"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."

 ~ Dr. Seuss

The hubster and I were going through old photos on our phones last night and we stumbled upon this photo. I pretty much had blocked when this photo was taken out of my mind and when I saw the photo, I just wanted to cry.

Here's the story: It was October 5, 2010 I got home from work around 4:45 that night and started supper just like normal. The kids were running around, hyper as ever and all I wanted to do was sit down and watch some TV after they went to bed...and just vege out.

My husband and I got our kids in bed around 7:30 and I sayed to him, "Emma is getting sick, she's really fussy and feels a little warm." No big deal, right? WRONG.

Around 10:00 pm Emma awoke and came downstairs to where I was relaxing watching TV. My husband was in the other room working on some report he had to do for his college class. She was crying and stumbling around like she was still asleep. I felt her head, she was burning up. We took her temp, 102.something...eeeekkkk....I gave her Tylenol and sent her back to bed. 11:00pm, Emma returned downstairs. I put her on the couch beside and began to rub her back. When my hand touched her back I quickly yanked it away...she was BURNING up...so hot, that my hand started sweating...just from touching her back. I called JD in...we had just given the poor thing a dose of Tylenol an hour before, her temp should be going down, not up. We decide to take her to the ER. We figured it was just a normal earache with a high fever. 

I get a call around midnight...sobbing on the other end...a very worried husband. "Can you get your mom to come over?" I said, "Why?" JD: "They want to take Emma for some tests, I don't know what's going on... her fever is up to 104.7. I call my mom, she's at our house in 10 minutes...I rush to the ER...many thoughts going through my head...104.7!!! She could go into a coma...

I get to the ER and my baby is laying on the table...she's so hot and they are pumping her full of drugs trying to get her temp down...NOTHING is working...NOTHING. They start doing all kinds of tests...tests that would make any baby cry...but my baby isn't crying...she's not doing anything but laying there with a blank stare...she holds my hand and I start to cry...it was terrible, a feeling of such helplessness, and no one knew what to do...the doctors were rushing around...fever was 105.2 by now...and still nothing was happening. Emma got admitted. After about the 5 dose of medicine, her fever went down to 104.1...which is still terrible, but at least it went down. She was hooked up to IV's, put in a crib and I was told not to touch her too much....WHAT?!?!?! My husband and I took turns throughout the next few nights and days of staying with her and one of us trying to make it through the day with the boys. Trying to act normal and trying to make it through the days, still not knowing what was going on with Emma. No answers.

The third night as I sat beside her crib in the terrible plastic recliner in the hospital, I prayed. I said one simple prayer with more feeling then I think I've ever prayed with before. "Dear Lord, Please help my little girl." That's all I said. I didn't want answers, I just wanted Emma to be happy again. As the nurses kept coming in that night to check her vitals...each time her temp got better. The nurses were amazed. They had no explanation. It had been 3 days with a temp of 104 or higher and all of the sudden, each hour her temp would drop another degree....finally her temp was at 99...I could hold her... :) In fact, I had to go to the bathroom and Emma wouldn't let me! She cried and wanted me to take her with me...I was happy too! The one time in my life I was happy to go to the bathroom with my child in tow. The next day she was discharged. Her temp had stayed down for 12 hours with no medicine. The sickness had gone as quickly as it had came.

So...the questions were complicated...what happened? Why was Emma's fever so high? 

The answers were simple...PRAY! 

COULROPHOBIA

YOU ARE CONSIDERED A FRIEND IF and ONLY IF YOU HAVE NORMAL-SIZED FEET and a NON-BALL-SHAPED NOSE...

My 3 year old daughter, NOT afraid of clowns. My 6 & 8 year old sons, NOT afraid of clowns. I like to think I'm a somewhat brave person. But there is one area in which I am a complete and total wimp. CLOWNS. They are creepy. The problem with this phobia is that once you have kids, there is no escaping it.

Clowns freak me out. I start to sweat, I feel nauseous, I feel dread, my heart starts beating faster, I feel like crying or screaming when a clown or just a picture of a clown is present. If I had my way, Ronald McDonald would be out of a job. My oldest son was a clown last year for Halloween and I thought I was going to have a heart attack...I couldn't look in my rear view mirror as I drove the kiddos to town to do some trick-or-treating. Just last weekend my husband and I took our kids to a local pumpkin farm and lo and behold, we walked through the entrance and there he was...a big-footed, red-shoed, red-nosed, orange fluffy haired clown...the image in my nightmares...I pushed the kids in front of me so I could dart around them and hopefully the clown wouldn't notice me...Everywhere I went he was there. EVERYWHERE!

There are no official numbers, but all over the web you'll find sites and blogs dedicated to scary clowns. In fact, I found a lot more sites dedicated to menacing clowns than I did sites dedicated to nice, friendly, funny clowns. Maybe they need a new Public Relations person... (don't call me) My family loves the story about how when I was 5 I was called down to the center ring at a local circus. I was called down because I won a drawing contest...I had to draw a picture of a circus (might I add, I had NO clowns in my fantastic, award-winning drawing) But when I got to the center ring, I heard bells behind me and as I turned around I saw about 500 clowns (OK, maybe not that many) running towards me... I thought they were going to eat me or abduct me and make me into a little clown minion... I sat down in the center ring and cried. Some of the audience laughed, others pointed (just like in those slow motion movies when someone is embarrassed) Time seemed to stand still, but the clowns did NOT stand still...They circled me like angry vultures. Eventually, my grandmother noticed that I was not laughing and she came to get me. My grandparents left the circus with me in tow and we never spoke about the "incident" again. Until I was in my late teens and recalled the story. Now it's a GRAND ole time to recount the story at family get-togethers.

It turns out a fear of clowns is a very real problem for some people. One website says people may be afraid  of clowns because a clown disguises his or her real emotions via makeup. That makes it impossible for the wimps who are scared to figure out whether the clown wants to give you a balloon or pull you down into the sewer. I found a photo of me as a very young child laying in my crib with some scary ass clown doll looking at me from the corner of the crib...he was just perched there watching my every move. I'm just a few months old and I look terrified...could my parents not see this? Could they not remove that terrible clown and burn it....But make sure it actually did burn and didn't jump out of the fire just to hide in my room and scare me again?

And WHY oh why can't there be a clown without that hollow bone chilling laugh that they all seem to be pros at? Seriously. Other then ax murderers and serial killers, no sane human should be able to laugh like that. If that doesn't convince you that full grown adults wearing rainbow colored M.C. Hammer pants are made of pure evil, take a look at John Wayne Gacy.

Did you know they made a movie called "Fear of Clowns?" We will probably be watching it in the coming weeks...because for some reason I like to torture myself like that.

First lesson learned: Watching a lot of horror movies is not, and never has been, a good idea for young brains still growing.

Second lesson learned: Would the world suffer in any way if clowns ceased to exist? I THINK NOT.

Third lesson learned: Never tell your spouse your worst fear. (That's for a later blog post)

Signs that it's Fall in my town...

1. As a result of overenthusiastic apple picking by many friends and family, you have 20 apples sitting in the fridge, 5 in the car and another 10 on the counter. You tell yourself constantly it would be fun to make homemade applesauce or a homemade apple pie. YOU NEVER DO because...

2. You spend all day Saturday cleaning out the closets and packing away the warm weather clothes, just in time to find out it's supposed to be temperatures of 70 and above all week.

3.  You walk into WalMart/KMart/Target and are bombarded with the scents of Christmas...and there they are the artificial trees and wreaths before you even carve a pumpkin...SO, you hurry the kids to the pumpkin farm and spend an evening carving pumpkins.

4. The kids don't believe you in the morning that it is actually morning because the sun isn't up and the moon and still shining bright...

5. The looming prospect of an extra hour of sleep from "falling back" makes you giddy with excitement.

6.  Your way home is decorated with political signs, which leads to some less-than-neighborly encounters.

7. The day after Halloween your overachieving neighbor is kicking the pumpkins and putting up inflatable Santas.

8. Meanwhile, your underachieving neighbor  is taking down the planters that are filled with brown, frost-bitten flowers and removing their Welcome Spring sign on the front door.

9. You want to keep up with the neighbors so on the day after Halloween, you kick the pumpkins, take down the welcome spring sign, throw away the frost-bitten flowers, and hang Christmas lights all in the same day....BECAUSE YOU ARE COOL LIKE THAT :)

"Got A Leaf...Lost A Shoe"

My main goal this morning was to get up early, get the boys ready, take a nice drive on the way to school to find the perfect leaf (my oldest son was given till today to take in a leaf), drop the boys off, go to the gym and then head to work.

I shouldn't plan in advance...or should I say daydream about how my day should be...

What really happened: My alarm went off at 6:30, I turned it off and said to myself, "It's too cold, I'm just gonna lay here for 15 minutes and I'll still have time." A text message woke my up at 6:57 (the boys have to be at school at 7:30) It takes us about 10-13 minutes to get them to school from our house....as you can imagine, my morning was not what I expected it to be. I jumped out of bed, ran to the shower, took a 2 minute 25 second shower...jumped out, boys still weren't up. 7:02 - ran downstairs to find my gym clothes...still in dryer and not dry. ARGHHHHH!!!! Ran back upstairs, found my work clothes. 7:08- boys crawl out of bed grumbling... 7:09 - brush through my hair (say to myself, don't look in any mirrors, just imagine you look great) 7:10 - run back downstairs, get wet gym clothes out of dryer, hang them on front door so I don't forget them THANK GOODNESS DURING THIS TIME MY HUBBY IS GETTING THE BOYS' CLOTHES AND BREAKFAST READY... 7:17 - Boys ready, lounging on couch eating breakfast.... 7:18 - out the door and everybody into the car. 7:19 - realize I forgot my phone....leave the car running so it warms up  (ice on the windshield...and no time to scrap it) Knock on door....send dog into panic...husband already in shower...run back to car, grab keys, unlock door, can't find my phone. Finally find it on the dryer... 7:29 - pull out of driveway.... 7:37 - made good time, going through town, pull over by a nice "fall colored" tree. Oldest son jumps out of car, finds the perfect leaf. It's here, that I must insert, that my youngest son calls me "Crazy mom." We speed away and make it to school just in time....swhooooo....WE MADE IT!!! Kiss and hug the boys, head to gym. Think to myself, "Wow! This is still gonna be a good day!" 

Pull into gym parking lot. Get dressed in car....not sure why I didn't head into the gym to change...sometimes I just don't think. Get one sneaker on, look everywhere for second sneaker. No where to be found. It hits me, when my son got out of the car, he must have accidentally knocked my shoe out....ARGGHHHHHH!!!!! Say a little prayer..."Please God, let my shoe still be there...I love those shoes! They are my FAVORITE sneakers!

Retrace my steps to the middle of town.... THERE IT IS!!! Right by the nice "fall-colored" tree!! YAY!!! 

Of course there's no where to park now...so I just pull over and double-park....Cause a slight traffic jam, but HEY! I found my FAVORITE SNEAKER!!

So, I didn't just get the perfect fall leaf for my oldest son, I also found my favorite sneaker and still made it everywhere I needed to be on time.

Moral of the story: It's good to be the crazy mom.

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

Wow! If I could just remember this quote every single day, how sweet life would be. I cry somedays because I feel like I'm missing important steps in my kids' lives. I cried today because I forgot to send a leaf to school with my oldest son (that was his homework, to bring a single autumn leaf to school today) and who forgot... ME!!! Somedays, I just want to crawl back into bed and try to forget everything...all my responsibilities as a mom, wife, daughter, friend...but I like to think I would be missed. And of course, I would miss my responsibilities probably after only 5 minutes.

Growing up, I was my mom's life. She focused all of her energy on me. She had a schedule, we followed that schedule to a tee. I can't remember a time I was sent to school unprepared. So when I forget to send a leaf to school I feel as if I'm a terrible mom...an uncaring, unorganized mom.

But really a leaf...that's what I'm worrying about today?!?!?! A LEAF!?!?!? I'm sure the teacher had extras, I'm sure he's forgotten about the leaf already and he's enjoying his day with his friends...and I'm quite positive the leaf will never be mentioned again. BUT I still feel bad. How do some mom's seem so perfect and seem to have everything together? 

This is the moment, the exact moment, I needed to read the Dr. Seuss quote above.

I don't think my kids have had a single day without smiling or without laughter. One of my main goals in life is to have my kids laugh from their bellies (you know that deep, uncontrollable laughter) at least once a day. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS. Sometimes it's hard to smile, but I try my hardest also to have a least one uncontrollable laugh a day.

These are the moments you have to focus on...the moments that will forever be memories...wonderful memories. Even if you can't remember why that uncontrollable laugh happened, you will always remember the happiness you felt while laughing that way.