Halftime Surprises

I finished putting Stella to bed and made it back to the Super Bowl just in time to feel embarrassed while Fergie sang Sweet Chile O' Mine with GNR's Slash. I had to look away. Apparently Usher joined the crew, because Mark proclaimed, Now, he can dance. I had no idea he felt this way about Usher.

Heath is still up, but I can see that he'll be fading pretty soon. He's sitting beside me and I can actually feel his elevated temperature through his clothes. No seals waking me up last night at 4:30am, just a burning up little boy at 12:30am. He's pretty much been a lump to be pitied on our bed all day. I finally got him to eat a piece of cinnamon toast at 6pm--the first thing he's had all day.

No preschool tomorrow.

Granny packed her stuff up this afternoon and announced that she wouldn't be staying for dinner because my mom and dad will be coming to get her soon. I told her they would be back on Friday, so she's stuck with us for a few more days. Then she ate a plate of homemade vegetable lasagna, had a shower, and a chocolate ice cream sandwich. Just before she went to bed she said she wouldn't want to stay with anyone other than us.

Must've been one tasty chocolate ice cream sandwich.

There's a Seal Barking In My Room Again

I woke up to the sound of a seal barking beside my head. I stumbled around in the dark, essentially sleep-walking, and shuffled Heath back to his room. There was zero light shining through the window blinds, I could tell it wasn't at all time to get up. According to the beaming red digits on his bedroom clock, it was 4:23. In the morning. Very early morning.

I tried to get him back into his bed, while he explained his early awakening. The germs have been dancing in my body for days, then they settled right here in my throat, and now they are connecting to each other, making me cough like this. This explanation was punctuated by interspersed gasping and seal barks. It finally dawned on me what was happening, so I shuffled him back to our room, preparing for our next course of action. Sitting in a steamy bathroom with the shower's hot water running. And avoiding steroids at all cost. Heath on steroids is like, well, Heath on steroids. Toys get broken. Books get ripped. Siblings get smacked and wrestled to the ground. All accompanied by Hulk-like clothes ripping and growling antics.

Fortunately, he fell back to sleep with little effort. It took me an hour or so to settle back down. I spent my time wisely by mentally composing a complaint letter to BOB jogging strollers (on behalf of a friend who is expecting twins any day now) about their stunning lack of foresight when it comes to using the car seat adapters for twins in the Duallie. You can't. For $600 plus dollars, you should. What on earth were they thinking, and why haven't they fixed such a blatant error yet?

Heath made a good effort at enjoying his day, but at 6pm, he was done. Beyond niceties and unable to hold his own body up. I don't think he even ate dinner. He was asleep by 7:30, the trusty vaporizor by his side. Let's hope that seal doesn't resurface tonight.

Groundhog Day. Again. And Again. And Again.

I was going to be annoyed by the cold rain today, but it turned out to be the kind of day that found us running a few errands, playing trucks on the kitchen table, and indulging in some super delicious afternoon snoozes. I'll take it.

Daddy even surprised us by suggesting Friday night Chinese take-out. Twist my arm. Then he told Heath and Stella that he would take them to an indoor play something tomorrow so Mommy can have some time to breathe and think and grocery shop alone and maybe even squeeze in a little run. His niceness completely foiled my plans for being annoyed by tomorrow's rain. And I see sunny and 54 for Sunday. I'll take it.

Meanwhile, Granny is on day 4 of 10 with the Ropkos. I spend most of my day reminding her where she is, what time it is, and where my parents are. She likes to sweep our floors. Good thing we have plenty of dirt for her. And she really liked her Sweet and Sour chicken for dinner tonight. She had two helpings and said over and over, Mmmm...you're a good cook. And I kept telling her that Mark picked it up from the Chinese take-out place near our house, glad you like it. As she was pulling down her covers on her bed for sleep, she commented on dinner again.

That was good dinner, Andee. You're a good cook.

I'm glad you liked it, I said, placing her glass of water on a Nike running shoe box, a makeshift nightstand. But I didn't make it. Mark picked it up for us.

Well, you don't have to tell nobody, she chuckled. You can let 'em think you made it.

I handed her a magazine and a Moon Pie snack and started to head out the door, she said, That was good dinner, honey, thank you. You're a good cook.

I start to launch into the take-out explanation again, but opt against it. Thank you, Granny, I'm glad you liked it. I love you.

I love you, too.

House Wires and Mouse Houses

Tonight, just as we were beginning our second reading of Dora's Happy Mother's Day, Mami!, Stella interrupted me with, Shhh...what's that noisey?

I stopped and waited to hear what I figured was going to be a Heath screech, or a Granny puttering (she's staying with us while my parents are in California), or a neighbor rolling a bulky recycling/trash bin down a bumpy, concrete driveway. Whispers of Mark and Heath in his room could be heard. No sound of Granny, so she must have been tucked in the guest bed with her evening snack of chocolate and a Rachel Ray magazine from 2008. And sure enough, an emptied garbage container made its way back to its usual daytime station until next week.

But none of those were the noisey in question. Instead, her ears had been perked by a faint scritch, scritch, scritch behind the wall next to her bed. It would suddenly fall silent, only to crank up again, Stella making an O-shape with her mouth, hand popped over her lips in exaggerated shock. Scritch, scritch, scritch.

What's that noisey, Mommy? she demanded. I feigned ignorance for a moment or two, but I knew what we were dealing with behind the wall. Scritch, scritch, scritch had Critter written all over it.

I've had my share of the scritches over the years. In Chapel Hill, I lived in an attic with a family of chipmunks. One chipmunk can make a stunning amount of noise; an entire family will leave you curled up at the headboard of your bed, quite certain they are going to explode through the wall and eat you alive. And then there was our Oakhurst house that had mouse after mouse after mouse inhabitants, and two giant o'possum. Turns out humane capturing and setting them free in your backyard is only inviting them to come back night after night. We finally resorted to capturing them in a garbage pail and having Mark drive them to a wooded area a mile from our home. I found them creepy then, and I find them creepy now.

Stella and I called in the reinforcements to confirm that we were in fact listening to the pitter-patter of critter paws. Mark confirmed that it was most likely a mouse, and Heath immediately confirmed that it should be killed. Both Heath and Stella decided that a mouse in the house is a scary thing. Mark then took back the mouse proclamation and said no, he was mistaken, it's a house wire scratching against the wall.

I don't think they bought it. As Stella lay in her bed, singing the last round of the Thomas the Train theme song, she asked for reassurance.

They're two, they're four, they're--Daddy, say it house wire?

Thomas, he's the cheeky one. James is--Mouse is scary.

Gordon, thunders down the--what's that noisey?

Henry--is a mouse?

Toby, well, let's say he's--I scared, mommy.

I convinced her that it was a simple house noise, no worries. Now Mark is going to have to convince me that it isn't a pack of angry mice that are going to burst through her wall and lick milk off her face.

Blue Men in the Night

It's been a long time since I've spent as much time outside as we did today and not be totally and completely miserable. At one point, I swear I heard the crackling of my thawing body. (That was Sunday and 30 degrees ago.)

Well, that's as far as I got last night. My attention became divided when I found myself completely absorbed in Creating the Blue Man Group on PBS. The kids even joined me on the bed to watch a bit of it before night-night storytime. Stella really liked them, and kept their PVC-piping beat pretty well, referring to them as rock stars. I kept wishing we could pay WTVI $249 for a contribution and win two tickets (and Meet and Greet passes!) for their show here in April. But $249...I love PBS. But 249? Not today.

Heath was obviously intrigued with the Blue Man Group, although he reserved his verbal interest for this morning. The first thing out of his mouth when he woke up? The Blue Men came to visit in the middle of the night, a giant smile spread across his face. At four, I would've been terrified if three men dressed in black t-shirts, sweatpants, combat boots, and shiny, bright blue hands and faces came in my room to visit.

And that's as far as I got yesterday morning. I am off the blogging beam.

Mr. Magoo

Adjusting to the new laptop has been an ongoing struggle since it arrived in the mail. I've already mentioned my inability to print until we buy a new printer. My frustration with documents opening, well, not opening continues. But I'm also experiencing a lack of coordination with the keypad.

It seems the edge of my thumb has either grown, or the way my hand is placed on the pad it consistently hits a mysterious button that pretty much wipes away everything I typed. In the last week or so, the number of blogs that I have begun to only have it erased by my wayward thumb will make a person do what I did, stop blogging for a bit. This particular keypad is not for lazy hands such as mine. Turns out you actually have to hold your hands up and off the board and type lightly with your fingertips, as opposed to resting your weary digits and palms like tired, old mountain dogs on a hot summer afternoon.

When we were shopping for our new laptop, I found myself scrolling through the pages and clicking on a number of perfectly good laptops, but Mark's interest wasn't really peaked until I found the 17.3" screen.

I need a big screen, he commented, tapping on the picture with his finger. After the arrival of our newer and bigger television, this came as no surprise. But the need for a large-as-life look at social media has brought me to one interesting conclusion: Mark needs glasses. Desperately.

And it's not just the in your face screens that has led me to believe this to be true, but a combination of clues over the past couple of weeks, namely an incident that occurred during my Blogging Break. I'll call it, The Ear Infection Incident.

One afternoon, most definitely out of the blue, Stella began to wander around the house saying, Ear hurting. This phrase was accompanied by typical tugging, pulling, and pressing the ear in question into her beloved Beanky for comfort. For an hour it continued, and feeling so very sorry for her, I decided to call the pediatrician for advice and a possible appointment. They insisted she come in and told me to give her a dose of ibuprofen in the meantime. I did as I was instructed, put her down for a nap, and spent much of her snoozing time feeling like a turkey-lurkey for jumping to ear infection when it was more likely sinus pressure from a cold, and debated whether or not to cancel the appointment.

But nap time concluded with immediate whines of ear hurting, and the telltale tugging and pulling commenced. So I took her to our scheduled appointment. Yep, she's got herself an ear infection, was the final verdict. We returned home with our ten day supply of Amoxicillin and a renewed sense of trusting my instincts.

About an hour post-dinner and post-first dose of meds, Mark had the kiddies in the bathtub, while I hurriedly tried to get it together and get out the door to meet some friends. Just as I was reaching for my coat, Mark called from the bathroom. Uh, can you come look at this?

I've heard that come from Mark's lips a handful of times before. Uh, can you come look at this? It's a simple request, even given with a marked calmness. But the undertone says, Something bad has happened and I am pretending that it hasn't, for the children's sake, and so you and I can compose ourselves in order to deal with the disaster that has befallen us.

And so I've learned when I hear, Uh, can you come look at this?, it's best that I take a deep breath and know I am getting ready to see something that is going to require immediate medical attention, and I, too, better go into calm mode. So when I popped around the corner and found Stella standing in the tub, clawing at giant red welts all over her little body, I slowly respond, Oh, looks like she's having an allergic reaction to the medicine. I'll call the night duty nurse and see what she suggests.

Benadryl and an antibiotic that isn't in the Penicillin family was the suggestion.

When I returned from a fast trip to Walgreens with Benadryl (we'll never be without that again) and a new antibiotic, I handed it all over to Mark to measure doses. I checked on Stella who has fortunately found something else to do besides rip at her own flesh. I, then, decided measuring a teaspoon of Benadryl should never take that long, so I head back to the bathroom to find Mark standing by the light, holding the bottle of Benadryl and the measuring spoon at various distances from his face, trying to tap into just the right spacing that allows him to see. The time for inaccuracy was not at that moment, so I suggested he go check the kids and I could take care of the medicine doling.

Stella's great. Ear infection long gone, and now when someone asks, Is she allergic to anything that you're aware of?, the answer is yes. Penicillin. And it's really not a shocker. So is Mark. We still don't know about Heath. Knock wood, he's yet to have an antibiotic.

Now to just get Mark to have an eye exam. At least before our next computer. This one already runneth over my lap. I don't think I can accommodate anything bigger.

What Have You Been Doing?

Days. It's been days since I've blogged. My list of excuses is dozens deep, but the one I'm going to stick with revolves around computers. Crashing computers. Incurable computers. Shipped computers. Late computers. Savvy computers.

Much savvier than I am. It seems our printer is so old that our new laptop doesn't even recognize it. It has MSWord, but I get the feeling I need to actually purchase that to use it. Most documents are unattainable. Unless I create them. In WordPad. Or they are .docx or .rtf. OMG. WTW? LOL. AETSN. (That's Angry Enough To Spit Nails.)

One delightful byproduct of our Computer Crisis, after enlisting the help of our IT guy (if you don't have one, I highly recommend befriending someone in that position), is having some beloved pictures recovered that we deemed lost. Gone forever. Back when our other computer bit the dust nearly three years ago.

Pictures of our first year or so with Heath. From in the belly to his first birthday bash. Apparently I had nothing but time on my hands to sit around and take pictures of him on our bed. The sheer volume of him in this location, in a variety of outfits, is stunning.

It's been an interesting trip down memory lane. Heath is pretty much the same as he was when he was an infant. Loud. Active. With an aura of one who has been around much longer than his actual years would indicate. And irresistibly cute.

Roughly three hours old. The smell of that head. Oh my.

Roughly three months old. On the bed.

Now imagine 8,000 more pictures similar to this one.