They've Got to Come Out - UPDATED AGAIN

Miss Leanna (11) is having her tonsils out today. They may or may not go for her adenoids as well; it depends on what they find when they get in there. She's needed them out for a long time in my (and her mom's) opinion, but as she was rarely well when she went to the doctor, they tended to take her swollen tonsils as a sign of illness, rather than a chronic condition. Until they did a sleep study. Wherein they found that she has a bad case of sleep apnea, at least in part because she wasn't getting enough air past those humongous tonsils.

So they've got to come out. And she's at the best possible place to have them out, given her age. I just heard from Leanna's mom and Leanna is (as of 11:30 AM) in recovery, having had her tonsils, adenoids, and a loose tooth removed. It may take her a little longer than the usual half hour to wake up because she has asthma, but otherwise she's doing well. More here when I have more info.

ETA: Leanna got out of recovery half an hour later; she's going to be fine. Her parents watched her sleep for awhile and the Laston came home. Leanna and her mom left about twenty minutes after Laston did, because she was able to swallow, which is the tipping point for this procedure. All in all, a success!

Next update: She's staying overnight for observation. Because she has asthma and she's on painkillers, her airways constrict every time she falls asleep (and she falls asleep often because of the painkillers). So they want to keep her overnight on the oxygen monitor

What Is It?

I feel strange today... just kind of off. No real reason for it as far as I can tell... I got enough sleep, I haven't taken any painkillers, I haven't drunk anything alcoholic. I've done the usual stuff - some laundry, some dishes, some taking out of garbage, some job-hunting, some schoolwork-doing, some blog-posting. I don't feel ill, depressed, or unusually hormonal. I'm a bit anxious about Leanna's tonsillectomy tomorrow, but not unduly so; it's a common outpatient procedure..

But maybe it is that, at least in part. Maybe it's that Abby spent the night at Grandma's yesterday, on a school night. Maybe it's the vagueness of a day at home with a sick toddler and the endless rounds of Blue's Clues left over from yesterday. Maybe it's that I've been watching Doctor Who and Torchwood at the rate of one to three episodes a day, which is rather like several stiff drinks in a row. Maybe it's trying to wrap my head around Abby turning nine in less than two weeks. Maybe it's that I hate the Whos and my heart is two sizes to small. Maybe it's the chronic lack of funds because I'm unemployed and the holidays are coming up. I don't think it's my inability to get out of the ridiculous phone loop at a local skating rink to schedule Abby's birthday party, because her dad has tried for two days and finally asked me to do it. I've only been stuck there for a few minutes and just discovered they're not open on Tuesdays to answer the phone.

In reality, it's probably all of these things.

Mommy's Work is Never Done - UPDATE

I had such plans for today. With both girls at school this morning, I could do the first two of four loads of  laundry, get a head start on this week's class work, follow up with the folks I had a coffee-shop-job-screening last week, and dig all the crap out from under and behind the couch. Then when I picked Lizzy up at 11:30, we could come home and eat lunch and do the rest of the laundry/dishes/tidying/vacuuming. I was on track and ready to go.

Until midnight, when Lizzy came out of her room, nose and eyes streaming, and spent the next several hours dozing restlessly enough to keep me awake, waking every few minutes needing her nose wiped. I tried some Benadryl to dry stuff up - I got her doctor's blessing for same at her checkup last month. It worked, but apparently she is the lucky winner of the "may cause excitability, especially in children" clause. Whee. So I left Lizzy asleep where she had crawled in next to me with a stuffed ducky, a lamb, and a Stitch; I got Abby out the door to the school-bus, called the preschool to report an absence, and then I went back to bed. Five hours of sleep, broken up. When this happened all the time - Lizzy's only recently started sleeping in her own bed all night - I was sleep-deprived but functional; when it's unusual as it is now, it's freaking exhausting.

So I've managed one load of laundry, the dishes, and the schoolwork. I've contacted the potential-job folks, but via email rather than how I intended to via phone. Abby is spending the night at Grandma's so she can help with  the non-tree Christmas decorations (the tree is a whole-family affair on a weekend day) as she does every year, so I won't have to get up at any particular time tomorrow. If Lizzy is up to Grandma's tomorrow I'll take her there and then have several hours to Get Stuff Done, without her... "helpful" presence. Wish me luck.

As I reread this in preparation to post it, I realize it's All About Me, not really about my sick baby at all. I plead sleep deprivation for my selfishness on the topic, but rest assured she's fine - it's just a case of the sniffles, no sign of her past complications (like croup - that was no fun for anyone). My biggest concern at this point is whether she gave it to Leanna (who is having her tonsils out this week) but given Leanna's drippy cough this weekend I think it's more likely that it's the other way round - Leanna gave it to Lizzy. Thus is the danger of having children in three different schools; the germs are everywhere!

ETA: And thank goodness for my beloved spouse, who brought home juice and tissues. Delivery of such items is not to be discounted!

The Hills Are Alive

Yes, it's Sound of Music time. My kids have never seen it, although they do know some of the songs, because we are, well, us. We planned on watching it Friday night, but Leanna has seen it and in true adolescent fashion she dismissed it s "a movie about a lady who comes to babysit a lot of kids". Um... that's a little bit of an oversimplification. Lizzy, four, may as well be Maria - "She is gentle, she is wild, she's a riddle, she's a child, she's a headache, she's an angel, she's a girl."

Abby is really enjoying it. Lizzy got bored just as Maria meets the von Trapp children and has gone into the other room to bang her toy ping-pong paddles together (she got whacked in the face with one earlier today) and draw endless pictures of her best friend Natalie on her Magna-doodle. And play in the sink, which she dearly loves to do but we don't usually allow unless we're trying to do something like watch a movie she's too young to appreciate.

"I bet her father would be really mad at her for kissing that boy in the thunderstorm," says Innocent Abby. Yeah, it's more that "that boy" is a Junior Nazi, really, but we haven't gotten that far into the movie yet. We shall see how it goes further in.

In the scene where Maria is singing a reprise of My Favorite Things and fingering the curtains in her room, Abby says, "Oooooooo - I know what she's thinking, because I've seen Enchanted." This blew me away, because of course the most famous example of curtains-to-dresses is from Gone With the Wind. I hadn't realized it was that prevalent a trope. So I looked it up. It is. And now she's dancing and singing along to Do Re Mi and thrilling that now she knows where this song comes from. And halfway through said song, she stopped dead and said, "Wait, she's Mary Poppins!?" She's always been good at this; she figured out that Mrs. Potts and Miss Price are done by the same actress years ago, so this was more of the same, but it always takes me aback.

I explained the basics of the Nazis (and why the Austrian von Trapps dislike them) in innocent-nine-year-old terms and she seemed to grok. The disc is from Netflix and started having some jerking and halting round about The Lonely Goatherd, which required a cleaning and scene selection to clear up. And it was only a temporary fix at that; we had to skip some more scenes. Netflix has been notified.

If there is anything else of note, I'll post it later. Time to put Lizzy to bed.

I Am So MEAN

It's true, my sense of humor is sarcastic. And I do use it on the kids sometimes (or Abby would not have known about rhetorical questions at seven). And it's also true that Leanna  (11) and Abby (nearly 9) are both at awkward stages where they don't seem able to keep track of their body parts and are constantly hurting themselves or each other or other kids or adults or toys, inadvertently. So far the holiday we've had half a dozen stubbed toes, a poke in the eye, and a number of spilled plates/bowls/glasses.

So today, when Leanna leaned forward to get out of the rocker-recliner and I heard a crunching sound, I made the snarky remark that if she just watched where she put her body parts, we'd be able to keep things longer (it was a plastic slinky and is just fine by the way - they have give). Leanna (being an adolescent) took this as a personal affront and the door to their bedroom was closed rather more forcefully than I'm comfortable with. However, since there were no shrieks of pain or outrage associated with this door-slamming, I let it go this time. She recovered pretty quickly too. Usually she's inclined to be mad for a while, because she's stubborn and adolescent and eleven. But right now the four of them - Leanna, Abby, Lizzy, and Kiki - are playing Hide and Seek and having a ball.

So I guess my sarcasm isn't going to do them any permanent damage.

Kids!

Yeah, I'm talking about ours here. They haven't done anything wrong, exactly. But Lizzy is four and doesn't cope well with the big kids' shows (we're watching Joseph: King of Dreams at the moment). Lizzy isn't frightened by the movie, but she's too young to grok it and so she gets bored and noisy. Then Leanna (11) can't hear and has me turn up the volume until the other two (Abby (9) and we have Kiki (10) with us tonight too) object to it being too loud, so I turn it down and the cycle starts over. It doesn't help that because the movie is a Bible story, Leanna knows it like the back of her hand and keeps saying things like, "oh, watch this part; this is really cool," and Abby shrieks, "SPOILERS" and then Lizzy gets in on complaining that she can't hear the movie she wasn't watching in the first place. And of course, being Joseph & family, every last one of them (except Mom Rachel) is a Jerk With a Heart of Gold until the end of the movie; it's a story about redemption and forgiveness of course. I prefer the first Old Testament movie Dreamworks made - The Prince of Egypt. This may be simply a matter of preferring the story of Moses to the story of Joseph, or it may be the music or the casting; I don't know. 

Anyway, the kids. They've been exceptionally noisy today. This may be that they've been stuck indoors - I have decreed that Leanna is not to play outside this weekend, because a) she has a cough and b) she's having her tonsil's removed on Wednesday. She is not getting sick on my watch! But I'll be glad when the three big kids go into their room for quiet time (around 8:30, I think) to play DS games and chat until 10 or 11. Then I can start in on Torchwood, since I've done all the Doctor Who I can get through Netflix and have not yet met up with my friend who has DVDs he can lend me. Which is good; I could use the break! But I'm pretty much dying for my alone time tonight. I had a couple hours in the brand new shiny Safeway store today, but apparently that was insufficient to deal with a bunch of cabin-feverish grade-schoolers.