With a Rubber Hose

We were all rushing around like bees in a hive:
4:45p Daycare pickup
5:15p Early dinner for the girls
5:45p Matt's class at the gym
6:15p Grace's gymnastics class

At 5:40 Clare decided to put herself on the evenings agenda too.

I was barking orders and clearing dishes and clearly not paying attention.

She looked at me slyly.
"Mama," she said with a smile, "In my nose."
"What's in your nose sweetie? Buggers? Do you need a tissue??"
"No," she said, "Up my nose. No buggers. A bead!"

Time froze for a second. She was so proud of herself.

Upon inspection, there it was.  As a distraction, I had pulled out a big bag of beads over President's Day weekend and let the girls and their friend string necklaces. The rubber of the elastic cording in the bag must have been getting old, because the necklaces have been systematically breaking and spraying nostril sized beads all over the floor. I thought I had been doing a good job of cleaning them up.

I tried trying to wiggle the bead back down her nose with my fingers from the outside. It wasn't budging. In fact, with the way she was fighting me, it was sliding further up. I called Matt. By the time he came home from his abandoned class, Doctor Google had given us some new ideas:

Try tweezers! - Except as soon as she saw us coming with them she would start to scream and thrash so violently we were afraid of poking the bead up into her brain.

Use a shop vac to suck it out! - Which we do own as part of the ill fated pool draining experiment, but they are big and loud and the hose was the size of 1/3 of her face. So we tried the vacuum, which didn't go over well either, because I don't vacuum. Ever. Well, only on special occasions. It is usually something we leave to cleaning crews, so Clare has only ever heard the vacuum 2 or 3 times in her life. That option did not go over well either. And now she was crying so hard she was doing the opposite of the vacuum and starting to suck the bead up further into her nose all by herself.

So at this point we were talking about the immediate care center. And Grace has realized that her chances of going to gymnastics were getting slimmer by every passing minute and starts to have a meltdown.

At the clinic, the doctor was indeed able to remove the bead in the predicted 30 seconds, but it was well worth the $50 copay. She would have never let us get it out.

And now the house has been purged of the beads and we repeat the daily mantra of "I promise I will not put anything up my nose. No beads in nose. I promise."

Of (Wo)men and Mites

Yesterday I saw an allergist.

VERY early on in the process.

I've been sneezey and itchy and have been forced to make a too many trips to the pharmacy for antibiotics lately. Allergies, was the suggested culprit over and over again. So I made the appointment. Well, I made three appointments, cancelling the first two. 1.5 of the cancellations was conflict. .5 was fear.

I was a little bit right on the .5.

The doctor was fantastic. Snarky, self-depreciating, and no non-sense. My favorite medical combination.

But, the arm pricks, and follow up syringe injections? Not so great.

And after 40 minutes of excruciating itching the verdict was in.

* Ragweed & weeds in general
* Mold
* Dust mites

Super. But at least I know what I am itchy/sneezey now.

Team Spirit

This past weekend Gracie wore her Bears jersey for the first time in ages. She was so proud to match her daddy and was overjoyed with our rendering of the Chicago Bears fight song, despite their loss in the end.

That morning during our weekly trip to the grocery store, the Sunday football jerseys were abound. I don’t think she quite understood that they stood for allegiance to different cities and teams, but she did know they weren’t like her navy and orange jersey and spent a good chunk of her time giving other shoppers the hairy eye.

Every time we saw a different jersey she would slap her belly and declare, Mama. I wear ‘Cago Beers. Yes love, yes you are. At home, the trend continued. Every half an hour heard a same declaration of, Mama, I wear ‘Cago Beers. When Gracie went to bed that night, I confiscated the jersey with all her other dirty clothes to run through the washer. It was air dried and put away for another day.

It seems another day is already upon us. Yesterday morning, out of the blue, she demanded to wear ‘Cago Beers to school. I am told by many sources that she once again spend the day slapping her belly and telling everyone who would listen (and some that could care less) that she is wearing her ‘Cago Beers. I warned the teachers at pick up that I had a feeling they would be seeing a lot of the jersey.

Despite this warning, I myself was unprepared for this morning. My child no longer wants variety in her wardrobe. She no longer wants dresses and feminine ruffles. She only want the Bears jersey, which by the way, was still unwashed this morning, covered with a days worth of food smears and snot, and therefore un-wearable.

*Enter the meltdown*

I know, I should have just put in on her, but it had ketchup smeared on the front. I know I should have just put it on her, but she didn’t want to put on a long sleeve shirt underneath to battle the December weather. I know, I should have just put it on her, but I’d she already had a super soft light blue fleece jumper dress laid out for today’s wardrobe damnit and if I have to wrestle her like an alligator to force clothes on the body she is wearing what I want her to!

So tonight, and every night in the foreseeable future, the jersey is going in the washing machine. Someone needs to explain to this child that I don’t do mid-week laundry though. And if you’re looking for a Christmas present for Gracie, more jerseys might come in handy, 3T please.

Parenting 101

A lovely picture, isn't it?

The boy's mother must be so proud. The boy must be so proud. Look at that use of Crayola! I mean, come on, in the first grade and already have a framed piece of art in a public building for folks to cast their eyes on. Art aimed to bring comfort to small children, art to give their parents something to stare and talk about while the minutes tick away.

Have you figured out where we are yet? Let's try the freaking PEDIATRIC EMERGENCY ROOM WARD.

Yeah, I failed. Don't worry, everything is 95% fine, but I still failed. I broke a cardinal rule of parenting. "Thou shall not leave thine child unattended on thine bed."

We had a full day yesterday.
-A walk around the neighborhood at 8am, where Grace woke most of our neighbors with shrieks of "Bug! Bug Mama! Ant! Aaaannnnnttttt!"
-At 10am we went swimming.
-At 12pm it was naps all around.
-3pm saw a trip to Rita's for custard and then a park. Sides. Sides! Sides!!!! (Read: Slides)
- And 6pm we were brought back to reality by the large amount of laundry piled on my bed.

Grace was a wonderful helper. As I folded boxer shorts and hung shirts on hangers before they could wrinkle any further, Gracie reigned over the sock pile. She sat in the middle of our bed surrounded by her subjects. She matched them in glory and then flung them into the dungeon. She was enthralled and hadn't moved in about 10 minutes.

So I sinned. I grabbed the massive pile of clothes on hangers and dashed to the next room to deposit them in the closet. They never actually made it into the closet.

THUNK...... followed by cries.

The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention. Grace was on the floor.

She was quickly calmed, but wouldn't put any weight on her left leg. We quickly located the source of pain, the instep of her left foot. Flooded with memories of past childhood injuries, we quickly loaded Gracie up to have it checked out.

By the time the x-rays had been taken and the overly compassionate pediatric doctor came into our little room to give the final report, Gracie was walking like nothing had ever happened. Squatting down on little kiddie hams in an attempt to find further imaginary ants at 9pm in the emergency room.

Rest assured, the doctor told us, there is no breaks or fractures. You were absolutely right to bring her in though, you can never tell with a two year old. If she is still walking funny in a day or two bring her to her regular pediatrician. Otherwise, she is just fine.

This morning, we still have a limp. I am glad we took her last night, because I wold have wanted to go this morning, just to be sure. Bruises still hurt though. Especially ones that take all the pressure of your body weight. Hopefully we will be able to speed up the healing process with all the extra love and ice cream that will be coming in the next few days though.

Chatting Up The Boss

Remember the job interview I had?

Well, I found out last week – as I was running out the door to collect Grace and catch our flight to Chicago – that I didn’t get the job. (And yeah, I know I haven’t written about my memories of the playoff game. It was painful and I am still working on it.)

Anyway, I was standing in the front lobby of my building, with people swarming around, and the Program Director stops me. He said he wanted to personally tell me that they selected someone else, but that he really wants to meet with me sometime soon to talk about my future.

That’s a good thing, right? To have someone that high-up even care about my future?

Well, I could hear the minutes ticking away in my head, and started inching my way towards the door. Sure Paul, I will absolutely email you the moment I return from Chicago!

Then I was left with my thoughts:
“Does he want to talk to me because I have good ideas?”
“Does he want to talk to me because he sees me as an inside source of information about what is really going on in the department?”
“Does he want to talk to me because I threw coworkers under the bus in an attempt to stress my management skills?”

Well, that meeting was yesterday. I had all of one hour worth of notice, and had eaten a greasy chili dog and onion rings for lunch. Great.

I think it actually went pretty well in the end. And it was a little bit of 1 & 2, no inkling of 3. Which is a good thing.

He said that during the interview I gave him a unique insight into how the program is operated, and with my responses, ideas on things that may need to be adjusted. That he got the feeling that I’m not 100% happy in my current position

(duh, I was on an interview, right?)

and that it was his goal to make sure I got the experiences I needed to improve my skill set and find the perfect position for me. He also said that we hire LOTS of smart people and LOTS of people who can get jobs done, but that it is a rare occasion to find folks that are the combination of the two……

And his impression of me is that I’M PART OF THAT RARE COMBO!

Really? Really??!?
(It was so hard not to giggle with delight!)

So I asked what kind of training and skill sets he thought I needed to acquire, blah blah blah.

Really? Really??!? You think I’m smart!?!
(He He He He!)

So that was the meeting. A good one, no?

But damn, now that means more work on my part.