February has been an ugly month for us as my family has tried to acquire as many illnesses as possible. Let me list the ways:
- bad, gunky, snotty colds - all four of us, Casey is still getting over his
- chronic cough - all of us, but Coulson had this nasty hacking sound last weekend that had Casey and I cracking up!
- pink eye - Coulson, me, Charlie (who so generously shared it with my dad)
- severe headaches - Casey
- a stomach bug - me, Chester (oh, that was nasty!)
- skin infections - Charlie
- iritis (maybe)- me, I couldn't drive for a few days (well, I had to drive, but it wasn't a good idea)
- eczema - Coulson
But Charlie takes the cake with this:
Yes, he has the chicken pox! Although I remember it as a childhood rite of passage, today in the medical community it's kinda rare since there's a vaccine for it - a vaccine that my dr's office didn't have in stock at his one year check-up, so they said, "Oh well, we'll just give it to him at his 18 month check up." Ha! That's one less shot he'll need now. Conveniently these strange chicken-pox-like bumps started to appear a couple days before his 18 month check-up. So when the Dr saw him and confirmed the pox diagnosis, she invited all the nurses to come in and see this strange disease for themselves, since many had never seen it before. Then as we left, one of the nurses put a sign on the door that says not to use the room for 3 days. And she asked me not to let him walk in the halls. I felt like an untouchable. I've had to keep him away from the public for the past 6 days and it's been driving me crazy! I should add cabin fever to the list of illnesses above.
Thankfully, the pox doesn't seem to bother him. He never itched or scratched at the spots. He was just a bit extra clingy to me - almost like how Coulson was at this age - on a good day. But now he's getting better. The spots are scabbing and he's not contagious anymore, so we're going to the grocery store tomorrow (oh, my life is so exciting!)
I decided that February is the month for us to be sick, and all that sickness will end once March begins. So we welcome March with open arms!
"It looks like juice is squirting from your mouth!"
as I'm throwing up in the toilet - I had a stomach bug today (feeling better, thanks).
Apologies for my lackadaisical blog lately. There has been so much I've wanted to blog about - my niece's roller-rink birthday party, my birthday, Obama-Clinton-McCain excitement, cute things that Coulson and Charlie do, and some random thoughts on everyday life.
But, alas, my online time has mostly been consumed with house hunting. Yes, Casey has accepted a job! The location is kinda complicated. The ER Dept in Winston (where he completed his residency) also manages an ER about an hour away in a mostly rural area. The majority of Casey's shifts will be out there, with a small few shifts at the dept. in Winston and some administrative ultrasound stuff in Winston. Ideally, we hope that he will eventually be able to transfer all of his shifts to Winston in about 2 years. So, although the scenery is nice out in the rural foothills, I wasn't too keen on setting up house out there, especially if it's a temporary position, so we're looking for homes near Winston with easy access to the highway for Casey's extended commute.
House hunting is fun, but tiring. We're making our realtor work hard for us - We're a bit particular about what we're looking for and we have a few months, but it would also be nice to find the right place quickly and be done with it. In the meantime, we're seeing a lot of fabulous homes in horrible locations or blah homes in great locations.
I especially love going into homes and figuring out "the story" behind the family living there. Some are just standard families growing up - pictures of cute toddlers downstairs, but upstairs the rooms obviously belong to teenagers. Or the house with only men's clothing and a somewhat used teenage room - that must the divorced father who gets his son every other weekend. My personal favorite - One house had pictures of kids rooms online, but when we saw it, the beds were removed and only a few toys remained. But the house still looked fully lived in. I imagine they got divorced, but he is still living there with the new trophy wife while they look for a place they can call their own. Meanwhile, she already started moving out the kids to her new place, not as big as their old home, but they can try to be happy together in their new life. Or maybe there was an evil step-father who shipped the kids off to boarding school! But the house was gorgeous and out of our price range (I thought it would be fun to see anyway) - Do you think they would consider an offer $75,000 below their asking price?
POST SCRIPT: I forgot to include the most telling evidence in the house with only men's clothing - A pool table in the dining room! It looked nice though, he did a fine job blending it in with the decor.
After eight years in Pennsylvania for college and Casey's med school, I returned to North Carolina a little over 3 1/2 years ago. I quickly re-embraced many of the aspects of the NC south that I missed so much - sweet tea, biscuits, pork BBQ, grits, "y'all" - I probably even have a slight southern accent and Casey and I love it when Coulson utters something with a big southern drawl.
But there has been one aspect of my NC heritage that I have been slow to re-embrace. Growing up, I have vivid memories of my brothers fighting over this. In middle school, it was a bonding moment as one brother patiently explained the process. In high school, I cheered with my classmates - often in the middle of class. Yes, I'm talking about North Carolina's dominance of college basketball and the NCAA tournament. And now I've decided that I can't let my ambivalence continue. I am proud to be a citizen of North Carolina and it's about time I started acting like it.
So I'm showing my colors! I am a Carolina Tar Heel! It's great living in NC because I have so many great teams to choose from - Duke, Carolina, Wake Forest, NC State... But my allegiances are with Carolina. And Wake Forest. But I can usually cheer for Carolina throughout the whole tournament (Carolina has made it to the Final Four a record 16 times), so that's why I'm sticking with the Tar Heels.
My life as a Carolina fan isn't getting off to such a great start. My first endeavor as a fan was to watch the greatly anticipated Carolina-Duke game last night. We lost.
Oh well. Go Carolina!
Most people know about "the terrible twos." But most of the moms I've met agree with me on 2 addendum to the terrible twos: 1) The terrible twos start at age one and a half and 2) age three is much worse than two. (Oops, I may have just exposed a long kept secret to all my childless friends. Forget what this blog says- children are angels! Clocks are ticking.)
Coulson turned four on Monday! And in the past month or so, I have noticed a change in his behavior. He still gets upset quickly, but instead of throwing himself on the floor screaming, he can usually be reasoned with and calm down enough to "use his words" and talk about his feelings. And he can understand the consequences of his actions. Impulse control isn't so great, so understanding the consequences of his actions doesn't quite act as a deterrent yet. I'm not saying we'll never experience tantrums or irrational behavior ever again (ahh, the teen years), but I am hoping that the frequency has slowed. Of course now that he can "use his words," we have to battle rudeness and talking back and interesting variations of "what really happened."
We had a Safari birthday party for him on Saturday with grandparents, cousins, aunt, uncle and a couple friends from preschool. I had so much fun at the party that I forgot to take any pictures. I'm hoping that the grandparents can send me their pics and then I'll post some for all to see. The kids made binoculars and then we all went on an "imagination safari" looking for hand-carved wooden animals that my parents brought back from Africa. The safari was a bit like an obstacle course, designed to occupy the energy level of eight kids aged 1-5. Think stampeding with elephants and jumping over snakes and acting like monkeys. And yet, they didn't seem tired afterwards. They also got to wear animal noses, very important for Coulson. The theme of the party was all about Coulson getting to have an elephant nose. It was all he wanted.
Coulson loves being four. He's probably mentioned turning 4 at least once every day for over a month, and he still talks about it. "Now that I'm four..." he says. Lately, his favorite activity is pulling the mattress half-way off his bed and tumbling or jumping or rolling down it into a pile of blankets and pillows at the bottom. He calls it "playing clowns" and I have no idea what it has to do with clowns. He can do this for hours, as long as someone is with him to watch all his tricks and talk with him (yep, he still hates to be alone.) Charlie also loves this game and it's fun to watch the two of them rolling off the bed together.
He's still into Super Heroes. Spiderman is his favorite, although he doesn't really know much about him because he's never seen anything with Spiderman on TV. I just got some classic spiderman cartoons from the 60s from Netflix that I need to screen before I let him see them tomorrow. He also says that he likes Star Wars and knows all about Star Wars. "Where did you hear about Star Wars?" "I just know. I know all the guys, like 'Olfie' and 'Kiki'." I'm pleased to know that his imagination can more than make up for any real lack of knowledge, he'll do just fine when he grows up. Casey used to say that you don't have to know the answer, you just have to say it with enough confidence and people will believe you. (Interestingly, now that he's a doctor, he doesn't say this anymore - I think that's a good thing.)
He's growing up. He loves to do crafts with me and he's getting interested in coloring (yeah, he's a late bloomer on the coloring) and learning about reading writing. When he wants to "help" it's often more like help, instead of "help." Help is nice because I can get things done faster. (Whereas "help" makes me groan internally because I know it will take three times as long to complete a task.) The other day he helped me put together one of his birthday presents and he did a great job of snapping the little thingies into the little holes. We had to do like 50 of them and by the end, he was quicker at it than I was. He's more interesting to talk with and I'm finding that it's easier to enjoy playing with him sometimes. I think I'm going to like age four.
But guess who's one-and-a-half.
