Tonight, I went to Pepper's seventh grade production of The Diary of Anne Frank.  I knew he was memorizing the lines for Miep Gies, the woman who helped the Frank family get supplies and food while they were in hiding, but I guess I never realized that he would be playing a WOMAN in the actual play.

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing when he took the stage in drag.  Then, I was horrified for him.  But, nobody snickered at all in the whole room.  I guess cross-dressing is no big deal to these seventh grade students and their parents.

Tonight, I hosted my book club.  We read Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, and apparently I was the only one who liked it.

I thought the emotions were raw and the storytelling very clever.  The rest of my group thought it was depressing and long-winded, with unlikable characters.

So there you go.  Is that a recommendation, or what?

After partying all weekend, we finally wrapped up the birthday celebrations tonight on Adam's real birthday with a spaghetti dinner and cupcakes and ice cream.

Happy birthday, Bubba-La!  I can't believe you're 11!!  

 

 Adam got an iPod Touch for his birthday, and you can see he didn't even remove the ear buds to blow out his candles.  I have a feeling all future shots of Adam will include the ear buds.

Sorry to post a picture of food - again - on my blog.  I really am against people who post recipes with perfectly-lit photos of each step of the preparation, and a final, blurry-background-and-highlighted-finished-product photo of their culinary creation.

 Because to me, food is just one more chore. 

But, since I spent all day in bed feeling lousy and growling at everybody, these cupcakes are the only accomplishment worth noting:

Adam's birthday is tomorrow, so of course I had to make cupcakes for his class.  I tried to be fancy with the frosting, but I really just made a mess.  But any mess made with buttercream icing is still a win, in my opinion.

When I asked Adam what he'd like to have for breakfast on his sleepover, he very definitively requested pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs.  So, that is what I made.

Neither Adam nor I expected that to be any big deal - in fact, we both thought the boys would gobble it right up.  I guess we didn't realize how American that breakfast is, because none of the boys at the sleepover had ever had a breakfast like that before.  And, with the exception of one boy from England, who was so excited to finally try "stacking pancakes" (he'd only had crepes before), the boys did not love it.

We had to show the boys how to prepare their pancakes, and they all suspiciously tasted the maple syrup before they'd pour it on their plates.  Some of them preferred to dip their pancakes in ketchup, which I'd put on the table for the eggs.  One boy gave up all together and asked very sheepishly if he could have some toast with Nutella.

I guess that just goes to show that there really is no such thing as Normal.

Tonight, Adam had some friends over for a sleep-over to celebrate his 11th birthday coming up on Monday.  We ate pizza and a big chocolate cake, then Brad packed them all into the car to go bowling.

I'm going to enjoy the next hour or so of quiet before they come back.  This could be a long night.

When I woke Lukie up for school this morning, he moaned and told me he had a bad headache.  Well, I was pretty sure he was faking, but I figured that with the crazy week we'd had, it would be OK for him to stay home and have a mental health day.

Well, the joke was on me when it turned out that Luke really was sick.  He sat in this chair all day with rosy cheeks, glazed-over eyes, and a wretched fever.  Sorry for doubting you, Schmuke.

I am so lucky to have great friends.  I have a lot of them, and maybe it's unfair to focus on just one, but today I'm especially appreciative of my girl Denise.

Last week when we found out about Pepper, I emailed Denise to tell her I wouldn't be able to go to our Girls' Night Out on Thursday (Denise is the cruise director of our group here - she is so good to plan these things for us).  Well, she took the news about Pepper and ran with it.  That afternoon, she went to a pizza place, ordered and paid for pizza for my kids at home, and arranged to have it delivered at dinnertime.  Then, she tried to apologize that it wasn't a home-cooked meal (another friend of hers had a child going in for an emergency tonsillectomy, so she was running to go pick up that friend's daughter to babysit while the parents were with their sick child).

Then, on Friday, she showed up in our hospital room with her two little kids in tow.  This was no small feat - she had to find parking and figure out what room we were in and find the correct building in a massive hospital, all without speaking German.  And she did this while dragging along her little kids.  At dinnertime.

Not only did she come, but she came bearing gifts.  Somehow, she had a stash of little games and puzzles that she gave to Pepper to help pass the time.  She also had a stack of People magazines for me to read (People is my guilty pleasure).

And then yesterday, when she knew we would be coming home, she came by my house with this big bouquet of tulips and another issue of People (she knows me so well).

We weren't here when she came by, so she left this in our garage.  She called to tell me to go look in the garage, but I was too scatterbrained to do it until today.  When I found these waiting for me in my pig-sty garage (I'm a little sorry you had to see that, Denise), I let out a squeal of delight because they are just so cheerful and huge and perfect.  Let me also mention that when I saw Denise at  lunch, she had a case of the pink eye and wasn't feeling very well.  Yet, somehow, she was thinking of me.  Every time I pass by this bouquet, I get warm fuzzies.

(Denise, I know you are reading this and probably feeling all embarrassed.  But I hope there is a piece of you that is pleased with some well-deserved recognition.  You're beyond awesome.)

I hate to brag, but I am really good at picking friends.

 We're home!

Pepper was released from the hospital today about noon, and we were thrilled to pack up the car and put Westend Hospital in our rear view mirror.  He will stay home from school  for the rest of the week so I can watch him and make sure all is well with his insulin doses and the doctor will call us every night to check his sugar levels, but WE ARE HOME!!

I have gotten many, many emails, phone calls, etc, from friends and family too far away to do anything besides pray for us.  Lest you think from my negative tone that your prayers for us have gone unanswered, I have compiled a list of the things your prayers brought us:

* THE PRIVATE ROOM!!

* a very chipper, English-speaking nurse who took care of us for the last three days

* the doctor changing his mind about making us stay in the hospital for 10-12 days.  Seriously, a German "expert" changing his mind is truly a miracle.

* the fact that all this happened while Brad was in town and not at all busy with work.  He was able to work from home while Pepper and I were in the hospital, so he was there to keep things normal for the other kids.

* how well Pepper has adjusted to his "new normal".  He is able to give himself injections and figure out the correct dosage for his insulin.  I was really worried about this, because it involves a lot of multiplication and that is hard for him.  But, he has caught on surprisingly quickly.

* that I haven't slit my own wrists.

* even with me gone most of the week and therefor unable to wield my whip, Jessica buckled down and finished her 10th grade project, which has been a source of much stress and contention for the last few weeks.

* that sweet Beatrice happened to be visiting us at the hospital when I was summoned down to the front desk to clear up some registration red tape.  Having her there to translate made an otherwise impossible situation just fine.

* more visitors than I ever would have expected.  We had so many people from our ward come to see us, as well as some from the school.  A couple of times, there were so many visitors that we had to leave the hospital room door open and spill out into the hall.  Even non-English-speaking ward members came, and we could do hardly more than hug and smile at each other, but their presence meant that they understood this was hard and they were behind us.  There is no way to explain how much it meant to us to see friendly faces in the middle of all the stress.  I am tearing up just thinking about the people who showed up to share my burden.

So, thank you for the prayers.  I am sure they did more than I even noticed.
 I certainly felt them.

Today we took another walk through the hospital grounds so I could get some photos of the awesome statues everywhere.  Some of them are truly mind-blowing.

Um...really?

These are the mutant statues that don't make any sense to me.  Are we supposed to feel better that the hospital considers these fair representations of the human body?

This one gave Jessica a case of the giggles when she saw it for the first time.

We also walked around "reading" the plaques situated around the grounds.  Since they were all in German, we really just looked at the pictures.

I had to snap a photo of this old picture of the pediatric ward from 1910.  I especially like the little guy front and center sitting on his potty.  Could they not have waited for him to finish his business before taking the picture?

Tonight, Pepper was delighted when a bunch of the Young Men from our ward came by to visit him.  When we opened the door to our room and saw this crowd of young men, so handsome in their suits, I nearly burst into tears.  It meant the world to Pepper to have these guys take the time to come see him.

 

Oh, sweet mother of everything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy - 

WE HAVE OUR OWN ROOM!!

Finally, a single room became available, and it was with much rejoicing that Pepper and I moved all our stuff again into OUR OWN ROOM!!

With my little cot next to his bed, you can see that our room is wall-to-wall beds, but we don't care.  It makes all the difference to be able to close the door on the Scary German Hospital and feel snug and safe in our own space.

Plus, we got the okay to go home on Tuesday, rather than Friday or Saturday.  Pepper is doing so well, and I have enough experience with carb counting and insulin, so the doctor said we didn't need to stay so long.  Hurray!

Brad brought the kids to see us, and Adam and Luke made artwork to wish Pepper well.

You can see that Adam made a very sweet note wishing Pepper would get well soon, and Luke started off nice with a picture of himself giving Pepper (in a bed) some flowers.  But, I had to laugh at his second drawing of a skull and crossbones.  Nothing says "Get Well Soon" like a Jolly Roger!

This morning, we hit an absolute low in this whole experience.  

Yesterday, our first little roommate was discharged, so we had a few blissful hours of our own room.  But, last night we got a new roomie in the form of a little Vietnamese girl (about a year old) with diarrhea and a bad fever who was deathly afraid of all nurses.  So, every time a nurse came in for any reason, she would scream and scream.  Since she needed some care, and Pepper's nurse was coming in every two hours to check his blood sugar, we had nurses in and out of our room all night long, which meant we shared a room with a hysterically wailing little girl ALL NIGHT LONG.  The poor little girl's grandma was with her trying to keep her calm, but that required her having the light on so she could take care of her.  Between the screaming and the florescent lights, Pepper and I didn't get any sleep.  At about 4 a.m., we both went into the hall and sat on some chairs there, staring into space in utter despair.  It was ugly.

At this point, all the doctors were telling us we would need to stay in the hospital for 10 to 12 days.  We requested a private room, but there were simply none available, so I felt trapped.  I was this close to  packing our bags and calling Brad to come spring us, no matter what any doctor said.  I was DONE.

Someone was looking out for us, though, and when our diabetic educator came to our room and saw the situation, she put her foot down and insisted that we have a different room (if she wasn't an obvious smoker, I would have kissed dear Frau Lauterborn on the lips).   This afternoon, we moved to another shared room, much smaller, but with a nine year old roommate who doesn't appear to be a maniacal cryer.

Because our new room is so much smaller, there isn't really any space for us to hang out comfortably.  So Pepper and I spent the afternoon going for a walk around the hospital grounds.

We also left hospital grounds (shhhhh...don't tell) and went to this grocery store to buy some snacks to supplement our hospital food (we did this with the full permission of Frau Lauterborn, who encouraged Pepper to eat what he likes and learn how to give himself the correct insulin).  When I took this photo, Pepper had just exclaimed, "I feel so free!!"

My friend Denise also came to visit us, and she put a very positive spin on Westend Hospital, which up until this point, I had hated with all my heart.  The first thing she said when she came in was, "This hospital is sooo cooool!!  It's like the Harry Potter hospital!"  With that perspective in mind, I took some pictures of the old hospital buildings and actually started to think it was kind of cool.

This is the building where we are housed.  It really does have a Hogwarts-esque vibe.

This is the view from our hospital room window.  How spooky are these hospital buildings?  And, you can't really tell from this photo, but all the statues in the square are misshapen human figures that do little to inspire confidence in this hospital's ability to restore health.

Basically, I HATE everything about this place.  It is taking everything I am made of to not run away screaming.  And to keep a fake "this-isn't-so-bad" smile plastered on my face so Pepper doesn't have a breakdown

I don't remember ever having a worse day than today.  It was way worse than eating Fish Salad.

This morning, Pepper was admitted to the hospital with type 1 diabetes. 

He has been extremely tired for the last week or so, and he would randomly throw up.  Last night, after eating Valentine's cake, he was really dragging and put himself to bed around 8:30.  By 10:00, he had been up twice to use the bathroom and it set off an alarm in my head.  So, I grabbed my meter and took his blood sugar.  It simply read "above 600" - apparently 600 is as high as my meter will measure (I'd never had a reading so high, so I didn't know there was a limit).

Well, I panicked a little.  First, I told Brad and we freaked out together in our bedroom.  Then, I grabbed a syringe and my insulin and gave Pepper a small dose of insulin (probably not the best idea, but I wasn't exactly thinking clearly).  When we checked his blood again an hour later, it was still above 600.  I was slightly more level-headed by now, so we decided to calm down and get him to the doctor first thing the next morning.

When we saw the pediatrician this morning, she sent us directly to the hospital.  She told us that this is the best pediatric diabetes center in  Berlin and that we would be well taken care of.  The idea of taking my child to a German hospital scared the bejeezus out of me, but I girded up my loins and we arrived at Westend Hospital where Pepper was admitted and he was assigned a shared room in the pediatric ward.

There was no way I could leave my boy alone there, so we made arrangements for me to stay with him.  Personally, I would have given my right arm to get away from that scary hospital and bury myself at home in my bed, and I know Pepper was at least as nervous as I was.  Plus, he needed blood drawn and all kinds of scary stuff, which wasn't made any easier by us not understanding the hospital personnel when they tried to explain what was happening.

By the time evening rolled around and I was tucked into my cot next to Pepper's hospital bed, I was so keyed up that I just wanted to vomit.  But I knew that wouldn't help my or Pepper's morale.  So, instead I just lay there and cried, trying to keep quiet so I didn't disturb our two-year old German roommate and his mother, who totally intimidated me.  It was not my finest moment.

Today, in honor of Valentine's Day, I channeled my inner Susanne and 

MADE THIS CAKE ALL BY MY VERY OWN SELF!!

As I was putting the finishing touches on the frosting, a delivery man came to my door with these flowers from Brad.  So, I was feeling very Valentine-y when I took this photo.

Then, I went into the living room and caught Luke poking holes in my leather couch with a push pin.  My mood changed abruptly.

You know those moms that love to play with their kids and are genuinely delighted to spend their time doing kid things like playing Candyland and making macaroni artwork?  Well, I'm not one of them.  I love that my kids are old enough to entertain themselves, and I am happy to let them do it.

So, when a mom from the school invited me to come over today with Adam and Luke for a play date with her two boys, I agreed with some trepidation.  The idea of spending our first day of winter break watching the boys play games and chatting with this woman that I barely know was not especially appealing.  But I agreed, because I at least want other people to think I'm a Good Mom.

 When we arrived at the play date, they had Paul Blart: Mall Cop cued up on the DVD player for our viewing pleasure.  I got to spend the next 2 hours or so watching Kevin James at his finest while the woman of the house explained to me in heavily Russian-accented English why it was so funny ("See, he not drink lemonade.  It margaritas!  You know margaritas?").

After the movie, we sat down to a traditional Russian lunch.  My perfectly nice hostess was especially pleased to present the fish salad she'd made.  Oh yes - FISH SALAD.  She even told me how she made it - herring fried with onions, a layer of mayonnaise, mashed potatoes, another layer of mayonnaise, then boiled carrots and beets, topped with more mayonnaise.  It was every bit as good as it sounds.

After lunch, I was done.  D.O.N.E.  So, I thanked her politely for having us and we left.  Unfortunately, I needed to stop at the grocery store on the way home, so I went to Kaufland with Adam and Luke (this bad decision was really all my fault.  I should know better).

When I finally got home, after spending an hour at the store wrestling two boys while I burped up reminders of the fish salad, this is what greeted me in the kitchen:

You probably can't see it, but there are sticky rice kernels all over everything.  Pepper had made his own lunch.  The table was also covered with old juice and soggy cereal in bowls.

And, everyone here had spent the afternoon watching movies, so the living room wasn't any better:

So now I am headed to my bedroom with my book and a Coke Zero.  I'm planning to close the door and issue a warning:

Tread lightly.  

Mommy had to eat Fish Salad.

This may not look like much, but this email is big news.  We got this email this morning, confirming that we will be moving to Texas this summer.

We've known for a couple of weeks now that Brad was being seriously considered for a position in the Dallas, TX branch of Daimler.  And today, it became official.  We're moving to TX.

Basically, that means we're going from "Guten Tag" to "Howdy" in 5 months.  Heilige Kuh.

 This may or may not be how I spent my whole day. 

In my defense, it was really cold outside and Brad had the car all day doing a service project for an older lady in our ward.  I'm hoping his 8 hours of service makes up for my 8 hours of lazy.

Disclaimer:  This was not the intended photo of the day.  I meant to snap a picture of the dance class at church, but got so caught up in waltzing that I forgot.  So, I was stuck with no picture at 9:30 p.m. and panicked.  I totally know this is lame.

We passed this snowman on the drive home from the dance class and I made Brad stop so I could take a picture.  This is on a round-about near our house, and since we've had snow, various snowmen have appeared in this spot.  I'm guessing this is the Janitor Snowman.

Brad has a new work-out program that he was talking about tonight at dinner.  The boys thought it sounded pretty cool, so Brad told them they could do it with him.  When 8 o'clock rolled around and it was time for Luke to go to bed, he was very sad that he wouldn't be able to work out with Dad.

Luckily, his siblings came to the rescue and led him through a few exercises.

I guess technically Lukie did work out with Dad.  Dad just participated from the comfort of his big chair and Kindle.

When we first moved here, I met my friend Susanne and learned that her sister Eva was in my old ward in Michigan.  I'd known Eva for a few years, and knowing that they were related made me like Susanne even more.

Susanne and Eva grew up in Germany, so Eva comes here occasionally with her family to remember her roots.  They are here now staying with Susanne, and tonight we went over to Susanne's to see Scott and Eva and remember our roots in the Clarkston Ward.  

I really loved seeing them and remembering the people we care about in Michigan.  Eva caught me up on some of the latest happenings in Clarkston and by the end of the evening, I felt like Michigan was right next door.  Some of my favorite people in the whole world live in that little pocket of Michigan and I will always feel like they are my family.

This little baby is my new Best Friend. 

It is a bag full of dried lavender and some grainy substance (wheat, rice, I can't tell) that stays hot when you heat it in the microwave.  I use it to warm my poor freezing feet during the cold, cold winter.

We have a stupid, archaic heating system in our house that once on, never turns off.  So, that means our house just keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter until we turn off the furnace manually.  It also means that we are paying a ton of money on heating oil every winter.  So, we try to off-set this by turning off the furnace at night before we go to bed, which makes our house really cold during the night and in the morning.

And that's where my little green bag comes in.  I often heat it up and put it in my bed down by my feet, and it usually stays warm all through the night.  It also used to smell nice - like dried lavender - but after many, many uses, it now just smells like burnt grain.

This is a common sight at our house - Adam jumping to try to touch the top of the archway.  Just about every time he passes here, he makes a jump for it.  His goal is to be able to touch it before his birthday at the end of the month.  He is actually much closer than this picture shows (try as I might, I couldn't get my timing right to snap the photo at his highest point). 

Today I was looking at Jessica's hair, which falls nearly to her waist in almost perfect waves, and I remembered a time when I didn't know if she'd ever have hair at all.

This is Jess's first set of pigtails.  It took quite a lot of doing to scrape together enough hair for those two little squiggles on either side of her head.

Of course, with a mother's bias, I thought she looked beyond adorable in her scrawny, little pigtails.  And now, with that same mother's bias, I think she is stunningly beautiful with her long, shiny hair.   

Sometimes, I really love living in my Mom's World.  Nobody pop my bubble.

“One of the very few reasons I had any respect for my mother when I was thirteen was because she would reach into the sink with her bare hands - bare hands - and pick up that lethal gunk and drop it into the garbage. To top that, I saw her reach into the wet garbage bag and fish around in there looking for a lost teaspoon. Bare hands - a kind of mad courage.”

― Robert Fulghum

 After nearly 3 years here in the Land of No Garbage Disposals, I believe I have achieved super hero status.

Before Brad left 3 weeks ago for his business trip to Toronto, one of his hometeaching families gave him this remote control helicopter.  It sat in the box, in plain sight of the boys, the whole time Brad was gone, torturing them with the promise of remote-control fun.

So when the boys got home from school today and saw that Dad was home, that box was promptly ripped open and the helicopter took its maiden voyage (I'm not sure if helicopters take voyages, but it sounded good in my mind.  Let's just go with it).  At first it kind of freaked out Pepper and Luke; it makes a high-pitched whiny sound, and it's pretty small, so it resembles a very large, vicious mosquito when it gets going.  But it wasn't long before all three (four) boys were fighting over whose turn it was to control it.

Tonight after dinner, Adam had some math homework he needed to finish.  It wasn't easy, and he wasn't too happy about it.  So, he tried yawning and making exaggerated tired noises so I'd take pity on him and send him to bed.  This is him acting like he is just too exhausted to go on.

Two words:  Drama King.

Despite an Oscar-worthy performance, Adam still had to finish the homework.  Somehow, he perked right up when he was done and I let him play his DS for a few minutes before bedtime.

Today I went through Adam and Lukie's clothes, pulling out things that don't fit and basically reorganizing their closet and drawers.  When I was done, I had three garbage bags full of clothes to give away.  It felt amazing.

Because I rearranged their dresser, I put sticky notes on the the drawers so the boys would know where their clothes go.  Adam's drawer notes are boring - I just wrote the words.  But, since Lukie can't really read yet, I drew pictures of what kind of clothes go in each drawer.

My artistic ability is staggering, I know.  But, Lukie thinks I am amazing.  He ooohed and aaaahed over each of my drawings, and giggled with glee at the thought of putting his laundry away tomorrow.

We'll see how long this lasts.