the weak in review

It has been a week of sick, sicker and sickest. Ella one the prize Tuesday through Thursday and Maya picked up the slack on Friday with screams that had us surprised someone didn't come over and see what we were doing to harm our baby. We finished with a Friday evening trip to Walk-In Care. And to think others were out having drinks and dinner.

Some snapshots of our week:

- Sandi went to Home Depot to get a pine door for the investment house (which henceforth I will refer to as the Savage St. house since it is on Savage St. in Bangor). It was improperly marked and, although Sandi told the cashier it was stocked under the sign that said $74 and even though she gave her the correct dimensions of the door, the cashier decided to charge her $13. She said there were so many doors listed in the computer and she didn't know which it was so she gave her the cheapest price. We are so loving the Home Depot moving sale.

- Ella informed everyone that she had a bad cough and was indeed very sick. She needed constant monitoring not to wipe what she began to call her "snotty snot" all over the furniture, Maya's blankets, or anything fabric. I found myself saying, as Emilie once commented she never thought she'd hear herself say it, "Ella, wipe your nose on your shirt instead of on the couch."

- When I took Maya to Walk-In Care, the place was deserted (everyone was having the aforementioned dinner and cocktails) and we got right in. The nurse did her initial interview and vitals and then asked if she could hold the baby. I assumed this to be for medical reasons, assessment and such, that is until she opened the door and announced, "I'm going to go show her off." Luckily by then she had gotten Tylenol and Ibuprofen and had stopped crying. The nurses cooed over her and commented that she looked like a Gerber Baby. The doctor, who also had nothing to do, was prompt and kind and even recognized our name from the article in the paper and asked me about it. Turns out Maya had fluid in her ear, caused by the cold which she got from Ella wiping her snotty snot on everything, and it can be very painful. We were on our way 30 minutes after arrival with numbing drops, license to use pain medication freely and a "your moms are doing a great job" compliment said to Maya but aimed at me. You can never hear that too many times.

- Ella was playing with her rice table and she, very intentionally, dumped a bunch of rice on the floor. Emerson has a tendency to do this often which earns him a prompt time-out. Ella is not really familiar with the time-out, except as a by-stander. She told me of the unfortunate rice-on-the-floor situation and informed me that she needed a time-out. She put herself on the couch and told me to tell her when she could get off.

- I caught the cold too and was reminded, unnecessarily I might add, that being sick and taking care of kids sucks. On Friday, I opted to go to work instead, which left Sandi with one recovering Ella and a getting-worse-by-the-minute Maya, but I told her it is more restful for me to massage. That is no joke.

- Ella was watching "Dora the Explorer" (she watched her quota of TV this week as well as the quota for all the kids on our street) and asked me the following, "Why are Dora and Boots outside so much?" (with a hint of jealousy) and then "Where are their parents and why don't they have to be careful for cars?" (with a hint of incredulity.)

- At around 7:20 a.m. on one of the days of this past week, a young girl on her way to school was driving down Wheelden Heights, took her eyes off the road in search of something, veered off the road, into our drainage ditch, around the back side of our mailbox, across our driveway, into the ditch on the other side and managed to correct and get back on the road. I am not exaggerating when I say that this couldn't be replicated easily by an experienced driver going at the speed she must have been traveling. She fit her car between our mailbox and our thick metal water access pipe with mere inches to spare. Luckily, she was unscathed, just rightly a bit disturbed.

- Our lovely friends, who have decided to get married after 10 years of being together and who have two adorable children the same ages as ours, have asked Sandi to photograph their wedding. What a huge compliment! The wedding is a really low-key private affair taking place on Cadillac Mountain at sunrise in July. And... we get to go stay overnight in Bar Harbor -ALONE!

- We had a week of such miniscule sleep, with the girls being up every few hours sick and Maya staying up for chunks of the night crying, Sandi called into work on Saturday and we all stayed home and had a quiet and relatively restful day. The girls and I are in much better states of health and Sandi went to work with the sniffles today. What are you going to do?