Mira Archives - Page 15 of 36

Feb 21, 2011

The Pioneer Woman, Ice Cream, and a Sick Kid All In One Weekend

Some weekends are short, and then some fly by so quickly that you barely had time to process everything that happened before you found yourself sitting at your desk at work again.

This weekend was one of the second.

It wasn’t a wholly bad weekend. And it wasn’t a wholly awesome weekend. But somehow it was a combo of both, with no hint of mediocre anywhere to be found.

First, the bad:

Friday started off with a beautiful afternoon and the promise of spending a few hours with my husband before the kids got home from school. That plan vanished when the school called to report Mira had thrown up and we needed to come get her.

Let the Vomit-fest 2011 commence!

Mira was fine the remainder of the day. Ate dinner, was mostly herself, went to bed with no problems. Then at 2:30am I heard her crying and found she had vomited in bed. Stripped & remade the bed, changed her, calmed her down and put her back to bed. 3:30am – lather, rinse, repeat. And then 5:00am, when I was out of sheets for her bed, Aaron took her downstairs to sleep on the couch while I started the laundry and then got a little more sleep.

It’s now Monday, and Mira just got off that couch. Other than going to the bathroom, she didn’t leave that couch for 48 hours. Poor kid seemed better on Saturday morning, but then by mid-day made it clear that even small sips of water couldn’t be kept down. Saturday was nothing more than fitful periods of sleep and vomiting. And like a bad, bad mother, I missed most of it, because I had a full day already planned. (In my defense, Aaron insisted I keep my plans for the day and he’d take care of Mira.)

Sunday morning was difficult, because I had to weigh our options of what to do for Mira. Take her to an urgent care, where they might insist on IVs, blood tests and meds that would leave us in major debt thanks to no health insurance, or keep her at home and take the risk that she might not get better on her own? Money is no factor if she genuinely needs help, but I’ve been through my share of stomach bugs to know that many times you just have to wait them out. And, well, I’m a nurse – I know what the danger signs of dehydration are and when we can’t wait any longer.

So we waited. I stroked her hair as she slept with her head in my lap, and I waited for her to guide me towards which direction I should take. And by Sunday afternoon she was keeping down small sips of Pedialyte and behaving more like herself. By Sunday evening she was asking for food, although we kept to the Pedialyte regimen. And then she slept through the night with no more vomiting. Whew.

Two things. One: I never want to repeat that again. Two: why do kids always seem to get really sick on the weekend, when the doctor isn’t in her office?

And then the awesome:

Momo had tweeted me earlier in the week that Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, was coming to town for her book signing, and she was organizing plans for dinner afterward. We know a lot of the same people, but I’ve never had the privilege of talking with Ree, so I was thrilled to be invited along.

I was also secretly terrified that she’d hate me, because she’s all…uh…domestic, and I’m, well, not. I burn water, people.

But the truth is, Ree is funny, smart, and so very easy to talk with. Not once did I feel uncomfortable around her. (OK, maybe a little jealous of her tremendous flexibility – she can get her leg behind her head!) She blended right in with the local gang as we talked, laughed and drank wine late into the night.

Oh yeah, we’d had some wine by this point…

We all had a fantastic dinner at Northstar Cafe (omg, try their veggie burger!), followed by dessert next door at Columbus’s own Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, with a personal tour by Jeni herself.

Ree is in awe of the ice cream goodness. I’m in the back about to pass out from so many yummy choices.

Side note: I am completely in love with Jeni’s ice cream, and was crazy proud that we could introduce Ree to our hometown best. Not only is it delicious, it’s all-natural, with many ingredients locally-sourced (including milk and cream from Snowville Creamery), and every flavor is safe for Cordy to eat. She’s not just limited to vanilla at Jeni’s, even if she prefers vanilla.

Columbus locals, if you haven’t had Jeni’s yet, you are hereby ordered to report to your nearest Jeni’s location and eat ice cream. Meyer Lemon Yogurt is my favorite, but if you hurry you might get to try Ylang Ylang Honeycomb before the season passes.

Dinner and ice cream and hanging out with some amazing women made it one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time. It all went by too quickly, and I already miss those conversations and all of that laughter. I’m glad to have met Ree, and thankful to her for giving us all a reason to gather and share an awesome evening together.

Love.

Filed Under: being a mom, me me me, Mira, plague · Tagged: blog love

Jan 14, 2011

Giving In

By Christina ·

When it comes to school lunches, we prefer to pack for our daughters. I’ve seen Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, I know how nutritionally deficient most school lunches are. French fries and ketchup count as vegetables – don’t even get me started on ketchup packets where tomatoes aren’t the first ingredient. Everything is breaded and fried and/or processed and prepackaged. The school menu looks like one processed food item after another, filled with artificial ingredients, fat and sodium.

Packing lunch has never been hard for Cordy. She’s a creature of habit who generally avoids new foods. And so every day she is thrilled to eat her PB&J, goldfish crackers and Annie’s fruit snacks. She even turns her nose up at chocolate milk because it’s different. (And we’re not about to try to push her on that, either.) She comes home each day with an empty lunchbox and usually a little peanut butter still on her mouth.

Mira is another story. At the beginning of the school year, she was thrilled to have a packed lunch like Cordy. She carried her lunch bag with pride, pointing out her name written in Sharpie on the top. But then she arrived at school and saw what the other kids were eating. And she saw the chocolate milk. She begged for chocolate milk – after all, chocolate ice cream was great, so chocolate milk must be awesome, right?

Even though she didn’t pay for a lunch, her teachers started giving her small cups of the chocolate milk because they always had extras. We frowned on it, but didn’t outright forbid it, and quickly learned that her teachers – like so many others – aren’t immune to her charms. So she started drinking chocolate milk with lunch.

But then I noticed she’d come home from preschool and some of her lunch was still in the bag. Sometimes she’d walk in the door and immediately tell me she wanted to eat her goldfish crackers, so I figured she was simply saving them for an afternoon snack. Occasionally I’d see notes from the teacher that she ate some of the school lunch, too, and they didn’t mind because they always have extras. Okaaaaaay then.

Over the past few weeks, though, Mira has come home with most of her lunch still tucked safely in her lunch bag. It’s frustrating to have to throw away an entire PB&J sandwich, and Aaron (who makes the lunches in the morning because I’m at work) was getting increasingly angry with her. He decided to try a different approach, thinking that maybe Mira wants more variety in her lunch. He began asking her each morning what she wanted for lunch, and then packing her requests. We hoped this would solve the problem.

However, earlier this week she brought home a salami and cheese sandwich, untouched, along with her other lunch items. Despite asking for it that morning, she decided not to eat it and ate the school food again instead. Throwing another wasted sandwich in the trash, Aaron declared that he was done making lunches for her. I agreed.

I’m a little surprised at how easily I agreed to let her eat the school lunch. But I can’t stand to see the food that we pay so much money for wasted every day. It still makes me cringe to think of some of the foods she’s eating. The little comfort I have is that, unlike Cordy, Mira appears to have no food sensitivities to artificial ingredients, so at least the junk food doesn’t affect her behavior.

She’s a stubborn three year old and she’s found how to get her way on this issue. (Please don’t think she gets her way with everything, though. Her pout and fluttering eyelashes have only limited power on Aaron and I.) She manipulated her teachers into letting her eat the school food even though she had a perfectly good and delicious lunch in her bag each day. And she pushed us to the point where we have given up and stopped packing her lunch.

She won. Or at least she won one battle. She’s already upset that she can’t take her Thomas the Tank Engine lunch bag to school anymore, and I’m not giving in on that. There’s no point in taking an empty lunch bag to school.

Sigh. I can already tell Mira is going to be a challenge as she gets older. I only hope I can convince her to use her master powers of manipulation for good, not evil.

T.R.O.U.B.L.E.

Filed Under: healthy living, Mira, school ·

Dec 23, 2010

A Fair and Balanced Christmas

By Christina ·

I thought I had most of the Christmas shopping done long before today. But then when I paused for a moment to do a quick recap of the gifts I have for my two cherubs to unwrap on Christmas morning, I realized I had made a grave error.

Mira has over twice as many gifts as Cordy.

It’s not like I intentionally tried to stiff my older child. Mira is just far easier to shop for, thanks to being very outspoken about what she likes. I know that if I find anything involving Thomas the Train, polar bears, or the color pink, she will squeal with joy and proclaim it the Best Gift Ever.

(Until she opens the next item that fits one or more of those categories, where she will yet again declare it the Best Gift Ever. She never leaves a gift giver disappointed by her reaction.)

Cordy, on the other hand, is a little more difficult. She wants a blue bunny. And maybe a superhero sticker book. Her requests are very specific, and not always items that can be obtained. Guess wrong when presenting her with a gift and you’ll be met with the silence of indifference as she sets it aside and never glances at it again.

So it was an honest oversight that I picked up significantly more gifts for Mira than Cordy. Which means I get to join the crowds today to find at least one more gift for Cordy.

Sure, I could hold back a few items for Mira, but if I did that it would be holding back all of the toys/games, because the polar bear clothing can’t wait until her birthday in May, when it will no longer be winter and she’ll likely be near the end of this clothing size. And even though I know she’ll love the clothing, I can’t make her open only clothing from Santa.

Thankfully, both of my girls don’t have expensive tastes, so I’ll only need to find a good book or an interesting small toy to make up the difference. Sometimes the least expensive item is often Cordy’s favorite. But they’re both old enough now to notice if one has significantly more presents than the other, so I have to at least make sure the gift load is balanced.

My mom was lucky – she never had to deal with the issue of gift equalization. I was an only child, making Christmas an easy task for her – if Santa brought me only one gift, I had no one else to compare it with. But possibly because I grew up as an only child, it’s also not a topic in the front of my mind when buying gifts for my children.

(For the record – I’m not saying I wish I had only one child. They just don’t cover this in the hospital when you give birth to your second child.)

I suppose this will be good training for the years to come, because while they will only notice the number of packages at the moment, I’m sure in the future I’ll have to dodge the “You spent more on her than me!” teenager whine.

And that will be the day I give them equal gift cards and let them pick out what they want.

Filed Under: being a mom, Cordy, family time, holidays, Mira, sisterhood ·

Nov 23, 2010