Outnumbered Two to One

As a mom, I never want my kids to get sick. Ever. If it were up to me, I would intercept each and every nasty cold and flu germ and take it upon myself to weather the illness for them. The reasoning is only one part martyrdom and two parts self preservation. Sick kids are hard to take care of, number one. Number two, worrying about my sick kids is way more difficult to treat than say, clogged up sinuses or a nagging cough. They sell over the counter medication for that stuff.

Thursday after my last post, my two-year old’s temperature rose to about 103 degrees under his arm. That in itself was concerning enough. Worse still was the sound he made when he was breathing, a rattling wheeze that affected both his inhales and exhales. The cough was clearly croupy, but sitting in a steamed bathroom barely improved it and the steroid nebulizer treatment I’d given him before bed yielded similar results.

I called the Dr.’s answering service at about 10:30. When he didn’t call back, my husband packed the baby up and took him to the ER where he was promptly seen and treated. His oxygen saturation levels were a little low and they kept him for about three hours for observation, but he was home, breathing easier by 4 am.

My doctor’s office called me at about 9 am the next morning. Almost 12 hours after my original call to the answering service.

“The doctor tried to call you last night,” the receptionist said over the phone, “but couldn’t get through because of the call block.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I don’t have call block on my phone, that’s not possible.”

“His call was blocked, that’s why he couldn’t get through.”

“We don’t have that feature on our home phone, why wouldn’t he have been able to get through?”

“So tell me how your son is feeling?” she asked me, completely disregarding my befuddlement and the argument at hand. The rest of the conversation was brief, and my pediatrician never once got on the telephone with me. Coward.

I was already in the process of switching doctors, but this whole exchange just kind of reinforced my decision.

Needless to say, it’s been a long weekend. My six year old is fully recovered from his flu outbreak and my two year old is on the mend, still drippy nosed and coughing, but much improved. Thanks to everyone for the concern and support. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to read and comment much in the past few days, but hopefully I’ll be able to catch up with my pal Google Reader during the coming week. I mean, all four of my kids will be home, but I’m sure I’ll have plenty of free time. Right?

It didn’t take a crystal ball to foretell that one sick and contagious child was only the beginning of my woes. Especially when said plague bearer was continually hacking unrestrained bits of toxic phlegm in to his younger brother’s previously healthy face. Not to mention the inadvertent cup sharing, face licking, and finger sucking.

The  dominoes are falling, one by one, into influenza’s sinister clutches.

The two-year-old, my diapered bundle of harnessed electricity, is currently a bleary eyed feverish mess. It is compounded by the fact that his ability to communicate is not quite as evolved as his older brother’s. Complaints and requests are usually shrieked at an inaudible pitch, possibly one only dogs can hear. Trying to decipher the words is another thing altogether. It’s almost like playing a really angry version of charades with someone from another country where language and hand gestures are completely reversed - holding your stomach means you want to be carried, rubbing your eyes means you’re cold, throwing up in Mommy’s bed means…well, that one is self explanatory.

So of course, mostly capable Mom, is for the interim, reduced to a worried, neurotic, scatterbrained lunatic. I’m agonizing over every cough, every whimper, every uneaten bite of Jello and unsipped cup of water. It makes me short tempered and irritable and generally unpleasant to live with…just ask the rest of the family.

It’s going to be a long weekend.

• I broke my kids’ Guitar Hero controller. It was nothing personal, I just dropped it right on its magic sensor and poof the damn thing stopped working. Luckily when we purchased it we got an accompanying warranty for just such accidents. Yesterday when I called for service, after a lengthy 20 minutes of navigating their voice menu, the kind gentlemen on the telephone took down all my pertinent information, then asked me whether or not the strings had broken on my “guitar”. I was a little puzzled for a moment before I realized this guy was a little technologically clueless. I had to explain that the wireless guitar comes with buttons and stickers and complex internal mechanisms but alas no strings. Then it was his turn to be puzzled.
• My two year old likes to use my basket of clean folded laundry as a recliner, he plops his butt down on a stack of clean tee-shirts and sits back. I can almost envision him 20 years from now on his own Lazy Boy, sporting a beer gut and holding the TV remote in a death grip, the other hand tucked neatly in to his pants. It makes me proud, he’ll make some lucky girl a fabulous husband.
• My husband doesn’t understand why I dislike Rachel Ray but love her 30 minute recipes. It’s simple mathematics E-V-O-O + Yummo + Delish = Annoying. But a tasty recipe in 30 minutes or less is genius. It’s even better if you can trick someone else in to making it for you. Preferably not Rachel Ray since the overwhelming desire to flick her in the nose might have adverse effects on your appetite.
• People around me keep getting knocked up and having babies. Been there, done that. Still it makes me feel a little left out, like I embraced a trend a little too early then got over it after months of ridicule only to have it suddenly become all the rage. Like I gave all my over-sized shirts and stirrup pants to Goodwill, but now the 80s have suddenly made a come back. I vow to never wear shoulder pads again. EVER.
• Keep your sweet smelling newborns to yourselves. I mean it.
• My two year old, the laundry sitter, finally got his hair trimmed last week. The lady who gave him his haircut spent so much time remarking about his cuteness and making goo-goo eyes at him, that it affected her styling. Now my son alternately looks like Moe from The Three Stooges or like he’s sporting an old lady wig. I paid $12 for that? I could have done better myself with a pair of nail scissors. At least it will grow out.
• My five year old son was unharmed during the haircut fiasco.

For more Randomness go find Keely but whatever you do don’t mention zombies.

Also thanks for all the birthday wishes yesterday, it made getting older just a little less painful.

I know I’m not the only one who obsesses about their children eating enough. If I could have liquefied his pizza and fed it to him intravenously I would have.

And why is it that food that’s all the rave to my two year old one day, is completely unacceptable sustenance the next day. He won’t even let it pass his lips. He won’t even lick a single crumb off the plate. Instead he shrieks, gags, and pushes said delicacy away with all the played out melodrama of a soap opera actress.

Seriously, he can’t live off soy milk and Hershey’s kisses forever.

Last Friday my sister and I decided to meet up once again for another one of our  oh-so-rare girls’ night out. It had been a couple of months since we’d last ventured an evening without our respective broods and we both felt we needed some grown up time…you know, after dark, in our good jeans, with our hair brushed and sporting a little lipstick. Fancy, right?

Well, after abandoning my children to their father’s capable hands, I hopped in to my styling minivan, and shuttled off to meet my sister at the restaurant, which is about 20 minutes of highway driving from my house. About halfway there, cruising along at a steady 80 mph, I noticed some movement in the left corner of my windshield. What I saw lurking there was this…

Now, I normally don’t harbor any ill will toward the arachnids. Live and let live is my general approach, not like roaches which I strive to either annihilate or flee from. The problem was that as my vehicle was hurtling forward at an alarming rate of speed, I suddenly became terrified that this slightly repulsive critter was going to fling itself toward my face and I was going to drive my car in to a ditch where it would quite theatrically burst in to flames.

Spiders are fine, sure. Spiders on your face are somewhat less fine.

Rather than pull over to the side of the road and risk getting splattered by whizzing traffic, I opted to get off at the next exit, drive to the nearest gas station, and run screaming from my car, while simulataneously checking my hair for spiders. After a brief moment’s panic I walked back to the driver’s side and checked things out. The tiny spider was still perched at the edge of the windshield, possibly wondering what the heck was making me so twitchy.

After trying unsuccesfully for several minutes to flush the guy out with a balled up paper towel, I was approached by one of the car wash attendants who must have thought I was completely schizo dancing around in my flats and making little squeaking sounds on the asphalt.

Luckily he ignored his better instincts, and helped a girl out. He very gallantly grabbed the little guy by the legs, pulled him out, and set him free in the nearby bushes, hopefully to live out the remainder of his spider life in peace and happiness. He also was quick to point out that spiders are good luck and I should consider his little visit to be a good omen.

I suppose he was partially right, I was lucky enough to find parking that night at the restaurant , we only had to wait half an hour to be seated, and the movie we caught didn’t suck.

All in all it was a successful evening.

Now had a spider landed on my face, I probably wouldn’t have been so fortunate.

• I believe the post office is one of the outer circles of hell. The one near us is always jam packed and still they have only two unhappy employees working the counter. These people only have one speed and it’s not snappy. Also they tend to speak in a monotone even when they’re being friendly, which makes it a little difficult to know when they’re telling a joke.
• I also believe one of hell’s circles is a never ending carousel ride.
• I have a cold again, which makes me a little angry. I just want to lie down and close my eyes, which with four kids in the house is not exactly possible. Even when Mr. Bear is at the helm they sneak in here to pull at my eyelids and shriek unintelligibly in my face…I’m going to take that as a sign of love.
• Also being sick makes it harder to shout when certain children are gratuitously flushing the toilet or pitching a tantrum because Yo Gabba Gabba is not coming on fast enough.
• My two year old is obsessed with his right nipple. Whenever he is shirtless, he picks at it unconsciously with one finger while he goes about his business. I’m scared he’s going to scrape it off. I can’t get him to quit so I tried suggesting he scratch at the other one. No dice. He’s got a favorite nipple apparently.
• A two year old without a diaper will always find the one square of rug in the house to take a pee on.
• My neighbor is getting her baby delivered via c-section this afternoon. It’s always exciting to me when someone else is having a baby because I get to soak in that new baby smell without the midnight feedings and postpartum depression.
• Don’t worry, I’m not taking my head-cold plague and spreading it on someone else’s new baby. I’ve got plenty of my own kids I can make sick, but then I’d just have to listen to them whine and clean up there puke, which I should be exempt from since I am sick myself.
• I am so not cleaning up my own puke.

You know you want in on the randomness. See Keely The Un Mom , she’ll hook you up.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have a picture of myself in my head. Now, this self portrait is a blend of several different images - how I wish I looked, how I looked ten years ago, and how I might appear in a mirror if I glance for just a nanosecond or squint really tight.

So today, as I was out and about tending to various duties and chores, I crossed paths with a woman and had the following exchange.

She: “He’s so cute.” Gesturing at my two year old who is in fact adorable.

Me: “Thank you.” She was stating the obvious, but I wasn’t raised in a barn, you know?

She: “How old is he?”

Me: “Two.”

She: “Do you know what you’re having?”

Me: Looking perplexed, wondering if she’s talking about my lunch options even though we’re not in a restaurant, when suddenly it dawns on me…”Excuse me?”

She: “Aren’t you pregnant?” Maybe my gaping jaw was a hint that possibly I was not withchild.

Uncomfortable silence.

Me: “Uhm, no.”

End of conversation.

So here I was walking around, feeling confident when this smirking pencil pusher in smart looking career shoes, sucker punches me in my decidedly un-pregnant gut. It’s just not nice. As a rule, I never assume anyone is pregnant unless I see their round bellies stretching and protruding like there’s actually something alive in there, and even then it could be an alien inhabiting their abdomen and not likely to be something said person would want to talk about.

For future reference, folks, this is what a pregnant belly looks like:

And generally speaking, a belly like that doesn’t EVER go back to being completely flat without some reconstructive surgery.

Yeah, reality can be so inconvenient.

Once upon a time I used to be a working mom, back when I was in my 20s and we needed the cash and my mother-in-law was disposed to sit for our one, then two girls for free. I had guilt then, of course, over my absence the better part of the day, over my impatience when I finally was home, over calling in to work when my children were sick, or not being able to miss a day even though they were.  There was the dirty laundry that piled up, the field trips I couldn’t attend, having to wake my darlings up before sunrise just to get them to their grandmother’s so I could be to work on time. It made for a crappy feeling I was never able to come to terms with.

When I got pregnant a third time, my mother-in-law, who was getting older and sitting for a total of four kids all together, finally decided to throw in the towel. By then my husband was making better money and we agreed me staying home on a more permanent basis was way cheaper than paying for child care times three. After my son was born I quit my county job and became a SAHM, an acronym I wasn’t familiar with until after I resigned from my full time position.

Stay-at-home-mom. It’s worked out for us, mostly. I can’t imagine caring for my now four children and attempting to commute to a corporate office five days a week. There are so many unpredictable variables I’m confronted with on a regular basis, things that tend to interfere with an actual paying job. Then there’s all that chauffeuring that goes along with the parenting, the cleaning, the feeding…good Lord the never ending feedings!

The plus is I’m around for everything. I don’t miss milestones anymore, I’m here to comfort them through every sadness, every ailment, every bump and scrape and fall. I’m here 24/7.

The downside is, living on one income occasionally bites. More often than not it sucks. Royally. So while I am providing my children with a certain measure of emotional stability, my presence doesn’t do very much for our checkbook. And when the kids are done basking in the ethereal glow of my infinite love, occasionally they need stuff. Material stuff you can only buy at a store with cash dollars.

Their needs are covered, don’t get me wrong. Food, shelter, clothing. The basics. But in kid lingo the word “need” takes on a whole new meaning. My oldest needs her own room. My tween needs a new rolling backpack. My five year old needs to go to Universal Studios. My two-dler needs…well, for now at least, he’s cheap to satisfy.

So the guilt seeps in again. Because I could, in theory, get a job. Earn some money. Contribute to our net worth and maybe occasionally afford us the luxury of a vacation. But it wouldn’t be without its sacrifices, would it? When the kids are older it might be an inevitability, I might have to spruce up that resume and get out in to the working world, but for now, my job is laid out for me. Guilt or not. I just wish it paid a little better.

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Do you have a guilty conscience? Tell it to Sprite’s Keeper , or stop by The Spin Cycle for more guilt ridden posts.

Never again.

I will never ever again have a yard sale in this lifetime. Never ever again. Ever.

On a good day, I would not characterize myself as a people person. After our yard sale flop today, I am completely ready to dig a moat around the perimeter of the house, populate it with hungry gators, and proceed to live the life of a reclusive novelist…minus the novel part since I haven’t as of yet been able to throw one together.

The husband and I spent all last night gathering items, clearing them of dust, and setting them aside for our yard sale today. We advertised on Craigslist as we planned, we made signs, we got change. I’d been apprehensive since the idea first gleamed in my husband’s eye, but I got on board with his logic. A few dollars for an item we were just going to give away, is better than no dollars at all.

I’ve since changed my mind.

Coincidentally so has my husband.

I think the first ambush set the pace for the entire afternoon. When I say ambush, I mean a car load of people sped in to my driveway and without ever making eye contact proceeded to grab as many items as they could carry then offered me $3 for the entire bundle. When I disagreed, they argued loudly amongst themselves over the audacity of the price and began to cite inaccurate examples about how they could get a brand new “X” for next to nothing at the store. They also used a variety of diversionary tactics to confuse and intimidate me, before settling on $8 for their armloads and then taking off.

I am pleased to report I only went inside to cry once.

Honestly, what we were selling was run-of-the-mill yard sale fare, nothing fancy but everything clean and in one piece. I also had several toys still in their original packaging. I was expecting people to barter, but I wasn’t expecting so many folks to just walk over without greeting us, pick through everything on display as if it were covered in fecal matter, and then act like we would have been lucky to have them take the stuff off our hands.

It was frustrating and humiliating and so not worth the $97 we collected in mostly dollar bills.

Afterward my husband whisked away all the clothing, baby items, and toys to the Goodwill. So if anything positive came out of the entire thing, it was that I can now actually see the carpet at the bottom of my closet.

We start work on the moat tomorrow. Hopefully $97 is enough to buy me a really surly alligator.

I’m just not feeling it.

Maybe it’s the hormones, maybe it’s the shrinking numbers in our bank account, but this whole Christmas thing has me feeling like a deer in headlights. The holiday season is speeding recklessly toward me and all I can do is blink, frozen as the driver sings drunken carols and chucks empty bottles of nog out the window.

If you ask me, Thanksgiving is just a gateway holiday. Blowing the door wide open to the dangers of Christmas - tinsel, pine trees, stockings and scotch tape.

Oh the pressure.

I don’t want to shop, I don’t want to decorate. What I do want to do is eat scads of leftovers and curl up in the fetal position.

Not an option with kids. Kids want Christmas music, they want to author Christmas lists and watch Christmas movies. They want a tree and happiness and joy and fun, so for them I will stir my inner elf with a red hot poker and wait for her to do a little jig, maybe find the motivation to do some online shopping while the kidlings are asleep. And sometime next week, we’re getting a Christmas tree.

It’ll need decorating.

Can you hear me sighing?

I’ll take plenty of pictures, I’ll fake some enthusiasm, eventually the spirit will catch on like a bad head cold, right?

Yeah, I’ll work on that.

Perhaps you bloggy readers can offer some tips for slaying my inner Grinch and getting in to the holiday spirit? Bring it.