Sick and Tired

OK, so I just spent the better part of twenty minutes picking out a new background for my blog. Do we like it? Or should we comment on the fact that I spent more time choosing backgrounds for the blog rather than, oh I don't know, actually writing something on this blog....ignore me. I'm just feeling sorry for myself. But what better place to vent than my own blog, right? As I posted on Facebook, I woke up this morning with pinkeye. Thanks, Sutton. Appreciate it. Just what I need, right? Add that on top of the fact that I am still fighting the remnants of this flu. I lost my voice on Tuesday, which made working interesting. Luckily, I had some help, in case customers needed to speak to me. But the hacking cough had been keeping me up the last three nights. I ended up crashing on Wednesday. Everyone at work told me, "Leave and get some rest." And rest I did. I went to sleep at about eleven in the morning, and slept until almost four-thirty in the afternoon. Wow, I guess I really needed to rest.
Thursday was good. Cough wasn't too bad, my voice was back (pretty much-I still sound like I have a frog in my throat. Dana came over with Jonas, and we pretty much just got out of the house. We went over to Costco, and picked up a few things. Shared a hot dog with Sutton.

He mostly ate the bun, and then decided to eat the rest of the hot dog. Then we went over to the mall playground and let Sutton run around for a bit. We only stayed there about 15 minutes before Jonas needed his nap. Sutton fell asleep in the car (as usual) and I got him into the house still asleep. While he napped, I started dinner. When he woke up, we made a smoothie (thanks for the idea, Sarah!)

He even drank it out of a big boy cup without spilling. Then we went for a walk around the block in the wagon.
Don't you love his crazy, tousled hair? He needs a haircut so badly, but the longer it gets, the curlier it gets. So cute. But the bedhead is scary.
When we got home from our walk, it was still nice outside. So we played in the backyard for a bit.
Farmer Sutton. Complete with the plaid shirt. The next series of photos are a bit blurry. He was running and dancing around the yard, singing some kind of song. I couldn't get him to stop long enough to tell me what he was singing.

Then we went inside and finished making dinner. Dave got home around 6ish, and we ate dinner. Then we played/watched TV until bedtime.

I guess sometime during the night, I developed the pinkeye. I honestly have no idea where I got it. Yes, Sutton DID have it, but that was over a week ago, and he was on the drops since last week Wednesday. He wouldn't have been contagious for over a week, could he?

Either way, I was in no condition to work today. I ended up leaving my HR manager a voicemail message at 5:45 in the morning, since that was when I had woken up to start getting ready for work. Of course, then I couldn't get back to sleep. So I sat up, watching the early morning news until Sutton and Dave got up. I got the boys off to school/work and headed to the walk in clinic. I was first in line, and am now on the medicated drops.

Only one problem remains...my makeup. I wore my contacts yesterday, so I need to throw those out until I am finished with the drops. Unfortunately, they were my last disposable pair, so I need to order more. But I did not wear any eye makeup yesterday. So I asked the doctor about it, and she didn't think I needed to replace my eye makeup. Do you think I should? I just bought a new mascara-it's less than a week old. I COULD replace my eye liner, and just tell Dave that the doctor told me I needed to!! Hmmm, what do you think?

Super Happy Family Fun Day!!!

If I could express sarcasm in this blog, the title of this post would reek with sarcasm. Today was just a complete series of failures across the board.
Let's go in order, shall we?
1. We had an open house scheduled for today. We were supposed to be out of the house from 12-4, so prospective buyers and agents could tour the property, as my landlord is selling the house we are renting. So we've spent the better part of two weeks packing, and organizing. We had old, unusable boxes picked up, and I had a large donation arranged to be picked up.
2. On Thursday afternoon, I started getting sick. I finally came down with what Dave had. So I did not have much energy to continue packing. So I pretty much laid around the house with Sutton.
3. I was off on Friday (I took 4 days off, to get the house cleaned and ready for this open house.) But my fever spiked at 101.2 and I felt like death warmed over. Out of my list of 10 things to do that day, I think I did one.
4. This morning, I got up with Sutton and decided, "That's it. I'm going to the walk-in clinic, just to make sure this isn't something serious. So I go to the clinic, where she gives me the diagnosis of...the flu. That's it. As she put it, stay in bed today, and get lots of rest. Really? Has she seen my to-do list?
5. So I get home, and we're finishing up some last minute cleaning upstairs. We try to keep Sutton entertained by putting on the TV for him. But he's more interested in screaming at us, "Mom! Dad! What doing?" (What are you doing? for those who don't speak Suttonese.) Dave is cleaning the office, and knocks over a pile of books. I hear the crash and come running. And run smack into a stack of heavy boxes. Jammed the toes on my left foot so bad I thought I had broken them. Go crumpling to the ground from the pain. Turns out they weren't broken (I could move them) But they're so badly jammed, now they're stiff and it's kind of difficult to curl my toes. Not to mention it hurts like a mother.)
6. Pile everyone into the car, including the dog and head to my mother's house. Now she was at work, but told us to let ourselves in, using my key. So we get there to find my stepfather (still weird to say that, even though they've been married for a year on Monday) Neal is there, watching his granddaughter Maya. Maya gets scared by all the dogs running around, and starts crying. I manage to calm her down, and get her to come watch Elmo with Sutton.
7. Then I get a phone call. It's my landlord's realtor. She informs me that because of the rain (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it's been pouring today. Like, build an ark kind of pouring. Totally ruined our idea of having a picnic in the park) she is canceling the open house. ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME???!!! After the time we have spent cleaning, and packing, and obsessing. Grrr.
8. After much bitching and swearing on Dave's and my part, I manage to calm down and make the kids some lunch. My mother has no kid-friendly foods in her house, so I make Sutton and Maya a grilled cheese sandwich. I think Sutton ate one half, and Maya nibbled on one half.


9. Then, after lunch, Neal says to me, "You think Maya needs her diaper changed?" I asked him, when did you last change her. He tells me-at seven thirty that morning!! Yeah, I think it's time for a diaper change!!
So I change Maya, and Dave changes Sutton, and Neal didn't have to change anyone!! Then we played with some flash cards, and read some books.

Then I put Maya down for a nap. After that, we packed up our boys and got back into the car to head home. Sutton fell asleep in the car, and (thankfully!) stayed asleep when we got him into the house. I laid down too, and managed to get some rest.

After naptime, Sutton woke up and vegged out in front of the TV.

Dave worked on his crossword puzzles (he's been addicted to them recently) and I started feeling antsy. This is the problem of having two days off in a row. I start getting restless and need to do something, get out of the house, etc.
So I decided to make some cookies. I tried to get Sutton to join me, but Diego was much more interesting, I guess.
I got the recipe from the most recent issue of Everyday Food. It's a pretty simple recipe, and really fast to make. So here we go. Please keep in mind that I am no Pioneer Woman or Misty, for that matter. It's difficult to cook and take decent photos at the same time. My hands are not big enough to hold the camera and press the shutter button with one hand. So some of these photos are out of focus. I promise I'll try to get better.

Here is the cast of characters.Peanut butter (I used smooth, and I mixed it with a peanut butter that I got from PBLoco that has chocolate and banana mixed in)
Granulated sugar
Light brown sugar
Vanilla extract
One egg
Chocolate chips (I used mini chips, because that's what I had in the house)

Put one cup of peanut butter into a large bowl.


Add 1/2 cup each of granulated sugar and lightly packed light brown sugar.
Crack the egg into a separate bowl and beat lightly. Add beaten egg to peanut butter-sugar mixture, along with one teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips

Mix together until smooth. Divide dough into equal portions, about a tbsp each. I used a tiny little ice cream scoop, to make sure everything was roughly the same size.
Roll the balls between your hands to round them out, and place onto a cookie sheet.
Take a fork and make criss-cross lines on each cookie. Bake at 350 for about 10-12 minutes or until puffed and lightly golden.
I accidentally let one batch get a little too brown, but they still taste good. You can really taste the banana in the peanut butter I used. These cookies are more crispy and crumbly, rather than chewy. I don't know if this is a favorite recipe or not, but it sure was fast.

I really miss baking, but it's so hard to do with a little guy getting underfoot.
That's all for tonight. Off to dose myself with Nyquil.

It's Pinkeye!!

Dave has been home with Sutton for about four days now. Sutton's daycare was closed for the 4-day President's Day weekend. And I had the Valentine's Day craziness at the store, so I was not able to stay home with him. So Dave got to play Mr. Mom. I'm sure he was never so happy to go back to work.

On Monday evening, I noticed some yucky green stuff coming from Sutton's right eye. (I'm sorry for you non-moms if I'm grossing you out. We tend to forget that other people don't want to hear about green discharge coming from our kid's eye. Let alone hear the word "discharge" being used. But it's MY blog. So deal.) Anyway, my first thought was "Shit! Eye infection! He can't go to school on Wednesday!" So we agreed to keep an "eye" on it. Geddit? An "eye" on it? What do you want from me? I'm fucking exhausted, and have a punchy sense of humor.

We woke up Tuesday morning, and it didn't seem so bad. Started thinking, "OK, maybe I overreacted, as usual." My mom showed up to babysit Sutton while I worked at night. I asked her to please watch to see if the eyes got yucky again. She called me on my lunch hour to report that they were getting gross again. Great.
I get Sutton up this morning, and his eye is crusted shut. Yup, it's pinkeye. Luckily, or unluckily, as the case may be, Dave woke up with body aches and a fever. So guess who had to stay home again today while the wife went to work and brought home the bacon? I did pick up Sutton's prescription, though.

Thankfully, he didn't pick up the infection from school. He's been out of school for a week now, so we know he picked it up at home. Just by being a dirty little boy. He sucks on his fingers, puts them up his nose, rubs his eyes, etc. And getting him to wash his hands is on par with getting him to brush his teeth. Major battle. And he has REALLY dry skin and ezcema (sp?)
So hand sanitizers are no good, because they have alcohol in them, which irritates his skin. So when I was out picking up his eye drops, I found some alcohol free foaming hand sanitizers from Clean Well and stocked them throughout the house.

That's enough posting for tonight. More later this week. Have a four-day weekend, yay!! Have to be out of my house, so they can hold an open house to sell this place, boo!

Best of Intentions

It seems to be a theme with our family right now. We have these great grandiose plans, and then the shit hits the fan, and we have to scrap our plans. I'll give you an example. Today, we went out for lunch, and I thought "Hey, it's a beautiful day outside (75 degrees and sunny. I'm sorry to everyone else who is miserable with winter.) Why don't we go to the park? Sutton can run around, burn off some energy, etc."
Fast forward to lunchtime. Sutton refuses to sit in the highchair, preferring to sit in my lap. I know that I could have forced him to sit in the chair, but I honestly did not want to deal with the screams that would have ensued. We did get him to sit in the chair when his lunch came. He sat, and devoured the fruit that came with his grilled cheese sandwich. He took a few bites of the sandwich, and ate about a quarter of my cheeseburger. He's on this kick where he loves to try anything that I'm eating.
Then he started getting antsy. We knew that we needed to get the check quick and hightail it out of there. I'm sitting there, watching all these other kids who are sitting nicely, eating with no complaint, not crying, etc. And I'm wondering "Why can't my child be like this?" I know, I'll drive myself crazy thinking like this.
So we're leaving, and I'm trying to get Sutton to walk next to me. He insists on being carried everywhere. I think it's because Dave carries him around, afraid that Sutton will take off and destroy something. So to prevent that, Dave carries him. Well, Dave outweighs me by quite a bit. And he's much stronger than I am. But when we're out, Sutton only likes to be carried by ME. And he weighs close to 30 pounds now. OK, maybe 28. My arms hurt just thinking about it. So I'm coaxing Sutton to walk. But here's the problem we have. Our stubbornly independent child wants to walk in the parking lot by himself. Doesn't want to hold my hand. Flops on the floor when I try to take his hand. Gina calls this "noodle legs." Good description.
Sutton tries to take off, and starts heading for the parking lot. I grab his arm, and he tries to hit me. I grab him by both arms, get down into his face and tell him "walk nicely or no park for you." You guessed it, we came home. Sigh.
I always build these great plans in my head, and get discouraged when they don't work out. I'm sure it's a common theme with most moms, but it's so frustrating.

Another frustration-I'm having a lot of trouble keeping Sutton entertained. I don't want Sutton to watch too much TV, but it's very difficult. I try all these plans to get him occupied, but his attention span is too short. We've tried crafts, cooking, outdoor play, etc. It's good for about 10 minutes before he wants to do something else. And he always ends up back in front of the TV. Now, he only watches PBS and Nick Jr., so thankfully, it's still not so bad. But my guilt gets overwhelming when I see him sitting on his beanbag chair, practically zoning out. And when I ask him if he wants to do something, he says "uh-uh."
What do I do? Sarah and Gina and Jamie always talk about these fun activities that their families do. Mine just isn't interested.

Sigh. Right now the rest of the family is napping, so I should get some cleaning and packing done. I'll post more later in the week.

Wow, it's been a while...

I realized that I haven't posted since the 31st of January, and it's now almost mid-February. I just haven't been feeling the blogging vibe right now. Gina mentions the same thing on her blog. I will try to write more later tonight, after the dishes are done and a little two-year-old is in bed.

Growing in leaps and bounds

Thank you to everyone who read my little rant on sleep habits, the other day. And yes, it has been a little easier. I say a little, because I don't want to jinx anything. But now we are moving on to bigger and bullier problems. We're fully entrenched in the hitting phase.

Sutton was never really a biter. Yes, he did bite a little, but then his classmates starting biting HIM. And I think he realized, "Hey, that f@&*ing hurt!" (And yes, knowing our son, he probably will curse. He has his uncle Tony to blame for that. The man curses like a sailor.)

But hitting is another story. And it's been getting pretty bad. He'll start by swatting the furniture. And he looks at you to see if you're watching what he's doing. And then he's trying to swat the dog. And if we discipline him, and he doesn't like what we're doing-he'll hit us. He's already sucker-punched Dave in the nose.
So, needless to say-we get mad. So into time-out he goes. And he knows to sit in time-out, and he screams his head off the whole time. But he still hits.

Now my dad is a child psychologist. So I turned to him for help. He told me that most of Sutton's hitting is simply frustration that we can't understand him (and honestly, I knew that. It just helps that someone removed from the situation tells me this. You know, and the many degrees help, too.) And that we need to be more concise about the words we use with Sutton. Instead of "No hitting-that's not nice." It's simply "NO HITTING!" And we're supposed to use a loud voice. Sometimes all you need to do is scare them.

And all of a sudden, Sutton is talking like crazy. For a while, I wondered if he had delays. (My friend Sarah went through something similar with her son Jack.) Sutton was born tongue-tied, and all the nurses kept telling me that it would cause speech delays-so of course, when Sutton really didn't start using words until about 18 months, I automatically thought it was because of that.
Anyway, he is talking more and picking more and more words up. He's like a little parrot. And I think that because we're able to understand him more, he's happier. Like last night. He asked me, in his little language, if I would turn on the TV. I told him that he could watch TV for ten minutes. His little face just lit up. It was like, "You understand me!! You like me! You really, really like me!" (Sorry, threw a little Sally Field in there.)
And tonight. He told me that he ate pizza. Small steps, but we're getting there.

Speaking of steps. On Thursday, I took Sutton to StrideRite. We were at the playground at the mall, and the shoe store is right there. So I asked the woman to size Sutton's feet. We had just bought a pair of size seven and a half shoes in late December, and they seem like they're already too small. So she sized his feet and told me that he wears an eight and a half!! I ended up buying a nine! My wallet cannot keep up with this boy's feet! And yes, we have tried other shoes. StrideRite just seem to fit him better. Luckily, I found a pair on sale.
In closing-some new pictures.
Playing with Mommy's sunglasses

Playing peek-a-boo at dinner.

Must be something in the air

I don't know what it is, but it seems like lately a lot of people have been having trouble with their kids sleeping. My college friend Sarah has been having trouble with her two kids ( the whole 3:30 in the morning thing sounds awfully familiar) and my cousin Phyllis was having nap trouble with her daughter.
Is it something in the air? Who knows? For us, Sutton has been sick all week. First it started with the cold that the family has been passing around. Then it turned into a severe ear infection. Bring on the antibiotics. But, because he has been sick, we've been running every time he wakes up during the night. And I think he's gotten used to it. So, now, it's happening anywhere from two to four times during the night.
Yesterday, he took a REALLY late nap, and woke up around 6 pm. So he was no where near sleepy around 8 pm, his usual bedtime. We ended up struggling with him for almost an hour. Rocking in the rocking chair, back rubs, you name it. At one point, he was ready to go into his bed, when the dog barked. All of a sudden, he was yelling, "Daddy, Daddy, what dat? What dat?" Nope, wide awake now.
Finally, we laid him down, kissed him good night, and closed the door. He screamed and cried for almost forty five minutes. We had to shut off the baby monitor. But we could still hear him down the hall.
Today, I had to be at work at 5 am. We have inventory tomorrow, and I needed to be there early for prep. When I got home, Dave had some work that he needed to go out to do. So I watched Sutton while he went out. I was SO hoping that Sutton would go down for a nap, so I could get some sleep. Not happening. We fought for over forty five minutes before I finally gave up and brought him downstairs. He parked himself right in front of the TV and stayed there until bath and bedtime. (We've been very bad about TV today-it's just we are both so exhausted. And it was an easy fix. We're trying to be better.)

And because he's been sick, he's had a lousy appetite. Normally, this kid can eat like a truck driver. But for the past few days, he's been living on bananas and yogurt. Today, he saw me eating an apple, and came running. But when I gave him a piece, he didn't like the skin. Any time we offered something else to eat, he responded with "NO! NO! NO!"

Sigh. They weren't kidding when they called it "the terrible twos."