Time Out!

I don't believe in spanking, I don't think it accomplishes anything. However, Doug was thisclose to a spanking yesterday. Recently I've begun letting Doug out of the grocery cart with me when I go shopping, provided he doesn't take off and run away. The last few trips to the store he's been very good, staying with me and helping me put things into the cart. We've had a lot of fun by having Doug help us find and count produce. In general the trip is less of a headache because he's not screaming to get out or running away from me.

So yesterday we went to Target and he was walking with me and helping me load the cart. After that we had to go to the grocery store. He wanted to get out and walk next to me and because he'd been so good, I was ok with that. We went up a few aisles, got some produce and then went to the condiment aisle. I was looking for some individual packs of ranch dressing for Jeff's lunch and Doug was roaming up and down the aisle looking at bottles of 'dip'. I then heard a rattling sound and realized that the bottle Doug had just picked up was glass. I very calmly told him to put it down as I walked toward him. He smirked, held the bottle over his head with both hands, and threw it with all of his toddler might. Glass and bbq sauce everywhere! I was shocked and absolutely horrified. To Doug's credit, he was pretty shocked too. I'm sure that he didn't know that the bottle would break. I don't remember what I said to him ( I was still in shock) but it was something along the lines of "you are in SOOO much trouble and there will be a serious time out when we get home!". I plopped him back in the cart and went to find an employee to alert about the mess*. Several minutes later I brought Doug back to the aisle to show him that some one else had to clean up his mess. For the rest of the trip, Doug was pretty subdued. He wasn't dancing to the in store music anymore or pointing out things he knew the words for. He mostly just calmly sat in the cart.

I usually give time outs right after the offense, otherwise Doug is unlikely to remember what he's in time out for. But a time out in the store isn't quite as effective as one at home and I thought this deserved a good one. When we got home I put him in his crib, his designated time out place and he began to jump in his crib, clearly enjoying himself. I realized that the crib no longer has the desired time out effect, so I had to come up with something fast. I realized that I could strap him into his highchair and put him in the middle of the dining room, which ended up working out nicely. After his three minutes, I talked to him about what he did and why it wasn't a nice thing to do. I have no idea how much, if any of it sank into him. He was rather exceptionally good the rest of the day, possibly because I told him that I don't take naughty boys to see GG (my grandmother) and he'd been talking about going over there all day long.

I was really glad that there weren't any witnesses to the 'Great Bbq Chucking' of '12. Had I seen that, my first thought would have been 'Wow, what a brat!'. And there was definitely some part of my mind that thought that. I know that the incident was pretty extreme for Doug. He did only intend to throw the bottle, not shatter it and make a huge mess. I may laugh about it at some point, just not this week.


On another completely unrelated note, I got yelled at by a door to door salesperson yesterday. It had happened shortly after I debriefed Doug on his time out. The doorbell rang and Doug started screaming, which is unusual (the screaming and the doorbell). Typically when the bell rings, we're expecting some one and I tell Doug that so and so will be over and he's all cool with that. So after calming down a freaked out toddler, I looked out my window and saw a young woman who didn't appear to have anything identifying her with any company. I thought that she could be a neighbor, so I opened the door. She then launched into some sort of spiel. I very politely, but firmly asked if she had seen my sign.

A quick word about my sign. The first month we moved into this house, we were getting solicitors at our door a couple of times in a week. I don't buy stuff from people going door to door. I don't give donations to people going door to door. I don't join new religions of people going door to door. I just don't do it. If some one is an obvious solicitor, I don't even open my door. So we got this lovely plaque for our mailbox, which sits right next to the door frame. It's bright red and says "NO SOLICITING!". Best three dollars I ever spent at Home Depot. All of our friends and family who've visited our house have noticed it. We had trouble on Halloween with parents not sure if it was ok to ring our bell. So basically, what I'm saying is that people notice the sign.

Anyway, back to my lovely saleslady. She said, very rudely, "Now why would I look at your mailbox?! You should put it on your door!!!" Again, the sign is about 3 inches from the door bell. I shrugged, said 'No thank you' and closed the door on her face. There were a lot of things I could have said but didn't. Like, 'Oh, I'm sorry you aren't able to read" or "Wow, I know soliciting is a pretty big word, do you know what it means?". Sigh.

Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest!


*I admit that I told the employee that Doug had dropped the bottle, not pitched it with all his might. It's also not a store we go to often. Or will probably go back to for a while...

Gah!

I'm half expecting agents from the Child Protective Service to be at my door today. I don't know how you can half expect something, but there it is. Also? My biggest worry about that is that they'll notice all the smeary sticky little hand prints on the coffee table that I haven't washed off yet. But there you have it.

Anyway, to make a long story somewhat shorter, we've called Poison Control twice in the past week! The first time was on Saturday. Jeff and I were just laying on the bed and Doug was running around, and then all of a sudden, he was on Jeff's side of the bed, chewing on something. We never did figure out what it was or if he swallowed it, but Jeff feared it may have been an ibuprofen pill he dropped. The pills are extremely bright orange, and there was no trace of the coating in Doug's mouth, so I doubted it. But to be on the safe side, Jeff called Poison Control, which basically said he'd probably be ok, but keep an eye on him. The thing we didn't know about poison control is that they take your information, and they call you back the next day to make sure the child is fine. Which I suppose they do for statistical reasons or something, because if Doug was ill, we'd take him to the doctor or the hospital and not wait around for a call to tell us that might be a good idea. But some people are stupid I suppose.

Last night I went to my bible study and Jeff and Doug went to swim class. On the way home from swim class they stopped off at the grocery store to get me some flowers. While Doug was in the cart, he was reaching for things, but Jeff thought he'd maneuvered the cart so Doug couldn't get a hold of anything. When Jeff was done picking out flowers, he looked over at Doug who was spitting something out that looked like tomato. It was not. It was Jerusalem Cherry plant, which has fruit that looks like cherry tomatoes, which happen to be one of Doug's favorite foods. Anyway, the cherries on the plant are toxic. When Jeff got home, he called Poison Control again. Because it appeared Doug spit the fruit out, he wasn't in any real danger other than an upset stomach. We turned on the baby monitor for the first time in a year so we could hear him if he got sick. We learned that Doug evidently has favorite songs on his fish mobile, and he'd smack the button to change the tune to a different one. I'd been wondering why it seemed the fish mobile was on forever.

Doug seems to be fine. We went to story time today, where he shared very nicely, most of the time. Afterward we went shopping. I had Doug strapped into the cart, and he was everywhere trying to grab everything. So I have a little more forgiveness in my heart today for Jeff. His penance last night was giving Doug a bath, which is exhausting and wet. Anyway, it seems I have a coffee table that needs cleaning...

Fizzle

That was the theme sound of our weekend. Things just fizzled out.

Friday night was the birthday dinner of one of my grade school girl friends. She planned a nice evening at a restaurant in Glen Burnie, the Bone Fish Grill. Jeff and I had actually been there recently and had a very nice time, so I was excited to go again. The catch was that the place doesn't take reservations for prime time dining on Friday, and there were twelve people in the party. So, my friend got there an hour before hand to get us on the list with the hopes that we'd be seated by about 7, 7:30, that is about what the hostess said, so we had high hopes.

Now, Glen Burnie is about 40ish minutes from my house and I'd only been there a couple of times with Jeff. Since I'd never driven there myself, I didn't feel too comfortable doing it by myself. Then you add to the fact that the fibro screws with my night vision and it was raining and then suddenly I'm your 65 year old relative who has to leave your house before dark. My parents weren't available to watch Doug, and we didn't have another sitter lined up. I really wanted to go, and Jeff very generously offered to drive me. We need a new washer and dryer, so he planned to have dinner with Doug in the area and then do some comparison shopping at the stores in the area while I had dinner with the girls.

This plan sounded good. When I got to the restaurant, my friends were in the bar, so I joined them. We chatted and had drinks and caught up on life. At about 8 or so (half an hour to an hour after we expected to be seated) the bar tender (who totally looked like Frodo Baggins, and oddly had a black eye) closed out our tabs saying that our table was going to be ready soon. We waited and waited and were starting to get restless. At about 8:45 we went to stand in the front of the restaurant, hoping to be seated soon. It was almost 9, and this meant that we'd probably eat dinner closer to 10. It was just too late. I couldn't let Jeff and Doug wait out all night for me. I decided I needed to leave, so Jeff and Doug came and picked me up. I was very disappointed, but it was really going to be a much later evening that I'd planned. For what it's worth, Doug had a very nice time at Chik-fila. He had a yummy dinner and a lot of fun in the play area. The Glen Burnie Chik-Fila has a much more awesome play place than ours. When we got home, the power was out. I wondered if we'd suddenly been relocated into Montgomery County. According to BG&E, one of the arms of a pole had to be replaced and our power would be on by 11:30, 1, then 3. Luckily it came back by 2, or else Jeff would have been sleeping in the basement*. And that was Friday.

I decided that Saturday we'd do something as a family. We decided on Thai for lunch and a movie, Hop. I didn't want to see Hop in particular, I just wanted to see a movie. We had a very nice lunch, the waitresses at the Tara Thai in Rio hadn't seen Doug since he was about 6 months old, so they made a big fuss over him, which he loved. We got to the movie, got some soda for us, chocolate milk for Doug and some snow caps and Reece's pieces. We decided to try Doug in his own seat in the theater and got a booster for his chair. We settled him between us and gave him some of the candy and milk. He was happy during the previews, he occasionally had to get up and stand on his chair and see all the people sitting behind us. When the movie started, he began to get restless. He wanted to walk around in front of us and say 'hi' to the people sitting near us. We tried to get him to sit in our laps, but he would have none of it and screamed each time. Jeff had finally had enough and took Doug to the entrance way and let Doug run around there. Every so often he'd try to sit down with Doug, but he'd scream again. This went on for at least 40 minutes and was miserable for all three of us. I decided that it was time to go. It wasn't Doug's fault. I think the problem was that he was too tired and our environment was too interesting for him to settle down and take a nap. Lesson learned, no more movies for a while.

Sunday was kind of a wash. I was too tired, drained and sore to get up in the morning, so we missed out on church. Most of the day was spent around the house. I watched a Hallmark movie I'd dvr'd a few weeks ago, 'Time After Time'. It was about a 55 year old man who accidentally went back in time and went to save his 30 year old self and marry his high school sweet heart. At one point, the events of the man's life had changed because of a choice he'd made with his second chance. The older version of the man had no memory of the events and they'd had no idea why. I felt they needed the Doc there with a chalk board showing the diverging time lines. It was a cute movie as long as you didn't think about it. Sunday was a very lazy day.

This weekend has made it painfully obvious that we need to think about an alternate baby-sitter. It's kind of a difficult time for Doug now because he has separation anxiety. I also don't want to subject anyone to a screaming toddler for a few hours.



*No electricity means that Jeff's CPAP machine doesn't work, which means that I don't sleep due to the monstrous snoring.

Socializing the Beast

It's been painfully obvious for quite some time that Doug needs to spend time with his peers. He will see other children his age here and there, and gets very excited about it. There was an incident a few weeks ago at a Barnes and Noble train table in which he tried to grab a little girl's face. Despite being a little older than he was, she was smaller, and he didn't realize that he could easily knock her over. I decided it was time for Doug to spend time with his peers.

So I started looking for classes or groups to enroll him in. The county we live in doesn't offer much in his age range. Montgomery County does have quite a lot of classes for babies his age, but most of them started a month ago. And then there's the problem of the drive back and forth. The local indoor pool offers classes for babies his age, but to be honest I'm worried about ear infections. I'm also not sure how much of it I can put up with either. Doug loves the water, but after taking him in the pool, I'm usually fairly wiped out. Then there's drying off and changing both of us back to our street clothes and everything else. Very exhausting. The other options were story times at the library and classes for babies at gyms for kids. I decided we'd try a free class at one of the gyms for kids.

When we got to the gym, a class for preschoolers was letting out. There were lots of excited kids running around, and Doug was quite interested in them. Once I got Doug out of his carrier and our coats and shoes off, Doug and I walked around a bit exploring. Only two other babies turned up for the class, one of which was also trying the class out for free. So they only had one registered baby in the class. The class consisted of songs and climbing up and down the various pieces of equipment. And lifting Doug. Up and down. Twenty pounds up and twenty pounds down. The instructor really liked activities in which we had to do this. Doug had an okay time, he didn't get terribly excited or hate it. He was mostly interested in the other babies and their parents. He met his first hippie. Doug was amazed that one boy's father had hair longer than mine. Doug also was really into the perky instructor. I didn't have the heart to tell Doug that she was paid to flirt with him. After it was all over, I was very tired and extremely sore. The physical toll on me wasn't worth the class. The price was also a bit much. Maybe when Doug's a few years older and there's less physical involvement on my part, we can try it again.

Until that time comes, I think we'll try story time at the library. The church nursery is also a nice place for him to socialize, but he's the youngest there by quite a bit. I'd also like to try to find him some play dates, so if you have a baby about Doug's age, I might start harassing you for some play dates. Now, I think it's time for a coke and some tv and not moving for a very long time :)

It's Regan's Fault*

We had quite a memorable New Year's Eve. I woke up on New Year's Eve at about 4:30 that morning in Columbus, Ohio. We had stayed the night in Columbus on our way back from Kansas City. I rolled over and over but I could not get back to sleep. See, Jeff has sleep apnea and if he sleeps without his mask, it sounds like some one is cutting down an entire forest of trees! Unfortunately, for us both, his mask broke the first day of the vacation, so for nearly two weeks, neither of us slept well.** Anyway, I wasn't getting back to sleep, Doug was restless between us and Jeff kept on waking himself up. So I decided that since none of us were sleeping we'd at least get on the road and be home by that afternoon. I was able to clam down and blow off some steam in the shower (don't mess with my sleep) and I come out into the room to find that Doug had thrown up all over the place. So there went my nice relaxed mood. I started working damage control. Jeff had done a good job on keeping the bio hazard localized, but Doug was still very upset. I calmed him down and took his temp, which was 102.3. So I dosed him with some Tylenol and called our pediatrician's after hours line. The line told us that Dr. So & So was covering for him and to call her. I called Dr. So & So and the message told us that our pediatrician was covering for her! Epic fail! So I called my mom. Anyway, long story short, we got Doug calm, clean and dressed and put him in the car. I think we left Columbus at about 7ish? I do feel badly for the person who had to clean our room. Doug sure knows how to destroy a hotel room!

For the rest of the day in the car Doug mostly slept. Unfortunately I couldn't get his fever down. I called his Dr.'s office and they were concerned about his high fever too, but as we were in Ohio, not much could be done about it. The nurse said we could take him to the ER or an urgent care facility, but neither of those were available at the time, so our goal was to just get him home. At about 11 we stopped some where in West Virginia for lunch. We wanted to eat quickly so we could get back on the road, so we headed toward a McDonald's. But lo and behold, what was next to the McDonald's!?!? An urgent care facility! I told Jeff that I thought it was a sign, so we took Doug in. We were told the wait was long, but actually we got in an out in a relatively short time. The doctor saw Doug and agreed with us that it was a stomach virus and told us the correct dosage*** of Tylenol for Doug. He also recommended that we try ibuprofen instead. So after the visit we got back in the car and drove to a pharmacy in town, dosed Doug with ibuprofen and headed back to McDonald's.

You know how some times something happens to you, or somebody does something to you accidentally and you really really want to throttle them but you know it's not their damn fault? That's what happened to me at McDonald's. I'd been going on no more than four hours of interrupted sleep the past two nights. I was beyond fatigued and in a lot of pain. I'd been dealing with a sick baby all day. In short, I was thisclose to going over the edge. Doug was asleep on the table in his carrier and Jeff brought the tray to the table with our lunch on it. Jeff reached for something and some how his gigantic Dr. Pepper was knocked over and spilled all over the table. A good portion went onto my lap, and the rest went into my brand new purse. Luckily, nothing in my purse was ruined, but everything was soaked and sticky. There were pools of soda in my purse. Jeff jumped up and helped me mop up and helped me pull things out of my purse. At the time the only thing I could say to him was to tell him to go to the car and get some plastic bags for the contents of my purse.

It was probably really good for our marriage that Jeff left me for that minute in a half. I was able to pull myself together and calm down. I realized that I had some options at hand. Option 1, I could yell at Jeff, which would allow me to vent. However, this will make Jeff feel worse and in the end will make us both miserable. Option 2, I could let it go and we can move on. I chose option 2. We were already both pretty miserable and really needed a break.

Anyway, Jeff came back in and we got resettled and began our lunch. After a few minutes Jeff said to me, "This whole trip has been my fault." I grabbed a french fry while I pondered my response to that. "Well, actually no. It's not your fault that you grew up in Kansas City. That's where your parents lived. They probably settled there in the 80s because of the economy. So, actually, it's Regan's fault. Yep, I think the blame resides squarely on his shoulders." So we had a nice quiet lunch and loaded Doug back up. By the time we got home on NYE, we were all dead tired, but Doug's fever broke. All in all, not a terrible end to 2010.



*I was in Kindergarten when the 80s ended. History classes never covered something as recent as the 80s, so really I have little to no idea what the economy in the 80s was like. Humor me.

**Fibromyalgia symptoms are worsened by poor, interrupted sleep. They've actually done studies in which they've screwed up the subject's sleep, and they have many fibro like symptoms. So seriously, don't screw with my sleep!

***Tylenol, or at least the generic we got, doesn't give you dosage per weight for children under 2. You're supposed to talk to your doctor about it. The last time we got that info for Doug was at least 5 lbs ago. On the other hand, the Advil we bought ONLY gives dosing instructions for children under 2. Go figure.

Phone Phail

Friday night we each got a new cell phone, sort of on a whim. We'd had dinner at the Rio in Gaithersburg and had about 2 hours until our movie. We each picked out different phones that we liked. We went home after the movie and tinkered with them for the rest of the weekend. Yesterday, we began to notice some rather irritating things about our new phones.

Jeff's phone had a small slide out key pad, a non-flip phone. So, obviously the phone had a key guard. Unfortunately, the key guard was one key. Which was easily pressed. Sunday night we heard a voice coming from Jeff's pants. Evidently he'd unlocked the phone and activated the voice command function. The phone was trying to text Jeff's boss, which was needless to say, not cool. My phone was kinda cool. It had a slide out qwerty key board and a touch screen. However, the touch screen wasn't sensitive enough, and it called everyone when I tried to set up my contact list. I have this reoccurring nightmare in which I need to dial 911, and for whatever reason, I keep mis-dialing over and over again. The other day I tried to call my doctor's office and I couldn't. Trying to call a contact not on the speed dial was not intuitive and took me nearly ten minutes to figure it out. It was my nightmare come true! The contacts list was also buried in several menus and not easy to access. Its a good phone, as long as you don't want to use it to call some one. It kind of fails in its primary objective.

So today we went to a local Sprint store in Laurel. We were told that we had 30 days to exchange the phones if we didn't like them. It turned out that we hadn't actually purchased our phones from a Sprint store, despite that the store was called 'Sprint' and had 'Sprint' printed on the receipt. After an emergency diaper change (what is it with the timing on that? always so inconvenient) we were back at the alleged Sprint store in Gaithersburg. We each got the same phone, one with a dial pad on front and a qwerty slide out key board. We each had the same phone before this too, it just didn't feel right having different phones, plus we both really liked this one. The phone is 'green', as in its environmentally friendly. I don't think it's due to recyclable materials or more efficient power but because it has some stupid apps you can get to tell you how to be green. Very silly. But we like the phones and hopefully we'll keep them.

Face Palm

So I thought I had an appointment on Thursday. It's in my calendar as Thursday and on our dry erase board calendar as Thursday. I wrote that appointment down two months ago when I left the doctor's office. Evidently, the appointment was today. I don't know what happened. I even remember thinking that the 29th was almost the end of July when I made that appointment with the receptionist. I've never missed an appointment before, ever. It really annoys me too because this one counted and now I have to do the back and forth with this office to get the information for my blood work. Perhaps I should have told them I that I feel like I've spent the night falling down the stairs. But this isn't the first time this office has driven me nuts. The doctor is wonderful. The staff sucks. They're always days getting back to me about a question. I have an appointment set with a rheumatologist for August and I have to get this office to send all my records to them, which I'm sure will be an adventure. That is unless I want to get tested for Lyme Disease again. Which I don't.

What sucks most of all about this is that I was having a nice day. My mom came and took Doug so I could lie down and nap. And now I'm all frazzled and thinking I've lost my mind. Oh well. I shall take it all out on some peas. I'm going to make Doug some pea puree for dinner and and food processing the heck out of them might be just the thing.

***Edit***

The doctor's office called me back, which is kind of shocking. Evidently my thyroid is quite fine, which is what I didn't want to hear (Remember I said chronic illness is funny? This is one of those times). Oh well. Jeff has taken pity on me and decided to come home from work early. There's always a silver lining :)