I Need a Happy

Feels like it has been forever since I wrote. So much has happened in the last.. what. Nine? Ten days?

Since coming home from Easter the household has been in a state of uncontrolled chaos. In an attempt to control it I am going to see if I can put it into some semblance of order here.

Evie regressed with sleep issues. The trip seemed to put her back to the place where she was staying up as late as she could and getting up early. It has meant that our 6pm baby bedtime was now a 10pm baby bed time after 4 hours of crying and being tired on her part but refusing to sleep. We've decided to skip her naps and do some Doctor reccomended sleep restriction to get her back to going to bed at a normal time and not being up super late.

A few months ago we were all ragged from her sleep problems. She would go to bed and then wake up 20-25 times a night. No that isn't a typo. She was up that much most nights. We lived on 15 minute increments of sleep that were split up by 10 minute sessions of Evie waking up screaming, tossing, turning, thrashing, banging her body into her crib, or when put into bed with us, banging into us. We were bruised, bloody lipped from being slammed with her head in the face, tired, and so totally over it. We learned that no one believed she had a sleep problem.

We were told that WE were the problem for trying to help her sleep. We had tried cry it out (vomit. fountains of vomit. She gags when she cries for longer than a couple minutes, even when shes NOT trying to sleep.), we had tried so many methods of sleep training, we had tried each one for long enough to give it time to work before giving up, and finally we turned to a doctor only to find that it took over 8 months to see a pediatric sleep specialist because of wait lists.

I fought so hard to get her seen. I called every sleep place within 50 miles. I e-mailed, I wrote letters, I called our doctor once a week every week until she finally put in the damn referral to a specialist for us. We finally got in to see someone. He said that she did have a problem, but at her age it was not safe to medicate her. All we could do was to not let her sleep until she was sooooo tired she slept. Four days of hell where she only slept 6 hours a day, and finally she slept. She slept 11 hours a night, but no naps. Then she started adding in naps. Once she napped, she is now not sleeping at night. So in the interest of actually getting some sleep, we are dropping naps. I do not want to do another 9 months of hell.

Of course, her sleep issues mean she is cranky all day long. She bites, throws, hits people. She screams and whines non-stop for hours on end and nothing soothes her. She plays the pick me up so I can whine to be put down so I can whine to be picked up so I can slap you in the mouth game. She is a little terror in a tutu.

Liam is going through a phase where his emotional age is that of a two year old and he is throwing tantrums over doing things he once did with glee. He is disobeying us AS we are telling him not to do something. He is not listening to anything, throwing toys and food and anything that we ask him to give back to his sister after he grabs it out of her hands..... it is just something extra I am having a hard time dealing with right now.

With all of this going on, I got the news that on the 24th that my Grandma fell and broke her femur up near her hip. It took two days for them to do the surgery because of the blood thinner my grandma takes. They had to wait until it was at a lower level in her body.

THEN, the first facility she was in after being released (because of course Kaiser won't let anyone stay in the hospital until they are well enough to leave, they just kick them out as fast as possible no matter what.) was HORRIBLE! she was ignored while screaming and crying for help, she had dropped the call button and couldn't see to pick it up (she is losing her sight) and she was thirsty and had no water, can't get out of bed and is screaming for help and NO ONE CAME for HOURS. Her daughter came by after work to check on her and found her like this crying for help. Ten minutes later my mom came and had the job of ripping someone a new one for treating an 89 year old lady like that.

They got her transferred to a new, much better facility, yesterday night. She finally got a good nights sleep, though my mom still is not leaving her side. Hopefully she will be better soon. I wish I could be there to help. But Evie is sick right now and I don't want to bring anything bad to grandma, plus I know the kids would be just too much for her. Even in small doses... and then I wouldn't be ANY help because I would be trying to keep my little turkeys from being traffic hazards in the hallways.

My lovely Grandma

And then, to top it all off, my 14 year old kitty, Mister Kitty, who for the last 5 years has lived with my best friend because he (yes the kitty) brought home a stray kitty who got attached to him and they couldn't be apart and that was just too many cats for me to handle..... well.... Mister apparently had a very aggressive form of oral cancer. He broke a tooth and we were crowdfunding to raise the money for his surgery, but when they started the surgery they found that most of his tongue was taken up with a tumor that had not been there even two weeks ago during a check on his tooth. We made the choice to euthanize him. I held him as he left us.

Mr. Kitty

No. I am not ok. I have some weird sort of emotional hangover feeling. I am so angry and sad right now. I want to be in California with my grandma, but not only can I not afford that really, having the kids there would just stress her out. I lost a kitty. My daughter isn't sleeping, also has a cold and is the crankiest thing on two legs. My son is just not listening and picking the WORST time to test the boundaries.

I need a win. I need a happy. I need something GOOD to happen beyond the good of making it through another day without running screaming into the street. Or maybe a kindly family of wolves to come raise my children for me for a week.

I Don't Want to Write This Post

I thought I would have longer before I had to write this post. I thought I would have another month or two. But life is what it is.

On Monday, January 13th, my mother in law passed away.

Most girls whine about their mother in law, they dislike them, think they are controlling, wish they would keep their opinions to themselves. But this mother in law was not like those mother in laws. She told me something about being a mom that I will keep with me forever. She told me that in any situation, no matter how sensitive, I have the right to do anything I need to do to keep my children safe. I was worried about offending her because I wanted to run the vacuum before I put the baby on the floor at her house. She just welcomed the help in cleaning up and told me I had a job to do, to keep my children safe, and if that meant running the vacuum, then I should do just that.

She was one hell of a special person.

So let me share a little bit about what I learned about Julie in the time I had her in my life.

Julie knit. She made beautiful things out of strings of yarn. She was a Wiccan. She was blindingly intelligent. She gave birth to and raised three boys, of which I married the eldest. She lived in a little house in Mississippi in the time that I knew her.

The rock in Julie's yarn

She had divorced the father of her boys when my husband was in high school, so a while ago. She had since remarried someone else who she loved greatly. She had rescue kitties, and a good dog. She worked for FedEx. She could fly small planes.

She made a blankie that my son loves,

and one for my daughter that she sleeps with every night.  

She came to see Liam when he was born.

And again just after he turned one.

We went to see her when Evie was about 6 months old, after she couldn't travel to us any more. 

She inspired me to learn how to knit.
She is the one who married us.

She battled cancer with good humor and grace. She lost the fight.

She will be missed.