time to celebrate

I predict that about 7 times while posting this, I am going to want to close the lap top and go to sleep.  I just know it. 

In the movies when there is someone sick, they never show toys, or the other kid's dirty pajamas, or candy wrappers, or one random shoe on the floor.  The room where the sick person is recovering is super clean.  The mom is never in her pajamas until 7:30 at night (I finally put clothes on so we could go for a walk), her toe nail polish isn't chipped, her eyebrows don't need serious shaping (please don't look at my toes or eyebrows the next time you see me).  The mom has on make up, and earrings, and she isn't rotating the same three shirts over and over.  Unless the movie is about a crazy family.  This is so not awesome.

I have never been so great at routine and no one has really cared but now we have to do things like make sure to stretch Maximus's hands three times a day.  And making your baby scream and cry and is so not awesome, either.  So sometimes we want to put it off.  But we always know we have to to it.  Otherwise his skin can contract and he will lose movement.  The pressure.  Right now, he is having a hard time bending his right arm so he has to tilt his head to get food in his mouth.

Look!  No bandages!  We have three bins of bandaging supplies and we don't need any of them!  We should have a bandage burning party.  This last doctor appt, there weren't any open wounds so he has moved on to compression gloves for his left and right hands now.  He wears a brace most of the day on the left and when he sleeps, he wears on on the right.   You can kind of see the donor sites on his legs where the shave off the skin to use for his hands.  They are healing so nicely.  Itchy and not for the faint hearted, but healing nicely.

Even with all the chaos, it is starting to feel more and more like a summer vacation instead of just the summer of, well, you know.  

Today was Independence Day and we celebrated so much.  Our family tradition is that Karl and I get bagels for everyone for the parade.  And us getting anything done before 8:30 a.m. is basically a miracle.  But we did it.  The parade was a lot of candy catching, bagel eating, and trying to embarrass my niece and nephew that were in the parade as much as we could.  Karl and my brother yelled my niece's name over and over super loud and stuff like, "Alex!  I know her!"  She said she felt loved.  She is.  When my nephew came by, we had a bunch of candy ready to throw at him.  

 It is always fun to run into old friends.  Especially if I can show them how well Maximus is doing now (despite his parent's chaotic ways).  I think this is the first time he has actually met this little fashionista of a girl in person, even though it was decided long ago that they would marry.  She was so cute and kept giving him candy.  

 These are all the grandkids, except the two that were in the parade that we tried our best to embarrass.  It is so hard to get Samuel to smile for a photo these days.  Is it the age?

And after all this excitement, I came home and slept for 5 hours.  I'm not even exaggerating. When people ask me how I am holding up, I can honestly say that I am fine.  But I do think it takes its toll.  I shut down like a possum and just don't want to think for a while.  Sleep is the only way, I guess.  

When I woke up, the family was in the midst of preparing quite the feast.  I wanted a happy photo of my three kids so bad on this day.  It took a lot of work.  And this was the best I got.  This is the hint of a smile that I got from Samuel.  I think I mentioned something about smiling or he wouldn't be able to do fireworks.  Something like that.

A little Instagram collage to sum up our surf n turf barbecue meal.   

My brother had some lobsters shipped in the for day.  I haven't had much experience with lobster, so this was an event for me.  I love lobster bisque.  Lobster bisque, grilled lobster, steak, corn, and garlic bread.  Not a veggie in sight.  Haha.  We were celebrating.   

One year, my brother accidentally dropped a steak on the ground right after he grilled it.  Bugged, he chucked it and it stuck up in the tree.  This year, he accidentally dropped a piece of meat, and he chucked it, and it stuck up in the tree again.  That, my friends, is how traditions are born.

 It is so fun to watch Maximus and my one year old niece interact.  She runs, he struts.   And that pretty much sums them up.

Maximus enjoying his ride-on toy.

The bigger kids enjoying their ride-on toys.

Not shown:

The dutch oven berry cobbler, the badminton games, the bubble blowing, the fridge moving (my dad took advantage of all the extra hands), the iron port party, and of course (what Samuel has been waiting for for days, hours, and then minutes), the fireworks (which Maximus did not care for at all, he wanted to be inside).  

I'll admit, I didn't realize that the fun part of life would be able to return so soon.   We seem to be doing a lot of celebrating these days.  Maybe because we are glad we aren't sitting in a hospital anymore.  Maybe we realize that in a split second, our lives can change.  Maybe it's because we weaned Maximus off Oxycodone and the spark came back in his eyes and he started eating better.  Maybe because we are mostly good at doing the fun parts of life and haven't really learned how to do the real stuff so well so this whole thing really threw us for a loop.  Yes, maybe the good us is a celebrating us.

P.S.  My prediction was off.  I only had to fight the urge to stop writing three times.