Teach me how to breathe again

So there we are, Zach was having a few beers and I was on my second mixed slushy Tastefully Simple drink . We are, as usual, watching DVR'd episodes of The Office and it is almost over. This is good, cause I was very tired! I heard a child up in the bathroom (which means it is Riley, Dec wears a diaper at night) and it sounds like he is throwing up.

He is not throwing up. He is literally unable to get a good breathe of air. He is so congested (but was absolutely fine three hours ago, when he laid down for bed) and is gagging but won't or can't cough any of it up. And he is scared. Panicking, pretty much. Which is only making it worse.

Zach had asthma from approximately age 4 until he was just about in high school. We are always waiting to find out that Riley has it too...he gets winded easily when running around and even his tantrums border on the hysterical.

Whether or not his hysteria is a flaw of his personality or his lungs remains to be seen.

After several failed attempts to get him to calm down, I grabbed a pair of socks and his snow boots and shoved them on while Zach ran out and started the car. He whisked Riley off to the ER, but not before I dumped a pack of the Muccinex crystally stuff down his throat.

Then I threw up my entire dinner (which was pretty big, since I had dinner with a friend out) and waited for my parents to get there so I could go to the hospital too. My mom stayed with the slumbering Declan while my Dad drove me to Hershey Med. We used to live right across the street from there. Don't think that fact escaped me as we made the twenty minute drive.

Riley did breathing exercises with Zach the whole way there, and was only wheezing slightly and coughing a lot easier when they arrived. He was pronounced pretty congested but not in any danger and a follow up appointment to check for asthma suggested.

By the time I got there, he had stickers and was proudly showing me his little hospital bracelet. Have you ever for one fleeting moment been able to see everything so clearly?

We got home around 12:30 am and Riley proudly told his GaGa all about the hospital, wide awake. This morning he was excited to tell his little brother about everything he missed while he was sleeping "like a baby".

I have had a few moments in my life where I am not sure if everything will be okay. A dark, snow drifting road is scary enough without wondering if your heart is still beating up ahead.

This year, February is way too white to be Black History month!

I have a serious case of cabin fever. It definitely feels like we have missed more days of preschool this month compared to days we actually made it there. Which is fine and dandy until you remember that preschool has tuition that is overpriced where Riley goes anyway. The snow is blowing sideways at speeds of fifty miles per hour. Overnight, all the snow piled up against our door and is about two feet deep, yet there is maybe an inch on the ground at the most. I can actually see the road in most places of our culdesac.

So is it spring yet? Because if it doesn't stop with this white stuff before too long, I am going to literally go crazy. I am finding my temper is shorter and shorter, which you would think I am able to correct if I am aware of it. Alas, I am human.

Just get tired of things not staying nice ever. No, I don't care if things are tidy most of the time. What I do find ridiculous? How I can't walk out of the room for a minute without one of them (and they are sticking firmly together and denying all and not even blaming each other-interesting) gauging a hole in the table in a nice jagged line. So now the table that we have had for less than 4 months is now worth very little. Guess it will go great with the one chair that they already broke and had to be fixed.

See what I mean? I take to bitching when I am confined like an animal. Although, Zach did let me know that there were many accidents on his way to work along 283 towards Lancaster. So getting out of this cage isn't worth risking our lives because apparently the wind is wicked on cars!

Less than a month til the official start date of Spring. And yet another almanac predicted nightmare coming up next weekend.

I will also be getting a third child that week. I am excited to have her, she is 2 and should be a fun distraction for the boys and give me a fleeting taste of what a daughter would be like. But I am not excited at the prospect of more snow and an extra person to entertain, or possibly lose in the snow piles.

Think it is time to make some brownies....or something. Chocolate can fix anything, after all.

Far From the Tree

I grew up in a house where everything was never out of place. I don't find it to be a fault, but when things were beginning to become untidy, my mom would always become pretty stressed out until it was fixed.

In my first apartment, where I lived alone with just myself and Poptart (my rat terrier) for company I was the same way. I remember when my baby niece and brother and his wife and my parents came for a visit and I was also not impressed with how things were becoming messy.

Now I have a five year old and a two and a half year old. Both boys. As they get older, I find myself caring less and less about the mess. It isn't that I have become lazier. I have just faced the inevitable. There is no match for the two of them. If you are cleaning one room, they are making a different room look twenty times as worse.

I could spend every night after they go to bed restoring perfect order to this place. However, that's no way to spend your life. So, officially I have given up the fight.

My life is a beautiful disaster. I wouldn't have it any other way.