Making some Changes

So I have been really tired of the state that our house is staying in lately (well for awhile now.). I decided that I was gonna change it and I was NOT doing it alone. So I have made the girls & I little chore charts. For me if it is not wrote down then it probably is not gonna happen. If I write it down I usually get better results! LOL!

I have worked very hard to figure out the best way for the girls to understand where their things go. I even went and bought a shelf for the little baskets to help. Everything has a place and they know it but now to reinforce it and make it routine and normal.

 

The girls chores are very easy here is the chart I have made them:

The x's are the days they do the certain chore. They both have their own laundry day where they can help me do their laundry from washing, drying, folding and putting away. At the end of the week they will get a treat (money, dollar store, etc.) for doing the chores. I have also made it clear that they have to start keeping their toys cleaned up and taken care of. I hope that this habit will be well established by their bday. I have told them that if that cant take care of their stuff then their bday things will stay packed up until they learn. I hate to do that but it gets really overwhelming for me to do everything for 4ppl with no help. They have gotten bad recently about just where every they are standing to drop trash, toys, whatever and just leave it! I am not ok with that. They are almost 5 years old and they know where things belong.

My chore chartS are a little more advance unfortunately! LOL!

  

(from left to right: my daily chart, laundry, then flylady)

Daily Chart: My daily chart has what days I will "deep" clean each area of the house as well as daily things to do. Bathrooms, vacuuming, dusting, sweeping and mopping are the "deep" cleaning things I want accomplished weekly. Then things like making beds, unload and loading the dishwasher, going through the mail, etc are daily things I want done. 

 Laundry Chart: I saw an email from Fly Lady ( I will talk about this in a min) the other day that made me go ah ha... The lady has 4 or 5 kids. She said that with all that laundry it was very overwhelming and she thought it was best to do all of it at once. Well that only made it worse. She realized that the best way to go about it was have a day for every load. Each child had their own basket and day for laundry. They also strip their bed on their laundry day.

Laundry is very overwhelming for me as well.  I have always gotten it done but then it never makes its way out of the basket. Then we have to dig through baskets or the couch to find what we are looking for. So I have made one chart that is for laundry. What day I

do what laundry. The girls each have their own side of their closet and now a basket as well (instead of the one to share.).  I hope that doing 1 or 2 smaller loads of laundry a day will help. Plus everything will get washed more often (ex. sheets, towels and wash rags, etc).

Flylady: First let me explain Flylady is a website (http://flylady.com/) that sends you daily assignments for around the house. She picks an area of the house each week. Then you have one assignment each day. They are really very easy things and don't usually take long to accomplish (her motto is in 15min you can do anything). And she also gives you one habit to do everyday for the whole month so that you can make it part of your routine. She also has a reminder on the emails for daily things that you should do. For example: swish and swipe, getting dressed from head to toe including shoes, and more.

So this months habit is Laundry-one load a day! This weeks area is the Kitchen. I highly recommend it to ppl. It really helps you establish a good daily habit and to get things done that you don't do on a daily basis.

So I have my daily reminders printed from Flylady and then my things to do for the week in the kitchen.

So this is what my Frig looks like now:

But I am totally ok with that bc I am ready to get this CHAOS under control. Until we make these things a habit I will do it!! Hopefully before long it will be habit and we want need the charts.

Please share what you have found helps you and your family to stay organized.  

Part 2 BIRTHDAYS BIRTHDAYS BIRTHDAYS!!!!

This post is gonna be a happy and fun post!!

So around here August is a wild and crazy month!! We have sooooooo many birthdays. Every weekend has at least one party in it. So we start the month out with a friends little girls (Lulu) birthday. We have been best friends for several yrs and now the girls (lulu, Kay and Jay) are best friends. Lu will be 5 this Thursday!! Man how the time flies! Her party is on Saturday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LULU!!!

Friday August 5th..... Hmmmmmm there is something going on that day..... Think..... think...... Oh yeah now I remember it is MY 28th!!!

No big plans at this point. We may head to the rodeo or to the local aquarium for member night. We will see.

The 14th we are having the BIG family birthday party with my moms family. Because other than mine, little bro, and the girls we have several others in the family w birthdays in the month of Aug. They live 2hrs from us and instead of us going down or them coming up just about every weekend we do one big party for everyone.

The 15th is my little brothers 10th birthday *yes I said he is 10! LOL

The 23rd is SFs, a little boy that we met him and his parents in NICU, birthday.

The 27th is a VERY busy day!!!!

We have the girls 5th BIRTHDAY PARTY at park here in town.

It is J & Ms, the twin boys that live right down the road from us whom we also met in NICU, birthday and BIRTHDAY PARTY.

(Yes we have 2 parties in one day!!! LOL)

Then to finish the month up..........

August 30th is our sweet baby girls 5th BIRTHDAY!!!!

I can not believe our little babies are gonna be 5! Where did the time go?!

They are starting Pre-K Sept 6th!!!! Oh my goodness!!!!!!



Man I love those BEAUTIFUL GIRLS!!!!!

So August is full of BIRTHDAYS BIRTHDAYS AND THEN SOME MORE BIRTHDAYS!!!!

Part 1 The rollercoaster

This is post 1 of 2 for today. I dont want this wild and crazy post to be in with a good post about this month. So hold on for the ride........ LOL!

So yesterday I check the mailbox and guess what is there.......... A letter from insurance where the hospital is billing for Kay's stay. Seriously!!! Insurance approved one day so far in PICU and I am not sure on the others yet. I called the insurance company and explained what had happened and ask what steps I needed to take. The lady was very nice. She told me that I needed to speak with the billing department at the hospital or wait for the eob and then get in touch with insurance and explain again.

I not only want the hospital to NOT bill our insurance for this but I want them to do something. I dont know what if anything can be done further. I called the hospital, after being transferred 4xs and explaining everytime, I finally spoke with a Nursing assist over the childrens er. She took down the info and said that her boss or someone higher would be contacting me.

I'm really not sure what to say to these ppl. I want them to understand my child was in icu bc they SCREWED up not bc she was that sick when we came in. I thought that there were procedures in place already that 2ppl had to check off on med. So does that mean 2 ppl messed up? If so then what can they do to fix it where it doesnt happen again. Unfortunely most medicines are based on a one dose fits all. Which I really dont like. There are exceptions to the rules. Kay is almost 5 and weighs 24lbs (after losing around 4lbs during this).  If you look at the directions on medicine bottles she fits in weight wise for a 2yr old. So did the PA base her dose on her age? Bc apparently no one had looked at her chart to see that she only weighed 11.6kilos and not 20kilos like most kids probably are at almost 5.

So how do I explain to the person that calls me back that they need to have something in affect were this doesnt happen to another child? How far do I push? Do I just make a complaint and hope that something is done? I do know that I am going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that this bill is not placed on us. We might have had to stay over night due to her not drinking and her dehydration but not in ICU for sure!!!

 I keep telling N our little girl could have died bc of this mistake!!! If we had walked out of the room for just a min or if I had been preoccupied and not noticed she would have! They did not have her hooked up on monitors so they would not have known. It was just by the grace of God that I was there and realized. I thought (and hoped) that after leaving the NICU (I will write about that in another post)we would never have to go through that again. It is the scariest thing watching a room fill in seconds to try to help your chid breath.

Nothing can explain the fear of seeing your childs lifeless body lying there in front of you. Just the thought of what happened to Kay makes me want to cry, scream, & to tear into the ppl that did this.
When we were in the hospital I kept my cool and my mouth shut (all but once) I guess bc my mind was just wrapped up in making sure she was ok. Now that we are finally making progress in her being on the uphill of this it is hitting hard. I know that ppl make mistakes, no one is perfect, but we trusted them to know what they were doing in taking care of our child. So what happened?

On a positive note Kay is doing so much better!!!! She is finally to a point where she is sleeping most the night and not needing so much meds during the day. We only had one minor melt down yesterday and so far none today. She is starting to pick up on her eating, although we are still trying to stay with easily chewed and shallowed food. (there has been alot of pasta around here!!)

This has been such a rollercoaster and I cant wait for it to end.

Ok so I am gonna get off my soapbox for now. Just pray that the right words come to me when I finally talk to someone about all of this. And I will post as soon as I hear something.