the weekend came and went without much ado...i finished a book, called The Pact, by Jodi Picoult. Was a very good book, but oh, so sad.....not your average love story.

Collin remained sick throughout the whole weekend...I'm beginning to think that we've got something bacterial on our hands, as the flu that's been causing this fever doesn't usually last more than three days....it's been four now. My poor little bub....he's just so miserable and has these big black circles under his eyes.

We rearranged the living room and our bedroom. The piano is now in the bedroom (how romantic, eh? LOL) , and the computer is in the living room....we shall see how this goes with all the kids running about. My thought is that this will help get Aaron some privacy until we figure out what a new house can do for us.

Speaking of new houses, we looked at this house that would be PERFECT for our lifestyle!! It has a huge family room on one side, that opens out to the backyard, and a living room/dining room side on the other side of the house. My thought is that the bigger room would be conducive to daycare, and the other side would be perfectly untouched throughout most of the day.......What am I saying, though?? We've not even put our house on the market yet! hehehe

Anyway, that's the latest from the Zoo. Otherwise, nothing much ado lately. Not much you can do with a feverish eight year old.... :)

they did a strep culture on Collin this afternoon, but still think that he has the flu....it's a nastier version, it seems!

i just got a call from Dante's dad, too.....he threw up this afternoon after leaving my house. joy.

as i sit here, aaron's taking collin to the doctor's office to check about his 104 temp!!!! :O

i'm very worried....will update later with diagnosis.....104 is freaking high...especially for an eight year-old!!! :(

tell me he's not cute... :)

i'm plugging along the best i can today.....at least there are only 6 five-and-unders total today.... i really don't like this feeling of being sick, though... :(

i had to call my sister-in-law up last night and tell her not to bring the kids up for the weekend. this wasn't a total loss, as she tends to irritate sometimes and had things she needed to do anyway.

does anyone have some soup? hot toddy maybe? ;)

serendipity it was that we didn't go to the children's museum today, because i now have the fever... :(

why yes....she's all geared up to go to the Children's Museum today.

6ish, Aaron comes in and says that Collin's crying because his stomach hurts.....temperature reading 101.0.

*sigh*

i'm.so.tired.should.not.accept.5:30a.m.kids.

griffin's running around with a headband on....ROFL i love my snotpots!! :D

otherwise, not much new at the Zoo. am feeling quite emotional lately due to the unfortunateness of others.....one of my online friends has so much to deal with with her family, that i want to be able to just hug her or take her out for a drink.

irl, i have a friend whose son died in his sleep after a long bout of drug abuse...i don't know what happened, but i feel so much for her. She was so happy to see that the twins were doing so well and was so supportive. i hope that i can somehow be there for her and make a difference for her as she goes through this tumultuous time. keep her in your thoughts.

i think that i've managed to convince aaron to stay put for a while longer in our little cramped house....here are a few reasons why i don't want to move:
1...i actually am used to my job and the kids that i'm taking care of....uprooting would mean not only changing houses but also changing jobs, most likely, as aaron was looking in another town...
2...i really hate to move.....
3....i have a few friends here right now...moving would mean getting used to a whole new bunch of people, and i'm just not feeling that right now.
4....i hate changes....and this would be too many changes for me right now....


selfish? why, i never said i wasn't!

OK, I'm coming to this thought again.....so...if you're wanting to read funny anecdotes from the Zoo...stop reading now. If you're wanting the deep shit I probably should just leave to my own little psychotic mind, please...endulge yourself.

The topic comes up tonight about Collin's First Reconciliation....yes...we're Catholic....and no...I don't really believe in telling all my sins to a priest to get a penance and be absolved of my crimes....which are so many anyway! ROFL....in fact, I'm having doubts about it all (and for the love of all that is good, Nain...please don't mention this to your parents!!!). Serious doubts. Agnostic, leaning toward Atheist doubts. Honest to goodness, I'm having trouble grasping all this spirituality and religion stuff right now. And, I think that most of us deal with this sort of thng. If you haven't, then you're just too good and should stop reading about me....LOL.

I know in my heart that we are supposed to be good people....it just makes common sense.....those that aren't good aren't necessarily happy or healthy.........but all the rest of it....could we be trying to follow all these rules (some of them conjured up by people like ourselves from long ago?).....just to die and have that be it? Is there really a Heaven and Hell, or is it really ashes and ashes and dust to dust, and the worms for us all?

If you're going to leave a comment judging me for these thoughts, then I'm telling you right now to save your typing energy and that you can kiss my ass. If you want to lend support to my little identity crisis, then please....feel free.

turns out my Brazilian boyfriend has the flu!! poor little man! he stayed home with his momma today. methinks that this is why NOTHING i did for the little tyke yesterday was the trick.

kudos to the one who stuck out watching the little girl.....i think that i would need some heftier drugs if i were to have to deal with that every day..... :O

aaron's thinking that he can no longer take living in such a small house. i don't blame him, because there's nowhere to fit all the bodies for naptime! LOL so tuesday we will have a meeting with a relator (sp??) to see what course of action we should take next. wish us luck! it would be nice to have a space for daycare and a living space. we shall see....please keep your fingers crossed that the interest rates will not skyrocket within the next few months.....

When I signed on for this, I didn't realize that I would be working from 5:30 am to 6pm....wowza, I'm tired. So, when I say that I've been up until 9:45 pm cleaning....that's AFTER getting up at 5:30am-6am to get a baby that will likely keep me up (a.k.a....NO NAPPING!)

I also hope that my little Brazilian boyfriend stops teething or heals from an ear infection, because I really hate that I can't make him stop crying by just holding him or feeding him. It makes me wonder if I'm making a wise choice by not telling them that they might have to find alternatives? Oh, I forgot to mention that they've coddled his little ass and have not really let him feed himself solids or the bottle? You're not doing the little dude a favor here, folks!! ROFL

Roll on 8:30 pm, cos that's when my little (muhahahaha) ass is going to bed!

4 scoops of rocky road and 2 pieces of butter bread later, and i'm still feeling the need to hide.....

i have a miserable little boy today.....i wake up at 5:30 am to hear crying for the next 11 hours. i am worth more than 30 bucks a day for this..........................


yes....i'm going to be more certifialbe by 4:30 this afternoon...............

today was a doozie!!! i, at one point, changed seven diapers in a row.....and here's me wondering why my hands are so dry! lol

i've nothing interesting to say today....nothing....cos i did nothing all day except entertain so many children. it's fun, though, and i can't imagine doing anything else right now. i do want to get back to the point where i go to a job, do it, go home (at a decent time---none of these 60 hour weeks) and have fun with my family. oh...and get three weeks paid vacation and all major holidays off. oh....and also....to have decent insurance. now...if the US goes nationalized healthcare by the time the babies are in school, i'll just demand two weeks paid off per year and stay with the job as zookeeper. if it doesn't, however, i'm going back to Ernst & Young and begging for a job as an admin assistant. ;)

do you know that i was up cleaning until 9:45 pm last night? i'm beginning to wonder whether it's even worth having a clean house.....ROFL with two babies to put to bed, mopping and vacuuming to be done, and clothes to fold, there wasn't much time left to do much of anything! :(

bucking up, now...the week's only going to get better! *inserting note of sarcasm here* the next three days in a row, i'll have mr. lucas at my door at 5:30 am. will i be able to get used to this? we shall see.....

Today was an average old day. nothing much happening. For those of you who requested pics of Miss Erin's new 'do....here it is! :)

it's raning it's pouring..............

kids, that is! not only did i get a call from the dad of the little boy who was supposed to be here yesterday (apparently there was a bit of a miscommunication and i wasn't supposed to have him yesterday? *shrugs*) saying that they definitely wanted me to be their sitter, but i also got a call this morning from a girl needing temporary help until the end of March. I can do this......it's going to be a busy winter, but I think I can, I think I can. I'm sure I'll be posting updates on my sanity (or lack thereof). hehe

other than that, not much new happening at the zoo. Did I mention that I cut Erin's hair? She has a cute little bob now, getting rid of the "femme mulet" that she was sporting for so long. hehe...I'm getting used to her lack of hair. It was getting quite long, but no one would be able to really notice, because it would curl up and get stuck in her collar. So now we just have to wait for all of it to grow out.

speaking of my own hair....I totally forgot, in my madness of wanting something different, that I want to donate it to Locks of Love. *sigh* But, the good news is, is that I don't have all that long to wait until I can let it grow out long enough for them to cut. I better do it now, while my hair is worthy of being taken. When I stop nursing, I just know that it will all fall out! ROFL

Happy Friday, all (all one or two of you who actually read this thing....no one's been commenting lately....*sob*)

ok, so i set the alarm for 5:20, got up, grabbed my pillow, unlocked the door, turned on the porch light, and laid down on the couch, ready to catch a few more winks before the little man who was supposed to show up at 5:30 came....

6:45, and I'm on the phone to check to see where they were. not sure where the disconnect took place, but my little man didn't show up today. I'm a little sad by this, as I was really looking forward to keeping him.....tho not of the 5:30 hour!

we'll see. perhaps they didn't think to knock...perhaps i was so out of it that i didn't hear them knock? whatever it is, i have a mixture of guilt and annoyance at this.

looking on the bright side, i got a bit of a nap in before dante showed today....lol

*yawn* kiddos are such a lot of work sometimes...hehe....griffin was up in the middle of the night again, coughing a lung up. :( methinks that we're back on pulmicort now, as much as i hate to drug him up constantly....

a bit of a funny....yesterday i went to the bathroom, only to come out and find that erin louise had "changed" kylie's diaper. :) HILARIOUS!!! she had her diaper off (kylie has a skinny little butt and slid right out of her jeans before, so i was letting her run bare-legged) and was taking a wipe and "cleaning" her....she was even wiping front to back! i nearly pissed myself laughing!!

Noah? Noah? Where are you Noah? I know you're out there!! When are you going to come by with your boat? The kids would love to see your animals!!






(yes, it's raining that much here at the mo....a thunderstorm...in the middle of january....that lasts pretty much all damn day....*harumph*)

Not much new happening at the zoo right now. We had a nice slow weekend. Griffin did wind up being wheezy enough to stay home on Saturday, so I hung out with the babes for most of the day. In the evening, we went over to my friend Jessica's house and had chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese and the kids played. It was a lot of fun. The down side is that they were in between flu sufferers....keep your fingers crossed that we don't get it! It sounds pretty much like the same thing that we had, so who knows if we might not have exposed them in the first place.

I vendored a crop last night. No one came, though, so that seems to reinforce the opinion that I should just be a hobbyist with LP. We'll see. Keep your fingers crossed about that, too.

I'm nearly there with sorting the babies' NICU pics. Who knows how this will work, because we have so many similar pictures. I might have enough to actually get creative! It's been very emotional sorting through these pictures, but at least I'm getting good memories from them. We did have our rough rides on the roller coaster while in the NICU, but it seems as though everything's going so well right now (touch wood). Anyway, if I ever get around to really scrapping them, I'll post pics! ;)

Now that I've had someone contact me about starting their own Leaving Prints business...which, you can do, by the way, with a mere $30! I've been thinking of maybe getting into the groove again...who knows? I've got three things booked until the end of the month...this girl's class on the 16th, an Intro to Scrapbooking class ([un]cleverly called Inauguration class) on the 20th, and a Two-Page Tuesday class on the 25th. If I can't get something positive accomplished with these things, I seriously am going to hang up the ol' apron and just be a hobbyist with a bunch of my friends. However, if I can get something good from these things, then I will go ahead and try to persue this. I will not, however, spend a ton of money on this anymore. I love the product, but how much more could one gal really need? I mean c'mon! I really need to take a pic for you all to see just how much retail therapy I had last year! :)

That being said, my little man is coughing again....and I'm not sure how much longer I have on the puter. I definitely will not be going to my grandpa-in-law's house tomorrow to see the rest of the fam. I don't think my nerves could take my grumpy gusses-in-a-van-for-three-hours-with-no-nap-thank-you-very-much. I shall stay home and scrapbook, methinks....we shall see....

why is it that griffin's breathing will turn to shit so quickly?? :( i'm so lost as to what to do about all this reactive airway disease crap....as one who does not like to overmedicate my children, i stopped giving him the pulmicort after months of no problems (since october, methinks??), but am wondering if i just shot the both of us in the foot now that i hear that familiar old crackling sound when he breathes.....wish me luck and let me know if you have any ideas....

on a happier note, i think i've added a part-time kiddo to the throngs....he's a year old, and is as cute as he can be....he's of Brazilian descent, and is soooo yummy! :) he got here at 5:30 yesterday morning, though.... :( *yawn*

Why I am so glad that I live in a house and can afford to get electricity..... yes, this is my backyard!!

when it rains, it pours, it seems! :D an awesome bit of news is that I have had a few calls about babysitting recently! i had an interview last night, and am probably having an interview tonight.

another funny is that i had someone contact me about being a Leaving Prints Instructor. I'm nearly ready to close my doors, and people keep contacting me about it. Too funny, eh? :)

So I'm feeling pretty good about myself today. I would really love to have another kiddo come through the doors. How awesome would that be on our finances. Aaron's due to get his Master's raise soon, and if I get these new kiddos, I'll probably get about $180/week extra! :) That's some exciting stuff, I tell ya!

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

today's been a busy day....i had nearly all my kiddos here today! whew! makes for a busy day, but busy days make for faster days.....i really need to figure out some way to keep myself motivated.....i would love to have time to scrapbook AND have a clean house.....we shall see....i need to get on the flylady bandwagon again, but am feeling like the wagon's rolling too far ahead of me....tee hee.....

off to clean the kitchen....shall be a good start....

When the depressed lunatic comes out in me (she always comes out to play after a visit to southern indiana), I find myself wondering why we aren't all much more happy with the life we lead. I find myself on a downward spiral, and something much worse happens to someone else.....

For example, when Erin and Griffin were still in the hospital, Erin had many infections. At one point, she had a really nasty yeast infection in her blood, and they thought that she had spinal meningitis. This was the lowest I ever felt in the NICU. Erin, my little baby girl, lay in an isolette, on a ventilator, with many many tubes hanging out of her. She was fighting for her life.....and then they toss on top of it the fact that they suspect that she has fungal spots on her brain and that she might have meningitis. I remember sobbing on the phone with a colleague, then visiting Aaron at work (yeah...while he was teaching...ROFL), and pulling him out of his classroom so that he could comfort me. I really didn't feel as though I could do it anymore at this point.

Around this same time, another couple had a set of twins in the same NICU unit....a set of identical twin boys, born early due to twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Three days later, one of them passes away. This is the other lowest point in my entire NICU experience. The combination of these experiences has changed my life forever. If I think about my friends' experience too much, I cling to my own children more tightly, so thankful that they're still with me. I still wonder why my friends weren't granted the same miracle. So happy that they have one son to love and cherish, but so sad because they have only memories of three short days on earth of the other son.

Again, more recently, things had been getting stressful for me and my little family. A much lesser scale, though, we started to worry more about our finances. Less daycare kids means less stress for me. But it also means less income. Less income means fewer Christmas presents for my children and the rest of my family. And while I was able to eke out enough presents (you really thought I was enjoying making all those gifts?!), and I really think that they were enjoyed, I really wish I could buy all the fun presents for my family, making life a little more fun and easier for them.

Then, right after Christmas, people I don't really know and am not likely to ever have a connection with were hit with the tsunami. Again, I am knocked out of my pity party (even though it was small) to realize just how fortunate I am. I cling to my children, reveling in the reality that it is not them nor I that is lost or dead. We have eachother, and that is what matters. Nothing else.

Happy New Year, Everyone! :)

I am back to a semi-normal schedule today. I've not seen some of my kiddos for three weeks, so I'm happy to be reunited with them! It never ceases to amaze me how quickly kids grow, especially when they're toddlers.

OK, so now that all of my Christmases are over, I have totals for just how much crafting my wee hands did.....

7 blankets
4 calendars (yes, I snuck this one in! ROFL)
3 journals/journal jars
6 cookie plates

I think that's about it.....I can't believe that I was able to finish all that. Of course, there were a few times that I stayed up LAAATTTEEE to get them finished on time, but humor me!

I'm now going to get back to scrapbooking. I feel so badly that the twins are nearly two years old, and I've not been able to get caught up enough (mentally) to work on their albums. Perhaps my lack of organization on that part is due to being scared of starting their albums (I realize that I'm a broken record when it comes to the twins and their extreme prematurity, but again...humor me...ROFL). Oh, well...that's the goal for 2005...sort out and start their albums...the poor dears with their deralict mother.....

Other than getting to the scrapbooking, there are several things that I plan on trying to do in 2005. They are as follows:
1. spend more time away from the computer and getting in the faces of my family.
2. do better at keeping house. i HATE cleaning (it's genetic, i'm afraid), but know that it's necessary for the health of my family and the happiness of my over-worked husband.
3. keep better records for the daycare.
4. do more things with the daycare.....

OK, i want nothing less than perfection out of myself....ROFL. I look at the things I expect from myself and don't need to wonder why i often feel inferior......