Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Summer Break

I am approaching my second solid week of medical leave with my son. This is, I believe, the longest contiguous break I've had from work since he was born and my maternity leave ended.  So far, so good.

T-man is healing up really well. He is still sore right at the surgery spot but has continued to refuse any pain medication.  The soreness only affects bathroom stops and wiping (hey, you don't want to hear about  body functions, go find another blog, LOL). He's still on a bigger-than-before dose of Miralax to make sure that nothing hurts coming out. He is about 50% in underwear, 50% in pull-ups. The extra Miralax sometimes gets things moving a bit too fast for him. Before his surgery he wore a panty-liner in his big-boys every day because the prolapse would rub and bleed through his pants. This past week, when not fighting liquid stool, his pants are staying dry and clean!

Besides that part, it's just summer break.  He can't sit in a bathtub or pool, but showers are fine, so we have gotten out the sprinklers and water guns. We decorated kites then flew them at the park. He did play at the park, but knows not to go down a slide on his bottom (yes, for once I'm telling him to go on his tummy, feet first of course).  The kids have had way more screen time than average (because what's a good old fashioned summer break without some mind-numbing couch potato time). Every morning at breakfast time they also do a couple of pages out of school workbooks (multiplication and division practice for the soon-to-be 4th grader, and a variety of reading/writing/math/clocks/time/etc sheets for the little guy). We've been to the library to sign up for their summer reading program, and collected a prize each. We went to a concert (Casting Crowns, at Six Flags, in the pouring rain and thunder).

We still have a few to-do's on our wish list to check off. Paint pottery, see a movie, go to the zoo, do some drawing.  And finish writing the novel I've been working on for 1.5 years. (Seein as how I've been known to hammer out a first draft in like 3 months, this particular story is driving me insane) I'm down to 2 scenes before I can type The End and set it aside to "rest"...I think editing this one will be a breeze because my self-editing process takes more of a fixed amount of time. Also, I abhor this story. It's either the worst thing I've ever written or it's brilliant (my money's on "worst").

I think by the follow-up visit next week that I will have little to no vacation or sick time left, so my husband will be the primary sick-day-parent for the next several months. I'm not upset with that. I'm a little sad that I'm unlikely to have enough vacation left for an actual Vacation this year, but 2.5 weeks off in June isn't bad.  Wish I could do this every year (minus the surgery of course).

1 comment:

Bethany said...

Sounds pretty fabulous (minus the actual surgery part). Glad he's doing good, and sounds like not a bad time to recoup if you have to recoup. I'm always amazed by the resilience of kids. Maybe someday I can look forward to free summer time. Probably not going back into schools, so I'll likely have the same problem with vacation, but who knows. Right now I'm kind of looking forward to the day when kids ARE in school. I know, I'll feel differently then. Throw a water balloon at your husband from me.