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Yeah, I’m definitely battling *something*. Still no fever, but a nice burn-y eye, scratchy throat, congested and just ick feeling’s been hanging on all day. And the dreary, overcast day was just a perfect one for jammies and TV.
I’m wondering if I am to blame for Bean’s behavior issues at her dad’s and at school. After a bumpy month or so, I’ve gone back to what worked for me when she was little: setting her up for success. I’ve really streamlined what’s important to me and worth clashing with her over, and a lot of other stuff I’ve just let go. As a result, her times with me are relatively stress and incident-free. Don’t think it’s all sunshine and roses, but I’ve made a concerted effort to minimize rules and requirements, not make unrealistic demands of her and to allow her the freedom to make choices and be who she wants to be. I also watch her for cues, and if I see a meltdown coming, I try to get in front of it by holding her and rocking her.
While she spends about 2/3 of her “home” time with me, she spends another 45-ish hours a week (and that’s a good chunk of waking hours) at preschool, and 1/3 of her “home” time with her dad. He’s a bit more rules and regulations than I am, but he’s *generally* a pretty AP guy in most of what he does and how he relates to the girls.
Preschool is obviously a lot more rules and regulations than I am.
And here’s where I wonder if my laissez-faire approach to parenting is doing her more harm than good. At least in the near-term. If she colors on the floor with a crayon and I happen to catch her in the act, to me it’s a talking point. To her dad, it’s a time out. To her teacher, it’s worth making Bean show me the floor. If I don’t catch her in the act, I’ll tell both girls (usually, tho sometimes I do single her out) that we don’t do that and I’ll restrict crayon access to just in my office or something like that. But if I choose to leave them with crayons while I take a shower, and I end up with magenta windowsills, that’s kinda my fault, at least in my mind.
Am I doing her harm by not echoing the structure/discipline/rules she has elsewhere? I’m a single mom running a zone defense on two pretty spirited kids, and honestly, I pick my battles: they can’t run away from me in public, they can’t run into a parking lot/road, they need to be gentle with animals, not kill bugs indiscriminately and not hit/kick/spit.
The other stuff, it’s all more a discussion and natural consequence-type stuff. If Bean’s insisting on wearing shoes that are too small, she gets blisters. If she wants to wear a velvet dress to go play at the park in July, she sweats buckets (and I keep a good eye on her). If she won’t share a toy with her sister, the toy gets taken away from both of them. I may take away a thing she likes if she’s made a bad choice, but I really only “discipline” for large infractions.
What do y’all think? Am I too permissive? Should I create more structure? Am I inadvertently causing her to act out at school because they have rules and I don’t? Ditto at her dad’s house?
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A week of sick kids, high stress and no sleep has left me feeling like poop on a stick, but I wanted to share a linky to a news story on what I’ve been up to.
More later, when I’m feeling better.
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Melissa, I like the talking head thing, so feel free to comment away 
But let me know if you do start blogging – I’ll definitely want to read it!
My parents have been on babysitting duty all week, and will likely finish the week as the girls’ day care providers. Sorry guys! I just sent an email to the real daycare, showing them this link from the local paper about state lab testing for H1N1. It’s entirely possible that my results will be indefinitely delayed as they work through their backlog, and if the school maintains their “we need your results” stance, who knows when the girls will be able to go back. So I suggested we just go with Monday.
I really hope they are on board … the girls need the structure of school, I think, to make sure they’re napping an eating well. My parents are doing a great job, but having a hard time with napping and getting the girls to eat; and when I’m getting home to two exhausted kids at 6:30, I can’t exactly whip up a full meal. So they’re in this cycle of carb loading and exhaustion. Miss O is sleeping for crap at night and I am just wiped out!
Miss O is one strong-willed little bugger … is it wrong that I like Bean a bajillion times more sometimes? O will sleep all night at Dave’s, and nap for an hour or more. With me, if I get her to nap on her own, the most I can hope for is 45 minutes, and she is back to waking up 4-5 times a night. And screaming when she does, partly because I’m not nursing her (mostly, by the last wake-up I just let her latch on. I don’t think she’s getting anything, but whatever). But I think part of it is just that she’s so chronically overtired.
With my folks, she won’t nap at all unless my dad walks her to sleep, then lays down with her asleep on him. Even so, they get maybe 30 minutes from her. Her one day at school, she slept on a mat for 2 stinkin’ hours. And Bean naps almost every day at school. But never at home.
Le sigh. I wish I knew where they got this pig-headedness from. Probably their dad, as I’m as flexible and easy-going as can be …
When I’m at work, I am loving being a working mommy. The evenings still suck, from a time management perspective, but I envision this as being really good for the three of us once we really have a routine down. And being a single working mommy has some real benefits, as far as after-hours work stuff goes – if I have some notice, I can just coordinate with Dave and not have the kids for the morning or evening. It’s kind of nice … you know, sometimes I think that I may never get married again …
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At least from a preschool director perspective.
I called the girls’ school this a.m. to bring them up to speed on the girls’ health, as Miss O left early Monday because she was sick and neither of them has been back since. The school sent out a “School Flu Policy” email today, and I just wanted them to know, mostly, that the girls were still ill, but negative for Type A.
And then idiot me mentioned I tested positive for Type A.
Hand to dog, I spent 10 minutes talking to the director and the owner detailing when I was last there (5 days before I tested positive for Type A), when I tested positive, when the girls tested negative, my doctor’s contact info … only to be called back and asked to keep the girls home until I get my test results back. You know, sometime next week.
I was hoping the girls were coming back tomorrow, but now Dave is being all devil’s advocate-y and saying “well, what if you’re still contagious? That would mean this whole week of isolation was for nothing.” Well, yeah, if you’re going to go and use logic.
Gah. I miss my girls. I haven’t seen them in a week and while it was really nice while I was feeling like death, now that I feel pretty good, it’s lonely. And boring. I mean, seriously – how much HGTV can a person watch without calling upon the powers of darkness and doing tons of decoupage? Do you know I actually watched TMZ this evening? And found it funny.
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Nuggets of joy gleaned from a 30-minute phone call from Bean
I hope you don’t break both your legs, mommy.I’m going to ask all the humans did you crash Paul? Did you crash Paul? Did you crash Paul? And if they say they say yes then I am going to crash them too because that’s not nice to crash people!
And I’m pretty sure you’re going to love me always mommy. Even when you’re 100.
Can I come to your house mommy? I will take care of you. Every time you sneeze, I will bring you a tissue. But I can’t take care of daddy and Miss O, too. That’s a lot of people.
Miss O just attacked me. Apparently she wants to knock me over.
I’m going to put the phone down and go ask daddy. Don’t talk until I come back, okay?
Well, my big girl definitely misses me. And talking to her really drove home how much I miss her, too. And her sister, but Bean is just kind of a force unto herself, you know? The things she says and does are so interactive and engaging and unique that being away from her for this long has been really hard. I miss the little one for the more obvious reasons: my baby girl, nursing, her consistent presence. But Bean is who really puts the life and dynamism into my home.
She initiated the always awkward mommy and daddy are divorced conversation. This one began with “you loved each other for a little while” kind of discussion. Sometimes I wish I had a kid who was just not interested in the world around her, you know? I wouldn’t have to talk about dead people, wouldn’t have to talk about divorce … We could just talk about her and her ponies. (Daddy got her a “medium size” Toola Roola pony, with “sparkles on her butt-butt and on her nose and in her mane!” … the girl loves her some Ponies.)
Somehow she drew the conclusion “you still love daddy a little”. Ummm … no. Caught off-guard, I replied “no, sweetie, daddy and mommy are just friends.” She asked her daddy if we were friends, and he must have shaken his head, because next I heard was “Yes you are. Mommy said you are friends” and, in the background, Dave’s “yes, we’re friends.”
This is a bit of a shift in verbiage; historically we’ve kind of made mommy and daddy just separate entities, and used ‘mommy and daddy aren’t friends anymore’ as the reason for two homes and the divorce. But as Bean’s understanding of things – and her social context – expands, it seems like we’ll need to wrap our co-parenting relationship in different terms.
And since, in her social context at school, “not friends” is defined in terms of exclusion, meanness and scratching, it’s probably best that she thinks mommy and daddy are friends. Thankfully, I’m not alone in my thinking, so friends is the new terminology. Of course, this was followed by Bean vowing “We will all be friends forever. Mommy and Daddy and me and Miss O.” So I think there will need to be some nuancing of the term, over time, so she understands there are gradations of friendship, but for now, the ‘friends’ bucket seems a much better place for mommy and daddy’s relationship than the ‘not friends’ bucket
On the health front, I think I’m past the feverish portion of the flu, but I still have a nasty cough and the general feeling of being run down by a truck. I was out for a little while today to mail a few things, return some library books and pick up my own mail, and found the 15 minutes of driving exhausting. This is after a good night’s sleep. I ended up taking a two-hour nap and woke up about 4 hours ago, but I’m already yawning again.
Still no word on swine flu results. Looks like the first local school is closing based on ‘probable’ swine flu, so it’s just a matter of time before the first positive shows up around here. Whatever version of the flu I have, it has definitely knocked me on my ass much harder than the flu usually does. Although I’ve never had the flu at the same time I was returning to work and putting my kids in full-time care, so I imagine that life itself was knocking me down a few pegs already
The girls are on the rebound from whatever non-flu issues were ailing them, so hopefully one or both of them will be able to return to school tomorrow. Dave has totally been a rock star, keeping them over there all week, and staying home with them while they’re sick. It’s not a huge shock to me that he’s doing all this, as his daddy skills were never in doubt or question, it’s just really, really nice that he’s doing it – mostly to keep them away from me, but also because it gives me a chance to recover. And, ostensibly, to work from home. Which is easier said than done, as my already limited ability to stay focused has been shredded by the combo of illness-driven malaise and medication-induced brain fog. It’s taken me all day just to type this post, and I’ve had to give up finding an appropriate quote to use as a post title because I keep getting sucked into all sorts of silly things …
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Well, at least I know what’s wrong – I have the flu. And yeah, it’s type A. I went to the doctor yesterday a.m. because I still wasn’t feeling well, and since I had the febrile, respiratory illness the CDC was saying ‘go see your doctor’ about, I went. The doctor’s office sent a second swab off for more detailed testing, but in the meantime, I’m stuck at home for a week and taking Tamiflu.
Dave’s keeping the girls for the week to try to keep them, and their school, separate from my cooties. They both went to the doc today, Miss O because she has had some GI symptoms and a fever, Bean mostly just to cover our butts, and their flu tests were negative. If Miss O isn’t feeling better soon, I think one of us will be taking her to get her urine checked.
For as long as I’ve been sick, I was pretty surprised to still swab positive for *anything*, but maybe I picked up the flu virus later in the game. Who knows. I don’t know when I’ll get the results back, as my doctor’s office has “never done anything like this before” and doesn’t know what to expect when they send the stuff off. They hope to have results within the week, but personally, I’d expect a little faster turnaround right about now …
So that’s what’s going on here. I miss my kids, and imagine they miss me, but hopefully this will keep them from getting sick and I will finally get to recover myself. I’m doing some work, but the meds I’m on are making me a little spacey so it’s hard to stay focused for long. Mostly, I’m just going stir crazy.
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Still feeling crappy unless I load up on OTC meds, no x-ray results and my left ear is full of fluid or whatevah it is that infected ears fill with. I swear, if my ear would drain, I would at least feel a little more human …
Since an empty fridge waits for no woman, yesterday I made a grocery run. I needed to print out my last 6 online class lessons, too, so I chose SuperTarget, as it’s right next to Office Max. I hate printing tons of stuff at home, since a new laser cartridge is so damn expensive. I’ve printed all my class stuff at FedEx/Kinkos (you can send them print jobs online) until now, but since they make you wait for the stuff, I figured I’d give Office Max a whirl. Walked in, handed them the USB key, and walked out 10 minutes later with everything printed and 3-hole-punched. I’ll be a highlighting fool in a little while, as I am way behind on my classes.
At SuperTarget, I made a spin through the toy department just to see if there was anything cool on clearance, and had the bizarro-world experience of running into Bean shopping with Dave and Miss O. Contrary to popular belief, the world did *not* spin off it’s axis with the two of us in one place … at least I don’t think it did, but I’ve got this middle ear thing kind of screwing with my balance …
Bean was excited to see me, and told me she wanted to come with me as she was “tired of being around boys”. I reminded her that Miss O was there, too, and that she missed her daddy when she wasn’t with him. Her response? “Not that much.” Ouch. I spent a few minutes with her while Dave and Miss O stayed away (O would have been very unhappy to have me leave if she saw me), and then convinced her to go back to Dave. The rest of the experience was punctuated by texting back and forth about where we were in the store and ended with me sending “I’m out” when I left. My life is just weird sometimes.
I swear, I’m going to call my doctor tomorrow and ask if I have swine flu. I can’t shake the cough and I’m still running fevers on and off. If those jerks would ever call me about my chest x-ray at least I’d know what *isn’t* wrong. Grrr …
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So, as evidenced by the death and graveyard conversations, Bean and I talk about all kinds of stuff. Interesting stuff, sometimes, completely banal stuff other times. We haven’t done rocks in the belly, yet, Julia, but if your explanation to C involves pictures, or, better yet, visual aids, I may drop Bean off for the show and tell portion
Tuesday (in addition to dead people and cemeteries) we talked about how and why one would go about resurfacing a road, including trying to explain how cars and weather degrade the surface of the road, and how they lay down a new layer of asphalt without removing the old layer. She just couldn’t wrap her head around the concept of how the road surface would ‘wear out’. When I explain things to her, I ask “Did that make sense? Or should I try to explain it another way?” But really, how many different ways can one explain ‘wears out’. I tried using holes in clothes as a comparison, but I think she’s still pretty cloudy on the wearing out thing …
Later, when she and I were talking about why she shouldn’t run away from the grownups she’s with, I was trying to be kind of vague and not scary about everything at first, telling her that it was dangerous and bad things could happen. She said “I need you to explain it a different way.” That’s when she got the ‘taken by a stranger/run over and die’ bit. Now every time she doesn’t understand what I’m saying, she says “I need you to explain it a different way.” Bed time takes even longer as I explain every nuance of her books to her, usually once but often enough at least twice. Le sigh. Kinda makes O’s non-communication look good by comparison.
Melissa, I’ve been thinking about you this week – how did it go for you and for R?
I’ve been at work one day this week. I felt like crap Wednesday, but I medicated it into submission and went in, only to be rewarded with a 101.5 fever Thursday morning, and the kind of sick that makes even your teeth and hair hurt. I’m waiting on chest x-ray results for possible pneumonia. Fun. I’m pretty sure I’ve strained my lower back and ab muscles with all this coughing, and my head is constantly pounding. Great way to start a new job, huh? Hopefully, *hopefully* they will be understanding, and by Monday I’ll be well enough to go in and kick some serious butt. And this will just be a few days we all forget about in short order.
Thankfully my folks were around to help out with the girls yesterday, so I could go to the doc and get the x-ray solo, then even get a nap in in the afternoon. I slept 9 hours last night, and plan on repeating that tonight. I already got a good nap in this afternoon with Miss O, so while I still feel like death, I’m getting some of the rest I need (and that the doctor ordered – ha!) to help my body recover.
O has made a few appearances in her daycare room this week, and she loves it. Today, she watched Dave walk out the door and turned back to what she was doing. After he took Bean to her classroom, he came back and she was happily wandering around doing her own thing. I hope, hope, hope she is going to do well with this. I am really encouraged by Dave’s report, and by my own experiences of her playing happily and making friends, and cautiously optimistic about how it will go for real on Monday.
I got the sweetest phone call from Bean last night when she was at her daddy’s. I was on the phone with Kelly, and clicked over on the call waiting to join a conversation in-progress (she doesn’t grasp that she needs to wait for someone to answer the phone before she starts talking.) She had gotten an ant bite and jabbed herself on a “pokey plant” while at the park with daddy and wanted me to know. She was also worried about me, asking if I was resting and “soaking”, as I told her I soak in a hot tub when I don’t feel good. Poor Kelly gave up on me, as there’s no way to explain “the other line” to a 3.5 year old, nor did I want to rush her off the phone. I spent a few minutes talking to her and then called Kelly back.
I’m anticipating a weekend of laying around like a lump as I try to kick this. They told me I should start feeling better within 48-72 hours, and if I didn’t I needed to come back in. I’m holding the doctor to that, because I cannot imagine feeling this rotten for much longer 
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Happy birthday to me
Since I celebrated 37 buying a house for my new life, it seems oddly fitting that I celebrate 38 enjoying my last day of being a stay-at-home mom. Both are exciting turning points, but also scary and stressful and not anything I saw on my radar when I looked a few years ahead at 36. I think I was supposed to be going to Europe this year to get *my* fancy import car; I certainly wasn’t supposed to be where I am today.
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It seems a sort of apropos commentary that I started this yesterday but the girls would not let me finish. Right now I feel like absolute crap – fever, body aches, an ear infection and a nice, hacking cough. Yay first day of work! I’m going to medicate it all into submission rather than call in sick, but damn, I just want to lay on the sofa for a day. Or three. I’m fairly certain I’ll be spending my weekend off laying around trying to recover.
Yesterday after Bean ran off for the millionth time, I finally broke it down for her with the “Look, if you run away you could either get taken by a stranger and never see mommy and daddy and Miss O again, or you could get hit by a car and die. Do you want either of those things to happen?!?” spiel. Naturally, we then talked about those things ad nauseum for awhile. And then I said: “Now, do you understand why you can’t run away?” And she replied, very soberly, “Yes. And I could even get eaten by a bear if there was one around.”
Prior to this, on our way to a birthday breakfast, actually, she started on her ‘dead people in the ground’ obsession. She was convinced they buried people under the road. So I finally introduced the concept of a cemetery, as a park with dead people. “Do they have playscapes?” was her first question. I explained that they did not, they had some benches, and then had to explain the whole concept of digging a hole, putting the box with the person in, refilling the hole and, because she needed to know, putting the grass back on.
So, naturally, our next field trip will be to a cemetery. What 3.5-year-old doesn’t want to check out a park with dead people??
And before anyone starts on me, it’s her own damn fault for asking so many questions.
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Ugh.
What a weekend. Yesterday I medicated myself into feeling decent, but the combo of everything settling in my chest and exhaustion has left me feeling completely drained. Today, thankfully, Dave didn’t have much going on and could take the girls a bit early and give me some time to veg out on the couch and relax a bit. Tonight I’ll be able to get a little done, have a healthy dinner and get some sleep. Since I start work in a few days, I really need to start feeling better!
Miss O is doing better. After reading a lot on pneumonia, I’m not sold on that having been the issue, but the antibiotic she’s on is pretty broad-spectrum and would address bronchitis or an ear infection as well, so as long as the fever wasn’t due to kidney issues, it’s a win-win. She started to improve within 24 hours of starting the antibiotic, and now just has an occasional cough and a little congestion. Way better than where she was on Wednesday.
On Thursday Bean had a screening ultrasound of her bladder and kidneys and there was some fluid in her kidneys, prompting the urologist to suggest a VCUG for her, as well. I’m not sure how much fluid, but apparently enough that it raised concern.
O’s u/s and VCUG didn’t show any hydronephrosis that I recall, so it’s possible Bean has a higher degree of reflux than O does. However, she’s asymptomatic, so I’m hoping it’s just a fluke thing and when she has the VCUG (insert serious frowny face here) it shows no issues.
I’m tellin’ ya – my kids are defective. At least Miss O doesn’t show any sign of toe-walking …
We had a first birthday party to attend yesterday, and I had to leave early because Bean just fell apart on me. She was being a bit turdly, not sharing well, that kind of thing, but nothing major. Then I watched her yank something from her sister. When I yanked it back, Bean called me stupid, and then when I told her it was time to go, she started to take off. I caught her and she turned and walloped me in the shoulder with a closed fist. Well, that sealed the departure deal.
She was tired, but 3:00 is just too late to start a nap. So we came home, did an early dinner, bath time and an early bedtime, since O missed her afternoon nap. I’m transitioning her to one nap/day since that’s all they do at daycare. I’ve got to transition them to a later bedtime, as well, since the 6:30-7:00 deal won’t work with me picking them up at 5:30. We won’t be done with dinner until 6:30-7:00!
My heart was hurting for Bean on Friday. Thursday while O was napping Bean covered about 1/3 of my kitchen table, as well as a great quantity of her leg and arm skin, with green marker. The table cleaned up much more easily than she did, so when she went to school Friday, she still had tons of green marker on her. Several of the kids sang “Bean’s a baby” at her, and one kid scratched her and told her she wasn’t her friend.
The baby song really, really pissed me off. Why? Yeah, kids are cruel, but the kids learned this from the teacher calling kids babies, IMO. Since she has, on more than one occasion, used ‘you’re a baby’ to admonish children in her class when they do something she doesn’t like, she has, to my way of thinking, taught the kids a way to pick on each other. Pisses. Me. Off.
The scratching thing bugs me, too. This is the second time Bean’s been scratched, with broken skin, and no incident report. I mean, hell’s bell’s, I had to sign a report when Bean did an incidental contact scratch on a friend a long while back, but here are two deliberate scratches, that Bean says her teachers knew about, and no reports. But since I’ve already complained about this teacher once, I don’t want to sound like I have a grudge against her … I mean, I don’t like her, I’ll be honest, but that isn’t why this stuff bugs me. Having my daughter tell me “No-one likes me. They all said they weren’t my friend and sang the baby song” is why this stuff bugs me.
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