Thanksgiving will be a dreaded holiday from this point on

The plan was to go to my Dad and Step-Mom's house for Thanksgiving, with a stop at my Mom's.

Unfortunately, fate had other ideas.

On Wednesday, the day we were going to leave, I had a list of things to do, and I had to pack. Two things happened simultaneously...my husband checked the weather for his Thursday morning hunting excursion and my stomach started hurting. With the weather being bad and me being sick, the decision was made to leave very early Thursday morning instead.

After confirming this with my family, we settled in for an evening of relaxation and TV watching...until Story puked all over me. I convinced myself that it was a fluke...or something bad she ate.

Just to be safe, I ran to the kitchen to grab a bowl after I'd changed her and cleaned up the couch. As I bent down to the cabinet where the bowl was located, I received a searing pain in my left kidney.

Oh. No.

I have a long running relationship with kidney stones. I get one stuck about once a year or less that involves heavy drugs and a trip to the hospital. There's nothing I can do about then, I just won the genetic kidney lottery.

But this pain meant the worst was coming...a trip to the hospital, along with a puking baby. And an impending trip.

A frantic search of the purses in my closet revealed that I had one pain pill left. I took it, and waited for the results to take effect...and as it started to kick in, Story puked again.

This was not just a random puking event. I was pretty sure she had the flu.

So, I stayed up until two a.m. with her puking every hour while Rob and Ivy slept. At two, my drugs wore off, and I had to go to the hospital. A sleepy husband came in the living room to sit with the puking kid while I turned on my hazard lights and made a speedy trip to the hospital.

It turns out the night before Thanksgiving is an excellent time to visit the ER. I was in and out in no time...and then I drove home under the influence of some nice little shot they gave me.

Story hadn't puked any while I was gone, but as soon as I sat on the couch next to her, she puked again.

The next morning, we had a come-to-Jesus meeting about our trip. It wasn't happening. So, we bought a turkey and some other stuff and spent the day cooking turkey dinner by ourselves for the first time ever.

Which our kids refused to eat.

Friday we took the girls to the movies and bought some Christmas decorations. On the way home, I started feeling strange...and have spent the past 24 hours with the stomach flu. Luckily, this wasn't the worst flu I've had, and since neither kid was a baby and breastfeeding, my husband was able to take care of them all day.

Still, I'm waiting for everyone else in the house to get it...and I'm pretty sure I'll have to take Monday off to recover from my vacation.

Pump up the volume

My house is a loud one.

Depending on who's home and awake, it can be a very loud one with all its members competing for attention and time. The worst times are in the evenings when all four of us and the dog are home. Usually, my husband and I are trying to watch a TV show that requires us to hear what the characters are saying (why we didn't give this up when we had kids I'll never know).

Children are magnetically drawn to parents that are involved in something that is enjoyable. It doesn't matter where they are or what they are doing, the radar dings and Ivy and Story speed around all obstacles, down stairs, even through closed doors, to position themselves directly in front of the television or whatever object we might be paying attention to.

If mere positioning doesn't do the trick, they will then telepathically conspire to perform. This might be dancing, jumping, making faces, or even fighting with each other. Ivy and Story are very good at this. When they walk in front of the television and see that Mommy and Daddy have are still paying attention to those boring people on the screen, their first step is to stage some kind of theatrical performance.

"Mommy, watch my ballet dance!" Ivy yells as she does some kind of jumpy, twittery move.

"Daddy, wook at me!" Story screams as she attempts to jump off of the coffee table.

This behavior usually results in us pausing the TV, watching the performance and clapping or lecturing (in the case of the coffee table) . Then, we resume viewing.

Not to be outdone, the girls might continue doing different loud movements or dances, screaming for our attention every time. Or, they might just continue to do the same thing, over and over and over and over again until Daddy has reached his threshold and looks at Mommy and says, "I can't hear." I will then get up off of the couch and persuade the kids to go to the other room, sometimes going with them pretending that I am going to play or something. If I'm lucky, my husband won't start the show again till I am back....but I'm usually not lucky.

I race back to the couch and get interested again. In phase two, little feet pitter patter through the hallway. Nothing. Then, the scrape of one of the stools on the kichen floor. Nothing. The sound of a cabinet opening. More feet. "MOOOOOMMMY, Story's on the counter." Sing-song tattle-tell voice.

"Story, get down," I call from the couch.

Five minutes later, chaos reigns. The kids are throwing stuff from the counter, singing, yelling, fighting, whatever works. Most often, I can drown this out by simply turning up the TV and refusing to go in there. Daddy, who does not have this innate ability to ignore his children, gets upset and stops the show again. Sometimes, only one of us go in there, but eventually we call for reinforcements. TV and grown-up time is left until the munchkins are in bed, which is a whole other quandry to deal with.

The best plan is to not watch anything until the children go to sleep. But, sometimes I can't stay up till midnight to watch a TV show.

Abby and the Nighttime of Poo

I have a dog named Abby. She is an eight and a half year old Golden Retriever. She's incredibly low maintenance (almost making up for the 2 years she was more maintanence than a houseful of kids).

Last night, she nuzzled under my arm at three AM, urging me to let her out. I did it in  daze, and plopped straight back into bed. I must have let her in again without realizing it because when I woke up, she was there.

And there was dog puke. On my rug. I have an unusually strong stomach, but I really hate dog puke.

I cleaned it up, disposed of it, and checked on her. She was laying in front of the couch and seemed pretty sick. But she's a dog, and I can't hold her in my lap and rock her, so I decided to pour some coffee and salvage what was left mf my workout time.

The kitchen smelled eerily like poop. I looked all around, and never saw any, so I shrugged it off and lit a candle. Suddenly, Abby sprang up and rushed to the door. Thinking she needed to puke again, I set the cup down on the counter and ran to get the door.

As I approached the door, I slid in something icky. It was scary...I could smell the poop odor again, and my foot was slimy, but if I just ignored it, would it go away? I realized it wouldn't, so I looked down slowly and saw.....

Diarrhea. The exact color of my hardwood floor. Yuck. If there's one thing I hate worse than dog puke it's doggy diarrhea. Especially at 5 AM.

I spent 20 minutes cleaning it up, and then another 10 scrubbing three layers of skin off of my foot.

Bedtime Antics

My kids hate to sleep. No, let me rephrase that...they hate to sleep before 11 PM.


Ivy and Story seem to have this internal clock that cause them to try and stay awake until 11 and sleep until 9. Unfortunately, they have to be up at 6:30, which means they really need to go to sleep at 8:30.


But that ain't happening.


Even with the best intentions, they will rarely get in bed before 9, and will probably lay there awake and crying for at least an hour.


Last night, I was determined that they'd be in bed asleep before nine! We ate dinner early, had baths early, and at 8:40 I yelled, "Bed time!!" Which instantly caused Ivy to burst into tears and Story to run around screaming "Catch me!" frantically.


I told Ivy to chin up and sent her to her bed while I concentrated on catching Story. After two revolutions around the furniture, I finally faked her out and had her writhing, thrashing, tutu-clad body in my arms. I met sobbing Ivy in the hallway and ushered her back to her bedroom.


I rocked Story for two minutes until the sound of Ivy's wails were so loud as to attract the neighborhood coyotes. I dropped Story in the crib, and she started to cry. I ran in Ivy's room and tried to console her. We read a book, but I couldn't hear what I was saying because Story's cries were even louder than Ivy's (who is the loudest child on the Earth- Story has accomplished a large feat!!!). I gave Ivy two more books to look at, and rushed back to Story's room.


Story didn't stop crying, though, just because I came back. She wanted OUT. It's not FAIR. Where's my POLLY POCKET? I settled into the rocking chair and tried my best to convince her to stop treating the crib like a trampoline. (Remind me to buy a new crib if I ever have any more kids- this one is probably ready to fall apart) Finally, I had to use the counting method (1..2..3..all right, spanking time). She laid down with a shriek, which caused sympathetic shrieks from Ivy in the next room.  


I quickly lost most of what was left of my hearing. I blew Story a kiss, popped my head into Ivy's room to say goodnight, and plopped myself on the couch with my snuggie and my netbook. This is what occurred as I sat there for the next hour:
IVY: Mooooommmmy, Story's crying, I can't sleep.
STORY: NO I NOT!!!!!!!!!!!! WAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
IVY: Mooooommmy, can you come turn my light on?
STORY: Mommy! I need a drinkie!!!!
IVY: Story, stop!!!!!!!!
STORY: MOMMY, I need you!
IVY: Mommy, I'm scared.
STORY: Jingle bells, jingle bells.......


I yelled, "No!" a couple times, and threatened to close their doors, too....eventually, they fell asleep, exhausted. I can't promise it was before I did, though! An hour and a half is too much of that!

Nyquil

Nyquil is an awesome thing when you're really sick. It puts you in this coma-like sleep for the whole night.

The only problem is that when you wake up, especially when something wakes you up, unless you've had 14.7 hours of sleep, you get the "nyquil hangover." And really, the last time I slept for 14 hours was probably when I was a newborn.

When you wake up with the nyquil hangover, you can't walk straight. For instance, when you are trying to get to your daughter's room where she has been screaming for thirty minutes trying to wake you up to come and get her, you might trip over anything. Even a slight variation in your hardwood floor.

Nyquil also destroys the ability for your arms to be controlled by your brain. When you try to pick up said daughter, it might take you three tries to actually get your hands on her and lift her out of the crib. Once in your arms, her deathgrip on your neck is the only thing that is keeping her from tumbling onto the floor.

The nyquil hangover also impairs your judgement. While trying to make it back to your bedroom with whimpering toddler, you might decide to check on your other kid, who should be sleeping in her bed. When you find that that kid is not in her bed, you might panic unnecessarily and begin to search her room frantically even though you have lost the ability to walk straight and you have a 30 lb. weight holding onto your shoulder.

Further impairment of logical thought might result in your running through the house yelling, "Ivy!" When you make it to your bedroom and discover Ivy sleeping at the bottom of the bed with her Daddy's feet in her face, you might also decide that she has suffocated, which causes you to toss the toddler into the bed on Daddy, slap his feet away, and prepare yourself to administer CPR to your now awake older daughter who is looking at you like you are weird.

The nyquil hangover also causes you to ignore everything you have just done and collapse in sleep in whatever position you might be in. For instance, if the older daughter says, "Silly Mommy, I came in here 'cause I was scared," and your husband has yet to wake up even though you threw a toddler at him and tried to kill his feet, you might then align yourself on the small sliver of bed the toddler and husband have left for you and instantly fall back asleep without remembering any of this until 9 AM the following morning. Especially since the nyquil caused you not to notice the older daughter was in your bed in the first place.