flea

Yesterday we did errands and grocery and bought a Christmas tree and put it up and I made a batch of gingersnaps and baked half, and baked the rest of last weekend's speculaas and made pizza, and at that point we agreed we were too tired to go downtown and watch Santa rappell off of Macy's and set off a fireworks display.

Casper came down and got in our bed, and I went up and slept in hers. First I was awakened by mr. flea, coming to sleep in Casper's bed because he felt crowded in our bed (and assumed I was in it, on the other side of Casper, and was very startled to find me in her bed!). Then Dillo had to pee (he still has to be taken.) I was still awake and congratulating myself on getting him to the potty (because as annoying as taking a 5 year old down a flight of stairs to pee it still beats changing a bed) when there were shouts from downstairs and a pause, then mr. flea called up, "It's your responsibility." (He's poop; I'm vomit.)

Casper went from asleep to throwing up almost instantaneously, and got herself and almost everything on the bed (our bed, remember), and it was an unpleasant one even as these things go. mr. flea lumbered back up to her bed and I got her changed and set up in a nest on the living room floor and stripped the bed and started the laundry, and she couldn't sleep so I started a Nature about hummingbirds (which was beautiful and fascinating - their shoulders rotate, and their wings go in a figure 8 - oh the joys of slomo cameras!). She threw up 5-6 more times over the next 3 hours, although there was pretty much nothing to throw up. She is such a big girl; all apologetic and stoic.

When Dillo got up late for a weekend at 7:30 we were still exhausted, so mr. flea took him out to breakfast, and we watched a movie, and then they came back, and we watched a movie, and then the boys went out again to get different flea meds for the cats (have I mentioned we have been battling fleas pretty hard for 2 weeks now - through one dose of Frontline on both cats, and flea-bombing Casper's bedroom last weekend, neither of which seems to have taken. Casper is terribly flea-bitten, though the rest of us are not.) Casper and I napped, then we watched another movie. (I also did 8 loads of laundry, the dishes, baked the rest of the gingersnaps, which are for the student workers I am managing, and made lasagna.

Casper seems fine and ate lasagna for dinner; she's pale and tired but not sick. Now that I am working again, I hate to lose a weekend to such things. Christmas? What Christmas?

Over the weekend I noticed that Casper could move her thumb in her cast - she could pull it in and poke it out like a turtle's head from a shell. Since the thumb is the broken part that the cast is supposed to be immobilizing, this seemed problematic. A call the the orthopedist yielded an appointment for today. They removed the old cast with a vibrating special cast saw, and x-rayed, and re-cast her, this time in purple, and a tighter wrap. (She was still quite swollen when they did the first cast, so I gather the looseness comes from that subsiding.) The bone is healing nicely and she should be finished with this cast in 2 weeks. She wants to take the old cast to school tomorrow so everyone can try it on. I am sure they will do so with glee, despite it being filthy. Michael made sure she thoroughly washed her hand while briefly between casts.

Casper and mr. flea are at the ER right now, getting a splint for her broken left thumb. She fell off the monkey bars at after school at maybe 2:30 (early release day) and seemed to have jammed her thumb, and it swelled up immediately. They called me, I called mr. flea who happily was not in the field this week. He fetched Casper and took her home, and our neighbor who's an ER nurse and mother had a look, and recommended we get an x-ray. mr. flea called the pediatrician, who I guess said to go to the ER, since that was where heard from then next. The ER did an x-ray and there is a small break at the base of the thumb, which may involve the growth plate, so they are splinting it for now and will give us a referral to an orthopedist. (My brother has one thumb that is very much shorter than the other; although the family joke is he stunted it playing too many video games, I think he actually broke it skateboarding and nobody realized it was broken, and the growth plate must have been affected. So, we want Casper to have symmetrical thumbs.)

Drama of the moment is mr. flea is at the ER with no cell and no clear idea of when they'll be done. Dillo is still at school which closes one hour from now. mr. flea has orders to call me if he's not walking out the door of the building at 5:30, and I will call Dillo's school and call around our neighbors to see if anyone can go get him.

Poor bunnies. I am not worried for anyone's longterm health, but Casper must be in some pain and a little scared, and mr. flea is obviously worried and stressed out, and Dillo is languishing at school in ignorance of the drama. Poor Casper just got a second crown on Monday, too, so it's like the week of health woes.

What's it about? What it's always fucking about around here, folks - dentistry. Casper went in today. At her cleaning 5 months ago they said she had one cavity. We switched dentists (for various unrelated reasons). These ones say two crowns, possibly root canals, and 8 additional fillings, and sealants, and the treatment plan comes to more than $2000. WTFF? We JUST paid these people $1000 for Dillo's fillings. How can she have developed this much more tooth decay in 5 months, during a time when we have been working pretty hard to brush teeth appropriately? This is the kid who cooperates! Who brushes her teeth and has been to the dentist regularly! And had clean checkups until that one 5 months ago. How did we get to 2 crowns?

mr. flea, who did the honors this time, was too stunned to do much but make an appointment.

AND I can't even post about it on Facebook because my mother is there now and we lie to her about this. Because I'd never hear the end of it, otherwise. She is EXTREMELY holier than thou about dentistry, being married to a dentist.

Casper woke up at 2:30 am calling me, having had diarrhea in her sleep. I was awake with her until about 5, and she's gone through 3 (of her brother's) diapers and two towels she was lying on AND I had to strip my bed. Mostly while she was asleep. And after we gave her immodium. Dayum.

Oh the, uh, plus side, I got to lie awake listening to her stomach gurgle and contemplating the etymology of diarrhea, which literally in Greek means "through-flows." She's got the through-flows all right.

She seems in decent spirits, but dayum, not how I planned to spend my Friday.

The Dillo has slept through the night - aaaall the way through the night, from bedtime to past 6 am - for the last 4 nights in a row! I am so well-rested that I lay awake in my bed between 5 and 6:15 am today!

It's not likely to keep up through the week, alas. He is much more likely to sleep all night when he hasn't napped (as on weekends). With no nap, he goes down fast between 7 and 7:30; with a nap (as in, last night) it is a huge struggle to get him down (last night he wasn't asleep until 9:30, and was rubbing his face on my saying "I wuv you, cat momma" for about an hour before that) and he is often awake in the night. But not last night!

Casper took off all her clothes as soon as she got home last night and scratched herself like crazy for hours. She has a little patch of skin on her cheek that sometimes flares up like eczema, and it was flaring. I rubbed her all over with lotion which didn't immediately help but I hope will - we've been having cold nights and the heat and dry air (very staticky heads!), plus she and Dillo and mr. flea had a huge bubble bath Sunday night which may have dried her skin out.

Casper is going to the dentist today (for the first time in 18 months, oops) and is VERY HAPPY and EXCITED about it. Also yesterday I was complaining about a boring day at work and she said I should come to her school, where I could "practice [my] coloring skills!" and read, and that would be exciting!

I emailed her teacher about something, and mentioned the "Casper is tall and beautiful" statement she (Casper) used to illustrate a fact, and she (the teacher) replied: "She has a wonderful imagination, and quite a well developed self-esteem! I wish I had her confidence!"

Heh. She's been sassy lately; we need to do a little cracking down about respect.

In the plus column, we acquired Christmas cards (half #5 and half #9 - the former for elderly relatives and the latter for folks with a sense of humor) (viva la Target; I sent in the order and got an email 8 minutes later saying it was ready), got the grocery shopping done, got 25 leaf bags to the curb (mr. flea), and washed, taped and cut in 1/2 of the kitchen walls (me).

In the minus column, Dillo is pretty poorly, pale, threw up all day long long after there was nothing left inside (we've given him some fluids to prevent dehydration and he throws them up). Casper was okay, not barfy but listless and low, and then fell asleep and woke with one of her night-terror-like times - loud, inconsolable crying. Both are fitfully asleep now in the living room. I sit and look at them and frown. mr. flea's turn to stay home tomorrow.

Casper is better. Has kept down water, appleasuace, crackers and seems in good spirits.

Dillo was fine until about 15 minutes ago, when he threw up all over himself and me. Oh well, at least it seems to pass quickly - Casper's only lasted 9 hours.

Good thing I kept him home instead of sending him to daycare.

8:30 Got Casper to fall asleep in my bed. Moved downstairs with Dillo to his bed.
9:30 Dillo finally falls asleep. Oh my god, child.
9:35 Arrive upstairs to carry Casper down to her own bed (per her request before falling asleep.) Discover she has barfed in her sleep, in my bed. Fetch towel. Pick her up. She barfs into towel. Set her down. Remove her shirt, wash her face with washcloth, fetch new towel. Transport her to her bed. She is pretty much asleep through all of this.
9:40 Strip my bed, start laundry of the worst things. Room still stinks of vomit; vow to sleep on couch.

I hope to god she's bright as a daisy in the morning, because I have no sick time and no backup caregiver. Fuckity.

She seems to be doing well. Mrs. E spoke of her as a good citizen of the class, friendly with several of the girls and a good example to them of standing up for herself in the face of a few boys who are behaviour problems (which Mrs. E says they are working hard on. They the teachers, I mean, as well as they the boys in question.) She knows all her letters and the sounds and is starting to sound out words in her reading group. She's well into working on or already meeting most of the grade-level skills for the year, and we have 3/4 of it to go. They do do phonics, which relieves mr. flea, who attributes his inability to spell to newfangled non-phonics education. (English is HARD.)

(She's not in the most advanced reading group - there is a group that is reading the simplest books already. Must not tell my mother, who in a recent phone call when I talked about how Casper is getting close to reading, said that my grandmother Dod, who was my mother's parenting oracle as she had dysfunctional parents and had me at 22, told her that HER children (my father, aunt and uncle) all could read when they started kindergarten, so my mother decided I had to be able to read when I started kindergarten, and so she taught me at 4, and (unspoken, so far) why didn't Casper get to kindergarten already reading, must be flea's fault!!)

The only thing Mrs. E brought up that we could work on is that sometimes when she is tired/not feeling well/ upset she stops talking and resorts to little whimpering noises and then gets frustrated when Mrs. E and the aide don't understand. She does this at home, too, of course, so we are already working on it. It can be hard for her to express her emotions; she's pretty stoic for a while I think and then topples over. Possibly I am projecting.

I picked her up early today - they were released at 12:30 because of the conferences, and I picked her up at 1. We walked home, spread some "spider webs" on the front bushes, planted some iris and daffodils that I brought from NC, Casper built the most adorable treehouse for her little mouse figure out of a magnolia leaf and tape and some lambs' ear leaves and a tiny doll quilt and a washcloth (and the mouse has a dress made from a wipe), we took a big bubble bath together, I made soup and she ate bacon and did some art stuff involving a large vat of blue-dyed water, and then we walked back to school, visited the Scholastic book fair where I spent $24 and got some good bargains, and then to the conference. She is looking tired and run down and still is having digestive problems off and on - had diarrhea this afternoon. She often says her stomach hurts, and her voice is hoarse like a cold is coming on. I had hoped to get her to nap, but fat chance. I hope mr. flea can get her to sleep early tonight. She feels fragile to me right now. But I am proud that she is happy at school, working carefully, and a good citizen (who also, Mrs. E told us, likes to make people (including Mrs. E) laugh, but she's good at choosing when to be funny, and isn't disruptive with it, as some of the other kids who think they are funny are.)