Trick or Treat!

Bribery

I don't usually resort to bribery with Ben these days. But today is a teacher workday, and he was being SO ANNOYING this morning that I couldn't help it. I guess being home sick 2 days last week + the day off today = too much time at home. I took him for new shoes, a hair cut, and lunch, and then got him a (used) DS game in exchange for a promise of no more whining today! At least we did get some errands accomplished-- the shoes and hair situations were pretty desperate. Now can I please get some work done, Ben?

Pumpkin Carving

My kids always abandon me for more interesting pursuits (tv watching? Really guys?) shortly after the laborious task of pumpkin carving begins. Of course, if I suggested not doing one, they would be scandalized. I said to Ben, "if you don't watch me, how will you know how to do this for your own kids?" To which he replied, "I'm going to make my wife do it!"

Ten Years!

Today is Joel and my 10th anniversary! (Can you say WOW?) Joel is working this weekend, and we have a babysitter lined up for all-weekend-long two weeks from now, so we decided to forego any special anniversary celebration until then. Nevertheless we did go out to dinner (with kids), at Zen Asian Fusion. Zen is owned by the people who own my favorite restaurant, Miro, and is a fusion of Spanish and Asian. So Ben got to order Sesame Chicken (the kid has lived on sesame chicken ever since the stomach bug hit for some reason) and I got to order my favorite meal: pork tenderloin with chimichuri sauce, black beans, rice and plantains, and tres leche cake for dessert. And a glass of sangria. The kids were fairly well behaved, and I gave a toast that went something like this: "Kids, ten years ago right about now, your father and I got married, and we got married without a single thought in our little heads about where we would be or what life would be like ten years later, and... well, here we are." ;)

Seriously though, I could not have imagined a more amazing "ten years later" even if I had given any thought to it! Happy anniversary Joel!

And the Dog Almost Gives Me a Heart Attack - Again

My Friday was uneventful - all 3 kids made it through the day, had a nice lunch with a friend, got somewhat caught up with work stuff after being out for much of the last few days -- except for one MAJOR incident:

I was upstairs collecting laundry from the kids' dirty clothes hampers and when i came downstairs I saw something chewed up on the living room carpet - the recent work of the dog. I went over to see what it was, and it was A PRESCRIPTION BOTTLE OF SLEEPING PILLS! Which apparently she'd taken off Joel's bedside table. The pills were spilled all over the floor and the bottle was chewed up. In a TOTAL PANIC I called Joel and asked him if he knew how many of them he had ever taken --turns out he had only ever taken one, and I could still read the quantity on the pill bottle. I hung up on Joel to count the pills (Poor Joel almost had a heart attack himself) and mercifully concluded that only one pill was unaccounted for -- I guess they tasted pretty bad. The directions (for human consumption) were to take 1-3 pills, so after consulting with Joel we determined that one pill in a 60 pound dog was not going to do much except maybe make her sleepy. Indeed, she took a 2 hour nap after that.

Lesson learned, lesson learned, lesson learned.... there is no such thing as a Labrador-proof pill bottle!

Teacher Conference

Yesterday I had Ben's first quarter conference with his teacher. At the end of the quarter (which closes today), his averages are: 91% in literacy, 91% in math, 88% in writing, 93% in science, and 90% in social studies. Of course, since the grading scale is annoyingly strict, this is one A (science) and the rest B's. However, I am pleased because apparently 3rd grade report cards come as a shock for a lot of parents, because the highest mark in K through 2nd grades, a "3", can mean an A, B or C. His teacher said she is pleased with his performance, and she is working with him on his organization skills which she sees as being his one area that he needs improvement on (where have we heard this before?) She also said he is very sweet, very bright, and has a great attitude in class. Yay Ben! :) She also reviewed her homework policy, which is that she does not give very much homework because she feels like the kids work very hard in class and she doesn't want to overload them. (I am totally on board with this).

We Should Rename this Blog "The Diarrhea Chronicles"

So to recap my week:

Sunday: vomiting/diarrhea (Caroline)
Monday: Diarrhea (Caroline)
Tuesday V/D (Joel), D (Caroline), Nausea (me)
Wednesday: D (Caroline), N/D (me and Ben)

Arrive at Thursday. At some point during the night Ben gets up and comes to tell me his stomach hurts. I told him to go back to bed. Shortly after this the dog starts whining, which I attribute to having heard Ben get up (though in hindsight she never whines during the night any more...) So I ignore her except to yell at her a couple of times without actually going into the laundry room where her crate is.

In the morning, with Ben still sick, and the baby still sick, I got up and went into the laundry room to let her out of her crate and discovered she was covered in diarrhea, and not only was she covered, and her crate covered, but the floor and even the walls next to her crate.

Absolute horror does not begin to describe my reaction to this sight! It took two hours to clean dog, floors, walls, crate, bedding, etc. There may still be some doggy diarrhea in the baseboard crevices. Apparently, dogs can get rotavirus, which we assume is the bug circulating in our house. As I scrubbed her down in the bathtub, I yelled at the poor dog -- "This is what you get for trying to lick Caroline's butt!!!!" I really felt quite bad for her though. Who wants to sit in their own poop all night long? Poor doggy. She was obviously not feeling well, refusing to eat for most of the morning yesterday.

Blessedly, that was (I am assuming!) the low point of my week. Since then I am happy to report that dog, boy and baby seem much improved. Today everyone is back at school / day care, though I am slightly concerned about Caroline who is as yet not diarrhea free, though since she only had 2 episodes yesterday I am hoping she can make it through the day today! Fingers crossed!