Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Updates

I am exhausted...this week isn't halfway over and I am worn out! I realized that I haven't posted any pics of Ally in her cast or the girls in their Halloween costumes. I will try and upload some later today--if I'm not taking a nap! :)

I just got back from taking Ally to Children's--the cast is OFF!!!!!!!!! Yay! It seems like the longest month ever! It feels like forever since I've seen my child's arm! The mornings before school became much more difficult--I had to help her get dressed, open the toothpaste, get her cereal, help her with her shoes, etc. You realize how much you rely on your child to be independent, even at the age of 6! So, it all healed great, but now she has to start using it again, since the arm is weak. When I dropped her off, she was still holding her arm like it had the cast on it!

Kelly was still fighting me regarding the potty up until last weekend. We had pretty much done everything but bribe her with a car to get her in there. I tried the whole "pretty panties" thing--she yanked them off and said she didn't like them. Mike bribed her with a piece of candy on Saturday and she was finally willing. And she went! So, the last few days she has peed consistently in the potty! No poop yet, so we are still in pullups. But she has pulled a complete 180, because she is rotten. Now, she constantly wants to go "pee in potty". She wants to go, even if it is just a few drops so she can get a sticker! Last night, she went 3-4 times before she finally crashed. Not to mention, we are still on the "little" potty...she wants nothing to do with the "real" potty. That's going to be lots of fun when we are out and about...ugh...so stubborn! It's a good thing she is cute!

Speaking of cute, we wound up changing Kelly's bedtime routine. More like actually going back to a routine. A few weeks ago, she was having a hard time settling down, so I covered her with her blanket, smoothed her hair and sang her "Kelly belly" song to her. She got the most adorable look on her face--I have my own song!--and went to sleep soon after. Now, she requests "Mommy, cover me!" and I have to sing 3 songs every night. It's worth it for the smiles.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Busted & fractured

The last two weeks have not been a good time around here. On Saturday, we all went out for a nice lunch to Olive Garden. We had a great time, and I love going there! Mike doesn't really like Italian food--yet he married an Italian girl, hmm?--so we don't go very often.

Anyway, as we were headed out, Kelly said that she had to go potty. I looked at her like she was crazy, because this was just two days after her freakout. But I took her in. Needless to say, she looked at the regular size toilets and looked back at me, and said, "No!". I wasn't surprised and we headed back out to where Ally & Mike were getting in the car.

I was holding her hand and the next thing I knew I felt a pull on my arm as we were outside. I saw her little face right before it hit the rock walkway! I scooped her up and there was blood everywhere, and she was screaming. I felt so guilty. I couldn't tell at first if she had broken teeth or just busted (bust?) her lip. I held her for a while and the bleeding didn't want to stop, but we didn't see any damage to her teeth, thankfully. Talk about a horrible way to ruin a nice lunch. Kelly had cut her lip pretty badly, and it took several days to heal up. She complained about the inside of her mouth hurting for most of the week--I think she must have cut her cheek when she fell as well.

Then, last Wednesday, Ally went to the first meeting of Bobcat Club. Basically, an afterschool club for first and second graders to have a snack and play for a while. Since the weather was nice, they were going to be outside on the playground. Mike picked her up and I was washing dishes when she came in. I thought she was fooling around when I heard her making strange sounds. But no, she was crying hysterically! She had fallen off the monkey bars right before he picked her up and the teachers were trying to evaluate if she had broken anything. We looked at her arm and the right arm just looked "off", swollen and something was definitely wrong.

Mike took her to the local hospital and two hours later she was home with a cast & sling. Ally broke her right elbow. I stayed home because I didn't think Kelly would do well waiting for hours in a hospital, but I HATED being away from my baby while she was in pain. Ally was a trooper. By the time she came home, she was fine. They even gave her a scrip for tylenol with codeine and she didn't need it, thankfully. Maneuvering with the cast is awkward for her, but she's not in pain. I am concerned about how she is going to do with schoolwork and everything.

I'm just hoping that things calm down a little around here.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Potty-training freakouts!

Warning, in case the title didn't turn you off already--this post is about bodily functions!

Kelly just turned 3 last month (yay!) and is still not potty-trained. Not a huge surprise, since Ally was 3 1/2 before she was really trained. But Kelly had actually gone both pee & poop in the potty months ago (maybe 6+ months) so I was hopeful. But alas, it was not meant to be.

So, we kept prompting and she kept saying no.

Well, Kelly started a new daycare a few weeks ago and they are obviously pushing it. Wednesday, I asked her if she wanted to try and go when she woke up, and she did! She earned her sticker--she gets 1 for pee and 2 for poop--and I kept asking her every hour or two. She went potty 5 times! After her nap and during dinner, she forgot and wet her pullup. But Kelly did amazingly well! We put her in a diaper for night-time. Then I heard her yelling at 5:45 that she had to pee...ugh. That was rough, and we both had a hard time falling back to sleep.

Thursday she was at daycare and used the potty all day long! By Thursday night, I was dreaming of finally being able to stop buying diapers FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 6 1/2 YEARS! After dinner, Kelly went into the bathroom to try and that it where the trouble began. She thought she peed, but she actually pooped. She hadn't pooped in the potty except maybe once, and that was a long time ago. When she stood up and looked in the potty, she began to cry and yelled, "I don't like that!" She completely freaked out...or you could say she "lost her shit"!


I calmly cleaned her up and showed her that we flushed it, so she wouldn't have to look at it. But she was not happy! The problem is that she was traumatized by the incident. She refuses to go near the potty now! I told her she doesn't have to poop in it, just pee. But she won't go. Not once. We were SO CLOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Dreaming

I have a problem. I had a dream several months ago. A nightmare, really. It is honestly still scaring the crap out of me. I dreamed (or is dreamt the correct term?) that I was in someone's driveway--I think it was supposed to be mine. You know how dreams take pieces of real life--your house, your school, work, your neighbor's house etc and combine them into one insane collage that makes sense in dreamland? Anyway, it wasn't my real driveway but it was mine in the dream. So, I'm backing out of the driveway and looking in the rear-view mirror. As I look back, I see two girls suddenly appear in the mirror. I slammed on the brakes and I think that I avoid them. But I don't. I hit one of them.

When I looked in the mirror, the girls were NOT my kids. However, I felt the "thud' for lack of a better term as I hit the girl in my dream and woke up. As I was ripped out of the dream, the child that I hit changed to Kelly. I think that she died in the dream--I didn't just hit her foot or something. Needless to say, there was no going back to sleep that day.

So, many people would just chalk it up to a bad dream. But for some reason this is haunting me. I'm now worried that it is some sort of premonition and am super alert anytime I am around a school--which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, I dropped Kelly off last week and looked down from the wheel for a second. I heard a child scream and my heart dropped. Then I realized that I was driving past their fenced-in playground and the kids were screaming in fun! A few weeks ago, I took Ally to camp at the Y and was in a hurry. I didn't do a thorough job of checking before I backed out, and worried that maybe I hit somebody. I STILL remember the feeling of that dream and it was at least 2-3 months ago. Being a careful driver is one thing, but being obsessive is another.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Overprotective much?

Yep, we're still here. As usual, I have mentally prepared posts long before I have the inclination or time to type them up.

One thing that Mike and I have been talking about lately is whether we have been too overprotective of Ally. She is our first baby, and of course, you are always learning the ropes with the first. We fully admit we have sheltered her, but I just wonder if it has been too much. For instance, when we read fairy tales like "Snow White", I omit the part where the huntsman is to kill Snow White. Ally has such a fragile grasp on what death is (though she understands a little more after my grandfather & aunt passed away last year) that I didn't want to explain why someone would want to murder another person. Was I wrong to do that?

With regards to tv, Ally watches mostly PBS with the occasional Mickey Mouse or Dora thrown in (more for Kelly). Oh, but her new fave is "Jake & the Neverland Pirates"--anyone else watching that? Anyway, it is mostly educational stuff. However, we remember watching the Bugs Bunny cartoons with all the violence! But my SIL supposedly lets her kid, who was 4 or 5 at the time, watch True Blood. WTH? I still maintain that is way off base, but I wonder what other kids her age are watching.

At this point, I think Ally is overly sensitive like me. She was scared of the villain in the Care Bears movie, and wanted me to sit next to her. Needless to say, when they watched "The Lion King" at school, she was terrified! I don't know if she is innately sensitive, or if it is because she hasn't been exposed to those kinds of things.

A few months ago, Ally started asking all kinds of questions at night. These questions were out of nowhere! She asked "What if someone broke in and took all our toys?" and the one that broke my heart was "What if someone came in and stole my sister?"!!!!!!!!!! We don't let her watch the news, because of scary stories like that. Mike & I both have OCD tendencies, so I don't want her to be afraid of the world. But hearing her ask those questions made me wonder if she was already anxious about the world. Thankfully, Ally seemed to trust me when I said they were safe and stopped asking those heartbreaking questions.

We do discuss "stranger danger" and that there are "mean" people who can hurt you. We don't want her to be completely naive, but where is the line???? What do you all think?