Bandaid

During Sunday School last week, my two year old received a bandaid on her hand which read, "God takes good care of me." After 4 baths and 4 days, the bandaid was still on her hand, and she refused to let us remove it. She had grown to love her bandaid.

This morning at 7am, we hear crying from the 2 year old's room. This is odd since she loves to sleep until 8 or 8:30. The 5 year old is the one who is sitting at the bottom of my bed at 7:30am fully dressed and announcing that he has made his bed and brushed his hair each and every morning.

Since it was Thanksgiving and a day off from work for my husband, he was not surprised by the 7am wake-up call. It seems to always work out this way on the rare day he can sleep in. So, he hops out of bed to see what might be the matter. Is she coughing again? Does her stomach hurt? What could the problem possibly be?

She had lost her beloved bandaid.

My husband tried to get her to go back to bed, but we could hear the whimpering from the other room. Since he is the best father ever, he went and got the two year old and brought her into our room. Then, he made her a new bandaid. All is right with the world again.

Dinner Prayers

Every night at dinner, our kids say the mealtime grace. The two year old always has the same prayer, "Ga Our Fa, Ga Our Fa, Men." Translation - "God our Father, God our Father, Amen." She used to hear her older brother sing his dinner prayer every night, and that was the first line from the song. She tries to do everything that he does.

Our 5 year old son is trying to learn the language of prayer. Every night at dinner, we hear him pray things like, "God - you are so holy." or "Thank you for making my sister well." or "God - we thank you." Etc... Tonight, his prayer went something like this, "Lord, thank you for making my sister well, thank you that you are holy and we pray that we can be in the circle of life. Amen."

My husband paused and asked him if he had been watching The Lion King again. My son answered yes, and then, my husband prayed and thanked the Lord for our meal.

Doctor Appointment

I took my 5 year old to his ENT doctor on Friday for his final check-up. He had to have tubes put in his ears over two years ago when some antibiotic-resistant bacteria landed in his ear. Since we have been going to see this specialist every 6 months for the past two years or so, I have learned the hard way to only take very early morning appointments. Otherwise, you will wait a very long time.

So, I make the appointment for 8:30am. We get there precisely at 8:30am. I see there are three people already signed in ahead of us. One at 8:00am and two at 8:15am. I am feeling pretty good at this point. We might actually be out of here by 9:00am. We take a seat and wait to be called up to register.

At 8:35am, I see the doctor arrive with coffee in hand. No emergency or anything - just strolling through with the coffee. Before I continue this story, let me say that I love our ENT doctor. He is fabulous with my son and an extremely qualified doctor. But, if I had strolled into work 35 minutes late for two different meetings with no excuse other than I needed to get some coffee when I was working, there would have been a few repurcussions. Of course, I was not a doctor and not a specialist.

We get called up at 8:45 am to register. I give all the information and the co-pay and then ask the woman behind the desk how much longer she thought I would have to wait. She said, "Your doctor is running on time." I then said, "Well, my appointment was for 8:30am and it is now 8:45am, so what does on time mean here?" She looked at the clock, and then looked at me, and then looked at the clock again. She honestly looked perplexed - as if she had never been asked about the time of an appointment before. After a few seconds of being flustered, she said she would take the chart right back and it should be very quick.

We get called back to see the doctor 35 mintues later. We saw the doctor himself 45 minutes later.

Sick Days

Sunday morning - 8am - 5 year old not himself. Laying in bed with me and looking glassy eyed. Husband heads off to church with the two year old while I cuddle with the 5 year old at home. Nice relaxing day.

Monday morning - 5 year old is still feverish and very sick so he gets to spend the day watching movies. Two year old, of course, feels that she should watch movies along with him.

Monday afternoon - 1pm - Both take huge afternoon naps. I clean the bathrooms, clean the refrigerator, clean some kitchen drawers, and finish a novel. I haven't gotten this much done since I started homeschooling.

Tuesday moring - 9 am - 5 year old is feeling better but the two year old looks a bit off. We do some homeschooling and go to vote but stay close to home due to the two year old.

Tuesday evening - 9pm - Sounds like a seal has moved into the 2 year old's bedroom. Investigate and discover that 2 year old has the croup. Find vaporizer.

Wednesday morning - 8:30am - Both children sleep in until 8:30am. This has never happened before. 5 year old is completely back to normal but the two year old is still barking like a seal. We have to cancel a playdate, and I miss Women's Bible Study again.

Wednesday morning - 11:30am - Feeling a bit confined. Try to call several friends to make contact with the outside world but none are available. They all must have healthy kids and freedom to leave the house. At this point, I am beginning to feel a bit stir crazy and actually look forward to letting the dog out in the backyard.

Wednesday afternoon - 3:00pm - Begin to think about Americans in the 1800s who lived through long winters in one room log cabins. Not sure how they survived.

Wednesday evening - 7:00pm - Get to leave the house to tutor a student in Geometry. I have never looked more forward to Geometry.

Wednesday evening - 11:00pm - All is quiet. No barking seal. Could the worst be over? It's almost too much to hope for.

Rhyming

My 5 year old son has taken to a little rhyming game. All day long, no matter what I say, he rhymes. For example - I"ll say, "We're having chicken for dinner." He'll say, "We're maving licken for binner?" As he runs through the house, he overhears me saying to his sister, "Please clean up your toys." He'll say, "Brean up your loys." I think you get the picture. Most everyone thinks it is cute and funny. Most everyone does not spend almost 24/7 with him.

The other day he decided to do some conjugating rhyming. For example, he rhymes the ending "or". So, you hear him say, bor, cor, dor, for, gor, lor, etc.... Inevitably, he decides to rhyme the ending "uck." It starts out fine with buck, cuck, and duck, but I think you see where this headed quickly. He decided to rhyme this particular ending over and over again.

Sigh.

GM

Our 1999 Chevy Venture is in the shop again. It has 47,000 miles and the intake manifold gasket is leaking. From our research, this appears to be a known problem with Chevy Ventures. Yet, GM never notified us about this - interesting.

About a year ago, our transmission went with 40,000 miles on it. We have driven cars over 100,000 miles in the past with no transmission problems. Again - interesting.

Both times my husband and I make the painful call to GM to plead our case. Although we bought the van used, we did buy it from a GM dealer after it went through their 1000 points of light inspection. We felt these issues warranted some help from the manufacturer.

Both times we went through the same process. We call customer service, plead our case, and then are told that we need to take it to a GM dealership and after paying $85 to have them diagnose the problem, GM "will see what they can do to help." Both times we call dealerships in our area to learn that their service departments have never had a time that GM has actually come through to help someone. We then call GM back to tell them that we aren't willing to take our business away from our friend who is a mechanic to a GM dealership service department to just have GM say, "sorry we can't help." We also let GM know that our experience with all of the GM service departments we have tried has been awful. We finish up by letting GM know that we would prefer to not pay $85 for a diagnosis that we already know when we have the vehicle at a perfectly competent mechanic.

We always get the same response back from them- "well, if you're not going to take it to a dealership, we might as well end this conversation right now. there is nothing we can do for you." This past time, it got a bit heated. Did it help? Well, it helped me feel better. The answer from GM, though, always boils down to no.

Just like the Capital One commercials.