Friday 30 January 2009

Now 99% Puke-Free!

I rarely get sick.

Correction: when I am neither pregnant, nor nursing, I rarely get sick.  Somehow, when it is completely forbidden by all pharmacist-anal-husbands to consume any type of medicated relief, I get sick a lot. Mostly colds, but I've had rotovirus and some bad stomach flus.  And the traditional morning all-day half-pregnancy sickness.  But I digress.

When my kids get sick, I run to the rescue and become super-mom.  I ain't scared of no puke!  And diahrrea?  I laugh at thee.  HAHAHA!

However, I am perpetually amazed at how much puke can come out of a 2 year old.  And how difficult it is to parent not only the sick 2-year old and soothe his needs while cleaning up puke before his baby brother starts splashing in it, but to also attend to the puke-splashing 8 month old who requires his regular daily does of mamalove and turning his riding car around when he hits the wall.

I did it alone for 7 hours.  I even managed to get them both down for naps at the same time. But the puke kept coming, and I started running out of rags and paper towels and clean jammies for the boy (having puked on all of them and refusing to wear regular clothing).

So at 4:00 pm, I called in reinforcements: my 83-year-old grandmother.  I asked her if she could come over, not to clean up puke (which had occurred 7 times by then) but to play with Kees so that I could clean up, rub Sacha's back and head and try to settle him to sleep.

She came, she rocked it up. I got Sacha to sleep.  Victory...for now.

When she left for her dinner date, my mom came straight from work, in her scrubs and all, and helped more.

Finally, my pharmacist husband came home just before 7.  He took over Sacha's care so I could get my Hippo to sleep (who will only go down for his favouritest mama of all time). I then scrubbed all the hard floors in the house and did about 5 loads of laundry to get rid of the puke smell.  Tony got Sacha to sleep and things seemed to calm down.  We even watched some television.  The puke came, I conquered it. The house was now vomitless.

Fast forward one hour: more puke.  In bed.  All over his PJs. In his hair. On the rug.

Screw it.  99% puke-free is good enough.

Thursday 22 January 2009

A dolphin is NOT a fish. Duh.

Sacha has now been in speech therapy for three weeks. He amazes me every time we go, not only with his progress but with his openness to do anything Lindsey (his therapist) asks him to do.  I cannot say the same for his attitude towards me - normally, his way of avoiding my demands requests is to wave and say "Bye, Mommy."

Sacha's session yesterday was no exception. Sacha was playing a fishing game where he used a little fishing rod and pulled out fish from a “pond”. When he’d pull one out, Lindsey would say “Sacha, this is a FISH. Can you say FISH?”  He would oblige by making his best attempt at an FFF sound, followed by something approximating ITCH.

At one point, Lindsey used the rod and caught a fish.  She asked him to say FISH. Sacha shook his head and kept saying "Non non non non." She looked at him and again said “Sacha, this is a fish. Can you say fish?” He adamantly refused.

After a few repeated attempts on her part, he finally said “Non non. Daffin.” Lindsey said “What?” And Sacha pointed to the fish and said "Daffin." She had caught a dolphin with her rod. She laughed at said “Yes, Sacha, it IS a dolphin!”
I friggin didn’t even know he knew what a dolphin was, let alone the word. God bless Finding Nemo ;)