So, my daughter…
24 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Motherhood, school
So, my daughter is finally in the online public school.
My son may not talk much, but he knows all his letters, most of his numbers 1-10, and a lot of shapes and colors (didn’t know how much he knew until two nights ago, watching him play with a question-and-answer electronic toy).
We don’t have to drive ANYWHERE for Thanksgiving this year.
My husband and I are both home, together, for two whole days.
I’ve seen some crazy, crazy stuff at work lately, stuff that will make me a better nurse in the long run.
All in all, a good week!
Yay! My kid got…
23 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
Yay! My kid got into online public school after two months of being waitlisted! Now to figure out how all this works…
15 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Motherhood
My son just clearly repeated ‘waffle’. :happydance: I was so excited that I walked over and smooched him and then smothered his waffle in extra honey. This is a banner day, because he also repeated ‘cracker’ this morning (well, it sounded like ‘caca’, but that’s okay 
). The fact that he will actually repeat two-syllable words now is HUGE.
He’s up to about 20 words now at age 2.5, but I guess it’s closer to 40 words if you count him saying his letter sounds. He’s developing in leaps and bounds.
19 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
I like this essay regarding wealth and poverty over on Red Letter Christians.
Train tunnel
17 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in Motherhood
My little guy is playing with the play tunnel and his battery-powered Thomas train. He turns on Thomas, puts him in the tunnel, then runs to the other end of the tunnel and patiently waits for Thomas to come chugging through. The only problem is that the tunnel is set up over a futon mattress on the floor, and also going around a curve. So needless to say, Thomas doesn’t get very far before he falls over on his side. So then little guy runs around to the other end and uprights Thomas, and runs back to wait at the end of the tunnel again. The little guy just looks so cute, peering into the tunnel, waiting and waiting. He has the concept down; he just doesn’t quite get that Thomas is facing insurmountable obstacles here.
17 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in health
Well, I ended up with bronchitis anyway, even though I tried to take it easy after my hard week. Apparently my immune system took a hit from all that sleep deprivation. I went to the family doc, who said there is definitely something bacterial going on, and sent me home with a script for 10 days of antibiotics. Last time I had bronchitis, 8 years ago, I was very anti-doctor, and coughed for 6 weeks before I finally went to the campus doctor, thinking that I had a broken rib. Nope, pleurisy. Four weeks of excruciating pain, which could have been avoided had I gone in a month earlier.
I’ve been off since last weekend. The nice thing is that I was called off tonight (was supposed to be my first night back, since I’m halfway better now), so I get a few more days to fully recover. Yay for low census.
The kids have been a dream this week, cooperating fully with my plan to use the TV as a babysitter while I recovered, but the house is beyond trashed. After being sedentary all week, I’m actually looking forward to cleaning it tomorrow. Nowhere to go but up; it’s pretty bad before I use the term ‘trashed’.
Sick day
11 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
I really overdid it this weekend. And now I’m sick. I don’t work more than 38 hours per two weeks normally, but due to a variety of circumstances hitting on the same week, I ended up working 50 hours in 5 days, with only 3 or 4 hours of sleep each day. I started feeling sick the second night, but calling in sick wasn’t an option for a minor cold, because I knew they were majorly understaffed even WITH me there. But today I’m sicker than I was, and I wouldn’t feel right going in there with a productive cough and fever, not just a sore throat and sinus headache like I had all week. Add in the fact that I don’t have a babysitter lined up for tomorrow so I can sleep for a few hours after my shift (not sleeping after working an overnight while already sick just sounds like the perfect recipe for making sure I get bronchitis), and it wasn’t a hard decision to call in sick this morning. I gave them 16 hours notice, so hopefully they can find an extra nurse, although I wouldn’t count on it, as short-staffed as the unit is already.
SO… I’m sick, I have a big paycheck coming my way from all that time and a half, and I feel soooo patient and happy to be with my kids today. Four of the five nights that I worked last week involved taking care of a roomful of manipulative lying thieves (they cleaned out our unit of hundreds of dollars worth of food and other items, and also did the same on the unit that they migrated to after leaving our floor. Pieces of work they were). It’s amazing how mature my two littles seem, even in full-out tantrum mode, after hours and hours dealing with those people. (I should mention here that the majority of my patients are lovely people, which is probably why the above family stood out so much- they are very much the exception!)
I was a little annoyed last night, to finally have a full night ahead of me for nothing but sleeping, only to lie down and find out that I couldn’t breathe. I moved out to the living room to avoid waking everyone with all my coughing, but on the couch, I was only able to get about four hours of sleep. So, no better than what I’ve been getting all week. Oh well. I was overdue for a cold; I don’t think I was sick even once last year. On the bright side, I am really glad to be a benefited employee again, meaning that I can actually get paid for staying home sick. I don’t think I’ve used any sick time at all since I was at my first nursing job, three years ago.
I’m tuckered out, but I’m really glad that I did work all those shifts, as it’s been a very educational week. I still have tons to learn, but I’m happy to say that I no longer feel like throwing up from the anxiety every time I go into work. My nursing skills are definitely improving, after being on this floor for close to two years now. Brag: I noticed a case of jaundice early, on a baby that wasn’t even my patient. I happened to see the baby lying there looking orange as a pumpkin, asked her nurse if I could check her (we normally don’t check them before 20 hours old), and found that she was already at a level of 18 at only 18 hours of age. 20 is where they start worrying about kernicterus. Yikes! So I have to pat myself on the back for noticing and responding to that (everyone around at the time seemed to think I was silly, and said that she was only that color because of her race).
I also witnessed one of scariest resuscitations I’ve ever seen. Scary enough that the practitioner in charge called for the code box, thinking that we might need to give epinephrine. Someone commented that God was watching over the baby, because if the practitioner had arrived only a few minutes later, the baby might not have survived. Anyway, it was terrifying, but it turned out okay, and I’m really glad I was there (the more experienced folks already had things under control when I arrived, so I was able to watch their decision making process and just take orders). Deliveries always make me nervous, even low-risk ones, but I feel more confident about attending them having seen this one, because less than 5% of deliveries require that long of a resuscitation. I’m so glad that everyone was on their toes that night.
And also, I’m still quite irritated at the oncoming nurse who criticized me for calling in the pediatrician to look at the baby right around shift change. “Why is SHE here?” “BECAUSE WE WANT HER TO BE HERE!” Apparently, I am supposed to respect her hatred for this particular doc by not notifying her about a baby who is doing scary things. Riiiiight. That sounds like responsible nursing care right there. I should know to expect that behavior from this particular nurse, but it’s still annoying as all get out.
Enough venting. Time for a fun-filling day of parenting from the couch, with a Kleenex in hand!
Letters
06 Oct 2011 1 Comment
in Motherhood
I swear my son is going to read before he speaks. The kid is obsessed with letters and phonics. Today he pointed with his chubby finger to all the letters on a Huggies box that was sitting on the counter, right at his eye level. “Huh. Uh. Guh. Sss.” And yet he still has less than 20 words that he uses on a regular basis. He is a puzzle.
All of my googling lately leads me to think speech apraxia. I hope he will start speech therapy soon after his quarterly First Steps review next week. He wasn’t ready six months ago, as he wasn’t yet imitating sounds, but he is imitating the first parts of words now, so I feel like he’s ready.
06 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
I haven’t worked much the past week or so. I expected to work more, but one of my extra shifts, it turned out the charge nurse didn’t even know that I was on the schedule, and then I didn’t get called in over the weekend, during my on-call hours. So I’ve pretty much been home for 7 days straight, other than a 3 hour stint last night when I filled in a scheduling hole for someone.
However, it is baby central at work right now, so it looks like I’m going to more than make up for not working much lately. Tonight, I will work 6 hours extra to cover for someone who is leaving on vacation in the morning. Friday night, 12 hours. Saturday night, on call for 12 hours, and almost definitely getting called in, since there is only one nursery person scheduled and they like to keep two around whenever possible. (Not looking forward to doing 3 in a row, but yay for call pay!) Then Sunday night, 12 more hours. Off Monday, then 6 more hours Tuesday night, and no babysitter Wednesday morning. Good times.
But hey, we do need the money, so I know I should just be happy that I have a job that I mostly like. We did FINALLY get our mortgage stuff finished, so we now have a real live 30-year mortgage, a full 3 percentage points lower than our old mortgage. We now own our first house free and clear. It’s completely trashed, completely flea-infested thanks to the renters who just moved out a few months ago. It probably needs more work done on it than it would even appraise for- as in needs a new roof , and needs the entire back half of the house needs to be ripped off and redone. But if worse comes to worse, it’s nice to know that we actually do own it.
I am breathing much easier now that we have a real mortgage. However, we are still paying what Dave Ramsey would call the stupid tax from having bought the house we live in now before we sold the first one. Stupid, stupid, but nothing we can do about it other than work our hardest to pay off all these bills. So it’s off to work I go, tonight and the three nights following.
Three types of husbands
18 Sep 2011 1 Comment
in marriage
I have decided that there are three kinds of husbands.
Situation: husband realizes that the refrigerator is no longer refrigerating, while his wife is working one Saturday morning.
1) Husbands in Group One would immediately conclude that the fridge has kicked the bucket, given that we bought the fridge from friends for only $100 several years ago when they were upgrading their kitchen. Group Ones would load the kids in the truck, drive to an appliance store, and lay down several hundred bucks on a brand new fridge, and trash the old fridge, without attempting to figure out what is wrong with it. Wife comes home to a shiny new fridge and a large credit card bill.
2) Group Two husbands are savvy about fixing things. Husbands in this group would take everything out of the fridge and freezer, put the food in coolers, and discover and fix the problem (which happens to be a broken ice cube dispenser, leaking and freezing in all the wrong places). Group Two husbands would put the food back in the fridge and freezer, or alternatively, leave everything in the coolers and tell exhausted Wifey, when she gets home, “I fixed the fridge today. You need to clean the those nasty shelves and put the food back in there. Hurry, those coolers won’t stay cold long.”
3) Group Three husbands put the food in coolers, discover and fix the problem, then mix up some bleach water and clean every square inch of every single shelf and drawer in the entire fridge. Group Three husbands then sort through all the food in the coolers, toss out all the mystery foods that have become unidentifiable and blackened with age, and replace all the still-good foods back on the shelves. Wife comes home to a sparkling clean fridge that once again makes ice cubes, and an organized freezer.
And yes, I am married to a Group Three husband. Lucky me! 
