Jun
28
I told you all about Eleanor’s vomiting at her cousin’s birthday party. But I realize that I never told you about Eleanor’s previous illness about a month ago. It was really a great moment in parenting for me. She woke up cranky on a Monday morning. This is not unusual. She’s not a morning person. I thought this was just the normal not wanting to get up or get ready for school kinda thing. But she was a little crankier than usual.
She kept saying she didn’t want to go to school and that she was sick. Well, “I’m sick” is one of her favorite ploys to avoid doing anything she doesn’t want to do these days, so I ignored it and took her to school anyway. But that day she really didn’t want to be dropped off and her teacher had to practically pry her off of me so I could leave. Again, this isn’t unheard of, it just doesn’t happen very often and I really did think that it was just a Monday morning thing. Because, really, who doesn’t feel like that on Monday morning. But I still did feel terrible about leaving her.
Well, I was going to feel a whole lot worse about it when I picked her up. Josh and I arrived at school to get her (we pick her up together most days), and were told that she had just been taken out of class to have her temperature taken. Her teacher noticed she was warm late in the day and her eyes were filled with goop! So we took her home for a quick dinner and then over to Urgent Care to have her checked out.
And didn’t I just feel like the best mom ever when they told me that yes she was sick. With Pinkeye! AND she was running a fever! AND she had an ear infection! Well, I just demanded the Mother-of-the-Year award right then and there! Sending a kid that sick to school, that is some fine parenting! Be sure to congratulate me on that one.
So, she had to stay home for a few days, and the best part (by best I mean worst) was that for the next 7 days we got to hold her down and put stinging eye drops in her eyes while she screamed and clawed at us to escape (she’s a fighter). What’s funny is that she doesn’t even flinch when she gets a shot, but about to let us put eye drops in her eyes.
The point of all this is that I want to send Eleanor to school with a surgical mask on or inside of one of those giant plastic bubbles. She is constantly sick. She almost always has at least a cold lately. What is the deal with kids getting each other sick all the time?! I’m so over it! Who’s with me?!
Jun
24
I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past that Eleanor is a Daddy’s girl. I used to think it was because she spent most of her time with me. I was home almost full time with her until she was about 18 months old and then she was in daycare just part time 3-5 days a week half days. So we were together a lot. I got her up in the morning and ready for school, I picked her up after lunch and took her home and put her down for a nap, and then spent the afternoons with her after she woke up. It was a lot of time with just the two of us. And if I were her I’d probably get sick of hanging out with me so much too!
But now, Josh and I are both working full time, and she’s in preschool full time. Josh leaves early in the morning, so I’m still the one that gets her up and ready in the morning, but aside from that she spends about the same amount of time with each of us.
And yet she still greatly prefers her Daddy to me! In fact, she has even been worse about it lately for some reason. She will actually cry sometimes when I get home from Pilates class. And when I got home from my weekend trip for my grandfather’s funeral she refused to give me a hug and pretty much ignored me.
I don’t write this to complain. It doesn’t really bother me or hurt my feelings, I actually think it’s pretty cute and it gets me out of a lot of the child care work on the weekends (if Daddy is around, she insists that he do everything for her). I just think that it is so strange and funny that I have to write it down to make her feel guilty about it later.
What’s most funny about it is that, when it’s just Eleanor and me, she is perfectly delightful to me. She’s sweet and loving with hugs and kisses and wanting me to pick her up and sit in my lap and help her do things. It must be that she knows how sensitive her Daddy is, so she wants him to be sure that he’s her favorite and to think that she’s doesn’t even really like me at all. Well, I know the truth! She loves her Mama! Nobody tell Josh!
May
27
There’s not much of a story to tell. We thought she was sleeping, instead she was working on this:
She managed to find a sharpie and go to town on herself. Luckily, that’s all she drew on. And she was pretty proud of herself.
Josh wanted to flip out, but I reminded him that this was definitely one of those parenting moments where you really should just laugh about it rather than getting angry (not at all like the poop incident). She was pretty adorable with those kitty whiskers.
p.s. Those permanent markers are pretty permanent. We managed to get her face mostly clean (we think it must have been the last place she drew), but the rest of her pretty much looks like this after several scrubs.
