Author: Superpaige (Page 96 of 180)

At about 11:40, we heard screaming coming from John’s room. I rushed into his room, and he was walking around, obviously very upset. I picked him up to try to comfort him, but he was grabbing at himself and kicking. In order to not wake Megan, who is sharing his room with him right now, we took him into our room to figure out what was wrong.
“Do you need to use the potty?” I asked him.
“NOOO!” he yelled.
“Are you hurt? Where does it hurt?” I asked him.
“Nooo!” he yelled again. He was writhing about, kicking and screaming. We tried to help him calm down, and he would for a minute, but then he was back kicking and yelling.
In a panic, I asked Ryan to call our friend and neighbor who is also a doctor. Maybe it’s a seizure. Maybe there’s something really wrong with him. Maybe he’s in pain! We’ve got to help him! But we didn’t call our doctor friend. It was midnight, after all. We just kept trying to comfort him.

He calmed down a little bit laying in my lap, and I comforted him the best I could. Eventually he said, “I want a blanket.” I put him down in our bed and put a blanket over him, and he went back to sleep.

I wish I could say the same for me. I couldn’t sleep all night worrying about my boy. Maybe he has some weird form of autism. Maybe he has some internal injuries that are hurting him. Maybe he has appendicitis. (And NO, I was not up all night looking up things on Web MD–this was just my mind racing.)

He slept the rest of the night, and didn’t even wake up when Ryan took him back to his own bed. Teh next morning, he didn’t mention any of this.

Well, Ryan looked things up and found that our boy had had a “night terror”, which I had heard of but never actually experienced (isn’t it funny that on the 5th kid I’m still learning new things?) and sent me a link to this.

The next morning, when I went walking, I asked my friend and my sister-in-law if any of their kids had done this, and they both answered yes. With one of their kids. At rehearsal that night I mentioned it to someone in the play and they said that yes, one of their kids had had night terrors. I guess it’s a common thing.

Night terrors are not the same as nightmares and the treatment is different as well.
Difficulty: Average
Time Required: Varies
Here’s How:

1. Don’t hug or shake your child. Waking the child will only frighten him or her more. (oops, I did that wrong)
2. Stay close to your child until he or she falls into a normal sleep again.
3. Turn on the lights and talk softly to soothe and assure the child that he or she is safe.
4. Watch to make sure your child doesn’t do anything to harm him or herself, like falling out of bed.
5. Night terrors sometimes lead to sleep walking. If this occurs, guide your child gently back to bed without waking him or her.
6. Keep the room safe in case of sleepwalking. Avoid upper bunks and keep the floor free of dangerous obstructions. (his room is totally FULL of obstructions!)
7. Warn baby-sitters or other family members and let them know how to deal with night terrors.
8. Keep your child on a regular schedule of meal times, bed times and rising times. (I don’t know how to do this when we have company and it’s summer time)
9. Make sure the child goes to the bathroom before going to bed. Night terrors can sometimes cause bedwetting. (Right)
10. Check for fever or illness that may be causing the night terrors.
11. Night terrors often occur about the same time every night. Set the alarm and wake your child before the terror begins.
12. If the night terrors happen often or are particularly disturbing to you or your child, discuss the problem with your doctor.
13. Ask your doctor if he can prescribe any medication that might help. (or maybe one for me. Xanax?)
14. If you believe the episodes may be caused by emotional problems or post-traumatic stress, talk it over with a psychiatrist or counselor.

1. Remember that most night terrors end before puberty.
2. A happy, relaxed home will help chase away the night terrors.
3. Remember that your child will probably not remember the night terror episode in the morning.

But it still scared me to death and I don’t want to have to go through that again, thank you very much.

Yesterday we had a fun day planned. We were going to go to the Colonial Days celebration in Provo. We love to go to the Crandall Printing Museum.

Ryan’s dad volunteers there to run the linotype, and our kids think it’s such a cool place. And during this week, people can tour the museum for free, and see all the other fun stuff they have going on at Colonial days. My sister the artist was actually there doing chalk drawing.

So, even though it was hotter than a day should be in Utah, we had a nice time there.

Except for one tiny little detail. Oh, you knew there had to be an “Except” didn’t you? Oh, yes you did, you smart thing, you.

Well. In Provo, they have these deep gutters that are about a foot deep and a foot wide, and there is no curb to keep you out of it. Why? I don’t know why. I guess it’s set up as a trap for unsuspecting cars or something. Well, I was that unsuspecting driver. I was looking for a place to park, and flipped a U-turn. Only not quite. I had almost made it, and CLONK!!! There we are, stuck in the gutter.

Wow, I thought, that was pretty stupid. Hmmm. I guess I’ll call AAA. The kids and I got out of the car, and I called triple A and they were remarkably helpful. They told me that they would have a tow truck there within the next half hour. I felt kind of dumb, but I had to ask the nice lady on the phone what would happen. “I mean, do I pay him, or is this just it?”
“No, this is it. You haven’t used our services this year, have you? Oh, and your membership is due to expire in August, so it’s a good thing it hasn’t expired yet. This is one of your four allowed roadside emergency calls for the year.” she told me.
“Wow, so I could have three more roadside emergencies in the next month!” I said. I was joking. I really don’t want to have to call them at all, but it’s nice to know I can if I need to. And I WILL be renewing that membership in August, let me tell you.

So as not to just sit and wait, the kids went with our friends who were with us, and went to go and see the Colonial fest while I waited.

With nothing to do but take a few more pictures, I sat and waited. A guy from across the street came over and asked if this were my car. Um, yeah. I was kind of embarrassed, but he told me people are getting stuck in these ditches ALL the time. Someone this morning did the same exact thing and had to be towed out. He told me that he and his brothers had been able to lift the car up just enough to get some traction and drive out of there, and they would be willing to try, if I wanted help. “Oh, that is so nice of you to offer, but I’ve already got a tow truck on the way.” I was very impressed that he would be so kind and offer to help.

In less than half an hour, Brandon the tow truck driver arrived on the scene.
First he figured he would jack it up, but then I guess he couldn’t find a good place to do the jacking. (Don’t laugh, I don’t know what you call it!) So, he put some wood down in the gutter and then hooked up the winch to the back of the van.

A little winch action and he had that car pulled right up out of the ditch. Wow! “That was easier than I thought it would be,” he said. Once we got it parked on the road and not in the gutter, he even looked under there at the axle and said he didn’t think it was damaged. “I’m not a body guy, but I think that should be fine,” he told me. I was so grateful! Thank you Triple A! I don’t know how much it would have cost me to have it extricated from the gutter had I been paying for it, but I’m sure it would have been more than the $45 a year I paid for the AAA membership. OK, I’ll stop. (But really, it’s a good thing, don’t you think?)

I walked about a block to where my kids were, and found them happily eating snowcones with their friends.

So, we went on a quick tour of the printing museum, (which I also highly recommend! It’s so cool!) saw some other displays and exibits, and headed out of there.

THEN, as if that weren’t enough, we had to stop and buy stage makeup, false eyelashes, and a parakeet. Yes, I said a parakeet. But that’s another story for another day.

So, guess what I did yesterday.

Go ahead–Guess!

I bet you can’t guess. Go ahead…you in the back. ????
Nope. I didn’t sprain my ankle. Nope, I didn’t run off and get married (I’m already happily married, silly!)
Nope, I didn’t sell any of my children, although I wanted to.

Keep guessing.

Oh, I’ll just tell you already. I purchased cemetery plots. Really! Why, pray tell, did I purchase cemetery plots for myself and my dear hubby, you may ask? Well, basically because the price was going up. Yep. Until June 30th, you could get a plot in our little Highland cemetery for $500 each. On July 1st the price nearly doubles. Plus, I can just add it into my city bill and pay for it over the next two years.

I’ve been meaning to go in and take care of this little detail for the past couple of weeks, but of course I left it to the last day. I went in to the city office building, and asked, “Are you having a run of people here to buy cemetery plots?” I asked casually. “Are we ever!” they told me. But I guess I came at a good time because there was only one person ahead of me meeting with the coordinator, so I only had to wait about 10 minutes. I went in, and she showed me a map of the cemetery and said, “So, where do you want to be?” Always the wanna-be, I asked if they could look someone else up and see if I could be by them. My friend, Tess, is also here in Highland, and I knew she had already bought her spots. So, I picked two little spots out right by Tess and David, so we can chat when we’re all dead and buried! Won’t that be fun!? Well, not really, because we’ll all be dead and probably won’t have that much to say to each other. The lady praised me for being so quick to make up my mind. She told me that she’s had people agonizing over spots, calling to change their spots and all sorts of hassles. Well, I’m nothing if not quick to make up my mind (sometimes).

So, where will you be buried? Hmmm?

It’s not every day you see this from your back yard.

We heard the loud “whoop whoop” sound and looked up to see a life flight helicopter right over us. The fireman yelled over at me to “keep your kids back”, because what kid can resist getting closer to a real live helicopter?

When they landed, a couple of guys got out and went somewhere we couldn’t see, and then we had to just wait from our yard and see.

Of course there was a firetruck there, too. We hadn’t heard a crash or anything, so we didn’t think it was a car accident, but we were still curious. I mean, this kind of stuff doesn’t happen very often in our neighborhood.

Later on we found out that it was an accident at home, and the person involved is doing better every day, but for an afternoon, that was our excitement.

Cole has been busy this summer. I can’t believe he’s so grown up. He’s 14 and mows the lawn for us, (which is great because it’s one of the only ways a 14 year old kids can earn any money), babysits whenever I need him to, and now that school is out, is really quite pleasant. Last weekend he also did his first garage sale.

Here he is standing in front of all our old stuff that he’d like to sell.

Of course, he didn’t just do it all by himself. It was his “band fundraiser” garage sale, and all the money he earned goes toward his band trip this fall, but did he do it alone? No. I’d been collecting things for the previous two weeks. I went through the girls’ closets and tried to weed out the clothing they didn’t need. Jenna’s was the most fun. As the 3rd girl in the family, she ends up with a LOT of clothes. We went through her closet and picked out everything that said size 6 or 6x (since she’s 7 1/2 now) and then tried to whittle down the dresses to “just 10”. I know, I know. Just 10? She had a lot more. I even got rid of a bunch of stuff from my closet, too. We also brought up the kids’ kitchen set and the little tykes tool bench and tools, the bouncy horse and mini trampoline from the basement. The kids weren’t too thrilled that I was getting rid of their kitchen. “We LOVE that!” they wailed. But I was insistant that if we are ever going to finish our basement, we need to start getting rid of some of the things we don’t really play with. Besides, Cole could use the money.

The kids and Ryan loaded all that stuff into the truck, and then I drove Cole and Megan to the High school at 6:30 to set up. I can’t believe all that stuff that I had been collecting for weeks only took up one load in our little pick up truck. I thought it was a lot more.

I had to leave the young entrepreneurs at 8:15 so I could go to my Saturday rehearsal, and by that time he had only sold a few dollars worth of our stuff. Darn. But things eventually picked up and he made a total of $50. And we got rid of a bunch of stuff. What didn’t sell, of course, went to DI, and that was just fine with me.

Yesterday, Cole marched in his first “REAL” parade, the Lehi Round-up. As former residents of Lehi, we’ve attended this parade many times, and the kids have actually even been in the miniature parade before. But this time he had to march AND play the flute at the same time. For two grueling miles in the hot sun. And they started at around 11:00am. Oh, and did I mention that they are wearing black?

They can’t be like a lot of high school bands and actually wear shorts and a t-shirt for their parades, they have to put on the whole flipping uniform and nearly sweat to death for their parades.

The worst thing, though, is that Cole is severely sun burned. Oh, yeah. He and Megan went with some awesome friends (thanks, David!) to Classic skating and waterslides on Friday, and I sent him with a bottle of sunscreen. Here is where this is kind of my fault. I SENT him with the spray can of sunscreen. I didn’t spray him all over myself before he left. And kids don’t seem to understand that you can’t just lightly spray that stuff on, you have to spray enough that you can see it, and then rub it in. Well, that didn’t happen, and he didn’t just wear his shirt, like I’m going to insist he do at all future sun/water events. His shoulders and back are very red, and he just walks around all day saying, “ow”. We’ve slathered on the aloe, and he’s taking tylenol, but he’s still very uncomfortable. So, needless to say, the whole marching in the hot black uniform wasn’t the most fun thing. But he did it. he survived, and he’s stronger for it.

(Just for the record, I didn’t actually attend this parade, as I had another Saturday rehearsal, so thanks to Ryan for taking the kids and sitting in the sun waiting for Cole to come by. They did get TONS of candy and stuff thrown at them, though. They even got a couple of t-shirts! So, Ryan, if you have anything to add here, feel free!)

He’s lucky he didn’t have to strap on the drums or a tuba!

And for his reward, the marching band plans to go to Seven Peaks Water Park tomorrow! Yippee! I’m not sure if Cole will want to go, or if he’ll be able to hang with his cousins, who are in town and will soon be staying with us.

This week at play rehearsal we met with the hair and make-up people so they could get us all up to speed on how we should look. There’s some pretty wild and crazy things going on, since we have jungle animals, bird girls, monkeys, fish, a cat, a grinch, and a bunch of Whos, just to name a few.

After a general workshop on makeup and hair, Mr. Mayor and I (I play Mrs. Mayor) had our own appointment where they went over what they had in mind for us. She showed me this very bland short GREY wig, and said, “This will be your hair.” Grey? They want me to have grey hair? What? I had this really cute blonde curly princess type wig that I was going to put all kinds of ribbons on and be super cute and funky, and she shows me this GREY wig, and I’m supposed to be excited about it. Well, they had me put it on and this one lady started to go to work on it. “It won’t look like this when I’m finished with it,” she said, and she started in on ratting and teasing and somehow curling it with just her fingers and a comb. She told me how she had done so much hair she was thinking about switching to grooming dogs, since it would be something new. Hmm. ‘Can you just not make me look old and ugly?’ is all I’m thinking. After she worked her magic on my “hair” for a few minutes, the makeup ladies are just oohing and ah-ing, telling me how absolutely perfect it is. I go into a nearby bathroom to see, and as I look at my reflection in the mirror, a gasp of shock escapes my lips. All I can think of is “I look Martha Washington!” Not that looking like Martha Washington is necessarily a bad thing, but I just hadn’t expected that. And how in the world did she get that hair so dang HIGH? Wow.

After I had been properly coiffed, the make-up people wanted to have their fun, too. “Can I just do your face really quickly?” one lady asked me. “Um, sure. Go for it,” I said, still in shock from the whole GREY huge hair I would be wearing. “Now for your makeup,” she said, “I want you to think of Mimi on Drew Carey.” Oh great. I can’t wait. As they are working on my face, adding more and more make-up, I look over at Mr. Mayor as they are glueing on some “eyebrow extensions” so that he looks somewhat like Oscar the grouch, and I feel a little bit better. At least I won’t be the only really funny looking one in the show. I shouldn’t have worried, though. At least I’m not the grinch. They were playing with prosthetic faces and noses. And he’ll be green, of course.

When they were done, there was another gasp of shock, and we went to go show the director. She liked it, but said she wasn’t so sure about the grey color. Oh, hooray! I thought. “She has a little boy, I don’t think she would be this old looking,” she said. I was grateful. So, they may color that wig brown or even black. Who knows. But they also discussed some kind of a funky hat, which would be fun.

The bad thing, was I didn’t have my camera with me, so I didn’t get a picture of the whole effect. But I did leave the makeup on all night through rehearsal. I felt very Tammy Fae Baker-esque. Little kids in the show were staring at me, and then would say, “I like your makeup.” Right, you do, kid. Don’t let your mom hear you saying that.

So, when I came home I flashed my face to Ryan, who was just a little bit shocked. He said I was practically ‘glowing’.

So, there you have it. Mimi and Paige together. Oh what a pair we’d make. Although I think I’m going to need a LOT more blue eyeshadow if I’m going to pull off that look.