Parties and Cakes and Really Big Earaches

Well I made it through the weekend. Friday was so much fun as I spent it hobbling around on a very sore foot and wanting very much to just sit down and relax. Hubby had lots of fun shooting pheasants with the guys from work and I'm glad he did have fun but why is it when he's out of town bad things happen?? After getting all things I needed to do done I decided that we would do pizza and TV and have a nice quiet (early to bed) evening. That took some convincing due to Matthew's ability to tell the difference between 8 o'clock when I wanted to do bedtime and 9 o'clock when I normally do bedtime. Andrew meanwhile decided he wanted to be pick me up and carry me baby all night. All the kids were very tired from the late night before but I did manage to get the older two down by 8:30 and sleeping by 9 or so. That was after the loving husband called and talked to the kids and I told them he would be home the next day. It took a little longer to get Andrew settled down and off to sleep. After blogging and watching stupid late night TV I went upstairs to pass out for the evening and ponder my options for the next day. Sometime around 4 or so in the morning Andrew started screaming and didn't stop for the next hour and a half. This was not whimper whimper I'm cold and while you're up could you get me a sippy cup of milk. No, this was full force top of the lungs writhe around in pain please make it stop screaming. Normally, I would have back-up to help out but of course said back-up was soundly sleeping in a motel room 75 miles away. At this point I was really really wishing for another body to help out. Andrew is incredibly strong and when he is thrashing around it is really hard to hold on to him without dropping him or him slipping out of my arms and falling to the floor. I was hoping to stay upstairs but he was crying so loud that I had to go downstairs. Lots of fun with a injured foot and a 30 pound child. I also couldn't stand and walk for long periods of time so I was forced to rock in the chair and hope that the motion would help. I finally gave up and took Andrew back upstairs with me and propped myself up in bed and laid him on my chest with the hopes he would fall asleep from exhaustion. He finally did but I didn't get much sleep so I was in a really good mood when the other two woke up and started making tons of noise. Knowing that there was a 99.9% chance Andrew had a monster ear infection going on I decided that I would try to wait it out until hubby got home later in the day instead of taking everyone to Urgent Care. Instead we went grocery shopping. We were hosting a November/December birthday party on Sunday so I needed to go and get a few supplies. Shopping was fun, the kids helped me get my things and since it was Saturday there were free samples to eat along the way. Later that day Hubby got home. He was trying to make it before the Urgent Care closed and actually got home earlier than he needed to. As expected, Andrew did have an ear infection, the tube was blocked (surprise surprise) and the eardrum was bulging and there was a very good chance it could rupture. After coming back home and doing supper, I headed out to Wal-Mart to buy a gift for my niece and decided to go to Menard's to get gifts for my Mother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law. Matthew and Carolyn were very good helpers. That night we once again got very little sleep. Andrew was quite restless and spent much of the night propped up on Daddy. I did score some awesome ear drops that numb the pain so those helped quite a bit. My plan was to get up early Sunday and get the cake made and start picking up the house before the kids woke up and made things messier. Didn't quite happen. I was so tired from the previous two nights that I slept like the dead and woke up later than I should have. Thankfully the kids were also tired so they let us sleep and I got a quick shower in. I had for some strange reason decided to make the birthday cake for this party. Jim had said that he didn't want to do a DQ cake this time and had suggested that we do two cakes instead of one since we were going to have 15 or so people over. Maybe it was the pink cake still haunting me or maybe I'm just losing my mind but I had picked up a box of cake flour on one of my recent trips to the grocery store and the carrot cake recipe on the back caught my attention. My in-laws love carrot cake so I decided what the heck I'll do a scratch carrot cake and while I'm at it I'll use a box mix and do cupcakes too. I did the cupcakes the night before and they turned out OK. I think if I go the cupcake route again I'll do less cupcakes but make them bigger. I still don't know how they get 24 cupcakes out of that mix. I got 23 but that was really pushing it. I had mentioned in a previous post that scratch baking and small children did not go to well together but scratch baking and husband watching the kids do go together so I was able to take the 35-40 minutes and make up the cake according to recipe directions. It's been so long since I did a homade carrot cake that I had forgotten just how much work they are. Of course since this was a new to me recipe I had to follow it word for word and not try to substitute ingredients. This particular recipe called for mayonnaise so I got mayonnaise--not low fat or fat free. When you go to all the work making the cake then you have to do the frosting too. What else goes with carrot cake?? Cream cheese frosting. To do frosting right there is no such thing as fat free or low fat in the vocabulary. Cake in the oven it was time to tackle the house. We managed to get all cleaned and organized by noon when the first guests arrived. Lunch was a very tasty Boston Butt Pork Roast--I picked it out-- along with grilled burgers and mashed potatoes, taco salad, frog-eyed salad and vanilla pudding cookie dessert. The nice thing about doing family parties is that everyone brings food so we only had to do the meat and cakes. The kids loved frosting the cupcakes--they were yellow with chocolate frosting. I managed to get my cake out of the pans without breaking it and I got it frosted without too much incident. I love my little food processor, it chopped the pecans in no time flat and if you looked just right and used your imagination the cake resembled the picture on the box. It tasted wonderful. For the blowing out the candle part I took three cupcakes and put impossible to blow out candles in them and handed them to my 8 year niece Ashlynn and to Matthew and Carolyn. I stuck one candle in the cake for my niece Raelynn and two candles in for Andrew. My MIL and SIL decided they didn't want to blow out candles. We lit the cupcakes first and had fun laughing at the kids blowing and re-blowing. We had to do the cake twice since my SIL Julie who was holding Andrew blew a little too hard on the candles when trying to get him to blow. Gift-wise we didn't do too bad. After everyone had left we were able to slow down and enjoy the rest of the weekend. On Monday morning I called the Ear Nose Throat Doctor and they had an opening that afternoon. After months and months of nothing but problems I was ready to ditch the tubes and start again. According to the doctor it is very possible that the left eardrum has already closed and the tube is just sitting on top stuck there so it looks like the tube is blocked. The right side is fine with no problems. He did agree with me that replacing the tubes would be a good option so I called the loving husband and asked him when he was available to do the surgery. Poor guy was a little surprised at my phone call. I didn't him know that I had an appointment scheduled so soon. He looked at his calender and said that the first week in December was open so Andrew is scheduled to get re-tubed on December 4. The next three weeks can't go by fast enough for me.