Stuck inside...again

Well, I guess I'm finally living the more realistic life of a parent. The kids are still battling these fevers. My son seems to mostly be over his, but my daughter woke up blazing hot this morning. The kids slept in the bed with my hubby, and I slept on the sofa because I'm too finicky to deal with two congested children, and a boxer within feet of me all at the same time while I'm trying to get some sleep.

Back when Chris and I had our son, my parents were SO available all of the time. My mom even spent a full two weeks at our house after we brought him home from the hospital. (As a side note, I suggest that new parents get the full experience for about a week by themselves before calling in the grandparents; you'll be able to appreciate them a lot more if you actually get to see how tiring it can be to care for a new infant - otherwise you'll probably constantly tread the line of "Hey, I'M the mother of this child so stop telling me what to do!")

But I digress. If you read this blog regularly you know that I lost my grandmother a month ago. She first got sick back on October 25, and my mom began caring for her 24/7 while she was hospitalized, transferred to a nursing home, etc... Before this, my parents have always been available to keep our kids (and my sister's kids) at a moment's notice. About once a month (sometimes twice) my hubby and I would get to have some time alone. I often found myself wondering how realistic this was. Many times I would cringe at having to call my mom and ask her if she would keep our kids overnight...again...after just keeping them two weeks ago, and keeping my sister's kids the previous week. You see, I'm of the belief that you have to be VERY careful what you ask of someone, and that you should never ask of someone else what you are not willing to do yourself. As it relates to my parents keeping our kids, there are a couple of reasons why I have always thought we should pull back on bugging them every other week or so:

1) Yes, I understand that grandparents LOVE spending time with their grandkids. It's really easy if you think of it that way. But ask yourself this question, When you become 50 years old, are you going to want to have toddlers at your house for the entire weekend for 3 weekends out of a month? Yes, that was a rhetorical question. If you are one of those few people that would answer, "Yes, I would LOVE that!", then you're in the clear. :-) However, if you are the person that's always trying to find someone to watch your kids on the weekends, then you are the type of person that wants to have your own time a lot...that doesn't change just because you turn 50 and have grandkids, people.

When my sister and I were little, we NEVER had babysitters. Even though my grandmother lived in my parents' house, my mom and dad NEVER left us overnight. They really enjoyed spending time with us. They would find things for us to do on the weekends together as a family. So, of course, as grandparents in their fifties, they haven't changed. They LOVE having the grandkids around on the weekends. That's the kind of people that they are. But we are all different. If you find someone to keep your kids overnight once or twice each month while you (and maybe your spouse) go off and do your own thing, it goes without saying that you aren't the kind of person that will want to spend 2 or 3 weekends out of the month watching your kids' kids. Yep, that's right, if you have more than one child, that's at least one grandchild per week. Something to think about huh?

2) Another reality that I am finally opening myself up to. We live in Atlanta, and it has finally become almost completely saturated. I know so many people who are entering fields that don't leave very many options in a small, but heavily populated city such as this. Many of these people are having to pack up their families and leave Atlanta. I have always been adversely opposed to this option. My husband has known since we got engaged not to even go where with me about leaving Atlanta. I was raised this way...you don't ever leave your family. Heck, living 30 minutes away from my parents was enough of a shock and jolt, so I couldn't imagine what would happen if God forbid we moved to another state! Not to mention the fact that we wouldn't have anyone to watch our kids overnight anymore. In fact, at this point, that is the only thing stopping me. I don't leave my kids with ANYONE except for my mom and dad. NO ONE. So if we moved away, my hubby and I would never have any alone time and that was a thought that I couldn't bear! Until now.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, it's been a little over 3 months since my hubby and I have had any time at all together to ourselves. We haven't even gone out to dinner together or anything. So, now, I know that we can bear this kind of reality if we have to. We have been forced to. We are tired all of the time, but we have just become more creative about things to do with the kids on the weekends. While the kids nap, we nap. We have become smarter with our free time. When my husband graduates from law school, if the best offer he receives (and by best I mean salary + hours + responsibility) is in Florida, or North Carolina, or somewhere else, we will have to at the very least consider it. For the first time in my life, this is an option for us, and makes things less stressful for my husband and his pending job search.

I know that this is an extremely long post, but I've been thinking about this for a while. These are the types of things that I don't have anyone to talk to about, so I just spill it all here. :-)

Yucky Colds

It seems as if EVERY SINGLE TIME I say out loud "Wow, the kids haven't been sick in a long time; maybe their immune systems have built up more!" ...they always get sick within 2 days of my saying this. Every single time.

My son's class had a field trip to the Atlanta Children's Museum this past Thursday morning. My mom went with him as a chaperone. He began showing signs of being sick while they were at the museum, but the field trip didn't end for another few hours. My mom called me at work to let me know what was going on with my son. The Children's Museum is mere blocks away from the CNN Center where I work, so I just hopped in the truck and picked them up to take them back. The next day (Friday) my mom called me around 3pm to tell me that his fever had jumped up to 104.5! I was horrified. After that, my mom started pushing liquids non-stop and cycling ibuprofen and acetaminophen every 2 hours. My mom kept him at her house over night so that he wouldn't have to get out in the cold.

I decided to let my daughter sleep with me last night since her brother wasn't here and she was noticeably sad about that. As she was fading off to sleep, I felt her back and it was slightly warm. By 2am she was blazing hot. I started pumping her with liquids and acetaminophen. She woke up with a yucky sounding dry cough, but the fever was gone. My hubby gave her some more medicine before he headed off to school this morning (yes, he has class on Saturday morning). My mom called and said that my son is doing better this morning. They were supposed to be going to their cousin's birthday party this afternoon. I think that Elmo is going to be appearing there. I was SO looking forward to this. My daughter LOVES Elmo!! And it would have been nice to be able to see the family; they are always fun to hangout with.

I guess we'll be holed up in this house all weekend. Oh well, such is the life of parent's of young toddlers. :-)

Nostalgia

–noun
1. a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time: a nostalgia for his college days.

I've been longing for happier times for quite some time now. If you follow my blog at all, you know that the past 3 months have been tough for me and my family. Today, during my regularly scheduled perusal of the blogosphere, I ran across an embedded Youtube video of Keith Sweat ft Jackie McGhee singing "Make it Last Forever" circa 1988. Ahhhhh, the good, old days.

Life was SO simple back when that song was in heavy rotation. I was in the 8th grade at Henderson High School. Every time I look back I think about all of the wasted opportunities in my past. Each time I look back, I want to cry over all of the people that I let down. Whenever I think on old times, I want to hop into a time machine and go back to 8th grade and start over. 8th grade was the virtual "fork in the road" moment in my life. This was my chance to shape my destiny, and shape it I did. I got excepted into an amazing school, and all of the accelerated programs and classes within it. Unfortunately for me, being a braniac wasn't good enough anymore. Actual "work" was required to succeed at this school, and I had ZERO experience with actually working.

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As I was typing this post light night, I heard a LOUD scream coming from my son's room. I ran in there and saw my 2 year-old daughter holding her head in her hands and blood on her face! She and her brother were playing even though they were told to go to bed, and she had obviously fallen and hit her forehead on the foot of my son's bed. My husband and I spent the rest of the night tending to her. I'll have to revisit my thoughts on nostalgia another time, hopefully soon.

Hilarious D.U.I. video

There's absolutely nothing comical about D.U.I. first of all. But this video is surely a riot!

Video Here

Friday: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

What a day:

The Good -

• I met up with one of my best friends, Chrissy L for lunch at House of Chan up in Smyrna today. It's always SO good to spend time with her. I also ran into a young lady that I used to be buddies with that works there.
  
• I got a ton of work done this week, and I'm packing up for the weekend feeling a freedom that I don't usually feel.
  
• I am finally learning to live with peace over the passing of my grandmother. It still aches so much, but I'm starting to settle in to the fact that it was best for her, and that's what matters most, and what I should try and focus on most
  

The Bad -

• I hit someone's car on the way back from lunch today. I was pulling into a parking space at my job, and the front left portion of my fender brushed against the back right bumper of their truck. I can't believe I did that. I'm still getting used to driving Chris's larger-than-life-itself Nissan Titan, so I think that's why this happened
  
• My house is a wreck, and I have to go home to it and face this reality. I guess I know what I'll being doing well into the evening and super early tomorrow morning. Egads.
  
• I just found out that a young lady that is a co-worker of mine has pancreatic cancer and has been diagnosed with only 3 - 6 months to live. She has 3 very small children and this news is very heart-breaking. My fervent prayers will be going out to her and her family.
  

The Ugly -
As I was walking into the breakroom a moment ago, I fell splat on the floor on my way to the crystal springs water cooler. Thank God no one was in there to see me.


I have a bad feeling. I know that I need to pray more often, and times like this serve as a harsh reminder. Weird things keep happening one after another here lately, so either my head is all over the place and I need to focus a little more, or it's something else. I don't believe in omens or anything like that, but I know that the Lord gives us signs through the Holy Spirit, especially when we're in deep prayer.

God be with you all today and the rest of this weekend.

Lessons Learned

I have learned a heck of a lot over the past few months. I've been feeling as though "life" has been kicking me in the butt. However, now that I've had some time to reflect on all that I have gone through, a new perspective is beginning to form.

Going through the loss of a loved one causes one to experience a lot more than just grief. I spent the entire week with my mom helping to take care of all of the arrangements for my grandmother's funeral last week. Trying the grasp the fact that my grandmother is gone just feels impossible. But in addition to this, I had to deal with a lot of other emotions.

For example, I have always felt that my mother is more partial to my younger sister than she is to me. After I had been married for a few years, I mostly got over it and figured that maybe I was being silly to think this for so many years. But I realized last week that I still harbor some negative feelings. In the interest of being careful not to say too much here, I'll wrap up by pointing out that I have a lot of work to do on my end to finally do away with the negative feelings that are stored way in the depths of my heart. Feelings like this just don't come up sometimes unless something as extreme as death occurs. My family is in enough pain, and I don't want any feelings of resentment on my part to contribute any unnecessary pain or negativity.

I feel really good about 2008. I only have a couple of resolutions:

1) Get more rest
2) Spend more time with my children
3) Prepare better meals for myself and my kids
4) Love harder
5) No more false promises

This is enough for now.