid breathing treatments pretty regular. Then Tuesday she starts with the puking. After puking up all through the nite and the next morning, she spiked a 103 fever so I called to take her in. They wanted to look at kendall too since she has been coughing pretty hard all nite too. Sure why not? What’s a few hundred dollars more in medical debt when you’re already in six figures, right?

So i have to go pull Kealey out of school early in order to get Karissa from preschool on time and make it over to the dr’s office. Apparently it is harder to pick up your own child from school than it is to break into the federal reserve, so half an hour and three sheets of paperwork later I have my child with me. I had to truck the two babies in with me for this fun adventure so thank God that Kaylen managed to not puke the whole time we sat there. That would have just topped the cake. But we make it to the dr and she listens again to Kaylen’s lungs and decides to send us for a chest Xray. The baby sounds pretty clear but fits the criteria for RSV so she says, “all the test will tell us is that yes, she has RSV. Otherwise we just treat it like any other virus and let it run its course. “  Great, let’s save ourselves a trip to the ER and a nasal swab and just call a spade a spade and get on with my miserable virus-surviving existence. BUT they are worried about kendall’s sudden breakout of blood-filled diapers so they decide to take some blood. After the nurse puts a hole the size of Lake Michigan in my baby’s finger we are sent on our merry way to pack BACK up into the car to drive over to the Edwards Outpatient building to get chest X-rays for Kaylen, then we’re told to go to Target to pick up the Zofran to see if Kaylen can keep a dose of that down, then come back to the dr office so they can read the Xray results and go from there. Which, you know, is just a BLAST of fun to do with four little kids, two who can’t walk on their own, two who are starving, in the ten degree weather. Did I mention that at this point its been almost two hours since we left home and I am about to explode a gallon of milk from the mammary glands??? Not fun.

So we get the Xrays which involved me having to leave the older two with the baby out in the lobby area while I went back to try to hold  a very sick baby still long enough to get her chest xrayed. Talk about having to decide between the lesser of two evils. Thank God i have really good kids. They sure were troopers with all the running around. So anyways – we get the Xrays done, run up to target where they DOn’T have our prescription ready because it never got sent from the dr’s office. so the pharmacist calls the dr who has the nurse tell us – no no no, you were supposed to come right back HERE after the Xrays, we’re waiting for you!  Oh – my bad! Cause i thought it would be FUN to get all four kids out AGAIN and tramp into Target to get a lecture on how i was supposed to go BACK to the dr’s office first!!! GAHHHH!!! PEOPLE! I just wanted to scream at that point, but back we all go out to the car, back to the office, back in the stroller…..all to find out that the lungs are clear, Kendall’s hemoglobin is fine (so she isn’t having massive internal bleeding as evidenced by the bloody poop), so “Well, I guess they must just both have a virus! Call us if they get worse!”

And that, my friends, is why i HATE the medical model in the US today.

If it’s not knocking on death’s door, its just a virus – take two tylenol and call us in the morning.

So Kaylen is STILL puking all day today. I can’t keep up with the laundry. Kendall is clearly in pain from something somewhere that I can’t fix. I put Kaylen in the carrier on my back and hold Kendall in the front and walk. Around and around and around the living room – hallway-kitchen loop. I have walked so many laps today I lost track. Just trying to keep my babies happy, myself sane, everyone happy. Except i am failing miserably.

I got three hours of sleep last nite between having to hold/feed Kendall – set her down so I could clean up Kaylen’s puke and hold/rock her for an hour till Kendall woke up again and start all over again. This goes on till 4:30 – back and fforth and back and forth.  Till we all passed out from sheer exhaustion and slept till 7:30. I think that to say I am running on sheer adrenaline at this point is an understatement. I think I ran out of adrenaline sometime around 9 am this morning and now its just the toxic fumes of coke and coffee and a few egg sandwiches.

To top this day off, I got home FOUR MINUTES after the bus dropped Kealey off (we had to wait till Kaylen woke up from her four hour nap, get the puke cleaned off of her, clean up more puke, run to target and get her prescription that the dr’s office finally managed to call in and wait while they filled it). She was SOBBING.  Apparently the four longest minutes of her little life.  So Kendall is screaming, Kaylen is still covered in puke from the three times she threw up WHILE we were in target and is whimpering about that, Kealey is having a breakdown and I just gave up. I joined in the crying and justheld them all for about 15 minutes on the floor. Cause really, what else are you gonna do?

So – there. I admitted it. I do cry. And now that i have started it is hard to stop. I think I am just so tired I can’t even function.

Ben comes home tomorrow afternoon. i will hold on till then, then have a mini-breakdown, then be fine. It’s his birthday on Saturday and I am sure that a catatonic wife is just the ultimate in birthday fun.

there was one bright spot today though – in a moment where i only had one of the babies crying, karissa told me she wanted to record something.

here is her cooking show – i hope you enjoy it as much as i did!

The sun’ll come out tomorrow, right?

terra

(it’s from a movie. You win the prize of the day if you know which one.) Plus it’s good for the google hits, hey?

Anyways – it’s been a long week already, and it’s only tuesday.

Kaylen is recovering from her ebola virus or whatever she had, I think I am getting it, and my mouth is STILL killing me from getting my tooth pulled on Saturday. As the oral surgeon dude put it – “well, it’s virgin gum. It’s going to hurt for a while till bone grows there.” You would think at the ripe old age of 32 that I would be past still growing bone, but apparently not. One positive, it is next to impossible to eat my beloved M&M’s though because I have no chompage with which to crush them.

Ok i am distracted by the crying babies in this house so i’ll get to the point of this post – pictures for ben who is back to being a rocket-man, a la Elton John.

A serious looking Kealey. Such a good helper. I worry that sometimes I rely on her too much, and yet she shoulders the responsibility so well and so readily. i cannot believe that my BABY will be 7 years old in less than 6 weeks. Must start planning some kind of birthday party for her…

Karissa in her usual position – hovering over the baby. I swear if i had a dollar for every time during the day Ben or I have to say -” GET OUT OF HER FACE” we would be able to pay off our mortgage. CONSTANTLY  buggin’ on Kendall.

but she is also becoming a good big sister.

Started preschool, REAL preschool not speech therapy school, last week and is absolutely loving it. In spite of the fact that “it takes so LOOONNNGGG momma”. i have no idea what she is trying to say – that the drive to school takes so long or that school itself lasts too long past her flea-sized attention span. Either way – I am glad she is learning and growing and making friends and the 2 hours of peace and quiet i usually have during school are very appreciated!

I don’t have one of just Kaylen. She is hard to pin down. The child runs all over the house all day long, leaving a path of destruction behind her a mile wide. She has definitely earned the nickname “Hurricane Kaylen” and “Captain Destructo”. i am not sure why i have so many pictures of kaylen in a state of undress…i swear she HAS clothes and it seems like she is clothed for most of the day usually…

Here is another view of this pic. it is hard to fit all four girls in the same frame and still be within arms length to catch either kaylen or karissa when/if they fall.

FOUR GIRLS.

it still shocks me to see it in living color like this in a picture. They exhaust me more than I thought possible and yet – i couldn’t imagine life without any of them. Each with such a unique personality…it is so amazing to watch them grow up day by day.

I couldn’t decide if i liked the color or b/w version of the above better.

i am just honestly so overjoyed to FINALLY have a child who will take and use a pacifier. I know it will come back to haunt me someday, since i have children who develop horrible oral addictions to their comfort objects…but we’ll deal with the binky-toting college graduate later. For now, it is enough to be able to plug the noise sometimes.

Ok i have to go clean up yet another toy the idiot dog has destroyed…the fake blood pressure cuff. Good thing too cause i am sure my blood pressure is through the roof right at the moment…

Maybe i’ll have more interesting drivel to post tomorrow. Yes i am almost positive of it. So stay tuned!

t-crest

(everyone say it with me now…)

BE HAPPY!!!

ok hopefully you all have that recockulous song stuck in your head now because it is stuck in mine. Which i did on purpose because prior to that, i had moon river stuck in my head. Which is completely random because i don’t even know all the words to moon river. But i digress…

anyways.

Someday i will have enough space on my hard drive to empty out my fall pics so i can unload my christmas pics. I made the mistake of shooting them all in RAW (which is what I shoot when we are doing actual photo shoots for 2sis)…so each picture is like 10mb in size, and there are ….a lot. Basically I dont have 6 free gigs on the hard drive so they are precariously stuck on ye olde CF card for a while longer. Soon, i tell myself, very soon I will be able to have things flyin’ on a supershineysuperfasthellacool new 500g laptop with an 18″ screen. I just need to win the lottery first. But you know, we all have a dream. MLKjr didn’t have a corner on that market. Word up.

So…yeah – someday there will just be four backdated posts that you have to dig for to read all about the christmas happenings here in crazyland. Till then, you’re stuck with more mindless drivel about the day to day happenings. And yet, you find yourself inexplicably drawn to coming back for more. You are more than welcome to come experience the chaos in real life instead of just reading about it you know!

Take yesterday for instance…It started by me getting about….three hours of sleep combined the night before. Kendall’s reflux is i THINK getting worse, but it might just be one of those things where it gets worse for a short period right before it starts getting better. I don’t know. Babies confuse me. They need to have like a mood ring indicator on their stomachs or something – like, turn blue if you’re happy or black if there is a serious medical condition requiring immediate attention type of thing. that would be helpful. anyways – so she isn’t sleeping, and its not like she just wants to be awake, no, she’s pooping, puking, crying, hiccuping and in general just being miserable. Anyways. So i started out WEdnesday on not a real good note. Kaylen has been getting progressively worse with this cold/virus thing she’s had going on for a couple weeks now too, so I called in the morning to the ped and was like all

“look miss pediatric nurse lady, I got four kids. I do not consider it a fun outing to pack them all up and bring them in just to have you tell me its a cold/virus thing and to take her home and give her tylenol as needed. If you do’nt think i have a good chance of walking out of your office with REAL MEDICINE in hand, then do’nt tell me to come in.”

She told me to come in.

So we drop off karissa at preschool, drive through dunkin’ donuts so i could get some coffee (because i realized at that point that i hadn’t eaten all day), and go to the doctor’s. We get in, the doc listens to her chest and starts semi-panicking. They hook poor boo-boo up to the oxygen, start a nebulizer treatment and hook her up to the pulse/oximeter on her finger (all i could think of was on “Elf” where Buddy says “My finger has a heartbeat!” Kaylen was a little dazed and confused by the whole thing. I finally got the doctor to explain WHY she was worried – she thought it was pneumonia that was deep in her lungs. Turns out its NOT that – but i didn’t get any other official diagnosis. It’s some kind of infection somewhere in the system, but it’s not fully settled into her lungs yet. And it doesn’t appear to be in her ears. Either way, she’s on the nebulizer for three times a day and enough antibiotic to kill a horse for the next two weeks. Neat.

I know some of you deal with nebulizer treatments all the time with your little ones – HOW in the name of all that is holy do you get them to actually BREATHE IT IN?!?!? Today we sat there and i sang ridiculous songs like Itsy Bitsy Spider nonstop for ten minutes…but I can’t do that three times a day! I’ll run out of singing material! Tips/advice on that end are mucho appreciado!

So that was good times. I think if the doctor HAD sent us over to the hospital like she first mentioned, I would have just handed her the phone, told her to dial any of my contacts and if she needed me i would be the one curled up in the fetal position under the chairs sucking my thumb and rocking. WOULD. HAVE. LOST. IT.

But thank God it didn’t come to that. Kaylen is slowly responding to all the medication and the nebulizer thingys. still not 100%, but, much better than she was on Monday.

Other random things that made me happy when i was in the store a few days ago..

Can you believe it’s almost Valentine’s Day? I am in love with all thing Valentine in nature. Not so much the actual holiday itself – I mean, flowers and cards and all that happy horsecaca are great and all. but I am more infatuated with the color scheme and how these mass marketers can turn random mundane everyday objects into ABSOLUTE MUST HAVES by slapping a few cute hearts and valentiny-y motifs on it. Take for instance, the Valentine bath mats and plastic cups at Target that i drooled over today. I just go ga-ga for Valentine’s Day crap. No idea why. But there you have it. Feel free to run an intervention on me. I am sure I need it.

and one last picture – just cause it makes me happy.

Sigh.

i love colors. I love glitter. i love this colored glitter set from Martha Stewart Crafts. i have wanted it since the very first day i saw it in a store…but cannot bring myself to spend $25 on neat glitter. So instead i’ll just look at the picture and be happy. Cause really, it does make me happy. I love the happy colors just staring out at me with their cute names like – moondust, grass, lemon, zippy red….

Yes – i am losing my mind, thanks for asking.

Ok – randomness over for today. I think. too much other real life shizzay i have to deal with.

Love and hugs -

me

I am not sure why i am blogging tonite – all it will end up as is one long whine. But I have no idea when i will have ten minutes all to myself again so, here i am.

Today was the first day of Ben being for real back at work, meaning gone. And of course it was a doozy of a day with kendall deciding she would just throw up every meal she ate (normally she only throws it up partway, then swallows it back down again – no mess!), and then in one grand finale decided to poop out what she had eaten yesterday or something – and it ended up going…well, ok i won’t go into gory details. Suffice it to say, it was time for a bath. In between all of that, though, we have poor kaylen who has been fighting what i assumed to be a minor cold, but it is clearly getting worse. And she just wanted to be held – ALL AFTERNOON. I have no idea when my teeny tiny little baby who had to wear Build-A-Bear outfits for the first month of her life because she was so scrawny went, but in her place is this behemoth of a toddler who is NOT easy to cart around all afternoon! (i should log that as exercise-weight lifting on my food journal…)

something about just knowing there was no tag team relief coming in the door at 5 made this all just ALMOST overwhelming. Somewhere, someway, somehow I was blessed with the grace of God to just keep plodding forward. Make something for dinner, deal with puke, deal with crying baby, deal with feces everywhere, go over homework, pack lunch for tomorrow, brush teeth, dispense medicine, set up humidifier, clean up dinner, put dog outside, feed baby….i have to get into a better rhythm. I am sure it was not a good mommy nite for the older two while all I did was deal with the babies and bark orders, and of course then there is no time for ME to recharge. I have to get up in three hours and start it all over again.

See – told you – massive whine.

but i am done now. I just needed some record of how badly this day sucked so that I could look back on it in a year and… i don’t know. laugh maybe? be proud of myself for surviving? lest you think i am all whine and no fun, i am keeping a “gratitude journal” (on my iphone! holla!), which is good in that even on crappy days like today – i can always find at least 5 things that i am thankful for, ways i am still blessed in spite of the immediate circumstance. And i do know and believe that fully. So I will go to bed, hopefully get a full three hours before the first nightly feeding, and then if i am lucky get another three in before the other girls wake up and we start all over again. My children are truly blessings though and i woudl’nt trade these crazy days for anything in the world. Except maybe 8 straight days of sleep. But even that….you know, its a tough sell.

Anyways – sorry to be debbie downer tonite. Thanks for all the happy comments or just plain commiseration on my facebook though – i don’t think i would be nearly as sane as i am today if it weren’t for good friends who know how to make me laugh.

May you all be blessed with good sleep tonite.

peace out -

*Supah-STAHHHHH*