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Monday, July 4, 2011

It's a Brave New World Whining

Last week one day, during the peaceful and quiet naptime, the Sweet Baboo opened her door and said, ever so sweetly, "No sleep, Mommy." She's been in a big girl bed for several months, has been able to climb out of it for several months, has been able to open the door for several months, and has been staying awake during naptime most of the time for several months. She just now put it all together and is popping out of bed like a jack in the box. The one day she did fall asleep, she was up two hours past bedtime, popping out of her room periodically. We keep sending her back to bed, to no avail.

Alas, the end of la siesta.

This morning, on my way to get an awake and talking Mini up from her crib, I glanced over at Sweet's room. Her door was open. Her bed was empty. After I recovered from my someone has stolen my child! momentary panic attack, I looked around. She was sound asleep, on the couch. I had not heard her over the monitor, nor could/would she tell me if she had been up playing in the middle of the night. I guess I'm sleeping on the couch for a few nights.

Sigh.

In antiwhines (she dooms herself by posting this on Teh Internets), it is Day Sixteen of No Potty Accidents. Dare we hope that she may be declared potty trained? Not exactly, as she's missing the part where she announces that she needs to go. It's only been a year, what's the hurry?

What's happening in your new worlds, pixies?

33 comments:

Sue said...

Oh esperanza, our eldest did the same thing. Scared the whoozits out of us. We ended up putting Christmas bells on the front and back doors (loud ones) just in case he decided the sandbox sounded like fun at 3:00 am.

Yay for Day Sixteen!!!!!

Whine: Day off. First, phone call at 9:20 which hubby deflected, as it was not urgent or even worth mentioning. Duh.

Anti-whine: Got our new Health Card pics taken and the tags for our vehicle despite a lengthy line up. We were in and out in half an hour! Score!

Whine: Got back home to discover the elevator out of or der - AGAIN. Grrrrr......... "Priority" fix-it call showed up 1.5 hours later. The nice fellow who showed up climbed four stories to check out the problem, then came right back down to let us know that it was going to be more than just a few minutes, so perhaps we might like to go out and come back.

Diabetic hubby was getting a bit clammy and blood-sugar-low, so I followed fix-it guy upstairs (got my workout today, for sure - four trips upstairs in total) - got the insulin and test kit and off we went.

Anti-whine: In the "Lemonade out of Lemons" department, had a lovely dinner with hubby.

Whine of the Wettest Sort: torrential downpour on the way out of the restaurant. We came home looking like someone had hosed us down.

And that, pixie friens, was my Day Off. ~sigh~

esperanza said...

Christmas bells, that might do the trick. There is a whine surrounding this whine, which is that I probably would have heard her escape, were it not for the (a) large, noisy fan and (b) white noise machine going in our bedroom. I have the monitors turned up as loud as they go, and I can hear crying, but not doors creaking, apparently. Christmas bells it is.

Sue, you have terrible luck with days off. At least you got a workout and a date with hubby, huh?

Sue said...

Yup. I'm trying to appreciate the good parts of the day.

purple_kangaroo said...

I'm so glad she was fine and in the house!

When my kids grew out of naps, we instituted "quiet time". I found the longest story or kids' music CD possible, and told them they had to stay quietly in their room playing, resting, and/or looking at books until the music/story was over. The audio indication of when quiet time was (or wasn't) over was really helpful for them when they were that age. Now they don't need it, except maybe the youngest sometimes.

AJ had her cardiology appointment and the conclusion was that she just has a benign heart murmur; hooray!

And we had a fabulous day today. I also started blogging again, if you can call a post that's mostly bullet points blogging. It's been a long time since I posted anything, especially anything of import or even about what's going on in our lives. FB sort of makes blogging feel a bit redundant sometimes. Anyone else having that problem?

purple_kangaroo said...

Also, we got an alarm system installed that can be set to chime with loud beeps and then a voice announcing which door has been opened: "BEEP, BEEP, BEEP! Front Door."

purple_kangaroo said...

That would be when our kids were at that stage, not this week. :)

esperanza said...

Thanks for the ideas. We will not even discuss how last night went. Except to say that I am too old to sleep on the floor.

Sue said...

Yay PK!! I love benign troubles - still there, but less heart-pounding involved.

I hear you on the FB thing. Sometimes it's just easier to know that you're limited to 140 characters. Takes some pressure off somehow. I definitely blog less theses days.

Esperanza - sleeping on the floor......not so good.

Liz Miller said...

Esperanza, if you have a round knob on your outer doors, this is a good product.

esperanza said...

Well, it's not Day 17. Let this be a lesson to you not to brag on Teh Interwebs.

Thanks, Liz, we may look at that. I just switched out doorknobs to her room, so now we have the capability of locking her in. Which the me who didn't sleep last night likes very much. The other me is not so wild about it.

kathy a. said...

oy, esperanza. we used kiddie gates for a while to prevent wandering, but sweet may be too big for that solution.

oy, sue -- the elevator. but at least you got a date out of the deal.

PK, yay for the benign!

kathy a. said...

my poor sweet cat is no longer suffering. i'm kind of a hot weepy mess.

thank you, friends, for all your kindness as i've fretted incognito about this decision in past weeks.

Liz Miller said...

(((Kathy A.))) So sorry.

Esperanza, we put them on MM's doors for times when he HAD to stay in his room, like time-out. But mostly we used them on the inside knob of the front door to the house. (Back door was a heavy slider)

Sue said...

(((((kathy a)))))

I'm so very sorry.

esperanza said...

oh, kathy a. It's so tough. I'm so sorry.

esperanza said...

And if I may be so rude as to continue whining on my own hostess week, I shall. The Baboos have been on my Big Name health insurance on an unemployment basis for 2 years. Alas, we have reached the limit and have had to switch to Mr. E's small name health insurance. Their coverage is similar, but what a headache. First, they got Sweet's birthdate wrong in their system (she is the heaviest user of the insurance in the family), our address is incorrect, I can't get answers I need about out-of-network coverage, and worst of all, our favorite specialist for Sweet is not in the network. Hence the out-of-network questions, since his office visits run about $600 each. I remember in the early days of Sweet's homecoming, I would spend significant time on the phone with doctors' offices and insurance companies each day. I am not liking the return to those days.

Thanks for the vent.

Sarah at ratatat said...

Oh Esperanza - hate that insurance switch. And the lost child feeling is terrible. Whine of similarity - came home from the store and my husband said, you took the baby with you, right? Uh, no. Frantic searching and found her asleep on the floor. Ugh!!!

AW: our long-awaited visit from our friends from Texas starts in 15-60 minutes. Yay!

Sue - sorry for elevator woes.

Whine: starting to wonder if the higher dose of the anti-anxiety meds is not quite working for my daughter.

esperanza said...

Ack, Sarah, that's a horrific misplaced baby story!

And sorry about the non-working meds. Sounds like some hard days at the ratatat place.

Sue said...

Oh my Esperanza, how awful. I hope it all gets sorted quickly.

Sarah at ratatat, sorry about the meds. It's such a hard process, trying to find the right drug or combination of meds that will do the job. It always felt a bit like Goldilocks and her perfect bed to me - like both doc and I were waiting until we could say "This one is just right".hope that happens for your daughter really soon.

kathy a. said...

cluesticks to insurance people. all of 'em, just on principle. it is such a pain dealing with them and their quirks. the prospect of either paying through the nose for the expert who knows sweet, or switching providers -- that sucks.

sarah, what sue said.

esperanza, the occasional accident is no big deal. i remember the kindergarten teacher having parents bring an extra pair of undies to keep in the cubby, just in case -- all the K kids were long past potty training, but every once in a while things get a little too distracting or exciting in the K world. so you still get to celebrate 16 days accident-free!

kathy a. said...

proof i am a tacky person: although we are grieving our sweet kittie, i have an overwhelming urge to replace the ruined hall carpet RIGHT NOW.

Sue said...

Not tacky at all kathy. When we lost our big boy kitteh, I got rid of his cat bed, his crate, and all of the ruined blankets that had been protecting the furniture. Everything went within a week. It was too hard to remember how the blankies were ruined, and too hard to look at the crate without seeing his frightened face every time we had to put him in it to go to the vet.

I'm happier with the framed picture of him on the dining room hutch where he looks quite happy playing with his favourite string toy.

AW (I think): I went for lunch with a parishioner who is still grieving the tragic loss of her husband over a year ago. She's really struggling, but we can always find something to laugh about. I guess I didn't realize how much that meant to her because she not only paid for lunch but gave me a way-over-the-top generous gift as well.

It isn't so much a gift I can hold in my hands and say "No, no, I really can't accept it." That would be easy, as there are boundaries around that sort of thing.

She paid for two sessions with a spiritual director. Because she knows I can't afford a spiritual director and especially after this past (really difficult) year for our congregation, I probably need to work out some of my own grief.

That she would be so insightful as to know that without asking, and arrange the sessions so I couldn't turn them down is both delightful and surreal. A part of me is saying "I am SO loved by these people and I couldn't be more thankful."

Another part of me is thinking "Do my people really think I'm that broken?"

W: The truth is, I really am that broken. Some days I cry and have no idea which loss I'm grieving. They are all just piled up on top of the other and I haven't had time to work through any of it.

AW: I guess now I can get started. :)

kathy a. said...

sue, she sounds like a friend to me. a keeper. of course she appreciates you are there for her, and especially the laughs. but it sounds like she hears/intuits what you need, too. love makes the world go round, no?

Name Under Development said...

Esperanza, you have my empathy for your insurance whines. My whine is smaller but still irritating.

Dancing Girl, despite her new status as employed college grad, is still on our insurance until the end of the calendar year. And some of the medical providers in the Giant City Named After The State have fireplacing slow and/or messed up billing systems, so we're still dealing with billing issues dating from her student days.
Whine the 1st: Yesterday I opened a bill (with her permission) from the student health service that dated back to January (!). The first line said, existing patient short complaint, charge 0. Line 2: Handling fee- $10. They charged her 10 bucks to tell us she didn't owe any money. So now she does. Sigh

Whine the 2nd: This spring, DG had a lot of issues with her eyes, apparently caused by an interaction between a medication and her contacts. The eye/ear clinic generates a new patient ID EVERY TIME you visit- you have 10 visits, you get 10 patient IDs. This confuses our insurance to no end. We get past due notices all the time because payments cross in the mail, are charged to the wrong visit, etc. Finally today a billing agent called DG and she told them firmly to give us ONE complete bill with ALL charges. Let us pray.

Anti whine: The elbow I broke the end of May on a work trip has healed enough that last week my dr told me to take of the sling and resume using both hands. Yay!

NUD

kathy a. said...

NUD, you definitely do not whine often enough! much sympathy on the insurance whines. cluesticks!

that is a hell of an antiwhine, being released from the sling after all this time. xoxo

esperanza said...

Oh, those insurance whines are award worthy, NUD. That charging $10 bit is agg.ra.va.ting. As is the other ID business. How can they think of so many ways to mess things up? And that sounds like a looooong time in a sling. Happy you're released.

Name Under Development said...

An addendum to my antiwhine- HR has been very helpful & cooperative about the medical stuff related to my broken arm- all bills are to go to workman's comp, they are handling all details, etc. The benefits coordinator told me to submit the bone density test i had this morning, because my dr wanted me to get one since I had a broken bone & am past 50.

Not all insurance/benefit people need a cluestick (but fear not, pixies, the posse will always have plenty of work to do.)

NUD

Sue said...

Oh NUD, what they all said. Cluesticks at the ready!

Sue said...

Dear "You've Won a Vacation!!" auto-dial callers: Don't bother calling churches. M'kay, thx.
signed,
Me.

Liz Miller said...

I just realized that I'm moving house on the 23rd of July and haven't packed a darn thing.

Plus, the current (rental) house is a disaster area and the realtor is going to want to show it to potential renters.

Plus, I need to get all the utilities and whatnot turned on and off.

A/W: We're moving back into the house we own, and we can now get phone, internet, and TV from the company I work for through their service that rhymes with Ohios, which is going to save us about a hundred dollars a month, even without the employee discount.

Oh shit, we also need to find a contractor to get more insulation into the walls over there.

I can has panic now?

kathy a. said...

cleaning, packing, and moving fairies to liz, stat!

one of the weirder things about reaching a certain point in life is remembering when moving meant throwing a few things in boxes and bribing a couple of friends with beer and pizza. we are no longer a lean operation, stuff-wise. one of these days, hopefully long before an impending move, i'll need to get better about winnowing and tossing.

kathy a. said...

big AW -- had lunch with my best friend from HS! very fun couple of hours catching up.

Sue said...

Cleaning Packing Fairies on the way Liz!

Kathy - I love those catch up lunches! They're so much fun.

AW: booked an extra massage for early next week.