July

Oh, boy! It has been a long month! Or rather, it has been a long week! One could even say it has been a long night and be completely justified in saying so. Ugh. I am completely exhausted and at my wit's end. Sadly, I have realized that I am just a human and not superwoman, like I previously thought. ;-) Actually, I probably couldn't even qualify as human this week. I'm just tired.

I am so glad that Ryan took his boards a few weeks ago. I am even happier that he passed. (Go, Ryan!) He is just awesome. I am especially glad that I have a husband again. He even helps me in the evenings. (Swoon!) I even get to sit on the couch with him after the kids are asleep and just be us. Heavenly! Those six weeks of his studying were seriously hard for everyone.

Ethan's allergy shots have been going great. His allergist even officially said that Ethan no longer has asthma. He is finally up to 50 pounds, which is fantastic for him. He will be getting braces on in the next few weeks to help give his teeth some room to come in (one tooth has no space at all to come down, so it is just sitting there in his gums) and also make it so that his back teeth can actually touch when he eats. Right now he makes edge to edge contact on his front teeth (very dangerous for those teeth) and cannot chew unless he pushes his bottom jaw forward. Thankfully Ryan is in dental school, because it gives us a pretty good discount on the braces. It will end up being about 1/3 of the cost of the other quote we received. He will also probably be getting new glasses soon. He had 20/70 vision with his glasses on. (Sigh.) 

When we were at Ethan's orthodontist appointment, Kate had an incredibly runny nose. Like pour straight from your sinuses runny nose. After a few trips to get tissues, I noticed her face looked a little odd. Her eye had swelled halfway shut. Thankfully we always have an antihistamine with us, so she got a dose pretty quickly. Even a day later, her eye is still puffy.

We have no idea what caused it. Hopefully it doesn't happen again. That would suck having another severely allergic child in the house.

V is driving me crazy. She won't sleep. I can't figure out if it is the food or just the age. I do notice that her scream is more shrill on the days that she has solid foods. But even on days that she doesn't have solids, she still screams all day. We did feed her carrots again and she didn't throw up. She did end up screaming a long time and arched her back a lot that night, though.  She screams when I nurse her, she screams when I try to put her to sleep, she screams when I set her down, she screams when she sees me. It is sounding very similar to Ethan at that age. That is why I ended up weaning him at 9 months and then found out he had food allergies. That is why I think I am going to pull her off solids again for a few weeks and see what happens. We ended up moving her crib to the girls' room. I just couldn't sleep with her in our room anymore. She wouldn't take her nap today so I let her scream herself to sleep. So sad. She has actually been asleep for almost 2 hours. Longest nap she has had in a long time. I am just tired. I hope we figure out what is going on soon. I really could use some sleep.

I am still trying to figure out how what I will teach the kids' this year. I am probably just feeling overwhelmed by V, but I only have a few days left to figure it out. I honestly can't believe that school starts the first full week in August. What ever happened to a summer break? Since we live in Arizona, I think we need to have our break in winter rather than summer. That way we can actually let the kids outside and let them be kids during their long break. It probably also didn't help that we were gone half the summer and I never really got a chance to organize my house or my brain for that matter. Or maybe I did get to organize a lot, but I just had SO much to organize that I still ran out of time. We are definitely in need of a yard sale! I am so tired of having piles of baby stuff in every open corner of my house. I just need it out! I even got so tired of the messes that I went through the boys' room and organized their closet. It took for.e.ver! I took away half of the girls' books. I even went through the school stuff my mom gave me 6 years ago when she stopped teaching. I went through all the kids' clothes. I went through our shoe pile. I have not touched the hall (toy) closet. It really needs to be gone through! I even started to wash the mountains of laundry. It really is amazing how much laundry a family of 7 will go through in 8 days! I still need to make up chore cards for the kids so they know how to fully clean a room from start to finish without me nagging them the entire time. I think once the house and my brain are all organized that I will be just fine with the kids' school this year, even though it is a little daunting teaching 4 kids at all different levels all at the same time. Someday it will get easier. It has to get easier!

We did have a lovely summer vacation after Ryan's boards, even if it was cut in half because of a crazy recluse-like spider crawling right next to Ryan and Ethan's bed. I will get around to telling about it...after I have a little more time. Wish me luck on getting through this next week of screaming baby, trying to get ready for school, decluttering craziness. :-)