Just us - there’s a little of the before, but mostly it’s the after...: July 2011

WOW...THANKS MOM!

My Mom is really sick.
I'm really fed up with it.
I want her better and I'm tired of waiting for it to happen.
She sees her Pulmonologist tomorrow and her Cardiologist on Thursday.
It would be oh so appreciated if they would just go ahead and fix her.

We saw her tonight and during our conversation, she was telling me about a little chat she had with my brother (Hi Skizoke!).

Although things are even more stressful right now for me than they have been in a long time, I am trying to just get through it without an enormous amount of complaining.

I recently asked my brother for help with something, but it was like an act of congress just to get his help. Not because he didn't want to help, but because of his schedule and the awful stress he is under at his job.
I understand.
I absolutely understand and didn't let it bother me.

Well, apparently it bothered my Mother....

because her little chat with my brother, according to her, went something along the lines of:

"I understand that you are under a lot of stress at work right now. The way that I figure it, you have about 25 years until retirement, so the stress isn't going anywhere. Your sister needs your help right now. This is her time to have a mental breakdown, you can have yours any time within the next 25 years. So if she needs your help, help her."

Ahem.

Hey...I didn't tattle...

and I think it's perfectly awesome that my Mother has given me permission to have a mental breakdown.
That's like even way more prestigious than getting a pardon from the governor.
I can't decide if I'm excited about it or if it takes all the fun out of it now that I've been given permission.

Either way, I have a free pass to hit meltdown.

I don't think my Mother discussed this with Chris in advance. Poor guy...

Paging Dr. Henderson

Our next stop was to visit the local pediatric clinic where Dr. Henderson was on call.

I was quite impressed with her attention to detail and compassionate demeanor.

Her pure sweetness was evident in all aspects of her care.

Addie and Julien walked into the "clinic" first.

Chris and I stood back because we wanted to see what they would do.

What I found remarkably amusing was that Addie did this all on her own with the exception of needing some assistance getting the stethoscope in place.

We were impressed!

She obviously pays very close attention each time we visit the doctor!

She was so gentle with the baby!

I love this picture...she is so focused!

There were even x-rays they could hang up for viewing.
It was really neat...

I don't know about your baby, but neither one of mine were ever very happy to lay on the cold scale of torture.

The green hair is now gone....thank the heavens above!!!!

Wow...somebody's been brushing well!

July 12, 2011

She Owned the Place

After dancing her heart out, we moved on over to home living.

When we entered that area, a museum employee greeted us and told us very briefly what was available in the area and told us to make ourselves at home.

(what a boost to us....)

Addie went in without any hesitation and made herself right at home.

Chris, Julien and I sat down at the kitchen table and Addie took over from there.

She found food in the refrigerator, washed it in the sink before placing it into the oven to cook.

She gathered plates and utensils for us and even stopped long enough to answer the telephone, before telling the caller to "have a good day".

Sweet Addie did have a good day.

As a side note, everywhere we went in this museum we saw employees cleaning.

As you can imagine, that absolutely thrilled me.

All the exhibits were nice and clean and all the employees were incredibly nice and helpful!

Dancing Queen!

We had an absolutely wonderful time on Day Two of our visit despite Chris, Julien and I having varying moments of controlled rage.

There are many times when we live by the mindset that kids don't intend harm or "kids are kids" and just ignore the amazingly annoying things that they do.

I suppose that it was the nightmare of a night we had with Addie in the hours proceeding our museum visit, but we had pretty much zero tolerance for the stares and reactions of other kids.

Things went well until we approached the Performing Arts Gallery.

Addie was immediately attracted to this exhibit because of all of the music.

There were over sized musical instruments lined up facing each other in a little hallway area.

There were tons of children and lots of music and as we approached, I swear it was like the parting of the Red Sea.

The music stopped and the children turned to stare at Addie.

I completely acted like I didn't notice a thing.

The teacher in charge of the summer camp told the children that they "had to share with everybody" but she might as well have been talking to the paint on the wall.

There was zero response from anyone.

I kept talking to Addie and telling her about the instruments and then directed her over to one of the smaller music rooms.

We didn't let the situation ruin the moment, but we had our typical, "wow..that was nice" comments once we were alone.

After leaving one of the smaller music rooms, Addie heard more music and ran over to a room filled with loud music and lots of lights!

Addie loves to dance!

She ran right in and started dancing around with her hands on her hips...and had not a care in the world.

Seconds later she was the only child remaining in the room.

Yay for us...no crowds to deal with.

We were determined to ignore every negative response and we did.

We had a very nice time and Addie was thrilled to explore the entire museum!

The Rest of Day One

Was pretty much the same thing.

There was minor drama throughout the evening.

We had a great time at the pool, although I had to have a little chat with Julien on more than one occasion about how it is not right to respond to some forms of ignorance by having the urge to "go over there and....".

~~

Addie doesn't do well - at all - at hotels and so the entire evening was just a mess.

The worst part of it all was that Addie refused to go potty and when I put her into the shower to wash her, I'm pretty sure everybody in the hotel thought we were beating her, all because - of the shower curtain.

Heaven help me.

The one little detail that I never thought to check on.

I honestly thought that Addie would rupture her bladder before we finally left the hotel.

She refused to eat dinner and she refused to eat breakfast and she refused to do anything.

It wasn't until we left the hotel, that she started to relax

and was all smiles again!

Sweet Baby Girl had the best time!

Perfectly Understandable

A few weeks back we took a little trip.

Our first stop on the trip involved an $80 tour through hell.

We watched Addie scream as the lady with the outrageously loud microphone talked to us about the penguins.

We have no idea if it was the lady or the penguins that had Addie totally freaked out

but we so totally got why this would have sent her into a screaming fit.

This....yep, looks a bit odd

and this poor little guy just looks sad....

Julien tried to comfort Monkey by showing her the pretty fish

but, this wasn't exactly what fit the description of a pretty, stress relieving tour of the fish.

So finally, I took Chunkus out of the aquarium and asked my husband if he could think of any other way we could throw $80 down the drain.

Before he could answer, I decided we would give it one more try...right after we purchased the penguin souvenirs in remembrance of the fabulous experience that we and our fellow aquarium goers got to indulge in on a scorching hot Monday morning.

Addie refused to look at the camera.

I think her shirt had melted onto mine.

We were drenched in sweat and the only thing that makes that better is when you are drenched in sweat, while all snuggled up next to complete strangers during an aquarium tour with a screaming child attached to your hip.

I swear I was waiting for the fish to start boiling.

Summer Camp - Week Seven

This week's theme - The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

See the tear hanging onto her chin?

I'd say that qualifies as Mad, clearly there's the Hat

her dress and her bracelet make her ready for tea.

I feel like we met all the requirements for this week's theme.

Yep.

Even Mad-er-er

I love this pose.

She can be such a girl sometimes!

Sitting on the counter with her legs crossed....

Love it!

2011 Summer Camp Theme of the Week - That's a wrap!

It's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood...

I scheduled today off work to take care of something incredibly important.

When I left work yesterday to meet my Mom to get Julien - from the doctor - I felt completely and totally miserable.

Just because I had something incredibly important to take care of today, I ended up with strep.

After spending the first part of my day conversing with my amazingly wonderful physician where he told me that if I wasn't better by Friday, I needed to be back in his office...

I came home and didn't get one second of rest and I didn't take care of that very important thing.

A day off not exactly spent as planned...

On the brighter side of things, Julien starts PT in the morning for a "temporarily dislocated" kneecap.

Yep.

We are very excited about that.

On the very incredibly bright side of things, it is all fixable AND Chunk-Chunk is in HER bed SLEEPING as I type this.

Thank heavens!

Speaking of Monkus, this is a very stressful week for us.

She is going through her transition process to her new room at school.

Monkey's special education teacher went to the school and taught a class, then met with the new teachers and has scheduled another training class coming up soon.

The entire process is going well and Monkey's first full day in her new classroom is Monday.

More coming soon on that.

Up Next

We take the show on the road.

Thanks to Addie not sleeping for the last four nights or so and this awesome migraine, I am throwing in the towel tonight and finding my bed.

Picture of the Day!

Picture courtesy of Kim (love, love, love Kim!)

More Of Chunk

Courtesy of Kim

It Could Have Been Worse

Last weekend, Chris and I took Chunk Chunk to the McWane Center.

This time around, we took Chunk to a different area to let her play and right before we decided to leave, we thought it would be fun to let her have a turn on the slide.

The slide is an enclosed slide that was constructed on the once working down escalator.

(At least they didn't use duct tape to secure the slide)

Chris had Addie upstairs and my job was to walk downstairs and stand in the "do not enter area" and look up into the slide and encourage Chunk to come on down.
I stood to the side of the slide for other children to come down and there were moments of silence while some interesting parents near me made comments about how there must be some "slow kids today".
I just smiled...and thought oh so pleasant thoughts...

A little bit of time passed, another child came down and then I heard Chris tell Chunk it was her turn (voices travel well down the slide, I could hear Chris clear as a bell from one floor up).

I kept hearing Chris tell Chunk to go ahead and so I started calling for Chunk, encouraging her to come down.

All I could hear her say was, "Momma".

She didn't sound incredibly thrilled, but by that point there really was no turning back.

I couldn't see her, so I moved a little further into the slide and finally caught a glimpse of her.

(I bet some gym teacher somewhere is really ticked off at the kid that owns these shoes)

She got really excited when she saw me.
She was a little less than halfway down the slide and she had one foot propped on one side of the slide and her hands were pressed against the sides like she was pressure mounted inside the slide.

She wasn't going anywhere.

It was at that moment that I heard Chris tell me to climb up and get her because if he tried to slide down, he would just slam right into her.

As I started climbing into the slide (Thank you Clark's for making shoes with amazing grip), I felt my jeans slide down just a bit and I knew...my big girl panties were now visible to anyone in the near vacinity.

I was trying to determine if sight destroying flesh was visible, but by that point, I was climbing up the slide, trying not to slip backwards, with no way to reach back and pull up my jeans or tuck my shirt back into my jeans - all the while telling Chunk that she was okay and I was coming to get her.

Chunk was whining, on the verge of hysterics and when I finally reached her, I had to pry her loose from the slide.

I held onto her thighs to prevent her from sliding too fast and I started to back down the slide.

As I approached the opening of the slide, all I could hear was imaginary beeping...warning others that I was backing up and that yes - panties were showing, child was crying and Momma was sweating.

As I climbed the rest of the way out of the slide, I told Chunk that everything was okay and I resisted the urge to make some stupid comment to any bystanders in an effort to reduce my embarrasment.