The Lucky Pumpkin

Warning! Don’t read any further if you are easily grossed out!

This whole day has been nothing but puke and poop! Emily got some kind of stomach virus last night and I found her in a circle of puke at about 2:00 am. We gave her a bath because her hair was coated, changed her sheet, and put her down, only to have her puke again! We changed the sheet again, and I rocked her to sleep. She woke up with a dirty bed from the other end, so it was another bath. Then she had her morning bottle, and threw it up out of her mouth and nose! Shortly thereafter, she had another experience with the other end which ended up with another bath when I took her dirty shirt off and got poop on her hair! The poor kid is really having a hard day! Normal activities are harder for her anyway because she has low muscle tone, so it really seems unfair to throw an illness on top of it!

Then, Anna became too crabby to bear after four days without a B.M., so I had to give her a suppository! THAT went over really well! (She is still withholding her poop because she doesn’t want to go on the potty. Her control is amazing!) Then, all the while I was cleaning her pull-up, and the rest of the afternoon, she kept saying, “Mom, poop is brown. Did you know poop is brown?” (Out of the mouths of babes…or toddlers!)

Well, I am off to do another load of laundry to clean up the various bodily fluid spills we had. Sorry if I grossed anyone out!

Do I still look beautiful with puke stains on my shirt? (Or, should I say, Does this puke stain make my butt look fat?)

Oh, my poor babies! They have been so sick this week. We all have had a very bad cold. Bob and I actually both got an earache out of it, and we were both commenting that we hadn’t had one of those since we were about four years old! Emily and Anna both had fevers. Emily wakes up every morning with her eyes and nose covered with with dried mucus, and even her tongue has been covered the last two days. I really feel badly for her. I have to wash her face a few times a day because her eyes get all matted again. I think that because her nasal passages are very narrow that there is no room for the drainage to go. She sure is a trooper, though. She is SUCH a good kid. (Speaking of “kid,” when I call Anna a good kid, she says, “I’m not a kid, I’m a CHILD!” Too cute.)

I would just like to thank the teacher of the music class that we have been going to for infecting the family. I am almost sure that this is where the virus came from. The teacher passes around instruments and I know that she doesn’t wipe the instruments down in between uses. She also encourages the babies to put the instruments in their mouths, so there is plenty of germ sharing. At $175.00 per child and $90.00 for the second child, it was a very expensive cold that we got. I think that this will be the last time we take that class. I am going to look for a Kindermusik class in the area. The teacher of the class we go to tells the parents to not show the kids how to play the instruments. “There is no wrong way to experience music. If they want to experience the song by having the instrument in their mouths, that is fine.” Sorry, but there IS a right and wrong way to play instruments. And it is ten times harder to unlearn the wrong way and than to just learn it the right way in the first place. This class was recommended to me by some neighbors, and the teacher has a phD, but I later found out that it is in something totally unrelated to Music or teaching. She has no qualifications for teaching music. She’s a really nice person, but there is more to teaching than a two-week course can prepare you for.