Dreaded Calls From School, Sunbeams, Sickfest and SNOW!!

Kids are so hard on things!!  We have only lived in this rental house for a few months, but the kids have reeked havoc on the place in these past few months!  Josh and Daniel have been jumping on the bed, luckily no one fell off and broke their heads, however, they have broken a few of the bunky boards that were supporting Josh's mattress underneath.  Now whenever Josh sleeps he has to avoid the huge hole that the mattress sinks down in during sleep.  I also have to remember about the huge hole when I go down to tuck them in because if I sit on it, it really sinks through the broken bunky boards.  I am sure we will fix it eventually when we get around to it.  Maybe if he has to sleep long enough in that huge hole he will stop jumping on the bed--how's that for wishful thinking?! 

 Sarah and Noah have broken the vent in their room.  Don't ask me how, but they managed to do it.  We need to buy a replacement, but we have been busy with other things.  Until we do get a replacement I get to come in their room every morning and pull out all the stuff they have stuffed down it the night before--such as toys, clothes, dress ups, jewelry, socks, etc.  Let me tell you, it's a blast--not really.

It really snowed here Friday night/Saturday morning.  This winter has been pretty mild so far, so the kids were so excited to wake up to find a thick, fresh layer of snow on the ground.  All the boys wanted to go out and play.  Once everyone was outside Sarah realized she was missing the fun and wanted to go outside, too.  She went and got herself dressed and ready to go--it was so nice that I didn't have to fight her on getting dressed!!  She went outside only to return a few minutes later and she kept asking me for something, but I couldn't understand what she wanted.  She got frustrated enough she went and found what she needed--some gloves.  She couldn't find the gloves so she grabbed the next best things--Dad's socks and put them on her hands.  After that she was out there to stay and play.

 Of course no one in this house besides Mom knows how to close a door when they go outside.  Before I knew it Noah had gone down the stairs and was trying to make his great escape out the open door even though he had no pants, shoes, coat or socks on.

Aaron seized the moment and through a snowball at Noah.  Noah didn't seem to mind so Aaron threw a few more.  He still didn't care.  He continued to try and get outside.  He is one tough little boy!!

 I love that the boys think it is fun to shovel.  It makes things a little easier.  However, what made things easiest is when our neighbor busted out his snow blower and helped us out by clearing our sidewalk.  Matthew didn't like shoveling as much as Josh and Daniel so as our neighbor was clearing our sidewalk, Matthew went over to him, pulled on his arm and told him, "Hey, you need to do our driveway!!"  Matthew repeated it a few times to make sure he heard him.  Aaron just had to sheepishly smile and pretend like he didn't hear what Matthew had said to our neighbor.

 Daniel took care of the porch.

 Matthew took care of brushing the snow off the bumper of the suburban when Aaron "accidentally" squished Matthew into it.

Noah had quite of bit of fun picking up the bits of snow that had fallen on the floor off the kids shoes and coats and was eating them.  YUM!!

By the end Sarah and Noah were still going strong, but the other boys had had enough.  Aaron grabbed them and tried to start a snowball fight.  Josh and Daniel did NOT like that and they started screaming like someone was trying to cut their arms off.  I wonder what our neighbors were thinking about all the shrieking coming from our house.  About this time everyone came inside to warm up and Noah got really excited because there was so much snow to eat and such little time to eat it before it melted.

In other happenings we have weaned Josh completely off his Keppra.  As far as we know he has not had any nocturnal seizures, but he has only been off the Keppra for about 24 hours.  We will be having him sleep in our room the next few nights to make sure.  I can say Josh is a lot happier after going off the Keppra.  He is not Mr. Attitude about everything and it is really nice.  I hope we can keep it this way--at least until he is a teenager and develops that attitude just by being a teenager. 

Last week I got the call of dreaded calls from the school.  I HATE getting calls from the school!!  Anyway, Daniel's teacher called me to tell me they were doing a counting activity with chocolate chips and Daniel decided to eat some.  The bad thing was those chocolate chips were milk chocolate chips and they made Daniel sick.  I only buy Daniel friendly chocolate chips at home so Daniel thought he could eat all chocolate chips.  Unfortunately, that's not the case because as soon as Daniel ate the milk chocolate chip his tongue started itching.  He immediately went up and told his teacher so Daniel's teacher called me and I told her to give him Benadryl ASAP and to watch him.  She went ahead and got his Epi Pen ready just in case.  Luckily, the Benadryl kicked in for the most part, but by the time he came home from school he was wheezing something fierce.  We had to give him a breathing treatment and another dose of Benadryl, but after that he was good to go.  Have I mentioned I HATE calls from the school??!!  I am just glad it wasn't worse.  It scared the teacher pretty badly so I don't know how many more chocolate chip counting activities they will be doing in the future... 

Wow these last three weeks have been a sickfest at our house.  As soon as someone gets better someone else starts a new round of a new disease.  All around Christmas everyone got the barfs and diarrhea.  I thought we were done with all that so I made sure the kids were 100% well for 48 hours and then sent them to school which happened to be Tuesday morning.  After the kids had gone to school I was cleaning up the house when I got a call from Aaron at work.  He told me when he got up to get ready to go to work at about 5 am poor Josh was hanging out in the bathroom and it did not sound like he was having a very good time of it.  Aaron could only hear all kinds of solids, liquids and gases coming from Josh--poor kid was having some diarrhea.  Aaron said he spent a good amount of time in there before he went back downstairs and got into bed.  Well let me tell you about Josh--He LOVES school.  He did want to miss any school so he didn't tell me he was having stomach issues that morning.  I got up thinking that everything was hunky dory and sent him out the door to catch the bus after he got ready that morning spending an unusual amount of time in the bathroom.  I am sure all the screaming from all the rest of the kids masked the sounds of all the solids, liquids and gases Josh was making so I was oblivious.  Aaron meant to call me and tell me to keep Josh home from school, before school, but he lost track of time and didn't get to call me until Josh had been in school for about 30 minutes.  DOH!!  I had to hurry up and get Sarah, Noah and myself dressed to go and pick up Josh from school.  When I got there I had him called down to the office.  When he got to the office he said, "Um, why are you here, Mom?"  I made up some excuse to say in front of everyone since there were quite a few people that had heard him say that.  When I got outside I asked him if he was having tummy troubles and he told me yes and then he told me he needed to use the bathroom ASAP.  We rushed home and got home in the nick of time for me to hear some more solids, liquids and gases coming from the bathroom.  He ended up staying home the next two days until he was fully over it, but don't feel too bad for him he got to kick back and relax the whole time he was at home minus the running trips to the bathroom.  A few days after Christmas I ended up getting a head cold--not too big of a deal just more annoying than anything.  I am still not over my cold so when I got my turn at the barfiness last Wednesday it just aggravated my cold symptoms since when I throw up it comes out my nose, too.  I know that's probably TMI, but it did make my cold worse because my sinuses got full of stomach contents as well as mucus--YUCK!!  I have not been that violently ill with throwing up for a LONG time and I hope it is another LONG time before it happens again!!  Anyway, when Aaron came home from work Friday saying he was starting to get sick I just thought he had caught my cold that still hasn't cleared up.  However, he started spiking a fever of 102+ degrees and along with that he got the body aches, head ache, coughing and just generally felt crappy.  The poor guy took ibuprofen, but it only took the fever away for a few hours until it came back again before he could safely take another dose of ibuprofen.  He had to start taking Tylenol in between, but the few hours the two didn't overlap his fever was in full force.  He was only mobile when he had both the ibuprofen and Tylenol in his system like when he went and shoveled the sidewalk Saturday morning--poor guy.  He got sick enough he decided to go into the InstaCare Sunday evening only to be diagnosed with Influenza.  Now the funny thing about that is, Aaron and Josh were the only people from our family that got the flu shot this year.  Guess Aaron got a different strain of flu than the shot--poor guy!  He stayed home from work Monday and Tuesday because he felt horrible.  He finally had to go back today because he had stuff he had to get done.  I am sure he will be exhausted by the time he gets home today.  We are going on week 4 of sickness at our house and it is getting OLD!!!  I have a dream that everyone at our house will get healthy and stay that way!! 

Lastly, since Aaron was sick Sunday and Matthew was complaining of a belly ache they stayed home from church while I, alone, took the other four kids to church.  When we got to church, we stopped by the primary room to figure out where their new classes would be at.  We started with Sarah.  I found out where her class was and I attempted to take her to it.  I can't believe she is not in nursery anymore.  Anyway, once she figured out we weren't going to the nursery room and going somewhere else she came UNGLUED!  I tried to pull her in to her Sunbeam classroom to have her sit down, but she fought me the whole way.  It was doubly hard because I was holding Noah, too.  She made it pretty apparent that she was not about to attend her Sunbeam class--I think all the kicking, tantruming and screaming gave that away.  When I got back out in to the hall with her she screamed that she needed wuvs (loves).  I had to put Noah down to give her loves.  Once Noah got put down he started SCREAMING because he got put down.  At that point I had two very loud and screaming kids to try and figure out what to do with.  Anyway, I took her back over to the primary room to figure out what to do.  At that point one of the primary presidency got her interested in some stickers.  When Sarah was sufficiently distracted with the stickers I snuck off hoping they would have better luck getting her to class than I did.  While I was sitting in Relief Society with Noah (who refuses to go to nursery) I kept jumping every time someone would open the door because I was expecting them to bring Sarah back to me.  I thought everything was going great because I didn't hear anything.  I started getting nervous when Sunday School went overtime so I got up and left before the lesson ended to make sure everything was fine.  I walked over to the primary room to see that they had already let out.  I started to get worried since I didn't see Sarah anywhere.  I was trying to get through the crowd of people by the primary doors when I heard Josh yell, "Mom, where have you been?"  When I caught up to Josh he told me he had found Sarah out wandering the halls alone.  Luckily he grabbed her hand and went to find me.  I never got to talk to anyone directly from primary, but from what I can piece together, they couldn't get Sarah to go to her class either.  That's when Sarah attached herself to a little boy who is Josh's age and just hung out with him in his class with his classmates and teacher.  She attended class with him and then when their class got out, she just wandered the hall until Josh found her.  **SIGH**.  I wish they would have come and gotten me instead of sending her to a totally different class.  Oh well, I guess we will try again next week, but I will keep a better eye on happenings so I don't find my daughter wandering the halls alone after primary lets out.  I think 3 years old is just a little too young for that!!