"Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"

During the last two weeks much of my time has been spent crouched on the bathroom floor, reading a book to Gwen, and hoping beyond hope that she will inadvertently use the toilet in the process. Some of the time has been successful, and LOTS of the time has been a failure. What have I learned in the process? Well, mainly that potty training is hard, really hard. It's going to take time, lots of time. Good thing that we have lots of books, books that take me back to my childhood, and books that make me smile and remind me of what life is all about. Today I was reminded of one of those books that I recently read to her. It was almost a perfect match for the day that we had today, thus the title of this post. If you haven't read this book, please do. It's a must. In it, Alexander had a day where nothing seems to go right. That is just what happened here. Let me start at the beginning. You'll probably want to sit down. It might take a while......

One thing I love and hate about Nate's occupation is the LONG 12 hour shifts that he works three days (and sometimes nights) a week. Last night was one of his long shifts that left me and the kiddos home alone, which is usually not a problem but an enjoyable adventure, but unfortunately I was hit with a migraine - horrible pain, nausea and vomiting, and blurred vision - at the exact same time (lovely).

After getting the kids to bed and taking some migraine medication, I too went off to bed, but found myself restless and unable to relax because of the constant pounding of my blasted noggin. Around midnight I slowly started to relax, only to be awoken at exactly 12:00 by my alarm clock, blaring to life at top volume, lovingly set by one of my children (how sweet). This, of course, woke up Beckham, reminding him that he was always hungry, and making him demand Pediasure. And after getting him a bottle and tossing and turning for a few more hours, I was finally able to drift off to sleep around 2:30. My slumber was disturbed an hour later as I opened my eyes to my tiny 3 year old, demanding that she needed to sleep with me and I, of course, gave in and pulled her into bed with me, thinking that she would quickly fall back to sleep.

I was definitely WRONG...Gwen had another idea.

After pulling her into bed, Gwen quickly turned over to Beckham (who is in a crib in our room because of his steroid hunger during the night) and yelled for him to wake up, and then began laughing and playing on the bed. I sat her down immediately, explaining that it was "night night" time, only to hear Beckham yelling again and demanding more food (oh joy). I once again filled up a bottle of Pediasure and handed it to him to fill his stomach, but soon found him soaked from head to toe from a 10 lbs diaper (you moms know what I am talking about!). This called for the lights to be turned on, a complete diaper and clothing change for the little guy, and, of course, made Gwen even more hyper and ready to play. Mind you, this was all with my pounding head guiding the way. Yeah! But don't worry, I got Beck changed and Gwen did fall asleep...3 hours later (I should know, I was awake for it!).

When Beck awoke me at 9 AM, I turned to find Nate asleep next to me, He looked so exhausted from his crazy night shift in the ER that I forgot about all my exhaustion (yeah right) and quickly took Beckham downstairs to get him his meds - due a half hour earlier...oops. As I went to give Beck his meds, I noticed that one of the bottles was almost empty and required me taking out the stopper to get the last remaining drops. As I did so, I missed directed my aim and sent a fork piercing into my skin (smooth move Kim). I probably would have screamed out in pain if I hadn't smelled a foul odor and realized that Beckham had not only pooped, but blew out (literally) of his diaper all together. I won't go into further detail, but know that this was the blow out of blow outs that would make almost everyone sick, or make my brothers, Nate's brothers, and Haley (it's true) proud to call Beck their nephew. And with this, there is only one thing that I can do: stick him in the bath.

As I began peeling off Beck's clothes and starting the bath water, I heard my screaming, sleep deprived (I wonder why?) Gwen, come into the bathroom. She continued to scream as I bathed him, during which time I noticed something funny about Beck's left hand. His left pointer finger and much of the back of his hand was deep purple, almost black - from a bruise? from a blood clot? from a broken bone? I don't know - and causing him pain. I quickly grabbed him out of the bath and took him into my bedroom (with the screaming Gwen in tow) to show Nate, who agreed that something was not right and then went downstairs, found my phone, grabbed Gwen some milk to stop her crying, and then called the transplant team to talk about his hand. As I talked to his transplant coordinator about Beckham, Gwen, was silent until I heard a huge wail escape her mouth. I turned, expecting to see her throwing another fit, and found her covered in vomit (are you freaking kidding me?). My brain at this time was about to explode - from both the situation and my migraine - but didn't (whew), so I cleaned up Gwen and her puke.

On the transplant teams advice, I trudged off to the doctor with both kids because Nate had to sleep during the day because of his overnight shift. Once there, both kids lost it - Gwen because she thought the appointment was for her, and Beck because he knows the appointment is for him - and I ended up carrying both of them most of the time (if you do the math right, you will realized that that is almost an extra 60 lbs I was trucking around). I'm sure my arms will be pretty sore tomorrow because the appointment lasted for more than 2 hours so that they doctor could make sure he was not missing anything with Beck. The results are that his finger is not broken, and they could not see a blood clot. It looks like Beck must have injured it at some point when we were not looking. Labs were also drawn and his hemoglobin is 10.5 (no kidding) and his platelets are 44 (lower than I was expecting, but the transplant team was not overly concerned by this).

As I drove home from the doctors I pondered over my crazy morning, looked back at my kiddos who both had a sucker in their mouth, and stopped at a fast food restaurant to get the kids something unhealthy to eat because they had had a hard morning. After ordering and receiving their food, Gwen, of course, lost it because she did not want "french fries," Beck cried because I could not get food back to him fast enough, and I smiled because I knew that when we got home, they were both going to go down for their nap.

It is now night, both kids are in bed, and Nate is home to help me. All seems forgotten. Was it a "Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?" No....but it was defiantly not my favorite. And in the words of Alexander, "My mom says some days are just like. Even in Australia."