Weekly Review November 20 '10

Seth playing in his room (cute new haircut!)

the advent calendar I made

The rest of the photos are Scott's Eagle Scout project:

I guess I'll start out with an update on my eye. It's doing very well, overall. I didn't bruise very much this time and the swelling went down quicker. It looks almost normal now, except for the incision that's still visible. I've been able to wear my contact lenses since Thursday. It never did look as bad this time as last time. On the flip side, I've been experiencing a lot of sinus pain and my teeth on the upper right side of my mouth have been quite tender. My nose has been running a lot, too, and the antibiotic they put me on has made me feel very dizzy. None of those symptoms happened last time. It's been hard to tell if all those things were a result of the surgery or if I have some kind of sinus infection, but probably they are just after effects from the surgery. I mentioned all of this to my doctor at my follow up appointment on Wednesday afternoon, and he said I may have some infection going on in the tear duct still; he thinks it looks a little infected. He said to drink lots of liquid to help flush things out and to call him back if the symptoms don't go away or get worse. When I told him that my eye had bruised a lot less and the swelling had gone done a lot faster this time, he smiled and joked "Oh, good--I'm getting better at this!!" I also talked to him about my left eye, which has been watering a lot more in recent months, so he checked it out. It seems to be fine, though--the duct is not blocked, anyway. That was good to hear! Hopefully now that my right eye is not watering any more the left eye will stop watering too.

I stayed home from church on Sunday and got some rest. Scott went to his friend David's house for a while after church--they did some baking. We got some of the raspberry bars that they made, and they were yummy! We had family night and rested.

Starting with Monday, I jumped back into real life. I've been going, going, going all week, and I'm grateful I've had the stamina to keep up with it all. Besides all the ordinary things, Jared had an orthodontist appointment on Monday, I went to the library twice, I had book club and a Presidency Meeting on Tuesday, Frank also had a church meeting Tuesday evening, I worked onthe next 2 weeks' Sharing Times, I did some Christmas shopping and mailed a Christmas package, shopped for Tanner's birthday, purchased treats for the Priesthood Preview, made a lot of phone calls, visited a Primary girl who is turning 12 this week, helped at the school library, took Snickers to be groomed, went to my surgery follow up appointment which took a whole afternoon because the doctor's office is a good 40 minutes away and I had to wait over an hour in the waiting room, Friday night I went to the YW president's house to read the Book of Mormon for a half hour as part of an all night "read-a-thon" that the YW were doing, and in between all that I tried to take care of sick kids. Whew!! I feel bad because I've been so busy that the sick kids have been left unsupervised quite a bit.

Tanner hasn't been feeling his best for a week or two, but on Wednesday after Seminary, he decided to stay home from school because he was feeling a lot worse. By mid day he had an elevated temperature, and on Thursday his temp went up to 100.4. It was still the same on Friday, so I took him to the doctor. It turns out that he just has a virus, though--no strep or anything like that. Meanwhile, Frank started feeling sick Thursday and was totally miserable by Friday. I assume he has the same thing as Tanner.

Seth also had a rough week. He's had a cold (cough / congestion) since last week but seemed fine and happy, so he'd been going to church and school as usual. But on Monday I got a call from the school about an hour after I dropped him off. One of his teachers had taken him to the nurse because he was crying and out of sorts, and then when she was holding him, she could hear that he was congested, so she thought he might be getting sick. I decided to go get him, but by the time I got there he was a lot happier. However, since I thought he might be coming down with something and because they had told him I was coming, I decided to take him home anyway. He seemed fine the rest of the day, though, and claimed that he was crying because he had "forgotten to give me a hug and a kiss". He hadn't, actually, but anyway, he had run back out into the hall to give me a hug right after I left, and then someone ran into him and their backpack knocked him on the head, so I think it was the combination of me being gone already and getting hurt that set him off. On Tuesday he seemed fine and went to school without any problems. On Wednesday, however, I was starting to leave when he came running back out of the classroom in tears again. I gave him another hug and a kiss, and he seemed to be ok and went back in, but when I waved goodbye to him from the door, he started to wave back but then his face crumpled and he started to cry again and ran back out to me. After that, he didn't want to let me go, so his teacher invited me to stay for a few minutes. He was pretty clingy for a while, but when they got to storytime, he got interested in the story and was ok letting me go--he even waved and smiled. However, later on Frank had to go over to the school (I was shopping) because he had a bowel movement and they are not allowed to wipe him (I didn't know that--I guess I need to work on teaching him to do that!) and when Frank was done and he tried to leave, Seth fell apart again. Frank ended up staying with him until dismissal time--about a half hour. Thursday and Friday I kept Seth home from school. He felt a little warm to me and he said his head hurt and that he "wasn't feeling well". I thought he might be coming down with the same thing as Tanner, so I let him stay home. He hasn't been acting all that sick, but he has been a lot more emotional / easily upset than usual, so maybe he has a mild virus or something. I hope that is also why he has been having trouble being separated from us this week. It's really perplexing, because he usually has no trouble with separation. He loves school and has been perfectly fine with it until now, and asking him to tell us what is wrong just leads to going around in circles: "Why were you sad at school, Seth?" "Because I needed you." "Why did you need me?" "Because I was sad." It's a mystery! Please keep him in your prayers. Next week he only has one day of school. Everyone is off Wednesday-Friday, and Monday and Tuesday are half days because of parent / teacher conferences. Since school is only in the afternoon on Monday, he doesn't have school that day. Hopefully he'll be fine on Tuesday. It's his show and tell day, which should help--he's always excited about that!

The other big project for this week was Scott's Eagle project. Thursday evening one of the men in the ward who is a structural engineer came over to talk about how to build the new lid for the turtle cage. Yesterday Frank and Scott went to pick up a trailer they were borrowing from a family in our ward to use to transport all the supplies for his project. Then this morning they were up bright and early to go buy the supplies. His project was supposed to be from 9:00 to 1:00, but it ended up going much longer--until about 3:30. A lot of the boys who came to help (including Jared) were going to a merit badge clinic at 12:30, so I helped transport a bunch of them to that. Scott, Frank, another adult and a few boys stayed to finish up the project. I took Tanner home because he still wasn't feeling well and got there just in time to meet Erin who was arriving at our home this afternoon. She came with me to go back up to pick up Scott and Frank. We were supposed to bring the trailer home with us also, but unfortunately I left Frank's keys at home and they had the key to the trailer hitch on them, so we had to leave the trailer there and Frank and I went back up to get it this evening. Meanwhile, I had to go back to pick up the boys from the merit badge clinic and take them home. Since the clinic was not nearby and the location for Scott's project was also a good distance from home, I spent a lot of time in the car. So the project that was supposed to take about half a day ended up takint the whole day, and I'm exhausted! Poor Frank is still feeling very sick and should have been in bed all day instead of working hard all day. I felt so sorry for him! The project got done, though! The turtle cage is all settled in it's new home and it has a brand new lid. Scott may need to go back and do a few little things, but the bulk of the project is finished--hooray!! Now for the paperwork...ugh!

We are all looking forward to a very well deserved rest tomorrow!