Sleep

If you haven't noticed by now, sleep is important to me. I love sleep. Seriously. I hope I still get to sleep in heaven. I've always loved sleep. I don't do well without sleep. In fact, I'm at my best when I get a full 8-9 hours of glorious sleep. Well that doesn't work out super well working graveyard shifts. Fortunately I also like what I do.

WELL, I should have been a Doctor.  I started working at a new location with my current job. It's like a mini satellite hospital here and it happens to be much closer to home for me. Well there is always a doctor on duty at this little pediatric hospital. But guess what....they get their own dark room with a bed and a pillow! This bed is not just to lay down on during a half hour or hour break either guys... they can go in there and sleep whenever they want (as long as no patients need them at the time that is). We can call them anytime of course, but seriously the last night I worked the doctor slept at least 6 hours. I was so jealous. Nurses do not get to sleep... we have to be up and ready at all times through the night. Sometimes it's downright painful, but we endure because it's our job and somebody needs to be ready. Sick kids don't suddenly get better and not need anything during the night.

I should have been a doctor.

Spider Dreams

I've decided I actually get more rest when my husband is gone. In fact, yesterday my baby and I napped like it was our job. I put her down for a nap in the morning and we both slept for 3 HOURS. It was awesome.

Anyway, so last week the man was home with us for 2 nights. I do actually love it when he is home. Well things are kind of goofy right now because my 6 year old is sleeping on a mattress on our floor so I can help her get up to go to the bathroom in the night. We are using a bed wetting alarm with her right now.

Well she was asleep and I crashed around 11:00. Suddenly I was awakened by the man around midnight:

"OH. MY. GOSH. THAT IS THE BIGGEST SPIDER I HAVE EVER SEEN!"

Me: "What? Where?"

Husband: "In that corner over there"

Me: "Well shine a light over there"

Husband:  "Nevermind"- and goes back to sleep.

Daughter: "Dad your weally fweakin me out!" (she struggles saying her r's a bit)

Me: "Will you just shine a light over there?"

Daughter: "Please Dad!"

Husband: "No it's fine" - back to sleep.

Finally I shined a light over there.... Nothing.  He was DREAMING and talking in his sleep.

Thanks to his wonderful sleep talking My 6 year old was up and crying for the next hour. Poor girl. No wonder why I needed a 3 hour nap yesterday.

Kids

Sometimes it feels like I'm surrounded by kids. Fortunately I kinda like them. I ONLY have 3 kids myself (as a mormon this is a pretty small amount), but I also work with kids. I've worked 4 12 hour shifts in the last 5 days, all at the pediatric hospital. When I am not at work I am with my own kids. Even at church I work with the little kids. Some kids are brats, and seriously, that is just annoying. But kids are also freaking awesome. They are hilarious. They are sweet. They are kind. They are sensitive and intuitive. They are inquisitive. They are so open to love and to learning. Really is there anything more beautiful?

My own 3 send me on roller coasters daily of wanting to lock myself in a room and hide in a closet to just loving being in their presence and enjoying the sweet moments with them. They each have a wonderful unique personality that I just love. My older two say some of the funniest things. I started writing them down in my phone last year because I think it will be fun being able to look back at some of the great things they came up with in these beautiful years of their lives. Here is what I have in my phone so far:

Kid Quotes:

5/2013

Mom: Oakley why don't you change your Jammie's, those ones smell like pee.

Oakley: sniff "No they don't"

Mom: yeah they do, smell the bum

Oakley: "oh. Yeah they do"

Ethan: "Ew Oakley I don't want to smell your peepee butt!"

Oakley: that's okay. I'll just turn the other way

5/26/2013

Oakley "Mom, I really want a nice tiger someday"

6/5/13

Oakley as she walks into the house "Mom, the house smells like your armpit"

8/9/13

Oakley: "Mom I'm just talking to my friends on the phone. I'm in high school and just talking to my friends. One is sick."

9/5/2013

Oakley: "mom one of my sisters is a hobo. My sister has a brother named Jake and he looks like a bulldog". She was completely serious.

10/21/13

Talking with the kids about how people make their own choices, good or bad and Oakley says:

"yeah, and some people choose to speak Spanish."

12/13

I am chewing Oakley out for how messy her room is. She responds "mom, it's called organized chaos".

12/22/13

Oakley, sitting in church sniffs and says "Mom, what does Santa smell like?"

2/2014

I asked the kids what we should do for dad as a surprise when he comes home from his Skywest interview. Oakley on the way home from school gets excited and says "I know what we can get dad mom! We can buy him a new bigger gun so he can shoot the cats!"

3/16/2014

Ethan asks me "Why do moms have boobs?" I say "Well, so we can feed our babies I guess". He says "and why else? For decoration?" Me: "haha yeah that too".

5/15/2014

I asked Oakley if I looked okay in what I was wearing. She replied "oh mom you look fabulous."

She graduated from kindergarten and told me "this is the best day ever" "I can't believe I did that"

6/30/2014

After swimming all day at the Arizona Grand Resort, Ethan runs up and says "give me some water! I don't want to get diabetes!"

I believe he meant dehydrated.

8/10/14

Oakley says: "I love you mom. I just want to rip your head off and hug it."

I asked her why she wants to rip my head off as that's not very nice and she said "then it's just easier to hold and hug"

9/2014

I asked Ethan if he would put some books away for me. He said:

"Yeah I can do that. I can just put the princess book in my room so I can read it to Oakley and Summer. That's my job... To make girls happy."

10/3/14

I told the kids that grown ups don't always know everything after Oakley told me I should know her school schedule because I'm a grown up and Ethan says "Yeah Oakley, nobody knows everything. Not even Siri."

Glorious

I should explain what I do "for a living".

You might think that my dear husband has the more exciting job flying around the world-- to super exciting places-- like North Dakota. His job has it's perks indeed, but I can't say mine is dull.

I have been a RN for nearly 4 years now and I have already worked in quite a few different fields of nursing. (I have often worked 2 jobs at once as I am doing now).  For the last 2 years I have worked at a very large and wonderful children's hospital in Arizona, working graveyard shifts mostly.

What do my nights entail? Well, tonight I got to scoop poop out of a diaper... with a spoon... into a cup.  It's moments like this that I wonder what my life has come to and how I managed to get myself into these things. Not much later I was drawing blood off a beautiful IV. I got my perfect little sample and was placing it into the 5 tubes I needed and somehow managed to send blood flying and squirted it ALL OVER the wall. Fortunately I was able to clean up my little crime scene before my patient and his mother woke up and saw the disaster.

Crap... I couldn't make it through this blog post because I was falling asleep looking at the computer screen. Did I mention that I work graveyard shifts?

Graveyards are something special, let me tell you. Things that wouldn't normally be funny can have you laughing on the floor. One of my very favorite nurse colleagues was barking at me last night. And no, I no longer work in psych.

Although I hate what staying up all night does to my body, I have come to love graveyards in many ways. I love the people I work with. It really is a different type of people who work nights.

We spend our nights running around like crazy people from room to room as one kid will be throwing up while another is being transferred to the PICU or sitting around laughing at stupid YouTube videos for hours. You just never know what you are going to get. I guess that's what keeps things interesting.