Once again....

Time gets away from me! Let's see, what to catch up on... Dad's been home and doing well.

Brent has left for Annual Training (National Guard). This is always my least favorite part of summer. I'm going to try to plan enough activities with the kids that we pass the time quickly. Caleb is going to be taking swimming lessons starting on Monday next week. I'm anxious to see how that goes. He used to be paranoid of the water. We've been going to the pool to just get him used to it. He's been doing much better than we expected! Hopefully, he continues to do well with the instructor, since it's without the parents. It's a very small class of four kids. Next, we have to figure out when to get Abby into swimming lessons. That child has absolutely no fear. I mean NONE. She'll take a flying leap head-first into anything. We want her to be able to at least paddle once she gets into the water.

I started taking Zumba classes at the YMCA. I've only been to two classes so far. It's fun, but man, I can tell I'm not that coordinated when it comes to dance!

Anyway...that's our lives in a nutshell right now.

Just an update...

Well, I realized I haven't updated anything on Dad yet. He discharged from the hospital to a nursing rehab center. He's been getting occupational and physical therapy. They've been working on balance training for the Parkinson's. We had a minor set-back. His incision started to drain profusely on Thursday. A trip to the ortho urgent care determined that it was a seroma, or a pocket of fluid. It wasn't infected, but they put him on antibiotics just to be safe. They had to back off on the therapy on that arm for a bit. We're having a family meeting tomorrow to discuss discharge planning.

Wish things were better....

So, what's a blog if you don't keep things posted? Today's a rough day. We were all hoping and praying that Dad would make it through this surgery without having the delerium that hit last time. He started getting confused this morning. He somehow got the nursing staff to call here at 4:30 this morning. I don't understand what the staff was thinking. I asked the nurse "at 4:30 in the morning, are you serious? Is it an emergency? Is he alright?" The nurse actually laughed a bit and said "he just wants to discuss things." Again, I said, "at 4:30 in the morning." The nurse again, laughed a bit. I said "Absolutely not. Mom will be there by 8. He can "discuss" things then." Then, I started to say that last time, this was how his confusion started. The nurse pretty much cut me off and said that he was thinking clearly. I wanted to come through the phone and explain what "thinking clearly" really means. They should not have called in the middle of the night like that. Besides, he has a phone in his room with the numbers clearly posted on his wall right where he can read them. If he can't figure out the phone (which he's dialed correctly in the past), he's obviously got confusion.

I haven't been to the hospital today. I talked to Mom. She says he's pretty confused and worked up. He's saying things that "you don't want to hear." He's extremely mean towards Mom right now. It's going to be a rough few days. Hopefully, it only lasts a few days.

Back at the hospital again...

Well, yesterday was Dad's surgery for his shoulder. I think I mentioned before that he had a total joint replacement done on his shoulder. Well, he fractured it. Now, they went in and fixed it. He will be staying in the hospital longer than last time to try and be sure that the same postoperative complications don't occur. We're all pretty anxious to see how this all plays out. Mom is very stressed, understandably. Last time Dad was in the hospital, I chose to not bring Caleb to visit. I wasn't sure how it would all play in with Caleb's anxiety problems. Well, Caleb has been doing amazingly well with his anxiety, to the point that the psychologist feels that we don't need regular visits (yeah!!!!). Anyway, I chose to bring him to the hospital today because he really wanted to go see Grandpa. Both the kids did very well (Brent has Guard, so he wasn't with us.) That is, Caleb did well until right before we needed to leave. The whole time we were there, he kept asking "when Grandpa gets better, can I go to his house?" I told him, "of course!" We had to explain that Grandpa needed to stay at the hospital for a while to get better. Caleb must have been thinking of it a lot. He started crying very loudly when it was time to leave. It was the kind of emotional, anxious, "tight" crying that usually leads up to his meltdowns. I got him guiet enough to get to the car. When we got home, I tucked Abby into nap and curled up with Caleb. He was able to tell me that he was sad that Grandpa was at the hospital and that he was scared because Grandpa couldn't get up from bed. Wow. How do you tell a four-year-old that it will be "okay?" Caleb's really starting to talk through things....and that's been really helping him emotionally.

I should probably say that Dad is able to get out of bed, he just needs help. His gait is very unsteady and shuffling (due to the Parkinson's). He's right handed and his righ shoulder is the problem right now, so it's hard to use a cane.

Nothing too exciting.

I realized I haven't blogged in a while. That's pretty much because nothing is really going on. We stay very busy, but nothing out of the ordinary, for the most part.

Dad is looking at having another surgery. He somehow managed to fracture his freshly replaced shoulder.

I went to our Annual City-Wide Garage Sales this weekend. I went over a couple of days. Brent happened to take yesterday off, so I took the chance and headed out for a bit while the kids slept, since Brent was home. I also went out for the day today. I got a lot of good deals. I think, if I counted right, I went to about 45 or so garage sales. That's a TON (over 3 days). The nice thing about them, is the kids are still at the age where you can find things in their sizes. I think I can milk if for a few years with Abby since most girls have too many clothes to wear anyway. I'm nearing the end of garage sales for Caleb. The boys always wear their clothes out too fast!

Anyway, that's about all for now.

Kitchen

So, I decided I am bored with our kitchen. Since we've gotten the house, we've done major necessary things like the roof, windows, etc. We haven't really done much to change things inside except painting it before we moved in. I've been thinking our kitchen is boring, but we want to redo the bathroom, so we don't want to spend much on updating the kitchen. I think we'll put crown molding ontop of the cabinets....but I wanted to do something with the backsplash too. I really like tile, but I've never tiled before, and I didn't want to mess it up. Besides....if I change my mind in a few years, it's pretty permanent. So, I did some looking online and found a site that talked about a faux tile backsplash. I decided I'd try it! This is what it looks like:

I love the way kids think!

Kids think about things much more than we give them credit for. They ponder what they've been told and try to come up with explanations for the "why." The funny part comes in when they misunderstand a key word. Case in point:

For the last week or so, Caleb has been asking me "Mommy, what is gravy?" He asks this a lot. I'm thinking...what's up with gravy? I never make gravy because the kids don't like it. We've had it a few times at Thanksgiving and maybe a handful of times in between. When Caleb asked me what gravy is, I would explain that it's like a sauce that you eat on your food. After I'd explain that, he would look down like he was in deep thought, confused about my answer.

This morning, he finally "finished" the question, and I realized why he was confused. He very seriously looked at me and asked "Mommy, why did the soldiers put Jesus in the gravy?" The last few weeks, we've been talking about the crucifixion and ressurection of Jesus a lot to explain what Easter is all about. The kids hear about it on the radio, and at Sunday School too. Caleb must have kept hearing "gravy" instead of "grave." No wonder the poor thing didn't understand! I love the fact that he's been thinking about what we've been teaching him. I also love the fact that he's willing to ask so many questions in order to understand.