Summertime Trip Number 1 - Grants Pass

We took a few days to go see my dad and step mom down in Grants Pass Oregon. The trip down took about 7 hours, 2 hours longer than it needed to, mostly because the kids, once you remove them from the car, do NOT want to get back into it.

Of course, there was the one funny stop. We had just gotten back into the car after stopping for a meal and were just back on the freeway when my son announces with great urgency that he needs to poop. We get to the next stop as fast as we can and figure we can fill up with gas while he poops. He is a rather shy pooper, so we have a little training potty from IKEA in the back of the car for him to use. We got him sitting on that while the car filled with gas. We didn't really NEED gas, but figured it was better to get it while we were there. My son ended up taking longer than expected to do his business and there was a line starting to form behind us. I had taken off to make my own pit stop and my husband made the decision to ever so slowly drive the car away from the pump. With the 4 year old sitting on his potty in the back of it. Yes the door was shut, he only traveled about 40 feet, just around the building to get out of the way. We spent another 15 minutes waiting for my son to finish up before we had to get him back into his car seat and clean the potty and finally get back on the road. As I sat there leaning on the car waiting for my son to poop, I had one of those "this is something only parents get to experience" moments and couldn't stop laughing because it was all so absurd.

We made it to the house late at night, around 9:30 and after unpacking and getting the children into pajamas, they took forever to fall asleep. At my dads house, there are guest rooms downstairs, but of course my son will not sleep there, and my daughter will not sleep in a playpen or even her own bed. No. She sleeps on a dog bed.




She ran around with my dad and the dogs there. The yellow labs are his, the grey and black Aussie is our dog, and the retriever is a neighbors dog who has adopted my dad and step mom as his own family and they treat him like one of their own.

So we got Evie's dog bed set up, and we pitched a tent in the living room for my son to sleep in. He likes it. Around 11pm we got him settled and asleep after reading a few stories, and then we tried to get my daughter calm and sleepy, but she was so keyed up that every time someone came or went into the main room she had to see what was going on. Well, my husband got the idea that she needed to watch some My Little Pony to fall asleep, but the TV was not set up to access the on demand stuff. My husband and my father spent an hour trying to get it set up, during which each time they left the room and I got her almost calm and sleeping, they would return and she would pop awake again. Finally, around 12:30, Ponies was happening, and the baby was dozing, and then my husband tried to move her into the other room. Yes. He did that. Of course she woke up and screamed. So it was back to the living room with her where she spent the night on the dog bed.

In the morning, we headed down to the Rogue River to play and splash and look for rocks. It didn't last long as the kiddos were tired and snoozy, but we had a bit of fun! Before we left, Liam spent some time talking to Amber about planes, and everything else that mattered to him. Amber is a good listener.

The kids spent the afternoon with Grandma Kathy and made home made ice cream, while my husband and I spent the afternoon with my dad. He is convinced that there is some gold on his property and we needed to help him dig up dirt and pan for gold. In a dry creek bed.  We tried, but found nothing but mica. Maybe in another spot on the mountain, we can try next time. When there is water running, so we don't have to haul dirt back to the house in a bucket. The kids had fun licking ice cream off the blades when the machine was done making it, so did the dogs....
 

We left in the afternoon on Tuesday after having lunch at this great little burger place, Jimmy's. Wow those were some tasty burgers, and truly hand made onion rings and frickles (fried pickles, YUM!). The drive home was a lot shorter, as the kids were already tired from all the having fun, so we could make it in great time with no stops.

Oh, and I almost forgot, before we left Evie got into the baby powder while I was packing the car and decided to make a mess. In my bedroom. That was fun to clean up!

And I even managed to get a nice picture of me and Evie, complete with her messy face!

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.

The Easter Bunny Lays Fish Eggs

We drove down to Grants Pass, Oregon for Easter this year. It seemed like a good idea to spend it with my dad and my step mom at their house there.

The kiddos did pretty well on the car ride out there. We left at 7am and made it there around noon. We had to stop twice at stores to get food once and then get a new cord to charge my phone with after the one I had decided it didn't want to work any longer.

The first day was nice, we made hamburgers at home after a quick trip to the store. Liam got a big lego plane and Evie got some megablocks to help keep them amused. I even got my dad to watch Frozen with us in the evening.

The next day we tried to go to an egg hunt at a local winery. This was a bad idea. The web site promised pony rides and an egg hunt and a bounce house.

There was an egg hunt that consisted of maaaybe 100 eggs for over 75 children. And they had the big kids in the garden at the same time as the little kids! The big kids took all the eggs that were easy to see and left nothing for the little ones. The parents were bad too, one lady saw Liam reaching for an egg and she snatched it away right out from under his hand. I was so angry! To top it all off, there was no sign of ponies or bounce houses anywhere. We left quickly. Our ten dollar admission fee paid for two mini plastic eggs with a single Hershey Kiss in each, one lollipop, and a five minute walk in a small flower garden overrun by kids crying that they hadn't gotten an egg while the 12+ crowd whined that they only had ten eggs.

You can be sure that I will not be making THAT mistake again!

But after deciding NOT to say something at the time and let my temper cool before writing them a nasty-gram for poor planning and not delivering promised things and overcharging for what they did provide, we went home and I stuffed some plastic eggs with candy and "hid" them in the yard. Liam had a fun time finding them and Evie got help from her Grandma Kathy. They stuffed themselves with chocolate and then rampaged around the house all afternoon with their little toys from Grandma

We had dinner, tried to go out for ice cream and discovered that the melting point for Liam was discovering that his Spiderman ice cream from Baskin Robbins didn't taste any different than normal vanilla ice cream and that he didn't like it. He had a full on tantrum in the store and I took him to go sit in the car while Evie stayed with Grandma and Grandpa to finish her non-allergen filled frozen treat. She still can't have milk!

In the morning we got dressed up all fancy and took some pictures and put out the last of the eggs. Since both kiddos love fish and all things from the ocean I bought some ocean creature themes plastic eggs. Liam found the first one and exclaimed loudly, "The Easter Bunny came and laid FISH EGGS!"

I made the mistake of doing pictures AFTER they found eggs, so all I got were pictures of them looking at their eggs!

Evie learned a new word, bucket, which she says as "buckie".

The drive home was ok for the first 4 hours, but the last hour was a nightmare! It was too close to home to want to stop and let them run, but far enough that they were super mad. They just wanted to be home and I knew that stopping somewhere would be too hard on them when it came time to get back into the car.

Finally we made it home and got everything unpacked and washed the cherry juice off of the blankets Liam spilled it on in the car, ordered a pizza and watched MythBusters until it was bed time.

This morning Liam asked for chocolate for breakfast. It would have been funny if not for the tantrum that happened when I said no!