Father's Day Weekend...

We had the blessing of a Ben being home for 3 days over the past weekend, which was such a treat for Father's Day. We had a great time and enjoyed having daddy home for more days, but it was also a very strange weekend.

This past week I came down with a sudden and fairly uncomfortable infection on my mouth. I will spare details, but it was the first time I ever had anything like this happen and I will be thrilled if it's the last. My Dr concluded that it's another thing to blame on my immune system being weakened during pregnancy. For a whole day I felt like Angelina Jolie, and not in a good way. It's still uncomfortable, but finally healing up a week later. So we started off the weekend with that weirdness. 

Also for the past week, Desmond has been on singulair for asthma related to seasonal allergies. If you  aren't familiar, Eugene had the highest pollen count in the nation over the last couple week. Grass pollen peaked over 700 last I saw. We were all suffering but Des and I took a big hit. I had a doozy of a sinus headache and he was wheezing. The meds seemed to help a few days in but his mood changed. I didn't make the correlation until Friday night when I remember a conversation about allergy medications and hyper activity I had with some other moms recently. I googled, and then I grabbed the insert from his medicine and sure enough mood changes can be a side effect and a reason to stop the medicine. The biggest issue for us was aggression and sleeplessness. We'll see if things change after some time off of it. 

On Friday, earlier in the afternoon Ben had the boys outside in the culdesac. He had finished power washing the house (it looks brand new!) and I had just returned from a hair cut, it was such a nice day. Malakai was running and went to jump up onto the sidewalk but missed and kicked the curb, knocking his shin into the edge of it. He didn't cry but he wasn't happy about it. He yelled and complained and wanted to go inside. He wouldn't put weight on it for over an hour and a half. I spoke with triage at his pediatrician who recommended we have him seen. Unfortunately it was the end of the day Friday and they had no appointments open so we'd have to go to urgent care. Daddy took him and I was left with Desmond bouncing off the walls.

After 2 hours of waiting in the most boring place on the planet and finally an x-ray it turns out Malakai had just badly bruised his shin. He continued to limp that night and into the next day, so I'm glad we took him in so we weren't continually wondering if we should have him examined. 

Saturday started out slowly as we didn't have any to-do's or obligations until a graduation party at noon. After which we came home for some downtime and then headed out to visit Ben's parents at the boys' request. They had a sweet father's day gift for Ben (we have yet to give Grandpa his because it was misplaced...) and we stayed for dinner.

On our way home we took a longer route because Des was dozing off and with all his sleeplessness we wanted to take the easy way out. As rounded a corner we've taken a million time our van thumped and there was a terrible sound just outside the back passenger side. Ben thought some jam that his parents had given us might have tipped over and hit something but it was on my side so I heard and felt it more and knew something worse had happened. He pulled over and got out to find we had a flat tire. He ran back and found what had caused the problem...

We had driven over top of it (not seeing it) and it hit the underside of the passenger side sliding door and then slashed the tire. We were so close that we were able to hobble home. Thankfully Des slept through the whole thing so I got Kai to bed while Ben worked on putting the spare on. Meanwhile his parents came over to drop off their bigger vehicle for us to borrow until we figured out what to do with the van come Monday when our insurance offices would be open. The one night the boys were to bed early and Ben spent most of it changing the silly tire. 

Sunday morning came and the boys were being CRAZY! Just unruly and disobedient. We all have those days, but I was so discouraged that it was happening on Father's Day after the way our weekend had already gone. Thankfully Ben was able to stay positive and linger on the good moments we had instead of the rotten. They were sweet when it came time to give Ben his gifts that we all made.

{Kai + Des are both looking AND smiling at the camera...miracle!}

That morning both boys would "move up" in their Kid's church classes. Desmond was promoted from nursery to his first pre-school class and Malakai went from pres-school to Kindergarten! It was so odd to almost start over from what had been our normal routine over the past year, dropping them off at the same classes with the same people every week. Thankfully they were both super excited to go to their new classes and they did great! 

After church and lunch I made sure Ben got a nap so he could have some sort of Father's Day treat (we never have enough time to get ready for church AND make a special breakfast on Sundays). That evening we went out to my parents' house for a nice dinner. My mom made some wonderful food! Unfortunately Desmond came unglued and was really hard to get settled down. We were both exhausted and I had another odd rash, this time on my hands (just when the one on my mouth was clearing up).

Monday I called and got an appointment to get my hand checked out. I bandaged it all up in fear that it was the same thing that I'd had on my lips, which was contagious for the first 24 hours. I got the boys ready to head out the door to take Kai to his first week of Vacation Bible School. My doctor called and asked if I could come in "right now" and I told him I had to drop off my son somewhere and I could get there ASAP after that. Drop off took a bit, this was out first experience with dropping off at an unfamiliar place. I struggled with it just as much as Malakai did. It wasn't that he didn't want to stay, I wouldn't have forced him to, but that he was being painfully shy and his nervousness was coming out in defiance. He didn't want to be outside (where all the kids were gathered by age), he didn't want to wear his name tag, etc.

 After a few attempts I finally got a peaceful goodbye but was a little late to the doctor. This meant that I actually had to wait an extra hour until my original appointment time. If someone would have told me that would be the case, I would have gone home since we live literally 2 minutes down the street. Keeping Desmond preoccupied anywhere these days is excruciating but a waiting room and then exam room was near unbearable. I finally broke out  my phone for Des to play a game when my doctor came in so I could focus. Thankfully the news was good and my rash was not bacterial, but an allergic reaction of some sort. It's not contagious and should go away with time and be relieved with topical benadryl and cold compress.

Monday night was another rough one for Desmond, it took an hour for him to settle down. He has been off the singulair for 3 nights so I'm hoping it's out of his system and tonight will be quieter, especially for Ben's sake.

Here we are ending our Tuesday. This morning the goodbye at VBS was still hard (for me), it was much smoother. I told Ben it's hard to leave part of your heart in an unfamiliar place. It also boils down to my being more sensitive than usual during pregnancy and that I'm highly empathetic, so I kept worrying about how he might be feeling.

I had the first session of a summer Bible study at church so Des got to play in the nursery and I got some downtime. We grabbed a few groceries and picked up Malakai. Nap went smoothly, I even got to snooze for a little while and while I've not being feeling too great (indigestion every time I eat!) the evening has been fairly productive. So I think our "bad luck" is wearing down and hopefully we can get our house put back together in time for family to visit this weekend!

mystery ailment + a cleaning challenge

I've lost count, but  it's been close to 10 days or so that I've been waking up to terrible cold/allergy symptoms. What's odder still is that each morning is worse than the previous. I've never had an illness where I get progressively worse over such a lengthy period of time. It's miserable. It's also really obnoxious trying to figure out what is wrong with me so I can treat it and move on with life.

First I assumed allergies, all the discomfort was in my sinuses and the Willamette Valley is literally the worst place in the U.S. for seasonal allergies. I've lived here all of my life and didn't begin to suffer from pollen allergies until 5 or so years ago, but even still it was fairly mild. These symptoms are not at all mild. 

A few nights ago I woke with trouble breathing, my throat felt like it was closing up. I woke Ben up and we googled strawberry allergies. I'd been handling and eating fresh strawberries every day since I had gone picking 9 days earlier. I noticed that day I went that my mouth felt tingly after just a couple berries, which was uncomfortable enough to make me stop. I hadn't thought too much about it as I ate strawberries in my smoothies and ice-cream and made strawberry jam and sauce, until I woke up feeling so weird. 

Turns out strawberry allergies (like most food allergies) have a lot of symptoms and "levels" of allergic reaction. Some people get that slight tingly feeling so they limit their consumption but indulge once in a while, others break out in hives, and then there's always the extreme cases where you go into anaphylactic shock. It was hard to determine if I was having a mild reaction from too many berries, if I had developed a worse case of seasonal allergies, or if I was (am) just suffering from the worst cold I've ever experienced in my 30-something years. 

My awesome husband woke up the next day to scrub down the entire kitchen and freeze the remaining fresh strawberries. He's some kind of wonderful, that one. I've avoided strawberries for the last 3 days and haven't really felt any respite. In fact, I've still been waking with additional and/or worsening ailments. 

I'm now suffering from sinus pain/pressure, running and stuffy and dry nose and sinuses, headaches of varying types and severity, swollen glands and tonsils, sneezing, watery/itchy eyes, a sore throat (dry, scratchy, burning, tight) that has been worsening each day over the last 10-ish days, on and off ear pressure/pain, hot flashes, fatigue... and the list goes on.

{smiling through the discomfort b/c my boys were snuggly for 5 seconds}

Now I'm certainly not trying to whine about this, but merely communicate that I'm truly confused by what is wrong with me. In an effort to find some relief I've tried apple cider vinegar, local honey, Claritin, Benadryl (at night), tea, lemon, tons of water, resting, not resting and more. Nothing helps for long, or at all. I'm totally stumped. So I guess I'll just do my best to wait this out. Although if it lasts past 2 weeks I'll be sure to get myself into the Dr. to make sure it's not tonsillitis or anything that I should be taking antibiotics for. However, from what I've heard from friends it could be seasonal allergies and I could suffer this way into July! Say it ain't so!

I have been able to get a little bit done around the house in addition to the normal day to day. I'd been inspired by the Summer Simplify Decluttering Series by Ann Marrie over at White House Black Shutters. I did the first week's list of "what is good and what needs to change" and then took up a little decluttering each day.

On the first day, I started very small and just went through the kid clutter on the fridge...

Then I went after our desk, which is ALWAYS a problem...

I do admit, I still need to go through the "in process" and "to be filed" boxes you can see to the left. Another day's project for sure.

And here's what Ben did with the kitchen, which I affectionately refer to as "the galley"...

{He's a smarty and put away our coffee maker since we only use it for Small Group meetings, which are on summer break. I use a french press for my own morning coffee. }

Our BIGGEST project will be the garage. It's FULL of random projects and our laundry room is also in there. We had a garage sale a month ago and while we immediately go rid of 3/4 of the stuff that was left over, there is still quite a bit to be donated, stored, and otherwise reorganized. Then we also put in a new door from the garage to the garden area and that project isn't quite finished so all the tools and such from that are spread across a ginormous table. It's pretty scary in there and unfortunately I have to go through it to get to the garden, and in the midst of it while doing laundry each day.

Sadly I haven't done anything since Friday because I've been feeling so crumby and we kept pretty busy on Father's Day (I'll share our gifts to Ben a bit later). Tomorrow my mom is having surgery (yes again- nothing to do with her cancer, but please say a prayer if you think of us) so Ben is working from home to allow me to be with my dad during that. I'm hoping to feel better for that of course, and to get on with the decluttering starting Wednesday.