Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Note from Kristina

So, here's something I've been thinking about for some time. I refer to my boys as Monkey Son #1 and Monkey Son #2. Is this hard to follow as you read? Should I change their nicknames so that they are completely different?

What do you think?

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Momic/Dadic

Momic/Dadic: noun. Moms (momic) and dads (dadic) that act as doctors, nurses, and/or medics when their child is sick or hurt.

So I promised to say more about Monkey Son #1's ambulance ride. Here's what happened.

Around 10:30pm about a week and a half ago, Monkey Son #1 woke up coughing pretty hard. I went to check on him and found that he was barely breathing. He was struggling and whispering that he couldn't breath. Husband and I brought him out of his room and gave him something to drink, but it didn't help. We dressed him and Husband put him in the car to go to the emergency room while I stayed with Monkey Son #2.

A few moments later, Husband pulled into the driveway again, opened his door, but did not get out. He was calling 9-1-1. Monkey's breathing, he decided, was too bad and he didn't have the time to drive him to the hospital.

A few minutes later, I was trying to stay out of the way of 4 paramedics. They gave Monkey Son #1 some sort of breathing treatment and took him away in the ambulance. He thought that was the coolest thing.

A very helpful neighbor came to offer her assistance. Her teen daughter stayed with Monkey Son #2 and the neighbor came with me to the hospital. I let her go shortly after. They wouldn't let her in the room, anyway.

More breathing treatments at the hospital. At one point Monkey Son #1 looked over at us with a breathing mask on and said, "Look! I'm Star Wars!" He also pretended to be a fighter pilot. And pretended to be a fighter jet.

In the end, he was diagnosed with a sudden case of croup and given a prescription for an inhaler, liquid steroid, and a need for a cool mist humidifier.

And then I became the momic. It was incredibly hard to get him to take his medicine. I was up early the next morning making the bathroom as humid as possible so he could breath in the moist air when he woke up hacking because we hadn't gotten the humidifier yet (it was only 6:30am and we hadn't been relased from the hospital until 3 am). Checking temperatures. Monitoring medicines. Monitoring food intake. Monitoring liquid intake. Watching for signs of getting better or worse.

He's now all better. Now if only Monkey Son #2 could get over his cold.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

One of my favorite businesses in the whold wide world...

...is having a fantastic giveaway!

Heather over at Mom4life.com ( a mom-owned and ran company specializing in pregnancy, baby, parenting, and especially-for-mommy items) is having a great giveaway this month. It's easy and free to enter and you can find out the details by going here.

Even if the prizes don't interest you, take a look around her site anyway. She's got some fantastic products that are all mom-invented, great customer service, and fast shipping. And I'm not just saying that to get an entry in the contest. :) I've actually bought items from her before.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Guest Entry: Men-gineering

After a couple of bad health weeks, I'm back. The worst of it was when Monkey Son #1 got to take his first ambulance ride late at night. But more on that in the next post.

Momma Brenda sent this fabulous word and entry in for the Mom-tionary.

"Men-gineering n.—The engineering attempts by who we can only assume is a team of men in an attempt to improve the operations of gadgets and machines women use every day."

"I know that there are several examples of this but the one that prompted me to post this is my oven. For some reason it is designed to turn off when the timer goes off! Now there is no woman in her right mind who would engineer an oven to do such a goofy thing. I mean how many recipes call for baking for 30 min at 350 covered and remove cover and top w/ cheese and continue to bake for 15 min? Or how about baking cookies?! Who wants to turn the oven back on every time a pan of cookies is done?!"

Thanks, Brenda! We all sympathize, I'm sure! Even Husband thought that was a stupid design, and he is an engineer. Sadly, he doesn't design ovens.

Anybody else out there have any men-gineering mishaps? I know I have.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Letter Drop Part III

You can find part I here and part II here.

Letter Drop:
verb. The act of mispronouncing a word by young children due to missing letters.

Things are looking up a bit. Husband and I are in better moods, but it looks like I might have to go back to the doctor in a few weeks depending on whether I am completely better. But no worries. Whatever is going on doesn't affect my typing fingers. :)

So, I was helping Monkey Son #1 put together a puzzle that was slightly out of his ability. While we were working on it, he asked, "What's a present?"

"A present is something you give someone," I replied.

"No, what's a present."

"It's something you give someone," I said again.

He got a little frustrated and repeated the word over and over. I thought, does he mean "present" as in the here and now? I was really confused over what he was asking.

Finally, he said. "Present. Like Present Barak Obama."

Oh...President!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Weak Week

Weak Week: noun. A week where everything just seems to be going wrong.

This is my third attempt to write this post. I have had a very, very, bad week. I've cried a lot and spent an inordinate amount of my time completely stressed out.

While trying to spare you any yucky/TMI details, I can say this. I'm super angry that though my symptoms could have indicated anything from ectopic pregnancy to cancer, my doctor's office didn't want to let me have an appointment. They even went so far as to say they thought I was about to start my period. Let's say I was not amused. I had to convince them that what I was feeling wasn't normal. Even then, they wouldn't see me until the next day, despite the fact that if I *had* been ectopic, I could have died by then.

After I had gotten the sought-after appointment, Husband suggested I call the nurse advice line for our health insurance to see if what I was experiencing was really, really serious or pretty normal. The nurse I spoke to said that my symptoms could not wait another day, and that I needed to be seen within 3-4 hours. Armed with this information, I called around to several more offices, who all told me that they were booked solid and there was nothing they could do for me unless I wanted to wait a few days or a week. Even explaining my symptoms and what the nurse had said, no one was willing to budge. They all seemed interested in what was going on with me, just not willing to do anything about it.

Finally, one office suggested I go to our local medical center/lab/clinic, since they take walk-ins. I did, and a few hours later, I had the results of some tests that only told me what the problem was probably not. The most vital piece of information that I got was that whatever was going on, it could wait until my regular doctor was able to give me a more thorough exam the next day.

So the next day the doctor declared it to probably be some sort of infection and gave me a prescription for antibiotics and a strong dose of ibuprofen.

So there we are. Husband and I were a lot less stressed after finding out the probable cause to the pains I had. But the next day, both Monkeys came down with nasty colds, particularly Monkey Son #2. They spent their morning fighting and yelling at me. My bed looks so good.