Birdie Calls In Sick

A week ago tomorrow.  Approximately 11:45pm.  One Birdie McGee woke up screaming like her arm had been torn off.  Don't fret, Brigade: she's still got both arms.  She'd just thrown up while sleeping face down.  You can feel a Baby Bird, right?  Waking up to discover you are laying in a pool of vomit?  Bleech-a-palooza.  It happened again about 15 minutes later, and so although there was no fever, Baby Bird stayed home Monday.  Ted stayed home all day, but worked in the afternoon once Julie came home from work midday.  Birdie woke up fever-free and didn't ever loose her cookies, but she napped for nearly four hours so we think the day at home did her good if for no other reason than she could nap in the peace and quiet of the Raleigh House Spa.

Monday, upon waking.  Bed head, naturally and gorgeously highlighted.

Fashionista fashion when the fashionista calls in sick.

The Force Is Strong With This One

Joe is a big, still little guy.  Nearly every day contains a moment when one can see the adolescent he will soon be, and the infant and toddler he was not so very long ago.  That is, nearly every day contains a moment when your heart swells up so big it feels like it will burst, and then it does.

Such as the case this past Friday.  Fridays are show 'n' share days at the KinderCare.  Julie tries to ensure that the items making the journey for showing and sharing have been selected and labelled before she departs the house to make it a little easier for Ted.  This past Friday, Clara said she was taking Chloe and Joe, the Millennium Falcon.  Chloe wasn't labeled, but there's really no possibility of Chloe being snatched or misplaced.  Have you heard Birdie shriek, Brigade?  Girl can get her shriek on.  Joe said the Falcon was still labelled from the last time it made the jump to light speed and KinderCare.  Now, admittedly, Julie had the fleeting thought, "Maybe I should tack down with guys are going. . ."  But only two guys have ever gone and he was messing around with all the Star Wars stuff anyway, so she dismissed the thought as soon as it entered her mind with the equally fleeting thought, "He'll figure out the two guys that will go. . ."

She was sitting at her desk at 7:47am when she got this text from Ted: "Finally leaving kc.  Gd star wars guys."  Switching over to Voxer, Ted relayed that he was finishing shower when he heard all hell breaking loose outside the bathroom, but he couldn't hear why over the water.  Once he was out, he heard Joe crying and wailing, "Mommy come back!  Mommy come back!"  He couldn't find his Star Wars guys, Fans.  Ted asked if they were still in the Hoth system (the back corner of the "hall"-vacuum -cleaner closet).  Joe said no.  Ted believed him (meaning he believed that Joe had checked) so several frustrating minutes ensued until Ted really checked the Hoth system and found most of the Rebel and Imperial forces still there.  Apparently, most of the guys went, not just two.  You can probably figure why.  At that point, the shoe and coat donning gauntlet probably hadn't yet been run.  It's hard to make the jump to light speed when leaving Raleigh House, as you know, Fans.

So that was Friday.  It wasn't even 8am before Julie's heart had welled up full to bursting, and burst.  Saturday, she went out for a bit right after putting Clara down for her nap.  Ted was dozing on the couch.  Joe was pattering around.  Julie gave Joe a hug, Ted a kiss, and headed out.  When she got where she was going, she checked her phone and found this message, sent from Ted at 1:01pm: "Joe snuck out the backdoor so he could watch you drive off.  That woke me up!"  Oh Pal-o!  It's a good thing I didn't know that.  I might not have driven away!  I would have had to come right back and scoop you up and try to keep with me on Tatooine forever.  That's not how it works.  I don't even want it to, really.  Just sometimes.

Solid

Bathroom is going from a cafe au lait brown that never contrasted as envisioned with the white  to dark gray and white (like the tile), with pale yellow towels (we think).  Oh, and there's Ted painting.  He's wonderful.

So Fans, as we've seen, while a bathroom is a luxury, so, too, is an additional bathroom.  There is nothing like dismantling a home's sole bathroom in order to repaint it while living with two preschoolers to make one long with something approaching desperation for a second bathroom.  We know, because we have dismantled Raleigh House's sole bathroom in order to paint it and--and this author does not make this up--Ted was just overheard saying, "Seriously?  Every time I turn around one of you is having to go to the bathroom!"  The nerve.  But it is a little extra crazy around Raleigh House this weekend because of the mini-bathroom remodel.

Ted is doing all of the painting really, so Julie has been making herself useful by cleaning, spring cleaning, and errand running.  This afternoon, she took Joe to DSW (to look for black ballet flats), Old Navy (to purchase him shorts because by the time we can wear them here in the Great White North, they will no longer be in stores), the Little Target (to return some things and pick up pictures of Clara with the sky in honor of her room's new sky theme), and to McDonald's (for shamrock shakes).

Julie had gotten Joe and Clara some new kicks at Target yesterday and part of her spring cleaning entailed tossing their worn out or too small sneakers.  This footwear routing necessarily entailed a talking up of the new sneakers to Joe.  They came up again on the way to DSW when Joe asked Julie what salad meant.  What?
"Salad?!"
"No, SALAD!"
"Salad?!!!"
"S O L I D."
"Oh, solid."
(Joe sits behind the passenger seat and so is to Julie's right if she is driving.  This is the ear out of which she hears less which is how it comes to be that she has these exchanges with Joe of the sort they will still be having in 30 year's time, only Joe will then be as old as Julie is now--wow.)

So solid.  Julie had used it in it's slang sense as she described the plan of attack, like: "So we're going to go to DSW and look quickly for ballet flats, and then go to Old Navy where we'll have to spend a little longer, and then to the Little Target which should be super quick, and then to McDonald's for the shakes which we'll get at the drive thru.  Solid plan?"  This last was rhetorical and said unthinkingly, hence the salad-solid confusion.

So at first Julie said that solid was a state of matter (only she didn't remember that brainiac phrase at the time), like a car was solid, but water was not; water was liquid.  But as she was saying all of this, it dawned on her that Joe was asking because she'd used solid in the slang sense.  So to explain what it means, first she had to explain what slang is and how words can have multiple meanings.  Julie is pleased to report that she thought up cool as an example Joe would know pretty quickly: cool means both a little cold or chilly and also, as slang, awesome, rad.  Solid, Julie explained, in the slang sense, was kind of like that--cool, all good.

Joe was quit for a moments and then he said, "These shoes are solid."

And that, was solid.

After errand running

A Morning Tableau

Every week day morning, while Julie stands in the bathroom curling her hair, Joe pads in to use the potty.  He only ever pees, so he stands.  After he's done, Fans. . .Fans, it takes him forever and a day to gather himself back up and make it back to the dining room table to finish what's left of his yogurt.  First, he just sort of stands there looking all about, but not really taking anything in.  Then, he pulls up his underwear.  That takes about a decade.  After that of course, he spends another decade pulling up his pajama pants.  Despite the fact that about 99% of the time, he would pull his underwear and pants or shorts up together, following his morning pee, this is not the case.  Why?????  Similarly, after he's pulled up his underwear, and then his pants, he will then put down the potty seat--and then the potty lid.  Then, he'll flush.  Then, he'll wander (which is really the only word for it) out of the bathroom.  Increasingly often, Clara will appear at the doorway announcing that she has to go to the bathroom.  Typically this toward the beginning of Joe's lackadaisical morning potty routine.  And why not?  You'll no doubt recall, Dearest Readers, that the bathroom is the smallest room of Raleigh House and the more people that can be in it at one time, the more exciting everything is.

Most mornings Julie will burst out with things like, "JOE!  Joe.  Look.  ALIVE!"  Then she'll think, "Why do you care?  Just mind your business.  Kid wants to take an absolute eon to pee, so be it."  But the next morning, he'll be standing there with his underwear around his knees, paused to consider. . .what?  Who can say?  And Clara will be at the door repeating over and over again that she has to go potty while Julie is like three curls away from being DONE and she'll say something like, "Joe.  We live in a society.  Clara needs to use the potty.  Pick.  Up.  The.  Pace."

By the way, Fans, the fun doesn't stop once Joe leaves the bathroom.  Clara still insists on wiping herself with no more than two squares of toilet paper which she quite deliberately wads up until they are the size of the head of a Q-tip--and then she wipes.  And Julie cannot help herself from saying that this method defeats, utterly, what is surely at least 50% of toilet paper's purpose, it's glory--i.e. to avoid getting pee or poop on one's hand when wiping.  Surely there is a way to be both sanitary and environmentally conscious.

Until they've got it figured out, we'll all be in the bathroom.

Of Aquaphor, Lady Parts Strep, and Tigers

Birdie couldn't even hold her head up this morning.

Last night, at Chipotle, Joe and Clara had this exchange:
Clara: "My body hurts."
[beat]
Joe: "Is it your joints?"

So there you have it, Fans: a glimpse of the bambini, many, many, many years from now when they will, the good Lord willing, still have each other for all manner of things, not the least of which is someone to ask after their joints.

We can't make this stuff up, but we can acknowledge that one's of Joe's classmates brought a book in about bodies this week and it would seem joints were a hot topic in the pre-K room--in addition the body's waste products (naturally--this is a group of four and five-year-olds after all).

In any case, it is also true that this morning found us beginning another Saturday with another hot potato bambino in our bed.  This time it was Birdie, with whom something was clearly up last night when she went to bed.  What really tipped us off was the fact that she actually went to bed rather straight off, instead of engaging in her usual bedtime shenanigans: bouncing about her bed, getting in and out of bed to dart about the room doing God only knows what, cackling, and so on.

But we had also asked Biride what hurt, and she'd pointed to her lady parts, the center ribbon of which was red.  A little Aquaphor never hurt anything.  Frankly, Fans, that could be the Raleigh House motto.  Looks red?  Pink?  Chapped?  Cracked?  Dry?  Like it hurts?  A little Aquaphor never hurt anything.  So we dabbed a little on, doped her up with some Motrin, and put her to bed knowing that we'd be at the doctor's in the morning.

By the time this morning rolled around, she had a fever of 102, though things were looking less red in the nether regions.  At the pediatrician's office, we learned that there is strep throat, and then there is strep lady parts, shall we say.  There are also, of course, yeast infections.  But despite the fact that Birdie just kicked the strep (throat), and the fact that antibiotics have been a steady part of her diet for the past month between the impetigo and the strep throat, neither yeast infection nor lady parts strep was found. We were told to put some bacitracin on Birdie's lady parts, and continue with the Motrin.  We're waiting to see if something else presents itself in the the fullness of time, or if things resolve.  In the meantime, it would seem that a little Bacitracin never hurt anything either.

Since waking up from her nap, Birdie has been flapping about like her usual self and fever-free.  So a little time never hurt anything either.

Oh--we should tell you this, Brigade: at the doctor's office, while the Birds were waiting for the results of the lady parts strep test, Birdie examined Julie, including Julie's ears.  Following the exam, Julie asked Clara if she'd found any puppies in Julie's ears.  Clara--quite seriously--replied, "No.  Tigers."  When Julie asked what was to be done, Clara just stared at her.  Aquaphor.  Probably Aquaphor.  Can't hurt.  Might help.