Give one to me!

Buster is dead. Do you remember Buster? The Beta fish? Well, he's dead. And I think I killed him. I changed his water and thought I had done a good job of carefully mixing the old water with the new distilled water...but I killed him. Fortunately, no one has noticed except the adults...and Abby. She asked about Buster the other day and I confessed that he was dead, (I didn't tell her that I killed him) but I ask her not to tell any of the other kids. Is that like lying to them? I don't know. All I know is mom is the one who held the funeral services for Buster. Alone. In the bathroom.

Devon and I were headed home one day last week and I was talking to the kids about how beautiful the trees were. Someone made a comment about so many of the trees not having colors. I thought for a second and said off-handedly that "the trees look naked, don't they?" Well, the kids went WILD. Now everywhere we go they are squealing about naked trees here, naked trees there, naked tree on my side, naked tree on that side. They work themselves up into hysterical high pitched fits of giggles about these naked trees. When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?

Jack is excited to see Little House on the Prairie. He asks me all kinds of questions about the show. We have a large turntable in the set (and we all know how Jack loves Thomas' turntable) so after my dinner break today John and I took the kids back to the theatre for a ride on the turntable. Holy Moses, those kids had a blast! Jack and Devlyn told me I was too heavy for them to turn the table and I had to get off...Nothing like a bit of honesty eh? Jack tells me all sorts of information about "Daddy's show is A Christmas Story. It is about a little boy who wants a toy for Christmas." He is pretty keen to see that show as well.


Connie had a terrible stye in her eye this week. We wound up taking her to the Doctor's office for it Saturday morning and that leads me to my story of the week...
We had tech for Little House on Friday. After tech I stayed and did some prep work on one of our upcoming shows. When I was leaving I ran into the crowd that had just wrapped up their 3 show day for Maul of the Dead (which was fantastic, by the way!) I stopped in at the bar to chat with the actors and finally headed home at 1:15 or so. I had hoped to crawl into bed, but Jess was up and we talked for a while. I finally staggered to bed bleary eyed and bone weary around 2:00. The boys were all in my bed and I didn't want to wake anyone so I just crawled in bed with them. Wy proceeded to kick me for about half an hour so I finally transferred Wy & Jack to their own beds. Well, Wy woke up and had a fit about not being in my bed. I had to soothe him till he went back to sleep. I managed to lay down again around 2:45ish and right around 3:30 Jack fell out of bed - hard. I sat and rocked him for I don't know how long. He was terribly upset. I was so cross-eyed tired that I finally decided to lay down with Jack and Wy had a fit about my being in Jack's bed, so we invited him on over - the 3 of us squashed ourselves into Jack's twin bed and again attempted to sleep. It was probably 4:30 when Jack woke up crying that he wanted to be in my bed. So I sent him on in to sleep with his daddy.

He proceeded to cry for "Mommy" in my room until I couldn't take it any longer and drug myself into bed with John and Jack. I thought he would be ok once I cuddled him up, but he couldn't settle down. Every time I started to drift off he started fussing and crying again. Sometime around 5:30 he became inconsolable. John and I gave him some ibuprofen and John took him downstairs so I could try to get some sleep. The next thing I know, Mom knocked on my door (it was 6:30 now I think)and told me Jack had thrown up. Now I'm really worried because throwing up after a head injury is not good. And so we got dressed and headed out for Jack's Doctor's office. Since Connie's Doctor is right next door and she needed to see him too, I had Mom and Connie come along.

(Here's my side note - I call this pattern of repeated waking with minimal spurts of sleep between wakings "sleepus interruptus" and I think it is much much worse than no sleep at all.)

Jack was certainly not his active little self while we were at the Doctor's office and so I was worried. Dr. Sorapolus was concerned because of his having thrown up along with his listlessness. She told me if it was a weekday, she would just have us do a CT, but the lab was closed - sooo, we would get to spend the morning at Children's Mercy. Of course when we left the Dr's office Jack underwent a drastic change in disposition and was as chipper and playful as he could be. I decided we would still go to Children's Mercy as I wanted to be safe rather than sorry. You know how it goes at the hospital, see someone for 3 minutes and wait 45 minutes...Well, after examining Jack thoroughly, consulting with Dr. Sorapolus and with me, we dicided Jack was fine and didn't need a CT. Thank the Lord. We were home in time for me to fix lunch and I was never so grateful for a nap in my life.

Then it was up, fix dinner, yell at everyone to get to the table, to eat dinner, to change into their costumes, to let adults open the door for Trick or Treaters and for everything else under the sun as we tried to get 5 kids and 3 adults ready to go trick or treating. Abby went as a ghoul. Connie and Devlyn went as little fairies. (Mom made their wands out of big fat lollipops, straws and curly ribbons. Real cute.) I'll give you one guess about who the boys dressed up as. I couldn't believe there was no fighting over both of them being Thomas. Anyway, all the kids had a great time as we went through the neighborhood.

I remember how fun it was to go out Trick or Treating. I totally do not remember being yelled at by adults to look both ways when crossing the street. I don't remember being reprimanded to be nice or say "Thank you." Or not to crowd other kids off of the that neighbor's front step. And for as much as John, Devon and I yammered at the kids - I don't think they heard any of it. Even if they did hear it, they didn't care, they werre simply too excited to be Trick or Treating! We were making our way to the last house of the evening and Jack was not happy about going home. He held up his basket and said "My pumpkin is NOT full." And when Wy finally made it up to the last porch, I said "Wy, what do you say?" He held up his hand as high as he could and demanded "Give one to me!" I was mortified.

Jess came home for the weekend. She spent some time with the family Saturday and then hung out with her girlfriend, Caroline Halloween evening. John, Devon and I picked up the girls and attended the 11:00 p.m. closing night performance of Maul of the Dead. I thought the show was FANTASTIC and I was so excited that the girls got to see it. On the way home I kept peppering them with questions about what they liked or didn't like. They just said "It was really good." (like oh, that was nice) and went right back to texting and giggling. I felt like I had just given someone this super great birthday present and they responded with Oh, it's blue. Well, that's a teenager for you. Here's a shot of John and I - Zorro and a Devil Enchantress? I don't know - I hated the crown that came with the Medussa dress, so I put on horns. I wish I had snapped a shot of Devon in her outfit - but it was late and we were heading out the door. She looked geat. Maybe I can convince her to put it on again for a photo?

OK peeps, I need more sleep. Love and blessings,
from me and my gang.