Wordless Wednesday~When scary rides happen to freaked-out little boys.

Guess where we've been! Does the shape of the pool give you a hint?

What about the company we were keeping?

Or the eighty degree weather the week of Christmas?


Yep! We have been in Disney World with Ben's family. Several of them are still there, but we wanted to spend Christmas at home. While it was a wonderful vacation, it wasn't exactly....Christmasy. What with all the sweat and all.

But we did have lights.

And fireworks.

And leaping fountains hitting Grace in the bottom.

What more could you ask for?

Owen certainly can't think of anything.

A picture of my Christmas Tree, just because my Aunt Susie requested it. Please ignore my blinds as they had been recently mangled by daycare children. Also, ignore the movies in my entertainment center, because they provide endless entertainment for small children that like to re-arange them and face the movies out so that they can see the pretty pictures, which is a definite improvement upon their recent stacking of the movies into a tower roughly the size of...well, themselves...and then knocking them over with a resounding crash. Why am I telling you this? I have no idea. Anyway, I will shut up now and say what I should have said in the first place, which was: Behold! A Christmas tree.

Here I am again, back with excuses. I have had a sick daycare baby all week (Remember Mucous Boy? He's even mucousier.) and all he has wanted to do was sit in my lap and rock. And rock. And rock some more. And just when I think he is asleep and I can put him down? He wakes up and cries. And makes me rock. I'm feeling kind of sea-sick.

He is now on breathing treatments, and I swear he thinks I am poisoning him. Every time we get close to breathing treatment time, I break out in a cold sweat. The child goes BALISTIC. The first day, his mother told me that I had I had to put the breathing treatment thingy (this is actual medical terminology, y'all.) in his mouth, which would be fine if he did not see it coming and clamp his mouth shut as if he had jaws of iron. I pleaded and begged and got firm and then went back to pleading, and I FINALLY got his mouth open enough to get the thingy in there, only to have him clamp his mouth shut on THAT and make me beg to get it back out again. All the while, he is arching his back and screaming (I do not know how he was managing to scream without opening his mouth. The child is talented.) When I turned on the machine (that looks deceptively like an adorable koala bear) and steam started coming out of it, Owen took one horrified look at us and ran up the stairs, screaming "RUN! IT'S GONNA BLOW!" I'm not sure if he meant the machine or Mucous Boy.

When I was telling his father about all of this, I wondered aloud to him if maybe perhaps Mucous Boy had asthma, and he nodded. "Probably," he said. "He's just like me, so far. See, I only have one lung." And then, with no warning, he proceeded to pull his shirt up to his neck and show me a really huge scar on his side. I did not know quite what to say. But now I am wondering...what in the world is he talking about? I have never heard of someone having a lung removed because of asthma. One would think that would make breathing even more of an effort, would you not? I should have asked more questions, but I was so startled by his sudden turn for the naked on my porch in mid December that I could not form the words. I am not good at thinking on my feet when confronted by chest hair.

Oh! And after two days of complete hysteria? His mother tells me yesterday that it is actually fine to just hold the breathing treatment thingy up to the child's face. As long as he is breathing the medication in, it's fine. Poor baby. I've traumatized him for nothing. He will probably have an irrational fear of koala bears for the rest of his life.

And I will have an irrational fear of over-sharing men with one lung. Thankfully, neither koala bears or one-lunged men are in abundance here in Georgia.

At least, I hope not.

Whoa!

Apparently, Thanksgiving, visiting relatives, a nasty cold followed by a stomach virus, and frantic Christmas decorating and shopping cause me to fall right off the face of the internet. Who would have thunk it? My google reader has a thousand un-read blog entries, and I have not blogged myself in so long that I can only assume that you all thought I was dead. If you even noticed, that is. But I like to imagine that you were all out of your minds with concern for my whereabouts, because that's just the kind of woman that I am. Feel free to tell me how much you missed me, and in between running back and fourth to the bathroom, I will feel free to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It's a win-win situation.

But sadly, I'm not really back. Not with anything relevant to say, that is. Unless you count "OH MY GOSH DO YOU REALIZE HOW LITTLE TIME I HAVE LEFT TO GET READY FOR CHRISTMAS?" as relevant, and I do not. But at least, despite all of the holiday panic and rumbly, upset tummies my family has remained fairly agreeable. As Owen so tactfully pointed out the other night while eating a take-out hamburger, "This thing tastes like a dog peed on it! But...I'll eat it anyway."

I'm thinking of making that our family motto.