Father Of The Blog

Occasionally we receive illness warning notices from preschool via backpack-mail that will read something along the lines of; ‘flushing rotavirus’ or ‘scratch out lice,’ a few weeks ago ‘spot the chicken pox.’ Over the past four or five weeks, we tallied six doctor visits. Super-germs have infected my family.

The first in this latest rash of pediatrician visits happened to be on a ‘daddy day.’ Both Olivia and Hailey were ill. Olivia had a full blown ear infection, her ear-tube was obstructed by dried-up gunk and the excess fluid behind the blockage became infected. The previous evening she howled throughout the night, “my ear!” so I got out the thermal thermometer took her temp, it was a bit high. Then I got out the opti-scope checked her eyes, her nose, her mouth and her ears, “yup it’s her ears.”

Hailey was being checked-out because of a nasty cough she had been rasping for a couple days. Her lungs were good, ears good, throat and nose a bit irritated but no soars so her diagnoses was a bad virus and there was nothing we could do but ‘wait it out’ and let the thing, ‘run it’s course.’ I hate when doctors say that.

By Friday night, Hailey’s body temp hit 103 degrees. I gave her a cool bath and a dose and a half of Motrin which help a bit. Saturday morning I took her back into the doctor’s office. Same prognosis, a virus and possibly a different one. No medicine, no magic pill to make my baby girl all better or to make Kim’s and my anxious frustrations disappear. That night and Sunday day she had been vomiting all over the place. It was bad. Kim couldn’t clean it up fast enough and Mimi (our dog) kept attempting to help with the cleanup angrily repulsing Kim even worse. So I was trying to keep Mimi out of the toxic zones and at the same time hurrying Hailey to the bathroom aiming to consolidate the mess. By the time we would arrive at the bathroom she’d be finished heaving, marking a trail behind her, Mimi whimpering to lop it up, Kim chasing us toting paper towels with a squirt bottle of Clorox Cleanup endeavoring to swiftly sanitize and Olivia wanting to play along too thinking it was some strange game of follow the leader. This happened several times and I’m not even sure what I would have done if we made it to the bathroom in time anyway. The sink? The tub? The toilet? The toilet being the obvious choice however that would contradict the multitude of times I have explained to Hailey not to stick her head in the toilet.

Monday Kim stayed home from work with Hailey and took her to the doctor again. (If you’re counting, we’re up to three doctor visits). Still no real relief, no magic elixir. “Have her drink plenty of fluids and get plenty of rest.” Resting was not a problem; Hailey remained feebly comatose all day as Kim scoured the entire house attempting to take revenge on the microscopic germs. When I got home from work the house smelled of bleach, Clorox and Pine Sol, pleasantly burning my sinus cavities.

Kim’s TLC stopped the vomiting however by Tuesday’s ‘daddy day,’ out of repetition, I taught Hailey a new word, it was grimly humorous watching her expression as I gingerly pulled off her pull-up and she inquisitively inspected the damage, “(dia)rrhea?” My poor baby girl could barley sit down her inflamed diaper-rash was horrible. Olivia was such a good helper, retrieving fresh diapers, soaking cool wash cloths to lay on Hailey’s forehead, checking up on Hailey making sure her drink was full and she was covered up with a blanket. Wednesday I stayed home from work and it was more of the same although Olivia went to school and after we dropped her off, Hailey and I managed to stop at the store re-supplying our sicky essentials of jell-o, chicken broth, crackers and fluids.

Sad and scary to see Hailey so inactive, lethargically laying around barley enough energy to watch the Wiggles or Elmo. I spent the whole day forcing fluids down her, my arm extended, holding a sippy-cup near her head with an extra long straw attached to her mouth, a makeshift Gatorade IV. Thursday it was Kim’s turn to stay home again. Hailey’s health had improved enough for them to take an afternoon stroll around the neighborhood and we felt she was on the rebound.

Friday was a gamble she hadn’t had any loose stuff in a day, no fever for a couple days and her tokus-rash was almost gone so we decided that she was well enough to go to school. Well we were wrong, according to Hailey’s assistant teacher she had two instances of diarrhea, but they didn’t call us. That was somewhat of a let down and a bit irresponsible of the staff at her school. Hailey’s lead teacher was absent that day but still that was no excuse. Not only that, Olivia came home feverish.

Friday night Olivia ended up in our bed again. This time it was the other ear and Kim took her to the doctor first thing Saturday morning. This time they gave her Augmentin for the infection instead of the ineffective amoxicillin which she was prescribed last week. The doctor also instructed Olivia to follow up with our ENT specialist. Could this be something serious please not another surgery? She was actually felling better within a couple days and not complaining at all about her ear, for a princess she is tough.

The following Thursday I picked Olivia up from school early and we went to see the ear-nose-throat specialist. Her office is located within Children’s Hospital and every time we have an appointment there it takes forever. This visit was no exception; three hours elapsed from the time we arrived until the time we left. I think we saw the doctor for all of ten minutes. Both Olivia and Hailey had ear tube surgery when they were about ten months old. Kim and I really like the doctor; she is very personable and came highly recommended. I was expecting the worst. However she said everything looked normal and that the one remaining tube wouldn’t have to be forcibly removed unless it remained intact for another year, the other ear-tube dislodged itself and fell out months ago which was expected. I asked her if I should be concerned that after almost two and a half years Olivia contracted two back-to-back ear infections seemingly out of the blue. The ENT was so reassuring “we’ll just have to wait it out and see what happens.” Why didn’t I go to med school?

Our sixth doctor visit occurred a week ago on ‘daddy day’ and this one was a scheduled two year check-up for Hailey. She did an eye exam, a hearing test, height, weight, twenty developmental questions with our pediatrician (one question she asked if Hailey could jump with both feet leaving the ground all the while she was leaping from the doctor’s metal stepstool landing with olympic gymnast perfection) and a hepatitis shot which Hailey didn’t even flinch on not even a yelp or a tear the nurse commended Hailey for her bravery and I could overhear her bragging to all the other nurses, “she didn’t even cry!” Olivia stayed in the back ground absorbing everything asking endless why questions for every test Hailey had to endure. Olivia and Hailey were so well behaved, must have been all the practice as of late or the promise of the coveted lollypop.

Originally posted on BabyCenter.com 10/26/06

Postponing sleep is one of Olivia’s and Hailey’s specialties. Their creative energy is abundant in finding new ways to evade falling asleep and when they persist with self induced insomnia Kim and I get frazzled, occasionally making rash decisions, unwilling to give up the one hour a day we claim as are own.

Olivia used to be in the habit of stretching (a sometimes pseudo or sometimes actual need to go) after-hours potty visit into a ten minute book perusal. During one of these incidents, spurred by fatigue I became annoyed, establishing a spontaneous decree with no forewarning, “I am officially banning books while on the toilet after bed time!” Olivia was confused. “No books!” I repeated. She cried for a good fifteen minutes at the sudden uncompromising rule modification. Kim glared the ‘nice going Homer’ look as she soothed Olivia but took my side, agreeing with the change, “Sorry honey, daddy said no.”

Olivia excessively relies on the bathroom excuse, usually two visits a night after being tucked-in. She also likes to stay up ‘reading’ scanning as many as ten books and a few times has fallen asleep with a paperback covering her face. Bathroom and books are moderately permissible. Her creativity upholds near the twilight of sleep, she will snoozily call on me or Kim with a governors-plea, “Close my closet door all the way,” even if it is closed. Or “There is a fly in here,” there is no fly. Or “You forgot your toy brain,” by that time we need a real one. She dreams-up something new almost every evening. What she really wants is one more reassuring kiss before entering the scary realm of night terrors. Nearly every night she will violently thrash and scream in the depths of slumber, which is bewildering and disheartening for me and Kim. No wonder she balks sleep.

Every so often Kim and I blurrily see through the hazy frustration of Olivia’s sleep-strife to find comic relief and emotional buoyancy. Recently, in the midst of a post-been-put-to-bed toilet pardon, while glancing up through the bathroom blinds, she noticed a three-quarter moon and proclaimed, “Daddy the moon is broken.” Grumpy and tired I couldn’t help but laugh and then started to explain that the moon has different phases. But she stopped my explanation short with her newest favorite phrase, “we’ll talk about that later daddy.” Her verbal abilities and emotional uninhibitedness amaze and sappily harness me. A few nights ago, after story-time on her way to bed she exclaimed, “You’re the best daddy.” Kim gushed. My head inflated to the size of a hot-air balloon. That comment was worth more than any pay check I have ever received. Proactive flattery is what I was thinking an hour later as she still would not fall asleep calling for me to obtain her Ariel wrist-band-compact-mirror-lip-gloss toy. Thanks to Kim’s archetypical modeling, Olivia will look good when facing her sleep-demons.

While I’m on the subject of sleep-demons; Hailey has been testing her limits with Kim and me for the past couple weeks. It started innocently, right after being put to bed she would shed her nighty and diaper then toss them out of the crib along with anything else that wasn’t nailed down, calling for mommy or daddy to come pickup her blankey, all her stuffed toys and re-dress her. After several nights, she progressed from disrobing and tossing one time, to three or four times, this new game quickly became vexatious. I decided to let her remain naked and have her cry-it-out, upping the stakes. Kim was at odds with this decision for good reason. Hailey loves a new challenge and countered with urinating in her crib. So then the game became Kim or I having to dress her and change the crib sheets, which was much to Hailey’s delight being that she was able to get out of her crib for a few extra minutes and watch mommy or daddy work on getting her bed cleaned-up. Great idea dad. In one week she went from playfully undressing to malevolently whizzing all over the place. Once or twice we ran out of clean linens, she went through four sets of sheets and had to sleep without anything but a wet cover, eventually falling asleep naked in a pool of her own urine.

The problem reached a boiling-point this week during our ‘daddy day’ siesta. Hailey had stripped and was shouting, “dah…diee!” from her crib for over an hour, then she became eerily quiet. My ‘dadar’ alarmed me and just as I was about to enter her room she hollered, “daddy I poo-poo!” I opened her door and she was hopping up and down in her crib, little poo-poo nuggets flying everywhere. The language that followed was of the ‘R’ rated variety. I hooked her underarm which was the only clean part of her body, yanked her from the crib, tossed her into the bath tub and dropped the soap bar in her lap. “Clean yourself up!” Then I went to disinfect her room, probably a good thing too, that gave me time to cool down and strategize. I concocted a plan that involved Hockey tape. After her cleansing, I wrapped plastic tape around her diaper, the same adhesive I use to lash my equipment to my body. It didn’t take the little escapist long to wiggle out of that continuing to elude nap-time and seemingly mock me, “dah…diee!” So I persisted, wrapping the tape around her shirt and nighty pants. That didn’t work either, she was naked within minutes. Defeated, I retreated to bed, covering my ears with pillows attempting to drown out her victory cry, “dah…diee!” She did eventually take a short snoozer, three hours after the start of nap-time.

I had lost that battle but the war was not over. I had a new plan. I called Kim on her way home from work requesting she stop and buy diaper-pins. That night, (last night) Kim pinned Hailey’s nighty shirt to her pants, six pins, it looked like a Houdini stunt in the making. So far the tactic appears to be working and for the past two nights she has fallen asleep, clothes pinned together, without a fuss. Kim and I have won back our hour, for now.

Originally posted on BabyCenter.com 10/19/06