"I've Got to Learn How to Be Strong Again..."

I have felt gross all night.  The irony lies in the fact that I made grilled cheese sandwiches with honey wheat bread and havarti, and served it with chicken noodle soup.  (You may be wondering why this is an ironic juxtaposition of facts, but if you knew what I've been serving for dinner it would make a great deal of sense.) Now, the soup was from a can, but it was the elite chicken noodle soup.  Not the wimpy chicken noodle soup.  It was all very tasty, and I thought,"At least there are carrots and celery in the soup!  Vegetables!"  I don't know why I feel so yucky, except for the days upon days (read:  months) (okay, read:  years) of horrible eating of which I am profoundly guilty.  

Now.  I know that I am not overweight in any dramatic sense of the word, however I have gained a significant amount in the last two and a half years, so that pants that I could wear a year after my third child was born, I can no longer pull up past my thighs.  While I am not happy about this gain because it is expensive to buy all new pants out of necessity, I am also seriously uncomfortable with how I feel.  And I don't mean how I feel emotionally (That is a whole separate blog post.  Maybe even blog.), but how I physically feel.  I feel bad, like my body hurts.  Especially around my middle.

This kind of frightens me.  

I was lying down with Eliana tonight, as I do in order to get her to sleep (and I won't lie, I enjoy resting for a few minutes before tackling the other things I have to do each night) and my legs kept twitching.  I thought,"I have Restless Legs Syndrome!" which may or may not be true, but I do not doubt that were I to exercise each day, walk around the block, get on our spin bike, go up and down the stairs twenty times in a row (wait, that might make me pass out...walking sounds good), my legs might be more inclined to lie still rather than jump around like so many fish on the deck of a boat, trying to get back into a place where they can live and breathe.

Hey!  That ended up being a pretty good analogy.  I did originally write "dock of a boat"...I'm relieved I caught that because what a ridiculous mistake that would have been to make.  Can a boat have a dock?  Maybe it can.  At any rate, my legs are unruly.  I know I need to exercise.  And eat more salad.

What is the point of this post?  I don't know exactly, because I don't make resolutions.  I mainly want to say I will start exercising, but I'm a little scared to say that because then I have to do it.  I would really like someone to exercise with me, but I have tried finding someone and didn't get anywhere with that.  So, I think I might be on my own.

("once again now.

One more time,

By myself.")

I'm just going to have to do it.  Because I have got to start feeling better.  I don't like this at all.

Does anyone else add song lyrics to their thoughts frequently?  Or song titles?  Like a running musical commentary on my own stream-of consciousness.  Or is that just me?  

According to Plan...Or Not

So, my plan was to clean my house from top to bottom (Or bottom to top...I didn't know where I would start. Maybe in the middle; we have a split level house.) today and I got pretty far along towards that goal.  By pretty far, I mean I cleaned up our entry way.  Which we treat like a mud room, except it is NOT a mud room, which is hidden.  There was a narrow path that one could walk but along the sides of the entry (which is shaped like a six-sided polygon, but not a regular hexagon.  Don't pay much attention to me.  I learned some stuff helping Christian with his math this week.) there was no space to be found.  Not even in front of the closet.  There was a suitcase there.  A suitcase!  What a splendid place to keep a suitcase...in front of the closet!  

I got the suitcase fully unpacked, and put away.  I was able to open the closet and put a lot of shoes away. Can you imagine?  Opening the closet!  I put away more shoes, and some more shoes, and then some more shoes after that. We have a lot of shoes.  You'd think we were big-time walkers, among other things.

Am I not funny?  You know you're laughing, even if you're making fun of me.

I swept the area and mopped it too.  And now I don't feel like dying a million times whenever someone rings our doorbell.

Although, I did get freaked out the other day by a sweet man that works at our church who told me about some burglaries that were occurring because people were knocking on doors in the middle of the day, posing as such-and-such and whoever, so that elderly people would open up and let them in.  I am not likely to open the door for anyone ever again, unless you are FedEx or UPS with a van that I can see in plain sight.  In fact, the doorbell did ring this afternoon, and I could see that it was a hail-repair guy, but I did not answer the door because what if he were really some weirdo in disguise, and besides I was watching MLB and they had all my attention what with the Texas Rangers signing Yu Darvish.  Finally.

What was I talking about?

My plan!  I did not get a single rug vacuumed.  I was sad about that.  I did do a mighty amount of laundry. Now my wash pile is down to two heaping baskets (heaping?  It sounds like I'm baking.) and a smallish mountain next to the baskets in the laundry room.  Oh, and also a pile in our bathroom that I have been avoiding.  I don't like our bathroom anymore.  I know that one day soon I am going to have to overcome this phobia of my own bathroom.  Aargh!  I also just remembered that there is a very large quantity of dirty clothes in the kids' bathroom that I have not dealt with ever since the girls' puke fest this weekend.  Don't worry. There are no pukey clothes in there, but I kind of feel like the whole bathroom needs to be hazmat-treated, and I was hoping to get my regular (read:  what is already in the laundry room) pile down before I bring these other things back to wash.

Now that I'm on a roll what with blogging again I just can't stop typing.  I have all kinds of things to say.  And one of them is that every now and then as I type and the line runs to the end and moves automatically to the next line, there is an extra space at the beginning of the new line.  Why is it doing this?  This is very strange and has never happened.  I am trying to figure out the method to my computer's madness.  Or maybe it is Squarespace madness.  I don't know.  I'll keep you posted.

There I go being funny again.  Bloggers post, you know.  Post haste.

I suppose tomorrow is a new day and today was progress.  That is how I shall look at it.  I am also going to try to take more pictures, because if you read (that is past tense "read") all the way to the end of this post without having a single image to break up all the nonsense, then you deserve an award.  

I know I seem extra chatty, and a little bit like I'm on amphetamines mixed with a Mountain Dew and a box of Swiss Cake Rolls.  There is a reason.  Can you guess why?  If you do, then you should get an award for that too.  But I am not PW and cannot afford giveaways, therefore you will have to be content with the satisfaction that you are super intelligent.  I could let all my friends know how smart you are by posting it on Facebook.   

I never did figure out why there is this extra space at the beginning of some of my lines.  I am curious to see if it appears even when the post is published.  We shall see.  

-Edited to add:  It totally appears when published.  So.  Weird.

Me + a Plan = ?? What Language Are You Speaking?

Not too long after we returned from Tahoe I took all of the ornaments off of the tree and put them in their boxes.  I got stuck there, though.  I haven't been very motivated to get them put all the way away (in the closet upstairs), and all of our nativities are still out, along with a handful of Christmas-y decorations that I have (there really aren't that many).  I was messing around with our new camera the other night and took this picture of our family room.  Aren't the books funny?  They crack me up.  I kind of like them up there, maybe with some tweaks.  (For example, the ones that are leaning on top of the ones that are going straight across?  Probably get rid of those.)  Most of them Mike plans on taking to the office.  Our tree looks so sad.  It's beyond droopy.  It had been a long time since it had been watered when we returned, and getting the ornaments off was like tearing precious possessions from angry, twisted claws.  The lights will have to come off outside, because they will surely create a blizzard of needles.  We'll get it all the way down soon.

In the meantime I have decided tonight that tomorrow will be a Very Busy Day.  I have got to get some things straightened up around here.  I can take it no longer.  Laundry will get done.  Rugs will get vacuumed.  Tables will get cleared.

Now I said it, I have to do it.

Keep me accountable.

FanFest!

Saturday afternoon the kids and I headed over to Arlington to meet the Texas Rangers!

Okay.  Not really.  But we hoped to meet at least one, and maybe get an autograph.  The organization hosted the Texas Rangers FanFest. 

We're fans.  We fest.  Hence, our attendance.

The kids did not mind the jaunty little walk we had to take from the car to the Convention Center.  They were looking forward to all the fun, and had just eaten lunch, therefore they were quite energized.

After paying for our tickets and getting our hands stamped (Eliana was extremely dubious regarding this strange procedure.  She did not readily hold out her hand for the guy to shoot the back of it with a clicky weapon looking thing.)  Fortunately for her she braved the unknown...there were balloon animals awaiting.

It was like they were destined for us.  Michaela got an orange dog (orange!) and Eliana received a blue butterfly.  Do you see her sweater?  It had butterflies on it!  Fate.  Christian also had a balloon creation.  He got a snake.  It was interesting.  I have to be honest, once he held it up to me and said,"Does this look like something else?"  As I gazed into the snake's close-set eyes and long tongue...I quickly said,"No!  It looks like a snake!  See?  Here are his eyes and his mouth with a tongue!"  Whew.  Thank goodness he's not a couple of years older.  That could have been disastrous.  Or really funny.  Not sure.

I got stuck carrying the "snake" attached to my shoulder bag (this is a misnomer...my shoulder bag is actually a wallet with a strap; a bag would have come in handy though, as I was carrying everything but the Rangers' kitchen sink by the time we had been there for thirty minutes).  Christian decided that he wanted to try his hand at pitching.  It's a lot harder than the pros make it look. 

He gets an "A" for effort though. 

One thing he is good at is running very speedily.  He gave "Stealing Home" a go.

They time the kids as they run from point "a" to point "b".

I think my children are brave.

Running down a lane in front of a large crowd, while being timed, doesn't sound fun to me. 

But they loved it.

We walked over to the area where there were interviews and autographs.  We were able to hear David Murphy speak for a little bit (I love him!).

And we watched Mitch Moreland sign some autographs (he has a fantastic accent).  If I were a little more bold I would have shouted,"Hi, Mitch!" so he would have looked at me while I snapped away.  But...I might have been overstepping some boundaries had I done that, so I just quietly took my pictures.

We meandered back over to the activity area of the Convention Center and the kids stood in line in order to participate in a home run derby.  I didn't think this through before getting in the very long line; each kid got around ten balls (and believe me, some got more than that!).  It took a LOOOONNNNGGGG time to get through the line.

While we waited, a former pitcher (Guzman) tossed the wiffle ball to the kids.  He stopped and some other person took over just before Christian and Michaela had their turn, but while we were in line some of the larger-than-life Ranger characters strolled by.  Sam Houston?

And the Rangers' Captain.  He was headed straight for Eliana, who was sitting on a fake wall.  I couldn't really step back to get the right shot.  I was afraid his nose would knock her right over. 

Please excuse my crazy pictures...I'm adjusting to a new camera.  (It's good.  I'm just not quite used to it yet.)

Would you believe that after standing in line for more than a half hour (I really don't know how long it was; it was a long time.) the Captain stepped on the field in front of Christian and Michaela?!  They thought it was hilarious.  I was groaning just a little. 

Finally, the kids got to bat. 

Christian hit a few and Michaela hit a few.

She's a switch hitter, don'tcha know?  Tricky girl.

They missed Guzman on the field, but caught him in a photo opp.  He seemed like such a nice person.  He stopped his pitching at one point because this one kid was a bit clueless and just swung around in a circle at every ball.  Guzman came over to the little guy and helped him hold the bat the correct way and pointed him in the right direction.  He pitched again, and...circle.  Too funny.

Eliana took a turn trying to hit the ball.  It was pretty funny.  She went right over the top of it again and again.  The girl who was working the activity did not seem amused at all.  She must have been tired of watching little kids miss all the live-long day.  I thought it was hilarious, though.  I finally said,"Try to hit the ball," and she did it! 

The kids also had their caricatures done.  Christian was very interested in this guy and his pictures.  He really enjoyed watching him do the drawings after his own was finished. 

It reminded me of a picture someone drew of me when I was in middle school.  Chick Larsen.  I adopted his caricature of me and used it when I signed letters, for at least a year. 

We just kept going back and forth between the two areas to see what we could see.  Can you see Michaela?  It's like Where's Waldo.

They had a mock locker room set up, as well as the trophies from the series that they won (Division Winners, and League Champions) (I don't know if they were the actual trophies or replicas).  Michaela was up for pictures.  The other two were...losing interest.

Ian Kinsler.  He's got the flow. 

More witnessing of autographs.  We had lottery numbers to be in this line, but alas, they were not chosen.

I enjoyed watching the players interact with the fans, even if from afar.  Josh Hamilton seems like a super nice person, too. 

Josh, if you ever read this (likely!), we want you to stay in Texas!  Okay?  Great!

It was a fun day, aside from the head trauma. 

This is a lovely stadium.  I like it here.

A lot.

The Fall

Around this time last night I was pulling back up to our house after spending several hours in the E.R. with Eliana.  I was almost in tears, so grateful that I was returning home with a little girl who was just fine, rather than something much worse.

We had gone to the Arlingtion Convention Center earlier that afternoon, in order to participate in the Rangers FanFest.  We had such a great time, and even though we weren't able to meet or get autographs from any of the Rangers that play on the team right now, we had some one-of-a-kind experiences with former Rangers, and the kids were able to participate in some energy-expending activities. 

As the end of the FanFest drew near, I headed to the store area in order to look at the t-shirts, for which I had a coupon, from the flyer that they handed out when we arrived.  The three kids were kind of running around in this large empty-ish area just next to the roped-off store.  Well, really it was the two crazies that were running around...Michaela was more likely watching them while I finished my purchase.  At any rate, Michaela came over to me holding Eliana's hand, explaining that Eliana had hit her head because she and Christian had crashed into one another.  Eliana was definitely upset, but she wasn't wailing, and she looked more offended than anything.  Or sad that someone had caught her out on her boo-boo (she really hates to get any attention AT ALL when she is hurt).  So I gave her a hug and asked her if she was okay, and she stopped crying and hung with me, and then not too long after that was laughing again and wanting to do some of the activities in another area of the Convention Center. 

So, we stayed around for a while, and the kids swung at some more balls in an effort to rack up home runs, and then we wandered back over to the autograph area so I could try to get a decent picture of Josh Hamilton.  I took a few pictures and then told them it was time to head home.  We walked to the car, got in, and headed home.  It was around 5:30.

Eliana fell asleep, which didn't surprise me at all, since it was so late in the day and she's still so young.  I think if the others had pillows, they might have fallen asleep, too!  It took forever to get home (yes, I did take one wrong turn...I never get home the same way when I'm coming from downtown) but when we did and I opened the van door, Eliana woke up and sleepily said,"Mama?"  I ran to the door, dropped some things off, and came back out to get her.  She was still tired, and she wanted to go back to sleep.

Here is where I should have been like ALARM BELL RINGING...WEIRD BEHAVIOR...WARNING...WARNING but instead I thought she was just super tired from the long afternoon and took her upstairs to get ready for bed.  I got her jammies on, brushed her teeth, read a story, and turned out the light.  I asked her again if she wanted to eat anything but she said no.  I also asked if her head hurt, because in the back of my mind I was worried about her hitting her head.

The story had come out as we walked after the incident; I had asked the kids to try to tell me what happened as best they could, which I'm sure they did.  My guess is things like that happen so fast, and they are hardly paying attention to their own feet, much less what other people around them are doing.  From what I gathered, Christian and Eliana were running together, in the same direction.  Someone turned toward the other, they crashed, and then Eliana fell backward.  She landed on her bottom first, but then fell all the way back on her head.

So...deep down I knew that there was a chance that she was hurt more than it seemed.  For some reason, I was trying not to pay too much attention to that feeling or thought.

After we had been lying down for about a half-hour, she said to me,"I'm hungry."  I took her downstairs to get a bite to eat, and sat down in a chair to wait for the microwave to be ready (Mike was heating something up...it was a leftover night).  I looked at her, and she still looked very sleepy; I put my hand on the back of her head to see if I could feel any bump at all.  I asked if her head hurt, and I don't even remember if she answered, but about three seconds later I heard this gurgly sound and I jumped to my feet and held her facing me.  She had such a sad, confused look on her face as she threw up.  She was trying not to throw up, while Mike and I told her it was okay, to let it out.  When it seemed like she was done I told Mike about her fall and he said we needed to get her to the emergency room right away.  I took her upstairs to get cleaned up, showered her, changed my own clothes and put my hair in a ponytail, and drove off as soon as I could.

I filled out the form at the E.R. and was seen by a nurse not too, too long after my arrival.  I had taken Michaela with me in order to keep Eliana awake in the car, which did not prove to be a problem.  They were singing and laughing hysterically all the way to the hospital.  At one point I said, loudly, because they were being so noisy,"Settle down!" because I seriously thought Eliana might make herself throw up just from her wild laughter.  Anyway, Mike and Christian met us at the hospital, and waited long enough for me to move past the initial waiting room into the official E.R. waiting room.  I waited there for a bit longer and was finally taken back to a room.

During all this time several people looked at her, checked her eyes, and listened to the story.  I reported about how she fell asleep in the car, woke up again on her own once we were home, and then vomited several hours after the fall.  I talked about how it was not unusual for her to fall asleep on the way home in the car in the early evening, but that it was unusual for her to admit to being sleepy once she woke up from such a nap.  Normally, she would deny being tired and adamantly insist on staying up.  The nurses were so very kind and reassuring.  I needed that, because I was terrified.

They brought her some water, and gave her a popsicle (one of the rainbow striped ones, which she only ate the top stripe!) (I guess for her that is a major improvement.  ha!) and she colored and worked in an activity book that they provided for us.  She was very busy.  The nurses and one doctor came in and out at first, each one checking her eyes, heart, ears, and listening to the story.  Each one said her eyes were perfect and that she seemed like she was just fine.  They wanted us to stay around to monitor her for a bit longer, and see if she threw up again (more than once in the initial four-to-six hour range is cause for alarm).

One of the activities in the book was a states-and-capitals game.  The capitals were listed on the left and the states on the right, each state assigned its own letter of the alphabet.  She has learned the states and their capitals in the Thursday class that she and Michaela are in, so we went through the ones they had listed (25 of the 50).  She knew every single one (I say the capital and she says the state), except for Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which is the one that trips her up every time.  I laughed a bit to myself as we went through them, thinking,"I guess her memory is intact." 

One of the nurses finally came back in and said we were being discharged with a list of things to watch out for, and if she threw up more than two more times, to bring her back.  They said,"She's perfect, she's beautiful."

Oh, the relief.  I had imagined all of the things that could have happened.  Probably not even all, I am sure I don't even know all of what could have happened...but, the bottom line is, when we left for the hospital I was very afraid.  I was praying that God would take away my fears, and that he would protect Eliana, especially since my strange and foolish hesitation to attend to her fall led to such a delay in getting her checked out.  I was so angry at myself for not doing something, anything, before she threw up.  For not taking the fall more seriously (maybe I would have if I had seen it happen...she seemed okay).  I even recalled, as I was driving to the hospital, that there had been a First Aid center at the FanFest.  I regretted not taking her there; what if they had detected something and sent me right away?  All of these things were going through my head, with the thought that there might be something very, very wrong with our baby girl. 

As I unbuckled her straps and took her out of her seat, asleep again (with an "okay" from the nurses), and carried her to her bed, I was grateful.  So grateful. 

The main reason I wanted to write this is to say if ever there is a doubt in your mind that there might be an injury, get it checked out.  Why risk it?  I have learned that lesson.  My heart aches even though everything worked out just fine, because what if it hadn't and I could have done something sooner?  The doctors and nurses who work in the E.R. can either look at your child and say,"Great job bringing her in...we'll take care of her right away!" or "Great job bringing her in...there is no emergency though, so breathe easy, and know that everything is fine."  If there is a next time, I will respond sooner and with greater urgency.

And if you are a nurse or a doctor, particularly in the E.R., I want to say thank you, because I think your job is brutal.  Working in that environment, in the day or in the middle of the night, surrounded by, often, very sick children (this was a children's hospital) and adults, going as fast as you can in order to meet so many needs...it's like being a mom, but on steroids and shoved into overdrive.  Thank you, in particular to the nurses and doctor that attended us; these women were completely wonderful, so reassuring, and a real blessing to me when I was scared. 

Head injuries, or possible ones, are not to be messed around with.  I'll be more attentive next time; I just wanted to encourage others in this regard as well. 

(And Eliana seems just fine; today she was back to her sassy, fussy, and funny self.  Apparently her memory and her personality came through this ordeal unscathed)