Friday, October 29, 2010

Haven't had one in over a year




Marysa and Tanner had a sleepover with a team mate from soccer. We decided to get Papa Murphy's Take 'n Bake. The bottoms of the pizzas never cooked. The bottom coil in our oven died. So I called the repair man. He told us the oven was so old the part wasn't made any longer. Since we rent and no one likes a land lord to come for a visit we didn't fix it.

Then my dad called. He said he got me a turkey. I told him we didn't have a working oven. He said he got me a turkey. Oh GREAT! Frozen turkey that will never get used coming to my house. Then my dad brought it over with a giant roaster. WOW! That's gonna take up space. Warren whispers "Can we sell it?" Nope. Dad now wants to come over for a turkey dinner.

My Mom came over and we had to figure out how to cook a turkey in a roaster. Well #1 the turkey wont brown unless you make some weird browning liquid. So we decided to make the turkey green. I injected it with Trader Joe's Goddess salad dressing. It was the best flavored turkey ever. It was green. Awesome sliced, in sandwiches, cut in salad and I HATE turkey.

The roaster deserved a second chance. I have been cooking everything in it. From the store bought frozen foods to meats and casseroles. Breads and cakes not so good. One kitchen experiment after the next. Tonight's was toasting pumpkin seeds. Took way longer but are just as good. I'm going to say 1 1/2 hours in the roaster.

Over all if you need an oven and doesn't look like it's going to happen soon get a roaster. It will be the most useful eyesore you ever get.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

When the cats away the mice will clean?




First I need to describe my husband in a nut shell. He's brilliant, smart, independent, motivated, focused and a It's good money and I couldn't be more proud. With that said I need to also explain 5 children in this "work" environment is not a match.Six hours a day the 3rd and 4th grade kids are at school. Good! Eleven hours a day my 22 month old and 3 1/2 year old are at daycare/preschool. Good!? I'm at work plus commute those eleven hours. :( OK we have nice cars and kid supplies coming our our ears. A modest home in a good neighborhood where the 7 of us live together. The house while my writer is writing needs to have a consistent level of quiet. For the most part we have that part in check as well. Sounds perfect. HA!

I commute. He works and then 3 independent dependants come home. They snack, the food gets left out and spills aren't cleaned. They do their homework and the pencils, glue, scissors, etc come out and don't get put away. They change their clothes and the dirty ones fall where ever and lay. Their shoes come off by the front door and jackets and back packs crowd our entry way. Oh and ideas for worm mazes and kitchen experiments come alive. Then there is restless destruction, rolling on the couch, chair or floor tossing throw pillows and blankets all over the place. Then I come home with the "Hi Guys!" boys. Who run and kick the block towers down, pull diapers of and run naked, jump on unmade beds pushing what they can on the floor. Then we eat dinner and dishes already in the sink get combined with the new dinner dishes. There could be soccer and this part could start 13 to 14 hours after I left that morning. Then we have baths. Towels, uniforms and dirty clothes added get added to the piles . Melt downs about not watching their favorite shows, forgetting homework at school and not wanting to read happen and some times tempers flare throwing something more on to my floors. Oh yeah and 3 of the 5 still have bed wetting accidents. Two of the five you can never get to bed and are capable to adding more to the work every minute their eyes remain open.

I usually try to pick up as much as I can enlisting the help of who ever I can grab. Laundry gets run every morning and night . Dishes unloaded and loaded in the dish washers every night and ran. Not ever enough. There is so much to do. I can usually get a few loads of clothes folded. Needless to say we need to vacuum, mop, dust clean bathrooms, kitchens and bed rooms. ELIMINATE CLUTTER! and still have time for a bike ride, trip to the park , birthday parties and play dates. Walk the dog? Soccer games and volunteering.




All has to be done quietly. LOL If your guessed it only a fraction ever is complete. Not because we're lazy. Warren with his work and me with the kids and a full-time job our calendars are full and I don't sit much at all.





My window has opened for a major catch up and I'm working it. HARD!!!! Tanner is scared of her room so in addition to the over due I need to flip flop her's and Marysa's room with Joey's.



Warren left to Atlanta on Sunday and will be home Wednesday. In this time I have gone to 2 parent-teacher conferences, had my carpets cleaned, moved 3 beds, 3 dressers, 2 toy boxes, cleaned my main bathroom clean enough to eat in including replacing the old toilet seat, washed 8 loads of laundry and put away, bagged items for goodwill, cleaned the dog house, decorated the yard with ghosts, learned new 4th grade math, sprayed the weeds in the yard with weed killer, trimmed the front bushes, blogged 3 times, replaced knobs in the kitchen. I still have to deep clean the master bathroom and replace the toilet seat, thin out the toys, clean the room Joey moved into from left over girl trash, go to a job interview, move the crib out of my room and put in Joey's, clean my room and relax unless I forgot something. Oh yeah and the kids get out early every day this week. Lucky me. I can do this because I'm not working and who cares how loud the kids get. HA! My sweetheart will come home to a house he can renew some pride in. It's the least I can do.







Monday, October 25, 2010

Mixed feelings, confussion or just motherhood



My daughter...... oh wow is she her own person. Part of me is so happy that she is and the other half is hurt. I can't figure out how my Mom became my best friend if I can't even connect with my little princess some times. I am so old and un-cool. Marysa is 9 3/4 going on leaving my house and starting her own life. She doesn't show me a lot of my baby girl anymore. Somehow I still try and treat her that way. I still want to give her too much explanation so she gets conversations and cut her off when she tries to talk. She's always calling me on it. She doesn't play dolls but she collects stuffed animals, only everything is hi-tech, her animals Webkinz needs a computer to make her animals come alive. My computer isn't even good enough for her. Not to mention the Beiber fever. No clue what I'm going to feel like when there is a real boy and not just a Teen Bop poster boy. I guess my little girl is more diva than I thought. I worry I'm not raising her right. I'm worried that I try to be her friend and the mothering gets in the way and visa versa. I worry what lessons and values she'll take from me into her own life. I have big dreams for her and one day I'll have to give those dreams up and support her dreams she doesn't even know she has yet.
I had her Parent Teacher conference at school today. I always get that feeling like when watching a good tear jerker and hope the teacher can't see it. Marysa is excelling across the board. Reading at a 7th grade level and bringing up wanting to take chemistry classes to become a Vet. The teacher conference was about 10 minutes told me how smart she is and how she is nothing to worry about. I guess my baby girl who won my heart with the first look see gave me is now my responsible wonderful young lady who I am very proud of.

I will follow him


Declan does what Sonny does. Good vs Bad. Sonny is my wild child after all. Luckily Declan does not keep up and is distracted pretty easily.


Now potty training....... ha ha ha. Declan wants to go when Sonny does. Makes things very easy. They both grab there diapers and yell peeing when they have to go. We all run to the potty. Sonny on the big potty, Declan on the small Elmo potty. Sonny usually goes Declan usually just sits.


No number 2 accidents for Sonny for a few months now. He will get lazy from time to time and just pee where he be. Couple of main reasons are the creatures that live in public restrooms, the potty seat is cold or my favorite "I DON'T WANT TO MOM!" Usually when we are at home I have him go any way. He has graduated to vinyl covered training pants. We are on day 3 and it's progressing nicely. This morning again the potty seat was cold and he was not going to use it. We talked about how boys can stand up to pee. That tickled a funny bone and he giggled. Now the challenge was getting him to try. Cheerios targets. LOL he dropped about 60 in the potty so he couldn't miss and couldn't get his body to work. Fifteen minutes of trying and the spring finally broke through. He shoot a stream straight up into the air. WOW! How fun but he needed to reload.


My newest fear........Declan didn't see that. The day is short potty training. How do you explain to a 22 month old a 3 year old is big enough to stand but you really need to sit down. YIKES!

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Long time past




I've been spending a lot of time talking about my job and not a lot on being a mother of 5. I'm going to go back to when I was a new mother of 3. Back in 2005 I was newly married to my sweet Warren. I had a beautiful little girl and brand new step daughter and even more recently acquired my little boy Joey from Foster care. Joey came to live with us December 13, 2005 and was having my daughters 5th birthday Saturday the 17th. Complete with a Pink Pony bouncy house on the rainiest day of the year.

The party was interesting to say the least. My sisters, my sister in-law, my daughter her cousins, my wild new son, my husband, step daughter and my husbands ex-mother-in law. A little ambitious I suppose. The kids had fun playing on my girls new bunk beds and snacking on cheese and broccoli turkey meat balls. The bouncy house went almost untouched as it was wet and cold. All the Mom's sat in the living room talking and the ex-grandma went room to room taking pictures.

I was exhausted and a little frazzled. The kids where hot and sweaty and having a blast. My sister in-law and War's ex-ma and Tan left. My Mom, Dad and brother (Joey's biological father) showed up. Ready to get out we loaded up the cars and when to see Christmas lights. Loading my car with kids in car seats reaching across the seat I noticed some extreme tenderness in my stomach. After stopping to see Santa at a local light show in the neighborhood saying my good-byes to the rest of the party I took a pregnancy test.

OMG!!! I was pregnant. I yelled out in excitement. Years earlier I was told after my daughters birth I would probably not have another child. Warren and I decided to keep it quite. I told my Mom who told my Dad who told everyone I'm sure. Went to m fist prenatal filled out all the paperwork and met my doctor. She took a quick ultrasound. Hmmm looks about 12 weeks......hmmm maybe you should come back next week to confirm this pregnancy is viable.

VIABLE! What's that? Well the baby had no heartbeat. Apparently it could be that we caught it to early. January 17, 2006 I was driving to work and was really tired. I took 2 hours off that morning flattened the backseat out in my car and took a nap right in the office parking lot. When I actually walking into work I had to pee and my paper was covered in dark red blood. I let the attendance manager know I thought something was wrong in my pregnancy and called my doctor. The told me I should be able to work as long as there wasn't anymore blood I could come in the morning. Well 4ish the blood came back and there was purple globs. I left right away and called my husband and mother to go get my kids. Warren and I spent a few hours as the ER until I was wheeled down to diagnostic imaging where I was told by the chief neurologist that my baby still did not have a heart beat. I had the choice of letting things happen naturally or they could help me along. I still had hope even though it was hopeless and choose to go home and rest. I laid at home for two days crying still nothing happened. No more bleeding or cramps and choose to go back to work. Well driving home it happened. I screamed out in the worst pain I had ever been in. Got to my children's daycare where I ran to the bathroom. It happened my lifeless little fetus came out. The physical pain ended and the emotional began.

I sat up night after night in search of a on-line support group for women who miscarried. I even tried to start one on CafeMom.com I got quick sympathy but no one was out there wanting to talk. Warren would come out and watch me cry night after night searching on the computer. I never felt so alone. My mother tried to comfort me as she also had a similar but more extreme experience. Somehow nothing helped. Warren begged me to get help and I did not.

Six months later we where pregnant again. I was neurotic about my pregnancy. To the point my doctor called my husband and asked if I was mentally OK. I ended up having to see someone about the tremendous fear I had about something going wrong with this pregnancy.

Have you ever heard the story of the boy who cried wolf? That was me terrified every few weeks something was wrong. I was very sick and my baby was very alive each time I went in for more fluid or a medicine to keep me from puking. I was put on an anti-anxiety medication and I calmed down some to stop crying in fear every time I sneezed. By the 3rd trimester I knew every triage nurse by name. By week 32 Dr. Dillar in an attempt to calm me I'm sure told me that if my baby was born he was developed enough to survive and it the cord was wrapped around his neck he still would be fine. I finally could relax. The doctors took me off work and I began to clean. Nesting right? Well I'm a super nest-er I guess I moved my rooms around, cleaned from top to bottom only stopping when I passed out to sleep. Warren wanted to go out for one last guys night before baby came in 5 weeks. Reasonable I thought. Until 30 minutes after he left I started to contract. 33 weeks into it. I called him and he came home with his buddy Carl.

Well I was in labor 5 weeks early. Ok 5 weeks and 5 days. the hooked me up to the triage monitors and my baby was unresponsive. No acceleration or movement. They had me drink juice. Still he did nothing. They buzzed my stomach with a fetal alarm still nothing. I then got pitocin. A few hours on it baby started to move. I was 3cm dilated and Warren and I where talking about going home with the doctor. I relaxing and waiting on one last check when I knew he was coming out. OMG! The nurse came in and told us to hold on a minute. Warren was in shock I think? I was in labor after all. "I guess I catch him if he comes out?" The midwife came in not a minute to soon. Sonny came flying out in 3 pushes and just an hour early we thought we were going home.

He came out blue and didn't cry. I was so happy I didn't notice at first. Then a trillion people came flying in the room. Warren tried to keep his fear for showing me our baby didn't look good. Our baby was quickly given to me and then swept away to NICU. He aspirated. Warren followed our baby. I sat in my hospital room alone, numb and terrified. An hour after his birth Warren send me an audio text. He cried.

They moved me shortly following the text. Rushing me through the NICU to see my baby. Warren talked to the doctors and got me back in to see my baby and as soon as I could walk I was the hospitals missing Mama. I sat next to my babies bed only leaving his side on shift changes. Warren and I sitting together in NICU with the baby looks at me and says Sonny? My eyes swelled with water, I smiled and he was Sonny.

Five days Sonny was poked, wore an oxygen mask, weighed his diapers, kept on monitors and slept under heat lamps. I was told time and time again he looked good and maybe tomorrow he would get to go home. Each time he wasn't released because he lost weight and hi bilirubin kept getting higher. Day 5 and under a UV lamp for 24 hours and a good fight with the head pediatrician at Kaiser about not giving him anymore shots they sent my Sonny home.

I'm thankful every day I see my little wildman and have never stopped watching his just as close as those first few days. If you know Sonny you know why.