Teaching Manners Isn’t Always Easy

Sometimes, teaching manners is interrupted by laughter. Ask any parent – your child can say or do something that deserves your attention and explanation as to WHY they shouldn’t do a certain something due to it being in poor taste or bad manners. However, you’re too busy trying to stifle laughter (so as to not encourage a particular behavior) to say anything. Even the best attempts at stifling laughter are sometimes impossible and before you can even attempt correcting them, you’ve burst into hysterics. We had such a case just the other day…

I’ll precede this story with a small fact to put everything in perspective. Friday evening, we ate at our local Mexican restaurant. While I had rice with my steak and cheese burrito, the rest of my family had beans with their entrees.

Yeah. That small fact is important.

Saturday, several times I had to remind our son that passing gas is not something you do as an attention getter – or at the table. Instead, you leave the room or if you’re at the table, you say excuse me, leave the table, go to the bathroom (in a restaurant) or in another room at home – do what you have to do and then return to the table. Of course, after he put the “leaving the room when farting” manner into practice, I then had to explain when you DO leave the table to handle your business, you do not return to the table and give everyone a play by play. The entire purpose of leaving the table is to not only shield those at the table from having to experience the aroma and/or sound effects, but to also shield everyone from having to think about farts while they are trying to enjoy their meal.

*Sigh*

Sunday night, son was sitting in his favorite spot (in the recliner on husband’s lap) while we all watched TV. Daughter and I were talking about something when we were interrupted by a small explosion from the little guy’s nether regions. Just as we’re looking over and I’m about to once again stress the importance of good manners, son, while fanning the air says, “Whew!! I’m smelling special!!”

Yep, the manners lecture was out of the question. Husband, daughter and I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say much of anything. It’s going to be a while before I agree to another dinner at the local Mexican place though – unless we invest in some Beano first.

Our Baby Had Surgery

Since we found out in January he’d need the surgery, I’ve been a nervous wreck. I’m so relieved that it’s now behind us and that everything went so well.

We found out there was a problem when the school sent a note home this winter that he’d done poorly on a hearing test. I talked with the school and was told that a lot of the children had similar results due to all of the cold/flu bugs going around at the time and not to worry too much.

I scheduled an appointment with our doc here in town and took him in – as the note about the hearing test suggested. Our doc said he had fluid in both ears and gave him a course of antibiotics. He wanted to see him again in two weeks.

We’d noticed prior to the hearing test that he wasn’t hearing well, but he’d been sick with a cold/cough off and on for several weeks, so until the hearing test I’d rationalized it that way. After the hearing test and our visit with the doctor, I thought the second course of antibiotics a month and a half after he’d had antibiotics when he’d had the bad cough would clear it up.

The two weeks passed and I took our little guy back to the doc. Unfortunately, he still had fluid in both ears. Our doctor said we’d try one more course of antibiotics and if that didn’t clear it up, we’d need to go see an ENT doc. As you can tell by the title of this entry, the last try didn’t work and we ended up having to drive our baby an hour and a half to another town to see the specialist. This doc was the closest one to us that takes Tricare. Just hard to believe with two larger towns within 35 minutes of us, no ENT docs in our area take our insurance.

So at the end of January, we made the trek to the specialist to see what he suggested. He looked at both ears and said they were full of fluid. He put a camera in his nose and said his adenoids were taking up 50% of the space – so he suggested we put the tubes in his ears and have his adenoids removed due to son’s history. That history being – daughter can bring home a cold and within a week son not only has the cold, but he has a barking cough to go with it. EVERY TIME he would get sick, he’d get this horrible sounding cough. Doc thought removing the adenoids would more than likely help so he wouldn’t constantly be draining stuff into his ears and throat.

So, Sunday night came too quickly. Daughter spent the night with our friends and their daughter. Husband, son and I made a two hour trek to the clinic where the ENT doc performs the surgery. The clinic an hour and a half from here is new and they are not doing surgeries there just yet. Anyhow, the surgery was scheduled for 7:30 a.m. Monday, March 10th. Since it was so early in the morning, we decided to go down the night before, find the clinic and then find a hotel close to it.

We stayed in one of the Suites hotels – can’t remember now which one (yeah, I handle stress real well lol). At any rate, THE WORST beds we’ve ever slept on. They were way too soft – the kind of soft where a mattress is worn out – not a pillow-top soft kind of mattress. We were burning up on the 3rd floor, but then froze when we turned the air on. Just a miserable night. It felt so awful having one of our children with us and our other baby two hours away. I love our friends – they are such great people and their children are the same ages as our children, so our children are friends too. But, it still felt terrible without daughter with us and not five minutes after we dropped her off I think husband, son and I all wished she was with us.

Anywho, after surgery was pretty rough. The surgery itself took only ten minutes according to the doc. While they took him to the first recovery area, we go back to a little room where the doc comes in and tells us how it went. He said that everything went great. He didn’t have hardly any fluid in his right ear, but had quite a bit in the left. We asked how long until he’s hearing better and he said he should be able to notice a difference as soon as he wakes up. We ask a few more questions which he answers in great detail (we really like this doctor) and he tells us that as soon as he wakes up, they’ll come get us and we can come back to the second recovery area and be with him.

Husband and I sit back down in the lobby and about thirty minutes later they call us back. We’re taken to a long hall that has these little cubby like areas off to the left. Each has a hospital recliner in them, a blood pressure/heart rate machine and an area for a child’s size bed. Towards the end of the hall they show us into our little cubby and pull the curtain open. About that time, I see them – no, the first thing is I HEAR my baby – and then I see two nurses pushing a bed around a corner and down the hall to us. Son is laying on his side in the bed and trying to sit up – all the while screaming, “MOMMY! MOMMY! I WANT MY MOMMY!!!”

Now, you have to know my children to know how out of character this is. My babies are pretty well behaved. They say yes sir and no ma’am. Since they were two years old, I’ve not had to tell them to settle down in a restaurant – much less in a store and especially not in a doctor’s office or a hospital.

So, to hear my baby screaming in terror for his Mom, put my heart into my throat and it honestly scared me to death. I’d never seen him like that – ever. Not to mention the fact my babies call me Momma and haven’t called me Mommy since they were itty bitty…

They get him to our little cubby area and I tell him Daddy and I are right here, that it’s OK. He says gasping, “Oh Mommy, I woke up and couldn’t see you and I was so scared. Oh Mommy….” I tell him that we’re right here now and Daddy and I aren’t going anywhere. At this point, I guess it dawned on him that THE MAN was in the house LMAO and he says, “Oh, Oh Daddy…I couldn’t find you and Mommy.” Husband says, “It’s OK buddy. We’re all together now.”

The nurse asks him if he wants to sit with me and he says yes, so I sit down in the recliner and they put my baby in my lap. He still has an IV in his hand and they attach a blood pressure cup to his left arm and clip a heart monitor on his toe. He lays his head on my shoulder and doses for a minute and wakes back up and starts to get upset again, “Mommy, Momm…” I tell him that I have him and he’s OK…just to lay right here on Momma and he’ll start feeling better in a few minutes when more of the anesthesia wears off. He closes his eyes and settles back down and I keep talking to him about any and everything I can think of, just so he can hear my voice.

After about ten minutes he wakes up a little more and says his head hurts bad. The cute little red headed nurse is in there and she asks if he’d like something to drink and he says yes. Then he says, “Oh I think I’m going to be sick…oh my tummy, I’m going to throw up Momma…”

The nurse hands us a plastic hospital issue puke holder and my baby throws up blood two or three times. I tell her that I told the staff that I’m a HUGE puker after being put under and I worried he would be to. She says that they’d given him a phenergan suppository while he was under. Our body won’t digest blood though, so he probably is sick due to swallowing the blood and once he gets it up, he should be fine. He says his head really hurts, so the nurse leaves and comes back with a syringe and a cup of water with a straw. She gives him the medicine in the syringe by mouth and tells him to drink the water to help get the taste out of his mouth.

And that’s when things get scary.

He lays his head back down on my shoulder, closes his eyes and doses back off. Meanwhile, the blood pressure/heart machine starts making a funny noise. Husband, the nurse and I look at it and see that his heart rate is just getting higher and higher. The nurse walks closer to the machine, clicks a few buttons to reset it, changes toes on the heart rate monitor and it counts for a second and starts making the noise again as it registers his heart rate at 191 beats per minute. The nurse says she’ll be right back and husband and I sit there with our baby and watch this monitor count the beats and make the loud noise every few seconds.

A few minutes later, the nurse is back and she has the doctor who put him under with her. We’d met this nice lady prior to the surgery when she’d stopped in to talk with us about putting him under. She tells the nurse that we need to wheel a bed back in here (when they’d put him in my lap, they’d removed the bed). The nurse finishes hooking up a bag of saline to his IV and leaves the room. Honestly, I can’t really remember what the doc did from there…I think she listened to his chest with her stethoscope, but I can’t be sure. Husband mentions that everything was fine until he was given the medicine by mouth. That we’re not sure if that has anything to do with it, but it wasn’t long after he got the medicine that the machine started making the loud noise.

Soon the nurse was back with a bed and she reaches down and picks my baby up and puts him back in the bed. She gets some sticky round things and puts two on his chest and one one his back and hooks that up to the blood pressure/heart rate machine. The nurse had done a print out of his heart rate prior to going to get the doc and after hooking him up to the machine with the sticky things, they printed out another. The doc said to let him get the entire bag they’d hooked up to his IV and she’d be back to check on him shortly.

Son was now more awake and talking normal – without the gasping fear sound to his voice. The nurse went and got him a warm blanket and he snuggled quietly as he talked about how scared he’d felt when he first woke up. I told him it probably had a lot to do with being so groggy from being put to sleep for the surgery…that I always wake up feeling all weird and shaky from surgery. I told him it was normal and the more awake you get, the less you feel like that. He agreed and said he was sorry for yelling, but he was scared and just wanted to see us. I told him it was quite all right – that I’m sure everyone understands and there’s nothing to be sorry for. We wanted to see him really bad too .

*sigh* My sweet little boy…

By the time the bag was three quarters empty, his heart rate was back to normal. The nurse came back to check on him and said he looked really good. We asked her what had caused his heart rate to go up so high and she said she wasn’t sure. She said what had concerned her so much was the fact it had jumped up so high and he wasn’t crying or anything. Him laying quietly on me and his heart rate increasing like it was sent off the warning flags.

When the bag was empty and his heart rate had been normal for a while, she said she could take out the IV and he could get dressed. He was so good when she was taking out the IV…just quietly said, “OW, OW, OW” and then asked why the band-aid lol. We helped him off the bed after she’d removed the round sticky things and he got dressed. He said he was PAST ready to go home ha!

We arrived around 7:15 and we were out of there by 9:45. We had to drive quite a ways to pick up his prescriptions. Where the surgical clinic was located looked pretty ritzy. All the homes were in gated communities and they had high priced little stores in all the strip malls. A winery/steakhouse, no Wal-Mart, but a Super Target that I didn’t even know existed ha! Well, as we headed south towards the other hospital where the pharmacy was located, you could tell there was a BIG LINE between the rich area and the shithole area. A four lane road separated them. On the north side, you had gated communities, everyone driving $50,000+ cars. On the south side, you had land yachts with bling, beaters driving on three tires and a donut, run down dumpy houses, dirty looking people hanging out on street corners etc. I noticed something else in the huge contrasts between the two areas. In the rich area, the speed limit on the main four lane road was 40 to 45 mph. Once you crossed over to the shitty area, the speed limit dropped to 35 mph. I told husband about it and wondered if there are any statistics that show there are more wrecks in crappy areas and fewer in richer areas. It would make sense I guess – when you drive a beater you don’t care where you park in a parking lot because one more ding isn’t going to make that big of a difference (yep, I’ve driven a beater lol). If someone tail gates, you think “Go ahead hit me, I need the insurance money.” When you have a nice vehicle, you park farther down so hopefully you don’t get some idiot opening their door on your car and leaving a dent and when someone almost hits you, the wordy durds fly… Anyhow, just wondered about that.

We arrived home around 1 pm. Little guy and his Dad had some lunch and then took almost a two hour nap. I woke them up at 3pm so we could go pick up big sister from school and hit the local grocery store. We’d promised little guy he could pick out any kind of ice cream he wanted.

Other than his throat being sore when he swallowed, he said he felt fine. He also said he could hear and breathe a lot better! I hadn’t thought about how the adenoids being removed would feel to him. He just couldn’t get over how much easier it was for him to breathe when he was drinking his juice. Instead of having to put the glass away from his mouth after he swallowed so he could take a breath, now he could breathe through his nose in between swallows – and he thought that was a miracle lol.

So, although it’s been stressful these past few weeks leading up to this surgery and we’re all glad it’s over, we are also glad we went ahead and had the surgery done. Not only is he hearing better, he’s breathing better. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome.

We’ll go back in a month to see the doc and hopefully that will be the end of any ear issues for our baby. The tubes will eventually fall out on their own, so he won’t have to go through another surgery to have them removed. I’m hoping with spring almost here, we’ve seen the last of the cold/flu season. If so, hopefully both our babies will stay healthy and give our little guy’s body time to recoup from not only the surgery, but all the bugs his little system has been fighting since October.

I’m just so glad it’s over. I was finally able to sleep last night. I think it was the first time in over a week I slept more than an hour and a half without waking up. I’m still pretty tired though. Hopefully getting a few more nights of good sleep will get me back to feeling normal instead of being tired and worn out all day every day. It’s definitely time for things to get back to normal around here…

Preparing for the Return

As this deployment finally nears its end, the preparations will begin in earnest today. I’ve deliberately put off the major house cleaning until this weekend. There are several reasons I decided to wait until almost the last minute. The main reason being, the last two weeks seem to always be the hardest for me. I go from being so excited about seeing him again that it feels as if my heart might explode from beating so hard – to being either short tempered (road rage anyone?) or wanting to cry. The days seem to go from twenty-four hours to seventy-two. Each day is longer than the last and feels as though they may never end. So, putting off the spring cleaning will hopefully help make the weekend go by a lot faster. And, with two children, dogs and a cat – hopefully I’ll only have to vacuum the stairs once heh heh.

Big plans for today though. We’re getting laundry done early so I can take down the living room curtains and wash them. While they are in the wash, I’ll clean the windows – and do a project I’ve been putting off for oh – about a year lol. I’m going to get my trusty caulk gun out and caulk around the window frames. With our house being almost 100 years old, the cold comes right in around the wood trim. Figure while I have the curtains down, it’d be the perfect time finally get around to that caulking job I’ve been procrastinating on.

Husband called last week and the babies and I knew it would be the last time he was able to call. On one hand, we were excited to know we were slowly getting closer to his return, but on the other – not hearing from him is hard.

When husband came home the last time, daughter had done so great through the entire year. We all held it together as best we could and tried to go through the motions of normal life even on the days when we didn’t much want to. The day of his return finally arrived. When the group walked in and daughter saw her Dad, she sat down in the chair, put her face in her little hands and just sobbed. Daughter isn’t much of a crier, so to see her just completely let go of everything she’d held in was hard. And, I felt pretty helpless…all I could do is tell her it was ok, he’s finally home now and we can all take a deep breath…

So, when daughter was fighting tears on the phone with him, I knew she was finally taking that deep breath and letting some of “it” come to the surface. She’s like her Dad and finds it easy to just stuff emotions and not quite deal with them in the moment. When I got back on the phone with husband he was pretty worried about her. I tried to reassure him that it was just the way it works and she’d be ok.

Later that evening, she’d come back downstairs after going to bed and her eyes were all red. She said she didn’t know why she was crying. She sat down in the living room and we had a good talk. I told her it was just what happens when the deployment starts coming to an end. While you’re so excited about the reunion, I guess it allows all the other emotions you’ve felt over the last 15 months to come to the surface too. At month two, five, nine etc. you are focusing on the day to day. You have school work or an upcoming holiday or whatever is going on to focus your mind and energy on. When you near the end though, your mind starts focusing on seeing him again – what you’ll do on the weekends with him home, him being able to hear about your day at school etc. and all that thinking brings other emotions with it. While you focus on seeing him again, some of the sadness from everything he’s missed seems to tag along for the ride. So, if you feel like crying, go ahead! It’s completely normal and might even make you feel better.

Well, better get busy this morning. I’ve got another post or two simmering that I’m going to try to get to later on this afternoon when I take a break from the cleaning. Hope you all have a good weekend!

Parents All Over the Country…

Are suffering with me tonight, I’m sure. If you are a parent of a child ages – oh – 5 to 13 or so, you too are probably watching High School Musical II on Disney tonight.

I have to say, the first one was cute – and the music wasn’t half bad if you can stand pop. This one so far – eh. Most sequels aren’t as good as the first and I’m afraid this one is the same.

My babies have looked forward to this for weeks though, so we’re watching it . It’s what makes life good though – sharing in the things that make them happy – even if you’d rather be watching COPS lol!

So Here I Am…

trying to be a better blogger.  The problem is, although I have stuff to write about, none of it seems to want to make its way past the keyboard and onto the page lol.

I’ve tried to write a parenting post several times and I end up deleting it.  Lets see if I can make it stick this time.

Being a Parent Sometimes Stinks
I try not to brag about my children. They are polite, well-behaved, considerate of others, loving – and the list goes on. They are truly exceptional little people and I feel they’d be this way with or without me. It’s just the way God made them. I was just blessed to be able to share their first 18 years with them and hopefully guide them to be productive, happy and healthy adults. I honestly don’t think I have had a lot to do with how wonderful they are – it’s just who they are.

I could take them to a White House dinner tonight and they’d be like little adults at the table. They may not know the right fork to use heh heh, but their behavior would be impeccable. We’ve walked into restaurants and seen the looks of dread on an older couple’s face as our young family is seated next to them. Undoubtedly, they’ve had similar experiences to ours – where your dinner is ruined by the wild children at the table next to us and their idiot parents. I try not to be upset at the children – it’s the parents who have failed to teach them anything, much less the basics of how to behave at the table whether it’s their own dining room table or a table at a restaurant. Anyhow, I’ve seen the looks of dread and we certainly understand them. However, we’ve also been blessed by having several of these couples stop by our table and compliment our children. I recall one saying it was a pleasure to sit next to our family and compliment us on how well behaved our babies are. To me, it’s the best compliment ever when a stranger will take the time to stop and compliment my children. Lets face it, if we fail to teach our children basic manners and appropriate behavior, we’re really short-changing them in life. Manners and good behavior help you on into adulthood. Without them, you won’t do well in job interviews, you’ll be passed over for promotions – it could even impact their personal life. I was just raised that manners were very important and you should know how to behave and act appropriate in any situation.

Now, I grew up in a house where no one was happy. I don’t blame my Mother completely – she’s had a hard life, there is no doubt. I am a single mom at times, however, I’m not having to support my children financially on my own. I’m in a loving relationship with their father whether he’s home or on the other side of the world. I have someone out there who loves ME – the good, the bad and the ugly lol. I have someone who puts me first and treats me special. Mother and step-father have had this love/hate relationship – where step-father is even keeled, but Mother bounces between not being able to stand the sight of him to tolerating him. WHY they’ve stayed together for 25 years I’ll never ever understand. Why she is still with someone who she has never been HAPPY with – makes no freaking sense to me. She loves to be miserable is what I’ve finally come up with. With him around, she has an excuse to stay pissed off. If he were no longer around, she’d have to face that she’s just misery waiting for an excuse I guess.

Back to the point – I spent most of my time growing up at my friend’s house and when I was home, I tried to be a wallflower. I tried to make sure my chores were done to her specifications. I tried to stay in my room a lot and lay low. She was always mad about something. Slamming doors, cabinets – stomping, bitching, yelling. I swore when I had children, they would not have to walk on eggshells. It’s rare that I yell – usually if I do, it’s because they’re upstairs and it’s the only way they’ll hear me over whatever commotion that got my attention lol.

So, in our house, we’re not yellers. Yelling makes me nervous, makes me defensive – and it’s just not something husband and I do. I don’t consider myself to be a big disciplinary. They don’t get in trouble too often. We have rules and you either follow the rules or there are consequences. I can’t recall ever spanking my children. Not that I’m against it or for it, I’ve just never been in a situation with either of them where I felt it was needed. Sending them to their rooms does the job just fine. Maybe they are just tender hearted, but the fact that they are “in trouble” and have disappointed their Dad and I is more upsetting to them than having to go to their room or having something taken away – like Friday Night Movie Night or not going to the park.

All this brings me to the real story – why parenting is sometimes so hard. I guess it was two weeks ago, I spent several hours in their rooms cleaning and downsizing. Daughter did a lot of her own room. Their rooms had gotten completely out of control. Son’s room was the worst – he had so much stuff out, you had to pray going in there at night to check on him that you didn’t step on something round, fall and break your neck lol.

After we got everything organized and put away (and lots thrown away), the three of us had a long talk. I told them this was the LAST time they would let their rooms get in that bad of a shape. Every evening, their rooms would be straight before they went to bed and every morning, their beds would be made and their rooms straight before they leave for school or go play. They both understood that these were always the rules, but we’d all sort of let things slide, so we were getting back to business.

Fast forward two days.

Rooms are disaster areas.

*sigh*

So, now I have to discipline and it stinks. I know it’s necessary. It’s my responsibility to ensure they grow up to be responsible adults and if there is no discipline, they are pretty much on their own to figure it out in adulthood. I tell them both that we’d JUST had a talk about keeping our rooms clean and making our beds and it’s not even been three days and their rooms are awful. I know that a lecture isn’t going to cut the mustard because we’d just done that song and dance two days prior. I told them they both were in trouble and as such, Daughter would not be going to her friend’s house Saturday and Son wasn’t going to a party Saturday afternoon. Now, get your rooms cleaned up.

It sucked. They were both so disappointed. I know they were looking forward to their plans and I hated to take that away from them. I felt it was necessary to get the point across though. Darn, my heart hurt. Parenting isn’t easy…

Their rooms have been clean since though. I haven’t had to remind either of them even once, so I gather the lesson has been learned. I’m sure sooner or later we’ll have to learn the lesson again, but for now, everything seems to be back on track thank goodness. Gosh am I glad that’s over….