Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours - Merry Christmas!

No Sleep for the Weary

Y'know, if it's not one thing, it's another.

Last week, Evan threw up on the off-white living room carpet...after eating blackberries.  Everyone talks about how blueberries are so staining, but no one ever mentions blackberries.  Luckily, the giant purple stain came out and it was one of those non-repeated fluke pukes.

And then I caught the stomach bug from you-know-where.  By day three of consuming nothing but miniscule sips of water and tiny bites of saltines, I thought I was going to die.  I never had a fever and thankfully no one else caught it, but for a while there in my delusional mind, I thought for sure that somehow I'd contracted some mutant combination of rotovirus/cholera that was going to land me in the hospital.  But, hey, I'm five pounds lighter now, so why should I complain, right?

And now, on top of his recent and on-going medical issues, Ryan has a terrible cold.  As I type this at 6 something in morning, he is snoring like a freight train (and has been since 4 something), which is about twenty times louder than your usual run-of-the mill train-type snoring.  I'm lucky that I got to sleep so much during my bout with the stomach bug because I'm sure as heck not going to sleep again any time soon.

I'd go sleep in the living room, but a) it's adjacent to our bedroom and I can still hear him snoring through the door (yes, it's that loud) and b) he's been diagnosed with a slight case of apnea (which might be causing the seizures) so I spend most nights just dozing and making sure that he's breathing and not sleeping on his back.  So I guess it's not like I've been getting lots of sleep anyway.

The doctors said we should look into having his tonsils taken out and that might alleviate the apnea issues and in turn that might lower his chances of having more seizures.  We thought about waiting a bit so that we can get through Evan's tear duct surgery next month (yes, yet another medical issue!), but as I listen to him snore so deeply that the bed is shaking right along with him, I'm tempted to go find a kitchen knife and perform the surgery on him myself.

Don't get me wrong, I love him more than life itself, but y'know, I need to sleep.  I haven't had a good night's rest in nearly a month and clearly it's taking a toll on my mood and my sanity.  Not even Christmas can get me out of this grouchy mood.  Now that's pretty sad.

10

Ten years ago today, Ryan and I said our wedding vows.  Ten years.  Wow.  (For a wedding picture, click here.)

We don't have anything big planned, not with Christmas next week and a family trip to Disney next summer.  We might go out to dinner on Saturday, if I can get rid of this nasty stomach bug (nothing says "Happy 10th Anniversary" like waking up to a vomiting wife.)  And if I'm still sick, well....oh well.  We'll live.

The sweet husband that he is, Ryan bought me a new iPod Touch as my gift.  He even wrapped it in foil since the 10 year anniversary gift is supposed to be aluminum.  (Honestly, I'd like to know just who came up with the list of traditional anniversary gifts and what the point of all of it is.)

What did I get him?  Nothing.  Not even a card.  Yes, I'm a bad wife.  And yes, I am feeling completely guilty.  But we've never been big on anniversary gifts (again, Christmas is next week) and I just never a found a card that I liked.  I guess that's what happens when you both have fairly sarcastic senses of humor and all the card companies like to print are really sappy cards.

So, Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband.  I can't wait to see what the next ten years have in store for us.

Spinning the Gerbil

After dinner last night:

Sydney:  Wanna hear the Hanukkah song I learned in school today?

Me:  OK.

Sydney:  It has a dance that goes with it.  (starts humming and dancing)

Me:  Go for it.

Sydney:  It's called "The Gerbil Song."
               (singing)
               Gerbil, gerbil, gerbil
               I made you out of clay.
               Gerbil, gerbil, gerbil
               With gerbil I will play.

Me:  Umm, do you mean dreidel?

Sydney:  Yeah!  That's it!


And then she spent the next ten minutes singing the song and doing the little dance that goes with it.

Love that kid.

Comic Relief

With all that's happened in the last several days, we've still found plenty to laugh about.  What's got me laughing the most is, well, frankly, it's mean.

During his last seizure, Ryan bit down on his tongue really hard and while the bruising is gone, the swelling is still there.  The poor guy's tongue was about three times it's normal size for a few days.  The swollen tongue has led to a terrible lisp and I'm sure I'll be struck by lightning for laughing about it, but it is absolutely hilarious to listen to him talk.

I laugh the hardest when he's reading the boys their bedtime story.  The current favorite is Dr. Seuss' Ten Apples up on Top! and when Ryan reads it to them, it sounds something like this:

"Come on!  Come on!
Come one!  Come all!
We have to make
the applth fall.

They mutht not get
our applth down.
Come on!  Come on!
Get out of town!

Applth!
Applth up on top!
All of thith
mutht thtop
Thtop
THTOP!"

How can I not laugh, especially when it's in rhyming form?

Anyway, both the swelling and the lisp are almost gone and my laughter will soon turn into a chuckle.

It may be cruel, but it is nice to laugh again.

Scared to Sleep

**Sigh**

It happened again.  This past Thursday, Ryan had two seizures, one around midnight and the other around six in the morning.  The first time I managed to keep him from falling off the bed.  The second time I was in the bathroom and he hit the floor.  He bit his tongue really hard and there is now a blood stain on the carpet that I cannot get out.

There was another trip to the emergency room.   Another clear CT scan.  Another ER doctor telling me that there was nothing they could do, other than prescribing an anti-seizure medication, and we should call the neurologist.

So I called her office (which is in the building next to the hospital).  She didn't come see him.  She didn't even call me back.

(We're finding a new neurologist.)

Ryan went straight to bed and slept for twenty straight hours.  He got up once to use the bathroom.  He ate nothing but a pudding cup in over 36 hours.

The kids were told that he had a really bad headache and that he needed to rest.  They're still wondering why I won't let him drive and why our bed is now turned sideways and up against the wall.  It may look ridiculous, but there's no way I'm going to let him fall out of bed again.

Me?  I think I've cried more in the last few days than I have in the last two years.

And I can't sleep.  I've always had insomnia issues, but now I'm actually scared to sleep.  We go to bed and I lie there for hours listening to him breathe.  Every little movement has me on edge.  He rolled over and hit the wall last night and I almost jumped out of my skin.

He's feeling better today and acting more like himself.  He still has a bit of a lisp thanks to a still swollen tongue, but his memory is improving and his muscle aches have subsided.

I don't know when I'll let him drive again.

I don't know when I'll sleep again, either.

And I have no idea what to tell the kids.

I gotta tell you, it kinda sucks.

Pet Peeves

I woke up in a mood this morning.  Everything seems to be getting on my nerves for some reason.  I know it will pass and by this afternoon whatever bee flew in my bonnet will fly away, but for now, I'm just in a mood.

What better time to vent, right?  Currently, I'm peeved by:

- the wind chimes that I usually adore.  We put them up in the back of the house so that we can hear them, but a cold front came through at 4 this morning and they've been jingling non-stop and I've been awake ever since.  (I think I've just figured out why I'm in this crummy mood.)  I'm fairly certain the wind chimes will be finding a new home soon.

- parents who take their kids out of school (real school, not pre-school) for an entire week or two to go skiing, to Disney or something similar just to "beat the crowds."  It's one thing to take their kids out for a few hours or even a day to go see relatives or something, but a whole week?  To go to Disney?  Really?  What are they teaching their kids about the importance of education?

- people who don't buckle their kids into car seats.  When I see a small child walking around in the back seat of a car or sitting on an adult's lap in the front seat I want to scream, "What is wrong with you people?"

- bloggers who edit their posts to only show a sentence or two in a feeder so that if you want to read the whole post, you have to go to the actual web page to read it.  I know they do it so that they get a higher number of page views for advertising/payment purposes, but all it does is make me delete them from my blog roll.  So long, Crockpot 365.

- people who don't understand that we don't like dogs.  We're just not dog people.  Two of our three kids are warming up to them and aren't as scared of them as they used to be, but one is still terrified of them.  We're working on it, but in the mean time, I wish some people would be a little more understanding.

- the yummy garlic chicken recipe that makes the house smell like garlic for three full days after I cook it.  It's too yummy to not cook it anymore, but sheesh, the smell is killing me.

- the list of people we have to buy gifts for this Christmas keeps getting bigger each year.  Between us, Ryan and I have three sets of parents, five siblings (with spouses), eight nieces and nephews (with another on the way) and four great nephews (and another on the way).  I honestly don't know how much more I can stretch our Christmas budget.

But, on the upside, the boys asked Santa for only one thing each this year and I managed to find them online yesterday at a pretty good deal.  Whew!  At least I feel can feel good about that!

Wanna play along?  What's one of your current pet peeves, holiday-related or otherwise?


P.S. I promise to be in a better mood for my next post.  :)