On the Mend

Olivia will take her last dose of antibiotics this evening. She went to school yesterday for half a day. She's on the mend.

My new nephew was born on Wednesday. Connor weighed 7lbs, 6oz. He was induced a week early and is perfect. I'm so happy for my brother and sister-in-law. They're family is complete and they couldn't be more blessed.

The girls have three days of school left. This is such a relief. After the long winter, we're all ready for some sun and heat and swimming and yes, even ice cream.

Alyssa will be officially be a sixth grader as of Wednesday at 3:02pm. I'm not going to say that I don't know where the time went because, well, I've been here, watching this girl grow and learn and amaze me every single day for the past eleven plus years. She's earned her way into the sixth grade. Heck, she picked out three books at the library today to read toward next year's AR points. She came in fourth in the entire elementary school this year for the most AR points. She'd really like to be first next year. That girl is just plain awesome. Though, wait, I had to inform her yesterday afternoon that she is not allowed to be a sullen teenager. She was making a pouty face at me and it was such a sullen teenager face that I had to declare that it's just not allowed. I won't have it.

We'll see how that works out.

Olivia is heading into the great big world of first grade next year. She's excited about having a locker even if it doesn't lock. I've put a positive spin on her being in a self-contained class with the special ed teacher. She's excited about it and I'm excited about the academic opportunities this is going to open for Olivia.

We're all ready for a summer break. Ready for a more laid back schedule, for even a little extra sleep, for a break. Bring on summer.

One Day More

Olivia stayed home from school again today. I got up at the usual 5:30 this morning to start our morning routine. I found Tom at his usual spot in front of the window. He asked how O’s night went. Aside from some cough, cough, coughing off and on through the night, she slept well.

He asked how long it is suggested that one keep a child with pneumonia home from school.

I said that when asking a medical professional that question, the stock answer is, “Keep them home until they feel better.”

Huh. Not necessarily as helpful as one might think.

I googled the question. Again, there was no solid answer but the suggestions for caring for a child with pneumonia at home included keeping that child well hydrated, rested and comfortable.

While I was at work yesterday Tom and Olivia spent the day eating and resting. Perfect. When I called home before leaving work to see if they needed anything, Tom said that Olivia wanted him to call me earlier to tell me that her hands hurt. She was slightly feverish and her joints were aching. Poor baby.

When I got home (they didn’t need anything) he told me that just before I got home, she told him that her heart hurt. One of the symptoms listed on the site I pulled up this morning listed chest pain. O isn’t sure what or where her lungs are but she does know where her heart is and so chest pain to her meant her heart hurt.

She informed me last night that cold oranges and popsicles make her heart feel better. I’m glad something does.

So after all that, Tom and I decided that since Olivia refuses to eat or drink while at school, she was better off staying home for at least one more day.

I think we both feel good about that decision. I know Olivia did. She was quite happy when I left for work this morning, her cup of water by her side, her tablet in her hand, Frozen on the television (in English this time, with the English captioning on.)

If you can’t spoil a sick child, who can you spoil?

This Time We Didn't Wait

She started coughing on Friday. I wondered if maybe it was just a residual cough, left over from the ear infection/cold she’d had a month ago.

Saturday, she said her arms and shoulders ached. I gave her some ibuprofen and cough medicine and hoped for the best.

Sunday, Tom brought her to me at 9am, saying she wanted to lay down with me. I pulled her into bed and realized how warm she felt.

A half hour later, Olivia and I were on our way to Urgent Care, one day short of a month from when we were last there.

Last time, I tried to wait the cold out, to give her body time to fight it. I kept telling myself that it takes ten days for a person to get over a cold.

This time we didn’t wait those ten days and I’m so, so glad we didn’t.

The wait at Urgent Care was insane. She wanted to sit on me and have me keep her warm.

Once we were finally called back, the nurse took her temperature and Olivia had a fever of 103.1. Yikes.

The nurse gave her a dose of Tylenol (probably $10 for that single dose) and the doctor finally came in to look at my girl.

She looked in O’s waxy ears, declared them clear (yay), looked at O’s throat, declared it also clear and then went about listening to Olivia breathe.

Olivia took deep breath after deep breath.

The doctor sat back and did not declare Olivia’s lungs clear. Instead, she stated, “Pneumonia.”

Not yay.

We left with a prescription for another antibiotic and instructions for Olivia to drink as much water and other clear liquids as possible. We were also instructed to take her to the ER if her temperature went above 104.

We headed to the Walmart (because, duh, where else does one go for anything at all?) pharmacy where we saw all the new friends we’d made in the Urgent Care waiting room and waited for O’s medicine to be ready. The lady who took the prescription paper from me mentioned that Olivia didn’t look like she felt well and when I mentioned the pneumonia she said she’d had it several times and it wasn’t fun. She also said she’d put Olivia’s order in as critical so I could get my girl home. People can be so kind.

There was still going to be a wait, so we bought some powdered donuts and cranberry/apple juice for Olivia to eat/drink while we waited. Never fear, we paid for these things before she consumed them. We’re not THOSE people who hand the cashier an empty wrapper at the end of our shopping trip.

When we were finally called to the pharmacy counter for a consultation with the pharmacist, he explained the dosage and then mentioned that this particular antibiotic will make her sensitive to the sun. He then glanced down at my bare arms (never fear, I wasn’t wearing anything as scandalous as a tank top, just a short sleeved shirt) and said, “Well, you’re both already pretty pale. Stay out of direct sunlight.)

Ha! Hahaha. Yes. Okay, we’ll do that. Thanks.

But seriously, this means Olivia needs to stay inside for recess this week at school, when she finally returns to school, which wasn’t be today, since she had a 101.3 fever just last night.

Finally, we got home and got Olivia settled in for a Frozen marathon. She watched it many, many times, often asking to watch it in either French or Spanish with the subtitles on as well. She’s funny like that.

But at least she’s on the mend now. And can I say again how glad I am that this time we didn’t take the whole wait-and-see route with O’s health. Yikes. But since we didn’t wait, she’s on the mend, often asking why there is “ammonia” in her lungs. I’ve tried to explain that it’s just a germ that’s making her sick and that the medicine, which she’s declared is yucky, will make the pneumonia go away. She usually just shrugs at me and goes on to ask if there is ammonia in her bones too. Seven year olds are funny, even when they’re sick.

Cultivating Kindness

I can be a pretty snarky person. No, no, it’s true. I can be heard saying obnoxious things about television commercials, people on television shows, slow people in Walmart, etc. pretty much all the time.

My girls hear all this and think it’s hilarious.

I realize how awful that is, actually.

Alyssa and I were watching the finale of this season’s Dancing with the Stars (Maks and Meryl for the win!) and listening to Meryl speak made me realize how lovely it is to listen to someone who is genuinely kind.

She’s so soft-spoken and gentle. She comes across as a lovely person. Maybe she’s snarkier when there isn’t a camera in her face, who knows?

Well, I do know that even if there were a camera in my face, I’d be whiny and snarky. Why do you think Tom and I have never auditioned for The Amazing Race? Duh, because when it was over we’d either be divorced or one of us (me) would be dead due to justifiable homicide. The judge would declare it justifiable after watching tapes of my whining to Tom during the race. Seriously.

So as we watched Meryl work her kindness with Maks throughout the season and saw him soften up and become an actual likable partner to her, I said, “She’s so sweet. I should be nicer.”

I followed that up with, “Damn.”

Which Alyssa found highly amusing.

I am not setting good examples here.

But you know what? There is a difference between being nice and being kind. You can be kind in all things while still not being a pushover or a door mat.

I resolve to be kinder. Even when I’m telling the girls to turn off their damned tablets, I can do so with kindness rather than snark.

I admit that I’ll miss the snark a little though. Snark is funny.

But kindness is better. It’s who I want to be, the example I want to set for my girls. I definitely want them to be kinder to each other and I know that starts with me.

On this day, I will start a whole new experiment. I’m going to be kinder. I’m going to approach everything in my family life with kindness. I want to see if kindness is contagious. I want to see if my kindness seeps into Alyssa and Olivia and even Tom. I want to see if a gentler mom/wife can cultivate gentler children and a gentler father/husband.

You know the saying: If mom’s not happy, no one is happy.

Well, I’m hoping to prove that if mom is kind, everyone is kind.

I guess we’ll see.

The Talk

Alyssa’s fifth grade class is being separated by gender today. Upon separation, the two groups will make their ways to different locations where the female school nurse will show the girls a short video and then discuss said video while the boys will be shown a video presented by the male physical education teacher and a discussion will follow.

Alyssa was all eye-rolly about this entire situation. When I read that parents are invited to attend the discussions, she begged me not to go.

Ha, as if I would. I sat through that very discussion during my own fifth grade year. I don’t need to see/hear it again. Though admittedly it was fun to tease Alyssa with the possibility that I might show up and embarrass her by sitting in the back of the classroom while she and her friends ‘learn’ about puberty.

I air-quote the word learn because at this point, Alyssa and I have had many discussions about this very subject. She isn’t going into this meeting with the nurse uninformed, is what I’m saying.

Funny enough, Olivia asked just last Saturday about how a baby gets out of its mom’s tummy.

When I told her, she was delighted and disgusted all at once. Her eyes got huge and she giggled a little bit, as if thinking I might be kidding. When she realized I was serious, she got a quiet, digesting the information.

I’m sure there are those who think seven if too young for this sort of discussion but you know what? If she’s asking the question, I don’t feel like I should lie when I answer her. I try to keep the answers age-appropriate but sometimes, you can’t sugar-coat it.

I know she’ll have more questions as she gets older and I’ll try to answer them all as honestly, as simply as possible. I want them both to know they can come to me and I’ll never lie to them, never lead them astray.

And I’ll never embarrass them by going to the school during their “What’s Happening to My Body” presentation. That I can promise.

A Lil Unfriending

So my Facebook friend list is pretty big. Big for me, probably not big for other people. Whatever.

I have several lists to which I assign anyone who requests my ‘friendship.’ These lists include, 5p-, high school, Chicago, IU and, of course, family. There are others but since I don’t have Facebook up right this second and I’m lazy, I don’t remember them all.

Anyway, there are people on that list I will never meet face to face. There are people I met a hundred years ago (or, you know, back in high school) whom I will never see again.

Last week, I was reading through the updates on my Facebook home page. Alyssa was reading over my shoulder.

I came across an update in which the ‘friend’ wrote ‘lil’ at least three times. ‘Lil’ makes me just a little crazy. Why are those three extra letters so hard to type?

I mean, come on! I also hate prolly for probably and many other cheats when it comes to text-speak.

But for now, we’re talking about ‘lil.’ I grumbled a little about the laziness of people these days and how irritating that very update was. Then it hit me. I don’t have to see posts like that. I checked to see how I even knew this person. She was an acquaintance from high school. She hadn’t even been in my class, she’d either been a year or two ahead of me or behind me. We’d never actually been friends, even when we saw each other in the halls at school. We were, at best, nodding acquaintances.

I unfriended her. I didn’t know this woman. I will probably never see her again and reading ‘lil’ three times in a single status update was too much for my brain at that moment.

Alyssa expressed what was probably an unreasonable amount of glee at my unceremonious unfriending. She was impressed that my desire to not read lazy, inane status updates trumped my desire to have a high friend number (which wasn’t hard to do, I really don’t care how many ‘friends’ I have on Facebook, to the point that I rarely extend a friend request but will usually accept one if sent to me.)

But that lil was too much for me. It just was.

Alyssa told my mom about this little unfriending incident and my mom joked that she was going to write something lil in her status. I declared that I’d unfriend her too. But…I probably wouldn’t. I might try to be funny and type, “Unfriended.”

Of course, my attempts at funny often fall short. Just a lil, but a lil is often just enough.

Brave

The McD’s in our town has a play area that consists of tubes kids can climb and slides they come tumbling down. There is also a ‘room’ at the bottom of the tubes the kids can go into that probably once held a ball pit but now is just a place for them to look out and scream for the mom to look, look, look at them.

It took Alyssa until she was about four years old to be brave enough to climb into and up the tubes and come down the slides. She was shy kid and wasn’t much interested in other kids’ invitations to play.

But at about four she became a little more socially aware and got brave.

Olivia? Still doesn’t much care about other kids and definitely hasn’t felt strong or steady enough to climb the tubes or go down the slides. She loves slides at the park but those are usually open, she can see where she’s been and where she’s going. She can also see me, which is important because I am her home base, if you will.

Last weekend, Alyssa was invited to go to Jaxon’s t-ball game with my mom. Olivia and I met them at our local McD’s after the game.

After coercing all three kids to eat even a little of the food we’d purchased, Alyssa and Jaxon made their way into the play area.

At 5’4” Alyssa is on the verge of being too big to play in those structures but when Jaxon asked her to go with him, she went gamely.

She came back out after one trip down the slide, though and took her seat next to my mom.

Olivia did her usual jumping off the step that kids use to enter the play area. She climbs the two steps up and then hurls herself off the top step.

She looked up a few times when Jaxon screeched from the top for Gram to look at him.

I saw the longing in her eyes. She wanted to go up there. She wanted to want to go up there, actually. She wanted to try but she also wanted to know that it was okay to decide it was too scary or too hard.

I asked Alyssa if she’d help her sister. I reminded her, though, that if Olivia said she didn’t want to, Alyssa shouldn’t try to force her.

I suggested to Olivia that she try to climb up with Alyssa.

Just as A and O disappeared into the first tunnel, Jaxon came down the slide. I called him over. “Hey Buddy, Alyssa and Olivia are climbing up. Will you go up behind Olivia and help her be brave?”

He gladly agreed to do this. He loves being tough.

A few minutes later, Olivia called down to me from the first level of the tunnels. She was so excited. She pressed her face to the plastic window up there and waved frantically, wanting me to see that she’d made it.

Then, minutes after that, they called down from the very top. The look of pride on O’s face was priceless. She’d done it. She’d overcome her fears and climbed to the top of the tubes. She was going to come down a slide, one with a cover on it, one she couldn’t see the end of.

They ended up climbing up and sliding down that thing for another half hour, Olivia doing the climb by herself a few times.

I’ve always known she could do it. But she didn’t know. And until she did it, with a little help from her sister and her favorite cousin, she didn’t have the confidence to even try. Once she’d taken that first brave climb? There was no stopping her.