3am Wake Up Calls, and the Reasons Why

If you're ever struck with a case of insomnia around 3am, call my cell. I'll be there. And awake.

Two nights in a row. The kids are 6 and 3 (almost four) - why are we still getting up in the night???

Tuesday night I woke up at 3:15am to the sound of Jack and Ryker talking to each other. Jack has a habit of waking up in the night and moving all of his bedding into Ryker's room and sleeping the rest of the night in there. We don't like this particularly, but we are picking our battles, and that's not one of them.

I woke up, dazed, and prepared to launch myself into Ryker's room, scare the daylights out of both of them, threaten them with death if they didn't go back to sleep, and hobble back to bed. I opened my door, ready to storm down the hallway, and almost tripped right over Jack. He was sitting in the middle of the hallway, lights on, tub of batteries in his lap, putting fresh ones in the Leap Pad, while carrying on a conversation with Ryker, who was sleepily thrashing around in his bed.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING???"

Scared them, yes.

Threaten certain death, yes.

Only at 3:45 it happened again. Not the batteries, but the waking up and the talking. I sent Jack to his room, whisper-yelling at both of them.

Fast forward to last night. I had a whole conversation with Jack, imploring him to be a big boy and stay in his own bed. He did GREAT. Ryker did not. Wanna know why? Because his lip is busted. He hurt it at school Wednesday afternoon and I spent all of last night trying not to look at him. Christi (my cousin-like-a-sister) made me look, and I'm holding her solely responsible for the knots in my stomach.

You all can thank me later for not getting an actual picture of his lip. Except my mom, who had to look at it via Facetime last night.

Chuck thought he was fine and that we shouldn't take him in. I went along with that and put myself to bed at 9pm - figuring unconscious was a better state than awake and trying not to think about my baby's lip.

Ryk awoke at 3am. What is it about 3am? He awoke, mumbling "mama" through a severely swollen lip.

"My wip is hurtin."

I had a moment of Mommy Genius - 3 in the morning - and got him a soda can to hold against it. No edges, no bumps. Gold Star to me. I patted his head until he fell asleep again.

This morning I looked sideways at him, averting my eyes but trying to gauge the severity. Then I left the room and made Chuck take a closer look. Then I demanded he take him somewhere. Most of you know about my aversion to blood and hospitals. I have fainted more than once because of those two things.

We spent the morning trying to call the clinic, talk to the triage nurse, keep ice (or Popsicles) against his lip, and telling him to "be kind to your face."  I tried to quickly make Jack's lunch, which ended with him locked in the bathroom sobbing and refusing to go to school because I hadn't put raspberries in there. We actually DID put raspberries in there, on the second attempt, but that wasn't good enough to overcome the first error (read: the lack of attention he was getting). I told him, through the bathroom door, that he was, in fact, going to school - because one parent was taking his little brother to the hospital for his busted lip and the other had to go to work to earn money to paid for said raspberries and the medical bills. So there.

Back to Ryk. He's out of Children's Hospital - no stitches. Wash with saline and he'll be fine. Whew.

So anyway, call me at 3.

The Garage Sale

First and Only.

Awhile back Chuck decided we should have a garage sale. I said no. I wanted to just donate it all and be done. Everyone I knew that had had a garage sale had only had A garage sale. Singular. I took that to mean it wasn't a very good idea.

We did it anyway.

I should back up a sec. I have a little tendency towards hoarding important things. Like everything ever associated with my kids. We have a fourth bedroom in the basement, and I have been using it to store all of the old kids toys and clothes. I have clothes back from when they were infants. I have hats, coats, mittens, boots, onesies, sleep sacks, overalls. SO MANY OVERALLS. I have car seats, three strollers, a crib, a race car bed, a highchair, baby swings, bouncy seats.

We also have hoarded books, computer stuff, cords, cameras, alarm clocks, vases. We have a set of bar stools. I'll stop now. You get the point.

Okay, so we decided to join the rest of the city of Bloomington in the city-wide garage sale.

I worked for weeks to get things thrown away, sorted, and cleaned. The last week was spent in the garage - setting up the tables and pricing everything. Nicki joined in our efforts, so I got to hang with her quite a bit, which was fun.

We started with a goal in mind of paying off the tires we had to put on the van last week. Not cheap,  and I was scared we wouldn't make it.

We paid them off by 3pm on the first day, and doubled it by the end. WHEEE!

I also met some very interesting people. There was the woman who was negotiating with me about the toys and seemed kind of gruff, until she softened and told me she buys toys and then takes them to Mexico to give to children there on Christmas. There was the man who got me to take half off my price for kids' clothes and made me button every button and fold them "nicely," who I was about ready to kick to the curb. Then I asked what he does with all of these clothes (he took over 40 pieces), and he told me he sends them back to his country, Kenya, for the children. His wife and kids still live there.

All in all I'd call it a success. We got rid of most of the major items we wanted to get rid of, made some extra money, and got a good lesson in not judging a garage-sale-attendee by its cover.

Help For Jack

Oh man do I feel better. It's not about me, but I'm just sayin'.  In case you're wondering how *I'm* doing.

We had our first appointment with Jack's new therapist today. She was great. We're in good hands. Jack was perfectly adorable, as usual. Her office was at the end of a long corridor, which he spotted quickly. When she came to get us, he said "is that your office?" and she said yes and he took off running to get into it. Not the response I was expecting.

She got medical histories from us, asked his history with frustration and anger, and asked him a bunch of questions.

At one point she asked what he liked to do most when he wasn't in school. He goes "umm...cuddling with Momma..." and then he listed other stuff but honestly I stopped listening then because I was grinning so hard I couldn't hear anything.

Anyway, she will have two more appointments with him, alone, and then she'll have one with just Chuck and me to give us her assessment. We'll go from there, but she made it sound like she thinks she might be able to teach us some good ways to help him ourselves without him needing to be in therapy for an extended period of time. As she put it, "6 year olds have better things to do than sit in therapy."

It felt good to take the first step towards helping my Jack Attack feel better.

Dinner Date

Tonight Chuck was putting Jackson in bed and they got talking about the fact that Chuck and I are going to dinner tomorrow night.

Jack asked if he and Ryker were going too and Chuck said "nope, just Momma and me." And Jack asked why. Chuck said that we just want to have dinner together and Jack goes "peaceandquiet?" kinda as one big word.

Chuck said "yes, peace and quiet" and Jack said "inner peace" and then went on a Kung Fu Panda rant.