Tick Hating Season!

Can I just say that I completely hate ticks! And of course here in the Northwoods there are ticks aplenty! I'm so squeamish about them! I'm fine with most spiders, bees, bugs, etc... but ticks just send my skin crawling!

My first experience with a tick was when I was at summer camp. I was eating rice crispies for breakfast and thought I had a rice crispie stuck on my chin. I tried to lick it off and when it wouldn't budge I picked it off and almost passed out when I realized I had been licking a tick!

Really, that wasn't my first experience, but it was the first one I was capable of remembering. One of my mother's favorite stories (that I've heard 10 thousand times!) is about my having a tick in my hair when I was probably a little under 2 years old. So of course I have no memory of it - Thank God!

Apparently, my mother and my aunt were quite the pair together. There are many stories about how crazy things happened when they got together. Anyway, so my mom and aunt were together when my mother discovered I had a tick in my head. They weren't quite sure what to do. So my mother says that she heard if you pour lighter fluid on the tick it will release. So they tried that. It didn't work. Then my aunt said she heard that if you touch a match to it it will let go.... unbelievably they tried this as well. Which resulted in my hair shooting up in flames and my mom and aunt patting my head madly to get the fire out. I guess I was bald for a while.

Almost 10 years ago, my x-husband and I were doing field work. One night after work in the motel room he was sitting with his back to me, crack showing of course ;) and I asked him since when did he have that big mole on his ass. It wasn't a mole, it was a tick! I wanted to go get someone to help, but it being in a sensitive area he was very insistent that I just suck it up and take care of it. I insisted on going to the store and getting a candle and some finger nail polish. Of course I tried the candle first!! Neither worked, so I ended up having to pick it out. It took me forever to work up the balls to do it.

In the 3 summers that we've lived up in the woods I've been lucky enough to have my husband around when one of the kids or myself have a tick issue. Until the other night that is.

The kids were out playing in the yard before dinner. During dinner I notice what looks like an ant in my baby girl's ear. When I got up to pick it out I discovered it was a tick! Luckily it didn't appear to have bored in yet. Of course I instantly freaked out and thought about calling my husband's brother. But it was in my baby girl's ear! And it was running around!! I totally panicked of course, but I eventually swiped it out with a kleenex and ran it outside to the fire pit! My husband has a special "tick" knife that he cuts them with, but I didn't have the guts to even open the kleenex :) the whole time I was running it to the fire pit I was hoping it didn't crawl out onto my hand! I was too panicked to get the child-proof lighter to work so I just flung it into the fire pit and ran back into the house quick!

Later when I was thinking about it, I figured that my husband's brother probably would have laughed at me and wouldn't have wanted to make the drive... it is a 15-20min drive. But I'm sure he would have done it, but then would have gossiped about it for a long time. So I thought of a better plan should I encounter a tick when my husband isn't home. I'll call the neighbors. They have 3 kids that play in their backyard (lined with woods), so I'm sure they are pretty good with the ticks :) I just really hope that it doesn't happen again!

Wee Loves to Potty!

It's time again for Potty Time Tuesdays, hosted by Healthy Moms!

Well, Little Man is doing about the same: he had his good potty days and the days where he kind of forgets about the whole going on the potty thing except for in the mornings, naptime and bedtime (he's realized he can really prolong naptime and bedtime by taking excessive time on the potty!). But over the past week he has done #2 in the potty several time! Of course he's still more often than not, going in his pull up, but it's still wonderful progress in my book! :)

But the amazing thing is that Baby Girl has gone potty in the potty chair every single morning for almost a week now!! And she totally gets the whole M&M thing ;) This morning after she went she totally ran right over to the potty M&M jar and demanded her reward!

She will come to the potty every time that Little Man does, but so far the only time she's gone is first thing in the morning. But still it's quite an accomplishment :)

Starving!!!

This counting carbs and all that stuff is making me crazy! :) It's pretty complicated. But of course I have to stick to it. If I was just diabetic normally, I don't know if I could really stick to this stuff... but as it is for the health of my baby, of course I'm following all the guidelines. But man, I wake up starving my butt off (no more middle of the night eating) and end up feeling hungry all day. I've figured out that I can eat more of the foods that have less carbs, but it seems like those foods are less filling... I always end up starving about an hour after I eat.

And the worst thing about it is giving up all those sweet treats! :( It really sucks to watch the whole fam eat ice cream and not be able to have any :( its torturous! ;)

The bright side is that hopefully I will only have to eat this way for the next month and a half.

The downside is so many more appointments! I will start weekly Dr. Apt's next week as well as weekly ultrasounds, non-stress tests and meetings with the nutritionist... as well as the contuned urine testing every morning for ketones and blood sugar testing 4 times a day... at least I don't have to take insulin!

That's been my week... starving and testing ;) I've been so busy that I almost forgot it was our 5th anniversary today!! How awful is that? Last year we were even busier and things were really crazy and I did forget until my mom called to remind me. I meant to go pick something up for the both of us today - as I know my husband most likely doesn't remember... the gift for 5th anniversary is wood... hmmm....

It's Potty Time!

Today I'm taking a break from complaining! :) Phew. I know you all are so relieved ;) Anyway, I keep meaning to do Potty Time Tuesdays with Cascia of Healthy Moms (and sorry Cascia, but I have had issues with copying and pasting the code for your button!)...but it seems that Tuesdays just fly by and turn right into Wednesdays! ;)

Anyway, Little man has been doing a really great job with potty training! I'm really quite impressed. About half of the time he will have a dry diaper all day! But of course there are other days when he's just too busy playing to tell me when he has to go potty. Not quite ready for the big boy underwear. I tried to entice him into wearing them by buying him Lightning McQueen and Spiderman, but he tried on a pair and had them on for about 5 minutes and then wanted them off...

Amazingly, he is waking me up in the morning and telling me he can go potty! He has been doing this about 90% of the time for the past couple of weeks!

AND: He has actually pooped in the potty about 5 times!!! I know that this is the part where people have the most difficulty - especially with boys, so I am so happy that he doesn't seem to have any issues with it - of course he doesn't do this every day, or even most days, but still - at least he isn't flat out refusing to poop on the potty! If he keeps this up I may be able to send him to preschool in the fall afterall! ;) (He really needs the socialization).

The other great thing is that baby girl is interested in the whole potty thing! She's 21 months, which is maybe a little on the early side, but she loves to do what her big brother is doing. Every morning when he says he has to go potty, she jumps out of bed and races him to the bathroom and tries to sit on his potty before he gets there. Its too cute, but of course really has been making little man mad. And any other time that she hears him say he's got to go potty she either races him to the bathroom or gets completely heartbroken if someone stops her.

We went and got baby girl her own potty chair the other day. She's been sitting on it fine. The first night she actually squeezed out just a little drop of potty :) But she's basically just been sitting there playing. Which is fine at this point, she's at least getting into the habbit of sitting on it.

I'm just very glad that Little man is really getting the whole potty thing. Going when we are out is going to be the rough thing for him. There has been a couple of times he's said he had to go potty at Wal-Mart or on the road... and when we take him into a public toilet he just looks and says "I think no." I'm sure that will improve over time...

Fun Stuff Folks ;)

I feel like I'm complaining entirely too much... but what else is a crazy pregnant woman to do? ;)

We finally got to the point where the two little ones were at least getting over being sick. I think Sunday night was the first night that neither of them woke up coughing in the middle of the night.

Monday I had my appointment with the diabetic nutritionist for gestational diabetes. And I was so overwhelmed. She gave me at least 50 pages/pamphlets and a book to read to start making meal and snack plans and such. (I'm finally making some sense of it all, it's very complicated!).

Monday night after dinner little man started looking not so well. We took his temp and it was 101, so we gave him some tylenol. The tylenol just didn't help and he just got worse - he couldn't get comfy to get to sleep and he would finally drift off and then wake up crying. He would sit up and he was really acting like his stomach hurt. We were also thinking that maybe he was having a rebound of the flu... And to top that off he told me that he accidentally ate something! It took me a while but I finally got out of him that he accidentally ate a sucker. Well, there are a few things that he calls suckers, and who knows he could have eaten something that he thought was a sucker. So we were freaking out and ready to take him to the ER at 2am.

Around that time, the dog got up and started acting like she had to go out. I told her to go lay down thinking that we just disrupted her sleep and I really didn't feel like letting her out at 2am... didn't want her to go out and start barking or anything... Let me just say that next time, I will totally let her out. 'Cause I woke up (after not hardly sleeping all night) to a nice pile on the floor...

So we called the clinic as soon as they opened in the morning and took little man in... Immediately after checking in his ears the Dr proclaimed that little man had an ear infection. Horribly we were pretty relieved. We had been thinking the worst.

He was down for maybe about a day until the antibiotic kicked in. And thankfully they gave us a prescription for some ear drops to numb the pain :) Ahhhh...

I am just so completely exhausted. And of course with the gestational diabetes, emergency clinic visits, and regular appointments, I have been on the run entirely too much. This week alone we were at the Dr's Monday, Tuesday, today and then we have Tweenie's eye glass appointment tomorrow (since she flushed her glasses down the toilet). Then since my glucose testing numbers have been a little bit over what they should be, I have to go meet with the nutritionist again on Monday... a re-check for little man's ear on Wednesday, and then my Dr's appointment on Thursday.

Ugh. I'm just glad that next week is finals week for the classes I'm teaching. Hopefully I can get some down time soon!!

Tween Drama

Just when I thought I had more than enough to worry about and more than enough going on... Tweenie decides its time to start acting up... big time.

Well, I've been busy with the two little ones being horribly sick for the past 2 weeks now. And then last weekend the rest of us starting getting sick... me first, then hubby, and then tweenie. Of course she's didn't want that to interfere with her going to school and I didn't keep her home from the beginning as I should have... she didn't seem to have it as bad as the rest of us, but then again it started out pretty mild and after a few days got lots worse...

Anyway, so for starters, on Wednesday she came home wearing pajama pants. Now I realize its not that big of a deal, kids are wearing them to school... but she has asked several times before and I have told her that she is not allowed to wear pajama pants to school. It just looks trashy, and I won't have her going to school looking trashy!

I always check her clothes out in the morning to make sure what she is wearing is appropriate. She had on jeans when she left for school on Wednesday. When she came home in pajamas I said "did you wear those to school?"
"Oh no," she says "I had them on under my jeans and I got hot, so I had to take my jeans off"

Apparently, she had forgotten to put her jeans back on before getting off the bus. Yes, she's sneaky, but hasn't yet got the complete smarts to stick it out and not get caught...

Boy did I want to ream her, but I sent her to her room and waited until I calmed down to talk to her. And then I just told her how disappointed I was in her because she knows the rules. She's been told before that she cannot wear pjs to school... we had been trusting her with more responsibilities and priviledges, and now I was going to have to start checking under her clothes to make sure she's not sneaking stuff she's not supposed to be wearing to school. Grrrr.... I just grounded her from the computer for a week.

She was fine about it, didn't even start crying as usual...

Then with this whole Swine flu thing going on and her being sick with the flu, we decided that we should really be keeping her home. Especially since her congestion and cough seemed to be getting worse. While, it is most likely not the swine flu, there were students from the community college where I (and hubby) teach that went to Mexico for Spring Break. One of them actually being in my class. The two little ones were the first to get sick, but still... you really just don't know for sure. So when we told her that we were going to keep her home since she was sick she got upset and started crying. She said she *had* to go to school on Friday because they were doing rehearsal for the band concert on Tuesday. We told her that if she was still sick she couldn't go. And when I called her school on Friday, they told me that if she has any flu symptoms that we need to keep her out for 7 days.

Anyway, so what does Tweenie do to "show" us? She got up in the middle of the night on Thursday and flushed her glasses down the toilet!!!

Friday morning when I woke her up she took forever to come down. She came down to go to the bathroom and started going back upstairs - I asked if she was feeling OK and she said that she just had to go find her glasses... she put them on her dresser when she went to bed and couldn't find them... she was up there "looking" for about 30 minutes when we went up to help her look for them. They were nowhere.

My husband immediately said that he thought she flushed them because the toilet was flushing funny. I said, "No, she wouldn't have done that"

After scouring her room, we told her that she had 10 minutes to think about what happened to her glasses and if she didn't come clean about it that she wasn't going to summer camp.

10 minutes later she came down and said that "they must've falled down the toilet" when she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

I just can't imagine why she would think of doing such a thing!?!?!? What did she think was going to happen? When I asked her that she said she thought she would just be grounded for a long time. Apparently, grounding doesn't work.

I asked her how she thought she was going to be able to read her sheet music to play in the band concert. She said she hadn't thought about it. I guess she showed us! The soonest I could get her in for an eye appointment is next Friday.

Of course if we are able to recover her glasses we'll clean them up good and she'll have to wear them. But my husband has been too sick to go through the hassle of taking the toilet off... We made her reach down to see if she could feel them. (which she no doubt did not think would happen!)

Lucky for her she fessed up and still gets to go to summer camp. So we did the next worse thing in her book as punishment - we deleted her myspace account. Through the whole ordeal that was the only thing she cried about. Maybe next time she thinks about doing something like that she will think it through a little better.

I just still can't believe she did something like that. I never would have imagined doing something like that!