Sick and Heathly; Mom and more

Welcome to any new readers out there……hopefully today’s post will satisfy some interests.

I’m having a bit of a identity thing today not so much a crisis but one of those days where the weight of all of the parts of my life are colliding so instead of dealing directly with any one I’ve decided to take some time to catch up my reader with all that is happening here in dear old Wisconsin.

Well this morning I found myself answering the question of “how are you this morning” with “ I’ll have a chest x-ray with a slice of pink-eye”. Griffin was to have a follow up on his latest bout with pneumonia ad Holly woke up with a pussy, puffy, pinky eye. So Bill, bless him, took them both to the doctor. Griffin didn’t have an x-ray and was pronounced clear and holly was pronounced gooey-eyed and sent home with eye drops and had to stay home which for those of you who follow this will see that Bill and I have to use more of our benefit time which is diminishing fast. Work today, and all of last week, although better than most times that one of our biggest district has Spring break, was to be a bit hectic.

I work for an agency that supports the idea of inclusion of children with special needs in childcare settings. I have a caseload of children that I follow their progress in their day care, summer day camps and other such programs throughout the year. On days that school is not in session we have more kids with more services happening. This means we are busier. One particular program insists that we need to come out and watch them take a young man to the bathroom. For a non-profit with huge budget short falls this is a costly and wasteful thing seeing that all that happens is that they take him into the bathroom and convince him to go (all totally his work) occasionally they have to change his wet pull up which he does most of but they are so afraid that they will get in trouble legally we have to go watch. So for me today that meant I had to go out twice which meant that I had to drive a total of 1 hour (four 15 minute trips) for two 5-15 minute visits. Which is an approximate cost of $36.38 or 4 hours of paraprofessional time with another child who may need it more. Silly really.

Meanwhile I am headed home to put a DVD in so I can work on my home computer and get some stuff done that has been waiting to get done. I don’t feel like a “good mother” for having my daughter watch movies while I work when she is home with pink-eye.

Well now that time has passed we have discovered that Holly has more than simple pink-eye and has spiked a 102 degree temp. Great now I feel worse and there goes more benefit time.

On another note I became an aunt again last Monday to a beautiful baby boy. I have yet to meet him because of sick kids. We were supposed to take the long holiday weekend and go pamper the new Moms and distract the big sister but a new Bay needs to not get exposed to what ever my two kids are brewing. So we stayed home. My parents should be there now helping out. With the busyness of the up coming months schedules I don’t know when I’ll get to meet him.

Tomorrow I will be at home for a while at least and hope to be able to post some more I have plenty of thoughts on stuff about mothers and some intereing thoughts having just seen the real outtakes from The Incredibles

Ketchup

As a working mother I always feel like I am catching up. You can see this in the last entry of this Blog and further in this one. It is frustrating that the things I wan to get done will go undone for weeks some times years because I just don’t have the time or energy. I think it is the same for my husband and so he stays up all hours to get some down time and play games. I wish I had that stamina to stay up that late and get up the next morning.

An up date on the whole Chicken Pox thing……….well they looked kind of like chicken pox behaved not really like chicken pox and because Holly had the vaccination the only way we will be able to tell is if Griffin gets them …………..tick………tick…..tick……..they say ten to twenty-one days we are at 11 from the last possible exposure…..10 more long days to go.

Oh and last Monday exactly a week after her last sick day Holly woke up at 4AM to puke.

And Griffin has a cold again. I don’t think we have had a healthy week since the week of January 3rd.

Griffin had his six-month check up. We have determined that he has a dairy problem….. NO cheese or cow’s milk for me or cheesecake or pizza or ice cream or………..pout I’ll learn, lets just say I am dairy free in dairyland. He has also dropped from 50% to25% in both height and weight from being so sick we think.

Then Friday morning I drop Griffin off at Day Care the very same day care that Holly has been at since she was 3 months old. There is a letter on his cubby telling us that the owners are selling to La Petite Academy. They are a national corporation and often not my favorite of childcare providers. I am hopping that things do not change too much I am most worried about the teachers jumping ship and I am also worried about costs rising as these nice five new centers are now going to be part of now 17 in the area. We chose Room to Grow because of its nature and I specifically steered away from large multi state corporate child cares. They seem to lose the local area's flavor with all the corporate policy stuff. It makes us a little sad.

Check out this “rant” from a friend of mine Family life in 2005. This is more on the same line of the book called “The Two Income Trap”. Money, Jobs, Children, Schools and Child Care expences are not as simple as it should be.