Top Ten

These are the current top ten most commonly heard phrases from our sons, age 3 years 9 months:

10. Because I said so 
9.  I'm not your friend (only by AJ) 
8.  Can somebody wipe my bottom?
7.  I want a treat
6.  There's no monsters? (only by AJ)
5.  Watch this, Mom!
4.  I want to watch something on the TV (only by MJ)
3.  I want to buy that!
2.  I'm thirsty (or hungry)
1.  Why?

When It Rains. . .

it pours. Monday night MJ woke us up with a croupy cough and wheezing. And then AJ woke me up with ear pain (he'd had ear pain and fever earlier in the day as well). And MM woke up vomiting.

Because MM was so sick himself, it fell to me to take the boys to their pediatrician first thing in the morning on Tuesday. (Fortunately, the NP was able to examine them both even though only AJ had an appointment.) AJ was diagnosed with the expected ear infection, and we learned that the tube has fallen out of his right ear. MJ was diagnosed with croup and a sinus infection. Antibiotics were prescribed for both, as well as a dose of steroids for MJ.

I missed a group firm photo for a local magazine (as well as most of a day's work), but that's life. On the upside, all three of them are much improved today, and everyone is back to work/school.

The one saving grace was that I am about 95% recovered from my own illness. Had I still been sick also, it would have really been a rough day.

#MicroblogMondays 60: Steroids Edition

The day after my last post, when it was clear I wasn't getting better, I finally broke down and went to urgent care. (I hate going to the doctor when sick and will usually avoid doing so until/unless it becomes obvious I won't get better without some type of intervention.) I was diagnosed with bronchitis and prescribed a ZPak, steroids and a cough suppressant, and on Friday night, I had my first decent night's sleep all week, which contributed to my feeling much better on Saturday.

By yesterday, I was close to my normal energy level, and although I am still coughing, the episodes are fewer and farther between, shorter and less violent. That allowed me to make a significant dent in the virtual mountain of laundry that had accumulated over the past week when I was feeling particularly poorly. I washed and dried nine loads and folded and put away seven of those, with two more waiting for me to fold and put them away this evening.

I also cleaned the kitchen, including mopping the floor, and vacuumed, in addition to the usual weekend trip to the grocery store and keeping the boys entertained. (They had tee ball on Saturday, and on Sunday we took them to a nearby ranch's "pumpkin patch" -- really, just pumpkins stacked on and around bales of hay, but they don't know the difference and had fun.)

It felt good to be productive and start to get a handle on things at home, as well as feeling well enough to enjoy hanging out with my sons. Thank you, steroids, for the quick recovery.

Now to chip away at the work "to do" list. . . .

I hate being sick

As of today, I have been coughing for two weeks straight. I caught a cold at the end of September and was just getting over it, with the cough still lingering, when I came down with another cold (this one more severe--worse sore throat and ear pain in addition to congestion) last Saturday.

My cough has been so bad the last three nights that I've hardly slept. I've tried everything that is available over-the-counter, and none of it has helped much. I'm frickin' exhausted.

(TMI: I also have urinary stress incontinence since having my sons, which makes for a lot of extra fun when I have a bad cough like this. Good times. . . .)

I'm really more annoyed by this than anything. Things had been going relatively smoothly for me. . . well, as smoothly as they ever seem to go in my life post-children. Since my hospitalization in early May, I'd only been sick once, with a GI virus in early July. I had recently started exercising regularly for the first time since my sons were born, and I'd managed to keep up the habit for three consecutive weeks before these colds hit me. Now I've had to put that on hold for no other reason than that I am absolutely worn out.

It isn't even cold and flu season yet! And our daytime highs here are still hovering around 100 degrees!

Anyway. I know that no one ever died from a cold, that there is nothing that can be done to shorten the duration of a cold, and that I'll be back to normal in another week or so. But right now, this just sucks. I just want to sleep and stop having to wear a diaper-like Po.ise pad all the time.

Playing catch-up

The title says it all: that seems to be the theme of my life these days. As I said in a comment on one of gwinne's posts recently, I fell behind on a variety of things when I was pregnant with my sons and have never been fully caught up since.

At the moment, I have a number of items that need to get done TODAY, both at home and at work. The work items have accumulated due to my secretary's getting fired this week (long story, but it had nothing to do with her job performance per se) and due to my being out of town all day yesterday for depositions. At home, our house is in its usual end-of-week state of chaos -- toys and various other detritus strewn about, low on essential grocery items, floors in need of vacuuming/sweeping/mopping -- plus we are completely out of dog food as of this morning, and I still need to buy snacks for the eight children on our tee ball team before tomorrow morning's game. Whew!

Meanwhile I still have a lingering cough from the cold I had last week, we have plans to (belatedly) celebrate MM's birthday Saturday night (it was actually Wednesday), my mom has finally arrived in the metro area and is coming over Saturday, we have the boys' second tee ball game Saturday morning and we hope to visit the pumpkin patch Sunday.

And on that note, I must end, as another urgent matter has just been dropped on my desk. Happy Friday

#MicroblogMondays 57

• The day after I wrote the last post, MM and I had a long talk about our plans to list our house and buy the larger house we'd found and decided that now just isn't the right time, for a number of logistical and financial reasons. So that plan is on hold for at least another 18 months.
• We were both a little bummed to miss out on the house we liked, but in the short term, I'm really glad to not have to deal with the stress of sprucing up our current house, keeping it showing-ready indefinitely and then moving. Ugh.
• MM had a cold over the weekend, and I woke up with congestion and a scratchy throat this morning. Darn him! I've had a surprising stretch of no illnesses, too: nothing since the GI virus the boys shared with me in early July.
• I am proud to report that I have walked at least 30 minutes, between 1.75 and 2 miles, at least 4 mornings every week for the past 3 weeks. Probably doesn't sound like much to anyone who exercises regularly, but I have been out of the habit of regular exercise since I got pregnant with my sons, so this is a big deal to me.

More space

[THIS POST IS COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO INFERTILITY. CHILDREN BRIEFLY MENTIONED.]

MM and I have talked often about wanting to get a larger house when the boys are a little older. Our current house, where we have lived over seven years, since before we were married, is more than adequate to our needs at present -- 1500 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms -- but the bedrooms are pretty small. Two toddler beds fit in one just fine, but two twin beds would be a tight fit.

For a while we have figured we would wait to make this move for a few reasons. First, it's not a pressing concern. Second, we currently pay almost the equivalent of our mortgage for daycare costs for our two children, and that outlay of cash will be less once the boys start kindergarten in a couple of years. (We will still have to pay for some after-school care, but that won't cost us even half as much.) Third, although the housing market in our area has been recovering, we weren't sure if it had recovered sufficiently to make selling our home a realistic possibility that wouldn't involve a net loss.

However, this past Saturday Mike stumbled across a house in our neighborhood having an open house that "ticked all our boxes." (In addition to our stated desire for more space, we have some specific and somewhat peculiar things we are looking for in our next house; the good thing is that we are in agreement about them.) And not only was it everything we are looking for, it is priced significantly under what one might expect for a house of that size in its location.

So now since Saturday we have crunched some numbers and done a lot of talking and planning, met with a realtor, been pre-approved for a home loan, and decided to list our current house in the hope of buying the other, larger home. It is exciting but also more than a little daunting when I think of all the things we will have to accomplish over the next two weeks just to get the house listed. . . let alone thinking beyond that to showings, a potential move, etc.

I am not sure if this is all going to come together -- whether we will sell our current house, whether the seller of the other house will accept our offer, etc. -- but I guess time will tell. I am trying not to envision myself living in the bigger house, just in case things don't work out.

In the meantime, the length of my "to do" list has tripled. And I am asking myself why I didn't wait for Bubbe's arrival in two-and-a-half weeks to take this on. (She would surely help me out with more than half this stuff if she were here.)