Oh, Hi! Remember me? I do still blog here. I just needed some time off.
I am falling behind on a lot of my commitments due to the current situation with my grandfather, as well as a developing situation with my sister (panic attacks and doctors too quick to throw drugs at her, pat her head, and send her on her unhappy way without concurrent cognitive behavioral therapy) and my father (contract in Alabama extended for another year - yay!) and just a lot of other stuff I needed to get caught up on. I'm still not caught up, but at least I made a huge dent in things.
Saturday I spent much of the day at a "playdate" with one of my oldest friends (not that we're old, we've just been friends a long time) who also happens to be the godmother of my oldest son and will be the godmother of my youngest son when he's baptized in a couple of months. She has 4 kids approximately the same age as my 4 kids, so the big kids played and the babies cooed and smiled and drooled at each other, and she and I sat and talked and yawned and fed the babies. It was great for my soul.
Then we went to my grandfather's house on the way home and spent a couple of hours there visiting with him. He maintains he needs to start driving again soon, but fortunately, his car keys are missing somewhere. I don't have them, none of the other relatives will admit to knowing where they are, but they're gone. This is a great thing. He can't drive - it's not safe for anyone involved, but as I've mentioned before, he is a stubborn old goat, and he can't get it through his head that if he's having trouble getting up and walking then he can't drive safely. He just sees it as us trying to take away his independence. We've been in touch with the local live in help (frankly I think she hid the keys) and the social worker, and they are helping out, which is good because I don't want to have to call the state and have his license pulled. Otherwise he is hanging in there - usually in good spirits, just lonely.
Sunday we spent much of the day doing a deep-clean-and-throw-out-a-thon in my family room. We moved all of the furniture and vacuumed under and around it, put away all toys, moved some to storage, and threw out all of our videotapes, because DVDs are easier to store and anything we were really attached to is available on DVD. Unfortunately, we found evidence that the rodents had been taking crumbs and cheerios and stuff off the floor and taking behind some tables and some of our storage bin racks and eating it there. All of that has been cleaned up, vacuumed, and clorox wiped all over. So if I drop dead in the next couple of months it's from the hantavirus I contracted from the mouse crap. It was sooooo gross. But it feels good to have that one room done, as it's the place we spend the most time when we aren't sleeping. At least, it's done until the kids destroy it again.
Yesterday the kids were off school, and my SIL came up and we took our collective 6 kids to the indoor pool. We had a blast. Nemo tolerated it okay - I was worried because he hates his baths, but he managed without screaming until he got tired, at which point I wrapped him up in two towels and nursed and rocked him to sleep. He napped about an hour at the pool. We got all the kids bathed there at the pool, ate lunch, and went to a park.
This particular park is huge, a sprawling collection of a castle play area, a pirate ship play area, a maze, a rock climbing wall, a teeter totter that seats about 15, various animal sculptures that the kids can climb on, a musical area with a couple of xylophone bells, and various swings, small toy houses, and picnic tables scattered about. It's a fully accessible park, which means some of the swings and play structures are appropriate for special needs kids, and it really is a fun place. I won't take my kids there when I'm alone because the place is just too big and it's too easy to lose someone there. Which happened yesterday. We lost Trout, because she wandered off.
I had lectured all the kids before going into the park that they were to STAY TOGETHER AT ALL TIMES because it is too easy for someone to get lost there. They knew that if they wanted to go someplace, say from the castle to the pirate ship, they needed to let me or my SIL know and we needed to move everyone together. I had taken Little Man and Sunny to the bathroom, about a quarter mile away, and when I got back and we did a head count we couldn't find Trout. Little Man had found a friend of his from his catechism class, and at one point we had her father and brother helping the rest of us search while her mother watched Sunny and Nemo. I finally found her walking back across the maze to where we were. She had decided she was much too hot and gone to the water fountain at the bathroom house a quarter mile away by herself, only to find the water fountain didn't work. We left immediately and she was sent to her room the rest of the night.
I was glad because I got to go out and do something fun with the kids instead of work. The dishes went undone, I'm behind at least 3 days in laundry, I let the bills sit til today, I didn't call my grandfather until evening, I didn't put together the latest two chairs that arrived yesterday - I just went out and had fun with my kids. It was glorious until Trout wandered off, but even then she wasn't gone long enough for the full-on panic to set in.
I got the kids in bed early last night, got to watch all of American Idol uninterrupted, watched House with BDF, and went to bed early myself, only to toss and turn all night long because it was much too hot. We put Sunny back in her bed a total of four times last night before giving up and letting her sleep at our feet. Nemo slept between us and kept punching us in the heads, got up at 5 to nurse, puked hugely as soon as I put him down in the bassinet after nursing and burping, and then wanted to play when I got him changed and cleaned up. I finally got a nap with a weird dream about sunrise. In the middle of the night, Sunny woke up screaming that she saw a bear in the house. She was shaking and just terrified. It took a while for us to educate her about the fact that bears have their own houses and they don't want to come in ours.
So! I still have a bunch of real posts I want to write, like my reaction to the new child care behavior study that came out, and our manny, and other stuff, but I wanted to let you know I didn't fall in a black hole while I work on those things. Just trying to get caught up and get a nap.
Edited to Add: I'm over here today, so go check it out!
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