If you don’t like the weather in Michigan… wait a half day!

Yesterday my sweet daughter had her 6th birthday.  Unfortunately, however, as the day wore on, both the weather and the kids changed for the worse.  By the time we got home from dinner and playing at the arcade and bumper cars, both kids had tummy aches.  That all culminated with my son vomiting at 6:30 this morning, and my daughter having diarrhea (what I not so affectionately call a “runny tummy”).  So both of them are home from school today.  It is not as bad as some illnesses they’ve had in the past, but still a bummer that they don’t feel well.  Was it a virus, the greasy food or the spinny bumper cars?  Maybe all of the above.

Remember the spring-like photos from yesterday?  By late afternoon, it changed to this:

See the little bit of a “lake” that is now frozen?

But meanwhile, back in Upper Michigan, it was much, much worse.  It looked like this:

Source:  http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/weather/story.aspx?id=862754#.UST_OTV6NB0

It was reported that some places got 20 inches of snow, and it still hasn’t stopped!  It could always be worse, right?

Communicable disease of the month

This month, it’s Coxsackie virus – otherwise known as hand, foot, and mouth disease. Not to be confused with hoof and mouth disease, which is a disease of cattle. This one starts with a really high fever, then progresses to a child with sores in his/her mouth, and the whole thing is nicely decorated with extreme fussiness. Sophie went from fairly OK to suddenly screaming Thursday evening, and we didn’t know why. Then Saturday I saw the blisters in her mouth. She never did get a hand/foot rash but she did have 1-2 spots on one hand. Not much you can do except tylenol/motrin and benadryl. By the way benadryl does not make my kids sleepy. It does not wind them up, but it doesn’t make them sleep either. Lucky me right?

Yesterday Will had a fever and was puking but he went to bed, stayed there all night and was fine this morning. Appetite not the best but he’s nibbled a little here and there all day. Sophie seems herself for the most part but I can see spots in her mouth, including a big one under her tongue. No wonder the poor thing has hardly been able to nurse! 😦 And it is crazy contagious… so we’ve all been staying in.

I was feeling OK, tired, but today my throat is sore. However it could be mono again, which flares up whenever I don’t get enough rest. Before the kids got sick, I was up several nights coughing from a mild cold. It’s always something…

Ahhh, Phenergan

This stomach bug or whatever it is that started in the middle of last week is still hanging around.  Sophie woke me up at 3 this morning and was up for over an hour.   My husband came in to help and once he got her to sleep, I was up.  For the day.  I swear, I married the sweetest man alive, he stayed home from work today because I had to get sleep.  I could barely eat anything this morning, but I was crazy thirsty so I downed 3 big glasses of water.  There is something we medical people do called a “skin turgor test”, it’s where you take a pinch of skin and it should snap right back, well mine didn’t and I knew I was pretty dried out.  I managed to get a little bit of sleep and when I woke up I finally gave in and called my doctor to ask if she would be willing to call something in for me.  I could tell by how Sophie was nursing that my supply was down as well.  I’ve just had so much trouble getting enough to eat and drink.  Fortunately I can keep things down but it’s getting them down in the first place that’s been so hard.

Thankfully they were more than happy to call in some Phenergan (it has multiple uses, one of them is that it works great for nausea).  Clane went and got it for me and I took one and went straight to bed.  I slept like a rock for 3 hours (it’s been ages since I got that much sleep at a time) and when I woke up I was finally able to eat.  I’ve managed to eat several times since then and drink too (although I need to really try to stay on that since I’m constantly losing fluid through my milk).  The only trouble with Phenergan is that it’s terribly sedating.  Great for when you need to sleep but could be tricky tomorrow – might try taking 1/2 tablet and see if I can get at least a little relief without falling asleep standing up.  I will take one tonight before I go to bed or earlier if I am starting to feel queasy again.  I can’t believe how weak and tired I feel, but it’s really been 5 days since I’ve been able to really eat a meal.  The stuff is like magic.  I think one of the problems is that NOT eating has made me more queasy too, but too queasy to eat.  If that makes any sense.

One of these days everyone in this house will be OK.  Will puked once yesterday but he was fine today.  I would love to blog about something other than our eating/puking issues.  Maybe later in the week.  For now I am going to enjoy my 7-Up on ice and my nice table water crackers.  At least I don’t have to choke them down.

Eh, not much happening

I haven’t posted in quite a few days so I thought I should.  🙂  Things are pretty  much the same here.  The kids are getting over their colds, and I am getting a sore throat.  I am hoping slightly warmer weather will come soon so we can all go outside.  We really need winter to be over!  I’m sick of it.

We went grocery shopping and the price of food and other consumables continues to rise.  I about fell on the floor when I saw how much diapers had gone up.   The price of a regular sized pack of Pampers went up a dollar in a week!  It actually made the unbleached, “natural” ones more within my price range.  Thankfully Sophie is in cloth all the time except night, so she uses 1 disposable per day.  Will is not in cloth but I could put him back in cloth if I was motivated… at his age he isn’t going through many diapers anymore.  It seems like we came out of there with a half cart full and it was still the same total as last week.  Of course that included some over the counter medicine, toilet paper, and diapers.  I am afraid things will only continue to get worse.  I guess we (society) have been living off credit for too long.  I just can’t see how this is going to get better any time soon, especially since people are not making more money.  I think going out to dinner would be the first thing to go for us.  It seems like my own cooking has tasted better to me than going out, unless it’s pizza (just can’t duplicate the pizza oven!) or sushi (don’t know where to get sushi-grade fish, nor am I wanting to consume a big block of raw tuna in one day, since it probably needs to be eaten right away).

We had kind of a miserable, rainy, damp, dreary day today.  Rain is fine.  I am glad it didn’t snow, although we had some mild icing last night.  It was already starting to melt by the time I got up.

On the knitting front – I found a pattern to make kitchen scrubbies.  I’m addicted to making them!  They are crochet (although you can knit them too) and I won’t need to buy those green abrasive pads anymore!  I’ve got a use for the awful acrylic yarn I have now.  They are a quick project and fun to make.  I’ve got some kitchen cotton to use as well but the acrylic is more abrasive and will probably hold up better in the long run.   I have enough yarn to probably make at least 20 of them if not more.  I’ve also just about finished one sock for my friend Anne.  I need to close the toe and I can start the second one.  And I’ve been working on Sophie’s cotton striped cardigan.  I have about 1/3 of 1 sleeve done and both the front pieces and the back.  Once I get the sleeves done it should be easy from there.  Oh, and I lost my Calorimetry head band!  I’m sad.  I wanted to show it to another friend who really likes headbands and likes to knit… but I don’t know where it is.  One of the kids probably put it somewhere weird, like in the bag of cat food.

Off to go check the bag of cat food.

My God, it never ends…

We are sick, sick, sick.  I have a pretty bad cold, head all stuffed up again, coughing up crap, low grade fever.  My throat and chest burn when I walk around too much, and I get all worn out.  Sophie is still running a fever on and off, has a runny nose… AGAIN… I am really getting really tired of this!  We haven’t been able to get out and see friends at all.  Poor Will is stuck inside with the same old, same old stuff to do.   We planted some seeds to start inside for something different to do.  And he got out his huge legos to play with.  But, this is making me very unhappy.  I was up with Sophie from 4 am on this morning, because she was warm and her nose was all blocked up.

I am getting a small bit of knitting done for Anne at Mombastic (see blog roll!).  I am making her a pair of socks.  Her birthday is in July so I am hoping I can get them done by then.  I’m enjoying the colors that she likes, and I find knitting relaxing (I need all the help I can get!).

Otherwise just taking the vitamins and trying to get better!  This is really not fun.

Surviving…

Sophie has decided she is going to be up for 1-2 hours again at night.  She wakes up to nurse, then is ready to play.  She is really close to crawling, so that’s her “excuse” for now… (sorry I still don’t believe she is manipulating me… weren’t you ever on the verge of a huge breakthrough and it kept you up at night?  I’ve been!)  but in any case, it’s thrown me into survival mode.   I have lowered my expectations even more, my job now is to keep the kids fed and dry, keep them from hurting each other or themselves, feed myself, and that’s about it.  If I manage to get a load of laundry done or get the dishes done, cool.  If not, tough shit.  And my son watches a ton of TV.  Don’t like it?  Too damn bad.  I AM SURVIVING.  I had someone ask me recently how I could get through mono with a baby and a 2 year old, and I told her, I had to, I had no choice.  People say they will help you but when it comes down to it, it’s really on their convenience.  (I mean, I help people when it’s convenient for me, right?  I don’t just drop everything to rush to someone?  Well, unless they got in an accident on our road and someone was here to watch the kids…)  SO HEAR THIS:  I made it through mono because what else am I going to do?  Quit and go home?  I made it through mono the same way I made it through 50+ hour labors… YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.

I love my children but this is not the time to attempt to live an ideal life.

And to think I was smug enough to believe that I’d done my time with my son who was a horrible sleeper, so the universe owed me a good sleeper??

Oh, by the way, my friends at Sleep Is For The Weak inspired me to post this.

Haven’t updated in a few days

There really isn’t a whole lot happening… I’m recovering from my cold just in time for my husband to get it.  Sophie continues to have pretty good nights, then she’ll have a few pretty bad ones.  She has discovered how to get to the floor to creep from a sitting position, something that took my son ages to figure out!!  And she is getting faster, I’m not ready for this!  She continues to be really curious about food but finds pooping a lot more difficult, she’s not constipated but it’s a little more difficult than her liquid mom’s milk poop.  So, she is still nursing I’d say 99.5% of the time and having small tastes of things here and there.  She has loved all the fruit she’s tasted and she’s only had sweet potato and avocado for veggies.  I have access to such good, inexpensive organic produce that I haven’t bought her any baby food.  She is a little gaggy too so we’re just going easy, but she sure loves to eat.  And, her favorite of all is paper.  She loves to eat any kind of paper – receipts, newspaper, cardboard, junk mail, catalogs, magazines… loves it all.  I’ve had to fish spitballs out of the back of her mouth several times.

We bought a wooden swing set from someone in Bay City a couple of weeks ago and last night brought the trailer there to pick it up.  Of course it took longer to actually get the trailer into the yard because of a narrow opening in the fence, and then it took longer to break the thing down.  So, in usual fashion, it is taking longer to get it here.  The guy was really nice and said we could leave the trailer parked til we could get some help moving it, which will be this weekend.  Needs a little work but for $50 we thought it was a pretty good deal.

When I took Sophie in for her check up I found to my glee, that I’ve lost 3 pounds in a couple of months without trying.  I have never been able to lose weight while nursing beyond the early postpartum weeks so this was a delightful surprise.  I think I’ve been eating better, we rarely go out for dinner anymore and I am trying to make sure that if I do have treats, they at least contain mostly healthy ingredients.  I can get such great stuff through our co-op and I’m going to try some coconut oil to use in baking, I already consume a lot of olive oil and nuts, things like that because I get so hungry, I need to eat denser foods.  Now that (I think) the mono is finally gone, and the weather is going to get cooler, I’d like to start taking walks.  We have a nice nature center (Chippewa Nature Center) that has great trails and Will does really well out there now.  With 18 lbs of baby on me, it should help a little, no?  The only trouble is that I’m STARVING when we’re done, so it seems like I can’t ever burn more than I’m eating.  But, I must have had a 15,000 calorie deficit somewhere along the line.  Wish I knew what I did so I could keep doing it.  I have a LOT of weight to lose, I should lose at least 60 pounds if not more.  (And I am not kidding either, this would put me at the TOP end of the charts.)  20% of breastfeeding moms can’t lose weight but I think it’s probably more than that.

Delphi is having their annual Family Day this Saturday so we’re all going.  They have monster trucks, fun stuff for the kids, motorcycle stunts, a fire truck, plant tours, etc. so Will at least will enjoy it.  I talked to a friend today whose son loves trains more than any other kid I know (even Will!) and we talked about going to A Day Out With Thomas next year… and how fun it would be if we got train tickets for the same day and time!  If we can get ourselves together enough, maybe we can work that out!

I’m not doing much today, Sophie is asleep right now and I’m catching up on laundry.  Clane put a new version of Linux on my computer so today my job is to use it and see if there is anything that needs to be fixed.  So far, so good.  He said something burned up in my computer last night but today so far things seem to be working, knock on wood.

Our short trip up north

Friday night when my husband got off work, we packed up the car and headed to his parents’ summer home in Au Gres, MI. It is pretty much his family’s destination for summer holidays and now that his dad is retired, they are spending more weekends there too. It’s a lovely house on Lake Huron, right on the beach! Unfortunately, the lake levels have been so low in recent years that the beach is all mucky and full of weeds, it’s a problem that many residents there have been upset over for a long time.

Sophie and Will both had their first boat ride. Sophie was tired and fell asleep as we were leaving the marina, but she woke up of course as I was strapping her on to me and putting a lifejacket on us both. Will was so lulled by the motor and the bouncing/rocking on the waves that he was almost asleep too, I was thinking he would fall out of his seat!

Sophie did very well in a strange house and bed, she slept with me of course and it went pretty well. Her second tooth came in the other day so I think she is finally able to get better rest. Her nights have been good, she nurses and goes right back to sleep, I’d say 2-3 times per night. However, she is up and adam at 7:30 am every day now and that’s just WAY too early for me! 😦 Especially since I only get about 2 hours at a time half the time.

Also, now I think I have a cold. My nose started getting stuffy Friday night, it’s not uncommon to get stuffed up when we’re up at the lake because it’s damp and kind of musty at times, plus, I’d picked up 6 very old Life magazines at a yard sale for 50 cents each! They are all from 1941, 1942 and 1951 and they are in pretty rough shape, kinda torn up and moldy/musty. I had blamed the magazines since my nose stuffed up worse after reading one of them, but we got home and the magazines are in the garage, and I slept all night in my own bed in the A/C and it’s pretty much the same. I guess after having mono/strep throat a plain old cold isn’t that big of a deal! I’d rather have this any day than anything else! I just hope I don’t give it to the kids. It’s too bad about the magazines, I love reading WWII/Cold War stuff. I am going to try putting them out on the deck in the sun and maybe they will dry out/freshen up a bit out there.

I found a few other things at garage sales, my mother in law loves to go to them and I’m getting to really like it now too! Found a cute pair of shoes for Sophie (black “patent” “leather” for 25 cents!) and some outfits, got Will a huge stuffed horse and I found the magazines and a couple of old church cookbooks. Those things have the best recipes, I used to buy cookbooks from Barnes and Noble, with the fancy pictures in them, but I don’t anymore because community/church cookbooks are better than anything else out there!

Today my husband is going to redo my computer. We are a Linux using family now and he needs to put a different version on my computer. (I am running Kubuntu now and I think he’s going to put plain Ubuntu on it today.) I have gotten to like it, however Firefox crashes a lot for some reason and there are a few other little things that irritate me that I’ve just learned to live with. So it will be neat to see how much better the upgrade will be. (Linux was invented by a Finlander, did you know that?)

Will had so much fun yesterday playing in the sand and playing everywhere, that he is still sleeping at 10:15 am… now if my sweet daughter would only sleep that long, OH would I be happy, I’d be drunk with sleep! *sigh*

Public Service Announcement from ThisFinnGarianMama

There are a lot of things I like about WordPress but one thing I really like is checking blog statistics.  I can see what posts get read the most often and even what people type into Google that eventually brings them to my blog.  As of now, the posts that get found the most often, by far, are about mono.  I’ve also had quite a few searches about scabby/allergic cats, and, strangely enough, Lebanese coffee!  So, maybe I’ll do a little FYI about my thoughts/information on these topics.

Lebanese coffee is awesome.  The kind I got is ground very fine, kind of like espresso, but I don’t make it like espresso.  I just brew it in my old fashioned stainless percolator pot on the stove (that thing makes coffee that will grab you by the shoulders and slap your a$$ awake in the morning!!).  I am sure there is a special kind of pot or brewing process they use in Lebanon, maybe the next time I’m shopping at Yasmeen’s I’ll ask them.  I like my coffee nice and dark and when I first poured a cup of this I was a little scared!  But it’s really very smooth.  Just limit your intake of it to the morning or you’ll be up for a week.  Actually that’s an exaggeration.  But it’s mighty good.

About scabby cats.  One of my cats is allergic to fleas, and I suspect is allergic to fish also.  When she has a reaction, her whole body breaks out in scabs.  They seem to be the worst around her neck and tail.  My vet said all it takes is ONE flea bite per WEEK in sensitive kitties like mine to make this type of reaction.  And, that fleas can come into your house THROUGH YOUR WINDOW SCREEN!!  Our cats don’t go outside but now they are on Frontline forever.  I was just getting P. cleared up when it became summer again and now we are back to square one.  It’s kind of gross petting a scabby cat.

Mononucleosis is a viral illness caused by the Epstein-Barr virus.  You can wikipedia it but I believe it does something funky to the nuclei of your white blood cells.  Most of the time it is not harmful but it is a huge pain in the butt.  It often comes with strep throat but not always.  It is spread by saliva which is odd for me (since I’m not a college student kissing a bunch of strange guys) but maybe not that odd since my 2 year old touches everything, then licks me… go figure!  Mono basically makes you feel like you are getting the flu pretty much every day for months.  Fatigue, fever, body aches, night sweats, headaches, sore throat… oh and did I mention that no matter how much sleep you get you still feel like shit?  Since it is viral there is nothing you can do but let it run its course.  You are also contagious for several weeks before you get symptoms.  One test for diagnosing it is the Epstein Barr virus titer, which shows antibodies to the virus.  You can get two different kinds, one shows if you’ve had the virus in your body for weeks, the other, for years.  And, it can flare up, if you don’t get enough rest or are under too much stress.  I have read that you can’t get it more than once but I know several people who have had it twice.

There, now I’ve posted about the three most popular subjects in my blog.  I’m actually doing this just to see what happens to my statistics, not because it’s exciting reading or even that interesting!  I think one of my other hot topics was pregnancy but I posted about that so much that I don’t care to go back and revisit it.

Now we have colds…

And I still have mono… this sucks.  Sophie slept like crap last night and the longest stretch I got was just about 1 hour.  All the other stretches were less than 45 minutes.  She is teething too.  Now I have a sore throat and runny/itchy nose and a headache and a slight fever and I just feel like hell.  Why can this not get better…