Sick girl

Josey has been genuinely sick since Friday. And when I saw genuinely, I mean, it's not a bumped knee blown out of proportion or a pin-prick size red spot on a toe that deserves vet wrap and a band-aid. No, she's ran a fever since Friday and her legs hurt.

So today, for about five-and-a-half hours, I sat with her at her house. Mainly, we snuggled on the couch and slept. I got up at intervals to unload/reload the dishwasher, bring her sprite and cook scrambled eggs. But otherwise, we were planted on the couch. I left one time, when she was asleep, to go outside and talk to her mom and when I came in, Josey met me at the door.

"Holly, I was looking for you," she said.

We snuggled and napped some more.

Here's the proof:

Before I left, she said, "Holly, I'll miss you. Will you come pick me up tomorrow?"

Of course I will.

Bitches

How many feel burdened, completely overwhelmed, stressed, exhausted, numb - raise your hand.

Mine is raised.

I told you a week or so ago that the past eight days had been emotional and rough. The eight days or so following that haven't been as bad but it's like the calm after the storm. Yeah, it's calm but there's a lot of clean-up and work to be done still.

Katie has her house, which was a huge answer to prayer. Then it was painting, laying new carpet, moving stuff in while at the same time, taking Ev to and from school, a doctor's appointment in Nashville, a yard sale on Saturday - all the while, with two babies underfoot. There have been times where we all have wanted to ... put socks in their mouths? Hire a babysitter? Give them away?

Exhaustion has turned to numbness, stress has morphed into a heavy object that just rides around on our backs, our good attitudes have run short and we've been bitchy at each other and the people around us.

But we are (stuck) in this together and we fight through.

That's the beauty of friends and family, right?

My Niece, the Communicator

Meet Evalyn - my absolutely spoiled-to-the-hilt niece who, despite the fact that no words come out of her mouth, keeps the household marching to her tune and lets everyone know the way things are (and aren't!) going to be.

The Stats:
Age: three years, two months, and 12 days old
Weight: 17-18 pounds
Height: not quite sure
Special factor: she has cerebral palsy
Education: two weeks, three days into preschool
Informal education: being a part of the Wise family for three years, two months and 12 days

Evalyn's wish is our command. And by 'our' I mean everyone who is in a ten-foot diameter of her at any given time. It could be her desire for you to look at her, to speak to her, to get away from her, to pick her up, hand her to her mom, come closer, walk further away....if she knows what she wants she's going to communicate it to you. Somehow, someway.

Her forms of communication vary but she's got a few commands through hand signals, tongue signals and noises that we all recognize.

Tongue out of the mouth/to the Side, Hands Partially Raised:
This is just a warning signal that she's getting irritated. She'll turn her head all the way to the left, stick her tongue out and start squawking. Usually, a change of position or acknowledging her will bring a smile and she'll be good.

Eyes wide/hands flung out, shaking/voice elevated
You're screwed if it gets to this point. She can go from zero to 60 in about, uh, two seconds. One minute she's fine, the next she is PISSED. Usually this is because you've had the audacity to a) leave her in her chair or 2) not responded to her signal of wanting attention. There will be no tears in this stage but even after you pick her up, there will be many sniffles (among the smiles!) to remind you that you should really always just listen to her the first time.

Smiles!
Evalyn loves to smile. That's her main form of communication when it comes to expressing her pleasure over something. Even when she's sad, if you talk to her and tell her good things, she will give you a teary-eyed smile.

Poochy Lip:
The poochy lip used to be for everything that she didn't like but with her other communicative signals, she reserves the poochy lip just for the most serious offenses that really hurt her feelings. Things like: when Mommy is trying to type on the computer while holding her with the other hand, when Mommy tries to do anything that doesn't involve 100% attention devoted to her. But mostly when she wants everyone in her vicinity to look at her, that's when she'll whip out the poochy lip. Who can resist that?!

Laughing:
Since she started school, Evalyn has taken to gut-wrenching laughter/near hysteria. And in true form, it mostly has to do when people get hurt (this is where her informal education comes into play!) Our closest friends aren't surprised at this recent development of Evalyn's humor - they all just look at us and say, "She has your dimented humor!" And it's true. Her teacher told us on Monday that one of the little kids grabbed the teacher's aide's foot and almost tripped her. No one else laughed but...Evalyn, who thought it was hilarious. And when we were sitting at the dinner table one night last week and Katie said "penis" you'd have thought she'd just told the funniest joke EVER. The funny part was that Evalyn was the only one who laughed at it but then when we started laughing because she was laughing, she just carried on. That moment was probably her most three-year-old moment yet.

Talking:
Though words don't come out, Evalyn will concentrate so hard on forming her lips to make sounds come out when she's trying to tell us something. Usually, she does this when she's been away from one of us or when something important has happened. The last time she did this for me was yesterday when I had to pick her up from school because of a poochy lip episode that her teachers couldn't get her out of. By the time I got to the school, she was fine and she even started laughing when I put her in her carseat. On the way home, she told me her version of the story. But I still contend that she has every single teacher right where she wants them - in the vortex of her every whim. Basically, she just didn't want to be at school and figured the best way to get picked up was to poochy lip it the whole time until we were called. It worked.

Dirty Looks:
If there were a queen or a princess of dirty looks, Evalyn would be stiff competition. If you piss her off to the point that she deems it necessary you get a dirty look, I can only hope that you fall within her good graces soon. Boy, she'll wrinkle those eyebrows and cut her eyes over at you and then look away. You can feel your heart-hairs being singed.

Pre-falling out of bed cry:
Mind you, Evalyn is mostly immobile and I say "mostly" because for whatever reason, she can wriggle her way out of her bed and onto the bean bag by her bed. She never moves that much, I swear. Now she has a special cry she customized just for the moment where her legs are hanging over her six-inch high bed and she's ready to tumble to the bean bag but she wants you to run in and save her. She just developed that in the last week or so.

There isn't much this kid doesn't understand. She'll be throwing a huge fit while sitting in her chair or laying on the floor. AS SOON as you say, "Evaly, do you want me to pick you up?" she stops. I mean, STOPS. And if you ask her to, she'll hold her hands out to you.

So, those are, in some form or another, Evalyn's forms of communication. With all those, is there really a need for her to talk?

But after her third day of school, her teacher, teacher's aide and a classmate told Katie that Evalyn said, "Hi" that day at school.

A-mazing. I can't wait to hear more of that voice.

Big Helper!

Inbetween helping (learning how to do) laundry, Josey and I danced in the laundry room to songs like John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" and "Rosemary's Granddaugher". Her giggles and laughter were evident of her being thrilled over turning help-time into playtime too. Plus, what girl doesn't like to dance in the laundry room?


But then it was back to work:

She's been quite vocal tonight and in what I like to call "normal English" and not just her baby talk. I had to explain to her that we were going to "Katie's new house" and when we pulled in the driveway, she exclaimed from the backseat, "Wow, it's big! I wanna see everything!" When she walked through the house, she kept saying, "It smells so good in here!"

I let her help me paint a part of the wall and she held the tape while we taped off the kids' room. She went in one of the bedrooms and asked, "who sleeps here?" I said, "this is Katie's room."

"Where are you going to sleep?" she asked. I told her probably with Katie.

And then she looked at me and said, "Well, where's my room then?"

She ran to the back bedroom, spun a circle in the middle of the floor and yelled, "THIS is my room!!"

I love her.

Snuggle Bunnies

Today was a day I spent nannying Josey and Riot in-her-house, which I managed to survive mostly because we were busy, busy, busy planning, cleaning, baking cupcakes, decorating cupcakes, making Happy Birthday banners and twirling crepe paper for a two-year-old's birthday party. Otherwise, I'd have probably lost my mind. Being in their house for any length of time usually conjures up memories of being stuck there for hours on end and results in a clausterphobic (sp?) episode of get-me-out-of-here! But today I managed to avoid that.

My nanny task of the day was to plan and execute this birthday party for a little boy who just turned two - his mother is also a friend of mine so it was indeed a pleasure. Plus, it made me feel good to see Josey and Riot so excited about doing something fun for someone else. They even hid with party-blowers and yelled SURPRISE when Allan walked in the door. Pretty priceless - made my mama-like heart proud.

What did not make me proud was the fact that I only bought 10 stars for the Happy Birthday banner. I distinctly remember standing in the line at Wal-Mart counting down H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y on my fingers - only to come up three short?!

And then I was using the balloon pump on one of the balloons (which, really, is not worth the $2.75 it costs) and COULD NOT figure out why the balloon wasn't getting any bigger....grrrr....so I looked. And it had a hole in the end of it. Mind you, this was after about, oh, 45 seconds of me furiously pumping the balloon pump, which I ended up ditching anyway because I figured out I could manually blow up the balloons faster.

When Riot pooped and peed his pants today, I could pass it off to his mom. But when I asked him, "why did you do that?" He said, "Josey made me." The excuses this kid has are priceless!

My exhaustion was not clearly evident to me today until I went to town to pick up the birthday pizza I'd ordered. Okay, Dominoes is pretty much in the middle of town. I drove from one end of town to the very other end of town before I realized where I was and what I was doing and that I needed to backtrack. But even when I backtracked, I still overcompensated by a few streets and still did not end up where I needed to be. Finally, I did. There's this symptom of Lyme Disease called "forgetting where you're going and not knowing how to get there." Yeah, that was totally me. I'm just not sure how much of it was LD and how much of it was the fact my brain had pretty much shut down.

As it is trying to do now. I'm fully prepared to collapse onto my bed (where my heating pad is warmed up!) and sleep.

But first, a picture of Josey and I's snuggle bunny moment today. She's been a little clingy lately and loves it when I take pictures of us together on my phone. We sat on the couch for a few minutes this afternoon while we watched a movie and she (again) special-requested I "take a picture!" So I did. And here it is.

"Awful, Beautiful Life"

Life in the past eight days has been very emotional and just tough. It's like all the forces of "things-not-going-as-planned" joined together and BAM! hit all at once in eight days. Reminds me of what life used to be like not so long ago and makes me thankful that I don't live under such stress and oppression all the time.

I've been wondering lately (actually, for a few months): is God even listening? Have I somehow along the way lost our Connection? Because life, my life, is not going as planned.

As I have planned.

Yesterday I was working at Curves and admittedly, a glazed, numb look was over my eyes. I cannot hide my emotions. It's all right there, on my face, in my eyes for everyone to see.
For the past three or four days my flight response has been in full force - run! hide! retreat! But I didn't.

A lady came in to Curves to work out (she's a self-proclaimed evangelist). It was just her and I in the club and she asked me if I was married. Looking back, that was how she sucked me into the conversation because me and my numb eyes got up and went to talk to her. Then she started in about how my overweightness is the reason why I have self-esteem and self-confidence issues and that I need to get up and start exercising. I tried to interject something about my "health problems" and she said I needed to stop making excuses. So I just quit talking, nodded every once in awhile and tried to wipe the numb look out of my eyes.

Really. If being overweight was the only thing I had to worry about right now, life would be awesome.

But it's not.

Yesterday I prayed a very specific prayer. Maybe "prayed" isn't the right word - more like, demanded, pleaded, interceded for, begged.

I prayed for a house for Katie. More specifically, I asked God to please, please honor the decision she has made and to please, please, please bless her. She'd been looking for houses for a week and nothing had turned up - her discouragement was palpable and there was nothing I could do but make a request.

In the God-I-know form, He answered. Today.

We all went and looked at a house that someone told us about and it's perfect. Perfect in location, price, all the things she wanted. It's hers.

Thank you, Lord.

He's listening...to me. I know that now.

So I'm asking myself maybe I'm not asking God for the right things for myself. I'm asking for the things I want. Maybe I'm still not surrendered to what He wants. Or maybe He's already answered - just not in the way I'd like.

This life really is awful and beautiful.

Watch the attitude

I know this is not Monday. So technically it's not Monday Memory (or Memory Monday, whatever I'm calling it) but I'm still going to start this post with a memory (if I can get past transcribing the Little Bill Noggin show going on behind me in the background - Little Bill's in my head while I'm trying to type!!)

One of the parenting techniques my mom used to use that I abhorred was putting my younger siblings in bed and letting them cry and then fall asleep. I hated this because it ripped my heart out to hear them crying and I really wondered how Mom could be so mean.

Fast forward twenty years and about a dozen kids later.

This is really the most useful parenting technique ever.

Take this morning for example.

I'm babysitting my neice and a 10-month-old boy, L, while Katie and Kris (L's mom) are running their yard sale. Both babies are high maintenance and used to being the center of attention. So one starts crying, the other starts, the first one cries louder, the second one screams at a higher pitch. The trick is to not let them get started but sometimes even the kid prowess in me isn't that capable.

I mean, I am just human, afterall.

Obviously since I'm talking about this NOT happening, that's exactly how our morning transpired.

L was awake first (at 5 something but I took over my duties at 6). He fell asleep next to me in the chair for about 10 minutes, just long enough for me to get Evalyn dressed after she woke up at 6:38.

Then it started.

I had to devote attention to Evalyn, which meant L wasn't being held, which meant disaster.

After about 30 minutes of not being able to move without L screaming (and making Evalyn cry) I was sweating (these kids are heavy!) and thoroughly tired of hearing screaming babies.

"Watch the attitude or you can go back to bed."

I found the pack-and-play and spent about 45 seconds trying to figure out how to put the damn thing together (while Evalyn's crying and L's trying to eat paper.) Now, if you've seen me try to do something when I'm frustrated, it's not very pretty or coordinated. To this moment, I can't tell you how I managed to get the pack-and-play set up because I was just jamming it, jerking it, and moving it until the sides finally went into place and I could put a child (safely) in it.

And I did.

Here's the best-parenting-technique-ever in action!

Seven minutes later (yes, I was counting), he was asleep. And Evalyn was fed in peace until she decided to be a little poophead and cry about e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

"Watch the attitude or you can go back to bed."

The thing with Evalyn is when she's tired, she gets excited about going to bed. So at the first mention of bed, she was all smiles. And then cries when I wasn't holding her. Then smiles. Then cries.

You get the picture.

I held her off till 9, put her in bed, at which time L woke up. And here we sit. I'm blogging and he's playing.

My weariness is exacberated by having had Josey and Riot all day yesterday and not getting home till 1:15 a.m. after sitting in the ER with Josey and her mom. Josey has a UTI.

Cheers to today...and naptime!