Блог обо всем и ни о чем…

In case some of my readers aren’t up on the lingo WAHM stands for Work at Home Mom (not to be confuse with WOHM «Work out of Home Mom») and SAHM means Stay At Home Mom. I prefer to be known as awesome.

Yesterday Cameron was home from daycare with a double ear infection. Yup, DH and I thought it might be pink eye but lo and behold it was really the ear infection. My sister was incredulous that we had no idea. «You mean she didn’t wake up during the night multiple times?» Nope. That’s not how Cameron rolls. But we did know something was wrong so off to the doctor’s DH went with Cameron. Diagnosis in hand we decided to keep her home for the day so she would nap better and recover more quickly.

Unfortunately neither of us could take the day off of work. DH’s calendar was a bit more flexible than mine but I had about 5 hours of conference calls where I was an integral component. So not only did I have to have my headset on for most of the day, multitasking was absolutely out. It worked out OK but I was pretty stressed for most of the day even with DH shouldering the heavier load with childcare. And Cameron napped for about 5.5 hours total. All in all it should have been a piece of cake but it was still stressful. I could never really concentrate on Cameron when it was my time to care for her or work when I was supposed to be herding cats on my conference calls.

As I lay on the couch in exhaustion catching up on the 8 (!) episodes of Fringe we have saved I wondered, how do the women who work full time jobs also juggle being the primary care giver during the day for their kids? I don’t mean freelance work which can technically be managed in «off» hours (although talk about tiring!) but a 9-5 job. I met one woman at BigFinance who told me proudly that she was going to be working at home while watching her 6 month and 5 year old sons. Really? I’m sure that worked out fabulously.

I have an exceptionally happy, long napping baby and there is no way in hell I could do it for more than a day. And that was with DH. I worry that technology has allowed us to juggle too many things. I appreciate the flexibility from BigFinance and the technological tools that allow me to work from home at least once a week. But when I work from home, I work from home. Sure, I might throw in some laundry or run an errand or blog but my time and attention is focused on work.

What do the rest of you think? Totally possible to juggle a full time day job and caring for kids? I assume that it would get easier as the kids get older but I would think that 0-6 is the hardest.

PS – Cameron is doing totally great today and didn’t even glance at me as I waved goodbye after dropping her off at daycare. And I am happily ensconced at my desk slogging through email.

Cameron has her first case of pink eye. I’m sure I’m not alone in hoping we could have avoided this milestone for many more years. DH is bringing her to the doctor this morning and he’ll be on baby duty until I get home tonight. I think this is the first time he’s had her alone for an entire day (vs. in the mornings and evenings when I’m traveling) so please wish him luck. I’m more concerned about having to put drops in Cameron’s eyes. This is a baby who refused to take sugary sweet Tylenol or Motrin. I can’t imagine how bad it will be to keep her eye pried open while squeezing drops into it. Fun times, I’m sure.

Probably the worst part? I didn’t know Cameron had pink eye so we went to Holden’s birthday party and interact with 3 other babies. Sorry, moms! I did the responsible thing and emailed them and I hope that there wasn’t too much cross-contamination of germs. Update: Cameron looked fine this morning except for a scratch underneath her eye. So we dropped her off at daycare per usual with the hope that we don’t get the dreaded pick up call.

We’re slowly introducing milk in Cameron’s bottles. 2 ounces milk, 4 of formula. After a week I’ll go to 50%, and so on. She should be close to 100% whole milk by the time we go for her 12 month well appointment. In other fun eating news, Cameron is now refusing to eat anything that is jarred food related (yogurt is out, for example). It looks like the 8-10 jars we have left are going to get donated. We’ll also probably end up with at least 1/2 of a tub of formula too. I hate throwing out that stuff…it’s so expensive.

Standing…always standing. That is Cameron’s new mantra. Cuddling with mommy? No way. And let’s not forget – she can do it by herself. No help necessary or wanted. It has resulted in quite a few head bumps and bruises but that’s why they make skulls so hard, right? Last night was the first where Cameron decided she wanted to stand in the tub while taking a bath. Aside from some initial nervousness about slipping and whacking her head I actually kind of preferred it. It was so much easier to soap her up in all the right spots. Bath toys have become a must and the little squirters are the best.

Finger nail clipping has become a pain in the ass. Cameron has a couple of scratches on her face because it’s a battle for me to clip even one nail at a time. I miss those days of clipping away while she was breastfeeding. Does anyone have any advice on how to make the nail clipping process a little easier?

Another challenge for us is hair. Cameron has the mullet going but because her back hair is curly you can’t tell. But I’m more concerned about the hair falling down into her eyes. Daycare sent her home with a Pebbles ponytail (with a rubber band!) and I took it as a message. The only problem is that I can’t find good hair fasteners that will stay put and not interfere with napping or be a choking hazard for the other kids when it eventually falls out. I’m adamant about not cutting her hair. Not because I want to be like Celine Dion or Kate Hudson but more because once you start cutting bangs you either need to keep doing it or deal with the pain of growing it out later. Goddess In Progress wrote about this in January and I’m hoping once Cameron’s hair gets longer things will be easier. Anyone else have advice?

Cameron has been sick all week. She’s been fever free since Monday but as I wrote in my last post she has a wicked bad sore throat. I’m allowed to say «wicked» as I hail from Massachusetts. DH and I have been layering her pain medications – Motrin and Tylenol. But still she will eat maybe 3 ounces in a sitting if we’re lucky.

I thought ahead and got a doctor’s note outlining the dosage of the two medicines. Go me, I thought, patting myself on my back. This way the day care will have to give Cameron her medicine. After all, I had a doctor’s note.

Nope. No deal. Apparently the day care will not give medicine unless it’s a life threatening situation. Not to put my crass hat on or anything but WTF? I totally get that they are trying to avoid liability but what if Cameron had an ear infection and needed antibiotics while in school? Is DH supposed to interrupt his day and make a round trip to the day care to give her the medicine? I say DH because he is much closer than me and would have to be the one to do it.

Has anyone else experienced this with your day care? Do I have any recourse here? Cameron still has a sore throat and I’m worried she will drink even less than she has been for us.

Yesterday after her second (brief) nap, Cameron woke up crying with a 102 temperature. DH and I coddled her and gave her some Tylenol and put her down for a longer third nap. The biggest problem? She wouldn’t eat.

I should have known something was off when she woke up and ate only 3 ounces instead of her normal 6. She did it again eating only two ounces after her morning nap. For some reason Cameron refusing her bottles frustrates me more than any other thing she does. I have no idea why that is. Whine for an hour? Fine, my ears might hurt but my frustration level stays moderately low. Take a short nap? Roll my eyes and tell her that she’s going to get a fourth nap that day. But refuse to eat? It immediately increases my blood pressure.

I wonder if ultimately it all hearkens back to breastfeeding. It was a struggle to get Cameron to nurse consistently for many weeks. So all I could do was obsess about how much she was eating. Dropping over a pound off her birth weight didn’t help either. So somehow eating became that trigger that would result in me passing her off to DH and walking out of the room if she refused to eat.

Up until we went to the doctor’s earlier this afternoon I was convinced that it was teething. True, DH was sick last week and 102 is high for a teething fever but Cameron was still a happy baby in general. Plus there was a lot more drool than normal. Then I thought it might be her ears although she wasn’t tugging at them too much. Regardless I took a day off from work and we went to the doctor’s after a nice long morning nap. Turns out Miss Cameron has a very bad sore throat. Not strep but blisters are involved.

All we can do is give her Tylenol and Motrin. The doctor recommended Cameron stay out of school tomorrow. DH will be the taking the lead on that one while I head back to work. I thought ahead and even had the doctor write a note for daycare so if she was still a bit out of sorts we could have them give her pain relievers when she returns on Thursday.

Once I had a diagnosis I felt much better. My patience level has increased dramatically and I didn’t try to fight Cameron when she refused another bottle. I am beating myself up a bit over being so stressed about her not eating. How about the rest of you? What are the things that really increase your stress level with your kids?