Fightin' For that Five & a Parental Promotion

Hello, everyone!

I want to start by saying thank you so much to all of you who were so encouraging about my latest endeavor.  Whether you commented or just hit that "like" button, I was touched by your feedback.  It was like an extra boost to keep going.

My client that started last week, Ms. J,  has already lost five pounds and she made it seem effortless.  She was like a star pupil!  Her positive attitude had a lot to do with it, but she also fought for it as well.  She followed the program and VOILA!  It's working.  I'm really proud of her and inspired by her too!

Speaking of "Five", I've been fighting to see that second digit become a five for a few days now.  It's my first big weight goal in Operation Fattypants.  Today I got on the scale and you know what I saw?

160.0.  POINT ZERO?   Really?  The effing thing just can't give me a break.

Worse yet, I have one of those scales that does not allow you to cheat in any fashion.  You get on, it scans, and then BAM!  The number pops up and the scale immediately sends it to your computer.   There's no chance to lean a little to the left and maybe get the scale to take off .1 of a pound.  It pisses me off.  But I suppose I need the honesty.

In case you're wondering, I have the FitBit Aria scale.  It works with the FitBit Force and is compatible with the My Fitness Pal app/website.  It's like all of my devices gang up on me.  There's no cheating.  Mutter fluckers.

I will be doing the Forbidden Dance of Joy when I hit that 159, so prepare yourself, peeps.  Wherever you live, I'm sure you'll hear me carrying on.

On other fronts, viral germs have infiltrated my home again.  This time it appears that they do not wish to invade MY body.  They've organized an attack against Justin and Allie.

Last Tuesday, Justin got the stomach virus.  Three days of gastrointestinal fun!  Whoopeee!  Around the 2nd day, he got the respiratory virus.  Double the fun!  Around Friday, he passed it on to Allie, which was a kick in the pants.  I mean, look at this poor baby.....

She usually operates on Fast Forward so for her to be passed out like this in the middle of the day was quite surprising.

Times like this are when I see the real value of Facebook.  Immediately I jumped on Facebook and started asking questions.  So many awesome people responded right away with input.   Of course they are only opinions, but to me it's like gold.  Those opinions have value to me.  Who knows this stuff better than Moms?

I know that sounds really sexist, and I know that there are plenty of dads who are the Go To Parent when illness takes over, so please forgive me for singling out the maternal side.  But when I complained about how I felt like the Optional Parent, everyone said, "Wait until she gets sick or injured.  You'll see."

When Allie wants to play or rough house or do something extra fun, Justin is the Go To guy.  She hears him come home and gets super excited.  Me....not so much.  That's why I say that I feel like the Optional Parent.  He's the super fun playmate.

HOWEVER there is an exception to this rule.  The second that Allie falls down or feels sick, it's all about Mama!  She wont even let Justin touch her.  "NOOOOO!  I WANT MAMA!!"  And of course this is very confusing to him, since he's the center of her world at every other moment.

The immature side of me relishes in this.  Why?  Because he finally gets to see what it feels like to have your child run past you to get to the other parent.  And it's really nice to be able to have something to give that no one else can.  I'm the Comfort Parent.  I'm viewing it as a promotion from Optional Parent. I'll take it.  No extra pay necessary.

Before I go, I had something occur that I'm wondering if any other parents have experienced.  It was a bit freaky and unexpected.....

I took Allie's temperature on Sunday and it was 102.7.  I had to do some things around the house so I moved her from my lap to Justin's.  When I finished with the chores, I came back to the couch and sat down next to him.  For about an hour I felt very emotional and disturbed.

Don't make fun, but I felt exactly like my dog does when a storm is coming.  She gets all freaked out and worried looking.  We always know that a climate change is about to occur just by Sadie's behavior.

During that hour, I kept saying to Justin that I felt like something wasn't right with Allie.   I called the doctor and he told me that her symptoms were normal for the virus that was going around.  But I still felt freaky.  I took her temperature again.

"It says.......104.9."

Wait.  WHAT???

I took it again.  Still 104.9.    I started crying.  I don't know why.  After that, I called my mom and asked her to bring all of her thermometers over.  ("All of my glasses and all of my shoes" for you Jerky Boys fans)  I took Allie's temperature again and it said the same thing.

We called the doctor AGAIN and followed his advice.  About 2 hours later she was back to 102.7 and I was feeling like myself again.  The next morning she was 99.3.  All was fine.  All was good.

So, who is going to explain this to me????  Does someone want to explain that floofy, kafuffle thing that I had going on internally the night before?  Do all moms get this?  Are these more maternal connections to create more things for me to worry about?  No one warned me about this!

Is this how my mom has always known to call me when I'm having distress?  Immediately after an argument with someone, the phone would ring and my mother would say, "It's me.  Are you okay?"  I know that I'm just a rookie.  I'm in the same room and I have this internal thing going on.  My mom gets it while she's in another zip code!  I lived in an entirely different state during many of those crappy moments.  She's intuitive on a professional level.

So, to wrap this up, here's my little princess this morning, feeling all fabulous.....

She's still sickly, but she is happy to be almost back to full speed.

And since I mentioned the dog earlier, here's a photo from this evening.  Sadie has insisted on sleeping by Allie's feet since she got sick.  I looked down tonight and saw this and it warmed my heart....

My two favorite girls intertwined

Wishing you all good health and fluffy, protective paws  :-)

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She Only Wants Mom

Happy Holidays Everyone!

With Chanukah and Christmas over, we have the New Year celebration and then.... back to regular life.  Everyone can start counting down to Spring Break.  I thought when I finished school that I would be done living from holiday to holiday, but it has continued on for me and pretty much everyone else, I think.

I had a most lovely Christmas despite the illness that is ravaging my entire family.  I'm hoping that this will be the last post where I bitch about being sick, but I actually have a relevant topic to discuss that pertains to being ill for a change.  I'm moving beyond the complaining.

Two days before Christmas, I crawled out of my car after my last appointment and dragged myself into my house and declared, "I need a doctor."  So off we went to the local urgent care place to see what my deal was.  After four long months, I've finally decided that I cannot wish myself better, talk myself into being "unsick",  deny that I was illin', all of the stuff that I was doing other than woofing down medication.  It was time to give into western medicine.

Turns out I had what looks like a smidgen o' pneumonia.  Imagine that.  It was a wee bit of a shocker when she said, "I think we'll take an X-ray to be sure."  But like a good girl, I am diligently taking my "Antibees, roids and gas" (antibiotics, steriods and inhaler) and I'm feeling much better.  Well, at least I can breathe deeply without choking.  That's still better!

During all of this drama, I discovered a very interesting development in my maternal bond with Allie.  I really kind of needed it because lately I've been feeling a bit left out of the parental situation.  She wants Justin for everything.  He even gets a more emphatic "I love you" than I do.  So, I needed to feel connected.  Here's what I discovered.

When Allie is sick, she wants ME.  Just ME.

So, I'm sure you're saying, "Big effing deal.  Why is that so odd?"

It's odd because of the two parents, Justin is WAY more nurturing than I am when it comes to injury and illness.  I'm not cold hearted and I try to help take care of him when he doesn't feel well, but he blows me out of the water.  The guy should've been a nurse.  Not a doctor.  A nurse, cuz nurses are more warm and fuzzy.

He does the boo-boo voice ("Oh, honey....I'm so sorry!  Can I get you something?  Let me feel your forehead.  You feel warm.  You're sick.  If you need anything, just let me know, okay?"), he checks on me constantly ("Do you need anything yet?  Orange juice? A snack?"), and he is majorly accommodating ("Let me pick you up and carry you to the bathroom.....now don't push.  I'll squeeze you gently until the pee comes out.  You need to rest!")

LOL. I'm just kidding about the last one, so you can put your eyeballs back in the sockets.

Actually, he will run around and do whatever he can for me when I'm sick, even if it's killing him.  He is a natural caretaker.  I was horribly sick on our honeymoon and he took such great care of me.  He went to hell and back to find medicine to help me function.  I remember crying and saying, "I'm so sorry I'm ruining our honeymoon.  You're so good to me.  I could never take care of someone like you take care of me.  I'm sorry I'm not as good at this as you are."

So, with that being said, if you were three and felt sick, who would you run to?

That's why it's a bit surprising to me (and him) that she only wants me.  She will push him away if he tries to fuss over her.  If he tries to help so I can rest, she demands that I help her.  She finds some sort of comfort from being near me that she doesn't get from him.  It totally backs up the nature part of the "Nature vs. Nurture Theory" that you hear about.  Her natural instinct is to want me.  And when I tell people this, they all seem to think it's completely normal.  "Of course she does.  You're her mother."

Well, WHEW!  FINALLY there is something she likes better about me!  SCORE!

To be honest, while I feel bad for Justin when he gets pushed away since I see how hurt he is by it, it feels wonderful to be needed by Allie in a way that no one else will be able to fulfill.  And while it usually annoys me a little to take care of people who are super needy, it doesn't annoy me at all when she is insanely clingy and needy.  On Monday night, her ears hurt (she has the same cold) and the one thing that she wanted was for me to rub the inside of her ear with a Q-Tip (or "ear tip" as she calls them).  She nudged me every five to ten minutes until 430am saying, "Mommy.  Please rub my ear with an ear tip."  And I absolutely didn't mind.

I have a feeling that Allie will be like me and my mom.  When we are sick, we want to be with someone, but we don't want to be bothered by it.  My mother is the only other person besides Allie who never annoys me when she's injured or ill.  She could whine and bitch until the cows come home and it wouldn't make me crazy.  Of course, I"m just guessing because she doesn't do that, so I don't really know if it would be agitating or not.

When I went to the doctor earlier this week, something else unusual occurred.  Allie does NOT care for doctors offices.  We have the most awesome pediatrician and she does nothing but cry from the minute she sees him.  When she goes with Justin to some of his appointments she is miserable there too.  But for some reason, she insisted on coming into the doctor's office with me.  Like, full fledged freaking out in the waiting room, begging me not to leave her kind of insistance!  Now I have no explanation for that one, but I am kind of curious what it was all about.

So, I hope that this is the last entry I make for awhile that says anything about me being under the weather unless I have another momentous discovery.  I would just like to thank all of the moms, young and old, who commiserated with me and offered sympathy.  It really made me feel better to know that this happens to so many other people when their kids go to school.  I was trying to outsmart it and be tough, but the germies were gonna get me no matter what.  That's just how it is.  I concede.

I plan on being back beforehand (I've got a doozie of a topic, but I need to calm down before I can write about it without sounding like a lunatic), but should something happen and I get sidetracked, Happy New Year, everyone!

I saw this on Facebook and thought it was excellent.  Game on!

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I Think It's Diphtheria

I'm sick.  Again.  I think it's diphtheria.

Okay, maybe diphtheria is a little extreme.  After all, only 56 people in the US have had it in the past 30 years, but maybe I'm part of the 1.866666 people who will get it this year.

I really hope I'm the "1" in that statistic.  I'd hate to be considered only .866666 of a person, although some would say that I lost my mind awhile ago, so that would account for the .133334 that could be missing.

It's round three with the same damn thing that started at the end of September.  I'm sure it's just a virus, but as I was self-diagnosing myself on the internet, I found that my symptoms matched diphtheria.  It's a good think I'm not a hypochondriac.  I'd be freaking.

Allie has been sick since October 4th.  She and my mom both got sick at the same time.  My mom got over it, but Allie has been coughing and sneezing and congested since then.  Justin has been sick twice since this lovely bug showed up.  And the damn thing clearly has some sort of vendetta as far as I'm concerned.  Three times???  Have some mercy!

Over the past weekend, we were sitting in bed watching a Bar Rescue marathon, when Justin started hacking and I sneezed a few times.  He looked at me and with complete seriousness he stated, "We are going to be sick until she graduates from high, school aren't we?"

Justin is convinced that Allie brought this illness home, courtesy of her preschool chums.  We were warned that Allie would probably get sick many times during her first year at any school since she wasn't really subjected to groups of kids for her first three years. She had only had a cold once, and that started New Year's Eve 2010.  We all got sick and within a week, we were fine.  Otherwise, no germies.

I have no idea how the teachers manage to avoid it.  I'm sure they have incredible immune systems, but considering where preschoolers put their hands and mouths, it's a damn miracle that they are so healthy.  They are like anti-viral/bacterial super-heroes.  I think they must have some magical medical force surrounding them, because I can't survive the germs that ONE toddler carries around, let alone the germs of 15!

As for this evening, I'm going to try to control my snifflingsneezingcoughingachingstuffyheadwithoutrest situation by rendering myself unconscious as I scarf down some nighttime medication.

I hope you all are healthy.....may the "Pre-school Teacher Force" be with you!

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