it just goes on and on my friend

Warning: this is a mess of a Foster Care happenings, crazy day, exhausted mama and I'm so glad the weekend is finally here update. It may or may not be coherent and I will not be offended if you just move on with your day and skip this rambling here. ;)

I thought for awhile this might be the week that never ends.  It has truly seemed like the longest week ever.  Every single day I found myself saying, "is it really only Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/etc. ?!!?!?"
And it's finally Friday.
It might just take a week's worth of energy to get through this one day though.  Or I guess that was yesterday, so now I feel like I need another little boost to muster up a little functionality today.

Yesterday was the Big Day of the week.  Starting bright and early with a dr's appointment for the baby.  She hadn't been taken in for a check-up or any shots or anything since she was discharged from the hospital at birth.  :(
Appointment was at 9am.  I left the house at about 8:30, knowing I wasn't familiar with where exactly the clinic was and with baby being a new patient and everything... and I didn't get home until almost noon.  NOON.  That's over three hours for a well-baby check + shots at a dr's office (not our regular btw!) that is ten minutes from our house.  Can you say crazy?

I was supposed to then have her at the courthouse at noon to have some visit time with her family before court at 1.  But after the dr I still had to run home (hadn't really planned on that taking the three hours!!) to get another bottle and such  (yet conveniently, still forgot the infant tylenol.  duh, duh, dun). And then make the 30 minute trip across town to the courthouse.
I've never been to the juvenile court, let alone any courthouse really, so finding it, finding (and figuring out how to pay for) parking, finally getting to the building, going through security and then figuring out where I'm supposed to be, and then spending a half hour with baby's family was, as you can imagine, all relaxing and lovely.
Our court appointment was running late of course, and then our junction ran long.  Meanwhile, baby is wanting to do nothing but sleep (did I mention a rough morning and four shots?!) but being passed around my multiple family members and friends.  She was getting fussier and fussier and pretty soon if she's wasn't sleeping, she was screaming.  She won't take a bottle and you can tell she just feels miserable.  Our case is finally up, but a complete waste of time as it's determined (in a matter of about three minutes) that we're reconvening next week when a couple of alternative options can be checked out.  So no plans or decisions were made, rather everything was put off for another week.
Another goal of the day was that we were hoping to be able to arrange a visit with baby's mother after the hearing (she is normally, how shall we say... unavailable, and was transported over to be present for the hearing), but they denied her any time with her baby.  She hasn't seen her baby since she left the hospital at two days old.  Kind of sad, but turned out to be for the best because by that point, baby was DONE.  She was screaming like crazy and I couldn't -no one there could- console her.  She wouldn't eat, even though I knew she was starving, you couldn't hardly touch her her little thighs were hurting so badly, and she was all stuffed up from crying so much so her little barely seven week old self was having trouble breathing well.  I finally just said I needed to get her out of here so she can get some relief.  From the noise, the touching, the bright lights, and mostly, the pain.
She then proceeded to scream (scream, not cry) the whole entire 30 minute drive home.  Entire.  I even stopped once to try again and comfort/feed/do whatever I could try to get her calmed down.  Didn't work.  So I just got back on the road.  Longest drive ever.
We made it home just after three in the afternoon.
With a baby who was screaming her (and my) head off.
I burst in the front door and handed her off to Ryan (who thankfully was able to work from home and stay with a recouping SJ today) and tracked down the bottle of tylenol -that I had specifically bought ahead of time for just this reason, but then tragically left at home!- and resisted the urge to pour myself a nice cold one that instant.

We eventually got Baby calmed down, Sawyer got home from school, Savannah had managed to stay fever free all day and so we headed out to the school's spaghetti dinner/book fair/third grade musical performance and were able to visit with some friends as well. Baby thankfully slept through the entire evening. :)  And Savannah did a great job performing and nailed her special part!!
We even managed to swing by the library (overdue books!) and pharmacy on our windabout way home, all in one piece!

Got all three kids in bed as soon as we got home and then I basically crashed.
Emotionally and physically drained much?
Unfortunately, as you can probably guess, we had a rough baby night as well.

I'm supposed to (and wanting to) go to school this afternoon and help with the kindergarten egg hunt, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.  My house is a wreck, I'm still exhausted and while the baby's sleeping now, there's no telling how our day is going to go.  When my babies were little, shots never really affected them much... no fevers, not really any crabbiness, they just went on with their normal happy baby life.  Not sure if Baby is just having a worse reaction or if yesterday was just too much for her.  Or both.

So glad it's Friday though.
We're supposed to go to a friends' house for bonfire and s'mores tonight.  And then maybe after we get home and get the kids to bed, have our neighbors come over for some card games or something.  And while I know I'm exhausted, and partly want to just clear the calendar and burrow into bed, it seems the last couple of weeks have been so busy with baseball, softball, fevers and life stuff that I haven't seen anyone or just relaxed and had fun in forever.  So we're still on for tonight.  I'm so looking forward to it.
And we have no baseball/softball this weekend since it's the beginning of spring break, so I'm really looking forward to an "empty" Saturday.  Even though I just want to fill it with yardwork.  We really need to get some trimming and weeding and planting done, I've been of no use during the week with a baby here now, and our weekends are basically eaten up by baseball and softball these days, so I'm actually looking forward to a day to have Ryan here and we can actually (hopefully) get something accomplished out there!
Then Saturday evening we're babysitting our friends' boys and swapping out for Sunday evening... ditching our kids with them and going out to dinner and a movie with J & K for K's birthday.  THE HUNGER GAMES!  Finally!!!  I am so excited.  Have y'all seen it yet??