I come home to an ill Adam. Cough. Sneeze. Pulling ear.
He coughed so hard Saturday night he threw up in his bed.
Nothing like a quick dash of reality after a weekend of waaay too much food, waaay too much drink and all the laughs a girl can handle!
It turned out he just had a mild croup, no meds needed. And it’s pretty much gone now, 4 days later.
Next time, though, I’m going away for 2 nights. 🙂
So this morning I woke up around 6am with a headache. I ran to the loo and confirmed that it was indeed snoring I could hear from Adam’s room and snuggled back into bed, hoping some more sleep would kill it.
At 630 Simon’s alarm went off. He grumbled himself out of bed, confirmed that, yes that was *still* snoring coming from Adam’s room and I told him I was going to stay where I was. I still had a headache.
At 7 I decided I needed some painkiller and maybe some food and headed downstairs. As I was making coffee sounds of wakefulness came from Adam’s room and so I left the coffee to brew and headed to get him.
Got him up and changed and went back downstairs to get him his bottle (Yes, he’s nearly 2 and a half and he still has milk from a bottle. Get over it.) and some juice and painkillers for me.
At 730 Simon headed off to work. At that point I had also had something to eat and was drinking some coffee. The headache wasn’t shifting, however.
At about 9, I started puking.
Nothing has stayed down all day. So I am home with my 2 and a half year old and pushing him out of the way or throwing him off my lap all day so I can run to the toilet, where he joins me to say ‘Oh no, mummy sick’. Very helpful.
So the TV has been on all day. Plans to run to the shops and the park cancelled. And I lose another day of sorting the house, which I do bits of when he naps on days he’s home.
He did actually nap this morning, for about an hour and half, during which time I lay on the other sofa and dozed a bit.
Now it’s 3pm and I’ve just puked again. Simon got a very kind colleague to cover his afternoon lecture and is on his way home, stopping to get the milk, juice and food for tea we need as I am not up to cooking.
Adam has been bringing books to me to read, watching TV, climbing the furniture and managing to entertain himself.
He’s eaten 2 bagels (whole, he doesn’t like them cut or toasted any more!), some cheese, juice, apple sauce, milk and pickles. I’ve eaten, but not kept down, cereal, coffee, juice, half a cup of sugary tea and about 20 Fox’s mints.
So mummy is ill. And we are surviving.
But I’ll be so glad when Simon walks through the door!
T for Tantrum.
B for Boots.
Yup. Right in the centre aisle of the large Boots at Belfast City Centre. Why? Because we needed to go right and he wanted to go left.
What did I do?
I picked him bodily up and strapped him into his pushchair. Which took three tries with the wiggling and jiggling and sliding out of the straps.
Was I embarrassed? Nope. Too busy dealing with it to worry what other people were doing. I was vaguely aware of people going past but beyond that? No clue. Nor did I care.
See, I will never understand when people post on places like MN about how embarrassed they are their child had a tantrum in public. Who has time to look at what others are doing while coping with a small person screaming for no reason?
Is it just me? Is it? Or is it just people like me don’t admit they really couldn’t care less what others think of them?
This was due to me working over 13 hours for my main client, over an hour for another client as well as my usual ‘mother to a toddler’ type activities.
Now, I am well aware that plenty of women work 40+ hours plus their usual ‘mother to a child/ren’ type activities. But most, if not all, of them do not have my health problems.
And what not getting any rest Monday (worked, then headed to get my new varifocals
My new glasses.
and do some errands) or Wednesday (lovely morning with a good friend from England, then worked starting at 2pm, getting home at about 10pm) led to was my being flat on my back all day Friday and most of today. I was in so much pain yesterday I was in tears at dinner and Simon had to do some of bedtime.
I then had a lie in today and then went back to bed for 3 more hours while Simon and Adam headed to the park and get some groceries. And then had lunch and a very hot bath and finally feel about 95% of well.
And this is why I no longer have a full time job and doubt I ever will again. Or at least not a full time job that is 8 hours in a row 5 days a week. I could see me working that many hours, but stretched out over 7 days, in fits and starts, so I have time to rest as well.
It does make me wonder how I would be if I had been working full time when my fibromayalgia started. Would I have had to quit my job? Probably.
So no matter how much I hurt sometimes and how tired I can be, being the mummy of a toddler, I have another reason to be grateful for my son. His birth gave me the strength to strike out, open Designed To A Tee and work for myself, as and when I can.
So, thanks Adam. You rock!
I realized I haven’t really described the house, so I will do that in a few days, with some pictures. ::waits for the sounds of fainting to stop::
Everyone okay?
Anyway, we are more or less moved in but, of course, not unpacked. A lot has been unpacked but the office and all of our books still need sorting out. Hopefully this weekend a lot of that will be finished.
So we are settling in and Adam is having the time of his life, with stairs to climb and a big back garden and a park nearby. And the bus! He gets to ride the bus! Who knew the bus was so much fun?
And do you know the best bit? Imagine, if you will, a bus full of commuters, just before 8am. I climb on and turn to help Adam up the steep stair and say ‘Go on, go sit down over there’ and put my Metro Card on the reader. I turn to join him and every one of those tired ‘OMG is it only Wednesday’ faces had lit up with a smile as my big boy climbed up on a seat all by himself and settled in for the journey.
Living in the ‘burbs is grand.
I think. I’ve lost count.
Adam’s contribution to the big house move was a fever on Saturday, diarrhoea on Sunday, vomit on Monday, and diarrhoea ever since.
We went to the GP on Thursday who said his ears were red and gave us some antibiotics. Which seemed to make the diarrhoea worse. So I’ve stopped them. Feel free to name the next super bug after me, okay?
This mornings wake up nappy was overflowing with pee and full of poo. The poo was soft but not the liquid we have been having. I’m seeing if he poos again in the next hour and what it’s like. If it’s like it was this morning we won’t go to the GP. If it’s still liquid then I’ll ring. If he doesn’t poo again, I’m going to assume the antib’s did indeed make him worse and call him done.
No other symptoms, BTW, once the fever passed. He’s not pulling his ears. He’s eating as normal. He’s drinking. He’s just got runny poos.
And the reddest bottom ever.
So we’ve moved. Big post about that in the works.
Then Adam had a fever. Then D. Then D&V. Then D. And now D and a double ear infection. And he’s not sleeping well either due to the aforementioned D, V and ears or because it’s a new house and things are different and his schedule is wrong as due to the D, V and ears as he hasn’t been to nursery all week.
To say I am tired is the greatest understatement in the universe.
Not unpacked, of course, but getting there. Most important, my broadband is hooked up!
I have tons to do so will try and do a longer post about the move etc over the next day or so. Just wanted everyone to know we are alive and in the new house!
And, for your viewing pleasure:
Adam is home ill, again, today and I am sitting on the sofa as he stands watching TV and playing a game on my iPhone.
There seems to be 1000 studies with 1000 different answers as to how much ‘screen time’ is too much. And I can’t decide which way to go.
The actual issue is that Simon and I spend our lives in front of screens. He teaches computers and I’m a graphic artist which, these days, means Adobe Creative Suite and drawing with a mouse. Oh, I occasionally sketch in a book, but final drafts to finished drawings are done on a computer.
We have in this house 4 working computers, two TV based game consoles, three hand held games consoles and 2 iPhones. Hell, Simon and I met through the computer!
So how do we tell our son he can only watch TV or play on the Xbox ‘X hours a day’? Granted, I can pull the ‘Mummies and Daddies are adults and have different rules’ card, but I always hated that when I was a kid. Why do they get different rules for things like this?
Okay, so some studies have shown TV/computer time can hurt brain development. But they can’t prove it 100%. And he is learning as he watches or plays games on my iPhone. He’s learning numbers and shapes and colours on the one he’s playing right now. He learns things from CBeeBies and DVDs. So does it matter that he’s learning them from a screen?
He hardly spends all day every day in front of one. We go out at least once a day for a walk, sometimes twice. He is at nursery 3 days a week when he doesn’t see a screen from 9 am to 430 pm. He does watch some TV when he gets home, but that’s not for long before it’s time for dinner and bath and bed.
And we do other things, even when he’s home sick like today. In a bit we’re going to break out the crayons and do some colouring. We might still get out for a walk as his fever seems to be going away.
So I don’t have the final answer. He’s a long way away from using any of these items on his own, anyway. He sits with me or Simon to play games on CBeeBies website or on our iPhones. He doesn’t know how to turn on the TV. So Simon and I have some time to consider our position.
What’s your position on your kids and screen time and why?
For some reason I cannot figure out, Adam has taken to objecting to Mummy showing certain parts of her body, namely her knees and below.
If I, for whatever reason pull up my trouser legs, he comes over and pulls them down. And looks at me disapprovingly.
The other day I came out of our bedroom wearing just my PJ top and some undies, as I was about to take a shower. Adam ran into the bedroom and grabbed my PJ bottoms from the back of the chair and brought them to me. He was very insistent that I put them on until I finally went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Then he ‘got’ it.
I have no idea why he does this. Or where he got the idea that Mummies are not to show their legs!
I guess I should be grateful that it was never hot enough this past summer to wear shorts. Who knows what he might have done!
What odd things do your toddlers do that have no rhyme, reason or origin you can figure out?