I'm Sick of You

We thought Molly was over the worst of her illness from this past weekend, but we were wrong.  On Monday her slight cough was keeping her up for a lot of the night, on Tuesday when we picked her up from daycare they let us know that she was coughing constantly, all day long and was lethargic.  Tuesday night I frantically called our doctor's office to see what we could do, then scheduled an appointment for Wednesday morning.

Wednesday, in the middle of yet another winter snow storm, we trudged over to the doctor who then referred us to a local hospital for chest X-rays because they were afraid it might be pneumonia.  With my heart in my throat we headed over to the hospital to await the test results.

A healthier Miss Molly

Chris and I had several epiphanies as we blundered our way through yet another toddler health crisis over the past few days that I thought I'd share.

Baby Brain Can Extend Well Into Toddlerhood
I remember those long arduous nights in the early days when a lack of sleep turned our brains into mush.  Lack of proper sleep can impair your judgement and reasoning skills significantly.  This was proven by Chris' decision on day four with minimal REM sleep to hand his car keys to occupy Jack while they were grocery shopping.  Upon cashing out, Chris discovered that Jack had tossed the keys aside in favor of consuming granola bars.  After 45 minutes of questioning Jack about the keys whereabouts*, tearing around the store in search of the keys, while checking in with the cashier every 10 minutes a random store manager overheard the fifth inquiry with the cashier and tossed Chris the missing key ring casually as if it were a pack of gum and he hadn't been tearing the store apart looking for it.  I guess Fresh Co. now has revenge for the minion vomit incident circa 2013.  When I inquired as to why Chris had not asked the cashier to make an announcement over the PA system to help him find the keys he muttered something incoherent that might of been a curse under his breath.

Be Wary of Strangers in Vans

You know the cliche about creeps luring children into their vans with promises of candy? We don't need to worry about Molly getting bamboozled by the promise of candy, we need to worry about strangers and stickers.  After three medical examinations, a set of X-rays and half a day of waiting I learned that she will do almost anything if she believes that you will give her stickers.  After Molly's X-rays the technician asked me, "So how many other times has Molly had X-rays?" Answer: None.  The technician protested, "But she's only two and a half and she sat so still."    I explained, "You promised her stickers!"  As the day progressed Molly learned that if she coyly told people about her twin brother she could get two stickers instead of just one, because he needed one too.**

Croup is the "New" Colic 
After days of worry, sleeplessness and hours in medical waiting rooms it was determined that Molly has croup.  The good news is that it's not pneumonia, the other good news is that the doctor at the hospital gave us the go ahead to send her into daycare because she was beyond the worst of it (and that is where she caught it), the bad news is that the only cure is time.  We braced ourselves for yet another sleepless night.  At 11PM we heard that telltale croup seal bark and rushed up to grab Molly, except she was sound asleep.  It turned out that Jack had developed a different type of croup, “spasmodic” which comes from the same virus but manifests itself differently.  Thankfully we had him back to bed within an hour and he slept through.  I remember when Molly had colic how much I cursed it; The constant crying for no reason, the hours of pacing and walking, but after croup, I hate colic a little less.  With colic I never feared for her health and it never sent us to the hospital.   Sure it ruined a lot of evenings, it was exhausting but you could set a clock to it (7PM - 10PM) and we got so much vacuuming done!



*The only answers he provided Chris with were: "Keys!", "Bars", "Bear", "High-Five!"  and "Chocolate".
**Jack was not with us at the hospital and never received a single sticker from his sister.

The Royal We

Recently I told a co-worker about how I make Molly cry by chastising her every time she calls out her new favourite catch phrase, "Go away!"  She asked me if it was hard to stomach that I was making my daughter cry.  The short answer - no.  First of all, I am assuming that she picked up this annoying gem at daycare because it isn't something that Chris and I ever say.  I'm also fairly certain that colic has numbed me permanently for ITTS (Irrational Toddler Tears Syndrome).  The bottom line, she shouldn't say mean things, especially in the morning, before I've had my coffee when I'm trying to style her hair for daycare and have already spent an eternity negotiating the existential crisis of leggings versus jeans.  I told my colleague that one of the hardest things about dealing with toddler antics is to avoid laughing or smiling when they are doing something naughty, albeit highly entertaining.

Chris and I often blame bad behaviour or annoying traits in our children on each other's genetics.  Any temper tantrums, outbursts of anger or tears Chris claims are passed on from my side, specifically me.  I blame Chris for any stubbornness or any obsessive compulsive behaviour.

Over the past few weeks Chris and I have witnessed a development in Molly and Jack's relationship: the beginning of no holds barred teasing.

Molly can be a little bit emotional.  She can also be a Bossy Bessie.  When people ask me if my daughter is a princess, I correct them: She's "The Queen" and not in a figurehead monarch kind of way, in an "Off with their heads!" way.

For the most part Jack quietly does what his sister says, for example her insistence on him wearing Mardi Gras beads whenever they play tea party.  The rest of the time he tries to ignore her abundance of demands.

A few days ago during dinner, Molly let us know that she was done her spaghetti and that she needed to wipe her hands and face.  She meticulously scrubbed off the sauce and sat back down beside her brother to drink her juice.  Jack dipped his hands into her bowl and rubbed sauce on her face.  She panicked, freaked out, cried a little bit, cleaned herself up and sat back down.  We told Jack not to rub sauce on his sister's face.  Two minutes later he dipped his hand back into her bowl and rubbed it all over her hands and shirt.  He looked at us with an anticipatory open mouthed smile, akin to the face Muppets make when they are trying to be funny.  Chris had to turn around and look out the window he was laughing so hard while I attempted to explain to Jack that he was not to put pasta sauce anywhere but inside his mouth, period.  Molly just wanted us all to "Go Away."  I'd say that teasing runs on the father's side, but I'm fairly certain my siblings would have a different perspective.


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Material Girl

Last week I decided to make up a resume for Jack because it's never too soon to get your children working...How else are we going to raise ourselves a family of Culkins?  Here's Molly's:

Molly (AKA Molly Badali, Badali, Moll, Queen Molly, Miss Molly, Thing One)

Home Address: Storybook Themed Nursery, next to the loud guy

Phone Number: Baby Monitor held to ear - radio wave B.

Skills

• Pointing accusingly (like the evil monkey on Family Guy)
• Tantrum guru
• Management skills: Have staff of two girl toddlers at daycare to "do" her bidding
• Can say about 60 words enunciated well most of which involve bossing out orders 
• Can say "No" with her entire body

Current Employment

Position: Toddler

18 months - Current

Responsibilities Include the following:

• Showing everyone her belly button
• Waving at strangers like she's on a red carpet (even if it's mid tantrum)
• Jumping on the couch
• Sitting on mom's lap
• Sucking her thumb
• Irrational attachment to flannel blankets AKA "gits"
• Dancing
• Tidying up by throwing random objects into the garbage

Previous Employment

Position: Infant

0 months - 18 months

Responsibilities Included the following:

• Colic, oh lord the colic
• Fear of men with moustaches
• Screaming (can break baby monitors with a single scream)
• German - when angry yelled "NEIN!"
• Eating dirt, grass, sand

Honours & Awards

•  Hair ripped from anyone's head, held up like a trophy

Hobbies

• Stealing other people's shoes and trying them on
• Colouring & Painting
• Dishwasher door surfing
• Eating raspberries
• Pretending she is going to share food with you and then popping it into her mouth at the last second and laughing
• Poking people in the eye while yelling "EAR!"
• Drinking mom's cream soda
• Attempting to drink mom's wine

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No More Tears

We were both relieved when Molly's colic finally ended.  Soon after, although things weren't nearly as difficult as they had once been, we realized that Molly is a 7 month old drama queen.  Anyone who knows me probably thinks I entirely deserve the Molly theatrics, although my mother has confirmed that in spite of also suffering from colic I was a fairly well behaved infant and child.

Miss Molly has a temper.  Yesterday when Chris got home from work I explained how Molly and I were fighting because while I tried to change her diaper she kicked at me, hit at me, screamed and threw diapers all around the room.   Chris then asked me if she stomped around and slammed some doors - a direct dig at me.  I gave him a really dirty look.*  I feel a little guilty about painting her as the bad guy, but her brother is so easy going that I genuinely forget that he's around sometimes and I have never forgotten about Queen Molly's presence.  Whenever I say that she's being bad, my mother corrects me and tells me that she's just high maintenance.  I am aware that she is teething and is coping with a lot of gum pain.**  We have learned her patterns, and are aware that she is a morning person, who requires a lot more sleep than her brother and gets crankier and crankier by the minute until her 830pm-9pmish bed time.  She has turned a corner and is a lot more pleasant to be around most of the time, but I think we let this fool us into submission.

Generally she requires three naps a day, varying in length and I can count on one hand how many times she's gone done with a whimper rather than a scream.  And when I say scream, I mean a lioness growl that sounds more like an angry wild cat than that of a 16.5 lb baby girl.  Usually this results in 5-10 minutes of angry snarling, followed by her falling asleep.  The past two weeks she's gone down with much more of a fight, even though I didn't think that was possible.

First she screams her wild cat screams*** and then the waterworks start - I didn't know anyone was capable of so many tears.  We've had to change her sheets because they get sopping wet from her crying, with her tears soaking into her clothes and blankets.  If you go and check on her, she'll smile at you, as if saying, "I'm not tired.  You should come play with me.  I wasn't even crying." Don't pick her up, it's a trap.  Next comes the intense kicking of the sides of the crib like some sort of deranged ninja until she gets her legs wedged between the bars and really freaks out.  Then when you go to check on her again she'll do this bizarre maniacal mix between a laugh and a cry, where no one, not even Molly herself knows what she's trying to accomplish.

I wonder if part of this new sleep issue has to do with the fact that the soft noises of the Sleep Sheep we normally use to lull the babies to sleep (Molly's preferred sound whales noises, Jack's babbling brook) is running out of batteries.  The problem with children's stuff, and I am aware that this is a safety issue - it still doesn't make it any less of a pain, is that everything is safety attached, which means that you need a screw driver to change the batteries on Sleep Sheep.  When Sleep Sheep runs low on batteries it doesn't stop working the noises change: whale sounds, now resembles demons who have come to swallow your soul, while babbling brook sounds more like a toilet clogging and leaking all over your floor.  Maybe I should take care of that tonight, but I probably won't have time.





*I am trying really hard not to swear as much in front of the children, which has resulted in a code where I glare a lot and when Chris is being a douche I call him Topher. It still has some bugs.
**To feel better she'll often intensely suck on a phallic shaped stuffed snail on her Exersaucer (AKA The Console of Doom).  It horrifies her father and he won't let me photograph her doing this.
***Our sitter Liz calls this her siren scream, think something Medusaesque that could turn sailors to stone. (Yes I know I'm combining legends here).

Enjoy the Silence

My daughter Molly has colic.  And it is terrible.  If you don't believe me come by any day between the hours of 6:30pm and 10:00pm. The board of education can forget those baby practice dolls, I'm going to start lending Molly out to local high school kids and I assure you none of them will EVER have sex again.

As a parent, colic is the ultimate in hands tying impotence as you watch your child scream in pain while you go through a random loop of ideas to "make it better" until finally the clock strikes whatever and everything goes back to some semblance of normal. However, you are generally so exhausted that you just melt onto the couch for an hour before going to bed.  

The experts say that colic ends at three months.  So we sat in anticipation last week awaiting some improvement.  The experts are liars.  There I said it.  Sometimes we think it's getting better, but I think we're just numb.

To give you a good idea of the anger level Molly displays during colic hours, I'll tell you this.  In the past month she has karate kicked the zippers of three pairs of footsie pajamas rendering them helpless and broken. Last week she ripped the leg off of a stuffed giraffe.  None of these instances happened during colic, that’s just regular happy Molly.*

During a good round of colic Chris likes to randomly call out, "Loud Noises".  I prefer to sing, "Noise, but I can't hear anything.  Just (Molly) screaming, screaming.  Some guy screaming in a leather jacket."** It doesn't make her feel any better, but sometimes it's liberating just yelling something back.

Yesterday our friend Rice*** sent me a great blog entry on coping with colic (http://offbeatmama.com/2011/11/a-colic-to-do-list).  It had some genuinely good ideas that we hadn't thought of and will totally try out.

I personally like to bring Molly to Wal-Mart when she's screaming.  She's never the worst kid in the store, cause it's Wal-Mart, right? And misery loves company.

Last week we discovered that Molly likes hockey.  Something about the white colour of the ice while we lay her on her stomach and bounce our legs makes her quiet and droolly, buying us a good twenty minutes.  The worst part about the colic**** is that as soon as you think you've figured something out to calm your baby: they decide they hate it.  Maybe tonight will be the night that she stops.  Then again, maybe not.

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*Chris thinks that the rage comes from the mother's side.

**Thank you Pursuit of Happiness.

***Yeah that's right, that's your new nickname.

****There are so many bad things about colic that there is no real "worst" thing.