Friday, February 27, 2009

Another Milestone

Claire reached one of those milestones, today, that they really ought to put in the baby raising books, but don't.

We woke up this morning and she immediately held her hand over her ear, looked at me and said, "I hurt."

"YES!" I thought, "She has finally achieved the age at which she can tell me that something is wrong! Hooray!"

"But waitaminute! Something's wrong! Boo! I haven't even opened my eyes yet....."

It made for a busy morning. BJ worked all night last night (literally) so he was sleeping. I got the kids up and dressed and fed, got myself showered and dressed, called the doctor's office and got a last minute appointment, took MG to school, grabbed a $5 coffee - which is simply insane, took Claire to the doctor, got the diagnosis of infections in both ears and the prescription, went to the pharmacy, grabbed her prescription, then went home to clean the house up before Allison came, picked MG up from school, took the kids to the pet store (because there's exactly enough time to go home, take off our coats, put them back on, and leave again to get Allison, so we try to do quick outings between school and picking up Allison on Fridays), picked Allison off, dropped them off - leaving detailed instructions for Allison (that story's next) and went to work.

I did more before 1 pm today than I have done in the past two weeks. I'm beat.

Mary Grace is allergic to amoxicillin. Claire has never had it before. I gave Claire her first dose at about 11 am, then dropped Allison and the kids off around 12:30. I left home absolutely convinced that Allison was going to call me and say, "Claire wasn't breathing so I called an ambulance..." Fortunately, that didn't happen - MG only got hives when she had it, and C seems to have no symptoms so far (knock wood), but their Grandma Diana has had breathing difficulty from amoxicillin, so I am being extra-vigilant about it. It made it really hard to focus on work this afternoon. I made several really stupid errors at work... But I had to go. There were things that needed to be done today.

Speaking of work, interesting comment from Anonymous at 2:01 am on the Going Gray post... My mom is also self-employed. I wonder how much of the pressure on women to look young (and therefore, to not embrace their gray, as well as to do other things like Botox, face lifts, etc.) is a result of workplace pressure. How much of it is self-imposed? Is it that we're actually expected to unnaturally retain our youth, or that we think we're expected to unnaturaly retain our youth?

I guess it's just one more reason to be glad that we're self-employed. The list keeps getting longer. Just today, I added, "It's not a pain in the ass to get time off to take kids to doctor, and if my boss won't let me go, I get to make him go," and "Can go gray gracefully if I so choose," to the list.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm Anonymous at 2:01 a.m. I just wanted to point out that the choice of hair color isn't necessarily as simple as you seemed to imply it is. Besides economic and employment issues (which men feel, too, by the way), there are also relationship issues. I'm always saddened when a middle-aged woman acquaintance confides in me that she really doesn't like the way her hair looks, but she wears it that way because that's the way her husband likes it. Ouch. I've heard that from a high-powered executive woman with too dark, solid color hair, and also from a pink collar worker with mousey gray hair. (Not many people have the kind of natural gray hair your mother is fortunate to enjoy.)

I think many women (and male TV news anchors) who choose to color their hair do it very badly, and that gives hair color a bad name. Women who once had naturally dark hair should go lighter when they color their hair, the hair should not look like one solid mass of a single color, and they shouldn't be wearing the same hairstyle they had in college. And why is it that women with a net worth of at least a few million dollars can still feel it's appropriate to have very visible roots and bad color choices? (Rant off.)

DPA said...

Hi there
It is certainly a challenge to get through the childhood ear problems. Dylan had an ear inf 2 weeks ago (in AZ).
FYI--i really didn't mean to make you worry about amox. I only had hives 20 yrs ago on that antibiotic. The only drug i'm 'allergic to' is Ciprofloxine (sp?)
Immunologist explained to me last year that our bodies change many times over the years and that i might be fine Amox and many other drugs that i previously was sensitive to.
Thought I'd best clear this up for you about Amox.
My Love
Mom (Di)