Back to Life, Back to Reality

I'm pretty sure I've used that title before, but it definitely applies here.  It's been a bit of a crazy couple weeks, for sure, and today we're finally all back to normal.  It's now March, and we're officially past the crazy month I was freaking out about four weeks ago.  We made it through the build-up to the surgery, and we got through the recovery.  The pre-surgery strep mess I could have done without, but everything went very smoothly on the back end.  Aside from the overnight medicine wake-ups and three-times-daily mealtime whimpers from Carter (which were short-lived each time), it was pretty shockingly uneventful.  I'll take it.  I do wish I had made better use of my time while I was trapped at home, but it is what it is.  Maybe it was my body's way of telling me to take a break and just hang out with my kid.

Carter is doing great.  I was happy my workload cooperated and I got to stay home with him Friday, just to get a better handle on how he was feeling.  I gave him medicine at bedtime Thursday and he slept through the night, and when he woke up feeling fine, I figured I'd see how far we could go.  And we never looked back--no medicine since.  We even snuck in a lunch trip to Taco Bell, and he ate a couple nacho chips "like a mouse" since he's been dying for chips ever since his surgery.  He did great!  It seems like his throat is still just a little sore at times, but I can tell he's ready to be running and jumping again.  Technically we're still supposed to wait another week for that, but considering how healed he looks inside his throat, I'm not too worried.  It's hard to tell at this point how the better sleep is impacting him, but at the very least I know he's not struggling to breathe in anymore, so that's a huge win.  I guess I'll just have to wait until our first hotel room stay (possibly June, if not sooner) to determine how much he's still moving in his sleep, which could indicate the restless leg-type symptoms he had are still persisting.  It has to be heads and tails better than before, though, when his breathing was making things even worse.

Fortunately, the weather has chilled out over the past few days (well, maybe too much--it's supposed to be in the teens all week) and I was finally able to chisel an inch of compacted snow from our driveway yesterday...before we got a couple inches of fresh stuff.  Of course, downstate they got over a foot, and it's not last weekend's 65mph winds, so I'm good.  I did the chiseling while Craig took the kids to see their cousins play hockey across town (which the kids and I did on Saturday night, too), and then I came in the house and scrubbed the kitchen floor, washed all but one of our living room blankets, did another load of rugs (thanks to a minor toilet overflow on Saturday night), and then a load of towels.  In the meantime I picked up around the house a bit and then did six months' worth of filing--mostly because my desk was overflowing and I needed to get our tax stuff together.  But of course, the overriding reason for most of this is that we have Carter's birthday party on Saturday and I have a million things to do before then.  Usually we end up with parties on Sundays because of various sports schedules, so I'm used to having Saturday to prepare.  Not this time.  And I can't take off work again, especially since I might be taking next Friday off, so I'm pretty much stuck doing as much prep as possible in the evenings this week.  I got a good start but will have to be productive every single night this week.

If that isn't enough, Carter's well visit is Wednesday afternoon and Jacob has his monthly therapist appointment on Thursday, so I'm already leaving work early twice.  I have my allergy shot tomorrow morning (unless I dispatch it to Friday since I had it late last month--decisions, decisions) and we have basketball Friday (skipping lacrosse since they overlap).  Thankfully Craig is off this weekend, so at least I have that going for me.  Clearly there's never a dull moment, at least not until the end of this month when basketball and lacrosse are both over (aside from Sunday practices for travel lacrosse, which Jacob complains about endlessly).  Both teams are struggling currently (okay, lacrosse is dreadful) but Jacob continues to contribute.  He's generally had between 4-7 points in basketball and is usually good for a goal or two in lacrosse.  House lacrosse can't be done soon enough for him since the team is so bad--a few kids quit going into the second half of the season so it's been even tougher to stick with it.  It culminated in this week where each town with two teams in the league had those teams playing each other, and even though it was supposed to be a schoolyard pick to choose teams (since one team is clearly better), that never happened and the other team beat up our team pretty good.  Even one of the moms from the other team was pretty mortified with what was happening.  So, yeah, bad.  Hopefully someday Jacob recovers his love for lacrosse, but for now, he is all basketball.  He talks about it incessantly, which is exhausting, particularly when the refereeing is as bad as it was last game.  He actually almost lost his temper after he went down hard at the end of the game and no foul was called, but thankfully caught himself just in time.  But he's been obsessing over it ever since.  For that reason, Friday can't get here soon enough so we can move on to the next game!

It's more challenging than I expected facing a full week.  You'd think that nearly two weeks off would leave me well rested and ready for routine again, and to some degree I guess I was, but between the weird sleeping schedule and having appreciated a slower pace, it's hard getting back to normal routine.  I was so bummed when my alarm went off this morning, and it was harder than I expected to focus at work.  I'm hoping I'll get back in the groove soon, but today was tough.  I'm so thankful to be past the surgery and on to better things...but apparently things aren't much easier on the other side.  But spring is coming so hopefully we can just focus on that and hope for better things ahead!