Busy times. You’d think I’d completed all my holiday shopping or better still, that I’d been busy crafting or making everything by hand.
Um, no.
First the good. My wonderful friend Jennifer (mom to the adorable Lily, one of Leo’s many prospective future fiancees) came from Portland for a long weekend. Thanks to my incredible partner, I came and went from home as I pleased, shirked pretty much all domestic and kid-related responsibilities and played New York City tourist with Jennifer all weekend.
We spent our days admiring the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, gazed at the holidays windows of Sak’s and Bergdorff’s, watched skaters twirl and fall at the exquisite skating rink at Bryant Park.
We walked about eighty blocks in one day, from Times Square to the tony shops on Fifth Avenue to the Plaza Hotel to SoHo, where we finally collapsed at a really bad bar for some extremely weak drinks (trust me, I’m an expert). Saturday we “did” suburbia.
The Short Hills Mall, Target, my
favorite kid’s resale shop. There was a delicious home cooked meal (thanks Sweetie), scallops sauteed with tomatoes and Brussels sprouts. And wine. Lots of wine.
Meanwhile, Ellie had a nasty, two-pack-of-Marlboros-a-day-sounding-cough all weekend (yes, while I was out shopping and boozing it up, you can go ahead and say it). Monday morning I just knew if Ellie went to daycare that I would inevitably get
the call. I kept her home and although she sounded pathetic, she was in good spirits. An afternoon appointment with the pediatrician (because everything might be swine flu, I admit it, I’m a little paranoid) found some wheezing, which the doctor did not like. She assured me on the continuum of wheezing it was very slight, but still, I guess they don’t play around with two-year-olds and breathing problems, which is fine with me.
Probably no surprise that Ellie did not enjoy the nebulizer treatment, which involves a creepy looking mask and a mysterious, smokey looking medicine wafting through said, mask. There were tears and tears and many tissues and a hysterical crying I haven't heard since the newborn days. I’d like to make a public thank you to that poor nurse who helped me hold Ellie down while we tortured her with the nebulizer, for she had the pleasure of hearing me perform “Old McDonald,” “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” “I’m a Little Teapot”…anything to appease a shaken and miserable Ellie.
The doctor sent us away with a prescription for an inhaler and an exorbitantly expensive “pediatric mask” that goes with the inhaler—and of course it wasn’t covered by insurance—why would it be? It is, after all, deemed “medical equipment” (cause most people buy “medical equipment” for fun).
***
In happier news, last night Leo said a new word: “Snow man.” He seems to be in the midst of a vocabulary explosion, lot of new words and better pronunciation of existing words. He now says a pretty clear “thank you,” as opposed to the old “day,” which seemed to be his version of “thanks.”
And this morning. One of those mornings in which by the time I get to work I feel like I’ve put in a full day already. As I looked out the dark window at 5:55 a.m. (thanks, Leo) while the slushy, snowy, freezing rain mixture pounded away, I contemplated if there would even be an open daycare to take Ellie to or if Leo would have school (the two are related since the daycare just announced it would close when our town’s schools close—cue me having a panic attack about his news but that’s a whole other conversation).
It took bribery with a soy corn dog (Leo’s idea, trust me) to get Leo into his snowsuit. Then Ellie was up and she took one look at Leo in his winter finery and demanded “snowsuit and hot dog!”
Two words probably not commonly associated with each other, which means, totally normal in our house.
