Hidden blessings

I think I need to acknowledge that there are hidden blessings all over. It occurred to me again last night.

The lab at the hospital said it was open until 7 pm (actually the lab itself didn't talk but the employee did). I came up with a little plan to get DH home by 6:30 so I could go without kids, especially the two with Hand Foot and Mouth. So DH gets home and I try to go and collect a stool sample. This isn't exactly a party I tell you. I was trying to rig the toilet to hold the sour cream container for me but I just couldn't get it to work so I decided to go back to those good ol' hands.

While I was in there C managed to get into an entire bottle of vitamin C that was in DH's work bag (and she licked a bunch of them with her virus infected tongue thus rendering them useless). She also ran off with my lab referral papers that I had set out to take.

I wasn't super thrilled about the latter. I found them a couple of minutes before the lab was going to close and therefore couldn't make it there in time. I was a little ticked but what can you do. Since it was bedtime for S (C had a long nap) I called everyone and reminded them of the time and we did scriptures and prayers together. C was acting really funny and kept rubbing her nose. That mother's intuition came to me and I told DH that I was pretty certain she had something up her nose. After we sent S off to bed (where she did anything but sleep) we got out the tweezers and a flashlight and there WAS something in her bed. This is where the hidden blessing comes in. I don't know if DH would have thought to look up her nose when she was cranky and the huge piece of watered PAPER would have been in there all night. I don't know how in the world she managed to shove that much paper up her nose. I am glad that I wasn't at the hospital when I wanted to be.

Since it was too late to go to the lab I picked and cut some peaches and pears and loaded them into the dehydrator, canned some tomatoes, did the dishes, and loaded some more laundry.

This morning I woke up later than usual (after 7 am if you can believe it) and D had wet the bed. I hate to say it but he didn't seem bothered by it. He just wanted attention for having done it. I wet the bed is not a bragging phrase. I try to praise and praise him but he just can't get enough. But I can't turn wetting the bed into a huge praise fest. I've been trying to lay it on him today though in hopes that he'll look for the attention in good places.

S's hands look worse today. The has some more blisters and so she is out of commission for a few days. She's pretty bummed that she can't play with friends. Maybe in her quasi quarantine time we can break this bad streak we are on right now with her behavior. I dropped her off to my friend R's house (just to R's front yard) so I could run into the school and check T out to go have a his blood drawn. R said S told her that her dad hadn't been obeying her when he cleaned her owie. I wasn't surprised. S tried to command me around all morning. I really believe that she thinks she is the boss and in control of everything. She just still seems so surprised that she can't get her way every time she wants to. Once we get her to believe that she isn't in charge of everything I think we'll progress a little more quickly.

I took the 4 kids to the hospital lab with anti whatever cleaner to clean whatever S touched (I kept C in my arms). T was a trooper. He didn't even cry this time and instead of picking a sticker for himself, he picked an Elmo one for C. S wasn't choosing to obey (instead she was standing on their chairs, trying to bite her leg and shoe, etc) and left screaming because she didn't get a Tootsie Roll. There's nothing like leaving a building with a kid yelling at you, "I waaaaaaaaaaaant candy." I just kept saying calmly, "I'm sorry. It's too bad you didn't choose to obey." I got a bunch of evil looks from people.

Tuesday is usually our super busy day. I'm not quite sure how today will play out. I might be switching driving to dance days.

T's doctor visit

I have to admit. I didn't really want to go to visit the pediatric gastroenterologist. This is going to sound so stupid but well, I didn't really want to bother him when the meds they gave to Topher seemed to help quite a bit.

DH said go. Good friends said go. Mom said go.

So I went. (After all, I am a bit of a pushover and a pleaser.)

I'm so glad. And in reality, the doc couldn't be too unhappy because he gets paid one way or the other. And in reality I was kind of surprised to not see other people in the office. You would think that someone that gets booked a half a year in advance would have a busy office. Maybe they just knew from the phone vibes that we would fill the office all by ourselves.

The doc did thing we need to check T out some more. He was the same doctor we saw almost 4 years ago when they had to take T off of all food and put him on the predigested stuff to give his little body a chance to heal.

Maybe we'll figure this kid out. We do get to do some more bloodwork and a stool sample. (Mom gets to collect the stuff in an old cool whip container. EWWWW!)

So the hope is that we can figure out T and that will help me with little C since she does the same things he did as a baby with her tummy.

And that is good news!

The visit was also a hit because I actually got the children kid's meals at Wendy's. I would normally not do it because we have this saying that we go to restaurants for food and not for toys. But I couldn't resist. They have the Magic Tree House books on CD. How great is that! I'm tempted to go and buy myself a kid meal for lunch tomorrow just to get another story.