Word To The Ys

…and I don’t mean anything obscene.  We only curse like pineapple-dwelling undersea creatures in this house (barnacles! fish paste! tartar sauce!)  Actually, my favorite pseudo-curse in our home is “Pickles!”  It’s amazing the degree of vehemence with which this can be uttered.

I digress.

No, the four-letter work this week is “sick”.  As in, I AM SO TIRED OF EVERYONE GETTING SICK.  This whole winter has been terrible, and while I know my standards are a bit high thanks in part to generally ultra-healthy kids, we’ve been riding the Sick Train for months.  In the last 30 days I’ve taken any combination of children to 6 doctor’s visits.  6.  As I have three kids, this is not a stellar average.  I spent an hour and a half at the stupid Target pharmacy yesterday waiting for the bajillion prescriptions we needed to finally be filled.  Have I mentioned I also despise insurance companies, in addition to doctors and pharmacies?

Max has still-undetermined mystery allergies.  He’ll tell you all about it if you ask, and I recommend you only ask if you wish to become comatose because boy will he tell you about it!

Oliver is laying on the sofa in a fever-induced stupor.  At least all the things meant to stay inside his body have decided to stop exiting quickly.

Seth has some insane rash action going on.  Neither of my other kids had diaper rash issues, so this is new territory for me.  Our visit to the dr. yesterday made me feel like negligent mother of the year.  I think that’s an actual award.  And thanks to his plentiful baby chub, he’s got infections behind his knees.  Who knew that was even possible?  Gah.

Scrumptious Roly-Poly Baby

I’m realizing this post is very gross.  Aw, pickles!

So we’ll just be staying home here for awhile, recovering from our pestilence and hiding from Swine Flu.  And I’ll try to get treatment for my Whine Flu.

Posted in Max, Mostly Me, Ollie, Seth | 2 Comments »

I just wanted to write a quickie about Ollie, as I’ve written a mountain about Max lately. Oliver is one wild ride; one moment you are far up in hilarity and fun, the next in a deep valley of excrement. Literally. Potty training is no joke, y’all.

Yesterday Joe elected to take Ollie to church with him for the evening. While Joe led youth group Ollie played with the most beloved caregiver at church, Jennifer. If Ollie were capable, he would already have sculpted a beautiful monument to Jennifer in his bedroom or something…he just adores her (and rightfully so!) Anyway, he had a great time playing with the popcorn-popper push toy in the courtyard until he found, in typical Oliver fashion, the messiest thing to get his hands on our there. Hopefully the big Advent lanterns are still intact, but of course he got his hands all sooty. Jennifer, being fabulous, knows this is just how he is and promptly took him for a hand-washing. He likely found this at least as fun as anything else he’d done that evening. He loves washing his hands, and it’s a good thing, considering how dirty he likes to get.

He loves music, and in particular seems to have taken a shine to old soul/R&B-type stuff. His top three requests on the ride home last night were “The Robot Dance Song” (known to most people as “Weapon of Choice”), “What I Say” by Ray Charles, and “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder. I wasn’t there but I can just hear his off-tune caterwauling to his favorite songs.

One last story from yesterday, and one that I think perfectly illustrates the juxtaposition of sweetness and crazy that is Oliver: at one point he went upstairs into the kitchen, and I was about two minutes behind him as I was finishing up an email. When I got up there I found him placing three peeled clementines on the table. He had peeled them himself. He said, “one for me, one for Max, one for Papa.”  As I complimented him on his thoughtful gesture but broke it to him that Max and Papa were not at home, he went back to the other activity he had somehow shoehorned in to that very brief time alone: cutting up his prescription information sheet with our very sharp kitchen shears. You know, the ones we keep way up out of the way so he can’t get into them. Ahhh. That’s our kid.

Posted in Ollie | No Comments »