Thursday, November 24, 2005

Diary Of A Sick Toddlers Mom

Day 1-Tuesday, the beginning
I'm glad this is a short week. I've been home with my four-year-old since yesterday. He has a running nose, a cough, and as of yesterday a fever that comes and goes. He told me yesterday that his neck hurts. I have figured that this is kid speak for, "my throat hurts." I haven't been home with a sick kid in a long time. I've gotten really spoiled. Everyday I see everyone off in the morning, arming them with breakfast, vitamins, backpacks that include lunch and my husband's count to five. The count to five is this count of the five objects he can't leave home without. Keys, wallet, work i.d., phone and ipod. I help the little one on with his jacket, his hat, his favorite object of the week, and an empty metrocard. He needs a metrocard to swipe into the turnstile. If you have a kid under five in New York, you know what this is all about. Even though kids five and under don't pay to ride the subway, every single one of them wants to swipe a metrocard. By now my kid knows the difference between the beeps on the turnstile that says "go" or "insufficient fare", but it makes no difference. He swipes and then bends over to go under the turnstile.

I'm lucky his sister still loves school. Well, she loves school, but not as much as she loves not missing school to see her friends. She's thirteen. Enough said.

He woke up at 7 o'clock. He had these moments in which he did lay down on his own, but he never took the two hour nap that saves one's sanity the day he moved from one activity to the next. He painted pictures with a watercolor set of paints he was given on his last birthday and had forgotten about. He would have had a nice picture, but he decided to take the water used for wetting the brush and pour it on top of the palette containing the paints. He took a bath for an hour and enjoyed a variety of water toys including fish that fill up with water and then squirt water when you squeeze their sides. I watched him create an entire water adventure complete with good fish and bad fish fighting over sandwiches in the water. He made up this storyline himself.

We read four books including the favorite book that reads like an encyclopedia of trains. "The Best Book Of Trains" promises on it's back cover:
* "Stunning full-page scenes capture the sheer power and speed of trains"
* "Detailed artwork show different train types"
* "Cutaway pictures reveal the intricate workings of trains and railroads"

This isn't one of those "Golden Readers" my mom used to read. Every page of this book has at least 2 or three cut away scenes with little paragraphs. There are 30 pages in total, the glossary is on page 31 and the index on page 32! I needed a nap by the time we got to the last page. Actually I asked him if I could stop reading by the time we reached page 19.

No slowing down this kid's appetite. I was preparing food every two hours. He has a thing for toast. I don't have a toaster, so this is actually more engaging than it sounds. I have to use the broiler on my oven, so I have to keep squatting and pulling out the broiler drawer to check on the bread and make sure it isn't burning. I always burn two slices no matter how careful I try to be. He also ate oatmeal, Kix cereal, and drank lots of juice and tea. I cleaned urine off the seat many times today. Did I mention he's four? When he remembered to lift the seat, he announced this proudly as he walked out of the bathroom hitching up his underwear. Yes, I said hitching. These are not tight underwear, it's just that the dexterity of a 4-year-old isn't so smooth. Couple this with the fact that he is in a hurry to continue watching Clifford or any number of those shows for toddlers on PBS, and you get the picture.

He was even very entertaining. While helping me wash the dishes (he mostly plays with the soap suds) he started laughing. I asked him what was so funny and he proceeded to say, "Remember when she was doing this?" I watch him do this jerky kind of dance his shoulders doing a shimmy and his arms swinging this way and that. I ask him what he's talking about and realize he is laughing about his sisters reaction when she accidental let a napkin catch fire. She placed it near the boiling kettle of water, (Don't ask why. She's is thirteen). I was amazed that he remembered that. That happened about two or three weeks ago. I explain to him that she was frightened by the flames. " I know,but she looked funny. You had to help her."

He didn't slept until bedtime, which was about 8:30 or 9 o'clock. About twenty minutes into his sleep, we heard him start coughing, and the next thing we know he was vomiting. He has his occasional sessions with asthma bought on more when he doesn't have his regular daily Singulair chewable tablets. They've run out. Our health coverage at my husband's new job doesn't start until next week. We are luckier than most folks. We bought a nebulizer when he was first diagnosed a couple of summers ago. We've got lot's of that medicine, because we don't use it that often. I get him to the bathroom (almost) and he finishes in the toilet. We cleaned him up and my husband sat with him while he sat breathing in the medicine from the nebulizer. I go back to his room to clean up the floor. He fell asleep in dad's arms and slept quietly the rest of the night.

I didn't sleep very long. I was awake working on this blog. I was excited because I was finally able to crack the code to posting a few favorite links. My husband kept saying," You should go to bed. He'll be up early and you'll be home with him again tomorrow by yourself. You need to get your rest too." I went to sleep at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Day 2- I should have gone to bed earlier!
My son was awake at 5:15. It was still dark. It was only Tuesday. He was very excited talking about going to school and asking for water because he was thirsty. I had to break it to him that he wasn't going to school again today. I asked him to talk softer since his sister and dad were still sleeping.

He wanted to watch television. More PBS. At 5:30, I had him on the nebulizer as a precaution while we watched "Learn To Read." We had a light breakfast by 7:30 and were continuing the subway project from the day before. We had begun making subway cars from the empty Kix cereal boxes. Then he pulled out his set of wooden train tracks and we began to make a strange oval formation but by the time we added a couple of tracks that switched we had a heart with a bridge. After pretending Thomas the Tank Engine goes to nowhere, I was ready for a nap. It was only 10 o'clock. He rested on his bed with the converted Kix subway cars next to him while watching Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers visited the music shop where an African band was rehearsing. We played our own instruments to their music. We have a few wooden pan flutes, gourds filled with seeds and a cowbell just to name a few. It was really funny watching Mr. Rogers showing off his African dance moves.

After Mr. Rodgers was over we watched the rain. My son enjoyed watching the city buses stop to load and unload passengers down below us on Amsterdam Avenue. He asked if we could go to the playground and I said " It's not a playground kind of day." His nose was running so much I was wiping it every 15 minutes.

I had some pasta with olive oil for lunch. Usually this is his favorite, but he hadn't asked for any food since breakfast. He had some crackers and requested an "I love Lucy" episode.

My husband bought the complete set on DVD a couple of months ago when I was beginning to panic about having made the choice to leave my job. These DVDs are pure magic. I've always loved that show and could count on it for laughing the blues away. The kids have made watching these episodes a nightly ritual. We have barred TV for the school year for his older sister (another story) and DVD's are usually a weekend treat. A bedtime story for the little one and an "I Love Lucy" every other night has become a ritual. We watch "Lucy's Schedule." That the one in which Ricky creates a schedule for Lucy when she makes them late for dinner with the boss. My son laughed himself silly watching Lucy get her teeth stuck in the wax apple. By the second viewing he decided he was tired and went to sleep on his own.

While he slept I made a split pea soup, a pan of cornbread and phone calls for the interviews for tomorrow nights radio show. The fever he had, came back again. I managed to give him a little fever reducer while he slept. The trick is to put the liquid in a drinking straw and put it in the kid's cheek side, stroking gently to get them to suck on the straw. It works. The fever went down.

When his sister came home, I was happy . She was the second shift. Dad wasn't coming home until 9 o'clock. He had parent teacher conferences with all the parents of all eight art classes he teaches. So it was left to me to me administer more medicine, including another visit with the nebulizer and more bathtub adventures while I listened to "The Majority Report."

We ended our day with a word game on the computer that makes his sister's brain work, a sticker book of new words and another subway story, "My Subway Ride." I actually love this book because it is a poem. We've read it so many times even he has some of the pages memorized.

I'm writing this at the end of day three. After three days of a fever off and on, cooking and reading and teaching my daughter how to create a blog and giving my son all of my attention, I look forward to leaving the house. It's after midnight Thanksgiving Day. I'm off to co-host the radio show. There are no smells of cooking in this apartment. We're going to my mom's. I plan to come make some salmon cakes and a sweet potato pie to take with us. Hope I can stay awake long enough for such grand ambitions in cooking.

No comments: