I'm A Little Worried About Ethan's Influence

To Preface: I have succeeded in addicting my ENTIRE family (yes, Eric too) to Dr. Who.  The kids ask every day if we can watch an episode, but we now have to wait for Eric to be home for work, and not at scouts or teaching.  Livi loves the Daleks and calls the Slitheen "Ninja Turtles" (Only Julia, and maybe my Mom will get that)

The kids and I went to Cheyenne on a Friday they had off (because we get 2 days off for Presidents Day and 2 days of for EASTER BREAK!!! How is that right???).  While at Barnes and Noble Livi spied a Dr. Who sonic screwdriver kit where you could mix and match pieces, and decided we could not leave until we were in possession of the sonic screwdriver.  I didn't really want to condone shoplifting so I was forced to buy it.
When we got home it was the first thing the kids wanted to play with. 

I asked Livi what she could do with hers and she immediately went here:

 I then made the mistake of asking her what else she could fix with her sonic screwdriver:

Scared Out Of My Mind, but not the good scared, like Haunted Mansion

 

Stare at the photo, ok, I know my room is a disaster.  It is last on my list of places to fix up.  We don't even have proper bedding since Eric can't stand the down comforter and I haven't replaced it with something cooler (not cooler like sparkly shoes, cooler like temperature).

    Moving on: Ethan's asthma has been horrific.  He got the flu and went a solid 4 weeks coughing more often than not.  We had already called our Pediatrician at home (got steroids), gone into a family doc (got prescription cough pills), but nothing was helping.  It got to the point where one morning he couldn't talk he was just coughing constantly.  I was so scared.  He was coughing like he was dying, the sound...the sound was just terrifying.  

     Knowing that the pediatrician's office wouldn't get back to us for hours if I called them I rushed him over to Urgent Care (which I hate).  When the doctor came in he literally chewed me out for not contacting the Peds office.  I explained that they would take hours to get back to me and I was scared Ethan would stop breathing or hurt himself.  He scoffed and told me to call the pediatrician next time.  I started crying and he rolled his eyes and left the room.  Ethan was playing on his Nintendo DS so luckily I don't think he noticed any of this.  He then started coughing so hard it sounded like he was tearing up his throat and the doctor came back in.  He actually looked worried and ordered X-rays and got a nebulizer out to immediately try and stop the cough.  He said that he was worried Ethan would tear a lung and start coughing up blood.  That freaked Ethan out, because he is 10, and really who wants to hear that you could start coughing up blood?

     The X-rays showed that is lungs were clear, there was no fluid or masses or anything else bad (he did have a giant gas bubble in his stomach which made him laugh pretty hard). He gave us a prescription for some cough medicine and a nebulizer for home and some meds to go in it.  Unfortunately he just handed me a stack of little papers that had the most atrocious writing on it that the people at the medical supply store couldn't even read it (and they deal with him more than I do), so I made the mistake of asking what they said.  He literally slowed down his speech like you do for someone who doesn't speak English and has had a massive head injury, and told me they were prescriptions.  I thought he was going to call them in, so I tried to clarify, he rolled his eyes again and said he did, but that one was for renting the nebulizer.  I asked why there were two papers then, and he huffed and in the most sarcastic tone I have EVER heard from anyone over the age of 16 said "One is for school.  You did need a note, right?"  I will do everything in my power to never see him again, even if it involves a baseball bat, a lamp, and my Gone With The Wind collector Barbies!

     We still don't know what is going on.  We did get over to the pediatrician, and he tested Ethan for pertussis, and listened to his lungs, but that was all negative.  We think it was just his asthma overreacting, like it always does, to virus'.  He had to take a couple days off from school, use a nebulizer 4 times a day, and take about 80 medicines.  Since the nebulizer treatment takes about 15 minutes each time I set him up with a DVD on my bed to make it a little more comfortable.  Livi thought it was great and immediately made herself and all 500 stuffed animals she owns comfortable.

Things I learned:
1. Never seeing that Urgent Care doctor again.
2. Flu shots really didn't work this year.
3. Ethan needs to be put in a bubble so he never gets another virus again.
4. All three kids will deal with the noise of a nebulizer if it means I let them all lay in my bed and watch a movie at full volume.
5. We are in a LOT of trouble when our Pediatrician/friend moves
6. REALLY never seeing that doctor again.

Is It Just Me? or Hopefully Not Blasphemous

Am I the only person that thinks this picture from Livi's class looks like they are riding on Splash Mountain?

My Little Dancers, my little dancers, ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh (sang to My Little Pony)

It was that wonderful twice yearly parent watch week in dance, where we parents are yelled at for stepping on the dance floor in our street shoes (not me), yelled at for taping our own children at non-specified times (also not me, I learned from last time, now I'm sneaky) and guilt-ed at (?) for not singing up to be dance mothers for the recital (me).
Both girls are doing great.  Livi seems to be having a lot of fun, and Ella is excelling.  It is a lot of fun to watch, but unfortunately (or fortunately if you are not a grandparent) both girls are in the front or main sections so parents sitting at the back of the class can't really tape them well (especially while we are hiding the cameras from vigilant teachers).

Sneak Camera Attack

Very nice tondue

A very nice try at retire' (I think)

I have 2 clips of just small little moments I enjoyed: This is just a warm up in Livi's class, but I love her "swimming" "backwards" (both intentionally in quotes). She is in the back by the pillar:

Ella is the youngest in her class, but seems to grasp things better than some of the much older girls (toot toot): Poor Livi was very bored going with me to Ella's classes (Eric teaches that on that night). I showed her the reverse function on the camera where you can take pictures of yourself and she went a little crazy. She kept telling me how to pose and when to kiss her cheek as she shot away. She got very mad when I told her I wanted to watch Ella, so I ended up with about 10 of these pictures.

Livi did let me take one or two pictures of Ella.  She is growing up too fast, and looks way to mature in her dance clothes!

Humor in 2 parts: exasperation and prat falls

Conversation in primary yesterday while the kids were coloring on paper.

Sister Bohner: "Lily that is beautiful, what are you drawing?"
Lily: "It is my best friend. (looks over at Livi) It is you Olivia"
Olivia: "No I'm not.  I already have a best friend, Carter."
Lily: "Can I be your best friend too?"
Olivia: "(rolls her eyes and sighs LOUDLY) ooooo-kay."

I kind of wish a camera was there to get a video of the next part, but I didn't even get a picture.  I was too busy doing the ugly snot cry to think about it. 

Getting Livi's bed ready for nighttime: 

I ended up bruising the entire right side of my body, and scaring Livi at the same time.  I feel so stupid, but I am a little proud of the stick figure me, and her ability to say "no" to chocolate.

Bleeding at Scouts or Never Try

Webelos scouts has lots of information the boys need to learn and show you they know.  There are two ways you can do this: Either lecture them like a college class, or have hands on activities that teach them the same thing.  Having activities is infinitely more time consuming, but lecturing just doesn't work too well with 10 year old boys.

In order to get the Arrow of Light the boys need to earn Readyman which is basically first aid.  We sang songs about calling 911, wrote down emergency phone numbers, watched kid friendly videos about how smoking affects the lungs, but they also had to tell me how to treat 15 different injuries. I decided that could get horribly boring and decided we would have an emergency drill.

I asked for help from Young Women in the ward, asked the other 3 leaders if they wanted their dens to participate, and spent over 20 hours preparing for the activity.

I made:

Fake wounds using flexible caulk and paint

3 different types of fake blood, trying to get consistency and color right for various injuries.  I even made it using washable marker ink instead of food coloring so it wouldn't stain the skin of the nosebleed and poisoning "victims"

I made prosthesis for cuts and scrapes, large gashes and snake bite. I made individual skin mounds for the boys to remove bee stings and ticks.  I packed gelatin powder to make 3rd degree burns and blisters. I brought an entire table of supplies the boys would have to pick from to "treat" their "victims."  I packed makeup to make bruises, frost bite, burns and poisoning. I made scripts for the victims to tell the boys about the situations they received their injuries so the boys could look up what the problem was and how to treat it in their scout books.  I felt pretty good about this activity.

The table of supplies

The only problem: relying on other people.  1 of the Young Women showed up.  2 of the 3 leaders showed up and told me they decided they weren't going to participate like they had said they would.  One leader even said his boys wanted to do another activity (I saw them later doing pushups in the hall.  Because pushups are more appealing to boys than blood and gore...right)

So I did what any leader would do in this situation: conscript her family.

Eric had to do lots of the injuries like 2nd and 3rd degree burns.  He is currently being treated for shock. He also did heart attack and choking.

Livi played our poisoning victim.  I couldn't put the makeup on her that I had wanted, but she did a good job of ignoring the boys as they asked her questions.

Ella loved being able to help.  I think she secretly loved being the center of attention of so many boys!

Ethan looking in his book to diagnose Eric's burn.

Ella showing off her prosthesis I made of the gash in her leg.

I was stressed out, and discouraged.  I hate when I have a picture in my head of how things are suppose to go, and it turns out nothing like that.  I think the boys had a good time, and Ella had a blast.  I know they took in more of the information than if I had just talked at them, so it was a success.

Universal Smackdown or I Need To Vent Because Eric Thinks I Am Overreacting and I Probably Am But I Need to Feel Like Someone Somewhere Is Validating This In Their Heads

I am not sure if I am just overly sensitive, but I am feeling a little aggravated by all human kind at the moment. The last 24 hours have been hard for me.  It is all stupid little stuff but every time I talk to someone I get a little more frustrated.  It is probably one of those days I just shouldn't be allowed around other people.

 It all started when I tried to refill my prescription and got denied.  Turns out the nurse practitioner only wrote the script for 2 months...and then had me schedule an appointment in 3 months.  It also turns out you have to give the office 72 hours to respond to all refill requests...none of which was explained to me at my appointment (along with leaving out that going off Zoloft gives you MAJOR withdrawal).

Conversation I had with the nurse for the nurse practitioner (?):
Me: I need a refill
Her: You really need to make sure you keep your appointment on March 5th
Me: Ummmm....okay, but I really need a refill
Her: You need to give us 72 hours
Me: I am out of my medication.
Her: You need to give us 72 hours.
Me: No one told me my script was for 2 months only or that I needed to call 72 hours ahead of time.
Her: I guess we can give you an emergency 30 day supply. But you need to make absolutely sure you come to your appointment
Me: I was planning on it.  Which was why I thought the prescription would last until then.
Her:We only write the prescription for 2 months to make sure you are doing OK on the meds before we continue it
Me: Ummmm...isn't that why I have an appointment in March?
Her: Yes
Me: So why not write the prescription for 3 months if you are going to make me come back in 3 months?
Her: So you have to call us and we can check you are doing ok on the meds
Me: What the heck? ISN"T THAT WHAT THE APPOINTMENT IT FOR?
Her: Yes.

The next few things were just little: Someone commenting at the gym that it was about time I came back, someone telling me I needed to clean the inside of my car.

Then I went to help in Ethan's class and just about lost it.  First off, when I walked in the room the teacher was talking loudly with another 4th grade teacher about how dumb the kids in their classes are.  This put my hackles up.  I know (hope) she wasn't talking about Ethan, but why say something SO rude when a parent is in the room?  It frightens me that such a negative person spends more time with him than I do.

Next thing was when I was sorting papers to put in their take home folders.  Ethan had been out of school so he had a lot of take home work last night.  He completed it just fine, and I looked over it to make sure that if he didn't understand a concept I could work on it with him (since his teacher is TOTALLY the nurturing type and would surely go over things he missed with him).  It all looked great to me, so it was a shock when I saw he missed 2 points on his test...that I had looked over.

This was the information given:
The problem was to write a line graph for the figures

 So Ethan wrote:

Which made sense to me, but she crossed out "Year" put in "Wins" and marked off 2 points.  

What she wanted was:

 I understand that works, but so does Ethan's and he properly labeled it.  As far as I know you can graph information many ways, and the problem didn't say which numbers to use on the bottom.  If anything I think Ethan's was better on getting the information across, you can clearly see how many wins for each year and compare them, but who knows. I am obviously out of my mind right now.

The thing that sent me over the edge was one of Ethan's classmates.  He came up to me and this was our conversation:
Him: I know who you were for Halloween
Me: That's nice.
Him: You were Ursula.
Me: Nope.  I was Maleficent.
Him: No you were Ursula
Me: No, I was Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty.
Him: No, I watch Disney channel.  You looked like Ursula.

Awesome.  So I look like a obese, unattractive octopus.  Smack down complete, Universe.  Smack down complete.  You can stop now.

Baby Vador

One of Ethan's gifts was VERY appealing to someone else in the family:

Kicking Myself Into Action, or Ethan's Birthday

I've been a little MIA this January as I was waiting for meds to start working.  Luckily they seem to have kicked in and I am starting to have enough energy to  tackle the projects I have unfinished from the last..ummm... year and a half I have felt like crud.  One of those things was our photo album.  As I was working on it I realized that the blog makes compiling the fun memories a lot easier, and really, that is why I blog, so I should kick myself in the rear and get back to it.

Ethan's Birthday
Ethan's birthday was early in January and it was a lot of fun.  We were still recovering from Christmas fun so all our decorations were still up.  Livi insisted Ethan's presents needed to be under the tree because, well, that's were presents go.

He ended up with 3 different Pokemon games and he was pretty happy about it!  No throwing presents saying "That's a crappy gift!" (thanks Andrew for that gem)

I told Ethan he could play as many video games as he wanted on his birthday so he hurried and got ready for school and played for a few minutes then.  I think he wished we got up earlier so he would have had more time.

For dinner Ethan wanted bacon.  Just bacon.  We convinced him he needed more than just meat so we had a brinner of eggs, bacon, toast and root beer.  Dinner of champions.

I told him I would make him what ever cake he wanted, that I would decorate it however he desired.  I said I would shape it into a Pokemon if he wanted.  He didn't.  He wanted a plain chocolate cake with plain chocolate icing. 

Because it he turned an even number he was due for a friend party (gag).  Eric thought it would be a GREAT idea to ask Ethan if he wanted a sleep over without asking me first.  Of COURSE he said "yes."  We invited 5 friends to spend the night thinking 1, hopefully 2, wouldn't be able to come.  I know I wouldn't let Ethan spend the night at a friends house if I didn't know the parents VERY well.  No such luck.  All 5 boys (plus Madi for Ella) could come.  It was actually a lot of fun, but they are super high energy boys.  We had pizza, cupcakes and bowls and bowls of candy.  Poor planning on our part.  We made the boys go downstairs to sleep around 10 but were going strong around 12 when I finally gave up and went to bed.  Ethan says he think they went to sleep around 1am.  Then one of the boys woke up at 5:30 and ran upstairs to play Skylanders on the Wii.  He kept yelling "Die, Die, Die-de-die die" at the top of his lungs so we were all up by 6am.

The boys in action.

  It wouldn't have been too bad to get so little sleep, except Ethan and Caleb had a basketball game on Saturday at 9am.  Eric had to coach so we were all up and at 'em earlier than usual.  We were so worn out that everyone (except Ethan oddly enough) took naps that afternoon

Including Tonks who was so worn out from having 6 little boys to play with that she slept for 24 hours straight. 

Supplies!!! - Updated!

My sweet sister has been in so many musicals and plays but I have never been able to see her act... Until now! My parents and I snuck up to Oregon and saw Julia's play, surprising her afterwards. She was awesome, the play was hilarious and my debilitating guilt at leaving my kids for the weekend (with Livi promptly throwing up after I left) was briefly assuaged while watching the magic on stage! Not only is Julia as good as everyone said, but look who I spotted in our hotel lobby!

UPDATE: a close up of the "visitor"