This time it's Carlos asking me to open the front door, Elli had gotten sick again and thrown up all over him and Tio Rudy's bed and they were now outside. This blows. Chunks.
Carlos and Elli come inside. She's already cleaned up, daddy had done that part at his parent's house, thank goodness. I place her in the king sized VRB and Carlos retires to Lexi's bed and as he's entering her room I hear him tell me he's not feeling so well. Greeaaaatttt.
Sunday morning comes and goes without anymore up chucking from the kids. We miss church naturally and I'm sure my ward thanks me for this. You're welcome. Carlos is now fully experiencing the wrath of whatever stomach bug has taken over our house but he's a big boy and can make it to the toilet on his own. No puke bowl for him. The kids are still pretty tired and we spend the day in bed watching Disney and Dreamworks flicks. I check on Carlos periodically and he sleeps most of the day, doesn't want to eat or drink much and starts to run a fever. I make him take some tylenol and he starts to feel better. Somewhere in the day we find out that Carlos' mom and sister have now fallen victim to our nasty little stomach assassin. I'm still holding out though, strong willed and steel stomached.
CJ and Lexi start to perk up and begin to play a little. Elli, again, has appeared like her usual self. That is until 10:30pm rolls around. CJ and Lexi are in bed asleep. Elli, Carlos, and I are lounging on our bed, no longer the VRB, stripped of it's armor, when Elli turns to me and starts to vomit. Again. This time all over me and the blankets. Dang it! I let my guard down! We were almost at the end of this sickness with relatively few messes to be cleaned and little laundry to be done. When the waves had ebbed Elli gets put in the bath and I get cleaned up. The dirty laundry gets put in the washer and new bed clothes placed on the bed. We retire to bed, this time with towels underneath and a bowl by our side.
Monday morning comes with no further incidents. CJ and Lexi are up before anyone and dressed for school. Carlos is recovered sufficiently to attend work. And me, well, now I'm feeling a bit rumbly in my tumbly.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Vomitus Maximus: Part II
I answer and sure enough Becky informs me that Lexi just made a mess of the bed she was sleeping in as well as leaving a trail down the hall. Again, lovely. I tell her I'll be right there but she offers to drive Lexi to me instead. What an angel Becky is, I truly mean this, it was 2:45 am at this point. We hang up and I go to the livingroom to wait. After about a minute I call Becky and tell her to just bring CJ as well because he'll likely be next. They arrive roughly 10 minutes later. I hug Becky and thank her sincerely and we get the kids in the house. Lexi begins retching. Luckily, I am prepared with a bowl!! Ha ha, no mess this time evil flu virus!! After this episode I get Lexi settled in the VRB and assess CJ. He tells me his stomach feels fine and I believe him. I set him up in bed with Carlos. With a towel underneath and a bowl just in case.
As the night gets closer to morning Lexi gets sick a few more times and each time disaster is averted with the trusty bowls I so carefully placed next to each sick child. After each occurance I swap a clean bowl for the dirty one and empty and thoroughly clean and dry the used bowl and place it ready for the next swap. I had 4 bowls that were being rotated, one next to each child and the spare to swap in and out. It worked beautifully and no towels were soiled in this business of being sick.
Flash forward to 6am and CJ slips into our room and wakes me with "Mommy, my tummy hurts." He then kneels down, cups his hands over his mouth, and starts to heave. I grab the nearest bowl and manage to catch, again, roughly 99% of the expelled stomach contents. The other 1% being on the wrist of his long sleeved shirt. Once he's done, he gets cleaned up, clothes changed, and set up in the VRB. So, now we have 2 five year olds, 1 two year old, and 1 very tired 28 year old in a full sized bed loaded with towels. And where is Carlos you ask? Oh comfortably sleeping in our king sized bed and blissfully unaware of the scenes that have unfolded that night. Oh so wrong, I know. I'm not bitter though, not much anyway.
At around 9am I kick Carlos out of our bed and tell him to move into Lexi's room, I'm setting up the VRB in the king bed. He obliges and I set up the room and bed. CJ and Lexi are still in the middle of the muck but Elli seems to be doing a whole lot better at this point and is very playful. Carlos decides to take Elli and go to his parents house to keep her out of my hair as I tend to the twins. Overall, it worked well. The kids slept most of the day away when they weren't experiencing tummy tsunamis and so I was able to recoup some of my lost sleep. The dvd player played a steady stream of all the Shrek movies, Little Mermaid, Cars, Up, The Jungle Book 2, etc. I could probably recite the Shrek movies from memory now, we watched them so. many. times. this. weekend. Again, no bitterness, I promise.
Towards late evening, I called Carlos and told him that he and Elli should just stay the night at his parents'. It would be easier that way. She had felt fine all day, playing and eating as normal. He agreed and we said goodnight. CJ and Lexi fall asleep early which is unusual especially with all the sleep they had that day. They were really sick. I fall asleep early, once again a semi sleep, my hyper vigilant vomit detecting mode still in full effect, although not needed that night. I get awakened by my cell phone again at 2:45am. What the heck is this?! Am I stuck in some disgusting, puke filled, Groundhog Day?!
~To Be Continued~
As the night gets closer to morning Lexi gets sick a few more times and each time disaster is averted with the trusty bowls I so carefully placed next to each sick child. After each occurance I swap a clean bowl for the dirty one and empty and thoroughly clean and dry the used bowl and place it ready for the next swap. I had 4 bowls that were being rotated, one next to each child and the spare to swap in and out. It worked beautifully and no towels were soiled in this business of being sick.
Flash forward to 6am and CJ slips into our room and wakes me with "Mommy, my tummy hurts." He then kneels down, cups his hands over his mouth, and starts to heave. I grab the nearest bowl and manage to catch, again, roughly 99% of the expelled stomach contents. The other 1% being on the wrist of his long sleeved shirt. Once he's done, he gets cleaned up, clothes changed, and set up in the VRB. So, now we have 2 five year olds, 1 two year old, and 1 very tired 28 year old in a full sized bed loaded with towels. And where is Carlos you ask? Oh comfortably sleeping in our king sized bed and blissfully unaware of the scenes that have unfolded that night. Oh so wrong, I know. I'm not bitter though, not much anyway.
At around 9am I kick Carlos out of our bed and tell him to move into Lexi's room, I'm setting up the VRB in the king bed. He obliges and I set up the room and bed. CJ and Lexi are still in the middle of the muck but Elli seems to be doing a whole lot better at this point and is very playful. Carlos decides to take Elli and go to his parents house to keep her out of my hair as I tend to the twins. Overall, it worked well. The kids slept most of the day away when they weren't experiencing tummy tsunamis and so I was able to recoup some of my lost sleep. The dvd player played a steady stream of all the Shrek movies, Little Mermaid, Cars, Up, The Jungle Book 2, etc. I could probably recite the Shrek movies from memory now, we watched them so. many. times. this. weekend. Again, no bitterness, I promise.
Towards late evening, I called Carlos and told him that he and Elli should just stay the night at his parents'. It would be easier that way. She had felt fine all day, playing and eating as normal. He agreed and we said goodnight. CJ and Lexi fall asleep early which is unusual especially with all the sleep they had that day. They were really sick. I fall asleep early, once again a semi sleep, my hyper vigilant vomit detecting mode still in full effect, although not needed that night. I get awakened by my cell phone again at 2:45am. What the heck is this?! Am I stuck in some disgusting, puke filled, Groundhog Day?!
~To Be Continued~
Vomitus Maximus: Part I
The title of this post is the perfect description of what my weekend consisted of. Shall I give you a run down of the events? Too much information? Maybe, no probably. Not interested? Oh well, here I go anyway. Misery loves company afterall and after what I've dealt with I can't not share the splendor of dealing with a family sized stomach flu epidemic...I'm apologizing up front.
So Friday evening I head off to the gym with the kids in tow. I love my gym because the gym that I frequent (yay YMCA!!) has child care that I can utilize for up to 2 hours a day whilst I try to drop the pounds and baggage that the last 6 years have bestowed upon me. My kids get to play while I sweat off Tuesday night's Cheesecake Factory dinner, can't think of a better scenario.
Flash forward to 8pm and I am done at the gym. The kids and I are now driving to my in-laws' home where Carlos is waiting for us. I park, get CJ and Lexi out of the car, unbuckle Elli and she promptly begins to regurgitate dinner. Now I, being equipped with lightning quick motherly instincts, instantly place my hands underneath the flow of my child's half digested dinner in a cupping fashion and manage to catch 99% of the nastiness.
After waiting to see if she is done I turn around and begin to look for some way to dispose of the contents of my hands. I begin pacing and weighing my options. My first instinct was to just drop it where I was on the street but then I realized I'd then be stepping in it. Not desireable. I then thought about the sidewalk. No, gross. I would hate to be taking a morning stroll and come across someone else's vomit in my path so I decided I wouldn't do that to someone else. Ooh the grass! My in-law's lawn or the neighbor's lawn? Hmm, decisions decisions. Again my conscience pricked at me and I threw that option out.
At this point CJ and Lexi come back out of the house to see why I hadn't followed them. I yell for them to get daddy and tell him Elli had thrown up and to bring a trash bag. My command was immediately followed by their running shrieking back into the house "Daaaaddddyyy Elllliiiii threeeewwww upppppp!!!" Carlos comes rushing out and gets as far as the end of the house and I see he doesn't have a bag. I yell "Go get a trash bag!" If I start to give you the impression of Kate Gosselin from Jon and Kate Plus 8 right about now, remember that I've been holding vomit in my hands for roughly 3 minutes now. A little abruptness is understandable dontcha think?
Carlos returns with the most wonderful trash bag I've ever seen and I instantly drop the muck in my hands down into the bag. Carlos, oh great husband and father that he is, has quite a weak stomach when it comes to bodily fluids especially when those bodily fluids are not where they're meant to be and he drops the bag and staggers several feet back retching and heaving. Thank goodness they were of the dry variety and none of his stomach contents were expelled because that would've just ticked me off. I mean, if he were to throw up on the sidewalk at that point it would have rendered my holding the vomit for over 5 minutes meaningless. Thankfully he was a good husband and didn't disappoint in his ability to hold back the floodgates. But not for long (oooh the foreshadowing, I need the sound effects they have on TV "dun duun duuunnnn")...
We get Elli inside and cleaned up. Not much of a mess to clean up though, remember my heroic effort at containing all the vomit in my hands! She is acting fine at this point. Her usual playful, ornery self. No fever, no lethargy. We decide that maybe she had eaten too much at dinner and played a little too hard at the gym with perhaps a little car sickness thrown in. Carlos and I had plans to go out on a late dinner date and went ahead with the plan since Elli seemed fine. We put the kids to bed at Carlos' parents leaving Elli in the care of Tia Becky and off we went to Carraba's Italian Grill. Mmmm.
We return about an hour later and find Elli alseep on the downstairs couch in different clothes than what we had left her in, being watched over by Carlos' mom and sister. She had indeed thrown up again. All over Becky's bed. Sorry Becky...
Since CJ and Lexi are asleep upstairs we make the decision to leave them for the night and just us three go home. We wrap her in a blanket and I pick her up and lay her head on my shoulder. We head out the door to the car when she starts to throw up again. This time down the front of my shirt. Lovely. We decide to just press on and clean up when we arrive home.
We arrive home and get both myself and Elli cleaned up. I set up a Vomit Ready Bed (VRB) in CJ's room for Elli and I to share. This VRB consists of towels lining the bed and pillows, a medium sized bowl within easy grasp, roll of toilet paper, and sippy cup of water. I lay Elli down on the towel covered pillow, pull the blanket over her and then place a towel over the top of the blanket so that if she does up chuck again I'll be washing towels instead of bedding. Ingenious I tell you.
We retire to bed without anymore incidents and I fall into a semi sleep, afraid to fall deeply into slumber for fear of Elli drowning me in a stream of puke. I am awakened by the sound of my cell phone ringing and once I'm able to locate it among all the towels I realize it's Becky. Oh no. One of the twins is sick.
~To Be Continued~
So Friday evening I head off to the gym with the kids in tow. I love my gym because the gym that I frequent (yay YMCA!!) has child care that I can utilize for up to 2 hours a day whilst I try to drop the pounds and baggage that the last 6 years have bestowed upon me. My kids get to play while I sweat off Tuesday night's Cheesecake Factory dinner, can't think of a better scenario.
Flash forward to 8pm and I am done at the gym. The kids and I are now driving to my in-laws' home where Carlos is waiting for us. I park, get CJ and Lexi out of the car, unbuckle Elli and she promptly begins to regurgitate dinner. Now I, being equipped with lightning quick motherly instincts, instantly place my hands underneath the flow of my child's half digested dinner in a cupping fashion and manage to catch 99% of the nastiness.
After waiting to see if she is done I turn around and begin to look for some way to dispose of the contents of my hands. I begin pacing and weighing my options. My first instinct was to just drop it where I was on the street but then I realized I'd then be stepping in it. Not desireable. I then thought about the sidewalk. No, gross. I would hate to be taking a morning stroll and come across someone else's vomit in my path so I decided I wouldn't do that to someone else. Ooh the grass! My in-law's lawn or the neighbor's lawn? Hmm, decisions decisions. Again my conscience pricked at me and I threw that option out.
At this point CJ and Lexi come back out of the house to see why I hadn't followed them. I yell for them to get daddy and tell him Elli had thrown up and to bring a trash bag. My command was immediately followed by their running shrieking back into the house "Daaaaddddyyy Elllliiiii threeeewwww upppppp!!!" Carlos comes rushing out and gets as far as the end of the house and I see he doesn't have a bag. I yell "Go get a trash bag!" If I start to give you the impression of Kate Gosselin from Jon and Kate Plus 8 right about now, remember that I've been holding vomit in my hands for roughly 3 minutes now. A little abruptness is understandable dontcha think?
Carlos returns with the most wonderful trash bag I've ever seen and I instantly drop the muck in my hands down into the bag. Carlos, oh great husband and father that he is, has quite a weak stomach when it comes to bodily fluids especially when those bodily fluids are not where they're meant to be and he drops the bag and staggers several feet back retching and heaving. Thank goodness they were of the dry variety and none of his stomach contents were expelled because that would've just ticked me off. I mean, if he were to throw up on the sidewalk at that point it would have rendered my holding the vomit for over 5 minutes meaningless. Thankfully he was a good husband and didn't disappoint in his ability to hold back the floodgates. But not for long (oooh the foreshadowing, I need the sound effects they have on TV "dun duun duuunnnn")...
We get Elli inside and cleaned up. Not much of a mess to clean up though, remember my heroic effort at containing all the vomit in my hands! She is acting fine at this point. Her usual playful, ornery self. No fever, no lethargy. We decide that maybe she had eaten too much at dinner and played a little too hard at the gym with perhaps a little car sickness thrown in. Carlos and I had plans to go out on a late dinner date and went ahead with the plan since Elli seemed fine. We put the kids to bed at Carlos' parents leaving Elli in the care of Tia Becky and off we went to Carraba's Italian Grill. Mmmm.
We return about an hour later and find Elli alseep on the downstairs couch in different clothes than what we had left her in, being watched over by Carlos' mom and sister. She had indeed thrown up again. All over Becky's bed. Sorry Becky...
Since CJ and Lexi are asleep upstairs we make the decision to leave them for the night and just us three go home. We wrap her in a blanket and I pick her up and lay her head on my shoulder. We head out the door to the car when she starts to throw up again. This time down the front of my shirt. Lovely. We decide to just press on and clean up when we arrive home.
We arrive home and get both myself and Elli cleaned up. I set up a Vomit Ready Bed (VRB) in CJ's room for Elli and I to share. This VRB consists of towels lining the bed and pillows, a medium sized bowl within easy grasp, roll of toilet paper, and sippy cup of water. I lay Elli down on the towel covered pillow, pull the blanket over her and then place a towel over the top of the blanket so that if she does up chuck again I'll be washing towels instead of bedding. Ingenious I tell you.
We retire to bed without anymore incidents and I fall into a semi sleep, afraid to fall deeply into slumber for fear of Elli drowning me in a stream of puke. I am awakened by the sound of my cell phone ringing and once I'm able to locate it among all the towels I realize it's Becky. Oh no. One of the twins is sick.
~To Be Continued~
Monday, April 12, 2010
New Background For A New Start
Hello world,
So, how ya been? Me? I've been just peachy. Not that you'd know that, I've sorta fallen off the face of the planet as far as this blog is concerned. BUT, I've just wasted more time than I'll admit trying to get a new background up so I'm recommitted! I'm not very savvy at digital scrapbooking or html so now that I've got a pretty good headache from scrolling through 25 pages of backgrounds at cutestblogontheblock and finally did the whole eeny meeny miney moe to pick one, I'm sitting down to type up my first post in, oh I don't know, 9 months.
Yes, NINE freaking months! Long enough to grow a baby. No, I didn't grow a baby in the months since my last post, just in case you were curious. Would have been nice though to have that as a handy excuse for why I still haven't lost the weight I want to. Sigh. Or an acceptable reason for why I haven't blogged since June. Instead I can only offer the reason that I discovered Facebook and felt satisfied at leaving little snippets of my life on my status update. It was easier than the blog, but ultimately not as satisfying. What finally convinced me to start again was going through all the posts on here and seeing the pictures of my kids and reading the stories that I hadn't thought of in so long. I need this, to document for me and my kids the life we enjoy. So here we go...
I'll spare you a long, boring recap of the last nine months, just rest assured that the kids made messes, threw tantrums, discovered new things, grew several inches, wore out of most of their clothes, and made my life generally wonderful.
We are nearing the end of this school year and CJ and Lexi's last year of preschool. And with that end we will be embarking on a new chapter for our entire family - homeschooling. Yes, you read that correctly. I just might be nuts, I'll let you know for sure in a couple of months. Lunacy aside, I'm really excited about this decision. I didn't always look so favorably on homeschooling but I'll just leave the explanation short and simple, we've been led to this decision by Someone who knows a whole lot more about a whole lot more things ;-) Who am I to argue?
I've been researching curriculum and reading blogs, books, websites, forums, pretty much anything I can find on homeschooling and it just feels right. So, if you think I'm crazy and going to screw up my kids just be grateful they're my kids and not yours. Oh and remember that just because I'm choosing this for my family does not make it a judgement on what you choose for yours. A little reciprocating can go a long way. Wow, haven't even started homeschooling yet and I'm already defensive. I've just come across some rather negative and judgemental attitudes about it when, frankly, I can't for the life of me figure out how it affects the other person.
Okay, sudden topic change, I'm finding this writing thing a little difficult. I feel out of rhythm and choppy. Sorry about that, I guess it'll take me a while to get comfortable again. This place feels a little foreign, or like a childhood home you're visiting again after 20 years. I'll get the hang of it again, bear with me. So with that I'll end it here. I've missed this, and the comments people used to leave. Dang, that's another thing, I'll have to get my readers back. Baby come back, you can blame it all on me!! (I'm thinking of the Swiffer Wet Jet commercials, lol).
So, how ya been? Me? I've been just peachy. Not that you'd know that, I've sorta fallen off the face of the planet as far as this blog is concerned. BUT, I've just wasted more time than I'll admit trying to get a new background up so I'm recommitted! I'm not very savvy at digital scrapbooking or html so now that I've got a pretty good headache from scrolling through 25 pages of backgrounds at cutestblogontheblock and finally did the whole eeny meeny miney moe to pick one, I'm sitting down to type up my first post in, oh I don't know, 9 months.
Yes, NINE freaking months! Long enough to grow a baby. No, I didn't grow a baby in the months since my last post, just in case you were curious. Would have been nice though to have that as a handy excuse for why I still haven't lost the weight I want to. Sigh. Or an acceptable reason for why I haven't blogged since June. Instead I can only offer the reason that I discovered Facebook and felt satisfied at leaving little snippets of my life on my status update. It was easier than the blog, but ultimately not as satisfying. What finally convinced me to start again was going through all the posts on here and seeing the pictures of my kids and reading the stories that I hadn't thought of in so long. I need this, to document for me and my kids the life we enjoy. So here we go...
I'll spare you a long, boring recap of the last nine months, just rest assured that the kids made messes, threw tantrums, discovered new things, grew several inches, wore out of most of their clothes, and made my life generally wonderful.
We are nearing the end of this school year and CJ and Lexi's last year of preschool. And with that end we will be embarking on a new chapter for our entire family - homeschooling. Yes, you read that correctly. I just might be nuts, I'll let you know for sure in a couple of months. Lunacy aside, I'm really excited about this decision. I didn't always look so favorably on homeschooling but I'll just leave the explanation short and simple, we've been led to this decision by Someone who knows a whole lot more about a whole lot more things ;-) Who am I to argue?
I've been researching curriculum and reading blogs, books, websites, forums, pretty much anything I can find on homeschooling and it just feels right. So, if you think I'm crazy and going to screw up my kids just be grateful they're my kids and not yours. Oh and remember that just because I'm choosing this for my family does not make it a judgement on what you choose for yours. A little reciprocating can go a long way. Wow, haven't even started homeschooling yet and I'm already defensive. I've just come across some rather negative and judgemental attitudes about it when, frankly, I can't for the life of me figure out how it affects the other person.
Okay, sudden topic change, I'm finding this writing thing a little difficult. I feel out of rhythm and choppy. Sorry about that, I guess it'll take me a while to get comfortable again. This place feels a little foreign, or like a childhood home you're visiting again after 20 years. I'll get the hang of it again, bear with me. So with that I'll end it here. I've missed this, and the comments people used to leave. Dang, that's another thing, I'll have to get my readers back. Baby come back, you can blame it all on me!! (I'm thinking of the Swiffer Wet Jet commercials, lol).
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