A Week of Ups and Downs

I’m doing a little catch-up on the blog tonight after a very, very long week. I received an email from my friend Marci, whose 10-day-old nephew passed away unexpectedly in his sleep. I get teary even now, thinking about how difficult that would be to experience as a new mom, with your first baby (or any of your babies, but especially your first). I’ve been praying for this family and hoping they can feel strength and peace during this hard time.

And on a totally different note, another reason it was a long week was because of this:

I FINALLY convinced Ben that we should paint the family room/ceiling. Which was great. I was thrilled to move forward with something that I had wanted to do since we moved in to this house nearly two years ago. It helped that I had scored a free makeover from a local designer, Jodie Shields of Home and Haven Designs. I was at the gym a few weeks ago and saw a sign up on the board advertising for a free room makeover, so I emailed and called her as soon as I got home. Unfortunately, she responded saying she had already filled her free spots. But then a few days later, she emailed saying the third person hadn’t worked out and she wanted to see if I was still interested (which of course I was!!). It has been so fun to work with her and see her ideas for the lovely family room. Remember when I wrote in to the HGTV show, Dear Genavieve?? This is much better :)

SO – I met a handyman two weeks ago that gave me a great quote on painting the family room walls. But over the weekend, I somehow convinced Ben that it would be great to paint the ceiling too. I got a quote (over the phone) for the handyman to do the ceiling too, but then when he and his guys arrived the following Tuesday, he said it would actually be the same price as the walls, it would be a lot of work and time, etc.

RED FLAG should have gone up. But it didn’t.

My experience with this handyman was HORRIBLE. The painting job that was supposed to take one day took three days. And he kept tacking on charges to random stuff. By the third day, I confronted him about the prices he was charging (he was adding on extra $$ to the cost of the paint and other supplies). He towered over me and yelled that I was taking advantage of him, that this was obviously taking a long time and he was going to end up paying the guys working on the project out of his own pocket, etc. (while I was thinking, you gave me a quote and now you’re making me feel bad about it??)

It was a nightmare. Our house was a MESS since they had moved all of the junk in the family room (except for those two bookshelves) out into the office and dining room. The handyman’s guys didn’t speak English, so I attempted to communicate with them with my poor Spanish. It turned out one of them is LDS and goes to one of the city wards. The two workers were great, worked hard, etc. The main guy though, was AWFUL. I felt totally taken advantage of and ripped off by the time it was all over. Which really stunk since Ben has dragged his heels about spending any money on this room to begin with.

BUT… I’m trying not to dwell on it too much. The room is painted and we’ll move forward. Here’s kind of a lousy after shot – the room will look much cuter in a few weeks or months as we work with Jodie.

Another difficult part to the week was on Mother’s Day… Ben’s tradition is to bring breakfast in bed. Yesterday he brought me a plate full of good stuff – lots of fruit, hash browns, bacon, and mango juice. I tried to eat quickly since we had church at 9 a.m.

However, by about 8:30 a.m. I was feeling really queasy and Charlie was super fussy/tired. So we decided that I would stay home and rest and give Charlie a nap too. Ben took Eli with him to church (and sat in the congregation with him, instead of up on the stand – Ben said Eli was BEAMING the whole time and was so good  - Ben doesn’t usually get to sit with us). I fell back asleep (feeling queasy still) and woke up to hearing Charlie waking up in the other room a few hours later, around noon.

By that point, I was VERY nauseous and weak and could barely get out of bed to go pick up Charlie from his crib. We slowly headed downstairs and I laid on the family room floor, trying not to cry from the awful stomach pain until Ben and Eli got back home a little while later.

I finally threw up (a few times) around 2:30. Ohhhhhhhh my stomach hurt so much. Ben realized that he had used the wrong bacon and felt horrible that he made me sick on Mother’s Day!!! I had bought a new package of bacon, but hadn’t thrown the old one out for some dumb reason. It wasn’t super obvious that the old bacon was outdated because it was pre-cooked.

I felt a little better after throwing up, but I was still super weak and tired the rest of the day. Gram, Mary Ann, and Davey came over in the evening for Mother’s Day dinner (they had church in the afternoon, so we didn’t have any way of warning them that I was sick), but I wasn’t able to eat anything. Thankfully, I felt a lot better today and I think the bad stuff it out of me now.

Poor Ben. He had good intentions :) It might be a little while before I can eat bacon again though.

I don’t want this post to be all negative, so I’m ending it with a few funny videos of the boys from the last week – the first is Eli playing peek-a-boo with Charlie:

Peek A Boo Charlie (May 2010) from Sarah on Vimeo.

The next is Charlie saying “ELI!” – he says Eli at the end (sounds like “E-I!”). Charlie has become very interactive over the last few weeks and says a lot of words now. It’s fun to hear him copy what we’re saying and to see his excitement when we understand what he is trying to communicate.

Charlie Says "ELI!" (May 2010) from Sarah on Vimeo

And finally, Eli singing “I Am Like a Star Shining Brightly” – we didn’t teach him this, so I give all credit to his nursery class at church!

Eli Sings "I Am Like A Star Shining Brightly" (May 2010) from Sarah on Vimeo.