Thursday, May 21, 2015

When They Tug At Your Heart

The other day I made a dinner that I knew that my children wouldn't eat.  They have sensory issues, but we're trying to learn to live within our means (a.k.a. not to pick up dinner anytime Mom just doesn't feel like cooking). 

My Rose took one look at that and said, "I'm not going to eat that. I know what you need to do, Mom. You need to make chicken nuggets."

I told her that we no longer had the money to just go out and buy chicken nuggets, that we needed to learn to eat what was in the house.

Rose jumped up from the table and said, "I have the solution."  She ran to her backpack and dug deep, tossing things onto the floor as she went, then came running back in the dining room and handed me an envelope. It was pink with a pig on it. She explained that she'd learned all about money today and that this was her piggy bank.

She gave me the bank and said, "Here Mommy, you can have my money so you can go buy chicken nuggets."

It was the sweetest thing ever. I pulled her into a hug and thanked her (trying hard not to cry)......but couldn't bring myself to tell her that the money wasn't really. I just couldn't. 

However, I still didn't buy chicken nuggets.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Public Service Announcemetn: DRINK WATER

It's hard to be a person, let alone a sane one.  Then you throw in things like jobs, marriage, kids, life, etc....and things get really hard (j/k--life itself is often hard all by itself).  Then you throw in the random things, oh say, like being a klutzy person like me....and you're really in trouble.

A few weeks ago I walked the race route for a local 5K that's happening this summer to raise money for cancer patients. I wanted to practice the race route several times prior to the race as its my first one ever. 2/3rds of the way into the route a crossed a bit of road that lets down onto an a non-sidewalk section of town . . . and rolled my ankle.  Being the stubborn person that I am I figured I'd already passed the street that led back to my car and I had less than a mile to go so I might as well finish walking the route.  Yeah, not the smartest decision I've made. 

I knew it wasn't broken but it was a pretty painful sprain. I had the chiropractor adjust the foot to help it heal more smoothly and had been wearing an ace bandage on and off for two weeks before the next incident happened.  Last week, I was carrying a load of laundry down the stairs (wearing my ACE bandage) and stepped on the edge of a stair instead of the middle and slipped rolling down the stairs, laundry basket tumbling, laundry flying through the air, and my ankle being pulled at a painfully awkward angle until something popped.  Definitely not one of my more graceful moments.

I screamed so loud that Juniper (my 3 year old) broke out of quiet time in his bedroom, hopped the safety gate, ran down the stairs, and sat down beside his sobbing mother, wrapped his arm around my shoulder and said, "Oh poor baby. What hurts."  I was laughing and crying at the same time. The pain was excruciating.

Well, the ankle wasn't broken, but due to the swelling and the amount of pain the nurse practitioner put me into what I call a Darth Vader boot (basically a removable walking cast) and told me to elevate and ice, ice and elevate.  

Have you ever tried to recover from an injury with kids in the house...HA!!!! Throw in the fact that my kids all have different special needs and I think I deserve a double-HA and a kick in the pants!  As I lay propped up on the living room couch with my leg in the air, remotes and phone at my side, a water bottle, and kids running amok (literally) I was doing my best to "recover".  But when my kids run amok that means whatever is mom's is theirs.

You may ask, "What does that have to do with the Public Service Announcement?"  Here you go....

If I had a water bottle, they would take it and run away and drink it, dump it out around the house, wear it, or hide it.  And being in the pain I was in, I wasn't too eager to get up to get a replacement bottle.  So I failed to drink my daily dose of water for four days straight. Then Saturday I didn't rest as often as I should and pushed my body past its weakened physical limitations.

By dinnertime I felt like crap. By bedtime I was shivering uncontrollably and had a migraine. By 11 pm I was waking my husband up, asking him to take me to the hospital. After a lovely visit in the ER it was determined I was severely dehydrated and had a bladder & kidney infection as well as a migraine to boot.

Did I mention that my awesome husband was scheduled to leave on a business trip, for a week, the very next day?  No, my bad.

If it weren't for so many amazing neighbors & friends helping with prayers, food, breaks from the kids, etc., I wouldn't make it out of this a live (and its only day three). 

So when I say DRINK WATER, I mean DRINK WATER.  Granted it would have been nice if I weren't accident prone in the first place, but things wouldn't have gotten nearly as bad if I had just taken the time and effort in my attempt to do everything else to stop and drink a glass of water.  If you want to take care of others, make sure you take care of yourself too.

This is the end of the public service announcement (this is your cue to go get yourself a glass of water). Have a great day!