I am so far behind in blogging, I can’t believe it is the 8th of April. I seriously think I have lost the past 7 days. I think this entitles me to skip a monthly recap for March, but did actually do one in my head sort of.

So I decided that I need to blog about the most important thing I should remember about this week, Zach’s ear tube. I may or may not catch up on some other things later this week but for now this is what you get. We (Zach and I) went for pre-op on Monday and learned that we would need to be at the hospital at 6:15am on Wednesday. Matt and I had been talking about how to arrange it and that was the deciding factor. Tumble Tots is closed this week and so someone was going to have to stay with Lily and Kendall as well as get Haley to school. My dad volunteered to ride with Zach and I so that made things a little bit easier.

I woke up at 5am on Wednesday got dressed and had to wake Zach up to change him. We arrived at the hospital at 6:05 and waited less than 5 minutes before they took us to the Outpatient surgery unit. Pawpaw sat in the waiting room because it was more room. The staff was awesome. Zach did not even need an IV. He was under for less than 10 minutes. Zach left me around 6:55 with 2 RNs. Erica D. came out to speak to me and the doctor was back to tell me everything was a success at 7:11am. I did have a chance to call Matt and then sent a text when surgery was over. Erica brought Zach to me around 7:30 and stay and talked with me for about 15minutes. At around 8am Pawpaw came back because he was getting worried. I had told him 30-45 minutes after surgery we could go but they made us wait an half and hour after he came back to me. We left the hospital around 9 am.

I am a little concerned as Zach has a bad cold with a low grade fever but I will watch him and see what happens. I did give him Motrin yesterday for a the fever combined with his not feeling good. I definitely think the tubes were the best choice. The MD told me that he did have more fluid behind his ear drums, so if we had not been on an antibiotic, I am sure we would have been back at the doctors. We have to put drops in his ears 2x a day for 10 days but other than that he is awesome.

Today at Angel Food we looked over and he has learned to sit up off the floor alone. He will stay sitting up for about 5 minutes before falling over. He also woke up EARLY this morning and “talked” for about an hour before crying for me to come and get him! He currently has 2 teeth on the bottom only!

I like to do little blurbs about our life and I also want to be able to sort blog post by labels so if I ever get some followers (don’t you want to be the first?) then you can skip the post that don’t interest you.

Matt bought and put up a new clothes line for me on Thursday. Clothes line have gotten to be expensive. So I determined that in order to make it “worth” the expense, I will need to hang up at least 100 loads of clothes this summer. So far, I have the 4th one on the line now and am planning to hang up a load of towels to decide if I can handle those on the lines. I LOVE sheets and in fact will hang them out even in snow! I remembered on Thursday how nice it is to hang “dress/causal” clothes up because they come out looking almost pressed! I refuse to hang out underwear or the little kids clothes ….too much work!

I was super EXCITED on Thursday to be featured on Caring with Coupons with my trip to Harris Teeter. I was hoping a couple of people would click over and decide to come back! I called Matt at work and Amanda at school to have them see it!

I worked 10 hours on Friday. This was an extremely long day for me and I really missed the kids. I was pleasantly surprise to come home and the house not totally destroyed, supper ready and the little kids feed. I hope not to do this again in the near future but am glad to know that I can handle it if I have to.

Zach has been eating ALOT, especially during the day and even waking every 3-5 hours at night. I was wondering if my milk production had slowed down and when I pumped yesterday after 6 hours I only got 3 ozs. So after talking to Matt last night we decided it would be best for everyone if we moved him to formula. Matt went to Walmart last night and learned that soy formula is expensive it was $15 for a week or less supply. I am planning to use up the rest of my stash and probably all of my quarterly ECB to buy up some. I also plan after a week or so to “mix in” one a day at first regular formula to see if he has an reaction. I am hoping that we can isolate better exactly what cause the reaction and not just assume it is milk. If this doesn’t work then Soy formula it will be! This morning it took almost 45 minutes for him to get hungry enough for a bottle. We are going to try several different ones today and hopefully by Monday get him straighten out!

Matt is hard at work in the big bathroom with plans to seal the gout, hang the door and finish the closet today. We also NEED to get our yard mowed and some outside stuff straighten up but we will see. The little girls have an Easter egg hunt today from 1-3 and my plan is to go back to Harris Teeter either tonight or Sunday for my final trip. It is busy but also manageable!

The weekend really started on Friday, a good friend from church came over on Friday to help me cook for Zach’s dedication as well as with the decorations. We got a lot done in the short 4 hours she was here as well as she offered to make the last 2 pies on Saturday for me! By the time I got everyone to bed and the bags all packed for Saturday, it was 10pm.
On Saturday, we left around 8:30 to head to Faith Alliance in Midway for the Bible Quizzing Invitational. Matt and I were the official score keepers for the 18 teams that were present. I was able to watch Haley quiz in the very first round, she even jumped and answered a question correctly!. At 11:30 Matt and Lily left in my van to return to our church for a birthday party for one of Lily’s friends. Lily had an awesome time, a clown came and made balloon animals for everyone as well as face painting. Lily chose a unicorn for one side of her face and then a butterfly was painted on the other side. Unfortunately, my van started acting up with Matt. We have discovered that the transmission is starting to slip. I am upset because the transmission has already been replaced in this van once. It is still drivable and we hope to try some inexpensive fixes later this week. Matt return to Faith and we got all the first 5 rounds tallied before we left to pick up Lily and drop off the little kids at my BFFs’. She watched the kids until we returned around 5 after finishing up the scoring, shopping for the salad ingredients and a quick dinner for the two of us. I wonder if we can consider that our monthly date? I was kinda of disappointed because the salad ingredients that we had to purchase were $28.08 after $4.40 in coupons. My BFF and I used pampered chef tools to prepare both the salads. We had planned on being at the church at around 6pm but really didn’t arrive until 7. Thankful we were able to decorate and assemble and made it home by 8:30pm. Lily was extremely tired and ended up crying all the way home. Saturday night was really rough, the kids had not been sleeping well since Wednesday so Matt and I decided to take shifts on Saturday night. He stayed up and dealt with the little kids until 1pm. I was up at 1:30 with Lily who had thrown up earlier and was “feeling sick” again. Then I was up at 3 and 4 with Zach. Finally at 5:45 I decided I should give up trying to sleep and start getting ready.
Sunday January 17th was Zach’s Dedication at church followed by a dinner for approximately 40 people in our fellowship hall. The menu was: seven layer salad, summer bean salad, Swedish meatballs, marinara meatballs, pineapple meatballs, crockpot lasagna, baked ziti, stuffed shells, spaghetti, garlic bread, chocolate crackers, peanut butter chocolate squares, cream cheese rolls and cream cheese pies. YUMMY! I was so glad all the food turned out wonderfully! Thankfully lots of our friends from church helped with the clean up! Amanda dropped Haley off at the Quiz Invitational where she called to tell me that they were in the championship round, because of a question she answered. I was able to come home get the little girls to bed and then drive out just in time to see the championship round. Haley and her team “Unfruitful Mind” won the entire tournament!
After reading this you probably realize why we have not really missed the Internet or phone this weekend!