Sick and tired

They're sick. I'm tired. This makes us all a little grumpy.
Yes, I'm the type of cruel mother who reaches for a camera when her children are distraught over who gets the blue picture bingo board. (Invisible Dad got to play the blue one. He's a handy guy to have around.)

Jessica is not tired in the least.



I suppose, looking on the bright side, that it's worth noting that I am not sick, and neither Mel nor Jess is tired. Lucas is far from Iraq. Things could be much worse.

Jessica developed what looked like a split lip this morning. I would normally attribute it to rough play or inadequate hydration, but I have hand, foot and mouth disease on the brain. I asked her if she had any owies, and she pointed to her mouth. She pointed to the inside of her mouth, not the visible sore. This was precisely what I was hoping would not happen.

We went to see the pediatrician, and a minor case of hand, foot and mouth was confirmed. Jessie will be contagious until the sores in her mouth are healed. Melody is most likely currently contagious, although non-symptomatic. Well, she has symptoms, just not those of hand, foot and mouth.

Jessie has no foot or hand blisters, no fever, and no objections to food or drink. On the contrary, she's been asking for food all day. She decided she wanted a red-themed lunch. She requested purple cabbage, or what she calls "purple salad", strawberries and apples, specifically red ones. She initially turned down the offer of honey-battered chicken nuggets, because they didn't match her theme, but was tempted by the sight of them on Melly's plate.

We're in self-imposed quarantine until next Monday, since Mel may be contagious without symptoms until then. The last thing we want to do is start spreading this around daycare, although we may have already done so. We definitely don't want to take this infection to the massive audience of Dora the Explorer Live. I'm disappointed, but fortunately I hadn't told the girls about it yet, and have been able to give our tickets to a friend from my Mother of Multiples group.

When the girls went down for their nap, my neighbour Arleen dropped by. Her three-month-old, Julianna, has the infection too, and our neighbour Max has been exhibiting the initial symptoms. Melly is officially the last child standing against hand, foot and mouth on our block, and she's down with the summer cold and bronchiolitis. Fortunately, Arleen is still nursing, so the baby has the benefit of her antibodies and appears to have a pretty mild case.

Here are the spoils of the pharmacy stop we made on the way home from the doctor. (I made very sure that the girls touched nothing but the shopping cart, and disinfected it with a wipe before returning it to the store.)


Make that Maalox and Benadryl to mix together for a mouth sore treatment, Little Noses saline drops to deal with nasal congestion (the toddler version of a neti pot), and children's ibuprofen in case of excessive pain or fever. The band aids are a refill, since we've exhausted our Dora stash. The generic Tylenol for adults? That's to deal with the headaches that are certainly coming as a result of seven long days of stay-at-home parenthood. I love my kids, but I function much better given the adult outlet of the office and its concerns.

Let's not forget the meds we're already using.

Two laxatives and two respiratory medications, all for Mel. I should have put more in my medical flex account.

Sickie update

Thus far this morning, it's still looking like Melody has a summer cold rather than hand, foot and mouth disease. She had two bowls of Cheerios for breakfast, and no complaints of mouth sores. (LauraC has this advice, which I've passed on to my neighbour: "You can squirt liquid Maalox all over the sores in the mouth before feeding them to help them get food." Thanks, Laura!)

Jess has begun coughing now, which puts her symptoms two days behind Melody. I assume that means she caught whatever this is from Melly, rather than both of them contracting it simultaneously somewhere. Jess is taking her albuterol right now; since this infection is going to interfere with her breathing anyway, we may as well get ahead of it.

Since Melody has congested lungs and nose, she keeps having to take breaks from her neb treatment to blow her nose. She's been responsive to my request that she ask me to turn the nebulizer off before she removes the mask from her face. We're going through a lot of tissues! A rough night means that I've added Pulmicort, the girls' asthma control medication, to Melly's treatments, making each treatment last 30 minutes, which gives a lot of nose-blowing opportunities.

I mentioned that last night was a rough one.

It was a relief when Melody fell asleep early last night. She'd had her breathing treatment, but when I checked on her at 10:00 pm, she was tossing and turning, clearly struggling to breathe through her nasal congestion. I turned the humidifier up, but Melody's discomfort didn't appear to be easing.

I decided to use a technique we haven't needed since Melly and Jess were newborns. I picked Melody up and headed to the living room. I reclined the back of couch, placed Melody in my lap so that her head would be elevated, and settled in to sleep there for the night. This position helps the nasal packages drain. Within a couple of minutes, I felt her breathing ease; there was still some crackling in her chest, but the breaths were going in.

(I owe my husband a big "You told me so" on the subject of the couch. The reclining seats were the best investment! They provided me as much comfort as was available when I was pregnant and huge, and they now allow for some sleep during otherwise unmanageable nasal congestion.)

At 2:00 am, I felt Melly shoot straight up. "Mama!" she said, with panic in her voice. I let her know that I was sitting right under her, and then she relaxed. She tried to get her bearings in the dark. "Is that your knee? Is that my elbow? Where is my sister? Is my room over there? That's my play room that has lots of toys. We have to be very really quiet 'cause my sister is sleeping," poured out of her at a volume incompatible with having been awake for just a few seconds.

There is no thought that goes through Melly's head that doesn't come out her mouth.

Since we were six hours from the last breathing treatment, and she was wheezing, I gave Melody another dose of her medication. She was cheerful and much more awake that I was. Once I was sure she was breathing easily, I tucked a very happy sick toddler into bed, accompanied by loud admonitions from the patient to be very very quiet. I took advantage of Mel's feeling better to take a shower. At 3:00 am. You fit things in where you can.

I checked on the girls at 6:00, and they were both breathing easily.

At 7:15, they were up and about, demanding breakfast, and answering only to the names Tasha and Uniqua.

What kind of sick?

Last month, Melody recovered from a cough with no need for breathing treatments. No such luck this month.

Melody started coughing on Wednesday, but it was hardly noticeable. It got worse over the next couple of days, and last night, I put my ear to her chest and heard distinct wheezing. We know the drill; I didn't even bother calling our pediatrician's after hours service. I sat Melody down with a nebulizer loaded with albuterol in front of an episode of the Wonder Pets. Hooray for 15-minute episodes!

Once she coughed up some gunk, the wheezing sound disappeared. When we woke this morning, she still had a cough and had developed a runny nose, but the wheezing hadn't returned. Still, I elected to take advantage of the doctor's Saturday morning hours to have Melody examined.

The doctor didn't hear any wheezing either, but recommended that I keep her on two treatments a day for the next couple of days. If that isn't enough to manage it, I should up the albuterol and add her asthma maintenance medication to the mix. The pediatrician described the summer cold that's going around as "wimpy", and said that Mel shouldn't get too sick.

I mentioned to the doctor that both the girls had been exposed to hand, foot and mouth disease at a birthday party on the block last Saturday. Little McKenzie, the patient, goes to the same pediatrician, so he knew exactly who I was talking about. He doubted that Melly's cough was related, since the symptoms of hand, foot and mouth are fever and sores, neither of which she has.

Melody started wheezing again around lunchtime, so I added an extra dose of albuterol to her regimen. She was in pretty good spirits all day. She didn't sleep during naptime, instead joining me in my workout after an hour of quiet time in her bed.

McKenzie, no longer contagious, came over to find a playmate this afternoon. Since Jess was still asleep, McKenzie's Mom, Heidi W., set their inflatable pool up in my yard so that I could watch Mel and listen for Jessie. While we were outside, my neighbour Arleen walked over with her three-month-old, looking exhausted. She mentioned that her two-year-old, Annelise, had been in an awful mood, refusing all food because of a canker sore. Heidi W. immediately suggested, apologetically, that Annelise might have caught McKenzie's virus.

We all headed into our respective homes for dinner, and Melody spent the next hour, unproductively, on the toilet. Jess and I ate our dinners, and I tried to convince Mel to finish off her water, which contains her laxative. We went head to head. She screamed. I yelled. It was ugly.

Finally, I packed both the girls off to bed early, Melly having had no dinner. While I was brushing Mel's teeth, she complained that her mouth hurt. I figured I'd jabbed her with the brush, but checked for a sore. I didn't see anything. I'd already tucked her in when I remembered that she needed a nebulizer treatment and got her started on that. By this time, we'd made our peace.

Then the phone rang. It was Arleen. She'd looked at the soles of Annelise's feet and inside her mouth. Sure enough, she was showing the typical symptoms of hand, foot and mouth disease. Arleen's Mom will be taking Annelise to San Antonio tomorrow to minimize the baby's exposure. Annelise's symptoms had started on Wednesday. You know, the day Mel started coughing.

Arleen said she was calling all the parents of kids who'd been around Annelise and might have been exposed. She's been to a couple of birthday parties and an indoor bouncy castle place over the last week, so the list was long. It struck me that in her exhaustion it might not have occured to her to contact our neighbour Heidi M., who is expecting. I quickly googled "coxsackievirus pregnancy" and confirmed that there was no reason for alarm on that front, but picked up the phone to call Heidi anyway.

There was a knock on my door. It was, conveniently enough, Heidi M., returning a baking dish. I gave her a rundown of the situation, but she wasn't too alarmed, since she'd consulted her obstetrician when McKenzie came down with hand, foot and mouth last weekend.

After a quick chat, I checked on Melody. Her breathing treatment was almost done, and she was fast asleep. She was just worn out, poor thing. Jess told me, "I was talking to my sister and 'splaining my story to her, but she closed her eyes, so I asked my question to my baby doll instead."

Have I mentioned that Jessie's nose started running today?

I'll only take the girlies to daycare on Monday if I'm certain they're not harbouring that yucky virus.

Potty training or potty trained?

I like to know exactly what a word or phrase means before I use it.

An important part of my job as a business analyst involves defining technical terms and creating glossaries to minimize ambiguity. Did reading dictionaries for fun make me pursue two degrees in Linguistics, or did being a linguist at heart making dictionary-reading fun? We'll never know.

The term I'm struggling with right now is "potty trained."

I'd imagined that once Melody and Jess had earned the label of "potty trained", life would become infinitely easier. The world would be our oyster, with no need to carry diapers or wipes with us. Jess and Melly's last tie to babyhood would be broken, and we'd step forward into the world of little girlhood.

I thought that "potty trained" was synonymous with "done with diapers". Now I'm not so sure.

We're done with diapers, but the training continues.

Earlier this week, for instance, we stopped at Chipotle for dinner. It took us an hour and 15 minutes to eat, because we had to take six potty breaks, four of which were false alarms. I had to leave our food unattended when we went to the bathroom; I wasn't about to leave a three-year-old to guard the table!

On the drive home this evening, Melody desperately needed to poop, so I pulled over and used a plastic bag to line the potty I'd placed in the car for just such an occasion. She tried for about 5 minutes, to no avail. I think that one in ten one-hour drives this week isn't bad for the first week back to school after diapers, but it's still not "trained".

Every day this week, Melody has soiled herself once in an attempt not to poop, while Jess has either had an accident in her panties, or sat so far forward on the toilet seat that she's peed on either her panties or her shoes.

So, how do you define "potty trained"?

A moment to myself

It appears to be a common misconception that once a woman gives birth, she no longer needs to eat, use the bathroom, or shower. This is not, in fact, the case.

Traffic was horrendous this evening, and we didn't get home until after 7:00. As soon as we walked in the door, Mel and Jess took turns on the potty, taking about 10 minutes. I told the girls I needed to go potty too, and that I'd make dinner as soon as I was done.

As soon as I entered the bathroom, Melody was there too. I asked her to please go back to the living room so I could have a few moments. After three minutes of cajoling, she turned to leave, only to be barreled down by Jessica.

Jess was sobbing. "I couldn't find you everywhere," she wailed.

I reminded her that I had told her where I was going, and that she'd know exactly where I was if she returned to the living room.

"I'm scary that I'm going to lost you," she sniffled.
"I'll be right here, in our house. I'm not getting lost," I tried to convince her.
"But I miss my Daaaaadaaaaa."

That child knows exactly how to get to me. I wouldn't budge, though, and tried to talk her into leaving me for 60 seconds. Melody finally took her by the hand and convinced her that I wouldn't get lost if they left me in the bathroom. Her explanation? "Mama needs to go potty so she can wear panties."

Amazing father

I sat down the other day and wrote up a calendar of the major milestones in our family's lives. I noted the day Lucas and I met, the day we got engaged, our wedding and the girls' birth. I also wrote down the dates on which he's left us to do his duty overseas. I tracked the joyous dates on which he's returned to us.

Lucas has been away for a total of 21 months since Jessica and Melody was born. That's 58% of their lives. He's been away almost two thirds of our little girls' lives.

If you had seen Lucas with his daughters last week, you would never have guessed that he was home for a short visit. He knows each of them, and understands them deeply. He knows how to talk to them, and what to teach them, and how to get through to them. He knows when they're testing him and what they're capable of. He knows when to be strict and when to be squishy. He knows how to help Jessica focus when her observations of everything around her overwhelm her. He knows how to help Melody perk up when she's feeling sorry for herself.

I think I'm a decent mom, but Lucas is a great dad. I couldn't have maintained a connection with Melody and Jess the way he does, if I were the one who was away. I certainly couldn't have supported him the way he does me.

I married the most amazing person I have ever met. How did I get so lucky?

Overheard 15

Outside

Me: Girls, you need to come inside now.
Melody: I want to stay outside.
Me: It's too hot. It isn't healthy to be outside for too long in this heat.
Jessica: You can put more sunscreen on me to keep me nice and cool.
Me: I wish it worked that way!

In the car

Melody: Give my Care Bear back!
Jessica: No, thank you.
Melody: You grabbed it.
Jessica: That's okay.
Me: Jessie, give Melly's Care Bear back.
Jessica: I'm Jane. That's Mary Poppins.
Me: Jane, give Mary Poppins her Care Bear.
Jessica: Mary Poppins is a grownup. Care Bears are for little girls.
Melody: No, it's Mary Poppins' Care Bear. I'm pretending to be a grownup.

In the bathroom

Jessica: I pooped, Mama!
Me: Great job, honey!
Jessica: Can I see it?
She peers into the toilet.
Jessica: I made a big poop and a little poop. It's a poop family!

Family time

Lucas' visit was lovely. It was much too short, but like a great party, he left while we were having fun, leaving us all reconnected and appreciating every moment we get together.

I've struggled with writing about his time home, both because Lucas is a much more private person than I am, and because words don't do justice to the feel of just being family. "Just being family" sounds so boring, and yet it's sublime, in the purest meaning of that word.

I went into work for a couple of days while Lucas was home, although I took most of the time off. One thing we learned during Lucas' leave from Iraq when the Doodles were a year old is that I need to temper my tendency towards being an insane control freak involved parent. This time, therefore, after spending a couple of days together as family, I headed back to work to allow for some quality Daddy-daughter time. Lucas was definitely worn out at the end of the day, but thoroughly enjoyed spending full days with Jessie and Melody. Lucas wasn't worn out by the girls' energy as much as their (and my) habit of thinking every thought aloud. There is no silence around here, ever, which can be hard to adjust to.

It was too hot to do much outdoors, so we stayed close to home. Jess got her trip to the library, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Lucas hadn't been to our town's public library before. He thought that the children's section was very thoughtfully placed away from the rest of the library, giving parents the leisure to teach kids library behaviour at the library, even if they sometimes forget themselves and get a little loud. Mel and Jess loved the books, of course, but also took advantage of the hand puppets, stage, and puzzle collection.

When Lucas picked me up from work early one day, we discovered the Texas Memorial Museum, just a few minutes from my office. It's pretty low-key as museums go, but we had fun. Teaching the girls about meteorites and fossils was great, and some of the dinosaur bones were breathtaking. Melody was so excited, she simply could not modulate her voice, but the other visitors seemed amused by her exuberance, rather than annoyed. Half way through the museum, Melly suddenly asked, "Are we in Mexico?" Where do they get this stuff? After our visit, Jess told us that her favourite thing at the museum was the drinking fountain. Well, it was over a hundred degrees out, so drinking fountains are a definite hit.

We don't try to jam a ton of activities into the precious days we get together. Instead, we focus on settling into the normal rhythms of home. That's never been easier than this time.

Lucas is such an amazing father. That's easy to see when he's away, because his insights on what the girls need or what they're thinking are so spot-on. It's even easier to see when he's here. Melody and Jessie's faith in their father is unquestioned. To be fair, they were shocked the first time he disciplined them after getting home; they'd both created an image of him as the one who would save them from Mean Mommy and Her Evil Rules. Once they remembered that he's even stricter than I am, though, we fell right back into the swing of a two-parent family. The girls weren't even particularly clingy. Lucas does an extraordinary job of letting them know that he's with them, even when he has to go away.

Jess did threaten to break both our hearts, though, when she tried to convince Lucas that he didn't need to return to Korea because he'd already fixed all the helicopters.

Lucas' parents, Jesse and Brenda, flew in from the Pacific Northwest toward the end of his stay. We all loved having them here. Lucas especially enjoyed seeing his Dad. It's been a long time since they've been able to spend time together. The girls were in heaven. Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa! Life doesn't get better. If they lived closer, I'd definitely need to have a talk with my father-in-law about how much he spoils the girls, but I won't ruin their fun quite yet.


Lucas and I took advantage of his parents' presence to sneak out on our single date of the year on his last day here. We watched the new Transformers movie and grabbed a late lunch. During our date, and during the rest of Lucas' time home, we remembered all over again how compatible we are. We have the same terrible sense of humour, the same nerdy interests, and same core values. And we have an amazingly unified vision for parenting. We interact with the girls very differently, but we provide a great balance for one another.

Our goodbyes were short and sweet. The girls miss their Dada, of course, but they talk about him with a smile in their voices. They know he'll come back when he's done helping people, and they know he loves them and that he's proud of them.

I was grateful that my in-laws stayed a few days past Lucas' departure. It definitely eased the pain of saying goodbye; the fact that they had Melly and Jess home with them during the first days post-diaper was definitely icing on the cake for me!

Potty willing

After nineteen months of trying, I think Jessie and Melody may be permanently out of diapers.

Just as everyone who knows about these things had told us, Melody and Jess decided on the timing, and made sure we knew that this was on their terms.

On Tuesday, Lucas mentioned to the girls that when they went to their new school, there would be no more diapers. That night, Melody told me, very quietly, that she wanted to sleep in panties. I don't know whether this was in preparation for school, or whether she simply wanted to make Daddy happy before he left. Either way, I told her that it sounded like a great idea. I told her that she should wake someone if she needed to go at night. (She didn't need to.) All the adults in the house were notified of the big event, and then, just to be safe, I double sheeted her bed.

Double sheeting is Jennie's brainchild. On your child's mattress, you put a waterproof mattress pad, a fitted sheet, another waterproof mattress pad, and another fitted sheet. If there's an accident in the middle of the night, you strip off the top layer, and there's no need to remake the bed while you're groggy. Brilliant!

The night passed without incident. Grandma and Grandma made a huge fuss of Melody in the morning, which encouraged her to stick to panties, and inspired Jessie to abandon her diaper too. My in-laws will be here until tomorrow, so the girls have been staying home with them.

Jessica had one accident yesterday. She just forgot that she was diaper-less. Melody pooped in her panties once. She pooped on the potty four times, though, and given her fears of pooping, that's huge. Jess was very sad to learn that diaper abandonment included saying goodbye to swim diapers, but after a day to think about it, she wondered whether we could give the swim diapers to our neighbour's two-month-old, "'cause babies wear diapers and big girls don't need diapers."

Everyone's been celebrating the diaper abandonment. Our neighbour Arleen brought the girls cupcakes. Grandma and Grandpa took them to the mall to visit the coin-operated ride on toys. Grandpa Jesse took them to the Timex store for watches after the Disney store came up blank. Jessie has taken to wearing a hair tie on her wrist and telling everyone that her "watch" says it's "one twenty clock". Grandpa wants nothing less than the real thing for his grandbabies. Lucas asked me to convey his pride in the accomplishment when we chatted on the phone. I got the girls new nightgowns and hit two Walmarts, three Targets, and a number of other stores before finally finding one that carries panties in toddler sizes.

Melody had a major poop incident today that resulted in one pair of panties ending up in the trash. Jess had another pee accident, but is doing well with frequent reminders of her diaperless status.

I don't feel like I do much parenting. I cook and do the laundry, and Jess and Melody seem to be raising themselves on their own schedule. I'm a little nervous about how much support we'll get from their teacher, after she recently declared her conviction that the girls just aren't ready to potty train. I suppose if they show up in panties she'll need to help them out.

Feels like home

Having decided to move Melody and Jess back to their old daycare, on Tuesday I took advantage of Grandma, Grandpa and Dad's presence to drive down to the school and submit our admissions forms and hundred-dollar deposit.

It was such a luxury to be able to pull out of the garage on a whim, knowing that the girls were well-cared for, and in the hands of adults who could handle any emergency. We have wonderful babysitters, but arranging for a sitter takes time and costs money, and I'm still on mommy duty while I'm out, on call for crises. With Lucas home, I knew that if an ER visit were in order or some other emergency occurred, I would only be called because my husband knows that I like to know what's going on, not because he needs me to make a decision.

Sure, the errand was child-related, but still, it felt great to be a traditional two-parent family for a few days.

When I arrived at the daycare, I was greeted by the director. Her brother happens to live two doors away from us, and we've kept in touch socially over the last year. It was good to catch up on the most recent happenings in her family.

I handed her my filled out forms, and gave her a check. She caught me up on what Melody and Jessie's old friends and classmates were up to. Right now, the 3-4-year-old class that they'll be in is combined with the preschool class to allow for adequate social interaction. Melly and Jess will bring the 3-4-year class count up to five, allowing it to break off into its own classroom. All three classmates are children that they've grown up with since infancy, all of them sweet, spunky kids.

When I visited the classroom, I realized that I'd already met the teacher, Sarah, at a birthday party, and liked her immediately. The children were all working on a colouring exercise, and two of them came up to me to show me what they were doing. One of them even gave me a hug, although I couldn't tell if it was because she remembered me, or she's just a huggy child.

I asked if I could chat with Suzanne, Mel and Jess's first teacher. She was helping out in the infant room, the room where I first left my five-pound babies to return to work three years ago. Suzanne greeted me with a smile, a hug and a, "So I hear you're bringing my girls back." Her six-year-old daughter happened to drop by to visit her mom, and greeted the announcement of the return of Jessie and Melly with a heartfelt "Yay." After all, she's known them and been something of a big sister to them since she herself was three.

On the way out the door, I mentioned our struggles with potty training. Tori let me know that getting the girls potty trained would be the first order of business. All the kids in the class are in underwear, and they don't have changing facilities in the classroom. When I told her the signs of readiness that I'd seen in the girls, Tori suggested that we just tell them that diapers didn't belong at their old/new school. With no alternative to the toilet, after a few accidents, they'd figure it out.

That's a plan I can get behind.

I mentioned that Melody was closer to being potty trained than Jessica, who really doesn't seem all that interested.

"Really?" Tori said. "I find that surprising. Jessica is such a go-getter."

That statement alone made any lingering doubts about a daycare change disappear. Tori's seen Jessie and Mel only two or three times in the last year, and has never been their primary teacher, but she is still better able to recognize their differences and predict their behaviour than the teachers they've been with daily for the last year.