Super Bowl fail

I'm going to need you to stick with me while I talk about some stuff (a lot of stuff, really) that is seemingly unrelated to the Super Bowl before we get to the Super Bowl stuff.  We'll get there though, I promise.

My speech aid Sandra works for me on Tuesday and for a school district the other four days of the week.  A few weeks ago she had to take her mother in law to the Emergency Room in the middle of the night, and after being up all night didn't feel it was a great idea to go to work.  I agreed.  She's not able to do make-up days because of her other job, so I do her make-up days when needed.  

The biggest problem with me doing a make-up day is that I have to find child care for Elliott.  Dorothy is our sitter every Thursday, but she works for another family three days a week so I can't just add extra days whenever I need to.

I did a make-up day for Sandra last Monday, the 26th.  Michael, who normally stays home on Friday, switched his off day day and stayed home with Elliott.  Then I worked my regular day on Thursday with Dorothy here.  On Friday Michael stayed home with Elliott in the morning because Dorothy had a doctor's appointment.  She came over around 12:30, so Michael didn't get to work until 1 pm.  He works four 10-hour days and usually works from 5:30 to 3:30.  He decided he would stay at work until 8 so that he only had to use 3 hours of vacation time.

With Michael at work until the kids' bedtime it means that I got home from work and was facing the entire evening alone with the kids.  This is not a problem, but I also needed to go to Target for legitimately needed items like Spencer's medicine and toilet paper.  Then it's hard to make dinner because we're at a store. It's a no-win situation really.  We loaded up, went to Target, got everything we needed (and a few things we didn't) then stopped at Which 'Wich to get a lettuce wrapped sandwich for me.  Then we went to Little Caesars for a pizza for the kids.

Elliott wanted to take a picture with me at Which 'Wich.  He liked this one the best.

We got home at about 6:45.  Spencer started gobbling pizza right away.  Elliott sat at the table rubbing his eyes and complaining.  After 10 minutes of this I decided he just needed to go to bed since he was obviously overly tired.  I put his pizza back in the box and he completely flipped out, screaming and crying and throwing himself on the floor.  That was when I wondered if maybe he was sick.  I took his temperature and it was 99.9.  Not a fever, but definitely elevated.  He was a complete mess so I quickly brushed his teeth, put him in his jammies, sang some songs and tucked him in bed.  He was asleep within 5 minutes, by about 7:10.

Spencer and I enjoyed some time on the couch with Ginger.  Spencer thought she was probably cold because it was raining.  You know.  Outside.  Where she wasn't. 

When Michael came home Spencer went to bed,  followed by us soon after.

At 11:00 Elliott randomly woke up and started talking to himself while laying in bed.  He wasn't upset, he wasn't crying, he wasn't trying to get up, he was just awake.  We finally turned to monitor off at 12:30 and he was quiet enough that we didn't hear him.  Michael got up at 5:00 to go to the bathroom and Elliott was STILL laying in bed talking to himself.  Now, it's possible that he could have fallen asleep and woken up again, but we really think he was up all night long.

He started calling for us at 7:00 and I went and got him.  He wanted to sit in the recliner with me and I wasn't really ready to get up yet, so we sat down and rocked and he actually fell asleep.  He hasn't fallen asleep with me holding him for way over a year.  It was a little slice of heaven for about 10 minutes when he coughed and woke himself up.

The plan for the day was that Spencer was going to a birthday party at noon and then we were all going to take the light rail downtown to go to Super Bowl Central.  The day started out fine, but "fine" lasted for about 10 minutes.  Then there was a lot of crying and fighting and more crying.

We decided, at 10:00, that Elliott would take a nap while Spencer was at the birthday party, we'd let him sleep as long as he wanted and then we'd head downtown.  Elliott went to bed around 10:30 and fell asleep around 11:00.

I dropped Spencer off at his party (at a bowling alley), went grocery shopping at 3 stores, dropped all the food back at home and then went to get Spencer 2 hours later.  Elliott continued to sleep.

After the party Spencer and I went to Target (for 12 pound weights), a used sports equipment store (for a set of kettlebells) and Walmart (for moisturizer and Doritos....of course).  Elliott continued to sleep.

Back at home I worked out and Michael and Spencer played video games while Elliott continued to sleep.  We made it to about 3:00 pm when we decided there was no way we could go downtown for all the festivities because it was too late and Elliott, who hadn't taken a nap in more than 6 weeks, was going on hour number 4 of sleep.  Nobody was very upset about the decision because it was cold and rainy outside, but it was still disappointing that the Super Bowl was happening "right down the street" (meaning, on the complete other side of the Valley) and we were going to miss all of it.  

So basically I wrote ALL of this insane post to tell you that we didn't go to Super Bowl Central and we stayed home and Elliott slept for 5 hours.  I pretty much could have just written the last sentence as my post.

I stole some images from Google so you can see some of what we missed.  

Coming up next: Super Bowl from home, because we didn't have a spare $4,000 per ticket on hand to be there in person.