The Fish Pond

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And the Silver Medal for High Fever Goes To...

Nemo, for his incredible achievement of 105.3 degrees. We are so very proud of him.

Thankfully he is spent and the fever broke this morning. It was over 105 all weekend. He sat up Saturday morning after the horrible second night of nursing nonstop all night long, pointed to his throat and said "Huwt. Huwt." A more pitiful thing I'm not sure I've seen. So we did the dreaded Saturday morning pediatrician run, which actually wasn't so bad at all. They apparently have a new nurse who we haven't encountered before who was so cute on the phone. "Do you know where our office is?" Uh, yeah. When do you want me to come in? "Well, as soon as you can get here, of course." Very cute.

Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with the dreaded Coxackie virus, nothing they can do for him, keep giving him advil and go around with him attached to your body for the next 48 hours because he is miserable and doesn't want to do anything but nurse. I can't begin to tell you how much fun that was. And can someone please tell me why my kids felt they had to wake me up to tell me that my boob was hanging out no less than three times during the one two-hour non-nap that we were able to take on Saturday afternoon? I was in my own room, for Pete's sake, no one there to see me except them when they came in. Which they had no reason to do at all.

So I've done little but nurse the baby and daydream about my vacation for the past six days. I certainly wasn't doing any sleeping. He was all hot and twitchy and having trouble sleeping and using me as a human pacifier, and we were a bit worried. Only a bit, though, because high fevers run in the family (note that he only received the silver - Trout still holds gold medal status with a blistering 105.6). I'm just exhausted at this point.

So! A little bloggy business! That vacation I mentioned? Because we are Parents of the Year, we are pulling our spawn out of school the second week of school for a boondoggle to the Outer Banks for a week of eating sand and running away from waves. My wonderful next door neighbors will be watching the house, feeding the fish, and watering the plants, but I could use a few blogsitters to keep the Pond lively in my absence. Please let me know if you are interested - I'll need posts by Friday so I can pre-load them. The house we rented doesn't have Internet access (I know!).

In the mean time, you'll have to bide your time for a day or so for me to recover before we get to such titillating topics (HA!) as the fact that Nemo is "still" breastfeeding, my adventure in bus riding following a wonderful lunch downtown, and how I feel about the new school year starting tomorrow.

Giveaway!

Okay, so, black it is! I'll post pics when we get the new one. Since I got enough comments, despite Agincourtdb's efforts to render the kitchen completely uninhabitable due to a refrigerator that would cause nausea, vomiting, and seizures, we'll have a giveaway. $20 Starbucks card OR a lovely almond colored non-cooling fridge, take your pick. All you have to do is comment either on this post or have commented on the last one by the end of the weekend to be entered, and I'll have one of the monsters pick a name out on Monday.

Stay cool this weekend - good stuff to come next week, when I can think straight again after some babysitting time.

Wow! Welcome, readers from Mom to the Screaming Masses

Welcome, welcome! I am so delighted to see so many of you from Carmen's place. Amazed, and honored. I hope you all find something you like and come back many, many times.

Carmen, I hope you're having a ton of fun, and I'll happily blogsit for you ANYTIME. Thanks so much for letting me hang out over there.

Oh, BTW, you're out of orange juice.

Party in the Pond, Unplugged

Welcome, welcome, come on in, the water's fine! I'm Mary, otherwise known as FishyGirl, and I think I'm probably the original FishyGirl, but there are others out there. I'm fine with that, just want you to know who you're talking to. I'm mother to four rascally little guppies under the age of 9, and they keep me dashing about. Trout is my oldest, at 8, and she loves science, ballet, and getting as creative as possible in her messes. Little Man is 6, and he's a sweet, kind soul who's a little accident prone, but if you need someone creatively mechanically inclined, he's your guy. Sunny is a pistol. She turns 4 on Saturday, has the gift of gab, and is quite precocious in her language, not to mention mischief making. My little Nemo is 16 months old, and though we are just now starting to see his personality emerge, he's kind and loving and busy. Very busy. BigDaddyFish brings home the salmon to keep us fed, clothed, and housed. We all have a good sense of humor, which is good, because if we didn't, we'd cry. A lot.

We live in a cramped 3 bedroom townhouse in the Maryland side of the DC burbs. We are currently getting our house ready to sell, so that we can move into a bigger house and Nemo can finally move into someone else's room to sleep, rather than in the bed with BDF and me. So, in honor of that, today, we are having this party unplugged. No tv! No movies! No music! Why, you ask? Well, this is why:

This is what the living room looks like right now. Notice the filthy, disgusting carpet. We've had that carpet for 9 years. Nine years of kids and juice and dirt and potty training and a dog with kidney disease will destroy a carpet. About 2 years ago it started stinking horribly every time we steam cleaned it, so we stopped doing it, instead intending to replace the floor when we moved. We're having a party for Sunny here on Saturday, so BDF wanted it done this week. Thank you Empire Today, for having next day service.

So sorry about the lack of electronic entertainment, but there's plenty to witness around here. Sunny made some salad for you, and I've made up some salsa dip. You can find out more about breastfeeding, if you're interested, since I've been doing it forever for the better part of the last 8.5 years. You can find out all kinds of crazy things my kids have done and continue to do on a daily basis. We love to laugh at ourselves.

We aren't without our serious moments, though. I've talked about my struggles with postpartum depression and the issues surrounding the breast cancer of my grandmother, the multiple myeloma of my grandfather, and their subsequent losses, as well as the loss of other people. I'm quite open about the effects of losing my mother when I was 15 and she was only 37, to a heart attack.

I love comments, so let me know you stopped by! I hope you have fun and I'm looking forward to seeing you at your place. New to the party? Head on over to 5 Minutes for Mom and find out all about the Ultimate Blog Party 2008.

And watch this space - I just may live-blog the carpet installation once they show up. At the very least, I'll update when the new carpet is done.

Thanks for swimming by - ya'all come back soon, now.

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Updated to add: AACCCKKK! I forgot about the prizes! They are offering a ton of awesome prizes with something for everyone, everything from cash to gift cards to amazon and target to all kinds of fun stuff. My favorite three are these:

#76 - Aren't these custom tutus from Lily Cait just gorgeous?

#103 - LEGO is giving away free legos in Pink - my kids would just love these.

#137 - The Soft Landing is giving away a set of BPA-free sippy cups - safe and adorable.

There are so many awesome prizes, some of which I have already - if I win and my top three are gone, any of these would be great: 11, 14, 18, 29, 34, 39, 47, 54, 55, 59, 60, 61, 63, 80, 82, 93, 96, 117, 119, 138, 140, and 141, in no particular order at all. Be sure to check out the whole list to find out how you can win them, too!

Ladies - Party in the Pond!

Hey, hey, hey! If you take a look at my left sidebar over there, you'll see this button:

Amygeekgrl, otherwise known as the Crunchy Domestic Goddess, posted on her blog about the Ultimate Blog Party going on for a week, starting today, hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom. It sounded like fun to me, so I thought I'd join in, too! Wanna come? Who doesn't love a good party? Last year they had over 1000 blogs participating, so that's sure to bring you some new readers plus a whole bunch of new blogs to add to your feed reader. Plus there's prizes, and you don't even need to have a blog to win them. Woot!

Check it out, and watch for my party post soon.

So Many Topics, So Little Time to Write

I have so many things I want to write about, so many posts floating around in the ether of my brain, but both of my littles have what we affectionately refer to as The Hacking Death and between wiping snot, cleaning up puke after the kids cry or cough so hard they puke, doing the ensuing laundry, driving people around all over, and just trying to get some sleep so I'm better able to handle said activities I haven't had the time to write anything. So, please forgive me, but I'm just going to throw some bullets out there so at least some of it can get out of my head and leave me more room to fit in all the information about mortgage qualifying:

• Tuesday afternoons Little Man has a sports class at our local community center. The class is only 45 minutes long, so the rest of us just sit in the car and Trout does her homework, we listen to music, and if she gets done quickly enough we watch a movie. I sometimes let Sunny and Nemo out of their carseats to stretch their legs, and this week Nemo slept while Sunny was free to move about the cabin. All of a sudden Trout starts shouting about how Sunny is coloring on the car - yes, my not-even-two-month-old van. Somehow Sunny found a random piece of crayon floating in the air somewhere (because I have not allowed any such items in the new van) and colored on the window, carseats, upholstery, speaker covers, whatever struck her fancy. I was livid. It appears that the crayon was a washable one, though, because a babywipe took care of most of the mess. I reminded her once again that she was ONLY TO COLOR ON PAPER!! and thought that was the end of it. Which it was until Little Man got in the car on Wednesday morning to go to school and found where I wasn't able to remove some of the crayon from his booster seat (which he will ride in until he gets his driver's license as he appears to have my genes). "Who colored on my seat???" he shouted, and I told him Sunny had and that I'd get it later and to buckle up. "AAAUUGHH! That..that.." he struggled with the words, and since he's been experimenting with colorful language lately I thought I knew what was coming. "She is SUCH. A. LITTLE... RASCAL!!" he said angrily as he stomped his foot. Yeah, she is.
• I am my own worst enemy, I swear. Tuesday morning I had to scramble around to get all four kids up and ready to go - the bigs to school, Sunny to her preschool, and Nemo comes with me to my therapy appointment. We got up early enough, got the bigs to school and went scrambling down to the preschool to drop Sunny off. I saw one of the moms who I know has younger kids with whom I sometimes share watching duty, where one of us watches the littles in the parking lot while the other runs in to get her big kid and then we switch, and I asked if she wanted me to watch her little one so she could run in. She said no, she'd be a while, and then asked me if I had a conference that day, to which I said no and looked at her quizzically. She told me there was no school that day, it was a conference day. Which I would have known if Sunny had gone to school on the previous Thursday and I had gotten the newsletter, but she didn't and I didn't. Doh. So there I was, with my therapy appointment, to which I have to take an almost-four year old. Yeah, I don't think so. I was able to scramble around and make arrangements for my SIL to watch her and was only 5 minutes late to my appointment.
• Saturday BigDaddyFish and I had a glorious day, just us. First we matched up the socks, then we went to an Indian restaurant and pigged out on the buffet. Then we went to the Air and Space Museum Annex - Udvar-Hazy Center and had a blast taking our own sweet time looking at exhibits and reading things with nobody going "Mooooom, this is booorring! Let's go!" or running around and trying to climb on the SR-71. They have added an F-14 since we were there last, probably my favorite among the fighter aircraft - awesome. They have a couple of flight simulators there, one that you can "fly" and one that you just ride along, and since we were unencumbered by small people I suggested we ride one. We chose for BDF to fly the plane and I would ride with him. We paid our money and got in line to go in, and they had a small tv screen showing us our "pre-flight" briefing. "This ride will be taking you upside down, so please leave all belongings in the locker provided." Say wha? Upside down? Nobody said anything about upside down. Have I mentioned I don't do flying, or heights for that matter, very well? Upside down? After eating a huge meal of Indian food? "You're going to pay for this," I said to BDF as we locked up our stuff. He was the pilot, I was the gunner, and the ride was 4.5 minutes long. Would you believe that we had so much fun? And I shot down 6 planes? And I only spent about 45 seconds with my eyes shut, and probably 45 seconds upside down? Then, as if the day wasn't great enough, we went to see Charlie Wilson's War, which was great, and THEN went out to dinner. We spent the entire day without the kids; we didn't fight or bicker at all. It was awesome. When you have small people depending on you it is so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day details of living and forget why you got married in the first place - nurturing your marriage is as important as remembering to feed the kidlets. And men, if you take the time to go out and have fun with your wife, just the two of you, without complaining about how much it costs or whatever else you could be doing, it just might increase your chances of getting a little action. Dramatically.
• When we were doing the great clean out on Saturday and Sunday, we found several of what we believe are larvae for clothes moths. We have a lot of wool shirts, blankets, and socks that don't get used very often, and somewhere we have an infestation. I freak the heck out when worms or snakes are nearby - I HATE them. I'm weirded out by things without feet. So I screamed each time we came across one and squealed and got all squicked out and BDF squished them and put them in the trash. I was not aware that cedar is not necessarily a great repellent, and that stored items need to be checked at least once a year. So, now we are working on finding the source of the contamination and eliminating it, four or five vacuumings and multiple washings at a time, like we didn't have enough of that to do already. Ewwww.
• Friday night BDF and I got salads for dinner and he went upstairs to eat his while on the computer. Instead of taking it back down two floors to the kitchen when he was done, he just put it on a stool at the top of the stairs down to our kitchen, on the same floor as our bedrooms. Nemo woke up before us, and BDF put him on the floor to just let him run amok while we woke up fully. Sunny starts yelling about an awful smell, and we think it's Nemo's diaper or something and tell her to just be patient about it. Then she started complaining about a big mess and we decided we better get up to investigate. This is what we found:

Guess Nemo decided he didn't like the salad. Gem that he is, Uncle Orca (agincourtdb) cleaned it up for us when he arrived to babysit so BDF and I could go our for our date. Frankly, I was quite relieved that it had nothing to do with Nemo's diaper.

• Capital One are a bunch of scum-sucking bastards. Last month I either didn't receive a statement at all or I lost it in the jumble of papers on my table (most likely didn't receive because I still haven't found it). I realized it after the due date but before they sent me anything to hassle me about it, so I paid them something based on what I paid the previous month. We got that card because it had a 2.9% interest rate for the life of all balance transfers, so we transferred quite a large balance to it years ago and have been slowly paying it off; we cut the cards up and never used them. We've put that balance low on our list of things to pay off and put higher rate stuff as a higher priority in our quest to get out of debt. Well, they decided since we were late on our payment to jack the interest rate - to 27%. 27%. Pure insanity. I've been late on other cards years ago and if they raised the rates at all, which I don't remember them doing, it was only a point or two. I would have understood if they had raised it to something like 6-10% since that's what we had for purchases if we'd ever used the card, but this is highway robbery. We are lucky that we had the money for me to call up and pay them off this morning, and I'm closing the account immediately. They have lost us as a customer and we will be sure to warn everyone we know about them. If there is ever a chance you might be late with a payment (which would mean you are a normal person), don't be fooled by Capital One. Within two months we will have paid off all of our credit card debt, and all we'll have are our mortgage and one car payment. It feels fantastic.
• I am going through a major effort to simplify my life, cutting down on spending, paying off debt, not buying new stuff, decluttering, not watching much tv (American what?), cleaning, etc. It feels good and has helped my depression so very much, and has helped me not to feel so unsettled. I'm enjoying taking better care of my family, and in doing so, taking better care of myself.
• I'm thinking of going back to work some, ideally to pick up some freelance writing assignments, but haven't the first idea how to go about doing that. Anyone have any ideas they are willing to share, or willing to take on, I don't know, a jr. apprentice or helper or something? I'm willing to work cheap until I've proven myself. I used to be a technical writer/editor before I had kids, and I have an English degree, so I have a basis for this line of work; it's just the marketing/business side of things I'm clueless about.

So, how are you doing? Did I mention we're house hunting? In theory?

Blogroll Update

As you may or may not have noticed, I have updated my blogroll/links, otherwise known as "Places to Go, People to See" on the sidebar.  If you see your name and don't want it there, let me know and I'll remove it.  I have to apologize to most of my "new" additions, as I have been reading you for a long time and just have been too technologically challenged (think stupid) and/or lazy to get the damn thing updated.  So, sorry, but you're here now.

Also, I've added a few sites for some organizations that are near and dear to my heart (and other parts of my or loved-one's bodies).  Check them out if you are so moved.

Next, new pants arrived.  They stay up.  They are two inches too long, but that's doable.  And they aren't totally frumpy, so I'm good for a few months.

Finally, BigDaddyFish has a co-worker whose wife just had their baby at 28 weeks.  She weighs 1 pound 13 ounces.  Please pray for their family/send positive thoughts if you are so inclined.  She's doing fine right now, but she's in for a long struggle in the NICU before she can go home.  I think mom had pre-eclampsia.  Scary.