I Don't Even Know What to Say About This...

I am beyond appalled. I am sickened, sad, horrified and any other adjective you can think of that describes the feeling you get when your heart falls into your shoes.

People picked a random day and called it "Kick a ginger day," and beat the crap out of all the red-headed kids. I saw it on the news, but there are articles about it all over the place. It was even spoofed on Sou.th Par.k, which just "helped" the issue, I'm sure. I honestly cried while watching this on the news. Obviously this is going to hit close to home with me, but seriously? Are kids really this cruel?

I really don't even know what to say. If I could put my son in a bubble and protect him from people like this, I would. I guess all I can say is that if anyone out there comes anywhere near my precious little "ginger" they are going to have one pissed off Mother to deal with. And to my fellow mothers? Let's try and teach our kids about loving other people and not bashing them simply for the color of their hair. Or for any other reason! Can we at least agree on that?

**This isn't my most well-written post ever, but I am honestly so upset by this that I can't even seem to get my thoughts together enough to form a proper blog post. You get the gist...

Thankful

I think it goes without saying what I am thankful for this season. But let's say it anyway. I am so thankful for my two beautiful children, my wonderful mother and step dad and all the other members of my family. I am thankful for my fabulous friends, who will always take the time to hear me bitch, even when all they need is a good bitching session themselves. I am truly a very lucky woman.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Decisions, Decisions...

I think it might be time for me to move The Boy from his school.

A little background: He started at a daycare that I LOVED when he was three months old. My brother had sent both of his kids there so I was comfortable before I even left him the first time. And I had reason to be. The ladies who ran the daycare were/are wonderful and I am actually still quite close with them. When The Boy was just two these two ladies (twin sisters) decided that after 25 plus years of daycare they were selling their house and buying a house by the beach. They were following their dream and who can blame them for that? (Well I can! Because it was hugely sad and very inconvenient for me...I am not sure why they couldn't wait until my second child was in kindergarten but I digress...)

So I started looking for a new place. And after several different tours and one place that we started out and then bailed on because it was HORRIBLE (hindsight people...) we settled into a Montessori school taught out of a home that was a perfect fit for The Boy. He was the youngest kid when he joined at just over 2 years old but that worked out well for him. Like theDirectress used to tell me, "He runs with the big boys." And he grew in leaps and bounds. Being surrounded by kids older than him constantly pushed his comfort boundaries and made him try some new things that I don't think he would have done on his own. It was a wonderful situation for him. But with all the kids being older than him, they all eventually moved on to kindergarten and/or pre K classes.

So that brings us up to our current situation. The Boy will be 4 in January (I know, right?) and he is now officially the oldest one at his school. The Directress has recently brought in a whole new batch of kids (I guess she does need to run a business) and, while they are all lovely, and even include twins that have gay parents, they are all two years old. There was one boy left that was a little older than The Boy with whom he played every single day. And that boy left last week. His parents thought that as he was getting ready to start school he needed to be surrounded by kids his own age rather than a bunch of two year olds. Food for thought.

This got me thinking. I am thrilled with the care he gets there, and his sister is now going to the same place, so not only do we get a "sibling discount," but the pick up/drop off is a breeze since they are both at the same place. But he is the oldest one. And he is surrounded by two year olds. Yesterday he asked if he could paint and they had to take him into the classroom by himself to paint so the little kids couldn't get into the paint. It wasn't long ago when painting everyday was the norm and in the curriculum for all of the kids. I asked him the other day who he plays with now that his friend has moved on and he said, "I play by myself Mommy. Those other kids are babies."

It's clearly time for him to go.

So I have an appointment at a new Montessori school which is about 5 blocks from our house and where he will be in a classroom (this is an actual school; it isn't out of a home like the other place) with other 3-4 year old kids. We go on Monday morning for a tour. I am glad The Boy is old enough now to go with us and to give me his honest opinion afterwards on how he feels about it. But it makes me sad. I am worried for him to have to make a transition, but I know he needs to be more stimulated and be with other kids his age. I am sad he won't be with his sister during the day. And then I wonder if my own fear of change makes me more worried than I need to be. The Boy is extremely social and generally doesn't have a hard time making friends wherever he goes, so maybe this will be easy for him. But I can't deny that it is hard to have him move into a real, honest-to-god school. The next step will be kindergarten. I am seriously not ready for that. Thankfully I have another year and a half before we have to deal with that.

Wish us luck on Monday. Probably more for me than for him. :(

My Son the Artist

**This is one of those posts that, as a Mom, is important for me to document. I really don't think the rest of the world will be interested, so feel free to skip over this if it isn't your thing.

The Boy has really gotten back into his artwork again lately. He went through a phase when he was younger when he LOVED to draw with his crayons and he did it all the time. But like most phases, he sorta moved on. But lately he is back into it. With a VENGEANCE!

He uses all mediums...crayons are generally his "go to" thing, but lately he has gotten into colored pencils and, most recently, watercolors. I don't want to forget how very much he loves to create and when he gets older I want to be able to look back and remember some of his first creations. Here he is this weekend creating a masterpiece with water colors:

And here is the scanned final product of that exact creation that he was working on in the above picture... I love all the different colors that he uses.
And he loves to mix the colors together to see what new color they make. The Virgo in me cringes every time he takes his paint brush and puts it in the yellow section and then moves it over to the purple section and then the brown section before finally putting it on the paper. I think to myself, you are messing all the colors up!!! But I just smile and tell him it is beautiful and ask him what color he will create next. Then I leave the room so I don't have to witness the chaos of colors. :)

Here is another creation he did this morning. He says to me, "Mommy I do this one for you because you like all the bright colors." (I think that might be because when he mixes all the colors together everything comes out brown, so I love it when he leaves the colors in their natural state and I can see him mix them on the paper and create different things with the different colors).
He has also learned that when he puts a color on the paper and then dips his brush back into his water glass and then puts it back on the color, it becomes lighter. He spent several different pieces of paper making each color lighter and lighter until the entire paper was just soaking wet with a hint of color...

The next one is here simply because I have thousands of pieces of paper just exactly like this one scattered all over my house. It is a spider. With lots of legs. And a pincher on the top of his head. He draws them in all shapes and sizes and colors. But this is it. Just one spider per page, in one color. Then he rips out the page and goes on to the next one. Only to draw the exact same thing in a different color, maybe a slight variation in size, but virtually the same thing. I am not kidding when I tell you there have been hundreds of these.
And finally, one of my favorites. This should be "landscaped" rather than "portrait," but I guess blogger doesn't want it to be that way. So you will have to improvise. The two things on the left (top) are "our family." Those are two people, me and him supposedly, and I am on the far left (top) and he is next to me. If you look closely you will notice that he is "shooting his web" at the "bad guys" who are coming near us. He has them all "wrapped up in his web" so that he and I are safe.
I love this for so many reasons. First of all I love that he is drawing his own representations of our family on paper (and for the record, usually there are three of us so he does usually include his sister. He told me that she wasn't there in this picture because it was dangerous and he didn't want her to be around the danger when he had to protect us all). And second of all it is so sweet to me that, even at his young age, he is trying to be the big protector for me. He made sure to point out that HE was the one shooting the web at the bad guys and that I was safely tucked away beside him where they couldn't get me. It must be some in-born thing that a little boy feels like he has to protect his Mommy. But I have spent his entire existence feeling like I was protecting him from the world, so it is nice to have the situation reversed for once.

I hope he always loves to be creative and expressive. I know that I will ALWAYS encourage it. I will always find the money for crayons and paper and paint. He will always be allowed to draw and to express himself. And I just love watching what he does with it.

Happy 7 Months Old Peanut

Dear Peanut,

You are seven months old today. You are practically a teenager. It is going so fast. On the one hand I am loving watching you develop and get bigger and start to do all these things on your own, and on the other hand I want you to slow the hell down and just allow me to enjoy you being a baby! Because every day it seems like you are getting further and further away from babyhood and closer and closer to toddlerhood.

The biggest change this last month has been that you are now fully engaged in eating food. Like real food. Surprisingly I am making all of your baby food. No one believed I would actually do it (least of all me) but I am actually really enjoying it. Maybe since you are nursing less and less it makes me feel like we are still connected in some way. But every weekend I bust out with the knife and cutting board and slice and dice and steam and puree everything I can get my hands on. And so far you love it all! We have yet to find something you don't love. So far you are eating: rice cereal, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, broccoli, green beans, butternut squash, winter squash, peaches, apricots, mangos, carrots and many many combinations of the above food. I haven't yet introduced strawberries or berries of any kind, or any meat, but that will come this month. You are ready. I also haven't given you any finger foods yet, but I think that might be because I am overly paranoid after our situation with your brother. I will get over it, in fact just today I gave you a hunk of his soft pretzel from the mall and let you gum it to death. You loved it. So I will start giving you chunks soon. But right now, you LOVE to eat. I freeze your food in ice cube trays and right now you are eating approximately 10 cubes a day plus about 2 ounces of milk with rice cereal in it. Like I said, you LOVE you some food. Here is a shot of you in your high chair, kickin' it with your foot up on the side, awaiting your next meal.

As you can see in this picture, you are still drooling like a fiend. If I don't put you in bibs constantly, all of your clothing looks like the above picture. But! There is a reason for all of this drool. You got your first two bottom teeth! They popped through a couple of weeks ago and are now almost big enough to see when you smile. Teeth at 6 months...what a concept! Again, already trying to better your brother who didn't spark a tooth until after 10 months. But you have 'em and you want to use 'em. You chew on everything. Literally everything. It gets exhausting sometimes. You will reach as far as your little hands can reach and whatever is within your grasp goes straight into your mouth. Your brother is learning to keep his drawings and toys out of your reach or else he looks over and finds them right inside your big chompers. And he isn't so much a fan of that. You are now officially old enough to annoy your brother. Good job. He has been annoying us for years...it is time someone return the favor. :)

Another big change for you this month is sitting up. No more laying around like a baby for you. You want to be sitting so you can see the world. I have to admit I am pretty stoked about this new development because it finally means you can start sitting in carts and high chairs when we are out at places. That makes like easier for Mommy, so thanks for that. Here is a phone pic of you sitting in a cart for the first time. (Gigi did the bam bam on your hair...don't blame me!).
I had to cover all surfaces around you with my jacket because we all know you would have been sucking all over that cart and frankly there is not another germ-ier place in all of the world, so that just couldn't happen. We have since dug out your brother's old cart cover thing and that now resides in the back of the car so we don't have this problem in the future.

Another brilliant thing about you sitting up is that I can now plop you on the floor next to your box of toys and leave you there. You will sit for up to an hour just playing and checking out the toys in your little box. You love it. Sometimes you still bail forward and do a face plant but you rarely get upset about it. You sorta look up at me like, "What the hell just happened?" Then you scoot around on your tummy going backwards and away from your toys. This generally pisses you off so you end up yelling for me once you have wedged yourself under my desk or the couch or chair and I come and sit you back up next to your toys and we repeat the process all over again. Good times. Here is a shot of you sitting next to your toys.

You are the happiest baby I know. You smile constantly and that smile is so contagious. Your eyes light up a room. I don't know how it is possible for you to be so happy and so feisty at the same time, but you are. You grunt and groan and scream loudly if you can't reach something you want. But as soon as you get what you want, all smiles again. There isn't much that upsets you and pretty much everything makes you happy. I have said it before and I'll say it again. You truly are a ray of sunshine. You make me smile and laugh so many times a day that I lose count.

There is one area that we need to work on. That is your hair. Every other part of you is absolutely adorable, but my darling...oh, that hair. At least you have hair...I will give you that. But it's just so...well...I don't even know how to explain it. You have a lovely covering around your entire head that is about an inch long. This is perfect and beautiful; wouldn't change a thing. But then there is the top. See you had hair on the top of your head when you were born and it is still there. It has just gotten longer. And it honestly looks like a bad comb over. Not only that, but the hair on the back of your head, where you lie on it, well it usually sticks straight out like some sort of static cling gone wrong. And the stuff from the front is getting so long that it hangs in your eyes and I usually swipe it off to one side, but that doesn't always work out so well. So Peanut, if there is one thing I can ask of you it would be this. Can you make your hair grow a little faster so we can do something adorable with it? Because while I find you completely precious, this is usually what your hair ends up looking like...

Let's do a day in the life and then wrap up this long post. As of right now, seven months, a typical day for you goes like this:

You wake up anywhere between 5:30 and 7:00am and nurse. The earlier it is the higher the likelihood that you will go back to sleep. Either way you hang out in my bed until around 8:00 or 8:30 (these are the non-daycare/work days we are talking about here). Then we get up and you play either in the living room with your toys, or in your brother's room. Around 9:00 I feed you breakfast that is usually two cubes of fruit and some rice cereal. Then you hang out in your high chair while I do stuff and around 10:00am you nurse and then go down for your morning nap. You have gotten MUCH better at napping in the past month, so thank you for that. You usually sleep between an hour and a half and two hours. Then when you wake up I generally nurse you and then head out for the day. I bring food with me and when your brother and I eat lunch, you join us. Usually two cubes fruit and two cubes veggies. You LOVE to eat at the table with us. Then we do whatever with our day and hang out. Around 2:30 or 3:00 you nurse again and go down for your afternoon nap. You don't sleep as long for this one, but you do sleep. So again, thank you for that. Once you are up you usually have a nursing snack around 4:00pm. Hang out, play with toys and then around 5:30 or so we have dinner. Usually 4 cubes of veggies and rice cereal. You sit in your high chair at the table while the rest of the family eats and then you have your bath. You have always loved your bath and still do, although you are not fitting so well in that little infant tub thing I have for you. Mental note...must find new solution. After your bath it is jammies and a little play time. Right at 7:30pm we change your diaper, put on your sleep sack and go in the living room to turn out all the lights and have your final nursing session. You no longer ever fall asleep while nursing or for the 10-15 minutes that I rock you in the rocking chair after, but you always go to sleep in your crib without a fuss. I put you down, turn on your little aquarium thing in your crib and kiss you goodnight and walk out. You play for about 10 minutes at the most and go to sleep. Sometimes once or twice in the middle of the night you wake up wanting your binky but usually you sleep straight through. You rule.

I know I say this every month but you have brought so much to our lives. Your brother and I love you more than you will ever understand (until you have children of your own). Every single day I am so thankful that I was blessed enough to have the two beautiful children that I do and I am so glad that I get to share my life with you. Happy 7 months Peanut. I will leave you with your seven month bean bag shot. And you can note how you were sitting up trying to grab for the camera during these shots. :)

One of Those Moments

Do you ever have one of those moments where everything just sort of stands still? Where something you see, or something you smell, or something you touch just makes the world stand still and suddenly you step outside yourself for a moment and look in?

I had one of those moments last night.

I should say that it was a particularly busy Sunday in which I literally ran around ALL.DAY.LONG. I was texting with a friend and tried to recall the last time during the day where I sat down (besides nursing The Girl) and I honestly could not remember. I don't think I sat down and took a breath all day long. Nothing horrible...just a busy Sunday for a single mom with two kids. Laundry. Food. Making baby food. Cleaning the house. Setting The Boy up with his paints. Changing a diaper. Making dinner for the next night...speaking of that, I HAVE to digress for a moment, sorry.

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I went out for lunch on a particularly lovely fall afternoon and decide to order some butternut squash soup. It was delicious. So delicious that I decided that I should make it for my family. The following day when I went to the store to buy the ingredients, I noticed that the lovely little pre-packaged chopped up pieces of butternut squash was not at the store that day. Then I saw these beautiful, large butternut squashes in the organic section. Can't be that hard to cut one up, I thought to myself. And I bought it. Then yesterday, during nap time I decided that I would cut up the squash so it could cook in the crock pot all day the following day (today). Holy shit people. Don't ever do that. If you can at all avoid it, do NOT buy a whole squash and commit to cutting it up yourself. It is HARD and big and very pumpkin-like and can I just tell you that it took the entire two hour nap time to cut it up and I ended up with blisters on my hands. I am not exaggerating. It was horrible. Don't ever do it. Currently my soup is cooking away so I cannot yet tell you whether it was worth it or not, but I can venture a guess. It was NOT worth it. No way that damn soup can be good enough to warrant that kind of work. Jesus...

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Okay digression over.

So after a very LONG day yesterday I was finally going to bed around 10:00pm. I stood in my room and looked up at my wall to see one of the holiday pictures we just recently had taken hanging in a frame in front of me.

And it hit me. Those are MY kids. I have kids. Two of them.

And I flashed back to when I was 12 and started babysitting and immediately decided that I would be a Mom. Not only that, I was going to be a great mom. The best mom. And I had a little slide show of my life. Going through High School, all the while babysitting. During college and after college and figuring out that I was gay. And the hardest part of that being that I wasn't sure how I was going to manage having kids while being gay. Then moving past that and knowing that I would have kids, gay or not. And then the road to getting there.

Meeting The Ex. Dating and talking about our future and the naivete of thinking we would just have a kid when we decided we wanted one. And then the long three year journey to getting our son. And then the breakup when he was 6 months old and how devastating that was and trying to come to terms with him being an only child. And then decided that damnit, he wasn't going to BE an only child. And then the journey of getting to my daughter. By myself. Just The Boy and me against the world. We fought to bring him a sibling. And we did it.

And they are here. And they are amazing. And they came from ME. They are MY kids. And I have dreamt about them for as long as I can remember. And they are here. And they are perfect.

Thank You

Sometimes I forget that I am not just typing this blog to vent my personal frustrations. So when I actually get comments and feedback from you all, it is very touching to me. Especially when I am talking about the frustrations with my son's lack of eating. So for those of you who were kind enough to comment with suggestions, I thought I would address what you said here.

• One of you suggested I try creamed corn or spinach. I have tried. The spinach was a no-go from the get-go. And surprisingly enough, I did try and relate it to Popeye. But then my son reminded me that he had no earthly clue who Popeye was and I remembered that perhaps he and Brutus were a little too violent for my small child and decided that I didn't want to go further with that. So he didn't go for the spinach, but he does like corn. Not so much creamed corn (he says, "Der is somefing in my corn Mommy), but he loves regular corn and will almost always eat it. And it is high in carbs so it works for us.
• To answer another question, yes, there are appetite stimulating medications. And he is on one of them. It is called Periactin and it really does work wonders. It is actually an antihistamine that has the lovely side effect of increasing an appetite. But like lots of side effects, the body gets used to it after a while and therefore loses the effectiveness of the side effect. So he basically goes on and off of it about every three months to sort of reset the side effects. We are currently "on" and it does seem to help, although it isn't a miracle worker.
• His Pediasure has a pretty high calorie count to begin with (each bottle is 240 calories, so since he drinks two of them every morning he is starting the day with 500 calories, which isn't too shabby) and my son being my son, if we try and alter the "milky" in any way shape or form, he won't drink it. He knows if it isn't the perfect temperature (25 seconds in the microwave on 75% power) and knows if any sort of medication has been put in there. He has a keen eye for details my little one. So no go on the calorie supplement. At least where his milk is concerned.
• And no, I hadn't heard of MCT oil and I will talk to his gastro about it and see what she says at our next weight check. Appreciate the heads up about it though!
• About the sweet potatoes, or mashed potatoes thing? I have no idea why but he has hated every form of mashed potatoes since he was an infant. He was the only infant I have ever known to hate sweet potatoes. And even recently he proved this again. We have a rule that he has to at least try everything that we are eating. He has to take one bite. Well we made him try one bite of mashed potatoes drowned in butter recently and he literally gagged it back up as soon as it hit his mouth. Something about the consistency I suppose, but he has never like potatoes. Pity though because you could do ALL SORTS of good things with them.
• We do name foods, associate them with things he likes and basically stand on our heads to try and convince him to eat certain things. But for the most part, if he likes it, he will tolerate it. But if he doesn't, he won't. And yes, it is extremely helpful to have him take part in the preparation of the food. In fact every single Sunday morning we make something in our crock pot. I dice everything up on Saturday night after he is asleep and put it in the fridge and then on Sunday, he "makes soup." And most of the time he will at least try what he has made. On some occasions he has found that he likes something new. He has just very recently started eating soups and I am sure it is because of us making it together. I am also making all of his sister's baby food and I let him take part in that process as well and try and teach him all about the healthy food we are making for sister for her to grow big and strong and wouldn't it be great if big brother could show her how he eats them too? It's a long shot, but sometimes it works. It works with apples and bananas and things he would have eaten anyway, but I am sure one of these times he is going to bust out and start chowing on some butternut squash just to prove it to his sister. Well...I can dream can't I?
• And letting him be a part of the decision making process for dinner does help a lot. Like I said, I have learned that just putting something in front of him basically ensures that I am going to have a lot of trash that evening. So when he gets home from school, if I know he won't eat what we are eating (as that is the utmost goal--to get him to only eat the same things we are eating), then we go through the fridge together and he gets to pick two items and I get to pick one for him to eat for dinner that night. There are some boundaries though so he isn't choosing Cheetos and Chocolate chips. Every night he gets some sort of a protein, a veggie, a fruit and sometimes a carb. But allowing him to take part in those decisions really does help.
• The smoothies are just a losing battle I am afraid. I am pretty sure it is a texture thing, but I have tried them several times with several different ingredients and at several different temperatures. I think he feels about them like I feel about casseroles sometimes: They might look good, but he knows there is potential for weird things to be hidden inside that he can't see. So he doesn't trust them. Such a shame too cause man, that would be RAD!

So overall I cannot tell you how much it means that you all took the time to try and think of ways to help me and my boy. And I think it should be pointed out that when he is healthy, and on his appetite medicine, he does okay. Not great, but okay. But when he is sick? All of my hard work just goes for nothing. The kid just won't eat. But when he is feeling well, all of the suggestions you guys gave me actually do make a huge difference. I can't tell you how many appointments I have had with his gastro doctor and with different dietitians to come up with the same shit you all gave to me free just by reading my post. I SO should have checked with you all months or even years ago. So thank you so much for caring and thank you for your thoughts. I will let you know how we are doing at our next weigh in, which is less than a month from now. I am wishing (but realistically not expecting) that he will FINALLY get over that 30 pound hurdle. I feel like we have been so close for so long but we just can't break it. We were 29.4 I think last time. Here's hoping!

Don't Be So Sensitive

Are there any red-heads out there?

If so, can you answer something for me?

I have heard that red-heads are more sensitive about things. My dentist said that red-heads need more Novocaine. One of The Boy's doctors told us that things seem to be more painful for red-heads. And when The Boy had surgery on his thumb his anesthesiologist said that red-heads generally need more anesthesia than most people. I find that fascinating. I am not totally sure that I believe it, but I find it to be something interesting to watch.

And then I witnessed one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life and I thought that perhaps the theory had been proven true (although keep in mind that I found this to be funny after several nights of little to no sleep when The Boy was sick and up coughing all night long).

As mentioned, I was about at the end of my rope with having The Boy up coughing all night long. I was willing to try anything. My mom mentioned casually that perhaps I should put a little Vic.ks Vapo.rub on his chest as that had helped her tremendously and she remembered it being used on her when she was a kid. I figured, can't hurt and proceeded to give it a shot.

After potty and teeth brushing and as we were putting on our night time pull-up I brought out the little blue jar. I told The Boy that I was going to rub some of it on his chest and it would help make the bad germs go away. He looked skeptical and backed away slowly from me. I said, "No honey. This doesn't hurt at all. It smells really good and will clear up your nose. I just rub it on your chest like some lotion."

He still didn't move.

I said, "Okay, I won't put it on you without you checking it out first. In fact, here, I will rub some on my hand so you can see. See? Nothing to it. Come over here and smell it and see if you think it might help." I actually thought that once he smelled it he would be all for it.

He cautiously walked over towards the jar. He got about a foot away and took a good sniff and literally spun on his heel and high tailed it out of his room.

"NO WAY Mommy! NO WAY you put dat on me. Dat not nice you try a put dat stuff on me Mommy. Dat Mean!!!" While he was yelling this he was physically running into the bathroom and hiding behind the shower curtain. Drama much?

I laughed and told him it was fine and that it didn't smell that bad and that I promised it would help him feel better. I walked toward the bathroom...

He screamed a high pitch sound like I was coming after him with a knife. It was then that I broke out in the full-on hysterics. I mean, seriously, who freaks out like that over Vapo.rub? He ran from the shower and into my room and my closet and then back to his room and into his closet with a blanket over his head, the entire time screaming about the horrible thing I was trying to do to him.

I thought it was the funniest thing I had seen in my entire life. This is the child that will walk up to a spider on the wall and stick out his little finger for it to crawl on him while saying, "Come here little buddy..." But Vic.ks Vapo.rub? Nope. That shit is the devil.

But perhaps he is more sensitive to the smell than most? Has anyone else had a similar experience with their kid? Or is my kid just...special?

One of the Many Differences Between My Children

So it is time to celebrate another first for The Girl...

Her first illness!!

Yes, she is the lucky recipient of The Boy's funk. She had been sorta sneezing and stuff for a few days but I thought it might be that second tooth that is trying to break through. Then on Sunday night I went in to check on her when she was doing a cry for her Binky and noticed that when I rolled her over onto her back she couldn't breathe. Poor Peanut was all stuffy. She started coughing at about 2:30am and it literally didn't stop until 5:30am. Just when The Boy had started to go an entire night without waking up coughing...she had to take over.

My children have conspired to make sure that I never sleep again.

But she is still the sweetest and cutest version of herself even while sick. On Monday morning I took her brother to school and brought her back home with me. She sneezed and sniffled and dripped out of her eyes and nose and coughed like a smoker, but all the while did it with a smile on her face. I also forgot the difference between babies when they are sick and three-year-olds when they are sick.

Babies sleep.

That's pretty much it. She slept practically all day long. I put her in her room with her humidifier and she slept. And slept and slept.

The Boy? You have to watch a movie with him, and he needs some water, and don't you want to sick and rock him for a while in the rocking chair? And just in case he hadn't told you in four minutes, he has "da bad germs..." And wouldn't you like to read a book? Because he might feel better if he reads a book. Oh, and while you are reading him the book? He will sneeze and cough directly in your face no matter how many times you tell him to please, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, cough in your sleeve.

But her? She smiled. And she slept. End of story.

Also, The boy is still coughing. We are on day 10 with him of this illness and he is STILL coughing. The girl? Not so much. She was sick on Monday. And like I said, she slept. A lot. And then Monday night I prepared myself for another night of being up all night long with the cough by going to bed at 9:00pm. And guess what? She didn't make a peep. All night long. She went to bed at 7:30pm and I woke her up to nurse at 6:00am (the boobs really needed some relief and plus, I had to get in the shower) and she went right back to sleep. She slept until I woke her up at 8:00am. And although there have been a few residual sneezes and coughs throughout the day, she is mostly back to her good ole self. Two normal naps today. Eating normally and her nose is no longer stuffed. Of course some of that can be attributed to the fact that she is still exclusively breast fed and is therefore getting my antibodies, but still.

The difference between my children is like I am raising two children from two different planets. And this is proven, yet again, but how they both handled this latest bout with sickness.

Yet Another Post About My Kid Who Won't Eat...

I only have 9 minutes to write this as my baby food finishes steaming on the stove...

I am at a loss with The Boy again. Our issues with food with him seem to come and go. He never has a full appetite and, as I have written here before, it is my daily struggle to get him to eat enough food to sustain his own weight.

My reactions vary. Sometimes I get so worried I am literally up nights trying to brain storm in my head how I can possibly get him to eat more. Other times I am so damn sick of worrying about it I just think, "He'll eat when he gets hungry enough...I can't possibly spend one more minute of my life worrying about this." Most of the time I am somewhere in the middle. I give it my best to try and get two good meals out of him (we have given up on breakfast and instead he drinks two Pediasures). And I struggle to make that happen. Somewhere near the end of dinner time I putter out and just say, "Okay, if you're done, then you're done."

And for the most part, we live okay this way.

Except for when he gets sick.

When he gets sick, the very first thing he does is stop eating. He has absolutely no desire and will not, for pretty much anything, eat. Thank God he will still drink Pediasure (before he would drink this is when we got ourselves in that evil "failure to thrive/feeding tube" situations) so he doesn't dehydrate and gets some calories. But man cannot survive on Pediasure alone. Fast forward to today, a great example.

He is feeling better but is still not 100%. He had his two Pediasures this morning and was fine. Right around noon he started to "hit the wall." (This means he becomes really whiny and annoying and pitiful and usually once he hits this place he will not come near any food). I asked him if I could make him a sandwich, an apple, etc... All he wanted to eat was "popcorn" which is really the Pirates Boo.ty stuff. So I gave him a bowl of it thinking something was better than nothing. He ate two bowls. (And in case you're wondering why I ask him what he wants to eat rather than just putting something in front of him it is because the amount of food I have thrown out due to his refusal could literally feed a small army. I have found that it is better to have him agree to something first and therefore not waste all of the groceries in my kitchen).

Then we left for the grocery store. It was before 1:00pm. He complained that he was tired and fell asleep in the car. When I woke him up to sit in the cart at the store he was literally so lethargic he seemed drugged. His head would fall backwards and his eyes would shut while he "fell asleep." While sitting in the cart. Yes, he is tired, but what has happened is that his body has NO fuel on which to run. He needs to feed his body in order to make it function. And he didn't. So he stopped functioning. He spent the entire shopping trip like that, slept in the car on the way home and I transferred him to bed when we got here. He is still asleep now.

So as of 3:15pm he has eaten two bowls of Pirates Boo.ty and two pediasures. That is it. When he wakes up he will cry because he wants another "milky" (Pediasure). I won't give him one because if I do he will literally not eat anything for the rest of the night. I will fight with him and make him have some sort of FOOD as a snack and then give him dinner. Once he eats dinner I guarantee you he will get a "second wind" and start running around the house like a crazy (read: normal/healthy) 3 year old boy. I understand what is happening. I just don't know how to fix it.

He won't eat ice cream or anything cold so that rules out smoothies or shakes or even ice cream. Sometimes, if he isn't sick, he will eat a normal lunch, but when he is sick he wants no part of it. But his body can't fight off his sickness when it has no fuel. But when he is sick he won't give his body fuel. It is a sick circle we are in and we can't break out of it. I know for a fact that when he goes in for his next weight check he will be down. He can't afford to be down. The kid is almost 4 years old and hasn't yet broken 30 pounds. It kills me...

Okay I am out of time. My butternut squash/apple concoction is ready to be pureed. Anyone have any suggestions?

Props

I have got to give props to all the stay at home Moms out there. Seriously. I have NO idea how you do it.

The Boy has been home sick from school all week long and I feel like I might lose my mind. I am sure it doesn't help that he feels like dog meat and is therefore the most pitiful version of himself, but man, I am tired and cranky and so OVER him being sick. Don't get me wrong, I feel bad for the poor little dude. He certainly isn't faking it and genuinely feels like hell, but I am so tired of hearing, "Mommy pick me up," "Mommy you rock me?" "Mommy my [insert body part here] hurts..."

I just re-read that and realized I sound like a class A asshole. My kid wants to sit with me? My kid wants me to rock him? How horrible!!!! And yes, there is some part of him being sick that I am enjoying in that he is cuddly and somewhat sweet. But although I am playing the part of a stay at home Mom this week, let's remember that I am NOT a stay at home Mom. And let's also remember that in order to pay my mortgage and, oh I don't know, buy groceries, I HAVE to work. And I do a large majority of my work from my home. And that hasn't happened this week. It hasn't happened nearly enough.

So while I would genuinely love to have the time to sit and cuddle and rock my almost 4 year old for hours on end, I simply do not. Add that to the fact that when said "cuddling" is occurring he is generally coughing and sneezing in my face and wiping his snotty nose on my sleeve, it doesn't make for as rosy a picture as one might imagine.

In terms of his actual health, I am wondering if this evil cold is EVER going to let up. He is up all night long coughing, which of course mean we are BOTH up all night long. And I don't know how many more nights I have in me. I feel horrible for him, but I don't know how to help him and my Mommy genes simply will not let me sleep through him coughing. He pulled all his little tummy muscles from coughing so much so now every time he coughs he also grabs his stomach and starts to cry because it hurts. That sucks. I do feel really bad for him. And the fever just will not go away. I know from personal experience that having a fever just all around sucks. No way NOT to feel shitty when you have a fever.

So to sum it all up, I feel really bad for my sick, sick little dude. But if he doesn't get well enough to go back to school soon I am going to lose my ever-loving mind.

That's all. Return to your regularly scheduled programming.

She's Too Big!

I can't believe it.

Peanut has her first tooth.

She has been quite cheery lately given that she was getting ready to cut a tooth, but I guess that's just her nature.

Here she is last night, kickin' it in her highchair with the foot propped up on the side...

The Boy didn't get any teeth until he was almost a year old. I spent months 6 - 12 with him saying things like, "He is going to get a tooth any minute..." "He is teething, that's why he's acting like that..." and then no tooth would ever show up. So I just assumed that Peanut would be the same. People lately have been saying that she was teething but I just laughed and repeated how The Boy didn't get teeth until almost a year so I was sure it wasn't anytime soon. But there you have it. My big girl. I am a little scared for my boobs...

The Boy does NOT have H1N1, thank God. He just has a nasty cold. The poor little dude was up ALL.NIGHT.LONG coughing last night. Like I seriously don't think between the two of them that I slept more than 1 hour at a time. I am exhausted. I feel bad for the poor little dude though. I used the humidifier and have him some Children's Benadryl (I know...SCANDAL!) and that helped him sleep for a few hours at a time. Unfortunately for me that is when Peanut decided she needed a binky, or needed to eat (I think that was around 4:00am...the time change has screwed us all up!). So I was up all damn night long.

I am pooped. But my baby has a tooth. I can't believe it. Sigh...

Damn Media Coverage

If I hadn't heard so much about this whole H1N1 flu thing I probably wouldn't be freaking out about it. Thanks media outlets! There is a possibility that The Boy has the evil flu. Or he just has the normal flu. Or he has some other sort of funk that has yet to be determined. But he has had a high fever for over 48 hours (very unusual for him), has the full-on body aches, is very lethargic, is refusing to eat (except for Pediasure...God bless that Pediasure...), is complaining about a sore throat and is coughing. Could be...pretty much anything at this point. But since I have a 6 month old baby at home we are going to get it checked out. If it turns out he does have H1N1 then the baby will get Tamiflu (or whatever the name of that drug is) to help ensure that she does not get it. Our appointment is tomorrow at 10:30am.

But before that things were okay. Here are the two kiddos on Halloween...

It is important to note that while I think my daughter looks ADORABLE in her flower costume, she didn't seem to find it amusing in the slightest. My child, who seriously does nothing but smile all day long, absolutely REFUSED to smile while wearing this outfit. In fact some would say she felt the need to give me the stink eye...
But I don't care. I think she looked fabulous. Although this is coming from the person who dressed up her son in a chick costume for his first Halloween and then had the nerve to take professional pictures of him so as to torture him for the rest of his life...BWAH HA HA HA!!!

And for the record, I did actually try and get professional pictures of The Girl in her flower costume, but she was having NONE of it. I guess it was my fault. In one setting I wanted to accomplish three things. 1) The Girl's regular 6 month pictures. 2) Shots of both kids dressed up in their holiday outfits in an attempt to get a Christmas card picture. And 3) Shots of both kids in their Halloween costumes.

Let's guess how far we got. First of all The Girl got a total of a 15 minute nap before the pictures and needed to eat. So while we got a couple of shots of her for her 6 month pictures, there are NO pictures of her with a big ole smile on her face. And my child smiles. Oh yes she does. But does she smile when I am paying big bucks for the professionals? Apparently not. So we got a few shots, but none with the grin. This is the closest I got to a smile...

Then I changed the outfits and that was pushing things. We got no pictures of the two kids alone. And we got one picture of me with both kids. I think I look about 300 pounds in the picture and The Girl is arching her back trying to get to my boobs. It is a great shot. (Insert sarcasm here...) We didn't even attempt the Halloween costumes. I have another appointment at a MUCH cheaper place for this Friday to try again. Although with Mr. H1Nsomething I don't think that is going to happen.

We did get one shot that I love though. Seriously. Look at that face...