One Crisis After Another

Yes, I realize it's been 9 days since my last post.  I'm certainly not doing a good job at keeping up with my posting, lately.  Reminds me of my journal just after I was married.  Except, back then, I often didn't even finish an entry - it would be left in the middle of the sentence, only for me to find it still incomplete 2 months later.

Anyway... I could blame my infrequent posts on a lot of things.  But suffice it to say that I'm sorry if you've been checking regularly, only to be disappointed!  I'm having a hard time, these days, finding a time where I'm ready and able to dedicate a good chunk of time to writing about my life.  ;)

The past week has been full of a lot of little (and some not-so-little) crises.  Shall I tell you about them?

Our good weather streak lasted a good long time.  Wednesday was the last day we were supposed to get really great weather, so we took ourselves out to the playground, which was now soft and muddy from the melted snow and ice.  The weather was so great, in fact, that Jacob didn't wear a jacket, and was just running around in his t-shirt.  I wore a sweater jacket, because I tend to get chilly no matter what, but I ended up feeling much too warm and a bit sweaty even in just that!

Since the ground was so muddy and gross, I didn't feel too keen on the idea of letting Alex just wander around.  So I put him up on the playground equipment.  I did my typical thing, where I let him go where he wanted to go, and just guarded the exit areas from the ground, so he couldn't fall off.  Well, that worked fine, until he crossed the equipment all the way to tall spiral slide.  Melinda was right with him, so I didn't get concerned, foolishly.  I just watched from the ground, ready to get him as he went down the slide.  I feel so stupid that I even thought it was a good idea.  You would think that I would be past these sorts of mistakes by my third child, wouldn't you?  At any rate, it wasn't a good idea.  Alex was having such a good time walking on the playground equipment, that he just kept right on walking when he got to the edge of the slide.  Probably because he's not terribly familiar with slides yet, and doesn't treat them like stairs, which he's generally wary of.  All I could do was watch with horror as he stumbled down towards the first curve of the slide, which was as tall as my upstretched hands.  As soon as his hips collided with the edge, the momentum carried him headfirst over the edge of the slide, hurdling towards the ground.  I yelled in horror and dashed to that side of the slide as fast as I could, instinctively hoping I could catch him.  But of course, I'm not that fast.  I watched him, almost in slow motion, tumble through the air towards the ground, my reaching arms being too far away to afford any help.  After he flipped headfirst off the side of the slide, his legs sort of cartwheeled over his head, and he ended up landing with a low thump on the soggy woodchips in quite possibly the best position one could hope for, after falling from such a height: He landed completely horizontal to the ground, partially on his side, so that it at least looked like his shoulder, hips, feet, and head all connected with the ground at the same time.  He started crying instantly, and I scooped him up just a split second later, clutching him close to me and then inspecting him.

There was not a single scratch anywhere on him, not even a mark from any of the woodchips.  No bruises.  Nothing.  It was the luckiest fall I've ever seen in my life.  But of course, Alex was pretty scared, after falling a good 7 feet down to the ground.  Holding him tight and rocking him wasn't helping him calm down.  I was so glad I had the ultimate baby-calming weapon:  Nursing.  As soon as he started sucking, he was quiet and calm, even if his eyes still looked spooked.  And I just sat, trying to calm myself down, too, feeling stupid and foolish for letting my 10-month old navigate the playground on his own.  Guilty as I feel about it, you can probably bet that he won't set foot on a playground without me holding his hand the entire way until he's almost 3!

After we were finished playing at the playground, we headed home.  I practically had to rip them away, even though their only playmate was a little boy who barely spoke a word of English.  They were having so much fun having anyone to play with at all!  It seems to rare that we run into other children while we're out.  But we were expecting a UPS package, and they tend to arrive right around 5pm, and I didn't want to miss it.  As we neared our building, though, I saw that there was a UPS truck parked in front.  And then I saw the UPS delivery man go back into his truck with a rather large package in hand.  I knew it was mine.  So the kids and I totally booked it down the sidewalk, trying to catch him before he left.  Melinda thought it was great! Jacob, not so much.  He collapsed crying on the sidewalk about 100 feet from me, screeching that he was too tired to run (why is that never the case indoors?!?).  And of course, since he was collapsed, that meant he wasn't walking towards me, either.  So the whole time I'm there talking to the UPS guy and signing for the package, he's wailing on the sidewalk refusing to move another step.  Finally Melinda convinced him I wasn't running anymore, and he joined us, face red and streaked with tears.  And we got our package!  (I've never had to practically chase down a delivery guy before!)

We had done our taxes and got our returns back that week, and Jesse and I decided to buy Guitar Hero: World Tour (the band kit) for something fun to do with our money.  Most of our tax returns is going into savings, some of it is paying for car parts and repairs that we needed, but this one little thing, we're having some fun with.  And this package that I hounded the UPS man for was it!  We were so excited to get it, we didn't want to wait another day.

We've been enjoying our Guitar Hero fun since then.  Jacob took immediately to loving the drum set, and Melinda wasn't far after.  Jesse and I have fun teaming up to do guitar/drums on all sorts of different songs.  Even Alex has joined in the fun, and if he's down on the ground playing anywhere near the drums, he'll reach up and hit them with his hands.  I've played around with singing with some songs with the microphone, but for most of them, I'm just not familiar enough with them to attempt the singing.  At any rate, it's been a lot of fun, and a purchase we've really enjoyed.

On Thursday, the weather changed sharply.  A lot of strong winds blew through and brought cold air.  We visited a friend, and two houses down from her, a tree had fallen over, leaning on the power lines.  We didn't lose power or have any ill effects ourselves, though!  But we did feel sad, saying goodbye to the beautiful spring-like weather.

Saturday was Valentine's Day, of course. The kids really loved getting their own little mini-tin of four chocolates, and a Valentine card from Mommy and Daddy.  Jacob is still hanging onto his, even taking it to bed with him, despite it getting bent and a bit crumpled.  He has asked us to read it to him several times.  It has a picture of a monkey on the front, and I wrote "our little monkey Jacob" on the inside.  He giggles at that a lot. ;)  Jesse and I just exchanged boxes of chocolate.... maybe next year I'll suggest we just go to the store together and pick out our own favorites, hehe!  We don't tend to make a big deal out of this particular holiday.  We decided to go out to the Golden Corral buffet for dinner on Saturday.  It was full of really delicious food, as always.  I stuffed myself with too many good main course types of foods, and didn't have enough room in me to enjoy dessert, which made me really sad.  :(  But it is one of my favorite places to have dinner, with all the choices to pick and choose from.  And I really love their steaks!

Jacob had started sounding funny on Friday: His voice was just off enough that it seemed like a good throat-clearing would fix things.  But he started getting a runny nose and a cough just a couple days later, and felt a bit warm by Sunday night.  By Monday he was sounding pretty bad, with a hacking, phlegmy cough.  And Alex followed quickly behind him, with his own profusely runny nose, phlegmy cough and fever.  In fact, he was very hot on Monday night.  I'm guessing he probably had a fever around 102 to 103, though I never brought out the thermometer.  Despite his near-constant waking, he was in a fairly good mood for being so hot, so I wasn't too concerned.  He was pretty wide-awake at about 6am, so I changed his diaper (nursing constantly throughout the night has a way of filling those things up quickly!) and took him into Jacob and Melinda's room, since they had both migrated to our room during the middle of the night.  We laid on the bottom bunk - so that if I fell asleep and Alex was awake, he'd be able to wander around on the floor without being in any danger.  And when I set him down on his back next to me, he just laid still and "talked" to me for 10 minutes or so, pointing at my face, "honking" my nose, and eventually playing peek-a-boo behind a stuffed animal.  He had a smile plastered on his face the whole time.  So he couldn't be feeling too badly, could he?  He eventually talked himself back to sleep, which was entertaining to watch - usually he really fights sleep.  But neither of us got much sleep at all that night.  Poor little guy just couldn't stay asleep after every cough woke him up.   And if he wasn't nursing, he was coughing.  And for whatever reason, I just couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep through nursing for most of the night.

Today, Jacob still has a cough, but is looking better otherwise.  Alex sounds about the same, but wasn't so hot last night (and the fever was essentially gone during the day, and again during daylight hours today).  Unfortunately, my throat started tickling yesterday, and today I woke up with a headache, and I'm starting to have a productive cough, too.  Jesse feels about the same.  I've heard Melinda cough a few times, but somehow she has this amazing ability to skip most of the illnesses that circulate in our house.  I won't be surprised if she never coughs more than a few times total, you know?  So we're all sort of house-bound this week, besides doing the grocery shopping that couldn't be put off another minute, back on Monday.  Jacob is driving me absolutely up the wall.  He's throwing, hitting, pushing, and screaming almost constantly.  And Melinda is doing her part in teasing him and egging him on.  And I'm just too tired to deal with it to the best of my ability, anyway.  I'm lucky that I got them all down for a nap today, though Jacob was really fighting hard against it.  It took him 20 minutes to stop thrashing around constantly and just twitch or kick occasionally, to finally just slipping off into sleep.  And I doubt he'll go to sleep easily tonight.  I think we got spoiled with so much outdoor time last week, that these few days of being house-bound s really getting to him.

Also by Sunday, I was freaking out pretty badly about another potential crisis.  If you're afraid of "too much information", stop reading now.

Really, you've been warned.   I'm going into major girl-territory here.

After Alex was born, my cycles came back at only 4 months postpartum, despite my exclusive breastfeeding.  (And, as a side note, I always felt rather bitter and robbed because of that!  I got 15 months out of Jacob, but only 4 out of Alex, and over a month of that time included typical postpartum bleeding!!)  I had been keeping careful track of my cycles this time around, and though for a while they were rather unpredictable, I eventually evened out to a regular 26-day cycle.  Now, this was fairly short for me.  Pre-Alex, my cycles had always been 30 or 31 days.  Even back when I was a teenager, and even between pregnancies.  So this whole 26-day thing was a bit new to me, but I got used to the regularity.  So, Thursday was when I was expecting my next cycle to start.

By Saturday, still nothing had happened, and I was getting really concerned.  But it still wasn't on my mind constantly.  By Sunday, when we were home and had little else to do, I really was freaking out.  But I still hadn't worked up enough courage to take a pregnancy test.  In my mind, it was better to not be sure about anything, than to know for sure that I was pregnant with another surprise baby, only 10 months after Alex was born.  I wasn't ready to deal with that sort of reality, so I settled for just worrying endlessly about the possibility.  By Monday morning, I had had enough of torturing myself with guessing games, so I took the only test I had in the house.  But not until after I had a good quiet one-on-one pleading session with the Lord, where I both begged to not have a pregnancy yet, or to at least be able to accept His will for me, somehow.  Because while I don't think I would terribly mind a 4th baby in the house, even if it wasn't what I wanted right then, the thought of another pregnancy, at least at this point in time, absolutely was sending me into a panic.  There was just no way of thinking about it that made it sound like even a remotely good thing.  I just couldn't imagine carrying, nursing, and caring for a 10-month-old, super-active child while growing a giant, uncomfortable belly....among many, many other negatives that I thought of over the course of the previous few days.

I shook the whole time I waited for the results of that test.  It was a nice clear, strong negative, though, and I felt a little lighter.  Unfortunately, that particular test was also a year past it's expiration date.  And so I couldn't trust it completely, even though most of my Google searches told me that expired tests generally gave either ambiguous or false positive results, instead of false negatives.  I had to go grocery shopping on Monday, anyway, so I picked up a new pack of tests at the store, and took another test later that night.  I didn't shake quite so much, that time. 

Again, it was negative.  A nice, clear, strong negative.  I was happy, and so relieved!!!  But what the heck was going on with my body??  I felt like I couldn't be 100% sure about the results, despite how much I trust that brand of pregnancy tests, until my cycle showed up.  And so I waited, a bit anxiously

Finally, late last night, things started up again.  I don't think I've ever been so happy about it in my life!  I'm also not sure exactly what held things up, though.  Was it stress-related?  Or perhaps all those short cycles were anovulatory, and this time, ovulation started again, lengthening my cycles back out to my previous normal length?  Or maybe even a combination of both?  I'm not sure what to expect next month.  Sheesh!!

Now, see, I *have* to update more regularly than this!  This post was ridiculously long!!!