This Week...Where Do I Begin?

Saturday

A. had a bad cold accompanied by a fever, and had slept terribly for several nights in a row. D. got up with her in the morning and let me sleep for another hour or so, which helped tremendously.

I took J. to Piano Student Achievement Day, where they are tested in 4 areas: Performance, Auditory Awareness, Theory and Sightreading. (She got her results today and she scored 93.5 out of 100! ) When we got home, we decided to go downtown as a family and have dinner and visit a used bookstore. A new Mexican restaurant opened recently, Senor Lopez' Taqueria, and it is very good authentic Mexican cuisine (something there was a dearth of in Ann Arbor prior to this restaurant, although almost every other ethnicity, including Ethiopian, is represented) so we went there. There were 4 tables open when we arrived, each seated 4, and 2 were next to one another. Unfortunately the waitperson who seated the couple in front of us was oblivious to the fact that a large group was behind them, because she gave them one of the 2 adjacent empty tables. When she asked us how many, and we said 8, she looked confused and walked away. This was repeated 2 more times with 2 other waitpeople. Finally one came back and said we'd have to wait until a table opened up and they would push 2 together. We ogled the other patrons and cheered every time a table emptied until we were seated. The service was unfortunately very slow, and so we had eaten 4 baskets of chips and spilled 2 sodas (spilled by older and younger D., respectively, ages 42 and 12--not the little kids) by the time the food came. We scarfed it down, but now it was dark and colder, so we scratched the bookstore idea and stopped at a coffee shop with live music to listen for a little while. A. was getting fussy and had been not nursing well all day, latching on and pulling off repeatedly and often refusing the right side, so I was glad to get home.

Sunday

Another rough night with A., but again D. let me sleep in.

After church, we decided to go on another family outing, and went geocaching. We were successfull, even in the snow, and discovered a neat small area of public forest to roam in. We had to hurry home because D. had a soccer game.

That evening our church was having the first of 3 peformances by a man named Mark Price, whose ministry is traveling and bringing several biblical characters to life. He was doing Simon Peter that night at 7pm and I wanted to go. I had to take everyone with me because big D. had taken young D. to his soccer game, but the church was offering free childcare so I thought it would be OK. I didn't have dinner ready quickly enough and by the time everyone ate and donned their winter garb, got buckled into their seats and we arrived and disembarked, it was 7:15pm. I peeked in the door and it was a full house, and the performance was underway. It would have been horribly disruptive to troop in and climb over people to sit down, so we went home.

Sunday night A. coughed continuosly, keeping both of us awake most of the night.



Monday

No sleeping in on a Monday morning.

I made a dr. appt. for A. She had ear infections in both ears, which I'd suspected due to the fussy nursing. Useful information, but since they won't treat them unless they are severe, didn't really change anything. The nurse practicioner told me that she is too young for cough medication, but that she could take Benadryl before bed to dry her up and help her cough less.

The second night of the Mark Price ministry featured him acting out Judas. I went alone this time, got there early and got a seat well before it began. It was very moving. The performance was supposed to be followed by Reconciliation (formerly known as Confession). Our priest and 3 visiting priests would be stationed in different spots around the church and we would take turns confessing to them. However, there was a major snowstorm going on, and after the performance our priest announced that in view of the weather, and the large number of people and small number of priests, he felt it would be most prudent to perform a Communal Reconciliation, where he a said a prayer and then absolved all of us of our sins at once. A freebie! I was elated: absolution without face to face confession.

I went home, directly to bed, dosing my sweet baby with both Tylenol and Benadryl, and we both slept like babies that night.

Tuesday

Snow day!!

Halfway through the day the phone rang, and it was our vet. "Are you missing something?" they asked. Spot had run away again, was apparently picked up by a Good Samaritan and taken to the sherriff station, where they were unable to identify him using his license (?1?)

The Good Samaritan then took him to the nearby vet, who happened to be our vet. They recognized him as a client, but had to call and find out who the owner was from the license.

When I got there, I told them I needed an appointment for Heidi for her rabies shot and for Spot because he's been scratching his ears and we thought he had ear mites. She looked in his ears, said he had an ear infection, and charged me $35 for a tube of cream and an office visit.

In the afternoon we played board games and ate popcorn while K. napped. Later we had a nice family dinner with strawberry shortcake for dessert.