B&B Recap

Ear Plugs? Ear plugs? Did those B&B innkeepers offer earplugs....to cover up train whistles? Really?

So, here's a little experiment for you readers. Take some squishy (read: CHEAP) ear plugs, mash them into your ears as far as you can without busting a drum and then have someone blow a foghorn at you from about 10 feet away every 20 to 30 minutes. Now, try to get some sleep. How'd ya do? (No dad, you don't count...)

Ear plugs, shmeer plugs. I would have had better luck sleeping with my ears underwater in that extra large bathtub. In case you don't catch my drift, ear plugs do NOT drown out the sound of a horn-happy train coming through your backyard! The only thing that can do that, outside of an overdose of NyQuil perhaps, would be to be HIT by the darn thing....

Of course, we did have a lovely time overall: Kurt caught up on sleep, I read a great book start to finish and every now and then we ate. (Who can turn down a fish fry buffet at a local dive in the country?) I also learned a valuable set of questions to ask the innkeepers at the next Bed and Breakfast we look into, seven years from now.

Most importantly though, I am thankful for the gentle, albeit loud, reminder to cherish all I have. For instance, I've never been so grateful to be awakened in the middle of the night by a child as I was last night. After all, it meant that there had been sleep available for the waking!

Bed and Breakfast, Like a Chicken

The Round Barn Farm B&B&B (Bed and Breakfast and Bread) boasts of 35 acres of woodlands, fields and bluffs, with one of the few remaining historic Round Barns in Minnesota and an outdoor wood-fired bread oven (the oldest structure on the property). Built in 1914, I'll admit, the Dammon Round Barn is pretty darn cool. I imagine a string quartet right in the middle, the music floating up through the circular hole in the ceiling, into the hay loft and out through the small opening in the center of the roof, bidding a lovely farewell to the rooster (weathervane) perched on top. This is a place where dreams are dreamt and fairy tales come alive. And this is the place I chose to take Kurt on our (much needed) FIRST EVER get-away weekend since having kids.

After researching for a week, becoming ever more picky in my list of desired amenities and styles, I narrowed it down to just a few places that had the required private whirlpool tub and in-room fireplace (after all, it would be December and December means COLD) and yet wasn't too fancy for our casual tastes. The Farm sounded perfect. I made a call, spoke to the overly cheery innkeepers who told of the peaceful country atmosphere outside the historic small town and decided that yep, this was the place for us to get-away, escaping the hustle and bustle (and NOISE) of work and parenting. Plus, I figured it gave me the experience of being on a farm yet wouldn't scare Kurt off since it was not a working farm any more.

Fast forward to yesterday: we said our good byes to the children, thanked Kurt's mom for coming out to watch them, told her to feel free to call us at any time (but only in an emergency, tee hee) and off we went. An hour later, we were cruising through Red Wing, the old town, beautifully lit up for Christmas. If we were the sappy type, it was almost magical....until we got a little father down the road and noticed the giant plot of land dedicated to one of Minnesota's State Correctional Facilities. The old buildings were beautiful, as was the extremely high barbed wire fence surrounding them. Kurt thanked me for not booking us at the Days Inn right next door but less than a mile away was our turn which lead us over the train tracks and up the street (only about 100 more yards) to the farmhouse.

We were kindly and eagerly greeted by the innkeepers who took us on a brief tour of the farmhouse which they had built in 1998. I'll spare the details but it is a fine, cozy retreat, right off the main highway, next to the train tracks, and right down from the state pen. Kurt and I chuckled at how they didn't really mention those things in their brochure (details...), nor on the phone. But they were nice enough to have plenty of earplugs for people to use if they felt the train horn would wake them up at night.

"How often does it come by?" I asked, curiously.

"Oh, maybe 5 or 6 times at night, and they always have to blow the horn because there is no crossing guard at our intersection," they cheerily noted.

Oh, how simply lovely, I snickered in a most sugary sweet tone of thought.

So, there we were, a most charming place, in a beautiful part of the country (the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River are truly gorgeous). They showed us our room and handed us the keys on the way out, telling us we only needed a room key because the front door was always unlocked.

"It's always unlocked? Even at night?" Kurt asked.

"Oh, we're in the country," they said, laughing.

Right. In the country. Off of a major road. Less than a mile from the state correctional facility!

After a lovely evening enjoying the comfy amenities of our room, (really, everyone needs to take at least one bath in a heart shaped tub!), we laughed about the little "details" overlooked by the innkeepers.

Ha ha, it's so funny that we are sitting on a train track. Ha ha, how funny that they consider this "away from everything" right off the main highway. Ha ha, they give you earplugs, maybe you'll sleep through the prison escapee joining the house in the middle of the night.

Kurt fell asleep on that king sized featherbed within moments.

I, however, still chuckling, stayed up...wide-eyed, like a chicken...all. night. long. The trains, all six of them, kept coming, blowing those horns and as an added bonus, with each train I was serenaded by an enormous pack of coyote RIGHT OUTSIDE singing happily along....perhaps they were right about it being the country after all....

And I couldn't help but laugh when upon entering the dining room this morning for breakfast the bubbly innkeeper commented:

"I bet it was nice to not be awoken by little children in the middle of the night."

Fortunately we were not yet eating. (I might have choked.) She apparently didn't notice the black circles under each of my eyes. But, she is certainly right about one thing: I was not awakened by a thing! :)

Let It Be

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me, shine until tomorrow, let it be... --Beatles


What I remember about the morning of Liam's MRI:

4:30 a.m. -- I awake because I hear a child coughing, not sure which one. I jump up to check on the kids, hoping it isn't Liam since he can't be sick for his MRI in 2 hours. I find out it is Lily.....wait, TWO HOURS?! Yikes, I can't go back to sleep now. What if I miss the alarm clock? I lay there wide awake until about 5:15 a.m. when I go ahead and get up.

5:15 a.m. -- I get ready to go, eat a quick bowl of oatmeal, and load up the car with my stuff.

5:45 a.m. -- I sneak into the boys room, pick up a groggy Liam and rush him downstairs to the garage. I strap him into the car with his loveys, he smiles as if exited for the adventure and off we go.

6:15 a.m. -- Having forgotten to grab Kurt's GPS, I take um, 'a different approach' to getting to the hospital. A few extra turns later and we are within sight. (Glad I left a little early.)

6:25 a.m. -- We arrive at Children's Hospital in downtown Minneapolis. As we head up the stairs in the parking garage, I trip on my own shoe and Liam and I go gracefully down, well, actually it was kind of like falling up really. Ever fallen going up a staircase? It is quite interesting...like a chicken...

6:30 a.m. -- We register with the front desk and then head into the wrong pre-op area. After being redirected, we find radiology, completely dark and empty. We wait.

6:35 a.m. -- Still waiting....Liam crawls around collecting any possible germs that could be sitting around the hospital floor.....eeeew, is that a puke stain on the carpet? Oh, please tell me it was just someone breaking the rules and spilling coffee.....

6:40 a.m. -- The radiology front desk person arrives and checks us in.

7:00 a.m. -- We are escorted back to the first of several rooms. We meet several way-too-chipper-this-early-in-the-morning nurses and doctors and after talking us through the entire procedure, twice, they get Liam's IV set up. He's thrilled...if all that screaming and crying means thrilled....

7:30 a.m. -- The Radiologist comes in to takes us back to the MRI room. Liam gives her the grumpiest look I have ever seen on his little elfin face. Apparently the thrill of our early morning adventure has come to an abrupt halt.

7:35 a.m. -- We put Liam on the table, he starts screaming so hard his eyes are clenched shut and it takes a couple of us to hold him down as they administer the meds. He falls asleep mid scream to a chuckling mom. I am sure this is out of some movie....it is like the part in Monsters Inc. when Sully is trying to get Boo to go to sleep and she is laughing and carrying on and then ZONK. She's out. Really, it was very funny. You know, in a sort of sick kind of way. The nurse tells me I can kiss him and I look at her like she has spoken some foreign language. After all, I am trained not to mess with sleeping babies and I've already had to break that once today....

8:05 a.m. -- They come to the waiting room to escort me to short stay, the room in which he will awake. He is already coming to when I get there and they all act amazed at just how quickly he is waking up. After having told me just thirty minutes ago not to touch him when he is waking up as it can agitate him, they now tell me I can pick him up if I like. Despite the mixed messages, I pick him up and hold him. He snuggles in, eyes open now and the nurse asks if he would prefer a popsicle or juice. Pop, definitely.

8:10 a.m. -- They administer the aforementioned red pop, Liam tries desperately to get it into his smiley mouth but keeps missing. I help him out, laughing.

8:15 a.m. -- We are dismissed and head on home for the rest of our VERY long day.


What Liam remembers:

Mom woke me up in the middle of the night. We went for a car ride and then I woke up again and she fed me a giant red pop for breakfast! It was totally awesome!

****

Well, the results are in and there is nothing wrong with his tiny brain in his tiny head on his tiny body. And although they couldn't rule out the possibility of a DNA mutation causing Elven-syndrome, we are free to just let him be.

Now, if the doctors will just leave him alone for a little while, he's got some walking* to catch up on....




*Speaking of walking, we finally figured out the hang up. We were down in the basement over the weekend and I put on some salsa music for the kids. They all got up to dance and there was Liam, walking around the room in circles as if the only thing he had been missing this whole time was a little salsa music to get his little feet movin'! Who'd've known?!

Spiders Revisited: Part 2

Speaking of spiders, winter is coming. The best part of winter in Minnesota is that if, no, when the kids leave a cup full of milk out in the car, you don't have to worry about your stomach lurching when you find it days later completely curdled. As a matter of fact, in winter, the milk would still be good! Did you accidentally leave in your car the two gallons of milk that you just bought at the store? No problem! (Although you might have to defrost it...oh, and for the record, I learned yesterday that we have not yet hit this point....)

So, although the spiders and other creatures start coming in to avoid the cold, we no longer have to worry about those crazy (scary) black widow spiders in California. We are no longer keeping count of how many we get rid of in and around our house. Instead, we have a new count: mice.

I told Kurt a few weeks back that I had found some mice droppings on my laundry folding table UNDER OUR CLEAN CLOTHES! (Ewww.) So, we put out two traps in the basement laundry room. Later that evening, Kurt and I were sitting downstairs, watching some telly, when he paused the program and said:

"Hey, listen. Do you hear that?"

Silence. Then, scratch, scratch, clink, clink, scratch.

"Uh, yeah," I said, getting up and heading into the laundry room. One of the traps was sitting there, not sprung, and the other trap WAS MISSING!

We followed the sound until we found a poor little mouse trapped behind the dryer, its tail stuck in the trap dragging behind him and rendering him completely incapable of getting out from behind the machines. No telling how he got there to begin with.

Now, despite the story my brother could tell about me as a teenager and the fish tank I left outside, letting the water completely evaporate and discovering firsthand about the phrase "fish out of water", I am a big animal lover. (Hey, those fish were kind of sickly looking anyway. No one can prove that they didn't die of natural causes....although I would personally put my money on cause of death being no water...) But I am the one who wants to plant lettuce in my yard in order to feed the bunnies. You know those pesky little chipmunks that other people try to get rid of? Yeah, we name them and then throw stuff out to feed them. When I was 8 years old, I tried to save a nest full of featherless baby birds that had been abandoned when we moved our trailer out of reach of their mom. (They all died but I tried hard until the very end, syringe full of milk in hand....Ok, so no one told me they didn't drink milk or eat mashed up cheese! Sheesh!)

So, my heart sank when I saw the two beady little mouse eyes looking into our flashlight. Thoughts of cages and rehabilitation fluttered into my head. Afterall, the kids really do want a pet...

Kurt on the other hand, had other plans. He ran upstairs and got a coat hanger. He stretched it out making it as long as could be and then I took on the task of climbing onto the machines and fishing the little guy out. Although I had the wise idea of just letting him go in the park down the street, I was vetoed and he ended up in a bag in our trashcan (and my stomach in knots...) Poor little thing...

It was after the next mouse stuffed himself under my washing machine, apparently having not been killed by the trap initially either, that Kurt went out and bought some new, fancier traps. When the kids noticed, they got very excited.

"Do we get to keep the mice?" Lily asked when we explained we were "catching" them. She started talking cages and names...Argh!

We have caught 10 mice in the last 3 weeks. And winter has yet to begin. (Thank goodness these aren't protected under the Animal Welfare Act I suppose...) I have to admit though, I kind of prefer deadly spiders....there's less PETA guilt involved anyway...

Spiders Revisited: Part 1

Last night, as I was putting the girls to bed, Madeline noticed a spider crawling on the ceiling above her.

"Mom, look! A SPIDER!" she said, quite composed given the circumstances. (Perhaps it has not occurred to her just yet that spiders can fall.)

"Oh, let me grab a glass to catch it in. Pull your covers over your head so it doesn't fall on you," I said. (I just love how wide her eyes can get!)

I got the glass, came back and climbed up on her bed. (She has the upper loft of the girls' bedroom set so I can pretty much touch the ceiling when standing on her bed.) The spider fell pretty quickly into the glass. That is when I noticed there was just a little bit of water on the bottom of the glass in which the spider took a swim.

I carefully climbed down from Madeline's bed, onto Lily's bed. Lily was watching intently, covers pulled close to her chin. (She apparently understands the full potential of falling spiders!)

"Hey Lily, do you want me to pour this spider on you?" I teased.

"NOOOOOO!" she screeched, pulling the covers a little tighter.

"I'm just teasing, " I assured her. And then, as if on cue, the spider JUMPED OUT OF THE WATER, OUT OF THE GLASS and right onto Lily's covers!

"EEEEEEEEEK!" she screamed.

Doh. Didn't see that comin'!

If the Shirt Fits....

Hee hee,

if the shirt fits....

This and That

Lembas-a special, extra nutritious bread made by the elves that is often used as sustenance on long journeys. For the hobbits, one bite could keep them full for hours.


Said the neurologist to Liam: "What a happy little elf you are!" (Ok, that's a paraphrase.) "What brings you to see me?"

"Well, he has had growth issues and developmental delays so our doctor is sending us all over to see if we can better figure it out," I explained.

She proceeded to weigh and measure Liam and, after deciding she is not comfortable with the tininess of his head, ordered a sedated brain MRI (scheduled for the day before Thanksgiving) in order to rule out any possible malformations. Good times.

We also discussed the possibility of going to the special Feeding Clinic here in order to figure out how we can enhance Liam's diet to help him grow better. I am guessing they will simply tell us to stop feeding him the lembas and instead, replace it with homemade chocolate frosted chocolate cupcakes which he so eagerly inhaled at Madeline's 5th birthday party....so much for keeping in touch with those elfin roots but hey, we found something the kid will eat...finally!

Speaking of Madeline's birthday, she had a wonderful weekend filled with family visiting from Florida and a party with about a dozen little preschool girls. At the beginning of her party we had all the girls color fairy posters to use as place mats. One of the girls walked in, saw the others coloring and announced:

"I don't want to color because I don't really like coloring."

"Oh, you don't like coloring?" I questioned.

"No," she said. "I like roosters."

"Uh, what did you say?" I asked.

"I like roosters!" she said again before running off to color.

"Oooooooh," I said, thinking 'because THAT makes sense...but it's totally making the blog!'