Head case

Biggest take-away from our conference with Jack's teachers last week? We have an almost-4-year-old boy who likes to fool around and get attention.

It's not like they told us anything we haven't already heard. He needs reminders to stay on task. He can't keep himself quiet and he can't keep his body still. He doesn't take a nap and he can't lie there quietly for the half-hour when everyone else does.

But you know what? HE'S (almost) FOUR. For the love of God, it's preschool. It's not like he's preparing for the SATs here. Of course I didn't say that to his teachers, because I get it. He's disrupting other kids and they can't spend all their time focusing on him. And that's not fair to anyone.

But in the end, I think it's just Jack being Jack. He wanders around here at home. He has never been a fan of using his inside voice. He's spent the last two years hip-checking his sister and not showing remorse about it. He rarely takes a nap on the weekends and he's definitely not quiet for a half-hour in his room.

When we picked him up from school today, his teacher said he had an awesome day and she couldn't believe how great he was. Apparently, the key to good behavior is a head injury, such as the one he got last night.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know we took Jack to the ER because he fell and hit his head at the pool, complained he was going to throw up an hour later and fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Josh had taken Jack and Emmie and I stayed home with Maeve, so I got the information secondhand, but apparently he was walking away from the hot tub area and the floor was super slippery and when he fell backward, the back of his head hit the raised tile ledge around the hot tub. Josh said he cried for about 10 minutes, and was fine. They went to dinner afterward and during dinner, he ate some pasta but then didn't want his pizza and started crying that he felt like he was going to throw up. After he fell asleep in the car, Josh started to suspect maybe these things were all related.

After they got home and he told me what happened, I called the pediatrician's service and the doctor on call told us we should probably take him to the ER just to be safe. He was sobbing that his tummy hurt and had a bump the size of an egg on the back of his little skull. We had our awesome neighbor (and longtime reader), Chris, come over to stay with a sleeping Emmie and an awake-and-ready-to-party Maeve and headed out to Children's Hospital.

After bathing ourselves and Jack in hand sanitizer several times during the 25-minute wait in urgent care, a doctor pronounced him "likely fine" and told us kids can actually puke twice after a head injury before they even think about giving a CT scan. Who knew?

Jack of course stopped crying the minute we left the house and was all smiles for the nurses and doctor. He gave them all a play-by-play of the events of the night and made everyone laugh with his detailed descriptions. Thanks to our (recently changed and expensive) health insurance, that little excursion set us back a couple hundred bucks. Awesome!

After returning home with the doc's permission to send him off to school in the morning, he finally got to sleep around 9:30 p.m. We were instructed to wake him once an hour to make sure he wasn't concussed and since I am awake multiple times per night to feed Maeve, I just went in and checked on Jack as well. Of course, he was up and ready for the day at 6:15 this morning. Seriously, does this child never sleep in? Does he have a secret alarm I am not aware of?

But apparently, his tiredness made for some docile behavior today. And lucky me, because we dealt with all that nonsense and didn't know how he would be today, Josh didn't fly out as scheduled and worked at home today. Yay! A one-day reprieve from single-parenting! And one more day to sleep in! I mean not that I don't love having my husband around, but let's face facts: my sleep is more important than anything right now.

But he left tonight and I was on my own for bathtime and bedtime. And let me tell you, at one point, everyone but me was crying. And I just had to laugh because there was nothing else to do. I came downstairs with Maeve to find an empty wine rack -- and that's when I started to cry.

Elbow grease

The morning after we brought Maeve home from the hospital, I was in a sleep-deprived haze when I heard a knock on the bedroom door a little after 10 a.m. My mother-in-law greeted us with a phrase I really wasn't expecting to hear.

"I think Emmie needs to go the ER," she said. "I think she dislocated her elbow or her shoulder."

That certainly got my attention. I snapped awake and asked what happened. Turns out, Emmie was being almost 2 years old and decided to throw herself on the ground while Grandma was holding her hand. Ahh, the joys of noodle children.

Josh jumped up and got dressed and I went downstairs to investigate. I found her watching "The Wiggles" and eating a snack with her left hand, refusing to use her right arm at all. Grandma said she wouldn't move it and cried when she tried to check it out. She also had three large butterfly stickers affixed to each cheek and her forehead, but I didn't even think to ask why. They seemed to make her happy, so I rolled with it. Besides, I was too tired to care why she had them there.

Sure enough, she gave me a tear-filled "No" when I tried to look at it. Seeing as there was no way I was dragging three-day-old Maeve to the germ-infested Children's Memorial Hospital ER, Josh and his mom took Emmie and I stayed home.

I must really have been tired, because this all seemed very natural and I didn't worry about it at all. She was in capable hands and I was dealing with the Nursing Nipple Pain of Death, so my mind was a little cloudy.

Less than an hour later, they were home and Emmie was no worse for wear. My mother-in-law said the nurses were kind of mean, but the urgent-care people popped the elbow back in and she was good as new. Sure, there was some crying, but again, I was so tired I forgot to be overly concerned about it.

A little Motrin and a nap and you would never know she suffered. Grandma is scarred for life. Daddy was stoked about yet another great parking spot. Mommy was just glad someone was here to take her to the hospital so she didn't have to leave the house.

And of course, now she's prone to having this happen again. And again. And again. I hope Josh took notes on the proper way to pop it back into place, because there's no way I am paying the $100 co-pay for that every few weeks.

Picture-perfect

Remember a few weeks ago when Jack fell on the playground and gave himself a black eye? The day before school pictures were set to be taken?

We got the pictures back today. I introduce to you, my son, the scarred one. I'm not sure which I think is more awesome: the look on his face or the black eye. I don't think we're going to have them retaken; we'll look back at this shot someday and remember it fondly.

Suckitude, Part the Second

As we left it last post, Jack's school called and the secretary said, "Is this Amy? Hi. Jack had an accident."

My first thought, upon seeing the caller ID, was that he had thrown up. Emmie puked in the morning, so of course he would be puking in the afternoon and I just knew that I would be puking by dinner. Great, just great.

Except then she said he had an accident. The day before he had "an accident" and they just changed his pants to the spare we leave at school. So what the hell were they calling me for? Just change him.

"He fell on the playground and we don't think he has a concussion and he didn't break anything, but he fell on his head and we have him here in the office and we just can't calm him down," she said. "I think you need to come and get him."

What the? Fell? Head? Concussion? Well, shit. That is no good. I told her I would be right over and hung up. My next realization was that Emmie was in the middle of her nap. How in the hell was I going to get her up and downstairs and into the car without carrying her? This put a kink in things.

Putting my first-born's needs above all others, I tried to rouse Emmie to no avail, so I reached into the crib and picked her up. Then I carried her down the stairs. Sometimes, you just have to carry your 25-pound toddler in an emergency, cerclage or no cerclage. She woke up enough once we were downstairs that she could walk out to the car on her own two feet, so off we went.

When I arrived, he was sitting slumped in a chair with his teacher and a bag of ice on his face. I could hear the moaning before I got around the corner in the office and when he saw me, the wailing started anew. When he turned toward me, I felt awful. His poor little eye was all black and scraped from the eyebrow, down around his eye to his cheek.

I sent my beautiful child off to school that morning and they sent him home a scarred prize-fighter. Apparently, he was running and missed the steps on the playground and hit the ground with his head first, then his hands. But seeing as he is a boy and we have definitely had our share of injuries over the last three years, I was pretty calm about the whole thing.

His doctor didn't seem to think anything was serious enough to merit an office visit, so we hung out on the couch and played and watched a little Wiggles until he calmed down. He was pushing his sister down after about an hour, so I knew he had to be fine.

The best part about the whole incident? Picture day was the next day. Oh yes, my kid had a black eye in his first school picture. And when another mom suggested I could just have them retake it later, I asked if she was crazy.

"I have a blog, this is material too good to pass up!" I crowed. That's me, always exploiting my children for material. But how can you not show this off?


Day 1, ouch


Day 2, even better

Taking a knee

Poor Jack and his skinned, scraped, contused, oozing knees. The kid is wearing a huge Band-aid on each knee and is now deathly afraid of removing said Band-aids.

Last night at bathtime, we told him we had to take them off because we wanted his war wounds to get a little circulation, and besides, wet Band-aids are just disgusting. So I told Josh to take them off while I directed my mother-in-law on what bandages and Neosporin products we needed her to grab from the drugstore.

I heard a blood-curdling scream and crying from the bathroom as I sent her on the emergency first aid run, and I came in to see Josh looking pale and pained and Jack sobbing and standing up dripping water everywhere. I asked what happened and Josh said when he pulled the Band-aid off, he pulled some skin with it.

Well then. I understood the expressions on everyone's face and tried to reassure Josh it wasn't his fault and calm Jack down and reassure him that pulling the other Band-aid off his other leg wasn't going to hurt. I lied to his face, but there was nothing else to be done. I instructed Josh to just grab it and pull quickly, but he balked, understandably, because he didn't want to traumatize either himself or Jack again. But I insisted and held on to a wet Jack while he pulled.

The screaming ensued again, although I suspect it was more fear than pain that time. We got him out of the tub and dried him off as he sniffled and moaned and clung to me like I was his only hope in the world. Then Grandma arrived home with the supplies, including some antiseptic spray.

I would like to point out it was antiseptic spray that clearly stated on the label contained NUMBING ingredients. I am pretty sure the fine print on the box instructs people to drink a bottle of bourbon before using the spray because that was about the only way it was numbing anything. Instead, I sprayed it on his knees and Jack jumped a foot off the counter and started screaming, "It hurts, Mommy. It's huuuuurts, Mommy." Mother of the Year material for sure, folks.

We immediately applied the Neosporin with pain relief and that must have actually CONTAINED pain relief because he stopped screaming and started whimpering instead. After applying a Band-aid the size of Texas to each of his kneecaps, we were able to calm him down. He kept requesting "medicine in my mouth" so we gave him some Motrin and tucked him into bed.

Today his wounds were oozing and weeping all day (hope you weren't enjoying your breakfast just now) and when it was time to change the Band-aids before bed, I assured him we wouldn't use the spray again. No no, we would use hydrogen peroxide!

As a child, I had plenty of scrapes like this and my father's cure-all for everything was to bathe the injury in peroxide. I once put a hole almost completely through my middle finger when it was caught under a big-wheel and my dad tried to just pour peroxide on it. I ended up needing stitches and still have a scar. So my background told me to go with what I knew in this situation.

Jack sat on the bathroom counter as Josh held his legs over the sink and I commenced with the pouring. For the first 10 seconds, Jack was fascinated by the bubbling. And then the pain set in. And the screaming started. I am pretty sure he now has PTSD when it comes to me coming anywhere near his knees. But again, we smeared on the Neosporin and slapped on a Band-aid and all was well.

Unfortunately, we will need to keep doing this little song and dance each night until it scabs over. And they say motherhood isn't glamorous...

Someday she will kill me for this post

Yesterday was like any normal day at Chez Snarky -- kids hitting each other, mommy sighing, general whiny-ness on everyone's part -- so I didn't even notice that Emmie was a little crabbier than normal. That and the fact my mom was on Granny Nanny duty, so really, I might have been zoning out a little and trying to pretend I couldn't hear the children whining at me.

We went to the park in the afternoon and tag-teamed the kids running around like maniacs. As an aside, let me tell you that a 3.5-year-old and an 18-month-old will never, ever want to do the same thing at the same time at the park. So you have three choices: 1. You leave someone unattended and possibly lose sight of him for more than 20 seconds, giving yourself a heart attack on several occcasions until you spot the back of his head; 2. You take them to a smaller park where they are contained and within sight at all times, but bored out of their minds because there are only three swings and some ride-on toys; or 3. You enlist help and bring another adult to the big park, hopefully sticking the other person with the attention-span-of-a-gnat 18-month-old who spends the whole time running from one side of the park to the other. Yesterday I went with door No. 3. While at the park, Emmie spent most of her time climbing, running, falling and sliding, so I chose wisely.

Emmie and Grandma went home slightly earlier than Jack and I, and when we came into the house, my mom told me she thought Emmie needed to go to the doctor because she thought she might have a bladder infection. I asked what in her extensive medical training led her to believe this and she said she had just witnessed Emmie bend over and start screaming while grabbing her diaper. When she went to change her, there was blood in it. As the needle screeched off the record in my mind, I switched into Super Mom mode and called the pediatrician. They felt very bad, but couldn't get us in until 8 p.m. In the meantime, they recommended cranberry juice, a bath and Motrin. As Emmie won't drink anything but milk (num-num, in Emmie-speak) I figured we might have a tough sell. But I was undeterred in my quest to provide pure cranberry juice for my poor little baby. I hopped in the car and sped down the street to Whole Foods, emerging $8 lighter after purchasing 32 ounces of 100-percent pure cranberry juice. No high fructose corn syrup for this child, and god DAMN, that shit is pricey. I could buy heroin cheaper.

I came home, poured her three parts juice to one part water, and handed her the cup with a huge fake smile on my face. "Emmie, have some juice! It's yummy! Mmmmmmm!" as I took a drink myself and tried to stifle the pucker that was forming. She took one drink and looked at me with contempt. She then refused to drink another drop. Great, and I couldn't even re-purpose it myself with some vodka and lime later.

My mom took her upstairs and plopped her in the bathtub just as the doctor's office was calling back. They wanted to see her early because they could get a urine sample and squeeze us in. Fabulous, I said, because frankly, this kid pees a lot and I couldn't imagine living through three hours of the screaming every time she needed to tinkle. We quickly dressed her, packed a sandwich and a banana and left the house. I inexplicably brought the stupid cranberry juice, thinking she would drink it. That earned me a withering look from Josh, who had arrived home just in time to head to the doctor's office with us. Once we arrived at the doctor's office, which is just a few blocks away, he turned around and came right back home to get her some milk. Which is what I should have just done in the first place, but didn't as I was aiming to please the nice nurse and prove I could follow directions.

They got her all set up with a urine collection bag taped underneath her diaper and had us wait a few minutes for her to pee. She was having a grand time running around the waiting room, shoving bites of almond butter sandwich in her mouth and waving to the the staff before they put us in a room. We weren't even in there two minutes before she stood still and started screaming a sound I have never heard before. I grabbed her, hugging and rocking her while she screamed and screamed. "Well, I guess she peed," I said to Josh, who looked stricken by this turn of events.

The doctor walked in at that very moment, witnessing the sweaty, snotty, screaming mess that was my sweet Emmie. She listened to the symptoms and agreed it was likely a urinary tract infection based on all the evidence. She had the nurse take the bag out of her diaper and we could all SEE the blood in it. While I attempted to calm Emmie down, with little success, the nurse ran the quick test and came back in to the room looking puzzled. She said there was a lot of blood in the urine, but no signs of infection at all. Now it was the doctor who looked puzzled. I, of course, was thinking she had some rare, invasive disease and ohmygod what the hell is wrong with my baaaabyyyyyy?

The doctor said she was going to take a quick look, just to make sure the bleeding wasn't coming from anywhere else and as soon as she got a good look at her lady bits, she said, "Oh yeah, that's it. She's got a tear right there." She pointed out an angry-looking red line right where you really don't want an angry-looking red line. And I was promptly horrified. The doctor said it's actually really common in little girls with all the climbing and falling and general uncoordination. They fall and the skin just doesn't have enough give to it. Based on the number of times Emmie tripped and fell yesterday at the park and at home, in addition to falling right on to a toy lawn mower after tripping over another toy on the floor, I am not surprised at all.

As someone who has birthed two children, and has had stitches in that very same area, I can attest to the fact that peeing BURNS LIKE ACID ON THAT WOUND. It is nothing I want my daughter to experience and I assure you her reaction to the pain upon peeing was completely appropriate. I may have done the same thing myself once or twice postpartum. So I completely empathize with the poor girl.

The doctor said we should slather her with A&D at all diaper changes to create a moisture barrier, cutting down on the sting, and use Bacitracin twice a day to avoid infection. The area in question heals quickly, as I can also attest to, so she should be good as new in a few days.

I was expecting bad times last night, but the A&D and Motrin must have done the trick because we didn't hear a peep out of her. Today we were blessed with pain-free peeing and a happy child. Hopefully that means she is already on the mend. Someday she will read this and be horrified that I discussed such a personal injury on the internet, FORGODSSAKEMOTHER, but I was traumatized by this and what better place to overshare such personal details?

Skinned knees are fun

This is how Emmie has looked for the past few weeks:


The poor thing learned to run recently and now it's all she does. Except she thinks she's Marion Jones and not a 17-month-old who hasn't fully developed her sense of balance or the ability to watch where the hell she is going.

The nasty scab/gaping wound/MRSA-waiting-to-happen hole in her knee became a fixture on her leg last week at the park. I was not witness to this particular incident as I was dropping Jack off at camp, but Grandma said she took off running and had no sense to look where she was going and left the skin of her kneecap on the concrete. But she barely cried with that injury, thus proving my theory that having a brother beat the shit out of you for a year makes you a very tough little girl.

Things were fine until a few days later when she was playing in the basement and stumbled over one of the 54,000 toys we have down there. Right on to her knee. Which resulted in her scab being ripped off by the carpeting and blood pouring forth. That one earned her a Band-aid when she finally stopped crying. Except every time she looked down and saw the Band-aid, the crying started anew. Which was cute for a few minutes and then kinda annoying after an hour. I was like "Get over it sister. You've had worse happen. Remember when your head was slammed in the fridge? That's worthy of crying. This is nothing." Surprisingly, my buck-up speech did nothing for her outlook. Instead she crawled into my lap and laid with her head on my chest for a half-hour, sighing and burying her face every time she looked at her knee.

This past weekend she added the double-scraped shins to her repertoire when we attended a post-wedding brunch. She was having a delightful time climbing up and down the brick patio stairs. Until she slipped. And then the screaming ensued because she slipped right on the edge of the bricks, scraping both shins the entire way. Nothing is more fun at a wedding brunch than a screaming, bleeding kid! Although, what better form of birth control for a young, married couple?

I know her legs will likely look like this for years to come if she's anything like her mother and likes to play outside and run around and generally act crazy. But if we could avoid any more gaping wounds for the rest of the summer, that would be nice.

And just so he doesn't feel left out, here's a picture of Jack. He has plenty of bruises of his own to show off, but most notable would be the dark circles under his eyes. Those would be the result of yesterday's no-nap shenanigans coupled with his penchant for waking up before 6 a.m. every day.



I will spare you the pictures of my own dark circles, which are also a direct result of Jack's penchant for waking up before 6 a.m. every day. That is something no one should be subjected to.

Summer summer summer time

Summer has finally arrived in Chicago. Although it still rained today, we had enough rain-free hours of warm and humid weather to hit the splash park this afternoon.


Emmie jumps right in and starts getting wet, unlike her brother who stayed dry for the better part of three months at this park at this age.


She loves it so much, she even went down the waterslide multiple times. She is our daredevil, for sure.


"I swear to God I will cut you if you make me leave this water park." She has perfected that look, just like her father. I swear, she is Mini Josh.

Then we have Mr. Jack. Jack enjoys taking buckets, filling them up and dumping them out in addition to running around the periphery of the water. At no time does he actually enjoy getting wet. He will do it, but usually only by accident.


His legs look like they're going to slide out from under him, but he has excellent balance.


He's actually IN the water. But Jack, look out for the big metal pole with the big metal screws. That pole! The one right... there.


Yep, he ran right into the pole because he closed his eyes to avoid water splashing in them. Seriously Chicago Park District, did you not SEE this as a hazard when you built it? Metal bolts and screws at toddler height are an excellent design element for a water park.

Another week, another unsightly gash on the forehead. It's going to be a long summer.

Ouch

You know what happens when you are running full-speed down the length of the lawn and trip over the edge of the grass, falling face-first into the concrete patio without breaking your fall with any part of your body except your forehead?



Oh boy, did that one leave a mark. I was able to finally calm him down from the hysterical crying by pointing out the hole he made in the ground, which interested him quite a bit, and an episode of "Sesame Street" while I held a bag of ice on his head.

Road rash and a huge goose egg just scream "child abuse" when you take your kid to Dairy Queen for being so brave now doesn't it?

You know what happens when you're just minding your own business outside in the sunshine, looking for rocks to give Mommy?



Look at the return of Blondie with all the time she spends outside. I still have no idea where she gets it from, but I think it suits her.

Again with the violence

I am sure everyone is sick of reading about my aggressive kid and his penchant for abusing his sister, but god damn, I am sick of watching it happen.

Today's event involved a toy train and her nose followed by six tissues worth of blood, a bottle of Oxyclean and 15 minutes of tears. Also, a serious timeout. I don't care what the "experts" say; when he hits, he sits. That's my new motto.

I told my mom if it was Josh or I inflicting this kind of abuse, they would take our kids away from us. It's not a joke -- I can't let this continue.

The sight of blood didn't even faze him. He looked a little confused, but he certainly didn't look contrite. I just don't know what to do with this anymore. I guess hope he grows out of it before he inflicts any serious injuries. Or that she learns to wallop back. Though I know I will rue the day she does that because then I'll be refereeing fights instead of sending one to timeout and hugging the other.

The poor thing. Her fever finally broke last night and she had her appetite back today and then he practically breaks her nose. The good news is that I will be able to hide her bruise behind a surgical mask and everyone will just suspect swine flu instead of sibling abuse.

Bumper cars

This morning we were eating breakfast as we normally do in the dining room. Jack was fooling around like he normally does and looking for an excuse to leave the table like he normally does. I was multi-tasking like I normally do, getting food for him and helping Emmie with hers.

He told me he was done and informed me "I carry applesauce" to the sink to put the dish away. I turned to put his plate in the kitchen and heard the glass bowl of applesauce hit the ground followed by a scream.

I turned around to see him laying on the floor, the chair on its back, in front of the bench we have in there. He clearly had tipped backwards when he tried to push the chair back and I am 99.9 percent sure he whacked his noggin on the edge of the bench.

I scooped him up and expected to see blood everywhere, but found none. Instead, I found an alarmingly large bump already forming. I helped him up and comforted him with some hugs while trying to decide what action to take. I grabbed the phone and called his father, who was of no help whatsoever as he was on a train between Chicago and Bloomington. He did, however, answer the SECOND time I called him. He suggested I call the pediatrician. If nothing else, Jack's timing was impeccable because he fell a mere three minutes after the office opened for the day.

As I was dialing the number, he made a miraculous recovery as evidenced by his crossing the room and throttling his sister. I was describing his fall to the nurse while Emmie was screaming in the background, and when she sympathetically asked if that was him, I breezily replied, "Oh no. That's his sister who he just hit. He's actually in a timeout." Everyone had a good chuckle over that one. Except Emmie, who really found nothing funny about it.

The nurse said we didn't need to worry unless he was vomiting or bleeding, of which he was doing neither. The bump was now so large it was making his hair stick out funny, but she assured me it was probably fine.

So I packed them up and took them to the Children's Museum as planned. I figured if he started puking and passed out, I could always blame it on them and sue for big money.

Falling for you

Who is the asshole that lets her second child fall head first off a changing table while she stands literally three inches away and turns her head for one second?

I will give you one guess. You'd think a second-time mom would know better. Not so much.

Emmie is fine. I think I just stopped shaking an hour later.

There's nothing quite like the sight of your child falling face-first into the carpet and hitting her face on the metal heating vent. I think I aged 10 years. Jack happened to be standing right there as well and while Emmie was screaming, I kept telling him it was OK, that he didn't do anything wrong, it was mommy's fault. He looked scared and kept yelling "Josh! Daddy! Josh!" down the stairs until Josh finally came back in the house from outside.

Stellar parenting today, folks, stellar.

Hurts so good

We had our first official injury today.



Mr. I Don't Listen To My Mommy or My Grandma was fooling around in the hallway at Grandma's house, taking the picture frames off the wall. He tried to grab one that was just a little too high and it fell off the wall and the corner of the glass caught him right on the cheek.

Much crying commenced and after applying some pressure with a cold washcloth, it was determined to be more of a scratch than anything serious. But because it was on his face, it bled copiously.

After crying for about five minutes, he abruptly looked up at me and announced, "All done crying." An Elmo band-aid and some Neosporin and he was good as new.



Every time I look at him now, though, it's so jarring to see a big red gash across his presssshush perfect cherubic cheek. I considered calling a plastic surgeon, but thought that might be a little over the top, considering it was just a minor scratch.

Perhaps a scar will give him a little street cred with the preschool set next year.