Just some random things happening over the last week or two:

-Timothy learned about his “large intesticle” and his “small intesticle” at school today.

-I swear I’ve had the flu twice in the last two weeks. I know you’re supposed to build up an immunity and not get the same disease twice but it felt like the flu both times. Maybe it was two different flus. An unexpected perk — I lost weight and I can tighten my belt another notch…I have limp, nasty hair and a fever blister on my lip but I choose to believe that those will go away and the weight loss will remain.

-I asked Alexis to put her toys away one day when she was feeling sick (sorry — most of my stories have to do with being sick. We have been since Christmas, I think) and she looked up at me with these huge saucer eyes, stuck out her lower lip and said, “I sick.” Chris and I have decided that Timothy’s vocabulary was bigger at this age, but this one is craftier. (No, it didn’t work. I don’t know much, but I do know when a two-year old is trying to play me like a violin.)

-Caleb rolled over yesterday — Feb. 24, 2008. I note the date because I long ago gave up trying to write these things down in a baby book and I’m hoping that twenty years from now, I will be able to retrieve this account from somewhere out in The Great Void and tell him these things.

-After two weeks of visitors (yeay, Holli! Yeay, Mom & Dad!), even the dog is misbehaving now. It takes a while for people (and, apparently, dogs) to get back in the normal swing of things. Stewart jumped up on the table and ate Timothy’s sandwich at lunchtime today. Then he ran and hid in Caleb’s room with his face to the wall and pretended not to hear when we called him. It’s amazing how similar dogs and preschoolers act when they know they’re in trouble.

-An artist made a sculpture of a horse that now sits outside Denver International Airport. It’s purple (or is it blue? Holli?) and at night, its eyes glow red like one of the Horses of the Apocalypse (yes, I know they’re the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…but it stands to reason the horsemen would have been on horses. And I’m pretty sure the horses would have looked like this monstrosity)

Annnnnnnd We’re Back

OK, so I was back in the hospital last night with another kid. This time Caleb was admitted — not so much because he was really sick at the time but because when I took him in to the doctor, she said the next 24 hours were critical to his not getting really sick and she’d rather he were at the hospital. I swear I’m not one of those moms who purposely makes their kids sick to get attention. It’s just been a bad month for us.

Chris packed my overnight bag for me and forgot a toothbrush, toothpaste and a comb (he forgets there are people who have to use them…) so I asked the nurse. She was telling me about women whose husbands pack their bags and how they end up with some really funny stuff and I was laughing…until I returned to my room and discovered Chris had packed me capri pants to wear home today. In a snowstorm.

The Charming Birdbath of Doom

When we left LA, we forgot our birdbath. It was, as suggested above, a charming birdbath…green-gray with vines on the pedestal…pretty much the only attractive thing in our backyard. Jim and Annette were kind enough to load it into their motor home and bring it with them when we all went to Michigan last summer. It eventually made its circuitous way to our house where it sits in our front yard. At the beginning of winter, I was good about keeping water in it for the birds (lukewarm, so they would enjoy it. Like a little birdy spa.) But about three weeks ago, we got hit with a big, windy snowstorm and the birdbath blew over. It was making the front yard look a little trashy, all fallen down like that, and I kept meaning to fix it but didn’t actually try to until this last week. And now I discover — it’s frozen to the ground. I can’t move the freaking thing. I almost threw out my back trying and still it lies there. I tried hot water to melt the ground around it…I tried a shovel to pry it up….nothing. I think it’s going to be there until late spring when the ground finally thaws.

Poor cold, dirty birds.

So I began my week by taking Alexis to the doctor because over the weekend she developed a bad, baaaad cough that kept us all up all night. They checked her out and put her on oxygen in the doctor’s office. Then the pediatrician leaned forward in a  gesture I’m assuming was meant to avoid sending me into hysterics and said, “Her oxygen levels are low — she’s going to need to go to the hospital.” He told me they’d take her off the oxygen in the office and I was to drive straight to the hospital without stopping and get her back on oxygen there. And not panic. Hah.

She ended up being there for 2 days — apparently that’s about normal for a respiratory illness in a little kid. Chris took the night shifts and I was there days…on the first night, Chris wanted to go get some coffee, so he put Alexis on her bed and turned on football highlights for her to watch while he was gone. He left the door open and on his way back to the room, he overheard a nurse say, “Oh, yeah, that’s Alexis.” You could hear her yelling at the game all the way down the hall. Her little bed made me so sad, though. I’m sure it was terribly safe but it looked like something in an 1800’s orphanage — metal bars that slid up around the sides so she wouldn’t fall out, and a top that slid down to complete her little baby cage.

I can tell I’ve been watching too much “House” because every time the doctor came in, I expected him to say they’d discovered an abnormality that they’d never seen before and they didn’t know what was wrong with her. After she’d been there awhile and was starting to get antsy (none of this hospitalization/oxygen mask/etc affected her energy…in fact, she was on steroids so she was totally amped), they gave us a portable oxygen tank in case we wanted to take her out for a walk. Like an 80-year old man. We went for one walk and she would stroll along beside me and suddenly shout,”Run!” and take off, with me trying to catch up before she ripped the tube out.

She was finally released Wed morning and now the house is nice and noisy again. As we were walking out, Alexis had to say goodbye to everyone — the doctor, the nurses, the lady who brought the food trays, the people in the elevator, the people at the information desk and random people walking in and out of the hospital. It was like watching a politician. Timothy was the only person disappointed when she came back — apparently he had a great time visiting her…there were new toys to play with, new movies to watch and a fridge stocked with snacks right outside our door. He frowned when I told him she was coming home.

And I was starting to think my life was boring. I think I prefer it that way.