Just wanted to update about a few things. I can't remember what I've shared and what I haven't, so forgive me if any of this is a repeat. It's been a rough winter, to say the least.
The Playhouse
There hasn't been any work done recently because my dad's wife's health is very poor right now. She has had a number of severe falls over the winter, the most recent one she fell and hurt her leg. The bedroom is upstairs, and my dad can't easily carry her up and down, so they are just staying put. Some of you may know that my dad's wife is a older than he is, and has been suffering from increasing symptoms of Alzheimer's. When they married not too many years ago, she was in wonderful health, but over the last, oh, 3 years or so, she's been deteriorating pretty rapidly. She can't be left alone now because she will try to walk, and when she does she falls. So there's no real timeframe on the completion of the playhouse, not that I'm in a big hurry or anything, all things considered.
Karina
Karina is doing fine, although allergy season has hit us here full-force, right on the heels of the end of winter. Most of this winter we spent battling ear infection after ear infection, in one girl or the other. I'm just ready for the pollen to be gone and for people to be able to be well for a while! She is still loving preschool and is currently obsessed with My Little Pony.
Elena
Elena is also doing well. She has been so incredibly cranky lately that, when I had to take Karina for her last ear recheck, I also scheduled Elena to be seen. No ear infections for either of them, finally, but Elena is teething. I wanted to rule out pain as the cause of her bad behavior before attempting any other type of behavior changing steps. As soon as she opened her mouth, Dr. B said, "Whoah! She's teething big time! Her gums are really swollen." This means she wants to drink something from her sippy cup constantly, because the cold milk or water feels good on her gums. This means she is wetting her diaper more, which is keeping her wet despite all my efforts, which means she has a bad diaper rash for which we have antibiotics. The rash was a concern, I could tell, because our doctor is so mild mannered and calm, but as he left, he scrunched up his eyebrows in concern and said, "If those bumps get any bigger, call me." Luckily, the cream and the meds seem to be working.
She's talking a bunch, walking all over the place, climbing on things and generally getting into trouble as much as possible. :-) She can almost say "goldfish" as well as daddy, doggie, diaper, diddy (sippy), diddy (Karina), and doddy (dolly). She has said mama a few times, and sometimes will say night night. When she's happy, she's just the sweetest cutest thing. When she's not. You know that nursery rhyme about the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead? "There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good. And when she was bad, she was horrid!" Well that's my Elena!
Bill
Bill is all right. We had a big scare over the winter when his doctor prescribed some blood pressure medicine that caused him to develop a bad cough. Apparently this is pretty common. However, when Bill went back to the doctor to complain about the cough, the doctor didn't make the connection, referred him to a pulmonologist, and basically got us all thinking he had pulmonary fibrosis, which if you don't know, is a death sentence. Luckily, it turns out he just has asthma. He's got a few other minor things going on, but for the most part he is doing just fine.
Me
I'm okay. Ready for my kids to be well for more than a week at a time. I'm working on a new housekeeping routine that I read about on another blog, and I'm sorry to say I don't remember which one it is. She made up little cards for what needs to be cleaned each day and in each room. Each room has a day to be cleaned. I made my own sheets, assigned all the rooms a day, except the kitchen, which I basically clean every day anyway, and what do you know, I'm on the 9th day of it and still sticking to it! That's a record for me! Normally I just go haphazardly from room to room attempting to clean everything all at once. You can imagine how well that worked. This seems to be something I can do. I like that in a way it gives me permission to leave something messy, because I know that the assigned day to clean it is coming up. So if there's a big pile of toys on the living room floor, I might clean them up or I might leave them, depending on my time, because I know that on Monday, it's getting taken care of. I know that none of the rooms are perfect, but the house looks so much better already and I feel better about it, too. I put a list of chores for each room under the day of the week and the name of the room, so I can remember what I need to do. Karina also has age-appropriate chores for each day. Anyway, it's going well so far.
I hope all of you are doing well. There are too many tragedies going on in the world right now, and so I hope that each of you, in whatever way you prefer, will hope for, think about, or pray for, as well as act with peace.
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