Now it's her turn

I'm home with JC today. She has been running a fever in the evenings. It's been odd...it's only a few hours each evening, and ibuprofin does wonders! Each morning she wakes up feeling pretty good, but having very little energy. The doctor decided that since she has a cold and HT just got over bronchitis, combined with the time of year and everything going around, he wanted to go ahead and put her on antibiotics. I was hesitant because I don't like to over medicate, but I do know it's probably for the best. I think having sick kids, even kids who are truly HEALTHY but just aren't feeling well, is one of the worst feelings in the world. As a parent, I know how I feel and I know it's going to be better. With my kids, I always worry that it's something worse, something serious, and that is the most terrifying feeling in the world. Hopefully another day of rest and another good night sleep, and she'll be fever free and back to school tomorrow!

Home Alone

HT has finally gone back to school today. He missed four consecutive days, all the way back to last Tuesday. Last Monday I didn't work but we were out the door before school started to get JR to an orthodontist appointment. The week before that I worked every day, so the last day I had a relaxing morning at home was November 10 (I worked the 11th as well). I'll be honest, I am so enjoying the peace and quiet, and knowing that I have almost 7 full hours all to myself! At the same time, I really enjoyed having HT around the last couple of days. It absolutely broke my heart to leave him Tuesday morning to go to school, even though I know he was in good hands with my husband. But "Dad" isn't "Mom", and since he was still pretty sick that morning I really hated leaving him. The good news is that the 15+ hours that he slept Monday night helped him to have a pretty good day Tuesday, and yesterday was even better. I regret that I had to turn down a sub job yesterday, but I don't regret one bit that it was to stay home with my little guy. And although I would've been happy to go in today, I'm also not complaining that I'm home alone!

I live with Amelia Bedelia

My husband and I have known for a while that we live with Amelia Bedelia. For those of you not familiar with the books, Amelia is VERY literal, and it causes all kinds of comedic moments. JC has read many of her books starting back to when she was first reading, and I'm beginning to think she might not see the humor in them. Because, it turns out, she is exactly the same way. While we've joked about it for awhile, the last few months it has become more and more obvious. When we were driving to a family reunion in August, JC asked if we had turned the correct way. I answered (rather sarcastically), "No JC. I purposely told your father to make a wrong turn." She answered, "Great. Now we have to turn around and do it again." A couple of weeks ago we were working on math, and it asked her to double 5. She answered "25". I said that it wasn't multiplying, it was as if she had two fives. She said, "Oh, 55!". Nope, not quite. Last week on a test, she had missed a map question that asked her which dot was closest to 88 degrees latitude. I asked why she had chosen the dot that she chose when another was clearly ON the line. She explained to me that she had chosen the dot that was closest to the WORDS, 88 degrees latitude. Oh my! The best example was last night. I had not been thrilled initially with the Christmas tree my husband purchased. However, once it was decorated I had to admit it didn't look bad at all. As we were all watching Rudolph together as a family, my husband said, "I really like our new tree." I replied, "It's growing on me." JC immediately piped in with, "Huh? It doesn't look any taller to me." My, my, my, what else can we say????

When it rains it pours

It has rained, literally non-stop since sometime Saturday night. Just when we think it might actually let up a bit, it starts coming down harder. I can only imagine what kind of flooding may happen in our region from this!

HT is home and is a sick little guy. He's been iffy since early last week, but overall he didn't really seem that bad. That is, until last night. That poor child coughed all night, and none of us got much sleep. I took him to the doctor this morning, and he has bronchitis. Because he is asthmatic we want to make sure he doesn't develop walking pneumonia, so he's on an antibiotic, albuterol, and (the best of all!) cough medicine with codeine. I'm hopeful we can all get some sleep this evening.

We received a call from JC's principal this morning. They had a classroom spelling bee, and when JC missed her word she stormed across the room and threw a pencil. She was sent directly to the principal's office. I remember this happening once in second grade. She gets so angry at herself and just doesn't seem to know how to handle it. Unfortunately, her actions when angry at herself are a danger to others. I explained to the principal that while there was absolutely no excuse for her actions, I suspected the fact that she's as exhausted as the rest of us probably caused her behavior to be worse than normal. And then there is the fact that it's spelling...for some very odd reason she expects herself to be absolutely perfect at spelling. She is not this way about any other subject, but when it comes to spelling anything less than a 100% can send her into tears. I have no idea why, but she's always been that way.

I'm scheduled to work so my wonderful husband is staying home tomorrow. HT isn't allowed back to school until Wednesday at the earliest, and possibly later in the week. I'm so grateful to my husband for being able and willing to do that, and hopefully HT will be feeling better quickly!

Black Friday

I'm happy to report there was absolutely no shopping done by me today whatsoever. I don't like shopping, and I don't like crowds, so you can imagine how Black Friday is not my idea of fun. However, my husband seems to have done some online purchasing (based on what my credit card says), and he also ventured out today to try to buy us a new Christmas tree. We have always put two trees up, but this year there is no room in our dining room for the second one. We knew that meant the one in the living room would have to be bigger because the old one didn't have enough room for all of our ornaments. This new tree was proving to be more challenging than I had anticipated. First of all, almost all the trees I saw were pre-lit and I did NOT want that. I'm picky about how my lights are on a tree and I've never seen a pre-lit tree that lived up to my standards. Secondly, the unlit trees that we were able to find were almost sold out. Apparently I'm supposed to think about trees in October, not at Thanksgiving. Fortunately, he found one this morning at Target, and I'm very excited to work on getting it up tomorrow evening. First though, friends will be coming over and watching the OSU/Michigan game. Go Buckeyes!

Thanksgiving tradition

A few years ago my husband and I began a Thanksgiving tradition all our own. The night before Thanksgiving, he and I sit down with a glass of wine (or two) and watch all the Thanksgiving episodes from the sitcom Friends. The Thanksgiving episodes are many of the best, and honestly, some of them are some of the funniest things I have ever seen on television. One even has Eddie Cahill in it, which doesn't hurt either! :) My husband is getting ready to make a cheesecake to take to my grandmother's house tomorrow and the kids are outside sweeping and raking leaves, but after dinner it is all about my husband and I sitting down to our DVD's!

Mom guilt

Today I have a very serious case of "mom guilt". JR called about 30 minutes after school started to ask if I could bring him his homework. I explained that HT was home sick, and since we are having absolutely miserable weather, I wasn't going to take him out in this weather. I could tell that he was disappointed, and we both know that this is going to adversely affect his grade. I can't help but feel guilty. I've tried to tell myself that it's a good lesson to learn. All he had to do was to put the homework in his folder when he finished, instead of being lazy and just putting it back on his clipboard. Hopefully he'll remember this lesson next time. I try to tell myself that if I had been working today or out running errands, the result would've been the same. But since I told him I wouldn't bring it up, I have this terrible guilty feeling that what he is going to remember is that I wasn't there for him. I know that I'm there for him in hundreds of ways every day, but I can't help but feel the guilt!