It has been another crazy week to continue the Summer of Angst and Teeth-Gnashing.

Monday was a good day, even though I was rushing to get laundry done for Justin for his trip, and had to do my Fantasy Football Draft at 10:30pm at night. Thankfully we zoomed through our draft in about 35 minutes and I was able to get to bed a lot earlier than I had been in weeks.

Tuesday started out alright. Cooper was in a really good mood and was laughing and waving at me while I filled up my car. I dropped him off at school and he even waved bye to me this time (he’s usually too busy eating to acknowledge my departure). After a fairly busy day at work, I was nearly finished when I got a call from school saying Cooper spiked a sudden fever. But in the usual fashion, I had an knucklehead coworker who wasted an additional 25 minutes of my time after that call came in so that I couldn’t leave immediately (this is after this same person had already wasted 90 min and just didn’t get it when I said, “I have to leave NOW.”). While on the road, I pray that it’s just a tooth. I mean, I was just home for two days last week due to his diarrhea. And home a day or two a few weeks before that, and again before that, and over and over for his ears. I get there and grab Gavin and pick up a very miserable and hot Cooper. Thankfully it was only around 101, but his teacher said it literally snuck up on him because he was playing and cruising around the room, and then *BAM* was sitting there fussy and crying in the middle of the room. When the picked him up to console him, that’s when they realized he was hot…and he hadn’t been about an hour prior when he had his last diaper change.

That information made my heart drop into my belly because I knew that it was his ears again. I was so frustrated, so angry, and I felt so bad for my little guy in pain, AGAIN, for the fourth time since this all began about 8 weeks ago. I get ahold of Justin in the car and I’m nearly hysterical because I’m tired and can’t believe this child is ill again, and realizing that it will be a lot harder to get some work done since Justin isn’t home to help. On other occassions, Justin would bring Gavin to school (like usual) so that I could give Cooper his morning cup of milk and he’d either doze back off or play in his bed until 8:30 or 9am. During that time I was usually able to knock out a lot of emails and work, and log a good 2+ hours (no, my bosses do not count my hours and yes, they trust me to get my work done, but I still feel the need to be online and readily available for eight hours). Now, since Justin is out of town, I have to get all three of us up and dressed and I have to drive 15 miles to daycare to drop off Gavin, come back with Cooper and hope he give me a good 20 minutes to get a few things done. I totally lose that morning time to get stuff done (not to mention the hour in the car…argh!).

On our way home, the kids and I get stuck in bad traffic, so I run to McDonald’s for a stellar dinner that both of them whine and cry through. While we’re pseudo-eating, Cooper pulls on his left ear once, and hits both sides of his head just above his ears. Crap. That definitely means ears. I dope him up and put him to bed.

Wednesday begins my marathon. I get up, jump in the shower, get Gavin up and dressed, fix Cooper’s cup of milk (I really mean toddler formula…his blasted addiction to antibiotics and loose bowels have prevented me from putting him on whole milk), throw on some clothes and run a comb through my wet hair, get Cooper dressed, then run all three of us out the door. Thirty minutes later I’m running Gavin into the school, leaving Cooper in the car w/the keys so he has the radio to keep him company. I run out and one of the other parents is telling the front desk that there’s “some baby in car with the keys in the ignition” and I holler, “my kid! sorry! I’m that parent!” as I run out the door (note: it was only about 70 degrees so no chance of him getting too warm in those 4 or 5 minutes I was trying to pry Gavin off my legs).

We drive the half-hour home while I’m trying to reach the pediatrician’s office to get Cooper an appointment. I get one scheduled, get home, feed him some breakfast, play a little, convince him to play on his own so I can get a little work done, then rush off to the pediatrician. She looks at his ears and pronounces them infected and gives me the names and numbers to three ENTs in the area. She gives me a fourth antibiotic (Biaxin), says it’s a great med, but that it’s really really gritty and hard to get kids to take (when I looked it up, the info states it is “practically insoluble in water”). She also mentions that he is probably a prime candidate for ear tubes. I call the first ENT office while still sitting in the pediatrician’s parking lot, and they are able to squeeze me in that afternoon with their nurse practitioner! YAY! So I drive home, feed Cooper, put him down for his nap, and plow through some work before I need to run out again.

At three o’clock I get him up, run to the ENT’s office, where they dig more stuff out of his ears in order to see those little inflamed ear drums and reinforce the pediatrician’s diagnosis. They tell me that they typically wait until there’s a fifth ear infection before doing tubes, but in cases of young babies learning to speak or in cases where the infections have been exceptionally close together, they will do it after the fourth infection if there’s still a lot of fluid behind the ears. So I make my follow-up appointment for two weeks out and pray he doesn’t need tubes. Not so much because I am afraid or uncertain of the procedure, but because my insurance won’t pay for an outpatient procedure like that until my $1,000 deductible is met first. When the rep on the phone first told me that, I burst into tears and warbled, “if I don’t have $700 to fix my car, what makes you think I have $1,000 to fix my son’s ears?” She apologized and I did, too. It’s certainly not her fault that my benefits are crummy when it comes to something like that.

So I leave the ENT’s office, run half-way back home to drop off Cooper’s prescription, realize the wait is kinda long and it’s after 4pm and I still have to go get Gavin, so I leave it there and run to get him. Our ride back home, which normally takes 30-45 minutes, took us nearly an hour to just get to our exit, thanks to a concert. I get off the expressway finally and hightail it back to Target to grab the prescription and we head home, where I fix a nutritious dinner of generic mac-n-cheese with chopped up hot dogs in it. Gavin ate it with little complaint, and Cooper shoveled it in with both hands, barely pausing to poop. Then came the fun of getting Cooper to take his gritty medicine. At one point he tried to wipe it out of his mouth and ran that hand across his cheek…it looked like he had sand stuck to his face. I then decided to mix it in some sherbet and finally got it down him.

I bathe the kids and get them in bed and finally sit down. I start checking in on stuff from work. And trying to reach Justin to catch him up with my day. I realized that I logged 80 miles on my car just on Wednesday alone. I realized that I’ve coughed up $50 in (failed) prescriptions and another $100 for Florastor for Cooper. I didn’t even try to count up the amount in co-pays I’ve coughed up for him this year. Looming over my head also was that potential cost for ear tubes and the money we will need to pay to eventually repair my car, which has had the check-engine light on since the same day of Cooper’s first ear infection in late June (I don’t know about you, but it’s very distracting to me to drive 300+ miles a week with that light glaring at me).

I felt out of control, frustrated, overwhelmed, and had no outlet. Adding to that was that I was having difficulty getting a babysitter for this Saturday night so that Justin and I could have time together out with other adults, and I just found out that friends of ours just suffered a major loss in their lives, which totally broke my heart.

So I pulled out the canning equipment and began to make some jam. Some women clean when they’re stressed; I cook. Or eat. Or both. Two hours later I was cleaning up my pots and pans from making 2 pints and 12 half-pints of raspberry-blackberry jam, all of which were drying and cooling off on a towel on my counter. I felt calmer, more collected, under control, and had a bonus sugar buzz from eating taste-testing the hot molten jam.

This morning I felt calmer. It had started raining during the night and really cooled things off. I got Gavin ready and to school with a lot less hassle than he had been giving me all week. Cooper was so cute and sat and watched the rain for 20 minutes before playing with his toys, giving me a good jump on my work. I laid him down right at noon and he’s just now waking up, 3-1/2 hours later. My boss IM’d me and told me that even if Cooper’s well enough for school tomorrow, to work from home again instead of sitting in bad holiday traffic. I was able to make some brownies to bring to my friends that I will try to take over there on my way to get Gavin (or may wait till tomorrow since it’s getting late). And even though I neglected to get copies of Gavin’s immunizations to the county Child Find office for his Speech/Auditory IEP (maybe because I don’t recall them mentioning it and there wasn’t a sheet in that 2-inch high pile of paperwork that mentioned it, either), I had no issues with the pediatrician’s office faxing it over there. And the Speech Therapist reassured me that she usually doesn’t begin speech services until at least the second week of school, so I still have time to get his schedule coordinated with her. Last, but not least, Justin said he’s been having a great time at his Apple training sessions and says he’s had some really positive discussions with people about all sorts of things, and I think he’s secretly excited to be in such a geeky environment with a bunch of other Apple geeks.

I’m extremely thankful that things are falling into place, and that today was calm and made up for me being so crazy and mentally exhausted yesterday. However, I wouldn’t be opposed to some cash falling out of the sky…maybe these remnant of tropical storm Fey we’re getting will bring some, eh? If not, seeing these two certainly helps:

This is what I found on my bed the other morning:

Yeah, I thought the same thing as you…who the heck pooped on my freshly washed sheets??? As I got closer I was starting to realize what it truly was:

and thank the good Lord above, it wasn’t poop.

Instead, it used to be this guy:

I forgot. I’m sorry. And Justin, who usually does this, has been ridiculously busy and hasn’t gotten a chance. So thank goodness Trannyhead is on the ball and posted Sumo’s pics (happy b-day, by the way!), which reminded how neglectful we’ve been.

These pics were done over the span of two different photo sessions because Cooper was just not in the mood to have his portraits done. On the first day I’d set him down and he’d start crying immediately.

I even tried sitting him with Gavin, whom he adores, and he’d still start bawling!

So Portrait Innovations saved that photo shoot for us and we came back two days later to try again. This time I brought Justin. And this time instead of crying (although he was a little crabby), he just kept crawling away.

But we begged, pleaded, bribed with milk and poofs, and managed to get some decent shots of our little tempermental toddler:

Last night, or rather, way early this morning, around midnight, I realized I forgot to make the mini-cupcakes I was planning to bring for Cooper’s class today. I got sucked into Twitter and Plurk for the n’th time this week and totally lost track of time. I figured at midnight that I was actually getting to bed early for the first time all week…but read Burgh Baby Mom’s post about homemade grilled pizza and thought, “OH CRAP!!!!”

I rushed through a few other computer-related things I needed to finish then went nuts.

• Pre-heated the oven, then saw the fine print on the cake mix indicating non-stick pans needed a lower temp.
• Mixed the eggs, water, and oil with the Funfetti cake mix by hand even though the mix called for an electric because I was terrified of waking up the whole house with my very noisy hand mixer. And I’m a rebel. No really, I am…went to TF South High School, home of the Rebels!
• I put the pan of mini-cupcakes in the oven, then realize I have NO idea how long to bake because the mix didn’t have time for mini-cupcakes. So I got to babysit the oven.
• Got Cooper’s cups of formula made for school while suspiciously eyeballing the rising cupcakes in the oven.
• Wiped down most of the horizontal surfaces in the kitchen. At least the ones not covered by dirty dishes or mail/papers.
• Since I got to babysit the oven, the dang timer went off three times and it is louder.than.sin.

I pulled them out and was arranging them in a dish to bring to the daycare when I heard Cooper fuss over the monitor. I froze…it was 12:30am. A minute later when he was done and quiet again, I realized that I had involuntarily hunched down behind the kitchen island and was holding my breath. I wonder what that says about my parenting. I mean, it made sense a few months back when I was putting some folded clothes away in his room and he stirred in his bed, that I dropped to the floor and crawled out of his room on my belly. A little extreme, but not for a mother tired of a baby getting up twice a night (at that point). Now that Cooper has been sleeping through the night since coming home from Chicago, I get a little testy when he rescinds on our agreement. And apparently it triggers some sort of Post Traumatic Stress response, as well.

The fiftieth time I checked on the little buggers…

No, I did not wipe down my stove…thank-you for asking.

YUM! Actually, I didn’t have a single one. And I did not frost them because while I love the teachers at daycare, I know that they stragetically give the kids the sweet treats at the end of the day, right before parents pick them up.

In preparation of friends and family coming into town and filling my house with fun and excitement in honor of Cooper’s 1st birthday on the 12th, we have been cleaning. And cleaning. And cleaning some more. And no, our house is still not all that clean because well, we’ve cleaned it like twice since Cooper was born. I might be exaggerating, but not by much.

Justin did some vacuuming and mopping; I’ve been tackling the bathrooms and the never-ending-piles-o-laundry (and really, WTH…every time I go to Target to pick up some more laundry supplies, they’ve stopped carrying whatever I’ve last bought AND they’ve rearranged the whole dang laundry aisle); we’ve been tag-teaming for dishes, toys, and general clutter (I admit, I am a clutter-monster and a pack-rat). So at least we’re getting somewhere so that come this weekend, we just need to do a few good wipe-downs of things and run the vacuum. Or so we hope. We’ll see how things go with weekend.
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In other housekeeping news, Karen over at The Rocking Pony gave me this and I am tickled pink! I swear, she is one of the sweetest people I know.

I would like to pass it along to

• LaskiGal
• Sue over at As Cape Cod Turns
• Tranny Head
• LagLiv

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I realized that due to Justin’s incredibly heavy work schedule in the past few weeks and my idiocy, we never updated you guys on the final say in Gavin’s Child Find testing, etc. The final decision was that he is about 6 months behind for Receptive Language (what he hears and understands), and about 11 or 12 months behind for Expressive Language (what says, his vocabulary, how easily is he understood by strangers). In other words his auditory processing is on par with that of a 3-1/2 year old boy and he speaks like a 3-year old. This has certainly explained a lot of our frustration in communicating with Gavin, and explains why when we ask him a question he sometimes gives us an answer that just isn’t quite right. Add in his stuttering, and it’s downright aggravating for all of us because he’s annoyed he can’t get his words out or get his point across or can’t understand why we keep asking him the same dang thing over and over. And for us…we just have a hard time seeing our child struggle, or hear his classmates speak so much better (or worse, hear children a year or younger have what seems to be better speaking and comprehension skills).

So thankfully we will have our IEP and will be starting services the first week of September. Three hours of therapy per month…well, technically in 3 weeks. The fourth week of the month is set aside for any additional help if needed or meeting with the teacher for in-depth discussions, etc. The neat thing is that it is going to be at the elementary school that he will be going to in Fall ‘09, so by the time he starts kindergarten he will be King of the Classroom and will know the school well.