Farewell for a Few Days

Tonight the husband is taking myself and the kids over to a hotel to stay for about two or three nights while he has the living room renovated. I'm having several issues with this.

1. Why another reno? WHY?
2. Why another reno, when he keeps threatening to move?
3. This is going to make my life more complicated as usual, with regard to getting kids to school/daycare/preschool.
4. He gets to sleep in a bed all by himself with no one else around, and sleep in. Does this make me jealous? A WHOLE DAMN LOT!! (He's sleeping up there right now while I am down here with a whiny eight month old and a bratty three year old who just fed the baby Silly Putty.)
5. I am worried about my stuff, because past experience has taught me that men don't give a crap and will not think about your possessions getting destroyed from construction dust and/or things falling on them.

On the upside, I won't have to breathe in construction dust and wind up in the hospital with severe breathing problems. Just from the tidying and tossing out we did last night, I have really sore eyes from rubbing them insanely and am wheezing like an old emphysema patient. And I don't even want to describe the old mouse crap we unearthed. It was shades of the great mouse infestation of aught-two to aught-five. Here's where we dealt with it. On the even "upper" side, we are staying at the Century Plaza Hotel, where there is a spa!! We are in one of the suites, too, which is great because I can put the kids down to bed and Hannah and I can hang out and have some together time. But I will be essentially single-parenting for three days and I am having a hard time stomaching it.

Okay, complaining over.

I took Hayden to physio yesterday and it went great! The physiotherapist was very impressed with his upper body strength. She told me a lot of the clubfoot kids she sees do not have this strength. I told her that I used to put him on his tummy even when he was in casts and she told me that was a smart thing to do. I really like her. Her philosophy is that kids should not have to exercise, but play. Therefore, she has designed her method of treatment around playing and regular household items you can use. I can see how this will be a big feature when he gets older. She showed me how to help encourage him to crawl forward by placing a sport headband that had been sewn down the center around his legs to keep his hips closer together. Because the bar keeps his feet so far apart, he naturally wants to stay like that out of the brace. She also showed him how to sit back down on his bum from kneeling. She knelt him at a 53L sized Rubbermaid Roughneck container and put toys on the lid for him. He could lean on the container and reach for toys. Also she sat him in front of it on a foamy chair so that he had to plant his feet on the ground. What I did not realize was that even if he is sitting and has his feet planted, he is bearing weight on his ankles. He can do this in the brace also. She was impressed with how quickly he caught on to things and for the most part he was very compliant, even though he had missed his nap. At one point he got irate and she told me that most likely it feels a little uncomfortable to him as he has never had to put weight on his ankles before. We finished up there and I headed over to my mom's place to have lunch before I took him to his portrait session.

When we arrived at the studio, I was was worried that he might end up losing it because he was now missing nap number two. But, he performed brilliantly and I can't wait to see the pictures! As soon as I have them, I'll scan them in and show them to you. I also had to get his passport photo taken because we'd like to go away this summer. Talk about a mug shot - they are not permitted to show teeth if they have them. The girls at the studio were telling me some of the crazy things that pictures have been rejected for and I just had to shake my head.

Anyway, that is it for now. I may try to get a post in if I can get over to Laura's and use her computer, but otherwise, I'll be back online Friday or Saturday. I am sure I will have plenty of tales to tell. Later, y'all!