Calgon, Take Me Away

I am so freakin’ sick of a whiny sick grumpy baby. She has no more fever and hasn’t for a full day now. But the whining and the crying. Oh my lord. She’s exhausted but she can’t seem to settle to sleep. Even with the Motrin I was giving her earlier in the week for the fever, it never knocked her out. She’d wake up very often, crying like her little heart would break, and then either she’d settle herself pretty quickly or I’d have to go in and rock with her (and she’d fall asleep in my lap, which NEVER happens). Well, the fever is gone but this nasty habit remains. No, she’s not teething as far as I can tell, but she won’t let me get anywhere near her mouth. And if she were, wouldn’t the Motrin have helped?

I feel like all I do with her anymore is feed her and put her to sleep. But when she does play for a bit, she loses her shit very quickly over something like me not letting her chew on her shoes. Hello? She walks on nasty floors with those things, I’m not letting her put them in her mouth.

I feel like I have done a damn good job at keeping us both sane this week all by myself but my patience is at its end. Jake may very well find himself wife-less this weekend. I might just go sit at the library to hear nothing but quiet for two full days.

Breathing a Sigh of Relief

Finally! Bridget FINALLY seems to be getting better. She woke up a bit before six this morning and she had a fever. I was really upset because all week I’ve been trying to convince myself it was no big deal. Infants had fevers of over 100 degrees for four days all the time, right? But I was covering up my worry that she was going to come out of this with brain damage or something. Or I was slowly poisoning her with an overdose of Infants’ Motrin.

I called the doctor and left a message for the nurse around 8 when Bridget was still asleep. Then when I got her up a few minutes later, I took her temperature, and she was normal. I have since taken it about ten times (you don’t know fun until you’ve used one of those digital ear thermometers) and all have been normal.  When the nurse called back, I had to tell her that the fever that Bridget had at 6 a.m. was gone by 8:30 without the aid of any fever- reducing medicine. The nurse also assured me that I could use the Motrin as often as I needed to. It wasn’t going to cause her to have a facial tic or lose the ability to count past three later in life.

And Bridget has been acting like the old her again this morning. Toddling around downstairs, getting into everything she can, not whining, not wanting to be held. Peeking around my laptop screen to grin at me. So someone tell me why, now that the worst has passed, I feel like I am about to fall apart? I’m trying not to cry right now. There’s no reason. All is well. I guess I was more freaked out than I thought.

That’s My Girl, Alright

Tonight I fed Bridget some mac and cheese for dinner. She loves it and I knew she couldn’t resist it, even though she’s been turning her nose up at everything lately. Why yes, she’s still feverish, cranky, lethargic and has no appetite. Thanks for asking. We’ll most likely be at the doctor again tomorrow.

Anyhoo, I noticed that she was pulling macaroni out of her mouth toward the end of dinner, which I didn’t think too much about. But later as I was cleaning up her chair, I noticed a ton of pieces of macaroni in her chair, all sans cheese sauce.

That’s right, my girl knows that the best part of mac and cheese is the cheese and she really can’t be bothered with the mac.

Knock on Wood

I don’t want to jinx anything but Bridget seems to be a bit better. After sleeping most of the day, her fever is down to about 100 and she isn’t constantly whining and crying, which makes me feel much better. In fact, she’s been awake for about two hours now and had a few decent snacks.

Keep your fingers crossed we don’t have a backslide into feverville. I don’t handle this well.

As If a Sick Baby Weren’t Enough

Yes, Bridget is still sick. We went to the doctor yesterday where he verified that it was indeed most likely just a reaction to her Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccination she had last week. He was very kind about it and didn’t make me feel like an idiot for bringing her in for something he told me was likely to happen.  She had another rough night but it wasn’t as bad as the night before. We tried to bring her to bed with us but she doesn’t really like that. She thinks our bed is where she gets to play, since the only time she goes there is usually on weekend mornings when she gets to go wake up Daddy. I guess that’s lucky for us - we’ll never have a problem getting her out of our bed. But last night would have been nicer if we could just comfort her immediately.  I woke up several times during the night to her crying but she always soothed herself back to sleep without me having to go in there. So yes, I was awakened several times but none of them for very long.

But apparently I did something to piss someone off in the karmic world because I logged on to my online banking today as I do every morning and discovered that someone had made a fraudulent charge to my Visa check card. I immediately called the bank who canceled my card and are issuing a new one. They can’t do much about the charge itself yet as it’s still showing pending but I got enough information to call Rent-@-Center, where the charge was made. Of course their corporate office, as you might expect, is completely unhelpful - “We don’t do anything with fraud claims here. You’ll have to call the store”- but at least I was able to narrow down to two the stores that it might be so I can call and hopefully sort it out before the charge posts for real.

Except of course now my card is dead. Does not work. Shut off.  No way to buy anything with it or get cash with it. And guess which other card holder in the family is out of town right now, for the rest of the week?  If you guessed Jake, give yourself five points.

So my choices for purchases now are a) use our credit card, or b) make a trip to a banking center with a sick baby, figure out how much cash I need between now and the day when my new card will arrive, and make a cash withdrawal. Neither of which are options I like, but I suppose it’s a good thing to have options. And since I have this sick baby, I probably shouldn’t be going anywhere anyway. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me to stop shopping.

Grumpy 2.0

Our girl is still not feeling well. After a very long night of up and down with her, I vowed to go to Target today to buy an ear scan thermometer. Say what you will but there is no way in hell this child was going to keep still long enough for me to get a rectal temperature. And there was no way I had the energy or the heart to try to force her.

Last reading was 102.5. So I did what any newish mother would do. I freaked the fuck out and called the pediatrician. I am not used to my girl being sick! After hearing about her lack of appetite, grumpy disposition and uneasy resting, they decided they want to see her so we have an appointment later.

You know, I’ve wished for a while now that Bridget was a more cuddly baby. I wished that she would be content to sit in my lap and have books read to her or just talk and babble. But she’s a very independent, active kid. Except the past two days she has been very cuddly and it breaks my heart because I know it’s just not her. I’ll soak it up though, while I can. It’s not often she admits she needs Mommy so while she does, I’ll give her all the Mommy she wants. I just wish it wasn’t at 4 a.m.

Another Grumpy Bear

I got a decent night’s sleep last night and I feel much better.  But I woke up today with a very grumpy Bridget. She is running  a fever but doesn’t seem to be showing any other symptoms. I think this is a reaction to her MMR vaccine early last week,  but I still hate to see her feeling bad. She slept most of the day which gave us time to begin the decoration process. We got the houses up on top of the cabinets and I went through the boxes of decorations, and even managed to throw out a few things I don’t want anymore. The tree should arrive tomorrow and we’ll get it all decorated. I can’t wait!

I just hope that Bridget feels better tomorrow. Maybe a few Christmas sparklies will make her happy.

Grumpelina

I have got to get some sleep. I’ve been working for weeks with not enough sleep. I go to bed too late and get up before I am ready. My problem is that I want to enjoy the “me” time I get after Bridget goes to bed. I want to do what I want to do. I want to catch up on TV shows. I want to read. I don’t want to waste my “me” time sleeping.

I don’t know why I am doing this to myself. I know that I require more sleep than most people. For me, eight hours is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. I can deal for a day or two with six or seven hours of sleep but not long-term, which is what I have been doing. On some nights, I’ve gotten even less than that.  It’s really starting to take its toll on me. I’m so tired, it makes me want to cry.

I would say that tonight I’m going to aim to get to bed early but I committed to working tonight kind of late. I’m going to move my shift back a bit and be ready for bed when I start so that when it’s over, I can hop right into bed and hopefully get to sleep. And in the future I’m going to try to adhere to an 11 p.m. bedtime.

Because I have to say, if I don’t get some damn sleep soon, someone is going to get hurt.

Game On!

Y’all, it’s Christmas now! I don’t have to pretend to be all “Oh I’m not even ready for Christmas this year. Grumble grumble bah humbug…” I can come out of the Christmas closet in a full blaze of red and green glory.

Sadly, my Christmas tree did not arrive on Wednesday. Its new estimated arrival date is Monday. Luckily Jake will be in town that day to put it in the stand for me. The trick will be to wait for him to decorate it. If he wants me to. Maybe he doesn’t care. I’ll have to check. But even without the tree, I totally plan to get the mantle decorated this weekend and get my Christmas villages up. I even plan to force Jake to get the outdoor lights  put out. We don’t hang lights since our house is two stories. Instead we use red and green floodlights pointed up the house.  Easy, subtle, Christmas-y.

I want to get all my Christmas movies and specials out. I almost bought the Charlie Brown box set just to have the Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas in one box. But I opted to save that $36. But I do have Elf, A Christmas Story,  It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas Vacation, and a few TV specials I think. Might just have to bust them out tonight. But I don’t want to blow my Christmas spirit too early.

Someone give me a tranquilizer. I’m way too Christmas-y for my own damn good.

Turkey Trot

We did it! We did it!

Here is a pictorial history of this morning’s events.

Here is us before the race. Yes, it looks like we have a team uniform but we honestly didn’t shop together.

Getting warmed up with some experimental stretching. You’ll notice our bib numbers are in the 14,000 range. Yes, that’s not a mistake. There were over 30,000 people there.

About to cross the finish line:

And afterward, so proud of ourselves:

The race itself was kind of annoying. There are soooo many people there, which is fine. But there is no separate lane or course for walkers so it was impossible to maintain any sort of pace. We were often trapped behind people ambling along with strollers and dogs. I would have thought that having done this for 40 years the YMCA people would have put a better plan in place. I won’t run this one again but I do want to come back with Jake and Bridget next year and walk it. It was a lot of fun.

I’m so proud of us. We did the thing in 40 minutes, which isn’t bad considering how long it took to get into a spot where we could run at all.  If you had told me back in August that I would have done this, I would have laughed at you. But we did it and we plan to do another one, hopefully with less people and with an official time.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!