Hug Twice

Last week I talked about my great and amazing (to me) parenting hack where CJ was holding his head because he felt sick, and I put one of his sister’s headbands on his head to hold his head for him, and how smart I was because it worked.

Well, it worked too well.

Even after CJ was sick, he wore the headband. And if you dare suggest taking it off his head… beware! He even wore it in the shower. Matt and I thought long and hard about it, and tried to figure out a way to explain to his preschool why we were sending him on Wednesday with a headband on his head. And we really couldn’t come up with anything.

So we did what any self-respecting set of parents would do - on Tuesday night, when CJ was asleep, we slipped it off his head. The first attempt I made, Cj actually semi-woke up and put his hand over his headband protecting it muttering “No my headband mine no no” so I left and tried again about an hour later. This time I was successful, but the headband was stuck under CJ’s head. Later that night when CJ had moved, Matt rescued the headband and hid it in our room.

When CJ got up the next morning he never asked about the headband. But he did start holding his head again. I asked him if his head hurt and he said no, so I told him he needed to stop holding his head to go to school. And he did. Mostly. Except I called the school to tell them about this head-holding phenomenon just in case it made them wonder.

Sometimes maybe I am too smart for my own good. Or CJ is.

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A number of carnivals went live this part week that HugTwice was a part of. Exciting stuff! I hope you will check out each of the carnivals yourself, there is so much great stuff out there. Here are some of the things that caught my eye.

The Mom’s Blogging Carnival was at Australian Women Online and my post How Was School Today? was included. I also enjoyed this post very much, it was great food for thought:

• The Health and Life Mixing Bowl: Is Selfish A Bad Word For Moms? I think I could learn to be a wee bit more selfish. Although I think Matt is a lot more giving of his time and energy than I am much of the time.

The Carnival of SAHMs is at Mom is Teaching and featured my post Resourcefulness. We are pretty resourceful, us moms! This post made me super-nostalgic…

• Life Nurturing Education: Searching For Snow Globes. I didn’t know snow globes had batteries now either. Ah, how old I am…

The Carnival of Family Life is at Adventures in Juggling and the author, 21 years ago, was very very pregnant with a stubborn baby that didn’t want to come out. Oh, I can relate! CJ refused so vehemently that eventually he had to be surgically removed - and Matt claims that CJ spent that next month trying to crawl back in the womb. Reading about that was a little stroll down memory lane for me. My post When Your Child Loves It But You Do Not was included, and I thought this book review was excellent:

• Four Pillars: Buy Buy Baby. This is a book I think I will soon be reading!

And the All Women Blogging Carnival was at Moggie Madness and my post Simple Consideration was included. I love the name of this blog…

• Three Ring Circus: I Know How She Feels. It is hard to watch your child not quite fit in and wish there was something you could do.

Go check out these great carnivals! And then get back to wrapping gifts.

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…in our favorite rocket ship, zooming through the sky…

Oh wait, I’m not allowed to sing that song. (Although lately, I am not allowed to sing any song. But I digress.)

We’re off to visit relatives for the next week and a bit, so as you read this we are actually in a car with two almost-toddlers (a preschooler and a not-quite-toddler average out to two toddlers, right?) driving our morning away. Did I mention that both of them recently had the stomach flu, as did their daddy and me? Wish us luck! I’ve pre-scheduled posts for tomorrow and all of next week to appear, and I may get a chance to check in once in a while and share some of the sure-to-be-crazy Christmas stories. Or maybe you’ll have to wait until January :). If you comment and it doesn’t appear right away, as soon as I check in I’ll approve it (unless it is spam ) so keep commenting often!

“See” you in a week and a bit! Keep checking back every day for new posts while I am gone though!

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What job doesn’t give you sick days?

Oh, right. Parenting.

This past weekend was the first time that all four of us have been sick at the same time with anything worse than a cold. It started with CJ throwing up early Sunday morning, and by Sunday night Alexa was throwing up too. That was bad enough. But then Monday morning, I started throwing up. So off to bed I went and Matt took care of the kids. Except by afternoon, Matt wasn’t doing very well himself. So Matt and I basically tried as best we could to keep the kids clean and comfortable while not passing out from sickness or exhaustion ourselves. By that point, CJ was somewhat better, which actually made it worse because he wasn’t sick enough to just lie around and sleep but he was sick enough to feel uncomfortable and cranky. And Alexa was sick but didn’t understand she was sick so she wanted to play and eat normally when really, she was capable of neither. We had to give her liquids a teaspoon at a time every ten minutes to rehydrate her so she would keep it down and she was NOT happy about that. Basically she’d scream for 9 minutes, get her little bit of liquid, commence screaming for 9 1/2 minutes, get her little bit of liquid… repeat. For hours.

Last winter everyone but me had the stomach flu. I thought it was bad to take care of two sick kids and a sick husband when I wasn’t sick… it is much worse when you are sick too.

Matt did way more than his fair share though. And never even whined. I can’t say the same for me.

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Generally, Alexa is a Daddy’s girl. She prefers to play with Daddy, hang out with Daddy, be carried by Daddy… in fact, if she wasn’t nursing I think I would be expendable.

But this weekend when CJ was sick, Alexa suddenly became Mommy’s girl. I was spending a lot of time with CJ taking care of him, and Alexa I guess was jealous in her little 13 month old way. Any time she saw me, she’d hightail it towards me. She’d whine for me to carry her over her Daddy. She’d latch onto me and not want to let go. If I left her line of sight a high-pitched wail would ensue.

It was sweet. Except, that I couldn’t always… and she wasn’t down with that. At all.

Everybody loves their mommy. Especially when they sense that their mommy is needed to mommy elsewhere.

Sadly, she also ended up getting sick with the same stomach virus, and by that time, I was sick too, so she still didn’t get an overabundance of mommy time.  I think she’s still holding that against me ;).

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