Monroe Parenting

Well, after working at the Evening News for 7 years, they decided to lay me off tonight — after my shift was over of course. No sense in not squeezing a few more hours out of me before booting me out the door. It’s funny — I always thought that the people who’ve been working at their jobs the longest would be more likely to stay at that job when there’s layoffs. I mean, wouldn’t the person who has worked there for years and year have a better chance of hanging on then a person who was, oh let’s say, hired a little more than a month ago would?? Oh, that’s right. Silly me. I forgot for a moment that I make much more an hour than a recent hire.

Anyway, sorry for the post of bitterness. But when you’ve got two kids and mortgage it’s nice to know you can at least keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

We’ll just call this picture the “before” shot, a.k.a. “before all the happiness was sucked out of the world”:

“You’re not going to shave it all off, are you? Hey, what are you doing with those scissors??”:

“Nooooooooooooooo! Not my bangs!!! Grandma, Aunt Lauren, make it stop!”:

Keegan pretty much kept us up almost all night last night. He’s got about 6 teeth all coming in at the same time, so no amount of Orajel, teething drops or pleading to God was going to stop his crankiness. Basically all we can do is try to keep him so occupied with toys that he forgets to be fussy. That doesn’t always work, because what he really wants is to be held so he can wipe his runny nose on the back of our shirts, but it’s the best we can do.

So when my mom called today to ask Dave to fix their computer I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Take the kids with you! Please take the kids with you!” I had to be in to work at 3:30 and it was only 1 p.m. at the time, but I figured it would take me at least that long to get rid of the throbbing migraine brought on by lack of sleep.

And I was right — 2 hours of blessed silence and one sweet tea from McDonald’s later and I can at last hear myself think!! But - oh crap, wait a minute. I do have to go home again later, don’t I? lol. Once again, if you see a blue Escape cruising through your neighborhood late tonight, don’t panic. It’ll just be me and my fussy little teether.

I never thought I would say that but that’s what it’s come down to. What is it with 4-year-olds?! I swear Caitlyn has turned into a “mini-teen” over night! The backtalk, the meltdowns, the flashes of temper when she doesn’t get her way…… the threat of being sold to gypsies no longer works and timeouts are a joke to her. After much arguing back and forth she will stomp to her corner, glare at me the whole time, and then stomp away again when the time is up and go right back to what she was doing. Everything has to be her way, what she wants, and if not she just flips out.

I attribute some of her attitude to a lack of an afternoon nap. Around 1-2 in the afternoon she gets super cranky. I do my best to get her to go down for a few winks, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If she does nap, she if very cooperative and mushy for the rest of the day (for the most part). But getting her to nap is no easy task and when she gets no sleep, look out!

I finally told her this morning that we are going to try something new. Every time she backtalks me I will take away one of her “stuffies.” Her pink panda or one of her Webkinz will sit high on top of the frig for one whole week. And if she continues to be mouthy then more friends will join her. That got her attention really quick — now let’s see how well this works!!!

Sorry for my week-long absence, but my house has been quite the center of chaos. With my semester getting ready to wrap up in the next couple of weeks, I’ve been on project overload trying to get all the big things done and prepare for final exams. Although that isn’t easy when you have two sick children. And I didn’t even realize just how sick they really are until yesterday…..

I had a doctor’s appointment for Keegan since I had forgotten about his 18-month vaccines and needed to rectify that problem. It just so happened that he was sick as well, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have him looked at while we were there.

He was in a pretty happy mood, so the doctor didn’t think much was amiss until she looked in his ears and noticed some fluid and then listened to his lungs and heard wheezing and congestion. She looked at me and said “I think he may have pneumonia.” Oh lord, no. No, no, no. I knew what was coming next and I dreaded it.

“I need to send him for x-rays.”

I swear I froze inside. That poor child. First he has to get three shots in his legs and then he has to go for x-rays. And getting x-rays for a child is nothing like getting them for an adult. Keegan may be a pretty big boy (32.6 pounds, 37 inches tall), but he’s still “little” in terms of being able to understand that he has to stand in front of a board and stand perfectly still while the x-ray machine works.

So that could  mean only one possible thing — THE TUBE. Oh, how I hate that clear plastic tube of torture!!!! It’s a contraption on a platform that has what looks like a bicycle seat in a hole. You dangle your child’s legs into the hold and set him on the seat while the technician *locks* a clear plastic tube around his back. She then finishes it by securing his head with a strip of cloth that is velcored around the back. And all this time I have to stand in front of Keegan’s accusatory eyes, holding his arms above his head over the tube. I felt completely helpless as my child cried in distress.

And, oh, the screaming. Keegan got so mad that he turned purple and puffed out his chest and kicked his legs in an attempt to knock over the table. In fact, we had to do numerous x-rays in an attempt to get one that would actually work because he refused to hold still in the tube — this only prolonged the agony. By the time we were done and walked out to the car, I just lost it. I felt like I was in shock — my legs were numb and I was just bawling, probably as bad as Keegan had been but without turning purple.

But I didn’t have much time to indulge in my freak-out because it was less than 5 minutes before Caitlyn’s appointment with the doctor. I had left her at my mom’s while I took Keegan in, but I quickly made Caitlyn an appointment, too, because I knew that she had the same problems hedid and I didn’t want to mess around with possible pneumonia. Thankfully, the x-ray place is right across the street from my doctor’s, so I was able to meet my mom in the parking lot and swap kids with her. She took Keegan home and I went back into the office for Round 2.

Keegan only had congestion in one lung, but we found out that Caitlyn has it in both lungs. I was given a slip to go back to the x-ray place, but thankfully Caitlyn knows how to hold still! We were in and out in less than 10 minutes with no screaming or crying needed.

The doctor said she’ll be calling me today with the results, so until then I’ll just keep my fingers crossed hoping that both kids just have really nasty colds. They are already on antibiotics but if it does turn out to be pneumonia then we’ll just deal with it.