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.

sick little guy

Little Guy will be 2 years old in about a month. He is really talking up a storm these days! I love to see the satisfaction on his face when he has gotten his point across using some words. He uses "down" for "up," but we figured it out and hope he'll understand "up" soon!

He's so cute it's unbelievable, but all parents think that about their kid, don't they? So I will refrain from telling you how blue his eyes are and how cute his little cheeks are...oops! I need to get a picture put into the blog, I promise to do that soon. I have a ton of good photos.

He has the flu or something. Yesterday his fever clocked in at 102. I'm keeping a close eye on him and tempting him with yummy drinks like Kool-Aid that I normally wouldn't give him to get him to drink more. It's hard to see him sick but hopefully it'll be over soon and I'll have something interesting to talk about.

war games

I took Little Man over to the Dollar Store today after I picked him up from Pre-Kindergarten.

I gave him his money and told him he could pick out one toy. It only took him about 30 minutes.

He ended up picking out a camouflage-colored play machine gun (I know, I know...GASP!) I told him he could get it, as long as he only used it to 'shoot' pretend monsters and didn't point it at people. He agreed that that was what he will do. So far, he's only been shooting into the air. It makes kind of a ratcheting noise and I guess that is the appeal.

A friend of mine won't let her kids have any kind of play gun, not even a squirt gun.
But I saw them every day playing shooting games using their hands as play guns, so kids are going to play like that I guess, no matter what you do. Kids will find 'weapons' in nature too. My husband grew up in Savannah, and there are small, tight cones that come off a tree there - my husband and his brothers would snap off the little stem on the end and pretend they were grenades.

I advise Little Man repeatedly to only point at play monsters and such, and never at people. Any toy needs parental involvement. All my kids have been taught to never pick up guns (if they ever found anything that looks like a gun).

Back To School Drama - Shows Daily!

We are having the usual school re-entry turbulence.

Having struggles to get our 13 year old twin girls to do the most basic things...for instance, they're supposed to pick out their outfits the night before but this morning one of my daughters was in a panic because she couldn't find 'anything' to wear. All I know is, I spent about $200 on back to school clothing for each girl. How can she not have ANYTHING to wear? This is ridiculous. Oh the angst and the drama...(Oh I wish they'd just go to uniforms at public schools!!!)

My daughters also seem to oblivious to alarm clocks. Maybe it's an allergy.

Either it's 'someone else's' responsibility to get up and turn off the alarm clock (if they do hear it) or they don't hear it. I start out gently saying "wake up, it's time to get up"
then I talk in my Medium-sized voice and say "Get up, time to get UP!" that fails, so I say in my big bad voice, "GET UP! This is the THIRD and FINAL time that I will be coming in here and telling you to get up!! If you don't get up in time and are late for school, it's up to YOU NOW! Then they finally get up and grumble that I'm so mean. Well I started out in the nice voice, they just worked that nerve until I had to use the Big Voice.

The daughter who doesn't have anything to wear, finally gets dressed and looks like a supermodel. She's stressing out about school. She thinks she looks awful. I tell her she looks great, but you know they can't believe what their MOM tells them, Mom looks at them through the eyes of love. I can tell she's having a panic attack, so I make her lie down, hands open at her sides, and I taught her some calming breathing exercises. She panicked even about that, and protested she didn't have time for that. Yes you do have time for it, I told her. What you don't have time for is running around the house in a panic! So after she did that, she seemed to calm down, ate a bowl of cereal. You couldn't pay me to be in junior high again.

Now have 3 minutes to make the 10 minute drive to my son's Pre-K.
He suddenly thinks he needs to go #2 in the potty. This is something I want to encourage, because I don't want this to happen in his pants at school. If he accidentally makes a mess at school, I am branded "The Bad Mother," a total failure to get my child to commit to The System and completely conform. The attempt at poo is unfruitful. He wants it to happen, but as he says, "my poop won't do it." Okay it's the poop's fault now.

At this point I have even less time to get him to school on time, and my oldest daughter appears with hair elastic in hand, and asks if I will put her hair in a ponytail. Sorry can't do it. Child needs to do her own hair. If she wasn't in a constant war with her twin sister, she could do it for her.

Zip out to the car, take son to school. When I arrive back home, my daughters are still waiting for the bus. What the hey, I still have shoes on, so I take them to school.

Come back home.

Breathe.

At least... until the pickup cycle and rushing around to finish homework, cook dinner, and clean begins this afternoon.

Cycles to be repeated.

Okay, I admit, I am also having re-entry turbulence.
This week, the rules are going to be laid out and these situations corrected.

Um...riiiight.