A long end to a REALLY LONG week! Thank goodness for weekends!

Warning, this is long!!

Oh my gosh! I cannot tell you how glad I am that this week is finally over! Yes, this week was bad, and hard, and stressful, etc., etc., etc.!!

It actually kind of started Saturday night with a bad reaction to an allergy pill I took, I was up all night throwing up and dizzier than I've ever been in my whole life. In fact I was wondering if it wasn't really an allergy pill, since the bottle gets dropped quite often in our home, medications have the tendency of getting mixed once in awhile. So, I stayed in bed all day Sunday to start off the week.

Monday wasn't bad. It was my cousin Brooks' 24th birthday that I got to celebrate with family at PF Changs. Brooks died in an automobile accident in February of 2003, so it was a bittersweet celebration. But, I love getting together with my fam, and Emarie of course loves all the attention she gets with them!

Tuesday was a nightmare! Work was insane! I'm on a deadline to re-test all my kids on the screener they take to get in the program. For some reason we haven't been able to find one of our testing kits, so I have to make sure I'm done with all the English kids this week, so that the other teacher can do the rest that need it done in Spanish. I have probably never been less involved in my classroom than I have been the last month! But, I have some really fun things planned for this month to make up for it. Also, I failed to mention that Steve's mom had twisted her ankle the day before (Monday), went to the doctor and was told to stay off of it for a week. That left us with a bit of a debacle on what to do about a babysitter. I asked my next door neighbor for ideas of people, and she was kind enough to offer to do it the next day (Wednesday) and then told me I should email our Relief Society president, since she could send out a group email to people in our ward to see who might be able to help out. This would have been great if I could have just gotten her email right! I tried 4 different times to send it with no luck! I finally gave up and just sent it to Rebecca to forward on for me. Once it finally worked (about 5 pm on Wednesday) I got so many responses, it was so overwhelmingly unbelievable I can't even express in words! I ended up letting the first person to respond go ahead and do it since she is a nurse! And thank goodness for her (see Thursday)!

Wednesday was ok except for Emarie's blasted pump! Every once and awhile we will have a pump (this is her feeding pump) that will have or eventually get a glitch where it tells us things that are not true! Yes, in short the dang little thing lies! What it does is beep and say there's "No Food" when in fact there is food in the bag and in the line, no air pockets or anything. So, if there's not a problem when it's saying there's a problem, essentially there's no way to fix it! Well, you can reset it and prime it, and sometimes it works, most of the time, it doesn't! So, I was worried that morning that someone who's never watched Emarie before was going to have to deal with this thing with virtually no training (since I didn't really have any time to). Bless Rebecca's heart though! I do consider her a very dear friend these days, and probably talk to her more about everything than to anyone else! I did have to drive back to her house (next to my house) only once, and she handled it herself the rest of the day, oh wait, except when Steve came home for lunch! She is a live-saver! And she is going to get a very nice treat! Emarie loved being at her house with all of her kids (she has 5, ranging from 18 mos up to 11 years, great kids too!) Also, this day was my assistant Katie's last day, who's been with me for three years! It was really hard to see her go. But, I think we gave her a nice little send off (the kids and I), and I know she's on to bigger and better things, since she is a college grad now! Way to go Katie, but we will miss you!

Ok Thursday was, well.....SCARY! So, as I mentioned above, Em's pump had really been acting up. It not only was lying about there not being a problem, but that it wasn't giving her as much food as it was showing. Essentially, Emarie had barely any sustenance for 2 whole days! That's a lot when you weigh barely anything! So, like I said, thank goodness for Tarah! She is the nurse that watched her on this day. And she asked me, "Is she normally listless, really sleepy?" And she added that she was concerned that she'd only had one wet diaper all day. By then I was in the room where she was, and the sight about killed me! She was like a limp noodle, and those that know her, know that that's not her at all! Even more alarming was how dry her mouth and lips were, and her breath was really raspy and labored. I knew immediately that this little girl was seriously dehydrated! So, I tried my best to stay calm, but first thing I did when we got home was bolus in about 5 ounces of water. I even gave her a bottle to help with the horrible dry mouth. Then, I called the doctor and made an appointment. By then, Steve was done with work and we went and got some pedialyte. And he had called Intermountain Homecare to come switch out the pump. Em checked out fine with the nurse, and by late into the night, was doing much better! Our new pump worked until her dose this morning, which leads me to......

Friday (today) was ehh. Started off with the pump not working, which made us (well mostly me) late. Finally had to give up and just prime some into her. The problem with that though, is there's no way to tell exactly how much she gets with that. But, there wasn't much else we could do, since Intermountain doesn't open until 9. So when I took her to my grandma, I primed a little more in and then turned the dang thing off, with the promise that I would have the delivery guy bring the pump to her house and I would meet him when he came. I had the last Friday meeting of the year today, which essentially was a big deal, but hey, my daughter will always be more important! We made sure to tell them (Intermountain) that this happens all the time! That being, we have a defective pump, and then they bring us another defective one. So they promised they'd send a new one this time. However, Steve joked that we need to start writing down the serial numbers, so we can make sure we aren't always getting the same one! Ends up the guy can't come until about 1:30, and by then, I'm home. So we call to make sure the guy comes to our house instead of my grandma's. Well guess what?? Around 1:30 I get a call from my grandma saying that a nice delivery man from Intermountain Homecare is there! Well, I'm not driving up there, especially since Emarie is sleeping like the dead at this point! Well, he was nice and drove to my house and gave me a brand new pump (I know, because it was still in a plastic, factory package!)! So far, it's working, but keep your fingers crossed!

So, back to Emarie. She seems to be back to herself, other than that uncommonly long, 4 hour nap she took today! I was a little worried about that, but figured she needed it, and she woke up feeling great! Charmed everyone at Costco! And I do feel I deserve a bad mom of the week award for this! I was so wrapped up with the stress of this week that I failed to notice that my daughter was starving to death! I just really hope her crazy dietician never gets wind of this incident, because I'm sure social services would be involved, since she's threatened to charge us with malnutrition before! Nobody tell her!!!

Sorry, so long, but in all fairness, I did warn you! Thanks for reading though, I needed to vent about my awful week!