Weekly Review November 22 '08

At the end of last week’s review, I was saying how glad I was that the next day was Sunday and we could have a day of rest. Well, here is how Sunday went: church from 9:00-12:00, choir practice from 12:15-12:45, tithing settlement at 12:40 (I left choir a little early), eat dinner, put Seth down for a nap, get him down just in time for the arrival of our home teacher at 2:45, Primary presidency meeting at 3:30, visit Primary children at 4:30, get home at 5:00. Eat supper, have family night, go to bed!

Hmmm…not very restful! I was tired after all of that, but it was still a day of rest. Why? Because on Sunday I always rest mentally and spiritually, even if I don’t rest very much physically. I find that I am always in a different mind set on Sundays than every other day of the week. I don’t think about the same things. I don’t worry about all the usual things. I don’t even give a thought to that long “to do” list that is waiting for me on Monday. Ahhh….rest! I am so grateful for Sunday! It is my favorite day of the week and I truly look forward to it all week long.

A side note about choir practice: I took Seth with me because Frank was helping the other boys count their tithing and fill out tithing slips. That didn’t turn out to be much of a problem because Seth was tired and sat quietly on my lap while I sang. He fell asleep before it was over—appropriately, while we were practicing the song “Still, still, still”. (Some of the words, for those who may not be familiar with them: “Sleep, sleep, sleep, ‘tis the eve of our Savior’s birth” and “Dream, dream, dream, of the joyous day to come.”) Seth was sleeping and dreaming! I got a kick out of that.

Speaking of Seth, I forgot to mention last week that Seth is getting verbal—that is, verbal so that we actually know what he is saying. He said his first word last week—ball. I was cleaning in the basement, and he came to me and said “ball”, and pointed to Scott & Tanner’s room—obviously wanting me to follow him. I did, and when we got there he pointed to Scott’s clock up on his dresser, which looks like a soccer ball. I rewarded him for saying his first word by getting the “ball” down for him. He promptly did what any normal person would do with a ball—he threw it! (Shhh…don’t tell Scott! At least the clock still works.) A few days later, he was looking over my shoulder and started pointing at something behind me and saying something that sounded like “Je ju” over and over. I turned around, and there was our picture of Jesus on the wall. This week he said “Jesus” again, while pointing at a different picture of Jesus on another wall. This week he also said “shoes” while the boys were getting their shoes on—he wanted his shoes, too. He also said “juice” and “spoon”. I wonder what he will say next?

On Monday I resumed my frantic cleaning efforts. While Seth was down for his nap, I cleaned Jared’s room. Oh my goodness! It took me about 3 hours! I am always astounded by the amount of JUNK my kids collect. I filled two and a half large trash bags with just that…trash! Papers, candy wrappers, etc. Why do my boys think they need to save every little scrap of paper that they have ever scribbled on? Why do they get so sentimentally attached to empty bubblegum containers? How come I am the only one in this family who truly appreciates the wonders of the “round file cabinet”? The funny thing was, when Jared got home, he was THRILLED to have such a clean and organized room. I told him it would be easy to keep it that way if he would just put things back where they go when he’s done with them. (And get better acquainted with his trash can.) But I know it won’t last! I don’t understand when they like clean rooms so much why they don’t take a little bit of trouble to keep them that way.

Here’s the update on the kitchen. Frank got one set of the under cabinet lights installed on Saturday night. We decided to wait on the other set because that took so long—as it was, we still didn’t get to bed until after midnight. It was nice to get some of them done and see the effect, though. It is so nice to have that extra light! I told Frank that he has now spoiled me and if we ever move to another house, he is doomed to have to repeat the installation process there. After contemplating the hole in the wall over the sink where the wires from the old light were protruding, we decided that we needed to go pick out the light for over the sink as soon as possible because we weren’t sure we could find one that would not require us to put a new hole further down. Obviously, if any new holes needed to be made, we wanted to do that before painting, not after. So on Monday evening, in between dinner, homework, folding of laundry, and family night activity, we squeezed in a trip to Lowe’s. We found what we wanted and brought it home to see if it would work. We didn’t have a chance to actually take it out of the box and check until Friday, but when we did we discovered that it would work to put it in the same place. Frank still ended up cutting a hole in the wall because he needed to put in a box to install the light, but the light covers the hole and he didn’t need to patch anything. Frank got the priming done on Friday afternoon with some help from one of our neighbors (Tony) who is a professional painter. Frank asked him to come in and give him some advice, and Tony just jumped in and started helping him do it, and got the whole wall done in about 30 minutes! It was so well done, too—I almost hated to see it covered up with paint! (Not really.) Frank got the painting done today. He installed the new light in the dining area in the morning and painted this afternoon (late). I got the kitchen all cleaned up this evening, and now it looks really nice! I am very glad to have that project done and to have a functional kitchen again! Someday I’d like to paint the cabinets, but I’ve had enough remodeling for now!

Seth didn’t sleep well at all on Monday night / Tuesday morning. He woke up at 2:00 am and then again at 4:00 am. The second time he never really went back to sleep, although he dropped off a couple of times. He was crying a lot and we just couldn’t figure out what was wrong until he threw up all over me. Ohhh…that’s what was wrong! Frank and I were both beat on Tuesday, so he stayed home and did work from here. I was supposed to have book chat, but didn’t go. I still had a pretty productive day—did a little organizing in the kitchen—but I was tired! Seth seemed to improve during the day. He was able to keep down soup, crackers, etc. He had a fever, but not a very high one. Overall, he seemed to perk up quite a bit and we thought we were on our way up.

Unfortunately, we were wrong! Tuesday night was even worse than Monday night. Seth woke up just as we were going to bed. He was fussy for a while and then went back to sleep, but when Frank tried to put him back in his crib, he woke up, cried, and threw up again—this time on Frank. We decided to take shifts taking care of him and Frank got two sleeping bags and zipped them together, which we put on the floor in Seth’s bedroom. I took the first shift from 11:00-1:00. I got a little bit of sleep, but Seth woke up about every 30 minutes. Frank took over at 1:00 and I conked out until about 4:30. Then Frank went back to bed, and I took Seth. He didn’t go back to sleep until about 6:00, and only for about half an hour. So we were pretty tired on Wednesday also. When Frank got up again, his throat was hurting and he barely had a voice, so he took a sick day. That was a help to me—Frank put Seth down for a nap while I took the kids to school, went visiting teaching, and got the shopping done. Frank took a long nap that afternoon, and later I convinced Seth to take another nap. I think I had a 15 minute nap on Tuesday and another 15 minute nap on Wednesday, but that’s it. I figure from Monday morning to Wednesday evening I got maybe about 10 hours of interrupted sleep, total!

Seth felt really hot most of the day on Wednesday. His temperature got up to about 100.8. Thankfully, he slept through the night (from 8:30 to 5:00) on Wednesday night, and so did I! He slept even better on Thursday night. Seth was doing better on Thursday, although he still had an incredibly runny nose. Frank made it to work on Thursday, also. He still wasn’t feeling great, but he was truly miserable on Wednesday—achy, sore throat, head ache, and dizziness. Unfortunately, his exercise program has suffered this week since he just wasn’t up to doing it most days. Hopefully next week will be better! On Thursday evening Frank got the rest of the under cabinet lights installed.

In spite of being tired as well as spending more time than usual holding Seth, I have plugged along at my “to do” list and have accomplished a surprising amount this week. I got Tanner & Scott’s room cleaned; it wasn’t nearly as bad as Jared’s but still took 2 hours (I broke it up into two 1 hour sessions). I worked on the kitchen a lot, also. I got a lot of the cabinets better organized and cleaned, and I cleaned the oven and the freezer part of the fridge. I’m almost done with the whole house, with the exception of part of the basement. I guess one nice thing about having a small house is that there aren’t as many rooms to clean! (Although the rooms you have are harder to keep uncluttered.) On Wednesday evening I took the boys to scouts; Tanner’s leader didn’t show up again, so I took him back home. Then after scouts I had a cub committee meeting which thankfully was shorter than usual. It’s nice not to be in charge of that meeting anymore!

Frank didn’t have to work again on Friday which was a great blessing since we were trying to get the kitchen done. He spent the morning installing the light over the sink, then we had lots of errands to run in the afternoon. We finished birthday shopping for Tanner, did a little Christmas shopping, mailed packages, and got some lunch. Frank had been given coupons for two free boxed lunches from Honey Baked Ham, so we did that. It was yummy! Each meal included a sandwich of our choice (Frank got roast beef, I got chicken cordon bleu), a side (potato salad, pasta salad), potato chips, a pickle spear, a drink, and a large cookie. It was nice to get all that for free! We got home shortly before we needed to go get the boys. We put Seth down for a nap and he slept for 3 hours which was helpful—Frank got the priming done while I worked on the budget. I ended up making another trip to the store to get some more things we needed for the kitchen project, and I also picked up the latest Indiana Jones movie and Journey to the Center of the Earth for the boys to watch. (Thanks to Tim & Rachelle for the Blockbuster gift card!) We watched Indiana Jones on Friday night and Journey to the Center of the Earth on Saturday night. I actually didn’t see much of either one of them—too busy to sit down and watch—but everybody else seemed to enjoy them.

Friday was very cold and we had snow flurries off and all on day. Seth was pretty fascinated by those funny white things drifting through the air! Seth had another bad night Friday night, and this morning he seemed off balance, so we decided we’d better have his ears checked. I kind of suspected all week he might have an ear infection, but since he seemed to be improving and he was only fussy, not screaming, we didn’t get him checked. Frank took him to the doctor—he has a double ear infection. Both ears—poor baby!! He’s on an antibiotic now, and hopefully he’ll be feeling better soon.

Report cards came home this week; everyone is doing pretty well. Scott made the honor roll. (They don’t have an honor roll at the other boys’ school.) Tanner did better than I had feared—he got a C in Science, but he got an A in Social Studies and Bs in Language Arts and Math. The lower grades are purely due to missing assignments, so if we can just help him get more organized, less forgetful, and more focused & efficient I know he will do really well. We are going to see if we can have him evaluated, because he really does have an extremely difficult time focusing on work and therefore takes 10 times longer to do it than it should take. He is holding his own right now, but we are worried about high school! We want to make sure he doesn’t have any learning issues and work to find solutions before it gets even harder.

That brings us to today, and this post is very long! I guess you can tell that we had a busy week. While Frank was installing the dining room light, taking Seth to the doctor, helping a ward member fix his computer, and painting, I was not just sitting around. I helped Tanner and Jared get homework done, worked on scout requirements with all the boys, helped Tanner write a talk for Primary tomorrow, kept Seth out of Frank’s way, picked up Seth’s medicine at the Pharmacy, and made trips to Wal-Mart and to Costco. The 3 older boys went with me to Costco (Seth was napping). Remind me to never go to Costco on a Saturday again! It was just insane. I had to drive around and around looking for a parking space. Then the store was completely packed, and the check out lines were, of course, extremely long. The boys had brought money to buy lunch, so they enjoyed hot dogs, churros, and frozen yogurt while I waited in the check out line. Then we had to get out of the parking lot, which was the biggest mess of all. It took us about 20 minutes, I think. Then there was dinner to be made and the kitchen to clean up. I will post pictures of the kitchen soon. For now, I just want to go to bed!

It’s almost Sunday again—thank heavens….