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I've talked about it a lot in the past, and now it is finally happening! I am bidding my farewell to my trusty old livejournal. I had this baby for over 4 years! It's crazy.

If you would like to keep up with my super exciting life and wonderful baby boy, Ethan, please don't hesitate to e-mail me and I will link you up with my new digs. I will not be deleting this journal, however, because there are journals on my friends list on here that I just can't imagine not reading anymore. So please don't delete me!!

LauraB2000@wyan.org

Cutest little mailman in the world!





This is the tiny face he wanted me to carve!





Oooh! I real live mailman! That would be my cousin, John :) Ethan was impressed!

I haven't had a cold like this in FOREVER! I am miserable. My throat hurts, my chest is so congested, and my head is just aching. I'm sneezing, coughing, and just feeling really blah.

Oh but last night at work, I decided I'd stay an extra 4 hours. Seriously, I am dumb. However, I am feeling a touch overwhelmed right now. We have a lot of expenses all at the same time. Our big kitchen remodel, which is only 1/3 paid for right now, Leslie's wedding in Cancun, which I still haven't booked (but I will next week), and of course, Christmas. If it wasn't all at the same TIME I could handle it better. It just seems like so much! So yeah...I plan on picking up extra hours this winter. I AM really excited for all the holidays coming up, though. I actually want to work them, because I get paid double time and a half, and it adds a huuuuuuuuuuge chunk onto my paycheck. It's awesome.

In other news, Ethan is all ready for Halloween. His mailman costume is ironed and ready to go. We have a huge bucket of candy waiting to be passed out on our table, and I only ate a little bit of it. My dog is eating a green crayon right now, and Jay and I are offically trying to have a baby...again. The first 10 months of trying were unsuccessful, so I am hoping after taking a few months "off", something will happen. And plus, Ethan wants a baby "brudder".

So this morning, while I was helping Ethan pack his toys because Jay is taking him up north today until Sunday, he started crying. And crying, and crying, and crying. And I had no idea why. It wasn't whining, it was an all out cry. And it lasted a good hour and a half, at least.

I had no idea what his deal was, but I was getting REALLY frustrated. Finally, as I was holding him, he burst out with "but who will lay with me up north??" Oh my little heart. He has a very hard time when I work. His teachers even noticed. Jay has told me that when I do too many days in a row, by the third night he is really missing me. His teachers say that on days where I worked the night before, he is just more emotional and sensitive. I had worked the previous 3 nights, and then he was leaving without me for 3 nights. I'm sure livejournal-land knows by now that I lay with Ethan at bedtime whenever I am home. And he just misses me! It seriously broke my heart. Once he got out what was upsetting him, he totally got over it and was all smiles. We talked, and I assured him that I would miss him and that we would talk on the phone. Oh, and I also got someone to pick up the last 4 hours of my shift on Sunday so I can be home to lay with him.

I love that boy more than anything in this world.

Ethan did stay home today. I actually think he is fine now, but it can't hurt. He has a lingering cough, but I think that will be around for a while. It's nearly 11 and neither of us are dressed...the perfect day!

Today starts my crazy week of working. I only have one day off from now until Sunday. Yuck!

That's all for now! I'll post some pics tonight when I get home.

Ethie-baby is sick! He is never your typical sickie, either. I have had times where I take him to the pediatrican for something else, and find out by fluke he has a raging ear infection. So he's a bit mopey, but otherwise he has been acting mostly normal. But he SOUNDS miserable. He has this wet cough and his nose is so congested. In other words? No school for him tomorrow! He's going up north with Jay on Thursday and I want him to be better for that. He is SO excited to go. I just wish he felt better, poor baby.

Today was fun. Jay said some beautiful words to me today. So beautiful, that I just may never forget them. Want to know what they were? Okay, I'll play it out for you:

Jay: Are you doing anything today?
Me: Nah
Jay: Why don't you go shopping? We need toothpaste and if you could get some bottled water for the basement, that would be cool.
Me: I don't have any cash (and mind you, I did have quite a bit of cash on me just 2 days ago...it burns a whole in my pocket like no other!)
Me (again): I could go to Target...
Jay: Just use the (insert angels voices singing right here) credit card.

Say whaaaaaaa??!

Let me break it down even easier:

Laura + Target + credit card = DISASTER and Jay knows this. He was off his rocker fo' sho'! I was like a flash of lightening after those beautiful words and dashed out the door.

In other news. I had a good heart-to-heart with myself in the car. I do my best thinking when I am driving alone, seriously. I don't know where I want to go with nursing. There are two very different paths I could choose. VERY DIFFERENT. I could go the OB path. Delivering babies is incredible. Heck, it was giving birth to ETHAN that made me think "I MUST DO THIS". Or I could do something like work in an outpatient surgery clinic where people come in, I assist with the procedure, and we send them home on their merry way. Both of these sound HEAVENLY. Truly, truly heavenly. There are so many pro's to these ways, it's not even funny.

But then! And this is where it gets hairy. I have this strange "love"...and I use that word loosely because it can come across in the wrong way... of codes. They are fast. Exciting. Crash carts...epinephrine...leads...IV access...blood pressure...ahhhh! It's crazy, fast, and again...EXCITING! Is my skill level right NOW where it would need to be to fully function in a code? Heeeeeeeeeeck no! I'm an observer at this point. But I could put myself in the situation where I could work in codes a lot. I could go to the ICU. Do I feel ready for ICU? GOD NO. I am scared out of my mind. I'm just not ready. But I WANT to be ready! I get such a rush when we have someone crashing (again, I know that sounds so wrong...) Trust me, I have shed tears during an emergency, and I have hugged families that are losing their loved one. I don't WANT people to crash, but when it happens, I want to be there to bring them back.

What to do...it's weighing on my mind BIG TIME lately. I want to find a niche and run with it. If I do the OB our outpatient surgery type thing, that's where I will stay for the rest of my carreer. If I go the ICU route, my DREAM would be to be the ICU charge nurse and go to codes and rapid responses on other floors and help them out. Then maybe from there, I could be a CRNA and make the BIG bucks. But if I choose that route, that is the route I am taking and it will be my lifelong plan.

I am leaning towards the ICU route. What's holding me back is there is a TON more learning and a lot more schooling, too. I'm not ready for that. But I can make myself ready. I have pushed myself more in these past two years than I ever have in my entire life. What makes me think I can't do it more??

Long day, fun evening!

First and most important, Ethan's eyes are perfect. No problems at all (other than his left eye being weak). Such a relief and I am so glad we got it checked out. He was mad at me, as I knew he would be, but he was a trooper and did just fine.

Lucy is majorly mad at me. Let's just say on the way TO the vet, she was all happy and bouncing around in the car. On the way HOME from the vet, she was so worn out, she slept. They think she has allergies (good Lord) which is why she is so itchy all the time. She was searched top to bottom for fleas and none were found. So she's on a steroid to tame her itchiness and yeah...that's that. Oh, and she got her cheeks squeezed and I know she felt majorly violated. I won't go into any more details than that, and trust me, you don't want me to. Jay and I lightly refer to it as a "cheek squeezing" because the real words for it is just disgusting.

After all that madness, we went out to dinner and then my mom and I took Ethan through a haunted house that had "friendly monster" night. Ethan was super nervous even though it really wasn't scary. I had to carry him and he had this death grip on me. But on the way home, he kept telling me how awesome it was and how he wants to do it again tomorrow. Ethan is all about Halloween. If Ethan goes to your house and you don't have decorations, he will not forget it and he will ask you a gazillion times when you plan on getting some.

That's all. My whole little family is getting a cold so I'm off to do some reading and hopefully get some sleep.

It's amazing how good a full night of sleep can make you feel. I have been fighting off a sore throat and just feeling yucky for a couple of days. I took some Tylenol PM last night at around 7:30, crashed with Ethan in his bed, and slept an AMAZING 11 hours. If only I could sleep that wonderfully all the time.

Tomorrow is a full day. Lucy (our dog) has a vet appointment. I'll maintain her privacy and not go into details about her concerns. I'm going to feel really bad because she loves to go on car rides, but when she realizes she's at the vet, she starts shaking and sheds all her fur. Sorry, puppy.

Ethan has his eye doctor appointment tomorrow afternoon, where I get to learn that I am a paranoid momma who ALREADY doesn't sleep at night so I need one less thing to worry about. He will ALSO hate me, because I still haven't even told him we are going, and they are going to have to put eye drops in his eyes and he HATES when they "squirt water in his eyes."

Good night!

I'm tired...what's new. I hate feeling this way. I can't sleep at night, then during the day, all I want to do is sleep. I have sleeping pills, which work, but they don't make me any less tired during the day. What's the use?

Ethan has been very emotional at school. His teachers asked me if anything was going on at home. They know I work afternoons, and it sounds ridiculous, but I noticed a change in Ethan ever since I started working, which was back in February. I'm off tonight and tomorrow and I am curious to see if it changes how he is at school. To me, none of this is surprising, as I know how he can be emotionally. He's very sensitive to things that shouldn't be a big deal.

Speaking of Ethan, he has another eye doctor appointment on Friday. I'm not even going to tell him until we are in the parking lot. I hate to do that to him, but he hates the eye doctor so much, and I just don't feel like having him worry about it all the way up until Friday. The reason he is going is because yesterday Jay's cousin showed me a picture she took of Ethan, and in the picture in one of his eyes, it has a big white circle in the middle, and in the other eye it just has the typical "red eye". This can be a sign of retinoblastoma. My first instinct when I saw the picture was 'that does not look right' so I called his eye doctor first thing. They want to see him, just to be sure. In the back of my mind, I KNOW he is fine. But I also know I won't relax until it's confirmed that it's nothing.

Work was absolutely crazy last night. When is it NOT crazy? ...but last night was especially crazy. It started out great. My group was good and I was right on the ball with getting things done. When I got back from dinner, I heard another nurse said that she was going to call the house physician because one of her patients was getting a little bit confused and she was fine earlier in the shift. Whenever there is an emergency, the nurses around the nurse having the crisis usually stop what they are doing and help. In this case, I was helping. The house physician gets there and they call a rapid response (I know I've talked about this before...it's a pre-code... the patient is going bad and we need to get them to the ICU where they have the means to help them). At this point, the lady is no longer responding to us. Her arms are flailing severely. We can't get a blood pressure on her. All the people involved in a rapid response (respiratory therapist, ICU charge nurse, house physician, cardiac nurse) make arrangements for her to go to the cardiac floor (ICU was full). As we're preparing her to go, she goes into a decerebrate posture. I don't know a whole lot about neuro problems, but I know this is BAD. It indicates something going on with her brain. Most at this point are thinking she had a major stroke. Everyone goes back into action, and she is intubated at the bedside. A CT of her head is ordered stat. Long story short, she had a MASSIVE bleed on her brain. So severe, it was causing her brain to herniate (basically, there was so much pressure on her brain, it was slipping down the base of her skull). Insane. Sad. I have no idea the outcome of her, but I don't expect anything good. Needless to say, that took a ton of time.

So that's all that is going on in my little life. I should do some cleaning and I need to figure something out for dinner.

Two weeks into preschool, and Ethan has found a love interest. That was fast, if I do say so myself. I saw the warning signs the first week, when whenever I'd ask him who he played with he'd say "the girl with the glasses". I thought, in my naive mommy mind, that he was singling her out because she had glasses and he had glasses.

Week two, "girl with the glasses" got a name. Hayley. Hayley is talked about A LOT in our home. Little scenario for you:

The other day I was picking Ethan up from school and he walks out all sulking and sad looking. Anyone that knows Ethan knows this walk. He does it a lot. So my first thought was "Oh God, what did he do?" but he cut right to the chase. "Momma, I didn't wisten." What do you mean you didn't listen? "I was standing in wine and the kid behind me was pokin' me in my back and it made me mad so I moved off the green star and stood by the table." What did the teacher do? "She said "E-fen, you need to stand on the green star." Who was poking you in your back? "Hay-wee". Just then, in the middle of our conversation, and we were just getting to the part about what he SHOULD have done, this adorable little girl (with glasses!) comes RUNNING up to Ethan, gets real close to his ear and says, "Meowmeowmeow" and runs away. Ethan's sad, pathetic face takes a change as he looks up at me with this sly little smile on his face. It was then that I knew he was in love.

Then our conversation continued at Ethan's prompting. "I wasn't the only kid that didn't wisten. Another kid didn't wisten at story time and the teacher said "you need to use your wistening ears." Oh yeah? Do you know the name of the kid that got in trouble? "Yeah, it was Hay-wee" Doh!

Then another morning, Ethan was in a bad mood. He didn't want to go to school, but of course, I made him. We get there and he's just standing there next to me quietly, while we want for the door to open. All of a sudden, a van door slides open and out comes the love of his life, in a whirl-wind of girly energy, and she bee-lines straight for Ethan. My first thought was "Oooooooh God...here we go...everyone is going to get to see Ethan's morning crabbiness!" He doesn't even like if people LOOK at him when he's in a bad mood. So anyhow, she zooms up to him, tickles his belly in a fierce way, all the while, I have my eyes clinched shut, just bracing for the "DON'T TOUCH ME!" that I just KNEW was going to come out of my sweet boys mouth. I didn't hear anything, so I slowly opened my eyes and there was that darn goofy grin on his face. "Hay-wee" can do no wrong in the eyes of Ethan.

I think this preschool thing is going to be a good thing. Ethan needs a lot of emotional maturing. Mentally, he is so there. The boy is practically reading now. But emotionally, he is way behind. In social situations, he has no idea how to express himself. I think his teachers saw a bit of that this week when apparently Ethan and... guess who... Hayley... were found playing with each others glassess. The teacher told them to give them back and to put them on their faces. Hayley did. Ethan became one with the carpet and remained that way throughout all of story and calendar time. We will get there, day by day. But then again, I really don't hold my breath TOO much, because I mean, my HUSBAND is 26, almost 27 and I still have to prep him before going into social situations. It's a boy thing, I think. And if we dwelled on it too much, NONE of them would have gotten past preschool, am I right?

It all started after my doctor realized I had never had any blood work short of a finger stick. I got the big ol' poke in the AC just for the heck of it. It was then that I got the call from my doctor saying my iron was severely low and we needed to find out why. Long story short...I'm a celiac. Yippee freakin' skippy. So I go along with my life. Get pregnant, and realize after Ethan is born that I am depressed, anxious beyond all get out, and I require more sleep than I ever needed before. More blood work. More news. This time my B-12 is dangerously low and my thyroid is way OVER active. I get some B-12 shots, I do a day long thyroid work up. I'm told I have to wait it out. Few months later, I am still super tired. Get more blood work. B-12 is still working against me, and now I have Epsein Barr Virus working on me. I can't win! ...or wake up! So I start taking Cymbalta and sleeping pill and that regulates me to some degree. Then right around now rolls around and I am concerned with my well-being being determined by pills. This is working but it can't be good if I want to make a baby. My body is saying "hellllllllllllllllllll no!" So I go back to the doctor. This was the grand daddy of all blood work. She looked at everything under the sun. I get the results today. My B-12 is suuuuuuuuuuper low. I MUST do monthly shots for a few months before even TRYING to get pregnant. But then...my tryglycerides are elevated (WHAT?) and my bilirubin is high. Something tells me she might think I am a big drinker, and that is quite the opposite, in fact. Unless there is hidden alcohol in my rootbeer that no one ever told me about. How freaking weird is that? She's going to send me for more extensive blood work to check all this out and see what the deal is.

The lesson I learned? Don't get bloodwork. It's never good news. At least it never has been for me.

I sincerely love my job. And I am so glad that I can even say that.

Yesterday (technically two days ago, but to me, it's still Thursday) I had two rapid responses. A rapid response is basically a pre-code. The patient is going bad, and we need to get them to the ICU before they get worse. There is only so much we can do on a general medical floor. Anyhow, since I have been on my own, I haven't had any emergencies. The first one, I had a patient coming in from the ER. He was coming in for a broken hip. I was sitting at the front desk, doing some work when I saw a patient get wheeled by on a stretcher. My first thought was "ugh, he looks like he's in rough shape" and then he got wheeled into my room! Shoot....this was MY problem. He was shaking terribly, he was mumbling jibberish, and his color was just BAD. I called the charge nurse in and her first reaction was the same as mine. We got the house physician there stat, and he started giving me all these orders. In the meantime, I had to call the patients primary physician to update him on all of this. While I am in the middle of all these phone calls, the nurses aide comes in and says "I know you are really busy right now, but your patient down the hall is saying she is light-headed, dizzy, and her heart rate is 140." Uhhhhh. Shoot again. The charge nurse tells me to go check that patient out, and she will stay with this one. Needless to say, both people were okay in the end (the first one had a bad reaction to morphine, and the second lady got transfered to the cardiac floor) but it took me the rest of the night to get everything sorted out. It. was. exhausting!

Today I was super busy, too. I got another patient from the ER who had a really low blood pressure (80/60) and I ended up having to give her a bolus of fluids, but she was also fine. Just dehydrated. I had 3 different patients give me REALLY nice compliments, and stuff like that makes it all worthwhile. It is such a rewarding job. I get so much fulfillment out of it.

That's all for now! My allergies are driving me insane right now so I took some Benedryl and I am headed to bed.

I am so behind in pictures! Ethan's first day of preschool was today! He did wonderful. Of course, I was right there with him :) The first day the parents go, too. It was really cute! Anyhow..here are the pictures from today.

He was SO EXCITED.




His locker


He looks so LITTLE!



Checking out the toys...he was impressed!

Ethan and I had a "date" today. A day-long date, just him and I. More on that later.

Our date ended so perfect, though, when I was laying in bed with him (as I always do if I'm not working) and we were talking about our day. He has been really scared of different things lately, one of them being monsters in his room. I always tell him that there are no monsters, only angels. He usually likes this response and doesn't ask further questions.

Tonight he did.

Ethan: Momma, what are angels?
Me: They stay close by to you, watch over you, and make sure you are always safe.
Ethan: Oh! So YOU are an angel, momma?


Best. baby. ever.

If there is one thing that is amazing to me since I became a nurse, it's that I have yet to get sick. I must have amazing immunity right now. MRSA doesn't stand a chance! However, I do think that I will stay up to date on my immunizations and titers.

The reason I say this is because I really really believe in the power of touch. I hate wearing gloves (although I do, when needed) because I feel like it is insulting to my patients. Again...I wear them when it is a safety issue, either to myself, or others, but I don't wear them for everything involving touch, because I can always wash my hands. It's instinct for me to touch them. Today I walked into a hospice patients room, and the first words out of my mouth when I saw this pale, thin old woman laying in bed unresponsive was "I remember her!" I had this woman as a patient just a few weeks prior and although she was a little confused, she was up, walking, and talking. After the shock of her condition wore off, and I realized that she wasn't able to verbally respond to me, I just sat by her and rubbed her arms.

A big moment for me when I was doing my pediatric rotation that made me realize that pediatrics wasn't for me was when I had a baby who was maybe 15 months old who had basically been in the hospital her entire life with one issue or another. Her family rarely visited her and she became so used to just laying in that awful hospital crib until someone would come in to interact with her. Because of this, she was WAY behind in her developmental milestones. This baby was SICK. I wasn't even assigned to care for her that day, but I went in her room, which was empty except for her, picked her up, and held her super close. I rubbed her naked little back and had her cheek pressed up against mine. It was instint to mother her and I even kissed her on the top of her head without thinking twice about it. I knew then that I would get WAY too attached to these kids, and it would make my job extremely difficult.

So yeah. That's my little tangent for tonight. It was just something I noticed. And it's strange, too, because I'm not a real touchy person normally. Just with my patients.

In other news...we had quite the experience tonight. One of my favorite co-workers came up to me and said that one of HER patients was refusing her as a nurse and asked if I would take over. I agreed. But then I got more report on this patient and learned she had a lot of psych issues. She was very demanding and paranoid. And her mannerisms were extremely child-like. I could tell the other nurse was about ready to lose her mind, so I went down to the room and spoke with the person. I told her that she needed to lower her voice and watch her words, as we had a lot of sick people around her, including a hospice patient that wasn't doing well, and her behavior was inappropriate. I also told her that we would get her some water and she could take a little break in either her room or in the waiting room while we got things sorted out. This suggestion made her go ballistic. She was then refusing anyone in our hallway to be her nurse. So I asked her if she planned on leaving. If she won't take a nurse, then what was the plan, ya know??? So I called my charge nurse who called the nursing supervisor. At this point, the patient was so freaking LIVID (over WHAT? I'm not sure yet!) that she took off. I ran after her and said that all of her belongings were still in her room. Her response? "I'll get new things!" Uh. Okay. So we documented the HECK out of that case (because you KNOW in the end it'll be our fault) and put the case to rest. Oh but guess what? Guess who was in the ER at 11:30 that night?

That's what kills me about my job. If a doctor won't give a patient their med of choice (dilaudid!) then the patient threatens to leave. Okay? So go...go get yourself some Tylenol...no wait! Make that EXTRA STRENGTH Tylenol...you'll really show them!

I think I needed to vent ;)

I'm an idiot. I thought my last two entries just vanished, but then I realized it was my accidental doing, after I almost did it again. I am in the process of printing out my livejournal, since a huge part of it is about Ethan. I'm not sure what I'll do with it once it's completely printed, but I have some ideas.

So! To summerize my last entry, basically I was saying how I've been kinda crabby lately (but that's getting better), Jay and I aren't sure what to do with the house, since the market is only getting worse and we found out in order to get a home equity loan, our house has to be off the market for 6 months and that would mean 6 months of doing NOTHING, and we have been trying to have another baby for forever and it's just not happening as fast as it did with Ethan and we're getting impatient. With EThan, I was pregnant within 6 weeks of being off the pill. I'm going on month 11 right now.

Work is going wonderful and I love love love my job. I have the sweetest patients for the most part and it makes every minute I am there so worthwhile.

I have also given myself nightmares over just general health problems. My floor is oncology, so most of our patients are SICK. We also have hospice. I have seen way more ways I hope I DON'T die than ways I hope I do. Some people leave this world with so much fear, it just haunts me. I can't even imagine.

Oh and I don't know if I ever posted about my thumb injury. I was cutting an apple with a HUGE knife (shut up, I already got yelled at for that) and sliced a nice 'c' shape on the pad of my left thumb. The LOOK of it was worse than what it actually was, and in my haste of trying to get ready for work, I became a crying mess. It was a definite "I need my mom" kind of moment, and unfortunately, mom was out of town. So Jay comes home, takes a look at it and says I probably need stitches (even though now he teases me for the lack of severity of it) so I take my upset self to express care. They decided to glue it shut since it was a flap and the sides were closed. So I had that issue for a few weeks. Now it is just a big scar, but it's still really sore. So then today, I grab the SAME KNIFE to cut some potatoes and this time I cut the OTHER side of the SAME THUMB...right through my nail. It has been throbbing all day. If you ask me, I should just amputate the dumb thumb and get it over with, but I figure I'll just do that the next time I go to cut something.

I think that's all for now. Anyone wanna buy our house?

Anyone seen my last two entries? What the heck, LJ?

Tomorrow is September 11. Crazy.

I remember that day vividly. It all actually happened while I was at U of M in my psychology class. Then after that, I went to my political science class and the professor said something about his wife being upset because there was a big HELICOPTER crash. That's honestly what we thought it was for the next 2 hours. After class was over, I'd meet up with Kristen, Linsey, and Nate for lunch and word was spreading FAST. We knew it was something huge. And we knew it was something scary. But no one knew the details. "Terrorist" was thrown around a lot and I didn't really understand what that meant. The 4 of us ate lunch together and as I was walking to my afternoon class, my mom called me to see if I was okay and to see if I understood what happened. That was when I got scared. WAS I safe? I just wanted to go home. So I did.

In Ethan's precious life, he doesn't know hate on this big of a scale. He doesn't realize that there are people that he will encounter that will make him very sad, very angry, and very scared. And I won't always be right there with him to tell him it is okay, and that makes me nervous for him. My parents did an amazing job of making me feel loved and accepted regardless, which is why when I left campus that day, I knew they wouldn't mind. They wanted me safe, and I was feeling really scared and unsure. I hope I can give Ethan that same sense of knowing that he can always come home to me.


....unless it's soccer practice.

Back to being serious. So yeah. Tomorow is my day off and we'll embrace it. I will tell him about September 11. And then we will go visit Uncle Frank, Cracker, and Uncle Chuck at the cemetary. I don't get sad at the cemetary because I know the part about these people we truly loved the most are their souls, and their souls are in our hearts and in heaven. Even Ethan can tell you that.

(Edited to add... "Cracker" is the name Jay's neice, Savannah, gave Jay's Grandpa when she was just a baby. It was her way of saying Grandpa and it stuck. She's almost 11 now and all the great-grandkids still use it)

Tomorrow is a wonderful day for remembering. And remember we will.

He has to wear glass now AND play soccer? I am the meanest mom in the world!

We still haven't broken the news to Ethan that he will definitely be going back to soccer on Saturday. Me, my mom, dad, and sister all played soccer with him the other day and he had a great time. He's actually really good, too! I think once he gets used to it, he'll be fine. I refuse to let him be a quitter this quickly, though. I promise him, if he never comes around with this, I WON'T sign him up next year :)

In other news, he is doing fabulously fabulous and I just adore him. Every night when I come home from work, I have to FORCE myself not to crawl into bed with him. I miss him when I work. He waited months for this new Thomas movie to come out, so yesterday we had McDonald's together, then we went to Toys R Us to get it. He was SO excited! We also got his backpack for school. He picked out a Cars one. It's seriously half the size of him! I can't wait for his first day of school. I want to think of a clever way to take his first day of school pictures so if anyone has a cute idea, let me know!

I'm realizing at work that I am ridiculously patient with my patients, especially those with a history of drug abuse. However, I am ALSO coming to realize that if I am TOO patient with them, they will manipulate me, just like they probably manipulate many. Last night was the first night where I finally let them THINK I was falling victim to their "game", but in all actuality, I had the upper hand. It felt good. And I didn't leave feeling like I was walked all over all night long. The past WEEK, I have had at least one drug abuser and/or alcoholic, and they are exhausting patients to have.