I basically passed out on the bathroom floor Sunday morning, fully expecting to wake up in a pool of my own vomit (so is this what it feels like to be Lindsay Lohan)? Technically I was on the floor between our bathroom and bedroom. And there was absolutely no alcohol of any sort involved. It's a long story, but it goes a little something like this:

The doctor upped my dosage of Mirapex, which I am taking for my Restless Leg Syndrome and my twitchy leg thingy (I can't remember the name of the condition). He doubled it, in fact. George mentioned on Saturday morning that I had been awfully twitchy the night before, so once we got home from the baseball game, I took the doubled dose of Mirapex for the first time. I slept OK, I suppose, except my arms and legs were kind of tingly all night.

When our alarm went off in the morning, I drug myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth and shower. Well, while I was standing at the mirror, I got this uncontrollable urge to vomit. I mean, I REALLY felt like I was going to hurl. My heart was racing, my mouth was watering, my breathing was quick. I felt so bad, I had to sit on the floor with my head between my knees and deep breathe. George saw me and told me to get back in bed, that I was not going to church. I was too sick to argue. At that point, I figured I had gotten some kind of virus, maybe the same thing that had made Drake nail the backseat of the car with puke. I woke up probably an hour and a half later feeling much better -

Until I stood up and tried to brush my teeth again. As I stood there, holding the toothbrush, I got the same hurl-y feeling as before. Although this time, I had waves of heat going through my body, my arms and legs were tingly and numb and wouldn't really support me well. My head was spinning and stuffy, and my vision was was dotty. I sat down with my head between my knees again. I kept looking toward our toilet, which REALLY needs to be cleaned, and thinking, "please don't make me put my face near that".

I was so weak that I couldn't stand. Sitting wasn't helping me either this time, so I laid down on the floor between my bed and the bathroom and dozed in and out of sleep. I started to hear Lucy cry after awhile, and I got panicky because I knew I couldn't get up to go get her, and I knew I wasn't able to call loudly enough for one of the older kids to hear me. For some reason, I had taken my phone up to my room the night before and laid it on the bedside table, which I almost never do. At any rate, when I realized something besides a virus was happening to me, I called George (and got his voicemail, of course, he was in Sacrament Meeting.) So I texted him "Call me", to which he texted back to ask if anything was wrong. I replied only "yes".

He called me a moment later from the hallway. I told him what was wrong and apparently he disrupted Sacrament Meeting and set a lot of folks speculating what was going on. He asked our friend Josh to come home with him in case he needed to drive me to the hospital and leave the kids at home. I thought that was very nice/brave for Josh to agree to come and watch our brood.
So when George got home, he found me half-asleep on the floor. He asked me if I needed to go to the hospital, but it was an indication of how out of it I was that I didn't consider going at that point - I just wanted to lie down in my bed.

George helped me up and into bed. He asked if I could stand, but I told him I couldn't without getting sick. At this point, we both suspected my sickness may have had something to do with the higher dosage of medication I had taken rather than some virus going around.
At any rate, I slept until noon. When I got up, even though I'd been gripped by hot flashes and chills now and again, my head was hurting. I'd woken, crying out, from a dream in which a collision with another car was inevitable.

I wandered downstairs, groggy and feeling like someone kicked me repeatedly in the head. Luckily, Josh and Jamie are our friends and not likely to care too much if I look like Medusa. Josh was hanging out playing the Force Unleashed with Bart while George made lunch. The second - and I mean the second I stepped foot downstairs, without even looking at me (I wasn't even in the same room with him) Drake yelled, "Mom, I want a dink!" (drink), and Lucy crawled to find me quick as a flash. I can never get past their Mommy Radar.

Pretty soon Jamie arrived with the kids and we all had lunch. I think I may have uttered some coherent sentences over lunch, but I'm not sure. I just rested most of the remainder of the day while the Little Two took their naps and the Big Two read and watched TV. Even by bedtime, I was not wholly well. I still had a light-headed, detached feeling.

Ugh. It was horrible. I hope to never experience that again. I told one of our pharmacists about it, and she said it was too much medication for me.

But enough about that. Suffice it to say that a drug overdose is NOT what I had in mind when I went to bed the night before.

We had a really great weekend (sort of).
I didn't have to work. Saturday morning I was kind of grumpy though, since Drake had woken me three or so times during the night by screaming for me. The first time was because his blanket had fallen off him and onto the floor. The other times, I'm not sure why. The last time, Bart came into our room complaining that Drake was screaming, so George moved Drake into our bedroom.
Anyway, I was pooped. George kept annoying me by offering to make me breakfast even when I told him I did NOT eggs and toast. I just wanted to be left alone.
I pulled it together a little later, though, and we all headed over to George's friend's house to go swimming. We ate lunch, played a little Guitar Hero, went swimming, and took a dip in the hot tub. I enjoyed myself, even though I was really exhausted and not in much of a partying mood. The kids had a blast of course, commandeering one anothers' ships/floats and launching cannons/beach balls at each other.
Around 5pm we packed up and headed to Kinston for my nephew Mack's birthday party. Lucy and Drake fell asleep pretty quickly on the drive.

Skylar made a pretty good pillow - until Drake drooled on her arm.

Bart is watching Pirates of the Caribbean - and biting his nails - again.

George, always one to smile for the camera.

And since there are never any pictures of me, I used the mirror to take one.

Mack was having his party at Grainger Stadium, at a Kinston Indians' game. It was a sticky and hot night, but all in all, not a bad night for a baseball game. We stayed for only three or four innings - long enough to visit some, watch Mack open his gifts, and share some cake.

The birthday boy, front and center.

Skylar and Leslie-Grace.

Lucy and Mommy and Bart in the background.

Bart hanging out.


Drake enjoying the chocolate cake, even though he was too full to eat more than five bites of his hot dog.

School Time Again

This has been one crazy week. I worked every evening so far, but had Saturday and Sunday off, which was nice.
Skylar and Bart started back to school on Tuesday. I'm so sad to see summer go. So were they. George helped them get lunch boxes and bookbags packed Monday night and clothes picked out (I had to make Bart change his clothes in the morning).
We got to school in plenty of time to unload the troops and walk the Big Two inside. As soon as we pulled up, Skylar and Bart started yelling that they saw their new friends from across the street and JUMPED out of the car so fast. I've never seen them move that fast where school is concerned. We walked in with our new neighbors and I made sure to take pictures as we left each kid at their classroom.
Here's Bart and Drake. Bart tried to convince me that his teacher wouldn't mind if I allowed Drake to accompany him to school on the first day. Drake even had his bookbag packed.



Everything was all fun and games until we got to Skylar's classroom in front of all her friends and frenemies.
Even though the picture is blurry, I included this one because Skylar is giving a My-Mom-is-SOOO-Embarrassing look. She's in fifth grade now, of course.
So it begins.


It was kind of nice just having the Little Two alone for awhile. I got absolutely nothing accomplished that day other than getting a shower while the two of them were napping, but I felt good about life. It was kind of a relief to be getting back into a routine.
At 3pm, our neighbor walked over to our yard and I went outside to join her in waiting for the bus. We had a nice chat before the children unloaded and went tearing through the yard like wild monkeys that had been cooped up for the past seven hours.
Then we met George at Dairy Queen for after-school ice cream and I went to work. Lucy was really mad that we didn't let her have any ice cream. The big kids loved it, though.



And thus ended their first day back at school.

A car trip goes terribly wrong

The smell of puke has been haunting me all day.
I can't figure out if maybe I didn't get it all washed off or if maybe the scent has become ingrained inside my nostrils.
Anyway....
We drove to Morehead City today so Sky could be fitted for her pointe shoes. Everything was fine until Drake started complaining of his stomach hurting. We had stopped at Wendys in James City for lunch as we were running a bit behind schedule, even though I've been a nazi about eating in the new car. The boys were sitting in the very back, the two girls in the middle seats. About a mile or so from our destination, Drake started crying and complaining about his stomach. I was telling him to hang on we were almost there (we were in the turn lane waiting to turn into the parking lot of the dance shop), when he started puking everywhere. Skylar and I were yelling for Bart to put the Wendys bag under his face to catch the puke. He puked three times, but Bart had his earphones on watching Pirates of the Caribbean so had no idea why everyone was yelling. Drake started screaming because he was covered in puke and everyone else was yelling. So we careened into the parking lot with everyone, including the baby, yelling.
Ugh. It was so disgusting.
Drake rarely ever throws up. He never once threw up in our old car. I could only laugh so that I didn't cry. I was trying so hard to keep the car nice, and I really loved the leather smell every time we got inside. Now all we could smell was french fry and milk barf.
I jumped out and told Skylar to get Lucy out. She held the baby while I wiped Drake up as best as I could and unbuckled him from his seat. Luckily, most of the mess was on Drake and his carseat. A little got on the carpet and there was some on the seat of the car, too. The carseat was absolutely covered. I stripped Drake down to his diaper - he looked and smelled like a homeless kid - and used about half of our box of baby wipes to clean him up. I put the yucky carseat outside and we walked into the dance shop just in time for Skylar's appointment. She got fitted rather quickly - I felt bad that her big moment was overshadowed by the younger siblings' bodily functions. Before we knew it, we were walking out of the shop - Skylar carrying Lucy and a new pair of pointe shoes, me carrying naked Drake and $65 less than I had gone in with.
Now, the fun part. I put Drake in Bart's booster seat, moved Lucy and Skylar down, and had Bart sit in the middle row with them. Poor Drake was stuck all alone in the back seat with the smell of his own vomit. We stopped at Big Kmart to buy clothes and car-cleaning supplies. I had absolutely no extra clothes to put on Drake, so I tied Lucy's bright pink polka-dot blanket around his neck like a cape and loaded him into a shopping cart. Poor thing, he looked like a cross-dressing superhero, without the tights.
Well....let's just say that was an interesting day. After all the confusion and delays, I had just enough time to put Lucy to bed, throw Drake into the shower with his brother, jump in the shower myself, and get dressed for work. I had initially been concerned that Drake was sick, but he magically felt fine as soon as he had blown chunks, and he was perfectly OK for the rest of the day. He even got new clothes out of the mess....smart guy.

Ballerina Girl

Tomorrow Skylar is going to be fitted for her first pair of pointe shoes. I can't believe it. It was only yesterday that she was a little two-year-old munchkin begging for ballet lessons and we had to tell her "not until you start using the potty". She's been dancing since age 3, and I hope she will keep on dancing.
Her first ballet recital was to a Winnie the Pooh song, "Lullabee" (I think it was called). She would shake her "stinger" so hard in rehearsal that she would get a stomachache. She's always been pretty good at shaking her booty - gets that from her mama.
This year, in addition to ballet, Pointe, tap, lyrical, jazz, and being a teacher's assistant, Skylar is going to take Hip Hop again. She took Hip Hop just before we moved here to New Bern and she loved it. Personally, I'd love to see Bart take Hip Hop, too. I could just picture him popping and locking like a pro. He's got a natural funkiness/goofiness that makes me think he'd be an awesome dancer. When he was three, he took tap and tumbling classes. He had the most adorable little teeny tiny shoes. He was great onstage too, a real ham - gets that from his daddy.

Lots of Lulu and Drake pics

Lulu stuffing her face (there are a lot of these kind of pictures):














Drake stuffing his face:

We always seem to be having lunch at Target lately (hmm...mabye it's my employee's discount?).

Lulu being dressed up (tormented) by the older kids:








Drake incognito:





Drake without a shirt, because that's "how big boys sleep":



Lulu playing some music:



I love this mischievous grin of Lucy's with her little teeth showing. No one in our house can resist her. Her brothers argue over whose baby she is. Drake calls her the princess. Bart carries her around the house while she grins up a storm. Skylar absolutely melts when Lucy puts her arms around her neck to hug her. And George, well let's just say I've never seen him so protective and kind of goofy over a baby. Lucy's newest thing is giving kisses. She will hold her head up to you with her mouth puckered a little (sometimes she licks like a puppy dog). She also started giving her favorite beanie baby monkey kisses, too. It's so freaking adorable!


I'm a little sappy lately because my children are growing up so fast. Tonight I found the beginnings of a gray hair which I promptly pulled out and Monday I am calling Darcy to get something drastic done to my color. There is no way I'm letting myself get old yet.

My Little Cupcake

For Lucy's birthday, I made a batch of strawberry margarita cupcakes and arranged them on a pink two-tiered serving plate I bought at Kmart a couple of weeks ago.

Eventually the candle would find its way into her mouth

"Gee whiz, mom. This is some good stuff."

Lucy is NOT happy about cleaning up after the cupcake explosion.



Lucy is in a sugar stupor.

Nuestra Casa

George got home from Mexico last night. It was really nice to have him home. I thought about how nice it would be just to hang out together after work and relax. The kids were really excited to have him home, too. George brought us all Chihuahua t-shirts home, all in different colors. Mine cost 170 pesos. Makes me feel special.

Here's Bart doing the Mexican Hat Dance to the tune of Tchaikovsky's Trepak, from the Nutcracker.