Monday, December 27, 2010

The Case of the Missing Socks

If you don't know, there are 8 children in our home. It seems that on a regular basis, our youngest, Bashful is always claiming to be out of socks.  Now, please note that Monday is Bashful's laundry day.  What is a laundry day you ask?  It is an assigned day of the week where one of the dwarf's gets their laundry done.  Their clothing, bedsheets etc.  By assigning one day to each child we are able to cut our laundry bill by 1/3 and we are able to make sure that the clothing being laundered is really dirty.  (maybe your children are different than mine, but my kids are notorious for placing clean clothing in the laundry hamper because they don't want to put them away!) Shocking I know... but by assigning a day per child, I am able to concentrate on one child and what they wore over the past week. 

Okay - returning to Bashful.  No matter what day of the week it is Saturday or Tuesday - the boy never has clean socks - for about a month now he has been wearing mis match socks from the sock bin on the dryer where all the swinging singles go. 

Friday morning we are preparing for my husband's 86 year old grandmother to come for a visit.  I figured that Bashful's bed would be the easiest for her to get to and be the most comfortable for her.  So I ask the boys to strip the bed.  I go up to the room awhile later to remake the bed with fresh linens and as I move the bed out from the wall to get the comforter to lay nicely ( you know how older folks feel about those military corners) low and behold; to what should my wondering eye appear...

36 swinging single socks!!!

Really !! you just can't make this stuff up!

Monday, December 20, 2010

An update on the illnesses that seem to be running a muck in our house!

Well Doc and Sleepy are on the mend.  I would guess you could say that the pox are drying up, the itching is subsiding and as each day breaks anew, the cocoa butter continues to be slathered on their faces and arms and legs so that they can keep the scars at bay.
I am very proud of them, neither of them succumbed to the overwhelming desire to scratch except their heads... where they are sure their scars will never be seen under all that hair!!
So we as we started out the day we were excited to say that we were on the mend! However at 2 PM today, I got a call from the school where Bashful was being held in the nurses office because he had pink eye... so here we go again - two pink eyes ! 
Really... you can't make this stuff up!

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Bella


This is Bella, our pure blue pit at 6 weeks old. 

Today we gave her back to the breeder because she was no longer happy in our home.  I know that most of you know my stance on children and pets.  I never wanted children or pets, and I am especially not a fan of dogs, but this one grew on us all! (well maybe not on Doc.) 

Today was a tear filled afternoon as we bid farewell to her after a year of loving, caring and training. 
The great news is that she is a good dog! Actually a great dog as far as the breed goes. She is loving, cuddly, and very fun to watch and play with. She grew from this tiny 5lb puppy to a 58 lb one year old. According to her trainer, our home is less than ideal for her, because she does'nt feel that she has her own space and that has lead to some territorial issues.  We determined that is was not fair for us to keep her if she was not happy with us, hence her return to the breeder.  

She will meet her new owner tomorrow.  Her surprise will be that she will be reunited with her momma tomorrow.  We hope that by being with her momma, and her new owner that she will settle into a new routine, where she is able to relax, enjoy some quiet and continue to grow and mature.  No matter what anyone says about pit bulls, with the right home, the right people they are an amazing, loving and gentle dogs. 

Selecting the perfect dog for your family is hard, but is even harder when you have 10 people in your household.  We will begin looking for our new pet in the upcoming months. Rumor has it that the perfect dog for our family is a Bernese Mountain Dog... so we will see!

Yesterday was a day that caught me by surprise!

As you may recall a couple weeks ago my son Dopey came home from a visit with grandparents with full blown chicken pox.  I did not forget about them per say, but got busy with life and pink eye, basketball schedules, Christmas preperations and concerts etc etc etc...

So when Doc came down with the flu we did not think twice about it.  Just moved on with life and let her hang out in her room cuddled under a pile of blankets and pillows to sweat it out.  Yesterday when I arrived at my office I found Sleepy, clearly very un-happy, with big red cheeks and tears in her eyes, telling me how sick she feels but if I could just let her rest and go back to class, she would be okay.  See she did not want to miss her first ever basketball game on an organized team.  I told Sleepy that for sure, she had a fever and could not put her team at risk and she had to go home.  Score one for this mom, as I shrank down to her eye level and kindly and lovingly told her that there are many basketball games this season and that no matter when she gets to play, it will be her first game and that we will all be there to support her!  She really wasnt buying what I was selling, but went and grabbed her stuff and home we headed.

In the car I reach over and feel her forhead which is on fire and then reach up and tossle her hair. Feeling a bump I ask her what she did to her head.  She says -"don't worry mom, they are bug bites - I had the girls at school look at them they are not ticks."  Bug bites. Really in December ? 

I get her home and ask her to put on her jammies and come see me.  I check her trunk and see a few red spots - check her hair and see some "bug bites" and think... that today is the LAST day for the chicken poxs that Dopey had to incubate... nuts I say to Sleepy, you got the pox.

I feed her and Doc lunch and then make arrangements for the other kids to get home from school and sports and do a few things around the house.  About 3 hours later I see Doc as she is getting a drink from the fridge.  I say to her, "is that a cold sore on your lip?" No she says.  Well maybe she says.  I ask her to come over towards me and as she does, I see a matching mark on her neck.  I tell her to head to the bathroom where I check her trunk, cant be sure - but am thinking maybe she has the pox too... But how can this be? She is the one that brought them home 10 years ago for us all to share.  Within the hour it was confirmed.  Case number two for the day.

Our dwarf friend comes home from school and has a headache.  Literally she sits all night on the couch and sleeps.  I go to cooking class, come home and wake her . I have her talk to me a bit about what hurts and then give her a glass of water and two advil and send her to bed. No sooner is she out of my sight and I hear a loud crash.  She passed out cold on the way to her room.  I rush up to see her in a heap on the floor.  I start trying to rouse her and after what seems like a long time, but maybe three minutes - she flutters open her eyes and asks, Did I fall?

Get her situated in bed.  Head back to the first floor of the house and now am a mess because every loud noise sounds to me like a child falling - out of bed - into the bathroom ... Finally I get to sleep around 1am, fighting off my own headache and stomach issues.

In the am I wake to find that Happy wont get out of bed. He has a headache and is refusing to go to school.  Hum..typically he is so compliant that I let this slide and tell him to go back to bed.   Go make my rounds to the other sick dwarfs to find that Doc looks like a pin cusion and Sleepy is not far behind, both still running fevers and have the chills and many many more spots than yesterday.  Because of the high fever and sore neck, we take Doc to the doctors. I check her in and whisper to the receptionist..."she is highly contagious, do you want her in the waiting room?  Eyes get large as she scurries away from the counter clearing a room for Doc.  Now that friends was the fastest appointment that I have ever had at the doctors office - we were in and out inside of 15 minutes!!

Side note - if you have three pox close together and you draw some holly leaves with a green maker around them you have a beautiful festive holly branch for the Christmas season.  Just saying.

Now the friend that we have and Doc both are thinking that showers would be a great idea.  Doc manages hers fine. However our friend does not.  She passes out in the shower.  After the shower she tries to talk me into going to school, because she has no fever and is not showing pox.  She just has no strength in her legs.. Hum let me think, send you to school or not ??? Answer ..NOT

The count for the day - four home - for sure two of them til after the first of the year - the third jury is still out on her ailment - but the doctor says if there is a doubt, keep her home.

Now let's just see what next weeks illness will be. OR better yet, will there be more dwarfs with the Pox in time for Christmas???

Monday, December 6, 2010

Today we have four pink eyes!

Well, I would like to say that since the vomit and the chicken pox, that all things in the house of the 7 dwarfs have calmed down... alas, not so much.

After a week of Dopey struggling through the chicken pox and his impending return to school, a new plague has crept into our home... you guessed it Pink Eye, or as we like to call it : Stink Eye!


  • It stinks that we have to do additional laundry because the pink eye is so infectious and you can't risk a shared towel or wash cloth, blanket or pillow case.
  • It stinks because Sneezy and Happy have to stay at home alone.
  • It stinks because it always costs something, medication, lunch out because we had doctors appointments over the lunch hour, time, energy, juggling of schedules...
  • It stinks because, did I mention,  that it is highly contagious and we have 16 other eyes in the house that could be potentially infected.

But to be fair, Sneezy and Happy are content and super excited that tomorrow,  while the rest of the dwarfs are preparing for school, that they can stay cuddled up in their beds, with dreams of sugarplums dancing in their heads, or at least that is until they try to open their crusted over pasted shut eyes...