Curse you Poison Ivy

We have told our girls many times about the plant and they have a healthy fear of the weed.  There is a lot of it growing around our area so the girls stay on the road and don't venture into unknown territory without our go ahead. 

So I take my 6 year old across the road so she can climb the driveway of our neighbor and go play.  It's a steep, long driveway and each side is covered in poison ivy.  Stay in the middle of the driveway I remind her, "I will" she cheerfully yells as she runs up the hill.  Satisfied that she is safe I walk back home.

The next day she wakes up in the morning complaining of bug bites itching her. I'm thinking this is odd since it's late in the season and too cold for mosquitoes, but we did have a oddly warm day yesterday, okay maybe.  I ask to look at the bites and there are three small red bumps around her knee, okay put Afterbite on her marks and send her off to school.  The next day she is still complaining about the itch so I have another look and there are now more red bumps and the old ones have grown (okay not looking like mosquito bites anymore).  

My mind is in search mode .... 

poison ivy? (but it's around her knee not her ankle) 

bed bugs? (ewwww)

flea bites? (yes, her friend has a kitten)  

I hop on the computer and start my search to find out what this is. 

"Ah Ha, my girl has..er well at least I'm pretty sure, she has poison ivy."

But where the heck did she pick it up, since she swears she didn't go off the driveway at her friends.

My husband makes an oatmeal bath for her and I treat the wounds with a Burosol solution.  The next day there are more red bumps and the old wounds defiantly are resembling poison ivy (time for more Burosol).  The next day even more bumps have popped up.  She now has gone from 3 bumps near her knee to many spots around her knee, another cluster on the back of her ankle, a strip above each of her inner elbows, and finally many underneath her buttocks on her legs.  I change the treatment to a hydrocortizone cream. (Grrrr) At this point I am very frustrated that it continues to spread.  I strip the bed and blankets and anything that may have come in contact with her skin, towels you name it.  My neighbor gave me a treatment that kills the oil that could still be on her skin, so we treated her with that yesterday and so far has not seemed to spread, hopefully we are just dealing with treating the existing wounds....cross our fingers.

Well, it has now been a full week and luckily she is on the mend.  Although a few more spots have popped up on her arms she doesn't complain about any itching except for one spot on her leg.  Her old wounds are quite ugly, the poor girl, it seems, is very allergic to the cursed weed.

No Pain, No Gain

I love going for a walk with my girls.  It is a wonderful bonding experience and great exercise, at least for them.  In the spring and summer they bring new meaning to the saying 'stop to smell the roses'.  In their case it is stop at every flower, be it weed or not, and pick it (usually for mommy).  Now we live in a rural area so we are surrounded by wild flowers and the whole length of our road is riddled with flora.  Needless to say we do not walk at a very brisk pace.  So I may have to stand around a lot more than I get to walk and I may end up with stinky hands from a strange floral bouquet, but I still love it.

My 6 year old is riding very well on her bicycle and my 3 year old is really getting a handle on her tricycle.  So I'm thinking great we'll be able to get some speed in our walks if I have two girls on bikes and another in a stroller.  I head out today with my 3 year old (6 year old is in school), she's on her tricycle and I have the baby in the stroller.  We start out and she is pushing her trike better than ever, for all of 3 steps, before she stops to ask me a question.  We start out again, we get 2 more steps before she stops again to point at something she sees.  Basically the whole trip was like this walking 2 or 3 steps and stopping to chat. It was too comical to get upset at, she is such a cutie. 

...And to think I was actually worried about her speech and language skills as a baby.

Goodnight, Sweet Dreams

You know you hear of those parents that have a baby that they just lay in the crib at bedtime and leave the room and the baby happily coos in their crib until they drift off to sleep.  Oh come on, you'd think having three babies at least one of mine would be like that.  I personally like to think those babies are much like the unicorn, a beautiful creature that doesn't really exist.  Now I remind myself that I'm not alone or else there would not be a hundred books for sale, solely on the subject of babies and their sleep.  

I hate letting my babies cry themselves to sleep.  Every fiber of my sole tells me that their crying is wrong and unnatural.  So for my baby, I am going through a bedtime routine which includes, nursing, stories, and singing lullabies until she's just barely asleep.  For the last week I've been letting her fall asleep in my arms and then transferring her to bed.  It's been going well she stirs slightly when I put her in but goes back into sleepy land quickly.  The idea being that eventually I would start putting her into bed sooner and sooner, before she gets into a real slumber.  

My baby hasn't been sleeping well through the night (it could be teeth, it's so hard to tell).  When she wakes the only way she will go back to sleep is for me to nurse her.  Now I only nurse her to sleep occasionally when she is super tired, usually she is still awake for stories. My husband expressed concern that this was quickly becoming at habit for her and that I should leave her to cry.

"But I don't want her to wake the rest of the house" I said

"Don't worry about that." was his response.  (HA! Ya, he says this now, wait till 2 am then we'll see how compliant he is!! You forget we've been through this before.)

So, time to try and put her down as soon as she starts to drift off tonight.  Her eyes are starting to droop and as soon as they are closed and I finish the song, I pick her up and place her in the crib.  She immediately arches up and twists around and starts to wail.  My heart goes in my throat, and I quickly leave the room.  I'll try, I hate it but I'll try to let her cry a bit (if only to prove my husband wrong).   I feel awful, my heart is pounding and every muscle in my body is constricted.  I'm short tempered and trying to deal with an upset 3 year old is not going well.  I decide I better leave everyone alone while I deal with my emotions.  I decide to attack the dishes in order to occupy myself.  My 6 year old comes upstairs to brush her teeth and asks why the baby is crying so loud.

"Daddy wants me to let her cry tonight." is all I can mutter.

"Poor baby" she says as she walks past me back downstairs.  (another big stab to my heart, feelings of failure attack my sole)  As I listen to the wailing I realize that they are now pauses in the crying (thankfully).  By the time I finish with the dishes she seems to have settled herself to sleep.  I wait for a good 15 minutes before I sneak in to check on her.  Everything is good, she still has her soother and she is in a comfortable position.  We'll have to wait and see if this has any improvement on her slumber tonight.  One thing is certain I cannot and will not be able to go through this in the middle of the night, I haven't the strength.

HiHo - It's off to work we go

What happened I remember when my little girl was so eager to help me out.  Much like my 3 year old is now, they want to help do things that really they cannot do.  You try so hard to let them help even though it takes three times as long to complete whatever it is we are trying to do.  But it makes them so happy, it's all worth it (well most of the time).

My 6 year old has only 2 chores, to clean the toy room and to help with the dishes that cannot be washed in the dishwasher.  We started with the toy room, it went well the first week, and it's been downhill ever since.  Then we added helping with the dishes and luckily she has been very helpful with that.  The difference is obvious, she needs mommy's help with the dishes.  So after a huge blow out in trying to convince, bribe, threaten and finally giving up and grounding her for not cleaning the toys up. I had to take another look and direction at chores in our house.  Obviously I did something wrong along the way, because my girls has no concept of money or it's value.

Voila, the chore chart.  I search on the internet for some fun ideas regarding chore charts and come across chorechart.com (yes, that's right there is actually a site named that) and printed off some charts for both girls ( I figure better start earlier with my 3 year old so we don't go through this again).  My girls and I sat down together and decided what chores were appropriate and helpful and filled in the chart.  The girls were both ecstatic and couldn't wait to fill in those spots with stars. Although they are very eager to complete their chores today we'll have to wait and see if it lasts.

Hush Little Baby

Sleep has been on my mind a lot lately, mostly because I haven't been getting much of it.  My baby has been having trouble getting to sleep, she's been waking up twice in the night and also has been waking up for the day around 5 a.m.  I continually remind myself that it is only temporary and I will be getting sleep soon, or will I?

  

I look back at my 6 year old, she was the most amazing sleeper as a baby.  She started sleeping through the night around 2 months old.  When she was a year and a half she would often ask to go to bed and she never put up any fight when you told her it was bed time.  Then something crazy happened, the 'lay with me' started.  Although we will never be sure of how or why it got so out of control, I do blame a big part of it on my husband.  When she was around 2-1/2 or closer to 3 years old we would put her to bed with a story and then 'lay with her' for a short time.  Well when my husband would 'lay with her' he would often fall asleep, thus increasing the amount of time that someone was in her bed.  He would usually remain asleep well into her slumber so he would wake up and leave her room without her even knowing.  Not surprisingly my daughter would always ask for daddy to put her to sleep and before we knew it someone had to be in her bed until she fell asleep.  Well by this age she was quite good at keeping herself awake and one of us would often be in the room for a good hour or so and if she ever woke in the night we would have to again lay with her until she fell asleep.  In the end we did wean her off of this habit and brought it to an end, but still to this day she will often ask for someone to lay with her.  Presently she does go to sleep by herself, although sometimes she does fight it, but she is plagued by nightmares and will often wake me in the night for comfort.  Which is simply my reassurance and escorting her back to bed.  Okay fine I don't mind her coming to me when she is frightened but this morning/night she comes and wakes me with "mommy, I have to go pee and get a drink."

"okay" I mumble.

"Can you help me?" she asks

WTH?? she's almost 7 and I have to help with a bathroom break, okay fine, whatever, I stumble out of bed and get it over with, too tired to argue.

Now I think about the sleep issues with my 3 year old.  Obviously there haven't been that many since she isn't that old but I remember nearly going insane from lack of sleep when she was just shy of a year old.  She would be up pretty much every hour in the night, (yikes!), I was loosing my mind.  The going to sleep by herself started late, basically I was still nursing and rocking her to sleep at this time.  Mostly I had delayed sleep training do to, well, my laziness, it was so much easier to not to worry about a crying baby.  So I tried the same method I had done with her sister, slowly removing myself from the room over a few days, and it was not working at all.  I finally had to resort to the dreaded 'cry it out', I hate the idea but I was at my wits end.  I laugh when I look back, 2 days and 10 minutes of crying each, (are you freaking serious, why didn't I do this earlier).  Today she goes to bed very well providing you get the timing right.  She has a window of opportunity if you go too early or too late it takes her forever to settle down.  Also she cannot nap anymore since that causes huge bed time problems as well. Luckily she doesn't wake in the night much, almost never, but as most preschoolers she is up early in the morning.  I often find myself just sneaking out of the babies room after finally getting her down after an early morning wake up and turn around only to have my 3 year old bouncing out of her room, (sigh, ugh).


Then I look to the future and think okay, once they are independent I will finally be able to sleep. 
- As soon as they get home for their first late night movie with friends.  
- As soon as they are home safe from their date.  
- As soon as they are home safe after the party.  
Then I look even further and decide once they are young adults maybe then I won't have to wait up for them, then I will only be woken by the sound of them sneaking in at 3 a.m.