Tainted Love

So my birthday was on Saturday, and MAN, WHAT A GREAT DAY IT WAS!!!! I didn't do much in the morning or afternoon. I did get a lot of phone calls, text messages, and birthday cards. And I know its all very little, but it is so much fun!!! It makes me feel so special. I ate lunch with Ethan and Greg, just at home. But as soon as Ethan was done, he says "Mom, I'm going to sing Happy Birthday now....Happy Birtay to you, Happy Birtay dear YOU (pointing to me), Happy Birtay to you!" It was absolutely adorable.
Greg and I dropped Ethan off at my Uncle John and Aunt Jodie's house and then took BART into the city. We were checked into the hotel, Club Quarters, by 4pm. The hotel was real nice, especially for the price. And the best part, on each floor, they have these little stations with empty bottles of water at the top, and then a "tap" on the bottom, so you can bottle your own water - for FREE!!! I thought that was just too cool.

We went downstairs at 5pm for dinner at the Elephant and Castle Pub and Restaurant. We had a very large group of 18. It was great. And I got lots of presents!!! That made me excited too. I really didn't expect that, so it was a nice surprise. I really thought I was too old to get presents. The food was really good too. I had their chicken pot pie, and so did three other ladies at the table. It came with red mashed potatoes and gravy, and it was absolutely wonderful. And I just love chicken pot pie, so to have it really good was just great! I tried Michal's meatloaf too, which was really, really good. And I really wanted to try Greg's fish and chips, but he literally at it all in like 5 minutes, so I didn't get the chance. But he says it was so good he really considered having a second.
After that, we went over to Bimbo's 365 Club. I totally scored getting an extra ticket so my brother and his "friend" could come with us. We got inside and happened to be the first ones in there and so we nabbed three tables against the wall that were up on this platform and bordered off. It was great. Total primo spots and since it was bordered off, it kind of felt like we had VIP status. It was awsome.

The concert was great, of course. If you've never heard of the cover band Tainted Love before, you can go to their website taintedlove.com. You can hear some of their music on the website. They have two guys and one girl singer so they do a HUGE variety of 80's music. I think my favorite was "Take Me Home Tonight". I just LOVE that song. And since we had the bordered off tables, we could dance without having to get into the sweaty crowd.

The highlight of the night had to be when this guy tried to fight us!!! The three tables, like I said, were bordered off with two entrances into it, one between the left and middle table, and one between the middle and right table. Well, I was sitting at the left table when a friend, Kim, showed up late, so I told her she could sit at the right table cause, at the time, no one was sitting there. Well, when Kim sat there, this guy, who kept standing against the border, started talking to her and pointing to the extra chairs. He left, so I walked over and said "Was that guy trying to sit in our chairs." And Kim said "Yeah, he wanted him and his girlfriend to sit there. He said he saw two girls leave, so he was going to take them. I told them you guys had these seats reserved." Well, the two "girls" that were sitting there were Jessica and her BOYfriend Mike. When they came back, they sat with us.

Well, next thing we know, the guy comes back with a BOUNCER!!! The Bouncer says "What's the situation here?" We were like, "There's no situation." Then all of a sudden the guy starts flipping out yelling at us. He is leaning OVER the border, yelling at the top of his lungs, pointing his finger at me, Kim, and Jessica, just screaming at the top of his lungs "You guys are liars, you can't reserve these seats, I was waiting to sit there, I saw two girls leave, You guys lie, That's bullshit, I was waiting for these seats, Let me finish." Just going balistic. We of course tried to plead our case to the bouncer, but this guy was just flipping out. Then comes Erica out of nowhere, yelling back at the guy. Then I see Greg finally turn around and see the guy yelling at us and he starts walking over and I'm thinking "Oh crap." And the whole time, the guy just keeps going on "You guys are lying, This is bullshit, You are all crazy" all of this stuff. Finally, Jessica stands up and says to the bouncer, "I'm sober, so I will talk to you and not to him." She takes the bouncer over to the usher, who had been talking to Jessica all night, and tells her what's going on. The usher tells the bouncer how we had been there all night, and the bouncer tells the guy to buzz off. So the guy walks off, totally mad, and THEN, walks over to the sound check guy and tells him what's going on like he's going to be able to do something. It was just hilarious. Yet totally crazy. The guy was just totally wack-o and totally flipping out. It still makes me laugh.

Greg and I ended up leaving the concert around 12:30, walked ALL the way back to our hotel, which was a mile away, ordered pizza, at that at like 2 in the morning, and then passed out. I did end up throwing up (I had 1 1/2 Jack and Cokes, and 1 1/2 Vanilla Stoli and Cokes - at that was 2 1/2 drinks too many). But it was still great and I had a blast. It was so much fun and I really can't wait to do it again!!!

The hardest part of motherhood

Sorry its been a while since I've had a post. Here is why....

There is a lot to deal with when you are a mom. It feels like every six months, Ethan goes through a new stage. You finally learn how to get him to sleep, then he suddenly doesn't want to go to bed at a reasonable bed time. You finally get him to sit down at the dinner table, then he suddenly doesn't care to eat anything you serve him. Its constant frustration and struggle. Don't get me wrong, there are a million more good things then bad, but the bad - well, they make motherhood a very difficult job.

The hardest part though is when your child is sick. Ethan had his first hospital stay 2 weeks ago. The week, well it began on a Saturday, started out with really bad diarrhea, and a mild fever. (Something that I never knew until I had a kid, babies can have a temperature of like 103, and doctors don't get worried. You hit 104, and they want to see you, but up until that point, the kid is basically fine. If I had a temp. of 103, you would think I was dying!!!)

At first I figured it was a simple bug and he would get through it. But then he started to complain that it hurt when he peed. Then on Tues, he was so lethargic, and he has never been like that, and so I began to worry.

The hard part about a kid being sick at this age is that they can't fully express how they feel. As a mom, you want nothing more than to know what's wrong. But if you're child can't tell you, you don't know what to do to fix it, and all you want to do is fix it.

So I called his doctor and he ordered some urine tests and luckily, I got Ethan to pee right into the cup. The doctor called Wednesday and said that the results came back fine. But, there was blood in his stool now. Actually, Greg and I thought we started noticing the blood on Monday, but it didn't look like normal blood, so we figured it was something he ate. We should have gone with our natural instinct. The doctor ordered some stool tests, and called us Thursday to say there definitely was blood in his stool. The other tests he ordered would hopefully tell us if there was an infection or what-not. However, with us ordering the tests on a Thursday, we would have to wait until Monday to get the results. ARGH!!!

When our doctor called us on Friday to see how Ethan was doing, his condition hadn't changed. So the doctor suggested actually come in. We went in about 3:00pm. First he had to go to the lab to have blood drawn. (I took my dad with me cause I hate watching them poke my son, it makes me want to cry) Then we had to go to x-ray, which took forever. By the time that was done, we went to our doctor's office, but because it was so late, we had sit around over 30 minutes to wait for the overnight clinic to start. We finally got to see the doctor, who wanted to admit Ethan into the hospital. They wanted to keep him over night to observe him. This way they could rule out anything serious. There was 85-90% chance Ethan had some sort of bacterial or viral infection, in which case he would be fine. But the doctors couldn't know that until the stool tests came back on Monday. There was a 15-10% chance it was more serious than that. They were afraid it might be this thing where your intestines kind of telescope itself, going inside of itself. Its common in kids from 18 months to 3 years. The only way to rule that out was to observe Ethan when he had pain and to actually see a stool right when it came out.

So I agreed and Ethan and I were finally sitting in his hospital bed at 8pm. Part of me was so scared cause here was my son, my little, little boy, sitting in this hospital bed with this little hospital gown, and all of this hospital equipment and even though I felt like nothing was really wrong, there was still that chance. But part of me just couldn't help and smile cause he just looked so darn cute in that hospital gown. (I even stole it cause it was just to darn cute.) But like the title says, this is the hardest part of being a mom. The waiting, and not knowing, and just praying. Sure, the praying makes me feel better, but I would rather not have to pray that my son is all right.

By the next morning, Ethan had a "normal" poo, and there was only traces of blood in it, so the doctors were happy and ruled out the serious possibility. When Monday came around the doctor called to let us know that it was a bacterial infection, called campylobacter which people get from eating contaminated food or milk, very similar to salmonella. The doctor didn't put him on antibiotics cause he was already on his way to doing a lot better. And it took only 2 more days for him to be perfect again.

I wish I could say that this experience has made me a lot more patient - that I no longer get frustrated with him or mad at him, but I'm only human, and doing this 24-7 proves that. But there are times when I'm tired and I don't want to play, and he just really wants to, that I remember him sitting in that hospital bed. All it takes is that memory for me to get up and join him. Cause if that one hospital stay is the worst thing I have to go through with him, I am one lucky mom.

The Bathroom

So, the bathroom is finally done!!! (Well, there are a couple of minor details to add, but for the most part its done.)
In case you have never seen our bathroom before, this is what it looked like when we bought the house. It had this really inconveniently placed sink with wood cabinet. Not very pretty at all. And this large medicine cabinet. Again, not very pretty, but it was very useful. There was no color in the room. Oh, not unless you count the fact that the sink was ivory and the toilet was white. Who does that?
This is what it looks like now: There is the new shower curtain that we picked out first, and then we decided on the rest of the color scheme from there. We chose to do beige and sage green stripes on the wall, which I did all by myself. We took out the old sink and put in a new pedestal sink. LOVE IT!!!! We added a chrome faucet so the rest of the accessories were white and chrome.

We put in a little cabinet since we lost the storage space from our medicine cabinet. We did leave the toilet the same, and in case you can't tell, the pedestal we picked matches the toilet. We added new towels that matched the shower curtain, put in those great white/chrome towel racks, replaced the light over the mirror, and replaced the mirror. I love them all!!! Greg also put in a great new chair rail and a new base board. He is SO handy!!

And we even replaced the floor ourselves. It used to have ugly linoleum. So we decided to tile it. If you ever want a room tiled and you think about doing it yourself, DON'T!!! That is literally back breaking work. Its hard, time consuming, and tiring. Sure it looks nice, but if you were to walk on it barefoot, you would feel the unevenness of it all.