Oh the Drama

Sadie turned seven today!  I can't believe how old my kids are getting.  She started the day feeling really sick - my boys have had what Micah calls "diaries in my bumb" off and on this week, along with the barfies.  I sincerely hoped it had skipped Sadie, but dang it, she was feeling pretty crummy this morning.

She rested most of the day and perked up considerably this afternoon when she got one of her presents in the mail:

The highly-coveted Rainbow Dash plushie.  We had to order that puppy from Amazon.

We had a little party for her tonight.  My dear friend Megs and her family, plus my parents, came.

Sadie opened many My Little Pony-related gifts:

Along with some other really great presents:

Then it was cake time.  My Favorite Neighbor Ever, Casady, made Sade's cake for her - My Little Pony-themed, of course.  The cake required some My Little Pony toys to be perched on the top. So Sades and I went to the store yesterday and got this collection with her birthday money from her Grandma Go-Go:

Let me tell ya, it was hard for her to hand that collection over to Casady for a couple of days.  As soon as Casady brought the cake over tonight, Sadie went, "Cool cake!" and snatched those ponies right off the top and started playing with them.  I had to beg her to put them back so I could take a picture of her cake:

Sorry.  Kind of smeary.  I was in a hurry to get the picture before she stole the ponies off the top again.  Casady does such good work.  Thanks, Cas!!!

Jonas and Brynnan asked to be on candle-arranging duty:

And Dylan asked to be on candle-lighting duty.  Unfortunately, when he went to blow out the match, he blew out all the candles as well.  We all burst out laughing.  So Dyl lit them again, only to make the same mistake the second time - blowing out all the candles as well as the match.  So of course, we laughed again.  This is where the drama came in.  I think maybe Sadie thought we were laughing at her??  Or that it was taking too long to light the candles?  I honestly don't know.  Her moodiness mystifies me.  She just got so pissed:

And then proceeded to cry, shout, "YOU'RE RUINING MY BIRTHDAY!!" at everyone, and run sobbing to her room.

I dragged her back so we could sing "Happy Birthday," and now we forever have these absolutely darling photos of Sadie on her seventh birthday, crying while people sing Happy Birthday to her.

 Lovely.

I honestly have no patience for these kinds of histrionics, so I just ignored her and started working on the dishing out of cake and ice cream.  My dad calmed her down by making sure she had a Capri Sun to drink and the "S" part of the cake to eat.  And then she was good as gold.

Oh the mercuriality of her.

Dad also got her to consent to him pulling her remaining top tooth.  It was dangling by some kind of fleshy thread for days.  I couldn't get that thread to break, but my dad is the Tooth Whisperer.  He pulled all of our teeth when we were kids.  He was able to get that tooth outta there.  He told me that you actually have to pinch at the top of the tooth to detach those pesky threads, as opposed to pulling down from the bottom of the tooth.  Good to know.  It looks much better now:

Note to self:  Remember to do the tooth fairy thing tonight, Kar.  DON'T FORGET.

So yeah.  Little girls are...interesting.  Quite honestly, I feel badly for my parents that they had FOUR girls and no boys.  Non-stop drama for years and years.  Sometimes I'm glad I just have one girl.  I can only handle so much turmoil.

How to Make your Kids Stay in Bed

So, as you know, my kids are horrrrrrrrrible about staying in their beds at night.  "Mom, I'm hungry."  "Mom, I'm thirsty."  "Mom, there's a bug in my room."  "Mom, I'm scared."  Onandonandon.  I made some bedtime charts for them a couple of months ago.  If they stay in their room from bedtime on and don't come out and bug me, they get a smiley face.  Once they get 30 smiley faces, they can get a toy.  Micah reached his 30 smileys last week and Sadie reached her 30 smileys this week.  Don't think that means they're doing well.  This is out of, like, 60 nights.  I doubt Dylan will ever reach his 30 smileys.  For reals. 

Anywho, yesterday was a really, really awful day, especially with Micah.  I swear some days...is it okay to love your child, but not like him very much sometimes?  I hope so. Because that's how I feel about him sometimes.  He is angry and sad and screaming and crying and yelling and hitting people ALL DAY LONG.  I realized last week that he is maybe happy only five minutes out of every 24 hours.  I'm not exaggerating.

So yeah, yesterday was rough.  My nerves were shot and it was taking every ounce of self control I had not to punch Micah in the face.  Adding to my stress was the fact that Ben had been in Xian for a week and I had only talked to him once during that whole time.  I find that I do better if I can talk to Ben every night.  If I don't get that time with him, I really struggle.  I just need his emotional strength.  He was unable to connect to the internet in Xian, so...I just didn't hear from him.

I tried texting him a couple of times and got nada back.  And then I started to freak out.  I was like, "He got abducted.  He was kidnapped by North Koreans and forced to teach English in North Korea like my friend's friend's brother."  (That's actually a true story.)  And then I was like, "Maybe some little Chinese woman seduced him."  I know.  Really dumb and very unlikely scenarios.  I trust Ben implicitly.  I was just in a really bad place yesterday.

So finally, I got a skype call from Ben last night. The kids were still up and around and screaming and hitting each other and slamming the crap out of the printer cover flappy thingey (Gage's specialty), and I was trying to talk to him about how hard of a day I was having and how I truly don't think I can do this clear until November.  And he was doing the typical Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing and trying to fix it.  "Well, how can we solve this?  I could come home early.  But then I'd probably lose my job.  You don't want me to lose my job, do you?"  And the things he was saying really weren't doing it for me.  I needed validation, not fixing.  I know there isn't a dadblamed thing we can do about this situation.  It is what it is.  I just needed him to say, "Dang, that sucks, Kar. I'm so sorry."

Isn't that really all we need, ladies?

So anyways, our conversation wasn't the happiest.  We didn't hang up on the greatest of notes.  It's hard to have a long-distance relationship.  Skyping is a great improvement over what couples have had to deal with in the past, but still.  Nothing beats working through things face to face.  And hugging each other.  And being there for each other.  Like, in the same room.  It's hard to work through difficult emotions when all I can see of him are a fuzzy peach ball for his face and a fuzzy grey square for his shirt.  And we usually only get to talk while he's at work and other guys are in the office with him.  Not the best time for working through deep emotional issues, you know?

So we hung up, I got the kids into bed, and then I sat at my computer and just sobbed.  Hard.  For like an hour.  My stomach muscles were actually hurting.  (But maybe that's actually from my Insanity workouts.  I'm on month two, and seriously, the human body isn't meant to do these things.  Especially when a certain human body I know of has had four kids, is 30 pounds overweight, and is 35 years old...)

Of course, Sadie came out to ask for some water or food or whatever the hell else, and she saw me and stopped right in her tracks.  Her eyes widened, and she tiptoed back out of the room, backwards.  Same scenario happened with Dylan, and then Micah.

My kids don't see me cry that often.  It's a side effect of my anti-depressants.  You do still experience emotions, but you just don't cry as often.  I remember when my Grandma died, and at her funeral, I didn't even shed one tear.  My dad said, "Wow, Kar, you're a rock." "No," I said, "It's just the anti-depressants."  And sometimes I miss crying a little more often, because it provides such a big release of pent-up frustration.  But I think that not crying enough is better than crying every five seconds, which is what I do when I'm not on my pills, soooooo.....

After each of the three oldest saw me in my Pit of Despair, none of them came out EVER AGAIN.  For the rest of the night!  It was a miracle.

So I cried for a good hour, and then my adorable friend skyped me and completely cheered me up, and then my adorable Ben re-skyped me, and by then, I was doing much better.  And Ben and I talked through our feelings and both felt much better about it.  Laaaa.

For reals, though, maybe I should bone up on my acting skills and get my cry on at bedtime more often.  It was so luxurious not to have to deal with my psycho children clear until they (and I) collapse with exhaustion at midnight.  Or maybe I can do that trick I used to have to do in high school drama, where you put Vicks Vapo Rub under your tear ducts and just let the tears flow, and screw up your face as if you're crying.

Oh, and P.S.  I called a child psychologist today and got Micah an appointment to get tested for anxiety and depression.  I truly think there is something deeper happening with him than the usual four-year-old stuff.  When a kid is never, ever, ever happy.... I don't know.  Anxiety and depression run in my family, so I just need to see if this is what we're dealing with here.  He goes in next week.  I'm interested and hopeful to see what they find out.  If there is something we can do to help him be happier, I'm all for it.  Something's got to give.  Sometimes it feels as if he's single-handedly destroying our family.  So, I'll let you know how that goes.

Oh, and P.P.S.  Micah barfed in his bed not once, but twice in the middle of the night last night.  Try not to be jealous of me.

Our Bathroom Ritual

Gage does this thing when I'm doing my hair in the bathroom every day.  Well, let's be honest.  I don't get a chance to do my hair every day.... so, um, like, once a week when I do my hair.

He comes in, shuts the door, then pounds on it until I open it.  Yes, he knows how to open doors.  He just thinks it's really funny to pound the heck out of that poor door until I open the dang thing.

Then he goes out into the hall, shuts the door again from the outside, and then pounds on the outside until I open it to let him in.

Then he starts the whole process over again.  And he does it over and over and over for the half an hour or so that it takes to do my hair.  (Which is why I hardly ever do my hair.  Half an hour???  Such an effort...)

I once told you guys that my hair is like a haystack until I straighten it.  Case in point:

This is right after I blowdry it.  Haystack, amIright?  I have a whooooole lotta hair.

Let there be light.

 Holy Mother of Pearl.  I'm back. 

Sorry, dude.  My sis, Beads, was here for a week, and we spent like 20 out of every 24 hours playing.  That girl likes to parrrrrrrrrrrrtayyyyyyyyyyyyy.  She is a whirlwind of energy.  It makes me jealous.  She tired us all out.  We are all now recovering.  Not that I'm complaining.  Because I like to parrrrrrrrrtayyyyyyy, too.

 A smattering of pictures from the ten thousand things that we did.

It was big, big fun.

And now let's talk about lights, shall we?  Specifically, the light in my dining room:

This light has two chains.  One for the fan, one for the light.  Ben and I learned a long time ago that bad things happen if you tug on the light chain.  The fan chain is all good.  But if you tug on the light chain, the light will go out and never, ever, ever work again.  Until Ben takes the whole dang thing apart, does something magical to it, and puts it back together.

So one month ago - I'll repeat this for emphasis - one month ago, my mom was baby-sitting my kiddos.  I came home, thanked her, and went about my business.  About an hour or so later, it was getting dark outside, so I clicked on the light switch that controls this light.  And the light wouldn't go on.  Oh no, I thought.  Mom jerked the chain.  I forgot to tell her never to jerk the chain.

So I told Ben on skype that night.  He tried to explain the magical thing he does when he takes the whole dang light fixture apart in situations like this.  I pretended like I understood (I did not understand) and got out his tools the next day to attempt some magic of my own.

Dismal failure.  I was able to take apart the bottom stuff, look at it, shrug, and put the bottom stuff back together.  None of which magically fixed my light chain issue.

So we had a dark dining room. I have a floor lamp in there that gives off a teeny amount of light - like, as much light as maybe one candle would give off?  Not much.  It's been obnoxious, obviously.


When Gage had his birthday party, we all sat around the table eating birthday cake in the dark.  Not kidding.  When Beads, Mom, and Dad came over to play Ticket to Ride (my current all-time favorite board game), we brought in a lamp from another room and played, squinting at the game board and occasionally asking one another what color a certain card was. 

Dad offered to come over today and fiddle with the light and see what he could do.  I gratefully accepted.  After messing with it for quite awhile, he came over to me, holding the light bulbs that have been screwed into the fixture.

"Um, Kar, do you think that maybe both of your light bulbs are just burned out??"

I stood staring at him, mouth agape.

Um, I did not even think of that possibility.  That something as simple as a light bulb burning out had caused me one MONTH of darkness in a major room in my house.

He showed me the darkened, broken-off filaments in each bulb.  Oh my goshhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  I almost wished that he was wrong.  I mean, getting new light bulbs is the best and easiest fix, right?  But if that's all it took, and we've been sitting in the dark for an entire MONTH because I didn't think to check that possibility out..... oh my goshhhhhhhhhh.

He took off to Home Depot to get some more bulbs, came home, screwed them in, and voila, we have light in our dining room once more.  It was just two burned out bulbs.  Nothing more.

Sighhhh.  Sometimes I wonder what has happened to my brain.  It's long gone.

Fortunately, a Misprint

My sistah, Beads, is in town for a week.  I sooo love when she visits.  We decided to go to the drive-in movie tonight with the kiddos.  When Beads called me to make arrangements, she said, "Kay, the first movie is Ice Age."

"What's the second movie?"

"Um...Magic Mike."

Magic Mike?  Like, the movie about male strippers???  Right after a kids' show??

"No way!  That's got to be a misprint!"

"It says so right here!  I sure hope you're right.  At any rate, I think we had better really hurry to pack it up and get out of there after Ice Age is over, kay?"

"Roger that."

So we went.  The movie was really cute.  And as soon as it was over and ending credits started, we ran around like crazy getting our stuff shoved into our cars to get out of there!

As we drove away, I looked at the sign outside.  The second movie turned out to be The Watch, not Magic Mike.  Phew.

But still.  The Watch is rated R.  Not many parents I know would let their kids watch a rated R movie, amIright?  It just seems weird to chase a kids' movie with a rated R movie.

I'm so in love with these...

Awhile ago, I showed you a card I designed.  I decided to make several of them, with variations on color and pattern, and I've gotta say, I cannot take my eyes off them.

 Could you die?  How cute are these?

 I think I've decided that this one is my favorite of the batch:

It reminds me of Starry Night by Van Gogh.  I love swirls.

Gorrrrr-geous!  If you want to buy some, they're in my etsy shop!  Head on over!

The Lesson on Following Counsel of Priesthood Leaders - What I Did

 Aight.  So one of the things I did was a suggestion on the online manual:


Invite the youth to read Ephesians 4:11–14 and Doctrine and Covenants 1:38; 21:4–5; 124:45–46 and answer the following questions: Who are these verses talking about? What is the message? Why is it important?

I tweaked it by handing each pair of students (I have eight kids in my class) a slip of paper with the scripture reference and those three questions written under it.  I gave each pair a pen so they could write the answers to the questions on their slip of paper.  I gave them a few minutes to read the scripture and answer the questions, and then I had each pair present what they learned from their scripture about following the counsel of priesthood leaders.  After each pair presented, I jotted down the main idea on the board.  It ended up looking something like this:

It's Important to Follow the Counsel of Priesthood Leaders

1.  Priesthood leaders strengthen and unify the church.

2.  The Lord speaks to his children through priesthood leaders.

3.  It's important to listen to priesthood leaders with patience and faith.

4.  You are blessed if you listen to the counsel of priesthood leaders.

I wanted to really emphasize that you should listen to priesthood leaders with patience and faith, and I came across this little gem on lds.org - a mini-play based on the story of Naaman.  I knew my lounge-loving teenagers would complain about doing the blocking and moving about that the original play called for, so I cut out the blocking and had them just stay in their chairs (they were grateful.  Heaven forbid that they move around) and read their parts.  One kid got into it (he played the part of Naaman) and he tromped around, emoted, used gesticulations, etc.  It was really cute.  Everyone else was content to lean their chairs back against the walls (Yes, we still have issues with leaning our chairs back) and read their parts.  Here is my cut-down-and-cool-enough-for-teenagers version of the Naaman play:

 

 Sorry; I was out of black ink.  So I had to get creative.

Part of the lesson talks about how priesthood leaders pray to receive inspiration to counsel the people who are under their jurisdiction.  For example, fathers pray to receive inspiration for their families, the prophet prays to receive inspiration for the church, etc.  The lesson suggested the story of when the four sons of Mosiah asked their dad to go on missions.  We were reading a tonnnnnn of scriptures during this lesson, so to break it up a bit, I had them read the comic strip version of the story.  It's found here. 

Here's my copy that I scanned:

Alright, dude, I'm out.  'Night.

A Pretty Mean Name

(Sadie got her hair cut.  She insisted on having "the same hair as mommy."  I think it suits her, and she loooves it.)

 

Sadie and Micah spend most of their day, every day, fighting.  It's neat. Today, Sadie came into the kitchen to complain about/tattle on Micah.

 

Sadie:  Mom, I'm so sick of Micah.  All he does is yell and scream.

 

Me:  Yeah, that's his schtick.

 

Sadie:  I'm going to go yell at him.  And call him a bad name.

 

Me:  That's really not the best idea, honey...

 

Sadie:  I'm going to call him....

 

Me:  [Clenching my jaw, preparing to hear a possible swear word that she probably heard from me]

 

Sadie:  ...Yelling Boy.  That's what I'm going to start calling him.  Yelling Boy.

 

Me:  Oh.  Um, alright. 

Woe is We.

My poor Dylie has been coughing for three weeks now. I took him in to the doc last week; she felt like it was post-nasal drip from allergies.  She told me to get an over-the-counter allergy medication for him and call her in a week if it wasn't better.

It wasn't.  So we headed on back today.  The doc thinks that maybe it's allergy-induced asthma now, so she gave us an inhaler to try.  Dylan feels like it's helping a ton.

She did the routine check-the-ears-nose-throat thing, and lo and behold, the poor dude has an ear infection, as well.  So we got him some antibiotics.  Hopefully now he'll be on the up-and-up, poor kid.

Unfortunately, my obsession with the Insanity workout DVD's have had a painful side effect - patellar tendonitis.  Luckily, I have my very own almost-physical-therapist sister to diagnose and then help me with stuff like this.  She recommends icing the tendons right above my patella bones.  This seriously provides tons of relief:

She also showed me this really scary thing to do to my tendons involving a butter knife and probable bruising ("Bruising is the first sign of healing," she told me), and I have to say....yeah.  I haven't done that yet.  I'm a wus.

I've had a bump on my leg that has been getting larger and scarier, so I went in to the dermatologist today to have him look.  It turned out to be a wart, and he froze it off.  Owwww.

Did I ever tell you about the good ole' days, when I was Warty McGavin?  Let me set the scene.  It was 8th grade.  Arguably the worst year of most peoples' lives.  Not only was I dealing with the normal I'm-awkward-who-am-I kind of stuff, but I had a little bit of a "wart problem" (channeling Chris Farley there).  I had them all over my hands.  And all over my elbows.

My mom told me that soaking cotton balls in vinegar, and then putting them on the wart and securing them with band-aids, was a fail-safe way to get rid of those warts.  Turns out, not so much.  The warts stayed, and I just smelled like vinegar all the time.

I had a boyfriend for two weeks in 8th grade, and whenever he held my hand, I was so embarrassed that he just got a handful of bandaids.  I wonder if that's why he broke up with me after two weeks...

After years of this, we went to an internal doctor.  He did this thing where he made me allergic to this medicine called DNCB.  And then I would put this DNCB ointment onto my warts.  And then my body would attack the warts.  It was a painful, horrible process.  My hands and elbows were so itchy, burning, and uncomfortable.  I remember putting ice on them all the time.  Horrible, horrible, horrible.

The worst part of the whole process is that these warts would, toward the end of the treatment, blister up, and then they would EXPLODE.  I'm not kidding, you guys.  EXPLODE.

In the tenth grade, my friend Em and I were at the Honda dealership.  I was picking up The Ocean Car (my '83 Honda Accord) and we had to sit on this pleather couch for a few minutes and wait.  And then one of my elbows decided to EXPLODE.  On the car dealership's pleather couch.  Em, understandably, screamed in disgust.  So I had to run to the bathroom, clean my elbows up, and then get a bunch of paper towels wet and soapy and go out and scrub...wart juice...off the pleather couch.

Wart juice.

My teenaged years were AWESOME.  I could write an entire book chock-full of embarrassing incidents.  Chock-full.

Back to today's story.  So my doc was all, "Do you want me to give you some DNCB to kill this wart?"  And I had all kinds of PTSD, wart-juice-exploding visions, and I said, "N-n-n-no.  No.  I c-c-c-can't go through that a-g-g-g-gain..."  He said, "Well, we can try to freeze it off and see if it will work.  It works maybe 60% of the time."  I told him I'd try the freezing thing first.

It hurt.

And then he looked at my moley-moley-moleys (now channeling Mike Meyers).  Just to make sure they're behaving themselves.  I had one on my thigh that was not behaving itself and had to be removed.  So he dug a hole in my thigh, got the dang thing out, and now I have stitches.

I was feeling alright until I did my Insanity workout tonight.  Word to the wise - if you have stitches on your quad, don't do Insanity.  Owwwwwww.

I'm going to take a large pain pill and then ice my poor tendons.  Good night.