Category Archives: Family Talk

We got my son his first little tool bench as he loves to bang and hit on anything and everything. We got him a cheap one from IKEA and it came with a hammer. The problem is since the first day the hammer has been missing and we still cannot find it.

Its been roughly a month now since it’s been missing and again today, I’m stumped, I have no idea where it is.

He is definitely a funny little character always hiding things between the couch and cupboards and typically I’ll find these items that night while picking up his toys or at least a couple days later.  But here we are a month later with no success. I know I may never find it, he may hunt it down and be playing with it one day and I’ll still be stumped as to where this hammer is. Its definitely not small so my brain is officially confused on where this long wooden hammer resides.

These cute little things make me smile, laugh and hold these precious moments dear to my heart. I wish I could understand what goes through his tiny little brain while he hides toys and stuffs his farm animals deep into the couch, so cute.

So we moved officially three months ago now. We have had an odor ever since we moved in but hadn’t known why. The wind would blow just right that we would get a whiff of something nasty. Now we remember this occurring since we very first moved in considering my son’s birthday was a week after we moved, and while we sat on the back porch for dinner, the smell was very potent. Here we are three months later and the smell was a leaky sewer pipe. It wasn’t from our actual sewer though; it was all kitchen disposal garbage that has been down there for several months cooking. Our homeowner’s policy wouldn’t touch it because it has been a gradual growth not a quick broken pipe. After getting quotes from three different companies I decided the theme was the same; this must have been ongoing for quite some time and I decided I would call the gentleman that did our homeowners inspection. Let me say, they weren’t too happy with me, but I felt this was very clear they had missed this leaking pipe. All evidence pointed to this; the smell, water, and three companies telling me so.

They hemmed and hawed about this event as I’m sure they didn’t want to take responsibility, now I finally called the owner of the company as I was unpleasant with the blame of other people rather than just taking responsibility for this mistake. I was very polite but honest with them and simply asked for them to take care of it. I wasn’t out for their money; all I want is a simple fix.

Here we are three weeks later, definitely a long process. Finally today they are here taking care of the issue and now our house smells like a manure pile; literally!!!! It’s so bad, all the doors and windows are open and its pretty cold out. They did tell me that food debris is actually worse than real sewer. I now believe this statement. It’s pretty bad! Luckily we are done with the smell by the end of the day! Now….even worse news…..they said not only is there a TON of spiders down there, they are HUGE, HAIRY and NESTING!!!! GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Fury, creepy crawlers are my worst nightmare. I have an abnormal fear of spiders, to the point so much so I should seek counseling. They said it was so bad they would actually throw a couple spider bombs under there for us. What is very frustrating is that we have a pest control company we hired when we first moved in to help take care of this issue. I’ve had to call them every couple of weeks to come back out and treat for slugs, spiders, beetles, you name it, we’ve got it. I’m not very happy with their service as we have paid over $400 for a year and have had no success.

(Here is the waste they had to haul out….)

(Here is the pipe with worn through holes…definitely something that occurred over time..)

Needless to say, we are taking action and going to fix a few problems promptly.

This weekend did not start off right. At 2pm on Friday I experienced the worst thing a parent could ever experience. As I walked into my son’s room 3 ½ hours later, confused that he was still sleeping, I walked into a nightmare. As I approached his crib my son was having convulsions that kept him from being able to sit up. I quickly grab him to have his head fall forward without an ounce of control. He was shaking so badly, and to see my helpless babe without the ability to hold his head up was a very weak moment for me. “Cooper, Cooper?” I cried as I tried to get a response from him. “Cooper, look at mommy, Cooper what’s wrong?” Without being able to gain a sign of response, I quickly thought maybe he was dehydrated. I tried to nurse him, and as he was lying in my arms his eyes kept rolling in the back of his head. Finally, he looked at me and started to cry. I quickly called the doctor as this started to subside; had it not, I would have called 911. The doctor told me to come in immediately.

On my drive to the doctor, I tried calling my husband to find out he was in a meeting. I was panicked; unsure what to do besides rush him in immediately. Let me tell you me deep love/hate for doctors, as I had to wait an hour just to be taken back to the room and an additional half hour once taken back; my deep loath for doctors began to sink in. My husband was on the phone with me fearful of the news we were about to hear. He finally couldn’t handle it anymore so he left work early and joined me right after the appointment. The doctor told me what I witnessed was probably the aftermath of a seizure. This is what I didn’t want to hear. I don’t know why a 14 month old baby would be having seizures, something else is than wrong. I had to stop my thoughts in their tracks hoping and praying that it was a ‘one and done’ deal; no more would happen. They couldn’t perform any tests while at their clinic, they would have to send us to the children’s hospital, where there he would stay the night and be monitored. Now the Doctor didn’t think we needed to do this yet. His words to me sounded numb; “he won’t die from seizures, so if he keeps having them we need to monitor him and find out why, but until than I don’t know that it would be the best decision to send you directly to the hospital without having seen it myself.”

My questions were endless, my frustration towards the doctor showed, I wanted answers, not “what ifs.” The only possible other solution was that it could be a virus, causing a seizure for some unknown reason. Neither of these answers were beneficial to me. He told me as the night progressed Cooper needed to gain full mobility back otherwise that would be a sign of something else because side effects of seizures are temporary. So all night we had to watch Cooper and evaluate his “wobbliness” so to speak. Now once my husband met up with us, he definitely noticed Cooper was a bit slower; he had fallen 4 times and knocked his head each time. Poor guy!

We decided against taking him in that night as he was still playing and was thoroughly tired. Now Saturday was pretty normal other than him being completely exhausted and having a big bruiser on his cheek from hitting the edge of the coffee table the night prior. Sunday on the other hand, he woke up crying which is never a good sign with him. He is the baby that will play in his crib for an hour before you truly need to get him. He’s refused to be put down all morning and was definitely not his normal Cooper Man self. We took off for church anyways, hoping for a change in scenery to put a smile on his face. There happened to be an all church barbeque following the service with some great entertainment that we wanted to attend.

Side note: We have been having sewer problems since we moved into our new house, now we didn’t know this until 2 weeks ago, but apparently this has been an ongoing issue for quite some time. Due to this information I decided to call the gentleman who did our home inspection as we had taken his word for all the activity under the house or lack thereof. He was supposed to be coming out Sunday at 2pm to evaluate this concern.

Due to this information we had to leave the barbeque early and get Cooper home for a nappy-pooh. Unfortunately, along with all of this “garbage” going on, for lack of a better word, as my husband was holding him he commented that Cooper was burning up. Burning up was an understatement, as we gave him Tylenol and even though that’s a fever reducer his temperature was still 101. He was so flushed and cranky. I laid him down for his nap while trying to juggle calling the advice nurse and talking to the home inspector at the same time. My eyes were getting watery, my emotions were worn on my sleeve, and everything together made me turn on the faucets in my eyes. I was crying out of concern for my child and the fact that we have a terrible sewer smell we’ve been dealing with for quite some time that financially wasn’t in our cards. $4500 was the staple price three companies had given us for this issue. Prayers that the home inspector takes responsibility for this and fixes it would be a huge blessing. (We still have heard).

The advice nurse finally called me back an hour and a half later, thankfully Cooper had been sleeping. This conversation was quite long. For liability reasons she had a lot of “advice” without being able to tell me exactly what to do. She knew my concern, knew I didn’t desire to take him to the hospital overnight if there truly wasn’t something big going on. She also knew I would pick up in a heartbeat and stay overnight as long as we needed to make sure my son was healthy. Torn between being an “over reactive parent” or an “unconcerned parent” was my struggle. She advised I watch him for a few minutes at a time if he slept longer than his normal nap considering that’s when we experienced the aftermath of his original episode. Since my son has been so restless lately while sleeping I figured I couldn’t get away with this. Luckily he woke up after 2 ½ hours. This time around, his temperature was 103. I’ve never seen Cooper so lethargic and never want to see it again. This active little boy can’t sit still, until now. He laid on me for quite some time just crying and helpless. He would also get restless and rollover and lay on the floor on his blanket and could not stop crying. He was so uncomfortable yet I was utterly helpless. This broke my heart and I wished I could do anything, anything in the world to take it away from him. Now with this response, the nurse did tell me that it actually doesn’t matter the degree of the fever, the bigger concern is if they are uninterested in their toys and you can’t hold their attention. This is exactly what was happening.

An hour later, my husband went to put on his jeans and pack a bag to head out to the hospital. Within those couple minutes we walked to the bedroom Cooper decided to try and play with a toy with a lot of intermittent crying. This behavior was a good sign, not lying on the floor and actually moving around was a huge blessing. Now I was concerned with his lack of fluids and food intake, but knew if we could get him to move around a bit, he would be bound to get thirsty. As the night progressed he got a little bit better and his fever dropped to 102. Enough to the point I felt okay with putting him to bed hoping for the best.

We put him in our room to monitor him and unfortunately he was so restless that every time he rolled over, sat up for a drink, and whimpered I was wide awake. I actually got no sleep, but given the circumstances I was totally fine with this. Tired, of course, but my baby was more important.

This morning he woke up with a fever of 100 degrees, I decided if the fever didn’t break we would definitely head in today no matter what. Well….by 1:30 when he woke up from his nap, the fever had pretty much broken. YAY!!!! The immediate concern was now alleviated, but the concern that my son still may have suffered a seizure still remains. We do have to watch for ANY neurological signs that may be slightly off to keep track if there is a bigger issue going on. The doctor did say it could be one and done, but we won’t know until more time passes and praying for no reoccurrence. I feel better knowing he’s getting his personality and strength back, but hoping for a full “recovery.” Praying for protection of Cooper and his health and that he will continue to grow and be a strong, healthy little boy.

I love you Cooper John Cook! I’m thankful I get to stay home with you; you are the light of my life.

The other evening when my son was having a rough night I walked in to nurse him and as I’m doing so, I notice this “leaf” thing on the carpet making a mental note to grab it once I laid him back down. I glanced back up and it was now in a different position further away from me. As I watched it I was contemplating whether my eyes were freaking out on me, or if I was seeing this correctly. I got up and thought it looked a bit like a centipede. Gross, come on now why would such a thing be in the furthest part of the house? I ran out to grab my husband and he scoured the room looking for clues and nothing was to be had except that this was a slimy SLUG!

I understand the weather is changing but a slug, really? What is even more frustrating is that we have a Pest Control Company that comes out once a month to treat these things and I’ve noticed no difference for the most part. I walked outside and found 5 tree spiders hanging out in their webs and another one my husband walked directly into, that formed over night. Walking out the front door for church that morning we saw another “gi-normous” slug as well. We took care of it promptly as Cooper crawls around everywhere.

Now, this morning, I walked into the kitchen to make coffee and there was this film on my rug that lies below the sink. UGGGG okay now I am beyond frustrated. Something is wrong when you have more than one slug in your house in a 4 day period. It wasn’t spiders, although we have had a lot of them as well, one the size of a half dollar my husband killed the other night. He showed me a picture of it after he killed it and it was so large I jumped across the bed thinking it was still alive. Now spiders seem to be more common in the house, as I’ve never heard of anyone dealing with slugs. So…this morning I am waiting for three hours for the pest control to come back out and treat for all of these creepy crawlers.

I still haven’t found the slug from this morning and am pretty annoyed as my son gets into everything and I don’t want him finding this. Finally Pest control came out and treated very well. They said our vents outside were full of slug film and so he treated to prevent any further creepers from invading our house. At least there was an answer that helped my confusion subside a little bit.

Side note: While the pest control was out treating the house, I was making eggs for my son and I. To my surprise, I cracked an egg and there was blood and what looked like to me to be an embryo. I literally threw my hands in the air, looked at my son and said “we may have plenty more surprises the rest of the day, as this has all happened in the first couple hours of waking up.” The Pest guy looked at me as he was in the kitchen searching for the slug and then looked in the pan and said “that is disgusting, I can’t believe you just found blood in an egg.” GROSS I say!!!!!!

Ugh, so frustrated. This morning was our day to get lots of little projects done around the house; new house that is. We literally had many items on our list and many items on Home Depots list as well. We woke up, had coffee, and took off to Home Depot before little man went down for his morning nap. We spent a good $500 on items to get a bedroom fan, kitchen faucet, texture, hinges, blind, and backsplash samples just to name a few. Needless to say, we got home with very hungry bellies. I wanted to make something quick so I could begin my list of projects while Cooper was asleep. I decided to make pancakes as we really love fluffy pancakes and eggs. Simply easy and definitely not fancy.

So, far it all sounds great right? I already had a mix from the store but while I was cooking them decided I should look at the ingredients. Let me tell you, this was so annoying; pancake mix should be a simple 4 ingredient mixture. While of course, anything store bought these days has to have chemicals and at least 10 ingredients; and lo and behold, it did. We ate them….yes we did, although while they were cooking I was adamant to make a pancake mix to have on hand from here on out.

We went camping last weekend with another friend and she brought her homemade pancake mix. I must say it was very good although anything is good while camping. It’s entirely too simple to actually not make our own pancakes, so much so, that I feel crazy for not already having done this. Mark my words, today will be the last day of eating yummy chemicals, I mean, store bought pancakes.

Please, if you are reading this, please make your own mix. It’s too easy not to! Click here for the recipe.

Today we had such a busy day but boy was it a good day. Nothing extremely exciting happened, but it was a well versed day with lots of cooking, cleaning, shopping, family time and enjoying the beautiful weather. A clear 76 degrees in sunny Portland today. Days like today make me thankful I live in such a beautiful city. Living in the suburbs with a view of Mt Hood from our porch and simply popping onto the freeway, you can instantly see Mt Hood, St Helens, and Rainier. So beautiful, I am blessed.

My husband and I were enjoying the leafless tree we had a little yonder in the distance. The lack of leaves allowed us to see Mt Hood in full view while sitting on our porch, playing with little man and drinking a cup o’ joe. Then we remembered that we won’t have this view once the leaves come in, except from our bedroom. Speaking of leaves, today we also had an arborist stop by. They are taking out all of our trees on the side of the house because our neighbors above us have begun to lose their view as well. We will be losing a lot of privacy and exposing most the neighbors around us unfortunately; but at the same time we found out they are so rotted that it will require a different approach to take them out. Come to find out there are nine trees tucked back there. It’s been so covered by ivy that no one actually knew how many were back there.

While my husband slave labored outside over the weeds that have turned our front yard into a meadow, I went grocery shopping and began the cooking for Easter Sunday. Might I add, our house has been a complete disaster today and well…. It continued to end the day in a complete disaster. I never quite made it around to vacuuming, dusting and picking up toys and nick knacks that lay about. I also had decided today (the day before Easter) that I would like to color eggs. Now being that Easter is tomorrow and we have plans all day, I realized we wouldn’t have time for this and quickly placed it on the “good idea list” to accomplish Monday. Now why would I want to color eggs after the holiday? Well…it is our sons first Easter and being that he is 9 months old, he won’t know any different. Secondly, the day after, I realized this was a genius move considering it will all be 50-75% off for the coloring kits.

We ended the day with stopping by our neighbors house. They have a cute little three month old girl, who weighs only a half pound less than Cooper at 9 months old. We had a good laugh and she is quite the cutie. As we were walking home I realized my husband was quickly losing his upbeat attitude. Was this because it was past dinner time, was he exhausted, tired, or all three. Yes, it was all three. This man had been up since 6:30 and as you already know he has been working roughly 70 hours a week due to tax season. So needless to say, we ate a delicious homemade pizza and salad, by 8:45 tonight he quickly began the zzzzzz’s.

Happy almost Easter!

Yes, house hunting has been amazing. I have enjoyed seeing so many potential houses that fit our criteria. I really do mean “potential” houses. We cannot place an offer on any of these amazing houses while ours is still resting on the market. How long of a rest will we be taking? That is undecided and I wish I could answer that but had I answered it, this rest would be almost complete, so to speak.

We have discussed as of lately, that we may not sell the house (or maybe the house is choosing this option for us), but that we may rent it after possibly staying here a couple more years. The job of talking with a lender has been added to my “To Do” list. To be honest we have no clue what we will end up doing, but whatever we do I know will be the right thing. God has a way of slowing our plans down or speeding them up without us really having a say in the matter.

Just as the house is “resting” on the market, so do my husband and I need to rest in being comfortable with the motto “whatever happens will happen.” We had a great conversation this morning entailing how we are a proactive couple, but realizing you can only be as proactive as life happens around you. We can’t force our house to sell; we can think this is the best option since sliced bread. But if this were true, wouldn’t our house have possibly sold by now? Is it not selling because Spring hasn’t fully hit? Are we with the right realtors? Is it the market? These questions are endless. So instead of dumping our frustration into gaining answers, we have got to step back and decide what options we have, and how they would benefit us or hinder us.

The other day we realized that we would be okay staying in the house for a couple more years if we really need to. Is my kitchen utterly small, why of course it is? But this is something I’ve already been dealing with and have managed to be more creative as I have a casserole cooking in the oven, rolls rising atop the oven, dishes being washed in the sink, while I prepare the everyday goodies that are to fill our hungry tummies. It is manageable, even when it can be a complete disturbance and I really envy many kitchens that I frequent with friends and family. I tell myself; one day you will have a kitchen that has more counter space, a pantry, cupboards and a full size dishwasher. I long for that day, but when push comes to shove I do realize it is not the end all be all. I have much to be thankful for and while I do cook and bake on a daily basis, I am proving to myself and the potential buyers that it is possible in the kitchen.

I took the little man on a walk today and our neighbor down the way has the same house as us. She was out in the yard doing some weeding and I introduced myself since we haven’t officially met. She was a very nice lady, and invited me in to see their layout since she knows our house is on the market. I appreciated her hospitality because it really gave me an idea of how to redo the kitchen if we ever decided to in the future. We have talked and talked and talked about redoing the kitchen, but to see the vision played out was pretty exciting.

After talking with my husband AGAIN about our house we are leaning more towards staying for another year or two and using this as our first rental. Maybe this is God’s way of telling us we aren’t supposed to sell the house. We have so many things happening right now in life, that one less thing to worry about would be great.

We have officially quit looking for other houses right now until we make our decision final. We will decide hopefully this weekend if we will be taking the house off the market. We have already done a little reorganizing and began painting the bathroom, so maybe that’s us getting back into the nesting mode; helping prepare us for staying awhile longer. We shall see….