Today's Numbers
Neva was home sick today. Poor little cookie. She had a rough night with lots of tummy pain, and Jeffy was up with her several times (blissfully letting me sleep, which I appreciate to no end). When she was puking this morning, I knew that I would not be going in to work today. Jeffy took the Dude in to daycare before he left for his morning of work at Quinte and night shift in Campbellford, and I hunkered down with my sick baby girl (even though she's not a "baby" any more, she's still my baby. All you mothers out there know what I'm talking about).
So, today's numbers:
1 - number of times I've changed her sheets. This is largely due to me remembering my mom's trick of putting a towel down over the pillows to catch any vomit, thus requiring only a change of towel instead of a change of the entire bedding set. Thanks, Mom!
2 - number of times I administered medication to Neva (either Children's Tylenol, to help with the stomach pain, or Children's Gravol, to help with the stomach upset). It's also the number of stories I read her.
3 - batches of baking I made while Neva was asleep. My cousin Katelyn is going to Burkina Faso this summer on a development project and is fundraising. Apparently they had a bake sale a while ago, but no-one wanted to/had time to bake for it. I volunteered to bake some stuff for this time around, so tomorrow Katelyn is getting a batch of brownies and a batch of chocolate chip cookies. (I'm keeping the banana-blueberry-cranberry-nut muffins for myself, thank you very much. To keep with the family theme, the brownie and cookie recipes are from my mom, and the muffin recipe is from Katelyn's mom aka my aunt. It's been a family kind of day.)
4 - loads of laundry I've done (though not put away -- clean is enough of a struggle these days, never mind folded and sorted).
5 - hours in a row Neva slept this afternoon. These 5 hours were punctuated by a small panic attack on my part during which I couldn't believe she was sleeping so long and had visions of her dying in her sleep due to me administering a bad combo of medication (I had only waited 5 hours between Gravol doses, not 6! And I'd also given her Children's Tylenol! And Jeffy had given her Children's Advil in the morning! What if she was up there, not breathing, and... well. My imagination and my hormones took over at this point, and the result was not pretty). I didn't want to check her, though, for fear of disturbing her much needed sleep. Eventually, though, I did go up and make sure she was still breathing (she was) and I flashed forward to the times I will have this exact same panic attack with the newborn the first time s/he sleeps for longer than two hours at a stretch, the first time s/he sleeps through the night, etc.
150 - milligrams of guilt-free caffeine I'm allowed to ingest daily without worrying about undue harm to the baby (according to motherisk). I'd been stressing slightly about this, because it seems I need a caffeine hit to get me through the day, but there are issues about miscarriage and low birth weight (not that my kids would suffer from having a slightly lower birth weight, given their 9lbs 7oz and 10lbs 13oz birth weights, respectively). You would think that today would have been a good day to catch a few winks instead of loading up on coffee, but I know myself well enough to know that if I'm having a good nap, I get resentful of anything that wakes me from said nap, even if that thing is my firstborn crying for help during an illness. So I figured I'd be better off staying awake and ready for whatever comforting and clean-up jobs might be coming my way, rather than napping and ending up bitter. Of course, if I'd known she was going to sleep for five hours this afternoon, I would have napped instead of parsing my cup of java out over the length of the day (mmm... cold coffee), but hindsight, you know...
208 - number of pictures from the Oscars Red Carpet I scrolled through this afternoon during Neva's marathon nap. I though Resse Witherspoon, Penelope Cruz, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett looked great; I'm not really sure what everyone else was thinking. After scrolling through that many photos and only seeing five dresses I liked, I was thinking that I'm glad I didn't sit through any of the actual television broadcast to see the outfits. They weren't worth it.
It's 8:05pm now, and Neva's sound asleep (after waking for a bit of soup and applesauce and some TV time with Hugh). Hugh is en route to dreamland as well. My favourite quote from the day came when we were driving home from picking Hugh up from daycare, and Hugh asked why she had her "cozy" (blanket) with her in the car. She said it was because she was very sick today. She then went on to elaborate:
"This morning when I woke up, I couldn't make it to the toilet before I threw up. That means that a person is very, very sick."
Really, not making it to the toilet before puking seems a reasonable standard for identifying illness. Here's hoping she's feeling better tomorrow, and that none of us has caught whatever it is she's battling.
So, today's numbers:
1 - number of times I've changed her sheets. This is largely due to me remembering my mom's trick of putting a towel down over the pillows to catch any vomit, thus requiring only a change of towel instead of a change of the entire bedding set. Thanks, Mom!
2 - number of times I administered medication to Neva (either Children's Tylenol, to help with the stomach pain, or Children's Gravol, to help with the stomach upset). It's also the number of stories I read her.
3 - batches of baking I made while Neva was asleep. My cousin Katelyn is going to Burkina Faso this summer on a development project and is fundraising. Apparently they had a bake sale a while ago, but no-one wanted to/had time to bake for it. I volunteered to bake some stuff for this time around, so tomorrow Katelyn is getting a batch of brownies and a batch of chocolate chip cookies. (I'm keeping the banana-blueberry-cranberry-nut muffins for myself, thank you very much. To keep with the family theme, the brownie and cookie recipes are from my mom, and the muffin recipe is from Katelyn's mom aka my aunt. It's been a family kind of day.)
4 - loads of laundry I've done (though not put away -- clean is enough of a struggle these days, never mind folded and sorted).
5 - hours in a row Neva slept this afternoon. These 5 hours were punctuated by a small panic attack on my part during which I couldn't believe she was sleeping so long and had visions of her dying in her sleep due to me administering a bad combo of medication (I had only waited 5 hours between Gravol doses, not 6! And I'd also given her Children's Tylenol! And Jeffy had given her Children's Advil in the morning! What if she was up there, not breathing, and... well. My imagination and my hormones took over at this point, and the result was not pretty). I didn't want to check her, though, for fear of disturbing her much needed sleep. Eventually, though, I did go up and make sure she was still breathing (she was) and I flashed forward to the times I will have this exact same panic attack with the newborn the first time s/he sleeps for longer than two hours at a stretch, the first time s/he sleeps through the night, etc.
150 - milligrams of guilt-free caffeine I'm allowed to ingest daily without worrying about undue harm to the baby (according to motherisk). I'd been stressing slightly about this, because it seems I need a caffeine hit to get me through the day, but there are issues about miscarriage and low birth weight (not that my kids would suffer from having a slightly lower birth weight, given their 9lbs 7oz and 10lbs 13oz birth weights, respectively). You would think that today would have been a good day to catch a few winks instead of loading up on coffee, but I know myself well enough to know that if I'm having a good nap, I get resentful of anything that wakes me from said nap, even if that thing is my firstborn crying for help during an illness. So I figured I'd be better off staying awake and ready for whatever comforting and clean-up jobs might be coming my way, rather than napping and ending up bitter. Of course, if I'd known she was going to sleep for five hours this afternoon, I would have napped instead of parsing my cup of java out over the length of the day (mmm... cold coffee), but hindsight, you know...
208 - number of pictures from the Oscars Red Carpet I scrolled through this afternoon during Neva's marathon nap. I though Resse Witherspoon, Penelope Cruz, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett looked great; I'm not really sure what everyone else was thinking. After scrolling through that many photos and only seeing five dresses I liked, I was thinking that I'm glad I didn't sit through any of the actual television broadcast to see the outfits. They weren't worth it.
It's 8:05pm now, and Neva's sound asleep (after waking for a bit of soup and applesauce and some TV time with Hugh). Hugh is en route to dreamland as well. My favourite quote from the day came when we were driving home from picking Hugh up from daycare, and Hugh asked why she had her "cozy" (blanket) with her in the car. She said it was because she was very sick today. She then went on to elaborate:
"This morning when I woke up, I couldn't make it to the toilet before I threw up. That means that a person is very, very sick."
Really, not making it to the toilet before puking seems a reasonable standard for identifying illness. Here's hoping she's feeling better tomorrow, and that none of us has caught whatever it is she's battling.
| posted at 8:05 PM |
