Kid sized conference call
This week, my parents are on a cruise. It’s a well deserved vacation, especially after having spent countless days taking care of my family last year while I was laid up with that whole giant spleen thing. I hope they are fully enjoying themselves on their whirlwind tour of Mexico. Fear not, they are not traveling Carnival.
While they are gone, I’m working from home so that I can run Cardin back and forth to preschool and still continue her speech therapy services. And also to make sure that the tank sized monster doesn’t destroy the city of Rochester.
This has made for some fairly interesting conference calls. I’m not sure my co-workers appreciate the essence of the show Bubble Guppies or understand the finesse it takes to wrangle your computer mouse out of the grasp of an 11 month in silence, but I’m thankful for their flexibility in allowing me to care for my children in such a way.
And don’t worry Internet, the cops have only had to come out to the house one time this week. I’m totally blaming Cardin for setting off the house alarm. On a positive note, at least I know that the services we pay for on a monthly basis are not wasted.
This is how I corral the children during the workday. There is food and water available at set intervals and I allow 1 hour in the exercise yard per day.
Couch slayer
Rory has been hot for standing lately. Strolling around in his walker is no longer acceptable, he wants to stand alongside some of the larger toys we have.
Up until this past weekend, standing has been the extent of his actions.
And then Rory got a little stronger and decided to be a tank and tip his toys over.
Literally, how is this possible? This toy is designed with the curvature so it won’t tip over.
This past weekend he started walking along the couch, slowly at first. Listen lady, after a couple tries, the couch was totally his bitch and now he is a walking machine;as long as he can hold onto something. Don’t be mistaken, he’ll utilize anything he can grab. Toys, legs, your nostrils. Lets just say that Brett stands very cautiously when Rory is in front of him.
Two man wolf pack
The children are raging against the machine; the sleep machine. Listen lady, I’m confident that both Rory and Cardin have taken a blood oath to never let us sleep through the night again.
Truth.
They have tiny baby alarms in each of their beds and they are set to go off within 2 hours of each other. Mind you, they never wake at the same time; that would defeat the pact to overthrow the parental empire.
By alternating waking hours, they have been able to significantly cut into cumulative hours we sleep. This also allows enough time to settle one child with whatever basic necessity they need, get them comfortably back to sleep, and collapse back into our own bed just long enough to start drifting off before the other child rings their bell.
No kidding lady, Cardin woke me up the other night just so I could put socks on her feet. Would you like a silver spoon too, madam?
Don’t worry though lady, the evil parental empire is strong and resilient. Cardin provided us months of sleepless practice. Plus, I have one big gun that works every time. A long car ride. Bring it.
Baltic baby
We’ve hopped onboard the Baltic amber teething necklace train. Don’t judge, I’m not going all witch doctor here. In a nutshell, it’s believed that Baltic Amber contains Succinic Acid and when it is heated against the skin it releases an all natural analgesic (that means ‘pain relief’ people) which helps to ease pain from newly sprouting teeth.
From all my research online, these are all the rage in Europe. Kinda like tea and biscuits. I’m not normally a homeopathic medicine person, but here is the thing lady….Rory takes a seemingly endless time for a tooth to break his gum line. We can see the top portion, right below the surface of his gum, but the thing plays peekaboo for so long you would thing it was Janet Jackson’s nipple having a wardrobe malfunction. The FCC has slapped us with so many fines repeatedly now I’m just ignoring them.
He is currently working on cutting his third tooth and this has been going on for 3 weeks. My happy go lucky baby has turned into a very whiney, hand chomping kid who seems to be unable to be soothed or comforted in any way. He is not happy being held or playing on the floor and will only stay in the jumper for 0.00003 milliseconds before full on banchi mode is enacted.
Normally, we can put him to bed at night and know that he will sleep till nearly 7 am without waking. This has been his routine since he was 2 months old. The past few weeks he has been waking at all hours of the night; grossly obscene hours….hours that should only be seen by people consuming alcoholic beverages!!
We tried teething toys and ibuprofen, but even those had little effect on Rory’s overall mood. Oh internet, you ask what I did with Cardin? When Cardin teethed we used Hylands teething tablets. These small homeopathic tablets dissolved on contact with her salvia and were a combo of natural ingredients that relieved the restlessness and irritability from teething. They worked wonders and she loved them. They were like infant crack. And then they got recalled because of the irregularity in the ingredients in each tablet. Awesome!
Listen lady, instead of poisoning my kid this time around, I thought we’d try the necklace. He has only had it a couple days so it’s hard to notice much difference yet, but last night there was not a peep from his room till 6:45am. Progress??
Nancy Drew
About four weeks ago I noticed a slight irritation developing on Cardin’s right thigh. It was a bunch of smallish red bumps. I asked her if they itched and she declared they did not so I assumed, like any good parent, that she probably irritated her skin with her clothes or some ridiculous dress up outfit she had picked.
Over the course of the next few days, these small red bumps began to spread like rapid fire. They jumped to her other thigh and up her stomach; crept all over her elbows. Knowing that Brett & Rory both have sensitive skin, I called the Peditrican.
He checked her over and confirmed a virus of Gianotti-crosti syndrome. Come again? Listen lady, this makes my kid sound like an Italian sandwich being totted by panera bread?
Now, you have to understand. Our Peditrican has an extremely thick accent and is often difficult to understand. I’ve fine tuned my ear, but its taken years of practice. I’ve had a lot of practice since he was also my Peditrican.
Apparently this type of condition is a skin response to a virus and fairly common in young children. It can last a couple weeks but typically runs its course and disappears without harm.
But then I wouldn’t have anything to blog about, right? Two weeks pass and crusti face Cardin is looking more rashy than ever. The rash has spread all over her stomach, legs, back, arms. About the only place that the rash hasn’t covered is her face. Which is good since I don’t have to cover her with a bee keeper hat when we go out in public.
Back to the doctor, except this time we leave with a diagnose of eczema and orders to apply a thick paste of cream a couple times a day. After a few days of this regimen, I notice that slick willy isn’t getting any better and behold, her crusti/eczema/rash has now spread to my hands. Currently they look like as though they have been attacked by 1000 tiny misquotes.
I immediately started googling and came up with a few results; one more deadly than the next. Googling is bad people.
Back to the Peditrican we went, though he can find no cause. We haven’t switched soaps or detergents, he doesn’t believe it’s being cause by her clothing because if the way it’s spreading and not localized. He asked if there was anything new she was eating and I just laughed in his face. We have no new pets and we haven’t traveled anywhere.
On a positive he was at least able to tell me it wasn’t measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox or scabies. On the other hand, still no solid evidence on what weirdness this actually is. We left, with a referral for a dermatologist. Cardin continues to ask me “mom, is my rash a mystery?” Now she’s got me playing Nancy drew.