Poor Noah, 8 Kids!? and Ohhhhhh Sarah!!!!

Noah has been extremely fussy and he had also spiked a fever the other day so I took him into the pediatrician's office. That's where we found he had two really horrible ear infections. Poor kid. Usually with his ear infections he gets a goopy, bright green snotty nose, but this time around he didn't even have a runny nose. His only symptom was the high fever and the fussiness. Poor kid. This would make 6 ear infections within the last 8 months. We have an appointment to see the Ear Nose Throat doctor on Tuesday to discuss tubes for his ears. You can tell from the picture he does not feel good at all!!Sarah loves cereal and she helps herself to it anytime someone leaves it sitting out on the counter (which is a lot with three cereal eating brothers). She helped herself to bunch of Shredded Wheat the other day before I caught her. She must have eaten a ton and I am paying for it. We have gone through more diapers than I can count--I lost track after 5 dirty ones!! Whenever any of the kids have a stinky diaper Aaron always says Ewwww and covers his nose with his shirt. Sarah's next dirty diaper was especially potent because she did the exact same thing. I think I just need to NOT ever buy anything high fiber. If I do it will only be for me and Matthew and then I will need to keep it under lock an key for sure!!! No one else in our family needs to eat high fiber anything EVER because....well you can guess why!! After Aaron changed her especially potent diaper he didn't put her pants back on. She got upset and tried to put them on herself only to get them on backwards. She was so upset she couldn't pull her pants up. She is too little to try and explain that your pants can only be put on one way and that's NOT backwards--poor girl!Yesterday one of my good friends went in to be induced to have her baby. She had babysitting all lined up for her three little girls when that fell through two days ago. She called me and asked me to watch her girls for her and I agreed. She was being induced at 11:45 pm (that's such a crappy time to start an induction!!). Anyway, that meant her kids got to come and sleep over at our house. Josh, Daniel and Sarah were excited because all three girls are their ages. When they got here the kids all played until bedtime. I let my kids stay up a little later than usual since their friend's usual bedtimes were 8:30pm. All the boys were sent downstairs to sleep except Noah of course. The four girls were split between the two upstairs bedrooms. My Sarah got to share a room with Daniel's friend Sara. Hailey (Josh's friend) got to share a room with her sister and Sarah's friend Beth. All things were going great until I tried to lay Beth down in the crib. She was quite upset and kept crying for her Mom and Dad. I tried rocking her, holding her for a while and she still wouldn't go to sleep. By this time it was about 9:30 pm so I put her in her crib to see if she could get comfortable. She cried and cried and her sister Hailey did not like it. She kept coming downstairs to tell me Beth was crying. I ended up moving Hailey over to Sarah and Sara's room to sleep. Finally after about 15 minutes of crying Beth finally fell asleep. Since the other two guests were in my Sarah's room I had to take of the door knob covers to the bathroom and the inside of my Sarah's room. My Sarah took advantage of this. She came out of her room, went inside the bathroom and played with the bottle of soap. She then decided to rub her eyes. Yea, she didn't like that too well. I had to wash it all off and put her back to bed. Finally she fell asleep, but the other two girls weren't tired. Hailey and Sara finally ended up falling asleep sometime after 10:30 pm. That's when Noah decided he was done with sleeping and wanted to scream and scream....and scream some more. I fed him, rocked him, put numbing drops in his ears, gave him Tylenol and ibuprofen and tried to nurse him. He didn't want any of that. He finally wore himself out about 1:30 am and fell asleep. I laid him down in the pack and play in our room and quickly fell asleep. I was then awakened at 3 am by Noah who after a nice cat nap was rejuvenated and insisted on screaming some more. He and I finally fell back asleep at 5 am. He slept on while the rest of the kids came and woke me up at 6:30 am for breakfast. Then started the crazy morning of getting 8 kids up, breakfasted, dressed, hair combed teeth brushed, medicated and ready for the day. I have never had to do four girl's hair in one morning before. That took some getting used to. While my attention was turned toward doing everyone's hair Sarah, ever the opportunist, found the girl's toothbrushes, took one of them and decided to use it. She took it downstairs to the boy's bathroom, found the toothpaste and went to town. When she was finally discovered she had toothpaste spread everywhere. She had it all over her pajamas, face, and hands: She got it spread all over the sink and toothpaste tube:She also got it spread all over the carpet leading into the boy's bathroom:After I got that cleaned up I found that she took another turn with the soap in the upstairs bathroom again. Luckily she didn't rub it in her eyes again, but she managed it get it all over the sink before she got caught. Ohhh that little girl!!!! After that I finally got the oldest three off to school. Luckily Matthew takes the bus and Josh rode his bike. That way all the rest of the kids could fit in the Suburban so I could take Hailey to school. Once the kids were in school I had to clean up my house from the 8 kid tornado that hit it that morning. While I was cleaning up Noah decided he was quite tired from his almost all nighter the previous night and he quickly fell asleep in his high chair.Sarah the opportunist got a hold of one of the boy's treasure chests this morning and took all their Silly Bands and put them on. I know she was tired from the lack of sleep the night before because she was "Chuckles " or extremely ornery. I also knew because when I asked her to show me her new bracelets she immediately burst into tears. Also while I was cleaning up she took another opportunity of my lack of supervision and got into the marker drawer. She then did some fabulous art work on her hands and shirt. You can see the scribbles on her shirt in the picture, though. I also knew she was tired because she crawled up into the recliner and pulled the blanket over herself. I was hoping she would take a nap, but that would have been too boring for her I guess.

She quickly got out of the chair before she could fall asleep and then she figured out how to open the sliding glass door.

Oh dear that is really bad. She can escape anytime she wants now. I think it is a good thing I only had one girl because I don't think I could take another one like her for sure!!!!

Later on this morning the three girls' grandma came and picked them up. Whew 8 kids are a lot of work. It makes me thankful I only have 5!! As for Noah he is now on an antibiotic and I have tried to keep him awake all day today. Hopefully we both can get a good night's sleep tonight. Keeping my fingers crossed!!