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November 21, 2003
Playtime with panties
Ella has been fascinated by underwear lately. I really haven’t been pushing it on her since she is not making any major headway on the old potty, but I had once told her (as she was requesting to put mine on) that she needed to be potty trained to wear underwear. That statement caused her to declare that she WAS trained and she demanded to sit on the toilet to pee (as always, dry as a bone). In any case there was a sale at Toys R Us so I figured “why not?” and together Ella and I picked out three packs of panties, size Small. (Like all things toddler related it seems, I was dismayed to find that these, too, were only available in a variety of TV/ Marketing related patterns. No hearts or flowers here—we left with Barbie, Hello Kitty, and Dora the Explorer). Upon arriving home Ella was in a huge rush to try on her new purchases.
Here ensued one of the funniest episodes to date. I will try to describe it but I know I won’t do it justice. Suffice it to say that Jamie and I were biting our lips to avoid bursting out and he had tears in his eyes from the effort. Basically, Ella, who is working hard on all areas of independence, insisted that she was going to put the underwear on “All my by-a self!!” Muttering to herself, she determedly went through the steps we had talked about “One foot in one hole… one foot in a-nonner hole… pull it up…” But alas, when she stood up, both feet were in the same hole. Teetering and nearly toppling over, she lowered herself to start over. This time the feet were all set but when she went to pull them up she must have grabbed the lower leg elastic because the whole panties turned inside out as she pulled them up. Furthermore, they were stuck in the back on her cute little tushie so she was tugging harder and harder on the front trying to get them up. The poor kid has these inside out pants pulled practically to her chin but can’t get the back up and is turning in circles (like a dog chasing her tale—oops, there I go relating her to animals again) trying to get herself straightened out. Meanwhile her poor little exposed butt is turning a darker and darker shade of pink as the circulation is slowed from the panties digging into it’s bottom. It was so cute and just hilarious but I didn’t want her to feel self conscious so we tried not to laugh.
Once she finally did get them up she was so thrilled she wanted to do nothing but promptly pull them off and go through the whole act again with another pair. By the end of the afternoon there were tiny little pink panties scattered all over the living room (“Looks like a Tom Jones show in here” remarks Jamie). Despite my nearly constant asking if she needed to pee, we still didn’t make that leap, but only one pair of underwear got a drenching… not too bad for about three hours sans-diaper.
Ill, and off
As I basically have come to expect, when the cold weather rolls around and everyone moves inside and hunkers down, our whole family has had somewhat of a low grade cold for the last few weeks. In the grand scheme of how I rate colds, it isn’t really all that bad, except that it has gone on and on. Ella’s symptoms weren’t the most obvious ones, that being the ever present goop from the nose, but seemed to be mostly a wet cough, which seemed to be worse at night. She did wake us up crying a few nights, however, which were very sad and we rocked her and, while she didn’t have a fever, she did say that her ear hurt from being pushed into the window at school that day. I decided to bring her in to the Dr. to rule out an ear infection and to see if there was anything he could do. I nearly cancelled the appt. the next day as she seemed to be feeling better but was very glad I didn’t when he took one look in her ear and declared it to be infected and she would need antibiotics. I felt terribly guilty that I hadn’t brought her in earlier; especially when the Dr. told me that all colds resolved themselves in 7-10 days and should be treated after that time period (has anyone else heard of this? I swear, sometimes I feel like my cold lasts all winter long…). And while, until now I have been pleased that Ella hasn’t to this point had any infections requiring antibiotics, now I am worried that she may have them in the past but suffered unnecessarily because I didn’t take her in. But I swear, she didn’t show any of the ‘typical’ signs- fever, redness, pulling on ear, unusual irritability (then again, she’s two, who knows what is ‘normal’), discharge.
Ella was very excited about the whole thing and loved her “Me-cin-in (Amoxicillin--I don’t blame her, one whiff of that stuff brought back many fond childhood memories of its sweet bubble gum flavor). She grabs the little plunger and sucks away and then sucks on it for about five minutes more afterwards to get every drop. I REALLY need to make sure to keep it out of reach because she would down the whole bottle if I gave her the chance. She has been playing Dr. with all of her animals lately and it always ends with them needing me-cin-in—very cute.
The biggest lingering problem from this illness, however, is her sleeping patterns. Ella is normally a good sleeper, going down around eight and sleeping to 6-7AM. She falls asleep on her own after playing around in her crib for a while and we don’t hear a peep all night. When she woke crying during her illness Jamie and I quickly went to her, holding her, rocking her, comforting her, and sitting with her while she fell asleep again. Now, however, it’s been a few weeks and she seems completely recovered but is still waking in the middle of the night, crying and calling out for us. I really don’t know how to handle this aside from letting her cry it out. For the first few nights we would go in and sit with her and talk with her, maybe a quick hug, but always as soon as we left she would howl even louder. In addition, she has started rising closer to 5 AM then her previous 6-7AM. Now I am an early bird normally but this is ridiculous. Again, when I go in to tell her it’s not time to get up she just howls when I leave. I feel cruel burying my head under the pillows but I don’t want to feed into this pattern either (also, a family bed is not an option for us—NONE of us sleep, just toss and turn and drive each other nuts). The other tough thing is when she wakes up at 5:40 or so. Six is normally the cut off for when I will go get her, but if she has been up and crying since 5:40 I hate to go in at six and risk her thinking that the crying was what ‘won’ her the right to get up, thus feeding the problem further. Rather then risk setting up this situation (her crying and yelling for me for twenty minutes and then me getting her at six) I would rather just get her and not put her in the situation anyway. I’m not happy about it, though, but am really at a loss as to how to get the old sleep patterns back. Ug.
Can’t believe it is almost Thanksgiving. We will be going up to Maine to spend it with Jamie’s family. I have so much to be thankful for (My family—especially my Husband, my Daughter, my Mom, my dog, inlaws that don’t drive me nuts—my health, the means and opportunity to go back to school, my brain and determination for getting me this far through the program, my house, our neighborhood, good friends, food on the table, also the opportunity to keep this diary, which has better preserved this year for all of us then any other time period in my life). I really appreciate a holiday to celebrate it all. Blessings to all of you out there in cyberworld.
As always, thanks for reading.
Bonnie
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