The Christmas Frenzy

It's been weeks since my last confession, I mean, blog post. I think I left off around early November. Some of the more notable events in November: Dinner with the Jill & Joe and Kids at Casa Blanca, a Mexican restaurant in Jill's part of town. Conversation with kids around is always a little challenging but we had a great time and the kids were pretty good actually. It helped that the restaurant was very kid friendly. It was very crowded when we left--since it's really the only place to eat within a 10 mile radius. OK, I'm exaggerating slightly but we are talking about south Chandler here. We went to a work skating party on Sunday and I tried to teach Jack how to skate. He didn't like it too much and I tried to help him skate but it was like dragging a dead weight around. So that didn't last. This skating rink allows you to push strollers so Ty got a lot of spins around. The kids liked playing the arcade games too.

We spent most of the next week preparing for our trip to Raleigh, North Carolina and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I took a couple hours to attend a jewelry show at Tracy's house where I bought some earrings and ring. Otherwise, I packed and packed and packed. On Friday around 4 PM, we headed off to the airport. Brian always drops me off at the curb with the kids, the stroller and 5 bags to check. I find this a little stressful since it's not possible for me to move all this stuff through a line. That's why I use the sky caps. Well, I gave the sky cap our three boarding passes that we printed out the night before and I mentioned Ty was a lap child.

Skycap: That child is not under 2.
Kelly: What?
SC: That is not a lap child.
Kelly: What do you mean? HE IS ONLY 16 MONTHS!!
SC: Do you have a birth certificate?
Kelly: No!
SC: What about an immunization record?
Kelly: No, I didn't bring anything--HE IS ONLY 16 MONTHS!
SC: Grumble...grumble Well, I'll let this go... but if the FAA found out... here put his birthdate here.
I proceed to write 6-24-03 (the year Jack was born) because I was so frazzled. Then say... oh, wait! and change the date... and the sky cap rolls his eyes again.

We had a four hour non-stop flight to Raleigh which wasn't great (because of Ty not wanting to actually since on our laps) but we made it. We spent the night at my sister's house and then left the next day for Myrtle Beach with the whole clan: my sister, husband and their 3 kids, my other sister, husband and their 2 kids and my mom and dad. We rented a 7 bedroom, 6 1/2 bathroom condo with a full game room (pool table, fuse ball, air hockey, pin ball, and a golf arcade game). The house also had 2 high quality big screen TV's plus TV's in every room. It was a really nice place and about a half minute walk from the beach, just across the street. The kids loved playing with each other and liked playing on the beach and feeding bread to the seagulls. The men were always playing pin ball or the golf arcade game or were actually out golfing. The women liked the outlet mall--they had all the good stores and we spent the a whole day there on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I bought a ton of stuff! We went back the day after Thanksgiving which was a big mistake because the lines were so long so we came back late in the evening when the people had thinned out. Overall it was a really nice time and I ate tons of sugar (but all homemade food) and we didn't eat out once because there was always a homemade meal (my mom and two sisters are great cooks!)

The trip home was awful (5 hours) and Ty was very restless, hadn't had a good nap, etc. Then the batteries in the DVD player died 2 hours in the trip so Jack was restless. There's really not much more to say about it other than I need to figure out a way to have an out of body experience during times like that. We always try to come back from our trips on a Saturday so that we have Sunday to get back into reality so Sunday we went to the zoo to check out the sting rays. It turned out to be an incredibly beautiful day and it wasn't that crowded so we stayed for several hours and had a great time.

Tuesday I got a health check. My employer has this program where you sign up for a health check and they give you $25. Then if you meet with a counselor about your results you get another $25. What have you got to lose? I got my test done on Tuesday, which may have been a mistake given what I had eaten the whole week beforehand. Within 2 days I had all my results (glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, body fat, BMI, blood pressure, etc). After 5 - 7 years of not having a cholesterol test (my logic was that I would not change anything with my diet or my exercise), I found out my results were quite good. I attribute this to the exercise more than my diet. Not that my diet is really bad. I don't like processed food and rarely eat fast food but I eat 2 eggs a day and will never stop eating cheese. Everything else was really good--also mostly attributed to exercise.

Ty got pretty sick this week--a fever, runny nose, and his breathing was labored and rapid. I started to think we should take him to the ER since he got really sick as a baby and spent the week in the ICU intubated because of a respiratory virus. We paged his doctor at 10 PM and we decided that breathing treatments would be the right thing to do so we got a prescription for albuterol. Fortunately we had a nebulizer from the first incident. He's been getting better slowly but he is clearly miserable and grumpy.

On Thursday evening I went to a parenting seminar by Dr. Sal Severe. He wrote the book "How to Behave So That Your Children Will..." and had a second book "...So Your Preschooler Will, Too". He was really, really good and I learned several new ideas and techniques. I bought his book too. I've been using a few things on Jack since then and have already seen some improvements. A lot of parents there asked questions about their kids and I learned something. That Jack's behavior is completely normal and that there are lot of kids that are more difficult than him. There were several parents with children with severe anger management issues (like a 6 year old who kicks holes in the drywall) and there was a case study where the anger came from something that seemed kind of small initially so I don't think any of us are exempt from that happening. But his concepts are very sound: set expectations, not being permissive or giving in, being consistent, and above all: be positive and don't show anger, even when your kids are being bad.

Friday night we went to cookie and beer exchange at Annette's house. We only knew Annette, Tracy and Shannon (and their spouses). The rest were neighbors we hadn't met before. I met a lot of new people and we had a good time. Shannon took her turn at being three sheets to the wind and had a great time--Tracy and I agreed that we didn't have time for a hangover the next day so we took it easy on the alcohol.

On Saturday Brian took Jack to T-ball and then I took Jack to Winter Wonderland, this little indoor festival that my work gives every year for the kids. Jack loved doing the crafts (he loves glue and glitter) and then we stood in line for 45 minutes to get a balloon animal. I can't stand doing that--what we do for kids. I rushed home because Deb was picking me up to go to high tea at the Phoenician with a couple more friends, Ger and Katherine. This is one of my favorite things ever. We had 8 different kinds of yummy sandwiches with the crusts cut off and then scones with clotted cream and lemon curd and then all the little pastries. Plus the tea and champagne. I really wanted a nap afterwards. We had a really good time talking and catching up. When I got home, Brian had picked up the tree so spent the evening getting the tree set up and giving the boys baths. This morning we decorated the tree and Jack loved that. Today's to do list: clean up the house, do laundry and print out photos of breasts to show the plastic surgeon!