Sick kids should not look this perky

 

We went to the doctor to check if she had strep and came home with a prescription for pink eye.  Huh?  

This reminds me of the time we brought this same kid in with a fever and stuffy head at 2  months old and the pediatrician thought we were there to discuss the yeast infection that smelled funny under her neck. There also may or may not have been a time we brought her 1 year old brother in for a check up only to have the doctor announce he had not 1 but 2 pretty severe ear infections.  The kid hadn't woken up in the night crying or rubbed at his ear at all and I will swear on that til my dying day.   I'm not a mind reader, doctor.  Tell the kid to tip a girl off.   

My six year old accident waiting to happen has successfully worn his glasses for two weeks

Over the summer, I did annual check ups at the pediatrician with my kids.  The three of us crammed into the examining room where two of us bounced off the walls until the doctor came.  At one point my son scaled my head like he was climbing a tree.  Which means it was pretty much business as usual for us.

I was thinking the worst part of the visit might be a couple shots for my daughter.  My son inherited his father's pain threshold and doesn't cry during shots.  On the plus side, it means I don't have to feel guilty when he gets shot since he doesn't even notice (He once asked me when they were going to do the shots after they had done the shots!?).  On the downside, we know the kid's an expert faker when he turns on the waterworks when we announce it's bedtime. 

Lo and behold, no one got any shots.  Instead, a certain six year old boy got a referral to an eye doctor to have his eyes checked.  I couldn't help but laugh because we'd been in the eye doctor's office literally 3 days before.  My daughter is apparently incapable of passing an eye exam at school.  Every year they like to tell me she may need glasses and to please report back after we see an eye doctor.  Every year the eye doctor casually suggests that I take her to Claire's in the mall to pick out something cute because those are cheaper than prescription glasses with window glass in them which is what he'd be giving her if he gave her glasses.  And I stupidly scheduled this year's Claire's conversation with the eye doctor before the pediatrician check up. 

So the pediatrician announces that we'll need to see the eye doctor and I'm thinking it's my daughter at it again.  Or maybe the eye doctor needs a new sports care and everyone is doing their part to drum up some co-pays to help him pay for it.  No such luck.  Wrong kid.  Back to the eye doctor we go.  And what fun, greeting the doctor a mere week later! Of course, he remembers us from last week! How amusing!

Apparently one of my first grader's eyes doesn't work as well as the other.  There's some big fancy term for it that I'm too stupid to have retained.  But the gist is that he's wearing glasses for two months to see if that'll give the bad eye a chance to start working better.  He gets an eye patch if it doesn't.  My first reaction upon hearing about the need for glasses was horror.  Not because I'm worried about that kid.  Because that kid's A-OK.  I also wasn't worried about the cost.  Kids are expensive.  That's life.

No.  My horror was how to keep the glasses on the kid's face for 2 months without getting them broken or lost.  We call that kid head-wound for a reason.  He successfully gets hit in the face a lot.  His aforementioned high pain threshold makes this only a minor issue.  He mostly just gets right up and keeps going when he gets hit.  Glasses are less likely to do that.  He's also really good at losing things.  Having an extra swimsuit in case he can't find one only costs me $20.  I'm not shelling out for multiple pairs of glasses when he only needs to wear them for two months.

At the eye glass store, the first words out of my mouth were to ask to see their selection of galactically indestructible glasses.  They call them rough and tough and you get to pay extra to call them that.  Then, once they were fitted on the kid's face, I had a long painstaking conversation with my precious accident-waiting-to-happen about where he should put his glasses when they are not on his face.   My daughter was looking at me like I had two heads during the part about never putting them on the floor even if you are sitting on the floor.    Apparently she thinks that goes without saying.  Apparently, she doesn't know what I'm up against.

A day later he work the brand new glass to summer camp.  He lulled me into a fall sense of security by successfully taking them off before going to the pool.   He also successfully had them on his face again by the time I came to pick him up at the end of Day 1.  So imagine my surprise when I go to pick him up at the end of Day 2 and the counselor hands me the glasses in a zip lock baggie.  A lens had popped out.  His sister couldn't wait to give me the play by play of him getting hit in the face by a basketball, the glasses flying off his face and some kid in stepping directly on them as he's running by and can't stop on a dime.  Day 2.  Genius.

Out of fear of having to be the idiot mother bringing damaged glasses back 3 days after we got them, I developed some superhuman lens popping skills and successfully got them back together.   

Glasses back on.   We then get in another 2 days of wearing them.  Then we go on a vacation that involved a lot of swimming and he wasn't wearing them much.  Then we come back and the kid has his tonsils out.  He's all weak and pathetic after the surgery so we don't make him wear them while he recovered. 

What's that you asked?  You want to know why he was weak and pathetic after the surgery if he has such a high pain threshold?  Excellent question!  He was weak and pathetic because he didn't want to take his medicine because it tasted gross.  The day of surgery that kid ate five popsicles and four bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch  despite the discomfort in his throat.   He also sucked down a fair amount of soda and somehow brainwashed his father into thinking he deserved an iPad.  No really.  While I was serving cereal to the kid that was supposed to be in too much pain to eat for a couple days, my husband hit the Best Buy.    Kid could not believe his luck.  Neither could his sister who didn't even have to have surgery to get her hands on it.  But I digress.

Back at the ranch, every four to six hours we'd announce that the world's luckiest kid had to take his medicine.  All of a sudden he'd become a mopey puddle of tears.  I'll give him the pain medicine tasted crappy.  But he claimed the two fruity ones were like death, too.  And yet, the kid did have actual surgery and it's completely understandable that it would hurt to swallow so what kind of heinous troll is going to call him out on being a drama queen.  But again, four bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that very night?  Seriously.

So ten days pass after the surgery before we finally tell him he has to start wearing the glasses again.  I check on him in bed two days later and discover he's fallen asleep wearing them.  The next day I notice the glasses seem lopsided on his face.  So I take them off.  I straighten the nose pieces a little and gently turn the arm a little.  Pop.  The teensy tiny screw flies out and the place between the arm and the front of the glasses has a crack.

Perfect.

He wore the stupid glasses a total of maybe 6 days before I had to take them back to get fixed.   And while the girl was waving her magic wand to get them back together enough to hold until the replacement frames came in, she she mentioned that there were divots in the lenses, too, so she'd go ahead and order us new lenses while she was at it.  Come again?  Did you say, divots?   She suggested that it looked like they might have hit the floor a few times.   And then she told me not to feel bad because she'd seen much more mangled glasses.  She forgot to mention whether those kids had been wearing their glasses for all of SIX DAYS when they mangled them.

As of today, we've successfully scraped together 14 days in a row with the glasses on his face all day.  He only has to get to 60 days.  I've decided we're going the distance this time.   I've also decided that these are the frames that are going the distance with us come hell or high water.  I don't care how lopsided they get on his face, no one is allowed to attempt to straighten them.  He'll just have to be the kid with the lopsided glasses.   I don't care if one of the arms gets ripped off and bent into the shape of a pretzel.  We'll just straighten that sucker out and duct tape it back on.  He'll just have to be the kid with ghetto repair job glasses.  He'll also just have to be the kid with the parents of the year that don't care how stupid they look.    

Because we are going the distance this time.



P.S. My crazy accident waiting to happen was apparently aware that one of his eyes sees better than the other.  When someone asked me later which eye it is that doesn't see as well, I had no clue but he immediately pointed to his right eye and announced that it was that one in a tone just short of , "Duh."  I stared at him.   Could have mentioned that sooner, kiddo! 

Day 6: Easter Bunny photo bombing

This is how lazy parents get a picture with the Easter Bunny when the line is literally 70 deep. Technically, we could have gotten there earlier to get a shot before the egg hunt. But technically, look what my kids decided to wear for the photo op.  In my defense, we were rushing to get there after soccer.  Not in my defense, we do own hair brushes.

A is for Awkward

Last week we attended the parent teacher meeting at the newest Kindergartner's school. This is the sort of activity my husband finds painful but that I live for. Met her soon to be First Grade teacher. Previewed the room.

Upon noticing that my soon to be First Grader would be sitting next to her five year old equivalent of an arch nemesis, I inwardly cringed.

As arch nemeses go, this kid's pretty tame. He's not mean or obnoxious or anything. Just doesn't seem to know how to play with other kids. Like maybe he spent the first 5 years of his life alone at home all day with his grandmother and never learned how to socialize with kids.

I'm sure he's very sweet. He just seems to frustrate the other kids. And by other kids, I mean all the other kids not just mine. I'm not even entirely sure what the issue is but there's been some mention of tattling and periodically throwing people under the bus. As an example, if people don't want to play with him, he'll chase them around the playground. And if they tell the teacher he was chasing them he'll say he wasn't. He also likes to promise he won't chase you again and then go right back to chasing you.

Not a big problem but not the newest First Grader's favorite person.

Over the summer, she saw him at a birthday party and he told her he was going to chase her again. Last week, when discussing the upcoming start of school with her she burst out crying over the potential chasing. I assured her we'd talk to the teacher and let her handle it and that if the teacher failed to address it we'd elevate the issue to the principal and/or the kid's mother. The newest First Grader felt better. No more tears. Back to nothing but excited to start the year.

Cut to the parent teacher meeting. Soon to be First Grader finds her seat. Arch nemesis' mom is standing at his desk and excitedly asks her to guess who she gets to sit next to. Chick clearly assumes my kid will be excited to sit next to her kid. My kid realizes who she will be sitting next to. My kid immediately looks disappointed and sighs. Arch nemesis' mom immediately looks confused. And I immediately look like a deer in the headlights trying to figure out how to spin my kid's reaction into anything other than, "Crap. I can't believe I'm stuck sitting next to your kid." It was awkward, people. Awkward.

I decided it was important to avoid eye contact in that situation. Too much eye contact and arch nemesis' mom would think she needed to delve into it further. We didn't need any delving. Nothing good would have come of it. The only thing worse than my kid's crestfallen reaction would have been her actually announcing to his mother that she doesn't want to sit next to her kid and that his existence in and of itself could potentially ruin her entire life. Bursting into tears probably wouldn't have been good either. Thankfully, she hadn't found her BFF's seat yet and locating it successfully distracted her. Talking to the teacher didn't hurt either.

But, sheesh. This school year hasn't even started and the playground politics are already wearing me out.

Operation Crappy Parents

The newest Kindergartner recently lost a second tooth. She'd lost her first one several months ago. The tooth fairy carted it off leaving a handful of coins in its place. A handful of coins might have been complicated if our house employed the "leave it under the pillow" strategy. Let me just share with you: We don't.

Teeth are small. Baby teeth are even smaller. I never realized how small until my kid placed her first tooth in my hand and I realized there was no way in hell the tooth fairy was going to be able to find it under a pillow in the dark without waking up the aforementioned kid. And our kid's bed was inside a pop up castle thing at the time, too. Many is the stuffed animal that slid down between that castle and the bed. What if the tooth fell between them? Imagine two grown adults pulling a bed out from the wall, pulling the pop up castle off and getting on their hands and knees with flashlights. Right. Suddenly, I understood why people buy those cutesy tooth fairy pillows.

So I convinced the newest Kindergartner that a bowl on the dresser next to her bed might work better. It really wasn't that hard. I mostly just suggested the tooth fairy wouldn't leave anything if she couldn't find the tooth. To thank her for making it easy to locate, the tooth fairy left 52 assorted coins in its place. Because the tooth fairy understands the importance of quantity over quality when distributing coins to a five year old even if the quantity consists primarily of pennies.

The newest Kindergartner delighted in announcing her windfall to her classmates the next day. And she's been waiting to lose another tooth ever since. Last week her mouth finally cooperated. And lo it was a great day in our house.

Too bad some evil troll in her class took it upon herself to tell my daughter that the tooth fairy is really your parents. The newest Kindergartner mentioned it to me over dinner wanting to know if that was true. I think the exact quote was, "Are you and Daddy the tooth fairy?" Well played.

I led off with, Huh? but quickly moved on to deflecting by asking who told her that. I figured it must have been some older kid shattering dreams in passing on the playground. Sadly, this revelation came courtesy of her best friend. So much for calling the kid a lying whore.

So then I hoped maybe I could undermine the credibility of the BFF's info by asking who told the BFF that. Except, apparently BFF got her info from her parents. So much for calling the kid's information source a lying whore. Very well played.

So, yeah. Fess up or lie. Tough call.

Except, confessing to the tooth fairy didn't seem like the only thing on the line there at the dinner table. Because this kid's bright. No tooth fairy is like three degrees of separation from no Santa. No way this kid won't connect the dots. No way her faith in Santa won't be undermined. But looking your kid in the eye and lying is hard core guilt inducing. Not that we've never lied before. Because let's be honest, sometimes claiming there's no more candy in the house is just plain easier. And my husband may or may not have claimed to have Santa's phone number last year when certain people were not successfully sharing with their brother.

But she's never asked us if he was real. So we've kind of lucked out not having to look her in the face and lie. But how do you give up on Santa? She's only five. Last Christmas she wrote her first real letter to Santa. It was so desperately cute I'm not sure I can live without at least one more. And she has a little brother to think about, people. Of course, Santa must live on. So I sucked it up and lied.

Having restored her faith in the tooth fairy, the newest Kindergartner was already mentally in the toy aisle spending her next windfall. She practically skipped to bed that night.

And that's when Operation Crappy Parents went into effect. That would be the operation that involved all of the grown adults in the house falling asleep while watching American Gangster. One second I'm trying to figure how much longer that movie can possibly drag on and the next I'm being woken up by a disappointed kid a foot from my face repeatedly asking why the tooth fairy didn't come. The 6 am on a Saturday early morning haze quickly cleared as the reality of our error hit home. My husband and I both sat up and said, "Oh."

It was early and I wasn't on my game so I tried suggesting the tooth fairy forgot. I know. Lame. And believe you me, it sounded lame at the time. Pretty much as soon as it came out of my mouth. But no need to worry. No one crafts a lie better than the guy with Santa's phone number. Big fat liar to the rescue. What's that you ask? What was the fix all sentence our kid hopefully never attempts to verify by comparing notes with her friends at school? Duh.

Everyone knows the tooth fairy only comes on Saturdays.

Another problem solved. Another proud parenting moment.

When in doubt, lock yourself in the bathroom and regroup

My husband had to leave suddenly on a business trip Thursday night. Suddenly is always a fun way for a spouse to depart. It often includes a sink full of dishes and a laundry backlog for you to take care of while they are gone. Oh, the joy.

The children and the dogs have been doing their best to make the first three days of his trip extra challenging too. Sleep deprivation being their modus operandi. They've been triple teaming me to ensure I don't get more than two hours of sleep in a row.

My three year old's plan of attack has been an ongoing debate about whether or not he should sleep in his bed. Not necessarily at bedtime either. Sometimes that's a concern that doesn't hit him until 2 am. One time we even got to debate it twice in one night.

He's usually good for a solid hour of debating. I tend to go with pleading and back patting whereas he opts for tears and irrational statements. By the time we're done, the newest Kindergartner is awake. And if she's awake, by golly, she's going to need to point it out. And by then the dogs are awake too and then they're waking up the three year old I just got to sleep. One time they did it by growling and wrestling around in the hall outside his door. Another time they decided to be more efficient and just go in and lick his face. Perfect.

My personal favorite though is the periodic wake up calls throughout the night by our three dogs wanting to go out. My husband can't figure out why they only do this when he's out of town. I can't figure out why he can't figure that out.

He claims they'll go back to sleep if I just ignore them. Except I'm sort of unclear how I'm supposed to ignore a 40 pound dog repeatedly springing off and on the bed and the giant pony puppy moaning next to my face. So I drag myself up and let them out. Several minutes after I lay back down and generally right as I'm about to fall back to sleep, I hear the scratching at the door signaling they're ready to come in. But here's where it gets good. Because when I get to the door, it's really only one of them that's ready to come back in. The other one is still partying the night away.

I know what you're thinking. Just tell the other dog to get his butt in the house and be done with it. But yelling and standing in the open door with the cold air coming in is not conducive to falling right back to sleep. In fact, it pretty much guarantees I'll be awake for another hour. So I leave that rogue party animal outside and pray that he'll decide he likes it out there so much he never wants to come back in again. And then I lay back down until he's ready to come back in five minutes later. Generally right as I'm about to fall back asleep again.

Three times getting up and out of bed just for one trip outside makes me want to throttle them. And it happens at least twice a night. It's awesome. Last night before bed when I pictured them waking me up again, I couldn't decide if I would just scream obscenities at them from afar or if I'd feel the need to wrestle their leaping bodies to the ground and hiss at them face to face.

I hope I never get captured by enemy troops and subjected to sleep deprivation torture. Not that I know anything you'd need to torture me to get me to tell you. But if I did, no one needs to be under the illusion that I'd be able to hold out. I'd sell my own mother down the river by the second night because I am inescapably weak and pathetic when I'm exhausted.

Yesterday was actually the roughest. Today I actually resemble a human. Yesterday, not so much. Unless crabby and shrieky are what you look for in a human. The bad part is that a crabby and shrieky mother tends to lead to weepy and whiny children and next thing you know it's a vicious cycle. At one point I locked myself in the bathroom to regroup. After getting my second wind, I also successfully got everyone dressed and out the door to run errands by 4 pm. Way to be, crabby and shrieky me! Yeah!

Today, no one's dressed yet but I did get the dishes done and produced enough clean underwear to get everyone through the week. So it's been a successful day is what I'm saying. The wrecking crew is currently watching Mary Poppins. I had hoped it might buy me an hour alone but so far, I've had a pop in to discuss lip gloss and another pop in that required butt wiping. So I guess maybe it's not working. Eh. Semi alone's not bad. And neither are my kids. For example, even a crabby and shrieky mother can appreciate this:

They're princesses. Both of them. One of the many perks of having a big sister is that she can dress you up in heels and teach you how to pose like a super model. Lucky kid!

First class all the way

Over the weekend, we finally assembled the easel my mother bought our kids for Christmas. She'd brought it over several weeks before Christmas wanting my husband to reinforce the wood after she'd read a bunch of reviews online that said it falls over and breaks easily. I guess she was hesitant about giving her grandchildren such a ticking time bomb. Naturally, we did what any good parent would do and hid it in the garage and immediately forgot about it.

We discovered it while cleaning and decided that if it falls and breaks we'll reinforce it then. For everyone that's playing along at home, that's called very, very lazy. Here's the potential death trap in our living room:

What with the giant plastic house, the play kitchen, two nylon tunnels and 347 assorted toys, we figure what's an easel. And the kids love it. I define love it by how many minutes they are capable of playing with it before an adult has to get up and find out why someone is crying. In this case, over an hour. Worth every penny she paid. Here's the newest Kindergartner trying out for Russell Crowe's part in A Beautiful Mind:

And here's her brother attempting to destroy the dry erase board side by refusing to listen to me when I tell him to stop drawing on it with the wrong kind of markers:

Nothing warms a mother's heart more than her child attempting to destroy a perfectly good toy. Thankfully, we're firmly entrenched in the "Washable Markers Only" camp and they wipe right off with Windex. Way to be, Crayola. Way to be. Now if I can just remember to buy them a giant roll of butcher paper to draw on we'll be all set. In the meantime, we're improvising:

Classy. That's us.

Overtired = Prone to Shriekiness

The day after my descent into the bowels of parenting hell both of my children happily got dressed and skipped into their new school. Not a single tear was shed. Not even by the 2 year old and that kid’s been launching a protest every morning for 3 ½ weeks. Some people think The Lion King represents the circle of life. I say it’s mornings like that. Worst morning ever followed by easiest morning ever. That’s life, baby. Sometimes you just have to wait out bad stuff to get to good stuff.

In celebration, I drank soda late at night and couldn’t fall asleep at a decent hour Friday or Saturday night. You’d think I’d have been smarter about it on Saturday after it happened Friday. But you’d be wrong. Because I’m a twit and I like to repeat those sort of mistakes. Heck, I may do it again tonight just for good measure. Because I didn’t do it last night and feeling well rested today has made me all “I can conquer the world” and odds are I’m going to take it for granted. Whatever.

Despite being tired this weekend, I cleaned my daughter’s room, the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. Not soap and water cleaned. Just picked up crap cleaned. Because my house is constantly overrun with crap. The story of my life now reads: Do laundry. Pick up crap off the floor. Do laundry. Pick up more crap off the floor.

I’ve discovered recently that I now evaluate toys by how much crap the thing contains. One giant piece of plastic now rates higher in my mind than 100s of small pieces of crap that can and will end up strewn about my house. I currently despise Lincoln Logs. Primarily because no one plays with them. And that’s primarily because those Lincoln Log people are lying through their teeth when they claim they are for 4 and up. My 4 year old got some for Christmas and even grown adults found it hard to build the house on the box. Now they get used as “chicken nuggets” in the play kitchen and annoy the crap out of me by turning up all over the house.

My children rewarded my efforts by dancing happily around our clean living room and I decided that I loved them 22% more than the day before. Right up until I went to lay in bed and read for a few minutes and came out and found them making their own Kool-Aid. They found the powder in the cupboard and figured out to add water. I found that mildly impressive since neither one can read. Although I also found it mildly annoying since Kool-Aid puts pictures on the package to facilitate children doing this.

There may or may not have been some shrieking when I saw the Kool-Aid. I don’t even feel guilty about it because it was busy staining the hell out of my kitchen floor and my children’s hands and feet. All I could think was “Everything I hold dear is stained red because there's no way these two freaks managed to keep it contained in the kitchen.” I began rushing from room to room expecting to find it dripping down the walls.

Except the universe must have still been feeling sorry for me from last week and the Kool-Aid didn’t get on anything other than skin and fugly retro kitchen tile. It was amazing. One of them even carried a cup of thick blood red Kool-Aid into the living room and set it on a table. That’s like getting sprayed with bullets Rambo style but none of them hits you. Wild.

To celebrate we made more popsicles. I even pretended to be super mom and let the 4 year old push the button on the blender. I’m still sort of amazed I make popsicles. I have a system now and everything. Mostly the system involves frozen strawberries and water. But I defrost the strawberries ahead of time and gave up adding yogurt. Defrosted because it blends quicker and no yogurt because they were turning out too creamsicle-y. But still. That’s pretty good for me. I even keep the blender in the cabinet over the counter I like to use to make them. That would be the counter that allows the least amount of access to 2 children. If I could figure out how to let the kids help without letting them touch anything or enter the room, I’d be all set. Which is odd, since, in my head making popsicles is an activity for them.

Then we made dinner and I managed to get it on the table before midnight. Everyone was tired by then though and I was still feeling warm and fuzzy so I announced we could all go lay in bed and watch TV while we ate. In my head, lights out and under the covers means you are dear to me. It also means I can see who Dan nominated on Big Brother. The kids mostly chattered and spilled black bean noodle mish mash on my beloved duvet. I’d like to pretend I didn’t shriek and wig out over the duvet spill but, let’s be honest, that duvet is like heaven and those freaks were wrestling over who got to sit on my side of the bed when it happened.

Apparently overtired = prone to shriekiness. So I tossed everyone in bed and medicated myself. And it was good.

P.S. Did anyone not know Dan was going to win that luxury competition? He's the only one with half a brain in his head. And I’m not just saying that because one of his competitors calls himself a professional “Mixologist.”

Proud Parenting Moments II

On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad it is to let your kid think the Elvis Channel on your Sirius radio is the kiddie channel? I changed the radio station at my three year old's request and Hunk of Burning Love was playing and, seriously, isn't that more fun for all of us than some stupid Wiggles song anyway? So I kinda sorta stopped the dial and kinda sorta let her think that was the kiddie channel.

Ok. Fine. So I didn't just let her think that. I actually answered "yes" when she asked if it was the kiddie channel. I know. Not great. But, see, she was already clapping and laughing. So she liked the song. And if I had told her it wasn't the kiddie channel, well, let's not even lie to ourselves that she would have agreed to like it even one more second. Because she asked for the kiddie channel. And if it's not what she asked for it is by definition less than acceptable. And it was early. And who needs the sky to fall right there in the car first thing in the morning. And, honestly, I was pretty tired yesterday. So my judgment was impaired by fatigue. So it's not really my fault. Because I'm a good person. And this was an isolated incident. And it won't happen again. Or at least not right away. And, Santa's a much bigger scam anyway. So there.

Proud parenting moments

Nothing makes you quite as proud as a mother as dropping your one year old off at daycare and getting a call two hours later that he has 102 degree fever. Remember how you commented as you left that he hadn't quite been himself all morning? Right. Yeah. That's called fever, stupid. Come get your kid.