The Great Escape

I don't know what happened to me last weekend, but I was super productive. I cleaned the majority of our house, including the bathroom, kitchen, coffee pot and disgusting area behind the coffee pot, microwave (inside and out), pulled weeds, washed, dried and put away a load of laundry, swept, and wrapped our spare change to put in Amelia's savings account... $37 worth. I also cleaned Amelia's room and then organized the spare room so I can start utilizing it as a craft room/office and complete projects like this more often:

My friend's wedding invitation and program are inside the ornament.

It was terrific that I could get all of this done because on Monday, Amelia started to seem a bit off. Fussy, poor appetite, impatient... something just didn't seem right. By Tuesday, she was throwing her morning milk up on me and sleeping a lot during the day:

We think it was either a little stomach bug or some sinus/allergy issues that were making her nauseous. This lasted all week- the week before students start at the online school I am a 12th grade guidance counselor for. You know what happens when you are a high school guidance counselor the week before classes start? You get several phone calls per day about schedules:

•  Why did you schedule me for this? (You need it to graduate.)
•  Why didn't you ask me what I want to take this year? (You were supposed to complete the scheduling survey in May.) 
• Why am I a junior this year and not a senior? (You keep failing all your classes, we don't just hand out diplomas out, OK?!?)

Did I mention that I had three cavities filled this week too?

Yes. It's been a super week. I have to get the hell out of here. And I am, with these lovely ladies:

Amelia and her BFF Bela at our local county fair.

Let's get this party started...

(Almost) Back in the Groove

This was the post that I started earlier this week:

I've had it. Completely had it.


Little Miss Typhoid Mary, as I am officially now calling her, has given me her rash. I suppose it was inevitable. Luckily we still have some cream that was used to treat her and so now I am anxiously waiting to rinse all this crap off me in eight hours. It isn't as painful or itchy as I imagined, just annoying. And, in the back of my mind, I keep thinking there are worse things that could be happening to us right now.


Despite that, I've had it. I pretty much had a mommy temper tantrum this morning.


My husband listened patiently and promised me sushi as soon as we are well. He apologized profusely for needing to be gone the entire weekend to come due to work. He said all he could think of to get me to calm down and look at the sunny side of life.


Things will be sunny again, right?


Yes. Yes they will. I mean, they have to. Today marks a full week of dealing with fevers, rashes, body aches, doctors appointments, prescriptions, benadryl, tylenol, cancelled plans, whining, and meltdowns. Some have been Amelia's. Some have been my own.

Oh, motherhood. You are indeed a rollercoaster. I will also admit here that I am the mom in my cousin's post who was plotting to create a benadryl induced family nap.

Just admit it. You've thought about (or done!) it too!

We've both recovered from whatever crappy virus that we had and I'm now incredibly behind in housework. Sometime during this week our outfits consisted of maternity pajama pants for me and a red Christmas sweatshirt with rainbow striped pants for her. That was the day that I considered going to a thrift store and just buying us new wardrobes, but alas, I have rallied what's left of my energy after not sleeping for the past three nights (thank you, toddler teething) and done three loads of laundry. It all sits in basement, begging me to fold it.

And yet, here I sit, playing games on Facebook and drinking wine. The healing scabs on my face indicate that I've earned it.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again... Amelia's lucky she's cute, or I'd sell her to gypsies:

A Basket Full of Illness

Since I last reported about Amelia's silly antics, things have gone downhill in our household. I was on Spring Break all last week so I had plans to take her to see a friend and then to my grandparents overnight. Alas, the morning that we were supposed to leave, Amelia got a fever. We cancelled our plans and my little peanut slept much of the day:

When she woke up, her fever had spiked again, but once Mommy made her cozy on the couch, she was happier:

The following day, the fever had disappeared, but she was in a bad mood, so we assumed maybe some molars had broken through. She whined and whined AND WHINED all day. By the time the evening rolled around, she was crying and unable to sleep soundly. She had developed a rash on her leg, which we had assumed was a bad case of diaper rash. By the next morning, it was clear we were wrong, as it had spread to her face and hands, as well as gotten scaley and spread to the size of a softball on her inner thigh.

Off to the doctor we went.

A tentative diagnosis and $60 worth of skin creams later, we were spreading Amelia in goop, changing sheets and doing laundry, and praying that this stuff was not as contagious as the doctor said it could be. So far, neither of us have gotten it, so I'm a little doubtful that it's what the doctor thought. The creams do seem to help and she is much improved by today.

Me? Not so much.

Saturday afternoon I developed horrible body aches and my throat started to hurt. We didn't go to church yesterday since Amelia looks like she has some sort of plague, and I felt like sitting up for a whole hour would be pretty unsuccessful. I hoped I would improve enough to head to my parents for our Easter meal, but we had to skip that too.

I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty disappointed that I felt like hell on Easter. Even today, on my last day of break, I'm pretty sure that we are going to be mostly homebound since it feels like shards of glass are scraping down my throat when I eat. But moping about it does no good, so I'm going to suck it up and enjoy some good snuggle time with my little girl and perhaps take an afternoon nap. Who wouldn't want to cuddle up to this?

Loves Mama's linguine!

Wherever there's food and a toddler, Molly is sure to be close by!

You can see a little of her rash in this naptime pic.

You may also like:

• Snots
• Yuck Part II
• CHOMP

Germs and the Verbal Explosion

Germs have struck again in our house, but this time they've attacked Mama. I had big plans this weekend to clean and play with Amelia lots, but then woke up yesterday morning congested and feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. I'm pretty darned disappointed. Nothing big happened this week to get me down, but it has been one of those weeks where little things have frustrated me and work has left me feeling like I'm constantly pushing my daughter's needs to the side. I couldn't wait till the weekend to turn my computer off and have some quality play time together. I did manage to drag myself down to the floor to help her with her farm puzzle and play ball, but generally it has been a snotty tissue and cartoon fest at my house, especially since my husband had to work yesterday.

Thankfully, although I think my cold is reaching it's peak today and I almost feel worse than yesterday, I did get to sleep in and Amelia got lots of play time with her daddy. This evening she is heading to my in-laws with him and I will get a lot of guilt free rest. Originally I had hoped to catch up on some sewing and writing projects, but as I sit here sniffling, I know that it would be best for my health and sanity to sit on the couch and watch a movie instead.

Meanwhile, in the land of mommyhood, Amelia has been learning new words at a dizzying pace. Tomorrow is her 15 month check-up (and shots-- UGH) so I'm interested to hear what the nurse practitioner says about how many words she can say. She was saying about 10 words at a year and we were told that is generally the 18 month expectation. Now she is up to about 25-30 words. Some of them are more sounds than words but we count them anyways. I had to write them down to figure out what the count is. Amelia can say: ball, book, keys, shoes, Daddy, Ma, dog, kitty, water (wa wa), done, up, down, Dora (duh-duh), backpack, belly, hands, hot dog (for the hot dog dance during Micky's Clubhouse), cookie, banana (bani), please (psss), hi, hello, bye, see ya (SEES!!), bird, and juice (which is actually the pedialyte we give her when she's sick), roll, peek-a-boo, choo choo (for trains), ta da! and beep beep (for cars-- sometimes she will say vroom vroom and car too).

As someone who used to work in a preschool through first grade school building, I mostly feel like this means she will be put on red a lot for talking when she starts school. However, I am also grateful that she seems to be developing as she should be. Although I think feeling proud of your child's developments is a good feeling to have as you watch your child grow up, I always try to reflect too on how grateful I am that she is happy and healthy so far.

Other than talking, Amelia also has been trying to figure out how to do things all by her big girl self, like brushing her teeth. So today I leave you with a picture of her in her big girl chair, maintaining her oral hygiene:

You may also like:
Snots
Growing Girl
Yuck Part II

Up and Down

Amelia continues to be sick. Although she seemed like she was almost completely over it about a week ago, the germs returned with a vengeance, and I finally had to surrender to take her to the doctor. She has been put on two different breathing machine medications to cope with her deep cough. The doctor hinted at the possibility that she could be cursed with asthma, which we are hoping she will outgrow, as many of my family members have.

Amelia attempting to get some congested zzz's

As such, I've been spending a lot of time holding down a displeased toddler to spray medications in her face. Ever the smart girl, Amelia crawls as fast as her little limbs will take her when she sees me unscrewing the mouth piece of her breathing machine in order to squirt the medication in. The rest of the ordeal entails me blaring Sesame Street in an attempt to distract her, and her whining every few minutes while trying to shove the apparatus out of her face.

All of this has not prevented her from continuing her path to being a wiggly, active little toddler. I haven't gotten any good video of it yet, but we are able to coerce her from the comfort of our foot rest at time and get her to take a few free standing steps. Ever the cautious child, she has been spending her time figuring out how to safely descend a piece of furniture for the event that she is brave/tall enough to start climbing things:

You may note that she is actually ordering her dad to lift her 'up'. I assume that this is only the beginning of her attempts to boss her parents around. Luckily, it's generally pretty cute at this point, unless she is being super whiny and bounces and cries when we don't put her on the couch right away. Also not cute? Her sticking her lip out in determination and shoving my laptop off my legs when I don't respond to her pleas immediately.

While she is driving me slightly nuts with her desire to be up monkeying around on our couch all the time, she is making up for it in a big way by continuing her love for canines. Her she is with our friend's dog:

And here she is giving our dog treats:

I was mostly excited that she wasn't trying to shove the dog treats in her own mouth, while Molly was excited that one more person in her life will be adding to her winter weight.

And now, I hear her stirring in our bed so I'm off for more sick child wrangling and other toddler adventures. Happy Monday!

Snots

I love watching Christmas movies, and one of my all time favorites is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I saw it with my family this weekend. Little did I know that part of it would resemble my life very soon:

OK, so indeed my baby does not have a 'set', but she has been just about that snotty this week and she also loves a good tummy rub.

I know, you're saying to yourself "She talks about illness all the time on this blog". (I also posted about it here and here). Well, wintertime motherhood is like that. Snot, vomit, congestion for a week or two, a break of a few weeks if you're lucky, and then you're facing the same battle all over again. Heaven forbid you have multiple germ carriers little darlings in your house because then it's just one constant stream of disgusting bodily fluids and sleepless nights. Or so I hear.

Actually, Amelia is pretty happy when she's sick. As evidenced here:



And here:

The worst part of her cold has not been wiping buckets of snot off her face or having her smear it on my shirts. Instead, I have been sleep deprived for nearly a week. Because she can't take cold medicine or blow her nose, she also can't breath at night and only finds comfort if I hold her, fairly upright, on the couch. Not super comfortable for mommy. Finally after five nights of little sleep (and sometimes some tears at 2 a.m. From me. Not the baby), she slept decent last night.

I feel like a whole new person today, and a little bit over the edge with energy. Which is awesome, because I have a ton of cleaning, work, and Christmas type things to do. Like watch the rest of SNL Christmas that I missed last night, which my husband tells me includes my favorite SNL holiday clip of all time:

Crazy Week

I was totally going to write a post Thursday or Friday, but let me tell you, it's been a crazy week. Someone got their hands on my checking account number and was paying their bills with it, I locked myself out of the car while I was at the bank handling it, and now my daughter has a cold:

This creates horrid sleep at night. Which in turn leads to a crabby, unproductive mommy during the day. Thankfully, my husband took care of her this morning so I could lay in bed and try to sleep. Try. Because my mommy brain is used to waking up at 5:30 a.m. every day and thinking about cleaning, working, exercising, diapers, meal planning, playing, laundry, dishes, etc. Also it occurred to me this morning that I'm running a half marathon in April and I'm going to have to start training for it in a month. Don't ask me why this is what I think about on the rare occasion that I could sleep in.

ANYWHO, I felt like I could be lazy about my postings because yesterday I was mentioned on Life's Crazy Joke. Very generous of Meredith to give some other blogs some exposure and also gave me a break on writing. Check her out, she's a funny lady.

And now, I'm off to try to peel my rear end off the couch and do something, hopefully Christmas related, because did I mention that I have hardly anything made, bought, or wrapped? No? Um, yep, not a thing done.

Yuck Part II

Friday I shared that I had the flu. It was no fun, and caused me to miss tailgating at the UT vs. BG game, and many bottles of Octoberfest. On the plus side, it was super windy Saturday and so being sick was a good reason to stay in where it was warm, and my body probably can't handle a whole lot more regular beer this Fall drinking season. I need to start training for Christmas cookie eating season.

I was still feeling a bit queasy Sunday as I headed over to my parents for weekly family time. I was a little irritated that my weekend had gone by with me feeling like hell, as this flu also brought on killer headaches. I tried to focus on being thankful that I had not thrown up and that Amelia hadn't gotten my illness. Then I started pondering what my reaction would be when Amelia does get the flu at some point. I'm one of those people that will gag and be on the brink of vomiting myself when someone does so in front of me. I had been reassured by other mommies that when it's your kid, it's different. Much like being adrenaline charged at a horrible accident scene, you just kind of let your mommy instinct take over and become a puke-cleaning-up machine.

As if to answer my question, Amelia was throwing up by 6:30 p.m. At first, it wasn't so bad. I felt bad for her, I cleaned her up with my mom's help and changed her clothes. There, all better. I recalled how many mommies noted that their kids could hold down breastmilk even when they could hold nothing else down, and since Amelia will not take a pacifier, stuffed toy, blankie, nothing-but-mommy-when-I'm-mad-sad-scared-nervous-just-mommy-all-the-time-dammit, I figured she would feel better if she nursed.

She did. For about twenty minutes. Until it all came back up and then some.

I know, this is my most disgusting post yet.

And yet, while briefly grossed out, I mostly was struck with deep pain and sadness for my poor baby girl. At this point she was crying and sweating, scared and confused at was happening to her little body. And when I say little, I mean it. Amelia has consistently been in the twentieth percentile for her length. Her weight is always good and she consistently grows, she has adorably chubby cheeks, and she is generally healthy. But she's definitely a petite girl and just hours before we had a store clerk ask if she was six months old. She's almost twelve months. To see our little peanut be so sick, again and again-- I counted almost a dozen times that evening-- was more than I could take. By about the eighth or ninth time she got sick, I started crying. My dad hugged me, my mom cleaned her up, we got her comfortable again. About this time it was 9:00 p.m. and my mom announced that she needed to go to bed soon because she would have to get up for work in the morning.

You what now? Work? You aren't calling off to help me with Amelia?

I got that same overwhelming sense of who-in-the-hell-decided-I-can-keep-a-baby-alive that many parents get when they first bring their newborn home from a hospital. I panicked and grilled my mom for details about when I should consider taking Amelia to the E.R., signs of dehydration, what degree temperature is too high, when I should offer her fluids and tylenol. And, when my dad squeezed me as I cried, I wanted to look at them and say-- I can't do this. I'm the kid, you have to take care of me, take care of us. I don't want to do this adult thing anymore, I'm scared, what if I mess up and she gets hurt or worse?

Maybe I sound dramatic, a 30 year old talking about feelings of wanting to revert back to childhood when her own child is ill. All I know is that those feelings were so intense at that moment that recalling them now is bringing me to tears.

I did know that I couldn't ask my parents to call off work, so I had to take a deep breath and be strong for Amelia. And in the back of my freaked out mind, I knew that if she was super ill in the middle of the night, I could call them and still lean on them, ask them to come to my house and help me as I crumbled into a pile of emotion over my sick baby. I headed home, called Jon and asked him to pick up some pedialyte, wine, and candy pumpkins, scooped Amelia up as she started getting sick the second we pulled into the garage, and made up a little sick station in front of the TV, complete with blankets, pillows, and garbage can. We stayed up till 11:30 watching Despicable Me, waking once to be rocked again and take a sip of pedialyte that thankfully stayed down and then up for the day at her usual 6:30 a.m. Amazingly, as if nothing ever happened the night before:

I could not be more thankful that she recovered so quickly, and keep reminding myself of that today as she has a whiney ass challenging day. This is probably because she is still a little queasy and also, what better thing to happen the day after you have the flu than to oh, boy, get some more teeth in?

Poor Peanut.

Poor Mommy.

Where in the hell are those damn candy pumpkins?

Yuck

My dreams of being healthier during cold and flu season because I am working from home have officially been shattered.

I have the stomach flu. Yuck.

It's not the worst flu I've ever had, and because I know at least three people who have had it recently, I am pretty sure it will be better by tomorrow morning. In truth, it's not too bad right now. Mostly it just squashed my plans of having a nice dinner at a local brewery with my family, and may ruin my plans to start drinking at 10am tomorrow (I love you, tailgating, and am so sad that we may have to wait yet another year to be together).

On the plus, it was a good excuse to take both of Amelia's naps with her today. I'm praying, PRAYING HARD that she does not get it, but there isn't much I can do to prevent it other than be as clean as possible. I'm hoping that since she is continuing to nurse that she won't get it. I'm imagining it would be pretty rough on her since my own tummy hurt bad enough today that I was sending whiny little text messages to my husband all day long.

Oh, and here is a fun fact that I learned today: When you have the stomach flu, every cartoon on PBS Kids involves the topic of food. No, Sid the Science Kid, I do not want to hear you discuss heat and how it impacts your mother's runny freakin' pancakes. I may never eat pancakes again.

First Cold of the Season

On my morning walk yesterday, I had thought of all these fabulous topics for blog posts. Working on being more positive. My reflections on being unemployed in an awful economy. The cute little lion pillow I made recently. Etcetera. I was looking forward to writing a new post this morning and choosing which idea I was most interested in writing about.

All these ideas were trumped by snot.

Amelia is officially sick. I have to be honest, I'm mildly pissed about it. Not at her, mind you. Just in general. Last winter, she was sick every month. I blamed this on all the germs I was bringing home from the school I worked in. So when I lost my job, I thought, well at least Amelia and I will be healthier this year. Obviously this is not the case.

I suppose if I were to stay home all the time or frantically wipe off everything she touches with bleach wipes, we may have avoided this. I just can't do it though. Staying home all the time with a baby will drive me absolutely insane, and a clean freak I am not. And so here we are, battling the germs.

Generally, it has not been too bad yet. This just started yesterday and it's mostly a runny nose/congestion. I let her nurse a lot, and she slept on my lap last night for two hours when it became apparent that she was too uncomfortable to take a good restful nap in her crib. I gave her a nice warm bath, she ate a decent dinner, we said screw it to the evening routine and let her watch Lady and the Tramp. She was asleep by 10:00 and I laid her in our bed to ensure better than usual sleep. Allegedly, for both of us.

Nope. Worst. Sleep. Ever.

She awoke and stayed awake at 3:00 a.m., but this has been happening a fair amount lately due to her teething, so I sighed to myself and reminded myself that she isn't feeling good. I tried to let her nurse, but she about suffocated between being plugged up and not being able to breathe through her mouth. I was Miss Patient Mommy till 4:30 a.m. when I surrounded her with pillows so I could go into the kitchen and cry with exhaustion, which led to a headache.

Jon woke and attempted to help, but that just made me feel guilty, as he has to drive all day at his job. I took her back to bed with me and finally, finally, sweet sleep came at 5:15. Then she was up at 6:30. And again for good at 7:40.

Now she has been sleeping peacefully on my lap for at least an hour, and while I know I should be sleeping too, it was way too tempting to have a decent chunk of baby free time. Maybe I can sleep at the dentist's office today during my cleaning. You think I'm joking, but I'm not.

**A positive side note: She did reward me for my sleepless nights last night with this-- as she crawled under our coffee table to get to me as we watched our Disney movie, I heard these sweet babblings: MAMAMAMA! Jon and I looked at each other with huge smiles and a slight look of disbelief. She has been saying Da Da for months, presumably because it is easier to utter than Mama. She is definitely a Mama's girl and though I know someday I will wish she would stop saying my name to get my attention, I have been dying to hear those words. And now I have <3