Project: Ditching kid entitlement in our home

After owning my Nook tablet for over a year, I finally got around to figuring out how to read library books on it.  BAZINGA!  Maybe that will cut down on my trips to the library!  Anyhoo.....when I was first browsing my book options, I found a book title that captured my interest. The book was called Cleaning House: A Mom's Twelve-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement and the description blew me away.  

"I had a sobering epiphany.

“I think I’m raising little socialists,” I said, “the serve-me kind that are numb to the benefits of ingenuity and hard work, the kind that don’t just need to be taken care of—they expect it.”

And why not? That’s what I have apparently been raising them to expect. In that moment and in the days that followed, I came to realize that not one of my five children knew how to do their own laundry. Not one could clean a bathroom—I mean, really clean it. Not one could cook, serve, and clean up after a full dinner. I wasn’t sure my eight-year old could even cut his waffles."

Guilty as charged!  Our youngest is 11 1/2 and at the time I read this book, I was still making up the dinner plates and cutting the meat for three of our four children.  The book was a real eye opener and we've started instituting some of the author's ideas in our home.  

 My first step was to have them make their own plates up for dinner on Sunday night.  As is usual after a long holiday weekend, Sundays tend to be leftover night.  It was SO nice to sit on the couch while they made up their plates, heated them in the microwave and cut their own meat.  My second step was to enforce dishwasher loading.  Up until this point, everyone in our family (and I mean EVERYONE minus myself) would put their dirty dishes in the sink even when our cute little clean/dirty pug magnet said dirty.  The last thing I've instituted so far is daily lists.  Each day the kids will find a short list taped to their door of tasks that they need to complete.  For instance, Ani's list today is as follows:

-Study/do homework

-Dust the living room/dining room

-Practice cheer routine (regionals is next weekend)

-Read devotional

-Read your book for 30 minutes

 Making the list simplifies so many things.  First, my memory isn't what it used to be so there are times where I will forget what I want them to do that day, or forget if I asked them to do it already, etc.  Second, this makes them a bit more independent and responsible.  They know what they need to do and they can get the satisfaction of crossing each item off their list once it is done.  

 There are so many other ideas that the author gave and I am excited to try more out in the next few months.  Here is to hoping that this project will enrich and empower our kids to realize that they can do anything they set their mind to! 

Family, food, fun and all that jazz

I've been slacking on keeping up with my blog lately but I will shamelessly use the chemo to excuse the absence.  Truthfully, the treatments seem to be falling into a pattern.  I take it on Friday night and am out of the running until Wednesday morning.  I spend most of my time in either bed or on the couch, dozing or full out sleeping my days away.  By Wednesday I am almost back to normal though any activity (such as grocery shopping) is bound to wipe me out and require a three hour nap afterwards.  

Beyond the treatments, the last week and a half has been full of parent/teacher conferences, cheer, a girls night out (dinner and the final Twilight movie with my bestie), lots and lots of food prep and baking for Thanksgiving, the actual holiday, putting up the Christmas tree, our annual tradition of watching The Grinch with the family, a 16th birthday party for our teenager, and a date with my hubby.  Lots of fun, good food and even better company was had.  

I made Pilgrim cupcakes

An Irish Cream cheesecake

And two pumpkin pies for the weekend.  

We always put our tree up on Thanksgiving.  The two youngest help daddy sort the branches and spread them out for ease of assembly.  After dinner, we let them have at the ornaments.  Of course...we always have to go back and do some rearranging!

Amazingly enough, everyone got along fabulously this weekend!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Life after the first treatment

I settled in last Friday night with some Laffy Taffy's (of course!), a few past episodes of the Duggars and my first chemo treatment.  I was nervous about how it would go so I escaped into someone elses crazy life for a bit.  About halfway through Michelle's birthday surprise show the side effects started.  I was extremely dizzy (good thing I was on the couch!) with a yucky taste in my mouth.  My lips were tingling and soon, I was just flat out exhausted.  I crawled into bed about an hour later and then the nausea began.  Thankfully, due to the advice I found online to take the chemo at night, I was able to sleep through most of the nausea.  I spent all day Saturday in bed....sleeping and reading while occasionally cradling a puke bucket (sad to say, this has become normal for me), but thankfully the nausea didn't get too out of hand.  I was able to eat bland food most of the weekend (couldn't manage dinner Sunday night but that loss of calories is certainly not going to hurt me!) and keep it down which was much better than I expected.

Fast forward a few days and it's the middle of next week, two days away from my next treatment and I'm starting to feel back to my pre-chemo self.  If this pattern holds, I'll have two days of feeling well each week and the rest spent in bed.  I hope my body is able to "push through" the side effects like some people I read about and that this isn't a lasting problem.  We are cautiously optimistic that we've seen the worst of it but I was told it could take two to three weeks for the side effects to fully kick in, waiting until the chemo was built up in my system so we will see.  For now, we've rearranged most of our social calendar to allow us to stay home on the weekends and we will just play the waiting game.

"Taste and see that the Lord is good.  Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in Him!" Psalm 34:8

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz

To buzz it off or not to buzz it off?

Ahhhh the days of my youth.  Back when my main consideration in a hair style was how much time it took me to do it...and I prefered NO time.  :)  This was my bestie and I...ohhhhh about 12 or 13 years ago.  Back when doing my hair consisted of pulling out the clippers once a week and shaving it all off.  I loved it back then but I must admit, I am pretty attached to my hair now. My husband is a big fan of it as well.  So when I got the call that I had to start chemo today....that was one of my first thoughts.  Should I just shave it off and save us the devastation of watching it fall out one clump at a time?  Really, that is such a minor consideration in the scheme of things but such is the human mind...grasping on to small details when the big picture is too overwhelming.    

30 Days of Thankfulness

In light of my recent vent on living with chronic illness, I feel I need to balance myself out by thinking of the many things I am grateful for.  I've been posting daily on FB about things I'm grateful for so I'll try not to be too redundant here.

One of the prevailing themes I've been seeing in my bible and devotional time in the last month is that God has given me this illness for a purpose.  He will use it for His glory and for that I am so grateful.  I can honestly say that I am thankful for this illness because it has opened my eyes in so many ways.  After my first bout in ICU when I lost consciousness for a few days, I woke up and almost immediately thought of baptism.  It had been nudging at my heart for quite some time but I kept putting it off.  I realized that God had spared my life and that I needed to be obedient to Him.  Tomorrow is not promised so we must live His plans for us TODAY.  The other realization I had was how blessed we were in our friends and church family.  Meals were provided for us for almost a full month during the beginning of my illness.  Friends came over to clean my house and do my laundry.  They drove my children to Illinois to spend Christmas with my parents.  They prayed, they visited, they listened and they loved.  My husband's bible study group did a phone prayer conference and prayed for healing & peace.  Our church lifted us up in prayer and offered their support as well.  It was mind blowing.

I am also thankful that God brought Jimmy into my life.  Meeting Jimmy brought me back to my faith and strengthened my walk with God.  He is the most amazing husband I could have ever wished for.  He is kind, caring, loving, generous, loyal and he takes care of me in every way possible.  His entry into my life also brought me two wonderful daughters that I feel so blessed to be able to love and care for.  I had never imagined having four kids but our family feels perfect and complete whenever we're all together.

And finally for today, I am thankful for my best friend Lea.  We've had a few separations over the years but she keeps finding her way back to me and for that, I am eternally grateful.  She is the sister of my heart and soul.  She would do anything for me and I would do anything for her.  She even shares her fantastic parents with me and I love them dearly!  She has been my strength during this illness, my voice of reason and my rock to lean on.  She is a second mother to my kids and has cared for them time and again while I go to the hospital.  Lea has a huge heart and I am so glad she shares it with me.  Love you girl!

 

Just a little DIY project.....

I have a confession to make.  We have an ugly fridge.  It's ancient, hideous and an odd shade of almond with plenty of wear and tear.  But....but it works just fine so we have never been able to justify replacing it.  We've just lived with the ugly.  Until I found Pinterest that is.  

Now, until I had gotten sick and stopped working, I avoided Pinterest like the plague because everyone told me how addictive it was and I just didn't have the time to be surfing it all day.  Once time became something I had in abundance, I became an addict.  And it was there that I found the cure for my ugly fridge.  

Chalkboard paint.  

Genius I tell you!

Here is our homely fridge

 For a $10 container of black chalkboard paint I was able to make it look like something new and unusual!

 I also found a really cute idea on Pinterest to paint frames from the dollar store and add magnets to the back to make your fridge look a bit neater.  I still have a few more frames to paint but this is the finished product.  Now I just need to tackle repainting the ugly walls in the kitchen and this area will look sooooooooooo much better! That is a project for another month though....holidays are coming and it's time to focus on the homemade goodie bags I plan on making for friends and family.

Living with a Chronic Illness

My symptoms started at the age of 15.  My parotid gland would swell up, get very hard, red and painful.  It was a mystery.  At first they thought it was the mumps but that test came back negative.  Then they removed my wisdom teeth because they were all impacted.  One doctor said it was a "pre-arthritic condition".  My all-time favorite was the quack who decided I had "extra loops" in my salivary glands that would cause a blockage and he stuck something very similar to fish wire into the glands in my cheek to "clear it out".  Fast forward 9 years and I'm at an Urgent Care center for the swelling again.  In a rare moment...the Urgent Care doctor asked if I had ever been tested for an autoimmune disease and that began my journey.  I made an appointment immediately and found that I had both of the positive Sjgogren's Antibodies as well as a positive ANA and Rheumatoid factor.  I also was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia.  Not even two weeks prior to my diagnosis, I had found out that I was pregnant as well which not only limited my treatment options at the time, but it also caused me to see an OB heart specialist since the SJS Antibodies can cause heart blockage in fetuses.  

Looking back, the beginning of my SJS journey seems so simple.  I remember thinking....well, I just can't wear contacts anymore and will need to stay on top of dental work.  As anyone living with an autoimmune disease can tell you, there are periods of remission.  I had times where I could go a year or two without even meds.  Then there would be periods of no sleep, pure exhaustion, vision problems and more dental problems than I could handle.  I spent a month during the summer of 2007 legally blind in one eye and almost legally blind in the other due to dryness.  I've had all of my tear ducts plugged so that I can retain any moisture that I do create and still I struggle with dryness in my eyes.  I think most people think of SJS as more of a fluff disease....some dryness, some dental work.  It's an invisible, insidious disease and people just don't realize how much work and effort it takes.  Maintaining moisture in my eyes and mouth, all the medications I am on that I have to juggle.  The monthly blood work that has to be done, the frequent doctor appointments, the pure exhaustion of the disease....it can be miserable and soul sucking.  

And then....in early December of last year I became miserably ill.  I was so sick that my husband actually had to drive me home from work on Monday morning when the illness hit me swiftly like a ton of bricks.  I had a high temp, nausea, vomiting, headaches....all of the classic symptoms of meningitis minus the neck ache.  My doctor said it was the flu bug and sent me home to rest and take lots of fluids.  I was off four days that week but then started to feel fine again.  Less than two weeks later, I was in ER getting a spinal tap.  Again, the illness hit swiftly...in less than 2 hours I went from fine and eating dinner to barely conscious and violently ill.  I lost consciousness that evening and didn't regain it for two days.  I spent five days in ICU and was sent home on very heavy IV antibiotics because they were proactively treating me for bacterial meningitis.  The spinal tap came back negative and all of my blood work was normal (as normal as it can be for a Sjoggie).  I was hospitalized twice more over the next two weeks for complications of the spinal tap and then the antibiotics.  Finally, it seemed like I was on the mend until the middle of January when it hit again with a vengeance.  Again, it took less than two hours for me to go from normal to violently ill and I spent another week in ICU.  I was sent home on IV antibiotics again even though the spinal taps were all negative.  Life resumed and I finally went back to work in March.  On April 1st, the illness struck again and I spent another week in ICU.  At this point, they had finally determined that the meningitis was being caused by my SJS-it is apparently a very rare symptom to have aseptic (without infection) meningitis as a Sjogren's patient.  The rest of the summer passed quite normally but in early October, meningitis struck again and I was hospitalized for almost a week.  Less than two weeks later, it struck again.  I was released from the hospital on Tuesday of this week and still I am very weak and tired.  This constant illness is draining...and being hospitalized always seems to make me more ill.  I'm covered in bruises (twice daily injections of Heprin will do that to you), pokes and aches.  I am so tired that even doing the smallest chore can make me shaky and require me to plop on the couch for a few hours.  Yesterday, for example, I spent the afternoon with a girlfriend.  Four hours, just hanging at her house visiting on the couch.  By the time I got home, I was so shaky my husband quickly ushered me to the couch and made alternate plans for dinner as there was no way I was going to be up to cooking.  

I know that some people think that those of us who suffer from autoimmune diseases are hypochondriacs, that we exaggerate how much the diseases affect us but if they could just live one day in our shoes, I think it would open their eyes to the daily suffering we go through.  Ok ok.....I'll get off my soap box!