Moving Update: The Ulcer, Giant Dusty, and Daniel’s Quest

We’ve been living in our new house for a solid week now.

Many interesting things have happened.

First, there was a fresh new medical problem…oh, the joys of mortal life…

I spent the plane ride out here in intense physical pain. I’m no stranger to pain, but this took over my entire abdomen and made for a miserable day. I was afraid to eat anything, for fear of making it worse. About all I ate that day was coffee and a Kind bar.

Well, I’ve had pain before. It’ll go away on it’s own. Everything will be fine.

Only it wasn’t. I stayed in pain.

Then one week later, I drank the first can of Coca-Cola that I’d had in a few weeks. After that I felt like I was going to die. It felt like labor, and I’m not even exaggerating. I should know. I’ve had four babies. I went back to being afraid to eat anything.

That night I finally began to suspect something was wrong. I went straight to Urgent Care.

Remember the nice NP who gave me a steroid shot for my hip after my Christmas flight? I saw that same NP, and he ran a blood test and told me that I have h. pylori ulcers. Heh? They gave me 6 pills to take twice a day.

So at least it was fixable. I’m on day 11 now, and I already feel 90% better.

Oh, and apparently not eating is bad when you have an ulcer b/c it increases acid. And coffee is bad, as are nuts and tomatoes, and BBQ. But Coke will kill you (not literally). Why do any of us drink that stuff? Sigh. Because it tastes so delicious!

So there you go, a free 101 on ulcers.

Moving

We polished up our new floors, unloaded a ton of boxes, and got on with life.

John David

On just day 3, an afternoon thunderstorm came up and JD and Daniel learned all about thunder, lightning, and storm-induced power outages.

JD was convinced that all of this was caused by Lightning McQueen.

He also thought the fireworks on the 4th of July were actually fires until he saw them. He still seems to be bothered by Grandaddy and Nana’s house burning down, and he talks about it quite a bit.

By the way, Dirt Boy has become Pool Boy. It’s too hot to play outside in the deep South unless water is involved, so that’s what he does. He has spent hours in his little wading pool outside.

We were in the store, and Daniel was carrying around his walky-talky, and he said, “Mom! Mom! Someone’s talking to me on my walky-talky!” He was picking up the employee frequency, and he was excited.

Daniel’s Quest

Daniel has been on a serious quest to make friends. Only he doesn’t realize that we seem to have moved into an unofficial retirement community. I should’ve known from all the perfect lawns and pretty flowers.

Every day, Daniel wakes up and proclaims, “Today I AM going to find some friends!”

We felt badly for him. We tried to help him. We even took the two little boys with us to the neighborhood pool on Saturday morning. Saturday! And guess how many people were there? None. Sigh.

Don’t despair quite yet. Wait ’til you hear about Sunday morning.

The boys have kept busy:

Where in the world are Joshua and Caleb?

Grandparent camp. I feel like I’ve hardly seen those two at all this summer, but I’m hoping to get them back tomorrow. They are having a ball visiting my parents and helping them get settled into their new rental house. The fire house was demolished this week, and they got to see a little of the aftermath of that too.

Meeting People

We’ve met a few people. I fully appreciated our neighbor John.

“I figured you’ve got some kids and a pool back here. I heard ’em out playing yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that.”

“No, no! I like hearing it!”

God bless this man.

I’ve been here a week and haven’t had any mosquito bites. Turns out that John sprays the woods behind our house for mosquitos because he wants his grandson to be able to play outside without getting bitten. AWESOME!

Giant Dusty and Lunch with New Friends

Today we were finally able to provide Daniel with young fry for him to play with. We visited a new church. Actually, it is THE church that operates the school that we’re sending Joshua, and possibly Caleb (still deciding), to this coming year.

When they opened the door to the 3-year-old class, JD took off into that room like a rocket. I’m telling you! See, there was the biggest toy Dusty we’ve ever seen right in the middle of the room. (Dusty is the main airplane from the movie Planes.) He was still playing with Dusty when we picked him up an hour and a half later.

When we picked up Daniel, Alan asked him right away if he’d made any friends. After all, that is Daniel’s quest. Daniel pointed to a boy playing in the floor and said, “Yep. Him right there!”

Hurray!!! 2 happy kids. We are on a roll.

This was Alan’s second visit to this church and the first for the rest of us. We were pleasantly surprised when our Sunday school teacher invited us out to lunch with their family and another family.

We had such a good time. Daniel and JD got to sit at a table with two little girls. At first, I thought that was going to be a battle.

Daniel pointed to his seat and said, “No, no Eminee, Mommy, I don’t like Eminee.” The embarrassment. He’d just met these girls. How could he not like them? And JD wouldn’t sit because Dan wasn’t sitting, and he is Dan’s follower.

I took Daniel to the bathroom to talk to him about the rudeness of not sitting with those girls. “Why don’t you want to sit with them? What has Emily done to you?”

“No, Mom, it’s just that I don’t like to drink eminAA.”

And it clicked. Lemonade! He meant lemonade!

“If I go change your drink, will you sit down?”

“Yes!” he nodded emphatically.

Daniel and JD ended up having quite the little party over there with those girls.

I’d call today a pretty great success.

Oh yeah!!!  And we bought a (new to me) mini-van! I’ve said for years that I like Alan’s grandaddy’s van, so Granddaddy found me one exactly like his! Right down to the DVD player and heated seats, a first for me. Heated seats are a big deal when you have an achy hip. Exciting times!!

What have you all been doing this summer?? Don’t forget to keep in touch!