Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Diseased: The Sequel

First off, if you haven't read the previous blog entry entitled "Diseased", it might be good bedtime reading, as well as context for what I'm about to say here. In other words, give that a scan first.

But having said that, let me tell you that I appear to be the latest casualty to the stomach bug, my most hated illness ever (well, my most hated *relatively benign* illness ever, of course). But as I was pulling out all the stops in the pity party, Annemarie came upstairs where I was having a quite moment to myself knitting, having the chills, its partner fever, and watching the very nice PBS special on the British Monarchy.

Annemarie had remarked earlier today that when you want to give a sick person a kiss (because, you will remember, she rightly pointed out when she was herself sick that sick people need kisses most of all), you should do it on the forehead, so as to give them a kiss in the most hygenic manner for everyone involved. So when she arrived up in our bedroom, right during the part in the show when the Queen tries on the crown to make sure that its 2.5 lbs of encrusted jewels isn't too much for her head, I anticipated that such a kiss might be part of her visit. But what I did not anticipate was how excited she was to give it to me, how eager to help, how her eyes sparkled with the clear sense that she was helping her mother and making her feel better. She even patted my head. My funky-haired, crownless head.

So in a moment of sappiness that I'm sure will be repeated time and again on this blog, let me tell you how thankful I am for the stomach flu tonight. Of course, perhaps my thankfulness stems in part from the fact that I'm already feeling much better, and I may help myself to a birthday cookie (it's Cole's birthday, and I didn't feel well enough to be a part of the special cookie decoration.) But I think the catalyst for this thankfulness was my sweet daughter who was eager to practice caring and concern, and that just makes me gosh darn proud. :) Having now learned my lesson, I give the bug permission to exit my body. Uh, gently exit, please....

Dry your eyes and get on with your day, now.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Diseased

Please forgive the rant in advance, but this day is not happening. Not without some documentation.

As I type this the smell of Lysol is in the air and my fingers are cracking from the loads of hand sanitizer that I've slathered over them. Today is one of those days that I dread all year long. Here's the background:

On Monday (one week, one day ago), Cole woke up seemingly well, but half an hour later was grabbing his head in pain, howling, complaining of an earache. Two hours later at the doctor, his first ear infection is confirmed.

Both big kids went to school the next day, Tuesday, none the worse for wear -- I mean, we had our usual runny nose that lasts from September to March, but nothing remarkable.

On Wednesday morning Annemarie woke up with a mystery fever (almost 102) but no symptoms. So she was home with me and Micah, and we ran errands. Even less work done than usual.

On Thursday night Cole went to bed seemingly fine, but woke in the middle of the night vomiting. His fever was also about 102. I was suspicious that this was an ear infection refusing to resolve, rather than the stomach flu, since he kept saying that his stomach never really hurt.

Friday AM -- exactly 24 hours before his birthday party -- the fever is gone, and I'm breathing a sigh of relief, feeling like we can have this party in good conscience. That night after he runs around it's up to 100, but hey -- it's not the 100.3. His nose and Annemarie's noses are running like sieves. I'm considering strapping a bucket under their chins at this point.

By Saturday morning, the day of the party, everyone is seemingly well. This is wonderful, and we have a great party. I don't worry about infecting the masses for a moment. But that night, Cole's eyes start weeping like he's got pink eye.

By the next morning, Sunday, Cole's nose is like a garden hose, his eyes are flowing all sorts of junk, and he feels awful. Just in time for our family's dedication at church. We stood up there with Cole looking like we'd just hit him in the eyes before we got there. Sunday night Annemarie's eyes joined Cole's, and Cole's started to back off a bit.

By Monday morning they both are still goopy eyed, so we skip ballet and gymnastics, our two fun things to do on Monday mornings. I call the doctor that AM to confirm the differences between pink eye and eye drainage from a cold -- we seem to have the latter (shew!). I experience false security. After a day of mayhem and his nap, Cole awakens with red spots all over his body. I call the doctor again, and they tell me to suspect an allergy to the antibiotic, to start some benadryl, and to call them the next AM to report back.

By this morning -- Tuesday -- Cole is absolutely, positively, 100% covered in red spots. They are on his scalp, his eyelids, his feet, in between his fingers. And they're not terribly itchy, but they are irritating enough that he has the urge to claw at them. I call the doctor, who wants to see him, and discover that he has some sort of viral rash AND that his ear infection never resolved AND that his other ear is now infected. As we're leaving, I notice that Micah's eyes are beginning to ooze junk.

By the time Brian and I rearrange our lives to get Cole to the doctor and Annemarie to school, then Annemarie picked up from school, Micah's eye is so terrible that it's swollen shut. And he seems to be miserable. Everyone goes down for a nap, and for a moment I have the sense that we might be over the worst of it.

Then Annemarie wakes up, and I sense that she's acting strangely. I can't quite pinpoint it. She insists that she feels fine, but not 10 seconds after saying that, starts puking everywhere. The WORST ILLNESS OF ALL! in my opinion. So after I clean everything/one up, spray everything down with Lysol, second guess what i've touched, and spray again (emptying the can), I give my "please tell me when you feel bad! WHy didn't you tell me?" lecture, to which she responds, "I was afraid you'd be mad."

WHAT? ME? MAD? Crazy, maybe. Mad, no.

After I explain that I could not possibly be mad over something like illness, I go into why that sort of information sharing is important -- so that we don't kiss people who are sick, so that we don't eat after them, etc. Then her eyes well up and her lip quivers, and she reminds me that I kissed her right before she took her nap. "Momma, I still need kisses even when I'm sick."

The motherly knife of guilt twists in my heart.

All this, and it now appears that I will have to miss my own doctor's appointment tomorrow for the almost certain ear infection that I have, which has persisted much too long.

Thank you for attending my pity party. I will attempt to come up with crafty, handmade party favors once my cracked and bleeding hands recover.


11-19-08
UPDATE! I ended up making it to the doctor after all today. I was told that I needed to have my eyes checked, that there's chronic fluid behind my ears, that I also have chronic vertigo. Oh yeah, and that the light I've been seeing is the recurrence of my migraine auras. So while Annemarie and Cole are feeling much, much better, their mother is dizzy and blind -- and thanks to her overconsumption of coffee, is slightly dehydrated. And Micah, bless his heart, has super oozy eye and appears to feel like a squished bug. There's nothing like having your infant son smile at you when you enter his room, peering at you through the slits of his eyes that manage to barely open despite the matted mucus that sticks them together.......

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Family. Its Size, Shape, and Scope

I overheard Brian saying something to Annemarie the other day that just about knocked my socks off. Usually Brian and I are on the same page when it comes to parenting, in almost everything. It's a very, very good thing. But what astonished me was hearing him discuss siblinghood with Annemarie, during which he said:

"So do you think you'd like to have a little sister?"

WHAT THE? I compromised my usual restraint (ok -- it's not restraint, but it was the *desire* for restraint that I compromised) when I screamed out, in front of her "WHY ARE YOU SAYING THAT?" And in my defense, I did practice restraint when I told the little man in my head who was telling me to strangle him to shut up for a bit so that I could see whether Brian was posing a rhetorical question or leading the witness. That does, you know, determine the severity and length of punishment.

But for many small children, rhetorical questions are nothing but reality itself, so upon reminding myself of this, I resumed my battle cry. You see, we have three kids. One of them is but 6 mos old. The others are rather small themselves. No one is yet in elementary school. All require some level of assistance getting dressed. Two need some help with toileting/diapering. All three need help when it comes to eating, and one of those three is still receiving 95% of his nourishment from me.

When I was pregnant this last time-- having been pregnant or nursing or both for almost the past six years straight -- I was miserable in a way that I had never before experienced. I mean really, really miserable. My entire body hurt. I was at the chiropractor every week to help my hip, my back, my...you name it. Every time I was pregnant I got sicker; every time I grew more tired; every time I was able to sleep less. When I was still in the hospital with baby #2 -- in fact, after having just delivered him with no pain meds -- Brian and I struck up something of a conversation about how a third child would not be out of the question. But all throughout the baby #3 pregnancy, I had a feeling that this was the last one. And when he was born, I had the feeling that our family was complete -- all members accounted for.

Catch my drift?

So perhaps it seems the ultimate betrayal of my own position that there was a lingering tinge of sadness when I interjected into that conversation to push my position that this was the last one. In his defense, Brian concurred, but you could tell that there was a bit of ambivalence there, as well. Brian's position on the matter is that having children is such a wonderful experience, one that brings us such immense joy, that any child that ends up with us would only be a good thing. But at the same time, Brian was quick to remark that he realized that we couldn't go on having kids forever just because we liked having kids. Thank you, Brian. I do not want to end up like that woman in Arkansas who's pregnant with her 18th baby. But I know what you mean.

While I am relatively (very) certain that another child is not on the horizon, I am equally certain that the decision to stop having kids can be an emotional one. A wise friend whose children are grown remarked once that she underwent something akin to grief when she and her husband decided that two was enough. It wasn't that she wanted any more -- I understand this -- it's just that there is something so magical about the process of waiting for and raising a young child that a part of you must undergo a "coming-to-terms" with the knowledge that that magical time must end. This is put into sharp relief particularly when your small children get big enough and verbal enough that they catch a serious case of sassy.

And do we have sassy. And eye-rolling. OH THE EYE-ROLLING!

So while my youngest is still young enough that we have a baby around -- and thus don't feel like we're missing out on the magic of infancy -- I do anticipate a time in the future when we will have to come to terms with the fact that that stage of life is over. It might be a bit emotional.

But then again, we'll be sleeping more, too. As eyes roll all around us.......

Six Points of Randomness

My dear friend Jovi has challenged six of her friends to a random personal fact-puking contest. Here's my purge. Thanks, J! It was fun!

1) I do not, as a practice, kill bugs that are in, on, or around my house, my person, or my children. What this practically means is that we own no flyswatters, and I have a healthy catch-and-release program going during the summer months when the backyard door is continually open. The one exception to this rule lies with those bugs that are a) vengeful and are clearly looking to attack (some wasps), which can be a big deal for a family with a history of sting allergies (ours), and b) looking to suck my blood (mosquitos, ticks, and fleas). I have no tolerance for blood-sucking of any sort, in fact. So if you're in my house and you're going to suck my blood, prepare to be squished. I won't like doing it, though.

2) I am a clean freak. However, I've lately had to relax my standards for the sake of sanity. This standard-relaxing drives me just about as nuts as the stuff piling up around here, though, so maybe that's a counterproductive move. Interestingly, I was not always a clean freak, and only acquired this habit upon marriage to Brian, who is rather tidy himself. As an industrial engineer by training, Brian has been known to periodically reorganize the refrigerator so that it's a more efficient food receptacle. ****heart****

3) In all things color, I tend towards featuring no more than one to two (occasionally three) bright or dominant colors in a room or on a body, surrounded by varying shades of neutrals, but particularly shades of brown, white, black, and gray. I have always found this to be a good rule of thumb when putting clothes on bodies and stuff in rooms. You gotta have both, but not too much of either one. And *why*, you ask, was I just thinking about this? Well, because a) I just bought a new lamp, b) my awesome friend Becky just gave me a 1930s settee, and I'm thinking about its reupholstered future, and c) I still, occasionally, wonder what it would have been like had I pursued that college whim of dropping the liberal arts stuff and going into interior design.

4) I was a member of a professional clogging team for almost 10 years, during my elementary/jr. high/early h.s. years. I have the scar tissue lurking under my kneecaps, as well as the calves, to prove it. Oh yeah, and I got the moves..... :) And did I mention that I had gold nameplates on above the heel on each of my clogging shoes?

5) I am a list maker, but not only that, a person keenly interested in the process of categorization. This is why I am loving this exercise. It's also why my paragraphs often contain lists (see above and below). In fact, I sometimes tend to see random, ordinary things in terms of their ability to be documented in some sort of hierarchy/list/chart. Put another way, when I walk into a situation, I often look for infrastructure. Not that lists and categories are necessarily the same thing, but the two do often go hand in hand............Now that's sounding a little OCD, no? :)

6) I miss California.

We moved to KC from California, where I was doing round #2 of Grad school. Although it was an amazing experience, I was eager to leave to be closer to family, to be able to buy a house, and because it never felt very comfortable. I suspect much of this lack of comfort had to do with the fact that my husband worked in NY most of the time we were in CA, and thus I was alone *A LOT*; I lived 45 minutes away from most everyone I knew in CA (and thus I made few close friends while we were there); and I found myself raising our daughter almost by myself for the first year of her life (again, in a place with few close friends and no husband around 5+ days of the week). But there is still something about the place that I miss desperately. I think often about the beach, the surfers, the smell.........

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Consistency, and Other Stuff

So, like, uh, it's hard for me to blog with the consistency that I'd like. My apologies in advance to my adoring fans. All zero of you who officially follow me at the moment :).

So after the Barbie trauma of the last post, I have attempted to resurrect the conversation about Barbie and bodies and the like that I failed to properly address before. I said something like, "You know, the reason why I wasn't a fan of your Barbie comment the other day was because the people who make Barbie dolls don't make them look like real people's bodies. And because your body is real, I want you to look like Annemarie looks, not like a Barbie looks." I also tied this into our "no character toys/clothes/shoes" discussion -- I have a rule that, as much as possible, we don't buy stuff that has kid characters plastered all over it. Why, you may ask? Well, for about a zillion reasons. First, if they want me to advertise for them, then they can pay me. Second, I'd like Annemarie, Cole, and Micah to feel happy to be Annemarie, Cole, and Micah, and not Barbie, Dora, or Elmo (although we do have bit of him around). And third, most of that stuff is just plain ugly.

Annemarie churns this through her brain, and responds with, "So you don't want me to be a character. You want me to be me?" Right! I'm thinking we're getting somewhere! Then she says "And because you really just want me to look cute as me, not cute as Barbie?" Wait a minute, now......so we embark, again, on how "cute" is not the highest achievable goal. This may take some time.

In other news, Cole, Mr. Snugglebug himself, climbed into bed with me the other morning, and with a grin on his face said, "Mommy, I LOVE you............and I LOVE granola, too."

yep. It's me and the breakfast cereal.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Mental Traumas, part 27


First, the Halloween pics that I mentioned. Aren't they just the cutest! Olympians and dogs. Now that makes you want to sing "We Are the World," doesn't it?


So I've had two very interesting things transpire in my psyche over the past couple of days.

Wait -- I just reread that, and hopefully more than 2 interesting things have happened in my psyche. Let's just say that there are two that are blogworthy.

The first happened yesterday, when I was at the grocery store. The cashier was a college-aged-looking kid whose nametag revealed that he happened to be named Micah, the name of my 6 mo. old son. Before it could occur to me that old Micah (as I shall call him) may not have any interest in young Micah, I said something like, "Whadya know! I have a son named Micah! I bet you don't run into a lot of people with that name, do you?"

Old Micah grunted an indecipherable response back, but it was enough that I knew that my chitter chatter was both boring and beyond him. I was someone' s self-identified mother, attempting to engage him. It was.....aging. It also caused me to have momentary, but life-altering, flash-forwards (approx 20 years or so....), wherein young Micah attempted to address me with the same "Leave me flippin alone, Ma!"demeanor. But in my imagination, I wrestle young Micah to the ground and, with spit drops flying in his face from my venomous lips, I verbally reenact the gory details of his birth so that he *knows* how I have paid for him.

Actually, with the exception of this varicose vein above my left knee, there's no lasting damage that I can come up with now. But I will make some up when the time comes. Oy. And it will remind him that I will NOT BE PRESUMED IRRELEVANT!

The second trauma transpired a couple of days ago when Annemarie, after being told that she could not wear summer clothes outside on a cold day, erupted into a tantrum. Her meltdown was fueled by the fact that she was tired and hungry, no doubt, but I was particularly bothered when she screamed "But I won't look cute if I don't wear that. I want to LOOK LIKE A BARBIE!"

Shudder.

I wanted to scream back, "But honey, we're feminists in this house! And one of the major reasons why we're feminists is so that no one ever has to feel like they have to say what you just said!" But that's hard to get through the brain of a five year old, so I made something else up, something that i can't remember now but that was no doubt insufficient.

Second shudder. Jovi, weren't we just talking about this? Third shudder.

In other news, please don't leave a rotisserie chicken on the counter with the lid off. Your cat may eat it. So we're having spaghetti.