2015 - Week 45

Here we are, Week 45. Full throttle into November, which is still so unbelievable to me. This week turned out to be quite an insane week…

On Monday, it was back to work, back to school, the usual. However, I woke up in a TON of pain this morning. My shoulder and neck were just killing me. I’m guessing I must have slept wrong, but it would not let up at all. It was a really hard day, but I had to tough it out at work. I did take some Tylenol, but it only helps so much. OUCH!!! There are a few people off at Christian’s work, so he had to work a weird shift today to cover the difference. He was supposed to work from 10:00AM-8:00PM, but didn’t end up getting home until after 10:00! Because he was working so late, I had to pick Eliza up after work, from my in-laws, before picking the big girls up from daycare. We ended up grabbing some drive-thru for dinner because I was still in a lot of pain. We settled in at home for a girls nice…dinner, some TV, a little play time. Eliza started getting super crabby and oversensitive, so I ended up putting her to bed early. She was NOT happy about it, but finally passed out. The big girls were off to bed shortly later, and I cuddled into bed with the iPad and a heating pad myself. Early night for all us girls, much needed!

On Tuesday I was a little stiff still, but feeling MUCH better than yesterday. Christian was back on his normal schedule, so we were all off and running early in the morning. Work was going along pretty well, until shortly after lunch when I got an e-mail from Amelia’s teacher, filling me in on the “rough” day Amelia was having. She said that pretty much from the start of the day, Amelia was having a hard time. That she pushes the limits often, but is usually able to turn it around – until today. She was moving the other kids’ lunch choices around, she was playing under the teachers desk, she was refusing to do her “job” in the classroom. She was playing with something on the teachers desk, being told repeatedly not to touch it, but wouldn’t stop. She was told to stay in her spot at the table and work on her listening ears, refused and proceeded to crawl around the classroom. Apparently the teacher finally had to take her to the office so that she could think about what was happening. She wasn’t a fan of it, so we’re all hoping it was a bit of a wake-up call. I know that kids will be kids, and everybody has a hard day…but man, I was BEYOND embarrassed reading that e-mail. Not to mention so frustrated. Nothing in it really came as a huge surprise to me…Amelia is so stubborn and can be SO difficult. She just kind of lives in her own world, and wants to do her own thing, and does not take criticism or being told no well. She has the same teacher Olivia had last year, and I’ve warned her teacher multiple times that they are NOTHING alike. She definitely notices that after these last couple months of school. Olivia was terrified of getting in trouble, really respects authority and has a desire to excel at the things she does. Amelia….Amelia has no fear, and wants to do what she wants to do. She’s the kid where you tell her you’re going to take something away from her, “I don’t care, I don’t want it anyway”, you tell her that she can’t go somewhere if she doesn’t shape up, “I don’t care, I don’t want to go there anyway”. It seriously makes me want to pull my hair out. We had quite a conversation when I picked them up from daycare tonight. She was pretty embarrassed, and SEEMS to understand why she was in the wrong today. I told her that she needs to apologize to her teacher tomorrow, so we’ll see. Meanwhile, I was obvious that Olivia is now coming down with the pink eye Amelia is just getting rid of. I SERIOUSLY thought we were going to get out of this with little damage. She’ll definitely be staying home tomorrow, so I sure hope that we can get it under control quickly. The rest of the night was pretty quiet. Amelia was on restriction from electronics, so after dinner we listened to some music and danced around for a while. My brain needed sleep tonight for sure!

Poor Olivia, sad that she is officially pink eyed

On Wednesday I was home with Olivia for the day. I was hoping she’d go over to my in-laws’ like Amelia did last week, but no such luck. Christian dropped the other two off at daycare, while I settled in and did some work from home. I didn’t put in a full day, but anything is better than taking an entire day of PTO, that’s for sure! Olivia rested, played on the tablet, watched some movies. I started her on Amelia’s drops, figuring there was no use in taking her in for the same thing. I took a break from working…we had lunch and took advantage of the nice weather and played outside for a while. Then, I was back to working while she rested some more. I called it quits for the day a little early, packed up my work, and then got started on picking up all of the Halloween decorations so that I could pack it all up. We had conferences scheduled for both girls tonight, so I knew I wouldn’t get far. Some progress is better than nothing though! While I was cleaning up, Olivia was running around, jumping on the couch…just general messing around. I snapped at her and told her, like we tell them EVERY DAMN DAY to stop jumping on the couch before she gets hurt. Not even 30 seconds later, I was back to cleaning when I heard CRAAAAAASH. I turned around, and she had fallen off the couch and hit the coffee table. I thought she kicked it so I yelled at her and told her to sit down and knock it off. I was so furious…we’re always worried about them hurting themselves, obviously, but it’s also a glass table and I’m terrified that they’re going to break it/crash right through it one day. She started bawling and sat down on the couch, holding her head in her hands…I thought she was just scared because I had yelled at her, but she moved her hands and I caught a glimpse of blood pouring down her face. I knew immediately that this was BAD, picked her up and rushed into the bathroom with her. I got her a towel to hold on it…she had blood all over her shirt, her pants…her hands were coated in blood, it wouldn’t stop. I had her moved the towel for a second and it looked just terrible. I started panicking, no idea what the hell to do. I don’t know why, but I just drew a complete blank on where I should take her. I knew that Urgent Care wouldn’t do stitches or anything, but didn’t know if I really needed to take her to the ER. I called Christian….took like 10 times before he picked up and I was just hysterical. I finally pulled it together and remembered “The Urgency Room”, which is kind of like a middle ground between Urgenct Care and the ER. I told Christian to pick up the girls’ fundraiser stuff from school (which we were going to get at conferences) and pick the other two up from daycare, so he had to leave work right away. Meanwhile, I rushed Olivia into the van and off to The Urgency Room. They got us checked in and got to work right away. No question, definitely getting stitched up. They put some numbing cream on the wound, so that the numbing shots wouldn’t hurt so bad. While we waited for that to work, I e-mailed their teachers to let them know what was going on, and that we wouldn’t make it to conferences – luckily they both have openings tomorrow, so one less stress. And, while we waited, Olivia got to chomp on an icee popsicle. She was so calm and being so brave, I was quite impressed. Finally, it was time for the stiches. They started shooting it up with some numbing shots, which seemed to still hurt her quite a bit. That was REALLY hard to watch, probably the worst part really. She ended up with 1 stich inside because it was so deep, and 7 on the outside. She took everything like such a trooper. They covered it up, and we finally made our way back home. Really, I shouldn’t even say finally, I think we were back home maybe 2 hours after the initial incident, so not bad at all. I was so stressed out and exhausted, it was quite the experience. While we were on our way home, Christian started dinner and we all settled in to eat. We gave all of the girls a bath, and they were off to bed a little early tonight. Stressed, exhausted and so relieved that things weren’t worse…what a night!

Pre-Incident. Happy, Carefree, Doing some Tree Climbing

And, there it is folks. Still makes me cringe...

On Thursday, I was back to work, and all of the girls were back to daycare. There’s no school today or tomorrow, shocker, so the big girls are at daycare all day. Poor Olivia was SO nervous to go to school – she was sure everybody was going to make fun of her. I told her NO WAY!!!! Stiches are so cool, everybody is going to feel bad for you and ask you what happened and think you are so awesome. I think that cheered her up a big. We took her bandage off, at which time Amelia compared her to “Frankie”, the Frankenstein character from Monster High. I’m not sure if that helped, or made things worse, but Olivia seemed in good spirits when I dropped them off. I played a lot of catch-up at work today, routing stuff from being gone yesterday, printing off my work from home, catching up on e-mails and all of that. Meanwhile, Christian’s work has still been vetting him about taking an overnight management position, and the talks have been getting more and more serious as time goes on. He had a meeting today, where they officially offered him his salary, talked about bonus potentials and salary increases, hours, all of the details. We definitely have some thinking to do…there are so many pros and cons on each side; it’s such a hard decision. After work, I stopped home to get Chuy out, picked the girls up from daycare, and we were off to school for the big girls’ conferences. Since Christian left early yesterday, he wasn’t able to get off in time to come with tonight, so it was just the girls and I…and Eliza was out of control the entire night. We had Olivia’s conference first…her teacher said she’s doing really well and that she’s above grade-level on all of her skills at this time. She did say that she has a little trouble sitting still during group time on the carpet and stuff like that, otherwise she’s well-behaved, involved and eager to learn. Next up, we were off to Amelia’s conference. Amelia is still trying to grasp most of the Kindergarten concepts…she recognizes most of the letters and numbers quickly now, but needs to work on the sounds of letters. She’s stubborn (as previously discussed), doesn’t take criticism well, doesn’t do well in a group setting (she likes to do things on her own) and she has a really hard time sitting still. BUT, she insisted that Amelia really WANTS to learn, and she’s really eager to get better at everything, which is encouraging. We talked a little bit about the incident the other night, and her teacher doesn’t want to jump to any kind of behavioral tracking or anything like that. We’re just going to see how things go and keep working with her. She’s one of, if not the, youngest child in her class, so I think that has a lot to do with her actions. Hopefully things keep looking up from here. The girls did lose their tablet privileges for the night though, because they were acting up and such a handful at conferences. I was, again, so embarrassed and overwhelmed. Ugh!!! Christian arrived home just before us, and started dinner. I did the dishes, the girls played and got into their pajamas. We ate diner, played together for a while and the girls were off to bed. I tried to settle in and zone out with some TV for a while, but ended up passing out on the couch. SOOOOO worn out!

Our Little "Frankie". She's still adorbs!

Friday, Friday, Friday. FINALLY Friday!!! I swear, this week was one for the books, and it felt like the week would NEVER end. The big girls were off to daycare, Eliza off to my mom’s, Christian and I to work. It was a really quiet day for me at work, so I got a TON of stuff done. Eliza was napping when I got to my mom’s to pick her up, so I hung out and chatted with my mom for a while. My in-laws asked to take the big girls overnight, so they ended up picking them up from daycare, and taking them home for the night. A quiet night was seriously just what the doctor ordered for this mama. I get really nervous about the kids being away when they’re sick in anyway, but Olivia’s gash is healing really well…her pink eye doesn’t seem to be getting better though. I knew they could handle that though. Eliza and I hung out for a while, enjoying the low key night, and I got her fed and into her jammies. Christian brought home dinner for us, so we ate and watched a little TV together. We all ended up going to bed fairly early…instead of partying it up when we’re down a couple of kids, we like to take advantage of the peace and quiet, and get some extra sleep!!!!

On Saturday, Christian was off to work early. Eliza was up shortly after he left, so no sleeping in for us! We spent the morning playing and hanging out around the house, and she was actually in a pretty good mood all day. With all of her crabbiness lately, that was a welcomed surprise. I took her monthly photo before she went down for a nap – she’s turning into SUCH a ham!!! I just love it. While she slept, I did a little picking up, did some dishes and got in a little down time before the rest of the house arrived home. My in-laws took the girls to breakfast and out to the mall to play for a while – they both came home with treats and a few goodies from the mall – SPOILED!! Eliza woke up shortly after they arrived home, and Christian and his friend Lorenzo were home from work. They worked on cleaning out the gardens for a while, while the girls rode their scooters and bikes, and hit some baseballs. I wish this weather would stay forever!!! Olivia and I were off to target to buy a baby shower gift for tomorrow, and a few things for the house, and settled in at home to relax. The girls were off to bed shortly later, so Christian and I had a little movie night, watching “Paul Blart 2” before bed. Party!!!

Also on Saturday, Eliza turned 18 months. Here's to another half birthday!! She's roughly 28.8lbs, and 31.5" Tall. I feel like she's really, truly a toddler now, and man does that break my heart a little bit. She's funny, brave, spunky and so dang smart. She is growing way too fast, and learning new things every day. She walks, runs, climbs, jumps and does everything she can to keep up with her sisters. Her favorite words are "Thank You", "Mommy" and "No". She loves her sisters, dancing, animals and playing outside. She is wearing 24 Month and 2T clothes, and it seems like she grows out of things week by week. She's a picky eater, throws the BIGGEST tantrums I've ever seen, and she's already got a stubborn streak - but her chunky hugs are the best thing in the world. Love my baby girl to pieces!

Eliza, 18 Months

Our latest family portrait, via Olivia

Sunday was a pretty stressful day. The girls were up around 7:15, pretty much their usual time, and we got going on our day. The girls played and watched a little TV while I started cleaning up around the house and got laundry going. Christian made breakfast, while Olivia and I started on her “Holiday Homework” – WHYYYYY do I always leave it for last minute?! I showered, got ready, got the girls ready, and we were off to my cousin, Colleen’s, baby shower. There were WAAAAAAY too many people at the shower…I think it was the only one she was having, so it was both sides of her family, his family and her friends. I am just not a fan of showers like that…you can’t really talk to anybody, there wasn’t really anywhere for us to sit where we (or at least I) could actually be involved in the festivities and it was SO loud. Just too much. The big girls didn’t want to eat, so while they played Eliza and I ate some food. Our other cousin has a newborn baby, so while she was off walking him and feeding him, I was able to grab her seat to catch up with my aunts for a little while, and play the dice game. While we were gone, Christian and Lorenzo finished the gardens, did some cleaning in the garage and hung the Christmas lights on the house. Time to buckle down and really get ready for winter! Eliza fell asleep on the way home and took a loooooooooong nap. Whew! Amelia watched some videos and helped the boys for a while, and I took Olivia off to the minute clinic. Her eye was just not getting better at all, and now she’s super sensitive to the light. It’s just not going away. The doctor prescribed her some more aggressive drops…and, we snuck in a flu shot while we were there. We dropped the prescription off and did a little shopping…not long after, the pharmacy called to tell me they didn’t have the medication in stock, so we’d have to go to the other Target…where they only had ½ of it right now. Oy! So, we stopped into the other Target quick, grabbed the prescription and made our way home. We have a coloring contest going on at work right now, so while I made dinner, I had the big girls color their pictures. Eliza woke up, we all ate, and then I was off with the big girls to swim class. With her injury, Olivia couldn’t swim this week, so she and I just watched Amelia. She was pretty bummed, but it was nice to get out of class a little earlier than usual. FINALLY, we were settled in at home for the night…we finished up Olivia’s homework, the girls were off to bed, I finished picking up around the house, packing Eliza’s up for my in-laws’ house tomorrow, packed up backpacks and wrote out Olivia’s medical note so that she can get her drops at school all day this week. Oh man, I was so exhausted….but, not quite done yet! I settled into bed with an overflowing basket of laundry to fold, and “The Walking Dead”. I had to watch the late showing because it took too long to “settle in” for the night, so it ended up being a super late night. Tomorrow is going to be a rough day!

Until Next Week! XOXO