Nope and What I Know For Sure

It's been an interesting year so far, all three weeks of it.  I've been sick for a good chunk of it and that has sucked. But just like bad moods and cloudy days make you appreciate good moods and sunshine, being sick has made me so damn grateful for the good old normal exhausted I usually feel. It's all about perspective! 

I was so sick that even Lucy in all her pre-teen moody glory right now came to comfort me and even took a sick selfie with me. 

In the past three weeks, I got back into a groove working at the preschool, started my new writing gig, went to an amazing storytelling show in Detroit, got to say yes to some great things but had to say no to some great things, tried not to spread germs, called in sick, slept a lot, cried, watched movies, went to the doctor (just a virus, whaaat?!), drank tea, had some pretty heavy conversations with the older kids, tried to help one of the younger ones out with math homework (um, worse than being sick), missed deadlines, made deadlines, agreed to work more hours at the preschool and finally started feeling better yesterday.

Life doesn't stop when we get sick....we just have to keep moving in a fog. 

This was at the ultra hip storytelling show I went to in Detroit. Most favorite sign maybe ever....instead of "stairs closed" or "do not enter" it's just a "nope." The BEST! That's what life said to me, "nope, not going to stop because you have a dumb cold, nope." Ha!

But now that the fog has lifted, I know for sure that I appreciate being less foggy and I want to dance in my kitchen and go play in the snow and have a real weekend.


Here's what else I know for sure this week:

• Enjoying the winter is more fun than complaining about it. The pond froze around the same time my fog lifted, so we hit the ice. Our first time skating this year and it was a blast. 

It was Wade's first time really skating, and scoring on skates. It was a blast!

• I am in love....with J.Lo. Um, because she is beautiful and so talented. I mean right? I love her on American Idol and now I love her new show. AND I want to go to Vegas to see her new live show. She is my idol. For real. ***Except I didn't love the episode of Shades of Blue last night.***

(click here to watch the video.)

• This book is AWESOME! A friend of mine gave this book to me for my kids except I want to keep it because I love it so much. Actually we are all sharing it because it's so cool.  Click here to learn more about it. It's just totally rad.

• My dogs are a lot of work, but I love them.

• Electronics are my nemesis except when everyone is cuddled up looking at pictures on someone's phone. Awwwww.

• Speaking of electronics, I joined SnapChat but I know for sure that I know nothing. I am totally clueless but curious. Any advice would be appreciated.

• This is a great video and message for daughters. 

(click here to watch the video.)


What do YOU know for sure right now?  How's your year going so far? Tell me here in the comments or over on my Facebook page.

Sunday Miracle

Being sick sucks. It sucks so bad.  

This past week, I hated everything and everyone, not because I really hate everything and everyone but because I felt so terrible.  It was just a cold. A horrible chest cold that makes it hard to breathe and makes you hate everything and everyone.  I felt like I was trudging through mud covered with thick fog and it was hot and then cold and then hot again. 

I was mean to my family.  I snapped at Tim all week and then cried because I said he wasn't being nice to me. I wasn't making sense.  When the kids turned up the music I didn't care, I didn't dance. Nothing made sense anymore.

I was a mess.

Yesterday morning after a long, cough-filled, sweaty night, I cracked opened my eyes and groaned at the dogs for waking me up and to my surprise my voice wasn't as deep as Bea Arthur's. I sat up in bed and rolled my neck around and it didn't hurt. I was scared to think that maybe, just maybe I felt better.  But it was true, I did feel better.  

Not only was my sore throat and the feeling like someone was sitting on my chest gone, my anger and hatred of everything and everyone was gone too.  I felt like a somewhat normal person again. Then I realized that the weekend wasnt' over and I was well enough to enjoy the last day before the work week started.  I was elated.  I felt like Scrooge when he woke up from his terrible dream and realized that he hadn't missed Christmas. I felt like running to the window and throwing open the shutters and asking a street urchin what day it was.  And when he replied "Sunday ma'am" I planned on throwing out a penny and telling him to go buy a turkey or something to celebrate that it was still the weekend. Then I would scream joyfully "I didn't miss it! Happy weekend to all!" 

After breakfast I apologized to Tim for everything I had said the week before, he looked confused but grateful that I wasn't yelling at him and then crying.  The kids turned on music and I danced. The world made sense again.

I quickly proceeded to get totally exhausted from our normal Sunday that is jam packed with too many activities for any normal family and collapsed into bed after watching an ultra-violent episode of Sons of Anarchy.  

This was actually pre-miraculous sick free wake up. I got out of my sick bed on Saturday to resume my job as family paparazzi. I loved cheering on Peyton but I hated everything and everyone else. Waaaaa.

I smiled for this picture that someone offered to take with me in it but it was fake because even ice cream couldn't make me happy that day. I was annoyed with Tim for buying the family ice cream on a cold day. Whaaaat? It was the sickness because usually any day is a good day for ice cream.

The boys' football games were on Sunday this weekend...the day I finally felt better. Phew.

It was parents' day at Peyton's game but it might as well have been little brothers' day. The little boys' greeted him on the parent line and cheered the loudest. They look up to Peyton and just love him so much.

It was a busy day, but it was such a good day. I liked stuff, I smiled at people, I danced, I took the dog for a walk, I cheered my kids on and felt like myself.

Bring it on Monday. This week has to be better than last week, I mean because last week sucked. So yeah, bring it week.

Tamiflu & What I Know For Sure This Week

I don't know much this week.  It's one of those weeks that is full of sick kids, phone calls from school telling me to pick up my sick kids, rearranging meetings and canceling lunches, taking temperatures, going to the pediatrician's office and not finding time to shower.  It's one of those weeks when I see my poor kiddos battling high fevers and looking pitiful.  

JT got slammed twice this week, first with complications from Celiac and then Influenza. Poor kid.

It's one of those weeks that I am grateful for bleach and Tamiflu.  I know everyone with oils is going to tell me how healthy they all are with their oils and I am happy for them. I really am. But for our family right now, it's bleach and Tamiflu and rest and gluten-free chicken noodle soup and more rest and gobs and gobs of hand sanitizer.  And forts in the living room and Christmas movie marathons.  

Sick kids and a dog have totally taken over the living room.

Lucy being a little mama and reading
to Wade when he first got sick.

I know for sure that being sick sucks, but being together doesn't and we will make the most of being quarantined.



Here's what else I know for sure this week:

• Hey maybe I'll dye my hair....maybe I'll just get drunk...oh yeah, I'm loving some old school Dolly Parton Christmas songs.  Songs like "Hard Candy Christmas."  My sister, my cousin and I used to sing this old favorite when we were kids.  Listening to it recently, um, it holds up.  Damn it's good.  Listen and hear for yourself. I know for sure that I love Dolly Parton forever.

• This recipe (for peppermint bark) is the possibly the greatest recipe of all time.  It's gluten free and delicious.  I should know, I made it and ate all of it.   Yup.  I made it thinking I might give it away as a gift, but instead I was quarantined with sick kids and ate it all, myself.  It's from my friend Elaine- click here for the recipe.

• You can enter to win a $50 gift card to stella & dot.  Click here to enter, it's simple and you have a great chance of winning and why not?

• If you don't tear up watching the video in the link, then I just don't get you. Seriously. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/16/puppy-present_n_6329860.html

• Podcasts are all the rage.  Did you know that?  I am late to the game.  But click this link from Mamalode to find out some really good ones.  I listened to Alec Baldwin interviewing Jerry Seinfeld the other night and was thoroughly entertained, click here for that podcast.

• I am still so in love with Instagram.  Come follow me here- @jumpingwithmyfingerscrossed.com

What do YOU know for sure this week?  Share it here or over on my Facebook page.

Quarantined

I have been stuck in the house for almost three full days now. (After last week with two other sick kids home and a bout of the stomach flu for me.)  

Quarantined with a sick child with spots all over his face.  You see, apparently Hand, Foot and Mouth disease can be more like Arm, Leg and Face disease.   Whatever you want to call it, Wade's got it and it ain't pretty.

After four children and 11 years of parenting, I dare say I am almost a veteran.  At least a toddler veteran.  I've been around the toddler block.  Sippy cups, potty training, toddler beds/big boy beds, pacifier addiction...you name it, I've been there.  Not to say I have any great advice, but I've been there.  And honestly, I'm not too shocked or surprised by anything.  Until this whole Hand, Foot, Mouth business.  

This virus which possibly has the worst name ever for a virus has never infected our household before. Doesn't it have the worst name?  I mean it sounds scary and medieval.  When really it's a fever and then spots.  Spots that don't itch, but just look really gross and kind of medieval.

So now, we sit and we wait.  

And Wade takes out every toy he sees in the house and throws it around the room for fun.

When he's bored throwing his toys, he actually sits quietly and plays with the utensils.  Because that's normal right?

And then Wade wrecks every LEGO set up his big brothers and sister made and thought they had hidden from him.

And then we wait some more.

We wait for the spots to go away.  We wait to go back to our normal lives.

Trying to be like a normal, nonspotty family, we sat down for a family dinner last night. We asked the kids about their day at school.  JT told us he had a test the next day.  We asked him what the test was going to be on and he said he couldn't remember.
"I am great at forgetting what people tell me," he declared.  He wasn't sad, he was more matter of fact.  He wasn't "man, I suck because I can't remember."  Of course I want him to know he's great at a lot of things in life, other than just forgetting, I also kind of love his attitude.

JT inspired me to rethink this whole quarantine.  Maybe it's all in the attitude.  Maybe it's all that glass half-full type of thinking that usually makes me want to roll my eyes.  Maybe it's not such a bad coping mechanism.

So instead of being stuck, I surrender.  I surrender to turning that frown upside down.  And you know what?  Just like JT's attitude, it's kind of great.

Instead of being stuck, I'm lucky that I get to spend the day with my little guy....  
Okay, no it still sucks.  But I tried.  I did.

I'm glad that kind of shit helps JT and it is very cute.  But it doesn't work for me.  I want the spots gone and I want to leave the house. 

He really is cute and I really am lucky to stay home with him.  I know it okay?  Here the cutie is using the untensil to "cut" his car, awww how sweet.

My first stop when I go out is to buy hand sanitizer and get a flu shot. 

Mama Martyr

mar·tyr
noun

--a person who undergoes severe or constant suffering: amartyr to severe headaches.
--a person who seeks sympathy or attention by feigning orexaggerating pain, deprivation, etc.


Moms called martyrs? What? Really?  Is this new?   Of course it's not new or news.  

Oh much has been made about moms complaining on Facebook about being well, um moms.  People either love it or they love to complain about how those moms should be "grateful" or "quit complaining."  

I usually side with the moms that tell people to lighten up and if a mom needs to complain a little, let her (er, me) do it.  Here's a great post from a great blog The Bearded Iris (for In the Powder Room) about "Facebitches" and mommy wars.

But I see how easy it is to get from mom complainer to mom martyr. When your kids are babies you feel like a milk machine and so much of the time you are over-exhausted and overlooked. Well I thought that feeling went away as babies and kids got older. But it doesn't.  No, I'm not nursing anyone (thank god), but I am prepping meals and schedules and I am indeed still over-exhausted and overlooked.  Waaaaah.

I love my children, I love my life.  Just yesterday, I wrote a post about how blessed I feel and how much I like my children.  But every now and again I embrace my mama martyr and have a pity party.  It's not a big party, I'm too tired for that anyway.

Here's the rest of the story over at MomPulse:

Delirious

I am delirious.  With fever.


It happened fast.  First Peyton, my 10-year-old, came down in the middle of the night with freaky high fever eyes.  I knew it was bad when he let me snuggle with him for five minutes.


Then as JT, my newly turned 6-year-old, and I were getting ready to go to the belated Mother's Day Tea at kindergarten, he started crying and he had the fever eyes.  

I was disappointed about not going to the party.  I was like really, really disappointed.  Crying and saying things in my head like "nothing ever goes my way."  The grand overreacting, while pretty common for me, was a tad over the top, even for me.  It was the first sign.  Then the chills, the aches and finally I looked in the mirror and I too had the crazy high fever eyes.


It's a game changer when the mama gets sick.  Who the hell does everything?  I have a good husband, a very good one, and he still doesn't do everything.  At least the way I do it, ahem, the right way.


Hopefully this is a fast bug, because it sure is aggressive.  I have to get better.  We have our busy life to get back to.  Baseball practices to go to, bills to pay, laundry to constantly try and "catch up" on, season finales to watch, plumbers to let in and so much more.


"I have a really important question," Lucy asked Tim last night.  "Not a 'can I have a chocolate milk?' kind of question."


Tim, being the amazing, kind father that he is leaned in closer and gently said "What is it honey?" (I told you he is good.)


"How are we made? How do our body parts work?," she said with a very serious voice.  "How did God make us so perfect, well not all of us." 


Tim's eyes widened.  I sat up from my sick couch to watch how Tim handled himself.  "When your mother is better, she is going to answer all those really important questions," he told her.


I gotta get better.


Yesterday before the fever invaded our house I signed the parent consent form for my fourth grader to listen to the first very important health talk.  You know the talk where they separate the girls and the boys in the class.

Being the mature parent that I am, I giggled as I signed it and asked him if he knew what this was all about.  I told him it was important to not giggle like me while his teachers talked.


I gotta get better.


There's really important stuff I've got to handle and even without a fever I'm not the best.  It could get even messier around here.