Notes from the crib

We've got a new member of the family. Story to come tomorrow...

We are well on our way into illness number two for George. On Friday we went to the park with friends and since it's March, I didn't think to put on sunscreen. The temperature was in the 80s that day, and later that night the friends we were with mentioned that they'd all gotten sunburned. When George awoke on Saturday morning with pink cheeks, I thought he must be sunburned, too, so we went on our merry way to the birthday party and then some shopping. On Sunday morning, George awoke with bright red splotchy cheeks, so we thought maybe it wasn't sunburn after all but maybe an allergy to something, perhaps from rolling around in the grass at the park? This morning it was even worse, and has now spread to red dots on his arms and legs. I called the pediatrician's office and the nurse I spoke with thought it was probably Fifth Disease. There's nothing that can be done for it, and it doesn't bother George in the slightest. It's a virus that's only contagious before the rash appears, so I'm hoping that he didn't infect anyone we were with on Friday or Saturday. I went ahead and told all of the people we were around, so they could watch their kids for symptoms. I also notified the child care at the gym, since he was there four days last week. The gym is probably where he's been picking up these germs; it's pretty coincidental that I've made a concerted effort to go work out for the past three weeks and he's now had the first two big illnesses of his life. Oh well, he's got to get exposed to germs sometime.

I've been sick since Saturday night with "cold like" symptoms so I'm hoping that I'm not also coming down with the disease. I'm curious to see if I'll have a rash breakout in a few days.

Here's a shot of my red-faced boy. It's no wonder they call it "slapped face disease". He sure does need a haircut. Every time I think of getting him one lately, he gets sick. Maybe it's a ploy on his part to grow long hair?

George had great fun today attending the birthday party of one of his friends. It was held at a play center that we frequent, and for the first time George was big enough that he could go off and play without me following right behind. It was blissful to be able to sit and chat with the birthday girl's mommy for a few minutes. For a present, I embroidered the birthday girl's name on an apron and made her a felt hamburger. I so enjoyed playing with my sewing machine again, it's been way too long. I'm hoping that I complete some of my jobs soon so that I can play again. I miss being crafty.

No, it's not the name of George's future girlfriend (at least I hope not). It's the name of the color of powdered pigment that George decided to pour all over himself this afternoon. I was in my craft room/office trying to finish up a transcript and George snuck in. At first he entertained himself by drawing on an easel. Then he snuck over to a little set of drawers I had temporarily set on the floor. He opened the top drawer and helped himself to a little bottle of Pearl Ex powder. The next thing I knew, he was giggling and covered in purple powder. I grabbed George and yelled for DH (who was headed out the door) to come back and bring me a paper towel, since my hand was covered in powder and I didn't want my purple fingerprints all over. He brought me a towel, I cleaned off my hand and then unsnapped the legs of George's pants. I was able to fold up the pant legs to contain the powder while I carried George outside. Then I let the legs down and shook off as much powder as I could, then George got to disrobe on the front lawn. He was carried in for a quick cleanup since one foot was entirely purple and he had some glam lavender sparkles on his eyebrow. I sprayed some Shout on George's outfit, took a picture, threw the clothes in the wash and prayed for the best. Then I vacuumed up as much powder as I could from the floor, sprayed cleaner on the carpet and hoped for a miracle. The outfit came out perfect, the carpet is now blue. I'm thinking I shouldn't choose outfits with suggestive phrases on them anymore for George. Perhaps it just became a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Flu B plus an ear infection. Poor little guy. For the low, low price of $150 we got meds for the whole family. Amoxicillan for George to help with the ear infection ($8), and Tamiflu for DH and I to help keep us from catching it. No Tamiflu for George since we are at Day 5. And since he didn't start presenting real symptoms besides fever until Sunday and we talked to the doctors on Friday and Saturday nights, there really wasn't anything we could have done differently to help him get over this any quicker. But it stinks that it's 80 degrees outside and George has to be stuck indoors.

George is still sick today. I think we'll get him in to the doctor tomorrow since he's just not kicking this bug on his own. Today he fell asleep in my arms at noon. He had curled up next to me on the couch while I was doing some work from home, and he kind of nuzzled in. I set my work aside, scooped him up and went to the rocking chair. A few minutes of rocking and he was out. It's been at least a year since I've rocked my baby to sleep, and I just relaxed and enjoyed the rocking for awhile before putting him in bed. He woke about 45 minutes later crying inconsolably. I went in to check on him and he was just lying there in tears, too upset to even soothe himself with the binkie smooshed between his neck and the mattress. I rescued his binkie, sent a quick IM to DH to make sure I shouldn't be worried that our son was too sick to even self-soothe (we decided he was just sleepy and out of it and we wouldn't worry), and then I crawled into bed for a much needed nap. An hour and a half later, I awoke refreshed and George slept another hour after that.

While he wasn't fevered when I put him down, he had a fever of 101.8 under one arm and 103.3 under the other when he woke from his nap. Either way, the boy was hot. I got him some Pedialyte and Motrin and we played for awhile while that kicked in. Then he wanted a snack of crackers and felt up to going out, so we had great fun spending time at Walmart picking up more supplies. He was such a happy little guy riding around in the shopping cart. I also got him to eat some comfort food of apple slices and half a cheeseburger at the McDonalds inside Walmart, so I felt better that he was at least eating some food even if it wasn't the most nutritious stuff.

I sure hope he gets to feeling better soon. And I hope DH and I continue to avoid the bug.

George has the ick. He's been down and out since Friday with a 102+ fever. Poor little guy. When we can get Motrin and Tylenol in him, he feels pretty good and bounces on the bed. Otherwise, he just cries and whimpers and nothing we do is right. Today the highest his fever got was 99.5, so hopefully he's on the mend. I asked a friend, and apparently this particular bug takes about a week to get over.

We had to miss a birthday party today (with a TRAIN ride!) and we're missing a playdate brunch tomorrow. I refuse to be the mother who brings a sick kid to events. While I would have loved to be social, and George would have enjoyed the parties, it isn't worth it to make everyone else sick. I wish other mothers felt the same, George most likely picked up this bug at the gym on Thursday. When I left him, they had big signs reminding parents that it was against the rules to leave children who were sick and it listed about five time periods in the previous week where they'd had sick kids in the facility that they'd had to send home. It's sad that a sign had to be made, and people just couldn't be considerate of others.

DH gave me a reprieve from caretaking last night and I got to meet a friend for dinner and a movie. It was fabulous to get away and be a grown-up for awhile. I think I need to schedule more girls' nights. We met at a favorite Mexican restaurant, ate at the bar, and managed to make it to the movies to grab the last two seats in the house for Slumdog Millionaire. Great movie - I already can't wait for it to come out on video so DH and I can watch it together.

I've been down and out myself the past two weeks with an injured shoulder. The best we can figure, my chair/desk combo got knocked out of whack when we moved offices. So I'm not sitting properly when I type, and it caused some muscle trauma, which compresses nerves. So I end up with this horrible knot in my shoulder and burning sensation that makes me feel like my back is on fire. After a week of pain I went to the doctor and got some strong ibuprofen, muscle relaxers, and this cool TENS machine electronic device that sends electric pulses that are supposed to help with the pain. Unfortunately, if I take the meds, I end up pretty much passing out so I can't take them unless DH is home. And he's been having to work late nights lately. So I'm on the slow mend, but at least have been able to start exercising again (although that just brought on the George-sickness so maybe that's not a plus?)

DH spent the weekend repairing one of his computers and buying himself a new monitor since his conked out Friday night. He's finally got everything working again this evening, so he's happy.

... you never know what you are going to get. -- Forrest Gump

Happy Valentine's Day!

In George's world, everything is a tragedy. He's in a phase where he has a vision for everything. And most of the time he wants to do it himself. Unfortunately, he's not yet able to be independent and he lacks all the communication skills necessary to tell us what he wants. So he's resorted to throwing himself on the ground, hiding his face in his hands, and sobbing. It just about breaks our hearts, especially when the best way for us to handle it is to just ignore him until he gets it cried out. If we try to pick him up or comfort him, it just makes it worse.

Last night I had to go in to the office, so DH was alone with George for dinner and bedtime. Apparently George wanted a muffin and DH made the mistake of removing the wrapper for George. George threw the muffin down, tossed the plate aside, and then flopped onto the floor just inconsolable. He'll do the same thing if we ask him to do something that he doesn't want to do, like move away from the hot stove. He'll just throw himself on the ground and cry.

Today, George and I joined some of our friends for a Valentine's party. George did very well for the first hour, playing and socializing. But at lunchtime he just melted down. First he cried because two of his friends were sitting on white wooden chairs. Since those were the only two of that style, I got George a green folding chair to sit on but George was not appeased. So he threw himself on the floor to sob. After he calmed down, he decided to just stand at the table with his friends rather than sit in the offending green chair. He was happily sipping on his juice box until he noticed that the other girls' juice boxes were bigger than his. So it was back to the floor with more sobbing. After calming down, he played with his food for a little bit. He wasn't eating much, so I tore a little bite off to see if maybe he'd eat smaller pieces. This sent him into hysterics of kicking and screaming and sobbing on the floor. At that point, I just picked him up, said our goodbyes, and we headed home. He sobbed for 15 minutes in the car before falling asleep. Once home, he napped for over three hours. The poor guy just wore himself out. When he woke he kept talking about the party, telling me "George cry. Chair!! Juice box!!!" I guess those things were really upsetting to him. We talked about what had happened, and I gave him a bunch of extra cuddles this afternoon. Now to help him figure out how to deal with these frustrations in a more socially acceptable manner. It sure is tough to be two.

George has entered a growth spurt and he's gotten much taller. But he's still not tall enough to reach all of his favorite things. That doesn't stop Mr. Ingenious from getting what he wants. He discovered how to dump out his book buckets, turn them over and stand on them to get what he wants. Here he wanted to turn on the light switch, although he soon discovered he could also unlock the door so he spent several minutes locking and unlocking the deadbolt. Luckily, we have a knob cover on the doorknob or he would have been outside in no time flat.

DH is sick and G has been feeling a little off this week (we think it's two year molars). So we are taking it easy today. DH is resting in bed watching Star Trek reruns, G is alternating playing and watching a Mickey Mouse DVD, and I'm cleaning up the craft room. I had it almost clean and then I held a class on Friday and I had to decide whether it was more important to clean the room or have projects ready for the participants. In preparation for class, the room ended up getting pretty trashed again, although I have most of the class stuff put away now. So I'm back to working on finding homes for the various odds and ends left in the middle of the room. G decided to come check on what I was doing and stepped into the doorway to assess my work. I looked at him waiting for him to speak, and this is what he said, "Messy! Trash! All trash! Mommy's trash!". Then he turned and ran back to the living room to watch more Mickey.

Speaking of Mickey, last week G and I were drawing on his easel. He wanted me to draw a picture of Mickey Mouse's clubhouse, which is made up of Mickey parts. So we drew the house with the ears and the shoes. Then he wanted me to add the hands. I couldn't remember where the hands went on the clubhouse, so I asked G "Here? What about here?" as I pointed to various parts of the clubhouse drawing. He finally agreed where the hands should go, so I drew them on the picture. G decided that wasn't where they were supposed to go after all and told me "No. Bad Mickey, Mommy. Bad!". I didn't know we were raising an art critic.

After lots of thought and disagreement and bruised toes, we decided that we needed to separate. Our stuff, that is. We have too much stuff and we don't share the same (dis)organizational philosophies. We have piles of papers, more electronics than the nearest Best Buy, newly acquired boxes of DH's childhood treasures, crafting supplies to rival Hobby Lobby and more, just between the two of us. Throw a toddler into the mix and we have a messy, messy house.

We've been trying to do something about the clutter for months, but finally got on the road to fixing it this weekend. First we decided that in order to live more peacefully, we needed separate spaces. So I moved out of the office and it's now a "man room". I moved all the office supplies and my computer desk into my crafty room and brought in a bunch more storage cabinets that we had scattered through the house. I've rearranged so that hopefully I'll be able to store all my stuff, plus have enough space to set up a temporary table in the center of the room for crafting class nights. We moved DH's family heirloom kitchen table upstairs (although DH has a plan to move it into the man room eventually), and then we took out a few leaves from my family heirloom table and relocated it from the dining room into the kitchen/breakfast area. The mead/wine racks were moved from the kitchen into the man room to get them out of G's reach. With the table gone from the dining room, we proceeded to convert it into a playroom for G. No longer will our living room look like Fisher-Price threw up in it!

We've moved an antique settee into the playroom, along with a rocker that had to be removed from G's room after he repeatedly used it as a launch pad. Books, toys and other items are slowly finding their way into their new spaces. And DH is finally assembling the play kitchen this evening now that G is asleep.

DH and G even ran some errands this evening and came home with a new rug to spruce up the playroom - G seems to like it quite well.

We finally got George's kitchen delivered yesterday. It's still not put together and probably won't be at least until the weekend. But at least we now have two boxes of kitchen parts. While the original only took two days to arrive, due to more shipping problems the replacement with the "expedited" shipping took over two weeks. I guess "expedited" must mean slow. I thought that George wouldn't notice that he didn't have a kitchen to play with, since we didn't really talk about it in front of him. We didn't ask him if he wanted a kitchen for Christmas, really didn't discuss presents and such with him at all. So imagine my surprise when George started playing with his new toys on Christmas morning. He stacked up some Melissa and Doug slice and bake cookies onto their tray, stood up, turned around in a circle in the middle of the living room as if he was looking for something and then asked pitifully, "Where's kitchen?" It just about broke my heart. Luckily, we were able to convince him that the end table could be used as an oven, and a crisis was averted.

George has learned his first bit of profanity. Several weeks ago one of my dear friends was sharing the latest horrendous thing that her ex-husband had done and I inadvertently let out an "Oh, shit!" forgetting that George was in the room with me. George had been quietly playing with his toys and suddenly started singing "Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh shit". At first I didn't realize what had happened, and then DH cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows at me. Oops. I'm so not winning Mom of the Year anytime soon. We ignored him and he stopped and didn't repeat it again, so I thought I was out of the woods. But I forgot that our son has a mind like a steel trap.

Flash forward to last week, a few weeks after the swearing incident. We are in the middle of rural America, the nation's Heartland, at a Walmart store, shopping for a locking hitch pin for the U-haul we are bringing back home from DC. All of a sudden George starts sing-songing "Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit". DH and I look at each other, raise our eyebrows and decide what we should do. I redirect George, "Are you talking about sitting? Yes, you are sitting in the shopping cart" and then I make a song up about 'Oh, we sit in the cart. Oh, sit. Oh, sit". And I rush us out of the store.

The next day DH is driving us, pulling the trailer behind, and he hits a large pothole in the middle of the highway. From the backseat comes an angelic "Oh, shit!" DH says, "Well, at least he knows how to use it appropriately." And we both giggle.

Yesterday, George breaks into his inappropriate song again while playing with his toys. Luckily, he received a Fisher-Price boat for Christmas, so we start talking about the ship. "Oh, where is the ship? Oh, ship, where are you?"

Today George was playing with his fire truck and drove the fire truck up the steep stuffed animal "mountain". One of the firefighters fell out of the truck. George said, "Oops" and then told the fireman "Stop it!" as he put the fireman back into the truck. I told this story to DH and he said, "At least he didn't say 'Oh, shit'".

There's much to blog about, but no time right now as I'm trying to get caught up on my transcribing that I should have done over break. And we are back to work now plus a doctor's appointment this week for a follow up from my surgery. George's kitchen might finally arrive this week after yet another shipping disaster. And we might someday get caught up on our sleep after our whirlwind cross country trip.

So I'll just leave you with this picture of our little guy doing what he loves best - trying to "push button" at the crosswalk outside Graceland.

After 19 hours in the car today (and 66 hours total over the past six and a half days), we are home safe and sound. The boys are snug in bed and I'm up waiting for my work from home job shift to begin, after which I will go to bed. If you are our family, have mercy on us and don't call us to see if we are okay. We are fine and (hopefully) still asleep. We'll call you when we wake up. George is just wonderful and rushed to play with his toys in the living room for 30 minutes before happily crawling into bed.

Hope your holiday was filled with sweetness!

I'm number this number one, as I'm sure there are years of mistakes to come. This is a pretty big mistake, and we should have known better.

I ordered George's big Christmas gift (a Melissa and Doug wooden kitchen) back in late October and it was delivered the first week of November and has been sitting in the house since then. Just sitting in a corner, out of the way. Quietly keeping a secret that was only to be revealed when we went to put it together about 9:00 tonight. The secret? It was box one of two. I have no idea where box two is - it either never was shipped from Amazon, or was never delivered by FedEx. (At the moment I blame FedEx, this is the second bad mix-up I've had with them this holiday season).

I was able to find a "contact me" button on Amazon's site and lo and behold someone actually called me within minutes, apologized for the problem, and offered to send us out a new one with expedited shipping. Not sure yet when it will arrive, but I'm glad that they didn't give me a hassle with the purchase being over their 30 days limit. Of course, I haven't received the new one yet, but I'm hopeful they will make it right.

I'm glad that George is blissfully unaware of the holiday this year. Otherwise, I think I might be quite upset instead of just annoyed and embarrassed. Mostly I'm just annoyed at myself for not opening the box before now. I knew better. I even mentioned a couple times that we should open the box and make sure all the parts were here, but we never did. I guess it's good to make the mistake this year. You can bet all future presents will be assembled well before Christmas Eve.

Today we spent a lovely Christmas Eve afternoon with George's Uncle JP and soon-to-be Aunt S. They had just picked a Christmas kitten up from the shelter and George had loads of fun chasing the kittie around.

When he got bored of chasing the kitten, he tried to climb the presents.

JP and S. have a knack for picking out really good presents and this year was no different. George loved the Little People boat he received, playing with it for a good hour while we were all visiting. He even had to play with it for a few minutes this evening after church.