dispatch from ear infection central

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Things I’ve learned this weekend:

1) Baby Motrin is a gift from the Baby Gods. That is some fantastic stuff.

2) Giving Cate her medicine is sort of like giving it to the cats. It requires both me and Dave – he holds her head still long enough that I can squirt the stuff in her mouth. I tried doing it by myself, and she ended up with a big streak of orange goo across her cheek and into her hair when she jerked her head really fast.

3) Amoxicillin works quickly, however it seems to have given Cate explosive diarrhea. Fun! The past couple of days, it’s been so bad that we’ve had to stick her in the tub and hose her down with the shower nozzle. I’ve developed a whole new appreciation for our shower head on the five-foot extension hose, because man, that sure has come in handy for rinsing off her nether regions.

(On a side note, I am worried sick about sending Cate to daycare tomorrow when she has a massive case of the runs. I’m trying to feed her stuff that will constipate her a bit – meats, cereals, etc. – but if any of y’all have other ideas, please let me know. Meanwhile, I’m going to be trying prayer and making sure that she has a couple of extra outfits in her bag.)

4) I’m not sure if it’s the teething, or the fact that she’s been sick, or maybe it’s just another one of those Baby Milestone things, but Cate has suddenly decided to start waking up in the middle of the night. In the past, she would occasionally sort of halfway wake up and fuss a little while she was finding a new position to sleep in. When I heard her on the monitor, I’d look at the clock and give her 2 minutes to see if she would go back to sleep, and she almost always would. Now, though, it’s like this frantic shrieking, and when I get into her room, she’s standing up in her crib and reaching for me. Maybe nightmares? Who knows. She’s fine as soon as I pick her up, and she’ll fall asleep in our bed in a matter of minutes. It’s making me crazy, though. Mama needs her sleep, and I’m starting to wish that there was such a thing as Baby NyQuil. (There isn’t. I checked.)

jinxed

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Ok, everybody who read that last post knew that Cate was going to get sick the second that I hit “publish,” right? I wish I had thought about that ahead of time, because last night we got our first visit from the Ear Infection Fairy. And let me tell you, she’s a real bitch.

Cate basically howled all night. She’d sleep for an hour here and there, sandwiched between two-hour screamfests. I thought about waking Dave up to help me with her, but that’s as much a challenge as trying to wake the dead, plus she’s going through this phase right now that when she’s upset, she only wants me. She would’ve just screamed even more if I had handed her off to him, and try sleeping then, Mom! Ha! So it was just me and her. Awake. All. Night. Long. God.

By 8 a.m., I was on the verge of tears myself, so I called the pediatrician’s office. They got us in right away (not with Cate’s usual doctor, but I wasn’t in the mood to nitpick), confirmed my suspicions about the ear infection, and sent us on our way with a prescription for baby amoxicillin.

I also found out that Cate now weighs 22 pounds, 2 ounces. Holy god! Suddenly I’m really glad that I got the car seat that goes up to 30 pounds. I also learned that her weight plus the fact that she’s over 6 months old means that she can now have a full dose of baby Motrin, which should help with her discomfort quite a bit. I was scared to give her a full dose of baby Tylenol since I wasn’t sure of how much she weighed, and I know it can be hard for their little livers to process. It was kind of reassuring to have the doctor give me the green light.

Once Cate was in a good mood (thank you, Baby Motrin!), Dave took over for a couple of hours so I could get a nap, but I still feel like poop that’s been flattened by a steam roller. Hopefully now that we have the medication situation worked out, we’ll be able to keep Cate comfortable enough that she’ll go back to sleeping normally tonight. Fingers crossed, anyway.

our house is not that fun right now

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Dave has been sick with a horrible cold all week, which means I’ve been spending the week torn between nagging him to wash his hands ten thousand times a day before he picks up the baby, and fervently praying that Cate and I don’t catch it from him.

So far? I think I’m catching it. I’m fighting it off pretty well: drinking tons of fluids, taking vitamin C and zinc every few hours to keep my immune system boosted, and doing saline nasal irrigation several times a day (which is really disgusting, but I’ve found that it sometimes can successfully fight off sinus infections, so why not give it a shot?). It’s funny because if we didn’t have a baby, I’m sure that I would’ve surrendered a couple of days ago and just declared myself sick and that would’ve been that. But now I’m all, “oh HELL no, you’re not taking me down without a fight, cold germs!” I ain’t going out like that.

Cate seems to be fine. She’s a bit snottier than usual, but I think that may be because she’s been crying a lot more since her second tooth just broke through. Poor baby.

Today, Very-Sick Dave, Almost-Sick me, and Weepy-Bitey Cate headed off to our local district court to get Cate her first passport. Fun! As you might have expected, it was a fully dramatic trip involving two separate trips to the courthouse because in spite of all my planning, we were unprepared for everything we were going to need. Who knew they’d only take checks and not my debit card? So off to the bank we went, where I learned that they will, in fact, print off a sheet of three personal checks for you. Isn’t that nice? I had no idea that service existed. And it’s only a $1 fee per check, so that’s a lot better than a $5 money order. (It was either that or drive ten miles back to the boonies to get the checkbook which lives in my purse, not my diaper bag. And, dude. No way.)

I’m not sure when we’re going to the UK to visit Dave’s family, but I wanted to get all of our paperwork in line so that we can go whenever we want. I also had to get my passport updated, since it still had my maiden name on it, and also featured a pre-gastric bypass photo of me that I will be quite happy to never see again. Luckily mine can be done through the mail, no courthouse trips necessary.

But if Dave isn’t feeling better by tomorrow, I’m sending him to the doctor. The last thing I need is a husband in the hospital with pneumonia.

not to be read during or near mealtime

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The only reason I’m writing about this is so Cate can read it someday when she’s older and be mortified that this story is published on the Internet for all to see.

This morning started off like normal. Cate woke up, I fed her, and then I went to get her dressed for daycare. I let her crawl around naked for a while, which she loves to do. Seriously, y’all have no idea how many naked pictures and videos I have of this child. She gets mad when I try to put clothes on her. So I try to let her have plenty of naked time every day because it makes her happy, and I love hearing her laugh. And ok, occasionally she’ll pee on the floor, but you know, when you’ve cleaned up as many cat hairballs as I have, that’s really no big thing.

Today, she pulled a first: she pooped on the carpet. Normally when she poops, she does the whole red-faced, grunting thing, and it takes her a while to produce anything. Obviously, if I had seen any signs of an impending poop, I would’ve slapped a diaper on her and that would’ve been that. But this happened so fast – she slowed down mid-crawl, and PLLLLBBBTTTT!!! It just exploded out of her butt. And all over her legs and feet.

The next ten seconds are still replaying in slow-motion in my head. She turned around, sort of surprised, like “hey, looky at what I just did!” Then… she grabbed it. Oh, the horror. I grabbed her arm to stop her from making more of a mess, and in doing so, she managed to smear her poop-covered hand all over my pajamas.

So that’s the story of Why We Were Late for Daycare today, since a bath for both of us was mandatory after that little incident. God, my gag reflex is still acting up when I just think about it.

Also, on our way out the door, I tripped on our front step. This same thing happened back when Cate was about ten days old. I didn’t skin my knee this time, but I did manage to twist my ankle, stub my pinky toe and slam my back against the side of the house before landing flat on my butt. Don’t ask me how I pulled that off – I’m sure I couldn’t demonstrate it if my life depended on it. The good news is that no clothing was ruined, and Cate was totally fine. I wasn’t even carrying her this time – I had set the car seat down to turn around and grab my cell phone (which I had dropped) when I fell. She got a little upset because I screamed when it happened, but she got over it quickly. (I yelled the Queen Mother of All Dirty Words, too – good morning, neighbors! Sorry about that!) I don’t think that bodes well for a good day, do you?

Unrelated: Sally is having a baby! I’m so excited for her, I’ll bet she’s just about the cutest pregnant lady ever, and I can’t wait to have playdates when we’re in my hometown. (Also, Sally, I hope the above poop story doesn’t make you re-think this whole baby thing. I promise it’s totally worth it 99.9% of the time.)

you just know "redrum" is next

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This video is a bit longer than most (a little over 3 minutes), but if you watch until the end, you get to hear Cate say “mama,” in both normal and demonic, possessed-baby voices.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHoJ4J3OvD4

You can also see her do the Baby Fish Mouth face that she’s been making lately, which totally confused me for a while, but now I think it’s related to teething. Every time she does it, Dave says we should hold her up against the window and see if she sticks, because her mouth looks like a little suction cup.

toofies!

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I had a huge “duh!” parenting moment yesterday. Cate’s been super-fussy this week, just a lot crankier than normal. Normally she takes two naps a day that are about 1-2 hours long, but she was taking several 20-30 minute naps instead, and waking up still tired and even grumpier than when she went to sleep. We assumed that it was the daycare transition, and that we were just going to have to suffer through it.

Yesterday afternoon, Dave took her outside to calm her down – since simply walking her outside almost always makes her stop crying instantly – and when he came back in, he said, “Hey, did you notice that she has a tooth now?”

Um, what? No, I hadn’t noticed that! She hasn’t been showing any of the typical signs for teething (excessive drool, etc.), so it never occurred to me that was the source of her crankiness. I knew from my mom that I got my teeth on the late side of normal (around 10 months, I think), and I just figured Cate would do likewise. But I felt in her mouth, and sure enough, there’s one corner of one little tooth poking up through the gums, and the other one feels like it’s just about to break through.

[For the record, Dave only discovered the tooth because she bit his hand and he noticed something a lot sharper than usual. So I’m not a totally neglectful parent, I just normally try to not let my child bite me. She already tries to pull my hair out, I don’t need the extra pain.]

Of course, this explains why she woke up at 1 a.m. shrieking the other night, which is highly unusual for her. And when I got her, there was a tiny bit of blood on her lip and some on the sheet of her crib. Dave and I thought maybe she was trying to stand up in her crib and banged her face on the bars, which didn’t really make sense because the spot of blood was exactly where her head would be when she’s sleeping. Now I realize that must’ve been when the tooth first broke through, and that must’ve been why she was so distressed.

Last night she got extra screamy right around bedtime, so I gave her a tiny bit of baby Tylenol before her last bottle. Girlfriend slept like a log for 10 straight hours. Poor baby must’ve been exhausted, and we had no idea what she was going through.

I’ll try to get pictures of the tooth (or teeth, but I’m not sure when that second one is going to show up) as soon as she lets me see them.

wednesday woes

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Ok, so it’s Day 3 of this whole working-from-home gig, and I have to say that so far? I am not a huge fan of it.

Monday was the day that we kept Cate at home with us, and Dave and I tried to take shifts so that we could each get our work done. I would now like to laugh at myself for ever thinking that could work. Basically, when it’s Dave’s shift with the baby, I have to hide in my office, because if she so much as catches a glimpse of me, she will scream her ever-loving head off until I pick her up. And have I mentioned how it’s impossible for me to concentrate on anything if I can hear her crying? I know God gave us that Protective Mama Bear instinct for a reason, but man, sometimes I wish it had an off switch and I could just tune it out.

Tuesday and today, Cate’s been at daycare, which is good as far as my work productivity, but man, I hate leaving her there when she’s crying. It just rips my heart out. I know she’ll get over it as time goes on, but I’m not sure I will.

I just keep reminding myself of how much we really need this money – especially since our stupid adjustable-rate mortgage is about to go up again next month, and oh my god, I just want to finish getting this house fixed up (which, again, requires money) so we can get the hell out of here. And you better believe we will read every single word of every document before we sign another mortgage. Stupid AmeriQuest bastards.

Totally unrelated: I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it here, but my dad is not a big animal lover. When I was pregnant, I lost count of how many times he told me that we should get rid of all four cats before the baby was born. I told him that was ridiculous, because it’s not like we’re raising pit bulls here. When was the last time you read a story in the paper about a small child who was mauled by a housecat? It just doesn’t happen.

“What if one of them scratches her in the eye?” he said.

“Oh please, what are the odds of that?” I replied.

You see where this is going, right? This morning, Cate was playing happily in the bathroom with me while I was getting dressed. Teenie was lying on her side on the bathmat – because, you know, when Mama goes to the bathroom, everybody has to join the party. Cate crawled over to Teenie and tried to rub her face on the cat, like she always does. Teenie got up really quickly, and in the process of doing so, she scratched Cate across the cheek with one of her hind legs. It was a total accident, not malicious in any way on Teenie’s part, and in fact she ran and hid when Cate started to scream.

Luckily the scratch didn’t get her eye, it was just a couple of inches off. It was pretty minor, didn’t even break the skin. But just so I never have to hear “I told you so” from my dad, I’m going to avoid taking any pictures for the next couple of days until it heals completely. And hopefully he’ll never read this blog entry. (Not a big stretch, since I don’t think he ever reads this site anyway.)

And another random topic jump: it’s national delurking day, so say hi.

The Great Mofo Delurk 2007