Friday, October 29, 2010

Short Stories

Tonight, I'm so tired that I don't even remember the fourth (and final) song in Pumpkin's bedtime routine. I am very well trained, though, because I woke right up when the fifth song on the CD started, and popped out of Pumpkin's bed to turn the CD off. I should be doing the dishes so that I can go to bed, but Pumpkin whined and didn't want me to leave. She's been doing that a lot lately, and I often indulge her and stay another minute or so. Tonight, I was afraid I'd fall asleep if I did that, and wake up sometime later, with my contacts half-gluing my eyes shut and a horrible crick in my neck.

So I told her I had to go, but promised to go type in the guest room for "a lot of minutes" before I started the dishes.

So here I am.

It is not Petunia's fault that I am tired- she has suddenly switched to a routine where she only wakes up once in the middle of the night to nurse. Occasionally, she wakes up again at about 5, but often she sleeps through until 6:45 or so, which is when she usually wakes up for the day. I don't know if this is due to the end of the 9-12 month separation anxiety period- her day care drop offs have gotten a lot easier, too, and she is a lot less clingy in general, so I think that period is over. Or it could be because she's fighting something of or getting over her 12 month shots- she was running a fever again this week. (It was a weird one- she got sent home from day care on Tuesday, so we flew my Mom over to take care of her. Then Wednesday and Thursday she was fine all day, but spiked a mild fever of about 100 or 101 at bedtime. The fever was gone by morning.  Tonight, there was no fever. I don't know what to think. This all started earlier than the post-shots fevers would normally start. She got both the MMR and the chicken pox shots a week ago today, and either of those could cause a fever starting about 7 days after they are given. It could be she just reacted a little differently than most. Or it could be a virus from day care. Or it could be a relapse of the fevers that I thought had cleared up with the antibiotics. I don't know. I guess it is a good thing I enjoyed my few days of not worrying about Petunia's health!)

Anyway, I can't blame Petunia for how tired I am, since I generally do pretty well if I'm just woken up once in the night. No, this is Hubby's fault. Last night, he would not stop talking when he brought Petunia in to me. I was nursing her, and trying to stay half asleep so that I could go back to sleep quickly, and he kept going on about I can't remember what. Interestingly, he can't remember either, and claims he wasn't fully awake. Well, by the time he was done, I was fairly awake and it took me almost two hours to get back to sleep. Ugh.

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My Mom took a video today that perfectly captures the difference in personality between Pumpkin and Petunia. When Pumpkin was learning how to walk and toddling around with her walker she would often run into a wall or door frame. When she did, she would repeatedly bang the walker into the obstacle, as if she were trying to make that inconvenient thing move out of her way. Petunia is now learning how to walk and toddles around with her walker. She ran into a door frame while my Mom was recording her. She just backed her walker up, steered around the obstacle, and continued on her way.

I love this. Both of my girls are a bit obstinate, but they are obstinate in different ways. Pumpkin will plow over any obstacle, full of sound and fury. Petunia will acknowledge the obstacle, and the calmly move around it and keep on her way.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this difference plays out as they get older.

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Petunia loves music. She will crawl over to the CD player/clock we have in her room and babble at us meaningfully until we turn some music on her for her. And then she will either sit back on her heels or stand up, leaning on the box that is still passing for a bedside table for her, and sway to the beat. She'll look over her shoulder at us and grin. And then she'll start pushing buttons on the CD player. Occasionally, she'll push a button that makes the music stop. And then the routine starts over: the earnest words that aren't words until we start the music, and then the dance party resumes.

Good times.

3 comments:

  1. Re: Petunia's fever... the worst family trip we ever took was about 5 days after Rosie's 12 month MMR and chicken pox vaccines. She had her shots on a Monday. On Friday, we started a 7 hour drive for a camping holiday in our trailer for one of Larry's triathlons. She was really fussy on the drive, which wasn't really like her. On Saturday evening, friends of ours staying at the same RV park offered to watch her so that Larry and I could go to dinner at this awesome Bavarian restaurant in the area. When we got back, Rosie had spiked a high fever (39C... not sure in F) and was not doing well. Not at all. But she had no signs of illness other than the fever and associated irritability. I spent most of that holiday in the trailer with a fussy baby until her fever broke a couple days later.

    I had called HealthLink (toll free phone number service we have here with free access to a nurse - I use it all the time and it's fantastic) and they told me that while its rare for a vaccine reaction to be so late, the chicken pox vaccine can occassionally cause it, but they really didn't know why.

    So maybe Petunia's fever was from the vaccines... it's not impossible.

    A caveat though, there are differences between Canadian and American regulations for vaccines and I know some of them are different, so perhaps the vaccines Petunia got are not the same as what Rosie got.

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  2. Loved this post.

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  3. I do so love these stories, especially about the differences in personalities.

    There are some nights when I know it's going to take a while for my girl to fall asleep, so I'll take out my contacts before lying down with her and just let myself fall asleep. Like last night. That was a good hour nap before I got up and went to bed in my own bed, leaving the dishes for the morning. Oh well.

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