a lesson i'm learning

It is easy to love your kids when they are sweet, cuddly, respectful and obedient. It is quite another thing to love them when they are the opposite of all those things.

Ethan and I are experiencing some growing pains in the last few weeks and I find myself really struggling to even want to be with him. He wakes up complaining and doesn't stop until he is back in bed at night. So far I've been unable to shake this from him--I desperately hope this is a phase and not a personality trait. I dislike negative people. I actively work to stay away from people like that and do not cultivate them as friends. Everyone has their moments of course but someone who consistently looks at the glass half empty really tries my patience.

When I need to enforce house rules, I usually end up getting a lot of sass and hurtful comments thrown my way. Don't get me wrong--I can take it but somehow I end up feeling drained and exhausted, sometimes by 9 AM! He seems to think that when I discipline him it gives him fair cause to say something uncalled for to me--usually it is about how I am terrible and have ruined his life.

We're trying different things to see what we can do about all this but so far nothing really seems to be working. The more you discipline him or take privileges away the more angry and lippy he gets. Spending quality time with him seems to work but usually he is so cranky that this is difficult.

So love your kids in the good times and be prepared to love them in the bad times. Ugh.

we are on the mend

Our visit to the doctor's office last Monday. Poor little man!

worst $25 i've spent lately

Every time I give Olivia Tamiflu, she throws it right back up. Immediately. It is a mess and I feel bad for her because she obviously hates the stuff. I gave her a few doses and have just quit it altogether. What a waste of money! I should've gotten the pills and ground them up in her food.

Tamiflu is not cheap! If I didn't have insurance it would've been $100 per prescription! Not exactly accessible to the average person without insurance.

On a brighter note, we seem to be over the hump in our house. Ethan's fever finally broke early this morning (if you are counting, that is a full 7 days with a fever). They are both coughing like crazy. They wanted to go outside so we went out on the deck and ran around for a few minutes and they could barely breathe when we got inside. Oops. They are also stir-crazy and crabby. I hope their coughing settles down so we can go out in public without feeling like we are infecting everyone around us!

the swine flew into our house

Well, it's here. Ethan has an unofficial case of H1N1. He started showing symptoms on Friday and is still feeling pretty yucky today. Mostly just a fever and a cough. Not sleeping as much as I would expect him to. Doctor said there is really nothing that she can do for him--Tamiflu won't help at this point. Jay and Olivia are on Tamiflu now with the hopes that they won't get it or won't get it as bad. Poor old mom gets nothing--except the flu I guess!

Last night I heard Olivia screaming around 4 AM. I knew something was up because I can't even remember the last time she woke up in the middle of the night. She was just laying there screaming and I just knew she had thrown up. I got her cleaned up and by that point she thought the whole thing was pretty funny and kept saying, "Wee-ah burp! Wee-ah burp!". She was still laughing about it today, talking about how she burped. It makes me smile. :)

So that's the news from our house. It is going to be a loooong week.