Month: January 2010

Career Plans

| patmcg

Claire has been thinking about being a working mom lately.

Her daily note from school today said Claire “went to work” while Carissa (her teacher) “babysat” her babies named “Dona” and “Roshashana”.

One night during her bath, Claire rattled off a few job ideas, but after some thought settled on being a teacher.

Yesterday, said Claire said she wanted to be a doctor and go to the hospital with her mom every day. Kit was really touched by this. However, she is suggesting that Claire look into an allied health field or a technician position rather than being a straight up doctor. The hours and stress have been getting to her lately. :-


The Dreaded RSV

| patmcg
I had never heard of RSV before, but now I sure have.
It stands for Respiratory Syncytial Virus. In kids and adults, it is basically just a cold. In a baby of Molly’s age, it is a nasty viral infection that takes 7 to 10 days to clear up. I could go on for some time about this nasty thing, but let me just hit the highlights:

  • Molly came home from school on Friday 1/15 irritable and with a bad cough. The teachers said she “wanted to be held most of the day”, by which I think they meant she was fussy. Either way, this was not the usual Molly.
  • That Friday night, Molly’s cough continued, and she had a lot of trouble sleeping. We had to hold her, taking shifts sitting in the glider most of the night.
  • On Saturday, Molly was in worse shape than ever. She was miserable, and Kit and/or I had to hold her all day to keep her even slightly comfortable. We literally could not put her down without her crying, and she cried in our arms a lot too. We verified that Molly had a low fever. Poor Molly.
  • Saturday night was the worst yet. Molly was uncomfortable, coughing and wheezing all night. There was no peace for Molly or any of the rest of us, except for Claire and Muffin, who were sleeping downstairs across the house.
  • Kit’s mom and dad, and Kit’s uncle Bob came up for a “quick visit” on Sunday afternoon. Kit’s mom ended up staying to help for a few days (and nights). Since it was only supposed to be a day trip, she had not packed anything for the stay. So went to Walgreens only to get a toothbrush. Kit’s mom mostly handled Molly during the weekdays while Kit worked and I got some work done.
  • We ended up making two separate trips to the pediatrician. On the first, they said it might clear in about four days, which seemed like a long time for a cold. On the second visit, they verified it was RSV with a blood test. They said it would be a 7 to 10 day ordeal, and then it would only gradually peter out. They put her on a saline breathing treatment to help a little with the congestion, but there was no medicine they could give to help Molly.
  • Molly’s fever subsided, and she became well enough during the day to take her back to school. The good teachers at school were willing to do Molly’s nebulizer treatment a couple of times a day.
  • Molly’s smile returned, between coughing attacks, after the first couple of rough days.
  • The nights continued to be pretty tough. Molly’s hard-earned ability to put herself to sleep so consistently and her routing of sleeping through the night with one middle-of-the-night feeding were out the window. Hopefully they will be back soon!
  • I am writing this on Jan 25, ten days after this thing started, and Molly is mostly better, but she is still exhausted and sometimes extra fussy. She had 5 or 6 hours of naps today and was still over-tired and cranky when we tried to put her to sleep at 7 tonight. She sometimes still coughs and wakes herself up, but now she does sometimes manage to put herself back to sleep. So this is progress!
So there it is, Molly’s first real nasty illness. We are really glad to gradually be putting this behind us!


Molly’s First TV Show

| patmcg

Today was the first time I put on a TV show specifically for Molly’s entertainment. Sure, she has seen a little bit of TV just from hanging out in the living room, but this was the first show just for her.

I was looking for a way to help Molly relax while I did her nebulizer sodium chloride treatment for her lingering RSV infection.  Kit and her mom had been using the mobile for this purpose, but it was sort of unwieldy to set up up by myself.  So why not pull out a classic?  I put on the DVD of Claire’s old favorite: Baby Einstein: Baby Shakespeare.  As with Claire, Molly was engrossed by the puppets, music, and moving toys, and she did not mind the nebulizer one bit.

Now these Baby Einstein videos might not may your baby a genius, but you would have to be a real dummy not to use them from time to time!

Sleepin’ In

| patmcg

Here is an interesting first for Claire. This morning around 7:00 am, I was downstairs making breakfast and waiting for Claire to wake up. Claire came out and said, “Daddy, I’m still a little tired. Will you put me back to bed and put my covers on real flat?”

Of Claire’s four years, this is the first time I recall Claire wanting to go back to bed in the morning to sleep a little longer. She’s never been a big sleeper, but Claire has been tired lately. Perhaps because she is battling the same RSV / cold that the rest of us are, and it has wiped us all out. Still, it is nice to see that Claire has come to appreciate the benefits of sleeping in a little bit.

Claire has also been falling asleep very quickly at night. Sometimes at the five-minute check after tuck-in, Claire is already asleep. She is almost always asleep at 15 minutes. This is a big turnaround from the past, when she would sometimes take an hour or more to fall asleep.

Future Picasso

| patmcg
Claire has showed a renewed interest in drawing lately. Ofter months of limited drawing, her drawings really have really taken off lately. Here are a couple of compositions she took home from school this week.

The first one is a family portrait.
It has her mom, her dad, herself,
and her baby sister Molly holding a bottle.

She also made this Picasso-eqsue drawing of a man eating a lilipop.

White and Yellow Delights

| patmcg
Claire received a small notepad and a yellow marker as a party favor at a friend’s birthday party a few days ago. With nothing but yellow on white, Claire has put together some interesting and surprisingly lively pictures.
This one looks like Molly with her bottle.

This one must be our dog Muffin, since it has four legs.

I’m not sure about this one; it’s probably me or Kit.

Carseat Milestone

| patmcg
Molly reached a rare size milestone today. When we strap her into her car seat, her shoulders were starting to seem kind of cramped. The straps had to go pretty far out of their way to reach up over her shoulders. She had outgrown her newborn car seat settings! We upgraded her car seat straps from the very smallest to the next one up. It is nice to see some real evidence of growth.

Baby Fingers

| patmcg
When Molly is trying to get to sleep (or perhaps trying to not get to sleep) she has started playing with her hands a lot. She’ll hold up her arm and turn them back and forth, up and down for minutes on end, just watching them. I guess she is learning that these crazy sticks are actually attached to her body, and she can move them around by herself. That would be fascinating.
She also likes to manipulate individual fingers. She often holds up two fingers in sort of a V sign. At school, the teachers said Molly does this a lot. In fact, one time the only way they knew Molly had woken up from a long nap was the tell-tale two fingers rising up from her bed, where her body is otherwise out of site. I joked that this was like something from a horror movie, and they said, “Yeah, beware the two fingers!” I realized later that the video game Left 4 Dead 2 is what I was thinking of. Creepy!