Limitations

I've been thinking lately about the limitations I put on myself from time to time. It's silly that we ever do that, isn't it? We are children of One who President Uchtdorf says is endlessly creative, and as such, we can create too. And also I keep remembering when Elder Christofferson came to our stake and told us that saying, "That's just the way I am. I can't change," is wrong because it goes against God's plan. The plan requires change, you know? To say we can't change is to go against what God's intends for us. It's like the guy who hid his talents instead of growing them.

So anyway, when I find these limitations I've placed on myself, it's my duty to uproot them. One of the ones that I had for a long time that really bothered me was that I was a bad actor. I was in a couple of plays in high school. Mostly I just did sey design and props and whatnot - you know, behind-the-scenes kind of stuff. I really, really enjoyed it and made some good, leading friendships there, but it bird me to no end that I couldn't act. I was just really bad at it. In fact, I had a short little line in the play Stuart Little, and I stood up there and forgot it! Ha ha! Embarrassing! Anyway, well, then I had kids, and that changed everything! When I was reading books to them I could suddenly be endlessly creative with how I read. I had lots of fun reading Are You My Mother to Hyrum and Joshua over and over and changing emphasis and tone and whatnot just for fun. :) I guess my change in motivation was the key.

Yesterday I was thinking about starting. There's another limitation I placed on myself. For as long as I can remember I've just said, "I'm no good at drawing." When I doodle I make hearts and daisies, and that's about it, if the boys ask me to draw something during church, I can draw houses, apples, fish, pumpkins, stick figures... That kind of thing. Whee! It never really bothered me too much. I just figured drawing wasn't something I could do.

Well, I also remembered that a long, long time ago, Andra's response to my limitation was, "Mrs. Platt says if you can write your name you can draw." I didn't believe it, but it bopped around in my head for all these years (since I was like a junior in high school). Well, yesterday,  I wanted to draw, and I finally said, "Why the heck can't I? Why the heck not?" (And just so you understand, heck and crap are my worst of the worst swear words.) So I grabbed a piece of paper, a freshly sharpened pencil (I bought a nice hand-crank pencil sharpener about six months ago, and I'm still super happy about it!), and a clipboard, and I found a few videos on YouTube, and, by golly, I drew something! And it doesn't look like crap! It's a far cry from prefect, and it took me all afternoon, but I'm quite happy with it! I need to learn about shading, I know. And I didn't really mean for his hat to look dented on the sides. I wasn't trying to make it look like anyone. I just wanted it to look like a guy about Bubby's age. And it does! :) And eating a stick is something all my boys have done on campouts. It's good fun. Sure his body is a little slanty in relation to his body, and his eyes don't quite match, but look at what I made! I'm so pleased with myself! See what happens when we embrace who we are as children of an endlessly creative God?

And in other news, I have another lesson on Sunday. I was worried about it because I was sick. I still am, but I'm a lot better! But I kept having to blow my nose during the lesson. But it came out ok anyway. And best of all, I got something out of it that I needed. The lesson was on prayer, and it was from President Benson. I love both President Benson and prayer a whole lot, so that works out good. :) One thing I read in the Bible Dictionary that I didn't get to share because I ran out of time was that when we close our prayers in the Name of Jesus Christ we need to be sure we are asking for things that are His will, or at least asking and then saying, "Thy will be done," because otherwise we aren't really paying in His Name at all. It was one of those, "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?" moments. :) I like those. Also,  there's a scripture and a quote from Elder McConkie that say that we can be told what we should pray for. It's partially because of the Atonement, because Christ knows what are going through and what everyone needs. It's cool when we know what to pay for. There was one time I was in the Temple getting dressed for a session, and I felt that I should pray for this one specific thing, so I did. And the prayer was answered immediately. It was such a blessing to me because it showed me that God was aware of me and wanted me to know it. It made me feel loved. :)

Benji had been in St. Johns with Grandma and Grandpa since Saturday.  I sure miss him! I'm glad he could go, though. In think it's been nice for him. He and Michael have been extra good friends lately, though, so it's been hard for Michael to have him gone. Stop they spend a lot of time on FaceTime, using up the batteries on my phone and Grandma's iPad and keeping everyone up late (Sorry about that, Mama! ), but it sure helps Michael feel better. :) And I must say I like hearing from him as well!

Bubby has been trying to talk lately. He had said chocolate and a lot of other things. :) I need to be better about writing them down. He has a big scrape on his forehead right now from falling down at Grandma Burk's house on Sunday.  :( But he's doing great! I haven't nursed him since New Year's Eve, and he's getting better at falling asleep at night and staying asleep. He sleeps in our bed, but at least he stays asleep.

Timmy has started sleeping in his own bed a lot more often. He falls asleep leading in there most nights, and now he usually stays there all night. Sometimes he wakes up in the night crying, and comes to our bed. When that happens, we run him to the potty before letting him stay there. He hates that, but usually that's what he needs, and so he feels a lot better and goes right back to sleep.  We've also noticed that when he wets the bed it's usually because he got really sad about something right at bed time. He wets the bed about once a week in his sleep. It was the same with Joshua for a long time, so I'm sure Timmy will outgrow it eventually too.

And I believe I mentioned that Timmy has a helper in Primary. Hey name is Lacy Norcross. She brings a bag of stuff to help him, and she just stays with him for all of Primary. This Sunday war her third time with him. Before, every time we tried to take him to Primary he would run the other way at full speed! Well, this Sunday I took his hand and said, "Let's go find Lacy. Where's Lacy?" He exclaimed, "Lacy!" Then he ran straight into Primary and sat down in his place! :D Hooray!

There are some songs on YouTube that have helped Timmy a lot as he learns to talk. They are called Super Simple Songs. There are all sorts of old kids' songs along with some new ones that these people made up. They have been such a blessing to Timmy! He learns the songs as he watches the cute little videos, and they kind of give him a voice in that he then learns to use the words as he talks. Just the other day they put up Skidamarink, and I'm so happy about it! I've waited a long time for him to say,  "I love you." He loves that song. It is short and ready to learn, so we sing it together. It's great. :) I need to remember to use music worth him more often. :)

Hyrum have a talk in church on Sunday. Susie and Rachel reported their missions in our ward that day too. It's funny because Susie hasn't even reported in her ward yet. Ha ha! They all did great. Hyrum is being better and better at giving talks. I'm so proud of him. He wrote his tali by himself. The only help he had was a story from Grandpa Badger. He found some scriptures to go with it, and it was great. :) And it fulfilled a requirement for the Communications Merit Badge.

I also meant to mention that Hyrum is doing good in his classes. So far he has a B in math, but I bet he can bring that up. He's good at math. The idea of algebra is still a little new to him, so maybe I should find some games to help him. That's what really helped me learn algebra. That's where it first clicked for me: games. He has Susie in his biology class and Grandma Burk in his sculpture class. The lady who teaches sculpture teaches painting and drawing and ceramics and maybe some others all at the same time. He's been making pots. Sounds like ceramics, and not sculpture to me, but he's having a lot of fun, and is learning some things. And really, that's kind of what happens at small colleges anyway. Grandma is actually in the painting class, and they ran out of room, so she is in smoothest room nearby, but there's an old family friend who volunteered to take care of Hyrum. :) I thought that was cute. 

I haven't been to the gym this week. I've been fighting sickness and driving Hyrum around. Maybe tomorrow, though! I discovered the rowing machine that first time I went with Jeremy, and I love it! I'd never tried it before. It's a great workout, and it's fun! So I've been doing the bike and the rowing machine. I have new shoesthat Jeremy for me for Christmas, and the have helped my sore feet, but I'm still not on the treadmill yet. Eventually I'll get the nerve to do it again. 

Stuff

I've been procrastinating! 

Soooo... Jeremy and I both took kind of a break from the gym over the holidays.  There was just so much going on I didn't feel like I could get to the gym too.  Plus, 2:00 is a hard time for me to go.  At that time Bubby's usually fussy, needing a nap, and most of us still haven't had lunch yet.  Anyway, last Saturday Jeremy took me to the gym with him.  It was fun. :) Then he bugged me about getting on the scale until I finally did.  Not so fun.  It's frustrating how my weight has gone way up and way down repeatedly over the last 4 years or so.  (Well, not the down part, but you know that.)  I was embarrassed, and I wanted to cry.  But then again, it's Jeremy, and he doesn't think I'm a bad person because of a number on a scale.  He does know that I want to change it, so he's been encouraging me to keep going.  I've started going in the morning some time after I bring Hyrum home from Seminary, and I like that way better!  The little ones are usually still asleep, and that makes leaving a lot easier. (It means there's nobody hanging out the window crying, "Mommy!  Mommy!" as I drive away.)  And Jeremy has taken me with him after work a couple of times this week.  That's pretty fun! :) It's like a date!  So in all I have gone 6 times this week, and I haven't gone yet today.  I've got a sore throat and haven't been feeling so great, but I'll probably end up going later this morning. 

Hyrum has biology at 8:00 instead of Seminary at 6:00 on Fridays.  And Susie is in his class! :) I think it's kind of fun, too, that he gets to have Aaron for a teacher every weekday, since Aaron teaches both biology and Seminary. 

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but Aaron and Kenzie are expecting baby #5 around August (Hooray!), and they will be moving to Thatcher so Aaron can fill the biology teacher position there.  They pretty much just handed the job to him.  They knew the guy was leaving, and Aaron has done a great job here at the college, and since the college here is through EAC they could just call it a transfer.

Becca is also expecting.  She's due in March, and it's another boy.  And Anne just had a baby a few weeks ago.  Now she has 3 boys and 5 girls.  The new little one is a boy, and they named him Ammon Lee Thomas.  I had to snicker a bit about Ammon Lee.  I grew up with Ammon Lee. ;) But Ammon is a good name, and Lee is Rob's middle name, so it works out nicely.  Plus, Ammon goes with Teancum and Helaman. 

We're still kind of trying to figure out a way to get us up to Cedar City.  I'm just not sure how it's going to happen.  We have plans pretty much ready for building a house (a castle - and, no, I'm not kidding) up there, and we've been looking at land.  All we lack is a job.  Jeremy has a friend in Washington (right by St. George) who teaches at a high school there.  They did that program in Paris together.  Anyway, she had a job opportunity teaching business full time at her high school.  It doesn't pay very good, though, and we would have had to leave right away.  Jeremy was already scheduled to start teaching his economics class at the college again in a few days, though, and Hyrum was all registered for his classes.  The timing just was bad.  And it doesn't pay well.  But the job will be posted again to get a permanent person in there after this semester.  We're thinking about it.  Jeremy would love to teach full time!  And we've also been thinking - remember how Jeremy was going to do that business that is through Mass Mutual?  We looked at it while we were living in Cedar City.  He'd be setting up his own business for financial consulting and that sort of thing through them in Cedar City.  Anyway, we didn't end up taking that job, and they gave it to somebody else.  But now they want to have somebody else start another one in Cedar City.  So that's an opportunity.  It would be kind of whenever he had time at first, and then he could grow it into a full-fledged business.  So maybe he could do that while he's not teaching?  I don't know.  It's an option, and we're thinking about it. 

There is one other consideration here, and that is that when they hired Jeremy, they expected him to stay for 20+ years.  They're training him and another guy to take over for two guys who are retiring next winter.  He's off at training today, and he has training on my birthday and his, and then a big one over 2 days in Colorado in April.  It makes us feel kind of bad about thinking about leaving.  I figure, though, that if we kind of leave it in the Lord's hands and bloom where we're planted, things are going to work out just fine wherever we end up.

Well, I'd better go get Hyrum from the college!  Here's a cute picture of Bubby, though. :) He fell asleep sitting up, and he kept almost falling over. :)

 

 

 And some more pictures of sleeping people.  What is it about sleeping people?  It's just sweet. :)

I might also mention that Hyrum finally let Rachel cut his hair, and then he felt like it was just too short.  He can't whip it around anymore, and, man, you should have seen the fro he could make before it got cut!  It was impressive!

 

Unfortunately, this one happens all too often!  I think this happened while I was in the shower on a Sunday morning.

 

Oh, wait!  I do have pictures of Hyrum's 'fro.  It was bigger another day.  These two were just minutes before Rachel whacked it.  He actually had it even bigger a couple of weeks ago. :)

Man!  I'm all photo happy today!  But while I'm at it, here's the gift I made for Jeremy's Grandma's birthday.  It has a pin on the back.  I'm pretty pleased with it. :) Grandma McDermott has been living with those guys for a few weeks now, and is here for the foreseeable future.  She is getting to have a hard time remembering people, and asks things over and over a lot.  She has a hard time getting around too.  But she is still her usual fun self, so it's always fun to go see her. :)

Jeremy's mom got a better picture of this than I did, but this is what I have to work with.  It was Grandma McDermott's birthday, and Jill was brushing my hair and Grandma Burk's, so she brushed Grandma Mc's too.  She laughed and laughed and said she was fancy.  It was fun. :)

 

2 bits of news

Our home teacher came over today and fixed our hall lights that haven't worked in like 2 1/2 years!  The best thing about it was Jill running up and down the hall exclaiming her delight at light in the hall. :)

And also, last night, as I had already begun to despair that it would never happen, I finally passed that stone! A few sharp pains and a bit more waiting and there it was! :)

Timmy and other stuff

First of all, TMI alert for the next paragraph.

Ok, so remember how I wasn't sure if the stone was still there or not?  Well, I'm not wondering anymore.  In fact one reason why I'm blogging right now is because I'm hurting like crazy and I need to get my mind off it.  I also think it's dumb that this pain medicine has to be taken with food.  It's for serious pain.  Who in the world wants to sit down and eat something real quick when they're suddenly in serious pain?!  Not me.  But I was stuck doing just that at 1:00 AM the night before last.  It really worked, and it only took like 10 minutes.  And right now I'm feeling the dang thing just hangin' out.  It feels like it's right there where it could just pop right out, but it's just not.  I ate a sammich and took some pain medicine over an hour ago, and it hasn't done diddly this time. :( So it works for kidney pain, but not urethra pain or headache pain?  Poo.

End rant

So Mama asked me about Timmy and Primary.  She asked if he just missed Sunbeams altogether.  I guess I didn't explain what was going on or something, so let me just clear that up right now. :)

For one thing, our Primary is kind of small, so there are like 4 teachers total.  The classes are lumped together.  Timmy's current class includes Sunbeams and the class just above it, and the teacher teaches out of the Sunbeam manual.  So even if he did miss all of Sunbeams, he'd have a chance this year to hear it all again.  He may not ever look at anybody, but he shows me that he's catching things.  Now and then he just repeats things he hears.

OK, so Timmy had absolutely zero interest in going to Primary.  He still would rather not, given the choice, but under certain circumstances he can be convinced to stay.  So for the first few months when he was supposed to be in Sunbeams, rather than practically sitting on him to get him to stay in Primary I would just take him to Nursery.  The problem was that that was the moment when he decided to do some little social experiments.  For what seemed like the first time in his life he was noticing that there were other people around who were not Mommy.  He found out that some of them were little and that if he whacked them or pushed them over they'd squeal.  He employed those experiments in Nursery, and that made some of the kids afraid to go to Nursery.  And the Nursery leader really just seemed to not like him anyway.  He also is still shaky on the concept of consequences.  So if he gets put in the corner for hurting someone, that really doesn't help.  He doesn't see how his actions are connected with the consequence at all. 

And then we add to that the fact that he doesn't like change.  He was happy in Nursery.  And he is really quick!  If we tried to take him anywhere else we had to wrestle him to get him to stay, and then he was screaming the whole time.  It just seemed logical to me to let him stay in Nursery longer.  I, of course felt really bad for the kids who were afraid to go to Nursery.  And, of course, I felt bad for their parents as well.  But what could I do?  I seriously could see no alternative except to just keep him home, which just wasn't going to happen.  I knew that he'd finish with his little experiments and move on, but that's not what everyone else knew.  All they knew was that this kid was hurting people.  That makes him a bad kid, right?  WRONG!

OK, so you can see that the whole subject really raised my ire.  I seriously need to forgive and move on.

So anyway, I periodically tried taking him to sharing time, but it was a huge struggle every time.  The Primary president (the one who moved a few months ago) decided that Timmy could only go to Nursery if Jeremy or I went with him.  Like that would prevent him from hitting when he got the urge, right?  Anyway.  Ergh.  Anyway, we settled into a routine where Jeremy and I took turns sitting with him in Nursery.  For a while we had a nice lady in Nursery who understood the situation better, and she'd tell us we could just go to class.  And then the Primary President would come up to me in the hall after church and let me know that we had to be there with him.  So anyway, our routine was that we'd sit with him in Nursery and then his Sunbeams teacher would take him to class.  We found that he could easily handle the classroom part of Primary, especially because they had a snack right when they went in.  Well, then the nice lady in Nursery went on a mission, and the other lady told us one day that Timmy had to leave at snack time because she didn't want him to want to come back.  Oh, I was livid! 

Well, in the end it kind of turned out ok.  Kind of.  By that time we'd tried taking him to Primary enough times that it wasn't just totally unexpected.  I tried a few different things to try to help him be happy through Sharing Time, but he couldn't really last any longer than that.  I brought in Play-Doh, and that worked for a month or two.  I just kept it in my bag, only for Sharing Time.  He would sit on my lap or on his chair and just play with it, and he was good.  And now that he's tired of Play-Doh he's getting used to just being there anyway.  I suppose I should thank the Nursery leader for being rude because we were forced to be more persistent in getting him to stay in Primary, but then again, no.

And also during that time, Timmy's teacher's daughter was on some sort of all-state softball team, so they were gone for that pretty much every Sunday.  That meant that I was sitting through Sharing Time with Timmy and then winging it with a lesson too.  I love my son and am thankful to help him, but it was frustrating.  I went for months without going to my own classes.  If I had a calling that caused that it would be one thing, but I didn't.  And then there's the fact that I was taking care of Timmy for pretty much the entire 3 hours.  Church really winds him up! 

Well, now the softball season is over.  His teacher is still hit and miss.  I really can't grumble about that, though.  I know that she has struggles.  Her husband has only been to church once in the last like 20 years.  It's hard going by yourself with kids, and I can't imagine going by yourself when your husband has no interest in going himself.  Seriously, hats off to her for keeping coming all these years.  Also, she is really good with Timmy.  She has gotten to know him a bit.  She doesn't mind that some days he needs to be under the table or on top of the tower of chairs.  She just rolls with it.

So now he isn't going to Nursery anymore, and I'm really thankful that he has a helper now.  She's a nice girl.  She'll do great!  And since I have to teach Relief Society, it is quite timely.  I'm so thankful!  I'm looking forward to this year's Primary because he's learning and growing.  He'll have somebody to help him, and I think that the more he goes, the more he's going to pick up on Primary songs.  He's picked up other songs, and I'm really excited for him to start singing Primary ones. :) Plus, with a helper he could probably even be in the Primary program this year.  I can't guarantee that he'll say anything in the microphone, but he could really do it. :) 
And with that, I'ma go make some dinner.  I've been chugging water, trying to be a good girl so I can pass this stone and avoid more, and it helped with pain.  But now I'm super sleepy from the pain pill.  Maybe that finally kicked in to help with pain too.  Ha ha!  I don't know.  Uncharted territory.  I'm thankful it's only one stone.  I can't wait until it's gone and I can get back to life as normal.

Great Fun

OK, first of all, here's some news that actually is fun!  Yesterday morning Anne and Rob had baby #7, and they named him Ammon Lee Thomas.  It works because Lee is Rob's middle name, and Ammon goes right along with their other boys' names (Teancum and Helaman).  But it's funny because I grew up with a kid named Ammon Lee. :)

More fun news: Hyrum starts college this week.  We're still not sure which classes he's taking for sure, but it'll likely at least be math and sculpture.  He's all excited, and he was way happy to go back to Seminary this morning. 

And also there's this: Aaron has accepted a full-time position at EAC in Thatcher teaching biology. So this is his last semester teaching at our local community college.  I have no idea how they are going to replace him!  We're trying to decide if Hyrum should take Aaron's Environmental Biology class or not.  It will be his last chance unless he goes to EAC in Thatcher.  Mom took that class, and she said she only spent about an hour a week outside of class time, and so it wasn't a hard class.  The only drawback is that will put him up to 10 credits, making a pretty large tuition hike!  Plus, he'll need one more book.  I got him all signed up with the FAFSA, but it turns out that he's too young to get a grant, so we have to pay it ourselves.  We still could do it.  I'm just not sure if we want to.  And honestly, if his math class wasn't at the same time as Jeremy's class I'd want him to take that one!  Well, at least he has his Papa at home. :) He'll learn good stuff just from that.

Timmy has a helper now in Primary.  She came and helped him for the first time yesterday.  He did escape once, but really he did pretty good!  I'm so thankful!  And at least he's predictable.  He always goes to the same places when he escapes.  We'll be having a meeting with her and the Primary president on Sunday to discuss how she can help.  But yesterday I was able to go to both Sunday School and Relief Society for the first time in months!  I hadn't been to Sunday School in quite a while.  It was so nice to go sit with Jeremy and listen! :) Hooray!

And one more thing: We got snow on New Year's Eve!  It didn't get very deep, and it took a long time before it stuck at all, but the kiddos sure enjoyed it.  We were sure it would be melted quickly.  Jeremy predicted it would be gone by 11:00 the next day, but it wasn't!  And we still have little patches of snow in the shady spots in our yard and a big slab of ice in the driveway.

OK, now for the news that isn't great fun unless you're being snarky.  I've got a kidney stone.  Whee!  About 2 or 3 weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when I came back, I had this pain in my left kidney.  Honestly, there's not a lot of other things pain could be if it's in that location.  And since I'd had that hip pain just before that, I knew it wasn't the same.  I actually had some kidney pain back in high school too, but it was pretty mild.  Well, I eventually got back to sleep and hoped it was nothing.  Then about a week and a half ago sometime I had some pain there again.  This time it was worse, but not like I was rolling around moaning.  It started in my kidney and kind of radiated its way down and then felt like menstrual cramps. All I wanted to do was lay in bed, but that didn't even help.  I just hoped it would pass, and it did, but I kind of knew it was going to come back.  I figured I probably had kidney stones.  I had random pains here and there, but nothing serious until New Year's Day.  And I had a lot of diarrhea.  It turns out that's a symptom of kidney stones too.  In the evening I started hurting again, and it quickly progressed into something horrible!  The thing with kidney stones - some people say they are worse than labor pains, and I think I have to agree.  For me, though, it's not that the pain was worse, it's that there are no breaks.  Changing positions doesn't help at all, and so it's just continuous pain instead of the contraction pain that comes and goes.  It was absolutely dreadful.  It made me throw up.  I was in my bedroom writhing in pain, and I didn't want to alarm the children, so I just texted Jeremy and asked him to give me a blessing.  Instead, he took me to the hospital and called Rachel to come and take care of our kiddos.

At the ER we only had to wait like 10-15 minutes before they took me back to triage.  That's like a record!  By then I was feeling worn out but wasn't hurting much.  Isn't that just the way it works?  You go to the doctor, so then you're cured before he can see you?  I was afraid I was just being stupid and wasting money.  Anyway, after taking my blood pressure and temperature and stuff they put me in a room and had me change into one of those wonderful hospital gowns.  Then a nurse came in who usually works in OB.  She said she came to the ER to help with what I guess was a rush.  It didn't look to me like there were many people there, but ok.  Anyway, she said the doctor said to give me an IV and take blood for tests right away.  She tried first in my left hand, but I guess she poked through the vein or something.  I've still got a bruise from it, and it hurts when anything touches it.  It's not way visible, but you can kind of make it out in this picture I took today. You can see a red dot on my vein and a big dark circle around it. I can't believe it still hurts!

 

 

So then she put it in the side of my right wrist, and it worked there.  She drew four vials of blood and went out.  Then a little while later another nurse came in and said that those vials were no good because they'd been labeled wrong.  They had the wrong name on them. :P So she took blood again, and she had to poke me again.  She said she couldn't take it from the IV a second time for some reason. :P So she poked my left elbow pit and took four more vials.  And another nurse came in and hooked me up to saline.  That always makes me super cold!  And they also put some pain medication in the IV, even though I didn't feel like I needed it anymore. 

 

All sorts of people came and went before the doctor came in.  He poked and prodded and said it sounded like kidney stones and that he wanted a urine sample and possibly a CT scan.  They did a pregnancy test just to make sure before sending me to radiology.  (I'm not pregnant, by the way. Ha ha!) And then after a while they came with a wheelchair and took me for a CT scan.  Have any of you had one of those?  I had one once after Jill was born.  They were trying to figure out why I was losing so much blood.  They put you on this bed with your feet facing a big donut-shaped machine and your arms up above your head.  The radiology tech goes into the observation room, and the machine starts up.  The bed slides forward so that whatever they're trying to look at is in the machine.  A nice lady voice in the machine periodically tells you to take a deep breath and hold it and then to exhale.  The bed moves back and forth a bit.  I guess it's so they scan everywhere they can or something.  And something big inside the machine spins around and around you.  Pretty exciting.  It has a warning on it that says it works with lasers and to not stare into the laser, but I didn't see what they were talking about, so I just looked away from the machine.  I really should look it up and see how it works sometime.  It only takes like 5 minutes.

 

Anyway, then they wheel chair guy took me back to the room where Jeremy (such a good fellow) was still waiting.  We watched Home Alone 2 on the TV while we waited.  We started in the middle and didn't get to finish, and Jeremy kept turning it off whenever anyone came in.  We also watched pieces of a show about a family that lives in the wilderness.  Jeremy likes to change the channel whenever commercials come on, so we end up missing pieces of whatever we're watching and only getting little pieces of whatever we're watching during the commercial break.  I don't get it, but ok.  Anyway, those people on the wilderness show were super weird, but they all seemed happy I guess.

 

The doctor came in and told me that I had one kidney stone and it's about 3.5 mm.  He said it should pass on its own and was already moving down the ureter.  He said he'd give me 3 prescriptions - one for pain, one for nausea, and one that they give to men to help with prostate problems. (!)  But he said the prostate medicine is also used to help pass kidney stones.  OK.  Anyway, then a little while later he came in and said I had a urinary tract infection.  Of course.  That meant they put one more bag of medicine in me through the IV, but then I was set to go home. :) I was still a little uncomfortable.  As I got dressed I could tell the stone was either in or right near my bladder.  But I was able to come home and get the kiddos to bed as usual.  The only difference is that I couldn't nurse Bubby.  I didn't bother asking if I could.  I figured I just had too much junk in me.  And I know I said I was weaning him before.  Well, we never quite finished.  He was still nursing to sleep at night and then off and on during the night.  I knew he'd sleep better if I'd just wean him, but it's such a hard thing to give up.  Weaning means I'm letting him grow up.  Except that whether or not I wean him he's growing.  So darn!  And, yes, I'm quite sore now from it, but at least I'm not hurting from the stone right now.  Hooray? 

 

I have had some pain over the last few days, but not much.  I was actually able to go to the Temple on Saturday (It was awesome! :D) and to church yesterday.  I'm just going on with life as normal except that I have to remember to take medicine.  The pain and nausea prescriptions are just as needed, so I haven't taken them much.  The pain medicine is supposedly "like ibuprofen on steroids," but it does nothing for a headache, and I don't feel like I can take my regular headache medicine because it is an NSAID (whatever that is) like the pain medicine, so if I needed the pain medicine before the headache medicine time was up I'd be in trouble.  I also have to drink lots of clear liquids and strain my urine every time to try to catch the stone.  I hate that!  I'm ok with drinking clear liquids, but they only gave me two paper cones to strain with, and they're coming apart.  I thought I'd just try coffee filters, but they get floppy when they're wet.  I need to go to the store today and get something better.  And the antibiotic makes me sleepy with a touch of nausea.  The nausea medicine is a little tablet I dissolve under my tongue.  It tastes nasty and doesn't seem to help.

 

And in the meantime, I can't decide if it just broke apart and came out already or if it's still there.  I'm not hurting much.  I just don't know.  I guess I'll just keep it up.  I'll be out of the Flomax and the antibiotic in a few days and then I guess we'll just see, huh?  I'm just thankful it's only one stone and that the worst is over!

Bedtime Shenanigans!

Jill turned the thermostat up to 87. :O Thank goodness I caught it at 78! And Timmy put on four shirts (the top one was a long-sleeved polo shirt, backwards) and proclaimed, "I'm Emmett." We've been watching The Lego Movie, and my guess is that Timmy was thinking of that scene at the beginning where Emmett changes his clothes over and over. Ha ha! I guess Emmett was really just layering, eh?

Hallelujah

In the last few days the following tragedies have occurred in my life:

1. Timmy fell off my choir with his head on the joint of my big toe.

2. Timmy dumped out the clean laundry on the floor, and something in my hip screamed out as I tried to clean it up. I spent the next 24 in quite a bit of pain.

3. A second little chunk of filling chipped off of one of my molars.

It never rains but it pours, right?

Well, I think that, contrary to what I originally thought, maybe my toe isn't broken. It doesn't hurt unless I push on it. Sweet! 

This afternoon I went to the chiropractor, and she did some stuff. She hooked up some sticky things on me. I imagine they looked something like those sticky things from that heart monitor. She placed them all around where I was hurting and turned it on and added a heat pack. The stickies vibrated. It was such a strange feeling! But after a while it felt nice. And then she did some adjustments and found that my hips are crooked! Well, no wonder since I carry kiddos around all the time. I was so disappointed when I went back to the car hurting just as badly as when I went in.  But guess what. Now, a few hours later, I'm feeling a lot better! It still hurts, but hooray! I should be able to sleep tonight! :)

I still have to wait until next week to get my tooth fixed, and I have to go back to the chiropractor a few more times, but I feel quite blessed! :)

Plus, who can feel glum for too long with this guy around? :)