my annual croup blog post

I awoke at 4 am today, my toddler son (Little Guy, shown finger painting in yesterday's photo) was barking like a seal with the classic cough of Croup.

I ran into the bathroom and got the shower going with the hottest water I could. I got the bathroom all steamy. Then I went to get Little Guy and I held him on my lap in the steam for about 15 minutes. That has seemed to help. He would not stop hugging his large, stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear for anything in the world. I know stuffed animals aren't the best thing for kids with croup to be hugging (allergies, etc) but I think the psychological benefits of Pooh outweigh any harm the stuffed animal could do.

I took his older brother (age 4) to pediatric emergency care the other night, because his Croup seemed very severe and it scared me. The American Academy of Pediatrics book (we've nicknamed it Momma's Big Book of Worries) says that kids usually outgrow Croup by age 3.
The pediatric doctor said oh no - they can get it to age five.

Well, thank goodness for insurance. That's an expensive nighttime visit to the doctor just to find out there's nothing to be done about it other than treat it like a cold, encourage drinking a lot of fluids, use a cool-mist humidifier in the child's room, and the steamy bathroom treatment. All the stuff I was already doing. I know when the co-payment bill arrives in the mail, I'll open it and say to myself, "here's my bill for being stupid!"

So that's why I'm up at 5:30 am blogging.

crumby project

My 8th grade daughter came to me fairly late Thursday night and casually announced that she needed to make a large cookie (or some kind of food thing) in the shape of the state of Georgia.
Luckily, I had some sugar cookie mix. I wasn't really thrilled for the short-notice of it, but I was secretly happy that I was able to appear to be 'SuperMom' for at least a few minutes.

So we put together an approximately 10" x 10" cookie shaped like Georgia. Georgia is not an attractive shape for a cookie. But there are no round states, last I checked, so we were stuck.

I used my portrait from photo skills to help her shape it. She frosted it with white frosting, while I added some blue food coloring to some more white frosting. My daughter marked all the rivers with a knife. I piped in the blue frosting using some cake decorating tools I have. We put some blue frosting around the Eastern edge of Georgia to stand in for water.

My daughter broke off extra pieces of cookie to create the barrier islands. We hopped on the computer and looked up pictures of Stone Mountain, resized the picture to the right scale for the cookie state. Once printed, she cut it out and we placed it on the cookie. She played with more crumbs to create the Blue Ridge region. While she was doing that, I got some sturdy cardboard and covered it with aluminum foil for a base for the cookie. We moved the cookie over to the base. Of course, because she had this huge, flat honkin' cookie that we didn't want ruined, I needed to drive her to school.

After school, she surprised me by walking in the door with the cookie untouched by hungry students.

Turns out everything had to be labeled, even though the instruction sheet from the teacher said nothing about labeling. I know, I read over the sheet with my daughter and we checked off all the items as we did them, to make sure we didn't miss anything. I was pretty annoyed. I had about 99 billion things that I would have rather have done that night, rather than bake a Georgia cookie.

The teacher told her she could turn it in as is and get a zero, or she could take it back home and label it and bring it back (moldy after the 3 day weekend I guess?) or, she could do the project on poster board. The family took a quick vote and decided to eat the Georgia cookie. Georgia is very tasty. The new project on poster board is hopefully up to standards. I don't want to eat poster board.

by jove he's got it, a blog post not for the squeamish

My oldest son started PreK last week on his 4th birthday, then he got sick and missed school on Thursday and Friday (cold, a bit of fever.) So I used that impromptu 4 day weekend to do a crash course in potty training. By jove we think he's finally got it.

He had a good day yesterday, stayed dry at school all day with lots of teacher reminders, but then last night when he was playing on the computer, he just whizzed right there on the floor. Ugh!

I use the kitchen timer to remember to remind him at home, and obviously I messed up that time! We are only doing paper pants at nighttime. He has some new superhero underwear. Lord it will be nice not to buy those expensive Pull Ups anymore!

My youngest son will be 2 in October. He's going to go to church preschool 2 days a week for 3 hours each of those days, starting in September. I'm really going to be driving a lot then - delivering kids and picking 'em up but it's going to be nice to have some time to myself.

He is so cute. Every day he asks (er DEMANDS) that I read Hop on Pop, Ten Apples Up on Top, Goodnight Moon, and the Gingerbread Man. I have them memorized. He has a head cold too now, so he has both nostrils running most of the time. (lovely)

Today at naptime, he woke up due to a number two, and apparently was feeling around in there to see what kind of prizes he could find. He had a poopie ball in his hand (and residue...let's not go there) and he was totally freaked out about it and was screaming. I got him cleaned up and he had to be comforted from that mean old poop ball attack.

What am I going to do when these boys are grown,
and I no longer have pee, snot, and poop to deal with?

I don't get grossed out anymore, I just laugh about it all.

There really is an opportunity here for an entrepreneur who could invent a non-permeable, non-staining clothing line for moms.