Sunday, November 28, 2010

QOTD: You said it, Hallmark....I mean, Charlotte.

Charlotte:  I'm just so happy.  Are you so happy?

Me:  I *am* so happy.  Why are you happy?

Charlotte:  Because I just love you!

Aww.  Melt.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Planning for next Halloween already...

Charlotte:  I know what I'm going to dress up as for Halloween.

Mama:  Oh yeah, for next Halloween?  What are you going to be?

Charlotte:  A vampire.

Mama:  *kinda flummoxed*  A vampire?  Really?

Charlotte:  Yes, a vampire.  I'm gonna dress up as a vampire.

Mama:  What is a vampire?

Charlotte:  Spooky.  A vampire is spooky.  Not a wampire, a vampire.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

*yawn*

I am not a morning person.  Really, really not a morning person.  I am also a mom, which means that despite my non-morning-person-ness, I frequently get up in the morning.  Not as early as my sister, whose alarm is set somewhere in the 5 o'clock hour (shudder), but early enough for someone whose bedtime is long after midnight. So any morning when I have to actually DO something, other than just be present and make breakfast, is like a kick in the pants.  Like today.

Charlotte still has this cough that she just can't shake (part of this three week cycle of illness).  As I've lamented before, there aren't really a lot of medications available for kids under 6 (and for good reason) (my, I'm parenthetical today) so we end up dosing Charlotte with honey.  (Only good for kids over 1 year.)  It works pretty well, especially in the middle of the night when she's not talking a mile a minute.  During the day, all bets are off.  Any benefits won by honey or warm herbal tea are completely trashed by her inability to keep silent.  She just keeps irritating her throat.  (I'm the same way.) (Obviously, I'm just embracing the parentheses today, there's clearly nothing else to be done.)  Last night, like the last week or so, I woke up to hear Charlotte coughing, so I brought a spoonful of honey to her room, sat her up, gave her honey, gave her a cup of water, and went back to bed.  I did this twice.  This morning when Charlotte wandered out to the living room, she had a terrifying knot in her hair, the size of a ping pong ball.  We figure that she must have (grossness alert) coughed out a wad of honey-phlegm-bile right into her hair.  Ew.  So Charlotte needed a bath first thing this morning, which means I needed to GIVE her a bath first thing this morning which means I'm still not awake and also grumpy.  But the whatever-it-was is out of her hair, so that's something.

I have reached several conclusions this morning.  Probably not the ones you might expect.  I have learned:

* Unlike her mother, Charlotte could probably develop dreadlocks quite easily.

* It's time for a haircut.  For Charlotte.  She's never had one, and the ends are all dead, thin, straw-like, and eager to stick to each other.

* Dr. Bronner's soap continues to be my cure-all.  Matt always mocks my soap, but today after baby oil & conditioner failed to detangle the mass, Dr. Bronner's stepped in and helped sort it out.  I don't usually use it on Charlotte because I have the mint one, and that is too intense and burn-y, but next time I will get a vat of the baby or almond and keep that around for washing my disgusting child.

* Today is a whole pot of coffee day.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Charlotte got her flu shot today; pray for us.  Last year she was sick for a week after it.  This year she was sick going into it, but I called the nurse yesterday and asked if we should reschedule.  The nurse said that as long as she isn't running a fever, she can still get it.  When Matt brought her in today, he told them about her reaction last time (fever, puking, sick for a week) and they gave her the shot rather than the nasal spray.  Charlotte had to get a combo with the H1N1, though, since she never got the second dose of the H1N1 last year.  They actually ran out of it when I had called them to schedule her second dose; they also hadn't told me at the appointment or in the literature that she needed a second dose, that was another thing I figured out from the news/internet.  Sigh.  What rigmarole that all was.

Charlotte slept through the night last night; we've had 3 days of that in the last 2 and a half weeks, and it's starting to really take a toll.  I'm grateful that she slept last night, though, because I suspect that tonight is not going to be great.  If she reacts to this flu shot at all, it's gonna be a problem on top of her current cold (well into day 10 at this point).  My goal is to get my work done for the day and get into bed as close to midnight as possible, and hope like hell Charlotte sleeps until 4 am at last.  Matt talked to the receptionist at the pediatricians' office about maybe trying to make an appointment to talk about this sleep thing, but she wasn't sure how to schedule that kind of consultation, and she was gonna get back to us.  I'll call tomorrow and see if I can sort it out.  I also have an idea that I need to implement this week, but it involves tweaking my schedule, which I am not so great at.  This is big though, the sleep thing impacts us all pretty dramatically.