Deconstructing Jen

the serenity is over...

dun..dun..dun..

Ben just pulled up on the coffee table and started inching his way around it. Life as I once knew it is now over. "My baby just became a toddler," she said with a sad sigh.

We now direct you to the part of the ride where you will experience bumped noggins, busted lips, and not being able to have anything on the lower 3 feet of any surface in your house. Good luck passengers. Enjoy your ride.

The pictorial evidence...

Backing up a bit...

The weekend...the breakdown.

1. Saturday...Chris and I checked out two fitness facilites in town Saturday. We stopped by Extreme Fitness. It's nice - kind of like a Gold's Gym with a HUGE gymnastics facility. It's nice but intimidating. It's certainly geared toward serious body building. The entire downstairs of the facility is dedicated to free weights and personal training. Upstairs are the cadio machines and weight machines and a running track. Then we stopped by 24 Hour Fitness. It's a brand new facility in your area. It's has that new sparkle. This was definitely more our speed. It has all the stuff we need without the overwhelming nature of the other place. It also has a lap pool, hot tub, steam room and sauna. AND...it has the coolest kids room I have ever seen. And the sticking point - we get a rock star corporate discount through the school district. Sold.

We stopped at Mom's for a bit to help her with her car and invite her over for dinner. Chris has an advertising awards show so Mom hung out with us. Evey discovered that she can invite friends over on her Webkinz. Sweet.

2. Sunday - Laundry is over taking our bedroom and threatening to bury out bed. It's still not done. We head to Bill's to celebrate Dad's birthday then to a friend's house for dinner and to watch the NHL All-Star game and let the kids play. I managed to sneak in a few minutes reading Emma - I still haven't finished it. It's good - just a slow read for me.

Now I need a nap.

Catching up...

I've had a busy couple of days and I have many many posts floating around in my brain that I want to post so bear with me as I get this thing caught up.

Happy Birthday Dad

Today is Dad's birthday. We got together at my brother's house to have lunch and cake and hang out. It was wonderful. Billy made stuffed pork chops, twice baked potatos and salad. Mom made cake. It was all delicious. Evey showed off her Webkinz to Billy, Mom schooled me at Wii bowling...twice (That one still stings a bit), Bill put up his pop up tent fort for him Evey to play in. Dad would have had a fantastic time. It's what he always loved about family get togethers - good food, lots of fun, and everyone together.

Happy Birthday Dad. We miss you.

i heart blogs

I stumbled across the most hillarious blog when I did a google search for "how to draw cartoon faces." I was looking for how to examples for my students...we are starting a new tessellation project and they MUST have examples to copy look at. Well I found two things - one, most people that know how to draw cartoon faces want to sell you their how to information and two, this post about drawing a face on The Sneeze. I've never read The Sneeze before but, oh my, this was hillarous. Then I decided I would see if the blog was currently being updated and his post for yesterday made me nearly spew Diet Dr. Pepper all over my poor unguarded laptop. So, if you have a few moments, and since you are reading this I suppose you do, check it out.

dreams of a front loading washer

I dream of having a front loading washing machine some day. I have kids. Two of them in fact. They create more laundry than should be humanly possible. They do things like vomit and wet the bed. Not pleasant topics I know...bear with me. When these said unpleasantries happen a LOT of laundry is created. Our current top loading washer is not up to the task. If I bring it even one thin blanket it sighs an annoyed sigh and unbalances it self as I load it up - I think it does this just to spite me. It's not until the rinse cycle that I discover the washer is annoyed with me. By the spin cycle it's down right livid because I have stopped attending to it and gone off to do such heinous things as feed my kids lunch. So in it's fit of anger my washer proceeds to thump and pound and then stop still full of sopping wet blankets and sheets. Three attempts later the first load is done. 10 more to go. *sigh*

Go to the laundry mat you say. Ha. 11 loads of laundry and two kids. Not only is my car not large enough but neither is my sanity.

Grammar - do you no it?

Grammar is important. I'm not the world's best proofreader so I know I slip up here and there but I think it's important to try to write correctly and use proper grammar. Web speak drives me nuts. Text messaging speak drives me even more nuts. Especially when the students in my class can't write correctly because they've spent most of their time learning how to text or IM rather than actually write and speak correctly.

So what's your score?

Your Language Arts Grade: 100%

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

A new goal...to be debt free and soon

I have to give my good (IRL) friend Brad full props for bring this to my attention (and he's got a great post on his blog about it). We both drive by the same billboard everyday. It said "Act Your Wage." It was an advertisement for Dave Ramsey's radio show. I'd seen it everyday for almost a month and I'd even thought about it more than the 2.5 seconds I usually spend on billboards as I drive by them. What does that mean "Act your wage"? But I never got far enough into that thought to really investigate. Well Brad did. And I'm really glad he did.

What would it mean to have no debt? I mean really no debt. No mortgage? No car loans? No credit card loans? Holy crap what would we do with all that money??? Now we don't have tons of debt but we have a moderate amount. We do have a mortgage but I made sure early on that we were buying a house that we could really pay off and one that we could pay off before our kids had kids if we choose to stay here that long. We have unfortunately had to buy new cars in the last two years so we do have two car loans. Although I am very proud of how we bought Chris's car, we didn't get suckered into more car than we could afford nor did we get suckered into anything more than a 36 month loan. My car - not so much but that's a story for another day. One student loan that will be paid off in the next 6 months and one credit card that will be paid before the year is over.

So there's another tangent...back to Dave Ramsey. Brad came over one day really hyped up about Ramsey's radio show and some video's he saw on You-Tube. It took a few days but I got around to watching them. Well holy crap. There a LOT of common sense to what this guy says and a new perspective on money that is refreshing and realistic. One that I wish I had been smacked up side the head with a long time ago. So it's now my goal for us to be debt free. Chris and I had been working toward it for a while but now it seems even more important.

I highly recommend checking out the You-Tube videos. He's entertaining. He's realistic. He's freaking smart. Imagine what life would be like without a mortgage payment. Holy crap.

Intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWEUCZymGmY&feature=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVhVNq7-Og0
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSFI7FnlSU
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMLXQoXylLY
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyrqaVNUdqs
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvQXLA9lRyE
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbgSTWpUHzA
Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sHed0UGptc
Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb9iEnMeIXs

Non-RSV Bronchiolitis, Round 3

I don't remember exactly when I started speaking in medical terms, it just sort of happened. I used to define Evey and Ben's illnesses in normal every day terms. Fast heart beat. Barky cough. Old man cough - I really did say that once when Ben was wheezing really bad because I didn't know how else to describe it. Now terms like sinus rhythm, tachycardia, bronchiolitis, chronic lung disease are part of my every day vocabulary and I am frequently asked by health care professionals if I'm a nurse. Nope. Just a mom.

So I'm digressing. Ben's chest x-ray was negative yesterday. AWESOME. Ben has non-RSV bronchiolitis. Again. Not awesome. Non RSV bronchiolitis - what is it? It's essentially RSV without the actual RSV virus. So what is that? It's swelling of the teeny tiny airways in his lungs and is caused by a virus that infects the lower part of his lungs. It causes a nasty cough, shortness of breath, a runny nose, and wheezing, really bad wheezing. Most kids don't get this unless they fall into a high risk category. High risk: born prematurely, having chronic lung disease, having congenital heart disease, are male. Ben meets everyone of those criterea. Okay so again, I'm digressing. Sorry for the medical terminology lesson. So the million dollar question...how do we treat it? Well, that's a tough one. We give him breathing treatments and steriods and pray really hard that they help him breath enough to get by while his imune system does it's job of getting rid of the virus. If they don't we go back to the hospital so we can help him breath a little more forcefully with oxygen.

The Fog...Update

Here's a quick update on the weekend happenings at my house...Evey ended up with whopper of a fever both Friday and Saturday - both nights getting up to about 103.5. By Sunday she was fine. Ben on the other hand is still having a hard time. I ended up having the leave work early Friday to get him from the sitters and take him to the doctor. He is having some fairly significant wheezing trouble and his meds aren't helping him so we are back to breathing treatments every 4 hours and oral steriods with little change. Poor guy is so miserable. The steriods make him ravenously hungry but he has a hard time eating because he can't breathe and eat at the same time when he's wheezing hard. I'm off to put in a call to his pediatrian...

*****Post pediatrian call update*****
We are heading to get a chest x-ray immediately after I get off work to see if there is something else going on with his lungs.