reanbean

Hoping Didn’t Help

When Buba got sick with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease, we hoped Tiny wouldn’t get it. Days went by and she seemed fine. But then, last Wednesday night, she came down with a fever. We hoped she would get a mild case, since the virus took longer to appear in her. And we hoped she’d handle it better than Buba, since she tends be more of a trouper when sick. But, unfortunately, hoping didn’t help.

Tiny’s fever lasted for 3 days and then the mouth sores began to appear. Sadly, she has gotten way more mouth sores than Buba, and to say that she’s miserable is an understatement. Yesterday was so bad. Tiny didn’t want to eat anything, and had a very difficult time sleeping. She woke up in pain five times last night, and each time when I went in she would mumble through her tears, “It’s hurtin’. My tongue is hurtin’.” (She has sores all along the perimeter of her tongue.)

I have continued to give her the generic Children’s Motrin, which she takes very well, but she’s still in a great deal of pain. Today she went through several periods of intense crying where she was completely inconsolable. She screamed and cried so much that she nearly lost her voice. It broke my heart to see her so upset. I can only hope that today was the worst of it and we’ll soon be on the road to recovery.

Fortunately, Buba is feeling much, much better. He’s still eating mostly soft foods, but he is clearly not in much pain (no longer taking any Motrin) and is just so much happier than he was all last week. I’m hoping that HFMD will soon be a distant memory, and that my kids will be the lucky ones who never, ever get it again.

Sickness Strikes

Saturday morning, neither Buba nor Tiny was up when the moon changed into a sun (at 6:35am) on their Good Nite Lite. This is very, very unusual. Buba’s normal wake up time is between 6 and 6:30am. I think Tiny would sleep later, but once Buba is up she tends to wake up shortly after. T and I didn’t think much of the few extra minutes of sleep. Perhaps it was the beginning of a transition to sleeping later in the morning. One can only hope so, right?

By midmorning, I was beginning to see the sleeping in as a symptom that something unpleasant was headed our way. Buba was pretty lethargic as we attempted to run a few errands after breakfast, and even began to cry and request going home while we picked up new books at the library (something he loves to do!). Not good. He barely ate any lunch and fell right asleep when I put him down for a nap, without his usual routine of bouncing and singing in his crib. He cried a bit in the middle of his nap, but managed to fall back to sleep and got in the full two hours. But he was a complete grump when he woke up. Also not good. By that time, he felt warm to me, so I took his temperature- 102.6! I gave him a does of generic Tylenol and within an hour he seemed like his normal, happy self. I decided to give him another dose before bedtime, to make sure he’d be comfortable for sleeping, and hoped we were dealing with some sort of 24 hour bug.

Saturday morning, Buba was screaming for me at 5:45am. Very unusual. I went right in and he was hot. I gave him another dose of the medicine and asked him if he still wanted to rest since the sun was not glowing yet. He agreed to rest quietly (and did!), and I went back to bed. But Saturday wasn’t a great day either. Buba was cranky and still not eating much. At bedtime, I took his temperature again (he was due for another does of medicine), and it was a whopping 103.1! Not good at all. After taking the medicine, he slept from about 7:30 until 11:00 when he woke up crying for me. He still felt warm and it had been four hours, so I gave him another dose of the sweet smelling, purple stuff and hoped he’d make it until the morning.

Buba woke up at 5:20 this morning, and I went in immediately. He didn’t feel as warm, so I asked him to just rest until he saw the sunshine. I wanted to take his temperature before giving him any generic Tylenol, but knew that Tiny would stir if I took him out of his crib. He rested quietly (maybe even went back to sleep) and was up calling for me the second the Good Nite Lite changed. Finally some typical behavior was back. And he seemed to be in good spirits. I hoped that we were through with whatever bug he had caught. I checked his temp and it was down to 100.1. Not great, but better.

I asked Buba what he would like for breakfast and he requested raisins and a strawberry breakfast bar. He was standing at his high chair saying, “Eat! Eat!” so I put him right in and threw some raisin on the tray. Buba stuffed several into his mouth and then started to cry. One by one, he pulled them out and threw them on the floor. Not good. Tiny joined him, and I handed them both a plate containing a cereal bar, some yogurt, and some cut up frozen strawberries. Buba ate most of the cereal bar, a few bites of yogurt and all of his strawberries. Things were looking good. Until I went to brush his teeth.

I know Buba is getting at least one of his second molars, so I brushed very, very lightly, but he screamed and started swatting at the toothbrush. Never before has this happened. I removed the toothbrush, and found it lightly covered with blood. I didn’t waste anytime getting myself and the kids ready and out the door to our pediatrician’s office. Fortunately it was still early enough for us to be seen as a walk-in. We waited forever, but once he was seen, it didn’t talk long for the nurse practitioner to conclude that Buba has Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease (so far, with no rash). Very common for a kid his age, very painful, and no real treatment.

So now we just do what we can to help make him more comfortable. I’m alternating generic Tylenol and generic Motrin, but he’s still noticeably miserable at times and not sleeping well (which means I’m not sleeping well). He hates the Motrin and vomited the first dose I gave him, which is not good since that’s the one that will help with the pain. Thus far, Tiny is showing no symptoms, but it could be just a matter of time. And wouldn’t you know it- this is the one week of the summer that T is teaching an enrichment class for his school district.

I know we’ll get through this. We’re certainly not the first family to be hit with this nasty virus. Still if you’ve been through this already, any tips you have to offer or words of encouragement would be appreciated.

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I realize I’ve been quite wordy lately. Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

My Needa Monkey

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything about our sleep issues (here and here). Basically, what happened was that the night wakings continued to the point where I was going out of my mind. Tiny was waking up every night and was waking Buba up with her screaming. Then it got to the point where she was waking up multiple times in one night, and that was when I said enough is enough. I read through Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child and determined that although some night waking in toddlers is considered normal, the number of times per week that Tiny was waking was not. I firmly believe that the initial night wakings were due to bad dreams. However, I think she then figured out that if she called us in the middle of the night, we would come, and this encouraged her to continue to wake and call for us. Therefore, a plan of action was needed. We purchased a Good Nite Lite and talked about staying quiet as long as the moon was glowing (all night long). If Tiny didn’t wake up and call for Mommy or Daddy, we would continue with whatever plans we had for the following day. If Mommy had to get up in the night to answer her crying calls, all plans would be cancelled. After one cancelled playdate, the night wakings basically stopped. Tiny still occasionally wakes in the night and calls for me, but it’s very, very rare now. And when she does call for me, it is clear that she has been frightened by something. Often she’s crying while asleep, and a gentle back rub along with some reassuring words calms her down quickly. I don’t cancel plans on the days that follow those types of night wakings. If she truly needs me, she needs me. I just don’t like being played.

So we finally had the night wakings under control when Buba decided that it was time to explore getting out of his crib. (Yes, he still wears a sleep sack. That has not stopped him.) To be fair, Tiny was the one who climbed out first, but her experience terrified her, and she hasn’t even attempted to climb out since. Buba, our careful observer, picked up on her strategies and perfected them to the point where he could get out and land safely on the floor. However, he would then cry and want to be put back into his crib only to do it again and again. Then one night, I decided not to go in right away. I let him cry for a few minutes and then quickly peeked in and did a quick scan of the room. I didn’t see him in the room, so I assumed he was still in his crib, which I did not get a good look at, and was just protesting going to sleep. I waited… 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 15 minutes. Finally I figured I should go in and calm him down. To my complete surprise, he was standing on the floor at the far end of his crib, holding onto the bars and screaming his head off. Yes, he had climbed out of the crib, but he had chosen to stay in his bedroom (the door was wide open and there was no gate up) and not to pull out any books or toys. I said nothing to him. Just put him back in his crib (the crying stopped instantly) and walked out the door.

I believe we had at least a couple of nights of Buba staying in his crib until he figured out that he could climb out of his crib and directly into Tiny’s crib without ever touching the floor. Their cribs are side by side, maybe a foot or so apart on the only wall of their room that doesn’t have any windows. He seemed to think this was fantastic. Tiny, however, was not amused. More screaming. More crying. We considered a crib tent, but decided not to go that way if we didn’t have to. So instead, we introduced three sleep rules: 1) stay in bed, 2) lie down, 3) go to sleep. And if the rules were followed, Buba got to play with a set of toys (an odd bunch of small toys picked up at a yard sale) in the morning. This worked for about a week.

T and I talked about possible solutions- move Tiny’s crib to one of the walls with window and hope she won’t mess with the cordless blackout blinds, get a crib tent for Buba’s crib, do nothing and just keep dealing night by night. It might surprise you to know that we chose the last option. But here’s the thing- Buba only climbs into Tiny’s crib once. After we put him back in his crib, he’s done and will go to sleep.

It was all very puzzling to me until Thursday night. It wasn’t long after we’d said our good nights that I heard Buba scream as though his arm had just been cut off. I went back into the kids’ room to find him still in his crib, but screaming and reaching towards Tiny’s crib. I asked him what was wrong and he told me repeatedly, “My needa monkey.” I instantly knew what he meant. Tiny has a soother attached to her crib that has a monkey who swings back and forth while soft music plays. Buba has one too, but his is a fish, and he wants a monkey.

I turned the monkey on, and Buba’s crying stopped immediately. Really? That was it. I walked back to the kitchen and told T what had just happened, and we both had the same thought. Perhaps another monkey soother would keep Buba in his crib. As I thought back about all the nights I had gone in to put him back into his crib, I recalled that most of the time, he was caught either turning the soother on or standing right in front of it and watching the activity inside. Maybe the climbing out is all about getting to the monkey and turning it on, which is why he’s okay with being put back in his crib.

So on Friday, I set out in search of another monkey crib soother. I first checked multiple message boards to see if I could pick up a used one, but there weren’t any for sale in our area. Amazon.com sells one and I could get free shipping, but I decided to try Toys R Us first. They had exactly one left, but for $45, I decided to let them keep it. T said we’d place the Amazon order after the kids were in bed, but of course, last night was the first in many, many, many nights that Buba did not climb into Tiny’s crib. So who knows what’s going on? Does he need a monkey or not?

T and I decided again to go back to our do nothing plan. The monkey soother is in our Amazon.com shopping cart, but I’m no longer convinced that it would be money well spent. I suppose only time will tell.

4th of July Fun

This was Tiny and Buba’s third 4th of July, but really it’s the first one where we attempted to participate in any associated activities.

Their first 4th

Their second 4th

The first year, they were just shy of 4 month old, and I cannot even begin to tell you how we spent that day. The second year, we were visiting my family in Iowa. I remember that there was a big cookout, but I don’t believe we took them to any parades or festivals.

So this year, it was quite a change. We started out by heading over to a small carnival in a neighboring town on the 3rd.

an attempt to get a shot of the two with their first carnival prizes

playing the “pick a ducky” game

having fun in the bouncy house

riding their first carousel ponies

When asked about their favorite part, Buba said his favorite part was all of it, while Tiny’s favorite part was “eatin da fried dough.” If I hadn’t been so busy chowing down on some fried dough myself, I’d have gotten a picture of that too.

The next day we headed over to Grammy and Grandpa’s house. We went down to the town center to see the kids’ bike parade and then had a picnic in the park. After a nap, Buba and Tiny wanted to brave the heat and play outside for a while.

sprinkler fun

riding around the cul-de-sac

nature hike

With a 7:15pm bedtime, there were no fireworks to be seen this year, but perhaps in another few years I’ll brave the traffic and crowds and take Buba and Tiny to see the display on the esplanade.

It’s All Gone

This morning, as I was in the kitchen making breakfast, Tiny and Buba were playing with Hot Wheels in the living room. Tiny had taken the plastic Ziploc bag of cars out of the toy drawer, and was rolling them one by one across the hardwood floor to Buba, who sat a few feet away. They both thought that this was great fun. When Tiny ran out of cars, this is what I heard:

Tiny: It’s all gone.

Buba: I lika mo (more) cars peese (please)!

Tiny: No, it’s all gone. See? (showing Buba the empty bag)

Buba: It’s empee (empty). No mo.

Buba sings: It’s all gone. No mo. It’s all gone. No mo…

It was such a simple conversation, but so nice to hear them using their words with each other- something I  feel like I often have to remind them to do, as there is often a lot of pushing, grabbing, grunting, and screaming involved in their playing these days. It’s just nice to know that they have it in them to play together nicely. And I’m quite proud of how their language is developing. Just this past fall, they were speaking mostly one word (Buba) and  two word (Tiny) phrases. And a lot of what they were saying was just repeating what T and I were saying. But now they can express complete thoughts and even hold conversations entirely on their own. I know this is the normal way things progress, but it’s still amazing to me.

Water Play Weekend

Saturday morning, T and I took Buba and Tiny to wash the fire trucks in the center of town. It’s an event organized by our town’s family focused organization and tends to happen once a year (maybe twice, we’re fairly new to this group). We got there right at the starting time and were pleased to see many of Tiny and Buba’s playmates from library storytime were there as well. The kids, however, skipped the hellos and headed straight for the buckets of sudsy water.

Both Tiny and Buba had a great time washing the trucks and playing in the water.

And they each got to take a turn sitting in the cab of the fire truck.

Before we left, the fire fighters passed out hats, fire safety coloring books, and stickers. After close to an hour, Buba was ready to go, but I’m pretty sure Tiny could have stayed all day.

Sunday afternoon, just as the Buba and Tiny were getting up from their nap, it began to pour as if someone had opened a fire hydrant in the sky. The kids stood watching the rain at the window and whined a bit about not being able to go outside to play. Fortunately the storm only lasted about 30 minutes, and then the sun was shining again. It was way too wet to play in the yard, but perfect for going out for a puddle walk.

There was a nice big puddle right in front of our house, and Tiny had the best time jumping up and down in it. It wasn’t long before her shorts were soaked all the way through, and we had to double over the waistline to keep them from falling down. Buba wasn’t much of a jumper, but he still loved dragging his feet through the water.

Our house is on a slight downhill, and it wasn’t long before Tiny and Buba started to follow the little stream near the curb down to the bottom of the street. There were some fantastically large puddles down at the end, and Tiny was in heaven (we didn’t get any still pictures, but I think T got a few video clips with his iPod).

Unfortunately the fun was cut short when Tiny fell into a puddle and came up screaming with blood dripping pretty heavily from her right hand. I picked her up and rushed her into the house. T put her in the bathtub and did his best to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. Honestly, he was completely calm and amazing, and I don’t know what I’d have done if he wasn’t there. My head was spinning in a crazy panic, and I felt as if I could throw up or pass out at any moment (no Mom of the year award for me). I managed to call the doctor’s office and got connected to a nurse at the affiliated hospital. She explained how to stop the bleeding, how to clean and bandage the wound, and how to know whether or not we would need to go to the emergency room for stitches. We determined that stitches were not necessary, and T continued to treat a hysterical Tiny while I did my best to calm her down. Buba was left completely on his own during this time and may have made several overseas calls, as I’d left the phone well within his reach. Fortunately, he didn’t talk long.

As soon as the bandage was on, Tiny calmed down enough to request a Popsicle.

Unfortunately, Tiny had a rough day today. She just wasn’t herself and seemed to fall apart at the drop of a hat. To make matters worse, she fell on her owie and it started to bleed again. Depending on what it looks like in the morning, we may be headed for the walk in hours at our pediatrician’s office first thing. Still, as T pointed out, we have to consider ourselves lucky. We made it over 27 months with nothing more than bumps and scrapes. And we have no doubts that, stitches or not, she’ll be good as new in a week or so.

A Berry Good Morning

This morning, Tiny, Buba and I went strawberry picking. We went up to Parlee Farms (where we’d gone apple picking in October) and were supposed to meet up with a bunch of other moms from our town. But when we arrived at the entrance at about 10 minutes past the time we were supposed to get there, I didn’t see a single person from our group*. I asked around the farm stand to see if anyone knew of their whereabouts, but no on seemed to have even heard of our town’s little family organization. We certainly hadn’t driven 30 minutes just to go home empty handed, so I picked up a basket and followed the signs for strawberries.

We ended up in a good sized, but not enormous, field where I felt comfortable letting Buba and Tiny walk around on their own. I gave them a little talk before releasing them from the confines of our double stroller- Stay right by Mommy. Only pick the red ones. The bigger the berry the better. Stay right by Mommy. Put the berries in the basket- no eating until we pay. And stay right by Mommy.

Tiny was great at following my directions. She’d run ahead a little, pick one or two strawberries and then come right back.

Buba had a harder time remembering all of my rules. He ran off frequently, and didn’t come back when I called him (grrrrrrrr). When he went in for his first strawberry, he squeezed so hard that he squashed it completely and came back with a sticky hand and juice running down his arm. He did better when I showed him how to pull them gently, but still needed reminders about not putting the berries directly into his mouth.

Buba was restricted to berry picking while holding my hand for the last 10 minutes or so, but over all, I think our trip was pretty successful. And I’d definitely do it again. Buba and Tiny loved the juicy, delicious strawberries that we picked. They’re sure to be gone in no time.

*We ended up seeing a couple of the moms and kids from our town when we returned to the farm stand to pay. It turns out that our group was in a completely different strawberry field. Oh well. Still fun.

One Year Later

In early June 2009, Buba was found eligible for Early Intervention (EI) services. We’d asked for him to be evaluated because our pediatrician noted that he had a slight speech and language delay. Since that type of delay runs in our family, T and I knew that we wanted to act on services as soon as possible, to hopefully avoid further trouble in that area down the road.

However, when the EI team evaluated Buba, they also found a significant fine motor delay. Buba was not yet clapping and almost never used his left hand. While I was aware of these things, the news that he would also need occupational therapy (OT) on top of speech and language services (SP/LA) caught me off guard, and it took some time for me to come to terms with it.

Buba started working with an EI educator (for SP/LA services) and an occupational therapist in July of 2009 after we’d returned from our family vacation. Within just a few weeks, his speech improved dramatically, but his motor skills were not improving as quickly, and it was really tough for me to take in all the information his therapist was giving me about his difficulties with balance, sensory integration, and motor planning. There were several times when I would break down into tears after his sessions, because I just felt that I wasn’t doing enough to help him practice in those areas when we were at home on our own. At the same time, I just couldn’t believe that he was as impaired in those areas as his therapist was saying. Yes, he had trouble getting clothing on and off, but He’s just a little boy! I would think to myself. It also bothered me that the therapist didn’t often acknowledge when he had made gains. And if she did, it was often followed by something new that she’d noticed he now needed to work on.

So, I was kind of excited when I found out that a completely new team of EI staff members would be taking on Buba’s one-year evaluation (which was yesterday). I just wanted to see how he would be viewed by different therapists who’d had no previous experiences with him. The way I see it, Buba has made huge gains in both SP/LA and OT, but I wondered how the evaluation team would seem him.

It turns out that they saw what I see. In fact, he did so well with all the tasks and activities used to assess his skills that they found him to be ineligible for EI services. He has 45 more days to be phased out of the program, and then that’s it. Needless to say, this news was quite exciting! I mean, what parent doesn’t want to hear that their child no longer has any significant developmental delays?

But the sad thing is that our playgroup is through EI, and that may have to come to an end as well. We’ll try working with EI to see if Buba and Tiny can remain in the group as community kids (kids without delays who attend playgroup- technically, Tiny already is one), but it all depends on the numbers, and I have a feeling that there are already quite a few community kids in the group. We’ll continue going at least through July (which is part of our 45 days) and then just see what happens from there.

All in all, I can’t say enough good things about EI. Even with my issues with Buba’s occupational therapist, I still felt like everyone who has worked with my kids has been excellent and has had my kids’ best interests in mind (Tiny worked briefly with an EI nutritionist last summer). And while I do think there were other factors involved, I don’t doubt that the EI staff has played a huge role in helping Buba to be the amazing kid that he is today.

No Help Wanted

Tiny is fiercely independent these days. Sometimes this is a great thing. Other times it is not. I know that Tiny doing something “all by self” is going to take longer than if I were to do it, so I try to give her as much time as possible to complete her task. And it’s great when she’s able to do something herself. She is incredibly proud of her accomplishment, even if it is just throwing a tissue into the trash can inside the kitchen cabinet.

But when she’s working on something tricky- like getting dressed or putting on her shoes and socks- and time has run out, you’d think that my offer to help was really just a horrible threat in disguise. They way she screams, kicks, hits- it’s insane. And so far today, we’ve been through this twice. Once when she needed to get her shoes on to go out for a playdate (she had about 10 minutes to do so, and did manage to get one on during that time), and once when she wanted to peel a sticker off of it’s waxy paper just before nap time (she’d been working on it for about 5 minutes and refused to let me start it for her).

I’m all for raising independent kids, and I’m willing to allow extra time so that my kids can do something for themselves. But there are certainly times when we are up against time, and I need to teach Tiny that getting help is not a bad thing. Any suggestions?

My Little Fashionista

I’ve never been someone with the cool clothes or the cool shoes. My mother went shopping and bought almost all of my clothes by herself until I was in high school, because I just wasn’t into that sort of thing. I’m still not a big fan of shopping. It’s so time consuming- looking, trying on, exchanging for a different size. Right now, I have such a small amount of clothing that my entire fall/winter and spring/summer wardrobes fit quite easily in my dresser and half of the closet I share with T.

Tiny, I feel, will be very different from me in this area. She’s been wanting a say in what she wears each day since last summer (about 15 months old). Ever morning, I have to offer her choices or be prepared to listen to the consequences. She knows her wardrobe like the back of her hand, and she’ll request specific articles of clothing that are not presented to try to get me to offer her something different. And she LOVES shoes. At Christmas time, she threw a big fit when I had to remove her fancy shoes because I knew they were too small for her feet. She screamed, “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!” Even when I showed her the red marks and indentations the shoes had made on her feet.

So it didn’t surprise me at all that Tiny picked these shoes when we went shopping recently:

They were not at all what I had in mind when we headed to the shoe department at Target. I wanted a nice summer shoe- a sandal but with covered toes. Target had no such things for little girls, but it didn’t seem to matter. Because when Tiny saw those shoes with all the colors and sparkles, it was love at first sight. She put them on easily all by herself, and was just so happy to walk around in them that I knew we would be taking them home with us.