Abby’s got a really bad cold and more than likely croup. We’ve had a day full of back to back “GOGO,” or Yo Gabba Gabba. She slept like crap last night and ended up in our bed so we could keep her head elevated and minimize the stridor & snot. Tonight I think we’re going to try her pillow pet in her crib to keep her elevated so I can possibly get some sleep. I’m a crabby lady today, I’m not going to lie.
Anyway, sick…and still cute.
The sick-day-do
I’m writing this post to serve as a reminder, mostly to myself, that I typically take this motherhood gig with a grain of salt. Abby is a really, REALLY easy kid. We rarely have any major issues or crazy stories to tell. Then there’s nights like tonight, that can be described as nothing short of a comedy of errors.
The hubs was running Abby’s bath, I was in the kitchen getting ready to do dishes. Abby’s been in the tub for a little bit when I hear, “uh… Jenna? Can you come in here?” I’m expecting a funny Abby trick or to grab a washcloth.
I get in the bathroom to find Abby standing on the bath rug naked, the tub with stuff floating in it. My first instinct is that she finally pooped in the tub (something I’ve been weirdly expecting for a while), but the hubs explains differently; Abby’s new hobby is sticking her open mouth in the water and getting water in her mouth. Something I’d like her to stop doing, but you try telling a 1 year old not to do something. Tonight is no different, and she does the same, except this time she gets a mouthful of water. And chokes.
She starts choking and gagging, coughing the water up and suddenly starts barfing her lunch (not her dinner, HER LUNCH) into the tub. The hubs pulls her out of the barf bath and stands her on the rug, where she immediately commences pissing all over.
I walk in to find a tub full of half chewed hotdog pieces and a really wet bathmat. Abby is squealing “BATTTHHH! BATTHHH!” because she wants to get back in (gross) having not been impacted AT ALL by just barfing and peeing within a minute of each other…and the hubs is just standing there, half laughing and half shell-shocked at what a complete fail this bath has become.
The water drains out, I fish all the hotdog pieces out of the tub with a paper towel, rinse it and all the toys off, and we start filling it again. Except now there is no hot water. We filled the tub and the sink up at the same time 10 minutes before, and apparently have a five gallon water heater.
So, there is no hot water for another “BAATTTHHHH!!!,” or to wash the piss out of the rug.
And this, friends is what parenthood is all about. May I never forget.
For a quick sleep training update – Abby cries when she knows she’s about to be laid down to sleep, but the minute she’s in her crib she’s quiet and sleep within seconds. It’s been going really well. My parents will be in town starting tomorrow, so we’ll see if that has any affect on her nighttime routine. (They are staying at a hotel, so I don’t expect too much of an issue.)
Just to get it out of the way – my insides are much better, thank you for asking. I’ve managed 3 meals without any, eh…distress, so that’s awesome. And I came into work this morning! Well, maybe more like this afternoon since I got all purdied up and came to work only to realize my laptop was still at home. (This SO isn’t the first time I’ve done this.) So I had to walk back to my car and go home and get it. BUT I WAS AT WORK TODAY, DAMMIT! And it felt REALLY good to be there. Mostly to be out of the house.
SO. Where do I begin this story? Hmmm. Hokay. So, since the dawn of Abbers we had ONE way of getting her to sleep, and that was in our arms. Sitting on the couch, walking her in circles around the dining room table, rocking her in her room, you name it – it happened in our arms. This wasn’t too big of a deal. When she got to be about 9 months, I asked her doctor about it. Her response? “She won’t need to fall asleep in your arms when she’s going off to college, so I wouldn’t worry about it.” She also referred me to a few books, including Ferber and others. So, we let it slide some more. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? (See also: I’m scurred of sleep training.)
Fast forward to a few months ago, suddenly Abbers has her nighttime bottle (shut up about her having a bottle, we’ll deal with that eventually) and instead of passing out in our arms, she’s a little ball of energy. And BOOK! READ ME THIS BOOK! I DON’T WANT TO BE HELD! And I’ll scream if you suggest sleeping! This was usually lasting us until 10, even 11pm sometimes. We resorted to laying her in our bed while one of us lays with her in the dark. (Probably a bad idea.) She’ll pull out every trick in the book, laughing at nothing, pulling her socks off, testing gravity, but eventually will quiet down and fall asleep (pseudo on her own). AND NOW, she will wake up in the middle of the night, will not fall asleep or allow you to put her back down in her crib, so she ends up back in our bed because WE NEED SLEEP SOMETIMES TOO, little girl.
We’ve been battling this for a while. And with the holidays, vacations, random nights out – it’s never been a good time to attempt sleep training.
Until this weekend.
I’ve been asking interweb friends, twitpeeps – you name it, I feel like I’ve gotten advice and encouragement from every last one of you. For some reason, it wasn’t until I read this blog post by Melissa at Dear Baby that I felt like I might actually be able to do it.
Abby is not going to do well. She will cry until she gags and maybe even barfs. She does that a lot if she gets hysterical. I’m preparing myself for that. I’m also preparing for having my own little meltdown since I’ll be extra hormonal by this weekend, likely crying at Disney World commercials I’ve seen a fafillion times.
Abby WILL do this though. I know she knows how to fall asleep on her own, I watch it nearly every night in our bed. She’s a smart girl. And she knows we are here. So, please, if you have any extra good juju to pass our way, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD pass it our way. It’s going to be a long weekend.
I’ll report as I can after Friday night, aka DOOMSDAY FOR ABBERS.
Yes, I am taking time out of my dwindling vacation to blog. I might be insane. Or this might be the first time since we got here that the internet connection hasn’t shitted out and we don’t have any impending activities to keep me busy.
So far, this vacay in Puerto Vallarta has been a big ole’ success. We’ve ziplined, taken a day trip to Sayulita (a little surfing village north of here) and have spent copious hours at the pool, and drinking & eating ourselves to near comatose levels. This is the first time I’ve taken a trip with this many friends, and it’s been super fun. I did manage to lose our point & shoot camera before we got off the airplane (Sun Country – call me if you find a camera with eleventy billion pictures of the same little girl) and also had a gallbladder attack the first night (I swear I ate less than a tablespoon of guac, medical professionals. Diagnose THAT!) but overall it’s been nothing but bliss.
But MY GOD do I miss my little girl. Since the internet has been spotty, we haven’t been able to Skype since we’d JUST get signed in and we’d lose it again. Last night though, it finally worked long enough to be able to see our little Abbers. She looked so much older already. I didn’t cry (even though I wanted to), just like how I barely held my shit together when we dropped her off on Saturday. I DID cry when I heard the hubs playing a video of her on his phone. He tried showing it to me and I yelled DON’T SHOW IT TO ME OR I’LL CRY which was stupid because at that point there were already gigantic tears in my eyes, so I yelled WHATEVER I’M ALREADY CRYING and watched it anyway.
I’m not lying when I say I never want to take a trip this long without her ever again. (This is, of course, being said by someone who has never tried taking a toddler on an airplane before. I know I’ll regret that the first time I ask her to “try to sit still and be quiet” for four hours in a tin can that will make her ears explode.)
Today we’re going to tool around the main drag and try to find a few gifts for Abbers (as well as myself because DUH), tonight we have reservations at an awesome place up on the hill with everyone, tomorrow is pool/recovery day, and then Saturday morning we hop back on the plane and I get to see my little girl. I will try not to think about the fact that with the windchill, it will be 100 DEGREES COLDER in Minnesota when we land. Did you see what I just said? ONE HUNDRED DEGREES COLDER.
On second thought, maybe the hub’s parents should just put Abby on a plane and we’ll just stay here.
And now, I will continue to clear out the over 400 posts in my Google Reader. I will not let it get that backed up EVER AGAIN.
But, dear internets, it is SO VERY HARD not to. I would like to scream “I told you so,” but I won’t.
(i told you so)
Yesterday, this story hit the newswire…again, discrediting “Doctor” Wakefield and severing the ties between vaccines and autism. From the article:
In the United States, more cases of measles were reported in 2008 than in any other year since 1997, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 90% of those infected had not been vaccinated or their vaccination status was unknown, the CDC reported.
“But perhaps as important as the scare’s effect on infectious disease is the energy, emotion and money that have been diverted away from efforts to understand the real causes of autism and how to help children and families who live with it,” the BMJ editorial states.
These two paragraphs speak VOLUMES. I’ll reiterate from the post from a little over a year ago that I wrote on the same subject – I’m not going to make any valiant attempts at changing anyone’s mind about whether they will vaccinate or not. However, if you’re on the fence, PLEASE look at the facts, and think about your child’s future. Or how horrible you’d feel if not only your child contracted measles, but then gave it to your best friend’s kid who also wasn’t vaccinated.
Autism SUCKS, I understand that. However, from what I understand polio sucks a lot harder. Like, a lot. I mean, FDR was a great dude but he suffered pretty bad. And whooping cough is no walk in the park either.
Let’s just break it down here; science is awesome. Smart people are kick ass. They know what they’re doing. Vaccines were created because of both of those things. Take advantage of them. Pretty please?
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