Phone calls

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January 3, 2010

Timing, His Stinks!

Posted by fixitmommy under Phone calls, Uncategorized | Tags: , |
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On my other blog, I just wrote about the Big Ones great timing with getting sick the other day. I wish the Husband could get some of that timing vibe from her!

Now that the deployment is coming to an end, one would thing we would have the timing of phone calls down, unfortunately we do not. I know he thinks that I have spent the entire time he’s been gone stressing out, yelling and generally being annoyed with the girls.

Yes, there have been a lot of those type of moments, but not all the time, just every time he calls.

I’ve written before about the morning of dog diarrhea that followed a night of kid-puke; he called at the exact moment that I discovered the dog diarrhea, so yes I was stressed.

Then yesterday we were at WalMart. We were fine wandering around looking at things. The girls were fine. Then he called just as we got to the frozen pizza aisle. So as I am trying to talk to him, the Big One is darting in between people trying to open every door and whining that she wanted every kind of pizza in the cases.

Meanwhile I am trying to maintain a conversation with him, while assuring that the Big One didn’t completely disappear into the abyss of people that is a Super WalMart on a Saturday morning. So yes, I was a little stressed and annoyed all at the same time.

Of course then he gets angry that I am not devoting 100 percent of my attention to him, so he ends the conversation and then I feel guilty for the rest of the day. It’s a great cycle.

Then this morning, I took 20 seconds to walk out the front door and halfway down the driveway to get the newspaper. Guess who called during those 20 seconds? I swear the phone must have started ringing the millisecond that I closed to front door to go out and then stopped ringing the millisecond I opened the door. I didn’t even hear it. Of course the girls were yelling, “Your phone was ringing!” as soon as I got in the door.

So now I sit and wait for him to call back. I know as soon as he does, he will make some smart comment about me still being asleep at 8 a.m. Then I will get annoyed because I haven’t slept that late in ages. Ahhhh, I love the drama of morale phone calls.

 

October 11, 2009

It’s All in The Timing

Posted by fixitmommy under Phone calls, The Little One, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , |
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The Little One has been sick for about three days now.  It started on Thursday night with eight hours of puking. No joke, no exaggeration.  She threw up every 20 minutes from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m.  It was pleasant.

Then on Friday she started complaining her ears hurt.  She had a low grade fever, but seemed all right after a few hours sleep. She was a bit grumpy on Saturday morning, then was fine.  But by Saturday night she was a grouch again.  Again she started telling me her ear hurt.

So I decided that today, Sunday, would be the day we made the trip to Urgent Care.  If she had an ear infection, it had already been a few days and I wanted to get her started on meds sooner versus later.

We had made arrangements to try out Skype with the Husband this morning.  So I knew I needed to wait for his call and then we’d head to Urgent Care.

Now one other aside about the Little One’s sickness; She had not pooped since Thursday.  Considering her decreased appetite with the large volume of puke, I was a little concerned, but not overly concerned.  I figured I would bring it up at the Urgent Care visit along with the other symptoms.

So what do y’all think happened the second the Husband called? I had just answered his call, spotted him on the computer, showed the Big One where to look for Daddy when it happened.  Not only did the Little One poop at that exact moment, she had the most disgusting liquid explosion in her entire life.  We are talking spilling out of the diaper, soaking through her sweat pants.  And the smell?  Oh my Lord, the smell was horrendous.

I’ve been a mom for 4.5 years.  I have dealt with my share of stinky poop, but y’all I was gagging on the floor, while trying to clean up the mess.  As I tried desperately not to get it on the carpet, the Big One continued to talk to Daddy as the video cut in and out.   Each time he disappeared, she was yelling, “DADDY? Are you there? DADDY???”

I’m not sure if it was a case of too many people clogging the server on his end, or if it was something that I had done wrong. I just know that he was cutting in and out as I was trying desperately to clean up the poop explosion.  Both kids were freaking out for different reasons.  The dog was trying to figure out where the smell was coming from by nudging the diaper with her nose.  I was holding the Little One’s legs and butt up in the air, while trying to clean up the mess and at the same time shooing Gracie Lou away from the diaper.

Meanwhile, the Husband is just sort of staring in disbelief at the computer trying to figure out what all the chaos was about.  I contemplated telling him we’d try back in 5 minutes, but then I figured what’s the use, there would surely be something else going on, so we pressed on.

We did get to talk and see each other off and on for about 10 minutes.  It was pretty cool, that’s for sure.

Of course, now the Little One keeps looking at the computer and saying, “I want to talk to Daddy!!”

 

September 19, 2009

Ahhh, the Phone Call Dilemma

Posted by fixitmommy under Phone calls, Uncategorized | Tags: , , |
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We’ve decided that the best use of the 30 minutes of free phone time that the Husband gets through our local base is for him to call on Friday mornings.  Both girls are home and can take turns talking to Daddy.

It’s fun to watch how excited they get when they realize that it’s Daddy on the phone, but the fighting and arguing over who gets to talk is frustrating.

They are still little enough that they need to have the phone on speaker phone so that they can hear him, he can hear them and I can hear it all to translate.

The problem is actually twofold.  They fight over the phone and who gets to hold it when.  I try to keep one quiet while the other talks and then after a couple minutes we switch off.  It seems to work for the first switcharoo, but inevitably the Big One remembers something that she HAS to tell Daddy when the Little One is talking and vice versa.

Once they start whining and fighting, it gets very difficult for the Husband to hear anything at all.

The other challenge is the conversation itself.  I don’t know what’s best.  Is it best to try to “guide” the conversation with prompting or is it best to just let them ramble?  I do let them ramble initially, but then they seem to lose steam and run out of things to say.

I hate feeling like I am forcing the conversation, but at the same time I want to make sure they utilize the time that we have.

I always end up feeling like an overbearing stage-mom promoting my girls on what to say when. My intentions are of course to make sure that Daddy gets to hear as much about their adventures as possible.  I just feel like  it comes off too forced.

 

September 11, 2009

The Cost of A Morale Call

Posted by fixitmommy under Phone calls, Uncategorized | Tags: , |
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Many of you know that phone calls home can be few and far between when your loved one is deployed. We’ve been very fortunate in that I have talked to the Husband almost every day on the phone. This morning was the first time the girls were able to talk to him.

He’s gotten to make calls through a few different avenues. When he calls my cell phone, it’s a “self-monitored” 15 minute call. When he calls the house phone it’s strictly enforced 15 minutes. It’s like the old payphones, when your time is up, the call is disconnected.

I know you are thoroughly confused now. The calls are routed through the “morale offices” at various bases. {The Husband is a talker, many of you know. So he has been able to talk his way into making calls through various bases because our cell phone and house phone are in different area codes.}

So today was one of the strictly enforced calls, and unfortunately the girls don’t get the concept of time very well. So they play, fight and argue when they should be talking. The Big One went so far as to hide upstairs with the phone behind her back because she wanted to keep talking, but the Husband was asking for me. He knew the time was running short and wanted to check on me.

I finally got the phone from her and closed myself in the spare bedroom so I could talk without the arguing and whining of the girls distracting me. The Big One perched herself outside the door knocking, saying, “let me in!” over and over and over again. I didn’t hear a peep from the Little One. That’s always a bad sign, huh?

So I talked to the Husband for a couple more minutes. It was tough breaking the news to him that the Space Shuttle may land here this afternoon. He is really bummed to potentially be missing it again. We saw it last Thanksgiving, but a few months ago when it landed at Edwards again we were in San Diego.

After the call abruptly ended; you get a five minute warning, then a one minute warning and then I think it went to five seconds, I opened the door and asked the Big One where her sister was. She told me the Little One was “playing with her diaper.”

I knew I was in trouble and was going to pay for the five minutes of peace on the phone. As I walked to the end of the hall towards my bedroom I smelled poop. For those of you who don’t follow my regular blog, the Little One seems to have a poop obsession.

I first found the wipes box covered in poop, then I found the diaper with skid marks. I looked in the toilet and only saw more wipes in there. I cleaned up that mess and then went looking for the Little One. I found a few more wipes as I walked downstairs and then finally found the Little One in the downstairs bathroom crying that her butt hurt.

She claims that she flushed the poop, and for my sake I pray she is telling the truth.

 

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