Archive for the ‘The Girls’ Category

Sick sick and more sick

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Two weeks ago Shea started out with a stomach bug that carried into a very nice chest cold. It wasn’t a pretty week, and then the girls and I got sick. No matter how hard we try if Shea gets sick we all end up sick.

Poor Kathleen was so sick I was worried about Pneumonia. So I took them out to the doctor to make sure it wasn’t that. We couldn’t get an appointment so we waited 3 hours before we were seen. They were giving two shots – steroids and antibiotics to help them recover faster, and then we spent another 1.5 hours in the hospital waiting for chest x-rays to rule out pneumonia.

They started perking up halfway through that evening, while they still have a nice cough and runny noses they are doing much better, even their appetites are returning, thankfully. But I’m still not well. I feel better today, I didn’t wake up with a hard cough, so I’m thinking I may have broken it, we’ll see tonight. If I set back into the way I was feeling last night then I’ll make an appointment to see the doctor. But today I think is a much better day.

So we’ll wait and see. Meanwhile the girls get to finish off their antibiotics and work in some breathing treatements a few more times and hopefully they’ll be cough free soon.

Preschool

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

I just made 5 phone calls to some local preschools. I only liked two of the schools from what I heard about them. 1 made them wear uniforms which is typical of the public school system here, but it’s not a public school, the other two were full day care centers and while I’m not opposed to being away from Kathleen that long Samantha might be. The two I liked are half days schools, one has a full day option that they told me about. Both are church affiliated (Methodist and Baptist). And they are worlds apart in cost.

First Methodist Preschool runs from 8:30 to 11:30 for $180 a month and First Baptist Church Day Care Center runs from 8 to 11:30 for $250 a month. I like the First Baptist one better from the enthusiasm the woman who answered the phone had about it.

The problem being we really can’t afford either of them. I really wish we had a public preschool. There is only so much I can work on with Kathleen. She can’t start Kindergarten this September because of her age. And she isn’t quite ready for it. Half a day school would be great for her right now. Learn and then come home and play with Sissy.

Hopefully we’ll be able to work something out. I can’t rely on my freelancing to do the job as I don’t make the same each week, and can’t guarantee I’ll make enough that we won’t struggle with the rest of the bills. So we’ll wait and see I guess.

Caffeine, colds and the potty

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Well I think I’ve managed to cut most of the caffeine out of my system. I had a bit much yesterday as I was not feeling well and got fast food so I didn’t have to cook lunch while feeling like crap. So I might get a headache today but considering I’m not top of my game already it probably will be a really bad one lol. Though I have gone days with out any caffeine and gotten no headaches, so I think I’m over that particular hump, now to stay off of it. I do enjoy the carbonation, so I’m back to buying Sam’s Choice Clear American “naturally” flavored water, that is no calorie and carbonated and has flavor since I do not like plain water. It gets that carbonation fix I generally drink soda for. We typically keep Key-lime in the house since Shea will drink it too, the other fruit flavors he doesn’t like, but I did buy a couple strawberries for me. The girls call it Thirsty – not exactly sure why.

We are now all officially sick. Shea caught what we’ve had the past few days, unfortunately he’s home from work today, but when he bent over this morning and got dizzy I kinda didn’t like that so pushed a little more for him to stay home and get well instead of going to work. We need the money, but I need him more than I need the money. Dizzy and heights do not go well together and what he does is already dangerous enough with out me worrying about that. So I’m glad he’s home. I just hope he can get some overtime this weekend to make up for it, but we’ll see. Good thing is I got a maintenance contract that expired and my client is renewing so that’s some income and I had a quick project last week so in 4 weeks well start making some extra money that way too. Hopefully my next project will be as quick. I’ll try to pick one up today after the girls doctor appointment.

We aren’t completely accident free now, but Kathleen has made excellent progress in that department in the past week. I tried threatening wearing diapers for accidents since nothing else seemed to work. But all it did was allow her to go in her pants with out much care. So after the second time of diapers I changed strategies and removed diapers and pullups from her completely. No longer are we doing pullups at night. Yes it’s far more annoying to wake up and have to make a dry bed, but it’s far easier in the potty training now. We’ve had only sleep time accidents since we started this particular thing. We are also on a timer, Grandma and Grandpa bought a potty watch for the girls. It has a set 30, 60 or 90 miniute count down on it and it restarts itself, which is awesome. It plays a song and lights up. She wore it the first day but now it just sits on my desk and she goes when it says to. I do turn it off and try to get her to go on her own, it has worked okay, we’ve not had any accidents.

I think it’s also helpful that they are spending time in our room watching the Roku with it’s new cartoons – dora and thomas the train that are streaming from netflix. I think in terms of what we paid for and what we have watched since getting it the thing has paid for itself already. I think being in our room has helped her as well, the potty isn’t too far away.

We’ve also instituted a sticker regime again. She seems to like that a lot. When we first established it we crossed out a lot of stickers, but I’ve not had to do that in a while. She gets 1 sticker for her board, and 1 sticker for herself when she potties and she gets 1 sticker for her and 2 for her board when she poops. And she only gets the poop ones when she shows me lol. So I get a lot of “Mommy, do you want to see the poop?” She likes to try to fake it out when she has an accident so you have to check the panties too. But we have made decided progress, and I hope we can get her in this most of the time so we can start working with Sammi, first thing with Sammi though is getting her to wear panties at all, she just won’t wear them. And if I put them on her she just takes them off so we have to work on it.

Bubba, again …

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

I am a terrible tweeter lol. I need to tell a story and 140 characters isn’t cutting it.

Last night Bubba was yelping when he slept I assumed it was a dream until this morning when he started doing it when I think he’s awake. He definitely does it when he’s moving so I think the girls were a bit too rough, again.

I called the vet just to see what I could do to help. I was already on the right track with isolation. Which I had been doing since this morning but Samantha doesn’t listen so I had to resort to putting Bubba in his pen. He doesn’t like it much, but he he’s surviving, and actually a lot less noisy than I anticipated, but then the girls are sitting outside his pen watching over him. He’s whining now, but the kind that means let me out not a yelping painful kind of one.

I can tell he hurts, but he’s still a puppy. He’s eating and drinking to my knowledge and he’s going to the bathroom. I’m hoping that he’ll be fine in the morning if not I’ll call the vet and see about picking up some pain relief for him and to keep him isolated until he does feel better. I really hope that he’s okay we can’t afford any type of vet bill right now. This cold weather is kicking our financial butt. If Shea doesn’t work, Shea doesn’t get paid and that’s the short and sweet of it, nothing I can do about it.

So my tummy is in knots and its no fun. The only good thing is at 5pm or so the weekend starts and Shea is home for 3 days. Not that he wasn’t just here yesterday cause of a “cold out”. Released because they couldn’t do any hot work cause the fire mains were all frozen. Yeah, that’s the south for you. We are lucky he went to work today.

Bells and Birthdays

Monday, December 28th, 2009

I’ve missed out on writing some things so I end up with a lot to write on the days I remember to write. I know it’s an interesting title, but my parents uses bells for their dog. It was such a great idea I’d tried to make our own set. I only found little jingle bells and Samantha took them off the ribbon I had them on. Probably not the greatest of ideas, but Mom found some HUGE bells, tie wrapped them on to a chain and put them on a cat collar so we can adjust it on the door knob. It’s been on about a week or so and Bubba actually uses them during the day. I don’t know if he’s ringing them to actually go outside, but I think he is, he usually rings them and then sits down and waits, and then goes outside. It did not take him long to figure it out. We have very few accidents during the day. We still have some and at night I’m sure we do as well, but of the three little children I have he was by far the easiest to potty train.

My parents asked me who would be potty trained first Kathleen or the Dog, I said the dog lol. And I was right.

Kathleen had her birthday party yesterday. She racked up on toys, but unfortunately I will be going to the store today to pick up another Barbie doll for Samantha. She fell IN LOVE with the one Sydney gave Kathleen. So we must get her one.

The birthday party was a bit bigger than the previous ones. We invited three additional kiddos. Taylor who is the daughter of Shea’s second cousin, she’s about 1 years old, Victoria who is the daughter of one of Shea’s highschool buddies and Jacob, who is one of Kathleen’s friends at Mam and Pawpaw’s church when she goes. Their parents are a friend of the family. We of course invited Addie and Laura as well. AND Gabriel and Sydney were there. It was a joy to have them share Kathleen’s birthday with us. We only wish it could have been longer but we understand.

The kids played with Kathleen’s Christmas video game – a web cam that hooks to the tv and plays music and has dancing characters while they all dance in front of it. And we brought up Elefun and all the kids caught butterflies. Shea’s parents have a pasture they let some local horse owners use, his only real condition was that they come over once and a while when the girls are around to give them a ride. Now I must say I was not at all surprised that Kathleen rode the horse. She actually couldn’t wait for it. But it truly amazed me that Samantha rode the horse. Totally amazed me because she freaks out at anything that moves by itself, she wasn’t real sure of it the first time and when I took her away she still insisted on riding so we avoided the horse’s head and we went around, she rode around in a smaller course than the rest of the kids, but she didn’t cry she actually smiled and enjoyed it. She still amazes me when she does something out of character like that. But she did the same thing with the fair rides this year too. It’s amazing what a year will do for the kiddos.

Christmas and Computers

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

Well it has been an eventful few days. On Monday my computer completely died. It’s been interesting not having on. I did finally get my laptop fixed. I had tried to install norton internet security and the avg kept erroring on uninstall so it broke the whole computer. Thankfully nothing important is on my laptop so I just reinstalled it. However when I do that it doesn’t have the ethernet or wireless driver so I didn’t get around to downloading all that until today. So my laptop is now functioning and I can keep up with my email and the likes with out bugging Shea.

It took three days to get the loan approved for my new computer. It’s a dell, it’s much better than what I had: Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q8300 (4MB L2, 2.5GHz, 1333FSB), Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English

It has 6G of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. I bought the latest version of Office with it and a 3 year warrenty. The only bad thing is that I won’t get it till the middle of January. It really kinda sucks but I’ll live.

Christmas was good. The girls made out like champs.

Kathleen and Samantha got a tent to share, a tinkerbell sleeping bag each, a princess dress up trunk from Grams T. Grandma and Grandpa got the girls a leapster 2, 1 game and a battery charger with 4 rechargable batteries, each. Santa gave them a buzz lightyear stuff toy and blanket, and a princess basketball, panties, m&ms, a toy story flash light and a little pet shop figure. I started a new tradition with the girls gifts from us. Something they need, “want”, a game, read, and wear.

They needed more sheets for their bed so they both got a mickey sheet set. They got their “want” which isn’t necessarily something they wanted but something I thought they’d like – Sammi got a large truck carrier with about 20 little cars inside it, Kathleen got some playdoh and a white board drawing and lettering set. They got the Elefun game to share (catching butterflies in a net). They each got a colloring/activity book to “read”. And a red “christmas” tunic and legging set they can wear after christmas still.

They got from Shea’s side of the family different things. Sammi got a talking truck she’s afraid of because it moves by itself, some Barbi dvds, an outfit and a princess drawing book and a bath set. Kathleen got a dance video game to play on the tv, a simple “simon” game, an outfit and a bath set.

Mom and Dad also sent the girls a collection of books and coloring books that they love.

We also had the first of Kathleen’s birthday parties. We had cake and icecream and she opened up some presents. She got a fairy popup tent, an arizona fleece sweat shirt, a tinkerbell blanket and some drawing books from us. She enjoyed it.

I got the new super mario brothers game for wii and Shea will probably be getting a smoker for christmas.

All in all we had a good day and I think everyone enjoyed opening presnets with both my parents and Shea’s. It was a good day.

Christmas Dinner

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Christmas is fast approaching. Next Friday is the big day, and one in which Kathleen cannot wait for. She is constantly talking about Santa, I think next year we’ll have to start writing letters to Santa.

Tomorrow is the family party, which hopefully will be a good time.

We had Christmas dinner tonight, the Saturday before Christmas. As is typical for here, I have no idea what we are doing on Christmas day, so in order to get the left overs that come with Christmas, I baked us a half a ham and made some mashed potatoes, and we finished off the biscuits I made for breakfast this morning. It was yummy, but my tatos were missing something and I’m not quit sure what it was.

Thus far our Christmas plans consist of opening presents when the girls get up while we web cam in my parents so they can watch the girls. Mam and Pawpaw might make it for present time, last Christmas we had to wake the girls up as they arrived before they woke up lol. I expect it to be the same this year or at least close.

I hope to have some cinnamon buns and hot cocco and coffee made while we open presents. I’d have egg nog but neither of us like it so there is no point in wasting that holiday tradition.

Tomorrow is a busy day, I have to make some smokey mac and cheese in the afternoon before we head over to the party. I will probably have to go to the store even though I had hoped I wouldn’t have to. I ran out of salt, which is a rare thing and I’m pretty sure I’ll need it tomorrow too. I should also pick up some drinks as I’m not sure if anyone will bring anything, so I want to make sure we are covered at least.

Being sick sucks

Sunday, December 13th, 2009

As I’m sure Bubba an attest to being sick sucks!

The girls are at least feeling a bit better. Not 100% but better. It has been a challenge to keep them in clothes. Thankfully today is a bit warmer outside then yesterday.

Me I’m still pretty out of it. I was so bad last night that the only sinus meds i had was a day time formula, so I took it. And it helped enough that I passed out.

Shea and I have been letting Bubba lay in our bed while we watch TV. I think that has spoiled the pup. He’s decided that he wants to sleep with us, which right now isn’t a problem. In a month or two when he’s grown up a little more then I’ll be hurting so we’ll see if Shea puts him in bed again with us lol.

Never been so happy for an accident

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

My biggest concern all day yesterday was that Bubba hadn’t had a bowel movement. He decided this morning after Shea went to work would be the best time to alleve himself of that problem lol. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy/proud of an accident in the house before. I would consider it a big achievement too as it was not yucky. Stinky but not the same kind it was before that permeated the whole house.

So yay for accident this morning. Now hopefully on to full on potty training. With our eating and watering scheduled right now it shouldn’t be overly difficult lol, but we’ll see.

Yesterday he was given food every couple of hours, he’d eat and sometimes he wouldn’t. I also was giving him some food when I saw he was starting to scavenge everything.

With a sick puppy in the house I forgot how much he could get into when he got to feeling better. The day before he came home I had cleaned up most of the house. But with him being sick things got to the normal house standards with the girls, their toys and the crumbs they leave behind. Not as big as usual. So this morning even though I feel like crap I spent the time to clean up the office and hall way floors, vacuum up them, even in the corners and edges to get all the “yummies” out of the crevices that got pushed to the sides with the vacuum. And I did a quick once over of the bedroom to get anything that he’d been sniffing at before. He has free reign of those two rooms. And by free I don’t mean he’s wandering around unattenuated cause it’s very rare that that girls aren’t attached to him. I have to fight them off of him to let him sleep. He’s at my feet now where it’s safe so he can rest in peace.

Two nights ago Kathleen had a nice fever. Nothing I was overly concerned about I knew how she’d probably gotten the cold – going out side with out the proper clothing on. Since we’ve had the puppy there has been only one good day for them to go outside and I let them under my supervision. It’s really hard not to let them go out into the yard, but it’s better until Shea can get the tall grass down. Last thing we need is for a snake bite or worse. I don’t even let Bubba get into the worse of the tall grass but he does have to go out in it.

Yesterday Samantha felt overly warm so she must have gotten something too. They’ve both been fussy so it didn’t surprise me any. I went to the store and bought some Children’s tylenol – something I haven’t had in the house since Kathleen decided to drink the last bottle. I have been very careful with this bottle. However I doubt there isn’t a place in the house she can’t get to if she really wanted something. All the currently active meds (the girls tylenol and the puppies meds) are on the second shelf of my kitchen cabinents. Almost out of my own reach.

I feel like crap. I felt like crap last night and I went to go watch TV in our bedroom. I managed to watch Phineas and Ferb’s Christmas episode and the episode that followed, and got a little way into rerun of Sactuary and then fell asleep and was woken by a dog yip from his pen. It was halfway through the new episode of Sanctuary. Yay! *sarcasm* I missed an episode. Though I probably will get to see that next Friday. I’m so drained.

Much brighter today

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Well last night he started feeling better, was drinking water at twenty minute intervals a few laps at a time. He was peeing normally and sometime in the middle of the night he pooped – still the runs in a dark green color with an icky smell, but after my research about what the parvo smell actually smells like I’m pretty sure it’s just an awful poo smell and not the smell of “death” that was described. But I guess we won’t really know much until he starts eating, which will be in about 30 mins or so.

We slept better last night, or so I thought until Shea told me Bubba and I kept him awake. I really didn’t think I’d been out of bed that much, and the girls only came in a few times, and not overly excessively considering Kathleen has a fever.

I was slightly worried last night about her, and around 3am Kitkat, Sammi and I took a luke warm shower. Sammi only joined us because she was awake. They came out when Shea went to work this morning and Bubba was attacking them like it was the first day. The girls were screaming cause he was nipping at their toes. Yeah, back to normal. He’s also very hungry. He’ll have to wait on that though he’ll be eating little bits over the course of the day. He is trying to eat everything in the world.

I had to bring the crate into the bedroom so that I can keep an eye on him while I tend Kathleen. The living room is too cold in the fall/winter so we stay in our bedroom for the warmth, and comfort of a bed instead of the leather couches. The lady at the vet told me if the crate was too big to throw in some boxes to make it smaller so that’s what I did. He and his bed can fit in the crate so hopefully this will do two birds with one stone, potty training/crate training and keeping him from over extending himself activity wise (and also keep him from the girls, he’s already been sent to his pen to day for biting Kitkat – after Samantha let him out of course).

I’m running on about 9 hours of sleep over the past two days. Which is also another reason we are in the bedroom and Bubba is going to spend most of his day in the pen. So I can rest and not worry about him eating things or cheweing on things he should not.

But all in all things are looking up. I’m still worried but today looks better, he’s acting like a puppy and that is not something he’s done since we brought him home.

Between Bubb and the girls it took me nearly half an hour to write this lol. So I’m gonna go prepare Bubba some dinner for the first time hopefully in two days he’ll eat.