Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Confirmed

I always suspected what would be my least favorite part of parenting. Monday night it was confirmed.

Vomit.

Specifically, having to be the person to clean up the vomit. I don't deal well with vomit. I end up needing to vomit myself. So when Mess 1 got sick Monday night, it wasn't good

Because of course Hubby was out of town Monday night. My children have some sort of "Daddy's out of town, let's get sick" radar. So I got to be the clean up crew.

I think I did pretty well; I only gagged four times.

Anyway, Monday night he woke crying about 9:00 pm. He told me he banged his knee on the wall and it hurt. I should have know then something was up, normally that wouldn't have even fazed him.

A few minutes later he started crying again and told me he had to go to the bathroom. So off he went and used the bathroom, and then he headed back to bed.

Thirty minutes later, he started crying again. When I went in that time he told me his tummy hurt.

Lesson learned: when the three year old says his tummy hurts?

Get Him. To. The Bathroom!

Do not go to get medicine or a splatter bucket. Get the sick child near the toilet, then go get those things.

While I was in the bathroom getting the medicine, I heard it. When I got to the door I smelled it. And by the time I got to him he started again.

It was bad. He got the bottom sheet, the pillowcase, the actual pillow inside the pillow case, and Turtle and Puppy Dog. So I got him to the bathroom, cleaned him off and I settled him next to the toilet. Poor baby, when I got him settled down and got his "soft blanket" to keep him warm, he looked at me and asked "What happened to me?" He'd never thrown up before, and had no idea what had just happened.

Next I went to deal with the bed. I got the sheets off the bed and in the washing machine, and then did what anyone dealing with their child throwing up for the first time would do.

I called my parents.

My mom's a nurse, so I called to ask what, if any, meds I should give him. Then I asked how to get vomit off stuffed animals. Things you only learn from experience.

I got all of the vomit off Turtle and most off Puppy Dog, but Hubby gets to finish that project. It will involve lots of Febreeze.

Once that was done I got my poor boy settled in my bed, with the splatter bucket close by. We watched one episode of Little Bill on Noggin to help him calm down, and finally he fell asleep around 11:30.

He had one more episode about 3:00 am, but we managed to hit the bucket that time, so clean up only took a few minutes.

Tuesday morning he woke up and wanted to make muffins.

I called Hubby and told him he owed me, big time.

I hate vomit.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

L.I.O.N.

In my ongoing attempts to occupy Mess 1 while Hubby writes his dissertation, we are taking advantage of every cheap children's outing I can come up with.

Sunday I took the children to the zoo with Sunny and Sam (and most of Columbia) since it was sunny and in the mid-70s.

Last night Hubby took Mess 2 home and Mess 1 and I went to the children's museum with Scott, Sunny, and Sam for family night. Admission would have normally been $16.00 for the boy and me, but family night is sponsored by Food Lion so admission is only $1.00 per person. Also as part of their sponsorship, Food Lion was giving out little 3-D wooden puzzles of a lion.

About 6:00, the adults decided we were getting hungry, so off we went to get pizza. While we were sitting at the table, Sunny put the boys' lions together so they would have something to play with while waited on dinner.

After she unwrapped the package, Mess 1 picked up the paper that had that instructions on the back and was looking at the picture of the lion on the front. As I watched he took his finger and pointed at the letters.

The next thing I hear is "L. I. O. N. Lion." Sunny, the reading recovery teacher, wasn't fazed by this at all, she just said that's good. Meanwhile I'm thinking "Is he supposed to be able to do that?"

Either way I bet he's going to start reading sometime this year. What is the child going to learn in kindergarten?

In one other interesting moment, Scott told me my money smells nice. I had given him some change to get Sam a bottle of juice, and it apparently smelled nice.

There's really no reason I told you that. I just felt it should be documented that I can make money smell nice.

Although, I wonder if there's a way to turn that into a marketable skill? We could use some extra income...

Friday, February 6, 2009

Music People

The other members of my family are music freaks nuts people. My husband is a musician by trade, working on his doctorate in beating on things (he is a percussionist, or, as my father refers to him, "that drummer who married my daughter").

Mess 1 seems to be following in his father's musical footsteps. He loves to play the drums that are scattered around our house, the keyboard gets daily use, and he wants music playing whenever possible. If there isn't any music playing, he's singing something he heard sometime or another. He only has to hear a song once to be able to repeat it, melody, rhythm, and words. The scary part is he's three.

Even Mess 2, at eight months old, is developing a reputation in the music department where my husband is both student and faculty. The early childhood music students that see her at her daycare, who go back and report to their teacher, who is a colleague of my husband, say she is the only baby they've ever seen who can sing and eat at the same time. Talented, that one is. Unfortunately for me it means feeding her takes four forevers.

Meanwhile I needed help getting my headphones to work while trying to listen to the new Dave BarnesEP on iTunes. Apparently plugging them into the microphone jack doesn't cut it. Who knew...

Three

From this:



to this:




in one short year.