We still had fun, despite spending more time inside the boat than out of it, and walking around in the rain once we got there.  We saw a lot of birds (who, en masse, are very stinky) and a few otters.  Once we arrived at Seldovia, we ate lunch in town with Jim and Cyndy (and Koren, who had spent the night with his grandparents).  Jim and Cyndy then taxied us to the cabin in their boat so our guests could see what rustic cabin life was like (we call it camping for yuppies).

We all enjoyed each other’s company and Koren even got in a small nap.

But seriously, Alaska?  You’d better bring out the sun for 4th of July or I’m going to have to open a serious can.

Friday afternoon, we took the kids to the Islands and Oceans Visitor Center for some hands-on learning, followed by a short hike down to the marsh.

The hiking trail goes down to the Two Sisters Bakery, which is one of our favorite places in Homer.  We didn’t get to stop there this time, but had enjoyed the Two Sisters baked goods for breakfast that morning.

The Islands and Oceans visitor center is not very large, but provides lots of things for kids to touch and play with so they can learn about the culture and wildlife of Alaska.

Every Friday, the Center for Alaska Coastal Studies (for some reason I can never remember that name) has a preschool program at the Wynn Nature Center, which is a little cabin at the top of the hill.  This time, the girls learned about fresh water and that it’s important to preserve fresh water because there isn’t all that much of it.  They took a short hike to a nearby stream to look at the fresh water and all the things that live in and around it.  Afterward, we went out for ice cream.

Kaelin was beyond thrilled to see her friend Maddy and the two were inseparable the entire time.  Koren was never far behind and the girls were really great about including him.  He has officially adopted Maddy as his second sister.

Our first order of business was to tour the Homer Spit:

Over the course of yesterday, Jens improved about 800%.  I kept the kids out of the house all day and when we arrived home it was like meeting a different Jens.  Well, “different” meaning the “same” Jens that I knew BEFORE our happy home was plagued with the Disease – yes, Disease with a capital D, oh D that will never stand for dog or donut or daisy or dallas or anything else in this house but Disease and maybe Death and Destruction or possibly Diarrhea and once we get past this thing we are burying D and probably S in the back yard never to speak of them again because these letters?  They spell bad things.  Excuse me while I go rock myself in the corner.  Again.

He ate a banana.  While we were gone yesterday.  A whole banana.  Swallowed it and everything.  And then?  Then?  Then we had dinner and he ATE. 

TACOS. 

Two, to be precise.

I just about fainted.

He’s even sleeping in our bed tonight.  Which, you may notice, I’m not.  I’m not sure if it’s the fact that Jens is sleeping in his own bed, or the fact that I was stupid and told my mom today that, “Koren has been sleeping pretty well the last several nights” (because I’m sure it’s one of those two things) but Koren has already been up several times.

A few minutes ago, I heard, “Mama, I’m cold.”  I went in to put a blanket on him and as he laid back down, he hit his head on the music box hanging on the side of his crib.  “Hey,” he said as he turned around to glare at it, as though the music box had intentionally reached out and hit him.

Also, there was the porcupine making a racket on our front porch.  Little turd. Although, I’d rather look out and see a porcupine on the front porch than another bear trying to get into the trash bins.

I have to say though, it’s weird to see it dark outside.  I think the sun will start coming up in about an hour and if I’m still awake to see it I’m going to be very depressed about that.

Tomorrow is a big day – kids go to school, I clean the house, then we have friends come to visit for a few days from Dallas.  So I guess I’ll go back downstairs and try to get some sleep so I don’t keel over in the middle of dinner tomorrow evening.

Night!

Jens is slightly better.  I watched him choke down three pills cut up into little tiny pieces, and only gag one of them back up again.  He also managed to eat some chicken broth tonight, which is the first thing he’s eaten since Thursday night.  He’s lost 11 pounds.  He has no energy.

Koren can open his eye today, with the help of Benadryl and antibiotics we were prescribed by the ER doctor yesterday.  I keep having people suggest to me that it’s a bug bite.  Apparently the mosquitoes around here are sadistic little bastards and are known to go for the eyes of small children.

He did get to go to school today, which was a blessing for me.  I got to go jogging, which seems to mean a lot to me these days.  And it was sunny, which also means a lot to me these days.

His eyes actually look about the same right now because as the one is getting better, the other is getting worse.  Tomorrow we head back to the Pharmacy to fill a prescription for allergy medicine.  For those keeping track at home, that will be a total of 8 trips to the pharmacy in 3 days.  Me and the pharmacy staff, we’re tight.

The doctor that we saw today strongly recommended going ahead and getting the x-rays done on Koren’s back, but doesn’t think we need to go see a specialist in Anchorage at this point.  The blood tests came back “almost normal.”  His white blood cell count is low, but apparently that can happen after a virus, which Koren was coming down with at the time he had blood drawn.  His red blood cell count is slightly low, but the doc said just to make sure he eats enough meat and other iron-containing foods.

Well, that’s about it.  Oh, and it looks like we’ll be getting Hastings back.  We’re not telling the kids yet, but I know they’ll be excited.  We just haven’t figured out exactly what we’re going to do with him, since his nature is to run off and there is no fence in our yard.

Also, we’re having company in a couple of days.  Valerie, Michael and their daughter Madelyn are coming for a few days from Dallas, and we’re very excited to see our friends again.  Though, I will probably spend a lot of the time apologizing for the state of our house, since I am coming to terms with the fact that certain chores are just not going to get done adequately until we get through this plague (hai, n-e-body wanna com cleen mah house???).

Regardless, Kaelin is SUPER excited to see her friend and has been counting down the days.  It was the last thing she said to me before bed: “Mama, tomorrow there’s only ONE MORE DAY until Madelyn comes, right?”

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Is anyone else bothered by the opening sequence of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?  I mean, even if you can get past the fact that you have 3 bears living in a cottage and eating porridge, and that Goldilocks is obviously the product of delinquent parents if she a) is allowed to go wandering through the woods by herself, and b) doesn’t have enough home training to know that you don’t just open the door and go wandering into some stranger’s house.

Even if you take all that at face value, there’s still the porridge issue, and I find myself unable to get past the porridge issue.

If you make hot porridge and pour it at the same time into 3 different sized bowls, the porridge will cool in direct proportion to the volume of the bowl.  In other words, IT IS THERMODYNAMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR MAMA BEAR’S MEDIUM SIZED PORRIDGE TO COOL FASTER THAN BABY BEAR’S “WEE” PORRIDGE.

The only rational explanation for this is that even though Mama Bear’s bowl was bigger than Baby Bear’s bowl, Mama Bear is anorexic and poured herself the least amount of porridge because she’s afraid of getting fat.

The underlying themes of this story just get better and better.

Because you have to assume that there’s some reason that Mama and Papa bear don’t share a bed.  And don’t say it’s because Papa Bear snores.  They all sleep in the same room, so separate beds wouldn’t really make a difference there. 

Maybe Goldilocks isn’t the first blonde bombshell to sneak into the cottage and “rearrange” Papa Bear’s bed sheets.  Just saying.

And this is a story we tell our kids?

Oh, and Koren has an infected eye.

Jens appears to have strep throat.  I say “appears” because the tests came back negative, but he has all the symptoms.  The doctor told him that the test is only 85% accurate so she’s pretty sure it’s just a false negative and put him on antibiotics.  He spent most of the day in bed and then took Kaelin to Seldovia for the weekend.

If you read that last sentence and thought, “huh?” it’s because he had made plans to take Kaelin to Seldovia for the weekend and my husband?  HE IS STUBBORN.  It was a struggle to keep him home last weekend with the measly excuse of a SHATTERED ELBOW.  So this weekend I gave up and just drove him and his contagious illness to the boat.

Speaking of Jens and his shattered elbow, we are still waiting to hear back from the doctor in Anchorage on whether he thinks surgery would be necessary, based on the x-rays.

And now, it’s time for me to get off the computer and get back to all that cleaning I’m supposed to be doing while Koren is napping.

I heard Kaelin coughing a few times last night.  If she gets sick too, I think I’m just going to throw myself off the balcony.

This week is wearing me down.  All the household chores are pretty much up to me now, which might give me a martyr complex if I was actually doing a good job at getting them done.  But I’m not, so it’s just making me frustrated and stabby.  It seems that no matter what I do, the laundry keeps piling up, the floor keeps getting cluttered and dirty, the dishes keep appearing OUT OF NOWHERE, and the trash…I don’t even want to think about the trash.  Though Jens and his mom did manage to do a dump run yesterday, so at least I have a place to PUT the trash.  For now.

Koren seems to be back to normal, except that he suddenly has the emotional consistency of a ping-pong ball.  Is that a 2-year-old thing?  I don’t remember Kaelin going through that stage.  He’s loving all his new toys, but he’s obsessed with the fact that they’re HIS.  As soon as he even THINKS Kaelin is going to touch one, he starts shrieking. 

He keeps telling us that he’s ready to use the potty.  I’m so not ready to go there.  We haven’t even weaned him off the pacifier yet.  I keep meaning to do it, but something’s always happening that makes it a bad time.  He’s sick, we have company, we’re traveling, etc. 

Also, I have a feeling that he’s going to be one of those kids who sleeps in a crib until he’s 3 and a half.  Kaelin got transitioned to a “big girl bed” shortly after she turned 2.  But just trying to keep Koren in his dinner seat is like trying to keep all the packing peanuts inside a box, so I can’t even imagine what trying to keep him in a bed in the middle of the night would be like.

I had plans to go jogging this morning (good stress relief) but after taking Jens to the doctor (they weren’t open yet) and going to the store to get throat spray I was finally headed out and then it started raining.  Since I can’t think of anything more miserable than running in the rain, it appears I’m not going jogging.

Maybe I’ll just take a nap instead.

Today is our 9th wedding anniversary.  All this time and 2 kids later, Jens can still crack me up better than anyone.  He’s a terrific husband, father, and life partner.  He has a heart of gold and it still amazes me that after all this time he continues to love me the way he did when we were newlyweds.  (Obviously I managed to hoodwink him somehow.)

I love you Babe, and I look forward to the next 9 years and beyond!