The doc said it’s likely just a sprained muscle but wants to rule out a blood clot (which I am fine with because of my previous vein issues). He said a clot can feel/sound like what I experienced…but that it would still be painful. Which it isn’t—it’s feeling much better after a full day.
Anyway, of course ruling out a clot required a separate visit to another clinic…where I was told that no, I have to go to the hospital for radiology…which has to be scheduled. 😐 Luckily I can get in this week.
I’m guessing he’s already completely constipated again…he still refuses to poop and has dirty underwear 3-4 times a day, which the doc previously said means blockage. 🙁
Since we’ve been home from the hospital, he has only pooped of his own free will one time. One. (I’ve been keeping track.) He’s also only said “I have to poop” four times…but those were after I strongly suggested he needed to try. He’s not earned one Lego. Which is worse than it was pre-hospitalization. 🙁
I can’t do anything serious with Miralax or ex-lax since he has school 3x a week…so I only have the weekends. So it looks like I’ll be spending this coming weekend trying to get him cleaned out…which is not fun for either of us.
I just want to scream and cry.
The doc warned this might not be the miracle solution…but something HAS to change. We can’t keep living like this. I’ve tried everything I can think of…but nothing works. Owen isn’t even swayed by the threat of quitting school OR having to go back to the hospital with the needles and tube in his nose (even though he tells me he doesn’t want to do that).
I’m hoping the doc has some better advice at the follow-up appointment in two weeks…because I am seriously at my wits end.
Owen: Mama, I miss my daddy. How many sleeps until he gets home?
Me: A lot, buddy.
Owen: Like 21? 22?
Me: [laughing] No, like 150.
Owen: Wow, that’s a lot.
Me: Yes, it is.
Owen: Mama, I like your shirt.
Me: Thanks!
Owen: What about my body?
Me: 😕 I love it!
Owen: Thanks!
I didn’t feel like chasing her with my bum leg, so I confined her to the porch while Owen ran around. She made do and had fun.
I rarely have to wake her up, but it was time… Normally she wakes up just as you open the door, but today, she was OUT. Enough so I could actually snap a picture!
I don’t buy many clothes for Katie, but when I saw this on the clearance rack at Kohl’s, I couldn’t pass it up.
I am a bit disenchanted with Owen’s school this morning. I know it’s all a little last-minute and that’s fine, but it’s stupid little things like no coat hooks and bins, but just bins (which backpacks don’t really even fit in) and a boring outdoor play area (no playset area like he had before—just an open space and a volleyball net—really?). Not that that’s why they’re there or they need an awesome play area…it was just a bit disappointing.
But the biggest thing is that they have no room for Katie in the drop-in care. Why? Because oh, they don’t have drop-in care for 1-year-olds (which no one ever told me) but technically they could take her but because of all this room- and building-switching, they had to move kids and now the 1 year room is at capacity. I asked “So you really never offered actual drop-in care, it’s mostly for scheduled care?” Yep. Well, thanks for wasting my time and having me fill out all the paperwork for no reason. She said I could still call in the mornings and ask if there was a space, but the chances wouldn’t be good unless someone called in sick. Great. There are other locations around town but the point was to DROP THEM BOTH OFF AT THE SAME TIME AT THE SAME PLACE—not drop Owen off then drive 10 minutes across town to drop her off, only to reverse the process at 11:30.
I still have the other drop-in care, but they don’t open until 9am which means I’d have to waste an hour in town if I want to drop her off after Owen (or drive home 15 minutes, waste 30 minutes, then drive 15 minutes back to town). Annoying, first world problems…but stuff that makes my life more difficult.
Edited after pickup to add: Okay, I jumped to conclusions. The area outside their classroom is for the bigger kids. They do take them out front to the nice, cool, new play area. 🙂
Playing with Katie while waiting for the teacher.
With his buddy, Braxton. (I tend to forget just how big Owen is until he gets next to other kids. Braxton is a few months younger than Owen.)
I know. Holy wah.
Is it possible to hear a charley horse snap? I’ve felt what feels like a charley horse forming…and coming down the stairs just now I felt and heard it snap. I didn’t lose balance (thankfully because I was carrying Katie) but it hurts like HELL.
Google later told me it’s the Gastrocnemius:
I’m not in agonizing pain but it’s certainly not comfortable. A quick call to my stepdad confirmed that I should probably go the RICE route AND go to the doctor. And of course tomorrow is the day I have to walk Owen in to his new classroom and do all the registration stuff so I can’t leave Katie in the car. Then I have to hope I can get in to see a doc and that it’s something they can do something for.
UGH. This is NOT something I really needed right now.
Owen promised and PROMISED and PROMISED to use them correctly. So, an hour or so after he earned them back…they were ruined (he pressed the tips hard enough to disappear into the marker) PLUS he left them all uncapped and laying all over plus on the floor (which he was warned about yesterday). So I threw them all in the garbage.
Oh, and he had marker ON HIS LIPS and on his body. And there was marker on the toilet seat. Plus he had glue (from the “art set”) all over him! Ages 3+ my ass.
I may have lost my shit just a little.
I can tell I really need a break because normally I think things like that are funny or picture-worthy…and I’m not feeling that anymore. As a matter of fact, I feel like I’m failing…big time.
I’ll just say that Grannie and Papa’s visit cannot come soon enough.
Two weeks…
Two weeks…
Two weeks…
And definitely his marker privileges. This is what I walked into at bedtime:
One, I didn’t know he even took any markers upstairs.
Two, he’s been great with markers thus far so I had NO reason to believe he’d do something like this.
Three, apparently I needed to remind him markers are for PAPER ONLY.
And four—of course, these weren’t any of the 40 “washable” markers we own. Nooooo, these were some other random markers.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
It’s in the first wash cycle now.
Here you can see how many people are on the field at one time! (If you click on this panoramic pic, it will pop up a bigger version.)
His first at-bat. Of course, since I was taking pictures, he actually hit the ball on his own! (The next time when I was taking a video (below), he ended up having to use the T—and someone obviously didn’t notice that I was recording and kept talking to me!)
This time, I let Katie out of the stroller when Owen was in the outfield. She stayed pretty close…
Except she kept wandering into the dugout (it wasn’t even Owen’s dugout—it was just the one we were closest to)!
Mid-game post-potty water break:
Here, you can see the announcer with Owen and his volunteer running in the background.
Heading for home!
A different church was helping out today so they didn’t have the full lunch truck, but they did have hot dogs and chips! Then it was off to the playground for a quick visit!
This was her response after I took away an empty granola bar wrapper:
Also known as “didn’t take a long enough nap.”
You gotta love end-of-the-season 50% off sales at the dollar store! Without further ado—Katie’s first sprinkler!
I told Owen we could go to the playground this morning, thinking he would pick the one we’ve gone to a few times (the one we stopped at on the way back from seeing Tom off) that’s closest to us…but no…he requested the “baseball playground” (obviously, the one next to the ball fields we went to after playing baseball).
He also requested “socks like grannie’s at the hotel” so he could slide down the slides better. So I gave him some of mine (no pics, unfortunately)…and they stayed on pretty long, until he saw a girl in bare feet and then he wanted bare feet, too!
It was a nice, cool, fall-ish morning so we were all in long pants and long sleeves (which felt like heaven!)…but Katie just couldn’t quite understand the long sleeves and kept trying to pull them off.
This is how she sometimes goes down stairs.
Unlike Owen, she doesn’t mind sand at all.
Owen with Connor, one of the kids from my mommy group.
Katie had her first skinned-lip/chin fall on the sidewalk moments before this (she just stumbled). She cried for about 15 seconds while I brushed the sand off her face…and then she was fine.
But I’m not sure to exactly what quite yet. :~
First, I forgot to mention that we got Owen’s Pre-K waitlist letter earlier this week—so that was good news (definitely better than a flat out no).
So, today at pickup, all the parents were getting pulled into the office…to be told that the school JUST got assigned a Pre-K class so current class locations will be changing. The Pre-K class is going to be held in the current Tiger classroom (Owen’s room) so all the preschool kids will be moving to the building next door. HOWEVER, if your child is on the Pre-K waitlist and is approved, they will be staying in their current classroom—it will just be full-time Pre-K instead of part-time preschool. But we won’t know if we’re approved until Tuesday. But the preschool class moves Monday. Which means if he’s approved, Owen will be moving classrooms TWICE in the span of a week—once to the new preschool classroom for his M-W-F days, then back to his old classroom for Pre-K starting the following Monday.
There is also the option of moving to a different preschool where they will now have openings—but it’s farther away so we’re not interested in that (though there might be some that are, so his classmates would be changing anyway). There are still no openings at the Pre-K five minutes from our house. Of course. And we have no idea how far down we are on the waitlist to know if we even have a chance of being approved.
If Owen is accepted into Pre-K, he will lose one of his friends for sure—“his girl” Joselyne, as she’s only three and too young for Pre-K. And I know his other friend, Braxton, is also on the waitlist so maybe he will get moved to Pre-K without Owen.
Sigh.
The admin admitted that they hadn’t really wanted to add this class because of all the necessary changes (after all, they just got the kids all settled in their schedules with their teacher and the teacher knows them all) but they had already signed the contracts saying they’d take the class if it opened.
So, it shall be interesting.
Oh, the other sucky thing? I have to fill out ALL THE EXACT PAPERWORK again. All 10 pages of information, medical history, likes/dislikes, emergency information, etc. No, they can’t make copies—we asked. The only things they can copy are the shot records and school physicals, which I guess is at least something…
Since it was a gorgeous fall morning (65° and no humidity!) I decided to take Katie for her first walk down the street…
It took a bit just to get her out of the driveway—she walked around the car about three times. 🙂
I love that you can see her pigtail in her shadow!
Stopping to take a break in a neighbor’s driveway:
She kept bringing me pinecones!
Playing in the dirt!
I turned in her paperwork last week, so took her this morning for a test run while Owen was at school…and they said she did great! Though, she looked a little lost when I first dropped her off:
At a quick glance, this really scared the bejesus out of me. I’m leaving the shower curtain closed from now on. Stupid palm tree fronds.
Katie’s been pretty good with naps since Owen started school…but sometimes this happens on the way to pick him up.
She slept for about 20 minutes…then thankfully still took her real nap around 12:45.
Charlie laid there JUST long enough for me to get out my phone, start the camera app, and snap one pic…then she bolted!
