The Blame Game

No, I am not talking about blaming someone else for something.  I am one of those people who blame themselves for everything!  Does anyone else do this?

Let's go back... a couple of weeks ago, my parents watched our kids so my husband and I could have a 'Date night... or not' (which I posted about here).  It was great that they took them for us though, so sweet.  I went over the next morning to pick them up.  I got there just before lunch (which we were supposed to eat there).  My parents have stairs at there house and we do not, so my kids love to look at them and go up a couple.  My daughter has not started walking yet, but she is climbing up on the first step.  I hadn't seen this yet, so we were all sitting near the stairs in the hall way.  My son was running around what we call the 'circle'.  This is when he runs from the dining room, to the kitchen, to the hallway, to the dining room, etc.  Every time he came by he wanted me to 'get' him.  So, I would tickle him and he would continue running by.  This continued on for a while until he got tripped up while I was tickling him on one of the passes and fell into the wall.  He started crying really hard, and holding his head.  I grabbed him and held him for a few minutes to try to assess what was going on.  It seemed that he just hit his head pretty hard.....

But then... he pulled his hand forward and there was blood on it.  This is when I had a mini-panic attack.  "Where do I take him?  Do we go to the ER or the Children's Hospital?  Is he really bleeding bad enough that it's dripping down my arm?  Ok, remember the head is really vascular and bleeds a lot?"

First words... "Ok, he is bleeding pretty badly, I need something to put pressure on his head.  Then I will take a look and see if we need to go to the ER."

Yes, we had to go to the ER.  Surprisingly we didn't have to wait very long and they were in the room with us within a few minutes.  The doctor came in the room shortly after we were in there and quickly assessed the situation.  He said that my son needed a couple of staples.  He came back in again and cleaned the cut and got both staples in before my son even started crying.  Then he told the doctor "bye buddy".

... This is where my freak out picked up again... it was my fault that my son had fallen, and therefore cracked his head open, and therefore needed staples... Ok, yes rationally, I know this is ridiculous, but how do you STOP this train of thought?

My son is doing fine though, the staples came out the next weekend and he has a cool little scar that will be a story to tell one day! :)

Really?

So, today was an absolutely gorgeous day!  I decided to take the kids and get out of the house for a little while.  First, my son and I played outside for a good hour or so.  After my daughter woke up from her nap, we took a little road trip down to the local 'super' store.  I like to make things as easy on myself as possible.  So, I put my daughter in a sling and my son in the cart.  This way, I didn't have to worry about carrying anyone, or not having my hands free.  It was GREAT!  We returned a few things, we shopped for a while, I got a few things I shouldn't have! :)  All through the store people were commenting about how cool the sling was and how cute my kids were.  (I always assume this is what they say to everyone, but I sure think my kids are pretty darned cute!)

At the end of the 'trip' I decided that I wanted to get my son's hair trimmed.  We went over to the salon portion of the store.  I asked how long the wait was, and they said they could get him in right away.  I was excited.  He got down out of the cart and was sitting on the chair.  The stylist went to go get the 'cape' and my son decided he was done.  He started crying and was acting scared.  I finally had to pick him up.  So, picture this:  I had my 10 month old daughter on one hip in a sling and my 2.5 year old son on my other hip crying.  As I am trying to comfort him and decide if he is too tired to try this right now, one of the other stylists says, "I remember that, when I had one and each hip and one in the belly.  I would NOT go back to that."  Did you SERIOUSLY just tell me that I look pregnant.  REALLY?!?  At this moment, when I am slightly stressed, holding two children... really?  Have you ever had anyone do that to you?  You know, comedians make jokes out of this, but it really can do a number on you.  I thought I was starting to get back into shape and I thought I was looking pretty good today.  HA!  There goes that notion.  Apparently my VERY NOT pregnant self is looking rather pregnant today.  The best part was that the other stylists not only did not disagree with her or stay silent... no, they thought it appropriate to agree and join in.  What do you do in a situation like that?  I mean, I am not the type to be rude, but normally I would have corrected her.  Today though, I was just so exhausted and too busy dealing with the kids to even say a word.

At least it is still a gorgeous day!! :)  I am determined to enjoy the Tranquility that I find in that!  My Touch of Tranquility!

Internal Argument

Does anyone else have this problem?  You lay down at night to go to sleep, you have just gotten comfortable and are starting to drift off.... suddenly, you realize you forgot to... brush your teeth or write something down on the grocery list (that you probably won't remember in the morning), etc.  Then, no matter how close you are to sleep or how much you try to ignore yourself (yes, I just said ignore yourself!), you end up waking up more and more and you can't go to sleep until you take care of whatever it was.  I HATE when this happens.  I don't have a terrible time falling asleep most of the time.  However, when something like this happens, I have a war with myself.

Just get up and do it!

NO!  You don't HAVE to do it tonight, you are almost asleep.

But if you don't get up, you will forget about it.

No, you won't, just keep repeating it.  Juice for the kids, juice for the kids.

You have a notepad on your nightstand and a pen somewhere.

But you can't turn the light on, you might wake your hubby up.

Just use your phone light, it's not that bright, he will probably sleep through it.

What if he wakes up, then you will feel bad.

Seriously, you are just going to drive yourself crazy until you just get up and do it.

WHAT IS UP WITH THAT!

I have finally learned, for my slightly OCD self at least, that I might as well get up and do whatever it is as soon as I think about it.  I am going to end up doing it anyway and the longer I wait, the longer it will be until I get to finally go to sleep.

Hopefully, I am not the only crazy chick who does this.  :-)

Cuddle Time

I have to say, the past couple of weeks have been very difficult on our family.  We have all been sick, but the kids seem to have caught the brunt end of everything.  There have been some very hard days, where I have considered walking out of the house for a few minutes just to get a minute of peace!  Is it as hard for anyone else?  I mean, I know that the kids are sick and on one hand I feel so compassionate toward them.  I just want to snuggle them and make them feel better in any way that I can.  However, when they are whiny and crying for unknown reasons and it seems like nothing I can do helps... I want to give up.  It is so hard to keep my head on straight and not get frustrated or angry.  I have honestly lost my temper several different days.

On the other hand though, when they feel bad it seems like they want Mommy.  They want to climb up in my lap and just sit.  For me to cuddle with them and love on them.  You know, when that happens, the opposite effect occurs as well.... they cuddle me and love on me.  Wow, how quickly that makes up for all the frustration I have felt through the day.

Yes, the past couple of weeks have been REALLY hard... but man have I LOVED the cuddle time.  My Touch of Tranquility in the insanity.

Date night... or not

Saturday night my parents kindly offered to keep our 10 month old baby girl and 2.5 year old son at their house. My husband and I decided that we should take advantage of this and have a date night.  Go to dinner, maybe watch a movie, not have to worry about the kids at all.  So gracious of my parents.  The kids usually do pretty well, but our daughter still wakes up at night sometimes.  Saturday, she ended up starting to get a stuffy nose and I was a little worried that she may have some trouble sleeping.  My parents still wanted to keep them for the night though and who am I to turn down a night of time with Mamaw and Papaw for the kids.  Or... a date night for my husband and I.

I don't know if this is true of you, but we have found that since we have had kids, we have had very few true date nights, with just the two of us. Maybe a couple or three a year.  So, this was a rare occasion!  For our date night, my husband and I decided to go to the Outback because we had a gift card there.  (Ah yes, the other reason we have very few date nights now, we are also on a much tighter budget!)  I dropped the kids off at my parent's house after lunch and came home, cleaned the house a little and then got ready.  We decided to leave as soon as my husband got home from drill.  That is typically between 4 and 5. This time it was around 4:30.  We went to an Outback that is pretty close to our house, so we got there shortly before 5:00.  It was funny, we felt like we were dining with the Early Bird diners.  Most of the people who were eating when we sat down were older.  We started joking about how 'old' we feel lately, with both kids being sick and missing sleep.  We had also both started feeling a little sick that day, so that just added to the 'feeling old'.  We had a lovely dinner and talked.  We got home and had planned to watch a movie. It was probably 7:00 or so when we got home and we settled down picked a movie and decided to watch it in our room, so we could lay down while we watched it.  Yeah, we were both asleep before 8:00!  Talk about feeling old.  I remember when we were in college and we would stay up until 3 or 4 studying and then get up at 7 for class.  Apparently, we can't do THAT any more!  It was still very nice to spend time together and to NOT have to wake up with the kids in the middle of the night!  :)  Thanks to my parents for the lovely break... maybe we can make this a more regular thing! ;-)

Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies!

So, tonight I decided to try a new recipe for chocolate chip cookies that I had found.  I have been looking for a recipe in which the centers of the cookie stay chewy while the edges are crunchy. The recipe was a little odd looking to me because it had cornstarch in it, and I have never added cornstarch to a cookie recipe.  However, I decided we might as well try it.  What's the worst that could happen with chocolate chip cookies.  I mean come on, they have chocolate chips in them.  I am pretty sure we would 'find a way' to get rid of them no matter the outcome.  :-)

So, I looked up the recipe again on Food Network Canada's website: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Dessert/Chocolate/recipe.html?dishid=2633 and went to work.

I did adjust the recipe slightly.  I used 1/4 cup less brown sugar and I used 'No Salt' in place of the salt.

The final result...

... perfection!

This is my new favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.  

Playing in the Change

Right now, I am sitting beside my 2.5 year old son, on my bed.  I am working from home today, but my mom comes over to help with the kids during working hours.  My kids both go down for a nap around 1 and usually sleep for at least a couple of hours.  Today, since my son is sick and his ears hurt and his nose is stuff, he woke up early.  He also wanted mommy as soon as he worked up.  So sweet, but I was supposed to be working.  He was being very noisy in the living room though and being that our house is a little small, I did not want him to wake his sister up, so I let him come into the room with mommy.  He saw some change on Daddy's night stand and decided he just HAD to put it in his little piggy bank.  I went to his room sneaky as can be and grabbed the  piggy bank, brought it back into our room and the fun ensued.

Apparently, moving the change back and forth between the piggy bank and the basket was of enough amusement to keep him busy for over an hour!!

What a wonderful Touch of Tranquility!!  

Zebras Are Fun

So, both of my children have been sick for the last few days.  My daughter started to feel better about the time that my son decided to feel worse.  They have both been so sad.  It breaks my heart to see my babies hurting.  Today was no different.  My son was actually worse.  He even had little dark circles under his eyes.  My daughter though was smiling more and even laughing a little more.

My son has this little zebra that he can ride.  You can turn it on and it plays songs and talks to the child about safari animals.  Well today, my son was on the zebra and wanted his sister to sit on it in front of him.  Then, he put his arms around her to make sure she did not fall off and drove her around the house.  They were both so excited.  I think it made all of our day.

This is a picture of the my son trying to explain how the zebra works to my daughter.  So sweet! :)

This was my Touch of Tranquility for the day.

Round 2

So, as I said in my last post, Roseola is contagious, especially to younger children... yeah, I am pretty sure my son has it too now.  Thank goodness we had such a good morning.  Both kids were in great moods, they were playing together well, the were both being cuddly.  This lasted until about 2 hours, and then... the evil came forward.  This day was honestly hard enough that I thought about how I wished I was at work and not at home. :-/  I do not like that I felt that way.  I think the hardest thing for me to handle is my daughter's whining.  She is only 9 months old, so she does not speak much yet.  Instead, she whines, all the time, if you do not understand her she just continues to whine.  I do not know why, but this is about the most annoying/frustrating sound on earth to me.  It is worse than someone running their fingernails over a chalkboard.  Oh my goodness, I was about to go out of my mind. I am sad to say that I was honestly looking forward to their nap time.  When they finally went down for a nap, I was relieved.  I honestly just sat... in silence, for a while.

They usually sleep for about 2 to 3 hours in the afternoon.  My son woke up after about 45 minutes, screaming.  Now, this is not normal.  Both of my kids typically wake up calm and happy.  So, I rush into the room to find out what is going on.  I pick him up, and he is BURNING up.  I took his temperature and he has a 103 degree temperature.  Since he never had Roseola when he was a baby, I am pretty sure this is what was going on.  :-(  Poor little guy.  I gave him some ibuprofen and he went back to sleep for a while.  He did wake up crying again though.  When my husband got home, I went straight for the long, hot shower... today, this was my Touch of Tranquility...

Lack of Sleep...

This past week has been an interesting week.  My 9 month old daughter woke up around midnight on Monday morning screaming.  We got her and fed her, she felt warm, but was back asleep before she was finished eating. So, I laid her down, and went back to bed.  Within about 15 minutes she woke up again screaming.  This time, I decided to take her temperature before we did anything else.  It was 103.1.  Let's just say, I began to panic a little.  I gave her some Tylenol before we put her back down.  The rest of the night she was up about every 30 minutes.

In the morning, I got on our Pediatrician's website to try to find their instructions for a temperature that was hanging out around 103.  They suggested to call if the temperature lasted for more than 24 hours.  So, I waited until Tuesday morning and when it was still so high, I called when they opened.  We got an appointment and went in.  Found out that she had a double ear infection.  Poor baby.  She also had a soar throat.  They prescribed Amoxicillin. (Side note - I had a major reaction to Amoxicillin when I was younger and had to be rushed to the hospital.)  Apparently, allergies CAN run in families, but not always.  So, needless to say, I was monitoring her very closely.  She seemed to be doing well, started acting more normal.

On Friday morning, she suddenly broke out in a rash.  I called the doctor again and ended up going in to get it checked out.  After all of that, it turns out she had Roseola.

Here is what the Roseola rash looked like:

(source: http://www.primehealthchannel.com)

And here is what hives look like in reaction to Amoxicillin:

(source: http://www.primehealthchannel.com)

As you can see, they are similar.

A few things I did not know about Roseola.

1. One of the most common symptoms of Roseola is ear infection.
2. It is contagious not just until the fever goes away, but until the rash goes away.
3. Children are most susceptible, but adults can get Roseola too.
4. If someone has already had Roseola, they can still get it again (although it is much less likely).  

This week, I have been rather challenged to find my touch of peace every day.  Today, my baby girl laughed again for the first time since she started feeling sick.  That precious giggle made the whole week worth it... my Touch of Tranquility... 

Storms

Last night much of the country faced some pretty intense storms.  It was definitely an interesting night in our house.  Around 9:30 a tornado warning went into affect for the part of the city that we live in.  My husband and I began to quickly make preparations to move the family into our bathroom.

Ok, let me explain.  Our house is rather small and it is a ranch home.  All of the rooms have windows and touch exterior walls, including the bathrooms.  However, in the master bathroom there is a door for the tub and toilet.  So, we decided the safest room in our house is the 'sink room' in our bathroom. 

So, my husband and I are quickly making preparations.  Well, our bathroom is a mess.  There are cleaners, make up, soda cans, brushes, a hair dryer, etc out on the counters.  All I could think was, if the roof comes off the house, this stuff is going to become dangerous!  Ridiculous right.  I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to beat this storm by cleaning my 'sink room'.  Yes, I decided THIS was the best time to clean.


Here is a picture of our 'sink room' and the dangerous projectile on the counters! :)

Now... imagine 2 adults, a 2.5 year old and a 9 month old in this little room... 

After the completion of the cleaning.  I grabbed a bunch of pillows and blankets, the cell phone, a flashlight and a couple of other things and then we ran to get the kids.  My husband got our 2.5 year old son and I grabbed our 9 month old daughter.  They were both startled, but my son went right back to sleep.  Thank goodness!  We are now sitting on the floor in our tiny little 'sink room', barely enough room for all 4 of us to even fit in there.  My daughter is growing restless and my son is snoring on a pillow on the floor.  

At this point, all I can think is, "God, please keep us and our family and friends safe."  I, of course, was panicking a little as the wind started blowing the rain straight at the house.  My heart is fluttering, the lightning and thunder are getting worse and worse.  The power goes out.  Which helps me - not!  Suddenly, there is a VERY bright flash of lightning, my son looks up at me, jumps up from the pillow and lands on top of me.  I had to hand my daughter to my husband.  But this sweet sleeping baby boy, cuddling up with his momma calmed me immediately.  I realized there was nothing I could do about the weather, but what I could do was to keep my babies safe and calm.  What a sweet time I had with my son through the howling, pounding storm.  

This was 'A Touch Of Tranquility' in my storm...

Life is crazy... look for the Tranquility

So, I decided to start blogging kind of as a way to relieve stress and decompress.  Life is pretty crazy.  I am married, have two children a 9 month old baby girl and a 2.5 year old boy, work a full-time office job and part-time as a massage therapist.  I know everyone else has just as crazy of a life, this is one outlet for me.  There just are not enough hours in any day or week or month for that matter to complete everything that I need to.  I constantly feel overwhelmed and all that I can do is search for a moment of peace through it all.  Some days that seems nearly impossible.  When I can feel myself getting close to the edge, I know I have to make myself take a break.

This is my newest attempt at trying to find that calm place... blogging.  We shall see how it goes!  I am excited, but who knows, it might be like the New Year's Resolution episode of Friends where Rachel says she is going to write in her diary every day and the rest of the pages are blank.