Obviously I didn’t get to update again yesterday, but it got a little busy around here (imagine that, busy on Thanksgiving!).
We had a wonderful dinner, everything was yummy and I hope everyone enjoyed it!
Thank you all for your delicious dishes!
Happy Thanksgiving to you all! For those of you we won’t see later this evening, we love you and wish you a very happy Thanksgiving and hope you have a wonderful day!
I will be updating here and there throughout the day when I can.
I will start by telling you that it took Daniel almost an hour to go to sleep last night because he was so excited about today. He woke up this morning at 6:30am and was very insistent that we also get up, because it is Thanksgiving! He said we had a feast to prepare and he hoped it was successful.
If he is this excited about Thanksgiving, I have no hopes of getting any sleep at Christmas…
I know I shared earlier that I sneak in a Christmas song or two a week, but generally my rule is to wait for all things Christmas until after Thanksgiving.
I wait to decorate. I wait to get my most favorite Gingerbread Latte from Starbucks. I wait to actually make David and Daniel listen to Christmas music all the time. And I used to wait to see Christmas commercials…they used to premier during the Macy’s Parade and when I was younger it was always the McDonald’s one with Ronald McDonald ice skating with the kids…in more recent years, it’s usually been a Hallmark commercial or something similar.
And just to be clear, I’m not talking about the vaguely Christmas-y commercials that sneak in around the end of October, I’m talking about the -there is no mistaking we’re talking about Christmas- commercials.
So you can understand that I am upset that there are so many Christmas commercials on already…I usually try to ignore them, but one in particular has caught my eye.
Campbell’s soup has a commercial where a women’s hands take a green bean casserole out of the oven and sets it on the counter. A boy then watches as the window above the counter opens by itself and a tree branch forms a hand and takes a big spoonful of the casserole, eats it and then lights up with Christmas lights.
So I suppose Campbell’s is saying that Christmas can’t start until green bean casserole has been made, but I find the whole thing rather creepy and very Poltergeist-esque.
So please, don’t feed your trees green bean casserole until after Thanksgiving!
*sigh*
The day actually started yesterday when Daniel’s little
cough turned into a bigger cough and a goopy eye. I called his doctor to take him in, but there
were no appointments left. They said they
could see us first thing this morning. So…we got up this morning, this rainy, yucky morning and drove into
The doctor looked him over, checked his ears, nose, throat, glands and gagged him with a strep test. She then left, stayed gone a good 20 minutes and came back to inform us that it was not strep, but she did hear some stuff in his lungs, so she was prescribing an antibiotic. I asked her about the eye and she said “oh yeah, it’s pink eye.”
(You know when someone starts talking about bugs crawling on them and you start itching? As soon as she confirmed pink eye, my eye started itching and getting that dull ache.)
We leave the doctors and go to Target (what? They have a pharmacy), where Daniel picks out a ring color because he is the only family member yet to have a prescription filled there (Target pharmacies have a cool color coding system for families, every one gets their own color on each of their bottles…and the bottles are really cool too, but we all know I can sing the praises of Target all day, so I will get back to the story). The pharmacist tells us it will be about 20 minutes. We make a quick tour of the toy aisle, pick up some 90% off Halloween costumes, some other sick bed provisions and head back to the pharmacy desk, where the pharmacist tells us it will be a few more minutes and by the way, how much does Daniel weigh?
I tell her that he weighed in at 49 pounds at the doctors and she again says it will be just a few more minutes. I decide to stick close by in case she had anymore questions and we casually peruse the humidifiers. I can hear her on the phone, but can’t quite make out what she is saying. The conversation continues and we move to the next aisle, but quickly return to the humidifiers when I realize the next aisle is condoms, personal lubricant and yeast infection treatment….Did you know that humidifiers come in several different sizes, range in price from $12.99 and go all the way up to $51.99? There is cool mist and warm steam…they also come in different colors and shapes, novelty ones for the kids (frogs, pigs, cows and penguins)? I think we may know everything there is to know about humidifiers.
Finally, the pharmacist calls me over and it is very apparent that she is upset. Her face is red and her hands are shaking a little as she tries her best to politely tell me that she feels that the doctor made a mistake in the dosing instructions. She had called the doctor to ask her about it and the doctor pretty much dismissed her without listening to what she was saying. The pharmacist then brought out the dosing instructions that come with the medicine and showed me where the concern was….with the weight chart, it could be very easy to mix up pounds and kilograms. She told me that she was not comfortable filling the prescription for such a high dosage when the doctor would not explain why and that she could not change it without the doctor’s permission, which obviously she wasn’t going to get. I asked if she could go ahead and fill it and just tell me the dosage to give Daniel, but she again said she would not be comfortable since she would have to put the doctor’s instructions on the bottle. She gave me a gift card to have our next prescription filled there for free and asked that I go to another pharmacy, with the hopes that if someone else called the doctor back and questioned it, maybe she would listen.
So we headed to Walgreen’s where I explained the situation to that pharmacist and she got out all kinds of books and punched numbers into her calculator and asked me questions about whether Daniel had chronic lung infections. She agreed that the dosage seemed high, but found documentation that said it was twice the normal dosage for his weight, but was still within acceptable limits.
They filled the prescription, but told me to call the doctor immediately if he had any adverse reactions to it.
At this point, as you can imagine, with my anxious nature, I’m not really wanting to give him any of the medicine and just take him to another doctor for a second opinion and possibly a different prescription. But, he’s not feeling well and all of this has already taken up a good portion of the day. After talking to David, we decide to just give him half the dose the doctor prescribed since both pharmacists seemed concerned and because we know his pediatricians attitude and personality. Tomorrow I will be searching for a new pediatrician. This is not the first time she has rubbed us the wrong way and I don’t want Daniel to have a doctor we can’t talk to.
During all this, of course, Election Day is going on. David attempted to go this morning at 7am when the polls opened, but there was already a huge line and he had to get to work. I was planning on going when we got back from the doctors, but it was lunch time and the parking lot was full, so we waited a bit longer. Around 3pm, Daniel and I headed over again (our polling place is here in our subdivision, so it only takes about 45 seconds to drive over there). The parking lot was still full, but I decided to head in and check it out.
(Starting in 2004, I always make sure to take Daniel on Election Day to vote with me, I think that too many people don’t vote and I want him to realize that it is an important thing, so I think taking him when he’s young will give him memories that may (hopefully) encourage him to vote when he is old enough. He waited in line with David and me for 3.5 hours in the last presidential election and was proud to do so. The polling ladies even recognize him now and always give him an “I voted” sticker.)
We got inside and they told us it was a 2-3 hour wait. We turned around to go back home and a campaigner asked why we didn’t vote…I said “I have a sick 5 year old, I can’t stand in line for three hours!” and he rolled his eyes at me (I wasn’t going to vote for his guy anyway)!
I wait for David to get home, thinking that maybe the lines will have died down at least a little bit and drive back over there. There is no where to park…at all. The lines have at least tripled. So I have to make a decision. Do I find a parking spot a few blocks away hang out in line (in the rain) for the next 4 hours or so when I have a sick kid at home or do I hope that enough people voted the way I would have and call it a night?
There really wasn’t much of a decision to make, bedtime would be coming soon for Daniel and he won’t go to sleep if I’m not home, especially when he’s feeling cruddy. I do feel horrible for not voting though, this was an important election to me (I think they are all important, I vote in even the tiny ones, but I had very strong feelings about this one).
On the bright side, I get to vote for a new pediatrician tomorrow!
*sigh*
Please direct your attention to the left, where you will see The Sidlinger Holiday Calendar.
Every November I search for all the holiday things I don’t want us to miss out on and since I was already making a calendar, I thought I would share it with all of you! It has TV shows, movies, local activities and anything I find!
It does not have every single holiday event there is, just the ones we’re interested in, but it is still a pretty comprehensive list. Right now, it’s pretty much cooking shows and a few movies, but I will be updating it as more information comes out (and it includes Thanksgiving things too, not just Christmas!). If you click on any of the entries in the calendar, it will give you any additional details, if there are any.
Hope you enjoy!
