surprise! a long post.

This weekend, we had a surprise 13th birthday party for trent. I know I didn’t mention anything about it – I think subconsciously I thought that if I mentioned it, it could possibly get back to him and I really wanted it to be a surprise. It was poker-themed, which makes me a horrible mother. In fact, on Friday, the local radio news station was playing this story about kids being addicted to gambling over and over again and I just felt awful. Oh well.

Instead of typing out everything that went on, I’m taking some excerpts of emails I sent to my email crue, lovingly called “tender morsels” (consisting of Nicole, mark, jen o, tracey (aka scuttleslut), and tom.)

he was surprised, which surprised me. there were about 23 kids there, including girls. we sent bella away with a friend of sean's, and it was only the 3 of us adults against all those kids. we ordered 5 pizzas and cut up 5 hoagies and had some chicken fingers and chips and whatnot, and hardly anyone ate anything. they were all too busy. as soon as trent came in, we started the games. they didn't let brett or sean up all night. I had to make them let me take a break twice to clean up all the soda cans and debris and to let the poor dog out.

they loved it. I think trent liked it too, but he's not especially emotive about things like that. at the end of the night, we asked them all what their point total was, and the one with the most points and the second most points got to pick from 3 best buy gc's of different values. the winner chose randomly the highest amount - $25. but the second place girl was complaining that she wanted me to just give her the one with the most money. and not in a cute way. I told her to pick, she got the lowest amount, and she bitched and complained, loudly, for the rest of the night. luckily she was only there for another 20 mins. (she also wanted cake as soon as she came in, and sean told her we had to wait, and then we didn't have time to cut the cake until about 9:45 and the party end time was 10pm. sean asked her if she wanted cake now, since she waited patiently all night, and she goes "uh, WHY would I want cake when there's only TEN MINUTES LEFT?? duh.")

so other than super bitchy bitch face, it was great. it's good we have a dog though, because on sunday, maggie buried her face in the couch and unearthed an entire piece of pizza that had been chewed up and spit out into a napkin which was folded nicely and shoved into the couch.

oh, and you should have seen our middle room. I moved all of bella's toys upstairs, and a bunch of stuff to the basement, and we had 3 folding tables - one long one for roulette, which I manned; one small one with a poker table top on top for texas hold em, which brett manned; and one medium one for blackjack, which sean manned. and there were 5 colors of chips, which seems like no big deal, until you can't remember if it's the blue ones that are 25 or the green ones, and you have to make change RIGHT NOW while a kid is screaming in your ear.


So that was Saturday. We were exhausted. On Sunday, some strange force overtook me and I started rearranging our furniture. I had decided that since we already bought a king sized bed specifically because bella sleeps with us, it was not necessary to keep up the rouse that she needs a crib, so until we make it into a toddler bed, I put it in the basement. Or rather, sean did. But while I was looking for the hardware bag for it, I cleaned out her closet, rearranged all of her toys, and cleaned out her old clothes. What a day.

On the bella front: last Tuesday, she had an appointment with a new pediatrician. He confirmed that her ears were infected again, and that had they been left much longer, they would have perforated. He put her on zithromax, which is a powerful antibiotic, and told us that the other doctors hadn’t been giving her the right kinds of medicine. On Friday, he wanted to check her ears to see how the medicine was working, and since it hadn’t worked at all except staving off the perforation, he gave her an injection of antibiotics. That’s the action of last resort. we took her in on Saturday to be checked again, but it wasn’t cleared up yet, so she got another injection. Yesterday, sean took her again to be checked, and for the first time in a long time, her ears are looking good. Tomorrow, we go to children’s hospital downtown to see a different ENT. I’m hoping the tubes are scheduled soon so we don’t have to go through another round of medicine or injections.

Because our appointment is so early, I asked Nicole and mark if they’d mind bella and I crashing at their house tonight, and they graciously said yes. so tonight, I’m off to casa de noah, land of both cheese and cheese haters.

Wish us luck.

(oh, by the way – the capitalization. No, I haven’t embraced the shift key. I typed this up in word instead of the blogger thingie. Stupid auto cap.)