Knock, knock! Who's there?

Hi. It's me.  :) Did you miss me?

It's been awhile hasn't it? Every now and then I go through these phases where I feel super shy. I can't seem to write all the stuff flying through my head or even comment on all the fabulous blogs that I follow. There are points where I wonder if that just makes me really weird but at heart, I know there are others out there just like me. I stare in amazement at those fabulous bloggers on the internet who admit when they're feeling uninspired, blocked, depressed, and any other temporary passing situation that renders them temporarily unable to push keys and publish a post. They always do it so elegantly, honestly, and sincerely. I might have to work on that some.

I thought it was time I tried to catch everyone up on what's been going on since I've been hiding. Let's see. Where do I start? Ok, how about where things started to come unraveled? I'll just hit the highlights.

My 4 year old, aka my "baby", out of my 4 children, decided to split his forehead open on the foot board of my bed frame while waiting on his turn to get in the bath. Ohhhh the humanity. There was screaming and blood and shaking hands. I'm not sure all the screaming was coming from little Phil and the shaking hands were definitely mostly me. This is the first injury of this type any of my kids have experienced. Some would call that lucky. I chalk it up to the super uptight, over protective, mother that I am. I manage to suck just enough fun out of my kids lives that they stay mostly in one piece 90% of the time and any injuries they do manage are usually fairly minor. It was so hard to think in those moments. It's like my brain checked out and decided it needed a vacation, RIGHT THAT MOMENT. And it wasn't waiting on a delayed departure. I was pressing clean towels to the wound, burned my fingers on an ice pack by holding it in place with nothing between my hand and it, shoveling children's pain medicines into him, and rubbing his belly. Seriously, the whole act of me pressing the clean towel to his head wasn't because I had any type of first aid process going through my brain. It was the sheer freak out of "OH MY GOD! THERE'S SO MUCH BLOOD COMING OUT! STAY IN!! STAY IN!!! STAY IN!!!! MAYBE IF I PRESS THIS ON IT I CAN KEEP IT ALL IN!!!" Never fear everyone. There were ambulances called and all the King's horses, and all the King's men, came and glued Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Humpty Dumpty on his first day of school with his head still swollen and glued together.*

Seriously, his forehead is glued shut. I'm thankful that medical technology has come so far that there's magic glue we can use to seal these terrifying wounds closed. Does anyone know anything about this stuff? We're now on 3 weeks of this stuff and it's still just hanging around. It's like the glue has no desire to come off. Is it supposed to be off now? I could've sworn they said 7-10 days and it'd fall off. There's no redness, swelling, heat or discoloration (other than the visible scab underneath the glue) to the area but I'm starting to think the glue has taken up permanent residence on his head.

Maybe we should just name the glue and accept it as a new family member. If you've got any experience or expert tips with this stuff, I'd love to hear it.*

My husband had to go out of the country for a business trip shortly after that traumatizing event. It's something that has to happen fairly regularly and doesn't typically sneak up on me very easily. It's fairly demanding though and can be overwhelming. Life gets hectic with 4 kids as a "single" parent. Everyone's got their own schedules.  School, activities, homework, and social lives all become crazy lightening juggling balls. As mom, you're supposed to juggle them all and not drop anything. Of course the day my husband flies out, is the day my body decides it's time for a nice super infection that leaves me in intense pain, feverish, nauseous and feeling as limp, energetic and weak as a piece of over cooked pasta. I can't say "thank you" enough to my friend D who took off work to help me get in to see the doctor and get some much needed antibiotics. Friends like that are totally awesome and I hope everyone out there has someone who would do that for them. I also have to give a little "Yay!" for antibiotics.  I managed to make it through the week, my husband returned from his trip and life resumed it's normally scheduled programming.

Now that the antibiotics have done their thing and I'm feeling a lot less like over cooked starch, I'm totally over doing it. (Did you expect anything else from me? Really?) I have thoroughly pushed myself and wrecked my back. For some reason, that no one has ever figured out, the tiny little ligaments that hold the pieces of my spine in place, just don't like to do their job all the time. I've had it happen enough times to be able to tell you that my pelvis is tilted and twisted. It's something that's fixable but not by anyone I know of in my immediate area. So I'm hobbling around still living life, trying to find a way to manipulate my spine into being nice. I'm stubborn, for those of you who don't know me. I refuse to accept limitations of this nature. I end up using every physio-therapy trick I've learned to continue to do things like putting weight on my right foot. People might not know it to look at me but it's a super painful process and I'm in constant pain.

During these all too fun times I have managed the stress with retail therapy. Since I don't have a bottomless budget for that kind of thing I've been justifying my purchases by buying presents. It's nearing what we call our "birthday season". All the kids have birthdays over the next 3 months and I've started my Christmas shopping early. How about you guys? When do you start your Christmas shopping? Is now too early? Is there such a thing as too early? (Yeah? Maybe? Shhhhh, don't judge me!) And wouldn't you know, the kid who has the first birthday this season, had to go and throw a wrench in my best laid plans. Here's our actual conversation:

 Me: "What do you want for your birthday this year? Do you want a party?"

My 6 year old: "Nah. Just give me Paris. That's all I want."

Seriously. What 6 year old says something like that? My 6 year old. That's who. After looking at the cost of renting out a hall to throw a party for his friends, throwing a party at a play place, or renting decorations, food and bouncy houses to have a party at our house, the cost of a day trip to Paris is starting to look pretty reasonable.

*All photos in this post are mine. Do not use them.