Long night

The night Robert had his stitches, Hannah woke up screaming in the middle of the night. I tried giving her a drink and laying down with her but that didn't work. As I laid down with her she kept tugging at her ear. So, I picked her up to go to the kitchen to get her Tylennol. Since I had such a busy day, I was exhausted and completely trapped over the baby gate landing right on my shoulder. Of course that made Hannah cry more and woke Nathan up. However, he was too tired to do anything and quickly went back to sleep. I tried to give Hannah Tylenol but she wanted it in her ear instead of her mouth. That was the way it made sense to her. Running out of patience I gagged her with the medicine (like you would an infant) so she would take it. On my way putting her back to bed she throw up everything on her favorite blanket that she has to sleep with. Nathan woke up then too and helped me clean up things which is wonderful since I don't do too well with throw up.

Hannah at that point was just awake. I tried sleeping with her in her bed but she was wiggle and I just couldn't get comfortable. So I left to sleep in my bed which caused her to cry. Either Nathan or I, brought her into our bed to help us all get some sleep.  Hannah is a very hard kid to sleep with and sleep diagonally between us. In the end, NO ONE slept well.

The next day, Rachel had her 6 month check up and Hannah had her ER trip follow up.

Rachel weighs 15 lbs and 13 oz (45%) and is 25 3/4 inches long (45%)and her head circumference is 42.5cm (54%). She is a very happy, patient, tolerant baby and at this time was sleeping from 11pm-6am.

 Hannah had her Depakote levels checked and there were fine (60% anything above 50% is good). She had one nasty ear infection in her right ear though and the doctor said it was ready to burst. So he sent in the prescription and we went to story time while we waited to it to be filled. (Walmart texts me when it's ready and I love this feature.)

Story time was fine, Hannah was just a bit whiny from her ears hurting. As we left the library she was running around and climbing the statue acting just fine.  She was being a little rascal in the car and wanted to see in the driver seat while I strapped in Rachel, but that's a little game between us. As I pulled her back to get her into her own seat, she went into a seizure. It only lasted a minute and looked pretty normal to the rest of her seizures. She fell right to sleep afterwards. The seizure was expected due to being sick and no sleep so it didn't worry me. Actually it was a little frustrating because her medicine was ready but I can't take Hannah and Rachel into the store with me in that state. So we just went home for her to sleep it off.

I'm in the middle of my once-a-month cooking process and only got 4 meals done today. I was a bit disappointed with that but we needed a break today. (The reason for the pressure to get it down quickly is that I don't want the meat to go bad before it is frozen.)

After a day on the medicine things were a lot better and on Friday I got the rest of the meals completed (15 meals). Everything fix expect for the following day's meal which was set aside for Nathan's graduation.

1st Stitches

Wednesday May 2nd was a very busy day. I go exercising every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at the church after Hailey goes to school. Then on Mondays and Wednesday right after exercising, Robert has preschool. This day luckily wasn't my week to do preschool, so I went grocery shopping for once-a-month cooking (the full 30 days this time). I made one trip during preschool to get everything none perishable and then got the produce and meat after I picked up Robert. Since that took a lot of time, I was able to quickly bring all the food in before it was time to pick up Hailey from school. I got lunch ready, then around 1:00pm Hailey and Robert had some friends over to entertain them while I prep the food.

The friends left around 3:00pm then the kids watched tv while Hannah took a short nap and I really got cooking them. (the first few meals are the most involved in the cook book) Around 4:30pm Hannah woke up cranky and the other kids were whiny for entertainment. So I did starfall.com with Hannah and sent the others across the street to play with Kaya. They love playing with her because she has a trampoline and she's a very friendly with a big imagination.

After about 5-10 minutes of Hailey and Robert leaving I hear crying. I didn't think anything of it and just thought that is it was something bad, that the kid would come home.  A minute or two later I glace outside to see where the crying was coming from but couldn't see anything so I continued playing with Hannah. Another couple of minutes passed and I stopped and told myself that I really do hear Robert and need to find him (it was one of those days that I have heard crying so much, it's hard to know if it is a real cry or just my ear ringing.)

I walk out of my house just seconds after Mandy (my next door neighbor who takes Hailey to school) to see Robert standing on the other side of the street with blood all over his chest. Before I get to him, Mindy (Kaya's mom) steps out of her house too. I think Mandy figured out it was his chin and while I held him, she took his sock to put pressure of the wound. After a few minutes of pressure (and time for me to get a hold of the situation), I took him home to get things arranged to take Robert to the doctors. Within 5 minutes Nathan showed up at home and I left with Robert. The best guess we had about what happened is that Robert fell on or off the trampoline.

I called a head to let them know we were coming and they took us back quickly. After cleaning Robert up some, the nurse put numbing gel all his chin and left us to sit for 30-45 minutes.  Robert kind of stopped talking and reacting at this point. Maybe his was too afraid to move his mouth. We read books and played the trial version of the games of my phone.

Then the doctor came in and Robert did real well with the stitches. The biggest thing was the bring lamp that bugged him. He got three stitches in total and only moved with the first one because the string was touching his face and that bothered him.

We left after that and Robert started talking again but definitely was not his usual hyper self. However, as we get closer to our house Robert told me that he wanted to go back to Kaya's house and promised he wouldn't fall off again. Talking to Hailey, she said that he tripped while on the trampoline and then fell off it. Robert just says he hit the grass..

 Here's the best I can do to take a picture of the underside of his chin.  There was a lot of blood because he was standing on the sidewalk just bleeding for about 2-5 minutes (he didn't cross because his shoes weren't on).

As far as cooking I got 7 meals completed. It was a long day and unfortunately didn't get much better at night time.

7 Years

This semester has literally been Nathan's thesis, job search, and nothing more. He stays up very late at night to finish off things and wakes up very early in the morning and leaves generally before the kids wake up. Having four kids, I'm very busy during the day and exhausted at night. Most holidays have kind of slipped by us this year. Nathan usually takes care of Valentine's Day and I do our anniversary. We try to leave the kids and have 24 hours by ourselves every year but it probably won't happen this year.

This anniversary caught me off guard and I only realized how close it was when my good friend mentioned celebrating their anniversary (which is one week before mine). So I surprised Nathan to an empty house (a friend offer to take the kids and Rachel slept through most of it) and a candle light dinner. We had a fondue pot of a cheesy tomato sauce (first time doing fondue) and crab legs (the first time I ever had crab). Our sparkly cider and berry pie topped off the nice evening together.



 Even though Nathan is not a gift person, I tied a couple of small gifts to the end of the balloons. I got him beef jerky, two flash drives (he loses his a lot) and a flash drive pocket holder.

So Happy Anniversary to us!