Monroe Parenting

There was a Dear Abby column not to long ago about a woman whose son ate some pancakes and then started having problems later when his lips turned blue and breathing became shallow. The woman’s husband was an EMT and he told her to boil some water and put the boy’s face over the steam until his breathing returned to normal. It turns out that the pancake mix the boy had eaten was expired and had grown mold in it, which caused an allergic reaction. … My family had a similar incidence last night.

My phone rang around 11:15 p.m. last night and it was my mom asking about that Dear Abby article. One of my sisters had eaten some pancakes for dinner and a little while later her eyes had swollen up, her lips had turned blue and she was having trouble breathing (which is worrisome in itself since she has bad asthma).

My mom couldn’t get connected to the Internet and wanted to know if I remembered the article and if there was any truth in it. She was right to be concerned. I looked it up on Google, and here’s what I found. Mom then paged our family doctor who prescribed Bendryl to counter the allergic reaction. As of this afternoon my sister still had puffy eyes, but her lips had returned to normal color and her breathing was much better.

For all you parents out there, please check the expiration date on the box before cooking up pancakes. The box my sister had used was dated Dec. 2005, so it was obviously way outdated.

Better be safe than sorry, especially with little ones!!!

I am so bleary-eyed right now from late night homework that I can hardly stay awake. I’m also feeling incredibly guilty that I haven’t had enough time for my children this week. I had a major project due today for one of my classes and over the past week I’ve put in at least 19 hours on it. And that was just this week!

Needless to say, the kids have spent the night at Grandma and Papa’s house a few times this week. Dave has been helping me with the graphic part of my presentation, so we’ve both been up past midnight cursing at the computer almost every night this week.

How in the world do other parents do it?? How do they balance school, work and children all at the same time?

I have dubbed this week “Hell Week” because it was definitely a trial by fire. According to the syllabus this was the biggest project we have all semester (mostly because it was a very labor-intensive group project). Imagine trying to coordinate work with a bunch of classmates you have never, and will never, meet because it’s an online class………..

Anyway, I think I at least owe the kids a trip to the Zoo or Calder’s this afternoon!

A co-worker of mine has this really nice over-sized clutch purse sitting on her desk, so I had to stop to admire it. She said that she likes carrying clutch purses and that got me to thinking: When’s the last time I carried anything over than a giant “mommy bag”???

And the answer would be: high school. (Obviously pre-children.)

When I got to college I just carried everything around in my book bag. Then I graduated, got married, had kids, and moved up to carrying around a diaper bag. Now who really wants to carry a big ol’ diaper bag AND a purse when you can simply slip your wallet into the diaper bag or put a couple of diapers and a bottle in an over-sized purse? Really, try fitting some diapers, a pack of wipes and extra changes of kids clothes in a clutch! That’s just not going to happen……

So I’m stuck, at least for the next 10 years, carrying around a mommy purse. And by the time I don’t need it anymore, I will probably be so used to having a big bag that I won’t be able to morph back to something smaller.

The Dundee Library recently held its 20th anniversary luau and of course, seeing as how I work there, the Schmitt family was in attendance! There was a steel drum band set up for an outdoor concert and it was some fabulous family fun!

Caitlyn shaking her noisemaker with the band.

Caitlyn trying the hula hoop.

Keegan is not impressed by his sister’s antics.

Dave and Keegan doing the limbo!! Obviously, they didn’t get down very low!!!

I don’t know if it’s because I’m addicted to watching the Food Network and trying new recipes, but now Caitlyn is addicted to “helping” me out in the kitchen. And when she does it, she talks like she’s on a cooking show.

“Okay, mommy, what we’re gonna do first is……..and then what we need to do is…….” and so on and so on. And all the while she is talking wildly with her hands.

So here is Caitlyn, cooking up her specialty: An all-meat pizza. (Which is especially tasty since daddy the vegetarian can’t have any, lol).

Getting the ingredients ready.

“Now what we gotta do is put them all over the pizza!” Caitlyn says about the cut up hot dog bites.

Mmmmmmm! Look at all those toppings!

Caitlyn with her masterpiece — all ready to put in the oven.

I decided yesterday that I needed a change, so I had my mom color my hair red (although it came a strawberry blond).

I told Caitlyn that mommy likes to change her hair color just like the leaves that turn red in the fall. She liked that idea, but then she decided that I was changing my color so that I could match her and Keegan. (Caitlyn has the strawberry blond thing going on but Keegan is much more of a copper red.)

The only thing that confused Caitlyn is why my hair didn’t turn out all curly like the “picture of the lady on the box.” I guess she was thinking that not only would the mix make my hair red, but it would also magically make it curly, too. Oh, if only that could come out of a box!!

By Shawna Schmitt, sschmitt@monroenews.com

I swear that I’m getting less sleep now than I did when the kids were newborns…… Juggling two jobs, two kids and grad school isn’t easy — but that’s not to say that I’m not loving it. The only problem is I’m still putting in the long days with the kids and trying to make sure I’m on top of all the housework before I start my homework. After the kids go to bed, that’s when it’s time to hit the books.  And by then I’m so bleary-eyed that sometimes I just want to curl up on the floor and go to sleep!

On the bright side, it’s nice to be a student again. The best part is actually getting to converse with other adults about things besides new PBS programs or how high my child can count. It’s nice to step outside the mommy role for a while and reclaim a part of myself that I’ve seemed to have lost along the way.

By Shawna Schmitt, sschmitt@monroenews.com

Keegan has continued his trend of not wanting to sleep at night, so Dave usually gets up with him and takes him downstairs to kick back in the chair. But lately, one of us will just bring him back to our bed and let him snuggle in the middle. That happened last night, although I wouldn’t say things were too “cuddley.”

I rolled over so that I could snuggle up with the little guy and the next thing I know his fist flies out and punches me in the eye!!!! I’m not talking a little love tap, I mean I’m lucky my eye isn’t black and blue this morning.

Caitlyn has always been a roly-poly leg kicker, and that I can take. But I draw the line at getting punched in the eye at 2:30 in the morning!! That baby has been demoted back to the downstairs chair! See if I share my nice warm bed with him again…..grumble, grumble. LOL.

By Shawna Schmitt, sschmitt@monroenews.com

When the kids go to my mom’s house, things have a way of just “disappearing.” Sometimes it’s Keegan’s blanket (which we finally found in the laundry pile because he had spit up on it and we had forgotten about it); sometimes it’s Caitlyn’s shoes (which she left out on the deck because she thought they were “dirty”). But the other day took the cake: Keegan’s nearly full bottle of milk was missing. Ewwwwwww.

I knew Mom was feeding it to him when I left for work, so I thought that perhaps it had fallen down inside the chair or perhaps it fell on the ground and rolled behind the chair. No, no, Mom assured me that she had looked there. In fact, she insisted that she had looked EVERYWHERE for it.

Now, I’ve discovered bottles in my house that still had some milk in them that Keegan had hid in unusual places. (You really don’t want to know what they looked like by the time I found them. Let’s just say they had gone way past the “chunky” stage and had entered the realm of mold.)

I found one hidden under the art desk buried under coloring pages. I have no idea how it got there — all I can figure is the art desk is next to the crib, so maybe Keegan dropped it. Although he doesn’t drink bottles in the crib, so that wouldn’t really make sense. Hmmmm….

Another time I found one camoflauged amidst his tools on the toolbench. It seems he was playing and just decided to set his bottle down and then forgot about it.

So anyway, I get a phone call from my mom yesterday saying she had found the missing bottle. Apparently, Keegan was just trying to be helpful and “put the bottle away.” Mom had opened up one of the cupboard doors on the kids’ play kitchen and there was the bottle — standing upright on one of the shelves.

Oh, Keegan. I guess we just need to watch him like a hawk when he’s walking around with his bottle!

By Shawna Schmitt, sschmitt@monroenews.com

Yes, I do realize that it’s only the beginning of September, but try telling that to the people running all the Halloween USA stores that are popping up all around town like the plague! Caitlyn begged me to let her go in one, and she immediately fell in love with all the frou-frou costumes with the poofy skirts, butterfly wings and princess wands. Naturally, these costumes run in the $20-$30 price range. Yeah, I have never spent that kind of money for a Halloween costume and I don’t intend to start now.

In the past, we have pretty much made all of Caitlyn’s costumes  — from the pink piggy outfit that required my mom to sew stuffed pig ears and a snout onto a furry pink hooded sweatshirt, to the purple and white cow outfit that my mom sewed a polka-dotted tail onto the butt of regular purple sweatpants. It’s all about working with what you already got. (Okay, that and my mom’s skill with a needle and thread, but you get the picture!)

So since Caitlyn has decided that this year she wants to be a ballerina fairy princess (yes, you heard me right), I started poking around inside her closet. And bingo! There was almost everything I needed. She has a pink ballerina outfit, complete with frills and poofiness, so she can wear that with a white turtleneck underneath and her pink leggins to keep warm. She also has pink ballet slippers she can wear and, for the princess part, she has a crown and tiara. (These were purchased at Target last for a dollar each — no big budget setback there.)

So now we just needed wings. Dave and I talked about making them, but I really don’t have a lot of time for that. Instead, I found a beautiful pair at Wal-Mart for $4.99. Done! That was pretty much all I had to spend on Caitlyn’s costume.

Keegan’s costume will be even easier (it also helps when your kids are too little to demand what they want to dress up as!). He is going to be a Red Wings hockey player. He already has the jersey and matching pants in the closet and my mom has a hockey stick Keegan can borrow that she got at the Dollar Store.

Voila! See, it is possible to create nice costumes without spending the big bucks at a Halloween outlet store!