oh croup

So I'm hearing that croup is EVERYWHERE. And by everywhere I mean I HAVE IT TOO. What the? The good news is croup in an adult just looks like a very horrendous cold. I suppose I could just have a horrendous cold. But considering the fact that I had children sneezing and coughing directly in my face for four days, I'd say odds are croup.

Croup is an infection of the respiratory system that is particularly uncool in that the windpipe gets all swollen. Kids have already small windpipes to begin with, so in addition to sneezing and runny noses and essentially wallowing in misery, they can't breathe and will likely wheeze or "bark." (It sounds kind of frightening sometimes, like they can't get air, because, well...they can't.) In tough, big kids, it's generally okay. In tiny or delicate kids, it can be serious. The older the kid, the quicker the recovery. Annabelle was done in like two days. Lou's going on four miserable days. So I thought I'd compile a handy list on what we've learned from croup this past week:

1. Just accept that you're all going to wallow for a while. Movies are acceptable. Sometimes all day. When that poor baby is just moaning in sickness, movies that make her happy win every time. 

2. Just accept you won't sleep. Maybe ever again. Oh. My. Gosh.

3. So here's what I learned about fevers and medications for kids (from my pediatrician, who is 36 and his wife is pregnant with their EIGHTH CHILD, I know). Best two pieces of advice I've had in a long time. Take it or leave it. I'm actually taking and running with it.

- There isn't a magic temperature that should send you to the ER. When your baby is really hot, but you're medicating, you're probably safe to stay home. When your baby is really hot, you're medicating, and they're like glazed over or not responsive, get to the ER. 

- Tylenol is basically only good for fevers. That said, don't rely on it for fevers. Use Ibuprofen first. Ibuprofen is way more effective AND it relieves pain, which your baby is likely experiencing a fair amount of as well. If your baby has a fever, start them on Ibuprofen every six hours. If they start to spike towards the end of that six hours, give them a dose of Tylenol too. The drugs don't co-mingle. You don't need to create a chart and a whacked out schedule to medicate (I totally did this). They can even be given simultaneously if you need to. (If your baby is under six months, don't use Ibuprofen. If your baby is under six months and has croup, go to the doc now.)

4. Humidifiers are awesome. Every croupy kid needs one. Cold, humid air. Win-win. I also tracked down a VapoRub Pediatric plug-in thing that warms up Vapo fumes in the room. Also awesome.

5. If in the middle of night, your kid starts to wheeze so bad, it becomes frightening, take them out in the cold air. It opens that windpipe right up. Just be sure to bundle them up otherwise. 

Mostly, I think croup is the most awful cold and flu season disease ever. The flu is even easier as it comes and goes. Croup lingers longer. 

So to anyone welcoming croup to their family, I hope some or any of this helps. And let's all just believe that we will someday sleep again? Right?

crazy sick, part two

To be fair, our crazy sick girl was literally crazy sick all night. I even resorted to the stand-outside-in-the-freezing-air-to-open-the-windpipes trick. (Which is almost magic, the way it works.) By the way, I didn't know how visible the stars were from my backyard. Quite beautiful really, to have such perfect quiet everywhere while my baby's breaths become less shallow and thick by the second.

During our second round of outdoor air, in true form, Lou started babbling. She peeked out of her blanket, looked into the parking lot that's behind our house and said, with a silly face and a whisper, "I see a fox." "Oh, a fox, really?" "Yeah, da fox is hun-gee. Is coming!"

After drinking too much water too fast, she of course threw up (during a barky fit of coughs), and as she finished, she said, "I oh-kay. I oh-kay," and smiled up at me through watery, sick eyes. And she patiently waited for me to disrobe her and clean up the throw up, then calmly snuggled up on my chest again, an intermittent bark here and there.

I think it's fairly extraordinary, the way she's able to keep her spirit of joy about her, even when she hurts and is plainly quite ill. It makes the crazy worth it. Because for all the crazy we put up with, she dishes out an equal amount of joy and love. And it is oh so worth it.

I took these photos this morning. As you can see, she can't help the happy.

crazy sick

So the girls got croup this week. Croup? I don't even know how to spell that garbage. And garbage it is. The "bark" cough, raging fever, runny nose. Annabelle came down with the disease first. She did the typical sick thing - sad, crying, miserable. It was the saddest thing in the world. I had her doped up on both ibuprofen and Tylenol just to keep her temperature barely acceptable. We took her to the pediatrician and they gave her some steroids to open up her wind pipe. Lou got it second. When her high temperature showed up, I geared up for a feverish, sad baby. I geared up for the misery of no sleep and an achy baby. I was ready for the misery. Instead? 

So Lou's crazy. It's just how it is. She's full of energy. Full of laughter. Full of mischief. She lies. She throws fits. And she loves with every ounce of her little being. And get this. Lou with croup is TEN TIMES WORSE....SO MUCH WORSE.

She's bouncing off the freaking walls. Like LITERALLY. She's jibbering at ten million miles per hour. She asks, "Why?' after every little thing we do. Why? Why? But why? She's running around, usually unclothed. Rolling her eyes. Talking back. Stealing stuff and giggling about it. Devouring food. Stealing food from others' plates. Singing every song in her repertoire, loudly. She's telling fairy tales, one after another. Talk talk talk. And all of this with a "bark" cough and a mild fever (even medicated).

Sometimes I go to bed without a single ounce of energy left. Not even a bit left in my tiniest toes. And that's because Lou.

autumn apparel

This morning we woke up to tiny snowflakes making their merry way to the ground below our bedrooms. They didn't stick by any means, but they sure were pretty little things. And such a stark difference to our Saturday, spent mostly outdoors, the girls running in and out as they pleased, the windows open and replacing the old indoor air with the smell of crunchy fallen leaves and sunshine.

I made the girls some lunch and forced them to sit down for five minutes and get something in their bellies. It was torture for Lou, and when I ran upstairs to grab something, I came back to only one child. I asked where Lou went, and both Jess and Annabelle shrugged their shoulders. She had dissipated? I peeked outside to see our "back garden" baby, lounging in the sunshine. Clad in just a shirt, underwear, and...gloves?

I sure love this little family of mine. :)

snip snip!

​

Well, I did it. I finally took Annabelle to get her hair trimmed. It took a lot of courage - on my and Annabelle's part - and complete denial from her father. But her hair had grown to straggliness. Those beautiful curls were in some places inches longer than others, and it was just time. 

Lucky for me, I have a friend who cuts hair. And her daughter is one of Annabelle's best friends. ​So it wasn't as scary as it could've been. I promised her that we'd only cut a little, and Ashley told her how healthy hair can grow longer quicker, like Rapunzel's even.

She opted to not wear the shield, but she sat bravely through the whole thing. And truly, her hair looks AMAZING. So soft and shiny and pretty now. Her hair is a little bit of a mystery. The new growth at the front of her face is full of tight curls, , but the long hair in the back is a mix of wavy and curly. I think if we layer it up, most of the curls will bounce up. But if we layer it, she can't do all the fancy up dos and braids she requests these days.

These are all pictures of her hair wet, but scroll down to the earthworm pictures. That's her hair trimmed and pretty and down (and not at all styled, my favorite thing about naturally curly hair).

All in all, a brave success.

backyardigans

Backyardigans. Is that a show? Or something? We live in the Stone Age with phones lacking smarts and TVs lacking channels. We don't know such things.

Anyhow. Backyardigans. That's what we've become. I'll be honest - we didn't properly use our backyard this summer. I think this is partly because we were out of town so frequently. But truthfully, I think it's because we aren't used to it. We aren't accustomed to having the option of walking out the back door and playing, and so we just forget.

With this favorite season of mine and the perfect temperature outside, we've found ourselves outside quite a bit lately. We've been "winterizing" the yard, if you will (stowing the grill, planting some last minute plants, weeding, and then weeding some more). Annabelle was thrilled when we found her an earthworm, and she carried that poor thing around for probably an hour. We convinced her he wanted to go back to his dirt when he stopped moving much. 

And then there are the Sunday naps. Those perfectly sweet moments where Daddy attempts to sleep and the babies run around and giggle and pretend to nap in between.

Life is good. Especially in the backyard. :)

fallish things

+ Legos, Legos, Legos

+ soup - How about this one? No, this one.

+ drives up the canyon to find colored leaves

+ pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin - Try this you non GFers. 

+ boots, boots, boots

+ Maria and Kathleen Kelly - I don't know why, but these movies just seem 

most appropriate when the air is crisp outside and we're bundled up cozy on the couch.

+ dark mornings, sleeping in babies

+ crack cookies (Not their official name, just a reflection of their addictive qualities.

 And not really just for fall. They're basically for every day of my life. )

bye bye binky

(This post started as a little blurb on how we got rid of Lou's binky. And then it turned into, well, this. Count on me to turn ditching the binky into an emotional essay. I know. For anyone not interested in my sappiness, there are some pretty fabulous pictures of Lou and her bink for the last two years. I think my favorite thing is the way she so often smiles behind the bink. :) )

Some of you may recall that Lou's first weeks were a little...stressful. I was breastfeeding for the first time, coping with yo-yoing hormones (thanks to the bouncing thyroid), and adjusting to having two babies. After a few weeks, Lou started crying. Kind of all the time. The only thing that soothed her was food (me). Of course, we finally figured out that my thyroid hormones were fighting with my other hormones, and my milk was drying up. She was basically just starving. (Having a thyroid disease is kind of like a life time party. Good times.) 

In the mean time, we tried out every binky on the market. No lie. The MAM brand was our last chance. And miraculously, she took it. I actually cried the day she took it. It was that big of a relief to have something - besides me - to soothe her. We spent the next few weeks switching over to a bottle (the MAM brand) and formula, and soon things started looking up for us.

Of course, this led to a binky addiction for our girl. She didn't suck on it all day, but man did we use it to plug up her screams. From her tininess, she's had a temper. When she's happy, she's literally the most happy ball of joy you'll ever know, but if she's angry - screaming, yelling, kicking, gnashing of teeth, the whole bit. Thankfully, the happy far outweighs her rage, but that binky was a lifesaver in keeping her calm. We also took a dozen vacations this year, making the binky a must. On top of the vacations, I had a myriad of excuses for needing the binky, for putting off the Binky Extraction Program. At the top of the list was my sleep. And my sanity. And my total fear of her rage.

Remember how bald she was? Squeeee!

But there was one more thing. I try to be a sensitive mom. I know I'm "the boss," but I really do try to see things from my girls' perspectives. And here's how I see it. 

I gave her the binky. I developed a dependency on it to keep her quiet. In turn, she learned to rely on it. I read dozens of methods for getting rid of the binky - ranging from a Binky Fairy to floating them away on a balloon to snipping them to a dozen more. And I know I take an extremely sensitive view on this, but in the end, I decided I wanted to get rid of the binky on her terms. I facilitated her reliance on the thing, and I felt so bad tricking her or just taking it away.

I didn't really have a plan of attack. I was waiting to see that she was ready and hoped some sort of brilliant plan would materialize. Then one day, the two remaining binkies we had went missing. I was sure if I looked with my magic mom eyes, I could find them (and I did, hours later). But I asked Lou to look. She couldn't turn one up, and so for several hours, the binkies were literally missing. And then it struck me - it's time.

I knew she understood that the binkies were literally missing. I also knew that she understood when I said she'd be okay. I also spent the day distracting her with fairy tales, her very favorite type of story. If she requested a bink, I asked if she'd like to hear a story. She always took the bait. It's hard to resist The Three Little Pigs and Their Candy Houses. Or Little Red Riding Hood and the Friendly Preschool Wolf. (I know. I should write children's literature.)

Then she took a nap without a binky. No problem. I expected rage, but she was tired and curled up with her blanket. At night, there was some of the anger I anticipated, but not nearly what I dreaded. I could see that it wasn't really anger; she was sad. She missed her binky. The thing she'd relied on for so long was gone. For that, I felt sad for her. 

The next day, when she asked for her binky, I reminded her they were gone, but I told her I had something special for her. I have two stuffed Lalaloopsy dolls that I got for Christmas last year but never gave the girls as they got way too much. So I went and retrieved one. I gave it to her and told her that when she missed bink, she could hug Peanut. For the rest of the day, I didn't hear any more requests for the bink, but Peanut was always under her arm.

And then each nap and bed time got easier. By the third day, we didn't have any real problems. Occasionally, she'd ask for her bink, but then she'd usually giggle because she knew it was gone. 

I can't say this method is sane or normal or would even work with another baby. In fact, I know I'm borderline nutty. But for this baby, it worked. In many ways, it's a relief. But in others, I'm sad. My baby is leaving yet another bit of her babyhood behind. The really amazing thing though? Each time my babies "grow up" a bit, each time they take a step into the unknown - whether it be ditching a binky or marching into preschool alone, head high - I'm reminded how truly astounding these girls are. I'm reminded that they have inside them a giant well of bravery and accomplishment and goodness.

And even though their growing up hurts my heart just a bit, it also does it so much good. To see the good that they are growing up into. 

Bye bye bink. :)

sisters

Once upon a time, we gathered up all my sisters, and our babies (also girls), plus my mom, plus the dogs (also girls), and had the lovely Jostlyn of Roz Photography take our photos. 

I grew up with just sisters. No brothers. And when I tell people that, they generally groan in anticipated sympathy. That's when I break it to them - we got along really well. We were all best friends. We fought rarely. When my mom had a fourth surprise baby (and didn't find out the gender while pregnant), we each secretly dreaded the thought of a brother. When it came out a sister, there were shouts of glee. 

Growing up with only sisters is a fairly messy shared bathroom. Growing up with only sisters is a shared understanding, always. Growing up with only sisters is negotiating emotional roller coasters and forgiving quickly. Growing up with only sisters is eating ice cream out of the carton, commiserating until the wee hours. Growing up with only sisters is a secret knock on the shared wall of your bedrooms. Growing up with only sisters is waking up in the morning to see a little sister who had taken refuge from her fears on your floor. Growing up with only sisters is having a best friend nearby, always.

We're all fairly grown up now. And we're all different. But we all have the same face, and we're still all best friends. My mom fostered a friendship in each of us and taught us how important it is to keep your very best friends close. Sisters really are the best, and I'm so very grateful for mine.

And I'm so grateful my girls have each other.