My first day of Garage Sale

First of all, Rescue just farted and I am in too much pain and too tired to more away.

Second I took today off of work so I could work at the OSLC garage sale. However, Elijah had a fever and is getting to the end stages of a cold today but he is happy right and eating and sleeping fine. Okay last night was not so fine but other than that. Thank goodness I love my daycare so much and they still took him.

Dear Lord, the dog keeps farting, It's like one endless fart that just keeps going and going and going. Blah!

Third I convinced my neighbor to join me and she was awesome help, All those Bratz dolls are now clothed in church appropriate attire and she helped out significantly with the animal crisis.

Fourth, I am SOOOOO soar. Standing on the concert floor all day long hurts, and now my hips, knees and back are aching. However, one thing I have learned over the years is, every day you go, you have to wear a different pair of sneakers so there is different areas of pressure on your feet and body.

Garage sale scores to this point:
Several books for me
Several books for Elijah
Several books for work
Two choices of winter coats for Elijah, Daddy will have the final say
Snow pants for Elijah
Cute little nativity toy (really awesome church toy)- It will go great with the Noah's arc that we have now. I love it sooooo much.
Fisher Price Little people Stable (birthday or Christmas gift, not sure yet)

I really want to work tomorrow night too, but I think my hubby might want me to come home and see him once in a while. I don't know.

Why are cars so much money??

Let's talk about cars. First of all they cost a small fortune to buy new. Why does a bunch of metal, plastic and cloth cost so much money. 20,000 for a small crappy new car. Great! Then if anything on that nice car breaks it costs another small fortune to fix. I have to say, if I got paid $50 bucks an hour for service I would not be complaining about my car. And why, does a car just get worth less as the time goes buy but the cost to fix it goes up??? Why does a car even really need a transmission? or belts, or oil or I don't know, gaskets?? I have decided that the stinking cars are one of those things you cant live without if your going to live at all.

Beguira and Mikey...BITE ME- but please, please, please don't break anymore!

On another note, Elijah has had his first experience with conjunctivitis of the eye. Rock on! Good week.

11 months

Wow, I can't believe Elijah is 11 months old today. I can remember exactly what I was doing one year ago today. I was as huge as a house, as comfortable as as the Princes who slept on a pea, and was at a good friends wedding. Let me just tell you all, if you are preggers there is nothing on the face of the planet that makes you look bigger than you really are than a dress. I even tried to use the whole color thing to my advantage, I wore black. Yeah good for the whole overall effect of it, not so awesome at an outdoor wedding. (tried to find the one picture of the day, no luck, Bummer.) Either way 12 months later I now have a very cute, very big, little boy. Our day started with a big poopy diaper, and a quick shower with daddy. Then I gave our boy a little hair trim around the ears, I only have a couple of years where I can make sure the has a great hair cut before he decides he wants to chose his hair style.Then BJ spiked his hair. We picked out a cute outfit from Auntie Katie and off to church we went. Elijah sat so well during church, and didn't have to be taken out once. It was great. Then we headed to Phillip's Park Zoo as a trial run for his birthday in one month. We had a picnic lunch, and looked at several animals. All in all, Elijah did great, we just need to work out a system for keeping him cool on these hot days. But he did let us put sunscreen on him so no worries about a bright red baby tomorrow. We came home, Elijah and I both took a 2 hour nap while the Blackhawks won! Wahoo. Then off to dinner with the neighbors, bath and bed.

I am very lucky to have such a wonderful little boy, he even snuggled with me for a bit tonight before bed which typically he will scream and cry. I love the baby he is but every day I see a cute toddler trying to surface. I just hope he keeps his wonderful attitude and personality, then maybe they won't be so terrible.

Can't wait for next Thursday

I have to say as much work, pain and sleepless nights go into the OSLC garage sale, it comes at the perfect time every year. About this time every year I get sooo done with all my kids. Even the ones I love. As I was cleaning up my room today I realized why this is.

1. The weather is getting nicer and as the kiddos play outside more they decide to bring the dirt in to therapy with them. Ground into their clothes, under their finger nails, on their shoes, under their toes in their sandals which they insist they must take off.

2. The weather is initiating may spring time colds or allergies and every single little nose in the clinic is drippy, crusty or stuffy. Fantastic, I spend more time going between the Kleenex box, garbage can, and germ-x, than I do actually treating.

3. School is almost out, and so are almost all of the school aged kids brains. They are so checked out of therapy and life unless it is time to play, getting anything functional done is just a joke.

4. It's half way through the year, therefore all the kids who have scripts/reports due every 2, 3, or 6 months are due. Um.. yeah, that is just about all but 2 kids on my caseload right now.

5. it is really hard to sit inside and watch the beautiful weather pass by while I am stuck inside with all the above mentioned kids.

6. It's the time of year for sticky snacks. Ice cream, Popsicles, juice boxes for kids learning how to drink from them, juicy fruit, the list goes on. Many parents, me being one of them, think that now that the weather is nice you can take this wonderful snack/dessert and eat it outside, 5 hours later we are remembering we need to go somewhere and realize that half of the snack and the dirt in the back yard is now stuck to your face, hair, hands, and clothing. Oh well, no time to change, guess we will just have to deal with it.

7. I get burnt out on all the games we play. I try my hardest to pick one game and play it all week long, that means that I could play Trouble, or Sorry, or what ever game is special that week 30+ times. Yes, it is pretty awesome that I get paid to play games all day long but I can promise you we do not have 52 different games in the clinic and some of the younger kid games (i.e. barnyard bingo, or Mr. Potato head) get played almost every week. AHHHHH BURN OUT!

Therefore, I am very much looking forward to spending just about 50 hours at the garage sale cleaning, going through gross stuffed animals, moldy toys and broken pieces, these next two weeks on top of the time that I will be at work, just because I will not be SLP work!

O'hare Towing

This all started in my nights of insomnia when I was preggers. Since I couldn't sleep, and there was nothing to do on the Internet, and the options for TV were slim I turned to com cast onDemand to keep me busy. The problem, I got addicted to so many shows during that time it wasn't even funny. However, one of my ultimate favorites was a show called Wrecked. Mostly because it was all about a very large towing company in the Chicago suburbs. I fell in love with the show. I even looked for it this season, but never found it. And plus since it was something filmed in Chicago I would ALWAYS keep my eyes open for one of their 30 some trucks. BJ actually saw the first one, I saw one once a couple of months ago, and in the past couple of months with all my car issues I always secretly hoped that one of O'hare's trucks would come and tow me. BJ today busted my bubble. Yeah that's right, O'hare towing came out to tow his sorry ass car down to Joliet so he can get his transmission fixed. Now you all are probably like, well at least the truck came out to your house and you could see it. Yeah no...his car was at my mom's house because that is where he left his car when he picked up my mom's car when he didn't think he could drive his car any further. I mean seriously??? I stayed up watching these men and women tow semi after semi and car after car out of snow and mud. GRRRRRR. SO JEALOUS!

Congradulations Bothers!

In the last 14 days Elijah, BJ and I rode to Michigan to watch my brother Brett graduate from Grand Vally State with a Degree in Accounting and Finance. He was possibly one of the most highly decorated gradates to walk that day. He wore three sashes (study abroad, fraternity, and honors college), he also wore a metal and three different cords. Elijah practiced wearing the hat for his graduation day (someday far down the line). Then we drove home. Then this past Saturday, Elijah and I drove out to Iowa to watch my brother Tom graduate for the University of Iowa with a Degree in Engineering and Mathematics. To bad Elijah was more fascinated in jewelry than he was in the pictures that we were trying to get. Again Elijah practiced wearing the hat. Once we were done with pictures Elijah was exhausted and needed a nap while he gave me enough time to peacefully eat my dinner. Little did I know that would be the last bit of peace for the rest of the night. Yes that's right my wonderful child screamed for an hour and a half before he was able to be calmed. It was a very long ride home. VERY long ride. However, before we left for the screaming ride home he got a little something to eat.

Over all, I am super happy for both my brothers! Now it's a big fat welcome to the real world.

On a side note, last night I caught Elijah standing all by himself, not holding on to anything. I think this had to be the most excited I have been about his developmental milestones to date. However, I don't know if the flu bug that had decided to call my body home for most of Sunday had anything to do with my increased emotions, but I actually cried. Way to go Little Elijah, keep up the good work.

Makes you think...

Warning...This may make me cry, and it may make you cry... Especially if your a parent.

Sometimes you are going along in life and things seem to be getting you down, tough to handle. I know for me lately, I have had to handle my boss resigning, new management, BJ's grandpa dying, my car dying, switching daycare providers, BJ's transmission failing, the list keeps going. At times it just feels like nothing is going right. BJ keeps saying, I wish we had more money, I keep responding, no matter how much money we make we will always wish we had more. I wish I could afford the $300 per week daycare, I wish we could both drive newer cars, I wish we could think about moving into our forever home, or even know selling this one we will come out on top of our mortgage. Again, the list goes on.

But every once in awhile we are reminded that what we do have we need to be grateful for. Today was that day for me. I am off at a continuing education class Thursday and Friday about autism. Today we spent most of the day seeing what autism is like from the parents point of view. We looked at home videos of these kids as infants and how they are now, non-verbal, stiming, tantruming, persevering little kids. Autism is getting more frequently diagnosed, no one knows why, we only know that there is a genetic componite to it.

As I watched these parents all I could think of was, thank God, Elijah has developed typically up until this point. These parents spend more money on therapies, therapy tools such as swings clothing and toys, and schools up through 8th grade than many parents spend on college, traveling sports teams, and big wheels. I just keep thinking of the phrase, "when a child dies parents can bury their child and morn the passing. A parent with a child with autism has to morn the loss of their child while still having to help their child." At that moment I wanted to leave, drive the 45 min home, pick up Elijah and hug him. Tomorrow should be interesting.

I Learn from the dog: By Elijah

It's been a long time since I posted. But I wanted to show you all what new tricks I can do. Most of what I have learned to do is because the only thing that loves me enough is the dog. She is always on the floor with me! She is always wanting to play with me. The best thing I have learned from her was how to get my toys from point A to point B. YOUR MOUTH!! Gosh that dog is smart. I wonder why Mom and Dad don't do this more often?

P.S. Check out Mommy's post?

Quick list (second post tonight)

1. My neighbors are awesome! Without them we would be down two really good friends and my car would probably would not be fixed if it wasn't for them.
2. Kids are funny. One of my kids told me today that the reason mail takes a while to get to his house is because he lives in a circle (or cul de sac.)
3. Softball season has begun. BJ is off playing baseball with this buddies. I can't wait until Elijah and I can go with him. We need it to be a bit warmer out though.
4. My mom is going to meet some turkeys. Still wish I was going with.
5. I wish the temperature of where I work would stay the same.
6. I have to drive to the other side of the world Thursday and Friday and I don't know if my car can drive across water or if I can get back in time to get Elijah from daycare.
7. I watch way to much TV!
8. I wish I had magic powers so I could poof and have dinner made. That would be awesome.

My first Mother's Day

It all started semi-wonderful. Elijah woke up at the crack of dawn, 6:00 am. BJ actually got up and got the boy and tried to change him. This caused him to scream bloody murder! Hard to sleep through that! Then Elijah came in and snuggled with me a bit in bed. And for the first time Elijah intentionally leaned over and gave me a kiss. In fact, he gave me about 15, most of them were super wet and sloppy. Then the boys went down stairs and had breakfast, again tried to catch a bit more sleep but never fail, child continued to scream throughout breakfast. Then the boys took a shower and I dressed the boy and tried to put him down for a nap. HAHA no nap mommy, I want to play. I then showered and started getting ready, as I came out bedroom to check on the boy there was a horrid smell that met my nose. Elijah made me a present! however, due to the holiday BJ got to change the diaper. We then finished getting ready for church and headed off to church. However, Elijah began getting very fussy, wait did I say began??? I meant continued to fuss. Finally he fell asleep, then we got to church and had to wake him up. We made it through the first couple of sections of church before Elijah became to wiggly. I then spent the rest of the church service trying to rock my child to sleep. After church Elijah still had not fallen asleep yet and as we talked to everyone outside Elijah kept melting, and melting. I finally was able to peel my husband away from socializing and we headed off to the store. But I realized that I needed to get gas for my car so we stopped by the grocery story to get gas. And the car wouldn't start. SERIOUSLY!! After we spent the next couple of minuets trying to get the car to start. I then thought, if we wait a bit the car may decide to work again once it sits for awhile. So off we go with the baby to get food for the afternoon, walk back across the parking lot and...no such luck. (Side note, if you haven't read yesterdays blog about my husbands patients here would be another instance of not having any). The car still refused to start and BJ started to curse and get real short with anything I had to say. The whole time I am thinking, great, now we have raw meat, and a baby exposed to the sun. Finally, a family offered us a jump, NO LUCK! Turning out to be a great mother's day! The wonderful family offered to give us a lift home, Thank goodness because walking the 2 miles without the stroller, a bag of food, and a crabby husband would have been AWESOME! We got home called BJ's parents who were already coming over for dinner and asked them to come a bit earlier so BJ could go back to the car and fix it. Elijah finally went down for a nap, BJ left with his dad to fix the car and BJ's mom made us brownies. 2 hours later Elijah woke up but the car was still not fixed or anything. Mind you BJ is getting pissier and pissier by the minute. I had wanted to get the Audry done before his parents to here and I wanted to get a nap in too. Yeah none of that happened. Once everyone got back home they made dinner and Elijah serenaded us with whines. My car is still not back home, it is sleeping at Firestone for the evening to get looked at in the morning, my dishwasher needs to be checked to see if it cleaned the dishes from dinner. I am utterly exhausted and I DID NOT get my day with no child. I really hope next year is not as expensive.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies. I hope yours wasn't nearly as costly as mine was or nearly as stressful.

Why I too will be getting a new dishwasher for Mother's Day (unplanned)

No Elijah didn't break it, I just thought a cute picture of the boy was needed!

This all started hmm.. when we bought our house, I guess. Our dishwasher has been the root of many a household problems for us. The builders initially decided that it would be a great idea to puncture the body of the dishwasher with the tiniest little hole. For the first couple of months we were always running the dishwasher at night when we were heading to bed or right before we left for work in the morning. However, as time went by we ran the dishwasher while we were actually home and started noticing a puddle of water on the floor in front of it. Now please note, we never really were pleased with the dishwasher we picked out, it was the base line model that I think even if you walked into any home appliance store you would have to buy a model better than ours because this cheap model was only sold to home builders to help keep the price of the homes low. ANYWAY, upon further inspection we noted that there was a leak in the tub. So off we go calling the builders to say our home warranty covered the thing and we wanted a new one. They sent out a guy he took 2 seconds to look at it and said, "you need to call GE- it's their problem." Fine. So I do. I take off a day of work, wait for the GE guy to come out and check out our dishwasher that is peeing on the floor every time we use it and see what he has to say about it. This guy at least took the time to look at it and says, "well who ever installed the kick plate on this thing put a pointy screw in a whole that should have had a flat screw. The builders were the ones that caused this error." GREAT! I then asked him to type it all up and as he is walking out the door, I am back on the phone with our builder saying I have paper work to prove it is their fault and they need to bring be back a new dishwasher. They then come back to the house check the paper work and order me an new dishwasher. However, me being smart asks if we could get the up grade and pay the difference. Yeah, no such luck. So on one of the super cold winter days of 2008 a new one arrives at our door step. They come out and install the thing and great!

A couple weeks later it starts making a real weird noise but it is still cleaning so no biggy, just super annoying.

Now let's jump ahead several years. We head over to my father's house to discover that they are having a jet land in their dishwasher and are having a repair man come out to fix the part. First of all the repair man, he knew his dishwashers and was very open to answering questions about them. BJ then told him about the weird noise ours makes almost every time we use it. The repair man offered him some suggestions on how to make it stop making that noise and BJ was all excited to get home and "fix" our $50.00 dishwasher.

We get home we pull out the tools and out come the screws easy as pie. but the piece we need to move still isn't coming off. A little pull here, a big pull there, nothing. Hmmm, it just seems to be stuck on something. Now don't get me wrong, I love my hubby very much, but he inherited his patients from his father. And let me tell that isn't very much. BJ loves to fix things, he loves to learn to fix things, but the second it can't be fixed on the first try, or doesn't go the way exactly planned, all logical thinking goes out the window. So when the dishwasher wasn't coming apart exactly the way the repair man had described it, that was it we were done. Instead of looking around to see where we might be getting caught up we just pulled with all our might to loosen up the piece we needed off and snap. First words out of BJ's mouth, "that's broken." On the positive side we found out that our lovely dishwasher had plastic wrapped around the motor that chops up the food to go down the drain. That was the noise. However, now we really can't put the dishwasher back together. We will try it out a couple of washes to see how it works with how we put it back together but I see a new dishwasher in my future. Here are some picks of what we found inside our dishwasher.

Warning if your eating, you may want to wait a bit before checking this out:

Ton of Bricks

It has happend to all of us and some of us it happends more often than others. That is the ton of bricks that hits you after a long day of work. Today the ton of bricks caught up with me while I was making dinner. I was minding my own buisness, cutting up the potatos, and yes I was the one cooking. I know right call Guiness... anyway, I needed to cut up an onion so I brought it over to the garbage to peal the crunchy skin off of the outside and bamb! All I wanted to do was close my eyes and curl up with the onion and go to sleep. I guess that's what happends though after your play with kids for hours on end during the day. Let's go over some of the things I heard from kids this week.

1. "You're hairy, You're real hairy."~This child was actually commenting on the fact that his clinician was wearing her hair down.

2. While walking past an older clinician, "How OLD is she???" Mind you this was at the top of his lungs!

3. To a pregnat clinician, "You have a baby in there??? Let me see??" In response to what he thought was in there. "A Five Dollar Footlong" I guess this was better than the kid who thought it was a puppy several weeks ago. I think they will both be slightly disappointed when it turns out to be a baby.

I'm sure there were more this week but as of now the second ton of bricks was just delivered to my door step and I need to start figuring out how to get me and my two tons of bricks up the stairs and to sleep.

Laughing

Thanks to my mother, I have found a new blog that I love. Anyone in the medical field needs to check this one out. One of the older posts really has nothing to do with being a doctor but about a new shower cleaner that I too have recently installed in my shower. Now props to the shower cleaner, I love it. In fact, we bought one for our neighbor so she doesn't die cleaning the inside of her shower. And FYI, The Dr. blog is something I have thought about doing with some of the kids I have worked with.

http://drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com/